#Critical Thinking Matters

[evanderlfragoso]

This is such a, "uh yeah, duh," thing, although it's nice to see researchers putting a magnifying lens on it, even though it won't affect policy because the people making the rules just don't care. The diminishing of critical thinking (at least speaking in regards to the U.S.A.) has basically been an essential part of our consumerist, capitalist-centric society. The people at the top don't care to have an intelligent populace really, they mostly care about profits and keeping people at the bottom right where they are, struggling while making them money while barely making a living. This is America.

[wickedzeevyln]

The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be

The film began with a black screen. A metal limb comes down like a hammer crushing a human skull, it almost got my brother and me leaping out of our seats. I remember the beating on my chest as the camera then faded in to reveal a post-apocalyptic wasteland littered with skulls, heaps of crackling fire, twisted metal, and hankering smoke and ash of a sky, sickly orange. This is the aftermath…

[inkskinned]

i. probably the most wild thing - and this is true - was that she tried to break up with me using Chat-GPT.

ii. we hadn't ever seen eye-to-eye about this issue. i am flatly and annoyingly anti-bot. my entire thing is creativity and the empathy of the human spirit. communication should be about connection, not distortion through the lens of AI. otherwise: what is the fucking point.

iii. i am steadfastly loyal in all my personal relationships - to a genuine fault. that fault will become clear to both of us shortly. sometimes when you love someone, you give them the benefit of the doubt; even when you doubt that you benefit.

iv. however. i used to academically cheat a lot. i had all the sad-kid excuses you could possibly want - unsafe home, untreated severe ADHD, bullied at school. i skipped most of my classes, to the point that the truancy officer knew me personally. sometimes i stand on top of my own high-horse policy of why would you use AI? and then i see the hoofbeats i left behind me. didn't i copy homework? didn't i just sparknotes the reading? didn't i write multiple essays just using wiki as my main resource?

v. she started using AI for her job. admittedly it is a tedious, annoying job. the first steps, slippery-slope style, were uses of AI that seemed minimal - checking two documents for minor changes. reading over drafts for conciseness. the kind of thing that pushes but does not bend what "using AI" constitutes as.

vi. for the record; i stopped cheating in college. i instead became the kind of person that other people copied off of. once i'd moved out of the unsafe housing (and was free of bullies), i dedicated myself to my work with a passion my teachers called "honestly a bit much." but isn't it tempting, as an adult? why the hell should i write another cover letter for another position that's being read by AI?

vii. AI became the centerpiece of how she finished all of her writing, the way i had warned her about. the argument was pretty explosive. at that point i'd learned to be scared of her anyway - of ever having a different opinion. i tried to talk about how my own work has probably been skimmed. how it is destroying artists. i asked - how can you do this to the environment? after all - for years, she'd been vegan.

viii. there's no ethical consumption under capitalism anyway. and the world is falling apart. and everyone else does it. i keep hearing - it's here to stay, get used to it. and hell, maybe i'm that guy. sometimes i think of the panic people had when we invented GPS or tablets. how all the adults said it's going to make people stupid. maybe i am paranoid about the decline of civilization because every technological advance always does that to a generation.

ix. her job switched AI programs and she admitted to me that she couldn't really do it anymore. the new AI wasn't trained, wasn't as comprehensive. and she couldn't return to something she'd been doing for five uninterrupted years; that it was like relearning a language that used to be her mother tongue.

x. i don't know exactly when she started using Chat as her therapist. when exactly she started feeding Chat information about me. when she started answering my text messages with the famous unspaced-dash. i have my suspicions. i would have never known for certain, except that one night she opened her laptop to play a movie - and there it was. her chat prompt about me, and our relationship, and how we needed to break up. she said you weren't supposed to see that. i sat there and thought i am going to get dumped by a robot.

xi. the irony of it. i am a poet. before you ask - her final message to me had a "particular" structure to it. i still have no idea who said it. but then again: is there ever really a gap between master and puppet?

