#all of your information is on the internet and its not that difficult getting your hands on it

[zaine-the-cat-meme-generator]

He know what you did

[gibbearish]

it is fun when u comment on a post on reddit and someones like "ummmm look what sub youre in" like no i know. i just think what you said is dumb enough that i'm willing to get downvoted to tell you that

[mcybree]

is this your man

3l!BigB is like a cicada to me. He showed up, dug underground, stayed there for seventeen years, came back up to the surface and died horrifically

[acid-ixx]

I hope you don’t mind but I need to ramble this to someone, neglected Wayne reader right? The fam would forget to bring them to social events and whatnot right? So there would be very few pictures, articles and interviews or even facts about them, meaning that reader Wayne is a rarity. Still following me? Reader Wayne with a small but devout fanbase.

I’m talking they are trading the latest pictures and sharing links to the rare interview with reader in it, following any social media they have that isn’t private, they are just fascinated by this micro celebrity that seems to always be forgotten. Okay but also imagine one of the heroes developing a para-social attachment to reader. My money is on Conner Kent, mainly bc he can project his own issues with his dads onto reader and he can Dolores ~Encanto~ reader with his super hearing and develop a even bigger parasocial obsession with them

I hope you enjoyed this ramble, I will leave you be now, see ya later alligator! 🐊

omg another one of my asks that actually predicted a major plot point... this ask ties well with the last part written here. i'm thinking about having the reader get a love interest/s but i have already written an outline but one thing is for sure—

you have more than just your family interested in taking you.

major spoilers below the cut. — an excerpt from chapter xx

(name) wayne may have been a name forcefully deleted off of the face of the internet, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its conspiracies of its own. nobody knows who you are beyond the blurry, unsolicited pictures of you. it may have been a photograph of your back, or articles published in unknown websites and buried at the far end about a kid entering through the fancy gates of the wayne manor.

you are a product of a one-night-stand.

but they don't know who the mother is, don't know your age, or where you come from, and what business bruce has with the woman to guarantee your adoption at the instance she had disappeared without warning.

your existence was a mystery most would like to solve. after all, it was your picture that was plastered all over the newspapers and articles, it was your name that journalists whisper and it was a silhouette of your face that the underground knows by heart. every known information about you was shared discretely yet efficiently like some sort of virus.

you were a target for interest, a large sum of money if they will. and alfred had taken it in his hands to make sure there would never be a repeat of what had happened before.

it was a clumsy mistake, one that cost you your memories, and one he swears on his life he'll never make again.

the first course of action he needs to arrange, which may seem difficult for most; he needs to confront bruce.

after all, your freedom is your doom.

maybe this is out of the picture, but id' like to imagine you and connor having a therapy session where one comes out absolutely obsessed with the other, and it's not you.

connor's character for me is so, so good for an angst potential. it's like his personal struggles is a way for him to show you how absolutely you two are meant to be. and he may have met you through bumping into you (false) or maybe... he has seen you stalking through the shadows back when he visits the manor. using his superhearing, he can hear your voice from the kitchen begging alfred to relay a message to bruce, sounding so absolutely desperate. it's the way you tell alfred how you wished your father actually spends time with you, or how nobody seems to notice you— that he kind of just makes a silent promise that he will talk to you soon, he needs to know why this family seems so keen on ignoring and how hypocritical tim is for literally doing the same thing to you when he's aware of kon's past.

if he (or anyone else) should be a love interest (though he is a minor character in the series unless you guys want him to be a major one), i can already imagine the absolute hell you have to suffer not only from your family but from your own lover. just imagine the stockholm syndrome or the delusions you convince yourself with because you're finally loved by someone but that love restricts you from the very freedom you tried to build.

the batfamily would be so conflicted because why are you choosing some stranger over them...? then you slap them in the face with, "well, this "stranger" wants to kidnap me and lock me up, sure! but at least they actually looked at me for more than five seconds!" and you can watch how the color drains off their face, their conflict giving you the perfect opportunity to run away from both your ex-family and your soon-to-be-kidnapper-lover who thinks your comeback is a funny way for you to propose.

