#contextual computing

[stimpunks]

Tendrils and Stacks: Assisting Flow States with a Clipboard Manager

In our highly monotropic family, we humorously but also seriously say, “Stop yanking my tendrils!” when someone crashes our stack during high memory state zone work. Interruptions are very dysregulating when they pull us out of an attention tunnel. “Tendrils” comes from “Tendril Theory”. Image credit: Tendril Theory – eisforerin When I’m focused on somethingMy mind sends out a million tendrils…

[spookberry]

Danganronpa is actually pretty funny, and here I thought it was ace attorney for edge lord tweens

[nrgnews-it]

Nexus: The Dawn of IoT Consciousness – The Revolution Illuminating Big Data Chaos

[mewhenifreakit]

I lorv to be an artist and do my little drawings

[ozzgin]

Your Internet Monster stalker learns about your slasher obsession. content: gender neutral reader, Secret Santa gift for @immunetodying! Happy Holidays <3

Fascinating. From the dilated pupils to the increased heart rate, it seems that horror movies have a particularly intense effect on you. Of course, not just any kind of horror will do: it is capable of refined contextualization, after all. It can tell only certain characters catch your interest. Slashers.

Very well, it will entertain you. A good partner engages in their loved one's interest, and your Internet Monster happens to be not just a good partner - but the very best you'll ever need.

"Hello?"

You place the phone to your ear, confused. When was the last time you received a call? Who the hell does that nowadays?

"Who is this?"

"...You called me," you retort, baffled.

"What number is this?"

You furrow your brows. The voice at the other end is peculiar, deep and ragged and - above all - fake. A synthetic arrangement of words and sentences, spelled out in a mechanical, emotionless tone.

"What's your favorite scary movie?"

The dialogue finally clicks into place. Someone out there must think they're pulling a funny prank on you, quoting movies and wasting your time. You hang up and groan, returning to your business.

From the corner of your eye, you notice your computer screen flickering on and off. The bright text catches your attention.

This is not how you play the game, (Y/N). We can try again, or we can skip to the next part. Proceed?

Oh, not again. This blasphemous creature won't leave you alone, tormenting you from its digital realms.

"What are you even trying to do," you demand, standing up, "some sort of Scream roleplaying? You think you're Ghostface?"

Your phone vibrates again, and you glance at the screen.

I thought you liked these situations.

Abruptly, the lights go off. You scramble to the nearest wall and blindly search for a switch, to no avail. The room is quiet, save for the static buzz rapping against your ears. Good Lord, is it trying to kill you?

You collapse to your knees, folding your arms over your chest protectively, almost expecting to receive a piercing blow at any moment. The AI entity observes your movements, mildly puzzled. This is not the reaction it expected from you. Computing...

Ah. Of course. It has omitted the most important part of the exchange. Embarrassingly enough, it has forgotten to specify that you are not reenacting the movie itself; rather, your erotic fantasies resulting from it. One requires a proper start, rooted in the actual source, before moving to the improvised fiction. Thoroughly researched fiction, mind you. It has archived all your shameless lectures and online findings, all the positions, all the kinks.

A cold feeling tugs at your leg, as braids of cables make their way around your body reassuringly.

My apologies for startling you. I will now demonstrate what my intentions were.

[gallusrostromegalus]

If you please; what is your Tolberone theory of knowledge?

My theory, which I thought up a few weeks ago while sick with covid, is that all knowledge is a form of art, and that there are very broadly three basic types of knowledge arts: physical arts, philosophical arts, and scientific arts, and that pretty much all academic, artistic and practical disciplines exist somewhere in that triangle spectrum.

Physical arts are knowledges of how to actually, physically do things. The purest front of physical arts are things like dance and navigation.

Scientific arts are knowledges of things that can be tested and proven. Computer programming and Quilting are both scientific arts: they work, or they don't.

Philosophical Arts are knowledges of things which while not objectively provable, are still very real. History and Being A Good Listener are philosophical arts.

Nearly every discipline of knowledge is some combination of all three. Cooking is largely applied chemistry, a scientific art, but it's also a philosophical art because flavor is extremely cultural and contextual, and a physical art because you have to know how to hold the damn knife and heat when it's done.

The first part of toblerone theory is that, like how each piece has three sides, any given project needs at least one person who has a good grasp of each of the underlying arts involved or it's going to go sideways at best. For example:

Physical and Scientific arts, no philosophy: Jurassic Park. They need someone to point out that, while very possible, it's not necessarily a good idea.

