Faraway451

“He’s too old/attached to be trained”= He is going to have a Bad Time with the current structure of the order and needs more/better support.

“You don’t get the title of master”= you were knighted too young and this war has caused all the padawans of the order to mature too quickly. You haven’t done the things that would earn you the title of master. We are in precarious political standing, so you get to sit with us, but you need more time to grow.

“Don’t come to arrest Palpatine”= turning in a friend and mentor was not easy for you. Watching him be arrested is going to hurt you even more.

But of course, Anakin’s rejection sensitivity can only see all of this as malice and hate.

- Option 1: Aramel the Handsome, wants to be an actor

- Option 2: Roberto the Clever, wants to be a writer

- Option 3: Malthus the Saint, wants to be a priest

And the Queen decides to aggressively pursue....

Dad Silco! I've had this sketched out for ages, finally finished it!

EXTRA:

And here comes another Fruits Basket meme for (hopefully) your pleasure. This is my own template, blank at the end if you wanna use

Where is your fav located ? Do you have a soft spot for the hot mess(es) or do you prefer the unusually stable ones ?

The characters & ships playlist are going well too; get ready for a post about it soon 8)

Good night to you all in the meantime !

but then you watch it again and close your eyes whenever she appears and just listen to her voice, you can hear the words and emotions and sadness of an average, tired woman who has accepted that no matter what she does, she’ll always just be seen for how she looks. That the way she has been animated and the way she is seen and interpreted by the world is beyond her control, and there’s not a thing she can do about it.

And suddenly the men aren’t very sympathetic at all, because you realize that while they LOOK, they haven’t at all been LISTENING.

Some people might be fuming and frothing at the mouth already, but the verdict is out.

What I don’t see is why people find it so difficult to accept this fact. After all, they’re quick to admit that TikTok makes you stupid—a claim backed by studies, by the way.

Part of it is that “stupid” can be rather a strong word for some people. It feels permanent and stigmatizing. If I were to be a bit nicer with my words, I’d say ChatGPT harms your cognitive fitness. It dulls your ability to read, analyze (LLMs are not reasoning machines), and form coherent thoughts. I also find the “instant gratification” element of it rather concerning, but this might be a topic for another day. The point is that just as never working out reduces your physical fitness, not exercising your brain and generating answers and content hurts your cognitive fitness. It really shouldn’t be difficult to see why. If I skip leg days, my quad muscles would eventually grow weaker and smaller.

Here is where most people say, “Oh, I’m not against AI! In fact, AI can be awesome if you use it the right way blah blah blah!”

You know what? I’m not going to say it. Someone has to say that what they call AI—which I think is a greatest misnomer—right now kinda sucks for the planet and every living thing on it. The only instance where I think ChatGPT can be sort of helpful is when someone is trying to code. Even this is despised by many mid-level and senior developers who have to deal with bullcrap put out by ChatGPT that their juniors keep turning in. Another possible application of this crap machine is when you have to write a groveling email to someone you don’t care about.

The problem is that none of these cute perks justify products that guzzle energy like some biblical monster. It’s not worth burning up the planet that’s already past boiling point just so some people can code easily—debatable—or write bunch of insincere emails or whatever “smart application” of ChatGPT that people are arguing for.

ChatGPT harms the planet. It also makes you stupid.

There is a culture that tries to scaremonger everyone, especially younger people, to accept and use AI products like ChatGPT. Despite knowing 99 harms it does, people cling onto the hope that there is one upside. I think a significant number of people know consciously or unconsciously, that stuff like ChatGPT is not all that good. But the wider social culture pressures them to “stay open” to “new technological innovations.” Not doing so makes you “fall behind.”

By the way, I always found statements like “blah-blah is here to stay” ridiculous. Facial recognition exists but that doesn’t mean we should agree to governments making it mandatory for all citizens. Likewise, we don’t have to accept ChatGPT as it is now.

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Since Tanith Lee deserves to be known for much more than having been plagiarized, I thought I'd share some recommendations. She had a HUGE body of work, and I've seen it suggested that the reason she never became a household name in fantasy and science fiction is that she wrote so many things that were different from each other, rather than staying in one easily labeled niche. I've only begun to make a dent in her catalogue, but here's the stuff I liked the best.

Note: A lot of her stuff can be disturbing, and I can't remember everything well enough to give perfect trigger warnings.

Red as Blood and Redder Than Blood: These fairy tale collections are being talked about now for the title story, but my favorite is The Golden Ladder, an incredibly creepy and hot version of Rapunzel, or perhaps When the Clock Strikes, a horrifying beautiful take on Cinderella.

The Weird Tales of Tanith Lee: As you can see, I love her short stories. These are all the ones published in Weird Tales, which includes some of the above fairy tales (including When the Clock Strikes) but also Arthurian, steampunk and science fiction stories. It's a great sampler of all the things she could do.

Blood 20: One more short story collection! This one is (most of) her vampire stories, so I know you goths will like it! There are things erotic, fantastical and grotesque in here, but to me the most haunting is the tragically mundane The Vampire Lover.

The Secret Books of Paradys: In this series, an alternate history of Paris, bad things happen. Supernatural things, sexual things, horrifying things. And sometimes good things happen, such as a man saved by a Jewish sage an his beautiful daughter who then actually converts to Judaism.

The Secret Books of Venus: I've only read the first entry in this similar series about an alternate world version of Venice, but once again it leaves the reader feeling totally transported to this sometimes sinister, sometimes lovely place where romance and cruelty live next door to each other.

Vivia: This tragic medieval plague-influenced vampire story is maybe the darkest thing of hers I've read, but dear god can she paint a picture with words. Along with The Birthgrave (which I didn't like as much), George RR Martin definitely pulled a lot of Danaerys's story from the title character here.

Islands in the Sky: And now for something completely different- a children's book. I remember finding this at the library as a kid and wanting to cry when it was over, because it gave me an equal sense of wonder and happiness as The Lion the Witch and the Wardobe, which I hadn't known was possible and worried would never happen again.

I had to dig to find out that the main yarn was singles, so there was no plying step. The yarn weight, however, works out to around 40+ wpi (.5 to .8mm) which is... quite thin.

I was gonna say that 11 hours seems high to spin 50g on a spindle, but then I don't typically spin lace so?

transition

bdsm

ADHD medication

go outside for an hour and observe birds