#I'm in public...

[blupeeblep]

... I'm so confused. ... I think I've been blocked by keanith... 😭I don't even know why??? Huh??? What did I do????

[booksinmythorax]

I'm already seeing advice from people in the US to purchase queer books and other banned or "controversial" books on paper as a way to combat the wave of government censorship that is coming. While this is a good idea (it is! absolutely!), it's not accessible to everyone, and truly, we're not going to be able to consumerism our way out of this one.

If you can buy the books, do. Whether you can buy the books or not, borrow them from your library.

Borrow the paper versions. Borrow the ebook or audiobook versions. Request the titles you want that your library doesn't have. The more a title circulates or is requested, the better librarians are going to be able to defend keeping it if and when it's ever challenged.

Use libraries like @queerliblib too. The more members they have, the better they'll be able to fundraise.

Your community resources depend on you using them. Borrow the books before they go away.

InB4: Piracy is not the solution here. We're trying to keep community resources available, not make sure individual people can read individual books. Different problems.

The books are still available. Borrowing them from your library and returning them on time and in good condition will help keep them that way.

[misscammiedawn]

Just read The Strange Case of Harley and Harleen and my god I needed a little bit of positive plurality in my life this week.

The way Pam and Harl's relationship adapts to accept the Harley/Harleen split makes my heart swell.

The way Pam sees the difference between her girlfriends.

And assures her that she accepts and loves all sides of her.

And does what she can to accommodate Harleen's memory holes.

The core relationship of this book is just so sweet and positive in accepting things as they are without judgment or pushing. Just acceptance and love.

And after finding that in our own life, I know what a powerfully positive thing it can be.

But the Harley/Harleen relationship is well handled too. There's friction and denial at the start but the two develop and trust one another by the end and Harley takes a seat as my favorite kind of character, the morally ambiguous protector.

I love the way Harley's protectiveness of Harleen is depicted and how she tries so hard to keep her from interacting with the criminal underworld of Gotham.

It's just saccharine and kind.

Highly recommend the book to anyone who just wants soft and kind plurality vibes. Heaven knows the majority of the fiction involving split personalities are flooded with angst and darkness and though this book contains a few dark plot beats like DV it never feels painful or sorrow inducing.

I'm so happy I read it.

[wiisagi-maiingan]

You are allowed to exist alone in public btw. You're allowed to go to the movies alone and go out to eat alone and hang out in a park alone and go for a walk alone and whatever else. It isn't weird or creepy, it doesn't make you lonely or a loser or whatever. You are allowed to just exist as yourself.

[glowingghosty]

people are drawing Steamboat Willie Mickey doing all this crazy shit and whatnot, but you could always do that. you can do that now, with current Mickey, just fine. it's fanart and it's legally protected. hell you could take Disney-drawn Mickey and put a caption about unions or whatever on it and it would still be protected under free speech and sometimes even parody law.

what is special about public domain is that you can SELL him. you could take a screenshot and sell it on a tshirt. you can use him to advertise your plumbing business. people have already uploaded and monetized the original film.

you could always have Mickey say what you want, but now you can profit off it.

[bioethicists]

every time a new SA allegation of a favored celeb arises, i'm reminded of the absolutely soul-crushing experience of the depp/heard trial in which i learned that dozens of ppl i loved + respected + trusted were also willing to engage in the basest form of misogyny if the woman Seemed Crazy Enough. there was a horrifying 2ish weeks on this website + much longer irl where i genuinely felt unsafe voicing my discomfort as i relived something eerily reminiscent of the aftermath of my own assaults playing out on screen, commented on by true crime youtubers like it was a red sox game.

it happens time + time again with every new allegation + it's truly the most agonizing + exhausting part of being a survivor. i am begging you all to consider that survivors are watching you engage with this stuff like theater + it erodes our trust in all of you + compounds our grief.

[orcboxer]

It is fuckin insane the sheer disregard everyone has for covid and how utterly bizarre it feels to be actively losing credibility in people's eyes just because I take it seriously. Everyone thinks I'm being "silly" but I literally was in the middle of getting a degree in microbiology when this shit started, I was literally taking immunology and virology courses when the pandemic hit, it's not like I have a poor understanding of the topic. I've been watching the death rate and keeping up with the new variants and vaccines and symptoms and I can bring up all the sources I want but it feels useless, nobody wants to hear it, nobody gives a shit.

