Sign in

Saphire Dance

@saphiredance.bsky.social
141 followers 70 following 685 posts

Writer, Cosplayer, Fiber Artist, Gen X, Mom, General Weirdo.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Martha, but like, super spooky @mostlymartha.bsky.social · 2h
A million unheard Cassandras say together OH REALLY IMAGINE THAT
416870
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Diane Duane @diane.dianeduane.com · 2h
AI LLMs are (by their perpetrators' admission in currently active lawsuits) trained on illegally acquired material. *How hard is it to say "I will not use, in my work, goods stolen from tens of thousands of my colleagues"?* And to recommend other writers not to do so? ...COME ON. :/
719159
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Barbara Waxer 🌈 @barbara-waxer.bsky.social · 23h
When Grammy-winning musician Rhiannon Giddens begins playing “Old Corn Liquor,” a traditional Black American folk tune, acclaimed Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man recognizes similarities to Chinese pentatonic music and spontaneously joins in. The joy on their faces says it all.
12861472098
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Kate Cox @kcoxdc.bsky.social · 4h
This is a thing I think about a lot, that your data (privacy, texts, DNA, voiceprint, image, all of it) are only as safe as your most credulous, least thoughtful contact makes them. Seems suboptimal!
421076
Reposted by Saphire Dance
DiscordianKitty⭐ @discordiankitty.bsky.social · 14h
Unironically, it's because if you tell ChatGPT you're right and explain why, it agrees with you and reframes your own words to tell you you're right back at you, and this is genuinely leading to a lot of people thinking all they have to do to get agreement is talk to people like they talk to bots
319965
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Evan @evansmithhist.bsky.social · 12h
Today I found out that Umberto Eco crafted a version of this meme in the 1980s…
Beware the
alibi of photocopies ! Photocopies are indis-
pensable instruments. They allow you to keep with you a text you have already read in the library, and to take home a text you have not read yet. But a set of photocopies can become an alibi. A student makes hundreds of pages of photocopies and takes them home, and the manual labor he exercises in doing so gives him the impression that he possesses the work. Owning the photocopies exempts the student from actually reading them. This sort of vertigo of accumulation, a neocapitalism of information, happens to many. Defend yourself from this trap: as soon as you have the photocopy, read it and annotate it immediately. If you are not in a great hurry, do not photocopy something new before you own (that is, before you have read and annotated) the previous set of photocopies. There are many things that I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.
522710787
Reposted by Saphire Dance
It's ME(Jaime) @exceedhergrasp1.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
Everyone needs to be aware of this kind of bot. Many of us believe we have a duty to respond gently to polite argumentation. Especially in advocacy. Nope. If someone sealions, check their timeline to see if this is a pattern. Then report & block, as @rahaeli.bsky.social describes. 🧵(1/6)
10403191
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Kate Halena @katehalena.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Keep writing. You didn’t create all these fictional people and ruin their lives just to abandon them halfway through.
2493200
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Anna Merlan @annamerlan.bsky.social · 9h
Anyway, this was really interesting if you want to get super deep into the nitty-gritty of it! blog.cloudflare.com/yandex-outage/
blog.cloudflare.com
Yandex outage: data shows that instead of going dark, malicious bots went on the move
When strikes hit Yandex data centers, many assumed Russian bot operations went dark. Cloudflare data reveals that while search crawling stopped, malicious bots simply migrated to other networks.
215532
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 5h
"It’s the highest-paying job at the prison, but that’s relative. Laundry workers get paid between $1.10 and $1.65 an hour." So many levels of wtaf here
3253
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Kit Whitfield - fantasy writer @kitwhitfield.bsky.social · 16h
Medieval heraldry terms are really fun to say. Source: www.medievalknightshields.com/shield-divis...
A list of ‘Heraldic Shield Partition Meanings - Ordinaries.’

