#Mean stack programmer

[softwarefrim]

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[adviceformefromme]

LOCK-IN SZN [YOUR 8-WEEK ACCELERATOR] Week 5

NEW MONTH ENERGY - MOVEMENT MARCH

This is literally the month of all months for transformation. This is where you take your embodiment to ANOTHER level. This month you are showing up. No more writing goals, no more wishing and waiting. This month is for MOVEMENT. You move. You take action. You make better choices. That is all you do this month. Move towards the version of you that has the things you desire. Move towards a life you dream of. Move with grace, with flow, just keep moving. 

Here’s what I’m doing to accelerate my transformation this month. 

Dr Joe Dispenza Meditations daily - 1hr (these guided mediations are backed by science and are PROVEN to create transformation on a cellular level. But it requires a daily practice).

Daily journalling - the morning pages which is 3 pages of free writing to empty mind and access deeper wisdom within. Also this is a proven method in The Artists Way a book written by Julia Cameron that unblocks creativity. 

Finding my community. I have joined a conscious business accelerator programme which is 2-3 sessions per week for the month of March. This is going to support mindset shifts for my transition from employment to self employed as I leave my career in tech this month and surround me with the energy for high level income and business success. 

Investing in my image. As a visual person seeing myself as a representation of my next level is HUGE. This means dressing and looking like the thriving, abundant, radiant version of myself that has the dreams I desire. Investing in skincare treatments, ensuring my wardrobe reflects the woman I envision myself as. This means dropping cash. Removing items from my wardrobe that no longer align. Booking appointments. 

Doing the most important tasks before 12pm. This is KEY. Feeling accomplished feels GOOD. Doing those difficult tasks before midday means I don’t feel guilty, or skip putting myself and my goals first. The world no longer comes before me. I am the most important person in my life, and it’s time my actions show this. 

Letting go of the past once and for all, limiting my references to my past trauma in conversations. Redirecting my speech and thoughts towards what I want, not what I don’t want or what has hurt or harmed me. The more I do this, the more I shift my energy towards the life I desire. 

Daily connections with God, through gratitude, daily prayer, reading the word and listening to sermons. This is key for my character development and grounding with the one who loves me the most. Receiving and accessing this love daily allows me to flourish and is a priority in my transformation journey. 

Habit stacking. Reading during my sauna session. Doing my workout during my daily dog walk. Listening to a podcast as I walk to across the city. Preparing lunch as I prepare breakfast.  

There’s a lot going on this month, but the most important thing is choosing yourself daily. Choose you EVERY single day. That is the practise, you choose you, and do it again and again and again. The more you make you a priority, the more you respect yourself, the more you invest in yourself, the more life will start to mirror that, the more shifts you will see in how people treat you, how your income becomes a reflection of your self investment. 

So this is your opportunity for DRASTIC change. More so than January. March is for MOVEMENT with nature, shedding the old, making way for the new. It’s truly the most magical time of the year. So come out of your hiding place, your hibernation, your excuses, and MOVE into a new you. Shed your old skin, it’s not serving you, it never was. A new beginning awaits. 

[techav]

On Celebrating Errors

Isn't it beautiful? The lovely formatted tables of register and stack contents, the trace of function addresses and parameters, the error message ... it's the most beautiful kernel panic I have ever seen.

Why on earth would I be so excited to see a computer crash? What could possibly be beautiful about a kernel panic?

This kernel panic is well-earned. I fought hard to get it.

This kernel panic came from a current NetBSD kernel, freshly compiled and running on Wrap030, my 68030 homebrew computer. It is the result of hours upon hours of work reading through existing code, scattered documentation and notes, writing and rewriting, and endless compiling.

And it's just the start.

As I've said before, a goal of this project has always been to build something capable of running some kind of Unix-like operating system. Now that I finally have all the necessary pieces of hardware, plus a good bootloader in ROM, it's time to give it a shot. I'm not that great with this type of programming, but I have been getting better. I might just be able to brute force my way through hacking together something functional.

It is hard.

There is some documentation available. The man(9) pages are useful, and NetBSD has a great guide to setting up the build environment for cross-compiling the kernel. There are some published papers on what some people went through to port NetBSD to this system or that. But there's nothing that really explains what all these source code files are, and which parts really need to be modified to run on a different system.

I had a few false starts, but ultimately found an existing 68k architecture, cesfic, which was a bare minimum configuration that could serve well as a foundation for my purposes. I copied the cesfic source directory, changed all instances of the name to wrap030, made sure it still compiled, then set about removing everything that I didn't need. It still compiled, so now it's was time to add in what I did need.

... how ... do I ... ?

This is where things get overwhelming very quickly. There is documentation on the core functions required for a new driver, there's documentation on the autoconf system that attaches drivers to devices in the tree, and there's plenty of drivers already to reference. But where to start?

I started by trying to add the com driver for the 16550 UARTs I'm using. It doesn't compile because I'm missing dependencies. The missing functions are missing because of a breaking change to bus.h at some point; the com driver expects the new format but the cesfic port still uses the old. So I needed to pull in the missing functions from another m68k arch. Which then required more missing functions and headers to be pulled in. Eventually it compiled without error again, but that doesn't mean it will actually run. I still needed to add support for my new programmable timer, customize the startup process, update hardware addresses, make sure it was targeting 68030 instead of 68040 ...

So many parts and pieces that need to be updated. Each one requiring searching for the original function or variable declaration to confirm expected types or implementation, then searching for existing usages to figure out what it needs ... which then requires searching for more functions and variable types.

But I got something that at least appeared to have all the right parts and compiled without error. It was time to throw it on a disk, load it up, and see what happened.

Nothing happened, of course. It crashed immediately.

I have no debugging workflow I can rely on here, and at this stage there isn't even a kernel console yet. All I could do was add little print macros to the locore startup code and see where it failed. Guess, test, and revise.

I spent a week debugging the MMU initialization. If the MMU isn't properly configured, everything comes to an abrupt halt. Ultimately, I replaced the cesfic machine-specific initialization code and pmap bootstrapping code with functions from yet another m68k arch. And spent another day debugging before realizing I had missed a section that had comments suggesting it wasn't for the 68030 CPU, but turned out to be critical for operation of kernel memory allocation.

Until this point, I was able to rely on the low-level exception handling built into my bootloader if my code caused a CPU exception. But with the MMU working, that code was no longer mapped.

So then came another few hours learning how to create a minimal early console driver. An early console is used by the kernel prior to the real console getting initialized. In this case, I'm using the MC6850 on my mainboard for the early console, since that's what my bootloader uses. And finally the kernel was able to speak for itself.

It printed its own panic.

The first thing the kernel does is initialize the console. Which requires that com driver and all the machine-specific code I had to write. The kernel is failing at its step #1.

But at least it can tell me that now. And given all the work necessary to get to this point, that kernel panic data printing to the terminal is absolutely beautiful.

