Fly Or Die

Thoughtful, funny posts, mostly about anime, including character & scene analysis, but also anything that catches my passion. This includes writing, books, movies, art, snark, cute animals . . .

[dduane]

Fabulous editor, favorite houseguest: see you later, old friend. 😢

[fluffyplushiesworld]

[druidshollow]

happy 30th anniversary to animorphs <3

[dduane]

“Crocodile Tears”, Peter de Seve

[dakywich]

first time Spock decided to be funny and Jim had none of it

[dduane]

Nonetheless, it was funny. 😄

[sztupy]

Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers

A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for the content of its AI search overviews. According to the court, previou

[ayeforscotland]

Let’s fucking go

[made-in-manetheren]

This is HUGE.

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

TL;DR Google reeeeeally stepped in it this time.

[rederiswrites]

Just watched Adam Conover (of Adam Ruins Everything) make such a solid point that I think we should spread far and wide. Yes, having AI write your emails is lazy, sure, but people love being lazy. We need to really emphasize that sending AI emails (or using AI responses on social media, or publishing AI flyers, or or or) is rude.

It's rude. You're making someone take their time to read something you couldn't bother to write. You're telling them they were so unimportant you couldn't be bothered to actually take the time to say something yourself. And frankly, you're lying about it while you're at it.

It's rude.

[wingkink]

btw it's so fucking stupid you can be anxious physically in your body even after you've decided mentally you don't care. I'm supposed to be in charge here

[imagine-fight-write]

Ask Tibetan monks, they might be able to help you.

[wingkink]

btw it's so fucking stupid you can be anxious physically in your body even after you've decided mentally you don't care. I'm supposed to be in charge here

[imagine-fight-write]

Ask Tibetan monks, they might be able to help you.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

I've been thinking. Animorphs have go-to morphs that they picked during a battle unless they needed something specific.

Jake has his tiger, Rachel bounced between grizzly bear and elephant, Marco morphs into a gorilla, Cassie went with a wolf and Tobias and Ax didn't really have an main or primary morphs, electing to go by their baseline state of being a hawk and an Andalite respectively. But, if you had to pick new main battle morphs for them, what would you pick?

I personally am thinking like a big snake like python or something for Cassie. And maybe a bison for Jake. I'm also thinking a hippo but I can't decide between Rachel and Marco for it.

I've concluded there is no right answer to this question, because arguments about biology have no real winners or losers. Does anyone else have morphs you'd have liked to have seen the Animorphs use?

[sarifel-corrisafid-ilxhel]

Generally speaking arguments about biology don't have winners or losers, but the Immortal Snail would be the best battle morph simply because it's immortal and it kills on contact. Just need give Tobias feet-gloves so he can drop the Immortal Snail on Visser Three.

Jokes aside: YES on Bison for Jake. Bison would be my own battle morph if I had one, and I think Jake would make good use of it too. As for the others, what I'd like to see:

Cassie - Mountain Lion. She's got easy access and they're extremely capable.

Marco - Tarantula Hawk - less for outright battle, more for sneaky incapacitation of Human-Controllers without actually hurting them. Though, this being Animorphs, there's a 50/50 chance the victim is allergic and goes into anaphylactic shock.

Marco (again) - A very large weasel of some sort, either honey badger or wolverine.

Marco (again again) - Great White Shark, just for all the movie references I know he'd make.

Rachel - Moose. It'd be a good intermediate between Grizzly and Elephant.

Rachel (again) - Also honey badger or wolverine. She's got a lot of big battle morphs, she could use a smaller one for enclosed spaces.

Ax - I wanna see Ax reverse the "Morphs a giant alien" thing on Visser Three for once, then awkwardly explain to the others that the creature he has morphed is a placid herbivore he once touched on a field trip after Rachel asks where the hell he got that morph from. Followed by an epic kaiju battle between Ax and Visser Three.

Tobias - Oh, hard to say. Probably also Mountain Lion. Somebody needs to morph a mountain lion.

Tobias (again) - Less a battle morph and more a battle strategy - I want to see him airdropping Marco or Ax (who are in their cobra/rattlesnake morphs, respectively) on the bad guys.

[nesugosu]

The Red Baron becomes a bomber flyer 🔥🔥🔥

Also yes someone NEEDS to get a badger! Embody the spirit of Stoffel (look him up, he's the greatest!)

Also-also, weasel! I considered it as an alternative morph for Tobias specifically once, but I don't remember why

Moose Rachel is also perfect

Oh OH and Kaiju battle HECK YEAH!!

