#Computing Theory and Applications

[fdrpjournals]

The Indian Journal of Computer Science and Technology (INDJCST) is a peer-reviewed academic journal that delivers cutting-edge research and advancements in computer science to scientists, engineers, and technology professionals.

It highlights the latest findings across four key domains: computing (including theory, scientific, cloud, and high-performance computing), systems (such as database, real-time, and operating systems), intelligence (covering robotics, bioinformatics, and artificial intelligence), and applications (encompassing security, networking, software engineering, and more).

[1o1percentmilk]

i actually think hatori is more of an electrical/hardware engineer than an informatics/information technology/software engineering person

[seat-safety-switch]

When you go to school for computer science, one of the things they try to teach you is that a computer can be anything. It doesn't have to be a bleepity-bloopity thing, stimulating rocks with canned lightning. It doesn't have to be a room-filling automaton made entirely out of fancy light bulbs. And it sure as fuck doesn't need to be some rocks that you move along on a piece of wood to count things. No, a computer can be anything, as long as it follows some basic rules. A dog can be a computer.

Recently, as part of my court-ordered requirement not to touch electronic computers and mobilized smart telephones, I've been training the neighbour's dog to access the internet. You might think that this is difficult, or impossible, but again: computer science theory says that the dog can do it. Rufus can be a computational device. At the very least, I can train him to run over to the neighbour's computer and read my newsgroups for me.

You might think that this is difficult work, but time is on my side. Without the cruel bonds of "productive employment," I can spend all day leaning out of my kitchen window and yelling random words at the dog. Eventually, I seem to hit on what I assume is some kind of command-injection fault. Rufus stands shock-straight, looks at the sky for a moment, and immediately bolts inside the house. Minutes pass, and then he emerges with a print-out of alt.autos.plymouth-volare, which has not seen any posts since the last time I checked. It's almost as if nobody else is posting there, but I feel relieved having reconnected to my people.

There's just one problem: Rufus, it turns out, is a narc. He has made more than one printout. In the time he was gone, he was delivering the other one to my parole officer. The judge doesn't appreciate my clever application of theory to practice. It wouldn't be so bad, except that from my prison cell, I can look out the window. It's there that see and hear the dog receive a medal from the Mayor Himself for valour. This is bullshit. He's no hero. He was just following orders.

[dr3amfyr-e]

crybaby - j.v. ( w. 5k )

꒰ in which the boy you see every summer enrolls in the same university as you. again. ꒱ — modern!jacaerys velayron x reader

୨ ⎯ childhood-friends-to-lovers. someone said idiots in love, and yes! modern au. everyone lives au. liberal usage of the em-dash. foul language. pushing the rhaenicent agenda. an incredible amount of yearning and pining. mention of reader's hair. mentions of anxiety. reader has a breakdown in semi-public. subplot where reader is sick. reader is so down bad its crazy. targ-tower cameo! aemond bitter af and for no reason. wrote a bit of dialogue that is so foul but i only realized it after i typed it and its not being taken out. luke is so little brother coded. i directly quote a serial romance novel thats so cringe. part one here. ⎯ ୧

can be read stand-alone, but theres a lot of context in part one !! thank u all for being patient :3

“It's called Applications of Ancient Politics in Modern Literature.”

Looking up from your twelve-page study guide, you meet Jace’s bright gaze where he sits at the foot of your bed, “That sounds… complicated.”

He shrugs, long fingers brushing up through his thick curls, “I need to take it, it's cross-listed for literature and political science so I’ll get credit for both. I think it’ll be interesting, plus if you take it too…” He leans a little closer, grinning in your face. 

“Send it to me,” You reply, highlighting a section in the packet about climate change and its impact on migratory birds in pretty pink ink.

You promise to look it up, to get back to him later, but it's hollow and you know it. He's already given you that pretty smile, flashed his dimples and stared down at you with his dark eyes — your grave has been dug. You will take  Applications of Ancient Politics in Modern Literature and read pages of boring political theory because Jace asked and Jace has you wrapped around his finger.

He shifts on the mattress, lying down on his front and scooting decidedly closer to you. His laptop is open in front of him, eyes trained on the screen through his glasses, perusing the course catalogue for the spring semester. 

“Isn’t it a bit late to pick classes?” You ask, stretching your legs out in front of you, “It's December, next semester is in, like, four weeks.” 

Jace is a perfectionist, a pre-planning freak who has three calendars: a planner that he carries everywhere, a big desk calendar at his apartment for easy access while studying, and his digital calendar. Its colour coded — he has a browser extension that allows him to make events on his Google Calendar any colour. So, it's very unlike Jace, who does his schoolwork the night it's assigned, to pick classes two months after registration opened. 

“I just like to look,” He replies, “This class is Wednesday and Friday, from ten to eleven o’clock. Does that work for you?” 

You nod, because it will work. You’ll rearrange your schedule if need be. It's pathetic, really, how easily he gets you to do things.

It's quiet for a while, Jace scrolling on his computer while you fill in your study packet. 

“When is your last final?” He asks. 

“Next Friday.”

“So you’re leaving Friday?”

“No, my train ticket is for Saturday.”

“Damn, I’m leaving Tuesday,” A lull, “When do you come back.”

“The Sunday before classes start. You?”

“That Friday.”

The conversation continues like that, mindless and short but so very comfortable. It's often like that anymore, with little eye contact and no real attention paid to each other besides the brief words — and, not in the way that feels awkward or tense, but in the way that old married couples chat over morning coffee and the paper. Maybe it's the lifetime of friendship that does it, or that you spend more nights in his apartment than your dorm.

You see each other twice more before the holiday. 

The Monday that exams start you meet at the coffee shop that became yours in the first two weeks of school. The middle table by the bay window is where you always sit, and the barista has Jace’s order memorised — because he gets the same drink every time you come, a caramel macchiato. 

He groans into his hands, ignoring both his coffee and his half of the cheese danish that you’d split, “I feel like I did poorly.”

He’d suffered through days upon days of studying for the political science exam that had plagued him all semester, to be taken today at noon. It was a three-hour exam, mostly multiple choice with two essay questions. You’d been with him through the worst of the studying: in total, forty-seven pages of research papers and scholarly articles printed at the library, and six books varying from fifty to five-hundred pages. He had filled up a plethora of pages in his notebook, and at least three in a word document. There was no study guide, just a list of broad topics. He was facing the consequences of taking a 300-level class in his first semester. 

“Jace, darling,” You reply, reaching out to press a reassuring hand to his arm, “You studied for that test more than I think anyone in the history of this school has studied for anything ever. If you didn’t do well, that's a reflection of the professor, not you.”

He doesn’t seem to want much to do with that rationale, sliding his hands down to rest his chin in them. He's pouting, glasses sliding down his nose as he looks at you through his lashes, “What if I failed?”

“Then… I don’t know,” You reach up to pull one of his hands down to the table, twining your fingers, “Then you failed, and that sucks. But you’re sporting a solid one-hundred in the class now, you could get a fifty on that exam and still end with…” Quick mental math. If the exam is weighted at twenty percent, then, “- a ninety percent.”

“An A-minus,” He whines. 

“Jace,” You chastise sweetly. 

He huffs, his pouty stare turning into a glare with no heat behind it. He wants to whine and mope about exams. What harm does it truly do?

You push his half of the danish towards him, “It's over now. You studied hard, you did your best. There's nothing you can do right now to change your grade. You can’t control it, so there is no point in trying to.”

Jace likes control, he likes to be in control. A psychological idiosyncrasy plaguing many eldest children and children of divorce. The quintessential therapist's advice about what you can control and what you can’t control had been revolutionary for him during one of his bi-weekly appointments — the whole family had them, Rhaenyra and Alicent were big proponents. 

Regurgitating that to him, no matter how much it makes you feel like you’re giving unsolicited advice, always works wonders to ground him when he's disproportionately anxious over something out of his control.

He deposits you at your dorm with a kiss on the cheek that evening.

On the Friday you leave school, Jace drives you to the train station. He packs your bags into the backseat of his hoity-toity hybrid Porsche Panamera and lets you play with his radio all the way there.

You’re an hour early to the station — Jace is early everywhere. He sets his paper copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings on his lap in the little lobby, slipping his finger into the book where it is dogeared. Yet, he makes no effort to read, his attention solely on you. 

“A month is ages to be apart,” He says, voice soft and thoughtful.

You scoot a little closer, elbows knocking, “It won’t be so bad. We can talk.”

His watch glimmers in the overhead light of the train station when one of his hands settles safely on your knee. Small white face, silver hands and framing, thin black band — it's Gucci, something his mother wore in the nineties. His fingers trace the edge of your skirt, and in the silence begin to smooth down your kneecap to your shin. 

