Notices by Fish Id Wardrobe (fishidwardrobe@mastodon.me.uk)

@inthehands do you feel like expanding on "specialness"? I generally just avoid the weird parts of YAML by not using them.

@inthehands I can certainly see why your vocalist moving away would kill the project -- she has an *astonishing* voice.

> it always feels (I hope) like verbal language is present

Well, this is true of a lot of modern music, sadly. Until reading this I thought it was just me not making out the words...

This is astonishing music, not comforting music. I'm glad I heard it but I'd be unlikely to return to it often...

@inthehands then perhaps I should say: it's weird we're not hearing about this because surely it should interest everyone?

@inthehands It amazes me how little effort we are expending on trying to understand intelligence. I mean: I'm sure it is studied. But we hear so little about it that I assume not as much as, say, the cost of fish or what day of the week is most depressing

TIL that 2017ish thinkpads have post beeps so complex that you need an app to shazam them in order to make sense of them. I admit this helped me figure out my wife's dead laptop at a quarter to midnight, but honestly, it's still a very odd idea?

#microfiction
"Grandad! You're not a nazi!"
"Well, technically I was a member of the party from April 29th 1921 to May 1st. Joined in order to make off with the mummy of the wizard-priestess Su An Ansaret an' the instructions to resurect her. Took 'em two days to work out I was missing; their security was terrible."
"Su An— didn't you say grandma Sue was Egyptian and you couldn't talk about it?"
"Might as well tell you now. She wanted me to wake her in 2025. She's going to be furious as it is."

@RikerGoogling elf - vulcan = romulan

@RikerGoogling why do Klingons use Bat'leth not disruptors?

@glynmoody shine this into your eyeball, they said. It's perfectly safe, they said

@glynmoody Most animals don't communicate entirely by sound. This might work for, I don't know, whales? But much less so for cats and dogs.

@babe Yes! Bring back surreal adverts, and throw in a bit of horny, why not?

@glynmoody we do that all the time, though.
edit: I mean — if we had a good record as a species at not harming *because sentient*, we'd not be whaling on each other, and it might make sense to extend that to potentially sentient others.

But we don't.

And I'd still argue that it would be better if we did the best we can by everything around us, sentient or not.

@glynmoody but a precaution against what? wouldn't it be more ethical to treat animals well regardless?

Edit: regardless of the consequences to us, I mean?

@glynmoody I note that the author has redefined "sentience" so that it applies to almost every animal. (Which is probably true for other definitions, too, actually; the word is misused).

This neatly sidesteps the question that sprang into my head: WHY should we treat potentially sentient animals differently? To save embarrassment later? That doesn't seem ethical…

@glynmoody ^^^^^
Wait wait wait. The rats of NIMH were (nearly) real??

@evan i use one for work, so…

@glynmoody iirc the yoga thing was in the news a few years ago, so this isn't exactly a lightning response, but, good.

Okay, that's … what the fuck? That's amazing!

We tend, I think, to imagine that the days of simple scientific 'miracles' – Newton and his prism, Fleming and penicillin – are at an end. Anything really useful will take years of work and a mountain of kit to make happen.

Nope. Take tartrazine, the food colouring used in Doritos, and paint it onto your skin. Shine a red light on it. Your skin is transparent!

How many medical applications does that have?!

https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/sep/05/common-food-dye-found-to-make-skin-and-muscle-temporarily-transparent

@inthehands Not what *I* meant, to be clear: I meant that I can well believe that a racist would assign the phrase to black people -- but using it does not make you racist, because you might (not being racist) assign the phrase to some other group...

@goatsarah @christineburns well, I mean, that's already true, so...