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feminist-space · 2 days ago

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Excerpts:

"The convenience of instant answers that LLMs provide can encourage passive consumption of information, which may lead to superficial engagement, weakened critical thinking skills, less deep understanding of the materials, and less long-term memory formation [8]. The reduced level of cognitive engagement could also contribute to a decrease in decision-making skills and in turn, foster habits of procrastination and "laziness" in both students and educators [13].

Additionally, due to the instant availability of the response to almost any question, LLMs can possibly make a learning process feel effortless, and prevent users from attempting any independent problem solving. By simplifying the process of obtaining answers, LLMs could decrease student motivation to perform independent research and generate solutions [15]. Lack of mental stimulation could lead to a decrease in cognitive development and negatively impact memory [15]. The use of LLMs can lead to fewer opportunities for direct human-to-human interaction or social learning, which plays a pivotal role in learning and memory formation [16].

Collaborative learning as well as discussions with other peers, colleagues, teachers are critical for the comprehension and retention of learning materials. With the use of LLMs for learning also come privacy and security issues, as well as plagiarism concerns (7]. Yang et al. [17] conducted a study with high school students in a programming course. The experimental group used ChatGPT to assist with learning programming, while the control group was only exposed to traditional teaching methods. The results showed that the experimental group had lower flow experience, self-efficacy, and learning performance compared to the control group.

Academic self-efficacy, a student's belief in their "ability to effectively plan, organize, and execute academic tasks"

', also contributes to how LLMs are used for learning [18]. Students with

low self-efficacy are more inclined to rely on Al, especially when influenced by academic stress

[18]. This leads students to prioritize immediate Al solutions over the development of cognitive and creative skills. Similarly, students with lower confidence in their writing skills, lower

"self-efficacy for writing" (SEWS), tended to use ChatGPT more extensively, while higher-efficacy students were more selective in Al reliance [19]. We refer the reader to the meta-analysis [20] on the effect of ChatGPT on students' learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking."

"Recent empirical studies reveal concerning patterns in how LLM-powered conversational search systems exacerbate selective exposure compared to conventional search methods. Participants engaged in more biased information querying with LLM-powered conversational search, and an opinionated LLM reinforcing their views exacerbated this bias [63]. This occurs because LLMS are in essence "next token predictors" that optimize for most probable outputs, and thus can potentially be more inclined to provide consonant information than traditional information system algorithms [63]. The conversational nature of LLM interactions compounds this effect, as users can engage in multi-turn conversations that progressively narrow their information exposure. In LLM systems, the synthesis of information from multiple sources may appear to provide diverse perspectives but can actually reinforce existing biases through algorithmic selection and presentation mechanisms.

The implications for educational environments are particularly significant, as echo chambers can fundamentally compromise the development of critical thinking skills that form the foundation of quality academic discourse. When students rely on search systems or language models that systematically filter information to align with their existing viewpoints, they might miss opportunities to engage with challenging perspectives that would strengthen their analytical capabilities and broaden their intellectual horizons. Furthermore, the sophisticated nature of these algorithmic biases means that a lot of users often remain unaware of the information gaps in their research, leading to overconfident conclusions based on incomplete evidence. This creates a cascade effect where poorly informed arguments become normalized in academic and other settings, ultimately degrading the standards of scholarly debate and undermining the educational mission of fostering independent, evidence-based reasoning."

"In summary, the Brain-only group's connectivity suggests a state of increased internal coordination, engaging memory and creative thinking (manifested as theta and delta coherence across cortical regions). The Engine group, while still cognitively active, showed a tendency toward more focal connectivity associated with handling external information (e.g. beta band links to visual-parietal areas) and comparatively less activation of the brain's long-range memory circuits. These findings are in line with literature: tasks requiring internal memory amplify low-frequency brain synchrony in frontoparietal networks [77], whereas outsourcing information (via internet search) can reduce the load on these networks and alter attentional dynamics. Notably, prior studies have found that practicing internet search can reduce activation in memory-related brain areas [831, which dovetails with our observation of weaker connectivity in those regions for Search Engine group. Conversely, the richer connectivity of Brain-only group may reflect a cognitive state akin to that of high performers in creative or memory tasks, for instance, high creativity has been associated with increased fronto-occipital theta connectivity and intra-hemispheric synchronization in frontal-temporal circuits [81], patterns we see echoed in the Brain-only condition."

"This correlation between neural connectivity and behavioral quoting failure in LLM group's participants offers evidence that:

1. Early Al reliance may result in shallow encoding.

LLM group's poor recall and incorrect quoting is a possible indicator that their earlier essays were not internally integrated, likely due to outsourced cognitive processing to the LLM.

2. Withholding LLM tools during early stages might support memory formation.

Brain-only group's stronger behavioral recall, supported by more robust EEG connectivity, suggests that initial unaided effort promoted durable memory traces, enabling more effective reactivation even when LLM tools were introduced later.

Metacognitive engagement is higher in the Brain-to-LLM group.

Brain-only group might have mentally compared their past unaided efforts with tool-generated suggestions (as supported by their comments during the interviews), engaging in self-reflection and elaborative rehearsal, a process linked to executive control and semantic integration, as seen in their EEG profile.

The significant gap in quoting accuracy between reassigned LLM and Brain-only groups was not merely a behavioral artifact; it is mirrored in the structure and strength of their neural connectivity. The LLM-to-Brain group's early dependence on LLM tools appeared to have impaired long-term semantic retention and contextual memory, limiting their ability to reconstruct content without assistance. In contrast, Brain-to-LLM participants could leverage tools more strategically, resulting in stronger performance and more cohesive neural signatures."

#anti ai #chat gpt #enshittification #brain rot #ai garbage #it's too bad that the people who need to read this the most already don't read for themselves anymore

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fruitsofhell · 2 months ago

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Why is "Magical Mental Illness" ft. Spamton G. Spamton

It's honestly a shame that my delay in playing Deltarune has led to me not making an essay about Spamton already. There are so many things to be said about that wretched little man on every level from character writing to the narrative and gameplay mechanics. And while I would love to be an expert on most of these in order to give a great opinion, I am only a semi-expert in one thing - and that is Psychology in character writing. Even with finally playing the game, it took a few things beyond pure brainrot to get this essay out of me that are important to keep in mind. One, was a video essay I was watching about this very topic which was not sitting well with me. At times the essayist seemed to deliberately negate the in-universe readings of Spamton in order to blunt force certain labels onto him, and at others they hastily stepped over grounds for interesting psychological insights. This then reminded me of the other important aspect, that being some advice my Abnormal Psychology teacher gave my class on what can only be described as an actual blorbo diagnosis roleplay assignment. She advised us to avoid characters from stories too stepped in fantasy because it can at times be near impossible to seriously put a scientific label on that which was meant to be magical through and through. We're not playing Matpat here.

As an avid lover of both fantasy fiction and psychology, I have run into this paradox plenty, to the point I even once had a name for it - "Magical Mental Illness". It is just a fact of the medium that you will often run into characters who express traits discernable as real psychological dysfunctions, but with entirely magical logic behind them. Spamton, in all his spastic glory is a perfect example of this, to the point it is barely even worth pointing out. But what is worth pointing out is how that line between the clinical and magical does not have to be the end of the conversation. My gripe with that essayist is not that they chose an incorrect, haphazard way to look at Spamton, but that it did not provide the most satisfying synthesis. Especially with a game like Deltarune which subtly revels in blurring the line between the real and imaginary for characters and players alike. It is very concerned with how we relate to fiction through how its fiction relates to its own meta-fiction, creating new layers of meaning to explore. Humans have been relying on stories as windows to our souls as long as we've been writing them, and especially as reference for when our souls become troubled. It's only natural that in that legacy, we begin to read about what it even means to read a story.

Kris and the Player: Hand in Unlovable Hand

Before getting too thick into the weeds, it's important to explain what I mean by this double layer of fiction and how it connects to us. In almost all popular stories you have a perspective character or presence to serve as the audience's middle man, and for Deltarune that character is Kris. But Kris is not as passive as the usual protagonist, as they appear to be acutely aware of and tormented by their role as the player's vessel for peering into their world from outside the game. Somehow, this poor 14 year old within their own world has fallen victim to some sort of possession facilitated by a third party beyond them and the player, and the mystery surrounding this predicament and what meaning the story will find in it is one of the pillars of the narrative intrigue. One that ironically draws us into being active participants in this torment of Kris as we seek to understand how to break it for them.

I was actually watching a different video on Kris' backstory when I stumbled across another magical mental illness blunder in analysis that also inspired this essay. The essayist was explaining a part of Kris' backstory told by an estranged friend, Noelle, who describes how Kris used to have a habit of suddenly freezing and staring off into space for some time before coming to again and quietly reorienting themself. As someone watching the video to comprehend the in-universe and meta-narrative implications of this, I was very surprised when the essayist interjected by declaring this evidence of Kris suffering from absence seizures. Unlike the dramatic spastic seizures that typically come to our mind, absence seizures are as Noelle described, where people lose consciousness and freeze in place for periods of time. This interpretation was not useless. It did hint that Kris may have suffered extreme stress during that time in their life, and more importantly, it was a comfort to the essayist who made the connection from their own experience with the trait, but it does cut off discussion on its own. At best absence seizures may have been an active reference Toby Fox used to write the behavior, especially to make it something that people around Kris could attribute to a non-magical source, but in this world of possessions and mysteries that cannot be an answer in itself. Kris is a magical character in a magical context, and no matter what their behavior looks right now, it is more than likely magical mental illness.

Frustrating as those two essayists' reasoning can be, I can't fault the instinct. Honestly as I was watching that video beforehand I was sussing out in my mind a headcanon diagnosis of Kris that could contain the metaphorical strengths of their character and maybe speak some spiritual truth to that disorder and its humanity. One of my first instincts was Dissociative Identity Disorder, but I cringed away from it aware that it is a negative trope to portray alters as adversarial or invasive. But that trope, or more the language of it without the direct clinical label - magical DID - has never stopped being attractive to me, because even if it doesn't align with the psychological truth of the disorder, it does still with a broader metaphor. Maybe its selfish, but when I read of DID, an inevitable theme or story of it arises in my mind that reminds of my personal struggles with identity. How parts of me sometimes felt foreign and cancerous, and how learning to carve parts of those out of me was a silent triumph I longed to express or see expressed in stories around me. In Kris, I see my own middle school age self who lost the superficial childish dreams which defined her and moved through life in a daze as she tried to understand what truly ran her before finding it and taking back control. That thinking can come off as medieval or psychoanalytical, but as a writer I think it can be important to recognize it as a tool of empathy as well. A way for an unafflicted soul to find a root in themselves that at least emotionally blurs the line between themself and this clinically defined "other".

