#we know you're a robot

[ghostrealmgatekeeper]

Elysium, we know the truth.

What ever are you talking about, dear?

[morninkim]

As a show of good faith toward the remaining Decepticons at the beginning of a new, united Cybertron, newly appointed Senators Bumblebee and Soundwave allowed Shatter and Dropkick to enlist into Autobot City's Defense Team.

These two turned out to be... not the best choices.

The city may have fallen to Insurgent Decepticon occupation had it not been for young recruits Hot Rod and Arcee's accidental interception of Shatter's communication with the fugitive Starscream.

To replace the errant Defense Team members, Springer and Blurr were reassigned from Iacon to Autobot City in their stead.

[daydreaming-ace]

I desperately wish Overwatch would make an old woman that looks like an old woman again.

Let Ana have old lady friends!! Let her kill people with her old lady friends!! PLEASE

[celtrist]

Why does Vassago already have merch, we haven't even met him yet

[icewindandboringhorror]

"We can get through this by working together, reach out to your friends, community is all we have, a social network will be your security in the world, now is the time to lean on others!"

I do agree, and it's scientifically sound (pretty sure there is data about how people with better social networks live longer and etc) but also....augh..... what about the severe social issues, difficulty to leave the house, physical issues which lead to like zero socialization energy a majority of the time, etc. etc. Social support can be a replacement for structural support, but.. I guess I just wish it didn't have to be. Community is extremely difficult to build, even moreso if you're someone who has issues with social cues or group conversations or even just being around others in the first place. And blah, nuance, of course I'm just complaining or maybe being too negative or maybe misunderstanding, but, I hardly have the energy to brush my hair once every 2 months.. how am I supposed to maintain a wide social network and be active in a Community and Join Groups lol... sometimes it kind of feels like "er.. well if thats my only option then...... ruh roh". It's overwhelming

[binah-beloved]

Can we think about binah's meltdown form for a bit?

yes we can absolutely think about Binah's meltdown form for a bit. i promise i will be entirely normal and sane about it. really.

[towered]

Right at the end of the year Twenty Twenty-Four, the humble man completes his Animal Crossing New Horizons museums by obtaining every insect, fish, and sea creature. This accomplishment is proof of his ecological fitness and will be celebrated for several minutes.

[give-grian-rights]

YOOOOOO I'VE SEEN SOME OF MY MUTUALS AND PEOPLE i FOLLOW REBLOG YOU, BUT I DIDN'T YOU WERE PART OF A FRC TEAM LETS GOOOOOO

YEAHHHHH im trying to get back into mentoring this year but college has me girlrotting. i love competitions i love FRC i love robots i love Dean Kamen i love the spirit i want to be buried in the pits

even if sometimes i remember that there's teams literally sponsored by NASA and i want to put my head into a wall. like CONGRATULATIONS. IM VERY HAPPY FOR YOU. but on the otherhand jeez ain't it great that you have several hundred thousand dollars and NASA engineers volunteering for you. thats very ethical

like obviously they cant just bar NASA engineers and other highly skilled individuals from volunteering because its GREAT that they want to be involved but also its just funny.

[gay-robot-boyfriends]

i am awkward but i just wanted to say that i love your art so so so much!!;;o;; your art always makes me smile and happy and just overall fuels my giddy xzero soul. I still look at the comic you made with just awe and glee you really worked hard on it too!!! your tags always make my day too !!! have a good day :D

Hi! I'm also awkward! Thank you so much!! asdkashdksh That really means a lot! 😭 When that comic was in my head, it was going to take 5 or 6 panels to finish, but thinking about what the characters were feeling as it happened stretched it out to 29! It really was a labour of love, so thank you so much Q_Q

[smile-files]

hello fellow nickel hater btw bot for the character bingo

i love bot!! what a sweetie!!! i, like many, have gripes about testy and fan having made them - which, we can all admit, is rather silly - but in concept bot is so fascinating!!!!! i think the fandom has lots of good ideas for bot's origin... i should probably come up with one myself (which would probably in some way coincide with my idea of a meeple guy other than mephone hosting ii3). but yeah bot is nice. very cute :)

[dat-physics-gal]

and when in doubt, make a few loops, maybe after 3 or 4 different links it links back to the first

they're too dumb to realize, since there's no intelligence there, and it will poison the fuck out of them

good idea

[snekdood]

ppl used to try to make fun of me for using zoo tycoon as a reference for animal shit and idk man like.... the game is literally built off the idea of educating you, it literally has an encyclopedia that tells you not only about the animals but also about the plants too. yeah its a tycoon game but thats only if you focus on it in that sense, personally i dont, I've always liked playing it to learn more about the behaviors of animals. sure things are generalized here and there and not 100% accurate- partially bc it was made in the early 2000's and we've probably acquired more info since then, but regardless its still pretty solid and taught me a lot about certain animals growing up, which other tycoon games dont really offer... anything teach-worthy.

