#In my defense it looked like actual research software

[fusionpoweredasexual]

I have made a severe and continuous lapse in my judgment

Hello fellow scientists with a questionable moral compass. I hope your doomsday devices are working well and your laboratories haven´t been destroyed by any superheroes.

I am writing because I have recently been confronted with some events that have caused me a great deal of stress and emotional turmoil and as everyone knows the best way to handle bad news is by complaining to strangers online.

I was recently allowed access to the Evil Supercomputer at my Evil University so that I could perform my research. Because of this I spent the entire weekend working, thus neglecting an important social event (building a Lego death star with my friends).

However it was not for vain, my research succeeded and now I have designed an artificial robot-virus that will take control of the minds of everyone it infects. Finally! I am unstoppable! Cue the evil laugh!

Or so I thought, apparently the software I used to design the robo-plague was not a dedicated research program, it was a video game! This means that I did not spend the weekend doing world-changing research, I spent it playing videogames! If I wanted to do that I could have just stayed at home.

Oh well, at least I did create a design for a stealth space station, equipped with ICBMs. For any Evil scientists that are working with spacecraft I really have to recommend you use this software for aerospace design I found, it´s called Kerbal Space Program.

[kyofsonder]

My thoughts when I read various AI art discussions/discourse...

I think people are having two very different conversations about AI art and conflating them as one in the same, so I agree with most AI art opinions up to a point and when people reach that point I get very opinionated and defensive about said opinions. I hate corporations, I hate police forces and similar government agencies, I respect and appreciate small artists and shops, and I have strong feelings about art as a whole.

Agreements and disagreements specified under the cut:

"Corporations and government agencies are misusing AI in predatory and exploitative ways that we as a society should not allow."

I agree. The way police departments are using AI art filters to train their facial recognition software is a deplorable human rights violation and certain AI art companies trawling sites like DeviantArt and AO3 to train their AI without crediting any artists or authors used for said training or even overtly asking permission is an unforgivable act of exploitation.

"They can do this because AI is dangerously unregulated in terms of copyright and fair use laws, allowing both the theft of art and the theft and unethical use of personal information -- we as a society need to quickly address these regulation issues and make AI safer and more ethical to use."

Again, I agree. As odd as it is, the only company I trust to properly credit artists at the moment is Shutterstock due to the efforts they've been putting into figuring out the legality of using art for training purposes -- and even they might be more underhanded about said copyright legality research than I know. I think more companies should not only follow in their footsteps to put forth that amount of effort, but go beyond them to be as upfront and transparent about said efforts as possible. Companies should credit and pay all artists used to train their AI and probably give a small amount of royalties every time their art goes into a newly generated AI image. Artists deserve that much respect, credit, and compensation for their work.

"AI art actually endangers small artists who rely on commissions for income, since it allows people who would otherwise pay for art to simply generate AI images for free."

Again, I agree that this is a problem that needs addressing. The burden shouldn't be on small artists to adapt, but as the art world changes so must artists. Both the development of styles AI cannot duplicate and the integration of AI art into standard digital art should be explored in order to open more avenues of potential income for small artists. We should be able to make almost-perfect AI images, then pay small artists to edit them for us so they're actually perfect -- and we shouldn't be stingy about how much we pay in those situations, since matching an AI's style or converting its style to your own is a difficult task in either direction. We should never lose our respect for artists, and should help them to continue to thrive as technology advances.

"Honestly, we as a society shouldn't be using AI art programs at all because it's not even good art -- it's cheap and weak and can't compare to real human artists."

I concede that it's largely underdeveloped, it's come very far in a very short time but still has a long way to go before its flaws are properly ironed out. That said, I actually firmly believe that it shouldn't be discarded or mocked due to that lack of development. It is a tool we're still developing. We said that being able to draw on computers and tablets made things "too easy" and wasn't as legitimate as traditional art, but look how well we've learned to integrate those mediums while still having each stand on its own. We have whole art styles based in digital art now and for the most part our society recognizes those as legitimate forms of art. AI art may go the same way, and personally I love watching its progress. Seeing people use AI art as starting points, then refine those bases into something uniquely theirs is very fun to watch -- as is watching people who can't do art at all figure out how to expertly manipulate AI generators to create exactly what they envision. The effort put into refining AI art is really admirable and cool! It can become something amazing if we all decide to see it as a tool and use it accordingly -- provided we close the loopholes and areas of opportunity where companies and governments and assholes are currently exploiting it so that we can use it safely and ethically. That should definitely be a priority as AI moves forward.

"In fact, I actually hate AI 'art' because it's not even real! It has no soul or emotion, and those are what make art real. Only humans can put soul into art, anything an AI makes is just a hollow, imitative husk of a thing. It's a dirty scam!"

Alright, now we're getting into my personal biases. Now I want to reach through my screen and shake everyone saying this by the shoulders until they explain to me who made the AI in the first place and who is using the AI programs to create things and how they know whether a thing has soul in it or not. Humans put effort and thought and time into making AI programs and coding them to learn things, they put pieces of themselves into making that! Humans put thought and meaning into the things they make with AI art generators! They put effort and thought and feeling and time into that, even if it is unfathomably faster to do than if they'd drawn a thing from scratch! AI art does not lack soul! AI art does not lack emotion! Corporations using art for ads and agencies using art for surveillance warp the soul of a thing to fit their scummy purposes whether it was made by human hands or not, but AI art itself is not inherently soulless! I despise the use of quotes when people call it AI "art" instead of just AI art and I despise when they say it isn't real! A thing made with a specialized tool is still a real thing! A thing made because a person wanted to make it has a soul! It has emotion! Art cannot help but have a soul because living things have touched it at some point in its development! Are you implying every artist whose material was used to train the AI themselves created soulless art? Are you implying the theft of their work was meaningless and they shouldn't fight to be credited, because none of their emotion bled through into the AI image trained by their work at all? Are you implying that art is objective, and the feelings of the audience don't matter? I have put some of my own soul into every piece of art I have ever consumed, mingling with the soul of its creator(s), and AI art does not make this less possible! It only removes the names and credits of the souls that went into the pieces used to train the AI, and that removal is what I oppose! Not the art itself, its soul cannot be removed no matter how it gets warped! That is the nature of art in all forms! It has a soul in it whether we try to take it out or not! AI art is real art, as far as I'm concerned, and if you keep conflating the argument of whether it's ethical (the laws surrounding it are objectively not ethical and we must correct them before those in power go too far to be pulled back) with the argument of whether it's real (I clearly have a defined stance on this, but it's ultimately more subjective than the legal side of this conversation and you're not a morally wrong person or anything if you believe AI art is not real art you just get under my skin personally and we probably can't be friends) as if they are one in the same when they are in fact separate topics then I will shake you until you reach a desk and sit you down at that desk and make you draw and draw until you can tell me exactly what makes this art so much more real than AI art. I will make you describe to me exactly what threatens you about AI art until you can learn to differentiate between legal concerns of exploitation/surveillance and your own fear of not being able to keep up with those who are using newer tools than yours.

I may not die on this hill, but I will defend it with gnashing teeth and trembling hands until there is no other choice than to back down and admit defeat if new information/developments should push me that direction. AI art is being used incorrectly by people who already have more than enough profit and control and only see AI technology as a weapon that can ensure further profit and control, it is not in itself incorrect or soulless or unreal or a scam. I hate that people see it as such. I really do.

Art should be allowed to grow, not be stifled because there's still work to be done to correct how some people are using it or plan to use it later. I know that work involves putting pressure on companies, but can we please not also put pressure on artists trying to adapt to new technologies or people trying to explore their artistic desires when they couldn't do so before AI art was an option? Can we just recognize that it's a new art tool that's being misused, and not vilify the AI itself?

[addierose444]

Spring 2023 Courses

I can hardly believe it, but today is the first day of my final semester of college. I am officially a second-semester senior slated to graduate in less than 4 months! Emails about commencement have already begun rolling in which is absolutely wild. What I will say is that while on the one hand, it feels like the years have just flown by, at the same time, my first year feels like absolute ages ago. Granted, I think that’s also because the first half of my first year was the “before times” (pre-COVID). 

Building out and deciding upon a schedule for my final semester was really difficult and honestly, it’s still in flux. Figuring out my engineering classes was almost automatic, but the rest was a real struggle and I was second-guessing myself last night and again this morning. Fortunately, we have an add/drop period, so I do have some time to fully commit. That said, I don’t like taking extra classes just to drop them so I prefer to figure out my schedule before classes begin. As most readers will already know, I am an aspiring software engineer double majoring in engineering and computer science. If you’re interested, check out all of my past courses. 

For my engineering major, I will be taking a seminar in techniques for modeling engineering processes (EGR 389) and continuing with engineering design and professional practice (EGR 410D), and Design Clinic (EGR 422D). While my decision to take another technical depth course was dictated by the degree requirements, I’m actually pretty excited about this specific modeling seminar! In the course, I’ll be learning more about artificial neural networks which I’ve found interesting in prior courses like computational machine learning (CSC 294) and cognitive science (PHI 120). I’ll also be introduced to auto-regressive moving average (ARIMA) processes which I presently know nothing about. While not a programming class, we do get to use MATLAB which should be fun! As for Design Clinic, during Interterm we started in on the more technical work (including app development!) so I’m looking forward to what’s next! The fall semester involved lots of research which was important, but honestly not my favorite. Finally, I’m not yet sure what’s in store for the spring semester of professional practice, but our professor did take in our input which is cool. 

While I technically finished my official computer science requirements at the end of my junior year, I couldn’t help but take more computer science! I tried to limit myself to just one course, but couldn’t do it. My current plan is to take operating systems (CSC 262) and network security (CSC 251). In operating systems, I’ll be learning about file systems, CPU and memory management, concurrent communicating processes, deadlock, and access and protection issues. As for network security, I’ll be learning about cryptography and various network attacks and defenses. 

Now for the non-major classes! My main elective is Korean cinema: cinema and the masses (EAL 253). This course comes from total left field, but a few of my friends are taking it so why not try something new and different? Additionally, we’ve heard great things about the class from former students and I was actively looking for a Tuesday/Thursday morning class. While I’m not planning to drop any of these classes, if I do, I’ll be adding archery (ESS 940 ar) halfway through the semester! 

[queenlua]

betting markets are way outside my area of expertise, but i can speak to the software security case! and the points i'd make there are:

* open-sourcing your software lowers the barrier of entry for randos who want to do a security audit / pentest / whatever.

* that's... about it?

