#broadly speaking...

[cleverreports]

We report about our first thorough look at the sky today: it looks especially big, and the clouds look especially distant. We feel slightly ridiculous about missing their proximity - just yesterday, some cumulus were hovering just above our head. It is a little bit colder still.

[phantomrose96]

If anyone wants to know why every tech company in the world right now is clamoring for AI like drowned rats scrabbling to board a ship, I decided to make a post to explain what's happening.

(Disclaimer to start: I'm a software engineer who's been employed full time since 2018. I am not a historian nor an overconfident Youtube essayist, so this post is my working knowledge of what I see around me and the logical bridges between pieces.)

Okay anyway. The explanation starts further back than what's going on now. I'm gonna start with the year 2000. The Dot Com Bubble just spectacularly burst. The model of "we get the users first, we learn how to profit off them later" went out in a no-money-having bang (remember this, it will be relevant later). A lot of money was lost. A lot of people ended up out of a job. A lot of startup companies went under. Investors left with a sour taste in their mouth and, in general, investment in the internet stayed pretty cooled for that decade. This was, in my opinion, very good for the internet as it was an era not suffocating under the grip of mega-corporation oligarchs and was, instead, filled with Club Penguin and I Can Haz Cheezburger websites.

Then around the 2010-2012 years, a few things happened. Interest rates got low, and then lower. Facebook got huge. The iPhone took off. And suddenly there was a huge new potential market of internet users and phone-havers, and the cheap money was available to start backing new tech startup companies trying to hop on this opportunity. Companies like Uber, Netflix, and Amazon either started in this time, or hit their ramp-up in these years by shifting focus to the internet and apps.

Now, every start-up tech company dreaming of being the next big thing has one thing in common: they need to start off by getting themselves massively in debt. Because before you can turn a profit you need to first spend money on employees and spend money on equipment and spend money on data centers and spend money on advertising and spend money on scale and and and

But also, everyone wants to be on the ship for The Next Big Thing that takes off to the moon.

So there is a mutual interest between new tech companies, and venture capitalists who are willing to invest $$$ into said new tech companies. Because if the venture capitalists can identify a prize pig and get in early, that money could come back to them 100-fold or 1,000-fold. In fact it hardly matters if they invest in 10 or 20 total bust projects along the way to find that unicorn.

But also, becoming profitable takes time. And that might mean being in debt for a long long time before that rocket ship takes off to make everyone onboard a gazzilionaire.

But luckily, for tech startup bros and venture capitalists, being in debt in the 2010's was cheap, and it only got cheaper between 2010 and 2020. If people could secure loans for ~3% or 4% annual interest, well then a $100,000 loan only really costs $3,000 of interest a year to keep afloat. And if inflation is higher than that or at least similar, you're still beating the system.

So from 2010 through early 2022, times were good for tech companies. Startups could take off with massive growth, showing massive potential for something, and venture capitalists would throw infinite money at them in the hopes of pegging just one winner who will take off. And supporting the struggling investments or the long-haulers remained pretty cheap to keep funding.

You hear constantly about "Such and such app has 10-bazillion users gained over the last 10 years and has never once been profitable", yet the thing keeps chugging along because the investors backing it aren't stressed about the immediate future, and are still banking on that "eventually" when it learns how to really monetize its users and turn that profit.

The pandemic in 2020 took a magnifying-glass-in-the-sun effect to this, as EVERYTHING was forcibly turned online which pumped a ton of money and workers into tech investment. Simultaneously, money got really REALLY cheap, bottoming out with historic lows for interest rates.

Then the tide changed with the massive inflation that struck late 2021. Because this all-gas no-brakes state of things was also contributing to off-the-rails inflation (along with your standard-fare greedflation and price gouging, given the extremely convenient excuses of pandemic hardships and supply chain issues). The federal reserve whipped out interest rate hikes to try to curb this huge inflation, which is like a fire extinguisher dousing and suffocating your really-cool, actively-on-fire party where everyone else is burning but you're in the pool. And then they did this more, and then more. And the financial climate followed suit. And suddenly money was not cheap anymore, and new loans became expensive, because loans that used to compound at 2% a year are now compounding at 7 or 8% which, in the language of compounding, is a HUGE difference. A $100,000 loan at a 2% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, accrues to $121,899. A $100,000 loan at an 8% interest rate, if not repaid a single cent in 10 years, more than doubles to $215,892.

