#linguistics in progress here

[szappan]

university.. university leave me alone

[hungwy]

that OP imaginably intended it to mean something like this doesn't really overcome the fact that what they're calling a "4th person pronoun" 1. is not a pronoun (someone else pointed this out but, but to push the point further, see that "chatself" doesn't really check out here like "myself", "yourself", "itself", etc. does) and 2. also not really "4th person" in the way they're describing. i dont think its necessary to analyze it like this. in fact, it might be kind of incoherent? if you are talking to or at someone, you are speaking to them in the 2nd person, that's just the definition. if you are talking about someone and not to them, it's the 3rd person. what's happening in sentences like "chat, how are we feeling today?" or "this game sucks, chat" is that chat is 100% being spoken to and thus involved in the conversational situation. they are not "beyond" the conversation. they are being spoken to directly. so clearly these sentences have 2nd person references, but to capture what kind of behavior this is exactly, realize that "chat" is being used as a term of address. to quote the handbook of pragmatics:

Terms of address are the linguistic forms speakers use to refer to their collocutor(s), in the words of Oyetade (1995: 515) “words or expressions used to designate the person being talked to while talk is in progress”. In English, for example, these are words like you, mom, young man, or Professor Snyder.

"You are my best friend." "Mom, I'm home." "Go to your room, young man." "Professor Snyder, sorry I'm late." "I'm not doing that, chat." "You know what happened, my friends?"

[poetic-mac-n-cheese]

Ok I need someone smarter than me to be meta about why John changed Gideon’s name in the way he did. Not that he changed it at all, that one I can understand from his perspective, but specifically why he changed it to something with clear gender markers.

Gideon Nav is perfectly neutral bordering on traditionally masculine, but KirionA gaiA is clearly female. Gaia is literally the feminized version of Gaius according to Latin grammar. In a society of John’s own creation that is apparently past most of our current gender and sexuality norms, how and why would he choose that? Is this another way to show that he’s not as progressive as he thinks he is? Is it about him actually not understanding Gideon at all and forcing her into a weird box? Is there some kind of cultural or linguistic aspect I’m not seeing here? Is it nothing and I’m overthinking? What is going on?

[victoria-writes]

Elvish For Dummies

Pairing: Legolas x Reader (gender neutral)

Summary: Set after the events of LoTR. You live with Legolas in Mirkwood and he teaches you Elvish. Pure fluff.

Word Count: 1039

Notes: Established relationship, reader is human, tried to make the sindarin elvish as accurate as possible so apologies for any mistakes, I’m multilingual so I based this off of my own experience with learning languages 

Read it on AO3 here

Story:

Despite the fellowship having disbanded, each day with Legolas seemed like another adventure. During your perilous journey together, the two of you had grown closer than either of you thought possible. The mere thought of being apart from you pulled at his heartstrings. He could not bear the thought of being separated from his new love. After the one ring was destroyed, the elf invited you to come with him to Mirkwood. Hastily, you agreed, for you too could not wait to start a new life with the elven prince. 

Since reaching Mirkwood, many seasons have passed and you two grow closer by the day. Under his guidance, your archery skills and ability to speak Elvish have improved. He took it upon himself to privately tutor you in the tongue of his people. Legolas still giggles when you fumble certain words on your tongue, but is quick to apologize, never wanting to discourage you. He says you have made remarkable progress and that you possess great linguistic potential. Whether that is true or he is exaggerating with sugar coated words, you cannot tell but it feels good to hear his encouragement either way. 

Most of your days together included walks through the woods and riding horseback, but today was a gloomy rainy day. A day that, Legolas decided, would be a wonderful excuse to help you get back to your studies. It’s not that you did not enjoy Elvish. Oh no! You quite liked hearing him whisper loving words to you as he held your gaze. 

“Meleth nîn, Im tur feel cín emel dring dan sab - My love, I can feel your heartbeat against mine”, he would say as he held you in his arms, his breath dancing upon your skin with each syllable. 

Saying you enjoyed that would be the understatement of the century. Everything in Sindarin sounded like poetry. Even the most mundane sentences were said with purpose and flowered language. Unfortunately for you, that also meant the most basic phrases you had to learn weren’t your typical ones. Instead of “I went to the store”, you had to say “I depart to look for food - Im gwann- na thír an aes”. It seems that most Elvish children learn how to say things like “I can feel it in the earth - Im tur- feel ha in i coe” before they learn “please” and “thank you”. No wonder they all sound prophetic when they speak common. Creepy oracle sounding sentence structure as your first language combined with being thousands of years old will do that. 

“Meleth nîn, you’re drifting off. Shall we return to our lesson or is a break needed?”, Legolas' words break you out of your trance. You look up from your desk, covered in notes, to see him towering above you, eyebrow raised and arms crossed. 

“Apologies, I was merely pondering the linguistic differences between Sindarin and Quenya Elvish”, you quickly come up with the excuse to hide the fact that you were simply not paying attention. 

“Is that so?”, 

“Yes, yes, the distinction between Elvish languages is very interesting to me”.

“This is the third time this lesson you’ve been distracted by those differences”.

“Ah, well…”, you trail off, caught red-handed. 

“Y/N, I will not force you to learn Sindarin if you do not wish it”.

“No, no, no, I want to learn. I promise. It’s all just new to me and takes a moment to sink in. Please, repeat what you said. I’m paying attention”.

Legolas smiles but does not repeat himself. Instead, he moves on to an exercise he is sure will get your attention. 

“We shall review what I have taught you thus far.” 

…

“ Very good, Y/N. Now how would you say ‘the stars shine white’?”

“ I elena mír thilivern” 

“The grass is green?”

“I thár na- calen”        

“Very good pronunciation. You have done well. I believe it is time to learn some new vocabulary”.

You take out a new sheet of paper from your stack, ready to write. 

“You need not write for this portion. Repeat after me.” 

“Okay”. You put your quill down. 

“Meleth nîn.”

“Meleth nîn. I know what that means already. You say it all the time”.

“And what does it mean?”

“My love”, your lips turn upward in a shy smile.  

“Very good. Let us move on then”, he smiles brightly, as if pleasantly surprised despite knowingly fully well that you knew its meaning. 

“I’m ready. Hit me.” 

He suddenly sits down next to you and takes your hands into his own.

“Im mel cin”  

“Im mel cin”  

“Do you know its meaning?”   

“No, should I? I’m sorry.”, your eyes widen as you try to recall whether he had said it before in a previous lesson. 

Legolas throws his head back with laughter. This may be the hardest you’ve ever seen him laugh before… and it’s at you. Great. 

“Apologies. Apologies.”, he manages to get out between giggles, “The look on your face was priceless.” Your face sours at this and Legolas manages to resist a second burst of laughter from it. He thinks you equal parts hilarious and adorable. 

“You would not have known this phrase as I have never spoken it to you before. I do think it is high time for you to learn it”.

