Heads up on some fucked up spam comments going around AO3 - a friend just got a comment claiming the commenter had their name and address and was adding them to a list of ICE agents. Any comment claiming to have your personal information is a scam designed to panic you into engaging with it. Report, delete, and consider locking your fic comments to registered users only.
Hi, I've worked in banking and healthcare, so apart from working directly in tech, I like to think I've got a pretty good handle on scam behavior.
Most scams want you to panic.
I want you to take a second and breathe. Did you give AO3 your address when you made your profile? Is your address associated, openly, on the internet, with your personal business (i.e name, phone number, address, etc)? How would a person have found out that your email address is associated with an AO3 account?
The answer to the first question is, no. I have an AO3. They never asked for my address. They don't need that information for me to have an account.
The answer to the second question, for the vast majority of the internet, I'm going to reasonably assume, is also no. If you're using, like, your whatever-professional certificate/license associated email address for your AO3......uhh, stop that? We use personal emails for recreation, you goose.
See? Logic defeats a scam almost every time.
Don't panic. Think.
Thank you for adding this! What my friend received was absolutely an AI-generated scam text meant to cause panic and further engagement. It's no different from those awful "I know you looked at porn" email with current levels of fucked-up added to it, and it's most likely run by a bot. Do not engage.
I think about this every year but this trend of American Christmas movies where characters act like Christmas is being forgotten/no one cares about it anymore/it's dying and needs to be saved/etc while the whole country has been flooded with Christmas since Halloween really is a perfect example of how (mainly white) American Christians always see themselves as the victims and persecuted minorities no matter what.
"Nobody believes in Christmas anymore! We need to save it!" Okay well I've been hearing songs about Jesus in grocery stores since November 1st so forgive me for my doubt.
Oh…. Well, it’s over for Crunchyroll I guess
it gets worse: funi had an option to buy anime outright. but, it was bought digitally, and now CR has said that they're not going to honor that, so if you bought anything from funi digitally, CR are taking that away from you
This is absolutely insane but the part that I find funny is that there isn't a community on earth more dedicated to piracy than western anime fans. For ages the only way to even get your hands on anime and manga in the west was piracy. I literally don't think Crunchyroll could have picked a worse group to try the "we're a monopoly so we can charge you whatever we want" play on. I doubt there's a person over the age of 25 who saw that and thought anything other than "welp, okay, piracy it is then!" like honestly the Crunchyroll executives are out of their fucking minds with this one.
What I think a lot of new fans miss is that... there used to be rules.
I have now run anime cons for 20 years. I got into anime in the period where the internet was rising, and legal access to this stuff was sparse, and generally limited to the biggest titles. I bought Fruits Basket on four. Separate. DVDs. I got each ON SALE for around 20.00. I paid EIGHTY PLUS DOLLARS for 4 DVDs of Fruits Basket.
But most of my early access was on blank DVDs with names and episode numbers written clumsily in sharpie. Handed over by friends, traded at con meetings, mailed to me by a friend via media mail. Fansubs and bootlegs, torrented and copied endlessly.
But there used those be a rule. A covenant. Unbreakable. Once a property was licensed, all illegal distribution stopped. Instantly.
The last episode of Fullmetal Alchemist I saw involved Hughes in a phone booth. The series was licensed right after that, and all access stopped. Fansubbers closed their listings, torrents dried up.
Because the end goal was licensing. We wanted nice, physical copies. We wanted professional, properly coded subtitles. We wanted an English Dub cast. We wanted to make anime a viable industry in the West.
So we bought Fruits Basket for eighty goddamn dollars.
So as I reach bitterly for my DVD burner yet again, it's time to remember. We upheld our part of the bargain. We bought it legally from them. We paid to see this industry grow and thrive.
We didn't break the agreement. They did.
First time Airachnid doodles
Can you tell the second is a much better one to me?
Sometimes it takes a second try and a second analysis of the character for me to finally get it tehehe. I love how Airachnid is designed and I love her sm but definitely don’t like how the fandom treats her and how the writing for her is treated in TFP (it’s misogyny let’s be blunt).
I also love my friends self ship with her sm, I’ll draw them whenever I get the chance to
hey it’s ok if you lost your ai virginity back when you were uneducated. a lot of posts go like “reblog if you have never ever used generative ai and never ever will!!!” but it’s ok if you have used gen ai before and it’s even ok if you used to think it was cool, back before you understood what it really was and how it worked, either because no one had taught you about it and you discovered it on your own or because the only education you had received about it was from the tech bros. you’re not a burger with a bite out of it for having used ai. ok
It is 100 percent okay to stop using it today and join the "boo AI" club.
This isn't a purity thing. This is a "everyone stand with us against destroying the environment and giving asthma to poor people" thing.
Did you know that when one community says no to an AI data center, they specifically search out communities with fewer resources? Communities that can't defend themselves? And the pollution 100 percent affects their health and wellbeing, in addition to burning through our already scarce drinking water.