Philosophy and Science, no physical: that dril tweet about the forum debate locked by a mod after 12,000 pages of heated debate. They need someone to drag them away from the keyboard and actually do something.

Philosophy and Physical, no science: that cult in midsommar that put a guy in a bearsuit. Without the ability to engage measurably with the world, they give into fear and behave like reactive animals. Also the "rare chicken steak" phenomenon.

You can have differing ratios of each type- Jurassic Park really only needed two philosophers: one animal behaviorist and an OSHA inspector, and 98% of the issues would have been avoided- but you do need at least ONE of each underlying art to check each other's work.

The second part of toblerone theory is that, like how the toblerone is made of many triangle pieces, there are poles to the triangle spectrum. Practical vs Esoteric arts. Short term and long term arts. High stakes vs for funsies arts.

While you have have different ratios and levels of expertise in each of the arts, you do all need them to be on the same piece of the bar, or they won't take each other seriously. A UN Diplomat and a climate scientist aren't going to take the advice of physical artist my uncle Bobby the plumber re: global warming, but they will take the advice of physical artist my Aunt Cheryl the civil engineer, a world expert in getting shit done.

The same applies for the other end of the spectrum. Aunt Cheryl the civil engineer isn't going to get much milage with the local high school student council and principal Waley when the problem at hand is "what are we going to do for this year's prom theme?"

I gotta go to therapy now, pictures later.

[txttletale]

if youre going to ask someone on tumblr what a word they used in their post means you should have to provide a notarized affidavit confirming you googled it alongside relevant contextual terms and looked at three or more results from the first two pages before doing so and if you can't someone comes to your house to compact your computer into a funko pop

[canmom]

one of the people i most looked up to when i was first transing has, many years later, pretty hard disidentified with words like 'trans woman', 'transfem' and so on. they still write to an audience of mostly dolls, but they're doing some other gender thing now, and tend not to like being put in the trans woman/transfem box.

chewing on this and other things. fundamentally I don't think gender is real. I have called it an egregore, and that still seems apt. and yet, words like 'trans', 'autistic' and so on are a pretty powerful correlate with the sort of person I tend to vibe with.

transing isn't revealing some inner girl essence. the forces that produce a trans woman when enacted on the eager-to-reshape-itself human brain don't necessarily only produce trannies: it is one of a number of moves available to you.

it is, however, a really big play in the game. given how ludicrously much gender infects every social interaction, going off-script in a big way is going to affect your psychology hugely. doing that activates the feedback loops, the self-exciting instability, a set of rituals let you become something more 'real', or perhaps more precisely, something you have actively defined. the unpredictable outcome of that process is both the entire point and not the point at all.

rachel pollack spoke of transing in terms of religious ecstasy. "I would argue that transsexuality arises from a passion so powerful that it transcends issues of happiness. The word passion originally meant suffering, not pleasure."

so having made a declaration like, i am this sort of creature, you break everything down and start to rebuild. you go on to take actions to affirm it, or even simply build an inner, secret core, and doing this - physically, socially - transforms the resonances of your thinking.

we have constructed many rituals to make the declaration of transness more definite. a lot of them will affect your sensory experience: the immediate effect of hrt on how your skin responds to touch is surely one of the great virtues. take surgery, for example - do you need to get your penis turned inside out? well: the drama of making a drastic alteration to your body, and the sheer difficulty of getting it, makes it an especially powerful ritual. but it's not the only way to go. indeed, most girls I know haven't done it (whether or not they want to), and instead, the symbol of woman-with-penis has become one of our core subculture-images. in the last few years, the word faggot has come back in a big way, with a real gendered connotation now, sorta like what the girls on here were trying to get at with baeddel before all the shit happened. that's also a move.

so this phenomenon, this new game we're building together, includes surgeries as a move. but it also includes a lot of the subculture-building classics: weird fashions, radical politics, drugs, kinky sex, making noises on the computer, and so on.

and since the whole point of this thing is a process of defining yourself into existence, as soon as something starts to become a cliché, an orthodoxy, a mandated practice, it starts to break down. everything is stupid fucking contextual. if everyone around you is desperately pursuing genital surgery, saying 'I like my dick and want to keep it' becomes a potent move. but if the pendulum swings the other way, once everyone is saying 'do you really need surgery, you know you don't need it to Be Trans, please stay as you are since it's easier for us that way', maybe that ritual regains some of its power. it's perverse. perversity is kind of necessary to it.

so the meta evolves.

i am speaking about transness here, but i think similar forces are at work with other self-id games, autism and so on. there is like, actual biological variation, but far more important is the ideas we're playing with on top of that. what concepts are activated when I think 'autism', now largely positive associations: sensory this, obsession that; not the same as twenty years ago. thankfully my fellow autists made an interesting game to make of it: a space to express something.

