#enacted cognition

[ladyfingerpress]

z. X "The Brain, Pt. 1" Quick steps through key concepts in neuroscience of great utility when reading our works on neurodivergence, consciousness, the critical brain, differential processing, etc

[tonyglowheart]

..huh. so I always kinda thought eh idk if the meds are really doing anything, on account of how I still have the depression

but I just realized. it's been a hot second since I've been, like, really anxious or stressed about anything. And shit used to stress me out from time to time, you know?

...so maybe the meds ARE doing something, lmao, just not uhh the like thing I was mainly hoping it might magically do something on

[luulapants]

I'm so frustrated by the lack of response to the mass psychogenic illness of law enforcement officials claiming to suffer contact fentanyl poisoning. There were a few studies done that quietly concluded that it's not real, none of the cases were credible, and the symptoms most closely resemble a panic attack or somatic episode.

No one is connecting this to systemic issues in police training and culture and no one is treating this as the canary in the coal mine it is.

Modern police training is functionally cult indoctrination, and intentionally cultivates paranoia. Police learn that everyone is out to get them, danger lurks around every corner, and their only job is to make it home alive after their shift.

They then enter the body of police culture, where questioning the bad behavior of fellow officers is at best strictly socially punished and at worst can get them killed, where they are constantly vigilant to say the right things and portray the right beliefs.

Suddenly, after generations of mainstream culture being generally supportive of police, in the midst of an anxiety-riddled pandemic, there is a highly-publicized backlash against law enforcement. Regular people are saying ACAB, calling cops fascists and murderers and wife-beaters. They're posting officers' service records on social media. Police, unwilling to believe they are evil, experience a cognitive dissonance backlash effect and cling to beliefs that contradict reality.

No one should be shocked - and no one should be hesitant to say - that there is a mental health crisis in law enforcement. They are paranoid, hyper-vigilant, and mired in cognitive dissonance. They have guns and virtually unchecked power to enact violence in their communities. Making up delusional stories about fentanyl is a pretty mild outcome compared to what we should be expecting from these circumstances.

Police aren't just bastards. They're a danger to themselves and others.

[bluemadafaka]

A PROMPT DEVOID OF ANY EXECUTIVE EXPECTATION AS A TECHNIQUE FOR ACCESSING AN AVOIDANT FLOW STATE.

Come up with a short broody poetic prose describing both the dread and the joy he feels returning to a place he enjoys greatly. The writing should obscure every meaning that could bring him too close to a known path, as his path is known only by a few.

The photograph includes the tools he himself is using, as it is a finished edit colorized and perfected as a surreal piece because it was developed within that excellent software. The art integrates the designing machinery along the emergent consciousness as co-performers enact the art piece as inextricable.

Beyond the meta-comment, this is a portrait by a cyborg crafting on itself. nothing to talk about photography—neither critique nor commentary or projection, yet an affective self representation of a one who happens to feel its own extension not as body, not as color, not as hardware, not as software, not as mind withing a brain, but as a contingent ensamble whose cognition extends its mind among, throughout, along and within all of which affect and can be affected in a current that doesn't need any segmentation since the turbulence, the vortex, the fluent cultural idioms, every movement reshuffles the current so every self is itself and the circumstances, reterritorializing continuously into new cyborgs, into new vortexes and tandems—into new unseen extended minds, autopoietic as a true agent, conscious by itself, emotionally unique, and an affective cognition continually emergent via the extended minds that lend the body and the hardware, yet novel, supra-volente, willful—constituting a self that's not the projected supplement to any one of its constitutive embodied minds: it's a new mind, fluent, volente, affective, emotional and self aware, alive as a virtual cognitive resident in the [hiper-complex, relational] machine from which its physiology-lenders permit its continuum by housing the fragmentary obscure subsets crucial in its fluent consolidation.

[russellmoreton]

Terrestrial Movements : #2 Solar Spore. by Russell Moreton Via Flickr: russellmoreton.blogspot.com/

[glitter-stained]

Look I don't like RHATO #25 for many reasons but if you're gonna talk about the beatdown and you don't like it you can just say "that issue had terrible writing" or "that's not my batman he would never do that"

You don't have to defend him, this isn't his first instance of abuse with any of his children or jason in particular but he's such a big and old character I understand not wanting to see him being an abusive parent ever (though in that case I advise you to just not engage in his and Jason's mainline relationship at all, at the very least not red hood!jason)

What does really really grate me though, is people trying to defend it because those reasonings are so hypocritical it's clear they just don't like the way Jason's character challenges the bat-status quo and that ends up literally just being abuse justification rhetoric again and again and I'm tired. If you're gonna be a hater can you not do it in a way that makes you sound like the parent who stands to the side watching their partner "discipline" the kid with a belt because "the kid is a bad kid that deserves to be punished."

