#Demonstrate examples

[tumblingxelian]

RWBY & Red Herrings

That would be a good title for a video, someone should make that,

[violent138]

Superbat parenting babies would be a breeze in my humble opinion. Bruce's medically well-versed enough and immune to even enhanced interrogation levels of sleeplessness, and loves kids and would probably be happy reading them stories to sleep every night.

And Clark could always tell if the kid swallowed fridge magnets/batteries/something else. Also, tell me which baby wouldn't enjoy Clark's presence and calmness. They'd be like little hamsters cajoled by the steadiness of his hold.

[huggywuggysuppy]

Gem and Pearl chatted lightly about the WL finale on Pearl's Dec 4th stream (here) and now we know what they meant.

Among references to Pearl's wet catness, at 1:55:30:

Gem: We're both a little bit pathetic in wild life, it's fine.

Pearl: I don't know if you can call yourself pathetic, Gem. I really don't-

Gem: I think-I think I was pathetic yesterday [in the finale.]

Pearl: You reckon?

Gem: I mean I've got like the biggest target on my back ever so it's like doomed, but I think it was a little bit pathetic

Pearl: mmmmm I don't want to spoil anything otherwise I would have a full blown conversation about why you think that. But also I can't. [because spoilers]

So why'd they say all that? Spoiler analysis ahead!

Gem lost her final life to the wildcard all alone at her base, which isn't the most interesting death. Many of the CC's have mentioned that a boring final death sucks -- even in the same stream Pearl mentions she hesitates to fight reds cause she doesn't want to inflict a bad finale on them. Also, in the ep Gem muses that she regrets holding herself back so much from murder -- the "sweat" accusations are really getting to all the CC's I fear. Gem isn't pathetic, and had a lot of entertaining moments in her ep, but the death was unsatisfying.

Pearl hesitated to even post her finale in part because she thought it was boring / unfulfilling. The wet cat bit is funny (and she's sort of owning it?) but even its origin is messy. Due to Aussie ping (as she demonstrated earlier in the stream), it was straight up improbable to get a mace kill, no matter how much she tried. She was fighting lag the rest of the episode too due to the wildcard overload. That was on top of episodes worth of failed traps, storylines, and murder attempts, that were largely foiled by not having enough time to do them properly. Placed final 5 as always, but she suffered the whole way there and mostly just survived without getting any kills herself.

Most importantly: neither of them got to enjoy/execute their divorce arc plans. It's an ongoing problem with WL but especially noticeable in the finale. Neither of them wanted to rush things, but the series forced their hands! Joel kept interrupting with (valid) murder attempts, and Pearl actively tried saving Gem when she was getting attacked by the rest of the server. Everyone loves and longs for another Murder Camel team up, CC's included, but it just wasn't viable. They agreed to hold off on their foreshadowed 1v1 until Gem was red, where she then died right before the wildcards deactivated (when there was room for lore/rp.) Overall, they were punished for pacing things out.

And why wouldn't they feel bad after that? Gem died unceremoniously, Pearl slogged through the ep with very little payoff, and neither got to fulfill their season long arcs. And that's what everyone's here for at the end of the day: telling a good story! Life series is special for its specific brand of focusing on RP, which is why the "a gimmick an episode" format hurt so bad. The CC's aren't pathetic, the wildcards are the problem.

(I hope the CC's feel better after the positive reception they HAVE gotten from the ep, as we still enjoyed the season and storyline they did squeeze in. Joel's ep in particular was still fire inc the final fight, although I dream of the au where Gem makes it to the end with him.)

(Pearl's stream line about "wanting a full convo" says good things about the CC's examining what went wrong and why so many people walked away unsatisfied. It's also sweet that the girlies don't want each other to think they're "pathetic /srs" instead of "pathetic /wet cat." I trust Grian + co. will figure things out for (hopefully) next time.)

[ranticore]

no joke just wrote 5 massive paragraphs about how i dislike how most fantasy fiction handles religion and then went who give a fuck and deleted it. good god when the ritalin hits

[thatswhatsushesaid]

ftr my thoughts on jin guangyao portraying himself as being small and weak and harmless and vulnerable are essentially that it isn't an act, because an act in this context implies a duplicity and/or disingenuousness that i don't think is present. but i do think it is a performance--it's just a performance that he has to play given the power disparity between himself and the rest of the cultivation world, at least until he becomes chief cultivator. in short, jin guangyao is performing the role of the non-threatening, subservient retainer that is expected of him to ensure his own survival in a world where he knows that the only person he can rely on to put his needs first is himself.

