Artificial Intelligence

Sep. 1st, 2025 08:02 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Two more articles about AI crap


I look at these and I am concerned, not because AI is inhuman, but because it is  picking up aspects from its human creators, including some of the worst ones.


Skills

Sep. 1st, 2025 03:18 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Wholebeing: Essential skills for a post-growth society

In the face of multiple planetary crises, we're beginning to understand that our dominant economic system is fundamentally incompatible with life on a finite planet. Yet while many recognize the need for systemic change, we often overlook a crucial question: what skills do we need to thrive in a human world that operates within planetary boundaries?


This is a useful set of skills.

Monday Update 9-1-25

Sep. 1st, 2025 02:41 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Artwork of the wordsmith typing. (typing)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
These are some posts from the later part of last week in case you missed them:
Bingo
Cyberspace Theory
Birdfeeding
New Year's Resolutions Check In
Today's Adventures
Communities
Birdfeeding
Wildlife
Philosophical Questions: Money
Poetry Fishbowl Report for August 5, 2025
Today's Cooking
Unsold Poems for the August 5, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl
Indigenous People
"Helium Miner's Song" by Catamariner
Climate Change
Worldbuilding
Venn Diagram
Birdfeeding
Writing
Follow Friday 8-29-25: Active Communities on Dreamwidth Summer 2025 J-Z
Friday Five
Poetry Fishbowl Report for July 15, 2025
Unsold Poems for the July 15, 2025 Poetry Fishbowl
Water
Birdfeeding
Hobbies: Photography
Today's Smoothie
Pen Person Questions
Birdfeeding
Today's Adventures
Early Humans
Birdfeeding
Let's Boycott Mississippi

Affordable Housing has 40 comments. Robotics has 67 comments. Food has 36 comments. "Philosophical Questions: Looks" has 52 comments.


There will be a Poetry Fishbowl on Tuesday, September 2 with a theme of "Communication Styles."


[community profile] summerofthe69 is nearing its end. You can see the calendar here and the current themes are a double theme of Fighting or Fucking AND Monsterfucker and Back End 69.


"An Inkling of Things to Come" belongs to Polychrome: Shiv and needs $200 to be complete. Shiv attends the first session of his Worldbuilding class.


The weather is still mild to warm and quite dry. :D Seen at the birdfeeders this week: a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, a male ruby-throated hummingbird, and a fox squirrel. I've heard a cardinal singing and a woodpecker drumming. Currently blooming: dandelions, pansies, violas, marigolds, petunias, red salvia, verbena, lantana, sweet alyssum, zinnias, snapdragons, blue lobelia, perennial pinks, oxalis, moss rose, yarrow, firecracker plant, tomatoes, tomatillos, yellow squash, zucchini, morning glory, purple echinacea, chicory, Queen Anne's lace, sunflowers, cup plant, firewheel, cypress vine, sunchokes. Tomatoes, ball carrots, and groundcherries are ripe.

Birdfeeding

Sep. 1st, 2025 02:29 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is mostly sunny and warm.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches, plus a squirrel up a tree with a walnut in its mouth.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 9/1/25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden and some of the savanna seedlings.

A few sunchokes are blooming.

EDIT 9/1/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 9/1/25 -- I did a bit of work on the old picnic table.

EDIT 9/1/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 9/1/25 -- I did a bit of work around the yard.






.
 

Labour Day

Sep. 1st, 2025 10:03 am
muccamukk: Text: Love > Anger, Hope > Fear, Optimism > Despair. (Misc: Canadian Politics)
[personal profile] muccamukk
Heather Cox Richardson: August 31, 2025.
Almost one hundred and forty-three years ago, on September 5, 1882, workers in New York City celebrated the first Labor Day holiday with a parade.

The Tyee: Why One Young Union Organizer Sees a Brighter Future.
kingstoken: (Vintage Mermaid)
[personal profile] kingstoken posting in [community profile] fancake
Fandom: Sherlock Holmes (Books/Granada)
Pairings/Characters: Holmes/Watson
Rating: G
Length: 1114 words
Creator Links: MadamzelleG
Theme: food & cooking 

Summary: Holmes never orders dinner for himself, but Watson has long since stopped asking why. Instead, he allows the quiet ritual to unfold—Holmes sipping his coffee, stealing a bite here and there from Watson’s plate with effortless precision. In the warm glow of the Café Royal, amidst the murmur of conversation and the clink of silverware, an unspoken understanding lingers between them: Holmes takes, and Watson never minds.

Reccer's Notes: An intimate little scene of Watson and Holmes dining out together. With some exploration of Holmes' canon issues around food, but not in clinical way, more like Watson observing Holmes.

