tumblr users love reading. you literally stopped for this post just because it has words in it

this is one of my favorite bits about tumblr

the users seem to actually prefer text posts to anything else, and treat it as a chore to play a video especially with sound

“google is free” actually now that you can’t turn off ai answers google is 5.6 billion gallons of water.

Not to be a bitch but the idea that AI is uniquely environmentally destructive is simply false. Honestly it's naive at best and willfully ignorant at worst. Google used billions of gallons of water before AI came along, and it'll continue to after AI has been left behind.

I'm sure AI has increased these water costs, but that's only because any new technology is going to increase water costs. AI isn't the root cause here; it's merely another component in a system that does nothing to encourage tech companies to find solutions to high resource usage.

It's good to be critical of huge companies like Google. It's good to be cognizant of the wasteful use of resources that goes into technology. But when we give in to blind hatred of a specific technology like AI and make it out to be the source behind these things, we lay a smokescreen for the corporate greed and broken systems that are really to blame.

If you're angry about the water use of AI, you should channel that anger towards learning and caring about the wider environmental issues at play.

But don't just blindly hate AI because it's the current boogeyman. There are deeper things at play.

...except every Google search only uses about 0.5mL of water, compared to the 500mL of water used for every 5-50 AI prompts.

One year of training for a single LLM uses 126,000L of water. Now consider how many LLMs there are (ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, etc) and suddenly that number is seriously rivaling Google's water use.

That's also putting aside the insane carbon emissions that come with training AI models (300,000 kg of CO2 emissions, or 125 round-trip flights between NYC/Beijing) and usage of AI (10x the current level of energy usage by small country).

Yes, Google itself also uses a ton of water and has a lot of carbon emissions. But not only is Google is a single company that is broadly used, but when you consider how many different LLMs are currently in use and how each one damages the environment in colossal ways on their own, the cumulative effect of all those AIs is the concern, because left unchecked they will become worse than Google itself.

The conclusion here should not be "you can't complain about AI's usage if you use Google", it's "AI is making a bad problem worse and should not be allowed to exist in its current form". People are capable of caring about multiple issues, and especially if we recognize Google is damaging to the environment then we should not be allowing what is essentially another five Googles to run around doing the exact same thing, multiplying the issue 500x.

No one is blindly hating AI, we are hating it for being a dangerous plagiarizing misinformation machine that guzzles water/belches carbon at a rate that will very quickly surpass what Google does. Trying to make people less critical of AI by saying 'but other companies do this too!' is not the gotcha you think it is, you literally just sound like this:

Sharing prev's tags because they're that good:

They couldn’t even use a verb as a verb😭😭😭

My verbs are punching, napping, and freaking out.

And stabbing, before someone comes in and reminds me.

In case any Americans are not aware of this: the rest of the world is FUCKING TERRIFIED of how this election is going to go. If trump wins, it affects more than just America. If trump wins, it will fuck so many other countries in so many ways.

So first of all, PLEASE VOTE. The rest of the world doesn't get to vote in your election, but we do get directly impacted by your election, so please do what we can't, and vote.

Secondly, remember that you're not just voting for America. You're voting on behalf of the all the countries that will be impacted by this election.

Please, for the love of God, vote blue, and save not just America from a second trump term, but the whole goddamn world.

Oh, so you like GENOCIDE?!

I know you tagged this as sarcasm, but just a reminder to anyone who is still hesitant over voting blue because of the Palestinian genocide:

Palestinians are literally asking you to vote for Harris.

Theyre asking this, because TRUMP WILL BE WORSE FOR THEM AND THEIR FAMILIES.

Trump is friends with Netenfuckwad. Netenfuckwad WANTS TRUMP TO WIN. Trump thinks that America needs to go further in supporting Israel. Trump has spoken openly about "finishing" Gaza. Trump and his family have spoken openly about the "real estate opportunities" that are opening up in Gaza.

Don't like genocide? VOTE HARRIS. Palestinians are literally asking you to.

I am not taking a risk

Not risking it pals

U know what I want potato of luck

Damn right I’m reblogging. See previous post re wrath of whatever from high atop the thing.

the best accessory a girl can have is visible biceps in a tank top

Mandatory caveat that Obama’s presidency had problems so the tumblr people don’t try to shoot me but anyways I often think about this one interview that Obama did a few years ago and in it he was asked what he was most proud of in his presidency and he was like we severely upped the efficiency of most household appliances in the US and reduced our carbon footprint a lot with that and helped people save on energy bills and that’s the sort of thing nobody ever notices

And he was right. I’d heard nothing about that. And I looked into it and there was a massive effort during his presidency to improve the efficiency of everyday household objects and do stuff like give people the means to install solar panels and track how much electricity they were using.

