punchyfeeley

[punchyfeeley]

If you are a person who wants to read fanfic and needs TTS but rightfully doesn’t want to support this asshole (also speechify, while it does have nice voices available at far lower prices than many places depending on how much you read, it has genuinely terrible accessibility and is the worst TTS for reading app I’ve ever had the displeasure of using. Your only option for in text navigation is clicking on a word or paragraph or using the scrubber bar. No navigating by chapter. No in text search. Etc.)

You have plenty of options for TTS.

- Speech central. My personal favorite. It’s free for limited usage. if you listen constantly like I do, it’s $10 for life. The voices are regular screen reader voices (vocalizer expressive, mainly. I use Fiona) though if you want AI voices there are ways to add those through a third party. You can even link your own server so they’re free, if you’re a person that knows how to do that. I do also want to note that as far as I’ve noticed speech central does the best with things like emojis, as far as I’m aware.

- Dolphin reader (TTS and good braille support. Free if I recall correctly. Again, vocalizer expressive I believe. Links directly with bookshare, as well.)

- Voice Dream Reader (a few more voice options than speech central and I heard it’s free now?)

Also, IF YOU HAVE ANY DISABILITY THAT LIMITS YOUR ABILITY TO READ PHYSICAL BOOKS AND YOU LIVE IN THE UNITED STATES:

You can get access to the NLS. You just need either a doctor, counselor, librarian—whoever—to sign the paperwork that says you have a print text disability. From there you can get access to BARD which is absolutely chock full of audiobooks. Stuffed to the brim. You can also get access to Bookshare. I believe it’s free if you’re a student but a yearly fee (varies country to country. Not sure how to gain access outside the US). It’s rare that I’ve come across a book that I can’t get the epub from bookshare.

If anyone wants more info on this sort of thing, I’m happy to help. I was an avid both fanfic and traditional published book reader and then surprise! You’re Blind now. So I have really like fought my way through all the options.

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much.

[punchyfeeley]

Couple weeks ago my friend sent me a link to @vaspider shop with their promotion for a buy one get one free on hot/cold packs:

Razz loves to spread the word about shops they buy from, especially small businesses or shops owned and operated by queer people. I did not need a popcorn scented heat pack, so I did not buy anything, but they did.

Tonight I got these messages: 



Emails, you say? Let’s see…

I just want you guys to know that this last line, “after this interaction I can no longer in good conscience promote your work or buy from you,” is akin to burning your crops and salting your fields coming from Razz. They are the most polite person I know. They do not want to stir up trouble. Part of it is because, as a blind person, they have had to learn to be non-confrontational in order to protect themselves, but it’s also because Razz is just genuinely a kind hearted and understanding person.

They live off of disability and occasional commissions, but they use what little money they have to support small businesses and independent artists because they appreciate the quality as well as the work that goes into each item. You can see here that Raz was trying to figure out if it was a genuine misunderstanding on their part because they hadn’t read the site correctly.

They were not able to read the site correctly because they’re blind.

This isn’t really about a misunderstanding, or Razz wanting to get the other item. It’s about Vaspider immediately treating them with contempt when Razz sent an email asking what had gone wrong. Is it the businesses responsibility to eat the cost of shipping due to someone not being able to understand the terms of the sale? It’s certainly good business practice, but I think Razz would have understood if they had been told that it would cost the store too much for another item to be sent if Vaspider hadn’t been such an asshole about it.

Razz is, unfortunately, used to disappointment. They are used to having to struggle to navigate websites that are not made with people like them in mind. They are even, at this point, used to having to lose money on things due to brain damage suffered from being forced into a botched medical procedure last year. But that isn’t how they opened this conversation. They opened with, “I think something may have gone wrong, can you help me understand what happened? “

The way Vaspider treated my friend is disgusting. I hope that those of you reading this will take Vaspiders behavior in this exchange into account when you’re deciding where to spend your money. The next time that you see one of their posts, a link to their store, or receive an email about a sale, I hope that you remember these emails and recall how Vaspider treats people that they don’t think are important. I want you to think about whether the group of people that Vaspider considers to be worthless might include you. 

I know that there are a lot of people willing to come to Vaspiders defense because they’re well-known and popular. They are so well-known and popular that they’re willing to treat one of their customers like garbage over $10 in shipping, and they’re willing to do it right out in the open for everyone to see.

