#Benefits of using labeling machines

[genderqueerdykes]

In a weird way, it feels like this is the only blog I can ask this and know that I'll get a 100% honest answer to my question, without having to worry about reading subtext. (Thank you for that) you've mentioned you don't want man hating lesbians here (valid) and if that applies here I'll back off 100% but like.

What if I specifically hate Cishet men. What if I don't take issue with queer men at all, just the cishets? Geunine question, just in case, because I know this could read as like trolling or something, and I do understand that basic language dictates yes it'd apply but I'm stupid & not sure, and I know that even if it's a harsh or brutal reply, you'll still give it to me straight. (Thank you for that too, my autistic ass struggles with subtext a lot.)

While I have reasons for feeling the way I do, I'm not sure they matter in this context. And that's okay.

i'm glad that you want to have a genuine conversation about it, i really appreciate that! the only way to learn and figure things out is to ask questions

at the end of the day, this behavior still affects queer men. cishet men can be queer- they can be intersex, aromantic, asexual, genderqueer, gender non conforming, drag artists... "cishet man" does not inherently mean someone who is not queer. there are many ways to be queer outside of being gay, bisexual, and/or trans. and even then, this behavior gets dangerous fast because strangers you perceive to be cishet men very well can be anything but that. someone you clock to be a cishet man may be a closeted trans girl, a trans man, a non binary person, a butch lesbian, and so on. you treating that person like they're an inherent danger causes a whole host of issues

this attitude is also why trans men, trans women, and non binary people are being forcefully removed from queer communities. if a queer person reads or passes as a "cishet man," they are treated with hostility and asked to leave in a lot of cases. we cannot allow the concept of manhood and perceived manhood to be viewed as something to be avoided and cast out, because it affects so much more than just cishet men. this attitude affects a LOT of closeted and non-passing trans women. honestly, that's who this hurts the most. it hurts trans men and enbies, but it really hurts trans women. it creates a standard where they have to overperform femininity and womanhood in order to be seen as "safe", and it's not okay.

projecting your issues with a small handful of people on to an entire group does not help. you have not been harmed by the concept of cishet men- you have been harmed by specific cishet men. in permanently labeling cishet men as bad people, this creates an ultimatum where they can never improve. hating them by virtue of them being cishet men creates a standard that cishet men will ALWAYS be terrible, and that they can't improve or learn. this creates an environment where no one challenges these behaviors and it makes the cycle even more toxic and abusive

it's okay to not want to spend time with cishet men, but saying that you hate all cishet men really isn't a good look. it's not the way to go about living a happy life. assuming that every single cishet man on this planet will hurt you or be a bad person strictly by virtue of being a cishet man is exactly what cishets do to us. this is how queerphobic cishet people look at trans women. there's no reason to do it back. we have to learn not to stereotype entire groups of people, no matter who they are

the concept of cishet men has never hurt you, and it never will. cishet men are not your enemy- patriarchy is. not every single cishet man benefits from patriarchy, either. intersex men, men of color, gender non conforming men, ace men and aro men are treated like absolute shit for not conforming to the toxic masculinity that patriarchy pushes. patriarchy also harms men- we must stand alongside men who are being chewed up and spat out by this machine. cishet men are not inherently bad people- we are grooming boys and men to be hostile, emotionally closed off, and violent. this is not an inherent trait of cishet men, but rather a societal issue

i hope that makes sense! in general it just really sucks to stereotype an entire group of people. it doesn't help anyone. the concept of cishet manhood hasn't hurt you and it never will. cishet men can still be allies. i've had lots of cishet male friends who weren't transphobic or even homophobic. the first person in my irl life to switch to using my proper pronouns at the time was a cishet man. he never screwed up my pronouns once, he never questioned my gender identity. cishet man does not mean inherently violent, dangerous, and evil. the more we teach men that they don't have to be this way, the more they will follow.

hope that helps! take care!

[maincharactermuse]

The one where there is overthinking. (9)

(Find my masterlist here)

Y/N woke to the smell of espresso that wasn’t hers. Which was odd, because she lived alone.

Her mind blinked awake slowly - just the sounds of the city through her open window, the dull ache in her shoulders from too much time hunched over a baking bench yesterday. No stranger brewing in the kitchen. Just muscle memory: a phantom scent, a thought that had wandered in from a dream of Harry’s house - warm wood, colder marble, and that stupidly beautiful La Marzocco machine that probably cost more than her rent.

She sat up slowly, duvet tangled at her waist, and blinked toward the light slanting through the curtains.

At what point does someone become your boyfriend?

Was it something you earned? Asked for? Grew into like a new pair of jeans - slow, unnoticed, until one day someone says that fits you? Or was there a moment, a spark, a declaration? A knock on the door, maybe. Hi there. Just here to let you know: congratulations, you have a boyfriend now. Terms and conditions apply.

She snorted softly at herself and padded into the kitchen. Turned on the kettle. Stirred honey into her yogurt with more intensity than was probably necessary.

It wasn’t that she needed the label, exactly. It was just… she liked knowing where she stood. Always had. In a relationship, in her work, in a bakery queue. And lately, things with Harry felt like standing on one of those moving walkways at the airport - things were going forward whether she walked or not. She just wasn’t sure where they were headed.

The kettle screamed. She poured the water, let the tea steep, and grabbed her phone.

Harry

Farmer’s Market at 11?

Will trade you peaches for my company.

She stared at it for a second. Smiled. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, copied and pasted the message straight into her group chat.

group chat: the coven 🔮

Y/N

He just texted

“Farmer’s market at 10? Will trade you peaches for your company.”

Is that a date or… a produce-related errand with benefits?

Noor

It’s a fruit-forward soft launch 💅

Go. Wear something vaguely effortless and make him carry everything.

Grace

That’s at least a date-adjacent activity.

Did he use a peach emoji tho

That would push it into horny territory.

Y/N

No peach. No winky face.

Just… sincerity.

Noor

Omg the intimacy 😭

Grace

You realise you’re already dating, right?

You’re just too emotionally stunted to say it out loud 😇

Y/N

OK rude but not inaccurate

Do people still have like… “the talk”?

Like when does it become a thing? Is there a ceremony?

Noor

The Ceremony of the Boyfriending™

A council appears. Rings are exchanged. You delete Hinge.

Grace

He seems like the “acts like your boyfriend for 6 months before saying it out loud” type tbh

Good hair. Terrible communication.

Y/N

Wow

Seen

Attacked

Buying jam anyway.

She laughed into her tea. But underneath it - underneath the ease, the teasing - there was still that quiet hum in her chest.

Do you see me like that?

Is this where we’re going?

Would you say yes if I asked?

———————————————————————————

Parliament Hill Markets were already buzzing when she spotted him. Gray shirt, dark trousers, sunglasses, carrying two canvas bags like he did this every weekend.

He hadn’t seen her yet. She stood still for a second and just… watched.

This was becoming a pattern - her life folding into his, quietly, one scene at a time. Not big, sweeping gestures. Just stolen mornings. Coffee that tasted like something else. Late-night texts about nothing and everything. Peach invites.

“Hi,” she said, stepping beside him.

He looked up. Smiled that slow, slightly surprised smile - like he wasn’t quite used to her showing up yet, but liked it every time.

“You came,” he said.

“I wanted peaches.”

He handed her one of the bags. “And good company?”

She shrugged. “Jury’s still out.”

They walked side by side, easy rhythm. But there was no contact - not even a brush of shoulders. Too many eyes. She understood. Still, she felt it - that space between them, measured and deliberate. Not unfriendly. Just… intentional.

They wandered between stalls, weaving through crowds. He picked out nectarines while she haggled over berries. Argued passionately over jam flavours — he said raspberry was king; she called it a coward’s choice.

“Strawberry’s basic,” he insisted. “Raspberry’s got edge.”

“Raspberry seeds are a war crime,” she muttered.

He grinned, handing her a sample from a vendor. “Here. Try this and tell me I’m wrong.”

She tasted it. Paused. Licked her lip.

“I hate that you’re right.”

He beamed. “Victory is sweet.”

At one point, a woman at a flower stall called out, “You again! Where’s your mum this time?”

Harry smiled politely, then gestured to Y/N. “She’s back up north. This is Y/N.”

Just that. This is Y/N. No qualifier.

The woman looked at her and smiled. “He always buys tulips for someone. You must be lucky.”

“Oh-” she started, but Harry jumped in, buying the flowers quickly, nudging her away.

Y/N walked quietly for a minute, tulips dangling from her fingers.

No qualifier.Just Y/N.

She hated how much she noticed.

———————————————————————————

“Okay, random question,” she said instead, tugging the tote higher on her shoulder. “What’s your most controversial food opinion?”

Harry’s brow lifted. “Besides the strawberry-thyme jam being elite?”

She gave him a dry look. “Besides that.”

He thought for a second. “Alright. I don’t think avocados are that good.”

She stopped walking and turned to stare at him. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not.”

“Harry.”

“They’re bland. Weird texture. And you all act like they’re some kind of edible gold.”

“Okay, wow. I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

“You just accused me of jam treason. Let’s not pretend we’re not both food criminals.”

She narrowed her eyes, pretending to be deeply offended. “I can’t believe I’m possibly not-dating someone who slanders avocados.”

His lips twitched. “Possibly not-dating?”

Shit. That slipped out.

“Hypothetically,” she amended quickly, brushing a bit of hair behind her ear. “If I were not not-dating you. I’d be concerned.”

