#Checkpoint Model

[skyvexxon]

Please check out my other videos I have to offer.

[redslug]

Helping Neuroslug help me

Admittedly it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out and start using inpainting, but now that I've had a taste of it my head is spinning with possibilities. And so I'm making this post to show the process and maybe encourage more artists to try their hand at generating stuff. It really can can be an amazing teammate when you know how to apply it. For those who didn't see my first post on this, I've trained an AI on my artworks, because base Stable Diffusion doesn't understand what anthropomorphic insects are. That out of the way, here we go:

I noticed that a primarily character focused LoRA often botches backgrounds (probably because few images of the dataset have them) so I went with generating a background separately and roughly blocking out a character over it in Procreate. Since it was a first experiment I got really generous with proper shading and even textures. Unsurprisingly, SD did it's job quite well without much struggle.

Basically masked out separate parts such as fluff, skirt, watering can, etc. and changed the prompt to focus on that specific object to add detail. There were some bloopers too. She's projecting her inner spider.

Of course it ate the hands. Not inpainting those, it's the one thing I'll render correctly faster than the AI does. Some manual touchups to finish it off and voila:

The detail that would have taken me hours is done in 10-20 minutes of iterating through various generations. And nothing significant got lost in translation from the block out, much recommend. But that was easy mode, my rough sketch could be passed off as finished on one of my lazier days, not hard to complete something like that. Lets' try rough rough.

I got way fewer chuckles out of this than I expected, it took only 4-5 iterations for the bot to offer me something close to the sketch.

>:C It ate the belly. I demand the belly back. Scribble it in...

Much better. Can do that with any bit actually, very nice for iterating a character design.

Opal eyes maybe?

Lol

Okay, no, it's kind of unsettling. Back to red ones. Now, let's give her thigh highs because why not?

It should be fancier. Give me a lace trim.

Now we're talking. Since we've started playing dress-up anyway, why not try a dress too. Please don't render my scribble like a trash bag. I know you want to.

Phew

I crave more details.

Cute. Perhaps I'll clean it up later. ... .. . SHRIMP DRESS

[checkpointgaming]

When things go hilariously wrong 💀 From our Twitch Anniversary stream: CPG Trivia! VOD is up on our channel

[hotsexygirlslook]

[aro-aizawa]

against my better judgement i did indeed buy the saints row 3 remaster and oh boy i should have expected all the bugs

[nostalgebraist]

Today, a little less than two years after the OP, I asked the same question to a language model running locally on my laptop.

And rather than producing nonsense – or even producing a correct but memorized-looking textbook-style answer – it simply thought about the problem for a long time, like a human would do with a hard problem, until eventually working its way to a correct answer:

Sure, its thought process is awkwardly phrased and repetitive, with some minor errors and confusions here and there, but hey, it ultimately gets the job done.

And it's probably not any more awkward-sounding than my own inner monologue when I'm trying to solve a math problem, if you could somehow transcribe it directly into the written word without cleaning it up at all.

(I like how it thinks about the Dirichlet function briefly at some point, but fails to notice that you can just shift and scale it to get the required property, and immediately zooms off in another direction, never making the connection again. It got what I meant when I pointed this out to it in a follow-up message, though.)

ETA: @sniffnoy points out that the model's final answer isn't quite right, because the complement of D also needs to be dense)

I had some fun asking ChatGPT about cases from "Counterexamples in Analysis." You get this kind of uncanny valley math, syntactically and stylistically correct but still wildly wrong.

This was a response to "Prove or disprove: there exists a nowhere continuous function whose absolute value is everywhere continuous." It responded in TeX, which I coped into a TeX editor.

Another answer to the same question:

[clicktuck-suskriberz]

My first ever Blender render

[fatehbaz]

was thinking about this

To be in "public", you must be a consumer or a laborer.

About control of peoples' movement in space/place. Since the beginning.

"Vagrancy" of 1830s-onward Britain, people criminalized for being outside without being a laborer.

Breaking laws resulted in being sentenced to coerced debtor/convict labor. Coinciding with the 1830-ish climax of the Industrial Revolution and the land enclosure acts (factory labor, poverty, etc., increase), the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 establishes full-time police institution(s) in London. The "Workhouse Act" aka "Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834" forced poor people to work for a minimum number of hours every day. The Irish Constabulary of 1837 sets up a national policing force and the County Police Act of 1839 allows justices of the peace across England to establish policing institutions in their counties (New York City gets a police department in 1844). The major expansion of the "Vagrancy Act" of 1838 made "joblessness" a crime and enhanced its punishment. (Coincidentally, the law's date of royal assent was 27 July 1838, just 5 days before the British government was scheduled to allow fuller emancipation of its technical legal abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean on 1 August 1838.)