[capseycartwright]

i know it’s not an island for one

Mel wouldn’t say she was keeping an eye on Langdon, exactly. That was the sort of thing that could be easily misinterpreted by the gaggle of gossips she worked with in the pit, and she wouldn’t want that.

No, she was monitoring him – in a very scientific sort of way, thank you very much, because she was a scientist at heart, and she had very scientific, medically driven reasons for glancing across the ED every now and then, seeking Langdon out amongst the chaos of their day-to-day.

ao3 link

Mel wouldn’t say she was keeping an eye on Langdon, exactly. That was the sort of thing that could be easily misinterpreted by the gaggle of gossips she worked with in the pit , and she wouldn’t want that. No, she was monitoring him – in a very scientific sort of way, thank you very much, because she was a scientist at heart, and she had very scientific, medically driven reasons for glancing across the ED every now and then, seeking Langdon out amongst the chaos of their day-to-day.

His first day back had been crazy. Mel wasn’t entirely sure why HR, and Dr. Robby, had signed off on Langdon making his grand return to the emergency department at PTMC on the Fourth of July, one of the worst days of the year to be an emergency medicine practitioner, but they did, and so Langdon had returned post-rehab to fireworks, third-degree burns and a very memorable placement of a pair of barbecue tongs she’d rather not relive the removal of.

Mel remembered the moment he walked back into the ED. She’d seen him plenty, over the months he’d been off, and in rehab, visiting with a stack of books and journals, wanting to do her bit in helping his recovery. They’d connected, that first day in the pit, and so Mel had wanted to keep that connection going, selfishly.

He didn’t look all that different – and maybe that was because she’d seen him twice a month while he was in an in-patient facility, and even more regularly after that, because she’d overheard Princess and Perlah discussing the fact he’d put weight on (Mel had barely restrained herself from reminding her colleagues that weight gain was a normal side effect of getting sober, because she hadn’t been sure that Frank would appreciate her intervention on that on) – but he’d still looked like Frank : bright blue eyes (though a little less bright, if you asked her less-than expert opinion), the floppy boyband hair Dana still teased him for, a pale white line on his finger where his wedding ring used to be, a new bracelet from Millie on his left wrist, and that same aura of confidence she’d come to expect after that one singular day she’d worked with him in the pit.

Now, Mel did not proclaim to be an expert on Frank Langdon – but she wasn’t convinced his confidence was all that sincere. The others didn’t seem to share her concerns, which only made Mel more concerned. She was an incredibly empathetic person, you see, and while it had its downsides, it did mean she was good at being in tune with people’s emotions, and she thought it was quite easy to notice that Frank was not doing as well as he pretended he was.

She didn’t mention it to anyone. Mel knew for sure that was something Frank wouldn’t appreciate her intervention on – but it didn’t stop her from monitoring, taking note of the days where he looked a little more tired, dark circles under his eyes deep set. On days like that, Mel tended to be the one to press a coffee into Frank’s waiting hands, be the one to encourage him to take a break – he was still her senior, only six months behind on his programme, but that didn’t mean it was inappropriate for her to want to look out for him.

They were friends, now.

Frank had reassured her of that one day at the dog park, Becca having taken charge of Nugget (full name Chicken Nugget, named by Tanner and Millie and indulged by Frank) and his afternoon walk, stomping around the park with a purpose as Mel and Frank had sat, and drank their respective teas. Caffeine free, because Frank wasn’t trying to replace one addiction with another, limiting his coffee intake, happy to be guided by Mel’s long list of herbal recommendations.

She liked feeling like she was helping.

Addiction was a lonely illness. That was a fact – one she’d learned in medical school, but one she’d learned over and over in the years since she’d started her in-hospital education, and one she’d certainly learned with Frank. Addicts tend to isolate themselves to hide their addiction, and so when they are trying to get sober, they tend to end up feeling very alone, because they’ve pushed a lot of their closest friends and family away.

Mel didn’t like the thought of Frank being lonely, and maybe she tried to be a little too present in his life to compensate for that, but she didn’t regret it. Frank needed a friend – more than one, really, but Mel could be a starting point, she figured.

Frank wasn’t the most open, about his recovery – he’d cracked a few jokes, made a few surface-level admissions to Mel, but she didn’t know how he was actually doing, not really. He hadn’t even talked about the divorce, offered no explanation for what was happening when he came to work without a wedding ring for the first time.

Mel wasn’t even sure if he was getting divorced, or if it was a separation – though one largely led to the other, she supposed.

She’d never call a day in the pit quiet, or calm, but Mel could admit they were in a bit of a lull moment, no major medical incidents incoming, most of the team occupied with their patients. Maybe that was what made it all the more obvious that Frank wasn’t doing well – or maybe she was just clued into her friend’s emotions – but either way, Mel noticed.

He’d tugged the curtain closed on his patient with shaking hands, Frank’s gaze trained to the floor as he tried to slip out of the pit without anyone noticing.

(Mel noticed. Mel noticed a lot of things.)

Quietly, carefully, Mel checked that Dana’s attention was elsewhere before she followed Frank, grateful she’d worn her less squeaky trainers that day as she tailed him out to the ambulance bay. His arms were folded tightly around himself, as though he was trying to hold himself together through force alone.

It sort of made her heart ache.

“Dr. Langdon?” Mel called out, not wanting to scare the other man when he was clearly upset. He didn’t respond, which worried her more. “Frank?” she tried. She rarely called him Frank to his face – it was always Dr. Langdon, or Langdon, especially at work. She was a little more willing to call him Frank outside of the pit, their burgeoning friendship feeling less fragile outside of their shared workplace, away from prying eyes and gossiping mouths . Calling him Frank felt like something sacred, and special – and Mel wasn’t entirely willing to figure out why that was the case.

Frank turned, and Mel immediately wanted to fold the man into a hug – she didn’t, because she respected consent and boundaries, thank you very much, but she could be forgiven for wanting to offer him a hug when he was crying, tears streaming down his cheeks, soaking into the material of his scrubs.

She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him cry before.

“Are you okay?” Mel asked softly. “Did something happen?”

Frank shook his head. “’M fine,” he mumbled, voice thick with tears. “I just needed a minute. I’m all good.”

“Langdon,” Mel chided gently. “You know it’s okay if you’re not all good, right?”

Frank gave her a confused look, which Mel decided was an invitation to step a little closer, pressing a hesitant hand to his elbow.

It’s not like they were particularly touchy-feely friends.

“You’ve been through a lot,” Mel reminded. “You don’t have to be okay all the time, Frank.”

Tears started to bubble at the corner of Franks eyes, and for a second, Mel was afraid she’d said the wrong thing. “I did all of this to myself,” he shook his head again. “I don’t – I don’t get to be upset about it, Mel.”

“Oh, Frank.” Mel’s stupid, annoying, overly empathetic heart ached in her chest. “You have to know that’s not true. I know for a fact that can’t be what your therapist is telling you – and if he is, I think you might need to find a new one,” she tried to joke, feeling oddly successful as a tiny smile tugged at Frank’s downturned expression.