He didn’t say anything for a beat. Just looked at her - really looked - and she could feel the air shift slightly. That thrum of something unnamed between them, hovering.

Then he smiled. “Well, hypothetically. I’ll allow it.”

They started walking again, side by side, his hand swinging just close enough to hers to make her fingers ache with wanting to reach for him.

But they didn’t. Not yet.

They reached the edge of the canal, where the path split off toward the little cafés and vintage shops. Boats bobbed gently nearby, flowers spilling from their windows like they belonged in a painting.

Harry slowed. “Wanna grab a coffee?”

Y/N opened her mouth to say yes. She wanted to. She wanted to spend more time with him, to sit across from him and pretend they were just a normal couple doing normal couple things.

But something tightened in her chest. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t anything he’d done. It was just… the weight of not knowing. Of feeling so much and not knowing where to put it. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “Actually… I might head home. I’ve got some stuff to do before tomorrow.”

He didn’t press. Just nodded once. “Alright. You sure you’re okay?”

She smiled. It wasn’t a lie. Just a version of the truth. “Yeah. Just tired.”

He looked at her like he could see through it, but didn’t say anything. “Text me when you get back?”

“Of course.”

They stood there a beat longer, and she felt that pull again. The one that made her want to reach for his hand, to kiss him, to say what are we, actually?

Instead, she just smiled.

He leaned in like he might kiss her, but pulled back at the last second—his gaze flicking toward the people nearby. Cameras or not, there was always someone looking.

So he just squeezed her shoulder gently. “Later, then.”

“Later.”

She turned and walked away, the tote bag still heavy on her shoulder, heart heavier. She didn’t look back, but she could feel him watching her go.

———————————————————————————

group chat: the coven 🔮

Y/N

Okay. I think I’m not NOT dating Harry. I’m also dating him.

Idk what I’m saying

Noor

men just assume you’re dating them when you remember how they take their coffee

Grace

Lmfaooo Noor

Y/N seriously though, what happened?

Y/N

Nothing. I mean, we hung out. It was nice.

We walked. Argued about jam.

He looked really good in a stupid cardigan

I almost said something but then I got in my head and left like I had a dentist appointment

Noor

Noooo babe 😂

Jam walk cardigan angst???

Grace

The rarest kind of emotional spiral

Y/N

I just… I really like him

And I don’t want to ruin it by being like “sooo are you my boyfriend?”

But I also don’t want to accidentally become a situationship because I was trying to be chill

I’m not chill. I’m warm. I’m room temperature. I bake things when I’m anxious

Grace

Okay but he likes warm

He literally goes to your café just to look at you over banana bread

Noor

You don’t have to figure it all out today

You can just… tell him when it feels right

You’re allowed to want clarity, babe. That’s not needy

Y/N

God you’re both so emotionally stable it’s disgusting

Okay

Okay. I’ll chill. For now.

But if he pulls out that jam again I’m walking into the Thames

Grace

Pls do

We’ll come with prosecco

———————————————————————————

Nana

Hi, baby. Just checking in — how’s your heart today?

Y/N

A bit noisy

I’m fine

Just… wondering when you’re supposed to say something

Like… how do you ask someone what this is without sounding like you’re trying to trap them in a net?

Nana

What happened?

Y/N

Nothing, really

Harry and I had a nice day

But I left early because I was overthinking every second of it

I want to seem cool and calm and unbothered but also like…

Can someone just tell me what’s going on 😭

Nana

You want to know if you are safe to hope

That’s not silly. That’s human.

Y/N

Yes exactly

That!!

Like how do I know it’s going somewhere

Do I need to wait until he says something? Or am I allowed to go first?

Nana

Labels are lovely, but they don’t build the relationship.

The daily kindness does. The showing up. . The way you feel when he looks at you.

If you still need clarity after that, you’re in your right to ask for it, lovie

Y/N

God why are you the wise one

I thought I was supposed to be the modern one here

Nana

I’ve just lived longer.

And made more of a mess of things 😌

Y/N

Nan.

You literally got married after two weeks

Nana

Exactly.

That’s why I know it’s okay to ask the questions

Y/N

You’re ridiculous

Thank you

Love you

Nana

Always.

Now go drink water and stop overwatering your thoughts

———————————————————————————

Harry

Hey

Don’t wanna overthink it but

Felt like you left a bit fast today

Everything alright?

Y/N

Yeah 😅

Sorry

I was just… in my head a bit

But I’m okay

I always like hanging out with you

Harry

Okay

Wasn’t trying to push, just wanted to check

You sure?

Y/N

Yeah

I mean, I like hanging out with you

Like kissing you

Love doing… other things with you 🍆🔥

Harry

Oh my god

You’re unhinged

Can we ever have a serious conversation

Y/N

You started it by asking if I was okay!!

I’m trying to answer in a mature and deeply honest way

Harry

Mature and deeply honest

With an aubergine moji

Y/N

Balance is key 🤷‍♀️

Harry

You’re ridiculous

But

I like all that too

(Especially the other things)

Y/N

I figured

Sorry again about today

Just got in my own way for a second

Harry

It happens

I’m glad you told me

Y/N

I’m free tomorrow after work

If you want company

I could bring over dinner

And by dinner I mean just me and maybe half a chocolate cake that’s been left over from the café

Harry

Perfect

You and half a cake is all I need

Text me when you’re close?

Y/N

Will do x

[probablyasocialecologist]

Nearly 50 years ago, long before smartphones and social media, the social critic Lewis Mumford put a name to the way that complex technological systems offer a share in their benefits in exchange for compliance. He called it a “bribe.” With this label, Mumford sought to acknowledge the genuine plentitude that technological systems make available to many people, while emphasizing that this is not an offer of a gift but of a deal. Surrender to the power of complex technological systems — allow them to oversee, track, quantify, guide, manipulate, grade, nudge, and surveil you — and the system will offer you back an appealing share in its spoils. What is good for the growth of the technological system is presented as also being good for the individual, and as proof of this, here is something new and shiny. Sure, that shiny new thing is keeping tabs on you (and feeding all of that information back to the larger technological system), but it also lets you do things you genuinely could not do before. For a bribe to be accepted it needs to promise something truly enticing, and Mumford, in his essay “Authoritarian and Democratic Technics,” acknowledged that “the bargain we are being asked to ratify takes the form of a magnificent bribe.” The danger, however, was that “once one opts for the system no further choice remains.”  For Mumford, the bribe was not primarily about getting people into the habit of buying new gadgets and machines. Rather it was about incorporating people into a world that complex technological systems were remaking in their own image. Anticipating resistance, the bribe meets people not with the boot heel, but with the gift subscription. The bribe is a discomforting concept. It asks us to consider the ways the things we purchase wind up buying us off, it asks us to see how taking that first bribe makes it easier to take the next one, and, even as it pushes us to reflect on our own complicity, it reminds us of the ways technological systems eliminate their alternatives. Writing about the bribe decades ago, Mumford was trying to sound the alarm, as he put it: “This is not a prediction of what will happen, but a warning against what may happen.” As with all of his glum predictions, it was one that Mumford hoped to be proven wrong about. Yet as one scrolls between reviews of the latest smartphone, revelations about the latest misdeeds of some massive tech company, and commentary about the way we have become so reliant on these systems that we cannot seriously speak about simply turning them off — it seems clear that what Mumford warned “may happen” has indeed happened.  The bribe can be a useful tool for understanding how we got where we are, and can be useful to keep in mind as we think about where we want to go next.

25 October 2021

[darkmaga-returns]

According to a U.S. bioweapons expert, DARPA — the Pentagon’s shadowy research arm — has taken battlefield technology originally developed for use during the Iraq War… and turned it inward. On us. On the American people.

This isn’t just about surveillance or mind control. This is about crushing the human soul.

Through a combination of vaccines and aerosolized chemtrail deployment, DARPA and its partners are working to “neutralize” spiritual inclinations in the human population. Their target? A specific gene — VMAT2 — known by scientists as the God gene, believed to play a role in spiritual experiences, moral intuition, and divine connection.

They aren’t just after your body or your mind. They’re after your soul. The divine spark that separates you from the machine. And they’re not hiding it anymore.

So what is the endgame of deleting the god gene? And who really benefits from a world stripped of faith?

Stay with us — because what we’re about to reveal might be the most disturbing truth of all.

The history books — if they’re ever written honestly — will remember chemtrails as one of the most deceitful and damaging operations ever carried out by governments against their own people.

For years, they mocked us. They gaslit the public. They labeled the truth as a “conspiracy theory.” But now? The veil is lifting. Their operations have become so blatant, so desperate, that denial is no longer an option for anyone paying attention.

Think back to when you were a kid — drawing blue skies and fluffy clouds. Did you ever imagine you’d live to see the sky carved into grids like a prison cell?

[esinofsardis]

AI Is Inherently Counterrevolutionary

You've probably heard some arguments against AI. While there are fields where it has amazing applications (i.e. medicine), the introduction of language generative AI models has sparked a wave of fear and backlash. Much has been said about the ethics, impact on learning, and creative limits of ChatGPT and similar. But I go further: ChatGPT is counterrevolutionary and inherently, inescapably anti-socialist, anti-communist, and incompatible with all types of leftist thought and practice. In this essay I will...

...

Dammit im just going to write the whole essay cause this shit is vital

3 Reasons Leftists Should Not Use AI

1. It is a statistics machine

Imagine you have a friend who only ever tells you what they think you want to hear. How quickly would that be frustrating? And how could you possibly rely on them to tell you the truth?