[h1biscusgal]

Void/ shifting for the lazy ass mfs, a "too easy" sleep challenge for 7 days.

Hey y'all, are you the type to call your yourself lazy? Can't wait to enter? Don't wanna try and just wanna sleep and enter? Think it's easier for you to be the careless mf and enter tonight? Here's a sleep method that literally can make you wake up in the void regardless of what the fuck is happening.

I call it, the "too easy" challenge bc mf the effort is not even there, like I'm not gonna even tell you to lay still or yada yada, I entered the void through it some years ago when I was in my shifting phase and didn't know it was the void, and it's my fav method so far, and y'all, you'll seriously shift or enter the void during those 7 days bc y'know how powerful this shit is???

Now I've seen a lotta people whine and say they lay back, try for it, and "don't enter" which is obviously your assumptions that you can't enter is in the way, so I thought, how about letting them know they can skip this part and just sleep and wake up there? Fun eh?

If anyone remembers, this is actually something a lot of shifters used to do back then, but the toxic shifttokers would be like "NO YOU CANTTT, YOU GOTTA PUT EFFORT TO SHIFTTT" nah fuck you, then how come some ppl shifted through it, like be fr and how "effortless" it was. 🤨

What will you need?/

ONE affirmation of choice:

I always wake up in the void state aware.

The void is too easy to wake up in.

Why do I always wake up in the void aware?

No matter what I do, I still wake up in the void aware.

I just gotta sleep and I'll wake up in the void aware everytime.

I always wake up in my home. (Aka DR).

I always shift in my sleep.

I can always shift by sleeping.

Sleeping helps me shift anywhere I want.

Shifting is too easy for me, I can do it in my sleep (fav).

A subliminal you like:

Can be anything, choose something you like that is either for shifting or the void state, doesn't even matter which or what, just choose something that you love and stick to ONLY ONE.

Void subs = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Shifting subs = 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Absolute suggestibility booster:

Yes, credits to "absolute power subliminals" for making this goldmine but oml, it's fucking good, either way, this is before you loop the sub we chose overnight, BUT REMEMBER LISTEN TO IT ONLY ONCE BEFORE LOOPING IN THE SUB!!! It helps to open the subconscious for the affirmations. 1

And lastly, assumption:

that you can do it during those 7 days, bc mf you definitely can tf you mean you're trying this with hope...

Let's get into it 🤭.

For the affs, repeat it as though you're REMINDING yourself something, not trying to convince yourself something, you get me? During the days and the nights and literally through anything, just affirm without needing anything, like, your wish if you wanna do robotic affirming or feeling with it while affirming, just remind yourself your goal, Go about your day repeating ONE affirmation, and this can be anything, the reason I'm saying one is bc you don't need a bunch, just one, choose one from here based on what your goal is, shifting or the void?, the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep repeat it whenever you like.

Now, this is optional, but if you like, you can loop the desired subliminal you chose during the the day, it's as you wish if you want to.

Now, sleep comes around, right? Listen to the suggestibility subliminal I provided there only once, simply once, now grab yo favorite earphones or whatever and loop the SUBLIMINAL overnight.

Don't think about it, literally don't, don't say "will this work or whatever" nope, trust and know, loop the sub in the background while you sleep, and in that moment, repeat this specific affirmation.

Subconscious mind, I command you to wake me up in (desired reality/ the void).

That's literally all....

LMK AND I AM SO SURE Y'ALL CAN DO IT, PAIR IT UP WITH HYPNAGOGIA BEFORE BED AND THIS CAN MAKE YOU WAKE UP WITH 10000 X MORE CHANCE, GOOD LUCK.

Xoxo, Coco.

