The shooting was on Monday

Aug. 3rd, 2025 06:36 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
How're you gonna send your "thoughts-and-prayers" email on Friday? At this point, silence would've been better. (I have no idea how I got on the mayor's email list.)

Speaking of the shooting, my aunt texted me to check in. She, uh, she called me by the name I tried out for like five minutes in middle school. I have no idea how she remembered that. I barely remember that. But at least she didn't ask after Mommy's health this time.

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Bot Problems

Aug. 2nd, 2025 12:22 am
soc_puppet: Words "Baseless Opinion" in orange (Baseless Opinion)
[personal profile] soc_puppet
I briefly saw (and participated in, for exactly one reblog) a thread on Tumblr about whether AO3 should allow works produced by Generative AI. OP was in favor, as was the first reblogger, where as at least one reblogger was firmly against all AI generated works on AO3, and several (myself included) shared the reasons why AI generated works currently are allowed on AO3. One of the rebloggers who is firmly against any AI generated works being allowed on AO3 said, "Like anything else in a shared social space, an enforced social norm requires actual social consequences for breaking it. This? Is just capitulation."

Anyway, that person also said that they're done talking about it, and I wanted to respect that, so I'm taking my thoughts over here. If you recognize the quote in question, or know who the person is, I will politely ask you to respect their boundaries and not go looking for the post and/or reblogging it from them with your own commentary; we can talk in the comments of this post, which they can safely ignore. I'm personally struggling with the point they raised, and will probably not be able to get to sleep without working some of it out, so I'm doing so over here where, again, they should be able to safely ignore it.

So. AI generated works on AO3. )

Anyway, those are my current thoughts. So now probably the thing that will keep me up is trying to decide whether to create a Tumblr poll about that last point ("Do you post AI generated works to AO3, and if so, do you admit that they're AI generated?")

Oh thank goodness, it's storming

Aug. 2nd, 2025 10:15 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
This should drop the temperature to something livable.

E and I watched three more Voyager episodes.

First, we watched the one where Tom Paris gets put in solitary for 30 days due to an environmental crime of conscience. Janeway flipped her morning coin and landed on "martinet / asshole", I guess. Tom tries pointing out that a month of solitary is cruel and unusual punishment, but nobody, least of all the writers, takes it seriously.

I take it seriously. This is literally torture. The worst thing that happens to Tom is he's bored and has a few nightmares about his astonishingly abusive father. (I thought the man was astonishingly abusive. I'll bet the writers thought he was just ordinary bad.) What happens to real people includes but is not limited to hallucinations, obsessive thoughts, a heightened risk of suicide, and lasting psychosis.

Anyway, the episode was surprisingly still topical, 30-ish years after the fact. The one moderately amusing part of this episode is where Tom tells the turbolift to bring him to the brig because nobody wanted to pay the security guard extras to speak. Great episode, but, to reiterate, solitary confinement is literally torture.

The next episode was Counterpoint, in which a fascist thug thinks he has culture, but actually he does not. They never do. Voyager is smuggling telepathic refugees. The fascists have some inane argument about how you can't trust telepaths and they're a real and present threat to society, but it's a weaksauce argument and nobody buys it. Outside the ship children are getting smuggled around in crates and incarcerated in concentration camps everywhere you look. This is another surprisingly, and dismayingly, topical episode.

At the end, Janeway is sad that the thug betrayed them instead of defecting for real, but that's because she thinks he's hot. I think she could've just kidnapped him. It worked with Seven, after all. (To be honest, there's a long list of one-episode characters that I think Janeway should've outright kidnapped. And also Seska and her baby.)

One of those refugee children shows up again on Prodigy as a Starfleet security guard and... honestly, I have so many questions about the way they apparently jaunt back and forth to the Delta Quadrant on a whim nowadays. Is this something they explain in Picard? Because I'm not watching Picard, not now that I've heard they kill off Icheb.

And today was a Robert Picardo Showcase Episode wherein the Doctor has a psychological crisis after finding out his memory was modified to make him forget his previous psychological crisis, when he chose to save his friend Harry over some random extra. It's a good episode. Don't ask me what Voyager planned to do if he never overcame his trauma and they had to go the rest of the trip with no doctor, though.

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PSA

Jul. 31st, 2025 08:13 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
What even is this fucking bullshit

Go leave a public comment, though I don't even know what to say. "This is garbage and you know it, and you're bad and should feel bad", maybe.

We saw the huskies yesterday!

Aug. 1st, 2025 09:24 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
Moonpie started to get super hyped up, as usual, and so did they, so I picked her up... and ended up with two huskies eagerly jumping up on me to say hi to their best chihuahua friend!

Well, at least my feet were firmly planted. Before we saw the huskies, on our earlier walk, we bumped into a friendly yorkie (?) - no collar, no people. But well-fed and groomed, this isn't another Finn. He eventually disappeared under a fence, but I've been asking everybody I saw if they know whose dog he is exactly, because I was that worried. Was he outside alone in the heat? That's no good.

Anyway, I asked the guy with the huskies, and he had no idea, but he told me something else - the day before, he thinks he saw a fox! I'm not sure he wasn't just mistaken, but if he isn't - wow! I know we have bunnies on the South Shore, and coyotes in the Bronx, and whatever the city says we definitely have a full time population of deer mid-Island, so maybe a fox isn't so strange.

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No!

