Dearborn likes to sit where the bedroom hallway meets the entry hallway, because she can see me at my office desk and also almost all of the condo from there, except for the Evil Kitchen which she hates anyway. It used to be she'd sit there watching me, and if I got up to walk into the living room or to the kitchen she'd leap up and run ahead of me, clearly concerned with being stepped on.
But she's five now, and simply refuses to be intimidated into moving. I walk up to the hallway juncture and she just sits there like "Answer my riddles three, Dad, if that's your real name."
My little sphinx, you weigh less than a six-pack of Diet Coke. You're lucky you're cute.
[ID: Two photographs of Dearborn the Tortie, in the same place and position: lying sphinxlike, front paws in front of her, head up to look at me, on the edge of a rug at the t-junction where the bedroom hallway meets the main hall of the condo. In the first, the hallway is shown clearly; in the second Dearborn is in close-up, looking past the camera, contemplative, immovable. Until her Dad picks her up and she yells because she hates being carried.]
Sam! I know this is very late, but I was scrolling back through your Shivadh-tag and had a thought about Simon's rival chef. My two cents is for a North African chef. I am missing people of color in these books. A-S is a Mediterranean country, so there's got to be some immigrant presence. And it sets you up to have some kind of community of color already established when you write your soccer (football, whatever) book, since those teams seem to have a lot of young men of color on them, from an outsider's untrained eye. (And I know you aren't getting into heavy real-world stuff, but A-S is a friendly coastal country, and I just keep thinking about refugees and immigration these days.)
I was just thinking about this the other day and wondering! I'm pretty committed to the chef being Shivadh by birth but that's nationality, not race, and there's no reason she couldn't be the child of immigrants, or of African descent, and possibly working in the immigrant/refugee community within Fons-Askaz. I've been trying to consciously include more racial diversity in the upcoming books, but that's still something I'm working out. I do have a couple of characters in mind, but nothing significant written for them yet.
I've been hesitant because I know that race and racism are viewed and act differently in Europe than they do in the US and often it's pretty regional. Without being immersed in the culture it's rough to pick up on, so I don't want to fuck up portraying that. But also these are "blue sky" novels where people aren't meant to be dealing with that kind of problem more than absolutely necessary -- viz Caleb not really coming up against any transphobia, Buck only mentioning biphobia in passing, etc -- so I think that's anxiety rather than realism talking.
Regardless, while I'll be doing my own research I'd also welcome trustworthy resources on race/diversity and racism as it appears in the Mediterranean, particularly southern France and northern Italy. If I can master the casual Italian attitude towards pastry taxonomy surely I can master this.
I have most of my “follow me around and track my interests and purchases” stuff turned off on most of my devices, but god damn if the Target app didn’t somehow nail down, if not anything I want to buy, at least the people I want to see hawking it to me.
I don’t drink Pepsi or buy Lays potato chips but Leo Messi’s face next to them certainly got my attention. Well played, Target app, well played.
[ID: A banner ad I screencapped from the Target app, which reads “Get delicious chips & beverages for game day” on the left. The photo on the right features a can of Pepsi and a bag of Lays classic potato chips incongruously pasted in next to Lionel Messi, a famous Argentinian footballer.]
Hi Sam! Because I just saw the post on ao3 and donations, and a different post about ao3s updated statement regarding chatgpt/ai generated fiction, and you generally have a good read on things like this - what's your opinion on it, and how its meant to be interpreted?
(I want to good faith believe, and its a complicated/ongoing topic, but wanted to hear your thoughts)
I don't know which post about the update you mean, Anon, but I assume the update referenced is the one the OTW posted on 5/13 about AI scraping and ChatGPT. I do have some thoughts but I want to go through the post a little because I don't think I'm actually needed to interpret this one -- I think with some critical thought anyone can, but a lot of people don't get critical thinking training in school, so I want to do a little demo of it.
Pre-emptively, this is a list of things I'm not an expert on: copyright law, data scraping, AI, website design, and the legality of certain forms of freedom of expression. But honestly for this you don't need to be.
