Emily Velasco

I work in PR for a university, and for most of my time here, it's been about promoting cool and interesting research taking place on campus. But in the last year or so, it seems like almost everyone at all levels of management has caught hype psychosis. Anything that mentions quantum or AI is the most important and critical thing. We have to stop doing whatever else we're doing and promote the latest thing that has some connection to quantum or AI, no matter how transparently dumb or craven it is. This sucks. I want to go back to writing about jellyfish being able to cure their own cancer and shit.

Look how good my pineapple is doing

I've learned something new about the community theater economy. Increasingly, theaters seem to be using projections, in place of sets. These are basically just stock images that you download from the internet. A theater that wants to use projections just needs to put up a scrim (a kind of translucent cloth) and project these images onto it. I had a planning meeting with the director and producer for our next show last night, and they got to talking about the projections they want to use and how expensive they are. The director complained that she was already blowing through part of her budget just because of the projections. "How expensive could these things be?" I wondered. I asked them for the website they are getting these things from. They gave it to me and I took a look. These projections are anywhere from $75-150 apiece! And most of them just shitty stock images. A lot of them are things I could find Creative Commons equivalents for. And a lot of them are even AI generated. I told them to hold off on buying any projections yet and to show me the ones they are interested in. I'm confident I can get or make us usable replacements for free. I am a set builder, so I don't like projections anyway. I think it's a lazy way to do a show, but now that I know they are such a rip-off, I am really against them. To make matters worse, the publishers that license the rights to produce shows are starting to push these projections as part of their licensing packages. What a scam. P.S. A lot of the projections are AI-generated, which adds insult to injury.

I went out into the garden and startled a jumping spider that was in the middle of catching some little leggy bug. The spider leaped away from its prey in fear of me, but then i witness something amazing. The spider had a strand of web attached to the bug like a tether, and from its hiding spot under a leaf (where it thought i couldn't see it), it reeled the bug in by pulling on that strand. I've always admired those little spiders for their intelligence. Now I've seen one fishing. Amazing.

Why is it 80 degrees at 8:45 at night? It was only 90 degrees today.

@nolan@microsh.art @ajn142@infosec.exchange It seems like a fucked up job. One guy delivered something here and then couldn't find the next package on his route in his car. He was outside looking under his car, in his car, under all the cars in the shared driveway, asking me if i had seen it. He was stressing, and we never did find his package anywhere

I want to know why hamburger buns now come in an abundance of types and qualities, but hot dog buns are still limited to that plain, white form that's barely better than foam. I remember when hamburger buns came in only one type that was equally bad, but then new offerings came along. The same hasn't happened for hot dogs. I know what you're going to say: "What about french rolls?" or "My grocery store has hoagie rolls." I've anticipated this, and before you say it, let me tell you that you are wrong. A french roll or a hoagie roll is not a better hot dog bun. It's a sandwich roll. It's size and density necessitates a lot of fillings to balance it out. A hot dog isn't enough and it's overwhelmed by that much bread. So, why don't grocery stories carry something more substantial than a wonder bread hot dog bun but less massive than a french roll? bratwursts and the like cry out for a worthy partner!

The newest officespeak in the office is "for your situational awareness" in place of the previous "for your information." Very dumb. Situational awareness is for hunters, marines, bank robbers, rabbits that might be preyed upon by foxes. No one in an office has any situational awareness. Everyone is in a trance while staring at their emails.

I was driving and saw a business called a "teeth bar." I stared. What the hell could a teeth bar be? Some kind of dental thing? I looked again. It said tea bar.

I've just been reminded that its the 25th anniversary of 9/11. 25 years of the country having lots its mind and not regaining its sanity

Hobie is so cute

Scenes from the garden: My pineapple is flowering. My plumeria is, too #bloomscrolling

My craziest friend has been texting me all of her thoughts on why AI is so great again lately, and she's taken a particular interest in that now-cancelled AI-powered robot teacher built out of a silicone sex doll. It will teach students better than any teacher could, she says. Because even the most leftist of teachers probably doesn't have the Communist Manifesto memorized, and even if they did, they couldn't instantly translate it into Greek if that's what the student asked for. I told her that teaching isn't simply being an encyclopedia, but that's not clicking with her. But what has been clicking with me when I hear her talk about why AI is the best is that she simply does not understand other people, and she seems to have no interest in understanding them because people are complicated. It really makes me wonder if a lot of what is driving the enthusiasm for AI among some of its proponents is that they don't understand people. People are complex and not always easily predicted, and that's scary and confusing. But AI, well, that's just computer code.

I escaped the heat for three hours by going to see The Odyssey. I enjoyed it. The people seated next to me did not. "That was too long," she said as soon as the lights came up. "Too long," he replied.

My boss just flew to scotland for a vacation. It took them 48 hours to get there because a flight was cancelled and they ended up stuck in atlanta. Now they're in scotland and all of their luggage is missing. I hate flying and every time I hear about anyone going anywhere these days, it reminds me even more to never fly

@spiegelmama@infosec.exchange it's terrible!

RE: https://social.afront.org/@MLE_online/116969649435934297 Sundown. It's time for activity. It's time to roam the outdoors.

