#the reels algorithm is fucking hell of course

[lav-endermoon]

i love you hidden likes and following list i love you tag feature i love you anonymity i love you customizable theme i love waffling into the digital void i love you tumblr

[veiilathiinks]

fuck you, happy world!

fuck you, happy world!

originally published on patreon, feb 9, 2024

kurt vonnegut once said: “i am a writer. this means that i made a career out of my mental illness”. and i am truly grateful that he hadn't lived to the present day. for, lo and behold, we are living in the happy world! and boy oh boy it is a detestable place.

“i've read your posts on the internet... why are you doing this, why are you so depressive, who is it going to help?” that is something i've been asked by a person who i've known for all of my life (i just started to wonder if this “knowing” wasn't in fact bidirectional). and it occurred to me: with all the make-believe freedom that we are having a privilege to, supposedly, enjoy in our modern high-tech independent lives (yes, sarcasm), we are not really allowed much. what we are allowed is simply to be helpers. nay, tools. listen, aren't we always expecting some kind of help to be offered by total strangers on the web? oh yes we do. and we are so used to taking it for granted, that we never as much as stop and think for a second, what hell it must be to be another person. we sure know what hell it is to be our good selves, no questions here. but as for other people, especially people that we connect to on the internet... let's be honest for a second: we don't give a damn. we simply demand, take and walk away. maybe it is fair, maybe it is supposed to be so, and maybe i would buy this pile of steaming manure if we were expecting to be treated back in the same manner. but that would be just too good to be true. we all need and demand respect, while barely ever showing any. that's ok, that's just us, human beings, you know, the vermin that crawls the earth, turning everything on their way into waste and dust, and keeps demanding for better conditions. that's no news. but hey, everyone wants to have their shiny moment, everyone wants to be a star of the show once in a while. and how would you get your dose of respect from a crowd of self-obsessed egotistical infantile narcissists? i think we can find the answer in a simple metaphor. how would you make a toddler like you? give the little leech a candy, of course! and the bigger and sweeter the candy the deeper the gratitude. and what if everyone around you is basically a toddler? look at them, these grown-ups, staring at their phones day and night, what are they doing there, writing a doctorate or calculating the orbit for a new spacecraft? or watching tiktoks and reels with morons farting on camera? what's your bet? i have a feeling that if you managed to read this text up to this moment, your bet is as gloomy as mine. and how do you please this crowd? what kind of candy must you give them for them to be grateful? how much candy will you have to supply? and how long will their gratitude last?

above all: do you really need their gratitude?

it is with a heavy heart and weeping eye i confirm that the majority of artists whose art i loved, cherished and respected have fallen victim to the happy world. and it makes me utterly sad. why? because art doesn't owe anything to anyone. art is only possible when it's created without a direct cause. art is the expression of the soul, the subconscious, the guts and the blood. when art is created on demand, when art is created for the sake of pleasing someone, it is no longer art. “music for working out”, “beats to study to”, “books to help you quit smoking” and all that excrement that fills the music and literary platforms – this is not art. spotify, meta and the rest of those corporate giants – these are not patrons of art, these are services, they serve. and when the artist tries to please the platform (or worse – the platform's algorithm) that makes the artist a servant of these services. a servant's servant. oh, i have a shorter and better word for it: slavery. so, my dear artists, if by any unbelievable ridiculous chance you are reading this, make a mental note to yourself: next time when you think that you should release 12 singles with 8 collaborations across the next 12 month in hopes to please the spotify algorithm, don't forget to remind yourself that you are doing it for your master. do you hear the whip swooshing? next time when you think that you desperately need to write a christmas song, because your distributor is nagging you, so you won't miss the annual trend, i want you to say aloud: “yes, master”. next time, when after writing a depressive song you feel an urgent need to make a motivational post where you explain your reasons for writing said depressive song and provide substantial evidence that said song not only helped you to conquer your depression, but above all was written with a clear intention to help your followers and subscribers to fight with their depression (of course one mustn't forget to add a link to some foundation to make one's claim to be a selfless helper more believable), i want you to end it with a sing-along with a choir of your peers “i owe my soul to the company store”. that will do it.

so what about us? are we here to motivate someone for something? are we here to provide advice? hell no. why are we doing it? because we can.

with all my heart i couldn't care less what anyone expects of me. i am an artist. i do what i do. if i feel so much pain that it spills out – i spill it out. if i can't contain my despair, why should i? why put lipstick on a pig? life is pain. the world is ugly. existence is meaningless. we are all here to suffer, die and be decomposed and forgotten. oh you don't like it? i'm sure there are going to be legions of cheerful spiritual people on the internet who would be more than happy to sell you the shiny wrapping of the happy world. i ain't one of those. i don't care. i've heard something about the #metoo movement. i'm starting my own movement. i'll call it the #countmeout movement. i refuse to trade honest art for motivational content. truth is scary. truth is ugly. we all suffer, why can't we just admit it? happiness is fleeting. “hope is the thing with feathers”, emily dickinson wrote. well, hopelessness is the beast with fangs. and despair is made of brick and mortar and it is here to stay. truth is made of pain and despair. happiness is fleeting, it passes in a heartbeat. pain lasts. and i salute those who refuse to hypocritically avert their faces, those who refuse to pretend, those who refuse to sell pink lies serving the corporate machine. and to the rest i say: fuck you, happy world!

i don't know if anyone reads these texts, and if anyone who read the first lines managed to keep up to this moment, but if you are still here, i want to say thank you. thank you for not demanding. thank you for letting me be myself.