First and foremost, we really have no reason to disbelieve OTW when they speak on this subject. While there's debate and discussion about AO3 and certainly it's imperfect in a number of directions, they are pretty transparent, generally speaking. I don't believe there is a reason to approach AO3 with an assumption of disingenuity in a general sense. However, the organization is run by humans, who are imperfect and can sometimes be deceitful, so it's good to always approach public statements with a critical eye.
So the post is talking about two separate but related issues: preventing AIs from scraping AO3, and policy on AI-generated works being posted. What we are looking for, from both, is a combination of things: we want what they're saying to make sense both in the world, and within the statement -- no contradictions, nothing that seems illogical, nothing that seems like baseless assumption or generalization. We want simple prose, and we want a look at the reasoning behind the actions they're taking.
I normally don't enjoy wedding scenes in TV or movies, particularly self-written vows, but I have to say I totally get why writers love them. It's intensely self-indulgent but it's the best, most romantic and vulnerable and dramatic scene you can write easily. All the bits that appeal most to a writer are there. And I was going to just skip the vows in Royals/Ramblers, but I ended up having a lot of fun with them...
[ID: A painting of a pastoral scene of wild hills and valleys under a cloudy sky. In the foreground, a giant spider in a cowboy hat is riding a horse casually towards the viewer.]
@scifigrl47 sent me a kit for Christmas to build a little wooden “treasure box” that looks like an owl. Finally managed to get my shit together enough to get it built and it came out awesome!
Polk helped. Or, well, she supervised from the Captain America blanket that I’ve just given up as “theirs now.”
[ID: Two images; top image is a three-dimensional owl face on the front of a small wooden box, made of layers of laser-cut and then glued-together wood. Bottom image, Polk the tabby is lying loaf-style on a fleece blanket, in the center of a Captain America shield printed on the blanket, looking very alert; in one corner, a sheet of the laser-cut wood that owl came from is visible.]
Hey Sam! Since it's currently AO3 donation time, I'm wondering what your thoughts are on it? I'm asking because you've written RPF and it's one of many "anti-AO3/anti-AO3 donations" people's favourite things to bring up when they're complaining about AO3 getting so many donations that it continuously obtains an excess of its donation goal whenever donation time rolls around? (Wow, how many times can I say "donation" in an ask?)
Sorry if this question bothers you! I don't mean to offend or annoy.
Hey anon! Sorry it took a while to get to this, I don't even know if the drive is still going on, but the question came in while I was traveling and I didn't really have the time for stuff that wasn't travel-related. In any case, let's dig in! (I am not offended, no worries.)
So really there are two issues here and as much as some people who are critical of AO3 want to conflate them, they are different. While some criticism of AO3 may be valid, rhetoric against AO3 tends to misinterpret both in separate ways.
First there's the issue of what AO3 hosts -- RPF, yes, but more broadly, varied content that some people find distasteful or think should be illegal, which is a misunderstanding of the purpose of the archive and more broadly a dangerous attitude towards the concept of freedom of expression.
Second, there's the issue of AO3 generally outpacing its fundraising goals while not allowing monetization, which is a misunderstanding of the legal status of AO3 and to an extent a misunderstanding of philanthropy as a whole.
The longer I watch debates about content go on, the more I come to the conclusion that I was fortunate to have a teacher who really wanted to instill in us an understanding of free speech not as a policy but as an ongoing dialogue. It's not only that freedom of expression "protects you from the government, not the Justin" as the meme goes, but also that freedom of expression is not a static thing. It's an ongoing process of identifying what we find harmful in society and what we want to do about it.
Should the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater be restricted? Should the freedom to yell slurs at drag performers? Should the freedom to teach prepubescent kids about gender, sexuality, and/or safe sex? Should the freedom to wear a leather puppy hood at Pride? Who gets to say, and why?
I was nine when my teacher did a unit on freedom of speech and the intersection of "harm prevention" and "censorship", which is (and should be) a discussion, not a set of ironclad rules. This ambiguity has thus been with me for over thirty years, and I'm comfortable with the ambiguity, with the process; I'm not sure a lot of people critical of AO3's content truly are. Perhaps some can't be, especially those affected by hate speech, but RPF is not hate speech. It's just fiction. Or is fiction "just fiction"? This is a question society as a whole is grappling with, although fandom seems to be a little out ahead of society in terms of how explicitly we discuss it.
