#we mostly communicate on whatsapp)

[the-aromantic-dragon]

my qpp is a ❤️ kind of a boy and i am a 🩷 kind of an enby

[hermitknut]

At the Feet of the Sun and tragedies that sort of did, sort of didn't happen

So I already texted this to a friend but I wanted to share on here too: last weekend I was subsumed with deeply agonising yet interesting thoughts about That Time Kip Got Declared Dead.

Below cut for spoilers but also length; this is mostly copied straight over from whatsapp so hopefully it still makes sense.

Because!! Kip is our PoV character!! So it took me until now to think outside his perspective on it - he thinks "oh wow the court, the newspapers, the empire" re The Death Of Cliopher Lord Mdang, which is understandable.

But I don't think it at all occurs to him to think of how much his presumed death would have devastated the Vangavaye-ve.

I mean they must have known, because Kip's mum and sister and uncle are all there at court when he wakes up, and he notes that his efela will have been sent home for funereal reasons. So, he knows they've been told. But Kip doesn't think about it much because a) he's got a lot else to think about and b) he never thinks of himself as missed or valued back home, at least not on a grand scale, even with what got clarified in HotE. And, c) he's still getting the hang of the fact that people back home even know what's going on at court.

I keep going back to the fact that, in this gathering of his family at court because of his death, there's someone significant missing: Buru Tovo.

Because we, if we have read Portrait, we know what Kip doesn't: we know just how much people care about him and value him and long for him to come home, not in a corrective way (the vibe Kip gets, which is basically "come home sit down and stop being weird") but because he's their best and brightest and their rising tana-tai and they need him and treasure him.

And we know that Buru Tovo kept that ember of hope alight for decades, that Kip would come home, and…

I keep thinking about Buru Tovo hearing that after all that hope, that time, that triumph of the fire dance… Kip has died. Kip will never come home.

And then I wonder if he… because he's like Kip, when tragedy strikes he goes to do what needs doing. He stays home because there are duties to do, because he cannot leave the community in this moment, and because he needs to go to Aya and ask her what he'd hoped not to have to, that she will hold the dances in trust, because there is now no one to follow him.

And also, at the same time, if he stays home because it hurts too much to go to Solaara.

And then!! The relief!! The joy!! The heart-stopping, tear-inducing news that Kip is okay, he's alive… damn. The way that must have hit home. It might only have been a short time before the announcement of Kip's death and the announcement that he's alive again, but frankly even a day would have been enough.

What happens next, in the Vangavaye-ve at least? Kip returns home at the end of the book and claims everything he deserves.

And people leave gifts for him at the house, and I think he attributes this to his claiming the position and finally Coming Home and all he's achieved in Sky Ocean, because that's what's just happened to him.

But… this is the first time he's come home since his family and the Vangavaye-ve had heard he died.

I feel like a lot of it comes from that, a lot of need to welcome him and express what they feel.

God, Kip always thinks he needs to Overachieve to the Max in order to earn love and respect back home, but I don't think they need him to, they're just terrible at expressing it. The love! Was there!! The Whole Time!!!

~

Additional comedy headcanon: the reason Vou'a is hanging out with the lore keepers when Kip and Fitzroy make their grand entrance is because he's in the doghouse with Buru Tovo about letting him think Kip was dead, and he's trying to make it up to him.

He got whatever the traditional islander equivalent of "go sleep on the sofa" is and he's sucking up by losing to Buru Tovo and friends at draughts and trying to earn Husband Points back.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for being harsh to one of my group mates?

(📳🎓)

For context, this is in uni, and most of us are between 18 to 20 years old. We've been assigned a group project we need to do basically, and while there were originally 8 of us, for the longest time there were only 5 of us. The other 3 were unavailable for a variety of reasons - until within the past two or so weeks, one of them (I'll call A) started showing up to some lectures. Not all of them mind you, but a couple of them.

Initially I was a bit 'ehhh' on A, simply because he hasn't shown up until now. However the rest of the group wanted to give him a chance, and for the sake of fairness we did. And for the most part, imo, he's been unreliable. He showed up recently to one of our more important sessions (the session essentially being producing a bulk of the work we'd need to do) and was genuinely helpful, but for me the pressing issues I have with him are that

1. He's inconsistent. He only got to that session because we prodded him about it on WhatsApp, and I'm sure that if we didn't he wouldn't have turned up at all

2. He rarely if at all communicates with us. He responded to one person (who I'll call D) twice and another person once. While in person he's a lot better, getting in touch with him otherwise is essentially impossible.

The kicker recently is that in person, we agreed to have a one on one meeting where we'd talk about what we've done so far and what he'll be able to help out with in the future. I arrived to the location, and waited... He never showed up. I texted him multiple times to let him know that if he's late he needs to tell me, and as I'm writing this he still hasn't even bothered to read the messages at all. I let D, who's our group leader, know and they believe he shouldnt share our grade. I agree.

