#techno optimists

[clwhowrites]

Merriam Webster defines fetish as:

a: an object (such as a small stone carving of an animal) believed to have magical power to protect or aid its owner. b: broadly: a material object regarded with superstitious or extravagant trust or reverence an object of irrational reverence or obsessive devotion : prepossession. c: an object or bodily part whose real or fantasied presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification and that is an object of fixation to the extent that it may interfere with complete sexual expression.

fixation.

a rite or cult of fetish worshippers.

1 a, 1 b, 2, and 3 fit how many people view technology, I call these people techno fetishists. These are futurists, techno "optimists," and tech bros. They have fetishized technology and some even treat it with religious reverence. Technology is a tool, it can help and it can harm. We have reached the point where we could use our technology to destroy our civilization, maybe even wipe our selves out completely. These techno fetishists have only made the use of technology more harmful, their fetisization of technology has led them to use or to let others use technologies in harmful ways. It is not hyperbole to say that techno fetishists are destroying the world.

Top: a Cormorant nest contaminated with trash. Source: NBC News. Middle: Micro plastics in the ocean. Source: Industry Weekly. Bottom: A shore contaminated with plastic trash. Source: World Bank Group.

Air pollution, water pollution, plastic pollution in the ocean, the health effects of micro plastics, deforestation, desertification, etc, these come from technology. But they don't have to. Social media has created social division while making a very few very wealthy and powerful, contributing to the growing wealth divide. It didn't and doesn't have to though. The world is heating up because of human caused climate change and climate change that will harm us and is harming us. It didn't have to be this way though. The negative effects of technology comes from how we use it, these negative effects of technology could have been mitigated, some of them could have been prevented. Part of the reason these harms have not been mitigated or prevented has been the techno fetishists. The fetisization of technology has only undermined efforts to deal with the consequences of technology, and those who fetishized technology ignored the warnings of the scientists who told people about these consequences. The repeated failed predictions from the futurists, the techno optimists who ignore the potential harm of advancing technology reducing our abilities to preemptively deal with them, and tech bros have been around long before Silicon Valley (they just didn't have a name tech bro until the 00s) and have only ever cared about short term financial gains, all have worsened technologies effect on the world.

Futurists are the best people to start with because there is a lot of overlap with techno "optimists" and tech bros. Even when they don't overlap, techno "optimists" and tech bros have stolen many ideas from futurists while ignoring deeper philosophies they are based on and ignoring the more cynical futurist predictions.

Futurists are the kind of people who will point to Moore's Law saying "computers will continue to get more powerful indefinitely". Moore's Law refers to the number of transistors on a chip, not processioning power. More transistors does usually mean greater possessing power but referring to Moore's Law in terms of possessing power misses the causal connection between transistors and possessing power. Transistors can only get so small, they are physical things, made of matter. At a certain point it becomes physically impossible to make them smaller. Futurist look at technological trends and technological uses of their time and extrapolate those into the future ignoring physical, practical, and economic limitations, and ignoring the demonstrable historical facts that technological development does not work that way. Technologies develops in an S-curve. A technology starts out expensive and it advances slowly, over time costs come down and the technology advances faster. The advances continues to accelerate until the technology reaches physical, practical, and economic limitations that makes it more and more difficult and expensive to advance the technology. The technology can and often does continue advancing but at a much slower rate.

If you look at science fiction you'll notice that science fiction often does the same things, extrapolating trends and uses into the future. Science fiction is science fiction though, it can get away with it for the same reason fantasy can get away with magic, fantastical creatures and worlds, they are not real. Futurists are basically science fiction writers and enthusiasts who think their science fiction is a plausible depiction of the future. These science fictions have proven not to be, but that hasn't stopped them from continuing to create science fictions thinking they are plausible. The fact that we are in the future and it is nothing like what anyone predicted speaks volumes about deep into the "fiction" part of science fiction futurists are.

