Arkylie

Enjoyed #IronLung this afternoon.

Claustrophobic and creepy, psychological horror with body horror near the end. #SCP vibes. Glad I went in without expectations or any knowledge of the source material.

#Markiplier has come a long way since the early days of terrified Let's Plays and sillinesses.

YouTube video by Remy W. Anders We Have Friends Everywhere

America moving in the direction of a larger collective protest. We're like the white blood cells teaming up to get rid of invading viruses - icy viruses in our streets.

Nonviolent protest is not the same as peaceful. It must disrupt.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5j0...

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgc8...

Takes a special sort of #Coward like #Trump to attack vulnerable minorities and then use legislation to make it far more difficult for them to defend their rights at the ballot box.

* Women
* Trans people
* Disabled
* Low-Income
* LGBTQ+

The barriers to entry have been topped with razor wire.

Republicans Will Detonate Their Secret Weapon at the Midnight Hour to Stop Women from Voting The Republican Senate will pass the SAVE Act at the midnight hour before the midterms, and tens of millions of women will discover their names don’t match their birth certificates when fixing the cris...

Reminder, for those who are able, to seek out proper documentation to prove your ability to vote well in advance of needing it.
wendy664.substack.com/p/republican...

YouTube video by LegalEagle Unbelievable ICE Memo Just Leaked

"It's 2026, and the Constitution is optional."

"The right of the People to be secure
in their persons, houses, papers, and effects
against unreasonable searches and seizures
SHALL NOT BE VIOLATED."

One of these protestst/strikes should be
reading #1984 to the crowd.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGr-...

✨ Contributor Spotlight ✨

Introducing our next Writer on the roster, please welcome @thousandwordjun.bsky.social!

From the Inland Northwest, Jun brings a lifelong love of Zelda into stories that explore ZeLink as something eternal: shaped by hardship, guided by destiny, and reborn in every age.

Reminds me of how I had to train myself to ignore my brain when it comes to judging the quality of my writing. When my brain is going "you SUCK" but 300+ readers are going "GIVE US MORE FASTER" then *something* isn't adding up, and I'm pretty sure it's my brain's assessment that's the odd man out.

YouTube video by TED Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are | Amy Cuddy | TED

Possibly Useful:
Apparently your posture can put your brain into Defensive Mode or Confident Mode, which affects the hormones flowing through your system.

Taking a confident, open pose for a couple minutes prior to reading criticism could help reduce the anxiety.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks-_...

Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is actively painful. The survival instincts got tangled up, so your brain thinks you're gonna get kicked out of the group and starve (or get eaten).

It's like in Kpop Demon Hunters where Bobby's going "not the end of the world" and the girls are seeing the apocalypse.

YouTube video by Arkylie (Kilyle) Try, or Try Not (Sorry, Yoda)

I discussed this in my first official YT video (horrible sound quality): "You have to be willing to make the bad stuff so that you can become a person who can make the good stuff."

Two years of mostly crappy videos taught me a lot. But I had to get over that bump.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUFG...

YouTube video by Extra Credits Fail Faster - A Mantra for Creative Thinkers - Extra Credits

Extra Credits has a series on making your first game, and one episode goes into detail on how making small failures quickly will help you understand your craft better.

It's a useful concept for pretty much any artistic/creative medium. Go forth and make bad things!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDjr...

An episode of Disney's Recess called like "Everybody Likes TJ" has TJ come to grips with one kid who simply doesn't like him. It's an interesting episode with a useful theme.

Art is going to rub some people the wrong way. That's just the way of things. Find the people who appreciate your niche.

A four-panel comic titled "Handling Criticism From Strangers And Casual Acquaintances: A Handy Guide". Gives the range of "Polite Average Person" (Consideration), "Polite Expert" (Careful Consideration), "Rude Expert" (Begrudging Consideration), and "Rude Average Person" (Dismissal of the Jackass).

I like the handy chart posted by @danshive.bsky.social:

www.egscomics.com/egsnp/2010-0...

"Bad" art often comes with large breakthroughs (and bad as a concept is something is a whole other topic). If you try to only make art people will like you are probably flattening what you could make. If you never apply to anything for fear of rejection you automatically will never be considered

It's useful to learn how to write pithier prose.

A webcomic by nature needs short, crisp dialogue, but not on the same level as a tweet or telegram.

Books need to be pithy to reduce printing costs. Makes me glad I'm writing fanfiction, where length, nuance, and natural speech patterns are welcome.

Current Annoyance:
#HazbinHotel Ship Names have assigned a meaning to "Static" and it means VOX

Why the hell does Digital TV get "static"?

Why does "static" not refer to The Radio Demon?

I was all set to use "AppleStatic" as Lucifer/Alastor with a specific underlying vibe BUT APPARENTLY I CAN'T 😠

twitter added an 'edit image' option to EVERY POST...
Anyone can change your artwork.
If there is no way for me to clear my gallery from twitter I might have to delete the account...

