#I’m not even fucking kidding I use ChatGPT.

[schlatt-is-president]

Maria, or Mar, stood at a height of around 5'5, and had an obvious Puerto Rican accent as she yelled through an phone about missing some coffee that was due thirty minutes prior. She was about 35, and had graying hair. Having a kid at 17 will do that to you, though. At the very least the kid had moved out and she could finally move on from being a Mother all the time. She was an avian, with long wings that dragged against the ground and feet like a bird's.

Walking briskly out of her office, she ran into Grayson with a huff, stumbling back slightly. God damnit. She was not awake enough for any human interaction.

[-@clinging-to-a-dream :3]

Grayson’s piercing gaze locked onto the woman with a mixture of disdain and something almost like curiosity, his eyes narrowing as if assessing the situation. He stood tall, his broad shoulders looming over her as he spoke, his voice edged with quiet authority.

“Apologies, ma’am,” he said, his tone steady, though there was an underlying sharpness to it. Without hesitation, he extended a large, calloused hand toward her, offering help with an almost businesslike air. Despite the collision, he showed no sign of losing his balance—his solid frame and towering height allowing him to remain unmoved, rooted firmly to the spot like an immovable force.

[itmeblog]

POLITICS INTO THE VOID TIME

In the event that you've not been pretty obsessed with how American politics have been going since Kamala became the Democratic nominee (there's been good and bad, that I'm aware of) the tone of the campaign has completely changed.

Because Kamala's team has decided that Trump isn't threatening, all powerful, and scary, (though the ads I've seen have sort of been using old language) they have decided that he's weird and he's a creep.

These were made 11 days apart:

As a kid who grew up being called weird (and occasionally a creep) this is hilarious. It's just playground bullying.

Dems really said, we tried being the bigger person, it wasn't working out.

And Trump's policies and desires are actually weird. A proposed porn ban is weird. Trying to put librarians in jail is weird, policing people's bodies is creep behavior.

As a former weird kid, the way to overcome this sort of bullying is not to assert that you aren't weird or god forbid shout "I'm cool" (the more you say it, the less true it is), it's to embrace that you're weird and accept that not everyone is going to like you, and that you'll probably never have a seat at the cool table.

But and I cannot express this enough Trump wants to be cool. His whole thing is, being edgy, and dangerous, and "being brave enough to say what people are afraid to say". And when you get someone who is "being brave enough to say what normal people are afraid to say" and shoot back with "they don't say that because it's fucking weird"... where does he go from there?

It's a depowering move. They are depowering Trump.

When you were a kid talking passionately about something that interested you and someone said "that's weird (derogatory)" it probably made you feel really small. That kid stole the power you were wielding in said conversation.

So the question is, can Trump proudly and convincingly assert "I'm weird. I’m a weirdo. I don't fit in. And I don't want to fit in. Have you ever seen me without this stupid hat on? That's weird." (GOD HIS CHATGPT AND PLAGIARIZED SPEECHES HAVE THE ABILITY TO DO THE FUNNIEST THING IN THE WORLD)

Is he ready to go full edgelord in the public eye?? I'm sure he'll still have followers, edgelords have a weird sort of power in this era of internet, but they are also indisputably cringe.

Like I'm not sure this will achieve anything other than being ridiculously entertaining (and thus catching the eye in headlines and reports). But,my family read one of the new releases and went oh right this whole thing is weird as fuck and it felt nice to get some kind of public acknowledgment that this is not normal.

So far the right has been struggling against couch fucking allegations, them saying that adults without kids should have less of a voice in voting (weird thing to say, but if you're polling badly with youngsters and need to maintain power~~), that Kamala is a crazy childless cat lady (Whoops accidentally alienated some of their base there, some people simply cannot have children, really shouldn't insinuate they are less than because of it. Not to mention that their own policies are making more everyday in mostly red states as complications with getting abortions for non-viable fetuses are leaving many people sterile. I'm not even going to go on with the fact that many people, like myself, simply don't want kids and that's reason enough. Also she does have step children), and the rumor that Trump wasn't really shot (as they finally removed the bandage to reveal... nothing, head wounds heal really fast but going from that giant plaster to nothing is doing a bit of a number in the rumor mill).

Basically they had Joe! THEY SPENT THE WHOLE RNC INSULTING HIM. THAT WAS THEIR WHOLE PLAN!! He was old, he was white. The inherit ableism/ageism of sleepy Joe and old Joe, and infirm Joe, were within "acceptable parameters". It was easy and safe to rib him.

