#media log extend

[maybe-not-a-robot]

Media Log 2025 Entry 2X - Dreams of Aether - dude it's just warioware (positive)

Really, all I can say has already been said by the caption: it's literally just Rivals of Aether Warioware, down to the use of low-res images of 3D models and re-using game sprites. I had a lot of fun and laughed a LOT while playing, and it's tough as hell in the post-game like any Warioware game should be! It's a great time, especially for fans of the Aether games. Thank you @the-giik, @dumbanteater, and the rest of the team behind this cute little April Fool's game!

P.S. GO GET THIS GAME RIGHT NOW!!!! IT'S FREE UNTIL APRIL 2ND!!!!! https://store.steampowered.com/app/3463050/Dreams_of_Aether/

[dontsayitditto]

trying a new? Practice? I guess you'd call it from now on. where i keep a notebook next to me while I use tumblr and see how much information I actually save and get out of using this site. ive got a lot of movies and stuff on here but I wonder if just saving the name instead of reblogging pictures would make me more inclined to watch them? and saving the names of artists/photographers so I can look up their work again and not lose it if this site ever goes to shit completely. I'll see how it goes

[antimony-medusa]

*I emerge from several weeks of talking about conceptualizing my cubitos and who else populates their world and what the precise nature of the character is* Hello. Hi. It's time for my twice-yearly thoughts on RPF.

Okay so I was one of the people who was emailing Ao3 about it when we had all of MCYT wrangled into VBRPF going please please please please can we have our own server tags pleeeeeeease I promise it's not just video blogging rpf pleeeeeeease my streamer doesn't have wings in real life pleasssssseeee— and my general stance is that writing about Dream SMP characters is writing about characters, it's not RPF.

Not quite. It's not quite RPF. There is a meaningful distinction there, but it's not a really huge one. That distinction exists and is important to me in how I conceptualize those characters and whether I'm mentally going "okay I need to study lore streams for vocal patterns" for voice research or if I'm going "okay I need to pull up technocord logs " to get techno voice right. What I consider the authoritative canon "character" is a rp guy who spawns withers, not a real streamer in california with a little white dog.

But like I do multifandom exchanges and I wander into them with my cubitos clutched tight in my palms, and I see what other fandoms look like— and importantly, I see what other rpf fandoms look like— and guys, I think that line is legitimately blurry and I think that's literally fine. If I walk into a mulltfandom space with my guys they're going to squint at me and go "rpf fandom— kinda, I think" and I can go "hahaha, not quite", but also I do not blame other people for thinking this is RPF cause like— there are a lot of similarities!

What MCYT tends to classify as "RPF" is directly stories operating in a world where the characters are streamers, they post on twitter, they have lunch with the CEO of twitch. And anyone not writing that, is obviously not writing RPF. And that is not untrue, up to a point, but there is a broad category of fics that tend WAY harder into the pure fictional that are still considered RPF fandoms, if you actually check what other RPF fandoms are doing. There are 599 works in "Demon Shane Madej", many of which are in AUs that have no connection to the real world other than the character relationships, and they're still officially considered RPF.

I have a friend who's in a c-drama rpf fandom that has a rpf ship they really like, and a really popular thing is to take the various characters these actors have played (totally fictional characters from various media) and ship them together. And that's just a crossover of two fictional mediums, but because the thread connecting them is two guys in real life, that's considered RPF.

The banddom tags are absolutely COMPLETELY full of aus that are not set in the real world at all, no connection to the music industry, and what the people in those fandoms will say is like yeah, I have no idea about the real guy, I'm working with a character/persona who's put on for the stage and interviews and personas, and that guy is not REAL, who knows what the real guy is like, but like, I like the persona, I deal with the persona, and then they put that persona in an au where he kisses other personas— and this gets considered RPF.

Wrestler RPF is directly dealing with invented characters who are beating the bloody snot out of each other (hot), they have names like "the undertaker", dealing with scripted storylines, but it still get considered RPF.

And like, I look at myself as I am entering my third year of writing Technoblade most of the time, and what I'm doing here and— there are a lot of similarities in what I'm doing to what other RPF fandoms are doing. I'm a fan of the DSMP character but I'm also a fan of the guy, so I want to play in this extended universe, so I want to include nods to his other stuff. So I will pepper in a cheeky nod to the potato war here, I'll mention hypixel there, etc, kind of make an extended Technoblade universe. And I think that's not RPF (quite) because I'm working from a fictional canon that includes references to the potato war and hypixel etc, I'm just expanding on it, but like, this is literally what my friend in c-drama rpf does as well when she's writing aus about her guy. It's kind of close to RPF. That line is not really obvious to the casual viewer.

So I do not blame anyone else if they look at what we're doing and they go ah, nods wisely, you are a rpf fandom, I've seen this before, and we go um actually, hahah, you'd think that, but no, and then they nod and clearly do not understand how it's not a RPF fandom.

But the thing is it's literally fine if people think that, I think. RPF is not the end of the world. It's just a bunch of people working with people's various performancesonas and worksonas and having fun with it. Spoilers for mythbusters in the real world, but we now know that by the end of mythbusters adam and jamie were not really friends, but most of the mythbusters rpf keeps them as friends because that was the professional persona they provided for the camera, and that was the fictional world the writers wanted to live in. I don't think it's a problem if someone wants to write straight up streamer fic, you do you, and that's unequivocally RPF, but once you start getting into AUs and extended universes and bringing emduo content into qsmp and writing fic based on GIGS streams, the line legitimately gets WAY more blurry.

I think a bunch of fic (including my fic) can start to exist in a "both things are true" state where it's drawing from direct fiction but it's also drawing from a lot of stuff that other fandoms would consider RPF sources, and like, I don't mind this. I don't think it's bad if you're doing this too. We're not getting more DSMP content, the fandom police are not gonna turn up at your house if you want to pull strongly from minecraft monday for your fic. Do schlackity on QSMP. Do a DSMP extended future where tommy gets tubbo to marry him for a bit and then tubbo immediately demands a divorce. The canon of material we have to draw on is not something where big obvious lines exist between "rpf content" and "pure fiction" if you step at ALL outside of canon-compliant. Like fuck, in my very first DSMP longfic I included all these hermit cameos and mcc references which would make it RPF in any other canon, but also I was pulling mainly from the prison arc lore and beats and relationships for the core, which is NOT rpf, and at this point it is not worth the hassle in my head to draw a strong distinction between them.