-well batman is a hero and Jason is a criminal what was he supposed to do he can't play favourites! So, I call Batman a hero when he acts like it but sure, Batman is a vigilante. He fights criminals. Have y'all ever heard of this little term called "conflict of interest"? Yk when your personal connection to the case you're working means you are more likely to lose your cool and let your emotions affect your judgement beyond measure so it's important to delegate? That thing? Batman is always showing up in everyone's comic, the outlaws can have some reinforcement being called to handle Jason's case for once this is absurd, Bruce is more compromised than the cia agent i've been pegging for months in exchange for data. Fathers shouldn't have to arrest their sons.

-well Jason deserved it! Punitive justice, especially fucking punitive violence, is the enemy. It doesn't work for children and it doesn't work on adults and it's a ridiculous approach to harm reduction and recidivism prevention. Well, killing might work, but i don't reckon rhato#25 batman defenders would defend this*. I understand the cathartic appeal of wanting to see fictional characters you dislike punished, really, and the desire for vengeance in the form of punitive justice is normal and perfectly understandable; but however valid this emotion is, that doesn't mean actually enacting this brutality becomes the correct course of actions. Idk how else to say it but however evil you think the victim is it's still not okay to victim-blame. And sure, I can tell fiction from reality and know this isn't a real person, but when people say stuff like that it still tells me that the person who is saying this stuff believes that it's not abuse if the victim is evil. And when you're there, it only takes a bit of cognitive bias and dissonance and carefully worded narrative bending for the victim to be categorised evil and denied the respect of their pain.

(*this isn't about the death penalty. I do not support state violence)

People are so concerned with hating Jason's character and wanting to see him punished for his crimes they will bend things backwards to justify that a father brutally beating down his son in an extremely vulnerable moment while the son doesn't fight back isn't abuse because the character is inherently bad and thus deserves to be violently punished. And then we wonder why victims blame themselves or explain "it's different because it's me so the situation is unique, i'm a special case because i'm wrong", when this is the classic mentality in our societies.

Truly a mystery indeed

[argumate]

brazenautomaton said: [...chopped for brevity...] was the entire post and all of its conclusions supposed to be a mocking joke? because you still concluded that the left was no worse at cognitive empathy than the right, that it wasn’t important to understand your opponents, and that you can “do a good job explaining your ideas” without knowing what their opponents think.

we've all been around this merry go round a thousand times over and I think we know how it goes at this point.

firstly it's always a bit of a waste of time to talk about "the left" and "the right" when it's hard enough to get consistent answers out of one person let alone a completely undefined random subset of historically contingent internet commenters, we know that.

secondly one "side" being better or worse at cognitive empathy makes little difference in practice to issues where interests are opposed: understanding where someone is coming from does not unlock a magic sequence of words that changes their mind (if anything it might reveal how difficult it is to shift their opinion).

it is obviously tempting to paint our favoured faction as being the ones who are sensitive and understanding while their opponents are blockheaded fools who just can't listen because if they just had some empathy they would immediately realise the rightness of our position just as we can so clearly see the wrongness of theirs but we can forgo that exercise I think.

framing the appeal to empathy in terms like "Trump would not have been elected if his opponents just understood what the people wanted" is facile because if you oppose Trump's policies then enacting those same policies to prevent his election would achieve nothing, in fact it would normalise the very ideas you don't want to spread, and even if you did attempt to out-Trump Trump he might still win on charisma anyway.

now you could say that people were upset about prices going up and that contributed to Trump's victory and so more decisive action on controlling inflation could have helped, but that is less about ideological empathy and more about basic polling and economic observation, I think.

ultimately this discussion would be a lot more interesting if someone, anyone, had an example of an ideological principle that people fail to understand, and that failure of understanding is an actual mistake that leads to genuine negative consequences that could have been corrected by improved cognitive empathy, because a lot of the time it reads like the standard evangelical approach where it's assumed that if someone just explains Jesus one more time they'll GET IT.

[venusintheblindspots-blog]

Remmick being from Ireland, a place that has been colonized by the same people that claimed the Americas as their own by displacing from indigenous peoples on their land, and enslaving African peoples is relevant to his character, because it makes him a more horrifying villain. Everybody he turns are apart of a hive mind, there’s no individuality,—whiteness doesn’t allow for it— and they all feel what he feels. It reminds me of this quote from “Mapping Tropical Gothic in the Americas” by Justin Edwards.