As we'll see with Spamton, this exercise in relatability between players and Kris goes deeper than just the initial experience of struggle, but into that wish to see oneself reflected elsewhere. Deltarune is not a story that needs to have specific discernible labels to its characters' internal struggles, because its not about the answer as much as it is about carrying a question with oneself into another realm. As I or another player may carry insecurities about control of the self into Deltarune, Kris carries their own into the dubiously metaphorical Dark World. As of right now, it is somewhat hard to say whether the Dark Worlds are as real as the life of Kris and their fellow lightners in the Light World, and I doubt this boundary will cease to be toyed with anytime soon. At the end of the first chapter we can see the hint that the card and board game themed Dark World was related to a closet of alike toys, and the connection was made explicit when Kris is told to bring the characters - the darkners - of that previous session into a new ground established in chapter 2's computer lab. But, at the end of each chapter, just as the player could begin to say to themself it may have all been a dream, Kris tears the player's will out of their body and reminds them how willing this game is to confuse the borders of reality inside fiction and out. Making Deltarune a rather inappropriate choice for attempting to draw clean borders between a clinical and magical character psychology.

Spamton Don't Seem Too Well, Does He?

Exploring the Dark World with a focus on Kris is what finally leads us to the one and only, collective delight of millions, Spamton G. Spamton. He is beloved for being a masterclass in how to lead players into the depths of a stories machinations (1). From pithy lore to fundamental existential questions, Spamton's rich character arc encompasses it all brilliantly, but it's not where to begin, as it is not where Kris nor the player begins. First impressions are critical after all, and Toby Fox has pretty much never let looming implications get in the way of a damn funny character. From his very first textbox after bursting out of a garbage dumpster, Spamton is equal parts incomprehensible and memetic. Players will literally freeze up in utter bafflement as they take whole seconds to comprehend the gaping blank space in his dialogue, with may just giving up on understanding its intention and filling in the gaps either way (2). Uniformly capitalized text, keyboard smash-esque grammatical errors, odd meter, and most famously, randomly bracketed text abound. Yet somehow by the end of the first bossfight, most players walk away thoroughly engaged in trying to translate his quirks into YTP impressions or an otherwise stilted and manic tone. He disappears after this first encounter till the final area of the game, but its nearly impossible for a player to not be thinking about him after.

(1) See a great, and highly inspiring breakdown of his character construction in Designing For's video on him!

(2) For examples of what I mean...

These unique mannerisms of Spamton's are where we find Toby Fox's employment and mastery of one of the most common tropes used to convey insanity and instability in a character. It is a tell-tale example of disorganized speech, specifically through a pattern resembling loose association where the words of the subject are strung along by superficial rather than descriptive content. Usually loose associations sends oblivious sufferers on a chain of associations far beyond what anyone but them can understand, but Spamton's writing seems to marry the idea with concentrated dialogue by way of the system of bracketed text. Spamton will splice tangentially related sales-themed slogans and phrases directly into his sentences before picking back up. Trying to say something along the lines of, "Why be a little whelp who hates its pathetic life," becomes --

> "WHY BE THE [[Little Sponge]] WHO HATES ITS [[$4.99]] LIFE"

-- A real life loose association phrase meanwhile would likely have taken "little sponge" and began starting a string of words related to the kitchen sink. The genius on display here, is that Spamton succeeds in getting his very important deal-making scheme across while also reading as utterly insane to the player. It's a careful balance of chaos and conscientious use of the player's time, which adds a character-rich twist to this common cliche. As players acclimate and move on from the encounter, they will likely begin to put together more and more patterns in Spamton's speech which fuels the intrigue.

By the time players return to Spamton's shop and spend even more time delighted and/or terrified by his erratic personality, it begins to become clear that 'crazy' in its more dismissive reading is not the whole picture for him. Really it started with his referencing of Kris' "[[HeartShapedObject]]" in the first scene, which may have been lost on disoriented players, but not on the character themself who visibly, autonomously flinched away from Spamton at the mention of this device which binds them to us. But these revelations are still for a time buried under another mountain of equally well-written quirks that have players continuing to second guess Spamton's legitimacy. At his shop, away from the eyes of Kris' fellow party members or surrounding darkners who have already declared him crazy, Spamton unveils the roots of his madness to them and the player. His catchphrase "[[BIG SHOT]]" begins to take form as an analogy for some kind of higher state of being related to Kris' world, or possibly even the player's, and it is self-evident why he seemingly can't shut up about it --

"> I'LL GET SO. > I'LL GET SO. > I'LL GET SO. > I'LL GET SO. > I'LL GET SO. > I'LL GET SO. > [[Hyperlink blocked.]]"

-- he sputters like a broken, creepily aware toy. What would in a clinical sense be a delusion is the main drive behind Spamton's entire character, a delusion of control that something or someone above him is pulling the strings of the world, and perhaps one of grandeur at his unflinching certainty in his ability to rise above it.

A new quirk in his disorganized speech also emerges in his shop dialogue which goes from a diet loose association, to abrupt breaks in tone and subject mid sentence. One of the chilling examples is triggered when Spamton tries to discuss some "knight" character - a focal point of fan theorizing - but breaks into frantic apology as soon as the words leave his mouth. Before a player could even suspect if this was a reaction to Kris, he screams --

> TOO MANY EXCESS VACATION DAYS?? TAKE A GOD DAMN VACATION STRAIGHT TO HELL

-- Most definitely alluding to some other confrontation. In another, bringing up your fears (which could be related toward God knows how many aspects of this sidequest) leads Spamton to a sudden departure from his unending award-winning grimace, as he solemnly asks, "… can anyone hear me? Help…", before immediately springing back to life--

"> HUH??? WHAT?? NO, I DIDN'T HEAR ANYTHING JUST NOW!!! > … BUT IT SOUNDED LIKE THEY WERE TALKING TO YOU."

-- Both can be read as a new flavor of break-down in speech content, and the first one especially as some sort of traumatic flashback, but to keep consistent I believe they could be best read as hints of otherwise unreferenced hallucinations. Perhaps trying to speak of something forbidden triggered accusations in his ears causing him to panic and lose his train of thought, or he accidentally parroted a line out loud (echolalia) and tried to deflect as in the last case.

Leaving the shop, as with the first bossfight, is another crucial point where Spamton has sold a second layer of himself to the players as a personality and character^1^. While the full glory of the former won't crystallize until his final confrontation, the latter has been established well enough by now players are choosing to buy tickets to however all this insanity comes together. That insanity is very clinically and unsurprisingly diagnosable as Schizophrenia. Disorganized speech, paranoid delusions, and possible hallucinations are all hallmarks of the disorder and especially its archetype in fiction. His constant smiling affect could even be lumped in with motor dysfunction too if it weren't for the fact that his kin, the adisons display this naturally too. From the backstory the adisons tell of him as an easter egg, a broader picture of Spamton's life as this living corrupted computer ad comes into focus, in a way which could thematically be read as mood disturbances. A life of never-ending career failures perhaps the result of a persistent depression, only to be broken by a psychotic mania in which brute force of personality and ideas - hallucinated from phone static - sent him soaring into the heights of unsustainable success. But that requires more assumptions about him than are necessary, and in the end the core takeaway here is that Spamton presents with highly readable psychotic symptoms.

So there you have it. A clinical, psycho-pathological reading of Spamton G. Spamton from Deltarune. Satisfied? Hopefully not, because I ignored nearly everything about him that is relevant to the story being told. As Spamton becomes more psychotic to the player, he also becomes more comprehensible in parallel. At the same time players can begin to read him as a paranoid schizophrenic, they realize that his paranoia in all its bracketed glory is directly on the money. He recognizes a power dynamic between the worlds of this story that most others are oblivious or apathetic to, and accurately implicates Kris' role within it while soliciting their favor. His associations are less loose and more censorious, and from their syntax-breaking nature, likely not by the volition of him or anything related to his plane of reality. Even his grossly broken text I attributed to hallucinations may be displays of the raw power some of these characters carry in the narrative, and the fear and disorientation they strike in its subjects. While he is doubtlessly still mentally unstable, he is by no means out of touch with reality as the diagnosis of Schizophrenia defines. Spamton is explicitly speaking arcane truths, not the psychological noise that makes up the real disorder of Schizophrenia, no matter how much his mind is struggling to carry that truth's weight.

Garbage Noise

One of the connections that always chilled me in the Spamton story was the notion of the "garbage noise" which the adisons report coming from the speaker of Spamton's phone. I was sure to make this period in Spamton's life where he communicated with a mysterious benefactor over the phone a psychotic one in the mood disorder model for that fact. It is on very purposefully ignorant surface-level evidence that a player could say Spamton's insanity came from nothing, but there is a very fun detail in how they themselves can come to hear this garbage noise. If a player opens Kris' phone and tries to make a call, a shrill mechanical tone tears through the receiver instead of a simple text-description of static. Toby Fox wanted the player to understand what "garbage noise" was, but he also wanted the player to understand exactly where it comes from - any line from the Dark World into Kris' Light World. I can't get enough of obfuscations like this in storycrafting, especially here where it simultaneously combines two ideas at once. We only know of nonsense coming through the phones of the Dark World, but we have heard that it is a divine, higher plane nonsense for Spamton. Whether it once gave way to a clear voice or not does not change its deeper content, and in a way, as much as it may invalidate Spamton as a rational subject, the idea it never sounded any different is revealing and chilling.

Why is it that Spamton presents so bluntly as psychotic when we know he is truthful? Even the source of his madness or genius can't be determined as of now as anything but the darkner equivalent of cosmic background radiation! Well, this is because Toby Fox, deliberately or subconsciously, is drawing on centuries to millennia of fictional ideas to shape this character, not our beloved scientific labels. Without a doubt the most modern framework applicable is that of lovecraftian knowledge and memetic hazards, where the world hides are cosmic facts to be learned that tear the psyche of its learner asunder. I could write an entire other essay on how Spamton is quite possibly the most creative and delightful take on this trope ever created, but sadly, claims like that require substantiation. But, with my pre-existing knowledge of psychology and capacity to wax philosophic, I would like to go beyond that thesis as a historical statement, and more so as a theme or story. The story Deltarune is getting out of this reference to the Schizophrenic archetype, the way I could infer the story of DID out of Kris. What the platonic ideal of this human experience means to Deltarune for Toby Fox to write Spamton as such, and what Deltarune intends it to mean for us.

Throughout human history, we have, frankly speaking, not understood a damn thing about what was happening to or around us. When humans saw the subset of ourselves who ranted and raved about things no one else could see, hear, feel, nor touch, there was a natural mix of apprehension and fascination towards them. We are pattern-seeking animals, nonsensically so even at our healthiest, so of course when our kin passionately speak of patterns found in that which we cannot begin to comprehend, we are drawn to the idea of novel and potentially revolutionary knowledge. But routinely, even in superstitious societies, many have tried to follow the patterns drawn by them only to come to naught. Even those afflicted, once in better health, may reflect and find nothing but psychic noise. But every now and then the pattern leads to something, whether that be a religion, a theory, or just a spark of imagination. Imagination for a world where we create the patterns, and tell the characters within and ourselves which to see and which to ignore. For as harmful as many portrayals of schizophrenic and psychotic behavior based on this fossil of reasoning can be, like those distortions of DID, I can't help but see an attempt for empathy in them. A wish to create a world where the disorientation, isolation, and exhaustion of the psychotic mind we see can find a form of radical acceptance.

