I have a family friend who worked at our local Salvation Army headquarters as a a secretary. This particular office took all the Christmas donations for children in need, put them in a warehouse, and on a designated day the staff and their friends picked through them all, taking whatever they wanted. She saw people hauling away bikes donated for specific families. Some local children had hundreds of dollars of gifts donated in their name, and on Christmas they received three cheap things, items likely not even from the person who sponsored them.
My friend quit, and I’ve not given them a dime of my money since then.
Do not give to the Salvation Army.
Do Not. Give. To. Salvation. Army
My turn.
I’m a wildfire and disaster logistics specialist.
I deal with a lot of agencies who provide disaster relief.
I used to say the Salvation Army’s disaster services were the one (literally the ONE) good thing they did.
They would come in, set up a canteen trailer, make and pass out hot coffee and donated food in a disaster, usually being one of the first agencies to get there and the last to leave.
Then I found out.
Every time they did this, regardless of if they were actually invited or deployed by the agency in charge (usually FEMA, sometimes others) they would SELF-DEPLOY. Meanjng they would just show up. Ok. That’s not TOO bad, sometimes agencies have to take initiative and get there before the red tape is sorted out. BUT. They, after they left at the end of the incident, they would send FEMA or the host agency a BILL. They used one or two paid employees (usually the driver of the truck and a supervisor); and many VOLUNTEERS, but they would bill for EVERYONE’s Labor at standard federal rates. They would bill for the food they distributed even though it was all donated by another agency or private parties. They would bill for the coffee they made and the supplies. Except they would use electricity from the shelter location, water from donations or from the shelter, and in many cases, they would get the coffee and industrial filters DONATED, but bill for them at retail prices.
Don’t FUCKING give to the Salvation Army.
There’s also the lovely revelations in the UK that they have been convincing homeless folks of indeterminate immigration status in London to come in for “help” with the process of finding out what their status is and stabilize their situation… only the “counselors” (or whatever they’re calling themselves) are EMPLOYEES OF THE HOME OFFICE whose intent is to find people to arrest and deport.
“Girls want a Superman, but they walk past a Clark Kent every day”
You fuckin CLOWNS think you’re a CLARK KENT? Not on my fuckin watch. You dumb, headass motherfuckers are barely a Guy Gardner and you think you’re a CLARK KENT? The amount of disrespect is unreal.
Listen here, wannabes: My boi Clark is 240 lbs of PURE KANSAS BEEF trained from a young age by Ma Kent to Love and Respect women as the Intelligent, Independent beings they are. He is shy rambling about tractors and casually moving the copy machine when my pen falls behind it and he would NEVER demand I be sexually or romantically interested just because he’s nice.
Y’all ain’t Clark Kent.
I have never hit the reblog button so damn fast.
“barely a Guy Gardner” is the sickest comics related burn I’ve heard to date.
They might walk past a Clark Kent every day but Clark Kent doesn’t actually mind because he respects their decisions
I recorded the call and threw the audio into Audacity, sped it up and fixed the pitch.
This is the third part from the old Unsolved Mysteries 1-800 number’s disconnection message.
It’s a female voice, and she says “It looks like there was a problem with the system. Please hang up and try again.”
My guess, based on having had to mass convert Audix system .ulaw files into usable audio for an MP3 player in the past, is that the person who set up these messages for the phone system didn’t realize one of the files was at a very low bitrate and never listened after slinging the thing into this phone system.
Man, somebody actually got paid for that. It’s like the audio equivalent of the most recent Buffy remasters where you can see all the out-of-frame footage that was never meant to be included in the shot.
Let’s be real. If little girls’ knees, shoulders, and clavicles are a problem for male teachers, you don’t have a dress code issue. You have a pedophile issue.
Last year I trained a neural net to generate new names for kittens, by giving it a list of over 8,000 existing cat names to imitate. Starting from scratch, with zero knowledge of English or any context for the words and letter combinations it was trying out, it tried to predict what letters might be found in cat names, and in which order. Its names ranged from the strange to the completely nonsensical to the highly unfortunate (Retchion, Hurler, and Trickles were some of its suggestions). Without knowledge of English beyond its list of cat names, it didn’t know what letter combinations to avoid.
So I decided to revisit the cat-naming problem, this time using a neural net that had a lot more context. GPT-2, trained by OpenAI on a huge chunk of the internet, knows which words and letter combinations tend to be used together on the English-language internet. It also has (mostly) figured out which words and letter combinations to avoid, at least in some contexts (though it does tend to suddenly switch contexts, and then, yikes).
When I trained GPT-2 on the list of cat names using Max Woolf’s colab notebook, it still retained a lot of what it had learned from the rest of the internet. Gone were the strange names like “Tilly-Mapper” and “Balllucidoux” - it had a bunch of real words it could use instead. Here are some of the names it came up with - and the Morris Animal Refuge (who you may remember from that time they used neural net names for their guinea pigs) has given some of these names to some highly adoptable kittens.
First, neural net can do fancy:
Taffeta Pompompur Monocle Tom Glitter Notion Tinnitus Cheesemonger M. Tinklesby Linklater Soap
It can also do the opposite of fancy:
Scat Cat Butthole Gangrene Moisture Grotesque Petard Oilbag Buttwig The Cream Meatbag Dr Fart Fudge Putty Scumbag Constipation BUTT
And it can also do names ranging from tough to downright sinister:
Miss Vulgar Lillith The Vamp Elle Fury Deadbolt Romeo of Darkness Starmaker Fist Warning Signs Bibles Smoked The Firestarter Higher Rune Scarlet Be Thy Coat Kill All Humans Bones Of The Master Mr. Sinister Evil Whispers Spawn Serendipitous Kill Stranglehold
(Starmaker and Sparky Buttons are from a litter that had upper respiratory infections that damaged their eyes, but even though their world is kinda cloudy, they love to play and cuddle.)