my favorite artists, writers that shaped and keep shaping me, musicians whose music directed and influenced me are brutally honest. if there is anything i can vouch for, it is that i can smell dishonesty in art. and those most brutally honest, from schopenhauer to hesse, from remarque to vonnegut, from fitzgerald to orwell, those whose words still ring in my ears and make shivers run down my spine, they didn't try to please me, they didn't smooth out the rough edges, they didn't conceal their pain, their disappointment, their despair, and neither should i. in the name of all the great art that this ugly, unfair and unbearable world provided me with, i will keep spilling my pain out on paper and howl in anguish. and i have only one thing to ask of you, whoever you are: don't avert your eyes, don't look away, for this is all that we have, and the moment we stop paying attention to pain – that will be the end.

send a tip to veiila (paypal or credit/debit card)

join the mailing list

[thejudgingtrash]

Yass, time for adult!Percy!

I was wondering about life past the current Riordanverse and I really like the idea of gathering different possible jobs for Percy, for fics and for fun.

So here’s a few:

1. Teacher/Counselor

First of all, what kind of teacher? Is he an elementary teacher? Does he teach AP classes in high school? Which subjects? Public school or private school (let’s not forget, Percy spent a good chunk in his life in private schools as the token poor negro kid and was surrounded by awful arrogant rich kids like Nancy and Matt)? Montessori school?? And most importantly: no, I absolutely do not see it.

Percy’s ofc very compassionate and aware of surroundings, so he’d be on high alert with his students but with the current and former state in schools I don’t think he’s willing to get traumatized each and every single day at school.

2. Marine Biologist

Call me basic but since it’s essentially canon, Imma stick beside him (tbh I can’t remember anything past PJO lol). But marine biology is such an interesting and diverse field?? Like c’mon now!

Yes, it’s a lot more chemistry and math and physics than one might think but the possibilities? And the benefits with his powers? Let Percy get a minor in psychology and study animal behavior by actually interviewing them, IT’S A GENIUS MOVE IF YOU GET THE VISION!

3. Marketing Manager

Hehe. My field of study. Am I biased? Of course I am! Was this part of my fic Oh. It’s Them Again? Yessss, mama!

Again. Such an interesting field with many possibilities! And he’d get more than just a good check in NYC if he switches positions enough! Like… is Percy a digital marketing manager? How much does he hate Google, Meta, Amazon and co.? Is he working in strengthening brand awareness and if so, how? Is he forced to work in newsletter/email marketing? Is he a sales machine and constantly on the road? Or is he a key account manager and simply focuses on a handful of important clients?

Is he, as a disgruntled millennial, forced to work with spoiled gen z influencers he hates and has to figure out the TikTok algorithm like a grandpa on the sofa whilst unhelpful Annabeth is laughing at him (shut up Annabeth, we all know you use IG reels and occasionally YT shorts at best!!)? Does he accidentally go viral and HATES everyone calling him daddy in the comments??

Oh, the possibilities.

4. Firefighter/Paramedic

Hell yes. I saw someone else posting about this ages ago (if you can remember, feel free to @!). But this is so interesting. If you want to somewhat stick to canon and let Percy use his powers, this could be an option.

I see it, helping and saving people that way could be an option. Still, also more on the traumatizing side but I actually think this is more interesting than a teacher. And oh, the possibilities in stories are endless! Saving people and pets from burning houses. Coordinating shifts in the station, being a first responder… oof.

That said…

5. Doctor

Oof, I should really work on The Wedding Dance in the future even tho it’s hella minor plot point…

Hospital doc? Owning his own practice doc? Doing 1 first and 2 next? What type of doctor is he? Simply an internist? A gastroenterologist? Pediatrician (could be traumatizing)? A surgeon to let out his god complex? Okay, let’s note down surgeon for Annabeth… a neurologist? Endless opportunities. Where’s the PJO x Grey’s Anatomy fic we all need??

6. Hotelier

Whilst the service industry is incredibly fucked (pre- as well as post-Pandemic), this is also interesting. Let Percy and Sally own a bed and breakfast. What does it look like? How many rooms are there? How much do they hate booking.com and AirBnB for taking a good chunk of commission?

Where’s the hotel located? In Montauk? In Manhattan? In Greece?? What are the roles? Does Sally do the cooking and house keeping whilst Percy does repairs and is the receptionist/clerk?

Who are the guests?? You decide!

7. Chef/Baker

Ahhh… Chef!Percy my beloved, you will always be welcomed. So. Much. Stuff. To. Think. About. And yes, this will actually be relevant for one of my fics, IFYKY. Head chef, deputy chef, junior chef… did Percy go the Institute of Culinary Education? Did he go to Italy or France for a few years to hone his craft? Or did he purposefully say f Europe, let’s head somewhere else? What is his specialty? How much sleep does he get per week?

Also I’m never letting go of Baker!Percy and Sally who own their sweet cupcake shop and sell all kinds of sugary shit!

8. Stay at Home Dad

My fave trope, don’t get it twisted! While I think Annabeth and Percy realistically have one kid max plus two or three pets, I love the idea of Career and Business Woman!Annabeth and SAHD Percy who’s trying to make her life as easy as possible whilst tending the baby, trying to clothe the toddler and reminding their elementary school aged kid to pack their lunch.

A chaotic, yet amazing and rewarding life (which is still stressful! Just a different kind of stressful!)