The product of this story holds true for Kris and Spamton within the broader narrative of Deltarune, with its open look into how reality becomes fantasy and how that fantasy reinforces reality. Spamton is a character with a shocking amount of impact on Kris, despite them being more aware than any other lightner of the falseness of the Dark World. It is more than just the flinch at Spamton's mention of the player's soul inside them, but their desperate striking of the shell in the basement during the Spamton fight fakeout, and being so emotional after Spamton's defeat that it elicits concern from their party-mates no matter what words the player puts in their mouth. To Kris, Spamton - this ridiculous embodiment of a spam email thrown in the trash - should be no more than an overly interactable and self-aware cartoon. Spamton's words, his actions, and his ambitions have no reason to matter to them, most of the insights he gives are into Kris' own vision. But they nonetheless highlight something in it that shakes Kris to their core, and causes them to look down on this speck of a man from their higher plane, and squirm in empathetic agony. Spamton's struggles speak to their own; speak to freedom, captivity, choice, autonomy. Things that Kris has been struggling with silently since the player opened a save files, and which Kris is for the first time hearing put into words. Passionate, direct yet censored words. Coming from a 3ft tall spam email, but coming from something nonetheless.

Spamton's struggles do not fall on deaf ears for players either, no more than Kris' do, drawing them deeper into every moment of every interaction between these scheming characters. When a man in the real world speaks of being tied to metaphysical strings and reaching a new plane, others in their superegos understand this to be baseless, but still feel something metaphorical to hold on to. All of us feel patterns which cannot be measured as materially as we would wish on a daily basis. Ones we can connect partially to tried and true philosophies of science, even religious doctrines, but which we strain not to turn into something too cosmic, for fear of chaining ourselves to unreason. An abstracted, diffuse lack of control in life has inspired everything about the human condition down to the delusions of that hypothetical man. But when this intangible captivity is molded and sculpted into a lower reality, into a story, it can become more real, it can become comprehensible and acceptable. So when we are insecure about feigning more knowledge than we could ever truly know about our own cosmos, we create miniatures and have them discourse with us about the patterns we have brought into pseudo-existence. And crucially, for all the pity or fear we cast upon those sick with societal and psychological superstition, we imagine a world where people like them can speak a real truth. Where listening to them and indulging in their passion through all the insanity is not just unashamed but objectively correct. Where the story - not the reality - of psychosis makes sense.

Watch Me Fly [[Mama]]!

But at the same time, knowing that we cannot truly grasp past our own cosmos anymore than a fictional seer can be rewarded with realness for his insights, we often can't help but write a bitter ending. Deltraune puts Spamton within a unique position, where by being from a world within a world, there was at least that one plane for him to jump to. There is a version of Deltraune where Spamton became a "[[BIG SHOT]]" and entered the Light World. But that is not the version of Deltarune that Toby Fox wanted to tell, because that would be about a hypothetical less real, less true to existence for the player than a spam email coming to life and begging them for money. If Spamton's schemes had succeeded, it likely would have been too unreal for that anyone to even consider trying to diagnose him with a real world sickness, because his failure is what gives him that tangibility. That fantastical caricature based in a true story of human existence allows us to explore our dreams and to blur the lines between ourselves and those we deem a simultaneously wretched and idealized other.

Like Kris cutting the strings of Spamton's big but not "[[BIG]]" enough body, we cut the strings of these dreams to allow sobriety to wash over us, reminded that no character nor person can move past their dedicated realities. Spamton then resigns himself to being an aspect for Kris to carry throughout their adventure, offering: "Let me become your strength." A silent passion once again, after the bombast of his performance that reminds us that it was a truth at one point, spoken by something, by someone. Spamton's lust for freedom, control, and understanding will stay in Kris' heart throughout their own character arc, and once they have succeeded or been cut down in parallel, we, the players, will have an aspect of them with us as well. A reminder that someone out there, some artist named Toby Fox, recognized a truth that we resonated with for all its potential absurdity, and spoke it long enough for us to dream and wake again. Hopefully with a clearer image of the world around us, in all its utter incomprehensibility and infinite meanings. A few of those meanings we hold in our back pocket just became a bit clearer thereafter.

That is why we have magical mental illness. Some of it is ableism and people wishing to assert an arbitrary boundary between sanity and reason, some of it is patronizing misplaced sympathy for struggling people, some of it is a profound meditation on the power of knowledge. It all gets a bit jumbled together after so many years, so many iterations, so many countless voices contributing to the noise that forms into what we would call a trope. But that history of meaning-making is beautiful and it is present in Deltarune. In amazing crystal clarity before the game is even a third of the way finished, may I add. The piecemeal nature of this story is perfect for letting ideas like those of Spamton get as much room to breathe as they can, as I can only imagine the game has more knockouts like him in store, but it would be a crying shame for them to all drown each other out in one single release window. Perhaps because Deltarune is a story about characters digesting stories, it makes most sense too for there to be delays - no matter how asynchronous - between adventures. If people want an excuse to understand why Kris reopened a Dark Fountain at the end of Chapter 2, just think about how hungry we all are to get another bite out of this game and its resonant characters this June!

#spamton #utdr #deltarune analysis #shut the heck up #media analysis #im tired of being normal its time for another 4000+ word essay on cartoon guys #this one was really really rotisserie-ing in my head since a bit ago #it started as a misunderstanding of someone elses thesis (that video i mention at the start) but became very beautiful to me #i have a lot of opinions on this all if you cant tell #also tumblr deleted all my damn whitespace-indents grrr #now i had to clumsily add hyphens between blockquotes so you can tell im not ending paragraphs #this will be up on my site eveeeeentually #and im gonna bring the kirby essay here too maybe this weekend #tag talking

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catboybiologist · 1 year ago

Text

Weird ramble and asking for advice here.

When talking about biology, I sometimes run into a problem where I don't even realize that the level I'm talking about is beyond what most people think about. That isn't supposed to be a brag, its literally this often-memed xkcd:

I have a point/vent here.

I'm kinda prepping to come out to my parents in probably about a week and a half. I'm terrified, tbh. I'm kinda realizing that this is me with gender too.

What I'm trying to say is that I'm going to be coming out to two people who are on the borderline of boomer and gen X who have never extensively interacted with a trans person in their life. I wrote a document to come out to them, and I'm trying to emphasize that their acceptance shouldn't be contingent on understanding. But I also know that they'll want to understand, even in an accepting, "get to know me" kind of way.

Thing is, I'm a decade or more into self exploration and realization, theory and rabbit holes about gender, synthesis of biology concepts with the way I understand gender, and they, well... they're not.

So what I'm doing now is going back to a lot of video essays, online resources, and the like, and trying to think about what would both accurately describes my experiences, but is also at a level where they won't just understand- but they won't write it off as being "overcomplicated" or "wishywashy". And that's.... hard. Because the video I want to show them is this:

youtube

(btw, I love Lily Alexandre to death, please check her out)

I don't think this'll go over their heads, but I do think they just won't pay attention because of how.... "not set in stone" it is? Thing is, this video, especially the early parts, are pretty much exactly what I want to get them to understand. If you saw my vents earlier, both of them (but my dad is louder about it) have said that people transition to "escape" something, or as a result of some kind of mental health crisis, and usually have regrets.

But I don't know how to get that through to them.

Idk. The thing I'm trying to emphasize is that I'm a biologist, and an adult, with a light sprinkling of "you have 0 financial control over me", but I'm worried about them worrying. About them making an enormous deal in their heads about something that they think is a cry for help, or a sign of something else.

Idk. I guess I'm asking for advice. Which is- what are the best "intro to trans" videos or resources for parents of adults? Most of the things I can find are explicitly aimed at parents with children much, much younger than me, and talk about things like support in schools and such. I don't even need my parents to support me, I just need them to not work actively to hurt me or themselves.

#trans #transgender #lgbtq #Youtube

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girl-in-the-mirrorbluenight · 2 years ago

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Okay I've been thinking about this pretty much all day since I saw the hbomberguy and then todd in the shadows video i just have so many thoughts. While I wouldn't necessarily call myself a Video Essayist™ (I've only made a few over the years) as a youtuber and someone who has made video essays i definitely have more experience than the average person. There are so many things that stand out to me about this whole debacle i dont even know where to start.

First I want to just give a little insight into the process for making video essays from people who've never given it a shot and just how absurd it is to do the type of plagiarizing James has done. Video essays take a fuckton of research, even for pretty simple topics, but on top that you also have to make them with the medium of video in mind. it's really not enough to just take an essay you would write for a class and read it out loud. the flow is different, you have to have accompanying visuals, often background music, etc. They're a beast to make. My Twisted video for which i used literally two sources for my research (Sondheim's books and the musical Twisted) still took days of thorough reading, note taking, watching the musical, watching the musical again, watching the musical and taking notes, cross-referencing my notes, etc. For videos that synthesize multiple sources or are covering multiple pieces of media, that time goes up exponentially. Then there's writing, recording, gathering clips (often one of the most difficult parts depending on how obscure what you're talking about is), and editing. Even for a silly video like my Glee video, I still had to do a ton of research to make sure I was getting things correct, and that was a funny tier list about freaking Glee! There is just no way you could come up with a thorough analysis by just copying and pasting. Which brings me to my next point.

I think James may have thought (or more likely rationalized) what he was doing as analysis based on like the vaguest definition. When you do any kind of analysis, what you're doing is taking research from multiple different places (news articles, primary sources, existing analysis, etc.) and coming to your own conclusions, whether that's a synthesis of those different sources, or applying it to a specific thing like a movie. Really simple example is my Twisted video where I take Sondheim's writing and apply it to a specific piece of media (in this case Twisted). I'm using existing work but coming to my own conclusion. In the Spies Are Forever video, I took existing research about the Lavender Scare and the Hays Code, including primary sources from the time period, and applied it to the musical Spies are Forever. What James seem to do is take a bunch of existing scholarship, copy and paste it all together and then come to a "conclusion" that was not actually his own original thoughts but either "facts" he completely made up or something that didn't do anything to actually link his other "sources" together. I can see why it has the veneer of analysis, but making up a random "fact" you think might be true is not the same as a drawing a conclusion based on research.

I also think Todd made a really good point in the part about England's propaganda campaign against Italy around 9:30 that it's just really bad video making to not include examples of images from this so called propaganda campaign. I have a ton of examples of news clips, government reports, etc. in my SaF video about the Lavender Scare because...it was a real historic thing that happened! If something was supposedly so widespread and not even that long ago, you can probably find evidence of it somewhere. Kaz Rowe (who is also linked in the queer creators playlist on hbomberguy's vid) talked about this a lot in their video about tiktok misinfo where people often make these outrageous claims but the thing is if something so outrageous happened (like people constantly shitting on the floors of versailles), other people at the time would probably be talking about it somewhere. It's a big red flag when someone makes such bold claims and has no evidence to back it up.

Putting this last section under the cut because I go talk about WWII, Nazis, and HIV/AIDS a bit (watch Todd's video for some more context) so if you don't want to see that post is over here.

