#meaning and structure

[theartingace]

Murderbot meets ART (who knew transports could be smart enough to be MEAN)

[avaguenotion]

12.22.2023 - whatever. write. meaning and structure.

and labyrinth form sun. Right. The thing is I love the idea of writing. I love the idea of sitting and composing words and evoking imagery and metaphor and meaning and all that. I even like the idea of end rhymes and other kinds of poetic structure. The problem is that when I begin the process I am disheartened. Everything to blame is because of the antipsychotic. My life is ruined because of the antipsychotic drugs. It is truly because of antipsychotics that I cannot handle the process of writing in its fullness and that my intellect and sensory capacities are all in various states of ruin. And so I write. With "Rays of the Sun" by OM blasting in my ears. Because.... forgive me: altered in the substrate by neural mechanism and judgement that has sealed my fate at present and upon this date I in my inner prison have endeavored to convey a glimpse of what has occurred since the dawning of the invasion the process of taxation the systematic elimination of humanity upon this sphere and my ficticious malady never seems to disappear what with the crescent and the crucifix and all the horror in between circa 2023 as I stare upon the screen composing in my lucid liquid crystal dream the epic poem. i am the bard. i am reminded that this shit is hard. it is i who longs to remain unseen and yet have the meaning conveyed to you incoherent I intend not to confuse you i know not what to do forgive me: for my entire body down to the fingertips has conspired and demanded to compose this elliptical tangent latin ascii scheme what I want to say is beyond me the words they must align they harmonize with the passage of the metronome keeping time meaning and structure

[backofthebookshelf]

I know I'm a week late but I do think people are misunderstanding the point of the Anthony Bourdain quote about Kissinger

The point was never "Anthony Bourdain has good politics and is an unproblematic fave," the point is that even someone with mainstream liberalish politics who goes to Cambodia for a food tour - a, let's be honest, very bougie type of trip to be part of your job - and has a basic understanding of history and a bare minimum of human decency can come away from that bougie food tour wanting to murder Henry Kissinger with their bare hands. The point is that Henry Kissinger fucked up this country so bad the only reason he wasn't lynched decades ago is because it's on the opposite side of the world and the people who were in proximity to him never really saw what it was. The point is that if we could see firsthand what our First World politics do to the Third World we would understand that monsters walk among us and it's a cultural failing that we let them die at home at 100 years old surrounded by their friends and family.

[pvtpunsart]

Can't sleep

[nights-at-crystarium]

earring

[barabaraoranges]

eddie: so you... actually want to help with repairs?

me, who just wants to see if i can fuck volt so hard there's a shortcircuit in the house: oh, yeah, uhhhhhhh, yeah.

[aro-absol]

Thinking of that post about nonpartnering aromantic people and the cost of living... for me, as a full-time wheelchair user who needs care, there's a whole other layer to it.

As a wheelchair user, I can not just live in any flat. I need enough space to maneuver my chair, as well as a accessible bathroom, including a grab bar on each side of the toilet and a stepless shower that fits a shower chair. Not to mention the kitchen - if I want any independence in making food for myself, I need to be able to reach not only the fridge but also the cabinets (meaning cabinets at a pedestrian's eye level are a no-go, which consequently means I need a bigger room for the same amount of storage space). If I want to participate in any of the actual cooking, I also need a roll-under stove and sink. That all means I need a bigger flat than a non disabled person, as well as the extra requirements I just mentioned, plus a step-free entrance.

That already excludes most of the more affordable flats - those are often old, small, and at the second or higher floor without a lift. So, just because I'm physically disabled, I need to pay more just to life somewhere. And because I'm nonpartnering(?), I won't have a second person to share these costs with.

However, a lot of living arrangements specifically made for disabled people count on disabled people being not partnered.

An example: I'm trying to move into my first real, own flat in the near future. I recently found an apartment complex that was specifically made for physically disabled people and has always carers present that you can call on whenever you need help with something (on top of the scheduled care you can book separately). This sounds great for me because I don't really need all day one-on-one care, but too much care to just have someone come over two or three times a day. Now, it's still not clear if I'll rent a flat there for a number of different reasons, but if I'll live there, I'll have to be living alone. And not just for a short while - I would need to make some alterations to live there, so it would only be worth it if I live there long-term. Besides, moving out of that flat again into a normal flat without such an on-call carer system in place would mean I'd need more planned care again, and I'd need these additional costs to be covered first.

Similarly, people who are institutionalised or live in group homes are also expected to be single.

I think that captures the kind dichotomy of disabled people's struggles with amatonormativity pretty well. On one hand, we're under even more pressure to partner up than non disabled people. We're expected to find someone to help us cover the extra cost and provide the care we need (all while seen as undesirable in society). This creates a dependency of the disabled partner in regard to the non disabled partner, which can trap the disabled partner in the relationship.

On the other hand, if we need to rely on outside help because we aren't partnered or we need more support than our partner can provide, we are forced into a structure that doesn't have space at all. Suddenly, we're not only exempt from amatonormativity but are actively excluded from taking part in adult dating. (Not to mention that sex with a disability is still a taboo topic, but that would be too much to discuss here.) This does not only make many disabled people unhappy, it also plays a role in our infantilisation and dehumanisation.

