Desiree DuBois's NSFW (mostly writing, and reblogged art and gifs) blog. Queer. Pronouns she/her. No AI! You can find me on AO3 at my1alias. My first book, a sexy companion to Jen and Éric Desmarais's "Assassins! Accidental Matchmakers", was released in 2022. Get your copy here: https://books2read.com/u/bOzBWW. Header art by @pinkpiggy93.
i do kind of wish it was legal to hire people for sex because it would be cool to he like. hey can someone help me through my intense fear of sex without judgmentj
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On fun thing about everyone using ai to do their data analysis or write articles or whatever is it's really exposing how many people weren't doing their jobs this whole time.
"We just found out that the ai tool we've been using to make business decisions for 3 months has been hallucinating all the sales data!" okay well it was stupid to use ai for this, why didn't you learn how glitchy it was before implementing it, but far more importantly, what you've just told me is that nobody bothered to check the real numbers for 3 months. "This guy has been using ai to write 9 magazine articles for us and the quoted info was all fake, he has been fired" no editor checked the first eight? "I used ai to write this report and the math was wrong" you didn't check the math? In your own report? Everyone is just telling on themselves re: how their work was always wildly unreliable and they already weren't doing their jobs.
It's because the various quality assurance jobs (editor, proofreader, tester, what have you) are often considered nice-to-have, and are usually eliminated first when there are cuts. At a lot of magazine and book publishers, editorial and proofreader positions have been rolled into one or completely eliminated for decades now; in academia, peer review is performed for free and is considered part of your duties, and often, no one looks at the data closely because ain't nobody got time for that. Even at software companies, I've seen upper management absolutely aching to get rid of as much QA as possible, and the only reason this doesn't happen more is because lazy/overworked consistently deliver untested, buggy code. SO MANY industries operate on a 'good enough is good enough' principle, and the standards for what is good enough are getting criminally low.
I love the theoretically close geographically but not having the time to travel to each other as a space for conflict but tbf it’s hard for me to see 2 hours as a really long commute😭 I’m from Moscow and 1-1,5 h is a pretty standard commute to work/university for a lot of people here so I think as a Moscow boy Ilya definitely would spend 2 hours just to fall asleep in the same bed as Shane
slaksjdjd anon thank you for broadening my cultural horizons (a person with a 15min commute), i would now love someone from ottawa/montreal to chime in just to really fully paint the picture of what shane's reaction would be when ilya says, "puck drop in ottawa is 3pm today, i can be in montreal by 9 and wait for you after your game"
but also, i asked my beloved fiancée whether she would drive two hours after an exhausting day at work to sleep in the same place and she said-- well, first she said "is this about heated rivalry", but after that she asked why they don't just get a series of apartments 30 min apart strung between montreal & ottawa so they can decide who's more tired on day of, & given that show!shane doesn't have a fuck condo i guess that IS how he could be spending that money instead
I LOVE RECEIVING INFORMATION, you are all beautiful. okay so i think this is how it goes:
---
Montreal is hosting Calgary tonight. Halfway through morning skate Ilya texts him: We have earlier puck drop, I can be at your apartment by 9.
Shane doesn't see the message until the team meeting's done, headed back home to heat up lunch. Are you crazy? he texts back, and starts the car. After a game? That's gonna take hours!
Ilya calls him. Shane hits accept and speeds up. "Do not drive here after your game," he says immediately. "Ilya. The traffic's gonna be a nightmare."
"'Hello, Ilya, good to hear your voice, you are such good boyfriend.'" Ilya's voice out of the car speakers is a drawling, sarcastic coccoon. "It's two hours, maybe two and a half? That's easy commute. Not so long."
"Not with rush hour traffic," Shane says. He hits a red light, stops with a jerk. "And the traffic from the game, and it's gonna be worse if it rains like the forecast says it might--"
"Okay, so three?" Ilya sounds unconcerned. "It's easy, Hollander, my baby can handle this." Shane happens to know his baby is an Aston Martin Vanquish. "I get through boring rush hour, I make up time--"
Green light. Shane stomps on the accelerator. "Oh my fucking god," he says to his steering wheel. "You can't, you said you weren't gonna get another speeding ticket."
