#i found an article that said that the first book has been sold to be made into a movie and im gonna cry that would be so cool

[gaywriting]

The Brightness Between Us review

The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Schrefer (2024)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✖️

"It arrives. The brightness between us." (p. 387)

This is the continuation of the story of The Darkness Between Us and follows humanity's last hope; spacefarers Ambrose Cusk and Kodiak Celius and them trying to rebuild on their exoplanet named Minerva. Life on this unfamiliar planet haven't been kind and many of their children have perished, all but one son, Yarrow, and one daughter, Owl. Together the small family must find a way to survive and eventually find a connection from a far distant past to help in a horrible crisis threatening their lives.

I finished this book in january 2025. Apparently one of my favorite books had gotten a sequel and no one thought to tell me. the first book was also the first book i posted a review of (Link!) and the reason i wrote that post was to put focus on a LGBT+ book that i loved and that is out of the ordinary from the usual mlm stories that get attention in the online book community.

this is the story of a family trying to survive in a harsh environment and the loneliness that is with only having each other. Akin to the first book, it deals with hoplessness in a situation you can't control and the insanity of loneliness. It is, though, a very different book, as the first book mostly took place during Ambrose and Kodiaks travel through space and this sequel is 18 years after they landed and is mostly revolving around them and their children. In the first book the only pov character is Ambrose and we never hear Kodiaks inner thoughts at all, but this book had multiple povs. We mostly follow Owl's thoughts, their headstrong, adventure-hungry daughter, who longs to explore their homeplanet. But we also get a look into Kodiak's mind, as well as Yarrow, the older son with a gentle heart, but dark mind 🎆 it is a story of space survival and a family that loves each other, but how a tough situation puts that love to the test. in this sequel, Schrefer managed to answer the questions the first book left us with, build on the world further and round off the story where you're left emotional and in need of 30 chapters more to know "but what happens then??" 😱

If you read the first book, The Darkness Outside Us, then i can definitely recommend the sequel! Sci-fi is not my genre at all (i'm def more into dragons and magic) so the fact that i vouch for this should speak for itself. But if it interests you, who also likes LGBT+ literature, then this is a must read! 💫

[chussyracing]

What has been happening in the world of motorsports?

I probably forgot a lot of stuff since I took too much time to post it, but the roundup is under the cut. All mistakes are my own!

Drivers and teams

All teams will have a shared launch event in London for next year, all drivers are confirmed to take part in it and there should be famous names like Madonna and Justin Bieber (who is funnily enough blacklisted from Ferrari after repainting his against their rules hehe) also Max already stated he would rather be sick that week than be included

Update there is slight backleash from fans because it sold out very quickly and then tickets already get resold for much higher price

Also Ferrari already announced their own launch event in Maranello and all Italian fans (or fans physically in Italy) that buy tickets to their museums can be entered into the giveaway for tickets to get there

In 2025 VCARB should be named Racing Bulls

They should also be using some parts from RB20 (I think suspension?) on for Las Vegas which should speed them up

Dan Fallowes left Aston Martin’s position of technical director after Brazil

Also Aston Martin scored a new partnership with Puma for 2025

According to FIA’s newest controls Red Bull didn’t use the front bib to alter the ride height between quali and races so there was no cheating from their side

Antonio Fuoco will do a junior FP1 session for Ferrari in Abu Dhabi in Carlos’ car after Ollie can no longer be considered as junior (he drove 3 races and the rules specifically state no more than two to be considered junior)

Nico, Este and Carlos has been cleared from their teams to do Abu Dhabi post season tests for their new teams

The same cannot be said about Lewis but the date when he will go to Maranello for the first time has been set already, as have been the details of him driving f1-75 since only old spec is allowed outside of texting and filming days

To nobody’s surprised Alpine will use Mercedes PUs from 2026 onwards (it should be a 5-year deal as of now and since it ramps up the value of the team I expect them to start looking for a buyer after 2026)

Inaki Rueda (yes, THE race strat head from Ferrari that we made petitions against) joined Audi under Binotto (he replaces Zehnder who will move into a different position in the team)

Red Bull accused certain teams that acquired their engineers and mechanics over the years from cheating with tyres by inserting a small amount of water in them to help cool them down and Pirelli responded that they found no evidence for this so far (also red bull thinks so because they were the ones who tried to find a way to cheat with this but weren’t successful SO FAR)

James Vowles mentioned how after all the heavy crashes, with only 3 races to go and a small budget, it will be difficult to bring parts to Las Vegas which caused a few ill-minded articles about no Williams in Vegas BUT the truth is they might bring in old specs and with no spare parts but they will be there

Merc is preparing a special goodbye livery for Lewis for Abu Dhabi (and you can be a part of it if you sign up on their website and get chosen)

Audi (or Stake because it will be funnier what I say next) is selling a stake in the team to Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund

Recent interviews with Toto (a motorsport podcast and the new motorsport book) show him as a pretty big loser because he spoke about Lewis mentioning that Sainz Sr told him about the move in Abu Dhabi 2023 and he texted Fred who left him on read and he also said that Lewis saved him some trouble hinting that they would need to get rid of him because of… *checks notes* lack of cognitive sharpness since everyone has shelf life??

Williams will add more yellow color to their Vegas livery for Keeper sponsorship

Silly season

Sauber confirm both Valtteri and Guanyu are out of the team at the end of the season and their 2025 driver line up is Nico and Gabriel Bortoleto (who untied the relationship with McLaren where he was on loan)

There are growing speculations (almost confirmed tbh) that Val could become Mercedes’ reserve driver

There are also MANY speculations about Franco: Horner visited Williams’ motorhome and they rumoredly offered to buy him for 10m and Williams said no unless they come up with a bigger check (Briatore is also looking at the possibilities of hiring him which would put Jack Doohan aside after he signed the deal with them for next year)

There are rumors Checo could get replaced next year, there are ones he will keep the seat and that he will bring more sponsorship money (choose your fighter)

What happened in the sport recently

Toto Wolff was missing from Brazilian GP

To celebrate Senna, Brazil had special pole award with Brazilian colors, special top 3 caps for the podium in yellow and green and with “Senna” at the back and Lewis drove Senna’s McLaren as the honorary citizen of Brazil

McLaren said the WDC was never their priority, and they always went for the constructor’s title after Brazil where they made Oscar let Lando in front twice in the same weekend (el oh el)

Little hats off to Fernando (it’s not really news but he deserves it), his back pain was so bad in Brazil he couldn’t even get out of the car afterwards, yet he decided to finish the race for the mechanics that worked to get the car repaired for the race after he crashed it in qualifying the same day

Women in motorsport and juniors

Alex Powell became Italian F4 rookie champ for 2024 I thought that is very neat

Rafaela Ferreira becomes another confirmed member of F1 Academy’s 2025 line up and will be driving for VCARB (she is the first female race winner of the Brazilian F4 Championship)

The 2024 F1 Academy champ (so most likely Abbi Pulling) will get a fully funded GB3 seat with Rodin for 2025 and 20 paid days of testing in the car before the season

Callum Voisin will stay with Rodin in F3 for 2025

There is rumor (which I wouldn’t believe so far) that Briatore is interested in Franco Colapinto and would like to set Jack Doohan’s contract aside for him

Dino will be racing for DAMS in F2 for the rest of the season to replace Juan Manuel Correa (yes but also nooooo)

With Jack confirmed for Alpine 2025 (for now at least) there are speculations of Paul Aron possibly becoming their reserve driver since the current TP of Alpine was also his boss in Hitech

Max Esterson will finish the season for Trident in F2

There is a RUMOUR for now that Roman Staněk could have a deal with Invicta in F2 for a full season seat next year (please and thank you)

Thomas Bearman (yes, Ollie’s baby brother) became first confirmed British F4 driver for 2025 (he will be racing with Hitech since he already had two races with them)

Chloe Grant is leaving the world of single seaters but wants to explore other racing options

Hailie Deegan will be driving Indy NXT in 2025 with HMD Motorsports

Richard Verschoor is switching to MP Motorsport after leaving Trident, meaning Denis Hauger is out of F2 for the rest of the season (he will move to Andretti in Indy though)

Nikola Tsolov (my arch nemesis) became the newest part of Red Bull junior academy

Roman Bilinski will be Rodin’s F3 driver in 2025

Nikola Tsolov will be Campos’ F3 driver in 2025

Nicola Lacorte will be DAMS’ F3 driver in 2025

Fia, rules and future of the sport

Honda got fined 600k for engine budget cap breach (incorrectly filled out documentation) and Alpine got fined 400k for engine budget cap breach (late submission of the documentation)

GPDA made an Instagram account and put up a joint statement/an open letter to Bey Sulayem mentioning swearing, jewelry and underwear rules and urging the president to change his tone when talking to and about the drivers and be transparent about the use of money they get from all the financial fines as it is unclear as it stands now

FUNNILY enough, Sulayem who is biggest voice calling for lack of politic gestures and speech from all sport figures in F1 congratulated Trump publicly on his elections campaign

Domenicali said to be ready for the news very soon which should be linked to the rotating calendar for European races he couldn’t stop talking about for a year now (after Monaco extended its contract it could be Spa and Zandvoort and also potentially Monza and Imola)

Oh, also he said that Argentina is among the candidates who would like to get added to the calendar

Race director Niels Wittich was fired from his role unexpectedly (according to him, he only got told on Tuesday morning) and he will be replaced by Rui Maques from Las Vegas on

Paolo Basarri also left the role of FIA compliance officer (and yes, he was most likely fired as well)

Monaco will stay on the calendar at least till 2031 after extending their deal, the date will be moved back to the start of June starting from 2026 (happy pride to all the non-straight non-cis chirlies out there we stay winning) so it will no longer clash with Indy 500 and the new deal includes higher hosting fees (of course)

Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei leaves his position in the lead at the end of the year but will continue as an adviser (they are apparently restructuring so let’s see how it goes)

Drivers will have cooling sets for extreme heat races from 2025 onwards (when FIA proclaims the race as extremely warm one that is)

The rookie sprint got a green light from all teams but they will need some preparations to make that happen so they will aim to have it ready for 2026

Also there should be gender neutral wording in the FIA rules starting with 2026 onwards

Ohh and! If a car cannot start the race, the grid should now be brought closer

Other series

Arthur Leclerc’s team Scuderia Baldini won the Italian GT championship

Kinda not my playing ground but: Norman Nato will be driving for WEC Jota Sport team (they partnered with Cadillac tho, also he will be teammates with Jenson Button)

Joseph Loake drove Aston at Silverstone as his prize for winning Autosport Young Driver of the Year (and apparently his time was pretty good?)

