Your daily dose of random

you know

this

- I'll hear it no matter where my phone was buried

- it's not going to be confused for anyone else's phone

- it's just silly enough to blunt some of the anxiety around phone calls

Me: you will not earn what you desire by banging the cabinet door.

My cat: This is a test of wills, is it not? We shall see if your ability to put up with my incessant banging outlasts my eternal lust for snackie treats. Years of conditioning have hardened me for this purpose. bang bang bang

Me: ksst!

My cat, throwing herself to the ground like she's been shot: Oh! Oh I have been assailed in my own home! Have mercy, have pity! Surely in the cruel darkness of your heart there is some mote of goodness that might stay your hand! Do not strike me, I pray you!

Me: ok

In writing groups I'm in it's grammar and spell check is for newbies and those wanting a crutch or a cheat code.

I'm going to be frank with you, anon. Those writing groups sound toxic as fuck and I'd recommend finding a better place to spend your time.

Grammar check and spell check are embedded in most word processing software and have been since the 1990s. People don't have to use them if they don't want to, of course, but there's nothing wrong with using them.

English spelling is famously a bastardization of French multiplied by German divided by Latin with fifty other languages thrown in for fun. And don't even get me started on the Great Vowel Shift.

All that to say, being bad at spelling is not a moral failing nor is it a sign of weak character. It's a fact of life for an overwhelming majority of people writing in English.

To be clear, I am very anti-GENERATIVE AI in most capacities. AI should not be doing things that a real person SHOULD be doing. You should be writing your own emails. You should be drawing your own pictures. You should be composing your own music. You should be doing your own research, not trusting a synopsis.

Things like spell check, where it flags something as 'hey- your 'i' need to be before your 'e' here- or if they can some come up with an algorithm for 'there, their, they're', 'your, you're', and 'too, to, two' it would be a blessing (homophones used incorrectly are a pet peeve of mine, even though I am still occasionally guilty of misuse).

Suggesting that something might be a run-on sentence or should have a comma here? That's a check on work already done. Not a creation of something 'new'.

As someone who is dyslexic and also suffers from dyscalculia, spell check and grammar check are blessed tools. But I use them to check work I have already done. Not to create the work for me.

On the subject of AI, I have a confession to make: I use it. Not to write for me, but to help me check for inconsistencies, to brainstorm ideas, to write outlines, to give me a couple of lines when I've been stuck for hours, to be my beta reader, if you will. Generative AI is bad? Yes, but it also a useful tool if one isn't lazy. I don't ask: write me a story. I go with my story and ask: help me with continuity. Look, this paragraph is clunky, how do I make it better? The demonization of generative AI is fair, but to be honest, I also understand people who use it. Maybe they're afraid of writing themselves, maybe they're insecure and don't trust their prose. Maybe they have brilliannt ideas but they need help to make them become fics.

To me, this is very much connected to my last ask where I was talking about how we don't have enough mentors in fandom to support the influx of people entering it.

All of the things that you're asking AI to do used to be done by a beta reader (or more than one!). A fandom friend (or even a random stranger who volunteered) would read through your work and help you with those issues.

Betas are amazing. They can help with grammar and spelling. They can regionalize language. They can provide sensitivity reading if they're from a marginalized community that you're writing about and aren't a member of. They can track canon, help with research, even just be a sounding board to discuss ideas with.

And sometimes, they're just a cheer reader - someone reading your story and telling you how awesome it is because they love it just as much as you do.

I understand turning to AI if you 1) don't know beta readers exist or 2) don't know how to obtain one. The need for that kind of support doesn't go away just because you can't access it.

But for anyone out there who needs this kind of help and wants to avoid Gen AI, you can write a post on your blog, add it to an author's note, check out resources like @needabeta or - if the time of year is right and you have the funds - place a bid on beta reading services during @fandomtrumpshate

Beta readers are often involved in fandom events like big bangs and exchanges, and if anyone is looking to host such an event, it's a great way to get people involved who aren't writers or artists but would love to help out.

Stop offering it as an option every time I do something.

Stop implementing it without an opt out option.

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.

burning ice

PROPAGANDA:

[Prowl]

"I want to study the child he has for new forms of mental illness. Also he has huge tits."

"This man. He needs a baby. He'd be such a bad parent, but I need it to happen."

"EarthSpark Prowl objects to the Autobots relying on human children as soldiers.

IDW Prowl is essentially handed a newly created bot and makes the extremely responsible decision to hand him off to someone else to train instead of trying to "raise" him himself. I have seen people call him a bad parent for this, and no. Bad parenting is when you know you would be a terrible parent, or don't recognize that you would be a terrible parent, and then you give your kid a horrible life because you can't just accept your own issues would mess them up. Prowl giving Springer, a "child" he did not want and did not have the capacity to care for, to someone else was the best parenting decision he could have made.

G1 Prowl is one of the sweetest bots you'll ever meet. Always ready to help out. Protective. Cares about people a lot.

This bot would be an amazing parent. Legitimately better credentials than most of the cast who interacts with kids, even (especially) if that credential is sometimes, "I should not be a parent, so I'm giving him to someone else"."

Prowl propaganda from last season

[Eggman]

"he has a lot of robo-kids and a lot of ppl prefer him mpregged, then Stone."

"He didn't win last year and I need him pregnant. I think he should win so he can carry his and Stone's baby, because obviously the only person smart enough to carry his kids is himself."

"He’s Eggman, it’s in the name."