Trends change. Moore's law is not a scientific law, it is trend in technology observed by a the engineer and businessmen Gordon Moore. Between 1903 and 1969, a period of 66 years humans went from barely getting off the ground to landing on the Moon. After five missions to the moon, we stopped going. The Concord was the first and only supersonic passenger airliner. It entered service in 1973, it ended service is 2003. The Space Shuttle first launched in in 1981 and it's last launch was in 2011. Since 2011 US astronauts have been going up in Russian Soyuz rockets which use 1960s technology, then Falcon 9 rockets that while are more advances in terms of computers, materials, and other components, in many way work like rockets from the 1960s and 1970s. There has been advances in flight technology, slow evolutionary advances, not the revolutionary advances of the 80 years after 1903. It's not just flight and space flight technology, this is how useful and popular technologies advance, it is the S-curve of technological advancement. This doesn't mean a new technology can't initiation a new rapid period of development but very few have accurately predicted these new technologies, mostly focusing on science fictions.

How futurists imagined people would use computers.

Futurists get more wrong than how technology will develop, often technologies are used in ways few predicted. How long have people had the ideas that computers in the future will work they was they do in Star Trek? In Star Trek, from The Next Generation onward, everything was touchscreen and everyone mostly told the computer what to do. It's a cool idea, the kind that futurists like. We've had the technology to have voice control on any internet capable device for well over a decade. How often has it been used? Not often (though there are time when it should be the only interface used like when you are driving). LLM chatbots like ChatGDP will not make people use them more, the problem has not been that the devices that couldn't talk back, the problem is there are better ways to use these devices. Touchscreen is similar, it works on phones and tablets but most laptops sold today don't have touchscreen and most desktop monitors are not touchscreen. There are better ways to use a computer than touching a screen. Key boards, mice, and touchpads will be the dominant interface for desktops and laptops because they are just better than touchscreen, touchscreen will continue to be used on handheld devices because it is just better than voice control. Voice control will be used in cars and other places where one's hands and/or attrition is taken up by something else, and voice control will be what is used in these situation into the future, not the techno fetishist idea of a neural implant. Futurists would never predict the internet or how it is used, they would never predict texting, smart phones, or social media for the same reason they are rarely used in old science fiction. They didn't not fit the trends, how technology was used at the time, and they wouldn't have been seen as cool.

Next are the so called "techno optimists," though "optimist" is not the right word for them as their "optimism" is just toxic positivity. While futurists get so much wrong, many, if not most are not overly optimistic about technology, some are very pessimistic about it. The reality is these toxic techno "optimists" are not optimists, they are utopianists who think technology will solve all of our problems. These utopianists, like singuleratists and tanshumanists (which overlap with them) are very much like an end times religion. They have their prophecies about what is gong to happen, when the prophecies fail, reinterpret and redate. Like all utopianists; Communists, Nazis, Islamists, Fundamentalists, etc, their ideologies are only destructive and only make the world worse. I go so far as to call them an existential threats to humanity as we have reached the point where we can destroy ourselves with our technology.

Technologies are tools, they can help us and they can kill us. A hammer can be use to build a house or bludgeon a man to death, a knife can be used to whittle a peace of art, or slit a woman's throat. Social media can bring people together, forge friendships, give people the freedom to speak out, and allow distant people to keep in contact, it can also be used to divide, turn people against each other, control people, and create violent mobs. Video games can be be a form of art, express ideas, and tell stories that couldn't be told in any other medium, they can also be addicting, used to distract the populace from the problems in the world, and used to spread propaganda. Technology is a double edged sword, which way it cuts depends on how we use is it. The toxic positivity of "techno optimists" ignores the harm technology can do, and when potential harms are ignored, they inevitably happen.

The connection between leaded gas and violent crimes. Tetraethyl lead was added to gas to increase the octane of gas. That led was emitted from cars tale pipes into the environment people lived. Lead is a neurotoxin and children are especially susceptible to it. The dangers of lead were ignored and it greatly damaged society. Source: Physiology & Behavior - Environmental causes of violence

As much as technology has made the world better (and it has), it has also created new problems, and these problems can't always be solved with new technology. Global warming, pollution, and environmental destruction can't be solved with technology alone, we are going to have to make changes to our lives if these problem are to be solved. New technology will help but not nearly enough. The problems and societal divisions social media has created can not be solved by any technology, it can only be solved by cultural changes and media education. Changes in us, in how we use the technology, how media literate we are, and how money is made from it. For the world to get better, we need to change, not have a religious faith that new technology save us.

