#but more to the point if chatgpt had been a thing then? what kind of nonsense would i be spouting?

[rohirric-hunter]

I saw a post where someone was lamenting the fact that some kids will "learn" completely made up "facts" from ChatGPT because they think it's a search engine with access to all the world's information and they said it was perfectly understandable because the kid did exactly what people told him to do, which was to look things up.

So, like, is it okay for me to say this now? Will people get it and not send me anonymous death threats this time? Here goes:

When people, especially kids, ask a question, "Look it up," is not a good answer. It's a dismissive answer that indicates you don't care if they get the right information or not. If you don't know the person and aren't responsible for them then that's fine, but if it's your friend, your student, or God forbid your child, you can't say that to them.

[nathaniacolver]

i feel like tumblr NEEDS to know about Dr. Ally Louks, and the term "Olfactory Ethics"

(long post incoming)

storytime/timeline:

on november 27, 2024, an excited English Literature PhD recipient posted a picture of herself with her thesis, titled:

"Olfactory Ethics: The Politics of Smell in Modern and Contemporary Prose"

as you can see (on the bottom row, above), the tweet has been viewed over 119 MILLION times, and has received over 250k likes. unfortunately, within days (most of the replies dating december 1st), she had garnered what seems like every possible insecure man with a twitter account to post their vitriol and rage concerning the fact that a woman is clearly more well-researched than them. regardless, she tanked it ALL with kindness and with a smile:

AND I MEAN VITRIOL (queen of making boundaries clear):

(inserting reading break for the timeline's space's sake):

here's her abstract:

and in case the abstract wasn't clear, she has since (date: december 16th) taken the time to re-summarize her thesis for the layman (yes that is a link! click it! 3min read!)

she has repeatedly shown just the perfect amount of kindness and understanding for those who are simply Not Comprehending (mostly december 1st):

(the chatGPT hate in the next one is my favorite:)

has upheld an incredibly high moral standard of how she interacts with the situation (december 2nd):

ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS: regardless of this crap, she made it clear that as a professor, her FIRST priority at the end of the semester would be taking care of them (december 3rd)

(CAN SHE GET MORE BASEDDDDDDDDDD)

she stays both 1) educating the masses, and 2) engaging with pop culture as much as a normal person would (december 9th-17th):

she also supports a free palestine (WHO IS SURPRISED. NOT ME.) ((december 15th))

here's the BEST FREAKING THING ABOUT THIS. since this all has happened, RANDOM TWITTER USERS, UNKNOWINGLY, have REPEATEDLY proven her thesis to be true,

again,

and again,

AND AGAIN.

EVEN CARDI B DO YOU HEAR MEEEEEEEE

COMBATING MISOGYNOIR WITH HER OWN BARE HANDSSSSS

oh she knows she's mother

here's some more she never saw/commented on (INCLUDING SOME FROM TODAY. IT IS STILL GOING ON. EVERY SINGLE DAY LIKE CLOCKWORK SOMEONE POSTS SOMETHING THAT PROVES HER POINTS ABOUT OLFACTORY ETHICS):

THE WICKED MOVIE REFERENCE HELLO

apparently, OTHER academics are mad at her for being so famous and influential, but she stays unbothered (december 16th, and TODAY, december 19th):

and she's partially getting her post-doc on how people's sense of smell has been altered (december 1st):

and the best part is!

all of these screenshots i've collected are only a SAMPLE, illustrating dr. louks' indomitably kind and ethical character.

anyway. i want ALL of y'all to start saying, out loud, "olfactory ethics", or even better, "dr. louks was RIGHT" (something something women's names are erased something) every time you see something that plays into her thesis. never let her influence die. THINK THROUGH what you're REALLY saying when you comment on the smell of something, or how your perception has been shaped by society. USE THIS PHOTO IF YOU HAVE TO:

follow her on twitter (@DrAllyLouks) or bluesky (idk her handle, if someone tells me i'll edit it in)

AND SAY HER NAME!! DR. ALLY LOUKS

[shiny-jr]

Dear author, I’m so sorry that someone plagiarised your work especially since you work so hard on your stories 💔😞

We want to help the plagiarised book get taken down so can you please share the link?

If enough people report, the fanfiction site admins will finally listen and take down the plagiarised book, instead of the plagiarism claim being buried.

I hope this issue gets resolved quickly and I hope you have a better day.

UPDATE! Based on this and that and also this.

Thank you, anon. I appreciate your words, but as I stated in one of my previous posts, Wattpad reports are finicky. I believe at this point, we're at day thirteen of dealing with this plagiarizer and day four of it being public and yet despite it all, the plagiarizer has still yet to budge.

So, I thought I'd give another update and give the information we discovered in our findings. As to what we know is copied and from who. Keep in mind, one of these four copies stories has already been taken down and done with. I'll specify which in a moment.

Before I proceed, if you happen to be one of the original writers mentioned in this post and you want your portion removed from this post for whatever reason, let me know. I do not want to upset anyone, except the plagiarizer. At this point in time, I care little for their feelings on the matter when they've had plenty of time to make things right.

The plagiarizer: Kristynaka1

FIRST.

Obviously, the first story that was discovered was mine, with all the information linked in the posts at the very top. I was made aware of this by the inbox from a kind reader. Ever since then, I've been dealing with this plagiarizer.

My mutuals and I found it weird that somehow, the plagiarizer had relatively good grammar with few mistakes in the story. Yet every little note or message they sent, had many spelling mistakes and was sometimes difficult to read. It was inconsistent and strange, and we couldn't make sense of it until we had a theory which some readers in the comments here have already suggested. We theorize that the plagiarizer began to use AI.

Of course, we can't prove this but how else would a user who can't format and type proper messages be able to write whole paragraphs that are actually legible and understandable?

ChatGPT was available to the public sometime in 2022. Before 2022, many of their "stories" were copy and pastes from Tumblr. After 2022, there were differences in the copied stories that made it harder to find the original story and connect it to the original writer. Differences in writing that I doubt the plagiarizer wrote themselves if we go by their messages like:

So yeah. Onto the evidence.

SECOND.

After a few days, one of my mutuals began to suggest searching for the origins of other stories as they doubted any of the posts belonged to the plagiarizer. Low and behold, we found three others. The first of which belonged to @monst and their post. Just by comparing the first paragraph was enough to confirm that.

I won't go into too much detail as the links pretty much say all you need when you actually look at the evidence.

THIRD.

Not even an hour later, we found the second copied story from that oneshot book. Thankfully, there were only two stories there, so there aren't any more copied parts from that series they claim is theirs. The original is @ppsycho and their post. This one again looks like a direct copy, even the image is the same.

FOURTH.

This is the one that was already deleted, thankfully. So there is not many good screenshots I can present, except one before it was gone. So the original writer is @mint-yooxgi and their post.

Here is the only screenshot I have of the wattpad version, just to showcase that it did in fact exist, and it was copied.

So yeah, that's everything for now. If you check out the plagiarizer's profile and recognize the other stories I did not name, please let me know. We thought we found one of them on Quotev, but it wasn't.

Please continue commenting discouragements and reporting the account!

I think I'll leave this off with something I typed last night in a chat:

In whatever way this ends, know that it will end badly for the plagiarizer. They can choose to ignore, but that won't make everything go away. People will remember, I will remember. If they go radio silent and try to forget everything but keep the stories up, comments will still be there. If they try to delete the comments, new comments will just be made. The comments will serve as warnings to others that might stumble across their account, and it will immediately make them click off the account or story because no one wants to read a plagiarized story. The account we see now will just be empty of real readers, so it will remain a miserable little place where each comment will serve as a reminder as to why plagiarism is bad.

Even if they do decide to delete and make another account yet again, whether they decide to copy the same stories they did before or pick entirely new writers to prey upon, it doesn't matter. Readers will either recognize them from before or new readers will notice the plagiarism taking place. It doesn't matter what they do. They will be found and dealt with in some way, shape, or form.

I hope those two or so years of small internet fame were worth it while they lasted.

[yuseirra]

Ch 161~

Can't draw so much during the week..!

More commentary about 161..