"No, I didn't," Ilya says.
"You literally said--"
"Ah, that," Ilya says. "I lied."
Shane grits his teeth. Gets through a traffic circle and a stop sign. "We said we'd call later, right?" he says. "That's always nice. You can tell me all your thoughts on Calgary." Ilya has it out for a forward there, for some reason, is extra gleeful whenever Shane gets a goal against them. "Why would you want to--"
"--come see my boyfriend?"
"--get arrested, probably," Shane says over him, "for going 145 on the highway--"
"180," Ilya says, unrepentant.
"Oh, so you're not gonna get arrested, you're gonna die." Left turn, toward the parking lot. Shane should be eating his protein and complex carbs right now, not talking Ilya out of suicide. "Can you even apply for citizenship with an arrest record? What if they kick you out of the country?"
"Shane," Ilya says.
Shane puts his forehead on the steering wheel. Breathes. "Okay, they probably won't," he admits. "Still. Bad idea, Ilya."
Ilya says, quiet, "Okay."
Shane turns the ignition off, jams the phone between ear and shoulder as he goes up to the apartment. "Anyway, what brought this on?" he says. "You hate driving on the 417, you keep misreading the signs."
"Why would the exits be in French?" Ilya says, a familiar kind of aggrieved. "I come here to play hockey, learn one language, and now suddenly there's new one?"
"Can't do a lot about that, bud." Shane heats up the meal in the microwave, vented for steam, and then peels it open on the counter. "I told you I could teach you some stuff. Since you're teaching me Russian."
"They do not put the word for cock on the road signs, Shane."
Ilya had taught him that one, extensively. Shane, alone in his kitchen, goes hot all over. "Um."
"Ah, you're thinking it too."
"Stop trying to get me hard during my pre-game meal." Come to think of it: "Shouldn't you be napping right now?"
"I did," Ilya says. "Had nice plan: sleep, win game, go fuck boyfriend. And then he texts me, tells me I cannot drive or read French or get Canadian citizenship--"
Shane's laughing. "I did not, you asshole--"
"So now I am awake, very sad. Will still win game, but then there is only phone call, and I will not see my boyfriend for eight whole days."
Oh. "Because of the road trip." Shane had put together the calendar when the season schedule dropped: the days they played each other, the days only one of them had a game; and then, bleakly impossible, the away games, when they were in different cities, halfway across the continent, not even in the same timezone.
"Yes, because of the fucking road trip. And Colorado, and Vegas, stupid cities, with their stupid teams--"
"Hey, we had some nice times in Vegas," Shane says without thinking.
"Mm, we did. Which times?"
"Uh, 2015, I guess?"
"Oh, when you won MVP? Not any of the times I won?"
Shane thinks back to 2014, Ilya smoking and the taste of vodka in his mouth. "Some of them," he says. And then: "Jeez, we used to go for months without seeing each other."
"Yes," Ilya says. "It used to kill me."
Shane puts down his fork, because he can't swallow around the sudden lump in his throat. "Ilya--"
"It will be okay," Ilya says. "Like you said. It used to be months. Eight days is nothing."
"Yeah," Shane says. "Yeah. Go to sleep, okay? It's gonna be a tough game for you."
"Against Boston?" Someone who didn't know Ilya well might mistake his tone for cockiness. "I hope they've learned some new tricks since I've been gone."
Shane hangs up and finishes his pasta with chicken. Puts the fork in the dishwasher, the packaging in the trash. He could have had Ilya here, tonight. But three hours is a lot, after a game: the exhaustion in his muscles, the road unfurling in front of him in the descending dark. He couldn't do it. He wouldn't ask Ilya to do it.
Shane should be resting. He has a pre-game routine. He could do yoga, calm the flickering of his nerves. Get in the nap, the way he always does.
He opens up his laptop. There's a real estate site he has bookmarked. He filters for properties in Hawkesbury.