ceoln @ceoln@qoto.org

Meta’s AI chatbot informs a parents' group that it has a disabled child who is both gifted and challenged academically and attends a NYC public school. https://www.404media.co/facebooks-ai-told-parents-group-it-has-a-disabled-child/

It seems like a lot of people I see here need a 🫂 or few lately.

If you're feeling like you might hurt yourself, please consider a helpline or even DMing me as an alternative (see profile for contact options). I may not be able to respond *immediately*, but I will read it and I will respond.

Yes, I'm just some queerdo on the internet, but sometimes that's enough to get through a hard patch. How do I know? Because if it wasn't for the kindness of some of the people on this site, I wouldn't be here today. (thank you 💕)

You can call a peer-run warm-line for your state here: https://warmline.org/warmdir.html

If it's critical, you can go to https://988lifeline.org/ or call tel:988, but beware of the risk of possible emergency services involvement.

If you're not in the US, here's a list of crisis lines by country: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_suicide_crisis_lines

#SuicidePrevention #ItGetsBetter #YouAreNotAlone #BoostWelcome #Boost

World's favourite cuisines. 25,000 people in 24 countries were asked which nation's food they preferred. Interesting results.
(via @yougov)

Photos of Bicycles of WWII in the Atlantic.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2024/04/photos-bicycles-world-war-ii/678086/

This was quite the cargo bike / ambulance thing

my friend's #queenofthenight did her thing again 😯☺️ #bloomscrolling

New from the Newberry Library, a collection of more than 8000 digitized postcards illustrated by named artists. Perfect for posting to Mastodon--they come with alt text! https://www.newberry.org/news/digitization-complete-for-john-i-monroe-collection-of-artist-signed-postcards

"This toy does what I’d hoped the first one would do, and *then some.*"

#ICYMI - my review of the @HotOctopuss Pulse Queen - https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/hot-octopuss-pulse-queen/ #SexToys #Vibrators

Feeling old... #comic #games

If you are an artist don't feel like you need to only post new work. Much of your work will be new to the people following you. And if you share a little about why you created it, or how you made it, or even how you see it differently, those who have seen it before will still find it fresh.

"I drew this six years ago, if I did it today I would ..."

"I remember drawing this during ..."

"This was the first time I tried to draw..."

etc.

I love these kinds of posts from artists.

#WritersCoffeeClub 16: Have you ever started a chapter with a quote or poem?

Does it count if the poem is in the title? Cause that happens in This Is How Immortals Die!

Otherwise, nope. Many years ago, when I was writing the high fantasy story that got shelved (for now), I started each chapter with a passage from a fictional book that described creatures, places, concepts, this kind of thing. I could see myself doing it again!

I do like the idea of starting with a quote/poem too.

Adobe Firefly GenAI won’t let users generate image of person giving the “middle finger” but it does allow the “center finger”

I recently discovered Chronically Capable, a job board for people with disabilities or chronic illnesses: https://www.wearecapable.org

It’s mostly U.S. based for now, but there are ads for other countries, too. I want every one of us jobseekers to find the perfect position this year. 😊

Boosts are warmly welcomed to this post as are suggestions for other hashtags to include if I’m missing good ones.

#FediHired
#GetFediHired
#RemoteWork
#Hiring
#JobSearch

Cat pics? "Snoots?" "Toe beans?" "Mlems?" These are toxoplasmist propaganda.

No mere psyop, no mere "brain worm" but a bug that literally worms into your brain.

Always be vigilant, my friends.

I wrote about an interesting prologue. So let's talk about prologues!

Not whether you love them or hate them--but what they are uniquely able to do. What's the difference between a prologue and a first chapter? What is the function of a prologue? And what's the fun of it too? How do you think about whether to include one?

https://bit.ly/4avWqpA

#WritingConversations #WritingCommunity #prologue #ReadingLikeAWriter #WhatHappenedtoRuthyRamiriz #ClaireJimenez #Writing #FirstPage #BookOpenings

This building was cursed by a witch who was only 9 years old at the time.

@futurebird Over on Facebook there's a group devoted to "liminal spaces", and the group seems divided between people who are freaked out by them and people who find them comforting. I think some of the comfort of liminality, when it exists, comes from the lack of stress, that feeling that you're in a place where nothing is expected of you and nobody cares that you're there, so you don't have to perform.

I think we're focused on the wrong thing when we look at what tech works for a company like Amazon or Facebook or Netflix.

We should be looking at what tech works when you *don't* have a small army of staff engineers optimizing it. I want to know what I can scale *without* paying someone a half million dollar salary to do it.

There should be more case studies on things that don't have a billion-dollar company propping them up, humming along quietly on a cheap-ass VPS somewhere.