[perfectlyripeclementine]

hey yall, let’s take care of each other by googling things with medical consequences before sharing them.

we’ve seen this before. we know healthcare is about to be de-regulated and certain kinds of care (like reproductive and gender-affirming care) are going to be targeted. we know people are afraid.

herbalism is a fantastic discipline. i love herbal medicine and deeply respect its practitioners. i also see some wild stuff be shared that i know is super dangerous.

in general, be suspicious of resources that propose herbal remedies as one-to-one substitutions for clinical medication. that’s not to say plants don’t have medical properties that can resemble medication, but herbalism tends to be a more holistic discipline. there’s not a plant that works just like aspirin or Plan B or estrogen.

be especially suspicious of resources that promote the use of herbs without making any kind of notes as to who they might negatively effect. many herbs can interact with any number of medications you are taking. mugwort, for instance, is not safe to take if you are pregnant or on birth control. it will, indeed, cause an abortion, but it will also do you a great deal of harm. there are other herbal remedies for abortion care but mugwort is not one of them - yet i see it on infographics for abortion care all the time.

this will get people killed. (it already has.)

the way to prepare ourselves for whatever the fuck is going to happen to healthcare in the US (and generally in countries where fascism is rising which seems to be most of them) is to educate yourself on your body and the natural environment. this is the time to sign up for herbalism classes or street medic training. this is the time to buy that herbal encyclopedia compiled by someone who has a documented practice in the field.

the search engines are fucked and lord knows how many companies are keen to profit from how difficult it is to find real information on the internet right now. the way to prepare for what’s coming is NOT to spread “resources” without googling them bc they have pretty infographics and were shared by a popular astrology account or whatever.

don’t kill your friends. don’t kill your followers. if you’re sharing something with medical information, google that shit (or look for it on a different engine that hasn’t been eaten by AI as much.) and when you find disinformation being shared, TELL PEOPLE it’s disinformation.

we have to take care of each other. we have to move with curiosity rather than fear. we have to take this shit seriously.

[eamour]

the void craze

as many of you already might now, the "void" state, also called the "i am" state, is a method coined by neville goddard which became popular and famous for its rather unique way of manifesting your desires. just like with every method being put on a pedestal, there are a hand full of problems that come along with it. with this post, i want to help you gain clarity but also consciousness (no pun intended) about your outlook on this method.

problems of obsessing over a state

disregarding your outer reality. you have responsibilities and things to look after in the physical world that — even if you can change and get rid of them — need your attention. you exist in both, 4D and 3D. as long as you are aware of yourself physically, you need to care for yourself.

disregarding your inner reality. by constantly being in a state of waiting and wanting, you keep desiring. you keep occupying a state of mind and refuse to change it — in other words, change your "i am" — and will remain in that state assuming you don't "enter" the void state.

dismissing your feelings and emotions. this point is less about you desiring something but more about your emotional well being. by not fulfilling yourself from within, you are enslaved to your senses and will continue to upset yourself with the 3D, starting to bottle up your emotions.

becoming indifferent to your surroundings. you might start to disregard everything around you and force yourself not to negatively react or acknowledge the outer world.

developing unhealthy habits. some people are likely to isolate themselves, some begin to spend an unhealthy amount of time on the internet (specifically apps like tumblr or youtube), some ruin their sleep schedules to attempt once they are truly sleepy, and so on.

overconsuming information. with people spending a significant amount of time online, it enables the possibility of people taking in more information than they actually need (also causing people to doubt or double-check their knowledge).

overcomplicating the method. now, entering the void is easy. all you do is "enter" a specific state of mind, something you do all the time with many many different states all day long. but people love to think that it's different with the void as it's such an "important" state to occupy (which it is not).

refusing to change from within. as you rely on one method to change your life entirely, you are not willing to take the lead and to "manifest the usual way". you don't want to try any other method, nor make an effort to try something else.

focusing solely on the void. you are convinced that the void will be your saviour and fix all of your problems immediately which is why you see no point in manifesting another way. you are certain that the void is the only way to shift your reality easily, quickly and effortlessly.

trusting only the void. it's easy to give up all efforts to manifest your desires with other methods when you feel that manifesting without the void seems too difficult, hard or too exhausting.

mistrusting other methods. you might also feel like other methods don't work as "good" or "efficiently" as the void method.

putting your life on hold. while many people try to attempt to "enter the void" aka "become pure consciousness" at night or once they get into a sleepy, drowsy state, they tend to fail to care about their lives for several hours throughout the day. they dismiss improving their lives, start losing hope and stop to invest in themselves, as they see no point in "trying" to change anything. they believe that achieving change will only be worth it or purposeful once they do it via the void state.

conditioning your desires. waiting for the best moment to attempt, meaning once you are tired, doesn't mean to condition your desires. it's thinking that you can only attempt around that time that makes you condition your desires.

discrediting your power. since the void is known to change lives drastically, some lean towards ascribing more power to this method compared to themselves.

believing in an external power. some even believe the void is a place that exists outside of them rather than viewing the void as a state of reaching pure consciousness.

