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Hi,

It’s you friendly neighbor fanfic author here. In the light of this apparent new trend of people feeding unfinished fics to AI to get an “ending,” and some people even talking about “blanket permissions,” let me just say this:

I EXPLICITLY FORBID ANYONE TO FEED MY FICS TO AI. DUDE, THAT IS ABOUT THE LEAST RESPECTFUL THING YOU CAN DO. IF YOU DO IT, SHALL YOU BE EXCOMMUNICATED FROM YOUR FANDOM AND WALK ON LEGOS BAREFOOT TILL THE END OF DAYS.

That is my anti-permission.

Thank you for your attention.

I know the OP is saying this in a bit of a lighthearted way to be nice but I’m not that nice and I’m frankly really appalled at what I’ve been seeing so I’m going to explain why you shouldn’t do that.

AI CANNOT create on its own. It’s not that smart. Anyone who’s ever built any sort of language AI can tell you with 100% certainty it’s not that smart. It can “learn” and it can “create” sentences, but it needs to be fed a language to do so.

So it will only ever “create” based on what it’s fed. This is absolutely crucial.

There are ethical ways to do this. I did this in my undergrad with my class, taking .txt files of old classic books and feeding them to our programs for words/sentences. That way our programs were only ever “creating” from works that did not break copyright laws.

But feeding an AI someone else’s fanfic? Yeah, now you’ve given the language model SOMEONE ELSE’S WORK to learn off of WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION.

It doesn’t matter that it’s a fanfic and technically, the author does not own the characters/setting. They created the story, they engaged in creative exercise, so that fanfic is theirs. YOU do not have the right, legally, to take THEIR work and do what you want with it, much less feed it to an AI who will take their work and now use it to further its language learning.

Especially since AIs like Chat GPT have a payment model. Now someone else is making money off of a fanfic author’s work, and YOU directly contributed to that.

So if you do that? Fuck you. Sincerely.

u can pry my Special Capitalizations and random periods for like. dramatic effect away from my cold dead hands

Proper business setting english, a comma for a pause and a period with a longer pause at the end of a thought.

Daily english?

We can use a comma for a pause where I'd like, naturally pause for breath.

Periods go down when I'd stop talking. For effect or somethin.

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I'm bringing this cosplay to a con again next weekend! And would love suggestions to update it! Like should I use a different wig? Bangs, no bangs Color on the wheels again or not? It's summer so should I wear a green skirt or shorts?

My wheelchair has been modified since these photos. We chopped off the handles and made it low backed, and have a new footrest situation. And I'm considering painting the wheels pink but I don't know.

I love being able to portray a character that means do much to me, as a ambulatory wheelchair user. I actually got asked if my chair was a prop. Which was baffling to me. As I also had my cane leaning against my legs. Because me and walking go very poorly. I post s lot about Barbara, so I thoughts Babs cosplay update was needed

There’s a dark side to Italy’s often ludicrous attitude towards culinary purity. In 2019, the archbishop of Bologna, Matteo Zuppi, suggested adding some pork-free “welcome tortellini” to the menu at the city’s San Petronio feast. It was intended as a gesture of inclusion, inviting Muslim citizens to participate in the celebrations of the city’s patron saint. Far-right League party leader Matteo Salvini wasn’t on board. “They’re trying to erase our history, our culture,” he said.

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Dude literally received death threats from Italian fascists for his research on Italian cuisine

Read this article here (no paywall):

https://archive.md/TRMZJ

When Grandi intervened to clarify that, until the late 19th century, tortellini filling didn’t contain pork, the president of Bologna’s tortellini consortium (a real job title) confirmed that Grandi was right. In the oldest recipes, tortellini filling is made from poultry. “This is the reason why I do what I do,” Grandi says. “To show that what we hail as tradition isn’t, in fact, tradition.”

Today, Italian food is as much a leitmotif for rightwing politicians as beautiful young women and football were in the Berlusconi era.

In case no one told you growing up

  • Bras last longer if you let them air dry. Don’t put them in the dryer.
  • If you have a problem with frizzy hair, don’t dry your hair with a towel. It makes the frizzies worse. (I recently read an article that said to use a t-shirt? I brush mine out and let it air dry.)
  • Whites wash best in hot water. Everything else can be in cold - save on your electricity bill.
  • You can kill 99.9% of germs in a sponge by putting it in the dishwasher for a cycle or by microwaving it for 2 min (be sure to make the sponge damp before microwaving and to put a cup half full of water in with it and please DO NOT squeeze the sponge until it has cooled off)
  • Airing out your room/house and letting sunlight in every so often can decrease the number of household pests like silverfish and ants.
  • Black underwear is best during your period as stains are less likely to be visible.
  • To save money, put aside 10% of each paycheck into a savings account. It’ll add up.
  • Unless your hair has something on/in it (like grease or mud or something), using conditioner first can actually be the better choice. The conditioner holds in the good oils that help you hair look sleek and beautiful, which shampoo would otherwise wash away.
  • Speaking of shampoo - if you have long hair, washing just the bits that touch your scalp is generally enough. The rest of your hair gets cleaned with just the run off from your scalp.
  • If you put a tampon in and it’s uncomfortable/you can feel it, you didn’t do it quite right. A properly placed tampon is virtually unnoticeable by the wearer.
  • Apply deodorant/antiperspirant a couple hours in advance of when you need it. This gives the product the chance to block your sweat glands. Using deodorant just before going somewhere where you’ll sweat (this means walking outside for people in high humidity places) results in your sweat washing the deodorant off and starkly limiting its usefulness.
  • After running the dryer, use the dryer sheet from that load to brush out the lint catch - it gets everything off in a fraction of the time it’ll take you to get it clean with your bare hands. Paper towels also work well.
  • Wash your face everyday, or as often as possible. Forget which brand of cleanser is best. Just washing your face everyday will guarantee you clearer skin. And do you best not to pop pimples, as tempting as the urge may be.
  • Fold laundry asap after taking it from the dryer to avoid wrinkles. This may seem obvious for dress shirts and silly for things like t-shirts, but you’ll notice the difference even then once your shirts stop looking like unfolded paper balls.