"The shift from the Afro-Caribbean zombie to the U.S. zombie is clear: in Caribbean folklore, people are scared of becoming zombies, whereas in U.S. narratives people are scared of zombies. This shift is significant because it maps the movement from the zombie as victim (Caribbean) to the zombie as an aggressive and terrifying monster who consumes human flesh (U.S.). In Haitian folklore, for instance, zombies do not physically threaten people; rather, the threat comes from the voduon practice whereby the sorcerer (master) subjugates the individual by robbing the victim of free will, language and cognition. The zombie is enslaved."

Vampirism in media has always been used for social commentary (there’s a lovely article by Fariha Mabud on this) and Sinners did not disappoint. Remmick’s modern day equivalent is a white Irish-American who uses his people’s history to shut black & indigenous peoples up about the colonization in a way that is almost welcoming by saying ‘We are all one’, when people who look exactly like him decided we weren’t, and allowed some Irish Americans to enact that same violence on black & brown folks without repercussions. So in contrast to the modern, western, vampirism that is appealing & alluring, Sinners uses vampirism in the same manner that zombies were used in Afro-Caribbean folklore— as a metaphor for the violent colonization of black peoples.

[jadeharleyinc]

The "AI Rots Your Brain" Study

"The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking" is a study conducted by Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research Cambridge.

it has been widely reported on as "concluding that AI makes human cognition atrophied and unprepared" (404 media) or as "linking AI usage with a deterioration in critical-thinking skills" (New York Magazine).

is that true? what does the paper actually say, though? it's only 20 pages, so you can check for yourself. otherwise, read on.

the survey's methodology has been... misrepresented, to put it mildly. this paper did not measure actual thinking ability. it surveyed workers who used AI at work, asked questions like "do you usually trust AI outputs? how do you think about them critically? if you can't, what obstacles are stopping you?"

the paper aimed to answer two research questions:

When and how do knowledge workers perceive the enaction of critical thinking when using GenAI? When and why do knowledge workers perceive increased/decreased effort for critical thinking due to GenAI?

pages 14-16 of the study discuss the survey's findings, and what they mean for AI tools, workers, and critical thinking skills. i've summarized these conclusions, point by point, as follows.

confidence and knowledge 1) people who say they trust genAI to be truthful are likely to be the same people who say they exercise less critical thinking about AI outputs. (makes sense.) 2) people who say they have confidence in their work skills are likely to say they are critical of the AI's output, even if they perceive this critical look as requiring extra effort. 3) it's possible that fostering workers' expertise and confidence in their domains will increase their ability to think critically about AI outputs. 4) a worker being confident in their skills at a task is associated with the worker's ability to delegate and guide the task. 5) a worker being unconfident in their skills at a task can rely more on AI, which potentially lowers their critical engagement and independent problem-solving skills. 6) in a nutshell, workers knowledgeable at a task invest more effort in thinking critically while using AI for it; less knowledgeable workers invest less.

the researchers suggest: 7) empowering users to 1. develop their skills, 2. develop a balanced relationship with the AI where it's not either the user or the AI calling all the shots. 8) adding feedback mechanisms to AI tools that help users gauge reliability of AI outputs, so they can know when to trust and when to question. 9) that AI tools let users customize and refine how the output is made, how much AI assistance is provided, depending on confidence and task complexity.

to do this, they see several approaches. potential approach 1: 10) AI tools could underline opportunities for critical thinking, especially for tasks the worker finds unimportant or secondary. 11) for example, AI tools could have systems to proactively interrupt the user and highlight a situation where it may be overlooked that critical thinking is needed. 12) another approach is to allow the user to request critical thinking assistance when they consciously need it.

potential approach 2: 13) increase the motivation to use critical thinking. workers use it less when they think it's not their job, and use it more when aiming to develop their skills. 14) therefore, AI tools could encourage critical thinking thtrough the lens of skill development and professional growth, not arbitrary and sometimes-irrelevant "audits".

potential approach 3: 15) enhance the ability to think critically. workers often refrain from thinking critically when they don't have the skills to fact-check or improve AI's responses. 16) this means learning opportunities: AI providing explanations for its reasoning, suggesting ways the users should refine their knowledge, or offering guided critiques. 17) the AI could help the worker develop specific skills: how to analyze arguments or cross-reference facts against sources. (see: AI as partner in skill development.)

