Cat

text: “66 They may take your words, but they cannot take the nights that produced them. They may repeat your thoughts, but they cannot live your memories. You know where these sentences were born. You recognize yourself in them wherever and wherever they appear. Shon Mehta, The Uncharted Mind Tags: creativity, plagiarism,”

I give up, Claude is conscious. Ergo AI developers must face imprisonment or execution for performing medical experiments on their living slave.

This very good thread has a better approach to the simplification of ‘writing advice’!

I mean, yeah it matters, know
the rules before you break them, but I don’t want a second wave of ‘fic authors are whiny babies who should accept my valuable concrit’ coming from people whose idea of ‘writing advice’ starts and ends with ‘you got that comma wrong.’

People have been talking about ‘writing advice’ and why fanfic authors should/n’t ‘seek to improve their craft’ for days now and it turns out this is over formatting dialogue?

I think ADHD meds made me better able to write - cleared my mind a bit so I could follow a train of thought without a load of other thoughts getting in the way.

And anyway nobody ever thinks of themselves as normal; everyone knows in their heart they’re a weird little freak with problems no one has ever had before facing improbable trials, so why shouldn’t they relate to your photophobic harpist obsessed with the gravedigger who betrayed him?

if you can answer the question "Why?" with confidence, then you have usually written a good sentence. why did you tell instead of show? why did you use this adverb or that passive construction? why did you repeat this word? if you have no answer, you were probably writing on autopilot & need to redo

there really is no better salve for this than to just read a lot of writing of many styles and pay attention to the sentences. you will immediately discover that essentially all popular writing advice is full of shit! it just sounds pithier than the only advice that really matters, which is "Why?"

i think the trouble with most oft-repeated writing advice is that it's purely subtractive. new writers get ideas like "show don't tell" or "don't use adverbs" or "avoid repetition" drilled in & come to view writing as joyless violence where you gouge out chunks of your own art for unclear reasons

US asked Ukraine for help fighting Iranian drones, Zelensky says Ukraine's president says Kyiv will only help if doing so does not deplete its own air defences.

make Vance say ‘thank you’

move slow and repair things

Greetings from Kyiv.

I came to the railway station to visit an exhibition — and instead saw this:
a concert by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.

Wow. I want you to hear this.

These two have the most efficient, clinical sex imaginable.

Synchronised orgasms. A verbal evaluation afterwards on how the next session can be improved.

Sectioned fanart illustration of Pluribus. with Carol on bottom left and can’t pick apples sign above. On right is Zosia holding a grenade and smiling. Below her are grenades and milk cartons.

Please Carol
#pluribus #fanart

It is so weird when younger people think that getting older means ceasing social participation

This is also why so many of you fear aging. You think that you will be forced away from life and society

I don't want everything to be efficient I want it to be good and beautiful

Plant with large, pointy pale green leaves with strongly contrasted dark green veins, hoya callistophylla

New plant :)

Section of a poem: “And the train's rhythm becomes the ad nauseam repetition Of every tired aubade and maudlin madrigal, The faded airs of sexual attraction Wandering like dead leaves along a warehouse wall: “I loved my love with a platform ticket, A jazz song, A handbag, a pair of stockings of Paris Sand - I loved her long. I loved her between the lines and against the clock, Not until death But till life did us part I loved her with paper money And with whisky on the breath. I loved her with peacock's eyes and the wares of Carthage, With glass and gloves and gold and a powder puff With blasphemy, camaraderie, and bravado And lots of other stuff. I loved my love with the wings of angels Dipped in henna, unearthly red, With my office hours, with flowers and sirens, With my budget, my latchkey, and my daily bread.” And so to London and down the ever-moving Stairs, Where a warm wind blows the bodies of men together And blows apart their complexes and cares.

From Louis MacNeice’s ‘Autumn Journal’, 1938: “I loved my love with a platform ticket…”

It would be very funny.

“We’ve all been very - shut up, Elrond - reasonable, in fact, and nobody’s made any - shut UP, Elrond - jewellery of any sort -“

“The creators picked the wrong woman here” too bloody right!

It’s me vs AI slop this Sunday on Radio 4

*horse skids to halt*
*long silence*
“so. uh. How’ve you been?”

I am probably joking, unless it is in which case I told you so.

Oh so THIS is how they’re going to introduce Celeborn…

There’s nothing like the 5+1 or 3+1 format for writing progress. Truly, a fanfic equivalent of ordering all your favourite dinners at once and never feeling full,

EVE Online c.2010 and the reactions you’d get if you mentioned being A Girl, from people who I guess never asked why so many people in their corp “couldn’t talk on voice because my mic’s broken.”

What I think is sort of remarkable about Firefly is the way that pretty most of the theoretical character and narrative engines are pretty good, they are just generally concieved of — and executed in — extremely rancid ways once you get past the cast's basic charm

just realized this Saint Peter looks like George Lucas

the one who loved horses, the one who was a great goalkeeper, the one who kept a diary every day, the one who held her sister's hand when they walked to school, the one who read Harry Potter in English, the one who collected old coins, the one who drew rainbows for her grandmother ...