it's a hard swath to mow

I'm just like... what is anyone who is translating what I'm thinking into their own language going to think when a translation app decides that it knows my intended tone? When online communication is already so complicated and nuanced? I'm a non-native so I'm spending ages agonizing over 117 characters, but when I'm chatting in English I'm not being so deliberate. How likely is it that tools that 'naturalize' are going to make choices that don't reflect reality and lead to insulting misunderstandings? I spoke with an English learner just yesterday who thought they were being bullied (they were not, the commenter in question was just excitedly infodumping about sociology) because something was lost in translation, and I wonder if it's because of tools making choices like this. I'm just a luddite I don't trust stuff like this. stinks of ai asking me if it can rerwrite my email in a more quirky style.

I AM SO SICK OF DEFAULT AI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We can rightly criticise LLMs for a WHOLE LOT of things, I want nothing to do with it, but classic Google Translate is just a shittier (though perhaps more predictable) version of the same thing.

When the whole crew is getting emotional to Joanna Newsom

im going to fucking die

Sufjan has produced a new album for John Legend, "My Favorite Dream". It is an album of sing-alongs & lullabies for kids and families.  The first song, L-O-V-E, is out now. On working with Sufjan, John said; "As I was writing the songs & envisioning what they could sound like fully arranged, I thought, "I wonder if Sufjan Stevens would make a children's album with me!" I've loved Sufjan's music for nearly 20 years. He's such a visionary artist, and I knew he would create the dreamy, whimsical soundscapes I wanted. So I reached out. And he said YES. I was so happy because he was my first and only choice. I'm proud to say the entire album is produced by Sufjan Stevens. I'm grateful for his genius. He blessed the album with music beyond my expectations & imagination." 

Say in the tags what you voted for and if you live in or outside of the US

I’m strangely confident in my ability to locate a cow in 2 hours or less. I’ve never tried but I could.

I grow like a cancer. I read "the end" here as the breakdown of the relationship, and his "self-defense" as the mechanism one learns through a lifetime of hurt and abuse, as a person with an unquenchable thirst and "a heart that offends with its lonely and greedy demands". We all want to grow, to move beyond the trauma of our lives, to learn to love and be loved in a way that for once does justice to these words, and to accept the fact that no amount of anything we can grasp is going to make all that we've been through right. And here is Sufjan singing that yes, he has grown all right, but he grows like a cancer — aimlessly, formlessly, and ultimately fatally. For all our efforts, for a lifetime of reaching out for transcendence in the most absolute dark, we've got nowhere, or worse. Shit. As powerful as that line is (it is one of my favourites), it is good to be back here and read this post. It makes me think of a quote from a Terry Eagleton article that is forever imprinted on my mind: "The Christian faith holds that those who are able to look on the crucifixion and live, to accept that the traumatic truth of human history is a tortured body, might just have a chance of new life – but only by virtue of an unimaginable transformation in our currently dire condition. This is known as the resurrection." When it is all said and done, we must still be kind, be strong, be patient, be forgiving, be vigorous, be wise, and be ourselves. That our transformation is unimaginable is not the point. We need to exist as if it were actual. How fitting, too, is There's a World as a closer. The raw stuff of life doesn't always make narrative sense, and it can be unrelenting. Sometimes struggle is just struggle, and there's no tying up all the loose ends up in a bow. As a conclusion, it gives all the answers and absolutely none.