This is the yearly reminder
Mar. 15th, 2026 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulythat the Roman calendar was batshit.
Today is the Ides, okay, and yesterday was pridie Ides, so far so good, and the day before that was three days before the Ides, because the Romans a. counted backwards and b. did this weird inclusive counting, so Friday, Saturday, Ides = three days.
(Which is also how Good Friday is three days before the Resurrection, when it blatantly isn't.)
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Today is the Ides, okay, and yesterday was pridie Ides, so far so good, and the day before that was three days before the Ides, because the Romans a. counted backwards and b. did this weird inclusive counting, so Friday, Saturday, Ides = three days.
(Which is also how Good Friday is three days before the Resurrection, when it blatantly isn't.)
( Read more... )
Long-term psychological effects of physical isolation
Mar. 16th, 2026 04:12 amvoidbeetles posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
little_detailsHi!
I have a character in a sci-fi universe who ends up "shipwrecked" alone on a completely uninhabited planet for two years. The planet, and the specific environment he lands in, are perfectly habitable by humans (we are in soft scifi territory here, very Star Trek inspired) and he's able to survive with some effort. (The details of how are not really important to the story - I know at least that he's the kind of guy who'd be able to salvage some tech and emergency supplies from his wrecked ship, and I'm comfortable with brushing past the details of what exactly he brought with him - but if anyone's really interested in coming at it from that logistical angle, I won't stop you!)
What is more relevant to the story is how this experience would continue to affect him by the time he's back home safely. I think there are a bunch of possible avenues here and I'd love to see people's takes on how they would approach this or approach researching it. For example, here are some of my cursory thoughts:
I have a character in a sci-fi universe who ends up "shipwrecked" alone on a completely uninhabited planet for two years. The planet, and the specific environment he lands in, are perfectly habitable by humans (we are in soft scifi territory here, very Star Trek inspired) and he's able to survive with some effort. (The details of how are not really important to the story - I know at least that he's the kind of guy who'd be able to salvage some tech and emergency supplies from his wrecked ship, and I'm comfortable with brushing past the details of what exactly he brought with him - but if anyone's really interested in coming at it from that logistical angle, I won't stop you!)
What is more relevant to the story is how this experience would continue to affect him by the time he's back home safely. I think there are a bunch of possible avenues here and I'd love to see people's takes on how they would approach this or approach researching it. For example, here are some of my cursory thoughts:
- PTSD is certainly a likely long-term complication
- It's implied that his shipwrecking was not an accident/was engineered maliciously - I imagine this is something he has dwelt on heavily throughout the two years and will affect his ability to trust people (and to visit other uninhabited planets in the future!). Seems like it would be easy to get caught in delusional spirals in a situation like that.
- I know that prolonged isolation can cause hallucination/psychosis in some cases, especially in solitary confinement, sensory deprivation contexts, etc. Is that as much of a risk in this case? And if so, do you think he'd still be experiencing psychotic symptoms after the fact?
- One of his personality traits is that he's fairly attention-seeking - I think it's likely this incident will exacerbate that and make him more desperate for connection
- It'll probably alter how he approaches social situations in the future in general; that's something I'll definitely be thinking about
- Perhaps he got into the habit of talking to himself on the planet, and this never went away
Accidentally took a butter knife home from work
Mar. 14th, 2026 03:59 amconulyNot to worry, I'll return it. We have plenty enough as it is.
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and now for something completely different
Mar. 15th, 2026 05:01 pmmuccamukkThe YouTube algorithm has seen my interest in figure skating and started offering me classical ballet (I think, always difficult to tell how one gets where one ends up).
So I've been watching bits and pieces of that, as well as all of The Royal Ballet's Cinderella. I therefore offer you some fully random observations, from someone who never got into any kind of dance as a kid, and therefore knows baaaaaasically nothing about the topic. (I have been to several ballets in person, The Nutcracker of course, and the Winnipeg Ballet's Svengali..)
Which is all I have for now.