Happy holidays, and eat a big old bag of dicks. 

Let’s fucking go.

[punchyfeeley]

PSA:

Acetaminophen/paracetamol has a hard stop upper dose limit, above which it becomes extremely toxic.

That limit is 4g (8 “extra strength” (500mg) tablets) in 24 hours (about 2 tablets every 6 hours).

A single dose of 22 extra strength tablets can kill you.

Taking 12 or more tablets per day for more than a week can also kill you (this is about 3 tablets every 6 hours).

Symptoms of overdose take up to 24 hours to manifest, and are fairly difficult to distinguish from other problems. They include abdominal pain (especially right upper quadrant), nausea, malaise, and confusion.

The antidote (n-acetylcystine) must be given within 8hours of ingestion in order to be useful.

After 10 hours the only thing that will work is a liver transplant.

You might think “why would I ever accidentally take so much?”

Well, acetaminophen is in almost everything in the cold/flu/pain aisle. Migraine combos like Excedrin, cold and flu combos like NyQuil, basically anything that says “non-aspirin pain relief”, and anything that’s branded as a fever reducer. It’s all probably acetaminophen/paracetamol.

So the goal of this post is to get you to read the labels on your medications. Because taking taking Tylenol and NyQuil together for a week (like you might if you had the flu) could kill you.

[punchyfeeley]

Help Bilal's Family Survive!

After Bilal @bilal-salah0 reached his goal on August 1st, he contacted me to let me know that, because the Rafah crossing is still bombed and closed, he can't actually use the funds to evacuate his family right away. The funds have since been redirected toward the skyrocketing cost of living in Gaza.

His family now has to raise another €30,000 as soon as possible to sustain themselves before the Rafah crossing opens, which could be as soon as next week for all we know.

My post celebrating Bilal getting close to his original GFM goal has over 7,000 notes, yet Bilal is only bringing in €20 every hour or so, which is a sharp decline from his previous momentum.

Bilal is still struggling with his own housing insecurity in Germany and the looming threat of deportation. Despite this horror, he's put the work in to vet a handful of fundraisers, promote fundraisers, and call out scams for us. He is simply too busy to campaign for his family on his own.

I encourage everyone to donate to Bilal's family and share his campaign with people you know on other social media platforms. You can repost any of the art people have made for him and share the pictures on his gofundme.

Bilal is a valuable member of our community! Please don't let him fall through the cracks!

verification source (no. 132 on el-shab-hussein/nabulsi's sheet)

current progress: €70,827 / €100,000

tagging for reach, DM me if you'd like to be removed from this list:

@timetravellingkitty @meaganfoster @briarhips @mazzikah @mahoushojoe 

@rhubarbspring @schoolhater @pcktknife@transmutationisms@sawasawako 

@feluka @terroristiraqis @irhabiya @commissions4aid-international @wellwaterhysteria 

@deepspaceboytoy @post-brahminism @junglejim4322 @kibumkim @neechees 

@mangocheesecakes @kyra45-helping-others @marnota @7bitter @tortiefrancis 

@toiletpotato @fromjannah @omegaversereloaded @vague-humanoid @criptochecca 

@aristotels @komsomolka @neptunerings @riding-with-the-wild-hunt @heritageposts 

@ot3 @amygdalae @ankle-beez@communistchilchuck @dykesbat 

@watermotif @stuckinapril @violentrevolution @mavigator @lacecap 

@socalgal @chilewithcarnage @ghelgheli @sayruq @northgazaupdates2

@decolonize-the-left @bisexualpositivity @arty-cakes @closet-keys @assad-zaman

@claudeleine @killy @heritageposts @beanlightbibblekeepflickbeanboss @ixzotica

@realitycanbewhateveridesire @avifromaplaceofcaring @abyssbirds @maruxee @merricat-3

@tedious-insanity @budgies-in-blue @bandedbulbussnarfblat @emeraldinerosefaedragon @mothalaalee

@mere-glim @patantasma @dreamcaster-jelly @fuzzy-little-wormi-guy @salty-mush-soup

@leviticus101st @yamino @a-wild-louser-appears @kn1ghtraine @vhstape

@whatthe4355 @ehksidian @lyunarium @sunpdf @mytinystay @lopiditty

@illiterate-words @aphicius @shrimpkidd @megabullz @unknown-lifeform

@mindfulruminate @nibbelraz @beasaintgermain @fluffykitty149 @tododeku-or-bust

@littlestpersimmon @wayneradiotv @windwake-me-up-inside @flamagenitus @little-big-batbag

