No angst in this house

POV you’re interrupting mbart media time. rude, honestly :/

stills:

After three weeks of back-and-forth and a bit of confusion at the local print shop, I'm pleased to announce that June postcards for Postcard of the Month Club over on Patreon have gone out!

Literacy crisis WHO? This was said in the most vocal fried Californian accent ever. I hope The Girls enjoy some Russian lit this summer.

Living in Australia, I'm kinda always at the mercy of my posts lining up with crappy timezones, so when I came back to Tumblr and realised there was a fully in-built post scheduling system, I was very excited...only to happily realise that even with that in mind, Tumblr has a much more 'time-blind' and relaxing approach to posts. It lifts my spirits whenever I see that somebody's gone through my catalogue or liked a post that had been put out days or even weeks ago, and it appears that that's a far more prevalent phenomenon on this site compared to anywhere else. A guy could get used to this more easygoing posting experience, although of course that's all thanks to folks like you! Thank you all. BONUS:

No transphobes allowed, only transborbs.

Check out my stuff!

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It's not hate – we're scared and frustrated. Not just for ourselves, because AI is a genuine threat to our livelihoods, but also for the next generation of writers, like you. It's going to be a lot harder to get discovered or published with AI-generated content flooding the Internet and the book market.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Meta trained Llama 3 on a massive body of pirated work. You can read more about it here. Meta employees knew this was morally wrong, but they did it anyway, because (1) they didn't want to pay anyone for the use of copyrighted work, and (2) they knew they could get away with it, and they have. They took our stories, born of real human experiences, and used them to feed something that's designed to be able to replace us. There are other reasons writers may be anti-AI, like the impact on the environment, but hopefully that gives you some context for why writers, specifically, are reacting to this so strongly.

You've said you wouldn't use ChatGPT to write your novel, which is great to hear. If you did, I would tell you that you weren't, in my opinion, a writer – just as I would never claim to be an artist if I used ChatGPT to create images, or a musician if I used it to generate a song. But I would also gently question why you feel like you need it to give you morale boosters or tell you if something makes sense. ChatGPT is not a human reader; unless you specifically instruct it not to flatter you, it will say what you want to hear. It isn't reacting to you, or to your story, with a human gut or a human heart. To me, any praise or encouragement it offers is empty. There's nobody and nothing behind it.

As for asking it to help you work out if something makes sense: I really do understand the temptation. I'm chronically ill, so I write at a slower pace than a lot of my colleagues, and it might help me churn out books faster if I asked ChatGPT to help me unpick a knot in the narrative, or fix a plot hole. But I don't want to surrender the ability to think and problem-solve for myself, and I would caution you against doing that – not just for the sake of your writing, but for everyday life. In this era of disinformation and propaganda, our ability to think, interrogate and analyse the world around us is more important than ever.

“Nope,” the blacksmith shakes his head. “Nothing but battle mages around here, and I’m the only artificer in forty miles.”

The traveller tugs on her grimy hair in frustration. “You don’t sell potions or amulets or sigils?”

“Wouldn’t know how to make ‘em,” he shrugs, looking at her with some concern. She looks in desperate need of a meal and a good night’s sleep.

“This place is spoken of as a bastion of magic! A font of innovation and power!”

“Well, I don’t like to toot my own horn, but I’ve got more magic in here than one person could possibly need. Provided you need it forged into a blade,” he replies.

It’s getting rather hard not to take her dismissal personally. He would never have expected someone like her not to value the crafting of magical weaponry; he has never seen anyone look more like a sellsword.

“You have nothing else?” she presses and this time there is desperation at the edge of her voice.

“Sorry…”

All the light seems to leave her eyes. Her head drops and the blacksmith can just make out a frantic stream of muttered words.

“Two months on the road,” she breathes, “dragging him from pillar to post as he wastes away, and there’s not a drop of healing magic in this damned place—”

“Heyday! I never said that!” he protests, urgently stepping forward. “You came here with someone in need of healing?”

Her eyes dart instantly up to his. “Yes. My— My charge. He is affected by some curse or illness… Something my skill could not protect him from.”

“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” the blacksmith grins. He looks at her, sizing up the width of her shoulders. “Know how to handle a broadsword?”

“Of course I do.”

He takes one from its case, the flawless blade almost black, the glint of the steel almost warm as he offers it to her.