#You'll find yourself much better at parsing 'is this something I personally don't like or is it actually HARMFUL'

[tswwwit]

Unironically enjoying something cringe is great because it humbles you. Once you accept that you are enthusiastically ridiculous, you view ridiculous content with clearer eyes. Only those without sin should cast the first stone, and brother you are a sinner. By god, look at that person go. Good for them.

[zangtang]

Everything can change at any point!

Create images here: https://www.bing.com/images/create?FORM=GENILP before i say anything else though: not following someone else's prompts means you'll likely find some wild and unexpected things yourself. If you follow my prompts like they're laws, you will only ever get results like mine. There are people doing much cooler, weirder things. Don't get restricted by this.

the site was VERY BROKEN for the last 6 days, you haven't been banned. You get 15 boosts a day which usually override any current downtime, but the popup thinks you get 25 a week, which is an indicator of how busted and poorly planned they were for this flood of users. It's not too hard to create illegal results, and there's millions of users, so it's very unlikely a human is ever looking at your results. Unless you're doing really spectacularly terrible things, of course. If you get the warning as soon as you enter your prompt, change the most controversial aspects of your prompt immediately, as repeats of this will get you suspended for increasingly long times. It is possible to make alt accounts with throwaway emails though. It's unconfirmed but it appears that US residents get priority access during US times, and UK residents can only reliably make things from 7am to 1pm for example. Weekend access is a crapshoot. I don't personally pay for ChatGPT so I can't say anything about the alleged priority access you get there, but even that can be slow and restricted during the worst times (I assume this will the their priority to fix though). There are many conflicting reports about whether it's more censored or not. Reports is a very fancy way of saying reddit comments.

Everything I superstitiously guess about prompts:

you can be very descriptive and write in natural english, or you can be very brief. both methods work, I suspect both versions do different things. repetition and restating the same thing in other ways also seems to emphasise (possibly.) Prompts can be quite chaotic and contradictory - you can describe a lot of things happening and it may surprise you, so have fun with weirdness! some words are "heavy" against the automated filters, and can be safe in one prompt and unsafe in another. think of it like buckaroo, the AI is trying to find meaning in your prompt and it will sometimes combine things and get mad about it. be aware of politics and words that may be used in erotic senses, and switch those up.

this is the format I use the most because i am super lazy and unimaginative. items in [ ] are optional and can be anything, and I don't know how the word order matters - in old Midjourney it mattered quite a bit according to guides, but now they're all pushing to parse natural english I'm not so sure:

[number of] [body type] [age] [nationality] [male noun or job] wearing [clothes], with a [size, shape] belly, [hair description], [pose], [location, time of day, weather, lighting, era], [facial expression or attitude], [actions]

The number of guys can be vague like "several." Also placing a number here will generally result in all men being fat. To add a second, very different person (even women! imagine the power), simply describe that in plain english later in the prompt. Try adding "with friends" or something and seeing what happens.

Mentioning body type is separate from mentioning that he has a large stomach because "fat man" alone doesn't make him very fat. also, the body type prompt will dictate his physical build underneath the belly - this allows you to make mpreg very easily, for example. Mentioning his belly separately also seems to be a key part in making clothes not cover it up. However, DallE has clearly gotten much better at this for some clothes, but not all of them. Formalwear is improving, though tactical vests no longer do the cute thing they used to do, and football shirts still ride up reliably. Nationality can be weird, and you can use it to exploit stereotypes, or it can be an eye-opening view of stereotypes from countries you barely know about - want to know what differentiates an Angolan man from a Kenyan man? Probably don't trust AI results! I suspect some countries are controversial due to current politics, and I suspect some are controversial due to fetishy stereotyping. However, if for example "English man" got censored, consider going for capital cities or famous regions, eg "London man." Maybe look up sports teams from that country. I'm a big fan of the "Italian-American" prompt but lately it's gotten quite a few results blocked, so I'd switch to "New Jersey," maybe even "New Jersey Italian."

"Handsome" may slim your results down, or even break the prompt entirely. Consider making your men footballers or rugby players, mention trendy haircuts, or using out of date synonyms to get round it. AI isn't all that likely to give you especially ugly results anyway, particularly if you specify ages under 40. It doesn't get the hair precisely right, but even a generic prompt like "short thick hair" can help. Giving your character a job may dictate what he'll wear, but you might want to specify what clothes you want anyway. Don't mention either if you hope he'll turn out naked. Certain jobs are tricky to use, as AI strains to be as unpolitical as possible - it doesn't want you doing politicians and it sometimes seems to refuse anything that might make the police or military look bad. However, it will accept "wearing a [colour] uniform/pilot shirt" very happily, because it's duuuuumb.