“You must be cold,” He murmurs, thumbing the material of your nylons. 

“I’m alright.”

Your train is called before he can shed his coat and drape it over your lap, as he so desperately wishes to do. 

He hugs you, tightly, before you board. He's so warm, his black jumper is soft against your cheek, and you can smell his cologne where your nose lands in the crook of his neck — patchouli and something earthy and fresh, Brutus Oroto Parisi. 

“God, I’ll miss you.”

One morning, a week into the holiday, a letter shows up. It’s written in the black pen he’s so fond of, and you admire his neat penmanship as you read the detailed account of his holiday celebration. You smell the expensive cologne he wears and recognize Helaena’s handmade stationery. He gives you a sheepish smile over a FaceTime call when you bring it up. 

When you see him on campus again in January, not much has changed. You're both in your respective majors, he lives in the nicest building on campus, and he hates your roommate. She’s taken to referring to him as your boyfriend; you correct her the first two times and then give up. 

Classes are harder with the emotional slump attached to winter. You talk to Jace often, but don’t see much of each other outside of class. And then you get sick. 

Banging. Loud banging. It wakes you up from your fever-and-Doxylamine induced sleep. Per college dorms, your first assumption is that it's your loud-ass fucking neighbor! Again! Having bunk-bed-breaking sex like she does every Thursday night with her ugly ass boyfriend who radiates such a strong odor of weed and computer science that you can get a noseful of him a meter down the hall. Doxylamine tends to make people agitated.

Before you can weakly pound on the cinderblock wall, there's a muffled call of your name. It comes from the hallway, and it's followed by another bang — which you begin to realize is knocking. 

Crawling out of bed, you blearily pad to the door. You don’t have to peer through the peephole to see who it is. The voice is soft, low, and endearingly posh. Clearly, it’s- 

“Jace?” You grumble when you open the door, mind foggy from the cold medicine.

It's early January in London, and the beige cashmere jumper he wears isn’t warm enough — it's a woman’s cut, but it fits him like Loro Piana himself measured the fabric to Jace’s body. The cold weather is visible in the flush of his face, the snowflakes that linger in his hair.

“I’ve been calling you for hours, darling,” He speaks gently, voice heavy with concern. 

You blink at him, not responding with anything more than a little, oh.

His hand finds your upper arm, leaning closer to hone your attention, “You look awful,” He guides the both of you back into your dorm room, “Are you unwell?” 

You nod, “My roommate brought it back from holiday break.”

Jace huffs sharply, mumbling something to himself, no doubt about your roommate. He walks you back towards your bed, gently pushing you to sit.

“Have you been to the clinic?” He asks, one hand coming to cup your cheek.

“Twice.”

His hand slides up, finers gracing your temple to push some stray hair behind your ear, and then landing upon your brow bone, “You’re burning up.”

It's quiet for a few moments, hands retracing back down to cradle your face as he inspects you. He's focused, calculating and planning in his head — it's an energy you’ve seen him embody countless times, assessing the scraped knees, bruised foreheads, and aching tummies of his younger siblings. 

“What time is it?” You ask, after watching him bustle about your room for about thirty minutes. He's such a mother hen: making tea, procuring medication you didn’t know you had, wetting flannels, adjusting your blankets.

“Ten,” He replies, settling into your twin-size bed next to you and pressing a mug of piping hot tea into your waiting hands, “It's peppermint. I wish you kept chamomile, or really anything herbal.”

You disregard his latter comment, resting your head on his shoulder. Soft. As an eighteen-hundred pound jumper should be, “You came here in the dead of night? In the snow?”

He slides his legs under the blankets, sinking down into your pile of pillows and stuffed animals and pulling you closer, “I took the bus part of the way. Plus-” His hand drags across your shoulders, “I needed to see you. You missed class today, and I haven’t heard from you since Monday. I had nearly driven myself to the brink of madness with worry.”

You groan, turning your head to bump your forehead into the jut of his shoulder, “I hadn’t thought about class,” Bump, bump, bump goes your head, “Did I miss anything important?”

He hums, looking down at you, “We had to turn in a paragraph detailing our preliminary ideas for that big Arthashastra comparison essay. Doctor Dunlavey loved your connections to the political system in The Silmarillion.”

What? You lift your head to look up at him, “I didn’t do the assignment.” You had been too sick to think about school-work.

“Well,” He shrugs, lightly enough that it doesn’t disturb you, “Who's to say? He doesn’t have your handwriting memorized, he has hundreds of students.”

You’re quiet for a long moment, “Thank you, Jace.”

He sleeps in your bed that night, insisting that you’re sick enough that someone needs to keep an eye on you. Dressed in a loose pair of your pajamas, he curls around you in the tiny bed. His body spills warmth through both of your sleepwear, and maybe it's the fever or the cold cinderblock of your dorm but there is no physical proximity that quantifies as close enough to him. 

He's gone by the time you wake up, late into the morning. Naught of him but a text.

i had to go to class and i didn’t want to wake you up, sorry

be back later x 

And true to his word, he arrives that evening with a travel mug of lavender chamomile tea and the cough medicine he makes Luke take when he’s sick. It’s so bad that you nearly choke at the taste, but he leaves the bottle and you’re better by the end of the week. 

You’re both more diligent in seeing each other going forwards.

Your phone rings one day in mid-February — a silly picture of Jace in a bright red hat, one of Helaena’s, pops up on your screen, followed by the affectionate nickname he’s saved as in your phone. 

You even get a chance to say hello, his voice immediately bursting through the speaker, “Do you have plans for the third weekend of February?” 

You think through your mental calendar, “I don’t believe so, nothing that takes priority over you at least. Why do you ask?”

You can hear him fiddling with something on the other line, the clicking of a pen echoing from his bedroom to your ear. Every year his family hosts a gala, raising an ungodly amount of money for their charitable cause by selling high-priced tickets. And everyone comes, because the Targaryens are the royalty of the one percent. 

“Come?” He asks, “Please, I think you’ll enjoy it. Plus, it’ll be like a little holiday for us.”

And again — you’re wrapped so tightly around Jace’s finger that you don’t even think before saying yes. You don’t think through many things regarding this, which lands you in a guest bedroom in Rhaenyra and Alicent’s massive London estate.

In truth, it's not a guest bedroom, but rather Daeron’s old room. It is decorated with posters of classical musicians and string instrument charts; vinyls line his bookshelf, alphabetized and all orchestral. Daeron stays with Alicent’s brother in Paris during the academic year, attending a private secondary school with a music-based curriculum. He had been practically a prodigy at the violin. 

The room is sandwiched between Luke and Aemond, directly across the hall from Jace. There are a number of guest rooms in the house, but they’re all the next floor up and Jace had insisted that you stay across the hall from him. It does feel a bit odd to change into your pretty black dress while staring down a battalion of Daeron’s music awards and a very large framed photo of Otto Hightower. 

“I don’t mean to be judgemental, but who keeps a photo like this of their grandfather in their bedroom?” You ask, adjusting the straps of the dress, “I would understand if he was dead, but Otto is… not.”

Jace laughs from where he lounges on the bed, scrolling through something on his phone. After nearly two decades of friendship, there's little that hasn’t been seen and very lax boundaries. He had watched you change innumerable times before, but today his eyes are decidedly diverted onto his phone. 

“Good?” You ask, turning from the mirror, and giving him a spin. 

Jace stares, uncharacteristically quiet. His eyes are trained on you, scanning the dress, mouth closed and brows drawn so slightly you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know him so well. He's a bit rigid where he’s propped up on the bed, clearly contemplating. 

After an unnerving amount of time, really only five seconds, he speaks, “You look nice.”

It's… odd. Measured and closed off, a complex thought that you don’t have the context from his internal monologue to understand. Did he not like it? Or was he stunned into silence by your sheer, Goddess-like beauty?

“We match,” You offer meekly, gesturing between your dress and his black suit jacket and slacks. A lame comparison. Nearly everyone at these events wore black.

But he smiles nonetheless, a genuine smile that shows off his pretty dimples, “We do.” 

Jacaerys drives to the event, and you’re squished in the too-small backseat of his car, between Lucerys and Aemond. Aegon is in the passenger seat, talking incessantly, and Jace wishes he would shut up so he can think about the silky material of your dress in peace. 

It's a precarious set-up, truly. Jace drives a four-door, but it isn’t meant for six adolescents in formal attire. Aemond is stiff as a rod next to you, pointedly staring out the window and only interacting to bite back at anything Aegon says. Occasionally his bony elbow will bump your side or his knee will knock into yours, and he’ll pull away as if you’re red hot, shooting you a glanced glare. 

