Stuff I like :)

how measurements work in canada (ie/ badly)

She spends forty-odd years fat and single and obsessed with dragons and loving it and letting nobody give her any shits

And then she meets a dashing-if-drunken forty-something watchman and they think they’re too old for love but they are so, so, so wrong and their relationship starts with mutual respect and trust and grows into an incredible amount of love and affection

“Among the other unwanted baggage that had been heaped on the young Sybil to hamper her progress through life was the injunction to be pleasant to people and say helpful things. People took this to mean that she didn’t think.”

and

“She was large and she was kind. She hadn’t enjoyed school much. A society of girls is not a good one in which to be large and kind, because people are inclined to interpret that as ‘stupid’ and, worse, ‘deaf’.”

Within pages of this she is bending iron bars over werewolves’ heads. I really wish she’d been able to have a go at Serafine, though, after the way the woman was talking about her at the beginning of the book, as if being friendly, even with people you don’t like, is some kind of weakness.

The Fifth Elephant is where Sybil really starts to flourish as a character, IMO. And the thing is, she’s far from stupid. She really pays attention to people in a manner possibly only surpassed by Carrot, which is how she memorizes whole dwarfish arias to deploy for maximum emotional impact and extensive notes on fat mining to haggle with the Low King. She notices people, and keeps up with them, and because of that she is able to mobilize the entire of the Sto Plains to watch a Goblin performance at a moment’s notice, changing the fate of an entire race. 

Anyway, did y'all hear that they nuked the White House?

Google has already announced that they will be “rolling back” this feature because of screenshots like these:

Other useful AI Removal/Detection links

How to spot AI Hallucinations like a Reference Librarian (originally on Substack)

OK

final one

for all the marbles,

this one doesn't have an illustration bc i think it was just a kids novel but i haven't been able to find ANYTHING about it on my occasional internet queries:

kids is staying with his (grandmother?) in the woods and she warns him not to look a fox in the eyes bc they're tricksy and will swap places with you. obviously that's the first thing the little boy does and gets body snatched by a fox who uhhhh proceeds to pig out with his new little boy human hands and the boy has to trick the fox into looking him in the eyes again to switch back...

i cannot express how much these are from memory, that's how internalized these artists and writers have become, they're a part of me now

The second one is likely Stellaluna.