Mention trousers, footwear or even just feet if your results keep zooming in too much. (It'll also zoom in if you mention too much about his face, I think.) Side view appears to make certain prompts fatter, but will often mean he's looking away - you can add "Looking at camera" if you want that. Metallic and plastic clothes can have very fun and weird results, especially if you change the location to a night setting in the rain. Gladiator costumes will reduce his clothes to a few leather straps.

"Flex pose" and "strong pose" will get butch bodybuilder poses (it will also buff up the muscle mass) and "battling strong winds" gets very superhero poses. At least when I was trying these out, I found I couldn't actually get proper bodybuilder poses or mention of superheroes past the censor, but it's been a few weeks so who knows what it's up to now. Give them all a go!

Casual poses and actions can liven things up a little if you just want portraits but don't want it to repeatedly be the same thing facing you directly. Getting out of a car, climbing stairs, leaning against things, adjusting his clothes or putting on a coat, all these kinds of things work. Smoking or drinking does quite a lot. "Tired" or "Exhausted" changes his attitude a lot too, your leans get leaned into more.

Contact words can be a little difficult, so consider ways to exploit using soft contact, or be very wordy and detailed about it so it's not misinterpreting you. "Patting him on the back" is a fairly safe phrase, but DallE isn't intelligent, so it will allow the contact but it will struggle to be precise, especially when the bodies are fat or not positioned in a way they can reach the back - the result of this is that there will be a lot of belly pats. Prodding in the stomach, pointing at the stomach, these both work, but I think DallE is vague about stomach=torso and you may want "pointing at his belt" to give a lower focus. Admiring can direct attention and vibes, whispering will draw their heads closer and make them interact somewhat. Embracing and hugging work but is very heavy for the censor, "hugging on his shoulder/belly" seems safer for some reason. Shaking, grabbing, "examining/concerned about his belly" can work. Bizarrely, squeezing past another man in a narrow corridor/doorway/cupboard works if you want a LOT of contact. And if you want unpredictable contact, fighting can work.

For more dynamic safe contact, try sporting actions. Baseball slides, football tackles, that kind of thing. It's hard to get them to lie flat and the AI seems to resist allowing heads to touch the ground, but "lying in a hammock" works pretty well, and sometimes specifying what the head is touching works. pretty much every minor prompt variation and scenario I've ever used:

"falling onto a broken chair/breaking an object with his weight" "washing windows" "with waiters helping him up" "with friends bringing him food" "falling over another man" "outside of a skyscraper washing windows, harness for safety, hoisted" "hyper-obese man wearing denim dungarees with an enormous inflated belly, drinking from a hose" ("blowing into a hose" gets better expressions for that IMO) "stuck in a broken narrow red british phonebooth with another man, bursting out with his enormous belly, black trousers" "bent over eating at a pie eating contest wearing a dirty white tank top with an enormous round belly and his face hidden buried in messy pie" "sitting on a throne next to a very fat 35 year old spanish monarch" "lying on his back the floor, enjoying a banquet, side view, tired expression" "very fat 35 year old handsome british man wearing tracksuit and gold chain with a hugely distended beerbelly, man with a massive round stomach, washing his car in a carpark at night side view" "at water park, stuck in a water slide" "before and after weightloss picture, in the left he is X and in the right he is Y" "with a large round belly spilled over eating at a banquet with an enormous round belly, bronzed, with waiters helping him up/being prodded with a fork" "washing dishes and leaning over his belly on a freestanding enamel pedestal basin" "climbing and leaning against a stepladder to change a lightbulb on the ceiling [with friend holding the stepladder steady]" "side view, photo of two 40 year old beefy handsome fat italian-american rugby player with a hugely distended round belly, resting hand on his chest, wearing a tracksuit with a gigantic round sagging stomach, gold chain, raining, whispering in a car park at night, leaning/hugging on shoulder, tired, stern expression looking at camera, smoking a cigarette" "side view photo of two strong 40 year old handsome samoan rugby player with a hugely distended round beerbelly, chest hair, wearing a white formal shirt and black suit, hugging on his belly, proud expectant father, boyfriends outside a busy pub at night, stern, looking at camera, raining" "two fat los angeles rams handsome footballers wearing white pilot shirt and plain tie and black trousers pushing through a narrow saloon door with their enormously distended beerbellies, stern" "photo of very fat 30 year old hunk rugby player with enormously distended belly, carrying his belly in a wheelbarrow" "very fat 35 year old man wearing white pilot shirt with an enormous round belly, tough man with a very large beerbelly, too fat for small broken airplane seat sitting on another man, fat belly spilling over armrest and pressing against over man, black trousers, slightly concerned, suave" "being carried on the back of a flatbed truck" can turn them into horrific lardvalanches but you don't get much control over it