“I just…” Frank paused, for a second. “It was the family, I had just now. The dad with the suspected heart attack.”

Mel waited for him to continue. Interrupting was never helpful.

“He’d been here for less than a half an hour when his family started pouring in – his three kids, a wife who clearly loves him. He’s got this picture-perfect, storybook family, and I was – I was jealous, Mel. I had all of that, and I got hooked on fucking benzos and ruined it all,” Frank scrubbed a hand over his face. “Things have been over, between Abby and I for a long time, and rehab was just the final straw, but I still – my kids aren’t going to have that storybook family now, and it’s my fault.”

“It takes two people to decide to end a marriage,” Mel reminded. She’d never been married, but she was certain a divorce required agreement between both parties. “And look – um – speaking from experience,” she took a long, slow breath. “Two separate happy homes are better than one unhappy home.”

There was a questioning look on Frank’s face, and he clearly wanted to ask her more – and maybe one day, Mel would want to tell him the whole sorry saga, but today didn’t feel like the day, and the ambulance bay didn’t feel like the place.

“I’m scared,” Frank was an empathetic man too, Mel knew, and so he realised she didn’t want to talk about it. “I’m scared I won’t be able to give them a happy home with me, Mel. What kind of dad can I be as a recovering addict?”

“A good one.”

Frank fixed her with a look. “I’m serious, Mel.”

“So am I,” Mel countered, shrugging slightly. “Your addiction isn’t some sort of moral failing – addiction is an illness, and one you’re getting help for. Being an addict isn’t your – well, it’s not your defining trait, is it? You are so much more than an addiction to benzodiazepines, Frank.”

Frank’s eyes were still watery, as he smiled, his blue eyes regaining a little of their former brightness. “I like it when you call me Frank.”

Mel felt her cheeks turn obnoxiously pink. She’d find time to be embarrassed about that later. “My point is,” she stressed, giving Frank’s elbow a more confident squeeze. Maybe they could be touchy feely friends. “You’re a good dad, from what I’ve seen. You’re doing all the right things – going to NA meetings, therapy.”

“Then why do I still feel so bad?” Frank sighed, pressing his palms into his eyes.

“Because,” Mel tugged at his wrists, not wanting Frank to hurt himself, even accidentally. She held his wrists tightly, fixing him with a serious look. “Life is kind of shit sometimes.”

Frank’s snort of laughter surprised them both. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you swear, Mel King.”

Mel grinned. “I swear – I’m just a consummate professional, when I’m here.”

Frank’s smile seemed a bit more genuine. “Well then – thank you, for making an exception to your professionalism. I appreciate it,” he paused, for a second. “I’m sorry, for getting so upset over nothing.”

Mel frowned. “Your emotions aren’t nothing – they’re very valid.”

“You sound like my therapist.”

“Well, then maybe you should listen to him and stop discounting your own feelings ,” Mel prodded. “I meant it, Frank. It really is okay if you’re not all good. People want to see you succeed here. I want to see you succeed in here.”

“I can’t shake the fear that if I admit to everyone how much I’m struggling, I’ll just prove them all right – that I’m a good for nothing addict who doesn’t deserve to be here .”

Mel didn’t think anyone thought that, but maybe that was something to address another time. “I’m going to hug you, now,” she announced. Consent was important. She waited a second, to see if Frank would protest, but he didn’t. She wrapped her arms around him, breathing in the woody scent of the cologne he wore, the fresh scent of whatever shower gel he used lingering on his skin.

She felt him press his nose into the space between her chin, and shoulder, his hair tickling her skin. Mel found she didn’t mind, which was both unusual, and something to unpack later, when she was home, alone, breaking into the bottle of wine that had lived in the back of her fridge for weeks now. “You’re not good for nothing,” she hummed, rubbing slow circles across his back, the same way her dad used to when she was little, and she was upset. “I think you’re good for a lot of things, Frank Langdon.”

“Not good enough to stay married to,” Frank mumbled into her shoulder, and Mel’s stomach did something funny at the thought of Frank, and marriage, and happily ever after.

“I think you’ll make a great husband again one day,” Mel decided. “Abby just wasn’t the right person, in the end. You’ll find the right person.”

Frank’s arms tightened around her waist. “I don’t want to go back in,” he admitted.

Mel hummed, barely restraining herself from pressing a kiss to Frank’s hair. Another thing to unpack later. “We can stay out here for five more minutes, then.”

[andmaybegayer]

I do wonder if a bit of why I am to a great extent like "LLM's are pretty cool actually" is because as a teen i was around a lot of linguistics-aligned programmers who were endlessly playing with chatbots and phrase generators with various markov chains and bayesian filters and grammar definitions. And they were bad! The most advanced comedy bots I've ever seen were thousands upon thousands of lisp S-expressions stacked together to just barely assemble shitposts and now you can talk to the damn things?

A family of core memories for me is playing with whatever the latest chatbot on the web was and they were all crap! Smartbot was useless! There was a Sony cross-promotional event with one of the James Bonds where you used an NLP bot to direct an agent through a simulated scenario and it would lose track of your meaning if you were even slightly indirect.

If you weren't following natural language processing in the 2010's you might assume that LLM's are a small improvement over a burgeoning field but in the timeline of computerized language they basically came out of nowhere and were immediately remarkably good. Hell! Look at Frank! I've made bots like early Frank by chaining together statistical language modelling and filters and they were simply not good!

[pigeonwhumps]

Morning

Everything taglist: @painful-pooch @i-eat-worlds @a-funeral-romance @rainydaywhump

A former living weapon in a rehabilitation programme has a bad morning.

620 words

CWs: living weapon, recovery whump, self-dehumanisation, past dehumanisation, fear of death, conditioned whumpee, lab-grown whumpee

When Caretaker enters the front room, wrapped in comfy flannel pyjamas and a dressing gown, she finds Whumpee sitting ramrod straight on the sofa, hands curled loosely in front of it, clad in only a thin, baggy t-shirt and shorts.

Ah. So it's one of those mornings.

"I'll be right back," she whispers to the stillness. Whumpee doesn't respond, doesn't even blink, but Caretaker knows it heard. It always does, with those near-supernatural GMO-ed senses of its, and that's... that's probably part of the problem.

She hurries upstairs and fetches a stack of warm clothes, placing them beside Whumpee with a whispered instruction to change into something more comfortable. Then she heads into the kitchen, heating milk on the hob, cinnamon, cardamom pods. Cocoa powder into well-loved mugs.

It's a hot chocolate morning. A morning for warm, delicious smells and tastes, that, crucially, Whumpee never had before it moved in.

She places both mugs on the coffee table and sits down opposite Whumpee, feet curled beneath her, giving it plenty of space. It's wearing a fleecy oversized hoodie over dungarees now, but it's still sitting in the same stiff position.

"What's up?"

"This weapon has been using luxuries it does not require, ma'am. It is malfunctioning. It needs readjusting."