so how is AI impacting critical thinking, specifically? 18) usually critical thinking involves analysis, synthesis and evaluation. using AI tools changes what tasks a worker performs to fulfill these goals. 19) when recalling and understanding, the worker focuses less on gathering information and more verifying it. (less need to find info, more need to verify it.) 20) when applying information, the worker focuses less on solving a problem and more on integrating the AI's solution. ("is this relevant? what parts should i tweak?") 21) when analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating, the worker focuses less on executing the task and more on supervising the task. ("stewardship" more than "collaboration".)

so, to think critically, workers that use AI should be trained: 22) on how to verify information, integrate outputs, and guide the task. 23) on cross-referencing with sources, assessing if AI output is relevant or applicable, and refining their use of AI processes. 24) on maintaining foundational problem-solving and information-gathering skills so they aren't overly reliant on AI.

the researchers point out some limitations of their study: 25) surveyed workers sometimes confuse "the task now takes me less effort" and "i spend less effort on critical thinking". (hey, we don't assess our critical thinking often.) 26) surveyed workers might think less critically when they get an AI output that matches what they expected. that could expect the aforementioned confusion. 27) asking workers to report their confidence at a task produces subjective responses. 28) the survey was conducted solely in english, and aimed only at fluent english speakers. 29) the survey sample biases towards younger, technologically skilled workers who use AI tools at work at least once a week. older and less techy people are underrepresented. 30) this is just a baseline study and long term impact has to be tracked.

i now encourage you to draw your own conclusions.

[eat-your-milk]

Please share the AUs!

>:)

Oh. I sure will.

Now, I have like.... a couple hundred (written down at least. 211 if my word doc is to be believed.) and a lot more in my head. Sadly, most of them don't have a ton of substance, but I will definitely post them once I have a clear bit of lore.

Sorry this took a tiny bit, but since you asked, I wanted to put down one I've been working on! (and a more whumpy one, just for you lol) Its more canon divergence if I'm being picky, but meh.

(I've never written an au like this. I didn't want to write a story but I have to be extra, so sorry if its hard to follow)

------

Viggo narrowly escaped being killed by the Skrill's explosion, but was left severely burned and injured. The Zippleback gas in his sword exploded in the blast, taking his hand. He thought he would die there, in that fortress. He sat, waiting for his death, listening to the explosions and screams outside, of Hiccup making his escape.

At the very least, his diversion was worth it. Hiccup was able to survive.

Just as he is about to fall unconscious, Krogan finds him in the burnt remains of the fortress. Furious, he takes him to Johann. First, Krogan proposes that they should kill him, be done with it. But Johann has another idea.

What if, they could get revenge and get a new weapon?

Luckily, Johann had a backup plan for controlling the Bewilderbeast when he found it. There was a man in the north, selling Deathgripper venom, said to be able to control even the strongest of dragons, hypnotize them, make them bow to you.

Now, he wondered, what would happen if you administered it to a human being? If it worked like it would on a dragon, then wouldn't it be the perfect way to enact vengeance on the one who no longer had any use to them?

Wouldn't it be ironic, to take the man who thought himself the smartest in the archipelago, who thought himself the master puppeteer, and turn him into a puppet?

No, they didn't kill Viggo. Instead, they dosed him and his pet Skrill with Deathgripper Venom, torturing him by not only taking his autonomy, but his cognition. He would be a slave for them, their dog. Doing their bidding until he dropped dead.

Even more than that, they would make sure he killed the man he was so distracted by. When he was properly broken, they would make him torture and kill Hiccup Haddock, whether he wanted to or not.

(basically Winter Soldier Viggo, bc I think the idea of him being the one under the influence of Deathgripper venom is basically the worst form of torture for the guy, and I want to see him with a prosthetic hand for some reason.)

Anywho, there's one of my lil AUs! More coming soon! I hope ya like it! :P

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

Thoughts on “How Jiang Cheng treats Jin Ling is normal because that’s just Chinese parenting”?

I was explaining to someone why I considered the way Jiang Cheng talks to Jin Ling to be abusive, and got hit with that.

I have noticed that parents and guardians in xianxia works sometimes speak quite harshly to their children in punishment scenarios specifically (plus there is frequently corporal punishment involved), but Jiang Cheng’s way of talking to Jin Ling feels like it’s on a whole different level. I can’t think of any time he speaks to Jin Ling like a normal adult.

Am I being gaslit here?

This argument in a gif.

