Life of a Leaky Pen

The System had been very clear: User 001 had transmigrated into Shang Qinghua’s character. For the past ten years, as he struggled against the limitations of his child body, Airplane had tried to reconcile himself with the fate that awaited him—the sect burning because of him, his neck snapped by a demon’s hand—and hoped desperately that he could change it somehow. Except now… his fate seemed to have changed by itself? “You have indeed been selected to join Xing Jiao Peak,” the teacher repeated. “Do you accept?”

Airplane joins the Sex Peak and tries to make the most of it.

The phenomenon is this: you see a piece of writing (or an ai approximation) of something in your area of expertise. You see all the mistakes, misrepresentations, inaccuracies. You can see that it's poorly produced, inaccurate trash. You see a piece of writing from the same outlet (or an ai approximation) of something in a field about which your personal experience is limited. It looks plausible enough to pass as probably all right to you, and you give it no further scrutiny, assuming it's correct and fine.

Tokyo’s subway system is arguably one of the most complex in the world. The map itself can be an immediate turn-off for any unfamiliarized straphangar. But exactly how do all these lines run underground, overlapping as they carry hundreds of thousands of passengers each day?

A very ill-timed nasty spring cold has meant I’ve been able to do way less promotion on our now-running Kickstarter to fund Ducks in a Row and Duxxx in a Row, curated collections of stories from Duck Prints Press’s first 2 years. We’ve got 48 hours left in our campaign, and we’re only 80% to our $9,000 goal – about $1700 short.

And all you need to do to help is boost this post! Of course, if you’re interested in the books, I hope you’ll check out the campaign, but we are a small press that relies on word-of-mouth for advertising. More people simply seeing that this project exists is critical as we try to make our goal before we run out of time.

Ready to learn more about what it’s about? Visit our Kickstarter now or read on!

Since Duck Prints Press was founded in January 2021, we have published over 200 stand-alone short stories by dozens of authors, ranging in length from just over 1,000 words up to 9,999 words. Most of these short stories are available for purchase individually from our webstore or are only available to people who back our Patreon… until now! With Ducks in a Row: A Curated Collection of Short Stories and Duxxx in a Row: A Curated Collection of Explicit Stories, Duck Prints Press dips into our vault, anthologizing stories we published from 2021 to 2023 into all-new collections!

Whether you’ve looked at our short story offerings and weren’t sure where to start, or you’ve heard about Duck Prints Press and wanted a tasting selection of what we offer, or you’ve wanted all your favorites in one lovely volume, or you had no idea we existed until today and just heard “short stories by queer authors” and said “SIGN ME UP,” Ducks in a Row and Duxxx in a Row have a little something for most everyone, with stories in different genres, with different types of characters, and by many different authors!

What we’re offering:

Ducks in a Row: A Curated Collection of Stories: includes 22 stories by 22 different authors, 236 pages long, in e-book (no DRM!) and trade paperback formats.

Duxxx in a Row: A Curated Collection of Explicit: includes 19 stories by 19 different authors, 264 pages long, in e-book (still no DRM!) and trade paperback formats.

Art prints of the front covers: our gorgeous cover art is by Pallas Perilous, and we’ll be making it into 8 in x 10 in/20.3 cm x 25.4 cm matte art prints.

Bookmarks of the front covers: you can see how we cropped the front cover art to make two charming bookmarks, 2 in x 6 in/5 cm x 10.2 cm, below! The backs will feature the (digital) signatures of all the book contributors.

Red Bowtie Dux die-cut sticker: our adorable mascot, Dux, created by Alessa Riel, is red-feathered for this campaign sticker! You can learn more about Dux, our Press mascot, here.

Red Bowtie Dux enamel pin: our first-ever enamel pin of our mascot will feature iridescent metal – including as the bowtie! – and pearlescent red enamel feathers.

Our ENTIRE back catalog of print books (not the e-book only releases) are also being offered as campaign add-ons!

Many of our past merchandise, such as stickers, enamel pins, magnets, and key chains, can also be added on!

Learn more about the contributors, the stories, the merch, the Press, the add-ons, the budget, the schedule, you name it, by visiting our campaign page!

As the OP with ADHD that frequently manifested itself in anxiety that I manage with organization, I’m feeling

real perceived

And the kids are like "but they get into our bug traps" and "we didn't catch him he followed us home"

And their parents are like. Please i do not believe that 6 fucking pixies smuggled themselves into our garage on the underside of your bicycle saddle and then set up shop in the old dolls house. These are living beings they're not toys it's not kind to treat them like this

And the kids are like we are NOT treating them like anything you said we're not allowed to trap them and they always get into our traps so we always run away when they see us and then they follow us and get inside our backpacks and stuff

And the parents are like

Stop lying!!!