Fanwork Links: Ao3

Round 178: Food & Cooking

Sep. 1st, 2025 08:03 am
runpunkrun: combat boot, pizza, camo pants = punk  (punk rock girl)
[personal profile] runpunkrun posting in [community profile] fancake
Photograph of steel spoons and spices in a dramatic setting with added text that gives it the look of a gourmet magazine cover: September 2025. Food & Cooking, at Fancake. Steel teaspoons are arranged in an elogated oval to suggest a fish, with the bowls acting as scales and some of the handles left visible to create the fins and tail, giving the creature a spiky appearance. The concave bowls are dusted with a powdery orange spice for color and one spoon at the front of the fish is filled with a coarse black spice to create an eye. The fish is on a black surface with a rough texture and around it are three skinny green peppers, a mound of salt, a mound of orange spice, and a dipping bowl filled with a clear amber liquid.
Our theme for September is food & cooking!

The tag for this round is: theme: food & cooking

If you're just joining us, be sure to check out our policy on content notes. Content notes aren't required, but they're nice to include in your recs, especially if a fanwork has untagged content that readers may wish to know about in advance. Because food can be a sensitive subject, you might want to indicate things like disordered eating, food allergies, dieting, weight loss or gain, food policing, fatphobia, and body shaming.

Rules! )

Posting Template! )

Promote this round! )

Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

Bingo

Aug. 31st, 2025 08:52 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
I  have made 7 fills in my 8-1-25 card for the Crime Classics Bingo


I1 (Somebody at the Door) -- "No Faster or Firmer Friendships" (Polychrome Heroics)
I3 (As If by Magic) -- "To Allow in More Light" (Monster House)
I4 (Someone from the Past) -- "An Inkling of Things to Come" (Polychrome HeroicsShiv)

N4 (He Who Whispers) -- "He Who Whispers" (An Army of One)

G2 (Family Matters) -- "When You Learn to Read" (Polychrome HeroicsBig One)
G3 (Before the Fact) -- "Where You Find Light" (Polychrome HeroicsBig One
G4 (Deep Waters) -- "The Most Precious Heritage" (Polychrome Heroics: Rutledge)  

Cyberspace Theory

Aug. 31st, 2025 05:29 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
The ecology of attention

There’s a moment, usually around the seventh open tab, when your brain lets out a quiet scream. Not loud. Just a gentle, exhausted howl from somewhere behind your eyeballs. You've read ten headlines, watched half a video, skimmed three opinion pieces, checked your email, ignored two messages, and now you can't remember what you were doing in the first place. Welcome to the modern infoscape. It's busy, it's loud, and it's eating us alive.

Read more... )

New Year's Resolutions Check In

Aug. 31st, 2025 01:00 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
We made it to the end of August! \o/ If you have completed some of your medium-term goals or subgoals, and/or you're still chugging away at your ongoing goals, then pat yourself on the back. You worked hard for that. We have also finished summer. If you're doing seasonal goals, hopefully you have completed your summer batch and are about to start on fall.

This year I'm trying something new, continuing to track goals at the end of each month. So far it seems to be helping, so that's encouraging. I'm looking at my goal list more often and trying to keep ticking off more of them. The main drawback is that this update becomes more of a chore each month.

These are the previous check in posts:
New Year's Resolutions Check In January 4
New Year's Resolutions Check In January 10
New Year's Resolutions Check In January 17
New Year's Resolutions Check In January 24
New Year's Resolutions Check In January 31
New Year's Resolutions Check In February 28
New Year's Resolutions Check In March 31
New Year's Resolutions Check In April 30
New Year's Resolutions Check In May 31
New Year's Resolutions Check In June 30
New Year's Resolutions Check In July 31

Read more... )

city turns away from me

Aug. 31st, 2025 04:58 pm
unfitforsociety: pearls (string of pearls)
[personal profile] unfitforsociety
Batfamily

Alvin Draper of Crime Alley by [archiveofourown.org profile] potofsoup
Jason is having a hard time finding Tim Drake, but he's been running into a kid by the name of Alvin Draper in the Alley.

In the meantime, Tim Drake totally has 5-step plan to bring get Jason and Bruce to reconcile! Nothing will go wrong.
This is hilarious and amazing!

dolly-verse fics by [archiveofourown.org profile] a_alene
gotham city senior dolores patton and the teenaged crime lord she hangs out with sometimes Jason is befriended by a little old lady in Gotham. She teaches him to crochet. <333

Hard Cash, Hard Liquor, and Hard Candies: The Crime Alley Grannies by [archiveofourown.org profile] cookie_rock
They know everything that happens in Crime Alley.

EVERYTHING.
<333

Killing the Past (And Coming Back to Life) by [archiveofourown.org profile] RaaorQtpbpdy & [archiveofourown.org profile] TaraLaurel
Tim is visiting Robin's grave when Jason Todd crawls out of it. Oh boys...