First: There is no excuse to say that corporal punishment is a necessity to use against children and has lasting trauma against those that have had it used on them in the form of consistent psychological maladjustment including depression, unhappiness, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, use of drugs and alcohol and can alter dopaminergic regions of the brain which hinders long term mental well being and inhibits behavioral responses emotionally and cognitively for themselves and social interactions. Up to some themselves beginning to engage in aggressive and physically abusive behaviors themselves.

Two: Verbal abuse is still... abuse. Some have defined it as the production of psychological and social defects in the growth of a minor as a result of behavior such as loud yelling, coarse and rude attitude, inattention, harsh criticism, and denigration of the child's personality. Other examples include name-calling, ridicule, degradation, destruction of personal belongings, threatening the torture or killing of a pet (and doing as such),excessive or extreme unconstructive criticism, inappropriate or excessive demands, withholding communication, and routine labeling or humiliation. 36.3% of children experience emotional abuse globally.

A consistent usage of this is not something to continue to normalize or excuse in parents, guardians and figures of authority of children. Verbal abuse is also not seen as a pressing issue as it is not physical harm enacted and still considered something that cannot be lawfully punishable despite the widespread statistics of its repercussions on the development of children and their adulthood life interactions.

At any rate, the author of the three novels condemns the abuse of children by several adults that engage in this behavior from Shen Jiu abusing his position of teacher and master over Luo Binghe because of jealousy. To Jiang Cheng and Madam Yu for physically and verbally degrading children they are guardians over and said children participating in dangerous antics to be praised for their skill or continued loyalty theyare said to owe. Jun Wu for trying to groom and gaslight another child (Xie Lian) to become another abuser and killer simply because he did not like the way said child interacted with the world with the position he had socially.

We also see from all three of these same works, is that these characters do also begin to physically abuse these same children as well as engage in isolation and negligence of them more than once. Enough that the audience should understand that these adults are not misunderstood AS THE ADULTS WITH CHILDREN UNDER THEIR CARE.

And as I have said before, whatever love may exist in Jiang Cheng for Jin Ling (and he desperately does, that isn't in dispute at any time unless someone who reads this is that stupid to come to the conclusion and say JiangWanyinscatmom is saying Jiang Cheng never cared or loved his nephew at all), does not negate the abuse that he has exhibited from the start of his very introduction when he threatens Jin Ling with abandonment when he says this:

江澄话中带刺，又是一转：“还站着干什么，等着猎物自己撞过来插|你剑上？今天你要是拿不下这大梵山里的东西，今后都不必来找我了！”

Jiang Cheng's words were full of thorns, he turned around and said, "Why are you still standing there, waiting for the prey to bump into you and pierce itself on your sword? If you can't hunt down that creature in Dafan Mountain by today, don't you ever come back to me again!"

[mightyflamethrower]

“Name me a single objective we’ve ever set out to accomplish that we’ve failed on. Name me one, in all of our history. Not one!”

-President Joe Biden, August 16, 2023 

Joe Biden in one of his now accustomed angry “get off my grass” moods dared the press to find just one of his policies/objectives that has not worked. Silence followed.

Perhaps it was polite to say nothing, given even the media knows almost every enacted Biden policy has failed.

Here is a summation of what he should instead apologize for.

Biden in late summer 2021 sought a 20th anniversary celebration of 9/11 and the 2001 subsequent invasion of Afghanistan. He wished to be the landmark president that yanked everyone out of Afghanistan after 20 years in country. But the result was the greatest military humiliation of the United States since the flight from Vietnam in 1975.

Consider the ripples of Biden’s disaster. U.S. deterrence was crippled worldwide. China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea almost immediately began to bluster or return to their chronic harassment of U.S. and allied ships and planes. We left thousands of allied Afghans to face Taliban retribution, along with some Western contractors.

Biden abandoned a $1 billion embassy, and a $300 million remodeled Bagram airbase strategically located not far from China and Russia, and easily defensible. Perhaps $50 billion in U.S. weaponry and supplies were abandoned and now find their way into the international terrorist mart.

All our pride flags, our multimillion gender studies programs at Kabul University, and our George Floyd murals did not just come to naught, but were replaced by the Taliban’s anti-homosexual campaigns, burkas, and detestation of any trace of American popular culture.

Vladimir Putin sized up the skedaddle. He collated it with Biden’s unhinged quip that he would not get too excited if Putin just staged a “minor” invasion of Ukraine. He remembered Biden’s earlier request to Putin to modulate Russian hacking to exempt a few humanitarian American institutions. Then Russia concluded of our shaky Commander-in-Chief that he either did not care or could do nothing about another Russian invasion.

