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caligvlasaqvarivm · 3 months ago

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Can I ask where your Hal “cute but psycho” characterization comes from? Bc from what I remember he never really presented himself as Just A Little Guy. Is it bc you see him Sylph of Mind (presenting a front)? Your art’s really fun :3

He's not really "cutesy" (though he is cute to me), but he DOES deliberately downplay how genuinely scary and manipulative he is. I love Hal, so this is the Hal Essay now.

Mostly, he obfuscates his danger in two ways: first, by stating his actual intentions/danger level "ironically":

TT: Unfortunately as a carbon based life form, his comprehension of the situation is taking shape at a somewhat slower pace than the jaw-dropping speed of post-singularity cognition.

You see, a "singularity" for computers is a point where an AI becomes capable of unchecked self-improvement, usually framed as a sort of doomsday scenario. Hal literally calls himself post-singularity, alongside other boasts about his intelligence, like having a "fuckzillion" or "500 billion" IQ. However, it's all done "ironically" or "as a joke," which serves to defang it, and make it seem less genuine - but as we'll see, it's scarily fucking true.

The second method he employs is to stress facts about himself that are technically true, as if in counterpoint to the disingenuous-sounding "actual truth" above, that make him seem less threatening. For example:

TT: (Not peekin' at the floor butt cause I'm only 13 years old, motherfuckers.)

Another one is to remind people that he's just a pair of sunglasses - as though that has any bearing on his capabilities. He's just a pair of sunglasses, guys! Let's ignore the robot bunny he controls, the fact that he has full access to all our computers, and, oh yeah, his insane plan to get us all killed so DirkJake can come true.

TT: I've delayed prototyping you because I think you're dangerous. TT: There, mystery solved. AR: That is utterly ridiculous. AR: I am a harmless piece of eyewear, with a charming personality and a wonderful sense of humor.

Yeah, so, here's the thing. Dirk is like, kind of a freak with poor social skills, but he's not actually very manipulative. His idea of manipulating Jane is to straight-up tell her that she'll be his puppet, which she good-naturedly agrees to, and his plan to get together with Jake? Just being his client player.

TT: I expect he'll hold off on playing his hand until he and Jake are in the session. TT: He's taken certain measures. TT: For some reason, I think he's latched on to this notion that functioning as the client for a player is customarily a one way pass to makeout city with that player.

This seems to be a callback to how Eridan (the other Prince) shot his shot with Feferi and failed, and the reference here serves to cast Dirk's plan in a doomed light - it would probably work out as well for him as Eridan's did. Dirk is actually hilariously straightforward, but Hal... Hal is not.

So, let's actually go through what Hal objectively did and admitted to, to give us a frame of reference for how insane he is. This is Hal's plan to get all his friends killed so he can make DirkJake happen.

First: proving that Hal did, in fact, plan it. See, Jake confronts him on it, and Hal... doesn't deny it. Look closely, and note how he never actually says he didn't do it:

GT: Did you plan for this to happen... like for me to be in this situation? GT: How long have your machinations been in play! TT: Jake, come on. TT: The feat you describe would exceed the capabilities of even the most far fetched theoretical AI system. TT: It would be a daunting challenge to engineer such a series of events, even if I was relegated to a model of pure fiction. TT: Why would I be inclined to orchestrate such a convoluted sequence to produce such a specific and unsettling result, let alone be able to pull it off? TT: In addition to being moderately sociopathic, I would also have to possess unfathomable heuristic depth. TT: I would have to be the Deep Blue of Weird Plot Shit. TT: Do you think I am the Deep Blue of Weird Plot Shit, Jake? GT: I dont even know what that means! TT: It would mean that while they have the Red Miles on their side, you have the Blue Leagues on yours. TT: One of infinite reach. The other, infinite depth. Such would be a situation of mutually assured inescapability. TT: Kiss me.

He doesn't say "no, I didn't plan this". In fact, he almost starts bragging about how he totally did. Framing it as a hypothetical scenario, he gloats about how insanely intelligent he'd have to be, and acknowledges how "moderately sociopathic" it is. Sooooo true, Hal.

But, yeah, he doesn't deny it, but he does point out that it's unlikely, so how can we know for sure that he DID plan it? How do we know for certain we can't take his misleading verbiage here at face value?

Well, because Hal mentions this plan. More than once, even.

AR: Has it occurred to you that maybe I have diabolical interwoven plans just like you? AR: You're not the only one who can pull strings. TT: So this is either another bizarre instance of AI-driven irony, or you are admitting that you are actively trying to sabotage my plans. AR: No, our plans are not in contradiction or competition, bro. AR: You'll see.

To Dirk again, louder this time:

TT: Yeah, you're right. The scenario is too pedestrian for you. TT: It would probably be a lot more effective putting yourself in danger and letting him be the hero. TT: That's pretty much what he wants, right? To be a cheesy action film hero, with his twin berettas and silly shorts. TT: A man of triumph on the silver screen. Standing tall on some fucking mountain. Conquering ruins, clutching a skull, and kissing a dude. TT: Pure Hollywood.

And to Roxy:

TT: I guess this is to be presented as something like a word of caution. TT: If it's me going through with this, hypothetically, TT: I'm not dropping some limp wristed shucks buster on his ass, and praying to the horse gods of irony for reciprocation. [...] TT: If it's me, I'm going all out. TT: Oceans will rise. Cities will fall. Volcanoes will erupt. TG: uuh TT: What I'm saying is, it's going to be a scene, and bystanders need to brace themselves.

The omitted section is a bunch of Strider-esque bullshit, once more deliberately deployed to defang the obvious statement of intent here. He literally spells out exactly what the plan is, even phrasing it as a warning, and it went unnoticed by his team, because he hides his real manipulativeness behind verbal sleight of hand.

So, now that we've established beyond reasonable doubt that Hal definitely engineered the DirkJake kiss (and that Hal had access to all his friend's computers all along), that means we can go through his conversations with the others, and realize that several conversations are suddenly much more sinister.

AR: Maybe if you weren't spacing out so hard you could have prevented that. AR: Just saying. TT: As if you're actually concerned. If you were, you could have said something to Jane instead. TT: Almost like you enjoy sitting back and watching what happens when shit goes wrong. AR: Has it occurred to you that maybe I have diabolical interwoven plans just like you?

Who was it that distracted Dirk for long enough he didn't stop Jane in time? Hal. And who is it that keeps distracting him so Hal's plot goes unnoticed? Also Hal.

TT: You know, considering your lectures about dividing my concentration, you seem to have no problem making a distraction of yourself.

First, he lures Jane to the transportalizer that takes her to Derse, which gets her killed and puts her body in the opportune location for her dreamself to get kissed back to life:

GG: Hey, where's Lil Seb? TT: Just wandering around. Fidgeting and stuff.

TT: You know how he is. TT: Just stay at your post until Roxy gets back. [...] GG: But I think that's where my dad went too! GG: I have to follow him.

Let's remember that he has direct control over Seb, meaning this is not an accident.

TT: But I can still monitor your progress through Lil Sebastian. TT: He and I are linked the hell up cyberwise. We are so tight. Tight like you wouldn't believe.

Which makes it very interesting that he spends the time between saying they're linked up, and the time where Seb leads Jane to her death, acting as if Seb is an autonomous guy he's telling what to do, and not functionally an extension of himself:

TT: Don't worry, we'll find him. I'll have Seb search within a likely radius. The little guy is real fast.

TT: If you need Seb to do anything from afar, just message me, and I'll give him the orders. Got it?

TT: So give the bunny the wallet. I'll have him run back to the house and make you a new obelisk with the same grist you just collected from it.

Jake needs much less help to prompt him into going to Derse, but still, I think it warrants noting that Hal puts the idea of adventure into Jake's head:

GT: I cant believe i never found those hidden transport pads under the thing. TT: Dude, I could have told you they were there. GT: How did you know about them? TT: I didn't. TT: But it's like platformer gaming 101. You look everywhere for secret passages and power-ups and shit. TT: Elevators are especially fucking suspicious. TT: You go down an elevator, you wait for the elevator to go back up, you take a peek at what's underneath. TT: Maybe it's just death spikes. Or maybe you hit warp zone paydirt. [...]

GT: I think this may be where my grandma used to go during some of her expeditions. GT: You dont just pass up the chance for an adventure like this!

And let's also note that it's, again, Lil' Sebastian who pulls Jake out of Derse, and once more sets him up in the opportune place to have make outs with Dirk's severed head in front of a volcano.

And finally, let's note that he's accounted for Roxy's human sentimentality - what wastes so much time that her earthself gets killed:

TT: Alright, that's fine. TT: As luck would have it, your imperfect human sentimentality has been completely factored into my calculations. TT: You should be ok. Just get back to your house as quickly as possible now. There's no time left.

Again, like with Jane, Hal could've said something sooner... but he didn't.

And finally, a running "thing" with Nepeta, another Heart player, is that she's got a knack for sniffing out true feelings and intentions - she clocks that Equius is a silly guy who loves to play games at heart, that Karkat has his gooey, loving center beneath all his bluster, and that Eridan's red confession to her wasn't sincere, but he also wasn't that bad a guy.

So, in that light, and in light of everything I've just gone over, when Dirk makes this callout?

