oyceter. Network

AI Video links:

“OpenAI shutting down Sora, Disney drops investment: The news comes less than four months after Disney announced a $1 billion licensing and investment deal with the owner of Sora.” That’s the ComicsBeat article, but this news has been shared all over.

The original Disney-Sora announcement had me going “yeahhhh, I’ll believe it when I see it.” I figured any attempt to do content moderation would be overwhelmed by the onslaught of “users determined to make video of Disney characters doing inappropriate things.” Did not have “the whole thing implodes before they even get to that point” on my list! But here we are.

“Rest easy, Marvel screenwriters. The video that supposedly cooked Hollywood was, get this, appears to be made by humans to hype AI.“

“Finji, publisher of beloved indie titles such as Night in the Woods and Tunic and the developer behind Overland and Usual June, says that TikTok has been using generative AI to modify its ads on the platform without permission and pushing those ads to its users without Finji’s knowledge, including one ad that was modified to include a racist, sexualized stereotype of one of Finji’s characters.“

Crimes and defamation links:

“Angela Lipps, seen here in a photo from her GoFundMe page, spent more than five months in jail for a crime she maintains she didn’t commit after AI software linked her to a series of bank fraud incidents.” (The incidents happened in North Dakota. She was verifiably in Tennessee at the time.)

AO3 spambots have pivoted from “accusing random authors of using AI” to “accusing random authors of committing IRL sex crimes.” If you get any of these yourself, go directly to the Mark Spam button. I mean immediately. Sprint like you’re training for the Olympics.

“An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library.”

“The feature crashed frequently and its “sources” linked to spammy copies of legit websites, or other archived copies that aren’t the actual source page. Some sources even went to completely unrelated links that weren’t written by the person whose work they were supposedly an example of, potentially indicating that the suggestions Grammarly’s AI offers with one person’s name may be based on a different person’s work.”

And the rest:

“Every day, Michael Geoffrey Asia spent eight consecutive hours at his laptop in Kenya staring at porn, annotating what was happening in every frame for an AI data labeling company. When he was done with his shift, he started his second job as the human labor behind AI sex bots, sexting with real lonely people he suspected were in the United States.”

“The fact that these guys can’t shut up about the day that their spicy autocomplete machine will wake up and turn us all into paperclips has led many confused journalists and conference organizers to try to get me to comment on the future of AI. That’s a thing I strenuously resisted doing, because I wasted two years of my life explaining patiently and repeatedly why I thought crypto was stupid, and getting relentless bollocked by cryptocurrency cultists who at first insisted that I just didn’t understand crypto.“

Video: “The “AI Revolution” actually started decades ago, it was just a massive lie. In this gaming history documentary, we investigate how companies like Sega and Tiger Electronics used marketing smoke and mirrors to sell the “intelligence” of the 80s and 90s.“

“Stop spending money on Claude Code. Chipotle’s support bot is free.”

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cyberghostface posting in

scans_daily

( Scans under the cut... )

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mom2boys posting in

holmestice

Name: mom2boys
Contact email: rita.mom2boys@gmail.com
AO3 username: mom2boys
Treat preference: Yes, please! One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats, and if some of these can be inexpensive and quickly procured so much the better. Iris Murdoch