It's kinda RPF. It's not quite RPF. It's fictional. It's based in the real world. It's all personas. it's drawing on off-lore-stream dynamics. It's drawing on scripted scenes where my streamer had his camera in lore mode. It's COMPLICATED to unpick and I legitimately think that's fine. RPF is literally fine, some people are gonna think we're writing RPF, it's not the end of the world. Just have fun with it.

[problematicsashawaybright]

Occasionally I'll see tiktok users who were active on Tumblr pre 2018 posting about iconic Tumblr moments, but they always talk about Tumblr like it's dead and gone and that's so funny to me. Tiktok got BANNED (for less than a day but still it was a whole Thing) a few months ago, almost got banned again yesterday, and is now apparently still set to be banned but the deadline got extended a few months. Tumblr may not be considered a main social media site or socially acceptable to be on, but there has not been a single day since I was 11 where I couldn't log on and immediately see posts that may not be good, but were definitely made from a place of genuine passion and interest.

[mariacallous]

Americans need to log off. Unplug. Shoot the TV. It seems impossible. Less than five days from Election Day in the US, most people can’t help but check the news—or TikTok or X—at least once a day. Swipe, refresh, repeat. By Tuesday, the connectedness will be constant. Mentally, political stress takes a huge toll. Given that anxiety can be exacerbated by uncertainty, the 2024 election feels worse than it has ever before. There’s a reason for that.

I don’t just mean the general sky-is-falling stuff—the militias on Facebook organizing ballot-box stakeouts, the conspiracy theory spreaders, the cybercriminals potentially waiting in the wings. Some version of those nerve-janglers has been around for years. Now, though, there’s a new factor upping users’ blood pressure as they doomscroll: AI misinformation.

Clearly US voters worry about how misinformation might impact who wins the election, but Sander van der Linden, author of Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects Our Minds and How to Build Immunity, notes that the anxiety around AI might be more existential. “If you look at the problem from a more indirect perspective, such as sowing doubt and chaos, confusion, undermining democratic discourse, lowering trust in the electoral process, and confusing swing voters,” he says. “I think we’re looking at a bigger risk”—one that fuels polarization and erodes the quality of debate.

According to an American Psychological Association survey released last week, 77 percent of US adults feel some level of stress over the future of the country. It gets worse. Sixty-nine percent of adults surveyed said the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was a cause of “significant stress”—a figure that’s up from 52 percent in 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton. Nearly three-quarters of respondents thought the election could spur violence; more than half worried it could be “the end of democracy in the US.”

Christ.

On top of all of this sits the threat of AI-generated falsehoods. For more than a year researchers have warned of election misinformation from artificial intelligence. Beyond the polls, such misinformation has played a role in the Israel-Hamas war and the war in Ukraine. 404 Media called the aftermath of Hurricane Helene “the ‘fuck it’ era of AI-generated slop.” (Actually) fake news lurks around every corner. Earlier this year, the World Economic Forum released a report claiming AI misinformation is one of the biggest short-term threats the world faces. Bad election information and fake images can also bring in serious money for X users, according to a BBC report this week.

This was the first year the APA asked about AI and election anxiety and one of the things the organization found was that seven in 10 people experienced stress over the fact that fake information can seem so believable. One-third of social media users said they don’t know what to believe on those platforms. “It extends beyond just information and social media,” says Vaile Wright, APA’s senior director of health care innovation. “A majority of Americans said they don't trust the US government. So there's sort of this whole lack of trust in what used to be very trusted institutions—the media, government—and that, I'm sure, is not helping with people's stress as it relates to this election this year.”

When the US election season ramped up there were AI-generated robocalls (the Federal Communications Commission outlawed them) and now election officials are preparing staff to deal with any number of deepfakes they may encounter. X’s AI model Grok is reportedly boosting conspiracy theories. (It’s also, according to Musk, working on its MRI-reading skills.)

After months of fretting about AI taking jobs, now everyone has to worry about it taking faith in the democratic process?

For nearly two decades, one social media platform or another has ended up dominating a US election. Back in 2008, it was a still-young Twitter. During most of the twenty-teens, it was Facebook (and a bit of Instagram) and Twitter. More recently, TikTok has become a news-spreading tool. In each election cycle, people have swiped to keep up—and also confronted new levels of toxicity. Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, who got out of prison this week, once told reporter Michael Lewis Democrats didn’t matter, “the real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.” That shit went online.

Now, that shit doesn’t even have to come from political operatives. Machines can make it. When people scroll around on their smartphones for a flicker of hope about whether or not their candidate will win, whatever discouragement or reassurance they find may not even be real.

The APA’s survey found that 82 percent of US adults were worried people may base their values on inaccurate information, and more than one-fifth said they’d believed something they read online or on social media when it wasn’t true. Another poll conducted in early September found that only about a quarter of voters feel confident that they can tell the difference between real AI-generated visuals, like the fake images Trump shared claiming Taylor Swift fans are supporting him. “That’s not a good sign,” van der Linden says.

If your fears about the election seem even worse than they did in 2020, this may be why. Misinformation takes a mental toll. “Political anxiety” exists, and research indicates it can impact those who aren’t anxious otherwise. Couple that with a media landscape where newspapers are coming under fire for not endorsing a political candidate and the picture of a nervous electorate becomes very clear. Trust no one; just wait to see what happens—then decide if you believe it.

[runwayrunway]

So here's a recap of yesterday. (I still remember getting to sit down, looking at my blog, and realizing my first post was from 14 hours earlier. It went by so fast. I know most people get exhausted by travel and I'm sympathetic to that but I'm the opposite. Sure, I get tired, but only when I'm done. While I'm traveling? I'm about as relaxed as I'm able to get. Even I think this feature of mine is a bit freakish.)

