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what-even-is-thiss · 21 days ago

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Free or Cheap German Learning Resources for all your Hochdeutsch Needs

I will update this list as I learn of any more useful ones. If you want general language learning resources check out this other post. This list is German specific. Find lists for other specific languages here.

For the purposes of this list "free" means something that is either totally free or has a useful free tier. "Cheap" is a subscription under $10USD a month, a software license or lifetime membership purchase under $100USD, or a book under $30USD. If you want to suggest something to add to this list, include things in this price range that are of good quality and not AI generated.

WEBSITES

DW - A public broadcasting service from Germany that also has a German learning section. They have videos, tv series, and lessons from beginner to advanced. The website is free to use with an account.

Gothe Institut - An organization affiliated with the German government that administers language level tests and promotes German culture abroad. They have a lot of free exercises and test questions. If you're willing to pay they may also have classes available in your region.

thegermanproject.com - A free website with explanations of beginner German concepts and stories to read for people at the beginner level.

germancorrector.com - A free website that will correct your spelling and grammar. You can also set the dialect to Switzerland or Austria.

Your Daily German - A blog in English by a native German speaker named Emanuel who makes posts about grammar, vocabulary, tips, and suggestions for reading.

YOUTUBE CHANNELS

Comprehensible Germani - A comprehensible input channel with German lessons in German using visual aids. Has content from beginner through upper intermediate.

Learn German - A channel that explains certain concepts and provides listening practice. The channel uses a mix of German and English.

Chill German - A channel that makes vlogs in slow German. They have videos from beginner to lower advanced levels.

Natürlich German - A comprehensible input channel that talks about different aspects of German culture and other topics as well. Has videos for complete beginner to lower advanced. This channel hasn't updated in a while but there's a large archive to watch through.

Easy German - A channel that has a combination of videos about basic German phrases for beginners and videos with interviews on the street in German speaking regions. The channel has dual language German/English subtitles on screen. The hosts of this channel also have a podcast for intermediate to advanced learners.

Expertly German - A channel about learning German with discussion of grammar, vocab, and business German. The channel is entirely in German.

Deutsch Mit Lari - A channel with a mix of German Lessons and vlogs in slow German. Content ranges from beginner to intermediate. All content and explanations are in German.

Learn German With Anja - A channel with a mix of lessons and videos on culture and living in Germany. Videos are in a mix of both English and German and often have dual language subtitles on screen.

READING PRACTICE

German graded readers by Olly Richards Short Stories in German, Intermediate Short Stories in German, Conversations in Simple German, Western Philosophy in Simple German, World War 2 in Simple German. Books tend to range from $4-$20 depending if you buy the digital or print versions. The books can also generally be found easily at used book stores or used on Amazon for cheaper.

Dino Lernt Deutsch - A series of short stories for beginners about a man named Dino lost in various German speaking countries. The full series new in print costs about $25 but it can be bought used or as a digital edition. Each individual story can also be bought separately

Nachrichtenleight - A website with news articles in simple German. The website is entirely in German.

AlumniPortal - Website with articles about business, academics, and other related topics organized by difficulty level. Has articles from upper beginner to upper intermediate. The website is entirely in German.

Grimm Stories - A website with an archive of the original Grimm's fairy tales. Language may be a bit archaic. The website is available in multiple languages.

PODCASTS

Slow German Podcast - Advertises itself as being for beginner to lower intermediate. The host talks about everyday topics such as seasonal weather and describing your apartment.

Easy German Podcast - The hosts from the Easy German Youtube channel talk about different topics, news, and answer questions from listeners in clear and understandable German.

News in Slow German - It is a podcast with news in slow German, including international news and culture news. Only a small section of the program is available for free.

Top-Thema Mit Vokalbeln - A podcast from DW for lower intermediate learners that discusses news topics in simple German and provides vocabulary lists related to the episode topic.

German Stories - A podcast for beginners in a mix of English and German that gives lessons through dialogues and short stories.

Speaking of Berlin - A podcast by Babbel of Berliners telling personal stories in slow German.

SELF STUDY TEXTBOOKS AND DICTIONARIES

Complete German All-in-One from McGraw Hill - a textbook that also doubles as a workbook. It’s more expensive at about $30. It’s difficult to find intact used copies of this book because it’s also a workbook and people tend to write all over it and tear it up. However the sentence builder and grammar sections are sold separately for much cheaper if you just want one or the other.

German Made Easy - Individual books in this series tend to be about $10-$20. From what I’ve read it’s just fine but it’s cheap and has all the beginner concepts you need and used copies are fairly easy to find online.

Easy German Step By Step - This is McGraw Hill’s budget option at $12-$16 new. Though as this one isn’t a workbook, it’s easier to find used copies. It focuses hard on only the most frequently used vocabulary and grammar concepts to get someone started as quickly as possible. It’s also available in audiobook form.

German Grammar Complete - This book is a full comprehensive guide to all levels of grammar from absolute beginner to college level. However it’s on the more expensive side at $30 and the workbook is sold separately.

DK German to English illustrated dictionary - This dictionary is sorted by topic and includes pictures and English translations. This is a new edition and is slightly harder to find used as I’m writing this. The base price is about $20 but there are older editions of this dictionary that might be easier to find used.

Merriam-Webster’s German to English Dictionary - The OG. The legend. The menace. The classic bilingual dictionary. Simple. Many words. Decent explainations. Only $8 new. Easy to find used older editions.

SERIES FOR LEARNERS AND KIDS TV

Hallo Aus Berlin - A series infamous among German students everywhere. Made in the early 2000s for use in classrooms, it has ten episodes of kids talking about certain topics like numbers and going out to a restaurant. It also has a number of songs. It’s cringey but in a fun way in my opinion.

Löwenzahn - a kids tv series aimed at very young audiences that’s been on for several decades. Every episode discusses one topic like bridges or factories so you’ll hear certain words repeated a lot. Theres only been a couple of different hosts so the presentation style remains consistent and unlike some other shows for kindergarteners it’s not obnoxiously loud and can be enjoyable for adults.

Sesamstraße - Sesame Street in German and localized for the German market with different themes and characters. In their YouTube channel you can find clips from as far back as the 1970s.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months ago

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Dirty words are politically potent

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

Making up words is a perfectly cromulent passtime, and while most of the words we coin disappear as soon as they fall from our lips, every now and again, you find a word that fits so nice and kentucky in the public discourse that it acquires a life of its own:

http://meaningofliff.free.fr/definition.php3?word=Kentucky

I've been trying to increase the salience of digital human rights in the public imagination for a quarter of a century, starting with the campaign to get people to appreciate that the internet matters, and that tech policy isn't just the delusion that the governance of spaces where sad nerds argue about Star Trek is somehow relevant to human thriving:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

Now, eventually people figured out that a) the internet mattered and, b) it was going dreadfully wrong. So my job changed again, from "how the internet is governed matters" to "you can't fix the internet with wishful thinking," for example, when people said we could solve its problems by banning general purpose computers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

Or by banning working cryptography:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/

Or by redesigning web browsers to treat their owners as threats:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

Or by using bots to filter every public utterance to ensure that they don't infringe copyright:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/today-europe-lost-internet-now-we-fight-back

Or by forcing platforms to surveil and police their users' speech (aka "getting rid of Section 230"):

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

Along the way, many of us have coined words in a bid to encapsulate the abstract, technical ideas at the core of these arguments. This isn't a vanity project! Creating a common vocabulary is a necessary precondition for having the substantive, vital debates we'll need to tackle the real, thorny issues raised by digital systems. So there's "free software," "open source," "filternet," "chat control," "back doors," and my own contributions, like "adversarial interoperability":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Or "Competitive Compatibility" ("comcom"), a less-intimidatingly technical term for the same thing:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/competitive-compatibility-year-review

These have all found their own niches, but nearly all of them are just that: niche. Some don't even rise to "niche": they're shibboleths, insider terms that confuse and intimidate normies and distract from the real fights with semantic ones, like whether it's "FOSS" or "FLOSS" or something else entirely:

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-the-difference-between-foss-and-floss

But every now and again, you get a word that just kills. That brings me to "enshittification," a word I coined in 2022:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