Lastly I wanted to talk about something else Kaz brings up in a lot of their videos when talking about historical topics and that is the tendency to dehumanize people of the past, often as unwashed, unintelligent masses who would just do any ridiculous disgusting thing because they were so stupid and disgusting. There are a lot of things to criticize about the people of the past and their actions obviously, but we cannot forgot that they were in fact, people. Real individual people with their own lives and dreams and ambitions and individual opinions and they have never been and never will be a monolith. Claiming anything is broadly true of "the victorians" or "the ancient egyptians" or whatever other vague historical group you want to talk about is usually a lot more nuanced than "they all thought or acted in this one particular way". I'm certainly not a historian and i've only done one history focused video but James Somerton seemed to make a lot of broad historical claims in his videos that I think fall into this trap.

The one that stood out most to me in Todd's video was the claim about Nazi body standards which is a whole mess in general that Todd goes into for a while, but the way he talks about WWII soldiers was just like...weird. Besides the fact that a lot of his claims about Nazis seem to be bordering on glorifying them and their aesthetics (gross), I think we should remember that WWII was less than a century ago. There are still over 100,000 surviving WWII vets in the US. My grandfather who was in the Army during WWII (he didn't serve overseas but he was an enlisted soldier I can literally look up his enlistment records in the national archives online) was a real person who I obviously knew personally and who died fairly recently. To think he enlisted because he was jealous of German fitness or whatever and wanted to prove how tough Americans are is an absolutely hilarious thing to think if you knew him. I'm sure there are as many reasons for enlisting as there were enlisted soldiers. When James talks about even as relatively narrow of a group as "WWII American soldiers," he's still talking about a very large group of real and diverse people and to make such broad claims that "most" or even "a lot" of them were just so taken in by strong german physiques or whatever is frankly insulting. I haven't watched the entirety of James video so maybe he does address this at some point, but from the clips I've seen it seems very generalized and implies some level of racism when WWII soldiers in fact included a lot of racially diverse people. IDK, i think if you're a supposed historical researcher and you're making a video about WWII and you don't know about groups like the Tuskegee Airmen or the Navajo Code Talkers, that's on you. I don't want to discount some of the really horrible shit that American (and obviously other countries) soldier's did in the war and how many of them held disgusting views (even my grandpa who I love dearly was not the most politically correct person to put it lightly) but Jame's claims are not criticizing any real ideology or the consequences of them, they're oversimplifying complex and harmful historical ideas and attributing them to something he pretty much made up. I'll also give you a little hint about something. When people fall into Nazi ideology, it's because they ultimately agree with the ideology, not for some surface level aesthetic reason of "fitness" or whatever. They are antisemitic, they are racist, they are eugenicists, plain and simple. They don't just think the Nazis are cool except for all their beliefs. I also think (and again I could be missing a part of the video here) the hyper focus on the Germans and the Soviets and not mentioning Italy is at the very least an oversight too. Mussolini, like Hitler and Stalin, had a pretty big campaign of promoting an ideal strong race which he tied to ancient Romans. Like this was also a country controlled by a fascist dictator that American soldiers fought in idk it just seems weird to me to leave it out. (okay edit i looked up the transcript and he does talk about Italian fascism a little bit but only about how Mussolini rose to power, nothing about his ideologies or anything really related to the main topic of body image).

And one more thing on that note that bothered me a lot. I think his claims about HIV/AIDS is probably the most well-known here on tumblr and has been pretty thoroughly destroyed by this point, but I do just want to say one more thing about it which is that AIDS isn't gone! I feel like they way he talks about it from what I've seen of this video makes HIV/AIDS sound like a problem of the past now that we have drugs for it, but that is just not the truth. There are still tens of thousands of new infections in the US each year and way more globally and yes, people do still die from it. I just don't like when people talk about AIDS as if it's this problem of the distant past, a separate era that people went through in the 80s rather than an ongoing epidemic that still does not have a cure. Safer sex, clean needle usage, and getting tested are just as important now as they were in the 80s and 90s and don't forget that.

#hbomberguy #todd in the shadows #james somerton #youtube

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river-gale · 9 months ago

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2, 5 12, 27 with (of course) River Gale?

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

i think it has to be that scene where they talk about register in english and how all our most formal syntax is latin and greek in origin and our least formal is usually germanic. just, the fact that they know that and are willing to randomly spend several minutes explaining it. i fell instantly in love

5. What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

someone put 'Simulation Swarm' by Big Thief in a mars house playlist and i haven't stopped thinking about it since. river and aubrey....

like wrong gender obviously but i think of them when i hear it. so.

12. What's a headcanon you have for this character?

i put this in a fic once already but i just feel in my heart that they know fortran. the programming language from 1957 bizarrely still in use among engineers. like, if you asked them to solve any problem in fortran, they could do it, and the solution would be bizarre, totally unreadable to anyone else, and LIGHTNING fast. i have programming style headcanons for every pulley character but this one is my fave

27. FREEBIE QUESTION!!

CARTE BLANCHE TO TALK ABOUT RIVER GALE!? LET'S GOOOO

i'm putting this under a readmore because i can't stop yapping.

i have so much to say. i could write individual essays about their politics, their gender, and their relationship to their sibling, but i want to talk about the argument they have with january sort of mid-book

i love this argument because they both have a point! january has a point bc gale's policies suck and because gale is obviously super privileged in their education. when i first read it, i thought gale was being kind of obtuse for not acknowledging that, but...

on like my third reread i realized i've been in this argument on gale's side lmao. i'd like to think i'd respond more maturely now that i've been there a couple times, but in the moment, "i can't argue with you about this because you're too smart for me" is really deeply unpleasant to hear! it doesn't feel like the other person is pointing out privilege, it feels like they're saying "i can't connect or engage with you on this because i (a) don't trust you enough to believe you'll listen to me or pay enough attention to see my argument when i don't express it perfectly, in fact i think you don't care at all about what i have to say, and (b) you are different from me in a way that is inherent and immutable, so much so that i can't even discuss things with you." and it's easy to see why that hurts!

and gale probably feels that last one way more because their halo reading means their brain is actually, physically different from everyone else's! january is 100% valid for feeling overwhelmed in this moment and for these reasons, but to gale, who connects with people by debating them bc they care about other people's opinions, it probably feels like a moderately insulting rejection.

i also think gale is the sort of person who views a debate or an argument as an opportunity for synthesis—disagreeing with someone and pointing out the counterarguments isn't to tear their argument down, it's to make it stronger by giving it an opportunity to address its flaws!! it's to arrive at the truth together!! it's a way to grow closer to people by learning how they think!! but we can see here that january views it as a violent takedown, which is completely valid of him given what gale and their pr team did to him at the beginning of the book!! that WAS a violent takedown, it lost him his job, and it was his first introduction to gale, so it's totally reasonable of him to assume that's how they work all the time, even though it's extremely not!!

i just love gale so much, because they obviously care so much about other people when the other people are right there in front of them. and they try really hard to tone the argumentative curiosity down, because they know it makes people uncomfortable, but it's their truest way of expressing that care. and it's so easy to misinterpret. and if you really think about it this conversation is kind of tragic for them, especially if you read them as having feelings for january at this point!

tl;dr: i think it's a fantastic character dynamic packed into the span of a short conversation! thank you for reading my impromptu river gale essay <3

#i also think it's really funny if like.... its the 2100s or 2200s. mars has been settled #computing has obviously been completely revolutionized bc ai consciousness exists and is not considered too costly for mars' limited power #fortran is still kicking. hilarious #the mars house #sorry abt the essay bluejay............ thank you for the ask :')

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lovewash3d-doll · 6 days ago

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🌻Best AP Classes for Writers in HighSchool🌻

AP Langugage & Composition 📝

Language is even in its name! While you’ll spend a large portion of class practicing argumentative, synthesis, and rhetorical analysis essays, you’ll also have a space to solely focus on the craft of writing. Rhetoric devices are something good writers should be able to recognize in other works and use in their own to make them more effective and powerful. Every metaphor, repetition, and literary device is intentional, and the tools you choose define your piece. In my class, we also dedicated time to writing several narrative pieces including a description of place piece, subjective definition, and a personal story. This was actually the first English class where I felt we were actually taught how to write well instead of just being told to. I also appreciated the attention to editting in this class and how to polish a piece, from chopping it up and rearranging it to the many advices and rhetorics of other writers.

AP Literature📖

One of my favorite AP classes is AP Literature! It is full 360 from AP Language, where you switch from analyzing writing to analyzing characters and stories and go back to reading books! It’s a very useful in-depth focus on fiction, and knowledge that you can reflect onto your own writing. All three tested essays are the same except for whether or not you’re analyzing a story, poem, or your self-selected book : you are analyzing how “ideas”/ elements in a story contribute to its overall meaning and a universal theme. My class learned about different writing eras/periods/movements, basic plot structure, how to actually digest poems, and character FOILs. You spend a lot of time deeply analyzing books and characters and the more you read, the better of a writer you are.

AP Psychology🫂

After my first Creative Writing class, my teacher told me that my writing lacked emotional depth and authenticity, suggesting that I spend some time studying psychology. To say the least, AP Psychology entirety improved my writing! It became one of my favorite AP classes and showed me the potential and power of emotions, behavior, and phenomena in the mind. The characters in your stories are not just pieces on a chessboard waiting for you to pick the next move, ignoring their humanity. Reactions, last-minute decisions, and changes in the psyche create tension and propel your story. That’s how the rising action works! You give characters a challenge, an obstacle, and they climb, stumble, and climb again onward on your mountain of a plot. Characters are a large aspect of what makes a story interesting and the more life-like you can flesh them out, the better. Sometimes character development and change is the entire plot! By learning the basics of every branch of psychology, you get a taste of so many different facets of what it means to be human and you learn very tangible models and theories to help you! Psychology is the blueprint of making characters!

AP Enviromental Science 🌱

Although AP Environmental Science does not seem very related to writing at all, it is related to world building. I was pleasantly surprised to learn about different biomes, natural phenomena, how the wind currents works, the different ways to use natural resources to support a civilization, and how nature and humans interact. It really is a little guidebook of the Earth and can greatly help you with the vocab and information to make your own world! There are so many parts of ecology we don’t ever consider in writing nor their effects on both the environment and humans. Earth— the physical land your story takes place in— is more important than you know and the framework and skeleton of the world you make.

AP Comparative Government 📜

Social science classes and writing go hand in hand! Although a rare and not often offered AP course, AP Comparative Government will teach you the basics of making a political system in your story. The course revolves around 5 country case studies where the history, goverment structures, and citizen realms are examined and compared. The whole first unit is dedicated towards learning every word you’ll ever possibly need to know to be inspired and craft your own political system. There are so many aspects to a governments. It’s eye-opening and informative to be able to break down systems and their effects, discuss them, and study the components.

XOXO,

lovewashed doll🌻

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Async mugwump linkdump

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON: YA Fantasy, Room 207, 10 a.m.; Signing, 11 a.m.; Teaching Writing, 2 p.m., Room 213CD.

For 20+ years, I've processed all the information that came over my transom by blogging – mulling on why something I saw in the world caught my attention and trying to summarize it for strangers. This turns out to be a very powerful way to do a lot of different kinds of mental work:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

With Pluralistic, the solo blog I founded 4 years ago, I've moved into longer, more synthetic essays that try to connect the things that caught my attention today with all those things I've written about for the past two decades. That's also proven very fruitful:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/20/fore/#synthesis

But this move to longer works has a downside: sometimes I'll arrive at the week's end and have a list of things that caught my attention without there being any obvious way to connect them, and when that happens, I devote a Saturday edition to a linkdump. There's been 15 of these so far:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

Welcome, then, to the 16th Pluralistic linkdump, and a warning, this one starts with an obituary.