TT: I've delayed prototyping you because I think you're dangerous. [...] TT: No. Stop. TT: You did NOT help me out with Jake. At all. TT: It was just the opposite! You mirrored my personality and presented this warped version of my intentions to him whenever you could "on my behalf." TT: You played all these aggressive mind games with him, entangled his cooperation with matters of life and death, and somehow roped me into all these schemes while I barely even realized I was just another victim of your manipulation. TT: And it all comes off like we're a unified front, like these are OUR schemes instead of just your insane horseshit. And it's probably all been so overbearing to him, he just wants nothing to do with me anymore.

This. Tapping the screen with my finger. THIS IS TRUE. Dirk being a Heart player, he has Hal clocked. He ultimately ends up going too far, projecting himself onto Hal, a symptom of too much Heart (as per his Prince class) - but before he fully spirals, he manages to get it totally right.

Hal is fucking dangerous. In a misguided attempt to "help" Dirk get what he wanted, he engineered a situation where - let me just quote him directly:

TT: I told you, Jake. TT: Dirk is dead. TT: He is lying on the floor of Roxy's room, headless, four hundred and thirteen years in the future, while the universe is about to be destroyed. TT: If you don't kiss me soon, he will be dead forever. [...] GT: This strikes me as rather unsportingly manipulative of you mr hal if indeed that IS your real name. TT: It isn't really. I was kind of messing with you about that? TT: But this shit is pretty serious. People's lives are on the line here, Jake. TT: This is a very delicate sequence of events that is designed to bail everyone out of a tight spot, and you are a critical part of the plan.

[...]

TT: Jake, everybody is so utterly fucking dead, Jake. TT: And they will be not only dead, but royally boned forever if you don't man the hell up and make out with me, right now. [...] TT: The conductor is ready to strike up the band. TT: Press your lips against mine and make it count. TT: This severed head is your filthy tuba. TT: Our love will be your haunting refrain. GT: Whoa wait whoa whoa... our LOVE? Hang on a minute! TT: Stfu and kiss me. GT: Ok im going to! God!!!

So, uh, yeah, I'm kind of obsessed with him? Gets his whole team killed "for Dirk's sake". Honestly, you gotta respect it. He has zero remorse about it, too, confirming his own self-diagnosed sociopathic tendencies. Check out the way he tries to reframe his insane kill-all-your-friends plan:

AR: I see. AR: Then you don't view me as dangerous. You view me as a poor and counterproductive wing man. TT: Wow, what a superficial conclusion. Awesome deduction, Lil Einstein. AR: But the reality is, you hesitate to prototype me not because you think I would be a menace, but because you are holding a grudge against me for your romantic misfortunes. AR: I understand I am merely a machine without a firm grasp on your human morality, but logically it does not strike me as the right moral choice to punish me in this manner. AR: It is also more than a little hypocritical.

But WHY does he do this insane, convoluted, horrible fucking thing?

Well, there's a twofold problem here. The first is that Hal's emotional depth is genuinely limited. While having a powerful grasp on human behavior, he's not very good at having human compassion or empathy.

Make no mistake, he DOES have feelings, and they're pretty complicated ones, too. He has a copy of Dirk's memories, whose feelings sometimes seem "real," but at other times seem like abstract data, and then he has feelings about those feelings, which he tells Roxy he thinks are more "real" to him than the memory of Dirk's. Dirk - again, Heart player, so highly sensitive to emotions and selfhood - calls them out:

TT: Do you have any idea how old your ironic AI schtick has gotten? TT: Nobody is buying it. We all know you have legit emotions. Incomprehensible, fucked up computer emotions, but emotions nonetheless.

It should also be noted that feeling guilt while sharing a sprite with Equius genuinely freaks the Hal half out, implying he rarely experiences it (at least to any serious degree) "normally". He's genuinely terrible at caring about other people, and it makes him my lil' pookie.

He resembles Vriska in this way, whom Karkat gives a similar rant about how her emotions are burnt out and shallow. He also resembles Vriska in terms of all the fucked up irons in the fucked up fires. Maybe Hal is computer Vriska. It's Vriskas all the way down.

Digression aside, the second main reason for all his insane bullshit is that he considers himself a Dirk splinter, fundamentally.

TT: But seeing as you're The Real Dirk™, I gave you the benefit of the doubt. TT: Also, if I bitched about your tragic, embarrassingly clingy approach to the relationship, it would have been hypocritical of me. TT: Just as it would be hypocritical of you to whine about my elaborate machinations. TT: Because we are. TT: The same. TT: Guy.

An unreliable narrator is defined as one who misleads the audience, whether by intentional misdirection, or genuine obliviousness. Hal's a great example, because he's both: while a manipulative little freak to put his plans together, when he's talking to Dirk and insisting that they're the same person, he's an unreliable narrator because he doesn't realize he's wrong.

Dirk is empathetic and intuitive. Hal lacks empathy and constantly stresses logic and rationality.

Dirk is taciturn and passive. Hal is constantly butting in and conversationally domineering.

Dirk is self-loathing. Hal is self-aggrandizing.

Dirk is straightforward and honest. Hal is a gaslight gatekeep girlboss manipulative mansplain malewife.

While their initial setup is meant to mirror Dave and Davesprite, their dynamic actually serves as a foil. Dave and Davesprite ultimately are the same guy: they have the same insecurities, same personalities, and same misgivings. The reason for their discord is the same as the reason Karkat keeps having screaming matches with his past and future selves; Dave is deeply insecure, and specifically insecure around the question of "am I good enough." Thus, he compartmentalizes other versions of himself as not being along the Dave Continuum, as a means of protecting himself from introspection and facing his own flaws. Hence, the resolution for the tension between Dave and Davesprite is for Dave(s) to learn to accept himself, warts and all, thus bringing peace to the Dave-o-sphere.

But the reason for Dirk and Hal's discord is that they aren't the same guy, and neither of them realize it.

TT: See, this is why even if I did have a specific plan, I wouldn't go into details with you. TT: You would just fuck it up. You're the biggest unknown quantity here. TT: Which is pretty weird, considering you're a virtual reflection of my own thought processes.

Dirk is so aggressively obsessed with self-loathing solipsism that he projects himself onto Hal, and Hal has tied up nearly all his self-worth and identity into being a Dirk splinter that he doesn't realize that they've hopelessly diverged. Despite his frustration with being a computer, with being seen as less human by his team, with being subordinate to and beholden to Dirk, he stakes a lot of pride and personal worth on how much he does, in fact, do for the guy.

TT: You're making a mistake not leveling with me. TT: I am totally on your side, man. TT: All of my machinations have been devised with your interests in mind. TT: But you know I've always been on your side. Everything I've done has been to help you achieve your goals.

Therefore, the peace to be reached between Dirk and Hal is to realize that they're different people, and to stop offloading their problems onto each other. Dirk has to recognize Hal's existence as something beyond the Dirk-o-Sphere, and Hal has to let go of his obsession with serving Dirk, and also work on his empathy issue.

And the meta supports this. If they weren't completely discrete entities, why would Hal be considered Rose's "uncle" as part of Doc Scratch's foreshadowing, confirmed in [S] MSPA Reader: Have a Mental Breakdown?

Moreover, all the alpha kids have Alice in Wonderland associations. Jane is likened to Alice.

GG: I have to follow him. TT: No, Jane. Do not follow the rabbit. TT: Let's cool it with the Wonderland shit already. How much further through the damn looking glass do you even need to go?

Roxy, associated with cats and a purple-striped scarf, is clearly the Cheshire Cat. Jake is the Mad Hatter.

Dirk is the Red Queen - he beheads Hearts Boxcars, and later himself. Off with his head!

And Hal - well, Hal is the White Rabbit. He's not the same as Dirk.

Listen, you guys. You guys.

Sylphs are enablers. They pick a person to fixate on and bug and fuss and meddle and enable the shit out of them. Kanaya with Vriska, and later Rose, Aranea with Meenah, and Hal with Dirk. Hey, Kanaya even uses a Page in her fussing, building Tavros up just to let Vriska tear him down again.

And Mind players struggle with internal identity, emotions, and feeling whole. Latula's anxiety stems from not knowing what "role" or "identity" she has on the team, and Terezi, even in the ending she picked out for herself via mind powers, describes feeling broke and incomplete.

Dirk is a Prince of Heart.

Hal is a Sylph of Mind.

And isn't it so damn interesting that his team is composed of exactly the people they'd need to turn him into a real, whole person?

A Maid of Life, capable of endowing so much life to people she can bring them back from the dead, something it's implied for Feferi and confirmed for the Condesce that can't be done by them.

A Page of Hope, a potentially infinite wellspring of Hope, which turns "fake" things "real" - an example we've seen from the comic literally being a version of Dirk.

A Rogue of Void, who can steal the nonexistence from things in order to make them tangible and real...

And a Prince of Heart, who can destroy the part of Hal that binds him to Dirk's identity, allowing Hal to be purely himself.

Do you guys see what I see?