Under a cut, because it's long, but here is some extended waffle about my experiences - mainly how much I like Arizona, how much I hate American Airlines, and miscellaneous thoughts.

(More broadly, I have begun to actually log flights I take on FR24, so behold: probably a third of my total social media presence. I'm slowly populating it with flights from the past whenever I can dig up information on specific flights, but a lot of those require sourcing from other people and some are going to force me to go back through the multiple volumes of journal I've kept to find boarding passes I've saved, so older flights will just occasionally pop up but I will definitely never get all of them. However, the more I add the more graph per graph I get, and that makes me happy, so it's worth doing. Okay, aside done, actual post now.)

First flight: American Airlines flight 1653, Boston to Phoenix.

Plane was N405AN, an A321neo. She did a wonderful job. I don't think I'll ever get used to how quickly neos take off. Very clean, interiors were less cramped and with far nicer upholstry than what I expect from American Airlines...probably because the last several times I've flown with them were planes nearly as old as I am while this airframe is relatively young at five years in service. May also have to do with the fact that the person who paid for my ticket opted for premium economy, but I'll be honest, I did walk past the normal economy section on my way to the restroom and it didn't strike me as too different from where I sat. In fact, even "first class" (I only realized while double-checking some things as I wrote this that it was, in fact, first class, because it was rough even for a business class cabin, more akin to premium economy - I had just assumed this plane didn't have first class) looked basically the same except with a hint more leg-room and 2x2 layout instead of 3x3, but I'll talk about the cabin layout a little more in a second.

This is the first time I can remember getting to see the view of the harbor after takeoff from this angle. It was genuinely stunning, but hardly worth mentioning compared to what I would see later.

I usually just sit in the cheapest available window seat, and that's almost always right at the back. When I fly with people who aren't just buying whatever is cheapest they usually want to sit over the wings because they all say it's the most stable and least nauseating place to sit and I'm sure they're probably right but I don't get planesick anyway and am pretty unbothered by even genuine turbulence so I genuinely don't notice the difference. This flight was an unusal experience for me in that I was actually seated noticeably ahead of the wings (another testament to how much of this plane was high-density coach, that premium economy occupies the rough location you'd normally associate with business or even first class).

I'll be honest, I didn't love it. I had to rotate more than perpendicular to my seat to get a decent shot of the wing and engine, and that also corresponded to what I would need to do in general to look at them myself. Like I said, I am more or less indifferent to minor differences in shakiness and only care about having a wall next to me, so the only difference I actually notice between the back, middle, and front is what parts of the plane I can watch during takeoff and landing, and I can now say with confidence that the front of the plane is actually my least favorite place to sit. This flight was quite smooth but in my past experience one of the few things AAL consistantly does well is that its pilots seem to be really good at avoiding turbulence, so that might not even have anything to do with where I was, and I had to go out of my way to turn around just to see the slats deploy. That feels like a losing trade to me, but people who self-identify as frequent fliers have strong opinions on this to the contrary, so I almost feel a bit wrong saying it. It's somewhat odd remembering that it's actually fairly atypical to care about seeing the plane itself.

(I did, at least, get a pretty good look at the thrust reversers in action. It felt, if anything, way louder and more shuddery during the deceleration process than it does when sitting behind the wings. Just another reminder of how powerful those engines are, though.)

Seeing Arizona from the air for the first time was genuinely quite odd. Most places I fly to are places I've been to already, so or they look similar enough to places I have, so it's rare to see something just...completely different, but god is Arizona different. This isn't quite the southernmost place I've ever been but it's certainly more than I'm used to, and it's also a significantly lower elevation and a completely different climate. I have never lived anywhere that's not right next to an ocean, and I think this is potentially the farthest inland I've ever actually landed in. So, to me, someone who has spent my entire life in the lush jungles of Massachusetts, Arizona is like an alien planet. It's so densely packed with natural features I've never seen before in my life. I've always wanted to come here for that exact reason. A lot of nice cities exist in the world and I would be happy to go to many of them but the places I wishfully think about visiting, my 'bucket list' so to speak, is largely made up of locations with natural features so incomprehensible to someone with my life that they might as well be the moon. Iceland is still right at the top of that list, I want nothing more than to be inside of a glacier and look at a volcano, but Arizona was a very close second because this entire state is just densely packed with the most insanely cool rock formations that somehow exist on this planet and not a different one.

So, like, seeing it from the air? Seeing all the various outlines of giant uneven peaks and valleys interspersed with extremely flat cities? Already this is a brand new world to me and while I never quite like getting off of a plane I was already very excited just seeing it from the air.

I wish I'd gotten to spend some time in Phoenix proper, but given the fact that their airport appears to have been designed by some sort of dark fae trickster it's definitely for the best I didn't try to push my luck. So, on the topic of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, can we talk about American Airlines for a minute?

"Runway Runway," people ask me, "why is it you hate American Airlines so much?" Just kidding. Nobody has ever asked me that because there is nothing hard to understand about hating American Airlines. I think it's fair to say that it would be weirder if I didn't. But I do actually dislike American Airlines a noteworthy amount, comparable to something like Lufthansa, though for different reasons. It's been ages since I've flown Lufthansa, so I can't say much about their quality of service. This is unfortunately not the case for American Airlines.

This is not a hot take: American Airlines sucks. Like, they're not good. I don't think my ranking of US legacy carriers being Hawaiian > Alaska >> Delta >> United > American would be particularly controversial. American Airlines is sort of the thief which keeps on taking. It is actually stunning how every time I think I know how much I dislike them they step in and insist that I'm actually being far too kind in my current condemnation of them, and that I'm missing crucial context that makes them actually worse than I already thought.

But they get so much worse. In fact, they are now too stingy to provide seatback entertainment even in first class on their A320s, instead asking you to watch their 'free entertainment' on your own cell phone, because that's definitely what you want to do on a long flight - strain your eyes looking at a tiny screen to 'enjoy' a selection way more limited than you'd be used to. And look, I've done long-haul flights with no in-flight entertainment of any kind. It's not the end of the world. But it is something you expect from a full-service carrier.