Jak Crawford became Andretti’s reserve driver for Formula E

REMINDER MACAU GP THIS WEEKEND (before I forget :))

Another thing I am not really following but I just learned Nascar works in playoff system until 4 people stay (Joey Logano won for those who wanna know!! Also, the guy with most points ended up p5 WHAT)

Logan Sargeant did a seat fit with Meyer Shank Racing Honda and will be testing with them next week as well

Seb is in talks with WEC next year with Porsche (probably for Le Mans only tho)

Robert Schwartzman will leave Ferrari WEC at the end of the season and go to Prema in IndyCar, meaning we will also need a new reserve driver with Ollie in F1 and Arthur with his own race weekends

Toyota Gazoo Racing won WEC constructor title, Jota won the hypercar title

Enzo Fittipaldi will be doing IndyCar testing for McLaren (so random)

Non-sport news

With Lewis leaving, Mercedes put up a vacant position for Marketing Operations Driver Clothing Executive

Ferrari partnered with IBM on a multi-year basis starting in 2025

Oh, they also partnered with Chivas Regal whiskey (so I suppose this is what the leaked Charles by the piano pic is all about)

Williams also scored new deals with Zoox/Robotaxi

F1 Fantasy will feature a new mini league for Las Vegas only

Car fucker fun fact of the day: Bugatti W16 mistral set a new open roof speed record of 453.91 kmph

Las Vegas is apparently struggling to sell out the tickets for the race so there are many exclusive offers and sales (also apparently, they are giving away a lot of ticket packages to influencers)

Ferrari partnered with Gladiator movie producers so the main actor (Paul or Pedro I forgot I am sorry) went to Austin with them and on the other hand Charles and Carlos went to the premiere

Daniel and Max played padel which is something I would normally not mention on my blog even at the gunpoint but apparently a 13-year-old kiddo beat them (which makes it funnier that they did good when max was partnered with Charles that one time so I am automatically ranking him highly above most other drivers and you cannot stop me)

Carlos was at Maranello this week and the Scuderia clubs (are they still called that?) threw a little goodbye party for him with cake and a little plaque

McLaren will have a little fashion show with Abercrombie in Las Vegas

Speaking of Vegas, they partnered with Snoopy and made a special edition merch only available in shops there

Kit Kat became F1’s official partner (which is sus when they have publicly been Checo’s sponsor for years now)

Wait ok this rumor is so funny I need to add it: apparently there are rumors at Norwegian gossip websites that their princess could be dating Franco

Max was on some charity sim racing and apparently his car made fun of Lando, so people got into a lot of discourse

Ollie will be at Autosport Internation Show at NEC in January

Damon Hill is leaving Sky Sport after 13 years with the team

Yeah help, did you see Pierre has told kids in a podcast that him and Charles got asked for a threesome/polyam by some fan once????????

[lavenderleahy]

Curious about the literacy crisis in the US?

Taking a break from my regular fandom-centric posts to share this. If you're from the United States, you've probably heard of or witnessed the literacy crisis we are currently experiencing. There is a lot of discussion surrounding the causes of this. Covid, technology, failing schools, and TikTok have all been blamed.

But our literacy crisis didn't just begin in 2020. It's been happening for a very long time. Right now, only about 30% of 4th graders are reading proficiently. And another ~30% can't read at all. Roughly 22% of adults in the U.S.A. are functionally illiterate. What on earth is happening? If this has been going on for decades, TikTok can't be to blame.

Keep reading below the cut for a podcast recommendation about this topic.

Source

Emily Hanford, an education journalist, has been following this story for quite some time. One of her most valuable articles, titled "Hard Words: Why Aren't Kids Being Taught to Read?" was published in 2018 and can be found here. It made the details of the literacy crisis well-known and accessible to parents and the public. Here's a snippet from the article:

The teachers were talking about how kids should attack words in a story. When a child came to a word he didn't know, the teacher would tell him to look at the picture and guess. The most important thing was for the child to understand the meaning of the story, not the exact words on the page. So, if a kid came to the word "horse" and said "house," the teacher would say it's wrong. But, Harper said, "if the kid said 'pony,' it'd be right because pony and horse mean the same thing."

Harper was shocked. First of all, pony and horse don't mean the same thing. Second, the idea that you look at pictures and guess when you don't know a word seemed odd to her. "I wouldn't have been able to use that strategy at the secondary level," she said. There were no pictures in the books her high school students read.

If you're a proficient reader, you should be shocked, too. Guessing words based on the pictures? That is NOT reading. And yet, it is one common tool of an instructional method called the theee-cueing system. This method is dangerous and harmful to students who are at risk for poor reading or who have learning disabilities such as dyslexia.

But there is a better way!

In 2022, APM Reports produced a limited podcast titled Sold a Story, in which Emily Hanford discovers the widespread literacy crisis and its causes. Hanford also shares about a ln approach called structured literacy, which is an approach based in the science of reading. The process of learning to read has been heavily studied by educational researchers and neuroscientists alike, and so we know what instructional methods work! Sadly, the research has not made it any to every classroom. But Sold a Story is looking to change that.

The original podcast was 6 episodes long with two bonus episodes being released the following year. Sold a Story is releasing two more episodes, the first on Thursday, April 4, 2024. I highly recommend listening if you are a parent, teacher, or know a child in the public education system. This podcast will shock you, but I hope it will also provoke you to take action.

The only way to help our children read is to know better and do better. And that starts with knowing better.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. I am a reading specialist with an endorsement in dyslexia intervention, so this is a topic about which I am very passionate.

[lucidheart3]

Pen Pals: AO3 version

Chapter 2: Breaking The Ice

Tom has never felt this helpless before. When Maddie came to him, struggling to meet his eye, and said she has always dreamt of becoming a vet, he told her it's alright. He'd do anything and everything to make her happy. And he did, too, taking up two jobs just to make ends meet, and one more to pay her tuition.

When he found out his father had cancer, he listed every oncologist, complied some of their articles for Maddie to read, so that they could find the one who suited his father's needs the most. They headed to the doctor's office and they were told he had stage four liver cancer. As his mother broke down near him, and his father, strong and calm as a river, placed a hand on his back, he knew. It wasn't over.They did all they could, he even sold the car they had at the time to pay for his dad's treatments, but he could only fight it for a year before he passed away. In his last moments, he looked him in the eye, and told him he had done enough.Told him they will rest together, him under the dirt and Thomas above it. He knew his dad died at peace, and beside the sadness, Tom was left basking in the peace his father always provided, even without his presence.

Despite the hardships, despite the tragedies, Tom has always done something, he has always been the one to respond first and think later, but there is no call to respond now. No scene to rush to. There is only this letter, his own letter, he found under his mailbox. Wet marks, now long dried, and some dirt on it. He wrote two more letters, and no response came. Maddie told him the maybe the kid got distracted, left the letter there and got bored of writing to him. Albeit it being a little humiliating, he really hopes this is the case. Wade assured him this is in fact the truth, and said he himself was the same when he was eight.

Tom has no doubt about that.

Still, he was worried out of his mind,he still is, so he decided to find the kid himself

He asked the English teacher to guess the kid's grade by the way he writes, and she told him the kid had to be in the third grade. He remembered the math question, showed it to the Math teacher, he said the question was from the third grade math book. When he became sure that the kid wasn't lying about his age, he investigated the eight years old boys, then girls, just to be sure, attending Green Hills Elementary; requested their files from the teachers, even asked them if any of the children moved away or had questionable home lives. But he returned empty-handed. Now Maddie and Wade agree on his worries.

He isn't studying in this school, that is too clear to Tom. But every kid matching his profile is attending that school, it is a small town with only one elementary after all. It is like the earth cracked open and swallowed him whole the moment he held Tom's letter. The only equilavent,kidnapping, isn't possible, because Tom would be the first one to know.Everyone would see if a scene like that was the case, Green Hills is a small town, he tells himself.

He tells himself a lot of things these days, yet his heart doesn't know rest. He banges his head on the table, and thinks if he should bring this up to FBI or something. It's clear that he isn't equipped to deal with this case anyway.

"God, help me!" He says, his heart is aching for this kid, whose existence brings more questions than he can answer, and that's why it hurts in the first place.He lifts his head to face his wife,and she nods knowingly. She approaches him with open arms, and he leans into her embrace. She places one hand on his back and another on his head which is laying against her belly.

"It kills me to see you beating yourself up over this." Tom sighs, and closes his eyes. How could he not? He feels like he failed his little pen pal.

"Hush, none of that! You're doing everything you can!" He rubs his forehead, realising that he voiced his thoughts again without meaning to.

"I wish he sends one more letter... Who I am kidding, I lost him forever!"

"Weren't you worrying about his parents abusing him ? His relatives could have taken him in. Maybe he is in a better place now, Tom."

"I just hope that better place isn't heaven." With that, both of them inhale sharply.

"Tom, we talked about this, you'd have known."

