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best advice i ever got as a writer was to pick a hobby that i hated more than writing and stick with it. i’m a runner now and it’s miserable and i Hate It and writing is so lovely in comparison. bonus: i’m in excellent shape and running gives you a lot of time to think about writing. i’ve solved a lot of plot complications while running.

This is such funny advice. Writing is so excruciating, you gotta take up Self Torture so that writing feels like a fun little break 😭

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Reading the new checks that might come in due to the Online Safety Act in the UK and this is actually bullshit

[Image Transcript:

And how will I prove my age?

There’s a number of methods a site or app might use to ask you to confirm your age. They might do this check themselves or use another company to do the check. These methods include:

Facial age estimation – you show your face via photo or video, and technology analyses it to estimate your age. 

Open banking – you give permission for the age-check service to securely access information from your bank about whether you are over 18. The age-check service then confirms this with the site or app.

Digital identity services – these include digital identity wallets, which can securely store and share information which proves your age in a digital format.

Credit card age checks – you provide your credit card details and a payment processor checks if the card is valid. As you must be over 18 to obtain a credit card this shows you are over 18.

Email-based age estimation – you provide your email address, and technology analyses other online services where it has been used – such as banking or utility providers - to estimate your age.  

Mobile network operator age checks – you give your permission for an age-check service to confirm whether or not your mobile phone number has age filters applied to it. If there are no restrictions, this confirms you are over 18. 

Photo-ID matching – this is similar to a check when you show a document. For example, you upload an image of a document that shows your face and age, and an image of yourself at the same time – these are compared to confirm if the document is yours.

End Transcript.]

Not only is this such a fucking breach of privacy, but this is going to hurt adults in vulnerable and abusive situations. Some adults don’t have bank accounts or credit cards or even a fucking phone. I’m one of them. I could not give half of this information even if I wanted to. What the fuck is this. Fuck the UK government. This isn’t going to protect kids, this is just going to hurt adults, and I know full well when they say “sites that allow pornography” they’re going to be going after sites that have huge amounts of queer content, like tumblr and Ao3. Queer kids are gonna lose their fucking communities because of this shit. Abuse victims are going to lose online support systems because of this.

I’m genuinely fucked off about this, and worried about whether I’m going to lose every single one of my online friends. Anyone in the UK, please email your MP and sign this petition. It needs to reach 100k signatures to pass through Parliament.

I’m only hoping the backlash will be big enough for them to stop implementing these measures.

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harry potter fans in 2025

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Robert Wood Lynn, “Bringing a Gun to Chekhov’s House”

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honestly we should really remake that whole "you're doing multiple rows of teeth Extremely Noticeably Wrong" post that we made once and got deleted (it was technically a reblog of someone else's post and it must've been deleted). it's still happening and it's still so prominent every time it happens.

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The sigil was drawn in salt and ash, the candles lit at the pentagram points, the incantation declaimed.

There was a shimmer - a demon appeared.

"Curious. What ritual is this?"

"I got it from ChatGPT. I included all protections in my prompt!"

"I see," the demon said and stepped out of the sigil.

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this is frying me so bad

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I'm sorry, professor, I consider publishing your course a day late, having a mandatory live zoom meeting during business hours to stay enrolled for an asynchronous class, and requiring students to use a $60 ***pdf*** that you wrote as their textbook to be exceptionally unprofessional and since I've still got 14 days to get a refund I'm totally not paying $150 to take your class.

Also, for all the newbie professors out there: a syllabus is not just a greeting and a list of assignments. If you haven't given your students AT LEAST your office hours, your late work policy, and your preferred method of being contacted, then you have not given your students a syllabus it's just sparkling announcements.

But really. Sir. SIR. You teach Speech 100. This is one of the most basic classes with like, 20 of the most widely available accepted textbooks and you want me to pay sixty dollars for a pdf of a book that you rewrite every semester so that there are no previous editions?

Buddy this is interpersonal communication, not introductory rhetoric. Why is one of your *four* total assignments about Socrates?

Maybe it's the fact that I've taken Spch 100 interpersonal communication three times already, maybe it's the fact that I grew up with somebody who taught Spch 100 interpersonal communication from 1981 to 2018, but buddy what the fuck are you doing?

"Some of our lectures will only be available for 24 hours so it is up to you to stay on top of it."

Friend, you are teaching an asynchronous online 100-level class at a community college during a pandemic. Get off your high horse, a third of your students are probably parents. There is no reason whatsoever to limit access to course materials to 24 hours unless you are doing it to be a controlling asshole.

Also YOU published your class a day and a half late! You don't get to publish your class late with an incomplete syllabus and tell students to "stay on top of it." Especially not since that means that people have two fewer days to buy your PDF textbook and only one full day to prepare for your mandatory 1pm on a Tuesday zoom meeting!

Why do you require me to have access to a printer for an online class? Oh yeah it's because you expect me to print out and draw on sections of your $60 ebook.

SIR. No thank you.

Kids, new students: this is a level of bullshit and disorganization from a professor that you do not have to put up with. This is a neatly ordered series of red flags that say "this professor is going to be absolutely unbearable."

Also *any* humanities class where your whole grade is 4 assignments should get serious side-eye. You should be able to pass most 100 level humanities classes by just turning in weekly assignments. 4 assignments means that by the time you figure out how the professor grades you're probably close to halfway through the class. Look for classes that require weekly participation as a major chunk of the grade because that way, even if you fuck up a project in a major way, just showing up can save your ass.

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"the new supernatural comics are set between seasons 1 and 2" really? and did you remember to give sam psychic powers? did you give sam prophetic little dreams and moving shit with his mind?? is it between seasons 1 and 2 as in sam has p-

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Oh my god

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-- Ted Chiang, from "Why A.I. Isn't Going to Make Art"

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fascinating thing about sinners is how absolutely doomed the narrative is.

like okay if sammie hadn't gone to the juke joint, remmick probably wouldn't have shown up. but then the klan would have. okay smoke took those assholes out solo, if it was him and stack maybe they could have handled it. well the juke joint would have shut down in a month because no one had any real fucking money because of the sharecropping scrip. not to mention two seperate mobs are on their way to fuck the twins up (what do you MEAN you robbed al capone??). okay maybe they covered their tracks, well they're still in the fucking jim crow south and stack and mary have a cool 35 years until loving v virginia so best case scenario is he's broke and watching the love of his life from afar until he's 70. plus annie implied the twins were on borrowed time anyway since she'd been quietly protecting them the whole time they were gone.

idk it both adds to the horror that there was no way out and just solidifies sammie saying it was the best day of his life, like that one little perfect moment was all they were going to get anyway

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In a fantasy setting, my job would be exactly the same

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is this orange or yellow.

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(image description: a three panel drawing with very simple sketched lines and only a little quick coloration. it depicts a woman sitting at a desk, with a computer keyboard, musing aloud; "sometimes I wish my creative works would just make themselves...", after which she is startled by the arrival of a stick figure with a square head labeled "generative AI," which replies; "I can do that." the final panel is the only one with detailed color and lighting, showing the artist whipping out a pencil-shaped laser gun and exploding the AI entity. end description.)

had a conversation in a writing server, decided to make a meme about it.