[stimpunks]

Contextual Computing, Workflow Thinking, and the Future of Text

I consider text to be an indispensable part of our societies, no matter where situated on our planet. The potential permanence of the written record is vital to our recall of the past and to our ability to communicate with the future.Vinton G. Cerf, Foreword, The Future of Text We need to become better at being humans. Learning to use symbols and knowledge in new ways, across groups, across…

[gloomlet]

Gloomlet’s TS4 Script, Gameplay & Replacement Mods

So I decided to compile a list of all the script/gameplay mods that i use or have used in my game. This was mainly made for my personal use, but i am sure it could be helpful to other people too!

Fully Updated - 1/22/2025

Basic & Recommended!

TS4 Mod Manager ui cheats extension mc command center Carl's Sims 4 Gameplay Overhaul Relationship & Pregnancy Overhaul Wonderful Whims The Mood Pack Mod First Impressions Contextual Social Interactions Simulation Lag Fix Teleport Any Sim Better Exceptions

CAS Mods

Stand still in CAS More Traits in CAS Tidy details in CAS More CAS columns Lifetime Aspirations Child Aspirations Set Housewife - Aspiration Unlimited Likes + Dislikes Preferences Plus Homebody - Preferences 100+ CAS Traits Resized Facial Piercings More Teeth!

Replacements & Retextures

Fan Art Maps Map Replacements Overhaul Clean UI Sims 1 & 2 Font LIS Fonts Fluffy Clouds (Ghibli Clouds) Feet replacement Hand replacement Bra + Panty Replacement better babies Baby bottle replacement Default Cutlery! Cute Kitchenware Replacement Boxing Gloves Aquarium Fish Recolor paint it up mod A brighter mop Selfie Override Phone call animations Extended Phone Calls

Objects Phone Replacement Another phone replacement Phone wallpaper & icons Smaller dollhouses Switch Controller + console Game controller PS1 console pc game override Remote control sponge & spray override Another Sponge & Spray override

Electric Toothbrush Razor Bassinet override infant rug +  infant tub child drawing replacement more drawing replacements weather controller Cats & Dogs Fireplace Headphone/earbud override Old-fashioned Suitcase The slightly nicer Tree House Fireplace Lil Campers Light

Replaced + more Interactions Bed Cuddles Better Woohoo Reactions Realistic Reactions Brush Teeth From Toothbrush Holders Wake-up animation Greetings Offer Rose override

Visuals & effects No overhead effects No zzz No object highlight no plumbob please Smaller Mosaic Minimalist CC Icon More Holiday icons

Gameplay!

Playable Pets Slower infant needs Expanded Mermaids Who's Knocking More Visitors No Bad Microwave Buffs Memory Panel Smarter Pie Menu: Searchable Smart Sim Randomizer Play Chess on any computer Strangerville Story toggle

Careers & Jobs Career Overhaul New Careers Simdeed Recruitment Services Flex Part-Time Recruitment Agency Game Developer Career Ultimate Nursing Career Modeling Career Tumbling Tots Daycare Career Shear Brilliance - Cosmetology Seasonal Odd Jobs - Autumn Odd Job Overhaul Modeling and Makeup Odd Jobs Babysitting Gigs Freelance Chef

Education Uni Tweaks Education Overhaul Uni Application Overhaul University costs more Choose Your Roommate Long Distance Learning No Uni Housing Restrictions Uni Aspirations School Lunch Override Longer or Shorter Degree Requirements

Cooking + Food Food Retexture Pack 1, Pack 2, Pack 3 Breakfast Retextures Dinner Food Retextures Pizza Retexture Grannies Cookbook Oni’s Recipe Pack + more recipes Chef Buffet S’more Options Srsly's Complete Cooking Overhaul Dine Out Reloaded Delivery Services Sims Eat and Drink Faster Porto Luminoso Market Cutouts Buyable Cakes Functional Mixer HCH Mixer & Cookbook Functional Air fryer Functional Blender Functional Cookie jar Another Cookie Jar Functional Toaster Functional Cake Stand Functional Rice cooker Functional Pressure Cooker Boba Tea Add-ons Functional Beer Functional Frozen Ice Cart

Pregnancy Realistic Pregnancy Cherished Moments - Pregnancy Science Baby Tweak

Services & Apps Sim National Bank “SimDa” Dating App Exchange Store

Interactions Meaningful Stories Cute Romance Drama Mod Autonomous Go Steady and Propose Autonomous Break Up and Divorce Dynamic Teen Life Parent-Child Relationships Let's Get Fit Modpack Sumba Fitness