Sooooo…

What do you think? Agreements, disagreements? Anyone who’s interested/in school for/already working in any of these fields? Do you think it’s unrealistic? Is it realistic?

Mayhaps, I’ll think about other demigods and what they can do in the future 🧐🫡

[andypantsx3]

statistically significant | 1 | bakugou/reader

length: 23,490 words | 7 chapters

summary: You’re the scientist who developed a neural net to model the value of assists. Now that your work is feeding into the hero rankings, pro hero Ground Zero has a bone to pick with your results.

tags: romance, enemies to lovers, sexual tension, reader-insert

warnings: aged up characters, eventual smut, m/f threats of violence, problematic behavior

note: I cannot overemphasize that this interpretation of Bakugou is based on season 1 Bakugou, which means he behaves very questionably at the beginning. Please heed the warnings!

Last year

You had been ferreting snacks out of the Hero Awards when he found you.

In retrospect, the whole idea of attending the Hero Awards had been a bad one from the get go. You’d just been so thrilled by the image of it in your head--getting to see all your favorite pros gathered in one place, dressed to the nines, celebrating their rankings, their wins, their saves, their successes. You’d pictured yourself flitting between heroes, collecting autographs and taking selfies, sitting down at a table with big names like Uravity and Froppy, making fast friends over the complimentary champagne.

But then you’d seen what really went into preparing for and attending an event like this, and the shine had quickly rubbed off.

When your boss at the Commission had extended you the invite, she’d told you that you would be representing the organization, and had advised you to contract a makeup artist and find someone willing to dress you. Her tone had strongly implied that this was more of an order than a suggestion. So you’d done it, but nobody had told you exactly how many hours went into getting your makeup tested, getting fitted and refitted for a dress, and fielding questions on cut, colors, fabrics, and fit.

By the time the Awards rolled around, you’d lost upwards of forty excruciating hours of your life to preparations, and had developed some kind of anxiety-induced Pavlovian response to the modiste’s name on your phone screen, where you immediately wanted to leap into the nearest storage closet and hide. And none of this was even counting the five full hours you spent on the day of the awards getting primped and polished within an inch of your life, then stuffed into some ridiculous scrap of fabric that threatened to fall off of you if you so much as breathed wrong.

By the time the stylists and makeup artist had finished with you, you were starved, cranky, and nursing a small migraine from how enthusiastic the hairdresser had been with you. You’d thought, though, that you would finally be able to enjoy yourself now that the worst was over. All there was left was to attend the ceremony, and get to see all your favorite heroes.

And for an hour or two, the Hero Awards had been just as cool as expected. You lingered on the fringes of the red carpet, gawking as pros like Chargebolt and Pinky swanned their way down the walkway, looking even cooler in real life than they looked on TV. Everyone had clearly gone all out, and they looked unbelievably good, either inhumanly beautiful or inhumanly intimidating. You had been utterly transfixed, as evidenced by the inordinate amount of time you spent accidentally staring at Todoroki Shouto as he gave an interview to the side of the walkway, looking absolutely unreal as he leaned over to speak to the reporter.

When you’d finally managed to snap out of your trance, you’d remembered to cut a beeline for the snack table, and had set about stuffing as many snacks into your dress as you could manage. And that’s where the trouble really started.

The invite to the Awards had come with the option for a very fancy multi-course dinner that you could have chosen. Instead, you’d taken one look at the price and laughed yourself sick, before resolving to sneak a bunch of the free snacks into your dress to keep you occupied during the ceremony. The problem was, the scrap of fabric the modiste had insisted was a dress was so obnoxiously flimsy and could only hold so many snacks.

If your dress had been able to hold a reasonable number of snacks, you wouldn’t have needed to sneak back out to the snack table during the presentation, and he would have never had a chance to catch you on your own. But the dress was lacking snack utility, and so you had gone back out for more.

You kept low in the aisle as you crept out of the darkened theater, keeping a hand over your chest so you didn’t spill out of the thin fabric of your dress, and emerged into the reception hall, where you were almost blinded by the harsh light. You stood for a minute, blinking the spots out of your vision, and touched a hand to your eyes, careful not to smear any of your eyeliner.

And that’s when he struck.

Almost as soon as you raised your hand, a rough hand seized your wrist, wrenching your arm down. A heavy arm went around you quickly, trapping both your arms to your sides, and you barely had time to let out a squeak before a calloused hand clapped over your mouth. Your feet left the floor, and then you were being dragged through a side door into the stairwell.

You twisted wildly, kicking out, trying to catch the wall or the railing to push off of and throw your assailant off balance, but he was strong, and clearly well-versed in combat, as he kept you well away from anything you could use to your advantage. He hauled you out into the stairwell, but instead of heading down the stairs, he moved towards the corner. To your surprise, he tossed you unceremoniously against the wall, letting you go.

You caught yourself on the rough stone and whirled around, only to reel back in shock when you caught sight of your assailant.

Bakugou Katsuki, perhaps better known as pro hero Ground Zero, leaned over you, trapping you against the wall with an arm on either side of you. He, like all the other heroes you’d caught sight of today, looked almost unreal in person, but in stark contrast to all the others, his handsome face was twisted up in unmistakeable fury, blood-red eyes bright with violence and white teeth bared in a silent snarl. Even under the thick fabric of his suit, you could see the hard lines of his body were taught with aggression, and it was all you could do to not shrink back against the cold stone of the wall.

