stuff to think about

time to get serious

[pangur-and-grim]

I wonder if being bullied as a kid has any inoculating factors? like "I can do this now, because I could do this at 4 feet tall" type stuff. or does it just permanently make you into a quivery little prey animal? much to consider.

[pangur-and-grim]

oh yowch.

[ladytuarach]

[thebibliosphere]

I regret to inform everyone that I remain Apollo's favorite dodgeball target.

I was organizing some old Hunger Pangs files (removing the various iterations of 'untitled,' 'untitled1,' 'untitled1(1)' from my hard drive), and this excerpt from the next book, originally written in 2018, jumped out at me, hit me with a steel chair then took off after rifling through my pockets for spare change:

"We're going to run out of coffee soon," Vlad said, sounding painfully resigned, Nathan thought. "Really? It's that bad?" The vampire nodded and set down the ledger he'd been looking at. "Tea and sugar too. Among other things." He sighed. "But I suppose that's what happens when you spend years waging wars you cannot hope to win, then imposing ridiculous tariffs to try and get your way when the wars fail." He looked up at Nathan, his black eyes far too bright in the dim light, and gave a humorless laugh, his upper lip twisting to reveal a disdainful flash of fang. "But don't worry. I'm sure our glorious leaders will find a way to blame it on the refugees seeking shelter on our shores. The bastards always do."

*smacking my pattern recognition with a hammer* How the fuck do I turn this thing off?

[minnesotacore]

As your audience might know, ICE has been active on the UMN-TC campus and protesters have been detained by university police.

The University Faculty are allowing this activity, unfortunately.

But! They have a meeting called the Board Of Regents meeting on FEBUARY 12TH AND 13TH on the sixth floor of a building on the UMN Campus called McNamara hall. It's open to the whole public- PLEASE come and state your grievances. I want these goons off my campus and people should be allowed to protest freely on campus, as well

I deleted another post about this concern for a moment while I dig in for sources and verification about exactly what went down and the reprocussions folks are facing.

However this brief article is documentation of the protest referenced in the meantime. I am not certain who was detained by the U and who was detained by the MPD, as it’s my understanding both were involved, and I don’t know who was charged with what.

That being said, I think if you come to this meeting you’ll hopefully hear some first hand accounts and learn more! If you want to listen a bit to what folks are saying before speaking showing up is still important because the UMN needs to know that people care. The Right has been putting their thumb on the scales for a while now and we need to respond by showing the U that doesn’t balance out the will of the community.

[minnesotacore]

A friend who wishes to remain anonymous also added this context:

“ I used to work in UMN admin on the president’s office/BOR level, and I want people to know that attendance at BOR meetings can be make-or-break in getting the regents to take action. I was present when protestors disrupted BOR meetings for Palestine and labor union advocacy, and it put a ton of pressure on the regents and Pres. Cunningham to start listening to community voices on the issue and have more closed-door meetings with activist groups to negotiate a compromise. The regents don’t like attention on their actions, and they will start to cave if we call them out and make a fuss. If you can’t attend the BOR meeting in person, there’s a livestream: https://regents.umn.edu/meeting-materials. You can contact the BOR by email, phone, and by leaving public comments on their virtual forum: https://regents.umn.edu/contact-information. Contact the office of the president here: https://president.umn.edu/contact. The upres inbox gets overwhelmed very easily, and the president’s office staff discuss its contents at internal meetings multiple times a week. If you make yourselves heard, they will have to make the conscious choice to act or not. Force them to make that choice, and call them out for it when they do.”

The Board of Regents works to fulfill the mission of the University of Minnesota in education, research, and outreach.

Please consider joining in on this action to protect our international and immigrant students! This might be about the U but colleges and universities across the state are watching and the U is big enough to have swaying power.

[thememedaddy]

[xclowniex]

My sister who has a very jewish first name tried to join a Facebook group for mums and the mods said "with a name like that we need to know your stance on Israel and Palestine before we let you join"

I guess god fucking forbid a jewish mother tries to find community with fellow mothers unless she states her political opinion on two countries she has never stepped foot in.