Now, imagine a machine that uses statistica to predict what someone like you probably wants to hear. That's ChatGPT. It doesnt think, it runs stats on the most likely outcome. This is why it cant really be creative. All it can do is regurgitate the most likely response to your input.

There's a big difference between that statistical prediction and answering a question. For AI, it doesnt matter what's true, only what's likely.

Why does that matter if you're a leftist? Well, a lot of praxis is actually not doing what is most likely. Enacting real change requires imagination and working toward things that havent been done before.

Not only that, but so much of being a communist or anarchist or anti-capitalist relies on being able to get accurate information, especially on topics flooded with propaganda. ChatGPT cannot be relied on to give accurate information in these areas. This only worsens the polarized information divide.

2. It reinforces the status quo

So if ChatGPT tells you what you're most likely to want to hear, that means it's generally pulling from what it has been trained to label as "average". We're seen how AI models can be influenced by the racism and sexism of their training data, but it goes further than that.

AI models are also given a model of what is "normal" that is biased towards their programmers/data sets. ChatGPT is trained to mark neoliberal capitalism as normal. That makes ChatGPT itself at odds with an anti-capitalist perspective. This kind of AI cannot help but incorporate not just racism, sexism, homophobia, etc but its creators' bias towards capitalist imperialism.

3. It's inescapably expoitative

There's no way around it. ChatGPT was trained on and regurgitates the unpaid, uncredited labor of millions. Full stop.

This kind of AI has taken the labor of millions of people without permission or compensation to use in perpetuity.

That's not even to mention how much electricity, water, and other resources are required to run the servers for AI--it requires orders of magnitude more computing power than a typical search engine.

When you use ChatGPT, you are benefitting from the unpaid labor of others. To get a statistical prediction of what you want to hear regardless of truth. A prediction that reinforces capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, and all the things we are fighting against.

Can you see how this makes using AI incompatible with leftism?

(And please, I am begging you. Do not use ChatGPT to summarize leftist theory for you. Do not use it to learn about activism. Please. There are so many other resources out there and groups of real people to organize with.)

I'm serious. Dont use AI. Not for work or school. Not for fun. Not for creativity. Not for internet clout. If you believe in the ideas I've mentioned here or anything adjacent to such, using AI is a contradiction to everything you stand for.

[forestlingincorporated]

I saw a post talking about how media like Detroit Become Human that use robots as a metaphor for racism never quite hits the nail on the head because, well, robots aren't people and the fear of being replaced by automation is a legitimate one.

And it made me think about Rockman-san.

Which is coming out very soon as Mr. Megaman, in English, so might as well talk about it now!

For a gag comic, Rockman-san has a very melancholy tone to it. It often touches on concepts like deterioration, obsolescence, and... well...

Automation.

The original Robot Masters of the Rockman-san comic are sentient. They can think, they can feel, they can love. It's a staple of Rockman/Megaman media for its Robot Masters and Reploids to be self-determining, but Rockman-san takes that to its extreme and, without getting into spoilers, has a real blurring of what it means to be human and what it means to be a machine.

Their humanity is what labels them as "dangerous," and that type of robot is being phased out and replaced with robots that can't think or feel. Yup - AI took the AI's jobs. The RMs are largely struggling with employment - some are having difficulty holding down a job, while others have been pushed out of the industries they were made for and find the work they took up to survive unfulfilling, while others are finding fulfillment in repurposing their hardware and programming to a new career. They have a variety of ways they experience the hardships of the world that... honestly hit me pretty hard, my first time reading, because it was probably the first time I'd read a story that felt like it was really talking to my actual lived experience as an adult.

By including these more real world ai machines, it reminds the audience the RMs are fantastical and highlights what the narrative is trying to analyze - "what does it mean to be self-determining? what does it mean to be sentient? is it a blessing or a burden? what rights does a fully aware, self-determining, sentient being have if it is not human? when do they become a person? what do you have to strip away from a human to make them no longer a person?"

Rockman-san manages to balance a narrative of robot discrimination while acknowledging that the presence of robots in their world is harmful to humans. It acknowledges that, by making the robots sentient, the scientists have accidentally created an underclass of person - the robots are thinking, feeling people who have to work to survive, to pay for energy, pay for repairs, pay for a place to live, pay for recreation. Robots work longer hours for less pay and have no legal recourse.

Rockman-san hits the nail on the head that this benefits the wealthy and harms the working class. Capitalism rears its ugly head yet again. The sentient robots get exploited, abused, and tossed aside. The working class suffers and dies. The wealthy profit.

And the finger gets pointed to the exploited underclass rather than those in power, as it so often does. But then... how would one ethically close Pandora's box? What changes would allow humans and robots to coexist? Can they coexist?

Just, something about how Rockman-san handles its robot rights narrative resonates, y'know? It doesn't rely on cheap parallels that don't really work. It's mostly asking questions of Megaman's premise. There's a lot of varying life experiences and opinions expressed by the characters, and it doesn't really ask you to agree with any of them - not even Rock or Dr. Light. We're not trying to come to definite answers, just exploring what it means to be alive and how to live in a society, how it works and how it fails.

I dunno. I'm not about to say it's a perfect narrative, but there's something about it I like.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

hey weird question but, with the context that while conspiracy thought in and of itself is just a sort of dangerous logical fallacy, most conspiracy theories have some kind of tie to antisemetism, are there any antisemetic aspects to gaylor theory? i can't think of how but somehow it almost always weasels in there, no matter how innocently silly something seems on the surface.

DEEP SIGH okay it's time to talk about Scooter Braun and his place in the Gaylor conspiracy

I'm not going to recap everything but will instead link you to this US Weekly article (I know, sorry) which is basically a fine summation of events despite being a bit sensationalist in calling a business disagreement between two adults a "feud"

tl;dr for anyone who doesn't want to read all of that (it's not actually that long, I prommy): in 2019 talent manager Scooter Braun acquired Taylor Swift's former record label Big Machine, giving ownership of the masters of her first six albums. Swift objected to this very publicly on the grounds that she wanted ownership over her own work and had repeatedly been denied the opportunity to buy it outright, while also alleging that Braun has been harassing and bullying her for years. ultimately, Swift has remained unable to buy back her work, leading to her steadily re-releasing expanded versions of her first six albums under the "Taylor's Version" headline.

obviously, given my stance against speculating on the personal lives of famous rich people, I'm not particularly interested in debating whether or not there's merit to Swift's accusations against Braun, although given the exploitative nature of the music industry I hardly think her claims are implausible.

regardless of whether or not Braun sucks as a person, it's important to note that he was only very briefly in ownership of Swift's discography: as the linked article above notes, he only owned them for about a year and a half before selling them off in 2020.

despite this, Braun holds what I would consider a rather outsize role in a lot of Gaylor conspiracy theorizing, with many apparently believing that Swift fully intended to come out in 2019 with the release of her seventh album, Lover, but was prevented from coming out by Braun purchasing her discography. I've seen some claim that he actively subjected her to homophobic bullying and others saying that she didn't him to financially benefit from any career boon she might have after coming out (although no one ever seems to have an answer for why she still hasn't come out three years after he sold her discography).

I can't say whether or not the majority of Gaylors, like, know or care that Braun is Jewish, but it feels tragically predictable and yucky that a Jewish man is given such a disproportional share of blame for why Taylor "can't" come out and is made a scapegoat in the ongoing effort to evade reality with "arguments" like this

(source)

... hang on, what's that?

oh man I love when a Jewish family gets put n SCARY ALL CAPS

okay so let's talk about Karlie Kloss and Josh Kushner!

as many of you probably know by this point, Karlie Kloss is the pinnacle of Taylor Swift's platonic gal pals that she gets relentlessly shipped with; I think it's fair to say that "proving" a romantic relationship existed between the two of them is the primary focus of a lot of Gaylorism.

since 2018 Kloss has been married to Josh Kushner, heir of THAT Kushner family. his infamous brother Jared is in fact Donald Trump's son-in-law and probably guilty of, like, a lot of federal crimes. that doesn't inherently make Josh a shithead or anything and he and Kloss both claim more liberal politics, although it should be noted that like a lot of rich liberals Josh does also suck pretty hard. he and Jared own a real estate management company together and were suing their tenants and evicting them during the COVID-19 rent moratorium, so that's kind of everything you need to know about him and Karlie Kloss IMO!!!

having said that, Josh being a bastard landlord doesn't make it appropriate to frame a Jewish family as having some kind of sinister interest in suppressing a queer woman's sexuality or imply that Kloss and Josh Kushner are in some kind of sham marriage. for YEARS Kloss' marriage to Kushner, including her conversion to Judaism and their two living human children, have been dismissed as elaborate turbo-bearding, with some Gaylors going so far as to allege that Kloss and Swift have actually been married for years and Kloss is just having Kushner's children for... reasons unknown... which feels like, you know. a pretty gross dismissal of a Jewish family in favor of pretending two WASPiest WASPs to ever WASP are secretly scissoring.

anyway I certainly don't think it's the most deliberate anti-semitism that's out there in the conspiracy world but are there some Gaylors blaming The Jews(TM) for forcing poor innocent Taylor to stay in the closet? resounding yes.

[lauravanarendonkbaugh]

Thoughts on A Message from NaNoWriMo

I got an email today from the National Novel Writing Month head office, as I suspect many did. I have feelings. And questions.