I’m a particular fan of the Very Weird cat names:
Honeystring Dr Leg Tom Noodle Pinball Scene Peanutbutterjiggles You’re Telling A Lie Beep Boop Thoughts Bobble Bun Atmosphere You Name It Whiskeridoo Sparky Buttons
Seemingly This Guy Various Authors Chicken Whiskey Fish Especially Thelonious Monsieur Ringo Shuffles Sweet Cakes EXTAs (Eye Stalks) Checker Spin Donut Quin Two Patz Grandpa He Glad Funky Moe Fluttering Feelers Accepted A Tribute Chewie Bean PLEASE Gregory Chimney Notable PRODUCT LEGEND Weird Science Platinum Not Suitable For Character the Enforcer
Did I mention these cats are adoptable? If you live near Philadelphia, you live near these kitties!
Just a reminder because apparently people don’t realize this, but the rainbow gay pride flag isn’t like…a gay male pride flag? it was literally meant as a pride flag for everyone in the community. not that there’s anything wrong with specific identities having their own flag, but i keep seeing ppl post flag sets as if the rainbow ride flag only represents gay men and saying that not including every single other flag known in existence means you’re excluding people when no it’s not the rainbow flag is for everyone
I think this is really important for people who are daunted by all the labels and still figuring themselves out. It’s okay. The rainbow flag is yours too
“Japan this week elected its first transgender assemblywoman.
Ayako Fuchigami won one of four prefectural assembly seats on the island of Hokkaido, according to Asahi Shimbun.
‘I am representing minority people who face many difficulties every day. I feel the weight of their burden on my shoulders,’ the retired dancer told crowds said after winning the seat for Sapporo’s Higashi Ward district.
Fuchigami, endorsed by the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, spoke out for LGBTI rights during her campaign.
Rights groups have called for Japan to dismantle laws that require citizens to undergo sterilization before legally changing gender.
What’s more, Japan does not recognize same-sex unions or have nationwide anti-discrimination legislation.
Seeing society reject colleagues at the club she performed once they retired spurred Fuchigami into politics.
‘I want to create a better world for minorities’ she said according to Asahi.
Sapporo city government is one of a number of regional administrations that offer limited rights to same-sex couples through ‘partnership certificates’.
Fuchigami reportedly wants to roll this out to the whole of Hokkaido.”
Much of the Midwest USA (which is landlocked, with no major natural bodies of water except our rivers) is UNDERWATER and most of the food grown in the US won’t be grown this year. High water rescues are being performed in what is supposed to be prairie. Flooding shows no sign of stopping and is going to break the all time flooding record. Levees are topped and failing, retention pools are full, and on top of that, MAJOR tornadoes (over 750 so far, on 4 occasions reaching EF4 status) have been happening. Over 400 streets are closed in Missouri alone, and most of a major interstate (i29) is closed in Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska?
Above: Nebraska, where 90% of corn and soy is grown in the US. Left is normal, right is this past march.
Most farmers in these areas don’t have flood insurance because they’re not in flood planes and normally would never need it. So they are at a major loss.
There will not be corn, soy, dry beans, canned beans, beef, chicken, or wheat grown. Beef will go up at least 2$ a lb and corn and soy will be extremely pricey and hard to find because it will have to be imported.
Lots of farmers haven’t even been able to plant their fields and cannot plant at all, most commonly as a result of too much moisture in the soil—though driving through my part of Illinois, I can tell you that many fields are more puddle/lake than actual field.
Most of this area with lots of rain has already hit their “final planting date,” when crop insurance no longer guarantees the full payout as crops planted after that date stand a significantly higher risk of not making it to harvest. As a result, many farmers are looking at having to take prevented planting payments, which are generally 50-60% of their normal revenue. Additionally, taking these payments prevents those farmers from being able to replant their crop. While some haven’t paid for inputs (fuel, seed, fertilizer), many already have, and it will be extremely difficult to cover these losses with such a low payment.
It’s going to be a massive hit to small and medium-sized farms, which constitute over 90% of farms in the United States.
Livestock is also dying at an alarming rate - one person I know has recently lost 200 cattle because of flooding.
More levees have breeched in this and the flooding is worse than Katrina. More rain is still coming. Fields that should be planted right now are sitting under feet of standing water, which is also a breeding ground for mosquitoes and other disease-carrying insects.
Right now, we are leaning on a back supply of food, but this can only last for so long.
If you live somewhere that is affected by this, and you very well might, even if you don’t know it, STOCK UP ON FOOD. Corn, soy, wheat, beef, and dry beans are the biggest things that will be affected. Chicken might be good to stock up on too. Prices will skyrocket when back supply begins to run low. This is a very real thing. Nuts, potatoes, and pea-based proteins shouldn’t be affected.
Other photos:
Credit for help with this post goes to “sounds like a weirdly specific question but okay” on facebook.
6/4/19
This isn’t a spring post. This is full summer. God help us.
Illinois is like 45% planted. It’s astounding and scary.
Missouri is under so much water. Places that have never flooded before are being evacuated. No one is really prepared for this.
Timeless, Chuck, Doctor Who, Star Trek, DC Comics, Supergirl, The Flash, Black Lightning, Legends of Tomorrow, MCU, science fiction in general, politics, civil rights, food, animals, public radio... you get the idea. A tumblog of many interests.
FYI, RPS/RPF/et al. is a...
