just saw someone critiquing the "The DAO and DA2 crews are found families and the DAI team are a bunch of coworkers" thing because "the DAI team are the most civil to each other of all the games!!"

yeah. that's exactly what we're talking about. being nice to someone because you have to because you work together Is coworker behaviour lmao.

NASA took a pic of the dark side of the moon fyi

One last devastating blow

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Why is there AI generated images of foxes on iNaturalist 😬

How can a fake image be research grade!!!

The colours and markings of the fox are all wrong. It's supposed to be an arctic fox but it has the black face, ear and leg markings of a red fox (no arctic fox has marking like that). The fur is very blurry and lacking in detail in many areas. The snow on the ears and face makes no sense. The whiskers are weirdly shaped and detached from the face in areas. The back legs make no sense and are weirdly shaped and overall it just looks super fake.

Y’all in the American SW and west Mexico better check the national hurricane center and your weather for this weekend and next week.

Hurricane Hilary is about to make landfall and that whole desert area is supposed to get a years worth of rain or more. Death Valley is supposed to get twice the annual rainfall. Severe winds, massive flooding, and landslides are all strong possibilities.

This is gonna get ugly. Please spread the word. This is a majorly anomalous event and people may be unaware of the threat headed their way.

Flash floods are definitely gonna kill people, so here’s your regularly scheduled PSA:

Desert soil does not absorb a significant amount of water. It reaches maximum saturation very very quickly, and all the rest of the water rushes downhill. Even if you can’t tell that the ground is not perfectly flat, the water can. And it will move. Quickly. No, faster than that. Nope, still faster. If you try to cross moving floodwater, you will get swept downstream and probably die.

Do not try to wade in/cross flood water that is any deeper than the thickness of the sole of an average athletic shoe, no I am not kidding, the water will get deeper literally while you’re standing in it.

This goes for cars, too. I’ve seen entire vehicles getting swept downstream in flash floods because the driver thought they could cross the “puddle” and Found Out.

Stay safe, y’all.

also if you're going into water intentionally (cleanup, obviously as things RECEDE), PROTECT YOUR EYES. Flood water is NASTY AS HELL and you will be getting a tetanus booster right off the bat if you end up in the ER for any reason.

Related to the above: After wading in the water, get somewhere with clean water and wash every inch of your body. The water being nasty means: There can be gases, oils, other harmful/irritating contaminants, there can be sewage (probably will be tbh), and then (And I'm sorry for this) animals will be dead in the water around you. Things like squirrels, birds, etc. They will be decomposing in there. You're basically wading in a soup of the nastiest shit you can imagine. So, post clean-up in the water: Shower, then GET YOUR FRICKIN' TETANUS BOOSTER.

Also, if you have a vagina, be extra careful. If you think yeast infections are nasty, they're nothing compared to contact dermatitis of the vulva, and the vulva is EXTREMELY sensitive along with the vagina. (Source: Me. I had an allergic reaction to a laundry detergent and it was the WORST experience of my life, I can't imagine how much worse it'd be in THAT kind of water.)

There can also be EXPOSED LIVE POWER LINES UNDER THE WATER. You legitimately have no idea what is in flood water, what is being carried, what kind of debris is at the bottom. If you can at all avoid going into the flood water, DO NOT GO INTO THE FLOOD WATER.

some dipshit uploaded my book to an AI site, so suffice to say, I will fucking kill them

emailed my agent cuz our contract states she has to protect me from shit like this, so we'll see what she says

but I will still kill these ppl

LMFAO THE SITE IS BEING TAKEN DOWN

hey so, just so there's no ambiguity about what just happened-- this was about Prosecraft, a website that would help you compare your writing to your favorite author by analyzing the "vividness" of the words used, passive voice vs active voice and the number of adverbs used in a given section.

unfortunately, the service is dogshit for various reasons but that's not the issue here.

the issue is that the website had trained an AI on 25,000 books, one of which included mine. and i definitely did not give anyone permission to use my work to train an AI. it's literally stated in my contract.

and if i didn't give permission--i can imagine quite a number of authors didn't give permission either. (oops, i don't have to imagine--because hundreds of authors came forward and said they didn't give permission either!)

so i emailed my agent about this. my agent directed me to my publisher which has a legal department that looks into piracy on this scale. all of those authors did the same, emailing their legal team, getting The Authors Guild involved.

EVERY AUTHOR pretty much roasting this guy named Benji Smith on Twitter for claiming to "support authors" yet clearly using pirated work to train an AI.

of course, he decided to take the website down. authors are now talking about getting AI protection clauses in their contracts going forward. i already have one with my agent, but I imagine I will have to get it instated into every publishing contract moving forward.

source: it happened to me lol (but if you don't believe me, here's a link)

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