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I'm tired of things that grab people's attention.

I think that's one of the huge underlying factors that have led to the way things are now. It's the responsibility of anyone creating anything that it has to really grab your attention. You have to be competitive, right? You're competing with billions of other people, trillions of other things, for people's attention. You have to make sure the thing you create really hooks people, really grabs them by the shoulders and says HEY, LISTEN, LOOK, HEY, HELLO, to grab their attention away from other things. Whether it's by being completely original and unprecedented (which is actually impossible) or by having super high stakes (gritty reboots, blockbuster movies) or by just being nasty or offensive for pure shock value (Marilyn Manson, Game of Thrones, most right-wing comedy), there has to be something that grabs attention.

The result of that is, in my opinion, an increasingly passive audience. No one pays attention anymore, they passively wait for their attention to be grabbed. There's very little critical analysis of anything--stories, real life, statements, paintings, situations, politics, anything. There's no analysis of context or intent or idea vs execution. There's no allowance for subtlety. There's no noticing the layers of things. If someone's attention is on something--and that's a big if--it's "analyzed" instantly in the sense that if they immediately liked it it's good, and if they didn't immediately like it it's bad, and if they immediately hated it it somehow represents the interests of their ideological enemies. And that's with things they do notice. That's things framed in a way that grabs attention.

Things that people create that are complex don't get very much attention at all, because you have to use the old version of the term: paying attention. I thought when I was younger that that phrase was just a random idiom, but as I've gotten older and fucked more things up and learned and relearned and fucked up again--I've realized it's not just a random word, it's literal. Nobody pays attention now--not in the sense that their attention isn't on something, but in the sense that they have no intention or control over where their attention goes. Attention is grabbed, so people passively wait for it to be grabbed; attention should be paid, with people actively choosing what to focus on and engage with it deeply.

And "paid" is right--it takes from you. It takes energy, mental and emotional. It takes effort. It's so much easier to just wait for the next thing to grab your attention rather than put in the effort to be intentional. But it's important, because it's very easy to make something shocking that grabs everyone's attention while you do something dastardly behind the scenes, and it's very easy to miss some very important and wonderful things in life, that are very worth exploring, because they're complicated and hidden and require effort to find out about.

(And in case that sounds ablist, I know attention is hard for certain neurodivergencies. I'm on the spectrum, most of my friends are either on it with me or have ADHD, I know what it's like. I'm not talking about attention in the moment, I'm talking in the general sense about being intentional. We can't all be instantly magnificent at directing our focus, but we can all at least have that intention, whether we ever achieve it or not. Believe it or not the intention alone has a tremendous impact on your life.)

Maybe I'm just an old grumpy fucker, maybe I'm just an asshole, maybe I'm onto something. I don't know. This essay isn't going out of its way to grab attention, so it will probably get very little, which is for the best, because the world doesn't need more cis white men clamoring for attention. But hopefully a few people will engage with this idea and do more with it than I can.

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i actually don't think there's anything morally wrong with being a weirdo fandom autistic

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So generally liquid nitrogen is produced via a process of cooling and compression, but mainly cooling. Oversimplified, nitrogen is primarily *cooled* into a liquid state, rather than compressed (for contrast, part of Jupiter's core is solid hydrogen, forced into a solid state by compression from Jupiter's gravity, rather than being cooled into a solid).

So: is liquid nitrogen only cold because it was cooled to become liquid, or would it be cold if it was compressed? More importantly, regardless of how it was made liquid, if it was *kept* liquid by means of compression rather than cooling--if it was cooled to a liquid state and then, rather than being kept in a vacuum-insulated, refrigerated container, it was kept at room temp but maintained at high enough pressure that it couldn't transition back to gas--would it still be cold? Would it still be *cryogenically* cold, super cold, cold enough to cool other things?

If liquid nitrogen were pumped continuously through a closed high-pressure system, high enough pressure that it couldn't transition to gas, could it absorb heat from objects adjecent to that system and A. maintain its liquid state and B. be re-cooled maybe by passing through dry ice?

I need answers. Feel free to DM. I'm still learning this platform and might not notice a response.

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The fascism and capitalism are partners.