“Okay, so what does it mean?”, you scrunch your eyebrows together, ego still a little hurt from being laughed at. 

His grip on your hands tighten but his touch stays gentle as ever. He has always been gentle with you. His gaze holds the same softness. No, even deeper.  The blue of his eyes seem more vibrant and invite you in to look deeper within him. His eyes tell of a love that can never be truly explained in any language. Legolas has always had a staring problem when it comes to you, but this is something different entirely. Your cheeks redden at his seriousness.

“I love you”.

Your eyes widen once more and before you can react, he kisses you. Deeply. Passionately. 

“I love you. I love you. I love you.” he repeats again and again into your lips. 

…

Maybe learning a new language isn’t so bad, if you have the right teacher.

[homunculus-argument]

Linguistic progression and language evolution is genuinely funny sometimes. Like in the 1960s the New Age people started talking about the vibrations in the air emitted by people and things, an aura that they have, something somewhat like the atmosphere, the impression of a person, but totally not the same thing because the vibrations are their own thing, intangible but very real for those who are sensitive to them. And you have to bite your tongue to not tell them that sounds like utter horseshit.

And in the 2020s people post shit online like "yeah me and my friends were supposed to go get pasta at this new place but the vibes were off. They told me I was being ridiculous, this place is fine, but the vibes were bad so I fucked off on my own while they stayed. Two hours later my friend got stabbed in the parking lot."

Survival of the fittest is about fitting into the environment, and words that are most used are the words that are useful. "Vibes" spread and got into common use because it turns out that it really is an useful word. Vibes are a legit thing. Doesn't have anything to do with seeing the colours of peoples' auras, and the extent of your ability to make prophesies and foresee the future is limited to a very rough estimate of how likely you are to get stabbed here. But that is an extremely useful thing to know.

[dedalvs]

I don't think that any of your conlangs are progressive enough to express being trans, but if they were, how would they? What about other gender/sexuality things?

That first clause is quite a thing to say. Languages aren't progressive. Their users may be, but the languages aren't anything. They're just languages. If you mean they're not modern (i.e. a lot of the languages I create are for cultures that are somewhat antiquated compared to our world), this is true, but that doesn't necessarily mean the languages won't have terminology for different gender identities.

There is a major assumption here, though. My understanding (and please do note: I am a cis man; please feel free to correct), cis and trans individuals, as opposed to nonbinary and genderfluid, are similar in that neither have any doubt about what gender they are, identifying with either male or female. So if any language I've created has a word for "man" or "woman", then there's sufficient vocabulary for a trans individual to express their identity that way.

However, there is a terminological difference, and it's both an individual choice and societal preference: Whether to identify as one's chosen gender identity, as trans, or both (e.g. "I am a woman", "I am trans", or "I am a trans woman"—and then preferring to use one of those or all of those, or some other combination of the three). My personal language preference (as a user and language creator) is fewer distinctions are better (why have three third person singular pronouns—or four or twelve—when you can have one?), because it's less to memorize, less work to use, and demands less specificity of the user—and allows the hearer/reader to make fewer assumptions. Unless the situation calls for it (e.g. the gender system hard-coded into Ravkan in Shadow & Bone), I prefer lumping rather than splitting. This is especially useful as I'm often not in charge of the culture I create languages for.

For example, the languages I've created for A Song of Ice and Fire were for cultures created and maintained by George R. R. Martin. Whatever cultural innovations I have made in creating the languages are, at best, pending—that is, true until George R. R. Martin says otherwise, which he is free to do at any time, as it's his world. As a result, I don't feel confident enough to say what life is like for a trans individual in his world, and how that might be reflected in the languages there. There's simply not enough information.

Where I might be in charge of the culture, you do know my preference now (i.e. fewer distinctions), but, as I am not trans, I'd prefer to leave it to the trans community to decide, and then do what I can to support those decisions linguistically (i.e. to make it work within the language). Any term chosen highlights some aspect of the experience while downplaying others. In English, trans, coming from transition, highlights the change from one identity to another. Other ideas for how to come up with a term might be using a root that refers to "true", highlighting the transition to one's true gender expression. Perhaps another root to look for would be "choose", framing it as one's chosen gender expression—IF one wishes to look at it that way.

In many ways, both the term and the experience are highly individual, and it's difficult to come up with a blanket term and say "this is the term". It's especially difficult since this isn't a life experience I share. It feels both disingenuous and a bit icky to come up with a term to describe an experience that is decidedly not my own.

My own preference in this regard is a twofold approach:

Allow trans users of whatever language to figure out what term works for them, and then support them in creating a term that obeys the various language rules (i.e. the phonology is correct, derived words are derived correctly, etc.). Those users, however, will be operating under the same "rules" that I operate under, e.g. the one who's creating the culture has the final say, if they care to weigh in, and so the result may end up not being canon, at which point it's up to the user to decide whether they care or not. (Note: I shouldn't have to explain it here on Tumblr, but, of course, you don't have to care if the creator of the canon says something isn't so, no matter how many billions they have.)

Allow polysemy. There will never be a term that is THE term. It may be an individual's preferred term, but someone else may like another, in which case it should be allowed.

A very important language-specific note (and the same is true of fandom, generally). By agreeing to work within a language, we're essentially agreeing to rules of a game. The rules can always be broken. When rules are broken, the question language users have to answer is if they've been broken so egregiously that they're no longer playing the game, or if it's fine. For example, if you look at fanfic, there's plenty of fanfic with gender-swapped characters, or the same characters in a radically different setting. Some readers may decide they don't want the characters to be gender-swapped. Others may decide that if it's not in the same setting they're not interested. And that's fine! Both the writers and the readers are deciding which rules of the game can be broken while still calling it the same game. This works very, very well so long as no one gets mad at anyone else. If someone says, "I don't enjoy this because it breaks the rules in a way that ruins my enjoyment", that's perfectly fine. If that same person says, "You're not allowed to break the rules in this way", that's not fine.

So hopefully this all makes sense. And, furthermore, when I say I want to support those who wish to create their own terms, I do mean it. If anyone has suggestions or needs help coining a possible word, feel free to message me! But do bear (2) above in mind. I'm not going to say any term is THE term, and have that be the end of it. It'll be one possibility amongst a rainbow of possibilities.

[xxscarletxrosexx]

A Linguistic Analysis of the Spelling Names "Ania" and "Anya" (and the chapter and languages of Ostania)

This includes spoilers from Short Mission 11, or Chapter 90.1

It's not a secret that Anya's (Ania) name change was officialized along with Loid (Lloyd) and Yor (Yoru/Yolanda) in July 2019. I do recall that our loveable Forger family had different spellings in the early manga releases. Many believed that it was Endo-san's way to cover up the spelling mistake, but I believe that, whether or not the origin and/or intention was a mistake, it paved a beautiful opportunity for a deep dive into linguistics and character analysis on Anya Forger.