"How could I know if he was sick, unable to attend school but pretending to? Anything could have happened to him, Mads, and I have no way to find out!" Looking up to Maddie, he feels tears strolling down his face.Maddie wipes them away gently with her delicate hands, and holds his arms to guide him to his feet. She leads him to the living room where they settle comfortably on the couch,Maddie running circles on his back as he tries to gather himself. For weeks, he held hope. He kept hoping as he checked the mailbox, he crossed his fingers upon every student file he inspected, before meeting every teacher he talked to.But he ran out of options,and he came a long way until admitting to that.

Still, he keeps on wishing, praying, that the kid somehow appears on his doorstep. He takes his head between his hands, and sighs, trying to silence his mind, screaming at him to find the kid one way or another. The only time the sadness felt this unbearable to him was on his father's funeral. All he is missing from that day is a grave, and he sure hopes that it doesn't exist. It shouldn’t exist,it’s so unfair to imagine a tiny casket underneath the dirt. But it happens anyway, and sometimes, no one is strong enough to prevent it.

Tom is not strong enough to prevent it.

Finally taking in a proper breath,he stands up. Ozzie rushes towards him from where he was laying down, and touches Tom’s hand with his head. Quickly taking the message, Tom pats Ozzie’s head, crouching down so that he can reach his belly for some rubs, he knows Ozzie enjoys those.Ozzie is successful at distracting Tom, and Maddie smiles to herself sadly. Her husband has been like a ghost ever since he realised he can’t find the little guy, and her heart aches for him. So she had to learn to treasure this little moments of happiness he gets to experience.

Ozzie licks Tom’s face, and the man snorts. Maddie has missed his laugh, she realises, the smiles he shows to her now never really reaches his eyes. Maddie gets it, she really does. She has asked every one of her clients about that eight year old boy but no one had a clue. She is normally more level headed than Tom, but thinking over his worries makes her tear up too.

She stands up to grab a glass of water, but she is stopped in her tracks when the bell rings. Tom catches her gaze, wordlessly asking who could their guest be, and she shrugs. They open the door together, only to welcome a little boy. He has blond hair, fair skin and blue eyes, and a small stature. His knuckles are white because of his thight grib on the straps of his backpack. Tom and Maddie exchange looks,Tom clears his throat.

“How… How can we help you, buddy?” Tom asks, and the child looks at his red sneakers, humming in consideration.

“My parents had to leave me to my Grandpa’s home… But he didn’t come back yet. And I was scared.”

“Who is your Grandpa?” Maddie asks, and the kid lifts his head up to face her.

“His name is Carl.”

“Crazy Carl?!” Tom exclaims, and Maddie hushes him. The kid’s confused gaze makes him bashfull, and he scratches his neck.

“I just… I didn’t know he had a grandson, y’know?” He explains, laughing awkardly and the kid shrugs.

“He must be looking for the blue devil or something. Come on in, then!” The boy obliges, and they settle in the living room.

“So… What is your name?”

“Jack. What is yours, mister Sheriff?”

“Thomas, but everyone calls me Tom. And this is my wife Maddie.” The kid shyly smiles at them, and they return his gesture.

“Jack, can you give me one of your parents’ phone numbers? I need to let them know you’re with us.” Tom request, and Jack grows paler.

“I don’t know their numbers.” Jack stutters, and Tom nods.

“Then I’ll call Carl.” Jack’s eyes widen and his jaw drops.

“Don’t! I mean, grandpa said he’ll be back for dinner! I just… I just got scared alone at home and wanted to explore! Then I saw you, and I know you’re Grandpa’s friend, so I came here!”

“I wouldn’t call us friends but…”

“What? But Grandpa says he talks to you everyday!”

“Okay, fair. But it’s still not right of you to wander off on your own, but I doubt you’ll get into serious trouble, kid. You don’t need to worry.” Tom says, dialing Carl’s number. Carl doesn’t pick up, and Maddie giggles. Side eyeing her, he places the phone back in his pocket.

“Consider this your lucky day, bud. He didn’t answer. ” Tom quips, and Jack snorts. “Then I’ll drop you off in a few hours, is that alright?”

“It is alright! More than alright! Thank you!” Jack exclaims with an excitement he hasn’t shown before, and Tom raises a brow, before nodding with a smile.

“Are you hungry? I can prepare some snacks.” Maddie asks, and the kid nods, then scratches the back of his head bashfully. Maddie grabs the tv remote and opens a random animated movie, which the kid is immediately drawn in.

“Tom, can you come along?” Maddie says, and they move on to the kitchen.Maddie leans her back onto the counter, and Tom takes a seat.

“What do you think?” Maddie asks, folding her arms against her chest.

“About Jack? He seems like a good kid.”

“No, Tom, do you think he could be-“

“Oh! I get it. But I don’t think he is. I don’t remember him in the children’s files I inspected.”

“But how does he know our address?”

“He said he saw me. He probably followed me here once my shift ended. And he didn’t even know our names. “

“You have a point. But don’t you think you are shooting down the possibility too quickly?”

“You might be right. It won’t hurt to interrogate. “

“Don’t tell me you’ll be strapping the kid on a chair and flashing light on his face.”

“Nah, I’ll be going the good cop route. Don’t worry.”

“Then go!” Maddie ushers her husband out of the kitchen, prefering to be alone as she prepares food. Jack is still immensed in the cartoon, and he jumps slightly once Tom sits near him.

“Sorry I startled you, kid.”

“It’s okay!”

“Mind chatting with this old man for a bit? I’m kinda bored out of my mind.”

“I don’t mind? And you aren’t old, Grandpa is.”

“Alright, thanks I guess! How old are you?”

“I am… seven, yes!”

“Seven? My wife’s niece is the same age as you.”

“Oh? Is she living here?”

“No, she is living in San Francisco. What about you? Where do you live?”

“Near Central park!”

“In New York, huh? Why did your parents bring you all the way here?”

“Um, because they said they only have grandpa to look after me!”

“And he doesn’t seem to do a good job of that, right?” Tom chuckles, and the kid giggles.

“Right…” Tom’s gaze is stuck in the television, and he notices he has watched the animation with Jojo before.

“Madagascar? It’s a nice movie. Did you know those animals are your neighbours?” Tom says, noticing the name of the zoo briefly shown in the screen.

“Yeah, I saw.” The kid says, also turning his gaze towards the television.

Maddie comes in with a sandwich and a glass of fruit juice. Tom stands up to grab the coffee table and places it near Jack, Maddie quietly thanks him. She puts the plate and the glass on the coffee table, and notices the backpack still on Jack’s shoulders.

“Jack, I can put your backpack somewhere, dear. You look uncomfortable this way.” Maddie says, and attempts to take away the backpack but the kid moves away from her, gripping the straps tightly.

“No! I mean, I’m sorry! I’m fine like this, thank you!”

“If you say so.” Maddie says, taking a seat on the other couch. They exchange glances, and Jack looks at them with worry in his eyes.

“I’m so sorry for shouting. You won’t kick me out,right?” His hands tremble and he holds onto his backpack again to hide it, Maddie realises, and her heart breaks.

“Of course not, honey! It’s okay, I understand I just caught you off-guard. You don’t need to worry about it!”

“Yeah, buddy, relax!” Tom says, placing a hand on the kid’s shoulder and giving it a light squeeze. Jack looks at him with glassy eyes, and a grateful smile. Tom’s smile falters as he realises how the kid overreacts to kindness.Almost as if he has never been offered it before. Jack hesitantly starts munching on his sandwich, and Tom is lost in thought. The bell rings again, making the three confusedly look at each other.

“We weren’t expecting any guests.”

“Seems our house is pretty popular today.” Tom says, standing up to open the door. Jack’s gaze darts around the house, and she can see his little hands tremble again.

“Maybe it’s your Grandpa?” She asks, trying to reassure the kid. She tries to guess what the kid is worried about, but she can’t figure it out for the life of her. The kid gives her a small nod, but his shaking doesn’t cease. She reluctantly places her arm over his shoulder, and he leans onto her side, and looks shocked as she is once he realises what he has done. Uttering an apology under his breath, he attempts to back away, but she brings him closer. They are both taken aback by her husband’s loud protests, ordering someone to not enter his home, before a strange man barges in the living room with an even stranger device in his hands. The device starts beeping, and Maddie stands up alongside Jack, who tries to hide behind her. The man gestures to Jack’s backpack, and laughs hysterically.

“Tom, what’s happening?” She shouts, but her question falls into deaf ears as Tom tries to get the man out of the house.

“Ha! Voila!” The man cries, and lunges on to the kid. Maddie shields herself before him just as Tom catches the man by his collar and pulls him away.

“For the last time! Get out of my house!” Tom says, but the man just smirks as a dozen drones circle them.

“The house won’t belong to anyone if you don’t hand me that backpack.” The man threatens, and shows three fingers to their face. When the countdown begins, the kid stands in front of her, his form somehow fading.

“I’ll never let you have it!” Jack shouts, and completely fades to reveal himself as something entirely different. An alien. Tom and Maddie’s jaws fall open, and they can’t help the shouts escaping their mouths. Even the strange man takes a step back. The creature looks at them, and they notice a huge emerald in his hands.

“I shouldn’t have tried again.” The creature, Jack, if it’s really his name, says, and gets enveloped by dark teal colored sparks. In a blur, he zips to each of the drones, destroying them instantly.The man runs out of the house, his screams ringing with both humor and genuine fear.

“What are you?” Maddie asks, Jack turns to them, his now teal colored eyes devoit of any emotion.

“I’m an alien, the blue devil. Don’t worry, you won’t have to deal with me anymore. I’ll leave Earth.” He spats, then turns around to get out of the house. Tom realises the edge to his words,and makes it a mission to get to the bottom of it. The thing saved their lives, he is not going to let him leave this… broken.

“You’re the blue devil, huh? So you’ve been living here for quite some time?”

“What?! Do you really want to chat now, Tom?”

“Yes? You saved our lives. I at least want to get to know you before you leave.”

