As someone with adhd it’s completely normal for me. When you’re a kid you have good reason to keep track of your age because at that time of your life you change dramatically between ages as you develop as a person, plus it’s important when asserting your identity to other as that too develops. When we’re older it’s just a number that only comes up once a year and is not that much different from the previous number, and so it’s easier to lose track of especially for people who have an affected working memory and time blindness like me. Idk if you have adhd or how often people without adhd experience this sort of thing but I can speak for my own experience. I forget how old I am, and other people’s names, all the damn time lol.

Fucking idiots, trying to act like the chatbot wasn’t their responsibility.

Someone having a schizophrenic episode can become much more susceptible to radicalization which can contribute to them adopting bigoted views. So while that doesn’t mean anyone is obligated to tolerate them when they express extreme or bigoted views, I do think it’s much more nuanced than just saying “it’s no excuse”. Disabilities/disorders are called that for a reason, which isn’t because they’re easy to manage and only have pleasant symptoms. Cognitive/mental disabilities influence the way we think and act as well as our level of control over those things. People with schizophrenia are more vulnerable to being taken advantage of by cultish movements and ways of viewing the world because of something they usually don’t really have any control over. That’s why it’s important to help them seek treatment and why they need to maintain that treatment consistently such as making sure to stay on their meds and listen to their doctors and therapists. But unfortunately not everyone has access to treatment.

I agree with the other commenter that sometimes depending on the situation something CAN be an excuse. Having schizophrenia can absolutely be an excuse if the person literally doesn’t have control over the way their brain can leave them vulnerable to certain influences or ways of thinking. That’s why in some cases it’s an acceptable defence in court (one of the few cases where the insanity plea might be successful, depending on how the schizophrenia influenced their actions and how aware they were of whether what they were doing was wrong or avoidable). I think it’s important to recognize the difference between “it’s not an excuse” and “I don’t have to put up with it”. Nobody has to tolerate or put up with inappropriate behaviour from someone else even if that person isn’t in control of themselves, and even if they do have an excuse that doesn’t mean we can’t avoid them or call them out for what they say or do, or that they shouldn’t experience the consequences of their actions if those actions harm others (winning an insanity plea doesn’t mean you’re set free after all). If they can be given access to treatment and regain some level of control over their body and mind then that’s all the better. We can refuse to accept or allow that behaviour while still showing understanding of someone’s situation.

If course, just because someone has schizophrenia that doesn’t mean it’s ALWAYS an excuse, there are a lot of factors, and it’s possible for someone with schizophrenia to do something wrong and know that it’s wrong while doing it, even while having an episode. Of course that can be hard to establish for someone that may be getting harassed or mistreated by someone with schizophrenia, and I wouldn’t try to dictate whether they’re allowed to blame the one who harmed them or not. But I don’t think we can just dismiss it wholesale by saying “lots of people with mental illness aren’t bigoted”, because mental illnesses are very diverse. Sometimes the symptoms of mental illness can be unpleasant or unpalatable. Not everyone with adhd has memory issues, but some do. Not everyone with depression is suicidal, but some are. Not everyone with schizophrenia experiences delusions, but some do. And doesn’t just mean that they hallucinate stuff visually, it can mean that they start to believe things that don’t make any sense and aren’t based on reality. Those beliefs can be nonsensical like “the aliens are using my brain as a radio antenna” or they can be dangerous like “the Jews control the world’s banks and the holocaust didn’t happen”. They typically can’t control these beliefs any more than they can control visual hallucinations. So I think it’s unfair to say that schizophrenia, or any mental illness, is never an excuse under any circumstance.

That said, it’s difficult to diagnose someone over the internet so there’s some caution that should be exercised in declaring that someone has schizophrenia and thus might not be entirely responsible for their behaviour. Sometimes bigots can resemble schizophrenics if they grow extremist enough, but the difference is they generally have more control over the thoughts, decisions, and actions they took to get where they are.

Saying Tumblr is corporate in nature is like saying the lord of the flies Island was democratic. If they so much as changes a rounded corner to be sharp or vice versa the entire site throws a shit fit.

I mean they posted the steps to replicate it so it wouldn’t take long to debunk that sort of thing as being fake.

Unfortunately Death is the crunch king. Dude is shredded.

Eventually even bones decay, unless fossilized, and fossilized bones are just, well, fancy rocks. So it's not like human remains stick around forever.

Can't find the name of the artist but the design is from a poster made for the NYC women's international strike.

https://www.bonfire.com/womens-strike-nyc160-2-1/

For me personally, I purposefully avoid checking for feedback for a given period of time, like a day, a week etc, depending on the work. I also try to make stuff that I want to see myself, rather than trying to make stuff I think other people want to see. If I like it, chances are there are other people that like it. Audiences can often tell when something is made with passion rather than made specifically for mass appeal.