Ross Anderson was one of the heroes of the cryptographic revolution, a brilliant scientist and communicator, a fantastic activist, and a scorching curmudgeon. Ross died this week. He was 67, and had chronic heart issues as well as long covid:

https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2024/03/29/rip-ross-anderson/

There's so much that's been written about Ross and his legacy already, and there's doubtless more to come, but I've picked out two pieces to point you to. The first is from Danny O'Brien, who was also the guy who talked me down off the ledge the first time Ross flamed me on a public mailing list, leaving me bleeding and furious:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39868983

As Danny says, Ross was "the model of a politically and socially involved computer scientist," a man whose blazing intellect, fierce moral center and relentless curiosity inspired a generation of technologists to think about politics, and a generation of political activists to think about technology. Few of Ross's eulogizers (thus far) have mentioned how Ross's passion came out as fury, and – as someone who counted Ross as a friend and inspiration – I think this is a serious omission. It's hard to imagine Ross doing all that he did without understanding the anger that – along with his ethics – fueled his passion.

(Compare with @neil-gaiman's classic essay on the anger of Terry Pratchett:)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman

The other obit that I want to point you to comes from Bill Buchanan, one of Ross's closest collaborators. Buchanan's memorial for Ross does a superb job of rounding up Ross's technical contributions to the field of security engineering:

https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/ross-anderson-rip-59233c75fadf

Buchanan embeds videos for some of Ross's best speeches, links to his key papers (including the classic "Programming Satan's Computer," on "programming a computer which gives answers that are subtly and maliciously wrong at the most inconvenient moment possible), reminiscences of Great Moments In Ross Anderson, and terrific, lay-friendly breakdowns of some of Ross's key mathematical work.

As an unreasonable, angry person, I take great inspiration from people who channel their unreasonable anger to socially beneficial conduct – like whistleblowers. After Baltimore's Francis Scott Key Bridge was totaled by the 95,000-ton cargo ship MV *Dali(, a vast cohort of instant experts in structural engineering, sea freight and shipbuilding has taken to the internet with a slurry of takes on the Meaning Of the Bridge.

Some of these are very stupid indeed, like the idea that somehow "DEI" caused the collision. But you don't have to be an expert in maritime issues or civil engineering to understand the importance of this report from The Lever about shipping giant Maersk's culture of retaliation against whistleblowers:

https://www.levernews.com/feds-recently-hit-cargo-giant-in-baltimore-disaster-for-silencing-whistleblowers/

Maersk is the company that chartered the MV Dali; Maersk is also a key player in the cartel that controls the world's shipping. Maersk was just sanctioned by the Labor Department for retaliating against a whistleblower who complained of unsafe conditions on the ships that Maersk chartered:

https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/news%20releases/Maersk-Sec%20Findings%20-FINAL%20071423_Redacted.pdf

Maersk's policy required employees to bring concerns to their supervisors before alerting the Coast Guard or others. This is not how that stuff is supposed to work. OSHA called this policy “repugnant” and a “reprehensible and an egregious violation of the rights of employees,” which “chills them from contacting the [Coast Guard] or other authorities without contacting the company first.”

The whistleblower – chief mate on the Safmarine Mafadi – complained of "unrepaired leaks, unpermitted alcohol consumption onboard, inoperable lifeboats, faulty emergency fire suppression equipment, and other issues." We don't know (yet) what happened on the Dali, but it's obvious that a company that retaliates against whistleblowers, rather than heeding their warnings, is prioritizing covering its ass, not operating safely.

Which brings me (inevitably) to Boeing, and to poor John "Swampy" Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who took his own life earlier this month. Barnett's suicide has stirred up similar low-yield online chatter focused on whether Boeing assassinated Barnett, a question that categorically cannot be answered through the method of arguing with internet strangers.

But there is a lot to say about Barnett: in particular, there's the substance of his whistleblowing, the specifics of his complaints about Boeing. For that, we can turn to the always-fantastic Maureen Tkacik, whose American Prospect piece "Suicide Mission" is definitive:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2024-03-28-suicide-mission-boeing/

Tkacik does a great job of painting a picture of Swampy as a member of the tribe of unreasonable and angry people who refuse to sideline principle in order to get along. More importantly, Tkacik shows us what made Swampy so angry: a company that was hell-bent on lobotimizing itself by forcing out any technical expert who might point out inconvenient truths about the safety risks of high-profit strategies.

As Tkacik writes, Boeing once thought about "knowledge" in terms of expertise that could be brought to bear on the unimaginably complex task of making reliable, airworthy jets. But under the "value-engineering" financialized culture that arose after the McDonnell-Douglas merger, the company viewed knowledge as "intellectual property, trade secrets, and data." In other words, the point of knowledge was rent-extraction, not safety.

At the root of this transformation was the Jack Welch protege Jim "Prince Jim" McNerney, the former 3M CEO who took the helm at Boeing. McNerney was openly contemptuous of the company's senior engineers, branding them "phenomenally talented assholes" and rewarding managers who found ways to force them out of the company. It was McNerney who decided to produce the 787 "Dreamliner" in non-union shops, far from Seattle and its phenomenally talented assholes. Instead of these engineers, McNerney turned to Boeing suppliers to do the major engineering work on the 787 – despite the fact that many of these suppliers "lacked engineering departments."

The 787 was, infamously, a $80b-over-budget boondoggle, haunted by technical failures. Swampy was part of the "cleanup crew" that tried to salvage the 787, and witnessed first-hand how the company purged all the engineers who managed to ship the 787 despite McNerney and his "value engineers" and retaliated against workers who tried to unionize the South Carolina facility.

In particular, it was safety inspector who came in for the most savage punishment. When the FAA decided to let Boeing mark its own homework – hiring in-house safety inspectors to replace government inspectors – they pretended to believe that these Boeing-payrolled inspectors would be able to operate independently of Boeing's leadership. The inspectors tried to operate this way (not least because they were criminally liable for oversights that occurred on their watch) and McNerney's Boeing came down on them like a ton of aviation-grade aluminum.

To further neuter these inspectors, Boeing management ordered the inspectors to outsource their work to the mechanics they were supposed to be supervising – that is, the FAA outsourced safety checks to Boeing inspectors, and the inspectors outsourced those checks to the mechanics themselves. Tkacik: "Swampy believed relying on mechanics to self-inspect their work was not only insane but illegal under the Federal Aviation Administration charter."

Swampy kept careful records of every way in which this system produced unsafe aircraft and an unsafe workplace – including the day he discovered that someone had removed 400+ defective parts from the rejects box and installed them in aircraft in order to meet deadlines. Swampy's reports were key to establishing that the company's much-trumpeted "improvements" in safety reports were down to a culture of "bullying" – not any improvement in safety itself.

When Boeing went to war against Swampy, they barely bothered to pretend that they were playing by the rules. He was told one day that he was four-weeks into a 60-day "corrective action" that no one had told him about. The "corrective action" paperwork had a blank for Swampy's comments. He wrote, "Leadership wants nothing in email so they maintain plausible deniability. It is obvious leadership is just looking for items to criticize me on so I stop identifying issues. I will conform!"

Shortly thereafter, he was forced out altogether. Managers who tried to bring him on their teams were told that no one was allowed to hire John Barnett. His name appeared on a secret internal memo entitled "Quality Managers to Fire." Meanwhile, the value of Boeing shares had tripled.

After Boeing's 737 Maxes started falling out of the sky, Swampy's painstaking documentation of the flaws in the 787's production took on a new urgency. A program of random inspections of 787s found major defects in all of them ("Boeing Looked for Flaws in Its Dreamliner and Couldn’t Stop Finding Them" –WSJ). An Aviation Week diagram of problem spots with the 787 marked red arrows over "every single section, from the tip of the nose to the horizontal stabilizers":

https://aviationweek.com/air-transport/new-boeing-787-fix-details-reveal-extent-gap-check-challenge

Boeing's war on "brilliance" did its work: after everyone who understood how to make a safe aircraft was forced out of the company, financialized CEOs were able to cut corners on safety, triple the share-price, scoop up billions in government subsidies and bailouts, all without those pesky "phenomenally talented assholes" pointing out that they were going get (lots of) people killed.

Tkacik closes by saying that Swampy's former work colleagues refuse to believe he killed himself. A former executive told her "I don’t think one can be cynical enough when it comes to these guys…It’s a top-secret military contractor, remember; there are spies everywhere." I confess that I don't know what to make of that, but I'll say this: if Boeing killed Swampy, that's just one of hundreds of murders they committed. Whether or not Swampy's death was their fault, the deaths of everyone who went down on the 737 Maxes that crashed is on their hands.

That's what "profits before people" means, after all: sacrificing human lives to make yourself richer. It's the foundational tenet of the conservative movement, though that impulse is often checked by other factors, like human decency. It's only when sociopaths get a sustained run at leadership that you see what they really want.

Which brings me to the UK, which has been governed by the Conservative Party for 14 years. The Tories are tipped to get destroyed in the next election, and a long article in the New Yorker by Sam Knight catalogs the many ways in which Tory rule has devastated the UK:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/what-have-fourteen-years-of-conservative-rule-done-to-britain

The thing is, after 14 years, it's impossible for the Tories to blame anyone else for the state of the UK. With strong Parliamentary majorities, Conservatives were able to govern as they pleased – the only compromises they made were between their own internal factions. The ideological commitment to making the rich richer, privatizing everything, subordinating governance to market forces – that's all them.

It's all them: the worst period for wage growth since the Napoleonic Wars, on them. The catastrophic traffic, housing, jobs market, and precarity, on them. Plummeting health, on them. The austerity, on them. The withering of the country's courts and prisons and police, its wilderness, its programs for young people and pensioners, its public health, its diplomatic corps, its road maintenance – on them.

A country where the police can't afford to prosecute burglaries – on them (4% of burglaries are prosecuted). The 2.5 year delay between a rape arrest and its trial? On them. Mass closures of schools that are literally crumbling? On them.

43% of the countries courts have closed. On them. Cuts to prison funding, coupled with longer sentences? On them.

And of course, Brexit – on them. Every part of it. The referendum. The referendum question. The failure to negotiate a deal with the EU. All on them. The collapse in British living standards, all on them. The fact that the 20% richest households in the UK have been untouched by all this? Also on them. But you might not notice it in London, where people earn an average of 400% more than people in Nottingham.

The only growth sector outside of London are the Citizens Advice Bureaux, whose client rosters are growing even as their funding is cut. Where the CAB once primarily catered to people who couldn't make ends meet due to disability, unemployment and other reliable predictors of economic distress, today, CAB advisors are seeing homeowners, people working two jobs. Desperation is "like a black hole, dragging more and more people in,"

More Conservative growth: Tories presided over a doubling in the rate of NHS antidepressant prescriptions, and a 20% rise in long-term health conditions. No wonder Tory Britain had the world's worst pandemic outcomes for a wealthy nation – that's on them, too.

