[26, They/She] This is my little hovel of shenanigans; multifandom, furries, witchy stuff... just read pinned. 18+ only [pfp. and banner by @gadjetomyart]
I am a hobby writer with a book project far beyond realistic ambitions, for the moment at least. Might pop up in discussion and whatnot here, and there might be previews if I create anything. Otherwise, fanfics and analysis and theories are the main pieces of writing you'll find here.
My OCs that appear in my work (a very limited list atm):
Lackadaisy OC: Cecyl Clearwater
Genderqueer mechanic, british white shorthair
Art credit: @ole4nders
Slugcat OCs (Rain World)
The Seer and The Harvester
š¬ 0Ā Ā š 0Ā Ā ā¤ļø 0Ā Ā·Ā The Seer and The Harvester (Keep reading for details)Ā Ā·Ā As I struggle to make time to continue the Lavender Dance fanfic, d
List of OCs to be added here (when art/info is compiled):
That's all for now! Sorry for the long pin, you're sort of meant to be able to access my entire blog from here, it's more of a hub than just a pinned post. Hope you enjoyed reading regardless, and I hope to see you around here :D
"i don't care if they make their whole way though uni with chatgpt" i think you guys are so internetpilled that you have forgotten there are actual jobs out there that require people to know what they are doing in any way possible or else people die
114 people died in the Hyatt Regency collapse, and in the US it's the third largest structural collapse fatality count, behind 9/11 and the Pemberton Mill collapse in 1860.
I've learned about this tragedy in my physics classes, to demonstrate tensile strength, and as a reminder about the importance of calculations being done right. I've also learned about it in my legal classes as an example of construction defect lawsuits. I've seen it referenced in disaster response classes.
Between AI and the current Presidential administration, we're barrelling right back towards this nightmare.
There are multiple errors that resulted in this collapse, but these stand out to me:
1. Kansas City was facing high unemployment and needed to attract jobs and business into the city. So the planning and inspection departments may have looked too closely at the designs.
2. An engineering firm too lazy to double check their designs or design changes by the manufacturer before approving them. The error that resulted in the collapse was one that the owner of the engineering firm said that a "first year engineering student" would spot.
3. The steel manufacturer treating preliminary plans as final plans, not verifying the math on their end.
The bridges' original design could only hold 60% of the minimum load required by city code. The design changes recommended by the manufacturer halved that. Less than a year and 3 weeks from opening to the public, the whole thing collapse.
Articles about the collapse say that everyone "trusted" the other party to have done the calculations correctly.
A significant portion of the population trusts what the computer or AI tells them, without checking. Imprecisely calibrated AI hallucinate information. The US economy is going into a downturn and federal regulatory agencies are being gutted.
We are going to see the Hyatt Regency Collapse repeat over and over for decades, not just in buildings, but in medicine, manufacturing, the environment, etc.
Some of this we're just going to have to weather, but the message for AI users comes straight from IBM (once the world's leading computer manufacturer) back in 1979:
"A Computer Cannot Be Held Accountable. Therefore A Computer Should Never Make A Management Decision."
The owner of the engineering firm that designed the Hyatt Regency spent the rest of his life lecturing on the disaster, to serve as a warning to his fellow engineers about the real-life consequences of sloppy design.
I don't think Sam Altman or Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk will have the courage or the honor to do that when OpenAI / Meta / xAI are responsible for getting people killed.
So if you're going to blindly trust the AI to do critical work tasks, I hope you're prepared to be making an apology tour for the rest of your life if it all goes wrong.
We've already seen AI give incredibly bad advice in numerous fields, including stuff like trail directions and identifying mushrooms. Pretty sure some AI "therapists" have convinced people to do drugs or kill themselves or other harmful acts.
We've already at the danger point, if not past it.
We had some absolutely criminal negligence in the building of the Quebec Bridge, with multiple engineering firms ignoring real signs of structural issues.