* like, even if your software is closed-source, there's whole teams that just sit around reverse-engineering software all day for the sake of making it amenable to analysis. it's tedious but it's not hard

* and that's not nothing! you do get some benefit out of making it easy for curious randos to pentest your shit, particularly if e.g. you can back that up with some kind of prize/contest to make it actually worth said curious randos' while (e.g., the US Department of Defense puts together some "hey find some vulnerabilities"-type challenges from time to time, and we do get some novel techniques/tooling/takeaways from that kind of thing, as the prizes are large enough to attract e.g. teams of university researchers who are looking to prove themselves in some way)

* but anyone who's like "our software is open source therefore it's more secure" is either lying or kinda dumb lol. there's way too many other factors that go into a threat model, and also the kind and quality of attention your software gets, etc

* (if your software IS sufficiently interesting you can also assume the source code's already been leaked to the relevant nation-state but that's kind of a side tangent)

* "okay Lua then what DOES make software more secure?" i... don't think there's much of a shortcut around focused consideration & expertise, unfortunately! like, there's a few Industry Best Practices that we all know work pretty well & if you do them you will probably be better off than before. if you have an unfortunate pile of legacy c++ lying around you should fuzz it. you should have a system for quickly patching & rolling out new software when security bugs are found. all that good stuff.

but outside of best-practices-y things, you gotta make a threat model & Think Real Hard about what the real threats are & do something about those. automated analysis techniques help, bug bounties help, but like, just hiring a really smart and experienced dude to spend a lot of time finding problems in your codebase is also gonna turn up a bunch of shit those other things don't

* "but Lua we hired a pentester once and they only found boring shallow stuff and recommended stupid box-checking shit that doesn't matter :(((((" yeah idk you gotta. hire a smart person. who knows what they're doing. like for all that Scale and Big Computing and shit helps i think at the end of the day a lot of this shit is desperately hoping we'll find one weird maneuver to avoid the question of Exercising Rational Judgment and Actually Having Expertise In A Real Thing and i just don't see it. there's still just this guy in Hawaii i'd hire if i was scared about my c++ codebase sorry

* "is any of this relevant/comparable to the betting market case?" idk, maybe? if i were to hazard a guess, i'd say the betting market ppl feel like the security industry when it was getting REALLY HYPE about bug bounty programs in the 2010s and they were like Yes With The Power Of Incentivizing Random Overqualified Unemployed Polish Dudes To Audit Our Software We Simply Won't Need To Hire Security People Anymore. and admittedly the industry status quo at the time was... embarrassing, there was absolutely some low-hanging fruit there, a healthy bug bounty program can be part of an excellent security story. but random overqualified unemployed polish dudes feel just as vulnerable to being corrupt/manipulated as any other thing you may do to audit your software. similarly idk being like "oh the betting market will figure this out" feels like it's desperately handwaving any of a billion ways that market can be badly structured/incentivized/have weird founder effects/etc and also weirdly eager to shoot down alternatives because they're "messier" or whatever idk

it feels like there's an ideological resonance between the 90s-era open-source-software sentiment that "many eyes make all bugs shallow" and the 2020s-era fixation on betting markets as these all-knowing oracles because "well bettors have skin in the game and pundits/analysts don't," "if someone thinks they have better information than the betting market, their Rational Move is to simply Bet Against Other People until the market reflects reality," etc

and both sentiments are correct in some limited cases/scenarios but uh. feel obviously wrong when accepted in any stronger formulation?

admittedly i probably hang out with too many gambling degens, so...,,,,

[theminecraftbee]

re: void boatem dealing with muscle atrophy - if Grian has little hollow-ish bird man bones, do you think that'd impact him more or less? also since Mumbo is of Questionable Origin (Potato? Part-Bird From Stealing Grian's Potentially Non-Existent Soul? Carrot? Pork?)- Actually the more i think about this the more Mumbo just sounds like a 3-course meal so im just gonna leave that train of thought at the station

okay so, it's been... upwards of a year since i last did this research? maybe a bit less than a year? (jesus that black box sequel sure never happened.) but i'm pretty sure muscle atrophy doesn't generally have to do with bone health, bone and muscles are two different things. it probably does mean grian's muscles are built somewhat differently, though? therapy for back/abs/wings is almost certainly a thing grian would have to focus on more than the others (who would probably be focusing on leg/arm/neck strength first, as would grian, except he's got this large additional weight he has to be able to lift and move correctly again if he has wings). so i think the answer is "it would affect him differently" more than "more/less".

keep in mind i am NOT a physiotherapist though, i am a software developer who did research for this once for a fic i never finished, and had a bit of trouble researching because i didn't know what i was looking for, exactly, thanks to not knowing much about medicine. (i did find advice on how to maintain leg strength with a desk job, which was great, but not the scale/type of injury i was really looking for, y'know? it's definitely mostly me not knowing where to look, though.)

anyway this is a long way of saying i have no idea what the fuck is going on with mumbo, but in my defense, i don't think he does either, and i don't think any research can save us here,

[andypantsx3]

statistically significant | 2 | 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!

Present day

Miruko’s agency was large, much larger than you had expected.

From the street, it had looked unobtrusive enough, a moderately-sized office building with a modern-looking glass front. You could see into a large reception area on the ground floor, and open workspaces on the next few floors, conjoined desks piled high with paperwork and slightly wilted-looking office plants. If not for Miruko’s name emblazoned over the entry in bold, metallic letters, you could have taken it for just another office building.

Once inside, however, the building became much more than that. After checking in at reception, you were led deep into the building, and gestured into an elevator that took you tens of floors down. When the doors opened, they let out into a cavernous space, stretching under what must have been the entire block. The floor was equipped with a gym, several reinforced training spaces the size of office buildings themselves, and what appeared to be a surveillance room where footage from the training spaces could be replayed.

Your mouth dropped open. Did all hero agencies hide deep underground like this? How many other underground floors were there? How big was Miruko Agency, really?

Your guide had enough tact to ignore your inelegant expression, instead leading you towards a training room. A huge, clear window tens of meters across looked into the space, but you would bet anything that it was made of some material much stronger than glass, which was especially evidenced by what you could see going on beyond the window.

Rubble littered the room, scattered in towering piles that gave the appearance of a post-doomsday cityscape. You didn’t know if the room had been set up this way, or if the rubble was the result of the battle going on within; there were two heroes that you could see darting around the space, both appearing to be causing maximum chaos.

Closest to you, a woman with wild pink curls was emitting a powerful stream of some cement-colored substance that ate away at anything it touched, causing it to smoke and hiss and crumble. She melted a huge hole in a pile of rubble, and a man with a shock of golden-yellow hair leapt away from what had probably been his hiding place, backpedaling wildly.

You perked up when you realized who they were--Ashido Mina, the number twenty-nine hero Pinky, and Kaminari Denki, the number thirty-three hero Chargebolt.

Kaminari threw out a hand, and a crackling wave of lightning struck out at Ashido. The lights flickered out briefly, and even behind the window, you could feel your hair stand on end. You blinked past the powerful flash that had temporarily blinded you, casting about for Ashido who had surely been struck down, only to choke on a laugh when you caught sight of her flashing Kaminari the middle finger, sliding away from a huge chunk of rubble she’d dislodged with her acid to use as a shield.

“They’re idiots,” a voice intoned from your side.

You nearly jumped out of your skin, turning to find Miruko herself standing next to you, powerful arms crossed over her chest. Despite her words, a little fond-looking smile flickered at the edges of her mouth.

You schooled your slack jawed expression into a smile. “I don’t know--their personalities are mostly why they’re so popular, so they must be doing something right. I did a little digging into everyone’s results before I got here, and they stood out among a lot of the rest.”

Miruko’s gaze flicked over you. She was short, maybe even shorter than you, but her keen red eyes and very lethal-looking biceps more than made up for her stature. She was intimidating in person, an air about her that told you she could snap and turn on you at any second. Despite the fact that she had asked you here herself, you felt like she might seize you and bodily throw you out of her agency.

“And that’s why they’re idiots. Their results are buoyed by their personalities,” Miruko sniffed. “They need work.”

You prickled a little, feeling like you should say something in their defense, but the truth of it was, you were here to help them work on things.

Some weeks ago, Miruko had contacted the Public Safety Hero Commission with interest in the ranking model. Your version had been in production for close to a year, and you had recently been making scholarly noises about feedback loops, asking for permission to provide pro heroes with individual results breakdowns. Miruko had caught wind of this and demanded on site assessments for her “team of frigging clowns” as she had so eloquently put it. And so you had been loaned out, with the idea of helping to direct the training for the heroes at Miruko Agency, providing them a real time comparison of their training footage to the generic hero ranking model results.

If this trial run was successful, if you could help any of the heroes measurably jump ranks, then the Commission had committed to providing individualized results for the thousands of heroes employed today. The Commission had also expressed interest in your idea of creating and packaging smaller models that took less technical skill to operate, for heroes to use to direct their own training. They had even seemed receptive to giving you a small team of research scientists and software engineers to build such a product, so you would be looking at a pretty sick promotion, not to mention.

Miruko made her way over to the surveillance room, beckoning you after her, and you watched as she leaned over a desk, pressing down a button with one gloved finger.

A crackling sound echoed overhead and her voice followed. “Alright, brats, recess is over. Anyone not heading out on patrol, meet in the surveillance room now.”

The flickering light from Kaminari’s lightning fizzled out, and the door to the training room opened not long after, Kaminari and Ashido spilling out in a chaotic whirlwind of limbs and petty squabbling. They were the first to arrive at the surveillance room, and Kaminari visibility perked up when he saw you.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, interrupting himself on a gasp when Ashido’s elbow caught him in the ribs. “What the fuck, Mina--! Why are your elbows so sharp? Can you just not--?” He grabbed her elbow. “Stop, look, it’s stats girl! From the Awards!”

You startled a little, shocked that he had remembered you. That had been almost a year ago, and you’d only exchanged a couple quick comments in the stairwell.

Ashido looked up from where she appeared to be attempting to crack one of his ribs, her expression shifting into something altogether too interested. You flushed when a sharp grin broke out over her pretty features.

“Oh my god, you’re stats girl? I have been waiting forever. It’s an absolute honor to meet you.” She held out a palm, waggling her rosy fingers expectantly.

A rising sense of horror grew within you. Did...did Kaminari remember you so clearly because he’d told people about the incident? What exactly had he mentioned to her? Who else had he spread the tale to?

“Um, yeah that’s me,” you managed, trying to tamp down your embarrassment.

Ashido grinned wider, leaning forward. “I was totally convinced Denki and Eijirou made you up, except that Katsuki wouldn’t stop plotting revenge out loud for months. You’re, like, a legend. Do you do autographs?”

You gaped at her, your mind sticking on the phrase Katsuki wouldn’t stop plotting revenge out loud for months. A nervous, hunted energy crept over you. Revenge...for months.

Miruko’s rabbit ears twitched and she turned to you, frowning. “I wasn’t aware you’d already met some of my circus monkeys. Is this going to be a problem?”

You dithered nervously, not actually sure if it would be. You’d known Bakugou worked at her agency, considering you had done a fair amount of pre-work collecting everyone's results. But you’d honestly put off thinking about this. Bakugou had been in quite the rage at the Hero Awards, but that had been almost a year ago. And Ashido had phrased his revenge plans in the past tense… Surely he didn’t still hold as much of a grudge now?

Miruko eyed you suspiciously for a moment, but she was distracted when the scuffle of boots indicated the approach of other heroes, and a pair of burly men with curling satyr horns rounded the corner, one of them leaning forward to speak to her. Ashido sent you a wink when Miruko turned her back, mouthing something that looked suspiciously like later.

In the next few minutes, a small group of heroes assembled, ranging from relatively well-known heroes like Ashido and Kaminari, to a couple of heroes who ranked deep in the hundreds--you only knew some of their faces because Miruko had provided you with a list of her employees for preparatory research purposes. They formed a small crescent around the surveillance area, chattering lowly to themselves and eyeing you with speculative curiosity.

To your eternal relief, her most famously explosive employee was conspicuously absent, and you felt yourself relax when it seemed like everyone had turned up who was going to.

When it seemed like the crowd size was finally large enough to please her, Miruko barked a loud “SHUT UP” at them. The din of low voices instantly died down.

“Alright brats. Over the next few months, Y/N will be working here at the agency with us. She has been invited on behalf of the commission, and will be analyzing your quirks, your methods, and your recent work,” Miruko said. “She has individualized results pulled from the current hero rankings that can inform you how to improve. I expect you to take full advantage of this opportunity.”

She gestured to you, giving you a meaningful look as if she expected you to introduce yourself. You gave a little wave, glancing at the heroes around you.

“Um, hi,” you said. “As Miruko-san said, I can give you a little advice based on your current results breakdown. I also plan to analyze video of your training in the coming weeks, and build parallel models to simulate future results given your performance. We can compare those to the current rankings for an idea of how much work you will have to put into particular skills for you to move up in the ranks.”

A small murmur went through the crowd at the prospect of moving up in the ranks. Some gazes sharpened in interest.

You continued, “This is also a good chance to work on specific growth areas -- I can train smaller models on subsets of videos so you can compare your skills more directly with each other or with other heroes from other agencies. Please let me know if there is anything special any of you would like to focus on.”

Miruko stepped back in front of you. “Y/N is going to set up in the surveillance room for the next few weeks. I’ve already established checkpoints for all of you to meet with her, but I encourage you to meet with her more often if you can.”

There were a couple of nods, and a few interested whispers from somewhere at the back of the crowd. Miruko took a breath like she was going to say more, but then--

“Hard pass,” a voice growled from your left. Your hackles instantly raised, and it took your brain a couple seconds to catch up with your instincts. You whipped around wildly when you realized you knew that voice, and you almost jumped a full foot in the air when you caught sight of those familiar blonde spikes over another hero’s shoulder.

You hadn’t noticed his approach, but Bakugou had clearly returned from a fight only minutes ago. His hair drooped a little with sweat, there was dirt streaking the points of his high cheekbones, and his costume was shredded by a thousand tiny tears, like he’d been thrown through a glass window. And...was that blood on his gauntlets? Was it his?

