#and compartmentalization

[thekimspoblog]

"Blinded by the puss" means he doesn't know her well enough to meaningfully care about her, idiots! He wasn't skeptical before smashing. Did you people learn nothing from Westworld?

[runawaymarbles]

The midjourney stuff just reminds of when we were trying to find a new platform to host the ao3 donation form, and companies kept trying to tell me about all their "ai" features that would track donor engagement, and figure out the optimal pattern to email individual donors asking for follow up donations, and all the ways they suggest we manipulate people into staying on our websites. It was a great way to filter out who either wasn't listening to us when we described our ethics and donor base, or just didn't believe us.

Now granted ao3 is a unique case based on a) the amount of page views we get in any given time period and b) the fact that most donors absolutely do Not want to be identified as such anywhere, (the default "list of recent donors" module got nuked Immediately) but it surprised me some that the concept of "donors who value their privacy and would be furious at even the whiff of AI" is unique. Some of us really are just existing in different worlds.

[smatterbrained]

That’s the problem with enemies-to-lovers, sometimes the nightmares are about you

[prideprejudce]

this whole oceangate submarine fiasco has actually led to a lot of interesting talks and debates about the grey area of human empathy vs the inclination to recoil at the bizarre behaviors of the ultra wealthy and how people struggle with both ideas and is actually very interesting to watch play out in different types of people

[mysticclementine]

Master of Compartmentalization

(OLDER WORK REPOSTED) So I actually just got a new tablet and I am really struggling with the learning curve so all my art looks like shit rn, have this angst comic I made like a year ago instead lol I never ended up making the happier ending part 2 to this... maybe I will get around to it soon?

[asphodelles]

i got the veilguard art book a couple months ago and decided to do a design study based on the mourn watch visdev during my 2 week winter break. i used my player character as a test dummy

[exutrio]

orym and dorian in c3 x 120: "the red end"

[starmieknight]

Was thinking about Stan's habit of grabbing his chest when he's scared and then thought about what if he did end up having a heart attack or something after Ford came back. Like, he's been stressed for ages and now he's gotta worry about Ford potentially getting the kids into something dangerous like he did and where he's gonna go after the kids leave and what he's gonna do without the Shack.

Maybe it hits him in the middle of tour or something. Like, he's been feeling off all day and looks kinda ragged so maybe Soos is keeping close and sees him go down. At first, people think it's part of the tour or some typical Stan gag. And then he doesn't laugh or try to play it up for money. So the twins run down to the basement to get Ford.

He's kinda annoyed that his planning time's been interrupted by Stanley's antics, but the twins seem genuinely upset so he goes to check it out. And finds out Soos and Wendy called an ambulance and there really IS a problem. Then he kinda disconnects from the situation. Like, he's panicking internally but this isn't the first major medical situation he's been in. So he calmly gets the kids (Soos and Wendy included) into Stan's car and follows the ambulance to the hospital. He's the one wrangling the kids while they freak out and asking all the questions to the doctors and nurses about Stan's condition. He can't take time to worry about his brother because he's got a bunch of kids to reassure and they're all looking to him because he's the eldest person there. He's an old man with all the answers in the universe. If anyone can tell them Stan's gonna be okay, it's gonna be Mr. 12 PhDs.

Except... he doesn't.

He doesn't know anything about his brother's medical history past the age of seventeen. Dipper's the one to mention Stan's medication and Mabel knows his diet and Soos and Wendy know about his boxing hobby and work schedule. Ford has a hazy memory about Stan chewing his way out of a trunk once.

He starts thinking about how Stan's the only family he has left. Sure, the twins are there, but they don't really know each other. Shermie and his son are just over the state line in California, but they don't know who he is anymore. Stanley's been wearing his face for years and they never seemed to notice. His parents are dead. Fiddleford is 30 years in the wind.

Stanley's the only one who truly knows him. Knows about his deepest insecurities and childhood dreams. Who knows his favorite books and comic book heroes. About his first disastrous date and the kissing bot. About how badly things had gone for him and been at his doorstep only a couple of days after receiving a single postcard after 10 years of silence.

And Ford knows nothing of the man Stanley became. Stanley doesn't know how Ford has changed. How he's trying SO HARD to fix his mistakes.

And suddenly being so angry over some paltry little machine doesn't seem so important. Ford's the one who built a doomsday device.

He's still angry with Stanley taking his identity, but what does it matter if no one noticed? Sure, Stan got him a criminal record, but he made one of his own in the multiverse. Their family has always leaned to the gray side of the law.

