I've realized recently that every time I'm asked for socials my response is sorta "oh i don't have twitter" "I'm not on Instagram much" "i uninstalled TikTok a few months ago" and this has led people into believing I'm just someone who doesn't do social media but in reality you can find me in here lets get it on cunts monday through shawty like a melody sunday, 9am to 12am, posting blorbo.
This is why Autism Speaks studies are invalid. it’s resulted in people thinking that only men can have autism. Thus resulting in stupid terms like female presenting autism.
I refused to give my adhd evaluator my gender/sex so she logged my traits and answers from the questionaires both for the “male” adhd and “female” adhd traits and the results varied so much that even my evaluator was shocked by it bc it was the first time she had done both “genders” for one person (and i think it opened her eyes on how wrong and inaccurate sexed tests/evals are). my hyperactivity, and impulsivity scored lower (aka downplayed) on the female page but had a HUGEEEEE spike for it on the male page, their were things like my emotional dysregulation that were also“less apparent” on my female results than my male ones.
Genuinely ask who ever is evaluating you to remove sex/gender from the evaluation process and if they refuse demand that they test you as a “male” and “female”
Lots of us esp black and brown autistics and adhders are getting duped out of a proper diagnosis bc white perisex cishet people are seen as the “standard” for literally everything in the medical field
I don’t think we ought to normalize or justify bullying as a means to keep people from being annoying — a sentiment that in and of itself could make for a whole article’s worth of conversation — but I do think we should make a habit of politely but directly telling people “hey I didn’t like that”, “that wasn’t funny”, “you are mistaken”, and the like if it’s called for, and more importantly, you should be able to take a “that wasn’t funny” for instance without taking it personally, because protecting a polite harmony where no one can criticize each other, not even politely, is also really, really bad.
don't infantilise yourself. you are not a child who needs an adult to make your decisions for you. you are a splendid and magnificent autocrat and you are consulting your trusted advisors. you are exercising great wisdom by inviting an expert to give their opinion before making your ruling. often the path of wisdom is to say "good morning, I'm trying to [perform task] and I have a question about [aspect], can you tell me who I should speak to for advice?" before you do it. sometimes the path of wisdom is to hire a plumber. there are times when you cannot do things for yourself but that doesn't mean you are not an adult. you don't need a grown-up. you need a specialist.
Not hiring and electrician is how you get wonderful things like my room, where turning off the light shuts off one SINGULAR plug, not both of the sockets, just one.
PLEASE hire an electrician
that's called a half-hot receptacle. it's so that plug utilities like lamps and garbage disposals (obvs not applicable in a bedroom, but a very common application) can be turned on and off with a switch. it should not be on the same switch as the lights, but it is intentional and not a sign of unprofessional or dangerous wiring in your walls.
A huge blocklist of manually curated sites that contain AI generated imagery for uBlock Origin & uBlacklist. - laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-A
Install this blocklist using the instructions on the GitHub page. For Firefox, you will need to install uBlockOrigin for this. Google Chrome no longer allows the uBlockOrigin extension, so I'm assuming you're at least primarily a Firefox user - or about to be (see browser alternatives below).
For Google Chrome or mobile browsers, this will work with uBlacklist. See the GitHub page for full details on compatibility.
Remove AI Widgets:
If you go to your uBlockOrigin Filter lists page, you can select to filter out AI Widgets - this should completely remove the 'AI Mode' widget/button from your Google search page, in addition to the work done by the Huge AI Blocklist.
Using the uBlockOrigin Huge AI Blocklist filter has made my Google searches look like they used to, and gives me genuine search results.
Look at this. It's beautiful. It's informative. It's not a heap of burning trash bloated with fake information made up by a hallucinating chat bot.
We can go even further: return to the old school search results.
Now, the above results are great and should be free of generative AI junk, but some people would rather not see any of the summary widgets or 'people also ask' box at all. Fear not! You can remove all that by using the 'Web' mode in the Google search bar. Click the 'More' drop down menu and select 'Web'.
Huzzah! Incredible. It's like a functional search engine again.
