#anyway good concepts dubious execution

[fishuijuu]

that very polite looking evil mark with blood all over him was the best part of episode 7

[vlad-theimplier]

WIP Wednesday: Custos Custodium

In which Jensen is privileged to carry Pritchard's voice in his ear through the Palisade Property Bank. For more Pritchard, visit https://archiveofourown.org/works/55686901/chapters/141357007

“Banker’s hours” were a foreign concept to the Palisade Property Bank. In early evening, the lobby still bustled with account holders and staff. Then again, Jensen supposed, the VIP treatment included round-the-clock access for customers unused to being told no, flying into Prague from time zones the world over.

He made some inquiries, inventing a family heirloom that unscrupulous relatives had tried to pinch while the estate ground slowly through probate, and asked to look around at the secure vaults. They let him wander: the vaults were guarded by Tarvos guards and automated defenses alike, so a sightseer would be hard-pressed to make serious trouble.

A normal sightseer, at least. As Jensen made appropriate polite impressed noises over the physical security, he got a call.

“Jensen. You do like to keep things interesting, don’t you.”

“Wouldn’t want you getting rusty, Pritchard.”

“No fear. The above-ground floors were easy, all public record. The vaults, though, took some digging. I had to break into the outskirts of their security system anyway, so you’ll see on your HUD where they’ve marked out shoot-on-sight areas. Hopefully those are signed as well.”

He checked—a dashed red line of warning ran along the floor in front of the security office and across the lower lobby. “They say ‘Restricted Access.’”

“Well, they mean ‘We have carte blanche from the Czech government to murder you if you come in here.’”

“Noted.” He hadn’t even worn his armor. If he was spotted in the bank, he was sunk anyway. The dermal would have to serve, in a pinch. “Anything you can do about the countermeasures?”

“Afraid not. They’re all on an internal network air-gapped from everything else—I can’t even see them. You’re on your own from here.”

It was no more than he’d expected, although it made for a hell of a challenge. Even with his cloak, the frontal approach was right out. A laser grid on the stairs slowed him not at all, but the whole floor was scrutinized by a web of intellicam-linked turrets positioned with a care that filled him with grudging respect for the Tarvos security team. No slowly-panning cams with blind spots underneath for Palisade: they’d set two turrets looking down each length of the catwalks that joined the office spaces, one from each direction. Every blind spot was thus covered by two other cameras, and the walls were built sheer and smooth, with no alcoves to hide in and recharge. He’d lose cloak power before he hacked through a door and made it to cover again, unless he ran fast enough for the patrolling Tarvos team to hear him. Hell, these guys were good enough they might have set the cameras to cue on door motion, too.

But no one thought of everything. Smart vision let him identify the security terminal in the executive office, just at the limits of the millimeter-wave radar’s range, and a vent grille in the wall across from it. Suspiciously close to where the elevator let out, in fact. He backtracked down the stairs to the lobby and crossed to the ground floor elevator door.

Another sweep with smart vision revealed an access grille hidden behind a vending machine. Jensen looked around, saw no one nearby, and hefted the garish bulk of the vending machine carefully in his overpowered arms. Just an inch off the ground, and a little to the side, and down—with a shockingly loud crunch and jangle of cans.

A Tarvos guard stuck his head around the corner and asked in a boarding-school British accent whether everything was all right.

“Sure,” Jensen improvised frantically. “It was just sticking.” He waved his wallet past the RFID reader and jabbed a key at random. The soda fell into the slot with betraying promptness. The Tarvos guard gave him a dubious look.

Jensen held up the soda. “See? It’s, uh, lemon-lime. I wanted… orange. I thought maybe the chute was blocked or something.”

“Well… okay,” said the guard. “Just be careful. I used to work with a guy, he almost got crushed by one while he was trying to get a candy bar loose. Wouldn’t want that to happen to you.”

“Be real tragic, yeah. Good advice. I’m gonna make do with this.”

The guard nodded and walked away. Jensen pocketed the soda and slipped inside the vent feet-first, pulling a trash can in front of the opening before he closed the grille.

[f0xgl0v3]

Bryce Lawerence

Okay! Okay, I’m actually writing this. I spent my time walking to school about how much HoO doesn’t really use this character that I think would be great, but let’s start,

(P.S VARUS WILL GET HIS OWN POST)

Bryce Lawerence

If anyone needs the reminder; Bryce Lawerence is a character from BoO that tracks Nico, Reyna, and Coach Hedge down. He’s the one that like Nico turns into a ghost and drags to the underworld.

Bryce is canonically a legacy of Orcus with very potent powers- or like, he is very explicitly shown to be able to use many (not something that we see with many other Romans in HoO that aren’t the POVs)

We are told that he comes from a very high up family from New Rome (the only reason Reyna says he wasn’t executed was because his parents like paid off the senate or jury or whatever-)

And Bryce is shown to be sadistic, we are told that he tortured cats, caused chaos in the forum and supposedly killed his Centurion- despite the… dubious representation on possible mental disorders/ illnesses that could be placed on him. Rick wanted to imply that he was ‘psycho killer’ despite the stereotypes used to portray him as such.

