Notices by Lili Saintcrow (lilithsaintcrow@raggedfeathers.com), page 7

Haha Google “Analytics” trying to weasel its way onto my website with “special offers”.

Not falling for that bullshit, nope.

"This suggests these articles are automatically syndicated, and local journalists at affiliates are not able to exercise editorial discretion. When these articles are syndicated, they appear alongside identically formatted articles on local government, weather, and sports." https://popular.info/p/sinclair-floods-local-news-websites

“Instead of providing its workers with legally required worker’s compensation insurance, WorkWhile charges its workers a “Trust & Safety Fee” that amounts to 54 cents per hour for route delivery shifts and 47 cents for other shifts…” https://missionlocal.org/2024/06/sf-city-attorney-files-suit-against-gig-work-company-workwhile/

And yet the media is screaming about some mythical shoplifting epidemic instead.

Thanks to release day nerves, publishing fuckery, and email newsletter platform shenanigans, I am so far behind I will never catch up.

Might as well just reshuffle the schedule and resentfully admit I live here now.

*shuffles off for more tea*

Me: "I just had a blinding revelation about today's events."

My daughter: "...this should be good."

Me: "No no, it doesn't end in fire. At least, not totally?"

My daughter: "Hang on, let me get a snack."

Me: "You see, today was a lesson sent from the gods."

My daughter: "About why you're not trusted with pyrokinesis?"

Me: "No, I know THAT part. The lesson was, be grateful."

My daughter: "...I'm waiting for you to say you're gonna punch the god that says that."

Me: "No, honestly, I am. Because today was a reminder that I am unfit for an office job. Having to deal with this sort of thing all the time--can you imagine?"

My daughter: *in tones of surpassing horror* "Oh, I don't want to."

Me: "Precisely. My powers of restraint are legendary, yet finite."

Me: "...so it's really best for the world if I'm locked up in my little cave with my imaginary people, scribbling their violent little kissing stories! It's for the greater good!"

My daughter: "I'm trying to imagine you in charge of an office supply cabinet."

Me: "I CANNOT BE TRUSTED WITH POWER."

And for the evening crowd...

RELEASE DAY: The Fall of Waterstone https://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/2024/06/release-day-the-fall-of-waterstone/

In which a new book is in the wild, Readers are always smarter than me, and I'd better go find that bucket.

I hate to sound cranky, but "disabled by default" isn't enough. Recall will still be there, waiting to be turned on, waiting for Microsoft to re-enable it again--or something worse--the moment people look away. https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-recall-off-default-security-concerns/

"Meta is now scraping Facebook posts to train its AI model. While this isn’t surprising on its own, what is surprising is just how difficult Meta is making it for users to opt out of this process." https://www.androidauthority.com/facebook-ai-opt-out-3446434/

I will absolutely take the worst, gaudiest, most horrid amateurish Poser book cover created by an actual human over an "AI"-generated one any day.

And believe me, my friends, I have had some utter HOWLERS slapped on my poor books. Still exponentially better than plagiarism soup.

Got a notification from Airtable that they're going all-in on that "AI" nonsense. The only thing I really used it for was the yearly reading log, but that's been exported now and I'll use a local spreadsheet.

So much goodwill is being lost by companies leaping on the plagiarism engine bandwagon.

As I said elsewhere: They *say* individual user data won't be used to feed the Microsoft "AI" they're using.

Of course, these companies also *say* they'll respect robots.txt and not scrape all our feeds and websites to feed their plagiarism machines, and my firewall user agent blocking data politely disagrees.

Morning Walk Report: Boxnoggin losing his damn mind at a husky across the street (who returned the favour, alas), waves of rain as the atmospheric river grows fitful, branches heavy with moisture, crows cavorting aerobatic for peanuts.

Slowed down for the morning run, focusing on form and endurance over speed, and that was the right choice. More waves of rain, roses everywhere, children eager for school to be done trudging through the park.

"But this new generation of children, there’s no home to go to at the end of the day where they can disconnect, because the camera is inside the house. It’s like living in a movie set all day, every day.” https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/29/us/social-media-children-influencers-cec/index.html

Have been going at warp speed ever since 5am and good Lord, where are the almond M&Ms? I HAVE A MIGHTY NEED.