"Enshittification" took root in my hindbrain, rolling around and around, agglomerating lots of different thoughts and critiques I'd been making for years, crystallizing them into a coherent thesis:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

This kind of spontaneous crystallization is the dividend of doing lots of work in public, trying to take every half-formed thought and pin it down in public writing, something I've been doing for decades:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

After those first couple articles, "enshittification" raced around the internet. There's two reasons for this: first, "enshittification" is a naughty word that's fun to say. Journalists love getting to put "shit" in their copy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/crosswords/linguistics-word-of-the-year.html

Radio journalists love to tweak the FCC with cheekily bleeped syllables in slightly dirty compound words:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/projects/enshitification

And nothing enlivens an academic's day like getting to use a word like "enshittification" in a journal article (doubtless this also amuses the editors, peer-reviewers, copyeditors, typesetters, etc):

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=enshittification&btnG=&oq=ensh

That was where I started, too! The first time I used "enshittification" was in a throwaway bad-tempered rant about the decay of Tripadvisor into utter uselessness, which drew a small chorus of appreciative chuckles about the word:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1550457808222552065

The word rattled around my mind for five months before attaching itself to my detailed theory of platform decay. But it was that detailed critique, coupled with a minor license to swear, that gave "enshittification" a life of its own. How do I know that the theory was as important as the swearing? Because the small wave of amusement that followed my first use of "enshittification" petered out in less than a day. It was only when I added the theory that the word took hold.

Likewise: how do I know that the theory needed to be blended with swearing to break out of the esoteric realm of tech policy debates (which the public had roundly ignored for more than two decades)? Well, because I spent two decades writing about this stuff without making anything like the dents that appeared once I added an Anglo-Saxon monosyllable to that critique.

Adding "enshittification" to the critique got me more column inches, a longer hearing, a more vibrant debate, than anything else I'd tried. First, Wired availed itself of the Creative Commons license on my second long-form article on the subject and reprinted it as a 4,200-word feature. I've been writing for Wired for more than thirty years and this is by far the longest thing I've published with them – a big, roomy, discursive piece that was run verbatim, with every one of my cherished darlings unmurdered.

That gave the word – and the whole critique, with all its spiky corners – a global airing, leading to more pickup and discussion. Eventually, the American Dialect Society named it their "Word of the Year" (and their "Tech Word of the Year"):

https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

"Enshittification" turns out to be catnip for language nerds:

https://becauselanguage.com/90-enpoopification/#transcript-60

I've been dragged into (good natured) fights over the German, Spanish, French and Italian translations for the term. When I taped an NPR show before a live audience with ASL interpretation, I got to watch a Deaf fan politely inform the interpreter that she didn't need to finger-spell "enshittification," because it had already been given an ASL sign by the US Deaf community:

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/go-fact-yourself/ep-158-aida-rodriguez-cory-doctorow/

I gave a speech about enshittification in Berlin and published the transcript:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

Which prompted the rock-ribbed Financial Times to get in touch with me and publish the speech – again, nearly verbatim – as a whopping 6,400 word feature in their weekend magazine:

https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5

Though they could have had it for free (just as Wired had), they insisted on paying me (very well, as it happens!), as did De Zeit:

https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2024-03/plattformen-facebook-google-internet-cory-doctorow

This was the start of the rise of enshittification. The word is spreading farther than ever, in ways that I have nothing to do with, along with the critique I hung on it. In other words, the bit of string that tech policy wonks have been pushing on for a quarter of a century is actually starting to move, and it's actually accelerating.

Despite this (or more likely because of it), there's a growing chorus of "concerned" people who say they like the critique but fret that it is being held back because you can't use it "at church or when talking to K-12 students" (my favorite variant: "I couldn't say this at a NATO conference"). I leave it up to you whether you use the word with your K-12 students, NATO generals, or fellow parishoners (though I assure you that all three groups are conversant with the dirty little word at the root of my coinage). If you don't want to use "enshittification," you can coin your own word – or just use one of the dozens of words that failed to gain public attention over the past 25 years (might I suggest "platform decay?").

What's so funny about all this pearl-clutching is that it comes from people who universally profess to have the intestinal fortitude to hear the word "enshittification" without experiencing psychological trauma, but worry that other people might not be so strong-minded. They continue to say this even as the most conservative officials in the most staid of exalted forums use the word without a hint of embarrassment, much less apology:

https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/chairman-of-irish-social-media-regulator-says-europe-should-not-be-seduced-by-mario-draghis-claims/a526530600.html

I mean, I'm giving a speech on enshittification next month at a conference where I'm opening for the Secretary General of the United Nations:

https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme

After spending half my life trying to get stuff like this into the discourse, I've developed some hard-won, informed views on how ideas succeed:

First: the minor obscenity is a feature, not a bug. The marriage of something long and serious to something short and funny is a happy one that makes both the word and the ideas better off than they'd be on their own. As Lenny Bruce wrote in his canonical work in the subject, the aptly named How to Talk Dirty and Influence People:

I want to help you if you have a dirty-word problem. There are none, and I'll spell it out logically to you.

Here is a toilet. Specifically-that's all we're concerned with, specifics-if I can tell you a dirty toilet joke, we must have a dirty toilet. That's what we're all talking about, a toilet. If we take this toilet and boil it and it's clean, I can never tell you specifically a dirty toilet joke about this toilet. I can tell you a dirty toilet joke in the Milner Hotel, or something like that, but this toilet is a clean toilet now. Obscenity is a human manifestation. This toilet has no central nervous system, no level of consciousness. It is not aware; it is a dumb toilet; it cannot be obscene; it's impossible. If it could be obscene, it could be cranky, it could be a Communist toilet, a traitorous toilet. It can do none of these things. This is a dirty toilet here.

Nobody can offend you by telling a dirty toilet story. They can offend you because it's trite; you've heard it many, many times.

https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/lenny-bruce/how-to-talk-dirty-and-influence-people/9780306825309/

Second: the fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term "enshittification" very loosely indeed, to mean "something that is bad," without bothering to learn – or apply – the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use "enshittification" loosely and inspire 10% of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I've done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise, theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders. Policing the use of "enshittification" is worse than a self-limiting move – it would be a self-inflicted wound. As I said in that Berlin speech:

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für englische Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

Finally: "coinage" is both more – and less – than thinking of the word. After the American Dialect Society gave honors to "enshittification," a few people slid into my mentions with citations to "enshittification" that preceded my usage. I find this completely unsurprising, because English is such a slippery and playful tongue, because English speakers love to swear, and because infixing is such a fun way to swear (e.g. "unfuckingbelievable"). But of course, I hadn't encountered any of those other usages before I came up with the word independently, nor had any of those other usages spread appreciably beyond the speaker (it appears that each of the handful of predecessors to my usage represents an act of independent coinage).

If "coinage" was just a matter of thinking up the word, you could write a small python script that infixed the word "shit" into every syllable of every word in the OED, publish the resulting text file, and declare priority over all subsequent inventive swearers.

On the one hand, coinage takes place when the coiner a) independently invents a word; and b) creates the context for that word that causes it to escape from the coiner's immediate milieu and into the wider world.

But on the other hand – and far more importantly – the fact that a successful coinage requires popular uptake by people unknown to the coiner means that the coiner only ever plays a small role in the coinage. Yes, there would be no popularization without the coinage – but there would also be no coinage without the popularization. Words belong to groups of speakers, not individuals. Language is a cultural phenomenon, not an individual one.

Which is rather the point, isn't it? After a quarter of a century of being part of a community that fought tirelessly to get a serious and widespread consideration of tech policy underway, we're closer than ever, thanks, in part, to "enshittification." If someone else independently used that word before me, if some people use the word loosely, if the word makes some people uncomfortable, that's fine, provided that the word is doing what I want it to do, what I've devoted my life to doing.

The point of coining words isn't the pilkunnussija's obsession with precise usage, nor the petty glory of being known as a coiner, nor ensuring that NATO generals' virgin ears are protected from the word "shit" – a word that, incidentally, is also the root of "science":

https://www.arrantpedantry.com/2019/01/24/science-and-shit/

Isn't language fun?

