I think the thing that annoys me most about AI on a personal, day to day, level is what it has done to grammar checkers. If you've never done a lot of editing, or used to 5+ years ago but haven't really in the last couple years, I can't even begin to describe how fucking BAD this shit has gotten. And as an author it is EXHAUSTING.
I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.
And yeah, I can ignore all the times it's trying to get me to cut out any semblance of my own voice, or shove things into the wrong tense, or make the most random suggestions on comma usage. But if it's getting all that WRONG, what is it just straight up missing that I SHOULD be correcting? What real spelling and grammar errors are still lurking in there?
I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.
Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.
Industry standards are industry standards FOR A REASON. Having everyone on the same workflow can be crucial to getting things done effectively and correctly without creating a lot of extra work. And those things are not going to change overnight, as much as we might want them to.
Yeah, Word, let me just leave this whole chunk of dialogue without the closing quotation marks. That's the thing to do. How dare I have two punctuation marks in a row. It's not like that's how closing quotation marks fucking work.
And you know, for young writers, this has got to be so detrimental just from the perspective of opening your document and seeing a million corrections that, frankly, don't need to be there. If you're a young writer you're likely not going to have the background knowledge to know what is and isn't a good suggestion, you're just going to see a document that makes it look like you made every mistake possible so clearly you must be a terrible, stupid writer and should just give up.
That is The Point. I have to address this with my students every semester. A lot of these “AI grammar check” programs will always, always identify things that “need fixing” regardless of whether there are actually any errors in the document.
They are, I am certain, intentionally programmed that way because the user is supposed to see “errors” coming up every time they write anything and conclude that they Need the AI. That they CAN’T write without the AI. “Look how many things it fixed — I made so many mistakes — I never would have caught all this without the AI.” So they keep using it, because otherwise all their documents will be full of “errors” that they or their human proofreaders all “missed”.
I do a live “fuck Grammarly” demo near the beginning of each semester, where I give it a paragraph from a published work and point out all the mistakes it claims are there, very few if any of which are genuine mistakes of any kind. It also displays that “grammarly score”, which tends to be aggressively low, especially if the text is at all interesting or original — “let’s see what it thinks of some of the stuff you were assigned in high school English as examples of Great Works… ooh, Edgar Allan Poe gets a C, he should learn how to write.”
And, of course, any time you tell it to rewrite something, it can’t come back with “this is already good actually, you don’t need a subscription to Grammarly at all” — if given a text that is already perfectly fine, it will just randomly swap out various words for synonyms. Because it always has to Do Something. If the program makes no changes, you might decide you don’t need it. But if you’re not a confident writer, if Grammarly tells you this synonym is “better”, you’re likely to believe it.
So yeah, the people who program these things absolutely want everyone who uses them to decide they’re a Bad Writer and give up. The “AI” is supposed to be hypercritical and find problems everywhere. Because people who KNOW that they can write decent prose on their own won’t use the software.
trying not to become someone I would find annoying by becoming someone who I would find annoying. self fulfilling prophecy. and not in a cringe = free way but like a bro go to therapy way
affirmations they will not kill me at work today. it is not in my job description to get killed. if they did kill me at work that would be weird and probably not worth it for them
and just some variations. Obviously not a comprehensive list, only a few examples of how it can present in deer across species. Some of these sources contain images of dead animals (labeled DA) or outdated language for intersex conditions (OL)! Please keep that in mind before clicking the links.
First up, antlered does:
White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
So put incredibly simply, all cervids (except for water deer) are capable of antler growth, as the stem cells that generate them are present even in females. However, in those cervids (except reindeer/caribou), those cells only activate with heightened testosterone. Usually only males can produce enough, but rarely, so can a female. Their antlers tend to be spindly and narrow, if they grow larger than spikes, and remain covered in velvet year-round. They rarely, if ever drop them, unlike their male counterparts, which regrow their antlers annually.
