Excellent Desert

my mom is in fact aware that dandelions exist. she temporarily forgot the name and there was some miscommunication.

the truth is actually weirder

she’s aware dandelions look like this

she is familiar with this flower. she knows the name of this flower. she declines to believe, however, that these are also dandelions

she does not believe these are the same plant. I tried to explain, and she thought I was either misinformed or lying. so I asked her what exactly did she think the yellow ones were called?

gosh I enjoy this website

The Rodeo Rule: you only have to do it for the first time once.

The Rohan Rule: if you are at a social function full of new people and you want to be liked, find someone doing important work like setup or food prep and offer to help.

The Tutorial Mode Rule: to navigate an unfamiliar situation where you fear you will mess up an interaction, preface the interaction by mentioning that you've never done this before, and let them know if you have a specific concern or question.

The Rocket Science Rule: most new things you want to try seem very complicated but are simple when taken step by step.

The [X] Will Remember That Rule: if you need to make small talk with the same person on a regular basis, try to save one fact or current event in their life from a given conversation and bring it up next time you talk.

Fine, you've stated your reasons for posting this on an anonymous sideblog, whatever. I'm happy to stand ten toes down on my own views here, even though some of them are not that popular. You say that you're not one of the people who posted this, but are you connected with them? If so, are you willing to disclose that?

Why would the creators of this document not put any additional care into investigating the placement and frequency of AI usage in the listed fics? I'm not a fan of AI in any capacity, but to me there's a huge difference between using it for translation, formatting code, etc. rather than using it to generate actual writing. Is that what's happening for any of these works? I don't know, I have not yet had time to dig into the source code for all of them, but I'm not the one making an enormous callout post.

ETA: at least one of the called-out fics clearly just used Claude to generate the appropriate code to format something to look like a recipe. Again, this is a judgment call, but I find this infinitely less upsetting than someone using AI to generate fanfiction.

Corollary: why was it helpful to call out these specific popular authors? To generate hype for these posts? I think making the skin is great, because it allows readers to make choices about what they're engaging with, but archiving receipts and downloading copies of all of these in advance means that you spent a lot of time looking at the works of these specific authors and planning this. Why? If you could take the time to do that, why couldn't you take the time to look more critically at your own findings.

To be exquisitely clear, I do not personally want to read things that are generated by AI. If I suspect that something is AI-generated, I mute the author and don't recommend the fic. However, I'm not at all convinced that this is a good-faith effort at transparency in fandom, and I'm not going to assume that it's been posted by people with good intentions until I get a better explanation of all of this.

I am a social worker. I have worked in community mental health and in home-based healthcare. And it is much, much easier for me to help you when the situation you're in is not yet a full-blown crisis.

"I'm out of money and have been for a while and now I haven't eaten for three days." This is a crisis. A crisis where I'm likely going to have to put you in the car and take you to the nearest food bank--except food banks require appointments now, and the next opening is in four days, so you're staring down the barrel of a week with no food. That's obviously not going to work, so, let's call eight different food banks until we've found one that has an appointment the next day...except it's in the neighboring county and you can't drive. So now I'm calling your doctor to try and brow beat an emergency plan of care update out of him so I can come back the next day and drive you to the food bank. And we haven't even started on the "constantly broke" part of the problem.

"I don't think I have enough food to make it to my next paycheck. I have (xyz) in my house and that will only last until (date)." This is bad, but not a crisis. We have a few days. We make you an appointment at the food bank and contact your brother to make sure you have a ride there. Now we can spend our visit talking about what bills are causing you the most problems and make a jump on a long-term solution, like looping in a community action agency to cover your utilities and getting you an OTC card from Medicaid to cover some of your groceries every month.

"I'm ten months behind on rent, and my landlord said I have a week to get out, or the cops will throw me out. I don't have the money, and if I get evicted, I have nowhere to go." This is a crisis. Every single thing we do here is going to be some version of a Hail Mary. In Michigan, we have the state emergency relief fund for rent issues, but process time is well over one week. There are community action agencies that we can call to assist you with payment, but they are unlikely to have sufficient funds to cover nearly a year of back rent. We can contact legal aid clinics to try and prevent your landlord from evicting you, but they may look at your case and determine that too much "fault" lies with you. Most likely, I'm going to have to put you in touch with homeless shelters and the public housing office.

"I'm two months behind on rent and I don't think I'll be able to pay next month either." This is bad, but not a crisis. This is solvable. We have time to apply for SER, or put you in contact with community action agencies. We have time to review your finances and see if you qualify for a public housing wait list or other forms of ongoing rental assistance. We have time to talk about a million possible adjustments to try and ease the burden of your rent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my elderly parent who has dementia and is emotionally volatile and fully dependent on me. I have not slept through the night in weeks and I have not had an actual break for over a year. I am having screaming meltdowns multiple times a week and I am threatening self-harm unless someone comes to collect my parent and take over all caregiver duties." This is a crisis. This is a crisis where the ethical code of my profession demands that I call 911 and report the conversation to them. They will likely come to the house and interview you. If they determine your threats were serious, they will have you forcibly committed to a psych ward. Your parent will either be dumped into a random hospital or rehab center, or left in the house on their own. Upon release from your psych hold, you will be expected to resume caregiving duties as though nothing happened. Except, now, adult protective services is actively investigating you, because it was determined you may be an ongoing danger to your parent.

"I am the sole caregiver for my demented parent, and I have not had a break in a couple of weeks, and I feel angry and weepy most of the time." This is bad, but not a crisis. We can get you in touch with volunteer groups for respite, and apply for state funded programs to get more day-to-day help, and talk about long-term planning for when the dementia symptoms get worse. We can get you the phone numbers for crisis lines and enroll you in a support group.

this and also the only difference between fanfic writers and writers who sell their own original works as careers is that fanfics aren’t monetized. that’s all.

being a “professional” writer doesn’t mean your works are inherently better than fanfics. I’ve read so many fics that are more professionally written than some published books.

"With genetic test results back from U.C. Davis Laboratories of toe-hair samples from each side of his body, I am excited to share that this sheep

🌟 IS INDEED a CHIMERA 🌟

His black mouflon side is a genetically different individual from his black gray side. The lab ran the test twice just to be sure!

Oh but wait, THERE IS MORE!

He is ALSO a she!

The black mouflon side is male.

The black gray side is female!

What I can tell you beyond these test results, is that this beautiful creature successfully bred four solid patterned ewes this winter that produced a total of 9 lambs, of which all were either solid pattern or mouflon pattern; 5 rams and 4 ewes. "

"I'm pretty sure that fella ain't here legally."

"Well, that ain't your business Chip, it's his."

They hate being preached to. If you pull out words like 'gender wage gap' they'll tell you you're brainwashed by the far left media.

"He's one of them transgenders."

Shut down the conversation without reacting.

"His dick, not mine" will get you much further to shutting that guy down than "well it's really inappropriate to call someone a slur while I'm the job site".

“Don’t be a dick.” <- to a slur

“Fuckin’ snowflake.” <- in response to “don’t do that gay shit around me”

This is a man who is VIOLENTLY aware that when it comes to conservatives, he is a Muslim first, a Brown Man second, an Immigrant third, a Socialist fourth, and a human a very distant fifth, if considered at all. He was also a young adult during the Obama Years and will have seen Republicans rip Obama to shreds for wearing a tan suit instead of a dark one and use literally ANY excuse they could to try and degrade his image.