Spelled The Way It Sounds

the hare runs into the fire http://archiveofourown.org/users/Shayvaalski

[holy-leapin-splits-batman]

[the-domestic-mammoth]

EVERYTHING'S FINE :) By W.B. Yeats

Tracing a neat straight line, adept and sure, The falcon heeds the calling falconer; Things hang together, and the center holds; Mere symmetry is ordering the world, The sea-bright tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence proceeds; The best have strong convictions, while the worst Are full of resignation and are sad.

Surely no revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming's far away. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When an indifference borne of stable comfort Leaves my sight clear: somewhere in sands of the desert A lion with lion body and the head of a lion, A gaze calm and leonine, as is usual, Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it Reel shadows of the normal desert birds. What a nice lion, right? And now I know That twenty centuries have gone along And things were bad sometimes, and things were good, And if a lion slouches toward Bethlehem, That's 'cause it's native to the Levant.

[peachpulpeuse]

@havingbeenbreathedout

[wombwarriors]

[sztupy]

Landmark German ruling declares Google's AI Overviews are Google's own words and makes it liable for false answers

A German regional court has ruled that Google is directly liable for the content of its AI search overviews. According to the court, previou

[ayeforscotland]

Let’s fucking go

[made-in-manetheren]

This is HUGE.

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

TL;DR Google reeeeeally stepped in it this time.

[alianoralacanta]

5. If the words are Google's, this solidifies the position of universities who demand that all answers from AI are fully cited. If all the in-line citations now have to be (Google, 2026), that's going to make it obvious when someone's trying to use Google as a source. There's still the difficulty with people who are academically dishonest by trying to pass off the AI writing as their own. 6. 91% accuracy is officially too low to use as a source of references, which means the AI can't be used as a source of references either. This makes it less legitimate for such purposes than Wikipedia of all places (Wikipedia might need date/time proof of when it was accessed for the reference to be valid, but at least it is possible to prove the link existed at a particular date and time). 7. This will help encourage the rollout of courses on how to avoid AI search for students who need academic accuracy, because it's statistically not good enough to use. 8. This strengthens the case intellectual property authors have against Google in the EU, as this is proof that an intellectual property transfer took place.

[horreurscopes]

i was going to be like "love being treated like a junkie at the target cvs" but then i remembered the concept of a junkie is a societal construct and there's no hierarchy between a so called drug addict and a prescription drug user and i should instead join forces with my junkie brethren and storm the fucking cvs together. welcome to the harmacy

[isuggesteatingtherich]

i have a suggestion

[memories-of-ancients]

Anthropeum

A daily game that challenges our understanding of human cultures. Ten objects. 5,000 years of human history. Guess where and when each artif

An interesting game where you are presented with 10 artifacts from the MET. You have to place where the artifact is from and what time period it is from. Each artifact scores up to 10,000 points, and you lose points the further away your guess is and how far off in time you are. You can only play once a day. Thanks to @baebeylik for showing this to me.

Today I scored really well. Yesterday ... not so much.

Anthropeum.com · Jun 8 2026 🟩🟦🟦🟩🟩🟩🟥🟦🟦🟩 79,001 · top 3% of players today!

[shayvaalski]

I'm quite bad at this (extremely off on one of the two nearly every time) but I enjoyed it a lot!

Anthropeum.com · Jun 10 2026

🟩🟨🟥🟩🟥🟨🟨🟨🟨🟩

48,537 · top 87% of players today!

[niff-of-draws]

these are the silt verses, and i name our disciples thus.

[thebelfry]

I just learned that the Russian word for “ladybug” translates to “God’s Little Cow”

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

It’s the same in Irish! bóín Dé!

[peniswizard69]

in hebrew it’s “our rabbi moses’s cow”

[vampireapologist-archive-deacti]

Oh I love this news!!!!

[pulmonary-poultry]

Multiple cultures upon seeing a ladybug for the first time: “Who’s cow is this????”

[thejonymyster]

[thejonymyster]

[thejonymyster]

[postilionstruckbylightning]

It feels like some early humans were naming things and one of them ran out of ideas.

Human 1: (points at animal) What’s that?

Human 2: Cow.

Human 1: (points at bug) What’s that?

Human 2: … little cow.

Human 1: But it’s so much smaller. Who would have use for such a small cow?

Human 2: (panicking but in too deep to stop now) God.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

The “Lady” in the name “ladybug” is the virgin Mary. People just cannot stop giving religious names to this bug.

The reason for this was that if you lived in an agrarian society then your survival was a throw of the dice every year, depending on the success of the crops. A failed crop year is a very hard year where deaths are expected. And if you grew a cereal like wheat, there were several things that could cause your crops to fail, but one of the big ones was if you happened to get a fuckton of aphids. You know what eats aphids? Ladybugs! If there are lots and lots of ladybugs around, there was a good chance that it’d be a good crop year! They were little crop protectors! When your family lives or dies on the success of that crop, of course they’d be seen as a blessing and given an appropriate name!