I wanted to add two things! OTW does have fundraising volunteers. The team is called Development & Membership. Here's the description for them on the OTW website:
Handles fundraising and membership-building for the organization. Also maintains our secure database of member and donor information, and ensures that each member is able to vote in OTW elections.
Essentially, it looks like fundraising organization is under the team in charge of increasing OTW membership, since donation is a factor in determining membership.
The OTW used to send out emails to all AO3 users during drives. However, they've stopped. It's been years since they send out emails to all AO3. I believe during the pandemic they stopped and never started again. They may still send them to previous donators or current members, but I don't recall off the top of my head. I assume this is because the org now has a healthy reserve. (edit to clarify my statements)
Adding context! Especially since I even knew there was a Development department and had just....forgotten somehow.
I will say I’ve never had an email from AO3 about fundraising that I recall, but my OTW membership waxes and wanes depending on how well I remember to renew it. :D
I’m very pleased about the reserve; it means eventually OTW can perhaps establish an endowment, which while not eliminating fundraisers can provide a lot of stability, and allow a nonprofit to expand its offerings in various and sometimes experimental ways.
SAM I can't even describe the thing you have returned to me - apparently what I like about cheez-its and cheddar goldfish is less the cheddar and more the salt + texture and I didn't know that classic goldfish weren't cheddar and I got some today and they're exactly what I've been missing since I lost dairy. THANK YOU. (I also saw both red and blue Ski Queen brnost (brunost?) at the shop and I was sore tempted)
LOL I am so glad I could bring you to the Truth of Goldfish Original Flavor. :D
This morning I was at Target buying some groceries for the week and they have this one tiny area that's like...food they want to get rid of but don't want to put on sale, per se, so they put it in this tiny area right as you go in. Today I noticed a whole display of Goldfish crackers that was only cheddar and rainbow.
I suspect a conspiracy is afoot.
Also apparently we have Parmesan flavor in the US, which I was unaware of, so I guess I'm as guilty as everyone else of Goldfish Cracker Blindness. (I knew about the pizza flavor but since all pizza flavor is really just "tomato and oregano" flavor I take a hard pass.)
The poll is currently more or less tied between "Yes I knew about Original Flavor" and "Today I discovered there's an Original Flavor" but a solid 1/5 of people appear to believe I am pulling a Drop Bear on them by insisting there are "plain" Goldfish crackers that are not cheddar.
I didn’t lose a LOT when my phone broke last month, most of it was backed up, but my photos were not and among the things that I lost were a couple of photos of some cards and packages folks had sent me along with the notes about who had sent what. And while I have some of the cards and all of the stuff that arrived in the package, the cards are in my File Of Cool Cards I’ve Been Sent with a thousand others, and I have zero short term memory so don’t recall the contents of the package.
SO if you sent me a holiday card in December, or a card or package from January to about the end of March, I definitely received it, I loved it, and I do not have a photo of it to share, I’m so sorry! The one that I know is @arukou-arukou sent me a lovely tree of cats and that is sitting on top of my hydroponic garden now :D I’m pretty sure other cards were from @alltangledupinblue and @nissus and Kris&Josh. Beyond that I apologize!
Gotta do a post office run this week, I think, so hopefully more Bounty this weekend!
Ah yes, the next big fad in competitive play: thumb sports.
[ID: A screencap of a section of a website headed “How to Use” with a drawing underneath it of someone flipping a “pop puck” which is a small fidget toy that I guess Popsocket is trying to make happen. To the right of the image is a subhead reading “The future of thumb sports” and beneath that regular text reading “Master tons of tricks and create your own ways to play.”]
Because Twelve Points is being released and Eurovision is happening I thought you (and others) might enjoy the episodes of the podcast the Allusionist about Eurovision's history and the languages used!
Oh yeah I'm a fan of The Allusionist! Listening to those two episodes (here and here) was super funny because it's all really interesting, but was also like, a replay of information I knew, mainly because of the research for the book. It was really amusing to hear the podcast try to explain why Australia participates and have to circle back around to "Because Australians are cool about it."
