“a’mama?” lucian murmurs, peeking his head into the dark bedroom. you see the glow of his eyes, moonlight bouncing off his pretty red jewels just right to make them shine.
you don’t respond, in fear of scaring him. he doesn’t need to see his mother this way— sniffling and hiding like a wounded animal. what a terrifying sight for such a little cub.
“mama?” his whispers get a little louder. you shift in your blankets and quiet your sobs. “mama, is me, woosi.”
your lungs can only hold so much air after the trauma its endured. bad days at work don’t only involve irritation and disagreement, but harsh beatings from other worldly beings too. wanderers getting one too many hits in, sluggish responses to too quick offenses lead to more painful clock outs.
today was not a good day. days like this weren’t uncommon, but it still twists your heart knowing you could have done better. could have been stronger or faster or smarter. days like this just always sent you into a spiral of not doing enough. of not being enough.
and lucian did not need to see this.
but lucian says, “mama.” louder now. just by the edge or the bed. “hello?”
“lucian.” you finally respond, voice raspy and raw. “go to papa.”
he frowns and weighs a thought. “don’want papa. want you, mama.”
“mama, eated?” he asks, glad to know now that you are awake. “mama, i get—i get nana? for you?”
“i’m okay, my angel.” you grumble, hiccuping back the cries that are triggered from his clueless compassion. “i’m not hungry.”
“mama sick?” lucian’s voice tilts into something somber and sad. now he tries to grip the duvet and climb the mattress to you. your heart beats like thunder.
“no, lucian—“
he makes his way up the slope, practiced and proficient, and crawls all the way over to you.
biting your lip enough to draw blood, you hide your face in the pillow, only allowing one eye to sight him. “lucian, listen to mama. go to papa.”
“no,” he plants himself firmly on the pillow beside your head and pats your clammy forehead. “mama sicky, need medicine.”
you catch his small fingers in your hand and hold it on his lap. “not sick, honey. i’m okay.”
he’s quiet for a while. the thought too profound to know why, he doesn’t seem to believe you. so he guesses again. “mama, bad day?”
your sinuses burn. softly, you ask. “what?”
“bad days no good.” he says. his voice of sympathy sounding all too familiar. he slides himself under the covers and squeezes himself in the space between your chest and the pillows. “bad days make woosi cry. is mama cry?”
there are weights on the corners of your lips, and smoke behind your eyes. the moonlight, once again, strikes his features so elegantly you’d think heaven sent a real angel for such a feeble soul. fresh air to your fumes. a gentle whisper to your silent tantrum.
the next sharp inhale you cannot hide, and in its trembling exhale lucian’s question is answered.
“i’m sorry, mama’s just…” you can’t explain. a bad day is true, but somehow it is not enough to encompass it all. and in his humble persistence, it feels like he deserves to know nothing short of that.
his hand, smelling of blueberries and milk, comes up to caress your hair. and his cheek falls onto the pillow before your one peeking eye. “s’okay, mama.”
“mama’s just very tired.” you whisper, turning your face to him. “and being tired makes me sad.”
“sad okay.” he says, wise beyond his years. you don’t have the time to wonder how. “sad now-mal like happy. sad is—is opposite!
“sad im…im-pow-tant too.”
he sounds so proud of himself for remembering. your fingers curl around his again and you kiss his palm. “yes, you’re right.” you take a breath. “mama is sorry for crying.”
“papa say no sorry for cryin.” lucian whispers to you like a secret. “papa say cryin is good, and cryin okay. helping— helping, uh, sad go out body.”
you smile. “he said that?”
“a-huh,” he snuggles closer. “and huggies help too.”
finally, like a bloom in spring, you uncurl yourself from your ball and wind your arms around the little body that has come to save you. “okay. let’s test that.”
his bell-like giggles are almost enough to flip your mood entirely when he is tickled by your closeness. never mind the ache in your ribs or the twinge in your neck; this pain is outmatched by the weight of your loving boy in your arms.
