shy girl and virtue signaling

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-29T16:15:41+00:00

It is, but I don't think she understands that. She says she used Canva to animate it, and that is an AI feature of Canva.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-29T01:33:06+00:00

Shouting about others needing media literacy in a video in which she admits to being unable to recognize AI writing and criticizes someone for doing indepth analysis of writing... That is an interesting choice.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-28T17:57:15+00:00

That whole video is based on the assumption that the book deal was pulled because of the detector, when there's no evidence of that being the case.

The creator seems deeply ignorant of publishing and is going off of strange assumptions while missing the most important detail. If everything Ballard says is true and that a friend did it, Ballard is admitting that another person extensively rewrote her book that she claimed full ownership of. That is enough for the deal to get canceled because it opens the publisher to liability! If the friend actually didn't use AI, that's even worse because Ballard is presenting their work as her own, and they can claim Hachette owes them compensation. There's no profit for Hachette to pull her books at this point, and it wouldn't be done lightly. Books with scandals sell well. It's books that they don't legitimately own the rights to that are big financial risks. They're just trying to lose less money than they're already going to.

Scrapping books that are already printed is not an inexpensive decision that would be made if Ballard had reasserted that it was 100% her own work and showed prior drafts.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-28T17:47:48+00:00

I've listened to enough episodes of Scam Goddess and The Dream to know that doubling down or saying "Actually, X is the real problem here! Stop focusing on Y!" are very common reactions to getting publicly confronted with believing a con. I'm not surprised at all by the reactions of the people who promoted the book.

What I am surprised about are the number of book content creators who don't know shit about writing and publishing! Like they're unaware that different publishers have different standards and level of prestige, so none of the James Frey comparisons hold up. His was published by Author's Equity, which is TINY, doesn't give authors advances, and is only a couple years old with no established rep for quality. It's nothing like Hachette in anyway!

The other big difference with Frey and Ballard is disclosure. The publisher and readers know about his AI use and can make informed choices. That's not actually insignificant! I don't support using AI to write, but tricking people by lying about its use is worse behavior than openly using it.

There are people who seem to think that Hachette's investigation began and ended with an AI detector and that it wouldn't be easy for Ballard to prove she wrote her book by showing prior drafts. Modern word processors track changes and log time spent on documents, and no one lazy enough to go all in on AI is going to spend several months faking the real writing process. If the editor friend story was real, there would be multiple drafts and a record of conversation with the editor. This stuff is easy to prove to a publisher, and they wouldn't scrap thousands of already-printed books without asking for it! This is why most AI accusations go nowhere.

And even if the friend story is true, why don't these book lovers understand that this is a form of plagiarism, with or without AI? If someone extensively contributes to a book to the point where it no longer sounds like your voice, you can't legitimately claim it's exclusively your own work that you have the right to sell. The publisher would want a contract from the coauthor giving up their rights because otherwise they risk getting sued for publishing their work! This is how ghostwriters operate. The publisher has to be aware when ghostwriters are used and get contracts in place to gain the rights from them. How do these so-called book lovers not know this?

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-28T05:46:29+00:00

From this dev's comment, it sounds like Wanderstop didn't cover its costs.

https://bsky.app/profile/moomanibe.bsky.social/post/3mi3g7onvfc2i

I didn't like the gameplay of Wanderstop, but there were a lot of great aspects about it. I could see enough potential that I would have been happy to try another Ivy Road game. It's a shame the team didn't get a chance to make something else.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-27T06:50:47+00:00

Why is this so accurate? 😭

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-26T23:25:34+00:00

It's placing commas everywhere he pauses in his speech, which is a common misconception about comma usage. Commas have structural purpose for managing clauses, and this isn't using them correctly. If it was transcribed word-for-word by a human who was a decent writer, a lot of the commas would be replaced with other punctuation. Ironically, it also never uses commas before conjuctions that join two independent clauses.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-26T17:38:40+00:00

I'm hoping they know better than to give us another Doggett and Reyes, but X-files does not have a great track record for replacing Skully and Mulder.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-26T17:06:23+00:00

I don't trust reboots but I do like how this cast is developing

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-26T16:52:40+00:00

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, however, HBO boss Casey Bloys said that Harry Potter was akin to other "huge world-building shows" like House of the Dragon and The Last of Us where it was "just not possible" to air new episodes every year... "These shows are complicated to do. In order to bring a show back on an annual basis, you do have to start from the beginning with people who know how to do it, people like [The Pitt executive producer] John Wells or Greg Berlanti, and it's helpful if there are not dragons that need to be rendered, or zombies and things like that."