First, I'd like to address my thoughts on "ANIA" as the spelling. Here are a few of my impressions on this:

"ANIA" could be perceived as her original spelling because wherever she came from used this spelling.

"ANIA" could just be her limitation as a child when it came to spelling her name.

"ANIA" could be an acronym from her lab that probably served the purpose of her existence.

"ANIA" could be the name of her mother/creator. And she was subjected to share the same name of her creator for "sourcing" purposes.

"ANIA" when applied to numerology number, reinforced her code name which is 007 (which is super meta to me, but probably is a coincidence because we all know 007 was Endo's way of referencing James Bond). S/O to @momentocollector for sharing this!

Second, I'd like to address "ANIA" as an identity for our precious baby girl.

"Ania" is the chosen spelling. This could possibly mean that this is her real name and how it should be spelled (You, as the owner of your name have every right to decide what your name should be, spelled, or pronounced after all).

"Ania" could possibly be an influence of either her mother-tongue language's spelling.

"Ania" could possibly be due to her limitation of spelling. (I don't think she is aware of how her name should be spelled.)

Recall that Yor carved out Anya's name as "Ania" and didn't question it. This could be a reflection of Yor's own lack of familiarity of Ostanian orthography since she is academically limited, and she would have listened to how Anya would have wanted her name to be spelled. Furthermore, this tells me that Yor's absence of questioning reflects that she accepts her daughter no matter who she is, be it "Ania" or "Anya".

Third, I'd like to address "ANYA" as her name's spelling.

"A-N-Y-A" is the spelling that her papa gave her, which tells her that she can now be on the same playing field as her parents. Their names and titles are all "masks" in this masquerade that they call "Forger". So, to little Anya, it means that she finally belongs with someone. Anya has essentially found "her home".

We also know that Franky did do a lot of paperwork and found that "Anya" is the spelling that was written down on her adoption papers. This reinforces that "Anya" is the standard Ostanian orthography of her name.

I perceive Loid as a person replicating the "average Ostanian" (since this is a deep cover mission after all), so to also tell her that her name is spelled a certain way reinforces that she has a new identity as an "Ostanian child". (I find this quite ironically poetic because it's a "fake man" giving a "fake name" to his "fake daughter").

I also see that when Anya's eyes light up, it could also mean that this new identity in her spelling change meant she was finally liberated from her days as a lab experiment and living in an orphanage.

Fourth, I'd like to address spelling etymology.

Since I'm not a Japanese linguist expert, I found @connoisseursdecomfort post to be quite educational when it came to Japanese spelling.

What we learn from the above post is that "Ania" is an acceptable name spelling in "Old Japanese". But as time progressed, the spelling changed to "Anya" which is the modern-day spelling of this name (this may tie into Anya's character lore).

We can track "i" becomes "y" in the evolution of the alphabet from Phoenician (c. 1000 BC) to Archaeic Greek (c. 750 BC). S/O to @rachellysebrook for this link. (Again, what this reinforces is Anya's background with an unidentified mother country/mother tongue language).

Another thing is that Yor Forger did not react to the spelling of "Ania". It could possibly be that she recognized Anya's limitation, given that her daughter already had poor scores since her admission.

We also learned that Yor, a real Ostanian, seems to be limited with Ostanian orthography which is most likely due to her dropping out of school to take care of Yuri (fake Ostanian /j). From her interaction with Anya, off-screen, it appears that Yor seems indifferent to spelling standards of names (Which is nice! She is subtly against society's norm and I love her for that). Had she been aware of the spelling, she would have been the one to ask instead of Loid. (But again, it must be Loid because it's poetic and has a much more meaningful interaction between "Loid" and "Anya").

Fifth, I'd like to address the name's (possible) impact on character purpose in the story.

"Anya" means mother in Hungarian (S/O to @httplovecraft1890. This inspired my thoughts on "Ania" as a name in the lab). Could this possibly be an inspiration or coincidence? It could be a stretch, but perhaps Anya's purpose in the lab is that she's a "mother weapon" for war.

"Ania" means "gracious" and "merciful" according to Google. Which makes me think that the lab scientists went with this name because it would represent her purpose as a weapon of war. Perhaps Ania becomes the "truth serum" and could be seen as the "angel of death" because she knows the war captor's thoughts and inevitably they are executed (a possible headcanon).

Sixth, I'd like to discuss the factors of the mysterious "unidentified language".

Anya did use "oui" in the anime when Loid had adopted her. This automatically made me think her possible origins could be French, but it could also take another step back in the language family: Romance. What makes this work is that we treat "Classical Language" as a dead language based on what we read/saw in the manga/anime like Latin. Anya has an innate potential to be bi-/multilingual.

Bonus: Seventh, I'd like to talk about the languages in this anime (This is a bit of a ramble but since we're talking about linguistics, I thought why not)...

Based on the dialogues spoken in the anime, we can confirm that English exclamatory (Oh my God, Goddammit, Shit, Wow, Elegant, etc.) and the Japanese language are the main components of the Ostanian language. This is reinforced by many characters who have used English expressions (Loid, Yuri, Yor, Anya, Damian, Henderson, etc.)

What does bug me is whether or not "oui", a French exclamatory, should be categorized as part of the Ostanian language or if that should be categorized for Anya's hidden lore. The reason is that when Loid/Twilight heard Anya say "oui" in front of him, he did not question it. (Perhaps he was too tired to process this, or he excused it as something Anya could have seen on TV and is merely mimicking. I really don't think Twilight would be the type to excuse this realization had he not had the aforementioned state of mind). I'm leaning more towards the latter as this is from Anya's mother tongue language.

In conclusion (or tldr;): "Ania" may be her real name, but "Anya" is her new identity as part of the Forgers.

If you read everything, thank you for your time! The linguist in me is so happy that Endo-san is steeping his foot into linguistic territory. As short as this chapter was, it said A LOT to me linguistically and provided more details to the scraps of lore that we know of Anya but it also tells us a bit more about Yor, Loid/Twilight, and Ostania.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

"Open" "AI" isn’t

Tomorrow (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

The crybabies who freak out about The Communist Manifesto appearing on university curriculum clearly never read it – chapter one is basically a long hymn to capitalism's flexibility and inventiveness, its ability to change form and adapt itself to everything the world throws at it and come out on top:

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm#007

Today, leftists signal this protean capacity of capital with the -washing suffix: greenwashing, genderwashing, queerwashing, wokewashing – all the ways capital cloaks itself in liberatory, progressive values, while still serving as a force for extraction, exploitation, and political corruption.

A smart capitalist is someone who, sensing the outrage at a world run by 150 old white guys in boardrooms, proposes replacing half of them with women, queers, and people of color. This is a superficial maneuver, sure, but it's an incredibly effective one.