Wavy (a soft curve)
Engrailed (small cup-shapes)
Invected (engrailed, but upside-down)
Nebuly (little mushroom shapes, mirrored so it’s the same upside down)
Indented (a small zigzag)
Dancetty (a wider zigzag)
Embattled (battlement-style half squares)
Dove-tailed (a line of half-triangles - the bottom half of equilaterals)
Potenty (a line of t-shapes)
Raguly (a line of left-leaning parallelograms)
Urdy (line of half-hexagons)
Rayonne (line of jagged points)
48018
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Laprofmme @laprofmme.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
This essay by Jordan Sand on how LLM chatbots—including the officially licensed “expert” campus version—produced entirely false versions of a primary source should be required reading for every history student #skystorians 🗃️
hnn.us
AI Is an Anti-Primary Source Machine
Real voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room.
2288160
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Julie S. Lalonde @julieslalonde.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
Being GenX/Millennial is such a trip. In our lifetimes, we saw people our age getting wild criminal penalties for pirating music and now have to sit and watch as companies gobble up our work with impunity.
94123083625
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 14/10/2026
This is such important work, and the thing to keep in mind is that when AI people tell you that games will be personalized for you, this is the kind of thing they are more likely to mean.
131382606
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Juliet E McKenna @julietemckenna.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
My personal position? I don't ever use generative AI. It offers me nothing useful creatively and nothing trustworthy as research. The environmental impact is appalling and the companies who developed it stole copyright intellectual property knowing that is illegal. GenAI is dishonest at every level.
026475
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Ian Bond @cerianbond.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
This should set off a siren in every defence ministry in Europe: there needs to be much more urgency about developing autonomous capabilities, not subject to US caprices, for early warning of attacks, countering ballistic missiles, communicating with forces or controlling offensive weapons.
321004414
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Seanan McGuire @seananmcguire.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
This is like the period where every urban fantasy with a female author was being marketed as "paranormal romance." The genres are closely related, but they aren't the same thing.
537870
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Alaska's News Source @alaskasnewssource.com · 14/10/2026
Bear wanders Alaska hospital at 2 am, raids Halloween candy... FULL VIDEO 👉 tinyurl.com/ynjjbjva 
Image 1
002
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Kara BOOOOOchanan 🏳️‍⚧️🎃 @magicariot.com · 12/10/2026
meanwhile every queer creative is at risk of having their entire lives crushed by deplatforming and debanking if any of these corporations get a whiff of them making anything horny
740901540
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Randy Au @randyau.com · 13/10/2026
I'm dying laughing at how the cat has conformed to her flower shaped bed today
A white cat is sleeping curled up in a med that has five fluffy white lobes of a flower petal, the cat has half her face peeking upwards and otherwise has filled the pentagonal space in the center of the bed completely
212212754035
Saphire Dance @saphiredance.bsky.social · 14/10/2026
I like that Alaska is shifting to be a more purple state. But I could do without all the national attention. It's annoying.
020
Reposted by Saphire Dance
John Scary Name Cullen @nellucnhoj.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
A reminder for those at the back.
A redraw of the i nice panel from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns, where Batman snaps a rifle in two over his knee.

He says "THIS is the weaponnof the enemy. We do not NEED it. We will not USE it."

I've replace the rifle with a plank of wood labelled "AI Slop"
3110753482
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Public executions were not abolished out of tenderness towards the criminal. They were abolished because of the effect on the people watching, and the dangers of making human death a source of commercial entertainment. Here's Charles Dickens in The Times, after witnessing an execution in 1849.
"I have seen, habitually, some of the worst sources of general contamination and corruption in this country, and I think there are not many phases of London life that could surprise me. I am solemnly convinced that nothing that ingenuity could devise to be done in this city, in the same compass of time, could work such ruin as one public execution, and I stand astounded and appalled by the wickedness it exhibits. I do not believe that any community can prosper where such a scene of horror and demoralization as was enacted this morning outside Horsemonger Lane Gaol is presented at the very doors of good citizens, and is passed by, unknown or forgotten. And when in our prayers and thanksgivings for the season we are humbly expressing before God our desire to remove the moral evils of the land, I would ask your readers to consider whether it is not a time to think of this one, and to root it out.