Next are tech bros, the AI bros, the "AI artists," the crypto bros, the tech investors, the tech businessmen and the corporate executives. These people don't understand the technology, they don't care to, they only see it as a means to make money. These are the FOMO filled people who flocked to crypto, meteverses, and now "AI," because they want to be on the ground floor of the next big thing. They never stop to think of the social or environmental effects of a new technologies. When they care they'll tell them selves and others "that the problems will be solved later, we have to develop the technology now" (showing the overlap with techno "optimists"). Ultimately what really matters to them is short term financial gain.

These people don't look at the long tern social and environmental costs of the of technology they flock to new technologies because of their FOMO, they don't even look at the short term tern social and environmental costs, many don't even stop to ask if a new technology will give them gains in the short term, fearing that if they stop to ask they will miss out. Both crypto and "AI" have a huge environmental costs, those environmental costs affect peoples lives and will affect peoples live into the future even of both technologies vanish. The damage has been done, and there is no sign or evidence that crypto and "AI" will ever use less power, in fact they will need more. The worst part is that because tech bros, executives, and investors are so filled with FOMO they will go all in on new technologies even before the new technologies have been shown to be profitable. This happened when the internet was still young, inverters and companies went all in on selling online before anyone figured out how to make selling online profitable, leading to the dot com bubble. We are seeing something similar with "AI" today, companies like OpenAI and Microsoft are loosing money on "AI", while investors and other companies are throwing money at "AI". To make the situation worse, "AI" LLMs are already running into limitations. OpenAI is already running into diminishing returns with the data they stole to "train" ChatGDP, and the internet is not big enough to continue making ChatGDP better. Tech bros and scammers are still making money from it though. They make money in the form of salaries, salaries funded by investment, investment that is likely never to get a return. They make money by selling "AI" related products to gullible executives, companies, and people, and many are making money through start up scams.

We are in a world of growing problems, technology is part of the causes for these problems. Techno fetishist are only adding to those problems. We can deal with the problems we have, they are not insurmountable and not as difficult as been presented. The things holding us back are political and cultural, part of that are the techno fetishism. The science fiction ideas of the futurists clouding any meaningful attempt at looking at where technology is going, the techno toxic positivist utopianists pushing for more technology regardless of negative effect of new technologies, and the tech bros who don't care about the social and environmental costs so long as they make short term profit, or just to not miss out, all of these are making the world worse. They are destroying the world.

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[smbhax]

Super Dodge Ball (NEOGEO MVS) (Super Technos World)

[collapseofindustrialcivilization]

Last Rites for a Dying Civilization

When the Black Death struck Europe in the Middle Ages, the fundamental values that held society together broke down. Husbands and wives abandoned each other and mother’s abandoned their children. This void of ethics that overtook the population is described in Boccaccio’s Decameron, considered a masterpiece of Italian prose and a documentary of life during that time. The book describes the…

[feminist-space]

A Company Reminder for Everyone to Talk Nicely About the Giant Plagiarism Machine

by Amanda Bachman

"Hey team. It’s your CEO. I know your time is valuable, so I’ll cut right to the chase: It’s come to my attention that some of you have been bad-mouthing the Giant Plagiarism Machine™.

I’d like to remind you that our company policy is pro–Plagiarism Machine™. We’re a tech-forward, future-oriented company that doesn’t shy away from the promise of new innovation—even if that innovation is a Giant Plagiarism Machine™ that copy-pastes existing innovation into fake sentient sentences.