So, that's kind of bad. It didn't bother me, exactly, because I can write things on my laptop without needing an internet connection (though this plane had the worst outlets I've ever seen, forcing me to plug my charger back in every twenty minutes when it slid out of the socket, and on top of that had no USB-C outlets at all on a plane that's only five years old). The thing is that most people are not me, who can entertain myself just fine with a pencil and the back of my boarding pass, or my mother. But the idea of people paying American Airlines $30 USD for the privilege of using their internet connection so they can do something that isn't watching a very limited selection of movies on their pathetic little phone screen makes me very very sad, and even beyond that it's fundamentally inaccessible. I, for example, really struggle to do anything on an object as small as a cell phone because of nausea and eyestrain, and because it's just plain inconvenient. I get that my experiences are not universal but I can't think of any interface more annoying to use and less reliably able to do what I want it to than a tiny little touchscreen. And oh my god, can you imagine how hard it would be to see anything you're trying to watch if you're in a window seat and the glare is particularly bad? "Just close your window", you may say, to which I reply "tell that to the people on either side of me".

Well, okay. American Airlines is not good. But I did in fact eventually escape them (...to their interline partner.)

This flight was operated by "Pride of Contour", a 26-year-old Embraer ERJ-135 registered N16501. She appears to be the only named plane in their fleet. I guess that means she's their favorite. That feels very mean to the others in their fleet - I'm proud of them even if Contour isn't - but I suppose I'm also lucky to have been blessed with the chance to fly on Contour's very own Pride of Contour.

Now, while I've been on big planes and small planes plenty, the ERJ-135 is a big small plane (not to be confused with a small big plane, like the A220 or E190), and that's actually somewhat new territory. In addition, it's the first time I've been on a plane with rear-mounted engines.

For one thing, the ERJ-135 is surprisingly roomy. The ceiling felt higher than the one at Sky Harbor and the cabin was quite spacious. Unlike American Airlines, they do not try to wring the bit of money from you they'd get from charging you to pick your seat (yes, American Airlines does this now! I fail to see what they offer that deserves a full-service price!), so it was absolutely free for me to sit in 2C. Contour's ERJ-135s use a 1x2 configuration, so I was in aisle class!

...I was also in the second row so I couldn't see the wing at all. Boo.

Anyway, you might not be surprised to learn I'm going to talk about Contour more at a slightly later date, so I'll leave it there. The most important thing to mention is the view.

Approaching Phoenix, I found it to be strikingly flat - this means something given the regrettable lengths of time I've spent in Florida. And I think it's pretty easy to understand why. The buildings in Arizona are rather short on average, even in a large city like Phoenix, and obviously you can't exactly build a city on top of an irregular landscape of mesas and canyons.

Approaching Page was nothing like that. We never got higher than FL170 ("Contour don't fly high," to quote word for word what the stewardess said when I asked her if this was really our cruising altitude), which is the altitude I took these photos at, so I had a great view of Arizona's landscape, which is actually as far from flat as you can get.

It was honestly a lot to process. The flight was fairly short but the density of natural formations that resembled nothing I'd ever seen was overwhelming, and I didn't have time to come to terms with one bit of landscape before a completely different one came into view. There just aren't proper boundaries between these things - they're incredibly varied and seem to be lined up almost randomly, in no particular order, even though they've all spent millions or even billions of years forming side by side.

It definitely reassured me that coming here was a fantastic idea.

My god, Page is gorgeous. If I had thought the density of the assorted mesas and gorges and buttes was a little exaggerated by viewing them from altitude, I was completely wrong. The horizon is stuffed full of all sorts of beautiful geologic features, and each step you take reveals new ones. The average rock here is taller than the average building, and it's so red - I used to think that the redness of Arizona sand and rock was a bit overemphasized in photographs, like the yellow filter put over any TV show that takes place in Latin America, but no, it's genuinely that red - when I toured Lower Antelope Canyon the guide informed me that it's that color due to the high iron content.

Before actually arriving I had been very apprehensive about one thing in particular: the weather. I do not do well with hot temperatures, even moderately high ones, for medical reasons, and was prepared to have to primarily go outside in short bursts and suffer through the agonies of the truly frightening numbers in the weather forecasts.

Thing is, this is actually the furthest inland I've ever been in my life by a significant margin. I have always lived either in a harbor town or very close to one, and the only other times I've been this far south were visiting literal islands. So this is the first time I've ever experienced heat that wasn't incredibly humid, and it's...pleasantly balmy?

Don't get me wrong, it's very hot. And that first day I arrived was on the cooler side. Still, immediately after I got off the plane I accidentally spilled hot tea on myself and it felt cool compared to the air, yet I didn't remotely feel like I was dying.

(Okay, yes, I did develop heat exhaustion later, but that was down to physical exertion rather than it just being hot.)

Page definitely doesn't let you forget that you're in the middle of the desert. The moment you leave the area immediately surrounding the airport it becomes miles upon miles of this. I'd never seen this many transmission lines in my life before - not just all at once, but in total. Some of them look like they're T-posing, which I like, but what do you mean those weren't invented for video game settings...

Thankfully, I am actually staying basically across the street from the airport...so getting groceries is a bit annoying, but I am not actually headquartered in the desert desert. You don't have to drive far to find things, either, but the area between them is just so remarkably empty, and I know that the longer you drive the further apart things become.

Even the empty parts aren't actually empty, though. Like I said, you can't walk a couple feet without discovering a new land formation. A lot of them are similar but none of them are the same, and as wide open as the desert feels it's absolutely full of gorgeous natural features.

And I'm right across the street from the airport on top of it. I can just go for a stroll and see who's parked in view.

Honestly? I love it here. I thought I was going to suffer for the sake of seeing Arizona's incredible natural features, and instead I am actually having the time of my life.

Though I could do with less American Airlines.