And now they may never get the chance to know each other again. 40 years without each other and the pain of potentially losing Stanley cuts Stanford so deep he feels like he's the one dying.

So he sits in that cold hospital waiting room, four hysterical kids surrounding him, and wears a straight face while his world falls apart around him.

If you lose your parents, they call you an orphan.

If you lose your twin, they don't stop calling you a brother.

[ifellintothestyx]

It will never not be funny to me that in Thousand Autumns, Shen Qiao is just the one normal, reasonable person while everyone else is living in a classic Wuxia drama

Basically every book conversation is just this:

Yu Ai: I had to poison you because you disagreed with everything I said, so I deemed you an incapable and naive sect leader! You would bring Mt. Xuandu to ruin!

Shen Qiao: I'm sorry, "had" to? We could've talked things out, y'know, like how normal people settle disagreements, but no, poison was clearly the only option left. You "had" to poison me. Right.

---

Yan Wushi: You and I are diametrically opposed. You are weak and undeserving of my attention. You fail to live up to my expectations and bring shame upon your master's legacy. Why would I need a friend like you so presume?

Shen Qiao: I didn't say you needed one, just that that's what I call you. You literally followed me around for months, ate with me, sparred with me, saved my life, and opened my eyes to the outside world... What on earth did you want me to call you that wouldn't be rude?

(Honestly knowing YWS's melodramatic ass, SQ probably just went through a mental list of statuses you could give to someone based on their proximity, realized that YWS is very much an outlier and also very much particular about his titles and general importance, picked "friend" as the safest option.)

---

Chen Gong: You look down on me because I'm from poor origins and never had the background or pedigree that you did so you disdain my methods!

Shen Qiao: ... You are holding. A child. Hostage. Literally every time I've met you you're doing something that doesn't agree with my morals and endangering human life. I genuinely do not care about your background, you just happen to be doing something I don't agree with and also tends to end up becoming my problem.

(No really, CG has like such a massive unrequited hatred for SQ while SQ is just lamenting that they somehow always end up meeting at the worst times in the worst places)

---

Half of the characters: Look how lowly you've become! From sect leader to boy toy! Everyone point and laugh!

Shen Qiao: Harsh but true, I suppose. Oh well, I should get back to what I'm doing.

[deathandnonexistentialdread]

No one talks about this enough but props to my boy Jonouchi for going through the five stages in record time

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Antiusurpation and the road to disenshittification

THIS WEEKEND (November 8-10), I'll be in TUCSON, AZ: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

Nineties kids had a good reason to be excited about the internet's promise of disintermediation: the gatekeepers who controlled our access to culture, politics, and opportunity were crooked as hell, and besides, they sucked.

For a second there, we really did get a lot of disintermediation, which created a big, weird, diverse pluralistic space for all kinds of voices, ideas, identities, hobbies, businesses and movements. Lots of these were either deeply objectionable or really stupid, or both, but there was also so much cool stuff on the old, good internet.

Then, after about ten seconds of sheer joy, we got all-new gatekeepers, who were at least as bad, and even more powerful, than the old ones. The net became Tom Eastman's "Five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four." Culture, politics, finance, news, and especially power have been gathered into the hands of unaccountable, greedy, and often cruel intermediaries.

Oh, also, we had an election.

This isn't an election post. I have many thoughts about the election, but they're still these big, unformed blobs of anger, fear and sorrow. Experience teaches me that the only way to get past this is to just let all that bad stuff sit for a while and offgas its most noxious compounds, so that I can handle it safely and figure out what to do with it.

While I wait that out, I'm just getting the job done. Chop wood, carry water. I've got a book to write, Enshittification, for Farar, Straus, Giroux's MCD Books, and it's very nearly done:

https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Adoctorow+%23dailywords&src=typed_query&f=live

Compartmentalizing my anxieties and plowing that energy into productive work isn't necessarily the healthiest coping strategy, but it's not the worst, either. It's how I wrote nine books during the covid lockdowns.

And sometimes, when you're not staring directly at something, you get past the tunnel vision that makes it impossible to see its edges, fracture lines, and weak points.

So I'm working on the book. It's a book about platforms, because enshittification is a phenomenon that is most visible and toxic on platforms. Platforms are intermediaries, who connect buyers and sellers, creators and audiences, workers and employers, politicians and voters, activists and crowds, as well as families, communities, and would-be romantic partners.

There's a reason we keep reinventing these intermediaries: they're useful. Like, it's technically possible for a writer to also be their own editor, printer, distributor, promoter and sales-force:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation

But without middlemen, those are the only writers we'll get. The set of all writers who have something to say that I want to read is much larger than the set of all writers who are capable of running their own publishing operation.