However, the reason why I feel I'm the AH is because he says he's been having some mental health issues. He didn't specify what, just that it's 'been hard getting out of bed' and the like. He may have mentioned depression, but I also can't 100% confirm it. The rest of the group believe we should give him another chance, saying that depression is hard and that we can't expect him to be fine 100% now, and they've even said that D themself is inconsistent when it comes to showing up to meetings, which is true. They say that they themselves have had similar struggles in the past and they sympathise.

While that's fair, I'm also of the opinion that well... He hasn't even done a lot of work. Like at all. He helped during that session but has otherwise done fuck all. From a practical standpoint he doesn't deserve a grade simply because he's done essentially nothing since we started, even if it is because he's been having a bad time. However, he also hasn't had much time to prove himself that he is capable of helping, so it could be that I'm just pre-judging him out of cynicism.

It might also not help that I'm a very practical person when it comes to mental health - I deal with my own shit, tend not to burden anyone with my issues if I can, and just get on with things. My anxieties were rough before uni, and while it's gotten better in some areas it's gotten worse in others. Yknow, stuff like money, if I'm even eating properly, general life, personal circumstances, all that shit. However it might be that A is the type to get buried in his feelings, and my more practical viewpoint is me being way too harsh on someone who is struggling.

While I understand where my group is coming from, I still don't think A should share our grade. Imo he hasnt shown much initiative if at all for the group, and even if he was struggling the fact that he just generally hasn't done anything means I don't think he should share our grade. AITA?

TLDR: Guy in a group has done not much in terms of participating in our group project, because he's been struggling mentally up until now. Group is mostly sympathetic and wants to give him another chance, while I think otherwise, believing he's had enough chances already.

What are these acronyms?

[captain-sassy-socks]

May I ask what the story is behind TFLN? What does it stand for and how did it come to be?

Hello.

TFLN means textsfromlastnight. It's a website that collected all the (mostly drunk) texts from people. I'm not sure if they're active anymore with people having shifted more to communication via social media or WhatsApp.

In 2020 when we were all in lockdown, the inspiration came from two sources: @notmytextsfromlastnight - a L&O:SVU blog focusing heavily on ADA Rafael Barba and @textsfromstargatecommand - a Stargate blog.

It started as fun until it morphed into something that belongs to the core structure of my blog. It's part Stargate, part Sanctuary, and whatever Amanda Tapping was in.

And if it makes you smile/chuckle/cackle/groan or roll your eyes, my mission is accomplished.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Rachel Connolly:

Earlier this year, I had a bout of what my friends and I term “mental health”. I was always tired. I couldn’t concentrate. I felt burnt out by the volume of communication that social media facilitates. I am 31 and, like many people my age, I’m in multiple group chats on WhatsApp and often find myself added to new ones. I use Instagram to post work and selfies, and to chat with people via the DM function. I use X similarly. (I’m too old for TikTok.) I enjoy some of this. I like talking nonsense with my friends. But I’d started to question how deliberate much of it was. I’d find myself posting a picture of a book I was reading and think, why do I need an audience to read? I began to wonder if, in the cycle of curating, recording and publicising our lives on social media, the things we do that are not seen and affirmed by people online feel somehow less “real”. My work as a writer means I probably get more online communication than the average person. Last year I published my first novel, and I have since noticed the slightly strange way that novels are discussed online. I get tagged in Instagram posts saying that my book is about a messy girl, a sad girl, a distant girl or a cold girl. There is an algorithmic basis to this. The easiest way to attract attention on social media is to talk about a trend everyone else is talking about, or to slot whatever you’re talking about into one of these trends.

So everywhere you look it is Brat summers or trad wives, cottage-core or bloke-core, high-functioning anxiety, parentified children or whatever happens to be the latest term for pathologising your life experience. Everything is flattened, simplified. I worried that being immersed in it was making me think this way too. A friend recently got a “dumb” phone, a Nokia 3210, to use when she’s out of the house. She leaves her smartphone at home like a landline. It has made her happier, she says. I needed a break too, but I was drawn to the idea of spending some time cut off from all communication. A reset, of sorts. I found a weekend-long silent retreat, no phones allowed, and booked myself in. My craving for a break is not uncommon. Social media is such a constant background presence in our lives that it’s easy to forget how recent it is. Facebook, which feels impossibly passé, is only 20. Instagram is not yet 15. Researchers first used the term “digital detox”, to refer to a period of abstention from phones and laptops, in 2012, around the same time that social media was really taking off (chat rooms had been around since the turn of the 1990s without the concept surfacing).

