i saw someone say nobody needs to know what a .txt file is anymore. what the fuck is the world coming to

unironically i think we need to bring back computer labs because APPARENTLY some people WERENT taught basic computer literacy and internet safety in school

things about computers/the internet i think kids should be formally taught in schools because theyre important to know and the amount of soon to be grown adults i know who know NOTHING about any of these is quite frankly almost all of them (and resources to learn if you dont know these things, because its never to late to get better with computers)

• how to troubleshoot by yourself when you have a technical problem
• what common file types are
• some very basics on how to use ""developer tools"" on your computer (because i cant think of a better way to refer to them) like task manager and command prompt (and their mac equivalents, terminal and activity monitor ofc)
• how to read and understand a privacy policy and what your personal data is, as well as what it being collected actually means and steps you can take to keep it private
• how to understand terms of service
  (hey. if you have trouble with reading legalese and worry about being able to understand these policies anyways, here's a site that gives basic summaries of privacy policies and ToS)
• what a cookie actually is
• internet privacy and your digital footprint!! seriously i dont know why we stopped teaching people that they shouldnt be putting their entire real identity online in a world where your online actions can ruin you irl
• basic safety measures like antivirus software (and why you should use it or if the built in one on windows or mac is enough for you) and backing up your computer (also a mac guide)
• common keyboard shortcuts (and on mac)

as an additional note: things i think everyone should know on computers and the internet but schools may bit hesitant to teach about for whatever moral/legal standards schools pretend to operate on

• vpns and adblockers! (btw for most of these where you can pay for things im purposefully not recommending any specific software but seriously just use ublock origin for an adblocker)
• how to not get a virus while pirating something
• what a temporary email is and when to use one
• red flags that you shouldn't trust a website (and how to quickly check the security of a site)
• what javascript on a website does and how to disable it to get around paywalls

ok one last addition! if you want to take it one level higher, i think learning the very basics of at least one programming language is good for people. it makes computers less scary and it makes you feel very cool, and a lot of people get discouraged about it because it seems overly complicated and hard to learn outside a formal classroom setting, so heres some resources for learning the very basics of python (because i consider it the easiest language to learn and knowing one language will make it easier to learn others)

• an online compiler so you dont need to download anything or worry about running code directly on your computer if that makes you nervous
• a basic video guide to introduce you to python and walk you through beginner steps
• a guide to some syntax and commands you should know (this was literally my lifeline in my first CS class)
• some performance tasks to give you things to code to practice and assess yourself

Everyone shut up and look at this carving of a whale from the 1200-600 CE Chumash culture

ohhhhhh my godddddd

When you thought it would be easy peasy lemon squeezy but it turns out to be difficult difficult lemon difficult.

Wait that’s actually really good, gonna pop this out of the tags

… I dont remember this version of the citrus scale

autumntides

10h

"In the instance an employer makes an illegal request for a photograph as part of a job application, you may submit a complaint to the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission." Successful violation fee collections are paid partially to the one who suffered the violation, which in many cases exceeds a year of work at these shit jobs. There's only two weak points to a corporation, and those are in the budget and in the supply chain. Hit them where it hurts.

Fucking word.

Learn your rights!

AUTO REBLOG IN CASE YOU MISSED THIS THE 1ST TIME AROUND.  It is important to KNOW YOUR RIGHTS.

So anyways with the rapid rise of fascism I feel it’s a good time to point out that it’s perfectly legal to follow unjust orders slowly, badly, or inefficiently

Breaking the law, even an unjust law, has consequences that not all can afford. But also a very large number of us are also very stupid, or very confused, or very lazy, and so it’s not unreasonable that someone at the bottom of the chain of command might make a typo, or misplace some paperwork, or leave a Friday afternoon email for Monday morning.

When something goes wrong, or an operation slows down, because a low-level worker somewhere sent a package to the wrong address or left someone on hold for an hour or didn’t fill out a particular form correctly- Do you immediately assume malicious intent? Or do you usually just brush it off as some underpaid idiot being bad at their job?

