*points* tell me about gregtech new horizions

Heyo! It's your local deaf guy on tumblr

[correct-hermitcraft-quotes]

Joe: im sorry i have a frail human form. im doing my best to transcend it and become pure energy

[poisoned-peppermint]

Thinking bout him

[artsekey]

I post on Reddit. Someone says it’s AI. I tell them it is not. They say, “sure, buddy”.

I post on Reddit. “AI slop,” they comment. “and if it isn’t, it’s bad, mediocre writing.”

“No, I am not a bad writer.” I have the audacity to say. “Writing is part of what I do professionally. I get paid to do this.”

Someone else posts on Reddit. A chat from Bumble, where a man has the gall to use the unnatural em-dash. “No one uses the em-dash,” they say. It’s a trope at this point, I know. “The hypen is much more common. I don’t know where to even find the em-dash. Plus, he said you were “elite”. No one would say that.”

“The hypen isn’t grammatically correct.” I tell them, looking over the chat log. It’s a real person on the other side, their personality obfuscated by the nerves that come with reaching out on a dating app. There’s subtle humor, missing punctuation. Still, 100 people condemn it as AI. It’s more feasible to them that someone would edit those human elements back in manually than type it themselves.

I post on Reddit. I tell them my writing keeps being called AI slop. They say it is, it is. Use fewer periods. Capitalize less. Ignore the rules. A real person wouldn’t write like that. A real person wouldn’t use those words, or say it like that. I’m a real person. I can’t prove it to them.

Someone, finally, says that the tone of my post matches how some books are written. That maybe it would be good for those who doubt that the writing is man-made to read more man-made books.

“You think we don’t read?” They ask. Then something more incendiary: “You think you’re better than us?”

And, hey? Bad news, babes. This isn’t hyperbole. This is all real shit that has happened in the last week.

What the fuck is going on???

[artsekey]

[feral-renaissance-cat]

As a writer who not only loves the em-dash—seriously you cannot even pry this thing from my cold dead hands—but also stresses over any tiny error in my published work so I try to make it as polished as possible before sharing it, I expect a lot of people think my stuff is AI. I don't care. I will use periods as I see fit. I will use rhetoric I learned in school or from other authors' works. I will never in my life for any reason at all ask genAI for a Thoth-damned thing. Y'all bent the monkey's paw on this one by overusing genAI to the point where you can no longer trust whether a human wrote something or not. That is not a genuine author's fault. Unless you have their browser history proving they visited some genAI site, don't assume just because someone writes with more skill than you it means they had a software write for them.

In other words,

[systlin]

So. Tyr, my dog, is a Great Pyraneese. This is important because this breed is known to be smart. Not in the way a German Shepherd or border Collie is smart, and wanting to please a human; Great Pyrs are independent minded and bred to Be Management of herds when a human might not be around.

Anyway.

It has been very pleasant out. We had the windows cracked and left them cracked when we went to work. This has never been an issue before.

My darling spouse was working on a job in a small town about a mile from our place. He was getting some stuff from the work van when he sees a large white dog prancing along.

"Huh." He thinks. "That looks an awful lot like.....TYR WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE."

Tyr, delighted that she has Found Father, bounds up happily and gets in the work van to give face kisses.

"GIRL NO WHAT." Kev says, scrambling to go let the client know that he has to take the fucking criminal back home real quick.

Turns out she discovered that a window can be shoved open with a determined snoot, and a window screen is not as strong as 80 pounds of muscular dog. And went for an adventure.

I got a call at this point while I was doing payroll.

"BABE WE NEED TO BABY GATE ALL THE FUCKING WINDOWS." My spouse says.

"....okay??" I say, and then get the story. I swore a bunch.

Anyway my dog is a criminal escape artist and we have to baby proof the fucking windows now

[damnhotpocket]

Gema.piano on instagram

Why are all music teachers like this 😭😭😭

[communeist]

THEY ARE

[crematedequally]

when i was 8 i had a very intimidating russian woman as a music teacher- she was both my opera instructor and piano teacher. about a month into piano, she sat me down and said to my mother and i "this child- very beautiful voice, good for singing. i will not allow this child to continue piano. god did not want this child to play an instrument. he told me this in dreams. that is all."

my mom had it written down on a slip so we could remember the exact words because it was so funny. i HATED playing piano and i was definitely not good at it (i did end up having a good 5 years of opera training and ended up being a pretty accomplished choir singer though) and the idea of god sending my incredibly severe and serious russian piano teacher a dream begging her to stop teaching me piano was probably the funniest way it could have gone.