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Random fantasy/worldbuilding thing:

Everyone from a different culture seems strangely poetic and profoundly deep in their observations, but only because they speak whatever the common tongue is as a second language, and whatever they are saying is actually mostly just clumsily translated common sayings/figures of speech that flow much better in their own tongue, and make perfect sense to the people who understand the cultural context.

Someone who comes from a place where geodes are common will describe another person: "He is like a stone that seems to hold a treasure inside of it - you learn to know such stones by their shape and their weight - but once you split it open, there is no quartz, no amethyst, no sparkling and brilliant crystal you expected. Just solid rock, through and through. He is like one of those rocks." Which vaguely makes sense, but they're clearly frustrated about not being quite able to express what they're trying to say.

The thing is, in their own first language, there's a specific word for this kind of rock - one that outwardly seems to be a geode but it isn't one after all. This word is also commonly used as an insult, to describe a person who is charismatic, convincing and outwardly seems brilliantly smart, but is actually dumb as shit.

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Hate is a weakness.

Not in a "hate is the action of the weak" way. In a "vigilante having friends makes the friends a weakness way." Hate is a vulnerability easily exploited.

When you hate someone, it becomes easy for others to manipulate you because all they have to do is exploit that hate.

When you hate republicans - not oppose, not fight, but hate, with passion, with obsession - all a person has to do to get your support is claim to hate republicans as much as you do. That's what the democrats do. They don't solve problems. They don't advocate for people. They don't stop the march of fascism. They don't do anything at all - but they call themselves the sworn enemy of the republicans, and that's all people need when all they think about all day every day is how evil republicans are.

When you carry that level of obsession around, it's easy to trick you into thinking that anyone who hates them must have your best interests at heart. But they don't. They just know what to say to make you think that.

Opposition to fascist advances is good. Obsessive hate is not. Watch yourself. Examine yourself. Make sure you're thinking logically, not assuming the enemy of my enemy is my friend, not assuming you can automatically trust any person in power who says they hate the people you hate.

Hate is a weakness. Shore it up.

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Lemme see if I can explain this a little more clearly than I have been.

I'm neither trans nor Jewish, nor anything else Rowling uses the Potter franchise and her wealth and influence to advocate against.

But I am autistic, and probably the easiest comparison to make would be saying Autism Speaks is to autism what JK Rowling is to trans people and Jewish people. AS (to varying degrees over the years) advocates for a "cure" for autism, on the basis that autism is a burden and a curse to the parents, and may or may not currently, but definitely originally, wanted to fund research into "early detection" of autism - "in the womb" early - with the unspoken purpose of helping parents abort children if they would be autistic (for the record, I'm 180% pri-choice, except for eugenics - that's not choice, that's pure evil). So you could say with reasonable accuracy that AS is the JKR of autism and most autistic people, myself included, feel about AS the way most trans people and Jewish people, I imagine, feel about JKR.

So with that comparison in mind, as an autistic person:

A. If Autism Speaks came out with a video game where the primary conflict is between a united group of sloppily-coded, hatefully stereotyped autistic people - say a nation of Sheldon Coopers - with a stated goal of shutting down a eugenics operation or codifying protections and accomodations for people like them, villified for that goal because it would inconvenience neurotypicals a tiny bit and/or the whole point was just that the Coopers were stupid and annoying and by the way have a secret plot to kidnap and mutilate children? I would be pretty pissed off about that, rightfully, and the very least I would expect of anyone who claimed to support me as an autistic person would be to not play or support or defend that game, and if someone decided that it wasn't worth it to avoid the game just for me, I would - again, rightfully - take that as a message that they only actually supporr me as long as it doesn't inconvenience them in any possible way, and as soon as it does, I can get fucked. And I would stop considering that person a friend.

B. Even if it turned out that AS wasn't really involved with making the game, their name was just on it because they owned the rights because it was set in a universe they created for some books they wrote, but still the game was written by someone less well-known but equally hateful to autistic people, I would still be just as pissed and still expect my friends/allies not to support it, and have the same reaction if they did.

C. Even if it turned out (which it wouldn't, and hasn't with HP, and won't) that the game was written with completely innocent intentions by someone who felt like they did support autistic people, the story itself would still be desperately fucked up and prejudicial and supportive of movements that actively seek to eradicate people like me from the universe for the crime of being people like me, so I would still have the same expectation and reaction to betrayal.