White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)
This is most commonly documented in members of the Odocoileus genus, such as these whitetails, and in the Capreolus genus, namely western roe deer. Like the doe above, these deer are typically capable of reproducing, and often behave like other females of their species, i.e. staying in female-only herds. Their heightened testosterone can be linked to hormonal imbalances, malformed or underdeveloped reproductive organs, or tumors/cysts on their ovaries. The latter occurs most often in older individuals, and has also been documented in elk, red deer, and moose (like this cow, which was spotted with a calf near Nome, Alaska).
Alaskan moose (Alces alces gigas)
High testosterone has even been documented in the aforementioned water deer, causing does to grow elongated fangs (DA, OL). These does, like females of other species with permanent velvet antlers, were still capable of producing offspring. While they were expected to exceed the standard weight for does, they were actually smaller.
However, not all antlered does can reproduce, and not all have permanent velvet. In extremely rare cases, their antlers can harden and shed. This leads to the next set of conditions, which unfortunately I don't have pictures for: visibly intersex animals, externally, internally, or both.
A vast majority of visibly intersex deer are discovered via hunting; therefore, intersex whitetails and roe deer (DA) are (still) the best studied. These deer can have any combination of sex organs, such as an individual with a vulva, cervix, testes, and more (DA, OL). Their antlers can be velvet or hardened, though they're often malformed. They may exhibit behaviors of both sexes, including breeding behaviors; while I couldn't find much regarding their reproductive ability, most are likely infertile. There's still a lot to study regarding these guys, especially in poorly-researched species like muntjacs, brockets, and hog deer.
Finally, the most common form of intersex in deer: cryptorchidism. This is a condition where one or both testicles don't descend properly, or are otherwise malformed. It causes male deer to grow wonky antlers, referred to as "cactus antlers," "Devil's antlers," and, for moose, velericorn antlers (also used for antlered cow moose). They shed them at odd times, and, like for this individual, they might even crumble away rather than pop off cleanly.
White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) (OL)
These deer may have little interest in mating, scraping, self-urinating or other breeding behaviors due to a lack of testosterone, or even prefer the company of females year-round. They may look more feminine, like this elk found in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which I believe to be a bull with cryptorchidism or another hormonal imbalance.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Like many animals, including humans, deer have so much variation in appearance, behavior, and yes, sexual characteristics. Even with strong dimorphism, biology is never binary.
you can download current and past hi-res versions of these over at my ko-fi (ok to print for personal use): https://ko-fi.com/mxmorgan/shop/freedownloads
you can also snag shirts here which go to various orgs: https://mxmorgan.threadless.com/collections/pride
these get reposted a whole lot from here to reddit to twitter to tiktok and on and on, and i don't personally care whether or not i'm credited. i made these for everyone to use, enjoy, and find meaning in them. i appreciate folks who do credit me, but if able, please at least link to the threadless shop in the previous post - folks can get an official shirt where 90% of earnings go to trans led orgs focused on mental health (which is an important matter in general, but very personal to me) and not from a scam bot site selling AI-churned maga garbage where you probably won't get one anyway. i also suggest downloading the files from my ko-fi - they are free/PWYW and you can use them to make your own shirt, patch, embroidery project, whatever. tips are always nice, cuz i do like a pizza now and then, but never required for download.
final thought - breaking the pride tradition and more than likely won't make a new piece. the top one from TDOV is all i'm making this year. i have my focus on other projects currently and i don't want to force a poster design. these came from a specific head space and my current head space is Very Tired lmao so i wanna work on other things. 👍
“The medieval warrior, realizing the consequences of his impulsive act, immediately approached the owner of the drone and offered to pay for the damage.
The owner of the drone was so impressed by the brilliant attack that he suggested organizing a competition for bringing down “dragons” with short spears next year.
Drone owners have another year to develop a unique “dragon-like” design for their flying machines.” (x)
I am 100% cooler with this knowing that the spear-thrower realized “oops maybe I shouldn’t have done that” and tried to make it right, and that the guy who the drone belonged to was cool with it
dededos
vaporwave
kaledo-art
snowghoul
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
jbbartram-illu