The radio is its own battle. Upon entering the car it had connected automatically to Jace’s phone, playing a few seconds of the theory podcast he had been listening to and earning a collective groan. Luke was quick to sync his phone instead, the Ramones brash drums blaring from the speakers. Aegon changed it to chav rap. It ensued like that for the whole car ride — punk rock to rap, volume up and down and up and down. 

The ballroom is glorious. All high domed ceilings and white crown moulding and gold leaf details. There’s a massive chandelier in the centre of the room that drips with perfect crystals. An astonishing world it was that Jacaerys grew up in. Overwhelming 

“Are you alright?” Jace murmurs, hooking his arm into yours as your shoes click against the marble floor. He can sense your unease, feel it in the way your forearm tenses at any particularly fast movement or loud aristocratic laugh. 

“Fine,” You assure, shooting him a smile.

Of course, Jace doesn’t buy it. Your pretty smile doesn’t reach your eyes, it's tighter than normal. He knows things like that — he’ll never admit it, but every one of your microexpressions are programmed into his brain. 

Arm-in-arm the pair of you reach a semi-circle near the bar. Rhaenyra, Corlys, Luke, and Helaena. The boring financial drivel meets your ears from several paces away, and it's mind-numbing up close. 

‘I don’t think you can quantify the inherent need for biodegradable fuel in those metrics.’ 

‘Well, I would argue that you can. In such a high output industry you have to calculate the necessity for every pence.’ 

You nod along, putting up a convincing facade of business intellect while Jace adds in expertly to the dull conversation. Helaena, to Rhaenyra’s left, is about as interested as you.

It's only when Otto breaks into the group, and the conversation shifts from the most cost effective biofuel to is shipping on a mass scale a pertinent trade in post-Brexit England that you’re pulled away. Though not by Jace, who has become more engrossed in the conversation than he is in you, but by Luke. 

“You seemed to be drowning,” He smiles up at you, offering his arm. 

You take it gladly, “Thank you for saving me.”

“Don’t worry, I was drowning too.”

Activity on the balcony is scant; one lady sits in a metal chair sipping a glass of champagne, an elderly man stands at the far end of the railing peering at the London cityscape down below. Luke leans his elbows against the rail, propping his head up in one hand. 

“How's college?” He asks, looking up at you.

You hum, leaning down to mimic his posture, “Oh, it's fine. It's a lot of work,” There's a lull in the conversation as the two of you bask in the lack of hustle and bustle, “Have you started thinking about college yet?”

He shrugs noncommittal, picking at the nails of his free hand. He's very quiet for a while, and you allow him that because every life decision feels massive and dire at fifteen. When he does speak, his voice is soft, “Grandfather said that he wanted me to inherit his business after my dad, but now mum is talking about me being her successor.”

“You’d be good at it.”

“Jace doesn’t want to inherit.”

“I know.”

“He wants to be a lawyer, like Alicent. And I don’t blame him, but that puts a lot of pressure on me. Because now it's like I have mum and grandpa expecting me to be great, and I stand in their conversations and I don’t understand half of what they’re saying-”

“Luke,” You softly interject in his rushed rant, running a careful hand down his arm, “No one expects you to be perfect. You’re still a child, you’ve not even taken your A-Levels yet.

He nods solemnly.

“I know that it feels like the weight of your family legacy rests on your shoulders, but if you also defer inheritance it will be just fine. You have, what — like, ten siblings?” He gives a little laugh at your reasoning, “Plus, Laena and Baela, and Rhaena who could take over after your father.”

Luke nods, “I suppose you’re right,” He elbows you gently in the ribs, “You’re pretty wise, you know?”

It's your turn to laugh, nudging him back, “So, what do you want to do after school?”

He traces mindless little stars into the railing, “I’d really like to study music. Some of my friends and I have been playing together, and we’re talking about starting a band.”

“That's really cool, Luke!” You beam.

He smiles sheepishly, “I mean, it's nothing grand yet. We haven’t decided a name, and we’re a bit at odds about a genre.”

“Well,” You smile, “When you lot play, let me know. I’ll be in the front row!”

The calm quiet is broken when the door to the balcony opens, “Luke, darling. Mummy needs you.”

You both turn to see Alicent peering out of the doorway, body still inside the ballroom. Her arm slips around your waist in an endearingly maternal way as the three of you make your way back towards Rhaenyra.

“How are you, lovely?” She asks, rubbing between your shoulder blades. Her pear and saffron perfume, Guidance Amouage, floods your olfactory senses.

“Well!” You reply, leaning into her warm touch, “This is all so wonderful. I’m very glad Jace invited me.”

She smiles back, “Me too.”

Being a guest of the host by extension, you’re required to stay for the duration. So, you watch people dissipate as your energy dwindles. By the end of the night, nearly eleven, your upright position relies heavily on the support of Jace’s arm around your waist as he chats with his grandmother, Rhaenys. Politics, environmentalism, blah blah, drivel, drivel. You might do more to participate if the five hours of nonstop interaction and three glasses of champagne weren’t pulling your body towards the ground, but you settle for little engaged nods. 

The car is less crowded on the way back — much to everyone's chagrin, Aegon called an Uber halfway through the gala. You’re allowed the front seat, and spend most of the ride dozing off to the tune of The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1967.

You sleep in Jace’s bed that night, despite your own quarters being directly across the hall.

When Jacaerys realises he’s in love with you, you’re crying in the library stairwell. 

“I’m fucked,” You sob into your hands, shoulders shaking with the force of your misery. 

You had been studying together, preparing for the rest of your midterms when a notification came through your school email with an updated exam grade. 

Sheer terror, cold unyielding panic that starts just below your throat and twists its way down your spine and back into your lower intestine. The grade was a forty-two, which brought your total grade down to a fifty-eight. 

In the least melodramatic way possible you’d shut your laptop and told Jace you were going to the bathroom. But the bathroom was at the back of the room, and you had gone to the hallway — plus, he just knew better.

Gentle footsteps, you see his Sambas first and hear the crack of his knees as he sits next to you on the stair step. 

“You’re not fucked,” He murmurs back, his voice low and soft. One arm comes around your stooped shoulders, the soft fabric of his cardigan brushing the back of your neck, “It's only midterms, angel. This is nothing that you can’t reverse.”

The first thought in your head is easy for perpetual straight-A student Jacaerys to say, the next thought is much more self-pitying. You don't voice either, head falling to your knees.

You aren’t allowed to stay like that for long, firm hands come to your arms and pull you up. From there, they run slowly up and down — from your scapula to your bicep, over and over. And his chest blooms with warmth when you respond well, calming down. He runs his thumb over the soft skin underneath your eyes — first the left eye, and then the right — brushing away tears. 

Jace’s typical form of comfort plays on his lifelong role as eldest sibling; it's usually coddling, while he mothers you and tries to problem solve. This is not that. It's something deeper, more genuinely concerned. He isn’t trying to solve your ailment, he just wants to make you feel better. 

“It's just a grade,” He soothes, “It's just an exam, a midterm. This makes up maybe ten percent of your overall grade, and I know that you do well on everything else,” His head is cocked, looking at you so sweetly, “I bet it only looks this bad because it's mid-semester, your score will go up in a few weeks.”

You nod, squeezing your eyes shut as the last stray tears fall. 

“You’re alright,” He whispers, leaning in to press a soft kiss to the apple of your cheek, “Hm?”

Jace is alone that night, Montblanc pen held in perfect writing posture as he journals — an exercise recommended by his mother. The highlights include:

It was gutting. I just wanted to make it better & I didn’t know how. 

Inappropriate time to kiss her face, I couldn’t think of anything else.

I’m usually so good at comfort and reassurance, I don’t know what's wrong with me. 

Fuck, I’m hopeless. 

Things feel different to me now. Not in a particularly bad sense, just different. Maybe it's the transition from childhood friendship to adult friendship. 

I read that god awful serial romance novel last holiday because grandma left it sitting out – A Wallflower Christmas by Lisa Kelypas. And I remember this passage like ‘I want you under me. I know you deserve more respect than that.’

I found it, “I want you under me. On your back. / I’m sorry. You deserve more respect than that. But I can’t stop thinking of it. Your arms and legs around me. Your mouth, open for my kisses. I need too much of you. A lifetime of nights spent between your thighs wouldn't be enough. / I want to talk with you forever. I remember every word you’ve ever said to me. / If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place. I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.”

I’ve been thinking of that passage, like it's playing aloud in my head. What does that mean? 

I don’t particularly feel that for her. 

I get some of it, like ‘I want to talk with you forever, I remember every word you say.’ Anything else though, the romantic bits, I don’t. 

Though, the kissing her face was new. It was compulsive almost, like I had to do it. 

Need to call mum. 

“Is it fair to you?” Rhaenyra asks through the phone. It's late, past the time she puts the little kids to bed, but she's never not answered a phone call from one of her children. 

