So good news: I’m starting to make enough money off writing to have to worry about things like self-employment taxes.
Bad news: the current charity we donate the Li’s Friends profits to, WIRES, is not recognized by the good ol’ IRS since it’s in Australia. Which is making my taxes interesting (derogatory).
The simplifying options going forward are “stop selling it” or “switch to a USA-recognized charity”. Definitely leaning towards the latter, so:
Please send me your USA-based (or IRS-recognized international) wildlife charity recs, and we shall have a new vote on who gets our monies.
[Image Description: The first image shows the front and back covers of Li’s Friends on a wooden table. Titanic-Ente drew the lines for the Sweetwater Anglerfish cover art, which WhisperWolf coloured. And on the back cover, Jellybaby drew the Jumping Spidercat.
The second image shows my drawings of the Murder Moose, which is a hybrid between a Moose and a Mantis Shrimp. END ID]
The Murder Moose (a lovely, screams redacted, supposed herbivore) is one of the seven hybrid animals that I’ve drawn in this colouring book.
There’s also the Honeyeater Honey Possum, the Drop Worm, and the Blue-Ringed Mantis Shrimproach, to name a few.
Please send your USA-based (or IRS-recognized international) wildlife charity recs to Muffinlance :D
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Alien, trans-species foster Talita has enough to deal with on the scrapworld of Dirtball. And the sly, crimey A.I. Bip isn't helping!
There is one week left on the Runaway to the Stars Kickstarter! If you wanted to get in, remember to do it soon!
The campaign hit two stretch goals already, one for a cover upgrade and one for an add-on compilation book of the three character AMA zines! (The Reader Questions on the comic website are to included in the main graphic novel.)
The next stretch goal is for a fancy full color zine of a bunch of my ink and fountain pen artworks, like these:
So if that tickles your fancy, check out the page and spread the news. Thank you to everyone who's already donated and helped make the campaign a smashing success :)
Explorations of Birrin anatomy and motion, created as I began developing their story in earnest.
Note that all limbs evolved from four-petaled, flexible appendages that served them well evolving as benthic marine organisms. The upper 'wings' are highly derived, reduced versions of these same limbs, due to the four-fold symmetry of quadrilaterians.
I dedicated a section of my book 'Other Worlds' to their design and inception, going back decades!
13 days to go, so check out the Kickstarter here :)
So usually when an imaginary friend is a real thing in a story, it’s either a demon or a ghost or some supernatural boogeyman that probably wants to eat the kid they’ve befriended (Mama, a couple of the Paranormal Activity movies), or “imaginary friends” are just treated as a real thing in the setting, and if a child just thinks hard enough they can manifest a friend into existence (Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Happy).
And somewhere in the middle is an area where the imaginary friend in question is real and they are supernatural, but they aren’t malevolent, and they aren’t entirely honest about what they are. Like maybe they’re a fairy or a god or some kind of boggle from mythology, but they just got caught by a six year old and they don’t have time to get into it, so they just go “…Yes. I’m your imaginary friend. We haven’t met. How do you do.” And then they stick around because they do love this kid, and if you’re a boggle from mythology in the modern day good food is really hard to come by.
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something about foreshadowing being more prominent the second time around reading a story but in a way that the meaning is changed forever and you can never view a story the same as you once did before. do you know what i mean.
literally so insane how you can never go back to the innocence of it all. you see all the signs coming and you know how it ends. but there's nothing you can do to turn a blind eye to it anymore. it hits you and you just have to keep going.
Every time I think about the care that went into the foreshadowing in Fox's Tongue and Kirin's Bone + The Skin Stealer's Son I'm smacked in the face by one of the first scenes, where Mabel replies to John something like, 'what're travel papers?' By the time I've read most of the Skin Stealer's Son my perception of that scene has radically changed.
I can't go back to the innocence I had before, but I like getting excited about the foreshadowing I can find on my next re-read. Especially becoming more aware of the connections between characters and events.
REALLY FUN FACT for big cats cheetahs are fucking docile as shit
my grandfather ran a cheetah sanctuary in south africa and he’d just lie with them and sleep among them and they’d rub against him and chirp at him they’re big fucking babies
Another Fun Fact: Cheetahs are incredibly nervous animals. One of the (many) reason’s they’re going extinct is that cheetahs are so sensitive and nervous, some of them are literally too nervous to breed. Others will breed, but stress themselves out so much, they’ll lose their cubs.
So zoos with breeding programs had to figure out how to make cheetahs comfortable enough to first of all, get laid and secondly - not spazz themselves into miscarrying.
So what’d they do?
They gave the cheetah’s their very own Service Dogs!
The dogs make them feel safe, protected and secure!
Also! Cheetahs are not in fact classified as big cats, they are simply very large lesser cats, due to the fact that they purr, meow, chirp, and cannot roar. Also many cheetahs have learned to recognize wildlife photographers are friends and not foes, so they will just come up to people and be friendly occasionally as pictured at the top of the chain. Some will even leave their Cubs with photographers to look after while they hunt. So. Yeah. Cheetahs are great
this works because cheetahs are actually fairly social animals, and they look to members of their group for context on how worried they should be about any given Situation. but since cheetahs are also nervous social animals, they can work each other into an anxiety spiral pretty easily over things like “being in an enclosed habitat” and “there’s a guy over there”.
so by introducing a dog as a member of the group, the cheetahs will now look to the dog for context clues on how worried they should be! and the dog Is Not Worried At All, Thanks, so the cheetahs think everything must be chill even if they were personally unsure about it, and they stop being so freaked out about literally everything.