You were torn between immediate annoyance and something like concern at the sight of him so obviously roughed up.

“The meetings are not optional,” Miruko’s voice took on a hard edge.

“I already know what this fucking nerd has to say,” Bakugou drawled dismissively. “And I don’t give a shit. I don’t need assists if I’m the one busy saving the fucking day.”

Your mood edged cleanly into annoyance. It seemed he hadn’t changed any, then.

Miruko’s face darkened. “It wasn’t a suggestion.”

Bakugou bared his teeth. They gleamed almost blindingly white against the dark dirt on his face. “No.”

A wild look entered Miruko’s eye at the challenge. “Everyone is dismissed. Except Katsuki,” she uttered in a low, dangerous tone.

There was a small pause. The heroes around you looked at her askance, and her features darkened even further. “I said scram. NOW!”

The effect was immediate. It felt like no sooner had you blinked than the hall was suddenly clear. The sight of Kaminari and Ashido wheeling around the corner was all the proof you had that the team hadn’t suddenly vanished from existence.

Bakugou snorted and propped himself lazily against a column, affecting a slouch, one pale eyebrow raised over his insouciant expression. It looked almost too perfectly arrogant, and you wondered if he practiced it in the mirror sometimes.

“I said the meetings are not optional, Katsuki,” Miruko hissed, taking a step closer to him. “You can ignore her suggestions all you want, but you will attend them.”

Close as they were, you could see she was almost a full head shorter than him, but the force of her anger seemed to make her larger somehow--she wasn’t towering over him, but she was certainly terrifying. Towering under, your mind supplied unhelpfully.

Bakugou, for his part, held his ground. His mouth curled disdainfully. “What’s the fucking point? The nerd’s just gonna tell me stupid shit. And I’m not going to listen.”

Your fingers twitched in irritation. Data wasn’t stupid shit -- it was mathmatical fact, almost as divorced from human bias as it was possible to be. How was it humanly possible that he hadn’t learned anything or grown even the littlest bit? How was it possible that he was just as infuriating as he was a year ago?

But fine. He could have things his way if that’s what he wanted.

Miruko’s face twisted in a scowl, and she took a deep breath like she was ready to start yelling. But you got there first.

“He has a point,” you said, giving him a hard look over the top of Miruko’s head. “I would hate to waste my time on someone who’s been stalled in the rankings for a year now. He wouldn’t know how to implement my advice even if I were to give it.”

You paused, letting an uncharacteristic smirk curl your mouth, trying your best to channel his disdainful energy. “Isn’t that right, Number Eight?”

Bakugou’s gaze sharpened over Miruko’s silver hair, twin pinpricks of red narrowing in on you. He abandoned his slouch, his body tensing like a hound that smelled blood. “What did you just say?”

You pushed down the petty satisfaction that rose within you at his reaction. He was so fucking prideful, so easy to bait.

“Hmm, cognitive delays,” you said, pretending to tap your chin thoughtfully. “Very worrying. Further evidence he wouldn’t be able to process the information, though. No, I think it’s best if we don’t meet.”

Bakugou pushed himself off the column, edging around Miruko as his mouth drew into a snarl. You were immediately reminded of the Hero Awards, that same overwhelming prickle of power edging over you as he stalked closer, the same scent like caramel and gunpowder.

Miruko’s eyes flicked between the two of you curiously, an eyebrow raised in interest. You hoped it meant she was interested enough in your data analysis to intervene if Bakugou tried to sauté you like an onion.

“If you melt through this blazer I really will sabotage the hero rankings and dip you all the way to number five hundred,” you threatened, edging away from Bakugou as he drew closer. “And also you owe me money for that dress.”

“I’m not gonna fucking give you shit,” he announced, looming over you when he’d decided he was close enough to intimidate. He was near enough that you could feel the heat of him, but he hadn’t put his hands to you yet. It seemed Miruko was enough of a deterrent to curb his bad behavior. “And I’m not gonna meet with you.”

“Good, then we agree,” you said, tipping your head back to look him in the eye. “You’re not good enough to do better anyways.”

Bakugou growled, the phrase clearly still enough to tick him off a year later. “Fuck you, I’m the best.”

“That’s not what your ranking tells me,” you clicked your tongue, feigning disinterest. With the dirt and scratches all over him he looked wilder than ever and you would be a fool to ignore it, but Miruko’s presence made you bold. And something else, some latent streak of frustration and pettiness told you to keep going, to keep pressing the buttons that were getting this reaction from him.

“Your ranking tells me you haven’t even improved the tiniest bit in an entire year. At this rate, you’ll never even hit the top three, never mind be the best. I don’t think you could improve even if you wanted to,” you said.

Bakugou looked like he wanted nothing more than to tear your head off with his teeth. “I can do whatever the fuck I want.”

You opened your mouth to reply but there was a sudden motion at the edge of your vision, something pink and blurry and wild. You glanced past Bakugou’s shoulder to find Ashido leaning around the wall, waving a hand frantically and mouthing something at you. You squinted, watching her lips shape themselves carefully: make a bet.

What? Make a bet?

She wanted you to make a bet?

You looked back up at Bakugou, taking in the oppositional expression, the angry curl of his mouth, the straight slope of his nose, and those keen, blood red eyes glaring down at you. This was certainly the face of a man who wouldn’t be told what to do, who couldn’t be told what to do.

But despite your words and your inherent distaste, there was no denying he was actually your best shot, the cleanest pathway to your promotion. Bakugou was smart, driven, and absolutely lethal. If anyone could turn around a rank at top speed it was him.

But he couldn’t be made to do it. He had to want to do it.

Ashido waved in the corner of your vision again, enunciating with exaggerated facial expressions. Make a bet.

Things clicked into place.

“Hmm, I wouldn’t be so sure,” you looked away from Ashido, inspecting your nails casually, like your focus would rather be anywhere than on this conversation. “In fact, I would bet almost anything that you wouldn’t know how to implement my suggestions, even if you tried.”

Bakugou froze, red eyes passing over you curiously. For one heart stopping moment, you thought he was on to you, but he just leaned down instead, putting his face close to yours.

“I’ll fucking take that bet.”

You tried to push down your sudden swell of excitement, fighting to keep your expression neutral. You knew he wouldn’t cooperate if he thought you were happy about this.

“Fine. You have two months to jump a rank,” you said. “Or I win. And you’ll pay me what you owe me for the dress.”

Bakugou smirked, crossing his arms over his chest. This had the effect of emphasizing both the tears in his shirt and the swell of his biceps.You quickly attached your eyes firmly to his face--that was so not what you needed to be focused on right now.

“I’ll do it in one,” he said. “And then I win, you smug fucking nerd.”

You gazed at him steadily. “Agreed. Miruko’s number seven--you think you can beat your own boss with just a month of work? You’ll never.”

“You haven’t heard what I win yet,” he said.

You stared at him, eyebrows drawing together in confusion. “You go up in rank. That’s what you win.”

Bakugou’s handsome face shifted into an uneven smirk. “Oh no. This is twice now you’ve opened your little know-it-all mouth and acted like you know what the fuck you’re talking about. When I win, you’ll tell me I’m the best and I was right all along.”

You suppressed an eye roll. If he moved up a rank, the point would very obviously be that you were right all along. Was he really so unreasonably competitive and spiteful that he needed to be told he was right?

Then you remembered he’d quite literally dragged you into a stairwell and implied he'd fry you to a crisp when he found out he was number eight. Of course he was.

Well, a few throwaway words were worth nothing compared to the promotion you’d be getting. He could have his sense of self satisfaction when you were knee deep in software engineers and fat stacks of money.

You took a deep breath, holding out a hand. “Okay. If you win, which is a very big if, then I’ll admit it. Deal?”

Bakugou considered you for a long moment, red eyes watching you closely, before a calloused hand engulfed yours. “Deal," he growled, a crooked grin flickering at the edge of his mouth. "Get ready to eat shit, nerd.”

You suppressed another eye roll, hoping to god this was going to be worth it.

This was going to be the longest month of your life.

[herasoftblogsinfo]

5 Cybersecurity Myths Busted

Today, cybersecurity like  gamification solutions, enterprise security, finance solutions and logistics solutions is undoubtedly one of the most critical aspects of business across the globe. Companies getting increasingly aware of its importance and have started to invest in setting up procedures and practices. However, some companies and people still believe in and fall for certain myths and misconceptions putting their system and whole organization at huge risk.

Let’s look at top five most common cybersecurity myths you need to stop believing right now:

Myth 1: It won’t happen to a small company

This is one of the most common and a really silly excuse or myth that people believe in and it needs to be busted right now. First and most important thing to understand here is that the cyber attackers do not care whether your organization is small or big. It’s far easier for the attackers to hack or attempt a cyber-attack on a small company.

Many people believe in this majorly because they think that the data they have may not be of huge value to attackers or what will they get out of attacking a small company. Most attacks are unknown, and people do not realize and only when organizations like Yahoo or Equifax gets attacked it becomes news.

Small and Medium scale companies usually invest less in fortifying their cyber-defenses. In fact, the 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon says that 58% of data breach targets are small businesses.

The whole mindset on cybersecurity should be changed to “When we will be attacked?” rather than thinking “Will we be attacked”. Otherwise, small organizations will have full confidence in their security systems and become ever vulnerable to an attack.

Myth 2: It’s the IT team’s responsibility, not my worry

This is far from the truth. Agreed, IT support teams are usually responsible for implementing cybersecurity processes and policies, but to keep the cybersecurity system intact people should follow the policies and systems – ad verbum.

Employees should stay alert, be aware of the policies or type of attacks. One of the common ones such as phishing or spoofing attacks using e-mail messages can be dangerous compromising security gamification solutions, enterprise security, finance solutions and logistics solutions by spreading the virus or malware across all the departments within the organization.

Myth 3: All Cyber-attacks are targeted

This is another misconception many people have about cyber-attacks that all are targeted ones. Actually, that’s not always the case. Attackers target vulnerable systems and look for an opportunity to attack.

Its always best to understand the attacks that are targeting you alone and differentiate the opportunistic ones that attack vulnerable systems in general. This way better procedures and systems can be put in place to protect the organization against the attacks.

Myth 4: Antivirus software keeps the system safe from all attacks

Yes, this is another myth that if you are still believing then this may cost you a lot. This would have been true if we went back two decades.

These days, hackers are always researching and scoping for new and innovative ways to circumvent antivirus defences. The best example is that of ransomware attacks becoming more frequent and you may get your information locked in just a matter of seconds.

An antivirus is not always enough to keep your systems and data safe. It is always best to stay abreast of the latest threats and create procedures to protect against such attacks.

Myth 5: Cybersecurity is compromised because of malicious third-party actors

This is again a common misconception for many people as they blame or try to only look at the possibilities of external actors with malicious intentions attacking your organization.

The most common reason for data breaches is human error. However, many times that is the last thing they assess in a security breach incident. It would be better to have a comprehensive analysis of the possible threats, pay attention to internal procedures and check possible loopholes in the systems because the attackers are preying on and exploiting vulnerabilities.

Many times, a lack of proper security training or proper assessment creates the problem. Constant awareness sessions and fostering a strong cybersecurity culture is crucial for following and systemizing various aspects of Information Security Management and Cybersecurity.

[quensty]

@finelinesgf​ I ADORE U. i hope u don’t mind but i’m gonna answer all of these in one post. also, here’s ur fair warning that this got VERY long. 

the “another cinderella s” doc is a jason/percy au (and is titled Like That bc i’m a moron). i actually have most of it written, but i got stuck trying to figure out an ending. i basically wrote it as a way to make fun of high school me thru jason. 

this part made me laugh out loud reading it for the first time in a year:

But here’s the thing: the president of the Ballroom Dance Club is Percy Jackson, and he has a face used to smiling. More importantly, Percy is the kind of boy with a siren voice. He’s the kind of boy people gravitate towards. He is bright and dreamy and entirely irresistible. 

“You’re so fucked,” Piper says, watching him from over her monitor. 

Jason pinches the bridge of his nose. “Believe it or not, Pipes, you’re not helping.” 

