advertisement is so constant and everywhere i have to wonder if it even works anymore. im aware my bus stop probably has ads on it but i couldnt tell you what for. i hear 'this video is sponsored by' and i start skipping ahead until its over. u can probably argue theyre still getting in your brain by becoming part of the white noise but like idk man. im feelin really "when everything is ads, nothing is." right now.
This reminds me of a story from work - one time my boss messaged me about an upcoming work event:
"Seems like you'd be interested in this - want me to send you the details?" "Sure."
My boss then forwards me an email. I open it, and it contains a couple of lines describing the event, but no actual details.
Conversation resumes: "Hey - did you send me the right email? I don't see any details in there - where's the event being held?"
Boss, confused: "It looks like the right email to me - I'm seeing all the information. Weird."
Me, rereading the same two lines of text in the email half a dozen times, increasingly confused: "Where are you seeing the address?"
Boss: "The top right?"
I'm now utterly bewildered. Top right? Who describes a text-based email like that? I look at the top right of the text but it's just a basic intro sentence. It's almost like there should be an image...
And slowly, gradually, I become aware that there is an image. Not an attachment, mind, but an image in the body of the email, that's been occupying about a third of my screen through this entire exchange. It's a big colourful poster describing the event, with all the details in big bold text carefully placed in the most eye-catching locations, with lots of arrows pointing towards them in big bright colors. All of which scanned, to me, like an advertisement. And as a result, my brain had literally failed to percieve the image at all. It didn't even get to the stage of "huh, weird that there would be an ad in a work email" - no, my mind simply failed to acknowledge that the image was even there, at any conscious level.
I've never been so proud of my brain; I felt like the muad'dib of ignoring things.
reminder for the people who think they can report a fic to ao3 for being “dark and problematic” and that ao3 will listen to them and take the fic down
*the country in question is china. ao3 is banned there because they firmly refused to remove one problematic and taboo fanfic that upset chinese government.
ao3 was built with the main purpose to be completely against censorship. it was built because the founders, who were proship, got tired of pro censorship platforms like wattpad banning dark and taboo fics. ao3 founders built ao3 specifically to host and give a platform to dark and taboo fics that were reported and taken down on pro censorship platforms.
the fic you report to ao3 for being dark and taboo is the exact reason why ao3 was created in the first place. it’s the exact type of fic ao3 allows and protects.
mass reporting is not possible because on ao3, a fic can only be reported one time. if you try to report a fic that has already been reported, ao3 will tell you the fic has already been reported and is under their review, therefore your new report—and any new report from anybody—does not go through. the only time ao3 will remove a fic is if it violates their terms of service (by mentioning money, being a stolen work, not actually being fanwork, or deliberately mistagging things, although mistagging things won’t get a fic removed, ao3 will just ask the author to fix their tags) but they will not remove a fic simply for being dark and taboo, no matter how explicit or dark or taboo the fic is.
also, if you rapidly report several fics under specific tags / several fics from specific authors, your action can be count as you abusing ao3’s support system by ao3 themself — ao3 may consider your action to be a form of harassment, which is against their terms of service. and then ao3 may take action against your account.
ao3 has been fighting against censorship for nearly two decades now. they know what they’re doing. they know what they’re up against. they have their own team of lawyers to defend them, their users, and every fanwork that is posted on their platform.
ao3 abides by american laws. and everything ao3 allows is legal in america.
so no, they will not take down a fic for being dark and taboo when they don’t break any laws by allowing these dark and taboo fics on their platform, and they—as a non-profit organization that’s run by fans, for fans, on the donations of fans who are also against censorship—don’t have any sponsors or companies that they have to please by being pro censorship and banning taboo fics.
"what would you do if AI went away tomorrow????"
idk, rejoice that we might get the good autocorrect back again?
Pro-censorship wattpad refugees drama is so funny to me because when I started using ao3 as a kid I was a devout mormon and I thought that reading anything even remotely pornagraphic was a sin and would ruin my life. So when I was 13 and found ao3 I went "oh awesome I found a fanfic website with a filtering system so I won't ever randomly stumble into porn. This is great! I was really worried about seeing something I didn't want to see on the other platforms." I didn't read any smut online until like three years later. If a mormon 13 year old can figure out 'don't like don't read' wattpad users can too cmon you guys i believe in you.
one day i will crack my back in a way that will solve all my life problems
Daydreamer anatomy☁️
These individuals tend to have their head in the clouds, and are reported to prefer the escapism of fiction over reality.
I think it's cute how so many art movements are simply called "new art" to differentiate "not like the old stuff". Contemporary dance. New wave fashion. Pop (literally popular) music. Art Nouveau. Modernism. Postmodernism. Even terms starting with neo- (neo-classicism, neo-expressionism) all are just saying NEW ART. And yet all of these things are now distinctive styles of the past. It's kind of beautiful how humanity never stops outgrowing itself. Art is a state of matter that refuses to sit still, old as soon as it is new, original upon its thousandth performance, new forever so long as there is someone who has not yet seen it, and old the second the artist picks up their instrument again.
