Still waters run deep

[Still waters run deep]

Since I’m always looking for people to discuss my rarepairs with I’m making an offer here

[astargatelover]

Talk to me about mine, and I’ll talk to you about yours. Fandom doesn’t matter, you can just introduce me to them, same as I’ll do. (Or maybe you’ve got some OCs?)

Because sometimes you just want to ramble or vent to someone about your feels, but you don’t want to go bothering random people, so here’s an open invitation. Just send me a message if you’re interested.

(Reblog for visibility, please.)

[astargatelover]

This doesn’t just go for ships, btw. I’m also up for talking about characters you feel like no one else appreciates.

[Still waters run deep]

[talesfromtreatment]

Personal moment of "hmmmn, boobs too big" as a vet tech this morning: the 18 pound frenchie had both hind feet on one tit, and both front feet on my shoulder, and was able to stand otherwise unsupported.

[talesfromtreatment]

Yeah, so, about that, because of sensory issues.... -_-

[astargatelover]

OH, ON YOUR TIT

[Still waters run deep]

[coldresolve]

'people can write whatever the fuck they want' and 'its good to approach writing about sensitive topics with some diligence and forethought' are statements which can and do coexist

[Still waters run deep]

[viridianriver]

KOKOBOT - The Airbnb-Owned Tech Startup - Data Mining Tumblr Users' Mental Health Crises for "Content"

I got this message from a bot, and honestly? If I was a bit younger and not such a jaded bitch with a career in tech, I might have given it an honest try. I spent plenty of time in a tough situation without access to any mental health resources as a teen, and would have been sucked right in.

Chatting right from your phone, and being connected with people who can help you? Sounds nice. Especially if you believe the testimonials they spam you with (tw suicide / self harm mention in below images)

But I was getting a weird feeling, so I went to read the legalese.

I couldn't even get through the fine-print it asked me to read and agree to, without it spamming the hell out of me. Almost like they expect people to just hit Yes? But I'm glad I stopped to read, because:

• What you say on there won't be confidential. (And for context, I tried it out and the things people were looking for help with? I didn't even feel comfortable sharing here as examples, it was all so deeply personal and painful)

• Also, what you say on there? Is now...
• Koko's intellectual property - giving them the right to use it in any way they see fit, including
• Publicly performing or displaying your "content" (also known as your mental health crisis) in any media format and in any media channel without limitation
• Do this indefinitely after you end your account with them
• Sell / share this "content" with other businesses

• Any harm you come to using Koko? That's on you.
• And Koko won't take responsibility for anything someone says to you on there (which is bleak when people are using it to spread Christianity to people in crisis)

I was curious about their business model. They're a venture-capitol based tech startup, owned by Airbnb, the famous mental health professionals with a focus on ethical business practices./s They're also begging for donations despite having already been given 2.5 million dollars in research funding. (If you want a deep dive on why people throw crazy money at tech startups, see my other post here)

They also use the data they gather from users to conduct research and publish papers. I didn't find them too interesting - other than as a good case study of "People tend to find what they are financially incentivized to find". Predictably, Koko found that Kokobot was beneficial to its users.

So yeah, being a dumbass with too much curiosity, I decided to use the Airbnb-owned Data-Mining Mental Health Chatline anyway. And if you thought it was dangerous sounding from the disclaimers? Somehow it got worse.

(trigger warning / discussions of child abuse / sexual abuse / suicide / violence below the cut - please don't read if you're not in a good place to hear about negligence around pretty horrific topics.)

Keep reading

[dropattackbear]

Their company summary reading as "AI Powered Community Moderation" really stood out to me, as at first glance it's not what they market themselves as.

But after reading through the rest of the post, and seeing their list of 'customers' on their website it's obvious what's going on. The apparently unmoderated, highly dangerous chat service where they throw extremely vulnerable people (and presumably the people who want to take advantage of them) at each other in the name of 'mental health support' is not their product. Their product is a bot that crawls social media content to flag posts for moderation. The chat service is just a data harvesting ploy. They need a large body of example text of people experiencing mental health crises to train their bot on. The chat service lets them harvest that.

This company is selling a tool to help social media companies automatically detect at risk users and provide them with links to mental health services. Which sounds perfectly fine until you realise that it's building that tool in the most breathtakingly irresponsible and immoral way imaginable.

[elfwreck]

This is part of a growing trend of "let's tell people in crisis to help each other - remove all the trained therapists from the discussion and get them to pay money for bells & whistles (and possibly therapists, at over-the-counter rates only you can't use insurance for them)" sites.

Nelson Hardiman - Healthcare Lawyers - “My Therapist Sounds like a Robot” - The Peril and Promise of Chatbot Therapy

“My Therapist Sounds like a Robot” The Peril and Promise of Chatbot Therapy In recent years, healthcare organizations and providers are incr

Nelson Hardiman

Also stay FAR FAR AWAY from any of these other services.

[Still waters run deep]

[lycanthology]

wish ppl understood the power nowadays in not giving something attention. things today are so focused on attention and reaction and #memes that the best way to shut literally anything down is simply not give it exactly what it wants. like you arent going to own that bigot on twitter youre going to boost their original message whether thats your intent or not and you arent just playing with ai for shits and giggles you are giving it free learning and data. just stop engaging with things that dont deserve it

[Still waters run deep]

[princessprouvaire]

Study finds English libraries generate at least £3.4bn in yearly value | Books | The Guardian

Researchers hope their report will change the way local and national governments invest in community services

amp.theguardian.com

I haven’t seen this article posted anywhere outside of my immediate library-sphere so I wanted to shout about it - remember that supporting your local libraries is super duper punk rock 📚❤️

[jstor]

This is great, but let's not forget that generating money shouldn't be the only way to measure the worth of libraries. Libraries are wonderful because they help people and communities. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

[Still waters run deep]

[evilwizard]

the gimmick blogs are like tumblr’s rogue gallery. yes we’ve got some heroes, yes we’ve got some villains, but more importantly if you look over here you will see some freak who devotes all their time to counting the number of “t’s” in a post

[t-counter]

T Count: 15

Letter Count: 198

Your T Percentage: 7.58%

Average T Percentage: 6.95%

You used the letter T 1.09 times as much as average!