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system

#pluralistic #language #enshittification #obscenity #linguistics #pearl-clutching #lenny bruce

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wholesalemagnesiumoxide · 2 months ago

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The Simslops Afterword

hello everybody! thank you for reading my book. seeing people talk about it has been very gratifying & encouraging.

i was going to write this up essay style, but doing it as a q&a is more fun and still lets me cover everything i wanted to, so let's begin.

q&a

first off, a question from @aminoasinine which i'll address in parts:

I really enjoyed Simslops, and in particular I think the "dwarf fortress event log" style of writing is a great way to showcase the machine/algorithm aspect of it. What software was used for this? Did it have trouble keeping track of so many characters? I noticed the centipedes and other numbered masses were accurately tracked throughout the text, which is something that I know AI tends to struggle with. I'm also curious to know how much of the chapters' 'plot' was laid out in advance by the prompting, and whether any major events were the result of emergent narrative. In particular, the coffin + Maude's Salvation plot towards the end definitely felt like direct intervention on your part, but was the AI reacting to you inserting those things, or were you editing the text around them after the fact?

the simslops is the product of a custom program written in nodejs. the source code is available at the download page if you want to examine it in detail, but the core of the framework is as follows:

there are actors, items, and rooms with names and numerical flags.

there are actions, each defined by their conditions, effects upon the scene, and chance of being selected.

each chapter is defined by its starting conditions and available actions.

each round or tick (whatever you want to call it), a random available action is applied to the scene.

this is repeated until an action ends the scene or there are no more actions left to perform.

each action narrates itself when applied to a scene. for example, the source code for the "pick up an item" action looks like this:

hopefully this is at least semi-intelligible if you don't know javascript. the first parameter defines what the action acts upon: in this case, an actor and an item. the second is the condition: the item must not already be held, and it must not have the pickupAttempted flag. the third is responsible for how the action affects the scene, and the string it returns is how the action is described in the text. when an actor goes to pick something up, if that something is immovable, this is noted. (otherwise every scene devolves into everybody struggling to pick up a couch.) if it's not immovable, the actor picks it up. the first case is described with "actor tries to pick up item, but it's hardly portable." (a reference to the inform 7 default responses) and the second with "actor picks up item." the fourth parameter says to multiply this action's weight by ten if the item in question has a description and has yet to be examined.

each action is defined similarly. a handful use grammars for more varied output, but the majority just have simple fill-in-the-blank sentences. all together there's nearly 6k lines of nodejs to define the whole book. this project started as a test case for this framework, actually. i was outlining a short story and hating it and had a thought: what if i wrote a program to generate an outline for me? then i could have a skeleton to work from and could get to the fun part, the actual writing. out of whimsy i decided to put some simpsons characters in a room and make them fuck. this is a more exhaustive test case than you'd expect. it handles solo actions (moaning) and pair actions (lustful looks & sex.) sex only happens when both participants are horny, which requires setting flags for each actor. kramer's appearance is an action not tied to anything in the scene, and giving birth is an action that creates new actors. a great deal of my motivation here (and in many other things) was "wouldn't it be funny / fucked up if..." but it also did its job of test case pretty well. once i added items, that necessitated inventories; theft & picking up & putting down all require certain types of checks.

it's funny that you mention emergent narrative, because i really think the simslops really became what it was in the telling. early in the process i became enamored with the image of one of the characters descending through text adventure geography, lost and alone. thus came the turn to pathos. i had read "does marge have friends" some time prior, which inspired maude's inclusion and the role she plays. from there i built things out with twin eyes toward thematics and "funny/fucked up". i do find it interesting to what extent all that was emergent from the implementation. it's a framework that tends towards reducing things to mush. a semantic satiation machine.

anyway, i hope this answers your question --- it's not LLM-based, it uses older, more "traditional" procgen techniques. the plot of each chapter is roughly scaffolded by the actions i attach to it. it's really incredibly authored; it's difficult for this framework to surprise me except by juxtaposition. under this framework it's also pretty trivial to track any number of actors. so, to answer this question from @zedogica:

how much of simslops was embellished from the original generated text? a few moments stood out to me

none of it. you can download the source and get your own personal simslops. the only human embellishment was done during development. in an ideal world, this would live on a server somewhere and everyone could download a unique generation. unfortunately, i don't have the knowhow for that kind of thing. (my understanding is that you need to do a lot when writing server-side code to make sure you don't expose a million security vulnerabilities.) i've contented myself with doing what i can client-side: releasing the source code & setting up the download button to give you one of five pre-generated outputs.

returning to aminoasinine's question:

I also really like the difference in language used during the Deviltongue chapters. It's interesting to see what changes when the tone is explicitly defined as 'horror' or 'scary', and how that seemingly translates to those bizarre compound words like tribulationmalice and torturefrenzy. I think it's my favorite chapter(s) in general because of how it takes a much different tone and hammers it into the same monotonous nothing as the other chapters despite its more 'active' and ostensibly 'less boring' setting than your standard centipede sex house. everything shakes and moans and howls with blood-malice, lymph and spines standing on end, over and over until it doesn't mean anything anymore. everyone and everything is trembling in fear of a grim finality bearing down that never actually comes, because nothing ever ends. It's the same nothing-emotion as all the unbearable passionate lust in the sex scenes, an emotional signifier that signifies absolutely nothing.

thank you! the strange compounds are a product of the aforementioned grammars, as are the shaking and moaning and howling. writing the dungeon & horror chapters made me realize i really like broad, dumb pastiches. there's something very satisfying about taking cliches and mangling them.

Anyway, the choice to have 'pet the dog' in every scene did not go unnoticed, I think the last three lines are my favorite part, and finally, I think every book from now on should open with a horoscope chart made from out of context quotes. Thank you for making this, I will be watching your neocities with great interest :)

thank you for reading it! two fun facts about the horoscopes:

each entry's text is taken from a random item description.

the dates are wrong, each offset by a day. due to my strong personal convictions i wished to stress that this novella in no way endorses the practice of astrology.

an anonymous question:

So Marge crying during the video game sequence show the reduction of feelings into simple fun, even though the human experiencing the games in question might feel other emotions when playing them. But what do the horror sections represent? I got the gist of most parts, but as I don’t engage with horror medium often I feel like the commentary is lost on me. What were you trying to say with the horror sections, in other words?

first: one of the major benefits of the framework i used here is that it's very good at creating unintended juxtapositions. the only prerequisite for weeping is if the actor in question is holding part of a corpse, but depending on the context, it can take on a number of different connotations.

second:

a lot of usamerican horror films (particularly aliens and predator) are sublimations of the anxieties surrounding the vietnam war. both are about big grizzled soldier guys getting picked off by an unseen yet omnipresent foe who can strike from anywhere. hell, one of them is even set in a jungle. slender: the eight pages, being a game about the Scary Getter following you around in a forest, feels of a type with these.

seymour skinner was a us soldier in the vietnam war.

in that vein, another anonymous question:

also I understand almost all of the references in the chicken’s names but how does sylvester stallone figure into colonialism?

one of sylvester stallone's two big roles is the rambo series, where he's a heroic us soldier rescuing prisoners of war in vietnam, repelling the soviets in afghanistan, or performing other jingoistic acts of horrendous violence. the other is rocky where he plays a white boxer (the "italian stallion") who's built up as a contender to the current reigning champion, Black boxer apollo creed. he's of a type with the other americana culture slop included, i think.

another question from aminoasinine:

Damn, I thought of another question right after I sent that long-ass ask. What was the thought process behind making The Bart such a minor part of the story? Is it out of a desire (or the AI's internal rules) not to have a child present in the gore/sex chapters, or is it more about how Bart as a character seems almost /more/ of a product or symbol than any of the other characters? Like, he can't really mingle with the other 'people' in this setting, because he is something beyond, having transcended any semblance of characterhood to become ONLY product? Is this the end state of every simslop, to eventually be reduced to a series of identical stimuli on a conveyor belt of endless content?

i settled on the cast of characters pretty early. homer and marge are obvious. ned is also pretty obvious. maude is the emotional core. "kramer bursts in" is a pretty common meme. and i had steamed hams edits on the brain, so seymour gets to come, too. i scaffolded out my story with a focus on these six and whatever pathos & resonance i could wring out of them.

i don't think i had any plans to include bart until i came up with that pun. "the work of bart in the age of mechanical reproduction." that + the factory itself is a very good illustration of the funny/fucked up philosophy & dichotomy. (i think i also had the bart doll from the trash meteor episode of futurama in mind.)