You can stop using character.ai today. You can say "I listened to the facts and stopped." And another thing: don't you think it's a bit more impactful to have used it, stopped, and then you're in a position to say how little it helped? How doing things for yourself improved your life?
also posts in the spirit of "if you've used AI even ONCE your soul is tainted!!!!" can't be great to those with OCD
y'all I used to mess with generative AI all the time back in like 2020-2021 before chatgpt was a thing and it generated entertaining nonsense
i had a paid subscription to inferkit for my amusement. it was a whole thing
Thing is. Since I played with LLM's back when they were in their early stages. I know how they work. specifically i am intimately aware of why they aren't, and can't be, "intelligent," and why there's no way they could possibly work well for the tasks they are being used for
you see, the earlier models offered sliders to manipulate the amount of "randomness" in the result and how the "randomness" was applied. Set the sliders low, you get endless loops of repeating words and sentences; set the sliders high, and you get nonsense gobbledeygook
furthermore, chatGPT has a sort of framing device where all the outputs are formatted in "person talking to another person" form; earlier models didn't use this and they just generated "more" of whatever you input
it made it very hard to miss that it is a statistically likely sentence assembling machine
My “draw the squad” memes so far
Updating with some newer ones!
@mexicanesecat @raimeyl references for y'all!
WOW! THE OG POST!
i will let my mind go wild with these knowing i’ll finally be able to credit the original artist
EEEE FINALLY THE ORIGINAL ARTIST
Oh hell yeah, going to use these later!
FINALLY! PINTEREST GO SUCK DICK WE FOUND THE SOURCE!
Pinterest is one of the reasons why I’m broke
Speaking of broke, my newest ref folder’s full of new DTS doodles is out NOW!
Unicron being surrounded by his followers
Doodle based on my self indulgent selfship TFP au that I call The Gator Maiden (mighg change the name) because it involves my sona being a mythical creature similar to a selkie or swan maiden in which they transform into a gator hence the au name.
While the au is a selfship AU mostly it still has lore that mainly focuses on the concept of Unicron actually having an influence/connection with the Earth creatures but most in particular the mythological kind.
In my doodle, Unicron is with the Bird Trio (all based on birds from the Everglades) and a gator who are basically his ‘followers.’ Now I do wanna say that absolutely Unicron still views Earth creatures as parasites who aren’t worthy of being his equals or subordinates but in this case, he the very least tolerates this group due to being his progeny (in a very loose God/Creator way) who understand that he doesn’t value them.
Their whole ideology revolves around understanding his world is an eat or be eaten world fueled by survival and gluttony, the creatures within it are chaotic wild beings naturally. Obviously they won’t be overly nihilistic or pessimistic like him, they at least aren’t try to put themselves above him. And that comparison of how much every creature reflects their creator, does earn that little bit of respect from him.
So boom the get to have perching privileges and he is just sitting there like an unamused dad. This particular image of Yellow Diamond with the pearls is what inspired me to draw this
Something I just noticed in Knights of Guinevere
Is that Olivia has those 'imperfections' that they want to get out of Guinevere.
Olivia has the wrinkles under her eyes. They want to get rid of that with Guinevere.
Olivia has literal points in her hair. When they want to brainstorm and get rid of that one singular point in Guinevere's hair.
Olivia's pupils are not dilated whatsoever... When they want to keep Guinevere's eyes dilated constantly.
AND. Olivia's not smiling. Guinevere has her mouth pinned to always keep smiling, and Olivia has never been seen smiling.
Olivia, I feel, is the LITERAL OPPOSITE of Guinevere. Where in just appearances alone or personality I do not know.
But also that '-O' is probably Olivia's name. 'O' for Olivia. So I think she's literally been getting rid of all the imperfections she has herself, through Guinevere.
Also I love this show like so much I hope there's a episode two <3
(Also none of these are really imperfections, but I'm pretty sure Olivia does think they're not perfect which is why she tries to get rid of them to make the 'perfect' Guinevere.)
I designed a critter 🐛
hello fellow artists. google has fallen. pinterest/duckduckgo AI filters don't work. do not despair; here is a list i made of places to find reference images without having to sift through piles of worthless garbage. (for future editing convenience i am just linking my blog post on dreamwidth.)
Also almost every country has laws restricting or outright banning disabled people from immigrating. They explicitly state we're "burdens" they don't want to shoulder. When everyone was joking abkut moving to Canada I had to sit there knowing I am trapped in a place that wants me dead (trans and queer) and no country will help me because they'd rather I die then burden them with my care.
"Immigrats who can contribute" is phrased to exclude disabled people :/ if we dont contribute by being smart or whatever the fuck we aren't worth helping.