[goodgrammaritan]

I'll say it again: Chimp Rachel with a gun.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Honestly, elephant Rachel with a gun. I bet that trunk is dexterous enough, especially if you can remove the trigger guard.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Very indulgent ask: you’ve talked here and there before about animorphs and unreliable narration, and I always love your insights. Do you have any passages or quotes from the books that you feel showcase biases in narration particularly well? Any favorites?

Oh man, how could I ever begin to answer? This is the best part of the series, and in some ways it's in every book! But I'll do my best.

David Trilogy:

In #22, Rachel characterizes Jake asking Ax to "get" her as Jake knowing what a violent monster she is, and using that monstrousness against a kid their own age. She obsesses over the idea that she's a terrible person who is barely worthy of being on this team, and the idea that Jake is basically puppeting her into atrocities.

But in #21, Jake asks Ax to get Rachel because he's scared. And because he wants the biggest baddest person he knows to protect him, if he's about to go into a battle he doesn't think he can win. Jake sees Rachel as his protector — in #11 he says that he never gets really scared until he sees Rachel get scared, and in #26 he trusts her to draw lines he can't. (Between this dynamic and how much Rachel dismisses Jake as a leader at first, I do headcanon Rachel being a few months older than him.)

In some ways Jake is right that she's his badass big sister — Rachel does see him as someone who needs protecting, maybe more than anyone else on the team does. (See: her sheltering him in #2, her pity for him at the end of #37.) In some ways Rachel is right that she's his red right hand — Jake asks Rachel to do the hard jobs, the dirty jobs, and he buys into her posturing about always being eager for battle, far more than Tobias or Cassie do. (See: him asking her to do all the hard parts of dealing with David #20-#22, his willingness to use her in #32.)

[mayleeillustration]

The King And The Future.

[dduane]

Hi, hope you're having a wonderful morning!

I have a writing question.

Have you ever written an epilogue before finishing a work?

I have an epilogue almost completely written and im not even 100% sure how they get there. I know basically how i want the story to end but the details need work.

I am here to tell you that I wrote what will be the epilogue for The Door Into Starlight (when it finally gets completed...) in 1980. I absolutely knew—even at that early stage—what was going to happen, and how it was (and is) all going to end.

And I had no damn idea how my characters and I were going to get there, either. (In fact, some of the most important details have only become plain to me in the last few years.) ...So don't despair.

The development of story is rarely linear, no matter how much we'd like it to be. A whole lot of writers have run up against this simple fact, at one point or another in their careers, and—trying to brute-force the situation into compliance—have wasted vast amounts of time and energy bashing their (figurative) heads against a rock-hard wall of resistance as they've tried to force story to grow in a linear way.

Sometimes, however desperate you are for it to do that, it just will not. (Though sometimes, I think just to throw us off our game[s], sometimes it does.) At such times, the thing to do—because frankly, you don't have much choice—is this:

Write down what you've got and then move on.

...This is something I've become used to over many years. In (pausing to attempt an estimate) maybe thirty out of fifty novels, I've absolutely routinely gotten the beginning first, and then the end... and have wound up spending a while staring at an empty-looking middle. (Though this staring period pretty quickly became a lot shorter for me once the habit of a reliable outlining workflow settled itself in... making it a lot easier to quickly structure and exploit what out-of-order pieces manifested themselves.)

Your own writer-brain's typical story-development pattern will probably take some time to develop and settle. This is fine, so don't sweat it. The beginning of your career will be about building and deepening the neural channels in which story runs as it grows, and all kinds of life- and work-events will affect this gradual development. Everybody's storygrowing patterns differ... so just let yours proceed to ingrain themselves at their own speed.

...Because they're going to anyway. 😏

Hope this helps!

[hjarta-deactivated20260124]

just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees

[scienceoftheidiot]

They existed *before beetles*

[somethingaboutsomethingelse]

[spacedandelions]

Why is this sad? Why am I sad?

[ignescent]

https://xkcd.com/1259/

Bee Orchid

[sepdet]

This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees' range has shrunk by 90%.

(my own photos)

Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.

Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.

You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:

The Trees That Miss The Mammoths - American Forests

Trees that once depended on animals like the wooly mammoth for survival have managed to adapt and survive in the modern world.



[modernvintage]

First quote from the linked article. Found it poetic.

[imagine-fight-write]

Does this include hedge apples regarding the statement about trees in the Americas & ground sloths?