So I've been watching bits and pieces of that, as well as all of The Royal Ballet's Cinderella. I therefore offer you some fully random observations, from someone who never got into any kind of dance as a kid, and therefore knows baaaaaasically nothing about the topic. (I have been to several ballets in person, The Nutcracker of course, and the Winnipeg Ballet's Svengali..)
- I like classical ballet (I'm not really watching modern) because it's quite ridiculous, and unconnected to anything that has ever happened on the face of the Earth.
- I have learned that there's dialogue! Classical ballet has a kind of sign language, done through gestures, so that the dancers can explain plot points such as "We make evil men dance until they die!" and "This lake is made of my mother's tears!"
- There does not seem to be much point to the male principal dancers. They have thighs like birch trees, which allows them to leap impressively high in the air, but they don't spin around on nothing but their big toe, which makes them less interesting to watch. Their main purposes seems to be to move the plot along, and act as a "Ballerina holder upper."
- Maybe it's just because I'm not good enough at reading the mime, but the romantic dances are... not very romantic. They mostly seem to be the ballerina holder upper holding up the ballerina while she spins around on her big toe.
- I don't know if there's non-transphobic/misogynistic way to do the comedy roles where male dancers play female characters, but Cinderella sure didn't manage it.
- The plot of Giselle is really interesting (boy meets girl, girl dies when she finds out that boy has a fiancée, girl joins chorus of vengeful ghosts, vengeful ghosts attempt to kill boy, girl saves boy), and I wonder if there have been modern retellings like there have of other old fairytales.
- I'm pretty sure the human body is not designed to do any of that.
Which is all I have for now.
Of Navajo cops and future arch nemesis
Mar. 15th, 2026 03:15 pmselenakDark Winds, Season 3: continues to be both beautifully acted, thoughtfully and empathically written, and a visual feast. Also heartbreaking in the day it follows up on s2's conclusion for Joe Leaphorn and his wife Emma. ( Small spoilery remark. ) Also I was more grateful than ever that the show takes place in the 1970s and wasn't updated to the present because Bern's new job with border patrol would have felt very differently even before her subplot kicks in.
Young Sherlock: aka the one by Guy Ritchie which doesn't feel like a prequel to his Holmes movies and is the better for it. I mean, I didn't dislike his first Holmes movie, which was the only one I saw, but I wasn't crazy about it, either, and never felt the need to see it again. Also it was made at a time where all the various iterations of Sherlock Holmes seemed to lean into emphasizing his arrrogance. Now, this show is entertaining fluff with only the vaguest nods to when it's supposed to be set: female students galore in Oxford, 1870, for some reason a rich and high ranking visitor takes the carriage instead of the train to Oxford, while someone in the production team actually remembered the Paris Commune happened, they evidently forgot or ignored both the near starvation of the population part of that and that there was also the Franco-Prussian war going on, so everyone makes a trip to Paris for one episode with no armies in sight, but the Folies Bergeres being in business with dancing girls, etc., etc., etc. Not to mentiion ( something extremely plot spoilery ) But honestly, because the show doesn't pretend to be anything but fun fluff, I did not mind. What I do suspect is someone in the production team has watched at least some Smallville and thought, hm, that "Clark and Lex were bffs for a while when young before Lex went evil" premise is great, we should do that with Holmes and Moriarty". And proceeded to follow up on this idea. Young Sherlock, played by a member of the gifted Fiennes clan, and young James M, played by Mat (the second one) from Wheel of Time, have the necessary chemistry and homoerotic subtext, they hit it off famously, and at the same time the seeds for future supervillaindom in Moriarty are there. And the show does make it believable these are two young guys smarter than most others around them and on each other's level. Most importantly, though: this Sherlock Holmes is the first one in what feels like eons who is not introduced being a jerk to the people around him. (I love Elementary ! But while Elementary's Sherlock was never as extreme as Sherlock's Sherlock, he, too, started out being rude to his Watson and everyone else.) It might come with the much younger territory, but while he's cocky, he's not (yet?) abrasive, downright tender with his mother, and, lo and behold, civil to people who aren't awful to others in front of him. Otoh, it may also be that Guy Ritchie and his production team watched the last season of Sherlock and thought, hm, dysfunctional Holmes family drama, unexpected relations, we like it, we like it, but how about giving the women better parts? ( Spoilers were very entertained indeed by the result ) Oh, and absolutely no one gets raped or threatened with rape. Like I said, this fluffy show with a heavy emphasis on the bromance manages to do very well by its female characters. Anyway, whether nor not this gets another season - which it doesn't really need for the story it has told - I enjoyed myself.
