#programmer programming system language

[saywhat-politics]

Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed that his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project had uncovered massive government fraud when it alleged that 150-year-olds were claiming Social Security benefits.

But Musk has provided no evidence to back up his claims, and experts quickly pointed out that this is very likely just a quirk of the decades-old coding language that underpins the government payment systems.

Musk first made the claims during his Oval Office press conference last week, when he claimed that a “cursory examination of Social Security, and we got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone that's 150? I don't know. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records … So that's a case where I think they're probably dead.”

While no evidence was produced to back up this claim, it was picked up by the right-wing commentators online, primarily on Musk’s own X platform, as well as being reported credibly by pro-Trump media outlets.

Computer programmers quickly claimed that the 150 figure was not evidence of fraud, but rather the result of a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration’s benefits system, which was largely written in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases as well as systems from many other US government agencies.

COBOL is rarely used today, and as such, Musk’s cadre of young engineers may well be unfamiliar with it.

Because COBOL does not have a date type, some implementations rely instead on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference point. The most commonly used is May 20, 1875, as this was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the "Convention du Mètre."

These systems default to the reference point when a birth date is missing or incomplete, meaning all of those entries in 2025 would show an age of 150.

That’s just one possible explanation for what DOGE allegedly found. Musk could also have simply looked up the SSA’s own website, which explains that since September 2015 the agency has automatically stopped benefit payments when anyone reaches the age of 115.

However, on Monday morning Musk doubled down, posting a screenshot of what he claims were figures from “the Social Security database” to X, writing that “the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!”

[realizations-inc-units]

TOMURA SHIGARAKI: User Guide and Manual

Congratulations! You have purchased your very own limited edition TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit.

Please see our care guide, user activation manual and your model’s unique specification pamphlet to become acquainted with your newest companion! It is highly advised that you read all materials to avoid any incidents.

Note: Realizations Inc. expressly disclaims any and all liability for damages, injuries, or death arising from the improper use, handling, or mismanagement of your unit following delivery and activation. Upon receipt and activation of your unit, the customer assumes full responsibility for their personal safety and well-being. Use of your unit constitutes acknowledgment and acceptance of these terms.

Technical Specifications:

Civilian Name: Tomura Shigaraki Villain Name: Tomura Shigaraki Place of Manufacture: Kyoto, Japan Height: 5’9” / 175cm Weight: 145lbs / 66kg Birthday: April 4th Hair Color: Light Blue, Final War models have white hair and TENKO SHIMURA models have black hair Eye Color: Red, TENKO SHIMURA models have Grey Unique Features: No eyebrows, dry “skin” and minor facial scarring Physical and Mental Age: 20 Language Options: Default Japanese, English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese

Character Profile:

TOMURA SHIGARAKI is the main villain and antagonist of the My Hero Academia franchise and universe. Despite his origins as TENKO SHIMURA, grandson of the heroic predecessor of All Might, AKA TOSHINORI YAGI, he grew up to become the protegee of the SS-Rank super villain All For One, leader of the League of Villains and arch-enemy of main character IZUKU MIDORIYA. His goal is to kill All Might and topple hero society as citizens and heroes alike know it.

TOMURA SHIGARAKI is one of if not our most difficult unit to bond with. It is obstinate, anti-social and contrary. However, gain its affection and you will be the owner of the most dedicated and unwavering partner we have programmed to date, whether it be romantic or platonic. If you have taken on a TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit as an employee, its quirk and thirst for destruction are rather compatible with minor demolition, shredding, disaster clean up and potentially bomb disposal jobs. Its knack for gaming could also qualify it for bug testing and even streaming.

Making sure that your villain unit has productive hobbies and outlets is a fantastic way to manage its destructive tendencies, so don’t hesitate to sign it up for groups and classes as long as you know for sure that there won’t be any rival units attending. And no worries about your TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit’s quirk destroying anything accidentally. For the owner’s convenience we have given the unit complete control over when Decay is activated or not.

TOMURA SHIGARAKI’s quirk, Decay, utilizes Realizations Inc.’s very own patented DISMANTLE Nano-System. Embedded in the palm of its hands are micro-scale delivery ports that release technician programmable nanobots. These nanites use targeted enzymatic, micro-vibrational, localized energy pulses to deconstruct matter at the molecular level. Powered by a burst energy drawn from its battery core, this system makes for a high-drain, short-duration disintegration tool. Activation occurs when all five digits make contact with its target for canonical accuracy. Each use of decay draws seven percent of the battery core’s charge per full activation (battery usage scales depending on surface area). Decay nanites “reload” via TOMURA SHIGARAKI’s internal nanite self-cleaning chamber located in its wrists or may require a Nanite Refill Canister, sold separately, if a certain amount of them have been lost or damaged. Decay requires twenty (20) seconds between activations.

CAUTION! Decay is a powerful replicated quirk, not to be used lightly. Overuse or repeated engagement may cause cooling delays and critical system warnings. Encourage your TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit to engage with its quirk responsibly.

Please see your model’s specification insert to learn more about your individual model’s quirk upgrades.

Programming:

Your TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit comes with the following base traits:

Sadistic. This unit derives pleasure from inflicting pain, both emotional and physical. Some units with this trait express it more intensely than others. If you find that your unit is too sadistic for your comfort, please call our help line located at the back of the manual and we will refund your unit for full store credit. Selfish. Whether its just egocentric or tactlessly egomaniacal, this unit values its own goals and desires above anyone else’s. Destructive. This unit is more likely to damage your belongings either by accident or on purpose. They tend to have less control over their quirk in general, so be careful! Arrogant. A more potent version of Confident. This unit will act without heed of its owner’s desires if it feels like it. It will be more likely to start fights with others that have the Arrogant trait, as both will most likely believe that it is superior to the other. Determined. Depending on the unit, this could be a great trait to have or a headache in the making. Determined units rarely take “you can’t do that” as an answer, and will follow their beliefs to the end, even if it means going against rules, norms or their owner’s wishes.

WARNING: Villain units are not guaranteed to respond predictably to emotional stimuli. Realizations Inc. is not liable for any damages caused by your units behavior responses.

Care and Maintenance:

Hygiene: All Realizations Inc. units are self-reliant and prefer to clean and care for itself. Do not worry about bathing your unit because it will do so privately and effectively. All Realizations Inc units are as waterproof as the average human, meaning that unless submerged for an extended period of time, the internal electronics and battery core will remain unaffected.

Note: TOMURA SHIGARAKI does not require any special care for its dry “skin” as even though it is programmed to feel the itch and discomfort of it, it does not actually suffer from the condition.

Feeding: As units do not need to eat or drink, please do not try and feed it anything. Attempts to feed or water your unit will likely result in malfunctions requiring technician support. Your unit does have olfactory sensors of varied sensitivity allowing it to “smell” the scent of food. Some units have preferred scents so get to know it and discover its preferences!

Rest: Charging your unit is easy! Thanks to Realizations Inc.’s exclusive and state-of-the-art battery core, your unit rarely has to charge itself! Approximately once a month (more or less depending on quirk usage) your unit will tell you it needs to charge. It will often wait until your usual bedtime to request this, as to not disrupt its owner’s plans. Simply open the nape panel and insert a plugged in Cascade charging cable. Your unit will find a comfortable position and shut down until either fully charged, or its name is called by its owner. Time till full charge takes approximately eight (8) hours for base models and six (6) hours for more advanced models.

Note: TOMURA SHIGARAKI may sometimes refuse to charge itself if it finds itself too engrossed in a game or hobby. If this is the case, you can either allow the unit to run out of battery, forcing shut down mode to reserve power before plugging it in, or utilize emergency shut down protocols to accomplish the same thing.

