#redundancies

[eaglesnick]

“We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” - Peter Mandelson

The other day I made the assertion that when the people of Britain voted for Keir Starmer, what they were really getting was Tony Blaire. To be fair this was partly tongue-in-cheek but having read the Kings Speech setting out the Labour Party's plans to change Britain it is closer to the truth than is comfortable.

The Tony Blaire Institute for Global Change has a paper entitled: The Economic Case for Reimagining the State that was published July 9th, 2024, just five days after the UK elections. Some of the wording in this report is almost identical to some of the wording in the Kings Speech.

Tony Blaire Institute:  “reforming the UK’s antiquated planning system is a high priority that could unlock much needed infrastructure investment and help un-gum the UK’s housing market.”

Kings Speech: “My Ministers will get Britain building, including through planning reform, as they seek to accelerate the delivery of high quality infrastructure and housing."

Tony Blaire: "Normalization of relations with the EU: A full reversal of these losses may be politically unattainable during this Parliament, but there is a path to a better post-Brexit relationship in the coming years"

Kings Speech: My Government will seek to reset the relationship with European partners and work to improve the United Kingdom's trade and investment relationship with the European Union

Tony Blaire: "The new government will need to lean in to support the diffusion of AI-era tech across the economy by adopting a pro-innovation, pro-technology stance, as advocated by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.”

Kings Speech: "It will seek to establish the appropriate legislation to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models.”

The Kings Speech is, by necessity, very brief and gives virtually no detail how the government’s aims are to be achieved. We will have to wait and see how much more of Keir Starmer’s vision for the future of Britain mirrors that of Tony Blaire. If Starmer is as closely aligned to Blaire as these comparisons suggest then public sector workers beware.

Blaire places great reliance on the introduction of artificial intelligence to ALL sectors of the economy, but  especially within the public sector. Once introduced Blaire predicts a productivity gain of “one-fifth workforce time”

 Public sector workers, having adopted the new AI and having increased productivity by 20% can then expect the sack.

“If the government chooses to bank these time savings and reduce the size of the workforce, this could result in annual net savings of £10 billion per year by the end of this Parliament and £34 billion per year by the end of the next – enough to pay for the entire defence budget.”

This is the true Blairite mindset. Nothing about sharing the productivity gains made by workers in the form of higher wages, nothing about the redistribution of wealth or tackling income inequality. In Blaire’s Case for Reimagining the State poverty is not mentioned once. Inequality gets one mention but only as a statistic relating to workers forced to use food banks. 

What Blaire and Starmer – like the Conservative Party - appear to have forgotten is that  public services are exactly that –  services.  Yes they need to be efficient and cost effective but NOT to the extent that the service element is lost. The rich can afford to buy service, ordinary working people have to rely upon government for basic services and over the last few years they have been badly let down.  Poor pay, increasing workloads, job insecurity and private sector creep have all contributed to bringing Britain’s public services to the verge of collapse. Let us all hope Starmer and Blaire don’t push them completely over the edge.

[mandyraine]

How to Streamline the Language in Your Novel Draft

In today's post, I provide several examples of how to streamline the language in your novel manuscript.

As you work your way through the revise and refine phase of the novel writing process, it is best to start with big-picture revisions that affect your novel as a whole before homing in on the smaller elements of the manuscript. At the macro stage, you analyzed the overall plot, structure, pacing, and character arcs—making sure the story flows and resonates with the intended emotional beats. Now…

[largishcat]

I actually don’t mind that “dead dove” has become conversational shorthand for “fics with heavy themes where you REALLY need to pay attention to the warnings”. such is the nature of language. what i do mind is when people tag their actual fics with dead dove and then give no indication of what they’re actually warning about. that is useless. that helps no one. that is completely against the spirit of the meme. i will not be reading that

[adyophene]

screen time

[creativemedianews]

Sir Keir Starmer promises 'all we can' to save Port Talbot jobs

Sir Keir Starmer promises 'all we can' to save Port Talbot jobs #aviationsector #CO2emissions #electricarcfurnaces

[bitrise-co-in]

Developer Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Supermassive Games recently issued an announcement that it is laying off some employees. This announcement comes shortly after news leaked that the UK-based company plans to lay off around 90 workers. ... netgainers.org

[mens-rights-activia]

The most vile and vitriolic person you know is online right now talking about the importance of building community and there’s nothing you can do about it

[jitzbala]

The UK Economy - The Ying and Yang in Auto & Retail

Delve into the contrasting events: triumphant surge in the auto sector and poignant transition in retail. Explore these pivotal moments in the UK Economy

Introduction In the vast landscape of the UK economy, triumph and transition continually shape our narrative. The recent advancements in the auto sector juxtaposed with the retail sector’s challenges provide a poignant reflection of the UK economy’s yin and yang. As we delve into these developments, the resonance of “UK Economy Triumph and Transition” becomes evident. The Electric Surge: UK’s…

[hellenhighwater]

There's something awful about forever.

[daynascullys]

Special Agent Fox "I do not gaze at Scully" Mulder ⤷ [1/13] ✧ Season One

[luckylsoer]

“I think I need more vents.” — Senna

Front view!

