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AI is used heavily in biology. Not that chatbot shit, but DNA analysis/drug design/brain mapping and other shit. AI is amazing for science and research. But the AI chat bots and image generators given to consumers are largely pointless and unreliable

yeah i should've been more precise with my language. im not actually against all AI. A that can identify cancer cells? or that turn masses of data into something more comprehensible? dope. there are some areas of concern, but this is general separate fromm my main concern.

im against generative AI that waste tons of energy, pulls information from god knows where, and spits out bullshit. I'm also against the societal impact where my peers are lobotomizing themselves, career fields are getting destroyed, and sexual exploitation and harassment are getting easier than ever.

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Hnngh. The Audible "hack" is making the rounds again, with people claiming you can use your Audible credit to listen to a book and then return it "for free." While I am the first among many to say "fuck Amazon and we should gullotine Jeff Bezos," I need you all to know it's not Amazon refunding you.

It's the authors.

They take that out of our royalties. And that's after they take 80% of our royalties on sales we do make.

(Note: Also, do not assume that your credit is worth the price listing that Amazon shows. Amazon does not pay us the cost of the listing. ((WHICH THEY PICK, we cannot set our own prices on audiobooks and then that forces us to use the Amazon price for the rest of the market!!)) What we get is 20% of the credit's value, so my book might appear on Audible for $20-30. However, if you received an Amazon credit for one of those $4.99 deals, I'd get 20% of $4.99. Yes, it's fucked, it's all fucked. Yes, other audio retailers do the exact same thing. This is one of the reasons authors don't make half as much money as people think they do.)

This became such a big issue that they had to make it impossible to return books after a certain point without talking to a customer service representative, because people were using Kindle/Audible and Amazon's return policy "like a library," and some authors (myself included) were getting royalty checks that showed negative income.

At this point, I don't even know if the Audible "hack" still works (Amazon has made changes to protect authors from this kind of thing at a glacial pace), but I need you to know it's not Amazon that's refunding you. This isn't a fun little "fuck Amazon" thing. The way Amazon has it set up, it's directly fucking the authors over.

So, yeah. Obviously, if you download something and can't get into it, or if something pops up on the author's side that makes you not want to support them anymore, yeah, process that return. Yeet the bitch. But please don't use it "like a library."

It's really harrowing to see your predicted income based on sales and then find out you're getting one-tenth of that because of refunds. And it's not even because people didn't like your book. They're just using the wrong place like a library and fucking over your algorithm as well, because once you get too many returns, you stop getting promoted.

Try using a library. You can access places like @queerliblib for FREE provided you have a US library account that you've hooked up to Libby. It's a little bit of work, but once you've got a card number, you're golden.

Just, y'know, throwing it out there because I don't think people realize this is how it works. You're not taking something back to Walmart, and Walmart is eating the refund before dumping the item in the garbage. Amazon takes the refund, turns to the author, and takes it off our plates.

Note: this does not affect Kindle Unlimited. Flip through the end pages to give the author maximum pages read, and then return that bad boy so the author can get paid. But also, please, maybe think about switching to a Kobo+ account instead. It offers the same subscription-based membership without demanding exclusivity, so authors aren't locked into just Amazon the way they are with KU. (Royalty rates are roughly the same, but it's a better deal in terms of allowing broader market access.)

This has been a rambling and exhausted PSA from your local peddler of weres.

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the thing you have to remember about spiders is:

that is an animals

it is very small

so you have to be nice to it. okay? :<

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A dance that never ends

[Prints available here]

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Just a stupid thing that was sitting in my desktop for a long time. Saitama just has very bad luck. 

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Youtube Blackout (important)

I’m basically just restating a couple of other posts so that hopefully more people will be aware.

Tomorrow, August 13th, Youtube rolls out a new policy that uses generative ai to guess whether a user is 18+ based on the maturity of the videos they watch. Anyone who watches ANYTHING related to cartoons, video games, kids media, etc, will be targetted.

If you continue to use their services once you have been warned, they will “request” your ID and other personal information from you. This is a major privacy violation. If you do not give your personal info, you will be banned.

Starting tomorrow, until the decision is reversed, there is going to be a blackout where (ideally) nobody uses Youtube to force their attention.

I want you all to participate, if possible. Download videos beforehand if you need something to watch during the blackout. Censorship will continue to get worse if we don’t retaliate.

Adult medias that feature gameplay and/or animation are just as susceptible. This affects everybody.

Please pass it on.

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That’s Louis Rossman, a repair technician and YouTuber, who went viral recently for railing against Apple. Apple purposely charges a lot for repairs and you either have to pay up or buy a new device. That’s because Apple withholds necessary tools and information from outside repair shops. And to think, we were just so close to change.

Follow @the-future-now

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having audio processing issues is so humiliating like yeah i heard you and yeah i was actively listening but the problem is i dont know what the fuck you sayed

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don’t know who needs to hear this but AO3 comments section is not Letterboxd. giving unsolicited criticism to a fanfic writer does not make you a “fanfic critic” because there’s no. such. thing.

giving unsolicited criticism to a fanfic writer just makes you a spoiled, rude, entitled asshole at best, makes the author stop posting their works altogether at worst.

a reminder that it’s always okay to just stop reading and quietly click away from a fic if at any point you feel like you don’t like it for whatever reasons. unless specifically asked, there’s no need to tell the author, whose work you read for free, how you dislike something they wrote for themself for fun.

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hey uh if you have an unemployed person in your life and they haven't volunteered information about how the job hunt is going, it's probably because it's going badly!!!! and asking said unemployed person how it's going will only make them feel Bad because the job hunt is Bad. I guarantee you that when the unemployed person in your life has a substantial employment update they will tell you about it. otherwise don't ask unless you're literally going to offer them a job. thank youuuuu

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Cookiebrain

also up as stickers!!

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Spin the wheel. That's who's trying to kill you.

Spin the wheel again. That’s who’s trying to protect you.

(If you have zero idea about the name you got, spin until you see someone you recognize.)

(Six months ago, I did a version of this poll with about five hundred options on the spinner wheel. For this one, I more than doubled it.)

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*Finds out your friend group universally hates and will shit on a show you like whenever it's brought up*

cool cool cool, excuse me as I retreat from this conversation and make notes to never bring it up again.

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Some names just sound so ridiculously fake that had they been fictional, people would’ve rolled their eyes in complete disbelief. Like seriously. Wdym there’s a mf called Galileo Galilei. Stfu. You just made that up