I bring you another song from Hazbin Hotel. All you need to know is that the first singer is Lucifer, and the second is the megalomaniacal sinner who's trying to take over Hell. The song includes the phrase "we'll make hell great again." It's awesome.

We're almost to Friday, y'all! I'm still coughing, but I'm hoping it clears up in the next day, because we have a TON of games scheduled. Or that I can butch through what we've got. It looks like someone can't do our Sunday game, so that's one less that I have to DM. I was looking forward to it, but it's okay, we can reschedule, and that gives me a little downtime on Sunday.

Yesterday was a good day. A lot of calls, but also a lot of shcedule wiggling. I got a lot of patients in for urgent appointments which alsways makes me happy. I like taking someone who's scared and worried, and getting them in quickly. Hopefully they'll have good outcomes. Today, I've got a Cardiac CT slot to fill for tomorrow, and then whatever else the day brings.

dine frequently does the question of the day on her journal. Todays was: Do you look back on your school days with fondness? What was your favourite subject to learn? I had an initial response that was just a hiss, but then I thought about it.

And my second answer is still a hiss. I hated school. I was a little anxious kid with learning disabilities in the 1970s and 1980s. In elementary school, I would have panic attacks. In Kindergarten, they gave me a plastic stretch bracelet with flowers. I was supposed to use it (?) to ward off my inconvenient crying jags. Did it work? Fuck no. Then, I got to first grade and reversing letters (b and d? c'mon now), they put me part time into special education. Where to help with this, they taught me cursive. (yes, really) Then, they'd send me back to my regular class where I...wasn't allowed to use cursive. Second through 4th was okay, but then in 5th, I had a massive allergic reaction to an antibiotic. Full anaphylaxis. The teacher was not sympathetic. It was a real pain in the ass.

In Middle School, the anxiety came roaring back, and brought it's friend, depression. I had one good year, and then it went to shit. I failed Science and Social studies. So, to allow me to pass, they had me take summer school in...math? They didn't have science or social studdies, so they decided to put me into math class, which I'd passed just fine. It was not a good crowd. I nearly got my ass beaten repeatedly by my fellow students. It was great. I faked an asthma attack to leave early on the last day, becaause I was getting my ass kicked that afternoon, I had been assured.

High School sucked even more, as I went in on day one and thought "I can't do this for four years." I failed to turn in work, missed a ton of time where I just refused to go in, and then would come in and ace the final exam. The one teacher was nearly in tears that he had to fail me, when I'd gotten the highest grade on the final. He actually cared. The rest were just too burned out. I dropped out in (what would have been) my junior year and got my GED.

My favorite subject was probably history. We had to take a year of civics class, and I loved that.

The depression would continue to be a problem until I hit about 27, when I had a doctor who finally gave me zoloft. I mean, it's been a problem off and on since, but I've at least been medicated.

Today, I have a few packages coming. One is seafood, one is meats and one is my slippers. I am excited for all of them, but the seafood is high on the list. It's going to include Dungeness crab, which makes me very happy. Whether I cook that tonight or tomorrow is up in the air, but we'll see.

Okay, time for me to go forth and get myself together. Everyone have a terrific Thursday!

Challenge 4
Remember that there is no official deadline, so feel free to join in at any time, or go back and do challenges you've missed.

On many of the fannish websites we use, our history is easily compileable into "pages". When we look back through those pages, sometimes we stumble upon things that we think are rather cool.

Challenge #4: Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so. Also, feel free to entice engagement by giving us a preview of what your post covers.

And please do check out the comments for all the awesome participants of the challenge and visit their journals/challenge responses to comment on their posts and cheer them on.

And just as a reminder: this is a low pressure, fun challenge. If you aren't comfortable doing a particular challenge, then don't. We aren't keeping track of who does what.

Alternate History and Althistory
Two Alternate History forums. The former has other aspects to it, including a fandom subforum, but writing and discussion of alternate history is the focus. I have been involved with the communities related to alternate history about as long as I have been writing fan fiction.