As for the reaching out to popular groups stuff, here’s the thing. I’ve been in groups of popular artists in fandoms before, and we can usually tell when people are reaching out in good faith and when people are reaching out specifically because we’re popular and they want in on that kind of group. You say that you’re reaching out just to get to know them, but clearly it’s more than that, since you’ve said yourself that you feel jealous and competitive, and you’re aiming for these popular people and groups because they’re popular. Whenever I end up in one of those groups it’s usually entirely by chance because some of my art got relatively popular in that fandom, enough to be shared a little bit, which resulted in more visibility, which lead to natural engagement with people who saw my stuff. If people saw my stuff and followed me, and I saw their stuff and followed them, as mutuals we saw more of each other, started commenting on each other’s works, worked on the same group projects, joined the same discord groups, made fanart for each other, etc. It came about naturally, not because we sought out popular groups specifically. I’ve also been in groups of not as popular artists in smaller fandoms, and the process was similar if not the same. The only difference was scope.

And I’ve been in the position where people regularly reached out to me because of my popularity and I can tell that they’ve only done so because I was popular in that fandom and they wanted some attention from someone popular. It’s usually pretty easy to tell, and it just makes me feel awkward. I communicate with groups of artist friends I’ve made because we found we had a lot in common and got to know each other and enjoyed talking to each other. People who come at me without building a rapport first are likely to get either awkward, brief replies, or no reply at all, depending on how they open. And you’d be surprised at how many people try contacting you out of the blue when you’re popular in a decently sized fandom, often trying to get me to look at their art, or read something they wrote, or give critique, or promote their stuff, and so on (I don’t like to share/reblog/retweet/etc something someone sends me unless I would have anyway, so that puts me on the spot as well). So if I had to guess, chances are these people you reached out to aren’t responding for the same reason I sometimes don’t want to respond, because it can be a bit tiring to filter through all those messages and people vying for attention, especially when you get the vibe that they’re only contacting you because you’re popular. I was more willing to engage with people who were sincere and shared my interests and just wanted to have a chill conversation because they saw stuff I posted and had stuff to say about the topic, or characters, or meta, etc. But if I got the vibe that they wanted something from me or that contacting me was something strategic for their own gain, then I was less likely to respond. I don’t mind giving the occasional advice, but I don’t want to be on the receiving end of someone else’s self promotion. I was more likely to check out the works of someone I vibed with who didn’t push me to look at their stuff (sharing specific works that were relevant to an ongoing topic of conversation is fine, that’s more organic, but most people weren’t sharing their stuff for that reason)

It might help to go into this thinking of it as a community effort, with everyone on the same team, rather than seeing it as a leaderboard. Works you put out are there for the sake of enriching the fandom, keeping it alive, providing diverse content, and fleshing out the community.

Try to get into the habit of posting stuff without looking at how many likes or shares or comments you get, at least not right away. Also, try posting more low effort stuff. Do some lazy doodles sometimes. They’re just as important to a fandom ecosystem as high effort works. Not everything you put out has to be something you pour all of your need for validation into. Heck, make some art that you don’t intend to post, or at least wait to post stuff until a while has passed. Other things you can try is purposefully posting at non-strategic times when you’re less likely to get noticed, draw stuff that you want to draw even if you think that other people won’t like it. Etc. You need to desensitize yourself to the concept of failing, or “losing”.

Even if you can’t get rid of that competitive mindset, you can at least try to be less of a sore loser. I’ve been there, so I get it, that need for validation. It’s addictive. What worked for me was forcing myself to become okay with “losing” on purpose. I purposefully avoided seeking out validation for an extended period. When you eliminate it as a factor, you relearn how to operate without it as a driving force. You might stop making stuff for a while at first if it’s a really strong factor for you, but if you have the drive of an artist that got you creating to begin with, then eventually you’ll develop an itch you need to scratch by drawing. And when you do, just post it without thinking about it, the moment it’s finished. Doesn’t matter if it’s an opportune time or not, just do it, don’t think about it.

And then let it go. Don’t check for notifications about it, don’t check for comments, go about your day as if you never posted at all. Post your next work without checking for feedback on the first. Just do that for a little while, before you consider going back to check for feedback on the earlier ones. Get used to creating without knowing or wanting to know what people think about it. Become desensitized to the thought of throwing your work out into the void and knowing you may never get an answer back. And try to make just as much indulgent lazy content as you do high effort content, don’t filter yourself.

In my experience over time it becomes a habit to create stuff without taking an audience into consideration, which helps to balance your desires and expectations. After a while you can go back to looking at feedback, but do so casually. Don’t count how many interactions you get, just glance over to get a general idea of what people think. Don’t think about it in terms of numbers. Look at the individuals. There’s 1000 times more value in one heartfelt comment from someone who was genuinely touched by something you made, than there is in thousands of mindless voiceless button presses from thousands of faceless accounts. And tbh I’ve found that I get a better response as a result. People often respond to sincere passion if you let yourself make stuff that you enjoy just because you enjoy it and not because you crave validation. Some of my most popular works are shitposts or experiments or super indulgent pieces that I made for myself and no one else.

