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Asexuality in science fiction

A resource guide

Hello! So a while ago, I mentioned a resource guide for asexuality in science fiction. It includes resources for information about asexuality, asexual creators, non-fiction, fiction databases, fiction, writing asexuality, and writing sci-fi. There's a decent amount of aromantic resources included too bc a lot of resources included both. Also, there's a wide variety of types of resources:

Come and check it out! Both high and lower quality versions included:

Asexuality in sci-fi: a resource guide - Google Drive

(Tagging a couple of people who said they were interested, sorry if you didn't want to be tagged: @snowshinobi @studyofwhump)

innerchildabortionclinic

I present my "stop viewing wives and children as property" strategy to crime preventers but they are unmoved

sophibug

There have been at least 227 cases since 2020 of a person, most often a man, killing multiple family members in unthinkable acts of domestic

Link to the article mentioned in the screenshot

nemertea

"Jakob, his mother Greta, and sister, Emma, were murdered" not "Greta and her two children, Jakob and Emma, were murdered." not "Emma, Greta and Jakob Mumper were murdered" certainly not "Emma, her mother Greta, and brother Jakob, were murdered"

the bit where even in the fucking news article about family annihilation only Jakob gets to be an independent person, and the women are defined by their relationship to a man is a not-insignificant part of why this keeps happening

kosmocrator

“The ad was in a women’s magazine and if I remember correctly, was for a perfume. It featured a white woman lying in bed with a black man. The man’s shirtless back was to the viewer, making only his taut, muscular form and powerful-looking arms and shoulders visible. He was faceless, unidentified. The woman looked sultrily at us from over his mysterious form, satisfaction writ large over her features. She had partaken of whatever delights this man had to offer and was smugly, luxuriantly basking in the afterglow. The ad copy was, “Take a walk on the wild side.” My teacher used the ad as an example of how marketers can use certain words and images to convey large amounts of information subtly and effectively. A white woman having sex with a black man? How risqué. The implication: be a little like that woman. Spray on that perfume and feel like the kind of girl who has sex with faceless, muscular black men in ritzy hotel rooms because it’s an adventure, a thrill, a risk, something illicitly pleasurable. These are the semiotics of race. This is why columnists will trip over themselves not to call Lupita Nyong’o or Angela Basset “beautiful”, choosing instead to use terms that call to mind a kind of savage, animalistic magnetism: fierce, striking, edgy, eye-catching. Words like “pretty” and “beautiful” and “cute” are for white women whose bodies and sexualities are not seen as wild, animal, or untamed. Black men are hulking, threatening, thuggish; white men are charming, sexy heartthrobs with hearts of gold. Brown women are exotic, with their “honey-coloured” skin and their “mystical”, “enchanting” beauty, unlike their white counterparts, who are held up as not only ideal, but knowable and safe. White people are beautiful; non-white people are dangerous.”

—

“The Semiotics of Race, or: Walks on the Wild Side”

by Aaminah Khan

(via haramdaddy)

vickisigh

hey i like ur vibe :] 🎧🎵⭐💕

✮ limited edition sticker sheet ✮

vickisigh

2 WEEKS LEFT to get this sticker sheet on my patreon! available only for the month of july! ✨💌

errorschacha

Sorry for walking around muttering “heads on pikes, heads on pikes” so much lately.

breelandwalker

JSTOR Articles on the History of Witchcraft, Witch Trials, and Folk Magic Beliefs

This is a partial of of articles on these subjects that can be found in the JSTOR archives. This is not exhaustive - this is just the portion I've saved for my own studies (I've read and referenced about a third of them so far) and I encourage readers and researchers to do their own digging. I recommend the articles by Ronald Hutton, Owen Davies, Mary Beth Norton, Malcolm Gaskill, Michael D. Bailey, and Willem de Blecourt as a place to start.

If you don't have personal access to JSTOR, you may be able to access the archive through your local library, university, museum, or historical society.

Full text list of titles below the cut:

breelandwalker

Bringing this back around for people who want free research material.