---

"Vagrancy" of 1860s-onward United States, people criminalized for being outside while Black.

Widespread emancipation after slavery abolition in 1865 rapidly followed by the outlawing of loitering which de facto outlawed existing as Black in public. Inability to afford fines results in being sentenced to forced labor by working on chain gangs or prisons farms, some built atop plantations.

---

"Vagrancy" of 1870s-onward across empires, people criminalized for being outside while being "foreign" and also being poor generally.

Especially from 1880-ish to 1918-ish, this was an age of widespread mass movement of peoples due to the land dispossession, poverty, and famine induced by global colonial extraction and "market expansion" (Scramble for Africa, US "American West", nation-building, conquering "frontiers"), as agricultural "revolutions" of imperial monoculture cash crop extraction resulted in ecological degradation, and as major imperial infrastructure building projects required a lot of vulnerable "mobile" labor. This coincides with and is facilitated by new railroad networks and telegraphs, leading to imperial implementation or expansion of identity documents, strict work contracts, passports, immigration surveillance, and border checkpoints.

All of this in just a few short years: In 1877, British administrators in India develop what would become the Henry Classification System of taking and keeping fingerprints for use in binding colonial Indians to legal contracts. That same year during the 1877 Great Railroad Strike, and in response to white anxiety about Black residents coming to the city during Great Migration, Chicago's policing institutions exponentially expand surveillance and pioneer "intelligence card" registers for tracking labor union organizing and Black movement, as Chicago's experiments become adopted by US military and expanded nationwide, later used by US forces monitoring dissent in colonial Philippines and Cuba. Japan based its 1880 Penal Code anti-vagrancy statutes on French models, and introduced "koseki" register to track poor/vagrant domestic citizens as Tokyo's Governor Matsuda segregates classes, and the nation introduces "modern police forces". In 1882, the United States passes the Chinese Exclusion Act. In 1884, the Ottoman government enacts major "Passport Nizamnamesi" legislation requiring passports. In 1885, the racist expulsion of the "Tacoma riot".

Punished for being Algerian in France. Punished for being Chinese in San Francisco. Punished for being Korean in Japan. Punished for crossing Ottoman borders without correct paperwork. Arrested for whatever, then sent to do convict labor. A poor person in the Punjab, starving during a catastrophic famine, might be coerced into a work contract by British authorities. They will have to travel, shipped off to build a railroad. But now they have to work. Now they are bound. They will be punished for being Punjabi and trying to walk away from Britain's tea plantations in Assam or Britain's rubber plantations in Malaya.

Mobility and confinement, the empire manipulates each.

---

"Vagrancy" amidst all of this, people also criminalized for being outside while "unsightly" and merely even superficially appearing to be poor. San Francisco introduced the notorious "ugly law" in 1867, making it illegal for "any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself or herself to public view". Today, if you walk into a building looking a little "weird" (poor, Black, ill, disabled, etc.), you are given seething spiteful glares and asked to leave. De facto criminalized for simply going for a stroll without downloading the coffee shop's exclusive menu app.

Too ill, too poor, too exhausted, too indebted to move, you are trapped. Physical barriers (borders), legal barriers (identity documents), financial barriers (debt). "Vagrancy" everywhere in the United States, a combination of all of the above. "Vagrancy" since at least early nineteenth century Europe. About the control of movement through and access to space/place. Concretizing and weaponizing caste, corralling people, anchoring them in place, extracting their wealth and labor.

You are permitted to exist only as a paying customer or an employee.

[heritageposts]