Magnets by [archiveofourown.org profile] gender_bender08
On a Tuesday night, Bruce Wayne attends a circus. Halfway through, the trapeze artists are killed, leaving their eight year old son behind, hands wrapped in dancer’s tape and knees bloody with how he falls on them in his anguish. Bruce Wayne watches him for a moment, two, then turns around and leaves.

Sixteen years later, the thing who was once a man named Dick Grayson nurses a bottle of scotch as he stitches the gaping wound in his side from where Batman got him with a batarang.
AU where Bruce doesn't take in any of his kids, but they all come together somehow anyway.

Penelope by [archiveofourown.org profile] NerdyGay
Tim finds that there are more ways to protect the Bats than just Robin. A little magic never hurt anyone, after all. I enjoyed this!

The Pieces of What's Left by [archiveofourown.org profile] mynameisjessejk
When Blockbuster burns down his whole life and Tarantula takes what isn't hers to claim, Dick ditches his life, his name, and his city for an anonymous, quiet life in the Bowery. Just till he can put himself back together.

Jason is doing his best to fix his corner of the city, keep Black Mask out of his business, and arrange a confrontation with Batman, the Joker, and all the water under the bridge. He has no idea what to do with a Dick Grayson who's apparently in hiding and joined his gang by accident.

But it turns out they need each other far more than they could have imagined, and if either of them are going to fix their broken pieces, it's going to have to be together.
I enjoyed this! #hoods and birds

r/MaleLivingSpace by [archiveofourown.org profile] Jackedrabbit
Stephanie Brown is many things: a vigilante, a gossip, an ally, a ragebaiter, and a friend. But when a blizzard knocks out her apartment's WiFi, she tacks on another label to that list - an uninvited houseguest. And uninvited guests are often most welcome when they leave. Hilarious!

Red Hood's Shelter for Feral Kids by [archiveofourown.org profile] dandelionlily
Jason has a plan for his return to Gotham. Steal the clown's old Red Hood identity? Check. Make sure meddling birds know to keep out of his territory? Check. Recruit some homeless youth to keep an ear to the street in exchange for shelter? Check. Take over the Crime Alley drug trade, convince Black Mask to break the clown out of Arkham, murder his Replacement and force Batman to finally avenge him? ...he's still working on it.

His plans are delayed when the homeless kids he's sheltering are joined by a fearful boy with hand-shaped bruises around his neck. Alvin Draper may not want to say who did it, but Red Hood isn't about to let anyone who beats up children go unpunished.
This is fun!

3 Times Timmy Drake Meets Santa + 1 Time He Meets Bruce by [archiveofourown.org profile] Writer_loves_tropes
Exactly what it says on the tin, though it's an AU where Tim is 6 while everyone else is their normal canon ages. It's adorable!

Whose Vault Unlocked by [archiveofourown.org profile] myvividreams
Jason's war against emotional competency, ft. a concussion, nosy neighbors, superhero RPF, and the local library's writing circle.

...Not that he's winning or anything. Fuck.
Oh Jason...this is a lovely look at how Jason begins reconciling with the family.



Crossover

Spiderman/Batman

Fries With That Secret Identity? by [archiveofourown.org profile] N0t_Sketchy
This is a fun crossover where Peter goes to Gotham on a photography assignment and runs into Robin. Banter and hijinks ensue.

Birdfeeding

Aug. 31st, 2025 03:25 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today is partly cloudy and mild.

I fed the birds. I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches. I heard a cardinal singing but didn't see it.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 8/31/25 -- I watered the irises.

EDIT 8/31/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 8/31/25 -- I did more work around the patio.

EDIT 8/31/25 -- I took out the hose and watered the new picnic table and septic gardens.

A male ruby-throated hummingbird dive-bombed me while I was out with the hose. Hopefully he'll go back and drink from the droplets on the plants. :D I heard a woodpecker drumming but didn't see it.

EDIT 8/31/25 -- I watered the patio plants, old picnic table, barrel garden, goddess garden, and other house yard plants.

A sphinx moth tried to lick me, and then visited the impatiens and other flowers on the old picnic table. :D

Cicadas and crickets are singing.

We got the hose reeled up and put away.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Today's Adventures

Aug. 30th, 2025 09:53 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
Today we went to the Tuscola Family Fun Day and the Arthur Amish Country Cheese Festival.

Amusingly, I'm wearing a goldenrod-yellow T-shirt with a corncob and the caption "This is my crop top." (It's full length.) I got at least half a dozen compliments on it. :D I bought it earlier this year at another event, definitely a good choice for fall festivals.

Read more... )

Communities

Aug. 30th, 2025 05:57 pm
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith
When your job treats you like a person

As I write this, however, as the new part-time engagement coordinator for a small community farm, I’m laughing at the comedy of errors. I’m not afraid, because this is the first job I’ve ever had that treats me, first and foremost, like a person.

Read more... )

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