Longwing

A collection of calcium sticks piloted by a ghost.

Pronouns: He/They

Last Notes

2025-12-23 15:02:22 UTC

I just removed an old power strip from circulation. How old?
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/115/769/473/047/807/771/original/aa1c61fb6f4c7131.jpeg

2025-11-02 16:36:56 UTC

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None of this forgives or excuses the use of AI. That's no different from buying your papers online, bribing a professor, or paying a diploma mill. Those are all shortcuts meant to bypass the system...
But degrees? They don't measure your intellect or the body of your knowledge. They measure whether you have the patience and dedication to navigate a complex bureaucracy for years on end.
In other words: How well you'll perform in most office environments.

2025-11-02 16:34:24 UTC

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A rational person who requires a degree to get a job will pursue that goal as efficiently as possible. They will measure that degree in price-per-credit and close in on the goal with ruthless efficiency.
People will tut tut about how you need to _learn_ things... but that's frankly elitist. You're talking about someone's rent and food money. They have higher priorities than academic excellence.

2025-11-02 16:31:28 UTC

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While I hold no sympathy for AI cheaters, I find it strange how disconnected academia has become from the real world. Academia earnestly believes that literature, philosophy, or art degrees have merit beyond their walls.
Meanwhile anyone who's ever gone to a job interview understands that degrees exist as a checkbox on a form, and few of them are actually worth the paper they're printed on.

2025-10-11 17:49:43 UTC

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Eh, I won't say those aren't problems, but we have ample evidence that the marketplace of ideas is a failed experiment.
Some of us don't want a grand final boss battle about whatever political talking point we're supposed to be defending this week.
Some of us want pictures of bees.

2025-10-11 17:42:08 UTC

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I feel like Existentialism, Absurdism, and Nihilism are basically three ways of looking at the same problem. "Wait, there's no grand plan? Oh no!/Ha ha!/F You!"

2025-10-10 22:31:45 UTC

Mastodon feels like the future the 1980s promised us. "Oh look, a post from my friend at hacker.space, and what a funny comment from some guy on gaysex.cloud, perhaps I should follow them, they seem witty."
It feels like you could turn a corner and wind up in a tearoom filled with furries discussing existentialism. Across the street are anarchists arguing loudly with socialists about how best to stick it to the capitalists.
Just down the way is a photographer who only takes pictures of bees.

2025-01-14 03:01:39 UTC

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I appreciate the sentiment, and the perspective on shared pain is resonant.
I'm raging against my own cynicism. I've encountered other authors who's work has touched me as deeply (Martha Wells, Becky Chambers, Brennan Lee Mulligan, to name a few). But even as enjoy their work, I wait for the news article, the explosive tweet, the candid video...
Abusers traffic in everyone else's trust. They borrow it from you and gamble it away on their crimes.

2025-01-14 01:30:15 UTC

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I think this question is what warps the perspective of rape apologists. When we rush to the defense of abusers (whether personal or famous) we're saying "I couldn't see this, so either I'm blind or it's untrue."
No. I believe it.
And with that belief my world is a colder and more monstrous place.
Gaiman stole a little bit of wonder out of my heart. He did far worse to his victims, but his crimes infest his body of work, and leave a stain on all of us he touched.

2025-01-14 01:26:26 UTC

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When you grow up weird, skilled writers are the first friends you find.
"Here's someone who understands the world as I understand it."
Are they just excellent liars? Disguising the horror in their hearts? I've read their work. I know that's not true. So do I just not see it?
Or do I see it, and it speaks to me?

2025-01-14 01:23:21 UTC

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Is there something fundamentally evil about artists? Is seeking the limelight somehow a symptom of a broken psyche?
Will every artist I love wind up betraying me in this way?
And what does it say about me, that the ones with whom I resonate so deeply wind up being monsters?
Do I gravitate to people like Gaiman or Wheadon because they're good writers, or is there something horrid in who I am that sees a kindred sort on the other side of the keyboard.

2025-01-14 01:19:57 UTC

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And thus I am enraged, not in the mild abstract way in which we discuss the news of the day.
"Oh isn't it awful!" we titter over tea.
"Someone should do something." we cluck while ultimately doing nothing.
No. This is a knife in my soul.
I am angry at the betrayal, and at the gaping wound of cynicism and paranoia it leaves in it's wake.

2025-01-14 01:16:26 UTC

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He shaped me. He _touched_ me. I aspired (perhaps more accurately STILL aspire) to be half the writer he is (for his crimes do not diminish the incredible skill with which he reached out of the page and altered me).
I have wept over his words.
And now those words, those stories, are poison. All of them discolored by the light shown on his crimes.

2025-01-14 00:55:51 UTC

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Rather I feel anger at the deeply personal and completely unearned feeling of betrayal.
Again, I do not know this man, but finding out he's a monster hurts as though he were my own kin.
Gaiman (or more accurately his stories) have lived rent-free in my mind for nearly half my life. It's accurate to say that his words changed me.
Through the expert application of the writer's craft, he altered how I see the world.

2025-01-14 00:51:58 UTC

I'm mad at Neil Gaiman.
First for the most obvious of reasons, but the recent article about him apparently goes into ghoulishly explicit detail on that topic, so I see no reason to rehash it.
Further, I can claim no special connection to either Gaiman nor his victims, so picking apart the crimes feels to me like photographing a trainwreck.
So no, I will not be discussing his crimes. Instead I'm going to be selfish and discuss my personal fallout.

2024-09-23 20:25:18 UTC

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great. So I'm even dumber now than I was before. That's just about all I needed.
Where's all that bliss I was promised would come hand in hand with ignorance?

2024-09-08 14:41:07 UTC

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Max Headroom was a practical effect (TONS of latex makeup). The shields in the 1980s DUNE were hand-animated.