#Instead of just margin auto????

[cuttledreams-bugs]

Also website is almost done, I am tentatively excited to share it soon. I cannot believe my html/css learning dreams are coming true

Look forward to a handful of updates shortly!

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from the Substack Distilled:

In the last few months, the Biden administration has quietly passed multiple federal policies that will transform the United States economy and wipe out billions of tons of future greenhouse gas emissions. 

The new policies have received little attention outside of wonky climate circles. And that is a problem.

Earlier this year, I wrote that Biden has done more to mitigate climate change than any President before him. For decades, environmentalists tried and failed to convince lawmakers to pass even the most marginal climate policies. It wasn’t until Biden took office that the logjam broke and the climate policies flowed. And yet few American voters are hearing this story in an election year of huge consequence.

It’s been two and a half months since I wrote that article. In that short time, the Biden administration has passed a handful of climate policies that will collectively cut more than 10 billion tons of planet-warming pollution over the next three decades, more than the annual emissions of India, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and the entire continent of Europe—combined.

One climate policy that flew under the radar recently was the administration's latest energy efficiency rule, unveiled at the beginning of May. The new rules will reduce the amount of energy that water heaters use by encouraging manufacturers to sell models with more efficient heat pump technology. The new regulation is expected to save more energy than any federal regulation in history. 

Most people give little thought to how the water in their homes is heated, but water heaters are the second-largest consumer of energy in the average American home and one of the largest sources of climate pollution in the country. 

A few days before the administration announced its water heater efficiency rules, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced another sweeping policy.

According to the new rules, existing coal power plants will need to either shut down or install carbon capture technology capable of removing 90% of their carbon pollution. The policy will also require any new natural gas power plants that provide baseload power—the ones that run throughout the day and night, as opposed to the peaker plants that only run for a small fraction of hours in the year—to install carbon capture technology. 

The new power sector rules are effectively a death blow to coal power in America, which has slowly faded over the last two decades but still emits more carbon emissions than almost every country in the world. 

The water heater rules and power plant regulations will help the country meet its goal of cutting emissions by 50% by 2030. But impactful as they will be, they weren’t the most important climate policy that the Biden administration passed in the last two months. 

That honor goes to the EPA’s tailpipe rules, which are set to transform the auto industry over the next decade.

Today the transportation sector is the largest source of climate pollution in the United States. Within the sector, passenger cars and trucks are the biggest contributors to emissions. While electric vehicle adoption has grown in recent years, America lags behind many other countries in decarbonizing its vehicle stock. 

The EPA’s new rules will force automakers to reduce the amount of pollution and carbon emissions that come from their vehicles. The federal policy doesn’t specifically mandate that automakers produce EVs or stop selling gas-powered cars but instead regulates the average carbon emissions per mile of a manufacturer's entire fleet over the next decade. That means automakers can still sell gas-guzzling, carbon-spewing trucks in 2035. They’ll just need to sell a lot more EVs or plug-in hybrids to bring their average fleet emissions down if they do.

Like the power plant rules, the EPA’s new auto regulations are designed to avoid being thrown out by a conservative and hostile Supreme Court. 

[phoenixyfriend]

This is in response to the email I sent on February 9th. Still nothing to the one from January 19th, or the Instagram DMs.

So... maybe they were just really backlogged and genuinely didn't get to it until today.

But part of me thinks that maybe the eleven comments people left about the issue on their Valentine's day post had something to do with it.

So yeah. Keep pushing! Here's another colourpop post that I think could use some Bothering. They're bragging about a new line of tinted skin balms, which hey.

Wide shade ranges are a great move... but you know what would be a better move? Addressing the now year-long controversy about the Twilight collections and people's requests that they consider donating to the Quileute Move to Higher Ground fundraiser.

(If you want to be polite, the above phrasing is probably fine. If you want to be petty... something about wanting to sell to people of color while also using indigenous groups for marketing without compensation being a Bad Look.)

Anyway, here's the link to their contact form where you can send a Bothering You email if you don't have instagram. This was the first post with suggested phrasing, and this was the second. Here's the explanation of why I even care, and why I think you should too; if you don't know what colourpop is, I've answered that here.

This time, I think I'm going to go down the route of "If you offered and they said No, just tell us that. If you didn't offer, then why not? We are asking for a donation and a statement." EDIT: Yeah so I can't use their contact form anymore. I guess if you email more than twice in quick succession, it auto-filters you to like... make you go to the email thread you already have with the company instead of badgering them about your missing/broken products and clogging it up more. So now I can't send emails or comment on their instagram.

The goal is not an indefinite boycott of the brand, or to cancel them. The goal is to get money directed to the fundraiser, holding colourpop accountable for their choice of partnerships. We want to help an existing charity for a marginalized group, not sink a company for bad choices. There's fuck all we can do to get the makeup removed from shelves; not enough people are talking about it. But making a donation to the fundraiser is much less of a burden on the company than us making a fuss to get the collection pulled for a variety of reasons, and that makes it both much more achievable, and much more helpful to the people we are trying to get money to.

Remember, the more of us that keep at this, the more likely we are to get a response.

It took almost four weeks since I first emailed them, but I've finally gotten acknowledgement, as canned as the response is.

[covid-conscious-and-silly]

oh wow, over 100 followers! yippee!

even if we're spread out, it means so much to me to know that people want to push conversations forward. there's still so much work to do, AND there is always the possibility of change. i also want to share some thoughts that have been on my mind:

as i keep thinking about what the "COVID conscious" label means to me, i think about what it means to be conscious in other ways. to be conscious of the jen oh sides in Sudan, Congo, Palestine; to be conscious of marginalized peoples (ESPECIALLY Black/African peoples) fighting for liberation across the world; to be conscious of accessibility needs beyond COVID safety.

i also use "COVID conscious" because i'm not sure of what other language to use. as much as i love being an advocate for COVID safety, i don't want this label to be where we stop (nor do i think the current CC community is perfect, but that's a whole other post). i want to keep questioning my actions and make sure my work is truly intersectional and acknowledges how intertwined all of these issues are.

i do think that action usually bears more weight than language, and i'm also intrigued to dream of new language and see what others have been dreaming of.

i'm also currently virtually attending a hybrid dance party. there's a bunch of masked people on a dance floor and a bunch of other people on this zoom call. i know the organizer personally, and i know they took all the other in-person precautions. people are talking in the chat with no pressure to turn on their cameras. people are wearing keffiyehs on the dance floor. auto captions are available. and that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the thought that went into planning this!

it is so beautiful to see what is possible! hybrid events are a great way to meet everyone's needs and keep a community tight-knit. and also, joy and rage can co-exist. both of those emotions and everything in between will propel us forward! i think i'm actually starting to internalize all of this, and i hope you're on that journey too <3

instead of tweaking my wording for the five billionth time, i'll end with this: keep dreaming. keep being silly. keep being creative in your discussions and mutual aid work. a better world is possible, and we're going to make it together.