Digital detoxes remained unusual for a time. In 2015, Essena O’Neill, an Australian influencer with 612,000 Instagram followers, made news around the world when she released a statement about quitting the platform. Today, similar moves by celebrities are so common they barely make headlines. Billie Eilish deleted all social media apps from her phone. Actress Tavi Gevinson wrote about using an assistant to manage her Instagram. It has been hard to keep track of the number of times Stephen Fry has quit and rejoined Twitter over the years. These dramatic exits can seem amusing, especially when they’re followed by sheepish returns, but mostly they underscore how addictive and overwhelming social media can be. My silent retreat took place in a large house in rural Devon. I arrived on Friday, one of a group of about 50. We were allowed to speak during registration and, because I had gone there determined not to use reductive labels, I could already sense myself reaching for them. A young man told me he had done several silent retreats before. Ah, I thought, so you’re the type of person who does these often. Then I caught myself. What type would that be?

During the first meditation session, our instructors explained that we would sit and try to embody, rather than think about, the question “What is this?” This distinction struck me as confusing to the point of meaninglessness. But they explained that one way of attempting “not to think” about the question was to resist the urge to answer it. They encouraged us to focus instead on how we felt, on the physical sensations in our bodies. If you have never tried this, I will say that it is extremely difficult. We sat cross-legged for 30 minutes. I stared at a wall. Then we walked in a circle for 10 minutes. Then we sat down again, and so on, for about two hours. Then it was bedtime. I enjoyed the communality of me and the other girls silently working through our evening routines together. I realised that I had never decided to bring my phone everywhere, like an appendage to my body

The next two days were structured around meditation and chores. At 6.30am we were woken by a bell. We did two hours of meditation, after which we had breakfast. Then a break, followed by another two hours of meditation and lunch. My chore was washing up after we ate. Then more meditation, dinner, another break, meditation, bed. If sitting in an uncomfortable position and staring at a wall while trying not to think sounds impossibly boring, I would say it is not so different from the way my days would unfold when I worked in offices, traipsing from my desk to the tea station and back. More earnestly, I would say I could not have imagined how much I would enjoy the retreat, or how much I’d get out of it. Over the weekend, one of the instructors spoke about trying to be more conscious of the labels we put on our experiences and interactions. It struck me that a similar fatigue with the overload of digital communication is probably what draws a lot of people to try a silent retreat. We were all the type of person who is fed up with “types of people”.

On my first morning after breakfast, I went outside. The countryside seemed fantastically vivid. The blackbirds looked as beautiful as anything I had seen before. I watched one, like a dash of ink, flickering against the mottled grey sky, then two sailing as a pair, in tune with each other. I watched a cloud of them, pulsing. It reminded me of a jellyfish. Back inside, from my seat in the meditation room, I could see a tree that the birds would visit. When I was frustrated with the way my thoughts rattled around my head, reviewing unsaid rebuttals to months-old arguments, I watched the birds and imagined the paths they were taking in the world. One of my issues with the task “embody but try not to think” is that the semantic distinction between thinking and feeling is hard to grasp. If you notice that you feel happy or sad, is that a thought? Or a feeling? I found animals a useful framework to try to understand the distinction, as they negotiate the world using senses. A bird might fly north because of an environmental cue, but it does not say to itself in words, “I want to fly north.” I came to understand the task not as emptying your head of thoughts, but rather resisting the tendency to narrate things to yourself in words. I noticed that this interior monologuing would lead me along familiar, superficial trains of thought, to recent memories associated with certain feelings, say, and soon enough back to mundane anxieties.

At night, I would sit outside and look at the stars. The clouds, invisible in the darkness, shifted to expose one patch of stars, then another, making it look like the sky itself was swelling and shrinking. Memories and ideas still came to me, but deeper, more interesting ones than before. It was as if I had cleared the way for them. I remembered that I used to look at the stars when I was a teenager. I used to read about how they’re born, how they sustain themselves, why we see only some of them, how they die. On Monday morning at breakfast, we were allowed to speak again. Some participants had found the weekend hard, they said. One person had cried repeatedly. Others said that eating in silence had made them feel as though everyone was being cold towards them. As they talked, I remembered old corporate jobs where I was always the office loser. People could sense the aura of failure emanating from me, so I would eat lunch by myself, in silence. I got used to it. I didn’t feel I was learning anything valuable at the time, but life can surprise you. Sticking out is not so bad, I realised. This is the message of most children’s books, but one it’s easy to lose sight of as an adult. Other people’s perceptions of you, real or imagined, don’t have to influence how you see yourself. Social media is designed to erase this perspective. Much of the anxiety it fosters comes from forcing you to see yourself, constantly, as relative to others.