“So,” he snarled, leaning in to put his face close to yours, “you’re the fucking statistics nerd.”

You gaped at him, mouth falling open. Your professional title was data scientist, but statistics nerd was a close enough descriptor that you could tell he knew who you were. Your brows went up, wondering why in the world Ground Zero knew you.

“E-excuse me?” you managed. Your brain rapidly kicked into high gear, running through possible reasons why he would know you, what he could possibly want with you.

Bakugou snarled. “What the fuck is your problem with me?”

You stared at him. Problem with him? Other than the fact that he’d just seized you with no warning and dragged you into a stairwell, you had no problem with him. You’d never even met him--what the hell was he talking about?

“Uh, do you maybe have me confused with someone else?” you asked, trying to shift out from under his arm. Maybe there was another data scientist milling around in the crowds that he’d meant to get his hands on instead.

Bakugou’s red eyes narrowed, and he put a hand to your abdomen to press you firmly back to the wall. “Oh no. You’re not getting out of this, you little brat. Fucking fix it.”

You eyed him warily, checking him for signs of a head injury, wandering over his shock of blonde hair and noting the size of his pupils. Maybe Bakugou had been out on assignment just before the Awards, and hadn’t stopped to get his injuries checked out before coming here. A blow to the head would explain why he was behaving so strangely, and asking for weird stuff.

“Fix what?” you asked, frowning when you couldn’t spot the signs of a concussion on him. His gaze seemed all too focused, all too intent. It was nerve-wracking, actually. You’d heard of his reputation for intensity before, but it was one thing to hear it and another entirely to have all that intensity trained on you.

Bakugou bared his teeth and leaned closer. “Your fucking nerd-ass model. Fix it.”

You froze.

Oh.

Oh no.

Oh, this was about the model. You knew his bone to pick with the model.

The entire reason you’d received an invite to the Hero Awards in the first place was because of your work on the model that calculated the hero rankings. The model had existed for years before you had come along, but this year it was different.

You’d been hired a couple months ago by the Public Safety Hero Commission after you’d contacted them with an idea on how to finally calculate the value of field assists. You’d had a rough prototype of a neural network that you’d trained on video of multi-hero operations, tracking the movements of all the heroes on screen, and had developed an algorithm capable of assigning point values to moves that contributed to but did not directly result in a win or a rescue.

The Commission couldn’t get their hands on your work fast enough, and after only a few months refining your neural net, it was hooked into the rankings model, and it had informed not only the choices for Rescue of the Year and Most Valuable Hero this year, but had entirely changed the hero rankings overall.

And Bakugou’s ranking had been very much affected.

Bakugou Katsuki was a hero very unlike the world had ever seen. Anyone could see from his stats alone that he was incredibly driven, supremely powerful, and almost unmatched by any other hero out there. A few years out from UA, he’d already entered the top ten and had been mere breaths away from the top three -- that is, until your model results had been released.

The thing about Bakugou was that he had a higher percentage of fight wins than any hero in recorded history. He came out on top of almost any situation he entered into, and had one of the highest villain capture stats and the highest villain kill stat as compared to any other hero at this point in their career. The problem was, the new model also now took into account assists, as well as applied slightly heavier weights to rescues, and as good as Bakugou was at winning fights, he was almost equally as terrible at helping others.

So when your model had been worked into the Hero Commission’s official ranking calculations, Bakugou had backslid to sit unhappily at rank number eight.

And apparently, he thought this meant you had a personal grudge.

“Okay, I understand you’re upset, but the results are the results,” you said, watching him carefully. “It’s got nothing to do with you personally.”

His expression darkened thunderously, and the hand on your abdomen grew notably hotter, a scent like gunpowder and burnt sugar rising in the stairwell. “Like hell it doesn’t. Fucking fix it.”

Your brow furrowed. How did regular people think models worked? “There’s no ‘fixing it’, Bakugou. That’s just how math works. If you have a problem with how assists and rescues are weighted then you can take it up with the Commission. I just trained the model with their recommendations, and the results are what they are.”

Bakugou apparently registered none of what you were saying. Rough fingers slid to your jaw, tipping your face up to him. “What is it that you wanted, you damn brat? Did you want to see me humiliated? Or maybe you wanted my attention?” His fingers dug into your jaw. “Well now you have it, you fucking harpy, so show me what you wanted with it.”

You gaped at him, unable to help the way your mouth hung open like a fish. Did he think you were blackmailing him? With a fucking statistical model? It was a matter of public record that Bakugou was smart--he was purportedly one of the brightest minds that had ever graced the profession of hero, with strategic skill and combat sense that was utterly unparalleled--so then why the hell was he being so dumb about this? Was he really so self-absorbed that he thought this whole thing was about him?

Your temper flared, rising like the slow heat that was building under his hands. “I know this might be news to you,” you said slowly, “but not everything is about you. The model I trained takes in video as its input, and calculates rankings based on recommended weighting criteria that the Hero Commission gave me themselves. There is no place for me to input my own biases or change the results, so if the output is something that you’re ashamed of, then maybe you should do better.”

Bakugou’s eyes brightened, narrowing on you with an intensity that made you want to curl into the wall. “Say that again, you little fuck.”

You held your ground, ignoring the dangerous way the scent of hot smoke sharpened, leaning forward to bare your own teeth. “Maybe you should do better, you self-centered asshole.”

You were close enough that you could see his pupils dilate with the challenge, like a predator catching sight of its prey. An unsettling grin made its way across his mouth. “I am going to make you wish you’d never even seen a calculator, you smug fucking nerd,” he said, leaning into you.

