Wildflowers | Wild Ireland: Kingdom of Stone

No title available
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
sheepfilms
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
taylor price

titsay

shark vs the universe
cherry valley forever
art blog(derogatory)
trying on a metaphor
wallacepolsom

No title available

Discoholic 🪩
I'd rather be in outer space 🛸
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
Jules of Nature

oozey mess

❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
RMH

Kaledo Art

seen from Finland

seen from Brazil

seen from India

seen from Finland

seen from United States
seen from Poland
seen from United States
seen from Nigeria
seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Latvia

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from United Kingdom

seen from Croatia
seen from Germany
@scribblesandfeathers
Wildflowers | Wild Ireland: Kingdom of Stone
That Warm Autumn Glow
(c) riverwindphotography, October 2024
NaNo Alternatives
Okay, real post time (but keep those boops booping) - You want to do NaNoWriMo tomorrow, but you don't want to go anywhere near the main organization and their website. Here's a list of alternatives you can try:
Rogue Writers - International group launched to provide an alternative for writers. Their website has challenges, free tools, and more.
myWriteClub - Word tracking tool.
Novlr - A writing app designed to help you meet your writing goals.
WriteTrack - Word tracking tool.
Shut Up and Write - Find in-person or online groups to write together with!
NoQuWriCo - A November writing challenge with tools, tips, and encouragement to make it through the month!
Writing Month - Write. A Month. Do It.
Your local library - If you did NaNo events through your library, chances are they're still doing it this year. Make sure you check in with all the resources you've used in the past, as they're likely still around.
Whatever you decide to do tomorrow, good luck! And remember, if you want to still use the NaNo website but don't like their AI policies and the rest of it, just don't give them money! Laugh to yourself, evilly, as you update your word count. It's very validating.
(Now back to booping.)
Albert Camus // “The Plague”
Anne Michaels, from "Infinite Gradation," originally published in October 2017
November ~ Edith Holden
You wrote about murder?? Murder is illegal?? You wrote about this dude killing someone and you didn’t even say ‘murder is bad’ at the start of the book, wht wtf, wtf is wrong with you? I can’t believe you condone murder, I can’t believe you’re pro murber, oh my fucking God don'ttalk to me when ou literally kill people, freak. I’m calling the cops, what the fuck, I’m shaking and crying.
White-throated Sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) in an autumn shower
(c) riverwindphotography, October 2024
I’m Declaring War Against “What If” Videos: Project Copy-Knight
What Are “What If” Videos?
These videos follow a common recipe: A narrator, given a fandom (usually anime ones like My Hero Academia and Naruto), explores an alternative timeline where something is different. Maybe the main character has extra powers, maybe a key plot point goes differently. They then go on and make up a whole new story, detailing the conflicts and romance between characters, much like an ordinary fanfic.
Except, they are fanfics. Actual fanfics, pulled off AO3, FFN and Wattpad, given a different title, with random thumbnail and background images added to them, narrated by computer text-to-speech synthesizers.
They are very easy to make: pick a fanfic, copy all the text into a text-to-speech generator, mix the resulting audio file with some generic art from the fandom as the background, give it a snappy title like “What if Deku had the Power of Ten Rings”, photoshop an attention-grabbing thumbnail, dump it onto YouTube and get thousands of views.
In fact, the process is so straightforward and requires so little effort, it’s pretty clear some of these channels have automated pipelines to pump these out en-masse. They don’t bother with asking the fic authors for permission. Sometimes they don’t even bother with putting the fic’s link in the description or crediting the author. These content-farms then monetise these videos, so they get a cut from YouTube’s ads.
In short, an industry has emerged from the systematic copyright theft of fanfiction, for profit.
Project Copy-Knight
Since the adversaries almost certainly have automated systems set up for this, the only realistic countermeasure is with another automated system. Identifying fanfics manually by listening to the videos and searching them up with tags is just too slow and impractical.
And so, I came up with a simple automated pipeline to identify the original authors of “What If” videos.
It would go download these videos, run speech recognition on it, search the text through a database full of AO3 fics, and identify which work it came from. After manual confirmation, the original authors will be notified that their works have been subject to copyright theft, and instructions provided on how to DMCA-strike the channel out of existence.
I built a prototype over the weekend, and it works surprisingly well:
On a randomly-selected YouTube channel (in this case Infinite Paradox Fanfic), the toolchain was able to identify the origin of half of the content. The raw output, after manual verification, turned out to be extremely accurate. The time taken to identify the source of a video was about 5 minutes, most of those were spent running Whisper, and the actual full-text-search query and Levenshtein analysis was less than 5 seconds.