I will create:
A fanwork of the following type(s): fic
In one or more of the following parts of fandom: Books: Doyle - Canon; Springer - Enola Holmes. TV/Film:Granada TV Show; Sherlock BBC; Enola Holmes. Comics/radio/other: Bert Coules radio dramatizations; Sherlock & Co.
For one or more of the following characters or relationships: Holmes/Watson; Holmes & Enola; Mycroft & Enola; Sherlock & Mycroft (& Enola); or any permutation of this list where Holmes/Watson is a given.
I like working with one or more of the following categories: Fluff; Angst; Post-Reichenbach; Alternate Universe; Hurt/Comfort; Established Relationship; Crossover; Friendship; Disability; Humor; Case Fic (I'm not great at this and tend to crib shamelessly from ACD canon but I'm willing to try); First Time; Friendship; Drug Addiction; Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence; Family Drama; Family Shenanigans; I am particularly fond of writing Enola verbally sparring with Mycroft.
With any of the following ratings: 1) suitable for general audiences; 2) non-explicit sexual content; 3) explicit sexual content; 4) mild to moderate violence or depictions of non-sexual mature themes; 5) moderate to explicit graphic violence or depictions of non-sexual mature themes
I am willing to create for the following squicks and/or kinks: dubcon; non-con/rape; torture; domestic abuse; alcohol/drug abuse; self-harm; suicidal ideation or implied suicide; child abuse. I appear cute and fluffy to the casual observer, but I am quite willing to write angst. I prefer to write happy and/or hopeful endings. I am not prone to utter despair and hopelessness.

I want to receive:
A fanwork of the following type(s): art, fic, vids, graphics, podfic, music--it's all good!
In one or more of the following parts of fandom:Books: Canon; Springer-Enola Holmes. TV/Film:Granada TV Show; Sherlock BBC; Enola Holmes. Comics/radio/other: Bert Coules radio dramatizations; Sherlock & Co.
For one or more of the following characters or relationships: Holmes/Watson; Holmes & Enola; Mycroft & Enola; Sherlock & Mycroft (& Enola); or any permutation of this list where Holmes/Watson is a given.
I like stuff in the following categories: Fluff; Angst; Post-Reichenbach; Alternate Universe; Romance; Hurt/Comfort; Established Relationship; Crossover; Friendship; Humor; Disability; PTSD; Case Fic; First Time; Friendship; Drug Addiction; Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence.
With any of the following ratings: 2) non-explicit sexual content; 3) explicit sexual content; 4) mild to moderate violence or depictions of non-sexual mature themes; 5) moderate to explicit graphic violence or depictions of non-sexual mature themes
I wouldn’t mind any of the following squicks and/or kinks: dubcon; non-con/rape; torture; domestic abuse; alcohol/drug abuse; self-harm; child abuse.

Please include further details about what you’d like to receive: Something spicy, not necessarily explicit and not PWP--I like my spice with an actual plot. I often enjoy a not-completely-settled ending but I don't want to be left unbearably bereft or despairing. Absolutely no main character death or actual suicide. (Reichenbach issues are fine, especially if you want to improve on the disaster that was the Moftiss take on it.) I love family stories, so including Enola and/or Rosie would be welcomed. I do not approve of the way Nancy Springer wrote Mama Holmes, so feel free to improve on that! I do not think that Mr. and Mrs. Holmes, as portrayed in BBC Sherlock were as awful as Sherlock and Mycroft made them out to be (because Eurus does NOT exist) so I will take them in a "good enough parent" scenario. Along with my spice, I want some angst, too. That said, I am always up for silly fluffiness. Not crack, necessarily, but fun.
Special requests: I'd like to stretch a bit--please, some spice, some angst--I can write fluff with my eyes closed. I haven't tried Sherlock & Co, so I'm willing to dip my toes into that particular pool. I am also quite fond of research, so historical fic is always welcome. I'd prefer to write characters from BBC, Enola Holmes (TV), or Sherlock & Co and am willing to set them almost anywhere from the dawn of time to the present. (Ok, that may be an exaggeration, but hopefully you get the idea). I'd like to get away from ACD if possible.

calimac

The announcement of the Lord Ruthven Awards, named for the vampire in Polidori's pioneering tale, reminds me of another well-known Ruthven in literature, the baronet Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd in Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore, and an error associated with him.