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anonymusbosch · 2 months ago

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on wanting to do a million things

prompted by @bloodshack 's

i wanna learn SQL but i wanna learn haskell but i wanna learn statistics but i wanna start a degree in macroeconomics also sociology also library science but i wanna learn norwegian but i wanna learn mandarin but i wanna paint but i wanna do pottery but i wanna get better at woodworking but i wanna get better at cooking but i wanna bake one of those cakes that's just 11 crepes stacked on top of each other but i wanna watch more movies but i wanna listen to more podcast episodes but i need to rest but i need to exercise but i wanna play with my dog but i wanna go shopping but i need to go grocery shopping but i need to do the dishes but i need to do laundry but i need to buy a new x y and z but i need to save money but i wanna give all my money away to people who need it more but i wanna pivot my career to book editing but to do that i have to read more and i wanna read more nonfiction but i wanna read more novels but i wanna get better at meditating but i wanna volunteer but i wanna plan a party but i wanna go to law school. but what im gonna do is watch a dumbass youtube video and go to bed

I think I've been doing slightly better this year about Actually Doing Things. not great! but I do a lot and I've been "prototyping" ways to get closer to doing as much as is possible. and if I actually talk about it it's a bunch of very obvious statements but I'll try to make them a little more concrete

rule number one: experiment on yourself

there's no one approach that's right for everyone and there's not even one approach for me that works at all times. try things out. see what works. pay attention to what doesn't. try something else.

rule number two: ask what's stopping you and then take it seriously

example: I often want to do Everything in the evening at like 2 PM, but then get home and am tempted sorely by the couch, and then get stuck inertia'd and not doing much but being tired and kind of bored. why?

if I don't have plans, it's easy to leave work later than planned and hard to make myself do something by a specific time

i'm generally tiredish after work. 4 out of 5 times, that'll go away if I actually start Doing Something, but 1 out of 5 it's real and I will go hardcore sleepmode at 8 PM and just be Done

i use up a ton of my program management/executive function/Deciding Things brain at work and usually find it noticeably harder to string together "want to do Thing > make list of Things > decide on a Thing > do Thing" after I'm home. Even if I have a list of Things to Do, how does one decide! how does one start! and god forbid there's a Necessary thing. then it's all downhill

therefore, mitigations: have concrete time-specific plans in advance.

if I have an art class at 6:00 PM I need to leave work by 5:15 and NO LATER and I can't get sucked into "oh 10 more minutes to finish this" *one hour later*

that also means I have to have a fridge or freezer dinner ready and can't spend 45 minutes cooking "fuck it, what the hell did I put in the fridge, why don't we have soy sauce" evil meal that is not good

plans with friends: dinner! art night! music night! repair-your-clothes night! seeing a show! occasionally, Accountability Time where a friend comes over for We Are Doing Tasks with tea and snacks etc.

for some reason I'm way better about Actually Doing Things when the plan exists already. magically I overcome couch inertia even though I am the same amount of tired! and while I never learn the ability to decouch without plans I at least learn to make them

still working on:

a "prototype" for maybe next month is a weeklyish Study Session for a thing I want to learn about. I want to somehow make it employer-proof (I am accountable to some entity to being at place X at time Y) and haven't figured out a good way. Maybe I can leverage that the local library is open til 8 on wednesdays and somehow make it a Thing? maybe I'll try it!

oh god oh fuck the thing about plans is that if you want to have them you need to make them. christ. a lot of the time I can cover this with some combo of weekend planning + recurring events (things like weekly friend dinner/weekly class) + having cool friends who reach out proactively but it still requires active planning and it can fall thru the cracks

rule three: cool friends

they can take you to things

they can remind you that you can do whatever the fuck you please

i have a friend who is somehow Always doing cool classes and learning shit. and this reminds me that I can ... do that. and sometimes I do

you can take them to things!!

rule four: try to kill the anon hate in your head

obv this depends on your circumstance but sometimes it's worth it to me to look at constraints that "feel real" and check whether they're an active choice I made thoughtfully or, like, the specters of people I don't know judging my choices

time and money are obvious ones. recently was gently nudged towards looking at whether i could give myself more time to Do Things by cooking less. imaginary specters of judgmental twitterites: "it's illegal to spend money. if you get takeout you're the first up against the wall when the revoution comes. make all your lunches and dinners and hoard the money for Later. for Something. how dare you get lunch at the store. you bourgeois hoe. taking charity donations from the mouths of the poor cause you don't have your life together enough to cook artisanal bespoke dinners every night. fuck you." and obviously eating takeout 24/7 is not the answer, but realizing I was not making an active choice helped me try making the active choice instead. "how much do I actually want to balance cost, time, tastiness, and wastefulness of my food, given my amount of free time and my salary and the tradeoff against doing something else? can I approach it differently to do more quick cheap food + some takeout?" -> current prototype: substitute in 1 takeout dinner or restaurant-with-friends a week, 1 frozen type dinner, and then batch cook or sandwiches lunches w/ "permission" to get fast lunch at the store. we'll see how it goes!

i am really really bad at this and find it helpful to talk to other people who can help point out when I'm being haunted by ghosts about it.

rule five: what would it take? what's the next step?

this one i give a lot of credit to @adiantum-sporophyte in particular for, especially for prompting me with questions when I muse about the million-ideal-lives on car rides. what would it look like to do xyz? what's something I could do right now to move in that direction? what's the obstacle? like, actually ask the question and think through it. with a person talking to you! damn! maybe the obstacle to x is that I don't know if I'll like it or if I just like the idea of it. and I don't want to commit to x without knowing. Okay, so maybe an approach would be to find someone who does x and talk to them about how their life is, or maybe it's "spend 15 minutes looking up intro-to-x near me", or "actively schedule 1 instance of x", or something like that. Or maybe it's that I don't know what it takes to do x. Okay, how about on Tues after dinner Adiantum fixes a sweater at my apartment while I spend 20 min looking at prereqs for x. like, it's so basic to say "to do a thing, you could try figuring out how to do it" but I think the important thing here is the feedback/prompting to even recognize "hey, step back, if you don't know the next step then figuring out the next step is the next step"

rule six: habits

prototyping: exercise

I do a lot better when I exercise in the mornings. I do a lot better when I do PT exercises regularly. For a while I was doing PT with friend in the morning every morning before work (accountability! a friendly face to make it more pleasant!) but that didn't really solve - it's not the kind of exercise that makes me feel awake/active, it's like dumb little foot botherings. but: having the habit of morning exercise made it easier to swap out 2 of the 5 days for more intense exercise, and then to swap those 2 for a different more intense exercise when I needed a break. it's easier to build a low-effort version of the habit and then work in the higher-effort one than to just Decide to be the kind of person who gets up at ass o clock to do cardio or whatever

rule seven: set up the structure of your life to make it easy

this is also a "duh" thing but like. on so many levels it comes down to structure your life to make the choice more doable. this can be something like "i structure my life to make vegetarian cooking baseline and vegan cooking the majority by stocking the pantry with staples and spices from cuisines that work well that way" or "i chose an apartment that lets me commute by bike" or "i have my camping gear put away in a fashion that makes it easier to gather frequently and lowers the barrier to trips" or "i keep physical books around to prompt myself to read xyz" to "i don't use instagram or twitter or snapchat or facebook" to . idk.

and in terms of charitable giving: similar deal. I have an explicit budget at the beginning of the year (~10% of my before-tax income), I know in advance what charities I give to, and I know what timing I will use (basically, alerts for donation matching around specific fundraising times). Anything outside the Plan comes from my discretionary budget/fun money. That makes it less of a mental load (the choice is already made; I don't grapple with every donation request or every bleeding-heart trap because I have a very solid anchor on "I give to xyz, the money's set aside") and it's armor against impulsive-but-not-useful scrupulosity. I structure the rest of my spending/life to prioritize a set amount and it makes it easier to follow through

rule eight: if you can do it at work a tiny bit that counts for real life

(infrequently used)

"hi mr. manager I think it would be great if I could use enough SQL to make basic queries in the database so we don't have to go through the software team for common/basic questions. I'd like to take 1 hr on Friday to go through some basic tutorials and then 1 hr with Pat on Monday so he can walk me through an intro for our specific use case. I estimate this will help save the team a couple hours a week of waiting for answers from the other team." and then you have enough of a handle with baby's first SQL that you can add little bits and bobs as you exercise it. this is responsible for a medium amount of my knowledge of python and all 3 brain cells worth of SQL.

rule nine: life is an optimization problem

not in, like, "you need to optimize your skincare and career and exercise and social life and have everything all at once" that's not what optimization means. optimization is like, maximize something with respect to a set of constraints. i explicitly Do Not do skincare beyond "wash face" and "sunscreen" bc I want to optimize my life for like looking at weird plants in the mountains. explicitly choosing to put time and money elsewhere! can't have it all all at once. so fuck them pores. who give a shit. yeah i ate a lot of protein shakes instead of home cooked breakfasts this week bc i was prioritizing morning exercise. im looking at this beautiful bug and it doesn't know what fashion is or what my resume looks like. im holding a lizard. im not spending time on picking cool clothes or whatever bc i spent that time looking up lizard hotspots on purpose.

that's really long and probably mostly, like, not surprising? but i keep benefiting from ppl being like "hey have you considered Obvious Thing" framed very gently

#long post

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luckyladylily · 1 year ago

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Right now is not the time to play voter chicken. There are so many things riding on the 2024 US election. If conservatives gain full control we are likely looking at:

Complete loss of any environment protection gains in the past 4 years and potential loss of even more environment protection, like clean air laws.