[evilwizard]

YOU EXIST???

[t-counter]

Sometimes you create a guy and it turns out they already exist

[cerayanay]

Sometimes that guy has skills beyond your comprehension @identifying-cars-in-posts

[identifying-cars-in-posts]

1993-1997 Mazda 626

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I love all the fun kinds of autism we get here

[Still waters run deep]

[duckdotcom]

would you put a discarded fruit sticker on my forehead in whimsical jest yes or no

[finleycannotdraw]

reblog to put a discarded fruit sticker on the forehead of the person you reblogged from in whimsical jest

[Still waters run deep]

cbc.ca

Vancouver property owners 'panic' to rent as vacancy tax implemented

Vancouver's empty homes tax came into effect over the weekend and some property owners are now scrambling to rent, sell or find a way around the fees.

[fycanadianpolitics]

Under the new rules, homes that are not occupied for at least six months of the year are subject to a tax of one per cent of the property’s assessed value. The deadline to rent out empty dwellings was July 1.

Fazli said many of the people he has talked to are thinking of renting or selling their properties. He recently met with a woman who owns three empty properties in Vancouver — and says one of them is now listed for rent, another will be listed shortly and she is thinking of selling the third.

“This is a scenario of someone who is kind of in a panic now and needs to rent them out,” he said. […]

amazing

[chippyskit]

Why were they empty?

[fycanadianpolitics]

they’re meant to be investment properties, bought, left empty, and then sold a year or few later for huge profit as housing values continue to rise. it’s a massive part of the bc housing bubble, and why despite so much new construction it’s still so difficult to find rental housing

the fact that these landlords are panicking because they might have to actually use their housing properties as housing rather than finance capital is deeply funny

[bogleech]

It should be more than a 1% tax rate though. I want it to be 100%. Torture them.

[redshiftsinger]

Originally posted by yeahiwasintheshit

[Still waters run deep]

[soberscientistlife]

[whatbigotspost]

Always nice when math helps make it all the more clear how ridiculously reasonable the worker demands are.

This is what the studios have brought everything to a grinding halt for.

[Still waters run deep]

[viridianriver]

KOKOBOT - The Airbnb-Owned Tech Startup - Data Mining Tumblr Users' Mental Health Crises for "Content"

I got this message from a bot, and honestly? If I was a bit younger and not such a jaded bitch with a career in tech, I might have given it an honest try. I spent plenty of time in a tough situation without access to any mental health resources as a teen, and would have been sucked right in.

Chatting right from your phone, and being connected with people who can help you? Sounds nice. Especially if you believe the testimonials they spam you with (tw suicide / self harm mention in below images)

But I was getting a weird feeling, so I went to read the legalese.

I couldn't even get through the fine-print it asked me to read and agree to, without it spamming the hell out of me. Almost like they expect people to just hit Yes? But I'm glad I stopped to read, because:

• What you say on there won't be confidential. (And for context, I tried it out and the things people were looking for help with? I didn't even feel comfortable sharing here as examples, it was all so deeply personal and painful)

• Also, what you say on there? Is now...
• Koko's intellectual property - giving them the right to use it in any way they see fit, including
• Publicly performing or displaying your "content" (also known as your mental health crisis) in any media format and in any media channel without limitation
• Do this indefinitely after you end your account with them
• Sell / share this "content" with other businesses

• Any harm you come to using Koko? That's on you.
• And Koko won't take responsibility for anything someone says to you on there (which is bleak when people are using it to spread Christianity to people in crisis)

I was curious about their business model. They're a venture-capitol based tech startup, owned by Airbnb, the famous mental health professionals with a focus on ethical business practices./s They're also begging for donations despite having already been given 2.5 million dollars in research funding. (If you want a deep dive on why people throw crazy money at tech startups, see my other post here)

They also use the data they gather from users to conduct research and publish papers. I didn't find them too interesting - other than as a good case study of "People tend to find what they are financially incentivized to find". Predictably, Koko found that Kokobot was beneficial to its users.

So yeah, being a dumbass with too much curiosity, I decided to use the Airbnb-owned Data-Mining Mental Health Chatline anyway. And if you thought it was dangerous sounding from the disclaimers? Somehow it got worse.

(trigger warning / discussions of child abuse / sexual abuse / suicide / violence below the cut - please don't read if you're not in a good place to hear about negligence around pretty horrific topics.)

Keep reading

[auressea]

A Mental Health App Tested ChatGPT on Its Users

Koko used GPT-3 to counsel 4,000 people but shut the test down because "it felt kind of sterile." Users rated the AI responses highly. Cue t

Gizmodo

Discord's KokoBot Triggers an Ethics Controversy

An experiment in using chatbots to dispense mental-health counseling raised questions about ethics. Rob Morris, cofounder and CEO of Koko...

Discord's KokoBot Triggers an Ethics Controversy

[thatsmimi]

Kokobot is incredibly predatory and exploitative. I wrote a post about how it exploits minors' empathy and gamifies "giving mental health advice", resulting in an unregulated mess that can only do harm to teens' mental health in the long run.

There are young people on tumblr that actively seek support from KokoBot right now, if you check the tag for recent posts. Those people did not get paid to promote it, so do not harrass them. If you can, direct them towards resources about Kokobot (like this post) that are more transparent about what this company is up to.