Anyway Bryce is one of my favorite characters to emerge from HoO, which is a shame because literally like 3 other people care about him and everyone else only talks about him when in relation to Nico. But I personally think that -like many of the other members of Camp Jupiter/Romans- there was a big ball just dropped on how potentially interesting he may be! And I have concepts/headcanons/ whatever that I want to share on him :]

But Bryce Lawerence, i have to concepts for him. Personally I like the concept that (in my Re-imagining) he is the legionnaire that caused Gwen’s almost death. Though everyone decides to assume it was Octavian because apparently the POVs just want to hate him- I think it would be more interesting if it’s Bryce. Maybe before this give one of the POVs some interaction with him, or a passing thought/comment that ‘you don’t wanna hang around him Percy’ or whatever. Because that could lead to good setup to make Bryce a re-occurring problem/threat or at least give the readers a ‘OH THAT GUY!’ moment when he shows up in BoO. If we align it with how Id want a Camp Jupiter POV; like actually in CJ, love Hazel, Frank, Reyna, and not really Jason but kinda Jason but an actual character in Camp Jupiter that could give a show into what’s going on there, whether that be camera behavior OR to have actual Character; expand and help the overall characterization of CJ and it’s legionnaires, while possibly making Bryce more of a threat (Idk if that whole thing made sense)

Quick sort of related to the whole ‘when does Bryce murder his centurion’ If I remember it correctly; the book (BoO) seems to imply that it was Reyna having to deal with the trial all by herself because Jason was gone- I don’t know if I’m Misremembering but that places the fact that Bryce has (in the canon timeline) around like what, eight months to murder his centurion, get tried, and exiled before SoN? Unless we assume that he was still there while Percy was at CJ and he simply wasn’t mentioned- if so that would feel a little like a missed opportunity, and puts a remarkably short time to when he’d have to get exiled between MoA and HoH, when Reyna implies that he’s been gone for a looong time.

Which of course leads to the second concept and the probably more Canon idea. Bryce killed his centurion sometime during the second Titanomachy (Second Titan war? I don’t know what terminology we’re using at this point in time) but; this is a good way to both make it believable that the Jury, senate, whatever, would let him off with an Exile for the murder of a officer or whatever. BUT it also maps onto the implication Reyna has that its been a long time since she’s seen Bryce. Along with that what I was talking about at the beginning of this bullet point; I think they say that his Centurion was murdered during the war games but I’m not 100% on that info- but he could’ve easily had planned this to murder them during the Siege on Mt.Tam, or whatever battles there was on the Roman side. It means they’d have to rely on much more circumstantial evidence (that we’re told was already the heap of their information for the canon trial) and it could easily be taken in tandem with his family influencing his sentencing to be a exiling(?) and I think the idea makes more sense- and if we place the trial happening during TLH, it still has Reyna as the only Praetor to like do the thing.

I like giving Bryce traits like being overprotective, awkward, he attaches to people quickly, a hot-head, etc, etc. I just like giving him character traits that help give him depth- or something of the sort, in what I’m imagining it would add more of a sense of worry and dread when Bruce is friendly and seems genuinely okay, a little weird and awkward, but okay. And then a colder calculating, sadistic side. He always is sadistic I’m not saying this is like a ‘oh he snaps’ type of moment, but more of a- there are occasions when the facade slips, or times when he just does. I add poor impulse control onto lists of things that I characterize him with- either that’s out of the blue buying a new sword, or full force slamming someone into the wall.

I also consider the Lawerence family to be currently on their third generation of Demigods- or legacies? God-related. And Bryce has a younger sister. It’s not very relevant because I haven’t expanded on the concept a lot but he has a little sister that’s like 6 and they have a surprisingly good relationship.

Okay I currently feel like a sickly Victorian child on my last legs- so I’m going to wrap this post up quick, let’s hope I work of the Varus one.

[hinasho]

(Sorry for not putting this under a readmore, but for some reason like half the whole post keeps getting deleted whenever I try?? So anyways!)

I FINALLY got the courage to read the Tokyo Revengers finale and honestly?

That wasn’t bad!

Was it rushed? Oh absolutely. There’s no doubt about that. Takemichi and Mikey time traveled further back, and, without explanation, was able to befriend and recruit Izana & Taiju into Toman, help Kisaki get over his crush, rekindle the relationship between Sanzu and Senju, South is at Takemichi’s wedding bc I guess they’re friends too, and somehow Chifuyu remembers everything even though he was neither a trigger nor leaper. Like, there was quite a bunch that the finale sped through.

The good news is: I honestly think the pacing is the only problem. If there had been just a few more chapters to show us how Mikey and Takemichi accomplished all this, even if in just a montage/brief snippets, then that would’ve been fine. And while personally I theorized a bittersweet ending, I’m not mad at the one we got. It’s 100% certified fluff. I didn’t expect it, but I’m okay with it.

Because, as Chifuyu explains, Takemichi fought for this outcome with an unstoppable drive. With literal blood sweat and tears, dying in brutal ways, watching loved ones die in equally terrible ways, over and over again. I do not know if I would’ve preferred a bittersweet ending or not (gotta think about it), regardless, I can’t say this wholesome finale was unearned. Takemichi went through a lot to get here.

Also, Mikey and Takemichi back in time together does makes some sense. It was clear the only way things could be fixed was if Takemichi made one final leap further in the past. It was really just the specific how and when that needed to be answered, which were.

The mere concept of someone else in the past that remembers everything besides Takemichi is really satisfying. Like he says, he’s been doing this alone. A few critiques I’ve seen for this line were fans saying “Takemichi is dismissing Naoto and Chifuyu” and like… no, not really.

Naoto only regained his memories when Takemichi travelled back to the future/present. Past!Naoto had no memories of Takemichi’s leaps nor could help in anyway. Chifuyu is Michi’s best friend and provided support whenever he could, but he also only had the memories of his current timeline and could not relate to the horrors Takemichi experienced alone. So for Mikey to now also have traveled back to the past, with his FULL memory of the things that happened, Takemichi can finally share the weight of trying to fix everyone’s futures while remembering exactly how wrong things can go.

Overall, I’d say I’m content with the ending. Could it have been executed better? For sure! Could it have been resolved in a different way, possibly one even more satisfying? Maybe! But I’m not mad at what we got. Despite the dubious execution, the concepts handled were satisfying. Now I’m just curious how Wakui plans to do it in the anime. Based on the touch ups we’ve seen so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if he adds more details to the anime version of the finale.