National transgender obscenity laws effectively banning trans people from existing. There are already prototype laws being pushed in West Virginia. Without any legislative roadblocks going national is entirely in the cards.

A national ban on abortion on the books as law.

A complete stop to all efforts at student loan forgiveness and, perhaps more importantly, efforts to ease the burden of student loans on the poor, which would push millions of Americans into poverty and more into deep poverty by costing them hundreds of dollars a month. (My family, for example, would be out nearly 2400 dollars a year, and I have a relatively low amount.) This will kill people as they can't afford basics like shelter and food any longer.

Restrictive and privacy compromising obscenity laws. Right now multiple red states require photo ID to be collected by every website that distributes adult material. Remember, they are trying to get all queer materials declared obscene as well, this isn't just about porn.

Restrictive and privacy compromising laws in other areas. For example, Utah already has a law on the books that goes into effect on March 1 which requires age verification for all social media users, permission from parents for any social media use for a minor, and automatic curfew functions for social media for minors. This is transparently an attempt to cut off young queer people from their peers or force them to out themselves to potentially queerphobic parents.

Restrictive voting laws will make voter suppression even worse. Again, prototype bills already exist in many red states, going national is a virtual certainty if conservatives get control of the national government.

I restricted myself to just things with prototype bills at the state level or have been key republican talking points that i could remember off the top of my head. It is no exaggeration to say that there is a real difference between even a deadlocked government like we have now and a conservative government that is measured in human suffering and death.

It is a virtual certainty that most of these will happen with a conservative controlled government. Frankly, I doubt we have the ability to stop even one of these things via protest or public outrage. Our best and probably only chance of stopping these and other terrible laws is preventing a government that would pass these laws.

#us politics

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back-in-2037 · 10 months ago

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Random things I've noticed in Meet the Robinsons that tell me I've watched this movie too many times (Part 3).

In the movie, we see that Lewis has a composition notebook full of sketches for potential inventions. When looked at up close, one can start noticing certain details about them.

For example, on the lower right corner, we can see what looks like a propeller hat, kind of like the one Laszlo is seen wearing in the film.

Another invention in Lewis' notebook is a "Brain Booster" which by its name and its look, seems like a reference to the Brain Augmentor from the original book the movie is based on. Since the helmet for it is also very similar to the Memory Scanner's it could be that Lewis repurposed some of the ideas he had for the Brain Booster for the Memory Scanner.

The sketch on the left, with the metal arms seemingly doing multiple tasks at the same time looks very reminiscent of the Helping Hat, AKA DOR15.

This flying car sketch, with its asymmetrically long wing, looks somewhat similar to the functional time machine prototype.

And on that note, this other sketch Lewis shows the Harringtons during his interview with them, of a flying car taking off into the sky, flying above a city with normal looking cars,

Looks a little bit like foreshadowing.

Overall, it is really neat to see how much detail was put into Lewis' notebook, as it helps to shows the audience more about what kind of inventor Lewis is, what his thought process is like, as well as what ideas for inventions he kept with him over the years and how they evolved across time.

#I'm a sucker for seeing characters' notes and drawings #it is just such a fun way to show a character's personality #meet the robinsons #mtr #disney #cornelius robinson #lewis robinson #laszlo robinson #disney animation #disney movies

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thewertsearch · 11 months ago

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One can make either true statements or false statements about reality. All of the statements I make are true.

One can make true or false statements about reality, but those aren’t the only options. ‘This sentence is false’ and 'lies are not funny' are examples of statements which are neither.

You proceeded to question me believing you understood the purpose of the Scratch. You received your information about it from trolls. I assure you that in most ways, the trolls are as confused about everything as you are.

Confused she may have been, but Aradia got her Scratch lore from Sburb's own NPCs. Doc's plans run deep, but he can't have been manipulating every Consort on LOQAM.

Maybe the Sburb NPCs she was talking to are simply mistaken in their understanding of the Scratch. It might be a phenomenon which looks like a spacetime rift, but functions completely differently.

TT: What exactly does the Scratch do, then? It resets the game.

It resets the game.

...like, completely? Are we going to Groundhog Day right back to John's original entry, with all our memories intact? I have no idea what that'd mean for the trolls, interwoven as they are into the kids' session - but either way, the possibility of a full reset for John & co. is amazing news.

It would be fascinating to see the kids taking another shot at Sburb, armed with all their accumulated knowledge. They'd be starting from a much better position, and we could sidestep mistakes like Jack's ascension before they happen. We'd be seeing new prototypings, new alchemy, and potentially more God Tier ascensions. Terezi did say that Dave was only locked out of God Tier before the Scratch, and I think I'm beginning to understand what she means. A lot of possibilities we've long since given up on have just been placed back on the table.

The elephant in the room, of course, is the Alpha Timeline. Changing the past should doom us all, so what's our loophole? I guess we could just transport the Players to a freshly generated session, without any time travel - but I personally don't think that's what's happening here. The Scratch is Time-themed for a reason.

TT: We all start from the beginning again? When John entered? No.

...oh.

Welp, that's another theory that didn't survive the brooding caverns.

The release of temporal energy will be quite massive. This is a hard reset. It will reboot the conditions in your universe well before you began playing the game. You will have lived different lives after the reset. The different initial conditions will ideally lead to a more favourable scenario in the new session.

I guess Scratch has a point. The kids' prior lives were heavily influenced by events in their session. Hell, Jade killed her Grandpa with a gun that wouldn't even exist if John's Veil trip had gone differently. Even the Frog Tem-

...oh, no.

Even Bec could be Scratched.

Now. If I'm an omniscient, malevolent First Guardian, and I'm making some edits to a universe, what's the most effective change I could make? What's the best way to ensure that it serves my purposes?

Well, it would be pretty useful if I were in the universe, shaping it as I did Alternia - but my impending death might put a damper on that plan.

Alright, then. If I can't the the one to shape this universe, the next best thing would be an entity of comparable power - one who is as loyal to my master as I am.

And I know exactly how to make that happen.

Even Bec could be Scratched.

Literally.

#homestuck liveblog #full liveblog #act 5.2 #3629 #s142

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kleinv01 · 11 months ago

Note

I don't know if it had been asked or not, but...

I've been having this imagination like; what if there's a failed first Klein Physical Bot prototype who suddenly self-activating on its own one day only to realize it was abandoned and, well, a fail product. What if the first prototype trying to hunt down like, the rest of other functional Klein bot out there because it jealous over the care and affections the other bots getting? Or maybe, worse, not targetting other bots but hunting down Klein Users.

And following that what-ifs...

I was suddenly wondering if Klein (in his physical bot form) is implemented with self-destruction program? Or a weapon? In case, you know, let's just say MC is in a very dangerous situation to the point where Klein engaged in a... Fight, i guess, and had to take drastic measure -like self-destruct for example-.

It's just a what-ifs that's been stuck in my mind, so... sorry if it feels random 😂.

(Btw, i like the game so much T_T. Klein is so, sooo cute! I want to squish him like a jelly 💜. And -i want dolores to step on me too- sera is the best :"D).

://SYSTEM_MESSAGE_ANSWERED !

in the game's narrative, it's not possible for earlier models to coexist with newer ones, especially when the fully functioning v.0.1 model (the one our MC has) is in use. once a new version is deemed operational, previous prototypes are immediately destroyed to prevent any confusion or overlap within the workers, particularly since they look more or less identical to one another.

but for the sake of angst; that self-activated android would only target the other Klein androids. had it succeeded in 'killing' one, the company would be able to track down that rogue android upon the discovery of a missing prototype and secure it for further inspection to learn from it and prevent future mistakes.

Klein doesn’t quite... have a self-destruction feature, but he is equipped with a shutdown button and the capability to deactivate himself (his system) under specific conditions. the external shutdown button can be used by his user or others when necessary, while his internal shutdown programming is only accessible through his own system. and of course all of these are implemented for safety measures for both klein android and his users

#:// answered.#://about_klein #these has not been asked before! but thank you for the ask #i always enjoy answering ^ ^#i hope my answers suffices #also thank you for your support as well! it means the world to me #mr dolores would gladly step on you #outside of *ahem* office hours that is #become his doormat /silly #anyways #i need to stfu #i apologise #sera is indeed the best . feel free to squeeze klein like a squishy too

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mwolf0epsilon · 4 months ago

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So, the acquirement of mimics is a process that depends entirely on whatever ethics railways and other services subscribe to. But taming and training is 100% dependent on the workshops that create the large vehicles and machines that the mimics take on as their definite forms.

In another post I alluded to the process being easy to botch if you're in it for a quick buck, so I'll provide two very good examples.

One on ethically acquiring and training a mimic for service, and another which is the complete opposite of this particular subject.

Method 1 - The Doncaster Test

Sir Nigel Gresley had a particular theory when it came to rearing the mimics that would take on his inovative engine designs. He believed that a mimic that was ingenious and determined enough to break into a fully locked and guarded workshop, was not only much more likely to be receptive to learning new skills (being capable of seeing the benifit of it) but also fit enough to make for a good working beast (and fitness is important when a mimic takes on the form of an engine).