[...] More specifically, the cycle of violence in The Last of Us Part II appears to be largely modeled after the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I suspect that some players, if they consciously clock the parallels at all, will think The Last of Us Part II is taking a balanced and fair perspective on that conflict, humanizing and exposing flaws in both sides of its in-game analogues. But as someone who grew up in Israel, I recognized a familiar, firmly Israeli way of seeing and explaining the conflict which tries to appear evenhanded and even enlightened, but in practice marginalizes Palestinian experience in a manner that perpetuates a horrific status quo. The game's co-director and co-writer Neil Druckmann, an Israeli who was born and raised in the [occupied] West Bank before his family moved to the U.S., told the Washington Post that the game's themes of revenge can be traced back to the 2000 killing of two Israeli soldiers by a mob in Ramallah. Some of the gruesome details of the incident were captured on video, which Druckmann viewed. In his interview, he recounted the anger and desire for vengeance he felt when he saw the video—and how he later reconsidered and regretted those impulses, saying they made him feel “gross and guilty.” But it gave him the kernel of a story. “I landed on this emotional idea of, can we, over the course of the game, make you feel this intense hate that is universal in the same way that unconditional love is universal?” Druckmann told the Post. “This hate that people feel has the same kind of universality. You hate someone so much that you want them to suffer in the way they’ve made someone you love suffer.” Druckmann drew parallels between The Last of Us and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict again on the official The Last of Us podcast. When discussing the first time Joel kills another man to protect his daughter and the extraordinary measures people will take to protect the ones they love, Druckmann said he follows "a lot of Israeli politics," and compared the incident to Israel's release of hundreds of Palestinians prisoners in exchange for the captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011. He said that his father thought that the exchange was overall bad for Israel, but that his father would release every prisoner in every prison to free his own son. "That's what this story is about, do the ends justify the means, and it's so much about perspective. If it was to save a strange kid maybe Joel would have made a very different decision, but when it was his tribe, his daughter, there was no question about what he was going to do," Druckmann said.

And continuing, on the security structures featured in the The Last of Us Part II:

Besides the familiar zombie fiction aesthetics of an overgrown and decomposing metropolis, The Last of Us Part II's main setting of Seattle is visually and functionally defined by a series of checkpoints, security walls, and barriers. There are many ways to build and depict structures that separate and keep people out. Just Google "U.S.-Mexico border wall" to see the variety of structures on the southern border of the United States alone. The Last of Us Part II's Seattle doesn't look like any of these. Instead, it looks almost exactly like the tall, precast concrete barriers and watch towers Israel started building through the West Bank in 2000.

Illustrations, from the article:

The first barrier Ellie and Dina encounter when arriving in Seattle / West Bank barrier.

. . . article continues on Vice (July 15 2020)

Backup -> archive.today link /archive.org link

[dilemmaontwolegs]

i know u have a gazillion requests but what if we spice up that Carlos fic? if you decide to do a pt 3. maybe Carlos is once again is frustrated because of the penalty after a good quali and has sex with Rebecca cuz he can't find the model. a lil angst

It’s no secret, I’m in an angsty kinda writing mood at the moment 😅 I also forgot who was meant to be the toxic one...and now it's both of them.

Lady in Red (3) || CS55

Pairing: Carlos Sainz Jr x fem!reader Warnings: 18+ only, NSFW, smut, cheating, manipulation WC: 1.5k

One || Two || Three || Four

You had been called away to work just before qualifying finished. You and half a dozen other models were asked to stand behind the top three drivers and wave feather fans for the cameras while an Elvis impersonator pumped out his signature dance moves. 

From your position you could see the frustration on Carlos’ face. He had qualified second fastest yet he was going to have to start from 12th on the grid. You weren’t the only person in the area upset by the 10 place penalty and the Ferrari supporters were making their opinion known as they chanted for Carlos.

“Alright, sweethearts, we need you over at the Bellagio for some promo shots and then you’re free for the night,” one of the headset-clad organisers said to the group you were with before checking her watch. “Or should I say morning.”

The drive back from the Bellagio to the paddock seemed to take hours with the road closures and checkpoints, but finally you made it back. Knowing Carlos would be waiting somewhere for you, you scanned each floor to find him before heading straight to the top.

“Fuck, mi amor, this is what I need,” Carlos moaned. 

You froze at the sordid scene you had walked in on. Neither one saw you in the doorway of the darkened room, their backs to you as Carlos bent Rebecca over the desk and pounded into her. He curled her hair around his fist and pulled back so to expose the pleasure painted on her face. 

You didn’t even notice you were crying until a droplet fell from your cheek to land on your breast, the feather girl outfit he enjoyed on full display. You suddenly hated how exposed you felt in the ridiculous costume. It was almost as ridiculous as you - for thinking a man like him could change. 

“Take it, cariña, take it,” he stammered as you recognised the pinch of his brow. He was close. He was close to finishing and you were more than done with seeing it. 

You were conscious of your footsteps as you retreated from the room and descended downstairs. You just needed to make it to your dressing room so you could get your stuff and go. 

“Hey,” Charlotte called out as she caught your arm and pulled you to a stop with a friendly smile. “Carlos was looking for you earlier. Did you find him?”

“Yeah, I did,” you whispered, quickly wiping the tears from your cheeks. “Don’t bother drafting up the breakup post.”