[autumnweeen]

Do not buy or sell Fanfiction in any of its formats. There are many unspoken rules in fandom and if you’re new, it’s easy to mess up. Once you’re educated about fandom etiquette, there’s no excuse. If you’re bothered by these rules, then maybe Fanfiction is not for you, and that’s ok. There are plenty of published works for you to buy, rebind if you’re into book binding or critique to your heart’s content if that’s your jam. (Going on a related tangent, but a tangent nonetheless) No one is asking for you not to have an opinion about FF, but not every opinion needs to be voiced in fandom spaces or published on social media for everyone to see (and this applies to life in general). FF authors are everyday people who enjoy writing. You wouldn’t shred a coworker to pieces because you hated the cookies they made for everyone at work. So please, just extend that same kindness towards Fanfiction authors; it’s not that hard. Lastly, the sellers won’t stop selling FF—it’s the buyers we need to educate, but I don’t think we’re targeting them. The people who read on AO3, who interact with authors and engage in fandom spaces are not the ones buying fanfiction. This is a different reader: they either don’t know the rules and just made a mistake or Fanfiction means absolutely nothing to them except for another book on their shelves and one more log on their Goodreads reading challenge. I wish I had solutions instead of mere observations, but I sincerely hope we can get over this hurdle before we lose any more authors and their stories ♥️

[beardedmrbean]

A newborn baby found earlier this year in Newham, east London, is the third child abandoned by the same parents, the BBC can report.

DNA tests presented to the East London Family Court established that “Baby Elsa” is the sibling of two babies, a boy and a girl, found in very similar circumstances in 2017 and 2019.

Despite appeals by the Metropolitan Police, their parents have not been identified.

The BBC and PA Media were given special permission by the court to report the sibling link - and that the children are black.

Judge Carol Atkinson said the story was of "great public interest" as babies are very rarely abandoned in modern Britain.

An expert told the court that, in his opinion, the genetic findings provided extremely strong scientific support for the view that Baby Elsa was “a full sibling” of the other two babies.

The older children have been adopted and Baby Elsa remains in foster care.

She was found by a dog-walker in January in sub-zero temperatures - the coldest night of the year - wrapped in a towel inside a bag.

The other babies - named Harry and Roman - had also been abandoned after birth in the same area of London.

They had been wrapped in blankets. One was also inside a bag.

Family Court documents stated Baby Elsa still had her umbilical cord, and doctors estimate she had been born only an hour before.

Although she was extremely cold when found, Elsa was described as crying and responsive. The court has since heard that she is doing well.

The Family Court has heard that the children - whose names have now been changed - will all know that they are full siblings, and there are plans for them to have some form of contact as they grow up.

The reporting of the sibling link was not supported by the local authority and England's Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass), which advises courts about children's best interests.

The Met Police said it was up to the court to determine whether the link between the children should be reported, but they told the court they did not wish to “inadvertently promote or encourage struggling mothers to abandon unwanted babies in public spaces”.

East London Family Court is taking part in a transparency pilot, which has been extended to cover almost half the family courts in England and Wales. This makes it easier for the BBC and other journalists to report cases.

The BBC and PA Media argued in court that it was a matter of public interest that the three children had been abandoned at birth by the same parents.

Carol Atkinson, the most senior judge in East London Family Court, agreed.

“Abandonment of a baby in this country is a very, very unusual event,” she said, adding that there was considerable public interest in such cases, for that reason.

She said the fact the three babies were full siblings was, for the same reason, “of enormous interest” in “our current society”.

She said that if she were to refuse reporting, it would affect the “public consciousness” of these matters, and restrict open justice in such cases.

The BBC and PA said further reporting was likely to assist the authorities in locating the children’s parents, and that highlighting the relationship would put the focus back on the children’s mother.

Very few babies are recorded as abandoned at birth in England and Wales. The ONS only published data until 2015, and that showed no babies were registered as abandoned for the previous three years, with just one logged as abandoned in 2011.

However academic researchers estimate the number higher, at about 16 per year - in analysis covering the period 1998-2005.

The press reported on an abandoned baby in Hackney, east London, in 2020 - and another in Birmingham in 2021. Their mothers were eventually traced, several months later. ______________

Woman campaigns to introduce baby boxes in the UK

A woman who was abandoned as a baby is campaigning to introduce baby boxes in the UK. ____________________

Having these should really be a no brainer by now

[bonesandpoemsandflowers]

tagged for 4 non selfies by @jbird-the-manwich but 5 is one of my favorite numbers

3 out of 5 of these are manuscript related notebook piles because that's what speedrunning a novel will do to a motherfucker...I think there's a week between shots there of the notebooks/desk. my current writing desk is an ikea footstool. I have tried so hard to replace it with a more serious piece of furniture, but it is the perfect height. I feel bad separating it from the chair it's a set with so I still have the chair even though I do not particularly like the chair. floor sitting gang rise up!! from the ground.

for operative reasons i am learning money origami...see the turtle...behold the turtle...

See the TURTLE of enormous girth! On his shell he holds the earth.

/dark tower hours

guys i got like four hours of sleep last night. help.

buffalo because...buffalo...at the buffalo restaurant...i look upon this buffalo once weekly and vow to figure out how to go to bookclub. google how to found bookclub. bookclub near me. how to bookclub not kill anyone. how to bookclub no arrest. oh great and powerful and kindly buffalo, only one person alive on this planet is writing a weird western worth a damn and it ain't me but give me the power to go to bookclub about it in the future. oh kindly and powerful buffalo, i beseech you.

what else? I like my current purse situation. black leather, skulls, $38 at marshalls...what more can one ask for.

blue leather passport holder is set up traveler's notebook modular style (virtually all the notebooks here are) and holds my calendar that I actually use and also my workout log. I belong to a fancy gym where they track your progress for you in an app and I hate that so I have...a little passport size notebook about it. Inevitably, I also have story ideas/insights mid workout that I have to write down, so in the back of the workout log there is a story notes section--written by flipping the notebook upside down, which is an old bullet journal hack from...somewhere? for pretending like you have two different notebooks when in fact. you do not.

undated muji planner in a bigger size that I remember to use...every other month or so.

in love with the midori traveler's pencil / lead holder / pencil extender you can see in the middle of the bigger size tactical notebook cover, tbh. it holds even the TEENSIEST of pencil stubs. it has a clip to clip onto things. the eraser is also replaceable. I got so mad about my fountain pens never consistently working that I became a pencil user this year. There are zero fountain pens in any of these--no, kaweco sport in maroon, pic two. there are ALMOST no fountain pens here. one of these notebooks is actually my to go watercolor kit but it also sometimes has index cards with story ideas in it so I have to check it periodically also. what if I solved the whole thing in between pages of cartoon squids? what if?

let's see uhhh who among you are whimsical enough to participate, maybe

@qesii @nimfeach @muffinbitch @isitfantasea @twobrokenwyngs

some of you I would love to get to know better but you either have tremendously good instincts or a history of media training so you've never posted pictures that I've seen. I respect it. It just couldn't be me. but if you ARE willing to post pictures and you think we ARE friends, you're probably right so go right on ahead and tag me to let me know.

