#understanding mimicry

[howdoesone]

How does one flirt with a mime without breaking the silent pact?

Flirting with a mime presents a unique and playful challenge. Unlike verbal communication, flirting with a mime requires you to rely entirely on non-verbal cues and physical gestures. This silent interaction can be both intriguing and engaging, providing an opportunity to explore the depths of human connection without uttering a single word. Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to flirt with a…

[pepsicoughdrops]

whagever. throws it all to the wind

(click for better quality)

[probablygayattorneys]

My brother and I both started new Stardew Valley save files at around the same time, and in mine I’ve been desperately trying to get a prismatic shard and I walked into his room while he was playing, just in time to see him get one

And I put a hand on his shoulder and said

“Chet, I need you to understand something. I hate you so much. I hate everything about you with every fiber of my being.

And this doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t save anyone, no one’s destiny is affected.

But the hate is still there and that has to count for something.”

And he said “That’s beautiful. Also isn’t that what Franziska said to Edgeworth at the end of the second game?”

[evelynpr]

Majority of Ochako's arc of being a hero:

[charleemoon]

OH MY GOD ADAM RAKI IS SO ME THEY WERENT LYING

[chronomally]

Whenever I think of Zagreus' character, I think of that writing advice that's like "If you want the audience to like your character or consider them likable, show them doing things that would make people like them." The way he interacts with everyone is so sweet and highly personalized, and the only 2-3 people in the entire game he's rude to or dismissive of are the ones who have a pattern of throwing his kind overtures back in his face

[goblin-enjoyer]

Uh homestuck review type thingy before i go to bed.

reading homestuck has definitely been a trip. having to deal with and figure out how to work with some signs of old internet age, despite using the collection. trying to download some kind of app only for it to work worse than the main one. having to go to the original site as some of the more special links didn't work on the unofficial collection. having to sync up music. all these and probably more I had to deal with to read homestuck. definitely got me more invested ill tell you that much! liked a decent chunk of the humor, disliked another decent chunk of it as well, am neutral on other jokes n' such. some of the stuff early on doesn't age well but it gets better the farther you get in. the 4th wall stuff and all the non main story stuff swung a pendulum (hekekkek) between very fun and enjoyable to grading and annoying. I liked most of the characters though a few I wish got more screentime and interactions and a few I wish were a bit less president in some parts. the "shipping" stuff was inherently confusing and at times annoying for me, nothing stable, often felt like some pairings, both friend and relation ship, could be in the forefront in one part but then completely dissipate over a timeskip. though i will admit i did get somewhat interested at around the end when things were starting to get more stable. (favorite pairings friendship or relationship go as follows: terezi and dave. some of my favorite characters with a great dynamic, really wish they got to interact more, even after the offscreen hook up and break up. > Rose and Kanaya. great solid pairing to the end! also could have used a bit more time for development, but overall better off than most. they work really well as a dynamic duo. > John and Vriska. eh I could take or leave the relationship but I did like their friendship and wish their interactions didn't end so abruptly as they did) Speaking of confusing things, time travel. I feel like that and the fact that this is a early to mid 2010s webcomic should clue you in to how confusing this aspect can be at times.

Overall thoughts: I liked quite a bit of it, though I also disliked a decent few chunks of it. unlike most things I cant quite say I'm neutral on homestuck. not actively positive, yet not actively negative. but I still have some feelings on the thing, I just cant really make them out as the line between "thing I like enough to start putting the characters in situations" and "thank goodness I'm finally done with this piece of crap". Would I recommend reading it, even if you get it working better than I can? no, not at all. Did I enjoy reading it? other than a few issues, Yes! it was fun to read and experience, a real bit of ancient internet history and time capsule from right around the time i was first exploring the internet as a wee unknowing child of roughly 7-13. despite not going around that area much at the time, it still felt a bit nostalgic reading an mspaint internet comic from that era. an enjoyable romp threw a time before the internet was as part of daily life as it is today, while not quite being from back from the dawn of the thing. Reading homestuck definitely had me in awe with hindsight at times with finding out how deep its roots were in the internet. I will never roam the internet the same way again. but i think I've rattled on about homestuck being stuck in that sweet spot of old internet for too long so ill try and give my summarizing words here without going off on side rambles for too long, its like 2:30 am and i should probably try and get my sleep schedule back after having it messed up for like a week. (thank you eternally obnoxious BRAIN. and to a lesser extent the new world of warcraft expansion and homestuck cliffhangers)

Summary of sorts: I wouldn't call homestuck "good" but I wouldn't call it "bad" either. It is confusing, annoying and doesn't work half the time but when it does it oozes with charm, humorous bits that can crack open the core of anyone who likes older memes and internet humor and great music that gets stuck in playlists but not in your head. (in a good way) I would not recommend reading it as it takes time, effort and patience for a variety of things as well as a high tolerance for a bunch of stuff I'm getting to tired to mention. but i am glad I experienced it and I doubt you would too if you did dropkick my and many others warnings into a ditch and read the accursed thing. heck your on tumblr, you probably already accustomed to humor like that in homestuck! I don't know how to finish this so here's a funny skeleton gif to tide yall over as I go spellcheck everything and go write the tags.

[k9effect]

Want to hear something funny? Akinator would have been called AI if it was released today. None of this "AI" bullshit is actually anything intelligent. It's programs and algorithms and computer mimicry. It learns nothing. Chatgpt and openai and midjourney are just Akinator. The term "AI" is just a marketting ploy thats working painfully well with the people who don't understand that this tech has been around and in use for YEARS. Akinator was relased in 2007. Its just slightly more advanced Akinator tech, but its not anything artificially intelligent. I really wish we'd stop calling it "AI"

[sykloni]

Sometimes I think about how it would feel for the spirits to wake up in a world so different than the one they left behind...