Now it is scary and risky to throw money at "could eventually be profitable" tech companies. Now investors are watching companies burn through their current funding and, when the companies come back asking for more, investors are tightening their coin purses instead. The bill is coming due. The free money is drying up and companies are under compounding pressure to produce a profit for their waiting investors who are now done waiting.

You get enshittification. You get quality going down and price going up. You get "now that you're a captive audience here, we're forcing ads or we're forcing subscriptions on you." Don't get me wrong, the plan was ALWAYS to monetize the users. It's just that it's come earlier than expected, with way more feet-to-the-fire than these companies were expecting. ESPECIALLY with Wall Street as the other factor in funding (public) companies, where Wall Street exhibits roughly the same temperament as a baby screaming crying upset that it's soiled its own diaper (maybe that's too mean a comparison to babies), and now companies are being put through the wringer for anything LESS than infinite growth that Wall Street demands of them.

Internal to the tech industry, you get MASSIVE wide-spread layoffs. You get an industry that used to be easy to land multiple job offers shriveling up and leaving recent graduates in a desperately awful situation where no company is hiring and the market is flooded with laid-off workers trying to get back on their feet.

Because those coin-purse-clutching investors DO love virtue-signaling efforts from companies that say "See! We're not being frivolous with your money! We only spend on the essentials." And this is true even for MASSIVE, PROFITABLE companies, because those companies' value is based on the Rich Person Feeling Graph (their stock) rather than the literal profit money. A company making a genuine gazillion dollars a year still tears through layoffs and freezes hiring and removes the free batteries from the printer room (totally not speaking from experience, surely) because the investors LOVE when you cut costs and take away employee perks. The "beer on tap, ping pong table in the common area" era of tech is drying up. And we're still unionless.

Never mind that last part.

And then in early 2023, AI (more specifically, Chat-GPT which is OpenAI's Large Language Model creation) tears its way into the tech scene with a meteor's amount of momentum. Here's Microsoft's prize pig, which it invested heavily in and is galivanting around the pig-show with, to the desperate jealousy and rapture of every other tech company and investor wishing it had that pig. And for the first time since the interest rate hikes, investors have dollar signs in their eyes, both venture capital and Wall Street alike. They're willing to restart the hose of money (even with the new risk) because this feels big enough for them to take the risk.

Now all these companies, who were in varying stages of sweating as their bill came due, or wringing their hands as their stock prices tanked, see a single glorious gold-plated rocket up out of here, the likes of which haven't been seen since the free money days. It's their ticket to buy time, and buy investors, and say "see THIS is what will wring money forth, finally, we promise, just let us show you."

To be clear, AI is NOT profitable yet. It's a money-sink. Perhaps a money-black-hole. But everyone in the space is so wowed by it that there is a wide-spread and powerful conviction that it will become profitable and earn its keep. (Let's be real, half of that profit "potential" is the promise of automating away jobs of pesky employees who peskily cost money.) It's a tech-space industrial revolution that will automate away skilled jobs, and getting in on the ground floor is the absolute best thing you can do to get your pie slice's worth.

It's the thing that will win investors back. It's the thing that will get the investment money coming in again (or, get it second-hand if the company can be the PROVIDER of something needed for AI, which other companies with venture-back will pay handsomely for). It's the thing companies are terrified of missing out on, lest it leave them utterly irrelevant in a future where not having AI-integration is like not having a mobile phone app for your company or not having a website.

So I guess to reiterate on my earlier point:

Drowned rats. Swimming to the one ship in sight.

[rongzhi]

Starting off the new year with a bang

English added by me :)

[psychotrenny]

Liberals of all sorts will confidently talk about what "indigenous peoples"* want in a way that makes it clear they've never studied a single anti-colonial movement in their lives. Like they can't conceptualise that the societies deemed "indigenous" are (by necessity of still existing) every bit as alive and part of the 21st century as any other people, instead preferring to think of them as nothing more than static museum exhibitions with any deviation from this being a lack of "authenticity". Nor do they imagine that resistance to colonising powers stems from the vicious destruction and exploitation these societies are invariably subjected to (by necessity of being classified as "indigenous"); rather they see it as a matter of idealistic preference for a "natural" and "primitive" life that leads them to resist the inevitable "march of civilisation" for its own sake

These sorts of foolish ideas are widespread, but groups will express them in more explicit terms than usual. Like Anti-Civs are really nothing more than the typical Liberal idea of the "Noble Savage" taken to a logical conclusion; if such people are so Noble then maybe we should aspire to Savagery. It's ultimately incredibly reactionary, whatever its adherents claim; a true progressive would reject the chauvinistic framing of "Civilisation vs Savagery" altogether

*nearly always as some sort of homogenous group, lacking meaningful variation both between societies and within them

[the-laws-of-physics-were-harmed]

Basically I think that if aromantic is a word that you think is Helpful to describe your experiences and you want to use it to describe yourself, or would if you weren't scared of being Wrong, then you Are aromantic.