Young Sherlock: aka the one by Guy Ritchie which doesn't feel like a prequel to his Holmes movies and is the better for it. I mean, I didn't dislike his first Holmes movie, which was the only one I saw, but I wasn't crazy about it, either, and never felt the need to see it again. Also it was made at a time where all the various iterations of Sherlock Holmes seemed to lean into emphasizing his arrrogance. Now, this show is entertaining fluff with only the vaguest nods to when it's supposed to be set: female students galore in Oxford, 1870, for some reason a rich and high ranking visitor takes the carriage instead of the train to Oxford, while someone in the production team actually remembered the Paris Commune happened, they evidently forgot or ignored both the near starvation of the population part of that and that there was also the Franco-Prussian war going on, so everyone makes a trip to Paris for one episode with no armies in sight, but the Folies Bergeres being in business with dancing girls, etc., etc., etc. Not to mentiion ( something extremely plot spoilery ) But honestly, because the show doesn't pretend to be anything but fun fluff, I did not mind. What I do suspect is someone in the production team has watched at least some Smallville and thought, hm, that "Clark and Lex were bffs for a while when young before Lex went evil" premise is great, we should do that with Holmes and Moriarty". And proceeded to follow up on this idea. Young Sherlock, played by a member of the gifted Fiennes clan, and young James M, played by Mat (the second one) from Wheel of Time, have the necessary chemistry and homoerotic subtext, they hit it off famously, and at the same time the seeds for future supervillaindom in Moriarty are there. And the show does make it believable these are two young guys smarter than most others around them and on each other's level. Most importantly, though: this Sherlock Holmes is the first one in what feels like eons who is not introduced being a jerk to the people around him. (I love Elementary ! But while Elementary's Sherlock was never as extreme as Sherlock's Sherlock, he, too, started out being rude to his Watson and everyone else.) It might come with the much younger territory, but while he's cocky, he's not (yet?) abrasive, downright tender with his mother, and, lo and behold, civil to people who aren't awful to others in front of him. Otoh, it may also be that Guy Ritchie and his production team watched the last season of Sherlock and thought, hm, dysfunctional Holmes family drama, unexpected relations, we like it, we like it, but how about giving the women better parts? ( Spoilers were very entertained indeed by the result ) Oh, and absolutely no one gets raped or threatened with rape. Like I said, this fluffy show with a heavy emphasis on the bromance manages to do very well by its female characters. Anyway, whether nor not this gets another season - which it doesn't really need for the story it has told - I enjoyed myself.
I've been so tired these past few days that I wonder if I'm actually sick
Mar. 13th, 2026 07:43 amconulySeriously, asleep more than I've been awake. And I never did manage to work out the logistics to get to the memorial, which halfway sucks but halfway is "Welp, social anxiety" so....
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A bunch of tennis fiction I guess
Mar. 15th, 2026 11:14 amthawreckaTV: My Prince of Tennis anime marathon continues apace. Good news: Tezuka vs Atobe is just as good as I remember! The look on Atobe's face when he realises Tezuka has accepted his challenge! Oishi asking Tezuka if he's sure! Atobe getting what he wants, but no longer wanting it! Atobe wishing the game would go on forever! When the crowd stops cheering and just looks on in shock for that endless tiebreak! The arm raise at the end! Honestly, magnificent. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding when Atobe finally won, even though I knew it was coming, it was that tense.
The Inui/Kaidoh doubles arc is also just as homoerotic as I remembered. Hunting down the place where Kaidoh trains shirtless, asking him to play doubles against a vibrant sunset, the whole 'let's mutually use each other' thing... What a good pairing. I 100% believe they hooked up between tennis practises....