We can't win.

[secretmellowblog]

Les Mis Hidden Name Meanings: "Fantine"

Every character's  name in Les Mis is either an elaborate pun or has some deeper symbolic thematic meaning — usually both at once. 

One example of this is “Fantine.” There’s a wealth of hidden meaning packed into to her name, and some of those meanings are explicitly discussed in the original novel. 

The name “Fantine” comes from the french word “enfantine,” meaning  “childike, infant-like.” Her name basically means “Baby.” And obviously this speaks to her innocence and naivety. But also “baby”  is kind of,.,, well, it sounds more like an informal term of endearment than an actual legal name?  

And that’s because– Plot twist– Fantine isn’t her legal name!

 What is her legal name? She doesn’t have one. 

And the reason she doesn’t have one is directly tied to political turmoil of the era she was born into. 

Fantine grew up an orphan living on the streets, without a family without parents. Hugo tells us the origin of her name: 

“She bore on her brow the sign of the anonymous and the unknown. (...)She was called Fantine. Why Fantine? She had never borne any other name. At the epoch of her birth the Directory still existed. She had no family name; she had no family; no baptismal name; the Church no longer existed. She bore the name which pleased the first random passer-by, who had encountered her, when a very small child, running bare-legged in the street. She received the name as she received the water from the clouds upon her brow when it rained. “

This moment is adapted beautifully in the Manga adaptation by Takahiro Arai: 

But now let’s talk about the Directory. 

To wildly oversimplifly a lot of complex history: Before the French Revolution, the Catholic Church’s records of baptismal ceremonies were often used as a  registry of people’s legal names. During the French Revolution, the Revolutionary government– including the Directory– put in place a series of policies we now call “dechristianization,” where they attempted to dismantle the power of the Catholic church. 

Fantine was born during the age of these dechristianization policies. So she was likely never baptised, her baptismal name was never recorded, and so she has no documented legal or family name. She’s slipped through the cracks of the legal system, and ended up completely anonymous.

This sets Fantine up as this anonymous child of the Revolution– a stand-in for everyone who was left behind when the Revolution was left behind, and kings were restored to the throne. 

Fantine’s namelessness is meant to show her isolation. She has NO support system. She has nothing to connect her to other people, nothing to connect her to a support system. 

Finally, the way Fantine tends to “slip through the cracks” is something that follows her throughout her life.  When she’s fired from her job at a factory, Mayor Madeleine never learns  of it– Fantine has this tendency to be overlooked and forgotten in official records.  At the end of the story, she is buried in an unmarked grave, with not even the name “Fantine” on her headstone. She is born anonymous and she dies anonymous.

It ties into the novel’s questions about  which people we consider worth remembering, whose lives are worth being recorded. 

[Thank you for reading! This essay was originally posted as a video here. For more Les Mis talk, you should subscribe to the 2025 @lesmisletters readalong on Substack here, and join the BrickClub Discord server here!]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

They were warned

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

Truth is provisional! Sometimes, the things we understand to be true about the world change, and stuff we've "always done" has to change, too. There comes a day when the evidence against using radium suppositories is overwhelming, and then you really must dig that radium out of your colon and safely dispose of it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/19/just-stop-putting-that-up-your-ass/#harm-reduction

So it's natural and right that in the world, there will be people who want to revisit the received wisdom and best practices for how we live our lives, regulate our economy, and organize our society. But not a license to simply throw out the systems we rely on. Sure, maybe they're outdated or unnecessary, but maybe not. That's where "Chesterton's Fence" comes in:

Let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence

In other words, it's not enough to say, "This principle gets in the way of something I want to do, so let's throw it out because I'm pretty sure the inconvenience I'm experiencing is worse than the consequences of doing away with this principle." You need to have a theory of how you will prevent the harms the principle protects us from once you tear it down. That theory can be "the harms are imaginary" so it doesn't matter. Like, if you get rid of all the measures that defend us from hexes placed by evil witches, it's OK to say, "This is safe because evil witches aren't real and neither are hexes."

But you'd better be sure! After all, some preventative measures work so well that no living person has experienced the harms they guard us against. It's easy to mistake these for imaginary or exaggerated. Think of the antivaxers who are ideologically committed to a world in which human beings do not have a shared destiny, meaning that no one has a moral claim over the choices you make. Motivated reasoning lets those people rationalize their way into imagining that measles – a deadly and ferociously contagious disease that was a scourge for millennia until we all but extinguished it – was no big deal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles:_A_Dangerous_Illness

There's nothing wrong with asking whether longstanding health measures need to be carried on, or whether they can be sunset. But antivaxers' sloppy, reckless reasoning about contagious disease is inexcusable. They were warned, repeatedly, about the mass death and widespread lifelong disability that would follow from their pursuit of an ideological commitment to living as though their decisions have no effect on others. They pressed ahead anyway, inventing ever-more fanciful reasons why health is a purely private matter, and why "public health" was either a myth or a Communist conspiracy:

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/brief-vinay-prasad-pick-me-campaign

When RFK Jr kills your kids with measles or permanently disables them with polio, he doesn't get to say "I was just inquiring as to the efficacy of a longstanding measure, as is right and proper." He was told why the vaccine fence was there, and he came up with objectively very stupid reasons why that didn't matter, and then he killed your kids. He was warned.