There is some debate about this, but most engineers in Canada agree this started a new ritual upon graduation with a B. Eng from any Canadian university. You attend a ceremony upon graduation and are given an Iron Ring.
You wear it on the pinky of your dominant hand, so it touches any paper you are asked to sign. Every time you sign off on something in your capacity as an engineer, you are reminded of your duties and obligations.
I have engineers in my family, and it is considered a sacred oath. Much like doctors, Canadian engineers have an ethos to do no harm.
And if you genAI bullshitted your way through your degree, you didnāt earn your ring. How fucking dare you accept one.
This was the Sampoong Department Store in Seoul, South Korea.
This happened due to a series of incidents that all came back to the same thing: the owner was not an engineer and made his own modifications to change the building from apartments into a mall and maximize floor space, a sentence that here means "removed a shitload of necessary visible support structures and weakened the remaining ones while skimping on or even skipping necessary interior structures."
The building collapsed only five years after completion.
There was a meeting going on during the collapse as to whether the mall should be evacuated, with its owner-slash-"designer" saying no because he didn't want to lose the sales revenue. He and the other executives, of course, left before terminal collapse. If you're wondering how they pulled that off: the warning signs started in April. The building collapsed on 29 June. The terminal collapse began circa 5p KST and became complete at 5:52p. In between those two times, the owner still refused to close the mall.
502 people died.
This is the second-deadliest non-deliberate building collapse in recorded history.
This is what happens when a greedy person who doesn't know engineering design is allowed to build and own a mall.
Something something Cybertruck....
Something something data center....
Something something AI.
An engineer DID actually try to stop the owner from doing this. He got fired for his pains, although when the courts got involved he was able to show he had no responsibility for the collapse.
What happens when the engineer doesn't know the owner should be stopped, because they let Claude get their degree for them?
heyyyyy itās october again which means itās time for
āØYetoās Superb SoupāØ
I had posted a recipe in the comments last year, but I decided to make a better version
Ingredients:
one 2lb kabocha (you can use an equal-sized pie pumpkin, but in my opinion kabocha has a much butterier texture and nuttier flavor. Also the yeti uses kabocha in the game so it gets points for accuracy)
1-3 carrots (last year the store had the fattest carrot I had ever seen. This year I needed 3 carrots to match that volume. Listen to your heart)
2-3 celery stalks (equal to the amount of carrot)
1/2 white onion
6 garlic cloves
(optional) 2 habanero peppers
mirin/cooking wine
1 box of fish stock (if you want it vegetarian, use kelp dashi stock)
1 box of vegetable stock
4oz goat cheese. Iāve tried making this with cream cheese and feta, but the flavor really doesnāt land right without the goat cheese.
1 cup? (<- it was eyeballed) heavy cream
.7lb filet of salmon
??tbsp olive oil
6 tbsp butter
a few pinches of flour
thyme, paprika, nutmeg, red pepper flakes salt & pepper
(optional) gronions to garnish
Step 1) Preheat oven to 400Ā°F/204Ā°C. Slice and deseed kabocha
Step 2) coat the pumpkin in a thin layer of olive oil. Season with thyme (I like dried thyme but fresh is better!), ground nutmeg, paprika, red pepper flakes, salt & pepper.
Bake for 30-50 minutes until itās soft enough to scoop off the rind with a spoon. Thinner kabocha might only take 30 minutes, and thicker kabocha (like below) or a cake pumpkin may take 40+ minutes.
note: if your kabocha/pumpkin is especially thick, your soup may end up tasting sweeter. If you want it more umami, use less of your chosen gourd or maybe add a splash of soy sauce to the broth? Havenāt tried that but itād probably work
Step 3) Prep all your other veggies while youāre waiting for the pumpkin to bake. Dice the onion and set it aside. Chop the celery & carrots into Chunks and mince the garlique
Step 4) Wait until the timer for the pumpkin has 20 minutes or less left. Heat up your pot/dutch oven on high/med-high heat, melt 2 tbsp of butter, and add the onions. After about 6 minutes, add the garlic. After another few minutes, sprinkle flour and stir, and keep frying until it browns.