But you have to be willing to put in the time and effort to break free of the unhealthy habits you’ve built up and reframe your way of thinking about fandom communities and how you engage with them. If you want to reach out to someone do it because you have something you want to say to them related to the interests they’ve showcased in their works, not because you just want a relationship with someone popular because they’re popular and you want to be popular too. And reach out to people whether they’re popular or not. Connections aren’t all forged from the top down after all, many of the people in those popular groups became popular because they sought out like-minded people to begin with, and their small group grew over time.

This got longer than I initially intended, but TL;DR: if you want to care less about “winning” all the time, make a habit out of losing on purpose.

Download some Japanese textbooks and go through them in order. They cover important vocab and grammar and conjugation, and have exercises and worksheets if you get all the right versions. I have the Genki textbooks and the situational functional Japanese textbooks myself, I recommend those. You can get them on Zlib I believe. For Kanji practice use Kanji Tree or Wanikani.

If you have a local college or university that offers Japanese classes, those are your best option if you can afford it. They also often provide the occasional opportunity to travel to Japan for relatively cheap.

Speak for yourself

You can’t tell me that isn’t objectively the best way to refer to someone named Gary.

Lord [name], my [name], my dear [name], the one they call [name], oh great and powerful [name].

Jokes aside, one I’ve heard of that I liked was “misc” like miscellaneous lol. That one works a bit better in writing that verbal though.

Some other popular ones include Mx, M, Ind/Div, N/A, Mt, Nb, and many others.

For my own personal suggestion, I kinda like the idea of using “The” as a gender neutral title. Like instead of Mr or Ms Smith, it’s The Smith. Has a nice ring to it lol

Japanese corporate culture is actually a relatively modern development, so a lot of older people in Japan have never experienced it.

This is not normal, you need to talk to a medical professional mate.

Do these people get mad about the nudity in those games in general, or do they get mad about those games almost exclusively reserving that nudity for women? Because there is a difference. I haven’t played those games so I’m genuinely curious.

Windows defender is fine if you use a good adblocker and learn what is or isn’t a safe download.

Because capitalism helps enforce a hierarchy, and conservative L’s love hierarchies. Religion is just another tool used for this since it generally preaches obedience with a consequence for not following the right “rules”. Most religion has nuance to that aspect, but if you erase the nuance it’s an effective tool for enforcing those hierarchies those people love so much.

It seems like analogue themed cyberpunk, but I’m not a punk expert

>Most of the data is scraped, it’s not up to the website.

It is up to whoever runs the ai, and those are the people I’m addressing for the most part, though plenty of websites do have control over what data is fed to the ai they’re using. In grammarly’s case it’s absolutely up to them what data is used and whether there’s an option provided to opt out of having your work used for training the ai, as shown by the fact that they offer it to the business license. They just choose not to offer that option to other users.

>You can’t give a list of citation since it isn’t a search engine, it doesn’t know where the information comes from and it’s highly transformative, it melds information from hundreds if not thousand of different sources.

It’s all code, the people coding it are 100% capable of programming it to keep track of where the information comes from. Even if it’s transformative, that doesn’t prevent it from keeping track of what was transformed. I’m aware that the number of citations would be extensive, I’m fine with that.

>If it worked only with volunteer work, there would simply be not enough data.

According to who? There are plenty of ways to get data from voluntary sources just like we get for any number of studies. It’s just up to the one who runs the ai to put in the legwork to get enough data that way, and there are lots of methods. You don’t have to just sit and wait for people to come to you and sign up, though based on the ai frenzy I bet they could have gotten plenty of data that way from people who are curious and want to contribute to ai training as a novel new concept. Making ai data gathering on websites something people can opt in or out on is just one way of making it more ethical than forcibly taking that data without permission.

>Any law restricting data use in AI is only going to benefit corporations,

I fail to see how requiring permission and offering the option to opt out of having your data used would benefit corporations. That just sounds like an excuse to not even try to regulate them.

>You can let them opt out, but then you need to do the same for whole websites which leads to a corporate hellscape where three companies own our whole economy since they are the only ones who can train ais.

I don’t understand how part A leads to part B here. Why would those corporations have an advantage just because everyone with ais, including them, have to offer the option to opt out? Also, it’s entirely possible to also restrict the scope of an ai or regulate ai monopolies alongside regulating stuff like basic consent. Historically a lack of regulation is what causes corporate hellscapes because without something keeping them in check the larger companies will take advantage of their reach to do whatever they want on a larger scale, pushing out or merging with competitors. It’s not like requiring permission and providing opt-out would give them more of an advantage than they already have.