They are struggling to find something on Kamala that doesn't come across as racist or sexist. Because they're polling poorly with Black Americans and they are down in the polls for women. Can't call her sleepy or lazy. Can't call her old (she's younger) can't call her stupid, can't call her infirm. Can't insinuate she's too emotional (have you met Trump??)

They probably could get her on a few policies but the 2025 project is looming large behind them.

I am foaming at the mouth trying to get to the next debate. But Trump is doing his best to weasel out of it. I am heartbroken! I miss the anytime, anywhere promise of yore.

[myautisticpov]

So, shit like ChatGPT is problematic for a whole host of reasons (being trained on works without the creators’ permission being a big one)

But, like, even if you’re just taking the use cases at face value, all of it fucking looks like someone handing an 11-year-old a calculator and saying “this child can now compete with professional mathematicians”

Like, yeah, if you ask them questions that the kid already knows how to do, the kid with the calculator will be faster than the professional at least some of the time

(I was going to say all of the time, but then I remembered that even I don’t reach for a calculator, like, when I’m playing darts or something, and I used to get annoyed when tills at retail jobs forced me to use them because typing everything out took longer than working it out in my head)

But, like, think of how fast that kid might actually get a fairly simple equation wrong if they don’t know something basic like the order of operations

And yeah, I’ve genuinely not seen a use case for ChatGPT that wouldn’t be a massive dumpster fire if it wasn’t being used by someone who already knew what they were doing

[undertheorangetree]

Can I just hate AI on main?? Snapchat is advertising their AI person to me: I already hate that it’s at the top of my screen. Google’s first results are all AI now and have listed information that is factually incorrect. The new iPhone is out and when they email me about it half the email is “look at this new AI!” I hate it so much! I don’t want it! Most of the time it’s wrong/stupid, I don’t want technology grabbing my stuff and fucking with it (I already hate algorithms that sell me shit) and I really don’t want its use progressing; people stealing other’s unfinished works and feeding it to AI to “finish” enrages me. And as a former teacher and current coach I can literally see my students getting less smart/creative/driven/patient because of things like ChatGPT. If they don’t have an answer INSTANTLY they give up and they refuse to take five seconds to even pretend to verify that answer. (I hate sounding like a “kids these days” because I know adults are doing it too, I just don’t teach adults yknow?)

Sorry about the rant I just got that stupid Snapchat message and I knew this was an anti-AI safe space. Thank you and have a good day homie.

If AI has no haters I’m cold in my grave

[bisluthq]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13809239/Travis-Kelce-calls-lawyers-leaked-contract-claimed-reveal-exact-date-relationship-Taylor-Swift-end-Fake-PR-strategy-document-spread-online-gave-illusion-year-long-love-story-sham.html

What the ACTUAL FUCK Gaylors are getting closer and closer to being as much of a danger to Taylor as those creepy stalkers who try to break in her houses ffs someone get these ppl into a psych ward I'm not even kidding like they need professional help

I don’t see how this is being as much of a danger to Taylor as going into her house but I wouldn’t preclude Gaylors from going into her house to find The Contract/the sekrit bébés/whatever one day very soon. This particular internet attention seeking behaviour is just like… such bullshit lol that I’m surprised his team even bothered responding but ig it’s a bad look for them when it’s got their logo on the one page. Absolute fucking nonsense tho lol and idk how you could look at this and be like “ah yes this seems to make sense” lol. I saw people doing debunks of it based on actual factual inaccuracies but what document uses Travis Kelce that many times as a full name lmao? Surely they’d say “the client” after the first paragraph because also parts of such a thing would be boilerplate copy pasted? Idk lol that was the first thing that struck me where I was like “but this legit doesn’t seem even a lil bit real”. Also they’re willing to post it with “Emily’s” name on Reddit (so she’d presumably be fired and maybe sued except for how she's gonna be fine because she doesn’t exist) BUT you are not willing to go sell it to Daily Mail (which is evidently interested) or Metro or The Sun? Okay then.

Finally I saw people saying it’s ChatGPT and they mustn’t do my little robot friend dirty like that. ChatGPT wouldn’t be as bad as this lol. ChatGPT would be bad and require editing but it wouldn’t be THIS bad.