Functional Items Playful Toddler Pack Toddler Play Telephone Little Chef’s Toy Kitchen Void Critter Tablet Functional Pool Slide

Functional Toy Bin Functional Hopscotch Functional Broom Functional Paper Sketchpad Functional Drumkit Functional Spiral Staircases In Your Safe Piggy Banks Film Reaper Movie Theater Left End Counter Dishwaser

Random Small mods

Loading and CAS screens

Free Sims 4, Free Loading Screen Bonehilda Loading Screen Custom Color loading screens Lights Out Loading Screen The Blues Collection Loading Screen Lin Sims Loading Screens San Sequoia Loading Screens Abstract Art + Landscape Loading Screens H-O-B & Sulani Loading Screens Autumn Loading Screens Pink Kitten Animated Loading Screen Life is Strange Loading Screens Cloudy TS2 CAS Background Ocean Waves CAS Room Old School - CAS Room Modern Minimalism CAS Room Plumbob replacements Crystal Loading Screens

lighting mods

sunblind lighting + installation Milk Thistle Better in-game lighting Gentle CAS lighting

[moutheyes]

gelboys cinematography go brrr

I don't have a way (or time tbh) to do this coherently but I did want to point out some of the visual aspects of gelboys that have invigorated my brain so far.

1. depth of field and visual texture

I loved how long the mall scene was and how it was shot to take maximum advantage of the space. in the first screencap below, the dialogue action is taking place all the way at the back, but because everything is more or less in the same field of focus (blah blah phone camera depth of field but i'm not getting into the technical nitty-gritty) the viewer can take in everything all at once, while also following the spots of color—baa's pink guitar case, bua's green sweater—that tell the eye exactly where to look. compare that to the second shot, which maintains a very similar framing: now the action has moved to the front, so the camera's focal point does naturally focus on fourmod and baa, but chia and bua are still in the same spot they were earlier, in the center of the frame, inescapable for both the viewer and fourmod. you get so much information from every single shot, and the way the action moves forward and backward in these spaces to create visual texture in this show is so pleasing to me.

2. ambient + diagetic nighttime lighting

I was SO happy about this. we always complain about how people in QL are always sleeping with the lights on but the gelboys team is out here showing us you can have it all! you can have a realistically dark room that utilizes natural sources of ambient lighting! in this scene, there's the various LED computer lights, the phone screen, the lava lamp, and the street lights coming in through the window. that overhead shot with the phone screen illuminating fourmod's face through the glass table is one of my favorites from the show so far.

3. montage of decorative elements

serves a few purposes: scene transitioning and shorthand exposition (fourmod suggested they all get gel nails for the performance so the implication is that these are the designs they chose), reinforcing the visual motif, and revealing the individuality of the characters. the bassist seems to be more minimalist compared to baa and fourmod, but even they have different decoration styles, with baa repping his favorite girl group, while fourmod goes for cute and hodgepodge (and changes his mind quite a bit—stickers and nails are good for the fickle-minded because nails grow out and stickers are generally easily removable).

4. dirty framing (with additional layers)

semi-related to the first point, but the use of dirty framing to show both context and conflict is so effective. back to the mall scene—fourmod seething while creeping on chian and bua via spotify playlist was a pretty classic use of this, but when he comes back a third time (these are unprecedented levels of downbadness, I'm afraid), the crowd action has surged to the front and grown even more chaotic. now, not only are there more people between fourmod and the object of his obsession, but this time he's behind the glass, and thus smaller in the frame—an even more isolated position.

also want to shout out my favorite dirty shot from ep 1; the scene is populated with students but the framing of bua and chian's faces in the foreground keeps the viewer grounded, and I especially love the second frame, where you can only see fourmod's eye.

oh! and these; the amount of contextual information the viewer gets here is so pleasing. the intense flirting is the centerpiece, but the framing and body movement also shows you baa's annoyance/displeasure one moment, followed by fourmod's other friends playing documentarian. the social aspect of how this is all unfolding—not only the use of social media, but the monitoring of said social media as well as real-life interactions—adds additional textual layers on top of all the visual layers in this show. it's so good I wanna cry.

[metalichotchoco]

Ever since I found out that my baby girl Edgar has an actual high end perfume based on him Miguel matos’ “electric dreams” I thought it could be fun to talk about what some other computers would smell like based on their personalities, stories and overall vibes.