[anarchotahdigism]

im scrolling through your blog and just saw your post on the signal app, gonna tell my family that they should switch to this; i don't download messenger apps (because i don't trust their security) and so im mostly limited to saving their numbers but this changes EVERYTHING, so thank you so so much bestie

Signal is the one app I broadly trust because so many cybersecurity professionals endorse it When Zuckerberg bought Whatsapp, it was a HUGE deal because hundreds of millions of Asians used to communicate safely with families throughout the diaspora and back home. So it was a titanic effort to get people's families with varying degrees of tech literacy to switch to a new and much safer app, especially when Whatsapp had so many functions that Signal still lacks, but Signal was and is so much safer. My policy is that if I won't say it in a post, I won't say it in a DM. Anything more personal or revealing is said on Signal or not at all. However, Signal is only as good as its user settings. To be maximally safe, set chats to autodelete (you can set this per contact and change it), disable screenshots as necessary, and be wise about what you say and to whom. In 2022 (I think) some people caught charges in PNW for leaked Signal screenshots that demonstrated them planning and committing radical acts. The cops got ahold of the phones, and one of which had screenshots and no PIN. That was enough to get at least two people sentenced iirc. No security measure is perfect but Signal is good enough, and the more people who use it while being informed about security culture, the safer we all are and will be.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Gossiping, spreading rumours, telling lies, attacking someones status, destroying their relationships…

The whispers in the playground, the cold shoulder at the party, the secret WhatsApp groups; if such a thing as ‘toxic femininity’ were to exist, then surely it would be this?

Much is said and done about the way boys and men hurt each other, and how their dominance of the physical realm allows them to punch, hit and fight one another as a means of aggression.

But is all aggression physical?

And might women (just as men exploit their physical superiority) harness their mastery of language, their skills of communication and relationship building, to wreak havoc in their own specific way?

“Relational aggression”, is the ability to harm others through deliberate manipulation of their social standing and relationships – and yes, it’s mostly women and girls who do it.

But like always, society remains reluctant to say anything about the malevolent side of the femme – even to the detriment of girls, who are the primary victim of this kind of bullying.

Worse, girls bullying other girls is hyper charged through social media, causing untold harm, and likely drives the recent rise in suicides in adolescent females – yet our social justice warriors are too gutless to talk about it.

The simple fact of life is this – women and girls are no better, or worse, than men and boys.

No less capable of greatness. No less capable of harm.

That is what ‘women’s autonomy’ truly is.

We all exercise our unique powers in specific ways, some of which draw the spotlight and ire of society, and some don’t.

So what is to be said about the destructive power of words?

Will anyone talk about the uniquely devastating ways that girls bully each other, or how women can destroy the life of a man without even lifting a finger?

Who will talk of relational aggression?

-

APA: https://tinyurl.com/3rjdz6mv

Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/digital-world-real-world/202302/research-casts-doubt-on-male-centred-theories-of-aggression

Misogynistic Tweets: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/26/half-of-misogynistic-tweets-sent-by-women-study-finds

Women as innovators of language: https://tinyurl.com/2st3vxz8

==

It's like people think we forgot that the film "Mean Girls" exists. The entire school was on the brink of imploding, requiring dragging all the girls out to conduct a giant group therapy session.

[dangmelearner]

Why after 18 years i still dont master Dangme?

I have been married to a native speaker of Dangme for 18 years, 10 of wich i’ve been living in Ghana, where said language is spoken. So why is it that I’m still at the beginner stage?

Behold, my vast list of excuses

1. English.

I’m a Finn but I learnt English in school and by the time I met my husband i was reasonably “fluent” (very debatable term) through exposure to English language media (Finns generally consume very high amounts of media in English). I also sang in church choir led by an American lady, I had English language penpalls, read books in English and found the magical world of the internet. And then I joined an English language church because I was invited by some lovely Nigerians I met randomly on the street. So summa summarum, I was already pretty strong in English when I met my husband to be. He hadn’t learnt Finnish at that time and naturally we communicated in English. Later he did learn Finnish but English remained our common language and it always felt weird trying to speak any other language together. So I never had this big need to learn Dangme. Yeah I really wanted to (and tried to) but it never bothered our relationship that I didn’t.

2. Not living in Dangme land

Even when we moved to Ghana we didn’t actually live in an area where Dangme was the majority language. So I would hear Dangme mostly only if my husband called his parents or if we travelled to see my in-laws which happened like twice a year.

3. Lack of materials

When I began my language learning there was very few materials. I managed to get a hold of a small tourist vocabulary which was very badly done and not very helpful. But I drilled that bad boy the best i could. I also asked my husband a lot of questions but he doesn’t have a very good attitude to my language learn quest and is sort of irritated when I ask him. He is very busy all the time and super stressed so I don’t really feel like bothering him.

4. Other languages

As I couldn’t find materials in Dangme I tried other languages. I tried Ashanti twi through Pimsleur, Aquapem Twi through a book and later Fante through actual face to face private lessons. I did some French too on the side because I watched SKAM France and fell in love.