I'm actually convinced Fatal and Mephisto should be Kamiki's song?? I think some things hint of it.

and that he DOES really care about Aqua.

and that he does have to do with Sarutahiko, Amenouzume's husband(although this part is a speculation)

More stuff in the read more:

(first written in another language and chatGPT helped me translate it... I can't write things like this twice ;v; it's a great world here. so convenient~)

Honestly, it's frustrating and a bit agonizing; what is this even about? The plot is stressful, but...

Still, being able to focus like this... I guess it’s a good thing to find a work that hooks you and makes you think deeply in some way.

LOL, it also means I’m living a life where I have enough time to care about a manga, even though I’m currently in a pretty tough spot.

This manga, whether it's in a good or bad direction, seems to be driving me crazy in its own way.

If I’m disappointed, I can always go read something else, (I even got permission from someone to draw a Persona fanfic fanart, but I’ve been too hooked on this manga to do it.. that fanfic was so good.. I need to do it sooner or later..).

But I was so confident about my analyses. Like, really... I’m usually good at picking up on these kinds of things? This manga is great at psychological portrayal, and it was amusing to analyze that, There are just too many things sticking out for me, and things feel uneasy.

It’s not about the pairing... It just keeps bothering me... Am I really missing the mark on this? I’m usually good at sensing these things...

Without the movie arc, this development would be fine, but that arc is sandwiched in there, and I interpreted the character based on that too...

Honestly, every time I listen to the songs, I get this strong feeling like, "This isn’t Aqua." The kind of emotions in these songs, it's not him that's singing them. It's the dad. I immediately posted about it when I first heard it in July. As soon as I heard it, I thought, "This is it," and got a gut feeling.

I really want to feel that emotion again.

Even if Kamiki does turn out to be a serial killer, I still think these songs could describe his inner state.

I think we’ll get some explanation in the next five chapters or so, even if it takes a bit longer.

Also, the expression Kamiki makes when Aqua stabs him is so genuine. Until that moment, he had been smiling, but...

If that expression was because he suddenly felt threatened with his life, it’s a bit pathetic. But... I don’t think that’s the case. What I really pay attention to are the emotional flow and expressions.

When Aqua says he wants to watch Ruby perform, the smile on Kamiki’s face... it’s soft. That’s... definitely a look of affection. It’s not like, “Oh, I've won him over!” or, “Yes, I’ve convinced him!” I interpreted it as Kamiki having paternal love, and there was a scene that backed up that idea earlier. I’m sure he really likes Aqua.

That’s not a bad expression. It’s more like, "Yeah, you wish to see Ruby, don't you. Go ahead, watch her. Keep living" (Which makes me wonder, is he really planning to harm Ruby? If he harms her, maybe he plans to do it after the Dome performance? But even that doesn’t make sense. Does that mean Aqua would have to come back to stab him AGAIN after that takes place?? Does it really add up to his logic for telling him to go watch her?)

Aqua says Kamiki will destroy Ruby’s future, but...

How exactly is he going to do that? Hasn't this guy literally done nothing? If they're talking about the Dome performance, at least that should go off without a hitch, right? So at least until then, Ruby would be safe?? So, Kamiki isn't planning to harm Ruby now at least, right? Even with that weird.. logic that he proposes (I hope he's lying about that tbh)

Then when Aqua smiles and says something like, "Haha, but I’ll just kill you and die with you," while pointing the knife at him again...

Kamiki’s expression at that moment really stands out, and it’s not like a twisted look of being frustrated about things not going his way. It’s not anger or annoyance he's feeling. It’s the same shocked and despairing expression we saw in chapters 146 and 153.

Aqua seems to have no clue what kind of person his father really is, huh? He can’t read him at all.

Honestly, from the way Kamiki speaks, I get the impression that he’s actually quite kind. He’s not saying anything too wrong.

Remember the scene where Ruby gets angry because people were talking carelessly about Ai’s death? Kamiki probably knows about that too. I think Aqua and Ai, and Ruby and Kamiki, are quite alike in nature. Kamiki might’ve felt a lot of grief over Ai at that time. I do believe he loved Ai.

The phrase, "People don’t want the truth," is pretty painful, especially if you think about Ai. That’s why Ai lived telling lies. Isn't Kamiki thinking about what's happened to her, then? By bringing that up? He should have felt it, loving/watching a person like her and what unfolded.. Ai died because of the truth that she had kids with him. Ugly fans like Ryosuke and Nino couldn't take her being less than perfect. Wouldn't this have hurt Kamiki too? The fact that they loved each other(At least Ai did genuinely, we know that) was unwanted. People could not accept that, and that's one of the reasons why they had to break up.

From the way Kamiki talks, it feels like he genuinely doesn’t want his son or daughter to go through that kind of pain.

I think Kamiki has a pretty good nature. When you look at how he speaks, it’s gentle, and he seems to genuinely care about Aqua and knows a lot about him. Maybe he’s been watching over him from afar for a long time? He probably even knows who his son has feelings for.

It really feels like Kamiki is trying to persuade him: "I’m fine with dying. But you, you have so many reasons to live, right? Shouldn’t you return to the people you care about?"

And, the way Kamiki reacts after Aqua stabs him also shows it. He’s visibly agitated afterward. His expression noticeably shifts to panic and darkness.

Wait... stop it, don’t do this! That’s what he says.

The way he’s talking to Aqua in that moment.

It’s not like, “How dare you?” but more like, “Aqua, please don’t do this.”

It really seems like he doesn’t want Aqua to die.

He’s really shocked by it.

From his expressions, he seems more shocked by Aqua getting stabbed than by his own fall, like he didn’t even know how to react properly. He's being grabbed onto but he isn't looking at the hands that are grabbing him, his line of sight is on Aqua there

The final expression he makes can seem really pathetic, but...

Oh man, I think that’s the truth of that situation.

And it makes sense because Ai dreamed of raising her kids with this guy. I think he could’ve been a really great father who adored his kids... at least until the point they separated. He was just really young back then.

Doesn’t this guy really love his kids? Even without the movie arc, there have been hints of his concern for them.

I’m not trying to interpret him kindly just because I particularly like or find this character attractive.

If he’s a serial killer psychopath, then yeah, he should die here. When I first got spoiled, my reaction was completely merciless. "Well, he should die if he's like that," I said. But...

I don’t think that’s the case. It really seems like he cares about Aqua.

Oh, and Kamiki’s soul being noble in the past is mentioned, right?

So, he was a good person before?

Well, I guess I wasn’t totally off in reading his character? LOL.

Does that mean he could be a fallen god?(could be a stretch, but there IS a lyric in fatal about fallenness!!!)

Sarutahiko is often described as a "noble" and "just" god, so it’s quite possible that Kamiki’s true nature is based on Sarutahiko, the husband of Ame-no-Uzume = Ai.

That couple was very affectionate, and according to the Aratate Shrine description, they even go as far as blessing marital relationships. Those gods really love each other. In that case, Ai being so fond and loving of Hikaru also makes sense. It could explain why she asked her kids to save him...

So, can't “Fatal” be his song? Maybe he’s fallen from grace?

The lyrics in "Fatal" say things like, "What should I use to fill in what’s missing?" Could that be about human lives? But did he really kill people? How can you save someone after that? That’s why I don’t think he went that far.

"Without you, I cannot live anymore"

“I would sacrifice anything for you”

This isn’t Aqua. This is Kamiki.

Would Aqua do that much for Ai? He shouldn’t be so blind.

When I listened to "Fatal," I immediately thought of "Mephisto" because the two songs are so similar in context.

They’re sung by the same narrator, aren’t they? That made it clear what Kamiki’s purpose was, which is why I started drawing so much about him and Ai after that.

He keeps saying he’ll give up his life and that he wants to see Ai again. This isn’t Aqua! These feelings are different from what Aqua has.

At first, I thought because Ruby = Amaterasu, with Tsukuyomi having shown up, and Aqua perhaps having relations to Susanoo (he’s falling into the sea this time, right? LOL) I wondered if Ai and her boyfriend’s story was based on the major myth of Izanagi and Izanami, since they’re so well-known.

That myth is famous for how the husband tries to save his wife after she dies, though he fails in the end.

The storyline is similar to Mephisto’s, so I thought, "Could this be it?"