Also, since the time of the original post, JSTOR added a free membership option that allows users to access something like 100 articles a month. (Thanks @jstor!)

scribefindegil

everyone who is not currently in the process of moving please pause and take a moment to be grateful that you're not currently in the process of moving

conservethis

I just got a very big and expensive piece of furniture installed in my house, so hell yeah I’m glad I’m not moving. It’s a wallbed!

xendiyatrix

Cyber board

frociaggina97

"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

frociaggina97

i know a lot of people study just to get paid well but girl this is engineering be for fucking real take this seriously

ironborealis

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.

comicgeekscomicgeek

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.

doublewindsor

Cool Canadian history moment 🇨🇦:

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 didn’t earn your ring. How fucking dare you accept one.

prismatic-bell

I'm just thinking of this:

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?

importantcatpics

ancientgeek

tiredfoxtf

Shout out to this person's meat craving bunny.

bobacupcake

its a mystery

captainhaterade

Found this on instagram and now I’m gonna be singing it all day:

(@thepacificpals on insta)

theresattrpgforthat

Do you happen have anything that's about food, but in the way that Dungeon Meshi is about food? (defined to me as, classic(TM) adventure but with food as a central feature) Generally food-centric games would be welcome too!

Theme: Dungeon Meshi, Food Adventures.

Hello friend, I am very excited about this week's request! I have some recommendations that have been simmering in the back of my head for a while now - a few of which can be used in the game of your liking!

Bakto’s Terrifying Cuisine, by Roll 4 Tarrasque.

"The entrance to the Kitchen Arena appears only to those hungry or foolish enough to find it. Perhaps a dusty pantry in a backwater restaurant, or a forgotten refrigerator in the basement of a busy hotel. The door closes behind you—it never opens again. At the bottom of a long set of pristine stairs, Bakto awaits."

Bakto’s Terrifying Cuisine is primarily an adventure for The Vanilla Game, which is free to play, but it strikes me as pretty system-friendly. You are all responsible for creating a dish for a hungry demon, and are provided with a dungeon map as well as descriptions of what waits for you in each room. The pamphlet also comes with 10 terrifying ingredients and 6 possible treasures, as well as a d6 table of random encounters. There’s so much packed into just 2 pages!

While this is probably only good for a one-shot or a two-shot, I think it’s definitely worth it. If you end up liking this game and want more from the same creator, you can also take a look at To Catch A Hellforged Swine, a system-agnostic adventure about hunting a cursed pig.

Gourmet Street, by theunlawfulneutral.

Gourmet Street is a setting that can be plopped directly into any world or adventure and serves up an extra side of gonzo fantasy. It is populated with street vendors serving every possible food you can conceive as well as a fascinating accoutrements of culinary artifacts, edible monsters, and bizarre dishes.

Another setting rather than game, Gourmet Street is great for OSR games like Knave or The Black Hack, but also works in games such as AD&D. It’s a street vendors’ alley, rife with rival factions and dangerous foods, as well as a series of custom, culinary-related monsters to throw at your players. There’s roll tables for dishes and their effects, as well as some descriptions of major food factions, including their defining characteristics, their advantages and disadvantages, and a quick summary of their values or goals. If you want the culinary process to be stick, dangerous, unpredictable and full of slime, this is the setting for you.

Iera Entera, by Nathan Blades.

In this world, Divine Beasts roam the land. Delivered to us from otherworldly realms, they lord over the grounds they manifest on. They’re incredibly violent, are replaced in mere days after being removed, and are capable of supernatural powers.

They’re also delicious.

This game takes the idea of eating monsters and turns it up to 11. You’re not just eating dungeon creatures - no, you’re hunting down Divine Beasts. The game is split into two sections - working out how to bring the Divine Beast down, and then figuring out how to cook the damn thing. If you are playing with folks who are familiar with Dungeon Meshi, I imagine they would have a lot of fun ideas about how to cook the entrails of a great beast, but there’s also three or four suggested beast hunts in the game itself to get you started.

Cook & Hero, by Raul Fontoura.

You’re an aspiring master cook, in a face off competition amongst worthy rivals to create the perfect dish. Unfortunately, you’re supposed to make it out of scary and scaly monsters in very dangerous underground conditions.

This is another pamphlet game, similar to Bakto’s Terrifying Cuisine, but the tone is very different. In Bakto’s, players are on the clock to satisfy a dangerous enemy. In Cook & Hero, the art conveys a more lighthearted competition, even if your character decides that it’s a matter of life or death. The 2-page game comes with some simple character creation, and the resolution uses a roll-under mechanic with a d10. It feels like it takes a number of cues from Honey Heist, but it’s definitely a distinct game.

Ghastronomy, by Timepool.

You are a ghastronomer, a chef that doesn’t cook for the living— but for the dead. You have been hired to help guide a ghost to the afterlife, by collecting the lost pieces of its soul and cooking ghostly grub to make it whole again.

