#a dumb train at an intersection

[foxghost]

And on the very first day they got confused and stopped traffic.

[darkwood-sleddog]

Teaching recall…through hypnosis. Balanced trainers really will do anything other than offer treats as a payment huh.

[muselixer]

dumb things my friends and I have said: 2024!

part four: october - december apologies ahead of time for length! feel free to change pronouns if need be. warning for foul and dirty language, suggestiveness, and capslock-implied yelling :)

"They come when I'm ready."

"I'll come up. I gotta get wood."

"I think they will really like my shaft."

"I need you to help me take my pants off."

"Oh my god, guys! We're just like Snoop Dogg!"

"I don't care if they DNA test it! They're not gonna know how many toes were in the bathwater!"

"Fuck you. I'm un-circumcising your PushPop."

"That's okay, it happens to the best of us. And the worst of us. That's why Hitler happened."

"THEY WON'T GIVE ME HIS FORESKIN."

"THEY HAVE FORESKIN ON ETSY?"

"THAT IS A CONVENTIONALLY ATTRACTIVE HORSE."

"Take a tampon, soak it in vodka, and shove it up your cooch."

"You put pepper on your thumb, and then sniff it, and then sneeze the whole time. It's really fun."

"Hi, I have a question. Please be nice to me, I failed college."

"I totally get being scared to pull out."

"That's called childhood trauma. That's called cold pizza."

"Can we stop flirting in the gay bathroom?"

"Dawg, I have so much coffee in my coffee."

"I don't know if I've whipped you before."

"I DON'T NEED THERAPY, I NEED TO WIN."

"If they showed up in real life, the asexuality would leave my body."

"Have you ever had a food so good?"

"Do you think there are emotional prostitutes out there?"

"I feel like I'm floating, but if the floating was evil."

"They look like that cat meme with the eyebrow. Wait, don't tell them I said that."

"Pull up to the date like... Kachow."

"A SECOND TRAIN HAS HIT THE INTERSECTION."

"Don't look at me like that. You look like a hand-drawn frowny face."

"In terms of hitting, this chicken's kind of a pacifist."

"TECHNICALLY, Mary cheated on Joseph with God."

"Oh, I'm sorry, am I being too manly? In my little manly sweater? In my little sweater that everyone likes?"

"Topdog? What's topdog? I'm a hands-on learner by the way."

"Paleontologists don't seek dinosaur bones just to fuck a dinosaur."

"I'm fina going to leave the group chat."

"Tell her a washboard is only 20 bucks at the hardware store, since clearly she doesn't want a washer."

"I already know your fuck head drinks Pepsi."

"Let's grasp it together, fellow idiot."

"Is he a couch fucker?"

"Do you have any proof that you don't fuck tape?"

"Please do not fuck the gutter pipe."

"This implies Christ is a chicken."

"You could kill me as an act of bullying and I wouldn't care."

"It'd be kinda fucked up if there wasn't any garlic in the garlic dressing."

"You guys are like what sitcoms think siblings are."

"If I want to get pegged by a cowboy, do I have to cut off his dick and give him a strap?"

"Are you a peg-ologist, by chance?"

"That's how you know this was organized by a straight man. You gotta come too early."

"Do you think Jesus gages his hand holes?"

"I hate to fat shame a letter, but..."

"No, you're not! O, Q, and D are fine! G is just doing something weird with its body!"

[hero-israel]

It occurred to me that a lot of the protests are essentially cargo-culting successful protest movements. Instead of well-planned and focused actions performed by those most affected and aimed at those with the power to resolve their grievances; you get American twenty-somethings protesting restaurants or blocking roads over something on the other side of the world.

It comes from a seemingly willful lack of historical engagement - their rage is all that matters, it is more important than selecting politically valid targets for influence or remembering that rape is bad. Some of it might also be from intersectional brain-scrambling - if all oppressions are linked, why WOULDN'T that kosher restaurant run by Americans be linked to oppression elsewhere?

I am coming to believe that the default for mass political movements is dumb, hysterical goober-ism, with successful movements standing out because somebody actually did the homework and picked targets that could work. I'm fully certain the "Extinction Rebellion" types, blocking commuter trains at rush hour, are a psyop sponsored by BP.

[frances-kafka]

Cause-and-Adjacency: a new techno-occultic social logic

"Cause-and-Adjacency" means that association is cause.

Cause-and-Adjacency is the dominant logic of this part of the 21st century, with a "latent space" aspect to it.

Cause-and-Effect: Things happen because of causative agents and are downstream of sequences of causative agents. Analytical people using C&E logic understand that things can have multiple causative agents and multiple types of outcomes, but relatively less analytical or informed people might think "something has only one causative agent, and if that statement is wrong, then ALL cause and effect logic is wrong."

Many things are stuck with Cause-and-Effect as their dominant framework. Cause-and-Adjacency logic doesn't apply when you have to deal with the physical world and its laws. Adjacency is primarily a social logic, and the physical world often isn't governed by social logic.

Cause-and-Adjacency: Things happen because of their adjacency to other things or because they share a latent space.

Cause-and-Adjacency is actually the logic of algorithmic sorting, prompt engineering, etc.

For example, in Cause-and-Effect, something being associated does not mean that thing is responsible.

A simple example of Cause-and-Effect:  I'll use a dumb example.

Let's say that Neo-Victorians like trains, train engineers like trains, New Urbanists like trains, WWII Nazis liked trains, and many autistic kids like trains. In standard Cause-and-Effect logic - and in more 20th century social logic, but NOT modern social logic - this does not mean that train engineers, Neo-Victorians, New Urbanists, Nazis, and autistic kids are part of the same social subgroup. They're just five different groups that are non-causally associated with trains. If you are examining this via Cause-and-Effect, you don’t equate “liking trains” to “is a train engineer, Neo-Victorian, New Urbanist, Nazi, or autistic.” Sharing an intersection doesn’t mean sharing probable cause. These things are not synonymous with each other.

But if you’re applying Cause-and-Adjacency:

In Cause-and-Adjacency logic, adjacency is causation even if the two things have nothing to do with each other. Guilt by sharing a common latent space.

You avoid anything that shares an intersection. This may actually be necessary online, in terms of SEO stuff. If you’re a particularly Twitterbrained [1] Firstian who doesn’t “know how the sausage is made” and your social experience – including your education in social logic - is dominantly shaped by your interactions with a post-Web 2 social media space, then all you know is that whenever you activate a particular intersection, all of the fellow travelers come along for the ride. Here's why: Post about trains, and you’ll get stuff from or related to train engineers AND WWII Nazis (ok, probably not) AND New Urbanists AND autistic kids. Providing more context won't help because you're still going to be optimizing your posts to all of those groups or topics. You may need to actually use much more specified language - or avoid the topic altogether. If you’re on Twitter, then your posting about trains made you hypervisible to ALL of them. Interacting with ANYONE posting about trains made you hypervisible as well.

In Cause-and-Adjacency Logic, the entire cloud of associations is held as a causative agent, especially since the people using this logic often are completely mystified as to how trains, Nazis, Victorians, and autistic kids are all connected.

According to the social logic of Web 2 and onward, you would avoid the entire “thing cloud” if you want to avoid even one of the things in that cloud. Firstians move through clouds of association.

Another strategy:

You invent a secret code word for "trains" to confine the context you are referring to (such as when tech people overly use the term "qualia" when they mean "soul") and avoid the Victorians, Nazis, and autists. This is social media algorithm and SEO logic. Marketers understand this better than many programmers do.

If you’re part of particular tech subcultures – like Rationalists/EA – you might make up your own term for “train” in order to throttle your engagement specifically to other people within your circle. This is what they are doing with the very subculture-specific language they use.

