i think we need to stop focusing on telling little girls they need to be “empowered” & instead teach them about chaotic mirth, hijinks, & becoming complete rascals
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Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
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@moonlitlex
i think we need to stop focusing on telling little girls they need to be “empowered” & instead teach them about chaotic mirth, hijinks, & becoming complete rascals
I’ve been spinning like a chicken on a spit ever since I heard about the whole ‘AI generated story places in renowned Commonwealth Writing Prize’ scandal and now has come the time to regale you with my Opinions™️ about the matter, because it’s hit on some thoughts I’ve had for a while re: how I approach writing, both fanfic and original fiction… and thoughts I’ve had as a reader. long read, strap in.
tldr scandal speedrun: story by Trinidadian writer Jamir Nazir just won the Caribbean regional prize at the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize ie one of the biggest short fiction awards in the world (almost 8000 entries this year) and was subsequently published on Granta's website, as all regional winners are. readers start flagging that something is off, and it quickly becomes clear that the story is almost certainly AI generated, and obviously the press and wank started up, media coverage, and my all time favourite part: Granta editor Sigrid Rausing uploads the story into an AI to ask if an AI wrote it and then puts out a statement that pretty much says ‘probably, but guess we’ll never know!’ (SORRY THIS PART IS SOOOO FUCKING FUNNY TO ME LMFAO 😭)
much of the earlyish discourse has focused on the AI detection question, what does this mean for literary prizes going forward, how do we verify human authorship. some responses have been very good/interesting (the Africa is a Country piece especially). what I want to yap about is what the judges' response to this story tells us about how postcolonial writing is read by the institutions that gatekeep it and readers who dismiss it (and this puts it perfectly with Arundhati Roy as an example), what the judging panel’s language reveals when read as a critical object in itself, and why the failure mode here is so damaging. tldr: the story is dogshit and so clearly AI generated you can even see the AI’s ‘thought’ process, but the mainstream reactions are slagging off the wrong thing, and for reasons that have little to do with AI.
it has been actually infuriating to watch a significant chunk of the online reaction use this nonsense piece of writing as a launching pad for a much broader dismissal. someone posts the bench-men sentence or the sunrise-over-a-sink sentence as evidence of AI, and then in the replies someone else will say some shit like "well this is just what postcolonial writing is like" or "I've read prize-winning stuff that reads exactly like this". and suddenly we're not talking about Jamir Nazir anymore, we're talking about whether this entire mode of writing, postcolonial literary fiction, global south prose ‘in general’, varied and distinct language plays associated with everyone from Roy to Walcott to Kincaid, as somehow inherently gaudy, unmoored, purple, a performance of profundity that collapses under scrutiny. sheer vim against styles of writing unfairly and lazily judged as ‘florid’ and ‘overwrought’, ie people calling for the clinical manicuring of prose through a lens of anti-AI progressivism.
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theres like a yuri cambrian explosion happening
was going to further explain how in the cons ive been to over the last few years theres been a dramatic increase in yuri (both ship art and art of actual yuri manga characters and even original w/w comics from artists) and it is excellent to see us progress towards more of a balance between yuri and yaoi but tbh the phrase yuri cambrian explosion just made me think like what if an anomalocaris and an opabinia were girlfriend
its genuinely fascinating the things ai does and does not get wrong visually. it successfully makes the coil on the safety pins, but you cant seem to open either of them. the paperclips are each split into two nonfunctional bits of metal. i dont see why the 1950 bic cristal has a logo 'etched' on it but the 2025 version does not (and also the logo is a bit fucked on its own). looks like it got the vibe of bobby pins though.
also just for the love of the game (and personal curiosity): here is what i can find on when these objects were invented, what they looked like, and what they looked like at the past time listed in this image (if it is different)! with the occasional bonus of when they get to their modern form
the safety pin
there is some interesting stuff about pins comparable to the modern safety pin throughout history (here is a 1964 article about ancient fibulae titled 'ancient safety pins' ), but walter hunt is credited with the invention of the modern safety pin in 1849 with this patent filed in the us. the distinguishing features he describes being "the construction of a pin made of one piece of wire or metal combining with a spring, and a clasp or catch, in which catch, the point of said spring is forced and by its own spring securely retained."