In "Open (For Business): Big Tech, Concentrated Power, and the Political Economy of Open AI," a new working paper, Meredith Whittaker, David Gray Widder and Sarah B Myers document a new kind of -washing: openwashing:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4543807

Openwashing is the trick that large "AI" companies use to evade regulation and neutralizing critics, by casting themselves as forces of ethical capitalism, committed to the virtue of openness. No one should be surprised to learn that the products of the "open" wing of an industry whose products are neither "artificial," nor "intelligent," are also not "open." Every word AI huxters say is a lie; including "and," and "the."

So what work does the "open" in "open AI" do? "Open" here is supposed to invoke the "open" in "open source," a movement that emphasizes a software development methodology that promotes code transparency, reusability and extensibility, which are three important virtues.

But "open source" itself is an offshoot of a more foundational movement, the Free Software movement, whose goal is to promote freedom, and whose method is openness. The point of software freedom was technological self-determination, the right of technology users to decide not just what their technology does, but who it does it to and who it does it for:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

The open source split from free software was ostensibly driven by the need to reassure investors and businesspeople so they would join the movement. The "free" in free software is (deliberately) ambiguous, a bit of wordplay that sometimes misleads people into thinking it means "Free as in Beer" when really it means "Free as in Speech" (in Romance languages, these distinctions are captured by translating "free" as "libre" rather than "gratis").

The idea behind open source was to rebrand free software in a less ambiguous – and more instrumental – package that stressed cost-savings and software quality, as well as "ecosystem benefits" from a co-operative form of development that recruited tinkerers, independents, and rivals to contribute to a robust infrastructural commons.

But "open" doesn't merely resolve the linguistic ambiguity of libre vs gratis – it does so by removing the "liberty" from "libre," the "freedom" from "free." "Open" changes the pole-star that movement participants follow as they set their course. Rather than asking "Which course of action makes us more free?" they ask, "Which course of action makes our software better?"

Thus, by dribs and drabs, the freedom leeches out of openness. Today's tech giants have mobilized "open" to create a two-tier system: the largest tech firms enjoy broad freedom themselves – they alone get to decide how their software stack is configured. But for all of us who rely on that (increasingly unavoidable) software stack, all we have is "open": the ability to peer inside that software and see how it works, and perhaps suggest improvements to it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBknF2yUZZ8

In the Big Tech internet, it's freedom for them, openness for us. "Openness" – transparency, reusability and extensibility – is valuable, but it shouldn't be mistaken for technological self-determination. As the tech sector becomes ever-more concentrated, the limits of openness become more apparent.

But even by those standards, the openness of "open AI" is thin gruel indeed (that goes triple for the company that calls itself "OpenAI," which is a particularly egregious openwasher).

The paper's authors start by suggesting that the "open" in "open AI" is meant to imply that an "open AI" can be scratch-built by competitors (or even hobbyists), but that this isn't true. Not only is the material that "open AI" companies publish insufficient for reproducing their products, even if those gaps were plugged, the resource burden required to do so is so intense that only the largest companies could do so.

Beyond this, the "open" parts of "open AI" are insufficient for achieving the other claimed benefits of "open AI": they don't promote auditing, or safety, or competition. Indeed, they often cut against these goals.

"Open AI" is a wordgame that exploits the malleability of "open," but also the ambiguity of the term "AI": "a grab bag of approaches, not… a technical term of art, but more … marketing and a signifier of aspirations." Hitching this vague term to "open" creates all kinds of bait-and-switch opportunities.

That's how you get Meta claiming that LLaMa2 is "open source," despite being licensed in a way that is absolutely incompatible with any widely accepted definition of the term:

https://blog.opensource.org/metas-llama-2-license-is-not-open-source/

LLaMa-2 is a particularly egregious openwashing example, but there are plenty of other ways that "open" is misleadingly applied to AI: sometimes it means you can see the source code, sometimes that you can see the training data, and sometimes that you can tune a model, all to different degrees, alone and in combination.

But even the most "open" systems can't be independently replicated, due to raw computing requirements. This isn't the fault of the AI industry – the computational intensity is a fact, not a choice – but when the AI industry claims that "open" will "democratize" AI, they are hiding the ball. People who hear these "democratization" claims (especially policymakers) are thinking about entrepreneurial kids in garages, but unless these kids have access to multi-billion-dollar data centers, they can't be "disruptors" who topple tech giants with cool new ideas. At best, they can hope to pay rent to those giants for access to their compute grids, in order to create products and services at the margin that rely on existing products, rather than displacing them.

The "open" story, with its claims of democratization, is an especially important one in the context of regulation. In Europe, where a variety of AI regulations have been proposed, the AI industry has co-opted the open source movement's hard-won narrative battles about the harms of ill-considered regulation.

For open source (and free software) advocates, many tech regulations aimed at taming large, abusive companies – such as requirements to surveil and control users to extinguish toxic behavior – wreak collateral damage on the free, open, user-centric systems that we see as superior alternatives to Big Tech. This leads to the paradoxical effect of passing regulation to "punish" Big Tech that end up simply shaving an infinitesimal percentage off the giants' profits, while destroying the small co-ops, nonprofits and startups before they can grow to be a viable alternative.

The years-long fight to get regulators to understand this risk has been waged by principled actors working for subsistence nonprofit wages or for free, and now the AI industry is capitalizing on lawmakers' hard-won consideration for collateral damage by claiming to be "open AI" and thus vulnerable to overbroad regulation.

But the "open" projects that lawmakers have been coached to value are precious because they deliver a level playing field, competition, innovation and democratization – all things that "open AI" fails to deliver. The regulations the AI industry is fighting also don't necessarily implicate the speech implications that are core to protecting free software:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-established-code-speech

Just think about LLaMa-2. You can download it for free, along with the model weights it relies on – but not detailed specs for the data that was used in its training. And the source-code is licensed under a homebrewed license cooked up by Meta's lawyers, a license that only glancingly resembles anything from the Open Source Definition:

https://opensource.org/osd/

Core to Big Tech companies' "open AI" offerings are tools, like Meta's PyTorch and Google's TensorFlow. These tools are indeed "open source," licensed under real OSS terms. But they are designed and maintained by the companies that sponsor them, and optimize for the proprietary back-ends each company offers in its own cloud. When programmers train themselves to develop in these environments, they are gaining expertise in adding value to a monopolist's ecosystem, locking themselves in with their own expertise. This a classic example of software freedom for tech giants and open source for the rest of us.

One way to understand how "open" can produce a lock-in that "free" might prevent is to think of Android: Android is an open platform in the sense that its sourcecode is freely licensed, but the existence of Android doesn't make it any easier to challenge the mobile OS duopoly with a new mobile OS; nor does it make it easier to switch from Android to iOS and vice versa.

Another example: MongoDB, a free/open database tool that was adopted by Amazon, which subsequently forked the codebase and tuning it to work on their proprietary cloud infrastructure.