I also have a headcanon that skykids are a bit creepy from the point of view of the ancestors: Imagine meeting a species that looks like the children of yours, but not quite. They mimic you and learn through that mimicry. I like to think that some ancestors are immediately like "Aww, how cute!" 😊 while others are creeped out and can't understand the people who aren't.

[mysticalcrowntyrant]

Yandere Shapeshifter x Reader

AN: I spent the last couple of days going through my drafts. I've fully edited about five of them :D

In the soft glow of twilight, the city looked like it was bleeding light—orange pooling in cracked asphalt, violet bruises swelling against brick walls. The air was thick with late summer heat, pressing against skin like a too-familiar hand. You walked home through the half-lit streets with your shoulders hunched, steps fast and decisive. You didn’t notice the man watching you from the other side of the road. He was tall, with broad shoulders and an indistinct face, half-shadowed beneath the flickering streetlight. He smiled when you passed, though you never saw it.

He’d worn another face yesterday. The barista. The one with the soft brown eyes and lopsided smile, who remembered your order even though you'd never given it more than twice. Before that, he was the man who bumped into you at the library. The girl in your dance class. The old woman on the bus who gripped your wrist too tightly when you offered her your seat. He was no one. He was everyone.

And he loved you.

You were beautiful. Not in the loud, obvious way others were—he hated those kinds of people. Their beauty was showy, performative. Yours was quiet, haunting. Something that sank under his skin and made him ache. You were all softness and edges, warmth and distance, always just out of reach, and it drove him insane.

He didn’t have a name anymore. He’d given it up long ago. Names tied you down, anchored you to one life. He didn’t want that. All he wanted was to be what you needed. Whoever you wanted. Whoever you would let in.

It started small. He made friends with your friends. Slipped into their lives with gentle lies and careful mimicry. He watched the way they spoke to you, the words they used, the nicknames they called you. He repeated them to himself like scripture. He became your classmate, your coworker, the stranger who handed you your dropped wallet and brushed his fingers a little too long against yours.

And you smiled. Just a little. Just enough to make his heart stutter.

He was careful. He could wait. He could change. He had changed so many times already.

You never saw his real form. No one did. Sometimes he forgot it himself. He remembered dark skin, an empty mouth, too many eyes. A body that bent in impossible ways. But he didn’t need that. Not when he could be perfect for you.

You had a crush on your neighbor once—he saw it in the way you lingered at your door, the way your voice softened when you greeted the man across the hall. So he killed him.

Not messily. Not dramatically. A little poison in his tea, a body that disappeared. Then, a week later, the same face moved back in. You never suspected a thing. The new version of your neighbor smiled more, cooked better. Helped carry your groceries.

You were grateful.

And he was patient.

But you didn’t fall for him.

It hurt. You saw him every day, and still your eyes wandered. Still you touched other people, confided in other people. He didn’t understand. Why wasn’t he enough?

One night, he watched you kiss someone else. A gentle kiss, soft and sweet, given to someone who didn’t know you like he did. He watched from the other side of the street, fingers curling into claws he didn’t know he still had. His form flickered—skin bubbling, bones cracking beneath a mask of flesh—and he had to press himself against the wall to keep from changing right then and there.

He killed that person too. Quietly. Efficiently.

The next day, he wore their face.

He touched you the same way, said the same things, but sweeter. Better. More attentive. When you looked confused, he lied. Said he was tired yesterday. Said he wasn’t himself.

He meant it.

And finally, finally, you started to fall. You let him hold you. Let him inside. You cried into his chest one night when things became too much. He held you so tightly he thought he might break your ribs. He wanted to bury himself in your skin. Crawl beneath it. Become you.

But there was still something wrong. He could feel it. Your eyes wandered. You dreamed of people he hadn’t killed yet. You talked about places you wanted to go—places he couldn’t follow. And worse: you talked about being alone.

“You ever think about just... disappearing?” you asked him once, as you lay together in the quiet, your head on his chest. “Going somewhere no one knows you? Starting over?”

He went still beneath you.

“No,” he said softly. “I only want to be where you are.”

You laughed. Not unkindly. But like you didn’t know what you were saying. Like you didn’t know him.

He had to fix it. Had to make you see.

So he started showing up again in other forms. The coworker. The friend. The stranger on the bus. All of them saying the same thing: how wonderful he was. How lucky you were to have him. He wove stories around you like a cocoon. Made it so that no matter where you turned, someone was gently reminding you that this was love. That he was good for you.

You started to believe it. You started to stay.

And still, still it wasn’t enough.

So he showed you a piece of himself. Not all. Just a sliver. One night, when the moon was full and you looked particularly sad, he let his arm shift—just a little. Just enough that you saw his skin shimmer, saw the suggestion of something not quite human beneath.

You recoiled. He didn’t blame you.

“I didn’t want to lie to you,” he whispered. “But I needed you to love me first.”

You didn’t speak to him for days.

It shattered him.

In your absence, he unraveled. Took a thousand forms in the mirror, screaming in voices not his own. The walls of his apartment became a collage of your photos. He slept in your old clothes, curled into your scent like a feral thing. He wore your face and kissed his reflection. He whispered your name into the mouths of strangers he consumed.

When you finally came back—shaking, scared, but curious—he wept.

“I don’t care what you are,” you told him, voice cracking. “Just stop lying to me.”

He swore he would. He swore on whatever name he used to have.