The scent of gunpowder burned in the back of your throat, and the hands on you flared alarmingly hot, before the door to the hall burst open, and a whirlwind of red and yellow tore into the stairwell.

“Heya Blasty,” a voice chirped, echoing on the stairs, “Found ya.”

The shock of golden yellow resolved itself into the lean figure of Kaminari Denki, aka pro hero Chargebolt. He quickly made his way to Bakugou’s side, seizing an elbow.

“I’m busy, fuckstick. Fuck off,” Bakugou growled.

A large hand reached over Bakugou’s other shoulder to pull him off you, a head of gelled red spikes materializing behind his back, and you blinked up at Kirishima Eijirou, also known as Red Riot.

“Sorry about him,” Kirishima smiled down at you warmly, in direct contrast to the way his fingers dug into Bakugou’s shoulder. His teeth looked incredibly sharp in person, but this fact somehow failed to detract from the warmth of his friendly expression. You blinked, stunned that you were being addressed by Red Riot.

“He’s been a little worked up since the results were released, but he’s harmless,” Kirishima explained, grunting a little as he jerked Bakugou away from you. Bakugou snarled and turned to his friend, a small volley of sparks lighting off of his palm.

“I said fuck off,” he growled.

You let out a choked laugh at the idea of Bakugou Katsuki being called harmless. Just this week he’d perfected a technique where he melted clean through concrete, and you’d seen the replay of him liquifying the side of a skyscraper on the news this morning as you’d been getting your makeup done.

“Harmless, right. Definitely felt that way,” you uttered as Kirishima struggled to get a grip on Bakugou.

“I’ll fucking show you harmless,” Bakugou spat, turning back to you, sparks crackling louder in his palm. Kirishima seized his chance quickly, getting a bulky arm around Bakugou’s chest and lifting him straight off the ground. Bakugou snarled and gripped Kirishima’s forearm, letting off an explosion that would have blown anyone else’s arm clean off, but Kirishima just laughed, ignoring that the sleeve of his suit had caught fire, and hauled Bakugou back through the door.

A litany of swears filtered back through the door before it swung shut again.

Kaminari turned to face you, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry about that. We didn’t realize he was gonna come after you like that, though I don’t think he would have actually done anything. He’s pretty much all talk.”

You waved a hand, still stunned that Chargebolt was speaking to you.

“Uh, it’s okay,” you said. “I just...didn’t expect that kind of a reaction.”

Kaminari chuckled. “He’s usually a little more chill these days--I think he’s just pissed he’s losing to Midoriya now.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “I gotta say, though, he was even more worked up than I expected when we got here. What did you say to him?”

You grimaced, thinking back on the tense conversation. “That if he was ashamed of his ranking, he should do better.”

Kaminari choked. “Oh fuck, he must have been pissed,” he managed, before dissolving into peals of laughter. “Do better. No wonder he looked like he was gonna give himself a hernia. Mina’s gonna wet herself when I tell her.”

You shifted uncomfortably. “He thinks I altered the results to get his attention.”

Kaminari’s chuckles tapered off as he set a comforting hand on your shoulder. “Oh, he’s just saying that. He knows he’s shit at assists. He’s just salty he’s actually gotta do something about it if he wants to be number one.”

You thought back to the feeling of that hard body pressing you up against the wall, the disdain that had twisted his handsome face, the burning heat that had built up under his palms. A shiver went down your spine. It had seemed like he was a little more than salty, but if that’s how his friend wanted to put it, then fine.

“Well, thanks for the save anyway,” you said, giving Kaminari a little smile. “I’d definitely give you and Kirishima Rescue of the Year if I was pre-determining my results.”

Kaminari laughed, turning back to the door that Kirishima had dragged Bakugou through. As if on cue, a small boom sent the door swinging open a little. “Speaking of which, I’d better get back to make sure I don’t have to rescue the rescuer.”

He gave you a casual wave, then crossed to the door quickly. He hesitated at the threshold, then peeked back over his shoulder at you.

“By the way,” he said. “You might want to take a look at your dress. I, um, think Bakugou may have gotten a little carried away.”

He disappeared before you could ask what he meant, but a quick glance down clarified soon enough. Right on your abdomen, where Bakugou had pinned you against the wall, lay a scorched cut out, exactly in the shape of one large hand.

Your mouth dropped open in horror.

That fucking dick.

[shirlleycoyle]

The Training Commission

After the end of a second ultraviolent American civil war, after we’ve placed the state under the guidance of automated systems—well, there’s inevitably going to be a Smithsonian exhibit. Ingrid Burrington and Brendan Byrne’s brilliant new speculative fiction newsletter—which received support from the Mozilla Foundation, and which we’re thrilled to share the first installment here today—collects the dispatches of an architecture critic with personal ties to the bloody conflict who is assigned to review the museum’s new Reconciliation Wing.

The authors explain: “The Training Commission is a speculative fiction newsletter about the compromises and consequences of applying technological solutionism to collective trauma. The USA, still reeling from a civil war colloquially referred to as the Shitstorm, has adopted an algorithmic society to free the nation from the pain of governing itself.” It’s also a hell of a story. There will be six installments in all, arriving weekly—subscribe here to receive the next five direct, as they say, to your inbox. Enjoy. -the ed

From: Aoife T <aoife@stringr.io> Subject: re: This is a bad idea Date: May 11, 2038 3:49 PM EDT To: Ellen Leavitt <leavitt@midatlantic.com>

I understand why you think that would work, Ellen, but aside from generally having no interest in putting my personal life on display like that, I really don’t think me writing a tearjerker op-ed about a traumatizing exhibition display is going to get the Smithsonian to change their minds so much as convince them that the controversy will draw crowds. I’d rather deal with them through backchannels with my mom and sister on board, try to make this all go away quietly before the museum opens.