This is why I NEVER say "tr*gg*r" and ALWAYS say “the Vapors” when referring to the overzealous use of the word "tr*gg*r." It’s also why I am asterisking out that word for that matter! It’s algospeak.

I’m saying “the Vapors” because – in the context I’m using this – I don’t actually want to engage with either the people who overzealously use the term or those who attack them. “The Vapors” gives me a way to talk about this within the specific context in which I'm using it, while lowering engagement from the people not involved in that context.

In many ways, this kind of algospeak is like reverse prompt engineering. Instead of building a big LLM prompt or doing SEO tagging that strengthens the signal to a broader group, you’re throttling engagement down to what is only understood by your in-group, or even to a frame you control (which is the beauty of always using your own language and framing for things wherever possible; it filters out the people who don’t actually want to engage).

All of this may point out, very much, to how Firstian society is evolving downstream of its foundational technologies.

[1] Being Twitterbrained may actually be a functional mode of operation if you’re on Twitter.

[madeofmydreams]

Ully’s May Reading Log

I spend entirely too much time reading and have catalogued the experience for the month of May. I’m making a post because my friend @ice-mage does this and reading books he’s recommended is always a delight.

Totals for works read to completion in the month of May: 32 works (7 fic and 25 original). ~2,575,000 words / 9,199 pages. 2 rereads.

Best:

Tied for 1st:

We Were Never Lovers by Sasha Avice [wc ~98k pc 325]

Rated: Adore

Summary: When Aboriginal footballer Sean Hiller wakes up in the hospital he’s confused and put out that everyone seems to think his good for nothing white boy teammate Jack Reaver is his bestie. He’s missing the last two years of his life though and when it’s time for discharge Jack is the only person available to keep an eye on him at home so he guesses he can tolerate him for a little bit.

My Personal Thoughts: We were never lovers takes amnesia and somehow makes it completely believable. The characters are real and messy and not always likeable but I rooted for them anyway. It deals with the intersection of race and ethnicity. With grief and isolation. With what happens when you believe it's all just understood and then you realize no actually... they didn't know you love them.

Meet Me in the Sky by Jeffery K Davenport [wc ~98k pc 324]

Rated: Adore

Summary: Billy is on his way to be the best man-of-honor his little sister could possibly ask for. He is perfectly organized and perfectly packed and he’s prepared to not think at all about his ex-husband thank you very much. Leaving his phone in his uber is a minor inconvenience that cascades into a hilarious chain of events.

My Personal Thoughts: This story is so well written. It’s hysterical and poignant. I love that it features 2 queer black men. Billy and Michael are great. The writing reminds me of Fredrik Backman. The only bits of the story that I didn’t like were some minor inconsistencies (at one point they go to buy toothbrushes and toothpaste but never complete the purchase, then later when they kiss Billy thinks about how Michael is minty. How? No toothcare has happened!) Also Billy mentions being a bit concerned about money but he spends money like someone who isn’t all that concerned about money… It’s the second book Jeffery Davenport has written (I read it first) and it’s better than his first one so I really look forward to whatever he publishes next.

Tied for 3rd:

A Spell for Heart Sickness by Alistair Reeves [wc ~99k pc 330]

Rated: Love/Adore

Summary: Briar is a flamboyant witch who is just finishing up school and is about to start his residency. He’s an orphan *and* ailing from a terminal curse so he has to work twice as hard as his peers to make his mark but he’s clever and kind and determined to become something great before the curse does him in.

My Personal Thoughts: This story is both cozy and high stakes. I loved the magic system. I loved Briar. I loved that Briar is a dumb genius and that the prophesies he experiences just make it harder for him to live his life.

You & Me by Tal Bauer [wc ~115k pc 384]

Rated: Love/Adore

Summary: Single dad Luke just wants to find a way to connect to his teenaged son, he wasn’t planning to become best friends with another one of the dads that helps out at Last Waters High School football games. Sometimes things you don’t plan for can be good though.

My Personal Thoughts: While You&Me is 40 year old single dads friends to lovers it's also soooooo much more than that. The father son relationships are nuanced and painful and just so good. There's religious trauma and grief. I laughed aloud at least 5 times while reading it.

Worst:

The Ballerino and the Biker by Rebecca James

Rated: Side Eye

Summary: A wealthy boy named Morgan has been training as a ballet dancer in Italy for years and returns to NYC for the funeral of his estranged older brother after which he is kidnapped by a motorcycle gang.

My Personal Thoughts: If this book was a loaf of bread it would be both burned and still doughy. There are soooo many things happening. Morgan’s ballet for instance. Why is he studying in Milan? I think just because it sounds fancy tbh. Of the best ballet schools in the world 2 are located in NYC. There are 2 in Russia, one in London, one in Paris, one in Australia… Then there’s Morgan’s money. He inherited a multimillion(billion?) dollar real estate empire when his parents died a few years back and he doesn’t want to run it but he doesn’t want to sell it and he’s only getting reports from a single person with the company. There’s the storyline of his brother’s death and his brother’s motorcycle club which straddles the line of legality. None of these stories was fully explored and all of them were overdramatic. I haven’t even scraped the surface.

Runners up for Best Read:

Real Fine Line by Lumifern on Ao3 [wc 132k pc ~ 440.]

Rated: love

Summary: This is a RoyEd Fullmetal Alchemist fanfiction. After the Promised Day Ed doesn’t resign from the military and instead stays on to help Mustang make Fuhrer.

Personal Thoughts: I loved how much it felt like a continuation of the original story. The political intrigue was on point. The way in which Ed and Roy become life lines for each other felt organic and inevitable.

Season’s Change by Cait Nary [wc ~113k pg 377]

Rated: Love (The only book I read twice this month.)

This is a queer hockey romance novel that includes: and they were roommates, a bit of an age gap, being in the closet, mutual pining, severe anxiety, and a stunning bi-awakening.

Summary: Olly was traded after his roommate on his previous team found out he was gay and reacted badly. Olly hasn’t left fight or flight mode since. At his new team management has paired him to room with a rookie named Benji who’d been coming up through the development league and has proven he’s a golden retriever in human form.

Personal thoughts: My favorite things about this book were; the depictions of Olly’s anxiety which felt accurate and real, and the delightful way in which Benji after having fooled around with multiple guys in his life realizes, “Oh!? Maybe I’m not straight???” which mirrors my own life experience entirely too closely. *laughing*

Kings Rising by C.S. Pacat

Rated: Love

Summary: This is the 3rd book in a trilogy and you definitely have to read the first two. In general the setup is that there are two crown princes of neighboring rival kingdoms that have been at both active and cold war for a decade or so. The main character Damen (crown prince of Akielos) gets kidnapped and then given as a slave to the rival crown prince Laurent of Vere. In this book there are sweeping battles and political maneuvering as well as tentative trust, heartbreak, and pining.

My Personal Thoughts: This series is really good but it contains so much sexual violence and non-consent that it was also really hard to read particularly for the first book. It does pay off and it is very well crafted but it’s dark. If you’re in the mood for something angsty and you’ve got the time for 1,015 pages you should go for it.

Tough Guy by Rachel Reid [wc ~94k pc 312]

Rating: Love

Summary: Ryan is a massive hockey player who’s job on the ice is to rough guys up if they damage the more talented players so he fights even though he hates it. He’s the kind of player who’s been on more teams than he’s played seasons of hockey and he truly just needs to be loved on. He’s starting over with a new team when he runs into his first crush from high school while picking up his meds at the pharmacy.

Personal Thoughts: This story is absolutely adorable and I think it would resonate with anyone who experiences body dysphoria and or negative self-talk. Watching Ryan become someone he likes is healing on the soul level.