I missed this and I’m a person who’s generally in tune with what’s going on politically. Like there’s so many unsexy mundane things the government is working on all the time that are super important. And I kinda like the idea that a president’s proudest achievement is that he made your appliances eat up a bit less of your electric bill.

you know what. I’m really pleased that I can finally reliably do 40s rolled hair without taking six tries and 45 minutes of swearing

but

at the end of the day when I’m taking all the hairpins out it’s starting to feel like that bit in a movie where a heavily armed character has to leave all their weapons at the door and they keep turning up one more knife. only in this case the knives are bobby pins

nearly all libraries have a ghost, but medical libraries frequently have a ghost and a skeleton

i’ve been reminded that most people don’t know about the ghost

‘ghost reading’ means collecting usage stats for books which are used within the library, without being checked out (which would automatically generate usage data).

This is often done by checking out the book to a dummy user account belonging to The Library Ghost before it’s reshelved. (After being returned ofc. Ghosts read very fast.)

Due to ghost reading, most libraries ask that you do not return books to the shelves yourself, even if you’re confident of where they go - there will instead be somewhere they’ll ask you to leave them (or just leave them out on a surface somewhere) so they can be collected and ghost read.

I knew about leaving books out after you read them, but I didn't know about the ghost account thing! Thank you for explaining that 👍

Certified Library Post

there are no hard rules for human interaction but honestly i think everyone online would benefit hugely from operating under the assumption that, unless you have been given a specific reason to think otherwise in discrete instances, internet strangers do not want to be approached with:

if it is your first time speaking with someone i can not highly enough recommend that these do not be your opening topics

something that has happened enough that it’s officially a Pattern of internet behavior: i will make a tweet that’s like, a jokey headcanon about a piece of media, and then someone i’ve never spoken to before in my life will come into the replies to try and offer a directly contradictory and actively depressing take. and either within their initial reply, or once i’ve expressed polite disagreement, they’ll make sure i know that the reason they have this headcanon is because they’re projecting their own trauma or self worth issues onto a fictional character.

and the thing that really gets me about this is that i am like 90% sure these people don’t have any ill intentions or even think they’re particularly overstepping. but i just can not fathom what the intended response to these things. i have NO idea what sort of reaction they’re looking for. it’s such a weird and uncomfortable spot to be put in. it’s a great way to get instantly put on my mental list of people to never engage with in the future

We’ve all heard the “I like pancakes” / “Oh, so you hate waffles?” example of a social media exchange, but we don’t talk enough about how “I like pancakes” / “I can’t eat pancakes anymore since my brother choked to death on one before my eyes” is not a great approach either.

When I ran groups on boundaries I used to use the example of “Imagine you’re on a blind date meeting someone for the very first time and you know nothing about them. What’s something they could say that would make you super uncomfortable?”

And we’d brainstorm a lot of silly and extreme ideas like asking to get married, asking what you’d name your children together, asking to sleep with you, etc, but we’d also talk about things like discussing trauma with someone who doesn’t have that comfort level with you (and who you don’t know is trustworthy enough to have vulnerable information about you). And I’ve found that for a lot of people, even people who themselves have terrible boundaries, trying to for a moment put themselves in the shoes of the person receiving this very first interaction helps them to recognize when it may not be appropriate to their relationship with this person.

The boy is Really Orange.

so focused on the problem, he cant see the solution

STOP IMPRISONING HIM

Orange concentrate.

Everyone has goth sex hormones it came free with your fucking existence.

BOTH I MEANT

BOTH

Nope, everyone get in the club, time for some Bauhaus.

Despite the *gestures vaguely in the direction of the US presidential election* there is at least one good bit of news on my personal front. The results of my annual mammogram, which I started relatively early and do religiously because of family history, came up as, "We want to do a secondary mammogram and also an ultrasound, because we saw something suspicious."

Insta panic on my part. But! I went in for the second mammogram and also the ultrasound (and lemme tell ya, getting your breast lubed up and having a thing rubbing all around it, especially near your nipple is hella awkward), and thankfully, the result was non-cancerous cysts and also I just have dense breast tissue that mammograms aren't great at scanning.

Like, ideally I wouldn't have had to get my breasts squashed twice in the space of a few weeks, but it's a lot better than having undetected cancer.

All y'all fellow breast havers, please make sure to have your annual mammograms starting at age 40 and earlier if you have a family history of breast cancer. Do a self-exam monthly — it's how my mom found her cancer. Trans men, even those who've had top surgery, you're not exempt, and even cis men can get breast cancer.

Reading articles about MrBeast's dominance of YouTube is fucking bizarre because, from my perspective, the dude isn't even on YouTube. I've never watched one of his videos. YouTube has, to the best of my knowledge, never recommended one of his videos to me. Every thumbnail screenshot of his looks like something you could tell me was a photoshopped parody of YouTube culture, and I'd believe you. No one I follow on YouTube ever mentions him, even negatively or in passing. The first time I ever heard his name was in regards to the quality of his ghost kitchens. The only way I know he isn't a mass, shared hallucination is that I've witnessed the thoroughly mid-looking chocolate bars he sells at Walmart for some reason

Given the apparent eleventeen ongoing scandals it feels appropriate to bring this one back

“I’m tired of voting every 4 years”

You’re 26 and there’s 80 year old black women who remember a time when they couldn’t vote but STILL aren’t tired of it. Maybe it’s a skill issue on your part.

You should also be voting more often than every four years. Use your rights that people fought and bled for.