People trying to use LLM/AI products earnestly, and getting scammy results:

“I renamed the file to mention Grand Cayman, and it told me how to book a flight to the Cayman Islands. Once I confirmed Copilot was just looking at the file name, I decided to try to trick it. I renamed the image “new-jersey-crystal-caves-limestone.jpg” and sure enough, the AI assistant was quick to tell me of the famous crystal cave of Ogdensburg, New Jersey. At no point did it correctly identify the location of the image.”

“I’m presently tackling a very pointed question: Did I ever get permission to wipe the D drive? This requires immediate attention, as it’s a critical issue.” (Reddit post…with a bunch of commenters saying things like “why didn’t you, the human, spot this obvious issue with the LLM’s code,” when this product is specifically marketed to as “if you don’t know code, don’t worry, our product will handle it all for you!”)

“The [fourth grade] class was told to design a book cover for Pippi Longstocking. Not using pencils and paper — no, this is the AI era! So this was an exercise to teach the kids how to prompt an image generator. […] What they got back was four pictures of a woman dressed in what looks like schoolgirl fetish or goth nightclub gear. One of them is wearing a leather bikini outfit. But, they all have long red braids. And stockings.”

“ChatGPT started coaching Sam on how to take drugs, recover from them and plan further binges. It gave him specific doses of illegal substances, and in one chat, it wrote, “Hell yes—let’s go full trippy mode,” before recommending Sam take twice as much cough syrup so he would have stronger hallucinations. The AI tool even recommended playlists to match his drug use.” (The 19-year-old died of an overdose after following ChatGPT’s instructions.)

People using LLM/AI products to deliberately run scams on you:

“report their comments to ao3 for spam—in this case, specifically, I think you may be able to report them for harassment too—and don’t pay attention to them, most importantly don’t delete your works, don’t feel discouraged by their comments. remember that they are bots and they mass comment something like this on people’s works at random to get people to delete their works.”

“DoorDash driver accepted the drive, immediately marked it as delivered, and submitted an AI-generated image of a DoorDash order at our front door.”

“I sell perfumes online. A customer ordered a set of 6 fragrances and requests a full refund claiming they arrived leaking/ broken. These are the 2 pics she sent me. I call BS”

Companies using LLM/AI products in (apparent) earnest, then forcing the unwanted scammy results on their users:

““Video Recaps marks a groundbreaking application of generative AI for streaming,” VP of technology at Prime Video, Gérard Medioni, explained in a statement. […] But as reported by GamesRadar, fans soon discovered it did a poor job on Fallout. For example, Amazon’s AI appeared to have been fooled by Season 1’s flashback scenes, which it said were set in 1950s America via a monotone text-to-speech-sounding voice. Of course, as all Fallout fans know, those flashback scenes take place in a retro futuristic 2077.”

“The language used in [Instagram’s LLM-generated post metadata] makes it sound as if I wrote it (“In this post, I share my personal journey…”). Because I have fiercely protected my authorship throughout my life and what my name is attached to, any generative AI writing that purports to be in my voice without my informed consent is a profound violation of my authorial voice, agency, and frankly it feels like fraud or impersonation.”

To end on a nicer note, here are some users scamming the AI/LLM products:

“ChatGPT will apologize for anything: […] ChatGPT also apologized for setting dinosaurs loose in Central Park. What’s interesting about this apology is not only did it write that it had definitely let the dinosaurs loose, it detailed concrete steps it was already taking to mitigate the situation.”

“Anthropic installed an AI-powered vending machine in the WSJ office. The LLM, named Claudius, was responsible for autonomously purchasing inventory from wholesalers, setting prices, tracking inventory, and generating a profit. The newsroom’s journalists could chat with Claudius in Slack and in a short time, they had converted the machine to communism and it started giving away anything and everything, including a PS5, wine, and a live fish.”

