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theprofessional-amateur

link to bluesky post

theprofessional-amateur

In addition to how to turn various things, it includes:

Other useful AI Removal/Detection links

How to spot AI Hallucinations like a Reference Librarian (originally on Substack)

Library Freedom Project has a lot of handouts about AI on their Resources page

depsidase

dogpuppy

princessgemma12

If you like the word “queer” reblog.

incandescent-creativity

#fun umbrella. we r all sitting under it like the big rainbow thing in elementary school gym class

genderqueerpositivity

Minnesota’s Giant Rainbow and Leather Pride Flags

June 28, 1998. Both flags measured approximately 50 feet wide and 75 feet long.

ryuutchi

Friendly reminder that the leather flag predates almost every other flag. We owe this community to leather daddies and kinksters

nightmarechamillian

In the era of corporate sanitization never forget it was leather daddies and S&M folks who protected some of the earliest pride parades.

mintmatcha

love arranged marriage unfortunately. the idea of being married to a knight who's not even in the city, but away on the front lines. it's a benefit for your family, so they dont even question sending you to his home to await his return...

mintmatcha

you meet him three months into the arrangement. He arrives after the sun has already set, his features set strong in the candlelight. His body is heavy with exhaustion and tension, his eyes dull and tired.

you've grown to hate this place, this castle gifted to him for war victories. The halls are barren, the garden yet to bloom. The maids are pleasant, but they keep their distance, as if you'll strike. Maybe your husband is the kind to hit. You wouldn't know.

When he looks at you, it's only in short bursts, his eyes suddenly low. There's a long stretch of silence between you and you consider introducing yourself, but decide against it. He knows who you are.

"The maid is drawing me a bath," he says suddenly and a sick feeling pours over you. This day was always coming, but you aren't sure you're ready to lay under a stranger.

"Am I expected to join?" you ask and his nose crinkles.

"No." He steps back and away. His departure is brisk and driven. You retire for the night by yourself and awake alone. Your husband is set to leave again in a few hours; a few soldiers have already gathered in the front garden.

"Don't you wish to give your new wife a goodbye?" one asks, unaware of your open window. "One night and you've already had your fill? Or has she been filled too much?"

"I refuse to believe she is real!" says another. "What kind of woman has worn down our brute and turned him into a family man? Should we expect a gaggle of children in the upcoming year?"

Your husband growls. "You will leave the poor lamb alone. She suffers enough."

That softens you. Just a bit. You rise from you bed and go to the window, leaning out enough to catch the men's attention.

"Until next time."

He watches you, expression caught between more emotions that you can count, then turns his gaze back to his mount. The two men share a look, wide, wide grins on their faces.

"Until next time," he repeats back.

mintmatcha

In his absence, he sends gifts. They are tiny things, sweets and oiled combs and scented oils and a porcelain figure of a cat, aimless in their direction towards you. Just simple niceties he could give to any woman in the world. You imagine he sends one to the lovers he has in every city as well.

(he must have lovers, you imagine. He hasn't touched you; he must be getting his fill with women in other cities, maybe women he actually loves. these are trinkets to keep his wife amused while she wastes away.)

none of the gifts come with a note.

one day a bolt of fabric arrives, yellow and ornate. It's only a small amount, not enough to make a dress, but enough for you to unravel and admire. It's beautiful and clearly expensive, golden threads woven into flowers and vines. Your father was a silk merchant; while you never wore the silks, you can recognize their quality.

the following week, the delicious man rides up on his steeds and presents a letter. The handwriting is rough. Knights that come from the lower class do not have the schooling of highborns; as fair as you know, your husband was born a street rat and worked his way theough the ranks to glory.

-I have been told by my secund that I did not send you enuf fabric for a gown. I do not no these things.

The spelling mistakes screw a smile out of you.

"Wait a moment." You stop the boy before he can leave. "I wish to send something back."

You take your time and use your finest calligraphy, tucking your note in with a handkerchief you had spent the week on. It's fine work-- one that would please even the hardest of hearts.

-Dearest husband,

Please take this handkerchief as a sign of my thoughts.

Your patient and thoughtful wife

A second letter arrives within the week.

-are you cros with me? A scrap of fabric for a scrap of fabric?

The response is what makes you cross. The poor messenger boy has to stay the night while you percolate over a response.

-Dearest, sweetest husband,

A handkerchief is a traditional gesture of affection. I have embroidered the edges by hand, with your last name and your roses, and it smells of my perfume. It is a piece of me for you to carry. If you do not appreciate my kindness or if you think it will turn away your lovers, you may return it. I do not wish it wasted on you.

