my geek, let me show you it

Like I said, the museum was a pretty snotty institution. It’s got a LOT of objects it’s way famous for possessing, but nobody knew about the absolutely massive collection of Moche erotic pottery it had because the curators were totally embarrassed by this stuff.

Some examples:

Pretty hot shit, right? They never, ever put any of this stuff on public view or published it in any catalogues but - we legit had like several hundred pieces of Moche ceramics in the “dirty pots” category. Anyway, I was left alone to just do my job with regard to the database for several years, ok? And I figured, well, these’re accessioned objects in the museum’s collection - better get down to bidness. 

I catalogued every goddamn bestiality, necrophiliac, cocksucking, buttfucking, detached penis, and giant vulva drinking cup in that collection. I’d be like, 

A drinking vessel in form of a standing man wearing a tunic and cap. He holds an oversized erection in his hands and stares into the distance (note I did not say “like he’s hella-constipated”). The vessel has a hole at both the tip of the penis as well as around the rim of the figure’s head, thus forcing the drinker to drink only from the penis or risk spilling wine all over themselves from the top of the vessel. Red and orange slip covers the surface of the piece.

Pretty straightforward, right? Apparently the deep seated fear of these objects that the curators exhibited was meant to spread to me as well, but - no one ever gave me that memo, because I guess Midwesterners reproduce asexually. When the curators understood that I had catalogued all of these objects in addition to the other, non-sexy pieces in the collection, they were apparently livid, but knew they had no legs to stand on in terms of getting pissed at me for it. 

I visited the museum’s online public access database a few years back and - every single description I wrote of these pieces has been totally neutered to say something like Male figural vase. 

ETA: um... so not everybody got the memo about eradicating the sexy sexy records.

I can't get the image out of my head of when Arthur sees it from the outside for the first time and is like bro why do you live in an aquarium the size of a double wide? The house I grew up in was bigger than this. You have more money than fucking God and you are literally in a studio apartment.

I mean obviously the answer is that he doesn't. I mean not really. It is all just a carefully curated tomb. and like Tony Stark with his workshop Bruce probably lives in the cave and only occasionally sleeps and makes coffee in his actual home. although whoever he had in his bed when he woke up after the nightmare he was comfortable enough having her there while he had a bunch of prescription meds on the bedside table so either it's somebody he knows and really really trusts or somebody whose phone is still in the glove box of his car so she can post no selfies to Instagram before he has a very nice Uber driver take her back to wherever she came from.

I mean that is right after the cage fight with KGBeast so it's entirely possible that she's not really going to bat an eye at his scars or his borderline opioid addiction, if they met at the venue...

Also I really want to find photos of Alfred's airstream because right up until I found that photo, I genuinely assumed that the man was living in either groundskeepers house or the carriage House on the property. I mean I'm sure his commute to work is still about 12 minutes maximum. but the thought of him living in an airstream is kind of hilarious.

Also the flip book with text by David Goyer explaining that Bruce and Alfred built the cave themselves and like oh really. they laid every giant slab of brutalist concrete and they installed every gigantic 10 ft high piece of tempered glass that makes up the walls of three storeys of batcave?

Just the mental image of Bruce and Alfred going through the sharper image catalog to find the exact right office chairs but then having them delivered and putting them together like in the garage and arguing because they don't have the correct Alan key is endearing.

ETA: to comparing it to the floor plan of Philip Johnson's glass house which is 1700 ft², with 18 ft wall panels of glass, I think it might be much, much closer to the Farnsworth house?

The only problem being while there is a great shot of the kitchen side of the cube in the middle (the center of which is the bathroom) we never actually see the entrance to the bathroom. It looks as if the galley kitchen basically as cabinets to cover everything so I presume the doors to both the bathroom and the small walk-in closet are out of frame next to the bed on Bruce's side of the bed. I also need to go back and look but I think the television must be above the fireplace, hidden behind the same kind of cabinet doors that hide the kitchen counter and appliances. The only scene I can remember with the television I think actually takes place in the Wayne Boardroom.

EMETA: okay so I was wrong. there's a very narrow corridor where the galley kitchen is and on the other side is the widescreen televisions and the cupboards and drawers that one presumes hold all of Bruce's worldly possessions. Also I was reading that Philip Johnson conceived of it as a glass cage and so that kind of makes sense because the Bruce Wayne persona is more of a cage whereas the bunker underneath the three stories of batcave is what's real and that's where he keeps all of his actual stuff. The lack of books and bookcases however continues to make me twitch.

EMEMETA: I wonder if the space is heated by running the smoke from the fireplace under the floor like a petchka. I can see that they installed blinds at the very least on the bedroom side in some of the photos I've been able to find. and I bet it could have been modified to be actually really incredibly efficient in terms of heating and cooling. because instead of just having the little round brick fireplace there's a 12 ft wall box basically in the middle with a fireplace sharing a wall with the walk-in shower. but the walls don't go all the way to the ceiling and the only lighting is that square over the bathroom. Everything else is lit with floor and desk lamps. I'm so used to ceiling lights that seeing the white expanse of plaster completely unbroken reflecting the sunlight onto the red and black 3 ft by 3-ft tiles genuinely confused me.