Knight's article closes with a Tory MP who believes that "the key thing for the Conservatives now is to be more conservative…Toryism must have its day again."

We can't count on oligarchs to rescue us from oligarchy – not even when oligarchy's failures push society to the breaking point. There's always a rationalization explaining why we just had to lean harder into oligarchy.

You hear echoes of this in the pro-monopoly choir, whose squeals of outrage at the rise of a new anti-monopoly movement grow louder even as monopolism's failures grow clearer. One of the more tangible expressions of monopoly's failures is the Ticketmaster/Livenation octopus, which controls the entire live music industry – key venues, promotions, and ticketing. Ticketmaster fucks over music fans, but it also cheats famous musicians, the kinds of people with big microphones, so we know a lot about how bad it is:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/20/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-will-eventually-stop/

Of course, the fact that Swifties hate Ticketmaster lets the pro-monopolists dismiss critics as foolish young girls, not Very Serious People Who Understand Economics and thus can see that Ticketmaster's monopoly is Good, Actually.

Last week, Congressman Bill Pascrell dumped a ton of litigation documents related to Ticketmaster's sleaze, and Matt Stoller broke them down:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/explosive-new-documents-unearthed

The docs reveal how Ticketmaster's system of (formerly) secret kickbacks let it choke out any competitor, so that it could charge fans more and pay artists less. The mechanics of the scam are beautifully laid out in Stoller's post – as is the many ways in which it violated both the law and Ticketmaster's numerous consent decrees arising from its previous lawbreaking.

This kind of scam breakdown is essential. It's easy to think that we, as mere normies, can't hope to understand the machinations of the corporations that prey on us. But once you pierce the veil of performative complexity, what's left behind is a set of crude tricks and transparent ruses.

Here's one of those transparent ruses: Discord's terms of service require Discord users to actively opt out of its "binding arbitration" system. Binding arbitration is when you sign a contract saying you can't sue the company no matter how much it harms you – instead, you promise to have your disputes heard by an "arbitrator" (a fake judge paid by the company that screwed you). Unsurprisingly, these fake judges are awfully tolerant of their employers' crimes.

Discord says that once you click through its garbage legalese novella, you have just a few days to opt out of this binding arbitration clause – if you happen to miss that fine print, you have "consented" to giving up your legal rights.

But every time Discord changes its ToS, the clock for opting out starts ticking again, and Discord has just changed (that is, worsened) its ToS again:

https://discord.com/terms

That means that if you send an email right now to [email protected] with "I am confirming that as of the date of this email, I am choosing to opt out of binding arbitration to settle disputes with Discord" in the body, you can escape this consent theater:

https://mamot.fr/@[email protected]/112175832989845038

Consent theater is a particularly galling corporate ruse – the idea that we chose to allow them to abuse us. Consent theater gets more outrageous by the day. Take Soofa, who operate streetside digital kiosks that identify you by grabbing your phone's unique wifi and Bluetooth identifiers:

https://gizmodo.com/digital-kiosks-snatch-your-phones-data-when-you-walk-by-1851368948

Soofa sells this data to advertisers – claiming that by walking down a public street, you "consented" to being tracked and sold.

The only reason this flies is that the US hasn't passed a federal consumer privacy law since 1988's Video Privacy Protection Act, which bans video-store clerks from telling people which VHS cassettes you took home. Congress keeps on failing to pass a privacy law, despite garbage companies like Soofa.

But that hasn't stopped the administrative agencies from acting to defend your privacy! The FTC just dropped its latest Privacy and Data Security Update, a greatest hits list of the actions the Commission took while Congress failed:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/2024.03.21-PrivacyandDataSecurityUpdate-508.pdf

One of the best things about the current administration is the number of extremely competent regulators who know exactly how much power they have and aren't afraid to use it to help the American people:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

The new FTC report, which details how the Commission's existing powers let it go after the commercial surveillance industry from smart doorbells to review fraud, from kids' programming to medical data, from lax security to data-breaches, is a bright spot in an otherwise grim week.

One more bright spot, then, before I wind up this linkdump. All week, I've been humming a half-remembered lyric, "come on baby/you're a link in this chain/put your hands together/and get free of the pain." For the life of me, I couldn't place it.

Last night, I searched for it (using Kagi, the post-Google search engine I've been paying for for the past month, and which I'm loving) and discovered that I had somehow completely forgotten a whole-ass band that I once loved: Toronto's Bourbon Tabernacle Choir, whom I saw live on many occasions.

The mystery lyric came from "Death is the Great Awakener," a fucking banger of a post-gospel track that I've been listening to on nonstop repeat as I wrote this. It's a hell of a tune and I'm intensely grateful to have it back in my life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6RUb63Tx3w

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/30/dewey-502/#rip-ross-anderson

Image: Waffleboy https://www.flickr.com/photos/waffleboy/28198395465/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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itmeblog · 6 months ago

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I've been thinking a lot about ChatGPT lately and how humans are really good at finding patterns to the point that we find them in places they dont exist. Like the phenomenon where anything abstract has the possibility of being interpreted as a face.

Anyway, we see what machines do and matter in -> black box -> matter out. And like for programs and printers and automated systems and shit that can be fine for working knowledge. Like someone out there knows precisely how the self checkout works but all I need to know is that the scanner works and that it accepts debit.

But we conflate that with our existence. People are not machines. The point of writing a Great Gatsby essay in high school wasn't because the essay mattered. The end result wasn't the point. The point was the black box. The synthesis, the analyzing text and interpretation of quotes that taught you stuff like media analysis and checked reading comprehension. Everything that happened from the time you got the rubric to the final submission of that paper mattered. The essay itself is like... vaguely consequential. There are hundreds of thousands of not millions of Great Gatsby essays, nobody was clammoring for more, particularly not 9th grade English teachers.

The point is the black box, the point is the *doing*. And you see we do that weird optimization everywhere, it's not even new! AI just made a new dimension. Make dinner faster, monetize your hobbies, write this quicker, lose weight at mach 1, don't you want Alexa to read bedtime stories to your kid!?

I know it's all capitalism and whatever in a trenchcoat but sometimes it really has me wondering, what am I alive for? And the answer so often is "the black box".

Like doing silly voices while reading to make my family laugh or pouring over a dictionary while writing or smelling onions caramelize. Stories From Ylelmore in and of itself is a middle finger to story optimization omg, how many convos in there are so strictly unnecessary to the plot?? Because in Ylelmore the plot doesn't matter! The point is making the journey as fun as possible!! Having a stupid 5 minutes argument about whether fish drown? Sure, why not?! We have the time!!

Just a few years ago I used to lament having to *sleep* and all the productivity I was missing out on! And why? For what? What was there to be productive about?

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collage-tls · 4 months ago

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蓮花空行身染愛 // The Lotus Dakini’s Stained Love

welcome to my twisted annotated lian-hue lyric translation. unfortunately there is a reason ppl post internet essays on interpretations of this song. i did my utmost to make a clarifying translation where i could, but ultimately the original lyrics are simply very convoluted and metaphor-packed, and i didnt want to twist them to the point of overly-imposing my own interpretation. should u desire to "know what this song is about," there is a synthesis of things the artists have said about it, things i've read others say about it, references i've looked up, and, of course, my own reading of the lyrics @ the end. annotations interspersed between stanzas. expand at your own risk. do listen to the song either way tho its a banger

「由本自性清淨故，令諸愛染悉無垢」 (1) because of our own pure nature, all love-stains are rendered unblemished

(1) my own understanding of this quote is that since our essential/original nature is pure, even impure things like excessive attachment/desire are also ultimately pure in their own sense as part of the natural world/human experience…? thus complicating a term which seems to often carry negative connotations.

om Gu-lu-gu-lie chu-li so-ha om Gu-lu-gu-lie chu-li so-ha (2)

(2) the essential mantra of Kurukulla (transliterated to chinese as 咕嚕咕列Gulugulie)

又閣是彼个無代無誌想著的形影 there it is again, that uninvited silhouette 親像一陣風吹落來是春風少年(3) it's funny how carefree young men blow past you just like a gust of wind 坐嘛是思念(4) 坐袂牢真無聊的思念 in moments of stillness my thoughts turn to you, this same old restless longing 倒咧眠床頂予月娘笑規个暗暝 i lay in bed and watch the moon laugh through the night

(3) this line gave me endless grief and is still subject to edit tbh. lit. "just like a gust of wind blowing by is spring breeze young man." after much deliberation, i decided that 少年, meaning either young man or youth, most likely means young man here and the overall phrase w/ "spring breeze" is referencing a particular image of male youth and its fleeting nature and impact on the women around them in this moment where our female narrator is recalling the memories of a lost love in her life. so. that is what i was aiming to capture (4) lit. to sit is to long [for you], which is imagery i quite like but maps awkwardly to english phrasing esp w the rest of the line.

我行過你的世界(5) i have walked through your world 啥物我攏無愛 there's nothing there i want 只想欲佇你心內（寫一條歌） i just want to be in your heart (to write a song)

(5) this line has the first actual pronoun uses of “i”(我) and “you”(你) in the original lyrics (chinese languages often drop pronouns, but it feels like an interesting artistic choice 2 me anyhow)

車行過𪜶的期待 your train has run past their expectations 這站閣無落來 it still hasn’t reached this station 無想欲對誰交代（心內驚驚） i don’t want to explain myself to anyone (the fear in my heart)

想起我彼暗小可仔歹勢(6) i recall the slight shame i felt that night 予你揣著我 you found me, 規身軀藏無好勢的委屈 my whole body composed of exposed grievances

(6) 歹勢；to my understanding, this word carries connotations of both shyness & embarrassment/shame. the only english word i can think of that somewhat comparably includes both of those is abashment, which no one has heard anyone say out loud ever. so i picked the one that resonated more w my personal interpretation.