Jace sighs, worrying one of the buttons on his cardigan, “What if it ruins everything?” He asks, “What if I tell her, and she never speaks to me again and then I lose my best friend?”

“But is that fair, Jace?” She reasons, “To go about a lifetime of friendship keeping this massive secret from her? It won’t go away, my love. It will fester and fester and eat at you for as long as you know her.”

He doesn’t have a good reply to that.

“Jacaerys, I spent twenty years pining after my best friend — so long that I had time to marry, have three children, and divorce. I spent years and years suffocating in regret, because I missed my chance to tell her and build a life. I got another chance, which is very rare, and it was no less scary that time. But, I knew that if I didn’t go for it then I would never have the opportunity to live the life I had spent my entire adolescence dreaming of,” Rhaenyra sighs, “My sweet boy, don’t let this slip away because you’re afraid.” 

'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, he thinks. 

When you accompany him home for summer break, hand in hand, it's with a new depth to your relationship. ‘Tis better to have loved.

tags<3 @one-big-fangirl

check out my event ! ཐི༏ཋྀ󠀮

[lelianaslefthand]

that was so scary but i did it #WomenInSTEM

new memory sticks came in guys wish me luck installing them bc im not asking my in-house computer guy (my stepdad) for help bc im mad at him

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Humans are not perfectly vigilant

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Here's a fun AI story: a security researcher noticed that large companies' AI-authored source-code repeatedly referenced a nonexistent library (an AI "hallucination"), so he created a (defanged) malicious library with that name and uploaded it, and thousands of developers automatically downloaded and incorporated it as they compiled the code:

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/28/ai_bots_hallucinate_software_packages/

These "hallucinations" are a stubbornly persistent feature of large language models, because these models only give the illusion of understanding; in reality, they are just sophisticated forms of autocomplete, drawing on huge databases to make shrewd (but reliably fallible) guesses about which word comes next:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922

Guessing the next word without understanding the meaning of the resulting sentence makes unsupervised LLMs unsuitable for high-stakes tasks. The whole AI bubble is based on convincing investors that one or more of the following is true:

There are low-stakes, high-value tasks that will recoup the massive costs of AI training and operation;

There are high-stakes, high-value tasks that can be made cheaper by adding an AI to a human operator;

Adding more training data to an AI will make it stop hallucinating, so that it can take over high-stakes, high-value tasks without a "human in the loop."

These are dubious propositions. There's a universe of low-stakes, low-value tasks – political disinformation, spam, fraud, academic cheating, nonconsensual porn, dialog for video-game NPCs – but none of them seem likely to generate enough revenue for AI companies to justify the billions spent on models, nor the trillions in valuation attributed to AI companies:

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

The proposition that increasing training data will decrease hallucinations is hotly contested among AI practitioners. I confess that I don't know enough about AI to evaluate opposing sides' claims, but even if you stipulate that adding lots of human-generated training data will make the software a better guesser, there's a serious problem. All those low-value, low-stakes applications are flooding the internet with botshit. After all, the one thing AI is unarguably very good at is producing bullshit at scale. As the web becomes an anaerobic lagoon for botshit, the quantum of human-generated "content" in any internet core sample is dwindling to homeopathic levels:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/inhuman-centipede/#enshittibottification

This means that adding another order of magnitude more training data to AI won't just add massive computational expense – the data will be many orders of magnitude more expensive to acquire, even without factoring in the additional liability arising from new legal theories about scraping:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/17/how-to-think-about-scraping/

That leaves us with "humans in the loop" – the idea that an AI's business model is selling software to businesses that will pair it with human operators who will closely scrutinize the code's guesses. There's a version of this that sounds plausible – the one in which the human operator is in charge, and the AI acts as an eternally vigilant "sanity check" on the human's activities.

For example, my car has a system that notices when I activate my blinker while there's another car in my blind-spot. I'm pretty consistent about checking my blind spot, but I'm also a fallible human and there've been a couple times where the alert saved me from making a potentially dangerous maneuver. As disciplined as I am, I'm also sometimes forgetful about turning off lights, or waking up in time for work, or remembering someone's phone number (or birthday). I like having an automated system that does the robotically perfect trick of never forgetting something important.

There's a name for this in automation circles: a "centaur." I'm the human head, and I've fused with a powerful robot body that supports me, doing things that humans are innately bad at.

That's the good kind of automation, and we all benefit from it. But it only takes a small twist to turn this good automation into a nightmare. I'm speaking here of the reverse-centaur: automation in which the computer is in charge, bossing a human around so it can get its job done. Think of Amazon warehouse workers, who wear haptic bracelets and are continuously observed by AI cameras as autonomous shelves shuttle in front of them and demand that they pick and pack items at a pace that destroys their bodies and drives them mad:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Automation centaurs are great: they relieve humans of drudgework and let them focus on the creative and satisfying parts of their jobs. That's how AI-assisted coding is pitched: rather than looking up tricky syntax and other tedious programming tasks, an AI "co-pilot" is billed as freeing up its human "pilot" to focus on the creative puzzle-solving that makes coding so satisfying.

But an hallucinating AI is a terrible co-pilot. It's just good enough to get the job done much of the time, but it also sneakily inserts booby-traps that are statistically guaranteed to look as plausible as the good code (that's what a next-word-guessing program does: guesses the statistically most likely word).

This turns AI-"assisted" coders into reverse centaurs. The AI can churn out code at superhuman speed, and you, the human in the loop, must maintain perfect vigilance and attention as you review that code, spotting the cleverly disguised hooks for malicious code that the AI can't be prevented from inserting into its code. As "Lena" writes, "code review [is] difficult relative to writing new code":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773779967521780169

Why is that? "Passively reading someone else's code just doesn't engage my brain in the same way. It's harder to do properly":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773780355708764665

There's a name for this phenomenon: "automation blindness." Humans are just not equipped for eternal vigilance. We get good at spotting patterns that occur frequently – so good that we miss the anomalies. That's why TSA agents are so good at spotting harmless shampoo bottles on X-rays, even as they miss nearly every gun and bomb that a red team smuggles through their checkpoints:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/23/automation-blindness/#humans-in-the-loop

"Lena"'s thread points out that this is as true for AI-assisted driving as it is for AI-assisted coding: "self-driving cars replace the experience of driving with the experience of being a driving instructor":

https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1773841546753831283

In other words, they turn you into a reverse-centaur. Whereas my blind-spot double-checking robot allows me to make maneuvers at human speed and points out the things I've missed, a "supervised" self-driving car makes maneuvers at a computer's frantic pace, and demands that its human supervisor tirelessly and perfectly assesses each of those maneuvers. No wonder Cruise's murderous "self-driving" taxis replaced each low-waged driver with 1.5 high-waged technical robot supervisors:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/11/robots-stole-my-jerb/#computer-says-no

AI radiology programs are said to be able to spot cancerous masses that human radiologists miss. A centaur-based AI-assisted radiology program would keep the same number of radiologists in the field, but they would get less done: every time they assessed an X-ray, the AI would give them a second opinion. If the human and the AI disagreed, the human would go back and re-assess the X-ray. We'd get better radiology, at a higher price (the price of the AI software, plus the additional hours the radiologist would work).

But back to making the AI bubble pay off: for AI to pay off, the human in the loop has to reduce the costs of the business buying an AI. No one who invests in an AI company believes that their returns will come from business customers to agree to increase their costs. The AI can't do your job, but the AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI anyway – that pitch is the most successful form of AI disinformation in the world.

An AI that "hallucinates" bad advice to fliers can't replace human customer service reps, but airlines are firing reps and replacing them with chatbots:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240222-air-canada-chatbot-misinformation-what-travellers-should-know

An AI that "hallucinates" bad legal advice to New Yorkers can't replace city services, but Mayor Adams still tells New Yorkers to get their legal advice from his chatbots:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/03/nycs-government-chatbot-is-lying-about-city-laws-and-regulations/

The only reason bosses want to buy robots is to fire humans and lower their costs. That's why "AI art" is such a pisser. There are plenty of harmless ways to automate art production with software – everything from a "healing brush" in Photoshop to deepfake tools that let a video-editor alter the eye-lines of all the extras in a scene to shift the focus. A graphic novelist who models a room in The Sims and then moves the camera around to get traceable geometry for different angles is a centaur – they are genuinely offloading some finicky drudgework onto a robot that is perfectly attentive and vigilant.

But the pitch from "AI art" companies is "fire your graphic artists and replace them with botshit." They're pitching a world where the robots get to do all the creative stuff (badly) and humans have to work at robotic pace, with robotic vigilance, in order to catch the mistakes that the robots make at superhuman speed.

