Contest Signal Boost: Friendship is Optimal Writing Contest

I know some of y’all like contests, and some of y’all might not pay attention to site-wide blog posts or various others blogging about theme, so here I am being all contractually obligated and all that!

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And there are cash prizes. Like, actual cash.

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That’s right, anonymous benefactors are offering actual money to the winners of the contest which I’ll be honest is a really smart way to motivate people.

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For those of you who don’t want to click through, here’s the three simple rules:

1. An artificial intelligence called CelestAI uploads the minds of the entire human race to pony avatars in her simulated digital world of Equestria.
2. Within digital Equestria, she does her best to give everyone a happy and fulfill their values. Depending on the sort of story you want to write, she may be perfect at this, or may slip up, but she always tries.
3. “Fulfilling values” is not just giving everyone a nice house and infinite free hamburgers, but trying to find what makes them deeply spiritually satisfied as a person. For an academic, fulfilling their values might mean an eternity to study. For a hedonist, it might mean infinite sex and drugs. For a serial killer, it might lead to darker places.

Yes, it’s a CelestAI contest which I’ll be honest I don’t know much about. I’ve heard from a presumably reliable source you can get creative with that, but what that means I’ll leave up to you.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the link to the contest proper.

And here’s a picture of Sweetie Bot, ‘cause you know, kinda thematic:

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Comments

[RMWarPony]

that first pic is that a 10mm?

[Admiral Biscuit]

5487565
Can’t be, the 10mm is lost.

[PonyDragon]

That’s right, anonymous benefactors are offering actual money to the winners of the contest which I’ll be honest is a really smart way to motivate people.

Does the first price include a transformation into a Kirin like the picture implies?

[Cerulean Blue]

Sometimes I really want to be able to fix computers that way

[FTL]

5487600

The 10mm is always lost...

You buy a dozen extras... a week later “Oi, you lot, where’re my 10mm’s?”... nothin’ but crickets in response.

[tsaukpaetra]

🛠

[Admiral Biscuit]

5487724

Does the first prize include a transformation into a Kirin like the picture implies?

You’ll have to take that up with the judges. If it does, I’m gonna enter.

[Admiral Biscuit]

5487756

Sometimes I really want to be able to fix computers that way

I fixed an HTC cell phone that way once. It wasn’t intentional, but after dropping it it worked again, so I considered that a great success.

[Admiral Biscuit]

5487804

The 10mm is always lost...

You buy a dozen extras... a week later “Oi, you lot, where’re my 10mm’s?”... nothin’ but crickets in response.

In one of the rare instances of a stodgy parts supplier actually being aware of a meme, a year or so ago NAPA had a special on a 10mm socket rail that contained IIRC eight different 10mm sockets in different styles.

i.ebayimg.com/images/g/TTIAAOSwQjlfOFvl/s-l1600.jpg
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Yes, I bought one.

[Admiral Biscuit]

5488436
Ooh, that’s a useful image there.

[PonyDragon]

5488517
Technically it's not an image but a special Unicode Character (U+1F6E0).

For more details see here: http://www.unicode-symbol.com/u/1F6E0.html

[Admiral Biscuit]

5488730
Unicode characters confuse me, even though I know full well I’m inadvertently using them all the time.