First, I genuinely believe someone in the office is panicking and backtracking and did not endorse all that was said and done in the last month. From what I understand, the initial AI comments were not fully endorsed by all NaNo staff and board members, or even known in advance. It's got to be rough to find out your organization kinda called people with disabilities incapable of writing a story on their own, and overtly called people with ethics racists and ablists, by reading the reactions on social media--and then your organization's even worse counter-reactions on social media.

I still think NaNoWriMo has a good mission and many people in it with good goals.

But I think NaNoWriMo is SERIOUSLY missing a point in its performative progressivism. (For the record, I'm actually in favor of many progressive policies, and I support many of the same concepts NaNoWriMo claims to support, and I applaud providing materials to underfunded schools and support to marginalized groups historically not producing as many writers, etc. The issue here is not "whether or not woke is okay" -- it's whether or not the virtue signaling is still in line with the core mission.)

Also, honesty. (That's below.)

NaNoWriMo has ALWAYS been on the honor system AND fully adaptable to needs. Some years I had a schedule which absolutely did not allow for 50k new words -- I adjusted my personal goals. (I did not claim a 50k win if I did not achieve one, but I celebrated a personal win for achieving personal goals.) Some years I wrote 50k in one project, and some 50k across multiple projects. NaNoWriMo has acknowledged this for years with the "NaNo Rebel" label.

So saying out of the blue that because some people cannot achieve 50k in a month, we should devalue the challenge (y'know that word has a definition, right?) and allow anyone to claim a win whether they actually wrote 50,000 words or not... Well, that's not only rude to writers who actually write, but it was unnecessary, because project goals have always been adjustable to personal constraints.

It's also hugely unhelpful to participating writers. Yeah, writing 50k words in a month is tough. That's why it's a challenge. Allowing people to "generate" (quotes intentional) words from a machine does not improve their skills. No one benefits from using AI to generate work -- not the "writer" who did not write those words and so did not practice and improve a skill, not any reader given lowest-common-denominator words no one could be bothered to write, and not the actual writer whose words were stolen without compensation to blend into the AI-generated copy-pasta.

Hijacking language about disability to justify shortcuts and skipping self-improvement is just cheap, and it's not fair to people with disabilities.

I would much rather see NaNoWriMo say, "Hey, we don't all start in the same place, and we may need different goals. Here's overt permission to set personal goals" (or maybe even, "here are several goals to choose from"), "and if you are a NaNo Rebel, rock on! This creativity challenge does require you to do your own work, in order for you to see your own skills improve."

And, honesty. Part of why I don't feel great about NaNoWriMo's backtracking and clarifications is that they're still not being open.

The same email links to an FAQ about data harvesting, which opens with this sentence:

Users of our main website, NaNoWriMo.org, do not type their work directly into our interface, nor do they save or upload their work to our website in any way.

This is technically correct in the present tense, but for years it wasn't. Every NaNo winner for years pasted their work into the word counter for verification. That was, by every web development definition, uploading.

[Updated: the word count validator was discontinued in recent years, and I was wrong to originally write as if it was still happening. I do think addressing the question of the validator would be appropriate when refuting accusations of data harvesting, for clarity and assurance regarding any past harvesting, especially giving today's AI scraping concerns. Again, as stated below, I don't think the validator was stealing work! But I wasn't the only person to immediately think of the validator when reading the FAQ. I was, however, wrong to state it as present-tense here.]

To be clear, I do not believe that NaNoWriMo is harvesting my work, or I wouldn't have verified wins with their word counter. But that's not because of this completely bogus assurance that their website never had the upload that they've required for win verification.

"Well, sure, we had the word counter, but it didn't store your work, and you should have known that's what we meant" is not a valid expectation when you are refuting data concerns. Just as "You should have known what we meant" is not a valid position when clarifying statements about the use of generative AI.

My point is, there are a number of different people making statements for NaNoWriMo, and at least some of them are not competent to make clear, coherent, and correct statements. Either they are not aware that the word counter exists, or they're not aware that pasting data into a website that uses that data to process a task is in fact uploading, or they are not aware that implying they've never collected data they did previously collect in a FAQ is dishonest. Or they are not aware that commenting or DMing users to castigate them for expressing legitimate concerns is not a good practice. Or they are missing the whole point of a writing challenge and emphasizing instead the warm fuzzies of inclusion without actually honoring that marginalized people also want to feel a sense of accomplishment rather than being token "winners."

I judged another writing challenge, once, which included an automatically-processed digital badge for minimum word count. One of the entries was just gibberish repeated to meet the minimum word count. Okay, "participant" who did not actually create anything -- you got your automated digital badge, so I guess you feel cool and clever. But did you meet the challenge? Did you level up? Did you come out stronger and more prepared for the next one?

That's what generative AI use does. Cheap meaningless win, no actual personal progress. That's why we didn't want it endorsed in NaNoWriMo. That's what NaNo is missing in their replies.

And I remain suspicious of replies, anyway, while absolute falsehoods are in their FAQ.

It's sad, because I've truly enjoyed NaNoWriMo in the past. And I actually do think they could recover from past scandal and current AI missteps. But it does not look at this time like they're on that path.

@nanowrimo

[yankeeblue]

I saw I was tagged in that thread late, my fault.

But @theknightofsolitude asked about Drake's deal with UMG. These tweets by the co-founder of Audiomack from a few months ago resurfaced. He explained one of the reasons behind Drake releasing songs on Instagram and his website during the 100 Gigs era.

So back when I use to listen to the Joe Budden podcast, there was a few times when he talked about Drake's relationship with Lucian Grainge, the person who runs UMG.

Joe mentioned one of the major record label's biggest fear is Drake going independent. The day Drake does that, the entire music industry is going to break. Drake generates a lot of money, he own his masters, have a huge impact, and he'd show other artists that they don't need the big three record labels. Which in this case is Universal, Sony & Warner.

Drake was in the middle of renegotiating with UMG. Every time he renegotiated, he recoup very quickly and they went back to the table to renegotiate a bigger deal. This time around, the number for a Drake deal is allegedly around $500-to-700 million. We already know he signed the $400 million deal in 2022.

So this gives some validity to the claims on the case about UMG attempting to bring his value down and going about it in way that included their alleged involvement in the Kendrick battle. And he counter that by "pushing the red button" by suing them and pulling the curtain all the way back to expose everything in the modern music industry practices.

Ultimately, I think Drake wants out of his deal since UMG keeps playing with him and his money. I think he'll go the independent route. And I think he believes he got the leverage by putting UMG in what he sees as a lose/lose situation. And in the long term, whatever happens in this case gonna benefit future artists.

Drake is fighting the machine.

cc: @itsexclusive @lchupanibre @norest4thaweary

[classicalsongbirdknits]

Superwash and non-superwash yarn both have their pros and cons, so today I’m covering the major ones so you have a basis to decide which kind of yarn to use.

For more information, check out the full post on my blog!

(Text for infographic below the cut)

You may have noticed that yarn labels sometimes say the wool is superwash or non-superwash. But what does that mean?

“Superwash” is a process that chemically treats yarn (typically wool) so it won’t felt in the machine. This treatment slicks down the wool fibres, so they can’t grab onto each other and tangle, which is what causes yarn to felt. This results in a slightly silkier feeling yarn, and can often been seen as a slight sheen.

Non-superwash yarn means that the fibres have not been treated with anything to make it easier to wash. The wool is wool as it came from the sheep - simply cleaned, carded, and spun. Non-superwash tends to be a bit fluffier, a bit toothier, and slightly less dense.

Superwash has the benefit of being washable, and it also dyes up with greater vibrancy than non-superwash. At the same time, it also has lower elasticity. Similarly, the chemical process of creating superwash yarn means there’s an environmental impact.

Non-superwash yarn has more structure, since the fibres haven’t been smoothed down. This also means that non-superwash animal fibres will bloom beautifully when blocked. However, non-superwash yarn tends to be more expensive, since it takes a longer process to dye. It also carries the risk of felting when washed.

Which one you use is ultimately up to you. There are pros and cons to each, so keep them in mind when you make your decision.

[blueikeproductions]

Looks like EarthSpark is finished baring any last minute announcements as a surprise leak/announcement reveals CyberWorld is coming out this July! Toy Fair is this weekend as of typing so we’ll start seeing something soon enough.

Will we see the Terrans again post EarthSpark?

I think we will, but likely not for a while. With all the political diarrhea going on as of typing, it’s probably easier for Hasbro to ignore Nighshade and the others until it’s “safe”. I’ve been vocal about disagreeing with the stereotyped brand of DEI in entertainment, the “Put a chick in it and make her gay and lame” rallying cry grifters were using post Panderverse. I still agree the stereotyped trans, dark skinned lesbian stock character has been horribly managed and is not what most people want, but I do believe there is a place for LGBT characters. There always has been, the writing and creative directions have just been bad, and that needs repaired over just scrapping LGBT characters outright.

There’s been mass protests from a shocking amount of people over the roll back of actual DEI policies (the kind that actually benefits minorities positively and should be kept), so with the continued protests (among other things going on politically that everyone hates right now), so with this in mind, Nightshade and the others may have a chance under better writing in future shows and comics. Skybound’s Shreadhead, as a nonbinary character (albeit not in the same way Nightshade is), shows the possibility exists.

Still Hasbro probably doesn’t want a repeat of the mass rejection of EarthSpark, so the Terrans are probably going to be benched alongside the IDW cast for the time being.