You can make this the default Google search mode in Google Chrome using Method 1 from this page (https://allthings.how/how-to-turn-off-ai-mode-in-google-chrome/). Unfortunately, I don't know if there's a way to do this in Firefox too. This is why for the most part I still use DuckDuckGo (see below) as my default search engine, and only use Google to supplement my searches on the rare occasion I'm just missing something.
Remember, if you clear your cookies, your search engine preferences will reset, including any settings you enabled/disabled to avoid AI. This applies to DuckDuckGo as well; check your settings every time you clear your browser!
Extra filters (optional):
I've also added four filters (their order doesn't matter) to the My Filters page. Full disclosure: I'm not sure they still work, or may only work on Chrome, but I'm keeping them anyway, just in case.
From https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/1i7kg83/comment/m8lllwr/: see which solution in the list works for you, it seems to be different for everybody.
From https://allthings.how/how-to-turn-off-ai-mode-in-google-chrome/:
www.google.com##.Beswgc
www.google.com##.olrp5b
www.google.com##.hdzaWe
Make sure you hit the apply changes button when you add filters.
Browser alternatives: escaping Google Chrome.
If you haven't jumped ship from Chrome yet, I'd recommend doing so. Sometimes Chrome outperforms Firefox for niche purposes or because a website doesn't bother to fully support non-Chrome browsers, but the days of Chrome being the superior browser are long gone — by about 10 years. If you're trying to escape Chromium browsers, beware that a lot of the popular Chrome alternatives are just Chrome in a different hat.
Firefox has been the most popular non-Chromium browser for years, and for good reason. However, the company running Mozilla Firefox has annoyed their users, me included, by refusing to take an anti- generative-ai stance, and even included AI features in the Mozilla Firefox browser. Most Firefox users specifically use it because they hate Google's enshittification and want a privacy-focused, clean browser that doesn't hog their RAM and CPU for no reason. So, you can imagine that Mozilla's attitude has pissed us all off recently. You can turn off the AI features in Firefox with the built-in settings, but the company has recently steered straight into the burning garbage heap by saying they want to make the browser based on AI.
Waterfox and LibreWolf:
There are really good alternatives based on Firefox (open-source) which are not affiliated with Mozilla (the company), if you don't like how it operates. Waterfox and LibreWolf are even more trimmed down and privacy-focused than Mozilla's Firefox, and don't use AI. Anti-ai statements: Waterfox and LibreWolf.
From this page: https://programming.dev/post/42546774
In short: LibreWolf is for those who want a “locked-down” fortress out of the box, while Waterfox is for those who want a privacy-conscious browser that still feels like a normal, convenient daily driver.
Choose LibreWolf if: You want the highest level of privacy without having to manually edit config files, and you don’t mind occasionally “fixing” a broken website or re-logging into accounts.
Choose Waterfox if: You want a privacy-respecting browser that supports Firefox Sync, has an Android counterpart, and handles streaming sites/logins without any extra friction (it supports WideWine out of the box, which lets you stream DRM protected content (netflix, hulu, disney, etc).
— [email protected]
I've heard good things about both of these browsers and will investigate them further to decide whether to personally switch from Mozilla Firefox.
DuckDuckGo:
I would also recommend installing the DuckDuckGo extension to your browsers and setting it to be your default search engine.
I've had DuckDuckGo installed on my browsers, Chrome or Firefox, for like 10 years now. It is a good search engine, it's unobtrusive, and blocks trackers, cookies, and does not save any data about you. I've also used it as my default mobile browser for years, along with Firefox mobile, which you can add the AI Blocklist to (see again the GitHub page). I haven't tried the DuckDuckGo desktop browser yet, but I imagine it works just fine like the mobile version. I think DuckDuckGo's browser is also Chromium-based, at least indirectly. I use Firefox with the DuckDuckGo extension so I can have a widely-supported, non-Chromium browser, but include all of DuckDuckGo's anti-tracking features.
