Stuff and Things

'A popular fanfic author stopped updating her fic because she said that the stress of being constantly falsely accused of using AI was a witch hunt and it was destroying her mental health to the extent that she needed to take a break from writing, leading to multiple online discussions defending her and debates about AI accusations and how You Can't Really Tell So Leave Her Alone, and then someone realised that there were Claude coding artefacts in her fics and that it was a super pervasive problem in that particular fandom, proven definitively by looking at the source coding of each work on AO3, and she denied it for a bit but then ultimately admitted that oopsie, she had been using genAI all along, and then she deleted all of her fics off AO3 and people got mad because they were being denied access to their favourite fics, even though they now knew definitively that they were genAI slop, and then it turned out that she'd actually stopped updating the fic on AO3 in the first place because she'd been shopping it around to agents and editors as an original work with the serial numbers filed off, and she'd been in conversations with a publisher which ultimately got dropped because she'd lied to them about her AI use' oh cool, so we're in Hell, then

Let me be clear: if you use AI to write fanfic, paticularly if you do so in the hopes of snapping up a tradpub deal off the basis of the popularity of your worthless slop, then you are an absolute grade A ding-dong, and may the vengeful spirits of our beloved Spirk Elders haunt you via the medium of perpetual papercuts forevermore.

I am unaware of who this is referring to and feel like a small fishing boat that just saw the dorsal fin of Leviathan off the starboard bow

That is so extremely valid, and truly I wish that I had not myself plunged into the depths and seen the truth of the Leviathan (a gigantic plastic fish effigy that's broken off a derelict Fish & Chip shop and washed into the Atlantic: a harbinger of doom in its own synthetic tongue)

So many lessons in fandom and life boil down to make your own works for love of the game, don't go looking for ways to be an asshole to people, don't lie when people ask you something that challenges you to be better, and don't fucking cheat.

Zelenogorsk is sand bathing

Zelenogorsk is sand bathing

Zelenogorsk is sand bathing

Zelenogorsk (Otocolobus manul)

Zelenogorsk (Otocolobus manul) is sand bathing

havent talked to friend in a while and dont know how to start up a conversation? consider succumbing to the darkness in your heart and becoming a tragic miniboss for them to fight with the power of friendship. works every time.

Can anyone explain wtf is going on here especially a Korean speaker

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That is one of the most astronomical fuck up translations I have ever seen.

fun fact about character development by the way. you can make them develop worse.

"all you ever do is complain" that's not true. I also resent.

I really need to do more studying and write an essay on how Americanism is a genuine folk religion which reveres capital and the vague concept of “the free market” as a god of providence to be pleased in order to lead a prosperous life, also that the founding fathers are prophetic, perhaps even messianic figures who basically gave birth to this god through the revolutionary war, and that the vast majority of conservative Christians in America revere capital more than the god they claim to serve in an ironic sort of golden calf situation.

Like, there are actual studies on this stuff. Look up “American civil religion” if you’re struggling for search terms. Or “American founder worship.”

also worth noting the vatican lists americanism as a specific official heresy. so even beyond the mountains of scholarship on the religion of americanism from various religious & secular perspectives, the roman catholic church itself officially recognises it as a religious heresy in the general region of idolatry that can be used in official church courts as grounds for excommunication. and it’s a religious view that’s drilled into americans so aggressively that to them it seems perfectly natural, whereas to most of the rest of the world ‘america’ seems more like a terrifying mind control cult than a country. this has led to large swathes of american catholics being members of a different religion than that of all the worlds other catholic populations and is a big part of how they became the closest thing to a pan-catholic in-joke, a global laughing stock if you will

Bioshock Infinite wasn’t ideal but making this subtext into text was probably one of the better things it did. Real interesting vibe, and they didn’t have to work hard to get there.

Under no circumstances is catholocism, or the pope, “based”

by the way. it never is too late to decide you want to be happy. the woman who helped me get hormones didnt start hers until she was 70, and i met her at 73, beautiful and smiling - and told me that the last three years of her life had been her favorite. your favorites might be ahead of you too. why not hang around and find out?

in law school, my mom took me to this stress retreat because my family was vaguely aware i was a suicide risk. and they didnt allow phones, so i brought this huge bag of books. and one of the options for "destressing" was this fake cave grotto thing, where they'd decorated a room to make it look exactly like an underground cave and the air was like -10 degrees, but there was a like 4ft deep pool in the middle that was kept super super hot, so you would just switch between the hot and cold. and they would bring you an endless supply of this weird syrupy drink thing that was like super caffeinated and tasted like sugar and mint. and so i spent multiple days sitting half submerged in this fake grotto drinking mystery liquid and reading. and i have to be honest i really did feel less stressed