Fuck that guy.

Or take Bill Clinton. From 1933 until 1999, American banks were regulated under the Glass-Steagall Act, which "structurally separated" them. Under structural separation, a "retail bank" – the bank that holds your savings and mortgage and provides you with a checkbook – could not be "investment bank." That meant it couldn't own or invest in businesses that competed with the businesses its depositors and borrowers ran. It couldn't get into other lines of business, either, like insurance underwriting.

Glass-Steagall was a fence that stood between retail banks and the casino economy. It was there for a fucking great reason: the failure to structurally separate banks allowed them to act like casinos, inflating a giant market bubble that popped on Black Friday in October 1929, kicking off the Great Depression. Congress built the structural separation fence to keep banks from doing it again.

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton agitated for getting rid of Glass-Steagall. He argued that new economic controls would allow the government to prevent another giant bubble and crash. This time, the banks would behave themselves. After all, hadn't they demonstrated their prudence for seven decades?

In fact, they hadn't. Every time banks figured out how to slip out of regulatory constraints they inflated another huge bubble, leading to another massive crash that made the rich obscenely richer and destroyed ordinary savers' lives. Clinton took office just as one of these finance-sector bombs – the S&L Crisis – was detonating. Clinton had no basis – apart from wishful thinking – to believe that deregulating banks would lead to anything but another gigantic crash.

But Clinton let his self interest – in presiding over a sugar-high economic expansion driven by deregulation – overrule his prudence (about the crash that would follow). Sure enough, in the last months of Clinton's presidency, the stock market imploded with the March 2000 dot-bomb. And because Congress learned nothing from the dot-com crash and declined to restore the Glass-Steagall fence, the crash led to another bubble, this time in subprime mortgages, and then, inevitably, we suffered the Great Financial Crisis.

Look: there's no virtue in having bank regulations for the sake of having them. It is conceptually possible for bank regulations to be useless or even harmful. There's nothing wrong with investigating whether the 70-year old Glass-Steagall Act was still needed in 1999. But Clinton was provided with a mountain of evidence about why Glass-Steagall was the only thing standing between Americans and economic chaos, including the evidence of the S&L Crisis, which was still underway when he took office, and he ignored all of them. If you lost everything – your home, your savings, your pension – in the dot-bomb or the Great Financial Crisis, Bill Clinton is to blame. He was warned. he ignored the warnings.

Fuck that guy.

No, seriously, fuck Bill Clinton. Deregulating banks wasn't Clinton's only passion. He also wanted to ban working cryptography. The cornerstone of Clinton's tech policy was the "Clipper Chip," a backdoored encryption chip that, by law, every technology was supposed to use. If Clipper had gone into effect, then cops, spooks, and anyone who could suborn, bribe, or trick a cop or a spook could break into any computer, server, mobile device, or embedded system in America.

When Clinton was told – over and over, in small, easy-to-understand words – that there was no way to make a security system that only worked when "bad guys" tried to break into it, but collapsed immediately if a "good guy" wanted to bypass it. We explained to him – oh, how we explained to him! – that working encryption would be all that stood between your pacemaker's firmware and a malicious update that killed you where you stood; all that stood between your antilock brakes' firmware and a malicious update that sent you careening off a cliff; all that stood between businesses and corporate espionage, all that stood between America and foreign state adversaries wanting to learn its secrets.

In response, Clinton said the same thing that all of his successors in the Crypto Wars have said: NERD HARDER! Just figure it out. Cops need to look at bad guys' phones, so you need to figure out how to make encryption that keeps teenagers safe from sextortionists, but melts away the second a cop tries to unlock a suspect's phone. Take Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian Prime Minister. When he was told that the laws of mathematics dictated that it was impossible to build selectively effective encryption of the sort he was demanding, he replied, "The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-end-end-encryption-ban-says-laws-mathematics-dont-apply-down

Fuck that guy. Fuck Bill Clinton. Fuck a succession of UK Prime Ministers who have repeatedly attempted to ban working encryption. Fuck 'em all. The stakes here are obscenely high. They have been warned, and all they say in response is "NERD HARDER!"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/05/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography/

Now, of course, "crypto means cryptography," but the other crypto – cryptocurrency – deserves a look-in here. Cryptocurrency proponents advocate for a system of deregulated money creation, AKA "wildcat currencies." They say, variously, that central banks are no longer needed; or that we never needed central banks to regulate the money supply. Let's take away that fence. Why not? It's not fit for purpose today, and maybe it never was.