[bestworstcase]

how's everyone in bitter snow feel about the justice system in Corona? also how are the guards in bitter snow, how do these people treat their positions as guards?

okay anon you said “everyone” so like

gonna talk specifically about all the character’s perceptions right now, as of chapter 9, because a lot of these feelings evolve over the course of benighted and also the rest of the series 👍

major characters!

cassandra!

she is well aware of the harshness of the system. her own birth parents were executed for their crimes—we’ll get more into that later >:)—and given who her father is and what her aspirations are, she knows some of the more unsavory details about what guard work can mean. there is a part of her that is… uncomfortable with this, but she rationalizes it as a discomfort related to feeling like she’s trapped in the shadow of the (very serious) crimes for which her parents were executed. she has very much drunk the kool-aid that all of this stuff is correct and just because it’s only being done To Criminals, who of course are not like regular people, who must be protected From Criminals (like her parents, there’s this whole nasty feedback loop of self-disgust going on with this). 

she also very much has her dad on a pedestal and doesn’t want to think badly about anything he does, and she wants to make him proud, and in her mind making him proud = succeeding as a guard. so that’s another huge thing tilting her in favor of the coronan justice system. 

rapunzel!

i don’t think rapunzel has quite made the connection between the existence of the king’s watch and what they actually do, which is arrest people and feed them into the horrible justice system. she knows that eugene was arrested and nearly hanged, and she doesn’t feel good about that, but she also has not been exposed to this system as a… daily thing with a wider scope than simply being something eugene escaped from. she has a very particular kind of self-centered naivety where it is still hard for her to grasp that people… exist, outside of her life, almost like a lack of object permanence where the concept of Other People is concerned? because she grew up in a tower with nobody but gothel. she’s beginning to develop inklings of this, but it’s not there yet, and with frederic and everyone in the palace actively trying to shelter her from the more upsetting pieces of palace life still, she’s still kind of navigating around obstacles that she can’t see in order to get there.

anyway all of which is to say she’s laboring under the impression that everything in corona is hunky dory. still very much in the homecoming honeymoon phase.

eugene!

eugene is in this weird transitional place where he, by his own actions in the last chapter, has been rather rudely shocked out of his own complacency and now he’s looking around at all the luxuries and privileges he has been granted purely by virtue of being the guy who happened to bring rapunzel home and he’s going: oh. oh i didn’t earn any of this actually. 

he knows exactly what corona is like. if you’re a thief in this world you know not to get arrested in corona. and he did get arrested in corona and he came very close to losing his life because of it. for a while there, i think he just fully embraced his pardon and decided to live it up because, well, why not, it’s what he deserves after a lifetime of hard living and fighting to survive… but fundamentally, he’s not an asshole even if he is sometimes an ass, and the more he lets go of the flynn rider persona the more his natural empathy reasserts itself. right now, his focus is on being better for rapunzel, but i think he sort of has in the back of his mind how very, very lucky he got in his brush with the coronan justice system and that inclines him to at least feel… dubious about becoming a cog in it. 

lance!

he’s sort of similar to eugene, in that he has this criminal background and he knows exactly what sort of reputation corona has in the criminal world… but there’s also this element of, he’s sort of… adjacent to law enforcement now. thief-takers are sort of like private investigators and sort of like bounty hunters, and they exist in the weird margin between law enforcement and criminal activity and lance has this very personal experience of having been sort of… invited into that space as an opportunity to reform his ways, and that worked for him.

i think he and eugene could probably have a really interesting conversation not too far down the line about how they got out of the thieving business and became better people and ways that could be applied on a broader scale versus just chucking everyone in prison, which i imagine tends to be the default not just in corona but in most countries in this region. lance sees his experiences helping victims of theft as intrinsically linked to his personal decision to never steal again, whereas eugene reformed because rapunzel, specifically, treated him with compassion and dignity. put those two things together and you have a decent platform for a restorative approach to criminal justice. 

varian!

varian is a kid. he has no clue about anything but his alchemy lol. i think he probably has a lot of romanticized notions of adventurous thieves in the vein of flynn rider and is accustomed to seeing guards/watchmen as The Enemy through that lens, but he has very very little actual real world experience with either and to him it all has this aura of fiction. it’s something that happens To Other People, not to him. 

caine!

caine saw the coronan justice system tear her family apart when she was nine years old, over a petty theft her father committed to feed his starving family. also, she’s saporian, so she has this extra pile of cultural grudges against corona in addition to this personal trauma. she hates corona, and unlike in canon—where the narrative need to make everything About Rapunzel demanded that her motivations be dumbed down—she puts the blame for what happened to her squarely where it belongs, on king frederic’s crackdown and the system backing it. though she’s not a separatist herself, she’s perfectly happy to work with them to attack corona, and she sees her piracy as… sort of a campaign against corona and its allies? in that she targets mostly trading vessels belonging to the seven kingdoms and has definitely liberated coronan prison barges in the past. 

as far as she’s concerned corona can just burn. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ up saporia

sirin! 