[anxious-ailurophile]

notice how no one does this to any other group of "bad" people. no one ever asks someone with a russian name to give their stance on the Ukraine war before letting them in. no one ever asks someone with a Chinese name to give their opinion on the CCP and Taiwan. they only ever do this to Israelis/Jews in general.

[specialagentartemis]

2025 in Land Back

The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians purchased back 2,000 acres of deeply historically significant land in Oregon in January.

A Wabanaki food sovereignty group secured a no-strings-attached land deal to buy 245 acres of farm and forest in Maine in January.

1,327 acres were acquired by the The Houlton Band of Maliseet Indians in Maine in February.

680 acres were returned by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to the Spirit Lake Nation in North Dakota in February.

Shabbona Lake State Recreation Area (approx. 1500 acres) was returned to the management of Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in Illinois in March.

The Fort Wayne Burial Mound (a half-acre site) in Michigan was returned to the control of Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi in April.

312 hectares (770 acres) of Vancouver Island were returned to joint ownership of the Lyackson First Nation and Cowichan Tribes in May, though I think this is the land title transfer ruling that is facing legal challenges from non-Indigenous Metro Vancouver area property owners.

47,000 acres of the Blue Creek watershed of the Klamath River in California was reclaimed by the Yurok Tribe in June.

351 acres of Monument Mountain in Massachusetts were reclaimed by the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of the Mohican Nation in August.

50 acres were purchased by the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band to be put into their Land Trust in California in September.

17,030 acres were reclaimed by the Tule River Indian Tribe in California in October.

53 hectares (130 acres) were purchased back by Ngāti Toa Rangatira Māori on the North Island of Aotearoa in October.

80 hectares (194 acres) were returned to the Snuneymuxw First Nation by the Canadian government due to a ruling on treaty obligations in October.

900,000 hectares (2,223,000 acres) of land and sea were formally given over to Wuthathi, Guugu Yimidhirr, and Yiithuwarra traditional owner groups in Far North Queensland in Australia in October.

900 acres were returned to the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation in California in December.

New Zealand courts and Crown government agreed that 3068 hectares (7581 acres) of land should be returned to the control of the descendants of the original Māori owners, as well as a $420 million compensation payment, in Aotearoa in December.

The Penobscot Nation is working with the Trust for Public Land in an ongoing process to reclaim 30,000 acres of land in Maine. I am not sure if this is part of the same process that involved the Appalachian Mountain Club transferring 1,700 acres of land into Penobscot Nation control in September, but that happened too. First Light is a cool and fascinating organization coordinating and fundraising for Land Back projects in Wabanaki lands.

Added up, it doesn’t come to a lot, really. But it’s a reminder that it’s happening, that it keeps happening, and that organizations exist that are fighting for land return and environmental justice. Even if the federal governments are antagonistic, even though a lot of bad things are happening, state, local, and private actions are more powerful than they seem. And if you make regular donations to environmental protection groups, I encourage you to choose ones mentioned here that work with tribes and support land back policies!

[wafflelovingbatgirl]

There’s more too! Here’s another one I know about because I did my field school with a project partnering with this tribe:

With their largest land acquisition, the Rappahannock Indian Tribe is returning to its river

Over the past weekend, the Rappahannock Indian Tribe gathered with the community of donors, volunteers, federal agencies, conservationists a

[specialagentartemis]

That’s fantastic! I tried to keep track through the year but it’s awesome to learn of more I hadn’t known about!

