sara (@slb) · DIRTY

sara

@slb

💡&🔥 I used to talk about learning science, inference & categories/concepts. now idk. she/they 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

229 Following234 Followers261 Posts

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sara@slb· Jun 22

Your blog has a paywall?

sara@slb· Apr 1

manga panel of a smiling schoolgirl saying "come to think of it, today's april fool's, isn't it?"

sara@slb· Mar 31

The ever-lovely @kenlikescarbs.bsky.social on books that live with us for a time

Screenshot of a quote of text that says: I don’t like the sound of that: that these are my books. They’re not mine. They’re just temporarily living with me. And they do that: they live. They live because a book testifies to life. Not to the bland, back-of-the-cover-copy version of life, with its glib emphasis on the human and the joys and sorrows of social existence. A book testifies to the wider, stranger, more terrifying and fulfilling life we know when we are most inexplicable to ourselves. I’ve known this wider life when I’ve experienced any love whose existence I couldn’t fit into my vision of the order or disorder of things. Every gift points at this wider life; I’m sure of this. And I’m sure that each book is a gift.

sara@slb· Mar 1

"... the computer allowed banks to deal with an ever-expanding number of checks in play that otherwise would have forced drastic changes to banking organization such as decentralization."

Screenshot of a Wikipedia article with two sections. The first section is headed "Apprehensions about computers and artificial intelligence". The text reads:
"He started to think philosophically about the implications of artificial intelligence and later became one of its leading critics.[8] In an interview with MIT's The Tech, Weizenbaum elaborated on his fears, expanding them beyond the realm of mere artificial intelligence, explaining that his fears for society and the future of society were largely because of the computer itself. His belief was that the computer, at its most base level, is a fundamentally conservative force and that despite being a technological innovation, it would end up hindering social progress. Weizenbaum used his experience working with Bank of America as justification for his reasoning, saying that the computer allowed banks to deal with an ever-expanding number of checks in play that otherwise would have forced drastic changes to banking organization such as decentralization. As such, although the computer allowed the industry to become more efficient, it prevented a fundamental re-haul of the system.[9]
Weizenbaum also worried about the negative effects computers would have with regards to the military, calling the computer "a child of the military.""
The second section is headed "Position on the military" The text reads:
"When asked about his belief that a computer science professional would more often than not end up working with defense, Weizenbaum detailed his position on the effect of rhetoric, specifically euphemism, on public viewpoints. He believed that the terms "the military" and "defense" did not accurately represent the organizations and their actions. He made it clear that he did not think of himself as a pacifist, believing that there are certainly times where arms are necessary, but by referring to defense as killing people, humanity as a whole would be less inclined to embrace violent reactions so quickly.[9]"

sara@slb· Mar 1

Screenshot of text:
Norma Jeane Baker of Troy

Anne Carson

Surely the life of a girl can’t be collateral?
Surely the gods don’t think like that?
How do gods think?
Does it all make sense to them — war? Clouds? Fakery? People in flames?
Do they like a good war show? Cover their eyes
at the bloody parts?
Poor gods!
We’re beyond that.
We don’t cover our eyes anymore, do we — we mortals, we creatures of a day?
We’re more or less blind —
shooting day for night.
And anyway, a heart surgeon told me once,
no need to worry: once the cutting starts,
a wound
shines by its own light.

sara@slb· Feb 28

A blockquote from Kyle Paoletta's "Fair Warning" in Real Life magazine, citing a 1985 interview with The Tech, an MIT News service, in which Joseph Weizenbaum — the computer scientist who developed ELIZA, the first chatbot in 1964 — states: "the computer has from the beginning been a fundamentally conservative force … a force which kept power or even solidified power where it already existed." The passage concludes that in place of fundamental social changes, the computer allows technical solutions to be proposed that would allow existing power hierarchies to remain intact.

sara@slb· Feb 18

No people, no significance.

Quote from Annie Dillard from Teaching a Stone to Talk: Were you were to glance out one day and see a row of mushroom clouds rising on the horizon, you would know at once that what you were seeing, remarkable as it was, was intrinsically not worth remarking. No use running to tell anyone. Significant as it was, it did not matter a whit. For what is significance? It is significance for people. No people, no significance. This is all I have to tell you.

sara@slb· Feb 12

Thank you ebay-sama

sara@slb· Dec 21

Incredible find outside a Park Slope brownstone the other day

sara@slb· Dec 9

I think it’d be neat if, when I run, I could look a little more like a mountain labubu

Gonggar outdoor apparel website showing two category sections: “RUNNING” features a model in a light blue jacket, long black skirt, and fuzzy boots holding a crossbody bag; “HIKING” shows a model in a purple jacket, dark shorts, and gaiters. A promotional banner displays “15%OFF CODE: GGHS15”

sara@slb· Oct 24

well I'll bite

photo of the manga Maison Ikkoku on a bookshelf

sara@slb· Oct 13

Quote from The Rings of Saturn
By Winfried Georg Sebald

Perhaps we all lose our sense of reality to the precise degree to which we are engrossed in our own work, and perhaps that is why we see in the increasing complexity of our mental constructs a means for greater understanding, even while intuitively we know that we shall never be able to fathom the imponderables that govern our course through life

sara@slb· Oct 2

Nobody needs permission to get these sick wings all over. Agree on pts 1 & 2

Illustration of Ciel from Tsukihime with power tattoos but in regular clothes. Angel wings on back and arms.

sara@slb· Sep 12

while this book's tone is quite frustrating and academic at times, I wish more people would read it

screenshot of quote:

RELATIONSHIP
ANANCILE
Relationship Anarchy
Juan-Carlos Pérez-Cortés
V
One very clear example of this issue is when the idea of avoiding labels in relationships is insisted upon and one of the people involved has a personal traumatic history of being denied value, a name, or the importance of a bond. If you have been denied recognition as a mechanism of power in the context of an abusive relationship, you will experience that desire not to name as a violent memory rather than a safeguard against repeating relationships of control and possessiveness. You will understand this as minimizing its significance rather than preventing the imposition of a predetermined format, identified by a label, in establishing how the bond will be set up and evolve.

sara@slb· Sep 10

Screenshot of quote

Holy the Firm
ANNIE DILLARD
Holy the Firm
Annie Dillard
く
The seraphs are born of a stream of fire issuing from under God's throne. They are, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, "all wings," having, as Isaiah noted, six wings apiece, two of which they fold over their eyes. Moving perpetually toward God, they perpetually praise him, crying Holy, Holy, Holy.... But, according to some rabbinic writings, they can sing only the first "Holy" before the intensity of their love ignites them again and dissolves them again, perpetually, into flames.
"Abandon everything," Dionysius told his disciple.
"God despises ideas."

sara@slb· Sep 4

Screenshot: Letter From Buenos Aires Anne Boyer

With the artist, we had spoken about why it was that Paradise, in Dante, is so boring. I said it was because Dante had never really known Beatrice, only laid eyes on her and run back to his room for the hot flush of fantasy. She was an absence, not a person, as contentless as every other abstracted desire – "and betaking me to the loneliness of mine own room, I fell to thinking." The artist disagreed, then told us about Marta, his Beatrice, with whom he fell in love and for whom he wrote eight poems, after which she moved to Patagonia and he forgot her. He couldn't remember her last name.

This is why heaven is boring: there is nothing substantial in it, only a ghost of a hope.

sara@slb· Aug 28

On my way to my first vaginoplasty PT session today

10:39 》
CO - STAR
Uber
11:00
•ll 5G+ 81
YOUR DAY AT A GLANCE
You have been wounded, but you will heal.
The cuts run deep, but your capacity to recover runs deeper.
Look at your scars-they mark where you were broken, but also where you mended. The pain isn't the story. The healing is.
Do
Don't
Portraits
Take one for the team
Painted toes
Мор ир
Sharing secrets Self-help books
DIVE DEEPER >
FRIEND UPDATES
HOME
FRIENDS
VOID
SHOP
YOU

sara@slb· Aug 13

what we must do to see

quote from Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard
> God does not demand that we give up our personal dignity, that we throw in our lot with random people, that we lose ourselves and turn from all that is not him. God needs nothing, asks nothing, and demands nothing, like the stars. It is a life with God which demands these things. Experience has taught the race that if knowledge of God is the end, then these habits of life are not the means but the condition in which the means operates. You do not have to do these things; not at all. God does not, I regret to report, give a hoot.
You do not have to do these things—unless you want to know God. They work on you, not on him. You do not have to sit outside in the dark. If, however, you want to look at the stars, you will find that darkness is necessary. But the stars neither require nor demand it.

sara@slb· Aug 13

quote from
Hope in the Dark
by Rebecca Solnit
> Another part of the Puritan legacy is the belief that no one should have joy or abundance until everyone does, a belief that's austere at one end, in the deprivation it endorses, and fantastical in the other, since it awaits a universal utopia. Joy sneaks in anyway, abundance cascades forth uninvited

sara@slb· Aug 4

Their branding is so good. This and tits out on the landing page right below the fold

Screenshot of cargo.site with a marketing pullout of a latex fetish site front and center

sara@slb· Aug 1

From @markleidner.bsky.social

Share the Good News While the News Is Still Good O 2
Mark Leidner
©
I like to think that to give is to prove that the gifts that you received were not given in vain.
If you search the terrain of your own happiness, you will probably find that everything that makes your life worthwhile resulted from someone's gift.

sara@slb· Jul 26

i was gonna post this as an example of family vacation film but i realize they're basically the same thing. i feel like these films have sweet spots right in the middle of the exposure curve that, like your photo, really sing (though overexpose even a little and it becomes a 90s family photo album)

box of fujifilm 400 camera film

sara@slb· Jul 15

A photo of a little free library in Brooklyn with a book titled logical positivism slapdash into its maw

sara@slb· Nov 25

we weren't the first to say this, but thanks for the citation!

screenshot that reads "Inferential statistics is a way of drawing inferences about populations based on the statistics obtained from
observations of samples (Kalish & Thevenow-Harrison, 2014; Nikita, 2017). "

sara@slb· Oct 12

Bodega cat, Williamsburg

Photo of a black cat mewing vigorously at its owner who was on the phone and wouldn’t come back in

sara@slb· Aug 7

weekend book haul in PDX (there's already more than this... we're terrible and enable each other)

a photo of books on a bed: the boy she liked wasn't a boy at all, nihongo notes, hit parade of tears, by your side, a girl on the shore

books on a bed: woes of the true policeman, and our faces, my heart, brief as photos, monsieur pain, people from my neighborhood, solip, strange hotel, photocopies, lilac and flag, frankissstein

sara@slb· Aug 7

shortlisted by the Children's Book Council of Australia

a photo of a book titled "all cats have asperger syndrome" by kathy hoopmann

sara@slb· Jul 14

powerful fit, precision targeting

insta ad for cat ear hat, collar handcuffs, cardigan, and skirt/pants

sara@slb· Jul 10

summer afternoon in the park

a color photograph of a person resting in the shade among coniferous and deciduous trees in a park, the summer sun strong, the sky blaring, the shadows cool

sara@slb· Jul 7

show yer lockscreen

Kikuri Hiroi from Bocchi the Rock! wearing a slouchy dress looking seductive