D. If someone who called themselves my friend started defending the game to me based on how much they loved the books AS wrote in the first place, so see, it's okay to play the game because they're just being nostalgic, and they don't support the bad parts, they just like reliving their youth in a new way - I'd tell them that I'm sympathetic, and it sucks that they fell in love with a universe and found out later that the author was a eugenical piece of shit, but that is what the author is, and looking back on the original works with that knowledge it's pretty obvious that that eugenical shit was in there the whole time, we just missed it because we weren't looking for it.

And I'd say that I don't expect them to pretend those stories never meant anything to them, but that continuing to defend the new material that comes out under the pretense of "separating the art from the artist" is a huge slap in the face to me and every other autistic person. I'd also point out that, as mentioned in point C above, it doesn't matter whether you can separate the art from the artist because the bigotry is central to the story itself no matter who wrote it - you could insert any potential author as the artist of this story, even someone perfect, and it would still be fucked up eugenics fantasy. If it turned out Mister Rogers co-wrote the story with Bob Ross and Steve Irwin, the story as it stands would still be some fucked up shit. It's not just about the author, it's about the story itself and what it means. And if they still insisted that it was okay to play it, I would interpret that as "this fictional story is more important to me than your life," and I would, rightfully, stop being friends with them. Probably tell them to go fuck themselves first though.

E. If any person, especially a huge group of people, insisted that I was overreacting and making a big stink over nothing and "blinded by emotion," I'd tell them to go fuck themselves too. I wouldn't be overreacting - the story is literally a fantasy about ending my existence and the existence of everyone like me, based on prejudice.

F. If anyone told me that they feel okay playing the game because "my friend is autistic and they said it's okay by them," I'd ask them, if one of their Black friends said they were okay with them using the N-word even though they were white, would they be out in public yelling the N-word at the top of their lungs and insisting that it's okay because they were given permission? Or would they recognize that one individual Black person being okay with it doesn't mean no other Black person has any grounds to be pissed off about it ever again? I'd explain that no marginalized group is a monolith, that some people, for varying reasons, are going to be fine with things that others aren't, and that doesn't constitute a universal moral judgement or invalidate the views of any other person in that group.

I would further explain that what they've done by using that argument is put me and their other autistic friend into a competition we didn't sign up for - I'm saying it's hurtful, and they're saying it's not, and you've decided that one of us must be universally right and the other must be universally wrong, and you've chosen them as the victor. Why? Are they a better, closer friend than me? Are they smarter than me? Are they somehow "more" autistic than me? Are they somehow more in tune with the universal experience of being autistic than I am?

None of that is real. First, if they're a closer friend than me, that doesn't excuse hurting me. Second, nobody's smarter than anyone. Third, anyone autistic is autistic, we're all different but none are less valid. And fourth, there is no "universal" experience of being autistic - we all have different spectrums of symptoms, we all have different families, different environments, different life experiences. One person having an experience in life that makes them not care very much when people want to exterminate them does not invalidate my experience that leads me to be super pissed off about it. So why are you inclined to choose their opinion over mine? If you're honest with yourself you'll find it's because theirs excuses you doing something you want to do even if it hurts people, and that's not cool.

F. If I found out that AS had already recieved all the money they're going to recieve for the game, that whether it sold 10 or 10,000,000 copies made no difference to their income, I'd still say it's fucked up to play the game, because yet again, the entire point of the game would be that autistic people suck, autistic people are harmful to "regular" society, autistic people are "our" enemies, autistic people should be eliminated.

That's not an exhaustive list of all the defenses I've seen for playing the wizard game, but you get the point: ultimately, every defense of playing this hypothetical anti-autistic game boils down to "it's more important to me to play this game than to support you and have your back," and I would in no way be out of line for taking serious offense to that position in addition to the offense I take at the game itself and the offense I take at everything AS says and does and supports.

Same for real life with the Potter game: even if it wasn't made directly by JKR, even if it was made by someone good, even if she doesn't make extra money from you playing it, even if your trans/Jewish friend said it doesn't bother them, even anything - the story is still literally anti-trans and anti-Jewish, no matter what. That's the story. The story, no matter who wrote it or who gets paid, is that Jewish people are bad and should be eliminated and that trans people are, at best, a bad joke. So no matter how you slice it, defending it and consuming it are supporting those statements, because that's what the story is.