Her smile dimmed as confusion replaced it. “What breakup post?”

“Huh,” you laughed humorlessly as you shook your head at your stupidity. “The one Carlos clearly didn’t talk to you about. God, I am a fucking idiot.”

You left the track, heading straight back to your hotel room and before you even reached the room you saw Carlos’ name come up on your phone. You sent him straight to voicemail, again and again.

You barely slept as you thought about how humiliated you felt. You wanted to get him back but you weren’t innocent yourself. You knew your career would be over if you outed the relationship you had with Carlos, even if it made you feel better momentarily. No, you weren’t going to bloody your hands for him, there was already a stain on your soul for what you had knowingly done.

You were a survivor and you were smarter than your recent actions showed. You knew things about Carlos that he had been foolish enough to share in the unburdened state that came after sharing his bed. You were going to use it to your advantage and do what you did best, be the envy of every man.

You had turned your phone off when you arrived at the paddock for the race but it was going to be impossible to ignore Carlos when you were assigned to the Ferrari team. 

“Stacy, swap with me?” you begged as she waited for Charles to escort him to the grid. “Pleeeease.”

“Whatever, French boys aren’t my thing anyway,” she said with a grin before heading next door to Carlos’ side. 

“I’m not French,” Charles corrected as he stepped out of his room. “I’m Monégasque.”

“Today, you’re pole,” you said with a grin as you offered your elbow out to him. “Ready to go?”

You didn’t glance in Carlos’ direction as you accompanied Charles out onto the grid. You didn’t even have to fake enjoying the company as you found the Monégasque had a good sense of humour and made you laugh the entire way. 

From the slamming of Carlos’ car door you knew you were getting to him. Carlos’ fear was losing to his team mate and he was sick of always being compared to Charles Leclerc. 

Carefully angling the feather fan to hide your faces from the jealous driver, you leant in and wished Charles good luck for the race. To the fans, you were clearly talking, but to Carlos? He would always think the worst.

Charles was high with adrenaline when he arrived at the Bellagio after coming second place. It wasn’t the win he was obviously hoping for but you could see how happy he was with the result. 

“So, you like Charles now, huh?” Stacy whispered as she stood as you did, a fake smile on your faces as you lined the interview stage. 

You cast her a quick side glance and winked. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I know why you wanted to swap, Carlos acts like a fucking baby. He practically trashed his garage after Charlotte spoke to him about something. God, I wish I could have heard what that conversation was about.”

“Hmm, me too,” you said with a sick sense of delight as the interviews wrapped up. “Oh, finally, almost time to party.”

“You must be happy, proving Carlos wrong,” you teased Charles as you escorted him back to the Rolls Royce he arrived in. 

His steps faltered and he slowed his walk as his other podium finishers drifted further ahead. “What do you mean?”

“Well, he’s been telling everyone how much better a driver he is compared to you,” you stated with a shrug. It was an exaggeration, you had overheard him complaining to his father in the garage. “But you showed him.”

“A better driver?” Charles scoffed. “He is full of shit.”

He seemed to be in deep contemplation as he walked silently, until he reached the car and turned to you. “You should come to the after party.”

Carlos had already added you to the invite list but you smiled and batted your lashes as Charles. “Are you asking me?”

He blushed and laughed at himself as he nodded. “Would you like to come to the after party with me?”

“You don’t have a girlfriend do you?”

“No,” he laughed warmly. “I wouldn’t be asking to take you if I did.”

“Then I would love to go with you.” You gave him your room number that was conveniently in the same hotel as him, since both Ferrari drivers stayed in the same one. 

You already had the perfect dress waiting in your room and as you stood in front of the mirror you had to admit you looked stunning. The red dress was tailored to your body and the plunging neckline was risque and exactly what you envisioned it to be. You couldn’t wait to see Carlos’ face when you walked into the party on his teammate's arm.

“Hey,” you greeted as you opened the door after the knock, but it wasn’t who you expected to see on the other side. “Carlos, what are you doing here?”

His jaw fell slack, lips parting, as his eyes trailed down your body. “Mios dios, hermosa.”

You held your hand out, planting it on his chest as he stepped forward to kiss you. “Woah there, buddy, not happening.”

“Why not? Why have you been ignoring me?” he asked with genuine confusion.

“I saw you fucking Rebecca last night after Qualifying.”

He looked a little sheepish as he scratched the back of his heated neck. “I couldn’t find you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better when you call her ‘mi amor’ too?”