Reverse centaurism is brutal. That's not news: Charlie Chaplin documented the problems of reverse centaurs nearly 100 years ago:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Times_(film)

As ever, the problem with a gadget isn't what it does: it's who it does it for and who it does it to. There are plenty of benefits from being a centaur – lots of ways that automation can help workers. But the only path to AI profitability lies in reverse centaurs, automation that turns the human in the loop into the crumple-zone for a robot:

https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

Jorge Royan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Munich_-_Two_boys_playing_in_a_park_-_7328.jpg

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

--

Noah Wulf (modified) https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thunderbirds_at_Attention_Next_to_Thunderbird_1_-_Aviation_Nation_2019.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[ppyopulii]

maestro’s muse 💿 interview no. 13

PREVIEW. Has HYBEHAX always been this… unserious?

FEATURING. lee jihoon x gn!reader, various non-idol!hybe groups & reader GENRE(S). coming of age, fluff, some angst LENGTH | WC. <10min | 2.2k words EXPLICITS. soonyoung is chaotic. & i guess one (1) curse word

JAY’S MUSINGS. prologue (part two) for maestro’s muse, the series. not every part will be written in screenplay, just like how not every part will be written in smau format, just like how not every part will be written in prose, etc etc... just havin’ fun writing (: enjoy!

www.hybehax.tech/interview

THE INTERVIEW FADE IN.

A cozy dorm room lined with comforting trinkets. The digital clock sitting on a neatly stacked shelf indicates it's almost half past seven o'clock. It’s quiet in the shared bedroom, and YOU (college freshman, music fanatic, prospective HYBEHAX organizer) sit at the desk, nervously tugging on your bottom lip with your teeth.

A monitor shows the join feature of a Zoom call. YOU stare back at yourself through the small camera screen displayed.

There’s a soft ping from a notification. A pause, and then YOU take a deep breath and click the join button.

On the screen, SEUNGCHEOL (college junior, President of HYBEHAX, mutual acquaintance of YOU) smiles at you from his impressive HD face-cam.

SEUNGCHEOL Hello, we’ll get started in just a minute. Soonyoung is having some difficulty logging on.

Shuffling noises sound from another screen. JIHOON (college sophomore, Internal Vice President of HYBEHAX, music theory classmate of YOU) grumbles under his breath.

JIHOON (irritated) You’d think with this being his thirteenth interview he’d have gotten the hang of it now.

SEUNGCHEOL (warning) Jihoon.

JIHOON mumbles a sorry and mutes. A minute passes and SOONYOUNG (college sophomore, External Vice President of HYBEHAX, friend of YOU) pops up on-screen, face grainy from bad internet.

SOONYOUNG Hi! Nice to see you!

YOU (warmly) Hey, Soonyoung. Still doing alright in your math classes?

SOONYOUNG (groaning) Not the same without you, man. You actually carried me through calculus.

YOU Aren’t you just in business statistics now? How hard can that be?

SOONYOUNG Don’t ask.

There’s a few coughs from SEUNGCHEOL. Conversation dies down and SEUNGCHEOL moves his camera to center himself on screen.

SEUNGCHEOL Alright, hello and welcome to your HYBEHAX organizer interview! Thank you for taking the time to apply; we were impressed by your application. Now that we’re here, think of this as a time for us to get to know each other, and for you to ask us any questions you have.

SOONYOUNG (interjecting) It’s really lowkey, don’t worry.

SEUNGCHEOL clicks his tongue. SOONYOUNG giggles and mutes.

SEUNGCHEOL We’ll start with a round of introductions. I’m Choi Seungcheol, a rising senior and double major in computer science and mathematics. I’m also the current President of HYBEHAX. I run pretty much… everything? Let’s see… uh, I’ve been an organizer of HYBEHAX since I was a sophomore, but I’ve been involved with hackathons since I was fifteen. I actually remember trying to code my first project in that 24-hour period. Even though I barely had any idea what I was doing, all the organizers and my teammates were so nice. Made me feel really welcomed.

YOU (smiling from ear-to-ear) Fifteen? That’s some serious dedication, I respect it. What drew you to want to be HYBEHAX’s President?

SEUNGCHEOL’s lips part in an ‘o’, like he’s surprised YOU asked a question.

SEUNGCHEOL Well… I guess you can say I’ve grown attached? The people that I’ve met and grown with through HYBEHAX have really made my college years worth it. That, and I want to be able to keep organizing a space that made me feel as safe as I did as a kid.

YOU Yeah, I understand. That’s really admirable, congratulations!

SEUNGCHEOL Thank you, that means a lot. I really hope I can continue to make this upcoming hackathon worthwhile to attend, especially since it’ll be my last year being an organizer.

SOONYOUNG unmutes.

SOONYOUNG And it’s our 10th year!

SEUNGCHEOL (laughing, albeit stressed) Yeah, that too. Ah… how could I forget?

A tense silence falls on the four. YOU shift your focus to SOONYOUNG to alleviate the tension.

YOU Wanna introduce yourself next?

SOONYOUNG Oh! Yeah, I can. You already know me, but I’m Soonyoung, EVP of HYBEHAX. I manage all the external affairs, like talking to building managers for renting and university officials for fundings of our hackathon. I’ve been organizing for awhile too, like Cheol-hyung, and I’m super excited for this year!

YOU (joking) You, trusted with money?

SOONYOUNG (mock offense) Yah, I’m literally a business major!

YOU Yeah yeah, whatever. What’s been your favorite part?

SOONYOUNG’s eyes light up.

SOONYOUNG Shopping!

YOU Shopping?

SOONYOUNG For the hackathon! I’m in charge of it.

SEUNGCHEOL (exasperated) With my card.

YOU watch JIHOON snort silently. He unmutes.

JIHOON You get reimbursed by the university, at least.

SEUNGCHEOL (sulking) But does he have to do it with my card?

SOONYOUNG You’re the president!

JIHOON rolls his eyes and scoffs good-naturedly.

JIHOON Hey, we’re in an interview right now.

SOONYOUNG (dismissively) So what? We all know them, and they know us. We worked with them last season when they were a volunteer.

YOU raise an eyebrow.

YOU Shouldn’t we at least try to maintain some formality though? Just for record’s sake?

SEUNGCHEOL …they have a point. Jihoon, go ahead and introduce yourself and we’ll actually start asking questions.

JIHOON Hi. My name is Lee Jihoon, I’ll be your Internal Vice President. Rising junior, computer science major. I work specifically on the inner-running logistics of HYBEHAX.

YOU nod and go silent at his lackluster introduction. SEUNGCHEOL chuckles.

SEUNGCHEOL Ah… Jihoon-ah is what keeps this club running. Think of him as the maestro conducting the orchestra—his back is to you but he’s secretly doing all the work.

SOONYOUNG (laughing) You’re making him sound like he does more than you.

JIHOON presses a palm to his face. His facecam slightly lags, blipping the view for a second.

SEUNGCHEOL (clearly enjoying the teasing) Well, at this point he basically does. Once I graduate he’ll be first runner up for President.

SOONYOUNG grins. His camera goes slightly out of focus as he rocks back and forth in his chair.

YOU Well, it’s nice to meet you Jihoon.

JIHOON Likewise.

There’s a beat of silence as YOU and JIHOON stare each other down via webcam. His gaze is sharp, meticulous. Yours is relaxed with a hint of a smile.

SOONYOUNG So formal. Why don’t you go next?

YOU Alright… hi everyone! Thank you for taking the time to meet with me. I’m a computer science major with a focus in front-end development, but I hope career-wise to go into front-end regarding data science. I was a volunteer this past fall for HYBEHAX and I really loved helping with the event, so I want to try my hand at organizing this year.

SOONYOUNG You were running around like crazy during the event. I think I saw you like, twice?

YOU (laughing awkwardly) Yeah… the last Marketing Team lead kind of recruited me. I ran around with them a lot getting pictures.

SEUNGCHEOL (amused) I specifically remember you during the welcoming speech. The President and I were trying to talk into the mic and you kept telling us to move slightly to the left ‘cause it looked better on camera that way.

YOU Hey! Because of me we had great shots. We can use these for marketing this time around.

SOONYOUNG Oh? You sure you don’t wanna be a part of Marketing Team?

YOU Oh, hell no. 

SEUNGCHEOL and SOONYOUNG burst into laughter. The corner of JIHOON’s lips crack open to reveal a small smile.

SEUNGCHEOL Relax, the Marketing Team Lead from last year left. Our Lead this year will be a lot better.

YOU Glad to hear that.

SEUNGCHEOL Are there any questions you have for us before we get into the specifics of your role?

YOU No, not that I can think of.

SEUNGCHEOL Sounds good! If there are any questions you have along the way, feel free to ask.