Here’s a Youtube video about that last one. Includes clips with an Anthropic sales agent, who insists “AI is coming and you have to be ready.” Even after this blatant demonstration that his product isn’t prepared for users.

Pretty sure I lost my old devil girl design, so I'm working on a new version. I like these horns.

✖ Read 45 min. per day.
✔ Drink something while reading. (Coffee.)
✔ Log reading/thoughts on DW.
✔ Read an owned, unread book. 

Current reading: "A Steeping of Blood", by Hasfah Faizal
Minutes read: 24
Pages read: 25
Progress: 18.1% 

✖ Read 45 min. per day.
✔ Drink something while reading. (Snapple.)
✔ Log reading/thoughts on DW.
✔ Read an owned, unread book.


Current reading: "A Steeping of Blood", by Hasfah Faizal
Minutes read: 25
Pages read: 20
Progress: 12.4% 

( Read more... )

I found a longer official clip for Colbert and Kimmel observe the fifth anniversary of January 6th.

 Just finished: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Did you know that the edition I have ends with an afterword from the author asking people to read his 1200-page book twice? Anyway I am very proud of myself as I managed to finish it around 30 minutes before the hold was due back at the library.

So, is it good? Yes. Do I totally get it? Not totally, though yes, more than I would have if I'd read it when I was 16. Definitely the time stuff, the illness stuff, the characters who are thinly veiled stand-ins for pre-WWI European political debates, yes. But of course, it's a very different world now—there is no longer the temptation to embrace illness as freedom, the idea that you can just convalesce for years in what amounts to a different reality, the fairy-tale world of the sanatorium. Which is why the ending hits so brutally hard. Structurally, the first half of the book is Hans Castorp's first three weeks on the mountain, and then it goes blurry, and the next seven years pass in a dreamlike state, with the changing of the seasons and the coming and going (through death and otherwise) of the patients being the only sense that time exists at all. And then there's essentially a massacre of half the cast in various ways, culminating in the arrival of WWI, and Hans disappearing into a viscerally described battlefield; time and history do exist after all, and it collides with the dream.

Reading it in 2026, of course, I am struck by the debates between Settembrini, representing humanism, and Naphta, representing totalitarianism (Catholicism/communism/fascism, but look, Mann was very much working out his political ideas in this book), but something I didn't talk about last week is Mynheer Pieter Peeperkorn (yes this is a character name) who pops up late in the book as Clavdia Chauchat's sugar daddy. He's a larger-than-life figure who gets described as kingly and charismatic despite being far too old for her, distracting Hans from the aforementioned philosophical debate with revels, partying, and a hella Freudian love triangle. I'm particularly struck by his speech patterns. Look, the guy is basically Trump; he is charismatic because the other characters (except Settembrini, who winds up being the only character who comes off well by the end) read meaning into his rambling words that isn't there. This book feels so incredibly apropos for our present day despite being over a century old.

Anyway, I finished The Magic Mountain, ask me anything lol.

Currently reading: Invisible Line by Su J. Sokol. You know, something light and fun after reading all that. Ahahaha. This is hopepunk but I'm assuming that the hope part comes in more towards the end. It was first published in 2012 and the first 50 pages were such that I had to text the author and ask if xe had like, rewritten it for the current edition to update it or something? Xe had not. I suppose the direction was obvious in 2012 where the political climate was moving but it's nonetheless one of those unsettling dystopian books, set in a crumbling fascist US rife with surveillance and police brutality.

Laek, a history teacher, Janie, his activist lawyer partner, and their two kids, Siri and Simon, are doing their best to live a normal life in New York, but Laek was a bit more of a spicy activist when he was a teenager, and his fake ID is no longer cutting it. So they make the decision to flee by bike to Montreal, which has declared itself a sanctuary city in tension with the Canadian government. It's basically too relatable, with a bunch of moments where the characters wonder if it's too much, if they should stay and fight the small battles they can or GTFO while it's still a possibility. There's a scene early on of a teachers' union meeting where a new policy means that the teachers must report their children to immigration, and it's the most accurate depiction of this kind of scenario I've run across in fiction, and yeah. If your feelings about living under fascism, or next door to fascism, are escapism, this book is going to be too real; if however, like me, you need to just read more about living under fascism, you'll be into it.