The value of open tooling as a stickytrap for creating a pool of developers who end up as sharecroppers who are glued to a specific company's closed infrastructure is well-understood and openly acknowledged by "open AI" companies. Zuckerberg boasts about how PyTorch ropes developers into Meta's stack, "when there are opportunities to make integrations with products, [so] it’s much easier to make sure that developers and other folks are compatible with the things that we need in the way that our systems work."

Tooling is a relatively obscure issue, primarily debated by developers. A much broader debate has raged over training data – how it is acquired, labeled, sorted and used. Many of the biggest "open AI" companies are totally opaque when it comes to training data. Google and OpenAI won't even say how many pieces of data went into their models' training – let alone which data they used.

Other "open AI" companies use publicly available datasets like the Pile and CommonCrawl. But you can't replicate their models by shoveling these datasets into an algorithm. Each one has to be groomed – labeled, sorted, de-duplicated, and otherwise filtered. Many "open" models merge these datasets with other, proprietary sets, in varying (and secret) proportions.

Quality filtering and labeling for training data is incredibly expensive and labor-intensive, and involves some of the most exploitative and traumatizing clickwork in the world, as poorly paid workers in the Global South make pennies for reviewing data that includes graphic violence, rape, and gore.

Not only is the product of this "data pipeline" kept a secret by "open" companies, the very nature of the pipeline is likewise cloaked in mystery, in order to obscure the exploitative labor relations it embodies (the joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians" comes out of the South Asian clickwork industry).

The most common "open" in "open AI" is a model that arrives built and trained, which is "open" in the sense that end-users can "fine-tune" it – usually while running it on the manufacturer's own proprietary cloud hardware, under that company's supervision and surveillance. These tunable models are undocumented blobs, not the rigorously peer-reviewed transparent tools celebrated by the open source movement.

If "open" was a way to transform "free software" from an ethical proposition to an efficient methodology for developing high-quality software; then "open AI" is a way to transform "open source" into a rent-extracting black box.

Some "open AI" has slipped out of the corporate silo. Meta's LLaMa was leaked by early testers, republished on 4chan, and is now in the wild. Some exciting stuff has emerged from this, but despite this work happening outside of Meta's control, it is not without benefits to Meta. As an infamous leaked Google memo explains:

Paradoxically, the one clear winner in all of this is Meta. Because the leaked model was theirs, they have effectively garnered an entire planet's worth of free labor. Since most open source innovation is happening on top of their architecture, there is nothing stopping them from directly incorporating it into their products.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com/leaked-google-memo-admits-defeat-by-open-source-ai/486290/

Thus, "open AI" is best understood as "as free product development" for large, well-capitalized AI companies, conducted by tinkerers who will not be able to escape these giants' proprietary compute silos and opaque training corpuses, and whose work product is guaranteed to be compatible with the giants' own systems.

The instrumental story about the virtues of "open" often invoke auditability: the fact that anyone can look at the source code makes it easier for bugs to be identified. But as open source projects have learned the hard way, the fact that anyone can audit your widely used, high-stakes code doesn't mean that anyone will.

The Heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL was a wake-up call for the open source movement – a bug that endangered every secure webserver connection in the world, which had hidden in plain sight for years. The result was an admirable and successful effort to build institutions whose job it is to actually make use of open source transparency to conduct regular, deep, systemic audits.

In other words, "open" is a necessary, but insufficient, precondition for auditing. But when the "open AI" movement touts its "safety" thanks to its "auditability," it fails to describe any steps it is taking to replicate these auditing institutions – how they'll be constituted, funded and directed. The story starts and ends with "transparency" and then makes the unjustifiable leap to "safety," without any intermediate steps about how the one will turn into the other.

It's a Magic Underpants Gnome story, in other words:

Step One: Transparency

Step Two: ??

Step Three: Safety

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ih_TQWqCA

Meanwhile, OpenAI itself has gone on record as objecting to "burdensome mechanisms like licenses or audits" as an impediment to "innovation" – all the while arguing that these "burdensome mechanisms" should be mandatory for rival offerings that are more advanced than its own. To call this a "transparent ruse" is to do violence to good, hardworking transparent ruses all the world over:

https://openai.com/blog/governance-of-superintelligence

Some "open AI" is much more open than the industry dominating offerings. There's EleutherAI, a donor-supported nonprofit whose model comes with documentation and code, licensed Apache 2.0. There are also some smaller academic offerings: Vicuna (UCSD/CMU/Berkeley); Koala (Berkeley) and Alpaca (Stanford).

These are indeed more open (though Alpaca – which ran on a laptop – had to be withdrawn because it "hallucinated" so profusely). But to the extent that the "open AI" movement invokes (or cares about) these projects, it is in order to brandish them before hostile policymakers and say, "Won't someone please think of the academics?" These are the poster children for proposals like exempting AI from antitrust enforcement, but they're not significant players in the "open AI" industry, nor are they likely to be for so long as the largest companies are running the show:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4493900

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[room-surprise]

Progress on the Dungeon Meshi cultural and linguistic analysis essay...

We're at 112 pages lads. Here's the chapter titles. The organization and flow is finally starting to really congeal...

(Yes, the elves have 3 damn chapters. Yes, Mithrun has his own chapter lmao)

[rubyarrows]

Unspoken Bonds

YN leaned against the filing cabinet, her fingers absently tapping a rhythm as she watched the bustling activity in the BAU bullpen. The team was working on their latest case, heads buried in folders and computers. She had been assisting the Behavioral Analysis Unit as a linguistics consultant for a few months now, and despite her initial trepidation, she'd come to appreciate the sense of camaraderie within the team.

Luke Alvez, with his rugged charm and friendly demeanor, had been one of the first to make her feel welcome. Their relationship was entirely platonic, a surprising and refreshing change for her, given her previous experiences. Luke's presence was comforting; she could always count on his lighthearted banter and genuine interest in her work.

YN's thoughts were interrupted when Luke appeared by her side, a cup of coffee in hand and a playful grin on his face. "Hey, YN. Long night?"

She chuckled softly. "Yeah, you could say that. The nuances of syntax and semantics don't unravel themselves easily, you know."

He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. "And here I was, thinking language just flowed effortlessly."

"Next time, just give me a heads up," she replied, rolling her eyes with a smile. It had become something of an inside joke between them. Whenever one of them faced a particularly challenging task, they'd playfully remind each other to provide a warning in advance.

As they chatted about the case and their progress, the rest of the team noticed their interaction. Penelope Garcia, the tech-savvy genius, sent a mischievous wink their way from her computer station. Rossi, the seasoned profiler, walked over with a knowing smile, his hands clasped behind his back.

"Am I interrupting something?" Rossi asked, his tone light.

Luke shook his head, taking a sip of his coffee. "Nah, just helping YN navigate the intricate web of language."

YN shot Luke a playful glare. "Oh, don't make it sound so dramatic. I'll figure it out eventually."

Rossi chuckled. "I have no doubt about that. Luke, don't distract our consultant too much. We've got a puzzle to solve."