Snyder's idea was that he moved into it because it was his mother's favourite place and because the house was simply too much house for just the two of them (and it was Alfred's idea to move out of the house and into the summer house). In this iteration Alfred was never a butler, he was hired as head of security and he was Bruce's bodyguard as a child before becoming his adoptive father. I remain incredibly incredibly salty about the fact that we never actually see the airstream where Alfred has lived for the past 25 odd years when the story takes place. and it does bring up the question of well where the hell did Dick live??)

Also I choose to believe that the batcave actually started life as an underground bunker sort of like Philip Johnson's painting gallery, combined with a bomb shelter. and the precast concrete and glass bat cave is really where both of them actually live. The lake house and the airstream are just where they sleep and occasionally one presumes shower.

I also find it deeply surreal that we never see the exterior of the hangar where the troop carrier is actually being worked on and where Bruce has set up the whole Justice League search when we first see Diana viewing the computer files. I don't think he took her to the cave until after everybody is coming back from Star Labs to go use the bat computer to get the location of the mother box after Silas died. So it makes me wonder if the hanger is also on the property somewhere, disguised.

I really wish we could have seen the scene where Bruce was like 'Congratulations! You're going to Kansas to dig up Superman.' and then Barry just being completely confused until presumably on the drive Diana explains who Clark was, and how the three of them do not actually apparently have secret identities.

Although this is the universe where Lois first meets Clark because she tracked Clark down and knew he was Superman, and he only gets the job at the planet when he follows her back to Metropolis. So whatever Lois Lane could find out in a week or a month probably only took Lex Luthor a day. What's more interesting to me is that he clearly also knew about Bruce, and something tells me that info was a lot harder to get a hold of.

Also while Bruce's house is like super classy built in 1950 whatever, Lex's house is ridiculous. It looks like an experiment rather than a building that someone would live in. It took me two viewings of the movie to clock that that was actually Lex's house and not a space rented for the Friends Of The Library gala.

I can't get the image out of my head of when Arthur sees it from the outside for the first time and is like bro why do you live in an aquarium the size of a double wide? The house I grew up in was bigger than this. You have more money than fucking God and you are literally in a studio apartment.

I mean obviously the answer is that he doesn't. I mean not really. It is all just a carefully curated tomb. and like Tony Stark with his workshop Bruce probably lives in the cave and only occasionally sleeps and makes coffee in his actual home. although whoever he had in his bed when he woke up after the nightmare he was comfortable enough having her there while he had a bunch of prescription meds on the bedside table so either it's somebody he knows and really really trusts or somebody whose phone is still in the glove box of his car so she can post no selfies to Instagram before he has a very nice Uber driver take her back to wherever she came from.

I mean that is right after the cage fight with KGBeast so it's entirely possible that she's not really going to bat an eye at his scars or his borderline opioid addiction, if they met at the venue...

Also I really want to find photos of Alfred's airstream because right up until I found that photo, I genuinely assumed that the man was living in either groundskeepers house or the carriage House on the property. I mean I'm sure his commute to work is still about 12 minutes maximum. but the thought of him living in an airstream is kind of hilarious.

Also the flip book with text by David Goyer explaining that Bruce and Alfred built the cave themselves and like oh really. they laid every giant slab of brutalist concrete and they installed every gigantic 10 ft high piece of tempered glass that makes up the walls of three storeys of batcave?

Just the mental image of Bruce and Alfred going through the sharper image catalog to find the exact right office chairs but then having them delivered and putting them together like in the garage and arguing because they don't have the correct Alan key is endearing.

ETA: to comparing it to the floor plan of Philip Johnson's glass house which is 1700 ft², with 18 ft wall panels of glass, I think it might be much, much closer to the Farnsworth house?

The only problem being while there is a great shot of the kitchen side of the cube in the middle (the center of which is the bathroom) we never actually see the entrance to the bathroom. It looks as if the galley kitchen basically as cabinets to cover everything so I presume the doors to both the bathroom and the small walk-in closet are out of frame next to the bed on Bruce's side of the bed. I also need to go back and look but I think the television must be above the fireplace, hidden behind the same kind of cabinet doors that hide the kitchen counter and appliances. The only scene I can remember with the television I think actually takes place in the Wayne Boardroom.

EMETA: okay so I was wrong. there's a very narrow corridor where the galley kitchen is and on the other side is the widescreen televisions and the cupboards and drawers that one presumes hold all of Bruce's worldly possessions. Also I was reading that Philip Johnson conceived of it as a glass cage and so that kind of makes sense because the Bruce Wayne persona is more of a cage whereas the bunker underneath the three stories of batcave is what's real and that's where he keeps all of his actual stuff. The lack of books and bookcases however continues to make me twitch.