"I've told you, this house is as much yours as it is mine. You don't have to need something to use it, although given that it's you I doubt you've done anything outrageous. What is it you want me to hurt you for?"

Because it's not 'readjustment', it's not 'correction', it's hurt, pure and simple, and Caretaker refuses to refer to it as anything but.

"This weapon used an extra blanket, ma'am."

Caretaker's heart breaks. She has to swallow hard a few times to be able to speak without just sobbing, but something tickles her cheeks anyway.

"There's nothing wrong with that, sweetheart."

"Weapons do not need anything, ma'am. This weapon was being weak. It needs realignment."

"Can I come and sit next to you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Caretaker smiles deliberately, moving to the end of Whumpee's sofa as it watches her warily. "Thank you. Now, you've done nothing wrong. I mean it. You're allowed blankets, why do you think there's a quilt on your bed? I'm not going to hurt you for using a blanket."

"This weapon was not cold, ma'am. It wanted to be more comfortable. It should not have thought like that, and it should not have acted on it, because weapons do not have wants and do not need to be comfortable. This weapon needs correction, ma'am, otherwise it will continue to malfunction and then it will be dissolved back into goo, so a better weapon can be made."

"I'm not going to kill you, or send you back, sweetheart. Never. I already promised you that. And you're not dangerous, that was the only requirement from the military facilitators for the end of the trial."

"That doesn't mean they'll let me stay!" Whumpee bursts out, before slamming its lips shut, rocking back against the sofa, flinching back, eyes wide, the most emotional Caretaker has ever heard during the day. "This weapon apologises. It malfunctioned, it did not mean to... it is not a person, it knows that."

"Shhh." Caretaker snakes an arm around Whumpee's trembling frame and runs a hand over its head. "It's okay. You're not doing anything wrong. I know it's stacked against us, Whumpee. I know they don't want a successful rehabilitation, although I'm not quite sure why. I won't let them take you back at the end of this, not to be used again or killed or anything else. You got that?"

Whumpee hugs its weighted moose close, doubt in its eyes.

"Yes, ma'am."

[outnumberedsins]

what is a side system vs sub system vs layer? ive heard multiple definitions of subsystem and im confused (I'm sorry if this sends multiple times my wifi is bad)

No problem! All of these terms are very similar and rely heavily on inner structure. I hope this helps:

'Subsystem' can mean multiple things. The first meaning refers to groups of alters that are somehow linked together and separate from other alters somehow. This could be a group of alters very similar to one another, ones with better communication between one another, or separate in other ways. Subsystems may reside in specific areas of the innerworld or have a separate inner world themselves.

The second definition refers to 'alter-in-alter' subsystems. Think of it like a russian nesting doll - an alter has their own alters. These subsystems may have their own innerworlds and struggle with communicating with those in the main system when fronting.

The third definition is an overarching term for any groupings of alters, including layers and sidesystems. Basically, it's a catch-all term. This definition is the most common within clinical literature, so when reading them, it might be confusing.

Here's an attempt at a visual representation:

The larger subsystem has good communication with the rest of the system and resides in its own area of the innerworld. These parts could have all split to deal with the same specific trauma and are considered a subsystem because they sort of stick together.

The smaller subsystem is a possible example of an alter-in-alter subsystem. The part that's inside the main system may be the "host alter" for that subsystem. Their innerworld is disconnected from the main one and may have communication difficulties.

'Sidesystem' can refer to a programming-specific phenomenon where programmers specifically create programmed parts somewhere completely separate from the main system. I'm using this definition because it's what I was referring to in my previous post, and I don't feel like debating if non-programmed systems can have structures that are similar. In literature, this is seen referred to as 'Left' and 'Right' sides of systems, but they don't necessarily have to be right next to each other. Despite the name, they don't have to be left/right, that's just how some people describe them.

Sidesystems typically have their own innerworld and are used by programmers to keep programmed parts hidden and separate from the main system or those that deal with day to day life. Sidesystems themselves can be layers. There may be one or two higher ups that can travel between sidesystems.

A notable difference between sidesystems and other groupings of alters is the amnesia level. Amnesia barriers between sidesystem alters and non sidesystem alters are huge. While there can be amnesia between other groups, the whole point of sidesystems is to create a completely separate "system," and thus, very heavy amnesia is present.

An attempt at a visual representation:

Sidesystems have no connection with the main system. This can be changed through integration of course, but as a base, they are completely seperate. Ideally, none but a couple alters will know about each other.

'Layers' refers to groups of alters that are separate from the main system, often "stacked" on top of one another. Despite the name, they don't have to be stacked. That's just how some people describe them. Layers are very common within polyfragmented systems, especially programmed systems. Layers often have their own themed innerworld, for example, a city or forest. Alters are typically separated by purpose or other split patterns and may have communication difficulties with other layers. In programming, layers are often seen within sidesystems or are sidesystems themselves. There may be some connection between layers.

An attempt at a visual representation:

In this, there are three layers stacked on each other. The main system has a connection to the layer below them and may be able to communicate more easily. The layer above, however, has no connection, and it may require a higher up part to communicate with them.

As you can see, all of these terms are very similar and can overlap with one another, and all can exist within the same system. At the end of the day, use what you are most comfortable with. Do you just want to call everything a subsystem? That's fine. If you like the specification? That's also fine.

For example, one person says "I kind of visualise it as descending 'containers' of alters. Like it goes, 'sidesystem -> has multiple layers -> has multiple subsystems.' but I know that that isn't everyone's experience."

Another says, "I can't be assed to specify what kind of group it is. I call everything a subsystem. It works for me."

All in all, I hope this helped. Let me know if you have any other questions, and I'll do my best to answer them.

[cosmerelists]

If Cosmere Characters Had Real-World Jobs (But Not The Obvious Ones)

In this list, I wanted to try to give Cosmere characters jobs in our world while avoiding the jobs that would be the most obvious picks--like, for example, the real world equivalent of whatever their canon job is.

1. Kaladin: Professional Football Player

It's a dangerous job that Kaladin's dad would scoff at, but the other kids in town think it's really cool and also the recruiters are coming through town and, I mean, he's really good at football.

2. Lirin: Public Defender

If we avoid the obvious job (doctor), then Lirin still needs a job where he is doing good, but it's pretty thankless and the general public are suspicious and think he might actually be evil somehow. So I figure: public defender. He's highly educated, helping people who need it, and just getting nothing but grief as a result. Worst of all, his smart son wants to be a FOOTBALL player!

3. Marsh: Masseuse

I feel like people who are good at hemalurgy know about the body and its pressure points and things like that. And frankly, "acupuncturist" felt too on the nose.

4. Shallan: Park Ranger

Shallan HATES to be confined, so no way she's going into an office job. Plus, she likes nature and animals, but I'm trying to avoid the more obvious jobs (like botanist or ecologist). It's just too bad that Shallan is SO bad at staring a campfire, though.

