Bárbara Vitória ༊*·˚

Our latest is live! 🏒 Kayti Burt reports on the fallout around the recent document attempting to identify fanfiction authors using AI, and how Heated Rivalry is ground zero for fandom's broader reckoning with AI-generated text on all sides:

“Fandom Has A Hidden Generative AI Problem” gives shape to a breakdown in a basic social contract for online fandom and all online community and discourse. While fanfiction writing is  generally pseudonymous, readers have historically at least been able to rely on the assumption that a fellow human being is writing the story they are reading. With the introduction of AI, that fundamental pact between fic writer and fic reader has been fractured. Fandom is a place for people to be in community together—to bond over shared obsessions in a way that can make us feel a little less alone. Realizing someone has outsourced that connection to a machine can make us feel even more alone.

even nazi books should not be banned. people should read them (if they can) so they can learn how harmful it is. you don’t teach people that some things are bad and harmful by hiding these bad and harmful things from them.

Nigel Farage is the leader of Reform UK, a far right party who are currently in the process of a serious bid to become the UK government. they are just straight up evil.

Count Binface is an intergalactic space warrior with a bin on his head. he likes to run as a novelty candidate in general and mayoral elections. a big thing he likes to do is run as a candidate against the incumbent prime minister:

(Also pictured: Boris Johnson, Elmo)

Anyway, in brief:

Nigel Farage is currently in the midst of a big scandal about his finances

He has decided to deal with this by 1) making a show of nobly resigning from parliament and then 2) immediately running in the resulting by-election

He has stated that he is letting 'the people' judge his actions and implied that if he wins that will prove that he has been exonerated in the court of public opinion

His goal was presumably to get a big resounding win over the other parties, proving that The People still love him.

the other parties have thus far decided that this is a 'vanity election' and, well, there is one very easy way to ensure that he will not beat any of them, and that is simply not to play.

and as a result the only person who has so far confirmed they are running against him is Count Binface. no matter the outcome this makes Nigel Farage look like, u know, a fucking clown.

One of my friends in high school changed his named as soon as he turned 18, so that the ethnic name his family gave him was finally the name reflected on all of his paperwork. He told me that he understood why his parents had given him an “English” name, but that he felt that if he needed to assimilate in order to succeed, then that was a type of success that he didn’t want.

When I was on my way home from the courthouse after changing my own name, I got into a conversation with my rideshare driver, who was extremely interested once I told him what I was in court for, and wanted to know how I’d done it, how much it cost, was it difficult, etc. It turned out that his girlfriend had chosen the name “Yo-yo” when she came to the United States, unaware of how rare that was as a name, and that she was frequently made fun of because of it. Neither one of them had realized that a name change was so easy, and he told me he was excited to let her know that she had options.

There was an intern at a summer job I had once, who changed her name to be the same name, but a different spelling. She said that she had no idea why her parents had spelled her name so oddly to begin with, and suspected that it was just an honest mistake either by them or by some nurse, but it had been a headache for her entire life, and it was a huge relief to not need to be correcting people’s spelling on important documents anymore.

One of my exes legally changed his name to have an exclamation point, because he liked to sign his name with an exclamation point.