Your less than patient and less than adoring wife

The poor boy scatters off in the morning and returns a few days later.

tortured wife,

I wil cherish it. I am sory, pour lam. I wil do better.

your loving husband

fidelcostco

the human brain is so cool, if you're tired and stressed enough, your brain will go, "don't worry, I got you" and shadows will start moving

fidelcostco

and what's the genital situation on the shadows

fidelcostco

oh this is my post

hellenhighwater

My sewing machine broke while I was making a fish bag for my water bottle and now it's not done :(

hellenhighwater

Sewing machine still borked but I've made a coin purse to go into the big fish

hellenhighwater

Feeeeesh

walk-up-songs

Bought my uncle a burger and milkshake in exchange for letting me disrupt the holiest day of the week, NFL Sunday Football, so I could install a Pi-hole and free the household of ads...the thing abt the specific boomers I live with is they told me not to trust people on the Internet but they do not understand the algorithm or online advertising and think that Facebook has their best interests at heart. And every time I have tried to explain to them that no, blorbo from my dashboard is not selling my kidneys on the dark web but Google from your capitalism is definitely selling your web searches to every advertising company on the planet, they think I am paranoid. How could their personal friend Mark Zuckerberg want anything bad to happen to them etc. I am fighting battles I did not know existed!!!

walk-up-songs

Update I have had Pi-Hole successfully installed for two (2) hours and have since learned that 40% of the web traffic in this household went to advertisements. FORTY FUCKING PERCENT. We live in hell. This is the greatest gift I have ever given my family that they will not understand or acknowledge or feel any gratitude for.

walk-up-songs

Update #2: it was rising all night but the number it finally settled on was...60%. 60% of the web traffic in this household went to advertisements. I can't tell if this high number is bc I live in Silicon Valley and probably am subject to the Algorithmic Internet in ways people outside of Silicon Valley are not or it is normal to have 2/3rds of your web traffic be ads, but it did make me set up a recurring donation of the EFF lmfao.

walk-up-songs

Okay I have had multiple people ask, so here are the useful websites that me and Beryl used to muddle our way through:

Using Pi-hole and Raspberry Pi (on the Raspberry Pi website, really good overview of what Pi-hole does)

Tumblr-archived Twitter thread about one household's experience with Pi-hole (this is what sold me on it. Also the tweets were published in 2022 and Pi-hole is actively being developed, so I think some of the teething problems he mentioned might have cleared up or are at least being addressed.)

Pi-hole website (gives broad strokes of the software and imho is not actually that helpful, however this proves that I am not making shit up)

Pi-hole documentation (read prerequisites carefully, you do NOT need the newest model of Raspberry Pi to run this thing!! You don't even need a Raspberry Pi at all, you can run it on a bunch of Linux systems however I'm very stupid when it comes to Linux and when my options are install and learn a whole ass new OS or spend $$ on a Raspberry Pi and hook it up to my TV with a wired mouse and keyboard I will unfortunately be spending money)

Privacy International's guide to setting up Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi (bro this one saved our asses)

You guys can ask me questions if you want but I guarantee I will not know the answers bc I don't know shit about fuck, I just followed the directions and reaped the rewards. It did take us 2 hours to set up bc I'm bad at following directions (and it's kind of complicated if you've been out of the software game for a while like I have), and you do have to be sososo brave about fucking around with your internet provider's configuration. So make sure you eat before you do it!! However it has been so worth it for me so far, given that now all my devices at home are running faster and I'm not seeing any ads while web browsing. We will see what complaints my family comes up with, but I love it so far.

Also!! if you've never heard of Raspberry Pi, which I realize are not all of my followers are lost in the Silicon Valley sauce so you might not have, here's is their website and their page for using Raspberry Pi at home.

(And here is the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that fights for digital privacy, free speech, and innovation, if you, like me, were presented with cold hard data about your personal internet usage and suddenly realized that our internet is fully a dystopia. haha.)

acquitarte

After a few months with pi-hole, I recently switched to AdGuard Home. It was recommended/is co-promoted in a pi-hole discord server, and it seems to be blocking a bit more successfully/consistently for me than the pi-hole did.

I also use Blokada on my phone when I'm not home and have the Windscribe browser extension which includes 10GB of free VPN traffic and has uBlock integrated into it. (AdGuard does technically make things that do this but I like those better; ymmv).

It all takes some setup and tinkering, but I highly, highly recommend taking steps to clear out some of the internet garbage and protect your info.

whitepeopletwitter

blanketfortarchitect

rebloggingistheenemy

tiktoksthataregood-ish

chilewithcarnage

ten-and-donna

the utter ecstasy of “is that lavENDER?” is what sells it for me

pulling-aggro

a level of appreciation for charcuterie the likes of which has never been seen before

patricia-taxxon

i love explaining the etymology of the word "rickroll" because the story starts with "ok, so at one point 4chan applied a filter to everyone's posts that changed the word egg to duck"