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Jillian Sauers

@jilliansauers.bsky.social

1.2K followers 1.7K following 2.9K posts

Formerly MerakiRetreat and same name on twt. Combining lit nerd and fandom accts here. https://ko-fi.com/jilliansauers6075

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Jillian Sauers @jilliansauers.bsky.social · Jul 7

QS-ing this so I can pin it for the foreseeable future

Yeet Kune Do @yeetkunedo.bsky.social · Jul 6

re: generative AI

I have finally fully and accurately explained my problem with how it’s marketed and used.

And now, you can use it, too.

Generative Al is being marketed as a tool designed to reduce or eliminate the need for developed, cognitive skillsets. It uses the work of others to simulate human output, except that it lacks grasp of nuance, contains grievous errors, and ultimately serves the goal of human beings being neurologically weaker due to the promise of the machine being better equipped than the humans using it would ever exert the effort to be.

The people that use generative Al for art have no interest in being an artist; they simply want product to consume and forget about when the next piece of product goes by their eyes. The people that use generative Al to make music have no interest in being a musician; they simply want a machine to make them something to listen to until they get bored and want the machine to make some other disposable slop for them to pass the time with.

The people that use generative Al to write things for them have no interest in writing. The people that use generative Al to find factoids have no interest in actual facts. The people that use generative Al to socialize have no interest in actual socialization.

In every case, they've handed over the cognitive load of developing a necessary, creative human skillset to a machine that promises to ease the sweat equity cost of struggle. Using generative Al is like asking a machine to lift weights on your behalf and then calling yourself a bodybuilder when it's done with the reps. You build nothing in terms of muscle, you are not stronger, you are not faster, you are not in better shape.

You're just deluding yourself while experiencing a slow decline due to self-inflicted atrophy.

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Jess O'Thomson @jessothomson.co.uk · 2h

It cannot be made clearer.

If you continue to support the Harry Potter franchise in any way, you are directly funding the removal of trans people's human rights in the UK.

JK Rowling pledges to keep up fight against SNP trans policies

Author vows to bankroll campaigners after Scottish government fails to pay group's legal fees in Supreme Court equality case

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Dr Noor Bari @njbbari3.bsky.social · 6h

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40813533/ 🧐

SARS-CoV-2 infection heightens the risk of developing HPV-related carcinoma in situ and cancer - PubMed

SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with elevated risks of HPV-related carcinoma in situ and cancer, irrespective of age or race. The findings underscore the importance of understanding the interplay b...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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Frances "Are You Scared Yet" Meh @francesmeh.reviews · 11h

rereading a novel from the 50s set in the 30s and i know this passage did not hit as hard when i first read it in the 90s as it does now

Photo of a passage from "The Watch That Ends the Night"

Jerome stopped and stared at me with incandescent eyes.

"Try and understand this-the fascists have brought back tor-ture, and torture calls for martyrs. And what else is fascism but the logical product of the capitalist system?"

"What do you mean—torture calls for martyrs?"

"Simply this. Unless a man is able to stand up and look the torturer in the eye and say, 'I'm not afraid,' torture becomes the way of the world. It's as simple as that."

"Is it really as simple as that?"

"No." He shook his head impatiently. "No, because underneath it all is the plain economic exploitation of a rotten world.
The communists are the only people who understand that. How can you pretend they're not one hundred percent right when they say that at a time like this the life of a single individual isn't worth a snap of the fingers? Wasn't Debs right when he said that so long as there was a soul in prison he wasn't free?

What does a single marriage count in a balance like that? It isn't easy being me. I know what all this means. [Highlighted sentence:] This evil inside the human animal-the fascists are charming it out like a cobra out of its hole and the capitalists let them do it because they think it's good for business. You think I'm abandoning Sally by leaving for Spain. I tell you, if I don't leave for Spain then I really do abandon her to a future of fascism and concentration camps."

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Lucia ✨🏴‍☠️🎨🏳️‍🌈✨ @citrussyndicate.bsky.social · 14h

On the plus side, look at these prints! I’ve never actually hung up any of my fan art but four of those five prints are going up on my own walls 🥲

A print of a digital drawing of Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach laying on a carpet, gazing into one another’s eyes.

A print of a digital drawing of Stede Bonnet, standing in a red early-70s style suit.

Three prints of digital drawings of Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach in various poses, wearing western wear.

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Solomon @solomonmissouri.bsky.social · 12h

If you gone date a poet be prepared for their poetry

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Solomon @solomonmissouri.bsky.social · 12h

But that’s just the perils of dating artistic women… they might immortalize you

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Jillian Sauers @jilliansauers.bsky.social · 12h

- AIM away messages
- Printing out mapquest directions
- Sending money orders to eBay sellers
- Email survey forwards to share your favorite things with hundreds of >>>>>> from being forwarded so many times
- Midi files
- Hamster dance and frog blender going viral
- Alt . tv forums to discuss shows

Jillian Sauers @jilliansauers.bsky.social · 15h

Zelienople

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Ghostly Bree @mostlybree.kitrocha.com · 16h

this feels like the corollary to we need Mamdani in NYC and an oyster fisherman in Maine and a midwestern dad in Minnesota.

we're supposed to be the party that embraces the fact that we're a diverse and chaotic nation, stop test-polling yourself to generic national oatmeal!!!

Constant Scream @ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 16h

It's interesting seeing the different ways resistance has formed in different cities. Los Angeles Organized, Chicago Radicalized, and Portland Got Weird as Fuck. All 3 have had success unifying their respective cities.