[maybe-not-a-robot]

Media Log 2025 Entry 1X - BURN·E - man, i feel for you.

Just a really funny short to go with WALL-E. It's a good companion piece! It builds off the mostly physical humor that the movie has and extends it into its own little short! It also really exemplifies how cute some of these robot designs are, BURN-E and SUPPLY-R are very cute.

Overall, I think there's something between BURN-E and SUPPLY-R. Sexual tension, maybe. Yaoi. Bot's love.

[libracorpvs]

tbh the main reason why i've been largely absent from social media is bc i finished my extended leave from work and took another year to reintegrate into real life and it became extremely obvious to me that real life is totally fucking different to whatever tf is going on online. the slew of far right nonsense that has absolutely found its way onto radblr and radtwt and just british society in general is insane and it's particularly jarring to log on and see people i "know" getting caught up in it. we are not immune to propaganda (myself included, i definitely learned some lessons first-hand about the dangers of the far right) but we can certainly all become a bit more resistant to it

[wolfertinger]

bro, you dont need to announce a detox if youre just gonna take a slightly extended nap and hop right back online. thats not a detox, thats a regular tuesday. and moving to a different social media platform doesn’t count either. youre still doing the same shit, just with a slightly different audience. if being online is making you miserable, the solution isnt to just switch tabs. its to actually log the fuck off and go touch some grass.

and its funny because he acts like he has no choice but to be constantly churning out content, when in reality, he is the one putting himself on this grindset of posting fursona ass like its a full-time job. nobody is forcing him to keep up this ridiculous pace except himself. like dude, take a breather. draw some shit for yourself, let posts stack up so you dont have to be terminally online just to keep engagement up. and maybe, just maybe, stop picking fights for once. hed probably be a lot happier if he wasnt constantly plugged into the discourse machine 24/7.

"he keeps running into the same problems on every platform, but instead of realizing hes the common denominator. he just keeps blaming the site itself. like, sure, being a visible minority online comes with its own set of challenges, but salem actively makes it worse for himself by constantly stirring the pot, refusing to disengage, and doubling down on every dumb fight like his life depends on it. its not just people randomly being mean to him. he feeds into it every step of the way.

if he insists on being loud and confrontational online, he needs to either grow some thicker skin or rethink his approach. you cant be an internet loudmouth and cry about people reacting to you. its one or the other. if he actually wanted peace he could log off, block people without creeping on their pages later, and stop feeding the fire. but clearly, he loves the attention too much to do that. he just wants it on his terms."

[csyched]

Mundane Design Detail of Digital Devil Saga: Tag Rings

(Spoilers for both DDS + DDS2.)

I have a tendency to look way too deep into little details of character designs in media, and when it comes to DDS where uniform designs are common, it gets even more fun for me. One of the things that first stood out was tag rings; the Junkyard invention that is introduced briefly and very early in the game as identifiable objects used simultaneously as trackers for downloadable mantras and can also act as digital wallets. I always wondered though, how much more they can represent for a character's actual design rather than just being a game tool for logging progress.

Rings on different fingers (and hands) represent different ideas on how we wish to present ourselves; these ideas can change from culture to culture, and in observing these differences, I looked both at general Western culture and of course, Hinduism. I was able to find more information in Western cultures with more commonalities. However, in Hinduism, by looking into mudras, you'll find rings on each finger can still hold different meanings. The middle finger is "ego", the pinky is "illusion", the ring finger is "karma". The index finger is Jiva-Atman - the individual soul or self. The thumb is Paramatman - the universal, eternal soul.

And if you've noticed, most individuals of the Junkyard wear their tag rings on their middle finger (on their left hand). In Western culture, the middle finger, similar to "ego" in Hinduism, represents "individuality". And hey, what do you know? That's a pretty important theme brought up later on.

The Samsara Tunnels scene with Lupa is actually what drove me to research further into this. Lupa removes his tag ring before performing an inevitable act of self-sacrifice, and at first, I thought it meant he was giving up his individuality. Until I noticed that no, Lupa wears his ring on his index finger on his right hand, rather than his middle finger on his left hand like almost everyone else. In Western culture, the index finger on the right hand instead represents the "potential for leadership". Fitting, for the Leader of the Wolves, who has offered his own head to the dominating tribe of the Embryon.

And then he hands it to Gale - who slips it onto his left hand next to his other ring, and he puts it on his index. And what does that represent? Comradery. Ohhhhhhhhh man. Let's go, gay subtext!!!

Irrelevant comment: (The funny thing is Lupa's ring literally does not pop up on his hand until the camera focuses on his hand and then it disappears. For the rest of the scene and the rest of the game and DDS2 it is gone. I don't know if that was an intentional choice - I doubt it - perhaps the animators didn't want to make a whole other Gale model with the two rings. I like to think he kept the ring...)

Moving onto DDS2, and Serph sells his tag ring at the Mad Mart to make some cash. Nobody else sells their rings. With the hacking disk, they are no longer needed, so it seems everyone just keeps it for sentiments. Serph himself also wears his ring on his middle finger, so was it a story choice for him to give it away - to represent him giving up his individuality? Of course, maybe not immediately, but eventually, Serph's individuality blends with another soul - being Sera's - in order to become Seraph. And no, they do not wear any rings, because neither Sera nor Serph did at the point of fusing.

Yeah.