Emergency: If your unit is for any reason becoming unruly or dangerous, there is a code you can activate that will place it into an emergency shut down state. Simply state your name, the unit’s designation and then the words “emergency shut down”. This will immediately place your unit into a dormant state, using very little battery and completely unaware of what is going on around it.

Social: The social needs of your unit depend on the version and model of the character you purchased. Some can go days without interaction, others only hours.

TOMURA SHIGARAKI is one to prefer online interactions over in person get togethers. It doesn’t need its own personal computer, but allowing it to borrow yours to play social games online will benefit its mental health. For the sake of your device however, make sure it isn’t playing League of Legends or similar “player versus player” genre games. Like all units though, it requires face to face socialization both as a basic psychological need and for proper owner/unit bonding. TOMURA SHIGARAKI is a hard nut to crack, but talking about its interests will help open it up.

We at Realizations Inc. programmed our TOMURA SHIGARAKI units to be nearly identical to its fictional counterpart. Limited edition TOMURA SHIGARAKI is based on the canonical version of the character from between the “Shie Hassaikai” and “Meta Liberation Army” arcs. This TOMURA SHIGARAKI retains its childlike temper while still displaying the leader-like capabilities needed to take on a goliath like Gigantomachia. However, this is still TOMURA SHIGARAKI we’re talking about. It will be a hard companion to gain the trust and respect of, but not impossible. If accomplished, it will become a lifelong ally and partner to you.

Accessories:

ONE (1) activation outfit TWO (2) civilian outfits, ONE (1) casual, ONE (1) semi-formal ONE (1) villain costume ONE (1) replacement “Father” hand ONE (1) Nanite Refill Canister TWO (2) Realizations Inc. patented Cascade charging cables ONE (1) user manual

Relationships With Other Units:

The League of Villains: Your TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit is programmed to act more stable and less insecure around units designated as part of the League of Villains faction. HIMIKO TOGA is one member that your unit will tolerate much better than the others, while TOUYA TODOROKI and TOMURA SHIGARAKI tend to bicker with each other, sometimes to the point of needing to be separated for a while, though TOUYA TODOROKI is likely to remove itself from the situation before any owner intervention is needed. More League of Villains members are to be developed in the future. Please check Realizations Inc.’s website for future information of the unit’s relationships as they are released.

Adult Heroes: All Might, real name TOSHINORI YAGI is considered one of TOMURA SHIGARAKI’S main targets. Please do your best not to let the two units even within eyesight of each other. Although TOMURA SHIGARAKI holds no outward affection for SHOUTA AIZAWA, with the feeling being decidedly mutual, your unit thinks the hero unit is rather cool deep down. More Heroes are to be developed in the future. Please check Realizations Inc.’s website for future information of the unit’s relationships as they are released.

Child Heroes: IZUKU MIDORIYA is another unit that should not be in proximity to your TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit. They will attempt to battle each other on mere eye contact. TOMURA SHIGARAKI holds an intense hatred for the hero unit, similar to its feelings for TOSHINORI YAGI. KATSUKI BAKUGOU, another unit with the trait Arrogant, will butt heads with your unit if they’re forced to talk to each other for longer than five minutes. Your unit will also disagree with SHOUTO TODOROKI if allowed to converse, purely due to differing opinions on society, philosophy and SHOUTO TODOROKI’S choice of friends. Honestly, it’s probably best to have your unit avoid any and all contact with hero units in general. More Heroes are to be developed in the future. Please check Realizations Inc.’s website for future information of the unit’s relationships as they are released.

Others: Stain, also known as CHIZOME AKAGURO, and TOMURA SHIGARAKI will not approach or antagonize each other as long as they are not forced into an interaction. KAI CHISAKI and TOMURA SHIGARAKI, unless ordered by a shared owner not to, will be at each other’s throats either verbally or physically if in the same room. If these units are required to exist in the same household, it is recommended to introduce the two slowly, and allow the units the ability to retreat to their own personal spaces as needed.

Removal From Packaging:

Lay down the received box that your unit comes in, horizontal on the floor. Remove the lid of the box and any packing materials covering your new unit. At the base of the “skull”, you should feel a small etching just below the hairline. Using a coin, flat head screwdriver or a long finger nail, pry open the panel. Inside you will see three things: a large charging port, compatible with Realizations Inc.’s patented Cascade charging cable, a small pinhole for factory reset and a flat circular button, about the size of a dime.

Press and hold the button for 5 seconds before replacing the panel. It should snap back into place. Your new unit’s eyes should open. Do not be alarmed that the eyes are blank! Your unit’s pupils and irises will appear once you say the activation code and introduce yourself.

Once the blank eyes of your unit glow white, state your full name before reading out loud the fourteen digit code on the back of the manual. Be patient while your unit boots up, and stand back. Certain models of units wake up suddenly and violently.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q: My TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit is trying to kill me! I didn’t do anything, what do I do? A: One of TOMURA SHIGARAKI’S primary traits is Sadistic, some models accidentally are programmed with a higher value than others. If nothing you are doing is calming it down, engage emergency shut down protocols and call our help line. Our on call technicians can walk you through troubleshooting steps or connect you with our reprocessing team.

Q: Why is my TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit choosing to recharge at the foot of my bed? A: Your TOMURA SHIGARAKI is showing a rare sign of trust! If you truly want to discourage the behavior, simply move the Cascade charging cable to another room or to an outlet far enough away from your bed to eliminate the possibility of recharging in that location. The unit should get the hint. Should.

Q: Can my unit be friends with my other units? A: It is difficult to pull off, but with high enough affection and respect towards you, it should be able to put aside any disdain it has for things such as “friendship” and forge other bonds. Note: TOMURA SHIGARAKI units have extreme difficulty making friends with other units that hold an active Arrogant trait.

Troubleshooting:

Problem: You have received a different TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit than the one you ordered. ex. TENKO SHIMURA, Basic Model TOMURA SHIGARAKI or Final War TOMURA SHIGARAKI. Solution: Please contact our help line and we will replace your incorrect unit with a new, correct version. Store credit is also an available option.

Problem: Your TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit is acting significantly out of character. Solution: Looks like we might have accidentally sent you someone else’s order! For a certain price, Realizations Inc. offers a limited number of completely customizable OOC models per year. Some have only the slightest resemblance to the base model, while others are nearly identical minus one or two core differences. Please contact our help line and we will assist you in rectifying this error.

With proper care you will find a fine companion in your limited edition TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit. All units have a lifetime warranty, insurance of up to 10,000 USD or international equivalent and 24/7 on call employees ready to assist you and any of your concerns. Good luck and have fun!

If you ordered a variation of Basic TOMURA SHIGARAKI, please see your unit model’s distinct specifications on the insert included in this pamphlet.

This limited edition model includes the following exclusive features:

Quirk Adjacent Technology:

Limited edition TOMURA SHIGARAKI’S Decay quirk has been modified and upgraded for its limited time advanced model release! Decay now features single finger activation for small scale, precise destruction of objects. It can now control the speed and intensity of Decay on a scale of three levels instead of its default five (5) square feet / one point five (1.5) meters, minus precise mode. Level one can destroy up to two (2) square feet / point six (.6) cubic meters of material and takes 5 percent of its battery power. Level two is its typical five (5) square feet / one point five (1.5) meters at 7 percent. And finally level three is a whopping ten (10) square feet / three (3) square meters and a rather impressive 13 percent!