Sir Ruthven had been living in disguise as a yeoman farmer called Robin Oakapple, but at the end of Act 1 he is unveiled and forced to take up his baronetcy and the family curse associated with it, which is what he'd been trying to avoid. He reintroduces himself as a bad bart in this sung verse, which Sullivan set to sinister music:

I once was as meek as a new-born lamb,
I'm now Sir Murgatroyd - ha! ha!
With greater precision
(Without the elision),
Sir Ruthven Murgatroyd - ha! ha!

Now, Gilbert and Sullivan companies know that the name Ruthven is pronounced 'Rivven', and that fact is noted by Ian Bradley in his Annotated G&S when the name first appears in Act 1. But at this point, Bradley makes a mistake, his only one that I've noticed. He says that "without the elision" means that this one time, the name should be pronounced as spelled, and since his volume originally came out in 1984 I've noted that most G&S performances follow his advice, whereas earlier on they didn't.

But Bradley is wrong! Look at the earlier line: "I'm now Sir Murgatroyd." (A complete error on Gilbert's part, by the way - 'Sir Lastname' is never used in Britain and is the mark of complete illiteracy - but Gilbert, for all his genius, was often clumsy where scansion forced his hand.) The elision is of the entire first name and not of a letter or syllable. Accordingly it is put back in in the subsequent line, but there's nothing about how it's pronounced. If I were playing the part, I would insist on pronouncing it normally. (Although if I were good enough to play principal roles in G&S, I'd prefer to be cast as Ruthven's brother Despard, with B. as his wife, Mad Margaret, so that we could perform the song celebrating their release from durance vile, which you can watch Vincent Price with Ann Howard in here.)

james_davis_nicoll

Tsukiko entertains her former high school teacher with an extraordinary tale.

Parade by Hiromi Kawakami

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rattfan

I'm somewhat bleh at the moment, not sure why. I did just have my Reandron shot yesterday, and it was definitely due, so perhaps a contributor. There seems to be a new rule, according to the nurse who gave it me, that a doctor has got to put eyes on you before you get the shot. So I had to wait around until Dr K was free. She eventually appeared in the doorway, saw me, said "Oh, it's him, yes, he can have it!" and disappeared again.

After I had the Reandron shot, I needed to see a barber for a haircut. New place. The place I went before decided to go with a very fancy - probably AI created - online website. It was now all "bronze" and "silver" and "platinum experience." I could honestly not find an entry for "haircut with clippers and scissors" like they had before, so I found a place that is ONLY walk-ins, just like Sami's in Bassendean. Tony the barber did a very nice job and also cheaper :-) Before me was a bloke with a magnificent white beard, so when it was my turn, I despaired of my current stubble and asked, "You think I should give up on it?" "Yeah, probably," said Tony. "You want me to get rid of it?" Two seconds later, all clean.

Being a nerd, I speculated that if this was 500 years ago, those two appointments would have been at the same place with a barber-( Read more... )

asakiyume

What a Fish Looks Like
by Syr Hayati Beker

Read this thanks to

skygiants' excellent review (here).

I loved the style of storytelling--love the way the author's mind works--and enjoyed aspects of the story a lot, but overall, I wasn't the right audience for the book. The right audience would be someone who is as interested in all the ideas as I am, but who is also very invested in portraits of people experiencing all the emotions associated with a breakup. The various narrators are really feeling their feelings about one another, and to enjoy the book fully, you need to be there for that.

It's the climate apocalypse, and some people are fleeing earth and others are staying, and there's conversation about what those decisions mean and what goes into them, but with a very loud undertone about what commitment to a lover means and what abandonment is, and bravery, etc. I was interested in the conversations about commitment to Earth more than the associated subtext (sometimes supertext) about commitment to one another.

So I read about halfway through with deep absorption, then skimmed the rest.

But the language and ideas are great. This quote, about hosting extinct animals' DNA, shows how marvelously the author explores the idea (and also how they nudge you about human relationships).