[tobermoriansass]

re: your recent post abt modern au = sign of facism, i was just about to ask if you've seen this post (tumblr . co m/ sab ertooth walrus/8028 4524 0570544128) and was curious about your opinions on it - i think the OP's assertions about the "slide away from complex plotty violent work and towards kidfic and coffee shops AUs" is well. questionable at the very least but i do think the last reblog has Points re: coffeeshop AUs and the like being very sanitized surface-level fantasies but at the same time i get people wanting to read about coffee shop AUs while not wanting to read about unionbusting/long work hours/Reality of working in a coffee shop bc it's well. a fantasy world and ideally both the reader and writer know this. similar to the post abt ideologically meeting shit where it's at

something i've been thinking about lately is the line between the act of literary/artistic criticism in relation to fic and fanthropology / fandom sociology and the complexities thereof. literary/artistic criticism is useful in that it allows us to ask analytical questions about the field of the text and to pick apart the ways in which fan texts are constructed and in that process ask questions like those raised in that post i.e. what ideas are embedded in this and what do they express in what they do or do not show. however, in fandom unfortunately, the act of literary/artistic criticism rarely stops at criticism alone and immediately veers into fanthropology / fandom sociology i.e. this says something about people and fan culture. it does not attempt to historicise these works, then, in a fannish cultural tradition; it does not attempt to engage with the people behind these works and ask how they think of these texts; it barely tries to even observe the ways in which people interact with, talk about or think about these texts. this slippage produces, i think, a lot of very fine-sounding statements, but when you poke closer, look at the past and present of fandom traditions or even try to poke outside of your enclave of fandom, things can fall apart very quickly.

this is a long preface to essentially arrive at this: too many times, literary criticism is used to generate statements that often moralise in very sweeping ways about why people do what they do. as a result, conversations that could be productive and thoughtful become fraught and circular. the post you've linked is an example of just that.

is it true that the preoccupations of fandom reflect the preoccupations of broader cultural products, which in turn reflect both prevailing mindsets and cultural conditions that allow only this narrow set of cultural products to be released? yes. is it true that it works in a neat one is to one fashion? i don't think so and i think that if we're going to make glib and grand statements like that, we should argue it better.

neither of these arguments are convincing. the first (and i'm clubbing in the tags in the second screenshot here) is pretty insubstantiated. a quick gander through differing fandoms on ao3, ffnet and lj will indicate that modern aus and kidfic have always been with us and have always been plentiful, as have been the complaints about them. moreover, their distribution varies from fandom to fandom. has the op really witnessed a rise in their prevalence across the board, or have they spotted an emerging trend in a specific fandom, or have they changed fandoms? unclear! is it neopastoralist? idk, i'm not sure that we can suggest this is exactly like aristocrats writing about a fanciful imaginary of the countryside for nationalist purposes! amongst other things, you have to reckon with the following: a) you do not actually know the biography & positionality of the people writing these fics & cannot make these judgements and b) if you argue this solely on the terrain of textual criticism, you must reckon with the possibility of canons themselves containing pastoralist / romanticised tendencies which carry over into fic (is any work of popular media depicting the professions they claim to depict with any realism? i think not. some exist in more romanticised versions than others and its worth asking if that also affects how the fandom responds.)

the second argument is more substantiated and i think thoughtful for what it is as a piece of literary criticism, but unfair when it comes to what the pleasures of a coffee shop au are for both writer and reader: "These topics are Political and Depressing and Must Be Avoided, because Political and Depressing things are antithetical to this kind of escapism. ... In order to be convinced and soothed by this fantasy, you must suspend your disbelief and avert your eyes. You must filter the coffee shop through a neopastoralist lens."

i'm sort of curious about the phrasing of "convinced and soothed by this fantasy". either you are or aren't. as you rightly observe, most people aren't presenting their coffee shop aus as this strike for greater justice and politics & therefore its a bit unfair to evaluate those works on those terms! but also what is the fantasy? what is the escapism taking place? are all escapism(s) identical? is it worth interrogating what the escapism looks like? maybe! possibly! are there ways to do it in which we don't imply charged accusations about people? but here we also get into the dangerous terrain of biography right? because my question is, what is the difference between the wage worker writing a romanticised version of their work to escape from the ugliness of reality versus an upwardly mobile middle class white collar worker writing a romanticised version of a working class workspace because they have no idea about reality? do YOU as a reader know who is writing what? can you judge the conditions of their escapism without knowing these facts? what makes it different? what doesn't?