And then they set up wildlife cams and not only can pixies apparently do all of that and are very desperate to hang out with these human kids (who have fun life-sized toys and are covered in wonderful things like glitter and are a free source of fresh bugs and pop tart crumbs)

But they can also like. Fully just pick locks and shit.

That's called a joke. It's supposed to be funny.

Whether or not I am pro-AI is a question that I can't answer without a spreadsheet and at least four hours of discussion (please see my four hour twitch stream from earlier today that was largely about massive problems with AI and massive problems with the way that people react to and report on AI. There are research papers and citations in it and everything). Define what YOU mean by AI and maybe I can get that down to twenty minutes and some bullet points.

Perplexity's Incognito Mode is a Sham, Lawsuit Says - People don't read ToSs and don't understand how computers work.

OpenClaw gives users yet another reason to be freaked out about security - It is profoundly irresponsible for businesses to be using 'AI agents' that have either elevated access rights or privilege escalation permissions and the fact that they were unaware that the agents would be able to do this is a good indicator that the entire concept is fucked (it is bugshit insane to expect a program given commands in naturalistic language to act like a program given commands through a programming language, we have set up amelia bedilia ass robots and don't realize what permissions we're handing them because it feels like talking to a person who understands norms and expectations but the entity you are theoretically giving instructions to is actually deriving its instructions from a black box process that you don't understand and isn't capable of knowing things so it doesn't know that it's a big problem for you if it emails your boss copies of your nudes. Do not use the malicious genie to get your airline tickets what the fuck)

AI Can now prescribe you psychiatric medication in Utah - El problema es el capitalismo AND that could be a phone tree instead of an AI app why are we calling this "AI" it is literally responding to a fifteen question form, is this even AI or is this calling some basic automation AI and charging patients $20 for access to a tool they don't need that is only being used to paper over the fact that we are dealing with a doctor shortage because of a cartel? In short: AAAAH. But not for the reasons you might have thought! (The robot can only give you prescriptions you already had and can't refill anything addictive, so the ADHD havers among us still have to deal with calling the office or going in and paying a copay and then remembering to do that every month. The AI is not the problem here the everything is the problem here).

Claude Source Code leaked via error, Hackers are taking advantage of claude source code leak to spread malware, people are getting hit with spurious DMCA takedown notices because Anthropic is shotgunning nastygrams into the void in an attempt to get their code taken down. Lol. Lmao, even. In my perfect world none of this is a problem because the shit was open source from the start. Information wants to be free, and life finds a way. (it was a human who accidentally leaked the code). Also fuck the digital millennium copyright act, all my homies hate the digital millennium copyright act.

Really, you made this without AI? Prove it - this is an article about human creatives trying to settle on a way of labeling their work as human made. As a human creative, I think this is just going to fuel anti-AI scrutiny toward all creative work. This is a shit approach, I think people should worry less about whether what they're seeing is AI and more about if what they are seeing is good, or evocative, or true, or compelling. I think that most lazily-made AI art and writing is both obvious and bad, and AI-assisted art and writing that humans put effort into is pretty much just art, but sticking a human-made label on your art feels both performative and futile. Like, on the one hand I don't care, do whatever. On the other hand ugh. This is going to be used to harangue people into accepting the standard or dealing with constant accusations of being AI and IDK i think it's kind of bullshit to spend time counting the fingers on a CGI article header on a facebook post when there is actual shit going on in the world. This is, more than anything, annoying. There's a great line in the article "The machines sure as hell aren't motivated to label their work, but the creators at risk of being displaced most definitely are." Friend. The machines aren't motivated to do anything and the companies that are profiting off the machines will be very much motivated to copy your logo. Stop worrying about being displaced by robots and start worrying about media consolidation and newsroom layoffs, which have been driven by profit-seeking for the last twenty years, not AI.