…honestly you’d be hard pressed to find anybody who hates coronan justice more than sirin does because [spoilers lol]. she keeps it on a very tight lock, because she is a pragmatist first and foremost and she isn’t interested in expending her rage on a doomed cause. when she acts on her hatred, she wants it to matter. and she’s also a leader, with a lot of vulnerable people relying on her to keep them safe, so she can’t just lash out the way she might want to if she had no other obligations. so she’s cultivated this very cold, very methodical anger and is proceeding with her plan very carefully but also, definitely enjoyed getting her hands bloody in the prologue. 

assorted secondary and minor characters (just the ones i feel like talking about, rip to everyone else)

commander peter!

it is peter’s job to enforce the coronan justice system. fundamentally, he has to agree with it. i think he has this ideal of what justice should be in the back of his mind and he sees all the ways that coronan justice doesn’t line up, and he’s trying his best to close those gaps while working from within the system. he cares very intently about his country and its people, and he firmly believes that he’s working to keep everybody safe—even if it comes at the cost of this harsh, sometimes unfair system. 

as part of this, he keeps very high standards of conduct for his watchmen. abuses of power do happen—peter can’t always be watching every single man in his force, and while he ostensibly commands the city watches in the rest of corona’s city’s too, in practice his influence tapers off outside of herzingen simply because of distance—but he tries to stamp them out as best he can.

(there’s definitely a big range within the king’s watch itself vis a vis how the guards approach their work. i think, taken on average, they... are cops. their job is to enforce the system first and foremost and they wouldn’t get into that career if they didn’t believe in it; some try to be more compassionate about it than others and some are just in it for the authority but they’re all... working to serve the system.)

arianna!

she’s both a foreigner originally—she was born and raised in eldora, one of corona’s neighbors—and very well traveled, so she has seen a lot of other models of justice in action and this leads to her taking a dim view of the way corona handles things. i think she and frederic probably have a lot of heated arguments about his crackdown in particular, and it’s one of the biggest points of contention in their marriage. she does often succeed in being a moderating voice, and i imagine she is a vocal proponent for reform not just in corona but in the seven kingdoms generally, but unfortunately she has no real authority in corona (because frederic is the monarch, not her) so her influence in this regard is limited. 

frederic!

in contrast to arianna, frederic i think truly believes that cracking down harder on crime is the only way to make it go away. he’s thinking about how a criminal in a jail cell is a criminal who isn’t out on the streets hurting people, rather than thinking about where these criminals are coming from in the first place. he listens to arianna—and to ludolf and peter, who are other moderating voices in this regard—but he also has a very hard time stepping out of this mindset of “we just need to take the bad people and put them somewhere else so the good people will be safe.” in a way, i think he has a very similar mindset to rapunzel in that they both tend to engage in black-and-white thinking, but where rapunzel sees only the good parts of the world, frederic tends to see things in the most bleak light possible. 

gilbert! 

gilbert is a career military guy in a kingdom with no standing army during a time of peace. this… absolutely has an impact on his approach to domestic justice, and in particular he takes the attitude that criminals and dissidents are The Enemy. he feeds into frederic’s worst impulses and fears because in his mind, frederic is too cowardly to do what must be done to quash The Threat. i think… like frederic a lot of this ultimately comes from a desire to keep corona safe, he’s just jumped fully overboard into not considering the “wrong” sort of coronan part of the country he wants to protect. and then him seeing everything through this military lens is fuel on that fire. 

ludolf! 

he’s a champion of compassion. he hates the existence of the prison barges and the gallows, but i think he also does not have much in the way of actionable alternatives; he’s has this kind of idealized, almost rapunzel-esque idea that if they just apply a little faith and goodwill then the problems can be solved (and this tends to weaken his stance politically, because he runs into the “well then what do you propose we do” problem; he works best in tandem with someone like arianna or peter, both of whom are details people who can come up with real solutions). 

quirin! 

having been… sort of? the closest thing aphelion had to law enforcement back in the day, i think he has strong opinions on corona’s system—namely that it’s all wrong—but he keeps them to himself because he’s not one to talk about the past in general and he’s also well aware that in corona, he’s just some peasant and his opinions aren’t wanted. mostly, he tries to keep his head down, keep himself and his kid out of trouble, and focus on preserving the simple life he has constructed for himself. 

(in aphelion, i think criminality was dealt with through the moonstone cult—this decayed somewhat over the course of the dedication, as aphelionese people lost their strong connection with the moonstone, but the basic philosophy still remained, and the basic philosophy was “work to understand the root of the problem, then shine the light of truth and understanding on it until the problem reveals its solution”)

adira!

adira very much thinks coronans are all a bit nuts and unlike quirin is not at all shy about voicing this thought when it happens to come up on the rare occasion that she stops being a vagrant long enough to talk to somebody. but that doesn’t happen very often. mostly she’s been too focused on searching for the sundrop and fixing the moonstone to care much about what corona does with its criminals, but also if she were directly asked she’d be like “were you trying to create a criminal assembly line? because that’s what you did” lol

nigel!

i think nigel is a very fearful person in general but this also wars with a degree of practicality. the notion of criminals frightens him but he can also recognize that many people turn to crime out of desperation or fear, and he has a tough time navigating this dissonance. on the whole i think he’d tend to lean toward whoever argued the most reasonably on any specific subject where coronan justice is concerned, which in practice means he ends up aligned with peter a lot—he respects peter’s authoritative experience in dealing with criminals, and peter tends toward this reasonable-sounding, incremental reform approach to the system that speaks to both nigel’s fearfulness and his practical side. 

feldspar! 

he’s in kind of an uncomfortable situation, in that he is saporian but i don’t think he is particularly open about that fact and would really prefer his coronan neighbors not… know about it. because being saporian, he has a clearer view of how the coronan justice system disadvantages his people and how the crackdown landed especially hard on saporia. i think he lives in perpetual anxiety over the possibility of getting in trouble or being accused of a crime and having his whole life destroyed as a result. also with his friendship with cass, there’s definitely a part of him that wants to just. shake her. until she wakes up to the injustices being done; but he’s far too anxious to actually do something like that so whenever she starts going on about being a guard he’s just kinda like :| 

xavier!

as the royal blacksmith and thus supplier of the weapons and armor used by the king’s watch, he has this closeness to the law enforcement side of it that definitely biases him a bit in favor of them; they’re one of his primary customers and biggest sources of business. but also, he’s a very intelligent, very well-read person, and i feel like he spent some time traveling in his youth, so he’s in a similar boat to arianna where he knows for a fact that this is not the only or the best way to do things and he could probably be coaxed into a lengthy conversation about it with the right questions. 