[lemonmoxy]

Ok just to preface this. I am not a fan of AI. For labor reasons, for quality reasons, for the selfish reason of when I’m looking for art I don’t want it clogged down with just objectively bad art (like the hands are fucked up and extra feet).

I do think the primary problem isn’t AI itself but unregulated capitalism that doesn’t care about quality, only lowering costs and the lack of safety nets for people who are ejected to cut costs. It’s bad that the companies do that. It’s bad that there are no safety nets. The problem isn’t really AI BUT until we fix those problems we should regulate the thing directly causing harm.

But some of you anti-AI people have lost your fucking minds.

So. A lot of you are crying about stolen commissions. I promise you, most of the people using AI to generate pictures of their OCs were never going to pay you. They cannot afford to pay you. Or that’s a luxury expense that just isn’t going to happen. I am paycheck to paycheck and I’m never going to spend a whole video game’s worth of money on a picture of my little goblin. Your art IS worth that much, I promise you, I’m not telling you to lower your rates. But I do not have that kind of money for that sort of indulgence. I’m sorry but you peddle luxury, there’s a reason why we had art patrons back in the day.

Some of my friends use AI for their OCs for table top games. I don’t. Because honestly sitting there fucking with it sounds tedious and frustrating to me and the results are always mid at best. But y’all also get mad about people “taking” your art to use for their OCs and maybe editing it to fit the character they have in mind. Which is WILD. I’ll agree, people who do that shouldn’t post it, but if you’re so mad at what people are doing in the privacy of their non published casual dnd sessions, maybe chill the fuck out? Being you sounds exhausting. I also see some of you get mad at people tagging things as inspiration. So what? You want people to pay the poor tax of using piccrew? Even though the results are samey and kinda bad? Idk y’all just are tripping on something.

I’m starting to wonder just what people think inspiration and brainstorming are. People have been pretending to be baffled about why people might use AI to brainstorm. “Use your own brain”. What the fuck do you think brainstorming is? You do not brainstorm by sitting in your room thinking. I mean maybe YOU do. But like you get inspiration from the world around you guys, be for real. A conversation you overheard. An outfit you saw at a crosswalk. The set of the brow of someone on your bus route. A funny post you saw on tumblr. A generative AI like chat GPT is taking things found online and showing them to you. Unless you’re uncritically using it to write a story (and if so that’s bad. Lack of effort and a bad product is bad obviously) you ARE using your brain. We draw inspiration from the world around us, just like the AI does. I know it sucks to feel unoriginal but you just are, sorry. That’s not bad even if it might feel like it. It just is. Even if you sit in a little box and don’t look at the world while you think, you’re thinking about the things you’ve seen and reconfiguring them. Sorry to be the one to break it to you?

Also, you know what chatGPT is good for? Anything an intern could do. You wanna organize your schedule? It’s good at that. You want a grocery list? It’s good at that. You want a menu based of what you got? It’s good at that. Not perfect. Don’t fucking trust a machine without quality checking it, we know that, you guys know that, corporations know that too they just don’t CARE. I don’t know why they’re pretending not to know, money, I don’t know why you guys started pretending.

I saw someone complaining like an old person about spell check and grammar check and how their kid didn’t know that it could be wrong. A ten year old. As if that isn’t normal and explaining to kids how the world works is dystopian. Nah man it’s not a mystery why the kid who still has spelling tests as a part of their everyday school lesions might not know that machines are fallible yet. Probably just how he hasn’t quite learned that adults are idiots too. This person was acting like spell check was some moral sin, some hallmark of the end. Ok grandpa, do you think we should give up the pencil too because writing things down is rotting our brains?

Just like writing things down isn’t an evil action of destroying your memory. I really do not see the difference between me googling for recipes with my ingredients and chatGPT doing it for me. Frankly I’m just as likely to forget I don’t have coriander. But it takes longer for me to do it and sucks.

[yourlocalartsonist]

I was working on my fanfic one day, and although I was EXTREMELY FUCKING AGAINST IT, I was stuck at an area and decided to use ChatGPT to see if it could get my brain flowing. I was in 12th grade and even the teachers were tryna tell us how to use it “smartly” so I thought maybe I judged it too harshly and it was worth a shot. I wasn’t even gonna use the generated writing itself, just bounce off of it as inspiration.

