The Wordsmith's Forge

THE RISE OF EMOTIONAL SURVEILLANCE

Companies are monitoring workers not just for productivity but for agreeability.

The bad news is that software now purports to glean insights into the depths and vagaries of human emotion using AI, and it is coming to watch you. If it isn’t already: Morphcast, for example, has licensed its technology to a mental-health app, a program that monitors schoolchildren’s attention, and McDonald’s, which launched a promotional campaign in Portugal that scanned app users’ faces and offered them personalized coupons based on their (supposed) mood. It is one of many, many such companies doing similar work—the industry term is emotion AI or sometimes affective computing.


Back in 1984, the roleplaying came Paranoia came out. The primary antagonist was The Computer. It was always spying on people, and if they didn't look happy enough, The Computer became suspicious and sent Troubleshooters (the player characters) after them. Or each other. "Your job as a Troubleshooter is to hunt down mutants and members of secret societies. You are a mutant. You are also a member of a secret society. Won't this be fun?" It was amusing at the time, but it's far too much like modern life to be fun anymore. :( That memory of people faking happiness to minimize the risk of further abuse in a dystopia stuck with me. And now here we are.

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Points Donation Challenge Wrap-Up by yourlibrarian 

In the end we had 16 donors and 20 giftees. Donors have been notified and will be making their point gifts directly to assigned giftees. If you offered to donate and have not received a direct message from me, please let me know.

Giftees should be seeing messages from Dreamwidth when the gifts go through. If you have not received anything by May 31, please let me know as something may have gone awry.

Once all gifts have been sent we will have added $402 to Dreamwidth's intake this year.

From the author's newsletter:

The Return of The Wiccan Wheel Mysteries by Jennifer David Hesse

I’ll be republishing all six books this year—each one slightly revised
and with a bit of new content. After that, I’ll pick up where I left off
and get to work on subsequent installments in the series. The writing is
already well underway.

To kick things off, the 10^th anniversary edition of Book 1, Midsummer
Night’s Mischief, will come out on the Summer Solstice: June 21, 2026.

Author Website

dialecticdreamer is hosting Magpie Monday with a theme of "Apologies." Leave prompts, get ficlets!

It’s the usual, 1k words of plot-ish story, per prompt, with the option of adding at least a hundred words to the count for each of the person’s quick signal boost to point new people this way. I’ll keep the prompt call open until Wednesday night because of the chaos around here, which gives people more time to think of something interesting.

The theme is apologies, and while I’ve included a few in stories, I’d love to explore the kinds of apologies that suit each reader, so feel free to be as specific as needful. Some prefer words, some prefer actions, some prefer a quiet, indirect acknowledgement but not an open discussion. Be as specific as one likes for characters, events, and so on, because there are plenty of events in the existing, posted stories which might require either a first apology or a returning one.

svgurl has posted a list of current fandom events in DW communities. 

A Day Away Spring/Summer 2026 is now up at the Effingham Magazines page.  :D 3q3q3q!!!  If you live in or plan to visit central Illinois, this is the best guide to events and attractions within daytrip distance of Effingham.

13 Queer Supers Stories for Superhero Day!

Happy Superhero Day!! We love a good caped (or uncaped) crusader, and so we present a list of our favorite superhero stories. Reminder, though, that the line between a hero and a villain is thin, and that a magical girl is a flavor of superhero, right?


These look promising.

If you want more, see my QUILTBAG Characters list and scroll down to Polychrome Heroics where some of them have superpowers.  Antimatter and Stalwart Stan is queer teen enemies-to-lovers.