Thanks for the Kilfe token, I just saw it come through on the ledger. I’ll be running the runnable parts of the draft in my newsletter, I guess. Sorry again to let you down on this. I might have a beat on something interesting soon–too early to say but it means I think I’ll be down in DC for at least another week.

From: Aoife T <aoife@stringr.io> Subject: Some Things Don’t Belong In A Museum Date: May 12, 2038 4:30:58 PM EDT To: subscribers@stringr.io

Apologies that it’s been a while since the last one of these. I’ve been busy, not successful busy, mostly pitching pieces in my new/old specialty. You’d think a contemporary moment so focused on rebuilding America would give some kind of shit about architecture, but uhm, nope.

What follows began as a review of the new Reconciliation Wing of the Smithsonian which a Very Kind Editor cherry-picked me for. It’s good to get paid to visit my hometown because, as my regular readers know, I will otherwise avoid the District like the sweaty American bog it is. I was apparently desperate enough for work to imagine the Reconciliation Wing might not feature an intersection with my own personal history, which, of course, was deeply delusional, and I took myself out of the game in a semi-dramatic fashion. Suffice to say, currently I’m fine but couldn’t really file something this incomplete so I’m sharing what parts of it could be salvaged here.

As seen from the National Mall ferry, the finally-completed Reconciliation Wing of the Smithsonian American History Museum is a major architectural interruption in the capitol’s low-lying landscape of retrofitted and elevated 20th-century buildings–which is ironic, considering how much attention went to making it seamlessly connect to the natural systems of the Anacostia canals. The first new construction project on the Mall since the creation of the DC canal system, the Reconciliation Wing has been subject of curiosity not only as an opening move in historicizing the National Shitstorm (ahem, The Interstate Conflict) but also as a formal progression in post-Capitol architecture. (Unless, of course, you believe that the bare-chested, perpetually shouting hologram of Alex Jones in the rear sculpture garden of the Newseum cannot be topped.)

The wing’s designer, Kay Mangakāhia, was a controversial selection from the Smithsonian and Ashburn Institute’s open call for submissions. An intern at Bjarke Ingels Group at the time, Mangakāhia was notable not only for her age (at twenty-two, she was barely ten at the time the Ashburn Accords were even signed) but her permaculture-infused proposal. The mycelium buttresses and living fungal structures of the Reconciliation Wing are now in high demand, but it took Mangakāhia’s persistence and the algorithm’s faith in her design to reach this plateau. The thriving structure’s delicate complexity and environmental pragmatism reflect the oft-quoted line from Mangakāhia’s original proposal: “survival without poetics is a carceral existence.”

One can’t say such an attitude pervades the exhibits in the Reconciliation Wing. Upon entry, a flickering series of Extremely Relatable Human Faces projected on black plinths greet visitors. The visages display a fairly narrow scale of emotions between Makes You Think and Slight but Telling Emotional Pain but somehow they manage to be all very specific. No context is provided. Given the purpose of the wing, one might suspect that these are some of the IRL victims of what the museum seems to have decided we’re calling “The First Algorithmic Society.”

Only upon arriving at a small, dim aperture is context provided: the portraits are all visuals generated by AIs developed pre-Shitstorm, let loose to slither upstream into visitors’ phones. They cull contact info, pictures, bank account etc. and put together a monstermash of the type of person you’re most likely to have an empathetic reaction to, then plugged said persona into the the loop, along with the last fifty or so visitors’.

This led to the other journalists in attendance performing variations on the exhausted sigh, since recent years have seen around half a dozen gallery shows in NYC using some version of this shock tactic (though, to be fair, rarely with the technical success of the Reconciliation Wing). While this installation is no doubt supposed to primarily remind visitors of the prevailing ease with which corporations accessed our pocket technological unconsciousnesses pre-Ashburn, it also serves the dual purpose of showing how vulnerable Palantir’s National Firewall is to even ridiculously outdated tech. Hence why the feds keeps running that Don’t Bring Your Phone to China/Don’t Actually Go to China Ever awareness campaign. (It shouldn’t surprise you that Vera’s written about this. Read her shit!)

Next is a long, narrow room skirted on the left by an unbroken screen which features a 1990s techno-thriller code waterfall with, again, no context. On the right runs a series of pictures, videos and artifacts designed to shock viewers into clubsterbomb memories–the remnants of a Google bus retrofitted and weaponized into a battering ram, that famous photo of the National Guard standing down at one of the many early BLM standoffs (everyone remembers the photo, never the standoff), a yellowing final print edition of the Washington Post.

To be fair, the Smithsonian’s only getting a fraction of the archival materials collected by the Ashburn Institute as part of the truth and reconciliation process. (This controversy–the splintering of the archive and intra-federal agency squabbles over it–does not get a mention in the exhibition.) Of course they went with the most bombastic acquisitions. But for all the attempted sensory overload, the wall text and captions are jarringly milquetoast, acquiescing to the kind of both-sides-ism that heavily aided the collapse of consensus truths in the first place. I wondered what kind of exhibit might have emerged had the Smithsonian received the full archives of the Training Commission–side note, has anyone ever actually referred to it as the Ashburn Truth and Reconciliation Council For A New American Consensus outside of official documents? Even Darcy Lawson called it the TC in her fucking victory lap TED Talk last year. When the director of the Ashburn Institute has embraced a term originally coined and deployed by critics of the project it seems like it might be time to drop the formalities.