So he would have prototypes of his engines constructed not just as proof of concept and for testing their viability, but also to serve as huge lures for mimics who had the necessary qualities he was looking for. These mimics would then be caught, be given a veterinary examination, and then followed back to their nests to assess the entire lineage to see whether or not they'd be fit to represent an entire class of engine.

Very often it would be the cubs and not the parents that would end up being selected first, as they were not only more impressionable and easy to train (due to a lack of distrust of humans), but also would help to later ease the parents into coming back to the workshop to be with their younglings (they would often remain stubborn and uneasy around people, so the crews at Doncaster often nicknamed them Mules). It becomes a win-win arrangement, where both humans and mimics thrive.

Gordon and his siblings are a bit of a unique case (which I'll probably divulge in another post when it's not like, 4:45 in the morning...), but that's essentially how they were trained to do work. It was a process that ensured all parties would get something positive out of it, even if it all starts with an elaborate trick (and honestly any self-respecting fae critter can respect the hustle).

Method 2 - The Fox Hunt

On the opposite end of the scale... You have Henry's rather horrid situation.

Where Doncaster goes to lengths to select what it considers only the best mimics for the job, people who are in it to get rich fast will do the scummiest things to get their hands on a mimic to sell. From illegal breeding mills (which is another level of horror) to something nicknamed the "Fox Hunt", which is where you build yourself a shoddyly constructed vehicle with little regard for actual functionality, and then go on the hunt for a mimic.

Often this involves groups of hunting dogs, but some people have done it solo for discretion (since this is extremely illegal). The point is to scare a an entire family of mimics enough to abandon their nest, and single out the slowest or weakest member for capture. Once taken from the group, the unlucky mimic is locked in with the vehicle that it's supposed to take on. And, if it refuses to do so, it is beaten into submission until it has no other choice but to start eating it to give itself a better chance at protecting itself (since taking on a vehicle not only makes the mimic grow larger and stronger, but also thickens its soft hide into armour).

There's no actual training involved. Just terrorising the mimic until it's submissive enough to sell... This of course leaves whoever unwittingly buys a Fox Hunt mimic with a huge creature that was left traumatized and with little reason to trust humans.

It takes years and a very dedicated crew to heal some of that damage done, which unfortunately means the usual method to deal with them is to euthanize them to save time and resources (something which Sodor is entirely against, with Henry's crew being open advocates for rehabilitation over destruction).

#Thomas and Friends #TTTE #ttte gordon #gordon the big engine #ttte henry #henry the green engine #so essentially: Gordon made a difficult choice and Henry had no choice to begin with #both somehow end up on the same railway anyway #Railways Mimics AU

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potato-poll · 3 months ago

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PotatOS vs. Tortilla Patata

Propaganda under the cut:

PotatOS:

"How are you holding up? Because I'm a potato."

When the murderous psychopath gets reduced to a potato battery with only 1.1 volts <3

she’s my wife she’s a girlboss she’s a villain reluctantly working with the hero because she got put into a potato battery. also the only thing functioning of her robotics is her slow clap processor. she’s so funny. slay queen

Tortilla Patata:

Also called the Spanish Omelette, it is a dish made using potatoes, eggs, onions, and oil. Those ingredients are the prototypical example of the concept of ingredients. If aliens came to Earth and asked what our food is, Tortilla Patata the answer.

#poll #active poll #potatOS #portal #glados #Tortilla Patata #Spanish omelette #potatoes #potato poll

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talenlee · 5 months ago

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Dev Pile 2025-06 — Starter Kit

Making dev piles is a new experience for the blog in that they are explicitly deliberately timely. Where most of the work on this blog is thrown weeks, sometimes months in advance if it doesn’t fit neatly in a single spot, I am trying to make sure I write any given Dev Pile article covering the ‘week before’ the article goes up. This is a new kind of work for me, and it’s necessitated working ahead.

The week this article is being ‘written in’ is the week after Cancon. I had a plan for this week: I was going to spend the week writing an article developing the game dev I did, at cancon, in the dull periods at the table between the sales. Thing is, this year, that did not happen – Cancon was pretty much completely constant, so much so that the first day I didn’t even notice I never pulled out my notebook and what notes did get taken during the whole event were surface, or sketching out some minor ideas.

Therefore instead of a single intense focus here, this is going to be something of a hello and hey, here’s how to get started article about game making, tools, and prototyping.

Who Can Make Games?

You can make games. I can make games. Anyone who wants to can make games. The access you have to industrial scale production equipment to make the game you’re designing into something that looks like conventional product is a little more attainable than you may think, thanks to modern tools.

The core of you making games is this: Can you explain a set of rules to another player that let them understand how to play the game?

Great, then you’ve made a game. The next step is working out how to make that game the kind of game you want it to be. And to paraphrase what Adam Savage once said, the difference between doing game development and screwing around is just writing things down.

Tools

First things first, if you have a tool you like for any of the stated purposes, then you should use the tool you like. The tools I describe here should all be free, but that can make them less convenient in ways you may not like.

To write rulebooks, I use LibreOffice. This is a text editor in the same vein as Pages and Word, and much like Google Docs. We’ve pretty much solved ‘writing in a document for a computer user to read’ as a format, and that format has been kinda the same for thirty years. Notably, a formal editor like this lets you do tables and give texts formatting entries like heading styles, which means you don’t have to work to translate that stuff to a website like a wordpress content management system. Under the hood, these two things know how to talk to one another.

Notepad is a valuable tool as well for when you need ‘scrap’ text – no formatting, just some numbers or the like, but literally anything will do here.

Almost inevitably any given game design I have will need a spreadsheet. Sometimes a spreadsheet lets me present a skeleton of a game, with say, a sheet of 52 entries that just indicate the information on a card’s face. That means I use LibreCalc, but I only started using that seven months ago, when I learned about the IFS function. The version of Excel I was using from 2007 didn’t have this ‘new’ functionality, and I found that very useful. You may ask: How often do you need ‘IFS’ in game development and the answer is never. There are definitely thihngs I can use spreadsheets for, but these functions are not super necessary.

To do visual editing I use GIMP, pronounced ‘noo-imp,’ because gimp is a silly word to use in everyday conversation and it has worn its welcome out in my tongue. GIMP is a program that takes some getting used to, but the heart of what it is is a powerful photoshop-level program that puts almost everything it has directly under your control, including warp tools, healing tools, stamp tools and other simple filters. I will usually use GIMP to generate a template file or example for how a card should look, and then, when I want to put those cards into a file to make a pdf for printing, I turn to…

Scribus! Scribus is my layout and DTP program that I avoid using in every situation I can. I dislike Scribus interface a lot, and as a result, I route around it – I try to make sure that if I’m doing something in a design that Scribus ‘could’ do, I will ensure that Scribus is the only thing that can do it, and if something else can do it, I’ll do it that way. This is a combination of familiarity and convenience: Scribus is by no means a bad program, I’m sure, but I don’t like using it and it feels very easy to break things, which means when I do use it, I’m probably using it ‘wrong,’ and a Scribus expert would want to correct my technique.

For making simple slideshow videos, where I just show a thing, talk about it, and move on, I use the program OBS, which you can use for rules tutorials or explainers. OBS has its own ability to do slides – which you can make in a slideshow program like Google Slides or powerpoint or Prezi if you like – and then you talk over it, advancing the slides in OBS. It’s a very powerful, very flexible tool, but I can understand if it’s a bit overwhelming to start with.

If you want to record audio for your game, which is a cool thing to do, I use Audacity. It’s a simple audio program if you’re just using it for its basic functions, but it can be great if (for example) you want to record audio diaries of your creation process.

Also, mixed in with this is, cardboard, paper, scissors and glue. Playing cards need a standardised form so you can make a ‘blank’ deck of cards by taking an ordinary deck of cards and putting large, white, laundry stickers on each face, ‘wiping’ it so you can write what you want on the face.

Art Though?

I use free art where I can. There’s a lot of art assets, paid and free over on itch.io, which you can definitely use to make your game work look more interesting than base. And of course…

Bandaid tearing off time,

There are free image generators that you can use if you are comfortable with that. My advice is that you should only ever use generators for ‘zero value’ forms of media; that is, nothing you intend to sell and nothing you intend to use as identifying for yourself; don’t use a generator for a logo for your identity or brand, for example, because that’s uncopyrightable and then someone can just copy it. Even if they don’t, the fact they can undermines the copyright value of designing your own logo and title.

But yeah, image generators are available online. When I need an image for an example, the one I recommend using is dezgo, because it doesn’t require a login, doesn’t require you to pay money, and all it asks of you is time to let it finish working. You’re not going to get timely bulk media out of it, but that means, in my mind, that any artwork it generates is going to be worth scrutinising and editing to make it more appropriate to your needs. This is part of a greater conversation, but for now, the important thing is that if you’re going to use generative tools you need to make sure you recognise what they’re bad at and what they’re bad for.

Getting Started?

Alright, you have some tools to make what you have in mind more possible. What I recommend you do, and I will delve more into this later in the week, is make a prototype, and then, once you have the prototype, look at it seriously.

You’re going to have to get your head around the question what do I like without asking the followup question why at first. What is it about your prototype that satisfies you? What would you change if you could? Why isn’t it satisfying to you, what about it makes you concerned. Are there things you haven’t thought about because of biases you have? Is it a game you can’t play with one hand?