[impulsive-fantasylander]

I'm not going to name any names, but holy SHIT some of you just fucking DESPISE the idea of people seeing men as attractive like holy shit.

[dennisboobs]

standing in front of a firing squad would have been easier than reading this script i need to be shot

[chaotic-archaeologist]

I’m 5 classes away from finishing my archeology undergrad and every time I visit a museum or archaeological site it’s like I haven’t learned a single thing in the last 4 years. Mind completely blank just staring at rocks and pottery. Is this normal?? At least the rocks and the pottery are pretty lol

I think the difference you're experiencing here is generalized knowledge vs specialized knowledge. An undergraduate degree will give you very generalized knowledge about archaeology methods, theories, and fields, but every time you go to a museum you're looking at very carefully curated specialized knowledge about a given time, place, and sometimes type of material culture.

The knowledge on display in museums takes years to develop, and the only way to develop it is to do in depth study of a specialization. You're not an expert, and that's developmentally appropriate! Also, your knowledge is just enough to help you realize the depth of what you don't know (conscious incompetence) which makes that gap seem all the more daunting.

Critically, the thing about specializations is that they are NICHE! Any museum exhibit you see is the result of collaboration between MANY PEOPLE! Archaeologists, curators, conservators, artists, museum professionals, historians, scientists, etc. Each of those people have a great depth of knowledge about a very narrow field.

You could take the world's greatest expert in Neolithic tools and drop them into an Aztec exhibit and they might know some of the things there, but probably not most and definitely not all. And that's the point of museums! They're a place to focus that knowledge and present it to the non-experts so we can access the conclusions of that expertise without having to spend years studying any given subject.

TL;DR: Go and marvel at museums without worrying about everything you don't know! Isn't it wonderful to get to learn things?! It's a privilege to benefit from all of the time and knowledge and effort that went into these exhibits just to bring that information to you!

-Reid

[teaboot]

Brief ser8ous note PSA thing, sorry if this comes off as rude or ungrateful but I feel like I should probably say that like. I don't need to know really if people are talking about me?

Like I appreciate those of you trying to keep me informed especially when accusations are made but I'm not really gonna do anything with that information

People can copy my posts or make tiktoks or disagree w me or whatever, that's okay

Referencing recent stuff obviously but also like. In general

If anyone wants to tell me something directly, then that's what anon is for. Otherwise it's not really my business

I think. Probably

But thank you?

[themortaldraw]

i don’t want to be That Guy, but i figured its a good time for a reminder that posting exclusively LU/linked universe content in the general loz/legend of zelda tags is discouraged—the creator addressed it here!

linked universe is a particularly huge linkmeets au, and has become so popular that it is basically its own separate fandom. people who have never played the games read linked universe, but not everybody who plays the games and uses the broader tags for legend of zelda does. the #linkeduniverse and #linked universe tags themselves get a lot of traffic and are generally more appropriate than a “legend of zelda” tag.

[harriertail]

Do Lionblaze and Lionheart fit into your hc? Genuinely curious here (and also would love to maybe see you draw a lion)

they do!! (sorta)

the HC for Lionheart is that he is born sickly and smaller than his sister (HC: and a possible dead littermate) which causes Swiftbreeze to invoke the Lion- name, with Featherwhisker's blessing, and he makes a full recovery; ThunderClan has more of a 'this name will bring good luck/a bright future' view of the ancient names compared to Shadow and WindClan who are superstitious of it and see is as an exchange, something must be taken back by the ancient cats. Lionheart is set for deputyship once Bluestar picks him, but the curse comes back to haunt him when he is killed by ShadowClan- his death leads to Tigerclaw's deputyship and all... that. Lionblaze already suffers a somewhat traumatic birth (Leafpool struggles to deliver him) so she uses Lion- when she sees he is not breathing and panics to revive him. The downfall is his power, and losing his power, which defined him. I also like to think he was destined to die in the Last Hope Battle but his power over the stars let him dodge death.

[maidthings]

seriously though it is weird that transndrobro types bristle so much against transemasculation as a framework, given that it tends to line up pretty well with the descriptions of transndrophobia that aren't reheated mra talking points.