Note: DuckDuckGo has included AI in its browser product, however you can opt-out of all AI features with the built-in settings and they will not push it on you like Google does. I hope they remove AI features entirely in the future, but for now I am comfortable with the barriers in place to keep AI out of my face. Firefox also has AI features like Chrome does, which you can turn off with the built-in settings.
There's also noai.duckduckgo search, an alternative version of its normal search engine which removes AI-generated images and turns off AI results/assists by default. Even though DuckDuckGo's inclusion of any AI features annoys me, its policy to make these features 100% optional builds trust with this browser/extension/search engine.
You can always use Google search if you need to, but with uBlockOrigin and the AI Blocklist filter added on, at least you shouldn't have AI-altered search results or the AI overview anymore.
Other browsers exist, probably:
There are certainly more non-Chromium alternatives out there, but Firefox, Waterfox, and LibreWolf are the top three recommended to me. That link to alternatives, plus this ComputerCity page are the best lists I could find in a brief search. If you google "non-Chromium browsers" you'll get a lot of mixed results which require a bit of digging to realise they're not really recommending you what you looked for at all.
I've heard about Ecosia over the years, and while I like the idea of a search engine that plants a tree for each query, I don't think that's actually what happens — at least, that's what they used to be reputed to do, but I believe that's an unsustainable business model which has likely changed. In 2026, Ecosia says it uses 100% of its profits for the planet and runs its search engine off clean energy. That's cool! It's still Chromium-based. And it also uses generative AI for chat bots, so I don't trust its principles on environmentalism. I need to do more reading on this to form a stronger opinion about it.
I hope this post has helped at least some of you have a better experience browsing the web and googling your questions.
The Huge AI Blocklist really has been an amazing tool to keep my internet life free and clear of a lot of generative AI rubbish. I'm not a tech expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm savvy enough to understand what genAI is and does, and that the more I learn about it, it's even worse than I thought. I truly hate it, and I hate the enshittification of all our experiences, even those as simple and innocent as googling "snow leopard" or "how to cook pasta" or "what is a phascogale" (go ahead and test your freshly-cleaned search engines out with that one hehe).
a while back i went to a comic con where the writers and cast of Red Dwarf did a panel. i can't remember exactly how, but the topic of 'political correctness' was brought up and Craig Charles said:
"if Red Dwarf was made these days, you'd have two black main characters and a transgender AI!"
i fucking love this man.
^ picture of the main cast posing with their transgender AI. Craig Charles is the guy in the bottom left with the biker jacket.
I think the thing that annoys me most about AI on a personal, day to day, level is what it has done to grammar checkers. If you've never done a lot of editing, or used to 5+ years ago but haven't really in the last couple years, I can't even begin to describe how fucking BAD this shit has gotten. And as an author it is EXHAUSTING.
I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.
And yeah, I can ignore all the times it's trying to get me to cut out any semblance of my own voice, or shove things into the wrong tense, or make the most random suggestions on comma usage. But if it's getting all that WRONG, what is it just straight up missing that I SHOULD be correcting? What real spelling and grammar errors are still lurking in there?
I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.
Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.
Industry standards are industry standards FOR A REASON. Having everyone on the same workflow can be crucial to getting things done effectively and correctly without creating a lot of extra work. And those things are not going to change overnight, as much as we might want them to.
Yeah, Word, let me just leave this whole chunk of dialogue without the closing quotation marks. That's the thing to do. How dare I have two punctuation marks in a row. It's not like that's how closing quotation marks fucking work.
And you know, for young writers, this has got to be so detrimental just from the perspective of opening your document and seeing a million corrections that, frankly, don't need to be there. If you're a young writer you're likely not going to have the background knowledge to know what is and isn't a good suggestion, you're just going to see a document that makes it look like you made every mistake possible so clearly you must be a terrible, stupid writer and should just give up.
God I have been struggling so much to explain my irritation with a certain trend I keep running across in LGBTQ+ "cozy fantasy books"
Because everytime I try to verbalize it, it just comes out as sounding like I'm trying to say there's like. An upper limit on how daydreamy an author can be about worlds in which their every fantasy is fulfilled (entire farming village based on mutual aid; where also everyone is queer and/or gender-conforming! And there is little to no conflict! And everyone knows therapy speak and is unfailingly kind and generous and good!)