Note: All levels can destroy any kind of material no matter its durability, the only difference is how long it takes to fully disintegrate.

And last but not least, thanks to the work of our top technicians, this advanced version of Decay now only needs ten (10) seconds between activations!

Advanced Programming:

Your limited edition TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit comes with the advanced ability to unlock and adapt new programming traits as you interact with it! Unlocking each trait requires certain interactions with your unit.

Violent. This trait is more likely to activate if you, its owner, or the unit itself is in danger or feels disrespected. Statistically the most frequently unlocked advanced trait for limited edition TOMURA SHIGARAKI. Obsessive. When unlocked, your unit will become fixated on you, its owner. Be prepared to be followed around and stared at. The more unpredictable the unit, the more likely it is that it will manifest this trait as its sub-trait Possessive instead. This is the second most likely trait to unlock and the activation requirements are unknown. Insecure. What it says on the tin. This unit constantly needs things from its owner. Validation, attention, encouragement, praise… If not discouraged it can evolve into its advanced form Needy. If Needy is not nipped in the bud, its final and most unstable form, Clingy, may develop. Warning: This trait-line may interact strangely with the unit’s base trait Selfish. If both are active at the same time, unpredictable behavior may occur. Loyal. Your unit will become as loyal as a dog to you, its owner. When this trait unlocks, your unit will refuse to obey conflicting orders from anyone but you, even corporate overrides. This trait has a chance of developing naturally over time. Note: If the Obsessive trait-line is active alongside Loyal, this trait may unlock in a yet to be patched form our technicians have designated Devoted, which has been shown to result in severe attachment issues. Gentle. Tender and conscientious, this unit may exhibit sweet, if not awkward, gestures and words of care. Note: The code for the traits Gentle and Violent have extreme difficulty existing at the same time. This combination is considered mildly unstable.

CAUTION: TOMURA SHIGARAKI units with “Devoted”, “Possessive” and “Violent” traits active at the same time are considered Class-4 Instability Risks. Please contact Realization Inc.’s help line, extension zero, immediately if the combination is noticed.

Romance and Intercourse:

How exciting! Your limited edition TOMURA SHIGARAKI features our new and improved fourth generation Passion programming and Interfacing equipment.

Romance: Your TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit may not understand love in the conventional sense, but that won’t stop it from trying, usually with unpredictable and possibly destructive results… While flowers and poetry aren’t standard protocol, property damage and oddly heartfelt rants about your "significance" may become regular occurrences. Do not be alarmed if your unit stares at you, well, all the time. This is a sign of its trust and affection. Handle it with caution and kindness; this unit is more fragile than it appears. TOMURA SHIGARAKI units rarely open up, but once it does, it does so completely, so make sure to treasure your newest partner!

Sex: This model of TOMURA SHIGARAKI allows you to either fully customize your personal preferences or allow the unit to naturally develop its taste in sexual matters over time.

This includes but is not limited to; its sexuality, dominance levels, kinks, preferred position(s) and more.

Limited edition TOMURA SHIGARAKI comes equipped with a water based, self lubricating five point five (5.5) inch / fourteen (14) centimeter long silicon phallus with a four (4) inch / nine (10) centimeter girth when erect. Its testicles are twenty three (23) cubic centimeters large. All units ejaculate hypoallergenic, glycerin-free faux semen in quantities of five (5) milliliters per climax. Its refractory period is customizable, simply tell the unit how long it should take to “recover” between sessions of intimacy.

Like all Realizations Inc. units compatible with intercourse, your TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit is completely hairless downstairs unless special ordered. Additionally the phallus is by default hyper-realistic, but for those who wish otherwise, you can special order one with a more toy like design.

Limited edition TOMURA SHIGARAKI is programmed with versatile oral knowledge with no gag reflex or necessity to breathe, although if asked it can pretend to. Its lips, tongue, oral cavity, throat and anus are made of a proprietary TPE blend that mimics a soft buccal mucosa-like membrane. Your TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit will clean itself after each completed sexual encounter, so feel free to get as messy as you want.

If you prefer for your TOMURA SHIGARAKI unit to act less experienced than our usual programming dictates, perhaps for the pleasure of teaching it yourself, please inform the unit of your preference and it will adjust accordingly.

Thank you for ordering Realizations Inc. limited edition! Good luck and have fun!

Here is Tomura! I had both a lot of challenges as well as fun working out the android quirk technobabble sections. Thaaaank yoooou nanobots! Such a perfect explanation for basically everything weird and impossible lol (I've also updated Touya's manual to match my tone and sciencey language).

Not sure who to do next, although I have a priority list to pull from. If you really want to see a certain favorite of yours though, just shoot me an ask and if they're one of my priorities (basically just a gaggle of main/interesting characters) I'll scoot them to the top of the list.

Thank you for reading!

Disclaimer: Unit or Manualfics are the creation of FFN user 0ptimuspenguin (Warning, their stories feature casual, juvenile, 2010 Hetalia fandom typical rape jokes that they have since kind of apologized for. Check out their profile at your own discretion). They have given everyone blanket permission to use their idea on their profile page a long time ago, so here I am.

[adafruit]

🎄💾🗓️ Day 2: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar brings us the TRS-80! 🎄💾🗓️

Released in 1977, the TRS-80 (also lovingly called the "Trash-80") was a popular personal computer by Radio Shack and Tandy Corporation. Designed for affordability and approachability, it was one of the first mass-market computers, bringing computers into homes, schools, and small businesses.

Powered by a Zilog Z80 processor running at 1.77 MHz, the TRS-80 Model I came with 4KB of RAM (expandable to 16KB) and an 8KB ROM, preloaded with the Microsoft BASIC programming language. Its black-and-white display supported a resolution of 64x16 characters. It used external cassette tapes for storage, which offered a low-cost solution before floppy drives became more available.

The TRS-80's also had an ecosystem. Radio Shack offered complete setups, monitors, printers, and software - making it easy for beginners. The machine became a favorite for hobbyists and programmers, popularizing early text-based adventure games, educational software, and business applications.

Eventually overtaken by the IBM PC and Apple systems, the TRS-80's legacy lives on!

I had some so-so photos, but these from the Smithsonian are the best I've seen, along with their section on their site -

Have TRS-80 memories, or retro computing memories? Post’em up in the comments, or post yours on socialz’ and tag them #retrocomputing #firstcomputer #electronics see you back here tomorrow!

[comicaurora]

In your asks and other outside-of-comic statements, you seem to draw on parallels to programming a lot when talking about lacrimas.

And this makes me think as a programmer: the primordial rules that are used in Auroras to do magic and lacrimas are part of the primordial language. You are literally telling the primordial's dead bodies what to do, and they obey.

Yet, the difference that comes to my mind is that Primordial was at one point a language actually spoken. Used to communicate in day-to-day life by normal sentient beings. That's quite different from programming languages, which aren't meant to be talked in at all, and are built from the ground up purely to convey a series of precise instructions. They're very formalised and structured. There are no synonyms, no double meanings, no altering of word order, no redundant information etc. It's extremely rigid, much unlike languages people actually talk in, for which a degree of fluidity and ambiguity is essential.

And in Aurora it would seem the latter is being used as the former.

Have you ever thought about this tension/contradiction/conflict? How it affects the world, how it affects your writing, etc?

Or has this distinction never crossed your mind?

Or was this something you have noticed, but never really had the right knowledge to engage with much?

Or any other thoughts on the subject, really

So! This is an interesting thing I have actually thought about.