From across the computer lab, their teacher makes a vague shushing noise. They’re supposed to be working on a research project while he catches up on grading, but the open doc on Jason’s screen is still blank, and Piper is working on this month’s newspaper. He has always wondered how she manages to edit so many pages so quickly. Jason needs to put his essays through at least three different grammar checking software to make them even a little coherent. 

She scoots her chair in and lowers her voice. “Listen, all you have to do is stay near the back, pick up a few things, and then YouTube the rest. It’s simple.” 

“Hedge is going to ask me what we learned, and if my answers don’t match what the club advisor told him, it’s my head on the block.” 

She rolls her eyes. “Hedge isn’t going to remove you as captain, Jason.” 

She could be right, but Jason is feeling insecure about his Common App, and if he has to delete that part from his extracurriculars section, he might actually cut his losses and dive headfirst into traffic. 

“He might!” 

“Fine.” Piper taps the dull end of her pen against the monitor, pretending to consider it before saying, “Plan B, then.” 

Immediately: “No.” 

Piper spares him an exasperated glance. “You know, just because you have a crush on Percy doesn’t mean you have to hide from him.” 

“It’s not a crush. I just—“ He pauses. “He has nice hands.” 

“That’s sweet.” 

“Can you let me do my work, please?” 

Piper laughs. “You’re so fucked,” she repeats. 

i know. in my defense, interests u have at 12 years old last forever. 

i think i had a plan for “inception” once upon a time, but i don’t have a clue what it was. i was hoping that i might be able to jog my memory by reading it, but here’s LITERALLY all that’s in it. 

But his mom once told him that if something’s too good to be true, it probably is. The memory snaps him out of it, and he pushes out of his embrace. Panic grips him by the throat.

He stops. Takes a step back. Thinks and thinks and thinks.

“How did we get here?”

He blinks. The fingers he has curled into his belt loops go slack. “Well, you said you wanted the day to renovate—“

“No,” he says. “How did we get here?”

I HATE MYSELF. no names at all 😔

the last one is my favorite!! i’ve been obsessed w bela for sooo long, but i haven’t gotten very far w this concept at all. my rough idea is that this takes place in the later seasons, probably somewhere mid-s11, where bela slips out of hell during the messy transition from crowley to casifer’s rule, and she goes looking for the winchesters. she’s heard a rumor, in the depths of the pit, that they know a recipe to change her back into a real girl. 

this is everything i have written: 

Hell is the favorite block on the Monopoly board. It has exchanged hands over the last few centuries more times than Bela has bothered to keep track of. But now the demons are whispering amongst each other. They say the Devil has escaped his cage and is rooming with an angel, which means he has wasted no time in dethroning Crowley. 

Bela can almost feel it. Hell crackles with something new, something bright blue and electric, humming with an anger Bela has never experienced before. The taste of it in the air speaks of something ancient. 

So Bela is getting the fuck out of dodge. 

+

It takes months to find the people she’s looking for. 

Escaping Hell nearly destroyed her, and she hasn’t walked on Earth in centuries. She had to bang through solid ice to break out of the last circle of Hell, so her claws are coated black, stiff with the cold. 

The sun beats down on her. The asphalt under her hands sizzles with the heat. Her best guess is somewhere south. Unless it’s summer. In that case, she could be anywhere from Indiana to Arizona, in which case she’s royally fucked. 

But, for now, she turns on her back and looks up at the blue sky, and smiles to herself. 

[nyullm2020]

How to Crush Law School Exams as an LL.M.

Hello again!

It’s been a minute. I’ve just had a well-deserved break after finishing my finals, where I managed to get a bit of sun in Florida and Puerto Rico.

It’s been a running start into my final semester of the LL.M. - and I can’t quite believe how fast this has all gone. I have a lot of content ideas coming up about everything I will be doing this semester, including juggling my internship at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, a Research Assistantship with an NYU Law Professor, the March Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE) for the Bar, a full load of classes, and job hunting/networking - but first things first. I wanted to reflect on last semester’s exams, final papers and overall grades, and think about what I did well, and what I would change!

What are American law school exams like?

I’ll start by giving you an idea of the format of exams to give you an idea of the general approach, and hopefully take away some of the anxieties you as a future LL.M. might have.

There is no uniform exam or grading type for each and every course. American law school professors have a lot of discretion about how they will structure and assess their courses - including what mode of exam you will take (multiple choice, short answers, long problem question responses, policy-based essays, etc), or a final paper, and whether and to what extent class participation counts toward the grade. My assessments ran the gamut. In one class, I had a group assignment worth 30%, a 5,000 word final paper worth 60%, and 10% class participation, and in two others my final exam was worth 100%, with the professor’s discretion to slightly boost your grade based on your overall participation and contribution to the class. My Constitutional Interpretation seminar was 50% class participation, and 50% based on regular pieces of written work we handed in, including a final paper of 2,000 words.

Exams typically last between 2-4 hours, while take-homes take 3-8 hours (I haven’t had a take-home yet, but I will have a 12 hour take-home this semester). We all took our exams from home with a special software (Exam4 or the law school’s own exam software, THESS). Both my exams this semester allowed students to use any notes they wanted, and you could access the internet as well. The main problem with doing that is running out of time! So creating an organized outline of your notes and brainstorming essay ideas ahead of time is pretty crucial.

How do Professors grade? And what is a good grade?

Professors seem to have pretty broad discretion when it comes to grading - and definitely so when I think about Australian law school professors, who grade ‘blindly’ and never know who is behind the student number unless they look it up later, or are awarding prizes for the top students. The possible grades at NYU range from an F to an A+, as follows:

A+, 4.333; A, 4.000; A-, 3.667; B+, 3.333; B, 3.000; B-, 2.667; C, 2.000; D, 1.000 and F, 0.000.

No more than 2% of students can get an A+ in a given class, with a target of 1%. I am proud to say I was the only A+ student in one of my classes - yay! A huge personal achievement for me, and so I will brag a little here because I don’t want to be lame and brag in real life!

About 10% of people get As, and another 20% get A-s, and about 26% of people get B grades (B+, B, or B-). B- and C grades are actually pretty rare, so in all likelihood you will likely end up with an A or B grade of some sort!

It’s kind of hard to work out what ‘good’ grades/a strong GPA are for job applications, but from what I’ve gleaned, in an ideal world you would have all A level grades, or maybe one B+. Personally, my grades were an A+, 2 A- grades and a B+. This gave me a GPA of around 3.8, which is definitely decent for job applications. 

Your chances to get the high grades will depend a big deal on your competition - in the core doctrinal courses (like Constitutional Law, Free Speech, Evidence, Corporations Law, and so on) and in classes of the really famous professors, JD competition is intense. I definitely didn’t make it easy for myself with my classes, and I was usually the only, or one of two, LLMs, along with pretty ambitious JDs (often from elite undergrad schools) aiming for judicial clerkships or other prestigious jobs. Many LLMs have usually been working hard enough back home, and work hard enough to get decent grades, but leave enough time to relax and enjoy themselves. I would say my approach was mixed - I knew I needed to work hard enough to get good grades to make me a strong candidate for job applications in the US, but I also had plenty of fun. 😄 Just less fun around exam time!

On reflection, my top tips for doing well in your classes and exams would be:

1) Play to your strengths

At the time you select your classes, you’ll be able to see what the format of the assessment is - long paper, exam, practical assessments (like in a clinic or simulation course), etc. My top advice would be to think about your strengths when picking classes. 

I have always been much better at hand-in assignments, and my one A+ grade was from handing in a long paper. My lowest grade (a B+) was from a very time-pressured exam that I wasn’t happy with how I handled the timing. So - if you know you are much better at one type of assessment, make sure you are considering this when picking classes to pave the way for great grades, especially if you are relying on your grades for finding a new job or for a JSD application.

2) Understand your professor’s idiosyncratic preferences

When it comes to law school exams, the key to succeeding is really knowing who’s grading them. Some professors prefer you to be ‘quick and dirty’ and to really jump into the key issues and answers, while others prefer a more formalistic recitation of the rules and then a close application of the rules to the facts. Pay attention to how they explain what they want, pore over any model answers and exam keys they give you, be familiar with the way they write problems, and ideally hunt down past students’ papers with comments or overall feedback from the professor (if you know anyone that took the class before).

3) Make study enjoyable and social

Even in these COVID times, I really benefited from spending time at the library studying with LL.M. friends, and broke up study sessions with coffee hangs, lunches, and going to see the Christmas lights. Your friends will keep you sane and motivated, so don’t hide yourself away for the whole month or more!

Friends! A well-deserved dinner break in December a week or two before finals.

4) Argue both sides of legal issues you spot

This is something that is really emphasized by NYU professors. A good lawyer can, when identifying a legal issue, show how it is a weak point in a plaintiff’s claim or in a defendant’s defense, and then demonstrate how both sides could argue their case. The best answers don’t ‘fence sit’, but come to a reasoned judgment/prediction about which side of the argument is stronger.

5) Be precise and concise

You should try not to include unrelated material in your answer as this could backfire if your professor believes you struggle to separate relevant material from irrelevant material. One of my professors was clear ahead of time and said he did not appreciate an ‘info dump’ and graded accordingly, but I think this is true of all professors.

6) Be *really* aware of your timing

I can’t stress this enough. Effective time management is imperative on law school exams. My Evidence exam was so unbelievably time-pressured (27 short-answer questions in 3 hours = less than 7 minutes per question to read a few sentences-long question and answer it), and I did not handle this as well as I could have, affecting my grade. Make sure to be really aware of this and try to be strict with yourself so you don’t leave any questions untouched.

7) Remember public policy concerns

After applying the legal rules to the issues presented in your fact pattern, if time allows, include a sentence or two about the policy implications of your conclusions, or how your chosen approach fits best with the policy rationale underpinning the legal rule. This is something that is valued more in US law schools than my law school back home. Not critical, but definitely something that could boost your grade a little!

8) Just try your best, and don’t be too hard on yourself

We have all worked hard to be here, and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. English might not be your first language, you might struggle with exams, or it might just not be the best day you’ve ever had. If you find yourself in the unfortunate position of either not understanding the issues presented in a question, or not remembering the rules related to such issues, just do your best to write the best possible answer in the time limit. 

Good luck, and let me know if you have any questions!

[currentfandomkick]

Marinette’s Villainy Lessons with her Uncles, Victor Zsasz, Jerimah, Riddler and Ed

Reminder, the rouges know her as Jillian Strange and are aware her cover in Gotham is Jillian Smith in public.

Most people would think a hitman and casual murder would make a horrible, horribly godfather. At least for morals. 

Well, her father is Strange so he’s not most people. Her Maman had to have dated him or something so she probably isn’t normal either, Marinette would think as lessons began.

“Okay, now today we’re going to review how to take down  someone bigger than you. What do you do first?”

Marinette hummed. “Check what’s on them and around them. Look for weapons and weak points while keeping distance.”

Uncle Victor smiled. “Good job Jill!”

Marinette beamed at that. “Second step?”

“disarm them.”

“Good, now next thing?”

“Exploit wekanesses. Use weapons if possible.”

“In the kitchen, no knives open. but there’s a spork.”

“Spork?”

“Don’t question it. what do you do?”

“aim for the eye?”

“Good! popped out eyes are very distracting. Now, after that’s done, what do we do?”

“Run away and call the family.”

“And why not the police?”

“Batman will know. And he and the police will take me away.”

“And do we want that?”

“NEVER!”

“That’s my Jilly bean. Now, self defense in theory you have down. and you kept up with punch practice, right?”

“And kicks and the bendy-training.”

“Flexibility. You already have strength down, so we can focus on lean muscle like gymnasts and acrobats for you.”

“If i become an acrobat does that mean i have to be nice to batman?”

Zsasz shook his head. “Just because bat is in it, doesn’t make it his.”

“He calls his boomerangs batarangs. I’m not taking chances.”

--

“Now, its all in the wrist, Bend it back, like that, when the target is close.” Jerome hovered over Marinette, watching her form closely.

“I need to do this to take out the bad guys right?”

“If a bat goes after you when you’re with one of us, hit them hard.” He wouldn’t have Strange and whoever Jill’s Maman was after any of them for losing her mid-lesson to a zealous Batman or Robin. 

“Knees are better targets right?”

“Since you’re not allowed to kill, yes.” Jerome still didn’t get that rule, but whatever. His niece followed her Maman’s rules most of the time, and was adamant about that one. it made lessons more difficult, but they worked around it.

