Shinyrock

Now the shiniest

[mymidwestheart]

Well, that made me happy. 😌🎠❄️

[rainbowbarnacle]

[alexaloraetheris]

Didn't realize it was a barn at first so I thought by Belgians she meant. People.

[elodieunderglass]

No same I was excited

[dduane]

Today's the day to say this, it seems

Dingbats have come after our buddy John Scalzi, over the last twenty-four hours, giving him grief for not being AI-friendly.* (eyeroll) So John has had to spell out his feelings about this in more depth.

The same dingbats have also confused him with our old friend Charles Stross (which is deeply funny in all kinds of different ways, but never mind that). So Charlie, too, has had to spell out his feelings about this.

So why not join in? Here's my take, expressed some while back, and a little amplified to reflect the day's business.

Our AI policy

None of the works on the Ebooks Direct website, whether literary or artistic, are or ever will be produced using AI technologies. Just so yo

TL:DR; Leaving aside all other considerations for the moment, I will not use technologies trained with material stolen from my colleagues. "Lie down with pigs, get up with mud," the saying has it. "Lie down with thieves..."? Fill in the blanks for yourselves. ...Me? I refuse to handle stolen goods. Period.

And—not naming some of the colleagues, but some of you will know who I mean—this excerpt (in which I also speak for @petermorwood, because I know damn well what he'd say):

We do not use, and will not use, ChatGPT, Claude, or any similar tool. Ever. ...Not even "just for research." Not even "just for outlining." Not even "just for brainstorming." You need a brain to brainstorm. "Generative" "AI" has none. As by-choice "brain-only writers", we decline collaboration with the non-brained.

And that's that.

(sigh) Meanwhile: look here! Books written by the honestly, organically brained. And on sale, too!

Our Summer Reading Sale

Details about our summer sale are here.

(Please do consider a purchase... or reblogging this for the sake of the gossip, if nothing else.)

*They actually called him their new favorite Bad Word, a "decel"! Like deceleration is a bad idea when you're heading head-first at better-than-escape-velocity toward what has a 50-50 chance of being a very big rock. (eyeroll) Jeeeeez but "what are they teaching them at these schools."

[mamoru]

Your Body Position Impacts How Quickly Pills Kick In, New Study Shows

Laying on your left-hand side may make for slower pill absorption.

oh wow! hey if you take pills check this out. new medicine taking meta just dropped.

according to these models, out of the 4 tested postures, the best position to digest pills is laying on your right side. standing upright has a similar time to laying in your back at twice as much as laying on the right side, and laying on the left side is the slowest by far.

laying on right side: pill dissolves in around 10 minutes.

standing: pill dissolves in 23 minutes. laying on the back has a similar time.

laying on left side: pill dissolves in up to 100 minutes.

https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0096877

definitely worth a lot more research.

if you want your medicine to kick in fast, try laying on your right side! if you want your medicine to kick in slower, try laying on your left side.

[sweaterkittensahoy]

This makes sense! I learned from a doc that if you have gas pain or nausea, you turn on your left side to make it easier for your stomach to send stuff through. The goal in turning left is to NOT absorb, but to release.

Turning on your right can make nausea/gas pain worse because it has to fight gravity to exit your stomach/body. So, yeah, lying on your right would make things absorb faster because it's going into the stomach lining, which is the point.

[archouai]

Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey

[still-and-starry-sea]

I was going to reblog this anyway for the useful info but the last addition fucking sent me

[nonbeanie-writes]

Purito

OHMAGAHD PURRITO

[homunculus-argument]

Any time someone starts some bullshit about how humans are hyperindividualistic and inherently selfish and exclusively motivated by self-intetest, I'll just tell them to go ahead and go do it then. Go live alone. Fuck off into the woods to make sure that no society ever benefits from your presence. See if you can teach yourself how to make a spear out of a rock or a shelter for one from nothing but your own wits and the nature around you. Go see how natural that feels, how happy it makes you to know that you don't need nobody and that nobody's life is improved by your presence.

[homunculus-argument]

So how come you don't have that skillset? Solitary animals that don't meet other members of their species outside of mating seasons tend to just fuck off from the nest and be completely fine on their own. Rattlesnakes don't need instructions for how to rattlesnake. Needing to be taught human survival skills implies you would need other people.

[shinyrock6498]

If you don't want to participate in society, you can make that choice. If you don't have the skill set, go to the library and learn. Or sign up for wilderness survival classes. Be the cryptid that breaks into cabins during off season you've always wanted to be.

