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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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went to an elementaryschool musical production and they started the show with the director saying: "Now there's some very small viewers here today, so just so you know. There will be a scary character later in the show. This is her," and a girl in a kinda scary ghost outfit did a creepy walk across the stage, the stood up straight and did a cheery wave, "but remember, it's just Nina. She's pretending to be scary."

Aaaand i would very much like for horror movies to have that as a little bonus feature you can chose. Let me start a movie with Guillermo del Toro showing me a scary ghost that might jump at me, but don't worry, thats just Doug!

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this is so sweet 🥺🥺🥺

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I’ve been thinking a lot about compassion in Judaism, and being kind. In that light, I would like everyone to know that my current favorite Jewish supernatural headcanon is that, instead of driving vampires away with crosses or stakes through the heart, we say the Mourner’s Kaddish for them. I mean, that’s just so adorable. You see this threatening undead creature, and instead of yelling murder, you feel bad for them, and you mourn for them. Imagine being a vampire at the receiving end of that, having been chased away for years and years and told you’re a monster when you come across someone who sees you and your existence and accepts that you’re in a pretty bad place and offers help in the best way they can. I’m actually tearing up about this a little. If someone adds to this post I’ll love them forever.

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what now?

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genuinely wild to me when I go to someone's house and we watch TV or listen to music or something and there are ads. I haven't seen an ad in my home since 2005. what do you mean you haven't set up multiple layers of digital infrastructure to banish corporate messaging to oblivion before it manifests? listen, this is important. this is the 21st century version of carving sigils on the wall to deny entry to demons or wearing bells to ward off the Unseelie. come on give me your router admin password and I'll show you how to cast a protective spell of Get Thee Tae Fuck, Capital

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imagining an alternate timeline where shakespeare wrote a play about king arthur. we would be so unwell

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jurassic park but it's tiny elephants and nothing goes wrong 🥺

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Some women are conditioned to be fragile and weak, and to believe that it's a sin to outperform a man. Her feminism would involve allowing women to be strong.

Some women are expected to be strong at times when they can't. Her feminism would involve reassuring her that it's okay to not be strong.

Some neurodivergent people are raised to believe that they're too stupid to ever amount to anything. Their disability activism would involve reassuring them that they're capable.

Some neurodivergent people are raised to believe that they're smart and gifted, and are expected to live up to impossible standards. Their disability activism would involve allowing them to fail, make mistakes, be stupid, etc.

Some children are constantly reminded "you're the child, I'm the adult" in order to deny their autonomy. Their youth rights activism would involve treating them like an adult at times when they feel ready for it.

Some children are treated like adults in order to justify increased expectations or to downplay abuse against them. Their youth rights activism would involve allowing them to be a child.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to oppression. Each individual person's experience is different. Whatever trauma is caused by their oppression, the activism should focus on undoing it.

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a gallon of milk but with this kind of cap:

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Can't Have Nice Things

The Ketamine King Musk has shutdown the IRS's Free Tax Filing system.

Of all the things a government could off, a way to Freely calculate and file your taxes seems like a good one. But the richest man in the world thinks we shouldn't have that.

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So… I got a notification from the State Department at like 8 PM Pacific that my passport was approved, and I was quietly thankful and stunned bc my legal gender in Oregon is listed as X, or undeclared, and that's what's on my passport. I'm pretty sure someone(s) worked late to get the X passports done today.

I was already really grateful to whoever in the Seattle Passport Office worked late to get these things processed on the last Friday before That Man gets back into office... and then I got a notification that my passport shipped at fucking midnight Pacific and whoever got that shit out the door so it couldn't be picked up on Monday and like, denied and shredded?

They're my fucking hero.

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During one semester of PE in high school I got put in a section called Team Sports. This was significantly better than a regular unit because the athletic kids were able to play and I largely got to sit and watch.

Months were devoted to what they called Pickle Ball but I’ve since learned was basically ping pong with larger than average paddles. The paddles had been through the absolute wringer, all padding had been rubbed and torn off by a relentless stream of bored adolescents like myself.

This presented me with a unique opportunity. I had a pencil, nominally used to keep score. I had a blank wooden panel. And I had large stretches of time sitting on the sidelines.

Every day I’d pick a blank paddle. I’d doodle little animals, bizarre monstrosities, and a bunch that were just a huge eye in the middle with the words “Big Brother is Watching”. What can I say; I was reading 1984 at the time.

When we finally finished with the paddles and moved on to badminton I completely forgot my dozens of illustrations.

It wasn’t until several years later that it got brought up again. I was hanging out with a friend and their younger sibling. We were listening to them lament their high school experience of the day. “But I won the Pegasus paddle, so that was cool.”

“Wait- what?”

“Yeah, most of them are just Big Brother, so they’re not exciting, but there’s only one Pegasus so we fight over it. Last week I had an elephant I really liked though.”

“You guys fight over the paddles with art on them…?”

“Yeah!”

My friend turned to me and asked, “Didn’t you make all those drawings?”

Their sibling lit up, “You made them?!”

I sat in silence as the complexity of the world and the waves we leave behind as we move through it washed over me. I contemplated how intertwined I was with the rest of existence to create such a beautiful moment.

I had made art on a whim out of boredom and it had an effect on someone else’s day, someone who through random happenstance years later was telling me about it all unknowing.

Their sibling was delighted when I drew them another pegasus on the spot and announced that they’d be the talk of PE now that they’d uncovered the mystery artist.

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#horror #horrormovies #horrorbooks #horrorpodcast #RichardKadrey #VioletBlue #RaisedByHorror

Streaming Horror January 2025

In this episode we experience excitement and despair about January’s lineup for streaming horror on Paramount, Shudder, Screambox, Hulu, Netflix, scary films hitting theaters, and a few upcoming horror books we think might be worth a pre-order.

Shoutouts to:

Everyone who sacrificed for The Blair Witch Project, Shudder, Amish Paranormal Activity, Terrified, Ils, Malum, Red Rooms, Werewolves Within, Horror’s Greatest, Terror-Fi Film Fest, Get Away, Grafted, giallo, Super Hot, Lizzie Lazarus, Wither, Stop Motion, Humane, Sophie Thatcher, The Ritual, Adam Nevill, owning your media, Stephen Graham Jones, Presence, Lucy Liu, Companion, Cold Eternity, S.A. Barnes, Nat Cassidy, Nosferatu, Clay McLeod Chapman, Grady Hendrix, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Eric LaRocca. 

Find all podcast links on our Raised By Horror Linktree (including YouTube, Apple, Spotify, and more). Theme song: Pop Goes the Weasel by Kevin MacLeod [Wikimedia Commons].

About: Richard Kadrey. About: Violet Blue. Support us on Ko-Fi!

Check out this episode!