I found the podcast when someone linked me to their episode on gender in the NHS, particularly surrounding pregnancy and birth (and to some extent parentage/surrogacy) while I was working on Infinite Jes, and it was extremely helpful. That episode has also informed Royals/Ramblers, where Michaelis brings some legislation regarding how the Shivadh national health program handles gender, adoption, and surrogacy paperwork.
Sam! Sam, Sam, Sam!!!! Have you heard Tim Harford’s Eurovision Cautionary Tales yet?!?!? It includes the term fan wank as a gambling characteristic! Now I’m imagining the poor gambler’s bet on Caleb / Buck!!!
Yes! I just listened to it yesterday in fact. (Link here.)
Very interesting, although also quite sad. I go back and forth on Cautionary Tales; I love it as a show but it often involves really tragic stories and sometimes I struggle with them, especially if they're about kids or current events (I do okay with historical tragedy, to an extent). Not to spoil too hard, but I thought this episode was a very nice tribute to someone who sounds like a fascinating man.
I like to think once Caleb got through Semifinals the odds would be strongly in his favor -- I think there's a couple of moments where someone mentions that the fan buzz is strong, but I didn't think about bookmaking per se. Jerry probably knows all the best bookies for Eurovision.
There's a lot I didn't get to include in Twelve Points that I would have liked to but didn't find a good place for, mainly the fan-eye-view of it all. At some point I may need to do a second Eurovision book where it's mostly about the fans and the media surrounding Eurovision. Also there are a few songwriters who tend to do a lot of work for Eurovision (sometimes they have multiple songs competing against each other) and I like to think Caleb could probably retire from teaching and just write Eurovision earworms for the rest of his life. He wouldn't, but he could.
Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!
Ways to Give:spikeygorgeous is fundraising to offset medical costs for her chronically ill child; insurance is not covering all of the medication and mobility aids he needs, and she needs help paying off debt already incurred from these costs along with aids she has not been able to get yet. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.Odin is an independent artist, educator, and author who is currently preparing for gender affirming top surgery; because they work independently for their income and won't be able to work for a month minimum and more likely two, after surgery, they are raising funds to help offset living costs. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.we_are_spc is trying to get out from under their sister-in-law's financial control, and are struggling with funding as well as with a bank that's being difficult; they need to raise $230-$250 to cover last minute expenses until their next payday this coming Friday. You can give via paypal here or send through paypal to celticphoenyx@gmail.com.
Help For Free:queerdo-mcjewface is helping Adam, a prisoner on their pen-pal's cell block, find someone to correspond with; if you are interested in writing to Adam on a regular basis, you can message queerdo-mcjewface on tumblr, or read more and reach out here.News to Know:sergeantgoggles is selling fandom-related wax melts! They currently have Star Wars: The Bad Batch and Legend Of Zelda melts in the shop, and will have Genshin Impact later this month. You can check them out and purchase here at Etsy.Recurring Needs:rilee16 is raising funds to cover a portion of bills that their roommate is unable to cover after giving them no notice he would not have the funds; one of rilee16's jobs also just cut their hours in half. They are currently late on rent, facing a late fee, and used cash earmarked for medication to keep the electricity on; you can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.
And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.
Honestly, why am I bothering trying to write a football-based romance novel when footballers are just out there giving this kind of thing away?
[ID: A photograph from the recent Roma-Leverkusen game; young player Edoardo Bove, left, hugs team captain Lorenzo Pellegrini after scoring what would turn out to be a game winning goal. Both Bove and Pellegrini are Roman-born and came up in Roma's youth program, about five years apart.]
Your two choices on this website are 1) making short posts which people will willfully misinterpret, or 2) making long posts which cover every possible exception, objection, and caveat to your point, which people won't read but will still willfully misinterpret
I’m a reasonably upbeat person most of the time, probably not despite but rather because of a lifelong diagnosis of clinical depression that was likely just exhaustion from the undiagnosed ADHD. (My mental health is a weird labyrinth that until recently I thought was a chess game.)
So I didn’t realize I’d been doing this lately but I’m kind of glad I have, I’m sure it’s been good for me: I keep crediting the cool shit I do to the ADHD.