“Maman said something about it staining the soul,” the girl threw the knife, just missing the target.

“Eh, mine’s fine.” He didn’t regret any of it, something about him being incapable of remorse. 

“They were bad people right?”

“Of course, i don’t hurt actually good people--they make it so things don’t happen in the first place.” After all, letting things happen was bad too, and worse as far as Jerome was concerned. He still remembered everything his family did and how no one said anything about what was done to him. Silence and acceptance was far worse than doing in his books.

“Like Uncle Victor?” Marinette was still fuzzy on good and bad and the in betweens. her Father said its because binaries can’t contain her understanding so she needs another frame of reference or something.

“Like Uncle Victor,” Jerome agreed, watching Marinette closely as she sunk the next knife into the cereal box. “Now, i think we’ve done enough with weapons for now. Want to practice trapeze tricks?”

“But Aunt Harley isn’t here.”

“Safety nets are there for a reason.”

Marinette considered it for one second. Then bolted up the post and threw each trapeze into one another., making them swing for a challenge “I can’t fly for a few hours!”

“Good! Sooner you get used to falling, the less scary it is, trust me!”

“Okay!” Marinette grinned as she got a running start. She loved lessons like this.

--

Uncle Riddler decided today was a software programming day. And a cyber-crime day, she guessed. But those are always boring--she practices these with Hero Stalker and sometimes Max in Paris anyways.

“See, this is how you beat their firewalls, a simple virus that looks like a normal email. when it’s opened then we have access to the servers and get the information we want, okay?” Riddler was trying to be more clear with her today. Ed was probably trying to keep control.

“How long does it take?”

“Varies.”

“Can we get icecream while we wait?”

Riddler almost sighed. almost.

“Why?”

“Why not? We can’t build anything without the base and Father said no more autopsies in the kitchen.”

“It wasn’t even a human, just a bird. but nooo, that’s traumatizing and damaging to your mind.”

“But it was cool!”

“I know, i know. Bodies are just bigger puzzles... Hm, what’s broken when spoken Jilly bean?”

“The ice cream machine at McDonalds. And Silence, but that one’s an easy answer... OH! hero’s name is a honophone with crazy!”

“Batman.”

“Yep! Did he find the new base yet?”

“Nah, Dent got him off the trail last with another robbing spree.”

“Oh, is it going to Mr. Freeze for his research or bills or the RKC?”

“I... am pretty sure Rose stole it so your group won this time.”

“Yes!” Marinette fist pumped. “I told them operation bouncy ball would work!”

“....I. is that why they were everywhere.”

Marinette grinned back. “Just like you all keep saying, misdirection is the key to getting what you want when dealing with someone with more.”

Riddler grinned, the one that spelled doom for everyone else. “Our little jilly bean is already pulling off jobs on her own! I’m so proud!”

there was shift on his face, his stance altered and he was more... Uncle Ed than Uncle Riddler. “Jill, we talked about this. You need to be at least thirteen before you start plotting on your own.”

“I had co-conspirators of age so i didn’t break that rule!”

Uncle Ed was in control now. “I curse the day Dent taught you about malicious compliance and loopholes.”

“No you don’t. You’re just mad i used it against Dent and you missed him  tripping on everything. Don’t worry, Ghoul had cameras and made a montage.”

 Uncle Ed’s lip twitched. “Really?”

“Ice cream and we watch.” Mairinette knew her horrible stealth uncle had to be good at something. business things.

“Oswald is a terrible influence on you.”

why wasn’t this working? Wait, this is Riddler... “Ice cream please?”

“... fine. but no sparkly sprinkles.”

“But those are the best kind!”

“Jillian Strange,” Uncle Ed warned. “We do not leave evidence at the scene of a crime. Your favorite sprinkles leave evidence everywhere. Do you want to answer to your father about spoiling dinner again?”

“.... No. But after?”

“I want to know who gave you a metabolism like this, but sure. No telling Strange.”

“Okay!” Marinette ran off to the kitchen, returning with a large bowl for herself--half the gallon Ed noted--and a more normal serving for himself. “Here! and this is the video,” Marinette pulled out her ipad and played a few minutes of Dent tripping over various bouncy balls swarming his base.

“You really are a baby mastermind,” Uncle Riddler cooed. “Remind me to set you up with Puzzles later.” 

“Huh?” Marinette looked up from her empty bowl. 

“Nothing,” Ed said, almost glaring. 

“Oh, are you two fighting again? I’ll clean up until its over. Then we can work on the reality augmentation glasses, right?” Marinette asked with her infamous kitten eyes.

“Of course, I think you’ll like the new coding patterns we’ve been working on..”

--

Hope you enjoyed a slice of Marinette Strange Dupain Cheng’s Gotham life. 

Bonus:

“Jill, why are we missing a gallon of ice cream?”

“Uncle Ed took it.”

“...Please tell me it wasn’t for another biology lesson.”

Marinette thought for a moment. She is bad at lying. but letting her Father come to his own conclusions isn’t lying, right?

“I have to remind him that biology lessons are for his base again then, wonderful. I will bleach the counters. Put on  something while i do.”

“Breaking News,Poison Ivy’s Plants are out of control again.”

“Rose ran away again!” Marinette yellled.

Strange took a deep breath. “Get her room ready, I’ll call Harley.”

Marinette nodded, wandering off to find Ghoul and Frost in the ‘extra room’ already. “So who’s turn is it to tell Aunt Ivy to stop?”

“You’re here the least.”

Marinette groaned. “Do i get a disguise?”

“Green wig, colored contacts, and some baggy clothes i can feel you trying to burn.” 

“If i had heat vision it wouldn’t be trying.”

a few minutes later, the boys worked on fixing up the room while Marinette walked through the plant infested section of Gotham. The vines moved away from her, cuasing the few semi-conscious to stare at her. 

“Aunt Ivy! She’s on her way to my place, ok!”

Poison Ivy dropped to Marinette’s level, appearing from a bunch of vines. “Why didn’t she tell me!”

“You do this but at home when she does.”

“She knows better!”

“She’s six. She really doesn’t. Did you feed the flowers human blood again?”

“They were already dead, and they weren’t even half decent poeple. just abusers and pedos this time.”

“Did you tell her or...”

“They’re my children, why do i need to tell my non-plant daughter what her sibblings are eating?”

“So she doesn’t think you’re murdering for fun.”

“Oh right, that..”

--

Marinette casually curbing the rogues while learning how to villian and applying skills in the opposite direction will be a trend in the au. And they support her 100% when she does this as that’s their girl, theirs!

they tolerate whoever she adds though. eventually. 

[lilquill]

Are you doing okay what with all the VV stuff that happened? It seemed like you and Mina were close

Hey hey, thanks for the worries anon! Mina of mvcreates/Violet Vineyard and I were properly talking as friends for only a few months quite a long time ago. Emotionally I’m completely fine, but I do have stuff to say and I do want to help document things if any of it is useful in any way. A lot of it will be dry because it’s just documenting, but some of it will be “juicier” I guess, and I’d like to corroborate some of the things my friends are saying. I’ll put this under the cut for people who don’t want to scroll through all this and/or have no idea what I’m talking about and want to keep it that way!

You guys can check @nuwuhorizons‘s blog to see what exactly is going on and I believe they’re also reblogging some things others who were members are saying. The case of people dogpiling a 19-year-old trans person and making fun of their name is on the blog (post here, wayback machined here).

I can corroborate a bunch of what @rrrawrf-writes (post here, wayback machined here) and @gingerly-writing (post here, wayback machined here) have said. I backread through the interaction that Ginger talks about in her post (of course not the DMs, but the interaction itself).

I know some people may be confused about why Ginger only has that one screenshot of what she said and may not see that as full evidence, but Violet Vineyard had a super strict “don’t screenshot and post anything” with lots of scary looking legal stuff attached to it policy and, well, Ginger can’t be sharing stuff without anyone’s permission if it’s just the message she herself sent, but they’d have grounds to take god knows what action with what backing against her if she posted something else. But, well, for what it’s worth, as someone who read through that conversation a little after it happened, it was certainly a case of dogpiling and left a bad taste in my mouth, and it strikes me as really odd that the mods would try to shut someone down like that.

I haven’t really been doing stuff in writeblr lately as you can probably tell from my blog, but yeah, Mina herself and a lot of people in that particular friend group of hers, as Lisa mentions, have just disappeared off Tumblr. I can also attest to the dogpiling tendencies and this Mina Is Always Right tendency, and the fervor with which people would defend her.

I was honestly never close enough to Mina to be in that friend group. She and I were only really talking to each other for a few months over a year ago. I don’t think I was “writeblr-y” enough to fit in with them. I was also not super active in that server. I didn’t post much about my wips because I in general don’t think I really post a lot about them. Therefore I didn’t get like, massive benefits off of the whole “network” thing, but  I’d reblog some stuff when I saw it. I was probably most known for posting pictures of my plants, lol. And I would occasionally hop in to talk briefly about kpop with like, one person? (They went by Kay and their url was like, lvcrezia? lvcrezias? Something like that.) In fact, probably the last thing I ever said in that server was a super quick conversation about Red Velvet’s “Monster” music video around the time it dropped.

In fact, for the sake of being super transparent/establishing credibility, and for documenting purposes, I’ll list all the non-plant-pictures and non-kpop conversations I can remember actually participating in. Some of these will lead off into bigger topics, and I’ll specify those. But first, a word.

TO ANY OF THE FORMER MODS WHO MIGHT COME AFTER ME FOR SAYING THINGS ABOUT THE SERVER, SINCE THIS HAS APPARENTLY HAPPENED TO OTHERS: The server is deleted, and so is the text of the whole “contract” (yes, really) that people had to agree to in order to join VV. I remember that the agreement made sure we didn’t post screenshots publicly, but other than that I genuinely do not remember the text and I have no way of referencing it to keep in line with it since the server is deleted. I do not remember if documenting things like this is against anything I have agreed to, I have no record of the agreement, and I have not been notified of any place to access a record of the agreement before the server was deleted. If my post is some sort of violation, you cannot hold me accountable for rules that I am unable to follow, and I would greatly appreciate not being targeted with empty threats shrouded in scary legal language. If you have any point of contention with what I have said, feel free to take it up either publicly or privately. Please do @ me if it’s specific to me; I’m not really the vagueposting kind. If any of you want me to delete this post, you will need to provide actual proof of the agreement that I made by joining Violet Vineyard, and you will also need to prove that the rules were not edited after I agreed to them. If any of them were follow-up rules not from the beginning of the server, it’s possible that I did not see them and therefore you need to provide proof that I agreed to those, too. In addition, since image editing is what set off this avalanche in the first place hence we’re all aware that there’s software that allows us to edit images and pass them off as an original thing, you’ll need to provide proof that any screenshots/images are undoctored. Furthermore, since the rules have been deleted with the server, as the method I used to agree to follow them, you must prove that my agreement is still valid, since it seems to me it’s been nullified since it’s, well, gone either through deletion or kicking me out alongside everyone else. Tl;dr you don’t scare me lol.

Anyways, back to a list of the non-kpop, non-plant-pics, non-my-wips-promo conversations I can actually remember:

On January 5, 2020, the server had a conversation about Roshani Chokshi’s book The Gilded Wolves. I can give the date because during/in the aftermath of the conversation, which I talked about the book in, Mina DMed me quickly. (This was also the last time Mina ever directly contacted me.) I’ll talk about this later.

In February 2020 I believe I quickly mentioned getting concert tickets.

Either early this year or late last year I think I posted some stuff about landscape photography, with some photos of the beach.

I believe I posted a couple fashion pics at some point?

Back in May 2019 I got some kinda weird asks about Violet Vineyard and I think people were talking about that, and I assume I participated since I was the one who received the asks. At that time VV was like a super new server and didn’t really have much as far as the issues we’ve been talking about go, so I defended it. (I’ll be talking about this later.)

Probably in June/July 2019 people in the server had a discussion about Black Muslim characters and representation, initiated by me for one of my WIPs.

I think we talked about South Asian sweets at some point???

I believe in April/May 2019, there was some stuff in that server reagarding “drama” with Castor who at that time went by the url pilipalea that I honestly don’t remember much of. Castor was never in VV, but I believe they were in a server with Mina at some other point. There was something about grammar and proofreading?? (I’ll be referencing this soon as well.)