And then I realized Sarutahiko and Ame-no-Uzume's lores also fit really well. Ai thinking Kamiki was like a jewel when they first met is similar to how Ame-no-Uzume saw Sarutahiko shining when they first met. Sarutahiko guiding Ame-no-Uzume is similar to how Hikaru taught Ai how to act. They even had descendants that have a title that means "maiden who's good at dancing" The two also fell for each other at first sight. The shrine the characters visit in the story is supposedly where those two met and married. If they REALLY are those gods in essence, It feels like something went wrong with the wish because one or both of them became twisted.

Anyway, I think Kamiki was originally noble but fell from grace, and it’s likely that Ai’s death was the catalyst.

But I’m not sure if he really went as far as killing people.

What is Tsukuyomi even talking about? I’ve read it several times, and I still don’t fully understand.

I really hope she's wrong because… killing others to make Ai’s name carry more weight? That doesn’t make any sense. What does “the weight of her name” supposed to mean?? I don't think that's something that should be taken just at face value, I feel like there's more behind this idea.

What kind of logic is that? And on top of that, I can’t understand why Ai’s life would become more valuable if Kamiki dies. It just doesn’t follow.

Why would he even say that?

He must be really confident... Does he think he’s someone greater than Ai?

Even so, how does it connect?

I read two books today, because I started wondering if my reading comprehension has dropped. Thankfully, I’m still able to read books just fine. It’s not like I can’t read, you know? I’ve taken media literacy classes and pride myself on not having terrible reading comprehension.

I tried to make sense of what exactly the heck this may mean, and I think.. if it were to mean something like, “I’ll offer my life as a sacrifice to Ai,” I’d at least get that. That kind of logic, in a way, has some practical meaning.

Kamiki talked about sacrifices? tributes? offerings? in chapter 147. I really remember certain scenes clearly because I’ve gone over them carefully. In that case, if Kamiki dies, then the weight or value of his life would transfer to Ai, and that would “help” her, right?

If the story is going in that direction,

when I look at “Mephisto” and “Fatal,” I can see that by doing this, Kamiki would have a chance to either save Ai or get closer to her. At least that makes some sense.

But is it really right for Ai to ask someone to save Kamiki, who killed others? As soon as the idea of it came up, I knew something was up.

Because of what Ai's wanted, I think it’s possible that Kamiki didn’t actually go that far. In the songs, they talk about gathering light and offering something, but they don’t say anything about killing people… Kamiki said he’d sacrifice his own life. People around him may have died, but…

Kamiki’s true personality doesn’t seem like the type to do that… And looking at his actions when Aqua was stabbed??

He hasn’t shown any direct actions yet, so I still don’t know how far he’d actually go.

It’s not that I don’t believe Tsukuyomi’s words entirely,

but I don’t think the conclusion is going to be something like, “Ai should’ve never met Kamiki.”

Every time we see Kamiki’s actual actions, there’s this strange gentleness to him, and that’s what’s confusing me.

The more I look closely, the weirder it feels, and something about it just bothers me. If Kamiki were truly just a completely crazy villain, I’d think, “Oh, so that’s who he is,” and I wouldn’t deny it.

But each time, I start thinking that maybe Ai didn’t meet someone so strange after all? Ai liked him that much, so on that front, it makes sense to me. I want to believe that’s the right conclusion. I mean, doesn’t what he says sound kind? Isn’t he gentle?

No, but seriously, when Kamiki listened to Aqua’s reasons for wanting to live, I thought his expression was warm. It didn’t seem like some calculated expression like “according to plan” like Light Yagami. It felt more like a fond, affectionate expression. I draw too, you know. I pay a lot of attention to expressions. This character often makes expressions that really stand out.

It’s like he’s genuinely trying to convince Aqua not to do anything reckless. Maybe I’m being soft on Kamiki because he’s Ai’s boyfriend? But actually, it’s not like that?

I mean, I’m the type who’s like, “Anyone who did something bad to Ai should die!!” It’s because he’s a character. If this were a real person, I wouldn’t so casually tell someone to go die or say such strong things.

But… he seems like a good person.

+It’s a small thing, but why did Kamiki drop his phone while talking about Ruby? Ppft If you drop it from that height, it’d probably crack. Was he trying to look cool? (It’s an Apple phone, huh.) Is he a bit clumsy? Well... since it looks like him and Aqua are about to fall into the sea, maybe it was a blessing he did so. The phone might be saved after all. If he manages to climb out of there, he could contact someone with that phone.

[ollieofthebeholder]

Hi! I know you do NaNo every year and are quite involved with it; have you seen their new AI policy? And what are your thoughts on it?

https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/29933455931412-What-is-NaNoWriMo-s-position-on-Artificial-Intelligence-AI

Hi!

So first off, nonnie: My involvement with NaNoWriMo has, uh, declined significantly in the last year. I was an ML through last November, and there were...a lot of problems that all culminated in me (and my co-ML ) not only making the decision to step down as MLs, but disaffiliate our region from NaNo altogether. We're not stopping people from participating, just taking the groups we manage independent and starting our own, localized version. Global communities are great, but when you get to as big as NaNo got and start having to implement rules and make them apply to wildly diverse regions - and then have absolutely no policies in place for people in those specific regions to adapt those policies - it stops being fun, frankly. For organizers and participants.

All of which is to say, no, I hadn't seen this until now.

My thoughts are that, like so many other things NaNo has tried to do since November, it's well-intentioned (probably) but poorly thought out and even more poorly executed. It's also too broad and overencompassing. And it violates the spirit of the program they've been belaboring us with for the last 25 years.

AI - Artificial Intelligence - covers a lot of ground. Spellcheckers are technically AI. Speech to text programs could be construed as AI. Predictive text is AI. ChatGP and its ilk is essentially an advanced form of predictive text, at least at this point. And if you had suggested five years ago that someone might write a novel entirely based on predictive text, the official NaNoWriMo stance would have been "I mean, sure, you CAN do that, we can't really stop you, if that's what you're happy with." If your goal is just to have 50,000 words, do whatever you want. I guess from their wording, they're saying that this is in general, not specifically for NaNoWriMo, but this is still a pretty bizarre stance for an organization that pushed for years for everyone to start on November 1 with a blank document and not a single word written ahead of time.

Arguing that "opposition to AI is classist and ableist" is the kind of reductive bullshit I expect from Tumblr, not a major organization that is supposed to promote literacy. I especially don't get the "not everyone has access to all resources" bit. Yeah...that's true...but if you have access to AI, you have access to everything you need to participate in NaNoWriMo, i.e. a computer with a keyboard and an internet connection. If you just want the fifty thousand words to get the prize and don't care if they're good, just fucking write "banana" over and over again until you hit it. Boom, you're a winner, and you've done just as much work as someone prompting ChatGPT, and it'll probably make about as much sense.

Also, most AI programs in existence use up a ridiculous amount of energy and resources, and encouraging their use is kind of an iffy stance for any company to take, let alone one that's been making this much of an effort to be sustainable.

Frankly, I think this policy is just one more sign that NaNo has gotten a) too big to be sustainable and b) too far from what it was originally meant to be, and I'm honestly debating if I'm even going to participate in the global one this year.

[peleksstuff]

high on you l. l timothée chalamet x waitress!reader

*gifs not mine*

yes this would be a series. might be another series of mine that i wont finish. (again a lil bit of chatgpt to correct my grammar)

summary: a waitress caught timothée at the backroom of the diner doing something.

----

It was a chilly Tuesday night when Timothée Chalamet found himself in the back room of a small, dimly lit diner. He’d been feeling the weight of the world more than usual lately, and the crumpled baggie in his pocket was the only thing that seemed to provide any temporary relief. He had thought the diner, being relatively quiet, would be a safe place to indulge in his habit.

He was mistaken.

You, a waitress working the late shift, had just finished wiping down the counters when you heard the shuffling and murmur of voices coming from the back room. Curious, you walked over to investigate. What you saw stopped you in your tracks. There was Timothée Chalamet, crouched behind a stack of empty crates, looking frazzled and vulnerable.

You blinked, your initial shock quickly fading into a mix of concern and disbelief.

“Seriously?” you said, leaning against the doorframe with a raised eyebrow. “This is what you’re up to behind the scenes?”