Step 5) Add the rest of the butter, the rest of the veggies, and stir. Deglaze the pan with a splash of mirin/cooking wine.
If you timed it right, the pumpkin should be about done. Using a spoon, scoop the rind off the pumpkin. While you do that, periodically check on the veggies, adding another sprinkle of flour and a some of the fish stock as it gets dry. Itāll create a sort of paste and the onions will be pretty browned at this point.
Step 6) Chop the pumpkin & add it to the pot. Add the rest of the stock. If youāre using habanero, slice it and add it now. Add any other seasonings (it may need more salt) to taste. Once the soup boils, turn the heat to low and cover.
Personally, I prefer soups with Chunks in them + I think itās more authentic to what the yeti made, but if you REALLY feel compelled to blend your soup, do it now.
Step 7) While the soup is heating up, get out a frying pan and add a tablespoon or two of some olive oil/butter on med-high heat. Add the salmon filet to the pan (scale side down) and just let it sit there. Donāt touch it. When it turns opaque halfway up, flip it until itās fully cooked.
Once itās cooked, remove it from the pan, remove the skin, and shred it into bite size pieces. If your salmon was really thick like mine was, and some parts of it are still pink, then toss the pink parts back in the pan to let them cook a little longer.
Add the salmon to the soup.
Step 8) Once the soup has been simmering for a few minutes and youāre too impatient to keep waiting, remove it from heat, add the goat cheese & heavy cream, garnish with gronions or whatever herb of choice, and enjoy!
In the game, this soup restores eight hearts, and it truly does feel that replenishing. This soup could cure any disease.
As a game dev I had to rewind this moment multiple times, because they've used actual Unreal Engine style graph-coding for the shield's wiring layout, and made sure it actually MAKES SENSE! The shields aren't working because someone made an actually believable wiring mistake, and the way we see Kaboodle rewire everything is accurate, too! Someone over on Reddit was kind enough to label the specific nodes being used:
But what REALLY delighted me was how Kaboodle's technobabble here isn't babble! He's accurately describing a REAL rendering problem that goes on to have ACTUAL impacts! Allow me to break down the terminology, then explain what exactly he's saying:
"Texels" are a texturing technique used to render surface details on textures, and are generally used when you need to overlay an effect on top of a texture, like making something look wet/dirty, or in this case making the shield's texture display impact/damage effects when it gets hit. It's important texel density matches the underlying texture's "scale topography," because otherwise the visuals won't line up or scale properly. "Pre-baking" meanwhile refers to the technique of having the game engine run all the necessary calculations for an effect BEFORE the game runs, so you don't slow down the game by trying to calculate that stuff during gameplay. The trade-off of this technique is that every time the developer modifies an effect (like fixing the shield's faulty wiring) they have to take the time to re-bake it. "LOD" means "Level of Detail," and it's a technique where you create multiple versions of a texture/model with different levels of quality and swap between them depending on how close the camera is. This ensures you don't waste resources rendering fancy details the player is too far away to even see, but the trade-off is that they increase baking time, since instead of calculating one model/texture for each asset, the engine needs to calculate several models/textures of varying quality.
SO! What Kaboodle's saying here is that after he's done rewiring the shield's code, they'll either need to re-bake all its visual effects, OR figure out how to make all those effects cheap enough to run in real time without heavily impacting how they look. Both options take time which they currently don't have, and Kaboodle's concerns are immediately proven right when the ship gets shot down before the shields can finish rendering.
What's craziest to me is that they didn't HAVE to do any of this. For 98% of viewers, it's just technobabble and an indecipherable mess of wires. Ross and his team took the time to do this specifically for the few people like myself who'd recognize it, and that sort of attention to detail runs all throughout the pilot. Like if you pay attention during Flapper's gameplay segments and boss fights, you can see actual thought went into his game's design and mechanics. We always see a mechanic get introduced in a level before it becomes the necessary way to defeat a boss, and the final battle with Snappers uses ALL the game's previously-established mechanics! They don't just say it's a video game, they actually make it WORK like a video game!