“But you know me.You don’t have to bother to know more.”

“I only know Jack, who was pretty much a front.But I don’t know you.”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” The creature faces him, and somehow, he is enveloped by even more of his sparks, which are shifting into a light green along with his fur.

“Of course I don’t!”

“What if I told you my favourite movie is Speed? My favourite color is yellow? That I lost my first friend, and I am all alone? Do you understand now, Bestie?”

“Oh, God!” Maddie clasps a hand over her mouth, and Tom slowly crouches down before his pen pal.

“I-“

“Don’t! Don’t say sorry! I know how you feel about me! I was never your friend, and I will never be!”

“You don’t know that!”

“I do! You wrote you can’t deal with the blue devil! You screamed once the illusion disappeared! You are scared of me!” He shouts, and starts to turn an even darker shade of green as his eyes lose their color.

“Hey, you have to calm down, kid! You’ll hurt-“

“I thought if I hid myself behind letters, you’ll accept me! Then maybe one day, I could be your friend for real! Then you wrote that words! And I went to Mushroom Planet. There, I learnt that this Emerald exists! Bringing every wish to life! So I returned and found it! But it didn’t work too and now you’re even more scared of me!” He shouts, forming a raging tornado encircling him. Tom stands up and clutches Maddie closer, as he thinks of anything that might help them out of the situation before their home is destroyed. He can already see some picture frames get sucked into the air current. The boy is still talking, screaming his heart out but his voice can’t reach their ears.

“You know what? Yes, I’m afraid of you! I’m so scared of you! I worry that all of this will harm my wife, hurt me, and destroy my house!” Tom yells, trying to get his voice across the wall of air. Somehow, the tornado is enraged even more, and sparks of a dark green threaten to jump through and reach them.

“Tom, what are you doing?! You riled him up!” Maddie shouts, but Tom flashes her a smile he hopes that is reassuring.He runs out of the house as fast as he can, the tornado following suit. Moments like this has him appreciate the location of their home as he reaches an empty area filled with trees quickly.

“Aren’t you scared, Tom?! Run away! I know you want to!”

A distorted voice asks, and he can feel his hands tremble for what might be the first time in years.

“Yeah! I’m terrified! But you know who I am also scared for? Who I was worried about for a whole damn month?! You!” The tornado seems to be getting quiet, or Tom is hoping it is. So he takes it as a sign to continuate.

“I did everything I could to find you! I thought you were dead! I’m still so worried that you’ll hurt yourself! So, what if I said I can’t deal with the blue devil?! You sure proved you are no devil, now !” Tom screams, his throat aching from trying to reach the boy. The tornado becomes quieter, and the sparks dissipate.

“Now I’m ready to deal with you, Bestie! And you don’t get to run away again!” He shouts, and approaches the tornado, It seems a lot dangerous up close, but he pushes himself to reach his pen pal. Do what he tried to for a month. He finally sees him, his fur back to the teal color he first donned. They catch each other’s gazes, and Tom notes the bright, empty light left it’s place to his orbs.A lone tear strolls down his cheek, ans he opens his mouth.

The air around him stops swirling.

“I don’t want to hurt you. I never did.” He softly utters, Tom reaches his hand towards him, but instictively backs away once sparks hit his skin like whips. The boy sadly smiles at him, and before Tom can do something, he imprisons himself in a huge, ice-like structure.

“Buddy, I know, now get out of this so we can talk, okay?” Tom says, leaning on the structure so that he can somehow see the boy’s state.

“I see you even bothered with wrapping up my present.How very nice of you, Tom!” Roboskeez, Robonik , or whatever named man hovers right before him in a flashy aircraft, and he inspects the control panel to make his next move.

“He does not belong to you! Neither does the emerald!” Tom shouts, shielding the miniature iceberg with his body.

“I advise you to not do anything you’ll regret later. You might be holding all the power this small town has to offer, but that power is nothing against mine!”

“We’ll see about that!” Tom says, but it’s just a bluff he ls sure the man sees right through.

He just wishes him and his pen pal can break the ice between them before they melt away alongside it.

<<Previous chapter——Next Chapter>>

[psalm22-6]

June 1907 Century Magazine published a letter said to be addressed to an Italian Count Victor A. Pepe, written by Victor Hugo, and translated into Italian "probably" by Hugo's secretary. The Count's daughter, Countess Rozwadowska, came into possession of the letter, believed to be unpublished, and shared it with the Century Magazine. However, I haven't been able to find out any more about Pepe or Rozwadowska. You will probably recognize the letter in question (which I will put below the cut) as the one Hugo wrote to the publisher of the Italian translation of Les Miserables, M. Daelli of Milan. Perhaps it was first published in English in 1907 but it had definitely been published in French as early as 1890, at the end of the edition of Les Mis published by Émile Testard and I believe it was included in the original 1862/3 edition of the Italian translation, based on a google translate of this auction listing. The last mystery for me is the signature, which doesn't look to me like Victor Hugo's signature at all. The letter was apparently quite interesting to English-speaking readers and I found several newspaper articles discussing its publication. If you know anything else about this letter please share!! I'm sure I've read something else about it...somewhere....

HAUTEVILLE-HOUSE, October 18, 1862.

You are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Misérables is written for all nations. I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well as to Spain, to Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs. Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map. In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the hearth which should warm him, the book of Les Misérables knocks at the door and says: "Open to me, I come for you."

At the hour of civilization through which we are now passing, and which is still so sombre, the miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.

Your Italy is no more exempt from the evil than is our France. Your admirable Italy has all miseries on the face of it. Does not banditism, that raging form of pauperism, inhabit your mountains? Few nations are more deeply eaten by that ulcer of convents which I have endeavored to fathom. In spite of your possessing Rome, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Turin, Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Mantua, Bologna, Ferrara, Genoa, Venice, a heroic history, sublime ruins, magnificent ruins, and superb cities, you are, like ourselves, poor. You are covered with marvels and vermin. Assuredly, the sun of Italy is splendid, but, alas, azure in the sky does not prevent rags on man.

Like us, you have prejudices, superstitions, tyrannies, fanaticisms, blind laws lending assistance to ignorant customs. You taste nothing of the present nor of the future without a flavor of the past being mingled with it. You have a barbarian, the monk, and a savage, the lazzarone. The social question is the same for you as for us. There are a few less deaths from hunger with you, and a few more from fever; your social hygiene is not much better than ours; shadows, which are Protestant in England, are Catholic in Italy; but, under different names, the vescovo is identical with the bishop, and it always means night, and of pretty nearly the same quality. To explain the Bible badly amounts to the same thing as to understand the Gospel badly.

Is it necessary to emphasize this? Must this melancholy parallelism be yet more completely verified? Have you not indigent persons? Glance below. Have you not parasites? Glance up. Does not that hideous balance, whose two scales, pauperism and parasitism, so mournfully preserve their mutual equilibrium, oscillate before you as it does before us? Where is your army of schoolmasters, the only army which civilization acknowledges?

Where are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy? Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant offences, show me the woman and the child. It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble creatures are surrounded that the degree of civilization is to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris? What is the amount of truth that springs from your laws, and what amount of justice springs from your tribunals? Do you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those gloomy words: public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner, the death penalty? Italians, with you as with us, Beccaria is dead and Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. Have you a government which comprehends the identity of morality and politics? You have reached the point where you grant amnesty to heroes! Something very similar has been done in France. Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute his pile, you are as rich as we. Have you not, like ourselves, two condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation decreed by the judge? Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great nation of France! Alas! our brothers, you are, like ourselves, Miserables.

From the depths of the gloom wherein you dwell, you do not see much more distinctly than we the radiant and distant portals of Eden. Only, the priests are mistaken. These holy portals are before and not behind us.

I resume. This book, Les Misérables, is no less your mirror than ours. Certain men, certain castes, rise in revolt against this book,—I understand that. Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does not prevent them from being of use.

As for myself, I have written for all, with a profound love for my own country, but without being engrossed by France more than by any other nation. In proportion as I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.

This is, moreover, the tendency of our age, and the law of radiance of the French Revolution; books must cease to be exclusively French, Italian, German, Spanish, or English, and become European, I say more, human, if they are to correspond to the enlargement of civilization.

Hence a new logic of art, and of certain requirements of composition which modify everything, even the conditions, formerly narrow, of taste and language, which must grow broader like all the rest.

In France, certain critics have reproached me, to my great delight, with having transgressed the bounds of what they call "French taste"; I should be glad if this eulogium were merited.

In short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: "Help me!"

This, sir, is what your letter prompts me to say; I say it for you and for your country. If I have insisted so strongly, it is because of one phrase in your letter. You write:—

"There are Italians, and they are numerous, who say: 'This book, Les Misérables, is a French book. It does not concern us. Let the French read it as a history, we read it as a romance.'"—Alas! I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race; the moment has at length arrived for tearing off that rag, and for replacing, upon the naked limbs of the Man-People, the sinister fragment of the past with the grand purple robe of the dawn.

If this letter seems to you of service in enlightening some minds and in dissipating some prejudices, you are at liberty to publish it, sir. Accept, I pray you, a renewed assurance of my very distinguished sentiments.

VICTOR HUGO.

[m0mmat0rtle]

FANCY FNAF MOVIE ➵ Ch. 3

You can only do so much research on google in 2000.

Fancy found herself nestled in between book shelves and local history archive drawers in the local library at Hurricane Utah. She squinted her eyes, pressed against the lens of the microfilm viewer, used to view old newspaper articles.

The first one she viewed in relation to her project had a headline that screamed to her in bold letters. "GRAND OPENING". There was a date under the heading, November 20th 1973. A picture to match, two men shaking hands in front of a modest building with a large sign with big letters spelling "FREDBEAR's FAMILY DINER" with a picture of a rabbit and a bear, arms around each other, and waving at the onlookers.