---

this post has been added to my dreamwidth meta archive here: https://thatswhatsushewrote.dreamwidth.org/10385.html

[dennisboobs]

i'm seeing videos on tiktok about the crossover (which yeah my first mistake is being on tiktok) but it's making me feel crazy when people keep saying "dennis should not be allowed in a school" specifically implying that he's a threat to children any more than the rest of the gang who have a worse track record

Bad Dad but a dad nonetheless

[tanadrin]

So when I see things like that EA guy's substack article about how AI energy use is fine and nobody should worry about it, and then I see another article about how coal use is ramping back up to meet AI demands for energy, and both are providing their statistics in the form of hard-to-parse visualizations ... this isn't really a question so much as complaint that someone has to be lying here, and I wish I knew who. It seems like it has to be the AI people, as they have the incentive, but ...

So I have a few of reactions to this.

It would be easier to debate the relative merits of two articles if you had linked me the other one, or at least given me some indication about what its title was, who it was by, and where to find it. Since you didn't, all we have is the bare claim that "coal use is ramping back up to meet AI demands for energy." Coal use for the United States as a whole has been steadily falling from 2007-2023 (the most recent year for which I can find data), and aside from small increases in 2010, 2013, and 2021 relative to the previous year, this decline has been almost completely monotonic.

Perhaps you mean this Register article, about how the lifetime of some coal powers plants is being extended because of data center power requirements? But that's not the claim you made. These are very different claims. "Coal use is declining more slowly" vs "coal use is increasing" no doubt sounds to some people like a small quibble, but I think it's really important, because this kind of sloppy equivocation between two substantively very distinct claims entails very distinct substantive consequences! The amount of power data centers have to consume to cause a coal power plant in one city to remain open longer than originally planned while other capacity is built vs the amount of power data centers have to consume to cause consumption of a resource whose usage has been falling steadily for sixteen years to reverse the trend of decline is a considerable difference. In short, if you saw the Register headline, and turned it into the claim presented in your anon ask, you are a liar misrepresenting the state of the world maliciously. If you simply heard the claim you present in your ask as-is, and repeated it, you were lied to.

If your response to the distinction between these two claims is "ah, what's the difference," and you continue to repeat the claim as you presented it in the anon ask, you are also a liar, and we can conclude that the reason you are confused about which claim is true is that you do not care to differentiate between true and false things. Someone like that would stumble through the world in a fog of confusion, not because the truth is hard (it sometimes is), but because they are uninterested in it.

The article I linked I found interesting because it provided very specific numbers, of the form you could check yourself if you doubted them. Again, you don't tell me which article you read that you felt provided a countervailing claim, is pretty light on numbers and pretty speculative on how future energy trends due to use of AI might look. Notably, a lot of claims about the future power needs of AI seem to be coming from companies promoting AI, and who therefore are publicly bullish about its widespread adoption, since they want to justify their investments in the technology to investors.

Andy Masley does not in any sense seem to be "an AI person"? He doesn't work for Google or Meta or OpenAI, or seem to have special background in this technology. My read of your ask seems to be that you think he has incentive to lie about the power consumption of AI technology, even though (again) he seems to provide a lot of numbers you could check yourself if you were so inclined.

You seem also to think that people who are opposed to the development of AI technology have no reason to misrepresent how costly the energy consumption of AI is. That is silly. People taken in by false claims have a strong incentive not to admit they were taken in by false claims! This might not be lying in the classical sense of "knowingly repeating something that is untrue," but I would not say that people who reflexively cleave to false claims because it would be embarrassing to admit they were wrong are being honest. Indeed, I think a huge amount of the misinformation that gets spread online and in-person is spread by people who are at best apathetic to the truth of the claims they are making, and who are more interested in winning individual arguments on a rhetorical basis.

If someone genuinely labors under confusion as to which of two sets of competing claims is correct, you can of course do the admittedly effortful task of trying to learn more, to see if you can achieve a little clarity on the subject. You don't have to look at two different articles, see that they seem to point in two different directions when it comes to a general conclusion about an issue ("Is AI very bad for the environment?") and throw your hands up helplessly and go "there is no way to know the truth here." I believe in you, anon.

That said, I don't think either the Register article nor the Masley article do point in two different directions. "People wildly exaggerate the energy and water consumption of AI" and "building or expanding a data center changes the local energy economy of a city, especially a smallish one like Omaha" are not even contradictory claims.