PEACH APPLE JAM (Phurum Jam)
(From AWL)
Ingredients:
- 12 peaches, peeled and pitted (8 cups macerated)
- 12 apples, peeled and cored (8 cups macerated)
- 12 pears, peeled and cored (8 cups macerated)
- 24 cups sugar (1 cup of sugar for each cup of fruit)
- Fresh ginger- a knob the size of your thumb, grated
Equipment:
- 1 very large stainless steel pot
- 1 food processor
- 1 long stem stirring spoon
- Sanitized mason jars and lids
- Tongs
- Wide funnel
- Ladle
Directions:
- First, you will want to clean out your mason jars. There are several methods for doing this, but I like to take a short cut and run them through the dishwasher on the ultra-hot ‘sanitation’ setting, which also heat dries the jars. Do ensure your jars are dry before canning with them.
- To peel the peaches, bring a large pot of water to a boil. Slice a small 'X’ into the skin on the bottom of each peach. Place the scored peaches into boiling water for 30-40 seconds then shock them in a bath of very cold or ice water. The skins should peel off quickly and easily. Quarter the fruits, remove the pits and whiz them through the food processor. You should have roughly 8 cups of macerated fruit. Pour chopped peaches into your large jam pot.
- Peel apples and pears with a vegetable peeler. Quarter and core fruits and blitz through a food processor in batches, similar to how you cut the peaches- small chunks are okay but try and get any larger pieces broken up. You should have roughly 8 cups of chopped pear and 8 cups of chopped apple. Add both to the jam pot.
- Add 24 cups of sugar (1 cup for each cup of fruit) and grated ginger and stir well. On the stovetop, turn the heat on the jam pot up to high, stirring frequently to ensure the bottom doesn’t burn. Once the fruit has come to a boil, turn the heat down to med-low and simmer for 40 minutes or so.
- Using a spoon and a little bowl, skim the 'foam’ that forms on the top of the jam as it is simmering. This 'jam waste’ is cloudy but still delicious and is a great way to test for flavour and adjust the ginger to your palette!
- When the jam is ready, the colour will have darkened slightly to a beautiful gold and the bubbles coming to the surface with 'burp’ slowly, indicating a good thickness.
- Fill a small saucepan with water and bring the water to a boil. Place the center lids of your mason jars (with the rubber seal) in the boiling water to sanitize them.
- Using a ladle and a wide funnel, pour your jam into one of the sanitized mason jars. Using a moist cloth, wipe down the edge of the jar to ensure a tight seal. Using tongs, lift one of the mason jar lids out of the boiling water and place on top of the filled jar. Screw on the outer lid tightly and set aside. Repeat with the rest of the jars until all the jam has been canned. As you go through this process you will begin to hear a satisfying 'popping’ noise as the hot jars seal themselves- that’s a good thing! A 'pop’ means the jar is well sealed and the jam will keep well in a cool dark place for up to a year or two!
POUND CAKE
(From AWL)
Ingredients:
- 1 and ½ cups (188g) all-purpose flour (spoon & leveled)
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup (230g; 2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1 cup (200g) granulated sugar
- 3 large eggs, at room temperature
- ¼ cup (60g) sour cream, at room temperature
- 3 Tablespoons (45ml) freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 1 lemon)
- zest of 1 lemon
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Icing:
- 1 cup (120g) confectioners’ sugar, sifted
- 1 and ½ Tablespoons (22ml) lemon juice
- 1 Tablespoon (15ml) heavy cream or milk (heavy cream produces a thick icing as pictured)
Directions:
- Lower the oven rack to the lower third position and preheat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan.
- Make the cake: Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a large bowl. Set aside.
- With a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle or whisk attachment, beat the butter on high speed in a large bowl until smooth and creamy, about 1 minute. Add the granulated sugar and beat on high speed for 2 minutes until creamed. Scrape down the sides and up the bottom of the bowl as needed. With the mixer running on low speed, add the eggs one at a time. Once the last egg is completely mixed in, stop the mixer. Add the sour cream, lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla extract, then beat on medium speed until combined. Scrape down the sides and up the bottom of the bowl as needed. The mixture may look curdled as a result of the varying textures combining. This is normal and the batter will come together when you add the dry ingredients in the next step.
- With the mixer running on low speed, slowly add the dry ingredients just until combined. If needed, run a whisk through the batter a few times to rid any large lumps. Avoid over-mixing. Batter is thick.
- Spoon/spread the batter into prepared loaf pan and bake for 45-60 minutes, tenting the cake with aluminum foil halfway through baking to prevent the top from over-browning. Pound cakes are dense and take awhile to bake in the oven. Baking times vary, so keep an eye on yours and don’t be alarmed if yours is taking longer. The cake is done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out *mostly* clean. A couple moist crumbs are OK.
- Remove the cake from the oven and place on a wire rack. Allow cake to cool in the pan on the wire rack for 1 hour, then carefully remove the slightly warm cake from the pan. Let it continue cooling on a wire rack or on a serving plate/platter. You can add the icing while the cake is still warm or wait for it to cool.
- Make the icing: Whisk all of the icing ingredients together and pour over cake. Serve immediately or wait until the cake cools completely, which promises neater slices.
- Cover and store leftover cake for up to 3 days at room temperature or up to 1 week in the refrigerator.