swlabr

joined 1 year ago
[–] swlabr@awful.systems 12 points 1 month ago

How about people here? When did you realize people are real?

When I moved out for the first real time. I realised my parents were whole human beings in their own right, and by extension every other person in the world.

I know that might make me sound stupid as I was an adult when I had that realisation. I mean it as the first time I really understood and internalised that idea. Everyone is on their own journey. Also not disputing me being a dumbass, there is plenty I do not know.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Coat? Guy came in naked, greased up and stinking of gin.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 8 points 1 month ago

~aaaaaaaaaaaa~aaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Man, fuck NESA* for thinking this was ok.

For further context, all NSW high school students need to take an English course** as part of their final studies.

The english exam is spoken about in hushed tones as the normalising factor that determines which bucket of scores you and your cohort are allowed to have. Go to a bad school? Good luck getting an ATAR that’s not a patronising ⭐️, meaning you scored in the bottom 30 percent. Million dollar+ local tutoring companies exist to pump out essays that can score in the high 90’s. Some parents spend tens of thousands on elementary school tutoring just to get their students into high schools with good english scores, or choose to uproot the ENTIRE family unit and move to whole new schooling areas for similar reasons. It’s a small price to pay if you want your kid to have a shot at entering an ultra-competitive undergraduate degree, like medicine. One day, your kid will thank you.

Imagine you’re in the final year of high school, and you’re being force-fed the panic-attack inducing lie that these high school -> university exams are the most important, fate-defining thing you’ll face in life. Then comes day one of a month-long exam season. It’s the big one. English part 1. All the pressure is on you to succeed. You turn the page, and you’re met with the visual equivalent of a conjunctivitis inducing wet fart right into your eye sockets. You and your gen Z friends have spent the little spare time you had shitposting on the internet, but it was enough to know exactly what chocolate starfish you’re staring into.

At that point, I would forgive any NSW high schooler for, once the pink eye settles, self radicalising via the treatises of a certain Ted K***.

*Formerly the Board of Studies (BoS), succeeded by the Board of Studies, Teaching and Educational Standards NSW (BOSTES), now just the New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA). These rebrands are important work!

**There are different english courses you can take. Each high school offers a different array of english courses. Explaining this more only awakens deep trauma within me.

***Ted Kennedy, of course. Please don’t arrest me, AFP

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago

🙄🙄🙄

Hope Musk’s existence and influence today was worth it, nerds from 2018!

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 12 points 1 month ago (9 children)

That launch happened Feb 2018. By that time, I was already solidified as a musk sceptic and didn’t pay attention to the hubbub. Thinking back on it:

  1. Why was this a thing?
  2. per wikipedia:

Musk explained he wanted to inspire the public about the "possibility of something new happening in space" as part of his larger vision for spreading humanity to other planets.’

What I like about the phrasing “possibility of something new” is that nothing new really happened with that launch. We’ve already sent all kinds of junk into space in configurations varying in impressiveness.

  1. Naming the mannequin Starman falls apart since the eponymous starman is an extra terrestrial. Just goes to show that Musk is not a Real Nerd^TM^ and just makes surface level references to look cool.
[–] swlabr@awful.systems 10 points 1 month ago

I will internalise this for the next time data moats come up!

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 1 month ago

it may be helpful to know that, at least on the platforms I have tried, you can highlight text and paste a link, and the awful.systems will handle the bracketing for you.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 14 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I bear news from the other place!

https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1g3zt5b/hsc_english_exam_using_ai_images/

Post content reproduced here:

autoplag image of some electronics on a table

hello, as a year 12 student who just did the first english exam, i was genuinely baffled seeing one of the stimulus texts u have to analyse is an AI IMAGE. my friend found the image of it online, but that’s what it looked like

for a subject which tells u to “analyse the deeper meaning”, “analyse the composer’s intent”, “appreciate aesthetic and intellectual value” having an AI image in which you physically can’t analyse anything deeper than what it suggests, it’s just extremely ironic 😭 idk, [as an artist who DOESNT use AI]* i might have a different take on this since i’m an artist, what r ur thoughts?

*NB: original post contains the text: "as an artist using AI images" but this was corrected in a later comment:

also i didn’t read over this after typing it out but, meant to say, “as an artist who DOESNT use AI”

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 13 points 1 month ago (3 children)

ok my first thought was to make a joke about castle warfare, despite my knowledge set being ephemera from a childhood appreciating tech trees in video games. So I did some research:

  • The etymology of “moat” is that it comes from the word “motte”. I will not elaborate.
  • Moats were effective against early forms of siege warfare, like battering rams, siege towers, and mining out the foundations of a castle’s defences, or anything that required approaching the castle directly
  • Moats were made somewhat obsolete by siege artillery, which did not need to be in the direct vicinity of the castle

Err so yeah. Make your own jokes, ig.

Anyway, this has been MoatFacts™️. Paging @skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de for better commentary*

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 9 points 1 month ago

as one of many people here who has undergone undergrad math, i reckon a month of youtube and anki might not be enough for even intro to linear algebra. I’m even saying this as someone who skipped all lectures and crammed before all the tests.

[–] swlabr@awful.systems 5 points 1 month ago

and hitting all the Ls

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