SOONYOUNG (raising his hand, not unlike a too-excited kid in school) I have a question!

Metaphorical lights dim. YOU fidget with the hem of your shirt. JIHOON bites his lip to fight a smirk.

JIHOON Yah, you’re the EVP, not Pres.

SEUNGCHEOL (skeptically) No, go ahead Soonyoung.

SOONYOUNG What made you choose Design Team instead of Tech? You’re a CS major, aren’t you?

YOU smile, as if expecting this question.

YOU I did briefly mention this in my application, but I feel like the integration between the arts and technology is so important to cherish and understand these days. Bridging that gap between two worlds that are seemingly unrelated is what I want to do—technology can be used to create art, and art can be used to create technology. It’s all relative, I feel.

JIHOON nods along appreciatively to your words. SEUNGCHEOL is listening intently.

SEUNGCHEOL As an organizer, you’re expected to specialize in your team’s work. You, on the other hand, have experience in multiple aspects—marketing, tech, design. Like Soonyoung said, we all saw how hard-working you were last season as a volunteer. We’d love for you to join us as a proper organizer for our 10th year.

YOU Thank you, that's very sweet of you. I'd be honored!

SOONYOUNG Oh, right. You said you’d be interested in being a Team Lead, too—are you still interested in that?

YOU Yeah, I think it would be fun. What specifically does Design Team Lead do?

SOONYOUNG You’ll be in charge of designating tasks to the members. Last season we only had, um, one member on Design Team. It was a lot and incredibly overwhelming and they quit. Understandably. So having someone who oversees everything would be preferable.

SEUNGCHEOL Yep, things like the sponsorship packet that goes out to sponsors, merchandise for the organizers and participants—those tasks wouldn’t necessarily be completed by you, but you would be in charge of making sure they’re getting done on time and in a professional manner.

YOU That sounds doable. If I’m being honest, I’d feel better managing tasks. I feel like I’d be pressured a lot to go above and beyond if I was just a regular organizer.

JIHOON Do you have experience in leadership?

YOU Only a little bit, but I’m definitely open to learning more, of course. I lead an outreach organization for my scholarship program.

SEUNGCHEOL (nodding along) Impressive.

SOONYOUNG We can call it, right? They’ll be our new Design Team Lead?

YOU Hey, I’d be down if you guys are down. This interview is more relaxing than I thought; barely even one at this point too.

JIHOON (shrugging) Only because we know you from the previous season.

YOU smile at him and JIHOON breaks eye contact.

YOU Question.

SEUNGCHEOL Yeah, what's up?

YOU Has HYBEHAX always been this… unserious?

SOONYOUNG Yes—

SEUNGCHEOL, JIHOON (simultaneously) No.

YOU Well. Glad to join the team anyways.

SOONYOUNG excitedly claps his hands. His screen lags.

SOONYOUNG Does that mean it’s a yes?!

YOU ‘Course. Anything for my calc buddy.

The man pumps a fist into the air and his webcam freezes. JIHOON audibly sighs.

JIHOON We’ll send you the contract via email soon. It just goes over more generalized rules about being an organizer—attending weekly meetings, making sure you keep up with your team, the usual.

SEUNGCHEOL Happy to have you!

YOU Thank you guys so much. I’ll be sure to not disappoint!

SOONYOUNG’s frames cut back into view. He’s peering at the camera and making gibberish noises.

SOONYOUNG Hello? Hell-oo? Can you guys hear me?

JIHOON (mumbling to himself) …and this is why he’s the EVP and not on Tech Team.

SEUNGCHEOL (exasperated fondness) Yes, Soonyoung, we can hear you.

SOONYOUNG Awesome! We’ll send you the paperwork right away so you can officially become an organizer!

JIHOON I already said that.

SOONYOUNG pouts and begins to whine, to which JIHOON huffs at. SEUNGCHEOL forcibly mutes them both.

SEUNGCHEOL

Anyway, I’ll also send you the Discord link to the server with the contract. That’s our main way of communication. As for the contract, it’s a PDF—you can sign it by like, opening it up in Adobe and using the pen tool. No need for fancy formalities.

YOU (laughing) Alright, sounds good. Thank you guys again for this opportunity!

SOONYOUNG is making cringey aegyo hearts at his camera. Your laptop begins to whirr softly from overheating.

SEUNGCHEOL Thank you for being interested in joining us. Details about our first meeting will be out soon. See you then, okay?

YOU See you then! Have a good night!

SEUNGCHEOL beams at YOU. YOU note his barely there dimple and fight back a smile.

On the other hand, JIHOON types a ‘Have a good night, thank you’ before promptly leaving the call. SOONYOUNG waves goodbye for an eternity before being kicked off by SEUNGCHEOL.

YOU wave and press the leave button. The call drops and your laptop quiets down. It’s suddenly silent in the bedroom, and YOU let out a yawn as YOU stretch your arms above your head.

YOU Welp. Design Team Lead, here I come.

FADE OUT. END.

[tanadrin]

There’s an interesting tension in complaints about capitalism or executive meddling for marketability purposes ruining tv and film, just because they are two of the most capital-intensive art forms ever devised. You can write a novel for the cost of pen and paper, or more realistically these days a cheap netbook. Painting or sculpture or other static visual media can be more expensive, but the initial capital outlay is like hundreds of bucks, or if you really need particular tools, thousands.

Meanwhile a film on a hilariously small shoestring budget can run tens of thousands of dollars—you gotta pay for actors and equipment rental and stuff. And more ambitious projects basically require the backing of large production companies, who—if they do not concern themselves with marketability—may rapidly cease to be large production companies.

And on top of all this, the scale of such productions means they are inherently collaborative in nature. That’s been true of performance arts for centuries, of course, but when a key element of your production is the Money Guy, it makes sense he has to worry about his ability to be the Money Guy on similar projects in the future. And given the vagaries of show business, and that there are way more consistent ways to make money, I don’t think there are many people in the business of film or TV or for that matter theater production who don’t care about the medium to some degree.

And in some ways capitalism is the ideal system to produce big film and TV productions in, at least for the would be auteur. If capital is allocated solely by private whim, you just need to get one loaded producer on your side to realize your vision—you don’t necessarily need to justify the existence of your art to a philistine public, or to bean-counting government bureaucrats, or to the people who process grant applications at arts funding councils.

Still, loaded producers are in limited supply, and it’s much easier to get their attention for your non commercial vanity project if you are already famous and well respected as a director. It’s not a system optimized for producing really top notch art! But the problem of where to get the money can only be shifted around, while actors and animators and sound technicians and so on and so forth are a finite resource.

(Notably the auteur’s incentives are in many ways directly opposed to the acting and technical staff’s incentives—a world where even big name actors get paid peanuts or are replaced entirely by computers is a world that removes a lot of financial limits on an auteur’s creative vision! Of course a lot of directors and showrunners want their employees to be paid well; they recognize there is more to making TV and film than minimizing costs. But in terms of the labor economy of show business, the auteur or showrunner is management, not labor, and auteur theory is a justification of that arrangement.)

[gyaru-tau]

godddd i love whenever Phil would get in character in QSMP and the music would always be a paid actor to any given scenario. Like in this VOD here.

The use of C418's "The End", be it intentional or not (it's likely that it is considering what this plotline is about in the first place) perfectly matches with the sort of tension escalation that happens in this "scene" beat for beat, ragardless of whether that was a choice or not. I know nothing about music theory so don't expect anything beyond a surface level analysis here, but I feel like i have to point out how unintentionally well timed a lot of this song is to the whole shebang.

The opening of the song gives a very immediate sense of "something ain't right" before Phil reads rose's book. Lots of low, droning synth that pans out in a single key.

Then, the moment he goes down to the center of the sanctuary to read the book that Rose left behind, the song immediately starts to tease us with similar kinds of ethereal sounds that we hear in other songs that have been used for Rose-centric lore (Echo in the Wind by Aaron Cherof comes to mind)

Once he makes it over to the Ender King's infiltration of the book, those ethereal sounds start to become a little bit discordant and distorted.

by the time he's closed the book and burnt it the synths continue to drone, and we hear short motifs from some other C418 songs made for minecraft. There are a fair amount of them so I won't name them all, though their inclusions here are slow and eerie when compared to their more comforting counterparts. It definitely helps to push the idea of something safe and familiar, such as Rose's sanctuary becoming "wrong".

These motifs only persist as Phil begins to check all of the places that he frequents , so my last point about familiarity becoming tainted is still very much applicable here as well.

Halfway through that, Phil is getting more and more frantic, and the synth starts to pick up a little more, getting slightly more intense as the motifs continue to ride out.

The moment Phil begins to read the Ender King's book left for him by Uppies 2, the motifs have disappeared entirely, the synths swell to the most aggressive peak thus far...

