I don't think people who come from wattpad after the purge and now want ao3 to have its own official app understand that one of the main reasons behind the recent wattpad purge that drove them to ao3 was due to pressure from appstore demanding wattpad to be more strict and follow appstore's policy. wattpad complied in order for its app to be able to remain on appstore. thus the wattpad purge.
ao3 doesn't have an app because for it to have an app, appstore will have to approve it first. and if, hypothetically, ao3 needs appstore to approve it, it will also have to abide by appstore's pro-censorship stance and start banning dark and taboo fics, which is against its own core principle of being completely against censorship.
ao3 doesn't need an app. it works more than fine without an app. the reason ao3 can allow dark and taboo fics, the reason it can allow the most disgusting and shockingly vile fics, and be completely against censorship is because it doesn't need appstore's approval. it stands on its own as a non-profit organization with functioning site and a team of lawyers protecting its platform, its users, and every single fanwork on its platform.
everybody say thank you ao3
here's the list of things you need to know about ao3 if you're new to the platform
me holding a gun to a mushroom: tell me the name of god you fungal piece of shit
mushroom: can you feel your heart burning? can you feel the struggle within? the fear within me is beyond anything your soul can make. you cannot kill me in a way that matters
me cocking the gun, tears streaming down my face: I’M NOT FUCKING SCARED OF YOU
Ok, what if when two soulmates happen to be in front of a mirror at the same time they can see each other? It starts almost immediately so Shane at three or four is sitting on his parents' bed watching his mother get ready and instead of himself he sees another little boy with a halo of curls. They stare at each other. Shane, confused, waves. His wrong reflection does not wave with him. The other boy tilts his head and blinks in confusion. His mother doesn't notice. After a beat, the other boy pulls a face at him and sticks out his tongue. Purely on instinct, Shane sticks his tongue back out at him. They both laugh and then the other little boy freezes and runs off. Shane's reflection returns.
"What's funny, baby?" his mother asks.
"Nothing." Shane says because he has no idea what that was.
It takes awhile for happenstance to strike again, and even then it's only glimpses for awhile. Then at ten, they move and Shane has his own bathroom with a big mirror. Sometimes when he's getting ready for school in the morning, brushing his teeth, the other boy is there instead, but he's dressed like he's going to bed. By now, Shane has heard about soulmates, he wonders if the other boy has too. So Shane mouths 'hi'. The other boy frowns and mouths back something else entirely. When Shane shakes his head, the boy wrinkles his nose. It takes a few tries before Shane painstakingly writes a message out backwards and show it to the mirror 'My name is Shane. I speak English. You?'
The other boy stares at the words, frowns and then runs off. Shane waits and even though he winds up almost missing the bus it's worth it because the other boy holds up a sign with weird lettering, but he's patient enough to hold it until Shane can take a picture with his Polaroid. It takes weeks of looking in the library (Shane doesn't ask his teachers much of anything usually and anyway, he doesn't ever know what to do with himself during library time, so it gives him a project). He determines the other boy is using Cyrillic. This explains less than he'd like. The school library doesn't have any books about Cyrillic. Defeated, he finally caves and tells his parents "I see a boy in the mirror, he uses this alphabet, can I get a book?" His mother hugs him very hard. Soulmates, he learns, are rare and precious. He also learns that maybe his parents were worried about him in ways that don't entirely make sense, but okay. Fine. Glad we squared that away. Can I have a dictionary now?
If it had been two years later, he might not have asked. He would have been too afraid of what it might mean to have a male soulmate. Lucky they moved. Lucky that they brush their teeth and the same time.
Shaky-handed characters and pantomime get them to 'Ilya' and 'Shane'. A lucky glimpse in a locker room bathroom gets them to 'hockey'. They start to use clocks to make sure they don't miss each other. When Ilya misses one of their schedule times, Shane can barely think about anything else all day. He knows they won't have a chance again until tomorrow, but when he goes to pee before dinner, he finds Ilya in the mirror, his eyes red-rimmed. For the first time, Ilya seems way too far away. Shane put his hand to the mirror and when Ilya put his hand up too and it's shaking, Shane wants desperately to be closer. That's how his mom finds him on top of the vanity which is not doing well with the weight of a preadolescent hockey player with his whole torso pressed to the glass. She doesn't make him get down. Maybe because he's crying too without any idea what they're both sobbing about. He won't for years.
It goes and goes. Shane interrupts Ilya getting ready to go out, finds him styling his hair. Shane mimics him with a smile and Ilya wrinkles his nose at him. Ilya watches Shane floss in bafflement, but takes up the habit too, seemingly so he can make fun of the faces Shane makes. When they happen to catch each other in hockey gear, they use their fingers to signal goals and assists. Shane keeps track in a little book that holds a lot of things. No one else can see Ilya, anymore than any one can see Shane on Ilya's side, but they learn to be careful in public restrooms, coming up with a clear subtle signal for 'not home' since they can't see the others location. They watch each other grow up. They learn how to write in each other's languages and backwards at that.
And finally, finally, comes the sentence that makes Shane's heart skip a beat. In Ilya's pretty handwriting (good even in his second language and backwards which makes Shane unbearably jealous and proud):
I will see you soon.
They meet at four sitting on their mother's beds across the world from each other. They meet at twelve, sharing a pain that doesn't need words to be clear. They meet at fourteen, Shane fresh out of the shower and Ilya shirtless, things wakening in Shane that he thought he would never understand. They meet at sixteen, hands pressed to the place on Shane's mirror that is always marred with fingerprints.
They meet at seventeen. Shane sees him across the parking lot and tries to stay cool, walking instead of running. He watches Ilya try to light his cigarette and gets there before flame touches it.