People keep asking about this from time to time, so here is this little tutorial. I explained the best I could :,) Keep in mind this is just one way of doing it, and maybe you can change some of the steps to find one that works better for you. Hope it’s useful to someone out there!
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The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI
People have until October 18th to comment.
American friends! The US Copyright Office (which we know exerts huuuge influence in how these things are treated elsewhere) wants to hear opinions on copyright and AI.
"The US Copyright Office is opening a public comment period around AI and copyright issues beginning August 30th as the agency figures out how to approach the subject."
We can assume that the opposing side will definitely be using all of their lobbying power towards widespread AI use, so this is a very good chance to let them know your thoughts on AI and how art and creative content of all kinds should be protected.
One of the things they’re asking for comment on is the use of copyrighted works to train AI. The Copyright Office really will read what you write. If lots of people write in that they oppose allowing generative AI to train on copyrighted works, that could encourage the Copyright Office to also find that using copyrighted works to train AI engines should not be allowed. Courts routinely look at Copyright Office publications while interpreting the Copyright Act, so this is an opportunity to actually have a say in the issue.
You might be wondering how you should express that letting AI train on people’s copyrighted works is bad in a way that the Copyright Office will take seriously. The simple answer is: Be polite and be honest. If you’ve been a victim, you can share how you felt when you discovered your work had been used to train AI without your permission. If you think authors and artists deserve not to have their work used without their permission, you can say that. Be truthful. Don’t present something as a fact if it is not. Avoid hyperbole, inflammatory accusations, and foul language. It is okay to say you are upset, concerned, and/or hurt, but do it without calling someone else a “fucker.”
If you have no idea what to say, but want to comment, I've got some suggestions on how to write a comment under the cut.
Part One - Thank the Copyright Office for seeking public comment:
Thank you for opening these important questions up for public comment.
Or
I appreciate the Office’s interest in this topic and its request for public feedback.
Part Two - Who you are and why do you care?
I am an author/artist whose living depends on my being able to monetize my work
or
I am a supporter of authors and artists, and recognize that it is important in a democratic society to support the creation of art.
or
I am an author/artist whose work appears on my website.
Part Three - there is a strong public policy in granting authors the exclusive right to their works for a limited time (ie during the copyright period)
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution requires Congress pass laws “ To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Permitting generative AI to train on copyrighted works without fairly compensating Authors for the Right to their Writings is inconsistent with the Constitution.
Or
There is a strong policy to promote art by allowing authors exclusive rights in their creative works during a set period of time. While a work is under copyright, therefore, it should not be used without the author’s consent to train generative AI. To do so would violate the author’s exclusive rights to control their work while copyright applies.
Or
The Copyright Act places time limits on when an author has exclusive rights in their creative works. This balances allowing the author to promote their work and recover for their efforts against the public’s ability to use the work. Applying this system to generative AI is fair - generative AI may be trained on materials in the public domain, but it would be a violation of an author’s exclusive rights in their works to train generative AI on the author’s work while it is under copyright.
Part Four - what do you want?
The Copyright Office should adopt positions finding that training generative AI on copyrighted works without the consent of the authors of those works violates the Copyright Act.
or
The Copyright Office should adopt positions that copyright infringement includes training generative AI on copyrighted works when it is done without the permission of the authors whose works are being used in the training.
Part Five - Thank you again for your time.
Thank you for considering these comments.
or
Thank you for your time and consideration in this important matter.
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! Please take a moment out of your day, on behalf of all authors, artists, and terrible bosses looking to replace human creativity with ultra-cheap good-enough alternatives to comment. And I don't generally ask for reblogs, but yeah. Do that too. But the most important part is commenting. Doesn't have to be perfect, just copy and paste from above if you want to, or write a heartfelt two-sentence "artists and writers should give consent and receive compensation to be included in a training set, and images and writing resulting from AI should not be eligible for copyright without significant further human manipulation/improvement of the generated image." Which is my own current stance on this issue.
I've seen two links floating on the reblogs for where to comment officially at, which is confusing
At regulations.gov: here
At the copyright office: here
BOTH OF THESE ULTIMATELY LINK TO THE SAME COMMENT FORM (on regulations.gov), so just to preemptively clear up that confusion, follow either link they're both fine
Edit: Someone added that non-USA residents can comment, too!
PSA: If anyone is considering paying for Tumblr ad free to escape the ads...
The ads are excluded. From exclusion by ad free. As an opportunity graciously permitted to us, apparently.
Actual reply from Tumblr support:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about our Netflix One Piece partnership.
You may notice a temporary dashboard tab featuring content about the show, and some sponsored posts throughout your feed for a limited time.
Tumblr Ad-Free Browsing excludes a few featured post formats on the platform. You’ll still have access to sponsored posts made by users as well as special features such as editorials and/or Tumblr takeovers.
Hey @staff got anything to add? Oh, sorry, to ad?
So yeah here's the place to complain loudly and often, I used multiple drop downs to test (and because I am filled with spite) and, unsurprisingly, the only one I got a reply on was using the category "Paid Options".
So everyone, feel free to go to Tumblr support, select Paid Options as your category, and complain in your preferred degree of politeness about how you...
CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER!
Are going to cancel your subscription if they keep advertising on ad free
Were considering ad free but became aware that it's not actually ad free, so bad Tumblr, no cookie money
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The Epaulette shark is only about 9 million years old as a species, making it the most recent branch in the shark family. And it is slowly but surely evolving into a land animal