doubting your abilities. you can draw this conclusion once you begin to think that a state of mind has more power over you than the person that has the ability to choose and to occupy any state of mind they wish to.

burning out. if you have "failed" to identify with that state of mind, you are very likely to develop beliefs implying things such as being unable to manifest, being out of control and overall giving up on yourself.

advice

i didn't make this post for the solely purpose to scare you off and to persuade you not to try the void method at all. i made this post for you to understand the many many unnecessary thoughts all around this method. these are things that people do or think once they start to make their happiness depend on a method, a state that they are infinitely greater than.

i want to encourage you to try out any method that you are interested in and determined to master. do as you please, regardless of the opinions of other people. but always keep in mind: it's nothing you can't achieve. and remember, just like neville said, the conceiver is ever greater than his conception — meaning, you will always and forever be more powerful than any state of mind you could possibly think of.

with love, ella.

[singbluesxlver]

Im so sick of north americans claiming all the time to be so inclusive and respectful to other cultures when in reality they're the most ignorant and self-centered people in the world.

Especially now that apparently being a "latino" seems to be just a trend.

And guess what! Disney took the opportunity to start releasing content from its new series, based on Latin America's (actually just Mexico, because for people in the US it is very difficult to understand that there are many countries besides Mexico in Latin America) culture, "Primos".

Created, directed, written by: people who know nothing about Latin America.

I am not going to dwell on the number of errors that JUST the opening song already has because the internet is already full of information about it.

But I do want to dwell on how part of the team behind this series is defending itself against the accusations of how racist their show is.

Myrna Velasco, who voices the main character in the series, recently posted a video on her ig stories making the following statement with an air of superiority in her voice:

"The Spanish language its not a Latin American language. Its a language that Spanish conquistadors forced upon latin american people (etc etc)"

(all of this happened because someone corrected a grammatically wrong sentence that she said in Spanish)

1- By that criteria, English is not a North American language.

2- Spanish has been spoken in Latin America for centuries. Whether you like it or not, that language (in all its shapes and colors, because the same Spanish is not spoken in Mexico as in Argentina as in Peru, etc.) is already part of our culture.

3- You dont like Spanish because its not native? ok then do it in Guarani, Quechua, Aimara, Nahuatl, etc

4- Why you can go speaking a very broken Spanish and get away with it but every time a Spanish speaker, after actually taking the time to learn your language (because it is impossible to communicate with you in any other way), is mocked and mistreated BY YOU for their accent even though they are forming grammatically perfect sentences??? (this goes to the majority of US population)

5- This woman claims to love Latin American culture but posts things like this one:

in conclusion, stop being so hypocritical and learn to look at what happens outside the United States, the rest of the world does not work the same way your country does or how your country thinks it works.

thanks for coming to my ted talk, I needed to get it off my chest.

chau

[sreegs]

Tumblr users like to build up a lot of myths about this site that still get thrown around like they're fact, but I think the biggest myth they've convinced themselves is true is that the site is unprofitable because of the users.

Tumblr's unprofitable because its model doesn't fly under the current state of internet advertising. It's also had a string of owners, leadership, and people in charge of coming up with ideas for Tumblr that don't know what they have and would be damned if they knew what to do with it. You can't make money on social media unless you collect worthwhile info from users to sell to advertisers. You also don't make money on social media by copying existing features.

Tumblr's core prop, which they has somehow survived Yahoo, Verizon, and now Automattic, is anonymity. You can't sell that information that you don't collect. Outside of that, Tumblr's a long-form blogging platform which flies in the face of short-form attention-grabbing content like Tiktok and Twitter.

The people who have been in charge of making decisions at Tumblr have never known what to do with it. A lot of them just copied other platforms' features. It got really frustrating working there, being forced to make something you knew would just languish for months before being left to rot or, hopefully, mercifully, be removed.

Meanwhile site improvements were neglected because they don't make a quick buck. This was the main reason I quit, because I just gave up on trying to make the place better only to be forced into adding a new feature that no one wants to use.

Case in point, Tumblr live. I can assure you that none of the engineers or the people who run the Staff blog, or anyone else who does actual work work at Tumblr, wanted to support it. It's not even the first time Tumblr had live video.

The thing is, though, I'm not sure that just improving the site without adding anything new would lead to long term success anyways. You need a steady stream of new users to replace the old. It's also incredibly expensive to run a social media site that hosts images and video. AND you have to moderate it, which is expensive and difficult. Even if Tumblr just made all these things better, I'm not convinced it would keep the site alive much longer. Tumblr's too expensive to maintain on this model that doesn't make enough money from advertising, and it's too expensive to be maintained on user donations.