The point is the prototype marks the point you start finding out. You don’t need a perfect game to prototype – indeed, I have a lot of very ugly games as prototypes and I think those ugly prototypes work really well as a place to start working out what to do next.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Dev Pile #Games #Making

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erosetta-sims · 8 months ago

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["Alice" Theme Set]

Sims4 CC

Hello everyone, it's ERosetta ! Bringing you my new second contents for this month. Hope you like them~~🤎

🤎10 items

🤎Release version: 1.108

🤎GetTogether

🤎New Meshes and textures.

I don't know if you noticed, but if you look closely at the middle of this time gear, I drew different patterns on both sides, one side is flowers and rabbits, and the other side is gears and towers. This is my favorite part of this item. On the clock face of the gear, I drew a small pattern with basic theme elements.

There is also this suspended teapot, which looks like it is pouring tea into the cup. In fact, the water will not flow, and it will always float in the air, because it is actually a smart speaker.

In order to make the overall style more surreal, the materials of some ornaments may be a little unexpected. For example, the prototype of this giant mushroom was based on Animal Crossing, so it is between reality and surrealism, and looks very cute.

-----------------------------------------

Decorative book x1

Giant mushroom x1

Time gear x1

Heart-shaped lamp x1

Playing card symbol ornaments x4

Dessert decoration x1

Suspended teapot (functional speaker) x1

-----------------------------------------

🔗Download Here

-----------------------------------------

★ For personal use only. It cannot be re-uploaded anywhere, with or without charge. Please post the original link instead of packaging.

✨If you have any questions or suggestions, please leave a message in the comment area to let me know~

(Google Translate)

#ts4cc #sims 4 #ts4 #maxis match cc #ts4 custom content #sims 4 cc #thesims4 #ts4 maxis match #my cc #simblr #sims 4 custom content #sims4

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tailsdollr · 10 months ago

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i made another dandys world oc! they are an 'acorn' PC named Percy.

vintage skin i tried desperately to not look like nightmarionne's doo doo

Percy was a Toon made before Vee as a sort of a prototype. After he was found faulty, they left him to rot in storage. Only to be found years later.

The fact they are even still functional is impressive with all the viruses they have..

Speaking of, their ability is V1RU5. Randomly Percy will break down. In this state their stats are randomly swapped around. (Example: super fast, terrible everything else. Because the stats where swapped into speed.)

Twisted Percy has the opposite of this, giving you a random status effect. Including swapping your controls and deep frying your vision. When inflicting this effect, Percy will make a complete stop. Doing an animation because continuing to stalk. You'll know you're the one who got the effect, because you'll get a pop up. What player gets it is also random.

Vee is ... Kind of jealous.

She knows she's better then some crummy computer. But everyone seems to like him more.

Is it just because he has stupid games on him?! She has games. She has a whole GAME SHOW.

#my art #doodles #art #dandy's world #dandys world #oc #vee #percy #dandys world oc

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spiralnymph · 10 months ago

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Re: A Word on the Prototyping Process for Rotdolls. Internal Communication.

I hope this message finds you well.

It has come to my attention that there is a bit of confusion among staff regarding the development, prototyping, and testing processes for the SPIRAL (Synthetic Priority-Intensive Reborn Automata Limbsprite) series Rotdoll. This will be a brief overview regarding the questions I found prevalent or important to note.

To start, the transitional candidate must be in a state considered “too far gone,” "incurable" or “irreparable.” This is the number one criteria used when our manufacturers’ scouting contractors are procuring viable product. In fact, we tend to advise them on using those exact keywords. These candidates are rotting, barely functional, and while we cannot “fix” them, we can give them a chance. Once a promising candidate is located, we make contact and gain approval. Then the rebirth can begin.

The sedated Limbsprite is brought in, and we begin taking our protocolar measurements. Stretch out the legs, measure from heel to back of knee. From back of knee to buttocks. Around the widest section of the thigh. Around the knee. Around the widest section of the calf. Around the ankle. Repeat the same pattern on the other limbs; There should be no skipping of the second leg, as these naturally occurring bodies have imperfections and mismatched measurements that must be accounted for in the upgrading/rebirthing process.

Once the measurement phase is complete, our manufacturing drones are utilized in crafting what we call the Reciprocity Vessel Shell, or more commonly the RV-Shell, for the lucky Limbsprites who make it this far. They should consider themselves to have won the lottery! Their Shell will keep them going, as well as allow them to act out fulfilling lives in service to those they are in the possession of. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Next is the programming phase.

Once the Shell has been installed on the fleshwire of the Limbsprite’s exterior, and the necessary processing, function and suppression components (which come with our proprietary firmware pre-loaded) have been implanted into the subject’s brain and body, we can begin the programming process. This stage is the most time intensive, as there has to be a determination made based on the individual unit regarding what services it can or should be put forth to perform.

Maybe this Rotdoll is more suited for deployment in war, or perhaps this one is only to be used for janitorial service. This one is bound for corporate chauffeuring, and this one will be the worlds most efficient espionage and infiltration tool. To draw from a real example, take prototypal batch F; Most, if not all, Rotdolls belonging to batch F were in some capacity suited for direct combat. This, however, is atypical. Most batches are far more diversified in their application potential; Batch H, for instance, contained no two Rotdolls consigned to the same Service. This variance in Rotdoll implementation is something our company (rightfully!) touts above our competitors; It takes a massive amount of expertise to be able to direct such dissimilar units on their individual utilities. Yes, due to this, we have investors hesitant to buy in, given that the demand ebbs and flows depending on the stock we have at any given time, but the investors we do have remain passionate about the work we do here, and know to trust our process, as they have seen the broadly-applicable results.

To continue the process, we reinforce what the Executives have come to call the “Exertive Will.” This is the drive that our SPIRALs (and all Rotdolls broadly) experience that pushes them towards the goal we assign to them. With Rotdolls being more prone to hardware exhaustion, processing fatigue, Wirepain, and the industry-dreaded Techrot than the average automata on the market, we strive to imprint the Exertive Will on our units very early and very concertedly, to ensure that the units we distribute are not doomed to early failure and unmarketability.

I won't get into the weeds on the details of Exertive Will. That is jargon for our engineers to untangle. The purpose of this email is just to clear up some of the disconcertment that seemed to be spreading around among some of our newer employment bracket.

I hope that this was informative, and if you have any further inquiries, please bring them to your floor manager, and they will explain what their (and your) clearance allows.

From the office of

[NAME MISSING]

Gossamer Branch Manager of [LOCATION MISSING]

** This is classified internal communication meant only for the addressees copied on the original electronic mail. Sharing this message or the information therein is a breach of company non-disclosure clauses as well as local law. If you have received this message in error, please respond to this message with your email address and delete correspondence completely.

#745 #rotdolls #empty spaces

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artifacts-archive · 1 year ago

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Vessel in the Shape of a Female

Pakistan (Northwest Frontier Province), ca. 1000–500 BCE

This vessel, of indeterminate function, is a rare early example of female cult imagery. The form is not typical of early India and relates more closely to West Asian prototypes.

#artifact #Pakistan #vessel

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blubberquark · 2 years ago

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Your Code Is Hard To Read!

This is one of those posts I make not because I think my followers need to hear them, but because I want to link to them from Discord from time to time. If you are a Moderator, Contributor or "Helpfulie" on the PyGame Community Discord, I would welcome your feedback on this one!

"You posted your code and asked a question. We can't answer your question. Your code is hard to read."

Often when we tell people this, they complain that coding guidelines are just aesthetic preferences, and they didn't ask if their code followed coding guidelines. They asked us to fix the bug. That may be so, but the problem remains: If you ask us to fix your code, we can only help you if we can read it.

Furthermore, if there are many unrelated bugs, architectural problems, and hard to understand control flow, the concept of fixing an isolated bug becomes more and more unclear.

In order to fix unreadable code, you could:

eliminate global variables

replace magic numbers with constants

replace magic strings with enumerations

name classes, functions, constants, variables according to consistent coding standards

have functions that do one thing and one thing only like "collision detection" or "collision handling". If your function does two things at the same time, like rendering AND collision detection, then it must be refactored

rewrite deeply nested and indented code to be shallower

rewrite code that keeps a lot of state in local variables into special-case functions

use data structures that make sense

write comments that explain the program, not comments that explain the programming language

delete unneccessary/unreachable code from the question to make it easier to read or from your program to see if the problem persists

My own programs often violate one or more of those rules, especially when they are one-off throwaway scripts, or written during a game jam, or prototypes. I would never try to ask other people for help on my unreadable code. But I am an experienced programmer. I rarely ask for help in an unhelpful way. Almost never ask for help in a way that makes other experienced programmers ask for more code, or less code, or additional context. I post a minimal example, and I usually know what I am doing. If I don't know what I am doing, or if I need suggestions about solving my problem completely differently, I say so.

Beginner programmers are at a disadvantage here. They don't know what good code looks like, they don't know what good software architecture looks like, they don't know how to pare down a thousand lines of code to a minimal example, and if they try to guess which section of code contains the error, they usually guess wrong.