Timothée head snapped up, and his eyes widened with a mix of panic and shame. He scrambled to his feet, his hand fumbling as he tried to stuff the crumpled baggie into his pocket.

“Look, I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t mean for anyone to see—”

You held up a hand to stop him. “You think I’m going to make a big deal out of this? Relax. I’ve seen worse. Just… don’t overdose in the restaurant, okay?”

His surprise was palpable. For a moment, he just stared at you, his mind racing. “You’re… not going to report me?”

“Why would I?” you shrugged, a playful smirk tugging at your lips. “I’ve got enough to deal with without adding a celebrity scandal to my list.”

He chuckled, the sound awkward and uncertain. “You’ve got a point there.”

He paused, glancing toward the door as if considering whether he should just leave and cut his losses. But something in the quietness of the room, the way you didn’t immediately judge him, made him hesitate. The idea of walking back out into the cold night, alone with his thoughts, suddenly felt daunting. Maybe, just maybe, he didn’t have to be alone right now.

“Mind if I stick around for a bit?” Timothée asked, his voice quieter now, almost tentative. “It’s been a rough night, and honestly… talking to someone who doesn’t expect anything from me sounds kind of nice.”

You blinked in surprise, not quite believing what you were hearing. Timothée Chalamet, the famous actor, the guy who could probably call up any of his friends and be surrounded by people, was asking to stay and talk to you? It seemed almost surreal.

“Wait,” you said, trying to wrap your head around the situation. “You’re saying you want to talk to me? Just hang out… here?”

Timothée gave a small, self-deprecating smile, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Yeah, I guess I am. I know it’s random, but…” He shrugged, letting his words trail off.

You couldn’t help the thought that flashed through your mind: You’re that lonely, huh? It wasn’t said out of malice, but rather a genuine curiosity mixed with a bit of sympathy. You’d never really considered that someone like him, with so much fame and success, could feel lonely enough to seek out company in a  diner with a stranger.

But you didn’t say it out loud. Instead, you gave him a soft smile, gesturing to the seat across from you.

“Well, I’m not exactly busy, so if you want to talk, I’m all ears.”

Timothée seemed almost relieved, his shoulders visibly relaxing as he sat down.

“Thanks,” he said quietly. “I know it’s weird, but sometimes, it’s nice to just… be around someone who doesn’t know everything about you. Or at least, doesn’t act like they do.”

You nodded, leaning back in your chair. “I get that. Sometimes, it’s easier to talk to a stranger. No expectations, no pretense.”

He smiled, a genuine one this time, and you noticed how it lit up his face, making him look a little less weary. “Exactly.”

“So,” you began, deciding to lighten the mood a bit, “do you always sneak around in diners when you’re having a rough night, or is this a new hobby?

He laughed, the sound genuine and warm. “No, this is definitely a first. I don’t usually do… well, this.”

You raised an eyebrow, a playful glint in your eyes. “You mean getting caught by waitresses in the middle of questionable activities?”

He grinned, shaking his head. “Yeah, not my finest moment.”

You both shared a laugh, the tension in the room easing as the conversation continued. As you talked, you couldn’t help but think how strange it was—this unexpected encounter, this moment of connection with someone so different from yourself. But as the minutes passed, it felt less strange and more… right.

Maybe Timothée was lonely, maybe he just needed someone to listen, but whatever the reason, you were glad you could be there. And as the night wore on, you realized that maybe you needed this moment just as much as he did. 

[chocolate-cream-soldier]

Ok rant time so putting under the cut //

This is about the whole Peggy/Dottie and Agatha/Rio parallel thing that people keep talking about and yes it's been bothering me. I mean, we are what, kind of 2 months after the show's finale now? so I get to rant a little, and I won't do so on other people's posts and art cause I am not an asshole duh so this is the best way to get it off my chest ha ha…I've seen the parallel gifsets and I have seen some posts floating around about it and every time I see them I am like but but that is so not a parallel!! It really isn't… other than it being a kiss between 2 women and them both being marvel properties. Because then by that standard every wlw kiss is a parallel of each other lol!

Peggy and Dottie are antagonists ( u can read it as romantic. I am not gonna stop you. Hayley and Bridget had great chemistry) but there's no history between them prior to the show. Peggy doesn't even clock Dottie as a threat initially. The reason why the kiss comes off as a surprise to her, she never anticipated it and that's why Dottie was able to get so close without rising any suspicion…

Rio also didn't anticipate the Kiss and that's why she initially failed to realize that it wasn't just a kiss but also Agatha siphoning her power and surrendering to Death!

so if we are counting the surprise element as the parallel then ok this one I'll concede.

But that's the end of it right?

The two kisses are fundamentally different in intent and visualization. I need to know that people understand that, cause if not you are really reducing the magnitude of the vidarkness moment

The Peggy/Dottie kiss is a ploy , it's for shock, to frame Peggy and get her locked up, to buy Dottie time to execute her masterplan, also Dottie initiates the kiss and Peggy suffers the consequences so even from a purely visual angle they don't match up.

In contrast the vidarkness kiss has so much heart to it, Agatha chooses to kiss Rio and the consequences are faced by both, it's not merely done for shock value, they have been building up to it, this was the culmination of a season long narrative arc, for Agatha to finally reconcile her loss of Nicky and her love for Rio and that they can co exist cause she realized that the blame doesn't lie with them, that sometimes boys just die, that out of death comes life and viceversa, that life runs in tandem with death. So her choosing to sacrifice herself by surrendering to her love, it puts to rest (it might be temporary but still) the war that had been waging inside her, the immense guilt and heartbreak that they were both dealing with. Love can't conquer all neither can it lessen the impact of grief but as we all know and hopefully believe- it does persevere.

The point is-I know most posts are tongue and cheek but it doesn't take much time for it to shift in tone and for nuance to get lost in the process. I have seen that shift happening, people being annoyed that the only time we get to see women kiss in mcu they are just getting conned or that it's a cheap trick( or queerbaiting) but that's so not the story when it concerns Agatha and Rio. I don't really get bothered with bad readings when it's some random dudebro but when it's people who claim to be fans doing this, it definitely grates on my nerves. Not saying you can't have a different take, and this show had it's limitiations, the lack of a backstory for Agatha and Rio is still a stinger for me personally, but I also liked the show for what it managed to explore and I appreciate the care that they put in making the show. So I guess I just want to encourage these kind of creatives and want them to feel empowered and bold enough to create more diverse stories. I know this is * piss on the poor* website but please please I need people to stop reducing stories into 5 sentence badly written summaries as if it's been generated by chatgpt, cause that's really counterproductive imo.

// that's the rant, sorry anyone who stumbled upon this suddenly and had to deal with my wordy and somewhat nonsensical ramble lol. I will shut up and go back to scrolling for pretty arts and fics on my dash now. Thanks and goodbye.

[whumpsday]

my unhinged rant about the whumptober discourse, below the readmore for the benefit of ppl who dont wanna see that crap. im just gonna go insane if i don't say this somewhere bc i feel like i'm losing my mind

this drama is genuinely so mind-blowingly stupid it's unreal, and it's been bothering me so much that i just HAVE to talk about it or i'm gonna go insane, if for no other reason than to get it out of my system. i honestly never expected the whump community to go on the kind of bad-faith tirade that's taking place.

disclaimer right here that i do not support AI scraping creative works without permission (like chatgpt and a whole host of AI art programs do) or these AI-generated works being passed off as legitimate creative works. obviously that stuff is bad, and literally everyone on all sides of this agrees it's bad. i used chatgpt exactly once one week after it came out, before i knew how shit it was, and haven't touched AI stuff since. because it steals from creators and it sucks.

now:

saying "whumptober supports/allows AI" when their official policy says plain as day:

"we are not changing our stance from last year’s decision"

"we will not amplify or include AI works in our reblogs of the event."