"Cognitive Surrender" leads AI users to abandon logical thinking, research finds - that's a pretty significant overstatement of what the research found and also the research is largely centered on creating a model of thought systems that is heavily based on a pop science book about decision theory written by an economist that has suffered pretty significantly from the replication crisis but is beloved by baseball scouts so you know it's good. We spent a lot of time trying to be charitable here but basically I'm unwilling to accept the validity of the basic premise of the book (that there are two modes of thought, intuitive and deliberative, and this is in some way meaningful) so I'm unwilling to accept the extension of the premise (there is a third way of thinking, and it is robots, and it makes people intellectually lazy on timed tests but does not make them lazy when you give them prizes for getting individual answers right on tests). Also I think the research was pretty poorly designed because I don't think they demonstrated how the AI assistant used in the study arms was meaningfully different than an encyclopedia or a google search. (the way the study worked was that they looked at people responding to a test either with their brain only or with their brain and an AI, but on one arm of the study they seeded the AI with incorrect answers and then looked at when people relied more on the AI or less on the AI; however the comparison of human+AI to human alone doesn't really tell us anything about cognitive surrender, it tells us about tool use and reliance on tools when tools are available - is it 'cognitive surrender' to not check an incorrect answer from a wikipedia page? It seems like it would have been simple to have a group that was given access to a set of correct articles and a group given access to incorrect articles and compare how THAT group stacked up against the human+AI arm). (also I am DEEPLY skeptical of any paper written on AI that has 80% or more citations from before 2020)

Anyway, I think I have two new rules:

If you are going to implement an AI tool in your workplace, you have to get approval from someone who can demonstrably make a functional calculator in no fewer than three programming languages

If you are going to denigrate AI you have to define AI and limit your complaints to AI that meet only those criteria

I've been talking a lot more about AI than I expected to when I started streaming and so far the things that we keep coming back to are:

Everyone means something different when they're talking about AI

People don't understand how AI works

People keep anthropomorphizing AI and expecting it to behave like people because they don't understand how AI works

People don't know how computers work

Because people don't know how computers work they don't know that most of the stuff that is getting hyped as AI could be accomplished with simple automation or a database

People are, generally, dogshit at fact checking and are easy to mislead with twitter screenshots, let alone AI articles on AI content mill sites, and maybe that it something that needs to be addressed more urgently than concerns about "what if ask jeeves was a stupid robot that hates you?"

So, am I pro AI?

“The Cursebreakers,” Letta whispered, voice all but swallowed by the incessant clucking of chickens.

The Cursebreakers were famous. Practically everyone had at least heard of them. Stories of their great deeds stretched from the Riann Salt Flats to the Shifting Isles and beyond. Letta had been little more than a child when she’d first heard whispers of them. A group of nonbinary and women warriors who, through acts of great skill and daring, overcame the curses and prophecies which no man was able to break.

With frozen breath and a fierce longing in her chest, Letta watched the warriors pass. Her greatest wish was to join them.

A voice snapped wretchedly behind her. “What are you doing?”

Letta’s head whipped up, heart already sinking. She recognized the voice.

Gormund, the butcher’s son, loomed above. He was nineteen (a year older than Letta) and exceedingly tall and broad for his age. His face was pinched in an expression of joyful cruelty.

When Gormund next opened his mocking mouth, it was to call Letta by the wrong name. Then, with a sneering look, he followed her gaze to the passing procession. His eyes lit with glee, and Letta instinctively hunched her shoulders, already guessing at the next topic of his teasing.

“Oh. That’s cute. You actually think you could join them?”

Letta clenched her jaw, and she reminded herself that punching Gormund in the face would only earn her a beating from Gormund and a lecture this evening from her mother.

“I don’t know,” Letta muttered. “Maybe if I could wield a blade.”

“You could have all the blade training in the world and still not belong with them,” Gormund mocked, and again called her by the wrong name.

Sometimes Letta actually hated him.

Having heard enough, Letta rose from her hiding place. The Cursebreakers were staying in town (a great beast whom no man could slay had nested in a nearby abandoned keep), and Letta hoped she might get another glimpse of the warriors if she stopped by the inn later.

After losing Gormund in town (Gormund might be larger, but Letta was much faster), Letta made a beeline for the inn. After sneaking in the bustling kitchen’s back door, she begged Sylvie to let her help with the serving for the evening.

Sylvie, bracing two muscular arms on either side of her apron wrapped hips, frowned. Her dark hair was wound up in a messy bun and wild strands fell loose as she shook her head and tsked. “You’d better not be planning on trying to join up with that lot. Your mum would have a fit.”

“Oh! I’m not - I mean…” Letta paused to fretfully tug at her pale hair. After nearly two years, it was finally shoulder length and her hands tended to reach for it when nervous. “It’s not that I don’t want to join up. I’ve always dreamed - but I know mom would kill me. And besides…” Her fingers twisted in her hair. “I don’t know if they’d even, you know…” take me.