5. Navani: Wedding Planner

Navani is VERY good at managing people and events, as seen when she had to manage everything while Gavilar was off plotting. She's also very organized and literally invented wristwatches. So I think she's be very good at this job.

6. Elend: Grad Student

This one may be too obvious, but I figure something like "politician" or "philosopher" are more obvious. But to me, Elend has major grad student energy.

7. Nale: Insurance Adjuster

Nale is a cop, of course, through and through. But if he wasn't a cop, then he'd need some other job where he uses the rules to screw people over. So I see him as, like, an evil insurance guy who's denying people medical coverage because the company wants him to.

8. Blackthorn-Era Dalinar: Debt Collector

If flashback Dalinar couldn't make a living mowing people down in battle and had to find a less obvious job, then I could see him being the guy to hunt down people and demand money they don't have. He doesn't really care about the money. He just likes the hunt.

9. Adolin: eSports Player

It's a job where you can head-to-head battle people and your dad is vaguely puzzled and thinks you should be doing something more important with your life.

10. Lightsong: Customer Service Agent

In canon, Lightsong's job is to face down a huge line of people and tell them "no" in response to them asking for something they want. So, I mean, I feel like that's equivalent to one of those shitty customer service jobs where you're not really allowed to help people (until, of course, Lightsong goes rogue and does start helping people, but that's another story...)

11. Stormfather: Bus Driver

He has his route, and he's not deviating from it. And if you miss the bus, he's not stopping. He's not going back. You can try to run, but you will not catch up to him.

12. Tress: Mechanic

As a Sprouter, Tress had to figure out how each of the spores worked and how to use them. I just feel like she'd be good at diagnosing issues in machinery and then fixing them.

13. Steris: Programmer

She's precise, she's smart, she likes rules. I think coding would suit her.

14. Yumi: Waitress

She could stack the plates SO high.

15. Marasi: Investigative Reporter

Which, honestly, is what I wish she had been rather than being a cop like in canon. I think it would suit her! She'd get to research, investigate, find the truth...

16. Kelsier: Motivational Speaker

He tells you about the power of smiling no matter what, so that you are never defeated. He tells you to carry something small, some memento or photo, to help you find your motivation. You tells you that no goal is out of reach--you just have to find the right people and the right steps to move forward. And he tells you that the most important thing is to survive.

[cas-kingdom]

I’m in love with your criminal minds Drabbles!! If possible I’d love to see some bonding between hotch and Reid’s sister <333

You sleeping in arbitrary places wasn't exactly a rarity around the BAU. Not quite yet an official member of the team—though somehow Hotch had enrolled you in some sort of experience programme you were pretty sure he'd made up for your benefit—you had to make do with stiff seats and tucked away corners on the daily as you waited for Spencer to finish his work. Surprisingly, the long days and even longer nights hadn't seemed to sway your wish to join the team just yet, though no one had placed any bets that it would.

Even so, said arbitrary places weren't exactly made use of at nearing midnight on a Friday. Having returned from Gideon's case just that evening, Hotch had sent everyone home with their promises of sleep before hiding himself away in his office to complete some work before the weekend. By the time he'd finished, the bureau had settled into the usual ambience consisting of the few late night workers and janitors.

He headed into the break room with the intention of grabbing a water bottle from the fridge and heading straight home, but the sudden sight of you and yet another of your arbitrary sleeping spots told him that might not be achievable just yet.

You were curled up on the break room couch, a stack of pillows under your head and what looked to be your brother's tweed jacket doing its best to act as a blanket. Hotch stared for a moment, concern slowly pushing away his brief amusement at the situation, and rose a brow when one of your eyes opened to stare at him.

"Hotch," you greeted, not at all groggily, which told him you probably hadn't slept.

Hotch put his bag down and seated himself on the end of the couch. "Y/N, what’re you still doing here?" he asked gently. He put a comforting hand on your ankle under the jacket and you sat up, tucking your frizzy hair behind your ears.

You yawned and shrugged. "Sleeping. Or, lying down, rather."

“I mean in the building." He smiled at your belated look of realisation. "Is Spencer still here?"

The expression on your face grew from tired to exhausted at the mere mention of your brother. Hotch sat back and crossed his arms, an instinctive movement when he figured some profiling may have to come into play. Those lines settled against his brow as he waited for your response.

You picked at a loose thread in the couch. “Playing chess," you said, then looked knowingly up at him. "I know what you’re gonna say, Hotch, but it’s easier to just leave him and let him do his thing. Gideon’s death hit him hard.”

Hotch nodded slowly. “I know. But what about you?”

“I don’t remember Gideon much.”

A corner of his lips curved upwards. Trust you to worry the least about yourself.

"I don’t mean that," he said gently, wondering how his next words would be taken. "Spencer has a tendency to forget about the people around him when he gets himself into one of these states. Now—" He pointed a finger at you before you could rise to your brother's defense "—that's not his fault, and he'll come out of it soon enough. But in the meantime, I don’t want you sleeping here until morning, Y/N." His fatherly instincts long having kicked in, his eyebrows rose in solemnity. "You need some proper rest in your own bed. The couch isn't going to cut it.”

You breathed a dubious laugh, still pulling at the thread. “Spencer has no plans on coming home tonight. Rossi’s already tried.”

“Then let me drive you home?" Your fingers paused and your mouth twisted in thought. Your face was hidden by a curtain of hair, but Hotch dipped his head enough to see your expression. He smiled knowingly. You didn't want to be alone. "Or…I can set up the spare room at mine?”

You peered up at him and for the first time he noted your level of exhaustion. Not only had you been kept physically awake by Spencer's turmoil, but your anxiety about the situation had mentally drained you, too. With your mother states away in a facility and your father completely written out of the picture, Spencer was your person and had been since he'd taken custody of you at four years old. When he wasn't himself, neither were you, and Hotch had always known it.

You took a second to respond, looking past him and out the open door for a moment before returning your gaze to his. "You don't mind?"

Hotch smiled and squeezed your shoulder in reassurance. The end of your storm was near, he was sure.

"Of course not," he said. "You get yourself ready and I'll tell Spencer."

Criminal Minds Masterpost

[agam-shel-barvadim]

Fun Hebrew fact ג: "double-colon"

A little background in programming: plenty of programming languages make a use of the following operator:

::

Which is basically just the colon symbol twice in a row.

This operator has a name: The scope resolution operator (named after what it's meant to signify, I won't get into it)

But, this operator happened to have another, fairly-commonly-used name.

You see, there's a programming language called PHP which was mostly developed in Israel back in the day (by Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans from the Technion in Haifa. Side note: the language was created by the Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf).

And PHP was one of the first languages to use the scope resolution operator [source needed].

So these two Israelis, when they had to look for a name for that operator - they decided to call it פעמיים נקודותיים, Hebrew for "double-colon". and in English? paamayim nekudotayim. they didn't bother translating it.

And to this very day, there are PHP error message which include the term "paamayim nekudotayim", and to this very day there are people using that term, often without even knowing it's Hebrew.

