cyanlastride

[cyanlastride]

i love being consulted about changes at my workplace before they are announced publicly. really makes me feel like part of the team, and gives me an opportunity to raise concerns or answer questions that i am asked. great work guys.

[cyanlastride]

*opens gloomhaven box*

so it begins

[cyanlastride]

dreamed that i got invited to my ex's wedding.

thatd be nice, actually. id like that.

i hope i do someday.

[cyanlastride]

grant me the silver tongue of a devil

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fuckin hell. detailed dream today. time loop plot that sometimes felt like a first person shooter, setting had vibes like children of men. important group (henceforth referred to as "the agency") has started a time loop to figure out the answer to some problem before it destroys the world. our protagonist (me, but not playing as myself) is also in the time loop on accident, but doesnt realize it at first.

quick loop rules: both the agency and protag retain memories on loop, rest of the world does not. unclear how long loop was, but longer than 24 hours and shorter than death of all loopers. perhaps 3 or 4 days? if a looper dies, they are out for the rest of this loop, but will wake again next loop, retaining all memories.

the agency realizes the protag is looping, and sends out a small division each loop to keep him occupied while they do science. the protag starts to believe that the agency has foul intentions, and starts spending his loops trying to kill/stop them. i eventually woke up after dying to extreme radiation exposure. not a pleasant feeling. protag is similar to protag from children of men, and has a relationship with someone in the agency similar to the relationship between the protag and the rebel leader in children of men. the problem they were trying to solve was not revealed, but it wasnt infertility, so i wasnt completely copying that movie. oh! another thing -- im pretty sure the protag "wakes up" slightly later than the agency members each loop, because the agency was always mobilized in a different way right at the start but didnt quite have enough time to just go kill protag. it would be cool if there was just one agency member that has to go wake up the others, so you could have a loop where its just the agency leader who has gone to talk to protag alone as a show of good faith. i also tried to turn some of the agency members, so that theyd stop killing me. anyways, yeah, it was cool. id like to know what exactly the agency was trying to do.

thanks, lizard brain. other than the radiation death, that was pretty fucking cool.

[cyanlastride]

... yaknow, someone told me this once -- i dont remember who; hell, it mightve been you -- but, they told me, its fucked up to say "you deserve better than me". because, well, it discounts the other person's choice. you chose me as much as i chose you. to say "you deserve better than me" is to imply something along the lines of "you made a bad choice when you chose me", which, just, it isnt fair, yaknow? you knew me -- or, at least, you felt you knew me well enough to choose me, and i dont think you like, made a mistake or anything. also, i just wanna say, i dont hate myself, yaknow? i think im alright. you deemed me worthy of you then, and id like to think youd otherwise deem me worthy of you now, ignoring our history. but there is still some element of truth behind the idea of "you deserve better than me", right? and, i think, well, ive got an answer that satisfies myself, at least.

a while ago, almost a year now, i went to go see a doctor for the first time in a long time. i didnt exactly say this outright to them, but i went because i was scared i was gonna kill myself. i didnt want to kill myself, and i still dont, and as far as im aware ive never wanted to and hopefully never will, right. but i was still scared that sometime i would find myself with an easy way out and id lean forward or pull the trigger before i could think about it. i left that room with a depression diagnosis, which i think vastly understates the problem, but whatever, and a prescription for a bottle of pills. and they said, "take half of one of these a day, for two weeks, and see how you feel." so i went, and i picked up my bottle of pills, and two weeks later i was feeling alright. i think they checked in, or something, and i said i was doing fine, and yaknow, here we are today.

but i never opened that bottle. it still sits on my shelf, actually. i see it every day. i dont look at it every day, but yaknow, some days i pick it up. some days i read the label real hard. spin in around in my hands. i always put it back on the shelf, unopened.

im scared of what those pills would do to me. its not a practical fear, i dont think. it might be borne of my mom having a host of medical issues because shes had to take a while suite of pills basically her entire life, but i dont really think its the fear of medical issues twenty years down the line thats stopping me. i think im scared of the pills working. of the pills changing me into a happier, healthier version of myself. i dont want that. one of my friends in highschool joked once, "what if the treatment takes my funny away." its not even really that, for me. its that i dont want to be a person who has "normal" levels of happy and sad all the time. its not the funny that it would take away -- its the lows. the horrifying, utterly terrifying lows. because thats what the pills are supposed to do. either that, or they wouldnt work, and we're back at square one. and yaknow, like, those lows are scary. really fucking scary, sometimes. sometimes they just suck ass. other times theyre mildly annoying. but i would miss them. or no, thats just it, isnt it -- i wouldnt. i wouldnt miss them. id be happy to not have them anymore. id stop thinking about them. eventually id forget.