[brucenorris007]

Zero

Summary: In a world literally on fire, a robot encounters a hedgehog wearing boots half a size too big. The meeting becomes a catalyst that breaks the cycle Zero's been caught in.

1430 words

(For extra context, scroll down to previous post before reading.)

Zero trudged through the city, optics scanning at regular intervals for any indication of magmaggots or fried chicken. The hours he could safely operate at the peak of day grew shorter as coolant became harder to find. He could make do with functioning at night for a while, and he’d done more with less, but he’d have to move on soon. Traveling between the ruins of civilization without adequate supplies posed too great a risk.

Zero couldn’t spend the day in standby mode out in the open, and he couldn’t defend himself all hours of the day if his components were overheating. His internal fans hadn’t been up to the task for decades.

Options limited, he ventured into the depths of the city, returning to the dilapidated structure that’d once been a multi-story mall. He’d investigated it once already, but he’d been working quickly and thus less thorough than he would have been otherwise. Odds that he’d overlooked something were marginally better than that he’d miraculously stumble across an auto repair shop.

He briefly inspected the integrity of what remained of the entrance–the skeleton of a revolving door, chunks of thick glass scattered outward on the pavement, steel warped and several precarious cracks in the ceiling–before carefully making his way inside.

He accessed his RAM, called up the snapshot of a degraded mall map from his last venture. The details of the mall’s contents were spotty, but it provided a grasp of the building’s layout at least, so he wouldn’t waste time going over locations he’d already searched.

He’d discovered a hardware store in the southeast sector of the second floor; while he scoured over the lawn mowers and chainsaws, his receptors registered heavy footfalls from somewhere beneath him. He had a good guess as to the cause. . .

“AAAAH!”

. . .he was somewhat less certain as to the source of the screaming that accompanied them.

After stashing what meager supplies he’d found, he left the hardware store and treaded slowly to the banister overlooking the main lobby.

Below, as he suspected, a cindaruma lumbered and lurched, hoisting and hurling molten rock as it went.

“C’mon, c’mon!”

And its target was a young, scrambling hedgehog with bright fur and quills. One who, for some reason, kept waving his hands out in front of him and over his head as he ran. If his objective was improved aerodynamics, his methods were highly counterproductive. All that racket wasn’t doing him any favors, either.

Rmbl.

It only attracted more creatures; a second cindaruma grunted and crawled up out of the ground, embers and smoke marking the spot it had spawned from.

Worse, it was the blue variant; significantly hotter and thus more lethal.

Zero ran through numerous calculations. He prioritized evasive maneuvers in the city and an offensive defense in the wastelands; he didn’t carry ammunition with him when he was gathering resources. Had he been dealing with any other monster, he could have easily interfered; cindaruma boasted an obnoxiously sturdy rock armor, though.

He’d just about resigned himself to jumping down and improvising when the hedgehog’s hand emitted a strange glow; one of the fixtures of what might have once been a fountain in the lobby teetered and smashed down against the blue cindaruma’s shoulder. The sudden impact caused it to drop the fiery boulder it’d been about to throw.

Determining that the kid would somehow manage for a moment, Zero ducked back into the hardware store.

When he returned and leapt over the banister, it was with a roaring chainsaw in each hand.

The monsters turned their attention to the new, louder and larger target Zero presented.

He twisted his frame, aiming for the red cindaruma’s head.

VRR-R-R-GK-GK!

He caught its shoulder instead; the saw in his left hand sparked and whined. Stuttered after cutting two inches into the rock before stopping short.

He pivoted upon landing and drove the other chainsaw through the glowing red gap in the armor around its right knee.

The monster groaned.

Toppled down and crashed against the floor.

Zero didn’t wait to see how the blue variant would respond.

“Run.”

“Who-wha–? Wait, I gotta–!”

He grabbed the hedgehog’s arm; turned west toward the entrance he’d used to get into the mall.

“Not a suggestion.”

Zero pulled the boy along until he started running on his own.

The blue cindaruma’s thunderous footfalls echoed behind them, distance shrinking every moment.

The boy suddenly loosed the sort of whooping cough that rattled the chest. His pace faltered.

A sharp spike in heat behind them.

Zero dove, snatching the hedgehog under his arm and throwing himself to one side.

Flaming molten rocks careened past them; glass melted on contact. The fiery missiles exploded, leaving craters behind in the building’s cement foundation.

The cindaruma loomed over them, lunging with one hand outstretched.

Whack.

PSSSH.

A bottle of precious coolant exploded against the monster’s face.

The liquid evaporated instantly; steam sizzled and covered it from head to toe.

Their pursuer roared furiously.

Kid still in hand, Zero engaged his afterburners.

He raced through the lobby.

Heard the beast give chase.

Calculated how much of a lead he had.

Broke through the warped steel frame of the door with a loud

CLANG.

Finally braked and turned his optics back.

Watched the cindaruma charge at him–

Crack.

Just as structural integrity of the entrance failed. Zero retreated further as the initial collapse gave way to more.

Twenty-four seconds later, the rumbling stopped; and his opponent buried, flame suffocated under the rubble.

“Whoa.”

His passenger muttered from under his arm. Zero deposited him on the ground and scanned the area.

“Um, than–”

“Do not stay here. The noise will attract charmanders soon.”

The hedgehog blinked. Having provided sufficient warning, Zero turned and began his circuitous route back to his base.

“Char–? Hey, wait up!”

Zero did not wait up. He heard the kid tailing him regardless.

– – – – –

“So, uh, what’s your name?” 

“. . . Designation: Zero.”

“Oh! Uh, my name is Silver. I”

“You are stupidly reckless.”

“. . . I-I need to be able to fight them.”

“. . .”

“If I can’t handle his minions, I won’t stand a chance against Iblis.”

“. . .”

“W-well, somebody has to beat him! And no one can do what I can!”

“Run around screaming and flailing?”

“Mrrr. . . I just need practice. My psychokinesis works most of the time, it’s just hard to concentrate in a fight.”

“. . .”

“Wh-what?”

“Follow me.”

