Collage Journaling: four cards

Oct. 24th, 2025 07:07 am
stonepicnicking_okapi: journal (journal)
[personal profile] stonepicnicking_okapi
So, yesterday, I allowed myself a few hours to play 'sick' because the previous day:

1. I got notice caught by a speed camera ($40); 2. I lost my prescrption sunglasses ($$$) at Minor's cross country meet; 3. the guidance counselor called to say Minor might be suicidal and depressed so we had a Mental Health Talk (he's ok).

I went to Target and got a new coffee pot to replace the one I broke so I can continue to enjoy the tasty coffee gifted to me by [personal profile] sweettartheart and [personal profile] bethctg. I also got our Halloween candy for trick-or-treaters (just fruit candy, no chocolate as the boys don't like chocolate) and so I got a can of soup and some Pringles for me and went home and watched "The Devil's Backbone," which was decent, then took a nap.

I accepted a new-to-me shift today, 6 hours with an Alzheimer client. We'll see how that goes. It's out in the rural area.

I need to finish my Spook Me stuff. COME ON, BRAIN!



badly_knitted: (Rose)
[personal profile] badly_knitted posting in [community profile] fan_flashworks

Title: Remarkable Device
Fandom: The Fantastic Journey
Author: [personal profile] badly_knitted
Characters: Jonathan Willaway, Varian.
Rating: PG
Setting: Children of the Gods, A Dream of Conquest, An Act of Love, Riddles.
Summary: Jonathan finds Varian’s sonic energiser fascinating.
Word Count: 200
Content Notes: Nada.
Written For: Challenge 495: Amnesty 82, using Challenge 48: Technology.
Disclaimer: I don’t own The Fantastic Journey, or the characters. They belong to their creators.
A/N: Double drabble.



veronyxk84: (Vero#spike)
[personal profile] veronyxk84 posting in [community profile] sweetandshort
Title: Off Balance
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Author: [personal profile] veronyxk84
Characters/Pairing: Spike (implied Spuffy)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: grief
Word count: 100 (Google Docs)
Spoilers/Setting: Set between S5 and S6
Summary: Spike’s musings on eternity and losing someone you love.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction created for fun and no profit has been made. All rights belong to the respective owners.

Prompt [#5]: Immortality

Crossposted: My journal, Sunnydale After Dark


READ: Off Balance )

Spy Flyers or Spyflyers? nobody knows

Oct. 24th, 2025 11:12 am
philomytha: stylised biplane (flies east biplane)
[personal profile] philomytha
The Spyflyers, WE Johns (available on Faded Page here)
Finally got around to reading this one as other people are requesting it for Yuletide, and it was a fun WW1 spy adventure, and unusually for WEJ, it's a standalone - I was expecting to see Raymond show up to be our spymaster as he seems to in all of WEJ's other series regardless of whether there's any other overlap, but no, we have a different character in that role here. This is one of WEJ's earlier novels, 1933, and it does show - the set-piece scenes are good but the assembly is a bit hit and miss, it's all over the place in structure. You can also see bits WEJ has reused in later books - the entire opening chapter gets a reprise in Biggles in the Baltic - and the whole of it is WEJ trying out ideas that he puts together in a different and far far better way in Biggles Flies East. I don't think Flies East would be anywhere near as good a book if WEJ hadn't written this one first.

The gist of the story, without spoilers, is that our pilot-and-observer duo Rex and Tony are assigned to try to find double agents who are flying around in British aeroplanes causing problems in France in WW1. Rex and Tony are both fluent German speakers and to do this they are assigned a captured German aircraft and some German uniforms and have to land in German-occupied territory and investigate, and soon they encounter the mysterious Captain Fairfax who seems to be in more places than is reasonable for one person - and so we have a wonderful romp of everyone being undercover on the opposite side. And for all that the story is all over the place at the start, by the middle of the story WEJ starts to tighten up the adventure and the ending is great. And I have gone and requested it for Yuletide too now.