Kawamura's hyper macho tennissona is so funny to me. Also, I just got to Fuji asking to use his bloody tennis racket and, wow, instantly remembered how hard I shipped that pairing back in the day. There should have been more fic about them!!!
I feel like Tezuka/Oishi is also an underrated ship; people don't do enough with that dynamic early on where Oishi is taking Tezuka to his doctor's appointments and acting like his worried wife. On the other hand, people have done much with how shippy the Golden Pair are after they break up in the arc where Inui gets back on the team, and they were right to, this bit of tension is the most shippy Oishi and Eiji have ever been, and from what I remember they get even shippier later.
I have to admit I didn't pay much attention to the (anime only) Josei Shonan arc, which was sooooooooo boring. All the characters on the opposing team have wacky hair to disguise that they don't have interesting personalities. I felt very [I have no memory of this place] so I assume I straight up skipped this arc the first time around. In theory the Inui & Momo doubles match should have been interesting, but it mostly underlined for me that they both have better chemistry with Kaidoh. It's not like I can say the storyline the manga did instead at this point was better, because I also don't remember that 🤣 The Rokkaku arc is fine, but the most striking image is the super long racket. Echizen is adorable in this arc, though.
I'm about to start the Rikkai games. The last bunch of episodes have been very Momo/Kaidoh shippy. Rescuing the kitty together ❤️
I kind of want to write Prince of Tennis fic again... in 2026... but I have genfic ideas. Where Ryoma is aroace but doesn't care because he only identifies as a tennis player. And then I guess I'd have to write a lot of tennis?
Watched two movies yesterday:
The 2006 Prince of Tennis live action movie, which is so much worse than I remembered. It's not good as an adaptation and it's not good as a film in its own right! No narrative focus! A lot of bad acting! Ryuuzaki is young and hot for some reason! They try to jam in too much stuff and too many characters and everything feels thin and underwhelming! The upside is I think Fuji is perfect in it in his approx five seconds of screen time, and the weird side is Ryoma and Tezuka are so much shippier here than I think they've been in any other version of the canon.
Challengers: the sad story of a woman who can't marry tennis, so she has to put up with men.
Could have used more tennis, though I found the tennis ball POV shots kind of funny. I mostly got the impression that Tashi found Art nice and convenient and she was attracted to Patrick but didn't want to be in a relationship with him, but she was really in love with tennis. I didn't find Zendaya convincing as a tennis player, but she is convincing as the hot woman two dudes fight over, so that was fine. The homoerotic tension was there, but by the end I think I found it the least interesting part? At the beginning I didn't like Tashi, but by the end I found her the only likeable character, weirdly enough; I think it might be because she was the best characterised of them all, and had more depth to her longings.
The ending felt great, which I think is because it gave me the impression the men were finally as in love with tennis as Tashi was. I can see why people want a threesome at the end of that film, but I mostly felt like none of those people should bone. Much like with the peach fucker film I feel that Luca Guadagnino's aesthetic sensibility and mine don't mesh very well; the film wasn't pretty enough to my tastes, but obviously worked well for other people.
The Inui/Kaidoh doubles arc is also just as homoerotic as I remembered. Hunting down the place where Kaidoh trains shirtless, asking him to play doubles against a vibrant sunset, the whole 'let's mutually use each other' thing... What a good pairing. I 100% believe they hooked up between tennis practises....
Kawamura's hyper macho tennissona is so funny to me. Also, I just got to Fuji asking to use his bloody tennis racket and, wow, instantly remembered how hard I shipped that pairing back in the day. There should have been more fic about them!!!
I feel like Tezuka/Oishi is also an underrated ship; people don't do enough with that dynamic early on where Oishi is taking Tezuka to his doctor's appointments and acting like his worried wife. On the other hand, people have done much with how shippy the Golden Pair are after they break up in the arc where Inui gets back on the team, and they were right to, this bit of tension is the most shippy Oishi and Eiji have ever been, and from what I remember they get even shippier later.