T hey waved at Fancy, their eyes beckoning her to follow. To follow the rabbit's trail. Fancy read the article. "Fredbear's Family Diner now open! Offering entertainment and fine food for guests of all ages! Come be a part of the fun! Owners William Afton and Henry Schmidt are proud to announce the grand opening of their latest achievement and showcase Afton Robotics' finest new inventions."

Schmidt? Schmidt? As in Michael? As in the sleepy and sloppy night guard? How much did he really have to do with this? What was he not telling her?

Fancy went through article after article about the restaurant being sold, bought, renamed, renewed. All were cash grabs, obviously, no relevance to the case. Until she landed on an article, the article.

"CHILDREN MISSING PARENT'S BLAME ROBOTICS PRODIGY AND RESTAURANT OWNER WILLIAM AFTON."

there was no picture with this article. Not one at the top at least, the author went right into it, discussing the events that had unfolded at that very pizzeria. "Five children reported missing at local dining and entertainment venue, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. Police have searched the establishment five different times, each search coming up empty. No remains of the children have been found and no clues to their whereabouts have been unearthed either. Parents choose to blame franchise owner and robotics master, William Afton but no concrete evidence has been unearthed to charge him with anything. Police continue to investigate."

the article wasn't useful. She still had one and only one suspect. William Afton. But where was he now? Any newspaper articles about him after 1995 were obsolete. It was as if he practically vanished off the face of the earth.

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

"It's you?" "uh yeah."

Mike seemed to shrug and stepped aside to let her inside of the old pizzeria.

"What? Didn't think I'd come back?" "Honestly, no I didn't." "You've got a lot to learn about me, Mike." She said as she followed him to his office.

"Now who's this person you promised me about?"

Mike didn't answer. She found him to be on a bit more of the quiet side. What was she expecting, though? For Michael Schmidt to be overly chatty about his past trauma and hunches about the shady job he had started working to keep his life afloat, barely, but afloat nonetheless.

The office was small, the size of a broom closet. Maybe that's what it was originally designed to be? Glowing monitors gave the room a hazy halo of light and there she was, sitting in the corner of the room on a fold out chair.

"This is-" "Officer Vanessa." Fancy finished for him. Vanessa quirked a brow at her.

"You're that new intern." She said as she looked at Fancy. "You know her?" Mike asked. "Only seen her in passing. She's not in my division." Vanessa explained. "She's with Hayden Hurst's group." "Who?" "The lead detective, Homicide division." Vanessa explained and Fancy nodded.

"How is he, by the way, Hayden?" "I haven't gotten to speak with him much yet." Fancy replied. "He was too busy today for me to come in for my orientation- you know, first day stuff, so I'm scheduled to do that tomorrow." She replied. "Careful with him." Vanessa warned. "He can be a bit of a jerk." "Noted."

˗ˏˋ ★ ˎˊ˗

"Mike tells me you've been asking some questions about the pizzeria." Vanessa began. "Yes," Fancy said, "I'd like to interview you but I'm not sure if that's allowed- interviewing an officer outside of the investigation division, so I'll play it safe and just take notes. I don't want to get you fired." Vanessa chuckled.

"Smart cookie." "The smartest." Fancy said as she took her notebook out of her bag and opened to a fresh sheet of paper.

"So tell me, what makes you an expert on this place?" "I used to come here all the time when I was little. I loved Freddy's. I had all the little plushes of the animatronics." "The what?" "The animatronics." Vanessa repeated. "You know, Foxy, Bonnie, Chica, and Freddy? Freddy's picture is even on the front of the building, on the glowing sign."

"Like Chuck E. Cheese?" "Better than Chuck E. Cheese." Vanessa snapped. "Chuck E. Cheese is a mass produced watered down version of what Freddy's is. Freddy's combined cutting edge entertainment technology with family fun. The animatronics could even walk around during the day. Nothing like Chuck E. Cheese." "Okay, okay, so It's like Chuck E. Cheese but better?" "Sure, you could say that." Vanessa agreed.

"Would you say it would have been easy to loose sight of someone at Freddy's? Back in the day?" Vanessa pondered on the question. She knew where this was heading. "I would say so, yes." Fancy jotted down a note in her notebook, clicking her pen a few times before looking back up at Vanessa.

"Do you remember the days the five children went missing?" "Who doesn't? It was big news. Word travels fast in a small town."

No one knew that better than Fancy. An old newspaper article flashed in her head, not one about Freddy's that she had been scouring over for hours at library but one unique to her. One from ages ago.

"BEAR FOREST SNATCHER STRIKES AGAIN."

The headline burned into her head. Seared like a branding on the side of a cow. Under the headline she could almost read it from her mind. "Local kidnapper strikes again, 12 year old Amanda Montgomery snatched right out of bed. Parents oblivious until the next morning they discovered Amanda's room empty and her window wide open. Authorities advise all residents with young children to remain indoors after seven pm and lock all doors and windows."

"Yes." Fancy said slowly. "Yes I know. Which is why I thought you might know something, you enjoyed Freddy's like no other. Surely you would have been listening for any kind of news regarding the place, especially after it closed down. You would have been expectant and hopeful for it to reopen, as any kid would be when their favorite place closes down. Your ears would have been tuned to any kind of new about the place. Anything." Vanessa shook her head.

"Sorry. I don't know much. Everything I can tell you, you probably already know." "try me." "The owner was blamed, but no evidence was ever found that he was liable. He was never charged and eventually he just vanished. No one knows where he is and no one has seen him since."

Masterlist

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[nityarawal]

Sent to legal:

Aloha! Happy Presidents day! I spoke to my handyman about bullying from my landlord Daniel Hall for his lazy sauna bedroom bill. He and my other 7 handman feel he's giving men a bad name smearing our best moms as a gay man. His X Cougar gf Melody Gray lured me here to testify against her nurse IEHP mom in medical malpractice lawsuit with Dr Natalya. They treated me for Tick, lymes, and a brain cyst then coldly blocked me from any follow up since and try to mentally abuse me. Melody caught her mom on this phone number listed above smearing her and I. She's failed to procure screen shots she promised in June! Darlene worked at Dr. Browning office & Idyllwild Health Center with Ukranian Dr. Natalya murdering thousands of colleagues and clients since covid. My atty was Ken Carlsson but he's been found guilty of committing foul play with brokers & courts too for murder. America First Legal is handling refunds from Elon Musk now. I cc'd them. We just need all your testimony for Dr Adam Cash- he wrote "Psychology For Dummies." Thankyou.

This is the culmination of my work. Integrity. Lol A new president and my kids are coming home today to play with puppies. Make that happen. Melody also busted PNC Bank for harvesting clients with Pfizer and BBVA AI scams. She filmed pnc Pfizer executive office on record- caught them lying etc. Could y'all hurry and send in your testimonies so I can close out? Truth is I need heat and Daniel has been a selfish substandard landlord. I was soaking wet cold all winter and he kept unplugging electric because he's having bi-bolar, manic, schizophrenic episodes at all the tenants. Melody claims he violently broke her leg. I work on comission as a journalist for justice & housing rights as a realtor of 25 years. Melody took a bribe from her Idaho sugar daddy big pharma pimp and got a black Mercedes over Christmas- tampering with Elon Musk cybertruck give away for distressed moms. Melody also claims her step dad molested her and her 3 daughters. He's 10 years younger than Darlene and she's sold out to pedophilia agenda. Melody also said Daniel's step-dad Martin tried to molest a tenant. Could you explain what happens to men that molested children Dennis. I'll send the country club murder article about Adrian Denada so we're crystal clear what happens and please advise Martin not to come back to California. Robert Dreyfuss's dad was murdered from Aguanga on that addiction too. They'll put the gun in Daniel's hand and force him to pull the trigger. Only a 2.5 year charge for the child victims in self defense. Does that play book work for step-dad? It seems Sheriff Parsons is circling our home to set the groundwork? We'd rather Vegas handle charges humanely.

Thanks for cleaning up the hill. Please don't hurt Daniel or his pets & dogs or my x! Just get our kids. Melody has a 15yo Anjali molested by Darlenes pimp too.

All Love,

Nitya xo

[spikewriter]

I saw another anti-AI post where the first words out of someone's mouth was "Plagiarism!" That is why it's so difficult to have reasonable discussions about these new tools--and how they be useful as tools--because people start screeching, "You're not a real writer!"

The article at the core of the post, however, is worth discussing because, yup, it is exactly what the antis are yelling about. The post, by the way, did not include a link to the article, just a screenshot of Publisher Weekly's Twitter promo of said article. Which is actually a rewrite of a Newsweek article about a man who was about to release his 97th ChatGPT-written "novel." I'll explain the quotes later on.

I've included a link to the original article because it's worth a read no matter what side of the argument you're on. The headline is absolutely clickbait. It's also full of self-aggrandizing bullshit.

Tim Boucher (the article is written by him, or, rather, 60% written by ChatGPT by his own admission) admits to making $2000 over the course of 7 months. Hardly the thousands of the headline. He's sold 574 books as of the article, which equals out to an average 5-6 copies per book, or an average of just under $21 per book. The books are 2,000 to 5,000 words each, so they're not really novels, but serial chapters. He is also, by the way, not selling on Amazon or any other distributor, possibly because some of the stories are too short for them to accept.

It also means he has an extremely small, niche audience who are interested in "dystopian pulp sci-fi with compelling AI world-building." He writes "majority of my readers being repeat buyers, many having bought more than a dozen titles. In one case, a reader has bought more than thirty titles."

I found this paragraph particularly illuminating:

"It's very difficult, for example, to have longer written pieces that maintain a coherent single storyline or character arc. So instead, I've tended to lean into short "flash" fiction slice-of-life collections, interspersed with fictional encyclopedia entries that deliver world-building and backstory, and point the reader towards other volumes where they can continue down the rabbit holes that appeal to them the most."