So that is how Hebrew found its way into programming.

Sidenote: It's actually supposed to be pa'amayim nekudatayim (unless there's some type of Ashke pronounciation that i'm not aware of, which is fairly possible), and this is a common Israeli mistake (using the plural form instead of the singular before the ayim suffix, which means "two").

Bonus: people complaining about the term on Stack Overflow, a website where people ask for help with programming:

Another bonus: PHP's icon becauae I kinda like it:

[centrally-unplanned]

I don’t remember you doing Gorbachev’s VOR (apologies if you already did), so, if you are willing: Gorbachev, middling VORcel or negative VOR?

I didn't! He is hard because essentially you need like a third axis for people like Gorbachev - someone who was hugely impactful but in a 'fuck up' sort of way. It seems wrong to mark Gorbachev and like Rudy Guiliani during 9/11 as the same tier, right? The latter just did nothing and took media credit, the former made massive, bold plays that blew up in his face. So yeah, lets use negative VOR for that.

I tend to be on the team of "the USSR was not in crisis" in 1985; it had reached the limits of its model for growth, and was definitely going to go through a budget crunch and stuff, but that isn't terminal for a lot of societies. The reformist faction in the CPSU was not the majority, and even dissident groups at this time were overwhelmingly looking at marginal changes. Gorbachev himself was elected by his supporters as a younger, status-quo 'tinkerer' - he by no means outlined a revolutionary agenda to get in power.

Gorbachev's killer talent was playing the party system - he played the long game, essentially coming up the ranks as a quintessential moderate and then revealing himself as a radical to break the illusion of consensus in CPSU thinking. Its a rare talent and I think he deserves credit for that; iterated over dozens of major events, he broke precedent policy and reigned in the conservative faction to back his new way. He does a *lot* of political gamesmanship in this period which is generally underappreciated, which he does to stack the deck against halting reform. I think there are very high odds the USSR does not embark on Glasnot & Perestroika in 1987 without him, and the nature of those reforms is really critical.

They are critical because they are complete cock-ups, and went far into imploding the Soviet economy & system of governance. At this point he deserves less credit; the fall of Eastern Europe was probably not a coup of Gorbachev's political daring, but instead a system moving into freefall and trying to cut its losses; it is in fact amazing how little opposition it got inside the USSR (they also did not see it coming at the speed and scale it did). And by 1990 Gorbachev is out of ideas, desperately begging for aid abroad to 'transition' the economy while others like Yeltsin are building parallel state structures and people like Yavlinsky are building the 500 Days Economic Programme. He is clearly out of his depth; he knew how to manipulate the party system to obtain power, but was inadequate to the task of what to do with that power once he had it.

Though while he was never in the drivers seat on the later reforms, something he did do was serve as a block on the CPSU getting better leadership in power; even during the August 1991 coup they had no intention or plan to replace him as GenSec. In this way he has (negative) VOR value as well - how well he stacked the deck came back to haunt the USSR, and not many others could have done it like he did.

There are deep structural forces at play here too, just don't have time to get into those. Overall I say essentially [B+], with the understanding that its pointing into the 'failure' direction of the 'impact' chart compared to his fellow B-tiers.

[dailyanarchistposts]

I.3.8 Do anarchists seek “small autonomous communities, devoted to small scale production”?

No. The idea that anarchism aims for small, self-sufficient, communes is a Leninist slander. They misrepresent anarchist ideas on this matter, suggesting that anarchists seriously want society based on “small autonomous communities, devoted to small scale production.” In particular, they point to Kropotkin, arguing that he “looked backwards for change” and “witnessed such communities among Siberian peasants and watchmakers in the Swiss mountains.” [Pat Stack, “Anarchy in the UK?”, Socialist Review, no. 246] Another Leninist, Donny Gluckstein, makes a similar assertion about Proudhon wanting a federation of “tiny economic units”. [The Paris Commune, p. 75]

While it may be better to cover this issue in section H.2, we discuss it here simply because it relates directly to what an anarchist society could look like and so it allows us to that more fully.

So what do anarchists make of the assertion that we aim for “small autonomous communities, devoted to small scale production”? Simply put, we think it is nonsense (as would be quickly obvious from reading anarchist theory). Indeed, it is hard to know where this particular anarchist “vision” comes from. As Luigi Fabbri noted, in his reply to an identical assertion by the leading Bolshevik Nikolai Bukharin, ”[i]t would be interesting to learn in what anarchist book, pamphlet or programme such an ‘ideal’ is set out, or even such a hard and fast rule!” [“Anarchy and ‘Scientific’ Communism”, pp. 13–49, The Poverty of Statism, Albert Meltzer (ed.), p. 21]

If we look at, say, Proudhon, we soon see no such argument for “small scale” production. For Proudhon, ”[l]arge industry … come to us by big monopoly and big property: it is necessary in the future to make them rise from the [workers] association.” [quoted by K. Steven Vincent, Proudhon and the Rise of French Republican Socialism, p. 156] In fact, The Frenchman explicitly rejected the position Stack inflicts on him by arguing that it “would be to retrograde” and “impossible” to wish “the division of labour, with machinery and manufactures, to be abandoned, and each family to return to the system of primitive indivision, — that is, to each one by himself, each one for himself, in the most literal meaning of the words.” [System of Economic Contradictions, p. 206] As historian K. Steven Vincent correctly summarises:

“On this issue, it is necessary to emphasise that, contrary to the general image given in the secondary literature, Proudhon was not hostile to large industry. Clearly, he objected to many aspects of what these large enterprises had introduced into society. For example, Proudhon strenuously opposed the degrading character of … work which required an individual to repeat one minor function continuously. But he was not opposed in principle to large-scale production. What he desired was to humanise such production, to socialise it so that the worker would not be the mere appendage to a machine. Such a humanisation of large industries would result, according to Proudhon, from the introduction of strong workers’ associations. These associations would enable the workers to determine jointly by election how the enterprise was to be directed and operated on a day-to-day basis.” [Op. Cit., p. 156]

Moreover, Proudhon did not see an anarchist society as one of isolated communities or workplaces. Like other anarchists, as we discussed in section I.3.4, Proudhon saw a free society’s productive activity centred around federations of syndicates.