So what now?

1. Begin to bother people

I’m finally going to begin pushing people to speak Dangme to me. I have made friends with a handful of dangmes and they are much more in favor of my learnign endeavors than my husband. So I finally have some people to help me.

3. Materials

The last couple of years materials have popped up. I now have a handful of YouTube videos at my disposal and I have found a few children’s books. I have also found some academic articles about Dangme grammar. Im also now in a WhatsApp group with other people wanting to learn Dangme. That is very motivating. But the one resource I’m so exited about is a dictionary! I can now translate stuff without having to ask people about each and every word.

4. Focus

I’m going to but all other languages to hold. I’m even going to put my other hobbies on hold for a while. I really want to just do a really intensive period of Dangme studies for the next year or so. I’m hoping by the end of the year I would be at a level where I can hopefully learn more passively (like through just reading Bible in Dangme and through natural conversations. ) After I have become strong enough in Dangme I want to bring back the other languages one by one but keep maintaining Dangme. I really hope this works out.

[thozhar]

Apart from the telephone, even letters were a popular means of staying connected. Being more personal, affordable, and accessible, they allowed one to express wholeheartedly, especially the new brides. At home, Amma would pack some khasta and bhunja (our native snacks) and stitch them all together in a piece of cloth with our letters. I remember, Papa once replied, “Jab bhi Nehal ka khat aata hai, main kayi maah tak usko padhta hoon.” (Whenever Nehal’s letter arrives, I read it for several months.) Only later, did I truly acknowledge his emotions and my naivety as a child who didn’t understand then that ‘maah’ meant month. 

Later, even recorded audio tapes were used by migrants to exchange messages but my family did not engage in this practice as it was mostly used by newly married couples; it was not widely respected among elders. Then, the coin-calling system emerged, with a coin offering a minute of conversation. Another method was operator-calling, often considered illegal, but still used frequently as it allowed migrants to talk for a longer duration at any desired time, marking the beginning of uninterrupted communication among migrant families. The advent of mobile phones in the subsequent years further allowed for more private conversations and individual autonomy. Initially, only migrants used them but later even their families joined in and the significance of landline phones gradually declined. Initially, without the Internet, there were options like calling cards. Papa would often caution us to talk for five minutes only when calling on someone else’s mobile, as he had bought a five-minute calling card.

In 2014 and 2015, Papa and Abbu returned from the Gulf respectively. They were among the first batch to leave, and now the third generation is working there. Besides WhatsApp, other apps like I.M.O. and Skype have also grown popular due to the easy accessibility of smartphones and the Internet. However, amidst this rapidly changing world, my most significant memory of Papa’s life abroad is still the installation of the landline telephone in our home—how I would inform all the migrants to dial our phone number instead of calling in another mohalla. I would proudly declare in one go, “Ab humaare ghar phone lag gaya hai aur humaara number 25240 hai; 06154 laga lena pehle.” (Now we have a telephone at our home and our number is 25240; please add 06154 as a prefix.) 

As happy as I have been, to be able to hold on to these bittersweet childhood memories, I cannot deny the fact that my father’s migration deprived me of a normal childhood and experiences that would have been possible in his presence. A sense of detachment and an agonizing silence lurk between us—a void that seems only to be deepening in this digital age, reminding me that I am not merely a participant of migration but also a victim of migration.

— Gulf Calling by Nehal Ahmed

[the-aromantic-dragon]

my qpp is a ❤️ kind of a boy and i am a 🩷 kind of an enby

[searchingforserendipity25]

Incoming Call? Who's calling whom? And why?

It's for the casual Seven Stones for Seven Brothers collection, going from the idea that Feanor built the stones for his sons and they use it to communicate. Inevitable consequence: The Long Peace as a time for long group face-timing sessions on holidays :D

This is all dialogue. Mostly done-ish, I just need to finish it, humour-proof it, and figure out how to use the ao3 WhatsApp skin option! I had a blast but the last bit is stuck. Headcanons involved: Amras as a tailor, Maglor's voice is a bother, Huan is the best guy to find your lost phone even when you don't want to find it.

Here's a snippet:

"Hail, brother. I am with you."

"Maedhros! I think we are the first ones. Better enjoy the quiet while it lasts.  Ah, you received the cloak!"

"I did. Many thanks."

“Let me see - you are going to have to duck a little more than that. Does it fall well? We tried to keep enough heavy lining if you needed to let down the hem. The clasp suits? It ought to balance against the brace."

"It falls very well, Amras. The clasp hurt nothing at all, and has proven most useful in battle. ‘Tis a wonder, dearest; you chose well the length. Where is Amrod?" 

"He is burying the remains of dinner, lest our call be interrupted by wolves. Ah, we have company. Why all this neverending dark?"

"Hearken to us, Maglor. No, not like that. Listen - Ambarussa, do stop laughing."