...And then it fades to near white noise as Phil reads the book.

Once he closes it, the synths start to slowly swell once again-- at this point I believe there's another motif, or rather just a sort of eerie, plinky piano sounding backtrack that circles through the same few notes. This starts up right as he looks down to the nest and realizes that there's crying obsidian all over it as well.

As soon as he glides onto the nest to take a closer look, there are more distortions-- namely, there are some sounds sprinkled through that are played in reverse.

A buzzing sound kicks in as soon as Phil tries to convince himself that everything is fine-- that everything will be fine. C418's "Minecraft" is sampled here, pausing and dragging the first few notes like an audio error or a computer crash might. It is one final hopeless cling to familiarity.

The song starts to fade out to a similar, albeit more aggressive "white noise" kind of state as Phil mulls over his options.

Then it returns to one final, warbly swelling synth as Phil finally writes back to Rose to tell her that he's been found, and that she needs to contact Blaze for more help.

By the time he writes Blaze's name and places the book in the chest, the song skips back to "Minecraft", only managing to play a few notes of the song and skipping on repeat a few times before cutting to silence and static as Phil contacts Fit to meet him.

This entire sequence, regardless of whether not it was like. BUILT around "The End" as a song is still such an excellent climb in tension, and that is no doubt in part due to the song's presence. It makes me sad that less people bring it up!

[girlactionfigure]

1 Nobel Prize in Chemistry - The Development of Multiscale Models for Complex Chemical Systems

2 Nobel Prize in Chemistry - Quasiperiodic Crystals

3 Nobel Prize in Chemistry - Decoding the Structure and The Function of The Ribosome

4 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences - Repeated Games

5 Nobel Prize in Chemistry – Ubiquitin, Deciding the Fate of Defective Proteins in Living Cells

6 Nobel Prize in Economics - Human Judgment and Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

7 Fields Medal Award in Mathematics

8 Turing Award - Machine Reasoning Under Uncertainty

9 Turing Award - Nondeterministic Decision-Making

10 Turing Award - The Development of Interactive Zero-Knowledge Proofs

11 Turing Award - Developing New Tools for Systems Verification

12 Vine Seeds Discovered from The Byzantine Period

13 The World’s Most Ancient Hebrew Inscription

14 Ancient Golden Treasure Found at Foot of Temple Mount

15 Sniffphone - Mobile Disease Diagnostics

16 Discovering the Gene Responsible for Fingerprints Formation

17 Pillcam - For Diagnosing and Monitoring Diseases in The Digestive System

18 Technological Application of The Molecular Recognition and Assembly Mechanisms Behind Degenerative Disorders

19 Exelon – A Drug for The Treatment of Dementia

20 Azilect - Drug for Parkinson’s Disease

21 Nano Ghosts - A “Magic Bullet” For Fighting Cancer

22 Doxil (Caelyx) For Cancer Treatment

23 The Genetics of Hearing

24 Copaxone - Drug for The Treatment of Multiple Sclerosis

25 Preserving the Dead Sea Scrolls

26 Developing the Biotechnologies of Valuable Products from Red Marine Microalgae

27 A New Method for Recruiting Immune Cells to Fight Cancer

28 Study of Bacterial Mechanisms for Coping with Temperature Change

29 Steering with The Bats 30 Transmitting Voice Conversations Via the Internet

31 Rewalk – An Exoskeleton That Enables Paraplegics to Walk Again

32 Intelligent Computer Systems

33 Muon Detectors in The World's Largest Scientific Experiment

34 Renaissance Robot for Spine and Brain Surgery

35 Mobileye Accident Prevention System

36 Firewall for Computer Network Security

37 Waze – Outsmarting Traffic, Together

38 Diskonkey - USB Flash Drive

39 Venμs Environmental Research Satellite

40 Iron Dome – Rocket and Mortar Air Defense System

41 Gridon - Preventing Power Outages in High Voltage Grids

42 The First Israeli Nanosatellite

43 Intel's New Generation Processors

44 Electroink - The World’s First Electronic Ink for Commercial Printing

45 Development of A Commercial Membrane for Desalination

46 Developing Modern Wine from Vines of The Bible

47 New Varieties of Seedless Grapes

48 Long-Keeping Regular and Cherry Tomatoes

49 Adapting Citrus Cultivation to Desert Conditions

50 Rhopalaea Idoneta - A New Ascidian Species from The Gulf of Eilat

51 Life in The Dead Sea - Various Fungi Discovered in The Brine

52 Drip Technology - The Irrigation Method That Revolutionized Agriculture

53 Repair of Heart Tissues from Algae

54 Proof of The Existence of Imaginary Particles, Which Could Be Used in Quantum Computers

55 Flying in Peace with The Birds

56 Self-Organization of Bacteria Colonies Sheds Light on The Behaviour of Cancer Cells

57 The First Israeli Astronaut, Colonel Ilan Ramon

58 Dr. Chaim Weizmann - Scientist and Statesman, The First President of Israel, One of The Founders of The Modern Field of Biotechnology

59 Aaron Aaronsohn Botanist, Agronomist, Entrepreneur, Zionist Leader, and Head of The Nili Underground Organization

60 Albert Einstein - Founding Father of The Theory of Relativity, Co-Founder of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem

61 Maimonides - Doctor and Philosopher

Source

@TheMossadIL

[4denthusiast]

I've just noticed an odd combination of beliefs I hold about how maths works. I'm not exactly convinced that every statement in arithmetic (i.e. statements that can be written in terms of 0, the successor function, =, +, ×, and, not, and quantification over natural numbers) is either true or false. (My previously more Platonist views were shaken by some university courses on topics like model theory and Gödel's incompleteness theorems. In order to understand that stuff you have to entertain the possibility that certain seemingly obvious things aren't true, and I then sort of never stopped for some of them.) At the same time, I accept the law of the excluded middle (that P∨¬P is always true). I generally wouldn't describe myself as an intuitinist, even if I am interested in the applications of some intuitionistic logics in computer science.

I think the way I resolve this apparent contradiction is that the reason I don't feel like all arithmetic statements are true or false is that I'm not sure the natural numbers, as a set, are uniquely defined. Any definition of what is and what isn't in ℕ tends to involve some degree of circularity. "It's 0, and S0, and SS0, and so on.", but "so on" for how many steps? A natural number of steps. Hopefully you see the issue. So then, an arithmetic statement may be true of one model of the naturals, but not another. Within any one model, P∨¬P is true (or, more to the point, (∀x. Px)∨¬(∀x. Px) is true), so if it's true in every model it's true, but we can't ever pin down quite which model we're talking about, so the individual statement (∀x. Px) can remain indeterminate.

All this sort of implicitly relies on a separation of the language and meta-language, even though I didn't set out to have a separate meta-language in the first place. I'm not quite sure whether what I'm thinking here even makes sense. Perhaps what I mean is that the meta-language does have logical connectives (and, or, not), so you can form a claim like "(∀x. Px) is true, or ¬(∀x. Px) is true.", but it doesn't have quantification over the naturals, at least not always, because in the meta-language there isn't a unique ℕ, and you can't specify which one you mean because there's no way to totally pin it down. At least I think. But then the semantics of A∨B is meant to be that A∨B is true iff A is true or B is true. I guess we can still recover this by saying that any statement in the language that includes any quantifiers is implicitly with reference to a particular model of ℕ, and a statement is true iff it's true for all models, but then that requires that the meta-language can quantify over models of ℕ, which should be way less possible than quantifying over individual naturals. I don't know how to resolve this, if it even can be resolved. I'm kind of confused.

The true ℕ, if it exists, ought to be the smallest one of course. The trouble is you can't define "smallest" properly without discussing the whole class, which is a less basic concept than the numbers themselves. Also, not every ordered set or class has a smallest element. I think probably if you allow yourself sufficient expressiveness you can prove that in this case there is a smallest (take the intersection or something), but again I don't think you can prove that without making assumptions at least as strong as the conclusion.

The same thing happens with set theory, but there it all feels clearer. In contrast to the naturals where I'm not sure, I feel somewhat more confident that there isn't a single true set-theoretic universe V. There ought to be sets that can't be named (there are only countably many names after all), which makes the universe much trickier to pin down than the naturals. I know there are countable models of ZFC, but they don't feel like they're the real model, and ZFC is itself kind of vague. It leaves a lot of room for rather natural variation in what sets are allowed (e.g. the continuum hypothesis), while non-standard naturals seem much more exotic. If you assume that there's some particular ℕ that's the real ℕ, in the meta-language, this gives you much more solid foundation to use when talking about potential uncertainty in V. You can do induction, talk about constructible sets and stuff. It seems quite likely that the continuum hypothesis doesn't have a definite truth value, even though CH∨¬CH does, but it feels like quite an ordinary sort of indefiniteness, like "He has brown hair." when it isn't clear who "he" refers to. "Is there a cardinal between ω and 2^ω?" What version of the class of cardinals are you talking about?