風中的飛龍咧吼 a dragon cries in the wind 聲聲予天搖地動 the sound shakes the heavens and the earth 愛你的傳說寫佇頂懸 the legend of my love for you is written up above 感情紲來愈飛愈懸 emotions rise the higher it flies

花開佇你蹛的樓(7) flowers bloom where you reside 想當時欲綴你走 i wonder what could have been if I’d gone with you then 多情的雨崁著目睭 a downpour of emotions obscures my view 你的代誌(8)講袂清楚 and my understanding of you blurs

(7) i have always wondered if this was supposed 2 be a hua(花) manlou(樓) pun here w/ the first & last character but who knows lol. see notes on song inspirations for context. (8) more headaches. the mandarin word 事情(shìqíng), which seems to be the universal tl of the taiwanese word 代誌, does not map super easily onto any 1 english word. the general definition is matter/affair/business, but it is often used in contexts where actually using any of those words in an english tl would sound super out of place. like this one. most literal tl i can think of is your actions/situation/circumstance/affairs are not clearly explained. went with ‘my understanding of you blurs’ to go with the line b4 it, since my understanding of the lines’ collective meaning is something along the lines of like. ive been so blinded by my feelings for you that ive lost sight of who you really are/wonder if i ever knew you at all

看你行過千山萬水 i have watched you cross a thousand mountains, ten thousand rivers 手內薔薇微微仔芳 the fragrance of the rose you hold seeps into the air 行踏輕鬆跤步的我 (恬恬佇遮攏無出聲) i tread through life lightly (staying here quietly, noiselessly, still)

日子過一工閣一工 day after day goes by 你的一切攏猶未放 you still have not let anything go 越頭欲揣過去的我 i turn back to search for a former version of myself 煞來袂記家己的名 and find I have forgotten my own name

(拆開你的 [心肝內底] tearing open your [heart] 會看著暗淡的愛 i can see our hopeless love) (9)

(9) this interlude section features 2 abbreviated lines from another collage song, 《這該死的拘執佮愛》(this damn unyielding love) the full two lines are 「是按怎拆開你的心肝內底 / 會看著暗淡的愛流成水/血」（tl: Why do I tear open your heart? I can see our hopeless love flowing like water/blood)—parts used in this song have been bolded. since it only says "tear open your... i can see our hopeless love" in this song, i decided to add minimal context and complete the first clause

是我欲陪你流浪 i am willing to accompany you as you wander 長路終點滿天花雨 (10) at the end of this long road lies a sky full of petals and rain 雺霧內底戇神 in the mist your expression looks dazed 千年流轉你的世界 (11) a thousand years pass in your eyes

(10) reference to buddhist verse cited in background section of extended notes (11) lit. a thousand/thousands of years flow through/in your world

自作多情的人 unrequited lovers 眼前地獄家己揀的 reside in a hell of their own making 天上地下人間 heaven, hell, and the land of the living 四方妖孽請恁退下 (12) demons from all realms, i beg you to withdraw

(12) this and the prev line are definitely a make of it what you will set of lines. i did my best to help comrades, now it's up to you. will add comments on realms imagery wrt fictional characters used as inspiration eventually but u are currently reading first iteration of this post.

這繁華世間 in this flourishing world 眾生有情人 all living things have lovers 有情生煩惱（甘願受罪） to be in love brings troubles (willingness to suffer) 心狂閣火著 anger burns 明知會艱苦 i'm fully aware of the hardships ahead 千錯萬錯（攏佮你無關） countless mistakes (none concerning you)

NOTES:

1) KEY BACKGROUND. imo what follows is the most important piece of context, & everything after is more optional set dressing: in his initial lengthy instagram post around the song’s release, hunter shared that the primary inspiration for the song was the story of Guo Xiang, a side character in Jin Yong’s 1950s-60s wuxia series The Condor Trilogy, known for the unrequited love she harbors for the story’s protagonist.

(he also explains that this character’s story came to mind after a chance encounter with a particular verse from the Kṣitigarbhasūtra: 《南方世界湧香雲，香雨香雲及花雨》, which you can see references to w/in the song [10])

he mentions additional inspiration from the Eileen Chang novella protagonist Ge Weilong + a secondary character from Gu Long’s Legend of Lu Xiaofeng, Hua Manlou [7]. Chang’s novella tells the story of a young girl’s loss of innocence and faith in love, and i am sorry to admit the hua manlou one defeated me i honestly still cannot tell how he fits into the themes here lol. sorry.

i think knowing this does rly help create a cohesive narrative throughout the song and situates it/the many metaphors w/in it as part of an exploration of the internal world of the narrator through the experience of unrequited/lost love.

2) RELIGIOUS IMAGERY. firstly, a deconstruction of the title & intro, 蓮花空行身染愛 (The Lotus Dakini’s Stained Love) :

蓮花空行，lit. Lotus Dakini, refers to Kurukulla, a dakini belonging to the lotus family in buddhist mythology. the song opens on her essential mantra. (the om gu lu gu lie chant [2])

i understood 身 here to be serving as a possessive (oneself/one’s own), hence the ’s. however, on its own it means body.

lastly, 染愛，lit. stained love, composed of 染(to dye, stain, contaminate) and 愛(love); these characters are a reverse of the traditional buddhist concept of 愛染, as seen in the scripture quote relating to kurukulla that serves as an epitaph to the posted lyrics 「由本自性清淨故，令諸愛染悉無垢」 [1]

i could not find any evidence of an established english tl/explanation of this term, so to my (limited!!) understanding, 愛染 (lit. love-stain) refers generally negatively to a concept of excessive attachment to things or people, with underlying—though not exclusive—associations w romantic/lustful attachment due to the characters used. note that this is a noun; in the case of the song title, stain染 has been moved to the position of adjective modifying love愛. do with that what you will.

#珂拉琪 #lyric translation #蓮花空行身染愛 #deus ex machina #(< kind of)#taigi #i meant to also add notes about the realms imagery but well.#i will add that one day kasjdhf #also will maybe post a tl of the original IG post hunter made abt it. (on a separate post lol)#also planning to also post this again later sans annotations w the apple music interview bit abt it and the album vers 🫡#so this is the version for real ones.

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nanowired-lover · 2 years ago

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The thing that I feel like neurotypicals don't get is that some of us do need specific limits in order to fit in ? I don't mean "noooo limit my rights or i will eat all the meds or destroy the economy by working with my disability" no no no, I mean. If you ask me to write about something. I want to know how much. I also want you to not interrupt me when I talk/write too much after you told me you don't care how long it is. A lot of us trained ourselves to restrain ourselves while talking/writing.

Through bullying and lack of time maybe ? I talk too much, about everything and anything because everything seems interesting (it's not really), every thoughts every reflexions want OUT. People don't like that. I do not even like that sometimes. I wonder if I dislike when people do that because of jealousy since I can't do it without feeling ashamed or embarassed ?

But also I take too much time. I could write a "short" essay. But I know it'll take me days and weeks when most people do that in a few hours or 1 or 2 days when they know the subject. But it's because I find everything worth talking about ? (it's not ! A lot of it is a stretch and they don't want you to explain absolutely everything. People wants synthesis)

Even now I want to go into heavy details of why am I writing this post and I can't really ? Because it won't be interesting. Because not a lot of people care. Because it's going to take too much time and I have things to do. Because it's going to lose the audience. Because I know I already lose track from what I was saying in the beginning.

Every thoughts count but at the same time, it doesn't because you don't make sense in the end because you have ADHD and you lost the start of your train of thoughts and it grew into something bigger than that.

So yeah. Please dear teacher. Please I beg you tell me how much I need to write about this movie. I could write a book if you gave me time and space and nothing else to work on. But I can't have that because I have a life, hobbies, and other things to do. I need somewhere to stop even if I hate it, to fit in.

#funniest shit tho I am writing about Monty Python and the Holy Grail #and I don't even liked it that much ? It's just that there's a lot to say about it and idk if I should analyse evert fucking scene or not #what do you want from me !!!#nano.txt #autism #adhd #audhd #yeah it's bc of them brain can't stop

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sunriseverse · 7 months ago

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Italics anon: Apologies in the delay in reply! And thank you SO SO MUCH for your beautifully detailed reply and links - glad to know that you also saw that discourse and I did not make it up in my head lol (discourse can get so wild). Thank you for explaining the discourse + your opinion, it’s really really helpful. I’ve been flipflopping on whether to italicise certain terms (just nouns, not idioms like you’ve touched on) and this solidified my decision on not italicising. Sidenote: “culturally sinicised” is so interesting (thinking abt this as someone who grew up in singapore). Also 100% agree on the less-innocent end – every time I see shidi incest discourse I’m just so utterly over it lol (I’ve actually never seen the debates on filial piety, is that mdzs or another fandom?)

Your paragraph on italicisation and deeper biases is so well written!! Would you happen to have any recommended texts on orientalism? (i’ve read Said’s book and it was very good but wondering if there are chinese-specific texts)

Thank you sm for the in-depth reply and multiple reblogs, I really appreciate your time and effort. Hope you have a nice day!

no worries for the delay! i entirely understand—real life happens, and tumblr simply isn't necessarily a priority (which isn't a bad thing!). i'm glad you found my explanation useful! (also "culturally sinicised" is 100% a term made up by me, because frankly i can't think of a better, succinct way to explain [waves at my entire background] lol)

in response to the shidi incest, i've found it's a larger issue with people taking "familial terms" as literal, which isn't............how chinese/culturally-sinicised people generally view these terms/relationships? it's the same in my specific west asian culture too, you use "familial" terms for people you're not related to in any blood way, but i've found that a lot of westerners or western-raised people tend to be really weirded out by this. it spawns so much fucking discourse and never fails to give me a headache, honestly—it seems like no matter how often you say "no, that doesn't mean they're literally related or even think of themselves as adopted relations", people just don't listen :') (and yes, the filial piety discourse i think is fairly mdzs-specific, just because mdzs is one of/the most popular translated cnovels with filial piety as a major theme—the fucking number of times i've watched my mutuals and people i follow repeatedly lay out why characters do xyz due to/in line with the cultural concept of filial piety, rather than xyz thing that western fans think they should have done, is frankly exhausting.)

i'll be honest i've probably read an academic paper here or there, but i don't remember them off the top of my head—most of what i wrote in reply to your previous ask was a synthesis of things that i've read and the experiences i've had. but in specific to orientalism and china, you might find these texts interesting, though they are not necessarily on the topic of italicisation and orientalism (though many are on media and orientalism, or translation and orientalism, with focus on china/chinese, since i suspect that your interests probably align that way). putting these under the cut because i'm realising this got REALLY long :') (also i don't necessarily agree with all of the texts here, but i think that all of them have something important to offer on the topic.)(also also, if you can't get ahold of any of these, let me know because i can probably get you a copy!)

-- Orientalism Writes Back: Discourses of 'Chinese' DissemiNationalism in Transnational Martial Arts Films by Chan Shaoyi (International journal of Taiwan studies, 2018-08, vol. 1 (2), p. 353-369)

This essay revisits Edward Said's famous conception of Orientalism and places it against the context of transnational Chinese cinemas, in particular Hong Kong and Taiwan cinemas, to examine how the concept is unpacked and reconstructed in a way that is often described as 'self-Orientalism'-the self-exoticising of local fabrics to satiate Western consumers. Focusing on three films, Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle (2004), Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin (2015), I argue that the act of self-Orientalising, rather than a passive submission to Western spectatorship, has served to rewrite and recode the idea of Chinese nationalism to present an alternative form of nationalism which I call dissemiNationalism and an alternative discourse to the mainland-centric narrative.

-- Orientalism and occidentalism: two forces behind the image of the Chinese language and construction of the modern standard by Helena Casas-Tost, Sara Rovira-Esteva (Journal of multicultural discourses, 2009-07, vol. 4 (2), p. 107-121)

This article identifies the principal myths and misconceptions surrounding the Chinese language and, by means of discourse analysis, shows how they have been expressed and become entrenched in the academic world, both in China and in the West, despite the evidence which undermines the premises on which these myths are founded. We also show how these views originated from applying a Western linguistic model to descriptions and reforms of the Chinese language, thus, reinforcing the orientalist discourse on Chinese that still persists and has permeated the Chinese language teaching. We tackle these issues from a Spanish perspective at a time when the country is experiencing important educational changes at three levels. First, there is an increase in courses on Chinese Studies. Second, European university curricula are undergoing a process of homogenisation. And, third, a new policy to standardise language learning, teaching and assessment at all stages of education is being implemented all over Europe. We are concerned about this policy because the model designed for European languages is also being applied to non-European languages. We believe that this new context is an ideal occasion to question existing discourses and bring forth new approaches towards the production and reproduction of knowledge related to the Chinese language.