*A primmer for my rating system. I’ve chosen not to use stars just because if I did I would want to rate solid books as 5 stars and then would have nowhere to go whenever I encountered those blue moon books that are beyond solid and will live rent free until I forget them because I’m 93 and have dementia. My system this month has gone like so:

DNF – I couldn’t read this for whatever reason.

Awful – I finished this and it was a problem in at least 7 ways

Side Eye – I finished this and it was a problem in at least 5 ways.

Eh – I finished this and it was a problem in 1 to 3 ways

Like – I finished this and it wasn’t brilliant but I enjoyed it.

Really Like – I enjoyed this book. It didn’t have any major flaws but I probably wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Love – This book made me feel deeply and will be worth reading again. If the description interests you it is definitely worth your time

Adore – This book is the absolute Crème of the crop. I will be buying copies to give to my friends.

[paperstorm]

I’m curious about something- do you think of TK and Marjan as super close besties?

And if so, can I ask why? (I promise I’m not saying it to be mean I just find it genuinely confusing- like Marjan literally has one on one scenes with EVERYONE except TK- and like when they’re like oh someone should talk to her about why she isn’t coming to see Paul, TK IMMEDIATELY jumps on Nancy’s train of thought”oh we’re the medics we don’t have to do it”

Am I missing something? Is it just the corn silo scene? (Which if it is- wouldn’t TK do that for literally anyone on his team?? I don’t think that was Marjan specific- am I just completely dumb?)

I don't think you're dumb! If we are going strictly by what exists in canon then no, you're right, they aren't shown on screen to be super close. They have their moments of course like all the different friendship pairings in this show but we don't see much of them being besties on screen. Marjan and Paul are each other's canonically stated best friends and at least since mid-season 2, I feel like TK's been shown to be much closer with Nancy than with any other member of the 126. But headcanons are half the fun of fandom, right? at least I think so. I have a headcanon that Carlos is much better friends with Paul than anyone else at the 126, and that's literally just based on the fact that I feel like Carlos would value so much having another queer man of colour who he could commiserate with because Carlos has never had queer friends before, he was lacking in community for so long, and Paul would understand Carlos's experience with the intersection of queerness and race in a way that TK can't. I love the thought of them being really good friends, even tho they aren't shown to be in the actual series. I think there's so much love in the found family of this show that you truly could take any two of them and hc that they are best friends, and the transformative part of fandom is finding joy in doing exactly that - taking small hints of things that happen in a show and making a whole rich world in your head about them, even if that isn't the story that's being told in canon.

[praline-elegy]

Another Fence Drabble :)

Nicholas shifts the weight beneath his feet as he and Seiji draw nearer to the stairs. His eyes are trained on dark brown, and Seiji’s not even looking at him, eyes facing forward. Nicholas’ mesmerized by them, anyways. The shape of them, the color, his lashes. The way his mole sits under his eye so perfectly poised. He’s not paying attention to where he’s walking.

Nicholas takes another step, a little too big, his foot settles onto solid ground.

Okay, good. Now keep walking and stop staring at Seiji’s face, Nicholas tells himself.

He’s always been bad at following directions, even self-imposed ones no matter how hard he tries. Maybe that’s why karma finally came around to catch him, because his foot doesn’t catch the next step.

Empty air.

Nothing.

He’s not expecting the lack of step, he didn’t even realize how close to the stairs they were. His eyes snap away from Seiji’s gorgeous soulful brown ones, flickering over to make a grab at the handrail.

He misses.

His hand eye coordination doesn’t need work, it just needs to stop focusing on Seiji. His hand misses its mark and suddenly he’s falling forward.

Oh god this is the stairs to get to the bottom of the music wing, Nicholas’ mind races. It’s an incredibly tall flight even with the large flat step intersecting the middle. Falling even just to that safe-ish haven is gonna land him a sprained wrist at the very least. Or-or something.

Ironically everything happens in slow motion, when it all technically happened within a split second.

A gasp, his flailing arm, the dumb decision to close his eyes instead of reattempting to place his foot on the correct step as a final redemption in the heat of the moment.

As quick as flick, a hand reaches out. Warm and calloused and safe, engulfing Nicholas’ own and tugs.

Nicholas stops falling, suspended above those wretched stairs covered in small traces of marker and randomly fallen flyers. Nicholas isn’t one of them.

His breath stalls in his throat, a tiny breathy sound stuck right at the place he wants Seiji to kiss him. A kiss on the throat sounds awfully divine, but Nicholas is anything but worthy of such godly touch.

Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about Seiji kissing you, he admonishes himself.

He focuses on fingers, firmly gripped over his own as that safe comforting hand pulls Nicholas back.

He’d romanticize it and say it was a slow and gentle moment, but in reality Seiji had yanked him back so hard he fell into the taller boy’s arms. Stumbling into him with his face pressed right against his collar. Uh—not what he expected, not that he planned to fall, he didn’t like falling unless it involves another boy with a painfully soft smile that hits you suddenly like a flèche before it’s gone. But still, score.

A moment passes, and then two.

“Nicholas, you’re shaking.” Seiji says, fingers still wrapped around his, squeezing them gently.

“I fell.” He responds dimly, still in shock.

“You didn’t.” A murmur above his head. It’s soft.

“I fell.” He repeats against Seiji’s shirt.

“I caught you.” Seiji reassuraces him, his other arm wraps around Nicholas’ shoulder, pressing him close.

“I fell.”

“Nicholas,” the soft triplet of his name makes him look up, and eyes filled with something intense yet so soft look back at him. “I’m here.”

“Okay.” The word just plunks out of him, inelegant and gauche, but he doesn’t know what else to say.

Thank you. I love you. Don’t stop holding me. Please love me.

His heart is aching at the way Seiji looks at him like he’s something precious, words that he wants to say pour through his veins, begging to be heard. He doesn’t say any of those words.

Seiji nods, and Nicholas can hear a heartbeat racing fast against his ear. Was it his own? Or was it Seiji’s?

He doesn’t know.

Nicholas slowly peels himself off of Seiji, and the two slowly make their way down the stairs.

Neither of them say a word as their hands remain clasped between them.

[llort]

Work Text:

As an affecter, Olistole’s influence was mostly a hit and hope type situation. He could not sense what matter contained what nodes but if he could spread the focus of his mental reconstruction over an object and detect a node, he could enact whatever sub-program was encoded into that node by an alter or by nature himself. Olistole enjoyed scanning inanimate objects as the environment was always adapting and exchanging nodes with itself. Sometimes he could get a pebble to float, a tree to hypnotically change colours, or for shits and giggles, activate the notification system on someone's mailbox and these were the three exact things that Olistole did on his way home. He passed by a small garden that his brother used to take Olistole to show him how to harness his affecting. Syn was older and a very seasoned affecter, he had already passed the trials with flying colours and was in some higher educational program in the mainland. Olistole looked up to his brother and was looking forward to his own trial where he resolved to create his very own powerful or high utility actuator pathway. Olistole actuated the lock on his front door and made it open for him. while daydreaming about his future and being relieved that no effectors seemed to catch him annoying his neighbours. He would rather be annoying his friends, he was late for his daily training session regardless. He hurried with the gait of a man who didn’t really care about arriving on time

Under the sky clocked green and orange auroras flaked with electric blinding networks of fractals. Five spectres embossed in impossible colours, waltzed and stumbled around amongst a flurry of flung meta-material manipulated with the synergistic team effort of an effector and affector pair, The stage of this intricate dance was an obsidian coloured rocky black battlefield serving as an arena. The foundation of their training zone was threaded with multicoloured fractures with blips of light that had a life of themselves zipped, pulsated, and strobes in response to and despite of the five influencers. These figures spun from place and be dancing and flitting between glossed tracers of energy. Olistole saw excognitive phosphenes representing Kela’s effecting outlying a prominent target and he utilized his effecting mentally and lifted a rock and propelled it toward/ Velor didn’t need Ikaria to see this impending collision to his temple and caught the projectile in mid-air, redirecting the geode..