Anyways, the point is, the Tumblr users that like to proudly declare they have the power to make this site lose money are actually helping the site make money by posting and using the site. Even if you have an ad-blocker never pay for merch or whatever, your presence and activity here adds to Tumblr's usership statistics, which they use to court more advertisers. The people who have actually been keeping this site unprofitable are the people who own it and the decision makers who dictate what the next feature will be.

[theoutcastrogue]

the internet is rotting, as Jonathan Zittrain noted in an important (but paywalled) 2021 Atlantic article. A huge percentage of the links on the internet are broken, and there is no single authoritative, accessible universal repository that keeps track of everything. It is frighteningly easy for crucial information to slip away. ...

The practice of making changes to an article without noting that you’ve made them is called “stealth editing,” and even the New York Times does it. ... The existence of stealth editing means that it’s difficult to trust that the version of an article you click on at any given moment is the article as it was originally published. ...

I also, to my alarm, realized just how dependent we are on private publications themselves to give us access to records of their own work. Often, they keep it payawalled behind locked gates and charge you admission if you want to have a look. There are lots of sources in the Chomsky book to which you have to subscribe if you want to verify, such as this 1999 story in the Los Angeles Times about NATO’s bombing of a bus in Yugoslavia. This is a story of national importance, far too overlooked at the time, but if you don’t subscribe to the LA Times, you need research library access or a workaround if you want to read it.

Thank God for the Internet Archive, whose Wayback Machine preserves as much of the internet as they can and is invaluable for researchers trying to figure out what was once housed at now-dead links. But the Internet Archive has its limits. Social media posts, YouTube videos, paywalled Substack posts, PDFs—all can be very difficult to track down after they disappear. If a politician tweets something embarrassing, for instance, and then deletes it, it might be preserved in a screenshot. But we know screenshots are easy to fake. So where do you turn to prove satisfactorily that something was in fact said? ...

it’s very easy to lose pieces of information that seem permanent. E-books, for instance, can be changed by their publisher without the changes even being noted. You might read a book on your Amazon Kindle one day and open it up the next day to look for a quote only to find that the quote has disappeared without a trace. The Guardian, for twenty years, hosted a copy of Osama bin Laden’s “letter to the American people,” an important historical document. After the letter went viral on TikTok, the Guardian removed it from the site entirely. The New Republic did the same after an article of theirs about Pete Buttigieg caused controversy. The documents in question can still be found, but only by digging through the Internet Archive. If that ever goes down, researchers will find that trying to piece together the online past is like trying to learn about a lost civilization from excavated fragments. ...

I think that in an age where people (rightly) don’t trust the information they’re getting to be true, it needs to be as easy as possible to do research. Instead, while we have better technology than ever for sifting through information, it’s still the case that the truth is paywalled and the lies are free. If you want to “do your own research” to check on the veracity of claims, you will run headlong into a maze of broken links, paywalls, and pop-ups. How can anyone hope to find the truth when it’s so elusive, trapped behind so many toll gates? 

[liaredrose]

Hello everyone.

I think some of you have noticed I haven’t updated my stories in a while. They are not abandoned, I will finish them. I’ve been a silent reader of Dramione for something like 15 years. Before writing in English I wrote and shared fic in my mother tongue. I have always loved Harry Potter and I have always adored Dramione. It’s just that - and I have to confess I it with a heavy heart - it has become difficult to find joy in writing - and sharing - Dramione. To me writing has always been a way to escape reality and enter the fantasy world that reins in my mind. Well, that world has zero limits. Now whenever I write a Dramione I have to fathom how some people might twist what I write and be personally offended.

It has becoming annoying. I know that some might say: it’s on the internet; brace yourself for criticism. Yeah, you are right but that does not allow people I don’t even know to insult me. I have been told to cure my fat-phobia - I didn’t even know that was a thing - because I wrote Hermione didn’t like Dudley. The fact I wrote she also didn’t like him because he was a moron was apparently irrelevant. Some people were concerned by the fact Hermione believed herself to be a slut for her behaviour so they launched themselves into a campaign to accuse me. Again, the fact she had had a previous sexual relationship that had affected her way of thinking was not relevant. I have been accused of being a racist because in one of my stories Draco decided to go by MUDBLOOD as a muggle rockstar. There is a reason that I haven’t yet explained in the story so I won’t write it here. Besides, comparing muggle au to racism it’s such a ludicrous thought that I am honestly speechless. In a comment someone wrote and I’m quoting here “Careful not to make this into a smut without plot”. I also had to defend a story and waste time I could have been using to write to stop a stupid quarrel.

