A blog where I reblog random stuff I find on the internet. Basically, a mix of art, animal gifs, fandom reblogs, with a healthy dose of memes and snarky comments. 10 years and counting on this hellsite.
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I spent the afternoon arranging our books by size and color (and it’s so satisfying and looks amazing) and my partner came home and stared in shock at the bookcase and then said “i’m a librarian, you can’t do this.”
it has occurred me during this process that apparently not everyone thinks about books by what color they are? like, literally when i’m looking for a book, i picture it in my mind. i have a very…tactile experience with the books i read and idk! i thought everyone did that lol.
my partner was like “how will i find [this book] for instance” and i replied “easy, it’s purple” and he looked at me like i was a witch.
This actually is interesting in terms of information-seeking behavior, which is a thing librarians think about a lot and often actually study (some library jobs require you to publish, and academic librarians, for instance, will often use the students at the college they work at to study how they search for information in order to figure out how to best provide them services).
When you go for an MLS (Master’s of Library Science, which is a thing, and which is usually required for “professional-level” library work [which is also a weird and contentious concept that I won’t go into here]), one of the things you study is the organization of information. This deals with how to determine what a book or other material is “about"—a concept we tongue-in-cheek call “aboutness"—and how to convey that to a potential user of the item and make it easy for them to find. Things like keywords and subject headings, do I put this book about how often wild birds attack aerial drones in with books about birds or with books about technology, if its a fictional novel do I put fantasy in it’s own section or mix it in with all of the other fiction, so on and so on.
OP is organizing books by how they would look for them. OP’s partner is thinking in terms of aboutness. This is a system that works for OP because it’s their personal library: they know basically what books they own and they only own books that are relevant to them, and if they know what the book looks like, that can be a quick way to find it.
In a library that assumes the public (or people who do not own that particular collection of books) are using the collection, that doesn’t work. Books are often re-issued in multiple covers, or re-bound in new covers when they get worn out, and if the user doesn’t know what the book looks like or is expecting a different cover, they’re lost. That’s why non-personal libraries used standardized cataloging systems like the Dewey Decimal System or Library of Congress System to organize a book by what it’s “about”, and then put books about the same or similar topics together, marked with labels and signage so a person unfamiliar with the book or collection can find their way to it.
Basically, OP’s system works for their own personal library, because it’s best suited to how the primary user—OP themselves—looks for books. OP’s librarian partner is coming from a background of thinking in terms of a public-facing collection, where aboutness is the key criteria and communicating it to a user unfamiliar with the collection is the priority.
People get made fun of for being scared of aging but it comes from the very real fear of being discarded by society that’s why i always say the goal is not to never become old or disabled the future comes for us all the goal is better social policy
ok sorry to double reblog BUT I just looked him up and he does these fantastic videos where he breaks down HOW he actually mimics the other artists’ styles. Like for ed Sheeran, he explains how he brings his voice forward in the mouth, while Adam Levine sings in the back of the mouth, stuff like that. It’s SO COOL, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone actually break down how to do this sort of thing, as a skill, instead of just treating it like a neat trick they just happen to be good at.
https://www.tiktok.com/@justinjmooremusic
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The train takes 8 hours. The plane takes 1 hour, plus an hour to/from the airport at each end and the time it takes to get through security. Both are clean and as safe as you could hope any matter of transport to be. Both have Wi-Fi.
the 3rd route with a scamming tutor hits so hard. now that i'm in a licensed professional career, there's def some people in the industry that have made a career out of "teaching" rather than using the license, and charge eye-watering amounts. like it's one thing to be some rando youtuber to spout their 10 step plan to success, but it fucking sucks to see ppl that carry the same license/training as me making pie-in-the-sky promises in conjunction with the crazy prices.
Given my highly (and perhaps overly) educated background it's always fun to see the Genshin writers take their experiences and weave it into the Sumeru Akademiya and its social structure haha.