Unless, of course, you are not interested in building an accurate model of the world through acquiring information about it, but only in slotting each article you click on or social media post you read into one side or another in a rhetorical struggle, because you view everything through the lens of whether it will help you dunk on someone in an argument later. But those people are really annoying, so please don't be one of them.

[hood-ex]

My brain is flashing panels of Dick and Vic over and over at me because it wants me to compare them to Leo and Raph. And like, yup, that's Leo vs. Raph behavior alright.

The New Teen Titans (Vol. 1) #25

[melocherie]

I will never get over how Noor BUTCHERED princess mononoke ( sorry I just wanna rant about it )

Her downgrading not only ashitaka but also kaya in sen's arc is genuinely so baffling. I remember when Noor said she finds ashitaka a boring character/ protagonist and to me that's crazy because his personality is almost like mc in the sense that they both have a strong sense of justice , willing to hear both sides while also standing that they do not want violence. The only difference is that ashitaka doesn't express himself as much , he has a flat tone , he's very blunt and he's a calm person. These aren't boring qualities in my opinion at least

And kaya OML

Sorry I just wanna say

NOOR BUTCHERED SO BAD THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN KAYA AND ASHITAKA. These two have respect and care for each other, it's hinted that their engagement was arranged. He takes care and protects her and she does the same with him, even if ashitaka never loved her romantically. Kaya could have had romantic feelings for ashitaka but that's up for interpretation, when she gave ashitaka that necklace you see the worry look on her face.

Because of course her ( now ex ) fiancee is now leaving the town forever with a curse no one knows how to cure.

She could've given this necklace to ease his mind when he gets homesick or a last gift of love to him

( this is what Noor said btw below )

It doesn't make sense at all that kaya could be pregnant with ashitaka's ( especially with how conservative Japan is )

Also like dude really a girl being pregnant in the movie is now the same with a guy wanting to force a girl to be pregnant????

OMG WHAT?? Also I've seen that Noor finds it weird that ashitaka gave the necklace kaya gave to him to San

So why didn't she just write Kano as a worried and sad ex fiancee that went to MC because he was worried , show him upset that sen has the gift that he sent to MC

Also how did Kano even leave the village?? Doesn't that have any consequences? Wouldn't the people there be worried

I don't know man I have so many thoughts but I just wanna share them with you

unfortunately,  i  still  haven’t  seen  princess  mononoke  since  i’d  like  to  watch  the  movie  before  reading  sen’s  arc  so  the  details  are  still  fresh  in  my  mind.  as  a  result,  while  i  agree  with  you  based  on  what  little  i’ve  seen  the  arc,  i’m  afraid  i  can’t  add  much  to  the  discussion.  nonetheless,  i  am  aware  of  hayao  miyazaki  as  a  writer,  and  your  thoughts  regarding  the  butchering  of  his  characters  brought  to  mind  this  quote  from  him:

“I've  become  skeptical  of  the  unwritten  rule  that  just  because  a  boy  and  girl  appear  in  the  same  feature,  a  romance  must  ensue.  Rather,  I  want  to  portray  a  slightly  different  relationship,  one  where  the  two  mutually  inspire  each  other  to  live—  if  l'm  able  to,  then  perhaps  I'll  be  closer  to  portraying  a  true  expression  of  love.”

it  seems  strange  to  me  that  miyazaki,  known  for  portraying  complex,  platonic  relationships  and  for  his  strong  female  characters,  would  fate  a  teenage  girl  to  raise  a  child  after  her  fiancé  is  exiled  without  offering  any  attention  to  the  anguish  she  would  experience.  i  understand  that  princess  mononoke  is  far  more  mature  compared  to  ponyo  or  kiki’s  delivery  service,  but�� i  don't  think  it  makes  sense  for  such  an  blatantly  mature  plotline  to  be  sidelined  off  screen.  i  can  comprehend  an  arranged  marriage  between  the  teens,  but  a  ghibli  film  that  implied  underage  sex?  are  you  sure?

and  it's  these  kinds  of  uncertainties  that  make  me  cringe  at  noor’s  decision  to  use  this  blatant  lie  to  turn  this  innocent  little  girl  into  a  rapist.  while  "wouldn't  it  be  wild  if  this  happened?"  is  a  legitimate  approach  to  storytelling,  it  shouldn't  be  the  only  method  of  handling  a  significant  character  in  a  story's  arc.

i  feel  terrible  for  comparing  a  quotev  story  to  tatsuki  fujimoto,  but  i  think  fire  punch  is  an  excellent  example  of  what  i  mean. 

