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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
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completely blind computer geek, lover of science fiction and fantasy (especially LitRPG). I work in accessibility, but my opinions are my own, not that of my employer. Fandoms: Harry Potter, Discworld, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Buffy, Dead Like Me, Glee, and I'll read fanfic of pretty much anything that crosses over with one of those.
keyoxide: aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
Location Ottawa
Birthday 1987-12-20
Pronouns he/him (EN)
matrix @fastfinge:interfree.ca
keyoxide aspe:keyoxide.org:PFAQDLXSBNO7MZRNPUMWWKQ7TQ
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
Here's another service, free for now, called . playground.zyphra.com/audio
Or free for self-hosting on github: github.com/Zyphra/Zonos
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
This gave me a chuckle: throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2025/02/d100-ways-to-get-dragged-into-isekai.html
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
transphobia @jscholes @TheQuinbox @simon The various rationality cults, breeding hypocritical ideas like effective altruism and worse, are the biggest threat both to Christianity and the human race today. But most Christians are too busy fighting the gays and trans people to see what's coming as more and more of these people come to power. And, of course, banning stuff like Harry Potter because reasons, when it's way closer to the worldview of the people banning it than anything written in the past 50 years. Oh, good grief. I'm ranting. I could honestly do this for hours and hours. I'll stop, now. Thanks for listening to my TED talk. I sure am fun at parties! But the way people fail to understand Harry Potter always gets me going. And that always leads to me ranting about Methods of Rationality.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
transphobia @jscholes @TheQuinbox @simon Well, actually, I'll walk that back a tiny bit. You can remove or twist everything Christian in Harry Potter. If you Do, you get Methods of Rationality, an equally problematic work that claims that the western/European worldview that came down to us from the enlightenment is the only correct worldview, that emotions are bad, that nothing exists if it can't be measured, that people with low IQ are worthless and should die, along with a host of other unsavory implications. Though as someone who does believe in a soul, life after death, and objective morality, I will freely admit that as hateful as some of the things in Harry Potter might be, I'm still biased in favour of it over Methods of Rationality, and I find MIRI, LessWrong, and Eliezer Yudkowsky's other cults nearly physically sickening.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
transphobia @jscholes @TheQuinbox @simon Now onto the aspects of safety. JKR spends the majority of her time posting on social media, and fundraising, for anti-transe causes. While she continues to do this, and remains in the forefront of the media and cultural zeitgeist, unexpected mentions of people enjoying works based on JKR's original books could absolutely be psychologically damaging. Especially if you grew up loving Harry Potter, as I and so many millions did, only to discover you're trans as an adult, and were betrayed by the author of a work you hold dear. If you love Harry Potter as much as I still do (and wish I didn't), those feelings of betrayal and grief aren't going to fade quickly. Especially because as someone who isn't trans, I still get to enjoy those things without that personal baggage. So I'm sure there's also some bitterness and Jealousy to go along with everything else. And yet, I, and many others, aren't going to just give up Harry Potter, a friend we've had from childhood. But the verry least we can do is CW discussion of the works.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
transphobia @jscholes @TheQuinbox @simon Okay, let's start with the ways that a particular worldview is reflected in Harry Potter. , as a practicing Christian, I'm well grounded in fundamentalist beliefs. While Harry Potter was condemned by unthinking religious reactionaries, it is utterly, utterly soaking in both the good and true parts of the Christian faith, as well as the worst of our hatred and misguided heresy. From the Goblins that are obvious antisemitic Jew stand-ins (they have long noses and fingers, control all the money, have to be kept down to prevent rebellion, etc.) to the way the entire story depends on the existence of the soul (and a morality beyond death), to the pro-slavery allegory of house-elves ("Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart." -- Ephesians 6:5), to the way the only gay characters are either celibate or evil (Dumbledore, the celibate good gay and priest stand-in has to defeat Gellert Grindelwald, the evil gay), to the way the entire story is rooted in medieval alchemy and the concept of the alchemists journey of purification through Christe's refining fire. Without both the good and terrible of Christianity, you don't get Harry Potter. And it's not possible to remove that baggage from it. If that's something that interests you, I strongly recommend the book How Harry Cast His Spell by John Granger.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
transphobia @TheQuinbox @simon Yup, as I said a bit down the thread, I don't CW fics by trans authors with trans characters. And I won't CW at all once JKR is dead and gone. But right now, she's a clear and present danger, and actively harmful.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
I really enjoyed the first 22 or so chapters of this one. I finished the rest. It got a bit too dark for my taste, though, and the things it was trying to say, combined with the way it was saying them, just didn't quite land for me.