He showed you then. All of it. The writhing truth beneath the masks. The shifting, bleeding, endless change. He thought you might scream. You didn’t. You just cried.

And then you kissed him.

And for a moment, he believed you meant it.

But you didn’t. Not really. You were scared. You were trying to survive.

He could tell.

So now he watches you sleep. Watches the way your mouth twitches in dreams, the way your fingers curl like you’re holding onto something. He wonders if it’s him. He wonders what he has to be for you to love him fully.

He’ll find it. He’ll become it. Whether it’s the friend, the lover, the monster, the god. He’ll wear every face in the world if it means you’ll look at him like you mean it.

He’ll never let you go.

After all…

He’s whoever you want him to be.

Forever.

Masterlist

[r4t-g0d]

yall every have an emotional break down in front of friends and you are just supremely guilty and regretful about it? yeah

[piroulinewafers]

𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐧!𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐛

🍪 𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐬 !! 🍪

siren!caleb who lurks beneath the surface whenever she comes to the secluded beach, just his eyes peeking out from the dark tide, wide and unblinking, watching like he’s memorizing every breath she takes. siren!caleb who circles her from below like a shark every time she swims out too far, his shadow vast and silent under the waves, tail dragging slow— because even though he knows she’s not food, his body won’t stop reacting like she is. siren!caleb who carves her face into the walls of his underwater cave, over and over and over again— dozens of messy, desperate renditions done in stone and bone, like some shrine to the only thing he’s ever loved. siren!caleb who’s tail along could wrap around her twice and still have room to squeeze— thick and smooth and shimmering with scars from years of dragging himself across sharp reefs in pursuit of prey… but her? he’s gentle with. mostly. siren!caleb who can’t understand why she’d ever leave the shore. why she’d ever go back to her stupid little human town, her stupid little human home, when he’s right here. always watching, always waiting. siren!caleb who leaves strange offerings tangled in seaweed at the edge of the tide— teeth, pearls, his own scales he’s ripped from his tail, strange dead fish— and other things he rips from the ocean’s belly just so she might pick them up and think of him. siren!caleb who has a horrible little habit of nipping at her skin with sharp teeth during affectionate moments— soft at first, but always one second away from sinking too deep. he just wants to know what’d she’d feel like between his jaws.  siren!caleb who can’t be trusted with his mouth near her neck. his kind kill at the throat. and he’s trying, really trying, but he always ends up mouthing there too long, groaning low in his chest as if in pain from holding back. siren!caleb who smells blood in the water like a hound— one scraped knee knee and he’s gone, eyes rolling back slightly, nails digging into her soft skin. he thinks he’ll satiate his desires by dragging his tongue along her wound, lapping at it, but it does nothing to satiate his desires. siren!caleb who collects bones. not hers. never hers. but he thinks about it. thinks about what she’d look like picked clean. what her voice would sound like underwater, gurgled. and then he bites into his arm to make himself stop thinking.  siren!caleb who mimics the way she laughs, the way she hums, the way she blinks. it becomes a ritual, mimicry through obsession, a way to feel closer to her. they’re always a beat too late, too low, too breathless, like he’s trying them on for size.  siren!caleb who doesn’t sleep much. just stares at the moon through the cave mouth with her shirt clutched to his nose, mumbling nonsense as he inhales her scent. siren!caleb who has the most lovely, honeyed voice. his sweet lullabies are a balm to any weary soul, just as his possessive growls when he’s watching her sleep. “mine.” “stay.” “you need me”. “i’ll die if you leave me.” siren!caleb who swims circles around his home restlessly when she don’t come by the secluded beach for days, tail slamming against stone, injuring himself, muttering her name to himself like a curse or a prayer— scratching it into the walls with bloody nails until the water clouds red. siren!caleb who drools without realizing it when she’s close— real, slick hunger pooling on his tongue like brine, eyes dilated and blown-wide with the need to taste, to bite, to drag her down where no one else can touch.  siren!caleb who loves her like a creature that never been loved before— wild, reckless and too much, clinging with sharp nails and teeth and desperate, trembling hands. siren!caleb who dreams about sinking his teeth into the curve of her neck. to mark her, to taste her, to eat her. to make sure no one else gets to. who dreams of her drowning in his arms— but she's smiling. because in the dream, she's not afraid. she never tries to leave.

𝐚/𝐧: im actually so normal about this... i have so many thoughts about siren/sea creature caleb and choso...

[astrologydray]

Ruler of the 3rd through the houses

ruler of the 3rd house through the houses reveals how your mind works, how you learn and speak, your communication style, relationships with siblings, and how you move through your local environment. This also ties into social intelligence, storytelling, and how you interpret the world around you.

3rd House Ruler in the 1st House

Your mind is your identity.

You communicate with intensity and presence. Your thoughts are quick, and your words can leave an impression. People might see you as opinionated, witty, or always “in the know.” You probably need to speak to understand yourself. Talking over others, impatient listening are throngs that can happen.

3rd House Ruler in the 2nd House

Speaking as a source of value.

You might monetize your communication skills — writing, teaching, sales, or media. You think in practical terms, and your thoughts often revolve around worth, values, and security. Grounded, hands-on, slow but lasting retention. Watch for fixed mindsets, and attaching ideas to material worth.

3rd House Ruler in the 3rd House

Ultra communicator.

This doubles the Mercurial energy. You’re endlessly curious, naturally sharp, and likely live in your head. There’s a deep connection to language, possibly a gift for mimicry, writing, or storytelling. Fast, curious, often self-taught or info-obsessed.

3rd House Ruler in the 4th House

The inner voice is shaped by the past.