Luke saluted Rossi playfully. "Yes, sir. Back to work, YN."

As Rossi walked away, YN couldn't help but feel a warmth in her chest. This team was more than just colleagues; they were a quirky, caring family. Luke's presence was like a steady anchor in the midst of their intense work, a reminder that they were all in this together.

Later that evening, as they wrapped up for the day, Luke approached YN again. "Hey, there's a new cafe that opened up down the street. I heard they have amazing pastries. Care to join me tomorrow morning?"

YN smiled, feeling genuinely touched. "Sure, sounds great. Just give me a heads up about the time."

Luke laughed, recognizing the callback to their ongoing joke. "Will do. See you tomorrow then."

As YN packed up her things, she realized how much she had come to value Luke's friendship. In a world often dominated by unspoken tensions and hidden agendas, their platonic relationship was a breath of fresh air. She looked forward to their coffee date tomorrow, knowing that whatever challenges lay ahead, having Luke as a friend made everything a little bit easier to bear.

[hamsterclaw]

Fic Library: Jimin

Lost and Found by @kimvtae. An idolverse AU featuring Jimin as a problematic idol who gets sent for rehab in America, where he meets reader. Beautiful writing and reformed bad boy Jimin is characterised so well here.

Adonis by @xjoonchildx. Jimin's a hot paramedic who you meet with a little help from the little old lady next door. Funny, cute and written in Ana's incomparable style.

Put it on me by @jimilter features models Jimin and reader on a shoot and it's laugh out loud funny, snappy and smutty. So so good.

La Grande Maison by @softyoongiionly features Jimin x reader and is a mystery/thriller with great scene-setting and beautifully realised friendships.

I know a place by @augustbutwinter has Jimin and a gender-neutral reader in a sweet pining story about unrequited love.

Fall like moondrops by @madbutgloriouspond is a beautiful story set in a just-post-college AU featuring a dancer Jimin who's determined, sweet, and an all-round decent guy. It captures the end-of-summer vibe and apprehension about upcoming change perfectly.

Devil's in the backseat by @ugh-yoongi is a sexy, smutty tale with banter that's sparky and so so funny, featuring Jimin x f! reader in an established relationship.

Headrush (It's too sweet) by the uber-talented @minisugakoobies is a spiky, sexy, fun, headrush featuring stylist reader and idol Jimin.

Neon Seoul by @readyplayerhobi has a noir murder mystery set in a cyberpunk dystopia and features detectives Jimin x reader. The worldbuilding is stellar.

Make an offer by @bangtanintotheroom features an irresistibly sexy Jimin in a sugar daddy/sugar baby AU.

Of stars erased by @fantasybangtan. I'm a sucker for dystopian future AUs, and this is a story that makes me reflect on how lucky I am to be able to read stories like this, for free. Incredible storytelling by a fantastic writer.

An Ghealach by @theharrowing is sexy horror at it's best. A haunting, ambiguous, unreliable-narrator tale featuring linguist Jimin and a mysterious OC.

Like Crazy by @thatlongspringnight is a beautifully realised story about loneliness and seeking solace in transience that features Jimin x f! reader.

Blunt Rotation by @gimmethatagustd is a law school AU featuring pretty boy Jimin and weed girl reader. Funny, chaotic and razor sharp.

Weight by @augustbutwinter features Jimin x f! reader and is set in a semi-historical, royal AU, where nothing is quite as it seems.

Menace by @eoieopda features Jimin x Kim! reader in an irresistible relationship dynamic characterised by brattiness and hate sex and a Jimin who lives up to the title of the story. So so good.

The airport couple: P(ass)enger from hell by @dovechim features frequent traveller Jimin and TSA agent reader and is so good I've reread it time and again. Cracky, hilarious and Jimin is perfectly written as an outrageous little shit.

On the borderline by @jimilter is a friends to lovers AU in progress that's a super fun read - deliciously smutty, angsty and infused with Ash's signature brand of humour.

Red flag by @xjoonchildx has rich boy Jimin x reader in a witty, sparkling smutty caper that's a romp of a read.

Shadows in the graveyard by @minisugakoobies is sexy, kitschy, schlocky horror at it's best featuring reader x Jimin stranded in the woods.

[ihatebrainstorm]

What are ur thoughts on IDW Prowl?

Just a lil curious :3

ohhohhhhehhehahhehahh...

Alright, first off: I'm horrid at explaining my thoughts cohesively in words, so this is gonna have a lot of me scribbling, yelling, and virtually shaking you back and forth, but just bare with me here as I commit crimes against linguistics...

HE'S SUCH A PRICK. A GENUINE PRICK, SUCH A FRIKIN THORN UP THE ASS I HATE LOVE HIM SO DAMN MUCH. Smug asshole probably was cited in the definition of the word "jerk", he's just sooo,,,, HHHHGRGG- Exactly the type of character where you love him, but you still cheer when karma comes around the corner and serves him 5 star yelped review can of "whoopass to the face" y'know???? Sometimes he deserves it, sometimes he doesn't, but either way you feel god awful when he shows vulnerability or starts feeling regret.. To a point where it almost feels that subconsciously, I'd rather he be a one dimensional villain type character just to avoid him being hurt? If that makes sense?

He's somehow such an asshole, but such an endearing one at the same time?? His dialogue delivery is so comedic in a way where it seems like he's severely lacking self awareness, but because of who he is you can't tell if he's doing that on purpose to get a rise out of someone gaghhh- The king, the master, and seasoned veteran of "Holy Crap You Should Not Have Said That To Their Face"

But he's also so sad?? The way you watch as former close associates lose trust in him as the story progresses, his realization of said fact, the trauma he sustains from having his mind be exposed/controlled multiple times over, watching as even Optimus turns his back on him, that whole Tarantulas fiasco, etc. etc. It really hurts watching his slow, meandering descent into isolation

He makes me want to aggressively throw him on a couch using a trebuchet before layering him in cozy blankets, the number of which would rival the princess and the pea's mattress count- I just,,, desperately want him to catch a break and relax a bit,,,,,

but also it'd be really funny if someone bolted his table into the floor. I'm just saying......

(Hopefully that was cohesive enough? I dunno maybe my memory is a bit warped and my perception of him is all wonky? It's been a hot minute since I've read the earlier IDW comics skdfks- Either way, agree or disagree, these be my thoughts on him.. minus all the cut out aggressive screaming and table pounding)

[korstudying]

🌸🌼🌸 30-Day Journey to Korean Language Mastery! 🌸🌼🌸

Hey there language lovers! Are you ready for an exciting adventure in learning Korean at a more intermediate level? 🇰🇷✨ In this 30-day study schedule, we'll dive into some juicy grammar topics that'll take your Korean skills to the next level. Ready to embark on this language adventure? Let's rock this 30-day challenge together! Happy studying and remember, every step counts on the road to Korean language mastery! 화이팅! 💪✨

Week 1: Verb Modification and Advanced Sentence Structures Day 1: Time to dust off those honorifics and level up your respect game! Show some love to those verbs with various honorific verb endings. Day 2-3: Let's express our wishes and assumptions with "았/었으면 좋겠다" (I wish I had) and "-(으)ㄹ 텐데" (I suppose, I think). Wishful thinking, here we come! 🌠 Day 4-5: No more doubts about "have to" or "can do"! Master "-아/어/여야 하다" (have to, must) and "-아/어/여도 되다" (can, may). Day 6-7: Weave your magic into sentences with various verb modifications and advanced structures using the things you've studied the past few days.