[kinkymagnus]

Your fics are honestly super healthy the way all fics should be. I was so against ABO fics because most of them involve rape and what's consent? When I read your fic it was honestly so amazing. Why can't some authors understand that while yes being a dom means somewhat liking rough sex at times doesn't mean you can just implicate violence and dubious consent everywhere.

thank you i’m glad lskfgjlkd 

honestly i just. really love ships i write about to be like, super healthy, because it feels so weird and wrong when they’re not?? like it’s ooc and weird and icky and not hot at all. ROLEPLAY of stuff that would be terrible if real (like power imbalances or dubcon or whatever)? yeah i can see that, i’m cool with that. but like, actually bad/dark/unhealthy malec??? no thanks.

and yeah same like i really love a/b/o as a concept but i hate the execution a lot of the time like????? honestly tho. knotting, heats/ruts, self-lubrication, mating bonds, lowkey mpreg??? there’s lots of good story potential without just having it be cruel/uncaring dom/alpha raping soft/submissive/helpless sub/omega????? like... 

there’s angst potential (”alphas have treated me badly before and now i’m scared of being knotted/mated to an alpha...”) or funny/awkward situations that can be like, kinda awkward but generally with the right amount of communication/consent can be super hot (”oops! my heat came early!”) and kinky shit (knOTTING) and fluff (pregnancy, even though super inaccurate in fics like this, can lead to so much cute fluff and family love and shit okay) and etc. but people waste it for this shit. why do y’all even like ooc characterization and creepy rapey shit anyway?? you can do angst and hot heat sex in a/b/o aus without this okay

and YEAH like rough/kinky sex =/= unhealthy and violent relationship wtf why do people do this

you can have a dom who loves to take their sub to poundtown and still have them love their sub and be gentle with them and not hurt them????? you can have kinky rough sex without unhealthy relationships??? dfgkhjkflghj

anyWAY thank you so much!!! i’m glad you like them, and i really hope more people will write fics with romantic sweet a/b/o and dom/sub relationships

[jbeshir]

Why I Think Rationalist Self-Help Is Broken

So I was asked, fairly reasonably, after in my previous post I said I thought I might have had a narrow escape from a self-reinforcing set of bad approaches to mental health and executive functioning issues, what approaches I was thinking of, exactly.

This is a list of approaches I think are wrong, and the consensus around them in the self-help parts of the rationalist community (e.g. all the praxis/gnosis type channels I’ve encountered on rat!Discord) is a big part of why I no longer frequent those spaces and now consider myself rat!adjacent, centrally an EA, and more likely to pursue skeptic communities or other communities to try to find ones whose flaws I am happier living with, rather than expanding engagement with rationalist communities. Although I insist, as an unrepentant Yudkowskian, the rationalist community moved away from me and not visa versa.

If you’re a rationalist with “post rationalist” leanings who doesn’t want to read a list of reasons why I think you suck right now, I recommend not expanding this post; I’m going to try to be as polite as I can about it all and stuff, but at the end of the day the topic of the post is the topic of the post.

So, the approaches I think are bad, some with particular justification and some just by correlation to the rest.

Drug addiction/recreational drugs as coping mechanism. A bit ago I commented “alcoholism is cool so long as you swap out the drug”, sardonically, and someone responded to say that actually, they endorsed that, so this is an actual point of disagreement.

I think the primary problem with using incapacitating recreational drugs as a balm within your coping mechanism is that it provides an extremely good avenue for escapism, which is a really tempting way to buy a balm for today at the cost of tomorrow. Additionally, I think it readily leads to a thing where people can’t function sober because their coping strategy is unavailable, and can’t function high because, well, they’re high. And yet there is a lot of “oh, you feel bad? Let me help you get some weed”. Arguments about handling existing addicts aside, this is I think probably one of the ways people move into a rationalist cluster and then decline because of “helpful” peers sharing their escapism.

I miss straight-edge LW-rationality where my willingness to countenance alcohol put me at the questionable end of the spectrum.

A bunch of stuff tied up in the assumption that normal friendship and relationships are impossible for many people in the community and therefore people should be grateful to have friends and relationships at all. This particularly leads to the idea of the whole “catgirl” thing where you can apply any kind of costs to the people around you so long as you’re a catgirl for them, because both they and you assume that they can’t get friends anywhere else.

This is not actually true! Being friends with people who are... a bit high maintenance is great, but you shouldn’t do it out of the feeling that they are the only people who will be friends with you. It’s not true. and people shouldn’t feel like they can be as high maintenance as they want so long as they play catgirl.

When I got over this, approximately concurrent with me starting therapy and reinforced by an increase in RL socialisation they encouraged at the time, I flipped out a little and quit most of the circles I was in for a bit. I don’t need to be friends with people who borrow hundreds of pounds from me and have no shame about not paying it back to have friends, and any interactions with people who think I do are going to involve them taking liberties. I’m back in parts I like now, but without the previous “I need to cling to this community” feel.

Most stuff involved in thinking about social status and auras, and social reality, more likely if it promises to be looking at social reality for “real” when everyone else isn’t. These things are real, but... the only way I can really put the issue is... “wow, autistics are really bad at distinguishing between good and bad social models”. If the models pick up on one dynamic that a naive model doesn’t, they’re adopted without question, no matter what other cases they get wrong. And boy, do they get things wrong.