[hotwaterandmilk]

An IRL friend of mine recently suggested I cut back on posting content because "maybe a dozen or two dozen people" like my posts and they weren't sure why I bothered when there was no money or engagement in it.

I definitely felt a bit like that a few years back, particularly when I'd see people repost my scans on other platforms and get tens of thousands of likes. If I'd shifted platforms and focused on engagement that could well have been me.

However, that's not really what I've ever been about. I share what I share because I like it and want other people who like these works to enjoy what I have in my collection too (or to discover new works they might not have encountered). Nobody has to engage with what I post though, I could get 0 likes/reblogs and I'd still keep plugging away because ultimately this is just a hobby and I'm just a fan.

I don't want to harp on with the cheesy "you should do things for yourself first and foremost" with hobbies, but at the end of the day my affection for certain series and artists won't evaporate just because my posts about them aren't popular on Tumblr.

I've been here for 14 years and have only just hit 10,000 followers. I'm not an important internet person by any stretch of the imagination and I think that's OK. If I'd been angling for something beyond simply being a fan of certain things, I can see how this might be considered failure. For me (personally) though, I don't feel like my hobby needs to have any form of hustle attached to it. This is what I do to express my affection for things.

Not everyone will feel the same way as I do about sharing content online and that's fine, we're all individuals and we engage with things differently. I just wanted to express this while the thoughts were still fresh in my mind.

Enjoy your hobbies in the ways that work for you. You'll find people who appreciate your contributions (big or small) wherever you go online and if you move onto different fandoms or hobbies, you'll find new folks who like what you do there too. Just don't feel locked into numbers as the ultimate way of judging your own love for media.

[leonardcohenofficial]

the multiepisode bentoncarter breakup is HERE i forgot just how dramatic the whole thing was LMFAO

[skaruresonic]

The common rebuttal to "this reads like fanfic (derogatory)" is "read better fanfic," which is true in certain cases, but on the other hand, there is some grain of truth to the idea that you can tell when someone's primary mode of literary analysis is fanfic instead of... well... literally anything else. It's okay to like or even prefer fanfic, but if you want to take your craft seriously you also need to read books, dude. Published books will teach you a lot of stuff fanfic doesn't, like proper dialogue formatting and how to introduce your reader to unfamiliar characters. Even the crappiest book (well, if it's not After or 50 Shades, which started off as fanfic to begin with lol) will have been subjected to some sort of editing process to ensure at least the appearance of proper grammar. That's not a guarantee with your average fanfic, and hence why you can't always take all your writing cues from fanfic because it's "so much better" than commercially published original fiction or whatever. Frankly, fic writers tend to peddle some absolutist and downright bad takes sometimes. "Said is dead" is a terrible rule, though not because said is invisible and a perfectly serviceable tag; that's just part of it. Dialogue tags are a garnish, not a main dish that can be swapped out for more ostentatious words. If your characters murmur and mutter instead of simply saying stuff, your readers are going to wonder why nobody speaks up. "'I'm explaining some very plot-important shit right now lol,' she elaborated," likewise, is a form of telling. Instead of letting the reader extrapolate that "she elaborated" via the contents of the dialogue itself, you're telling them what to think about it. And that's why it's distracting: your authorial hand is showing. Writing is an act of camouflage. You, as the writer, need to make your presence as invisible as possible so as to not intrude on the reader's suspension of disbelief. That's the driving reason behind "show, don't tell." And overall, everyone could stand to cut down on the frequency of their dialogue tags anyway. Not every exchange needs "he said" or "she whispered" attached as long as you establish who is doing the talking before the exchange. Some people will complain of confusion if you go on for too long without a dialogue tag, and that definitely is a risk, but at some point you also need to resist the temptation of holding the reader's hand. If they can't follow a conversation between two people, chances are they weren't meeting you halfway and paying that much attention in the first place. In fact, you don't even necessarily need action beats in between every piece of dialogue, as Tumblr writing advice posts will often suggest as a fix. Pruning things often cleans them up just fine.

Another fanfic-influenced trend in writing is, I guess, beige prose? A heavy focus on internal narration with lots of telling. It's not a style I can concretely describe, but every time I click on a non-mutual's writing, I feel like it always has, like. This "samey" voice to it. There's no real attempt to experiment and use unique or provocative language, or even imagery half the time. It's almost a dry recital of narration that doesn't leave much room for subtext. I see this style most often in fanfic where you can meander and wax poetic about how the characters feel without ever really getting around to the plot. And it's like. DO something.