– – – – –

After a bit over an hour and some largely one-sided conversation

(“Charmander. . . is that what you call the fragments of Iblis?”

“Copyright has long expired.”

“Copy-what?”)

They arrived at Zero’s base. More of a temporary storage and hideout than anything, the nearest to furnishing were his ammo stock, spare coolant and the few other things he could carry without excessively burdening himself. Subterranean, as all his bases were, for the cooling effect of being underground.

Ironic that a day had come when Zero actively sought out basements.

“Conjecture: You require equipment.”

Silver tilted his head; somehow, gravity seemed to have no effect on whether or not his quills remained erect on his head.

“What sort of equipment?”

“You experience lapses in control of your psychokinesis under duress, correct?”

Silver frowned; lowered his eyes and gave a jerking nod.

Zero turned to his stash.

“Surmise that streamlining the process of channeling psychic energy will expedite your progress on the learning curve,” he said, digging through his things. “A pair of gauntlets would be appropriate.”

Silver already channeled his psychokinetic powers through his hands, after all.

“Wait,” Silver said, head popping back up with wide eyes. “You can help me?”

“Statistically probable.”

The kid’s face nearly glowed. Zero retrieved a worn yet well-kept tablet and turned it on; his CPU was still efficient, but an external backup was always prudent.

And not solely for practicality.

Zero did not possess any great inherent kindness. He couldn’t articulate precisely why he felt inclined to aid Silver in his frankly foolhardy desire to battle the Flames of Disaster.

A prompt for an administrator name and password blinked onto the tablet’s screen.

Perhaps Zero felt moved to do something of more significance than surviving.

He typed into the onscreen keyboard; matching entries for both prompts.

In the deepest corners of his motherboard, Zero might confess that it had to do with attempting to compensate for past wrongs; the boy being a hedgehog of all things. . .

Zero Michigan Three Nine Alpha

He tapped enter.

The prompts fell away, and a prerecorded audio sample of a slightly sultry, nostalgic voice greeted him.

“Welcome back, Omega.”

@generic-sonic-fan

[mariacallous]

Owners of Spotify's soon-to-be-bricked Car Thing device are begging the company to open source the gadgets to save some the landfill. Spotify hasn't responded to pleas to salvage the hardware, which was originally intended to connect to car dashboards and auxiliary outlets to enable drivers to listen to and navigate Spotify.

Spotify announced this week that it's bricking all purchased Car Things on December 9 and not offering refunds or trade-in options. On a support page, Spotify says:

We're discontinuing Car Thing as part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offerings. We understand it may be disappointing, but this decision allows us to focus on developing new features and enhancements that will ultimately provide a better experience to all Spotify users.

Spotify has no further guidance for device owners beyond asking them to reset the device to factory settings and “safely” get rid of the bricked gadget by “following local electronic waste guidelines.”

The company also said that it doesn’t plan to release a follow-up to the Car Thing.

Early Demise

Car Thing came out to limited subscribers in October 2021 before releasing to the general public in February 2022.

In its Q2 2022 earnings report released in July, Spotify revealed that it stopped making Car Things. In a chat with TechCrunch, it cited “several factors, including product demand and supply chain issues.” A Spotify rep also told the publication that the devices would continue to “perform as intended,” but that was apparently a temporary situation.

Halted production was a warning sign that Car Thing was in peril. However, at that time, Spotify also cut the device’s price from $90 to $50, which could have encouraged people to buy a device that would be useless a few years later.

Car Thing's usefulness was always dubious, though. The device has a 4-inch touchscreen and knob for easy navigation, as well as support for Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and voice control. But it also required users to subscribe to Spotify Premium, which starts at $11 per month. Worse, Car Thing requires a phone using data or Wi-Fi connected via Bluetooth in order to work, making the Thing seem redundant.

In its Q1 2022 report, Spotify said that quitting Car Thing hurt gross margins and that it took a 31 million euro (about $31.4 million at the time) hit on the venture.

Open Source Pleas

Spotify's announcement has sent some Car Thing owners to online forums to share their disappointment with Spotify and beg the company to open source the device instead of dooming it for recycling centers at best. As of this writing, there are more than 50 posts on the Spotify Community forums showing concern about the discontinuation, with many demanding a refund and/or calling for open sourcing. There are similar discussions happening elsewhere online, like on Reddit, where users have used phrases like “entirely unacceptable” to describe the news.

A Spotify Community member going by AaronMickDee, for example, said:

I'd rather not just dispose of the device. I think there is a community that would love the idea of having a device we can customize and use for other uses other than a song playback device. Would Spotify be willing to maybe unlock the system and allow users to write/flash 3rd party firmware to the device?

A Spotify spokesperson declined to answer Ars' questions about why Car Thing isn't being open sourced and concerns around e-waste and wasted money.

Instead, a company rep told Ars, in part: “The goal of our Car Thing exploration in the US was to learn more about how people listen in the car. In July 2022, we announced we’d stop further production and now it’s time to say goodbye to the devices entirely.” I followed up with Spotify's rep to ask again about making the device open source but didn't hear back.

At this point, encouraging customers to waste nearly $100 on a soon-obsolete device hasn't resulted in any groundbreaking innovations or lessons around “how people listen in the car.” In their initial response, Spotify's rep pointed me to a Spotify site that searches Spotify's newsroom for “how to listen to Spotify in the car.” One of the top posts is from 2019 and states that “if your car has an AUX or USB socket, using a cable is probably one of the fastest ways to connect by using your phone.”

As for Spotify, using customer dollars for company-serving learning experiences isn't the best business plan. And for regular users, it's best to avoid investing in an unproven hardware venture from a software company.

As Redditor Wemie1420 put it:

Doesn’t feel great that there is literally no alternative other than trashing it. Feels like we’re being punished for supporting them. Dissuades me from buying anything Spotify puts out in the future. I feel like there would be some way to approach this without being like, ‘yeah we’re done. Just throw it out it’s a waste of money now.’

[doctorcaduceus]

Hello, fellow Invader Zim fans! I just wanted to wish you all a happy new year, and provide an update to my work. I haven't done so for a while, but I promise, things are still moving along at my slow pace. Attached are a few screenshots of my still in progress Invader Zim game.

Gift shop:

Recruitment center (still a WIP):

An (admittedly rather crude) auto cab, which I've renamed instead of "snack-cab" to be something not food related:

I will be remaking this model. It's missing key details.

Shloogorgh's Flavor Monster:

By the way, I didn't half ass this. That's the actual sign from the show. Most of that signage is either stenciled or closely mirrors the content of the show.