[choppersconfirmedkills]

willow ai (a guide for shifters)

What is Willow? Many of you have heard of Willow who has taken TikTok by storm due to it proving the existence of parallel realities. Willow is a quantum AI computer chip developed by Google. Willow was created with the purpose harnessing quantum mechanics to help better society. So basically Willow is a super super computer that does a whole lot of math, in regards to how the universe is how it is.

How did Willow "prove" the multiverse? This part was absolutely fascinating to me because I am a huge nerd. When Willow was created, it's ability was tested using a computation benchmark. For even the most advanced supercomputers known to man it would take them 10 septillion (10 to the 25th power) years to solve. That is longer than the universe has existed thus far. Willow solved this benchmark in 5 minutes. FIVE FREAKING MINUTES?! The fact that it solved this in 5 minutes has now been used as evidence to David Deutsch's theory that quantum computation uses parallel realities. His theory posits that quantum computing is an "inherently multiversal process." Willow solving this equation, provides significant merit to this theory.

So what does this mean? Not much. At least in terms of real world applications. At this point the goal is to apply Willow's quantum computation abilities to more practical efforts.

For shifters this means, that if you accept what Willow may prove, that we were always right, and this is very real. We exist as energy and we now know that energy (particularly the energy we create) can be used to "travel" across realities. So go fucking shift, you're better than AI and AI did it so...

[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.

[milf--adjacent]

why do so many M/Ls love gen-AI suddenly it's straight up perplexing to me. luddite that i may be. anyway other question, do you have any opinions based in theory yourself since you're opposed to gen-AI (as am i) whether it being anarchist/communist etc

Having nuance and learning about something to properly understand it isn't being "in love" with something. It's normal adult behavior. How capitalists use a tool isn't inherent to the tool. Gen AI has (and has long been used) for many valid, disparate applications such as doing busy work for animators and drug discovery. Ever use the magic wand tool in photoshop? That's technically gen AI by today's definitions. The tool itself has no moral value. Why do people consistently mistake the actions of capitalists with the tools they use to try and make a quick profit? Do you not keep up with science and tech? Just because chat GPT is stupid and horrible doesn't mean *checks notes* a computer program that is somewhat related is also stupid and horrible. Learn to listen instead of making assumptions and feeling false superiority based on them.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Writer tip: Repeating a character trait doesn't make it true.

"he/she/they were clever." said ad nauseum doesn't make it true. Prove it in the text, demonstrate it.

I mean you could tell me. And you could show me the university certificate, but it doesn't make it true and I won't believe you.

s/He was an inventor. Fine. He was an inventor, then demonstrate it in the text. Are they a one-trick pony and can't apply it after you introduce it? Then I think he stole the invention. He doesn't know how it works, can't demonstrate it being useful in other applications, can't figure out how to invent anything on the spot, has no mind of being an engineer. I don't believe you. Give me the mindset of the person.

The person was intelligent... again, demonstrate this is true in the text by them using words in context that makes them sound emotionally and intellectually intelligent. I'd be much more impressed if they were explaining fancy mathematical theory to a three year old using three-year old language than I would be them using long multi-syllabic words at random. That takes extra intelligence, to me. Fermat's Theorem AND be sensitive enough to get a Three year old's attention, hold it, and get the kid to understand. That's like intelligence on steroids.

It's not show or tell in this case, it's *actually put it into the text* instead of slamming me with the character trait over and over.

If I went around telling everyone every ten seconds I was smart, and I was clever, would you believe me? If I said I got into Yale, maybe you would wince and ask something like, Iunno, were you a nepo?

But if I told you I watched an episode of MacGyver and then broke apart a mechanical pencil for the spring and used some sticky tack to fix a screen door. That would lead some credence to how I was smart.

(BTW, he wasn't fixing a screen door in the episode).

If I told you I used dental floss to make a locking door open from the other side, you might believe me (It was a lunchroom push door. I'd gone to the dentist the previous day and had it in my pocket. I got sick of getting up for the door, so rigged it.)

BTW, this isn't a copy-paste moment, but to think up your own creative solutions to problems and try to borrow the mindset of everything can be fixed with duct tape, for example.

In another words, the more I demonstrate the logic, the mindset, then you'll start to believe me.

This person was creative. Still doesn't make it true. This person did avante garde paintings challenging colonialism and a dying planet using mixed mediums and trash, might tip those scales.

Frankly, I don't care if you tell me, or if you show me, just demonstrate it on the page it's true instead of repeating it over and over at me.

Go MacGyver with your engineer. Know your art movements for your artist. Know your pirouettes for your ballerinas. Pick up at least a fraction of the mindsets, so when Iunno, a computer engineer looks at someone saying the UX person told them that the program functions, but it doesn't actually work, it makes sense. (I saw a Japanese drama do this brilliantly, BTW, and I was delighted. On the flip side, I've seen people try to pass HTML and Javascript as "programming" especially badly formatted Javascript. I'm looking at you Square Space. WTF was with that badly formatted Javascript and calling that "programming". I may lack game, but seriously, that's not a good advertisement. Look, our program spits out terrible javascript and we don't know what programming and scripting is...) This is why the best writers are nerds. Wok Hei for your Chinese chef. I spent 3 hours looking up old waterwheels to get the engineering.

Again, don't use AI to get there, do the work and find an edge to play with. A gap. Because AI can't find gaps. A lot of professions have mindsets or varying mindsets. And if you capture that, you'll get ahead. Did I watch Cells at Work because doctors highly recommended the anime, yes I did. But I also picked up how doctors think.

BTW, dropping into process story structure for a little bit to demonstrate the impact or the brilliance of a chef, a painter, an engineer, etc usually tips people over the edge. It doesn't have to consume that long in the book either.

[illmoraineakoi]

Theory: Victim was never actually deleted or killed.

The Flash project being closed without saving didn't do anything to him because his file had already been saved automatically the moment he was created.

Why do I think this?

Because that's what happened with Chosen.

We never see Alan save the Flash document he made The Chosen One in. Nor Dark's, nor Orange's. But that doesn't matter, because is seems Flash automatically saves a stick figure's .EXE into it's own directories, under a "Players" folder, which itself contains a folder specifically for stick figures.

This likely happens the moment the stick figure is named and turned into a symbol, as a part of the process of turning that stick figure into a symbol, or "Player".

Which is a process Victim did go through.

The original document he was created on didn't matter.

He already existed. He was already an external .EXE process functioning outside of that specific document. The only thing closing Flash might have done is shut his process down, but his file was still there, just like any other normal execrable file.

And I'm not even certain that would've happened, because it doesn't seem to matter if Flash/Animate is open for the sticks to exist and function on their own. This leads me to think that each stick figure is it's own executable/application process, which runs separate from any other program or application, even if they were originally created on or apart of one.

And AVA4 heavily implies this too:

The each have their own processes the computer is handling individually. Orange's is completely separate from Flash's. Red, Green, Blue, and Yellow's processes are separate from Chrome. And so are the Facebook stickers, strangely enough.

[Also something I never noticed: Avast is running during AvA4. But it hasn't detected the stick figures or taken any action to defend the computer against them. This might possibly because Alan hasn't specifically run a scan; Chosen hadn't been automatically detected until he made Avast run a scan. Avast is one of the strangest parts of AvA canon I s2g.]

We never actually see Victim die or disappear or even the Flash program closing, in AvA 1. It ends immediately after "No" is clicked, which leaves the viewer with the implication and the assumption that closing the program has ended Victim's life. And for a majority of AvA's history, that implication was likely true, and what Alan originally intended, back when he made it.

But that implication is now wrong, leaving how Victim survived a mystery that will (hopefully) be answered Saturday.

But the fact that it does end so suddenly without showing anything has left the door open for so many possibilities, and I don't think it's out of the question that things continued even after Flash was closed, things AvA 1 never showed. I think it's possible that Flash closed, but Victim remained on the desktop, and continued the fight until he was gotten rid of or even escaped in a totally different way.

Alan closing Victim's project without saving did nothing to him.

(The same cannot be said for Victim's clones, which likely did rely on Flash to continue to exist. They were copies of his own symbol Victim had pulled into the project from the Library, so Flash had likely been treating them as aspects of that project, as much as everything else Alan had drawn. While it could technically be possible for Victim's clones to have had their own files that were made when Victim pulled them down, much like Purple's clones were files in AvLoL, I doubt it. I feel like it's much more likely they were handled by Flash itself.)