I am become GORG

The Destroyer of Words

[cellspex]

Normalize this response

[nom---nom]

[titllytop]

[rawr-gorg-smash]

In my view, this is the kind of “gateway” activity that is worth triggering a response.

It’s pretty unusual for someone to be intentionally abusive to animals and also unlikely to intentionally harm people and/or society.

Puppy mill owner? Likely to defraud humans in future without intervention.

Deliberately neglecting animals? Likely to neglect humans in future without intervention.

Animal torturer? Likely to graduate to humans in future without intervention.

Now, these interventions should be rehabilitative and not merely punitive. For example, hoarding disorders should be grounds for a “not guilty by reason of insanity” defense, so the intervention is that the animal hoarder can get court-mandated mental health assistance until they have their condition under control. Not every animal abuse example is deliberate, but even when deliberate, rehab beats punishment every time.

I grant you, this would all require a functional justice system and social safety net to do perfectly. However, I see a value to saying, as a society, that this sort of crime should be considered an early catch to potential escalation.

[theapollosystem]

this is how i feel sometimes

[bogwarg]

Homestead Greys In Star Trek DS9

I recently started watching Deep Space 9 and it brought the biggest smile to my face to see Sisko wearing a Homestead Greys hat.

The Homestead Grays were a Pittsburgh-based Negro league baseball team that played in the Negro National League from 1922 to 1948…

The Homestead Grays were one of the most successful Negro league baseball teams, winning multiple championships in the Negro National League. The Homestead Grays weren’t inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame UNTIL 2006 (almost 60 years later!). The teams primary owner was inducted 60 years after his death. They were one of the best baseball teams PERIOD… They won nine straight league titles 1937-48. So seeing one of the characters in a show from the 90’s represent this team years before the baseball hall of fame even did made me so happy… The record stats from the Homestead Greys weren’t put into consideration into baseball history until this year! The Homestead Greys had some of the best baseball players of all time on their team.

As someone from Pittsburgh seeing this team represented in something as impactful as Star Trek made me so happy. Whoever did the costuming for Star Trek Deep Space 9, excellent job.

EDIT: I’ve read some of the tags and from my understanding it seems like it was Avery Brooke’s idea to include the Homestead Greys cap in DS9. Atm I am unable to confirm that. Either way, that’s so fucking cool and really has added a lot to the show for me!!

[diana-andraste]

Meanwhile in Greenland...

[sweetteaanddragons]

Thinking about the soulgaze in the Dresden Files.

That people have strong reactions to soulgazing Harry makes sense; a lot of them have never done it before at all which likely makes their reactions stronger, and there's plenty of things to plausibly make it a frightening experience in Harry's head in particular: soulgazes have been shown to reveal trauma (of which he has much), psychic damage (of which he has much), residues of dark magic (of which he has plenty), and the kinds of things a person is capable of (of which Harry has a wider and broader variety than he is proud of).

And, to top it all off, I increasingly suspect that this starborn thing means that anyone who soulgazes him is getting a little peek of the Outside.

All that said, I think it's remarkable that people have, after looking at the representation of Harry's soul, repeatedly thrown up, fainted, or outright fled, and Harry's reaction to this has just been, "Haha. Yeah. I try not to think about that too much!"

Because. These are not normal reactions! Harry has soulgazed some frightening people and not reacted this way! How does it not do terrible, terrible things to your self perception to have people react this way to your soul!

[amanita-jack]

[memeengine]

Scott McCloud’s incomparable “Understanding Comics”.

I swear you can open this book to any page and it’s amazing.

(ps it’s actually a digital image of a printed copy of a drawing of a painting of a pipe)

[gallusrostromegalus]

Highly recommend scott mccloud’s “understanding comics” as an introduction to all forms of visual media, but especially educational work like scientific illustration because the man does have a handle on some of the funkier stuff that happens when a viewer tries to interpret an image.