"You're not kissing me for the first time tasting like cigarette smoke, asshole."
"This is not romantic," Ilya protested. "This is not first time I hear your voice."
"I love you," Shane said irritably, "do not light that thing or I'll throw up."
Ilya's breath caught. "You do not know me. You do not love me yet."
"I do," Shane said stubbornly. Then he stuck out his hand, "I'm Shane Hollander."
With a smirk, Ilya took his hand. "Ilya Rozanov."
Shane didn't let his hand go. He held firm and Ilya didn't try to pull away.
"There, now we know each other. I love you. Kiss me."
"Shane. I have to go back. It is no good there if we..."
"I know. Mom read me a bunch of articles," Shane said with a shrug. "But there's no one else out here. Kiss here. Everything else later. Okay?"
"Okay," Ilya said.
They kissed in that terrible parking lot and Shane never wanted it to end. He pulled away with a soft sigh.
"Wow."
"Wow," Ilya repeated teasingly. "You will say this when we beat you too."
"Not happening," Shane laughed. He was still holding Ilya's hand, a circuit completed.
When Shane got back in the car, his mother asks, "How did it go?"
Shane has a number in his pocket and a promise for a mirror meeting tonight once Ilya's roommate goes to sleep that makes his ears burn.
"He's kind of an asshole," Shane said, delighted.
"Okay," his mother laughed. "I can't wait to meet him."
And it's not that it's easy. Ilya goes to Boston and Shane goes to Montreal. They will have years before they see each other more in person than through reflections. But when Ilya gets ready for game 7 of the Cup, he does it with Shane smoldering with lusty jealousy from twelve inches away. And when it's Shane's turn, Ilya wears his jersey alone in the privacy of his house so Shane can see it before he heads off to victory.
Even years later, when they're married and more often before a mirror together than trying to communicate through them, sometimes they do it anyway. If Shane is washing his hands, ready to go back out to a photoshoot, he'll look up to find Ilya flirting with him or holding up Anya to make her wave at him.
There is always a handprint on their mirrors.
Sometimes they are apart, but they are rarely alone.
"But AI can't do your job. It can help you do your job, but that doesn't mean it's going to save anyone money. Take radiology: there's some evidence that AIs can sometimes identify solid-mass tumors that some radiologists miss, and look, I've got cancer. Thankfully, it's very treatable, but I've got an interest in radiology being as reliable and accurate as possible.
If my Kaiser hospital bought some AI radiology tools and told its radiologists: "Hey folks, here's the deal. Today, you're processing about 100 x-rays per day. From now on, we're going to get an instantaneous second opinion from the AI, and if the AI thinks you've missed a tumor, we want you to go back and have another look, even if that means you're only processing 98 x-rays per day. That's fine, we just care about finding all those tumors."
If that's what they said, I'd be delighted. But no one is investing hundreds of billions in AI companies because they think AI will make radiology more expensive, not even if that also makes radiology more accurate. The market's bet on AI is that an AI salesman will visit the CEO of Kaiser and make this pitch: "Look, you fire 9/10s of your radiologists, saving $20m/year, you give us $10m/year, and you net $10m/year, and the remaining radiologists' job will be to oversee the diagnoses the AI makes at superhuman speed, and somehow remain vigilant as they do so, despite the fact that the AI is usually right, except when it's catastrophically wrong.
"And if the AI misses a tumor, this will be the human radiologist's fault, because they are the 'human in the loop.' It's their signature on the diagnosis."
This is a reverse centaur, and it's a specific kind of reverse-centaur: it's what Dan Davies calls an "accountability sink." The radiologist's job isn't really to oversee the AI's work, it's to take the blame for the AI's mistakes.
This is another key to understanding – and thus deflating – the AI bubble. The AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job. This is key because it helps us build the kinds of coalitions that will be successful in the fight against the AI bubble."
- Cory Doctorow, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI
My favorite scenes in the LotR books are the ones where Legolas has vital information and just decides it's not important to share.
Like when Gandalf spent literal PAGES trying to figure out why the vibes were off in Moria and Legolas chimes in with just "it's a balrog :) that shit's evil :) we're so fucked :)" like what do you MEAN you knew already and just didn't tell him??
Or at the beginning of Two Towers when Aragorn thinks there's something nearby so he puts his ear to the ground to listen, and then like 10 minutes later is like "hmmm i hear horses" and Legolas is just like "mm yep. there are 105 blond bitches with spears" like you just let your friend put his face in the dirt and you can SEE them??
It's because legolas hasn't spent enough time with non-elves to remember that they don't know what he knows.
gandalf is scratching his head in moria, and legolas is thinking "oh man, the wizard noticed something off *besides* the obvious balrog that we all are aware of??"
"I wonder what aragorn is listening for? must be hard to hear, what with all of the horses. How many horses are there, actually? 1... 2... 3..."
"What do your elvish eyes see?" is Aragorn saying, as politely as possible, "Because the REST OF US are at a significant disadvantage, Prince Dipshit."
so this guy right he makes ancient egyptian themed furry costumes. he makes all kinds but mostly he specializes in Horus heads. it's his passion really. he loves to make the beautiful falcon head of the Sun God. anyway so he's at a con one day and he sees this whole bunch of people in middle kingdom dress with these indistinguishable animal heads. he's like. oh man these folks could really use a new source, i can hardly tell what animal those are! so he goes over and he says "hey guys! i see you are into ancient egyptian mythological themed furry costumes--if any of you are interested in being the radiant Son of Ra, I am the BEST in the business!"
and the group of people look at each other, then at him. awkward. finally one of them says: "uh. no thanks. we're all Set."
theartofmadeline
gummygunk
jimmyeatworldofficial
