Your daily dose of random

[jane2001673]

TF One Prowl cogged version He's very happy about his new form

[spicymochi]

your month, your mini cat!

[starsheild]

November.... actually rather accurate. And very cute.

[byjove]

Me: *Removes my cat from my lap to do something else.*

My cat: Father is...evil? Father is unyielding? Father is incapable of love? I am running away. I am packing my little rucksack and going out to explore the world as a lone vagabond. I can no longer thrive in this household.

[cryoverkiltmilk]

The spiritual successor to Miette

[manicgoblinnightmarewoman]

Might I also add

[shydestinybread]

May i add the piece from artist Verbal Vomit

[unyanizedcatboys]

Glad to see we’re all in agreement that cats talk like disparaged victorian children

[explorerrowan]

I am so incredibly glad we finally moved on from "i can has". Cats are clearly smart enough for advanced sentence structure and dumb enough to draw entirely incorrect conclusions about what they're talking about.

[dualclock]

My cat, banging the cabnet door over and over and over: bang bang bang

Me: you will not earn what you desire by banging the cabinet door.

My cat: This is a test of wills, is it not? We shall see if your ability to put up with my incessant banging outlasts my eternal lust for snackie treats. Years of conditioning have hardened me for this purpose. bang bang bang

Me: ksst!

My cat, throwing herself to the ground like she's been shot: Oh! Oh I have been assailed in my own home! Have mercy, have pity! Surely in the cruel darkness of your heart there is some mote of goodness that might stay your hand! Do not strike me, I pray you!

Me: ok

My cat, after waiting about 3 minutes: bang bang bang

[notcaycepollard]

[callmebliss]

Can haz snackytreat

[ladyshinga]

(source)

[dogsrulepeopledrool]

Source

[cryoverkiltmilk]

#the ancient texts

... My reblog was only six years ago!

[starsheild]

Life with cats.

[tieflingkisser]

[rarilee33]

Also on windows 10!! go to typing settings- how ai has helped you- typing insights-off

[ao3commentoftheday]

Is using spell check okay at all now?

In writing groups I'm in it's grammar and spell check is for newbies and those wanting a crutch or a cheat code.

I'm going to be frank with you, anon. Those writing groups sound toxic as fuck and I'd recommend finding a better place to spend your time.

Grammar check and spell check are embedded in most word processing software and have been since the 1990s. People don't have to use them if they don't want to, of course, but there's nothing wrong with using them.

English spelling is famously a bastardization of French multiplied by German divided by Latin with fifty other languages thrown in for fun. And don't even get me started on the Great Vowel Shift.

All that to say, being bad at spelling is not a moral failing nor is it a sign of weak character. It's a fact of life for an overwhelming majority of people writing in English.

Or, to put it another way, would you tell a near-sighted person such as myself that wearing glasses is a cheat code and that I should just "see better"? I really hope not.

[starsheild]

Good grief- if this is in response to the anti-AI campaign, this is far beyond reasonable.

To be clear, I am very anti-GENERATIVE AI in most capacities. AI should not be doing things that a real person SHOULD be doing. You should be writing your own emails. You should be drawing your own pictures. You should be composing your own music. You should be doing your own research, not trusting a synopsis.

Things like spell check, where it flags something as 'hey- your 'i' need to be before your 'e' here- or if they can some come up with an algorithm for 'there, their, they're', 'your, you're', and 'too, to, two' it would be a blessing (homophones used incorrectly are a pet peeve of mine, even though I am still occasionally guilty of misuse).

Suggesting that something might be a run-on sentence or should have a comma here? That's a check on work already done. Not a creation of something 'new'.

As someone who is dyslexic and also suffers from dyscalculia, spell check and grammar check are blessed tools. But I use them to check work I have already done. Not to create the work for me.

There is a difference.

[ursiday]

Earth

[ao3commentoftheday]

Hello.

On the subject of AI, I have a confession to make: I use it. Not to write for me, but to help me check for inconsistencies, to brainstorm ideas, to write outlines, to give me a couple of lines when I've been stuck for hours, to be my beta reader, if you will. Generative AI is bad? Yes, but it also a useful tool if one isn't lazy. I don't ask: write me a story. I go with my story and ask: help me with continuity. Look, this paragraph is clunky, how do I make it better? The demonization of generative AI is fair, but to be honest, I also understand people who use it. Maybe they're afraid of writing themselves, maybe they're insecure and don't trust their prose. Maybe they have brilliannt ideas but they need help to make them become fics.

To me, this is very much connected to my last ask where I was talking about how we don't have enough mentors in fandom to support the influx of people entering it.

All of the things that you're asking AI to do used to be done by a beta reader (or more than one!). A fandom friend (or even a random stranger who volunteered) would read through your work and help you with those issues.

Betas are amazing. They can help with grammar and spelling. They can regionalize language. They can provide sensitivity reading if they're from a marginalized community that you're writing about and aren't a member of. They can track canon, help with research, even just be a sounding board to discuss ideas with.

And sometimes, they're just a cheer reader - someone reading your story and telling you how awesome it is because they love it just as much as you do.

I understand turning to AI if you 1) don't know beta readers exist or 2) don't know how to obtain one. The need for that kind of support doesn't go away just because you can't access it.

But for anyone out there who needs this kind of help and wants to avoid Gen AI, you can write a post on your blog, add it to an author's note, check out resources like @needabeta or - if the time of year is right and you have the funds - place a bid on beta reading services during @fandomtrumpshate

Beta readers are often involved in fandom events like big bangs and exchanges, and if anyone is looking to host such an event, it's a great way to get people involved who aren't writers or artists but would love to help out.