EMEMETA: I wonder if the space is heated by running the smoke from the fireplace under the floor like a petchka. I can see that they installed blinds at the very least on the bedroom side in some of the photos I've been able to find. and I bet it could have been modified to be actually really incredibly efficient in terms of heating and cooling. because instead of just having the little round brick fireplace there's a 12 ft wall box basically in the middle with a fireplace sharing a wall with the walk-in shower. but the walls don't go all the way to the ceiling and the only lighting is that square over the bathroom. Everything else is lit with floor and desk lamps. I'm so used to ceiling lights that seeing the white expanse of plaster completely unbroken reflecting the sunlight onto the red and black 3 ft by 3-ft tiles genuinely confused me.

Snyder's idea was that he moved into it because it was his mother's favourite place and because the house was simply too much house for just the two of them (and it was Alfred's idea to move out of the house and into the summer house). In this iteration Alfred was never a butler, he was hired as head of security and he was Bruce's bodyguard as a child before becoming his adoptive father. I remain incredibly incredibly salty about the fact that we never actually see the airstream where Alfred has lived for the past 25 odd years when the story takes place. and it does bring up the question of well where the hell did Dick live??)

Also I choose to believe that the batcave actually started life as an underground bunker sort of like Philip Johnson's painting gallery, combined with a bomb shelter. and the precast concrete and glass bat cave is really where both of them actually live. The lake house and the airstream are just where they sleep and occasionally one presumes shower.

I also find it deeply surreal that we never see the exterior of the hangar where the troop carrier is actually being worked on and where Bruce has set up the whole Justice League search when we first see Diana viewing the computer files. I don't think he took her to the cave until after everybody is coming back from Star Labs to go use the bat computer to get the location of the mother box after Silas died. So it makes me wonder if the hanger is also on the property somewhere, disguised.

I really wish we could have seen the scene where Bruce was like 'Congratulations! You're going to Kansas to dig up Superman.' and then Barry just being completely confused until presumably on the drive Diana explains who Clark was, and how the three of them do not actually apparently have secret identities.

Although this is the universe where Lois first meets Clark because she tracked Clark down and knew he was Superman, and he only gets the job at the planet when he follows her back to Metropolis. So whatever Lois Lane could find out in a week or a month probably only took Lex Luthor a day. What's more interesting to me is that he clearly also knew about Bruce, and something tells me that info was a lot harder to get a hold of.

Also while Bruce's house is like super classy built in 1950 whatever, Lex's house is ridiculous. It looks like an experiment rather than a building that someone would live in. It took me two viewings of the movie to clock that that was actually Lex's house and not a space rented for the Friends Of The Library gala.

Truncated text of tweet from MrPitBull, Mar 11, 2026:

She kept finding women in laboratory photographs from the 1800s. Then she read the published papers—and every single woman had vanished. Someone had erased them from history.

Yale University, 1969.

Margaret Rossiter was a graduate student studying the history of science. She was one of very few women in her program.

Every Friday afternoon, students and faculty gathered for beers and informal conversation. One week, Margaret asked a simple question: "Were there ever any women scientists?"

The faculty answered firmly: No.

Someone mentioned Marie Curie. The group dismissed it—her husband Pierre really deserved the credit.

Margaret didn't argue. But she also didn't believe them.

So she started looking.

She found a reference book called "American Men of Science"—essentially a Who's Who of scientific achievement. Despite the title, she was shocked to discover it contained entries about women. Botanists trained at Wellesley. Geologists from Vermont.

There were names. There were credentials. There were careers.

The professors had been wrong.

But Margaret's discovery was just the beginning. Because as she dug deeper into archives across the country, she found something far more disturbing.

Photograph after photograph showed women standing at laboratory benches, working with equipment, listed on research teams.

But when she read the published papers, the award citations, the official histories—those same women had disappeared. Their names were missing. Their contributions erased.

It wasn't random. It was systematic.

Women who designed experiments watched male colleagues publish results without giving them credit. Women whose discoveries were assigned to supervisors. Women listed in acknowledgments instead of as authors. Women passed over for awards that went to male collaborators who contributed far less.

Margaret realized she was witnessing a pattern that stretched across centuries.

Women had always been present in science. The record had simply pushed them aside.

She needed a name for what she was documenting.

In the early 1990s, she found it in the work of Matilda Joslyn Gage—a 19th-century suffragist who had written about this exact phenomenon in 1870.

In 1993, Margaret published a paper formally naming it: The Matilda Effect.

The term captured something that had been hidden in plain sight for generations. Once you knew the term, you saw it everywhere.

Her dissertation became a lifelong mission.

For more than 30 years, Margaret researched and wrote her landmark three-volume series: Women Scientists in America. She examined letters, institutional policies, individual careers. She gathered undeniable evidence that women in science had been consistently under-credited and structurally excluded.