Thoughts are deeply emotional. You may reflect and process internally before speaking. Early home life or family dynamics may have shaped your communication style — for better or worse. Emotional, intuitive, learns best when feeling safe. Prone to overly subjective thinking, and clinging to the past.

3rd House Ruler in the 5th House

Creative communicator.

You speak with flair and passion. Storytelling, poetry, performance, or playful communication comes naturally. You’re likely the funny friend, the flirt, or the drama-filled texter.

3rd House Ruler in the 6th House

The mind as a tool.

You’re a practical thinker. Your thoughts are often directed toward improving systems, fixing problems, or helping others. You may work in writing, analysis, healing, or admin roles. Systematic, structured, analytical.

3rd House Ruler in the 7th House

Your words shape your relationships.

You’re a natural negotiator, communicator, or mediator. Conversation is your love language. Partnerships (romantic or professional) deeply shape your mindset.

3rd House Ruler in the 8th House

The secret mind.

You think deeply, intensely, and often privately. You may be interested in taboo subjects, psychology, mysteries, or healing. Your words hold weight — and often power. Deep dive thinker, emotionally charged type of learners.

3rd House Ruler in the 9th House

The philosophical mind.

You learn best through big ideas, different cultures, or spiritual exploration. You may be a natural teacher, traveler, or someone who bridges practical thinking with visionary ideas. Expansive, big-picture, philosophical.

3rd House Ruler in the 10th House

Public voice, visible mind.

You may communicate for your career or be known for your ideas. Your thoughts are goal-oriented, structured, and ambitious. Think speaker, writer, CEO, or spokesperson. Authoritative, strategic, often career-focused.

3rd House Ruler in the 11th House

The networked mind.

Your ideas move through community, technology, and social movements. You think about the future, the collective, and what’s next. Possibly gifted in digital spaces or group organizing. Social, futuristic, thrives in collaboration. Prone to overthinking social roles, and groupthink tendencies.

3rd House Ruler in the 12th House

The mystical or hidden mind.

Your mind is imaginative, dreamlike, and intuitive. You may communicate best through art, music, or subtle emotional language. You often process things internally before expressing them. Intuitive, visual, dreamy — needs time alone.

[bulletsandbracelets]

AI has one beneficial use, and it is the only use (in my humble opinion, I suppose) that will ever actually be successful. By training a model on a very specific and controlled set of data, the model can find things with less overhead than a human.

That’s it. There is no use case for a general AI - because anything created by mimicking humanity is going to have all of the inherent flaws of that, but with 10x the operating cost involved. It is always going to be cheaper, and more successful, to hire a person instead.

There’s a reason automation replaces factory jobs - machines are great in highly controlled and highly repetitive settings. They fall apart when they are introduced to an environment with variables that the developers cannot anticipate.

Medical AI application has done wonders. So has the introduction of machine learning in certain industry tools, in fields like animation and engineering and scientific research. Tools that deal with a lot of data based on hard numbers and rules (physics, artificial environments) that are clearly defined.

I’ve written collision avoidance algorithms for UAVs, but those only have to worry about the other defined planes in a limited airspace. And even when writing those, we found that the most efficient method was probably generating the route beforehand. Because in a reactive model, the planes aren’t taking each other’s future movements into account. And what they decided to do could easily make the situation worse, leading them further from the objective and directly in line with another collision. Unless human drivers entirely disappear, and one company has a complete monopoly on the self-driving system (with data on all current vehicles at all times), there is no other reality for self-driving cars. They have to be reactive and they have to be able to respond to variables that developers cannot foresee.

Maybe the comparison only makes sense to me. I just don’t understand the hype from people (even in my own industry) who have nothing to gain from being dishonest about this. Which makes me think they aren’t dishonest - they’ve just bought in.

TLDR; sometimes I feel like I’m the one missing something. And then I read a piece by Doctorow and it at least shows I’m not the only one who is skeptical. Even the fear around AI is overhyped, but I’ll take that over the praise at this point. At least the fear means we might get some technology guardrails in place for once.

You were promised a jetpack by liars

TONIGHT (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

As a science fiction writer, I find it weird that some sf tropes – like space colonization – have become culture-war touchstones. You know, that whole "we were promised jetpacks" thing.

I confess, I never looked too hard at the practicalities of jetpacks, because they are so obviously either used as a visual shorthand (as in the Jetsons) or as a metaphor. Even a brief moment's serious consideration should make it clear why we wouldn't want the distracted, stoned, drunk, suicidal, homicidal maniacs who pilot their two-ton killbots through our residential streets at 75mph to be flying over our heads with a reservoir of high explosives strapped to their backs.

Jetpacks can make for interesting sf eyeball kicks or literary symbols, but I don't actually want to live in a world of jetpacks. I just want to read about them, and, of course, write about them:

https://reactormag.com/chicken-little/

I had blithely assumed that this was the principle reason we never got the jetpacks we were "promised." I mean, there kind of was a promise, right? I grew up seeing videos of rocketeers flying their jetpacks high above the heads of amazed crowds, at World's Fairs and Disneyland and big public spectacles. There was that scene in Thunderball where James Bond (the canonical Connery Bond, no less) makes an escape by jetpack. There was even a Gilligan's Island episode where the castaways find a jetpack and scheme to fly it all the way back to Hawai'i:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0588084/

Clearly, jetpacks were possible, but they didn't make any sense, so we decided not to use them, right?