Other tells that the author is taking their cues from fanfic mores rather than books: >>too much minute description of eyes, especially their color and their movement >>doesn't leave much room for subtext (has a character speak their every thought aloud instead of letting the reader infer what they're thinking via action or implication) >>too much stage action ("X looked at Y. Y moved to push their seat in. X took a deep breath and stepped toward Y with a determined look on his face. 'We need to talk,' he said.") >>tells instead of shows, even when the example is about showing instead of telling ("he clenched his teeth in agony" instead of just "he clenched his teeth") >>has improper dialogue tag formatting, especially with putting full stops where there should be commas ("'Lol and lmao.' she said" instead of "'Lol and lmao,' she said." This one drives me up a wall) >>uses too many dialogue tags >>"em dashes, semi-colons and commas, my beloved" - I get the appeal but full stops are your friends. Too much alternate punctuation makes your writing seem stilted and choppy. >>"he's all tousled brown hair and hard muscle" and "she's all smiles and long legs." This turn of phrase is so cliche, it drives me up a wall. Find less trite ways of describing your characters pls. >>"X released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding" >>every fucking Hot Guy ever is described as lean and sinewy >>sobbing. why is everyone sobbing. some restraint, pls >>Tumblr in general tends to think a truism counts as good writing if you make the most melodramatic statement possible (bonus: if it's written in a faux-archaic way), garnish it with a hint of egotism, and toss in allusions to the Christian God, afterlife, or death. ("I will stare God in the face and walk backwards into hell," "What is a god to a nonbeliever?") It's indicative of emotional immaturity imo, that every emotional truth need be expressed That Intensely in order to resonate with people. >>pushes the "Oh." moment as the pinnacle of Romantic Epiphany >>Therapy Speak dialogue. why is this emotionally constipated forty-something man who drinks himself stupid every morning to escape gruesome war memories speaking about his trauma like a clinical psychologist >>"this well-established kuudere should Show More Emoshun. I want him to break down crying on his love interest's shoulder from all his repressed trauma" - I am begging u. stop >>"why don't the characters just talk to each other?" "why can't we have healthy relationships?" I don't know, maybe because fiction is not supposed to be a model for reality and perfect communication makes for boring drama?

>>improperly using actions as dialogue tags ("'Looks like we're going hunting,' he grinned") >>why is everyone muttering and murmuring. speak up >>too many adverbs, especially "weakly" and "shakily." use stronger verbs. ("trembled" instead of "shook weakly") >>too many epithets ("the younger man" or "the brunette detective") >>too many filter words ("he felt," "she thought," "I remembered")

>>no, Tumblr, first-person POV is not the devil; you're just using way too many filter words (see above) and not enough sentence variation to make it flow well enough. First-person POV is an actually pretty good POV (not just for unreliable and self-aware narrators) if you know what you're doing and a lot of fun crafting an engaging character voice. Tumblr's hatred of first-person baffles me, and all I can think is you would only hate it if your only frame of reference was, like, My Immortal. Have you tried reading A Book? First-person POV is just another tool in your toolbox, and like all tools, it can be used properly or improperly. But it's not inherently a marker of bad writing. The disdain surrounding it strikes me as about as sensical as making fun of the concept of characters. Oh, your work has characters in it? Ew, I automatically click off a fic if it has characters in it. like what.

[stellafrin]

I picked up this Yuri a few days ago, there's only 6 chapters translated but after reading threw it I've been lingering on this chapter

Skipping past several pages of flahsback

I wish I could add more coherent thoughts to it other than just showing literally half the chapter, it's just. Luna's story resonates with me so much because I've been threw the same thing.

Never really having romantic feelings for anyone, and then someone close to me confessed and I accepted became I cared about them and didn't know what I was supposed to feel.

Over time slowly realizing that I didn't love them the same way they loved me and feeling horrible about it, that I couldn't recuperate their feelings, and slowly drifting away because of it.

These pages are followed up by Lily saying some honestly cruel things to Luna before pivoting to this

Hay, can these girls stop?

Can I stop being seen?!?

The lights burn!!!

...

Anyway

I can't wait to read more about this absolute cinnamon roll, her Hypersexual/Demiromantic Succubus GF, and her Aro/Ace ExGF Bestie

Uh... if it hadn't been nuked in the fucking MangaDex purge and isn't on the Yuri Site for some reason?