Ikaria and Kela seemed busy supressing each others effecting, essentially muting precognitive intuition for each others effector/affector pair. Olistole and Velor had to resort to the metaphorical equilivent of slinging crap at each other, dumb non-precise missles. They were training for much more dangerous environments so the risk of acute blunt risk trauma wasn’t much of a bother.

The Wild Grid continually fractured back together physically, mentally, and cognitively regurgitating hazing memetic caustic embedded in cyberphysical substrates. To Olistole, this buzz on the periphery external environment intersecting with though fuzzy boundary of his conscious subjective non gestalt boundary of his mind/prefrontal cortex fizzled and spitted in a self same esq pattern that didn’t warrant any level of increased offensive meta awareness. Typically net lossless grid states didn’t indicate that there was no potential threat to Olistole as he walked through the cellular Autonoma machinated via infected programmable Pico nanomaterials Jungle that thrived on churning chaotic procedural generation clashing with itself with caustic, potent violations for variations of the laws of thermodynamics, game theory, and biological theorems.

After a few hours of the five influencers playing and training their influence for the upcoming trials they came to a natural rest and lay about idly on the landscape floating their various thoughts about. The eldritch entities that they do or do not know that exist but their belief is always wrong, observed the objective, subjective, and abstract external frame of the influencers internal subjective reality. These beings alone saw the total of potentiality across all probabilities.

Zeph rested on the side lines trailing his fingers through solid ground as the teams of an effecter and an affecter put their wits and their proficiency over their respective type of influence while he grafted the ground itself into intricate geometries while the lights seem to interact with his actions and thought only known to him, IIkaria and Kela, and god knows how many Friendly Local Neighborhood Effector Vigilantes prowling around to assert self righteous judgement and punishment

Their surroundings were dark, and it was hard to tell what flora or fauna was compared to the ever-shifting evolving landscape. The effector affecter teams from before were coupled up and talking, Zeph had his fingers knuckle deep into one of the glowing veins and was appearing to influence the ever shifting ever evolving nature of the area around him. As all things do, the social temporal superposition faded

The five influencers parted their ways after a while of idle chatting about the training session and the upcoming trials and shortly after Olistole found himself winding his way home. The darkness of the sky didn’t bother him, his eyes were adapted to it. Sometimes something malicious could be lurking in the. surroundings, internally or externally. Ever vigilant for a potential possible threat Olistole noticed a vague shape far above. The sky is aways cast in a mixed green hue of auroras and this object seemed to be ascending further towards these heavens. Olistole knew that this was likely to be Dayns, his anchorite friend. Olistole wondered if he could somehow get Dayns attention from where he was standing, as an affecter he couldn’t communicate at range, so he had no choice to use his affecting just to knock the object that Dayns was in to get his attention. Olistole focused his external matrix on the slim, apparently poorly made wicker basket hot air balloon. There was a sudden but ultimately not quite unexpected result of the structure collapsing and its occupant start to plummet to the ground of Epheosia.

Olistole felt a bit guilty, but he knew that anchorite’s internal matrix was their domain, meaning that anchorites could reinforce and boost their bodies natural abilities and resilience. Dayns appeared in a tumbled heap as Olistole approached. With a crack of his back and snapping stretch of his neck, Dayns said “you do realize that was my trial run, right? Forty days of fasting and meditation for preparation and crafting the most minimal possible wicker basket hot air balloon for my holy tempering and cleansing?” Olistole felt a bit more guilty. “Can you just resit with a few days of fasting and try again” he said. Dayns casually pointed to the faint glint of the fire that was fuelling his wicker balloon as the balloon drifted off somewhere to be reclaimed by the wilds and Olistole shrugged in apology and the two friends walked back to their village together.

Dayns affect perked up when he spotted his anchorite temple and asked Olistole if he would like to visit. Olistole agreed and they both proceeded through the temple courtyard, past living gardens the training grounds, and wicker balloon workshop, approaching the shrines entrance. Meditating in the shrine in front of an open hearth with black flames was Yan, the anchorite leader. “Ah, Dayns, you are back from your ascent pretty early, what happened to your balloon?” commented Yan. Dayns replied” I starved myself for forty eons before this idiot knocked me out of the sky, do I really have to fast again before I retry my ascendance?”. Yan unfolded his limbs with cat like grace and stood up with perfect posture and poise “Unfortunately it is our way Dayn, you will have to nourish yourself before fasting again and you will have no assistance from any alters in crafting a new wicker balloon”. At this point, Olistole did feel true guilt, he had gotten in the way of his friend's trial of sustenance. All Anchorites when they came of age were to construct their own method of reaching the skies and touch the auroras which would corrode their flesh then they would descend to rejuvenate and touch the auroras repeatedly, until they had tempered their bodies and minds and strengthened their connection with their internal matrix. Olistole did not really understand why they put themselves through all that, but then again anchorites were the only type of influencer who had no will over their external environment. It made sense that they would go to extreme lengths to make the most of their own abilities.

“Yan” said Olistole, “Why do you all undergo the tempering, it seems awfully inconvenient”? Yan looked to be no older than Dayns but he carried himself with grace and coiled lethality that betrayed his years and he remarked” Mastery over the inward is its own reward, you know that the anchorite's power is the inverse of the alters, we can have an enormous influence over our own internal physiology and psychology. I can, for example, sustain myself without matter or fluid indefinitely if I needed to, only to replace damaged or lost tissue and blood. We anchorites believe that the minimal viable unit is the one closest to perfection, but we also believe in maximising the creative and actualized self, so we train and temper our minds and bodies to simplify our matrixes but to maximize our potential number of actions that we can enact in any given moment”. Yan then proceeded to turn around and hold his hand outstretched in the black flames behind him. The fire started to consume the flesh around his fingers, smiling Yan pulled his outstretched arm from the flame and turned around to hold it upright in front of Olistole and Dayns. As the two friends looked on, the anchorites flesh began to warp and bubble as soft tissue, blood vessels, and skin flowed and reformed the damaged hand with no obvious signs of previous damage.

“The temperature of that fire isn’t typically hot enough to hurt me” said Yan “The auroras are a different beast though Dayns. It could be good fortune this eon is not the time that you fully attempt your tempering, I have been trying to pass through the auroras for as long as I can remember, and they just get stronger and more dangerous the more far out you go. Nobody knows what lies past the auroras and part of our anchorite philosophy is tempering and training until our matrix is resilient and lean enough to get through into heaven. Even the strongest effector cannot sense what lies beyond Epheosia’s upper atmosphere.” Olistole briefly wondered if he could benefit from tempering as well, maybe he would join Dayns on his next journey skyward. Olistole as an affecter could dimly sense nodes in his own internal matrix but they felt dull, blurry, faint, and imprecise but if he concentrated and focused hard with his mental constonstruction, he could sometimes achieve small feats like raising or lowing his pulse or blood temperature at will or turn his skin or hair a slightly different hue.