Finally someone sees it! This is what I've been saying this whole time. He's stone-cold brilliant, it's just a facade. People keep confusing social ineptitude with actual factual intelligence - they're not the same noris one necessarily casually linked to the other.
we face misogynistic patterns of abuse, discrimination, and oppression, intertwined with and amplified by transphobia. and then, beaten down, when we seek community with others who face these things, we are laughed off as the jokes we've always been told we are
when we are raped, it is a pale imitation of real rape
when we are abused by our partners, it is a pale imitation of real domestic abuse
when we are punished for our failures to meet patriarchal standards of womanhood, it's a pale imitation of the same thing happening to cis women
when we grieve our inability to give birth, it is a pale imitation of the grief of cis women who cannot give birth
when we face violence and murder at incredibly high rates, when we are threatened and catcalled and harassed by men in public, our fear is a pale imitation of that of cis women
when we are paid the lowest wages of any gender demographic, it is a pale imitation of the smaller wage gap faced by cis women
our suffering is a pale imitation of real suffering
to be vulnerable for a second. it's painful. I want it to be ok but it isn't ok. I hope things start to get better if we keep working to make them better. I want my sisters to be ok
I talked with some friends on Discord about the Old Man River poem in Lackadaisy, and one person suggested that I post how I summed up the poem. I also expanded a little bit on some of the words in it. I really, really love this poem, it is super thoughtful and playful at the same time. I think it was a really great choice to show the audience what a creative and intelligent person Rocky is on the inside, even though he seems like someone who never thinks about anything except for causing trouble.
āOld Man River! That seems far too austere a name for something made of mirth and rage!ā
Rocky is pointing out that itās weird that someone would name the river āOld Man Riverā when itās such an exciting and intense body of water. He thinks that the name is too serious.
Austere: cold and serious
Mirth: joy and excitement
Rage: anger and aggression
āO roiling red blood river vein, if chief among your traits is age, youāre a wily, convoluted sage!ā
This is the first time Rocky compares the river to a vein, because he does it a couple of times. Heās also saying, āif being old is the most noticeable thing about you, then you must be a pretty chaotic and wise old manā.
Roiling: churning or unsettled. For example, a pot of boiling water.
Chief: most important
Wily: mischievous and clever
Sage: a wise old person
āIs āoldā the thing to call what rings the vernal heart of wester-lore?ā
Rocky is pointing out again that āoldā is a weird thing to call the river, since there are so many more interesting things about it. Heās bringing up out that the river is also very important in American folklore and myths, and has inspired all kinds of stories.
Rings: surrounds
Vernal: young or related to springtime
Lore: mythology and stories
āWhat brings us brassy, myth-made kings! And preponderance of bug-type thingsā¦ā
Again, Rocky is bringing up that the river is important to American folklore, and that it inspired legendary characters that are still popular hundreds of years later. He also comments that the river attracts bugs, which he doesnāt like as much as he likes legendary stories.
Brassy: overly proud
Preponderance: too many
āTo challenge titans come before? O demiurge to a try at Avalon once moreā
Rocky being dramatic and nerdy about old legends that are related to the river. He could also be referring to Manifest Destiny, which was the belief that the Europeans were destined by God to spread all across North America. But I donāt know if that was intentional.
Titans: giants in Greek mythology, or anything else that is extremely large
Demiurge: a higher being that creates a new world
Avalon: a mythical island paradise from a Celtic legend
āAnd what august vitality in your wide aorta stream. You must have had to oversee alchemic change of timber beam to iron, brick, and engine steam!ā
Rocky is also pointing out that the river was used to transport materials for building cities. He compares the river to a vein again, because veins deliver blood around the body, and blood is how the body spreads out nutrients and other materials, just like how the river was used to spread materials to grow the United States.
