On the one hand, I don’t suppose I can go on posting celebratory gifs for every week free from AI indefinitely. Eventually, I will have been doing it long enough, and I don’t want it to become annoying for people. However, it does continue to be helpful for now. I’ve had some AI temptations lately, and one day where I came close to giving in (thanks for keeping in touch with me and helping me strategize that evening, Valia.) As silly as it is, it does help to fight off the urge by remembering that if I give in, I won’t be able to add another week and post my gif. Thanks, everyone who’s encouraged or prayed for me. Transparency, especially lighthearted transparency, truly helps.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
As it is food drive season I'd like to remind people that while food might be edible past these dates, food banks and food pantries will not use food past those dates, so please don't waste their time by donating things they will not use
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
The castellers of Vilafranca (Penedès, Catalonia) for Sant Miquel holiday in Vilafranca.
Castellers (meaning "castle builders") are groups of people who do the Catalan tradition of buildings castells ("castles" or human towers). There are many different structures for the castell, with different difficulties. Towns, city neighbourhoods, universities, and others have their own group, which everyone interested can join. They are seen as an icon of Catalan culture, representing the values of teamwork, inclusion, effort, and the resistance of Catalan culture.
They rehearse and then perform in the streets on the day of festa major (Catalan traditional holiday that each town holds on the day of their patron saint) or diades castelleres when groups from other towns also come to build their castells. Each group wears their shirt with a different colour, and fans can recognize all of them, like football fans do. They climb to the sound of a band of gralles (wind instrument very typical of traditional Catalan festive music, very loud to be played on the streets) which play the characteristic castells song, which the castellers use to coordinate the speed.
Photos by David Baell posted by Castellers de Vilafranca.
The dragon of La Geltrú's dance for festa major holiday. Video posted by this dragon's dancers' group on their Instagram.
Festa major is one of the most loved holidays in Catalan culture. Each town celebrates it on the day of their patron saint with traditional Catalan dances that change from area to area and sometimes even from town to town. They are especially celebrated in the Southern half of Catalonia, with fire dances (devils) and fire beasts (dragons and some other legendary creatures) as well as other dances.
Each dance is accompanied by their musician band, which includes different traditional instruments (gralles —a shawm wind instrument—, bagpipes, different kinds of drums, flabiol —a small flipple flute—, etc) but for the fire dances, because of their devilish nature, they're accompanied only by drums.
Dragon dances are documented in Catalonia since the Middle Ages. In some towns, the dragon can be a generic representation, while in other towns it represents a dragon from their local legend said to have happened there.
Like, I very much appreciate people trying to be mindful of their consumption and trying to be sustainable. But I need y'all to understand that it literally does not matter. The top 10% are doing more damage than all of us together could ever prevent.
you know, until we remember what to do with rich bastards.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
this is so late renaissance early mannerism. the controversial male nudity? the lighting and value on the figure of emphasis?? him bathed in light and placed ABOVE while the police are clad in dark and BELOW?? Uh HES HITTING THE CONTRAPPOSTO??
On one hand: this imagery touches on themes of freedom vs oppression and how in shedding the various layers of shame placed upon us by the regime we can transcend to a higher place above the forces that seek to hold us to unjust societal standards.
On the other hand: cheeks out at the Krispy Kreme.
in English that's saying exclude any work with Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini anywhere in the tags or the author's notes. use the pipes ( || ) to add further slop machines as necessary
not sure how useful this will be really but at least you have a little more knowledge now about how powerful AO3 search really can be
researching the history of education in japan and learning that, pre–Meiji Restoration, peasants/commoners formed their own schools to become educated because it was the best way of fighting tax fraud.
That is, when an official told you, a rice farmer, that you owed more taxes than you really did, it was very useful if you were good enough at math to know he was lying (and could prove it) and if you were good enough at writing to write a letter to your government defending your case.
all of which is to say it's crazy that mega-corporations are now pushing education to be "what if you paid us whatever we tell you to for the rest of your life and never do math or write anything ever again"
I'm finding it immensely helpful to read books about AI, because my past grumblings of "it's bad for the environment" really pale in comparison to what I'm learning.
But im not finding it easier to talk about AI with the people in my life who use it. The evils are both enormous and complex. I cannot, on the spot and in casual conversation, recite the colonial and political history that led to entire towns in Chile being devastated by AI data centers. It is unseemly to bring up how many women have had miscarriages because of lack of access to drinking water worsened by data center usage in places like Uruguay. How racist surveillance of the public in South Africa has been used as training data for AI companies. How AI companies would not limit their use of drinking water even during Arizona's most severe drought in history. How this whole paragraph isn't even scratching the surface of what is evil about AI companies.
It's actually so much harder now to articulate my absolute hatred or to know how to approach these conversations.
EDIT: So far this year I've read, in order of quality/relevance:
Empire of AI by Karen Hao
More Everything Forever by Adam Becker
Enshittification by Cory Doctorow
More Than Words by John Warner
planning to read these next:
Data Empire by Roopika Risam; not sure how specifically AI-focused it will be
With the recent rumblings about censorship and work deletions on Wattpad, many users are considering posting to AO3 for the first time. If that describes you, you may have questions.
This post is a collection of resources you can use to start finding the answers to these questions. If you don’t find what you’re looking for at the links below or you have something more specific to ask, please feel welcome to post questions in the reblogs and comments here.
If you’re an AO3 pro answering questions in these notes, be kind. We were all new once, and other fans helped us then. It’s time to pay it forward.
Resources (under the cut)
How does AO3 work? What is and isn’t allowed?
My first recommendation for new users is always to skim the Terms of Service FAQ. It explains what AO3 allows and why in plain, straightforward terms. AO3 does not allow placeholder works, commercial content such as commissions links, or “work search” posts.
How can I change the look of the site?
The appearance of AO3 is very customizable! If you just want a basic dark mode, scroll down to the bottom of any page and click “Reversi” under the Customize menu. For more advanced customizations, I can’t recommend @ao3commentoftheday enough. They have so many gorgeous tutorials for everything from site skins to making the site’s content filters do whatever you want.
Wattpad users may especially appreciate the Floating Comment Box extension, which makes commenting on AO3 work slightly more like Wattpad.
How does AO3 search work?
This handy guide by @backofthebookshelf covers the basics. Here is a cheatsheet with more advanced searching tricks.
I’m ready to post my own works. How do I add [specific thing]?
With a little bit of HTML, you can do some incredibly neat things in an AO3 work. Here’s the website running Doom. Here is a very comprehensive guide to Limited HTML on AO3. It may look intimidating at first, but you can get a lot done by copying and pasting and paying attention to the results. As a fun bonus, check out the rest of the series, which includes step by step instructions for making your fic look like text messages on a phone screen, newspaper articles, sticky notes, and more.
Why is Wattpad doing this now? Have similar things happened before?
Fandom creatives have been outrunning purges and legal threats for a long time. Here is a comprehensive timeline of fandom purges and legal actions taken against fanworks, from 1977 to the present day. Here is another timeline written by @olderthannetfic, with associated commentary from other fans.
Purges on LiveJournal and other sites circa 2007 influenced the founding of AO3. You can read in detail about the circumstances of its founding and the construction of the policies it abides by today here.
If you read this far, I’m proud of you. Migrating to a new site is always hard, and there’s so much grief when archives purge content without warning. Welcome to AO3. We’re glad to have you. 🤝
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
huge coming from the site who is so against black art that 'tumblr users are afraid of rap' has been a meme for the best part of a decade. You know that yall are 4channers with pronouns right?