Jawbreaker is the only one who has an opportunity to continue appearing because he’s a Dinobot and Dinobots tend to be pretty popular, as Jawbreaker and Grimlock seemed to do well in my area.

Will the Terrans still be recognized as their own faction/race? That’s hard to say, as post Beast Wars, the Maximals and Predacons were often just absorbed into being Autobots and Decepticons. WFC, IDW Beast Wars and ROTB did see the Maximals return as a proper faction, but it’s been very inconsistent with the Predacons. Sky-Byte in particular has often instead been a Decepticon despite originating as a Predacon, even his RiD01 toy for Age of the Primes is now considered a Decepticon. Tarantulas also was recently labeled as a Decepticon via EarthSpark, another awkward instance of “Predacon erasure”. The most bizarre instance was Legacy Transmetal II Megatron still being a Predacon but he has the TFP Predacon insignia instead; the TFP Predacons have also been largely ignored post Prime, contributing the “erasure” problem.

Even Mini-Cons seem to be suffering a similar problem, where post Unicron Trilogy they were largely ignored until RiD15 revived them in a big way, only to be forgotten once more. While Micronus Prime is still kept, his role as a Mini-Con seems suspect as it feels like Hasbro instead wants him to basically be a little person vaguely tied to Micromasters. Armada Jolt via Legacy was instead called a Micromaster, while Hasbro tried reviving Micromasters whole sale during WFC, but they sold horribly, and since then it feels like Hasbro’s been throwing a tantrum at Mini-Cons as a whole. This is made all the more noticeable with Age of the Primes, where TFA Wasp was said to be a descendant of Micronus; Wasp (or anyone of that body type in TFA) isn’t a Mini-Con, and is just… short. So that doesn’t bode well. (TFONE implies Bumblebee might be connected to Micronus by being both the short one of the group and inheriting his Cog…) Ironically Mini-Cons do exist in TFA, where they’re prison guards and Disney/Looney Tunes style gremlins that tinker with machines.

So It’s frankly not looking that good for Terrans being recognized as a separate entity, where more than likely they’ll be Autobots and Decepticons going by past trends. With Maximals being currently acknowledged as a third faction, and an implication in the Beast Machines part of the RPG rule books, Nightshade (and possibly Jawbreaker) could instead be recognized as Maximals. Twitch and Spitfire have the opportunity to be considered Mini-Cons (or Micromasters) if Hasbro unclenches on the matter in the future, but Terrans, probably not. The recent Mercenaries faction has also been forgotten almost immediately and the (ROTB) Terrorcons seem to be pushed aside also, unless CyberWorld surprises us later on in its run.

It won’t be long now until we start seeing more of what CyberWorld has to offer, but I wouldn’t assume atm that the Terrans are involved right now. That might be a post CyberWorld cartoon at best because I don’t see Skybound using them either right now.

[thewickedbohemian]

another hyperspecific poll for fandom unpopular opinions

Some explanation

You shouldn't use the "copaganda" label just because a show has cops who aren't presented as evil, you should look at what the show is trying to say first, but especially you shouldn't use it for non-cop scenarios where the heroes just happen to be crime-fighters be it other kinds of LEOs (say what you will about the politics of Criminal Minds but whatever it is the show isn't copaganda because they're not cops so how the hell are things supposed to trait-transference between fictional FBI and real police) or even superheroes who aren't anti-establishment enough

From the Ody3 on Doctor Odyssey to the Elsbeth episode "Hot Tub Crime Machine" with both the throuple at the heart of the murder and Edwards being canonically poly to whatever the hell was going on (in a good way) during Leverage: Redemption S3 the seeds have been planted for more poly rep being a thing and who knows, it doesn't necessarily have to be on future shows alone (as e.g. now that I know Brilliant Minds is getting a S2 there's a part of me that, if the triangle with the guy "cubs" and Ericka is still an in-play thing, would think it would be cool if it could get resolved in a throuple as it'd be better than the stupid things they were trying to do to compete for her, or even if High Potential couldn't have a whole-team-as-polycule thing that includes Daphne and Oz too they could at least have a Karadec/Morgan/Soto OT3 situation)

Even though the stuff that threw this past season (or at least season finale I've heard it both ways) of Doctor Who sideways as I've heard was behind-the-scenes drama, given how much these couple seasons have been Doctor Who in basically one big meta-conversation with itself, there's nothing saying it couldn't use meta-magic timey-wimey shenanigans to fix the story to how it should have been/was supposed to be (or at least something as good and making-sense) as best as it can from a Watsonian not-gonna-actually-break-the-real-fourth-wall perspective as long as of course that quest for undoing doesn't prevent the next Doctor from shining on their own

Everything from Doctor Who (even before this past season) to Star Wars to Harry Potter could benefit from canonizing the multiverse in the same way the MCU did that way multiple timelines could be made sense of and contradictions rationalized away and people wouldn't have to basically go all selective-y designer-y on canon pretending things they hate didn't exist and the same story could even be told multiple times multiple different ways as official canon

Two of the biggest problems I've seen people have with the Uglies movie that wouldn't just be solved if another attempt had a new cast were the characters not looking like teenagers and the Pretties not looking fantastical enough, animation could have solved them both as you wouldn't be bound to actors' real-life looks or what practical effects can do to someone

I posted about this on my sideblog but what I mean by how gendered original The Librarians is is that characters' arcs (for the team and for non-team characters who get enough screen time to get character arcs) seem so even indirectly dependent on them being the gender they are (even for characters who aren't/aren't-connected-to mythological or historical people whose gender-swapping would shake up history) that trying to make a rule-63!AU would end up resulting in something with only marginally more similarities to original The Librarians than The Librarians: The Next Chapter has. Not saying it's some kind of duty or missed opportunity or w/e to write that kind of AU but until I thought about how one might work I never really noticed how much of the show's plot seemingly relied on character genders

[fuck-customers]

Why have customers decided that their shopping experience is no longer their own responsibility and they can just have us do literally everything for them?? Like whyyyyy is there not a single molecule of thought or effort put in from their end!!?? Examples:

- Googling the phone number of our store to call and ask what time we open/close (the opening hours are right under the phone number, including clearly labelled public holiday hours)

- Phoning our store or asking in person for information about another store in the chain (their hours, address, stock availability etc.) When they could easily google it or call THAT store

- walking into the store and asking the first person they see for help without even looking around first. Especially when they walk past the thing they're looking for on their way to an employee.

- not being able to find their way with pointing and verbal directions, needing to be walked over to and handed everything even when it's right in front of them and I'm pointing to it. Also the people that ask where the exit is when our store is laid out in a big square with a huge middle walkway and if you keep walking around in either direction you will reach the exit.

- asking questions that have nothing to do with me, information on other stores in the complex, asking for directions, asking touristy questions... Where's a good place to eat around here? How about the dumpster behind the store? fuck off

- wanting to start a new project or hobby and coming in without doing ANY research on it and what they might need to purchase and expecting us to give them a free class like we have the time/training for that sort of thing. YOUTUBE IS FREE. GOOGLE IS FREE. FACEBOOK HOBBY GROUPS ARE FREE. This goes triple for the Cricut ladies, if you are going to drop 300 dollars on a craft machine please learn how to use it. One lady asked me if her cricut could cut a certain cardstock and got mad when I said I'd never used one and she should check the manual

- wanting personal opinions on what to buy. There's a difference between "what are the benefits of buying x over y?" and "which one do you like better?" like for one we sell thousands of different things, I haven't personally used them all and secondly my tastes, opinions and needs for a product could be totally different from yours. So pick the one YOU like plzzz, you're the one paying for it.

- wanting to purchase fabric and not doing their measurements or calculations beforehand. Like babe, only YOU know how much fabric you need. Next time someone asks how much they need to make a dress I'm saying 10 metres because I'm going to assume they're making a ball gown

Anyway, fuck these dumb, lazy sacks of shit, I have no idea how they managed to get this far in life without firing a single neuron.

Posted by admin Rodney.

[rlyc00l]

Rhys is going to put his skills to work and make these people trust the crap out of him if it kills him (Actually, he doesn't want it to kill him, he's actually going to try to avoid dying). Zer0's ego goes through some stuff. Everyone could benefit from like, team building exercises or something.

Also under the cut

The first thing Rhys did, after giving up on lying sleeplessly and considering his new position, was draft a message for Vaughn and Yvette. “Hey, I’m alive, on Pandora. Vasquez tried to have me killed. Sorry for doubting you. I don’t know what he’s gonna do now, be careful. I’ll be back soon.” He paused and deleted the “soon”, replacing it with “Sorry to be vague. I’ll explain everything next time I see you.” before sending. It wouldn’t satisfy them. When he got back to Helios, he’d launch the two of them up the corporate ladder (just slightly below himself) to make it up to them. And then he’d brag about this forever. 

But first, he had to secure his victory.

Step one: Gaining trust. He’d been a pro at that up on Helios. Building trust with your coworkers was one of those pillars of success in business (it went hand-in-hand with “strategic betrayal”). There was even an acronym: DARGH. Dependability, Approachability, Respect, Gratitude, and Honesty. Three out of five were easy, he could do those without trying. He’d have to do away with honesty, which left dependability. Dependability required competency, and he was far from competent in this setting. He still hadn’t even figured out how to reload. Luckily, he had the ECHOnet. He activated his ECHOeye and pulled up everything the Hyperion database could teach him about guns and shooting, and found diagrams of the two guns in his possession.