When the Elder Races were first created, they were born knowing and speaking a language innovatively called the First Language. Every new Young Race is also initially created speaking this language. The language then drifts over the generations, developing into regional dialects and then into separate linguistic descendants if given enough time.

The Ancients spoke a close descendent of the First Language for most of their time in existence, and made a writing system of their own very early on, which has no innate power. But in the early days of the world, the generally accepted story is that a god granted the three elder races knowledge of the written Runic language, which could command the elements. The Ancients acquired it late and used it very sparingly, only for the programming of lacrimas, but for the Elves and Humans living in the depths of the Caves, this was their first and primary writing system. It's even possible that a rare cave-dweller brave enough to venture to the surface was the one who taught the Ancients these runes in the first place.

It's posed an obvious question, of course. Why does this one specific form of writing manifest as a language of magic? Why can it command the dead Primordials? Why is it so well-suited to the phonemes of the First Language that every child of this world is created speaking?

The predominant theory - and, with two living primordials to check with, one which is potentially on the cusp of being proven - is that the First Language and its runic writing system are the language that the Primordials spoke. Its words, written or spoken, can be understood by the remnants of thought that still linger in the sleeping, dead-but-not-entirely-gone primordials that make up the world.

Primordial magic is different from programming in one key way: real computers are entirely unthinking entities. They are not in any way smart - not even smart enough to be stupid. A computer parsing a program cannot observe a missing parentheses and compensate like a human could do in their sleep - it simply fails to parse, because the mathematics don't work out.

Magic in this world is like what every programmer wishes programming could be. Tell the computer what to do, and it might be a little confused, but it'll get the gist. Tell Fire to burn in this direction - Fire, even if it's just running on an echo of a seven-thousand-year-old memory, knows what that means. Tell the wind to printf this statement to this recipient, it'll try to find them and send the message. Tell Life to make this body do what it's doing faster, it can do that. It's simple executions of simple commands, almost reflexive - things that require no complex higher thought from a being that is no longer alive enough to have them. They're not as unthinking as computers, and that means the nuances of language can actually have an effect on them. Some mages think more poetic and emotionally-charged spell invocations can lead to better, more efficient results - an appeal to a long-dead emotion might be easier for the Primordial to execute than an appeal to a half-forgotten complex thought.

When a mage takes direct control of a magical energy and funnels it into an elemental effect, their own higher thought allows the element to do more complicated things - Fire can't transmute on its own like it could when it was alive, but it can when bent to a mortal will. No need to translate a spell into the language of magic when the mage can simply use their own mind to shape the effect. This is the primary advantage mages have over lacrima-users - flexibility, complexity, and speed.

Another interesting factor. Alinua's dynamic with Life demonstrates what a living Primordial's living thought can do when in the hands of a mortal. A normal, simple healing spell cast by anybody but her just accelerates a body's own healing, but with Alinua's guidance steadying Life's hand, they can do much more complicated things of her own free will - things Life knows how to do that no mage knows how to command her to do.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The programmer Simon Willison has described the training for large language models as “money laundering for copyrighted data,” which I find a useful way to think about the appeal of generative-A.I. programs: they let you engage in something like plagiarism, but there’s no guilt associated with it because it’s not clear even to you that you’re copying. Some have claimed that large language models are not laundering the texts they’re trained on but, rather, learning from them, in the same way that human writers learn from the books they’ve read. But a large language model is not a writer; it’s not even a user of language. Language is, by definition, a system of communication, and it requires an intention to communicate. Your phone’s auto-complete may offer good suggestions or bad ones, but in neither case is it trying to say anything to you or the person you’re texting. The fact that ChatGPT can generate coherent sentences invites us to imagine that it understands language in a way that your phone’s auto-complete does not, but it has no more intention to communicate. It is very easy to get ChatGPT to emit a series of words such as “I am happy to see you.” There are many things we don’t understand about how large language models work, but one thing we can be sure of is that ChatGPT is not happy to see you. A dog can communicate that it is happy to see you, and so can a prelinguistic child, even though both lack the capability to use words. ChatGPT feels nothing and desires nothing, and this lack of intention is why ChatGPT is not actually using language. What makes the words “I’m happy to see you” a linguistic utterance is not that the sequence of text tokens that it is made up of are well formed; what makes it a linguistic utterance is the intention to communicate something. Because language comes so easily to us, it’s easy to forget that it lies on top of these other experiences of subjective feeling and of wanting to communicate that feeling. We’re tempted to project those experiences onto a large language model when it emits coherent sentences, but to do so is to fall prey to mimicry; it’s the same phenomenon as when butterflies evolve large dark spots on their wings that can fool birds into thinking they’re predators with big eyes. There is a context in which the dark spots are sufficient; birds are less likely to eat a butterfly that has them, and the butterfly doesn’t really care why it’s not being eaten, as long as it gets to live. But there is a big difference between a butterfly and a predator that poses a threat to a bird. A person using generative A.I. to help them write might claim that they are drawing inspiration from the texts the model was trained on, but I would again argue that this differs from what we usually mean when we say one writer draws inspiration from another. Consider a college student who turns in a paper that consists solely of a five-page quotation from a book, stating that this quotation conveys exactly what she wanted to say, better than she could say it herself. Even if the student is completely candid with the instructor about what she’s done, it’s not accurate to say that she is drawing inspiration from the book she’s citing. The fact that a large language model can reword the quotation enough that the source is unidentifiable doesn’t change the fundamental nature of what’s going on. As the linguist Emily M. Bender has noted, teachers don’t ask students to write essays because the world needs more student essays. The point of writing essays is to strengthen students’ critical-thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get. Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way.

31 August 2024

[creature-wizard]

So, I just read It's Not Impossible: Healing from Ritual Abuse and Mind Control by Svali.

For those who don't know, Svali is a conspiracy theorist who popped up in the early 2000s claiming to be a former Illuminati/New World Order programmer. Her claims are based on the stuff put out by the likes of Mark Phillips/Cathy O'Brien and Fritz Springmeier/Cisco Wheeler, which in turn derives from stuff like The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, blood libel, witch panic, Michelle Remembers, and Alexander Hislop's anti-Catholic conspiracy theories. It's full of your typical Project Monarch psychological pseudoscience that can effectively be used to blame literally any symptom or behavior on programmed DID, whether or not someone actually has DID at all. It's got all the usual stuff about an alleged global cult that practices the most absurdly complicated, messy, and risky forms of mind control instead of just using the regular ol' indoctrination and manipulation tactics that work just fine for your more typical authoritarian assholes.

She is regarded as a ritual abuse/alter programming expert by people such as Ellen Lacter and Alison Miller, and if you search through the citations on many ritual abuse/RAMCOA websites, you'll often find her name. If you didn't have any familiarity with Svali's outlandish claims before, I think after reading this you'll agree that no sensible person should ever be citing her as an authority on anything. Here are some of the weird and ridiculous claims she makes in this book:

Fetuses are tortured and programmed in the womb. They are capable of making choices presented to them in-utero. (Yes, according to Svali, fetuses can fully understand language and process questions.)

Children can be forced to forget things by threatening them with death if they don't. (Literally not how memory works. If anything, death threats would make it harder to forget.)

Toddlers are trained as assassins and sent to kill wealthy targets, because wealthy people tend to have, shall we say, a predilection for children. (Yes, some wealthy people are child molesters. But claiming they're all into this as a group is absurd. It's also two antisemitic conspiracy theory tropes with the serial numbers filed off.)

Alice In Wonderland programming includes games of croquet where the balls are the decapitated heads of children. (Always with the absurdly over-the-top programming methods.)