You also gotta not brag about it.
Keep your political opinions on the down low. Be noncommittal or ignorant or undecided. Say things like “I’ve never heard of that”, “where did you hear that?” or “that’s interesting, I heard a conflicting story from here, how weird”. Never be outwardly confidant of what you know. When there is a silence, don’t fill it- leave the space and let the other fill it for you. That’s how you get information, that’s how you find sources, that’s how you reduce the value of anything others get out of you.

Virtue signalling by wearing pins and ribbons and loudly declaring your place is not safe in some environments. It will place scrutiny on you and everything you touch. Nobody believes the guy who says “fuck my boss and everything he stands for” scratches the boss’s car by accident, even if it is an accident.

If you want to slow the march of a tank, filling the path with mud is going do more than laying down in front of it.

So fun fact: back during the Second World War, the U.S. Army, yes that U.S. Army, wrote an entire manual about how to sabotage a giant machine made of people that is destroying the world and everyone in it. It's called the Simple Sabotage Field Manual. What @teaboot describes is one of the most highly recommended strategies in there, because just about anyone can do it no matter what role they have in the machine, and it's really remarkably effective.

The whole thing's on the internet archive and I highly recommend reading it cover to cover.

the number of times i think about the full body viking skeleton i saw in the museum is ridiculous like when i say it haunts me i mean it actually haunts me

every time i remember the questions are endless — what was his name? what did his mother call him? what sounds did he wake up to? what sounds did he die to? how old was he when he died? how old when he fell in love? how old when he first fell out? who cried with him and laughed with him? who cried for him? how many miles of separation can i draw between my ancestors and him? was he kind, serious, jokey? was he sombre or impulsive? was he chatty and good-humoured or a cantankerous asshole? like…i have never stopped thinking about this.

the fact that at one point in time this was a living breathing person. with memories and petty hates and the dumbest jokes. and friends he loved. and the fact that he probably at some point burst out into drunken song or punched someone in an argument or GOT punched in an argument or tripped into the mud while his friends pissed themselves laughing or or or or…countless or‘s into infinity

and the fact that before all of that this massive skeleton was tiny toddler (was he scared of the dark? did he squabble with his siblings? did he have siblings?) who may or may not have hid behind his mother or probably got hoisted onto an adult’s shoulders and in his little mind thought this person was the strongest human in the world and that he could hold the whole sky up just by standing there like that and as long as he was up there he was king of the world or could be.

like…what am i supposed to do with this? what does ANYONE do with this? how are you supposed to cope with the enormity of this while at the same time realising just how tiny and fleeting our lives are? there is literally more than a THOUSAND years between us & ALL of it has been pinched down to a glass case not even 2 inches thick like…i’m losing my mind.

I got this feeling when I saw some petroglyphs on the side of a cliff like.. a human made those. That human felt all of the emotions I feel they went through the same universal human experience and they each had vivid internal lives and memories. Wild.

ok this is next level and i honestly…i honestly can’t

during my prehistory module we got given Roman pottery and roofing slabs that had thumb prints in the handles and I put my thumb over those thumb marks and cried in the middle of the tutorial 

I do pottery, and it’s one of my favorite things about the medium: that you can often see the shape of someone’s fingers in the surface. I love it when someone just shoves a finger somewhere while throwing, and leaves it there as a place for YOU to put your finger. Little thumbrests on top of mug handles is a fave.

“How did you make those ridges like that on the outside? How did you make that spiral on the bottom?”

“With my fingers.”

All of this. 

At Wells Cathedral in England the stairs down from the chapter house have had dips worn into their stone by centuries of human feet taking the most direct route up and down. 

Thinking about the immense distances between the stars makes me panic, but looking back into human history gives me peace. 

Reminds me of when we got to see this exposition on ancient egypt. 

I was like, “Wow a real life papyrus!”

but then my mom said, clearly moved, “Wow, that’s someone’s handwriting.”

Part of why I love medieval calligraphy so much is that my sources are these centuries old manuscripts that have… doodles in the margins, and scribbles where they tested their pens and ink, notes at the end and in the margins complaining about the temperature or their work materials or thanking god that they’ve finished. There are surviving artifacts with cat paw prints across the page where some pet got into the ink, and there’s even one with a pee stain on it followed by a long note explaining why nothing of importance is written on that page and a reminder not to leave your books out at night.