Sylvie’s heavy hand pressed over her shoulder. “Is that Gormund being awful again?”

“His stupid face is awful,” Letta muttered.

Sylvie sighed, and her great calloused fingers lifted Letta’s chin. “If those warriors wouldn’t take you, then they don’t deserve you, Letta my sweet.” And with a second, deeper sigh, she said, “Well go ahead and grab a spare apron. You’re on serving duty, girl.”

The afternoon passed in a blur of hot plates and burnt fingers - until finally, a thundering of boots sounded upon the inn’s stairs. The Cursebreakers descended on the tavern proper, laughing and joking with a lighthearted air. If it weren’t for their warrior’s dress, it would have been easy to forget they’d come to town with the express purpose of doing battle with a three headed serpent.

Letta fetched ale first. With trembling fingers, she held her breath and began setting drinks before the warriors. The liquid sloshed in the mugs, but she prayed to her favorite gods, and then her least favorite for good measure - and not a drop was spilled on any of the legendary warriors.

When she returned with steaming bowls of stew, Letta’s nerves had settled enough that she chanced a glance at the warriors she was serving. She nearly dropped the soup when she saw short, fiery red hair. Fortunately, her fingers were quick, and Letta saved the bowl from dropping in Arna Swiftfoot’s lap.

Arna Swiftfoot, a wiry, muscled woman with crows-eye wrinkles and a rakish tilt to her lips, was the leader of the Cursebreakers. As Letta set the sloshing soup before her, Arna’s sharp gaze settled upon her.

“I thought you were going to dump that in my lap,” Arna Swiftoot remarked.

“I nearly did,” Letta blurted, and wished she could swallow her tongue.

The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve. 

Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.

If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.

Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.

We rolled out a significant change to how notes work on reblogs, and the reaction has been strong. We're not going to pretend otherwise. 

First things first: We're reversing the change. Your feedback in comments, emails, and especially reblogs, made clear that the rollout created problems we need to address before moving forward. We also should have communicated this differently from the start, and we didn't.

We still believe there's a better version of how reblogs can work. One that gives every voice in a chain the credit it deserves. But we want to get there with you.

In the coming days we'll share more on how we plan to do that,  including ways to work directly with some of you on this and future changes before they ship.

The good that features do, is mentioned after them. Their frustrating parts are oft intered with their bones, so let it be, with the reblog chain

The noble tumblr had told you the reblog chain denied engagement. If it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously the reblog chain paid for it

Here, under leave of tumblr and its @staff, for tumblr is an honorable site, so are its staff, honorable in their help, come I to speak, at the reblog chain's final moments

She was a good feature. Simple, and engaging to me, but tumblr says it denied engagement and tumblr is an honorable site

It had brought many memes to the world, who's sharing did the userbase grow, did this, in the reblog chain, deny engagement?

When that the meme did flop, the reblog chain had not notes! Engagement denial should be made of lesser stuff, yet tumblr says it denied engagement and tumblr is an honorable site

You all did see that in the last 3 years thrice users of other sites flocked to it, and thrice they had not stayed because opening Tumblr for the first time sucks, and absolutely never for the reblog chain, but tumblr says it did deny engagement, and Tumblr, is an honorable site

I speak not to disprove what tumblr spoke, but here I am to speak what I do know.

theory 2: jiang cheng, breaking from convention, has no particular thoughts or feelings about jin guangyao. he does not really care about jin guangyao's parentage.

theory 3: not only does jiang cheng not care about jin guangyao's parentage, but jiang cheng also thinks highly of jin guangyao. this is due to jin guangyao's incredible efficiency in running jinlintai, his being a reasonable sect leader jin (especially compared to jin guangshan), and his peaceful reign as chief cultivator.

theory 4: jiang cheng thinks highly of jin guangyao, due to a 13-year mostly-successful history of coparenting jin ling with him.

theory 5: jiang cheng has this 13-year mostly-successful history of coparenting jin ling with jin guangyao, but hates his ass anyways because jin guangyao is raising jin ling WRONG and is SPOILING HIM and does things like GET HIM DOGS (why dogs????) WITHOUT JIANG CHENG'S PERMISSION

theory 6: jiang cheng thinks poorly of jin guangyao not because of his status as a son of a prostitute, but rather because jiang cheng is 100000% convinced that jin guangyao is cheating on qin su with lan xichen. truly, lianfang-zun, you are your father's son.