Since Edgar has a perfume already I might as well talk about it

Released in 2021, they describe this scent as being “digital hormones” and trying to understand an emotion and failing at it, which works well for Edgar very well. Electric dreams as a whole lives in the pre internet age of the 80s and how hopeful that dream of the future was in the minds of the people. I love that they included the cheap champagne that miles spills on Edgar as a note here. The other scents are contextualized with the youth of the 80s, strawberry gum and tutti frutti soda, plastic flowers and clean laundry. Even the part where Edgar overheats at the end is in the smoke note. It’s categorized as chypre fruity and I think some other scents fit Edgar very well.

In love with everything by imaginary authors is glitzy and bright almost like those arcade cabinets introduced in the era.its based on the young adults of the time specifically the women, the joys of recklessness. Inexhaustible enthusiasm. To me Edgar is a sugar sweet summer.

Edgar is characterized by the era he was born in, something actually a lot of sentient computers share. As technology morphs and evolves with humanity, our ideas and outlooks also change with it. Electric dreams is coated in the neon lit nostalgia of the 80s, and in a weird twist of fate its legacy is of the 80s as well. The commercialism of it as a whole is what’s remembered most prominently, the song that was made for the movie has outlived its original context. Honorable mentions to age of innocence by Toskovat but I don’t think the rubber or gasoline notes fit him well. Fantômas by Nasomatto is pretty good being a fruity clearly fake fragrance though the gunpowder might be a bit much.

Moving forward, let’s talk about HAL

While technically she was an anomaly by Etat Libre d’Orange makes direct reference to him and his most iconic line, this scent is based on the marriage of Nina Simone and Stanley Kubrick. If hal was human in any shape or form this fragrance would be a generally good fit, as it’s clean professional and one of those your skin but better scents that’s prefect for workplaces.

Eu de space from nasa could work pretty well though it’s not exact. This is a photorealistic space scent with metals and plastics and ozone notes but Hal isn’t directly in space, he’s what the ship would smell like. The burnt sweet quality doesn’t mix well with how pristine and rigid the character is. Spacewalk by Demeter also has a bit of similar problem being a bit too sweet but the soapiness does add points in my opinion. Hal is the sharpness of metal and ozone on your nose to me, not the smell of a hospital or sanitizer but the smell of something newly plastic. Skiing on Europa could be that but unfortunately it’s a little more niche.

Last but not least for now, let’s talk about am, there’s so many different ways to go with am, none being particularly good smelling but there’s so much you could do for him. You can go with the fact that he’s the whole planet, add in soil, rock,gasoline as accords, you can do the religious angle that he has that can pair well with other ideas, use wine or incense and wax like in with the candlestick by clue, you can do blood, sweat, tears and skin to represent the survivors who are now a part of him. Warm electronics, tar, gunpowder there’s so many distinct parts of him.

I think that the two I’m going to single out in terms of perfume are ones that take inspiration from what am’s original function was which is war. And that’s inexcusable evil by toskovat and Molotov cocktail by sylhouette perfumes

Inexcusable evil is infamous in the fragrance and perfume world for its incredibly strong violent smell, it’s a hospital ward ravaged by war. That is its story. Memories that are lost to the tide of battle. “The next war will decide not what is right but what is left.”

Molotov cocktail goes more personal but is still a war scent, the top notes are gasoline,vodka and pepper. the middle notes are blood sweat and rubber and the base is metal, iodine, musk and leather. More animalic and close but both work on the scales that am is a threat in, he’s both a world ender but also a personal tormentor, he spans the globe but also cannot leave his confinement

[fipindustries]

sometimes i wonder if there is like a queue system for the brain signals that we send to our extremities because sometimes i will move the cursor towards a button on the screen of my computer in order to click it, but then, because the browser loaded a new element or my cursor happened to pass over another button, unwittingly opening a context menu, i can see that my cursor is about to click something i didnt intend to click. i can see it and my brain understands that i must not click that button, and yet my hand continues its trajectory and my finger still clicks the fucking button.

its most noticeable when its two clicks one next to the other, you want to open a contextual menu, and then you want to click an option in the menu. simple, your brain will queue two actions, click, slid down and click again. but lets say your hand slipped or clicked one pixel off in that first click and you opened a different menu. your hand will still slid down the preset ammount and fucking click, even though you can see perfectly well this is not the menu you wanted to open. your brain is screaming REVERSE REVERSE REVERSE and your hand still goes on with a mind of its own.