Now for spoilers - and I was surprised by several twists in this, so if you think you might read the book, read it first and enjoy the twists unspoiled, and then come back and chat about it with me.

spoilers )
rionaleonhart: revolutionary girl utena: utena has fallen asleep on her schoolwork. (sort of exhausted really)
[personal profile] rionaleonhart
Here are a few more questions and answers about writing from my Tumblr!

Are you only working on one project right now, or multiple?

I’ve got twenty-nine files in my WIP folder, and I’ll occasionally pop into one and write a few lines, but there’s no project that’s really grabbing me right now. Or there’s no fanfiction project, at least, because I’ve been busy building a Danganronpa website. I promised myself I wouldn’t make any more websites! They’re so much work! I don’t know why I keep doing this!

(To be honest, I know why I did this: it's because I got COVID and spent a week in quarantine. There are a lot of issues associated with COVID, but no one ever talks about the risk that, while you’re isolating in your bedroom, you will end up making a fourth goddamn website.)

What’s the best thing to get you in the mood for writing?

There’s nothing I can reliably do to get myself into writing mode, unfortunately! The only thing that will make me write is having an idea. Once I’m inspired, I’ll write at every chance I get, but I don’t know how to trigger that inspiration; I just have to wait until it hits me.

What plot points and themes do you find yourself falling back on again and again in your work?

There are a lot of themes I find myself revisiting constantly! The main ones coming to mind are:

- Being unable to trust your own memories. Memories being erased, memories being rewritten, memories of things that never happened filtering through from another timeline; I do a lot of writing about weird memory stuff in general!
- Feeling responsible for someone’s death.
- Seeing/speaking to somebody no one else can see. This often combines with the above one: a character hallucinates someone whose death they feel responsible for.
- Bad coping mechanisms.
- Isolation.
- Falling in love with and/or banging everyone you know. I write this so often that I made an entire AO3 collection just to house my fics on this theme.

How often do you write?

It varies a lot, but my general pattern is to go a few weeks writing almost nothing, then get a fic idea and write feverishly for several days, then go back into a lull once I’ve finished the fic. The exception is November, in which I try to write a little bit every day. We’re almost there; I’ll need to think of some ideas!

What books have inspired your writing the most?

Animorphs, no question. I was absolutely passionate about KA Applegate’s Animorphs series when I first started writing fanfiction as a twelve-year-old, and, looking back at my early efforts, I can see that the style was heavily influenced by Animorphs. I wasn’t writing Animorphs fanfiction; I was writing for Pokémon! But there’s no question of where my style came from.

Over the years, as I’ve grown up and become a more experienced writer, my style has developed. But you could probably trace a direct line back from my current fics to my childhood efforts to reproduce the style of Animorphs. If you dig up my writing style to see what’s underneath, you’ll find that the foundations are pure Animorphs: very straightforward, very unornamented, short sentences and short paragraphs, focused on emotion and dialogue above all else.

ChatGPT в школе

Oct. 24th, 2025 11:14 am
green_fr: (Default)
[personal profile] green_fr
Интересная статья в Le Monde о том, как школа реагирует / может / должна реагировать на появление в нашей жизни LLM.

Во Франции, начиная с этого года, есть уроки пользования ИИ (en 4ème et 2nde). Но это скорее для того, чтобы убедиться, что все дети понимают, как пользоваться ChatGPT — который подавляющее большинство детей и так уже освоило. Для самих преподавателей тоже предусмотрены курсы повышения квалификации, но пока что их прошло только 9% учителей. И только 14% учителей реально пользуется ИИ для работы.

Из интересных идей, как учителя могут вплести использование ИИ в свои уроки: скармливаешь ChatGPT условие выпускного экзамена, а затем разбираешь его вместе с учениками. Это как минимум даёт возможность показать на практике, что считается плюсом в ответе. Ну и увидеть, как ИИ может накосячить.