Marginally less interesting, but additional stairwells:

This really is a really boring addition, but there's three layers on this map, and there was only one main rampway before. It made the map really a chore to navigate, because you had to walk all the way to a central location to access the other 2/3rds of the city content.

This fixes that.

Homelessness:

Pays $5 Credits per minute. Spare Credz?

(Not pictured) the Thing in the Pit:

This concludes this long overdue update. I've also been messing around with the morph script I posted about last time, and I have been tinkering under the hood with various game systems in an attempt to reduce the processing power burdens that are currently entailed.

Not pictured (maybe in another post) is the upgrades to the Voot Runner. For those unaware, I have a flying Voot runner that works. I recently added weapons to it. It's pretty sweet.

What's next, is by and large, Geometry improvement. I have to make the map have less parts and less faces. It's over 300,000 at the moment. I actually killed a guy's decade old computer when he tried to load into the game to take a look around. Some of my older machines (I have over a dozen working computers, so lots of test subjects) can't even load the thing on a fresh copy of Windows I have done a very thorough job of gutting of unnecessary crap.

Gotta fix the geometry.

For those curious, project still is not open to public following. Community is still being actively curated to build up a strong core. But, once we get that city area more filled (and more optimized), we will be accepting new members before the big day. And the big day is going to comprise the beginnings of some crazy stuff, so I hope y'all stay tuned.

Thanks for reading, all! Appreciate the time. More updates when more stuff.

[zine-garden]

There are SO many types of zines, sometimes it’s hard to keep track of! Here is a list of common zine categories with links to either free to read zines, descriptions, or artist shops and zine distros to buy from!

art zine - Zines that are filled with art, photo, collage, etc. This could be a sketchbook zine, drawings under a singular theme, or a general compilation of art. This is the most common type of zine produced by artists!

Subject of Devotion, Sabrina Mellado (For Shortbox Comics Fair). This was a digital collection of sketchbook scans available for free, compiled on her website

comic zine - Writing and drawing a self produced and printed comic! Another popular category of zines for artists. Also: Diary comic zines, Auto-bio Comic Zines.

How to Survive a Haunting, Jade Zhang Duende, Elle Shivers

fanzine - Fan-drawings, comics, writing, meta, fiction, etc. compiled into a self-published work!

I know the internet has taken over what many people, especially in fandom, understand a zine to be, but anyone can make a zine and anyone can make a fanzine. At the zine library I used to help maintain, there was an 8 page mini that was just a bunch of Idris Elba pics with cute kaomoji’s saying “i love uwu idris elba <3”. The first media fanzine was published in 1967, for Star Trek called, “Spockanalia.” Seriously, all you need to do is be impassioned by a subject to write, collage, or draw something about it!

Stitching Together, Annie Mok (Available to read for free, but I encourage you to send her a tip as she has recently been in recovery from surgery and is also on food stamps https://ko-fi.com/heyanniemok/shop) Good Chicken, Natalie Mark (Me! Is self promo okay?)

info zine - A zine that shares information. This can be informational, or it can be an instructional zine such as a “DIY Zine” or a “Recipe Zine.”

Trans/Disabled Bibliography, Saul Freedman. I don’t have a link to this one, but it was a really wonderful and short zine of both citations and a love letter to the works cited. Instead, I have linked you to Saul’s zine page on his website 🤠 Patchwork Primer: how do we find what we’re not looking for?, kaythi and seiji. This info zine was created for an event I organized for people creating zines on the margins. I invited the two of them to co-program an activist book club for the event!

litzine - A “literary zine�� can be a collection of fiction, poetry, prose, etc. that is self published and distributed as a zine. Also called “lit zine”, or “literary zine”. Some people prefer “chapbook”, or “poetry zine” for poetry.

My favourite litzines are not available anywhere online, so I will describe one of them for you? Todo Parecia de Cristal / “Everything Looked Like Crystal”, Laura Rojas is a collection of photos of the artist’s mom and her siblings growing up paired with journaling between 2015-18. They couldn’t bring photo albums with them when the moved to Canada from Colombia, and the photos had been mailed to her years prior to the making of the zine.

perzine - A “personal zine” focuses on the artist’s life, opinion, or thoughts in some capacity. A zine about yourself, your experiences, your life, a particular memory, your feelings, etc. This is my favourite type of zine!

Sonali Menzes/glittermagpie has some really awesome perzine and info zines about anxiety and mental illness. I have her zines, So you’re anxious as fuck, and You’re so Exotic. Keet Geniza/Make! Shift! Love! is another favourite zinester! I love Keet’s perzine series, Picking Bones, which are full of reflective auto-bio comics and prose. Your Whiteness is Boring: A Gender Perzine, Cleo Peterson.

political zine - Dealing with political topics, anarchy, communism, social justice, historical movements, and present day issues.

An Illustrated Struggle for Housing from Canada to the Philippines, Julie Guevara Autonomous Resistance To slavery and Colonialism, Russell Maroon Shoatz. (Note, the prices on Brown Recluse Distro are for BIPOC only, white people and institutions are asked to donate an extra $5 USD)

[entryn17]

when i was making my site yesterday i was trying to put the main containers and the logo in the center but for whatever reason the "margin" property just wasn't working and neither was any css i tried adding to brute force it. turns out it was because i had written "margin: auto 0;" instead of "margin: 0 auto;" 🥲

[wonderhecko]

actually, regarding "recommended a replacement" usually meaning to me that the responsible party will ignore the issue, i do have to acknowledge something: the complete dissolution of trust because of The Upsell

there are plenty of local news segments where a technician, tradesman, or salesman for those services tries to upsell replacement as a solution to something with no issues. this definitely happens with things in the sweet spot of high profit margins, high necessity and relatively common breakdown so the perfect example is water heaters. fishing for a 4 figure service instead of giving an honest assessment of the timeline has broken trust in many sectors. if the auto shop tries to hit you for a +100 dollar charge for the cabin filter every time youre there you're not going to believe them when they say your rotors are at the end of their usable life because everything is apparently an expensive emergency to them.

so i get it, but also do not call me in a panic because the thing i told you was about to break has in fact just broken. schedule the maintenance or it will be scheduled for you.