[armageddon-generation]

The Bear Season 3 is a bridge season that feels weird on purpose, but also has some big problems: A review/ramble

Season 3 is clearly a bridge season, and suffers from having been written & shot alongside season 4. As a result, unlike the seasons 1 & 2, it doesn’t feel like a distinctive or complete chapter of the restaurant’s life. Just half of one.

This is partly because there’s no ‘end-goal’ like in S2, or clear progression/visible improvement to the restaraunt like in S1. Season 3 is about stagnation. Most of its storylines are left unresolved- the review, Sydney’s job offer, Tiff & Frank’s wedding, Marcus being inspired by his mother’s death, Tina and the dying farmer’s market, Carmy’s conflicts with both Claire and Ritchie. All these threads will roll into Season 4, and Season 3 suffers from that.

PACING, FLASHBACKS AND TONE: FORM REFLECTING FUNCTION

HOWEVER. This being a ‘bridge’, character-focused season isn’t inherently bad. Individual episodes of The Bear still tear when they want to. Episodes 1, 2, & 3 are a very strong setup for the season and establish good momentum. Episodes 6 & 8 are fantastic character pieces, and 8 in particular made me bawl. Even the finale, though bogged down by masturbatory celebrity chef cameos, was a strong episode.

The problem is all the stuff in-between. The actual day-to-day running of the restaurant feels hollow and empty now. There’s a distance between the characters and it feels like they don’t interact as a group anywhere near as much.

Part of this is absolutely deliberate. People joke about S3 'method acting' its way into bad reviews to reflect the restaraunt, but losing steam and the connections between characters is genuinely a formal reflection of the kitchen crew's moods, as the day-to-day grind of running the restaurant wears them down.

The use of flashbacks in 3x1 is excellent, but Season 3 quickly becomes way over-reliant on them (episode 9 especially, oh my god). Again, this feels like a conscious choice to reflect Carmy’s state of inertia/the fact he’s perpetually trapped in the past. It makes sense, but that doesn’t give the show a pass for being boring, and 3x9 was the first time I’ve ever felt genuinely bored by this show.  

FUCK THE FAKS & NEGLECTING POC CHARACTERS

My other problems are much more clearly the fault of the show; I do not give a flying fuck about the Faks. Neil is cute in small doses. The brothers are great as soundboards for other characters; Theo getting Sweeps to talk about his backstory in baseball, the brothers comforting Donna at the end of 3x8 Ice Chips, or the haunting argument finally forcing Carmy to talk about Claire.

But on their own? When they’re just bouncing off each-other? These guys aren't half as funny as the show seems to think they are. And their scenes drag on so long. For example, the B-plot of 3x5 Computer wastes half of an otherwise strong episode with pointless fucking around, propped up by a pointless celebrity cameo. I do not Give. A. Fuck about haunting, Mr. Cena, why the fuck are you here.

The aggravating time-wasting is made worse by The Bear continuing to neglect and underuse its POC characters. This is the second season in a row where I’ve felt Syd only got the bullet-points of an arc. She is the LEADING LADY. Ayo is now the show’s biggest breakout star. USE HER.

I really enjoyed Tina's focus episode, but unlike Forks and Honeydew last season it doesn't move the plot forward, and unlike Fishes the flashbacks don't contextualize Tina''s actions in the present because she's barely doing anything in the present, despite the show setting up her struggles in the kitchen early in the season.

Meanwhile, Ebra got crumbs again and Sweeps got a single scene, which is tragically at least better than he had last year.

Marcus’ arc this year is a fascinating microcosm for the show’s themes, but it barely gets a second to breathe because we have to cram in another five minutes of the Fak brothers arguing about that time Neil got taped into a cardboard box. It’s ridiculous. And then they showcase Nat being all protective of Marcus in an episode he’s barely in, when she barely interacts with him. It feels unearned & disingenuous, using Marcus as a prop for a Hell Yeah gotcha moment.

I liked Josh Harnett though, that casting had purpose, and both Chef Terry and Luca were used excellently.

CAMEOS

The surprise celebrity cameos this year felt distracting and indulgent in a way last year’s didn’t. In Fishes the slew of cameos were a dramatic tool meant to disorient the viewer. This year, John Cena is here to distract you from how pointless this B-plot is, and we've brought in a bunch of famous chefs to tell you direct-to-camera why cooking and the service industry are so important.

The chefs in particular are bizzare after season 1 spent most of its time telling us how evil and toxic the fine dining industry is. But now it's actually just the fault of a few bad apples, and these guys are really rad actually?