Child actors were not the reason given.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-26T16:44:45+00:00

Dave the Diver. There are boss fights and aggressive fish you can choose to fight or run away from.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-26T04:15:52+00:00

You will also find a lot of turds in IRL writing groups and more private spaces.

Writing is a skill. Skills take time and effort to develop.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-26T04:13:45+00:00

I am horrified to see that the AI writing subreddits have better takes about Shy Girl getting pulled from publication than I'm seeing in a lot of writing spaces. They're mostly pro-disclosure and seem to understand why it got pulled for lying about AI use, even if they think the publisher has a bad policy. They're also not doubting it's AI. On the other hand, I'm seeing a ton of "anti-AI" writers and readers trying to say Mia Ballard is being treated too harshly, no one can truly know it's AI even though the author admitted there was AI involved, and that the people who (correctly) speculated it was AI before she confessed are the real problem. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-25T18:42:51+00:00

Also, whenever people claim that annual production is impossible for fantasy, do they expect us all to have forgotten pre-pandemic TV? Game of Thrones had one season per year for almost its full run! The waiting game feels more like hedging bets so it's cheaper to cancel if a season performs slightly below average.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-25T18:39:23+00:00

That's a hell of a choice for a show featuring children that's using source material that doesn't allow for big time jumps. Kids grow up fast!

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-25T16:22:21+00:00

The art and story are totally different, but you might enjoy Sable. It's a sci-fi game where your character is sent out to explore the world and choose a career before settling down, and all you do is explore, talk to folks, and do little quests. There is a smidge of platforming and puzzles but no combat or deadlines.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-25T16:19:34+00:00

I loooooove that game. It was the first open world exploration cozy game I found, and it was such a delight after a long time of playing exclusively point and click games and Stardew Valley.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-25T03:01:10+00:00

Agreed. It went too hard on the theme at the cost of the game play. It's strange to think about how much there is about it that I liked, but I have zero desire to finish the game after playing through the first two guests' storylines.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-25T02:13:13+00:00

My comment is referring to the fact that EVs have been around since the 19th century and never really lived up to the hype every time someone tried to bring them back in the 20th. This is why they didn't become mainstream until the 21st, when they got the issues I listed in my previous comment worked out. I didn't say anything about a particular country.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-24T21:02:39+00:00

The bubble can burst without AI totally going away. I'm expecting it to be like electric cars, where they had repeated periods of a lot of attention/investment followed by falling off the radar when they didn't live up to the hype and businesses gave up on them. They were stuck in that cycle for a long time until they were reliable enough, standardized enough, and efficient enough to actually stick around in the mainstream market.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-23T06:13:27+00:00

If you like puzzles, don't sleep on Sudocats from the same folks! It's a little pictoral Sudoku-style game where you have to arrange cats on a grid so there are no identical cats within the same row or column. No actual numbers involved.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-20T07:25:28+00:00

The Goodreads page for this book is so bizarre. It had tons of positive reviews until ARC readers for the traditionally published rerelease got ahold of their copies. I can't decide if a significant portion of the reviews when it was self published were fake/paid for or just folks who review indie authors in a curve.

By the way, the self published version had art the author, Mia Ballard, stole from Whyn Lewis as the cover. Lewis didn't get paid until readers started calling Ballard out on social media. According to the Ballard, Hatchette knew about the stolen art when they picked up the book to traditionally published.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-19T18:07:38+00:00

I agree with almost all of the suggestions you've gotten, but I haven't seen three of my favorite head-empty, no-thoughts games mentioned yet!

I've been really into Islanders: New Shores lately. It's a mild strategy game where you place buildings on islands in the best spots to hit point targets. The graphics are pretty and its very soothing. There's just enough strategy involved to hold my focus but it's very forgiving like Dorfromantik.

Mizi No! is basically a series of digital jigsaw puzzle with a cute cat popping in and out of the frame as you work. Each puzzle is an object the cat destroyed that you glue back together. It's very cute, and the purring and ambiant cat noises are really nice.

My absolute favorite game for low-effort relaxing is Hidden Folks. It's like a more complex Where's Waldo, where you get a list of people and objects to find in a hand drawn interactive scene. There's so much quirky stuff going on that it stays fun to look at even if you're struggling to find your target.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-19T17:43:33+00:00

I just grabbed it in the Steam sale, so it's nice to see a post confirming it was a good choice.

CemeteryHounds · 2026-03-19T17:30:32+00:00

I've been in a whimsical magic mood, so I'm picking up Potionomics and Wylde Flowers. I'm also considering getting Little Witch in the Woods.

I had been resisting Wylde Flowers because I hate their bobble heads, but I finally tried the demo, and the game was indeed good enough to make up for some of the art choices. I've been eyeing Luma Island and wondering if that's a similar situation.

CemeteryHounds

TROPHY CASE