Интересная мысль, что не надо путать жизнь взрослого с жизнью школьника. Взрослый реально может эффективно использовать ИИ, потому что и он сам уже сформировался как личность, и процессы вокруг него более-менее известны, использование ИИ может просто ускорить его работу, сделать его самого более эффективным. В то время как школьник действительно ходит в школу не для того, чтобы выучить определение синуса, а чтобы привыкнуть к процессу обучения: читаешь определение, пытаешься понять его, затем читаешь задачу, разбираешь готовое решение, после чего сам решаешь похожую задачу, потом более общую — ну и так далее. Что именно произойдёт с процессом вот этого обучения, если в это время дать в руки школьника ИИ, непонятно.


Тема популярная, я сам несколько раз уже участвовал в подобных разговорах. Можно карикатурно пересказать две радикально противоположные точки зрения.

Первая: ура, прогресс идёт, мы победим. Дети в школе перестанут решать тупые задачи, которые за них может решить ChatGPT, освободив время на решение по-настоящему нужных задач. Как в своё время мы отказались от уроков по подготовке глиняных табличек или заточке гусиного пера — так и сейчас, нужно всего лишь признать, что какие-то умения стали ненужными — ну так и чёрт с ними. Чуть менее карикатурно: действительно, появление калькуляторов избавило нас от необходимости уметь пользоваться таблицами Брадиса. Как следствие: разрешить в школе пользоваться всем — в реальной жизни мы же имеем право пользоваться калькулятором, почему не в школе?

Вторая: всё пропало, это закат цивилизации. ChatGPT способен решать за детей какие-то базовые задачи, но отказавшись их решать самим, дети не смогут научиться решать более сложные задачи. Да что там, они даже понимать эти задачи перестанут. И тут проблема фундаментальная: если мы, люди, перестанем понимать передовой край науки, то и двигать её дальше мы не сможем — и уж точно не LLM, который учится на уже написанных текстах и по определению не может ничего сам нового выдумать, продвинет науку дальше. Ну и вообще, мы в школе учим не столько конкретный предмет, сколько развиваем собственные способности добиваться результата — а ИИ избавляет нас от этих усилий.

У меня нет никакого мнения по поводу потенциальной деградации обучения. И по поводу того, способен ли ИИ создавать что-то новое — точнее, лично мне кажется, что да, способен, потому что я не вижу, чем ИИ, обучившийся на уже имеющихся текстах, кардинально отличается от моего мозга, точно так же обучившегося на уже имеющихся текстах (мне сложно представлять какую-то «искру божью», которая принципиально отличала бы наш мозг от компьютерного, но это моё личное мнение, основанное исключительно на моей, ничем не подтверждённой вере).

Но что точно, это то, что школьным учителям придётся радикально пересмотреть концепт домашнего задания и оценок его. Потому что если в школе они ещё могут попытаться «всё запретить», то что ты будешь делать с домашкой? Да, это огромный труд для преподавателей — нужно не просто переписать весь свой курс, а сначала переопределить его цели, в уже потом переписать от начала и до конца. Как когда-то, при появлении калькуляторов, они были вынуждены пересмотреть концепт домашних заданий по математике. Или с появлением интернета — пересмотреть домашние задания, базировавшиеся на простом поиске информации.

У меня в прошлом году был такой опыт, не могу сказать, что очень успешный, но тем не менее. Я вёл курс ООП в java, и выдал студентам задание написать какие-то классы для сражающихся роботов (играли в парадокс заключённого — см. здесь и здесь). Очевидно, что можно было скормить моё задание ChatGPT, и он выдавал какой-то код. Очевидно, что с первой итерации этот код никуда не годился (несколько человек таки сдало мне неработающий код с комментариями чата «а вот тут вставь логику»), но за несколько итераций его можно было довести до ума. Но только если у студента есть понимание, что этот код должен делать, и как его тестировать. То есть, получилось как минимум задание на тестирование. Плюс, я сделал бонусное задание, которое было определено достаточно невнятно: сделать класс-арену для натравливания классов-ботов друг на друга. Тут тоже, конечно же, можно было припахать ChatGPT, но начинать нужно было с долгой формулировки соответствующего промта. То есть, как минимум нужно было понять, в чём состоит задание.