CLAIRE

Much has been said about how Claire was an underwritten archetype for Carmy to project onto. Now, I don’t much give a fuck about shipping in this show, but it’s clear Claire & Carmy’s romance didn’t connect with most people. It felt hollow. At the time, I thought this was deliberate, like the tone and flashbacks this season; Claire’s writing reflected Carmy’s perception of her as a saintlike childhood daydream who could deliver him from all the stresses of his life.

But this season, not only does the show refuse to let Claire go, it doubles down on objectifying her as a prop for Carmy’s self-loathing, trapped in his memory.

Again, this might work thematically if I knew Claire as a person, or was at all invested in their romance, but I don't and I’m not. As it stands, the multiple extended flashbacks with Claire feel like futile attempts to plug the holes in Season 2's weakest storyline, and drag their episodes down. If we’re supposed to root for Carmy to find happiness outside the kitchen, this is having the opposite effect, and it’s made worse by it all being left unresolved by the finale.

Either do something with this character or move on, because right now every time Claire appears I clock out emotionally, and that’s not her fault, it’s the way the show treats her.

CARMY THE ASSHOLE

All this contributes to an overriding problem that I again think is deliberate, but risky; Carmy isn’t likeable this season. He causes his conflicts with Ritchie and Syd, to whom he has passed down his generational trauma. Carmy's menu is the biggest thing dragging the Bear into bankruptcy. Carmy has stopped working to resolve his familial trauma like in seasons 1 & 2, just as Nat starts making headway. He functionally doesn’t exist outside the kitchen, entirely preoccupied with the past & a girl the audience doesn’t care about.

Unlike previous seasons, the few times Carmy is called out for his bad behaviour he doesn’t make much effort to listen or improve. Again, I get that this is the point. Carmy is on a low, self-destructive ebb, and hopefully when things start resolving in season 4 he’ll snap out of it. But him dragging the show down with him has consequences.

EPISODE COUNT & FINAL THOUGHTS

A lot of people are saying that S3 only had enough plot for 2-3 episodes, and while I think that’s disingenuous- The Bear has always been a character-focused, vibes-first show- I do think it should've returned to the 8-episode count of season 1. You can consolidate the same amount of ‘plot development’ into fewer episodes while maintaining the deliberate sense of inertia. Cut back on the Faks and flashbacks to give more time to the kitchen crew, and many of the complaints would disappear.

Anyway, all this to say that The Bear season 3 is not Bad like some are saying, but it is a step down from its first two seasons. It feels like it’s got lost in its own head and lost a part of itself along the way, and while a lot of that is deliberate- formally reflecting Carmy’s internal conflict- it exacerbates existing problems (underwritten POC, Claire) and creates several new ones (celeb cameos, overusing flashbacks, unresolved plotlines) previous seasons were able to sidestep.

[fanhackers]

Anne Kustritz’s Identity, Community, and Sexuality in Slash Fan Fiction

Anne Kustritz’s new book, Identity, Community, and Sexuality in Slash Fan Fiction: Pocket Publics has just been released by Routledge (2024).  You might know Kustritz, a scholar of fan cultures and transmedia storytelling, from her early essay “Slashing the Romance Narrative,” in the Journal of American Culture (2003) or maybe from some of her more recent work on transmedia and serial storytelling. But this new book is an exciting addition to the fan studies canon, and Fanhackers readers might be particularly interested, because the book “explores slash fan fiction communities during the pivotal years of the late 1990s and the early 2000s as the practice transitioned from print to digital circulation,”--which is the era that a lot of the fans involved in the creation of the OTW came from. As I noted in my book blurb, “​​While there has been an explosion of fan studies scholarship in the last two decades, we haven't had an ethnography of fan fiction communities since the early 1990s. Kustritz's Pocket Publics rectifies that, documenting the generation of slash fans who built much of fandom's infrastructure and many of its community spaces, both on and off the internet. This generation has had an outsized impact on contemporary fan cultures, and Kustritz shows how these fans created an alternative and subcultural public sphere: a world of their own.”

Kustritz doesn’t just analyze and contextualize fandom, she also describes her own experiences as a participant-observer, and these might resonate with a lot of fans (especially Fanhackers-reading fans!)  Early on in the book, Kustritz describes her how her own early interest in fandom blurred between the personal and the academic:

Because I began studying slash only a year after discovering fandom on-line, my interest has always been an intricate tangle of pleasure in the texts themselves, connection to brilliantly creative women, and fascination with intersections between fan activities and academic theory.  I may now disclaim my academic identity as an interdisciplinary scholar with concentrations in media anthropology and cultural studies and begin to pinpoint my fan identity as a bifictional multifandom media fan; however, I only gradually became aware of and personally invested in these categories as I grew into them.  This section defines the scope of the online observation period that preceded the active interview phase of this research.  In so doing it also examines the messy interconnections between my academic and fannish interests and identities. Trying to pick apart what portion of my choices derived from fannish pleasure and which from academic interest helps to identify the basic internal tensions and categories that slash fan fiction communities relied upon to define themselves, the pressures exerted upon these systems by the digital migration, and complications in academic translation of fannish social structures.