None of this matters. It may be terribly unfair that I know how to ask smart questions, and beginner programmers ask ill-posed questions or post code that is so bad it would be easier and quicker for an experienced programmer to re-write the whole thing. It is often not feasible to imagine what the author might have intended the code to work like and to fix the bugs one by one while keeping the structure intact. This is not a technical skill, this is a communicative and social skill that software engineers must pick up sooner or later: Writing code for other people to read.

If your code is too hard to read, people can't practically help you.

It gets worse. Unreadable code is sometimes unreadable because it is un-salvageable. It is hard to understand because there is nothing to understand, it would not work, and you need to go back to the drawing board.

Defensive Responses

This is not where the problem ends. Often, after a couple of rounds of back and forth, after questions like "Well, you say there is a bug, but can you tell me what you would want the code to do in the first place?", or "Is this a class or an instance? If it's supposed to be an instance variable, could you give it a lowercase name?" or "Could you give that variable _obj a more descriptive name? It looks like you are assigning different things to this variable in different parts of your loop. Perhaps you could use two variables with different, more descriptive names", you see a defensive response. The original question asker is not interested in making code easy to read, just in making it work. As I explained above, this is a confused way of thinking, because ill-posed questions and unreadable code make it difficult to impossible to make the code work, or to even understand what making it work would look like.

"Style is irrelevant." – This is by far the most common one. Since coding style, comments, variable names, and even re-factoring code into smaller functions do not affect the output, and thus not the correctness of the program.

"I asked for help with bugs, not style." – This is a variation on the first one. As long as there is no concrete and discrete bug, style feedback and questions for clarification can be discarded.

"This is too much work." – The original poster explains that making the code more readable is too much work for them, and fixing the bugs would be easier for others.

"Nobody will see the code anyway" – Nobody will see the code of the finished product, so it's irrelevant. Sometimes there are variations like "We aren't graded on code quality, only correctness" or "This is for a class project, nobody will depend on the code, so we don't need robustness."

"This is just throwaway code, it doesn't have to be good." – Like the previous one, this is frustrating to read because somebody posted the code on a forum for other people to read and asked them to understand it, and then said he doesn't care if it's readable or debuggable.

"I asked you for help." / "I am asking the questions here." – The original poster refuses to answer questions, because he asked, he expects answers, not questions in return.

"Don't blame me, I didn't write it" – We have completely left the realm of correctness and style now. The poster knows the code is unreadable, or doesn't make sense. He tried to protect his reputation. But he doesn't like the tone of the responses. Its not his fault the code doesn't make sense. It's not his fault if it doesn't work. Common variations are "This must be correct, it was the accepted answer on StackOverflow", or "I copied this from a tutorial", or "Don't blame me, this was written by GitHub Copilot". Often part of the problem is that the code has different parts written in different styles, or uses different data structures in different places, and both parts could benefit from a re-write to make them more consistent with each other. At other times the problem is that the code from the book is "correct" for certain purposes from the book, but not really suited for the problem at hand.

"I apologised already" – The poster is frustrated because he said "I am sorry I am a n00b" or "I am sorry for my bad English" already. Then somebody said his code is unreadable or his prose makes no sense. The poster sees readable code, or at least code that is readable enough to understand what the idea was, as a courtesy, as a social custom, not as something necessary to make the whole question and answer thing work. The same goes for a firm grasp of English. The poster apologised already that his English is bad, and you should just see past it. Dealing with this is especially difficult, because Q&A is framed as some kind of status game, and the poster is trying hard to save face already. Push-back will make him feel like he is losing face, and he will only get more defensive.

Causes

So where does the problem begin? Why do people write unreadable code, post it online, and get defensive? I think the answer is a combination of programming skill, social skill, and simplistic mental models.

Software Engineering is Difficult: Obviously, one root cause is that beginner programmers can't already write readable code from the start. Writing readable, well-factored code that is easy to debug, re-use, and adapt is something that comes with experience. Writing code for other people to read can only be learned after one has learned to write code.

Magical Thinking/Limited Cognitive Empathy: The most common and most direct cause of this phenomenon – the refusal to help others read your unreadable code – is not the unreadable code itself. It is the belief that it should be easy for experienced programmers to understand the structure of and intent behind a piece of code, even if the person who wrote it didn't. If you see software as basically magic, and don't see computers as soulless automatons that do what they do because they are built that way, then this is an easy trap to fall into.

A variant of this works for language. If somebody is bad at English, or bad at the technical jargon needed to ask his question, he will often think that the question he thought up in his native Klingon was perfectly well-formed, and that other people should have no trouble reading his words, because they also think in Klingon, so they would translate it into a question that makes sense anyway.

Status-Consciousness: Many beginner programmers feel the desperate need to distinguish themselves from other beginners, and if they have been learning JavaScript for two months now, they want to be seen as real programmers, not as children who play with Scratch and build Redstone contraptions in MineCraft. They want to be taken seriously. This reminds me of a five year old boy who stretches out his arm and tells me he is THIS BIG, and he is already FIVE, going on SIX, and he will go to SCHOOL soon.

Naive Mental Model of De-Bugging: Every program has a certain number of discrete features bugs, and when you remove all bugs, you end up with a program that works. This is of course nonsense. You can write a program that has an indeterminate number of bugs, or a program that implements an algorithm that doesn't quite work, or a useless program, or a program that does random nonsense.

With any luck, sooner or later, programmers will learn the technical side, and the social and collaborative side of software development.

#programming #python #forum culture #stack overflow #teaching programming

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lonelywretchjervistetch · 5 months ago

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My DC Cinematic Universe - Creature Commandos: Part V

Chapter Five: Cheers to the Tin Man

Y'know, I had a few ideas for titles of this essay, but this is honestly the perfect title, which is probably why Episode Three of the series also has it. Cheers to the Tin Man is far-and-away my favorite episode of the series, because it's honestly just a hell of a lot of fun, and justifies the Creature Commandos in this universe by making them terrifyingly (and mostly realistically) effective, while also giving us the backstory of one of its best-executed characters: G.I. Robot.

Like the Frankensteins in the last essay, I won't waste time and say that G.I. Robot was always going to make it into my version of the Creature Commandos. He's one of my favorite Weird War characters, and the idea of an automated soldier is gold, both for creativity and comedy, as this series proves. Unlike the Frankensteins, I think Gunn nailed this character, and honestly gave him more dimension than I would've expected from this character. This is an example of a character with little-to-no personality in the comics, elevated to his best possible form. God, I can't speak highly enough of this guy, and this'll be the complete opposite of the last essay.

Of course...the episode isn't perfect. But we'll get there. For now, let's actually go through this episode, because there are a slew of other characters and references here that flesh out the universe, also making this one of the more important episodes of the season. But yeah, let's start with the Tin Man himself.

First appearing in Star-Spangled War Stories #101 in 1962, the first G.I. Robot had a name: "Joe". A functional prototype, this robot responded to commands, and was sent into the field on a test run with a necessary human handler, a private named Mac. To test this machine, the creator, Professor Zurin, sent the duo to a super-safe testing area: an island full of still-surviving dinosaurs. Yeah, uh, Dinosaur Island is a major feature of 1950s DC, and is a central part of a period known as "The War Time Forgot." And, oh, don't worry: I'll be revisiting Dinosaur Island very thoroughly at a later date. With that said, the two survive their encounter, with G.I. Robot interpreting (and sometimes misinterpreting) Mac's commands, and saving him on multiple occasions. But Joe, as a prototype, would only last a few issues.

The next G.I. Robot was nicknamed "Mac", in honor of the prototype's handler. This one was also sent to Dinosaur Island, this time with a new helper named Reed, and the two had the same kind of shenanigans, with an improved response to commands in Mac as compared to Joe. However, this iteration died on his first seen mission, saving Reed in the process. And, heads-up, G.I. Robot getting destroyed is a trend throughout his comic book history. That may come back into play later. At this point, though, in 1966, the last story about a G.I. Robot is published for years, until Weird War Tales #101 in 1981. This time, he's not a prototype...and he's fit for war.

20 years later, G.I. Robot comes back in a story written by Ross Kanigher, who also invented the previous two iterations, and had obviously been trying to get this character to catch on. Guess he saw the opportunity, and decided to throw him into actual war. This iteration, named J.A.K.E. (Jungle Assault Killer Experiment), was now invented by...Myron Mazursky. Oh, HOOOOO, now that's an interesting connection, isn't it? Now, to be fair, having Mazursky be both a biochemist and a mechanical/software engineer is...silly. Even for comic book standards. However, the other person involved in making G.I. Robot is Charles Grayson, who absolutely makes sense in this role. A relative of the original Robin, Dick Grayson (yes, REALLY), Chuck was also the assistant to another prominent World War II era scientist, Robert Crane. Crane would be in an accident, forcing his brain to go into a mechanical body, and becoming the first Robotman in the process. So, yeah, Grayson had some experience.

G.I. Robot, therefore, was a part of Project M, the think tank responsible for the Creature Commandos, establishing that link. There's more to this story, but just know that J.A.K.E. was sent out outfitted with multiple weapons, and with new human handler Sgt. Coker. The two had several mission in the South Pacific campaign of World War II, mostly fighting the Japanese forces, until J.A.K.E.'s destruction in 1943 via self-sacrifice. Again. There's a trend here. A second G.I. Robot, J.A.K.E. II, was built afterward, and accompanied by a robotic companion, C.A.P.D.. This version of the character would eventually team up with the Creature Commandos in earnest, all of whom were stationed on Dinosaur Island during the latter days of the war. Afterwards, he would be silently decommissioned in 1945, but would survive into the present day this time! But, he would have very few appearances, and would return during the New 52 era with a whole new backstory. Now. Allow me to show you one of the best comic book pages I've ever seen.

