What even is going on with her paws here? I don't understand this girl. #CatsOfBluesky

It's a rainy #Caturday and everyone is catting peacefully, including the humans.

I've closed my Etsy shop for the foreseeable future. Etsy has become a minefield of AI-generated and stolen listings. I rarely dare shop there myself any more, so I can't blame anyone else for doing likewise. The sales drop since the rise of gen AI means it's not worth the effort any more.

#MayWorldbuilders Many magical gifts facilitate long-distance communication. It's a common career path for a fire witch (for instance) to set up shop as, essentially, a phone box. Common enough that they haven’t invented phones, though they probably could.

Remember when Britain voted for Boaty McBoatface but they named it Sir David Attenborough instead and nobody minded? His was the only name that was acceptable to a nation having its vote ignored. It’s probably too late to make him our leader and heaven knows I don’t want to ignore democracy but.

Be a David Attenborough in world of Trumps, Farages, Musks, and Putins.

Starmer said that Labour didn't want my vote, so I did as he asked and walked. The Tories are over. Reform are a bunch of racists funded by billionaires who want to dismantle the NHS. The Greens are the party standing up for human rights. #JoinGreen

This is just the beginning. Join our movement of hope: Join.greenparty.org.uk

Don't stop spreading the word. Do not stop.

Election day cat. Nefertiti has never heard of Nigel Farage, and if she ever had the misfortune to meet him she could hiss in his face with no negative consequences. Sometimes I am astoundingly jealous of my cats.

Labour's top priority for the next 3 years should be electoral reform to introduce a more proportional system, so all voices can be heard. If not, our current voting system means very extreme political voices will be able to seize complete power on 30% of the vote. #UKPolitics #UKElection #BBCNews

No one expected Keir Starmer to solve our pressing problems overnight. But what we did expect – and had every right to expect – was that he would lay out a clear vision and roadmap for doing so. Instead, we’ve had drift, appeasement and a startling absence of ideas, values and ambition. 🧵1/6

I fear Labour people risk falling into an ecological fallacy visible from space when reacting to these results. Here is what is very clear in results so far: Labour are losing *seats* to Reform, but... Labour are losing *votes* to the Greens Greens split the vote, Ref comes thru middle

I'm also an author with chronic health conditions that limit my ability to write, and yet my work has never been within so much as sniffing distance of the AI slop machine.

It's super easy from here to look at the US and scream YOU ARE SLEEPWALKING THROUGH 1930s GERMANY REDUX. Brits who do that should take a minute to read up about that period's obsessive transphobia, and cartoons like this in the national press.

Freyja has been staring under the fridge for 15 minutes straight. I have a bad feeling about this.

I'd like to take a moment to evangelise about Clues By Sam to all my puzzle-loving peeps. Catch criminals! Solve crimes! Falsely accuse innocents because you can't tell left from right! (That last one might be just me.) Seriously though, it's great.

It's been a very Monday-ish Tuesday.

I wish I could figure it out myself, my marketing would improve no end! Some kinda alt-world, here's what our world might be if the continents looked different, and oh yeah if we also had magic but also some technology. #SpoonieAuthChat

Once again I am extremely narked that my husband can buy jeans that don't snag the second a kitten tries to climb them, but I can't. It's not even a price issue. I'd gladly pay twice what he does for a decent pair of jeans, but they just don't exist.

The irony of chronic illness is that you get very tired of being very tired.

If you use AI to generate a book cover, I'm automatically assuming you used AI to write the book and I just won't read it. 🥰

This is exactly what I'm trying to say every time I say that AI can't make art and never will be able to make art. Without authorial/artistic intent, there is no art.

It is warm enough to wear a pretty dress for the first time this year. Happy May Day.

Today’s poem is called ‘Billionaire in a Midlife Crisis’.

This Is Just To Say I have turned off the AI features that were in the update and which you were probably hoping to monetize Fuck you they were stupid so unnecessary and so annoying

A spin-off conversation from this has me pondering a better phrasing than high v. low support needs. I have low enough support needs that I can have a job, go to work, feed myself, etc., but those support needs are very much behind the scenes and the coping balance is easily tipped by stress.