anyway, to answer your actual question: yeah, i didn't want to put bart in the main story because i didn't want to put a child in the mix, and he didn't fit in the outline i had drawn up. i think the intermissions pretty accurately capture the pathos of bart & milhouse, though. the funko pop scamp and the perpetual punching-bag.

this next question is from @where-your-eyes-dont-go:

I'm curious about the reason for "_ pets the dog" being such a frequent refrain in so many sections. I could read it a few ways— it's an action that's often used to humanize characters, and it occasionally does seem to give the characters more apparent personhood, the action almost automatically being interpreted by the reader as affection showcasing an internal life—but its repetition seems to force the reader to instead view it as just another merely automatic process. It also could be a bit of commentary on the common claim that a "pet the dog" button in video games automatically makes such games better. I'd love to know more about your thought process here.

early in the development process, i added "actor votes blue." as an inane flavor action. rqd suggested they pet the dog, and i thought it was brilliant. "can you pet the dog" is exactly the kind of empty posturing i want to satirize. i thought it would be best if the dog is never simulated otherwise. just as petting the dog is an empty gesture in games, in the simslops the dog only exists "in flavor", not mechanically. there is no dog actor or dog affection flag, it's just implied there's a dog around for each scene. the suggestion of something cozy and wholesome and cute happening without any actual substance. (and bob was there, too.)

(a friend had to dissuade me from adding "actor realizes why they're called Kojima games" as another flavor action.)

this anonymous question befuddled me a bit:

have you read Marge Simpson Anime?

"marge simpson anime... what in the world is marge simpson anime?" and then i looked it up and found a tumblr blog with a bunch of drawings of marge and went "oh yeah! marge simpson anime!" i haven't read it, but i've definitely seen it around, and i'm definitely at least in conversation with it.

(on the subject of things i'm in conversation with, i realized recently that i absolutely should have put too many cooks and the simpsons au where homer is in pain in the further reading section.)

a question from @theoretically-questionable:

I'm curious as to why the choices of both explicit sexual acts and disregard for consistent anatomy within said acts were made for Simslops; was it simply a transgression, influenced by the (surprising) amount of actual simpsons porn, or something else?

this one also befuddled me. my original intent had been to generate oddball descriptions of a consistent set of genitals, but, like. on further reflection, that super isn't borne out by the text. i think my mental image of things changed when i added the "adverbly-verbing" snowclone to the sex grammar. (score one for emergent narrative.) my initial motivation was that i think over-the-top, too-mechanical-to-be-erotic sex is a fun thing to write a generator for, and i find kramer and homer doing obscene things to each other amusing. the end result is a lot more mastaba snoopy in a way i really like.

here's a question from @txttletale:

why the simpsons? as opposed to, for example, family guy

i've had to think for a while on this. my instinctive response is "it was essentially random, an act of whimsy," but that's not a very good answer. surely something drew me to the simpsons, even if it was subconscious. let's try and peel it back a layer. my next theory has to do with pathos. it is very difficult to wring anything remotely poignant out of peter griffin. you put peter griffin in a scary cave and he goes "this reminds me of the time i was in the descent" and we get some inane cutaway gag. i can't imagine lois expressing anything more sincere than a scott the woz video. there's an obvious pathos to meg, the constant butt of the joke; treating her with any degree of seriousness gets you pathos in spades. similarly, that comic where chris griffin and bart simpson go to couples therapy is genuinely affecting. there's something there, but it's a very different something from what the simslops ended up being. (for one, i wouldn't feel comfortable doing all the centipede sex stuff if my principal characters are kids.) there's a similar issue with trying this with south park (which was also something i don't have much familiarity with). while the fandom has bafflingly devoted a great deal of time and energy to the emotional struggles of those little weirdos, i don't really see much potential there.

on the other end, we have futurama, a show with perhaps too much emotional weight to go in the blender in the same way. like, there are the episodes with fry's dog and fry's brother and leela's parents. similarly, bob's burgers and bojack horseman (and i'm sure many other shows) draw their characters too realistically. the simpsons hits a sweet spot. its characters are cartoon-enough, commodified-enough, and emotional-enough. they're in the goldilocks zone along all these axes.

in the simpsons movie, there's a bit where bart and ned go fishing. bart messes up somehow, ned goes to assist, and bart flinches away, expecting to be strangled. what was once a comedy routine, a subversion of the "father-knows-best" sitcom family, is treated with real emotional weight.

how did they ever come back from that? by the end of the film homer had redeemed himself as a person and as a father. it was the emotional climax of the movie or whatever. roll credits. there were a million billion more seasons and despite the increasing age of the voice cast, more simpsons are extruded every day. why bother? the rotten heart was laid bare nearly two decades ago.

finally, a question from @fattyopossum:

have you seen any interpretations of it youd consider like. unexpected, in either a good ro bad way? any takes on it now that its been out that youw erent expecting people to get or new interpretations people brought to it that really resonated with you

a lot of the thematic weight of the simslops feels post-hoc to me, like a new interpretation that wasn't there when i wrote it. again, it really became what it was in the telling; technical decisions lead to thematic weight. all characters who have sex have the same genitalia. i decided this because it made writing the sex grammar easier. however, it's also a huge thematic boon. casting marge and maude as transfem makes maude's abjection and their love for eachother much more impactful. it's really easy for me to get chicken-or-the-egg about it. which came first, the High Artistry or the Funny/Fucked Up?

(the real answer, of course, is that it doesn't matter. the text exits anyway and i must shepherd it as it exists, not as i intended it. ego death of the author.)

as for other people's interpretations: i'm quite pleased about the reasoning that anon expressed earlier for why marge was crying while platforming. i was also happy to hear a friend's read that kramer had finally found peace in the meadows, that she's with the girls and relaxing and having snacks. it's not really borne out by the text, but it's such a comforting thought, right? maybe if we imagine kramer happy, she will be.

trivia

the first commit hit my git repo in september 2024, and the simslops released march 2025. all in all it took about six months of on-and-off work.

the name "deviltongue" comes from a character i played in a game of neptune's pride. he ended up getting betrayed and dying badly. so it goes. (on a similar note: as a kid, i thought his name actually was "slideshow bob".)

originally, the sundervalley chapters were going to feature more of the classic cozy small farmer simulator tropes. homer was gonna go fishing and chat up the town's eligible bachelors: crow, tom, and cam. it would've distracted too much from the real core of the chapter, though, so it never got implemented.

my original design for the cover looked like this:

i'm still not sure i made the right decision switching to the final composition. i like the oddness of eyes on the hair in that version, but the lines over the hair in the this version remind me of one of the ways you see dicks censored in hentai, which feels thematically appropriate.

on that subject, this texture:

is a heavily mangled collage of a bunch of ai generated images, each of which was created by using the name of a simpsons' character as both prompt and negative prompt. it shows up in the download buttons and (in heavily desaturated form) on the final version of the cover.

the blurbs were slightly modified grammar output. i was pretty fried the day of release & wasn't able to think of anything, so rqd suggested i use a relevant wikipedia extract and use a grammar for the blurbs. i think it turned out pretty well.

there are six secret characters in the simslops. have you found them?

future work

i think i've taken this framework as far as it will go. the system of numerical flags got bent when i stored the farm workers' country of origin as text. the more linear plotted segments required a set of flags trading off each other, which is fiddly to coordinate. generally, everything is very siloed off. the clearest example of this is in the grammars for generating the various bits of procedural text. they're fun to write, and i'm always delighted by the results, but there's a lot of duplication of effort in my current approach. each chapter that uses procedural text has its own grammar with its own set of words and phrases. this is basically fine in this case, but it's not something i want to deal with for future projects. writing grammars is fun, like building a shipyard in a bottle, but it gets mind-numbing after a while. you can only come up with synonyms for laugh so many times, yknow?

my dream is a single massive grammar all output text runs through. since my grammar system can handle conjugating verbs and adding a/an in front of words, integrating all text output with that system would simplify all sorts of things. then i could have big lists of words to query for relevant adjectives or nouns with specific associations, procedural sentence structures, referents that know what adjectives apply to them...

it's really easy to get feature crept in this sphere. we'll see how much of this i'll be able to implement. i don't think all that is necessary to make the simslops framework useful, really. the only thing it urgently needs is some kind of event emitting & handling system. currently all the little special cases have to be implemented specifically. for example, there's a check in the "drop item" action for if the item in question is fragile. if it is, it breaks. if the item is also smoky, we get the "orange smoke pours out" effect. it'd be a lot cleaner (and make me a lot happier) if i could just say "when a smoky object breaks, emit orange smoke" and similar things.

thank you to everyone who read the simslops, and an extra thank you to everyone who asked me questions. now it's time to go back to work on the next issue. it's going to be a very different beast. i hope you enjoy it.