We don’t know each other, but I’m only patient with my son and with my students. This is a hobby, so I have zero patience here. My heart is broken because I love this fandom. I met wonderful people thanks to Dramione and I will be forever grateful. But enough is enough. I want to reassure my readers that I will finish Crimson Seeds and MUDBLOOD because I love those stories and I want them to have a closure. Then I’m done. I’m writing the next chapters, but - for all the reasons listed before and more - I’m doing it slower than before. I truly hope this fandom will get back to its former glory because it was a fantastic place to be.

I love you all.

Yours,

Lia

P.S. This was just meant to inform my readers so please don’t turn my words in something they are not. Thank you

[wolke17]

"Deadly Sentencing" - An insight into the Japanese Criminal Justice System

Ok, I finally got around to make this. For context, @marikuchanxo asked me to elaborate my previous post on Higuruma's domain, so here's a brief explanation (sorry, that it took me so long).

Quick disclaimer: I am neither an attorney, nor do I live in japan myself. These are just my personal thoughts based on the knowledge that I gathered either from the JJK manga, or from articles and other sources I found on the internet. You are welcome to add information or give your own two cents, as long as you remain respectful of course. :) And in case you come across any language mistakes, please keep in mind that English is not my native language. With that being said, let’s get started. 🙃

-

Who is Higuruma Hiromi?

Prior to the Culling Game, Higuruma Hiromi was essentially a pro-bono defendant lawyer with a great sense of justice. Despite his young age, he’s already considered a genius by his peers, with the potential to become a judge even.

However, he declines these friendly suggestions as he believes he’s not suited for this role. He does not have much interest in money after all and rather likes to take upon himself to deal with the so called "impossible" cases.

At that time, he still takes the view that the unique, "flawed and hideous" nature of mankind is still something that should be cherished.

However, his optimism gradually fades as he is slowly disillusioned by the reality of the criminal justice system.

One particular obstacle he encounters is that, in contrast to the prosecution side, the defandant attorneys usually have small, limited budget and ressources - making their fight for justice extremely difficult and essentially leaving them at the mercy of the judges and prosecutors.

Prosecution has also big authority in prolonging trials - sometimes even under the most ridiculous disguise. This is a major factor for the surreal conviction rate of 99.9% in japan, which means that 99.9% of the cases that go to trial, will get the guilty verdict eventually.

Professor of Law, Muraoka Keiichi from Hakuoh University explains the reasons for this extraordinary conviction rate in an interview:

"INTERVIEWER  How do these factors come together to create Japan’s high conviction rate? MURAOKA  The simple answer is that prosecuting attorneys have broad discretion to suspend suits, even when there is substantial evidence, and only pursue cases that are certain to end in indictment. The reason that some 60 percent of cases are deferred is because public prosecutors are overly concerned about losing a case and tarnishing their reputation."

This means A) 60% of all cases are deferred without a chance of an indictment, with only the cases who gurantee the guilty verdict proceeding to trial in the first place. B) Prosecution has high administrative discretion in the trials, resulting in retrials and prolonging the process until the guilty verdict is declared. Higuruma keeps encountering this kafkaesque reality where laws are just proven to be powerless over and over again, until this realization fuels his disdain for the justice system and he loses all hope after a particularly upsetting case.

Essentially, what sparks his interest and makes him join the Culling Game is the very fact that contrary to those powerless laws of the justice system, where one has to argue over what is true and what not, "the rules of Jujutsu feel as real as nature's law".

Domain Expansion

Being the genius that he is, Higuruma quickly learns the rules of Jujutsu, to the point he manifests his Domain Expansion "Deadly Sentencing". Deadly Setencing presents itself as a court room. Its prominent feature is that it has no sure-kill effect and relies on a binding vow that requires the explanation of preset rules - reminiscent of the traditional domains from Heian Era (which showcases Higuruma's raw talent and high intellectual grasp yet again, as he's able to learn the rules of barrier techniques in record time and manifest a Domain Expansion this early on).

Anyway, in the beginning, the conditions of his domain seem pretty fair for both sides :

A non-violence rule that is applied to both sides.

Despite being the owner of the domain, Higuruma does not take the role of the judge. Rather, his role is compared to the one of a prosecutor by Yuji.

Instead a thirdparty, a shikigami, serves as the judge. Except for a single piece of evidence, it does not share any personal information about the defendant with the prosecutor. Furthermore, Judgeman decides on a lawful verdict solely based on the provided evidence and arguments from both sides.