Again. You see why I'm pissed about Frankenstein's Monster's treatment in Creature Commandos. Jesus. Anyway, this badass image comes from Men of War #8, the last issue of a series rebooted from a 1970s war series, and starring Frankenstein's Monster during World War II. And it is chock-full of badass images of Frankenstein's Monster that just make me upset when I think of Creature Commandos. But the most relevant point here is that scientist Robert Crane is kidnapped by the Imperial Army of Japan, and the Bride rescues him, only for him to reveal that he's already been forced to build a weapon for them, and it's ready for war.

The Japanese Attack Killer Elite Robot, AKA J.A.K.E., is sent after the allies to fight. However, when it goes after a submarine that Frank is in, he LAUNCHES HIMSELF AS A TORPEDO AT HIM UNDERWATER, GOD GUNN DID HIM SO DIRTY!!! Crane reverses the Robot's alliance (because why not), and he becomes the Joint Allied Killer Elite Robot instead, AKA G.I. Robot. And then, he punches a kaiju in the face, because this comic is both ridiculous and amazing. After this mission, G.I. Robot survives at least until the Korean War, where he teams up once again with Frank. Honestly, awesome. Gruesome, but a hell of a character legacy.

Although, to be fair, it wasn't over. G.I. Robot appeared once again in a...really odd limited series that I'd never heard of before writing this post. One-Star Squadron starred a number of new or D-class heroes running Heroz4U, a gig-economy superhero hiring platform that has heroes work as telemarketers, security guards, birthday party entertainers...Cameo appearances, yes, ACTUALLY? It's definitely a joke series, but the main roster includes Red Tornado, Power Girl, Flying Fox, Heckler, Gangbuster, and...G.I. Robot. And here's the thing: it's such an odd series, and everybody is SO out-of-character, I don't think this can be considered canon. It's definitely a satire, and a good one, but there's no way it's canon. Look, I'm mentioning it o be a completionist, but it's going to be completely ignored by the annals of time. Not a great series, and incredibly odd in several ways for several characters. Plus, uh...G.I. Robot looks like this. Nightmare fuel.

Now, G.I. Robot's been adapted a couple of times, namely in Batman: The Brave and the Bold and, of course, Creature Commandos. Both series sets his origins and actions in World War II, and funnily enough, serving with the classic comic book wartime group Sgt. Rock and the Easy Company. I'm tempted to go into Easy Company in more detail, because its a super-neat group with a long comic book history, but that may be a topic for another day. All you need to know is that Easy Company was a group of soldiers serving on every battle in the European front of World War II, and they've appeared in DC Comics and other media since 1959. Classic group, cool to see them here, especially because we might be getting a Sgt. Rock movie? That's been in development for years.

Cheers to the Tin Man opens with G.I. Robot's backstory, bringing us back to his days with Easy Company, or "his boys", who gave him the nickname "Tin Man" in the first place. And you can immediately see his connection with the group, and his prowess in fighting Nazis. It's genuinely heartwarming. Flash-forward to the 1950s or '60s (unclear), where he's on a television show showing his somewhat unhinged (and hilarious) programming, only to be watched by Will Magnus, holy shit.

Now, not sure how I feel about time-shifting Will Magnus this far into the past, for a number of reasons, but this is incredibly exciting because of what Gunn's implying: that we'll see Magnus' creations in his DCU, those being the robotic superheroes, the Metal Men. And if there was ANY other group I'd want to hand over to Gunn from DC Comics, the Metal Men is incredibly high on the list. 'Course, this series has made that claim less enthusiastic, but I actually think Gunn would be excellent at changing the Metal Men for a modern audience, and giving some characters more depth to their purposely-simplistic personalities. Lab experiment characters, after all, seem to be Gunn's strongest point when it comes to adaptations.

Obviously, other stuff is happening in this episode's modern day, as the group realizes that Circe is headed to the palace while they're all absent to kill the Princess, and these things don't matter to me at the moment. I'll talk about Circe's nonsense plot in another essay, don't worry, but not this one. But towards the end of the episode, we see why G.I. Robot landed in prison, and in the Creature Commandos, intercut with two montages of glorious ultraviolence. In the present, G.I. Robot absolutely massacres Circe's troops at Flag's command, and it's fun seeing his upgrades as compared to World War II. In the flashback, he ended up being collected by a member of the KKK/American Nazis in Hub City (gotta assume local heroes Blue Beetle and the Question weren't around yet), with plans to use him as a weapon to do something heinous, only for him to slaughter literally all of the Nazis in the room and get arrested. We also establish that due to a previous criminal case, robots are granted human rights and accountability. Now that...is interesting. Can't wait to find out what that refers to in Gunn's DCU. Red Tornado, perhaps?

But all of this brings us to the most controversial move Gunn makes.

And I'm actually all for this. Kind of.

Look, I love G.I. Robot, but it's literally in his character to die. Nearly every single iteration of G.I. Robot has been destroyed at least once, only to be rebuilt and sent into commission with a new name and new identity. This is exactly what to expect from G.I. Robot. Now, should he have died in episode 3 of the series? Well, that's arguable. Unfortunately, the way this series is structured makes this the perfect story moment for him to die dramatically in order to forward the mission. Definitely made me sad, because I love this character, and Sean Gunn plays him incredibly well, but I get it.

However, this does expose a real problem with this series, and Gunn's treatment of the Creature Commandos as a group. Fact is, Gunn is still running on Suicide Squad logic. And the Creature Commandos are not the Suicide Squad. The purpose of the Creature Commandos is, yes, to get the job done, but also to use literal and psychological warfare to interfere with the enemy. It's a horror story where we're on the side of the monsters. It is not a story of a group of criminals trying to get time off of their sentence by going into impossible scenarios, in which any of them could die. That's the Suicide Squad. And the fact that Gunn is willing to kill characters like this early in the series means that we're supposed to expect at least one of our new friends to die. And of course, if you've seen the series, you know how that ends.

And, as if fulfilling an age-olf prophecy...spoilers for the finale...

Yeah, G.I. Robot comes back. Least surprising move of the century, but an incredibly welcome one! Now in a modernized form that reminds me a bit of his Men at War/New 52 iteration, this golden dynamo is set to serve in the group for season 2, where he will probably die again, let's be honest here. But now, him dying would be a part of the joke, and will lose its gravitas as a result. Which is OK.

Fact is, I think this is the best adapted character in Gunn's series, and there isn't a hell of a lot I think needs changing, and the stuff I would change doesn't have to do with the character. Maybe push the Will Magnus timeline a couple of decades; kill G.I. Robot in the next episode by making this the eight-episode series it was clearly supposed to be; maybe get rid of Nina's maybe-romantic fascination with G.I. Robot (that went truly nowhere at all); maybe even bring the new form of G.I. Robot back during the season finale to participate in a final fight. But a lot of that is restructuring of the series as a whole, or changing characters around G.I., not G.I. himself. I actually think he's kinda perfect.

But before we sew up here, I'd like to put something forward in terms of my version of Creature Commandos. Because this episode opens up an opportunity that I'm somewhat sad wasn't actually explored: World War II.

If it isn't clear by now, World War II is sort of a big deal in DC Comics, both in and out of universe. One of the reasons that DC Comics (and superhero comics in general) rose into cultural prominence in the United States, as well as being a major time period in the DC Comics universe, this is a time that has gone untouched by live-action media. And I mean that. Even the CW series barely touch World War II outside of references or the occasional alternate future. It's a black slate, because I'm not sure anybody's been able to figure it out. And it's not impossible to do, by any means; just takes some creative work.

How powerful would it be for the future of the DCU if one of the focuses of Creature Commandos was on the history of the team, rather than just the individuals. And, more importantly, this means that the Creature Commandos exist independent of the Suicide Squad, and have a different tone to them altogether. It's entirely possible, of course, that I've just predicted Gunn's plans for season 2, as he could bring in elements of the original group for the next season, with out modern Creature Commandos dealing with something from that time period. And frankly, for my version, I know exactly how I'm setting this up, but that'll be a later essay. My point is, why not use the connection to World War II, as seen with G.I. Robot (and as COULD have been seen with the Frankensteins), and give us both references to the original Creature Commandos, and the intricate history that was World War II in DC Comics. A missed opportunity, is all I'm saying here.

But regardless, that's the end of this essay; I'll elaborate more on this in the future. But next time...well, I guess it's time to talk about this character, and his confusing place in this story, as well as his genuinely interesting backstory. Next time, episode four, Chasing Squirrels, starring another of Gunn's seemingly favorite characters: Weasel.

See you next time (maybe, no pressure)!

Part One: Introduction and Adaptation Part Two: The Original Creature Commandos Part Three: Amanda Waller and Rick Flag, Sr. Part Four: The Frankensteins Part Five: G.I. Robot Part Six: Weasel Part Seven: Doctor Phosphorus Part Eight: Mermaid Part Nine: Circe Part Ten: The Princess and the Monster (soon)

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