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every scifi writer: in 2025 the machines are smarter than anyone thinks they are

real-life 2025 horror: everyone thinks the machines are smarter than they are

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[video description: a man playing saxophone in front of a large pipe. everything he plays echoes back through the pipe, resulting in a call-and-response type song. the person behind the camera claps along to the beat. end description.]

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so my apartment building got a notice board to post fire alarm tests and maintenance announcements and such. the building is pretty well-maintained, so we rarely get notices. the board is big and grey and to think it would be empty like that 99% of the time was a bland boring sin i just couldn't bear, so i vandalized the corner of its empty canvas with a teeny tiny Guy

and within a few days, there was a sudden addition from my one of my neighbors along with a Bunch of thumbtacks. this was an unexpected, but welcome surprise!

well there was still so much space, i figured i'd add another crumb to the art hoard. i'd been playing genshin that day so i drew my favorite grandpa

and like clockwork, new art manifested!! this person is gonna grow to be a great artist i know it. the detail in those stones? hell yeah that's cool.

we're two weeks into it. more neighbors have joined in with their artwork. who knew there were so many artists in my building?? we're onto somethin great here i just know it.

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Remembrance, a Hellblazer pride story (featuring Xanthe Zhou) by us and @pdmarshall-comics. With authenticity consultant help from @manggageprek.

A fancomic about memories, grief, and generational queer tension.

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Was talking to a coworker today who explained that her grandfather was like Snow White “but Californian. And an old man.” in that the creatures of the forest would follow him around and presumably duet with him.

“When he died the ravens sat in the trees outside for a week, watching. Taking turns. A horde of raccoons tried to break into the house every night, tearing at the siding. Eventually they gave up, but it was unsettling.”

“Aww. They were checking on him!” I said, like a normal person. Internally, I thought “Maybe you could do the thing you do with dead pets, where you show them to the living pets so the living pet understands they’re gone. But I guess if you did that to a bunch of scavenging species, they’d be like “Well, that’s very sad but he IS food now.” So what you’d need, for human sensibilities, is some sort of transparent corpse barrier. Like a see-through coffin oh that’s what the dwarves were doing! You’ve stopped paying attention to this conversation about the loss of a beloved family member you gotta phase back in.”

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“These are the eyes of a Strawberry Conch (Conomurex luhuanus). They inhabit the shallow tropical waters of the Great Barrier Reef and feed on algae and detritus.” © Lawrence Scheele

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is this orange or yellow.

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we need to invent a way to explain how deep running and pervasive and subliminal racism and antiblackness is without immediately sounding like an insane conspiracy theorist

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🌊

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Okay so when I got sucked into the phantom zone last week while watching youtube shorts a lot of the content it fed me was ADHD tips and a lot of it was either useless for me or redundant but there was one REALLY good tip about taking breaks that wasn't about taking breaks it was about RETURNING from breaks and the tip is: when you are about to go on a break, before you step away from your task (work, craft project, school stuff) decide what you'll do as the first thing when you sit back down at your task and set up your workspace to do that thing.

That means you've got an easy re-entry point to go back to doing the thing instead of sitting back down and having to make a decision or having to reorient from break mode to task mode. You have pre-reoriented and can just go back into working mode.

I've been doing this by circling what my next task on my tasklist is and bringing up the windows that I'll need for the task before I step away from my desk.

Brilliant hack, works great for me, hope it works great for you as well.

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The revolution needs you to brush your teeth.

This ask went hard, but you are correct.

The revolution needs you to brush your teeth. Crippling pain and debt from having bad and rotted teeth makes you easier for the oligarchy to control.

The revolution needs you to brush your teeth.

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So, the other day, when I was discussing AO3's policy on solicitation, a tumblr user came at me saying that AO3's "no monetization/solicitation" rules were "bullshit" because nexus mods allows fan created mods to get paid.

Look at me.

Look at me right now.

AO3 protects you.