[caustic-splines]

The Balloon and the Five Buffoons

As an affecter, Olistole’s influence was mostly a hit and hope type situation. He could not sense what matter contained what nodes but if he could spread the focus of his mental reconstruction over an object and detect a node, he could enact whatever sub-program was encoded into that node by an alter or by nature himself. Olistole enjoyed scanning inanimate objects as the environment was always adapting and exchanging nodes with itself. Sometimes he could get a pebble to float, a tree to hypnotically change colours, or for shits and giggles, activate the notification system on someone's mailbox and these were the three exact things that Olistole did on his way home. He passed by a small garden that his brother used to take Olistole to show him how to harness his affecting. Syn was older and a very seasoned affecter, he had already passed the trials with flying colours and was in some higher educational program in the mainland. Olistole looked up to his brother and was looking forward to his own trial where he resolved to create his very own powerful or high utility actuator pathway. Olistole actuated the lock on his front door and made it open for him. while daydreaming about his future and being relieved that no effectors seemed to catch him annoying his neighbours. He would rather be annoying his friends, he was late for his daily training session regardless. He hurried with the gait of a man who didn’t really care about arriving on time

Under the sky clocked green and orange auroras flaked with electric blinding networks of fractals. Five spectres embossed in impossible colours, waltzed and stumbled around amongst a flurry of flung meta-material manipulated with the synergistic team effort of an effector and affector pair, The stage of this intricate dance was an obsidian coloured rocky black battlefield serving as an arena. The foundation of their training zone was threaded with multicoloured fractures with blips of light that had a life of themselves zipped, pulsated, and strobed in response to and despite of the five influencers. These figures spun from place and be dancing and flitting between glossed tracers of energy. Olistole saw excognitive phosphenes representing Kela’s effecting outlying a prominent target and he utilized his effecting mentally and lifted a rock and propelled it toward/ Velor didn’t need Ikaria to see this impending collision to his temple and caught the projectile in mid-air, redirecting the geode..

Ikaria and Kela seemed busy supressing each others effecting, essentially muting precognitive intuition for each others effector/affector pair. Olistole and Velor had to resort to the metaphorical equilivent of slinging crap at each other, dumb non-precise missles. They were training for much more dangerous environments so the risk of acute blunt risk trauma wasn’t much of a bother.

The Wild Grid continually fractured back together physically, mentally, and cognitively regurgitating hazing memetic caustic embedded in cyberphysical substrates. To Olistole, this buzz on the periphery external environment intersecting with though fuzzy boundary of his conscious subjective non gestalt boundary of his mind/prefrontal cortex fizzled and spitted in a self same esq pattern that didn’t warrant any level of increased offensive meta awareness. Typically net lossless grid states didn’t indicate that there was no potential threat to Olistole as he walked through the cellular Autonoma machinated via infected programmable Pico nanomaterials Jungle that thrived on churning chaotic procedural generation clashing with itself with caustic, potent violations for variations of the laws of thermodynamics, game theory, and biological theorems.

After a few hours of the five influencers playing and training their influence for the upcoming trials they came to a natural rest and lay about idly on the landscape floating their various thoughts about. The eldritch entities that they do or do not know that exist but their belief is always wrong, observed the objective, subjective, and abstract external frame of the influencers internal subjective reality. These beings alone saw the total of potentiality across all probabilities.

Zeph rested on the side lines trailing his fingers through solid ground as the teams of an effecter and an affecter put their wits and their proficiency over their respective type of influence while he grafted the ground itself into intricate geometries while the lights seem to interact with his actions and thought only known to him, IIkaria and Kela, and god knows how many Friendly Local Neighborhood Effector Vigilantes prowling around to assert self righteous judgement and punishment

Their surroundings were dark, and it was hard to tell what flora or fauna was compared to the ever-shifting evolving landscape. The effector affecter teams from before were coupled up and talking, Zeph had his fingers knuckle deep into one of the glowing veins and was appearing to influence the ever shifting ever evolving nature of the area around him. As all things do, the social temporal superposition faded

The five influencers parted their ways after a while of idle chatting about the training session and the upcoming trials and shortly after Olistole found himself winding his way home. The darkness of the sky didn’t bother him, his eyes were adapted to it. Sometimes something malicious could be lurking in the. surroundings, internally or externally. Ever vigilant for a potential possible threat Olistole noticed a vague shape far above. The sky is always cast in a mixed green hue of auroras and this object seemed to be ascending further towards these heavens. Olistole knew that this was likely to be Dayns, his anchorite friend. Olistole wondered if he could somehow get Dayns attention from where he was standing, as an affecter he couldn’t communicate at range, so he had no choice to use his affecting just to knock the object that Dayns was in to get his attention. Olistole focused his external matrix on the slim, apparently poorly made wicker basket hot air balloon. There was a sudden but ultimately not quite unexpected result of the structure collapsing and its occupant start to plummet to the ground of Epheosia.

Olistole felt a bit guilty, but he knew that anchorite’s internal matrix was their domain, meaning that anchorites could reinforce and boost their bodies natural abilities and resilience. Dayns appeared in a tumbled heap as Olistole approached. With a crack of his back and snapping stretch of his neck, Dayns said “you do realize that was my trial run, right? Forty days of fasting and meditation for preparation and crafting the most minimal possible wicker basket hot air balloon for my holy tempering and cleansing?” Olistole felt a bit more guilty. “Can you just resit with a few days of fasting and try again” he said. Dayns casually pointed to the faint glint of the fire that was fuelling his wicker balloon as the balloon drifted off somewhere to be reclaimed by the wilds and Olistole shrugged in apology and the two friends walked back to their village together.

Dayns affect perked up when he spotted his anchorite temple and asked Olistole if he would like to visit. Olistole agreed and they both proceeded through the temple courtyard, past living gardens the training grounds, and wicker balloon workshop, approaching the shrines entrance. Meditating in the shrine in front of an open hearth with black flames was Yan, the anchorite leader. “Ah, Dayns, you are back from your ascent pretty early, what happened to your balloon?” commented Yan. Dayns replied” I starved myself for forty eons before this idiot knocked me out of the sky, do I really have to fast again before I retry my ascendance?”. Yan unfolded his limbs with cat like grace and stood up with perfect posture and poise “Unfortunately it is our way Dayn, you will have to nourish yourself before fasting again and you will have no assistance from any alters in crafting a new wicker balloon”. At this point, Olistole did feel true guilt, he had gotten in the way of his friend's trial of sustenance. All Anchorites when they came of age were to construct their own method of reaching the skies and touch the auroras which would corrode their flesh then they would descend to rejuvenate and touch the auroras repeatedly, until they had tempered their bodies and minds and strengthened their connection with their internal matrix. Olistole did not really understand why they put themselves through all that, but then again anchorites were the only type of influencer who had no will over their external environment. It made sense that they would go to extreme lengths to make the most of their own abilities.

“Yan” said Olistole, “Why do you all undergo the tempering, it seems awfully inconvenient”? Yan looked to be no older than Dayns but he carried himself with grace and coiled lethality that betrayed his years and he remarked” Mastery over the inward is its own reward, you know that the anchorite's power is the inverse of the alters, we can have an enormous influence over our own internal physiology and psychology. I can, for example, sustain myself without matter or fluid indefinitely if I needed to, only to replace damaged or lost tissue and blood. We anchorites believe that the minimal viable unit is the one closest to perfection, but we also believe in maximising the creative and actualized self, so we train and temper our minds and bodies to simplify our matrixes but to maximize our potential number of actions that we can enact in any given moment”. Yan then proceeded to turn around and hold his hand outstretched in the black flames behind him. The fire started to consume the flesh around his fingers, smiling Yan pulled his outstretched arm from the flame and turned around to hold it upright in front of Olistole and Dayns. As the two friends looked on, the anchorites flesh began to warp and bubble as soft tissue, blood vessels, and skin flowed and reformed the damaged hand with no obvious signs of previous damage.

