Show Me The Way To The Bar

However, Hua Cheng muttered glumly, “I’m not happy.” “Why is that?” Xie Lian asked. Hua Cheng’s tone turned cold. “I…hate looking like this!” Xie Lian could actually detect a trace of loathing in his voice and was slightly taken aback. Hua Cheng lowered his head. “I don’t want you to see me in such a useless form, much less be forced to protect me!” (...) Hua Cheng buried his face in his shoulder. “…It’s not the same,” he grumbled, voice muffled. “Your Highness, I have to be the strongest. I have to become stronger than anyone else. Only then can I…” Although his voice was young and tender at the moment, a trace of fatigue lingered in his tone. “You’ve always been the strongest. But you don’t need to be strong every waking moment of every day,” Xie Lian soothed him. “Just… think of this as giving me some face. Let me protect you this once. Please? Okay?” It was a long time before Hua Cheng lifted his head. He placed his hands on Xie Lian’s shoulders and gazed at him. “Your Highness, wait for me.” “All right, I’ll wait for you,” Xie Lian promised. Hua Cheng vowed to him, very seriously, “Give me a little time; I’ll be back very soon.” Xie Lian smiled. “No rush. Go at your own pace.”

-Chapt 73

and I can't help but connect his words here to what he said to Xie Lian back then as a Ghost Flame.

The voice seemed so close and yet so far, like it was coming from a waking dream. It cried in despair, “Oh God, please wait for me, just wait for me… Please give me a little more time… Let me… Let me…”

[ID: Screenshot of tumblr tags reading “please op i am desperate for the context.” End ID.]

Sure, here ya go:

Lord George Gordon Byron was an English poet in the early 1800s.

He wrote several narrative poems that influenced the gothic genre and was a HUGE fucking slut. HUGE. This bisexual mess slept with so many fucking people it was insane, no gender was safe. Unfortunately that “no one was safe” mentality did not work out well for him bc there were a LOT of rumors that he impregnated his half-sister.

His only child from a legitimate marriage was from his wife, Lady Anne Isabella Noel Byron, who straight-up left him after a year. You know how divorce was uncommon in the 1800s? His wife was just so fed up with him that she did not care and left when her daughter was five weeks old.

This daughter was named Ada and would become known as Ada Lovelace.

Byron signed the separation papers and then left the country to have sex elsewhere and would later die when Ada was eight.

During that time if a couple divorced, usually the Dad would get full custody, so just in case he tried anything Lady Byron made sure to play the devoted and overattentive mother.

Lady Byron was absolutely paranoid that her daughter would become an insane gothic mess like her dad so she decided the only thing to do would be to make sure she did not become a Poet™. So she heavily encouraged Ada’s interests in science and mathematics.

Around the 1830-40s, Ada met Charles Babbage through a mutual friend and he showed her his prototype for a mechanical calculator. She got absolutely obsessed with this machine and began helping him out with it to the point where her notes on it became more extensive than his.

She also added notes to a translation of a paper on this engine that is considered to be the first published algorithm.

These notes on the engine and translation became the basis for computer programming.

She’s considered The First Computer Programmer™

an important thing to know about Count Binface is that he was previously Lord Buckethead, pictured here with Theresa May in 2017.

Lord Buckethead previously ran against Margaret Thatcher in 1987 and against John Major in 1992. Lord Buckethead ran for the Gremloids party.

Officially all Lord Bucketheads are the same Lord Buckethead who went away for a while and returned; however, it has come to light that Lord Buckethead (1987, 1992) and Lord Buckethead (2017) were two different guys under the bucket.

Following the 2017 general election the original creator of Lord Buckethead (not either of the guys who had worn the costume) asserted his legal rights over the character and 2017 Lord Buckethead acquiesced. and so, Count Binface came into being.

In the 2019 general election Lord Buckethead and Count Binface both ran against Boris Johnson, Binface as an indepent and Buckethead having joined the Monster Raving Looney Party. (NB this Lord Buckethead was a third different guy, not 87/92 Buckethead)

Lord Buckethead won the race (ie, got marginally more votes than Count Binface) but has not stood in an election since whereas Count Binface has been very prolific, running in two mayoral elections, two by-elections, and one further general election in 2024:

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

:| :| :|

The only things that work without rest are machines; literally everything that lives requires rest.

I wanted to use what ‘reach’ I may have here to share the Carolina Wildlife Center’s urgent plea for donations. If they are unable to raise $75,000 to cover ongoing and future care of their wildlife patients, the center will have to close July 20th, 2026. The services provided by CWC to the community are incredibly valuable, and without them, many wild animals will suffer without the care they need.

Original post

Goodmorning to the Anthropic Claude AI training scraper that suddenly decided to request 660 thousand pages (exactly the number I had remaining on the starter plan) and brought Pikiwedia down. 

Sudden switch from diverse user agents like chrome, safari, messenger preview to Just Claudebot. I'm not even mad though, this is maybe the funniest thing possible, because I've inadvertently poisoned their training data with thousands of fucked up articles with normal urls.