[optical-trapping]

[emziess]

Rocky + Movement Project Hail Mary (2026) dir. Phil Lord, Chris Miller

[footlongdingledong2]

vomits

[luxiomahariel]

[luxwing]

Whenever I hear someone say "the woke mob" I have to stop myself from laughing because even today all I can think of is this fucking tweet

[luxwing]

Happy Pride to the Woke Mob

[doomsday-dj]

There was recently a copyright infringement case in YA and I need everyone to know that the following sentence was in the legal decision:

“Hot, sexy, dangerous boys, central to virtually all young adult romance novels, cannot be copyrighted.”

[kuttithevangu]

“Regarding setting, the court held that both works taking place in Alaska high schools was not protectable because Alaska is a public place and setting a teen novel in a high school is a common genre convention.”

Freeman v. Deebs-Elkenaney | Loeb & Loeb LLP

Freeman v. Deebs-Elkenaney | Loeb & Loeb LLP

[kogiopsis]

I've read the entire decision (skimming over the purely legal precedent/definitions bit) and here are some of my favorite bits:

[only-tiktoks]

[picturesque-about-it]

[shinesurge]

whenever i sit down with what gets chosen as our flagships i really don't blame people for not getting into comics. i don't want to hang out here either

[shinesurge]

a constant problem with both mainstream and independent comics is the medium is not treated as a medium, it's treated as a genre, and then we keep letting that genre be defined by cynical writers who are here for bad reasons. it's the same issue the magical girl genre has, almost everything that breaks containment to reach beyond its actual audience is someone trying to be subversive or save it somehow; they don't love it, they're a benevolent auteur swooping in to shine their genius on a medium that they don't consider to be worth a damn on its own. Then that's what takes off and it becomes the only current comic thing your relatives recognize, your offline coworker's entire concept of what comics are is based on things people are making out of contempt. Of course people don't think they like them.

[noknowshame]

every time I go camping with my dad he gets annoyed if I won’t drink alcohol so this time I’ve decided to put a definitive end to that by uno reverse peer-pressuring him into doing magic mushrooms

[noknowshame]

dad quote: …..I feel like a moth…..

[noknowshame]

dad quote: I wonder how my life would be different if my father owned a speedboat. no. lets start with the basics. I wonder how my life would be different if my father loved me. and owned a speedboat

[noknowshame]

other highlights of the night:

took off his glasses and hearing aids because apparently he didn’t need them anymore

saw faces in two trees and made up an extensive dialogue between a 19th century british explorer and his frenemy a lowly ornithologist

explained to me in detail the entire plot of a movie called the incredible mr. limpet

went down to the docks (we’re camping at a lake) and began directing imaginary photoshoots

had to be physically stopped from enthusiastically waving down a police officer

polished off the night by listening to sgt. pepper’s lonely hearts club band. claimed to feel the disembodied presence of john lennon (we’ve all been there)

importantly, I was also high on an equivalent dosage and was fine

[the-big-mood]

At Toba aquarium in Japan, after closing time, some clever little otter pups help their grandpa tidy up their toys. As a reward, he gives them ice cubes

[speculative]

Taiko no triangleposting by airuei

[johncraft2003]

[sirfrogsworth]

Scrolling the timeline on Mother's Day can be hard for me so last year I decided to turn my grief into something positive.

This year, I decided to make it a tradition.

I noticed people were posting a lot of old, degraded photos of their parents. So I try to pick a few good candidates to restore.

I spent a couple of years learning how to do this. I am very good at it. And I really enjoy it. But I learned it isn't very lucrative and most people are fine with what AI can do now.

It makes me a bit sad, but I actually think restoring people's precious memories is not the worst use of AI. Plus, I use several AI tools in my workflow. When there is extensive damage, generative fill is a lifesaver. The remove tool makes quick work of stubborn accumulated dust. And AI upscaling makes the photos printable, often at many times their original size.

My restorations are still much better than the free AI ones. I edit them with a precision and fidelity that can hold up to 400% magnification. I take special care to preserve likenesses and often work with reference photos to make sure people's loved ones still look like who they are after upscaling. I also do colorizing by hand (though I will sometimes make initial color maps with AI). I color grade using film stock color references so the photos still look like film, and I add texture and grain selectively to keep people from looking like smooth rubber.

But that kind of quality takes so much time. One photo is probably several hundred dollars of labor. And no one is willing to pay that so I have to charge below minimum wage.

I will probably just do pro bono restorations from here on out. Focus on fixing photos that AI isn't very good at restoring. Plus I have a ton of family photos that I want to restore for my niece. At some point, years from now, she'll be old enough to talk to me without my brother's permission. And she'll probably want to know who her grandparents were. I hope to be ready with photos and stories by that time.

In any case, it felt nice to do this on a hard day. And it helped clarify to myself how I should use this skill I've developed going forward.

Before and afters...

[thefrogman]

Some of the most difficult restorations I've done...

I've had to deal with intense color casts before, but never a green one. Thankfully, the original color was still in the data, but figuring out how to filter out the bad green and keep the good green required a lot of problem-solving.