By sunrise he was outside, dry firing the pistol while aiming at distant bullymong holes, trying to get used to the gun’s auto-stabilizers. 

“What are you doing?” 

Rhys flinched, fumbling with the gun. It was Zer0, of course. The others were still asleep. His immediate impulse was to snap at them–why the hell were they always there? He restrained himself for the sake of DARGH and instead summoned all his Hyperion brand faux-affability. 

“Oh, hey Zer0.” Fake smile. Cheery voice. “I-I’m practicing. Getting ready for today, you know? You’re welcome to join.” Goddamn, that sounded phony. He was better than this. The whole double agent thing was throwing him off his game. 

Zer0 looked at him, then his gun. “There’s a camp, not far. / Living targets are better. / With a loaded gun.” 

“That…I-I’m good, thanks. I’d rather conserve ammo, y’know? For those uh, those Fleshripper guys?” 

“There’s a vendor, there.” They thumbed over their shoulder. An Ammo Dump vending machine leaned haphazardly against a nearby building.

“I don’t have–” 

“Oh, right. Your wallet’s empty. / Save your bullets, then.” A smiley face.

“W-wait, you saw who stole my money?”

They ignored that. “Still, practice, needless. / Today, I’ll kill the bad guys. / Just stand back again.” The word “coward” didn’t fit at the end of their haiku, but it was implied. Their “>:P” made that clear.

Later, as they ventured through Fleshripper territory, he did his best not to deserve the label. At least, his best within reason. He stood back, sure, but only because he didn’t have a shield and the others did. A thrown buzzaxe bounced right off of Axton’s head when it would have split his skull open otherwise. Salvador walked right into oncoming gunfire to kill the shooter. A grenade landed at Gaige’s feet and only gave her a few scratches. A shield was undeniably a necessity, here. 

Rhys checked bodies for one when he got the chance, but there was little intact for him to take. A few dollars here, some bullets there. The bandit’s actual killers got first dibs on everything. So he was forced to shoot from afar, careful to avoid his “allies”. Most of his shots missed, but sometimes they hit, and sometimes the bandits died. Those kills didn’t feel like that first time, but at least he wasn’t almost dying. Small victories.

A further small victory came for his “DARGH initiative”. With Zer0, of all people. 

Bringing up the rear occasionally put him near them, when they’d switch from up-close fighting to sniping. Their sudden appearances had startled him the first few times. They seemed to teleport, but it was a clever combination of hologram and cloaking technology. Rhys found that if he paid attention, he could sometimes see when their footprints in the snow parted from the hologram. Even then, he missed it more often than not.  

Zer0 may have been a total asshole, but it was pretty cool to watch. They’d appear with their sword buried in one man’s back. When the next bandit fired on them, the hologram would feign an attack from the front while they climbed a nearby roof, blowing his brains out without him ever knowing he’d been tricked. Rhys wondered if Jack knew about their method, or if he should report it. If Zer0 meant to fight Hyperion, the soldiers should be forearmed with that knowledge, the way these Fleshrippers weren’t. 

As he was considering recording them for Jack, a gunshot rang off from his left and two bandits dropped dead at the same time. Zer0 appeared with their sniper rifle on a low roof next to him. “Holy crap. Did…Did you just do that?” 

“Yes.” They projected a “:D”. 

“That was actually pretty badass.” 

They didn’t respond, only moved to a higher position, taking out another pair of bandits the same way, then a third with a headshot.

If he didn’t know better, he would have thought they were showing off. But there was no way they cared what he thought, right? It was worth testing. Rhys was well-practiced in the art of sycophancy. “You, uh, you think you could hit that guy way down there before Krieg gets to him? The one taking cover behind the crates.” 

The bandit in question was on the other side of camp, firing at Krieg as he charged. Only a small portion of his head was visible. 

A second after he said it, they’d shot, and the bandit’s head vanished in a spray of red. Krieg slowed to a stop, with a bellow of “Disappointed!” 

“Nice!” The enthusiasm in his voice wasn’t hard to fake. He never expected Zer0 might actually be easy to win over. 

“As I said before. / You need not participate. / I’ve got this handled.” 

“Right, clearly.” It was the same on Helios, flattery didn’t get you respect in return. Still, if he’d swallowed his pride and sucked up to Vasquez, the man wouldn’t have tried to blow him up. Zer0 was more the “literal backstabber” type, but still, the point stood. 

———

Captain Flynt, leader of the Fleshripper bandits, was the last thing standing between the Vault hunters and the mainland. He’d made his throne on a wrecked freighter sitting precariously atop an icy clifftop. Rhys lost count of how many the group had killed on the trek through the surrounding camps and the climb up to the ship’s deck. At that point, a reasonable person would surrender. Captain Flynt wasn’t a reasonable person. 

Claptrap had raced in ahead of the rest of them, waiting at the top of the ramp that led to the ship’s deck. “Yoohoo! Minions, this way!” He waved them on impatiently. 

Maya stopped there. “We should go in with a plan. One would have to be pretty hard to kill to lead a bandit clan of this size for more than a week, and Hammerlock claims he’s tough.” 

Zer0 barely glanced at her as they moved on after Claptrap. 

“I was thinking we shoot him full of bullets. Until he dies.” Salvador said, passing her.

“Yeah, that was more or less what I was gonna say?.” Axton stopped for only a moment, hesitating before jogging after Zer0. “Sorry, not about to let them get all the glory!” he called over his shoulder.

“I need to get keelhauled!” Krieg followed the other three. 

“Hey, wait up!” Gaige had the decency to look guilty as she passed. “Sorry, Maya, but I mean, we have more guns?” 

Rhys could only offer a shrug. “For what it’s worth, I was onboard with the ‘having a plan’ plan.” 

The battle was underway by the time he and Maya caught up. Flynt wasn’t alone, at least twenty more bandits fought alongside him. He was unmistakable among his cohorts. The man dwarfed even Krieg–but part of that might have been the thick, padded suit and the tall horns atop his helmet. He wielded both a flamethrower and an entire anchor with ease. Also, he was on fire, which didn’t seem to bother him.  

Yesterday, Rhys might have stayed on the ledge overlooking the deck, never directly joining battle. Today, he had a promotion and a turbomansion to look forward to, and DARGH to think of. Amazing what getting contacted personally by Handsome Jack could do to a guy. At least, it was enough to make Rhys hop down onto deck–only to slip on a patch of ice and fall on his face. Thankfully, this went unnoticed. The bandits were too occupied with those who got there before him. Each Vault hunter seemed to be fighting their own battle. Huge plumes of fire intermittently shot up from the vents in the deck, leaving thick clouds of smoke in its wake. Maya was already further up, he saw a flash of purple lift Flynt into the air. A buzzaxe-wielding bandit took notice of him as he was getting to his feet. Rhys shot him as he charged, and he stumbled to the ground and didn’t rise again. Then a second bandit was shooting at him. Bullets whizzed past his face, barely missing. Finding flimsy cover behind a wooden crate, he returned fire. Either one of Rhys’s bullets hit the mark, or someone else’s did. Regardless, that bandit fell too. 

He got another glimpse of Flynt near the broken edge of the ship. Zer0 was behind him, sword bearing down at his back. Flynt turned, delivering a blow with his anchor that knocked them off their feet. He lifted the anchor, ready to bring it down on them. Flames went up. Rhys fired a few shots where he’d seen Flynt. The fire faded. Flynt was running at Salvador, whose pair of shotguns seemed to do little to slow him. No sign of Zer0. 

“Krieg, come on! You’re in the way!” He heard Axton before he saw him. He was shooting over a pile of crates. His turret was perched on a crate firing at Flynt, only, Krieg was in front of its target. 

Fire again. A flaming bandit came rushing out of a nearby vent, screaming in agony. Rhys backed up, pulled the trigger. Out of ammo. The bandit fell anyway. He ducked behind cover. His shotgun held only two shots in it, and he’d never actually used it before. It would be better to stay here and wait for the fighting to stop. He heard more screaming–a voice that had to be Gaige’s. 

Could be a hero. That’d be worth points. 

He moved along the intact edge–towards the screams, trying to keep track of Flynt. The jet of fire from his flamethrower gave him away on the far side of the ship. 

When he found Gaige she was crouched behind a junk pile, reloading her submachine gun. Her robot was fighting off a bandit on the other side. Another three bandits lay dead nearby. 

“You okay?” he needed to raise his voice to be heard over the battle. She was soaked in sweat and covered in ash but otherwise, she looked okay. 

She gave him a strange look, then turned to finish that last bandit. 

He ducked down next to her. “I–someone was screaming. Was that Maya?” It hadn’t sounded like Maya.

“Oh! Yeah, that was me! Look at this shit.” She stuck out her leg. Her nylon tights had partially burned away, revealing her calf red and blistered beneath it. “Hurt like a bitch!” She’d sounded like she was being murdered. “Right. So you’re not in any immediate trouble?” 

“Nope. You’re bleeding, by the way. Like a lot.” She turned back to the battle. It was quieter now.

“Haha, what?” He looked down, not seeing any blood on him. “No, I’m not.” “Your face.” 

He was so soaked in sweat, it took a moment to find the blood on the right of his face, longer to find the gash starting at his temple and ending just past his ear. He hadn’t felt it until now, but suddenly his body seemed to remember that this was supposed to hurt. “Oh jeez… How…How bad is it?” “I think you just got grazed, dude. You’re fine.” 

“Owwww…” It burned.  

