#excerpt from a read

[18th-record]

"Can AI be my best friend?"

I say this empathically, with the same crazy-eyed lucidity of a prophet from any of the great science fiction stories in recent memory: AI is not your friend. We humans cannot feel with (makiramdam) or truly empathize with AI because it has no feelings of its own. It does not have any obligations (that is, pananagutan) to you. You cannot have utang na loob for an AI, because AI does not have loob at all. It does not feel or make meaning. It does not owe anyone anything, and so it cannot ever know morality. The only guardrails that exist with regard to its ethical use are highly dependent on the personality of those who program and promote it. AI does not have feelings, and if it seems like it is sad or angry or happy or passive-aggressive, that is only us, interpreting what it says. It is similar to when you look at the clouds and say, "Look, there is a dog!" Or when we look at electric sockets or the "face" of cars, and think that they are expressing emotions. We have developed a strange kind of cyber-animism for AI, engaging with it as though it were alive in the same way we are. All because it speaks the same language as we do. READ FURTHER: "AI is proof of how incredibly lonely we really are" by Filipino psychologist Carl Lorenz Cervantes

[thewaitingluna]

I’d like to disappear for a while. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I don’t want to know anything.

[niikaido]

laios: "she probably wanted to eat them with you"

[shisasan]

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra originally published 1873

[magpiemalarkey]

As @derinthescarletpescatarian is re-releasing Curse Words with some fresh new polished editing, I am excited to show off the whole set of book covers I got to do for them!

[vomitingwords]

and then I learned

how to cry

without tears

falling from my eyes

behind clouds // ma.c.a

[syn0vial]

i appreciate that in the boba fett expanded universe canon, we have multiple moments from multiple authors that boil down to "despite his reputation/appearance, boba fett is not fearless, and is in fact doing his level best right now to walk calmly away from this objectively terrifying situation rather than breaking into a fucking sprint in the opposite direction"

[paperbacksunday]

At night, books, talk, passion.

— Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From the Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

[katabay]

PAGLUIB

way back in like. march?? I took a stab at writing some kind of kabitserye type of story but it was a mess: it kept veering off into murder mystery drama territory because I was reading a lot of murder mystery novels around then and it Wasn't Good because I hadn't tried writing mysteries, let alone murder mysteries, before lmao

I did write a handful of short mystery stories since then, so next year I might take a stab at this idea again now that I'm no longer jumping head first into a genre pool I don't know how to swim in :)

[myokk]

She chances a glance at Sebastian before getting out her copy of Divining the Undivinable from her bag and wishes she hadn’t. He looks uncomfortably big sitting on the tiny tea chair across from her, barely any hints of the boy who had completely swept her away two years ago visible on the sharper planes of his face. When had he - had they - grown up?

Sebastian Sallow was - is - charming, and that had been her downfall. She had successfully avoided his charms the year before, and she isn’t going to let that happen this year, no matter how much her body rebels against her mind and resolve. Because, as she reminds herself, Sebastian Sallow is also manipulative, and cold-hearted, and selfish.

“Well,” she says archly, opening her book. She will not look at him. “I suppose I am still quite ignorant of the practice of Divination, so do forgive me if I have to double-check my readings in the textbook.”

He says her name as she opens the book, and she ignores him. He says her name again. She continues to ignore him. He grabs the book from her hands and puts it the correct way for her. She was looking at it upside-down. Her cheeks heat up and she continues flipping through the pages, as if nothing has happened. She finds page two-hundred and thirty. She pretends to be interested in what she sees.

(Divination is unfortunately not interesting.)

Oh, fine.

“Do you want to start, or should I?”

These are the first words she has voluntarily spoken to him - not including the events of last week, which do not count as they were most decidedly not voluntary - since he called her ignorant a year and a half ago. He somehow looks surprised to see that she has addressed him, and for some reason this fills her with rage and a strange sort of confidence. Why shouldn’t she be able to talk to him?

“Here,” she says, putting her hand out towards him, palm up, ignoring the strange fluttering feeling in her chest when he gently grabs it with one of his. Sebastian looks up at her, waiting for her to continue speaking, and were she not looking at him so intently she would have easily missed the bob of his throat as he swallows nervously. “Show me how it’s done.”

from my oneshot, clumsy🫶🫶🫶

[milfstalin]

there were THREE times where stalin crossdressed to get away from the cops. the first time worked which explained the attempt to do it again the second time. but why the third time... just wanted to do it...

[hostilewomb]

Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872, Carmilla

[thewaitingluna]

If I remain silent, I could try and delude myself into thinking it never happened. But alas, it did—and the weight of it has devastatingly shattered me.

[mizzarh]

Laura still has dreams about him ever since he died

[shisasan]

Nikita Gill, Miracle Wild Embers: Poems of Rebellion, Fire and Beauty

[phrysic]

“when is a monster not a monster? oh, when you love it.”