But that doesn't even matter as much as the fact that even if one trans person OR one Jewish person who has an issue with it, is hurt by it, that should be enough. It's one thing to weigh things like this when the choices are "the feelings of one hurt person" vs "the well-being of ten thousand others," that would be one thing; but when the choices are "hurt one or more people by playing the game" vs "literally zero consequences or inconvenience of any kind," one person should easily be more than enough, and if it isn't, you need to stop pretending it's "logic" or "reason" guiding your decisions and accept that it's just selfishness.

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ACAB =/= Slut Shaming

Slut shaming in itself *is* cop behavior - you're literally trying to police others' sexual behavior.

You can't justify slut shaming by ACAB, those are opposite concepts. If ACAB, then slut shaming makes *you* a bastard as well.

You can "it's okay because she's a cop" as much as you want, but you're wrong, because the problem with slut shaming isn't the moral standing of the victim, the problem is that slut shaming is claiming moral (or sometimes physical, or even legal) authority over what another person does with their own body.

Slut shaming is cop shit.

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Just one more note on AI art: it's not going to replace human artists. Not because it never possibly could ever because human art will always be better, but because when has anything ever actually been replaced?

MP3s didn't replace CDs. People still use CDs. CDs didn't replace cassette tapes, tapes didn't replace 8-tracks, 8-tracks didn't replace vinyl. Tons of people still use those things. They're not as popular - except vinyl - but they exist and people use them and love them.

You could say digital video replaced tape video, but especially in artsy circles film still very much has its place. Same for photography. Same for digital effects - Photoshop and AfterEffects and green screens are the standard, but practical effects are still widely appreciated and preferred.

Ebooks and Kindles haven't replaced books, and although it did hella damage to the industry and fucked a lot of good people over, ultimately, Amazon hasn't replaced bookstores.

Home video didn't replace going to the movies. Streaming hasn't replaced going to the movies. Despite all the new options, not only is the theater industry thriving - despite covid, no less - box office sales are still (erroneously) the sole metric by which people gauge the success of a movie.

None of those advances actually replaced anything - except maybe streaming replacing video rental, but I don't see many people complaining about that. What happened was that people have more options now, and established standards got freaked out by that on the assumption that the only reason people liked them was because they had no other options.

But despite having the option (which I prefer) of holding thousands of albums on a tiny chip in your phone to be listened to as needed through internal speakers, external speakers, headphones, earpieces, airpods, and car stereos, millions of people still obsessively prefer vinyl (even though there's actually no difference in quality because it was all recorded digitally in the same way at the same time, but whatever).

Becuse nobody ever loved vinyl because they had no other choice. People loved vinyl for dozens of neat and quirky and immersive and emotional things that they still love them for today. What was exciting, and still is, about new forms of media is the option for convenience.

8-tracks didn't replace vinyl, not because they sucked, but because having a convenient way to listen to music in the car or to store a music collection with less space didn't replace the emotional effect of holding a giant cardboard case with big cool detailed album art on it, pulling out a big solid hunk of music, feeling the grooves of the music on your fingertips, reading the liner notes while you listen to it.

Kindles didn't replace books not because they're inferior, but because there's a benefit and a convenience to carrying a whole library in a thin device and never having to worry about losing a bookmark, and that convenience can never replace the smell of a book, the warm feeling of seeing a typo in a mass-published book reminding you that even the authors we revere *and* a team of proofreaders can still miss things just like we do, the feeling of a thick book in your hands or in your back pocket.

Home video and streaming haven't replaced going to the movies because going to the movies isn't about convenience, it's about the big screen and cool audio system, the snacks and popcorn, the big comfy seats and dark room, the romance of it.

Hell, movies didn't replace live theater, because both have their place and their appeal. You can do things with movies you could never do with live theater, but you can do things on stage that would never translate to film.

It's the same with AI art. It's a convenience and a novelty, but even if (and I think it's likely) it gets to the point that you can really say that AI art can, completely independently, make art that moves people emotionally, human-made art is loved for so much more than just the art itself. It's not the source of the creation we respond to, ultimately, it's the process. It's the years of experiences and self-reflection and humanity that are being translated into fantastical visuals.

No matter how popular AI art gets, it won't replace that. It might get more popular for a minute, but for a hot minute the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, too. Novelty surges and then things level off once it's no longer new and exciting, and that's the point where you find both contenders settling into niche roles.