It’s kind of wild that while the PC in chapter 5 of Runes of Pandemonium is busy dismantling slavery, she never makes a comment one way or another about the eugenics program that’s also going on. She does comment on the project to kidnap humans and turn them into robots, reluctantly admitting conversions should be voluntary even though turning humans into robots is her fetish, but she has no input on the project to breed smarter humans who’ll make for smarter robots than kidnapping some poor sap.

It's Wednesday! We're at the halfway point of the week. Day 8 of whatever fucking bug this is. It's still going strong.

I'm so sick of coughing. It passed annoying and has moved into loathing. It doesn't seem to want to let go and I need it to leave now. It's had it's fun, I've coughed until I've gagged, that's it. I'm done with it. Yet here I am coughing. It's like this virus doesn't respect my boundaries at all. I actually went to the urgent care, only to get a pat on the head and a pack of steroids, which I don't want to take. They make me angry, and I don't like that. I always feel snappish and bitchy. I figure I'll give it til day 11 or 12. If it's still hanging around, I'll consider it.

I knew Urgent Care was a useless idea. Honestly, all I wanted from that visit was a codeine cough syrup. I did not get it.

It's a shame gummies aren't anti-tussive. That I can just get.

We'll see if my voice holds out today. Yesterday, it was getting very wispy, but we'll see how it goes.

We tried a new Yemeni restaurant called House of Mandi yesterday and the food was amazing. Very flavorful. I got what was basically a biriyani, called Chicken Zorbian. It was so good. I could actually taste it, which has been a bit of a problem from all the congestion.

Last night, our tea order from Whistling Kettle came. It was too late to try things, but I'm looking forward to trying the butterscotch or cotton candy tea today. Both smell amazing. I'm leaning towards the butterscotch, but we'll see.

I also got our salt order, which is lovely. I ordered from Saltverks, which is a company based out of Iceland. I ordered their flaky sea salt and their Arctic Thyme see salt. They're hand harvested, and taste lovely. I'm looking forward to feeling better so I can use them when I cook.

I also got a jug of the white chocolate mocha sauce from Fontana. It's the sauce that Starbucks uses, but the company is not at all affilliated with them. Thus, I can have my sauce and uphold the boycott. It's very tasty in my coffee this morning.

Lastly, we got an amazon order that had some little travel clocks in it. I've heard that during the Alaska cruise, your phone doesn't always sync with ship time, so it's important to have a clock that is independent of that. We have two clocks, one for the living room and one for the bedroom.

I don't think I have a whole lot else that we need to get for the cruise. I think we've got all our stuff.

I've got other packages coming this week. Nothing exciting, just some little things, though I do have slippers coming. My feet are always cold while I'm working, since my desk is by the window, so I thought I'd grab a pair of supportive slippers. Fed Ex says it's coming today, but I think maybe not, since the last tracking is in New Jersey.

Okay, time for me to relax and sip my coffee and hope it melts some of the gross snot in my throat. Everyone have a stupendous Wednesday!

Reading a Pathfinder fic, and it does a good job of establishing how tribalism, religious conflict, and totalitarian governments lead to some races being viewed as “the bad ones” despite none being inherently evil.

Reading the reference materials it links to, and this shit sounds obscenely racist. “This volume offers an indispensable analysis of the most vicious killers of all – orcs. Born and bred for war, they are an awful, brutish, violent species and, despite their constant infighting and backstabbing, their horde armies remain a dire threat to all races.”

Thanks to christopher575  for the idea and kazzy_cee  for posting the original here.

Again, why must I choose?  I see hot chocolate, I drink it.

Testing, Testing

I'm going to post something without coding the text color, just to see if a change I made with help from muccamukk  will do that. 

Woo-hoo! It worked!