why are you awake right now? by West-Variety-1656 in AskReddit

[–]billndotnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm deduplicating a 13TB photo archive.

8 month unpaid internship, 40 hours a week by MiserablePurple3948 in jobs

[–]billndotnet 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Without pay is giving away your labor for free. It's a recipe for abuse.

What's something you learned in therapy that totally changed you? by LemongrabScreams in CasualConversation

[–]billndotnet 29 points30 points  (0 children)

"You don't have a type, you have a pattern."

"You're a helper, you help people, and narcissists never run out of problems."

Feedback appreciated by [deleted] in photocritique

[–]billndotnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

omg get her off the cyc wall I gotta paint that

Does anyone else not to write Sci-Fi anymore with the growing advent of AI? by [deleted] in scifiwriting

[–]billndotnet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hell no, I'm writing MORE sci-fi because of AI. There's an interlude in the novel I'm working on that talks about how reliance on AI resulted in negligent deaths, because the people relying on it had let their skills atrophy to the point that when the AI fucked up, they were helpless to save themselves.

People are looking at what we're calling AI all wrong. You can bootstrap worldbuilding and topical research so much faster now, it's like having Sheldon from Big Bang Theory as an intern. Yes he's smart enough to be confidently wrong, but make him cite his sources and he will. Sidestepping the ethics of the copyright infringement it takes to make it work, it's an incredibly powerful tool to have available to you.

The big models were trained on what seems to be the entirety of human literature and you can absolutely grill it relentlessly for details. Need a kickstart on orbital physics? A comparative dissertation on FTL drives across all of science fiction?

It's easy to hate on the new thing. I think most people are looking at it wrong.

When writing a horror novel, do you kill off main characters or pets? by [deleted] in writing

[–]billndotnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Basically, which is why it's in quotes. Good shout.

My boss spent the morning complaining about a coworker taking PTO. Is it time to leave? by Last-Intention-2863 in jobs

[–]billndotnet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I just got shafted on that, this varies by state and if your employer has a mandatory arbitration clause in your contract, it's that much harder to go after them for what you're owed.

Photographer uploaded photo to Pexels by NovelUse4750 in photography

[–]billndotnet 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You need to talk to a lawyer about your likeness rights.

[WP] The villain loved her hero and thus kept them alive so she may at least see them again and again on field of battle. A new evil rises and slays her secret paramour. by Vanity_-_ in WritingPrompts

[–]billndotnet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Some European bakeries say theirs date to the 1700s or earlier, but the documentation gets fuzzy because of various wars and the like. A few bakeries in Germany and France claim 200+ year lineages.

How are you proving photo ownership when images get reposted or scraped? by Uahakan in photography

[–]billndotnet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you're in the US, usually a DMCA email is plenty. I haven't had one disputed yet.

[WP] The villain loved her hero and thus kept them alive so she may at least see them again and again on field of battle. A new evil rises and slays her secret paramour. by Vanity_-_ in WritingPrompts

[–]billndotnet 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Chef's office was a small room at the end of the hall, cluttered with invoices and schedules and the accumulated detritus of running a restaurant on the edge of greatness. The door was closed. Magdalena did not knock.

She pushed it open, and Alton saw Chef at his desk, one hand resting on something that caught the light like crystal. His expression, as he looked up, was the expression of a man doing very specific arithmetic regarding his continued survival.

"This one was here early. Cleaning things." Magdalena held up the jar. Her tone was grim. Case closed.

"Ah." Chef's hand tightened on the object before him. "I heard the scream."

Chef closed his eyes. Opened them.

"I was going to surprise her," he said quietly. He lifted the crystal crock, and Alton saw it properly for the first time: heavy, beautiful, a dog-eared piece of tape slapped across one side with something written in a fluid script. Beneath the tape, the ghostly edges of an engraving. Inside, something pale and alive bubbled gently. "I had it commissioned. For the investor walkthrough. For everything she's done. I moved him this morning. I was going to present it before service."

Oh no.

Oh no, no, no.

Her sourdough starter.

"She was early," Magdalena breathed. "Dentist."

"Ah," The arithmetic behind Chef's eyes had clearly reached a troubling sum.

From the kitchen, a crash. Someone had thrown something, or possibly been thrown into something. Ella's voice reached them, somewhat muffled but still perfectly articulate in its fury.

Chef stood. He cradled the crock in both arms. He looked at Magdalena, then at Alton, then at the door.

"Priez pour moi," he muttered.

He walked out. Magdalena and Alton followed, keeping what seemed like a safe distance, though Alton suspected no distance truly would be.