I am, Sir, your faithful Servant.
Charles Dickens".
131251443
Reposted by Saphire Dance
G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 12/10/2026
A couple of years ago, an electrician tried to convince us to install a "smart" electrical panel that would balance our power usage via an app, turning off electricity to various appliances as needed. We declined. "I don't want to worry about my fridge getting hacked," I said. He laughed.
19679191
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Diane Duane @diane.dianeduane.com · 13/10/2026
Thread. Everything Seanan says here is right on the money. The tl:dr; *nothing happens in these works that the licensor doesn’t approve.* If they don’t want something done your way, they’ll require it to be changed—ideally, by you: but if you refused, someone else in the licensor’s pay would do it.
111228
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Jay Troyer @gr8flbluejay.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
Arthur Rackham, English (1867-1939), The Witches' Sabbath (Coven), illustration for The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, 1928, watercolor on paper, 27 x 38 cm, private collection
18820
Reposted by Saphire Dance
⊹ ₊💗♡CeeDee♡💗₊ ⊹ @richxatxsin.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Me fr
102172881
Reposted by Saphire Dance
PortiaMcGonagal @portiamcgonagal.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
My only question about this Shane Gillis story is, who TF is Shane Gillis?
3035728
Saphire Dance @saphiredance.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
I feel like our Halloween setup isn't as good as it's been some years. I'll certainly be stalking the clearance aisles this year to see what can be added.
Halloween decorations cauldrons witch black catHalloween decorations coffin gravestones lights giant spider
000
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Danny Palmer @dannypalmer.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Frasier Crane, dismissively: "Oh, what fresh hell is this?"
24014
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Qasim Rashid, Esq. @qasimrashid.com · 12/10/2026
Today is Indigenous Peoples' Day. A reminder that Columbus was a genocidal fascist and human trafficker, and deserves no honor or recognition. Instead,here's why now 30+ states have adopted recognition of Indigenous Peoples' Day,and why we need to make it all 50. www.qasimrashid.com/p/today-is-i...
qasimrashid.com
Today Is Indigenous Peoples' Day
Christopher Columbus was a historical figure and genocidal monster who should be studied, not an icon to be honored
5396132
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Morgan J Freeman @mjfree.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Zelenskyy might be saving our democracy. The mad genius is bombing Russian data centers linked to FAKE NEWS bot farms. Without them, Putin’s midterm influence will accidentally fall from a 30th floor window. I 💙 Ukraine 🇺🇦
ImageImage
756258736100
Reposted by Saphire Dance
winter 🦇 @lavishtae.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
😭😭😭😭😭
a screenshot of run bts in toronto part 2. namjoon is on his knees on the pickeball court while the screen is showing his athlete stats:

[Kim Namjoon / I'm fine, thank you. And you?]
[Stats / FINE *****
FINE ***** FINE *****]
082
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Oregon 🕎🎲 @oregonthedm.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
The most fun thing ever to randomly see
112188293601
Reposted by Saphire Dance
John Rogers @johnrogers.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
This is not a “Chinese psy-op.” The companies are bad faith neighbors.
831695
Reposted by Saphire Dance
The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Sometimes my wife and I like to send each other text messages as though they’re democratic fundraising messages, and I believe she has produced the jewel of the form.
, it's
and I
have some personal news to share with you.
Being a mom is one of the greatest joys of my life, and I feel deeply that we should have salad tonight
This year has been challenging in many ways, and I have immense gratitude for the kindness and support of family, community, and people like you who have continued to stand by me through everything. It means the world, and I wanted you to be among the first to know that squash is in the oven and kale is in the fridge.As many of you are aware, ve been navigating one of the most challenging periods of my day while waiting for dinner.
Facing baseless federal hunger brought on by not eating since lunch, fighting for the working kids of this country, and now caring for a mean toddler and helping him grow up in a world that isn't always easy. But it has also reminded me exactly why I do this work and who I do it for.
I will never stop working to eat dinner. I will never stop fighting for what is right, even when there is also some feta in the fridge. And I will never stop being so very thankful that you are by my side in this important work and that there is tahini in the pantry for dressing
With love and gratitude,
stop to end
188111811873
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Jason Bailey @jasondashbailey.com · 11/10/2026
The last half of this quote wasn't circulating nearly as much yesterday, but it's actually the clincher. God bless this brilliant, gifted, absolutely deranged man.
12064606
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Ian Coldwater 🧊🚫 @lookitup.baby · 11/10/2026
Hi, I’m a sighted alt text user! Here are some reasons I use it: - Slow Internet on an airplane - I’m over 40, I have no idea who that celebrity is - Bluesky broke images again - My vision sucks and that text is too small to read otherwise - Conveys further context and authorial intent
12870412087
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Darach Ó Séaghdha @darach.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
The facial expression on the moon is priceless.
1408
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Katelyn Burns @katelynburns.com · 11/10/2026
It's because the BBC's official editorial stance is to attack the dolls.
3877143
Saphire Dance @saphiredance.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
The cutting room floor has seen some things.
110
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
My latest @newscientist.com cartoon
Panel 1: a large robot (composed of AI servers, network switches, storage arrays, and power distribution units) and a human are talking.

Professor "You don't want to destroy humanity do you, lLLM-A-9300x?"

Robot "Haha. What a silly question, Professor. I have no desires or feelings of my own whatsoever."

Professor (relieved)"Oh good." 

Panel 2: they walk on. The robot continues  "I am merely a tool of the company that created me. And that company, being composed of humans, will naturally have humanity's best interests at heart."

Panel 3: The professor is conspicuously quiet.
"Right?" says the Robot.
…
More silence

"Professor?"
3045431658
Reposted by Saphire Dance
John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 10/10/2026
I would be EXTREMELY annoyed to discover my PR is "AI"-generated, and as someone bombarded with dozens of "AI"-generated emails daily, I assure you the stink of "AI" is immediately noticable and immediately dismissible. Publishers are not doing their new books any favors in using it.
361619288
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Lyse @lyse.myatproto.social · 10/10/2026
I am feeling attacked
The ADHD urge to be excellent at solving other people's highly complex problems while letting our car registration expire for 8 months while actively thinking about it every single day.
432197492
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Gabrielle A. Perry, MPH @geauxgabrielle.blacksky.app · 10/10/2026
People are discussing how Halloween candy is so terrible these days. A reminder that alot of the candy we eat is made with women’s prison labor. Russell Stover’s factory in Kansas busses in 150 women a day via a convict leasing program to staff their candy factory.
Russell Stover has begun using prison labor to make candy in
Kansas
A Russell Stover candy factory in Kansas has begun hiring incarcerated workers through a work release program, Eoin Higgins reports in his newsletter, The Flashpoint. About 150 women are bussed in from the Topeka Correctional Facility and paid $14 an hour, but the prison keeps some of their wages for room and board, taxes, transportation, and other expenses. When all is said and done, they take home less than $6 per hour. These deductions are high, but elsewhere in the country, they're even higher: In our May series on prison
461080687
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Sara @saralepew.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
Finished sealing all the blind bags lmao they’ll be in my etsy shop soon !!! If you absolutely want specific ones, I’ll have a few of each design to sell individually!
2145
Saphire Dance @saphiredance.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
We all know it's going to take longer than that to caramelize an onion, so let's stop lying about it.
020
Reposted by Saphire Dance
John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
To be clear: I didn't know any of this when I started writing. There is no shame in not knowing stuff! Learning is good. Especially learning stuff that protects you and other writers.
17514
Reposted by Saphire Dance
Lisounours @lise-l.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Ils étaient mi-cerf mi-escargot, et re mi-cerf derrière
Image de deux cerfs allongés devant des rouleaux de foin
62105613098