Kneutral Knife

Ani || 20-something || He/She/They || Taken || Still getting used to not being a student anymore

[phantomrose96]

There was an engineer I worked with on a project about 18 months ago. Absolutely brilliant man, Partner-level (I'd guess maybe 1 in 200 engineers reach that level), super heavy Russian accent, and he talked like there was absolutely no tomorrow. Every single conversation. You'd think the world was on the cusp of discontinuing oxygen the way he just had so much to say constantly all the time. Mostly this was fun. Occasionally this was a problem if you needed to get in a word more important than "yeah" or "uh-huh" while he was talking. Highly accomplished. He'd done a lot.

He retired last year, but really he "retired" to go on and create a one-man engineering endeavor. Power to him, very on brand. I know it's AI-related, which is miserably unavoidable right now. I only know a few tiny details from his LinkedIn.

I opened LinkedIn now because I've been doing nothing all day and I've run out of websites to click on. First post in my feed is from him. About two paragraphs talking about progress, but immediately something is wrong because this is not how he talks. It's very obviously how AI talks.

Heavy Russian affectation gone. Long passionate rambling gone. Full of em-dashes, triplicate clauses, all deeply not how he speaks. I've spent so many hours on Teams calls with this man and this is not how he speaks. It feels like he's been bodysnatched but the real explanation is so much more stupid and banal and fucking tired. I feel like I'm reading an account that's trying to scam me. I hate it here man.

[phantomrose96]

This probably doesn't apply to the whole world but actually I love internalizing my coworkers' speech patterns. I love hearing in my head how they'd say things. I love reading text-based messages from them and knowing exactly how they'd say that out loud. I love accents. I love speech quirks. I love dialects. I hate AI that sells itself on taking this over. If my coworkers start sending AI-generated emails to me I'm reporting them missing.

[phantomrose96]

I scroll a few posts further and it's an auto-generated "[Coworker] has completed 21 years at [our company]!" post for my coworker who got laid off last year.

He was laid off when the stock price was at an all-time high, but someone needed to be on the chopping block to offset the company's meteoric investment in AI data centers.

Blind is chattering about another massive round of layoffs coming next month. I hate it here man.

[gurlu]

When I was in my teens, I used to make an entire magic system with 900 unique spells, ordered in magic schools and categories, and it boggles my mind that I basically reinvented DnD mechanics, even down to metamagic.

I wanted to make a wiki about it but I don't have time for it.

The point was to try to encompass every "superpower" I could think of into a magic system.

I even got lore related to it all, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna simply reuse it all for OC worldbuilding. Ngl the fun part was naming all the spells, symbols and coming up with the logic of it all. Edit : Due to popular demand, I'm making the wiki now yay. There's even more sigils done now >:]

[gurlu]

After almost a year of brainstorming, coding, designing, writing and drawing, I am proud to announce that the magical system wiki I was working on is finally ready to open to the public !

You can check it out here !

Linguomancy

World Anvil is a worldbuilding community and collection of tools for authors, role playing games storytellers and worldbuilding

The writing part is done, and I've done enough spells to provide an example for each element. The goal is to fill up that huge array eventually! >:]

[fuckyeahcomicsbaby]

Different Stories Resonate with Different People

[lovingmyselfishard]

I will always reblog this.

[brightwanderer]

I once spent three hours scouring the internet to find this comic again, I will not let that be repeated.

[ew-lour]

They De-Tumblrized Ms. Frizzle

[malaesthetic]

@transfagsculine​

#how do yall whitewash a white woman 

why would you leave this in the tags lmao

[tikkunolamorgtfo]

Allow me to explain:

[raevenlywrites]

Everyone dropping this pic

And talking about how the new frizz her is her niece, allow me to do a direct side by side instead

These are STILL not the same woman. Where is the icon fashion, the earrings (the chameleon, which might be in the new show idk I haven't watched it), the prominent hooked nose, the broader shoulders, the volume to her hair, the LIFE IN HER EYES

This frizzle looks like she's been called into the school board for inappropriate behavior and dress one too many times and has been broken.

Also others have said it before me but I couldn't find it in the scroll backs but they whitewashed all the kids too. They same face syndromed everyone to either be easier to draw or be more ambiguous so as not to offend or both or something, and it just makes me sad

[raevenlywrites]

Fuck it I did the digging cause I'm still mad

[amingethia]

And that’s not even to mention what they did to the bus itself.