August: majestic, awe-inspiring
Vitality: power or strength
Aorta: the main artery in the circulatory system
Oversee: manage or be in charge of
Alchemic: related to alchemy, which was the medieval āscienceā of changing things from one material to another
Timber: wood
āYour umber whiskey waters lance the prideful, sober sovereignty of faulty-haloed Temperance, and wilt her self-sure countenance.ā
This is Rocky bringing up how people are also using the river to smuggle alcohol around the country. Heās saying that the riverās brown water looks like a literal river of whiskey, and that it is directly harming the Temperance movement, which was the cultural phenomenon where people shunned alcohol and got it banned.
Umber: a dark reddish brown color
Sovereignty: authority or power
Faulty: flawed, imperfect
Haloed: surrounded by a halo, which is a ring of light around an angelās head
Wilt: to die
Countenance: appearance or face
āYes, righteousness is vanity, but your sportās for imps, not elderly.ā
Rocky is criticizing the Temperance movement, saying that people enforce it because they think they are better than others.
Vanity: seeing yourself as better than you actually are
Imp: a small demon or evil spirit, or a child
āSo, if thereās a name for migrant mass of veteran frivolityā
Rocky is starting to say what he thinks the river SHOULD be named, and saying that itās true that the river is old, but it is still something playful.
Migrant: traveling, going from place to place
Veteran: old or experienced
Frivolity: a carefree attitude
āThat snakes through seas of prairie grass and groves of summer sassafrasā
He is describing how the river flows through the Great Plains.
Snake: to move or twist around
Grove: a small area filled with trees
Sassafras: a tree thatās known for its flavorful bark
āA name that flows as roguishly as wild waters, fast and free. Itās your true name, Mississippi.ā
Rocky is saying that the best name for the river is something thatās long and silly and mischievous, just like the river. He thinks that āMississippiā is the perfect name for it.
Roguishly: improperly and mischievously
Mississippi: from its indigenous name that was written down as āMichi Sepeā, which means āgreat riverā
Thank you for writing and sharing this poem in your comic, Tracy : ) I really like it and can remember it word-for-word.
Ok so I was thinking of writing RW fanfics, starting with my favourite red gay bad bitches, but I felt I should have a look at the already existing Cherrybomb fics out there so I can decide if my idea has already been sufficiently done before. But I don't wanna have to scour the Ao3 tag myself for ages. I'd like to know which ones are worth checking out.
Does anyone have any cherrybomb fic recommendations? Preferably ones that are canon-friendly or canon-adjacent. No modern or fully anthro or similar AUs preferably. Oh and Ao3/Tumblr stuff only pleaseandthankyou.
Of course if you have any other suggestions that are just flat-out amazing RW fanfics, then do recommend them too, but keep it separate from the Cherrybomb ones, oki?
Got the idea from a Tik Tok trend. Feel free to lmk if you agree or disagree! =)
NOTE: I made these collages at least a year ago, and I didnāt realize until now that borscht isnāt exactly accurate for Viktor as he is a Slovakian character, not a Russian or Polish character. If I were to redo the slides I might put Kapustnica or another traditional Slovakian dish. Apologies for the inaccuracy.
Ok so I was thinking of writing RW fanfics, starting with my favourite red gay bad bitches, but I felt I should have a look at the already existing Cherrybomb fics out there so I can decide if my idea has already been sufficiently done before. But I don't wanna have to scour the Ao3 tag myself for ages. I'd like to know which ones are worth checking out.
Does anyone have any cherrybomb fic recommendations? Preferably ones that are canon-friendly or canon-adjacent. No modern or fully anthro or similar AUs preferably. Oh and Ao3/Tumblr stuff only pleaseandthankyou.
Of course if you have any other suggestions that are just flat-out amazing RW fanfics, then do recommend them too, but keep it separate from the Cherrybomb ones, oki?