Why do we have central banks? The Fed – which is far from a perfect institution and could use substantial reform or even replacement – was created because the age of wildcat currencies was a nightmare. Wildcat currencies created wild economic swings, massive booms and even bigger busts. Wildcat currencies are the reason that abandoned haunted mansions feature so heavily in the American imagination: American towns and cities were dotted with giant mansions built by financiers who'd grown rich as bubbles expanded, then lost it all after the crash.

Prudent management of the money supply didn't end those booms and busts, but it substantially dampened them, ending the so-called "business cycle" that once terrorized Americans, destroying their towns and livelihoods and wiping out their savings.

It shouldn't surprise us that a new wildcat money sector, flogging "decentralized" cryptocurrencies (that they are nevertheless weirdly anxious to swap for your gross, boring old "fiat" money) has created a series of massive booms and busts, with insiders getting richer and richer, and retail investors losing everything.

If there was ever any doubt about whether wildcat currencies could be made safe by putting them on a blockchain, it is gone. Wildcat currencies are as dangerous today as they were in the 18th and 19th century – only moreso, since this new bad paper relies on the endless consumption of whole rainforests' worth of carbon, endangering not just our economy, but also the habitability of the planet Earth.

And nevertheless, the Trump administration is promising a new crypto golden age (or, ahem, a Gilded Age). And there are plenty of Democrats who continue to throw in with the rotten, corrupt crypto industry, which flushed billions into the 2024 election to bring Trump to office. The result is absolutely going to be more massive bubbles and life-destroying implosions. Fuck those guys. They were warned, and they did it anyway.

Speaking of the climate emergency: greetings from smoky Los Angeles! My city's on fire. This was not an unforeseeable disaster. Malibu is the most on-fire place in the world:

https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/

Since 1919, the region has been managed on the basis of "total fire suppression." This policy continued long after science showed that this creates "fire debt" in the form of accumulated fuel. The longer you go between fires, the hotter and more destructive those fires become, and the relationship is nonlinear. A 50-year fire isn't 250% more intense than a 20-year fire: it's 50,000% more intense.

Despite this, California has invested peanuts in regular controlled burns, which has created biennial uncontrolled burns – wildfires that cost thousands of times more than any controlled burn.

Speaking of underinvestment: PG&E has spent decades extracting dividends for its investors and bonuses for its execs, while engaging in near-total neglect of maintenance of its high-voltage transmission lines. Even with normal winds, these lines routinely fall down and start blazes.

But we don't have normal winds. The climate emergency has been steadily worsening for decades. LA is just the latest place to be on fire, or under water, or under ice, or baking in wet bulb temperatures. Last week in southern California, we were warned to expect gusts of 120mph.

They were warned. #ExxonKnew: in the early 1970s, Exxon's own scientists warned them that fossil fuel consumption would kick off climate change so drastic that it would endanger human civilzation. Exxon responded by burying the reports and investing in climate denial:

https://exxonknew.org/

They were warned! Warned about fire debt. Warned about transmission lines. Warned about climate change. And specific, named people, who individually had the power to heed these warnings and stave off disaster, ignored the warnings. They didn't make honest mistakes, either: they ignored the warnings because doing so made them extraordinarily, disgustingly rich. They used this money to create dynastic fortunes, and have created entire lineages of ultra-wealthy princelings in $900,000 watches who owe it all to our suffering and impending dooml

Fuck those guys. Fuck 'em all.

We've had so many missed opportunities, chances to make good policy or at least not make bad policy. The enshitternet didn't happen on its own. It was the foreseeable result of choices – again, choices made by named individuals who became very wealthy by ignoring the warnings all around them.

Let's go back to Bill Clinton, because more than anyone else, Clinton presided over some terrible technology regulations. In 1998, Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a bill championed by Barney Frank (fuck that guy, too). Under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's a felony, punishable by a five year prison sentence, and a $500,000 fine, to tamper with a "digital lock."

That means that if HP uses a digital lock to prevent you from using third-party ink, it's a literal crime to bypass that lock. Which is why HP ink now costs $10,000/gallon, and why you print your shopping lists with colored water that costs more, ounce for ounce, than the sperm of a Kentucky Derby winner:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

Clinton was warned that DMCA 1201 would soon metastasize into every kind of device – not just the games consoles and DVD players where it was first used, but medical implants, tractors, cars, home appliances – anything you could put a microchip into (Jay Freeman calls this "felony contempt of business-model"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

He ignored those warnings and signed the DMCA anyway (fuck that guy). Then, under Bush (fuck that guy), the US Trade Representative went all around the world demanding that America's trading partners adopt versions of this law (fuck that guy). In 2001, the European Parliament capitulated, enacting the EU Copyright Directive, whose Article 6 is a copy-paste of DMCA 1201 (fuck all those people).

Fast forward 20 years, and boy is there a lot of shit with microchips that can be boobytrapped with rent-extracting logic bombs that are illegal to research, describe, or disable.

Like choo-choo trains.

