Lady Scorpia

This needs to be digitized online!

What an exhausting week this has been!
Unsurprisingly, I have been thinking about that little retirement fantasy I had a while earlier. I do feel I must see a few more clients through before I consider it. They are so promising.

That is a very valid concern. Does anyone truly trust those companies to keep such data safe?

Saint-Étienne-du-Mont Church & Ernest Hemingway's Apartment

The city is dense; you'll never see every corner. The photo for now marks where I need to return: Saint-Étienne-du-Mont Church.

We passed Hemingway’s first apartment. He lived here in the 1920s, newly married, newly poor, carrying stories in his pockets.

joellemctigue.substack.com/p/tracing-sh...

All that is going down south. I have dear friends there I'm worried sick over.

Five years old.
I'm speechless, simply speechless.

Most days I simply can't think of anything to post, it all seems rather small on my end. I am not one living through anything close to any of the worst! I can't imagine—

a cartoon character says what now in front of a potted plant ALT: a cartoon character says what now in front of a potted plant

I’m here, technically.
But I do sometimes regret not becoming a remote lighthouse keeper when I had the chance. (Long story.)

I’d genuinely rather deal with sideways rain than mad kings and their wake.

Am I the only one who cannot sleep? I can't imagine I am the only one tonight.

I heard! Scorpia is not pleased 🦂

We have the sniffs here too, it is everywhere right now. 🤮

The AI creep in this industry is exhausting 😬
I’ve saved enough, and honestly? I could retire, travel a bit, take my mum along while she’s still healthy enough to enjoy it. That feels more human than whatever this is becoming.

If you’re wondering whether I’m okay: I just argued with a semicolon and -lost-.

Me!

As someone who ends up guiding others around the language at times, I can promise you English is already pretty broken right out of the box!

Thinking about another career change today. Watching folks in my industry cosy up to AI is… disheartening. So now I’m daydreaming about opening a wee knit shop. Or wandering the land as an itinerant sorceress. Haven't decided which yet, but both come with scarves, so...

I am drawing a blank on "Poppy", it's been a minute since I was caught up.

VagabondTE? I don't think I know that name. Who are they?

Excerpt from a BBC article: ""We usually work, 10, 11 or 12 hours a day," says a 49-year-old woman from Jiangxi unwilling to give her name. "On Sundays we work around three hours less." She is in an alleyway, where a dozen people are huddled around a row of bulletin boards. They are reading the job ads on the board, while examining the stitching on a pair of chinos draped over it. This is Shein's supply chain. The factories are contracted to make clothes on order - some small, some big. If the chinos are a hit, orders will ramp up and so must production. Factories then hire temporary workers to meet the demand their permanent staff cannot fulfil. The migrant worker from Jiangxi is looking for a short-term contract - and the chinos are an option. "We earn so little. The cost of living is now so high," she says, adding that she hopes to make enough to send back to her two children who are living with their grandparents. "We get paid per piece," she explains. "It depends how difficult the item is. Something simple like a t-shirt is one-two yuan [less than a dollar] per piece and I can make around a dozen in an hour.""

The people who make Shein's clothes labor for ten to twelve hours per day (in violation of China's labor laws), some up to seven days a week, and earn as little as 15 to 30 cents per t-shirt.

The woman who discovered the first black hole Betty Webster is a name to remember. Also: more rogue binary jovians

Have you ever heard of Betty Webster? I hadn't until recently, and she co-discovered the first black hole ever found! Here's her story, to honor her memory and fantastic accomplishment.

badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/the-woman-...

🔭 🧪

4 Tips That Will Inspire You To Write More • Walk for creativity • Every word I write is another stroke that takes me to the shore of a completed book• Ask key questions • What are your intentions?

#authorship #creativewriting #editing #amwriting #writingcommunity inventingrealityediting.com/2...

Mum will not stop making "Bubba" jokes and I am not entirely sure how I feel about it all.

Thank you for letting me know, just hit me up when you have more time.

Oh dear. What DID happen, then?

I am afeared to ask what has happened now in that particular corner.

New tools need new ethics to go with them. If your tool only destroys then it's only a weapon. #UBI #WritersRights #AIethics

4 of 4.

If you’re getting rich off the labour, expression, and insight of others without paying anything back, that’s exploitation. Writers made the words that built the web, the worlds, and the works you’re now feeding to machines. If #AI’s the future, then it owes them royalties.

3~

If companies want to profit from the collective mind of writers and artists, fine. Pay for it. Compensate the people whose work you mined. If this tech is as world-changing and profitable as they say, then let them fund a universal basic income for the very creators they’re replacing.

2~

As an editor & mentor, I’ve been watching young writers lose heart by sheer force of watching their futures get strip-mined by #AI that learned from them, for free.
Bright, passionate writers look at their dreams and say, “what’s the point?” If creativity isn't viable, culture collapses. 🧵1~

Took a peek southward last night and let out the tiniest sigh of relief. Like, barely audible. The storm’s still hovering, but there was this one shy beam of sunlight that made it through. We’ll see if it holds.