Well, I was wrong. In a terrific new 99 Percent Invisible episode, Chris Berube tracks the history of all those jetpacks we saw on TV for decades, and reveals that they were all the same jetpack, flown by just one guy, who risked his life every time he went up in it:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/rocket-man/

The jetpack in question – technically a "rocket belt" – was built in the 1960s by Wendell Moore at the Bell Aircraft Corporation, with funding from the DoD. The Bell rocket belt used concentrated hydrogen peroxide as fuel, which burned at temperatures in excess of 1,000'. The rocket belt had a maximum flight time of just 21 seconds.

It was these limitations that disqualified the rocket belt from being used by anyone except stunt pilots with extremely high tolerances for danger. Any tactical advantage conferred on infantrymen by the power to soar over a battlefield for a whopping 21 seconds was totally obliterated by the fact that this infantryman would be encumbered by an extremely heavy, unwieldy and extremely explosive backpack, to say nothing of the high likelihood that rocketeers would plummet out of the sky after failing to track the split-second capacity of a jetpack.

And of course, the rocket belt wasn't going to be a civilian commuting option. If your commute can be accomplished in just 21 seconds of flight time, you should probably just walk, rather than strapping an inferno to your back and risking a lethal fall if you exceed a margin of error measured in just seconds.

Once you know about the jetpack's technical limitations, it's obvious why we never got jetpacks. So why did we expect them? Because we were promised them, and the promise was a lie.

Moore was a consummate showman, which is to say, a bullshitter. He was forever telling the press that his jetpacks would be on everyone's back in one to two years, and he got an impressionable young man, Bill Suitor, to stage showy public demonstrations of the rocket belt. If you ever saw a video of a brave rocketeer piloting a jetpack, it was almost certainly Suitor. Suitor was Connery's stunt-double in Thunderball, and it was he who flew the rocket belt around Sleeping Beauty castle.

Suitor's interview with Berube for the podcast is delightful. Suitor is a hilarious, profane old airman who led an extraordinary life and tells stories with expert timing, busting out great phrases like "a surprise is a fart with a lump in it."

But what's most striking about the tale of the Bell rocket belt is the shape of the deception that Moore and Bell pulled off. By conspicuously failing to mention the rocket belt's limitations, and by callously risking Suitor's life over and over again, they were able to create the impression that jetpacks were everywhere, and that they were trembling on the verge of widespread, popular adoption.

What's more, they played a double game: all the public enthusiasm they manufactured with their carefully stage-managed, canned demos was designed to help them win more defense contracts to keep their dream alive. Ultimately, Uncle Sucker declined to continue funding their boondoggle, and the demos petered out, and the "promise" of a jetpack was broken.

As I listened to the 99 Percent Invisible episode, I was struck by the familiarity of this shuck: this is exactly what the self-driving car bros did over the past decade to convince us all that the human driver was already obsolete. The playbook was nearly identical, right down to the shameless huckster insisting that "full self-driving is one to two years away" every year for a decade:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/23/23837598/tesla-elon-musk-self-driving-false-promises-land-of-the-giants

The Potemkin rocket belt was a calculated misdirection, as are the "full self-driving" demos that turn out to be routine, pre-programmed runs on carefully manicured closed tracks:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-autopilot-staged-engineer-says-company-faked-full-autopilot/

Practical rocketeering wasn't ever "just around the corner," because a flying, 21 second blast-furnace couldn't be refined into a practical transport. Making the tank bigger would not make this thing safer or easier to transport.

The jetpack showman hoped to cash out by tricking Uncle Sucker into handing him a fat military contract. Robo-car scammers used their conjurer's tricks to cash out to the public markets, taking Uber public on the promise of robo-taxis, even as Uber's self-driving program burned through $2.5b and produced a car with a half-mile mean time between fatal collisions, which the company had to pay someone else $400m to take the business off their hands:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

It's not just self-driving cars. Time and again, the incredibly impressive AI demos that the press credulously promotes turn out to be scams. The dancing robot on stage at the splashy event is literally a guy in a robot-suit:

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-ai-day-tesla-bot-is-just-a-guy-in-a-bodysuit-2021-8

The Hollywood-killing, AI-produced video prompting system is so cumbersome to use, and so severely limited, that it's arguably worse than useless:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/expectations-versus-reality/

The centuries' worth of progress the AI made in discovering new materials actually "discovered" a bunch of trivial variations on existing materials, as well as a huge swathe of materials that only exist at absolute zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

The AI grocery store where you just pick things up and put them in your shopping basket without using the checkout turns out to be a call-center full of low-waged Indian workers desperately squinting at videos of you, trying to figure out what you put in your bag:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins

The discovery of these frauds somehow never precipitates disillusionment. Rather than getting angry with marketers for tricking them, reporters are ventriloquized into repeating the marketing claim that these are lies, they're premature truths. Sure, today these are faked, but once the product is refined, the fakery will no longer be required.

This must be the kinds of Magic Underpants Gnomery the credulous press engaged in during the jetpack days: "Sure, a 21-second rocket belt is totally useless for anything except wowing county fair yokels – but once they figure out how to fit an order of magnitude more high-explosive onto that guy's back, this thing will really take off!"