The defendant can choose between three options to defend themself, which are: Silence, Confession and Denial (with the latter even providing the possibility of lying, so long as it is convincing enough for the judge).

However, in his fight against Yuji, we quickly notice that this feeling of impartiality is merely on surface level because

Judgeman is manifested by Higuruma's own Cursed Technique, meaning it is tied to his cursed energy thus to his very being. It delivers verdict inter alia by recalling Higuruma's own juridical knowledge and this goes both sides, because it implicates Higuruma can estimate its reasoning and the possible outcomes of the trial (at least to a certain degree) - something the defendant can not do.

Furthermore, Judgeman is not a neutral judge by any means. It actively participates in the trial by gathering evidence, which it shares with the prosecution and is omniscient when it comes to personal information about the defendant, going as far as obtaining CCTV footages. It is crucial, that the defendant has no access to this piece of evidence and is left in the belief that they have a fair chance to deny the allegations. Moreover, they are even encouraged to lie to be declared innocent.

The provided evidence is extremely firm and material (in Yuji's case a photo of him entering the pachinko place), meaning essentially nothing the opponent claims to defend themself is actually of value against the solid evidence.

Lastly, there is a hidden rule which allows the defendant to request a retrial, granting the possibility to escape the punishment (as long as they have not confessed to the crime prior of course). This rule, however, is purposefully not disclosed to the defendant and has to be found out by themself.

The Japanese Justice System

Like many other criminal justice systems, the Japanese Justice System is offically an adversiral legal system, which means there's a prosecution and a defense side which present their arguments to a neutral third party (judge) working under the presumption of innocence until the defendant was proven to be guilty.

However, in reality and due to historic reasons, it is actually a so-called pseudo-adversarial system with the following traits:

A dominant prosecution: Prosecution has more access to ressources and evidence. Which is why they are able to do thorough research even prior to pressing charges, often times only going into trial if success is absolutely guranteed

Weaker defense: Consequently, the defense has less authority and access to ressources, thus has to put in extra work and strongly rely on their own juridical knowledge.

Partiality and active role of judges: Judges are most often in favor of the prosecution. Furthermore, they are actively participating in evidence gathering (questioning of witnesses, requesting addtional evidence etc.) instead of taking a passive, neutral stance or merely listening to the presented arguments like they should be doing.

Professor Muraoka further explains the issue of active judges with the following:

"[...] Whether sitting in a summary court or on the grand bench, judges are expected to follow the ironclad rule that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty. All too frequently, though, court rulings ignore this fundamental principle.There are of course many on the bench who are capable of hearing cases with an unbiased ear, but they are in the minority. [...]Judges are obligated to give all aspects of a case equal consideration to keep the scales of justice from tipping in favor of the prosecution. As this isn’t happening, defense attorneys need to study the law more thoroughly and carefully follow proceedings to ascertain the leanings of the bench and act accordingly. There’s also a need for judges to learn how to avoid implicit bias."

Deadly Sentencing - A reflection of the flawed Justice System

All in all, the above points are strongly reflected in Deadly Sentencing.

What seems like a neutral trial at first with a fair chance of winning for both sides, quickly establishes itself as a partial setting. Even the existence of a designated third party such as the judge is barely an illusion.

Higuruma, who has always considered himself a lawyer, cherished the flawed human nature and fought for the ones less fortunate, now takes the role of an ironclad prosecutor himself. He plays dirty at times and ruthlessly punishes his opponents. Due to the very nature of domains, there is no prosumption of innocence. Everyone who enters the domain, is set to be declared guilty from the start. The judge is biased, and the prosecutor hostile. Just like in real life, prosecution has more authority and access to ressources ( evidence, knowledge of the law etc.), the judge is actively operating against the defendant while the defendant themself has to abide to their rules and is at a clear disadvantage throughout the trial, which ultimately results in Higuruma's high body count in the Culling Game - strongly reminding us of the absurdly high conviction rate in real life.

Ultimately, Higuruma's domain expansion reflects the flawed reality of the criminal justice system and his resignment as a lawyer and cynism towards human nature are underlined by the fact that he does not appear as a lawyer anymore, but takes the stance of a prosecutor instead.

[womanlifefreedom]

All eyes on alert

This is a note to thank everyone for sharing voices from Iran and the diaspora.

In the past, it was easier to downplay or forget injustices going on around the world when the news cycle had moved onto the next big story. Now, all one has to do is get past an algorithm and do a little searching to inform oneself. It is more difficult to move on when the names of the people being wrongly imprisoned have hashtags and we can still see the faces and hear the voices of those who are being oppressed and killed. It also is more difficult for the regime to operate with total impunity when there is more public and political attention on their human rights abuses.