#Neurodivergent life hack: you are allowed to use gloves (disposable or otherwise) for household tasks that are sensorily difficult, even if other people can do them bare-handed.

Dear Google, I do not want to try your AI features for Gmail, Google Drive, or anything else. Please kindly go fuck yourself. Thanks, A Very Annoyed Writer

Signs of spring.

All the stuff about vetting, advisers and process misses the point that everyone knew who Peter Mandelson was, what he had done and who he had associated with for literally years before Keir Starmer made him ambassador and lots of people pointed it out at the time. He appointed him anyway

If you're seeing a lot of angst from indie authors on your timeline, it's because we seem to be getting hit from all sides and a whole lot of us are either barely breaking even or losing money publishing our stuff to begin with so it wears you down. Sending 💜 to my fellow indies today and every day!

Finishing watching The Other Bennet Sister one night and starting watching Young Sherlock the next is a recipe for whiplash. IYKYK.

Comfy baby girl.

*sigh* If your Kickstarter video/image is AI, I won't back it. If your book has an AI cover, I won't read it. If you're a public supporter of AI use for creative work, I will unfollow you. I cannot stress enough how offensive I find AI use in the arts. It is outright theft, it is lazy, it is gross.

wouldn't it be funny if EVERYONE blocked this Attie AI account @ bsky.app/profile/atti... before they could do anything with it

I finally lost my shit about so-called AIs, LLMs, enshittification & everything fucking evil that @officialgrammarly.bsky.social is doing. I'm fucking furious, and not just about what 1 company has done. An open letter to Grammarly & the rest of the LLM hype machine www.moryan.com/an-open-lett...

YouGov latest poll. A reminder that over the past year Reform's polling is usually overestimating the final vote in by-elections whereas the Green's polling underestimates it. With everything being so fucking awful you don't need to doomerise about this...enjoy the bar chart, even for a moment.

Anyone on the left who wasn’t actively involved from 2015-19 needs to know what’s coming. 1, they’re going to throw multiple, often contradictory lies at the wall to see what sticks. Polanski will be simultaneously weak and strong, timid and aggressive, passive and dictatorial, old fashioned and

#GreenVictory A lot of people are defending Starmer’s record and ‘Labour have done xyz good things’. To which yes, BUT, that’s nowhere near enough to counteract the other side of the scale. It has the same energy as ‘at least Harold Shipman didn’t commit tax fraud’. Like, so what? 1/5

underappreciated but very funny gorton and denton sideplot: the conservatives nominating literal sex matters (uk terf group) trustee charlotte cadden, only for her to get the worst result for the conservatives in by-election history and lose her deposit

Starmer: “If you don’t like our policies you can leave.” Voters:

Neph is a bit too big for her new box. Nevertheless: she fits, she sits. #CatsOfBluesky

Hey, c’mere! Closer. No, closer! Okay, here goes: Disabled creatives do know the difference between assistive tech and GenAI. (Stop saying, “It’s ableist to be against GenAI because disabled folks need it.” It’s actually ableist to use us as an excuse, just so you can still use GenAI.)

Just finished Guards! Guards! I first read this when I was 13 or so. There is soooo much that I must have missed back then. Fabricati diem, pvnc, indeed. I think it's time to revisit the rest of Sir Pterry's oeuvre. #Booksky #GNUTerryPratchett

Genuinely read this headline as though one person had just won at least four events in one day, and had to give myself a reality check.

My work email keeps trying to auto-correct my Oxford commas out of existence and it's very annoying.

LLMs do not understand, will not understand, and cannot ever understand information. It's a glorified search engine combined with auto-compete, and you should treat it as such. No matter how much LLM companies try to tell you their machines can think or reason, they cannot and will not. 12/12

Caturday has brought Freyja her first sunbeam in weeks, and she is very happy. #CatsOfBluesky

Friends from Minneapolis reporting to me that things are at the point where folks are being hidden in other people's houses and we are in the "again" part of "never again" which the "never" was supposed to preclude