“The temperature of that fire isn’t typically hot enough to hurt me” said Yan “The auroras are a different beast though Dayns. It could be good fortune this eon is not the time that you fully attempt your tempering, I have been trying to pass through the auroras for as long as I can remember, and they just get stronger and more dangerous the more far out you go. Nobody knows what lies past the auroras and part of our anchorite philosophy is tempering and training until our matrix is resilient and lean enough to get through into heaven. Even the strongest effector cannot sense what lies beyond Epheosia’s upper atmosphere.” Olistole briefly wondered if he could benefit from tempering as well, maybe he would join Dayns on his next journey skyward. Olistole as an affecter could dimly sense nodes in his own internal matrix but they felt dull, blurry, faint, and imprecise but if he concentrated and focused hard with his mental constructional matrix, he could sometimes achieve small feats like raising or lowing his pulse or blood temperature at will or turn his skin or hair a slightly different hue.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Published: Apr 26, 2024

The hysteria in the Ivy League does not start there. Those students shrieking Hamas slogans in the squares of New York were not radicalized overnight. It is in schools that civilization is built or destroyed. Schooling determines the calibre of a nation’s governing class, if not its ideology. This is well understood by the Left, which has transformed Western pedagogy since the 1968 publication of the third most-cited work of social science of all time, Pedagogy of the Oppressed by the Brazilian Marxist Paolo Freire. Freire’s book took the USA by storm in the 1970s, helping to decimate such tyrannical norms as the authority of the teacher over the pupil, the memorization of knowledge, and even the idea that knowledge is good for its own sake (he claimed that the sole value in teaching is to reveal the “oppressive nature of reality” to children). So, while the unholy trinity of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (D.I.E.) has enjoyed a growth spurt in the last decade, we can trace its roots back to good old-fashioned 20th century Marxism. Soviet-funded subversive ideology surviving its mother’s demise, yet again.

D.I.E. is, in turn, the mother of poor standards: dumbing down logically proceeds from the ideology of “emancipatory education,” which attacks “logocentric” (or, more recently, “Eurocentric”) knowledge for being the fruit of Dead White Male labor. This explains the lack of classroom rigor and teaching authority that underpins the appalling standards in American public schools. US literacy and numeracy scores have now dropped to their lowest level in decades. (Though there is some evidence suggesting this has partly to do with demographic changes.) This decline preceded 2020 but was undoubtedly worsened by the closure of schools during the pandemic.

But poor test scores are only part of the problem: the ideological equivalent of paranoid schizophrenia, poorly concealed by woke buzzwords like “inclusion,” now has a stranglehold on the schools. Children are being fed ideas which are not just nakedly ideological, but bewildering: there are as many genders as there are numbers and racial color-blindness is oppressive. This allegedly pastoral education eats into the time that children might otherwise spend learning a language. 

Top institutions are not invulnerable to the ideological madness and philistinism of D.I.E. In some cases, they lead the charge: flagship independent schools like Eton and its American parallel, Philipps Exeter (attended by now-disgraced Harvard President Claudine Gay), have officially DIEd a demeaning death. 

At Eton, English master Will Knowland was fired in 2020 for refusing to retract his statements in a lecture entitled “The Patriarchy Paradox,” in which he challenged the idea that masculinity is by nature toxic. In defending masculinity, Knowland sought to emancipate a classroom full of boys from the idea that their sex is irrevocably stained with the sin of “patriarchy.” Knowland’s goal – and crime – was to encourage boys to have confidence. This was too much for the school: Knowland was fired at the hands of Head Master Simon Henderson, who, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, pledged to teach a school of English boys the fanatical dogma of the American left: that society is plagued with “systemic racism” and (in a nation which abolished slavery throughout much of Africa) must be “decolonized.” 

The events in May 2020 likewise prompted a period of insanity at Phillips Exeter. “Intersectional” studies of science and race abound, as do “queer readings” of Shakespeare; most alarmingly, children are subject to cynical “anti-racist training,” based on the idea that white children are inherently racist – an idea which is sure to shatter the self-confidence of those children. 

It may sound elitist to mourn top institutions like Eton and Exeter rather than focussing on the abject conditions of state-funded schools in the Anglosphere. To that I say: yes! The health of the body politic depends on the health and caliber of its political elite. It is in any nation’s best interest to be governed by men and women who know right from wrong, are well-versed in the languages and literatures of their global allies, and conduct themselves with responsibility rather than racially motivated neurosis or self-victimization. At the very least, can’t politicians possess the basic knowledge required to do their jobs? It seems not: last month, it was revealed that the chief secretary to the Treasury in the UK, educated at top grammar school Oxted and Pembroke College, Oxford, doesn’t know how to interpret statistical data. 

But education isn’t just instrumental. Knowledge may be power, but it is also true “emancipation.” The perversion of D.I.E is that it removes the real freedom which excellence and emotional robustness gives children, shackling them with poor-quality learning and a host of neuroses. This particularly betrays children from unstable backgrounds, whom D.I.E. claims to help. The distress which anti-colorblind dogma brings children is palpable: parents have reported that their children leave classrooms in tears because they are white, therefore monstrous oppressors. Chaya Raichik, known for her Twitter account “LibsofTikTok,” has drawn attention to dozens of cases of overt anti-white propaganda in American schools, many of which are elementary schools; typical occurrences include schools hosting playdates which exclude white children. Despite her primary tactic being to simply repost content which teachers and schools willingly publish themselves, Raichik has come under fire for “inciting hatred” (as a glance over her outrageously partisan Wikipedia page reveals). Since her platform has such a wide reach, her critics claim she is irresponsibly drawing attention to humble elementary school teachers; it doesn’t occur to them that these teachers should probably restrain themselves from posting about their ideological schemes on TikTok, the most popular mobile app in the USA.

Perhaps even more pressing is the explosion of transgenderism in schools. As a recently censored study shows, “rapid onset gender dysphoria” is a real and growing phenomenon. The contagious nature of trans identities contradicts the claim that these identities are innate; evidence of exploding numbers of insecure, pubescent children identifying as transgender in social clusters shows otherwise. 

The social contagion effect in schools is compounded by ideologically driven teachers who work to alienate parents from their children by concealing and abetting their young pupils’ new identities. In April 2022, Chaya Raichik exposed footage of an 8th grade English teacher in Owasso, Oklahoma, who stated in a video "If your parents don't accept you for who you are, f*ck them. I'm your parents now. I'm proud of you. Drink some water. I love you." Tyler Wrynn, the teacher in question, is far from alone in his stated mission to “emancipate” children from parents who are concerned that their children might seek out and access cross-sex hormonal therapy, which risks sterilization and myriad permanent ailments. In this way, D.I.E. in schools poses a threat to fundamental unit of society which overwhelmingly determines outcomes for children: the nuclear family.

[ Katherine Birbalsingh. ]

Parents are waking up. Demand is growing for classical schools where great books will be devoured rather than dismissed as relics of a world of Dead White Men. Schools which champion the principles of authority, stability, order, and emotional fortitude are already boasting unusual academic success and good discipline: Michaela Community School in London, run by the effervescent Katherine Birbalsingh, is a testament to how strict authority can transform the prospects of children who come from deprived, largely nonwhite backgrounds. Birbalsingh discourages the victimhood mentality which is typical of Generation Z, eschewing appeals to “mitigated circumstances” if homework is late.

Often described by the British press as the “strictest school in Britain,” Michaela attained among the best GCSE results (the rough British equivalent of the Iowa tests) in the country in its very first student cohort. In 2022 and 2023 the school boasted the highest “value-added” (or progress) score in the country, all while autocratically banning mobile phones and making it compulsory to sing the National Anthem. In Alberta, Canada, Caylan Ford (who has written incisively about the pernicious philosophy underpinning Freire’s Pedagogy) has been overwhelmed by the demand for her newly-founded classical charter school, Calgary Classical Academy. The Great Hearts School network, exploding across the American southwest, is another heartwarming example.

Stuffy, strict, concerned parents: take stock. You are not alone.

[ao3sakari]

In a Resident Evil AU set in the Zootopia universe, what animals would Chreon be?

I had a random idea about Chreon working in the R.P.D. as Zootopia animals bubble up, and I'm so curious to see what animals the fandom would imagine them (or any other RE characters) to be.