Nemesis Quest [Isekai + LitRPG Satire]by Charmpagne: "Nemesis Engine engaged.  Nemesis found... Transporting... 
And now that I had EVERYTHING going in the right direction, I'm sucked into another world as a scullery maid because some ex-boyfriend from high school still hates me?  Seriously?  I was pre-med!  I had a family!  And a cat!
What do you mean I can have my cat?  Well, that's a start...but once I get the hang of this, someone is going to pay because if I'm what you wished for, your genie doesn't like you.  Did I mention I can cook?
Finished and Complete" www.royalroad.com/fiction/68328/nemesis-quest-isekai-litrpg-satire
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
The amazing feeling of discovering that The Archive Of Our Own has a character tag for "Fediverse Network/Mastadon Platform (Anthropomorphic)", followed by the disappointment of finding only a single using that tag. I wanted to read a bunch of erotic about all that forking! Maybe a slashfic! Or some and lemons. A and hurt/comfort fanfic anyone? C'mon, people. The fact a tag exists means we should use it. archiveofourown.org/tags/Fediverse Network*s*Mastadon Platform (Anthropomorphic)/works
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
transphobia @Fragglemuppet @simon Though Simon has a good point that I should be more specific. In future I'll probably use something like "Transphobia due to views expressed by the author of the original work" or something. Because he's correct that just slapping "transphobia" on the post is tarring the fanfic author with a brush they may not deserve.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
transphobia @Fragglemuppet @simon Because not being a trans person, I am still able to read and enjoy Harry Potter and its related fanfics and works. However, I don't give the author any money, and I put a content warning on any Harry Potter related post I make, because I recognize that this aspect of my personality is harmful and unsafe for others. So the best way for me to be a person who's safe to be around is to put a warning on Harry Potter related posts.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
transphobia @Fragglemuppet @simon Even then, though, the basic premise of the work is infected with the opinions of the person who authored it. Yes, it's possible to be transformational and remove those views, or for them not to come into it. However, JKR is a clear and present danger. I'll stop putting content warnings when:
1. She's dead, and can thus do no more harm.
2. If I'm linking a fic written by a trans author with trans characters.

Death of the author as a literary theory kind of requires that the author, you know, die. Especially in the case of JKR, where she still exerts control over the Harry Potter world, still makes money off of it, and spends that money in ways that support her views. When she's gone, none of those things will apply, and I would agree that at that point, a content warning is no longer a requirement.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
transphobia @simon Yes. anything related to Harry Potter is deeply transphobic. The worldview of the author is the worldview of the work.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
Honestly is making me wish I was actually musical, and knew how to work with stems and remix things. All the examples I've posted here are just silly fun, but unlike with Suno or Udio, I can regularly describe things to Riffusion in ways that get it to generate music that I actually enjoy. If I could, like, trim the start and end, and remove part of one chorus, and move the verses around a bit, some of these would be perfect. It somehow feels worse to get a song that's almost exactly what you imagined it would be, but just not quite, than to think of a fun idea for a song, but know you can't play or sing or edit, so it's just never going to happen anyway. And 37 is way too late to learn the keyboard or reaper or something from scratch. So I just have to live with this unsatisfaction.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
So glad I checked before filing an issue. was absolutely crawling whenever I tried to load a thread with more than about 50 replies. Turns out the database upgrade overwrote my postgresql.conf somehow, and the values were terrible. Checkpoints were taking five minutes. Aww. Poor wiffle database! Daddy made it all better, now.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
AI generated audio @Onj @jscholes I didn't, until I went looking for Freaky Fwoof. And found that, and a thing you recorded about how you're really really bored, and pop rocks.ogg, and many other glorious things. No, I'm not a data hoarder! Shut up! LOL If they didn't want me to keep everything, they wouldn't sell me 20 tb drives on Amazon.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
AI generated audio @jscholes @Onj Also, the world needs AI covers of "My Daddy is Square Pusher".
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
AI generated audio @Onj @jscholes I mean, you did that song about trailor parks...
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
AI generated audio @Onj @jscholes Does suno try to transcribe the lyrics for you and do it really, really badly? These...are not the lyrics to Believer by Imagine Dragons...
[Verse 1]
First thing first, I'm the singer of the world
It's down to my think I'm one percent on my services
I was broken for my age, thinking my friends would make me so out
I think my parents would build them to be my turn to show me high, high

[Chorus]
hey hey hey i oh oh hey hey is
You're the face of the future, of the blood of the rain.
Woo -hoo! The blood of the rain.
Woo -hoo!

[Verse 2]
hey maybe now you maybe not believe me
Hey, I like the butterfly, don't let me wait.
My life is to the mind, just for today.
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
11mo
AI generated audio @Onj @jscholes Oh, interesting. In riffusion you upload, then you just get a textbox to type your prompt. You can change the lyrics and pick instrumental if you want. But you don't have to select a particular style or anything. Just type whatever. You can also extend audio, but I think there's maybe a bar I have to drag or something? I haven't figured that part out yet. It would explain why Suno makes so much more sense if the input is more restricted.