To all the kids whose parents couldn’t help you with this kind of stuff

Suspecting im having a Spicy Pineapple incident here. Is activated charcoal supposed to make your face burn with cold fire or is that just me

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Interesting.

Have also had issues with an activated charcoal face scrub before. I thought it was the acid stuff, but I tried some activated charcoal toothpaste the other week and it made my tongue buzz for an hour or two.

In a statement to The Post, a spokesperson for NBCUniversal claimed the tree work is simply an annual ritual at this time of year. “We understand that the safety tree trimming of the Ficus trees we did on Barham Blvd. has created unintended challenges for demonstrators, that was not our intention. In partnership with licensed arborists, we have pruned these trees annually at this time of year to ensure that the canopies are light ahead of the high wind season,” they wrote. “We support the WGA and SAG’s right to demonstrate and are working to provide some shade coverage. We continue to openly communicate with the labor leaders on-site to work together during this time.”

Quick shoutout to the good people at @UniversalPics for trimming the trees that gave our picket line shade right before a 90+ degree week. pic.twitter.com/aZvvPYQ23i  — Chris Stephens (@ChrisStephensMD) July 17, 2023ALT
OH SHIT SON  THOSE TREES ARE CITY PROPERTY  IT MIGHT BE TREE LAW TIME https://t.co/oaoFWQQaNv  — Nome (@NomeDaBarbarian) July 17, 2023ALT
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Here is the weeping fig at Plummer Park that has been left alone because it is in weho. The photo embedded in the tweet is of an absolutely enormous tree with a huge lush shade canopy planted between a sidewalk and parking lot.  — lauren (@aptkr_) July 17, 2023ALT

If those trees were pollarded annually, the cut areas would NOT look like that. There would be big knobs of old growth at the trimming sites. Not seeing any of that here. The way those trees were topped (not pollarded, which is a very careful process that has to begin when the tree is immature) is excellent way to kill them due to loss of hydration, open sites to infection and parasitism during the best time of year for both, lack of nutrition due to so little greenery and new budding growth being left, sunburn and other exposure damage, and a myriad of other possibilities. Plus, if they were topped annually, they would not have the lovely drooping branches seen in the other picture but would have tons of vertical suckers instead.

This is what an annually pollarded mature tree should look like:

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If this was done by the city, the public works arborists should be protesting in front of city hall and screaming their heads off right now. I'm not hearing about that, so... Tree law!

The Studios: *speak*

Botanists and other Tree Experts:


lying cat says "lying"ALT

Update and confirmation of Imminent Tree Law:

Our Office is investigating the tree trimming that occurred outside Universal Studios where workers, writers, and actors are exercising their right to picket.  The trimmed trees are LA City managed street trees.  (Before and after photos below) pic.twitter.com/xczw0bTdh9  — LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia (@lacontroller) July 19, 2023ALT

He mentions later in the thread that not only do they not trim the trees annually, they’re trimmed at best once every 18 years. Supposed to be every five, and only in dormancy, which even my layman’s ass knows about tree trimming.

And yes, Universal can probably eat the fine. But it’s gonna be a whopper even if the trees survive (which is as mentioned kinda unlikely), California is a triple damage state for tree law, and it may increase dramatically if there were nesting birds in the trees.

All this to be a Captain Planet filler villain to some writers. And yes, it’s currently just the writers officially picketing there; SAG-AFTRA recommended against it for petty bullshit like this and the suddenly necessary sidewalk construction.

I asked my dad— a retired arborist—about TREE LAW and he just kinda blinked and said (i paraphrase because Dad Tangents, amirite?):

"Worst and best case I ever saw was a guy who was caught in the act of cutting down a C&C tree by two Department of Urban Forestry supervisors while they were randomly driving around on a Saturday. Not only did he have to deal with the cops showing up and months of paperwork and bureaucracy, but he also had to pay the fines AND cover the cost of the tree removal + stumping + buying a new tree + planting the new tree + wages for the regular crew plus the extra workers they needed to get the jobs done. That tree ended up costing him upwards of $35K, and that was over 20 years ago."

So yeah, respect Tree Law or pay out the bootyhole.

TREE LAW! TREE LAW!

Superman must hear the most insane gossip every day. Do you think he has to resist the urge to get on twitter and post "Jennifer from apartment 33B on Queen Street if you're reading this....... he's cheating"

the absolute struggle of knowing the exact plot of your fic, what the characters facial expressions will look like, what sounds will happen, the emotions, the lighting, everything….

except it’s all playing as a movie in your head and you can’t articulate any of it.

the absolute struggle of knowing the exact plot of your fic, what the characters facial expressions will look like, what sounds will happen, the emotions, the lighting, everything….

except it’s all playing as a movie in your head and you can’t articulate any of it.

the absolute struggle of knowing the exact plot of your fic, what the characters facial expressions will look like, what sounds will happen, the emotions, the lighting, everything….

except it’s all playing as a movie in your head and you can’t articulate any of it.