I have to admit I didn't pay much attention to the (anime only) Josei Shonan arc, which was sooooooooo boring. All the characters on the opposing team have wacky hair to disguise that they don't have interesting personalities. I felt very [I have no memory of this place] so I assume I straight up skipped this arc the first time around. In theory the Inui & Momo doubles match should have been interesting, but it mostly underlined for me that they both have better chemistry with Kaidoh. It's not like I can say the storyline the manga did instead at this point was better, because I also don't remember that 🤣 The Rokkaku arc is fine, but the most striking image is the super long racket. Echizen is adorable in this arc, though.
I'm about to start the Rikkai games. The last bunch of episodes have been very Momo/Kaidoh shippy. Rescuing the kitty together ❤️
I kind of want to write Prince of Tennis fic again... in 2026... but I have genfic ideas. Where Ryoma is aroace but doesn't care because he only identifies as a tennis player. And then I guess I'd have to write a lot of tennis?
Watched two movies yesterday:
The 2006 Prince of Tennis live action movie, which is so much worse than I remembered. It's not good as an adaptation and it's not good as a film in its own right! No narrative focus! A lot of bad acting! Ryuuzaki is young and hot for some reason! They try to jam in too much stuff and too many characters and everything feels thin and underwhelming! The upside is I think Fuji is perfect in it in his approx five seconds of screen time, and the weird side is Ryoma and Tezuka are so much shippier here than I think they've been in any other version of the canon.
Challengers: the sad story of a woman who can't marry tennis, so she has to put up with men.
Could have used more tennis, though I found the tennis ball POV shots kind of funny. I mostly got the impression that Tashi found Art nice and convenient and she was attracted to Patrick but didn't want to be in a relationship with him, but she was really in love with tennis. I didn't find Zendaya convincing as a tennis player, but she is convincing as the hot woman two dudes fight over, so that was fine. The homoerotic tension was there, but by the end I think I found it the least interesting part? At the beginning I didn't like Tashi, but by the end I found her the only likeable character, weirdly enough; I think it might be because she was the best characterised of them all, and had more depth to her longings.
The ending felt great, which I think is because it gave me the impression the men were finally as in love with tennis as Tashi was. I can see why people want a threesome at the end of that film, but I mostly felt like none of those people should bone. Much like with the peach fucker film I feel that Luca Guadagnino's aesthetic sensibility and mine don't mesh very well; the film wasn't pretty enough to my tastes, but obviously worked well for other people.
Performing some traffic maintenance today
Mar. 14th, 2026 01:04 pm![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
mark posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_maintenanceHappy Saturday!
I'm going to be doing a little maintenance today. It will likely cause a tiny interruption of service (specifically for www.dreamwidth.org) on the order of 2-3 minutes while some settings propagate. If you're on a journal page, that should still work throughout!
If it doesn't work, the rollback plan is pretty quick, I'm just toggling a setting on how traffic gets to the site. I'll update this post if something goes wrong, but don't anticipate any interruption to be longer than 10 minutes even in a rollback situation.
A scattered weekly proof of life
Mar. 14th, 2026 11:24 amumadoshiI have worked. Uh. A lot. Over the past three weeks. o_o But now it's the weekend, and I don't currently have a rewrite to work on, and March Break lies ahead; the spring crunch isn't finished, but it's on hiatus for the week, and a normal workweek is a breath of fresh air at this point. (Also I'm taking a couple of days off during it.)
Yesterday work wrapped up early enough that I had an actual evening, so I was finally able to start Butterfly Effects, the fifteenth (!) InCryptid book. ("Finally" is a bit of a stretch, I guess, since it's still the release week, but this is a Sarah-narrated book. Mostly. SARAH.)
So my hopes for the weekend are pretty much: avoid napping (I don't find naps restorative and feel groggier after than before I started); finish reading Butterfly Effects; watch this week's The Pitt and hopefully the temporarily-streaming production of The Importance of Being Earnest withscruloose; get scruloose to redo my undercut; and (also with scruloose) do a second round of advance-prepping ten or so bags of the dry ingredients for my breakfast banana bread while also baking up a new batch of loaves. I think that last will also require decanting cinnamons from bags into jars, so maybe we'll manage a bit of other spice decanting/sorting while we're at it.