[magical-bear-dubin]

That is such an interesting etymology!!!!

And entomology too i guess

[asparklethatisblue]

in German they’re Marienkäfer which also pretty much means “Mary’s Beetle”

[istadris]

In French it’s “Good Lord’s Beast”

Not even a cow, it’s just a little Creature but we know for sure God loves it.

[dent-de-l1on]

In Dutch it’s “Lieveheersbeestje”, the Good Lord’s Little Beast

A liddol creeture

[thingsfromthedirt]

Rolling Homes: Handmade Houses on Wheels by Jane Lidz (1979)

[thundergrace]

WOW I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS IS MY FAVORITE TELEVISION SERIES OF ALL TIME (it's not out yet)

[thebigsartorialist]

“Thank God we don’t have to wear suits anymore for work. Everyone looked the same!” Said the men all wearing chinos and blue or white shirts to work

[amaliazeichnerin]

Is Africa leading the solarpunk future?

Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa are building solutions that richer nations could learn from

Interesting blog post.

[reasonsforhope]

I've been saying this for like 3 years now!! Always excited to see more coverage of it!!

If you're interested in the future of solarpunk, ecopunk, and a sustainable, livable future, African, South Asian, Latin American, and Indigenous climate movements are absolutely some of the biggest places you should look.

[grendel-menz]

kind of a vent

[pasiphile]

Spent most of the day managing a work crisis which was strictly speaking not my responsibility but I was involved in for various reasons (mostly that I can Communicate With IT people while still being directly in the middle of the business side of things, which is apparently a rarity).

Home now, and now I'm going oh actually I was being a conceited arsehole and I should have just let the people directly involved handle it and I don't think I actually contributed anything and possibly even made things worse—

Wife: you've got Dom drop

[status-quo-hater]

I think one of the funniest abortion stances I've heard was from my parents neighbor. He's a like, hard-core libertarian viking larper guy who is very tall and very fat and very bald.

He believes a fetus is human with a soul, but also its "basically attacking the woman's body" so if she wants to get rid of it, that's "basically self-defense". He compared it to shooting a home invader. So he supports abortion not as healthcare, but as killing a baby in self-defense

[status-quo-hater]

Y'know I'm so glad someone reminded me of this. Because this was also discussed.

My stepmother did NOT like the way her Libertarian Viking Neighbor framed pregnancy as the fetus "attacking the woman". She incredulously told him this was extremely disrespectful to expectant mothers to portray pregnancy as so violent and negative.

Libertarian Viking Neighbor's response was that people consensually hurt each other all the time, and "there's like a whole community about that, with the acronym the one that starts with a B" And his reasoning was that if the mother was consenting to bring attacked by the baby, it in fact wasn't violent and negative because there was consent.

He brought up people consensually hurting each other, didn't go for one of the obvious answers like boxing or body mods or something, no he went STRAIGHT TO BDSM and he DIDN'T EVEN REMEMBER THE ACRONYM

[mossworth]

Guys, queers. Specifically my fellow queers.

I work at a library. We do this thing where, every so often, we weed the collection. It hurts to see books go, but it's necessary to make sure there's room in the library for new materials.

I have seen so much support for the library in text, and I've seen folks pass around those beautiful "queer your library" flyers. Keep doing that. That's great. Nothing wrong with that. But you HAVE to turn your words into action. We MUST remember to actually go to our local organizations and libraries and actually, with our own fucking hands, interact with these materials we want to see more of.

My branch is medium-sized for a library, maybe a little small. We don't have as many materials as I'd like, but we have fundamentals. Tell me why, even with all the verbal support I've gotten from my local community for the library as a resource for our LGBT+ community, every single trans biography and a good chunk of our vaguely queer theory books were on the list. This isn't a scheme to take the books off the shelves, it isn't another bigoted American governmental push. The only thing we look at when we weed is how long it's been since the last time the item was checked out.

Three years.

No one in my community interacted in any meaningful way with the few books on trans life and history we physically had on the shelves for three fucking years.

I promise you the materials you want and need are there, but this isn't a horde. This isn't a static safety net. You have to use them. You MUST use them or, in the future, maybe in three years, they *won't* be there anymore.

This isn't a vague post, there's no one person I'm hinting at or calling out. I'm not even talking directly to anyone who's directly in my line of sight. I just want everyone to hear this. Big library, small library, whatever. Doesn't matter. Please, we cannot be losing our shelf visibility like this.

[alanfromrochester]

I work in a different library and can confirm, it's a decision based on popularity not censorship

we're big enough to have lots of shelf space but still have the problem on a different scale. We do have a back storage room rather than completely getting rid of some things, but having to ask for that might be a barrier for sensitive subject matter and prevent people from casually stumbling across something of interest

[paintedpigeon1]

Yep. Different library worker here, we weeded adult non-fiction recently bc it's most rarely used and we needed to clear a bookshelf of space, and there were a decent number of queer books on the list. Thankfully not all of them, but some (we had a lot lol). Our criteria is also no borrows in 3yrs. I can't borrow the whole list by myself. I do try to get these books in, and the local authority are happy to buy them, but we need space for new books every so often and we can't keep everything forever! If you want them, you have to use them!