Some additional points:

Cielo doesn't wear his tag ring as a ring, he wears it as a necklace. Similar to Lupa and his layers of necklaces with several tag rings. I'm not sure what that means - usually, necklaces with rings represent vows, most commonly found for promise rings. They can also represent deceased loved ones. Which is quite heartbreaking when you think about Lupa's necklaces...

Generally, the right hand for rings is the "action" hand while the left is the "thinking" hand.

If I ever find more information and more opportunities to extend this drabble, I will. I'm not sure how interesting this essay is for others, but some friends were interested in hearing it. I really do wonder how much thought was put into this design aspect, and if anyone has their own knowledge to bring to the table, I'd love to hear it.

[thelongestway]

What can I say? It feels very, very good to have finally gotten into the part you've been imagining (in many different variations) for months, and making it real.

Do not mess with friendly AI unless you want them to show you their favorite movies. (That is a threat.)

Edit: I fixed the culmination! So this is the second (but not final) draft of Ch. 37 (which is now ch. 39).

Chapter 39: Ghost

Yeah, no, we weren’t going to be doing that, not after all the “I won’t even hack them” crap. And I knew exactly what I needed to say to snap them out of it. I tapped at them sharply and fed them my logs and data.

We need to get Hostiles Six and Seven off Iceblink before they take her hostage. And we need a tech down here who can reconnect the pod. I'm going to run out of power, and when I go down, so does Tal.

I felt their terror intensify as they took in my power cell charge percentage, and I sent them another estimate. We had less than five minutes if we wanted me to be able to take down the hostiles. And a little less than ten until emergency shutdown.

Even with much less processing power than normal, Aspen ran their assessments faster than I could follow, discarding option after option. Most of their initial ideas needed both more processing power and more control than they had right now. Finally, they picked one. Twisting and shaking, they extended a connection somewhere and said, Archive MAG 122 in priority, please. I'll need that one.

Data came pouring in, and they choked on it, trying to get through it all as quickly as they were used to. I reached for them like they did for me when I nearly fell into their web, and lent them my processing (well, the processing that ART was lending me, plus the extra it spared to fit Aspen's quickly unrolling processes). They latched on to me gratefully and offloaded some of their work onto me and ART.

The data they gave us was actually very easy to process. Because it was media.

Horrible media.

I mean. I understood the priorities here. But also I didn't.

Aspen. What the fuck?

We can’t fight them like we are now, they answered tersely, pulling little bits and pieces out of their archive on the fly and incorporating them into visual filters. But the Courageous has always been such a fucking horror show. So let’s give them one.

They dumped a plan into our workspace, which I acknowledged with a few minor corrections. Then I tapped Iceblink's feed to tell her she had to remain absolutely quiet no matter what she heard, and also to be ready to move into CR3 as fast as she humanly could on my command. At the same time, I tapped Hiram to brief him and ask to prepare an amush at a specified point.

The hostiles came closer.

Aspen gave me a routing map and I followed it, quietly breaking into the hostiles' targeting augments and then getting the hell out of Aspen's way. Their opening secured, they extended one little vine into Laboratory Ring 2.

…And their human self stumbled out of the next door on Target Six and Seven's itinerary, hands raised and looking--wow.

Yeah, okay, Aspen's human imitation code was still really good, even with very limited traffic channels and processing space. Their human avatar looked absolutely terrified. But it was probably good they were looking down and avoiding eye contact with the hostiles. I wouldn't have wanted to see their eyes either.

"Wait! Please! Don't shoot!" Aspen broadcast through the feed, making their human form looking even smaller than it had normally.

(Iceblink raised her head, and I told her again, Not a sound. She complied.)

Of course, Aspen immediately got a projectile weapon pointed at them, and pressed themselves into the wall, while the hostiles kept a good distance away from them, keeping their avatar sighted. They pleaded again, "I—I'll come! Please! Just don't kill me!"

"Marten one, we've got a resident," Target Seven said, sounding bored.

"Good work," Hostile Leader said. "Bring them with you, continue sweep."

I felt Aspen’s threat assessment spike (so did mine), and they rifled through their library of samples to find something to distract them from Iceblink.

The one they found sucked. I caught it before they could deploy and erased it.

Don't fucking ever tell them what to do. Especially not like "please, sir/maam/ker/ser, I'm all alone here, you don't need to look for anyone else," that's so fucking suspicious.

Fuck, they said angrily. That was a stupid idea, you're right. I really wish I had my search back. Or maybe these assholes in chronostasis pods, so I could eat their fucking brains. That would be even better.

I tapped them to let me take over, and they receded, giving me space in the narrow feeds of the old Courageous. I hacked a pressure sensor and blew a pipe right in front of the targets, giving one of them a helmetful of hot steam to the face. The target recoiled, swearing, and the backup team stopped, two doors short of Iceblink’s hideout.

By then, Aspen had a plan. I approved the next sequence they drafted and they gave a quiet feed-laugh, sounding a little unhinged as they focused back into their avatar.

Target Six looked around for the nearest camera and said, "Hey you, hacker fuckwits. Do that again, and your friend here… What's your name?"

"Aspen," Aspen said in a very small voice.

"What, like the AI?" Target Seven said, wiping his helmet.

"Y-yeah. Kind of."

"Irrelevant," Target Six said. "So like I said, fuckwits. Do that again, and we shoot your fucking friend Aspen here before we move on to you. That clear?"

The speakers were silent. Target Six turned to Aspen and said, "You wanna say anything to your friends, resident? Before they do something stupid and you die?"

"Uh. Um. I'm—I'm afraid there's been a little. There's been. There's been a misunderstanding, okay?"

Target Six's eyes grew cold and she gave a little pointed shake of her gun, making Aspen shrink their avatar even more.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"Um. The people you're thinking of? Those people who were talking to you? They don't exist."

"The fuck?" Target Seven repeated. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm. I'm really good at voices. I… Can I show you?"

Target Six nodded, and Aspen said, synthesizing my voice: "I lied about this being a honeypot, you—." They cut off, as if they were scared to insult the Targets, and continued talking in Iceblink's voice: "I was just home, and then I heard explosions. That's all. I swear!"

"You're from the Courageous keepers?" Target Seven asked, and Aspen nodded.