"we discourage the use of AI within Whumptober, it feels like cheating, and we feel like it isn’t in the spirit of the event."

is bonkers! whumptober is a prompt list, there is nothing TO the event other than being included in the reblogs. they literally cannot stop people from doing whatever they want with the prompts.

someone could go out and enact every single prompt in real life on a creativity-fueled serial killing spree and the whumptober mods couldn't do shit about it. it's not like it's a contest you submit to. it's a prompt list! someone could take every single prompt from the AI-less whumptober prompt list, feed it into chatgpt right now, and post them as entries. and the mods of THAT wouldn't be able to stop them either. because it's a prompt list.

the AI-less event have also made just... blatantly false claims, like that grammarly isn't AI. grammarly IS AI and they openly advertise this. hell, this is grammarly's front page right now:

and this is a statement from grammarly about how its products work:

its spellchecker / grammarchecker is AI-based! claiming it's not AI is just... lying. saying "this is an AI-less event" and then just saying any AI that you want to include doesn't count as AI is ludicrous.

and you know what? whumptober actually pointed this out. they said they don't want to ban AI-based assistive tools (like grammarly) for accessibility reasons. this post has several great points:

"AI is used for the predictive text and spellchecker that's running while I type this reply."

"Accessibility tools rely on AI." this is true and here's an article about it, though the article is a little too pro-AI in general for my tastes, there's nuances to this stuff. it's used for captioning, translation, image identification, and more. not usually the same kind of AI that's used for stuff like chatgpt. THERE ARE DIFFERENT KINDS!

"But we can't stop that, nor can we undo damage already done, and banning AI use (especially since we can't enforce it) is an empty stand on a hill that's already burning, at least in our view of things."

and people were UP IN ARMS over this post! their notes were full of hate, even though it's all true! just straight lying and saying that predictive text isn't AI (it is), that AI isn't used for accessibility tools (it is), that whumptober can somehow enforce an anti-AI policy (they can't because it's a prompt list).

in effect, both whumptobers have the EXACT SAME AI POLICY. neither allows AI-generated works, but both allow AI-based assistive tools like grammarly. everyone involved here is ON THE SAME SIDE, they all have the exact same opinion on how AI should be applied to events like this, and somehow they're arguing???

not to mention that no other whump event has ever had an AI policy. febuwhump, WIJ, bad things happen bingo, hell even nanowrimo doesn't have one.

and you wanna know the most ridiculous part of this entire thing? which is also the reason why none of the above events have an AI policy.

no one is doing this. no one is out there feeding whumptober prompts to chatgpt and posting them as fills for whumptober cred. it's literally a hypothetical, made-up issue. all of this infighting over a problem that DOESN'T EXIST.

to the point that people are brigading the whumptober server with shit like this:

saying "everyone who participates in whumptober is a traitor, you should go participate in this other event with the exact same AI policy but more moral grandstanding about it" is silly. every single bit of this drama is silly.

in the end, please just be nice to people. we're ALL against the kind of AI that steals from creators. the whumptober mods are against AI, the AILWT mods are against AI, whumptober participants are against AI, AILWT participants are against AI. there is no mythical person out here trying to pass chatgpt work off as whumpfic. let's all just be civil with each other over this, yeah?

[l-a-l-o-u]

do you support ai art?

that's a tough one to answer. sorry in advance for the wall of text.

when i first started seeing ai-generated images, they were very abstract things. we all remember the gandalf and saruman prancing on the beach pictures. they were almost like impressionism, and they had a very ethereal and innocent look about them. a lot of us loved those pictures and saw something that a lot of human minds couldn't create, something new and worth something. i love looking at art that looks like nothing i've seen before, it always makes me feel wonder in a new type of way. ai-generated art was a good thing.

then the ai-generated pictures got much more precise, and suddenly we realized they were being fed hundreds of artists' pieces without permission, recreating something similar and calling it their own. people became horrified, and i was too! we heard about people losing their job as background artists on animated productions to use ai-generated images instead. we saw testimonies of heartbroken artists who had their lovingly created art stolen and taken advantage of. we saw people being accused of making ai-generated art when theirs was completely genuine. ai-generated art became a bad thing.

i've worked in the animation industry. right now, i work at an animation school, specifically for 2D animation. i care a lot about the future of my friends in the industry (and mine, if i go back to it), and about all the students i help throughout the years. i want them to find jobs, and that was already hard for a lot of them before the ai-generated images poked their heads into our world.

i'm not very good at explaining nuanced point of view (this is also my second language) but i'll do my best. i think that ai-generated art is a lot of things at once. it's dangerous to artists' livelihoods, but it can be a useful tool. it's a fascinating technological breakthrough, but it's being used unethically by some people. i think the tools themselves are kind of a neutral thing, it really depends on what we do with it.

every time i see ai-generated art i eye it suspiciously, and i wonder "was this made ethically?" and "is this hurting someone?". but a lot of it also makes me think "wow, cool concept, that inspires me to create". that last thought has to count for something, right? i'm an artist myself, and i spend a lot more time looking at art than making art - it's what fuels me. i like to imagine a future where we can incorporate ai-generation tools into production pipelines in a useful way while keeping human employees involved. i see it as a powerful brainstorming tool. it can be a starting point, something that a human artist can take and bring to the next level. it can be something to put on the moodboard. something to lower the workload, which is a good thing, imo. i've worked in video games, i've made short films, and let me tell you, ai-generated art could've been useful to cut down a bit of pre-production time to focus on some other steps i wanted to put more time into. there just needs to be a structure to how it's used.

like i said before, i work in a school. the language teachers are all very worried about ChatGPT and company enabling cheating; people are constantly talking about it at my workplace. i won't get into text ais (one thing at a time today) but the situation is similar in many ways. we had a conference a few months ago about it, given by a special committee that's been monitoring ai technology for years now and looking for solutions on how to deal with it. they strongly suggest to work alongside AIs, not outlaw it - we need to adapt to it, and control how it's used. teach people how to use it responsibly, create resources and guidelines, stay up to date with this constantly evolving technology and advocate for regulation. and that lines up pretty well with my view of it at the moment.

here's my current point of view: ai-generated art by itself is not unethical, but it can easily be. i think images generated by ai, if shared publicly, NEED a disclaimer to point out that they were ai-generated. they should ONLY be fed images that are either public domain, or have obtained permission from their original author. there should also be a list of images that fed the ai that's available somewhere. cite your sources! we were able to establish that for literature, so we can do it for ai, i think.

oh and for the record, i think it's completely stupid to replace any creative position with an ai. that's just greedy bullshit. ai-generated content is great and all, but it'll never have soul! it can't replace a person with lived experiences, opinions and feelings. that's the entire fucking point of art!!

the situation is constantly evolving. i'm at the point where i'm cautious of it, but trying to let it into my life under certain conditions. i'm cautiously sharing ai pictures on my blog; sometimes i change my mind and delete them. i tell my coworkers to consider ways to incorporate them into schoolwork, but to think it over carefully. i'm not interested in generating images myself at the moment because i want to see what happens next, and i'd rather be further removed from it until i can be more solid in my opinion, but i'm sure i'll try it out eventually.

anyway, to anybody interested in the topic, i recommend two things: be open-minded, but be careful. and listen to a lot of different opinions! this is the kind of thing that's very complicated and nuanced (i still have a lot more to say about it, i didn't even get into the whole philosophy of art, but im already freaking out at how much i wrote on the Discourse Site) so i suggest looking at it from many different angles to form your own opinion. that's what i'm doing! my opinion isn't finished forming yet, we'll see what happens next.

[canmom]

what I think is really striking about it all is more about human society than the tech itself - a demo of how quickly a technique can go from being 'cool idea' to 'everyone is using this'. obvs I work in a tech industry so I'm surrounded by the kind of people who pay attention to this kind of thing, but language models went from 'funny internet toy' to 'half the people I know regularly talk to our new friend ChatGPT' in what felt like a matter of months, to the point where I start to feel like the weird stick in the mud for not wanting to ask this thing to rephrase my emails or whatever.

