"we're using AI to turn PDFs into podcasts" is gonna be one of those phrases that gets mocked in about 20 years as the absolute height of the 2020s AI bubble of creating useless features dreamt up by Linkedin-climbing MBA lunatics for an audience of no one

When you can tell which item you can interact with, and which are just background dressing

i'm a thought leader. AMA

The fact that J.K. Rowling successfully bullied Amnesty International into taking down a report that accurately called out her attack on trans people, especially trans women, is so repulsive and such a display of the power of her money, and her choice to put her vast fortune behind persecution.

Amnesty International put out a major report documenting the influence of UK based anti trans gender critical organizations and their funding. Within hours, GC groups threatened defamation lawsuits and Amnesty was forced to pull it down. Proving the point they're anti rights. Anyways, here it is.

Mainstream Respectable opinion is that people joking about a bad person's death represents a culture of cruelty, but really it represents a culture of impunity. It's a coping mechanism for watching someone do evil their whole life and never seeing consequences

The idea that we can't ever express relief and joy at the deaths of horrible figures who intentionally chose to make our lives hell is a weapon of the gentry. "But they were a person, with a family." So was everyone they gleefully destroyed, and they matter a hell of a lot more.

Despite a paper trail proving otherwise, Unbound’s administrators claimed they still owned the rights to Effin’ Birds and threatened to sue Penguin Random House if PRH paid me any royalties for my ongoing book sales. Wasn’t resolved until two months ago. They tried to bankrupt me out of spite.

“But I want to tell you what he was like to hang out with in private when there were no stakes” is a very common response to the death of a person who had immense power in situations with high stakes.

I'm sure this has been said a million times already, but: If one critical test of character is whether someone is kind when it doesn't benefit them, another is whether they're kind only when it doesn't hurt them.

Quick Tip: "Don't speak ill of the dead" means dont demean, or spread lies, or speak malicious untruth about dead people, who cant defend themselves Accurately describing someone's life and legacy is not "speaking ill" It's the truth - which is self justifying in that it is the truth!

This is what drives me nuts about this slop, no designer would get away with such mistakes, the client would’ve said “WTF is this crap, go away & fix it”, but because they can do it cheaply themselves it’s somehow OK, it just needs the right feel on a macro level

This is the best possible tiny shelf of DVDs you could find in a rental cottage. You would spend the whole week trying to triangulate the personality of the owner, become obsessed, start writing fan fiction.

Not again!

whyyyyyyy would you want to take such an endlessly good and fascinating instrument and blunt all its edges? nobody is making you do that! just don't do it!!! you need your brain! you only have one!

did you know you can make your brain do NEW things? it will do it! it will do it all the time! in 2019, I started doing a bit where I'd say "oh, I've given up magical thinking" and because the brain is endlessly malleable, I accidentally CBTed myself into really, for real, giving up magical thinking

what's crazy about AI is that I love the human brain with every piece of my heart, and so many people seem enthusiastic about causing all the good things about their own human brains to atrophy and die.

it's not actually an honor to end up on the cover of Viziers Monthly. it shows your machinations aren't subtle enough

There was one post by a guy asking if he was getting a good deal on some flashlights with a hurricane coming and the response was like “these are fine for an emergency but you’re living in a dream world if you think this is good enough for an everyday carry”

Adding to the list of red flags: - if they claim to be an editor or agent, aol or gmail address instead of corporate - an editor emailing you when you already have a publisher, and/or have your agent's info on your website

5yo is having a playdate over at our house and is rushing around showing her friend everything, and the 10yo is all like: ah, the follies of youth I remember many winters ago when I was such a callow lad

worth mentioning that a lot (a lot!!!) of men have also been sexually harassed and abused, and very often they struggle to gloss it that way to themselves. it would help people of all genders to be more honest and forthright about the harms of sexual abuse. for God's sake.

I was VERY UPSET when my local specialist running store closed earlier this year, because it’s impossible for me to buy shoes that fit online (and I need a weird size that most regular brick-and-mortar stores don‘t have stock of to try on)

This thread was my exact experience as a buyer for an indie bookstore as well. One preorder was "huh, interesting." Two preorders meant I was definitely going to order it in for general stock, possibly enough to put on the front table or to have faced out on the shelf.

I was waiting for someone to post this.

you have this seen this, right? www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsgW...

call a bondulance

5yo lost another tooth, which just prolongs this crime spree

this is also a very good article

as I'm reading this excellent piece by Rien, I'm thinking about the flip side, the extremely common sexual script in romance (especially het romance but not exclusively) where the penetrating partner can magically intuit and deliver everything the penetrated partner wants, without discussion.

good article www.newsweek.com/i-dated-grah...

I was chatting to my (lovely) (male Romanian) PT about the topic of divorce just the other day. He said, but people used to stay married a lot more, and I said, yes and men used to die inexplicably a lot more too. His face was a picture.

[putting on history of labor and aesthetics hat] See how the devaluation of skilled creative labor causes public visual standards to sink even deeper, with the previous devaluation paradigm of the word processor and MS Paint now held up as an ideal

The story here is not this stupid movie – which will never get made and never come out – but how the Tilly Norwood people keep getting these credulous articles placed in national news sources despite zero demonstration of any success or demand for this.

One of the previous occasions

seemingly everyone chotiner interviews: “rip to everyone humiliated by chotiner but i’m different. and better. maybe even better than chotiner.”

there is a cohort of men who resent the responsibilities and obligations of adulthood — of the fact that you owe things to other people. it is a fundamentally childish impulse that they have reconfigured as the height of masculinity, and i think it informs the parasocial attraction to platner.

It's testament to the genius of Documentary Now! that @jezfletcher.bsky.social keeps forgetting TROUVER FRISSON is not a real Agnès Varda film

It's been a point that's been argued to a brick-wall my entire professional life but if you take a cold hard look at the relative successes, compounding economic benefits, and global standing of British industries the treatment of the performing arts is a completely mad kind of self harm

I shared the blog post earlier but the report is definitely worth a read too – especially for editors

I do not post screenshots from the X app because I am not an importer of filth. All the filth you see here is organic and locally sourced

We didn’t find a smoking gun. Nothing so neat. But we found patterns: • hollow worldbuilding • limited interiority • strange behaviour in editorial • missing drafts/notes • contradictions • weak craft conversation

AI fraud nearly derailed our next anthology. Today we’re talking about what went down, the things we missed, and publishing the report we wish we’d had when it happened. Read all about it on our new blog, and download the full report:

spotted on Reddit: this menu card from a Lufthansa flight explaining the bibimbap being served the Korean text apparently translates to: "You know how to eat bibimbap, right? You are experts. So, please understand that we need more space for English and German instructions."

Zohran hitting the Mourinho “If I speak” meme last night on the US Trump corruption debacle was so so funny

for years, as a reporter on this beat, I was asked, "but what about the path back?" there are paths back, there's a whole chapter on them. Thing is, they're rigorous & most people don't want to do the work. We don't have to valorize not doing the work. That's a choice & it ain't brave or special

💚 If you ever think we keep doing the same shit over and over again regarding abuse, assault & misconduct, Burn It Down is my attempt to explain why those patterns persist & what we can do about them (a lot!) It's about Hollywood, but here is my not-that-hidden agenda: It's about everywhere 🔥

Man got Chotiner’d without even agreeing to an interview. Astounding