Right there is the issue with current LLM programs. You can get a coherent storyline and character arc with ChatGPT or Sudowrite, but it takes manipulation on the author's part. It takes being willing to put in the work to revise and massage the outlines. Dear god, don't use it to write scenes, because the quality of dialogue and description is horrendous.

This guy isn't. He's only willing to put in 6-8 hours to create and publish a book, which may include generating the cover and any brainstorming. What he is doing is the tech boy grift of inflating what the program is capable of and his own accomplishments. He's trying to shout, "I am a disruptor! I am the future!" (And taking a look at his website, he's also a conspiracy theorist about underground cities in Antartica.)

Sadly, this is exactly the type of person other tech bros who might be making decisions are going to listen to. And because he's publicity-hungry, he's making everyone else who is trying to use these tools to assist, not replace, the process look like a grifter as well.

Oh, and I can't help including this article written in response to the Newsweek one.

[glass-clown]

[FIRST ID: A screenshot of a Facebook post by Jane Friedman that says, "As of today, there are about half a dozen books being sold on Amazon, with my name on them, that I did not write or publish. Some huckster generated them using AI, hoping to make a quick buck from people who don't realize I'm not the author. Unforuntately, these scam books were also added to my official Goodreads profile. I don't think the larger public understands that author don't directly control what books appear on their profile. They are automatically added via Amazon and/or submitted by users. To get them removed is not an easy process. [in all caps] A brief update [end caps]: After going back and forth a few times with Amazon on this issue, I was notified these junk books would not be removed based on the information I provided. Since I do not own copyright in these AI works and since my name is not trademarked, I'm not sure what can be done." Attached is an image of a rusty dumpster with fire and smoke coming out of it. Above the screenshot is a Tweet by Gabe Hudson @ gabehudson.bsky.social that says, "Dear god what fresh hell is this for writers?" /END OF FIRST ID]

[SECOND ID: A screenshot of a message conversation between @jenovacomplete and an Amazon customer service member whose name has been blocked out. The first message is by jenovacomplete, set at 10:49 pm, that says, "Ah, I haven't ordered from them. I just wanted to see if there was any way to report their fraudulent reproduction. If there isn't, that's fine! Thank you for your time!" At 10:54 pm the customer service member replies, "Okay. Thank you for been on online, The product from Amazon are genuine and correct . You can order from Amazon. No worries from shopping amazon." /END OF ALL IDS]

-

I found an interesting excerpt in an article about this case:

""All this time, public outcry over the case from other authors and observers mounted on Twitter. Finally, on Tuesday morning, Amazon reversed its decision and removed the titles from its platform. A company spokesperson sent Gizmodo a statement explaining its decision.

"We have clear content guidelines governing which books can be listed for sale and promptly investigate any book when a concern is raised," Amazon spokesperson Ashley Vanicek told Gizmodo. "We welcome author feedback and work directly with authors to address any issues they raise and where we have made an error, we correct it. We invest heavily to provide a trustworthy shopping experience and protect customers and authors from misuse of our service."

Amazon declined to comment further when asked to elaborate on what particular rule or policy was violated that led to the AI-generated content being removed. Friedman said she's confident the growing backlash on social media contributed to the ecommerce's reversal. That's good news for her, but will come as little solace to other, smaller writers who lack her same level of prominence.

"I do think it was the public outcry," the author said. "Obviously you shouldn’t have to raise a shitstorm in order to get them to do the right thing."" — "Amazon Removes AI-Generated Books That Spoofed an Author's Byline" by Mark DeGeurin on Gizmodo

[jodilinbio]

Part 43

I sent a letter to Andy’s sister Marla since I couldn’t find his address, asking her to say hello to him for me. I admitted that moving away without telling him where I’d gone had been mean and that I missed him and was curious about what he was up to these days.

Shortly after, I received a message saying that the only way Andy would forgive me for dumping him was if I sent his old recorded phone message tapes to his sister.

I was stunned by how much he still sounded the same, though I was disappointed to hear he was also clearly stoned.

I thought back to when I would record his phone messages for him, as he didn’t have the means to do it himself. But I mailed that tape to him before we left Phoenix and wrote another letter to Marla letting her know this.

“Guess I’m not the only unforgiving person in the world,” I’d written in a journal entry of mine on Kiwibox before I left that site, which was later sold and changed entirely. A young woman in Maryland responded, making a good point: she said Andy should forgive me because he wanted to, not because of anything I could give him.

Damn right, I agreed silently, feeling a bit embarrassed to be learning from someone half my age.

One day, I was browsing a prison inmate locator site and, out of curiosity, started looking up people I’d known in jail. Mary had told me about Myra and Hope, who each got forty years for child abuse, but I wondered about some others.

I studied Hope’s booking photo—she looked exactly as I’d expected: depressed and anxious. Myra, though, wore a wide smile, looking happy as ever. What could be so exciting about a forty-year sentence? I wondered. But then, if someone could be sick enough to abuse children, perhaps they could also be crazy enough to smile about forty years behind bars.

Yeah, smile, Myra. You’ll be an old lady when you go home. :)

Over the years, I’d wondered about Rosa, regretting that we hadn’t kept in touch, though I’d assumed she was deported to Mexico.

But there she was! I recognized her picture immediately. I was glad to finally find out what had happened to her, even if the news wasn’t good; sadly, she was serving twenty-five years for second-degree murder.

In late September, my worst fears for Mary came true. I knew she wanted to be hopeful and trusting, so I tried not to express my fears that she wouldn’t be released in exchange for her testimony against the man who killed her child, as she’d been promised. If anyone knew that cops, lawyers, and judges could be dishonest, it was me. And sure enough, even though she’d signed a plea agreement stating she’d be free after testifying, the judge, who clearly had a preconceived opinion about her, ordered her to prison at the trial’s end. So, after a decade in jail, she now had to serve two years in prison, with her release date pushed to June 2011. Understandably, she was very depressed, and I haven’t heard from her much since the sentencing, as she’s much busier now. She described it as a “modern-day boot camp.”

In late September, Tom learned from a news article about a site that pays people to complete artificial intelligence tasks requiring human input, which has been a great supplement to our income!

If I thought finding Rosa, despite her grim circumstances, was thrilling, nothing could compare to the surprises I’d receive on October 3rd and again on Christmas!

One day, while taking a break, I found myself thinking of the kind woman from the camp I was in as a kid who had shown me such compassion. Who was she? Where was she now? What was her life like? Fourteen years earlier in Phoenix, I had tried to find her, but with no luck. But the internet has come a long way, I thought to myself as I logged onto Facebook. Searching for a group for that camp, I found one and messaged the group’s owner with my story. He said he loved helping reconnect old campers and counselors and would do his best to identify her.

At first, I’d thought I’d attended the camp at age 9, but on reflecting on one of my few memories, it hit me: I’d been about 11. I remembered a bunch of us kids trying to convince some of the counselors that we were “bionic.” But had The Bionic Woman even aired when I was 9? A quick internet search confirmed it hadn’t been released until 1976, so I must have been 11.

I let the group owner know, adding that she hadn’t been a regular counselor. He tracked down a list of names from 1976, and a few people in the group recalled a woman with a dog who matched my description. “It’s Eileen,” they said. “She had a dog named Sydney.”

Finally, a name! I messaged her and to my delight, she responded within hours, confirming that yes, she had been at Camp Naomi in 1976 and she even remembered me! Today, she has kids and grandkids and lives in eastern Massachusetts. We’ve kept in touch since I found her.

If finding Eileen was a surprise in itself, my next surprise truly floored me: reconnecting with Marie from Valleyhead. A couple of years ago, I’d set up an account on Classmates.com to enter a drawing. While there, I looked up Valleyhead, my old school. Despite its dark history—closed in the ’90s after an FBI investigation into abuse and embezzlement—I was curious about any familiar names, and I spotted Marie’s. Tall, dark, Italian, and very much my type, she looked fantastic.

While browsing the group page, I left a public message with my Facebook details, just in case anyone wanted to reach out. To my shock, Marie did! She remembered me, asked how I was, and shared that she was living in Trumansburg, New York with roommates and studying criminal justice. I was surprised by how excited she seemed to reconnect, even saying she’d love to chat.

As we talked about our Valleyhead days, I mentioned my crush on a staff member named Mary, which led to a surprising revelation: Marie had a crush on me! I couldn’t believe it. We’d rarely interacted and never shared a room or any classes.

[hardynwa]

Bayelsa keeps mum on palliative diversion probe

The Bayelsa State Government has kept mum on its investigation of the alleged diversion of fuel subsidy removal palliatives during the distribution of food items in the state, about two months after instituting a committee to carry out the task. There are concerns in some quarters that barely two weeks to the end of Governor Douye Diri’s first tenure in office, nothing had been heard concerning the work of the probe panel. A Government House statement signed by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Mr Daniel Alabrah, had announced the setting up of the committee on November 30, 2023, “with a view to bringing to book culprits who diverted food items.” It stated that Diri ordered an investigation into the palliatives diversion during the state’s executive council meeting in Government House, Yenagoa, “following complaints that some individuals diverted items meant for each ward in the state.” Diri directed the Secretary to the State Government, Gideon Ekeuwei, Coordinator of the state Community Safety Corps, Brig-Gen. Eric Angaye (retd) and the acting Chief of Staff, Government House, Peter Akpe, to work with relevant bodies to identify those culpable. The government claimed that it had procured more food items in addition to the five trucks of rice allotted to each state by the Federal Government as part of the measures to cushion the effect of the removal of petrol subsidies on people of the state. Each of the 105 wards, the statement said, was allocated at least 150 bags of rice apart from maize. Diri said, “Concerning the palliatives that I directed should be shared, I received reports that some greedy politicians converted some of them to their use. “I have asked for an immediate investigation and anyone found wanting will face the wrath of the law, particularly those that are appointees. You were asked to share 150 bags of rice; you went with 80 or 100 bags to your people in the wards and villages. You cheat on your people. “The SSG, the Coordinator of the Community Safety Corps, and the Chief of Staff should investigate through BYSEMA (Bayelsa State Emergency Management Agency) those who were in a position to distribute the palliatives to stakeholders in the wards and local government areas. “Confirm how many bags got to each ward and how they were distributed. We distributed not only rice but also maize. I heard that some were sold. I want to have that report. Work through all the commissioners, members of the House of Assembly, and leaders. All of those involved will be brought to book. “We must work assiduously not to disappoint our people. God has placed this assignment on our hands. Let us not be greedy. Whatever that should be given to the people, you must make sure it gets to them.” He also decried the fact that some politicians were selfish in their conduct by withholding the palliatives that were meant for people at the grassroots. However, about 60 days after the governor’s directive, neither the outcome of the investigation nor the conclusion of the committee’s task had been made public.When contacted on Monday, the governor’s media aide directed our correspondent to the SSG’s office. But an Information Officer in the office of the SSG, who identified herself simply as Ine, said, “I can’t give you any information on the report of the committee because I don’t have it, and I’m not privy to it.” The SSG could not be reached for a reaction even as a member of the committee and acting chief of staff to the governor, Peter Akpe, did not answer a call placed to his phone. Read the full article