If this doesn't appeal, time to accept it's not other people that you hate, you're almost certainly burnt out and overwhelmed

[eydilily]

artfight revenge on @panidanya ⚔️ yay for knights au!

[missrossweisse]

aeolus scott is another one (aside from athena owen) of my “this feels right” predictions . so much so that i made this so i dont go mad while waitingfor the actual designs . but don’t look at me when scott isn’t even aeolus bc i’ll be embarrassed ty ,,,,,,, design wise i wish i gave more wind motifs but 💔

click for athena owen !! vv

considering the icon is the owl and owen’s one word to describe his character is “eyes” i was like . right so im gonna lean into this and the owl thing huh . they do have big bulging eyeballs

additionally this design despite being technically my third pantheon design that i post was actually the first one i made .. slowly getting a grasp on how im approaching things design-wise unless i completely miss the mark 😭😭 i do have a feeling my designs could be passing as the gods themselves atp and maybe i should tone it down a bit but it’s literally not in my nature to go realistic 💔 well. only way we’ll know is when they’re announced 😭😭

[notbecauseofvictories]

my sewing machine does exactly one thing, and yet every single time I try to sew something with it I feel like I've put my baby in the pelican's mouth. over and over again.

[notbecauseofvictories]

sewing Machine perfec t for sewing straight l/ines! machine very Accurate and Level lines so so straight so easy to use Sewing Machine. Sew Straight Lines with Sewing Machine. no problems ever in macchine because good Shape and Whir noise for fast fast lines. Asewing Machine yes a place for making straight lines sewing lines can trust sewing machina for giveing good love to fabric. friend sewing machine

[fei-scribbles]

me when i hermit my craft

[viejospellejos]

Típico de belgas malinois

[ceruinus]

Good video showcasing exactly why these dogs are not suited to 99 percent of households.

They've gotten very popular recently and I suspect theyre also being dumped in shelters at a high rate

[ultramarineblues]

I can confirm they are.

Which is one of the reasons I reblogged this, I vaguely hope it might make someone somewhere reconsider their choices

[nesy-art]

There is a curse. They say: May You Live in Interesting Times.

-Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

[azuronel]

getting back into my childhood Pokémon phase of all things. umbreon my beloved

[blumineck]

Be yourself as best you can whenever you can.

[greenbloods]

oh sick someone paved this whole road with good intentions. i wonder where it leads

[aspiringsorceress]

[lost-carcosa]

[slab100]

consent is a cup of tea. someone gives you a box of tea bag and says go crazy make tea. so you make tea. black tea honey tea milk tea bubble tea, mix it with oolong and make weird gross tea that no one wants to drink but you and your friends. person who gave you the teabags says hey that oolong mix is NOT my taste can you stop making that. but like. why would you. that tea isn't for the person who gave you the teabags. it's for you and your friends. you're not even sure how the teabag guy found out about the oolong stuff, no one gave it to him. was he looking through your kitchen window? why was he doing that? so you say no and it's kind of weird for you to ask. and the guy says well they're MY brand of teabags look my name is on the label. it's against my brand guidelines to mix my tea with other teas that aren't mine. it's fine that you already made some mixed cups i'll let that slide but if you keep doing it i'll send my lawyers after you. and the teabag guy's fans all say it's great that he's set down some rules about making mixed tea in your own home and if you do that you're immoral and weird for being angry about the whole being threatened with lawyers thing

[shinyrock6498]

And maybe also you're not so sure you like teabag man anymore after that intersection or even after just watching that interaction happen. Nobody likes to be judged for how they take their tea

[thetangledsheet]

Anyway I think more video game quests should make you uncomfortable and guilty and mislead you and corner you between a rock and a hard place and offer hollow victories. There's nothing more annoying than quest writing that scrambles to assure you that you're niceys and good and nothing you put your hand on can ever have negative consequences. "You cannot save everyone" and I cheer and whoop etc.

[shinyrock6498]

Genshin impact is doing a great job of doing this storywise. The deeper you get into lore the more and more you realize that almost all of the enemies are people and the evil enemies are people even the absolute evil rat bastard is people.

The game occasionally makes a point of saying you're not killing all of the enemies you defeat but the more I think about it, the more I'm like, am I a good person? The game definitely builds you up that you're the hero and a good person but we fight so many people that are objectively just chilling until we come up and beat their asses and steal their stuff.