Yesterday work wrapped up early enough that I had an actual evening, so I was finally able to start Butterfly Effects, the fifteenth (!) InCryptid book. ("Finally" is a bit of a stretch, I guess, since it's still the release week, but this is a Sarah-narrated book. Mostly. SARAH.)
So my hopes for the weekend are pretty much: avoid napping (I don't find naps restorative and feel groggier after than before I started); finish reading Butterfly Effects; watch this week's The Pitt and hopefully the temporarily-streaming production of The Importance of Being Earnest with
scruloose; get scruloose to redo my undercut; and (also with scruloose) do a second round of advance-prepping ten or so bags of the dry ingredients for my breakfast banana bread while also baking up a new batch of loaves. I think that last will also require decanting cinnamons from bags into jars, so maybe we'll manage a bit of other spice decanting/sorting while we're at it.
Paint manufacture, storage and transport in Napoleonic Europe
Mar. 13th, 2026 10:05 pmhyarrowen posting in little_detailsFor large-scale projects, specifically for ships. All my ship-related resources for the era are for the British Navy, and books on colour that I've read have been on artists' paints or dyes.
How would a French Imperial Navy vessel be painted, not at one of the big shipyards? Would it be mixed up on site from raw ingredients, or bought in? Would there be barrels, buckets with lids, cannisters, vats or what - and what would the paint be made of?
Searching online produces info on painting scale models, or contemporary pictures of ships. I found a chapter on ship decoration in Conway's History of the Ship: The Line of Battle but that doesn't have the early-in-the-process details I want. I found an article on the pre-Revolutionary Navy in the International Journal of Maritime History, by David Plouviez, that's too early and still doesn't cover paint.
Thank-you in advance.
How would a French Imperial Navy vessel be painted, not at one of the big shipyards? Would it be mixed up on site from raw ingredients, or bought in? Would there be barrels, buckets with lids, cannisters, vats or what - and what would the paint be made of?
Searching online produces info on painting scale models, or contemporary pictures of ships. I found a chapter on ship decoration in Conway's History of the Ship: The Line of Battle but that doesn't have the early-in-the-process details I want. I found an article on the pre-Revolutionary Navy in the International Journal of Maritime History, by David Plouviez, that's too early and still doesn't cover paint.
Thank-you in advance.
It's Here!
Mar. 12th, 2026 09:00 pmmuccamukkNational Theatre's Importance of Being Earnest (2025)
Free to view now until the 18th, GMT, I assume.
Free to view now until the 18th, GMT, I assume.
links list (the Internet may be getting worse)
Mar. 12th, 2026 08:52 ammuccamukkThe Battle Against Enshittification
dw_dev: AI and Dreamwidth.
Great post frommark about exactly how DW could use AI (potentially spam filtering), and how it will never use it (feeding your posts into the maw).
404 Media: 'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back.
The Verge: Grammarly is using our identities without permission.
Wired: Grammarly Is Facing a Class Action Lawsuit Over Its AI 'Expert Review' Feature.
I'm sure everyone enjoys getting sued by Stephen King.
The Flytrap: Sex Workers Versus the Algorithm.
Mostly about payment processors, but also about filtering:
The Guardian: The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all.
Canadian Politics
(I'm actually saving fewer links about this, because it's mostly pretty disheartening. And I can't deal.)
![[youtube.com profile]](https://youtube.com/favicon.ico)
TheBreach: Pierre Poilievre is misleading the public about refugee healthcare (Video: 3 minutes).
The Tyee: Advocates Hope a Ruling Will Change RCMP Treatment of Indigenous Witnesses.
Nominally good news, but so much about this case pisses me off. $7k each? Seriously? Reminder that the one person who got state protection in all of this, the guy who (allegedly) abused all those people, is John Furlong. Fuck that guy.
The Breach: A notorious RCMP unit shaped B.C. universities’ reaction to Palestine encampments.
Category: jackbooted thugs.
Kind of Cool, Actually:
HeatherCoxRichardson: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter | Reckoning with Jason Herbert Podcast (Video: 1:43 hours).