The old bus had a personality and life and fun and now it’s just… a bus.

HOW DO Y’ALL WHITEWASH A BUS?!

[beforeliteracytherewasdeez]

It's gives "anti abortion Jehova's Witness cartoon" now

[therobotmonster]

Vector puppet animation and a shocking drop off in investment in kidvid is largely at fault, but international marketing is also to blame.

What's important to remember is that the whitewashy approach to character design in kidvid is a backslide.

Representation in cartoons had generally been on an upswing since the 1980s, even though efforts were often minimal, clumsy, or badly executed. Diversity helped sell action figures in the lucrative US/Canadian market and it was recognized as a prosocial value on the production side.

"Prosocial messages" are a major part of kidvid TV pitches and development, nearly every show has specific prosocial lessons the narrative themes are intended to work around, even if its an action-figure ad. These range from sincere expressions of the creator's intent (Gargoyles, OG Magic Schoolbus, OG He-Man (no, for real)) to the entertainment equivalent of carbon credits.

Slight aside. Actual ink-and-paint animation tended to lock characters down into more distinct tones because there were only so many standard paint colors. Which is why Kwame from Captain Planet, Roadblock from GI-Joe, and Tim from OG magic schoolbus all use essentially the same pantone.

Ralphie gets skinny because not only fatphobia, but I suspect because he would need slightly different rigging and would add just a teensy bit to the budget adjusting his animations when they could just copy-paste from one of the other identically built kids. If they need to put them all in spacesuits or diving suits or whatever, they just make the one body and slap the heads on, eazy-pezy.

Decals on the schoolbus mean they have to be tracked, they have to use different versions of the bus in flipped shots, same with Mrs. Frizzle's clothing patterns. Wouldn't want to spend time flipping Ralphie's "R' around.

And with the marketing for everything now being global, there's an impulse to average everything down to appeal to all markets to a general degree. Making stories oversimple makes them easy to translate. Humor varies culture to culture, keep it slapstick or quick quips that can be localized easily. Everything that makes the Chinese censor boards happy also makes US reactionaries less likely to kick up a protest, the incentive is to keep everything:

ALSO: These characters have the same face. They probably use the same eye and mouth parts for character animations.

It's all to do it as cheap and broadly appealing as possible, as determined by business weirdos who know nothing about art and care nothing about kids, and they're more than willing to leverage racism (or just ignore that its happening) for the promise of a tenth of a percent more profit.

And what's galling is that this kind of animation software doesn't have to make crap. It can be used to make amazing stuff and still be vastly cheaper than traditional hand-drawn, but the same quality at 60% of the cost is never going to beat 1/2 the quality at 5% of the cost for the money-men.

The path of least resistance rolls over a lot of people.

[pavilion-of-butterflies]

Reblogging for "the path of least resistance rolls over a lot of people"

[thecrowsteeth]

it's kid Karlach!

I really like imagining this mischievous rascal running around Baldur's Gate, tripping over her own tail because she had to grow into it haha

It was super fun drawing this!

[ebb-is-learning]

being anti ai is making me feel like in going insane. "you asked for thoughts about your characters backstory and i put it into chat gpt for ideas". studies have proven its making people dumber. "i asked ai to generate this meal plan". its causing water shortages where its data centers are built. "ill generate some pictures for the dnd campaign". its spreading misinformation. "meta, generate an image of this guy doing something stupid". its trained off stolen images, writing, video, audio. "i was talking with my snapchat ai-" theres no way to verify what its doing with the information it collects. "youtube is impletmenting ai based age verification". my work has an entire graphics media department and has still put ai generated motivational posters up everywhere. ai playlists. ai facial verification. google ai microsoft ai meta ai snapchat ai. everyone treats it as a novelty. every treats it as a mandatory part of life. am i the only one who sees it? am i paranoid? am i going insane? jesus fucking christ. if i have to hear one more "well at least-" "but it does-" "but you can-" im about to lose it. i shouldnt have to jump through hoops to avoid the evil machine. have you no principles? no goddamn spine? am i the weird one here?

[littl3p3sty]

As I’m sure no one who’s seen my recent reblogs is surprised to learn, I’ve been really wanting to crochet something Dungeon Meshi related. So behold Kensuke!