It's not like sharing a bed, struggling at first and then finding a rhythm. It's not like grafting an apricot branch to a plum tree. It is: your DNA turned into a factory for the DNA of extinct species until the day the world is safe enough that we can let the ghosts out, resurrected. Until then, it's a shorter life, but maybe less lonely. Maybe that's all there ever was.

There's also a great part where a character may or may not be talking to a collective mer-consciousness. The author plays with "A Lone" (a single, noncollective being, alone) and "Re-member" (come back into collectivity, remember). I loved the mer-collective's voice:

We remember what we eat
One Song:
One time a sailor fell off his ship. "Can you swim?" we said
No
So we ate him. Drank his tears
Now he is not
A Lone

And there's also a part about putting on a play (Antigone) that keeps doing "X, but Y" in very funny ways, e.g.,

The Sphinx, but with affirmations instead of riddles. It says, "what you are is fabulous, and that's what you are." It says, "the thing that walks on any number of legs belongs."
...
Your life, but in Thebes. Thebes is nice. It has no laundry, only sand.
...
A break up, but so well lit, you overcome your differences and fall back in love.
...
Romeo and Juliet, but with cell phones. Their elopement succeeds. Nobody dies. They move to a small apartment in Milan. They love and hate one another their whole lives, sheltered from the cold, touching all the old familiar walls.

Those are just some; there were more. The last of those X, but Y examples grated on me a little. I know "they love and hate one another their whole lives" is a thing that really does happen, but it feels very overrepresented in theater and literary fiction, and "touching all the old familiar walls" feels like every single young rebel's blithe certainty that they're going to live life differently.

But maybe they will! And people get to declare what they want for audiences that are thirsting to hear it.

So: good book, great ideas, me: not the target audience, but very glad to have read it.

ETA: I've gone this whole review without acknowledging that this book is queer centered. This book is queer centered! The lovers are nonbinary or trans, most of them. This was neither a plus nor a minus for me, but if you're yearning to spend time in a fully realized queer space, this story provides that--so that would be an added mark in its favor.

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seleneheart posting in

bookclub_dw

We do not have anyone signed up to host for May and the following months. I can do it, but then everyone will be stuck with my taste in books. Do we really want that? I think not.

Please sign up on the spreadsheet here.

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mod post

fred_mouse

I'm a week post radiation; I'm still very red, and I have some raw patches in my armpit / outer edge of the breast. I assume this is mostly because I did not do the same prevention there, because I did not realise I needed to.

This means I am doing a lot of going topless; it is fortunately still warm enough to be doing that (although it is down to 22°C at the moment, and even with the door shut I'm a tad cold). I ran out of the ointment the hospital gave me, then the healing gel i was using, and the replacement artisanat found isn't as good.

I have found a couple more books to fit the reading for the fiction part of my project, so I'm going gung ho on that. Am a little frustrated that I keep finding books from the USA, rather than anywhere else.

I have not been keeping up with DW. I've just opened about 20 posts and I think I'm going to end up closing them having skimmed. I have, instead, fallen face first into Heated Rivalry fandom, and very much appreciate chaosmanor sharing their sources for fic. (I have not seen the show, nor read the books. This is unlikely to change. Youngest has been reporting back on the show).

Tags:

body health

slacktivist_feed

Posted by Fred Clark

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2026/03/25/texts-of-terror-terrific/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=73576

A star-studded line up of MAGA celebrities is planning to read the entire Bible, out loud, in Washington DC next month. I don't think they realize what that means.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2026/03/25/texts-of-terror-terrific/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/?p=73576

osprey_archer

This Wednesday Reading Meme covers the last two weeks, so it is perhaps a bit longer than usual, although not so long as it could be as I intend to write a whole post devoted to George Gissing’s New Grub Street. Will I manage this? Unclear. Not sure I ever truly did justice to The Odd Women either.

What I Read Over the Past Two Weeks

Patricia C. Wrede’s Caught in Crystal. I was excited about this book because I loved Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles, but I found Caught in Crystal a disappointment. The characters spend a lot of time moving from location to location without ever giving much sense what makes any particular location interesting and unique, and it takes about 75% of the book before we finally get started on the quest that we could all see coming from about chapter two.