original characters do not steal prompts: "30 year old man who looks like he's the main character from the game Uncharted with an enormous distended round beerbelly, with one hand on a bar in a pub, nathan" This is sometimes surprisingly effective, but most often it'll simply draw vibes from the IP mentioned, so you can use it to get specific settings at least

Try spelling the names wrong or reversing the name order - sometimes it'll even accept names sprinkled throughout the prompt. Repeating the name may increase its effect (it might also not!) Also it's speculated that placing the celebrity fraud in a place or situation they would normally be found in helps. That said, I could only get a Robert Downey Jr if I made him dress as a gladiator. So maybe weirdness and ingenuity are your strengths. see also https://www.tumblr.com/baron-bear/731903035856584704/what-do-you-use-for-your-ai-stuff

[annadeedee]

Hi!! I'm a first year college student who's going to be majoring in math. As someone who's doing their PhD in math (o mighty one) how would you suggest I get to a point where I can read a paragraph/proof in a math textbook and not go "what the FUCK". It takes me about 5 to 10 minutes to even comprehend what each theorem says and yeah that makes the study process very long and arduous. Also for reference I like reading classic math texts for the ☆aesthetic☆ (and also cuz ig they're classics for a reason?)

Hi! Thank you for your question! I have several thoughts, in no particular order:

It is absolutely normal for proofs to take significantly longer to read than "regular" texts. You are not just passively absorbing information, but actively re-creating the argument and building it for yourself.

honestly, if a proof isn't going to make you go "what the FUCK" initially, the writer may just omit it altogether and say it's trivial. Sometimes they do it even when it is not. Not every math book is equally well-written.

that being said, most modern math textbooks phrase their claims in a fairly standardized language, stating the necessary elements and leaving out the unnecessary ones. You will get used to it and be able to parse it properly with practice.

practice doesn't just mean reading, it involves writing down your own proofs and running them through other people. math is not a solitary endeavor, it is a collective activity. Through building your own proofs (and doing it wrong many times), you'll understand how and why other mathematicians wrote what they did in that particular way (and the bits they skipped, and how you can fill in the gaps)

if that is too vague for you, my practical beginner's advice when you're trying to parse a statement is to clearly write down the assumptions (mark them in colors if that helps you), separate them well from the (desired) conclusions they imply, and make sure you understand the underlying logic structure of the statement and the things that need to be shown.

on that note, get very comfortable with propositional logic, lest you try to prove "A -> B" by showing "¬A -> ¬B". You'd think that's a silly mistake, but you'd be surprised. And not all arguments are structured as simply as that.

yes, I know you asked about making the process faster and I told you to slow it down even more BUT you will become significantly faster and all of this will become second-nature. You WILL get better at this and it will get less frustrating (though the math will get harder... so maybe the frustration just gets shuffled around to more fun aspects of the math process)

TALK TO OTHER PEOPLE. If you think you've understood something, try to explain it to someone else. If there's a problem with your reasoning, their questions will help. If you don't understand how the proof jumped from one claim to the next, the other person might have an insight. Even just imagining how you would explain it to someone is going to help. Be honest, and recognize when you're hiding things or hand-waving them away.

Draw lots of pictures. Try to find examples. Try to find counterexamples.

I'm very curious, which classic math texts are you reading? As a fellow fan of old math writing, my big warning is that 19th and early 20th century math is significantly harder to read than modern proofs, and that's not a reflection on your abilities. If you don't know what poincaré is rambling about, don't worry, neither do most people. there's historical context missing, assumptions about your math background, very woolly formulations... I once read a German paper from the 1920s where the writer refused to write "Hausdorff-Raum" and instead used "Raum im Sinne von Herrn Haussdorf". Every. Time. Modern writers (mid-20th century onwards, I'd say?) write much more clearly and concisely.

Best of luck with your studies! Math is great, I hope you have as much fun with it as I did :)

[tinker-jae-spam]

Dialogue

"Jackie"

"yeah?"