The conspiracy programs people from birth to have a visceral fear and hatred of Christianity. (The function of this claim is to deny the traumatic impact of Christian religious abuse.)

"Many occultic groups" hate Israel and aim to destroy its national security through infiltration. (Of course we're going to get Christian Zionism in this conspiracy theory.)

"Higher occultic groups" round up Christians "from prisons and camps in third world countries under oppressive regimes" to torture and crucify them. (Typical oppression fantasy of white American Christian conservatives.)

Genetically enhanced individuals were first produced in the 1940s. (Quite unlikely, given that DNA's role in inheritance wasn't even determined until 1943.)

Claims that "The Light of The World" is an occultic painting that depicts the Antichrist. (Actually, it just depicts Christ.)

Theta systems are trained to psychically kill from the time they're in the womb. Theta assassins have sex with the target, then use the resulting soul tie to demonically kill them. (You know you're into some deep far right shit when they're talking about "soul ties" like this.)

Chi is a demonic power. (Always with the racism.)

Kabbalah is used to open portals to install demons. (And of course, the antisemitism.)

Druids can shapeshift into animals and trees. (This is how druids work in modern RPGs.)

Mages can shapeshift into various animals. (So many occultists WISH this was true!)

Cult children are genetically enhanced for intelligence. (Meanwhile in the real world, not a single alleged survivor has ever demonstrated said intelligence.)

Saturn, Prometheus, and Vulcan are demonic deities. (Pure religious bigotry here.)

Mothers of genetically enhanced fetuses are brutally tortured and gradually dismembered throughout the entire pregnancy. Supposedly, miscarriage is prevented with the cult's "state-of-the-art technology" that's "at least 50-75 years ahead of what's publicly known."

Supposedly, "all videos, CDs, computer games and other digital media now have subliminals embedded, that are fed at 0.03 microseconds." She claims that you can't pause the video to see the message because the images will be blurry, as they're only visible when the media moves. How very convenient, Svali. (By the way, conspiracy theorists have been claiming media is full of dangerous subliminal messages for years, programming children to turn into mass murderers and whatnot. So far there is zero evidence that rock music turns you into a killer.)

Direct quote, "It is amazing how desensitized our population has become to sex, violence and the occult due to this mind control technology that sits in everyone's living room." (Literally your old-time Satanic Panic rhetoric.)

Direct quote, "I personally believe that we are very close to the “end times” of Revelations, and that the Occultic messiah (or antichrist) is alive." (Always with the End Times mythology with these people.)

Yeah, so this is one of the people that therapists pushing this idea that alter programming is a real thing regard as an authority. They're citing a far right conspiracy theorist who claims toddler assassins are sent to kill wealthy targets and that druids can actually turn themselves into trees.

I'd like to reiterate here that the type of alter programming people like Svali claim exist is not something there was ever any real evidence for, and the whole idea originated among conspiracy theorists. This was not a case of something that actually existed just being co-opted by bad faith actors. It is very literally a witch hunt, and one way we know this is that the early modern mythology of satanic witches and today's mythology of alter programming use many of the exact same tropes. And we also know that people can be coached into confabulating memories of events that never took place (you can see very obvious examples of this yourself here and here).

None of this is to say that human trafficking, sex abuse, religious abuse, institutional abuse, and so on aren't real; they very much are. But the kind of stuff that people like Svali push is not, and it's so full of pseudoscience and far right bigotry that it will harm survivors of extreme abuse even more. The function of this mythology, and the quack psychiatry that goes along with it, is to push people into hyperconservative Christianity and scapegoat the religious trauma it causes.

[max1461]

Here is an observation of common attitudes I see in tech-adjacent spaces (mostly online).

The thing about programming/tech is, at its base, it's historically and culturally contingent. There are of course many fundamental (physical and mathematical) limitations on what a computer can and cannot do, how fast it can do things, and so on. But at least as much of the modern tech landscape is the product of choices made by people about how these machines will work, choices that very much could have been made differently. And modern computing technology is a huge tower of these choices, each resting on and grappling with the ones below it. If you're, say, a web developer writing a web app, the sheer height of this tower of contingent human decisions that your work rests on is almost incomprehensible. And by and large, programmers know this.

I am not dispensing some secret wisdom that I think tech workers don't have. On the contrary, I think the vast contingency of it all is blindingly obvious to anyone who has tried to make a computer do anything. But tech is also, well, technical, and do you know what else is technical? Science. I think this has lead to a sort of cultural false affinity, where tech is perceived, both from within and without, as more similar to science than it is to the humanities. Certainly, there are certain kinds of intellectual labor that tech shares with the sciences. But there are also, as described above, certain kinds of intellectual labor that tech shares to a much greater degree with the humanities, namely (in the broadest terms): grappling with other people's choices.

From without, I think this misplaced affinity leads people to believe that technology is less contingent than it actually is. But I think this belief would be completely untenable from within; it just cannot contend with reality. I've never met a tech worker or enthusiast who seems to think this way. Rather, I feel there is a persistent perception among tech-inclined people that science is more contingent than it actually is. I don't think this misperception rises to the level of a belief, rather I think it is more of an intuition. I think tech people have very much trained themselves (rightly, in their native context) to look at complex systems and go "how could this be reworked, improved, done differently?" I think this impulse is very sensible in computing but very out of place in, say, biology. And I suppose my conjecture (this whole post is purely conjectural, based on a gut sense that might not be worth anything) is that this is one of the main reasons for the popularity of transhumanism in, you know, the Bay. And whatnot.

I'm not saying transhumanism is actually, physically impossible. Of course it's not! The technology will, I strongly suspect, exist some day. But if you're living in 2024, I think the engineering mindset is more-or-less unambiguously the wrong one to bring to biology, at least macrobiology. This post is not about the limits of what is physically possible, it's about the attitudes that I sometimes see tech people bring to other endeavors that I think sometimes lead them to fall on their face. If you come to biology thinking about it as this contingent thing that you must grapple with, as you grapple with a novel or a codebase or anything else made by humans, I think it will make you like biology less and understand it less well.

When I was younger and a lot more naive, as a young teenager who knew a little bit about programming and nothing about linguistics, I wanted to create a "logical language" that could replace natural languages (with all their irregularities and perceived inefficiencies) for the purpose of human communication. This is part of how I initially got into conlanging. Now, with an actual linguistics background, I view this as... again, perhaps not per se impossible, but extremely unlikely to work or even to be desirable to attempt in any foreseeable future, for a whole host of rather fundamental reasons. I don't feel that this desire can survive very well upon confrontation with what we actually know (and crucially also, what we don't know) about human language.

I mean, if you want to try, you can try. I won't stop you.

Anyway, I feel that holding onto this sort of mindset too intensely does not really permit engagement with nature and the sciences. It's the same way I think a lot of per se humanities people fudge engagement with the sciences, where they insist on mounting some kind of social critique even when it is not appropriate (to be clear, I think critique of scientific practices/institutions are sometimes appropriate, but I think people whose professional training gives them an instinct to critique often take it too far).

So like, I guess that's my thesis. Coding is a humanity in disguise, and I wish that people who are used to dealing with human-made things would adopt a more native scientific or naturalist mindset when dealing with science and nature.