Last year, the Polish hacking group Dragon Sector was contacted by a public sector train company whose Newag trains kept going out of service. The operator suspected that Newag had boobytrapped the trains to punish the train company for getting its maintenance from a third-party contractor. When Dragon Sector investigated, they discovered that Newag had indeed riddled the trains' firmware with boobytraps. Trains that were taken to locations known to have third-party maintenance workshops were immediately bricked (hilariously, this bomb would detonate if trains just passed through stations near to these workshops, which is why another train company had to remove all the GPSes from its trains – they kept slamming to a halt when they approached a station near a third-party workshop). But Newag's logic bombs would brick trains for all kinds of reasons – merely keeping a train stationary for too many days would result in its being bricked. Installing a third-party component in a locomotive would also trigger a bomb, bricking the train.

In their talk at last year's Chaos Communications Congress, the Dragon Sector folks describe how they have been legally terrorized by Newag, which has repeatedly sued them for violating its "intellectual property" by revealing its sleazy, corrupt business practices. They also note that Newag continues to sell lots of trains in Poland, despite the widespread knowledge of its dirty business model, because public train operators are bound by procurement rules, and as long as Newag is the cheapest bidder, they get the contract:

https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-we-ve-not-been-trained-for-this-life-after-the-newag-drm-disclosure

The laws that let Newag make millions off a nakedly corrupt enterprise – and put the individuals who blew the whistle on it at risk of losing everything – were passed by Members of the European Parliament who were warned that this would happen, and they ignored those warnings, and now it's happening. Fuck those people, every one of 'em.

It's not just European parliamentarians who ignored warnings and did the bidding of the US Trade Representative, enacting laws that banned tampering with digital locks. In 2010, two Canadian Conservative Party ministers in the Stephen Harper government brought forward similar legislation. These ministers, Tony Clement (now a disgraced sex-pest and PPE grifter) and James Moore (today, a sleazeball white-shoe corporate lawyer), held a consultation on this proposal.

6, 138 people wrote in to say, "Don't do this, it will be hugely destructive." 54 respondents wrote in support of it. Clement and Moore threw out the 6,138 opposing comments. Moore explained why: these were the "babyish" responses of "radical extremists." The law passed in 2012.

Last year, the Canadian Parliament passed bills guaranteeing Canadians the Right to Repair and the right to interoperability. But Canadians can't act on either of these laws, because they would have to tamper with a digital lock to do so, and that's illegal, thanks to Tony Clement and James Moore. Who were warned. And who ignored those warnings. Fuck those guys:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton had a ton of proposals for regulating the internet, but nowhere among those proposals will you find a consumer privacy law. The last time an American president signed a consumer privacy law was 1988, when Reagan signed the Video Privacy Protection Act and ensured that Americans would never have to worry that video-store clerks where telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes they took home.

In the years since, Congress has enacted exactly zero consumer privacy laws. None. This has allowed the out-of-control, unregulated data broker sector to metastasize into a cancer on the American people. This is an industry that fuels stalkers, discriminatory financial and hiring algorithms, and an ad-tech sector that lets advertisers target categories like "teenagers with depression," "seniors with dementia" and "armed service personnel with gambling addictions."

When the people cry out for privacy protections, Congress – and the surveillance industry shills that fund them – say we don't need a privacy law. The market will solve this problem. People are selling their privacy willingly, and it would be an "undue interference in the market" if we took away your "freedom to contract" by barring companies from spying on you after you clicked the "I agree" button.

These people have been repeatedly warned about the severe dangers to the American public – as workers, as citizens, as community members, and as consumers – from the national privacy free-for-all, and have done nothing. Fuck them, every one:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Now, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and not every one of Bill Clinton's internet policies was terrible. He had exactly one great policy, and, ironically, that's the one there's the most energy for dismantling. That policy is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (a law that was otherwise such a dumpster fire that the courts struck it down). Chances are, you have been systematically misled about the history, use, and language of Section 230, which is wild, because it's exactly 26 words long and fits in a single tweet:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Section 230 was passed because when companies were held liable for their users' speech, they "solved" this problem by just blocking every controversial thing a user said. Without Section 230, there would be no Black Lives Matter, no #MeToo – no online spaces where the powerful were held to account. Meanwhile, rich and powerful people would continue to enjoy online platforms where they and their bootlickers could pump out the most grotesque nonsense imaginable, either because they owned those platforms (ahem, Twitter and Truth Social) or because rich and powerful people can afford the professional advice needed to navigate the content-moderation bureaucracies of large systems.

We know exactly what the internet looks like when platforms are civilly liable for their users' speech: it's an internet where marginalized and powerless people are silenced, and where the people who've got a boot on their throats are the only voices you can hear:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

The evidence for this isn't limited to the era of AOL and Prodigy. In 2018, Trump signed SESTA/FOSTA, a law that held platforms liable for "sex trafficking." Advocates for this law – like Ashton Kutcher, who campaigns against sexual assault unless it involves one of his friends, in which case he petitions the judge for leniency – were warned that it would be used to shut down all consensual sex work online, making sex workers's lives much more dangerous. This warnings were immediately borne out, and they have been repeatedly borne out every month since. Killing CDA 230 for sex work brought back pimping, exposed sex workers to grave threats to their personal safety, and made them much poorer:

https://decriminalizesex.work/advocacy/sesta-fosta/what-is-sesta-fosta/

It also pushed sex trafficking and other nonconsensual sex into privateforums that are much harder for law enforcement to monitor and intervene in, making it that much harder to catch sex traffickers:

https://cdt.org/insights/its-all-downsides-hybrid-fosta-sesta-hinders-law-enforcement-hurts-victims-and-speakers/

This is exactly what SESTA/FOSTA's advocates were warned of. They were warned. They did it anyway. Fuck those people.