i'm not asking this as rhetorical gotcha questions, so much as questions that i've been mulling over of late, because to my mind they also exist side by side with some of the thornier questions about representation and escapism in fandom and i'm trying to work out what my thoughts are on this. bc that's the other thing right? what makes one fantasy more "radical" than the other? is realism the only route towards a radical politics? why do we think that? what really is being escaped anyway? what is it being escaped towards?

and like, if you've followed me for a while you'll know this is not a defense of cosy fiction and its politics, but more a question of how to critique with greater incisiveness and with more thoughtfulness.

full disclosure: i've read plenty of coffee shop aus in my time. i've arguably also written the depressing version of it (twice). i think its interesting that people problematise the soft and cosy romance meet cute version, but i don't think my "depressing" version of those aus is actually any more realistic! both are really just background settings for two different kinds of not very realistic spy & revenge stories even if they do feature different kinds of politics (yes even the politics of why and how the characters are where they are)! arguably, the "serious" tone may lead readers to believe that its "realistic".

at the same time, the coffee shop aus i've read generally tend to feature one or more of the characters as workers and maybe the love interest as a customer and so many times its clearly a fantasy of escape from the drudgery of work right? that instead of the dehumanising reality of customer service, suddenly you are humanised and that someone cares for you in this space of your dehumanisation. to those outside of this sphere of work, it hits very much in the same space of alienation/rehumanisation and tenderness. its romance, right? most times you are explicitly invited to identify with one of the characters and participate in this act of romance. its a fantasy space and its labelled as such: we know the journey we expect to take emotionally through this particular landscape, because the author has labelled it as such for us.

yet we return to the question: can fantasy be separated from critique entirely? is all pleasure uncomplicated? i don't know that they are! but how do you delineate between pleasure that is complicated and pleasure that is uncomplicated? aren't all pleasures complicated by the reality of politics? does it matter? what is the harm being done, if at all, in participating in this particular fantasy?

which i guess is where i come down on - and what the second person realises, but can't quite commit to. ultimately this really doesn't matter when there's no harm done. there are plenty of other far more popular and romanticised tales of coffee shops (popular tv sitcom friends, for example) that contribute to an imaginary of the happy, friendly workspace. as far as escapist fantasies go, you could do worse. i'm far more weirded out by the escapist fantasies of therapy / therapyspeak / the rituals of "communication" in fandom, which is not something i've seen an equivalent of in fiction/media - if you ask me. i'm far more worried about the harms perpetuated through political ignorance via vectors of race, gender, disability, imperialism etc in fandom and the ways in which escapism comes to function as a protective mechanism against knowing about this. are coffee shop aus part of this? maybe? i just don't think its significant enough to warrant channelling my energies in that direction.

tl;dr: great textual criticism in the second half, piss poor fanthropology, as so many analyses of fandom purport to be. if you want to analyse fandom, you have to at least be curious about why people do what they do and approach that with an open mind. and also, i do think you have to ask: am i putting the cart before the horse in hoping that controlling these fantasies will produce good politics?

[ipomoea-nil]

what’s really amazing to me is that people are so afraid of body hair on women that even in a shaving commercial they won’t show a hairy leg. they demonstrate the razor by shaving a hairless leg. they show their product being completely useless instead of showing leg hair. it’s just crazy

[viralfrog]

[lynati]

I applaud the effort that went into this seconds-long bit.

(THE LAMP IS STICKING STRAIGHT OUT FROM THE WALL!)

[thekijs]

For anyone who wants a side-by-side comparison to appreciate everything that moved, here you go:

My favourite detail is the plants on the windowsill getting rotated up sideways

[mikkeneko]

After years of living in the adulting world, I think I’ve come to a realization: Manners exist to guide you to good conduct even when you’re in a bad mood.

When you’re happy, when you’re feeling generous, when you’re pleased with your gift or your service or your outcome, it’s easy to be nice. It’s easy to tip the waiter well when you’ve had a good day. It’s easy to thank the teller or the clerk when you got what you wanted out of the transaction. It’s easy to smile and chit-chat with strangers on the road when you’re in a good mood.