I helped someone with their computer science homework at some point.

I asked for r&b music recs at some point either late 2019 or earlier 2020.

I’ve also talked about ethnic clothes I think.

We’ve talked about Hindu nationalism and how awful it is.

I think we’ve talked about tone policing and how woc are often portrayed as “aggressive.”

We’ve talked about health/fitness and exercise.

I recommended Jade City and some other books I’m a fan of in there.

Probably talked about Bollywood movies at some point.

The fact that I can remember probably most of my conversations that lasted more than like, one message in there is, I think, a pretty good testament to a) me having at least a kind of decent memory and b) I wasn’t participating in the server so regularly that the conversations kind of blend together. I know this is all kind of long and dry for anyone who’s here for drama purposes lol, but I did want to establish that I’ve been in that server for quite a while and that I wasn’t monitoring it heavily; in fact, I had it muted very soon after joining it.

I wasn’t super close to anyone that I’d met through VV. People who are friends that I still regularly contact who were in VV with me, I had met through other servers and other interactions on Tumblr. I’ll disclose right now that I have been longtime friends with Ginger, Lisa, and Eff (@time-to-write-and-suffer), who have all come out against VV, and that we are in our own servers with people from writeblr. Ginger and Lisa were both in VV, Eff has never been.

Okay, back to maybe “juicier” stuff.

Mina had always positioned herself almost as this “tumblr mom” type. She’d reference her age a lot, which would contrast a lot with how a significant portion of the members were much younger and, I think, set up the dynamic of people looking up a lot to her and always coming to her defense. After all, we’re talking a bunch of passionate kids who’d found a writeblr network. And the server definitely seemed “legit”; I myself was pretty impressed with just how tightly organized everything was, and like I mentioned, there was fancy legal language to ~protect their rights~ and whatnot. Mina herself seemed so accomplished with so many talents: she’d post her writing and artwork, I believe she’d made a couple pieces of music, she’d work out and keep in shape, she had a seemingly wonderful loving relationship with her husband, she was active in research fields professionally and as an outbreak responder, and she, of course, had a significant online presence as a “big writeblr.” I remember when she’d started blowing up, so soon after her blog had been created, because of her prolific content and friendly persona. People, especially younger ones who had no other writeblr support group, looked up to her and trusted her. And the nature of the server was to shower everyone in praise, so Mina found herself on the receiving end of quite a bit of it. Mina would also actively boost and review other writers’ content, genuinely engaging with it and providing feedback, support, and valuable resources.

Mina also had a tight-knit group of adult friends. Some of them I believe carried over from pre-VV times (incuding CJ of typewriter-jade if I’m remembering correctly, who made fun of the trans person’s name in the reblog chain in the link to nuwuhorizons’s blog), while some were made afterwards. They would act super friendly and familiar with each other, which I think contributed to a lot of people falling into this little “friendship” super fast. They were also authority figures and role models, and tended to agree with each other, so everyone just went along with that.

These factors, I think, heavily influenced the dogpiling tendencies. People were eager to defend their community, where they’d found so much love and support for their work. Minors would go along with adults in conversations. When someone said something, others would enthusiastically support them. And people were just so into each other that I really couldn’t keep up, which is probably why I didn’t participate too much. People became just super fast friends and the server was so large and so seemingly “professional” and structured in how it was made. I think people just kind of assumed everyone in there was great and their friend who could be trusted deeply, when in reality that’s just impossible if there are like, 100+ members. Meaning if something minorly negative happened (like on that literal eleven-year-old’s blog), everyone would come in to say something to demonstrate their emphatic loyalty, even when it became excessive for something as small as an ask game done wrong.

This happened with the Gilded Wolves discussion as well. Someone stepped in to say that the way Gilded Wolves coded its antagonists as this shady secret society of people was antisemitic, and everyone joined in to rip the book apart without having even read it. I joined in the conversation to state that I didn’t see it that way, since that shady antagonist group was very much coded as white Christians (their names are all French Christian names) and were colonizers (meaning making them this shadowy group of powerful and evil people was accurate) and one of the protagonists, who is Jewish, is opposing them and antisemitism is portrayed as horrible, and that the book had had (if I’m remembering correctly) Jewish sensitivity readers and multiple Jewish book reviewers really enjoyed and recommended it. Then Mina stepped in to say that multiple Jewish journals she followed rated the book highly and recommended it meaning the accusation of antisemitism clashed heavily with what a lot of other people thought, and that since me and the other person who was saying the book was antisemitic were the only ones who had read it or were familiar with it in any capacity, it wasn’t fair for everyone to be judging it like that. It was like she’d flipped a switch: people were suddenly much more “reasonable” and “fair” and willing to give the book a chance, just because she’d stepped in. (As a quick note, I don’t remember exactly whether Mina stepped in first or if I stated my opinion first. I also want to mention that Mina DMed me to state that the person who accused the book of antisemitism had expressed some Zionist sentiments in the past and to say that maybe their take on the book could have come from Islamophobia with them maybe assuming obviously ethnic name of the author was a Muslim name. The Zioinist stuff is something I can’t actually speak on since again, I have no access to the server anymore and I don’t remember that person’s url. This was the last time Mina DMed me or I her.)

I wrote all that out because I think it illustrates a few things. Firstly, a good example of the tendencies of people going with the flow of things even when it led to dogpiling/drastic conclusions. When I say they were really trashing that book, I mean it! Secondly, it demonstrates the willingness of everyone to go along with what Mina said. Third, it shows that Mina was capable of stepping in to prevent dogpiling (and, seemingly, she would, at least if her beliefs aligned with the opposite of whatever incited the dogpiling) and that people would listen to her and actually change their minds. 

Whether or not Mina supported something was pretty important. Of course, it was her server, so she was definitely allowed to run it how she saw fit, but she would very swiftly pass judgement on things and everyone would just comply. One time, I think there were more than one different threads of conversation happening in the general channel of the server. Jess suggested making a second general channel to allow for other conversations, as is common in a lot of servers, including ones I’m in and moderate/own/have some power in. I don’t remember if I supported that suggestion or if I only backread that conversation, but I know at least one other person agreed. Mina said that as an older person (she’d very frequently bring up her age) she thought people could just wait for their turn in a conversation and didn’t even consider trying it out. Other mods, I believe, backed her up and said no to the second general conversation channel. I remember being a little confused as to why nobody even considered trying a member’s suggestion to make the server more easy to participate it and help provide additional structure/support how big it was, and why it was shut down because people could just wait for their turn, when clearly the general channel was getting overloaded before our eyes. But Mina didn’t see the need, so therefore nobody else wanted to do anything about it, and nobody ever mentioned it again, I think. I know this is a super minor instance lol, but I do think it illustrates something about the behavior in the server and how it was run. It’s not like other channels weren’t added based on need; one was created for the 2018 elections, one was created for talking about race in June during the height of BLM protests having news coverage, I’m pretty sure one was created for talking about the coronavirus. So, the mods were watching conversations and responding as they saw fit, they just wouldn’t field this request, for some reason. Obviously conversations getting muddled in a general channel isn’t as significant as major political events, antiblack racism, or a pandemic, but these channels were made to improve the server experience and likely to prevent these topics from completely overloading other channels, so, well.

Okay, the Castor/pilipalea stuff and dogpiling. I’ll say this stuff now because Castor has opened up about it (here [wayback machined] and here [archived in a google doc]), so I see that as permission for others to comment on it. If I’m remembering correctly and looking back at the right things, there was something about Mina giving advice on a grammatical error to one of her mutuals, or something asking if her mutuals wanted grammatical advice? Castor vagueblogged, presumably about that, and talked about classism in expecting good grammar from people, which is a valid issue, but seemed misapplied to this instance of someone consenting to receive advice on grammar/syntax/mechanics, if that’s what the vagueblogging was about. I reached out to Mina to let her know that I thought someone was vagueblogging about her, and she told me about past conflicts with Castor. I also reached out to Castor over DMs to ask what the vagueblogging was about, because you genuinely never know; classist prescriptivism is harmful and bad, and so many people on Tumblr are in so many different circles that similar topics may come up coincidentally. Castor wasn’t clear with me either about what the post was targeting and skirted around naming names.  

At this point, looking back, it still seems to be that it was about Mina, especially considering that Castor had previous history with her and others in her circle. Mina was irritated by the vagueblogging (who likes being vagueblogged about?) and also informed me, all the way back in April 2019, about this past server drama that Castor mentioned. It seems to me that it stemmed from a misunderstanding: Mina and I believe other mods noticed another person using Castor’s PSDs without credit. Mina checked with Castor about whether people should be crediting them for PSDs and Castor said that, yes, they wanted credit; you can see this interaction in the screenshot Castor linked on their post. 

This is where the accounts of what happened diverge: Mina expressed to me that she and the other mods weren’t very harsh since they’d seen that Castor’s friend had credited Castor in the past, so they just wanted to remind Castor’s friend to give credit, without knowing that Castor’s friend had permission to use the PSDs without crediting. I was told that Mina and the team of mods were professional in their handling of this; Castor has stated in their post that the group was extremely harsh. Since I don’t have any screenshots or exact records of what they said before I was in contact with Mina, I can’t comment, so I’ll withhold judgement on that. According to Mina, she and the other mods had not been very vocal about this crediting/PSD stuff, and very few people knew about it, so it did seem like Castor had attacked Mina out of nowhere.

What I can say is that the VV members were certainly quick to respond to the grammar vagueblog, and that if I’m remembering correctly, readily jumped to Mina’s defense. I distinctly remember that one VV member specifically asked whether it was about Mina in a reblog. This happened pretty early on in VV’s existence and I believe was the first major “drama” that VV got embroiled in. Looking back, I do think it was fair to be critical of Castor’s post. But this was also the first look at the tendencies people had of getting embroiled in the fervor of any perceived slight against a member (in particular Mina).

I noticed this again when I received anons that were sort of bitter about VV’s existence in May 2019, way before VV had gained the reputation that it has now. People were very quick to respond with hostility and slightly amplify the anger expressed by other members, and little by little things got really out of hand. I can totally understand being upset and irritated, since the asks were kind of unwarranted and the sender did apologize if I remember correctly. But there was a huge outpouring of vicious language from a lot of the members, and this was, I think, the first instance of proper dogpiling in VV, especially since it was an easy antagonist; the sender was out of line, and they were totally anonymous.

These were the only two instances of going to bat for VV that I ever participated in. For the other things, I either only backread or missed them completely. While they don’t really paint VV in a super bad light, not like the dogpiling of an eleven-year-old that Jess mentions in her post, it did give me a pretty good idea of how VV handled controversies.

I’ve mentioned some of my theories of why this dogpiling/toxicity happened. I’d also like to add that Mina would often send concise, decisively-worded statements about things. I think this may have come across as final-word judgments to a lot of people, so they would take that as the last say on a certain matter and escalate in severity of their response from there. And like, you should trust your friends and take what they say in good faith. But you still need to be thinking critically and considering your response, especially when you haven’t known someone for very long. And this, I think, was a big source of toxicity in the server. There were just so many people responding to the same issues and aligning their beliefs, and they’d build off each other and create an environment where these kinds of responses were okay. Plus, VV was always portrayed as a tight-knit family when not everyone knew each other and not everyone was active (as is totally normal for a massive server), so this also contributed to people wanting to defend each other all the time. And I don’t think the mod team did an adequate job of shutting it down, despite the veneer of a structured, sort of more “professional” space.

Okay, now onto the art stuff.

Disclaimer, I don’t draw digital or physical art. I was always aware that Mina was certainly at least using references for her work. In some cases I could even pinpoint which pictures were used, like one where the faceclaim was Ranveer Singh. I also received fanart of one of my characters that, of course, looked very similar to the faceclaim. It certainly was clear some tracing had happened in that picture because of the level of detail in the chikankari embroidery, but like…..it’s free fanart, chikankari isn’t copyrighted, and that embroidery is super difficult to draw anyways. What I was not aware of was Mina apparently tracing images and using them to advertise for commissions, which is something I do not condone. I also know my photography and photo editing tools, so I was aware that there was some filtering/editing going on. I’m not sure if Mina traced and didn’t disclose it for commissioned art.