[spotforme]

actually the plot is secondary actually, expantion on that "futuristic" comedic dystopian milieu is all i'm thinking about

[makingqueerhistory]

":')))))))) you realise that gen AI is available to everyone though right??? Queer creators can use it just as much as anyone else??? I just don't understand this post... It really feels like a cheap way to get on the 'AI Bad's bandwagon, and coming from such a thoughtful and insightful creator that's incredibly disappointing... It's okay to not comment on subjects you're not an expert in y'know...?"

Y'all know the drill, I am replying to this publicly but that is not an invitation to send any negative messages to the person I am replying to.

Anyways, let me start by saying that the original context of the post you're replying to is discussing an event where a queer org used generative AI to steal an interview with Keri Hulme. So let's start there. To be clear I don't even know if the original interviewer was queer so let's put the identities of stealer and stolen from to the side. I want to explain the harm done in this example specifically and I hope this is illustrative of what harm generative AI can (and does) do.

The original place I saw generative AI was a queer org that explicitly says they are using generative AI "for good", and as a way to bring more queer history to light. So let's take them at their word, and assume they are not out to cause harm. This is the best example of generative AI that I can imagine, so I hope that makes it clear that I am not coming at this issue from bad faith in any way.

Here is the harm they are causing:

Decontextualizing and rephrasing an interview: I am not going to pretend that I am an expert in academic best practices, but I do believe one thing, if a person is speaking on their own identity and lived experience, it is always much better to directly quote than it is to rephrase. As I read this source, I initially didn't know that it was AI, and I was already upset. An interview that is widely available on the internet with no pay wall, was poorly sourced and made more vague than it was in the initial text. By creating one degree of seperation between the original words of A WRITER (whose literal job was largely based in choosing the right words to describe experiences they had) harm is already done. It makes vague what was once clear, and removes Keri Hulme's voice from her own narrative.

The original interviewer is not paid, or given proper recognition: I get it, sometimes just copy pasting an interview doesn't feel transformative enough, but something that one would learn if they worked in the queer history field and weren't a literal robot rehashing what has already been said, is that not everything needs to be transformed. In those cases, we give credit to the person who said the original words (in this case Keri Hulme), and the interviewer who facillitated the conversation (in this case Shelley Bridgeman). This case (again a best case scenario), takes the attention and byline away from the original interviewer and gives it to an AI.

The original publisher of this story is deinsentivised from paying interviewers in the future: The original publisher of this interview has ads on their website. As a person who also has ads on their website, taking an article like this and rephrasing it for no good reason (the orginal word count was not prohibitive and the rephrasing did not make it more readable), takes money from the publisher. It's pennies, but it's also removing numbers could have been used to justify further interviews with asexual people and archiving of asexual stories. The org that stole from this publication does not interview people themselves so the money and numbers that could have gone to continue to preserve asexual stories goes to stealing them instead.

These are just the active harms that I saw in this specific case. As you said, I am not an expert in generative AI, and will not be speaking as if I am. But I will say that asking me not to speak out on active harm that is being caused in queer history spaces, is disrespectful to my many years in this field.

To illustrate this even clearer: if you were a patron, you would know I recently took down an old article. I have been rereading and editing our backlist of articles, and I found one that no longer fit my standards of sourcing. My standards had recently raised due to a video made by HBomberguy about someone in the queer history space who was stealing from other creators. I watched this video not as a work project, but because I watch most of HBomberguys videos, and this one made me think more critically about sourcing. An AI can't do that. All an AI has is what has been inputted, and it is right now impossible to input every available peice of information about ethics into an AI and get a coherent ethical basis on which it will function.

It is a distinctly human trait to absorb information and change in that way. AI can rephrase information that already exists, steal it, recontextualize it even, but it cannot create something altogether new.

Do I believe that there one day might be an ethical use for Generative AI? Maybe. Do I believe that coming into a queer history space, stealing the words of a Maori asexual author, rephrasing them, and giving the original interviewer and publication no form of compensation for their work, is accomplishing that? No.

On a more personal note: I am coming at this issue with a bias. As a queer history creator, I do not want AI in my space, because it is literally damaging to my financial prospects. It has been like pulling teeth to try and get patrons in the current state of the global economy. I don't blame anyone from that, but I feel very disrespected that I am being asked to compete with a machine now. Not only that, but I am being asked to shut up and be fine with it? No, absolutely not. I cannot and will not stay quiet as space that I have fought tooth and nail to create in mainstream discussions is taken and given to AI.