“It is Amrod now holding the stone, and I shan’t. Maglor, you’ve put it the wrong way around. Or - is this thing underwater?  Are you dunking us?"

[thedunesea]

Hi. How’s your day?

I just want to say I mostly agree with your post about AI writing. I am a student from science background but is enthusiastic about fictions. Also my native tongue is NOT English.

Because of my……rather unique background knowledge, I feel like I have a “weird” stand about AI writing. I feel like 99% people I know use AI writing tools wrong, either they don’t know how to structure their story, how to create conflicts, or how to communicate with AI writing tools.

In summary, they’re either bad at storytelling or bad at using AI tools.

In fact, I use AI writing tools just like your post suggested—I mainly tell them what sentences I would use to describe the scenery, and see if they have better wording than mine. Or I would ask them which adjectives to use here, as google translate is dumb. Or I would ask if a scene which is not from my own culture make sense, as I don’t want to bother any online folks on this matter.

Your post made me feel less guilty about using the tools. I am not sure whether or not it’s a good thing tbh but thank you. I wanted to have some research about this topic, but I got yelled by people’s angry anti-AI writing posts in my face on tumblr most of the time. Like—I get it, but I wonder am I the only one who has the similar idea on this topic? Then I found your post.

I feel like my main concern now is—by using those tools, am I making the “evil” in others’ eyes stronger? As there are news about AI writing tools using online fanfics to train their models, the tools themselves might be unethical.

Thank you again and hope you don’t mistake my message……I’m here to say “thank you” and try to have some conversations over AI writing.

Hello friend, I'm doing fine, thanks, even if quite busy with the end of the school year approaching. I hope you're doing fine too!

I completely understand your fears and your reserves, and I share them. I think that the issue at hand here has two faces we need to tackle. The first is the tool, i.e. artificial intelligence chat bots; the other issue, the really problematic issue, is the way these bots were trained.

My foray into chat gpt was as a teacher, not as a writer: I needed to assess the potentialities and the drawbacks of the tool, since I'm fairly sure I will soon have to account for it when preparing my courses and perhaps even to integrate it into my teaching routine.

I do think that the tool, if used properly, could be really useful for teaching and learning, and also for everyday life. It's like having a very calm, very proper, very family friendly protocol droid. You have to take everything it says with a grain of salt, but it can help you get what you need (i.e. starter bibliography on a topic you aren't familiar with). It can also be invaluable for the uses you described. AI isn't inherently evil, if (and this is a HUGE if) we regulate its uses in order to let it substitute human work only when that work force can be redirected towards more engaging and more useful tasks, and never as a substitute to human knowledge and creativity.

What is evil is the economic system we live in, and this brings us to the second issue. Chatgpt was trained on data provided for free on the web, data that were never meant for this. This in itself is unethical, and a gross misuse of the web. Honestly I don't care that my fics may have been scrapped, but I understand why people do, and anyway my own feelings on the subject are way beyond the point: this is another egregious example of corporations using people's time and engagement to scrap data and profit, and this is one of the evils of our time.

And yet we keep using evil tools all the time. I use whatsapp, and I still have a facebook profile, so I'm feeding data to meta. I am not vegan, and I know all the evils of intensive animal farming. I don't buy a lot of fast fashion, and yet all my clothes are made in developing countries, and I have no idea of the conditions of the workers there. Heck, the fridge I just bought because the old one broke down is produced by a company that used to produce in Italy but then delocalized to a developing country, firing hundreds of employees.

I couldn't have bought an ethical fridge: I don't even know if they exist, and even if they did, I couldn't afford them. I absolutely couldn't afford to only buy clothes made in Italy or Europe. I could go vegan, but honestly I don't really want to. I eat meat very rarely, I only eat local fish (by which I mean fished in Italy, I don't live on the sea) and I buy eggs from certified cage-free hens. I could get rid of whatsapp, but it would complicate my life to an extreme I am not willing to go to. I can't give up google suite because I use it for work.

One thing I don't do, for example, is order delivery food. That is a form of exploitation I choose not to partake in, because it's a choice I can make. Would I want to have pizza delivered to my house sometime? Yes, of course I would. Am I willing to put at risk the life of someone less privileged than me (delivery people here are mostly immigrants, often 40+ years old) to have my pizza delivered to me instead of getting off my ass and going to buy it myself to take away? No, like hell I am!

Why am I saying all this?

Because until I only buy handmade clothes and locally produced foods, only own ethically produced tech (HA!), never use products from meta or google again... Until then, who am I to lecture anyone on their use of chat gpt?

We live in an unethical world. This doesn't make us above reproach, but we have to choose our battles, and very few of us are really in a position to hate on others for the battles they choose - and those they don't.