So anyway I use the thing and prompt it to generate me a scene describing post-rainy weather. First off, it didn’t even get the weather right and just generated rainy weather. Second off, it was the most generic, dry, worse than beginner levels of writing I had ever seen from man or machine in my entire fucking life. I was in such disgust and disbelief ‘cause people were praising it A LOT back then, and the one time I decided to try it out I was so enormously disappointed. Like I’m not kidding you, I have never seen worse writing than what that stupid robot spat out to me AND I GREW UP ON WATTPAD. At least inexperienced HUMAN writing has personality in it.

I got mad, closed the tab, and wrote the scene myself like I otherwise would’ve out of spite at that point. Obviously, it was leagues better than what the stupid AI could come up with.

Moral of the story, don’t use ChatGPT for anything👍

we need to make using chatgpt embarrassing bc sorry it really is. what do you mean you can’t write an email

[writing-winters]

sgroa: vampire diaries, s1 e16: there goes the neighborhood

Hola, y’all, how’s the heat where you are? We got two days of 70-degree temps, and now we’re back to high 90s! Thank all the various gods that it’s the solstice, and darkness returns to us apace. Let’s get started!

We open on the vamp house - covenhouse? - where the raveyard vamps are learning about television and getting haircuts.

Why. Why are vampires getting haircuts. WTF. I - You know what? Let’s just ignore this and move on, shall we? It’s hot, it’s summer, I do not have the energy to get into why vampires almost never need haircuts and why the fuck are you writing/directing/running a show about vampires if you can’t even be trusted to know that?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

MOVING ON. Anna goes from teaching a TV class to seeing the homeowner, Ms. Gibbons, being chomped. She gives the male vamp chomping the stinkeye, and he disengages. Ms. Gibbons asks if he had enough, and Anna tells her to go get some rest - and we can see that she also has bites on her throat. Male vamp says no, she feels fine, and she agrees - so she’s been mojo’d and this is all compulsion. Anna doesn’t look thrilled, and then we get our opening sting.

Matt is parenting his mother before school, which is awful. Not, like, the scene, but it’s awful for Matt. I’m pissed at his mom, mother-to-mother, because bitch, this is your job. You chose to have that kid. Fuckin’ step up. Jesus.

Elena and Stefan are gossiping at her locker. Damon is still depressed, won’t talk about Katharine, and has Elena decided what to do about her vampire birth mother? Who apparently is related to Katharine? Elena says that like it’s a fact, but I thought it was Damon’s depressed ramblings. Vampire Diaries, I wish I knew how to pay attention to you!

Back at the covenhouse, Anna’s mom is showing Harper (the vamp from the woods last episode) how to text, when they trigger Anna’s voicemail. She’s saving one from Jeremy, and she comes in to stop the phone playing. Harper asks if that’s her boyfriend, and her mom says, “Of course not!” in a scandalized tone. Uh-oh, did someone catch feelings?

Oh, Anna’s mom is Pearl, thank you for the reminder, Harper! Anyway, Anna and Pearl are taking Gibbons’s car and ATM card into town, where they have vague “business”, as Pearl says to the vamp who was eating Gibbons in the open: Frederick. He objects to being a “babysitter”, and Pearl reminds him that they have to cooperate with each other. Which - yes, of course they do, they evolved as humans. I’ve never understood why so much vampire media insists that vampires are weirdly territorial and always want to kill each other and shit. Why? Do you know people like that? Gross. You should maybe not hang out with them anymore, they’re broken.

Matt was distracted by his mother and maybe Elena and didn’t kiss Caroline before heading to class, which I didn’t think was hugely important, but now Caro is inviting Elena and Stefan on a double-date night with her and Matt, so. Oh, she thinks it will lead to them all getting over their awkwardness - because Elena and Matt used to date, remember. Stefan agrees with Caro, so Elena acquiesces.

Pearl goes to see Damon. She was able to waltz right in because no human lives there. Anna asks what they do about other vampires, and he says he kills them. He tries to demonstrate on Pearl, but she bends his hand back easily and suggests they sit down to talk instead.

The drama! How are these vampires all so strong and good-looking after being entombed for 145 years? Like, they were starved, they were basically left for dead. They’ve been eating whom, Ms. Gibbons? All 27 of them? They can’t eat animals, but they can all share one donor for weeks? (Okay, we don’t know it’s weeks, it might have been a day and a half, the way this show is.) And Pearl can beat the crap out of Damon.

Y’all, I haven’t even mentioned that it is broad fuckin’ daylight, again, either.