Just One Thing (24 October 2025)

Oct. 24th, 2025 09:40 am
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila posting in [community profile] awesomeers
It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!
nanila: me (Default)
[personal profile] nanila
  1. What do you see when you are looking out of the window closest to you?
    The canal lock. No boats coming through, though, it’s quiet season now.

  2. Who was the last person coming into your room?
    Astro. He is now lounging on the day bed, as is his wont (example below).
    20250809_120552(0)

  3. What is the most predominant colour around you?
    A gentle pastel green. It is very soothing.

  4. What is right behind you?
    A box containing a bunch of stuff that I need to take to work. Thanks for the reminder, meme. :/

  5. What is on today's calendar sheet?
    More than I could possibly accomplish in one day, and several meetings of different types.

(no subject)

Oct. 24th, 2025 09:13 am
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)
[personal profile] oursin
Happy birthday, [personal profile] innocentsmith and [personal profile] intothespin!

A Thinning Of The Veil

Oct. 24th, 2025 08:54 am
poliphilo: (Default)
[personal profile] poliphilo
 I had a dream about the chap from whom I was anticipating trouble. He was smiling, in a golden glow, and he said "I have got my constitution back" and I thought, "Either he has regained emotional stability or he has died and gone to heaven." 

As it turned out he was still alive and had decided overnight that he can find new meaning in life by alerting the world to the dangers of of AI. He used to be a player of sorts on the international stage and forgets that his influential friends have either passed on or will no longer take his calls. I think he might be happier if he resigned himself to being an inconsequential old gent living in an English seaside town but that's my mentality not his and if his illusions keep him happy why question them? At least he's still alive And it's not an ignoble thing to embody Don Quixote. 

By the way, I'm chalking that dream up as precognitive. 

Feverish illnesses of the kind I've been passing through, cause the veil to thin. It's the upside of them- and one could almost wish for them to hang around longer. I had very sharp colourful dreams last night, not quite lucid, but still more "real" than "real" even though they didn't exactly hang together.  In one there was a garden enclosure that was all mine and full of trees and ever so lush grass, in another a nice little boy was asking me the meaning of the word "Hilversum" on the display of an oldtime transistor radio and in the third "we" were perfecting some sort of magical acrobatic trick involving eggs under the supervision of Ailz's mother- who was being much nicer and sweeter than she ever was in life. The eggs would somehow become kittens and the kittens were to be given to the babies who were trundling wheelbarrows around. Also the broken eggshells would turn into flakes of beautifully patterned enamel. I think what we were actually doing was helping human souls reincarnate, but this may be an interpretation too far....
sovay: (Sovay: David Owen)
[personal profile] sovay
I had a run-off-my-feet day, but I love the newly revealed cover for Afterlives 2024: The Year's Best Death Fiction, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas and shortly forthcoming from Psychopomp, in whose liminal mosaic is reprinted my queer, maritime, ice-dreaming story "Twice Every Day Returning." I am looking forward to that table of contents for myself. Have some links.

1. Courtesy of [personal profile] isis: British Airways' "May We Haveth One's Attention" (2024) may be the most charming safety video I have seen since the legendary "Dumb Ways to Die" (2012). My only excuse for missing it last year is that I can't remember sleeping that month.

2. Courtesy of [personal profile] moon_custafer: James Cagney, Chester Morris, and Edward G. Robinson on a Ferris wheel in 1934. The dark glasses donned by Mr. Morris are doing him no favors whatsoever except that he's making enthusiastic eye contact in the sun-flooded overhead shot.

3. Courtesy of [personal profile] fleurdelis41: "The thread about the Loyal Edinburgh Spearmen; a force of very doubtful military significance." The caricature of "Mr Dundas" with his beaver hat and spectacles reminds me irresistibly of an Edward Gorey character. The overenthusiastic lighting of the beacons actually made me laugh out loud.