Words cannot express how validating this was. Lo! How many long years have I said that AL:VH is the most historically accurate Lincoln movie? HCR agrees.
The Tyee: What Can You Do with Used Plastic and 3D Printers? Meet Two Pros.
Not sure how scalable this is, but it's a cool project.
The Narwhal : In northeast B.C., fresh food is scarce. This First Nation hopes geothermal energy could change that.
Cool project to restore food security after Site C fucked it up, hopefully they can get funding.
NorthernBallet: Northern Ballet's Gentleman Jack | Costumes (Video: 2 minutes).
I've really been enjoying the promo clips for this new ballet. I hope there's some way to watch it online.
dw_dev: AI and Dreamwidth.Great post from
mark about exactly how DW could use AI (potentially spam filtering), and how it will never use it (feeding your posts into the maw).404 Media: 'AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back.
Kenyan workers are still the underpaid labor behind AI training, moderation, and sex chatbots. The Data Labelers Association is fighting back.
The Verge: Grammarly is using our identities without permission.
When users select the 'expert review' button in the Grammarly sidebar, it analyzes their writing and surfaces AI-generated suggestions 'inspired by' related experts. Those 'industry-relevant perspectives' include the likes of Stephen King, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Carl Sagan, among many others.
Wired: Grammarly Is Facing a Class Action Lawsuit Over Its AI 'Expert Review' Feature.
I'm sure everyone enjoys getting sued by Stephen King.
The Flytrap: Sex Workers Versus the Algorithm.
Mostly about payment processors, but also about filtering:
the endless dance around content bans requires constantly coming up with new ways to craft video titles and content that are frustrating not only for adult performers, but also their customers.
The Guardian: The world wants to ban children from social media, but there will be grave consequences for us all.
Age-verification systems require collecting sensitive data to support the biometric information. In no time, the internet will become a fully surveilled digital panopticon.
Canadian Politics
(I'm actually saving fewer links about this, because it's mostly pretty disheartening. And I can't deal.)
Desmond Cole fact checks his misinformation and explains how blaming the most vulnerable distracts us from fighting for good health care for all.
The Tyee: Advocates Hope a Ruling Will Change RCMP Treatment of Indigenous Witnesses.
But critics say the Canadian rights tribunal didn’t go far enough after finding police discrimination.
Nominally good news, but so much about this case pisses me off. $7k each? Seriously? Reminder that the one person who got state protection in all of this, the guy who (allegedly) abused all those people, is John Furlong. Fuck that guy.
The Breach: A notorious RCMP unit shaped B.C. universities’ reaction to Palestine encampments.
From Fairy Creek to university campuses, CRU-BC is positioning itself as the go-to police force for repressing dissent.
Category: jackbooted thugs.
Kind of Cool, Actually:
Words cannot express how validating this was. Lo! How many long years have I said that AL:VH is the most historically accurate Lincoln movie? HCR agrees.
The Tyee: What Can You Do with Used Plastic and 3D Printers? Meet Two Pros.
Not sure how scalable this is, but it's a cool project.
The Narwhal : In northeast B.C., fresh food is scarce. This First Nation hopes geothermal energy could change that.
Cool project to restore food security after Site C fucked it up, hopefully they can get funding.
I've really been enjoying the promo clips for this new ballet. I hope there's some way to watch it online.
Apparently Moonpie had a rough night last night and wouldn't stop barking
Mar. 9th, 2026 08:59 pmconulyJenn related everybody's lack of sleep, ending with a hopeful "So, you're not working tonight, right?"
Ah, no, I am working, and under no circumstances will I call out on the grounds that my dog is crazy.
Other than dementia, which she shows no signs of (the dog, not my sister... I mean, not her either, but that's not what I'm talking about), what could cause this sudden barking spree in an otherwise pretty quiet doggie?
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Ah, no, I am working, and under no circumstances will I call out on the grounds that my dog is crazy.
Other than dementia, which she shows no signs of (the dog, not my sister... I mean, not her either, but that's not what I'm talking about), what could cause this sudden barking spree in an otherwise pretty quiet doggie?
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