[capacity2]

I just can’t believe some of u are soooo young u didn’t experience the early 2000s at all like even briefly . U were born and ur mother door dashed you home from the hospital

[starlit-syncopation]

actually i was in the NICU for a couple weeks after being pieced together by surgeons but whatever lmao

[capacity2]

That’s because she used klarna. To pay through 4 easy installments with no interest

[sleeping-ranna]

reblog this if your icon could kill a man

[anifangor]

One of the most annoying things is Needing some sort of hand stim to help focus on longer tasks (like the 3-5ish hours I will have to spend grading video presentations today) BUT also having chronic pain in hands/wrist/dominant arm

Like sure I’m not in a lot of pain NOW. But how do I know I won’t accidentally cause a hell of a flare up even if I try to take it slow and give myself breaks

I literally sat down and then one of my fingers randomly decided it would Ache despite me not doing anything. I can’t risk worse since it’s finals week and I have to be able to grade ☠️

[legsdemandias]

“National teacher shortage” is a fun way of saying that the USA has made a passion driven job so ungodly inhospitable that even people who “just care about teaching, not the money” don’t even care about teaching anymore.

[roach-works]

you mean i could make less at school than at mcdonalds while working 60+ hours a werk and being expected to take a bullet any minute and contracting every disease ever and still not be able to cover my bills june-september while parents and politicians blame me for why their kids are gay

[stuckinthistaydream]

random poll just to learn more about all of you lovely people (please reblog with your answer + how you take your coffee/tea)!

how do you make your coffee?

keurig

drip coffee

moka pot

espresso machine

french press

instant coffee powder

cold brew

pour over

i drink tea (tell me what kind!)

none of the above (tell me in the tags!)

Voting ended onMar 19, 2025

[helenvaughans]

likes to charge, reblogs to cast

[redstonedust]

i'm not "undiagnosed" i'm largely headcanoned as neurodivergent but with no confirmation in canon. i hear a showrunner said something at a panel last year but it hasnt been leaked on youtube yet.

[liberalsarecool]

Abolish Tesla.

[seymour-butz-stuff]

Elon uses his overvalued Tesla stock as collateral for all his loans.

If the stock price crashes, banks will ask for their money back.

The Twitter deal alone would break him - twitter has tanked in value, he couldn't sell it to pay off his loans.

[j-swin79]

[ultrareginarules]

Please, oh please. Not just well deserved karma, it would be so fucking funny.

[localgays2]

[ladytharen]

well, well, well ^_^

January 27 ($397.15) to February 26 ($290.80)

[cilceon]

✨Like to charge and reblog to cast✨

[unashamedly-enthusiastic]

Tried to tip a tumblr blog at 1am and it was such a suspicious transaction it immediately put a full fraud freeze on my account

Fortunately, banks no longer just ask 'did you make that transaction' they want to make sure you weren't scammed into making that transaction and 5mins after their call will give away all your money anyway.

This is an honest to goodness life saving movement and I cannot be happier banks are adopting it

Unfortunately, it meant I had to have the most embarrassing financial call of my life

-

Me: Ah yeah I was just trying to tip a tumblr blog

Cash: right and were you directed there by a Facebook link? An Instagram advert?

Me: no I was just on tumblr...on purpose

-

Caah: and this person asked you for money?

Me: oh no they just had a funny story, which happened to be about money and I thought, "wouldn't it be funny if I tipped them"

-

Me: * covering a reblog by reblog update on the adventures my mutual was having *

Cash: okay I don't think that can actually happen though..

Me: It might not have, but i was happy to tip them just because it was funny

-

Cash: and how well do you think you know this person?

Me: *considers explaining how much I know about a beloved mutual without ever knowing their name or face* ... I have no idea who this person is

I think in the end Cash decided there was no saving me from myself

[dungeon-moss]

[weaver-z]

I heard this metaphor growing up, and in my case, it backfired supremely, because I went out into my neighbor's backyard where a rose bush was growing, and the one I tested had like 30 petals (it was yellow, but definitely a rose of some kind), and as a very logical lass, I came to the conclusion that you could have premarital sex AT LEAST ten times before your future husband would even notice something was up. Moral of the story? Test your metaphors on the weirdest and most neurodivergent child you know before writing your weird religious propaganda.