I’m really glad you made this comment, because otherwise I was going to have to be the one to make this comment, and I wouldn’t have explained things nearly as well as you did.

You have my sword!

• Sincerely, Me, a natural scientist

It’s analogous to a combined count of how many people have commented on the post, or shared it (or “reblogged”, to use the Tumblr term). It might also include likes? I only use Tumblr occasionally so I’m not sure.

I don’t know why Tumblr counts things like this. I sort of like it though — it makes it feel like a distinct place. Tumblr hasn’t escaped enshittification, but it makes me happy that it still exists as a little pocket of weirdos

Years ago, I read that a great tip for compliments is to stick to stuff that people have chosen. So things like dyed hair, jackets with patches on, badges, band t-shirts, or indeed hair accessories.

It’s certainly possible to successfully compliment people on things they can’t change, like body features, but it takes more skill and can be risky if you don’t know the person. I spent a long while practicing giving compliments on the safer things that I mentioned, as a sort of ‘grinding social XP’ challenge, but I ended up really enjoying it

The CPU is the silver squarish shape towards the right. It generates a lot of heat when in use, so having good cooling for it is important. So important that CPUs come with a fan in the box. This involves a heat sink to help draw heat away from the CPU. This screws on mounting points around the CPU, but thermal paste is also used to help heat transfer up. Then there’s a fan that attaches to that heat sink, so that the hot air from the CPU can be blown away from the CPU.

People spend a heckton of money on cooling for their CPU and GPU, because when things overheat, they throttle themselves and performance becomes super slow. Longevity of components can also be harmed by higher temperatures. If it gets too bad, then it will crash entirely.

This PC has put the CPU heatsink on the case fan on the left. I don’t think this is especially harmful in and of itself — the big problem is that the CPU is entirely “naked” and has no cooling whatsoever. This means the CPU begins overheating basically as soon as the PC is turned on.

Edit: you can actually see where the heat sink should match up to the CPU here

The big silver heat sink that’s on the left is meant to be on the CPU, which is the Silver squarish shape towards the right. Keeping the CPU cool is a big deal — CPUs come with a smaller fan which is sufficient for many people, but people who use their PC more intensively, or want to extend the life of their CPU typically buy an additional cooler. Here’s an example of a stock cooler, and here’s a motherboard that’s using the fairly basic aftermarket CPU cooler that I have. It was only $30, but when I was new to PC building, it was strongly recommended, because if your CPU gets too hot, it’ll throttle itself and slow down. People who over clock their CPU (running it at a higher voltage for better performance) have to get even beefier cooling, such as water cooling. You can completely fry your CPU if you do something wrong when overclocking, and even if it doesn’t get that bad, minor mistakes can cause crashes due to CPU overheating.

So TL;DR: keeping your CPU cool is super important for both performance and longevity of the CPU.

The PC in the top photo has zero cooling for the CPU. Not even the stock fan that comes with the CPU. That heatsink that’s attached to the case fan is almost certainly intended for the CPU — you don’t even need a heatsink in that location.

This means that this person’s CPU will rapidly overheat soon after it is turned on.

Edit: you can actually see where the heat sink should match up to the CPU here

Proactively communicating your needs and preferences makes things a bit better for everyone, and takes an immense amount of vulnerability to do so. Good girl xx

Piggybacking off this to add more lightbulb jokes.

The best joke I’ve ever heard was delivered by a German friend with an incredible deadpan delivery

How many Germans does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

!“One. We are a very efficient people”!<

Another one!

How many emos does it take to change a lightbulb?

!None. They all just sit in the dark crying.!<

(I should clarify that I find this one funny because when I first heard it, it very much applied to me. I felt mildly attacked, but not in a hurtful way)

Piggybacking off your comment to leave a pirate joke of my own.

“What’s a pirate’s favourite letter?”

(Ideally, the audience will reply “Arrr!” this this. It works best if you prime them for this by doing a bad pirate impression earlier in the conversation, or tell a joke such as “What’s a pirate’s favourite animal? An aardevark!”)

“You might think so, but a pirate’s true love be the C (sea)”

Bonus joke! What’s a pirate’s least favourite letter?

!Dear Sir or Madam, your IP address has been recorded downloading infringing copyrighted material on…!<

I’m sad that Jimmy Carter won’t get to see this.

He once said that he hoped that the last Guinea worm would die before he did. His nonprofit, the Carter Foundation, did incredible work in pushing forward here. He was able to negotiate a 6 month humanitarian cease fire to allow aid to high-conflict areas of South Sudan, which had one of the highest incidence rates for Guinea worm disease.

Damn, you look incredible. I love your makeup as well. You’re the kind of person who I would notice while out and about, and think “wow, she looks so cool, I wish I could be her friend”

That’s an absolutely giant cat and surely must be of significant scientific interest

Movie dialogue tries to be verisimilitudinous, rather than realistic.

I’m mostly making this comment because “verisimilitudinous” is an excellent word that I love getting the opportunity to use.

I am glad you exist, and I’m sorry that existing is so hard for you right now. You don’t deserve this — no-one does. It’s not fair that you’re having to deal with so much awfulness in the world, and then an asshole like this comes along and makes it worse. Even if you know that you shouldn’t put much stock in what a random asshole online says, I know how much it hurts when something like this comes along at a time when you’re feeling especially vulnerable.

I am glad you have somewhere you can kind in that feels safer. I hope it helps.

I really like the book "Means and Ends by the historian, Zoe Baker. She also has a YouTube channel where I have learned a lot about anarchism, but I especially like the book. It’s one that I bought a physical copy of purely because after reading it digitally, I knew it was a book that would be great for lending to friends.

The book only covers the period between 1868 and 1939, but this was a key period for the development of Anarchism, and I found it useful for understanding how Anarchism has developed as a school of thought or ideology. Anarchism has an especially high level of disagreement amongst anarchists on what Anarchism actually is, and that is inherent to Anarchism, I reckon. Baker grounds her analysis in the history really effectively and it really helped me to understand the wider conversation that was taking place in this period, which helped me to understand Anarchism as it is understood today. It’s a super accessible read, and I found Baker’s style to be quite fun to read also.

I wish I had someone who would tell me minutiae about glassblowing

The datasets they are trained on do in fact include CSAM. These datasets are so huge that it easily slips through the cracks. It’s usually removed whenever it’s found, but I don’t know how this actually affects the AI models that have already been trained on that data — to my knowledge, it’s not possible to selectively “untrain” models, and they would need to be retrained from scratch. Plus I occasionally see it crop up in the news about how new CSAM keeps being found in the training data.

It’s one of the many, many problems with generative AI

Here is a song that relates to your comment

“Art is for Amateurs”, by Jam Mechanics (a collaboration between Narcissist Cookbook and Bughunter)

Thanks for sharing this. This bolstered my spirit.

I liked the bit where it discusses how, regardless of the effectiveness of whistles in deterring ICE, they have proven to be helpful in regular people feeling less alone.

Next time someone asks me what PDF stands for, this is what I will tell them

(I’m reflecting on how many times I’ve been asked what PDF stands for, because my comment would suggest it is a thing that happens often.

Doofensmirtz_meme.jpeg: “if I had a nickel for every time someone asked me what PDF stood for, I’d have two nickels. — which isn’t much, but it’s weird that it happened twice”

I think I’m just most people’s token techy friend. Or more specifically, I’m the techy friend who also knows loads of random shit and really enjoys answering random questions)