“yay,” he murmurs quietly when your sobs turn to small giggles. “i helping.”
you sigh, deep and freeing. “you are, my angel. i needed this, thank you.”
he shuts his eyes, and takes in a breath. “and woosi needy mama.”
the world shifts. tilts back from its skewed axis into its rightful place. all thanks to a child, so strong to have lifted the weight of it, to remind you that you will always be enough.
so essentially there’s this cool horse drawn into the hills in england made out of chalk and it’s like 3,000 years old.
people carved trenches 3,000 years ago and filled them with chalk in the shape of a horse but what’s interesting is that if you fail to maintain the horse by adding new chalk regularly, it will disappear. for 3,000 years, we’ve been filling in chalk in this horse so it doesn’t disappear.
we’ll never know what the purpose of the horse was originally. we’ll never know if it had ritual or spiritual significance or if it was just art. but we do know that people maintained it then, and, even though the meaning of the horse has long been lost to time, we continue to maintain it now.
the people who made this horse are long dead, but they live through us still, don’t you think?
I will never let AI touch my art, even as it becomes more and more prevalent in today’s society. I like to think that every part of the process, from coming up with the ideas to handwriting all the words, is special because it’s coming from me. I put my whole heart into my art, and I hope that it shows!
In this AI dystopia, your favorite artists need you more than ever! Join their Patreons, buy from their online stores, like or engage with their art on social media. Let’s uplift human artists over AI that continues to profit off of the backs of millions of artists that it stole from.
first day as a second century warlord i have my men tie branches to their horses’ tails to stir up dust and make it look like there’s a lot of us but i forget it just rained so there isn’t any dust and the enemy can clearly see there’s like twenty of us all spread out in a line
second day as a second century warlord i bribe a bunch of kids to start singing a nursery rhyme i carefully crafted to spread misinformation and further my strategic ends but they change the lyrics to be about poop and the enemy isn’t misdirected at all
third day as a second century warlord i lure my enemy into a narrow valley and send a team of archers to shoot them from the high ground but there was a feral hog napping on the trail up to the overlook and they couldn’t decide whether to try and shoot it or just go around and by the time the hog woke up and left on its own the enemy had already passed safely below
fourth day as a second century warlord we attempt to join a battle on the side of the guy we want to ally with but he and the guy he’s fighting have really similar names and it’s finally dusty and i misread the standards and attack the wrong guy. so now we’re stuck with this total loser of a liege lord, because how the fuck do you explain that after a battle?
fifth day as a second century warlord and some sort of wizard wanders into camp, my loser liege lord wants to execute him for being a wizard but i convince him to let the wizard stay, because i want to do more weather-based strategies and i’m pretty sure having a camp wizard can help with that. after the welcome to the team banquet the wizard steals half the treasury and my liege lord’s wife and leaves
sixth day as a second century warlord my loser liege lord sends me to reinforce a city he’s taken, but in the confusion of leaving i forgot to take the token that would have gotten us into the city, so my men have to wait outside the city walls for like eight hours while i ride back to get it
seventh day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord finally joins me in the city, it turns out he’s actually a pretty cool guy, and he isn’t even that mad at me for letting the wizard steal his wife. i decide to shoot my shot but i’m really nervous and keep on stalling because what if i mess up our relationship and by extension jeopardize the security of my men, and eventually he just says goodnight and goes back to his room, where an assassin is in the process of setting up to kill him
eighth day as a second century warlord and my loser liege lord tells me to fake defect to his rival warlord, the one i originally wanted to ally with, to find out if he was the one who sent the assassin and why. but my whole way over to the rival warlord i’m worried that this has something to do with the wizard thing or how awkward i made it last night
ninth day as a second century warlord i try to tactfully ask my fake liege lord if he sent the assassin to kill my loser liege lord and it turns out the idea of using assassins never occurred to him, but now that i’ve suggested it he’s really into it. in order to save my loser liege lord i volunteer to be the one to kill him
tenth day as a second century warlord on my way back to my loser liege lord’s city i realize i won’t be able to collect my men from my fake liege lord until i bring back my loser liege lord’s head. this would have been a great thing to think of before i got myself in this situation. i go back to my loser liege lord and ask him to rescue my men, and he tells me that if he could sack my fake liege lord’s camp he already would have. that doesn’t change the fact that my men are still trapped. they’re prisoners, even. i go back to my room to sulk