#vexations #the simslops

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the960writers · 6 days ago

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Do you think it's a good idea to try and get away from Google Docs when it comes to writing? I really can't afford any other fancy program to write my drafts in, and it honestly seems like the easiest - not to mention, most convenient - program to use to share my manuscript with beta readers. I could use advice on this matter because I keep seeing things across the net about it being a bad place to work on writing, but I have no idea what to turn to to make things easy for me and my future beta readers.

This is such a good question. Thank you.

So, a little backstory. Ever since Google removed their motto "do no evil" they have gone down the rather predictable path of all big players of the rot economy: putting profits over user experience.

A little while back, there was rumor that Google trains AI with the content of google docs, then they said they don't really, they only scan the content and do nothing with it, and then they started blocking access to documents with sexy images. Do we believe that Google has our own best interest at heart? That's something everyone has to decide for themselves.

Back then, I made a post with alternatives for Google Docs, you can find it here, also check the reblogs for more options:

Now, is it a good idea to switch from google docs? I think it is, but I'm also not consistent with it. As you mentioned, it seems to be the easiest to share writing with beta readers, and I also still often use it for fanfiction.

But there are alternatives, and they require very little adjustment in the process. Let me give you two free options.

Ellipsus is webbased, meaning you can write in it in the browser on any device. They have sharing, specifically for beta reading, and an export function for AO3.

Reedsy (marketplace around everything self-publishing) has an editor. It is webbased, and they also have an option for sharing with beta readers. This software is aimed at book type-setting and exporting but it works just fine for copying to web.

Personally, I'm currently switching everything to LibreOffice (also free!) files in some cloud connected folder. I used to do a lot of mobile writing on my phone with a bluetooth keyboard but currently, I'm taking my laptop everywhere so LibreOffice works great for me. If I have to use my phone or tablet for some lightweight mobile writing, on vacation for instance, I can still use something webbased.

So, I hope I gave you some interesting options. Do I think it's a good idea to make us less dependent on Google? Yes, I do. I don't trust them.

We have alternatives, and they cost us nothing more than a little adjustment.

~ barbex

#writing software #writing tools #alternatives to google docs #barbex gives advice #ellipsus #reedsy #google docs #libre office

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bookie-bookdust · 7 months ago

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HELLO THERE:

You can call me Bookie, Bookdust, a simp - I don't care. I am happy to brain rot about many things, but the little demon in my head makes me hyperfixate over Hogwarts Legacy, metalcore/alt/emo music, and writing. Feel free to reach out to me and say hi! My inbox is open.

Ravenclaw - INFJ - Gemini sun, Cancer moon, Libra rising - Tired

I'm an adult and share NSFW content. That being said, I write a variety of teen to explicit-rated stories/posts. You should always assume my characters are 18+ unless stated otherwise. I'm also on tiktok at bookdust_

FAN FICTION (the literature🧐):

Where you can read my deranged writing:

ao3 - I am most active here. This is also where I post all of my chapter fics and one shots.

Wattpad - I'll post all chapter fics and some of my one shots here. I hate WP, and I don't have the patience for it.

That's it lol. If you find my garbage anywhere else, let me know because then I'd have to go break some legs.

✨Chapter Fics:

Sebastian Sallow Fucking Sucks (SSFS) - Taking place after Sebastian calls MC ignorant following an emotional and tumultuous night at the Yule Ball--and Merlin, she is fucking pissed // Definite canon divergence, extremely morally gray chaos couple, unhinged female lead, merciless flirting, forced proximity, goofy humor, hurt/comfort, a lot of angst, and dark magic being addictive. // ao3 - wattpad

✨One Shots:

How to Defuse a Ravenclaw - Seb finds himself violating his newest rule - do not think about fucking the Ravenclaw // porn with plot // ao3 - wattpad - tumblr

Secret for One - In which using some anti-cheating ink reveals what you and Seb were up to (kissing – the answer is kissing) // teen-rated cute and secretly conniving // ao3 - tumblr

Pass the Ring, Not the Potatoes - Seb gets the flu on Christmas Eve, the night he plans to propose, and starts...hallucinating // holiday explicit comedy // ao3

Little Sis - Anne Sallow POV where Dark Seb attempts to use the relic to heal her // Horror // ao3

When You Were His - Sebastian had this dream—he never told you—of you resting your head on his shoulder in the rain // quick sad read // tumblr - ao3

A Fucking Proper Hogwarts Welcome - The famed DADA duel of how they met // humorous one shot // ao3 - tumblr

✨My FMC:

Lucia Compari

Backstory/Facts

More here eventuallyyyy

✨Game Screenshots/Edits:

Screenshots ⬅️

✨Other fanfic related material:

Resources for FREE images, character creators, and software for your edits, book covers, and banners

Shitty Sebastian headcanons

Shitty Ominis headcanons

Stupid things Sebastian would do to get you to talk to him after a fight

Stupid things Ominis would do to get you talk to him after a fight.

Sebastian Sallow Fucking Sucks Playlist

HL characters breaking you out of detention (unhinged edition)

Where HL characters would work (unhinged modern au)

MY CREATOR POLICIES:

You do NOT have my permission to repost my writing, photos, art, and other creations without my permission especially to other websites, for your own personal use, for cover art, banners, etc.

I'm very strict on AI. You do NOT have my permission to feed my work into any form of AI software for any reason whatsoever.

I am a bookbinder myself, and you're welcome to bind my stories for personal use. I'd love to see pictures if you have pleaseeee!!! BUT keep in mind that selling books, typesets, etc is strictly prohibited for ALL fanfiction. Respect it if you want to keep fanfiction safe.

If you have any questions, my DMs are open! If you're ever unsure, you should always reach out and ask. I will answer lol. I don't get out much hahahaha.

OTHER STUPID SHIT:

Seb and MC are my OTP. I know it's boring, but if you're judging me for pixels idk what to tell ya, babe.

I do love Ominis, but Sebastian just rots my brain.

Poppy is a sweet baby angel who will smack anyone as needed. And I will smack anyone on behalf of Amit.

I have a tendency to write Anne as semi-antagonistic (swear I don't mean to idk why it keeps happening).

I love the morally gray zone of dark magic and how it affects characters. I tend to write it as an addiction.

I don't like Draco Malfoy lol.

WE NEED MORE RAVENCLAW REPRESENTATION!!!!

My female characters are gonna be messy. Always. They don't jog for fun. They have constant bedhead. Poor impulse control. Love to torture themselves. I'm on the complex female character bus, and I will run over all pedestrians.

I don't tolerate rudeness, bullying, misogyny, racism, or homo/transphobia. I will find you and eat your bones if you try shit. (I'll actually just ignore and block you, but you never know). Also fuck JK Rowling lol.

If you read all of this, then you've earned a tiny shard of my soul in thanks, friend. Here's to more delusion and fanfiction.

Thanks for stopping bye! 🥰

#hogwarts legacy #bio #hi wtf is this

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nebrasska-alasska · 2 months ago

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Hello Nebraska!! I just want to say that your Sonadow fanfic, The Secret In Your Quills, is one of the best Sonadow fanfics I've ever read in my entire life! The writing is so epic, and I'm so excited for the final chapters!!

I don't know if you are active on Twitter/X, AI has recently become one of the most talked-about and controversial topics there, and I’d like to know your opinion, especially since you are a wonderful writer.

To you, is using AI to improve and/or correct writing and grammar mistakes considered cheating?