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Movie Night (Clip of the scene here)

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[corseque]

Did you know the fantasy MMORPG Final Fantasy Fourteen only uses the word "okay" 9 times in dialogue throughout the entire hundreds of hours long story? And each use of "okay" that got through seems like an actual mistake that simply didn't get edited out?

There is no use of "okay" in A Song of Ice and Fire. There is no use of "okay" in the entire The Witcher series. It's something that's like... just really largely accepted for fantasy. I would argue that vocabulary choice and word choice does a huge amount of heavy lifting to make something "feel" like a fantasy!!!!! It's a part of the genre expectation that I think is largely agreed on.

If you're writing a medievalish fantasy in a fantasy land, and you chose to establish a unique vocabulary and to minimize modern anachronisms to facilitate the feeling of being in a different fantasy world than our own modern mundane world, in a way that is commonly accepted for fantasy, and you've done it in all 3 previous of your games except for deliberate exceptions for artistic reasons, then you expect that to continue into the next part of the story so you feel like there's continuity.

the FFXIV English localization team made a point never to use "okay" commonly because it DOES make it feel too modern. It's actually a really easy thing to keep an eye on, editing wise.

and FFXIV is a game that has ACTUAL MODERN CARS and PARKING LOTS!!! and the English writing team STILL cared about eliminating "okay". Because they cared in a basic way about how word choice affects fantasy experience. Anyway, so that's how it feels when fantasy writing cares about the little details :)

Anyway, I'll continue to look at it as the most easy softball lob toward the writers' and editors' bats that they just fucking whiffed for no reason. Or whiffed on purpose, which is even fucking worse.

And after this week's revelations that BioWare always HATED and devalued the medieval fantasy Dragon Age and LOVED and valued the futuristic sci-fi Mass Effect, this style change is even more important to me. When a company looks down on fantasy PERIOD and suddenly in the latest game even the very language is changed to not feel as much as a fantasy game.... HMMM Hmmmm hmmmm I'm sure it's nothing!!!!!! but yeah it's childish to have basic expectations for a fantasy setting

[danwhobrowses]

With so many parties in Oaths and Ash staking claim to Fearne's soul - including the Primordials - it is worth noting how Ashton instead opts to fight for her freedom rather than throw in a claim themselves.

idk I feel like that speaks to how much Ashton cares for and understands her, she's always her own person first.

Also they got a HDYWTDT that helped save her.

[oceanwithouthermoon]

"i dont hate this female character, i just have a nuanced take on her" and the nuanced take is comically stereotypical misogyny

[anghraine]

TMP is honestly this wild trip despite the glacial pacing at times, because it's like—

Vulcan woman: Spock, you've worked hard to purge yourself of all emotion, but your mind is picking up signals from some human and I guess some logic thing in space. my conclusion: you aren't racially pure enough to find your answers here

Spock: time to track down the pure logic thing and find the answers and meaning in my existence as a Vulcan that I've been searching for all my life and definitely never found in the past before all my previous character development got reset

[Meanwhile]

Kirk: so this unknown cosmic force is going to wipe out all life on Earth, and I've been placed in charge because I have a lot of experience dealing with bizarre dangerous cosmic shit as commander of this specific ship, in addition to my missing being in space because I was pushed into the admiralty at, like, age 39

Decker: *throws a series of tantrums about the prioritization of all of Earth above his ego for almost the entire mission*

Ilia: I have taken an oath of celibacy

Kirk: ... not super relevant. please just do your job

[Also, the transporter painfully melts some people we don't know into unrecognizable lumps of flesh. This is completely disconnected from the rest of the movie; it has no relevance to anything else, is immediately forgotten and never acknowledged again, and everyone acts like Bones is silly and paranoid for being nervous about going through the transporter]

Uhura: I think Admiral Kirk is obviously the person most qualified to command our incredibly dangerous and important mission, and we're damned lucky he got put in charge. if anyone cares

[everyone else]: *doesn't care*

McCoy: Jim, maybe you shouldn't make your mid-life crisis everyone else's problem