We'll find a balance where generally AI art is vital and perfect for certain things (like marketing) and human art is perfect for other things (like therapy, expression, and connection), and the new thing will be accepted as Just Another Tool and the old thing will be appreciated even more than before out of recognition of the time and effort that didn't *have* to be put into it, but were.

Like how hand-made furniture is more appreciated than it used to be now that, technically, they could've just 3D printed the damn thing, but they chose to put their heart and soul (and likely blood) into it because it mattered to them.

Seriously, this unbalance is temporary. Artists, don't think so little of yourselves as to actually believe anything could ever replace what you do. Convenience has its place, and it doesn't have to threaten yours. This trend is filling a need that has nothing to do with the need you fill.

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I guess my consolidated opinion on AI art is just another extension of one of my core philosophies: once something exists in the world, it can't be made to un-exist. Energy spent trying to undo things is energy wasted.

Yeah, it was misguided for people to strive to make AI art bots in the first place. Yeah, it was fucked up for them to steal human-made art to train it with and profit off artists' hard work with zero credit or compensation. Yeah, much as it shouldn't be a thing that capitalism forces artists to capitalize their art, AI art threatens their livelihoods and that's bad. No argument on any of that.

But no matter what, AI art exists now. The bots that make it exist now. They will now never not exist. No amount of boycotting or opposition or even legislation and litigation is going to make it so that AI art doesn't exist.

Piracy exists too, and the rich had a lot of the same objections to it when it started as people have now to AI art, but I'm still a pirate. They made PSAs against it and we laughed. They made it illegal, we started using VPNs. They introduced anti-piracy measures on software and music and movies, and within a month we had ways around them, and every new way they come up with lasts a couple months at best. You can't make piracy stop happening, and even if you could, the fact that it ever existed means it would again. It would never be gone permanently. Make it finally stop and in a year, ten years, a hundred, someone would find out it used to exist and be inspired to bring it back. Because once a concept is introduced to the world, it's here. Nothing is ever truly gone.

Solving complex problems isn't a matter of making it as though the problem never existed; solving complex problems is about figuring out where we go from here. If you're playing chess and someone takes your bishop with their knight, you don't sit around talking about how it should never have happened or try to change the rules so that knights can't take bishops. You don't have philosophical discussions on whether it should have happened in the first place. You look at the pieces on the board and figure out what options you have with the resources still at your disposal.

Now that AI art exists, it will never not exist. In the same sense as piracy, it presents a problem in capitalist society, but also makes something people love more accessible to them, and that's not something people are going to let go of, for better or worse. Personally I feel like that's an aspect we should be celebrating, but regardless, even if it's 100% bad with no silver lining, it's here and we will never see the day it won't be. Shunning artists because their art "looks like AI art" is a waste of energy. Trying to ban AI art is a waste of energy. Even refusing to use the bots is a waste if energy at this point - not saying we all have an obligation to go out of our way to use them, just that if there's a situation that would be improved by using them, not using them on principal is a waste in a practical sense. Those things aren't the solution.

The problem is that AI art steals revenue from the artists doing the labor. The solution is to come together, more than we already have, to create a world in which artists don't have to depend on revenue for survival. The solution is to end capitalism, not AI art.

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You think you're better than other people because you make different choices than they do. One person chooses to drop their trash on the ground, and you choose to hold onto yours until you find a trash can, because you're better than that. One person chooses to use heroin, and you choose not to, because you're better than that. One person chooses to have sex with dozens of people, and you choose not to, because you're better than that.

Your first mistake is assuming that every action is a choice, and every circumstance is a direct result of those choices. We could go over thousands of examples of why that's not true at all, how an awful lot of things just happen to people through no fault of their own, but for now let's pretend you're right.

We all make the choices we do because of who we are. You think you make better choices because of who you are, that in the same shoes as someone else, you'd make better choices; but who are you? Who is anyone else?

Who we are isn't some identity we're born with. In any given moment, we are the product of a few genetic traits, the environment we were raised in, the ideas we've been exposed to, the things we've experienced. It's why there are things in all our pasts that we'd do differently now. We're ultimately the same person, but who that person is has changed.