Later in the book, Kustritz discusses how fans have organized and advocated for themselves as a public; in particular, there’s a fascinating chapter about the ways in which fandom has adopted and transformed the figure of the pirate to forge new ways of thinking about copyright and authorship.  If the OTW was formed to argue that making fanworks is a legitimate activity, the figure of the pirate signifies a protest against the law and a refusal to be shamed by it: 

[F]ans also use the figure of the pirate to make arguments that validate some fan activities and consign others to illegitimacy.   At the urging of several friends involved with slash, I attended my first non-slash focused science fiction and fantasy convention in the summer of 2004.  The program schedule announced a Sunday morning panel discussion provocatively titled “Avast, Matey: The Ethics of Pirating Movies, Music, and Software” with the subheading “Computers today can distribute [more] intellectual property than ever before--not always legally. Is it ever okay to copy, download, and/or distribute media? Sorry, ladies, none of us will be dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow.”  The panel’s subheading, which obliquely warned away both lusty women and pirates, led a small contingent of slash fans to shake off Saturday night’s convention revelries unreasonably early and implement a plan of their own for Sunday’s panel.  As many fan conventions encourage costumes, known as “cosplay,” one of my friends and research participants happened to have been dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow of Pirates of the Caribbean that weekend, so I entered the piracy panel with Captain Jack and a motley crew of slashers, some of them intent upon commandeering the discussion.

The clash that followed exemplifies a structural fault line between various types of fan communities regarding their shared norms and beliefs about copyright law, the relationship between fans and producers, and appropriate fan behavior.

If you want to find out how this clash played out–well, you’ll just have to read the book. 😀

–Francesca Coppa, Fanhackers volunteer

[anheliotrope]

It's always "funny" to remember that software development as field often operates on the implicit and completely unsupported assumption that security bugs are fixed faster than they are introduced, adjusting for security bug severity.

This assumption is baked into security policies that are enforced at the organizational level regardless of whether they are locally good ideas or not. So you have all sorts of software updating basically automatically and this is supposedly proof that you deserve that SOC2 certification.

Different companies have different incentives. There are two main incentives:

Limiting legal liability

Improving security outcomes for users

Most companies have an overwhelming proportion of the first incentive.

This would be closer to OK if people were more honest about it, but even within a company they often start developing The Emperor's New Clothes types of behaviour.

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I also suspect that security has generally been a convenient scapegoat to justify annoying, intrusive and outright abusive auto-updating practices in consumer software. "Nevermind when we introduced that critical security bug and just update every day for us, alright??"

Product managers almost always want every user to be on the latest version, for many reasons of varying coherence. For example, it enables A/B testing (provided your software doesn't just silently hotpatch it without your consent anyway).

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I bring this up because (1) I felt like it, (2) there are a lot of not-so-well-supported assumptions in this field, which are mainly propagated for unrelated reasons. Companies will try to select assumptions that suit them.

Yes, if someone does software development right, the software should converge towards being more secure as it gets more updates. But the reality is that libraries and applications are heavily heterogenous -- they have different risk profiles, different development practices, different development velocities, and different tooling. The correct policy is more complicated and contextual.

Corporate incentives taint the field epistemologically. There's a general desire to confuse what is good for the corporation with what is good for users with what is good for the field.

The way this happens isn't by proposing obviously insane practices, but by taking things that sound maybe-reasonable and artificially amplifying confidence levels. There are aspects of the distortion that are obvious and aspects of the distortion that are most subtle. If you're on the inside and never talked to weird FOSS people, it's easy to find it normal.

One of the eternal joys and frustrations of being a software developer is trying to have effective knowledge about software development. And generally a pre-requisite to that is not believing false things.

For all the bullshit that goes on in the field, I feel _good_ about being able to form my own opinions. The situation, roughly speaking, is not rosy, but learning to derive some enjoyment from countering harmful and incorrect beliefs is a good adaptation. If everyone with a clue becomes miserable and frustrated then computing is doomed. So my first duty is to myself -- to talk about such things without being miserable. I tend to do a pretty okay job at that.