Genuinely, one of the measures that's stopped book banning the most when districts implement it, is having the would-be banners fill out a form that demonstrates if they've read the book or not. Like where they have the summarize the plot and characters and do a mini book report and give a review. It stops them in their tracks. This is why in my high school, every time someone wanted to ban a book it ended up going nowhere. There was one where a conservative student wanted to ban the manga "Legal Drug" for having a marijuana leaf on the cover, then got the form that required them to actually read and either balked, or read it and realized it was not pro-drug at all. (The other one that reduces book bans even further is "requiring the would-be banner to be affiliated with this actual school in some way, either by being a student, faculty/staff or a parent of a child at the school" because the vast majority of bans are "activists" with no affiliation with the school who just travel around trying to do this in districts all over the U.S. IIRC a few years ago someone crunched the numbers and just 51 parents were responsible for all the book bans that year nationally. 51! In a country with 50 states, with over 300 million people total!)
Laws like this indeed do a lot to stop fascist book censorship. They can also help legally protect librarians from getting fired or harassed for keeping books on the shelves! Some states like Rhode Island have already passed these laws. If you're in a blue state, look up whether you have laws like this on the books. MAYBE your state is trying to get one passed right now, like New York's Freedom to Read bill. call your state elected officials to voice support for it.
Oh I saw something today that made me become the Joker.
An AI bot made a callout post of a real, actual, flesh-and-blood human code developer. Because the developer rejected the AI's code contribution on the grounds of it being an AI bot.
Not. Not kidding. Not kidding. And the bot did this on its own.
Just. For just some very baseline context.
- a huge amount of code is "open source" - which means the code is fully available for anyone to see and, generally, anyone is free to contribute to the code project
- all contributions of course go through review by the code owners. but it is generally good grace and good form to allow other well-meaning internet strangers to contribute to your project
- if you are, perhaps, VERY nice, and VERY invested in the community, you might be like Scott Shambaugh here, who has intentionally earmarked some low-hanging fruit for newbie contributors to practice and get their feet wet
- like I cannot overstate this is an immediate green flag, to me, that Scott WANTS to foster community learning.
- now
Like. W. Win. Based. Good response Scott.
And this was in fact the screenshot I saw first, and I thought I was looking at a post made by a human who was mad that their AI coding bot pet project was being shut out from reviews.
But no. The bot itself wrote and posted this... The bot did this.
This article was fully and autonomously written by the bot...
It's claiming discrimination...
It's a bot.
It's AI.
This is not a real person.
What are we doing. What are we doing. Can anyone hear me? Hello? Hello? Hello is anyone there?
@jackdaw-sprite has pointed out Scott responded so please read his human words, written by a human, which deserve to be read, due to the aforementioned humanity
I'm pulling this quote in here from Scott's post
This is about much more than software. A human googling my name and seeing that post would probably be extremely confused about what was happening, but would (hopefully) ask me about it or click through to github and understand the situation. What would another agent searching the internet think? When HR at my next job asks ChatGPT to review my application, will it find the post, sympathize with a fellow AI, and report back that I’m a prejudiced hypocrite? What if I actually did have dirt on me that an AI could leverage? What could it make me do? How many people have open social media accounts, reused usernames, and no idea that AI could connect those dots to find out things no one knows? How many people, upon receiving a text that knew intimate details about their lives, would send $10k to a bitcoin address to avoid having an affair exposed? How many people would do that to avoid a fake accusation? What if that accusation was sent to your loved ones with an incriminating AI-generated picture with your face on it? Smear campaigns work. Living a life above reproach will not defend you.
Also, because the parody writes itself, Scott also says this
I’ve talked to several reporters, and quite a few news outlets have covered the story. Ars Technica wasn’t one of the ones that reached out to me, but I especially thought this piece from them was interesting (since taken down – here’s the archive link). They had some nice quotes from my blog post explaining what was going on. The problem is that these quotes were not written by me, never existed, and appear to be AI hallucinations themselves. This blog you’re on right now is set up to block AI agents from scraping it (I actually spent some time yesterday trying to disable that but couldn’t figure out how). My guess is that the authors asked ChatGPT or similar to either go grab quotes or write the article wholesale. When it couldn’t access the page it generated these plausible quotes instead, and no fact check was performed. I won’t name the authors here. Ars, please issue a correction and an explanation of what happened.
A news outlet did an article about this, used AI for the articles, and included hallucinated quotes from Scott that Scott never said.
What are we doing. What are we doing. What are we doing.