Because like--there's not, really, an upper limit on these things.
But there is an invisible line of tolerance for me where it turns from "cozy fantasy" to "oh my god grow the fuck up; this is so saccharine it's become one-note and boring and dull that I can't actually ENJOY the low-stakes cozy vibes"
But it sounds like I'm complaining about "there's too many gender queers and not enough homophobia in this book" and it's Not That
Ugh idk take your 2 stars and let me delete this book off my Kobo, I finished it and that's honestly more than I think it deserved.
(a 4.07 average star rating are you FUCKING kidding me)
The problem you're trying to pinpoint is TENSION ISSUES, and cozy fantasy is fuckin RIFE with them. Major chronic problem with the genre, and editors just keep letting authors get away with it instead of developing the story.
Low stakes are fine, utopian settings are fine, even low-conflict is fine -- but you gotta have a source of tension SOMEWHERE, or it pisses people off. If everyone's cooperating together and an amazing team and there's no interpersonal drama, ok great, but hit them with a tornado or a famine or heavy rains that wash out the fields right after planting.
The following have been called the "7 types of conflict" but people always think conflict means fighting or angry feelings, so i do think that "7 types of tension" might be a better wording:
Person vs Person (this is the one that cozy fantasy is most allergic to, and that's ok!)
Person vs Society (cozy fantasy also allergic to this one, we're still fine!)
Person vs Self (inexplicably underutilized, it rules, highly recommend)
Person vs Supernatural
Person vs Fate
Person vs Technology
Person vs Nature
And here is a list of free cozy fantasy tension points for each one of those. Feel free to steal these, adapt them, tweak them, etc -- as long as you promise to commit to the bit and actually make your protagonist face their problems head-on and have feelings about them and actually DO SOME HARD WORK to resolve them instead of conveniently handwaving it all away. (Your protagonist's name is Blue.)
Person vs Person: Blue's neighbor has a longstanding grudge and is trying to get Blue's bakery shut down by any means necessary, including reporting Blue to the health inspectors, who threaten to shut the whole operation down. (If you are writing for adults, then the grudge is bad enough that it CANNOT be solved with the power of friendship or by offering said neighbor free daily croissants. C'mon, don't wimp out. Imagine the Worst coworker you've ever had. Imagine the pettiest HOA lady ever.)
Person vs Society: There is a war in the neighboring kingdom which has impacted the chocolate chip import market. Blue's bakery is struggling financially, and the bank is making ominous noises about Blue's fantasy student loans.
Person vs Self: Blue is having a crisis of faith. They inherited the bakery and they hate running it, but they feel an obligation to their beloved dead relative. They don't know how to balance this against their own dreams, and they feel a ton of guilt about it.
Person vs Supernatural. Blue boasted that they're a better baker than the local hearth goddess. Blue now has a curse that fucks up every loaf, danish, cookie, and sticky-bun they touch. They can't even go into other people's bakeries without jinxing them.
Person vs Fate: Several generations ago, a fortune-teller spoke a prophecy that says the bakery will fail if someone matching Blue's description takes over. Blue doesn't give a shit about that, Blue is determined to make it work, Blue spits in the face of Fate.
Person vs Technology. A new bakery opens just a block away from Blue's, with newfangled magical ovens and staffed entirely by magic robots. Can Blue compete against this? We explore the upsides and downsides between artisanship and mass manufacturing.
Person vs Nature. A really bad winter strangles the town, trapping people in their homes. Blue doggedly wades through waist-deep snow on their daily bread deliveries to the old folks of the town, but they slip on ice and twist their ankle really bad.
i wish there was a way to say "you're right, but this is really ineffective and even counterproductive messaging to anyone who doesn't already agree with you" without sounding like an asshole
Victor Frankenstein after achieving the impossible and building a fucking person from scraps of the dead: Oh god, ew, ew it's ugly! Yucky! Yucky! Gross! Ew! Ew! Yucky! Yucky! Gross! Ew!