Her work faced resistance. Many dismissed women's history as political rather than academic. Others insisted she was exaggerating.

Margaret didn't argue emotionally. She presented data. Documented cases. Patterns repeated across decades and institutions.

Eventually, the evidence became undeniable.

Her research helped restore recognition to scientists who had been erased:

Rosalind Franklin, whose X-ray work revealed DNA's structure—credit went to Watson and Crick.

Lise Meitner, who explained nuclear fission—omitted from the Nobel Prize.

Nettie Stevens, who discovered sex chromosomes—received little credit.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, who discovered stars are made of hydrogen—initially dismissed.

And countless others whose names had nearly vanished.

Margaret changed the narrative. Science was no longer just the story of solitary male geniuses. It became a story of collaboration that included women who had been written out.

I can't get the image out of my head of when Arthur sees it from the outside for the first time and is like bro why do you live in an aquarium the size of a double wide? The house I grew up in was bigger than this. You have more money than fucking God and you are literally in a studio apartment.

I mean obviously the answer is that he doesn't. I mean not really. It is all just a carefully curated tomb. and like Tony Stark with his workshop Bruce probably lives in the cave and only occasionally sleeps and makes coffee in his actual home. although whoever he had in his bed when he woke up after the nightmare he was comfortable enough having her there while he had a bunch of prescription meds on the bedside table so either it's somebody he knows and really really trusts or somebody whose phone is still in the glove box of his car so she can post no selfies to Instagram before he has a very nice Uber driver take her back to wherever she came from.

I mean that is right after the cage fight with KGBeast so it's entirely possible that she's not really going to bat an eye at his scars or his borderline opioid addiction, if they met at the venue...

Also I really want to find photos of Alfred's airstream because right up until I found that photo, I genuinely assumed that the man was living in either groundskeepers house or the carriage House on the property. I mean I'm sure his commute to work is still about 12 minutes maximum. but the thought of him living in an airstream is kind of hilarious.

Also the flip book with text by David Goyer explaining that Bruce and Alfred built the cave themselves and like oh really. they laid every giant slab of brutalist concrete and they installed every gigantic 10 ft high piece of tempered glass that makes up the walls of three storeys of batcave?

Just the mental image of Bruce and Alfred going through the sharper image catalog to find the exact right office chairs but then having them delivered and putting them together like in the garage and arguing because they don't have the correct Alan key is endearing.

ETA: to comparing it to the floor plan of Philip Johnson's glass house which is 1700 ft², with 18 ft wall panels of glass, I think it might be much, much closer to the Farnsworth house?

The only problem being while there is a great shot of the kitchen side of the cube in the middle (the center of which is the bathroom) we never actually see the entrance to the bathroom. It looks as if the galley kitchen basically as cabinets to cover everything so I presume the doors to both the bathroom and the small walk-in closet are out of frame next to the bed on Bruce's side of the bed. I also need to go back and look but I think the television must be above the fireplace, hidden behind the same kind of cabinet doors that hide the kitchen counter and appliances. The only scene I can remember with the television I think actually takes place in the Wayne Boardroom.

EMETA: okay so I was wrong. there's a very narrow corridor where the galley kitchen is and on the other side is the widescreen televisions and the cupboards and drawers that one presumes hold all of Bruce's worldly possessions. Also I was reading that Philip Johnson conceived of it as a glass cage and so that kind of makes sense because the Bruce Wayne persona is more of a cage whereas the bunker underneath the three stories of batcave is what's real and that's where he keeps all of his actual stuff. The lack of books and bookcases however continues to make me twitch.

EMEMETA: I wonder if the space is heated by running the smoke from the fireplace under the floor like a petchka. I can see that they installed blinds at the very least on the bedroom side in some of the photos I've been able to find. and I bet it could have been modified to be actually really incredibly efficient in terms of heating and cooling. because instead of just having the little round brick fireplace there's a 12 ft wall box basically in the middle with a fireplace sharing a wall with the walk-in shower. but the walls don't go all the way to the ceiling and the only lighting is that square over the bathroom. Everything else is lit with floor and desk lamps. I'm so used to ceiling lights that seeing the white expanse of plaster completely unbroken reflecting the sunlight onto the red and black 3 ft by 3-ft tiles genuinely confused me.

Snyder's idea was that he moved into it because it was his mother's favourite place and because the house was simply too much house for just the two of them (and it was Alfred's idea to move out of the house and into the summer house). In this iteration Alfred was never a butler, he was hired as head of security and he was Bruce's bodyguard as a child before becoming his adoptive father. I remain incredibly incredibly salty about the fact that we never actually see the airstream where Alfred has lived for the past 25 odd years when the story takes place. and it does bring up the question of well where the hell did Dick live??)

Also I choose to believe that the batcave actually started life as an underground bunker sort of like Philip Johnson's painting gallery, combined with a bomb shelter. and the precast concrete and glass bat cave is really where both of them actually live. The lake house and the airstream are just where they sleep and occasionally one presumes shower.