Also reccomended: james gurney’s “light and color”. The man did Dinotopia he knows what the fuck he’s talking about.

[meret118]

MS Word is Using You to Train AI

How to turn off AI-scraping from your Word documents

Microsoft Office, like many companies in recent months, has slyly turned on an “opt-out” feature that scrapes your Word and Excel documents to train its internal AI systems. This setting is turned on by default, and you have to manually uncheck a box in order to opt out.

If you are a writer who uses MS Word to write any proprietary content (blog posts, novels, or any work you intend to protect with copyright and/or sell), you’re going to want to turn this feature off immediately.How to Turn off Word’s AI Access To Your Content

I won’t beat around the bush. Microsoft Office doesn’t make it easy to opt out of this new AI privacy agreement, as the feature is hidden through a series of popup menus in your settings:On a Windows computer, follow these steps to turn off “Connected Experiences”:

File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Privacy Options > Privacy Settings > Optional Connected Experiences > Uncheck box: “Turn on optional connected experiences”

[cara-delaney-author]

Gonna yell about it again...

If you do not absolutely need Word (for work or school or a functionality that exists literally nowhere else), just stop using it.

For a 1:1 Word replacement, I'd always recommend LibreOffice. There's also a version of OpenOffice still around, though it updates at a slower pace.

If you're a fiction writer and would like to switch to a dedicated novel writing software, the free options tend to be a bit limited. However, there is SmartEdit Writer, which looks a lit like a slimmed-down Scrivener (which is pretty much the writing app, but has a one-time cost).

Most people don't need Word. It's just what's familiar. And even there, LibreOffice is very similar in design. It will also generally read your Word docs out of the box. The switch really isn't hard, I promise.

[fixyourwritinghabits]

By all means, yell as much as you want.

[thememedaddy]

[gardenxkisses]

[unsolids-your-snake]

Dresden files! Yeah, i hated it

YOU WHAT

Boy we finna FIGHT

No but really, why? Just not your style? Butcher too horny for violent women? 😅

[deepfriedanon]

I need to read Butcher. Last Calls was fun.

[2urban2fantasy-deactivated20241]

It’s fun, it’s the literal standard of urban fantasy, but as OP says, it is indeed almost unbearably horny

[deepfriedanon]

Good, it can give me a reference for too horny. I've been looking for that

[unsolids-your-snake]

It's absolutely wonderful, but also, Jesus Christ it's horny 🤣🤣🤣

[borgesperovago]

But in a potable way. As horny as you'd expect a single dude in his 30s and in a dead end job be.

Also, having Micheal fighting back the horny as fiercely as he fights ghosts and dragons is a delight to read.

[unsolids-your-snake]

He has like four serious relationships and two children during the series, how single IS he 🤣

[borgesperovago]

As single as he is at Summer Knight so shush

[unsolids-your-snake]

Lolllll it's my favorite series and Dresden is my favorite boy, but I'm totally happy to make fun of him too

[honorbound1980-deactivated20260]

Harry Dresden is what happens when you combine a noir detective’s high libido with an actual conscience, then put him up against supernaturally beautiful women who weaponize their beauty to manipulate and/or eat people. Or both.  By Skin Game, he’s gotten to the point that when ridiculously hot women coming onto him, it triggers his fight-or-flight.

This is the man who is quoted as saying “That thing [his penis] is always saying something stupid.” and “Dammit, Harry, ignore your penis before it gets you killed!”

As for whether Harry is single, please note that of those four relationships, at least three of them have ended traumatically, one before the series even started. The man spends more time in years-long dry spells than he does getting some.

Ain’t nobody wants this man’s love life. Peter freaking Parker doesn’t want this man’s love life.

[unsolids-your-snake]

I detect no lies. You remember when he dumped Maeve's supernaturally cold water straight on his dick to short-circuit the glamour she was pulling on him? 🤣

The series does span like 20ish years so far, and uh, lemme see, I think only two of four girlfriends have died?