Jul. 28th, 2025 03:14 pm

Feedback time

Jul. 27th, 2025 11:41 pm
soc_puppet: Chibi Tsutako from the Maria-sama ga Miteru manga dressed in a graduate's robe taps for attention with a baton (Tap tap!)
[personal profile] soc_puppet
Just got my feedback for my Persuasive Speech!

Technically, I only had to hand in the outline, but since I wrote the speech to the outline template, it was effectively the same thing.

Anyway, here's the professor's feedback:

[Socchan], excellent job following the template. Well written and organized. Transitional statements were strong.

Yeah. Just kinda laugh-crying over "Excellent job following the template" 😂 Boy I sure hope it was, after how long I spent agonizing on it!

Anyway, I got 100% on the speech, and an additional 16/20 points of extra credit for presenting it. I could probably blow off the final quiz and assignment and still get at least a B in this class. I'm not going to, on account of being certain that it would tempt me into blowing off more and more assignments over the next semester, but it's good to be secure in my final grade.
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
Really? You really don't see it at all?



(The comment is a few years old and gave a few more details in the thread that read to me like they were a teen or young adult when they wrote it, so to protect their identity I'm linking to a different lyrics video of the same song. But seriously, there's a level of stupidity that can't be entirely excused by youth.)

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Esperanto Dreamsheep

Jul. 26th, 2025 03:36 pm
soc_puppet: Dreamsheep snoozing in front of the Esperanto flag; the Dreamwidth logo is in green and white (Esperanto Dreamsheep)
[personal profile] soc_puppet
Esperanto Dreamsheep are a go! You can check them out over here on [community profile] dreamsheep or here on [community profile] esperanto.
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
So, there was the one where Naomi Wildman's mother doesn't die but we never see her again, which is kinda weak as episodes go but which does set up Naomi becoming Seven's little duckling.

We skipped the ice episode - I mean, it's a great episode, I just wasn't feeling it - and went on to Seven's multiple personality episode, or as I call it, "Jeri Ryan is an amazing actress". Like, wow.

This is another episode in which the crew has seemingly forgotten the concept of diplomacy. Okay, you have a Borg device with a computer virus that kills lots of Borg. The people who invented the thing obviously want it put back in space, intact, so it can kill even more Borg. You don't want to do that until you've cured Seven - great, wonderful. Have you considered asking them if there is anything they might accept in trade? Like, I don't know, information about the Borg? They only met the menace four years ago! Sure, they've made remarkable strides in killing them since them, but they'd surely like to know more about your novel approach of deborgifying the drones? They could get some of their own people back if they tried that approach, and that'd surely be better than killing them all? More information so they could pursue multiple goals can only be a good thing, especially as the Borg are bound to adapt to any one approach sooner or later.

But no, nobody even suggests it. Geez, these people. (And also? Maybe information on this virus would've been a good thing to trade for. You don't need people to sacrifice themselves. If the virus is nonfatal but persistent you can just infect people prophylacticly and hope for the... uh, best? Worst? You can hope that if the worst ever happens, at least you'll take some Borg out with you.)

And we wrapped up with the episode in which the Doctor creates a holographic Cardassian war criminal as a medical expert with whom to confer. So-so writing, honestly - the themes deserved better, and it's only saved by the acting.
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
A maverick is, literally, an unbranded cow. Sam Maverick refused to brand his cattle. Mommy just could not get over that semantic drift.

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conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
while denying that it was in any way wrong to act like that.

But now I'm not sure where I read that. Does anybody have a link?

Hot today

Jul. 28th, 2025 10:18 am
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
Not as hot as the Primaries, god that was hellish, but still plenty hot.

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conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
I'm a little relieved. I mean, not very, I'd rather have the job, but if I'd gotten it then I'd maybe have had to interact with him again and who needs that?

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Pet Peeve

Jul. 24th, 2025 11:20 pm
soc_puppet: Words "Baseless Opinion" in orange (Baseless Opinion)
[personal profile] soc_puppet
I just wish that Minesweeper would count it as a win if you correctly identify and flag all of the mines, even if you don't click on every other non-mine square. The same way it auto-flags all of the mines if you do click every non-mine square, but don't use any flags.

Esperanto: The Language of Hope

Jul. 24th, 2025 01:39 pm
soc_puppet: Dreamsheep snoozing in front of the Esperanto flag; the Dreamwidth logo is in green and white (Esperanto)
[personal profile] soc_puppet
Got to give this in class after all! Sharing it here as well, because why not.

Persuasive Speech goes here )


Works Cited )

Quick question....

Jul. 23rd, 2025 04:32 pm
conuly: (Default)
[personal profile] conuly
How bad of a faux pas is it if you're filling out a job application in person and then realize after you hand it in that you've gone ahead and proofread it?

(Asking for a friend!)

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Blergh

Jul. 23rd, 2025 12:35 am
soc_puppet: Words "Language Barrier" in yellow (Language Barrier)
[personal profile] soc_puppet
Switched speech topic from "Why You Should Switch to Firefox" over to "Why You Should Learn Esperanto", because the former was giving me a headache to try and write. Esperanto speech is going much more smoothly! I still need to write the conclusion, but that's just one paragraph, and I've already got all of my sources listed and embedded as well.

...I should make an Esperanto Dreamsheep. And pick Esperanto back up in general. I remembered what I know better than I was expecting, but I really do want to know this language well.

Edit: Speech is (tentatively) complete! I just want to extract it from the template and give it a good look over for flow and so forth, and then it should be good to go. Thank goodness.
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