Here’s the thing: I have a friend who is currently writing a book. He built the entire foundation, he came up with a good story, characters, the plot, and everything. But there’s a problem: he’s not very skilled in writing and doesn’t know how to write certain parts. He struggles to describe certain scenes, forgets words that could be used, and makes many, like really, many spelling and grammar mistakes. Not only that, but he also tends to drift off from certain contexts, making parts of the story confusing or nonsensical.

Because of that, he asks ChatGPT to help him with his writing. For example, he writes a section of his book and asks the chat to improve that part, like making it longer, more detailed, and most importantly, correcting grammar mistakes and polishing the writing. When ChatGPT finishes generating the revised version, he reads it to see if it matches what he had in mind. If it doesn’t, he tweaks a few things. And when it finally fits what he wants, he adds it to his book.

But this made me think, and the question kept spinning in my head, so I’d really like to know: is AI actually helping him, or not? I don’t have many friends, and the ones I asked didn’t give me any solid opinions about him using ChatGPT to assist with his writing (assist and improve, not come up with ideas or write it for him).

So I decided to bring the question here to you: Is using AI to help or improve your writing considered cheating or unoriginal?

He doesn't have Tumblr, and since I'm sending this to you anonymously, he will never know that it's me LOL, but I'm serious. What is your opinion about this?

Oof, AI is kind of a tricky subject, and I certainly have a lot of thoughts/opinions on it.

Overall, I don't think AI has a place in writing fiction when it comes to the actual process of writing. Creative writing is an art form, a way of sharing something you've created with others, and having something else nonhuman create that art kind of takes away from the whole purpose. What this means is, when I write, I embrace all of it. The good, the bad, the ugly. The highs of exciting, juicy, and emotional scenes, and the lows of the less fun stuff that comes in between. If you cut corners by having AI write parts of it for you, you're not really growing or evolving as a writer because you don't ever challenge yourself (and listen, you don't have to want to improve your craft while writing fanfiction, but at the same time, if you're incapable of writing the whole thing without having AI fill in the gaps, then it's probably time to reevaluate what you're trying to get out of your writing, if it's not completely yours). It might be a harsh opinion, but at the same time, writing is a form of expression, so why wouldn't you want everything you share with the world to be completely yours in your own unique voice? Isn't that kind of the whole point?

But there's nuance. Having AI help with grammar is a feature that has been in writing softwares since the dawn of the dinosaurs. I tend to ignore grammar suggestions more than half the time because they're either incorrect or because I'm intentionally breaking the rules, but it's still nice to have when reviewing/editing chapters. And idk. AI probably has other nice and innocent features I don't know about because I've never used it before out of principle.

I hope I didn't ruffle any feathers. I'm pretty anti-ai, but that's because in a lot of ways, I see it as an insult to art and the creation process that is innate in us as a species. It has its places in society, but the creative world isn't one of them. Truthfully, I count my lucky stars that I completed my English Literature degree before AI was a thing... I would have hated to navigate that through my courses.

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brittanyearnestauthor · 3 months ago

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Writing Tips for Beginners

Writing can feel intimidating when you're just starting out. There’s a lot to consider, but taking things step by step can make the process much smoother. This guide walks you through essential tips to help you navigate your writing journey with confidence.

1. Why Do You Want to Write?

The first step in becoming a writer is understanding your motivation. Ask yourself:

- Do you want to write entertaining stories with no deeper lessons?

- Are you passionate about highlighting important issues to educate readers?

- Do you wish to share valuable life lessons and inspire others?

- Or is it a mix of all these reasons?

Defining your “why” will shape what and how you write, giving your work purpose and direction.

2. Choosing a Writing Style

Your writing style is a key part of storytelling. Start by exploring:

- Third Person: "Jake went to school late this morning because he forgot to set his alarm clock."

- First Person: "I can't believe I forgot to set my alarm clock last night. Now, I'm late for school."

Both styles are powerful, but picking one to focus on as a beginner can help you find your groove. Mastery of both can come later.

3. Choosing a Genre

Think about what you love to read or watch—those genres can inspire your writing. Your familiarity with the genre will guide you in crafting your story, but always ensure your ideas are original. Copying someone else’s work risks losing the respect and trust of your audience.

4. Brainstorming Ideas

Brainstorming is where creativity starts. Keep a notebook or document of ideas—no matter how wild they seem. Even ideas that don’t fit one story might inspire another in the future.

5. Creating a Writing Schedule

Life can be busy, but carving out time for writing is essential. Even five minutes a day can build momentum and keep creativity flowing. Little by little, it all adds up.

6. Making a Plot Outline

Outlining your plot keeps your story organized and prevents excessive rewrites. A simple outline looks like this:

- Jane goes to the library.

- Jane grabs her favorite book.

- Jane meets the librarian.

This allows for creativity while keeping the story on track.

7. Creating Character Sheets

Characters are the heart of your story. Use character sheets to note their:

- Features

- Personality

- Behaviors

- Interests

This ensures your characters are unique and memorable, reducing confusion for readers.

8. Choosing Writing Software

Pick software that suits your needs. Options include:

- Microsoft Word: Reliable and feature-rich for writing, editing, and formatting.

- Google Docs: Free and convenient, but dependent on internet access.

- Open-Source Software: Free alternatives, though they may have limited features.

9. Writing Tools

Leverage tools like Grammarly to catch errors and refine your work. While AI tools can aid editing and polishing, remember they're there to support—not replace—your creativity. Work smarter, not harder!

10. Editing

Editing doesn’t have to be daunting. Take breaks to see your work with fresh eyes and use tools like Grammarly or text-to-speech programs to catch errors. Rewrite or cut scenes that don’t serve the story’s purpose.

11. Exploring Publishing Options

You have two main routes:

- Traditional Publishing: Requires pitching your manuscript but offers professional backing—though it can take time.

- Self-Publishing: Faster and gives you full control. Platforms like Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) offer free marketing tools like giveaways and discounts.

Research to find what fits your goals.

Conclusion

Writing takes time, patience, and a willingness to learn. By following these tips, you’ll be well on your way to starting and succeeding on your writing journey. Happy writing!

#writing community #creative writing #writing tips #writingjourney #writers of tumblr #new writers on tumblr #storytelling #tipsforbeginners #writing skills #fiction writing

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mizukagami-takamagahara · 2 months ago

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Meant to ask, but has there been any progress on translation for BlazBlue Novels? Know anyone working on them?

Unfortunately, I don't know the current progress of translations. I'm not in contact with any teams that might be working on the project.

All of the currently available translations seem to have been collected on Baka Tsuki.

The most recent updates that I know of were the Bloodedge Experience translation in January 2025 that were done by Generative AI, and noted by bilingual folks to be full of errors. It seems this translation has been uploaded to Baka Tsuki. I'm not sure if it has been edited or reviewed by a real human since the initial AI scandal, though. If anyone has any information about that, I'd be grateful if you could share it.

A translation of the first Calamity Trigger novel was also uploaded, around the same time as by the same person as the Bloodedge Experience ones. This makes me suspect it was ""translated"" in the same sloppy manner and may not be at all accurate. However, I haven't been able to check this yet, so I can't make any definitive claims. Another situation that I would be very grateful to hear more about from people involved.

All five books in the Phase Shift series have been translated as of December 2024, and while the translations are clunky at times, especially in the early books, I'm of the understanding that this is a real, human-made translation. All of the short stories from the Calamity Trigger Materials Collection and Continuum Shift Materials Collection are also available. You can even read a transcript of the Wheel of Fortune drama CD!

Lastly, Spiral Shift is available, though the person who did this openly discloses that the work was machine translated. As far as I know, this was using traditional translation software, so at the very least it doesn't have the issue of "hallucinated data" that Generative AI works do.

#blazblue #bloodedge experience #blazblue phase shift #blazblue calamity trigger #blazblue spiral shift #bb translations #ao no kokagami

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manuscript0123 · 1 year ago

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For more information about Manuscript, visit https://manuscripts.ai

#AI book editing software

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ernmark · 1 year ago

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I just stumbled across somebody saying how editing their own novel was too exhausting, and next time they'll run it through Grammerly instead.

For the love of writing, please do not trust AI to edit your work.

Listen. I get it. I am a writer, and I have worked as a professional editor. Writing is hard and editing is harder. There's a reason I did it for pay. Consequently, I also get that professional editors can be dearly expensive, and things like dyslexia can make it difficult to edit your own stuff.