I also find it deeply surreal that we never see the exterior of the hangar where the troop carrier is actually being worked on and where Bruce has set up the whole Justice League search when we first see Diana viewing the computer files. I don't think he took her to the cave until after everybody is coming back from Star Labs to go use the bat computer to get the location of the mother box after Silas died. So it makes me wonder if the hanger is also on the property somewhere, disguised.

I really wish we could have seen the scene where Bruce was like 'Congratulations! You're going to Kansas to dig up Superman.' and then Barry just being completely confused until presumably on the drive Diana explains who Clark was, and how the three of them do not actually apparently have secret identities.

Although this is the universe where Lois first meets Clark because she tracked Clark down and knew he was Superman, and he only gets the job at the planet when he follows her back to Metropolis. So whatever Lois Lane could find out in a week or a month probably only took Lex Luthor a day. What's more interesting to me is that he clearly also knew about Bruce, and something tells me that info was a lot harder to get a hold of.

Also while Bruce's house is like super classy built in 1950 whatever, Lex's house is ridiculous. It looks like an experiment rather than a building that someone would live in. It took me two viewings of the movie to clock that that was actually Lex's house and not a space rented for the Friends Of The Library gala.

I can't get the image out of my head of when Arthur sees it from the outside for the first time and is like bro why do you live in an aquarium the size of a double wide? The house I grew up in was bigger than this. You have more money than fucking God and you are literally in a studio apartment.

I mean obviously the answer is that he doesn't. I mean not really. It is all just a carefully curated tomb. and like Tony Stark with his workshop Bruce probably lives in the cave and only occasionally sleeps and makes coffee in his actual home. although whoever he had in his bed when he woke up after the nightmare he was comfortable enough having her there while he had a bunch of prescription meds on the bedside table so either it's somebody he knows and really really trusts or somebody whose phone is still in the glove box of his car so she can post no selfies to Instagram before he has a very nice Uber driver take her back to wherever she came from.

I mean that is right after the cage fight with KGBeast so it's entirely possible that she's not really going to bat an eye at his scars or his borderline opioid addiction, if they met at the venue...

Also I really want to find photos of Alfred's airstream because right up until I found that photo, I genuinely assumed that the man was living in either groundskeepers house or the carriage House on the property. I mean I'm sure his commute to work is still about 12 minutes maximum. but the thought of him living in an airstream is kind of hilarious.

Also the flip book with text by David Goyer explaining that Bruce and Alfred built the cave themselves and like oh really. they laid every giant slab of brutalist concrete and they installed every gigantic 10 ft high piece of tempered glass that makes up the walls of three storeys of batcave?

Just the mental image of Bruce and Alfred going through the sharper image catalog to find the exact right office chairs but then having them delivered and putting them together like in the garage and arguing because they don't have the correct Alan key is endearing.

ETA: to comparing it to the floor plan of Philip Johnson's glass house which is 1700 ft², with 18 ft wall panels of glass, I think it might be much, much closer to the Farnsworth house?

The only problem being while there is a great shot of the kitchen side of the cube in the middle (the center of which is the bathroom) we never actually see the entrance to the bathroom. It looks as if the galley kitchen basically as cabinets to cover everything so I presume the doors to both the bathroom and the small walk-in closet are out of frame next to the bed on Bruce's side of the bed. I also need to go back and look but I think the television must be above the fireplace, hidden behind the same kind of cabinet doors that hide the kitchen counter and appliances. The only scene I can remember with the television I think actually takes place in the Wayne Boardroom.

EMETA: okay so I was wrong. there's a very narrow corridor where the galley kitchen is and on the other side is the widescreen televisions and the cupboards and drawers that one presumes hold all of Bruce's worldly possessions. Also I was reading that Philip Johnson conceived of it as a glass cage and so that kind of makes sense because the Bruce Wayne persona is more of a cage whereas the bunker underneath the three stories of batcave is what's real and that's where he keeps all of his actual stuff. The lack of books and bookcases however continues to make me twitch.

EMEMETA: I wonder if the space is heated by running the smoke from the fireplace under the floor like a petchka. I can see that they installed blinds at the very least on the bedroom side in some of the photos I've been able to find. and I bet it could have been modified to be actually really incredibly efficient in terms of heating and cooling. because instead of just having the little round brick fireplace there's a 12 ft wall box basically in the middle with a fireplace sharing a wall with the walk-in shower. but the walls don't go all the way to the ceiling and the only lighting is that square over the bathroom. Everything else is lit with floor and desk lamps. I'm so used to ceiling lights that seeing the white expanse of plaster completely unbroken reflecting the sunlight onto the red and black 3 ft by 3-ft tiles genuinely confused me.