1- Internal components

2- Waterproof layer

3- Skin layer

[fangbanger3000]

we need to talk about The Silence and The Song

[PLEASE READ] edit to add: i realise that this post has been reblogged far and wide and that there is not a lot i can do about it now, but this is me trying anyway.

posting examples from the fic about my issues with its repetitive structure was careless of me, and i apologise to those of you who read it and became insecure about your own writing style. as someone who has worked with ai in academic settings, it's incredibly difficult for me to explain to you how the tone and structure of ai-generated fiction works and how, after reading enough of it, you can simply just tell. i do also realise that this is an incredibly weak argument, which is why i didn't include it when i originally wrote this post.

all that to say: there is an enormous difference between "beginner's writing" and ai writing. being repetitive as a new writer (or a seasoned one who just likes using repetition) is so normal. as is flowery/purple language. i've read hundreds of books and fics and the difference between these traits in ai-text and actual works is starkly clear. please don't feel anxious over the examples i've used in this post.

again, i apologise for any distress i have caused.

as per my last post, i have received a lot of encouragement to go public with this, and the more disappointed people i have in my dms, the angrier i get. so i will.

the silence and the song is an ancient arlathan au DA fic on ao3 by luxannaslut, and it is partly, if not entirely, written by an ai. i have no wish to be involved in any kind of fandom drama or witch hunting or bullying, but as a writer myself there are few things that piss me off more than watching people steal the work of others because they can't be fucked to write. it's disrespectful to your fellow writers, it's disrespectful to your readers, and it's disrespectful to the authors of the works the ai is stealing from.

ai is a plague that has no business being in creative spaces and you must do better.

the writing pattern

there was something very odd and monotone about the sentence structure of tsats that i couldn't quite place, so i fed chatgpt a prompt along the lines of "two people in a fantasy novel hate each other, but they secretly desire one another, and they kiss", and the screenshots above are the results. the third one is an excerpt from chapter 40 of tsats. the writing pattern is identical and it doesn't seem like the "writer" has even bothered to pretend they wrote it. if you're going to use ai, at least be sneaky about it. you know, paraphrase a little.

nonsense descriptions

"her nimble fingers worked with quiet precision" (ct. 1), "his grip firm but tender" (ct. 33), "her gown pooling around her like embers" (ct. 1).

fingers don't make sound, so what does quiet precision mean? as opposed to what? her joints cracking with every movement? how is a grip firm but tender? what does that mean? since when do embers pool?

the entire fic is littered with these adjectives that contradict each other or just straight up do not make sense, because all an ai does is generate descriptive language with no understanding of what the words it's spitting out actually mean. i could spend hours picking out examples from the seven billion pages worth of text, but i quite frankly have better things to do and would simply challenge you to try getting through a chapter or two without noticing the pattern.

repetition at structure-level

all the scenes in this fic are described in pretty much the same way. they open with purple prose vomit of the surroundings; solas is standing somewhere looking "unreadable as ever"; ellana's fiery golden molten fire copper ember ginger red hair is flowing this and that way; there's some dialogue with whoever is present and it leaves ellana feeling different variations of "something she couldn't name". this is, once again, a blatantly obvious sign of ai. below is the result of me feeding chatgpt the line "write me a scene from a fantasy novel where a woman with red hair is sitting on the ground in a magical garden at night", and side by side with that is the opening scene of the fic. make your own judgement.

repetition at word-level

this one speaks for itself. we fucking get it. her dress is orange, her hair is red, mythal's presence is heavy in the room, solas looks unreadable, compassion is sitting on her head like a crown, solas' ears are betraying him and ellana's move with every thought she thinks. we get it. the issue here is that an ai remembers the info you feed it, but not necessarily the info it shits out. if it's being told to write scene after scene of an elven woman with a gown that looks like fire doing xyz, it's going to do so with no regard for how many times the reader has already been informed of these details.

lastly: the breakneck speed

359,6k words in four weeks by a person who allegedly is employed and married and hasn't pre-written anything? no. any writer will tell you that this simply isn't possible. it absolutely infuriates me to see how much praise this "writer" gets for posting up to three full chapters in a day without anyone calling bullshit. i am pulling out my hair, you guys.

why i'm not going to live and let live this one

perhaps i would be less angry if the fic was some silly bullshit court intrigue Y/A stuff, but this is a text that handles very heavy and triggering topics such as SA, coercion, domestic abuse, and other things of the same vein. to sit back and put your feet up while having a robot write these extremely sensitive and very real human experiences with words it has stolen from texts written by actual persons is fucking heinous. the "writer" should be deeply ashamed of themselves and i'm sick and tired of watching people eat up their bs.

and on that note: the amount of people in my dm's telling me that they feel stupid and naive for not clocking this has infuriated me more than anything else. you're not foolish for this. being fed ai-generated bullshit is not what is supposed to happen on any creative platform and much less a fandom-centred one, so of course no one approaches a fic through that lens. fandom and fic writing is supposed to be about passion and the only person in this situation who needs to do better and change their behaviour is luxannaslut. polluting our creative spaces, wasting the time of your readers, and minimising the effort of actual writers who are working hard to provide content for us all to share and enjoy is vile and so, so lazy. i beg of you: do better.

[protosymphonette]

happy pride month everybody

[tamamita]

I love how meaningless the terms tankie, leftist, radical marxist and red fash have become among libs, because these are the people who are supposed to lead the country, and none of them have taken any effort to understand what those words mean

[rhera]

PART I - PART II - PART III - PART IV

— Morgiana (1972) The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) Daughters of Darkness (1971) London Fields (2018) Salon Kitty (1976) Corridor of Mirrors (1948) Spencer (2021) Jackie (2016) League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003) The Artist (2011)