[satanicdollx]

they should invent friends that do not live so fucking far

[mythicalcoolkid]

You don't wish your disability was worse or more visible, you wish your disability was taken seriously. Please stop confusing the two, I guarantee you would not get the support you need JUST by being more severe or more visible. Please listen to visibly disabled people when we tell you it isn't better on our side

[pied-piper-pluto]

"All this digital art stuff, you know, it goes way over my head. But my wife, y'see, she has this cousin Lou. Now Lou's a real smart cookie, knows everything from Blender to Clip Studio, but the one thing they won't touch is AI. Says it wastes a whole lot of electricity for something that only looks good at a glance.

See, a computer, it can't think through things like a human can. You or I, when we look at a drawing of an apple, we can compare it to real apples we've seen. If you show us a drawing of some orange thing with spikes coming out every which way, well, we can tell you that sure doesn't look like an apple.

But a computer? All a computer can do is look at pictures of apples. And if you give that computer enough pictures of apples that are a little bit orange, or a little bit bumpy, well. It might just decide that spiky orange thing is an apple too. It takes a whole lot of pictures of apples to get the computer mostly good at guessing when things are apples or not.

Now, that's bad enough when you just want your computer to tell you what it sees. When you want a computer to make an image, though, that's where Lou says you really run into trouble. You put a piece of paper in front of me, give me a pencil, and tell me to draw an apple, it won't win any awards. But it'll be a new drawing. Nobody's ever drawn that exact same drawing the exact same way before.

But if you take your computer that's gotten pretty good at guessing when things are apples, and you tell it "okay, draw me an apple", it can't make a completely new drawing of an apple. Instead, it'll take the pictures you've given it and mash 'em together. Maybe, at the end, you won't be able to tell which pictures it used, but if you ask it for enough drawings of apples, you'll start seeing patterns...

I'm sorry, I'll get out of your hair. I know you have to get back to your painting.

Just one more thing... how many fingers does that man in the corner have?"

[poirot]

Save your tears for something sad, because there’s nothing sad here. I have lived a privileged and an interesting life, and now it’s time to go. 

Downton abbey (2019) dir. Michael Engler

[dewwshi]

this post touched me

[lazylittledragon]

y'know every time i feel guilty about bothering someone by singing along when i'm listening to music, i just remember that i have to tolerate my dirtbag brother screaming at his ps5 for hours every day so listening to muffled off-key fall out boy is probably preferable

[redbeardace]

WE ARE STILL HERE

[hellsitegenetics]

Hey are you willing to BLAST Kat Bolstad’s page on the AUT website? She’s the researcher who voiced over the colossal squid video and it’s making me so mad that people’s hatred of generative AI is so strong that they’re trying to crowd out an incredible cephalopod researcher who frankly speaks with a similar cadence to David Attenborough (those documentary skills!!!) especially during a time where we need to encourage women in STEM. This is the real damage generative AI is doing.

https://academics.aut.ac.nz/kathrin.bolstad

String identified: Acat at ta AT a a caat , gatg t t a ac ca cg ca (, ct a t at). t at AT, at t t ata ata t (ta ttt, agt, .C.) a t ga Aa t, A. a caat t t aa T aa Tgaa, t ata ttt at & Atc ac (A), t t a Aa ac ttt (A), c ttt caga, a t t Ataa . at' a ac c a t ca a , a -a . a a gat c a a ca , a c a a a -ta t. a a atcat cta a t t t Atactc.

Closest match: Arctia caja genome assembly, chromosome: 13 Common name: Garden Tiger Moth

(image source)

[finnlongman]

Love to write a book with an aroace protagonist and get reviews complaining that it didn't have a love interest :| 99.9%* of YA books have a romance plotline, can we not have 0.1% focused on other kinds of relationship?

Not every book is for everyone, sure, if you're looking for romantic YA then mine isn't for you. But there's a difference between "this book wasn't for me because I prefer romance" and "this book was flawed because it didn't contain romance" and boy, the latter hurts when your life doesn't either.

*Statistics absolutely pulled out of my arse here.