Jeremy decides to ask ChatGPT how to become or kill a vampire. Just kidding, it’s an actual chat room, this is like, 2008 or something. He gets joke answers, and we cut away to Pearl and Damon as he settles in after asking for serious answers only.

Pearl and Anna tell Damon they know about the Founding Families’ Council, and that Damon’s on it, and that he’s supplying vervain. They want all the names of the Council and for him to stop supplying. Damon scoffs and asks what it’s supposed to achieve. They want their town back. Damon doesn’t give a shit, and Pearl offers him Katharine. But Damon doesn’t want her! First of all, he doesn’t think Pearl could even find her, but secondly, he’s not going to be her “little minion”.

So Pearl puts her thumbs in his eyes, and he’s unable to get her off. She says she has 400 years on him, and yes, that may be true, but YOU WERE IN A BOX FOR 150 YEARS.

Y’all. Y’ALL. I HAVE A CHARACTER WHO WAS STARVED IN A BOX SINCE THE 1860s! My man was not in a position to be doing anything but eating and killing entire grown people for several years after that. YEARS.

Elena thinks they should cancel on Caroline and Matt, but Stefan says this is what he’s wanted: to hang out with his girlfriend, to have as normal a life as possible. He’s been looking forward to it! Elena acquiesces.

The “business” Pearl and Anna have in town is meeting Jenna, who is apparently a realtor, to look at the old apothecary shop that they… used to own? So who owns it now? Shouldn’t they still own it, if they never sold it? Shouldn’t some sort of lawyer’s clause have kicked in when they disappeared?

I know too much. I cannot be trusted to just go along with the plot. I’m way too autistic for that, and I fuckin’ love logistics.

Damon rolls up to the bar at The Grill with sunglasses on, but when Matt’s mom asks him what the deal is, he takes them off, and his eyes are fine. Kelly says he’s new around here, and she would have remembered someone who looked like him when he says he’s not. She’s been blown off for the bartending job interview - she did fuck the manager’s boyfriend last time she was in town - and is about to hit on Damon really hard when Jenna walks in and Kelly invites her to drink with them and catch up. Because there’s nothing a television show likes more than everyone knowing everyone else - so no one ever leaves town, or only for college, or only until they decide to marry their high school sweetheart, or whatever. So weird to me. I grew up in Connecticut, my husband in Wisconsin, we met in Phoenix and currently live in Denver. Like. Do people just… sit and stay?

Back at the covenhouse, trouble is brewing. Despite being told how to use television and the internet, a bunch of vamps are just sitting around, staring at each other. And because there’s nothing vampires like more than never mastering their emotions, Harper and Frederick are getting into it.

Pearl comes in and stops the fight. Frederick wants to go into town, but she says they have to keep a low profile. How did this jabroni survive? YOU’RE A VAMPIRE. You have to hide. Get your shit together, my god.

The double date is going well, until we learn that Kelly and Elena’s mom were best friends, and she and Matt have known each other literally since they were babies. Then Matt looks over at the bar and sees Kelly drinking with Damon, Elena sees Jenna with them, and everyone on the double date is very disapproving.

Frederick and a female vamp, Beth-Ann, are going to town. Harper catches them, and Frederick’s all, “gonna stop me?” But no, obviously not, he’s just going to tell Pearl and she’s going to kill you, dude.

Anna shows up at Jeremy’s. He doesn’t look terribly enthused, and when she goes past him into the house - she’s already been invited in - he looks positively terrified.

Nonsense at The Grill - Damon suggests they get hammered, Elena talks about the first time she and Matt got drunk, Jenna notices the kids are there.

Jeremy asks why Anna and her mom decided to stay in town. “Business opportunity,” she says, her mom is going to open a store. And Anna might go back to school, but she’d have to ask. “I wish you were going now,” says Jeremy, “because I could use some help with my history paper about VAMPIRES.”

But he has a theory that vampires are maybe just outsiders, just misunderstood. She gave him all that info before, what does she think? “I made that up, Jeremy. I wanted you to like me. Vampires aren’t real.” Oh. OK. Sure. I don’t think he’s convinced, Anna.

The girls go to the bathroom, and Caro tells Elena to stop going down memory lane with Matt. “The point was to show him how much you like Stefan,” she says, and stalks away back to the pool tables. Elena follows, but is immediately intercepted by Frederick, who calls her Katharine. “You have the wrong person,” she says, and he hangs onto her arm for an uncomfortably long moment before saying it’s his mistake.