Algorithms are not the solution to that.

Pay a newbie human editor. Trade favors with a friend. Beg an early birthday present from a sibling. I cannot stress enough how important it is that one of the editors be yourself, and at least one be somebody else.

Yourself, because you know what you intended to put on the page, and what is obviously counter to your intention.

The other person, because they're going to see the things that you can't notice. When you're reading your own writing, it's colored by what you expect to be on the page, and so your brain will frequently fill in missing words or make sense of things that don't actually parse well. They're also more likely to point out things that are outside your scope of knowledge.

Trust me, human editors are absolutely necessary for publishing.

If you convince yourself that you positively must run your work through an algorithm before submitting to an agent/publisher/self-pub site, do yourself and your readers a massive favor: get at least two sets of human eyeballs on your writing after the algorithm has done its work.

Because here's the thing:

AI draws from whatever data sets it's trained on, and those data sets famously aren't curated.

You cannot trust it to know whether that's an actual word or just a really common misspelling.

People break conventions of grammar to create a certain effect in the reader all the time. AI cannot be relied upon to know the difference between James Joyce and a bredlik and an actual coherent sentence, or which one is appropriate at any given part of the book.

AI picks up on patterns in its training data sets and imitates and magnifies those patterns-- especially bigotry, and particularly racism.

AI has also been known to lift entire passages wholesale. Listen to me: Plagiarism will end your career. And here's the awful thing-- if it's plagiarizing a source you aren't familiar with, there's a very good chance you wouldn't even know it's been done. This is another reason for other humans than yourself-- more people means a broader pool of knowledge and experience to draw from.

I know a writer who used this kind of software to help them find spelling mistakes, didn't realize that a setting had been turned on during an update, and had their entire work be turned into word salad-- and only found out when the editor at their publishing house called them on the phone and asked what the hell had happened to their latest book. And when I say 'their entire work', I'm not talking about their novel-- I'm talking about every single draft and document that the software had access to.

#writing #writer woes #anti ai

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river-taxbird · 6 months ago

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The Four Horsemen of the Digital Apocalypse

Blockchain. Artificial Intelligence. Internet of Things. Big Data.

Do these terms sound familiar? You have probably been hearing some or all of them non stop for years. "They are the future. You don't want to be left behind, do you?"

While these topics, particularly crypto and AI, have been the subject of tech hype bubbles and inescapable on social media, there is actually something deeper and weirder going on if you scratch below the surface.

I am getting ready to apply for my PhD in financial technology, and in the academic business studies literature (Which is barely a science, but sometimes in academia you need to wade into the trash can.) any discussion of digital transformation or the process by which companies adopt IT seem to have a very specific idea about the future of technology, and it's always the same list, that list being, blockchain, AI, IoT, and Big Data. Sometimes the list changes with additions and substitutions, like the metaverse, advanced robotics, or gene editing, but there is this pervasive idea that the future of technology is fixed, and the list includes tech that goes from questionable to outright fraudulent, so where is this pervasive idea in the academic literature that has been bleeding into the wider culture coming from? What the hell is going on?

The answer is, it all comes from one guy. That guy is Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum. Now there are a lot of conspiracies about the WEF and I don't really care about them, but the basic facts are it is a think tank that lobbies for sustainable capitalist agendas, and they famously hold a meeting every year where billionaires get together and talk about how bad they feel that they are destroying the planet and promise to do better. I am not here to pass judgement on the WEF. I don't buy into any of the conspiracies, there are plenty of real reasons to criticize them, and I am not going into that.

Basically, Schwab wrote a book titled the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In his model, the first three so-called industrial revolutions are:

1. The industrial revolution we all know about. Factories and mass production basically didn't exist before this. Using steam and water power allowed the transition from hand production to mass production, and accelerated the shift towards capitalism.

2. Electrification, allowing for light and machines for more efficient production lines. Phones for instant long distance communication. It allowed for much faster transfer of information and speed of production in factories.

3. Computing. The Space Age. Computing was introduced for industrial applications in the 50s, meaning previously problems that needed a specific machine engineered to solve them could now be solved in software by writing code, and certain problems would have been too big to solve without computing. Legend has it, Turing convinced the UK government to fund the building of the first computer by promising it could run chemical simulations to improve plastic production. Later, the introduction of home computing and the internet drastically affecting people's lives and their ability to access information.

That's fine, I will give him that. To me, they all represent changes in the means of production and the flow of information, but the Fourth Industrial revolution, Schwab argues, is how the technology of the 21st century is going to revolutionize business and capitalism, the way the first three did before. The technology in question being AI, Blockchain, IoT, and Big Data analytics. Buzzword, Buzzword, Buzzword.

The kicker though? Schwab based the Fourth Industrial revolution on a series of meetings he had, and did not construct it with any academic rigor or evidence. The meetings were with "numerous conversations I have had with business, government and civil society leaders, as well as technology pioneers and young people." (P.10 of the book) Despite apparently having two phds so presumably being capable of research, it seems like he just had a bunch of meetings where the techbros of the mid 2010s fed him a bunch of buzzwords, and got overly excited and wrote a book about it. And now, a generation of academics and researchers have uncritically taken that book as read, filled the business studies academic literature with the idea that these technologies are inevitably the future, and now that is permeating into the wider business ecosystem.

There are plenty of criticisms out there about the fourth industrial revolution as an idea, but I will just give the simplest one that I thought immediately as soon as I heard about the idea. How are any of the technologies listed in the fourth industrial revolution categorically different from computing? Are they actually changing the means of production and flow of information to a comparable degree to the previous revolutions, to such an extent as to be considered a new revolution entirely? The previous so called industrial revolutions were all huge paradigm shifts, and I do not see how a few new weird, questionable, and unreliable applications of computing count as a new paradigm shift.

What benefits will these new technologies actually bring? Who will they benefit? Do the researchers know? Does Schwab know? Does anyone know? I certainly don't, and despite reading a bunch of papers that are treating it as the inevitable future, I have not seen them offering any explanation.

There are plenty of other criticisms, and I found a nice summary from ICT Works here, it is a revolutionary view of history, an elite view of history, is based in great man theory, and most importantly, the fourth industrial revolution is a self fulfilling prophecy. One rich asshole wrote a book about some tech he got excited about, and now a generation are trying to build the world around it. The future is not fixed, we do not need to accept these technologies, and I have to believe a better technological world is possible instead of this capitalist infinite growth tech economy as big tech reckons with its midlife crisis, and how to make the internet sustainable as Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook, the most monopolistic and despotic tech companies in the world, are running out of new innovations and new markets to monopolize. The reason the big five are jumping on the fourth industrial revolution buzzwords as hard as they are is because they have run out of real, tangible innovations, and therefore run out of potential to grow.

#ai #artificial intelligence #blockchain #cryptocurrency #fourth industrial revolution #tech #technology #enshittification #anti ai #ai bullshit #world economic forum

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fullstackonion · 13 days ago

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A Plot Twist Over a Report

I was supposed to write a report for this morning’s meeting. That was the plan. But instead, here I am—seated at my desk in the office, fully immersed in something completely unexpected: fleshing out the BELLESCO plot that’s been brewing in my head since last night’s post.

It’s funny how stories sometimes find their own way through the noise. I’ve been turning the idea over in my mind since the moment I logged off. It kept me up longer than I’d like to admit, but here I am, letting it out—because sometimes, when an idea clings that hard, you don’t push it aside.

This particular one? It was sparked by a GIF I saw on Twitter. I had just finished rewatching Notting Hill—yes, that charming 1999 classic—and just as I was scrolling, that familiar GIF passed my timeline again. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: that one specific GIF shouted “BELLESCO—but in a Notting Hill setting” to me. And now, well… here it is.

For the record, I don’t write with AI. Not for this. Even though I’m a software developer and part of what I do professionally involves building and training AI systems, I don’t use it in my spare time—not when it comes to storytelling. This part of me remains human, spontaneous, and a little unpolished—and I like it that way.

I don’t even really write, to be honest. I read. Always have. But writing isn’t completely foreign to me. I was a journalist once, all throughout my school years—from elementary to college, I was the one filing stories, editing drafts, and meeting deadlines for the campus paper. I suppose that part of me never really left.

