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I tap the mic. “Most people don’t want to crawl down your chimney and steal your dog.”

the crowd murmurs uncertainly.

“If someone wants to steal your dog,” I continue, “there are easier ways to do that. They don’t have to crawl into a chimney.”

Murmuring intensifies. People stand in their seats and begin to boo.

“People disguising themselves as chimney sweepers and stealing dogs is not a rational fear,” I shout. “Literally anyone could steal your dog. Why make sweeping chimneys illegal?”

“I have a list of chimney sweeps who stole dogs from parks!” Someone yells, throwing a shoe.

“You seriously think no chimney sweepers could possibly ever steal from a home?” Another cries.

“Only a dog thief would even want to crawl into a chimney to begin with!” Says a third.

A single tear rolls down my cheek. They are all so fucking stupid

This is a metaphor

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That hits hard.

Imagine my shock as a neurodivergent teen when I first realized that using large vocabulary and eloquent speech doesn't make you less likely to be misinterpreted, rather it adds an entirely new layer of misinterpretation I had never even realized existed in the form of people thinking you're being snobbish or condescending when you're just trying to be specific

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On the “ethical consumption under capitalism” point, just today I had someone respond to my criticising one of the actors who’s signed up to be in the new Harry Potter show with the “Yet you also contribute to society” comic and ask if I used an iPhone. As if needing to buy a product that’s essential to my daily life from some company is equivalent to accepting millions of dollars for a juicy role in a bigot’s TV show.

bat at hornets nest maybe but "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" refers to low income communities needing to choose between survival vs being eco friendly. not you continuing to watch the harry potter movies

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A good rule of thumb for AI is "would you trust a trained pigeon to do this?"

"We trained a pigeon to recognise cancerous cell clusters and somehow they're really good at it" okay great, that's something that could plausibly be a thing.

"We trained a pigeon to recognise good CV:s and left it in charge of sorting through all our job applications" uh perhaps consider not doing that.

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Here’s an incomplete list of things people would say to me growing up that I just couldn’t understand the purpose of (I don’t know if this is an autistic thing or if NT people also struggle with these, just that I am autistic and they were hell for me):

“Oh you have an answer for everything”. (You were asking me questions. Was I not meant to answer?)

“That’s an excuse not a reason.” (I know there’s a distinction between these words, but I don’t think you’re using it right. I’m not trying to excuse anything, I’m just explaining sequence of events.)

“Stop trying to be clever.” (Is being clever a bad thing now? People used to encourage me to be clever, now it’s a problem?)

“If you didn’t understand, why didn’t you ask for an explanation?” (I thought I did understand. I did what I believed you were telling me to. Why are you assuming I’m just deliberately being ignorant?)

“Don’t talk back to me!” (Can you explain the difference between “talking back” and just “talking”? i thought we were having a conversation. Even if we disagree, aren’t I allowed to take my turn in it?)

As I grew up I got to understand some of the subtext in a few of these phrases, but it was so frustrating that I was just expected as a kid to accept the meaning here even when there didn’t seem to be one.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/technology/chatgpt-ai-chatbots-conspiracies.html

Another great development for chatbots: they are now fuelling delusional thinking.

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Fundamentally, I think every human being has a right to the food (and shelter and healthcare, etc) they need to survive, but even if we’re going to argue for the existence of commercial food production and sale as a valuable industry, the stage where unsold, perfectly edible food is thrown in the garbage is indefensible. At that point, the people who produced the food, whose labour was used - farmers, cooks, factory workers, and so on - have been paid. Maybe not enough, but that’s a separate issue. The only people losing out on profit are the retailers, and whatever happens to the food afterwards, they still are not getting that money. And, frankly, that is part of the business proposition they’ve entered into. They make a guess on how much they can sell and profit from, and sometimes they will be wrong. Sometimes they’re right and make a lot of money. Sometimes demand is even higher than they expected, and if they use their purchasing power wisely they might be able to get more stock in quickly and cheaply enough to make even more money. The point is, figuring out how to do that is their job and I can’t find it in myself to be super upset if they don’t do it well. But that food is still, fundamentally, not doing anyone any good in the garbage. It can do someone some good if it enters their digestive system and becomes fuel for their body. And if your first question is “Do they have enough imaginary value tokens to allow them to furl their bodies?”, you’re asking the wrong question.

a society that allows people to starve when there is food has failed. like. that’s it.

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“Malware? In my phone’s vagina?”

It’s more likely than you think.

what are yall doing that we need this??

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You know, I never imagined Mr Bent was a vampire. Up until the end, I thought he was going to be revealed to be a leprechaun, for a couple of reasons: in his later books, Sir Terry had been introducing more new species to the books (banshees, orcs, harpies) to give interesting takes on them; Mr Bent’s obsession with gold seemed to fit the “pot of gold” part of the folklore; a leprechaun who works at a bank just seemed like a funny, Discworld-like idea.

no one did clowns like pratchett. sure "the fool jingled miserably across the floor" but that's just the tip of the iceberg....imagine alluding to a character's tragic backstory and deep repression of his true nature and heavily implying he might be a vampire before revealing the identity he's been battling against all book is actually just a literal circus clown

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Seriously, though, whenever you hear someone talk about how the fandom was “betrayed” by some new development in the canon, or that their childhood had been ruined, or just saying some new [x] instalment isn’t real [x] media, it’s probably grown out of a person who insisted, vehemently, that they were part of this house/clan/faction/Sex and the City character. The process of deciding who you are and then living up to that idea of yourself consistently is scary for a lot of people, so why not take some pre-packaged persona with brand recognition that you can hand anyone you meet like a business card? People have also done it with zodiac signs, Myers-Briggs personality types, left-brained/right-brained dichotomies, and any number of pseudo-scientific personality variants. The additional problem of tying your sense of self to IP is that it’s something someone else owns and its integrity is beholden to a number of factors outside your control, not least of which is the profit motive. Which means if your character archetype that is all about being Loyal and Brave could suddenly make more money if a magic space vortex changes them all to be Devious and Manipulative, that can happen regardless of your feelings about it.

do you think that a certain genre of queer person is so obsessively weird about pride flag discourse becuase their flags fill the gaping hole in their personality where a hogwarts house used to be

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Huh, when I started reading your reply I was thinking “vase of flowers” like that picture that could either be a vase (though, to be fair, there are no flowers visible) or two people’s faces opposite each other. What seems like one thing to you seems like something else entirely to another person.

i think one of the most important things you learn about making connections with others is that a significant portion of the time people just do not know theyre doing what theyre doing

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these are two full-grown adult cats. but one of them will always be baby

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This is just to say that if I find the fucker who ate the plums that were in the ice box - that I was saving for breakfast - I am going to go absolutely apeshit on them. No forgiveness.

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You can put the bar for human decency on the ground and some Tumblr users will grab their shovels.

if you find a part of a human body (not your own) you shouldn’t keep it in your house for the next 50 years. yeahhhhh. that jawbone is not for youuuuuuuu.

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Having never used AI, I can’t honestly say what it feels like to generate something with it. If I were to guess, I imagine it feels a bit like punching a number into a vending machine and having a chocolate bar come out. But I do know what it feels like to create something artistic, to have bounced off a number of not-quite-right versions until suddenly, like jumping into the air and realising you can actually fly, you finally do it the way you wanted to. There’s nothing like it. The glow of satisfaction charges you up from top to bottom, and every misstep you made on the way has primed you to appreciate the feeling to its fullest. It’s a tragedy to imagine people looking for a way to circumvent that experience.

One thing I’ve noticed about AI users is that they are completely repulsed by the notion of feeling bad or frustrated for even the slightest moment