This vision of a federation of workplaces can also be found in Bakunin’s writings: “The future organisation of society must proceed from the bottom up only, through free association or federations of the workers, into their associations to begin with, then into communes, regions, nations and, finally, into a great international and universal federation.” [No Gods, No Masters, vol. 1, p. 176] Like Proudhon, Bakunin also explicitly rejected the idea of seeking small-scale production, arguing that “if [the workers] tried to divide among themselves the capital that exists, they would … reduce to a large decree its productive power.” Therefore the need was for “the collective property of capital” to ensure “the emancipation of labour and of the workers.” [The Basic Bakunin, p. 91] Bakunin, again like Proudhon, considered that ”[i]ntelligent free labour will necessarily be associated labour” as under capitalism the worker “works for others” and her labour is “bereft of liberty, leisure and intelligence.” Under anarchism, “the free productive associations” would become “their own masters and the owners of the necessary capital” and “amalgamate among themselves” and “sooner or later” will “expand beyond national frontiers” and “form one vast economic federation.” [Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, pp. 81–3]

Nor can such a vision be attributed to Kropotkin. While, of course, supporting decentralisation of power and decision making as did Proudhon and Bakunin, he did not reject the necessity of federations to co-ordinate activity. As he put it, the “commune of tomorrow will know that it cannot admit any higher authority; above it there can only be the interests of the Federation, freely accepted by itself as well as the other communes”/ For anarchists the commune “no longer means a territorial agglomeration; it is rather a generic name, a synonym for the grouping of equals which knows neither frontiers nor walls … Each group in the Commune will necessarily be drawn towards similar groups in other communes; they will come together and the links that federate them will be as solid as those that attach them to their fellow citizens.” [Words of a Rebel, p. 83 and p. 88] Nor did he reject industry or machinery, stating he “understood the poetry of machinery” and that while in “our present factories, machinery work is killing for the worker” this was “a matter of bad organisation, and has nothing to do with the machine itself.” [Memiors of a Revolutionist, p. 111]

Kropotkin’s vision was one of federations of decentralised communities in which production would be based on the “scattering of industries over the country — so as to bring the factory amidst the fields … agriculture … combined with industry … to produce a combination of industrial with agricultural work.” He considered this as “surely the next step to be made, as soon as a reorganisation of our present conditions is possible” and “is imposed by the very necessity of producing for the producers themselves.” [Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow, pp. 157–8] He based this vision on a detailed analysis of current economic statistics and trends.

Kropotkin did not see such an anarchist economy as being based around the small community, taking the basic unit of a free society as one “large enough to dispose of a certain variety of natural resources — it may be a nation, or rather a region — produces and itself consumes most of its own agricultural and manufactured produce.” Such a region would “find the best means of combining agriculture with manufacture — the work in the field with a decentralised industry.” Moreover, he recognised that the “geographical distribution of industries in a given country depends … to a great extent upon a complexus of natural conditions; it is obvious that there are spots which are best suited for the development of certain industries … The[se] industries always find some advantages in being grouped, to some extent, according to the natural features of separate regions.” [Op. Cit., p. 26, p. 27 and pp. 154–5]

Kropotkin stressed that agriculture “cannot develop without the aid of machinery and the use of a perfect machinery cannot be generalised without industrial surroundings … The village smith would not do.” He supported the integration of agriculture and industry, with “the factory and workshop at the gates of your fields and gardens” in which a “variety of agricultural, industrial and intellectual pursuits are combined in each community” to ensure “the greatest sum total of well-being.” He thought that “large establishments” would still exist, but these would be “better placed at certain spots indicated by Nature.” He stressed that it “would be a great mistake to imagine industry ought to return to its hand-work stage in order to be combined with agriculture. Whenever a saving of human labour can be obtained by means of a machine, the machine is welcome and will be resorted to; and there is hardly one single branch of industry into which machinery work could not be introduced with great advantage, at least at some of the stages of the manufacture.” [Op. Cit., p. 156, p. 197, p. 18, pp. 154–5 and pp. 151–2]

Clearly Kropotkin was not opposed to large-scale industry for “if we analyse the modern industries, we soon discover that for some of them the co-operation of hundred, even thousands, of workers gathered at the same spot is really necessary. The great iron works and mining enterprises decidedly belong to that category; oceanic steamers cannot be built in village factories.” However, he stressed that this objective necessity was not the case in many other industries and centralised production existed in these purely to allow capitalists “to hold command of the market” and “to suit the temporary interests of the few — by no means those of the nation.” Kropotkin made a clear division between economic tendencies which existed to aid the capitalist to dominate the market and enhance their profits and power and those which indicated a different kind of future. Once we consider the “moral and physical advantages which man would derive from dividing his work between field and the workshop” we must automatically evaluate the structure of modern industry with the criteria of what is best for the worker (and society and the environment) rather than what was best for capitalist profits and power. [Op. Cit., p. 153, p. 147 and p. 153]

Clearly, Leninist summaries of Kropotkin’s ideas on this subject are nonsense. Rather than seeing “small-scale” production as the basis of his vision of a free society, he saw production as being geared around the economic unit of a nation or region: “Each region will become its own producer and its own consumer of manufactured goods … [and] its own producer and consumer of agricultural produce.” Industry would come to the village “not in its present shape of a capitalist factory” but “in the shape of a socially organised industrial production, with the full aid of machinery and technical knowledge.” [Op. Cit., p. 40 and p. 151]

Industry would be decentralised and integrated with agriculture and based around communes, but these communes would be part of a federation and so production would be based around meeting the needs of these federations. A system of rational decentralisation would be the basis of Kropotkin’s communist-anarchism, with productive activity and a free society’s workplaces geared to the appropriate level. For those forms of industry which would be best organised on a large-scale would continue to be so organised, but for those whose current (i.e., capitalist) structure had no objective need to be centralised would be broken up to allow the transformation of work for the benefit of both workers and society. Thus we would see a system of workplaces geared to local and district needs complementing larger factories which would meet regional and wider needs.

Anarchism rejects the idea of small-scale production and isolated communes and, as we discussed in section H.2.3, it does not look backwards for its ideal. The same applies to other forms of libertarian socialism with, for example, G.D.H. Cole arguing that we “cannot go back to ‘town economy’, a general regime of handicraft and master-craftmanship, tiny-scale production. We can neither pull up our railways, fill our mines, and dismantle our factories nor conduct our large-scale enterprises under a system developed to fit the needs of a local market and a narrowly-restricted production.” The aim is “to reintroduce into industry the communal spirit, by re-fashioning industrialism in such a way as to set the communal motives free to co-operate.” [Guild Socialism Reststed, pp. 45–6 and p. 46]

The obvious implication of Leninist comments arguments against anarchist ideas on industrial transformation after a revolution is that they think that a socialist society will basically be the same as capitalism, using the technology, industry and industrial structure developed under class society without change (as noted in section H.3.12, Lenin did suggest that was the case). Needless to say, capitalist industry, as Kropotkin was aware, has not developed neutrally nor purely because of technical needs. Rather it has been distorted by the twin requirements to maintain capitalist profits and power. One of the first tasks of a social revolution will be to transform the industrial structure, not keep it as it is. You cannot use capitalist means for socialist ends. So while we will “inherent” an industrial structure from capitalism it would be the greatest possible error to leave it unchanged and an even worse one to accelerate the processes by which capitalists maintain and increase their power (i.e. centralisation and concentration) in the name of “socialism.”