I know the sheer amount of raw footage has dropped on Twitter, partly due to increased surveillance and internet restrictions as well as ebbs and flows in both activity on the ground and online attention spans. We must remember that social change, resistance movements, revolution, these things are a long game. They demand stamina and commitment. It is never going to be at full throttle all the time.

The anniversary of Mahsa Jina Amini’s unjust death is approaching. If you can, keep posting and sharing what is happening in Iran. Keep an eye out for local actions. Keep attending protests. Keep contacting and pressuring your political representatives. Keep learning about this country and its rich history and culture. Thank you.

[mbti-notes]

Funny story, the other day I received a question about the quotation "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate". (Sorry to the person who asked because I lost track of your handle and must now post the full response here. You're about to see the journey you've sent me on.) The question was vaguely worded, so I can only assume it was requesting a source for the quotation. This struck me as odd for a couple reasons. First, the quotation is widely attributed to Jung, so it shouldn't be very difficult to find the source. When I say "widely", I mean it is not only used all over the internet, it also appears in numerous books. Second, the quotation does a great job of encapsulating a central tenet of Jung's theory, so there is nothing particularly strange or suspicious about it.

Since I'm used to academic writing and wading through research materials, I'm usually diligent about finding the original source of quotations in order to avoid misattributions. But I was lax in this case because I allowed myself to assume that such a well-known quotation must have already been checked by someone. A mistake. A preliminary search revealed that a small handful of people have doubted the attribution, but a definitive answer seemed elusive. So, I decided to take a deep dive into the literature. I searched through Jung's as well as whatever Jung-adjacent and Jung-inspired works I could get my hands on.

I was unable to find a verbatim source in Jung's own writing. However, this isn't enough for me to claim that he never said it. It's possible that it was lifted from a discussion, lecture, or interview, of which the transcripts are not readily available. Jung did write sentences that were remarkably similar to the quotation in meaning, so it's also possible that the quotation was somehow mangled or lost in translation from the original language, which makes it difficult to match up with the official English editions of his work.

I then decided to locate its earliest usage in order to piece together an origin story. The earliest date I could find was ~2006, which is a huge red flag. Books by Jung and about Jung span the entire last century, so one would expect at least a few references from earlier periods, especially throughout the 90s when psychoanalytic theory was widely referenced in a variety of academic disciplines. Of course, books before the 90s haven't all been indexed and made available to search online, so a citation might still exist out there somewhere in a very obscure book.

I then decided to examine books published since 2006 that contained the quotation to see if any included a citation. This was even more of a red flag because, in every case, the authors either did not provide a citation, cited another post-2006 book, or cited a (dubious) internet resource. It turns out that 2006 might be an important piece of the puzzle because it was around then that goodreads.com went online and became a widely used resource for quotations.

Although goodreads makes it clear that they don't verify information, people often trust the website because it is assumed that readers are quoting accurately as they read the actual books. The Jung quotation in question is listed on their website and could even be the first instance, but there was no citation and I couldn't find who originally posted it in order to ask where they got it from. Whoever originally posted it was obviously familiar enough with Jungian theory to capture some of its essence.

In conclusion, I hazard to guess that there are three main possibilities for how this quotation came into being. Around the mid 2000s, someone reading something in the original language posted their own personal translation of it, or they got it from an obscure source, or they fabricated it for reasons unknown. From there, the quotation got picked up by various parties and spread far and wide.

I decided to tell this story because I think it's a good example of how misinformation creeps around online and gradually becomes "reality". The numerous steps I had to go through to investigate this one tiny piece of information illustrates how tedious it can be to verify the things you read. Should we expect the masses to verify every word they come across? It's not realistic, is it? Teachers and parents tell kids to be careful about the internet content they consume, to not take things at face value, to not believe everything they see and hear, etc. But it isn't easy (or fun) to always be on alert even for the motivated, even for this weary and grizzled researcher.

Fortunately, nobody's gonna die from a misattributed quote. But, what about subjects of consequence such as medicine or geopolitics where truth really matters? I love that we have so much information at our fingertips. I just wish we didn't always have to battle against greed and chaos to find the good stuff.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How cable monopolists tricked conservatives into shooting themselves in the face

No matter how hard conservative culture-war cannon-fodder love big business, it will never love them back. Take network policy, where rural turkeys in Red State America keep on voting for Christmas, then profess outrage when Old Farmer Comcast gets to sharpening his ax.