The problem isn't middlemen: the problem is powerful middlemen. When an intermediary gets powerful enough to usurp the relationship between the parties on either side of the transaction, everything turns to shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/direct-the-problem-of-middlemen/

A dating service that faces pressure from competition, regulation, interoperability and a committed workforce will try as hard as it can to help you find Your Person. A dating service that buys up all its competitors, cows its workforce, captures its regulators and harnesses IP law to block interoperators will redesign its service so that you keep paying forever, and never find love:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2024/02/13/1228749143/the-dating-app-paradox-why-dating-apps-may-be-worse-than-ever

Multiply this a millionfold, in every sector of our complex, high-tech world where we necessarily rely on skilled intermediaries to handle technical aspects of our lives that we can't – or shouldn't – manage ourselves. That world is beholden to predators who screw us and screw us and screw us, jacking up our rents:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/yes-there-are-antitrust-voters-in

Cranking up the price of food:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/04/dont-let-your-meat-loaf/#meaty-beaty-big-and-bouncy

And everything else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

(Maybe this is a post about the election after all?)

The difference between a helpmeet and a parasite is power. If we want to enjoy the benefits of intermediaries without the risks, we need policies that keep middlemen weak. That's the opposite of the system we have now.

Take interoperability and IP law. Interoperability (basically, plugging new things into existing things) is a really powerful check against powerful middlemen. If you rely on an ad-exchange to fund your newsgathering and they start ripping you off, then an interoperable system that lets you use a different exchange will not only end the rip off – it'll make it less likely to happen in the first place because the ad-tech platform will be afraid of losing your business:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

Interoperability means that when a printer company gouges you on ink, you can buy cheap third party ink cartridges and escape their grasp forever:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Interoperability means that when Amazon rips off audiobook authors to the tune of $100m, those authors can pull their books from Amazon and sell them elsewhere and know that their listeners can move their libraries over to a different app:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

But interoperability has been in retreat for 40 years, as IP law has expanded to criminalize otherwise normal activities, so that middlemen can use IP rights to protect themselves from their end-users and business customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

That's what I mean when I say that "IP" is "any law that lets a business reach beyond its own walls and control the actions of its customers, competitors and critics."

For example, there's a pernicious law 1998 US law that I write about all the time, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the "anticircumvention law." This is a law that felonizes tampering with copyright locks, even if you are the creator of the undelying work.

So Amazon – the owner of the monopoly audiobook platform Audible – puts a mandatory copyright lock around every audiobook they sell. I, as an author who writes, finances and narrates the audiobook, can't provide you, my customer, with a tool to remove that lock. If I do so, I face criminal sanctions: a five year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offense:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/25/can-you-hear-me-now/#acx-ripoff

In other words: if I let you take my own copyrighted work out of Amazon's app, I commit a felony, with penalties that are far stiffer than the penalties you would face if you were to simply pirate that audiobook. The penalties for you shoplifting the audiobook on CD at a truck-stop are lower than the penalties the author and publisher of the book would face if they simply gave you a tool to de-Amazon the file. Indeed, even if you hijacked the truck that delivered the CDs, you'd probably be looking at a shorter sentence.

This is a law that is purpose-built to encourage intermediaries to usurp the relationship between buyers and sellers, creators and audiences. It's a charter for parasitism and predation.

But as bad as that is, there's another aspect of DMCA 1201 that's even worse: the exemptions process.

You might have read recently about the Copyright Office "freeing the McFlurry" by granting a DMCA 1201 exemption for companies that want to reverse-engineer the error-codes from McDonald's finicky, unreliable frozen custard machines:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

Under DMCA 1201, the Copyright Office hears petitions for these exemptions every three years. If they judge that anticircumvention law is interfering with some legitimate activity, the statute empowers them to grant an exemption.

When the DMCA passed in 1998 (and when the US Trade Rep pressured other world governments into passing nearly identical laws in the decades that followed), this exemptions process was billed as a "pressure valve" that would prevent abuses of anticircumvention law.

But this was a cynical trick. The way the law is structured, the Copyright Office can only grant "use" exemptions, but not "tools" exemptions. So if you are granted the right to move Audible audiobooks into a third-party app, you are personally required to figure out how to do that. You have to dump the machine code of the Audible app, decompile it, scan it for vulnerabilities, and bootstrap your own jailbreaking program to take Audible wrapper off the file.

No one is allowed to help you with this. You aren't allowed to discuss any of this publicly, or share a tool that you make with anyone else. Doing any of this is a potential felony.

In other words, DMCA 1201 gives intermediaries power over you, but bans you from asking an intermediary to help you escape another abusive middleman.

This is the exact opposite of how intermediary law should work. We should have rules that ban intermediaries from exercising undue power over the parties they serve, and we should have rules empowering intermediaries to erode the advantage of powerful intermediaries.

The fact that the Copyright Office grants you an exemption to anticircumvention law means nothing unless you can delegate that right to an intermediary who can exercise it on your behalf.

A world without publishing intermediaries is one in which the only writers who thrive are the ones capable of being publishers, too, and that's a tiny fraction of all the writers with something to say.

A world without interoperability intermediaries is one in which the only platform users who thrive are also skilled reverse-engineering ninja hackers – and that's an infinitesimal fraction of the platform users who would benefit from interoperabilty.

Let this be your north star in evaluating platform regulation proposals. Platform regulation should weaken intermediaries' powers over their users, and strengthen their power over other middlemen.

Put in this light, it's easy to see why the ill-informed calls to abolish Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which makes platform users, not platforms, responsible for most unlawful speech) are so misguided:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

If we require platforms to surveil all user speech and block anything that might violate any law, we give the largest, most powerful platforms a permanent advantage over smaller, better platforms, run by co-ops, hobbyists, nonprofits local governments, and startups. The big platforms have the capital to rig up massive, automated surveillance and censorship systems, and the only alternatives that can spring up have to be just as big and powerful as the Big Tech platforms we're so desperate to escape:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/23/evacuate-the-platforms/#let-the-platforms-burn

This is especially grave given the current political current, where fascist politicians are threatening platforms with brutal punishments for failing to censor disfavored political views.

Anyone who tells you that "it's only censorship when the government does it" is badly confused. It's only a First Amendment violation when the government does it, sure – but censorship has always relied on intermediaries. From the Inquisition to the Comics Code, government censors were only able to do their jobs because powerful middlemen, fearing state punishments, blocked anything that might cross the line, censoring far beyond the material actually prohibited by the law:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/22/self-censorship/#hugos

We live in a world of powerful, corrupt middlemen. From payments to real-estate, from job-search to romance, there's a legion of parasites masquerading as helpmeets, burying their greedy mouthparts into our tender flesh:

https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/visas-hidden-tax-on-americans

But intermediaries aren't the problem. You shouldn't have to stand up your own payment processor, or learn the ins and outs of real-estate law, or start your own single's bar. The problem is power, not intermediation.

As we set out to build a new, good internet (with a lot less help from the US government than seemed likely as recently as last week), let's remember that lesson: the point isn't disintermediation, it's weak intermediation.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/07/usurpers-helpmeets/#disreintermediation

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

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en (Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

[universitysunflowers]

Dedra Merro is either

1) about to have a crisis of faith unlike anything we’ve ever seen or

2) she’s going to become one of the worst fascist leaders ever portrayed in modern media

[pokeberry5]

something like tim convinces himself that robin has to be a Boy™ and then steph becomes robin and shatters that conviction and all his repressed gender feelings come spilling out, but actually letting go of that conviction isn’t all that easy

if there's no homoerotic tension between you and the manifestation of your alter-ego that you’ve constructed in your mind, do you really have identity issues?

closeups + refs (leyendecker) + bonus:

[vaguely-concerned]

lucanis' last question when interrogating zara's corpse -- whether illario also asked her to kill caterina -- is so telling. because if illario had done that, I actually do think lucanis would have killed him. (his standards are predictably wild and hilarious in a dark sort of way. listen I can forgive you for killing me that's fine understandable even but there's a limit to everything illario.) which is why he saves that question for last: it's the one thing he really does not want to know the answer to. because if the answer is yes, it's going to need action from him that would be so psychologically catastrophic that nothing the ossuary could do to him would compare, that would have been the end of him too, I feel, even with rook and the team there to try to catch him or pick up the pieces. I love how if you pay attention you can trace out the underlying hurt/logic already here, before it gets spelled out in inner demons. the logic lucanis' brain operates on is very sad and very consistent the whole way throughout the game.

[wistfulwatcher]

3.18 The Crossing | 17.04 Kingdom of the Blind

[seagreenstardust]

I cannot believe the canon bkdk dynamic though.

Katsuki, completely whipped, 100% on board to spend the rest of his life with Izuku, living the dream as heroes.

Izuku, completely oblivious to his own worth, oblivious to how Katsuki really feels about him now, just so oblivious to it all.