The other videos probably came from fanfiction websites other than AO3, like fanfiction.net or Wattpad. As I do not have access to archives of those websites, I cannot identify the other ones, but they are almost certainly not original.
Armed with this fantastic proof-of-concept, I’m officially declaring war against “What If” videos. The mission statement of Project Copy-Knight will be the elimination of “What If” videos based on the theft of AO3 content on YouTube.
I Need Your Help
I am acutely aware that I cannot accomplish this on my own. There are many moving parts in this system that simply cannot be completely automated – like the selection of YouTube channels to feed into the toolchain, the manual verification step to prevent false-positives being sent to authors, the reaching-out to authors who have comments disabled, etc, etc.
So, if you are interested in helping to defend fanworks, or just want to have a chat or ask about the technical details of the toolchain, please consider joining my Discord server. I could really use your help.
------
See full blog article and acknowledgements here: https://echoekhi.com/2023/11/25/project-copy-knight/
🌸Describing Scents For Writers 🌸| List of Scents
Describing aromas can add a whole new layer to your storytelling, immersing your readers in the atmosphere of your scenes. Here's a categorized list of different words to help you describe scents in your writing.
🌿 Fresh & Clean Scents
Crisp
Clean
Pure
Refreshing
Invigorating
Bright
Zesty
Airy
Dewy
Herbal
Minty
Oceanic
Morning breeze
Green grass
Rain-kissed
🌼 Floral Scents
Fragrant
Sweet
Floral
Delicate
Perfumed
Lush
Blooming
Petaled
Jasmine
Rose-scented
Lavender
Hibiscus
Gardenia
Lilac
Wildflower
🍏 Fruity Scents
Juicy
Tangy
Sweet
Citrusy
Tropical
Ripe
Pungent
Tart
Berry-like
Melon-scented
Apple-blossom
Peachy
Grape-like
Banana-esque
Citrus burst
🍂 Earthy & Woody Scents
Musky
Earthy
Woody
Grounded
Rich
Smoky
Resinous
Pine-scented
Oak-like
Cedarwood
Amber
Mossy
Soil-rich
Sandalwood
Forest floor
☕ Spicy & Warm Scents
Spiced
Warm
Cozy
Inviting
Cinnamon-like
Clove-scented
Nutmeg
Ginger
Cardamom
Coffee-infused
Chocolatey
Vanilla-sweet
Toasted
Roasted
Hearth-like
🏭 Industrial & Chemical Scents
Metallic
Oily
Chemical
Synthetic
Acrid
Pungent
Foul
Musty
Smoky
Rubber-like
Diesel-scented
Gasoline
Paint-thinner
Industrial
Sharp
🍃 Natural & Herbal Scents
Herbal
Aromatic
Earthy
Leafy
Grass-like
Sage-scented
Basil-like
Thyme-infused
Rosemary
Chamomile
Green tea
Wild mint
Eucalyptus
Cinnamon-bark
Clary sage
🎉 Unique & Uncommon Scents
Antique
Nostalgic
Ethereal
Enigmatic
Exotic
Haunted
Mysterious
Eerie
Poignant
Dreamlike
Surreal
Enveloping
Mesmerizing
Captivating
Transcendent
I hope this list can help you with your writing. 🌷✨
Feel free to share your favorite scent descriptions in the replies below! What scents do you love to incorporate into your stories?
Happy Writing! - Rin T.
How are you planning to do Comment Day?
Maxing out the character limit on a comment on my favourite fic
Commenting on my most read fics saying how often I re-read them
Commenting on the most recent fics from my favourite authors
Finding a fic in my favourite tag and leaving a thoughtful comment
Making a set of custom memes about the fic that I recommend most often
Live-blogging comments reading a fic I've been saving for a special occasion
I don't know yet but emoji are gonna be involved
Something else (tell us in the notes)!
Comment Day is a celebration of leaving comments on beloved fic! We want both to tell the author what their work means to us, and to appreciate reflecting on works we enjoy! Commenting is a unique feature of fic reading, and we want to have fun with it.
So it looks like NaNoWriMo are happy to have AI as part of their community. Miss me with that bullshit. Generative artificial intelligence is an active threat to creativity and the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people in creative fields.
Please signal boost this so writers can make an informed choice about whether to continue to take part in such a community.
It may not be obvious to all, but once you take a look at who's sponsoring this year, everything becomes clear:
ProWritingAid is a planet-destroying, plagiarism-enabled generative AI [sic] company.
I suggest everyone just deletes their accounts, if they have one - they'll soon realise how fucking idiotic this move is. I've already deleted mine and I know of at least one pro writer (Daniel José Older) who's stepped down from the company's Writers Board.
Oh, and this is their further justification for this bullshit nonsense:
So yeah, if you've got an account, I'd think seriously about deleting it and never going near that shit again.
@caxycreations
Oh FUCK that, yeah I'll warn her.
Bloody hell. I love the concept of "National Novel Writing Month" but they keep making it harder and harder for me to justify keeping my account open.
And I don't want to delete it. I like seeing my stats. I've got tracking data on there from 2015.
*long, hard sigh*
Gonna have to though, aren't I. Fuck AI.
A Tangle of Winter Woodlands
(c) riverwindphotography, January 2024
~~Four Ways to Flow~~
(c) gifs by riverwindphotography
“February” (1906) (Robin, Whitebreasts, and Snowdrops)
by Edith Holden (1871-1920)
Source: morning-earth.org
Oak Woods Dartmoor UK