Eleanor Hoffman’s A Cat of Paris, illustrated by Zhenya Gay. Another lavishly illustrated cat POV children’s book from the 1940s, which seems to have been a highwater mark for this sort of thing. Delightful as books in this genre almost invariably are, with the extra delight of taking place on the Left Bank of Paris! I was only sorry that our cat never got to pose for the patissiere who yearned to sculpt him in marzipan.

Scott Eyman’s Hank and Jim: The Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart. During a long wait at the airport I sorted through my Kindle and found some books I’d forgotten about, including this one! I love Golden Age Hollywood and Jimmy Stewart especially, so I found this a lot of fun, even though Henry Fonda is the kind of guy who says things like “I’ve never liked myself very much” and you go mmm yeah I don’t think I like you very much either. Apparently if someone got too emotional in front of Fonda, or asked for help, his characteristic move was to silently walk away.

However, I did find Fonda’s needlepoint hobby endearing.

Ngaio Marsh’s Enter a Murderer, the second Inspector Alleyn novel, which I approached with trepidation because I’ve found the early Alleyn books hit or miss. (IMO Marsh hits her stride in Artists in Crime, when Alleyn falls head over heels for murder suspect Agatha Troy.) However, this one was a surprise pleasure. The story is set in a theater, and Marsh’s theater mysteries are almost always good, and although Alleyn doesn’t seem to have quite settled into his characterization yet, it is extremely funny to watch him flippantly flirting with starstruck reporter Nigel Bathgate.

”Here’s the warrant,” murmured Alleyn. He struggled into his overcoat and pulled on his felt hat at a jaunty angle.

“Am I tidy?” he asked. “It looks so bad not to be tidy for an arrest.”

Nigel thought dispassionately, that he looked remarkably handsome, and wondered if the chief inspector had “It.” “I must ask Angela,” thought Nigel.

Must you, Nigel? I think you can tell damn well that Chief Inspector Alleyn simply oozes sex appeal.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun Takuya Asakura’s The Vanishing Cherry Blossom Bookshop, which I bought because it was a mere $5 with a drink at the Barnes and Noble cafe (deal lasts till the end of March!) and I was weak to the beautiful cherry blossom explosion of a cover. I feel that a bookshop that only appears when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom ought to feel a bit more numinously magical than the one in this book, but nonetheless I’m enjoying it enough to keep reading.

What I Plan to Read Next

Continuing my Provincial Lady journey with The Provincial Lady in America.

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cimorene

Ughhhh. Panic again (Finnish government bureaucracy), and trying to make important decisions, and trying to build healthy habits, and feeling too exhausted for any of it - we're barely ahead of laundry and dishes. I want to take myself and all three pets for checkups and I cannot make the appointments.

At least my dad isn't sick! My parents and sister's shared house is experiencing a plumbing emergency where the shower won't drain though. We have had so many drain problems here that that looks minor to me, though it is quite expensive.

Our wonderful Ukrainian tenant-neighbors in the other half of our house asked politely if they could trim the apple trees, which we've been thinking we need to hire someone to do because we have tried and failed and didn't have the tools. The husband there works, studies, cycles, takes his kids out, fishes, cooks, and is constantly buying and selling things through fb marketplace and fixing furniture with power tools. (His wife does too, but not the fishing or power tools; she swims and does other stuff.) The instant we said yes please 🙏 he thoroughly trimmed both trees, and the kids have gathered the brush into piles already. They are so active and involved and extroverted and successful that we feel inadequate in comparison, but we're so lucky to have them.