Maybe you have a theory about how platforms can be held civilly liable for their users' speech without harming marginalized people in exactly the way that SESTA/FOSTA, it had better amount to more than "platforms are evil monopolists and CDA 230 makes their lives easier." Yes, they're evil monopolists. Yes, 230 makes their lives easier. But without 230, small forums – private message boards, Mastodon servers, Bluesky, etc – couldn't possibly operate.

There's a reason Mark Zuckerberg wants to kill CDA 230, and it's not because he wants to send Facebook to the digital graveyard. Zuck knows that FB can operate in a post-230 world by automating the deletion of all controversial speech, and he knows that small services that might "disrupt" Facebook's hegemony would be immediately extinguished by eliminating 230:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/zuckerberg-calls-changes-techs-section-230-protections-rcna486

It's depressing to see so many comrades in the fight against Big Tech getting suckered into carrying water for Zuck, demanding the eradication of CDA 230. Please, I beg you: look at the evidence for what happens when you remove that fence. Heed the warnings. Don't be like Bill Clinton, or California fire suppression officials, or James Moore and Tony Clement, or the European Parliament, or the US Trade Rep, or cryptocurrency freaks, or Malcolm Turnbull.

Or Ashton fucking Kutcher.

Because, you know, fuck those guys.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/13/wanting-it-badly/#is-not-enough

[kacievvbbbb]

I love how extreme found family is in one piece. Like they took supernatural line of "Family don't end in blood" and actually made good on it. Because it's not just that the crew found each other even before that only really very briefly Robin, Usopp and Luffy could say that anyone biologically related to them raised them.

Like Luffy had Garp and that's his grandpa but he also had Makino and Shanks and the red hair pirates and they were a family unit and he also had Ace, Sabo Dandan and the bandits and they were a family as well and it's never who mattered more to Luffy or who actually raised him cause they all did. It'd be hard to put him in a nuclear family structure because so many people fill the same roles in his life in different ways and that's great like Kung Fu panda said "that doesn't mean less for one parent it just means more for Luffy"

And that's the thing I think sometime fandom can get very obsessive with trying to pin down who is whose surrogate father/mother how do they fit in the nuclear family structure and while that's fun and there's nothing wrong with head cannon characters that way I also think it's important to remember that not every relationship needs a title or definition sometimes you are just family and that's valid too.

Ace had Luffy and Garp but he also had the whitebeard pirates and his pops same with Sabo and the revolutionaries

Zoro with Kuina and his old kendo master, that was maybe more of a rivals, mentor mentee relationship than whatever Mihawk Zoro and Perona had going on but it's all family none the less.

Chopper with Hiririluk and Kureha. Perona and Moria, Usopp with the little village boys and Kaya. Shanks and Buggy with the Roger Pirates. They might not all have had defined roles with each other but it was still family.

Just like Sanji, Nami, Franky and Law and their more defined Surrogate familes

And people like Vivi Robin Usopp and Shirahoshi who had/have their biological parents/family that love them and raised them.

It's nobody that I've just mentioned properly fitting squarely into any of these categories because it's all complicated family is complicated and its messy and it's big and everyone in your family might not have even met but it's family and it doesn't end in blood and for some people it never started there either.

[starleska]

it is so funny to me that in the second episode of each of his seasons, the Fifteenth Doctor has been tied up by a member of the Pantheon of Discord in some fun 'rope' related to their powers...and this isn't the first time a villain has done this to the Doctor full stop!! RTD, your The End of Time is showing 😳

[rustchild]

one of the wild things about people’s stubborn insistence on misunderstanding The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is that the narrator anticipates an audience that won’t engage with the text, just in the opposite direction. Throughout the story are little asides asking what the reader is willing to believe in. Can you believe in a utopia? What if I told you this? What about this? Can you believe in the festivals? The towers by the sea? Can we believe that they have no king? Can we believe that they are joyful? Does your utopia have technology, luxury, sex, temples, drugs? The story is consulting you as it’s being told, framed as a dialogue. It literally asks you directly: do you only believe joy is possible with suffering? And, implicitly, why?

the question isn’t just “what would you personally do about the kid.” It isn’t just an intricate trolley problem. It’s an interrogation of the limits of imagination. How do we make suffering compulsory? Why? What futures (or pasts) are we capable of imagining? How do we rationalize suffering as necessary? And so on. In all of the conversations I’ve seen or had about this story, no one has mentioned the fact that it’s actively breaking the fourth wall. The narrator is building a world in front of your eyes and challenging you to participate. “I would free the kid” and then what? What does the Omelas you’ve constructed look like, and why? And what does that say about the worlds you’re building in real life?