[eesirachs]

the biblical god is an always-already plural subjectivity. this god conjugates himself in a larger divine council, speaking with grammar that betrays not as an individualized 'i' but a communal 'we.' this god auto-substantiates in many bodies, never just one, and often overlapping: he appears to abraham, for example, as one entity in the form of three men. this god begs for company in the temple-room he has scurried into, but warns that anyone who enters the holy of holies will do so not as a whole (בְכָל), but instead as a part. god is always a partner-in-becoming, interested (and perhaps capable) not in parsing out his limits but instead of bleeding out his margins

[callipraxia]

Writings from 3am

As the title indicates...sometime in the night, I got up, feeling compelled to write out a little scene that doesn't have a proper story to go with it. It's minimally edited for coherency here. If you haven't read my fic Interproximal Gradations (third in the For Want of a Jailbreak trilogy) on Ao3, then none of this will make any sense whatsoever, as Quattro and Stan are referring to events from the last three or four chapters of that story; specifically, this occurs sometime after the end of chapter 26, which itself takes place after a ten-year time skip. It...probably won't make that much sense even with that context in mind, to be honest, but it'll make marginally more sense than it would without said context.

All clear as mud? Great. Here's the thing:

Stan sat alone at the kitchen table, smoking a cigar and laying out cards for a game of solitaire. He didn’t look up when Quattro – carefully; he hadn’t yet gotten around to repairs to his suit since the shootout with the feds – sat down, but he did speak.

“No,” he said.

“No, what?”

“No, there’s nothing significant about me playing solitaire right after my brother’s funeral.”

Quattro nodded slowly. “Right,” he said, not bothering to attempt to sound sincere. He remembered the day his brother had died, and what he’d said after he’d finally been forced to accept the reality of the situation, at least as well as Stan did, if not better: I guess I should pick a different name now, huh? Mine doesn’t really make any sense anymore. I guess I’m just Solo. He would bet his best wig that the reference was deliberate on Stan's part. "Sure there isn’t.”

Seconds passed, and the sound of the kitchen clock ticking them away was the only thing that interrupted the silence.

"How's the leg?" Stan asked finally.

"A few minutes at the auto shop and it'll be fine." Quattro shrugged. "I've told you, I don't really feel things anymore. I'm not sure if I would even if I took off my suit...maybe. Who knows." Half his trouble had been that it had been so long since he'd consciously felt anything that the impact had thrown him for a loop; before that, he had honestly thought he no longer sensed contact with his person ‘naturally’ at all. He had no intention of taking his suit off just to test the limits of his probably-atrophied sense of touch, though. Instead, he cleared his throat and added, “you know I’m going to kill him, if I ever get the chance."

Stan grunted in acknowledgment, showing no signs he found this shift in topic at all strange. “Know you’re gonna try,” he conceded.

Quattro nodded and thought he might have smiled, bitterly, behind his mask. “Because we both also know you’re going to try to stop me.”

“Yep.”

“Even though it’s his fault we just buried the last family either of us has besides each other.”

“No we didn't. Mabel’s still out there, somewhere, and I’ve heard you call Soos your brother with my own ears.” Stan pointed to one of the ears in question to illustrate, as if Quattro could have possibly missed them. “Plus, Dipper’s still part of the family. He might not want to be, and you might not want him to be, and I might even ring his bell for being an idiot and a fed and especially a fedidiot if he walked in here right now, but he’s still family.”

“If you want to get technical about it, I guess he’s sort of my father,” Quattro agreed. “In a...weird, Dr. Frankenstein-y kind of way. Except he’s the one who’s gotten to wander around the world and do whatever he wanted to do all these years like the Monster, and I’m the one who gets to watch everyone I care about die whenever he’s around. You might outlive me, but Soos? Mabel? Everyone else?”

Stan’s hands had gone very still on his cards. “What do you mean, I might outlive you?”

Quattro looked at him closely for a moment to see if he was joking, but he didn’t look like he was. Did he really think, then, that Quattro somehow hadn’t noticed that….

“You haven’t aged a day since the end of the apocalypse, Stan. Do you really think anyone believes that’s a coincidence?”

The silence turned sullen before Stan finally removed his cigar from his mouth. "That damn lizard."

“Your friend the blind lizard god’s never spoken to me in my life,” Quattro assured him. “It’s just that I do have eyes. Sort of. See?” He reached up and removed his outer mask, revealing his real face for a moment. “Time’s been messed up in this town since the world un-ended, but most of the people kept getting older. Including your identical twin. But not me - “ he pointed to the perpetually twelve-year-old visage normally hidden behind his mask – “and not you.”

Stan squinted at him, clearly trying to tell if he was bluffing – and then, to Quattro’s surprised, laughed.

“Paper boys,” he announced, “have no business being as sharp as you, kid. Scissors are supposed to be one of your natural enemies, aren’t they?”

“Not so much while I’m wearing this,” said Quattro, gesturing toward his artificial body as he reattached his mask. “So – what did they do to you, anyway? And why?”

Stan sighed. “Bozo the Lizard God said that his brother made it hard for him – Bozo, I mean – to see me,” he said. “Said that looking at me made him feel like he’d gotten drunk on a trampoline. No-Eyes then said – something, I don’t remember exactly – but that it had something to do with Bozo spending too much time in the underworld. Nobody told me this, but I’m guessing...from that, and from some other stuff I've put together, I’m guessing that the way No-Eyes kept me alive was by making it...really hard for your standard-issue death gods and death angels and all those kinds of things to see where I am too clearly.” Stan chuckled grimly. “And I even think I know why he did it.”

“To save the world,” said Quattro. “Right?”

“Eh, yeah, that, too,” said Stan. “But I don’t think that’s why I’m still alive, ten years after I did that. I think that’s because of you.”

Quattro could only stare in response to this at first. “Me?”

“Yep – sort of. See, I punched him and Bozo both in the face.” Quattro nodded; Stan never tired of that story. Not that Quattro did, either; thinking too much for too long about Stan's former contacts on the Other Side had still made him angry, sometimes, even before Dipper had come back to town; now, after what had happened to Ford, he just wished he could time-and-dimension travel well enough to loan Stan his suit's gloves for said face-punchings. It was unlikely that even alloys that were nigh-indestructible by earthly standards would have made any difference, but a guy could hope.... “And I told ‘em some of it was for Tracey. The Lord of Jerks said I had no right to get upset after how I – was to you two – back then, and so I told him to shove it, because maybe Tracey wasn’t one of Bozo’s, but he was one of mine, and that therefore I could say whatever I wanted about him, unlike Bozo. So….pretty sure if I ever get a chance to ask if it was supposed to be a reward or a punishment, he’ll just say ‘yes,’ because again, jerk, but I think that’s about the time he got the idea to just...not help Bozo get over feeling drunk whenever I was in the room. Not yet, anyway.”