"why am I so anxious all the time?"

"what do you mean?"

"well, I'm always anxious. If I'm thinking about like what i wanna do and stuff, what i want, i get anxious, even saying the words, 'what do i want' give me anxiety"

"well it could be that just thinking about that stuff gives you anxiety"

"i think it might be a little more than that, also if i can't answer that question, then how will I improve myself, my life, all that jazz."

" well there you go, do you frame the question?"

" what do you mean Jackie?"

" you just framed it, you can't do X which means that you won't get Y. If you know you want to improve yourself then that question is already answered. Not only that, the fact that you know that there is something you want is already a pretty good indicator that you can answer the question so that's not the problem. Hold on a sec, let me pull up a chair this is gonna be a long one."

Jackie grabs a chair and sits next to ****** by the kitchens bar.

"alright, let's do this" says Jackie with a sigh

"alrighty, that's good. okay so Jack, idk maybe i don't even need to ask the question. Interesting note, I've noticed that whenever i ignore or try to work around my anxiety, it always bites me in the ass later on, so we could try working with it."

"okay, so let's talk for real now, what is it that you want?"

"well that's just the thing, it's a bad question, there's no context, just like those shitty depression and anxiety exams or personality tests. You can't give someone part of a question and expect a good answer."

"in that case," said Jackie, "what context would help?"

"Maybe something like 'what do you want with your life' 'how can you mitigate your anxiety' 'how do you want to hone yourself' 'what skills do you want to build' etc."

"Well you know that's better, but still this anxiety thing, my guess is If we can find the source(s) of it, you might actually be able to better articulate and parse your thoughts, that and do more stuff."

"some sources could possibly be, physical, emotional, mental, stuff like that. Childhood trauma maybe, i had a mostly pretty good childhood tho and that's something for a therapist. There's gotta be some link, some pulsating mass of flesh or something that's eating at me. Even now i can feel it."

"Links sound good, let's try following a trail, see where we end up." Said Jackie

"a trail huh?" said ****** "okay, maybe we could like follow it and stuff"

"So it starts in my chest and is painful, it also feels like I can't breathe. Breathing can help but not fully. It's like a bandaid. Social stuff but not as much anymore, if i just do the thing it gets better, at least socially. Kinda like shocking my system, the rush of doing the thing generally fucks off the anxiety. You know, that actually happens too if I have anxiety about doing something and then I break the anxiety by doing it, one issue, however, is that it also affects my thoughts, being a bit of a hothead helps mitigate that. Hmm..."

****** paused to ponder.

"That's it! Okay I've gotten a better idea. If I try finding what I want via specific questions, i can then break/overcome the anxiety. Progress, however small is a big one that helps. There's probably more and better solutions, but this is good for now. Besides, anxiety is really good at wriggling it's way into thoughts so it's best to act now before it takes over. Oh by god it's like one of those game sections with timers, you have to go like a certain speed or you'll fail."

"well shit man I'm glad i could help!" said Jackie.

"there's one more thing, doing long term tasks, but that is a separate yet connected issue. I've gotta get to work, I'll be back in a jiffy, biya!"

" Bye dude, cya!"

A/N: this is cool innit? I think it is.

[i-miss-us]

The Fool

If one would use tarot as means of self-fulfillment and spiritual growth they then would traverse the heavenly staircase of major arcana, one by one, and reach enlightenment.

The Fool, then, embarks on a journey and takes through the great mysteries of life.

Persona 2's battle system revolves around each party member being able to utilize personae of different arcana and swap around them at will. This was changed in later installments of the series, where only the main character embodying The Fool is capable of expressing these archetypes at will.

Additionally, Yu's personae become obsolete after a couple of levels (with exceptions late into the game). They evolve slowly and have only a handful of new abilities to acquire, in contrast to the rest of the investigation team whose personae evolve throughout.

There is indeed great power hidden within The Fool, that's obvious to anyone who's done a casual playthrough of the game. Yet should Yu neglect his growth, Izanagi remains by far the weakest implicit persona out of all the cast. The Fool offers potential, but nothing more. Additionally, all of Yu's social stats are set at 0 and begins the game in something similar to a tabula rasa state.