[p4nishers]

one of the most important things terry pratchett has taught me is that it's okay to be angry. no one has ever said that to me before. he taught me that anger was an engine. that you can use that anger. that it goes hand in hand with love. he taught me to never underestimate my anger, because it's one of my strongest points. he taught me genuine anger was one of the world’s great creative forces. he taught me i shouldn't be fighting my anger, but what caused it. he himself said rage underlines everything he wrote. i never heard anger talked about so openly like that before and it's freeing, i suppose, to realize you are truly, truly not alone in your rage at the world. you never were.

[llamagoddessofficial]

For the mafia bad sanses, what if we did try and run away?

Oho, the hunt is on.

Horror likes a chase. He always has, he's a hunter at heart. He's also very good at it; he pays much closer attention than people realise to the very small details. On top of being excellent at following scents, easily capable of tracking your movements, he knows your habits and routines like the back of his hand and he can accurately predict where you'll go and what you'll do during your brief escape. Nightmare absolutely expects Horror to find you first - the other two use him like one might use a bloodhound, following his bulldozing lead through the city.

Though it's fun to chase you down, Horror's genuinely worried about you the whole time you're gone. It doesn't help that Nightmare feeds his paranoia to ensure Horror is a vigilant guard - don't you understand he's trying to protect you? He will bring you back. He has to keep his loved ones in places he can keep an eye on them. He's not angry when he finds you, he's not even upset... he just checks you for injuries, and asks if you're hungry.

When you get back, he'll get you a snack.

Dust understands. He really does. He would run away, too, if there wasn't so much on the line for him. But he really feels like an idiot. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he had started to think of the situation as you and him against them. He started to feel like, maybe, there was... a connection forming? He started to feel like maybe you understood him. Maybe... maybe you trusted him. Maybe he could open up.

... You fleeing is a jolt back to reality. You didn't tell him anything before you left. You don't trust him; he's not your friend. You see him as one of them. Now he feels stupid and embarrassed.

Dust drags his feet about hunting you down. He follows Nightmare's orders, like he always does, but it's obvious he's just letting the other two do it. He still looks after you - he would never go back on his word. But you can tell something's changed.

Killer certainly enjoys chasing. He likes tossing you over one shoulder once he's found you and he's itching for a reason to kill anyone who scared/hurt you before they found you. But once he's actually got you, he's... mature? Sympathetic? He talks to you gently, but without being patronising. What the hell, is this even Killer? He chats with you during the trip home, assuring you that you're not in trouble. He genuinely wants to know why you ran... he wants you to get it out, insisting bottling it up won't help anyone.

... He also explains that when you're outside without them, you're in real, genuine danger. Nightmare is infamous - his enemies might want to take out their frustrations on his prize human, but on top of that, some of his allies might think you're a defector and grasp the opportunity to prove their loyalty by hurting you. Killer's words are gentle, but he paints a vivid picture.

Seems like he really doesn't want you to leave.

Nightmare is frustrated.

When you're brought before him again, you think he's angry with you. He's certainly angry. But at you? Goodness, no, never at you. He's angry at his guards for finding you so slow, and not sufficiently preventing your escape. You're not to blame here, it only makes sense that a pretty bird like you would take flight through the first open window it sees. Nightmare doesn't appear phased by this at all - in fact, the only real consequence (if you could even call it that) for you is that Nightmare is insistent on having a garden built for you, so you can get fresh air to avoid cabin fever. He keeps asking what flowers you'd prefer for it. It's kinda alarming, how blase he is about someone he likes trying trying to flee him.

(Nightmare's very pleased that this has driven a wedge between you and Dust. Better you focus on him instead, dear.)

[mechncheese]

Will there be/are there women in your AU? For example a scientist like Nautica or Lug or a doctor like Lifeline

Yes ! Fret not, there are women ! There are just so many characters I'm still unsure how to juggle them all ! I want the B plot on Cybertron to switch between character perspectives to show how everyone is generally doing there so you will see them around !

I have scientist and non-scientist women, Lifeline is a field medic so she's out and about in battle while I imagine Nautica is working to get the Ark back in working order

Non-Scientist women include Elita-1, she's the Mining Captain (similar to TFone !) she works with geologist Lug looking for energon, I imagine Anode as a weaponsmith in this AU, Arcee is a surface scout, and Windblade is the Autobot Aerial Captain

other characters include Strongarm, Chromia, Firestar, Greenlight and Moonracer who are also around but again, idk how big of a role anyone is playing yet since I'm still working on the story.

With the Decepticons we have Flamewar, Strika, Slipstream and others I'm probably forgetting off the top of my head. Though I'm not really sure what I'm doing with the Decepticons all too much yet </3 Work in progress..

Also on another note, I want to point out Science AU Skywarp is nonbinary and uses any pronouns. Much like real life, gender is a social construct for them. Cybertronians are sexless and choose whatever pronouns feel comfortable for them.