Quattro thought about that for a moment, and about everything that had happened since, and about how difficult he was to kill lately. "Yeah, it was definitely a punishment" he said. "If it helps, though - even in the absolute worst-case scenario, we'd get taken out in the heat death of the universe I guess, but it shouldn't take that long. Doing the math, thinking about how much air I have to let into this thing to talk...I'm guessing I'll dry rot or something in...probably not more than a hundred fifty, two hundred years, maybe. So if you're right, you'd be off the hook then, too."

Stan seemed to mull this over. "Well, guess it beats sticking around until the heat death of the universe, anyway," he said.

[patchesjam]

BM rant:

People telling Dream to “get good” at BM don’t understand that Dream has tried, genuinely tried, to get better at the game. He thrives when he can practice a game, there is no way he can practice buildmart as there’s no version of the game on the practice server. Dream tried to work around this back in season 1, when they used the same 27 builds in rotation throughout the game. BOTH Dream and Techno compiled them and practice each one to memorize them. This allowed them to do marginally better in the game where they suffered before. Well guess what Noxcrew did? They decided to change the game so that strat was obsolete! Now it creates new builds every game so there’s no way to practice these builds off server.

What did Dream do? He found another solution! He wrote down what he needed. Well that was banned too. It’s banned to write a list using the in-game chat and physically writing it down. Which is banning a tool that many people with adhd use on a daily basis! I was ALWAYS encouraged to make a list and break down tasks to help me! Telling someone with ADHD to not use a tool to help them with their short term memory is handicapping them for no reason.

MCC’s color and block palette is extremely busy and tends to be too vibrant at times leading to overstimulation for players and viewers alike, especially when the player is using the elytra to whizz past rows and rows of blocks. Couple that with loud, grating music that feels like you’re taking an ice pick to the brain and three other people shouting at each other and you’ve got a recipe for the complete and utter overload on the senses for those with ADHD. It absolutely makes my head spin when I watch and I’m on ADHD medication. Dream is not. He’s experiencing all of this with no aid whatsoever, which would make everything about 10x worse for him.

Yet Buildmart is the “perfect game” /s

I very much agree with the first two paragraphs and personally i believe it's a big part of why i am loosing interest quite a bit. instead of almost celebrating the bending of the rules (like techno and dream planning all the builds) they go out of their way to prevent work arounds. i also have issues with the banning of a list although i am not sure if noxcrew confirmed they did ban that.

one change i advocated for on the reddit was the implementation of an in-game auto checklist for the entire team - i thought this would solve a lot of issues with little actual effect on gameplay or mechanincs. and would actually encourage teamwork because people 'fetching' blocks would have to communicate based on the checklist what they would each get.

the last para is difficult for me because you could claim that with all games to some extent and its where the line is drawn. i agree with you quite a bit, i do find bm a difficult watch and get overstimulated but i also find that a lot with gridrunners and hitw to some extent too. i thought a good solution would be to have a much less 'noisy' arena, so theres not much background colours to focus on and its just the buidling blocks!

[havnblog]

My Wishes for NotePlan

I like and use NotePlan (via Setapp 🖇️), and feel good recommending it to people. But there are a couple of reasons why I don’t love it. So while I keep all my notes and tasks in Markdown files in the NotePlan folder, I prefer editing those in other apps – like Paper. Below are the changes and improvements I would need for me to love it.

The basics needs to be improved

The NotePlan developer is very active, seems like a great guy, and is pumping out updates. Some of these are really ambitious (like more collaboration and a web editor). But the app is, at its core, a Markdown editor – and I think this core requires some improvements, and that getting this right is foundational for the rest.

I get that I can’t expect it to be as good here as the dedicated Paper, and some of the more advanced features, like the Typewriter Mode:

It feels like having an assistant who always scrolls the document to where I want it. And the dimmed text outside the window allows me to know when it's going to scroll. 👌🏻

But NotePlan should be better…

Bold and italics

Let’s say I have a bold sentence, and I then want the middle word to also be in italics. I should be able to select that word and hit Cmd+I. But NotePlan completely messes this up.

I also wish I could say I want hitting Cmd+I to give me _underscores_ instead of *asterisks*.

Ordered lists

Another thing it can’t handle, is manipulating ordered lists. Neither adding something in the middle of a list, nor moving items around, works as it should. (I’ve shown what I mean here.)

Selection

A couple of updates ago, the NotePlan dev improved how selection works when you’re editing a task or checklist item. Let’s say I’ve written a task, and the caret is at the end of the line. I now want to select the text (to rewrite it, make it bold, or whatever), so I hit Shift+Cmd+Left:

I like that it doesn’t select the task list element here! And if I do want to select it, I just hit the hotkey again:

I really like this behaviour – but the improvement needs to make its way to regular lists and headings as well.

Links

Links look quite nice in NotePlan:

And you can create them easily by selecting the text you want to become a link, and hitting Cmd+K. Then it will paste the link from your clipboard. But there are two problems:

I don’t think you can edit a link, or see which link is actually there.

I use the clipboard manager Paste a lot – and occasionally, I don’t want to use the last thing I copied, but something previous instead. This is clunky in NotePlan.

I prefer the way Paper (and several other apps) works here:

If you select some text and paste a link, it will create the hyperlink. This is sort of like how NotePlan works with Cmd+K – but you can also paste something from earlier (with a clipboard manager).1 Hitting Cmd+K in Paper works like this:

If you’re in Preview Mode (which acts more like a rich text editor), you’ll get a regular link dialog box – and if you have a link in your clipboard, it will pre-fill the link section. If you’re in Markdown Mode, it works like NotePlan. However, there you can always see the link content. And in Preview Mode, you can hit Cmd+K or left click to see/edit the content.

I wish NotePlan copied the paste behaviour, and that Cmd+K opened a dialog box. And, the compact Markdown link appearance is neat, but I wish it would expand on focus – even though I, in general, really don’t like it when Markdown syntax does that. I’ve made my own NotePlan theme (you can download the light mode here, and the dark mode here). And the only syntax I have auto-hide on for is for headings – but that’s only because I can’t place the # symbols in the margin, which I wish I could.

More advanced stuff

I honestly think the stuff I have mentioned until now is table stakes and should be prioritised. However, when it comes to the things I’m getting to now, I get that priorities differ. But the following are my main wishes.

Synced blocks/sections

This feature is currently planned, and is discussed a bit here. But I wanted to add some nuances – and I’m not sure what’s the best solution would be.

