Baroness Winter

I am sick unto death of "the #AI bubble is about to pop". Can it fucking pop already?

Friends, I apologize for my recent silence. I have not been able to see. My left eye has been bad for several years. Last Monday, I had a bad hemorrhage in my right eye as well, leaving me staring into impenetrable clouds. Since then I have been listening to music, using a screenreader, and sleeping to pass the time. I am pleased to report a tiny improvement in the situation, and hope this will continue, but for now, life is pretty unfun. Hang in there for updates.

Just to further illustrate that I can't get even a small win without being punished, I'm getting an internet upgrade (15Mbps to 500Mbps) and will be paying $15 *less* per month... and my wallet has gone totally missing. I'll have to replace my debit card, my ID, my insurance card, my social security card...

From AP News:

'GOP officials dismissive of protests

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson called them the product of “leftist funding networks” with little real public support.

The “only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them,” Jackson said in a statement.

The National Republican Congressional Committee was also sharply critical.

“These Hate America Rallies are where the far-left’s most violent, deranged fantasies get a microphone,” spokesperson Maureen O’Toole said."'

What did I say yesterday? They don't fucking care. Their heads are *all* the way up their own asses. Chants and footsteps will not affect them. *Real* action is necessary. We have to take the energy raised by #NoKings and DO something with it. We have to make them afraid. We cannot sit back and pat outselves on the back now. This has to be the start, not the end.

Hey @jezebelkat@famichiki.jp , I've been watching videos on YouTube about cool stuff Japan has that the rest of the world could really stand to pick up on, and I gotta say, yinz got some *super* great ideas over there. The videos are kind of addictive.

#NoKings is fabulous. Amazing. Remarkable. Historical. I wish my health and situation were aligned such that I could march and scream all day.

The problem is, once that energy is raised all across the nation, something has to be done with it. The last two times, nothing was. Simply marching and chanting slogans isn't going to have an effect on them, no matter how many people participate, because they don't fucking care. They have the power and footsteps and words aren't going to change that. Real action has to be taken. They need to feel afraid... and they need to be right about that. No Kings has to be the beginning, not the culmination.

Remember:

It's always Black History Month.

It's always Pride Month.

It's always Women's History Month.

Always.

I was wrong. Firefly is returning... in animated form. I guess the impossible *is* possible. We could use some of that energy right now.

https://deadline.com/2026/03/nathan-fillion-firefly-animated-series-development-1236754122/

The saga of the new PC continues.

The new Dell Optiplex 5040 arrived yesterday a little after 1 PM. I opened it up to proceed with my plan to replace the 500 GB HDD with a 2 TB I already had data on and had to give myself a crash course in modern PC parts, because at first I couldn't find the SSD, and the HDD looked like what I expected an SSD to look like. After I got that figured out, I closed it back up and went on to setup.

Setup went fine, though I was disappointed to find out that I could not move the taskbar. I got it where I wanted it through manipulation of which monitor was my main, though I wasn't entirely happy that that meant some games would automatically load on the wrong monitor. I figured it was a problem for future me.

However, the PC did not recognize the HDD. I turned it off to do some fiddling, and when I turned it back on...

TPM not found. And it wouldn't let me boot.

A couple *hours* of fiddling and searching for solutions didn't fix anything, so in desperation I cracked the case again, unseated and reseated what I could... and promptly lost the hold-down screw for the M.2 SSD somewhere in the case. Tried to shake it out, and somehow it just completely vanished. Put some tape on it in hope, turned the PC back on... wouldn't boot.

I lost all patience, took my HDD out of it, put the 500 MB back in, and packed it all back up for a return. However, after some sleep I was able to calm down, and this morning I ordered some M.2 mounting screws from Newegg. They'll be here next week. I don't like having to wait, again, but it's the best I can do.

Whose bright idea was it to make an M.2 mounting bolt with no hole in the top, so you have to reach down into the case and use your fingers on such a tiny piece? Anyway, I really want this thing to work, because returning it involves two things I can't do on my own: printing a return label, and finding the nearest UPS dropoff (I don't have a car). If getting the SSD properly secured still doesn't work, though, I'm screwed.

Oh, the ROOM! The glorious SPACE!

Time for a re-introduction. My name is Audrey Grace Winter, RPG author and editor, political leftie and professional autistic. I'm new to the beige.party madness; I was on dice.camp for a couple years before finally having the courage to make the switch. Great folks, those dicecampers; there just wasn't enough room in a post for me to properly blather, and frankly I need a replacement for Google+, not Xitter. Thus, I have joined the cult--

What's that? Not a cult? Are you sure? ... All right, not a cult. I have joined the *server*, as it seems well-suited for my personality and needs.

I post (I don't call them toots; toots are flatulence) about things like #movies and #shows, #music, #books, #games, and of course #TTRPGs. I'm also into #science and #history like any true nerd should be.

I need somebody to tell me how to add more "Extra Fields" to my profile. I have too many things I wanna list.