I'm not sure if the 500-word intro that I drabbled out will ever become more, but it can be read under the cut.

First animals that came to my mind was Leon as a wallaroo (smaller kangaroo, herbivore prey animal, has a powerful kick), and Chris as some sort of big predator cat. Tell me your thoughts 💚💙

Also, I'm giggling at this dumb equus joke:

“How can I join STARS?” Leon looks over his shoulder to glance at the strapping zebra asking the question. “Now, now, hold your horses,” the presenter says.

Nestled in between mountain ranges, bends of rivers and sprawling woods is a citified span of land called Raccoon City, named after the one native animal of the region that was shrewd enough to thrive across all the various rocky, wet, and leafy habitats of the surrounding area. Conveniently located where the differing terrains intersected and easily accessible for all the diverse fauna in the area, Raccoon City became a popular hub for inter-species trade and eventually developed into an urban centre where creatures and critters of all shapes and sizes could live together in harmony. “Today, Raccoon City is seen as a beacon of hope for peaceful coexistence across the entire animal kingdom. However, while most see the benefits and synergies of inter-kingdom cooperation, there are still wildlife that prefer the feral way of life and see the commingling of species as a threat.” The primate delivering the presentation jabs his pointer stick at the projector screen displaying a photograph of an untamed tiger bearing its viciously sharp teeth at a bird caught in mid-flight. Leon fights off the shudder that threatens to shoot down his spine at the sight of that wide maw, an evolutionary response of the predation instinct. Seated all around him are other fresh police academy graduates, arranged from front row to back row by size. Leon sees a waterbird in the front row ruffle its feathers, shaking from beak to tail, and is glad he’d spent so much time on desensitization training so that he wouldn’t be caught trembling in his boots. Despite it being a natural reaction, a cop quaking with fear just doesn’t inspire much confidence in the public eye. The presenter advances the slide deck using his remote clicker, and the room rustles with excitement over the next picture. STARS really needs no introduction. Everyone can recognize their distinctive forest green tactical gear, if not the unmistakable crest proudly emblazoned on the sleeves. Still, the primate brandishes his pointer stick at the screen again, saying, “The R.P.D.’s STARS division protects Raccoon City against the beasts looking to disturb the peace of our citizens.” He clicks to the next slide, opening his mouth to continue his presentation, when he’s interrupted by a question from the back. “How can I join STARS?” Leon looks over his shoulder to glance at the strapping zebra asking the question. “Now, now, hold your horses,” the presenter says, waving off the question and directing everyone’s attention back to the projector screen. “There are two paths rookie officers can pursue: Traffic Services and the Emergency Services Unit. Only after your first year on the force can you apply to other policing units. Now, STARS, in particular, is a division where candidates are scouted; only officers with a recommendation from a STARS captain are invited to apply. Do your best to protect and serve, and you just might catch the eye of STARS.” The zebra in the back row gives a braying sigh in response.

[frances-kafka]

The big thing with Cause-and-Adjacency becoming a dominant social logic, is that we dominantly meet online now, downstream from SEO and marketing algorithms. And there is almost no separation between grass-touch life and the internet anymore. So whatever you do in the 3d world, is going to have a feedback loop with the internet. To extend the dumb example I used again, about "the railroad fandom" being an intersection of WWII Nazis, train autists, New Urbanists (many examples possible, but limiting the field for simplicity's sake): In the 1980s, if you were in a third space dealing with Train Fandom as a topic, it was a *very different experience* from dealing with Train Fandom online.

(I was not part of train fandom, but I was part of other spaces this applies to.) One big thing is that the third space in question may in fact be under Robert's Rules of Order, or have to default to the "house rules" of wherever it's being hosted. And there is a certain amount of stuff that people just weren't going to say right to another person's face. You are also having participants in your space, in an in-person third space, sorted by area. (This has plusses and minuses. It's great if you fit into your area and it's terrible if you don't. But a big thing is that the more extreme people aren't actually going to physical spaces, where I live. Your Mileage May Vary.)

You meet the people you like, you leave with the people you like.

Modern internet interaction *isn't like this.*

Anything within the latent space of a thing you're into, will get spammed into your face. The only real surefire way to avoid Nazis for example is to have a rule about contamination; if Nazis even like this thing, it's not "safe." SEO will drive the Nazis to wherever you are if you like *anything* that shares a latent space with Nazis.

You either have to keep running until you find something they are categorically Not Into or you have to somehow learn to interact in a space that contains Nazis (which can include all kinds of strategies, but none of them will 100% remove Nazis from your existence.) This is downstream of SEO and marketing silos, and is a massive failure mode of most of our life being online. Radicalization pipelines worked differently before the internet.

Web 2 has actually created a public world where nothing can even be engaged.

1980s talk shows' formats of doing hard hitting investigative journalism or interviewing Nazis or what have you, couldn't really exist in this context because we've come to see "sharing latent space" (being in the same room) as a broad social taboo and under the New Social Rules, even arguing is platforming. But I think a chunk of this is downstream of SEO and of internet-first social interaction, because of how much post-Web 2 online interaction *does* require a bit of an eggshell walk. Unfortunately, it means there is a massive amount of stuff that can't really be talked about in the open. And we have lost a half century of work done just to secure that very thing, to get people talking in the open about real problems. And for the most part, now, you just can't talk about anything.

Web 2 has turned every conversation into a contextless public square argument between people that, in the past, you could just... not invite to your space.

[rottenbrainstuff]

…the fuck? I live close to train tracks so it’s not uncommon to hear a train horn when dumb drivers are not clearing the intersection, but just now I heard an old-timey steam whistle. I looked outside and some old black locomotive is chugging down the tracks.

[luneevenfall]

Camp nano day 9

I always keep writing like, until 10-15 minutes before midnight and go "OH CRAP I HAVE TO UPDATE ON NANO OR IT'LL BE COUNTED AS TOMORROW!" lol

so anyways, a little lower but still 7k today! I'm at the point of the story where shit is easy to write (lots to do lots to see)

I'm not even sure what scene to do for this one, but since I've been pretty consistently posting lesbicious longing I decided that this will just be my theme. That or lesbicious suffering!

“Hina, are you alright?” “Hm, what do you mean?” Hina questioned as she tilted her head. “You’ve just been kinda… quiet since we left the ramen place.” “Oh, that?” Hina waved her free hand at Ayumu dismissively. “It’s nothing, I’m just a bit tired.” It was something. She wanted to ask about her birthday. Was she really going to be so much of a coward that she’d delegate that to asking over texts? It’d be so much better if she asked in person. “If… if you say so. If there is anything, don’t feel afraid to speak up.” Ayumu reassured her, reaching her free arm over to pat Hina’s head on top of the cap; it was a bit awkward with the way they were walking, but she appreciated the gesture nonetheless, cozying up to Ayumu the whole way. “Don’t worry, it’s… really nothing. I’m… really happy we did this. Even if it was a bit silly.” Hina couldn’t help but smile timidly as she looked down at their feet, down their bodies, still pretty amused at what she saw. “It was pretty dumb. But hey, I actually kinda like this outfit. I’m keeping it.” Hina was incredibly happy to hear it. “What about you?” “I’ll keep it. Though I still do think I look like a kid trying to be cool and failing.” Hina couldn’t help but laugh at herself as she looked down her body; it just felt a little surreal. “Trust me, you don’t look like that at all.” Ayumu looked towards the night sky, refusing to face her. “In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you wore stuff like this all the time. You look like a model.” Hina blushed, unable to form a good reply to something like that, instead moving her hand down Ayumu’s arm to hold onto her hand, locking their fingers together. There was no hesitation and neither of them made any move to stop it. Touching each other had become entirely too natural. Surely, they just looked like friends to most others, especially right now; no one would see two girls holding hands and find anything strange by it. That’s what she told herself, at least. That this was still just “friendship”. She sighed to herself ever softly, but Ayumu seemed to notice, holding her hand a little tighter. “Are you… really sure you’re ok?” “Yes… I’m fine. Sorry. I think I just need to get back and sleep.” They had been stalling this entire time, but finally they arrived at the station. Well, perhaps it wasn’t “finally” in her mind, but “already”. How splendid it wouldn’t be for them to just spend an eternity, just the two of them, with nothing else in the way. If such a world existed, perhaps right now, they would call each other more than friends.

