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Learning about Lopburi, the Thai town where two rival gangs of monkeys have been fighting in the streets

Police have been trying to capture the “leaders” but the monkeys know how to identify a tranquilizer gun, so they scatter as soon as they someone raise one. Cops have to hide the tranq gun until they get close.

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I try not to be callous and unempathetic as an aroace but then I see some bs like "fantasizing about anyone other than your current partner (including celebrity crushes) is cheating" or "being friends with your ex is a red flag" (if you end your previous romance amicably and on good terms that feels like a massive green flag to me??? Why are screaming match breakups the norm) and I'm like. wow I am so glad I'm aroace cause being allo sounds exhausting lol.

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Well... insisting on living life like a bad article in Cosmo is indeed exhausting, but I hope most sensible adults will realize they shouldn't do that.

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Russian lies are meant not only to disinform, to make action more difficult, but also to demotivate, to make action seem senseless. Russian memes work not by presenting Russia as a positive alternative, but by demoralizing others. No one wants to be close to "Nazis," and the simple introduction of the lie is confusing and saddening. The same holds with the Russian meme to the effect that Ukraine is corrupt. A completely bogus Russian source introduced the entirely fake idea that the Ukrainian president had bought yachts. Although this was entirely untrue, Representative Greene then spread the fiction. Senator J.D. Vance also picked up the "yacht" example and used it as his justification for opposing aid to Ukraine. The larger sense of that lie is that everyone everywhere is corrupt, even the people who seem most admirable; and so we might as well give up on our heroes, on any struggle for democracy, or any struggle at all. Ukraine's president, Volodymr Zelens'kyi, chose to risk his life by remaining in Kyiv and defending his country against a fearsome attack from Russia which almost all outsiders believed would succeed within days. His daring gamble saved not only his own democracy, but opened a window of faith that democracies can defend themselves. It confirmed the basis lesson of liberty that individual choices have consequences. The lie directed at Zelens'kyi was meant not only to discredit him personally and undermine support for Ukraine, but also to persuade Americans that no one is righteous and nothing is worth defending.

Timothy Snyder

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"A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit.

Google's search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google[...]

Google operates one of the world's most consequential security system – The Algorithm (TM) – in total secrecy. We're not allowed to know how Google's ranking system works, what its criteria are, or even when it changes: "If we told you that, the spammers would win."

Well, they kept it a secret, and the spammers won anyway.

...

Some of the biggest, most powerful, most trusted publications in the world have a side-hustle in quietly producing SEO-friendly "10 Best ___________ of 2024" lists: Rolling Stone, Forbes, US News and Report, CNN, New York Magazine, CNN, CNET, Tom's Guide, and more.

Google literally has one job: to detect this kind of thing and crush it. The deal we made with Google was, "You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.'"

They broke the deal." -Cory Doctorow

Read the whole article: https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/21/im-feeling-unlucky/#not-up-to-the-task

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May I present: Leda and the Swan Princess! It's based on this post about a swan princess who refuses to go quietly in obscurity when cursed. (If you liked this one you will probably also like my other comics which you can find on my pinned post).

If you enjoyed and want to support a queer art student, you can tip me over on my Ko-fi! Tips help me out dramatically while I'm still in school!

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smartphone storage plateauing in favor of just storing everything in the cloud is such dogshit. i should be able to have like a fucking terabyte of data on my phone at this point. i hate the fucking cloud

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happy 4/20

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Losing it over this twitter account

[Image ID: Three tweets from Real Jonathan Harker. The first says “Dracula took my phone. (tweet sent from Nintendo 3DS)” The second says “Dracula took my 3DS (tweet sent from Nintendo Wii U)” The third says “Dracula took the Wii U (tweet sent from LG Smart Refridgerator)” /end ID]

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just a reminder that "listened to marginalized people about their oppression" means "people know their own experiences better than you do" not "the most oppressed person in the room is always right about everything"

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when people who want to be vaguely progressive say 'nature' all secular style but it's painfully obvious they mean 'god' while thinking they don't mean god

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It’s really funny to me what kids will pick up on that adults say. I once babysat a girl who wanted to pretend it was her wedding day and, using a tablecloth as a veil, just sat in front of a full length mirror sighing heavily and saying “i don’t want a wedding, I want a marriage”

#my friend had a story recently about her five-year-old #my friend said 'what the heck?' and her kid said not to say that #she said only kids are allowed to say 'what the heck' #so my friend asked what grownups were supposed to say #and the #and the kid replied that grownups are supposed to say 'what the hell?'

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its so brave that you have such a 2012-coded url in this 2024 world

would you call a bear brave for standing in a new construction suburb or would you recognize the unfamiliar world they built around him

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#yeah no that totally checks out for 2003 #in fact I'd have been shocked if it was any earlier than 1995

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this is so funny. ducklings from wish.

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English added by me :)

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Don Wilson:

"I have noticed a significant increase in general laxity about PPE since COVID masking has been dropped. A significant % of OR staff (esp anesthesia & RTs) not bothering to mask inside actual OR even when sterile fields are open & set up.

Nurses inside OR generally much more consistent (they directly handle & set up sterile equipment).

I’ve seen unmasked anesthesiologists & RTs for emergency CS & gyne cases… I don’t get it. We mask to prevent contamination of open surgical wounds. Just because COVID mask mandates are over doesn’t mean INSIDE an operating room is a mask free zone.

Used to be that it was unthinkable to be unmasked inside an active OR. Even in the hallways during active OR time. It’s a sad commentary on the impact of the antimask stupidity spilling over to areas where it can impact quality & safety of the patient care environment.

I’m just one person who chooses to be fastidious about masking inside the hospital, I can’t take on the entire system. But it’s discouraging to see & I wonder how many patients go on to have nosocomial surgical infections because of relaxed cultures around masking now."

https://x.com/heiltsuk_paleo/status/1780326358314614784