“Sometimes an impression of a person having an effective aura picks up on evidence that you would consciously miss about them being competent” => “The halo effect isn’t a bias anymore, it’s actually the correct way you should be approaching your decisions, your feels of a person’s aura is a better assessment of their competence than any assessments you might make away from those feels”, is every rationalist talking about how their in person interactions indicate a person actually has brilliant models despite everything they ever wrote being evaluated as awful when actually analysed blind. And it is frustrating as hell.

Auras and social reality offer a tempting opportunity to be the holders of a cynical secret, but taking that opportunity in no way requires people to actually adopt better models, and since the matter is complex enough that adopting better models is genuinely hard, that generally doesn’t happen. More common is brazen self-justification; the more you describe the rest of the world as sucking and focus on that the less your flaws show up relatively. The more you talk about your version of social reality, the less you have to pay attention to actual reality.

(I vaguely associate this stuff with Vassar’s group? But by now it’s the default.)

Trying to invent their own novel forms of therapy instead of (rather than as well as) going to actual therapists.

I think trying to execute therapy without being a therapist would be fair enough just because therapists are expensive, but some effort to actually be aware of what therapy generally entails rather than just sticking the name “therapy” on any series of actions you think is helpful would be good.

Hypnosis for mental health assistance and anything involved in exploiting suggestibility. This is mostly correlational- I observe a very strong correlation between cultivating suggestibility and a tendency to lack direction and an internal moral sense. But I also observe a lot of enthusiasm and no results, which is sufficient in itself to be dubious of it as a strategy.

Internal Family Systems; there’s a definite thing of temporarily disassociating to regain functionality temporarily I’ve seen people do which... I guess worked for them, I don’t want to recommend it but I can’t discourage it either.

But reifying things you are conflicted over into multiple personalities seems in the many cases I’ve seen it to let you keep both sides of the conflict, and I think that’s often not a good idea. The part of your thinking which is saying “actually, I don’t want to have this trait” should not be satisfied by being split off into a different personality unit than the trait.

I’m not sure it is something that can’t work to actually make progress in internal conflict, but I don’t think it looks like it is working the way I see it tried. I hear actual therapists touch on the concept, but I’d assign a probability of 80% that they do it different in a substantive manner.

I think peer support centred around validation has a tendency to validate behaving toxically. This isn’t rationalist exclusive, but is a problem with its self-improvement channels.

Separated out so you can more easily say you hate this bit while agreeing the above is bad: I also think it has a tendency to validate inaction. You don’t need to do X because Y. It’s okay to spend your time high because Z anyway. As a throwaway thing from a friend to a friend, well, there are worse crimes than bending epistemology while being supportive. As a culture, gets a bit crab bucket-y.

Part of the problem, I think, is that these traits tend to overlap and seem to reinforce each other. Once you get into some you get a bunch of the rest, and then you can’t update out because of the mutual reinforcement. The stuff you hear against your weed habit? Clearly just people manipulated by state propaganda trying to increase their own social standing. The stuff you hear against social power? It definitely seems to help in whatever hypnotic/suggestibility stuff you’re playing with. Why go to a therapist when they don’t understand social reality? And such. I never particularly bought into any of them, and am quite glad I did not.

I’ll mention messing with self-identity as something which is more good than bad. It doesn’t work, I think, if you detach yourself from reality enough that you can sustain a positive self-identity without actually... being positive, which is a problem that exists. It’s often done very poorly. But it’s still better than the way people readily self-identify as negative things by default. People are at least aware that negative identity is much more self-fulfilling than positive, and if you let something negative in there that wasn’t definitely true by accident then it will tend to become true.

Also, while I now no longer agree with the part of it based on IFS, I like the rest of the Luminosity sequence as a “soft sequence”, based on novel ideas, which I think is good for self-improvement; it focuses on self-observation to gain a more accurate self-model, and I think this largely works and is positive.

(On the Hammertime sequence in particular, I’ve not read it yet.)

[takaraphoenix]

Movie Review: Reign of the Supermen

When you spent the whole movie-series so far setting Clark/Diana up and then without any explanation whatsoever drop that and introduce Clark/Lois as somehow already established in theprevious movie where you 'kill off' Clark... you... you are not even really trying to make me care about a ship I already dislike anyway... So that was kind of not really the best set-up to presenting a Superman movie where Lois Lane is the primary protagonist...

And also: Killing Superman off in your first Superman standalone movie is a horrendously stupid move... and then having Lane, who was so far not even close to an important character in this series, be the main character of your second Superman movie is... a very dubious decision in general.

Honestly, I'm genuinely salty that the animated universe I have come to love so much rushed into this like that. Just... Just one regular actual Superman movie. That's all I would have wanted. One Superman is the hero and saves the day standalone movie before you ‘kill off’ Superman. This universe has three standalone Batman movies. Three. Really, Superman deserved at least one real actual proper movie where he gets to be the protagonist throughout the entire damn movie! I had hoped this universe would do it right, would do it in the proper order.

They also could have maybe attempted to, I don't know, make Lois and Diana not look the same? Same height, same facial structure, same length of the same dark hair, both blue eyed. Give one a lighter shade of brunette, a different hair-style, heck a different skin-color – even among white people you can still have different shades of white, you know, they don't all have to be the same shade of pale! Even keeping both blue-eyed, brunette white, you could have at least tried.

Connor as a little punk with an undercut is... weird. I have grown so accustomed to the broody, moody version?? But he's adorable though! I really hope he joins the Teen Titans in their next movie. (And gods am I still craving a universe where SuperWonder raise Connor...)

Clark with long hair though. Long hair and the scruff. Makes him look... very much like Bucky Barnes somehow?? Huh. Weird. Still, having Superman join his own movie after an hour... damn.