Lately, it feels like some of you aren’t the techno-optimists I took you to be. You’ve been heard uttering slurs like “I’m worried about my job stability” and “I just don’t think it’s positive for humankind,” neither of which sounds remotely optimistic or techno. I’ve even heard shocking reports of teams failing to incorporate plagiarism into their processes, because—I can’t believe I have to repeat this—“it’s not helpful.”

Team, hear me when I say that this is harassment, and it must end. Put yourself in your coworker’s shoes—say, a coworker with really nice, designer footwear, who has invested their personal fortune into the Giant Plagiarism Machine™, along with other intellectual-property-theft futures. Imagine how that coworker (could be anyone!) might feel working alongside such Negative Nancies.

Folks, that’s just not who we are. This is and has always been a company of risk-takers who are unafraid to move fast and break things. Or at least, that’s what I thought, until a bunch of you started bringing up the many merits of proceeding cautiously and keeping things unbroken.

It just really comes as a shock that such accomplished intellectuals, who’ve spent their entire careers pushing the upper bounds of human achievement, could be judgy about a machine that runs the entirety of human imagination through a shredder and glues together what comes out.

I guess I understand. I, too, was once a little skeptical of the Giant Plagiarism Machine™. But that was before I attended The Conference for Big Boy Business Owners™. Here, I learned that my fellow titans of industry have been re-orging to “leverage plagiarism” and “minimize thought-waste.”

It was at that very same conference that I learned critical thinking takes up 20 percent, sometimes 30 percent, of company time. It’s clear to me that some of you are not focused on the profit potential of outsourcing all of our thinking to a machine capable of remixing thoughts that have come before.

And sure, most of you are hired for your intellectual capabilities. But you don’t need to worry about losing your jobs to the Giant Plagiarism Machine™. As I always say, people are more powerful than plagiarism. (At least until the next economic downturn, during which I will quietly decide that, hey, maybe plagiarism was the dark horse all along.)

The way I see it, we’re family. It really does disappoint me that so many brilliant colleagues—whose genuine breakthroughs I’ve profited from for years—would be so quick to condemn this newer, stupider way that I and others like me can make money off your life’s work, through stealing.

So as we move forward, I want to hear a real turnaround in attitudes, troops!

Because, at the end of the day, you don’t really have a choice."

[tanadrin]

I am not a particularly techno-optimistic person or a futurist or singularity believer or anything like that, but I think it kinda sucks that a lot of people in reacting to the nebulous threat of “the tech bros” have let themselves be negatively polarized against pretty straightforwardly correct ideas like “bodily autonomy and assistive technology is cool” (that is, fundamentally, the spirit that motivates transhumanism) and “death is scary and tragic.” One of the oldest extant works of human literature is largely about how awful mortality is and how hard it is to come to terms with death; it is in fact an incredibly common sentiment throughout history, and just because some people you know who really suck are also scared of dying doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

[sircantus]

Shaking you shaking you shaking you supervillian superhero au you posted about earlier. Is maybe killing me

Its killing ME you know what im thinking about im thinking about the stubborn kindness of Tommy being a new hero who’s still bright eyed and optimistic and is so sure that he can save everyone, Wilbur and Techno included. Phil holds back on taking the opportunity of weakness because of Tommy insisting they should just help and leave the fighting for another day, and in giving that truce and in letting them go when they’re all finally out, twinsduo give them a chance of trust. Techno feels like he has to repay them SOMEHOW, so he starts just retreating whenever Phil or Tommy comes into the fight, not even making an effort to hurt them. Wil stops picking on Tommy for being a newbie hero, he still argues and bickers with him from a distance, but he never causes damage with Tommy nearby. Phil gets questioned on what exactly happened when him and Tommy got trapped with the villains for a couple of hours and he just. Doesnt say anything. Neither does Tommy.