@chamiryokuroi @alliumduorpf @sunlitmcgee @fanficphoenixed @ourflagmeansdeath

[punchyfeeley]

The funniest thing about biphobia is that when it's directed towards men it's just homophobia and when it's directed towards women it's just misogyny. But the woke kind so it's actually okay

[punchyfeeley]

They're in dire need for NOMAD esims in Gaza! Please refer to the website on how to buy esims

[punchyfeeley]

i’ve started babysitting for a VERY christian family which is great because they pay me a lot of money but as someone who was raised almost completely agnostic it’s kind of insane. the 2 year old keeps asking me to read her stories from the bible. (why are we reading david and goliath to a 2 year old????) the 5 year old told me today that he was going to bring his legos to heaven with him. he also has repeatedly told me that the lego spaceships he builds are stronger than jesus. (not sure what to say to that. do i deny it??? are things allowed to be stronger than jesus??) had to stop myself mid sentence today because i almost told them im not going to heaven which would DEFINITELY have caused several meltdowns. they’re also both completely fascinated by my nose ring

[punchyfeeley]

Separating nature and society as like this dualism—these two things that don’t touch—has also long been a function of colonialism. This here is what exists inside of the walls and is what is protected and that there is outside and is what we are protected from. That there is exotic. It is to be owned and conquered and made useful. This includes people, by the way. I can talk more on this if people want but I highly recommend the book “a history of the world in seven cheap things” it’s very readable and covers this topic well.

This mindset also results in very ableist exclusivist sorts of takes about what it means to be in touch with nature. That having a paved trail means you’re not really “in nature”, for example. Someone at one point said something similar when I expressed my joy over being able to visit the overlook points you can drive up to on the blue ridge parkway. For more on this topic, again I’m happy to go on or Alison Kafer has dealt with it in I believe it’s chapter three of Feminist, Queer, Crip. I believe I have EPUBS of both of these texts if anyone wants or needs them.

Anyway, I just mean to say that OP is right. You do not exist separate from nature, but it’s so easy to fall into this mindset of nature as being “out there”. Like it’s something to go visit. The cracks in your sidewalk from tree roots that refused to be contained, (the rock I had to dig out of my puppy’s mouth), the wood beam that rots and decays, the paper in the books you read, the cotton in your shirt, the metric fuck ton of rain that fell last night.

i've been reading a lot of books about urban naturalism recently, and the one big thing they all talk about is how you HAVE to stop seeing nature as something that happens somewhere else. nature is not just charismatic megafauna and state parks and mountain ranges. nature is that abandoned lot that's growing native milkweed in it. nature is the murder of crows that lives in your block. nature is the moss growing on your roof and the dandelions growing in the sidewalk cracks and the song birds at your neighbor's birdfeeder. and you should care about it! you should notice it! that's YOUR nature!

[punchyfeeley]

Here is the link! What an amazing idea ❤️

[punchyfeeley]

“Why is snoop dogg at the Olympics-“

WRONG QUESTION!

WHY ISNT MARTHA STEWART THERE WITH HIM?

[punchyfeeley]

hey i can't make it to Sorry For Visiting Wanton Destruction Upon Your Populace For No Reason Day yeah uhm its just that like you didn't invite my war crime friend and i think its kinda fucked up that you did that

[punchyfeeley]

SCREAMS 80% of my feed is pictures with no alt-text im losing my mind this app is unnavigable. I can’t even read the tags at the end of posts bc the “see more” button is not screenreader accessible. Tumblr PLEASE

[punchyfeeley]

God gives his toughest battles (making phone calls) to his strongest soldiers (me and my bad anxiety)

[punchyfeeley]

pelagic barnacles feeding

[punchyfeeley]

🛋️

[punchyfeeley]

Source

Phenomenal choice

As a former teacher, MN Governor Walz has:

Signed legislation protecting abortion rights

Signed an executive order protecting gender-affirming care

Banned conversion therapy

Restored voting rights to Minnesotans who are on parole, probation or community release due to a felony

Signed voting rights legislation

Signed legislation legalizing recreational cannabis

Signed legislation guaranteeing free school lunches to students

Expanded workers rights and is supported by unions