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*actually looks at the environmental impact and discovers it's a drop in the bucket*
except it's not actually about that, it's bad because it's not real art
*realises my definition of art is so reactionary it excludes duchamp, pollock, and about half of the stuff since the 1800s*
except it's not actually about that it's about how it's STEALING our intellectual property
*realises my understanding of what is and isn't copyright infringement is somehow even more litigious than the actual law, and that adobe is trying to exploit the pro-copyright elements of anti-AI rhetoric to make artstyles copyrightable*
except it's not actually about that it's because it's destroying your brain
*actually reads the study i keep using as proof and realises that not only is it not a very good paper, the authors have explicitly disagreed with the conclusion i keep saying it proves*
except it's not actually about that it's about how it's replacing workers
*remembers that's been happening for the entirety of history and trying to destroy the thing automating your job out of viability has literally never worked*
except it's not actually about that it's about the innate human sovl
*realises my hitler particles are off the charts*
except it's not actually about that it's uhhh... because it's killing the environment
because this blew up, here's a few clarifications:
AI companies are not your friend. their valuation is ludicrously inflated right now and sam altman is scamming investors out of their money (which admittedly is pretty sexy of him). anyone who's trying to convince you you need to "uplift your productivity with AI" is either an idiot or a snake oil salesman
i am not going to force you to like AI. i personally don't use AI because i've rarely ever had a need to. i think it's perfectly fine for you to not like AI art and want some sort of filter to exclude AI stuff from search results or whatever. it wouldn't catch everything, but it'd still remove the bottom 90%, which is where the real problem lies
any belief that boils down to "the masses are all tasteless rubes who don't know what's good for them and need to be controlled (by me and my group) in order to culturally uplift them" is both incredibly pretentious and rather dangerous
i understand that there are two different things people mean when they talk about "human soul" and i think they're both shit. either:
A: you genuinely believe in the existence of an intangible human soul and are telling other people what they should and should not be allowed to do based off of your religious beliefs, in which case i think you should examine what meaningfully separates you from people who want to ban homosexuality because of the bible
or
B: you're using it as a shorthand for "art that i personally like" and declaring that art outside of that category is without merit and should not be allowed to exist, in which case i think you should look at the wikipedia page on degenerate art
If you want a pretty reasonable, actually-supported-by-facts reason to dislike AI art, remember that the neural network technology supporting it inherently trends towards the mean.
For example, with automatic translation, when you translate from a language that's more gender neutral to English, which uses "he" or "she", biases sneak in - he treats the patients, she cooks dinner, stuff like that.
(Similar to how a lot of the image generators had a period where it turns out they were adding "racially ambiguous" to all prompts on the back-end, because results trended white-as-default).
Or, for another point of comparison, the whole argument of "are video games art?" turns out to have the boring answer of "yes, but that doesn't mean art is inherently meaningful".
Image generators tend towards average results, (they'd probably be really good at inoffensive hotel lobby art designed to provoke nothing), so on the whole humans will probably produce more interesting results out of an ability to get weird with it - you don't have to believe in the soul to prefer human art!
...But, by the same token, AI outputs curated by humans have, in personal experience, actually gotten pretty interesting.
Duchamp's Prelude to a Broken Arm (shut up about Fountain, it's not even the only readymade he did) is literally just a stock snow-shovel anyone could buy, hung up in a gallery.
But the nature of a snow-shovel titled the way it is inherently implies a story - someone shoveling snow, slipping, and breaking their arm. The title's implication creates that mental image in the viewer, and suddenly the piece is having a conversation with the viewer even though literally anyone could have made it.
Properly curated and guided, AI output can become intriguing. It's just... very easy to use it in a lazy way leading to boring, biased output.
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These are rules I generally adhere to in my own writing, they aren't gospel or meant to be the end all be all of writing. Also it should be noted that like all rules, these too are made to be broken when and where it serves the text. This is not about grammar or Correct Use of King's English™, this is just a list of personal style choices.
Anyway.
1. Indicate who's speaking as quickly as possible.
See difference between:
"Wait, does anyone have an extra eraser? I could swear I brought one, but I can't find it."
"You can use mine. Though if you steal it, I will kill you."
"Nice. I'm changing my brother's name to Gerry, is that okay?"
"You had two weeks to come up with your backstory."
And:
"Wait, does anyone have an extra eraser?" Melanie asks. "I could swear I brought one, but I can't find it."
"You can use mine," Jan says. "Though if you steal it, I will kill you."
"Nice," Melanie says. "I'm changing my brother's name to Gerry, is that okay?"
Annie says, "You had two weeks to come up with your backstory."
But this looks like talking heads in a blank void talking to each other, so, give the characters bodies and physicality, which brings us to rule 2.
2. no talking heads in void.
Though people do just sit around talking without doing anything else, it's not that interesting to read and also, gotta remember that readers can't see what you see in your head while writing. You gotta actually give them something to latch a mental image onto, so. Characters should move and emote.
"Wait, does anyone have an extra eraser?" Melanie asks, rummaging through her bag. "I could swear I brought one, but I can't find it."
"You can use mine," Jan says, nudging his own eraser over. It's in the shape of an old fashioned motorcycle. "Though if you steal it, I will kill you."
"Nice," Melanie says and snatches it up to do quick edits on her character sheet. "I'm changing my brother's name to Gerry, is that okay?"
Annie gives her a flat look. "You had two weeks to come up with your backstory."
Now you can sorta tell what they're talking about. Just don't go overboard - dialogue has a momentum and a rhythm, and too much description can overwhelm it.