The AI version of this is that if we just keep throwing orders of magnitude more training data and compute at the stochastic parrot, it will eventually come to life and become our superintelligent, omnipotent techno-genie. In other words, if we just keep breeding these horses to run faster and faster, eventually one of our prize mares will give birth to a locomotive:

https://locusmag.com/2020/07/cory-doctorow-full-employment/

As a society, we have vested an alarming amount of power in the hands of tech billionaires who profess to be embittered science fiction fans who merely want to realize the "promises" of our Golden Age stfnal dreams. These bros insist that they can overcome both the technical hurdles and the absolutely insurmountable privation involved in space colonization:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

They have somehow mistaken Neal Stephenson's dystopian satirical "metaverse" for a roadmap:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/

As Charlie Stross writes, it's not just that these weirdos can't tell the difference between imaginative parables about the future and predictions about the future – it's also that they keep mistaking dystopias for business plans:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tech-billionaires-need-to-stop-trying-to-make-the-science-fiction-they-grew-up-on-real/

Cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion. Please, I beg you, stop building the fucking torment nexus:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

These techno-billionaires profess to be fulfilling a broken promise, but surely they know that the promises were made by liars – showmen using parlor tricks to sell the impossible. You were "promised a jetpack" in the same sense that table-rapping "spiritualists" promised you a conduit to talk with the dead, or that carny barkers promised you a girl that could turn into a gorilla:

https://milwaukeerecord.com/film/ape-girl-shes-alive-documentary-november-11-sugar-maple/

That's quite a supervillain origin story: "I was promised a jetpack, but then I grew up discovered that it was just a special effect. In revenge, I am promising you superintelligent AIs and self-driving cars, and these, too, are SFX."

In other words: "Die a disillusioned jetpack fan or live long enough to become the fraudster who cooked up the jetpack lie you despise."

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/2024/05/17/fake-it-until-you-dont-make-it/#twenty-one-seconds

[frostyresolve]

a lottie little too much ꒰ ᝬ brant

he gets drunk and decides to battle a bunch of lottie losts for your favor. 1.2k words. suggestive, fluff.

︶꒦︶꒷︶︶꒷꒦︶︶︶꒷꒦‧

he stumbles up to you, dancing on his feet as his boots touch the wooden floorboards. he won’t deny that he’s had a few drinks too many, his vision hazy as he surveys the troupe, glasses clinking and beer sloshing in cups at the celebration of a performance well done. even through the haze, he singles out you.

he calls out to you, leaning against the tabletop for balance. “you like the little rabbit things?” BRANT huffs, words incoherent somewhat as they tumble out of his mouth. they’re adorable, you can’t deny. especially the lottie lost in front of you playing the accordion; they’re quiet and compassionate echoes, more so than the ones you’ve encountered in the wilderness.

“they’re sweethearts,” you point out with a small smile, clearly taken by their cute mannerisms, the rabbit echoes clambering for your attention as they tried to outdo each other. what’s so special about them anyway? sure they could play instruments well enough, but they weren’t prodigies. how could you find them more interesting than him when they could only say two words?

he never should have suggested having echoes perform alongside the show if it meant every single drop of your attention would be spent on them and not him.

he practically growls, envy bubbling inside him. "just rabbit echoes... but they're cute... and you're petting them...”

“pet me... i’m cute too... i’m the captain." he hiccups, a hint of petulance in his voice.

scowling, his expression morphs into a mix of drunken annoyance and wounded pride. the sight of you lavishing attention on the bunny echoes was starting to get under his skin. you’re caught off guard as he clumsily climbs onto your lap, his body heavy against yours. his legs hooked around your hips as his arms grip your waist tightly, the sweet smell of alcohol lingering on his skin. "mmm...much better..." he hums, nuzzling his face into your neck. he clumsily tries to mimic the rabbit's voice.

"lottie lost, lottie lost…" he speaks suddenly, his words coming out slightly slurred and far from cute. there’s a pause, your gaze locked onto BRANT along with the other lottie lost rabbits who freeze at his words. he’s probably saying something atrocious in their language, but he can’t be bothered to care, staggering over to you and clinging onto you as he tries to imitate the echoes. he tries his best to mimic the rabbits again, his words barely understandable.

“lottie…lottie lost…” he keeps repeating in a sloppy manner, gripping your arm in his drunken stupor. the lottie losts continue to stare at him with their button eyes, their confusion growing with each attempt. it was probably coming off more like drunken babble than cute mimicry.

“what’re you doing?” you ask in confusion as his arms wrap around your waist. you can practically smell the alcohol wafting off him, the rich scent of aged grapes clinging onto his clothes. he never settled for anything but the finest wine after all, even if it left him with a hole in his pocket.

“lottie lost.” a rabbit calls in an attempt to attract your attention back as it waves its arms at you, probably craving your applause and validation.

you can feel his grip tighten around you, drunken logic taking over. he didn't like that you were paying attention to the rabbit echoes when he was right there, and in his state, he chooses to make the irrational decision to try even harder.

the words came out as a slurred mess, anything but similar to what a lottie lost would sound like. if the rabbits could make facial expressions, they’d probably be grimacing at the foul words leaving his mouth. “lottie... lost..." he mutters, his head drooping onto your shoulder. "need hugs... from you... not them..."

you’re not sure what else to do, trying to register the sight before your eyes, so you decide to state the obvious. “you’re drunk; how many bottles did you have?”

“mmm, not drunk…” he sings against your shoulder, his fingers clutching onto you with an iron grip. “a lottie lot. always drunk on you.”

he lifts his head, amethyst eyes hazy and unfocused. BRANT sees you clearly, though, clearer than any blue sky and brighter than any gem he’s ever encountered. “you’re... pretty. prettier than the rabbits. much prettier... and tastier. you taste better.” he slurs drunkenly, his words coming out without a second thought. you know he’s too far gone by now by what he’s spewing out without a care.

“a lottie lot…” you repeat in confusion; his words are merging, every sentence leaving his lips twisted with the name of those damned rabbits.

his face crinkles in confusion as you repeat the words back to him. his mind is too fuzzy with drunkenness to grasp what he’s said, and he just stares at you for a moment before breaking into a hiccupping laugh.