“I didn’t mean it, I-I was thinking about you,” his eyes widened as his voice went up a pitch. “I swear.”

You nodded sympathetically as you rubbed his arm. “Of course, like you were thinking about me when you didn’t have that chat with Charlotte. Yeah, I know you didn't, so just go back to your girlfriend.”

“But I want you,” he pouted as he bowed his head and looked up with big brown puppy dog eyes.

“But I don’t want you. Not anymore.” You gave him a push and he ceded the space in your doorway as the  elevator across the hall opened and Charles stepped out looking good in a pair of jeans and a fitted shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbow. “Hey handsome,” you greeted him with a smile as you grabbed a black clutch with your phone and money. “Perfect timing.”

“You are breathtaking,” he said after a few blinks to recover from the sight of you. He smiled as he brushed past Carlos to kiss your cheek, ignoring the Spaniard completely. “Ready to go, chérie?”

You took his hand and sent a dark smile in Carlos’ direction as you passed by. “See you around, red man.”

Click here for part four.

[waterpoofs]

I accidentally left the A1111 checkpoint on Protogen 2.2 when upscaling a folder of images intended for the trial of Homofidelis, so I've inadvertently ended up with some side-by-side comparisons of the two models. And why waste them. Protogen on the left, Homofidelis on the right, both img2img upscaling old 512x512 gens from Protogen at 0.7 denoising.

I think I'll like the Homofidelis look...

[nefertitiacai]

Astrology observations: LONG DRIVE EDITION 🛣️

LET'S GOOOOOOO!!! 🏁 🚘

🚋 This post is dedicated to my prominent mercury and third house placement folks who love their long drives, cars, and road trips.

🚋 Uranus/Aquarius in 3rd house ppl may own a car which may have a unique aspect to it, like the model of the car has been stopped being sold by the company, not many people may buy it, it may be electrical, etc.

🚋 With Uranus in 3rd house, you may also go on sudden, spontaneous trips.

🚋 Okay but my condolences to the Sagittarius folks who love traveling but also have Virgo placements (especially if they are squaring), y'all how are your motion sickness and stomach problems while traveling 🫣, mine ain't better.

🚋 Growing up, folks with Sagittarius moon/ Jupiter conj Moon/ Jupiter in the 4th house may have traveled to a lot of spiritual and pilgrimage places with their parents.

🚋 Capricorn/Cancer/Taurus placements for what I've observed is that they want to travel slowly, like if going on a long drive they are the ones who make sure the ride is comfortable by stopping by food stations/ scenery checkpoints etc, they ain't hurrying that's why they are my fav travel buddies.

🚋 Pisces/ 12th house placements/Neptune in the 3rd house 🤝 taking a good ass nap while sitting on the backseat. Ik ppl who have this placement who'll legit not sleep throughout the night just so they could sleep while traveling XD.

🚋 Gemini placements are a great source of entertainment while traveling XD. They've got everything. They'll make jokes and be funny all the time but also if you're curious about the place they'll have the facts up their sleeves.

🚋 Leo, Taurus and Libra placements 🤝 shopping, especially the cutesy souvenirs.

🚋About pilgrimage and spiritual sanctuaries, I've noticed that Capricorn placements also love to visit them, especially when they get older.

🚋 Libra, Scorpio, Cancer, and Pisces placements 🤝 daydreaming/reminiscing while listening to music and looking outside the window.

🚋 If you wanna dine the right place, I think it is quite well known by now to take Virgo, Taurus or Sagittarius folk with ya. They know and have it well researched.

🚋 Aries/prominent Mars placements (especially in the 3rd house)🤝 loving that adrenaline rush from driving on rocky terrains and fast driving on the highways.

BONUS: Some asteroids associated with gods of travel and my take on em 🛣️

Ganesa (2415) - Hindu God of wealth and wisdom. Also known to be the "remover of obstacles" that's why he is prayed for before embarking on a new journey be it literally or metaphorically. Having it prominent in your chart may indicate where you'll be successful in your ventures, where you may have a lot of luck and wisdom by your side, and where you may gain wealth.Where new beginnings will be auspicious for you.

Hermes (69230) - Many consider this Greek god as the "Jack-of-all-trades" as he is considered to be the patron god of travel, art, invention, trade, literature, and also of thieves. Planet Mercury is associated with this deity hence having it prominent in your chart may indicate that you may also be a jack-of-all-trades, clever, cunning, and intelligent. Having it prominent in your chart may also indicate you may get away from the troubles and consequences of your actions by using your wit easily.