3. Character Action and Character Dialogue go on the same paragraph.
See difference between this:
Melanie rummaged through her backpack.
"Wait, does anyone have an extra eraser? I could swear I brought one, but I can't find it."
"You can use mine."
Jackson nudged his own eraser over. It was the shape of a motorcycle.
"Though if you steal it, I will kill you."
"Nice."
Melanie snatches it up to do quick edits on her character sheet.
"I'm changing my brother's name to Gerry, is that okay?"
Annie gives her a flat look.
"You had two weeks to come up with your backstory."
And this:
Melanie rummaged through her backpack. "Wait, does anyone have an extra eraser? I could swear I brought one, but I can't find it."
"You can use mine." Jackson nudged his own eraser over. It was the shape of a motorcycle. "Though if you steal it, I will kill you."
"Nice." Melanie snatches it up to do quick edits on her character sheet. "I'm changing my brother's name to Gerry, is that okay?"
Annie gives her a flat look. "You had two weeks to come up with your backstory."
Not only does it make the text way more cohesive and snappy but, once again, it's much more clear who is saying what - but even then, I prefer to use dialogue indicators. Text like this to me looks like maybe there's a voiceover going on or something.
4. No mixing and matching characters. One character per paragraph.
This is one of my most broken rules, but in general it's character per paragraph.
So, none of this:
Melanie rummaged through her backpack while Annie set up the DM screen. "Wait, does anyone have an extra eraser? I could swear I brought one, but I can't find it."
"You can use mine." Jackson nudged his eraser over and Melanie snatched it up "Though if you steal it, I will kill you." Melanie begun making quick edits.
"Nice. I'm changing my brother's name to Gerry, is that okay?" Beside her, Annie gave her a flat look.
"You had two weeks to come up with your backstory."
Mixing and matching who's doing what like this makes it hard to see who's saying what, it makes the dialogue messy. However, this is fine.
While Annie set up the DM screen, Melanie rummaged through her backpack "Wait, does anyone have an extra eraser?" she asked. "I could swear I brought one, but I can't find it."
"You can use mine." Jackson nudged his eraser over and Melanie snatched it up. "Though if you steal it, I will kill you," he added.
"Nice. I'm changing my brother's name to Gerry, is that okay?" Melanie ask, grinning at the look Annie gave her.
"You had two weeks to come up with your backstory," Annie says flatly.
Note that in mixing and matching like this, it's all the more important to point out who is saying what. In general though, I tend to minimise this sort of stuff.
5 is kinda rule 1 rehashed, but, again, indicate who is speaking upfront. Especially when there's a larger piece of dialogue.
Sometimes, people aren't actually reading - sometimes for various reasons they're using text to speech, or maybe someone does a podfic or something. Even in visual reading, when there's a big block of dialogue without indicators it can be hard to follow.
So instead of:
"If Melanie can change her background, can I add a cool uncle to mine? I want a cool uncle - like, a gunslinger or something. Or a wizard - oo, a wizard uncle! He can be creepy and vague and give me problematic spells!" Jackson says eagerly.
I'd rather do:
Jackson puts his hand up. "If Melanie can change her background, can I add a cool uncle to mine?" he asks eagerly. "I want to give Kaiser a cool uncle - like, a gunslinger or something. Or a wizard - oh, a wizard uncle! He can be creepy and vague and give me problematic spells!"
Especially so when there's multiple characters talking and maybe one character hasn't been talking as much as the others - if they jump back into the discussion, it should be noted.
6. Limit your bits.
But as said before, every rule is made to be broken, and I break my own rules all the time. When I do it, though, it's generally for the bit, to make the text more interesting. Stuff like bits of dialogue without any indicators who is saying what to show that there's a faceless crowd speaking all at once, or two characters going back and forth, stuff like that.
"Jackson's dude has Main Character Energy," Melanie says solemnly.
"Kaiser is the anime protagonist," Jan agrees. "We're just NPCs in his world."
"The cheerleaders of his adventurers."
"Founding members of his harem."
They nod in perfect understanding and agreement.
For a couple of lines, exchanges like this can be fun - if the back and forth goes on for 12 lines, though, it will get tiresome.
There are other bits I do, and again, I break my own dialogue writing rules a lot for stylistic reasons to make the text more interesting or to give it better rhythm, or whatever. Sometimes, there's no dialogue at all, sometimes there's no indicators. There's no actual rules in writing, even grammar is all made up. These are more guidelines than anything.
But I hope the effort makes the dialogue more readable.
I promise you can use "said" and "asked" so much more in your writing than your realise. People won't think your writing is bad. I swear. The words are basically invisible. You can use them. It's okay.
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