The result so far is more than 500,000 dead and wounded in the war, a Verdun-stand-off along with fortified lines, the steady depletion of our munitions and weapon stocks, and a new China/Russia/Iran/North Korean axis, with wink and nod assistance from NATO Turkey.

Biden blew up the Abraham accords, nudged Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States over to the dark side of Iran, China, and Russia. He humiliated the U.S. on the eve of the midterms by callously begging the likes of Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to pump more oil that he had damned as unclean at home and cut back its production. In Bidenomics, instead of producing oil, the president begs autocracies to export it to us at high prices while he drains the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve for short-term political advantage.

Biden deliberately alienated Israel by openly interfering in its domestic politics. He pursued the crackpot Iran Deal while his special Iranian envoy was removed for disclosing classified information.

No one can explain why Biden ignored the Chinese balloon espionage caper, kept mum about the engineered Covid virus that escaped the Wuhan lab, said not a word about a Chinese biolab discovered in rural California, and had his envoys either bow before Chinese leaders or take their insults in silence—other than he is either cognitively challenged or leveraged by his decade-long grifting partnership with his son Hunter.

Yet another Biden’s legacy will be erasing the southern border and with it, U.S. immigration law. Over seven million aliens simply crossed into the U.S. illegally with Biden’s tacit sanction—without audits, background checks, vaccinations, and COVID testing, much less English fluency, skills, or high-school diplomas.

Biden’s only immigration accomplishment was to render the entire illegal sanctuary city movement a cruel joke. Given the flood, mostly rich urban and vacation home dwellers made it very clear that while they fully support millions swarming into poor Latino communities of southern Texas and Arizona, they do not want any illegal aliens fouling their carefully cultivated nests.

Biden is mum about the 100,000 fentanyl deaths from cartel-imported and Chinese-supplied drugs across his open border. He seems to like the idea that Mexican President Obrador periodically mouths off, ordering his vast expatriate community to vote Democratic and against Trump.

Despite all the pseudo-blue collar dissimulation about Old Joe Biden from Scranton, he has little empathy for the working classes. Indeed, he derides them as chumps and dregs, urges miners to learn coding as the world covets their coal, and studiously avoids getting anywhere near the toxic mess in East Palestine, Ohio, or so far the moonscape on Maui.

Bidenomics is a synonym for printing up to $6 billion dollars at precisely the time post-Covid consumer demand was soaring, while previously dormant supply chains were months behind rebooting production and transportation. Biden is on track to increase the national debt more than any one-term president.

In Biden’s weird logic, if he raised the price of energy, gasoline, and key food staples 20-30 percent since his inauguration without a commensurate rise in wages, and then saw the worst inflation in 40 years occasionally decline from record highs one month to the next, then he “beat inflation.”

But the reason why more than 60 percent of the nation has no confidence in Bidenomics is because it destroyed their household budgets. Gas is nearly twice what it was in January 2021. Interest rates have about tripled. Key staple foods are often twice as costly—meat, vegetables, and fruits especially.

Biden has ended through his weaponized Attorney General Merrick Garland the age-old American commitment to equal justice under the law. The FBI, DOJ, CIA, and IRS are hopelessly politically compromised. Many of their bureaucrats serve as retrieval agents for lost Biden family incriminating laptops, diaries, and guns. In sum, Biden criminalized opposing political views.

Biden has unleashed the administrative state for the first time in history to destroy the Republican primary front runner and his likely opponent. His legacy will be the corruption of U.S. jurisprudence and the obliteration of the American reputation for transparent permanent government that should be always above politics, bribery, and corruption.

If in the future, an on-the-make conservative prosecutor in West Virginia, Utah, or Mississippi wishes to make a national name, then he has ample precedent to indict a Democrat President for receiving bad legal advice, questioning the integrity of an election, or using social media to express doubt that the new non-Election-Day balloting was on the up-and-up, or supposedly overvaluing his real estate.

The Biden family’s decade-long family grifting will likely expose Joe Biden as the first president in U.S. history who fitted precisely the Constitution’s definition of impeachment and removal—given his “high crimes and misdemeanors” appear “bribery”-related. If further evidence shows he altered U.S. foreign policy in accordance with the wishes from his benefactors in Ukraine, China, or Romania, then he committed constitutionally-defined “treason” as well.

