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> read library book

> it's good

Thank you library

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Konstantin Korobov (Russian, 1985) - Dirus (2020)

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Sometimes they fancy a shag, sometimes they don't, sometimes they never do or only for special moments or people. REGARDLESS THEY MATTER AND DESERVE TO TAKE UP SPACE.

Yesterday was International Asexuality Day, but ace books are good to read all year round. Asexual means a person doesn't feel sexual feelings or attraction to others, but this is a spectrum and can vary widely from person to person. Note that attraction does not equal romance, and asexual is not the same as aromantic. Some people are sex repulsed, some are not. Some people are sex positive, some are not.

Demisexuality falls under the asexual umbrella, and means a person doesn't feel attraction until developing a strong connection with a person. Two of my books, Phantom and Rook, and Matsdotter and Adrastus, have demisexual mains.

There are many different shades of Ace, and many different types of stories just waiting for you to read.

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Art by David Lynch

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Louise Glück | from "The Untrustworthy Speaker" (1990)

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— fatima aamer bilal; coffin heart? bury me.

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Émile Bernard (1868–1941) - Satan is dead; be reborn, O celestial Lucifer!

engraving for Victor Hugo’s “La Fin de Satan” 1935 edition

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dogperson iii. oil painting on coaster. yet another for 'salut 9' open now at Nucleus Portland

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Bad Fucking News for self-publishing

Draft2Digital, which many have considered an ethical alternative to Kindle Direct Publishing, has just sent out a survey asking authors and *publishers* if they would like to sell the rights of the works they publish through D2D to be used to train LLMs.

And it's a dodgy fucking survey.

Some questions try to trick you into saying you would only mind if you disapproved of the purpose your words were put to, with options like:

Yes, it matters; I would withhold training rights for any licensing deal I found objectionable

As long as I’m fairly compensated, I would consider a competitive deal

No opinion

Note that you only get to say 'No' if you say you have 'No opinion'.

There are two free-text fields in which you get to give your reasons for telling them to go to Hell. This is what I put. I wouldn't copy my words in case they discount duplicates, but they might be inspiration.

Free-text field 1, question: Imagine this fictitious example for a non-competitive application: You’ve authored a 75,000 word novel, and an automotive company wants to license it along with thousands of other books to train their LLM’s natural language processing capabilities. They plan to use their LLM to support a suite of internal corporate productivity applications used by 200,000 employees. At what minimum price would you consider licensing the AI training rights to your book?

Please elaborate on your reasoning behind your choice. If you have an exact number in mind, share it here:

My answer:

I'm furious you're even asking us. To even consider letting LLMs scrape our work is grossly irresponsible. It isn't even just that it's unethical for authors (although it really, really is, and I will not support it in any way), the energy used and water required to cool these large models is accelerating climate change. I firmly believe there are few more irresponsible and damning actions a person can take at this moment in time than to have anything to do LLMs used to produce empty words and images in place of thoughts and ideas.

Free-text field 2, question: Again, imagine the same automotive company example above and you have a 75,000-word novel, but this time the license is for a potentially competitive application in which the company plans to train an LLM that will power a new external facing application for millions of its customers. It will brand the application, AutoFiction. AutoFiction invites customers to generate custom short stories in the style of their favorite author featuring the car owner and their car. At what minimum price would you consider licensing the AI training rights for this potentially competitive application?

Please elaborate on your reasoning behind your choice. If you have an exact number in mind, share it here:

The reasons are the same because there are no circumstances in which using LLMs to train off fiction is remotely OK. 'AutoFiction' would be contentless nonsense that would detract from my sales to actual readers, but beyond that the damage to the environment is inexcusable. If there is any shred of decency in any of you, you MUST NOT DO THIS.

Here's a link to the survey. I don't know if nonusers can complete it, but I didn't seem to need to log in. Note that it would not submit when I was using Firefox. I had to use the invasive AI-scraper, Edge.

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Dragan Bibin — Vampire "Vid" Visiting his Home (oil on linen, 2011)

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Vampire fang boners are actually one of my favorite tropes. “His fangs lengthened”??!???! Hell yeah they did, bite me with your horny fangs you bitch

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Art by Paul Stavroulakis

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The street where you live, Eli McMullen

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Dark Times II by Andreas Rocha

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what happens, happens

photo source

Kind of a Cynosure prequel, though I have definitely been thinking of putting it in either as a prologue or Act 2 beginning in some way, probably a bit edited. This one has been on my mind for a while, hehe.

Summary: A medical examiner arrives to work in the morning and finds an unexpected guest by her door.

Warnings: Mentions of death, autopsies, unethical research practices

Dr. Campo entered the building, slightly shaking off the waterdrops off her umbrella before leaving it in the basket by the door. She could have sworn the weather forecast didn't have rain for today, at least in the morning. Driving to work was incredibly annoying today, and the darkness of 5AM didn't help.

On one hand, she enjoyed coming to work at 6 in the morning. The offices are empty and no one comes to annoy her while she's working - not that they come down there that much, barely anyone has business in a megacorporate autopsy - and she gets to leave two hours earlier, in theory, at least. She mostly just takes two hours during lunch to see her spouse or go meet up with friends. It's not like the corporates would let her leave at 2PM, especially with the tendency to give her too much work sometimes, especially paperwork.