It’s hard to tip the waiter when you didn’t enjoy your food. It’s hard to thank the clerk for their time when you’ve just been told there’s a problem with their account and they weren’t able to fix it for you. It’s hard to think of something nice to say when your aunt gave you a crappy sweater you neither need nor want. It’s hard to be nice to people when you’ve had a shitty day. It’s HARD.

That’s what manners are for. Scripts and phrases that you learn by rote to say when you can’t think of a single nice or good thing to say from your own volition. Yes, they’re scripted. Yes, the sentiment is empty. But the scripts work in every situation, and the emptiness provides a buffer between your own unhappiness and the rest of society.

Because most of the time, it’s not the waiter’s fault that the food you ordered wasn’t what you expected. It’s not the clerk’s fault that your account is overdrawn. It’s not the fault of the barista or the stranger on the subway that you got fired today or your favorite aunt died. But even when you can’t summon a smile or a cheery word, you can still have manners, because they will serve you the same in sunshine or rain.

[animatedamerican]

This is very wise and very well put.

[andallofthemwitches]

are you saying to live like an npc

it sounds like you’re suggesting to live like a non playable character.

[mikkeneko]

I am not kidding even a little bit when I say that if you are equating civil and humane behavior with subhuman status, that is a problem you need to fix with yourself.

[omgthatdress]

The Louvre jewels weren't stolen by some single billionaire who just wanted the jewelry for himself, they get stolen, broken down, and the big recognizable gems get cut down into smaller gems so that they can be sold like regular gems so the thieves and their criminal network can make money.

That's why people do these heists, they just want to sell the jewels.

That's why these kinds of heists are so fucking devastating, the pieces are almost always destroyed beyond recognition and never recovered.

[myeverficklemind]

♡ this explaination & the tags:

[marzipanandminutiae]

You’re a victim of a heist? Are you French? Did you work at that museum? How does this affect anyone besides the museum itself? Which, if what I’ve read about it is anything, had kinda shitty working conditions. What am I missing here that makes me and you and the rest of The People victims in this?? I’m really struggling to understand this point. It’s sad that art was stolen, sure, it sucks it might go to a private owner, but how many of The People were ever going to see it in person in the first place? The heist has probably made more people aware of its existence and importance than anything ever has. Honest to god, what am I missing?

if art is in a museum. anybody could theoretically see it. the Louvre is one of the most-visited museums in the world, my guy. could everyone see it in their lives? no. but the option was OPEN to anyone

if art is destroyed or privately owned by a billionaire who got it via shady channels. nobody- or only that billionaire and their billionaire friends -can see it again. ever

like I don't know how much clearer I can be

and there's a massive irony that so many people on the Eat the Rich website are just...okay with that

because HeeHee HooHoo Ladder and Saw. or Fuck France (International Visitors Don't Exist or Something). or I'm A Short-Sighted Asshole Who Doesn't Acknowledge Any Art Besides Paintings and Statues whatever

museum heists are not Robin Hood plays. museum heists are not Eating the Rich. museum heists are FEEDING the rich art and cultural heritage that previously, anyone could theoretically see and learn from and be inspired by

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

"the world isn't kind" ok??? Much more importantly are you?????

[whatsupwalnut]

"the world isnt kind" skill issue. I am

[inkieswirlsgaming]

This is a threat

[lierdumoa]

RE: AI Slop on AO3 and The Function of Rulemaking

I think there's an ideology clash taking place with regard to the whole "should AO3 ban AI" debate, and it's not between the people you'd think.

Like, you'd think the debate would be between between pro-ai people and anti-ai people.

But actually it's between pragmatists and, uh, let's call them evangelists for lack of a better word.

The pragmatists will say, "Well there's no point in instituting a rule we can't possibly actually enforce—rules that can't be enforced are meaningless!"