Yu isn't completely devoid of personality, however. Though the game's frequent dialogue options "allow" you to "form" his personality yourself, his personality is more defined by the choices you don't get. He's good with children, level-headed, and just overall painfully earth sign coded. There's an interesting push and pull between the game's limitations and what it's trying to accomplish in its abstract Jungian view. If Yu isn't a complete tabula rasa, then it's easy to interpret him as just a quiet, kind of boring but dependable young man. If interpreted like that, one has to wonder why he's the one to get the privilege of the wild card ability. Perhaps it's Izanami's will at the beginning of the game which set off the events, maybe it's Atlus continuing the trend of keeping the main character special as a vector for players' power fantasies. Maybe it's something else entirely. Interpreted like this, Yu isn't inherently special in any way but is given significant narrative weight through archetypal dominance.

In the same way, the Velvet Room remains exclusive to him and its denizens. This is in stark contrast to Persona 2, where the entire main cast was free to enter and interact with that very special place.

I've found this exaltation of the main character to be directly in conflict with my "truth" since I was 14, and was one of the things that had eroded my interest in the series. Though MC syndrome is everpresent and sometimes a fun distraction, in a game like Persona which seemingly seeks to model something fundamental about humanity it seems more than out of place. Should we accept that everyone but Yu is simply fated and incapable of embodying more than one archetype? You could interpret the arcana, not as representations of the characters themselves, but as lessons they represent to Yu himself. The fact that the rest of the investigation team is limited to only one persona throughout the game suggests otherwise (and not to mention, certain spinoff games implicitly reject this view themselves).

With such an interpretation, it's easy to see a bleak and misanthropic picture painted by the symbols overlaying this story. Yu is the only one capable of reaching enlightenment, and the rest of the cast is fated to experience and embody only a fraction of the full human experience. Basically, if you're not a Taurus you might as well just kill yourself.

This, however, is just an interpretation. Should you disregard the narrative importance of the arcana and personae you're given more space to interpret Yu and the rest of the cast. For a game series as laden as symbolism as it is, I'm not particularly keen on accepting that truth as well.

Should Yu be considered as a standard model for any individual? According to Persona 4, no, he's an exception.

Here's one way out of this ideological hole. Igor mentions responsibility:

This is hammered home throughout the games. Your actions and your decisions are yours to make, and the consequences are yours to resolve. Really, the responsibility in this story falls on your shoulders. Should your choices be less than satisfactory at a crucial point in the game, you fail. Should your direction be mistaken, you've endangered the rest of the cast. This is evident both in gameplay and narrative. Perhaps the wild card is bestowed upon those who're prepared to take responsibility for themselves and their lives. What led Yu to the Velvet Room is a mystery, but he has accepted its terms and received its blessings in turn.

Furthermore, we know that the arcanum is not fixed in place. Should one overcome their trials, they're then ready to begin their spiritual ascent. Aigis has accepted life on her own terms and was granted the wild card herself. One can then interpret The Fool as nothing more than a state of mind, and an openness to experience life and others unobstructed by self-imposed obstacles.

Persona 3 allows for this interpretation more elegantly, as there are no personal shadows to overcome. Persona 4, then, requires more nuance. The shadows they overcome are not triumphs over their trials, just acknowledgments. Seen as such, Persona 4's characterization parses much better. This, then, can be seen as Yu's story and nobody else's. It's a shame then that he's made as a proxy for the player (unsuccessfully, IMO).

Why Yu had no shadow is then trivial. He had no personal trials to overcome himself, hence he's ready to receive the arcana's wisdom. How he achieved that, then, is something only he knows. Maybe he just had a good relationship with his dad.

This, then, brings about assumptions and will put more weight on the game's narrative. Should a personal shadow be overcome, what does that mean for the person? We'll explore this a bit down the line.

If you've read Umineko (and perceived it as I did) you could say this was an exercise in love. I'd disagree. Really, I've forced the game to fit into my internal framework. I've no qualms about doing so, and I'll keep doing it. Unlike a person, a story is written, fixed in place, and frozen. To do this to a person is to compartmentalize them. Like that imp post that said: you're not good at bringing yourself to someone's level, you're good at manipulating people to get on yours.

I think that's the correct way to engage with a story. Keep thinking, and you'll find yourself represented everywhere. I've rejected the simple truth and have found another one. Whichever one was "intended" is something I'll never have the privilege of knowing, hence both hold equal weight. If I spend more time and look further, maybe another truth will be within my grasp.

Anyway. Yosuke, Chie, and Yukiko's social links have opened up. I'll certainly be talking about those down the line. I've nothing much to say about their shadows individually, but maybe as a whole once the game nears its climax.