If chat gpt helps you, get to know its pros and its cons: if using it doesn't bother you, use it! Chances are that the people that would get mad at you are probably using something unethical too - like driking milk, because the disboscation and pollution and soil consumption that are needed to produce our milk are far worse things than a bot scrapping the ao3.

I am sorry for the ramble, and I hope I didn't come across as patronizing: this wasn't really aimed at you, personally, it was more like a written train of thoughts, because honestly I asked myself the same questions you did when I started to think about if and how to incorporate these bots into my teaching routine, and this is the only answer I could find for myself.

[for the record, I won't use it for teaching, not yet: I want to get to know the tool and its training and all these issues way better before I decide to willingly expose my kids to it]

[twistedtrannies]

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[mitchipedia]

We don’t need a new global town square to replace Twitter. We already have one: The Web.

The web is the world’s town square.I t’s been right there along along, and Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc., are all just layers on top of that web.

Nobody owns the web. If somebody like Twitter or Facebook puts a fence around their part of the web, that fence is just two feet tall. You can easily climb over it. If you’re not doing that, it’s because you’re choosing not to.

Mastodon is a great service. It’s not that hard to use. If you can figure out Facebook, you can figure out Mastodon. Learning to drive is harder and most of the people complaining about Mastodon being hard to use can already drive.

Mastodon is part of the much larger “fediverse,” which includes other services, which are less popular than Mastodon.1 Services join the fediverse by supporting a protocol called “ActivityPub.” It’s all very much like the way different email services interconnect with each other, and you can message from your Gmail account to another person’s Microsoft Outlook account without any difficulty.2 Already, we see WordPress blogs can be part of the fediverse, and a small blogging service called micro.blog, which I use, communicates with Mastodon using ActivityPub.

Right now, we’re not seeing a fediverse boom—we’re seeing a Mastodon boom. That needs to change. For the good of the web town square, people need to embrace that they can choose a variety of services that can all talk with one another.3 Mastodon is just one of those services.

@manuelmoreale makes similar points.

And Mastodon itself is pretty unpopular, compared with Twitter, which is in turn unpopular compared with Facebook or YouTube.) ↩︎

For an even better comparison, imagine if WhatsApp and Apple Messages could talk with each other. They’re similar but not identical—you’d lose some features but mostly you could communicate just fine. ↩︎

Kind of like the way your can read a Substack newsletter in email or on the web, and likewise you can get email updates on WordPress blogs. ↩︎

[h-a-unted]

name: Kuroki

pronouns: any pronouns!

preference of communication: Discord or WhatsApp

most active muse: Travis and Emma, I've literally been really active around here (or as active as I can be which is not much) and left my other muses on very low activity, for now. Though, aside from them I've been trying to tend to mostly Meteor and my OC Popshi, both mainly from FF14. Which reminds me that I did make a Qu.arry verse for Popshi hehe, never got to use it, though.

experience / how many years: Experience in RP... I honestly have no idea, since 3rd grade? Don't know how many years that is but it's... a lot. Experience here on Tumblr was like around 2017 I think.

platforms you use: Right now; Tumblr, Discord (but I tend to be real bad at keeping up RPs there), and Facebook (very-mega low activity).

best experience: In this blog it's honestly having people to interact with. I've had the chance to bring Travis to life, even, something I thought would barely happen and develop the ships I want as well as friendships I never thought my muses would have. Emma has grown even more on me and I wish to see the different nuances of her we couldn't see much in-game. My big highlights have been meeting: @foghidden before New Years came over and how quickly we clicked! I've been having a blast writing and just talking with you. I want you to know you're real special to me already and I hope you're having as much fun as I am! You're an amazing writer and your muses are amazing! It always feels like you understand your characters so well, as if you either relate to their experiences or have studied them well. You're also very inviting when we talk and so considerate, I love talking to you a lot and hope we can share more! @quarryhag You and your Dylan were one of the first interactions I had and honestly, I can't be any more grateful. It's been so amazing, I never thought I'd find a bestie for Emma, but I'm glad I did. You evoke Dylan in your writing so perfectly, it feels like I'm actually interacting with him. Hopefully, I also meet expectations because you're giving me amazing interactions both with Emma and Travis. Talking to you about our plot ideas or random videos we find and all that is really fun! Hopefully we can keep it up this year! @v4mpier You and all your OCs and muses in general! I was super psyched that you gave me the time of day. You're so dedicated to your muses, I'm glad I can be part of them and watch them grow! I'm so excited to see what you develop along the way. Let's keep it up, I'm looking forward to more interactions and to see you develop your characters with me and with others, too! I'm rooting for you! In conclusion: You're all amazing and I hope I can make our interactions justice as you do 'cause I adore you all. In general, being in this blog has been tons of fun and I hope we develop even more together. I'm also hoping to interact with more of my followers, so please feel free to approach, I'd be so happy if you did! If you ever falter, just know that I ALWAYS am up for talking/interacting, so do it!