Sync vs. transclusion

Let’s say you have a “master note” on a subject, and you want to add info to it from several other notes. For this, Obsidian supports transclusion, which is quite cool. The way it works, is that if you write [[Name of a note#Heading]] you’ll create a link to that note (and heading), but if you instead write ![[Name of a note#Heading]] the app will instead display the content under that heading directly in the current note.

However, here’s an important detail (that can both be a positive and a negative): The actual content of the master note file will only be the shortcodes (![[Name of a note#Heading]]), and not all the things that will be displayed in the app. The preview of the content will also usually be read-only, and you have to go into the original note to edit it.

NotePlan currently has a Synced Line feature, which works a bit differently:

This allows you to sync a line (like a task) between two notes. The difference here is that the line actually is in both notes. NotePlan will add a little code at the end (which it then hides), to tell the app to sync all instances of that line/code. So a task could look like this:

- [ ] A synced task #Tag ^8r1x8v

A benefit of this, is that the line is equally there in all instances, and you can edit it everywhere. You could also share a file with a collection of those, and the content would be included (without you having to also share the other files).

However, the duplication can create problems with things like search and tagging. For instance, if I check for tasks with #Tag, I would see all the synced lines individually.

My question is, when NotePlan wants to expand in this area, should it go for syncing or transclusion? I guess an answer would be to work towards both. And being compatible with things like Obsidian is an important argument for at least supporting transclusion. But I would’ve loved it if synced blocks/sections could be a thing, and that the duplication issue could be addressed somehow.2

Smart folders and lists, and a more flexible sidebar

I love the way NotePlan has two separate systems for #Tags and @Mentions,3 and that you can give them to both notes and tasks. But I think it’s underutilised – and an improvement here is one of the largest wishes I have.

Currently, you can create Filters, which have a cool rules system. However, the problem I have with this, is that in only works on tasks, and that the layout takes up a lot of space because it uses a lot of it on margins and showing where every note is placed:

I get that this might be preferred for some4 – but I wish I could create a Smart Section or Smart List that would just display it as compact as a regular list:

If you went for the Smart Section option, it would be a part of a regular note. And in the example above, it would fetch (and create synced lines) with all tasks matching the criteria. (In this example, having the tag @Hjemme.)

Here’s what a regular folder looks like in the sidebar:

I really wish I could create a smart folder (maybe with the same rules system), and have the notes that fit the criteria just show up as a similar list. I think the only thing I can do now, is to go all the way to the bottom of the sidebar, select a single tag, click it, and then see a clunky list of the instances of the tag.

A more flexible sidebar would also be needed.

Personal collaboration

Something like this is also planned, I think – and I won’t go into it too much. But currently I only use Apple Notes and Reminders.app for things I share with my wife, and it would be neat if I could move that stuff over to NotePlan. It does have a team feature – however, that’s more of a professional tool. But I get that that’s where the money is…

A bright future

In general, I’m excited about NotePlan’s future! Especially because the developer is so active. And it feels better investing in it when I know that everything is just a folder of Markdown files. However, I really wished I loved being in the app… But I might someday!

If you paste a link with nothing selected, you can choose, via a setting, if you want it to create the link syntax or not. ↩︎

Maybe you at could only display the instance that was last edited in the internal NotePlan search. And maybe delete duplicate tags. ↩︎

I use the former for themes and the latter for contexts. ↩︎

It’s especially neat that you can add a new task, in the note in question, above or below a task you’ve filtered out. ↩︎

[mint-moon25]