And yet, the world was not so simple, for they had expectations put onto them. There were restrictions that they followed. If they had not been idols, would it have been different? The train was surprisingly empty, and it was mostly just the two of them; Hina was mostly left alone with her thoughts as they sat down in the seats, leaning on each other. All that kept her company in her reverie was the rustling sound of the train on the rails, and the warmth of Ayumu’s shoulder against hers. She watched the night sky through the windows across the aisle, as the scenery passed them by. Ayumu’s hand never left hers, even as they got up to leave the train, only briefly parting to walk out through the ticket gates on the other end. They walked until they came upon that familiar intersection. Hina stood still for a moment, shuffling on her feet, not wanting to let go of Ayumu’s hand. “It’s late.” Ayumu finally spoke up, as if drawing attention to the fact that they were just standing there without letting go of each other. “Mhmm.” Hina hummed in response, turning her gaze down to look at their hands. “We… should really go home…” “… Yeah.” Ayumu finally let go, albeit very slowly. Hina felt a little lonely, even though she knew that they had to. The urge to ask to go to her house was huge; if she did, what would happen? Instead, she watched as Ayumu turned around; her silhouette looked beautiful in the moonlight, the new outfit enhancing her slender frame. “Goodnight, Ayumu.” “Goodnight. I’ll see you… at practice.” Hina watched her go, until she turned the corner; that was when Hina finally pulled the jacket around her body, feeling the cold seeping in as she made her way back home. If only she had even the smallest little smidgen of courage in her body, she would’ve probably had the ability to move forward with this relationship. Instead of that, however, she walked this path home. Alone.

Oh, the miseryyyyy

I think tumblr found the excerpt too long so I had to split the indentation pls don't look at it too hard

[sunshinemakesmesleepy]

Dude as someone who’s been on the inception train for god knows how long, and JUST got into leverage bc my partners finally forced me to watch it (we just finished season one) this hits the nail right on the fucking head.

Like I love inception, and like a lot of other things that Christopher Nolan has worked on, it has very good bones. Which is why there is an abundance of fanfic that goes into all of the things that the movie didn’t go into. Because you could argue that there’s a difference. That in leverage the mark almost always knows they’ve been conned. And that’s what makes it satisfying. But with inception, the whole point is that they slip in and then slip out unseen. That once they leave nobody knows they were even there. And while the “it’s tech bros talking about ai, without taking a moment to realize that while the ai can do something, that doesn’t mean it’s done well” thing is very very relevant because at the end of the day the reason there is so much fanfic for that movies is because there are parts of it that aren’t explored, I think that that in itself is a sort of the point of the movie itself. It’s a tool that was made by the military to extract secrets from people and to help train them for combat. People who were more interested in the more complex and fluid sides of dreaming then took that tech and ran with it. And so the system of how extraction is done, the reason why it is done, and how people get away with it is very mechanical and systematic in nature. Because it has to do with the long term effects of manipulating the inner most parts of the subconscious mind.

That being said, it is a very tech bro perspective on the subconscious, dreaming, and the manipulation of people’s psyche. But honestly I think that’s kinda part of the point. That these insanely rich people in their little mc mansions are almost detached from humanity and so a systematic slow methodical approach that creeps up on them and dissects them from the inside out to get information that really matters. Outside of money and morality. But it’s obvious with how Cobb and Mal ended up limbo, and the role her father has in this entire story that there are alot of things about dreamscapes and dreaming with the pasiv that have yet to be tapped into. And so it makes sense the methodology would be brutal. Simplistic and yet impractical, and that’s the whole point.

Do I think Nolan consciously was thinking about all of this as he was writing? No. But he’s the type of filmmaker where even he when he might have a sweat in viewpoint or option he wants to try to push, he can and will put it aside to make a good story and to be true to his characters and the actors who play them.

So it is very funny to see two perspectives, who methodologies of theft and manipulation out side by side, because ironically leverage is more realistic. Rich people are dumb. Law enforcement is dumb. And that the best way to combat a corrupt system is to not confine yourself to what said system deems “lawful” and “just”.

And yet inception treats the subconscious like a maze and the world of dreaming and dreamscapes as an art form rather than an exact science. Or more so it’s the intersection of the two. Forgers are actors, with a side of criminal psych, and the ability to physically manipulate yourself and the things around you as if you were a sculpture. Or an oil painting. Whoever’s on point is basically just a stage manager who’s also the dramaturge, and a pa. All jobs in the arts.

Architects walk the line between math and design, and you have to be decent at both to get anything done, in real life and in dreams. And then the chemist obviously is working dangerously experimental chemicals, but even then, it’s more so along the lines of how many people say psychiatry is more of an art than a science at times, from how the drug is delivered to the physical and artistic method of delivering a successful “kick”.

And the extractor? An extractor is a glorified psychologist with a side of con artist and children’s party magician who basically has to gain the trust and confidence of their subject to get jack shit done.

Obviously, Nolan only gave us the bare bones of all of that, and even then all of these “roles” are a lot more sterile in actuality, but their basis is in the arts and psychology and emotion really is in direct contrast to the emotionless corporate money focused nature of what a lot of these “dream jobs” entail. Not to mention how’s cobs emotional instability and general repression and denial surrounding his wife’s death and all that’s come afterwards does end up almost being more powerful then anything and everything they prepared and or planned for, because it’s vulnerability is so powerful. So dangerous.

Using the pasiv is supposed to be incredibly inefficient. Because the point is less about the extraction itself and that the people who are employing dreamers to extract information want it to be virtually untraceable, specifically to the public eye. They want their adversaries to either be confused and lost or unable to cast public blame, because they can’t tell anyone about the pasiv, or dreaming, or extractions. Because then that sort of thing would loose its unsuspecting nature and exclusivity, which is why it’s highly sought after in sensitive situations.

So yes, inception, and by extension extraction, through dreaming and custom crafting dreamscapes is very tech bro “ai is gonna replace us all because it can do everything super fast all at once”, but that’s kinda the whole point. And it’s why the movie is so fascinating. Because dreaming is almost like a strange dying art form, that can be used in so many strange and dangerous ways, from Yusuf’s dream den, to how Cobb was introduced by Mal’s dad in the context of bringing his architectural designs to life, to the jobs Cobb, Arthur, Eames, and even Yusuf, have been doing for years at this point.

But yeah. The side by side comparison is insane.

Okay to clarify I like the movie inception, it's fun and it's well done

BUT

As someone who grew up on Leverage, the concept sends me into hysterical laughter.

Like the Inception writers are all like "in order to change someone's mind you must physically go deep into into their psyche and alter it with your own hands"

And I'm like... have you never manipulated someone in your life?

Nate Ford got a man to change his password to Badger35 just by stealing his highschool reunion. Gave a man a nosebleed with the power of his mind.

Sophie plants ideas in peoples heads all the day long with naught but words. She trained Elliot to make her tea just by tapping his arm.

Like the concept of inception feels to me like those tech bros, you know? The ones that say "I made an AI that can write full movie scripts in ten minutes" and then anyone who knows anything is like "yeah but they're literal shit?"

Like someone watched a master manipulator do their thing and change the mind of a person and was like "I bet I could do this with technology" and they proceeded to make the worst possible deathtrap option for that.