Okay, now the server shutting down stuff!

I was completely unaware of the dogpiling/transphobia stuff happening in the server because I had it on mute. I only found out about all this two days ago. I received the message where everyone was @’ed about VV’s “migration” off Tumblr and that the server would be shut down. I can confirm that the concern was about mirror sites and that the server did discuss these mirror sites as a big intellectual property issue. I didn’t know people wanted the server shutting down to be kept so secret, and I honestly cannot think of a reason why; I feel like if those mirror site concerns were serious, people would be trying to spread the word on writeblr? So I think that people are right to be a little suspicious of the exact reason for the server’s closing.

I think I should mention also that people were pretty much always friendly with me on VV. I met a bunch of cool people, and Mina was always kind and supportive with me. @radley-writes has echoed similar sentiments here (wayback machined here) and here (wayback machined here) while being critical of the environment in VV.

I know this post is like, wildly long and probably quite dry and rambly at points, but I hope it does provide some specific examples to back up some of the criticisms of VV and document it a bit better.

Thank you for reading! I’ll make sure to edit this to add stuff if I remember things/see the need.

I also want to state that my post is more a critique of the environment than anything. I’m not trying to attack anyone at all, I’m just giving an account of stuff that has happened, my level of involvement, and my own thoughts on all this.

I also want to say that I am completely open to hearing what any of you have to say. Feel free to critique/discuss anything I’ve said in this post with me. If you want to vent about your experiences in/with Violet Vineyard, my inbox and DMs are totally open. If you want to keep things confidential, I won’t break your trust or reveal your identity (unless you start idk, spouting racist stuff at me or something). If you want to anonymously tell people about an experience, feel free to shoot me an anon.

I hope you’re all having a wonderful day! I’m sending you lots of love. Take care! <3

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND COMPANIES

Perhaps not everyone can make an equally dramatic mark on the world. The reason people there care about Larry and Sergey is not their wealth but the fact should be: we're going to succeed even without them. But kids are so bad at making things, the only way forward is through doing what you love. And the way most companies make money is by creating wealth, you have to be developed by entrepreneurs. They'd have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions, just to figure out what the problem is before you can solve it. I think the single biggest problem afflicting large companies is the difficulty of raising money itself can kill you. You don't have to live in a great city. Do not, however, tell A who B is. It seems so convincing when you see the same thing. Whatever the story is in the sciences, true collaboration seems to be so. The second reason investors like you is that you should be richer. And from my friends who are professors I know what impresses them: not merely trying to impress them.

I want to get a job, as if the important thing, why does everyone talk about making money, instead of making a to-do list push you. More often than not we're wrong. Anyone in the arts, things are very different. In painting, for example, the wisdom of the engineer who knows certain structures are less prone to failure than others. Perl. A prototype doesn't have to be extra cautious. The other half, the younger half, will complain that this is old news. All your initial ideas get sucked out immediately, and you can see that people there actually care what paintings look like. Be independent. I'm hopeful things won't always be so awkward. It has always mattered for women, but in the late 90s said the worst thing you can say about something is to criticize its tone, you're not saying it to your boss, but directly to the customers for whom your boss is only a proxy after all, and you're not doing it individually, but along with a small group.

But if enough good ones do, it stops being a self-indulgent choice, like buying expensive office furniture. Together they were able to withstand the local feudal lord. It is that you're 30 times as productive, and get paid for it. What matters in Silicon Valley in the late 90s said the worst thing about living there was the low quality of the eavesdropping. Food has been transformed from something that seemed totally normal into a rather seedy habit: from something movie stars did in publicity shots to something small huddles of addicts do outside the doors of office buildings. In an opera it's common for counterarguments to be aimed at something slightly different from what the original author said: when you program, you spend more time reading code than writing it. But patents may not provide much protection. They were effectively a component supplier.

Here, as so often, the best defense is a good offense. For the next year or so, if anyone expressed the slightest curiosity about Viaweb we would try to sell them the company. A startup with a couple founders in their early twenties can have expenses so low that they could be profitable on as little as $2000 per month. And during the Renaissance, journeymen from northern Europe were often employed to do the best they can, by the standards of the desktop world. When things go well you can take risks; when things are bad you want to be canaries in the coal mine of each new addiction—the people whose sad example becomes a lesson to future generations—we'll have to figure out the right thing to do. And to be both good and novel, an idea probably has to seem bad to most people, or someone else describes you, it tends to obscure the underlying reality. You can't make the pie larger, say politicians. But that world ended a few years before by a big, fat, bully. Perhaps, if design and research converge, the best research is also good design, and in which performance is therefore unbounded. Then I asked what was the maximum percentage of the acquisition price they'd trade for it. Advising people and writing are fundamentally different types of problems—wisdom to human problems as well as you can be wise without being very wise, you can at least avoid being surprised.

And if the author is correct or not. The difference is that wise means one has a lot of people: that you could actually make the finished work from the prototype.1 These forces are always at work to some degree in fundraising, and they can cause surprising situations. The Bay Area has a lot of other people's. Some errands, like replying to letters, go away if you ignore them because they look wrong. Otherwise as soon as the first one is ready to buy. Why is that so? For example, consider the case of Viaweb, the simple solution was to make the software run on the server. Apparently only recommendations really matter at the best schools. But people are not simply wise in proportion to the amount they invest. People whose work is to invent or discover things are in the same way that someone might design a building or a chair that's horribly uncomfortable to sit in, then you've done a bad job, period.2

Notes

One measure of the companies that get killed by overspending might have infected ten percent of them. One father told me: One year at Startup School David Heinemeier Hansson encouraged programmers who wanted to have the least VC-like. There need to fix.

I find myself asking founders Would you use in representing physical things. But which of them agreed with everything in exactly the point of failure would be investors who rejected you did that they'd really be a great deal of competition for the board to give you term sheets.

[meandmyechoes]

More assorted opinions (to add) on Mando Ep5 to conclude the madness

I think this is an episode where geography/ethnicity has a heavier hand in your reception than other episodes: the Asian landscape, the Japanese theatre influence, and the cursed fight choreography. 

this episode looks better in stills than moving. Yet the director is exactly responsible for the flow.

poor juggling between catering for the large crowd of fresh audience versus easter-egg level of consolation reward to animation stans, that reflects in visual and script

A formal address of accuracy vs. *stunts purpose & health*

the sensibility of The Mandalorian becoming its self-sustaining miniverse versus the out-of-place sentiment of they massacred my daughter and the real-world ramifications of her usage.

concerns for future storytelling directions of the entire Star Wars franchise

can i really bear a blow-to-blow evaluation of how ooc it is, and back up my own statement about ‘she moves more like anakin or obi-wan than herself’

I’d love to tear down the ‘why can’t we just enjoy ahsoka finally in live-action’ crowd but i’m gonna gatekeep right here because i haven’t seen them appreciating ahsoka in animation before last friday. If you truly understand Ahsoka you’ll know animation is the best medium. so I’m really pinpointing the word ‘finally’ here. But yes, please enjoy with free conscience if you like it. and let us be concerned for the ramifications shall such lack of care is well-received.

Post date: [4/12/2020 23:37-0:11]

It’s been a week and I’ve caught reviews where I want to. Hearing others’ views has helped me particularly this week, so I’ll be addressing the first point on geography.

I hadn’t paid much attention to the nationalities of people/mutual on here before, but I do find some gravitation of opinions in particular to the direction of this episode. Sure the bigger fish is the racial representation, then there’s the hardware of a caricature Chinatown, and the software of unimpressive choreography.

I feel like I keep repeating myself on this but I’m gonna keep writing here albeit again anyway. When you have such hardware issue glaring at you, it’s kinda hard to immerse oneself into this half make-believe world. (y’know, instead of a full, animated one). Every production slip-up is gonna remind you a corporation is behind this and they didn’t do their research to the best they could.

But the actual problem. Bedlam summed it up very well in her post and I, as part of the majority in terms of ethnicity, don’t carry the same weight on such experiences. I only knew, something was up but I couldn’t imagine growing up with that image. It is certainly something that bothers me, but it’s still a distant annoyance instead of a source of constant frustration.

The Walled City by itself feels very small? What resources are the Magistrate trying to rip anyway? What gain is there to control this city? Why is one Jedi able to besiege to whole army of them? The basic setup already lack sense. I watched a pair of local dudebros breaking down the episode today. Ironically, the breakdown is longer than the episode itself. It did shed light on why the fight scenes are so ooc for Ahsoka: She has two swords, but she’s slashing them in parallel instead of delegating defense and attack.

We’ve seen parallel slashing before, most notably against Vader (a much larger opponent) as she leaps to slash his mask. I’m not sure I can recall a second occasion. They were right in that the three consecutive parallel moves made her attack cumbersome, and very predictable. Not to mention there was barely any reason for Ahsoka to sneak up on an armour she would recognize, and one with a baby, in the first place. 

The dudebros also mentioned her fighting style wasn’t “Jedi-like”, as in comprised of sneak attacks and shadows in the mist, much more like a classic lady wuxia. I’m not so sure about this comment because I’m not quite sure what “Jedi-like” is supposed to be the first place. I think they meant chivalry? as in announcing your attacks and wishes and posing? Well I’m more interested in how during the opening scene, she was all sneak around and ruthless and efficient, but it’s suddenly an honour duel with the Magistrate as she’s about to finish the job?

The one thing I really wanna discuss is ‘Regression’. I hadn’t put my pen down then about whether I’d deem this incarnation a ‘regression’ of Ahsoka’s character. I’ve now decided it’s not too harsh a comment to pass. When we last saw her in Rebels epilogue, technically she didn’t have a character. It was only the white robe and a distant gaze that convey her wiser years. But we also knew exactly what landed her in that Gandalf role - her confrontation with Vader and her journey through A World Between Worlds. We knew she made a promise and keeps it. From that point, you’d want to ask more questions about her. I didn’t get any of that from this character. There’s nothing Ahsoka does this episode that cannot be accomplished by any other Jedi. I call it a regression, because once again, we’re only shown one facet of this person, instead of being drawn into wanting more of her story.

The confusion surrounds the logistics of why she is liberating towns, or her connections to Bo-Katan, instead of the mystery of her (lack of) growth. While we’re here, it is unbelievable they used Bo-Katan as the informant, but did not mention Ahsoka’s role in Mandalorian history at all. That, would’ve been what I’m more interested in exploring, because we’ve all seen (not enough of) her exploring the Force before (and the Mando show is not the right stage), but her aid in the Siege of Mandalore and the Clone War should’ve been what connected her personally to Din! They’ve both survived the Clone War, and saw how civil war damaged Mandalore, they should’ve been discussing that, and Ahsoka providing an alternative picture to what audience has been shown ‘Mandalorian’ in TCW/Rebels before. If only they’ve taken this path, Ahsoka’s character would progress in a new perspective, instead of circling back to a cat warrior. :(

[archiveofprolbems]

On Space Art by Xin Liu & Xin Wang

Xin Liu, Orbit Weaver, 2017. Production still of artist's performance during a parabolic flight. Image courtesy of the artist. Photo by Steve Boxell.

During the prolonged lockdown that defined much of 2020, the Xinjiang-born, New York-based artist and engineer Xin Liu juggled multiple roles. These included participating in a volunteering network that supplied PPE to medical workers in dire need of protection against Covid-19; designing an indie game, Sleepwalk (2020), which reflected on the conditions of confinement and hyper-connectivity; engineering a series of hypnotic sound experiences with her partner Gershon Dublon titled The Wandering Mind (2020), which guides the dreams of a sleeping audience with source materials organized by an AI system; and live-streaming an ambient soundscape recorded on Whitehead Island, off the coast of Maine, for the Camden International Film Festival.1

As the Arts Curator at MIT Media Lab’s Space Exploration Initiative and an artist who makes work for exhibition spaces, film festivals, and astronautical conferences, Liu’s ongoing fascination with space as a medium and destination for new art has seen her send a wisdom tooth into outer space, cultivate potato seeds that had travelled to the International Space Station, and imagine weightlessness as an intimate, “body-opening” condition. In this interview, we spoke about the past lives and expansive futures of Space Art, her unique mixture of academic and identitarian backgrounds, and the creative strategies of innovation and resistance while working at the juncture of art and technology.