The evangelists will counter, "The point is to make a statement. Even if the rule is only symbolic, putting one on the books presents an ideological front against ai slop. Even if we can't litigate this stuff off the problem, having a rule might at least shame and peer pressure people into posting less of it, less blatantly.

.

This is one of the things that really differentiates AO3 from other places on the internet.

The rules on AO3 are actual rules. They exist to be enforced. If they could not be enforced, they would not exist.

Sites like xitter and tiktok are full of rules that are not actually rules at all, but merely political messages.

For example, tiktok made a rule a while back banning omegaverse content, so they could make a statement to their advertizers that their website is a "child friendly" space. But they didn't actually try all that hard to enforce the rule. They made a paltry effort to hide some omegaverse posts from direct search results, but they didn't have a lot of financial incentive to actually drive all the omegaverse posters off tiktok. Those posts still bring traffic to their platform.

These websites might occasionally make an example out of someone to make it look like they're doing something, but the point isn't to actually do something. The point is to look like they're doing something.

[makingqueerhistory]

Queer history includes porn.

Queer pornographers, queer sex workers, queer collectors, and queer pornography enjoyers, are a part of queer history. Archiving queer history includes protecting porn. You cannot separate the history of queerness from pornography, stop trying.

[curiositysavesthecat]

Do you think AO3 should ban AI generated works?

Yes

No

I don't use AO3 / I don't know what AO3 is

Voting ended onOct 18, 2025

*As of now, AI generated works are allowed on the site

This poll was submitted to us and we simply posted it so people could vote and discuss their opinions on the matter. If you’d like for us to ask the internet a question for you, feel free to drop the poll of your choice in our inbox and we’ll post them anonymously (for more info, please check our pinned post).

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

Not a fan of AI, but "do you think AO3 should ban" never actually solves a problem. Because how can you tell what's AI and what's human made? It is extremely hard to tell, and going around accusing authors of using AI — just because you suspect they do — does more harm than good. Chances are that you're accusing real writer of being AI and ruining their day at best, making them quit writing at worst.

And the act of banning never stops something from existing. It only makes it more difficult to find and avoid. Tumblr bans porn, but you can still find porn on Tumblr. The only difference is that they're no longer tagged as porn, which means you're more likely to stumble upon them because blocking the tags no longer works when they are not tagged as porn.

The same applies to AI generated works on AO3. For now they are tagged as "AI generated". You can avoid them if you don't want them.

Once they're banned, people will no longer tag them as AI, which means you have more chance of unknowingly reading and leaving kudos on AI.

Also, no, unless an author says "this was written by AI" you cannot tell for sure if something was written by AI. Em dashes aren't evidence of AI. Long and overly described paragraphs aren't evidence of AI. Real human writers do write like this and AI was trained to mimic real humans' works.

If AO3 bans AI, you will be dealing with witch-hunting, genuine writers getting wrongly accused of using AI, and AI works no longer being tagged as AI (meaning they are almost impossible to avoid and no for sure if something you read is AI)

[alex51324]

This, yeah. I don't like AO3 having AI-generated works, but I don't think that a ban is going to help. It's not enforceable, and trying to enforce it would not only get ugly, but also tie up a lot of resources that the AO3 team would be better off using for improvements that are realistically achievable.

[runawaymarbles]

And there's no way for the Policy and Abuse volunteers to definitively say if something is AI generated, the way they can say "this fic is the same as this other fic but with the names changed". Lots of fic plots are recycled. Lots of people are writing in their second language. There are recurring phrases that appear in fic more than other places. Lots of people are writing their first story ever.

The witch-hunts would be bad but at the end of the day there would be no definitive guidelines for the volunteers reviewing the works to tell if they're in violation or not. Not to mention the grey areas; what if the outline is AI but the writing isn't? What if they only outsourced parts of it? What if it's heavily edited after? How much is too much?

Some places have rules for show, that aren't actually enforced; AO3 is not one of those places.

[myeverficklemind]

yes, I don't want ai generated works on so3 but it is better to have them than to try to ban them when the echnology to do so does not exist. For all the reasons above