(first image from the patent, second image is a visual representation of it from wikimedia, cropped to the example that i think is the closest to the intent of said patent.)
so not quite yet a match to modern day!
judging from my patent perusing it looks like metal covers for the pointed end came around relatively quickly. i can't find an explicit patent on them so my timeframe is just "between 1849 and 1877". (given that i found a patent filed by WA butler where he wasn't arguing that the shield concept in and of itself was novel, just the design thereof, from 4/10/1877).
i found a patent from 1878 where the metal shield is pretty much in the shape as we know it today:
(there are others that are getting there functionally, but this one has the little folded over bits we know so well).
we were pretty much there by the 20th century. a more interesting visual/confirmed brand is clinton safety pins from that era. this antique clinton safety pins box is an example of what i am talking about:
(images are better quality in the link, there are other comparable ads that they put out about it as well as other antique boxes you can find the old auction listings for). i didn't manage to dig up their specific patents but i did try. but even if they didn't make them, it looks like someone was!
the museum of everyday life has a page for "a visual history of the safety pin" which isnt quite as granular about the construction i am talking about, but has some interesting jumping off points.
paperclips
i am going to point to the office museum's history of the paperclip for if you want to learn more about the paperclip without buying one of the books people have written about it. most things online seem to be citing or match them. please assume everything i am saying is pretty much from there unless stated otherwise (because again. so many people cite them)
we actually got the ovular paperclip pretty early, but the paperclip patented in 1967 by samuel fay was actually a shaped something like a fish or a tipi depending on how dedicated to the triangle the company making it was while making it. here is a side-by-side look at that style of clip (right) by a 'standard' paperclip (left)
(picture from 'pins to paperclips' by carolyn wasser, which talks about different fastenings she was dealing with while working at her archival internship.)
again, per the office museum, the paperclip we know so well is the 'gem' paperclip, which started being sold in the early 1890s. (image below also theirs).
so i wonder if the ai recorded 'triangular' in the descriptors of the fay paperclip and got that pointed version? but at any rate, not correct.
bobby pins
bobby pins are a bit of a fun adventure in the sense that i can't definitively nail down an inventor or original year for them. they are most commonly attributed (in the sources i am finding) to luis marcus in the nebulous time frame of 'after ww1', but he did not patent them that i can find. that story seems to be the most reputable but it's a pretty low bar; this mentalfloss piece is damn near the only article that links anything when talking about other people's claims (looking at you reader's digest).
but since i am more worried about the timeline: by and large, immediately post ww1 to 1920s seems to be consistent for when, with the rise of bobs, bobbing "bobby" pins gained prominence (in the usa at least).
i see contentions that the kirbigrips of the uk were invented earlier and seemed to have been comparable enough to become synonymous over there. now i did find three hairpin related patents (1904, 1905, 1926) from kirby beard & co but i dont have a ton of information from google patents, i do not speak french, and i dont think the UK patent search lists expired patents and/or patents this old, so i do not have any visuals to confirm anything. so we will look at a picture of vintage kirbigrips and then move on to other bobby pin shenanigans. okay? okay.
(this is just from an art print site, which i think is from this stock photo. there is a similar image of almost identical packaging a lower quality on this page which made me more willing to use it.)
but at any rate, first obvious bobby pin patent i can find is this one from 1924, which notably does not contain the now ubiquitous one-bumpy-and-one-smooth side (example figures below on the the left). the first patent that i can actual find is this one filed in 1926 by s. goldberg (below on the right).
mr goldberg has quite a storied life, which i will leave for your reading pleasure/general citation, but his hump brand bobby pins from the second patent were pretty close to our modern equivalents.
both of the above images are from this ebay listing, since i can ballpark it to 1920s-30s since most visuals for hold bob bobby pins are gayla brand, which is the same company just the brand hold bob pins were sold under in the 1940s. (goldberg's widow renamed the company (and her family) gaylord in the 1940s and gayla was under that umbrella)
the only missing link as it were is the fact that it took until the 1940/50s to add the rubber tips that the ai seems to be implying and which are now very common. the patent for that was filed in 1948 and was being mass-produced by the early 1950s.