So yeah, overall, I'm salty to have the second Superman standalone movie be a Lois Lane and not a Clark Kent movie because that's just weird and as someone who really does not like Lois... watching this was a bit like getting your wisdom teeth pulled... It wasn't a bad concept or even a bad execution of what they had planned, but it was the third in a trilogy where they forgot to make the first and rushed from the second to the third within too short a time. I did enjoy Connor and I like Steel and it really was an interesting/good movie for the most part... but... the universe's pacing there, as well as my personal dislike of Lois did put a damper on it for me.

[atakportal]

Space tech has outpaced space law, and we’re at risk of killing innovation – TechCrunch

New Post has been published on https://idealz.cloud/2018/07/11/space-tech-has-outpaced-space-law-and-were-at-risk-of-killing-innovation-techcrunch/

Space tech has outpaced space law, and we’re at risk of killing innovation – TechCrunch

Lyon Brad King Contributor

Lyon Brad King is chief executive and co-founder of Orbion Space Technology and the Ron and Elaine Starr Professor in Space Systems, Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics, at Michigan Technological University.

“Disruption” is a term (over)used in the technology world to describe some development or product that is inherently good. The formal definition of the term, however, is at odds with its casual use: a disruption is a ‘disturbance or problem that interrupts an event, activity, or process.’ Right now, space tech is currently experiencing both flavors of disruption.

Reliable estimates indicate that, within the next 5-7 years, the inhabitants of the Earth will launch more satellites into space than have been launched in the history of our planet up until now. This is a disruption in the best sense, however, there’s a serious problem: we’re at a very real risk of crushing our own excitement and stalling our progress towards the stars. Space policy hasn’t been high on our government’s to-do list, and this unfortunate regulatory neglect means that today’s most innovative companies’ plans are being disrupted by stuffy, antiquated rules and regulations.

Image: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Existing space policy

For those who haven’t recently brushed up on existing space policy, a widely adopted international agreement called the “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies” was negotiated, signed, and drafted in 1967 by the United Nations. Commonly referred to as The Outer Space Treaty, the agreement dictates that each nation be responsible for all and any of the space activities originating from their nation — whether they’re conducted by citizens, companies, or the government itself. Each must also maintain full jurisdiction and control over all space objects originating from their country.

It is noteworthy that, at the time the treaty was signed, nobody could fathom that commercial companies might want anything to do with outer space, let alone launch their own satellites

Permits… and the FCC

OK, so the US government is responsible for our space activity and space objects, right? That means it somehow needs to know — and track — anyone and anything that goes up, and this is no small task. It’s not like we can perform mandatory vehicle inspections when satellites cross the Karman Line, marking the border between atmosphere and space. So how do we track them? By issuing permits before they launch. And while we’re talking about word definitions, ‘permit’ loosely translates to ‘huge government bureaucratic morass.’

The current system in place involves getting permission from the FCC, which is strange because when you think ‘satellites’, I highly doubt that the FCC comes to top-of-mind as the appropriate expert agency. The logic goes that if you’re planning to launch an object into space, then surely you’re planning to communicate with it somehow — whether by beaming up commands or beaming down data — and this requires the use of radio frequencies, which are coordinated by the FCC. If you’re going to be making a call to the FCC anyway, then this might be an appropriate place to conduct a ‘vehicle inspection’ and put a permit sticker on the back of your satellite.

The problem is that the FCC now becomes the gatekeeper for all things related to satellites, extending to many checkboxes that have nothing to do with radio frequencies. For instance, the FCC requires all permit applicants to prove that their satellite won’t cause injury or harm when/if it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere. You may not be surprised to learn that such a calculation involves more than a couple of dubious assumptions and some fuzzy math, and perhaps another agency (ahem, NASA?) might be better suited to checking this.

Among the many checkboxes, the FCC also requires launch permit applicants to prove that their satellites will be ‘trackable’ in space so that they can be monitored ostensibly, to foresee potential collisions with other satellites. It was this requirement that disrupted satellite manufacturer Swarm Technologies, who applied for FCC permission to launch their tiny SpaceBee satellites to disrupt the Internet of Things from space (see what I did there with ‘disruption?’). Now, these satellites are smaller than pretty much anything ever put into orbit — an enviable innovation! — and so the FCC determined that they might not show up on the usual radars used to track satellites. Permit denied. Which is confusing, since smaller satellites have been permitted and launched by the same agency.

Consequences for startups

The logical path forward is to appear before the FCC with hat in hand and appeal for a legitimate permit. This is the way things have been done in the past, when it took 10 years for giant aerospace companies to build a satellite; there was plenty of time to wait for bureaucracy.  But put yourself in the seat of a disruptive startup who is building an entire small satellite in a few months: your company is consuming venture cash at a steady burn rate towards zero and you need to demonstrate your tech in space to get your next pile of cash. If you take a number in the FCC lobby and wait your turn, then the likely outcome is that your permit will be delivered to the address of a bankrupt company.

Faced with the prospect of this, there’s no doubt that ambitious and bold startups will be tempted to push the boundaries and see just how severe the penalties will be for operating sans permit (and in fact, that seems to be the path taken by the Swarm team). At this point, nobody really knows what the real consequences are. In the worst case, they will destroy the entire business of the startup that dares, but then bankruptcy might have been pretty much guaranteed anyway, based on the undetermined time of the FCC appeal process.  An interesting alternative exists: a company can try to export their satellite to another country and try their hand in that country’s space permitting process. Needless to say, federal regulations that encourage US companies to take their tech offshore are not how we want to do business, and oh-by-the-way satellite export laws are such a mess they make the launch-permitting process look like buying an entrance pass to a national park in comparison.

Archinaut, a robotic system developed by Made in Space, can manufacture, assemble and repair satellites, spacecraft or other large equipment in zero gravity.

