This is a verified GoFundMe for librarian Luanne James from the Rutherford County Library Alliance.
gofund.me/f7704eb98
Read what happened to this hero: www.newschannel5.com/news/rutherf...
Hot take: 99% of university administrators who push AI are grifters and I suspect they'd lose their careers pretty quickly if anyone checked their hard drives.
What a shock that the guy who pushed AI on the staff, faculty, and students of Ohio State University also turned out to be corrupt as hell.
What a shock.
This is my shocked face.
These scams are not new. A while back, I wrote about discovering letters sent to my grandfather in the 1930s. He was a songwriter and musician and it appears he fell prey to publishing scams back then. 3/ www.jasonsanford.com/blog/2020/5/...
We were recently asked about this old episode, prompting a re-listen. If you haven’t heard ‘Magdala Amygdala’, by Lucy Snyder, you should check it out 🧠 🩸
And a reminder that Patreon supporters can get our back catalogue in their podcatcher to listen to at leisure!
pseudopod.org/2013/07/19/p...
Did a big thread about this on Twitter a few years back, about how the Columbine shooters were steeped in nazi rhetoric, including eugenicist beliefs about killing disabled people, and just how much their neo-nazism wasn't just downplayed but omitted. Text from:
schoolshooters.info/sites/defaul...
Check out A Shadow Full of Stars: A Mind-Bending Fantasy Novel by Rob Cornell.
I was a beta reader for this novel, and I recommend it. It's Lovecraft-adjacent but not horror, and has a bit of a "The Good Place" vibe to it.
www.kickstarter.com/projects/rob...
Neil Gaiman popped his head up to claim he's innocent, so I guess we're in for 6 more weeks of winter.
Anyway here is the most successful promo I've ever done for a book.
YOU DO NOT NEED AI.
The entire thesis here is "hey, do you realize how many people could choose to not use labor from human beings if they instead used the extruded meat product trained on labor from those same human beings?"
I don't think you could come up with a list more designed to inflame sentiments than "here is a list of things that publishers MUST use AI to do and remain competitive, but don't worry, this isn't pushing out creative labor"
Remember how I said I have it written into my foreign-language contracts that my work has to be translated by an actual human? This shit is why.
Those book translations are gonna suck. They'll save money putting out books that are going to be painful to read. That's not a great long-term strategy.
ebook cover for Sister Silence Night by Michael Warren Lucas
ebook cover for The Last Multivariable Differential Christmas by Michael Warren Lucas
Coming to my shop tomorrow, with luck: two Christmas stories. Mostly a gift for my Patronizers, but I have zero shame and'll take anyone's money.
Serpents-as-evil imagery never really worked for me, but it especially doesn't work now that I've been keeping snakes as pets.
It's just ... most of them are the derpiest little noodles, c'mon.
Yoga studio owners are mantrapreneurs
Dear neurodivergent folks: We're not broken. We evolved as an important part of humanity but modern capitalists created a narrow, artificial world that isn't made for us. Our nature exists because it is inherently valuable. It sucks that our culture doesn't recognize our value.
Submission fees are garbage. Always. Yes, even then. Garbage.
A publication that has monetized its submission pile isn't going to be terribly motivated to develop a readership.
So if a place tries to justify submission fees with, "Oh, but think of the exposure you'll get!" be very, very skeptical.
Submission Grinder users,
Hey just wanted to say that we truly appreciate it when: if we happen to list a publication that has a history of i.e. bigotry, when people ask us if we were aware of the thing and they have receipts.
We are not all-knowing, and this information is VERY HELPFUL. Thank you!
High fashion for owls: hoot couture.
Yoga practitioners! You know about "downward dog" and "sun salutation" but have you heard of "I'm alone in the house and the gecko ran onto the back of my shirt"?
Having a roomba is, in several ways, like having a cat. It:
- spends a lot of time sleeping
- has a talent for getting underfoot
- gets stuck in improbable places and cries for help
- doesn't listen to what you say
- leaves hairballs on the carpet
So you never know what authoritatively-issued misinformation a newbie writer might be laboring under. And seeing an alternative in print might not be enough to shake off the idea that a widely-used technique is "wrong" because Professor MFA or Workshop Guy said so. (4/4)
Both those bits of advice were demonstrably not even remotely true, but she had wide-eyed young writers taking her advice as gospel, because she was The Professor and what did they know? (3/4)
Why? I've met people in Positions of Writing Authority who were giving out wildly misguided advice.
For instance, a tenured MFA poetry professor told me both that poets shouldn't write narrative poetry, *and* that the only way to get a poetry book published is to win a contest. (2/4)
Someone subtweeted about new writers who ask "Can you do [XYZ] in a novel/story?" when [XYZ] is commonly encountered in genre fiction.
This someone wondered, "Do these people even read?"
Assuming these newbie queries aren't clickbait, I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. (1/4)
Terrarium and aquarium pets come in two types:
"If this place drops below 76 degrees or goes above 82, and if you don't feed me imported Siberian mulberry leaves every 2.3 days, I will surely perish."
"Nice dirt you got here. I've already laid 50 eggs."
Tool