(incidentally, the whole list was 35 pages long, which... please borrow the books you want people)

[qbdatabase]

I didn't have time to comment the first time I reblogged, but I can add now:

I'm also a librarian and queer books are almost always cut first when we have to weed for space or prioritize new releases over old items because no one reads them

I will say, when I worked at a large downtown location, we had a "browsing card" that we would check out items we found taken off the shelf and left on a table, as an example of a book that had clearly been read, just not checked out by anyone

it's possible queer books do actually get a bit of unfair treatment in this regard because people may be nervous or outright scared to check them out onto an account with their name on it. so they get browsed at a much higher rate, but if a library doesn't have a specific system in place (or need for it) to count browsed items, then it looks like they aren't being used and they get weeded

for other librarians, a browsing card is a great idea if you have enough staff for the extra work / enough items left out to justify it

for patrons, check out queer books even if you don't read them! you're not lying or committing any type of fraud. you're keeping books on the shelf long enough for pride season when people are interested in checking them out again and for people scared to use their own accounts or who don't have library cards

for anyone nervous about using their library card, libraries do not keep search histories of what you check out!! this means even if the government does come back with a warrant, *wet farting noise* too bad! it doesn't exist!

so please check out queer books!

[vtothefun]

I have to wonder how often they aren't checked out because those in an exploratory period may not feel safe enough for them to go home with them, too. Kids, for example, or folks who have ended up in a het marriage that... Doesn't feel like it's quite right (or may be physically abusive).

[mossworth]

This is most definitely one of the causes of this. That's why it's so important for folks who *can* to *do*.

It feels like such a small thing, but all movements are made up of small things! We have this mindset that in order to get everything done, everyone must be doing their (or *the*) absolute best at all times. But not everyone can do the same things, to the same degree, with the same amount of productivity or success. Not everyone can; sometimes, they're the ones that need help. Sometimes people just need help.

This post is very much so intended for the people who can. I've seen a lot of replies from folks who say they don't have to (or don't think about) checking out or requesting queer books from the library specifically because they *can* buy them, can pirate them, or already have them in their house or on their computers or phones. But in instances like that, keeping these books in circulation is less for you and more for the people who can't. The folks who come to the library, who don't have access to internet--or even electricity--at home and would never--have never--been able to interact with this "ubiquitous queer community" we have here online who has made so many of these. materials so avaliable to the rest of us.

And... if I can be a little frank. Sometimes the hyperaccessibility of these materials online (through pirating, cheap e-book copies, etc) gives people a false sense of security. It implies that these things are an infinate resource, good for "When I get around to it".

And often, you won't. There's so much to read and so much to do. So much to download and so much to sit down and stare at for hours. That kind of mental scope puts books in people's hands (or phones), but never in their heads.

But the moment your favorite document archival site gets knocked offline for breaching copyright or your go-to mega corporate audiobook distributor decides it doesn't want "those" materials anymore, what's left? What did you download? What information did you internalize? Did you ever get around to it? If you did, great, but what good does that do for the person who didn't? Are you going to be the one to redistribute that information? Are you going to communicate it in the place of the author whose words are no longer publically accesible or, mostly avaliable, but only behind hefty paywalls and financial gatekeeping? How would someone else get a hold of it? How could they, if they wanted?

[vtothefun]

This is excellent info.

What are some good books to check out for those who can?

[mossworth]

Gosh... there's so many options. I wouldn't know where to start without knowing who I'm talking to and what they're looking for. What I can recommend is for folks to check out creators like @makingqueerhistory who have spent just a ridiculously beautiful amount of time collecting queer history and book lists! You'll find something in seconds reading their page.

Personal pitch: I liked the books Tar Hollow Trans and Gay Poems for Red States. Both great.

[makingqueerhistory]

I'm glad I was tagged in this because it means I can cosign (and also add a little nugget of info).

I live in a province that is currently trying to ban queer books from libraries, and as a library patron, this is terrifying. 95% of the books I read are from the library and a lot of them are way out of my budget to buy personally.

Making Queer History would not exist without the school library I skipped class in to write articles. It would not exist without my friends with library cards for their universities sharing them and getting me access to rare texts. I would not be able to read as much as I do without Libby and Hoopla. If I have ever given you a book recommendation, know that I likely got it from the library first.

I cannot overstate the importance of protecting libraries and checking out queer books. And I want to say thank you to everyone above for being as passionate as I am about queer books in libraries.

Love y'all <3

[jinglyjangly-theclowm]

Happy Pride Horseblr!

Images used!

Red Orange

Yellow Green (eye)

Blue Purple

Black Brown

Can't fit all the colours here (limit of 10 images) so other colours will be in a reblog!!!