#Right on point

[entropiasgift]

Copia finishing his first album with "If you had life eternal" and Perpetua finishing his with "I am afraid of eternity, too" has me frothing from my mouth. it hits me so hard right in the existential anxiety part of my brain that i'm doing backflips right now

[who-do-i-know-this-man]

Both Selfish; you each lose 2 points

You Selfish, prev Cooperative; You gain 2 points

You Cooperative, prev Selfish; You lose 1 point, prev gains 1 point

Both Cooperative; You Each gain 1 points

(ps make sure to say what you voted)

Making this post long so you have to scroll to see prev's tags.

[nathaniacolver]

arcane ships be like

i love a show that teaches equality (😭😭😭)

[incohorace]

what studying literature feels like

[redstonedust]

yknow AI art has ruined an entire genre of painting to me, i saw one of those smooth anime-realism pieces and immidiately thought ''ugh, AI art'' until i noticed it was posted by an established deviantart user 6 years ago. like ive never been a huge fan of that genre but it looks like a pretty difficult style to master and i feel bad for the artists who specialized in anime-realism only to have their entire market jacked by people typing keywords into midjourney.

[humming-fly]

They seem like the kind of guys who would keep count

Bonus:

[floworence]

I need to get this off my chest before I go INSANE.

"You are not immune to propaganda"

This is the main thought I have when people are talking about Effie.

Effie is a clear example of that and people are kinda missing the point.

Suzanne take time to establish that not all Capitol citizens are pure evil, even if they're not rebels. We see it in Katniss' stylists, the girl in the lemon coat, countless kids that died in that bombing, people who died at the hands of both Peacekeepers and rebels alike.

We see it in Effie.

Over the course of the series, Katniss learns that capitol citizens are humans, ones that were put under years upon years of propaganda, with no knowledge on how to behave differently.

The whole message of the series is "remember who the real enemy is". It's the higher powers oppressing people, not common people living privileged life. That is why Katniss shoots Coin, that is why Games, of any kind, had to stop.

Some people focus too much on Effie being typical capitolite, and miss the crucial element of what she is representing. She is a picture of a person who lived their whole life under propaganda and could only break away from it when faced with real facts that contradicted it. Katniss and Peeta being reaped again, shattered Effie's view on Games, making her see through the propaganda.

It doesn't make Effie evil to change only after that.

Sotr also established that Trinkets are an ostracized family, one that is least likely to rebel since they'd be the first ones to go. They need to keep being in the system to survive, they need to comply or they die.

The difference between propaganda in Captiol and Districts is simple.

Districts are confronted with harsh reality daily, Capitol isn't.

That's why propaganda in the Capitol is more effective and why it's harder to break away from it. We cannot judge those characters as if they have access to all the information we have, since it's simply not true.

Effie is a woman in a situation where it's hard to break from the hold of Capitol, from the information that's being fed to her, you have to remember that.

[thornrings]

36/64-1: art therapy?

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

haunted houses being portrayed as "infested" with evil spirits....yes obviously the house is infested it has uninvited human occupants.

you get pests you call in exterminators, just how it works

[majunju]

[siren/pirate au] info

[inkskinned]

i have chronic pain. i am neurodivergent. i understand - deeply - the allure of a "quick fix" like AI. i also just grew up in a different time. we have been warned about this.

15 entire years ago i heard about this. in my forensics class in high school, we watched a documentary about how AI-based "crime solving" software was inevitably biased against people of color.

my teacher stressed that AI is like a book: when someone writes it, some part of the author will remain within the result. the internet existed but not as loudly at that point - we didn't know that AI would be able to teach itself off already-biased Reddit threads. i googled it: yes, this bias is still happening. yes, it's just as bad if not worse.

i can't actually stop you. if you wanna use ChatGPT to slide through your classes, that's on you. it's your money and it's your time. you will spend none of it thinking, you will learn nothing, and, in college, you will piss away hundreds of thousands of dollars. you will stand at the podium having done nothing, accomplished nothing. a cold and bitter pyrrhic victory.

i'm not even sure students actually read the essays or summaries or emails they have ChatGPT pump out. i think it just flows over them and they use the first answer they get. my brother teaches engineering - he recently got fifty-three copies of almost-the-exact-same lab reports. no one had even changed the wording.

and yes: AI itself (as a concept and practice) isn't always evil. there's AI that can help detect cancer, for example. and yet: when i ask my students if they'd be okay with a doctor that learned from AI, many of them balk. it is one thing if they don't read their engineering textbook or if they don't write the critical-thinking essay. it's another when it starts to affect them. they know it's wrong for AI to broad-spectrum deny insurance claims, but they swear their use of AI is different.