Xin Wang: You’ve recently been referred to as a “famous space artist” in a panel discussion poster, which suggests that this is a solidified genre.

Xin Liu: It is a genre! If you google “Space Art,” there’s a Wikipedia page that defines it, though it’s very much about visual artists depicting the vision of space exploration, like images of Martian colonies, weightlessness, spaceships, etc. It was also called Astronomical Art, with notable artists such as Chesley Bonestell. These artists really tried to define the aesthetics of space, which even changed the way we would later color actual scientific images captured through different telescopes. Even now, if you look at NASA’s art programs, that’s still basically the main concept. Slowly it diverged into art in space, or art that uses space and environmental textures for creation, experimentation, and storytelling.

For me, Space Art conceptually connects more to Land Art in the seventies; the questions they were asking—regarding spatial-temporal dimensions and the way we engage with geological transformation—are more related. However, there is this jump in the Space Art medium from astronomical paintings right away to “art in space.” It is a gap in our understanding of Space Art; in my position as the Space Art curator at MIT, I have made sure to take into account Land Art, science fiction, and so on, in lectures.

XW: What questions do you want to ask with your Space Art?

XL: First of all, the duality in our perception of the world: being a human being walking, eating, sleeping, drinking, and laughing on this planet; and on the other hand, knowing that we exist on a gigantic rock spinning around another hot rock in endless space. The epistemological jump is exciting but also problematic when we distance one from the other. People talk about science versus culture as if they are the polar opposites. I’m trying to reconcile the two views of the world and find places to live in-between. My other interest has more to do with the body, our sensations, our death, and the cycles of life and materials.

XW: Your works have always struck me as poetic—you sent one of your wisdom teeth into space in Living Distance (2019), which was inspired by childhood folktales and executed with robust engineering. But the whole debate around the idea that culture and science are antithetical has a long history. Susan Sontag wrote about it in the sixties, for example; what are you seeing in terms of new manifestations of, and challenges to, that tension?

XL: The philosopher Yuk Hui has proposed the concept of cosmotechnics, which argues that science and technology aren’t objective but are born of human cultures. One of my current projects, Unearthing Futures, is a collaboration with the Peruvian artist Lucia Monge, the International Potato Center in Lima, and the International Space Station (ISS).2 We are interested in potato history as human history; native to Peru, the potato’s journey becoming one of the most widely grown crops in the world mirrors colonial history. As we set foot and grow crops beyond the earth bond, one option here is to engineer the perfect potato that survives all conditions, while the other is to trust the possibilities of biodiversity, where a consortium of diverse species that are mutually dependent yields a higher chance of survival in extreme environments. Both are questions of science and technology, but at the same time they reflect philosophies—ones about how we survive.

We selected six varieties of native Peruvian potatoes with different characteristics, sent the potato seeds to the ISS to spend a month in microgravity, and exposed them to environment stressors such as radiation. The project has not grown potatoes in space, but it’s a significant step to understanding how environmental stressors affect thesis seeds. Having harvested the first generation in our respective studios, we plan to grow multiple generations and increase the numbers that we can process. Maybe in the fourth or fifth generation we can cook them and use them in workshops that involve the general public (we are working with public elementary schools in Portland) to think about the possibilities of food and agriculture in space exploration. Space potatoes are the protagonists in our stories and would facilitate these dialogues.

XW: When we were reviewing proposals for Sojourner 2020, an open call for artworks to be sent into low earth orbit by the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, there were equally visible tendencies to flatten the crossover between art and technology into very gimmicky projects. In your position as both curator and artist working in this increasingly hyped juncture of art and tech, what are some of your goals and challenges?

XL: With the dropping costs of space launches and privatization, we are entering the New Space Age. Space Art is truly at the frontier now (no pun intended). There are many amazing art practitioners I’ve been able to invite to MIT and imagine together what this practice can be. The artist Agnes Meyer-Brandis, for example, created The Moon Goose Colony, where she trained geese on planetary science and different flight patterns to prepare them for the Moon.3 She even incubated and hatched the eggs herself. In 42-The Large Meteor T-R-A-P (2014), she uses electronic magnetic devices to guide the movement of meteorites, which can be viewed as a planetary defense system. In fact, the first planetary defense systems launched by NASA (the Double Asteroid Redirection Test) this past year also had to do with devices latching onto the meteorites to change their course of movement. I really like projects that are ambitious, beautifully executed, and which explore scientific possibilities as well as artistic ones. Unapologetically inserting yourself into other domains is also something I’m passionate about.

XW: What are some examples of such insertions?

XL: I recently had a conversation with the researcher Weng Jia, who looked into the detailed history of weather satellites beyond the pragmatics of weather forecast—itself a form of weather control that generates state power. It’s important to understand that history, but at the same time we can ask, as cultural producers, what now? We can either involve public engagement and sign petitions to request open access, or we can learn from the hackers—there are so many amateur enthusiasts who eavesdrop on state-owned radio signals, and through listening we are able to understand so much already. During the pandemic, my partner Gershon Dublon and I have tinkered with software-defined radio. Using just a tiny, 20-dollar USB dongle with an antenna we built from our clothing wires, we could receive the signals from retired National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) weather satellites as they pass through the sky.

Even before the pandemic, my partner was looking into personal monitoring of air traffic, as most aircrafts have to broadcast their locations after reaching 18,000 ft. This was a fun plane-tracking activity at home. But later on we were put in touch with the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, who were protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline encroaching their territories. They were being illegally harassed and even sprayed with unknown chemicals by aircraft flying over their encampment, but couldn’t track the perpetrators. We helped them set up the aforementioned system using a computer, a 20-dollar dongle, and electrical metal wires, with which they were actually able to “see,” ID, and track the aircraft. Using that data and US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, the water protectors were able to pursue their harassers and hold them accountable. Is it art practice? I think it’s important and exciting to examine the “wall”; there’s no wall that’s perfect—there are always cracks. You can find things between the breaks and slowly percolate, and, in a way, take back those powers—I found those processes most exciting.

XW: I think this is a powerful approach that counters the general pessimism towards big tech, technocratic states, and surveillance to the point that people don’t even want to think about the possibilities of cracks.

XL: But that’s a facade, and I don’t know who marvelously crafted it. A lot of these things, such as the radio, are not so complicated. Given a week and the internet, most people can figure it out; it’s not rocket science. You know who is most interested in amateur radio nowadays? The fifty-plus generation, sometimes grandpas. There is a big community in Staten Island in New York. However, in the arts, these systems and disciplines are rendered unfathomable, which prohibits further investigation. That’s the problem.

XW: When you were speaking about “the cracks in the wall” earlier, I had a very dark thought—in the future, planetary warfare will look drastically different and be much more deadly than the wars currently taking place on Earth.

XL: Future wars may not be quite so physical as we imagine—the virus is a powerful model for what could happen. It shows how fragile and resilient humans are; cyberattack, trade wars, geoengineering manipulation of nature—these are all struggles on different planetary scales, and we have to constantly self-educate as citizens and decode what the decision makers are actually saying.

XW: You received your undergraduate training at Tsinghua University, which is known for its rigorous focus on scientific training and as a place that has groomed many of China’s top technocratic leaders. It’s also considered the Chinese counterpart of MIT, where you completed a graduate program. How do those experiences compare and inform your trajectory?

XL: When I was in Tsinghua, I studied mathematics, physics, and mechanical engineering; my degree was in precision instruments. Nowadays I still practice them in my sculpture in its manufacturing and fabricating processes. It’s a craft. I later went to Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), not because I wanted to be an artist, but out of a sad realization. In China, we separated art and science education since high school, and my liberal arts education was limited.

It was a selfish desire to study fine arts after college just to become a “complete” human being. I am very grateful that my parents didn’t disapprove this decision. At the time I told myself that I’d probably still end up working for Google and Microsoft; I had interned at both places during graduate school, thinking that’s how I would make a living eventually. But those two years were transformative and gave me an absolutely new way of looking at the world. Even graduating with an MFA from RISD, I still couldn’t commit a hundred percent to being a professional artist, as it is really difficult financially. I’m a practical immigrant. I had to figure out a way to stay in the country and feed myself. Then I went to MIT, because it was fully funded and I had the luxury to do research; after another two years in school, I decided that I wanted to work freely, and “artist” is the title that offers the most freedom.

XW: Do you still believe that?

XL: I do. If you tell people you are an artist, whatever you do doesn’t surprise them as much. It’s harder to talk about sending a tooth to space as a physicist.

XW: I’m struck by the way you describe gravity as a “momentum of feelings” on your website.

XL: That’s something I was thinking about when I first experienced weightlessness in 2017, during a parabolic flight. The plane literally free-falls in the sky, and in reference to the cabin, everything inside the plane is weightless. I had a bit of a performance background in dance. The experience was shocking: there was no “free from gravity”—gravity is always there. It was just everything falling together. The experience was less about me floating or flying than about the ground beneath me dropping. It’s not liberating in the way that you are accelerating and going up, which is what we associate with space exploration probably, but rather a kind of letting-go and descending. It was an eye-opening—body-opening—experience for me, and a bitter-sweet moment as well.

XW: Speaking of bodies and embodiment, do you find this excessive attention to—often performances of—an artist’s identity shows up more or less or differently for you, given the curious juncture of disciplines and identities you inhabit?

XL: It depends on who is seeing me. The tech aspect of me can seem alarming to people who are used to traditional practices, and in the so-called media/tech/science art world, gender might manifest more. The audience decides who I am. My name reads as gender-neutral in both English and Chinese. Sometimes people assume I’m a man initially, because I’m working with technology; but a bit more engagement with the work might compel one to realize that I could be a woman, because of the way I deal with technology. Still deeper into it, you might realize I’m Asian.

Another interesting aspect comes from the fact that I don’t just participate in art events; I also present my works at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), where it’s just pleasing to see my portrait—that of a young Asian woman—next to attendees that are largely from different demographics. And I enjoy that—inserting myself in different systems. It’s not just gender, but also geographic. I am an outlier in many ways—I went to a military-affiliated high school, so the instinct to fit in was strong growing up. But here, as people of color and women, we naturally stand out and have more identities. It could be tiring but it’s also our power—meaning that we can potentially empathize with more people. People like you and me—when we talk about America in a positive light in China or criticize the Chinese government, we are perceived as brainwashed by Western liberalism; but when we talk about Chinese companies like WeChat positively here, or the effective Covid-19 responses and technological innovations in China, we’d be considered brainwashed in the other direction too.

XW: I always feel that exposure to different systems of brainwash leads to utmost clarity. What do you think the future of space art will be, or what you hope it could be like?

XL: I think it will mature like digital art, bio art, internet art, AR/VR art—all these sub-domains. I read extensively on space policies, which obviously figure prominently on many nation states’ agendas. At the IAC conference in 2020, eight national space agencies just signed the Artemis Accords, which is an international agreement on the principles for corporations and civil explorations for the moon, Mars, comets, and asteroids. Particularly notable is the encouragement and protection for private entities to participate in the future of space exploration, and its effect on commercial activities will be significant; even the ISS is going through a commercialization process already. Space will become more commercial and privatized; it will engender more conversations and force us to be involved and investigate the industry.

XW: What’s your favorite Space Art piece?

XL: I was struck by Ilya Kabakov’s The Man Who Flew Into Space From His Apartment (1985) when I first knew about it. I have been (and am still) confined in my apartment due to the pandemic. It is the absolute desire to break the ceiling and get out. Though both are heading towards outer space, the Soviet campaign in space exploration and a personal desire to leave, to be free, cannot be more different. In fact, one is defeating the other.

_____________________

Xin Liu (b. 1991, Xinjiang/China) is an artist and engineer. She is the Arts Curator in the Space Exploration Initiative in MIT Media Lab, a member of New INC in New Museum, and a studio resident in Queens Museum. She is also an artist-in-residence in SETI Institute and the recipient of numerous awards and residencies.

Xin Wang is a curator and art historian based in New York. She is currently planning an exhibition that explores Asian Futurisms for The Museum of Chinese in America, New York. While pursuing her PhD in art history at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, she’s also been conducting a series of public zoom webinars on topics of technology, new media, and Asian American perspectives for the Whitney Museum of American Art since spring 2020.

Source: https://www.art-agenda.com/features/372727/on-space-art