-- Confucian Orientalism and Western Outlook in Martial Arts Film by Stephen Teo (Journal of Chinese Film Studies, 2021-05, vol. 1 (1), p. 65-82)

This paper discusses the martial arts genre with reference to the films of the Japanese master Kurosawa Akira and the Chinese director Zhang Yimou, discussing how both directors converge in their themes and styles through the concept of “Eastern Orientalism.” Such Orientalism is based on Confucian precepts of (rectification of names), chaos theory, and the defense of the people undertaken by militaristic but heroic individual protagonists (samurai or xia). In raising the issue of Orientalism, the paper probes into the Western perceptions of the genre and the imperative of directors like Kurosawa and Zhang in pandering to Western tastes. However, these same directors seem equally preoccupied with fostering a sense of self and nationalistic expression in their response to and treatment of Orientalized content. The paper concludes with a discussion on (2016) as a comparative review of the Western and Eastern viewpoints at play in the US-China co-production. Here the analysis revolves around the issue of sameness, dramatized as a main theme in the film.

-- Cartography and Orientalism in late imperial China by Angelo Maria Cimino (International communication of Chinese culture, 2020-09, vol. 7 (3), p. 395-406)

The Opium wars epitomize a crucial moment in Chinese history, a turning point that globally affected all countries involved, the Qing dynasty and the Western powers, which witnessed radical political, economic and social changes both internally and in their international relations. Recognizing that orientalism with its corollary of studies, researches, travel impressions, beliefs, stories, and popular gossips about China and the Orient in general, is a pervasive form of knowledge which has a political nature, means agreeing on the fact that the Western knowledge upon the Orient has been an agency for the action that has followed, namely imperialism and colonialism, which in turn led to the Opium wars. Geography became the scientific side of such knowledge. As a matter of fact, the moment in which geography embraced the cold geometries of cartography, it turned into a tremendous support to the knowledge process pertaining to the Orientalism. A process driven by mere political and commercial interests, and deceitfully expressed in the popular culture of those Western societies and countries which supported and had colonies in the Far East.

-- Orientalism, modernism, and the American poem by Robert Kern (1996)

Orientalism, Modernism, and the American Poem is a critical and historical interpretation of "Oriental" influences on American modernist poetry. Kern equates Fenollosa and Pound's "discovery" of Chinese writing with the American pursuit of a natural language for poetry; what Emerson had termed the "language of nature." This language of nature is here shown to be a mythic conception continuous with the Renaissance idea of the language of Adam - a language in which things themselves are also signs. Analyzing and contextualizing the nineteenth-century works of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Ernest Fenollosa and the twentieth-century creations of Ezra Pound and Gary Snyder, Kern sheds light on the three contemporary nexuses of his search: the cultural study of Orientalism and the West, the evolution of Indo-European linguistic theory, and the intellectual tradition of American modernist poetry

-- With What Voice Does China Speak? Sinology, Orientalism and the Debate on Sinologism by Pedro Sobral (Journal of Chinese humanities, 2023-06, vol. 9 (2), p. 215-243)

Abstract The arrival of postcolonial theory in China and the country's global rise came with the realization that its self-image is often distorted by Western ideological discourse, conveyed through Western Sinology. Drawing from Edward Said's Orientalism, some Chinese scholars have classified the ideological dimensions of Western Sinology as Sinologism, and have pointed out its implications for China's capacity to think of itself on its own terms. The concept has sparked debate mainly inside Chinese academia about the objective quality of Western Sinology. This article will attempt a critical overview of two major formulations of Sinologism, underlining its major presuppositions and placing the notion in the broader context of China's anxieties of "academic colonization" by Western intellectual practices. It will conclude by arguing that attempts to discredit Western Sinology rely on some problematic assumptions and suggests East-West comparative studies as an alternative way of dialectically constructing Chinese identity.

-- Mulan’s Cultural Journey to the West: From a Chinese Heroine to a Globalized Figure by He He (Theory and practice in language studies, 2024-03, vol. 14 (3), p. 912-917)

Disney’s live-action Mulan (2020) was adapted from the animated Disney film Mulan (1988) and has caused heated discussion after its release. The film successfully wins the Western market because it incorporates Western elements, such as the image of the Xianniang from the legendary story. However, Chinese audiences fail to fully accept the rewriting of traditional Chinese heroine in this live-action film because it partly subverts the content of Chinese legend. From the perspective of Said’s Orientalism, this paper discusses the interpretation of Chinese elements in the film, such as Phoenix, qi, and the traditional Chinese ethics of loyalty, courage, truth, and filial piety, intending to reveal the operation of cultural capital in the international cultural market of film and television in a more comprehensive way. This paper will further discuss that the canonization of Mulan sheds some enlightenment on how to introduce more Chinese literary works into the world as part of world literature.

-- Genealogies of orientalism: history, theory, politics edited by Edmund Burke III and David Prochaska, 2008

an anthology of essays on orientalism

-- Chinese Dreams: (Self-)Orientalism and Post-Orientalism in the Reception and Translation of Liu Cixin's ThreeBody Trilogy by Gwennaël Gaffric (Fanyi Xuebao [Journal of Translation Studies], 2019-01, vol. 3 (1), p. 117)

After receiving the Hugo Award in 2015 for the English translation of The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin's Three-Body trilogy and its translations into a large number of languages have been a massive success, prompting many reactions and much praise. In this article, I attempt to discuss first the global processes of translation and reception of Liu's novels beyond China. I particularly focus on the Orientalist imaginary conveyed by the publication of the trilogy, at a time when Chinese science fiction has become a tool for the Chinese soft power strategy based on the culturalist and nationalist discourse of the "Chinese Dream." I also examine the reception in China of the success of Liu Cixin's translations, and the way in which Chinese media and officials are also engaging in a process of self-Orientalization. In a the second phase, I try to question the task and the strategy of the translators when confronting these Orientalist projections: how does a translator makes himself or herself an accomplice of these fantasies, and how can she/he engage in a post-Orientalist or antiOrientalist approach? This reflection is illustrated by concrete examples from my own translation of Liu Cixin's trilogy into French.

-- Disorienting Politics: Chimerican Media and Transpacific Entanglements by Fan Yang (2024)

Disorienting Politics mines 21st-century media artifacts—including films like The Martian and TV/streaming media shows such as Firefly and House of Cards—to make visible the economic, cultural, political, and ecological entanglements of China and the United States. Describing these transpacific entanglements as “Chimerica”—coined by economic historians to reference the symbiosis of China and America—Yang examines how Chimerican media, originating in the US but traversing national boundaries in their production, circulation, and consumption, co-create the figure of rising China and extend a political imagination beyond the conventional ground of the nation. Examining how Chimerican media are shaped by and perpetuate uneven power relations, Disorienting Politics argues that the pervasive tendency among wide-ranging cultural producers to depict the Chinese state as a racialized Other in American media life diminishes the possibility of engaging transpacific entanglements as a basis for envisioning new political horizons. Such othering of China not only results in overt racism against people of Asian descent, Yang argues, but also impacts the wellbeing of people of color more generally. This interdisciplinary book demonstrates the ways in which race is embedded in geopolitics even when the subject of discussion is not the people, but the (Chinese) state. Bridging media and cultural studies, Asian and Asian American studies, geography, and globalization studies, Disorienting Politics calls for a relational politics that acknowledges the multifarious interconnectivity between people, places, media, and environment.

-- The Historical Roots of Reverse Orientalism and Their Recapitulation in Wo Chang's "England through Chinese Spectacles" (1897) by Michael Hill (Asian Journal of Social Science, vol. 38, no. 5 (2010), p. 677-696)

The reverse Orientalism intrinsic to the "Asian Values" project of the 1980s is shown to have its origins in European thought of a much earlier period. Prominent scholars of the Enlightenment constructed a utopian image of oriental—principally Chinese—society which was deployed in stinging critiques of contemporary Europe. A cumulative inventory of this image is presented. There is a parallel critique of English society in the late nineteenth century in a work by "Wo Chang" which represents a spirited contribution to the literature of reverse Orientalism.

-- Magic, Modernity, and Orientalism: Conjuring representations of Asia by Christopher Goto-Jones (Modern Asian Studies, vol. 48, no. 6 (November 2014), p. 1451-1476)

This article inquires into the cultural and political nexus of secular (stage) magic, modernity, and Orientalism at the turn of the twentieth century. It argues that these three arenas interacted in important and special ways to both shape and reflect the politics of knowledge of the period. In doing so, it draws attention to the ways in which secular magic has been overlooked as a historical phenomenon and highlights its utility in furthering our understanding of the great problematics of modernity and Orientalism; in particular, it suggests that magic actually provides an unusually vibrant and clear lens through which to view the politics of the Other and through which to explore issues of tradition and the modern. Focusing on two historical cases—the 'Indian Rope Trick' challenge issued by the Magic Circle in the 1930s and the astonishing 'duel' between the 'Chinese' magicians Chung Ling Soo and Ching Ling Foo in 1905—this article considers the ways in which discourses of origination, popular ideas about esotericism and the 'mystic East', and questions of technical competence interacted and competed in the culture politics of the early twentieth ce

-- Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era (Sherry Simon, Paul St-Pierre), especially Chapter 2: "Colonization," resistance and the uses of postcolonial translation theory in twentieth-century China (Leo Tak-hung Chan)

this text focuses on translation in the post-colonial era; the second chapter focuses on china, specifically

-- Sinologism in Language Philosophy: A Critique of the Controversy Over Chinese Language by Ming Donggu (Philosophy East and West, vol. 64, no. 3 (July 2014), p. 692-717)

Sinologism is basically a cultural unconscious in China-West studies predicated on an inner logic that operates beyond our conscious awareness but controls the ways of observing China and producing China scholarship. Its logic has exerted a profound impact on studies of Chinese language and writing. Since medieval times the difference between Chinese and Western languages has been viewed as a conceptual divide that separates Chinese and Western traditions. It has motivated scholars to generate a considerable array of ideas, views, and arguments on Chinese language and writing. These dazzling views operate on the logic of Sinologism: conditions of Chinese language are to be investigated from the Western linguistic point of view, and the nature of Chinese writing is to be determined in terms of Western alphabetic languages. This article reexamines the enduring controversy over the nature of Chinese language, especially writing, with the aim to see why the long-lasting debates have come to no satisfactory conclusion. By demonstrating how the epistemology and methodology predicated on phonocentrism and logocentrism in Western metaphysics have evolved into the logic of a language philosophy that manages to misunderstand and misrepresent Chinese language, especially writing, it explores how we can move out of the war of discourse and come to an adequate understanding of the true nature of Chinese language. It suggests that to be self-consciously aware of the hidden logic of Sinologism is the sine qua non for going beyond the war of discourse over Chinese language.

these are just a selection of things that i thought you might find most interesting; there's a fuckton more texts if you search on jstor (i've linked the specific search string that i used!) i hope that these resources are interesting to you, and if you ever want to speak further on the topic, my dms and asks are both open, so don't feel shy!

#ask #c.txt #italics anon

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