I write stuff

Zinemakers are among the most vocal critics of using AI to create art. Some are creating anti-AI zines in protest. Maddie Marshall spent a year working on a 92-page zine opposing the technology that she now sells on Etsy, the online craft marketplace. Marshall, a Melbourne-based video editor and illustrator, was inspired to create it after facing pressure to use AI at work.

“I felt the urge to spread the word about my opinions on it and get people to question why these technologies are being pushed on us so heavily,” she said.

Goldfinger created her counter-AI zine, I Should Be Allowed To Think, – named after a 1994 song by the American alternative rock band They Might Be Giants – as she feels AI is making it harder for artists to secure jobs.

the funniest thing is the video logs Grace sent back to Earth. he nakey.

which means there's an entire planet that doesn't know Eridians wear clothes at all because their only exposure to this species is a nudist.

Humans and Eridians meet again one day, and all the Eridians are wearing clothes, and sweaters, and accessories like normal people and the humans have a brief huddle about this before one of them walks up to Rocky (probably much older now) and says, "so, uh. those video logs. you, um, you wear clothes?"

quotes taken from the source

You are not going to pass a skillcheck against a rip current once it has you.

Waves will not bow to your physical prowess no matter how impressive.

Shock does not care that you used to be on your school swim team.

If you hit your head, being good at swimming isn't going to turn you face-up while you're unconscious.

Those colors are chosen for how much further under water they're visible

In middle school biology, we did an experiment. We were given yams, which we would sprout in cups of water. We then had to make hypotheses about how the yams would grow, based on descriptions of yam plants in our books, and make notes of our observations as they grew.

Here’s what was supposed to happen: we were supposed to see that the actual growth of the plant did not resemble our hypotheses. We were then supposed to figure out that these were, in fact, sweet potatoes.

What actually happened was that every single student in every single class lied in their notes so that their observations perfectly matched their hypotheses. See, everyone assumed the mismatch meant they had done something wrong in the process of growing the plant or that they had misunderstood the dichotomous key or the plant identification terminology. And, thanks to the wonders of a public school education, everyone assumed the wrong results would get us a failing grade. We were trying to pass. We didn’t want to get bitched out by the teacher. Curiosity, learning, science - that had nothing to do with why we were sitting in that classroom. So we all lied.

The teacher was furious. She tried to fail every student, but the administration stepped in and told her she wasn’t allowed to because a 100% fail rate is recognized as a failure of the teacher, not the class. It wasn’t even her fault, really, though her being a notorious hard-ass didn’t help. It was a failure of the entire educational system.

Either I'm just too neurodivergent to know that I'm supposed to be lying, or I may have always had a core of wanting to know, if I was wrong, where did I go wrong, because that's the only way you learn.

The problem with big things, like leaded gas, cigarettes and all those other company failures/betrayals often wasn't the scientists to start with. The scientists were reporting the truth.

Much like your teacher, the CEOs over these scientists didn't want to hear and/or admit the truth because of their own bottom line.

This is a failure of that teacher and teachers like her, who DON'T make students feel supported, like they can have an answer that doesn't seem to be the one the teacher wants; that the student can ask the teacher, 'what went wrong'.

Science education should repeat to you, over and over, in a dozen different ways, that it's okay when your hypothesis doesn't match the results of the experiment. Because that's life. Sometimes you don't have the exact perfect parameters that someone else had. Sometimes, someone's bias results in unreproducible work.

Science education should highlight the significance of things like peer review.

They have funded successful campaigns in other countries to make homosexuality illegal and punishable by death. They strongly support conversion therapy.

and like. I don't think shopping at shitty stores makes you a bad person. but consider that in order to live according to our principles sometimes it may be necessary to accept inconveniences. whether that means shopping online or driving a further distance than we'd like, or saving up to buy more expensive supplies, or whatever.

Some alternatives:

For yarn:

https://hobbii.com/yarn

https://www.yarn.com/pages/yarn

Art supplies:

^"controversies" section has sourced info about the contraceptives and more about the smuggling, and endangerment of employees as well as the "he gets us" superbowl ad campaign.

Hobby lobby 2023 tax returns. The biggest donations ($6+ million , twice) are to Vanguard charitable endownment program, possibly to hide controversial donations. There are also donations to many different universities and fraternities/sororities, and a few churches, as well as a single, comparatively small, donation to a planned parenthood location in Houston, TX.

In 2012, Hobby Lobby donated the Northfield campus to the National Christian foundation. The building was estimated to be worth $20.000.000 at the time.

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.