Vibilia (144) - Roman goddess of the journey, "the right way", short and long trips as well as roads. Having it prominent in your chart may indicate what inspires you to travel, your spiritual/symbolic or literal journey. Being prominent in solar return may be an indication of travel that year.

Adeona (145) - The Roman goddess of safe return, she is also considered the protector of children who travel to come back home (isn't that wholesome?), and also the goddess of homecoming. Having it wherever in your chart may indicate aspects of your life that you return to for comfort and safety. What aspects of your life are where you return and settle in after completing all your endeavors.

[lixel-5]

stanley parable and portal crossover where stanley and chell are escaping aperture (the narrator is just a voice that follows stanley, and constantly arguing with wheatley btw)

stanley falls and chell and wheatley are like. shit.

chell shrugs and wheatly says something like ��well, what can we do. we still have YOU! now let’s continue!”

two minutes later they hear the narrator’s voice approaching again.

“i still can’t believe you, stanley. it was a simple jump and you FAILED. that lady seems much more competent than you.”

once they’re close enough to see stanley, they realize he’s completely unharmed and still has his portal gun and long fall boots.

“what? how are you back?! you fell! i watched you die!”

“it was a simple fix, i’m sure you wouldn’t understand even the basics of it. i simply reset stanley’s model a few checkpoints back and we made our way back here. it’s simple video game mechanics!”

stanley nods and makes eye contact with chell. stanley looks bored out of his mind and chell just looks neutral.

“w-what? video game? what the hell are you talking about.”

“oh, stanley, do you remember when i had to explain this to you? well i have to do it again. this time with two people. how miserable.”

[callie-the-creator]

bertholdt dating a deaf reader would include...

sfw. warnings: mentions of bullying.

author’s note: this was posted on my wattpad, so there is no need to worry if you see it there. other than that, there is nothing else to add!

• in all honesty, how it was revealed that you were deaf was a little embarrassing. it happened during the first day of the cadet corps when everyone was being debriefed and publicly humiliated in front of each other because commander shadis wanted to ensure every abled person was morphed into a model soldier. it didn't take long for it to be your turn.

— "sorry, sir! i can't hear you!" shadis, at first, thought you were being a smartass and before he could yell at you some more, you added, "i'm deaf!"

— "then why the hell are you here?!"

• from there, you explained that you wanted to not so much fight for humanity by physically driving the titans back but stay back and help formulate strategies and plans.

• fortunately, shadis was merciful enough to let you stay, though it took some convincing. that and once his superiors heard about your case, they were torn but eventually you were allowed to train with the others. 

• alas, you were completely oblivious to some of the bullying happening behind your back...

• you struggle with communication and social skills, such as simply not understanding a joke that everyone else is laughing at. when that is happening, you usually write down on a piece of paper to ask just what is so funny, but they usually brush you off by either ignoring you, saying "oh, it's nothing", or something of that nature.

• the first few months were hell on earth for you. if anything, you preferred the physical training over anything because that meant you wouldn't have to worry about trying to communicate with any of the other cadets since the same can't be said about sparring or the wasteland excursion training (an exercise where the cadets are split into two groups and make a round trip through the wasteland. they leave the training base at the same time on separate routes, retrieve an object at the checkpoint, and return to base. they exercise aims to test their vigilance in tedious, low-risk situations).

• in terms of bullying, you experienced quite a variety of things. being ostracized, taken advantage of when it came to sparring or other team activities since everyone knew you were at a disadvantage, or people trying to talk to you but you didn't know what they were talking about.

— "can she seriously not hear a thing?"

— "what a weirdo."

— "hey, y/n, can you even speak?"

• bertholdt didn't like how differently everyone was treating you just because you have a disability, it reminded him all too much of his father and the prejudice eldians face from marleyans. so, when he's finally had enough, he steps forward and tells everyone to cut it out. from there, he becomes friends with you and follows you everywhere to help you in any way he can.

— of course, this didn't blow well over with annie or reiner because bertholdt is sympathetic toward the enemy but it's not like they could stop him.

• it's from there where bertholdt did things like open the door for you, carry your things, intentionally pick you to be his partner in sparring so no one else would be rude toward you, try his best to translate things if someone was trying to talk to you (by writing down on a piece of paper).

• obviously, it didn't take long for you to develop feelings for him and the same can be said for bertholdt! ☺️

— he thought you were so sweet and precious...you needed to be protected and although he wasn't the best option for this, he still wanted to do his best to make you feel safe.