I get it, anon. We use the tools that are available to us. But here's another potential tool if you're interested in branching out?

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I miss the era when people would say “it’s photoshopped” instead of “this is ai”

[ode-on-a-grecian-butt]

art by Curtis Lanaghan

[starsheild]

Very Dinotopia, which I loved as a child and still do.

[depsidase]

[starsheild]

I am so sick of ChatGPT and AI in everything.

Stop offering it as an option every time I do something.

Stop implementing it without an opt out option.

If I want someone else, or SOMETHING else, to do my thinking for me, I will go find it.

[catchymemes]

[everythingismadeofchaos]

We all do, buddy. We all do

[josephbrassey]

“Haha remember when murder-hornets were gonna be a thing? What a nothingburger.”

Yes, because the Washington state government activated like a sleeper-cell and ruthlessly, systematically hunted them down and annihilated them.

“Y2K came to nothing amirite?”

Yes because an army of software engineers working around the clock, losing sleep, and busting ass till the last minute prevented it from happening.

“Remember the hole in the ozone layer?”

You mean the one that was fixed through rigorous world wide government action?

One of the root problems of our society is a refusal or inability by media to articulate that all those “it’s gonna be an apocalypse” disasters were not disasters because we collectively did something about them.

The good news is this is actually quite correctable. I maintain my firm belief that we as humans are capable of solving almost all of our problems, when we decide to do so.

And I still think that’s going to happen. I don’t know when or how, but I do know that abandoning hope won’t help bring it about.

And I refuse to let the cynics own a chunk of my heart.

[gudamor]

Happy Smallpox Eradication Day

[susiephone]

[starsheild]

Ok, so can we figure out how to cancel this AI apocalypse?

[klematista]

burning ice

another art for rus tf fanzine

[need-him-pregnant-poll]

NEED👏THAT👏MAN👏PREGNANT *SEASON TWO* ROUND 3 POLL 12

TUMBLR! Who's getting pregnant?

Prowl (Transformers)

Dr. Ivo “Eggman” Robotnik (Sonic the Hedgehog)

Voting ended onMay 10

PROPAGANDA:

[Prowl]

"I want to study the child he has for new forms of mental illness. Also he has huge tits."

"This man. He needs a baby. He'd be such a bad parent, but I need it to happen."

"EarthSpark Prowl objects to the Autobots relying on human children as soldiers.

IDW Prowl is essentially handed a newly created bot and makes the extremely responsible decision to hand him off to someone else to train instead of trying to "raise" him himself. I have seen people call him a bad parent for this, and no. Bad parenting is when you know you would be a terrible parent, or don't recognize that you would be a terrible parent, and then you give your kid a horrible life because you can't just accept your own issues would mess them up. Prowl giving Springer, a "child" he did not want and did not have the capacity to care for, to someone else was the best parenting decision he could have made.

G1 Prowl is one of the sweetest bots you'll ever meet. Always ready to help out. Protective. Cares about people a lot.

This bot would be an amazing parent. Legitimately better credentials than most of the cast who interacts with kids, even (especially) if that credential is sometimes, "I should not be a parent, so I'm giving him to someone else"."

Prowl propaganda from last season

[Eggman]

"he has a lot of robo-kids and a lot of ppl prefer him mpregged, then Stone."

"He didn't win last year and I need him pregnant. I think he should win so he can carry his and Stone's baby, because obviously the only person smart enough to carry his kids is himself."

"He’s Eggman, it’s in the name."

Eggman propaganda from last season

[starsheild]

VOTE FOR PROWL

[orcbara]

i know most leftists agree that everybody should have a right to food, water, shelter, and healthcare but i think a vitally important fifth pillar is privacy. people should not be compelled to be tracked, monitored, or to share personal space with others to access their other essential rights

[lyinginbedmon]

"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is and always has been fascist rhetoric everyone.

[doomhamster]

To paraphrase the late, great Sir Terry Pratchett... the innocent have a great deal to fear. Mostly from the kind of people who use the phrase "the innocent have nothing to fear".

[bethanydelleman]

I have been listening to this podcast called Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, Scandal & Society, and it's really reminding me of the main reason that you should listen to experts. It's not because of the reason media usually shows, them having encyclopedic knowledge of their subject (though many do have that) it's their ability to sort.

This podcast demonstrates that ability really well because sex scandals tend to be used as propaganda, so it's difficult to tell if they are true or not. The host will ask the historian guest, "Did he have sex with men?" and the guest will say something like, "Well four sources say so, but three were written after his death and the one from his lifetime was from a dude who REALLY hated him, so I'm going to conclude no."

That is what an expert can do, that we've perhaps forgotten about because we have so much information at our fingertips, an expert can tell which information is good & valid vs. bad & unreliable. An expert can sort much faster than a layman because they've been doing it for years.

It's the same for my field. Some things I am absolutely sure are wrong, like if someone says "We only use 10% of our brains." No, we use all of it and I can even tell you what every part does. But other claims, if I see a news article claiming something that sounds fishy, I can read the research article behind it and judge the validity of the source. I can sort. I know which parameters to sort on. That was the entire point of my education and it was pounded into my head.

Knowledge isn't enough. Researching isn't enough because if you don't know how to sort you'll just be led astray down dangerous rabbit holes. That is why experts are so important.