4. I discovered the inimitably named Blackbeard's Tea Party some years ago with the furious drumbeat of their "Ford o' Kabul River" and then almost immediately lost track of them again, but as they seem to have come out since with the whaling EP Leviathan! (2018) and the nightmare siren song of "Mother Carey," we're still good. Since they closed their first album with "Chicken on a Raft," I am delighted that their recorded repertoire now also includes "Roll and Go."

5. I meant last week to link the Divine Comedy's "Invisible Thread" (2025), especially since it was my father who found it after I had sent him another song from the same album.

Her memory for a blessing, Darleane Hoffman who studied transuranic elements and still got to die at ninety-eight. She was not unstable.
[syndicated profile] tim_harford_feed

Posted by Tim Harford

An amateurish burglary in 1950s London ends in murder. One of the men involved is a 19-year-old named Derek Bentley. Bentley has the understanding of a child – and he wasn’t the killer. But the British justice system seems determined to deliver the death penalty. The fate of capital punishment lies in the balance, and so too does the fate of Derek Bentley. 

This episode was previously released to subscribers only – for bonus episodes, behind-the-scenes conversations, our monthly newsletter and ad-free listening, please take a look at the Cautionary Club.

[Apple] [Spotify] [Stitcher]

Further reading

On Derek Bentley:

“Bentley: The Hangman’s Account.” By Albert Pierrepoint. The Guardian. 31 July 1998.

https://www.derekbentley.com/pierrepoint/wnJUL98.html

Efforts to save Bentley FailThe Guardian. 28 Jan 1953.

Regina v. Derek William BENTLEY (Deceased) [1998] EWCA Crim 2516. 30 July 1998.

Efforts to save Bentley FailThe Guardian. 28 Jan 1953.

PEELERS PROGRESS Policing Waltham Abbey since 1840 By Bryn Elliott. 2001.

Let him Have it!” By David Morgan. Inside Croydon. 26 March 2023.

1953: Derek Bentley hanged for murder.” BBC News.

A Close up of the notice board, its glass front smashedAssociated Press Photo. 28 Jan 1953.

Derek Bentley Hanged.” Australian Associated Press. 28 January 1953.


On Crime and Capital Punishment:

Firearms (Amendment) Bill. House of Commons. 11 June 1997.

Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime” by Manuel Eisner. Crime and Justice. University of Cambridge. 2003

The Secret Executioner“. By Marcel Berlins. The Guardian. 31 March 2006

The Abolition of the Death Penalty in the United Kingdom. By Julian Knowles QC. 2015


On Lord Goddard:

Crimes of Violence. Hansard. House of Lords. 23 March 1950.

The Last of the TigerTime. 1 September 1958.

Bentley Judge AttackedBBC News. 30 July 1998.

A Chief Justice got away with murder” by Marcel Berlins. The Independent. 2 August 1998.



Follow Friday 10-24-25

Oct. 24th, 2025 12:53 am
ysabetwordsmith: Cartoon of me in Wordsmith persona (Default)
[personal profile] ysabetwordsmith posting in [community profile] followfriday
Got any Follow Friday-related posts to share this week? Comment here with the link(s).

Here's the plan: every Friday, let's recommend some people and/or communities to follow on Dreamwidth. That's it. No complicated rules, no "pass this on to 7.328 friends or your cat will die".

Dear Yuletide Creator 2025

Oct. 24th, 2025 04:41 pm
reynardo: (Default)
[personal profile] reynardo
Dear Amazing Yuletide Creator )

Boostle Update

Oct. 23rd, 2025 10:37 pm
muccamukk: Matheson side eyes hard. Text: Srsly? (B5: Srsly?)
[personal profile] muccamukk
Someone stuck both my boostle fic on goodreads. Which... sighs. Maybe that's where all the traffic is coming from?

I should figure out how to get them taken down, but don't have the energy to care.

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