• so...within a few weeks, you two started going out! bertholdt couldn't care less about the stares he got— he was used to them— but if you ever pointed it out, he would make up excuses to make it seem like the judgmental glares were aimed toward him and not you. it wasn't like he wasn't used to it already and the last thing he wanted was to see you unhappy.

• a few years went by and close to graduation, shadis gathered everyone to tell them that the government had been working on a way to communicate with the hearing-impaired. sign language. shadis said it would be easier to talk to you that way. many people were against learning it because they thought of it as a waste of their time, saying that they had enough issues learning the specifics of titan killing.

— all in all, the only people that were willing to learn— aside from you— were christa, mikasa, bertholdt, armin, and connie & sasha (even though they can be a bunch of numbskulls at times).

• bertholdt spent many nights trying to perfect his sign language. it sort of pissed off some of the other guys in the cabin because of just how late he would stay up! he can't remember how many times he's accidentally pulled an all-nighter and only knew when he heard the bell for muster.

• when he signed to you the first time during supper, he was so nervous, afraid that he might offend you if he messed up any of the signs but was relieved and proud of himself when you understood him and offered to teach him some more which he gleefully agreed to.

• bertholdt likes that you two have this language that not everyone in the cadet corps can understand, that way he can be cute with you without the other boys knowing and making fun of him for it

[preservationofnormalcy]

Hey, so I'm planning an interdimensional trip. Hoping to move off this plane, actually. I think the nearest portal to me is the Devil's Tramping Ground in North Carolina-- have you got any confirmation that it's a working (and non-fatal) gateway? Any tips for humans traveling interdimensionally in general? I think it's feasible, I knew of someone who did it, but then again she had táltos ancestry so.

You might end up a little disappointed. I've had Ambrose outline our current theoretical models for how the universe works in terms of interdimensional structures, and unless you're a dragon or sufficiently powerful demon or angel, it's going to be very tricky.

Puncturing the barrier to other planes is difficult - we don't currently have a safe method we can replicate in laboratory conditions that we can put the ol' stamp of Office approval on. Some wizards out there might tell you they can open portals, or "awaken the latent ley energy that underlies all things" or some other kind of nonsense, but I'd be very careful. The closest thing we get is the fey realm, but that's not entirely...compatible with human biology.

Devil's Tramping Ground is offlimits, sorry. It's true that it is a place where the barrier between our realm and Pandemonium is weak. Where sulphur leaks into the air, where the heat of Hell is unbearable at the witching hour. It was a place the barons and princes of Pandemonium turned their gaze to when their thoughts drifted to conquest and war against Earth and, eventually, Paradise.

Naturally we made it a government checkpoint. It may not look like much when you go there, but rest assured we have a lot of surveillance over there to make sure no one goes in or out without our say-so. If you have business in Pandemonium, take it up with the Board of Infernal Affairs and apply for a surrogate. It's not a place you want to vacation, if your body even survives the trip.

[jackoshadows]

The Return of Ta-Nehisi Coates

A decade after "The Case for Reparations," he is ready to take on Israel, Palestine, and the American media.

It is in the last of these long, interconnected essays that Coates aims for the sort of paradigm shift that first earned him renown when he published "The Case for Reparations" in The Atlanticin 2014, in which he staked a claim for what is owed the American descendants of enslaved Africans. This time, he lays forth the case that the Israeli occupation is a moral crime, one that has been all but covered up by the West. He writes, "I don't think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel."

He was astonished by the plain truth of what he saw: the walls, checkpoints, and guns that everywhere hemmed in the lives of Palestinians; the clear tiers of citizenship between the first-class Jews and the second-class Palestinians; and the undisguised contempt with which the Israeli state treated the subjugated other. For Coates, the parallels with the Jim Crow South were obvious and immediate: Here, he writes, was a "world where separate and unequal was alive and well, where rule by the ballot for some and the bullet for others was policy." And this world was made possible by his own country: "The pushing of Palestinians out of their homes had the specific imprimatur of the United States of America. Which means that it had my imprimatur."

That it was complicated, he now understood, was "horseshit.""Complicated" was how people had described slavery and then segregation. "It's complicated," he said, "when you want to take something from somebody."

What matters to Coates is not what will happen to his career now — to the script sales, invitations from the White House, his relationships with his former colleagues at The Atlantic and elsewhere. "I'm not worried," he told me, shrugging his shoulders. "I have to do what I have to do. I'm sad, but I was so enraged. If I went over there and saw what I saw and didn't write it, I am fucking worthless."

