welcome to my haunted tower

silly little crow • chaos gremlin extraordinaire • i'm magpies and pop rocks and funky patterned socks • swamp goth • eater of books • mediocre photographer • occasional dabbler in the arts • d&d is important to me • air sign triple threat • i really like frogs and corvids and most birds honestly • i reblog things i like credits to my icon image

[decompose1]

ohhhh shit. target is recalling their up & up baby wipes (fragrance free & fresh cucumber scented) because they're contaminated with Burkholderia cepacia complex and Burkholderia gladioli, multiple people are reporting discoloration & infections. i just got a call about it cuz i had purchased those but i've already gone through them 😅 so no refund for me. but im fine. if you have these they're saying you need to immediately stop using them and bring them back to target for a full refund. this bacteria can cause life threatening infections in children/infants and people with compromises immune systems (ESPECIALLY cystic fibrosis!!) and i know lots of other chronically ill people follow me!!!!

[decompose1]

Hold on i should've been more specific.

First: THIS RECALL IS NOT STATE SPECIFIC. IT IS NATIONWIDE.

here are the specific products and dates:

FDA page on this:

Target Recalls Up & Up Fragrance Free and Fresh Cucumber Scented Baby Wipes Due to Potential Microbial Contamination

Target is voluntarily recalling Up & Up Fragrance Free and Up & Up Fresh Cucumber Scented Baby Wipes following customer complaints of produc

[its-funnytwittertweets]

[dragonpyre]

[sevastiel]

[cosmonaut775]

Hey do y’all remember when Boeing fucking killed a guy last year. And we all said “huh I guess Boeing fucking killed a guy” and then went on with our lives. And everybody knew that Boeing had fully just fucking executed a guy and nothing came of it. Like there was no police investigation no justice no nothing. Like literally EVERYBODY knew that Boeing had full on murdered a guy to silence him and there wasn’t any consequences for them. Kinda crazy.

[flamiemoonfox]

and there was even less talk when openai did the exact same thing more recently

[flamiemoonfox]

So for those who are, very understandably uninitiated on this story:

On 23 October last year (2024) the New York Times published an interview with former OpenAI researcher Suchir Balaji who worked on organising and gathering data for OpenAI until 2022 when he begun thinking about the morality of it. He eventually came to the conclusion that what OpenAI is doing blatantly violates copyright law and decided to leave the company altogether in August 2024.

After he came out with this accusation he was set to appear in court to testify against OpenAI’s data-gathering practices, something which had the potential of being a complete disaster for the company and the generative AI industry as a whole.

That was until 26 November, just days before he was due to appear in court, when he suddenly and mysteriously was found dead inside his own apartment. Investigators concluded that the death was self-inflicted, something which his family has disputed.

There was also “sign of struggle in the bathroom and looks like someone hit him in the bathroom based on blood spots”, and his apartment showed signs of having been ransacked for evidence: “The pin drive is missing. His computer was messed up.”.

Overall it feels pretty clear-cut what happened, that is to say that OpenAI had him killed because he was a legitimate threat to their business, indicating that they are fully aware that the way they’re gathering data is completely illegal.

Sources:

Alys Davies, 14.12.2024, OpenAI whistleblower found dead in San Francisco apartment. BBC News

Barney Davis, 16.1.2025, Suchir Balaji’s family demand outside investigation into OpenAI whistleblower’s death. The Independent

Cade Metz, 23.11.2024, Former OpenAI Researcher Says the Company Broke Copyright Law. The New York Times

[ralfmaximus]

Boeing killed two whistleblowers, in March and May of 2024. Both were set to testify about safety violations.

[free-parking-blog]

Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991

[The work] consists of a pair of inexpensive, plain-faced wall clocks, ticking away side by side. The instructions for installation insist that the two be set at exactly the same time, but because of their imprecise mechanisms, it is only a short time before one of the clocks falls a second or two behind the other. “The beauty of the piece is that it is a very perfect image of what a couple is, trying to stay on the same page but never actually being able to,” says Molesworth. (via)

Gonzalez-Torres dedicated the work to his lover Ross Laycock, who died of an AIDS-related illness the same year.

[fire-plug]

Personality hire

Working Cats

[jeanjauthor]

Sometimes you really need a good personality on your staff.

[narwhalsarefalling]

[pinkasketch]

Shut up m'dudes, it's a national holiday

[quadriviummuse]

Happy Kermie Day to all who celebrate!