Week 2: Subjunctive and Concessive Expressions Day 8-9: Curiosity piqued? Delve into "-아/어/여 보다" (try to do) and "-아/어/여지다" (become something). Adventure awaits! 🚀 Day 10-11: Unveil the power of "even if" with "-더라도" and the allure of "either" with "-든지". Day 12-13: Embrace "no matter how much someone says" with "아무리~-(으)라고 해도" and the certainty of "regardless of" with "-든간에". Day 14: Take a deep breath and look back on the amazing grammar points we've conquered so far! You're soaring to new heights! 🦅

Week 3: Advanced Particles and Connectives Day 15-16: Adventure calls! Set out on "-을 테니까" (since I will) and navigate "-느라고" (because of, due to). Day 17-18: Embrace the twists and turns of "-를 지경이다" (to the extent of) and "-는바람에" (because of, on account of). The path may be challenging, but you're up for it! Day 19-20: "Even if it's tough, let's do it!" Dive into "-아/어/여서라도" and "might have to do" with "-아/어/여야 할지도 모르다". Day 21: Let's take a moment to bask in the glory of the grammar points we've mastered in Week 1 to Week 3. Proud language learners unite! 🌟

Week 4: Expressing Intention and Assumptions Day 22-23: Master the art of expressing intentions with "기로 하다" (decide to do) and "으려던 참이다" (was about to do). Your plans are set in motion! Day 24-25: Delve into assumptions with "ㄴ/는다고 하다" (heard that) and "ㄹ/을 것 같다" (seems like). The mystery unfolds! 🔍 Day 26-27: Let's get speculative with "것 같으면서" (while feeling like) and "(으)니까" (since, because). The intrigue continues! 🕵️‍♂️ Day 28: Embrace your linguistic prowess as you navigate the subtleties of intention and assumptions. Let's recap the past few days!

Week 5: Advanced Particles and Expressions Day 29-30: Explore the nuances of "만에 하다" (to do after a long time) and "아니면서도" (although, even though). Time to fine-tune your expressions! Day 31: Reflect on your incredible progress and pat yourself on the back for conquering advanced grammar structures. You've come so far, and there's no stopping you now! 🎉

[corvid-language-library]

A brief introduction

Hello! 👋🏻

I'm not new to tumblr or langblr (you may know me as nordic-language-love), but I've decided to make a new blog for a whole host of reasons. And it's only courteous to have an introduction post when ones makes a new blog, isn't it?

👩🏻 You can call me Victoria

🎂 I'm in my 30s

🇯🇵 Originally I'm from the UK, but I currently live in Japan (Tohoku) where I teach English

🇳🇴 Learning Norwegian and Japanese. Japanese is currently my main focus for obvious reasons, but Norwegian will always be my fave <3

🗣 Other languages I'm interested in: Finnish, Icelandic, Spanish, Irish, Korean, Ukrainian, Tswana, Cornish and French

💬 Big linguistics fan too (etymology my beloved)

📚 I'm an aspiring bookworm. My favourite genres are fantasy and sci-fi (with a lil YA sprinkled in there). Find my 2024 TBR here.

📝 I also write! Getting something published someday would be nice, but I'm more focused on just having fun. I write primarily fantasy.

🩰 I practice yoga (intermediate level) and ballet (total beginner)

🧠 I'm neurodivergent. I have no official diagnosis yet but I have been referred for an assessment. I'm 99% sure I have ADHD (probably combined, possibly just inattentive) and autism's been suggested as well.

✉️ I'm shit at replying to messages. If I never get back to you please don't take it personally!

More about this blog

This blog is gonna be a bit of a mix of all my hobbies and interests because I can't be bothered to run like 5 different sideblogs anymore. However, my main interests that I'll be posting about are languages and reading.

I have a fitblr for my diet and fitness shenanigans! You can follow me on @flyingfitandsugarfree

I go through phases of posting original content, but I mostly post about my own journey and whatever random thoughts pop into my head

I try to post language learning logs once a week, where I kinda summarise what I've been working on and what progress I've made

Because I live in Japan, I sometimes like to post about my life there and how it differs from life in the UK

I don't really do aesthetic posts. Most of what I post is wordy and boring lmao

If you feel like being my friend, give me a follow! I'd love to get to know you :)

My 2024 Goals

[snackugaki]

... my ass actually got like 6+ images deep before realizing i hadn't posted shit-- oops

my tmnt  iteration (where everyone made it past their 20s, splinter’s alive just old, venus is here, and they deserve some goddamn respite and shenanigans)

tmnt  iteration part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6 | part 7 | part 8 | part 9 | part 10

tmnt  iteration omake 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

lny visit 1 | 2

IDW spoilers below, teeechnically Mirage & Next Mutation spoilers too ig?

blah blah blabbering because that's one of the many things you can do on tumblr.com

bloopity bloopin, turtles all being traded on the black market as pets, medicine, or decor to be... "prepared". 'cept Jennika, keeping her IDW origin because it's badass and I like it. eco vigilantes freed them one fateful night, same night someone(s) stole some mutagen for a rival company to TGRI, boom collided in their getaway routes, away floated Venus just like in NM and some others who lalala may or may not be some mutanimals

playing mostly with coloring, Rise introducing markings is such a nice and refreshing change from the all sam green turtle, different bandana color turtles I grew up with. fanon taking that concept and applying it in conjunction with actual turtle colorings also scratches my visdev brain node just so

hm... still fiddling with their plastrons... Venus' and Jennika's are fine though

Leo

funky li'l ringed map turtle

can't see it but, he got them little ridgey-spikies on his shell

christ, I'm finding a way to attach Iris symbolism to him, either through markings or something else

Iris in hanakotoba is... basically all Leo; nobility, bravery, honor, courage, heavy samurai association

5'2"

Raph

McCord's or Amboina box turtle idk idk idk can't choose

stuck on coloring him with a scale mail feeling to match the box turtle photos I found

....I needa draw him beefier, he can stand to be beefier

5'6"

Donnie

literally just googled which turtles exhibit the highest INT, wood turle consistently listed plus some have funky geometrically patterned/shaped shells

tossing on how do the plastron coloring, really liking the dark spots on it

probably keep the lightened belly/inner limb coloring

...probably... lol idk

5'8"