The first inkling that Coates might want to write about Israel came around the time he was leaving The Atlantic. He was partly spurred by criticism he'd received over a passage in "The Case for Reparations" in which he cited reparations paid by the German government to the State of Israel after the Holocaust as a potential model. "We did an event when 'Case for Reparations' came out, at a synagogue in D.C., and I remember there was a woman who got on the mic and yelled about the role of Palestinians in that article," he told me. "And I couldn't quite understand what she was saying. I mean, I heard her, but I literally could not understand it. She got shouted down. And I've thought about that a lot, man. I've thought about that a lot." It hadn't occurred to him that Israel might itself be in the debt of a population that it had oppressed, a blind spot that remains a source of regret to this day. "I should have asked more questions," he told me. "I should have done more. I should have looked around and said, 'Do we have anybody Palestinian who's going to read this before we print it?'"

On the ground in the occupied territories, he saw the segregated roads, the soldiers with their American-made weapons, the surveillance cameras, and the whole archipelago of impoverished ghettos. "I felt a mix of astonishment, betrayal, and anger," he writes. "The astonishment was for me — for my own ignorance, for my own incuriosity … The betrayal was for my colleagues in journalism — betrayal for the way they reported, for the way they'd laundered ethnic cleansing, for the voices they'd erased. And the anger was for my own past — for Black Bottom, for Rosewood, for Tulsa — which I could not help but feel being evoked here."

One of his first encounters with the Israeli state is a soldier stopping him on the street to ask him his religion, a confusing question for an atheist. It becomes clear that if he does not give the correct answer — "Jew," "Christian," anything but "Muslim" — he will not be allowed to pass. "On that street so far from home," he writes, "I suddenly felt that I had traveled through time as much as through space. For as sure as my ancestors were born into a country where none of them was the equal of any white man, Israel was revealing itself to be a country where no Palestinian is ever the equal of any Jewish person anywhere."

In Coates's eyes, the ghost of Jim Crow is everywhere in the territories. In the soldiers who "stand there and steal our time, the sun glinting off their shades like Georgia sheriffs." In the water sequestered for Israeli use — evidence that the state had "advanced beyond the Jim Crow South and segregated not just the pools and fountains but the water itself." In monuments on sites of displacement and informal shrines to mass murder, such as the tomb of Baruch Goldstein, who gunned down 29 Muslims in a mosque in 1994, which recall "monuments to the enslavers" in South Carolina. And in the baleful glare of the omnipresent authority. "The point is to make Palestinians feel the hand of occupation constantly," he writes. And later: "The message was: 'You'd really be better off somewhere else.'"

By the time Coates returned to New York, Palestine was his obsession. Right away, he began sending work and research to group chats of various friends. "You wake up and Ta-Nehisi has overnight written four different walls of text and posted three different e-book screenshots and highlighted things," Ewing told me. "We have probably talked about Palestine pretty much every day since returning." Later that summer, just after he returned to the U.S., Coates introduced himself to the Palestinian American historian Rashid Khalidi at Columbia, who invited Coates and his wife to dinner to discuss his trip. "I think he felt that he had been conned," Khalidi told me. "And I think he felt he had to — I don't think atone is the right word, but make up for what he had mistakenly believed." So Coates began his education in earnest with Khalidi guiding him through the literature in a running dialogue that lasted months. It was a process not dissimilar to his preparation for "The Case for Reparations": Coates leaned on friends, family, and experts, Jews and Arabs and others, to stress-test and expand his ideas. "He's a very public learner," Ewing said.

While The Atlantic has certainly published some dissenting views in these areas, the central pillars of its perspective are unshakable. In November 2023, as Israeli forces were beginning their decimation of Gaza, Yair Rosenberg predicted that a new moral authority in Israel would rise from the rubble of Netanyahu's failures. Amid news of Israel bombarding schools and hospitals, the magazine's April cover story, by Franklin Foer, claimed that the left's sympathetic response to the October 7 attack had augured the end of "a golden age" for Jews in America. In May, in an article quibbling with the U.N.'s estimate of the death toll in Gaza, Graeme Wood wrote, "It is possible to kill children legally, if for example one is being attacked by an enemy who hides behind them." When Hamas murdered six Israeli hostages in late August, Foer wrote a wrenching obituary for one of the victims, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, treatment that is rarely afforded to Palestinians who have been killed in the conflict. And as student protests against the ongoing assault on Palestinian civilians took hold across the U.S., The Atlantic applied a full-court press: The demonstrations were "heartless" (David Frum), "oppressive" (Michael Powell), "threatening" (Judith Shulevitz).