Human waste products I can understand. But how many humans would you need to mulch to get enough blood for a building project? That’s one of the main fluids we usually want to stay inside our bodies.

It looks like @Kolanaki posted the source further down the thread: it’s the flute part from a piece in the Jungle Book.

I just searched for it a bit, but all the sources I could find (twitter, pinterest, BlueSky) also don’t say where it’s from, except that it’s a flute piece.

In case your wife wants to see more of these like I did, the oldest source I could find was Musical composition with threatening auras (29 photos).

<blink>intensifies<\blink>

The installers for every major software company riddled every single computer with adware. And you needed a compsci degree to get rid of it. Weren’t there lawsuits over that shit, that led to regulations? I remember that happening. It’s not like they were going to stop doing that of their own accord.

I’m to the point that if whatever I’m watching/doing pops an ad at me, I reflexively make a snap judgement on whether I want to continue watching doing whatever it is. Often the answer is ‘no’ and I’ll just bail entirely.

Slotted spoons don’t hold much soup.

DROP TABLE 01;

I’ve got serious tech skills I could be using for evil.

Every day I wake up destitute, I think,

Why not. Why shouldn’t I create a fully automated ecommerce site dropshipping AI trash to Etsy & elsewhere? Hell, why not start a cult? I can at least source cheap FlavorAid.

This bridge has been stupid low for decades, and it’s a main artery from downtown to the (e hospital and) highway. As of the last time I drove past it, the advance warnings signs didn’t seem adequate to me.

Oh shit, I posted a separate comment before I read yours – this is my bridge! Oo

There’s a bridge near me with scuff marks on the underside like that. I’ve driven under and briefly wondered about the stories behind each one, and now your post makes me want to investigate further.

Oh this one cuts.

☒ Subscribe and save

I’m a user experience designer. My favourite story is from aviation engineering. I don’t remember the year or all the details, but the US Navy had put stupid amounts of money and time into engineering a new fighter jet. It was worked out on paper and built to exact specifications. Then, during the first human test of it, the pilot ejected on the tarmac before it took off. The plane crashed, obviously, but the pilot couldn’t explain what happened (apparently he had a concussion from his unscheduled landing).

The plane was built again, and shortly after takeoff, the pilot again ejected without explanation.

What the fuck was going on?

In the retelling I heard, someone finally noticed the design of the cockpit was to blame. In trying to cram all the standard controls plus new ones into the smallest amount of space, the designers had moved the eject lever right next to the lever to adjust the seat position – they’d coloured the eject lever red, but the pilot couldn’t see that since it was below and slightly to the right of his ass, and both levers were the same size and shape. Nobody noticed this was a problem until at least two pilots accidentally ejected on takeoff.

This might be apocryphal, I don’t know, but I learnt it as an example of how things might look good on paper, but you can’t really know until a user fucks everything up.

Once you’re old enough, there’s no difference. My doctor’s admin keeps calling me to schedule a colonoscopy, and we’ve been playing phone tag. That’s the closest I’ve come to foreplay in years.

I’m 54. When people ask my opinion of this war, I change the subject. I’m not proud of that, but I’ve seen this war more than once.

I have strong opinions about many things, but I’ve seen what this particular war does and I’ve learnt there’s no winning it. I donate to Gaza, but nothing I can say will change the horror the latest flare up of this war will bring. Im sorry.

Most of us don’t want to till fields and milk cows, and we’d rather trade things like iPhones with people who are cool with shovelling cow shit.

I know, that’s surprising. We’ve only been trading like that for a few hundred thousand years. Fucking millennials.

Less than two steps between that and eugenics, and one step between eugenics and genocide. We’ve seen and documented that. It’s a logical but sociopathic mentality.

Conversely, when we realise that we’re stronger together and act empathetically as a society, every one of us and all of society benefits. When we care for the least of us, crime goes down and we find geniuses who improve life for us all, who would otherwise die in anonymous poverty.

Living like barbarous animals – not rising above the ‘brutality of nature’, as you said – helps sociopaths who take advantage of our better nature to enrich themselves. Indeed, if we structure our society around that, as we have done lately, our society will devolve around the lowest common denominator (people like Musk or Trump).

We can and must do better than that.

These lunatics have a disturbing amount of control in the US government.

Laughing at them might be fun, and I was doing it until recently, but they’re not joking. The worse our climate disasters become – and they will very soon – the more scared people will become, and the more these groups will take advantage of that fear. We’ll see more climate refugees, more desperation, and more fear. These groups prey on fear, and they’ll amplify it on purpose.

True fascism thrives on fear, which is why these people amplify it like they do. When climate disasters accelerate, these groups will harness the social upheaval to take control. I don’t know what we can do to stop it, but we should all be thinking about and sharing ways to head it off, because they’ve got plans in place already.

I know I sound paranoid, but I’ve been watching them and these aren’t my ideas, but theirs. They talk about this a lot, and if we aren’t prepared, their plans could actually work. I don’t want to live in the fascist future they’re planning. If we don’t combat it, we’ll be living in the Handmaid’s Tale before most of us realise.