bic cristal ballpoint pens
the image is brand name, so i'm going brand name, but the ballpoint pen does predate bic so keep that in mind. bic's cristal pens have been pretty consistent since their debut in 1950. it's a whole brand thing. they simply will not shut up about it. and because it's a brand thing (especially compared to the ubiquity of the other objects) it's a bit harder to uncover manufacturing details given talking about flaws can go against the narrative they've built. last year was their 75th anniversary so i wouldn't be surprised if, in part, that was the cause of this image. (all of those links love these pens so much. its all just advertising.)
i think the broad strokes of the visual are the same, so the extra blue plastic at the bottom of the '1950' version is probably just randomly generated. my biggest conjecture from the images ive seen is that the hole in the lid was likely smaller or nonexistent (the lids appear too pointed for the hole in the modern pen). otherwise, the main thing seems to be is that the placement of the etchings varying over time. just for fun, here are some ads from the 50s and an example from the 1956 catalog.
ads are from the already linked 75th anniversary page and the cropped example from the catalog is from their ''our story'' book-length advertisement. that thing is over 100 pages.
in conclusion: i hope you like patents! i looked through them so you don't have to. unless you want to. some of those safety pins got pretty crazy. they're just making fucking shapes in wire in those early days.
Does anyone have the fucking tiktok video of the overly enthusiastic rich bearded guy showing off his new hiking shoes in his Mansion and the Woods, but then another dude duets with it to make it look like he's escaping from being held prisoner please please
edit THANKS @smellslikebot
do it scared do it stupid do it alone etc etc but don’t do it hungry. eat a snack first
haiku of despair
he wishes to acquire you
A couple of years ago I was tidying a rarely-tidied storage space, and found this painting that I bought long pre-transition (and then hid away, and eventually forgot about), because I had been captivated by the beauty of it, and wished dearly that it could be me, and settled for "in another life", and now, it's basically me (if I put my hair up):
...even down to the small boobs and big hands and that dress, and this is what I thought I could never be
@queer-joy-detector
Queer joy detected!
@this-is-trans-joy
This is trans joy!!!
the guy who wrote greek mythology
BAD BUNNY accepting the award for Best Música Urbana Album at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards.
also frankly i'm sick of this chibnall revisionism just because rtd2 is ass. "chibnall era was always so good and you guys were haters" no. no it wasn't and it still isn't.
even if rtd2 is worse than the chibnall era (i'm not sure i agree with this, at least not yet) that doesn't make the chibnall era good. 13 is still extremely out of character. the "fam" is still made up of cardboard cutouts of people. chibnall still introduced dhawan master, supposedly placed him after missy in the timeline, and undid a 3 season long character arc for the master in one fell swoop. the politics in chibnall's era were still dogshit. two writers can be bad at writing at the same time. two different creative teams can fumble the bag on doctor who.
there isn't one "villain" of doctor who. i know it would be easy if there was. but there isn't.
it's been a while since chibnall's era but you chibnall fans need to understand that even if you personally enjoyed it, it was still shit. the pro amazon episode and revealing the master's race to the nazis scene and "actually graham trying to comfort you about your cancer makes me feel kind of weird so fuck you" scene all still happened. this is out of character writing. that's not the doctor.
i think it's kind of funny that the rbs on this post are full of people explaining why they think rtd2 was worse or chibnall was worse. when my entire point was that they are both bad.
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you need to listen to rap and hiphop you need to listen to jazz you need to listen to blues and country and bluegrass or else you will be inflicted with something most foul of the soul
and if you say you do and post a video game ost you will be hexed by an evil shaman
Is a mixed variety of genres What you mean, or does it have to be specifically Those ones?
I don't like rap because it gives me audio fatigue (brain can't process everything and I get nauseous)
Cannot identify hip hop against any other "Pop" genre.
Jazz... it's alright, but I don't seek it out
I like the blues harmonica riff. I like music inspired by the blues. I do not like the blues themselves.
I genuinely do not know the difference between rock and country other than misogyny. As far as i'm concerned, metal music is just screechy country.
I have never heard of bluegrass. I'll try it but I make no promises about consistently listening
Video game OSTs are so prevalent that they inspired, like fifteen percent of the music I listen to.
If it is about genre diversity, i listen to whatever genre AJR is, indie rock/country idk, dubstep, extratone, what i've been referring to as bubblegum pop, and a number of different sounds that I don't know what they're called.
white person here, I jerk off to the goombas from super mario
so many things to think about like am i going to ignore sea devils or am i going to watch it and complain about it