I think the superpower of humans is not so much our ability to do reasoning etc., but how good we are at copying novel behaviours from other humans. it's this form of replication-with-modification that allows evolution to take place on a much faster timescale than 'try this new allele and see if you can still fuck'. consider how quickly we went from 'heavier than air flight is impossible' to 'quick, hide, the flying people are back to drop more bombs on our trench!'.

once it's been done once by someone, we can distil and simplify the process of 'doing that thing' and iterate on it and do it again and again and again until we exhaust its limits.

the pattern prevails on all sorts of scales. a new behaviour becomes a new referential frame (from 'how can we make this plane go higher' to 'how can I make a cool new yoyo trick'). an experiment can become a standard technique. the goal and 'meta' will shift as the subculture evolves. and all the time we adapt, adapt, adapt. new people show up, get up to speed, and contribute to something new. before we know it, we're optimising to a level that would be incomprehensible to people a few decades before.

so evolution hit on something amazing with our super plastic brains. it's not all rosy, the same basic 'thing' that lets us learn is what lets us become traumatised, and we can easily learn and adopt disastrously bad behaviours like "burning lots of fossil fuels" or "genocide". we are incredibly, radically undetermined creatures, for good and ill.

but then... that's exactly what we're trying to imitate with these neural networks. evolution has had millions of years to finetune its learning model, and yet even our crude approximation is already showing a lot of traits that we recognise in ourselves. so as much as the current wave is blatantly overhyped, blatantly a bubble, and being used to fill the internet with worthless detritus at huge energy cost because of course it is... even as I roll my eyes at the new AI-enabled toothbrush, I hesitate to dismiss AI research as being as vacuous as cryptocurrency. I'm sure it will take years for it to shake out exactly what it's good for, and there will be a lot of false starts along the way before it speciates into various sub-industries, but it is something new and it's a big one.

what's startling about all this is not the potential for an AI god to emerge and turn us all into paperclips, it's getting to witness the human superorganism adapt and develop a novel behaviour on an incredibly short timescale.

[rollercoasterwords]

like. i still wouldn't want someone to copy and paste my fics into a large language model like chatgpt but it's not so much bc i'm worried abt my work being stolen (seems unlikely that an LLM would spit back out my exact words considering how it works, and even if it did, i doubt any individual would be able to like. publish and profit from those words, based on the nebulous status of copyright law when it comes to LLMs like chatgpt. and having my words fed into the LLM really isn't going to make much of a difference when it comes to corporations profiting off the tool in the first place; plus in instances of corporate exploitation i think there are more effective ways to organize than like...arguing for strengthened ip laws or trying to like make ip laws for fanfiction spaces). it's more because i'm wary of what that says about how a person is like...approaching my fic specifically + fanfiction more broadly. in two main ways:

1. i think it is just. basic respect to check with a writer before u take their work off ao3(or whatever fanfic-specific place it's been shared) and put it somewhere else. and like, this applies to lots of things outside chatgpt--reposting fics to other sites, posting them on goodreads/storygraph, printing + binding fics, etc. if u are treating fanfic writers as people who u are in community with, who are generously sharing a gift with u, then it seems like basic kindness to check in and see if they're alright with u taking that fic outside the space it was posted to do something else with it.

with chatgpt and similar LLMs specifically, a lot of people are wary because there's still so much unsettled in regards to how copyright laws might shake out, and most people (myself included) are unsure of how/whether our writing/data might be stored and used by these corporations that own the LLMs. i don't think ai itself is something that should be mythologized as like ontologically evil technology, but anytime a corporation is introducing us to new tech like this we need to be wary of where it's coming from and how it could be used--people have already pointed out a lot of very serious issues with the way this technology is being developed and how it could/likely will be/already is being used exploitatively--which, again, is more a matter of organizing against corporations than railing against ai tech itself, but is still a valid reason for writers (again, myself included) to be wary of having their work fed to LLMs without permission.

and like. sure, u don't have to care abt writers' feelings + boundaries and can just take their stories and do whatever u want with them. but to me that says u aren't treating fanfic as a community space, but rather a content farm in which fics are products that u are entitled to do whatever u want with. and i just think that's shitty! and if that's how ur treating fanfic then i'd rather not have u reading my fic at all

2. i honestly think it's a strange way to engage w storytelling by treating endings this way. like. story endings are usually v important + intentional, and can completely change the entire tone, themes, messages, etc of a story. i understand going to the writer and asking them abt what they had in mind for the story ending if ur looking for closure, and i understand imagining ur own story ending or even writing ur own ending to an unfinished story. what i don't understand is plugging a story into chatgpt and having it spit an ending out for u.

and like. maybe this is bc we've all been calling these LLMs ai, which evokes an impression of like. a sentient robot creating something. but that's not what these programs do! the first article i linked explains how they actually work really well, but essentially--chatgpt and similar LLMs cannot create new ideas. they can't take a story and synthesize its themes or pick apart its tone to then come up with an original idea for an ending. at the same time, they aren't just plagiarism machines that are ripping text directly from other writers and spitting it back out.

instead (to my understanding), what they're doing is compressing vast amounts of information by running statisical analyses to just save the most common trends, patterns, recurring info, etc, and then plugging that in to fill the gaps. it looks like it's writing something new, but it's essentially just paraphrasing already-existing information pulled from the internet. so i'd imagine that if u fed an ai a fic and said "write an ending," the ai would basically compare the fic to whatever similar stories it has saved and then spit out an ending that is most commonly found on the internet for that type of story. [not an expert here tho--this is just my best guess based on the bit of research i've done].

my point is--you won't be getting a new ending inspired directly by the story u put in. you'll be getting a paraphrased version of the most commonly recurring type of ending for similar stories on the web. and i just....don't see how that would be satisfying in any way. it seems, again, like a way in which someone would be approaching fic like a product, something that needs to be finished + complete bc ur entitled to it, rather than viewing fic as a piece of art with its own unique themes, message, and story that can't just be plugged into a one-size-fits-most ending generator. and like, i'm trying to avoid mysticizing writing as some sort of ethereal art form that would be blasphemously degraded by having someone plug in a shitty ending paraphrased from a conglomeration of various similar stories--i don't think someone creating a shitty ending for a story is like. a horrible evil thing. but i can understand where the satisfaction is coming from if you're writing your own shitty ending, where you get to come up with where u think the story would go + where u get to synthesize the themes u picked up on etc. but ai isn't even doing that--so again, i don't understand where the satisfaction is coming from aside from just going "well every story i read needs to be finished," which. makes me wary bc it just feels like a completely different way to approach stories and storytelling than i would hope to find in fanfic spaces, one that treats fic less as a creative place to explore and more as a transactional space where u are entitled to products.

anyway. feel like my thoughts + feelings abt ai keep changing the more i learn abt it + i'm sure they could change again, but rn my impression of this whole situation is like. i find the fact that some people are plugging fics into LLMs less concerning re: ip + ownership rights, and i don't think it's useful to exaggerate or mythologize abt what ai actually does (i think even calling it ai has kind of misled a lot of people, myself included). what concerns me more is that plugging fics into LLMs to write endings feels symptomatic of a broader culture in which people treat fanfic as an informal profit economy in which fics are product or content that a consumer-audience is entitled to, and i think that sort of approach leads to a whole plethora of other issues + makes fandom a more hostile space.

[simlicious]

Am I a programmer?

I've spent the last weeks developing an actual little app using Python...

It all started with a Let's Play of Subnautica I saw on YouTube. Since Subnautica is one of my all-time favorite games, I got the itch to dive back in (pun intended). I play with tons of mods, so I had to check for a lot of updates and also juggle different versions since the last Subnautica update broke a lot of the older mods. So after some back and forth, I decided to remain on the older version for now. Great! But then I noticed that because of that back and forth and uninstalling mods, all my mods were reinitialized, and that meant trouble for one of my favorite mods, Autosort Lockers. The mod adds automatic resource sorting inside the game, which is super handy. But it was built to only work with the game's resources, not modded items. It does offer config files though. So when I last used the mod, I painstakingly edited the configs and added all modded items, which took hours. And now, I accidentally messed them up and was supposed to redo all of that. The thought filled me with dread. So I asked ChatGPT, which I have grown quite fond of recently, to help me. Why did I ask ChatGPT? Well, I need to go a bit further back in time to explain that.