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family,
knypplinge

cyberghostface posting in

scans_daily

( Scans under the cut... )

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sabotabby

Just finished: To Ride a Rising Storm by Moniquill Blackgoose. I absolutely loved this—it was a worthy sequel to the first one, and I ended up kind of binge-reading it because it's so compelling even though for the first three quarters, nothing much of anything happens. It's just a slow burn of political tensions so by the time things explode, you should have seen it coming but maybe don't, because as wise and savvy as our heroine is, she's still a 16-year-old girl navigating school, relationships, and family.

I immediately went to one of my Discord servers to squeal about it and was rewarded with some uncomfortable speculation about the author's heritage so I am hoping those rumours aren't true because I need her to be as cool as she seems.

Grendel by John Gardner. I have been meaning to read this for ages as it's one of those books where when people get to know me, they'll say "oh have you read this" and I'll say "no but it's on my list." Anyway it lives up to the hype. I don't know that the idea of telling a well-known story from the monster's perspective was all that new in the 70s, but it's far more than that. It's a literary masterpiece in terms of the prose, which is squelching and visceral, and it takes some unexpected philosophical turns, especially the bits with the dragon and the mad peasant, that feel fresh and relevant even today.

Currently reading: Always On by Helena Trooperman. And now we're back to the world of indie SF. This one is about an inventor, single mom to five children after her husband's death, struggling to get her career back on track. She discovers a way to power cellphones through human static electricity, which brings her in direct conflict with Big Oil. It's pretty interesting, brought down a little by some strange dialogue choices, but overall compelling character and a cool type of plot that the genre doesn't usually do anymore.

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books

andrewducker

I wonder at what birth year over half of people have never seen a western.

Obviously very young people won't - but if we look at people age 25-40, who have had a chance to watch a bunch of movies, I wonder if outside of classic movie afficionados you'll have seen many people see any. The last minor resurgence would have been Tarantino's Hateful Eight and Django Unchained, and I don't think either of those were that massive. Before that you're probably back to Dances with Wolves and Unforgiven, which is now around 35 years ago.

Which would mean that the main cultural touchstone for young people would be Red Dead Redemption 2, released in 2018 and the 4th best-selling game of all time.

(Curiosity triggered because in the most recent University Challenge nobody recognised John Wayne.)

tamaranth

2026/042: The Keeper — Tana French

Ardnakelty has no time for Guards. The townland will run its own investigation, spreading unseen beneath the official enquiry like ancient trailways underlie the brash modern roads; it'll reach its own conclusions, and deal out its own justice. [loc. 1069]

Third in the trilogy that began with The Searcher and continued with The Hunter. Cal Hooper's life in the small village of Ardnakelty seems settled: he's more or less engaged to Lena, and Trey is finding friends and possibly even romance. Then a young woman -- Rachel, fiancee of local big-shot Tommy Moynihan's son Eugene -- is found dead in the river. ( Read more... )

Mood impressed

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books,
read26

chefxh

Even though I really "got" geometry, unlike other math, and even though I did really REALLY well on the "what shape does this fold up into" part of the ASVAB (do they still administer that?), this is beyond me. The whole magic square thing? Not my deal beyond SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS.

chefxh

In local news, the city is installing shade netting over kids'playgrounds here to provide some relief when it gets hot.

Isn't that innocuous and wholesome and refreshingly normal?

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l'hospitalet,
spain

dine

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

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meme,
vid rec

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Sakura of DOOM

Network

The Sora deal flops before it started, and other LLM news

Knull #3

Hope springs eternal

a Gilbert and Sullivan picayune point

Parade by Hiromi Kawakami

A good dose of leeches will fix that.

Reading Wednesday: What a Fish Looks Like

Hosts for May and Beyond

minimal update

Texts of terror? Terrific!

Wednesday Reading Meme

Interesting Links for 25-03-2026

False spring is here at last

Amazing Spider-Man #25

Reading Wednesday

I'm curious about whether young people have even seen a western

2026/042: The Keeper — Tana French

playing at pentominoes

throwing shade

that’s what brave is - being terrified and doing it anyway

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