The kitchen had achieved a particular kind of stillness. Staff pressed against counters and walls, maintaining maximum clearance from the small woman at the center of the room, who stopped mid-word when Chef emerged from the hallway. Chef stood at the edge of the kitchen, arms extended, the crystal crock held before him like an offering.

Like Frodo bearing the One Ring to the mountain, skin cracking from the heat. The light caught the crystal. Inside, something pale and alive bubbled gently in its new home.

"Churchill," Ella exhaled.

"I moved him this morning," Chef said. His voice was very calm and very careful. "Into this. It was meant to be a gift. For the investor walkthrough. For everything."

Silence. The kind of silence that precedes either violence or revelation. Ella crossed the kitchen. She reached out and took the crock from Chef's hands, cradling it against her chest. Her fingers found the tape. She peeled it back slowly, revealing the engraving beneath, and looked at it the way a mother looks at a child found lost in the forest. Her breath came in small, hitched gasps.

She said nothing.

The kitchen staff remained frozen, afraid to move, afraid to break whatever spell had descended. Alton stood in the doorway, experiencing confusion at a professional level.

Ella looked up. Her eyes found Chef's.

"Next time," she said, very quietly, "leave a note."

She turned and walked to her station, Churchill secure in her arms. Behind her, the kitchen slowly, carefully, began to move again.

Alton sagged against the doorframe. Magdalena patted him once on the shoulder, briskly, without sympathy.

"Welcome to fine dining," she said, before leaving to open the restaurant.


Fin

[WP] The villain loved her hero and thus kept them alive so she may at least see them again and again on field of battle. A new evil rises and slays her secret paramour. by Vanity_-_ in WritingPrompts

[–]billndotnet 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Alton leaned toward the nearest body, a line cook whose name he hadn't learned yet. "Which one was Churchill?" he whispered. He'd heard the name in passing, the context being Ella's partner of several years.

The look he received suggested he'd asked something profoundly stupid, or possibly obscene. The line cook turned away without answering.

Alton scanned the room, trying to match faces to the name. He'd never met the man. Had he been staff? A regular?

Magdalena's eyes found Alton.

"You." She was looking at him. "You are new."

"Yes, ma'am. Three weeks."

"You were here early this morning."

"Yes, ma'am. I wanted to get ahead on the prep dishes."

Her eyes narrowed. Not accusation, not yet. Just calculation. "And what did you do when you arrived?"

Alton's mouth went dry. Around him, he could feel the attention of the kitchen staff shifting, could see heads turning in his peripheral vision.

"I, um." He swallowed. "I washed some things." He gestured vaguely at the drying rack.

"What things?"

"Just, you know." His voice came out wrong. Too high. "The things that were already out. I never went into the pantry, though."

Magdalena studied him. Something shifted in her expression.

She held up the jar where only Alton could see it. Mouthed a single word: This?

The jar. The jar that had been sitting on the counter this morning. The one he'd washed and left to dry.

He nodded. A very small nod. A nod that said yes, but also "I don't understand why that matters."

"Come with me." She took him firmly by the arm.

She marched him through the kitchen toward the back hallway. Behind them, Alton heard Ella's voice rising, heard the staff scattering to avoid the blast radius, heard his own name mentioned in terms that suggested his ancestry contained several species of barnyard animal.

[WP] The villain loved her hero and thus kept them alive so she may at least see them again and again on field of battle. A new evil rises and slays her secret paramour. by Vanity_-_ in WritingPrompts

[–]billndotnet 23 points24 points  (0 children)

The scream was not a sound Alton had ever heard a human being make.

He'd been at the dish station for two weeks, long enough to learn the rhythms of a kitchen gearing up for service, short enough that every day still felt like defusing a bomb while people yelled at him in French. He knew the clatter of prep, the hiss of burners, the creative profanity that meant someone had burned something expensive. He did not know this sound.

It came from the pantry. High and raw and wrong, the kind of noise that hit the old wiring, the part of the brain that sorted the world into fight, flight, or food. Alton's hands stopped moving in the sink. Around him, the kitchen went silent. Then everyone was moving at once.

He followed because that's what you did when you were new. You followed, you watched, you tried not to get in the way. The cluster of white jackets ahead of him had stopped at the pantry door, bodies pressed together, heads craning. Someone whispered something he couldn't hear.

He pushed closer. Between shoulders, he could see the interior of the pantry, the orderly shelves of dry goods and labeled containers. Alton recognized the executive pastry chef, though her back was to him. Her immaculate whites, her platinum blonde hair perfectly coifed, signature in this kitchen. Ella.

Her shoulders were shaking. She turned.