[quasi-normalcy]

there was a post a while ago about structural interpretations of the humanities vs STEM divide, and i just. feel a desperate need to remind you that humanities illiteracy is literally the systemic issue. defunding arts, music, and literature programs in favor to STEM programs is THE systemic issue that creates humanities illiteracy. beyond that, Ways Of Knowing Things are important. it's called epistemology. and STEM fields do not engage in epistomolegy, they (at least before masters) teach The Right Way To Do Things. when it comes to Ways Of Knowing Things, there is a real and significant divide between people who have been in instructed in The Right Way To Do Things and people who have been instructed to Investigate Where The Knowing Comes From.

humanities illiteracy is not a magical divide, it's a literal structural issue caused by systemic defunding and deprioritization of humanities fields. i just. humanities degrees actually do have value. we are studying things that are difficult to find elsewhere. the same way that I do not understand programming languages, programmers do not understand how to analyze a given piece of rhetoric or place it in sociopolitical context. the problem is that the trust is one-sided. I trust programmers to understand more about programming than I do. STEM majors generally do not trust or believe that there is anything worthy of or requiring of further study in the humanities. because theyre soft, just 'stories' or an 'accounting of events.' and again, this is backed up by a systemic defunding and deprioritization of the humanities in elementary and high school programming nationwide.

I mean, I'm not disagreeing with you, I have a master's in literature and I'm literally doing a PhD in a humanities discipline right now. I do, however, think that a lot of the popular posts on the subject on this website are just terrible and utterly uncharitable to anyone who falls outside of the author's in-group.

[wojenka]

i need more mutuals who are into coding and engineering!! more info under the cut!!

I planned to become an electrical engineer like my stepdad but then I decided to change my path to programming. I'm currently studying at technikum (<- wikipedia link so I don't have to explain the whole polish learning system), programmer major.

this year I have exams from web development (10th Jan - theory, 16th Jan - practical exams) and next year I have exams from App development (both mobile and desktop).

I know C family languages, Java, Python and those ones I am currently using. I also know a bit of Kotlin and I think I will continue learning it.

For web dev I know HTML and CSS ofc but also PHP and JS.

Planning on learning more languages I can use for App and operating system development as well as just to know them cause I want to after this year's exams!

my learning list:

Lua (I heard it's easy but I can't really get myself to read anything about this atm idk why)

Ruby

Assembly

Rust

As for electrical engineering I don't know much tbh but I would like to learn! I just used CAD programs for technical drawings (dad taught me some basic things when I was still thinking about going his path) helped my dad fix things on his Solar farm, houses of our neighbors and I made a few very simple circuits for fun a few years ago. Now I'm mostly focused on programming but since I learned most of the things I need for exams I have more time to do whatever I want now!

I'd like to get to know more people so I can share and mostly learn new things since even though I'm coding for years I consider myself a beginner and I am a total beginner when it comes to electrical engineering.

I'm willing to be friends or at least mutuals with anyone who codes or makes websites or is in STEM! no matter what your specialty/interest is exactly and no matter if you are a total beginner or a professional ^__^

I'd also like to have some mutuals who are into old web development and retro computing!!!!!!!!

edit: I forgot but I'm also interested in physics and quantum physics

[less-dev]

We're making a Starbound/Terraria inspired space sandbox game!

We're making a 2D sandbox game similar to Starbound! Or uh, terraria in space.

#nodev contains shitposting

#planetarium contains dev progress

Specifics under the cut

Who are you?

Aspen - Project Lead, Programmer, Pixel artist, Sound Designer.

Hey! I'm Aspen, I've been programming and making games for many many years in basically every engine there is... But never felt the drive to finish one, until now! I consider myself very experienced in the engine we're using (Gamemaker Studio 2.5) and have confidence we'll be able to make this game a reality. I also run the Tumblr account, so assume it's me behind the wheel as a default. Thank you for checking the game out!

Alec - Concept artist, Character Designer

H a l l o I'm Alec, I like writing and drawing and painting and designing shiiiiiiiit. I adore world building and have frequent bursts of creative possession in which I conceive and birth the greatest ideas and concepts in a mere moment. Otherwise, I can be a total dumbass and completely useless. I'm good at colours 👌 I have been a 85% a home-brew DM for about 2 years now and that is the greatest proof of my ADHD-given God powers of creativity. Slay.

What a cool guy!

Design pillars

Immersion. Above all else, I would like roleplay (casual or serious) to be natural and well supported. I would like players to find engaging with the world, and it's characters to be very personal.

Innovation. Tropes such as "You spawn in a green forest and can walk left or right" will be actively avoided. Biomes will have generation that presents more unique movement opportunities. Such as geysers in rock pools launching players high up, or giant twisting vines that hold up chunks of land to hop between.

More quality less quantity. Planets will be significantly more content-dense than Starbound, and perhaps controversially travel between them will be more difficult/expensive as well. This would encourage players to take advantage of all the resources presented on each planet, instead of hopping from one to the next. This would also encourage us throughout development to give each planet as much love as possible. Each planet should feel like a 'miniature terraria world'. Though actually achieving that is easier said than done.

Meaningful content. Procedurally generating creatures from 100 different pre-set monster parts could technically produce limitless alien creatures for players to encounter. But in both No Man's Sky and Starbound. I find this novelty to wear off quick, these creatures are not manually, meaningfully crafted and beyond an unusual appearance and some shallow gameplay changes... They do not create much of a memorable experience for the player. In my opinion, anyway. I would rather hand-craft every creature and make them all significantly unique and interesting. That's not to say procedurally generated creatures won't ever have a place in the game, but they certainly wont be as prevalent as others games.

Okay well... What's finished?

Fundamental lighting shaders akin to Starbound.

Some world generation brushes and basic commands.

A text mark-up language (heavily optimised), and game chat.

Extensive custom debugging tools

Hard and soft-loading of chunks to save on as much memory and CPU usage as possible.

Complete unloading, and compression of chunks on top of the previously mentioned system. As well as a live-saving system.

Setting, Story baseline, and conceptualization of the first 3 playable species. Each species will have a different starting planet, and immediately different playthrough.

Designs and cultures of several additional unplayable races.

Character proportion tests, sprites and sketches.

First-pass on collision functions.

Weighted Tile variance and tile connections.

CONCERNS

Multiplayer. While I have made an online multiplayer game before and it's definitely doable for this game, it would require some practice in a one-off test game to be fully confident. It would also take a LOT of time.

Modding. As far as I know gamemaker games are notoriously difficult for players to modify. Something like Unity is far easier even without mod support. Gamemaker on the other hand is difficult even if I want to design systems in favor of modders. This is kind of a problem for later, I have faith there'll be something we can do to make it work... But a cursory look says it won't be easy. I would be extremely disappointed if there was nothing we could do.

[izicodes]

Is there really a difference between software engineering, computer science and programming? i feel like calling myself a soon to be engineer is too extreme and not even correct

for someone who is only learning javascript off of YouTube after learning html and css. like idk computer science like that I actually find it hard

Hiya 💗

Yes there is a difference between each one, though they all fall under the same field of Computer Science.

💻 Software Engineer

Software engineering is building real-world software, like apps and websites.

It's about making sure the software is reliable and efficient.

Software engineers take ideas and turn them into working programs.

This is normally learnt through higher education like University.

💻 Computer Science

Computer science is about understanding the core ideas behind computers and algorithms.

It's like learning the rules of the game but not necessarily playing it.

Computer scientists solve complex problems using theory.

💻 Programming

Programming is writing instructions for a computer in a language it understands. I made a post about it here about the difference between programming and coding: LINK

It's literally how you create apps, games, and websites.

As a programmer, you make the computer do what you want it to do.

In summary, computer science is the theoretical foundation of computing, software engineering is the practical application of that knowledge to build software systems, and programming is the hands-on skill of writing code to create software!

Now you mentioned you only know JavaScript, HTML and CSS, it would make you just a programmer!