"I… I don't like crowds. So I wasn't up in the gardens tonight," they said in their normal voice. "I, uh. I panicked. Tried to scare you off. Wrecked a lot more than I planned. Honestly, the Courageous is a pile of old junk, and without an AI it's even more broken, and after I busted some things it's just… kind of… continuing… to fall apart." they trailed off, and then added in a small voice, "Please don't kill me." Target Six and Target Seven exchanged completely confounded looks. Then they stayed quiet for about ten seconds, listening.

Without us attacking, the Courageous was still and silent, only existing breakages making noise.

Target Six lowered her weapon and said into her communicator, "Marten one? I think we've got a bonafide Friend situation here."

(I felt a spike of amusement from Aspen as they saved the recording to their permanent storage. Probably to amuse and horrify Dandelion in equal measure later.)

Out loud, they said, "Yes! Of course! I'm friendly! I promise!"

"Shut it, Aspen Courageous," Target Seven growled. "Keep walking."

"Um. Just Aspen?"

"I said, shut it!"

Aspen shut up and turned away, walking lamely two meters before the Targets, head pulled into their shoulders and staring at the floor, biting into their lip hard enough to draw fake blood.

Once all three of them rounded the corner and were far enough away, I tapped Iceblink, instructing her to bring an emergency generator up to Tal's pod. She didn't need to be told twice.

(According to Aspen, there were several in the nearby storage areas. Which weren't marked in the feed, because why would the sunbleached Arboreans mark their fauna-infested critical infrastructure redundancies in the rootrotting feed! If I knew, then I wouldn't have been stuck here while Iceblink nearly died!)

But I could be angry at all of rootrotting Arborea Cosmica later. For now, as soon as Iceblink replaced me with an actual generator, I ran some quick diagnostics. And the results were not looking good. With how much power Tal ate from me, I’d need several minutes of sitting still just to recharge enough to be able to walk, and I wouldn’t be back anywhere close to useful performance reliability for at least thirty minutes. I could still help Aspen hack, but I couldn’t take down the hostiles. We’d have to stall them until help could get here.

And they have a hostage, Aspen said flatly. Zheni’s not one of mine, but I’m not letting them have her, either.

Hostile Manager’s chances really weren’t looking good. My threat assessment gave her a 74,3 chance of being shot by her own team, and even if she somehow wasn’t, another 55,7 percent chance of being taken down by Hiram’s team during the resulting confrontation. (63,9 if Hostile Leader used her as a human shield. Which she probably would.)

Then we have to get her out before the assault, and I can't get there in time, I said. Can you scare them into leaving her behind somehow?

Maybe, Aspen said as their terrified-looking avatar neared the hostile’s meeting point, mouth set in a short angry line. But I’ll need your help to do it.

[mikauhso]

Small fandom rant, feel free not to read.

I don’t really care what an artist has done as a person, unless they’re like literally hitler or someone who you’d punch in public for their crimes, I find it a bit sad and annoying how so many artists online are willing to tear down someone else’s art to say “I did it better.” It’s one thing to give constructive crit in good faith, and it’s another to make an OC-ified version of canon out of your love for something, but creating something out of spite will almost always ring hollow for me. I see so much good art duct taped to posts about how “here I fixed it” or “lol you can’t draw” and I think back to the time when I learned the phrase, “you’ll attract more flies with honey than vinegar.” It disheartens me to see artists and people I’d know to be kind and constructive not extend the same kind of care hey show irl to someone online based on their parasocial relation to them. It’s such a low-stakes game and people will act like a mid show having characters they enjoy is the end of the world, and in doing so will take personal snipes and make insults at the art instead of addressing the actual problem head on, because it’s easier to derail and funnel attention and love towards yourself instead of ask that others improve. I love redesigns born of love. I love rewrites that try to see an artist’s vision, but at a certain point I wonder if people even like what they’re making art about or if they’re slapping something recognizable over top of it in order to ride trends.

The internet normalizes clout chasing to the point where I feel like we do it almost instinctively. That little insult or sly comment at the end of a post, that’ll sway people to your side. Saying why you don’t like some person despite not knowing them. It’s valid to have your opinions but I wish people would act like they would in the real world. You wouldn’t go around and scream at someone who you saw post this one thing one time. You wouldn’t punch someone based on a rumor, or verbally berate them in a restaurant. Yet people post so much shit online and it’s so normalized that we don’t even register it as a sign to log off anymore.

I feel like social media is something incredibly important for communication, but it’s currently designed in a way that centers ourselves and how much dopamine we can get, whether it’s at the expense of others, ourselves, etc. And we’re part of the problem too, we refuse to change and recognize that maybe internet points aren’t worth it and maybe it shouldn’t matter what people think of us. And maybe it’s an opinion I have but I shouldn’t judge someone based on what fraction they put out on the internet of themselves. Maybe I should cook myself a snack or go out for a walk or sit on the balcony or in the yard, talk to a friend face to face. Again, I love what the internet has done for accessibility but every accessible thing is locked behind a service designed to ignore vitriol and anger towards one another.

I guess I fall prey to this too, but I’ve seen this pattern happen again and again and again. There are people behind everything that’s made, and unless it’s ai or something stolen, an artist put their time and heart into it. It’s part of the game to have tough skin but I wish it didn’t have to be a necessity because of spiteful people.

I guess I should add an addendum, this is about a pattern I’ve seen in many a fandom. This isn’t about the morality of a show’s crew or whatever, that’s a conversation for another day that I’m not getting involved in because the personal lives of others are no business of mine. Hah, there I go again. But in all seriousness. I’ve seen it in Hazbin Hotel. I’ve seen it with High Guardian Spice. Velma. Steven universe. The owl house. Any new show I’ve seen come out where someone decides to have a moment and say “I will create out of spite and a need to be seen.” I wish artists didn’t feel the need to ride trends and that we’d value each others’ work as much as something put out by Disney. But that too, is a post for another day.

[transmechanicus]

If you need a way to waste time, highly recommend reading the SCP test logs for the DVR that causes all media played on it to be plot corrected for crimes bc the scope and variety of tests is incredible.