Decker: yeah! I should still be in charge! my solution is "don't take risks" when encountering the unknown and wait until systems are 100% safe before we do anything

Kirk: again let me reiterate that we need to act decisively even if it's risky or billions of people will die. we have to at least try, so waiting is not an option here

Spock: *shows up and, despite being icy and dismissive, immediately fixes all their most pressing technical problems*

McCoy: maybe we shouldn't trust him. he has his own agenda now

Kirk: wtf of course we can trust him he's Spock how dare

[Kirk quickly figures out the changes to the bridge, and from then on, his judgment and decisions are pretty much continually vindicated by the plot. Decker's advice goes from temporarily useful to unprofessional constant jabs with little sense of the real stakes and no better ideas. It becomes extremely apparent that Kirk really is far better equipped in temperament and experience to deal with the potential slaughter of Earth than Decker, especially when assisted by Spock—even this arctic version of Spock.]

Spock: *knocks out a crewman, steals a spacesuit, and tries to make contact with the cosmic acid trip/space vagina by traveling through what he unenthusiastically describes as its "orifices"*

Kirk: I ... guess maybe Bones was - no, it can't be - wait a moment, I -

Spock: *starts transmitting all the data he's gathering to Kirk*

Kirk: hah, I knew he would never betray me! Okay, everyone, you all stay here, I'm going to jump into space to catch him

[Spock melds with the cosmic space vagina and it violently ejects him through various orifices, as he might describe them, until he's thrown right into Kirk's arms, signifying nothing]

Bones and Chapel: melding with the cosmic logic vagina seems to have fried his brain :(

Spock, laughing: I should have known ...

Kirk: *seizes his shoulders* known WHAT Spock what are you talking about. please tell me your mind is intact. sweetheart it's okay what are you full of shame about this time *tries to shake the brain damage loose*

Spock: Jim ... I melded with the supreme logic being and discovered that there's no beauty or art or meaning in raw information or logic ... only a barren STEM hellscape without the humanities

[Spock slides his hand down Kirk's arm until their fingers wrap around each other, and their joined hands tightly cling together. unrelatedly, we have definitely seen Vulcans and Romulans use finger stroking as kissing and/or foreplay]

Spock: it was awful and empty and not at all what I've been searching for this whole time. and finally I understood that the real meaning in life comes from the simple feeling between you and me. The mechanized space vagina couldn't understand our love

[Kirk wraps his other hand tightly around his and Spock's clasped fingers. God knows what degree of obscenity they would be committing on Vulcan, but in any case, McCoy (as ever) politely pretends he's not seeing this happen right in front of him, since Kirk and Spock obviously have forgotten, yet again, that other people exist]

Kirk: 🥹🥰

[They stare tenderly at each other without speaking for a few seconds, but are definitely communicating on some level; after a moment's hesitation, Kirk nods slightly, then Spock nods in response, and it feels like we're missing half the conversation. Then Spock explains V'ger's existential angst in terms that obviously apply equally to his own past self, and by past I mean "for most of this movie until a few minutes ago"]

It turns out that V'ger, in addition to being a cosmic acid trip/space vagina/mass murderer, is also an annoying teenager, maturity-wise. I do appreciate Kirk and Spock having their "this is just adolescent angst and we are too middle-aged for this nonsense" reaction, and noping out to provoke V'ger into some measure of cooperation until they all figure out that it's trying to communicate with NASA.

In the course of all this, there's a point where Decker manages to be mildly helpful via the Ilia probe sort of remembering their old relationship, and he proves his value at last by welcoming the chance to orgasmically fuse with Ilia/V'ger, while Kirk is horrified and baffled at why Decker would find this remotely appealing. (ngl Kirk in this movie feels like the most purely gay-coded iteration of him; from the film itself, I could easily believe he has lost all attraction to women at this point.)