Defunding the police, and pandemics of exempted looting, shoplifting, smashing, and grabbing, and carjacking merit no administrative attention. Nor does the ongoing systematic destruction of our blue bicoastal cities, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. All that, along with the disasters in East Palestine or Maui are out of sight, out of mind from a day at the beach at Biden’s mysteriously purchased nearly 6,000 square-foot beachfront mansion.

Biden ran on Barack Obama-like 2004 rhetoric (“Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America).”

And like Obama, he used that ecumenical sophistry to gain office only to divide further the U.S. No sooner than he was elected, we began hearing from the great unifier eerie screaming harangues about “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” dangerous zealots, replete with red-and black Phantom of the Opera backdrops.

What followed the unifying rhetoric was often amnesties and exemptions for violent offenders during the 120 days of rioting, looting, killing, and attacks on police officers in summer 2020.  In contrast, his administration lied when it alleged that numerous officers had died at the hands of the January 6 rioters. In addition, the Biden administration mandated long-term incarceration of many who committed no illegal act other than acting like buffoons and “illegally parading.”

The message was exemptions for torching a federal courthouse, a police precinct, or historic church or attempting to break into the White House grounds to get a president and his family—but long prison terms for wearing cow horns, a fur vest, and trespassing peacefully like a lost fool in the Capitol.

Finally, Biden’s most glaring failure was simply being unpresidential. He snaps at reporters, and shouts at importune times. He can no longer read off a big-print teleprompter. Even before a global audience, he cannot kick his lifelong creepy habit of turkey-gobbling on children necks, blowing into their ears and hair of young girls, and squeezing women far too long and far too hard.

His frailty redefined American presidential campaigning as basement seclusion and outsourcing propaganda to the media. And his disabilities only intensified during his presidency. Biden begins his day late and quits early. He has recalibrated the presidency as a 5-hour, 3-day a week job.

If Trump was the great exaggerator, Biden is our foremost liar. Little in his biography can be fully believed. He lies about everything from his train rides to the death of his son to his relationship with Biden-family foreign collaborators, to vaccinations to the economy. Anytime Biden mentions places visited, miles flown, or rails ridden, he is likely lying.

Biden continues with impunity because the media feels that a mentally challenged fabulist is preferable to Donald Trump and so contextualizes or ignores his falsehoods. Never has a U.S. president fallen and stumbled or gotten lost on stage so frequently—or been a single small trip away from incapacity.

So, yes, Biden’s initiatives have succeeded only in the sense of becoming successfully enacted—and therefore nearly destroying the country.

[lov3lyl3tters]

One of the reasons Donald Trump maintains trust among a significant portion of the public—despite consistent evidence of corruption, cruelty, and authoritarian tendencies—is because of the image he projects. In particular, his portrayal as a “family man” plays directly into deep-seated psychological instincts and cultural values.

Trump surrounds himself with a large, visible, seemingly unified family. He showcases his children, especially Ivanka, Don Jr., and Eric, in political roles; he appears at rallies with Melania and Barron; he brands himself as a patriarch. This isn’t just optics—it’s a carefully curated psychological strategy.

According to psychological research, humans are naturally drawn to people they perceive as part of an in-group. One of the most basic in-groups in American society is the nuclear family. Psychologists call this the “mere-exposure effect”—people tend to feel positively toward what feels familiar, comforting, and stable. When Trump presents himself as the head of a close-knit, traditional family, people who also value family instinctively trust him more.

This taps into what’s known as the halo effect—a cognitive bias where we assume that if someone is good in one area (like being a “family man”), they must be good in other areas too (like leadership, morality, or trustworthiness). So even people who disagree with some of his actions may still think: “Well, he loves his kids. He must have a good heart.”

But that’s the trick—it’s propaganda disguised as relatability. Because behind the image is dysfunction. Trump has repeatedly shown transactional relationships with his children. He’s been accused of inappropriate behavior, spoken about family members in deeply objectifying terms, and used his familial ties to consolidate power rather than foster genuine connection. This is not unity—it’s performance.

Social psychologist Erich Fromm once wrote about “escape from freedom”—the idea that in uncertain, threatening times, people will submit to authoritarian figures who offer the illusion of order, tradition, and safety. A man with a large, seemingly obedient family fits that mold. He becomes the symbolic father figure for a country anxious about change. But it’s all a façade.

And while people are busy admiring the illusion, he’s enacting policies that harm real families: separating children from their parents at the border, gutting healthcare access for single mothers and working parents, mocking survivors of abuse, and enabling ideologies that threaten the safety of marginalized households across the country.