[meaniezucchini]

the contrast between how gandalf and saruman spend the beginning to fellowship is so funny

[girlsludged]

please consider writing to Prarieland defendants Autumn Hill and Meagan Morris, they are both trans lesbians incarcerated in men's prisons for protesting an ICE facility

prosecution established affiliation by way of defendants having fucking anarchist zines, the kind of shit you see in a punk house. this is what they want and are willing to pursue for all of us who aren't willing to lay down and die, imprisonment and torture and the absolute stripping of our dignity (the govt gleefully included their deadnames in a press release yesterday; Morris' public defender has consistently deadnamed and misgendered her despite her legal name change)

there is no one who will protect us except us, and if our sisters are lost to us and forgotten as soon as they are grabbed by the prison system (ie if the system is allowed to work as intended) then we are failing, and we are woefully unprepared for a world where they start taking more of us

Autumn Hill - Support the Prairieland Defendants

Autumn is a loving wife and is interested in religious history and mythology. Write to her at FMC Fort Worth.

Meagan Morris - Support the Prairieland Defendants

Meagan Elizabeth Morris is loved by her wife housemates, and dogs. Her name was legally changed in 2007, but the federal complaint used her

[vehder]

i miss u so much (pre ai internet)

[only-cat-memes]

[fluffmugger]

[ryan-sometimes]

LMAOOOO

[furnishedfurnace]

"I have a problem with my trans son. Not because he's trans, but because he inhaled all our food like fucking Kirby."

[monidoll]

its kinda hard to celebrate trans day of visibility because the visibility we're getting lately is like

[yet-another-heathen]

[yet-another-heathen]

[mudwerks]

AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.

AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They’ve warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic’s AI training now threatens to “financially ruin” the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.

well…darn

[flippyspoon]

like to charge reblog to cast financial ruin of the AI industry 🔮

[novella-november]

originally posted August 8th, 2025.

Authors have until March 30th, 2026 (That is just 9 days as of this reblog, which I am posting on March 21st, 2026) to file their claim against Anthropic to be reimbursed up to $3,000 per work found in the list.

What Authors Need to Know About the $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement

Updated February 18, 2026 IMPORTANT: The Claims Deadline Is March 30 Background  Bartz v. Anthropic is one of the major copyright lawsuits b

Please click the above link for all of the exact details of how to file a claim and to check for your works, and share this post as far and wide as you can before March 30th, 2026!

[shi1498912]

!!!SIGNAL BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOST!!!

[beanbagbuddies4life]

The magic of a scorching summer evening

[sierraveree-art]

[yubriamakesart]

we’ve been drinking a lot of tea lately.

[yubriamakesart]

update:

[arliedraws]

Dude, I almost cried yesterday because of AI. I can’t grade anymore without getting upset because of how much kids are using generative AI. How can I assess their ability to think critically when they aren't thinking critically? One kid admitted he used ChatGPT on an assignment, and he was like, "So? Is my answer right?" And I was like, first of all, whether or not it's "correct" is not the problem, and ALSO, it was INCORRECT. Like...majorly so!

They can’t fucking think for themselves (or rather, they’re losing the ability). This is not “ooooh technology scary” -- this is a fundamental, they can't fucking answer questions when I ask them to their faces. I fucking HATE when my colleagues roll their eyes and say, "Well, this is how we felt about phones! Just accept it!" First of all, it's different. And TWO! We're FUCKING FIGHTING PHONES every day! We've literally banned all cell phone use during class in my district because letting kids use their phones and not fighting their use in class FUCKED US OVER, and now we have to FIX IT.

Okay, but also, kudos to Tumblr, the weirdo website, and our anti-AI stance here because my weirdo queer kids are the ONLY ONES who are STAUNCHLY against gen AI; they're the only ones reliably not using AI. Dear children of Tumblr, thank you for being little weirdos who give a shit.

[grungekitty-77]

It was a slightly different situation, but it's translatable. This became a stable for me.

I asked my students if it's nice/helpful/good/acceptable/normal to help someone else lift something really heavy they were struggling with. Of course they agree! Then I asked them if it would still be (or explain to them that it isn't) nice/helpful/good/acceptable/normal to help someone lift heavy weights if they are working out at the gym. The answer is no! Because the POINT is that it's hard to do alone! That's why it makes you stronger! (Plus it gives the kids a very funny and therefore memorable visual for the concept. You can play into it and have a laugh with the kids at how weird someone would be if they did that!)

I often used "Don't lift their weights!" as a shorthand when a student was trying to give another kid the right answer.

Anyways, AI is lifting your weights for you. If you go to gym everyday and have a robot lift the weights for you, are you going to get any stronger? Even if you are going to the gym and "lifting weights" everyday? Even if the robot was really good at it? School is the gym for your mind. It's hard for the same reason gym weights are heavy.