The original was actually in really good shape and had a lot of detail. But there were just so many people in the photo and they all needed individual exposure correction on their faces. And I colored everything manually. I think this ended up being over 400 layers by the end.

For this one, the car was completely blown out and had no data. But I posted it in a bunch of vintage car forums and was able to identify the make and model. I replaced the blown out car with a better photo of the exact same model from the same year. Then I researched what paint color options were available and matched that as well.

This is one where folks might assume I used AI, but aside from my upscaling tool, I actually did this with traditional compositing techniques. It is probably one of the most damaged photos I've been able to save.

Her facial likeness was completely destroyed.

However, I restored this other photo of her.

And I was able to use it as a reference to restore her likeness in the lake photo.

It doesn't hold up as well as I'd like at this magnification, but considering how damaged it was, I am pretty happy with the result. And I think I was able to make it look like her again.

One might think photo restoration is only about saving really old photos, but I have fixed modern wedding photos that were taken in bad light and I regularly use these skills to fix smartphone photos.

My phone is getting old and is in bad shape. The back fell off and I keep it together with a case. And the lenses are unprotected and hard to clean. So all of my photos look a bit hazy now. But sometimes it is all I have to capture a moment. So I take photos and hope my editing magic can fix them.

I took this out my front window on a foggy morning.

I actually got a court summons for having that chair in my front yard.

It's a long story.

And I just had a visit from a foxy friend the other day.

My neighbor says he sees this fella all the time. So I feel like he needs a name. Otis's favorite toy was a stuffed red fox, so I'm thinking maybe I'll call him Milo.

[thevanillahorizon]

OP, I would understand very little of your magic so I will not ask on that, but I DO want to hear about the court summons.

[thefrogman]

I am going through a very long and difficult health recovery. And I have this heart thing that makes me very weak if I exert myself too much. I was trying to take this old red chair to the end of my driveway for trash pickup, but my heart started beating way too fast, and I only dragged it halfway.

So I just left the chair in my yard.

It rained soon after and I realized this pleather chair was waterproof. It shrugged off the rain and was perfectly fine. I then sat in the chair and it was a comfortable place to sit outside and relax.

So I left the chair where it was.

I can't leave the house much, so I have to find photographic opportunities close by. I eventually started incorporating the chair into my photography.

This thing was nigh invulnerable. No season was able to damage it.

And I did a fun Halloween bit with it.

It was in my yard for over a year, bothering no one.

But then I got a warning letter in the mail. The county inspector claimed I had "rubbish" in my yard and I had to remove it. I'm suspicious that a neighbor tattled on me.

I am making a lot of progress with my health. But I am at a stage where I have to get worse to get better. So I am currently bed bound most days. I have very few good days where I could move a big red chair.

It took me a few weeks, but as soon as I had a good day, I dragged the chair back into my garage and out of sight.

But it was not soon enough.

The inspector referred me to the court and I got a summons for not complying.

So now I have to appear before a judge and explain why I had a chair in my front yard.

I'm hoping they will accommodate my disability and let me do it over a zoom call. This all feels like a silly waste of time. I have neighbors with old cars on their lawn. I keep my lawn maintained and others let it grow two feet high.

But I got dinged for having a comfy chair in my yard.

[moncalas]

you're owen lars. your father has fallen in love with a woman and she's enslaved. you and your father aren't rich, but eventually you manage to free her. this one woman. one woman on a planet full of injustices.

you're owen lars. the woman you call mom had another child once. it doesn't make her love you less, but she talks about him in a way that makes it clear that she loved him, too. he's off to be a jedi now and she's very proud.

you're owen lars. your mother's been kidnapped and you have to assume the worst. a man and a woman step into your home and the man announces himself to be that kid who went off to become a jedi. he knows you less than you know him and before anything else can happen, he takes off to bring back his mother, a feat you think is impossible.

you're owen lars. anakin skywalker brings your mom's corpse to your doorstep. her funeral is interrupted by a message of utmost galactic importance.

you're owen lars. your brother is dead. you never saw him again after that first time. there is another jedi on your doorstep, with a baby in his arm and you know what it means and you can't bring yourself to face him as he hands your nephew off to your wife.

you're owen lars. obi-wan ben kenobi is a pain in the ass. he was more your brother's brother than you ever were and he doesn't understand your particular kind of grief, is drowning in his own. you don't even know the full story and kenobi will never tell you all of it. but you have a child to care for so you tell him off and get back to work.

you're owen lars. you didn't know your brother, but you know your nephew and your nephew wants out of this place as soon as possible. you know he won't be safe out there but in the end you're helpless to stop him. and you know the stories, you remember the one time you met him, the days your mother died. and you do this for her and you do this for your father and you do this for your brother and you do this for your nephew.

you're owen lars. your last act is to protect your brother's child. your child.