Fixing a broken system for the new space era

How do we fix a broken system? You can bet we won’t alter international treaties any time soon, so it’s safe to assume we’re stuck with what’s set forth by The Outer Space Treaty. One foreseeable option by the government would be to put stronger teeth into existing policies and laws, so that devastating penalties are issued to any renegade companies. The effect of this would be predictable: emerging startups with exciting new ideas will be stifled, while the corporate giants of the space industry’s old guard will remain untouched. On the other hand, the government could choose to look the other way and merely slap wrists, but this could invite even more dangerous and egregious violations down the line that would prove hazardous to the responsible space actors.

Because of the Outer Space Treaty, the US will always be required to monitor and track all satellites from our nation. Concepts like the space-equivalent of the FAA have been proposed, as have mandatory radio-beacons on each satellite, self-identifying them like ships at sea.  So far, this is all just chatter and nothing has been enacted. In the meantime, the New Space renegades will continue to explore the boundaries by pushing them, while the old guard will express outrage over the insolence of the disrespectful youngsters. It may be that the only solution is for the new explorers to self-organize and self-police to bring order to the chaos.

In any case, we are in dire need of a forward-thinking approach to space policy and regulation that includes and goes beyond just Earth-orbiting satellites. If our government continues to ignore the need for comprehensive space policy that is expandable to pervasive commercial activity, it’s just a matter of time before a major civil, commercial, or international dispute occurs in space that could prove legally catastrophic.

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[pikkington]

So we’re nearing the end of episodes I have basic plot summaries for.  Episode 9, “Grossberg’s Return,” wherein they set up a great overarching plot for season 2, but ABC has other plans.  ANYWAY,

Ah, another tele-ection episode.

And we just open with a shirtless scene.

Porky's Landing is a really bad soap opera, but it’s a little tough to tell because the filming set-up is the same as the show.  WHY IS IT FILMED LIKE-

A jab at Ms. Formby.  That’s catty, unnamed token female executive.

GROSSBERG.  I'm just kidding, this is literally the name of the episode.

"Snow White and the Baby Eaters."

Bryce is friends with someone at 66.  Ooh, and she's really up front about them LYING.

So the kids at ACS graduate at ten, but they’re also inducted at ten?

ETHICALLY DUBIOUS.  PERFECTLY LEGAL.  WHY AM I SURPRISED, THE LAST TIME THEY NEGOTIATED WHO WOULD WIN.

Ooh, Grossberg's touchy about working with Cheviot.

This show loves destroying my headcanons, doesn't it?  All it was was Murray had a wife.  That was it.  Okay, there was more, but still.

EDISON YOU CAN'T CALL HER SHIRTLESS

Ohh, Theora's with a man~  And Edison's upset~

So is this tele-election for local offices or is this, like, for the president?

Show, please, at least have Max have his own show, just let me have one headcanon.

"Another plague of frogs."  I'M SORRY YOU WANNA ELABORATE?  NO? OKAY.

I love how everyone has last names except for Murray.

Grossberg, taking it personal, aren't we?

OKAY SO Max is just straight-up the "first computer generated person."  WHY DO PEOPLE CALLING HIM PRIMITIVE?  Is it for future viewers?  Did they know the CGI wouldn't age well, or that graphics would change?

*hears vaguely Japanese accent* *squints suspiciously*

OH WAIT THAT'S THE DUDE.  KIRSLER.

Grossberg knows how to play them like a fiddle, huh?

Max was eavesdropping on the phone.  Do you know how NOSY that is?

Angela, sweetie, what is with that hat.  It has fabric in the back divided into two flaps.

Editorializing a bit, aren't we, unnamed Network 66 reporter?

DRAG 'EM MAX!  Seriously, though, Theora, Edison, you guys are adults, talk it out.

Indian presenter slamming the whole system.

"Well, we saw a bit of her front." Ashwell, you're trying.

Grossberg what.  WHAT.

Grossberg, what's your game?  You’re outing the head executive?

Totally unrelated, but this is supposed to be the antagonists' boardroom, but it's not evil enough.  I mean, everything is done in marble, so it leans into it but it's not...EVIL boardroom like 23.

WAS THIS JUST A POWER PLAY GROSSBERG.  WAS IT FOR THE RATINGS.

So, wait, it wasn't for ratings???

Evil boardroom!

Moral choice my butt, you don't like Peller.

"This is one tele-election the public's going to win."  IS THIS SOMETHING YOU SHOULD BE OPEN ABOUT?!  AGAIN WHY AM I SURPRISED?

Someone else won!  Edison threw BOTH of them under the bus.

Okay, this is the first time someone other than Max has made eye contact with the camera, and it was to...impart wisdom?  Cheviot said the public couldn’t be fooled when it came to voting, which is why they piled on to Rivers on a different network.

MURRAY'S THROWING DOWN!

EVERYONE'S FIGHTING NOW!  EVEN MAX WANTS TO JOIN!

I like that they brought Grossberg back.  I guess they wanted an overarching antagonist for season 2, and he was a good one.  He feels personally slighted, he’s the perfect level of crazy, and watching him go down would be satisfying.  Also, it’s clear Grossberg has no problem with underhanded tactics, seeing he hired two goons to dump a still-alive-but-unconscious Edison at a body bank just so he wouldn’t have to deal with bad publicity.  Didn’t really like the subplot, at least the bits with Theora and Edison sniping at each other.  Guys you are ADULTS, talk it out.  And then kiss, you two clearly like each other.

This is a little irrelevant, but the worldbuilding in his show is superb.  At the very least, they understand the concept of “show don’t tell,” because this is the second time I’ve seen a tele-election play out and it just hit me that this world had done away with the electoral college and the two-party system, and made voting accessible for everyone, because all you have to do is watch the channel backing your favorite candidate.  And all of this is represented by graphics on a TV screen.