One day, not too long ago, I asked ChatGPT to reformat a long list. ChatGPT said, "Apologies, I cannot process such a long list. Here's a Python script, here's how to install Python, copy the script, run it and it will do what you want." I thought ChatGPT was crazy, surely that would never work!? Nut I was curious and also a little desperate so I did install Python and ran the script and ... it did what I wanted. I was stunned. Could I use ChatGPT to write code for me? Apparently, the answer was yes. So I spent a lot of time directing it, add this, add that, and I noticed that it was not at all as easy as I thought. ChatGPT removed code when it felt like it, and the longer it got the more it messed up. But also the more time I spent copying/pasting Python code, the more I understood. Sometimes, I would just ask "What exactly does this bit do?", and ChatGPT patiently gave me answers. Running the Python code from the command prompt got tedious very quickly though. I asked: "Can't you make a button for me that I can click??" To my surprise, ChatGPT said: "Sure, let's make a gui." And that was it, the moment I fell in love with Python. So I made a few attempts at this and that, most only half-finished because the project got too ambitious for the little knowledge I had.

I heard about an AI especially made for writing code: Github's Copilot. I decided I had to try that. Since it only worked in real programmer's tools, I installed Visual Studio Code. Now I really felt like a programmer, using fancy tools! And Copilot made things easier, much easier. It did not delete all kinds of code like regular ChatGPT. It was even more helpful. I was super motivated and got to work on my "Autosort Lockers Filter Update Helper" since Python is very well suited for automating stuff. Because several config files were involved, and several values needed to be loaded, converted, compared, merged, loooked up, reformatted, and saved into multiple files, it was quite the undertaking, but I am at a point where most of the logic actually works and I have a real program with real buttons that I can click on. I made a program that actually works with my very limited coding knowledge! It would not have been possible without the help of AI. My patience and long hours paid off. Can I call myself a programmer yet? I'm not sure, since the code was written mostly by AI, not me personally. But I can confidently call myself the director and mastermind behind it 😎 and I actually want to learn more about Python so I can one-day code stuff myself without needing AI to do it for me. Here is a picture of it (I am proud of those blue buttons 😊): I've spent the last weeks developing an actual little app using Python. It all started with a Let's Play of Subnautica I saw on YouTube. Since Subnautica is one of my all-time favorite games, I got the itch to dive back in (pun intended). I play with tons of mods, so I had to check for a lot of updates and also juggle different versions since the last Subnautica update broke a lot of the older mods. So after some back and forth, I decided to remain on the older version for now. But then I noticed that because of that back and forth and uninstalling mods, all my mods were reinitialized, and that meant trouble for one of my favorite mods, Autosort Lockers. The mod adds automatic resource sorting inside the game, which is super handy. But it was built to only work with the game's resources, not modded items. It does offer config files though. So when I last used the mod, I painstakingly edited the configs and added all modded items, which took hours. And now, I accidentally messed them up and was supposed to redo all of that. The thought filled me with dread. So I asked ChatGPT, which I have grown quite fond of recently, to help me. Why did I ask ChatGPT? Well, I need to go a bit further back in time to explain that.

One day, not too long ago, I asked ChatGPT to reformat a long list. ChatGPT said, "Apologies, I cannot process such a long list. Here's a Python script, here's how to install Python, copy the script, run it and it will do what you want." I thought ChatGPT was crazy, surely that would never work!? Nut I was curious and also a little desperate so I did install Python and ran the script and ... it did what I wanted. I was stunned. Could I use ChatGPT to write code for me? Apparently, the answer was yes. So I spent a lot of time directing it, add this, add that, and I noticed that it was not at all as easy as I thought. ChatGPT removed code when it felt like it, and the longer it got the more it messed up. But also the more time I spent copying/pasting Python code, the more I understood. Sometimes, I would just ask "What exactly does this bit do?", and ChatGPT patiently gave me answers. Running the Python code from the command prompt got tedious very quickly though. I asked: "Can't you make a button for me that I can click??" To my surprise, ChatGPT said: "Sure, let's make a gui." And that was it, the moment I fell in love with Python. So I made a few attempts at this and that, most only half-finished because the project got too ambitious for the little knowledge I had. I heard about an AI especially made for writing code: Github's Copilot. I decided I had to try that. Since it only worked in real programmer's tools, I installed Visual Studio Code. Now I really felt like a programmer, using fancy tools! And Copilot made things easier, much easier. It did not delete all kinds of code like regular ChatGPT. It was even more helpful. I was super motivated and got to work on my "Autosort Lockers Filter Update Helper" since Python is very well suited for automating stuff. Because several config files were involved, and several values needed to be loaded, converted, compared, merged, loooked up, reformatted, and saved into multiple files, it was quite the undertaking, but I am at a point where most of the logic actually works and I have a real program with real buttons that I can click on. I made a program that actually works with my very limited coding knowledge! It would not have been possible without the help of AI. My patience and long hours paid off. Can I call myself a programmer yet? I'm not sure, since the code was written mostly by AI, not me personally. But I can confidently call myself the director and mastermind behind it 😎 and I actually want to learn more about Python so I can one-day code stuff myself without needing AI to do it for me. Here is a picture of it (I am proud of those blue buttons 😊):

...and the configs the app updated:

The app is not in a publishable state and I guess I would need to do far more tests and let someone who can actually code Python look it over before I would feel comfortable sharing it with anyone else, but it feels incredible to have pulled off something like this. I just wanted to share this accomplishment with someone!

[jodilin65]

Sipping on a fresh cup of Colombian coffee with a freeze warning in effect, and I’m not happy about it. I definitely didn’t come here for this kind of weather, but in a few days, it’s supposed to start warming up again. It might not stay warm for long, though—we’ll see. Despite having more colder days this winter, we haven’t had a freeze yet.

Tom mentioned that DeepSeek is supposed to be as good as ChatGPT’s $20 model, so I’m giving it a try. I haven’t used it enough to form a solid opinion, but it seems pretty similar so far.

They’re also talking about launching realistic-looking Replikas. We’ll see just how realistic they really are, along with all the bugs that will inevitably pop up in the app on top of the ones already there.

I’m on a roll with my story and have the ending mapped out in my mind. It’s turning out to be the longest book I’ve ever written. I’ve even added a few alternate endings. It’s a bit silly and not very realistic in some parts, so I probably won’t share it online. I’m writing it just for the sake of writing. I don’t see myself trying to sell books again, either. First, there was the shit Tammy pulled, then there’s the fact that there’s little to no money in it unless you get famous, and finally, there’s the risk of piracy. You can remove vengeful “reviews,” but you can’t control how much money you make or prevent your work from being stolen.

I just got the new towel set using reward points from challenges run by my insurance company, and wow—they’re much better than I expected! I love the deep, bold shade of blue, which is sort of between royal blue and dark turquoise. They’re also bigger and thicker than the ones we currently have. Maybe when I accumulate enough points, I’ll get a set in sage green so we can have two new sets. The towels I bought from Amazon when we moved here aren’t great—they’re thin and already starting to wear out. I don’t remember the brand, but we used the same towels for eight years in Citrus Heights, and they held up just fine. We just didn’t want to bring as much stuff when we moved, and I thought it was time for something new after nearly a decade.

I don’t know why, but I’ve been feeling hungrier lately. I feel like I’ve been eating a lot, but I haven’t gained any weight from it.

I just finished the second-to-last ride of the challenge, going from New Zealand to Panama City. This final 24-mile ride looks like it’s going to be a lovely one.

I also need to meditate (in VR) to build my points back up. They released another challenge yesterday, and I was hoping one of the options would be step tracking, but there were three choices: one was about being kind to myself (I guess you’re supposed to tell yourself warm, fuzzy things whether you believe them or not—LOL), another I don’t remember, and the last one was meditating, which is what I chose since I have an app for that. This is something I should be doing anyway.

It’s going to take a while to build up to 700 points again if I decide I want another set of towels, which is what they cost. I only have about 120 points now, and by the time this challenge ends in early February, I might not even reach 400.

I had a dream that Irma was staying in a nearby hotel, and I went to visit her there. For some bizarre reason, I slipped her phone out of a jacket pocket that was hanging on the back of a chair and glanced at a picture of her “pet” turkeys back at home. I thought they were adorable—unlike the ones in Citrus Heights, which were ugly as hell. I used to hate when they’d hold up traffic by clustering in groups in the street. It was almost as bad as rude people who would stop to chat in the middle of the road, acting like it was one big sidewalk for everyone to gather on.