So thankfully, we're finally free of the weird and underwhelming Decker/Ilia duo via multiple cosmic acid orgasms, and the Earth is saved, etc. In aesthetics, it's all powerfully 70s, even in the awesome strange bits before V'ger looked quite so, uh, yonic. Somehow even the new bland sleepwear version of Starfleet uniforms seem very 70s; apparently Spock's kickass robes and the muscle-revealing quasi-polo top that Kirk promptly switches into consumed all available stylishness.]

Scott: everything's fine now, so I guess we can drop you off at Vulcan, Mr. Spock

Spock: my experiences today have, uh, resolved my need to stay on Vulcan, so there's no reason to detour for me. I'll just tag along to Earth for >_> no reason

Kirk: [deeply vindicated for about the twelfth time that day, but this time also managing to exude Spock is getting laid tonight without saying a word about him] Mr. Sulu, ahead, warp one.

[liquidstar]

look this site really is awful for ppl with OCD so i just wanna reassure anyone that you are not Tainted Forever for consuming a piece of media with questionable content. the fact that youre able to recognize it speaks to your critical thinking skills, which is good, certain depictions should be critiqued. but you dont need to ruminate on it to the point where you begin to feel guilty for simply witnessing gross or creepy writing choices. you dont have to vindicate yourself to the fictional tumblr discourser inside your head, saying that youre now a bad person bc you watched the wrong anime. your actual response to it still matters of course, but thats that and this is this. just seeing it is neutral, you didnt commit a thought crime. its literally fine.

IF YOU ARE USING THIS POST TO ONLY FURTHER YOUR STUPID PEDANTIC BLACK-AND-WHITE DISCOURSE TO GET A "GOCHA" OVER THE OTHER SIDE YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. DON'T USE OUR DISORDER TO VINDICATE YOUR BEHAVIOR. THOUGHT CRIMES ARENT REAL BUT ACTIONS STILL MATTER. PEOPLE WITH OCD ARE CAPABLE OF THINKING CRITICALLY ABOUT OUR ACTIONS AND RESPONSES, EVEN WITH INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS AND RUMINATIONS. TREATING US AS IF WE CANNOT, ONLY TO FORCE US TO USE YOUR STRINGENT UNNUANCED DISCOURSE OPINIONS ABOUT "PURITY CULTURE" (TRIGGERING TO THOSE WITH OCD) AS THE ONLY REASONABLE GUIDE DOES MORE TO EXACERBATE OUR OBSESSIONS THAN HELP US. YOU ARE THE ISSUE AS WELL. YOU ARE ALSO THE TUMBLR DISCOURSER INSIDE OUR HEADS. DO NOT USE US FOR YOUR DISCOURSE. WE ARE PEOPLE, NOT HYPOTHETICALS TO USE TO EXPLAIN IF YOUR FROZEN INCEST FANFICTION IS OKAY OR NOT. TREATING US AS IF WE CANNOT AUTONOMOUSLY HAVE OUR OWN OPINIONS ON WHEN MEDIA IS TANGIBLY HARMFUL IS ABLEIST. FORCING US TO ABIDE BY YOUR IN-GROUP'S SET OF UNEQUIVOCAL MORALS IS ABLEIST. ACTING AS THOUGH THE ONLY SOLUTION FOR US IS MINDLESS MEDIA CONSUMPTION IN WHICH "EVERY DEPICTION OF XYZ, NO MATTER HOW POORLY DONE OR EXPLOITATIVE, IS ALWAYS OKAY AND IF YOU DISAGREE YOURE ACTUALLY AN EVIL 'ANTI'" IS ABLEIST. THOSE ARE THE SAME BLACK-AND-WHITE MORALS THAT SEND US INTO OBSESSIVE SPIKES, BUT FLIPPED. A SET OF MORALS IN WHICH QUESTIONING THE IMPACT OF A PIECE OF WORK MAKES YOU AN "EVIL CONSERVATIVE PURITAN "ANTI"" DOES NOT HELP MORAL OCD.

YOU ARE THE DAMN TUMBLR DISCOUERSERS MAKING THIS SHIT WORSE FOR US! YOURE THE EXACT SAME BUT WITH FLIPPED BUZZWORDS! YOU'RE MISSING THE WHOLE DAMN POINT!