@nolan@microsh.art that's very shady. I've noticed a lot more things being delivered by random people in their personal cars over the last couple years. My neighbors are always getting packages delivered like that. Often the drivers end up coming to my house looking to drop the items off

Several of the minnows in my pond have disappeared. Ordinarily when fish are disappearing from my pond, it's because raccoons are getting them. But when raccoons do it, they leave everything in the pond upended. That wasn't the case here. Everything looked normal. Just, some fish were missing. As I was looking for them to see if they were hiding somewhere, i found an empty exoskeleton floating in the water. Then I found another. And I remembered that when I brought the aquatic plant home from the river, there was a small nymph of a dragonfly or damselfly clinging to it. I think that bug is in my pond and eating my fish and growing larger by the day!

Imagine if people in the year 3500 are drinking soda out of gold cans because people found eleventy quadrillion tons of gold in antarctica after the ice caps melted

Aluminum had a similar, but different story arc. Metallic aluminum isn't found in nature, and it was once very difficult to produce it, so it was a rare and valuable metal. There are monuments here and there made of aluminum because it was prestigious. But then we figured out how to make it much more easily, and now aluminum is a lowly packaging material

I pretty much always eventually adopt new slang and phrases, no matter how dumb they sound to me at first, but I've never adopted hella and I never will. It sounds as dumb to me today as it did when I first heard the kids from norcal saying it in the dorms freshman year of college

I heard a noise at the back door and found this handsome guy inside my house, rolling around on the floor and having a great time. He hissed when he saw me and ran out the door and up the ladder to the roof where i captured this photo of him. His presence back there greatly upset Lettuce, who did some hissing of her own. Last i saw him, he was taking a flying leap off the roof, over the wall into the condos behind me.

Sometimes I do something peaceful like go read a book for a few hours, and then I pop back on here and I'm like, "wow, half of everyone on here is mad about something." Maybe I should be on here less.

I stopped by the ceramics studio this afternoon and talked to the head of the ceramics program. He's putting me on the very short waitlist for the saturday class for fall. He said I'm almost guaranteed to get in, and that he will put in a good word for me with that instructor.

@ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org I wouldn't survive this season without my electric flyswatter

I'm bored of how hot it is. I want to be doing something

The construction "if/when" or "if and when" is used in English to mean something is more likely than just an open-ended "if" would imply, but less certain than the absolute certainty that "when" implies. I think we just need a single word for this kind of squishy conditional

I love getting asked to do a thing at work, fully aware that the thing I do is going to get completely thrown out and replaced by the bosses' version. Then doing the task, and having it completely thrown at and replaced by the bosses' version.

@lety@doesstuff.social coworker says to me, "where did you get that cool shirt?!" I say, "the children's section at old navy."

@lety@doesstuff.social i wouldn't say that. I'm not a hypocrite

I'm supposed to send out a press release to a new mailing list this morning, so I go into the platform we subscribe to to get the mailing list so i can export it and put it into the other platform we subscribe to where the release is. Can't export the list. Only the creator can export their own list. My coworker, the creator, is on vacation. Ok, well, this platform also has the option to send out press releases. I rebuild the release over there and go to send it out. Stop. Before you send an email, you have to connect your email to the platform. Ok, I start that process. I get to the last step. You cannot connect your email address to the platform without admin privileges for your email provider (only IT has that). Ok, fuck it. I'll just manually copy and paste the text of the mailing list from the platform into excel, clean it up, and then import it into the first platform. The text comes out all garbled when I past it. I go looking for a solution. The solution is to use the paste from web table in excel. Ok, I go to do that. But there's no paste from web table button. I go looking online. Sorry, paste from web table is not supported on excel for mac. Fucking technology. I'd rather just have a phone, a typewriter, a rolodex, and a bunch of envelopes.

One good reason why you should wear pants and not shorts while using a wire wheel on an angle grinder. One good reason not to wear pants is that it's too hot for that

@lety@doesstuff.social I keep trying to reply to this post and it keeps disappearing and reappearing

@fredy@tacobelllabs.net I can just dig a bike shaped mold in the dirt and lay all my bike scraps on it so they'll melt and I'll get a cast bike

Two of me squash plants have a very strange condition that's causing them to develop leaves that are almost purely white except for small dark green dots. I've never seen this before

@lety@doesstuff.social lmao. i just wanted to say i burned my best so badly last year from like one minute of tig welding. I can mig weld for an hour without getting a burn

@modrobert@infosec.exchange humans will almost certainly survive in some form. We're very adaptable. Our civilization won't survive though

@h2onolan@infosec.exchange i'm not loving second 1,799 as i watch the mconalds bouncers headed my direction

@lety@doesstuff.social Oh shit. I burned my corneas with a UVC light once. HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE

@farbenstau@infosec.exchange and they run through red lights or what?

@farbenstau@infosec.exchange but you still have to go through the intersection even if you are on the sidewalk!

@modrobert@infosec.exchange what kind of a question is that

Actually, no, unless it's a really old common root. Truck comes from a word that meant wheel, which came from an Ancient Greek word meaning to run. Drag just seems to come from the word drag all the way back to proto-indo european