rp pet peeves: When people try to patrol what others like or rp, when people don't want to interact due to different perspectives that wouldn't matter in rp/writing (I respect it but I don't like it), really rigid rules, when people refuse to give others a chance to rp, etc. I'm just really chill in general, I want to write with others and have a good time. I don't mind boundaries set, as long as you're not rude about it and allow for me to be free with my other partners. Live and let live. If I bother you, block (or soft block, so I don't accidentally post at you), don't try to make drama out of it. I just hate how rigid things have become around here with most people, wish others were as open as before because this only makes people (it's me, I'm people) fear to approach and have more interactions when this is supposed to be simply a hobby for fun.

fluff,   angst,   or smut: Fluff or angst are my JAM! I'm really bad at smut so I don't include it, but I don't mind it as much if the other person doesn't mind me being mediocre at writing it lmao. Fluff and angst are just... chef's kiss, though! It's so nice for character development and I live for it and just interactions in general!

plots or memes: Both! I like random memes because I'm bad at plotting, but I don't mind trying my best if you prefer to plot, it's quite fun!

long or short replies: The reply that vibes with the moment as long as it allows me to continue with another reply or so!

best time to write: All day, every day!

are you like your muses: I, initially had written that I am NOT AT ALL like Emma or Travis, so I asked about my traits and... I do have the same coping or reactionary mechanism as Emma when in face of dire/scary situations. I tend to be the token Mellow Fellow that remains outwardly "calm" despite being frightened and the one that tries to cheer others up with silly or cheery behavior. When it comes to traits I share with Travis, I seem to not be honest with my feelings and try to force myself to be mentally stronger and more detached just because I know I should be to keep myself protected. There's also a self-sacrificing factor in him that is a little hard to pinpoint, but it's still the same type I convey, I suppose. There may be some more but, I don't know of any other traits, at least not at the top of my head. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to develop them and see how it went for me (aside from growing really fond of the two). I WISH I had some of their good attributes, so to speak. I don't think I am like my muses in general, and maybe that's why I'm drawn to them. But, surely, I put pieces of me on my portrayal of them, so maybe lookout for those, if you can find out which are which! tagged by: @quarryhag (thank you omg this was so good!) tagging: @foghidden @v4mpier @blccdycigxrettes @hrrorstrie @ghospoke @mkoshi and anyone else I missed! If you see this, consider yourself tagged! (And feel free to tag me!)

[thomascarterpd]

Accessibility review of my trip to Japan – Josh's Story

In September 2024, some friends and I departed Australia for a two-week holiday exploring Japan. This article reflects on my experience of Japan’s accessibility from my perspective on this trip, in four key areas: Airports, Hotels, Transport, and Food.

Airport and flight: 4/5

The flight we chose was a budget airline and as expected it was not as flashy as the big airlines, but it was still manageable. Our flight included typical budget airline featuresno in-flight entertainment and no meals (there was an option to purchase meals onboard, although I just ate before the flight). The flight was about seven hours with a brief stopover in Singapore and then another seven-ish hours’ flight. The lack of in-flight entertainment did not really matter as I just used my tablet with movies downloaded as well as my e-reader.

Like most international flights there was a stopover both ways. My stopover was in Singapore for three hours on the way there and twelve hours on the way back. They do make you go through security when boarding your connecting flight which is where a DNA swab was used on my AFOs which is mostly a standard procedure, except for at Narita airport on the way home. I could just walk through without anyone batting an eyelid, which was nice.

Hotels Rating 3.5/5

For the first and last few days, we stayed in Airbnb which is quite common in Japan. Airbnb’s are often in apartments with self-check-in and chat with the host available in the app. We did spend a while finding the combo keylock as they are usually hidden. The rest of the trip was hotel accommodation which was quite accessible to a standard you would expect from hotels. One of the hotels did have a virtual reception (during unstaffed reception hours) which was a tablet at the reception desk, where you communicate with hotel staff either through typing or WhatsApp calls.

Travel Rating: 4/5

I was so excited to get a bullet train and it did not disappoint, so if my rating was just based on those it would be an easy 5/5. In total I caught three bullet trains and yes, they as fast as you would think! They do have bathrooms in each carriage although I am unsure if they had accessible ones as I didn’t check.

For the rest of our travel, we used local transport: a mixture of trains, buses, and trams while in Hiroshima (never have I been so excited to see a tram!), although we tried to avoid peak hour as Japan’s trains are way overcrowded during this time. They even have dedicated station staff as pushers to help cram people into the train. The train stations themselves can be quite a maze with multiple exits and entrances. To get certain trains you have to make sure you are at the correct entrance as it is so easy to get lost inside the stations.

Read through the full article to gain insights about cerebralpalsyresources