AO3 protects you and your works. 

It protects your works from copyright strikes and DCMA takedowns.

It protects your work from advertisers.

It protects your work from overzealous legal challenges.

It protects your right to post adult content.

AO3 is non-profit and AO3 will never try to use you or your work to make a profit for themselves and AO3 will go to bat for you if someone tries to legally challenge you or your works.

Please respect AO3 and its mission.

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Hey, if you did work over the past few weeks to try to stop the GOP's obscene and murderous budget: thanks. It ended up without the AI regulation ban, the trans healthcare ban, the western lands sell off, and without its stupid name being official.

It passing was a major loss for everyone in this country including the very wealthy and other people who believe they will be able to be better off from it.

But also, it passing was not as bad as it could have been and it took the ongoing effort of huge amounts of people to even make that a possibility, so if you were part of that, from the bottom of my heart: Thank you.

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Lenny from Strange Days (1995)

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Okay, another little lesson for fic writers since I see it come up sometimes in fics: wine in restaurants.

When you buy a bottle of wine in a (nicer) restaurant, generally (please note my emphasis there, this is a generalization for most restaurants, but not all restaurants, especially non-US ones) you may see a waiter do a few things when they bring you the bottle.

The waiter presents the bottle to the person who ordered it

The waiter uncorks the bottle in order to serve it

The waiter hands the cork to the person who ordered the bottle

The waiter pours a small portion of the wine (barely a splash) and waits for the person who ordered it to taste it

The waiter then pours glasses for everyone else at the table, and then returns to fill up the initial taster's glass

Now, you might be thinking -- that's all pretty obvious, right? They're bringing you what you ordered, making sure you liked it, and then pouring it for the group. Wrong. It's actually a little bit more complicated than that.

The waiter presents the bottle to the person who ordered it so that they can inspect the label and vintage and make sure it's the bottle they actually ordered off the menu

The waiter uncorks the bottle so that the table can see it was unopened before this moment (i.e., not another wine they poured into an empty bottle) and well-sealed

The waiter hands the cork to the person who ordered the bottle so that they can inspect the label on the cork and determine if it matches up; they can also smell/feel the cork to see if there is any dergradation or mold that might impact the wine itself

The waiter pours a small portion for the person who ordered to taste NOT to see if they liked it -- that's a common misconception. Yes, sometimes when house wine is served by the glass, waiters will pour a portion for people to taste and agree to. But when you order a bottle, the taste isn't for approval -- you've already bought the bottle at this point! You don't get to refuse it if you don't like it. Rather, the tasting is to determine if the wine is "corked", a term that refers to when a wine is contaminated by TCA, a chemical compound that causes a specific taste/flavor. TCA can be caused by mold in corks, and is one of the only reasons you can (generally) refuse a bottle of wine you have already purchased. Most people can taste or smell TCA if they are trained for it; other people might drink the wine for a few minutes before noticing a damp, basement-like smell on the aftertaste. Once you've tasted it, you'll remember it. That first sip is your opportunity to take one for the table and save them from a possibly corked bottle of wine, which is absolutely no fun.

If you've sipped the wine (I generally smell it, I've found it's easier to smell than taste) and determined that it is safe, you then nod to your waiter. The waiter will then pour glasses for everyone else at the table. If the wine is corked, you would refuse the bottle and ask the waiter for a new bottle. If there is no new bottle, you'll either get a refund or they'll ask you to choose another option on their wine list. A good restaurant will understand that corked bottles happen randomly, and will leap at the opportunity to replace it; a bad restaurant or a restaurant with poor training will sometimes try to argue with you about whether or not it's corked. Again, it can be a subtle, subjective taste, so proceed carefully.

In restaurants, this process can happen very quickly! It's elegant and practiced. The waiter will generally uncork the bottle without setting the bottle down or bracing it against themselves. They will remove the cork without breaking it, and they will pour the wine without dripping it down the label or on the table.