[epacer]

Classmates

John Fry, Class of 1962

One man helps keep Pacific Beach Historical Society alive

Reposted edited article from sdnews.com by Dave Schwab on August 17, 2023

Since 1979, the job of chronicling Pacific Beach history has been in the capable hands of John Fry, the author of three local books and an airplane postcard collector, who also has a monthly historical newsletter.

Pacific Beach Historical Society’s founder, the archivist has admitted to having a historical “hankering” from early on.

“I grew up in Normal Heights and, next to my favorite hobby shop, was a real estate office with a historic photo of a streetcar on Adams Avenue in its window, courtesy of Title Insurance and Trust,” said Fry. “I spent the summer of 1965, before my senior year at San Diego State, working with the photo collection at Title Insurance under Jane and Larry Booth. That collection is now the photo archives of the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park.”

Fry moved to Mission Beach in 1967 and Pacific Beach three years later. In 1972, he joined the Pacific Beach Town Council, eventually serving on its board of directors. That move ultimately led to the creation of the Pacific Beach Historical Society.

“At one of the directors’ meetings Howard Rozelle showed up, hoping the council would purchase over 7,000 photos he’d taken of the beach over the years,” said Fry. “The council didn’t have the funds, and Howard’s photos eventually found a home in Balboa Park. Howard and I (despite the 30-year age difference) hit it off immediately and founded the Pacific Beach Historical Society in 1979.”

PBHS’ first meetings were held at the old library on Felspar, then for some years in the banquet room at China Inn, and finally in the Community Room of the Earl & Birdie Taylor/Pacific Beach Library. “The meetings were monthly and well-attended, with guest speakers and slide presentations featuring Howard’s photos,” noted Fry. “Over the years the membership aged and eventually the society stopped holding regular meetings. The ‘society’ is now just me.”

Fry pointed out that his monthly newsletter, available for a $30 annual membership fee covering costs, continues to be published with stories and photos about the beach town’s past. “It features articles about beach history,” said Fry adding his newsletter underscores the society’s mission to “let people know about the history of Pacific Beach.”

Fry added his collection of community photos and memorabilia, unavailable to the public, is in safe keeping in a file cabinet in his home office.

“Newsletter topics often look back 50 or 100 years,” pointed out Fry noting the current issue celebrates the 100th birthday of Pacific Beach Middle School, “or at least the fact that a school has been on the corner of Diamond and Ingraham since 1923,” he said.

Fry has also written three local history books over the years. “I self-published ‘A Short History of Crystal Pier’ in 1990 in anticipation of the pier’s 75th birthday,” he said adding, ‘Images of America: Pacific Beach,’ tells the history of the beach in photos. ‘Pacific Beach Through Time’ shows color photos of Pacific Beach that I took in the ’70s and ��80s, matched with photos taken in the mid-2000s.”

Fry is also the publisher of American military airplane postcards, which are sold in the gift shops of most United States air museums. They are also collected by aviation enthusiasts worldwide. He has also written an illustrated operational history of the USS Saratoga (CV-3), the first American ship launched as an aircraft carrier.

“The airplane postcards came about when I recalled the cards that I bought in my youth that, like baseball cards, came in a pack with gum,” he said adding, “For a while, I supplied the gift shops of many of the nation’s air museums.”

Fry’s skills as an archivist even extend to his high school. A 1962 graduate of San Diego’s Will C. Crawford High School, Fry continues to maintain contact with his classmates publishing a quarterly newsletter for Crawford Alumni.

[sussex-nature-lover]

Sunday 5 March 2023

For Christmas I received a large and beautiful hardback book which contains a nature poem for every day of the year. I’ve got to admit that I’m not a poetry person and up to now at least, I’ve found the content extremely challenging, so the gift giver, Ms Nature Watch the elder, threw down the gauntlet and said, can you do better?

Well, I won’t say better, but I can do different, a present-day take on the same title and so I chose to write one poem for the birthday of each person close to me. The first in the year is my late father’s birthday.

Forever associated with spring, daffodils are a welcome sign that warmer days are ahead. An inspiration to artists across the centuries and entangled in myth and symbolism, there’s much more to these bright and cheery trumpets than meets the eye. I found an article with some fascinating and unusual facts about one of our most popular springtime blooms. It was published by the seed and bulb sellers, Suttons, so thanks to them for the following.

What do daffodils symbolise?

Daffodils are among the first flowers to appear as spring approaches, so it’s no surprise that they’re the birth flower for March as well as a symbol of rebirth and new beginnings. But daffodils have also represented many other ideas over the years. The Victorians, for example, considered them the flower of respect and friendship.

Traditionally given on a tenth wedding anniversary (I never heard that before) florists often add daffodils to these celebratory bouquets as a symbol of faith, joy and happiness. However, in days gone by, presenting someone with a single daffodil was seen as bad luck, while observing a bloom as its head drooped used to be thought to herald death. I never heard of that either, but then I’ve never known of anyone give a single daffodil to anyone.

That apart, daffodils remain primarily associated with hope. At the start of 2020 they were the inspiration for David Hockney’s daffodil artwork. Drawn on an iPad during the first COVID-19 lockdown, the piece was titled: ‘Do Remember They Can’t Cancel The Spring’. You can also see it here at The Art Newspaper.

Daffodils as medicine

Originating in the Mediterranean, daffodils are said to have been brought to the UK by Roman soldiers who used them for pain relief and wound healing. We know now that this is unlikely to have helped, as all parts of the daffodil are toxic and should not be consumed. Prolonged exposure to the sap can cause dermatitis.

That said, daffodils do contain the compound galantamine, which has been found to slow the progression of dementia symptoms. In certain parts of the UK, like the Black Mountains in Wales, daffodils are grown specifically to produce a treatment for Alzheimer’s. How incredible.

It’s very fitting that the daffodil is the national flower of Wales and is proudly worn on 1st March to celebrate St David’s Day.

Daffodils in poetry

We’re all familiar with the poem ‘I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud’, William Wordsworth, having taken a walk in the Lake District with his sister Dorothy, describes his feelings upon seeing ‘a host of golden daffodils’ growing at the edge of a lake. A lesser-known fact is that the poem was also inspired by his sister’s journal entry, and that the middle two lines of the final stanza were written by Wordsworth’s wife, Mary Hutchinson.

The Cornish daffodil industry

Bunches of daffodils have been sold in the UK for hundreds of years, but commercial farming of the flowers really took off in the late 19th century, courtesy of Cornish potato farmer William Trevellick. The daffodils around his farm on the Isles of Scilly bloomed much earlier than on the mainland, so he made use of the weekly freighter and the (then relatively new) Penzance to London railway link to get freshly-cut blooms to London within 48 hours of picking.

Island landowner Thomas Dorrien-Smith built on Trevellick’s idea by encouraging his tenant farmers to make bulb-forcing houses and transport boxes for the flowers, and also brought in different varieties to extend the flowering season. This in turn inspired mainland farmers to start planting bulbs, and the world’s largest daffodil grower, Varfell Farm, is still in operation today in Penzance, Cornwall.

Establishing the difference between ‘daffodil’ and ‘narcissus’ seems to cause confusion (throw ‘jonquil’ into the mix if you want to increase the head-scratching). To clear this up, daffodils and jonquils are the common names of spring-flowering bulbs that are members of the genus ‘Narcissus’ (the botanical Latin name for this group of plants)

Daffodils in Greek mythology

The name ‘Narcissus’ comes from a Greek myth about a hunter who spurned all romantic advances and then fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to tear himself away, he died and a narcissus flower grew where his body had been. The way that daffodil heads tilt towards the ground is said to mimic Narcissus dropping his head to gaze at his reflection. This story is also the origin of the term ‘narcissism’, which describes someone who is selfish, overconfident, and obsessed with their personal appearance.

Wild daffodils (Narcissus pseudonarcissus) are sometimes called Lent Lilies, as they commonly bloom and die back between Ash Wednesday and Easter Sunday. There are over 50 species of narcissus in existence and thousands of hybrids and cultivars. They come in a wide variety of colours, shapes and scents and I’ve never met one I didn’t like. Our own are slow to bloom compared to other local areas. I’ve seen lots of vibrant patches along with the snowdrops and odd drifts of crocus. We’re officially in meteorological spring now, even if the weather doesn’t seem to agree with that. Roll on Spring proper please

[geekgirl78]

Green Day in Simplon, Groningen 2nd January 1992

“Ton van der Werf lived in the Lewenborg district of the city. He had many contacts and was busy booking concerts here and there.' 'He got a call from a band from America asking if he could arrange something. That turned out to be Green Day. They came this way and were going to visit Groningen first.'