Mikey

my perfect chonky boy, no notes except he (and his brothers) need plastron do-overs

and now i am stuck with the heart-on-his-sleeve marking

canon 2 my iteration it is done

he gets to be the slider this go round, if just 'cuz he's technically the first born (in terms of creating TMNT and its story and world)

let him have the fluttering, finger drumming on everything and everyone because he's bursting with "i love you" energy anyway

5'4"

Venus

"my pretty daughter" iykyk

sea turtle as per last couple iteration posts

cultivator instead of "shinobi"

"i aM ShiNObi"... guh, just, I dunno, the term "cultivator" wasn't really known back in '98 like that, but she had the medicine box, she worked to learn how to throw a fireball at Vam Mi, she was pleased at her progression when she defeated the counterspell from the staff of Bu Ki. that's cultivator shit right there.

she's still a pugilist more than a iron fan user

looks up to April like a big sister, speaks canto and hakka with her

cuz she's still a linguist scholar like in Next Mutation so duh she speak all the languages (to an extant, she has a lot of studying left to go after all)

the greenified hawksbill coloring is growing on me...

still needa futz more with the plum flower motif on her

also figure out her huadian situation or just scrap it idkidkidk

her bandana + 50% green coloring is also growing on me....

5'10"

Jennika

technically also ringed map turtle since it was Leo who gave her the blood transfusion

I like the idea of bringing her Blaschko's lines to the forefront post-mutation but just... it's a lot of stripes. and goddamnit I ain't even gonna go deep into much of anything with the comics I just... can't not world build rip me

6'0"

April

still so tickled at April being closer to the turtles' ages in these new reboots and fascinated how it's played out

...but mine is a clean 44 yo, so. (turtles in late 30s)

Laird originally conceived April as an asian woman in his notes, Eastman drew her as a biracial woman he was dating at the time (April Fisher) and... idk what to tell y'all, people are running around being mixed in this world all the time, Brooklyn got hella Jamaican/Chinese so there you go

can speak canto and hakka

April being a "weirdo" as I've seen mentioned in Rise can stay, I'm picking that, that's a great trait to her character, big fan of Poly Styrene, loved Rachel True in The Craft

where "weirdo" is just she's into alt subculture and being in New York... she got her hands everywhere in those scenes

She and Chu Hsi get to have the most shoujo fuckin' romance because it's cute

and she's still a living drawing which I'm changing around a bit being why she felt like a "weirdo" and leaned towards subcultures and the turtles, she did eventually begin to destabilize but Venus stabilized her by trapping her in a scroll so she could work on a solution. ...where she has a long, happy relationship with Chu Hsi in the painted world scroll because lol time dilation

saw somewhere on the hellsite that the tooth gap is passed around every iteration... so April gets to have it

5'7"

Irma

i'm not ashamed to say I just reupholstered Nadia from Russian Doll

87 Irma went through a lot so she can have some dry wit and humor and be fly as fuck, big hair, big glasses, and a big attitude

still besties with April

likes moths, they're just neat little guys with rabbit ears iykyk

there is a very specifc size of her hair I am battling to keep consistent the problem it never feels big enough

says "fuhgeddaboutit" and has yelled that she is, in fact, "walkin' here,"

... she might also have a little bit of Myrtle from AHS: Coven sprinkled in now that I'm thinking about it to sum her up

she knows somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody for any random thing you could want to try to find

all the delis and bodegas know her

discusses plot lines from soap operas with Splinter on weekends, they get heated

5'5"

... god all this and I was just gonna have them play spades and play a round of pickup street ball in silly little comics

[hillbillyoracle]

I've spoken before about the increasing tendency of online communities to coopt the language of specific material difficulties face by minority groups to give their personal complaints more "moral" weight.

The example I always use for this is "gatekeeping" - it was used for a long time in the trans and disabled communities to denote the situation we often face where a cis or able bodied medical professional got to determine whether we belonged to a group enough to access treatments we needed. This is a very serious medical issue that we face that leads people in the community to wind up using black markets and risking their lives with less than scrupulous people who seek to profit off of this medical alienation. Some people wind up in incredibly amounts of physical and mental pain or even committing suicide.

I spent a long time not understanding why in the last maybe 6 or so years so many people, mostly younger, seized on the words as if it was theirs to describe merely not being included in a group by others of the same identity were no route for filling a material need is impacted. Even more recently I've run across people who are using it to mean that information they want - for hobbies, interests - is difficult for them to find.

I hear all the time "language changes" - which is definitely true. But it's worth looking at why given language changes happen - and who benefits. This is a whole field in linguistics and it tell you a lot about the values of a given group. It hit me when I came across it most recently that whether people admit it or not, they borrow that language because they want their complaint to be taken as seriously as the material complaint they see it originate with.

And this is obviously not great right? Like you not being allowed in a discord you want or it not being easy to figure out how to knit a sweater are very obviously not on par with being denied a badly needed medical treatment to deal with your pain because you're not considered "disabled enough" by an able bodied doctor. I get this is largely happening subconsciously and we don't really have a language to talk about it making it even harder or people to catch in their own usage. I don't have an answer to that as I'm not a trained philosopher or linguist but I do have some food for thought.

For those who can be honest with themselves enough to see that they likely use words like this to lend the moral weight of marginalization to their mundane concerns, I want you to know some practical issues with this.

One, it pretty instantly flags you as being unsure of the veracity or relevance of your point, unlikely to be receptive to the other person, and more worried about appearances rather than the issue at hand. Which is a shame because you may have a really good point in there. You may absolutely be calling out an issue that needs addressed. But borrowing the language of these groups for their moral weight is simply not needed when you've made an effective argument.

Two, moralizing the mundane is a facet of carceral cultural creep. This really could be it's own post, but simply put, we've come up in a media ecosystem which tends to praise "justice" systems as being the means for processing difficult experiences - regardless of how true that is when interacting with the systems themselves. So even people who are out here saying ACAB will unironically police other people on having and performing the correct opinions in ever tightening loops (as punished people are needed to keep the rest o the group in line). You're not exempt from it and the desire to make mundane things like people not wanting you in their clubhouse and not finding the right video out to be a moral failure on someone else's part is rooted in those very non-progressive ideas.

Three, generalization means the language loses it's moral weight as it gets used meaning it is a constant process of habituation and more and more groups will wind up having their very important and specific terminology taken up for the sake of this particular selfish pyre. Once you've habituated to the language you can never go back and grasping at the language that these groups have to continually reinvent in light of this watering down is a type of violence given the material costs to groups who can no longer name the heinous act of the systems they face. If you indulge in this, it'll never stop and can never be enough.

The answer is pretty simple. Learn to state your feelings plainly. Learn to form solid arguments without resorting to mental shortcuts like coopting the marginalization to moralize your mundane experience. Learn how to set actual boundaries (which are about controlling your own behavior not others) and walk away from people and groups that don't align with your preferences and pursuits.

The answer is grow into yourself - stable, healthy, flexible.