I read a while ago about how all wool even in like New Zealand and Scotland or whatever still has to be sent to China to be processed. now I don't know if that just means like cleaning and spinning it into thread or weaving it into cloth, or just cleaning. but I did remember sort of being shocked at oh shit. NO MORE TEXTILE MILLS. They have all of this raw wool but there's no more facilities local to actually process it. All of that got moved offshore and has never come back because it wasn't possible for people to turn a profit unless they were moving production somewhere where the standard of living was lower and there were enough skilled factory workers willing to do that work at what would not be considered a living wage in most supposedly first world nations.

I really really wish that people understood that once manufacturing and finishing goods moved offshore and once we started using factories in East Asia it was never going to come back to the United States because we had no interest in actually running factories and mills and mines and all of those industries that amassed wealth for millionaires in the early 20th century. What we have now are ghost towns, and foreign labor contracts, to keep Walmart's able to sell toasters for $5 each or whatever. That's reality. That's the reality we built and we don't have time travel. We can't go back and change our minds. We literally have to roll back the clock.

And in the 21st century all we've done is outsource more. in 1994, the airline that I worked for was able to get money from the governor to be headquartered in Columbia South Carolina specifically because we were going to build the reservation center there and provide jobs for hundreds of people. It was a small carrier with only I think four planes total, servicing a specific geographic quadrant of the United States.

Jobs like that reservation center? Are ceasing to exist. Customer service representatives are now in India or working from home as contractors (which is how companies save money by avoiding having to pay any kind of overhead, by offloading the cost of the overhead to the actual employees with no compensation. It's not as if they say okay here's the portion of your electricity bill and your cable bill that you are using to do your job 8 to 10 hours a day. Here's the stipend. here's how to get reimbursed for your expenses. there is no stipend. there is no expense account. They know what they can get and how little they can get it for and that's how we have billionaires today.

The only industries where people really talk about this stuff tends to be the automotive industry because when we think of manufacturing for some reason we think of Detroit and cars. but that's because America has chosen to be a car culture. That's the infrastructure that the country chose to invest in: highways. Sure there's a lot of freight that's shifted from one place to another by air or by rail or by sea. But the final deliveries involve trucks and cars. and the companies that manage the logistics and warehousing are very very slow to change once they have decided that they have finished evolving.

Not low cost high frequency rail systems, not robust public transportation systems. Not a competitive airline industry with multiple low cost airlines. now they block murders because the idea of Southwest Airlines competing with Delta on the same even playing field scares a lot of old white guys right down to their socks.

The only way this works is to go back to striving for a healthy middle and lower classes, normalise trade schools, abolishing tipped wages, and paying a living wage. FOR EVERYONE.

And even that America still relies on institutionalised slavery in the form of prison labour and the entire agricultural industry resting on the back of migrant workers.

It's going to require a level playing field that does not allow 1% to exist or an underclass to function.

No more billionaires, no more hoarding wealth, no more mergers and considations to the point where 8 billionaires are running the world, stronger and better enforced antitrust laws, capping executive salaries for the unspeakably wealthy, and all trades having strong unions to protect workers and ensuring a living wage all the way down to the very bottom of the ladder.

It means looking at all of the places where social programs continue to work and have abolished homelessness and poverty and applying them to more than just a tiny handful of small Scandinavian countries.

And as above have said it requires robust unions and regulators and investing in people instead of the 1% only caring about hoarding profits. It means making life safe for people and the environment and not continuing to treat everything like a resource to be exploited. We have to turn them into renewable resources.

We have to learn or relearn how to manufacture and finishing goods without destroying the planet and ourselves.

So you can avoid them stealing things from you, the artist/writer, etc.

Pro GenAI websites/Programs:

Facebook

Instagram

X/Twitter (Remember, Grok gives people cancer)

Threads

Pro Writing Aid

Grammarly

Duolingo

Google Docs

Microsoft Word/all Microsoft products Takes from and will feed their machine.

Youtube (taking advantage of people who are hearing impaired. ==;;)

Adobe Products. All of them. If you HAVE to use them (Some businesses require it), save offline because there is a film of at least some privacy protections there, so if you have to sue, you can say it violates US privacy law. Remember, contracts do not circumvent US law.

Corel won't feed the machines, but still uses AI stolen from other artists. Which sucks since Corel Draw is the second best overall for vector programs. (Plus I love Painter, but I bought the offline version to avoid AI). (Canadian company)

Canva Takes and feeds their machine.

Deviant Art Not only supports AI, but put a tool in and said they are going to steal your work if you like it or not for their machine.

Sketchup went Pro-GenAI. The thing is that you can do the same thing in Blender these days with precise measurements.

Autodesk has stated they are Pro-Gen AI here. It is not clear if they will use your models to feed their machine. But be on guard. They make Maya and 3Dmax. You can replace it with Blender.