and see thats, thats the thing. i dont want to forget. i want to know exactly how bleak the world looks from the bottom of the hole. because the lows are also my moment of greatest empathy. where i can look at my neighbour, my peer, my fellow person, and understand how different we may see the world. im already a bit of a shitbag sometimes, and the lows help me remember that everyone is worth saving. no matter how much it hurts. everyone can be someone theyre proud of, even if theyve forgotten what that looks like.

well, and, if we're being honest, thats not the only reason. i was put on this earth with a fucked up brain, and gods fucking dammit im going to leave with it. im not interested in fixing it. ill repair it as much as it needs, but i never want there to be a day where my fucked up brain isnt fucked up anymore. therell be another hill, another hitch, another problem. its a pride thing. im playing the hand i was dealt. itll kill me. im okay with that.

but it does fucking suck. the lows make me unstable. inconsistent. makes it hard for me to maintain the level of happiness i would generally want in the life of someone i love. so thats what ill say. i love you, and i love myself. but you deserve someone whod take the pills. and neither of us knew it then, because i had never considered pills as an option back then. but that was never going to be me.

[cyanlastride]

you cant wake up if you dont fall asleep

a fool will be cured before death

[cyanlastride]

agi might be a faster apocalypse than both fascism and global warming. absolutely terrifying.

this is a thought ive had for a while, and might have written here before, but its worth repeating. i believe that improvements in technology leads to faster improvements in technology. technological growth is exponential. for all of human history, this growth has been picking up speed, but it hasnt really mattered, because it still appears to take a while on the scale of a human lifetime. what we are living through now is the point where the time between technological milestones is not only short enough to be witnessed in the human lifetime, but actually takes less time than it takes for a human to grow up. my grandparents grew up with telephones. my parents grew up with home computers. i grew up with the internet, and with social media. my younger peers have grown up with llms to help them with their homework. you can see the strain that this has caused on our society -- many places are still struggling with internet privacy laws, and how ideas like copyright and fair use function in a digital landscape. how can we pass reasonable judgement on llms when the people making laws arent competent with smartphones? technology is now faster than culture, and we are suffering for it.

however, in theory it stops at some point. technology is still limited by the human mind -- it cannot progress faster than humans can work, and importantly, collaborate. human collaboration takes time.

but what if it didnt?

what if we had a device that contained within it all of human knowledge, and could take disparate ideas and concepts and combine them near-instantly? what would the limit be then?

would there be one?

this is the threat that agi represents. without the limitations imposed by human function, technology may be able to progress faster than humans can adapt, much less societies.

that is the moment we cross the event horizon.

[cyanlastride]

meeting went well! its cool to see what happens behind the scenes in a department. they also paid for lunch, which was nice of em. ive gotta find myself at more of these things -- free food always tastes the best.

[cyanlastride]

we are the anthropocene.

look upon our works, and despair.

[cyanlastride]

man, itd suck ass to be tumblr-famous.

i think i could do it. i think im capable of the right vibe, and volume. id have to filter a lot, which isnt really the point of this space. but like, a sideblog? i could be the next pukicho.

which would be entertaining for all of five minutes. and then people would start yelling at each other. because this is the piss on the poor website.

but really, everywhere is like that. at any time, reasonable minds can and do differ on what is acceptable, because we all live in wildly different contexts.

im glad i found bo burnham in highschool. chasing internet fame wouldve massively fucked me up.

[cyanlastride]

i shouldnt have watched memento.

i dont know why, exactly, but i shouldnt have watched it.

it breaks the veil.

i do this thing, after, or i guess during experiencing stories, where i act like the character. more than that. i see the world the way the character does. it stays with me, for a bit after finishing. im pretty sure its normal.

i read the gunslinger, i am the gunslinger. just for a while. i watch thunderbolts, i get annoyed because theyre trying to portray me, and theyre not doing it right. thats a completely different conversation. maybe its relevant. i hate that he forgets. the painful part is remembering. remembering, and still not being able to do anything about it. being painfully self aware. what you wouldnt give, in the moment, for the pain to be novel. to fight through it for the first time. not the tenth. not the hundredth. because thats when you know itll happen again. and you can do whatever you want in the meantime, but itll come back. and youre powerless. it cant be stopped. delayed, forgotten, sure. but when you're there, you remember. and you know itll keep happening. and you have to climb out anyways.

i have two great fears. the first is being alone. the second is forgetting. because despite everything, i dont want to forget. climbing put is what makes me, me. it separates me from the dead.

is the protagonist of memento dead?

maybe. its worth some thought.

[cyanlastride]

just saw memento. goddamn. what a story.

[cyanlastride]

despairing that i have noone to watch sad anime with

[cyanlastride]

watching 4 hours of movie for (less than) 1 hour of discussion fucking sucks. 4 hours of movie should be AT LEAST 2 hours of discussion, ideally 4, maybe 8. not a fan of this class so far.

[cyanlastride]

watched children of men last night and queen and slim just now for my film class. hell of a pair to introduce us to cinematography and mise en scene.

[cyanlastride]

pick

out

her heart

with a kitchen fork

pin down her arms