I really like the idea that one of the weird lurkers of your blog (like me) just hangs around looking for inspiration to write papers about. Like I realize that's not how it probably actually went down, but 2017 to 2022 seems like a pretty reasonable lead time from reading your post to conducting the research to writing and publishing the paper.

In reference to this:

It’s amusing that the original post only got 22 notes (likes), but when I looked at it again it had 19, which I’m choosing to interpret as the authors sheepishly withdrawing their likes in order to preserve their anonymity.

I think they probably just googled the phrase “friends to lovers pathway” before using it as the title of their paper and pulled up my post, or the other alternative being that the post popped onto their timeline when they were in the early stages of manuscript prep, and it was a moment of academic serendipity. I definitely don’t think I inspired the work in any way - just the quote and title. But it’s funny to imagine being studied.

I should say that I don’t necessarily expect permission to be asked if people intend to prosper or advance their careers from my words or art. However, I do appreciate the courtesy of being told that it’s happened. So far I’ve been quoted in a published book, quoted to name an academic paper, a person is actively selling plushies and other merchandise based on a post of mine while claiming that it’s their intellectual property actually, and screenshots of my work are regularly considered hilarious enough to steal but not pay me for. (the cricket post in particular was screencapped, went viral on Twitter some years ago without reference to me, was shared around BBC journalist twitter, and hundreds of people in the media industry said things like ‘lol we should pay this person to write’ …. in the apparent ignorance of the fact that if they had asked I would probably be open to…. Being paid to write……… and all the other times my posts have broken containment to go viral on other platforms for other people, with comments about how I should be commissioned to write a book; obviously that’s a normal part of online journalism and media, and I’m not naive about it, but it’s a bit much to for these people to be enriching their platforms with screencapped content, without the OP’s knowledge let alone consent, and joking about how they should pay for it or would read a whole book about it, when they’re the only people who could actually do something about it in the nightmare media landscape.) And nobody told me about any of these examples, I always find out by trying to retrieve links to my own stuff, or by friends telling me that someone else has gone so viral with my recognisable work that it got around to them.

Anyway if you do use my stuff in your own stuff, do let me know! I’m not here to prosper, but I am here to connect, and I’m quite willing to link your paper (and write a lay summary for free), buy your book or art, make your acquaintance, promote your work, or just add it to my portfolio - because if I ever DID want to prosper from my work here, which I wouldn’t usually consider except that it is evidently peer-reviewed good-enough-for-others-to-prosper-from, all of that would be valuable and helpful for me to know.

January 24 2024 Scam Alert:

There's a new phishing email making the rounds that looks like an authentic message from Google, warning you that unless you take action your Gmail account will be closed and all your messages deleted. All you have to do is click the link to confirm or deny the action.

It is, of course, fake. It collects your password "for verification" then hijacks your account.

Don't click any link in an email no matter how official it looks. Instead, go to your Gmail dashboard directly. If there is indeed any risk Google wants to delete your account, you'll be notified there.

i know everyone said 'replies from sideblogs could go bad' though personally i was excited for them (for topic specific sideblog running purposes) but i do think we should be able to send asks from sideblogs too tbh. it could also get exceptionally ugly very fast but i think that for all the topic-specific blogs like ask blogs, for systems who have headmates with diff sideblogs, and for people who want to make friends in smaller communities focused on niche topics unrelated to their main i feel like it would be worth it

this still has to be my favorite visual gag in the series 😭

doodles i made while sick

Hi all, just replying to loop in *@outlook.com and *@yahoo.com.

*@gmail.com [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[A typical gmail UI] To: *@gmail.com (+expand) Cc: [Empty field] Bcc: [Empty field] Subj: New Friends Hey all! Go ahead and introduce yourself! [Caption:] If Google ever decides to shut down Gmail, they should let one user trigger a global reply-all apocalypse.

MARSHMALLOW — MISAMO

So, y'all who use Gmail...do you realize Google is just. Not showing you e-mails?

We're having increasing trouble with Google receiving e-mails from our server, despite having everything set up correctly - and this isn't about being sent to spam, this is about them full-on just not putting the message through.

If it's happening to us, it's happening to others.

If you use gmail and interact with people who use private domain e-mails, and you're like "why haven't I heard from them?!" you might want to follow-up.

It might also be a good time to start considering moving away from gmail, because yes, as far as I can tell, Google is just. deciding not to deliver e-mails. without notifying people on either end that the e-mail hasn't been received.

Yep, that’s Gmail.

emails instead of usernames was a ploy by Big Email to make you have an email address

Yeah sure you can have a cookie but I'll need your first born

when you get a comment so good and insightful on a fic that you have to get up and physically walk it off, like. that’s the GOOD STUFF right there. 

death grips album covers in the style of keith haring, by gosh-z

i fixed the barbie movie screenplay (read: cannibalized myself for content i.e. cleaned up a post i already made here where i fixed the barbie movie screenplay, this time with an idea i actually like for what to do with the ken of it all and also approximately ten billion footnotes)

The worst thing is to think about how much potential ACoTaR had before it turned into an ego-filling service for SJM...