Presumably, the TC is at least acknowledged in the exhibition. Considering that it enabled UBI, closed (almost) every prison in the country, and effectively automated the office of the Presidency out of existence, it would have to be. But I didn’t get that far.

(Here endeth the non-article.)

As longtime readers already know, I write about architecture and design here, not my brother. In fact, I don’t write about him at all. I have no interest in following in Ciarnán Whelan’s investigative reporter footsteps or reflecting on what happened to him in any public setting. I’m hoping that by the time the Reconciliation Wing opens to the public, a particularly distasteful section of the exhibition will be revised or altogether removed. But to include something so graphic with so little warning, with such a manipulative experience design, and with the gall to strategically place tissue boxes around the space as though that’s an act of mercy? It’s cheap and insulting. It doesn’t deserve to be written about. So I didn’t write about it.

Thanks for subscribing (and reading). Depending on whether a piece an editor’s been sitting on for months ever lands I might have something old-new for you next week.

From: Aoife T <aoife@stringr.io> Subject: Deadtech from a Dead Guy Date: May 13, 2038 2:31:58 AM EDT To: Avi Huerta <ahuerta@notall.technology>

Avi,

Did you read my last stringr newsletter? I mean, probably not by now since it just went out like under twelve hours ago and you have a small excellent child. But I can’t sleep, and you’re the kind of person who might be able to help but you also probably should read that first for context. (And, as context for the context, most of what’s below is what I wrote in a fugue state before realizing that I couldn’t send it to my editor.)

So I knew the real reason I got a press pass to the Reconciliation Wing preview wasn’t my bylines so much as my real last name. The press tour minders were practically levitating with morbid curiosity when I arrived. I managed to ditch them, lingering and checking photo credits (nerd) by about halfway through the exhibit. This meant, thankfully, that there was no one around when I turned the corner into the section I had secretly hoped wouldn’t be included: the tragic death of renowned journalist Ciarnán Whelan while embedded with the Last Luddite Revolutionary Guard, declared here by the museum to be a “turning point” in the Interstate Conflict.

I mean, I was expecting some triggering bullshit, but I wasn’t expecting the audacity of how it was delivered. Instead of taking the larger-than-life screen approach with that portrait everyone loves to use of him or a slo-mo attempt to make a snuff film elegiac, I got a fucking push notification on my phone from the museum AI.

“Please be advised that the following content may be disturbing to some,” it read. It turned out that wasn’t a notice to give you a fucking choice, just a preamble before the video started to play and I was fucking thirteen years old again, staring at my palm and a video of my big dumb reporter brother using his “serious correspondent voice” I always made fun of, just outside a New Mexico Facebook data center embedded with the Ludds. People forget how long the broadcast ran before the too-good-for-a-minor-militia “DIY” quadcopter IED actually hit. (This was, of course, the video that was broadcast on Facebook Live, the one that people said Facebook tweaked the algo to downrank when their role in the attack became clear. It didn’t work. As the wall text accurately notes, most people, like me, saw it live.)

The wall displays telegraphed the rest of it, though mostly I’m just guessing from what I vaguely remember seeing spinning on the walls in front of me right before I blacked out mid-panic attack. 90% sure they have a shot of Faraday Fields under construction, which should amuse you; also seemed like they get into the conspiracy theory/ies, which probably won’t.

I woke up in a basement office of the old Smithsonian, somewhere far below the canals. A slouchy middle-aged guy with no hair on his head and a throwback 2010s beard was sitting by the door, scrolling through his phone. “Welcome back,” he said, gesturing toward an ancient percolator with the elan of a long-suffering mid-level bureaucrat. The coffee smelled about as appealing as Anacostia scumwater, but I was too tired to turn it down.

I asked if I’d been out long, a little thrown that the Smithsonian’s idea of first aid was depositing me in an office with some rando who I definitely hadn’t seen on the press tour.

“A little more than an hour. The tour’s over. If you want to see the rest of it I can take you around in a bit.” Eyes a little too steady on me, he took the smallest sip of coffee from a mug which read No Taxation Without Input/Output. “You’re a good writer. I subscribe to your Stringr.”

“No shit, thanks man. What’s your name?”

“I was surprised to hear you took this gig,” he added, “Considering.” My face must have done something because he ducked his head slightly and said, “Sorry. Just came out.”

“Nothing new. Half my subscribers are legacy leftovers. Pity’s a driving force in my economic security, if you wanna call it that.”

His face compressed into a porpoise’s little O. “That can’t be true.”

(It’s true, shut up Avi, it’s true.)

I sipped some of the coffee, letting him know via performative sigh that it was shit. “So what’s your deal, guy? You volunteer to babysit me while I’m unconscious to fanboi out here or is this like your actual job?”

Said guy did some seriously inscrutable facial muscle constrictions, which I studied as an example of how not to behave towards formerly unconscious people. Then he smiled suddenly and said, “I have to get back to work.” He raised his eyebrows, actually raised his eyebrows, and gestured at the door.