She smiled at the security guard as a 'hello', quickly showing her ID card as she passed by. The same woman has worked here for years, and was always on the morning shifts. Dr. Campo felt like they have, in some ways, turned into friends that way, sometimes stopping to have a conversation on different topics.

Today, though, she sadly didn't have the time to do that. Waking up and seeing that there's an urgent case that needs to be solved really annoyed her, in a way.

She entered the elevator and swiped her left wrist by the chip reader to gain access to the lower floor. Sometimes she wondered what's the point of the ID cards if all the info can be found on the chip. Not that touching everyone's wrists sounded more exciting.

As she stepped out on her floor into the corridor, she stopped. Someone was there, by her workplace door, sitting on the floor. Deep in their thought, clearly, as they didn't seem to notice her arrival and instead continued reading something, the unnaturally dark purple hair being lit by the hologram view of the document.

Dr. Campo switched the lights on and cleared her throat. "Can I help you?"

They looked up, surprised that someone was standing in front of them. It took them a while - to collect their thoughts, she thought -before they could answer, "Um, yes. I'm here about Dr. Nejem."

"Who?"

"The, um, the woman who died in one of the labs yesterday? They said you'd be the one who would, um, see what was the cause of death," they "explained". She heard the person's voice shake a little, as if they were clearly upset by this topic.

"Wait a moment," she said and took out her tablet, "Hm, no, I haven't checked the body yet," she noticed the person wince at the word 'body', as if it somehow hurt them. "Who are you, again?"

The person sat still for a moment, looking at her, before slowly rising up, slightly leaning on the wall for support, left leg slightly bent. "I, um, I'm Ripley," it mumbled and showed Dr. Campo its ID card. Dr. Ripley T. Katz, pharmaceutical chemist, R&D department, and additional info like pronouns, home office and the other things corporate cared about. She looked at its face again, frowning. It looked younger than her daughter, and seemed to have already lost the happiness it showed on the ID card photo.

"This, uh, Dr. Nejem, a collegue of yours, I assume?"

Ripley nodded, but didn't seem to want to say anything else.

"You mentioned she died in a lab? Was it an accident, self-inflicted, caused by-"

"She took an experimental drug we are working on, hoping it would help with her injury," it said, its voice slightly shaking again, forcing it to pause for a moment. As it took a deep breath, it continued, "I'm, um, sorry, I'm not sure if I can say anything else, I-"

"I understand," she said, hoping that would calm it down a little. It wasn't her first secret project case the higher-ups had thrown to her. Definitely not the last, either. So much for the two-hour lunch break, though. "Anything else I should know?"

The chemist looked at her tablet. "It's in the report."

"Hm. So what are you doing here? I can't give you anything yet, as I've just arrived here. Come back in a few hours a-"

"Can I stay?"

"What? Why?"

"I, um... I feel like I owe it to her, as in, to find out what went wrong as soon as possible, I-" it paused, looking for the right words, "If it wasn't for me, this wouldn't have happened... She would've still live... It's, um, my fault?"

"What, was it you who gave her the substance or something?"

Its eyes widened, and frown on its mouth got wider. "No! I would never, that's- It's still in the early stage, why would I ever want to give it to a human at that point?"

"Then what is your pr-"

"I'm the one who came up with the idea for this thing, I-" it looked down and covered its face with its hands, "If I never got this idea, this wouldn't have happened. That's why I need to figure out what went wrong. Why she died. So I could fix it."

Dr. Campo stared at it for a moment. She never agreed with the company's idea of taking young scientists and working on their ideas, but this just made her hate the whole thing. A twenty-year-old should be enjoying its life, not blame itself for causing someone's death in a corporate lab, which it most likely had no control over. "Well, it was her choice, then, to take it, no?"

"Uh, what?"

"She chose to use it?"

"I, um, yes? I guess? But-"

"Then it's not something you can be responsible for."

Ripley stared at her with its dark brown eyes, clearly not believing her - or then just not being able to.

She thought how long it's been waiting for her here, the whole night? She doubted it would go home if she didn't let it in. "Fine, if you really want to, you can come inside and sit somewhere," she said as she opened the door.

It slowly followed her inside, then stopped near one of the tables close to the exit. After slowly looking around the room and not noticing a chair nearby, it sat on the table, wrapping its arms around self. "It's, um, kinda cold."

"A little, yes," she said as she turned away from it and walked to her desk. Her co-worker had left a few notes for her, one sticked to the hologram projector she used instead of a screen. She placed her tablet down and connected it to the projector, and quickly swiped through the tabs to find the correct one. "Okay, so, first off, I-" she turned back to the chemist, only to notice that it had curled up on the table, looking like it was asleep. It probably tried to look for a comfier position to sit in, and it ended up being too comfortable, she assumed.

Dr. Campo considered waking it up, at first, but then stopped. This way, it'd be less likely to slow her down with questions or by doing something, or just moving around as she worked. And no one would show up, anyway, so it was unlikely anyone would say anything about it.

Besides, it looked exhausted. Like it really needed some sleep.

She turned away and started preparing for the procedure.

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hey man.