[clfixationstation]

ngl I cannot bring myself to agree with the "Catra's redemption was rushed" crowd, whether they like the show overall or not. Perhaps I have a different view of redemption than most. To me, a redemption arc begins when a character experiences guilt and remorse for their actions, which Catra expresses in early season 4 when she has a nightmare about how she threw Entrapta under the bus and activated the portal. Catra's nightmare shows her images of Entrapta and Adora questioning her, placing the onus for her actions on her: "What did you do to me?" "Why did you do it?"

Derailing: Why did she do it? Not because Adora made her. Catra can't use that excuse anymore. "Why did you do it?" Adora also asked Catra this as a child (s5ep3 Corridors) after she hit Lonnie. Back then, it was because Catra was terrified of losing Adora's friendship and thereby being "discarded" by Shadow Weaver. She was scared for her life. But now? Catra didn't activate the portal for safety; she did it to win. She did it to prove to the world she could be victorious, to Shadow Weaver, Hordak, Adora, to everyone who refused to believe in her. Yet after pulling that lever, Catra's true desires were revealed; she wanted to be relatively safe, surrounded by friends, allowed to love Adora, and recognized for her worth. She didn't need to dominate. When that false reality shattered, Catra's hope was shattered with it. She fell back on her sense of injustice, reduced to her own agony, inflicting it upon the world and herself. After the portal, Catra had to face that her goal of ascending through the Horde was hollow.

One could even argue Catra feels regret at the end of season 3 with this look she gives Adora of "ohhh I fucked up, I fucked up big time." Catra looks sickened, with herself and with how Adora now sees her.

From this point in the story, it was blatant to me that Catra was headed for redemption. Catra clearly knows that she went too far and may have completely burned every bridge and ruined all hope of redemption. But she can't yet confront that her ambitions will not fulfill her. So, she doubles down. In classic sunk-cost fallacy fashion, Catra seemingly strengthens her allegiance to the Horde, taking control and commanding operations. Despite herself, Catra's guilt creeps up on her, not only through the nightmare but also in her approach to Adora. Unlike in s1-3, throughout season 4 Catra avoids Adora almost entirely, only engaging from afar. Catra evades confronting the amount of pain she's caused Adora, the seemingly irreparable chasm she's clawed between them, focusing solely on strengthening the Horde. She still cares, but she denies herself that regular interaction.

This suppression poisons Catra's fragile friendship with Scorpia as well. Catra continually lashes out at Scorpia, projecting her own insecurities and frustrations onto her. Her behavior pushes Scorpia away and causes her to leave the Horde, to leave Catra. This is the first time someone left because of her. It almost feels like self-sabotage, Catra pushing Scorpia more and more, becoming crueler, creating reason for her to defect. Catra doesn't feel worthy of Scorpia's friendship, of anyone's. And so Scorpia's kindness enrages her, reminds her of how far she's fallen, and how much lower she will go. Catra also lashes out at her former comrades, Lonnie, Rogelio, and Kyle, further isolating herself from anyone who cares about her, pinning her entire existence on proving herself through Horde victory. She failed in the friendship department; the Horde is all she has left.

But Catra can't fool herself forever, and she certainly couldn't fool Double Trouble. After defeating Hordak, who does Catra have left to prove herself to? Horde Prime? Herself? Neither of those people care. For the first time, Catra is completely alone, and Double Trouble doesn't let Catra hide from how she got there. They read Catra to filth, summarizing what I wrote above: Catra pushed all her friends away in pursuit of a villainous role she didn't desire; her heart laid elsewhere. Now both goals are in ruins. Depleted, with nothing left to prove, Catra asks Glimmer to kill her. Catra's guilt permeated season 4, seeping into all her relationships and degrading her mental state. But guilt is meaningless without action. Which brings us to season 5.

I got soooo off track, so I'll try to wrap it up. So yes, Catra's redemption arc started in s3/4 when she first felt remorse for her actions - not in season 5. Even then, her change took time to develop. Initially, Catra still tried to align herself with Prime, but convinced him to spare Glimmer, indicating her shifting allegiance. The girls begin to empathize with each other and Catra sees how much Glimmer cares for Adora and the life Adora has built for herself. Fully expecting to die, Catra chooses to throw away the small amount of favor she earned with Prime and save Glimmer, therefore protecting Adora. Catra apologizes to Adora for everything. Her body is stolen from her and she dies as a consequence of her actions. She's revived and chooses to join the Rebellion. She slips up but genuinely tries to make amends, not for her own conscience but because it's right. She wants to do better. She accepts ire from the Princesses without retaliation. She defends Adora from Shadow Weaver. She gives Adora the strength to choose to live and allow herself to desire, and together they save the world.

This redemption is not immediate. It was given time, the foundation established across seasons. Catra does not have a sudden change of heart. It builds gradually, even within the final season. Nothing about Catra's arc was rushed and nothing about it was easy. Each day, she fought the harmful instincts cemented in her from years of abuse to become a better person, experiencing realistic regression and growth. Catra was tormented by others and herself for her entire life and all it did was make her worse. She deserves a soft universe, the new world she and Adora created together