“Well,” I said, standing a little unsteadily, blowing on and sipping the rough coffee one last time. “Thanks for the hospitality, I guess.” I watched him watch my right hand replace the coffee cup. I was pissed at myself that it couldn’t stop trembling, and I was pissed at him for noticing it. “You know whoever designed that section on my brother?”

“No.”

“You know who approved it?”

He thought about that a second. “Yes.”

“Do me a favor and tell them it’s manipulative and crass? That no one fucking needs to relive that?”

He nodded once, looking down at his coffee. I left before he could put his foot in his mouth again. Outside, in a arcing, narrow corridor I turned to see the name on the door: John Temblaine Paulson.

Shockingly, my phone had already synched up with the Smithsonian’s wayfinding platform, which guided me up two separate elevators then shunted me out a service exit onto Mangakāhia’s rhizomatic terrace. I took about three steps before palming my juul out of my bag and putting it to my lips, automatically clicking the button and drawing in hard before realizing that I had clicked no button and was drawing around an object which was definitely not providing me with a long-overdue nicotine hit.

It was a USB stick. The kind you might use in, like, 2008. Dead tech, and it looked it: scarred light purple shell and a connector skewed so hard I doubted its operability.

Avi, you are well aware that I have a fairly disordered work/home/personal life, but you’ve known me long enough to know my bag is always ordered. And never have I put a USB stick in my bag. Never have I, as an adult, even used a USB stick, much less carried one on my person. So John Temblaine Paulson had, quite obviously, stuck it in there.

Recalling his idle phone-scrolling when I came to and the inscrutable creepy expressions, I concluded the guy probably filmed me passed out in his office chair as some weird sex thing, then put that video on the USB somehow and left in my bag to taunt me.

Which, as I type this, sounds kind of insane but I was also coming off a blackout induced by re-watching my brother’s livestreamed murder, so logical conclusions weren’t exactly in reach. Plus the only thing in my stomach at that point was that shit museum coffee.

As I returned to the museum entrance the elderly docent who’d processed my credentials two hours ago welcomed me with a smile that demonstrated she’d completely forgotten who I was. “Lemme tell you about the kind of people you got working here,” I spat. “John Temblaine Paulson, that weird old pervert, how could you just let him–”

“John?” said the docent.

“–scoop me up like I was a puppy or something like small and stupid and throw me over his shoulder like a sack of onions or whatever he did, maybe he used a handtruck–”

“Paulson?”

“–and just spirit me down to his little serial killer sanctum and video me while I was passed out in his shitty little Federal-ass stiff-ass chair–”

“Temblaine?”

“Yeah, don’t even try to tell me you don’t know him.”

“Of course I know him, dear. He’s in Iceland for the month.”

That set me back, my jaw going while my brain stopped, and, luckily, nothing more coming out of my mouth. The docent smiled at me like she was worried I might be about to stroke out. “There’s no one in his office then?” I mumbled.

“Oh, that should be locked,” said the docent, but she was catching up and looking all concerned. “Were you there? In Mr. Tembaline Paulson’s office? Did someone take you there?”

And here, embarrassed and out of it yet suddenly aware of my own behavior, I was saying things like I’m confused, I think, apologies, you don’t remember who I am do you? and backing out of the lobby. With the docent oozing concerned utterances in my general direction, I fled through Mangakāhia’s rhizomes and caught a ferry back to the sliver of shipping container I’d reserved on the Marion Barry Inlet (of course I didn’t tell my mom I was in town, fuck’s sake). Wrote the article, cut off the part marked HAZARD PERSONAL SHIT, sent the other chunk to Ellen, fell asleep for three hours, woke up, wrote Ellen an email saying the article was shit, and then she said no it wasn’t but yeah she couldn’t run it, and then spent the rest of the night listening to the arrhythmic thud of water against the container hull and hating myself.

I tried to clear my head this morning by heading up to Air and Space. I know, I know you fucking hate that place, but my childhood nostalgia still beats out my discomfort at imperialist propaganda. It’s one of the last places in this city where I can actually space out.

You’ll be shocked to hear this is directly related to Ciarnán taking me there routinely as a key part of Big Brother Babysitting. Specifically, the museum’s second floor, where an exposed platform lets you look down on various high points of colonialist engineering. There’s a glass partition that I’d press against, as if there was nothing between me and the immense sun-drenched lacuna beneath us, Ciarnán at the ready just in case the glass shattered under the stress of my little form.

For just a minute, fingers dragging the smudging glass, now knee-height, looking down at the overlit off-season emptiness, I felt like I just might fall, like I just might be pulled back.

When I returned to the world somewhere around the Drone Wing, my phone buzzed insistently with one of FBUS’ all-hands alerts. Automatically I obeyed and was rewarded with not-John Temblain Paulson’s face enclosed in a little blue box. “Ashburn Institute staffer found dead in Potomac.” As my eyes blurred the images and my upper back instinctively scrunched into a defensive hunch, my hand curled around the USB stick still shoved in my pocket, fingernail scouring it again and again as if that might reveal whatever was stored inside.

So: can I come visit? Whatever this guy wanted me to see was apparently important enough to fake his way into the Smithsonian, and if I hand the USB to the case workers I’ll probably never find out what’s on it. You, on the other hand, have an oracular way with the dead tech, and who knows, maybe it’ll have some fun dirt on our New Algorithmic Society we can send to a real journalist or whatever. I mean, it’s probably not real spooky ops shit. But if it is, it’ll at least be interesting, right?

A

The Training Commission syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/