The Symbolism Of Flowers

nytimes.com

Who Is in DOGE? Tracking Its Staffers and Allies in the Federal Government

The Times identified 45 people within the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, a group formed by Elon Musk that in a short few wee

Oh no. MAGA is mad that the NYT shared the names of DOGE staffers. Don’t share this! Would be a shame

DEI does not mean lower standards.

You are thinking of white privilege.

How to Tell If That Post of Advice Is AI Bullshit

Right, I wasn't going to write more on this, but every time I block an obvious AI-driven blog, five more clutter up the tags. So this is my current (April 2024) advice on how to spot AI posts passing themselves off as useful writing advice.

No Personality - Look up a long-running writing blog, you'll notice most people try to make their posts engaging and coming from a personal perspective. We do this because we're writers and, well, we want to convey a sense of ourselves to our readers. A lot of AI posts are straight-forward - no sense of an actual person writing them, no variation in tone or text.

No Examples - No attempts to show how pieces of advice would work in a story, or cite a work where you could see it in action. An AI post might tell you to describe a person by highlighting two or three features, and that's great, but it's hard to figure out how that works without an example.

Short, Unhelpful Definitions - A lot of what I've seen amount to two or three-sentence listicles. 'When you want to write foreshadowing, include a hint of what you want foreshadowed in an earlier chapter.' Cool beans, could've figured that out myself.

SEO/AI Prompt Language Included - I've seen way too many posts start with "this post is about..." or "now we will discuss..." or "in this post we will..." in every single blog. This language is meant to catch a search engine or is ChatGPT reframing the prompt question. It's not a natural way of writing a post for the average tumblr user.

Oddly Clinical Language - Right, I'm calling out that post that tried to give advice on writing gay characters that called us "homosexuals" the entire time. That's a generative machine trying to stay within certain parameters, not an actual person who knows that's not a word you'd use unless you were trying to be insulting or dunking on your own gay ass in the funniest way possible.

Too Perfect - Most generative AI does not make mistakes (this is how many a student gets caught trying to use it to cheat). You can find ways to make it sound more natural and have it make mistakes, but that takes time and effort, and neither of those are really a factor in these posts. They also tend to have really polished graphics and use the same format every time.

Maximized Tags (That Are Pointless) - Anyone who uses more than 10 one-word tags is a cop. Okay, fine, I'm joking, but there's a minimal amount of tags that are actually useful when promoting a post. More tags are not going to get a post noticed by the algorithm, there is no algorithm. Not everyone has to use their tags to make snarky comments, but if your tags look like a spambot, I'm gonna assume you're a spambot.

No Reblogs From The Rest of Writblr - I'm always finding new Writblr folks who have been around for awhile, but every real person I've seen reblogs posts from other people. We've all got other stuff to do, I'm writing this blog to help others and so are they, the whole point of tumblr is to pass along something you think is great.

While you'll probably see some variation in the future - as people get wise to obviously generated text, they'll try to make it look less generated - but overall, there's still going to be tells to when something is fake.

I don't have any real advice for what to do about this (other than block those blogs, which is what I do). Like most AI bullshit, I suspect most of these blogs are just another grift, attempting to build large follower counts to leverage or sell something to in the future. They may progress past these tattletale features, but I'm still going to block them when I see them. I don't see any value in writing advice compiled from the work of better writers who put the effort in when I can just go find those writers myself.

Oh, and by the way, that Supreme Court ruling is where that Harry Potter money goes.

FACTS.

“The Crocodile”

Okay. I was typing a reblog and it somehow became a rant/spiel, so I’m making a whole post about it.

“The Crocodile” Episode? I know a this isn’t exactly an unpopular opinion, but I’mma say it anyway.

Hook and Milah. Had. It. COMING.

Granted - Hook became cool eventually. But I hated him for a LOT of the series on the grounds of his first impression alone.

Like it’s one thing to run off with a man’s wife. Rumple and Milah weren’t in love and the marriage wasn’t a good one. She put zero effort into their family and taking her off their hands may arguably have been better for everyone.

Seriously. Fuck Milah.

Spinner Rumple tried so hard to be a good husband and father, or at least to make their family work in a loveless marriage, and he deserved better.

But in spite of that, what Hook did to him on the ship crossed so many lines and he totally deserved to get owned for it.

