Honestly I find that so valid. I haven’t managed to de-enmesh myself from amazon even though I 100% believe it would be the morally correct choice.

Yeah like… this isn’t so much about the IP implications of this use case of the tool – I do not think anyone on God’s green earth really cares where we get the pictures we use to supplement our games of let’s pretend as long as we make no money. It is the fact that the tool itself was trained in a violative way that makes it gross. Taking pictures of actors and going “now kiss” is something you can do without impact, but using a tool to do it that can only do it because it was fed a bunch of stolen work is qualitatively different.

BUT I don’t think anyone HAS to care about it. I get that there is a limited supply of fucks to give and God knows i seem to have a lessening supply daily.

@MisterBoring It’s not the fact that it is for profit that makes it theft, no. What makes it theft is the stealing people’s work and feeding it to the training data of the generative AI.

Pretending that commercial generative AI models aren’t walking databases of art theft is just disingenuous at this point. Like I think most of us have at least poked at them at this point, myself included, and I am not going to hate on people for yielding to the temptation to use the convenient and available thing, but let’s not engage in reality distortion about what this is.

@junipersky I hate to say it, but even though permanency is super important to kids, the likelihood is that the court will terminate and then the parent will immediately appeal. I dunno about yours but our department typically won’t finalize adoption while appeal is still pending because it is SUCH a mess if lightning strikes and a term is reversed. If they aren’t warning you about this, beware optimism.

I’m sorry you’re going through this – reminds me of a time we had to stop mid term and do a mistrial because a parent testified that they were high on the stand. Had to start over 5 weeks later in front of a different judge. Term trials are very hard to schedule especially in jurisdictions without a lot of court availability. Winceing at that failure to subpoena because I have been in that boat-- sometimes IDK who my witnesses are until my dependency parent shows up with them at the term trial and demands we let them testify. Our AAG used to let them because she knew a witness like that was unlikely to hurt her case against the parent and the failure to offer evidence could give them grounds for that appeal.

I hope I am wrong and your final orders are actually final but it sounds like there’s some obstinacy, so. Fingers crossed for you.

<3<3<3 @Snackness and I am glad you have a support system but I am definitely thinking of you.

@Tez I do think managing player load via storyteller numbers is an interesting idea from a sustainability perspective, particularly if your STs can be self-aware of their own boundaries and not pathologically incapable of saying no.

@Pavel Yes, this. I like to feel grounded in my stories, even if the settings are fantastical or bizarre.

I wish I knew how to incentivize prps because when I want to run I find it so fun and when I don’t want to run I feel terrible trying. I think the biggest hurdles for me are feeling comfortable enough in the playground to mess around – if I know the theme or system will be way more inclined to tell stories than if I actively know I am guessing or full of shit. But the validation I want for running story is people having fun with it or maybe seeing my story having impact on other people’s – I don’t know if there is a way to incentivize that.

@Trashcan one day i will rp with you again

@dvoraen the part where you had to acknowledge how many years you have been in this hobby

Today my mu peeve is that I haven’t been on a mu since christmas, nothing appeals to me so I am not joining anywhere, and I think I’m just turning into Bones McCoy and everything is newfangled and gonna scramble my atoms.

I love rosters but I prefer to write my own characters.

And everyone else’s characters, apparently. Because I have a problem.

The only good thing about auto-aging not being a thing on Arx was staffers singing happy birthday when I remembered to age my character up.

my mu peeve is that i want to rp but i am sick and whiny and my brain is full of porridge

I am going to play it eventually, but I am not in the mood right now for a big rpg.

I am gonna leave a review too but honestly you are underpricing your work. These little guys are adorable and I woulda paid more.

PRATFALLS

okay guys I did a reading with these but I can’t remember who some of them are. WHO ARE STRENGTH AND THE PAGE OF PENTACLES PLS.

All of that is so hard. My heart hurts around animal rescue. I had to represent a defendant who stole thousands of dollars from a local rescue once. I ended up donating a thousand dollars after the case was over and it wasn’t a conflict anymore because I knew they were never going to see that restitution – not because the now clean former defendant wouldn’t try to pay but because a vet tech who went off the deep end like that will probably never work again.

I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to wander into a local shelter and adopt the first face I looked at and her big dumb brother and I feel deep empathy for you guys who JUST. WANT. KITTY. I see these adoption events locally all the time where the shelters around here are desperate for adopting families and I hear about east coast people who can’t get a cat and I am like AAAAAH. I WISH we could mash together. Fkn geography.