We are sorry to have laboured this point, but this issue is one which arises with depressing frequency in Marxist accounts of anarchism. It is best that we indicate that those who make the claim that anarchists seek “small scale” production geared for “small autonomous communities” simply show their ignorance. In actually, anarchists see production as being geared to whatever makes most social, economic and ecological sense. Some production and workplaces will be geared to the local commune, some will be geared to the district federation, some to the regional federation, and so on. It is for this reason anarchists support the federation of workers’ associations as the means of combining local autonomy with the needs for co-ordination and joint activity. To claim otherwise is simply to misrepresent anarchist theory.

Finally, it must be psychologically significant that Leninists continually go on about anarchists advocating “small” and “tiny” workplaces. Apparently size does matter and Leninists think their productive units are much, much bigger than anarchist ones. As has been proven, anarchists advocate appropriately sized workplaces and are not hung-up about their size. Why Leninists are could be a fruitful area of research...

[mightyflamethrower]

Democrat Owner of Original Obama 'Hope' Picture Now Backs Trump

It has been said that all politics are local. On one level, that means that politically speaking, what happens at the grassroots level matters more than what happens on a state or national level. Perhaps a better interpretation of that particular saying is that one does not wake up until he is personally bitten on the backside by problems that one thought only plagued other people. 

And that is okay. For many people, enough birds have to come home to roost and leave their droppings all over the place to effect a change of heart. Better late to the party than never. Such is the case of  Allison Huynh. Huyhn is a former Democratic fundraiser and donor whose efforts pumped millions into the party. 

She is now a Trump supporter.

Huynh recently told Fox News that Biden has been "asleep at the wheel," adding:

He's allowed Big Tech as well as the looters to take over Silicon Valley. San Francisco has been the science experiment that's gone awry. I wake up in the morning, there's no grocery stores to go to, and there's no malls to take my teenage girls shopping to. The streets are not safe, there are more fentanyl users and dealers than high school students in our once-great city.

Like many people, Huynh and her ex-husband, a Google programmer, were true believers in the Obama vision and raised stacks of cash for the campaign. Hey, I was a believer, too, at one point. But the reasons she offered above, combined with the Biden administration's approach to business have not exactly made her a newly minted member of the GOP, but an independent who even visited Mar-A-Lago for a Trump fundraiser. 

She notes that Biden is driving tech start-ups offshore and making it difficult for would-be entrepreneurs to succeed. Huynh says Biden does this by "legislating and suing emerging technology companies, startup companies, and just regular entrepreneurs who are funding their business." She adds that Trump, by contrast, backs business owners and wants lower taxes for new tech companies.

Huynh is so disenchanted with Biden and the new incarnation of the Democrat Party that she is dumping her left-wing memorabilia. That collection includes a rocking chair owned by none other than JFK and the original Obama "Hope" piece by Shepard Fairey. You know the one. You saw it everywhere during Obama's campaigns and reign. She says the rocker cost her $10,000 at auction, while the artwork set her back over $1 million.

On one hand, it would be easy to say to Huynh "Glad you finally figured it out. The rest of us have been treading shark-infested waters for the last four years." On the other hand, this is one of the things that will be necessary to help unseat Biden in November and begin the long process of draining the proverbial swamp. Members of the Leftist elite have to be driven to a place where their backs are against the wall and can either admit that the emperor has been parading around in the altogether, or they can go down in flames with the rest of us.

It might be tempting to tell Huynh and people like her, "Too little, too late," but what she needs right now is for someone to get her a beer and a welcome packet.

[dertaglichedan]

Democrat Owner of Original Obama 'Hope' Picture Now Backs Trump

It has been said that all politics are local. On one level, that means that politically speaking, what happens at the grassroots level matters more than what happens on a state or national level. Perhaps a better interpretation of that particular saying is that one does not wake up until he is personally bitten on the backside by problems that one thought only plagued other people. 

And that is okay. For many people, enough birds have to come home to roost and leave their droppings all over the place to effect a change of heart. Better late to the party than never. Such is the case of  Allison Huynh. Huyhn is a former Democratic fundraiser and donor whose efforts pumped millions into the party. 

She is now a Trump supporter.

Huynh recently told Fox News that Biden has been "asleep at the wheel," adding:

He's allowed Big Tech as well as the looters to take over Silicon Valley. San Francisco has been the science experiment that's gone awry. I wake up in the morning, there's no grocery stores to go to, and there's no malls to take my teenage girls shopping to. The streets are not safe, there are more fentanyl users and dealers than high school students in our once-great city.

Like many people, Huynh and her ex-husband, a Google programmer, were true believers in the Obama vision and raised stacks of cash for the campaign. Hey, I was a believer, too, at one point. But the reasons she offered above, combined with the Biden administration's approach to business have not exactly made her a newly minted member of the GOP, but an independent who even visited Mar-A-Lago for a Trump fundraiser. 

[mysterycharacterflowers]

Round 1; Dandelions 1 Vs A bouquet of willows and chives

If you know who they are, or are pretty sure of it, please don't tell until this poll has ended!

First, let's talk about the Dandelions 1

Why this flower was chosen: Dandelions, bc they 1) are not native to where this character creator is from. This character grew up in a kingdom that wasn't too fond of half-elves, and never quite belonged with the rest bc of that. 2) Survive and thrive in extreme + hostile environments- again, she grew up with a lot of things stacked against her, but manages to stay happy and optimistic despite it all. 3) are really cute, and she is also really cute. 4) she's dandelion coded. Description: in another world, where she'd been born in a happier place, she would've been a scholar, studying ancient religions and magic. if she'd been born in a modern world, she'd be a gamer. unfortunately, neither of these are true, and instead she's a half-elf wizard who grew up in a very oppressive kingdom that hates pretty much everyone who isn't a high elf or a drow. she's bought fully into her country's propaganda, and struggles to be seen as "good enough." because she grew up an outsider due to being a half-elf, she didn't really have any friends, (especially since the wizard training school she went to was like. i cant even think of a fictional example bad enough. it had a fucking mortality rate, schools shouldnt really have those), other than her sentient spellbook (whose sentience she had to keep a secret from everyone for fear he'd be taken away and she'd be alone). she's an unpaid intern for one of the ruling council of the kingdom. she was sent on her current mission with the expectation that she wouldn't be coming back. she's sweet and helpful but doesn't really trust anybody except her spellbook. i love her

Check their post here

Now, let's talk about the bouquet of willows and chives:

Meaning: Willows for Sadness (because hes an emo lil man) and Chives for usefulness (*) Description: – (*)This bouquet is OBSESSED with being useful to others – Hes the trans aroace ghost of an overworked programmer 80s dudebro. – Hes also in a queerplatonic Poly relationship with ANOTHER 80s dudebro, a shadow guy who looks like Krobus and an evil ass robot whos only screen face is ':D' – Also hes also trying to get all these shapeshifting masks so that he can ascend into godhood and... idk form a cybercult maybe. – Hes PERSONAL enemies with the Council (and it was good) – His gender is 'whatever's funnyest' – He watches Soap Carving Videos to fall asleep to.

Check their post here