She goes directly to Stefan, whom Frederick recognizes, and very obviously texts him what’s going on. He immediately looks up at Frederick - but he and Beth-Ann are gone.

In the car on the way… home? Elena says she wants to deal with it tomorrow. Oh, Stefan’s house, they’re gonna watch a movie or something, I guess. Caroline feels like she’s been there before, lol. Stefan and Matt bond over cars. Matt brings up a Camaro Elena’s dad used to have, and Caro says she doesn’t like sports cars: they’re too hard to make out in. “Nah,” says Matt, “it wasn’t that bad,” and immediately everyone knows he fucked up, and Caroline goes back to the house.

It doesn’t bother Stefan, and Matt tells him he’s happy Elena is with him. She’s happy, and that’s what matters to Matt. Aw. Get it together, Matty, or you’ll lose Caroline.

Jenna leaves Damon and Kelly practically sucking face at the bar, and walks out to find Frederick and break her shoe. He breaks the other one for her, and then asks her about Damon, saying they “go way back”. But he’d rather talk to her, and tries to mojo her into going with him, but obviously she’s got the vervain amulet. She gets her cab, and maybe Frederick realizes he doesn’t know everything.

Matt gets the engine going on Stefan’s - it might be a Karmann Ghia, but I’m not 100% on that - anyway, he gets it to run, and they head back to the girls, and because everyone senses the tension between Caroline and everyone else, Stefan tells Matt and her to take it for a drive.

Jeremy makes Anna and him sandwiches, and while her back is turned, he cuts his hand on purpose to see her reaction. He gets her to vamp out and she chomps him - well, chomps his already-bleeding hand. Jenna interrupts, and Anna goes out the back door while Jeremy is distracted.

Y’all, not a lot of jokes this week, but we’re back in the land of super-quick scenes, nine million cuts, and absolutely zero plot movement. Well, maybe not zero, but it is very little. Most of this ep is just relationship drama, which is not what I’m here for, frankly.

Matt and Caro make up and make out. Obviously. I do like them, they’re the least irritating people on this show, and Caro proves her point about sports cars, heh.

Damon brings Kelly home, and right about the time her legs are wrapped around him in the FRONT HALLWAY, Matt and Caroline come back in, followed shortly by Elena and Stefan, who’ve been alerted by Matt’s very loud, “MOM?!”

Kelly slinks back through the door, Matt follows, I’m sure Stefan’s lecture to Damon will be boring as usual. Stefan sends the girls home, and of course Frederick is watching the house. So no, Stefan’s lecture will not be boring: it will be interrupted by Frederick flying through a window, followed by Beth-Ann, to have a vamp fight in the house. What these men must spend on glazers, wouldn’t it be easier to have a butler or something?

Frederick gets away, Beth-Ann looks dead but we’ll see. Stefan says he recognizes them from 1864, and Damon says, “About that….”

Damon. DAMON. You didn’t tell him the crypt is open?!?!?!?!?!? You couldn’t send a damn text all day?

Matt’s lecture to his mother, on the other hand, is excellent. She’s drunk at the bar, where HE works to pay bills that SHE doesn’t? She’s tryna fuck a guy half her age? She’s always drunk somewhere? She says he’s right, and she’ll try.

Elena and Jeremy meet in the bathroom to brush their teeth. “How was your night?” says Jeremy. “Same old, same old,” says Elena, and they brush in silence.

Frederick goes back to the covenhouse. Pearl is waiting, and asks after Beth-Ann. “She won’t be coming back,” he says. “We shouldn’t have left.”

She fixes him a glass of blood from a motherfucking WATER BOTTLE, and I do not have time for that, we’re just gonna move along - She fixes a glass of blood for him, then stabs him in the stomach with a wooden spoon and throws the blood on him. “Next time you’ll listen to me.” Ooh, Pearl might become my new fave, that was excellent. Not the water bottle, obviously, but I… can’t. We have three minutes left, I’m out of steam.

Elena lets Stefan know she made it home okay.

Anna shows up in Jeremy’s bedroom. She could have killed him. She should have. But she didn’t. How did he know? He tells her about Vicki, and the articles, and her own eyeballs when he kissed her. Why didn’t she kill him? She says she’s a sucker for lost guys, like him. Why did he take the chance? Because maybe it means Vicki’s still out there, alive.

And because he wants Anna to turn him.