They were made by people, and I love feeling connected to those people by what I do.

The one that gets me every time is this bowl:

I want to know what the person who was making it was thinking, so badly. Maybe it was all done very seriously. But maybe they were giggling, as they said to themselves, “But what if I put feet? FEET ON THE BOWL!” Were they giggling at the idea? Did it make them happy, every time they shaped those little toes? If they were having a bad day, did they make a foot bowl, to cheer themselves up?

Did they ever consider that, some 6000 years later, someone would look at their foot bowls, and smile every time, and wonder about the person who made them?

As someone who has worked in clay?

Yes, we think about that. We wonder about it. We wonder who will see our work, if it somehow survives even a hundred years, let alone a thousand, two, or – amazing! – six thousand years. When you work in a durable medium, you wonder whose thumb will fit the prints you leave. Who they will be. If your work will bring them the same joy that it brought you in its making.

I transcribe documents. Mostly ship logs. But also personal diaries and journals. They were just like you and me. They write don’t forget eggs, and wondered if their neighbors secretly hated them or if they are reading into it too much. They loved and were loved and they wondered. They wondered about you. Who were you going to be? Would you live in a hose like them? Would you travel the stars? Would you care about them? The things they wrote the things they made? Did they leave an impression. Everything I transcribe from ship notes, research papers, census, to diaries. Are just people saying I was here, what I did mattered, please remember me. And every word I type out is me whispering back. You were, you did, we will.

reblog if you're corny and insufferable

mutuals, out of curiosity what season were you born in and what's your favorite season?

odysseus absolutely does present a threat to penelope if he perceives her as at all unfaithful, and i feel the unfairness of this, and i think people tend to undersell how much tension at least potentially exists between odysseus and penelope. but i'm also like. his reaction, all speculation aside, his actual reaction in the odyssey to her flirting with the suitors is delight, because he immediately ascertains that she is running a con. sorry that they're so in-sync in spite of the forces that try to drive a wedge between them, including their own misgiving hearts. sorry that they invented homophrosyne ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

oh, you meant they literally did, ok

would i, tumblr user thee odysseyofhomer, lie to you?

...

this is the only funny addition to this post

Achievement Unlocked:

Nobody Answered

Well ain't that a poke in the eye.

I made another Rusty Quill fan compilation because i was bored and i have so many clips on my phone. Have at it folks.

Foxfire says fuck them cops.

*You couldn't pay me to chase after lights in the hills of Kentuckiana, the Berkshires, or the Bridgewater Triangle, let alone deep Appalachian country. Sometimes when you see something strange, no you didn't.

being anti ai is making me feel like in going insane. "you asked for thoughts about your characters backstory and i put it into chat gpt for ideas". studies have proven its making people dumber. "i asked ai to generate this meal plan". its causing water shortages where its data centers are built. "ill generate some pictures for the dnd campaign". its spreading misinformation. "meta, generate an image of this guy doing something stupid". its trained off stolen images, writing, video, audio. "i was talking with my snapchat ai-" theres no way to verify what its doing with the information it collects. "youtube is impletmenting ai based age verification". my work has an entire graphics media department and has still put ai generated motivational posters up everywhere. ai playlists. ai facial verification. google ai microsoft ai meta ai snapchat ai. everyone treats it as a novelty. every treats it as a mandatory part of life. am i the only one who sees it? am i paranoid? am i going insane? jesus fucking christ. if i have to hear one more "well at least-" "but it does-" "but you can-" im about to lose it. i shouldnt have to jump through hoops to avoid the evil machine. have you no principles? no goddamn spine? am i the weird one here?

I have been thinking of this Canal+ ad with napoleon in it

thank you @mugwomps, all right, who do I tag.

I guess @neosatsuma, @cdrlogic, @aranov, @thekenobee.

In an incredible reversal, Builder.AI just declared bankruptcy after admitting that they were faking their AI tool with 700 humans

Holy smokes it’s true

way too good to leave in the tags

that’s a good one