"lottie... lost count..." he repeats, chuckling as he leans heavily against you. his hand continues to roam your skin aimlessly, touch warm and lazy, heat radiating off his skin with each brush of his thumb on your cheek.

that’s when his lips brush against yours briefly, giving you any time to react. you’re stunned speechless when he pulls away, about to speak up, but the only sound leaving your mouth is a shocked gasp. his tongue dips into the hollow of your throat as he nuzzles his face closer into your shoulder.

he seems to take notice of your reaction, and so he responds by peppering more kisses along your neck, whatever he’s saying becoming more of a muffled hum against your skin. his hand on your back begins to explore more, trailing up your spine, before eventually resting on the back of your head, gently tilting it to the side to give himself more access to every expanse of your skin BRANT could find. x marks the spot where his mouth and teeth sink into your neck.

“can you walk?” you whisper, feeling your cheeks heat up as you clear your throat awkwardly when he finally pauses to catch his breath. he pulls away in a daze, swaying on your lap, holding onto you for dear life like you were anchoring him.

it seems like you’ve gotten your answer as his hand slips on the edge of the table, and he faceplants onto the deck of the ship unceremoniously when he tries to get up from your lap. curse you for letting him drink himself silly, not that he wasn’t silly before. his head hits the bottom of the table, letting out a whine as he rubs the side of his forehead before he practically crawls back to you.

you’ve never wanted to jump off the plank so much in your life.

“carry lottie…cuddles…” he coos, looking at you through half-lidded eyes as his body practically drapes over yours like a cape, causing you to stagger at the sudden weight pressing against you. he’s absolutely lost it; he’ll get teased in the morning when his hangover hits like an anchor crashing down onto him. he tugs on your sleeve, warm breath ghosting your neck, moist lips stained with wine trailing sticky kisses all over your exposed skin. if he were sober, he’d probably ask politely instead of gnawing at you like a dreadwolf. his balance is totally off-kilter, stumbling with each step as you make your way to his quarters.

maybe this was what BRANT wanted all along. for you to drag him back to his room. he’s not letting you leave soon, pulling you in the direction of his quarters when you open the door along with him.

he wants you to tumble right into his bed, right where you belong, to keep your captain lottie lost company.

© FROSTYRESOLVE 2025. DO NOT PLAGIARISE, REUPLOAD OR FEED MY WORKS INTO AI

[gazemaizeisdead]

there’s a scene in fat albert 2004 where live action kenan thompson fat albert, who has accidentally escaped the fictional television world of his cartoon series and become real à la barbie, meets his creator, bill cosby.

it’s a unique film. i’ve seen it about thirty times. the opening credits are in comic sans.

it’s the worst film in the tiny but horrible microgenre of films in which an established, questionably marketable character with diminished cultural relevance is mysteriously transported to our reality. rocky and bullwinkle, harold and the purple crayon, garfield, enchanted (it’s disney, which at the time was only beginning to toy with the cloyingly affectionate self-awareness that has since swallowed it whole, so an expy blend of all stock princesses is used in the place of any particular ip). if you loosen up the parameters of that definition a smidge you can easily come up with another fifty or so awful, bizarre live-action adaptations of various properties with similar narrative structures and plot beats, but i’m curious about this very specific type of hyper-meta fish out of water isekai movie, stories that are less interested in the characters they are ostensibly about and more about the modern world’s current reactions to those characters, and choose to discuss that in the most convoluted, literal way possible.

this type of story is simultaneously extremely high-concept postmodernist analysis and the laziest paint by the numbers shit it’s possible to create. live-action adaptations even at their best betray an inherent disrespect for animation, implying it to be a secondary medium that exists as a temporary placeholder or poor man’s substitute for reality, that characters are only worth caring about if they look as real as we do or exist in a world like ours. there’s no genuine artistic reason to make a woody woodpecker movie, an avatar movie, a death note movie, a live-action pinocchio, they’re all cynical soulless cashgrabs but they at least do attempt to adapt and actually BE what they purport to be. dan aykroyd yogi bear and light turner and matthew lillard william afton for the five minutes they wanted to pay him to be in the fnaf movie are simply poor facsimiles of themselves and they suck because of that bad mimicry, we see and hear the contrast and know immediately it’s not the same. the project of live-actionization is misguided because even before awful executive-driven creative decisions (which all these movies have in spades) very often whatever is being adapted simply can’t be translated properly to its new medium. you could give a film a 500m budget and airbending will still not look as good as it does in 2d, where one can easily and stylistically show the movement of invisible wind and have a character float and defy gravity in a way that is instantly believable in a way that a real human being moved by CGI is not. neil patrick harris and hank azaria as hard as they try, as talented as they are cannot legitimately sell me on the idea that they’re actually being hardcore smurfed in the way that an animated gargamel can. these movies reach for a perceived authenticity and fail to reach it, not understanding that the mediums they are stealing from almost always allow for a greater seeming realness than live-action can, especially when portraying the fantastical.

the isekai movies go one step beyond this disrespect because they refuse to even play the part. yes we’ll make a rocky and bullwinkle movie but we cannot simply DO rocky and bullwinkle, we can’t do a scooby doo and just make a bigger irl version of the formula, we must have this elaborate meta routine so we can continually point to the audience and share a laugh together about how dogshit and unimportant rocky and bullwinkle are. the people who make these movies are so embarrassed by the concept of taking these ideas seriously that they must even in-universe create further removal from the realness of this to insulate us from the possibility of caring. rocky and bullwinkle must be a fake tv show even in the movie, even in pretend land they must be from a deeper pretend land. it’s fine if you want to do commentary on the property (preferable, in fact, that makes it more interesting!) but this commentary is almost never allowed to extend beyond the singular joke of every gamer webcomic ever made: wouldn’t it be fucked up if fictional thing were REAL?