GOD its such a fun thought it could be such a neat 400k arc with twinsduo being like “GODDAMNIT” whenever Phil or Tommy show up because those are the only two heroes they can’t hurt, because they’re somewhat friends with them, and in being friends with them theyre slowly getting dragged through a redemption arc

[bayesic-bitch]

That's true but that's not to say that violent coercion is the only possible external incentive to get things done. I'm no fan of anarcho-capitalists, but one long-standing project they have that I respect a lot is formally sketching out what incentive/market structures you would need to replace the functions of the state, such as their whole thing with a competitive market for judicial systems. I'm not going to get into the conclusions they come to with this (I think they're pretty bad). But I think this kind of work is valuable, and the sign of a political ideology really putting its money where it's mouth is and trying to create a concrete, positive vision that could be enacted. The reason that actually-existing-anarchists don't do this are more social than fundamental imo. Anarchism and this approach to econ/politics simply attract very different kinds of people

I don't like or trust states and it would be nice to find other mechanisms to perform the useful functions that the state performs. This is obviously a hard problem but it's pre-emptive to say it's impossible.

[transmutationisms]

being reductive here but i do think the covid pandemic has & continues to expose a very specific strain of techno-optimistic or utopian thinking wrt medical technologies in particular---this idea that you can simply solve a massive socio-technical problem (disease spread) through a solely technical intervention that thus requires no input or cooperation from the average person besides a vague sort of 'pro-science' stance. you see this first with the crowd who thought the 'post-vaccine world' was one in which things ought to immediately 'get back to normal' but you also see it with those who seem to believe that eg a risky recreational event (parties, bars, &c) would be magically transformed in a binary manner into a wholly 'safe' one if only people were to wear masks. in this sort of politics there is no real understanding of risk as being along a spectrum or varying according to numerous factors including people's social behaviours; instead it is a technical problem solved instantly by a singular technical intervention. there's no need then to engage in larger and messier conversations about things like capitalist de/valuation of biopower, or disabled people's right or ability to participate in society. you sidestep the whole issue because you have applied the right technical means to simply dispense with the political problem. obligatory i wear masks when i have to be in public and i am boosted and blah blah but i'm under no illusion this means i can't get or spread covid (or other diseases). but more to my point here, i think this mode of thinking has dangerous consequences for all manner of social theorising that's simply answered with a lazy appeal to technological 'development' or advance---assumed to be something we can magic away if we throw enough money at pharma companies or weapons manufacturers or whoever else. what this ultimately does is stifle political consciousness and bolster the power and epistemological authority granted to institutions tasked with producing and protecting hegemonic forms. and my point here is not 'anti-science' or techno-pessimistic either; again, i am profoundly grateful for many a technological intervention into my life and i will continue to avail myself of them, including medtech. however the fantasy that problems of political and social forms and arrangements can be solved by sufficiently advanced technology is both foolish and dangerous.

[sumwan]

/dsmp /rp

Rewatching VODs again and it's sad to see how at the start of his imprisonment, Dream was trying so hard to downplay the prison's conditions and stay optimistic about them.

During Tommy's first visit, he says to Tommy, "It's not too bad, right? I can write and I can read and they bring me food." He talks about the new game he can play with his clock.

When Bad visits, Dream admits that Sam sometimes gives him less food when he burns his clock, but that he's not starving because he "[has] potatoes." He says that Sam is "treating [him] amazing" and that he's fine when Bad asks him if he's okay.

Tommy visits him again a month after the first visit, and by then Dream's attitude has changed entirely. Tommy says he's been suffering from success, and Dream replies, "Me too. Except for without the success part, just suffering." Then when Quackity visits him the first time and asks how he's been, Dream only says, "I've been."

Later after Techno gets locked up with Dream, he no longer attempts to downplay anything. Techno jokingly complains about Dream not being positive, and Dream can only think of saying, "Since you've been in here, I haven't been tortured. So I'll give you that much, that's been better." He tells Techno how there's absolutely nothing to do in the cell and how he's been eating nothing but "raw, disgusting potatoes" for the past months.  

Dream did his best to convince himself and others that everything would be fine, that he could deal with the prison's conditions. He tells Sam that he thought the prisoner (himself) "would be fine with potatoes, would be fine with not seeing the courtyard." That he didn't realize how bad it would be. But the longer his imprisonment lasted, the harder it became to deal with it. Dream tries one last time to ask Sam for better food and to see the courtyard and then is forced to give up, trapped behind glass and with no hope of ever getting out.

