Aimée Maroux

When I hear someone pronounce my English name with an accent, I don't think oh they pronounced it wrong, I think oh they said it with an accent. They used the closest sounding approximations their native language has of my name's English sounds. It sounds right to me, with an accent, and that's fine.

I lived in the US for about half a year. People wouldn't even attempt to pronounce my name. So everyone who worries: it feels better if someone tries and fails than giving you the feeling that your name is so outlandish and difficult that it is hopeless to pronounce it.

Link to the gay porn library of Alexandria.

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

Word already had a word count?! That WORKED?

If you see a fawn laying down on the ground all alone, leave it alone. It is not lost, it does not need your help, do not pick it up, do not move it.

This behavior evolved to keep deer young safe. The baby is very small, very quiet, and hard for most predators to see. A young fawn cannot keep up with a fleeing mother deer, which is their primary problem-solving strategy. So while the mother goes elsewhere to graze, the fawn stays safe and hidden. The mom will be back.

4 year old me: why must we do this

Fantastic old woman in the leopard print coat: "Why yes, my tooth IS real silver! Nobody ever asks me that. Do you like cats?"

When I say we should keep Americans and Brits away from our mythology, that's exactly what I mean.

I appreciate that you’re emphasising that AI isn’t something to be simply trusted, nor that it should be given any kind of writing. However, from the point of perspective of someone who writes essays on their stories explaining in detail how/why I made which writing choices, with the explicit goal to help others understand how I put a story together, it’s quite crushing to read that you’d rather go and ask AI to teach you how to do that.

I don’t mean to offend; I’m just letting you know that it feels very, very personal and hurtful. Because I know full well that AI can teach you that because I and many, many other authors have taken the time and effort to explain how our writing works and how we decide what to keep, what to cut, what to tidy up and what to expand. And our work has been scraped and used without giving us any credit, so you can ask AI how to teach you the same things that we have spent hours upon hours trying to explain to the best of our ability. Essays and guides you could have found with a simple search, no AI required, in a day and age where search engines tend to be very good and every good bookshop and library will have guides on writing.

Because that’s the other side here. I have spent many, many years trying to get to this point, have worked with beta readers, have read books (like The Art of War for Writers) and essays on the internet, have read books myself and made notes of what I liked about a specific author’s writing style. I have notebooks full of quotes from my favourite books and random funny, thoughtful, interesting and otherwise memorable statements people have made in my vicinity, that I have noted down since I was about 13 and pick up when I get stuck, just to leaf through and see if anything jumps out at me. Very often something does.

By the by, I, too, struggle with communication. I have no official diagnosis, but I am somewhere on the spectrum, and I’ve always struggled to understand people around me. Taking the time to observe others, note down what they said, remembering their reactions and then going and putting all of it into a fictional setting, trying to imagine what would have made a character say that, what would have made another react like that – then getting feedback from my beta readers on what I had written, has helped me learn ways how I can improve my communication and interpretation of what others are telling me.

It is profoundly saddening to me to read that your choice is to use AI for all of that. And it’s even more saddening that you seem to believe that AI is giving you the tools that you needed. Because the tools AI is giving you are actually the tools that I and others have been creating for decades.

Farlands Fiction, a new small press focused on LGBTQ+ representation in science fiction and fantasy, has an open submissions call for an asexual representation anthology, with the theme of Space Ace. They are accepting science fiction short stories (1000-10000 words) that feature space or space travel, and that contain at least one asexual spectrum (e.g. asexual, aromantic, grey ace, demi-sexual, etc.) character in a prominent role. 

All submissions must be entirely human-written - no artificial intelligence/LLM use allowed. 

I really just have to summarize Thomas's entire life:

He was in a committed relationship with a male swan named Henry for 18-24 years before a female swan named Henrietta showed up and mated with Henry.

Thomas was initially jealous of the pair and attacked them, breaking 2 of the 5 eggs Henrietta had laid. However, once the remaining eggs hatched, Thomas warmed up to them and helped raise them.

Henry couldn't fly because of an injured wing, so Thomas taught the cygnets how to fly.

When they needed to reduce the goose population in the pond where Thomas and the swans lived, they dyed Thomas's feathers red so he wouldn't be separated from Henry.

Henry, Henrietta, and Thomas remained in their happy throuple for years and raised 68 cygnets before Henry died in 2009. After Henry's death, Henrietta found another swan and flew away, leaving Thomas alone.

Thomas finally met and mated with a female goose in 2011 and had his own babies. However, another goose named George stole them and raised them himself.

As Thomas grew elderly and blind, he was relocated to a wildlife center where he raised orphaned cygnets.

His caretaker at the center described him as "pretty high maintenance."

Thomas died in 2018 at the age of around 40. He had a funeral that included a small coffin and a procession that was led by a bagpiper. He was buried under the stone where Henry was buried, the two finally reunited in death.

Drawn/painted/rendered in Krita using a Wacom Intuos Pro