there's a strange desire to sort of divorce real-world AI malpractice over "personal use". for example, is it moral to use AI to write your cover letters? cover letters are essentially only templates, and besides: AI is going to be reading your job app, so isn't it kind of fair?

i recently found out that people use AI as a romantic or sexual partner. it seems like teenagers particularly enjoy this connection, and this is one of those "sticky" moments as a teacher. honestly - you can roast me for this - but if it was an actually-safe AI, i think teenagers exploring their sexuality with a fake partner is amazing. it prevents them from making permanent mistakes, it can teach them about their bodies and their desires, and it can help their confidence. but the problem is that it's not safe. there isn't a well-educated, sensitive AI specifically to help teens explore their hormones. it's just internet-fed cycle. who knows what they're learning. who knows what misinformation they're getting.

the most common pushback i get involves therapy. none of us have access to the therapist of our dreams - it's expensive, elusive, and involves an annoying amount of insurance claims. someone once asked me: are you going to be mad when AI saves someone's life?

therapists are not just trained on the book, they're trained on patient management and helping you see things you don't see yourself. part of it will involve discomfort. i don't know that AI is ever going to be able to analyze the words you feed it and answer with a mind towards the "whole person" writing those words. but also - if it keeps/kept you alive, i'm not a purist. i've done terrible things to myself when i was at rock bottom. in an emergency, we kind of forgive the seatbelt for leaving bruises. it's just that chat shouldn't be your only form of self-care and recovery.

and i worry that the influence chat has is expanding. more and more i see people use chat for the smallest, most easily-navigated situations. and i can't like, make you worry about that in your own life. i often think about how easy it was for social media to take over all my time - how i can't have a tiktok because i spend hours on it. i don't want that to happen with chat. i want to enjoy thinking. i want to enjoy writing. i want to be here. i've already really been struggling to put the phone down. this feels like another way to get you to pick the phone up.

the other day, i was frustrated by a book i was reading. it's far in the series and is about a character i resent. i googled if i had to read it, or if it was one of those "in between" books that don't actually affect the plot (you know, one of those ".5" books). someone said something that really stuck with me - theoretically you're reading this series for enjoyment, so while you don't actually have to read it, one would assume you want to read it.

i am watching a generation of people learn they don't have to read the thing in their hand. and it is kind of a strange sort of doom that comes over me: i read because it's genuinely fun. i learn because even though it's hard, it feels good. i try because it makes me happy to try. and i'm watching a generation of people all lay down and say: but i don't want to try.

[toad-in-a-trenchcoat]

The Virgin Mary lookin’ a bit different-

prev

[prouvaireafterdark]

listen I know it's heartbreaking that Claudia dies and it's understandable to wish she didn't, but let's please not accuse the writers of fridging her. to do so is a fundamental misunderstanding of the story and is frankly insulting to the intelligence and skill of the writers of the show.

Claudia's death, and the overwhelming grief and regret her parents experience because of it, is quite literally the point of the entire story. she dies because Anne's daughter Michele died of leukemia when she was five years old and there was nothing she or her husband could do to prevent it.

writing IWTV was how Anne coped with the unimaginable loss of a parent losing her child. she created a story about a little girl that could not die and then killed her anyway. Claudia's death is a senseless, unavoidable tragedy, just like Michele's was. the grief that haunts Louis and Lestat for the rest of their lives is the same grief that haunted Anne and her husband.

so when you're accusing people of killing Claudia off to benefit a story about two men, please remember that in real life sometimes parents lose their children. please remember Michele Rice.

she's the reason Claudia exists.

she's also the reason Claudia cannot be saved.

[o0kawaii0o]

After the farmer left 🌟🌠✨

[technically-human]

First meeting

[elucubrare]

"on the one hand," i tell the late medieval monk i hang out with sometimes, "each age reconfigures the great events of history in the way that makes them most meaningful for their own time. like how you keep drawing alexander in full plate."

"he's a knight, what else would he wear"

"on the other," i continue, ignoring him, "it does make me feel like i've gone a little bit crazy when people applaud caesar's assassins as restoring power to the people. at best they wanted a different dictator for life."

"was your 1st century ad stoic friend busy or something"

"yes. anyway the point is applauding action taken for action's sake without looking at the consequences is silly. it's not like killing caesar restored the Res Publica anyway -"

"because all Caesar did was knock over its rotted corpse," he says along with me. "can i play Dark Souls in peace now?"