I have nothing to say

I ran a quick query on hatch shape in my media storage, focusing on popular adventure and suspense/horror dramas and the high incidence of hazardous fauna, raiders, human and/or bot murderers, and/or magical fauna, unidentified but terrifying dark presences, and straight up monsters associated with round hatches. I sent the results into the team feed.

ART-drone said, You wasted processing space on that?

“Eighty percent,” Ratthi said, genuinely shocked. “I thought I was making a joke.”

because (yeah Ratthi!) when I started with the fuck density stuff I too thought I was making a bit of a joke…but now that we have System Collapse data:

The original short fic, Linguistics (actually thinly disguised meta) now has multiple chapters updating the graph to System Collapse (94 fucks!)

Hi all! Thank you everyone who gave me a nudge! Here is the preliminary fuck density* of Platform Decay and at 238.2 it’s the highest yet for any book in the series! Beating a previous high of 150.4 for System Collapse!

The count is 92 fucks, which is exceeded by the 94 of System Collapse—but the word count of Platform Decay is just 62% of System Collapse… I shall be updating Linguistics on Archive of our Own (the little fic which spawned the fuck density chart series) shortly… Thank you all for giving me the little push I needed to do this! 🥰🥰🥰 Also—there may be errors on the graph (it’s first thing on a bank holiday Sunday so I may have messed up!) CORRECTIONS WELCOME!

🖤🖤🖤I will be adding the data to Linguistics shortly— Linguistics is the fic/meta which is home to the fuck density data 🖤🖤🖤

*NB—I started calculating fucks per page, but that inaccurate as the books can vary in font size etc so I have what I believe to be reasonably accurate word counts for the books. I am always open to improving the data! Just let me know! Then the fuck count is all fucks, fucking, fuckers etc and it can be, for example, reported speech or MB’s narrative—anything goes! The number of fuck/word number gives unwieldy decimals (0.000095 etc) so I then multiply by 100,000 to give a more human accessible number (9.5 for ASR)

Okay—so here it is:

Bugger! Need to go and correct elsewhere too! At least I spotted it today!

But:

Very much did in the sense that I literally do not know where my job is at the moment. But, for the time being I haven't been let go because nobody else including the store owner knows where it is either.

So, I don't wanna risk doxxing myself by posting pictures but goddamn am I tempted because this is not a believable event. This is a cartoon problem. For looneytoons.

But yeah, so, I work(ed?) at a kiosk selling boba tea, right? Freestanding kiosk in the mall with full water and electrical hookups and multiple fridges and sinks and a mini kitchen and the works. Fully functional tea shop. Very important to note that it was there last night, The work chat was discussing another issue last night at closing time. I'll get back to this.

It's been showing signs of being on the way out with how business is being handled lately and I've been considering other options, which is probably why I'm not as torn up about this as I should be, but maybe it just hasn't set in yet, but that's not the point. The point is there's been a lot of shit breaking and not being replaced and nobody mentioning anything about it until I walk into work in the morning and have to figure out why shit like the fucking cash register isn't there today. So I'm kinda used to having to ask questions about big things that nobody bothered to update me on. I was out for two weeks recovering from a surgery, so I came to work this morning assuming there'd be some kind of bullshit, yeah?

So, the question I had to ask the chat this morning was:

Not a text I ever thought I'd have to send in sincerity, but there it is. Because what I found instead was a fenced off patch of discolored tiles and a few holes in the floor where my entire place of employment used to be.

And the answer? Nobody knows! It was there last night when the mall closed, and every single trace of the structure and all its contents including drink making supplies and our safe and cashbox was gone when it opened again. And when I say nobody knows, I mean everyone from last night's closers to the actual (former?) owner of the store jad no fucking clue about this until getting that text from me this morning. For once I am actually the first to know. 🎉.

So. I guess I didn't so much lose my job as had it stolen. Not by AI, but good old fashioned hands-on human beings picking it up and carrying it away somehow. All mall security would tell me was that they were instructed not to tell me anything and have us contact our management. Who also don't know anything. And later on I came across some construction workers around the gravesite of the kiosk discussing filling in the holes, asked them about it, and was told that they "weren't at liberty to say".

So, not only is my job gone in the most literal physical sense of the word, but it was taken in some kind of super secret kiosk extraction in the dead of night without any warning or witnesses and nobody is allowed to speak of it. The store owner said she was gonna figure it out 10 hours ago and still no word back.

My mother in law thinks the FBI took it.

Not any of the other stores around the state. Just the one little kiosk.

Why? Because she loves a conspiracy and is just a little bit extra.

Also because she was around for the massive crackdown on Yakuza-owned businesses in Waikiki (in her homestate) that did actually involve the FBI seizing stores (no confirmation of making kiosks cleanly disappear in the middle of the night though).

Still no word from my job on what's actually going on, but the most likely theory so far is that maybe the kiosk was on lease and got repossessed? The mystery continues

According to the owner, based on what she's been able to find out, the kiosk was not removed legally and they're starting a potentially long process of legal action. I hope she gets to sue the shit out of whoever did it but for now at least I know for sure I'm unemployed.

Really hoping for more details in terms of who/why/how, so I'll keep updating if I learn anything.

For now the summary is: An unnamed entity that is most likely mall management (on account of mall security cooperating with them) stole an entire kiosk and all the contents including money and machinery with barely a trace in the middle of the night grinch-style, with zero warning or explanation, and ensured the silence of both security and the construction crew, in an action that was definitely preplanned and illegal, and as far as I know nobody knows its whereabouts.

Enjoy the unintentionally funniest text I've ever sent in my life

Aaand a close-up:

HEY HI HELLO THIS ONE'S MY FAVORITE

So, it turns out that if you use Claude to write your fic and paste it into AO3, it leaves some very obvious tell-tale signs. I cannot take the credit for this discovery. I first heard it going down in my discord about a Stranger Things fic being unearthed, then a Heated Rivalry problem.

@heatedrivalryai on twitter was the original source (I believe). There's also a link below explaining what's really going on. Most AI detection tools are bullshit, but this one's looking for specific html left in by Claude.

There's a link here explaining the discovery:

I don't have twitter, but I did find some CSS for an AO3 skin on paste bin that basically highlights any fic, or section of fic, that uses these Claude specific html tags. It's not foolproof, and it won't filter out all AI, but it's a start. I already found one fic on the most recent Merlin fic page that comes up bright red.

Instructions on how to use this to make a skin on AO3 below the cut

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Starry Owlet-Nightjar (Aegotheles tatei), family Aegothelidae, order Aegotheliformes, Papua New Guinea (endemic)

Owlet-nightjars are not nightjars, and are not in the nightjar order Caprimulgiformes. (And are also not closely related to owls).

They are in their own order.

They are not as closely related to nightjars or frogmouths, as previously thought.

This species is beloved and deeply desired by birdwatchers, and if I saw one I would pee my pants. (One my top 10 birds!)

More species swap shenanigans

His ass is not listening 🙏