Gaige, put away her gun, getting to her feet. “Anyway, I think we’re done?” 

Clutching his head, he followed her lead. There were dead bandits everywhere. On the far side was Flynt, lying in a heap on the deck. Flames had stopped coming up from the vents. “Huh, wonder if he was like, remotely controlling the fire somehow…”   

“Dunno.” Rhys couldn’t find it in himself to be that curious right now. He couldn’t remember the last time so much blood was coming out of him.  “First time being shot?” Axton joined him and Gaige as they crossed the deck to meet with the others. 

“Kinda hope it’s my last.” Axton laughed. “Good luck with that.” He looked him up and down. “Hell, did you ever get a shield?” 

“Couldn’t find one.” “Why didn’t you say something?” Axton stopped, opening his storage deck holoscreen. He was using his left hand, his right hung at his side, covered in blood. 

“Kind of got the sense that uh, begging would be a bad look?” 

Axton shrugged. “This isn’t Hyperion. And I mean, a little more to the left and you’d be dead.” He’d produced a Tediore shield, handing it to Rhys. 

“Thanks.” He clipped it to his belt.

They passed Salvador, looting a corpse. “Y’all see what happened to Zer0?” he asked. “Cuz if they’re dead, I already called dibs on that gun. The acid one.” 

Rhys glanced at where he’d last seen them, half expecting their mangled corpse. They weren’t there, but between the sheer number of corpses and trash on deck, they could still be dead and he’d just missed them. He didn’t feel like looking so hard, his head hurt. 

Maya and Krieg waited outside the deckhouse, beneath Flynt’s throne. Krieg sat on a still-panic-moded Claptrap. A buzzaxe was half buried in his shoulder, and Maya was trying to calm him enough to pull it out. She scowled when she saw them. “Couldn’t have spent a few minutes trying to coordinate an attack?” 

“Hey, the guy’s dead, right? And we’re alive.” Axton radiated self-satisfaction. 

“Hell yeah, you are!” Claptrap popped out of his panic-mode, almost knocking Krieg over as he rolled out to gloat over Flynt’s corpse. “Take that, Flynt! My minions are certified badasses!” 

Maya ignored Claptrap, grabbing the buzzaxe’s hand with both hands. “Your turret drained Krieg’s shield.” She gritted her teeth as she yanked the blade out. 

“No! I needed that there!” Krieg protested. The wound already began to knit together before Maya jabbed a hypo in the flesh near it. “Augh! How will I find anything now?!” 

She ignored that too. “Not to mention, if I hadn’t made it in time, Salvador would have gotten crushed by that anchor. And, I have no idea where Zer0 went.” 

“Another one into the pit!” That one took her a moment. “Wait, they went over the side?”

Krieg tensed, grabbed his head, and then managed an exaggerated nod. “Anchors aweigh!” Crap.” She looked around at the others. “There’s more hypos inside, get yourselves fixed up. I’m going back for Zer0.” 

Inside the deckhouse was what once was a lounge for the crew, when this was still a functioning corporate cargo ship. Now, maybe it was still a lounge, but hanging from the ceiling were bouquets of human skulls, and staked to the dart board was a man’s corpse, dead at least a few weeks. After the bandit camps, this kind of decor seemed pretty standard. Rhys took a seat on one of the lopsided, threadbare couches opposite the corpse. At least it was cold enough it didn’t smell, much. 

Gaige, Salvador, and Axton were going through the chests and crates that lined that wall, arguing over loot. “I did get the kill, so y’know, I think I should get the shotgun.” “You only got the kill because my turret softened him up!”  

“Oh come on, you guys killed one guy, me and Deathtrap killed like, a gazillion of them while you were fighting him.” 

“Those little guys? I was saving them for after.”

“Yeah, they weren’t exactly our primary objective.”

“So next time I should just let them shoot at you? Cuz I totally will.” 

Rhys tuned them out, absently studying the crude map next to the dartboard corpse as he tried to distract himself from the pain. The map must have been made by one of the bandits, it was an indecipherable mess, there was no way it was to scale. Was that supposed to be the ocean? Then that there would probably be Sanctuary… But what was that thing in the center? It didn’t match up with the maps he studied in his ECHOeye, but maps of border planets tended to be lacking… 

“Oh, right, Rhys!” Axton crossed the room to him, holding out a hypo. There was a bullet hole in his forearm, rapidly closing up as he offered it. “Hate to see a face like that go to necrosis.”

He took it with a “Right, thanks so much,” and a forced smile. It was only once his face started to heal that he realized Axton had probably been flirting with him. He didn’t know what to do with that fact, did it still count as a win for DARGH? Did that mean he was doing a good job winning these people over, or should he just take it as a testament to his looks? 

It was then that Zer0 finally limped into the cabin, just ahead of Maya. They crossed the room without looking at any of the others. “The path is open. / We board Claptrap’s freakin’ boat. / And get out of here.” They sounded pissed. 

“Couldn’t have said it better myself!” Claptrap said as he followed them. “Let's board me mighty vessel and kiss the shelf goodbye!” 

“Woah, wait, Zer0, You alright, dude?” Axton asked. 

“Yes,” they said. 

“Cause I have like, one more insta-health here.” He held up another hypo, smirking. 

“Give me it.” “I dunno. If you’re okay, I might save it for later. Does our untouchable assassin really need some healing?”

Zer0’s hand closed around the hilt of their sword. “You have eyes.” 

“Axton, just give them the damn instahealth.” Maya stepped in. 

Axton sighed, and Zer0 snatched it up. “This feels like enabling their crap, y’know?” 

———

Considering that the boat they were to take belonged to Claptrap, Rhys expected the prize to be some sad little dinghy. He wasn’t well-versed on boats, but it had actually probably been some sort of fishing trawler. He wasn’t sure how a Claptrap would end up with something like that, but it had SS Claptrap spray painted on it. It was a good-sized boat, even with eight passengers there was space to spare. Sturdy, too, though that didn’t make Rhys feel much better as they lowered it into the water from a pair of cranes attached to Flynt’s wreck. He clung to the side as it was slowly lowered into the water, wondering if the shield would save him from falling to his death. Every bump felt like it might be the end, but somehow the ship touched down without incident.  

“So, how long is it to the mainland?” Gaige asked when they finally got moving. 

“Fifteen hours! But don’t worry chums, I’m sure it’ll pass in a flash! I know some great boat trip games!”  

“Ugh. If anyone needs me I’m gonna go over there and tune up Deathtrap.” 

“Yeah, uh, shouldn’t you be steering? Keep us from hitting any icebergs, or something?” Rhys tried.  

“You’re absolutely right! I guess you guys can have fun, I’ll provide the background music. Just gotta load up some sea shanties, and it’ll be a party in no time!” 

Rhys just hoped that Pandora wasn’t home to any horrific sea monsters. Before anything else, he found a tiny little bathroom in the boat’s cabin, a mirror on the door. There was a sink, but no water ran through it. Instead, he was stuck wiping what blood and sweat he could get off with his sleeve–Maybe Sanctuary would have actual laundry machines. 

It was then that Vaughn called him back, the notification lit up in his ECHOeye. He ignored it, no telling what the Vault hunters would do if they caught him communicating with someone on Helios. A moment later he got the voicemail and played it directly into his implants. 

“Holy shit, Rhys. I just saw your message. I’m so glad you’re okay. Or, I hope you’re okay. I’m gonna choose to believe you’re not answering because you are busy actively surviving that hellhole. What happened? Where are you? Can we do anything to help? Yvette can send down supplies? You, uh, you don’t have to worry about us. Get this, Vasquez disappeared, his nameplate’s gone, office cleaned out, no one knows what’s going on. But supposedly, he got called in for a meeting with Jack, and you know… Try to get back up here soon. And don’t drink the water down there! Or eat anything weird. Call me back. If you’re still alive, I mean.” 

Rhys texted a reply, practicing with the ECHOeye functionality he’d used to message Jack: “Still alive. Can’t call you, I’m surrounded by bandits. We’ve reached an understanding though, they trust me. I’m not going to be in mortal danger anytime soon unless I start openly talking to someone on Helios.” 

The text response from Vaughn came a minute later: “Holy shit, dude. Are you sure they’re not planning to eat you? I heard Pandora is chock full of cannibals.” 

“I’m sure.” 

“Okay, still, you should really find a Hyperion base or something.” “I’ll keep an eye out.” A lie, but he wasn’t about to give too much away. 

“I gotta get back to work, Don’t want anyone else up here getting called into Jack’s office. I’ll message later. But seriously, you need anything, let me or Yvette know.” “Yep. See you later.” He had to smile–Vaughn had nothing to worry about up there, Jack had already done him a favor and gotten Vasquez out of the way. He played this right and he could get his friends comfy, safe positions before this was over. 

He passed Axton on his way out of the cabin, already napping on one of the little cots. 

Outside, the rest of them were keeping their distance from each other. Krieg was at the prow of the ship, yelling incoherently at the sea ahead. Maya sat on a crate nearby, somehow ignoring him enough to be reading a book. Gaige worked on her robot, disassembled parts laid out across the deck in front of her. Salvador was cleaning his shotgun. Zer0 was just leaning against the side of the boat, arms crossed, things like “B0R3D”, “...”, and “UGH” occasionally flashing over their helm. 

Claptrap, at least, was too occupied with steering to bother anyone with more than singing.