[hjarta-deactivated20260124]

just learned that magnolias are so old that they’re pollinated by beetles because they existed before bees

[scienceoftheidiot]

They existed *before beetles*

[somethingaboutsomethingelse]

[spacedandelions]

Why is this sad? Why am I sad?

[ignescent]

https://xkcd.com/1259/

Bee Orchid

[sepdet]

This is how I feel about Joshua Trees. They and avocado trees produce fruit meant to be eaten and dispersed by giant ground sloths. Without them, the Joshua Trees' range has shrunk by 90%.

(my own photos)

Not only they, but the entire Mojave ecosystem is still struggling to adapt since the loss of ground sloth dung. their chief fertilizer.

Many, many trees and plants in the Americas have widely-spaced, extremely long thorns that do nothing to discourage deer eating their leaves, but would've penetrated the fur of ground sloths and mammoths. Likewise, if you've observed a tree that drops baseball or softball-sized fruit which lies on the ground and rots, like Osage Oranges, which were great for playing catch at my school, chances are they were ground sloth or mammoth chow.

You can read about various orphaned plants and trees missing their megafauna in this poignant post:

The Trees That Miss The Mammoths - American Forests

Trees that once depended on animals like the wooly mammoth for survival have managed to adapt and survive in the modern world.



[modernvintage]

First quote from the linked article. Found it poetic.

[gabrielagresteofficial]

*turns a perfect 180 degrees so that my cutting board-flat ass is facing you* *i walk away with feminine swagger but masculine contempt*

[laughingmango]

[magical-girl-tetia]

Anyone gonna ask what the hell the other guy is doing with his legs

[devmoth]

don't worry about it

[agnesmontague]

you can kinda tell when a writer has spent a lot of time around kids bc they avoid most of the pitfalls that come with writing children. namely, not giving them a too cutesy or twee voice but making them sound more like extremely weird little adults. kids playing pretend will almost never cutely slot into some romantic scenario for the adults' benefit bc the adults are usually too busy cleaning up or wondering what the fuck is wrong with their child. kids also have surprisingly stringent hangups ranging from very petty grievances to downright chauvinist gender roles, more often than not the result of a tragic education but sometimes far surpassing what they were taught in intensity. what im saying is there's nothing inherently wrong with treating fictional kids as stock characters but it's always quite nice to see when they aren't

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

It's extremely common for very young children to suddenly say something extremely cogent and articulate, that's jarringly inconsistent with their normal speech. This is usually something that they heard an adult say recently. A kid will spend ten minutes telling you a story about how they fought a wolf yesterday using simple sentences of fifty cent words, then nibble a snack, wrinkle their nose and say something like "I feel like Mum was overenthusiastic with the salt today, and not for the first time either" before going back to their clumsy story. (They do understand what they're saying when they do this. Kids' communication is usually held back by their vocabulary and pronunciation, not their understanding.)

Young kids are also a lot more socially aware than people give them credit for. Young children are perfectly aware that adults don't take them seriously. They know when their parents don't actually like them. They listen and remember when adults talk about them while they're in the room. Kids will develop basic abilities to charm etc. from babyhood and will begin experimenting with social norms and concepts of deception, appropriate information, and acceptable language and attitudes in toddlerhood. By the time a kid is five or six, they have solid social strategies for relating to adults and separate ones fr relating to their peers, that they'll continue to refine for the rest of their lives. They will also say completely off the wall shit because they don't have the context to know what is and isn't considered super fucked up yet.

By the time a kid is eight or nine, their main difference from adults is in experience, interests, and ability for long-term focus. An eight year old can think as intelligently and coherently as a thirty year old, they just have less experience and information to draw from, and are likely interested in very different things. They're also likely still slightly hamstrung by vocabulary and literacy, though much less so than a younger kid.

Teens will behave like adults who have little power (a teen is often at the mercy of their parents and the state and rarely taken seriously, which is extremely frustrating) and who are high stress and mid-crisis, because they're going through a transitory period where their bodies and moods are changing and are having to constantly learn and adjust; a fourteen year old in a stable situation will act pretty much like a thirty year old with an oppressive boss who's just left a tumultuous relationship.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#oh is *that* why i feel 14 again after my fiance broke things off with me and i had to move halfway across the continent back in with my ma?

Yeah that's just what humans feel and act like when they're unmoored and powerless and unpredictably changing. Teenagers are pretty much constantly unmoored and powerless and unpredictably changing, and react reasonably to those circumstances.