...and he gets pregnant by a fifth that he didn't even date 🤣

[honorbound1980-deactivated20260]

Yeah, I remember that. Man just straight up unzipped and poured ice water on his junk to make his libido chill the hell out. He takes cold showers for a reason, and it ain’t just because he’s scared of what his magic could do to a water heater.

Out of the four love interests, two have died on-page - one of which he actually killed, and the other died in his arms right in the middle of a soulgaze. Tell me that ain’t going to leave some psychological scars - one was actually mind-whammied into pursuing a relationship with him (which made things all kinds of awkward afterwards), and with the last one, which happened pre-series, he thought he’d accidentally burned her to death for years afterward. As far as the woman who got mind-whammied goes, I still maintain that her disappearance during Changes was suspicious as hell, and that she’s potentially compromised by either Nemesis or the Black Council. Being Harry’s love interest is bad for your mental and physical health.

Two thoughts occur to me: 1) Molly’s got to be an idiot to want to ride that particular train, and 2) Lara ought to be sweating bullets when she learns of Dresden’s romantic history.

[unsolids-your-snake]

Of COURSE Molly is an idiot, we've spent several books establishing this

And Lara is the only one I'm not scared for. She's gonna get exactly what she asked for lol

[honorbound1980-deactivated20260]

You’re not wrong on Molly. She’s got poor impulse control, and she only really learns her lesson when she gets burned. Hopefully that crap with Carlos up in Alaska taught her a few hard lessons.

As to Lara, I think that she wanted to woo Harry over to her side over time, at least allowing Harry time to grieve. Mab put a brick on the accelerator, and she was not ready for it. Of course, Lara was also an idiot for thinking that she could enter into an alliance with Mab without negative repercussions. At least Harry was smart enough to know that dealing with Mab is only for the desperate and foolish. And even he didn’t expect the marriage pact, because he’s always viewed the Winter Knight as Mab’s disposable bag man (just like Bob said).

[taibhsearachd]

It is genuinely so funny (also infuriating but still funny) to me when people respond to ADHD people taking meds for the first time and going “wow is this how people are supposed to feel???” by acting like those people are taking meth for the first time and getting high and thinking that’s how humans are supposed to feel all the time. And then they get condescending about that.

Like. The reason I am so sure I have ADHD is because I would absolutely not seek this drug out to get high. It has zero recreational use for me, although it clearly does for neurotypical people.

You know what I did the first time I got access to ADHD meds? I sat quietly in a chemistry class, waiting for a boring chemical reaction to take place, basically with Wii music playing in my head, and the waiting didn’t feel physically painful to me the way it did prior to taking meds. I’m told normal people can endure 5-20 minute stretches of doing nothing without boredom becoming painful. I never had before. It was a revelation.

But it absolutely was not like getting high. I could just behave in the exact way I’d been expected to behave for 30+ years without hurting myself doing so. It’s so fucking crazy the hoops I have to jump through to get a vital medication just because some dipshits think I’m getting high off it. Literal meth out of someone’s trailer would be simpler and probably cheaper to acquire if that was what I was after.

[dresdenfilesincorrectquotes]

Murphy: Well, let’s bust out the polygraph.

Dresden: Lie detector truth or dare.

Murphy: No. Dresden, last time we did that, you ended up telling everyone you had a crush on the tea pot from Beauty and the Beast.

Dresden: It’s the way they drew her.

[dresdenfilesincorrectquotes]

Murphy: You’re useless. You are completely useless. You are, without a doubt, the most incompetent detectives I’ve ever seen. And I am including that bomb sniffing dog that humps all the bombs.

[dresdenfilesincorrectquotes]

Harry: There was something that prevented me from having friends when I was a little boy

Murphy: It must have been your personality.

[dresdenfilesincorrectquotes]

Morgan: You think you’re cute?!

Harry: Bitch I’m adorable.