Everyone still seemed too tense to approach, but he still had a lot of material on the Hyperion database that may or may not come in handy to study. He sat down leaning against the cabin’s outer wall, and pulled up an entry of their destination, Three Horns. 

“Three Horns is a small region named for its three stone crags. Ringed by mountains to the east and precipitous cliffs to the west, the area is…” 

“That should be removed.” Zer0’s voice interrupted his reading. They were kneeling in front of him. “Before we reach the city. / It may get you killed.”

“Wha..?” He closed out of the ECHOeye entry. “What?” 

They poked his chest.  “Oh. Yeah.” It barely peered out under the bandit’s jacket, only the “Hy” visible, but it was undeniably Hyperion’s logo on his vest

“In Sanctuary / I hear they find clever ways / Of killing your kind.” They projected a “;)”. 

“Right…” It was a nice vest. Expensive, hardy. He couldn’t just throw the whole thing out. But he could probably cut through the stitching. “You’ve got a knife or something?” 

“Yes,” they said. 

He waited. They made no move to offer him anything. 

“Can I use it?” 

They cocked their head, seeming to consider for a moment. “No.” They stood and returned to their prior spot. 

After half an hour of fighting with the label, he’d managed to pull it a third of the way off. Hyperion stitching was good. He was considering resorting to using his teeth when a folded pocket knife landed in front of him. He looked up to see Zer0, and took the knife with a “Thanks? Wish you’d given this to me before?” 

The knife was marked “DAHL”. 

“Er…Did…Did you steal this from Axton?” 

“He is still sleeping. / If I were you, I’d work fast. / He will wake angry.” They projected a “:3”. 

[dryococelas01]

Tumblr Power Polls Q5 + extra

So

Some housekeeping before I list today's question.

Eventually we are going to get to the point that I can't just list off a bunch of labels I've thought of.

For example, let's say desire breaker won. I could make up a bunch of stuff it could feed off (attention, strong emotions, parasite etc) but I might not think of everything and you guys definitely have cool ideas.

So from this point onwards I will have a 'next questions' part, where I will say what the next question is and if I want audience suggestions on options to vote on. If you have suggestions, either message me, comment or put them in reblogs. I will attribute them to whoever does so (unless they don't want me to).

Additionally, for some minor questions I will put up 2 at once. Or for major questions I feel should be voted on at the same time. For those I will put a clear indicator at the start of the post, and any additional polls in the reblogs (as I can't have more than one poll per blog)

Q5: What type of stranger is the power?

Current results:

Q1: How many power categories? 2

Q2: What categories? Breaker/Stranger

Q3: How powerful? Mid tier, rating 4-6. As this poll was done under a reblog, it may be neccesary to redo.

Q4: What type of Breaker? Fate Breaker. Benefits after you transform, consequences when you transform back. A focus on action and consequences.

Wildbow explicitly noted that fate breakers have some issues with their civilian identities due to the negative consequences.

A future question will be what the benefits and consequences are. If anyone has suggestions they can start early.

Now I tried to use the weaverdice doc for this, but I ran into some difficulties. While the breaker categories were fairly clear and distinct, the stranger ones were less so. Apparently wildbow has redone stranger a few times, and to be honest? I couldn't really tell what some of them were supposed to mean or how some were classified as stranger. Some I could see as stranger, but not purely stranger.

For example, Ambush strangers are described as

"Ambush strangers are heavy damage dealers or combat capes with very conditional strength.  This may require flanking, timing, careful use of battlefield, or disadvantaged targets."

Which I understand what it's telling me but I don't know how that translates to a stranger power. I could see a brute that's stronger when undetected could fit there, but not a pure stranger.

Similarly a creep stranger is described as

"Creep strangers are strangers who can avoid danger or obtain access by way of agility, movement modes, or physical adaptations"

Which feels like it will always be a mover stranger.

Bedevil strangers also fit here

"Bedevil strangers produce effects that are more offensive sort, primarily focused around debilitating and crushing others without directly harming them. They might bind, tie, mire, and hamper, or set up effects that threaten foes but only if conditions are met. Often utilize effects that involve poisons, parasites, or other vectors that may have a weak initial effect but provide the opportunity for a greater effect later, often with timing involved, (non-emotion) master-like influence or personal benefits."

As such I ain't using all the categories.

Additionally I've added a category, mislabel, as I felt strangers like Nice Guy would fit in multiple sections and like those sortof effects enough that I wanted to cordon them off. I am biased

So here's the categories:

Machination - indirect effects that make combat and infiltration easier, in a way that isn't just increased combat strength.

For example, gasconades power will erase any trace of his presence after a short period, earning him a small stranger rating.

Abandon - strangers that can make themselves dissappear. Stereotypical stranger, makes themselves invisible, produce less sound etc.

Unsense - effects that mask them from others senses. Abandon strangers go invisible, unsense prevent people seeing them.

'Mislabel' - abandon strangers are hard to sense, unsense are masked from senses, Mislabel causes people to incorrectly label you or your actions. For example, Nice guy, who gets labeled as a non threat.

Mask - produce illusions or misdirections.

Nox - powerful always on rules for interactions. I believe August Prince (cannot be conciously attacked) and blindside (cannot be looked or aimed at) are examples of this.

Charm - influences emotions to produce stranger effect. Stranger (rating) by way of master (effect) if you will.

Warp - strangers who can avoid attacks, danger, or slip through defenses by way of bent rules, distortions, otherworldly details or disruptions in the standard rules.  

Next up:

2 concurrent questions:

Does this power physically affect its user?

Does this power mentally affect its user?

[mywifeleftme]

312: Victor Jara // Manifiesto

Manifiesto Victor Jara 1975, Discos Pueblo

Manifiesto is assembled from recordings intended for an album that was to be called Tiempos que cambian (literally Times That Change, or New Times) smuggled out of Chile by Jara’s widow Joan after the folksinger’s torture and murder by the Pinochet junta in 1973. It was simultaneously released by different labels under a variety of titles around the world. My copy hails from Mexico, released by leftist folk label Discos Pueblo, who make their intentions clear in a statement (machine-translated by me) on the back of the sleeve that reads in part:

“We find it necessary to point out that due to its quality and value, Victor Jara’s work should be disseminated, but always by those who identify with it, and not by the transnational companies that financed his return to Chile by organizing the bloody military coup of 1973. [Ed. Something in their use of word “retorno” is probably being lost in translation here; I think it implies something like Jara’s “return to whence he came,” e.g. his burial in Chilean soil.] Those transnational corporations that today benefit from Victor Jara’s singing, filtering out its combative aspects and presenting it as incomplete, seem to ignore the deep paths that people use to preserve the integrity of the voice of their singers. This album is our answer.”

The LP is clearly a work of love (and economy), the sleeve purposely left unglued so that it can be opened like a gatefold, revealing testimonies by his peers. There’s scarcely an inch that isn’t crammed with text—even the flaps that cradle the inner sleeve itself hide lyrics to two of the album’s key songs:

The sleeve unfolded.

“I don’t sing for the sake of singing, or for having a good voice, I sing because the guitar has sense and reason, it has a heart of earth and wings of a dove, it is like holy water that blesses my sorrows. This is where my song fits, as Violeta said, a hard-working guitar that smells of spring. It is not a rich man’s guitar or anything like that, my song is the scaffolding to reach the stars. The song has meaning when it beats in the veins of the one who will die singing truths, not fleeting flattery or foreign fame, but the song of a lark to the bottom of the earth. There, where everything arrives and where everything begins, a song that has been brave will always be a nueva cancion [New Song].”

Jara’s artistry (which, besides spearheading the nueva cancion movement, also included poetry and theatrical direction) was inseparable from his politics, and the music of Manifiesto is a stirring testament to his talents and the historical moment he occupied, when Chile like Cuba before it seemed on the verge of breaking free from centuries of resource extraction-driven imperialism and making its own way. These songs cannot help but feel elegiac given the circumstances of their release, and indeed they do frequently mourn the historical oppression of the common worker. Jara’s was a lark’s voice, not that of a conventional rabble rouser, and most of these songs seem best suited for night-time gatherings of comrades and lovers or, in the case of the dazzling instrumental “Caicai Vilu” (referencing a Mapuche creation myth), perhaps a rural cotillion. But these songs were recorded during the years of Salvador Allende’s triumph, a movement that Jara had personally helped galvanize, and there is the sense that these are songs about moving in a changed world that still feels almost surreal. Only at the very end, with the rock-inflected call to arms “Canto libre,” does Jara’s Revolutionary sentiment take on a more martial beat, finally unfurling a flag of victory.

That victory would be short-lived of course, as U.S. imperialists would soon back Pinochet’s reign of terror and grind the Chilean people under the heel of fascism for another generation. It’s hard to make an argument that Jara and Allende’s side “won” in any meaningful sense (without an appeal to some abstracted moral arbiter anyway). It may be blinkered to even try, knowing that Pinochet died obscenely wealth in his nineties and that there were never meaningful consequences for his even wealthier American backers, while a despairing Allende perished at his own hand and Jara with his fingers broken and his body riddled with bullets. Yet I do believe that a song can transcend the accounting of atrocities and persist on its own terms. Music like Jara’s will endure as long as there are human beings who seek a recognition of their own worthiest qualities in art. As one of the Mexican edition’s compilers says:

“…his voice will not have coffins or crematoriums, nor dark prisons nor barbed wire, comrades! His voice and his guitar continue the fight, they remain alive seeking victory. And they will also return as flags when the Homeland regains its joy.”

312/365