wouldn’t it be fucked up if rocky and bullwinkle were in a REAL car? you bet it fucking would be. (robert de niro produced this movie and plays the main villain)

obviously we’re in a post-barbenheimer world and the only movie of this kind worth comparing fat albert to is barbie, which is notable for being the only good execution of this premise (i would call enchanted competent; it’s funny but a mess). the barbie comparison is especially interesting because fat albert is a cracked mirror to barbie.

like barbie, fat albert and the cosby kids exist in a cartoon world where characters are simultaneously performers and platonic forms of themselves, and where they operate with an unspecified degree of awareness of their own fakeness; a background character in fat albert’s philadelphia mentions having done guest spots on the jetsons. like barbie, al is snapped out of his usual routine by the personal crisis of one of his fans, when her single live-action tear falls on the remote as she watches his show and magically falls into his fictionalized philadelphia. the magic tear allows him to hear her crying and a portal is rended between the two worlds; he enters reality, naively tries to solve her social and emotional problems with platitudes, and is forced to grapple with the tenuous nature of his existence and mortality and the complexity of the real world. 

i’m just ken is replaced with fat albert performing an extended rap cover of his own theme song. fat albert spends as much of this movie trying to help the main character make friends as he does trying to fuck her adoptive older sister (“my big al”, she calls him).

without getting into “barbie politics” barbie works because it wants to be a movie about barbie, the thing it’s named after. it takes “barbie lore” seriously. at least half of barbie actually takes place in barbieland, a world that the movie cares about making authentically fake and different and weird. the mechanics and nature of barbie’s existence and barbieland are the most important part of the movie. all of these bad adaptations have the obligatory familial infighting/accidentally thwarting a jewel heist/stopping the evil CEO from demolishing the neighborhood to build a megamall/helping larry bird get his basketball talent back from the aliens plot and so does barbie but it’s an excuse to talk about more interesting abstractions. there is a subplot dedicated to barbie helping to reignite a mother and daughter’s bond but this isn’t the core of the movie, it really is about barbie, literally and metaphysically. fat albert too isn't "about" helping a girl make friends and find herself, it's about fat albert, but it resents that about itself.

fat albert 2004 has about six minutes of actual animation, it rushes to get kenan thompson on screen as quickly as possible and stays there as long as it can (presumably a factor of cost more than anything else, as with all of these films). in barbie the ideas and philosophies of barbieland and real life both naturally affect each other, are reflections of each other, which is an obvious worldbuilding choice that makes intuitive sense; the media we consume is a reflection of the real world and vice versa. there is nothing inherently wrong or bad about the link between the two worlds, says barbie, though it is often the conduit for harmful ideas.

fat albert’s philadelphia and our philadelphia do not share this connection, albert’s intrusion in the real world is a perversion of the natural order and, we later learn, a physical impossibility in the long term. halfway through the movie, the cosby kids begin to be influenced by the real world: mushmouth gains the ability to speak coherently (“don’t call me mushmouth anymore! just call me… mouth!”) and dumb donald removes his ski cap, learns to read, and goes to the library and speeds through 22 volumes of african-american history. this is portrayed as profane; as dumb donald says before jumping back into the TV halfway through the movie: “"i've become smart enough to understand that... we've entered into a world where we do not belong. if you try to become something that you're not, you lose the essence of who you really are."

albert, still on his love quest, at first refuses to rejoin them; he goes off on a date with protagonist’s older sister, which goes well until a child recognizes him and shames him for not being in the tv where he belongs. “we need you! what would mr. cosby think if you don’t go back?” al’s stunned by this; he has no response, but it inspires him to seek answers. in the next scene he decides to find out. he walks up to bill cosby’s house and knocks on the door.

in barbie the discussion barbie has with her creator, ruth handler, is the emotional climax of the film. when barbie tells her she wants to stay in southern california, ruth warns her of the dangers of being human, but does not ultimately stop barbie from doing so; she points out that she is incapable of doing so even if she wanted to.

fat albert mirrors this discussion; albert is told of his conceptual origins. as barbie is based on ruth’s daughter, he is based on a deceased childhood friend of cosby’s, the grandfather of the girl he is trying to help (which is why the movie is careful to repeatedly stress the point that the older sister he’s fallen in love with is only his granddaughter by adoption). there isn’t a parallel moment to the one in barbie where handler winks to the audience about her criminal conviction but that’s probably in the film’s best interest.

albert pleads with cosby in the same way as barbie. more than anything, he wants to stay in the real world. cosby, like handler, encourages him to recognize his own power as an icon, but informs him that his fate is inescapable. if he stays in the real world, his colors will begin to fade and he will soon “turn into celluloid dust” and die. how cosby knows this is not explained; presumably little bill also visited him in the past and suffered a similar fate.

even when done cynically (as it always is) to adapt or remake anything to reject the source material in some way. it’s a paradoxical relationship, because to do it you have to both like (or at least be interested) in what you are recreating but find some aspect of it unnecessary or outdated or lacking or worthy of change. the animation to live-action adaptation often must navigate the additional paradox of wanting to make the unreal real, and the end result, formed by people who don’t care and are only in it for a paycheck, is usually bad art.

in the end fat albert acknowledges his own unreality and crawls back in the tv. the final scene is a saving private ryan style ending where all of the real life elderly inspirations for the cosby kids leave flowers on the real fat albert’s grave. here it hits you: the only moral of the live action fat albert movie is that a live action fat albert movie is a really shitty idea that would kill fat albert.

i agree.