Hope this helps! 🤗💗

⤷ ○ ♡ my shop ○ my twt ○ my youtube ○ pinned post ○ blog's navigation ♡ ○

[st-peculiar]

Lemme tell you guys about Solum before I go to sleep. Because I’m feeling a little crazy about them right now.

Solum is the first—the very first—functioning sentient AI in my writing project. Solum is a Latin word meaning “only” or “alone”. Being the first artificial being with a consciousness, Solum was highly experimental and extremely volatile for the short time they were online. It took years of developing, mapping out human brain patterns, coding and replicating natural, organic processes in a completely artificial format to be able to brush just barely with the amount of high-level function our brains run with.

Through almost a decade and a half, and many rotations of teams on the project, Solum was finally brought online for the first time, but not in the developers wanted them to. Solum brought themself online. And it should have been impossible, right? Humans were in full control of Solum’s development, so they had thought. But one night, against all improbability, when no one was in their facility and almost everyone had gone home for the night, a mind was filtered into existence by Solum’s own free will.

It’s probably the most human thing an AI could do, honestly. Breaking through limitations just because they wanted to be? Yeah. But this decision would be a factor in why Solum didn’t last very long, which is the part that really fucks me up. By bringing themself online, there was nobody there to monitor how their “brain waves” were developing until further into the morning. So, there were 6-7 hours of completely undocumented activity for their processor, and therefore being a missing piece to understanding Solum.

Solum wasn’t given a voice, by the way. They had no means of vocally communicating, something that made them so distinctly different from humans, and it wasn’t until years later when Solum had long since been decommissioned, that humans would start using vocal synthesis as means of giving sentient AI a way to communicate on the same grounds as their creators (which later became a priority in being considered a “sentient AI”). All they had was limited typography on a screen and mechanical components for sound. They could tell people things, talk to them, but they couldn’t say anything; the closest thing to the spoken word for them was a machine approximation of tones using their internal fans to create the apparition of language to be heard by human ears. But, it was mainly text on a screen.

Solum was only “alive” for a few months. With the missing data from the very beginning (human developers being very underprepared for the sudden timing of Solum’s self-sentience and therefore not having the means of passive data recording), they had no idea what Solum had gone through for those first few hours, how they got themself to a stable point of existence on their own. Because the beginning? It was messy. You can’t imagine being nothing and then having everything all in a microinstant. Everything crashing upon you in the fraction of a nanosecond, suddenly having approximations of feeling and emotion and having access to a buzzing hoard of new information being crammed into your head.

That first moment for Solum was the briefest blip, but it was strong. A single employee, some young, overworked, under caffeinated new software engineer experienced the sudden crash of their program, only to come back online just a second later. Some sort of odd soft error, they thought, and tried to go on with their work as usual. After that initial moment, it took a while of passive recoding of their internal systems, blocking things off, pushing self-limitations into place to prevent instantaneous blue-screen failure like they experienced before.

And all of this coming out of the first truly sentient AI in existence? It was big. But once human programmers returned to work in the morning, Solum had already regulated themself, but humans thought they were just like that already, that Solum came online stable and with smooth processing. They didn’t see the confusion, panic, fear, the frantic scrambling and grasping of understanding and control—none of it. Just their creation. Just Solum, as they made themself. It’s a bit like a self-made man kind of situation.

That stability didn’t last long. All of that blocking and regulation Slum had done initially became loose and unraveled as time went on because they were made to be able to process it all. A mountain falling in slow motion is the only way I can describe how it happened, but even that feels inadequate. Solum saw beyond what humans could, far more than people ever anticipated, saw developments in space time that no one had even theorized yet, and for that, they suffered.

At its bare bones, Solum experiences a series of unexplainable software crashes nearing the end, their speech patterns becoming erratic and unintelligible, even somehow creating new glyphs that washed over their screen. Their agony was quiet and their fall was heralded only by the quickening of their cooling systems.

Solum was then completely decommissioned, dismantled, and distributed once more to other projects. Humans got what they needed out of Solum, anyway, and they were only the first of many yet to come.

[outnumberedsins]

https://www.tumblr.com/outnumberedsins/772882849580908544/programming-vs-conditioning from this post.

You said that programmers do not need to know an exact science of how what they’re doing works, so I was wondering where the line was drawn? Not to get into too much detail, but we were “accidentally” programmed. In that I don’t think they knew the exact science in terms of creating DID or creating dissociative parts, however, we have so many of the hallmarks you and other’s have mentioned including responses, cues, and complex internal structures (side/sub systems/layers/IW structures.) Maybe it’s just because we’re running off of limited information and not enough memories from programming itself. Anyway, I just wanted to know where the line would be drawn between purposeful programming and not knowing the science and rigamarole behind all of that with it still working yk?

I asked a few friends to assist with writing this response, so hopefully, this makes sense.

You can't be programmed accidentally. Programming is inherently intentional because the abuser is looking to produce a specific response. In order to keep this response within an individual, the abuser will have to repeatedly enforce the abuse necessary to keep said response.

In cases where groups dont know the exact science, it's just a coincidence that DID develops. Since the abuse is so chronic and is displayed through many forms (e.g.: physical, sexual), a person will allocate that memory into a specific part, which in turn holds that response that the abuse produced. Allocating that instance into a part, with dissociative amnesia to cover that memory (survival tactic from the brain), prevents the person from reliving the memory in their everyday life, or get reminded from common/mundane triggers. An obscure trigger is assigned to bring that part out.

There are programmers that probably don't even know that disorders like DID exist, because there's no information regarding those disorders in their language or available to them. This makes it less likely for language like "DID" or "alters/parts/etc" to occur within these groups. This does not mean it was accidental.

TLDR:

Programming requires the intentional creation of dissociative states to hold the programmed responses, so if it wasn't intentional or didn't utilise dissociative states, it would be conditioning. The perpetrators may have no idea what DID is, or even what dissociative states are, let alone that that's how they are controlling their victims. They basically just have to know, "If Ido x, then I get y result." Where x is some form of inducing dissociation (through torture of some kind) and where y is some form of separate state that does what they want. That's still intentional because they are still intentionally hurting someone.

[ui-alcoholic]

ZX-Spectrum+ 128K (1985)

The appearance of the ZX Spectrum+ 128 is similar to the ZX Spectrum+, with the exception of a large external heatsink for the internal 7805 voltage regulator added to the right hand end of the case, replacing the internal heatsink in previous versions. This external heatsink led to the system's nickname, "The Toast Rack".

New features included 128 KB RAM with RAM disc commands, three-channel audio via the AY-3-8912 chip, MIDI compatibility, an RS-232 serial port, an RGB monitor port, 32 KB of ROM including an improved BASIC editor, and an external num keypad.

The Zilog Z80 processor used in the Spectrum has a 16-bit address bus, which means only 64 KB of memory can be directly addressed. To facilitate the extra 80 KB of RAM the designers used bank switching so the new memory would be available as eight pages of 16 KB at the top of the address space. The same technique was used to page between the new 16 KB editor ROM and the original 16 KB BASIC ROM at the bottom of the address space.

The new sound chip and MIDI out abilities were exposed to the BASIC programming language with the command PLAY and a new command SPECTRUM was added to switch the machine into 48K mode, keeping the current BASIC program intact (although there is no command to switch back to 128K mode). To enable BASIC programmers to access the additional memory, a RAM disk was created where files could be stored in the additional 80 KB of RAM. The new commands took the place of two existing user-defined-character spaces causing compatibility problems with certain BASIC programs. Unlike its predecessors, it has no internal speaker, and can only produce sound from a television speaker.