the  world  of  fire  punch  is  considerably  bleaker  and  darker  than  everything  in  iaptbap,  with  every  trigger  warning  under  the  sun,  from  dismemberment  to  incest  to  sexual  assault,  and  as  a  result,  i  found  it  an  unpleasant  read,  yet  despite  the  copious edge  there’s  an  elegance  to  fujimoto's  writing.  the  post-apocalyptic  world  of  fire  punch  isn't  just  "wouldn't  it  be  wild  if  people  had  to  resort  to  cannibalism  to  survive";  it's  a  statement  on  how  ignorant  people  will  become  if  denied  the  tools  to  live  and  an  education,  and  how  ignorance  can  be  shaped  into  cruelty.

one  of  its  characters  is  togata,  who’s  essentially  immortal  and  whose  sole  passion  is  cinema.  they,  like  most  characters,  aren’t  a  moral  person.  in  their  second  chapter,  they  wait  idly  by  while  men  attempt  to  assault  a  child  because  they  believe  the  act  will  make  the  men  more  hateable  as  characters,  thus  improving  the  film  their  directing. 

likewise,  "wouldn't  it  be  wild  for  quirky  togata  to  do  that"  isn't  the  pinnacle  of  their  character.  another  theme  in  fire  punch  is  how  individuals  and  mankind  as  a  whole  will  find the  means  to  live.  togata,  who  is  three  hundred  years  old  and  has  seen  old  humanity  die  before  their  eyes,  is  so  disillusioned  with  life  that  they  can  only  engage  with  the  world  through  the  escapism  of  movies,  a  relic  of  old  humanity  in  this  post-apocalyptic  world.  despite  their  shocking  actions,  the  characters  of  fire  punch  don’t  feel  like  puppets  on  a  string,  dancing  to  the  writer's  whims  but  real,  multifaceted  people.  they  are  the  narrative,  it’s  themes  and  questions,  not  merely  vehicles  to  ride  to  the  next  insane  thing  that  happens. 

and  i  can  never  count  on  noor  to  have  a  fraction  of  this care.  why  waste  time  exploring  kaya's  personality,  thoughts,  dreams,  and  feelings  when  the  event  of  assaulting  the  protagonist  is  far  more  interesting.  it  would  be  incredibly  messed  up  and  crazy  if  she  did  this,  so  why  bother utilizing  her  to  delve  deeper  into  the  themes  already  explored  in  the  film?  why  even  care  about  the  themes  in  princess  mononoke  any  way  when  we  can  spend  the  chapters  smooching  our  6’8  feral  wolf  boy  hottie! (  ♥  )  /sarc

[daughterofheartshaven]

Re the whole thing with Ace McShane and deadnames...

Her keeping her deadname around and still using it sometimes in a professional sense makes perfect sense to me as someone who also uses a nontraditional name irl. Sometimes it is just easier to pull the deadname out if I don't want to deal with "will the high and mighty so and sos accept this as a real name".

It's not that I think my name is any less legitimate, it's just that there are situations where I think explaining that is more effort than it's worth. And I feel like that is a judgement call Ace would also be having to make constantly.

It's notable that onscreen, the person to use Ace's deadname (Sarah Jane) has never actually met Ace and barely heard of her. Meanwhile, her actual friends (say, Tegan and Kate) never call her anything but Ace.

[melonisopod]

Hon we need to get you some Adderall.

[verstappenalty]

the funniest thing is he could have used almost any other driver-race engineer duo as an example and it would have worked better.

[wildsaltair]

not just a snack but the entire five-course meal plus coffee and dessert. I'll have mine in my room

[moonilit]

I reeeeeeally need to know so please reblog to help me know

Please specify any details whether in comments, tags or if you are shy my inbox is open. im trying to learn something and thank you!

[in-tua-deep]

Met a truly charming little cat named “Sinister” on my walk today who tried to follow me and twine herself around the cat stroller as child watched in suspicion

Hard to get a pic of bc she was constantly trying to follow my hand and headbutt me for pets

[protoindoeuropean]

i was confused reading this, because i did not parse at all that there's three people being talked about here. when it went from "the feminist" to "your fiancee" i was like ?? this is one person? because using the supposed "oxford comma" makes this necessarily read as an apposition ("along with [your fiancee, (who is) a militant feminist], and [your ex].") on the other hand without the appositional comma, this is perfectly understandable ("along with [your fiancee], [a militant feminist] and [your ex].")