Thoughts go here

Really sad news, everyone.

Rupert Giles, you phenomenal character. Anthony Head, you incredible actor, who brought such subtlety to this role. At times dark, at times comedic, always hot.

we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)

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What it did was make it impersonal, inaccurate, and unacademic. The voices and stories of the people weren't real so they didn't relate directly to the materials on exhibit, nor were they fictionally derived from a specifically curated amalgam and the experiences ended up a mismatch of class and racial norms for the time so a human copy editor had to fix it for a sum that far exceeded the original budget.

It cost them a lot of money but it also cost them audience attention and the "yes and" factor because stewards working the exhibit couldn't easily relate the work back to the artefacts they displayed (as the LLM had no ability to do this) and the public couldn't on their own initiative look up more about a person.

If people are sad about The Wizard Facism game coming from someone you used to look up to and admire, may I suggest an author whose books are filled with nuanced characters and strong, dynamic women?

I love Tammy for being so understanding and supportive, and y'all should read her stuff!!

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

I was driving through Vermont with a friend, and we pulled over at a tiny shop offering Maple Items. We were on the state highway, not the interstate, so "pulling over" meant "squeezing my tiny car into a parking bay the size of a broad highway shoulder."

As we got out of the car, an older woman emerged from behind the building where she had been pruning her roses. She introduced herself as Tammy.

Her shop offered the promised variety of Maple, but also a number of small antiques and a plethora of dog figurines, plaques, and clearly-hand-stitched garden flags.

A huge purple ribbon hung on the wall behind the register, along with many pictures of small dogs. This was no county fair ribbon. It was the size of my torso. The material had the soft sheen of actual silk.

As I placed my purchases on the counter, I asked, "Do you... Breed dogs?"

Yes. She does. She has bred Yorkies for the last 40 years. Her mother bred Yorkies before her. The purple ribbon was from her national championship winning Yorkie.

You may be expecting that the infodump was going to be about Yorkies.

It was not.

It was about 40 years of drama in the Yorkie breeding community. Where – you must understand – the judging at shows is often about who you're in with, not about the dogs. This is especially true when Tammy's opponents win anything.

And Tammy's mother! Well. Phyllis has been on the Yorkie scene since Yorkies were invented. Because of this, many women of equally venerable age hold deep grudges against Phyllis. The sort of grudges that result in episodes of Midsommar Murders.

This led to deep injustices against Phyllis on the part of judges and prevented her dogs from winning so often she retired from the scene. Judging is all about who you're friends with, after all.

After 20 years in hiding, Phyllis – the One True Queen of Yorkie Breeding – hatched a plot. She may have been out of the show circuit, but she was still breeding dogs. She entered an absolutely perfect bitch in the national competition, but sent her with a handler rather than go in person.

None of the usurpers knew who this dog belonged to, and in dog-breeding circles this Does Not Happen. This could have resulted in further injustices, but Phyllis was crafty. She knew this tournament was being judged by a man from the UK, who knew naught of the drama in the US Yorkie Empire.

With these advantages – and being the best dog there – Phyllis's bitch won the highest honor at the show.

Incensed by this insult to their ill-gotten supremacy, the other owners descended on the handler after the show, demanding to know for whom he was working.

"Phyllis," said he.

The name of the overthrown queen evoked horror in the usurpers.

"PHYLLIS!? She's still ALIVE!???"

Yes, Phyllis yet lived, and this bitch – the dog, not the woman – went on to mother Tammy's current dogs. One of whom, Lucy-Fur, is the reincarnation of Tammy's sister (also Lucy). This is certain for two reasons.

Firstly, Sister Lucy absolutely went straight to Hell upon her death, and Lucy-Fur the dog is positively as evil as Sister Lucy was.

Option one: The murder victim was innocent while the killer was an abusive bastard, see Speckled Band. Conclusion, arrest and have the killer charged (Or in the case of Speckled Band, indirectly murder him yourself then shrug and go home)

they were POPULAR

the Victorians LIKED reading about women who won out over shitty men in their lives, even when that plotline reaffirmed a woman’s power and agency or put an active sexist in his place (ie Irene Adler besting Holmes)

how it ended: