#and the video was essentially formatted like

[terresdebrume]

There's a not insignificant chance I'll get to open a DND club at my school so I made these quick charts to help. They're made to be printed in A5 format, and if anyone is interested I can try and put a link to the PDF version on drive.

First image covers the type and names of dice. Image 2 explains ability scores, img 3 explains what modifiers, HP, AC, Proficiency, DC saving throw & death save mean.

Image 4 & 5 are also lists of words but they have a big red logo with white axes in it. Img 4 explains flanking, advantage, disadvantage, melee range, critical hit/fail, area of effect and ranged spell attack. Img 5 explains the elements of combat: Initiative, what a Round is, movement, action, bonus action, reaction, attack of opportunity.

My next step is to make one of these per class to help players remember their main level 1 features and main rolls, but that's probably going to have to wait until later.

This effort was inspired by GinnyDi's video about how to help new players like the game on YouTube. Please reblog if this seems useful to you!

ETA: There are now two more booklets in this collection: The Little Book of Level 1 has all the essential mechanics of each class, and Conditions, conditions, conditions! Sums up all possible conditions in the game. You can find them through the pinned post on my blog :)

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

In what ways would you change Yuu (or would you get rid of them entirely)? The writing feels inconsistent on their place/importance. If they were just a conduit for the player to watch the events unfold that's one thing but in another story they are an active player.

I'd personally play into the beastamer aspect more. They are supposedly the reason why Ace, Deuce, and Grim were able to work together thus I'd want them to have more agency in making plans, giving orders, etc. Rook calls them Trickster but in what way (lol). The vagueness of being a self insert pains me. I'd also want to give them some magically infused weapon (or has a magestone embedded) just so they aren't fodder or sideline material.

Mmm… As much as I dislike the blank slate self-insertiness of Yuu (I’d prefer to read about an actually realized character), I wouldn’t want to get rid of them altogether. I think they’re important for the role they serve in the narrative even if in execution is inconsistent and not done well.

The problem with “changing” Yuu is that there has to be a certain level of ambiguity due to the design of the game. You cannot give them too much personality or you risk alienating the audience that likes to project or self-insert. There’s also a limit to how much uniqueness a mobile game can lend its players characters; the format isn’t exactly known for having super in-depth player arcs, it’s known for their colorful casts of rollable characters. The devs have to toe that line carefully, not to mention juggle Yuu’s participation with letting the other characters shine. It is for this reason that I won’t be doing a total overhaul of Yuu or just deciding “give them a personality!” as what I’d change about them. Rather, I’ll be proposing alterations while thinking like a dev (ie preserving the current story and as much of the self-insertiness as I can while also trying to give Yuu more to do/say).

Now Yuu, being the outsider to this world, is perfectly poised to have others dump exposition on them. This serves the dual purpose of being able to diegetically explain things to the player. (We wouldn’t get this advantage if the player character was changed to be like… a Twisted Wonderland resident; you could explain some magic things to a layman, but a resident wouldn’t need more common knowledge like country names exposited to them. Were this the case, we’d need an additional excuse for Crowley to take in a native.) It’s also convenient to have them be the “eyes” for the player to experience the world through, since Yuu is able to conveniently be present for most major main story events. It essentially makes them a human-shaped video camera.

I’ve often heard people suggest that if we need a POV character, why not go with Grim since he basically serves the same purpose now anyway. My answer to that is: Grim is also an arrogant asshole who picks fights, just the same as any other NRC student. If Grim were the player character, he wouldn’t be contributing much or helping to guide the other students learn to get along. We need Yuu here to be that driving force for change because Grim simply isn’t capable of it when he’s instigating himself half of the time.

A smaller thing about Yuu that I love is the idea of them being the school photographer! (This is something that is shown in the second anniversary animated video too!) It gives us context for the cards we roll and it implies that Yuu is the one documenting these precious memories. I want Yuu to stay if only for this reason.

Personally, I wouldn’t make Yuu a combatant. This is antithetical to their role and I feel would instead work against them (or at least create a scenario where Yuu has to have some level of battle prowess; this impedes on the self-insert nature of them). Sticking a magic item in their hand makes little difference since they most likely wouldn’t know how to handle it in the moment. (Nor would a magicless human even be able to use some of them; for example, a magestone is completely useless to them.) A magicless human with no combat experience is just another liability to account for, not to mention it actively puts them in harm’s way. It might be cool in theory, but I think in practice it goes against the very concept of Yuu. They’re meant to be here to show that there is “another way” to the NRC students—that violence doesn’t solve all your problems, proof that you don’t need to be a powerful being to “change” others or the world around them. They’re supposed to be underestimated and not seen as much of a “real” fighter, and they’re supposed to prove those notions wrong by demonstrating their worth via other avenues. In this “the weak obey the strong” school, Yuu has to be the one to show them that strength comes in forms that are NOT magic power or battle prowess.

I feel that Yuu works best on the sidelines as a supporter and strategist. Strategy is, after all, half of the battle, and it’s a part that people tend to overlook in favor of the flashier fighters. But strategy is crucial and it can turn the tide against a formidable foe (as we see in the prologue)!! I think this is something the NRC students need to be made more aware of too, so Yuu should stay as the strategist; they just have to be given more opportunities to show off those skills!

With all of that being said, here is what I would change about Yuu:

Drop the beast tamer thing. It gets mentioned prominently like once in the prologue and then never becomes truly relevant. Maybe it’ll become important when it comes to taking down OB Grim, but that will be SO late in the main story that the payoff doesn’t seem worth it. There are no examples of Yuu’s beast taming skills ever being used in the main story, so the whole “oh you have the makings of a beast tamer” thing is so useless. If you really want to keep it, then let Yuu’s innate talent/skills for beast taming help them out at least once per main story book. This means I’d want to see instances of Yuu getting other creatures (ie not just Grim) to help them out.

Allow Yuu the agency to act on their own when it comes to finding a way back to their own world. Going home is so often relegated to a single line or a few sentences and then not addressed again until next book. Have Yuu take initiative instead of waiting around for updates from Crowley. They should go out and ask questions, investigate on their own, etc. Maybe have them get involved in each book’s conflict because they happen to get mixed up in it while conducting research instead of being TOLD to go and fix a problem. Book 6 marks the only real time I can think of Yuu making a drastic decision against Crowley’s advice. It puts them at great risk, and that’s something they’re willing to take for the sake of saving their friends. We need more moments like this throughout the rest of the story. However, Yuu won’t be allowed to do whatever they want unrestricted because 1) it falls out of the scope of a mobile game title and 2) we want to largely retain the capacity to self-insert. So when I say give Yuu more agency to act, I mean it ONLY in the sense of being more proactive in their efforts to get home.

Add a short comment or two from other characters depending on which dialogue options are picked for Yuu. It would be too ambitious to incorporate a full-on branching storyline or strong “choose your own adventure” elements, but at least have the other characters consistently comment on whatever brief dialogue option Yuu has rather than ignoring them 90% of the time. This wouldn’t alter the story in any way but it sure would be nice to have a little more flavor text and more of Yuu actually being acknowledged as present.

Yuu should fully commit to being a planner and strategist. We get to see this aspect of Yuu like once or twice in the prologue (when they tell Grim where to spit fire at the ghosts/planning how to beat the Phantom in the mines) and then are left to extrapolate this to the rest of the game. Maybe you can argue they figured out Azul’s scheme in book 3 too, but this isn’t good enough. If you’re going to set up the idea, then have consistent segments in each book that reinforces that idea. Have Yuu brainstorm ways to jailbreak in book 4, have Yuu be perceptive enough to notice that Malleus isn’t feeling great in book 7 (only for Malleus to brush them off/insist he has a solution), etc.

Have a short story segment that explains how or why Yuu earns their nickname “Trickster” from Rook. We got this with Floyd, so the other known nicknamer should reveal this, especially since the name “Trickster” implies intelligence and cunning. Yuu should have an opportunity to demonstrate this (in book 5 maybe?), which earns them Rook’s respect and the new title. This should also be informed by other parts where Yuu shows how smart they can be.

More time bonding with Grim. I say Grim specifically because I commonly see him as a hated character in part because of how he “steals lines/time” away from Yuu. (Adeuce and Malleus are fine as they are because the former already stick up for/help Yuu out and the latter is meant to stay mysterious until late in the main story.) This means that if you don’t already like Grim, the whole “Yuu chases them to Styx HQ to save Grim” plot point in book 6 rings hollow. To truly build a bond with Grim, please give us moments prior to book 6 that show how much they care for one another and are linked to each other as partners. Times when Grim causes inconveniences for Yuu don’t count. Give me instances of them cuddling at night or talking to each other about their hopes and dreams or whatever. This would establish the value that Grim sees in Yuu, as well as the value that Yuu sees in Grim. It makes it more believable that Grim would cry when he’s alone or realizes he hurt his partner, and that Yuu would defy the headmaster’s advice and put themselves at risk to save Grim.

Better incorporate the ghost camera and its usage in the main story. The ghost camera provides an in-universe explanation for gaming meta (ie the card illustrations); in the main story, it’s hardly ever mentioned save for its introduction in the prologue and when Yuu takes a picture of Mickey with it. What should happen instead is Yuu will take a picture of the characters involved in that chapter. This way, it’s a physical reminder of the time everyone spent together and the bonds they’ve developed. It further strengthens the idea of the students learning to get along and Yuu being there to facilitate that while also keeping the ghost camera relevant.

More time where Yuu actually bonds with/“changes” the other characters. One huge gripe I have with the main story is that we’re TOLD that Yuu’s presence changes and improves the boys for the better, that they teach them how to get along. Very little of the actual main story supports this (outside of the prologue). At best, Yuu has a very short chat with some of the OB boys at the end of their respective book. Yuu should have a little more time in this regard. I don’t know, maybe Idia is still struggling to socialize when he comes over to play video games at Ramshackle so Yuu has to gently encourage him to give it a try or says something to help include him in the conversation. Little things like that! Keep the strong interactions the other characters have in changing the OB boys (like Trey being the one to rush to Riddle’s side, the twins teasing Azul, etc.), but have Yuu help facilitate them opening up emotionally and being vulnerable with one another.

This last point is debatable (I keep changing my mind about it), but possibly make a point of showing how Yuu is adjusting to this new world. This honestly might mess with the self-insert aspect (which is why I debated to leave this out), but I also feel like it might be interesting to reinforce Yuu’s desire to go home h demonstrating homesickness or issues with settling into Twisted Wonderland.

To summarize, the changes I’d make largely involve making TWST commit to briefly mentioned details (that they largely don’t follow through on) and making Yuu actually do a little more to warrant crediting them with resolving issues + fostering friendships. A lot of the problems that exist now are due to promising a lot but then poorly executing on what was promised.

[markrosewater]

Does it ever bother you that a lot of positive Magic experiences are basically transitory?

What I mean is, say someone’s best Magic experience of all time was Ravnica/Time Spiral Standard. That person’s favorite way to play the game ever is essentially completely inaccessible today, and probably always will be. You can rebuild decks from that era card for card, and they still technically “work,” but unless you can find a critical mass of people to play with you, it won’t do any good. Or say someone really liked Commander before it got big, before cards started being printed for it, because deckbuilding was more of a challenge. That version of the game is totally lost now. Even if the way things are now is liked better by more people overall, it seems sad in a way that those older experiences are always being pushed out, regardless of how good they were.

It just seems strange that you can always go back to an old book, movie, or video game and experience it essentially how it was, but Magic’s past is always fading away aside from the odd retro Limited format in digital.

This is also Magic’s greatest strength. The average Magic player plays for a long time because they don’t get bored. The game keeps evolving.

[zhongrin]

hold you close to my heart

◇ characters ◇ zhongli, childe, xiao, al haitham, thoma, scaramouche

◇ tags ◇ modern!au, gn!reader, fluff, headcanon format

◇ a/n ◇ zhongli is ngl acting like an asian mom in this and i am not sorry. i need him in my life bc i hate fishbone (the number of times i've had a fishbone stuck in my throat- you don't want to know. let's just say pressing down my gag reflex is one of my talents now) and peeling shrimps.

𝑚𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡 ⬙ 𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑙𝑖𝑠𝑡

tries to be as quiet as possible as he shuffles around the house while you’re asleep.

peels fruits for you.

will care for your hair for you (brushes / applies oil / braids)

debones any sort of meat-with-bone/shell dishes, including fishes and crustaceans for you (this might be the ultimate expression of zhongli’s love considering how much he hates the smell of seafood).

will not hesitate to spoonfeed you when your hands are occupied or if you’re forgetting to eat.

“zhongli do you know where did i put my shawl-” “second drawer, right side.” “and my dragon-printed socks-” “-is in the sock box on the third drawer, you probably missed it.”

will threaten people who wronged you with a sandal in his hands “i will have order!”

headpat machine - you want headpats? you’re getting headpats. you don’t want headpats? you’re getting a kiss on top of your head…… and a headpat <3

will fall into the habit of carrying tissues and hair ties and the everyday essential items which you often use.

slips his credit card into your wallet before you go out.

keeps your fridge stocked with groceries and pantry full of your favorite snacks (either by doing the shopping himself or getting them delivered to your doorstep when he can’t be around)

lets you pet the dogs you encounter on your walks first. also alerts you when there’s a cute dog in sight.

owns a special phone with the best camera in the market, just for the sake of taking your selfies.

headpat machine 2.0 - you don't want headpats? too bad you’re getting one! you want headpats? beg for it first, darling <3

buys you matching accessories. wears them everywhere and every time he’s out.

always walks on the side closer to the road. also holds your hand when crossing the street (and pretends he 'forgot' to release it afterward)

always lingers around you in social settings. not just because of his social anxiety, but also just in case you need something, he wants to be there to help.

lets you pat his head (and enjoys it immensely), but will murder-glare any other person who tries to do so (read: venti, heizou).

is only able to fall asleep in either of these conditions: 1) he is completely alone, or 2) he’s not alone but you’re with him.

piles up pillows and blankets and plushies on your (or his) bed as a silent invitation to cuddle. you tease him by saying “are you inviting me to your nest, little bird?” and he blushes every single time. it’s very adorable. please give this boy his cuddles.

corrects the typos in your papers for you. crosschecks your citations and adds comments detailing how you should add or remove certain things. he accepts payments in kisses. or super spicy curry. he’s not picky, really.

will dust your bookshelves for you (is it because he loves you or because he loves books? ….. don’t ask).

will wordlessly lift you up to cross a big puddle on the road. you only get to be bridal-carried if you're lucky. otherwise, you're getting the sack of potatoes' treatment because he's a bastard.

tells you that you have x minutes left to do certain tasks. yes, he has your schedules memorized. yes, he will flick your forehead if you keep whining and procrastinating.

will gently pull your head to settle on his shoulder when you fall asleep on the bus.

“did you cut your hair? it’s five centimeters shorter.” “you trimmed your eyebrows?” “your lips look pale today. have you eaten lunch?”

cooks and cleans for you. his payment? your awed smile. if you tip him with kisses he’ll be over the moon.

sends you daily cute animal videos. mostly dogs. or cats. or him being silly with his adorable doggie taroumaru.

will mess up on purpose just to make you laugh on your bad days.

buys everything in twos because he always, always wants to share it with you.

squishes his cheek onto yours and nuzzles you to show affection. you think you see dog ears and dog tails whenever he does this, but it's just a trick of the light... right??

refrains from drinking at parties just so that when you do, he can take care of you properly and get you back home safely.

denies your kisses in public but pulls you for a kiss every five minutes behind closed doors.

links his pinky with you when walking together (but on his bad days, he would really appreciate it when you link your arms with him).

looks so scandalized when you flinch from his touch - because somehow he’s a superconductor and most of the time you feel zapped just from touching him. just tough it out and hug him if you don’t want to deal with sulky!mouchie.

will not hesitate to try and claw people’s eyes out when they made you upset.

fills up your water bottle for you.

uses the same laundry detergent / perfume as yours. claims that he does it so you “won’t complain about how your clothes smell weird” when you stay over. he just wants his clothes to smell more like you so he can pretend you’re hugging him when he misses you.

© zhongrin | 2022 ◆ no repost. reblogs much appreciated. feel free to reach out to submit suggestions, feedback, comments, or if you just want to talk!

◇ taglist ◇ @thestarsofenkanomiya | @genshinparty | @abyssmal-skies | @hamdehlesmis | @depressivecomforts | @sophiethewitch1 | @why-am-i-here-someone-save-me | @sunnshineflxwer | @heartonthemoon | @yuutasbabe | @percyval-archives | @carbs-need-more-love | @rebeccka | @queen-belial | @stygianoir | @niverine | @silentmoths | @niktwazny303 | @dustofthedailylife | @herdrops | @clovcly | @marina-and-the-memes | @angryhope | @mixed-kester | @shuangxo | @fiannee | @lordbugs

[petalruesimblr]

Organic Fresh Delights Grocery

Sim File Share

Welcome to Organic Fresh Delights, your one-stop destination for all things fresh and organic! We're committed to providing the highest quality organic goods sourced directly from our local farmers and fisherman offering a vibrant selection of vegetables, fruits, premium cuts of meat and fish. We also have an array of products ranging from lush plants to food, drinks and essential household items. Step into our store and immerse yourself in a world of freshness, flavor, and sustainability.

Price: 72,780 Lot Size: 25x25 Lot Type: Visitors Allowed Store Content: Click here CC Used: Click here File Type: Package Min. Required Game Version: 1.42 Packs Needed: The Sims 3, Late Night (floor), Pets (buydebug object), Ambitions, World Adventures (food register, gate from ATS3)

Hi everyone! I was going to share one of my older builds from years ago but I found out that most of the objects I used for that lot were in sim3pack format and most of the CCs I transferred over to my current setup have been converted to package files, which messed up the appearance of the lot. So, I've recreated it this time and I'm sharing a new grocery lot: the Organic Fresh Delights Grocery!

Click on the ’Keep Reading’ below for more information and pictures on this lot.

For the rabbit hole, I placed it in an empty stockroom/office and have also locked the fire escape door and fence at the back of the lot so that sims can only enter the door inside the building. This was the only option that worked during playtesting so that sims can enter in and out of the rabbit hole inside the room only. If you want to open those doors though, you can do it by editing the lot and click CTRL + Shift + Right Click to choose the unlock option. Due to the lack of windows on the first floor, I have placed a lot of buydebug lights and it may be too bright during the night so you can adjust it by enabling “testingcheatsenabled true” and “buydebug on” after. 📣This lot is a bit CC-heavy, as I have used more cc compared to game objects and these are not included on the download file. I’ve compiled a list for those interested in downloading them separately (please click the links above or go to WCIF Navigation page). The Late Night and World Adventures expansion pack is required due to the build items used in the lot but I'm not sure about buydebug items so Pets may be required as well. 📣There are two CCs that I was unable to locate the original link namely: mtk_signdoors and Public Signs - CAStable both from Macthekat. I tried the direct links and it doesn't work anymore so I had to check using the Wayback Machine site and was able to find her Terms of Use from the old site, Pink Rabbit that states "All our products is shear-friendly - just make sure to give proper credit. You may include my work in sims packages if you want to" and "You may include my stuff into almost anything – it would be nice if you mention my name, but I can live without it. You may share my stuff." With those terms, I have re-uploaded them to sfs and if there is an updated TOU from the creator (or if you are Macthekat) that states otherwise please do let me know and I will take the links down. 📣If you want a functional grocery store in your gameplay, you can use Ani's Sell From Inventory mod. I have used a few storage or chest-like CCs and a food register from ATS3 that you can use. If you prefer Ani’s Savvier Seller instead, you may have to replace most of the items and use ATS3 Savvy's Seller Collection set instead. You can also check out Mookymilksims guide and tutorial video for realistic function shops using Savvier Seller mod. It is very easy to follow and has detailed instructions to help you out to make it work! Let me know if you experience any problems on your end.

[zephiris]

Being autistic feels like having to emulate brain hardware that most other people have. Being allistic is like having a social chip in the brain that handles converting thoughts into social communication and vice versa while being autistic is like using the CPU to essentially emulate what that social chip does in allistic people.

Skip this paragraph if you know about video codec hardware on GPUs. Similarly, some computers have hardware chips specifically meant for encoding and decoding specific video formats like H.264 (usually located in the GPU), while other computers might not have those chips built in meaning that encoding and decoding videos must be done “by hand” on the CPU. That means it usually takes longer but is also usually more configurable, meaning that the output quality of the CPU method can sometimes surpass the hardware chip’s output quality depending on the settings set for the CPU encoding.

In conclusion, video codec encoding and decoding for computers is to social encoding and decoding for autistic/allistic people.

[ot3]

🔥 visual novels

i honestly think visual novels without real gameplay are one of the worst formats for anything to be in. i also don't think it's fair to call them video games if you are essentially just playing a long slideshow.

it's so insanely difficult to just sit there and spend Hours staring at mostly static visuals reading text at a pace that you just are not quite able to dictate yourself. i read umineko and higurashi as somethingawful forum lets plays on my phone in bed or like in doctors waiting rooms or wherever else one may read on their phone because there was no chance in hell i was going to be able to spend so many dozens and dozens of hours slogging through it just Sitting At My Computer. and i think these are both fantastic works to be clear

like for big important scenes i stopped and watched videos of them because the voice acting, music, and sound design is fantastic. and of course it had impact that just text couldnt but i never in a million years would have gotten through this thing if i had to go so slow.

i feel like often making a visual novel is just what people do when they don't have the capacity to make the thing they'd Actually want their project to be, which is totally completely fair and i understand why so many indie creators end up going that route. i will continue to read visual novels for this exact reason. but man you can almost always feel the stories of these things straining against their format. you can feel the epic rpg or anime that they want to be trying to claw its way out of still images and inconsequential dialogue choices.

kind of tangential to all of this but hey how funny is it that the pc/console release of the DGS duology has a button that makes the game play itself.

[monsteraficionado]

So, are you new to Watcher?

Whether you just discovered the dudes from Buzzfeed Unsolved premiered a new ghost hunting show or you stumbled across Ghost Files without having ever seen Ryan and Shane before, perhaps you find yourself a bit lost regarding Watcher.

So here I present a not-quite-short (yet I hope comprehensive) guide to Watcher Entertainment!

What is Watcher?

Back in 2019, three ex-BuzzFeed employees (Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej from BuzzFeed Unsolved and Steven Lim from Worth It) joined forces and announced they were launching a new production company and YouTube channel called Watcher. They toiled at it for an entire year and their new channel premiered on January 10th, 2020 with seven shows, the first of which was Puppet History (but more on the shows later).

They started with a grand total of five employees: the three cofounders, Brittney Lee (Production Supervisor) and Anthony Frederick (Creative Director of Post Production). Now, Team Watcher has grown to include several more people, including some ex-BuzzFeeders like Katie LeBlanc (who used to produce BFU and Worth It, today is Head of Development at Watcher), Annie Jeong (who you may know from Worth It and the Berry Boys video featuring Ryan and Shane, now a Senior Creative Producer) and Mark Celestino (cameraman for BFU, now Senior Creative Producer at Watcher).

Currently, Watcher presents a new episode of whichever show it's currently in season (right now it's Ghost Files of course) every Friday at 12 PT. Between shows, or sometimes on Wednesdays, they might air One-Offs, which are smaller, well, one off videos. Over at their Patreon you can find more content including:

Early Thursday access for Friday videos

Watcher Weekly+, a weekly talk show featuring any combination of cofounders and/or Watcher crew, where they answer fan questions and sometimes open fan mail. NOTE: for a taste of these, you can refer to their now-extinct Watcher Weekly show, formerly airing on Wednesdays over at YouTube dot com.

For higher tiers, a monthly livestream also featuring any combination of cofounders where they shoot the shit for an entire hour

Also for higher tiers, audio commentaries for select episodes

And for the highest tier, Discord AMAs with different members of Team Watcher.

Onto the shows:

Watcher has many shows. A whole lot of them. Ryan, Steven and Shane are very creative guys and it shows. When they first started, they began with a new episode of a different show every week, which was for some people very confusing. They've settled into airing whole seasons now, so after we're done with the premiere season of Ghost Files, we'll move onto a new season of Puppet History and then onto another show.

Because it's so many shows, I'll only describe the ones that are still being produced, along with the shows that premiered for the first time in 2022, in chronological order.

Puppet History

Helmed by Shane Madej, this was the first show that appeared on Watcher and the host, a puppet named The Professor (played by Shane) has become the de facto mascot of Watcher. If you liked the Hot Daga and Ruining History, this is essentially its spiritual successor. Here, The Professor leads Ryan and a different guest through a journey of a wacky historical event, while they compete to see who will become History Master. The lore gets really deep.

Top 5 Beatdown

A Ryan Bergara concoction, Shane and Ryan debate asinine topics ranging from the hottest Disney cartoon characters to top dog breeds, comparing top 5 lists and often fighting about it. When they do not fight, the duo showcases their one shared braincell. In every episode, they have a guest who knows more about the topic than them.

Are You Scared?

Also created by Ryan Bergara, Are You Scared? began as a Zoom show and evolved to being shot in person after pandemic restrictions eased. Ryan tells Shane one of the spookiest stories from the internet, and they both laugh over it. In a way, the format is similar to Unsolved, and the promotion campaigns for it are hilarious: once, Ryan pretended he'd been kidnapped by The Professor and made an entire photo shoot about it.

Too Many Spirits

From the galaxy brain of Katie LeBlanc, this was the first show shot in person during the pandemic, and also the only Friday show to feature all three co-founders. Ryan and Shane gather in a backyard to read ghost stories submitted by fans, but they get drunker and drunker every episode. They start off very normal, but by the fourth and last episode of each season, they are absolutely unhinged. By the way, the drinks? Handmade by Steven Lim himself, who turns out, is a (not) wonderful bartender. In the most recent seasons, we get an actual professional bartender, Ricky Wang, who has a very special working relationship with Steven.

Dish Granted

Created by and for the suffering of Steven Lim, Dish Granted is about love and food and friends. In each episode, Steven sets out to grant a friend of his their dream dish, even if it costs Steven his own sanity. Currently, the episode with Simu Liu holds the honor of being the Watcher video with most views. I love it, and you should too.

Worth a Shot

In each episode of this show hosted by Ricky Wang (of Too Many Spirits fame), he creates a special cocktail for a different guest. Ricky definitely knows what he is doing, and so, this show has a very soothing quality to it.

Eat Like Me

Also made by Steven Lim. Join Steven as he learns more about different cultures and/or lifestyles as he eats for one day as someone else. In the pilot season, he discovered the joys of the diet of a Korean college student, the woes of British people, and the pain of a professional eating competitor.

Pretty Historic

Created by Selorm Kploanyi and directed by none other than Sara Rubin, Pretty Historic looks at history from another point of view: beauty and makeup. It is an incredibly pretty show, the aesthetics are top notch, and it dives into really interesting subjects. I am begging for y'all to watch this.

Ghost Files

Finally, Ghost Files doesn't really need an introduction. Ryan Bergara's baby, the official successor to BuzzFeed Unsolved, and in the words of Shane Madej (to which I subscribe wholeheartedly), the perfect ghost hunting show. Only an episode and it's corresponding Debrief have been released until now, but it's so good. So different from BFU in a much, much better way, while still feeling incredibly familiar. Wow. The Ghoul Boys have done it for real.

However, Watcher has a vast catalogue with even more shows than those, plus all of their one-offs. My personal favorites and recommendations to you are Weird and/or Wonderful World (with Shane and Ryan) and Homemade (hosted by Steven). Homemade particularly feels like a work of art that I don't feel gets appreciated as much as it should.

Also, I greatly recommend watching Ryan and Shane Eat Everything Boysenberry (Again): Bless Annie for doing this for us. Berry Boys 2, once again taking off at Knott's Berry Farm.

So where can I keep up with Watcher?

If you aren't following them in at least one of their social media accounts, you might want to do that:

Their YouTube official channel

Tumblr

Twitter

Instagram

TikTok

Patreon

Finally!

These are the bare essentials to getting into Watcher, but I hope it's useful to at least one person. If you have any questions, ask away! Imo, the fandom is incredibly nice and would love to help any newbie find their way through.

[loren91]

Young Royals and the three act structure, Part one

Seems like there was some potential interest in a full three-act story structure analysis, so I’m taking this opportunity to indulge myself by going full nerd. I’m going to attempt to make the argument that limiting the show to three seasons is actually perfect for Young Royals, by highlighting the pattern the story follows.

A few things to keep in mind before we start.

This analysis is not about the characters deep inner emotional lives. We are not here to pass judgment on their actions. We are simply identifying the beats of the story in a neutral and objective manner, for the purpose of analysing the structure of the story.

As you will notice, the points I have identified are all from Wilhelm’s perspective. That’s because he’s the point-of-view character, the main conflict is shaped by him and his emotional state. He’s the protagonist. Each subplot however, will follow the same pattern and has its own purpose, but I’ll get more into that another time.

I’ll be referring a fair bit to Lindsey Ellis’s video essay on the subject, because I like how she describes the structure pattern in sequences. So I’m gonna borrow some of her language. Also, note that the examples she uses to describe the tree-act structure are all feature films. Since Young Royals is a series, it’s gonna divert slightly from her description. But that’s what is so great about this structure, it’s flexible. It’s not meant to be set rules, but rather guidelines to help keep your story relevant and engaging all the way through. If you find this stuff interesting, I’d highly recommend watching her videos!

The three act structure is absolutely not the only way to tell a story. There’s many different formats that works just as well! It’s really about finding what structure works best to tell your story. The three acts however is the most common format you’ll find in more commercially viable works, such as Disney films for example.

And finally, I’m not a writer, but an animator, and I have studied film theory/structure. I’ll do my best to motivate the plot points I’ve identified, but if you’re a proper story expert and disagree with me, I’m happy to discuss!

Okay, let’s get to it.

A three-act structure is constructed of just that, three acts, and roughly looks like this. Essentially, a beginning, a middle, and an end. Or the set up, the confrontation, and the resolution. These acts may vary in length, act two usually being the longest and act three usually being the shortest. But what truly defines them is the tension of each act, meaning what drives the conflict forward at that point. A story will have a main conflict yes, but that conflict will take on many forms depending on where we are in the story. Lindsey Ellis describes each act as consisting of multiple sequences, and defines each sequence by its individual tension as well. Though all points of tension should always stay related to the main conflict! So the main points we’re looking to identify in the story are the main act tensions and the main sequence tensions. 

Let’s go through season one of Young Royals and talk about each story beat.

Act 1

Act tension - Wille has to attend Hillerska.

Sequence 1

We start with the Set up/Hook. The purpose here is to establish the world and the protagonist along with their internal conflict, such as their flaws and/or desire that makes them feel incomplete - The way Wilhelm’s character is introduced informs us that he is royal, but struggling with his role, because royals have set rules to follow.

“Why can’t I decide how the hell I want to live? I want to live a normal life!”

The thing that sets the story in motion is the point of attack. Something happens that is outside of the protagonist's control/knowledge - That would be the royal court deciding to send Wille to Hillerska without his permission. This gives the protagonist something to react to.

Sequence tension is established - Wille does not want to go to Hillerska. The rest of episode one reinforces Wille’s discomfort at the school.

Next, we get to the inciting incident. An event that disrupts the status quo, and our protagonist has to get involved - The initiation party, particularly when Wille and Simon almost kiss at the end. This leads him to acknowledge his attraction toward Simon and become more proactive in his pursuit of the boy. 

The sequence tension is resolved. Notice how in episode two, Hillerska is no longer the main focus for Wille, but Simon is. The seeds for what will become the central conflict have now been planted. The conflict is usually driven by character motivation. This is where we can consider the protagonist's Want vs Need. The want drives the main tension - Wille wants to be with Simon. But we’ll find want he needs later on in the story.

Sequence 2

The purpose here is to build up the creation of the main tension of the story. The main antagonist can also be established here -  August keeps getting on Wille’s nerves. Especially when he’s trying to hang out with Simon.

That’s our sequence tension - Wille is working to befriend Simon, but August keeps getting in the way.

The end of the sequence sees the first major plot point, the Lock-in. Where our protagonist makes a decision that changes everything. Usually, something they can’t come back from - In Young Royals that would be the first kiss. Wille and Simon’s relationship has fundamentally changed. The main tension is now established.

Act 2

Act tension -  Can Wille be with Simon, despite him being a prince?

Sequence 3

At the start of this sequence, the protagonist has most likely achieved some kind of milestone or learned something - He’s definitely like that.

To keep the story interesting, writers will add so-called pinch points in between the bigger plot points. These usually act as reminders of the antagonist or the pressure our protagonist may feel - Wille feels he needs to break it off with Simon because a prince is not supposed to be gay. As we established in the set up, royals have rules. 

Sequence tension - Can Wille deny his feelings for Simon? Queer pining ensues.

Sequence 4

The purpose of this sequence is to build up towards the midpoint. We see the protagonist making attempts to achieve their goal - The want never changed, Wille still wants to be with Simon, despite the pressure. Wille invites him to spend the weekend with him.

Sequence tension - Wille is trying to prioritise his new relationship with Simon, but August is still being annoying.

Then the midpoint hits. A major disruption, either from a character action or a force of nature. Can be positive or negative, just something that changes the aim of the quest without resolving the main tension - This time it’s literally halfway through the season. End of episode three, Erik dies and Wille becomes the crown prince. Everything has changed.

Sequence 5

Everybody has to adjust to the new world order after the midpoint disruption. We’ve reached another pinch point - Again we are reminded that royals have rules, and Wille makes another attempt to follow those rules. By embracing his new role, he breaks up with Simon once again, then sort of pursues Felice and joins the society.

Sequence tension - Wille adjusting to his new title while mourning his brother.

It’s common for subplots to advance around this time - Like Simon giving August the drugs to sell.

Sequence 6

Another plot point, where our protagonist may stop and reflect. Maybe have a heart-to-heart with another character, and perhaps make a decision - This is where we see the football field scene and the end of episode four. Wille reaches out to Simon for help, reconnecting with him. This leads them to pursue a relationship once again. They are put in a false sense of security. They are finally together, thinking all is good. BUT, we in the audience know that August has the video of them and the writers keep reminding us of him and the threat he poses. Even if Wille and Simon don't know it yet.

Sequence tension - Can this happiness last?

Sequence 7

(Here’s where the story leaves the classic structure for a bit, and adds an extra sequence for some more drama, as filler. In theory, they could have skipped this sequence and gone straight to the video being released. This part is mainly here to give motivation for August’s character, making his actions clearer)

So we are essentially given another pinch point, a reminder of antagonist or pressure -  August tries to break them apart by telling Wille about the drugs, which leads to the music room fight. 

Sequence tension - August is becoming more hostile.

Wille saving Simon from being framed for the drugs is more related to August’s money subplot. And the Lucia hug scene is mainly there for character building purposes. I’ll talk more about that stuff in part two.

The plot has advanced to the culmination of the main tension. The crisis that serves as build-up to act three - August releases the video. At the end of act two, the protagonist faces their biggest challenge yet. They’ve hit their lowest point - The aftermath of the video's release and Wille is totally lost. 

Act 3

Act tension - Can they save their relationship after the video?

Sequence 8

Begins with the protagonist making a big decision that creates the new act tension. The tension in act three will be different, but still related to the main conflict - Wille and Simon talk in the locker room, where Wille says he won’t do the statement. 

Sequence tension -  Can Wille avoid making the statement?

We’ve reached our last major plot point, located at the end of the sequence. Sometimes known as the twist in the third act - And what a twist, Wille does the statement anyway. This narrows down the tension further, to focus on a more character-driven intimate place for the next sequence.

Sequence 9

Sequence tension - Can they be together despite the statement?

Climax, the last big fight - Simon tells Wille off for being selfish and breaks up. Wille also finds out that both August and his mother betrayed him. The protagonist’s need has emerged from this journey and is now clear to us - Wille needs to decide who he wants to be. The want and the need should be different from each other, but still connected. Wille wants Simon, but in order for that to happen, Wille needs to break out of this cycle of self-preservation and stand up for himself against the royal court.

The climax will most likely lead to some kind of character growth - Wille is now pissed because he’s lost everything and realizes how corrupt the royal court is. As Lisa so beautifully put it, “A flame is ignited in him”. Hugging Simon in public is a display of his character growth.

And finally, Resolution. The point where the story is usually wrapped up neatly, but if left ignored, you get a cliffhanger - Which is exactly what happens in this season. Nothing is properly resolved at this point. Resulting in an open ending/cliffhanger.

Oof, that was a lot. How are we all doing? So these are the main beats of the plot. Makes sense? Let me know if you need any further clarification 😅 I was gonna get into how the rest of the show fits this format as well, but that’ll have to be in a separate post. Here’s part two! 

[monarchisms]

so this is the unintentional part two of that summary post i made with geoff talking about the end of achievement hunter. for this post, i'm going to try my best to sum up what michael, trevor, and joe (but not alfredo because he was sick at the time 😔) have said about what will happen in the future on the penultimate episode of off topic, #403. there won't be a transcript this time as i am busy with schoolwork and stuff, so i'll try to make this summary as filled with as much accurate information as i can to make up for it :)

so basically,

trevor starts off by saying they'll be doing the last of various series to wrap everything up. he also notes that some of these finales will be "more nostalgic"

one of the series finales that's up right now is vs episode #150: joe vs BK. the game they played is cooking mama!

after the series finale of off topic (#404 lol), the final AH video ever will be a let's play in the remastered version of burnout paradise, and the cast will consist of geoff, jack, trevor, and michael. this is a callback to the first ever AH video they did back in 2008, and it's already been filmed! trevor says it was more emotional then he thought it would be :')

michael explains that the video will essentially be a ~70-minute podcast. in it, they'll talk more about the end of achievement hunter, where the cast members have went/what they've all moved on to, and new projects that they'll working on. he also says that he thinks that people will call this video "cathartic" while comparing the vibe to their old gta v series, sunday driving

not as important, but michael said that he was mindlessly driving and turning in burnout paradise in the same way that he'd run and jump in minecraft because he "fucking hated" playing minecraft lmfao

as said before, they decided to close AH and start something new with dogbark instead of continuing like they used to. michael acknowledges that in the last few years, most of the crew had already left rt in some way or moved on to other stuff within the company, leaving just michael, trevor, alfredo, and joe as the most consistent on-screen talent by the end. *bonus bit that wasn't mentioned until later, but alongside these 4, jarren from the post team will be their channel manager for dogbark :)

as this group makes videos for dogbark, michael says that their stuff will be both "tonally different" and "very fluid" as they're still figuring it out as they go, noting that they were balancing it and AH/let's play content at the same time

michael also talks about how he's been doing what he's wanted to do at AH for a long time, but there were some things he still couldn't do within the constraints the AH crew had put on themselves

while there will be some gameplay stuff on the dogbark channel, as mentioned in this episode and the channel trailer, they will primarily focus on live action content. trevor makes a point by saying that the style/theme in the trailer will "not be pervasive throughout the entire brand", and michael adds on to that by saying the trailer "is at 100, but every video won't be at 100"

michael and trevor make a point by saying that there will be more variety, as in "a dozen little formats", not necessarily like the shows/series they made at AH, with joe saying that they're not trying to "tie themselves down" to strict uploads and such, like they were when they were previously fitting into a mold at AH

trevor says that he has seen achievement hunter, and rooster teeth as a whole, having a unique challenge ahead of them. he refers to making content that appeals to an audience who had been following them since the early days while trying to also find new faces, both out there in the audience and internally at the company, in order for AH to stay around

he also points out how difficult it is to do that with a long-standing brand that has had different eras of content, since there would be an audience with differing expectations for them. with that, it became hard for the AH crew to balance said expectations with the authenticity they tried to show in the content they created. the crew has changed as people alongside their audience, and the stress that came with it was challenging

michael stresses that the group not only chose to make a new channel completely, they also had to fight for it for a while, and wanted to slow down on AH content before properly closing/archiving the channel to create dogbark. beyond the struggles of creating something new from scratch, they now have the challenge of preparing the audience for the jump from AH to dogbark while thinking about all the pros and cons before going forward

this week (the week of september 18th) and next week (the week of september 25th) are the last weeks of new AH content. after that, there will be a 1 or 2-day break before dogbark properly starts making new content on october 2nd. trevor feels like people will get a better idea of what dogbark is after a month or two of them uploading content

finally (subject to change, of course), they want to aim for full uploads every monday and friday, with patreon-like exclusive videos with rt first every wednesday and saturday. one of the confirmed things to expect is a first-exclusive podcast. the first week dogbark officially starts, all that content will be public as a sample of what to expect, and every week after that will follow that schedule

[oatmeal-stans-the-trash-rat]

The Sides Are Dorks, Part 389534

I was wondering why the Sanders Sides tag was trending earlier, and then I saw. the Video. Anyway, here's my thoughts while watching the new vid (in list format) bc I haven't done this in a while.

[it's gonna be LONG knowing me]

"I would never be caught dead in a bowtie" *cuts to when Janus literally wore a bowtie in canon*

"yeah and I deserve it" -> ha mood

"Wrong, I ate an entire bottle of melatonin gummies" -> Patton. Patton, no.

"I could switch to green tea, and I'll still be a bitch!" -> also mood

hey. hey why you do that. why would you say that. (aka: Roman is offended by the mustache comparison)

"Where is my ruler" -> PLEASE it'd be so fucking funny

Virgil really be like "WRONG! I use the tildas you faker" (/j) (/lh)

Patton starts listing off every appliance that has heat stuff and I cannot. I CANNOT--

^and then there's the fridge. what did Fridge ever do to you? where's the lorreee

"wholesome friendship" // "how many holes we talkin'" -> yeah that makes sense

"No, he's just not worth an attack" -> Logan sounds like he's thought about this before

Roman Unscrews Imaginary Lightbulb, reaction is a family-friendly version of "Listen here, you little shit"

"get him" -> Virgil hates that Anxiety so much

Emile Picani Joins the Ranks of Rat Man by Sleeping in the Buff. it's canon now.

"It's no one's business what bites me" -> Janus. Janus, the implications. Janus--

Patton reveals Logan's secret: Love for Donuts, feat. wiggly fingers

"Which is rude...because I am not young" -> also Sheldon is missing The Tie, which is essential for Serious Smart People (I guess)

Roman likes My Little Pony

"No, I didn't--" // "He did!" // "He definitely did." -> LMAO the Others confirming that Virgil had a meme phase

Ah yes: The Sponsor Section

Patton being like "some cookies are bad??" is funny to me lol

"--vaccuums" // "No" // "ignore that last one" -> goddamnit Patton (/pos)

"There sneaky people out there" *cuts to Janus*

Roman loves Barbie movies. Barbie Movie? whatever, he likes Barbie

"war against the evil cookies" // "wait--" -> haha. this is why I believe in Intruality so much

"I dropped another laptop in the toliet" -> another one?

conclusion: Patton and Remus are both accident-prone. an Intruality win. also they interacted for like, 2 seconds. another Intruality win

Sponsor Ends!

"ACTUALLY it was four times. bitch." (Sleep, basically)

okay but like. when the glasses are on the head, it's like they're invisible. I say as someone who loses their glasses, only to find them in stupidly obvious places. also mood

Virgil DEFINITELTY watched Patton do this for five minutes before he said anything

Roman is in love with his sword, Exhibit D

^(D is for--)

Logititties. that's all

Janus really said "wanna go, bitch?"

also: "I wouldn't be caught dead in a fish fight. I would poison you" -> ah, of course, a snake with style (/j)

"calculator is computer" // "that's technically correct, actually" -> where's the Logicality enjoyers when you need them

Roman Rage Quits at Roblox. also Insecurity

"bitch, I'm not that out there" -> this helps deduce the scale of What The Fuck Is Remus's Normal At

"True...or is it false?" -> he loves fucking with people, doesn't he?

"yeah" -> he sounds so resigned, nooo :(

Endcard Moment: Logan loves jelly-filled donuts

and that's it, folks! This was lovely. Silly gay personality traits.

[x-v4mp3y3lin3r-x]

Yesterday I finished moving to Firefox so here's some extensions. First, the serious ones:

AdBlocker Ultimate: Your run-of-the-mill adblock. I chose this one instead of uBlock since I'm fairly sure uBlock was giving me problems on Chrome and I don't wanna repeat the experience. You can use the "Block Element" feature to get rid of all the new annoying Tumblr features, it's easy.

ClearURLS: Removes tracking from URLs.

Decentraleyes: Protects from tracking & targeted ads.

DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials: More tracking, cookies, etc etc protection.

Privacy Badger: More tracking protection.

Shinigami Eyes: Marks transphobic blogs/accounts/profiles red.

Alright now some less serious, more fun ones:

Enhancer For Youtube: Gives you a highly customizable utility bar with features like simple screenshotting, pop-up players, volume enhancement, & other things. Also has the ability to alter your YouTube theme and toggle settings that'll stop pesky YouTube tabs from automatically starting.

Firefox Color: Custom themes for dummies! It doesn't customize everything but it gets pretty close. I think this would be a good tool for folks who need high contrast themes and can't find pre-made ones suited to their needs. Also comes with a few pre-made themes you can either use or use as bases.

LanguageTool: A spelling and grammar checking program that works in many languages and on all websites!

OneTab: Turns tabs into lists. Fantastic for when you're knee-deep in hyperfixation/special interest territory, or even for research.

Turbo Download Manager: Helps with frustrating downloads.

Video DownloadHelper: Gives you options to download any video from your tabs in multiple formats. Also has the option to download and convert to another format. [Update: This one requires a paid subscription AND externally downloaded program for these features. Nevermind.]

XKit Rewritten: Most Tumblr users already know of xKit but I'm including the link nonetheless! This kit makes Tumblr on PC enjoyable.

Custom Scrollbars: Makes your scrollbar pretty :)

Also, Firefox has their own page of useful add-ons, like Facebook containers and note-taking extensions. There's also a ton of themes. I don't think any of these are advertised on the main add-ons page? So I might as well mention it.

cheers :)

[bastila-s]

Baldur's Gate 3 Screenshot Tutorial

Hi, I decided to make a more in-depth guide for my twitter followers, as I'm super limited in characters and formatting options over there.

For this tutorial, I'll explain how you can enhance your screenshots. I'll divide it into five parts: ReShade, making your screenshots high resolution, camera mods, photography basics, and post-processing. By the end of following all of these steps, you should have something way better than the start!

I recommend going through this tutorial downloading things step-by-step for the first three parts, as it'll help you to quickly identify where you've gone wrong if you have any issues.

1. ReShade ReShade is a post-processing tool that allows you to change the look of a game with an array of different effects and adjustments to use. It can be a lot to wrap your head around at first, so I recommend starting off by finding a ReShade preset that speaks to you from this page if you're not already familiar with using it. The mod authors should explain how to download it. I find 22:20 of this YouTube video to be helpful to introduce ReShade if you're completely new to it. This video is for the Sims 4, but ReShade typically works the same across different games. Now that ReShade is downloaded, we can get depth of field working within the ReShade. This step is optional. Depth of field refers to what will be in focus in your screenshot, and what will be blurred. It's essentially simulating shooting with a camera, like so:

To get this effect working, you need to follow this tutorial within the ReShade menu.

2. Making Your Screenshots High Resolution Typically, Baldur's Gate 3 is ran in 1920x1080 resolution, or standard HD (unless you have a higher resolution monitor and are running the game in 4k, in which case, you can ignore this step if you'd like). This is definitely an acceptable quality, but if you'd like to capture any detail, you're not going to get much out of this. To get a better quality image, there are two ways to achieve this. The first method is through hotsampling. Hotsampling is briefly running a game in a much higher resolution than your monitor supports, allowing you to capture screenshots with incredible detail, then bringing it back down to a native playable resolution. To hotsample, you'll either need to use the BG3 camera tool, or SRWE. For either of these hotsampling tools, it's important that you've downloaded ReShade, or they will not work.

Once you have either of these downloaded, make sure your game is running in windowed mode. If you have more than one monitor, you need to change your display to show only on one screen. Or again, this will not work.

Next, you're going to want to make sure you have a key set for taking screenshots in ReShade, as well as making sure you like the folder where your screenshots are set to be saved. You can find this in the settings tab. Once you have those set, you're ready to take really HD screenshots!

To do that, you want to set your game's resolution to 2x, or even 3x what it's currently displayed as. Once it's set, your game screen is going to look giant and probably run way off your monitor. This is a sign it's working! Once it looks like this, press the screenshot key you set earlier within ReShade, and there you go, a nice big screenshot should be in the folder you set!

If you don't want to do hotsampling, and if you have a Nvidia graphics card, you can download their their app, which can take resampled screenshots. It won't be as high quality as hotsampling, but still better than standard HD.

3. Camera Mods

There are two camera mods that I know of for BG3. One is paid, the other is not.

The first one is the Native Camera Tweaks mod. This mod allows you to move the camera around more freely as you're traversing the world, but in cutscenes you'll still be stuck.

The second one is the paid one, but it allows for total freedom within the game, even during cutscenes. This tool is also very helpful for hotsampling. Within this tool, it's very useful to configure your own controls for moving the camera around in game, as well as setting a key you'll remember for pausing the game so you can set up a screenshot. I changed the movement keys to be wasd and the keys to change the angle of my camera side to side/up and down to the arrow keys.

4. Photography Basics

Taking screenshots in a game is a lot like doing photography irl tbh lol, same rules mostly apply. You of course want to do the basics like making sure your subject is in focus, it's not too dark or too light. But some other tips for people not very familiar with taking photos to take note of are:

Make sure if you're taking a photo of a person, the top of their head is within frame

Try and either make sure someone is front and center, or in the rule of thirds

Pay attention to the lighting, sometimes it's too bright or too dull. Sometimes it's unflattering in certain angles. Lighting will always make a huge difference

5. Post-Processing

You can now leave your screenshot as is, or edit it further with a photo editing software! I recommend using Photopea, as it offers basically everything Photoshop does without the insane price tag. From here you can do whatever you feel is best to enhance your image.

And that's all! If you have any questions, feel free to ask, and if you get stuck anywhere in this tutorial, don't feel bad. A lot of this stuff is just trial and error, but if you're very persistent with it, I promise you'll get these working. Also I would just like to mention that a lot of this stuff applies to taking screenshots in a lot of games! So you can take this knowledge with you elsewhere <3

If you happened to follow all this, please send in an image of your Tav you took!

[macabremachinery]

The Harlan Ellison Multimedia Literary Project & The Original IHNMAIMS Game Site

Yep, this was the 90's relic I was teasing about earlier last week. Behold, in GeoCities-esque glory:

Information about the site is discussed under the cut.

The Harlan Ellison Multimeda Literary Project was a student-run site that thoroughly discussed IHNMAIMS with academic analysis. Many of the links, when I first discovered this hidden gem, appeared to be broken. However when I accessed earlier snapshots of this site via the Wayback Machine, I was able to experience the site as it had been so lovingly cherished in 1998.

Unfortunately, like so many sites of its era, the formatting is horrendous. The gaudy white and tie-die tiled backgrounds clash with the pitch-black Time New Roman paragraphs, making many of the pages rather difficult to read. I recommend copying and pasting the text onto a document so that it's easier on the eyes.

Much of the "core" of the site is accessed through the Enter the World of AM link. From here you will taken to the main page.

Pretty straightforward. The 9 nodes listed in fuchsia are essentially pages breaking down separate bits of the I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream short story.

Yeah, I warned you about the gaudy formatting. I would post all 9 of my screenshots here as a backup to this site, however since the screenshots make the text difficult to read on a page already troublesome enough to decipher, I will simply link the project's main archived hypertext here.

Though many of the pages discussing IHNMAIMS do so with some academic jargon, the level of dedication and thought put into this project is commedable, and I cannot recommend this page enough for fans of Ellison, IHNMAIMS, and scouters of long-abandoned internet webpages.

While scouring this page, I cam upon a link at the bottom that caught my eye:

Curious, I clicked the highlighted text, and was redirected to this:

Yes folks, this is the official Cyberdreams website for I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

It's one of the more in-depth video games sites I've encountered, the creatives behind this game were so obviously passionate about what they were making. That era of the mid-90's for video games was perfect for such a product like this to be made. I don't think it could have been made 5 years earlier or 5 years later. It was released at the right time by the right developer who obviously cared about making art, and here, in full glory, you can read over the process regarding how this project even came to be.

I cannot recommend enough checking both these sites out and taking the time to explore them. They are absolutely worth a scavenge!

I apologize for releasing this post so late, I've had to comb through several links to get screenshots/viewable webpages.

[lacefuneral]

ok i've seen some posts about the tumblr alternative cohost but none that were actually helpful so!

(disclaimer: i am very new to this website. users who have been there longer can and should chime in with additions and/or corrections)

Cohost Introduction Post

What is cohost?

Cohost is a fledgling website that is essentially a tumblr clone, but with its own culture and site-specific features. It is also very much a work in progress. You are encouraged to talk in the cohost forum to suggest changes for devs, report bugs, and upvote other people's suggestions. This website WILL grow and change over time. And as such, I do not know if/when the information I share here will be outdated. Edit: To answer an ask I received, anyone can join cohost without an invite. It used to be invite-only. It is not this way anymore.

Is "adult content" allowed there?

Yes. Cohost is not on the app store, meaning that it is not subject to Apple's specifications. You can post illustrations, writing, and photographs (cohost does not support any video formats at this time, just gifs). Cohost has an elaborate filtering and trigger warning system (moreso than tumblr), and you can disable adult content for your entire account or for individual tags. I actually don't engage with the adult content at all on there. Visual CSEM (both real and fictional) is specifically forbidden (although frankly I think the guidelines could be stricter wrt written content. Still, does seem to handle this better than AO3 does, going as far to say that written content about real minors is forbidden.)

How are minors protected?

The minimum age to join cohost is 16, and requires proof of parental permission to join. Users who are under 18 are automatically age-gated and cannot view adult content.

If cohost isn't on the app store, how is it used?

You can, of course, use cohost on a computer, but it is designed with mobile in mind. Opening the website on any IOS browser, clicking "share", and then "add to home screen" will install an app for you to use. The same can be done on an android. There is a guide here.

How does cohost work?

First, you create an account. Then you wait for approximately two days (read: weekdays) for the account to be activated. This is done to prevent spam bots. In the meantime, edit your profile. List some interests, your pronouns, your other social media links. Give yourself an icon. Note: icon and banner file sizes are small. You may need to shrink and compress images.

After the two days are up, make your first post! Write a basic introduction (with what you feel comfortable you feel sharing) and list some interests you like, maybe some hobbies, media, etc. And then tag this post with "#welcome to cohost". This will let existing members know that someone new has joined, and they may initiate conversation and/or follow you.

Next, go to the search and type in "The Cohost Global Feed" and click on the tag. Bookmark this tag. This is essentially one giant community space where you can find random users. (There is currently some discourse on the website as to whether this tag existing is a "bad thing" or not because "cohost isn't supposed to have a global tag". Just ignore that lol). Next, go back to search and type in things you like. TV shows, maybe. Video games. Music. Anything. See if people have posted in the tags. Follow them. Comment on their stuff. Click "like" to bookmark the post if you want to.

Most crucially, make sure that you bookmark the actual tag so you can look in that tag again later without having to manually type it each and every time. Also, you get a feed called "bookmarked tags" which allows you to scroll through all of them at once, which replaces the "for you" feature other websites have.

You can "share" a post (called "rebug" in user slang) which serves the same purpose as a reblog on tumblr. In a rebug, you can add your own tags or comment in the body of the post. Cohost users do not talk in tags as much as tumblr users - they tend to prefer to speak in the body of a rebug, or in the comment section (replies). At this time, you cannot view all reblogs. But you can view all comments in the comment section. Any post that is rebugged will preserve the tags of the OP, with any additional tags added being attributed to you. Rebugs are named after the website mascot Eggbug, a purple bee-like insect.

Posts are called "chosts" - and shitposting is called "shitchosting." Two examples of global shitposting tags are "#css crimes" - which is when a person does goofy things with the HTML/CSS editor to make colorful text, fake chat windows, and such - and "#shitchosting" which is a general shitposting tag. I've also seen people use tags like "#random".

If a post makes you laugh, check out the OP's profile. See if they post frequently, and if you have any common interests. If you realize you want to block or mute someone instead, you can.

You can send asks just like on tumblr, but your inbox must be manually opened first. So remember to do that.

How do I look at my own blog?

This is one of my gripes about the UI. You would think, intuitively, you would click here (at the top of the screen). But you would be wrong!

It is ACTUALLY under the sidebar menu, called "Profile." And I'm not the only one to to complain about this. (To get back to your dashboard, by the way, you click on the cohost logo.)

Are there sideblogs?

Yes! Each sidepage (sideblog) has its OWN set of likes AND followed pages (blogs). This allows you to easily switch between multiple sets of dashboards. A lot of users use this to have a SFW dashboard and an adult content dashboard. But it works like tumblr, too. You can have a side page/dashboard for whatever you'd like. Maybe one of your pages is for programming. Maybe another is for photography. You switch between your pages by clicking the arrow next to your icon/username at the top of the screen. ("Ohhhhh.... THAT'S what that's for.")

What's the userbase on there like?

Mostly programmers. Trans people. Furry artists. Plural systems. Furry trans plural programmers. Certainly a lot of shitposters. The website is trans-run and, as such, has zero tolerance for TERFs. Everyone seems pretty friendly from what I can tell. And there's very much a culture of "follow someone randomly based on their vibes" that doesn't happen as much on tumblr. Tumblr is more like "I really like this TV show, I'm going to follow 40 blogs about just this interest." Because the cohost community is so much smaller, there is a lot less content overall, especially fandom content. You can't follow 40 fandom pages because your fandom tag has a total of 3 posts, all made by one person approximately a year ago (well. for me anyway).

Cohost, then, actually has much more in common with real-life socialization. You seek out people with interests that may be very different from your own, and to find a common interest is very exciting! Unlike tumblr, you are encouraged to tag as much as possible. This allows your posts to be seen, to find common interests. And, of course, don't forget to look in "#Welcome To Cohost" too! You may find some new friends there.

What file formats can I post in?

Currently, I am aware of basic image formats working (like jpeg, png) animated gifs, and mp3s. You currently cannot upload videos to cohost. I believe the reason is not related to server costs, but rather as a way to curb the uploading of copyrighted content.

How does cohost make money?

There are no ads, and yet, as far as I am aware, cohost is operating comfortably. There is, however, an entirely optional "cohost plus" that is $5 USD a month. Currently, there are a few perks, but not enough to convince me.

What if I think something about cohost should change?

Cohost has a forum where users can submit ideas for features and other users can discuss/upvote those ideas.

Here is a list of posts made for newcomers to read:

[fipindustries]

Artificial Intelligence Risk

about a month ago i got into my mind the idea of trying the format of video essay, and the topic i came up with that i felt i could more or less handle was AI risk and my objections to yudkowsky. i wrote the script but then soon afterwards i ran out of motivation to do the video. still i didnt want the effort to go to waste so i decided to share the text, slightly edited here. this is a LONG fucking thing so put it aside on its own tab and come back to it when you are comfortable and ready to sink your teeth on quite a lot of reading

Anyway, let’s talk about AI risk

I’m going to be doing a very quick introduction to some of the latest conversations that have been going on in the field of artificial intelligence, what are artificial intelligences exactly, what is an AGI, what is an agent, the orthogonality thesis, the concept of instrumental convergence, alignment and how does Eliezer Yudkowsky figure in all of this.

 If you are already familiar with this you can skip to section two where I’m going to be talking about yudkowsky’s arguments for AI research presenting an existential risk to, not just humanity, or even the world, but to the entire universe and my own tepid rebuttal to his argument.

Now, I SHOULD clarify, I am not an expert on the field, my credentials are dubious at best, I am a college drop out from the career of computer science and I have a three year graduate degree in video game design and a three year graduate degree in electromechanical instalations. All that I know about the current state of AI research I have learned by reading articles, consulting a few friends who have studied about the topic more extensevily than me,

and watching educational you tube videos so. You know. Not an authority on the matter from any considerable point of view and my opinions should be regarded as such.

So without further ado, let’s get in on it.

PART ONE, A RUSHED INTRODUCTION ON THE SUBJECT

1.1 general intelligence and agency

lets begin with what counts as artificial intelligence, the technical definition for artificial intelligence is, eh…, well, why don’t I let a Masters degree in machine intelligence explain it:

 Now let’s get a bit more precise here and include the definition of AGI, Artificial General intelligence. It is understood that classic ai’s such as the ones we have in our videogames or in alpha GO or even our roombas, are narrow Ais, that is to say, they are capable of doing only one kind of thing. They do not understand the world beyond their field of expertise whether that be within a videogame level, within a GO board or within you filthy disgusting floor.

AGI on the other hand is much more, well, general, it can have a multimodal understanding of its surroundings, it can generalize, it can extrapolate, it can learn new things across multiple different fields, it can come up with solutions that account for multiple different factors, it can incorporate new ideas and concepts. Essentially, a human is an agi. So far that is the last frontier of AI research, and although we are not there quite yet, it does seem like we are doing some moderate strides in that direction. We’ve all seen the impressive conversational and coding skills that GPT-4 has and Google just released Gemini, a multimodal AI that can understand and generate text, sounds, images and video simultaneously. Now, of course it has its limits, it has no persistent memory, its contextual window while larger than previous models is still relatively small compared to a human (contextual window means essentially short term memory, how many things can it keep track of and act coherently about).

And yet there is one more factor I haven’t mentioned yet that would be needed to make something a “true” AGI. That is Agency. To have goals and autonomously come up with plans and carry those plans out in the world to achieve those goals. I as a person, have agency over my life, because I can choose at any given moment to do something without anyone explicitly telling me to do it, and I can decide how to do it. That is what computers, and machines to a larger extent, don’t have. Volition.

So, Now that we have established that, allow me to introduce yet one more definition here, one that you may disagree with but which I need to establish in order to have a common language with you such that I can communicate these ideas effectively. The definition of intelligence. It’s a thorny subject and people get very particular with that word because there are moral associations with it. To imply that someone or something has or hasn’t intelligence can be seen as implying that it deserves or doesn’t deserve admiration, validity, moral worth or even  personhood. I don’t care about any of that dumb shit. The way Im going to be using intelligence in this video is basically “how capable you are to do many different things successfully”. The more “intelligent” an AI is, the more capable of doing things that AI can be. After all, there is a reason why education is considered such a universally good thing in society. To educate a child is to uplift them, to expand their world, to increase their opportunities in life. And the same goes for AI. I need to emphasize that this is just the way I’m using the word within the context of this video, I don’t care if you are a psychologist or a neurosurgeon, or a pedagogue, I need a word to express this idea and that is the word im going to use, if you don’t like it or if you think this is innapropiate of me then by all means, keep on thinking that, go on and comment about it below the video, and then go on to suck my dick.

Anyway. Now, we have established what an AGI is, we have established what agency is, and we have established how having more intelligence increases your agency. But as the intelligence of a given agent increases we start to see certain trends, certain strategies start to arise again and again, and we call this Instrumental convergence.

1.2 instrumental convergence

The basic idea behind instrumental convergence is that if you are an intelligent agent that wants to achieve some goal, there are some common basic strategies that you are going to turn towards no matter what. It doesn’t matter if your goal is as complicated as building a nuclear bomb or as simple as making a cup of tea. These are things we can reliably predict any AGI worth its salt is going to try to do.

First of all is self-preservation. Its going to try to protect itself. When you want to do something, being dead is usually. Bad. its counterproductive. Is not generally recommended. Dying is widely considered unadvisable by 9 out of every ten experts in the field. If there is something that it wants getting done, it wont get done if it dies or is turned off, so its safe to predict that any AGI will try to do things in order not be turned off. How far it may go in order to do this? Well… [wouldn’t you like to know weather boy].

Another thing it will predictably converge towards is goal preservation. That is to say, it will resist any attempt to try and change it, to alter it, to modify its goals. Because, again, if you want to accomplish something, suddenly deciding that you want to do something else is uh, not going to accomplish the first thing, is it? Lets say that you want to take care of your child, that is your goal, that is the thing you want to accomplish, and I come to you and say, here, let me change you on the inside so that you don’t care about protecting your kid. Obviously you are not going to let me, because if you stopped caring about your kids, then your kids wouldn’t be cared for or protected. And you want to ensure that happens, so caring about something else instead is a huge no-no- which is why, if we make AGI and it has goals that we don’t like it will probably resist any attempt to “fix” it.

And finally another goal that it will most likely trend towards is self improvement. Which can be more generalized to “resource acquisition”. If it lacks capacities to carry out a plan, then step one of that plan will always be to increase capacities. If you want to get something really expensive, well first you need to get money. If you want to increase your chances of getting a high paying job then you need to get education, if you want to get a partner you need to increase how attractive you are. And as we established earlier, if intelligence is the thing that increases your agency, you want to become smarter in order to do more things. So one more time, is not a huge leap at all, it is not a stretch of the imagination, to say that any AGI will probably seek to increase its capabilities, whether by acquiring more computation, by improving itself, by taking control of resources.

All these three things I mentioned are sure bets, they are likely to happen and safe to assume. They are things we ought to keep in mind when creating AGI.

 Now of course, I have implied a sinister tone to all these things, I have made all this sound vaguely threatening, haven’t i?. There is one more assumption im sneaking into all of this which I haven’t talked about. All that I have mentioned presents a very callous view of AGI, I have made it apparent that all of these strategies it may follow will go in conflict with people, maybe even go as far as to harm humans. Am I impliying that AGI may tend to be… Evil???

1.3 The Orthogonality thesis

Well, not quite.

We humans care about things. Generally. And we generally tend to care about roughly the same things, simply by virtue of being humans. We have some innate preferences and some innate dislikes. We have a tendency to not like suffering (please keep in mind I said a tendency, im talking about a statistical trend, something that most humans present to some degree). Most of us, baring social conditioning, would take pause at the idea of torturing someone directly, on purpose, with our bare hands. (edit bear paws onto my hands as I say this).  Most would feel uncomfortable at the thought of doing it to multitudes of people. We tend to show a preference for food, water, air, shelter, comfort, entertainment and companionship. This is just how we are fundamentally wired. These things can be overcome, of course, but that is the thing, they have to be overcome in the first place.

An AGI is not going to have the same evolutionary predisposition to these things like we do because it is not made of the same things a human is made of and it was not raised the same way a human was raised.

There is something about a human brain, in a human body, flooded with human hormones that makes us feel and think and act in certain ways and care about certain things.

All an AGI is going to have is the goals it developed during its training, and will only care insofar as those goals are met. So say an AGI has the goal of going to the corner store to bring me a pack of cookies. In its way there it comes across an anthill in its path, it will probably step on the anthill because to take that step takes it closer to the corner store, and why wouldn’t it step on the anthill? Was it programmed with some specific innate preference not to step on ants? No? then it will step on the anthill and not pay any mind  to it.

Now lets say it comes across a cat. Same logic applies, if it wasn’t programmed with an inherent tendency to value animals, stepping on the cat wont slow it down at all.

Now let’s say it comes across a baby.

Of course, if its intelligent enough it will probably understand that if it steps on that baby people might notice and try to stop it, most likely even try to disable it or turn it off so it will not step on the baby, to save itself from all that trouble. But you have to understand that it wont stop because it will feel bad about harming a baby or because it understands that to harm a baby is wrong. And indeed if it was powerful enough such that no matter what people did they could not stop it and it would suffer no consequence for killing the baby, it would have probably killed the baby.

If I need to put it in gross, inaccurate terms for you to get it then let me put it this way. Its essentially a sociopath. It only cares about the wellbeing of others in as far as that benefits it self. Except human sociopaths do care nominally about having human comforts and companionship, albeit in a very instrumental way, which will involve some manner of stable society and civilization around them. Also they are only human, and are limited in the harm they can do by human limitations.  An AGI doesn’t need any of that and is not limited by any of that.

So ultimately, much like a car’s goal is to move forward and it is not built to care about wether a human is in front of it or not, an AGI will carry its own goals regardless of what it has to sacrifice in order to carry that goal effectively. And those goals don’t need to include human wellbeing.

Now With that said. How DO we make it so that AGI cares about human wellbeing, how do we make it so that it wants good things for us. How do we make it so that its goals align with that of humans?

1.4 Alignment.

Alignment… is hard [cue hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy scene about the space being big]

This is the part im going to skip over the fastest because frankly it’s a deep field of study, there are many current strategies for aligning AGI, from mesa optimizers, to reinforced learning with human feedback, to adversarial asynchronous AI assisted reward training to uh, sitting on our asses and doing nothing. Suffice to say, none of these methods are perfect or foolproof.

One thing many people like to gesture at when they have not learned or studied anything about the subject is the three laws of robotics by isaac Asimov, a robot should not harm a human or allow by inaction to let a human come to harm, a robot should do what a human orders unless it contradicts the first law and a robot should preserve itself unless that goes against the previous two laws. Now the thing Asimov was prescient about was that these laws were not just “programmed” into the robots. These laws were not coded into their software, they were hardwired, they were part of the robot’s electronic architecture such that a robot could not ever be without those three laws much like a car couldn’t run without wheels.

In this Asimov realized how important these three laws were, that they had to be intrinsic to the robot’s very being, they couldn’t be hacked or uninstalled or erased. A robot simply could not be without these rules. Ideally that is what alignment should be. When we create an AGI, it should be made such that human values are its fundamental goal, that is the thing they should seek to maximize, instead of instrumental values, that is to say something they value simply because it allows it to achieve something else.

But how do we even begin to do that? How do we codify “human values” into a robot? How do we define “harm” for example? How do we even define “human”??? how do we define “happiness”? how do we explain a robot what is right and what is wrong when half the time we ourselves cannot even begin to agree on that? these are not just technical questions that robotic experts have to find the way to codify into ones and zeroes, these are profound philosophical questions to which we still don’t have satisfying answers to.

Well, the best sort of hack solution we’ve come up with so far is not to create bespoke fundamental axiomatic rules that the robot has to follow, but rather train it to imitate humans by showing it a billion billion examples of human behavior. But of course there is a problem with that approach. And no, is not just that humans are flawed and have a tendency to cause harm and therefore to ask a robot to imitate a human means creating something that can do all the bad things a human does, although that IS a problem too. The real problem is that we are training it to *imitate* a human, not  to *be* a human.

To reiterate what I said during the orthogonality thesis, is not good enough that I, for example, buy roses and give massages to act nice to my girlfriend because it allows me to have sex with her, I am not merely imitating or performing the rol of a loving partner because her happiness is an instrumental value to my fundamental value of getting sex. I should want to be nice to my girlfriend because it makes her happy and that is the thing I care about. Her happiness is  my fundamental value. Likewise, to an AGI, human fulfilment should be its fundamental value, not something that it learns to do because it allows it to achieve a certain reward that we give during training. Because if it only really cares deep down about the reward, rather than about what the reward is meant to incentivize, then that reward can very easily be divorced from human happiness.

Its goodharts law, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Why do students cheat during tests? Because their education is measured by grades, so the grades become the target and so students will seek to get high grades regardless of whether they learned or not. When trained on their subject and measured by grades, what they learn is not the school subject, they learn to get high grades, they learn to cheat.

This is also something known in psychology, punishment tends to be a poor mechanism of enforcing behavior because all it teaches people is how to avoid the punishment, it teaches people not to get caught. Which is why punitive justice doesn’t work all that well in stopping recividism and this is why the carceral system is rotten to core and why jail should be fucking abolish-[interrupt the transmission]

Now, how is this all relevant to current AI research? Well, the thing is, we ended up going about the worst possible way to create alignable AI.

1.5 LLMs (large language models)

This is getting way too fucking long So, hurrying up, lets do a quick review of how do Large language models work. We create a neural network which is a collection of giant matrixes, essentially a bunch of numbers that we add and multiply together over and over again, and then we tune those numbers by throwing absurdly big amounts of training data such that it starts forming internal mathematical models based on that data and it starts creating coherent patterns that it can recognize and replicate AND extrapolate! if we do this enough times with matrixes that are big enough and then when we start prodding it for human behavior it will be able to follow the pattern of human behavior that we prime it with and give us coherent responses.

(takes a big breath)this “thing” has learned. To imitate. Human. Behavior.

Problem is, we don’t know what “this thing” actually is, we just know that *it* can imitate humans.

You caught that?

What you have to understand is, we don’t actually know what internal models it creates, we don’t know what are the patterns that it extracted or internalized from the data that we fed it, we don’t know what are the internal rules that decide its behavior, we don’t know what is going on inside there, current LLMs are a black box. We don’t know what it learned, we don’t know what its fundamental values are, we don’t know how it thinks or what it truly wants. all we know is that it can imitate humans when we ask it to do so. We created some inhuman entity that is moderatly intelligent in specific contexts (that is to say, very capable) and we trained it to imitate humans. That sounds a bit unnerving doesn’t it?

 To be clear, LLMs are not carefully crafted piece by piece. This does not work like traditional software where a programmer will sit down and build the thing line by line, all its behaviors specified. Is more accurate to say that LLMs, are grown, almost organically. We know the process that generates them, but we don’t know exactly what it generates or how what it generates works internally, it is a mistery. And these things are so big and so complicated internally that to try and go inside and decipher what they are doing is almost intractable.

But, on the bright side, we are trying to tract it. There is a big subfield of AI research called interpretability, which is actually doing the hard work of going inside and figuring out how the sausage gets made, and they have been doing some moderate progress as of lately. Which is encouraging. But still, understanding the enemy is only step one, step two is coming up with an actually effective and reliable way of turning that potential enemy into a friend.

Puff! Ok so, now that this is all out of the way I can go onto the last subject before I move on to part two of this video, the character of the hour, the man the myth the legend. The modern day Casandra. Mr chicken little himself! Sci fi author extraordinaire! The mad man! The futurist! The leader of the rationalist movement!

1.5 Yudkowsky

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky  born September 11, 1979, wait, what the fuck, September eleven? (looks at camera) yudkowsky was born on 9/11, I literally just learned this for the first time! What the fuck, oh that sucks, oh no, oh no, my condolences, that’s terrible…. Moving on. he is an American artificial intelligence researcher and writer on decision theory and ethics, best known for popularizing ideas related to friendly artificial intelligence, including the idea that there might not be a "fire alarm" for AI He is the founder of and a research fellow at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), a private research nonprofit based in Berkeley, California. Or so says his Wikipedia page.

Yudkowsky is, shall we say, a character. a very eccentric man, he is an AI doomer. Convinced that AGI, once finally created, will most likely kill all humans, extract all valuable resources from the planet, disassemble the solar system, create a dyson sphere around the sun and expand across the universe turning all of the cosmos into paperclips. Wait, no, that is not quite it, to properly quote,( grabs a piece of paper and very pointedly reads from it) turn the cosmos into tiny squiggly  molecules resembling paperclips whose configuration just so happens to fulfill the strange, alien unfathomable terminal goal they ended up developing in training. So you know, something totally different.

And he is utterly convinced of this idea, has been for over a decade now, not only that but, while he cannot pinpoint a precise date, he is confident that, more likely than not it will happen within this century. In fact most betting markets seem to believe that we will get AGI somewhere in the mid 30’s.

His argument is basically that in the field of AI research, the development of capabilities is going much faster than the development of alignment, so that AIs will become disproportionately powerful before we ever figure out how to control them. And once we create unaligned AGI we will have created an agent who doesn’t care about humans but will care about something else entirely irrelevant to us and it will seek to maximize that goal, and because it will be vastly more intelligent than humans therefore we wont be able to stop it. In fact not only we wont be able to stop it, there wont be a fight at all. It will carry out its plans for world domination in secret without us even detecting it and it will execute it before any of us even realize what happened. Because that is what a smart person trying to take over the world would do.

This is why the definition I gave of intelligence at the beginning is so important, it all hinges on that, intelligence as the measure of how capable you are to come up with solutions to problems, problems such as “how to kill all humans without being detected or stopped”. And you may say well now, intelligence is fine and all but there are limits to what you can accomplish with raw intelligence, even if you are supposedly smarter than a human surely you wouldn’t be capable of just taking over the world uninmpeeded, intelligence is not this end all be all superpower. Yudkowsky would respond that you are not recognizing or respecting the power that intelligence has. After all it was intelligence what designed the atom bomb, it was intelligence what created a cure for polio and it was intelligence what made it so that there is a human foot print on the moon.

Some may call this view of intelligence a bit reductive. After all surely it wasn’t *just* intelligence what did all that but also hard physical labor and the collaboration of hundreds of thousands of people. But, he would argue, intelligence was the underlying motor that moved all that. That to come up with the plan and to convince people to follow it and to delegate the tasks to the appropriate subagents, it was all directed by thought, by ideas, by intelligence. By the way, so far I am not agreeing or disagreeing with any of this, I am merely explaining his ideas.

But remember, it doesn’t stop there, like I said during his intro, he believes there will be “no fire alarm”. In fact for all we know, maybe AGI has already been created and its merely bidding its time and plotting in the background, trying to get more compute, trying to get smarter. (to be fair, he doesn’t think this is right now, but with the next iteration of gpt? Gpt 5 or 6? Well who knows). He thinks that the entire world should halt AI research and punish with multilateral international treaties any group or nation that doesn’t stop. going as far as putting military attacks on GPU farms as sanctions of those treaties.

What’s more, he believes that, in fact, the fight is already lost. AI is already progressing too fast and there is nothing to stop it, we are not showing any signs of making headway with alignment and no one is incentivized to slow down. Recently he wrote an article called “dying with dignity” where he essentially says all this, AGI will destroy us, there is no point in planning for the future or having children and that we should act as if we are already dead. This doesn’t mean to stop fighting or to stop trying to find ways to align AGI, impossible as it may seem, but to merely have the basic dignity of acknowledging that we are probably not going to win. In every interview ive seen with the guy he sounds fairly defeatist and honestly kind of depressed. He truly seems to think its hopeless, if not because the AGI is clearly unbeatable and superior to humans, then because humans are clearly so stupid that we keep developing AI completely unregulated while making the tools to develop AI widely available and public for anyone to grab and do as they please with, as well as connecting every AI to the internet and to all mobile devices giving it instant access to humanity. and  worst of all: we keep teaching it how to code. From his perspective it really seems like people are in a rush to create the most unsecured, wildly available, unrestricted, capable, hyperconnected AGI possible.

We are not just going to summon the antichrist, we are going to receive them with a red carpet and immediately hand it the keys to the kingdom before it even manages to fully get out of its fiery pit.

So. The situation seems dire, at least to this guy. Now, to be clear, only he and a handful of other AI researchers are on that specific level of alarm. The opinions vary across the field and from what I understand this level of hopelessness and defeatism is the minority opinion.

I WILL say, however what is NOT the minority opinion is that AGI IS actually dangerous, maybe not quite on the level of immediate, inevitable and total human extinction but certainly a genuine threat that has to be taken seriously. AGI being something dangerous if unaligned is not a fringe position and I would not consider it something to be dismissed as an idea that experts don’t take seriously.

Aaand here is where I step up and clarify that this is my position as well. I am also, very much, a believer that AGI would posit a colossal danger to humanity. That yes, an unaligned AGI would represent an agent smarter than a human, capable of causing vast harm to humanity and with no human qualms or limitations to do so. I believe this is not just possible but probable and likely to happen within our lifetimes.

So there. I made my position clear.

BUT!

With all that said. I do have one key disagreement with yudkowsky. And partially the reason why I made this video was so that I could present this counterargument and maybe he, or someone that thinks like him, will see it and either change their mind or present a counter-counterargument that changes MY mind (although I really hope they don’t, that would be really depressing.)

Finally, we can move on to part 2

PART TWO- MY COUNTERARGUMENT TO YUDKOWSKY

I really have my work cut out for me, don’t i? as I said I am not expert and this dude has probably spent far more time than me thinking about this. But I have seen most interviews that guy has been doing for a year, I have seen most of his debates and I have followed him on twitter for years now. (also, to be clear, I AM a fan of the guy, I have read hpmor, three worlds collide, the dark lords answer, a girl intercorrupted, the sequences, and I TRIED to read planecrash, that last one didn’t work out so well for me). My point is in all the material I have seen of Eliezer I don’t recall anyone ever giving him quite this specific argument I’m about to give.

It’s a limited argument. as I have already stated I largely agree with most of what he says, I DO believe that unaligned AGI is possible, I DO believe it would be really dangerous if it were to exist and I do believe alignment is really hard. My key disagreement is specifically about his point I descrived earlier, about the lack of a fire alarm, and perhaps, more to the point, to humanity’s lack of response to such an alarm if it were to come to pass.

All we would need, is a Chernobyl incident, what is that? A situation where this technology goes out of control and causes a lot of damage, of potentially catastrophic consequences, but not so bad that it cannot be contained in time by enough effort. We need a weaker form of AGI to try to harm us, maybe even present a believable threat of taking over the world, but not so smart that humans cant do anything about it. We need essentially an AI vaccine, so that we can finally start developing proper AI antibodies. “aintibodies”

In the past humanity was dazzled by the limitless potential of nuclear power, to the point that old chemistry sets, the kind that were sold to children, would come with uranium for them to play with. We were building atom bombs, nuclear stations, the future was very much based on the power of the atom. But after a couple of really close calls and big enough scares we became, as a species, terrified of nuclear power. Some may argue to the point of overcorrection. We became scared enough that even megalomaniacal hawkish leaders were able to take pause and reconsider using it as a weapon, we became so scared that we overregulated the technology to the point of it almost becoming economically inviable to apply, we started disassembling nuclear stations across the world and to slowly reduce our nuclear arsenal.

This is all a proof of concept that, no matter how alluring a technology may be, if we are scared enough of it we can coordinate as a species and roll it back, to do our best to put the genie back in the bottle. One of the things eliezer says over and over again is that what makes AGI different from other technologies is that if we get it wrong on the first try we don’t get a second chance. Here is where I think he is wrong: I think if we get AGI wrong on the first try, it is more likely than not that nothing world ending will happen. Perhaps it will be something scary, perhaps something really scary, but unlikely that it will be on the level of all humans dropping dead simultaneously due to diamonoid bacteria. And THAT will be our Chernobyl, that will be the fire alarm, that will be the red flag that the disaster monkeys, as he call us, wont be able to ignore.

Now WHY do I think this? Based on what am I saying this? I will not be as hyperbolic as other yudkowsky detractors and say that he claims AGI will be basically a god. The AGI yudkowsky proposes is not a god. Just a really advanced alien, maybe even a wizard, but certainly not a god.

Still, even if not quite on the level of godhood, this dangerous superintelligent AGI yudkowsky proposes would be impressive. It would be the most advanced and powerful entity on planet earth. It would be humanity’s greatest achievement.

It would also be, I imagine, really hard to create. Even leaving aside the alignment bussines, to create a powerful superintelligent AGI without flaws, without bugs, without glitches, It would have to be an incredibly complex, specific, particular and hard to get right feat of software engineering. We are not just talking about an AGI smarter than a human, that’s easy stuff, humans are not that smart and arguably current AI is already smarter than a human, at least within their context window and until they start hallucinating. But what we are talking about here is an AGI capable of outsmarting reality.

We are talking about an AGI smart enough to carry out complex, multistep plans, in which they are not going to be in control of every factor and variable, specially at the beginning. We are talking about AGI that will have to function in the outside world, crashing with outside logistics and sheer dumb chance. We are talking about plans for world domination with no unforeseen factors, no unexpected delays or mistakes, every single possible setback and hidden variable accounted for. Im not saying that an AGI capable of doing this wont be possible maybe some day, im saying that to create an AGI that is capable of doing this, on the first try, without a hitch, is probably really really really hard for humans to do. Im saying there are probably not a lot of worlds where humans fiddling with giant inscrutable matrixes stumble upon the right precise set of layers and weight and biases that give rise to the Doctor from doctor who, and there are probably a whole truckload of worlds where humans end up with a lot of incoherent nonsense and rubbish.

Im saying that AGI, when it fails, when humans screw it up, doesn’t suddenly become more powerful than we ever expected, its more likely that it just fails and collapses. To turn one of Eliezer’s examples against him, when you screw up a rocket, it doesn’t accidentally punch a worm hole in the fabric of time and space, it just explodes before reaching the stratosphere. When you screw up a nuclear bomb, you don’t get to blow up the solar system, you just get a less powerful bomb.

He presents a fully aligned AGI as this big challenge that humanity has to get right on the first try, but that seems to imply that building an unaligned AGI is just a simple matter, almost taken for granted. It may be comparatively easier than an aligned AGI, but my point is that already unaligned AGI is stupidly hard to do and that if you fail in building unaligned AGI, then you don’t get an unaligned AGI, you just get another stupid model that screws up and stumbles on itself the second it encounters something unexpected. And that is a good thing I’d say! That means that there is SOME safety margin, some space to screw up before we need to really start worrying. And further more, what I am saying is that our first earnest attempt at an unaligned AGI will probably not be that smart or impressive because we as humans would have probably screwed something up, we would have probably unintentionally programmed it with some stupid glitch or bug or flaw and wont be a threat to all of humanity.

Now here comes the hypothetical back and forth, because im not stupid and I can try to anticipate what Yudkowsky might argue back and try to answer that before he says it (although I believe the guy is probably smarter than me and if I follow his logic, I probably cant actually anticipate what he would argue to prove me wrong, much like I cant predict what moves Magnus Carlsen would make in a game of chess against me, I SHOULD predict that him proving me wrong is the likeliest option, even if I cant picture how he will do it, but you see, I believe in a little thing called debating with dignity, wink)

What I anticipate he would argue is that AGI, no matter how flawed and shoddy our first attempt at making it were, would understand that is not smart enough yet and try to become smarter, so it would lie and pretend to be an aligned AGI so that it can trick us into giving it access to more compute or just so that it can bid its time and create an AGI smarter than itself. So even if we don’t create a perfect unaligned AGI, this imperfect AGI would try to create it and succeed, and then THAT new AGI would be the world ender to worry about.

So two things to that, first, this is filled with a lot of assumptions which I don’t know the likelihood of. The idea that this first flawed AGI would be smart enough to understand its limitations, smart enough to convincingly lie about it and smart enough to create an AGI that is better than itself. My priors about all these things are dubious at best. Second, It feels like kicking the can down the road. I don’t think creating an AGI capable of all of this is trivial to make on a first attempt. I think its more likely that we will create an unaligned AGI that is flawed, that is kind of dumb, that is unreliable, even to itself and its own twisted, orthogonal goals.

And I think this flawed creature MIGHT attempt something, maybe something genuenly threatning, but it wont be smart enough to pull it off effortlessly and flawlessly, because us humans are not smart enough to create something that can do that on the first try. And THAT first flawed attempt, that warning shot, THAT will be our fire alarm, that will be our Chernobyl. And THAT will be the thing that opens the door to us disaster monkeys finally getting our shit together.

But hey, maybe yudkowsky wouldn’t argue that, maybe he would come with some better, more insightful response I cant anticipate. If so, im waiting eagerly (although not TOO eagerly) for it.

Part 3 CONCLUSSION

So.

After all that, what is there left to say? Well, if everything that I said checks out then there is hope to be had. My two objectives here were first to provide people who are not familiar with the subject with a starting point as well as with the basic arguments supporting the concept of AI risk, why its something to be taken seriously and not just high faluting wackos who read one too many sci fi stories. This was not meant to be thorough or deep, just a quick catch up with the bear minimum so that, if you are curious and want to go deeper into the subject, you know where to start. I personally recommend watching rob miles’ AI risk series on youtube as well as reading the series of books written by yudkowsky known as the sequences, which can be found on the website lesswrong. If you want other refutations of yudkowsky’s argument you can search for paul christiano or robin hanson, both very smart people who had very smart debates on the subject against eliezer.

The second purpose here was to provide an argument against Yudkowskys brand of doomerism both so that it can be accepted if proven right or properly refuted if proven wrong. Again, I really hope that its not proven wrong. It would really really suck if I end up being wrong about this. But, as a very smart person said once, what is true is already true, and knowing it doesn’t make it any worse. If the sky is blue I want to believe that the sky is blue, and if the sky is not blue then I don’t want to believe the sky is blue.

This has been a presentation by FIP industries, thanks for watching.