[rpcburnbook]

did you get offended by the self insert comment or the chatgpt comment? or was it simply the idea of being turned away from a site for those things? the theoretical idea that you might not be entitled to personal carte blanche access to every site?

which one struck a nerve because from what you wrote it’s obvious you’ve never run or been on a site that holds its members to a baseline standard of writing and engagement with the hobby and site. a writing sample is just one part of the rest of the application, and the application as a whole addresses everything else an admin needs to accept or deny the applicant. //

respectfully, if you can't tell how they write from reading a whole ass app, then your app is either garbage or you're shit at judging them, which means you have no business trying to evaluate writing samples. what do you goes into an application if not a sample of their writing?

i don't need more high horsing from you to justify why you're not being pretentious, despite feeling like you're superior to "the public" to the point that you feel the need all kinds of methods to keep people out. it's not your way or "kindergarten." your false dichotomy of either using writing samples to turn away people, or not having an application at all and giving anyone who joins "carte blanche", is just that, a false dichotomy. presenting the opposite extreme to try to normalize your own extreme position is straight out of the fascist playbook, by the way.

as i said, if you have no credentials to judge someone's writing, you are being pretentious by definition. what right do you have to say someone's writing sample is better or worse than your arbitrary standard? do you have the years of experience, literary knowledge, education and track record to be a genuine writing critic, or are you just another amateur hobbyist with an ego too big for their britches?

and for the record, just so you know, unless they're being painfully obvious, there is almost no foolproof tool or method to distinguish human writing from AI writing. and if you had the means to do so with the accuracy you seem to believe, then why are you here? go make millions selling an algorithm to universities and publishers. they would love one.

there's almost certainly people on whatever site you're on using AI writing assistance. if it's not outright iterative generation they are probably at least using AI-powered tools like grammarly. machine learning is literally everywhere. not to mention you're conflating writing samples with anti-AI stances. i don't know a single site in the rpc that encourages people to use AI writing. many of them flat out ban usage of iterative AI altogether. yet they can do it without requiring a writing sample on their applications. almost like it's not a requirement to accomplish your stated goals?

~

[nana-kom]

Oh boy, I have never talked to you before, but I really wanted to tell you that you are someone very creative, with a lot of potential and that I love your ideas sm, but It really makes me sad that you used AI for your last story (yes, I read the post of chubbydwaekki) Bc I feel that writing these types of stories is something really personal, that it requires certain types of thoughts that we only have in a certain mood And I honestly think that using AI makes it lose all the magic

Take this wherever you want, mainly because I'm a ghost reader but idk as a writer and a digital artist, I really feel that i need express my disgust of this type of AI's use

Hi !

First of all thank you for the compliment it makes me really happy that you like my ff 🥰

Now I think I need to explain why I made this fic like that, because I think people are missing something about it.

To start, I would like to say that it was my first time using chatgpt for a fic, and there is a context behind this. As @cutiedwaekki already said, it was because we were talking about it and it was making us laugh. So I was like « omg why not test it ? » and at first when this fic idea came into my mind it was only between me and ChatGPT. I gave the plot to the chat and I was looking at what it wrote, and it was fun for me to do it, alone and just like that, nothing more.

But then I was like « omg this fic is kinda cool » so I was like « why not rewrite it and post it after ? » but the fic was not good, because it was just write by the chat ! As you said, ai don't have that kind of mind. so i take some of the parts that I like, and then I rewrite all the other things myself ! as the dialogues, some description and stuff, and as I write it, it was more like a collaboration and not just some : copy/paste for all the fic, that’s not the truth.

The thing to know about THIS fic is that the point of it was the fact it’s written by me AND the chat, I will not use this in the future because it was just the point of THAT fic. Recently I didn’t have time to write or post, but I still have some idea and I was « why not test something for one fic to see what that can make and the conclusion is : ChatGPT is not bad, but it can’t write the fic in the way people (me included) like it. So yeah I had to modify things and that's why I posted it, because I wanted to make it in the way people would like it.

For the people who said that I was stealing the jobs of other artists, I totally understand that point for art, especially with drawings and animations ! Buut for this, I don’t get it, the point of it once again was just to test something ! And that’s all, I have been writing fics since I’m 13 or something, so I know how to write by myself, and the idea came from me and all that happened in the fic came from me too. It’s not the ai who created that, it’s not the ai who described everything not in a bad way without any help. And also, we are talking about kinky fic, we all know why we write that right ? So I think you can enjoy the fic by itself without thinking about chatgpt ! Who once again, didn’t write the fic in this kinky way ! That’s why I’m here 🤗 to make it cool for people to read it and enjoy, i told you at first it was written in my original language in a bad way so of course I had to make it for people !

I understand that it can really be interesting to talk about ai in the future, but trust me try to write a fic with chatgpt and not correct it. It will be bad and not kinky…

Anyway ! I love to write fics and I will continue to do that in the future because I like it, and I have been writing this kind of fic for a year now and I will not stop, and I will not use chatgpt because that’s NOT the goal of my fic. If I take an example when I write « Maknae on Top » that was the original idea of @cutiedwaekki and I made it for her. So what does this mean ? Does that mean she used someone to write a fic ? When people make a request and we write it, does that mean we’re stealing the job for the person who has the original idea ? I don’t think so ! I know it’s not the same but i think it’s a good point to illustrate what can be the point of the fic and why we write it.

So ! This fic was an attempt to create something fun, new and cool. But people didn’t like it, because everyone is thinking that this will DESTROY the kinky authors and fics, but that's not the truth. Once again, it was just to test, and have fun for me and for you. Nothing more. I sincerely hope that everyone will understand now that I talk about it. I hope this message is clear and that you will understand why this fic exists.

I really hope you understand now, we can still talk about it. I’m really sorry that people didn’t like it, and in the end, I’m sad too. Because I’m taking time for my fic, even this one, I take more time on this one that some others you know…so yeah I was a bit disappointed to have reaction like that, because I was just a test, but the fic still come from me in the end. So yeah, tell me if you have more questions, I will answer to it.

Have a good day ! And I’m really open to talk about it 💕

Thank you for reading all this 💜

[charyou-tree]

Dumb Research Thing:

So, I'm a computational materials physicist. Sounds fancier than it is, I'm mostly a glorified sysadmin, but our servers crunch numbers about material properties instead of spreadsheets or social media.

However, doing materials science in a computer requires a lot of horsepower, we're talking hundreds to thousands of CPUs, dozens of GPUs, terabytes of ram, that sort of thing. Of course, that kind of heavy-duty hardware is way outside the shoestring budget that most academic teams operate on.

Fortunately, there exist specialized services to solve such problems. Well funded universities will construct huge supercomputer clusters, and want to make sure they get their money's worth of science out of them, so they contract out timeshares of their core-hours to outside academic teams and fund the whole thing through complicated grant arrangements. There are whole organizations that exist to match research teams with compute time on the hardware they need.

We use one such service. The way it works is pretty simple, you apply for an allocation of compute-time, and if you get it they give you "credits" that you can exchange some of them for core-hours on one or more of the supercomputer clusters they work with. Pretty simple, works a lot like getting prizes for tickets at the arcade.

We had applied for our allocation of credits last year, and had used up most of them, even applied for a 6-month extension to have more time to use up what was left, but now even with that extension we were down to our last week. No big deal, time to apply for a renewal for another year, and wouldn't you know, that's my responsibility.

So, I look through what they want, and there's paperwork as usual. They want a 2 page statement of purpose, a 3 page progress report, a CV from the professor leading the project, all the details about the grant from the National Science Foundation that's funding our research team, a list of papers we've published using their resources, the works. Being a good academic, I spend quite a few hours last week and today getting all this stuff, writing the reports with the proper academic verbiage, pestering my boss for his CV, pestering him again when its over the number of allowed pages, editing and proofreading the reports, citing my sources, dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's. Finally, this afternoon, the renewal request is ready, and I click "submit", a full 3 days ahead of the allocation expiring.

There's the confirmation email that they have our renewal request, good to know that they're looking at ...

What.

There's another email saying that the renewal has been approved...

7 minutes later

Meaning that nobody read any of that bullshit.

What the fuck was the point of all that?

I sure am glad that I spent all of that time and effort that definitely wasn't needed for the impending infrastructure upgrade that's already a week overdue writing bullshit fluff reports that nobody was going to read anyway. I guess I could have just had fucking ChatGPT write it all for all they seem to care.