Don’t be fooled: It’s just management blowing smoke.

I just wrote a novel (finished first draft yesterday). There’s no way I can afford professional audiobook voice actors—especially for a hobby project.

What I was planning on doing was handling the audiobook on my own—using an AI voice changer for all the different characters.

That’s where I think AI voices can shine: If someone can act they can use a voice changer to handle more characters and introduce a great variety of different styles of speech while retaining the careful pauses and dramatic elements (e.g. a voice cracking during an emotional scene) that you’d get from regular voice acting.

I’m not saying I will be able to pull that off but surely it will be better than just telling Amazon’s AI, “Hey, go read my book.”

Republicans: We want Americans to have more babies!

The science on how to make more babies: Stop electing Republicans!

Ok so what do we want? Toxic plastics that last forever or toxic plastics that break down in the environment after 3-5 years?

Because that is the gambit here. We’re not going going to just get rid of plastics altogether.

Also, this article is setting off my BS meter by claiming plastics contain 16,000 toxic substances but not showing how much of that is realistically possible to get into your body. The dose makes the poison!

“This spider contains 1300 toxic substances—one of which will kill you if even a tiny droplet gets in your blood! And these spiders are out in the environment!”

…and not stable enough! Not only that but if they’re paying $40/hour you can be sure as shit they’re never going to raise that rate as long as you work there.

Also, a huge chunk of your paycheck is going to go to useless health insurance and it’s not like these companies are banding together to lobby Congress to make it so they don’t have to pay for that anymore (by demanding a single payer system).

The worm in his brain is just trying to reproduce 🤷

That’s why he brought his children.

I mean, as long as the enablement dialog is truthful…

All your fetish porn is about to be synchronized to your OnDrive at work. [Embrace] [Abort Work] [OK]

Throw the book at them!

I’m thinking Miku Miku oooweeeoooh.

I was under the impression that polyethylene and polypropylene microplastics don’t actual harm humans until they get out into the environment, absorb nasty substances, then re-release them when entering our digestive tract.

If you eat those plastics they just go through you (for the most part). The reason why we all have microplastics permanently stuck in our bodies is because we breathed them in. Not because we ate them.

It’s an important distinction, I think. Because a tiny microplastic thread that stuck inside a can of tuna can be 1000% worse than a tiny chunk of polypropylene or polyethylene that has only come in contact with your own food.

Also, polypropylene microplastics fall—they don’t float in the air so easily like polyethylene. So there’s a great big difference when it comes to the type of plastic bag (as far as this lawsuit goes… In terms of harm). I’m also not certain that a frozen or microwaved polyethylene or polypropylene bag would emit microplastics into the air at all. I couldn’t find any studies about it.

For reference, normally—to get polyethylene airborne in the form of microplastics—it needs to be processed into threads. Those threads then break apart into tiny strands that can float on the wind (because they’re so light). The type of microplastic you’ll get from a polyethylene bag won’t be a tiny thread like that. It’ll be a literal chunk (will look like a rough rock under a microscope).

Having said all that, there are some studies indicating the that microplastics in our guts can change the makeup of our microbiome (temporarily—while the plastic is there). This can cause a swelling response which is bad. So there’s that 🤷

I say all this because it annoys TF out of me when articles talk about “microplastics” like they’re all the same. They’re not, damnit! Some aren’t even a problem! PHA is harmless, for example and PLA breaks down within 3 years or so which is fast enough that it doesn’t really matter (because we don’t use it that much anyway so the rate at which is accumulates in any given spot is unlikely to be a serious problem).

Don’t even get me started on colorants! 😤

1 year for every book seems an appropriate sentence

No! An appropriate sentence would end in a period, question mark, or exclamation point!

Your attitude is a step in the right direction 👍

Noted and corrected! 👍

No. Just a frikkkan american.

It was the yeast they could do.

Who let Doctor Hamster into the female nurse enclosure?

https://www.itv.com/news/2014-06-06/guinea-pig-to-become-father-to-400-after-breaking-into-female-enclosure

The story isn’t finished!

Did the kid end up having his sucky carnival‽

She accuses it of admitting students who are contemptuous of America,

OK. So what?

Let’s logic out that statement:

• Educational institution accepts students that are “contemptuous of America” -> When the student graduates are they still “contemptuous”? Did they become moreso? No change? Less? None at all?
• Educational institution actively seeks to deny students who are “contemptuous of America” -> Did they produce “contempt for America” in their graduates? Same problem.

I wonder what would produce “contempt for America”? Maybe deporting people without due process? Or not recognizing human rights?

Maybe we should agree, then: Harvard shouldn’t accept students that hate the Bill of Rights. Reject conservative ideology that suggests that due process shouldn’t be followed. Reject conservative ideology that actively seeks to undermine the US Constitution.

Let’s get keep those people (conservatives) with “contempt for America” away from places like Harvard 👍

I dunno. A dinosaur that’s impossible to disarm sounds badass.

Ah, so cute. Here’s what you need to do: Find what you like to do, then pick a realistic career path that you think you could do and do that instead. I highly recommend picking a career that lets you work from home. That way, you can skip the commute, do your laundry, and face existential dread at the same time; it’s better for the environment 👍

Comfort and happiness are what happens after work. You have to work to attain it! It’s the capitalist dream.