[thesunshinesanctuary]

Not in tech, but I’m a tech worker in higher ed. We have to tread lightly, too. Some board member or administrator thinks AI fixes everything and students need to “learn it” and you’re hardly allowed to dismiss it. Some of the useful slightly coded phrases I’ve had to use more than once over the last few months when people think AI solves things it doesn’t solve…

“So, what problem would this product be solving that makes it worth the cost, including the environmental impact?” (This is a trillion dollar product that sucks lakes dry without a trillion dollar problem to solve, so far.)

“Why is a generated answer that may include entirely invented false information preferable in this instance?” (I can get you a better answer on Duck Duck Go or our library’s journal search. And if we ChatGPT this paper, who’s going to check it didn’t outright plagiarize?)

“What data set do you see this being trained on?” (How the fuck do you expect the AI to know how to schedule classes three years from now when it has zero darned idea that Sue is no longer going to work here and Brad will suddenly have school-age kids and you’re remodeling an academic building? Especially if you don’t even feed it previous schedules?)

“What AI is really good at is pattern recognition…” (The AI doesn’t have any of its own insights. It’s going to see that number 1 went up in x relation to number 2. It’s not going to tell you what majors to pour money into because it can predict the future. It’s not good at context when you give it none. An Excel spreadsheet is not context.)

“I’m not particularly worried about programmers being completely replaced by AI any time soon.” (Babe, the users can barely explain to me, a friendly-faced chatterbox who is good at translating their user-ese and what I know about their jobs to something more tech-y, what they want. I’m less worried they’re going to be able to tell the faceless, unforgiving beep-boop bot what they want. Especially if it tells them to glue their toppings on their pizza and they can’t debug what comes out of it.)

so like I said, I work in the tech industry, and it's been kind of fascinating watching whole new taboos develop at work around this genAI stuff. All we do is talk about genAI, everything is genAI now, "we have to win the AI race," blah blah blah, but nobody asks - you can't ask -

What's it for?

What's it for?

Why would anyone want this?

I sit in so many meetings and listen to genuinely very intelligent people talk until steam is rising off their skulls about genAI, and wonder how fast I'd get fired if I asked: do real people actually want this product, or are the only people excited about this technology the shareholders who want to see lines go up?

like you realize this is a bubble, right, guys? because nobody actually needs this? because it's not actually very good? normal people are excited by the novelty of it, and finance bro capitalists are wetting their shorts about it because they want to get rich quick off of the Next Big Thing In Tech, but the novelty will wear off and the bros will move on to something else and we'll just be left with billions and billions of dollars invested in technology that nobody wants.

and I don't say it, because I need my job. And I wonder how many other people sitting at the same table, in the same meeting, are also not saying it, because they need their jobs.

idk man it's just become a really weird environment.

[clinging-to-a-dream]

The woman met Grayson's gaze with a flicker of defiance, though her expression softened just enough to show she wasn’t entirely unmoved by his commanding presence. She hesitated for a moment, then, with a subtle sigh, took his hand. Her grip was firm, but her eyes never left his, wary yet intrigued.

"No need for apologies," she replied, her voice smooth but laced with an edge of cool composure.

"Seems you’re not the type to be easily knocked off course."

She tugged herself upright with a slight effort, brushing off her coat with a quick flick of her wrist. Her posture straightened, and she readjusted her purse strap, that rested against her shoulder.

Maria, or Mar, stood at a height of around 5'5, and had an obvious Puerto Rican accent as she yelled through an phone about missing some coffee that was due thirty minutes prior. She was about 35, and had graying hair. Having a kid at 17 will do that to you, though. At the very least the kid had moved out and she could finally move on from being a Mother all the time. She was an avian, with long wings that dragged against the ground and feet like a bird's.

Walking briskly out of her office, she ran into Grayson with a huff, stumbling back slightly. God damnit. She was not awake enough for any human interaction.

[-@clinging-to-a-dream :3]

Grayson’s piercing gaze locked onto the woman with a mixture of disdain and something almost like curiosity, his eyes narrowing as if assessing the situation. He stood tall, his broad shoulders looming over her as he spoke, his voice edged with quiet authority.

“Apologies, ma’am,” he said, his tone steady, though there was an underlying sharpness to it. Without hesitation, he extended a large, calloused hand toward her, offering help with an almost businesslike air. Despite the collision, he showed no sign of losing his balance—his solid frame and towering height allowing him to remain unmoved, rooted firmly to the spot like an immovable force.