¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ProWritingAid, which is heavily AI now, is one of NaNo's main sponsors.

This is on top of the child grooming scandal last year, which saw the shut down of the forums and official community spaces, which means no Wrimo feedback onsite whatsoever.

Apparently NaNo's own Tumblr post and other social media is getting hammered and their social media team is locking and deleting and trying to remove dissent where they can but good luck.

Also still trying to figure out how AI is supposed to help marginalized writers break into publishing, let alone the classism and ableism aspects that make this worse. If anything, AI is more of those things, not helping them. But y'know, spellcheck exists, so genAI should be fine.

Nor is NaNo answering concerns about the plagiarism aspects of genAI, the environmental impacts, or the rampant money laundering and other issues with such an unregulated "business".

Examples: drinking is a personal risk. Drinking and driving is a public risk. Going scuba diving is a personal risk. Running a scuba shop with faulty equipment is a public risk. Riding a bicycle without a helmet is a personal risk. Not maintaining public transport safety standards is a public risk. Foraging for mushrooms is a personal risk. Advertising a mushroom identification app that uses shoddy AI is a public risk. Elective surgery is a personal risk. Not wearing a mask in a doctor's waiting room when you are sick with a contagious illness is a public risk.

Remember during COVID some young able healthy people wouldn't understand why they were asked to please not do extreme sports that and the following year?

Things that he’s gotten done and what impact they have made or will make. I don’t like all of them, but there are a lot I am really, really glad he’s managed (and impressed).

Now, imagine what could happen if we had a unified House, Senate, and White House. If you think of all the bills that have stalled because the Speakers wouldn’t even bring them to a vote…

I know everyone fucking hates hearing this, but voting 3rd party in national general elections in the US is a fucking waste. In our current two-party FPTP system, third parties functionally do not exist, and they know it. Most of them are functionally grifts as a result.

I know we've been saying that "this next election is crucial to the survival of American democracy" for the last couple of elections, so it's probably starting to sound like old hat or like people are exaggerating, but y'all...

There is literally nothing more important to your cause - whatever that cause is - than keeping Trump out of the fucking White House.

You don't have to like Biden. You don't have to think he's the right choice for the Democrats to run. I surely think they should have made another choice, to put it mildly, but they fucking didn't and here we are. We are at the point where it's either Biden or Trump, and every goddamned third-party vote is "well, maybe a little fascism would be okay."

Putin and fucking Bibi would be thrilled to deal with Trump. The people who want to ram all of us into tiny little narrow boxes where we have children we can't afford because we don't have a choice and then spend all of our lives hungry, scrambling, desperate and easy to control? The people who have been literally making those plans in public since Reagan, and planning explicitly how to get poor white people to have more babies, specifically so those poor white people will keep them in power? They love Trump.

Is this what I wanted? No. We didn't even have primaries in my state before the race was essentially decided. But you know what?

This is where we are, and no amount of wishing it were otherwise will change that. At this point, if you're not focused on keeping That Dude out of power, you're helping hand it to him.

It sucks, but it's the truth.

Protest votes are for primaries. Third parties should not be taken seriously in Presidential elections especially - and any third party that isn't focusing locally first is basically just a grift to get people on TV and into the national news so they can [raise money/get money as a political consultant/sell books/whatever Marianne Williamson's current grift is now that she isn't telling AIDS patients they will only get sick if they don't pray hard enough and maybe they can stop taking their meds].

so a huge list of artists that was used to train midjourney’s model got leaked and i’m on it

literally there is no reason to support AI generators, they can’t ethically exist. my art has been used to train every single major one without consent lmfao 🤪

some things to look out for

1. spelling mistakes. do you know how many rounds of marketing and sales experts these things go through? if theres a spelling mistake dont click it

2. not using your name. if an email adresses you with “dear customer” or, even worse, a generic “ladies and gentlemen”, it is most likely not actually targeted to you

3. verifying or login links. even IF your bank was stupid enough to send these to customers, dont EVER click those. look at me. they can legally argue that youve given your data away and thus they dont have to pay you anything back DONT CLICK THAT FUCKING LINK

4. creating a sense of urgency. do this or we lock your account next week. do this or your ebanking stops working tomorrow. give us all your money in cash or your beloved granddaughter will get HANGED FOR MURDERING BABIES. no serious organisation would ever do something like that over email or sms. ever. hands off.

5. ALWAYS CHECK WHO SENT YOU THE EMAIL. the display name and the email adress can vary a LOT. anyone can check the display name. look at the email adress. does it look weird? call the fucking place it says its from. you will likely hear a very weary sigh.

6. if its in a phonecall, scammers love preventing you from hanging up or talking to other people to have a little bit of a think about whats happening. there should always be a possibility to go hey i wanna think about this ill call back the official number thanks.

7. do not, i repeat, do NOT a) call a phone number flashing on your screen promising to rid your computer of viruses after clicking a dodgy link and b) let them install shit on your computer like. uh. idk. teamviewer.

7.i. TEAM VIEWER LETS PEOPLE USE YOUR COMPUTER HOWEVER THEY WANT AS LONG AS THEYRE CONNECTED. IF YOU DONT KNOW FOR FUCKING SURE YOURE TALKING TO ACTUAL TECH SUPPORT DONT GIVE ANYONE ACCESS TO YOUR COMPUTER.

fun little addendum: did you know a link can just automatically download shit? like. a virus? an app you can’t uninstall unless you reset your entire device? dont click links unless youre extremely sure you know where they lead. hover your mouse over it and check the url.