packbat is a social construct @packbat@weirder.earth

December Mutual Aid. Need January rent and electric. 871/1500 raised. Due today. If you want to just support a disabled Native artist share or donate. Also have my etsy where I sell my art.
PayPal.me/kiagbear
Cashapp $kiagbear
Venmo kiagbear

https://ko-fi.com/mahtheyzhawey

My etsy where I sell my art

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MahtheyzhaweyArts

My link🌲 where I have wishlists for medical stuff and other things.

https://linktr.ee/mahtheyzhawey

#MutualAidRequest #DisabilityMutualAid
#NativeAmerican #DisabledArtist

I know you’re not supposed to have Popeye eat spinach for strength yet, but are you allowed to say that Popeye’s gender is amphibious?

the frog! the frog! the frog!

okay this was one of the most beautiful moments i've ever experienced. top ten memory right here. i was having a terrible start to this year, just felt like total dog shit. i was unemployed and listless. i could just barely get myself out the door to go take pictures. and i am so glad i did.

i walked into the nature preserve and immediately was hit with this sound that i couldn't identify. took me a few moments to register that they were probably frogs and i needed to go find them immediately. on my way rushing to the pond i passed a woman who was like "do you hear the chorus frogs??" and i was like "yes!! where are they??". She apparently had just gotten done teaching a class out there and told me where to find them.

As i approached the pond, the sound was nearly too much. They were so loud!! It sounded like i was absolutely surrounded by hundreds of frogs all singing. The strangest part was that despite there sounding like endless numbers of them i could not for the life of me locate one of them!

Took me a bit of hunting but finally i started to see them amongst the duckweed. Just tiny little orbs croaking their tiny little hearts out. i was just absolutely overwhelmed with the emotions of experiencing something so beautiful and perfect. such a new and unique experience. something that made suffering through all the shit utterly worth it. there will always be more frogs to see for the first time. there are so many more experiences to have. there are people to love and animals to wonder about. ill be thinking about these frogs for the rest of my life.

The customary #Malagasy_Language new year’s greeting is “Arahabaina tratry ny taona” or “Arahaba tratry ny taona”, often shortened to “Tratry ny taona”,

meaning “Congratulations for living to see the new year”.

And the customary answer is “Dia samy ho tratry ny ho avy”,

meaning “And may we all live to see what is to come”.

Happy new year! I made cat ears with cat ears with cat ears

The era of ChatGPT is kind of horrifying for me as an instructor of mathematics... Not because I am worried students will use it to cheat (I don't care! All the worse for them!), but rather because many students may try to use it to *learn*.

For example, imagine that I give a proof in lecture and it is just a bit too breezy for a student (or, similarly, they find such a proof in a textbook). They don't understand it, so they ask ChatGPT to reproduce it for them, and they ask followup questions to the LLM as they go.

I experimented with this today, on a basic result in elementary number theory, and the results were disastrous... ChatGPT sent me on five different wild goose-chases with subtle and plausible-sounding intermediate claims that were just false. Every time I responded with "Hmm, but I don't think it is true that [XXX]", the LLM responded with something like "You are right to point out this error, thank you. It is indeed not true that [XXX], but nonetheless the overall proof strategy remains valid, because we can [...further gish-gallop containing subtle and plausible-sounding claims that happen to be false]."

I know enough to be able to pinpoint these false claims relatively quickly, but my students will probably not. They'll instead see them as valid steps that they can perform in their own proofs.

I am here to announce that I have decreased #spam on my web contact form from 1 message every 15 minutes (for months straight) to 0 messages in the last week by adding a "I am a spam bot" radio button.

I am not joking.

No I am not using something like ReCaptcha, I literally just added a radio button to the list.

Too many writers are using generative 'AI' to make their book covers, so I've written a guide on how to make your own cover for free or cheap without turning to a machine.

If you can't afford to pay an artist, you CAN make your own!

I hope this is a helpful overview that covers the basics and points to some free resources.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/create-your-own-118846775 #covers #indie #writing #WritintCommunity #SelfPublishing

Do I happen to know anyone in the St Louis area who would want an air hockey table? We need to finish cleaning out a family member's place this upcoming weekend and don't have room for it ourselves... and since we don't live in STL, I don't think we'll have time to list it on Craigslist or anything.

random plug for the Tales from the Records of the Adamant Gambit series https://the-adamant-gambit.itch.io/

we had no involvement in its production, we were just playing each new game every day when it came out

really wonderfully cosy science fiction, personal and respectful and interesting

also if you pay for the anthology there's a dollmaker in the back as well as the creator commentary and soundtrack and such

New Years Eve is one of my least favorite times of the year but at least new stuff entering the public domain is kinda fun

A bit back I was in an exchange here about whether closed captions needed to be faithful to spoken dialogue in a show (at least in the US, the answer is yes, they do).

It came to mind again that I'd brought up captioners' tendency to censor cusswords.

I have enough hearing impairment that I benefit substantially from closed captions, but I also still hear maybe 70% of dialogue.

Among things I watch, #Netflix Originals seem to be especially bad about this. We were watching a movie this weekend, and the spoken line was very clearly:

"I never want to see her fucking face again."

The caption was:

"I never want to see her again."

So yeah, Netflix is going out of their way to sabotage an *accessibility feature* in the cause of ableist infantilizing of people with disabilities.

Hashtag soup follows

#Ableism #EverydayAbleism #Accessibility #Disability #ClosedCaptions #Netflix

I need to write a proper post about this at some point, but for now, here's the short version:

If you're purportedly fighting racism on fedi, purportedly trying to make it a more diverse space, purportedly trying to make it a more welcoming space to people that aren't white, etc, stop assuming people that don't have their race plastered in all caps on their profile are white, k? (*especially* if you're a POC yourself)

Because you know what that is? White-washing, an example of the very racism we're trying to fight, and something that makes a space seem less diverse than it actually is

The fact that it's used against POC to discredit what we have to say is just the cherry on top (and often even a wonderful example of lateral violence :cat_facepalm: )

#SocialJustice #Racism #Bigotry #Fedi #Mastodon #POC #BIPOC

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some 2021 stuff~

#myart #roserubedo #korkicanaille #evemorisot