So you see someone addicted to drugs, and you think, "If I were in their shoes, I wouldn't have chosen to try drugs in the first place, so I never would've gotten addicted." But is that really the choice you would've made in their *exact* shoes? Or is that the choice you, as the culmination of your genetics, upbringing, exposure, and all your experiences, would have made if you were put, as you are now, in the same moment that they first decided to get high?

Have you considered what genetic predispositions they were born with? Have you considered the way they were raised - their parents' social, political, economic views, their income bracket, the culture they were born into? Have you considered the schools they went to, the population of the towns they've lived in, the breadth of ideas they have and haven't been exposed to? Have you considered every single thing they've ever experienced, good and bad, and how it informed the way they make decisions - or even their ability to make decisions at all?

Have you considered whether their parents were also addicts, and the idea was normalized or even glorified for them for their entire lives? Have you considered whether they grew up in an isolated community with limited exposure to views like yours? Have you considered the difference in cultural views on asking for help? Have you considered whether their parents had to work long hours, making their main influences as a child the other kids and families in their neighborhood, and what that neighborhood was like, and what each family they spent time with was like? Have you considered whether they suffer from genetic mental illnesses like chronic depression, BPD, schizophrenia? Neurodivergence?

Have you considered whether they were abused as a child - or as an adult? Have you considered how many horrible things happen to people every day? Have you considered how PTSD literally rewires a person's brain to make it harder to make wise decisions, and how every case of that is different?

To put ourselves in someone else's shoes requires us to take *all* of this into account. Because if a person first tried heroin at a party in high school, and you think back to who you were in high school, and you know for a fact that you wouldn't have even *been* at a party like that, and if someone offered you heroin you'd spit in their eye, then you're probably right; but if you consider who you would've been in high school if your parents were completely different, if you'd spent years of your life being abused by a trusted family member or family friend, if you were born predisposed to depression, if you were twelve years old and watched someone die, if everyone you were close to as a child told you that asking for help is a sign of weakness and you should never admit that you're having a hard time - and you consider what effect any one of those things would have on the way you see the world and the way you make decisions, then you have to admit the likelihood that in their position, you'd actually have done exactly the same thing.

You have to understand that if you were actually *entirely* in another person's shoes, in every way, then you would almost definitely make the exact same choices they made, for the exact same reason. Because that's what you don't see when you put yourself *as you are* in someone else's shoes: all of us, when we make a decision, it's for a reason. Maybe we don't fully understand in the moment what that reason is, but it's there. We all make the best choices we're able to make in a situation - that's the only true universal aspect of human nature. We're all doing our best, and what we decide to do is informed by the shallowest *and* the most unseen aspects of how we see the world, and we all see the world differently, so our bests are all different.

So when you see someone doing something that you think is stupid, or wrong, or selfish, or evil, I challenge you: instead of insulting, judging, thinking you're better than them, consider that we all make the best decisions we can and take sixty seconds to consider *why* they're behaving that way, what could have happened in their life to give them a worldview that makes that behavior seem like the best decision. Take into account genetics, upbringing, exposure, and experience - and be flattering and generous; don't use these lenses to make more creative insults. Be compassionate. Assume the very best. Do that for sixty seconds before you react to what they're doing.

I think you'll notice a change in your own behavior, and I think suddenly a lot more people will be given opportunities and help to improve.

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I love how the world perceives tumblr as useless platform. No world news here. No algorithm. No verified accounts. Ads are about Pikachu cosplayer and shoelaces. Folks that's exactly how social media should be

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The little parental PSA they play before Paw Patrol says it teaches kids how to be helpful members of their community. But does it? Laugh, but bear with me.

I guess the definition of community varies by individual, but to me, a community is a group of people who are equal. Being helpful to your community means finding ways to use your strengths, talents, passions, whatever to fill a need or two that you see in that community, while others use their strengths and talents and passions to fill needs where you have weaknesses. It's about unity and support, right? I pick up your slack, you pick up mine, we pick up his, etc. There's not just equilibrium in it, but equity. Equality. We each have our roles.

Is that what we see in Paw Patrol? Are Ryder and the pups helpful members of their community? They're obviously helpful, but are they part of their community? They do all have specialized roles that align with their passions and talents - Marshall is a fireman, Chase is a cop (boooooo but if real cops played the role Chase plays they wouldn't all be bastards), Sky handles the air, Rubble does construction and demo, Zuma is water rescue, Everest is snow and mountain rescue, Rocky does environmental work, etc. They have highly specialized, very helpful roles, which they perform for their community.