eleventh day as a second century warlord i find a little caged pigeon in the rafters of my loser liege lord’s room and deduce it belonged to the assassin. without asking permission or telling my loser liege lord goodbye i let the pigeon loose and follow it north. don’t ask what i was doing in my loser liege lord’s room. it’s not important
twelfth day as a second century warlord i disguise myself as a wizard and enter the camp of the coalition leader the pigeon led me to. in the middle of my little sleight of hand performance i make eye contact with the coalition leader’s second-in-command. IT’S THE WIZARD THAT STOLE MY LOSER LIEGE LORD’S WIFE. after the banquet i corner the fake wizard and ask him what the fuck is going on and he just says “wouldn’t you like to know” and leaves. i don’t know what to say to that so i just let him go
thirteenth day as a second century warlord i’m honestly so sick of not knowing what’s going on, so i adjust my wizard costume to passably disguise myself as a woman and break into the women’s area of the camp, where sure enough my loser liege lord’s wife is. i ask her what she’s doing here and she tells me the fake wizard overheard her singing a poem she overheard on the street, not knowing it contains the coalition leader’s formation’s weaknesses. the fake wizard kidnapped her and assigned an assassin to kill her husband before they figured out the poem’s significance. she shares the first couplet with me but i’m discovered and thrown out before she can share any more. she doesn’t need to. through a bizarre coincidence of homophones, it’s the poop version of my misinformation nursery rhyme
fourteenth day as a second century warlord i go back to my loser liege lord and tell him everything, urging him to join with my fake liege lord to attack the coalition leader according to the weaknesses in the nursery rhyme. he tells me frankly that he doesn’t trust me anymore. i ask him to execute me if that’s really true, because i can’t bear to live if i can’t protect him and i can’t protect my men. he agrees to attack the coalition leader
fifteenth day as a second century warlord. due to the information in the nursery rhyme, and thanks to my loser liege lord reminding me of the weather conditions multiple times while planning our battle strategy, our alliance carries the day. my loser liege lord gets his wife back. my men tell me that our fake liege lord actually treated them really well and they’d like to stay with him if i don’t mind. i do mind, now that neither the men i love nor the man i love have any use for me, but i don’t tell them that
sixteenth day as a second century warlord i’m preparing to leave to i don’t know where, maybe to try to become a wizard for real, when my loser liege lord stops me and asks me where i’m going. he says he had hoped i would continue to work as his advisor. i was unaware i was his advisor in the first place. i agree, and he tells me he’s truly honored to have me in his service at last. he has known i am a rare and talented man with a strategic intelligence far above his ever since the day he witnessed me tying branches to my horses’ tails in six inches of mud, and could not for the life of him figure out why
🚨BREAKING: OpenAI published a paper proving that ChatGPT will always make things up.
Not sometimes. Not until the next update. Always. They proved it with math.
Even with perfect training data and unlimited computing power, AI models will still confidently tell you things that are completely false. This isn't a bug they're working on. It's baked into how these systems work at a fundamental level.
And their own numbers are brutal. OpenAI's o1 reasoning model hallucinates 16% of the time. Their newer o3 model? 33%. Their newest o4-mini? 48%. Nearly half of what their most recent model tells you could be fabricated. The "smarter" models are actually getting worse at telling the truth.
Here's why it can't be fixed. Language models work by predicting the next word based on probability. When they hit something uncertain, they don't pause. They don't flag it. They guess. And they guess with complete confidence, because that's exactly what they were trained to do.
The researchers looked at the 10 biggest AI benchmarks used to measure how good these models are. 9 out of 10 give the same score for saying "I don't know" as for giving a completely wrong answer: zero points. The entire testing system literally punishes honesty and rewards guessing.
So the AI learned the optimal strategy: always guess. Never admit uncertainty. Sound confident even when you're making it up.
OpenAI's proposed fix? Have ChatGPT say "I don't know" when it's unsure. Their own math shows this would mean roughly 30% of your questions get no answer. Imagine asking ChatGPT something three times out of ten and getting "I'm not confident enough to respond." Users would leave overnight. So the fix exists, but it would kill the product.
This isn't just OpenAI's problem. DeepMind and Tsinghua University independently reached the same conclusion. Three of the world's top AI labs, working separately, all agree: this is permanent.
Every time ChatGPT gives you an answer, ask yourself: is this real, or is it just a confident guess?
theartofmadeline
annaxmalina
titsay
andulkaphoto
kianamaiart
izzy806
vaporwave
