It's evil to train people to fall for scams, even if you happen to not be scamming anyone.

Scams work by using urgency (act now before it's too late!). This overrides your skepticism with regards to how the money will actually help someone.

I am of course referring to Democratic fundraising texts.

See, my mum would describe herself as a second-wave feminist, which is one of the demographics most susceptible to TERF rhetoric. But she saw through it: "I realized that nobody would willingly shoulder the immense difficulties of being a woman in our society unless they truly felt that way."

AI footage in the quote post. However it's a real fact, with real footage available (See my link below). Now people who believed it have a false image of how octopus act, and people who recognise it as AI question a real observed scientific fact. Utter bullshit.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN9B...

🎩👨‍🦲👍💕

the nonbinary rapper who frequently gets misgendered as a man: Mx. Sir-a-Lot

Bet

For what it's worth, my highly-placed editor at Orbit (Hachette) says they don't use AI in their art dept, editorial or production. She is troubled by this and investigating further.

The Author's Guild has also issued legal clauses to help agents secure their clients' work against AI digestion.

"according to nine people familiar" is never a line you want in a story about you

Me: [idly looking up info on popes]

Wikipedia: This list is incomplete; you can help expand it.

Me: wut?

Wikipedia: [lifts eyebrows suggestively]

Also, I just read The Dare, & as one of the TTRPG campaigns I run at present is a superhero game, thinking about it A LOT.

John, I absolutely want to hang out, hopefully at 4th Street 2027(since I cannot make it myself this year), but if we happened to be in the same city sooner, I would buy you a [random acceptable beverage] & talk your ear off, buddy.

The eyes and ears of a cat peek up over the edge of a coffee table

*Jaws music plays*

"I will face God and walk backwards into Hell"

Who Is Blake Whiting? - The American Scholar The most astonishingly productive historian in recent times is someone you’ll never meet

"The books are not listed in the U.S. Public Records System; works created entirely with AI cannot be copyrighted, since their authors are not human. Each of these books, however, has an Amazon Standard Identification Number."

“Long ago I yearned to be a hero without knowing, in truth, what a hero was. Now, perhaps, I understand it a little better. A grower of turnips or a shaper of clay, a Commot farmer or a king--every man is a hero if he strives more for others than for himself alone."

~~THE HIGH KING
Lloyd Alexander

they got the Church of England supporting the Pope now

Donate to Help Matthew Cover Emergency Surgery Costs, organized by Matthew Cortland I'm writing this from a hospital bed at Tufts Medical Center, where I had … Matthew Cortland needs your support for Help Matthew Cover Emergency Surgery Costs

Help Matthew Cover Emergency Surgery Costs

If, and only if, it would NOT at all be a financial hardship, and you find what I do valuable ⤵️

www.gofundme.com/f/help-matth...

You can have my isolation
You can have the hate that it brings
You can have my absence of faith
You can have my everything

Up until this moment, I believe I would have enthusiastically opted in to being haunted by you. Alas, no more.

Exactly one year ago today:

That's delightful.

I honestly don't know if any of the other players realized they played Amber Diceless RPG at a convention with an incognito Roger Zelazny.

Writers I Wish Had Collaborated While Alive include John M. Ford and Roger Zelazny.

Both *loved* repurposing history into their stories and were absurdly eclectically well read.

One of my favorite convention stories involves Roger Zelazny and the Amber Diceless RPG.

“It’s a couple of things that work beautifully in concert. First: no music. Audiences are so sophisticated, but what they’re not accustomed to is not being told how to feel,” Wyle says. “You take all that out and it forces a level of engagement where you’re now looking for clues within the frame of the screen, which forces you to look up from your phone. And I think that is extremely engaging, especially to young viewers who aren’t accustomed to being asked to participate in a nonpassive way in the viewing experience.

“Second point, shooting it with almost exclusively 50-millimeter or 65-millimeter lenses, which is the most comparable to the human eye—and only shooting from the point of view of a human being that’s present in this space. There are no cameras on gurney wheels going in the hallway. There’s no cameras on the ceiling looking down from a God point of view. You are limited to the perspective of a participant. You can look away, but you can’t leave, and it becomes an endurance test for you to stay on your feet as long as we’re on our feet. Which [brings me to my] third point: real time. Real time has an aggregate sense of tension that you don’t get in any other form of storytelling. What happened before is happening now, and these two things are going to add up to the next thing. And if we throw more ingredients into this cooker and keep ratcheting it up, it’s going to pop.”

Wyle makes eye contact for his next point, delivering it with a Robby-esque matter-of-factness. “Fourth point: The election went the other way,” he says with a shrug. “We could have been a really good show with a lot of nice things to say in a perfectly normal Kamala Harris universe. And instead we became almost a beacon of hope and humanity in an alternative universe. But in the midst of that, fifth point—this is essentially competence porn. You’re watching really smart, dedicated people do what only they know how to do at a level that you don’t know how to do it, and you’re so fucking glad that they’re there doing it, and compartmentalizing their own stuff to put your broken pieces back together. You’re so reassured by knowing that there are people out there that laugh and joke and have the ability to lock in like that.”

this is fucking unreal stuff from Noah Wyle on the magic of The Pitt. www.gq.com/story/noah-w...

If you want an interesting divergence point for European history: The Prussian General Staff existed formally from 1814, and had an unprecedented autonomy from the Prussian nobility of the era. All it takes is Blucher getting pissed at Gneisenau in 1817, and it collapses due to Blucher's popularity.

I like that it has the courage not to wrap things up with a tidy bow. And it genuinely understands a piece of wisdom my ex-firefighter spouse related to me: "People rarely call EMS because somebody did something intelligent."

I, also, want to see them try, but in the way that I want to make popcorn first.

If we Butlerise under current conditions, someone is going to upload LLMs into our Mentats, Lydy.

I watched one episode of The Rookie, and cannot tell if it's a bad SHOW because it expects me to be on these people's side, or a good show but bad COPAGANDA because I am meant to see what a wreck all these people are.

Either way I didn't much enjoy it & am unlikely to watch more.

Chasmosaurus for me, but essentially same.