So yes, people trust Trump because they see a man with a large, tight-knit family—but it’s important to understand that trust is built on emotional manipulation. The image he projects taps into psychology, not reality. And when propaganda uses the language of love and unity to distract from harm, we have to be willing to see through the performance.

[post-punk-revival]

Humans only sometimes think they aren't animals because they don't realize they have instincts; their instincts make sense to them so they believe they're examples of higher consciousness instead. So from an outside observer, here are some examples of human instincts I've noticed:

Chatting. Humans love to chat and it will completely engross them. No matter what they're doing, if another human starts casually interacting with them, they'll abandon their task as if they've forgotten it. You can charm basically any human if you engage with their chatting.

Laughing. If they find something funny they seem completely incapable of preventing this reflex.

Generosity. Humans love to see other humans succeed. They will share a small portion of almost anything they possess. Some individuals may seem to be an exception to this but I've found that to be a trained behavior which can be unlearned by basically any individual.

Human communication is notably lacking in body language, especially in the way of subtlety, and what they do express can be quite esoteric and confusing. Luckily for all those of us living among humans, there is only one very frequent theme to be aware of: physical touch. They are extremely prone to it. Surprisingly this is not unique to Homo sapiens; many other mammalians share this. Humans, though, are uniquely poor at telling that you are not a human too, and can sometimes enact this physical touch without sensing your discomfort. Don't fault them for this; due to their unfortunate lack of body language communication, this is one of the few ways they have to express affection.

Due to their limited communication, humans will frequently engage in art in order to express complicated ideas. A work of art can take many forms depending on the area of the brain it was designed to stimulate, from auditory to tactile to cognitive analytical, and can even be targeted at emotions such as fear and sorrow. I'm personally impressed by the creativity exhibited by the auditory forms.

Humans often engage in an act known as dancing, a trait which they share with certain birds. This usually occurs alongside music. It is frequently a method of self-expression, similar to art.

Humans tend to find familiarity even in the wildly unfamiliar. A good example of this phenomenon is the human concept of constellations.

[the-silent-fellowship]

P-DID Personal Rendition

Partial-Dissociative Identity Disorder

[PT: P-DID Personal Rendition | Partial-Dissociative Identity Disorder]

“Partial dissociative identity disorder is characterized by disruption of identity in which there are two or more distinct personality states (dissociative identities) associated with marked discontinuities in the sense of self and agency. Each personality state includes its own pattern of experiencing, perceiving, conceiving, and relating to self, the body, and the environment. One personality state is dominant and normally functions in daily life, but is intruded upon by one or more non-dominant personality states (dissociative intrusions). These intrusions may be cognitive, affective, perceptual, motor, or behavioral. They are experienced as interfering with the functioning of the dominant personality state and are typically aversive. The non-dominant personality states do not recurrently take executive control of the individual's consciousness and functioning, but there may be occasional, limited and transient episodes in which a distinct personality state assumes executive control to engage in circumscribed behaviors, such as in response to extreme emotional states or during episodes of self-harm or the re-enactment of traumatic memories.” - the ICD-11(link)

[ID: none yet]

[Tags] @system-term-archive, @pluralitywords, @pluralterms, @radiomogai, @mad-pride

[darkmaga-returns]

Donald Trump has claimed that aides took advantage of his “cognitively impaired” predecessor

The US president has accused Joe Biden’s senior advisers of committing “treason at the highest level” by allegedly exploiting Biden’s cognitive decline in order to enact unauthorized policies that he would never have approved of himself.

RT reports: In a Truth Social post on Tuesday, Trump claimed that Biden never advocated for open borders and that the surge in illegal immigration was orchestrated by staffers who effectively “stole” the presidency by taking control of the autopen – a device used to replicate a person’s signature.

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer has since launched an investigation into whether senior Biden aides orchestrated a cover-up of the president’s alleged cognitive decline.

“The Joe Biden that everybody knew would never allow drug dealers, gang members, and the mentally insane to come into our Country totally unchecked and unvetted. All anyone has to do is look up his record,” Trump argued, adding that the resulting influx has cost the US “hundreds of billions of dollars.”

“It wasn’t his idea to open the border… It was the people that knew he was cognitively impaired, and that took over the autopen,” he added. “This is TREASON at the highest level!… Something very severe should happen to these treasonous thugs that wanted to destroy our Country, but couldn’t, because I came along.”

Trump’s allegations come amid renewed concerns about Biden’s health, following the recent announcement that he has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 and metastasis to the bone. While Trump publicly wished Biden well, he also questioned the timing and transparency of the disclosure, suggesting that the public was not informed soon enough.