Alongside your co-workers, you will arrive on the scene and use your cooking credentials and what you learned from each of your ghastronomy schools to find, obtain, and cook a wayward spirit's remaining traces. With proper planning, teamwork, and a little bit of luck— you might just piece its soul back together before it fades away forever.

Ghastronomy looks fairly easy to learn, with an interesting apron mechanic in which your apron is also a shield. You’ll also probably all have different styles of cooking, as each character will come from a different culinary school. If you like the idea of cooking for more than just survival, and you want to incorporate the paranormal into your game, this might be for you!

Lutong Banwa, by Sinta Posadas / Diwata Ng Manila.

Lutong Banwa is a cooking game, where you set out to adventure and find ingredients from Spirits and recipes from old civilizations. Embark on this anti-canon storygame adventure with its own custom system and play to find out just what sort of zany adventures you can get up to in this weird, wild world. Do whatever you want.

Lutong Banwa feels like a cozier game than some of the others on this list, and I enjoy the perspective it brings to the genre. You are playing tamale, the successors of the earth after Humans have faded to history, trying to replicate old world dishes. Your characters will use a number of different-sided dice, depending on which stats they use, and what strengths they have. Rather than character death, your characters simply have a limited number of chances to complete a task before they are forced to rest for a day or so. Altogether the game encourages creative thinking and playing outside the box. I think this is an extremely charming game and you absolutely should check it out.

bebewrites

genAI companies are now buying up rare and antique books so they can scan them and use them to train their AI. then they're destroying the books afterward.

AI companies are quietly obtaining rare books, ingesting their contents, and then destroying them -- even if they're exceedingly rare.

they've had to face settlements against stealing from current authors, so they'll just go for the old books now. they're also doing this so they have the only copies of rare books.

they're taking water, power, natural resources for their data centers. they steal. they're book burning, essentially. i'm just so angry, i'm at a loss right now.

twizzlersandvanillacoke

From the article:

"One small book seller said that in April, he suddenly went from selling no more than 20 books a week to hundreds, and he’s almost certain that the customers are AI labs, noting the random selection of the books and how they all have ISBNs. He added that his inventory is full with rare and out of print books, meaning that an AI company could be destroying some of the few remaining copies that can be found.

“I personally have mixed feelings about all of this,” the bookseller told 404. “It benefits me financially as well as by clearing out old inventory that is otherwise unlikely to sell. I’ve been well-suited for these sales with inventory from overseas and foreign language books.

From a Google search:

PISBN allows publishers, retailers, and libraries to track and manage books more efficiently. Each ISBN corresponds to one specific edition of a publication, making it essential for smooth global circulation.

ralfmaximus

Oh god. Oh god. This physically hurts. It's nauseating.

But also.

Scanning out-of-date science books is going to make your AI worse. Scanning out-of-date geography books is outright stupidity. Plate tectonics wasn't even accepted science until 1967. Two years before we landed on the moon.

Also also: language evolves. Do you really want your LLM digesting text written in a style nobody writes or speaks anymore? Try reading a newspaper from the 1970s and you'll occasionally stumble over phrasing. Now try the 1930s. And that's less than a century ago.

What the fuck is WRONG with these people?

movementnudge

Movement nudge, hand mobility! 🙌

X

ruffboi-mags

1) do this even if you're under 40. seriously. I definitely should have been doing something like this for years and I only turned 40 a month and a half ago

2) if you're like me just now trying this going "oh god i've only done 15 and i think my hands are cramping" start lower than 30 and increase by 5 once whatever number you're doing no longer makes your hand cramp up. I can manage about 15 per exercise at the moment.

creations-by-chaosfay

If you're hypermobile, be especially gentle.

sunspotpony

Yeah I have Hypermobility and tried these and immediately fucking hurt my hand real bad.

yokowan

dont store a knife with the point facing down, it damages the blade. no, dont do that either. when you store it with the point facing up you might accidentally hurt yourself when you try to grab it. dont store a knife at all actually. your blade must never leave your hand, always ready, ruthless and waiting. you know deep down that ever since you learned the stench of blood you will never be able to cast it aside. or just get a sheath for it i guess.

i-give-you-a-fish

You get a Green Swordtail

Xiphophorus hellerii

queer-as-city-folk

Photo shopping my friends cat onto the sex and magic flag

queer-as-city-folk

I wish Instagram had tumblr style asks so I could send these to said irl friends

queer-as-city-folk

Dog is Cats

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