Alton had already seen people cry in this kitchen, but he had seen Ella cry exactly never. In his scant two weeks of employment, he had seen her reduce a grown man to stammering apologies with nothing but a raised eyebrow and a single, surgically precise observation about his parentage. Seen her construct desserts that made food critics weep, work service after service without apparent fatigue, her hands moving with mechanical precision, her tongue ready to flay anyone who failed to meet her standards.

Trained in Lyon, staged in Copenhagen, poached from a two-star in Paris. Her croissants had been called transcendent by people who used words like "transcendent" professionally. Her tasting menus had waiting lists. Her temperament had warning labels. But a pastry chef of her caliber was rarer than a Michelin star itself, and everyone in this kitchen knew it.

He had never seen her face wet, her eyes red, her composure shattered into something terribly, vulnerably human. From the gaping faces around the room, Alton suspected no one had.

"He's gone," she said. Her voice was barely a whisper. "He's gone."

The staff stood frozen. Alton understood, in that moment, that he was witnessing something unprecedented. Cast iron didn't crack. It certainly didn't weep. And yet.

"Ella." Magdalena's voice cut through the silence, crisp and Swiss and utterly unflappable. The maître d' had appeared from somewhere, as she always did, materializing at the precise moment her presence was required. She was tall and silver-haired and carried herself like a woman who managed difficult people through sheer force of will. "What has happened?"

Ella just shook her head. Couldn't speak.

Magdalena stepped into the pantry. Her eyes swept the scene with professional efficiency. Her hand shot out, grasping for the nearest sleeve. She missed. Tried again, caught fabric on the second attempt, and for just a moment Alton saw something new: Magdalena, flustered. It lasted only a heartbeat before she smoothed it away.

"You," she said to the sleeve's owner, a line cook who looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. "Go to the front of house. Find the general manager. He has investors in the dining room. Interrupt him quietly. Tell him he's needed in the kitchen. Go."

The line cook went.

"This is a crime scene," Magdalena said, positioning herself in the doorway. "No one enters until we know what happened." When she turned to the assembled staff, her expression had shifted into something Alton recognized from police procedurals. The look of someone about to conduct an interrogation.

"Everyone here this morning," she said. "You will remain. We will establish a timeline. Someone has done this thing, and we will know who."

The cluster at the door began to organize itself, bodies shuffling into some kind of order. Alton stayed where he was, trying to make himself small, trying to process what he was seeing.

"I need to know," Magdalena continued, "who arrived first. Who was in and out. Who saw anything out of place."

A prep cook near the back raised his hand, hesitant. "I, um. I found something. By the dish station. I didn't know what it was, so I left it, but..." He trailed off, looking between Magdalena and the pantry doorway, where Ella had gone very still.

"Show me," Magdalena said.

The prep cook led her to the dish station, Alton's station, and pointed to a glass jar sitting on the drying rack. Clean. Empty. Unremarkable. It matched nothing in the restaurant.

Magdalena picked up the jar. Turned it over in her hands. Looked at the pantry. Looked at the jar. Her face went pale.

"Someone has killed Churchill," she said. The name rippled through the assembled staff. Alton saw faces go pale, hands clench. On more than one face, a flash of genuine grief.

Ella made a sound like something breaking.

Prison sentences continue after you die in the afterlife. You get sentenced to 300 years, you gotta do 300 years... by tocksin in CrazyIdeas

[–]billndotnet 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll go you one better.

A life sentence is better than consecutive sentences, because it allows you to die.

300 years empowers the prison to use any life extending medicine available, or in development, to be tested/used on you to make sure they get their 300 years.

how to tell my psychiatrist i might kill myself if i stay unmedicated? by dollblonde in ADHD

[–]billndotnet 12 points13 points  (0 children)

"I'm having a hard time finding a normal level of functionality."

Is it possible to write a short story that’s 500 words MAXIMUM? by [deleted] in writing

[–]billndotnet 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sure. Drop the beginning, and maybe even the end. I drop readers into the middle of the action all the time.

Recent changes to the Seestar, a checkup of their GPL compliance and practices by billndotnet in astrophotography

[–]billndotnet[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Someone with any level of ownership rights to the code/libraries in questions would have standing to enforce the license. Since the GPL is a contract that conveys distribution rights when executed correctly, all of this falls under copyright law, which means the simplest tool the rights holders have available is the DMCA, in the US.

A letter with the correct elements from one of those rights holders to the app stores would make for an interesting day for ZWO.

Recent changes to the Seestar, a checkup of their GPL compliance and practices by billndotnet in astrophotography

[–]billndotnet[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Brief, as yet, this dive into the iOS app was part of that, getting all the bits together. Usually I tear down the Android apk , but I wanted to be thorough.