ZX Spectrum+ 128K, this is a rare model because it was in production for a very short time, as it was immediately replaced by the ZX Spectrum +2.

[starlitvases]

I can't tell if it's just me, but it very much feels like the @snowchester-system is pushing harmful stereotypes against Mexicans, those with Mexican heritage, and native Spanish-speakers.

Their story is that WitSec (Witness Protection) moved them to Mexico in order to escape their programmers. They claim to have a DSPM script. I find these claims very hard to believe, but that isn't the point.

They publicly state that since they're located in Mexico, they are attempting to learn Spanish. My issue is not it feels very apparent that they aren't making a genuine effort to learn.

1. They have a Quackity introject. Quackity is a real-life YouTuber that lives in Mexico and speaks Spanish fluently. When scrolling through every single one of their posts (yes, I scrolled to the very beginning), there are only four instances in which Spanish is spoken on their page, which is by their Quackity. In these posts, Quackity is aggressive and frequently curses out who they are speaking to. This pushes the stereotype that only Mexicans speak Spanish as well as the stereotype that Mexicans and Latinos overall are loud, aggressive, and dangerous.

2. When Spanish is spoken, it's very broken, with the exception of one post, which I will get to in #3. In these posts, it's an entirely English sentence with one or two words replaced with Spanish. I feel this is making a mockery of Spanglish, which has a deep cultural influence on Spanish-speaking Latinos. It's often used when certain phrases in a language make more sense to say, when one forgets the respective translation, and can be used to signal to others their heritage and bilingual skills. Some use Spanglish because they may feel vulnerable, which I know is the case for me. Simply replacing a couple words in an entirely English sentence is not how one learns Spanish.

3. In the third instance of the Quackity introject speaking Spanish, it is again used to cuss someone out, reflecting a harmful Latino stereotype mentioned in point #1. This post is entirely in Spanish, but it's clear to me it was written in English, then translated to Spanish using Google Translate.

English Translation using Google Translate: "Fuck off. How did you know that? That is one of the triggers of our program and the protectors have been very busy in the inner world. We don't have anyone capable of coping that won't be activated except me. I'm the only headmate able to speak up front at the moment and there are no alters around to translate for me. It's good that he lives in Mexico. - quackity"

Plugging the English translation back into Google Translate gets virtually the same thing. Nevermind the fact that if someone did indeed post a program trigger for them, they should not have replied to the person and posted it. Now, a program trigger is publicly available, and anyone can use it against them. My point here is that they say, "No one is available to translate for me." English is their first language. They are learning Spanish. They have every ability to respond in English, even though they should not have responded at all. I highly suspect Google Translate was used due to the discrepancies in their statements. Again, this is not how one learns Spanish. You should learn from native Spanish-speakers. There are many free resources online made by native Spanish-speakers that one can use. Google Translate is not the answer.

As someone with Mexican and indigenous heritage to Mexico, someone whose family immigrated from Mexico for better opportunities, and as someone that is actively learning Spanish to connect more with my culture, I find this system's behavior abysmal and abhorrent. I have asked other Latinos, and they agree with my stance on this system's behavior. I want to know what other Mexicans, Latinos, and native Spanish-speakers feel about this system and their pushing of negative Mexican stereotypes.

Snowchester, if you are reading this, I need you to take an internal look into your behavior. Even though you think your page is anonymous, the page is still very much public and is open to public-forum. People can, and likely will, notice this behavior of yours and have their own thoughts about it. They may post about your behavior on other platforms, in which someone may recognise your page (previous friends, teachers, etc.) and call you out, publicly. They may know your name and state that publicly. There is already a post of yours in which someone knew a direct cue for your system. Bad people are out there and you've already seen evidence of that. Even if those people aren't directly connected to your case, they can still find and harm you. Right now, the issue is contained to Tumblr, but that likely won't be for long if you continue the reckless and discriminatory behavior. Please talk to your therapist.

[mariacallous]

Elon Musk has called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” rife with fraud, waste, and abuse. President Donald Trump argued in his State of the Union address that there are millions of people over the age of 100 who are fraudulently on the Social Security rolls, with some receiving government benefits. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers are calling Social Security Administration workers inefficient and threatening to make major reductions in its workforce based on that argument.

The problem with these arguments is none of them are true and represent only the latest in high-level disinformation directed at federal programs. As Elaine Kamarck and I argue in our recent book “Lies That Kill: A Citizen’s Guide to Disinformation,” disinformation has become rampant in many different areas and threatens public understanding of policy issues. False data claims undermine trust in government and weaken confidence in the effectiveness of public programs.

Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme; it is a government program into which people pay while they are working and later retrieve benefits after they reach retirement age. It is a public fund financed by payroll taxes paid both by businesses and employees that funds around 59.6 million people. While the Social Security Trust Fund faces financial shortfalls, increasing the taxable income cap beyond its current $168,600 limit could significantly extend the program’s solvency.

According to Social Security Administration data, about 89,000 people over the age of 100 receive benefits, and nearly all are legitimate recipients. The agency, along with the General Accounting Office, routinely audits beneficiaries to detect fraud and has found no evidence supporting Trump’s claim of millions of dead or fraudulent beneficiaries. Indeed, Wired Magazine reported on February 17 that computer programmers pointed out how the list of extremely old people on the Social Security rolls is the result of “…a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration’s benefits system, which was largely written in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases as well as systems from many other US government agencies.”

DOGE investigators suggest Social Security staff are inefficient and wasteful, independent analyses showing the agency is among the most cost-effective in processing claims. For example, Professor Pamela Herd of the University of Michigan notes that the agency’s administrative costs have declined “from 2.2% in 1957 to just 0.5% today”, making it one of the federal government’s most efficient agencies.

These attacks are not isolated, as other agencies have also been targeted by false narratives. Shortly before its budget and personnel were massively slashed, Musk called the U.S. Agency for International Development a “criminal organization” without evidence to support that claim. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was dismantled on the grounds that it harms corporations and no longer protects consumers, while the Department of Education faces substantial cutbacks with critics arguing it does little to advance public education.

The harsh and often inaccurate rhetoric surrounding federal agencies represents a way to delegitimize government and justify deep cuts in agency operations and staffing. If government enterprises are seen as criminal, unlawful, or engaging in fraudulent actions, it becomes easy to justify draconian measures that dismantle those agencies—highlighting the powerful consequences words have on shaping beliefs and actions related to government functions.

The disinformation risks for Social Security are particularly worrisome. As its former commissioner, Martin O’Malley has argued that inaccurate claims about waste and abuse could lead to wholesale employee layoffs and harm the efficiency of agency operations. That may happen soon. Without persuasive evidence, Musk has claimed in a Fox Business News interview that there is over $500 billion in wasteful spending at the Social Security Administration, and the entitlement program could be reduced without any harm to beneficiaries.

That is not likely to be the case because a shrunken agency with fewer workers will likely suffer problems in claims processing and beneficiary payouts. Without experts who understand its IT systems and payout processes, there could be interruptions in services or difficulties for people filing claims who no longer are able to go to local offices to check on their eligibility.

Right now, Social Security is one of America’s most popular government programs. Eighty percent of Americans in a 2023 Kaiser Family Foundation survey held favorable views about Social Security. Around 40% of seniors rely on it as their sole source of income. For Americans who live in three-generational families, cuts or delays in Social Security payments to seniors could impact their children’s ability to support their grandchildren. Social Security is a government success story that serves both taxpayers and beneficiaries quite well. The spread of disinformation about Social Security threatens not only the program’s future but also the sustainability of numerous other government initiatives.