Betwixt and Between

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.

You CAN make it somewhat better in Word at least by going to File>Options>Proofing>Writing Style>Settings, which will open up this big long list:

Unchecking everything from the "clarity" and "conciseness" sections will get rid of A LOT of the suggestions that try to really change your voice. It won't fix a lot of the stupid ass suggestions it makes for other stuff, but it at least gets rid of a bunch of the distracting junk.

I have a shit computer and was wondering why Microsoft Word was basically unusable and it's because the AI takes up so much more processing power than normal, it was basically crashing my system.

BUT!

You can delete the AI without affecting the rest of the program.

Instructions under the cut cause they got long.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

it always makes me laugh when ciel talks to people while hanging from Sebastian he's so relaxed and unserious

it’s not just a matter of dependence or the fact that no one could ever replace him. sebastian is literally inseparable from ciel’s public image. the people on the domain know him. he handles daily deliveries and purchases. he visits the fantom shops, and even consider them their goods. he orders clothes, chooses tableware. he attends every meeting and often speaks on ciel’s behalf. he never leaves his side, and everyone considers it perfectly natural that he is always walking a step behind him.

so if sebastian disappeared, ciel would not only have to learn how to live without an all-powerful, incredibly dependable butler, but also endure the endless questions about where he went.

at first it would be constant. eventually it would die down. but even years later, people who had always associated the two of them together would still ask,

“whatever happened to your tall, handsome butler?”

and ciel, clenching his fists and forcing back the tears he has spent years learning not to show, would repeat like a mantra:

the name sebastian would forever be associated with a pain in his chest. for ciel, it would clearly be an uncomfortable subject, so people would gossip endlessly about what happened between them that caused two people who were once inseparable to suddenly drift apart.

was it a romance brought to an end by ciel’s wife? did sebastian betray him and run away? did ciel try to use his position of power, only for his butler to refuse? did sebastian die, leaving ciel in mourning?

the events on the campania made such an impact that ciel never doubted sebastian again—not even when sebastian supposedly tried to devour him during the emerald witch arc.

in new zealand, our evil government are trying to legislate definitions of women and men, in ways that are legally incoherent but clearly trying to pave the way for more horrifically transphobic legislation. we have an election in a few months but our main opposition party, and all our mainstream news media, are so spineless and cooked that there's a good chance the ghouls will win reelection.

it took 2 whole months for local terf group 'speak up for women' to get 2,000 signatures on the petition that led to this new bill in our parliament.

it's taken five days for this pro-trans 'they don't speak for us' petition to get 17,000 signatures.

this is a show of support that is really heartening for a lot of trans people in our corner of the world.

cis/ish women, if you're from here but haven't signed yet, please do. and if you're not from here and you know any new zealanders, could you send them this petition? a full fifth of our population lives overseas, and there's a good chance they don't follow the news.

no, you don’t have to date that guy just cuz he wants to date you.

no, you don’t have to stay with her because she doesn’t want to break up.

no, you don’t have to keep dating them even though they haven’t cheated/abused you/whatever horrible thing is your only reference for ending a relationship.