[zvaigzdelasas]

Since I guess tumblr ate the rest of my tags on that reblog:

Interpolation in a potentially-million-dimensional non-trivial embedding space is still fundamentally interpolation

Whether interpolation is "generative" or not is kinda just an argument over definitions, which is the other side of coin of arguing over definitions of "copying".

Interpolation is a very useful paradigm for systems with a closure composed of the base dimensions of their object of analysis

Open-ended systems are not closed

The attempt to add a closure to open-ended systems is often a political or economic action

We live within systems of political and economic action

Fungibility necessitates a closed (potentially very large) system

Fungibility necessitates a shared substance - see also marx's conceptions of Abstract labor as a system which attempts to make qualitatively distinct Concrete labors fungible

We are not in the process of inventing God and matter itself has much richer range of expression than abstracted models like skinnerist behaviorism

"AI does this exactly like a human does" is silicon valley techno optimist ideology and is wrong

"AI is useless" is wrong

[nomsfaultau]

The Promised Neverland au for S3I. 

Starts out with Tommy in a strong Emma position, only he’s younger and has a different type of intelligence. Less genius, more charisma type ringleading people. When he goes to return the left toy and learns the truth, he’s alone. Tommy immediately tells Techno and Phil, two older boys he trusts. While at first they claim they don’t believe him (and tease quite a bit about it) they’re clever enough to figure it out once given the push. Not doing well under the pressure, Tommy’s already mediocre grades start to slip. Phil and Techno help tutor him which makes for an excellent cover for planning their escape. Young, naive, and optimistic Tommy is determined to break out everyone.

Techno (Ray-ish) is a lot more jaded, thinking about themselves getting out first and foremost, and planning to start a revolution against the tyrannical system once they’re out. Leads to terse conflict between him and Tommy, because Techno isn’t going to die like a hero would. He doesn’t have perfect recall, but instead schizophrenia that he had to learn to deal with fast and silently. The paranoia aspects were what led him to be so suspicious and eventually realize the truth, but until Tommy confirmed it he’d been plagued with doubt that it was a hallucination. As the situation grows more dire, his mentality switches from escape to turning the orphanage into a crater. What he tries is less self immolation and more anarchist firebombing combined with a (potentially manic) conviction that Technoblade Never Dies.

Philza (Norman-ish) wants everyone out, but doesn’t see a practical way, and deep down is a realist. He’d also sacrifice himself for the others in a heartbeat, but doesn’t see how that would do any good (at first). Philza is ruthless and cunning when it comes to protecting his family. He puts a lot of pressure on himself to always put the younger kids first  since he’s the oldest (only by a few months) and tries to comfort them. But he’s not perfect at it, since he is just a kid and it’s a lot of responsibility. Had Philza been a girl he would’ve been offered the role of Mom. But he isn’t. And since the other children always come before himself, when the time comes Philza accepts his ‘adoption’ and is devoured to buy more time. For real because I don’t like that plot twist. 

New troubles arise from things like Tommy struggling to keep high enough grades to not get adopted next, Philza being easier to tempt to doomsday thinking, Techno not being as adept a liar as Ray for the double crossing spy aspect (or perhaps Mom gaslit him instead?). Another huge problem is that Tommy actually is easier to manipulate, and for a while is convinced that Mom doesn’t know and is their friend while Techno and Philza desperately try to prevent the younger kid from going to Mom for help.