Not exclusively; I also credit some of the real dumb shit I’ve done to the ADHD. But I’ll get bored or notice something weird and do something to entertain myself, which will delight or perplex those around me (there’s a spectrum). And then I’ll think, oh, that’s probably the ADHD talking, the sidelong approach I take to so much in life. A normal person wouldn’t do cool shit like that.
(Disclaimer as always: Normal is a cultural consensus and when I say “normal” what I mean is that we have a stringent social idea of “normal” that I do not conform to, nor could I even if I wanted to.)
Most of the examples I have of this would take too long to explain, or not seem that weird because they’re fandom things that fandom people, who are by and large Very Not Neurotypical, do. To keep it vague, recently I pulled a small prank on a group of people in the same room as me, and it took them about half an hour to notice, and when they did they were all highly amused -- but I laughed so loud at their reactions to the prank that they had to shush me. Prank: fun, but definitely ADHD. Inappropriate loudness: Inappropriate! Also ADHD. Working on that.
Anyway I caught myself thinking it today -- thinking that an impulsive thing I did which turned out cool was probably spurred on by ADHD-led boredom and curiosity. I never noticed I felt that way before but I definitely have been for at least a few months.
It’s really nice to have a mental health issue that I feel positive about. Like yeah I do feel hobbled by it sometimes but more by the late diagnosis than anything, really, and it has undoubtedly made my life way more interesting than it otherwise would have been. So that’s cool, and probably pretty functional of me to do. Ultimately I’m the one doing both the neat stuff and the dumb stuff, like I’m not externalizing the ADHD, but if I’m going to think “Hey, mental illness probably made me say that dumb thing the other day” I at least also think “Hey, mental illness made me look real cool just then.”
Not illness as in infirmity, but as in THAT WAS SICK, BRO.
hi, Mr Sam, you're fandom old, you seen a lot so you might be able to help me because i don't understand : why would someone use chagpt to wright a fic ? the point of a creative outlet is to create, i don't understand
Listen, as a fandom old, let me tell you, and I mean this sincerely and as kindly as possible: You should ask them.
If you are genuinely in search of understanding about something strange someone has done in fandom, the absolute best way to understand is to talk with them about it. To come in nonconfrontationally and say, "Hey, I don't understand this and it concerns me. I'm struggling with this idea. Can you tell me more about why you did this?"
Most people who are doing shit in fandom that seems unfathomable love to talk about it if you give them an opening. And if they're a dickhead about it, then, well, that's a data point, at least.
Now, I suspect that what you are actually after is my hot takes on AI, which is fine; I don't prefer the question be that sidelong, but I think you're genuine in wanting the discussion. I am happy to give those hot takes, and indeed wrote an entire essay of them when I saw this ask, but I'm also twelve hours from getting on an airplane to cross six time zones and spend ten days functionally without a computer. This is not the time to air my thoughts on the incredibly inflammatory topic of AI.
So I promise I'm not being flip, but I'm going to post this tidbit of advice now, and save a reblog of it as a draft with the rest of what I wrote, and I will share my thoughts and feelings about AI when I'm back in Chicago in May. And if you do ask someone why they'd have an AI generate a story for them and you have a good discussion of it, I'd love to hear about that conversation from you!
Meanwhile, I have to spend today vibrating in place while I wait for the workday to be over and calling Google about my new phone, which if you put it on the 5G network overheats and chews the battery to shreds. It's a real good time. :D
It would be incorrect to say I don't have the time or interest to investigate AI, but the culture war fandom is already fighting over AI is less of a concern to me than what's going to arise out of AI being used in more mainstream ways. Fandom is my community and it's tough to see it struggling and damaged by this, but it's also not necessarily going to be the way the wider human community experiences AI as we go forward.
My hot take is actually probably pretty lukewarm: I have yet to see a discussion of AI that manages to encompass all the disparate aspects of how AI is developed and used. It may exist, but if so it's not hitting my radar. I agree with some arguments being made about AI and I disagree with others, but I also suspect a lot of people are speaking of AI generated art -- and by art here I mean a broad category encompassing prose, visual arts, music, and other disciplines -- without knowing much about how it actually happens. Meanwhile, outside of fandom the discussion is heavily based in tech and social philosophy, and doesn't really address the artistic side at all. And I'm not capable of encompassing all of it either, so take all of this with a grain of salt.