Van der Werf remembers it well. In the early nineties he was studying in Groningen when the American band came his way through that one phone call. “They were 17, 18 years old and they were on an 11-week European tour,” he says. 'Now, but also at that time, that was bizarrely long. Normally it is a round of four to five weeks. With a super rickety bus that broke down in Leeuwarden. I think a key was broken off.'

The band members stayed the night in Lewenborg pending the bookings that Van der Werf could arrange. 'There was never any money. They had a maximum of 250 Guilders left over from the Simplon show. For example, if I put on a little show in a squat-place, they would sleep at my house. So did Green Day. They were three nice boys. The drummer was already hyper and a bit crazy then.'

'On stage you saw fresh guys with a nice show and interaction with the audience. That's important to break through. At the time nobody was surprised that they broke through.' Well, no one? Van der Werf has a different view about the concert. “They were very rickety. In Simplon it was funny, nothing more. Their album Dookie was released in 1994. I went to Belgium with a band NRA and that's where we came across Green Day. There they said: yes, it's going well, we've just sold 1 million records in America.'

“We were really suprised by that. You know them as a rickety band that can just hold a guitar and three years later they have sold a million records. When they started playing, I got it. It was a well-oiled machine. They toured Europe eight to nine months a year, then you become a good band.'

A short review was written in Simplon Magazine about Green Day's show. ‘What an opener of the new year in the cafe! Three boys from San Francisco who swear by primal melodic punk pop and a good dose of enthusiasm; the always working recipe for a very pleasant evening. With borrowed instruments here and there, there was a nice pounding, and the full house couldn't get enough of it. Also note the lp 39 smooth.

source

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Found this little article about the time Green Day played in Simplon in 1992 in my city. I got into them 2 years later, so sadly i wasn’t at that tiny show, but i still like to read about it and had fun reading this one. Written from the words of a man that booked shows in Groningen etc. I’ve seen many bands at this bar and everytime i go there, i’m like “i can’t believe the boys were in this bar so many years ago”, cause it’s kinda special to me. Reading how they stayed over at this guy’s place, the area he lived in and i’m like “damn, can’t believe gd have been in that area of my city”. I know it sounds silly, but i don’t care, it just means something to me. Anyway, i copied some bits i liked from the article and translated them to English. These things just put a smile on my face. Also, love how he thought they were 17/18 years old, i mean, yeah, they looked very young, i mean look at that cute picture of little billie at the show XD

[uboat53]

Well, Trump's tax returns are public and, while the first wave of "oh my goodness, he paid no taxes!" stories have come out, we're now starting to get to the interesting stuff. SHORT RANT (TM) ahead.

By the way, if you're interested in reading through them yourself (they're about 5,000 pages in total), Politico has published them here.

NO TAXES

As with the last time we got a look at Trump's taxes, when The New York Times managed to get ahold of some and publish them a few years ago, we can see that there are years where he pays very little or even no taxes. This is a product of the fact that our tax code contains lots of incentives for property developers to build things and Trump's aggressive use of every trick in the book to get out of paying taxes.

What is surprising, though is that he paid significant taxes in three of the years covered. Not significant compared to the earnings he claimed, but taxes in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, even approaching $1 million in 2018. As for the reason why that's interesting, I'll get to that in a bit.

THE FAILURE OF THE IRS

One thing that was reported immediately, and is definitely something we should still be concerned about, is that the IRS failed to follow its own rules and audit the sitting president until Democrats took the House in 2019 and asked about it. Even then they didn't actually do the audit, they just rubber-stamped the papers that Trump had given them.

Every president since 1977 has been audited on a yearly basis, so why did the IRS fail to audit Trump? Did he or his people put pressure on the agency? Did the complexity of his tax returns overwhelm the IRS? There are very few answers I can think of that don't indicate some type of real problem and we should definitely track it down to get to the bottom of this so that we can fix it.

PRESIDENTIAL SALARY

Remember when Trump said he was so rich already that he'd donate his presidential salary of $400,000 per year to charity? I'm sure you're shocked to hear that didn't quite do that.

At least in 2020 he kept his entire salary, donating none of it to charity.

PAYING TAXES

I noted earlier that I was a bit surprised to see that Trump actually paid a reasonable amount of taxes in 2018 and 2019. The taxes he paid are from capital gains on $20 million and $9 million and, if you're familiar with capital gains taxes, you know that this means he sold that much in capital assets because you don't get taxed until you sell.

Now why would he sell? The standard tax strategy for rich people who own a lot of capital is just to borrow against their capital so they don't have to sell it and then pass it on to their descendants who don't have to pay the capital gains tax due to the stepped up basis. It's also a question of why he sold in those years and not others where losses could have offset the gains? He reported even greater losses in 2020 and didn't sell anything.

I've read two likely possibilities (see the CNN article linked below): either he was desperate for cash and unable to borrow or he got such a good deal on the sale that it was worth paying the taxes.

Either one of those possibilities raises HUGE red flags for possible conflicts of interest given that, you know, he was President of the United States at the time. If he got a sweetheart deal, who paid him that much money and why? If he was desperate for cash, who did he owe it to and did they demand anything else from him?

CONCLUSION

So yeah, these tax returns have only been public for about a day so far but already there's a ton of indications of problematic behavior that have been found. I'll be very interested to see how much more we can learn from them in the coming weeks and months.

SOURCES

[maverick-werewolf]

Werewolf Fact #63 - Werewolf Women

There’s a common - and very silly - misconception that there are “no female werewolves” in folklore. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Yes, there are certainly far more werewolf men than women, but let’s go over the why of that and also cover how there are certainly werewolf women, too.

I’ve given a few talks about this, as a woman who loves werewolf legends, so you might imagine it’s pretty important to me for people to understand that a werewolf woman isn’t a uniquely modern concept.

There are actual arguments out there claiming that all werewolves are male and, oh no, there’s never been any female werewolves in folklore so we have to make our own in popular culture. That’s a ridiculous statement made by people who clearly have never bothered reading the legends.

The werewolf curse is in itself defined as “a man or a woman who turns into a wolf” in some of our oldest sources. There’s no exclusion of women.

There are two big reasons why most werewolf stories are about men: first of all, stories of these various time periods focused on men more than women. Women appeared in many, many werewolf legends, but they were not often the werewolf in question, as they were usually reactionary instead of being the protagonist. This is because werewolves were generally someone in the role of a warrior, a knight, a guardian, a ruler/king, an outlaw, etc., roles at that point in time not regularly attributed to women (though some of these were too, at times! But we won’t get into historical discussion beyond the matter at hand).

Is it true that some werewolf legends were quite unfair to women, as were many stories and legends of all these time periods? Yes. Take the “werewolf husband” folklore element, for example. These stories are all about the treachery of unfaithful wives, like Bisclavret (no one can make me dislike Bisclavret, though, despite that), Melion, Arthur and Gorlagon, etc.

Anyway, getting back on track, let’s talk about actual werewolf women...

In the werewolves of Ossory story, which I detailed here, one of the werewolves who talks to the priest is an old woman.

There are plenty of werewolf grandmas out there, as detailed here.

There are other Chinese werewolf women; a good source on them is this book here, which is a translation of stories instead of retellings or someone’s interpretation, which is always preferable. One of my personal favorites features a werewolf woman betrothed to a guy, turns out she doesn’t like him, so she eats him and her entire werewolf entourage eats his entourage and all their horses and they get away scot free.

There’s one obscure Armenian story in which the werewolf is specified to be a woman who wears a wolf skin. You can find it mentioned in one of my favorite werewolf sources, The Book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring-Gould.

A 1615 treatise by Jean de Nynauld mentions a story about a woodsman who was attacked by a wolf, cut off its paw, and then later found a woman missing a hand - that woman was then burned alive for being a werewolf (bearing in mind this was during the time when werewolves were now seen as evil, as I discuss at length in various werewolf facts). This story was retold and adapted in various forms in various  places. You can find Nynauld’s variant of the story in Baring-Gould’s book as well.

I’ve been asked before about good sources for female werewolves. Truth is, you need to just use the same sources as you do for all werewolf folklore. Here are many good sources. These are absolutely the ones I recommend.

‘Cause the fact is, there are no good sources specifically on female werewolves. If you find one that claims to be, it’s almost certainly going to be a gimmick. Just being honest. There are so many people out there right now trying to get in on the werewolf fever that started really going after Twilight was first  published. I remember loving werewolves for so long and them being obscure, I was so “weird” for being so passionate about them, then suddenly they became mainstream. They even became a subgenre of romance fiction. It was all very weird and sudden to me.

At any rate, as a result, there are tons of trashy little books out there with non-information in them that are sold based purely on gimmicks, and you really need to watch out for those. The writers of said books basically just googled werewolves and compiled all the bad nonsense “information” and somehow got it published. Or else it’s literally just a parody piece where it pretends to be written by a monster hunter and talks about their weird werewolf headcanons with no real-world folklore involved at all. And then people made an actual Wikipedia article called “Werewoman.” What is even-- “were” means “man.” It has nothing to do with “being a shapeshifter.” You can’t just cut the prefix off werewolf and have a thing that means “shapeshifter,” that removes all connotation of actually turning into something else. If you say “weres” to refer to werewolves, or “werewomen” to refer to werewolf women, you are effectively removing any sense of shapeshifting or animal of any kind. “Were” means “man” so... man-women? Human-women. They are people women. So they are... ordinary women! That doesn’t work at all. Just like how if you say “weres,” you are just saying “people,” with no concept of shapeshifting involved whatsoever.

Anyway! Pet peeves galore.

If you were ever under the impression that there were no werewolf women in folklore, I hope this set you down the path of clearing that up! There are more out there, of course, but these are some of the prime examples in my opinion.

(If you like my werewolf blog, be sure to check out my other stuff and consider supporting me on Patreon!

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