HOWEVER: In their everyday work, are they performing those roles as members of the community? They don't call Marshall when there's a fire. They don't call Chase when there's crime. They don't call Sky when something's in the air. When the dam almost broke, they didn't call Rubble to fix it. They call Ryder. And they don't call Ryder when there's a specific issue aligned with one of the pups' roles. They call Ryder for EVERYTHING. Yes, when the dam broke, they called Ryder. They also call Ryder when the mayor loses her pet chicken, when Mayor Dipshit fucks up a cat talent show, when a piñata goes missing, when a mountain cabin is sliding downhill, when a cow goes missing, when some jerk's remote control for his drone starts controlling all the cars in town - as Ryder says, no job is too big, no pup is too small, and they fuckin' take him at his word, calling him with horrifyingly gigantic and frustratingly miniscule problems with the same air of urgency and panic. You with me so far?

They call Ryder not with specific jobs for specific pups, but in a panic when there's any problem at all, with his specific helpful role being the discernment to know how each pup's specialty can help fix the problem (which in all sincerity is impressive and important and valid). That's an entirely different relationship than being a helpful member of the community. The community looks up to Ryder - which doesn't have to be a bad thing, but in a very real sense that forces him and the pups into a role deliberately separate from the community. Apart from. On a personal level they're members of the community, and in their professional roles they're helpful, but there's no overlap in those two positions.

I know it seems like a meaningless distinction, because the community's needs are met and everyone's safe and happy, but I feel it's important to be clear about what it means to be a community. The Paw Patrol model of community is a reflection of modern American society's relationship to cops: we say "helpful members of the community" (neoliberals do, anyway) in that they're relatively local and perform a service, but in any real sense, in addition to not being helpful, cops are not members of the community. They stand apart from the community in the same way the Paw Patrol team does, as someone to throw at problems instead of the community using its own resources and its own power to solve problems. Two different reasons of course - there's no evidence of propaganda or lobbying on the part of the Paw Patrol team, no manipulation, it always seems like their relationship with the community is something that just evolved due to a lack of mindfulness about the issue - but it's the same thing. Cops are necessarily a separate entity from the community they "serve," and understanding that, having a proper understanding for what a community is and what a community does, is central to abolishing police and central to having proper communities that care for each other.

[kropotkins-revenge]

What I love about Asimov is that he understood, in a way that even today most people don't seem to get, the fact that when it comes to artificial intelligence or psychic phenomena or whatever you like, the thing itself isn't what matters. What matters is how we interact with the thing, and why. And that the way we interact with the thing, the way we categorize it in our minds and the way we treat it based on that - especially with regard to human vs not-human - is the primary factor that determines what it is and how it acts. And in that way, almost everything we interact with *is* human in every way that matters, that we're not better.

Is a humanoid robot human? Is an NPC human? Maybe. Possibly not. But the real question is why, as confirmed humans, we're so concerned with finding the exact line where something can accurately be called non-human so we know who we can and can't "ethically" exploit. Why it's important that NPCs aren't human so we don't have to feel bad about killing them. Why it's important that it's "just a robot" so we don't feel guilty giving it a terrible and menial existence. "Why say thank you? It's just a robot!" And why are you so eager to avoid saying thank you? If the real definition of a human is something that lords its consciousness over other beings and makes every effort to exclude them in order to live an existence of oppression over its "lessers," is that really something we ought to be proud of?

Asimov got that.

Basically, the question isn't what's human and what isn't; the question is what does it say about *us* that "non-human" is an excuse for mistreatment and oppression and killing?

The concept of AI humanity is intertwined with all human rights issues when you understand the question properly.

[kropotkins-revenge]

Up Next: Incompetent American Kleptocrat Struggles With The Concept of European Workers Having Rights

[kropotkins-revenge]

I know those "unfair that X has to work" memes are mostly a joke, but actually yeah, it is unfair that marginalized people have to go to work every day in a world that hates us. It is unfair and fucked up that as a black, trans woman I can turn on the news any given day and see that someone who looks like me has been murdered but I still have to work.

I'm sick of it.