Let’s review:

Concerned husband boards a pirate ship to beg for his wife back, thinking she’s been abducted. Right off the bat: That right there took courage. It always pisses me off when OUAT characters call Spinner Rumple a coward, because he really wasn’t. The world put him through it and he was doing his damn best. Just showing up to the ship of bloodthirsty pirates, knowing that literally all he could do was beg and hope for the best, took guts.

Back to Hook. So this poor guy shows up to ask for his wife back unharmed. And shy of actually hurting Rumple, Hook decides to do quite possibly the cruelest thing he could have done:

Keep letting the spinner think that his wife had been taken against her will and that she was being raped by the whole crew.

If Milah was in on the lie, then in my opinion SHE was the cowardly one here. Not Rumple. You want to abandon your disabled husband and son to run off and live the high life with a pirate? Own your shit.

But no. Instead they pushed the blame onto Rumple and gaslit this poor man into thinking it was somehow his fault.

Yeah - Rumple didn’t pick up the sword when Hook challenged him to a duel over Milah. But let’s think about that for a sec shall we?

We have Rumplestiltskin: An older wool spinner with a disability. Who can’t walk all that well WITH his walking stick - much less without it, on a boat, and during a fight with a sword. Which he’s barely held in his life unless you count the crash-course he got as fodder- I mean a new recruit, when he was drafted into the Ogres War.

Versus Captain Jones: A younger, taller, stronger pirate. An experienced swordsman, comfortable on a ship, and with two good legs. AND with a loyal crew of OTHER strapping pirates who would probably kill Rumple even if by some miracle he DID take Hook by surprise or something.

So really, Rumple had two options here.

Option A: Refuse to fight the bloodthirsty pirate, leave with your life but without your wife, and return home to your now motherless son.

Option B: Fight the bloodthirsty pirate, probably die or at least get badly injured (which could be death within a few days-weeks anyway given his financial situation and living conditions), the pirate takes your wife anyway, and your son is left an orphan who may or may not ever know what happened to you.

So there was no realistic scenario here where he fights off the pirates like a dashing hero and carries his wife home.

What else was he supposed to do?!

Rumplestiltskin is extremely smart. He always was. He knows when to pick his battles and he would have known all of that at a glance.

Refusing to fight wasn’t cowardice. It was common sense.

And yet Hook, this mothafucka, who must have realized all of this too and put Rumple in this situation in the first place, had the gall to act disgusted about it when Rumple refused to “fight like a man.” And then gaslit him into thinking that he was a coward and a fool for making what was obviously the more rational decision.

Now Hook is a pirate. I never would have expected much from him. But that’s no excuse. What he did was fucked. And karma is a bitch.

Stupid Game = Stupid Prize

And yes I know this is a pretty commonly held opinion so it shouldn’t be new to anyone but I rewatched that episode recently and needed to get this off my chest. 😤

Reblogging because this is REALLY FUCKING IMPORTANT.

Also second that people shouldn't have to dump their whole medical history on someone, or be forced to share their medical trauma/life story, just to get what the hell they asked for and what they are more often literally PAYING for.

None of them are making this a problem. Especially if they ask "can you do this" and don't usually make a fuss if you can't, they just want to know so they can make an informed decision. It only becomes a problem when pretentious people decide to be spiteful, hateful, deceitful or judgemental with no cause and MAKE it a problem.

Just trust people to know what the fuck they can eat on their own. It's not your damn business.

DO NOT DO THIS.

This makes me so angry.

If you work in a movie theater and you do this I have no respect for you.

My younger brother is Type 1 Diabetic.

When we go to a movie theater, we always get him diet soda. If he were to get regular when we asked for diet, we would not give him the insulin he would need for it. If that happens, his blood sugar level could go so high he could go into a coma, go blind, or even die.

If somebody gave him regular soda instead of diet without telling us, that person could be responsible for a nine-year-old being killed or blinded.

Just thinking about that makes me so angry. I get scared every time we take him to a movie in case the people working there saw this picture and decide to do the same thing.

Please signal boost this so people know.

This ain't even a question

I know it’s not hard to point out reactionaries hypocrisy when it comes to like safe spaces or hug boxes or whatever but genuinely how much of an echo chamber do you have to exist in for you to think this is a reasonable thing to say

How would an omega mutant lose to a tin can? Storm could fry his ass using a lighting bolt with her pinky and iron man would be over.

Mcu stans need to get serious for once in their lives.