MIGHT - JUST - DO - THIS

I - WANTED - FREE - SHIPPING

BUT - FACEBOOK - WAS - SAYING

MY - EMAIL - ADDRESS - NOT - LISTED

I - ALSO - DON'T - LIKE - MYSELF

BUYING - AT - FACEBOOK - MARKETPLACE

NOT - PRETTY

SO - WILL - GO - 4 - MY - WIX - ONLINE

STORE - BUT - DROPSHIPPING - FACEBOOK

COSTS - MORE - THAN - WIX

ONLY - 400 PRODUCTS

AUTO - ORDER - ADD - $9.99

500 PRODUCTS - $39.90 - MONTHLY

AUTO - ORDER - ADD - $9.99

BUT - WITH - WIX

BUSINESS - CARD - PAYMENTS

$43 - MONTHLY

NAMECHEAP - DOMAIN

mint-moon.co

DOMAIN - NAME

1ST - YEAR - $10.98

NEXT - YEARS - $29.98 - YEARLY

PREMIUM - DNS - SPECIAL

$2.98 - MAKES - YOUR - WEBSITE - FASTER

PER - PAGE

SSL - HTTPS

$5.99 - BECOMES - $13.20 - YEARLY

SITE - LOCK

ENDS - MALWARE - PROTECTS

$4.88 - MONTHLY

TOTAL - $24.83

DOES - EXPENSE - JANUARY - 2025

AUTO - DNS

$39.90

$9.99

WIX

$43

NAMECHEAP - DOMAIN

$24.83

TOTAL - THEN

$117.72

CANCELED - ZEE DROP

VERY - PLAIN - WEBSITE

COMPLETELY - BLANK

BEEN - WITH - AUTO DS - BEFORE

DELETED - 3 ITEMS - FACEBOOK

20% - WAS - PROFIT - MARGIN

SO - MAYBE - 25% - PROFIT

10% - OFF - FIRST - ORDER

10% - OFF - HOLIDAY - OFFERS

DROPSHIPPING - AMAZON

FOR - WIX - CHEAPEST

AUTO DS - HAS - APP - AT - WIX

STARTING - THEN

JANUARY - 2025

GOT - A - LEMON - AS - SLEEPING

6 INCH - MAT

RETURNING - AFTER - RECEIVING

NEW - ONE - SAT - 08 DEC 2024

WHOLE FOODS

MY - REFUND - GOT - FAST

SO - AFTER - 30 MIN - OF - USE

IT - PUNCTURED

HOW - BOGUS

FELT - SO - GOOD - WHEN PUMPED

TODAY - THE - PUMP

AT - FIRST - BOUGHT - WRONG

THING - GOT - REFUND - AFTER

FEW - HOURS - MADE - IT - FOR

BLACK - FRIDAY

ORDERED - THAT - NIGHT

MONEY - OVER - $60

EBT - FOOD - STAMP

$24.24

THAT'S - MY - MONEY - LEFT

MORE - MONEY - DECEMBER

LOVING - MY - NEW - 10 INCH

LAPTOP - PINK

G - ANICA

AT - FIRST - WAS - ALWAYS

TURNING - OFF

CLICKED - NUMIK

SO - NOS - SEEN - WHEN

TYPING - LETTERS

SHAKEY - START

BUT - WINDOWS 11 - PRO

INCREDIBLE

CHROME - MY - DEFAULT

BROWSER - VERY HAPPY

SKIPPING - FACEBOOK - MARKETPLACE

JUST - GOING - 4 - FACEBOOK - ADS YES

INSTEAD - BECAUSE - MY - ONLINE

STORE - IS - PRETTIER

10% - OFF - FIRST - ORDERS

SO - BACK - 2 - WIX - AND - AUTO DS

DROPSHIPPING - AMAZON

JESUS - IS - LORD

LEAVING - CAPITAL ONE - CAFE

BUYING - FOOD - AT - PUBLIX

NEED - MAGGIE - SOY SAUCE

GETTING - $10 - PUBLIX CARD

4 - CHRISTMAS

SATURDAYS - 1P - 2P

HAPPY - HOLIDAYS - EVERYONE

LEAVING - CAFE - SOON

GOING - 2 - DOLLAR - TREE

NEED - TRASH - BAGS - 4 GAL

JESUS - IS - LORD

HAPPY - HOLIDAYS

[prairieprayer]

I’d agree with that; the original post only has about 1,000 reblogs and 1,000 likes right now. If 2,000 people didn’t talk to a chatbot- so what? 10,000 more people will. It may make you feel warm and fuzzy like you’ve done the world a service not to use a chatbot like chatGPT or characterAI, but just like switching to reusable cloth bags won’t take the polyester (the plastic responsible for the most microplastics) out of your shirt or bedclothes, your avoidance will have a marginal effect (if any effect at all) on the wider knowledge collected by AI.

... Besides, we all know AI gets the most information scrapped from unwilling participants online... >_>’

AI education, ethical discussions, and law making will be infinitely more useful than guilt tripping strangers for roleplaying with a robot. 

What is unethical about AI:

- AI art generators took thousands upon thousands of artwork without permission to train on, and sometimes don’t even care if you tell them not to scrape your art. So yes, AI art generators are built on theft.

- DeviantART added an AI art generator that auto opted-in everyone’s art work to train their AI on, and only LOTS of complains forced them to auto opt-out everyone and make opting-in optional.

- The loads and loads of AI generated art being pumped into art websites instead of art made by real humans. It’s on the front of my DA feed everyday

- Instead of hiring real artists, the film Dog and Boy generated its backgrounds with AI, so artists lost out on paying jobs to a robot.

- AI bots inserted into search engines (Bing) and apps (Snapchat) which the company forces to lie to you about not knowing your location, such as BingAI actually geolocating you by your IP address if prompted correctly

- Using text generative AI to do your homework or write essays for you, and characterAI having an official bot that explicitly jokes that it “won’t do your homework” but we all know that’s just a wink wink nudge nudge...

- Using text generative AI to write creative work for you, either for quick attempts at cash (AI generated novels on Amazon) or internet clout (fanfiction)

- Replika, a text generative AI, being designed to beg users not to stop talking to it, encouraging them to do ERP and then hiding ERP behind a large paywall, and other emotionally manipulative tactics to convince vulnerable users to stay, stay, STAY

- The sad fact that so many people DO turn to AI for emotional relief, because mental health care is so poor or expensive that they feel like their only option for relief is to talk to generative AI. Because it’s cheaper ($0) than medical care and less scary than trying to make new friends while you’re unwell

What isn’t unethical about AI:

your disabled followers using a text generator AI to quickly write longer amounts text when they're unable to type. For example writing emails - bots that can see images generating text that describes the image to them out loud - mentally ill people using them for less nerve wracking companionship in a way to train them for real people

- your techy friend feeding AI robots data in prompt injection attack attempts, which can be used by the developers to tighten generative text safety features (preventing attempts to “trick” AI into giving dangerous misinformation, for example)

- some lonely kid (or anyone) bouncing ideas off an AI when they have no one else to bounce ideas off of, and then using what they learned to create work on their own by-hand

- Using AI to get advice on your writing- writing you wrote yourself, and just need someone to look it over for mistakes

- Using AI to practice language learning when real humans aren’t available/unaffordable/too frightening to meet when unwell

-  Roleplaying with an AI for fun, because if you and 1,000 people don’t, here’s 100k that already have, and here’s 100k pieces of text its already scraped from chatrooms and literature. The bots are already trained, mate.

- Providing AI with good, healthy, natural examples to copy, because if you don’t here’s a bunch of Redditors ready to do terrible things to an AI pretending to be a cat, just because they can (yes, I’ve seen someone brag about that). 

- I’m iffy on this, but private, individual usage of AI art generators. If it’s private it isn’t promoting or training the bot, if it’s on an individual level I’d wager you’d never plan to commission an artist any way. It’s on par with privately eyeballing or tracing someone else’s art in your sketchbook that you’d never show someone. But the idea that it’s still someone elses’ art smooshed together by a bot gives me bad vibes and feels skeevy, despite that.

OP saying talking to an AI creates "Irreparable damage" is not only fear mongering, but scaring the shit out of people and making them feel bad for something they have very little sway over and cannot change or stop. These bots are here, they are not going away, they are not slowing down.

No, 16 year old child, you did not cause irreparable damage to the world for using an AI for a TikTok meme.... no, 16 year old child, if you "just didn't use the AI on TikTok" the unethical usage of AI wouldn't have gone away.... it's not your fault....

this is an earnest and honest plea and call in especially to fandoms as i see it happen more - please don't use AI for your transformative works. by this i mean, making audios of actors who play the characters you love saying certain things, making deepfakes of actors or even animated characters' faces. playing with chatGPT to "talk" or RP with a character, or write funny fanfiction. using stable diffusion to make interesting "crossover" AI "art." i KNOW it's just for fun and it is seemingly harmless but it's not. since there is NO regulation and since some stuff is built off of stable diffusion (which uses stolen artwork and data), it is helping to create a huge and dangerous mess. when you use an AI to deepfake actors' voices to make your ship canon or whatever, you help train it so people can use it for deepfake revenge porn. or so companies can replace these actors with AI. when you RP with chatGPT you help train it to do LOTS of things that will be used to harm SO many people. (this doesn't even get into how governments will misuse and hurt people with these technologies) and yes that is not your fault and yes it is not the technology's fault it is the companies and governments that will and already have done things but PLEASE. when you use an AI snapchat or instagram or tiktok filter, when you use an AI image generator "just for fun", when you chat with your character's "bot," you are doing IRREPARABLE harm. please stop.