Neutral ground:

Tumblr (there is a way to opt out [Link] and they don't have an active AI machine.) https://www.tumblr.com/dookins/743519550598987776/heres-how-to-disable-third-parties-like-ai

Etsy allows GenAI, but still has some (minor) restrictions. I'd still be cautious. (Also be cautious of drop shippers). Complaints about too much AI and AI images+patterns made by Ai still exist on the website. They lean slightly more pro-AI, but still won't let it run completely amok, say like Facebook. They won't feed your work into a machine, but also don't ban it through robots.txt.

Bluesky They don't use an AI algorithm except for in the "Discover" section of their website, but while they are anti-GenAI strongly, they don't seem to block the Gen AI bots from entry, so you'd still have to use Nightshade or Glaze (links below). There is no opt-out because they don't need an opt out. (Leaning towards strong position on AI, but I wish they would block GenAI bots).

Searxng- If you super want to screw over Google, in general, and have some tech savvy, you can set up your own search engine through searxng. It's easier on Windows and Linux than it is on a Mac. (Mac you need Docker), but if you're determined on privacy, Searxng adds a layer of privacy. Some of it sometimes uses bits of AI, but most of it doesn't and you can fuss with the settings so it doesn't spit out AI results. At sheer minimum Google will stop spitting out weird videos on Youtube at you because in your private browsing, you searched for the origin of ball bearings while not logged in for a book and Google likes to break privacy laws.

Strong positions against AI:

Scrivener (Creator vowed against AI) Writing program. There is an active forum, and versions for Mac, Linux and PC. It is paid, but at ~60 USD, it's cheaper than most programs. There is usually a holiday sale around Christmas. It has a learning curve, but with an active forum with the programmer of it there to ask obscure questions it's not a dead zone. They often take suggestions and implement them over time. (Especially if you rank the importance, applications, etc) US company.

LibreOffice Open source and free Spreadsheet and Word processor program that can replace Microsoft Word. Some people might have seen older versions where it was called Neo Office (now extinct) and Open Office. LibreOffice is still populated, plus the forums are super helpful if you get stuck. The UX is pretty intuitive if you've used Microsoft Word. Scrivener, BTW, supports exporting to odt (the native file) as well as .doc, and this can open both. The slight thing is that sometimes it doesn't export to .doc smoothly. And I DO wish more magazines, and agent (big clue here) supported .odt files since it is free. Part of the reason .odt isn't as supported is because Microsoft and Adobe have a deal with the devil with each other, so Adobe's Book formatting program InDesign doesn't support ODT. (BTW, if you have a good open source replacement for InDesign that supports ODT, let me know.)

Dabble (as suggested by SF stories, see reblog) is a writing program. Similar to Scrivener. Has vowed against AI and to resist it. 108 dollars a year for Basic. It is almost twice the price of Scrivener who lets you update for fairly cheap. 29 dollars a month, v. 59 dollars for the whole program (Scrivener) for the same features of Premium. You choose.

yWriter is a free Writing program and like Scrivener, and has vowed against AI Last I looked it had some UX issues, but some people swear by it. The learning curve is higher than Scrivener which is saying something.

Ellipsus is an online writing program and vowed against AI. The main feature I like (which Scrivener doesn't have) is the ability to change spellcheck based on region/language. It is a requested feature of Scrivener, but lower priority. So if you have a Brit, you can get the spelling for the character. They are a British-based company.

Cara.app (The creator of the website sued GenAI there is no chance they'll convert) is an artist website. Cara is trying to institute an auto Glaze/Nightshade into the website if given enough funds. People see it as a soft replacement for deviant art. (which went fully AI) If you believe in human art, please donate if you can. Zhang Jingna, the Creator,is Chinese-Singporean. She lives in Singapore.

Clip Studio Paint added AI, but saw the light and decided to protect artists instead because of protest and removed it. There are tutorials and a good forum if you get super stuck. Based in Japan, so the UI and UX is really clean.

Davinci Resolve Pro is a film editing software that's super good. There is a free version and a paid version. The forums are responsive. The programmers aren't always present. There is a healthy group of tutorials. US company. Clean UX. It does take a little bit of time to remember the shortcuts.

Tahoma2D is anti-AI and open source animation program. Takes a little getting used to, but is good for animations and doesn't crash as often as Animate. Programmers are in the forums and some bugs are fixed within hours. The forums are super responsive and helpful.

Krita open source and free, no AI. I'd rank it secondary to Clip Studio Paint (which is paid) I haven't tried the forums, but it's pretty intuitive and can stand for a lower level replacement for Painter, and do a lot of the basics of Photoshop. It's usually ranked higher than the equally open source Gimp.

Writer P AKA Writer+ (app for when you're on the go) is a simple word processor app for your phone that doesn't use AI. The original programmer stopped updating, so Writer+ person took over and isn't out to make a profit since it's free in the spirit of the original app. It has subfolders you can use. Since it was programmed before GenAI it doesn't have AI. Intuitive, easy to use. Fairly easy to upload the files through three dots->share. The files can save to your card or phone with some settings fussing. Simple word processor.