[k-s-morgan]

Hi, I don't know how to write this differently... I'm kinda, little bit, very very worried 😅 I don't want to make you feel obligated to answer this, with the electric outages and everything, but please just a little update if you're ok 🩷 Rusáci jsou kundy, přeji ti hodně sil 💛💙 srdečné pozdravy z Česka (Russians are cunts, I wish you strength, теплий привіт з Чехії*)

*I could only think of best wishes in English, which is not the same, so I hope google translated it with the same warm sentiment 😊

Ask from @princessgotham21: Hi Kat, we've not heard from you in a while so I hope you're safe and okay. I don't care about updates, I just genuinely want to know your wellbeing. Sending prayers and love 🤍

Ask from @seiji-amasawa: I’ve been following your stories for years now, and with news headlines about what’s going on in Ukraine has me really nervous for your well being. I hope you and your loved ones are doing well. You’re in my thoughts <3

Ask from @disappearinghills: You haven’t posted in a week, I hope you’re okay love❤️

-----

Hi! I'm finally home and with a steady connection - in fact, while I was gone, my Dad did some techno-magic, so now I'll have the Internet even when there is no power! Seeing all these asks made me so warm and happy, and cared for. Thank you all so much! I really didn't expect the connection to be this bad in the mountains. That place had WiFi, both of my cell operators were accessible, and yet nothing connected properly 99% of time. Not sure how it works. On the other hand, I took a really good rest from the war-related news, air raids, and other stuff. I heard just one explosion at a distance in over 2 weeks.

@jebemtimater7890, ah, I really appreciate your sentiment <3 Дуже дякую за такі чудові слова! It always warms me so much to know that so many people from different countries support Ukraine. Maybe it's the result of my vacation, but I started to feel a little more optimistic about the war than I have in over a year. Not sure it will last long, but it's such a relief to feel like this for now.

I went to the mountains with my Mom, and the place we were staying at had the loveliest cat who instantly realized I'll be more than happy to let her share my bed :D It was very hot for one week, and then it rained non-stop for the next one, so we got all kinds of experiences.

I'll miss the peace and quiet of that place, but being home is also good! I missed my set of silly pets, half of whom didn't immediately recognize me and tried to flee before figuring out who I am :D

The first part of a series of ATLWETD updates will be up in a few hours. I'm doing the last quick read - it probably isn't necessary, I've edited it already, but I can't help it, I always feel like I'll catch some more mistakes/unfortunate turns of phrases.

[bleue-flora]

I've been thinking about, what do you think it's the type of trust cdream has with his allies? I've seen people talking about it and I've always thought that it isnt like cdream trust more or less any of his allies but that it's different kinds of trust and trust with different things that are affected by how the relationship is and how it ended up

Trust is an interesting topic choice, though I’m not really sure what you mean by “type of trust” as I more so see trust as a fragile onion with many layers that are rather complex in my opinion. Trust in regard to Dream is even more so. Because Dream’s trust is tied to predictability, he trusts that people will act like he assumes they will. This is one of his fatal flaws, because what he doesn’t really realize is that people don’t follow the same rules and train of logical thought as him so he can never truly predict them.

Anyways, Dream’s trust relies on the concrete, not on the person themselves but of their behavior in the past and present. Dream trusts Punz in part because he pays him, he trusts the money not Punz. He trusts Techno in part because of the favor between them. He trusts the circumstances, the facts, the truth and his own actions. He trusts that Sapnap will listen to the facts of why he escaped, not of Sapnap’s empathy or their previous friendship. He trusts that Sam will keep him alive as his duty not because of Sam’s care for him as previous friend. In this way, he can trust but does not have to trust the other person only that they will act accordingly. It’s not a blind trust, it’s a calculated trust. It’s a detached trust.

He doesnt have to trust that people love or care about him, he doesn’t have to trust that Punz wouldn’t back stab him for friendship because he pays him and they share the Revival Book immortality that requires both of them. He doesn’t have to trust that Techno cares about him, he trusts that Techno will repay the favor of saving his life after he saved his. He doesn’t have to trust the server to care about him enough not to kill him, he only has to trust that they are smart enough to want to not kill the Revival Book.

So it’s not so much what he trusts them with or what type of trusts he has in them. To me, it is about what he expects of the other person that he then counts on. Hopefully that makes sense.