So while the report can wait a little longer (don’t worry, it’s still on my list), today I’m letting creativity take the lead. Let’s see where this BELLESCO idea goes.

And if you’re reading this as a writer yourself, let me say this plainly: if the BELLESCO plot sparks something in you, take it. Run with it. Write the thing. I wouldn’t mind—not one bit. Stories are meant to be shared, shaped, and told in different voices.

anywhooooo here is the plot, my lovelies

BELLESCO IN "NOTTING HILL"

Goffredo Tedesco, a quiet Venetian who now owns a cozy bookshop-café in Trastevere, lives a peaceful and routine life surrounded by antique shelves, espresso, and opera playing on vinyl. The shop, Il Sogno di Carta, is frequented by artists, poets, and the occasional tourist who stumbles in off the cobblestone streets.

Meanwhile, Aldo Bellini, a charming, fast-rising Broadway star making his Hollywood debut, lands in Rome for a brief escape after a hectic press tour in London. He comes to visit his close friend Guilio Sabbadin, an art curator, and Guilio’s boyfriend Raymond O’Malley, who works part-time at Goffredo’s café counter and also moonlights as a local poet.

One lazy Roman afternoon, Guilio tells Aldo, “You want real coffee and peace? Go to Raymond’s café. It’s got books. Magic. And Goffredo.”

At the café, while Raymond prepares their drinks, Aldo drifts into the quiet backroom bookshop. He’s instantly drawn in by the smell of old pages—and then, by the sight of Goffredo, struggling to carry a precarious tower of books. They bump into each other. Books fall. An awkward apology. A quiet smile.

Aldo buys a worn copy of Letters to a Young Poet, and Goffredo wraps it with care.

Aldo returns the next day. And the next. They begin talking—first about books, then about Rome, Venice, childhood, failed dreams. Goffredo is resistant at first, used to transients, especially tourists with famous faces. But Aldo isn't like them. He stays, helps rearrange shelves, learns how to brew Goffredo’s bitter espresso.

Raymond and Guilio become their quiet cheerleaders.

Soon, the world intrudes. Paparazzi snap Aldo leaving the bookshop. Goffredo finds his face in the tabloids: “Broadway Star Finds New Love in Rome?” He’s furious—not at Aldo, but at the exposure. His private world, now public.

Then Thomas Lawrence, Aldo’s ex—and a famous British actor—arrives in Rome, checking into a villa nearby. Thomas says he’s “just here for a film shoot,” but it’s clear he's still tangled emotionally with Aldo.

Aldo invites Goffredo to dinner with Thomas and some producers. Goffredo arrives late, overdressed, and completely out of place. He watches Thomas casually drape an arm around Aldo’s chair. Goffredo leaves without saying goodbye.

Aldo follows him back to the café that night. They argue. Goffredo accuses him of living in a fantasy, says, “I sell books, Aldo. I live in the margins. You live on the front page.”

Aldo, hurt and unsure, doesn’t fight back.

Days pass. Goffredo retreats. The café is open, but quieter. Aldo tries calling, texting. Nothing. Raymond says Goffredo is “back in Venice for a while.”

Back in New York, Aldo has dinner with Thomas. Thomas asks plainly, “Do you still love me?”

Aldo replies: “I was your shadow. But I was sunlight in his shop.”

Aldo returns to Rome unannounced.

It’s poetry night at Il Sogno di Carta. Raymond is on stage. Goffredo is behind the bar, serving espressos. Aldo walks in quietly, sits at the back.

When Raymond finishes, Aldo steps forward, holding the same book—Letters to a Young Poet—now full of handwritten notes.

He opens to the last page.

One note reads: “For G.T. — If home is a person, not a place, then I hope I haven’t lost mine.”

A pause. Then he says:

“I messed up. But this— you— were never temporary. You were the whole chapter.”

The room holds its breath.

Goffredo slowly walks forward. No words. Just a nod, a quiet sigh, and then—

they kiss.

A year later. The shop is busier than ever. A small sign outside reads:

“Il Sogno di Carta — Owned by G.T. & A.B.”

Inside, Raymond signs copies of his first poetry book. Guilio curates a small art exhibit in the back. Goffredo makes cappuccino. Aldo sits behind the counter, reading a script, occasionally stealing a kiss from the barista he never really left.

Outside, tourists pass—but inside, it’s quiet, warm, and eternal.

Just like love in Rome.

#bellesco #goffredo tedesco #aldo bellini #goffredo tedesco x aldo bellini #aldo bellini x goffredo tedesco #lawrellini #thomas lawrence #sabballey #raymond o'malley #guilio sabbadin #conclave #alternate universe #au #notting hill #Spotify

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oliviamaitlandauthor · 11 months ago

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Comprehensive List of Tips for Self-Publishing Authors

Cover Design

"Never judge a book by its cover" is a philosophy very rarely followed by most readers, so it's important to make sure your cover is as eye-catching, aesthetically pleasing, and true to your story as possible. The cover should encompass what your story is about and it should give the reader a glimpse into the world you've spent years creating.

For most of us who are not artistically inclined, trying to create a cover design on our own is incredibly challenging. When you find yourself unable to generate an exemplary product, you may need to turn to a freelance designer or a company that specializes in poster/book cover graphics. Here are some options for you to explore:

Fiverr - budget-friendly, ample reviews from previous customers, and examples of work are provided by the designer, but make sure to be aware of AI use so your product is made authentically.

BespokeBookCovers - this company asks that you give a short synopsis of your book, along with some basic details, then you will be contacted to discuss more about what you are looking for. They do require a 50% deposit prior to beginning the design, but you do receive the product within 12 business days. They also ensure you are completely satisfied with the product before the transaction is complete. This company may not be the best for fantasy authors as most of their covers have more of a Colleen Hoover-esque aesthetic.

Miblart - This is a wonderful cover design company for fantasy writers, as evident in the examples provided on their website's home page. They do not require prepayment and offer payment installations in case the total cost at once puts a financial strain on you.

Editing and Formatting

Similarly to traditional publishing, you need to thoroughly self-edit your work before submitting it for professional editing. Suppose you feel as though you are proficient enough in editing that you do not require professional services or you cannot accommodate the cost. In that case, I suggest using workbooks or software to make sure your grammar and syntax are as high quality as possible. Here is a list of editing tools that can help you review your work:

Grammarly - a good resource for spelling, but it often flags intentional word-choice and sentence structure to make it more simple, which may be incompatible with your writing style. Also be aware of incorrect suggestions.

The Copyeditors Handbook - offers a guide to book publishing and addresses common writing errors. Does come with a workbook to help you exercise your skills.

It's also important that you understand the risks of self-editing. Sometimes it's hard to see flaws in your own story/writing because you already know all of the details. The reader does not have this knowledge, so certain plot points, wording, or details may be lost on them. Having a second set of eyes is incredibly beneficial to help you solve this problem. Here are some outside editing tools:

UpWork - allows you to list a job and review applicants. Each applicant is verified to be real, and you can sample some of their work and their credentials by viewing their profile.

Reedsy - employs Big Five editors to find a proper match for your writing

Raab & Co. - a self-publishing company that helps match you to a professional editor

ISBN

An ISBN number can help readers identify and find your book across multiple platforms, given that an ISBN is a unique number. You can buy an ISBN through Bowker or ISBN.org. An ISBN number on this website costs about $150 USD. This is not a necessary step, so no worries if you don't get one. It simply helps your book be more recognizable and appear more professional.

Pricing

The best way to figure out how to price your book is to look at similar publications on the platform you intend to publish on. Amazon is the most common, so look at your options. Generally, you can publish the book for a fixed price, or you can use Kindle Unlimited. Here's a list of pros and cons for Kindle Unlimited:

Pros:

Paid per page read, which is amazing for longer works or series

Saves a lot of time and effort as most of the work is done by Amazon, and it can generate more income than other platforms

Gain popularity because each time someone checks out your book or adds it to their library, it counts as a sale in your sales rank, which can boost your profile

Cons:

Unable to publish more than 10% of your book on any other platform while it is available on Kindle Unlimited, which limits your ability to reach a greater audience

Sometimes the length of the book affects income more so than the quality of the writing itself, so your book may be incredible well-written but have a lower sales rank.

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