I guess my point is there are multiple paths to ungovernability.

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Jillian Sauers @jilliansauers.bsky.social · 19h

I love this! It's like garages where mechanics keep a giant glass jar of all the random stuff they pull out of flat tires.

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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 19h

The suspect accused of igniting the fire that destroyed LA's Pacific Palisades neighborhood allegedly used a ChatGPT prompt to show "a burning forest and a crowd fleeing from it," months prior, officials say

Man arrested, faces federal charge in connection with Palisades Fire: DOJ

The fire caused widespread destruction in Los Angeles County and killed a dozen people earlier this year.

abcnews.go.com

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Jillian Sauers @jilliansauers.bsky.social · 19h

I'm very sorry you are going through such a hard time 🫂 I hope things get better 💜

Jillian Sauers @jilliansauers.bsky.social · 20h

Have you read Kalahari Down by @oatmilktruther.bsky.social? It has similar vibes.

archiveofourown.org/works/512186...

Kalahari Down - Chapter 1 - oatmilktruther - Our Flag Means Death (TV) [Archive of Our Own]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

archiveofourown.org

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mgm1229.bsky.social @mgm1229.bsky.social · 21h

Happy birthday @david-jenkins.bsky.social ! May this year bring you great joy and may all your wishes come true. Thanks for wrangling these particular cats into gorgeous art that changed lives. I love how proud you look.

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Jillian Sauers @jilliansauers.bsky.social · 21h

It was @gheyandwoke.bsky.social!

bsky.app/profile/ghey...

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Lucy 🧜‍♂️🏴‍☠️ @butterscup95.bsky.social · 1d

Happy Birthday @david-jenkins.bsky.social, you’ve got the moves for life, babe. 💖

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Bright Wall/Dark Room @bwdr.bsky.social · 1d

"MIRACLE MILE is about many things — romance and Los Angeles and the looming threat of nuclear devastation at the close of the Cold War — but also, obsessively, it’s about marking the passage of time."

The End of the World Will Come at Dawn | Miracle Mile (1989) | BW/DR

Miracle Mile is about many things — romance and LA and the looming threat of nuclear devastation — but also, obsessively, it’s about the passage of time.

www.brightwalldarkroom.com

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Matt Ramsey @onenerdsopinion.bsky.social · 1d

Dandy has perfected her Cinnamon Roll form.

An orange kitten lies in perfect cinnamon roll position on a bed. Her tail is curled around with the tip resting just between her ears.

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Inkling @printinkling.bsky.social · 1d

So we really don't like to build our name off of someone else's dipshittery

but five months after this post
(which was not the first SM fuckery)

almost EVERY new sticker client mentions wanting to get away from Sticker Mule

So thanks, I guess, weird Sticker Mule guy.

Inkling @printinkling.bsky.social · Apr 15

We quality checked THREE THOUSAND stickers by hand this morning

I've had actually conversations with every single person who has ever ordered stickers from us.

We care about the quality of clients receive, not how cheap we can make them.

But go off about your robots, Donkey Show 💀

Sticker Mule CEO fires workers, touts robots: ‘Automate, automate, automate’

CEO Anthony Constantino says the company has installed 250 robots at production sites in past two years

www.timesunion.com

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Jillian Sauers @jilliansauers.bsky.social · 1d

I always called it his Michael Stipe look, but you're exactly right 🤯

youtu.be/8Ms3mJFkSeg

Debbie Gibson - Lost In Your Eyes (Official Music Video)

YouTube video by RHINO

youtu.be

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See Through Canoe @seethroughcanoe.bsky.social · 1d

Dolphins doing high jumps this morning in the intracoastal waterway near Clearwater, Florida. I've probably captured close to 1,000 jumps on camera over the years but I think these might be the highest I've filmed.
#nature #amazing #animals #awesome #dolphins #wildilfe #thanksforallthefish

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Joseph Fasano @josephfasano.bsky.social · 1d

I hope this reaches you.

To a Life in Despair

Don't. Don't go to the bridge.
Don't wake in your coat in the morning light
and carry those stones into the river.
Don't find your father's pistol
in the attic, hidden in the family albums.
Don't. Don't pour the pills
into the whiskey, the walls dissolving
like your childhood. Don't, just don't choose
not to wake.

Stay. Just stay.
Tell yourself you'll do it tomorrow.
You can always walk alone into the darkness.
But not yet. Not yet. Not this soon.
I don't have a reason
to give you. All I have
is the morning, and the autumn wind,
and the child you once were
in the darkness, looking at the new moon
through the ruins, saying
save me, save me, save me,
and the moon looking back
with her vacant
face
saying I promise, I stone-
cold promise
that the face of utter
hopelessness
is the face of something just about to change.

—Joseph Fasano

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Jillian Sauers @jilliansauers.bsky.social · 1d

I'm happy it arrived safely! I hope you can find one in the wild someday too. Happy Early Birthday! 🎂

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 1d

Whether Bsky as an org likes it or not, it is emerging in a time of profound political instability across the world and a time when people are fearful for the literal future of all life on earth. We have seen that social networks can create and sustain genocide. We take this seriously because it is.

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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 1d

People have an actual limit with the number of times in one week that the company's comms strategy can come off like "actually we are untrustworthy fucks who have no problem being racist to Black people and transphobic to trans people and wildly dishonest with artists who trust us with images"

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