Course that is more so towards the end, in the beginning he was actually very trusting. He trusted people to be fair and be kind. He trusted people and their humanity and good nature and honor, but I think that trust fractured the moment Sapnap and Tommy killed him and took his stuff, refusing to give it back. No longer did he trust them to do the right thing, so he took Tommy’s discs instead, trusting a concrete item instead and the care Tommy had for them. Another big moment where Dream’s trust was fractured is in the dethronement conversation as Sapnap trusts the words of Tommy and Quackity over Dream’s.

But eventhough he didn’t fully trust people after awhile, I think he still was optimistic and hopeful about them. That they’d stop Tommy from killing him, that Sapnap would become his friend again, that Sam would have human decency…etc he didn’t trust those things but I don’t think he didn’t hope for them. As the saying goes, “you hope for the best but plan for the worst.”

He trusted them all with his life: Sam, Punz, and Techno, and in a way they all both met expectations and let him down in the end…

As far as information goes, I think despite his lies and production, he does tend to be honest even amongst his lies, something I’ve talked about before. At least as far as his feelings and motivations goes, not his plans of course. And it’s hard to say how trusting he is to his allies with information and even physically and such since we don’t have many scenes of staged duo or rival duo to que us in. How close and how far into the onion does he let them in is hard to say, though I do think that some of the most honest and vulnerable we get of him is in that cell with Techno…

[collapseofindustrialcivilization]

When Silent Wings Inherit the Ashes

We forged our world with fire, steel, and coal, Unleashed the atom’s power, beyond control. Industrial dreams, relentless, bold and vast, Now threaten to undo us—future fading fast. The Earth endures our seismic plague, Pursuing “progress” for reasons vague. We crown ourselves wise, Earth’s caretakers, Yet pave over beauty as blind undertakers. Our clever tools, a double-edged sword, Shape…

[plazmafields]

Do you guys ever think about what type of music Kerry makes after Johnny's sound no longer influences him?

I like to think about what Kerry would do with his career after the end of the game. Clearly he's starting to branch out in genre, what with the Us Cracks collab and all. So, like, how far does he take that? Does he make an experimental techno metal album that nobody buys but a small subsect of weird badlands dwelling hippies? And they all tell each other "wow, I always thought Eurodyne was the most commercial sound you could get from rock, but this shit is fucking preem, you gotta check it out."

Does he start collaborating with more pop artists like Lizzy Wizzy? They do a full album inspired by her breakup and Kerry letting go of Johnny for good. The album tells the time-old tale of grieving lost love; platonic, romantic, something in between, it's all the same process. It starts with more Lizzy-directed tracks that are angry and vindictive and hurting, then ends with Kerry's more hopeful, optimistic, and relaxed new sound.

Does he even make another album? Maybe he just puts out some singles because he can't find a theme or a consistent sound because he has too many ideas all floating around in his head at once. Some songs need delicate synth crescendoing and crashing like waves of thought disconnected but all happening at once, others are percussion heavy and feel like internal war, a few are just his voice and his guitar with heavy reverb accenting the emptiness of his heart, but in a way that leaves room for another.

Maybe he moves away from the music industry all together and composes a movie soundtrack. Kerry gets in touch with some contacts and ends up composing for the next Bushido (what are we on, nineteen at this point?). It isn't until his third soundtrack that he really finds his sound for these sorts of projects. He starts doing the score for some weird oddball foreign films that debate the meaning of humanity and what separates the brain from a computer in a world where they can be one in the same (I'm imagining a very Trent Reznor style score).

Does Kerry take inspiration from V's Aldecaldo friends? He listens to the soft emotion that emanates from those weeping guitars and hollow bucket drums and feels a connection to music he hasn't gotten in a while. Removing the machines from his music—amps, drum machines, effects pedals, etc.—brings back a bit of that love for creation. A raw organic sound that artists try so hard to emulate but will rarely commit to. 2077's version of country/folk, maybe.

[tanadrin]

“You can tell techno-optimists and futurists are influenced by Christianity because only Christians are afraid of dying” is a weirdly common and frankly nuts take. It’s wild the way people will reach for any string of words that sounds vaguely like a dunk and post it even if it makes no goddamn sense.