Inkscape is a free vector program and no AI. It is harder to use than illustrator and has less features. But if you're doing smaller vectors for one-offs with less complexity, it'll do you after some learning curve. Best of the lot. I hate Affinity Designer which is the same thing, only paid. (Neither Affinity program was worth the money paid)

Affinity (Designer, etc) swore to be AI-free and does Vector and Photos. The UX is messy, I dislike the program and regret paying for it. Inkscape and Krita are better UX and do the same thing. The forums aren't as friendly since there has been an onslaught of people seeing it's supposed to be a replacement for Photoshop and Illustrator, but the programmers aren't present. The people on the forums are often on edge about this assertion. And the capabilities of the program don't outshine basically Krita or Inkscape capabilities (both free). What is usually intuitive is not. UK company. If you're going to pay for a program, go for Clip Studio Paint which rivals Corel Painter.

Blender is a 3D art program and does not use GenAI. It can do 2D animation, but Tahoma is easier to use in this regard. It's open source and free. Plus there are plenty of tutorials. The forums can be touch and go sometimes, but there are plenty of sub Blender communities that might be responsive. It can also do animation.

Handmade vowed against AI and promised to never sell itself for stock prices to prevent AI (as a replacement for Etsy.)

Proton (to replace Google Suite) as suggested by SF Stories (see reblog) Vowed against AI. They are missing a spreadsheet, but have online and offline capabilities, plus a built-in VPN.

But you need a pro website...

Look up robots.txt and AI bots: https://www.cyberciti.biz/web-developer/block-openai-bard-bing-ai-crawler-bots-using-robots-txt-file/

Use cloudflare:

Use Nightshade:

https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/whatis.html

which will poison the algorithm

Use Glaze:

Take Away:

The thing is you think you doing it alone will do nothing, but the more AI feeds on itself, AI images, the worse they become, and the less detailed so, denying it the images, adding poison or not being able to read the human text is eventually going to lead to an AI collapse.

And why not help that along?

I read a while ago about how all wool even in like New Zealand and Scotland or whatever still has to be sent to China to be processed. I don't know if that just means like cleaning and spinning it into thread or weaving it into cloth and dyeing it, or just cleaning. But I did remember sort of being shocked at that. O SHIT, NO MORE TEXTILE MILLS. They have all of this raw wool but there's no more facilities local to actually process it. All of that got moved offshore and has never come back because it wasn't possible for people to turn a profit unless they were moving production somewhere where the standard of living was lower and there were enough skilled factory workers willing to do that work at what would not be considered a living wage in most supposedly first world nations.

I really really wish that people understood that once manufacturing and finishing goods moved offshore and once we started using factories in East Asia it was never going to come back to the United States because we had no interest in actually running factories and mills and mines and all of those industries that amassed wealth for millionaires in the early 20th century. What we have now are ghost towns, and foreign labor contracts, to keep Walmart able to sell toasters for $5 each or whatever. That's reality. That's the reality we built and we don't have time travel. We can't go back and change our minds. We literally have to roll back the clock.

And in the 21st century all we've done is outsource more. in 1994, the airline that I worked for was able to get money from the governor to be headquartered in Columbia South Carolina specifically because we were going to build the reservation center there and provide jobs for hundreds of people. It was a small carrier with only I think four planes total, servicing a specific geographic quadrant of the United States.

Jobs like that reservation center? Are ceasing to exist. Customer service representatives are now in India or working from home as contractors (which is how companies save money by avoiding having to pay any kind of overhead, by offloading the cost of the overhead to the actual employees with no compensation. It's not as if they say okay here's the portion of your electricity bill and your cable bill that you are using to do your job 8 to 10 hours a day. Here's the stipend. here's how to get reimbursed for your expenses. there is no stipend. there is no expense account. They know what they can get and how little they can get it for and that's how we have billionaires today.

The only industries where people really talk about this stuff tends to be the automotive industry because when we think of manufacturing for some reason we think of Detroit and cars. but that's because America has chosen to be a car culture. That's the infrastructure that the country chose to invest in: highways. Sure there's a lot of freight that's shifted from one place to another by air or by rail or by sea. But the final deliveries involve trucks and cars. and the companies that manage the logistics and warehousing are very very slow to change once they have decided that they have finished evolving.

Not low cost high frequency rail systems, not robust public transportation systems. Not a competitive airline industry with multiple low cost airlines. now they block murders because the idea of Southwest Airlines competing with Delta on the same even playing field scares a lot of old white guys right down to their socks.

10 years ago when dual factor authentication first started making our lives difficult I observed that it was easier in the United States of America to purchase a gun and it was to sign into your Google account from a new phone. The fact that it's only gotten worse in every possible way in every direction from where we are now to the dawn of time stretching to the eventual heat death of the universe is part of the slow creeping death of my ability to function, or even the desire to function rather than settling for mere existence.