[autisticrosewilson]

While we're on the topic of De-aging AU's I wanna talk about Jason and Damian if Jason was 14 again real quick.

Do you guys think that Damian looks at this version of Jason, so different from the version he knows, nothing like the person he was told Jason was, and feels uncomfortably seen?

Damian was always told that Jason died because he was reckless, because he disobeyed orders, he was fired as Robin and he got himself killed. A cautionary tale, not a threat to his position. He dismisses Jason because Bruce does, because Dick does, because sometimes even Babs and Alfred do.

That's not the kid that he's looking at now. This Jason is happy, and smart, and full of love that has not yet soured into grief. He hangs on Bruce's every word, trains until his hands bleed and his body gives out to perfect the moves Bruce teaches him. He looks at Bruce with stars in his eyes and he calls him dad.

And Damian can't help but think, that this is the perfect Robin. The perfect son. And if Jason - sweet, loving, strong, Jason - can be fired, can die and have his room locked away and his pictures torn down, can have his last memory as Robin be as A Good Soldier, how could the rest of them ever compete? What could Damian do to stand a chance?

Jason will never grow out of the shadow of Robin, like the rest of them did. As long as Bruce, and Dick, and Babs, and Alfred look at him and see a dead kid who came back wrong, he will never get to be anything else. He will not get to be looked at through who he is now without the shadow of a dead boy looming over him.

And the worst part? Jason is exactly the same person he was back then. Bitter, sure, angry, justifiably, but he is still the boy with too much love in his heart and righteous fury festering in his gut. He is exactly the same boy who threw himself in front of an explosion to save his mother.

(The lines between the mother that betrayed him and the father that disgraced him are so very blurred. Fire or blade or crowbars or fists it does not matter. It ends the same way it always does because Jason Todd always dies, in every universe, in every timeline, Jason dies and crawls out only to be killed again and again and again.)

[jakeperalta]

I've said it before that taylor's many years of receiving (often unwarranted and ridiculous) criticism have seemingly skewed her ability to pick up on what is valid criticism and what's just ""haters"" and she pretty much proved that correct with but daddy I love him and I fear that is now her attitude towards all criticism (even without the excuse of being blinded by love or whatever). which is sort of why it would probably help to be surrounded by more people who can help make that judgement of valid criticism vs celebrity hate. but alas :/

[ichliebemeinkissen]

The "certain set of transmascs/NBs who weaponize being AFAB against trans women" doesn't exist. That is a twisted statement purposefully made to rile people up & ignore how what this actually is is "transmascs telling people they experience misogyny & certain tfems who think being tfem is an argument enough for their queercourse trying to silence them becuz it doesn't fit their worldview"

[crypticcanidae]

veilguard's kinda like. the monkey's paw of videogames i think.

[dirtyassvoiceactors]

Kingsley: “How did we survive with people around like this is beyong me. Oh that’s right I didn’t, well done”

Beau: *baffled noises*

Jester: “I’m so glad you’re here with us Kingsley”

Kingsley: “ah thank you for calling by the way this is ridiculously fun”

[shorthaltsjester]

Why are your children bound by rules you will not follow?

Critical Role, Campaign 3, Downfall Parts 1-3 // Commandments of The Prime Deities according to the Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting Reborn

[wardensantoineandevka]

funniest thing the C3 Stan Twitterati doing rn is assuming people who were critical of C3 and felt the Exandrian gods shouldn't be killed to the last hate the idea GENERALLY of killing gods. like, truly kindergarten-ass engagement with media over there, acting like disliking a plot point in one context means you always hate it. like, is this how you all think of stories? that every narrative solution or development is one size fits all? why do you think the critics judge plot points out of context? is that how you do it?

why would I dislike the idea of Aramán's gods being killed just bc I didn't like it as an idea for Exandria? unserious people. the fact that this is a take I've seen multiple times is so tedious. they're separate narratives with different settings and context and story progeession.