AI was not supporting me when I was sent gore to try and scare me off of discussing queer history. A person did that. AI was not there to tell me I had written too many sad stories, and I needed some happy endings to remind myself of the good in the world. A person did that. AI was not there when I was being harrassed for supporting and including asexual stories on my website. A person did that.

And after all that, I am being asked to lie down and take it when my ability to pay the people who supported me in those ways, is being threatened. Nope. Not going to happen.

An AI doesn't have to make rent. An AI doesn't understand what it feels like to have to stop holding their wife's hand in public. An AI didn't get calls from people needing comfort in reaction to the election. Pay me for my work, and get this AI nonsense out of my face.

[physalian]

How to make your writing sound less stiff

Just a few suggestions. You shouldn’t have to compromise your writing style and voice with any of these, and some situations and scenes might demand some stiff or jerky writing to better convey emotion and immersion. I am not the first to come up with these, just circulating them again.

1. Vary sentence structure.

This is an example paragraph. You might see this generated from AI. I can’t help but read this in a robotic voice. It’s very flat and undynamic. No matter what the words are, it will be boring. It’s boring because you don’t think in stiff sentences. Comedians don’t tell jokes in stiff sentences. We don’t tell campfire stories in stiff sentences. These often lack flow between points, too.

So funnily enough, I had to sit through 87k words of a “romance” written just like this. It was stiff, janky, and very unpoetic. Which is fine, the author didn’t tell me it was erotica. It just felt like an old lady narrator, like Old Rose from Titanic telling the audience decades after the fact instead of living it right in the moment. It was in first person pov, too, which just made it worse. To be able to write something so explicit and yet so un-titillating was a talent. Like, beginner fanfic smut writers at least do it with enthusiasm.

2. Vary dialogue tag placement

You got three options, pre-, mid-, and post-tags.

Leader said, “this is a pre-dialogue tag.”

“This,” Lancer said, “is a mid-dialogue tag.”

“This is a post-dialogue tag,” Heart said.

Pre and Post have about the same effect but mid-tags do a lot of heavy lifting.

They help break up long paragraphs of dialogue that are jank to look at

They give you pauses for ~dramatic effect~

They prompt you to provide some other action, introspection, or scene descriptor with the tag. *don't forget that if you're continuing the sentence as if the tag wasn't there, not to capitalize the first word after the tag. Capitalize if the tag breaks up two complete sentences, not if it interrupts a single sentence.

It also looks better along the lefthand margin when you don’t start every paragraph with either the same character name, the same pronouns, or the same “ as it reads more natural and organic.

3. When the scene demands, get dynamic

General rule of thumb is that action scenes demand quick exchanges, short paragraphs, and very lean descriptors. Action scenes are where you put your juicy verbs to use and cut as many adverbs as you can. But regardless of if you’re in first person, second person, or third person limited, you can let the mood of the narrator bleed out into their narration.

Like, in horror, you can use a lot of onomatopoeia.

Drip Drip Drip

Or let the narration become jerky and unfocused and less strict in punctuation and maybe even a couple run-on sentences as your character struggles to think or catch their breath and is getting very overwhelmed.

You can toss out some grammar rules, too and get more poetic.

Warm breath tickles the back of her neck. It rattles, a quiet, soggy, rasp. She shivers. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. If she doesn’t look, it’s not there. Sweat beads at her temple. Her heart thunders in her chest. Ba-bump-ba-bump-ba-bump-ba- It moves on, leaving a void of cold behind. She uncurls her fists, fingers achy and palms stinging from her nails. It’s gone.

4. Remember to balance dialogue, monologue, introspection, action, and descriptors.

The amount of times I have been faced with giant blocks of dialogue with zero tags, zero emotions, just speech on a page like they’re notecards to be read on a stage is higher than I expected. Don’t forget that though you may know exactly how your dialogue sounds in your head, your readers don’t. They need dialogue tags to pick up on things like tone, specifically for sarcasm and sincerity, whether a character is joking or hurt or happy.

If you’ve written a block of text (usually exposition or backstory stuff) that’s longer than 50 words, figure out a way to trim it. No matter what, break it up into multiple sections and fill in those breaks with important narrative that reflects the narrator’s feelings on what they’re saying and whoever they’re speaking to’s reaction to the words being said. Otherwise it’s meaningless.

—

Hope this helps anyone struggling! Now get writing.