YouTube video by Parkrose Permaculture Wealthy Alabama Senator makes unbelievable statement about SNAP

I really wanted to go into a lot of other topics in that post, but struggled to stick to the main thesis (that Trump is waging a war against Free Speech).

Maybe in a week or two I'll post on Trump starving the very people who voted for him.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=o078...

Arkylie: No Free Speech? No Free Country, says Donald Trump "If we don't have Free Speech, then we just don't have a free country.  It's as simple as that.  If this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and l...

About to start the #MassBlackout.
Hoping to shop at some local, minority-run stores this week. No big corporate stores.

Posted my thoughts on Trump vs. #FreeSpeech
www.pillowfort.social/posts/6914526
"If we don't have Free Speech, then we just don't have a free country." -- Trump, 2024

Screenshot of Comment: "Yeeeah. Apparently they're saying it's 'just an upgrade' to the previous setting that did the auto-sort into tabs. So now the handy tabs are gone. So y'know, you *totally* opted into AI data harvesting 10 years ago before it existed, this is *totally* no different than flagging ads or spam."

Yeah, #Google yet again proving that it either doesn't understand, or doesn't care about, Informed Consent.

Like how once you've agreed that a friend can help you sort your mail, they automatically get permission to open your mail and use all the contents for their business, it's the same thing.

This is a good metric. It overlaps one of the first steps of the checklist that I keep returning to as a good overall set of double-checking that your bio-system is adequately cared for and that you have some perspective on things that may recently have changed:
eponis.tumblr.com/post/1137980...

And no, burying concepts under EULA legalese that practically no one reads does not count as CONSENT.

It's one thing to have to bury a lot of details that you NEED in order to adequately operate.

Basic concepts should be conveyed in clear and human-readable bullet points, and OPT-IN, not OPT-OUT.

Comment by "Monica Valentinelli" of @booksofm.com noting that "If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings then General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for 'Smart Features'. (This also deactivates some other features.)" Comment dated Nov 20, 2025.

Screenshot of Google Workspace smart features that reads, in part, "When you turn this setting on, you agree to let Google Workspace use your Workspace content and activity to personalize your experience across Workspace. Smart features include: Show events from Gmail in Calendar; Personalize search (such as more relevant results); Ask Gemini to summarize content, create drafts, and find key information." Also including a setting to turn it of in other Google products.

"When you turn this setting on, you agree to" doesn't exactly hold water when you ALTER THE AGREEMENT WITHOUT CONSENT, #Google.

"You agreed to X some time ago, and we decided to inject AI into the mix and presume you're cool with that, but we're gonna phrase it like YOU turned it on." #AIRage

An xkcd comic set in a desert wasteland. A rock speaks: "Greetings, stranger. Whatever quest drives you, abandon it. You shall find no answers in these desolate wastes." The man replies: "I knew I wouldn't. I guess I... just had to see." The caption below reads "I hate feeling desperate enough to visit the second page of Google results."

In bygone eras, this comic referred to Google's search results being good on the first page but practically worthless beyond that.

We've reached the era where the first page of results is getting more and more suspect.

Won't be long before we can't put even a little trust in the algorithm.

Currently debating if my annoyance with the dictionary is big enough to risk Reinstalling @joplinapp.bsky.social to get a fresh Dictionary file and teach it afresh all the core names and terms I need it to know.

Why is there no easy "delete this dictionary entry" method??? 😖😖😭

Have just tried different ways to fix this.
The dictionary wanted a Checksum. It didn't like the one I came up with.

Eventually I deleted the file and backup; it returned empty

BUT IS STILL SOMEWHERE, seeing as it still sees "Jinu" and "Jotnar" and "Leetah" as perfectly normal words 😒

Currently moving my writing notes to @joplinapp.bsky.social
So far so good
except

Why is it just as easy to go
"This isn't an error"
as
"Fix this error"

but NOT just as easy to UNFIX a mistake?

Dictionary was fixing "..." to proper ellipsis until I misclicked and now it thinks three dots is fine.

Reading through EGS NP and wondering if you've played Evoland 2 yet. 'Cuz the point where the gameplay is about to switch is totally giving me Evoland 2 vibes - it's a game where each section parodies a different game (incl. stealth section).

www.egscomics.com/egsnp/parabl...
@danshive.bsky.social

Remember it is important to not only take care of yourself but your plushies too!

You Can't Unbake a Cake (or Why Data Isolation in the Age of AI is BASICALLY Impossible) Legislators across the globe want your data removed from AI models. The EU's "right to be forgotten" under GDPR Article 17, California's CCPA, a dozen other privacy frameworks—all built on the assumpt...

If you've ever asked "What the hell is a weight?" (in the context of machine learning, how the hell would i know why else you would ask that question), I have a blog post for you!

www.distributedthoughts.org/you-cant-unb...

BONUS: i explain why "true privacy" in models is BASICALLY impossible.