For two years, the FCC has been hamstrung because MAGA Senators refuse to confirm Gigi Sohn, leaving the Commission with only four commissioners. What do the GOP have against Sohn? Well, to hear them tell of it, she’s some kind of radical Marxist who will undermine free enterprise and replace the internet with tin cans and string.

The reality is that Sohn favors policies that will specifically and substantially benefit the rural Americans whose senators who refuse to confirm her. For example, Sohn favors municipal fiber provision, which low-information conservatives have been trained to reflexively reject: “Get your government out of my internet!”

Boy, are they ever wrong. The private sector sucks at providing network connectivity, especially in rural places. The cable companies and phone companies have divided up the USA like the Pope dividing up the “New World,” setting out exclusive, non-competing territories that get worse service than anyone else in the wealthy world. Americans pay some of the highest prices for the lowest speeds of any OECD nation.

For ISPs, bad service is a feature, not a bug. When Frontier went bankrupt in 2020, we got to look at its books, which is how we discovered that the company booked the one rural customers with no alternative as “assets” because they could be charged more for slower, less reliable service:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

We also learned that Frontier had calculated that it could make an extra billion in profit by bringing fiber to three million households, but chose not to, because it would take a decade to realize those profits, and during that time, executives’ stock options would decline in value as analysts punished them for making long-term bets.

We can bring fiber to rural America, and when we do, amazing things happen. McKee, Kentucky — one of the poorest places in America — used federal grants and its New Deal era rural electrification co-op to bring fiber to every household, using a mule called Ole Bub to run it over difficult mountain passes, and the result was an economic miracle:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

The only Americans who consistently say they like their ISPs are people who live in the 700+ small towns that have run their own fiber, mostly in Red States:

https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

Small wonder that rural Americans prefer muni fiber to commercial ISPs’ offerings. When Trump’s FCC Chair Ajit Pai gave them billions in subsidies to improve rural connectivity, the monopolists spent it pulling new copper lines, not fiber — which would have been thousands of times faster.

Given all that, it takes a lot to convince rural Americans that municipal fiber is bad for them. Specifically, it takes disinformation. More specifically, it takes the lie that municipal fiber would result in “government interference” in users’ communications.

Boy, is this ever wrong. Private companies are free to set their own content moderation policies, and can discriminate against any viewpoint they wish. They can and do remove “lawful but awful” speech like racist diatribes, vaccine denial, election denial, and other conservative fever-dreams.

Contrast that with local governments, who are bound by the First Amendment, and prohibited from practicing “viewpoint discrimination.” This means that if a local government allows one viewpoint on a subject, they are generally required to allow all other viewpoints on that subject. This is how we get the Satanic Temple’s excellent stunts, like demanding that towns that display Christian icons on public lands also display statues of Baphomet right next to them.

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/17/639726472/satanic-temple-protests-ten-commandments-monument-with-goat-headed-statue

When your town government runs 100gb fiber into your basement or garage, it will have a much harder time blocking you from, say, running a Mastodon instance devoted to election denial or GhostGun production than your commercial ISP will. Convincing American conservatives to hate municipal broadband was a gigantic self-own:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/17/turner-diaries-fanfic/#1a-fiber

Even worse is what rural America has been sold instead of municipal fiber: Starlink, the My Pillow of broadband. Starlink sells itself as blazing-fast satellite broadband, but conspicuously fails to talk up the fact that every Starlink user in your neighborhood competes for the same wireless spectrum as you, so the service can only get slower and more expensive over time:

https://www.somebits.com/weblog/tech/bad/starlink-nov-2022-data-caps.html

There’s been a concerted smear campaign against Sohn, and one of the major talking points is that Sohn is anti-cop because she sits on EFF’s board, and EFF wants to place limits on police access to commercial surveillance data. Which is wild, because one of EFF’s demands is limits on geofenced reverse warrants, where cops ask Google to reveal the identity of everyone who was in a specific place at a specific time. If you’ve heard about geofenced warrants lately, it was probably in the context of conservative outrage at their use in rounding up the January 6 insurrectionists.

Now, the primary use of these is to target Black Lives Matter demonstrators and other protestors, and EFF advocates for the normal Fourth Amendment rights that everyone is guaranteed in the Constitution. Conservative pundits didn’t give a damn about geofenced warrants until the J6 affair, and now they do — but they still insist that Sohn should be disqualified from sitting on the FCC because she shares their outrage at the abuse of private surveillance data by law enforcement.

All this raises the question: why have all these Red State senators made it their mission in life to block the appointment of an FCC commissioner who would deliver so many benefits to their constituents? It’s hard to say, of course, but Luke Goldstein has a suggestion in today’s American Prospect:

https://prospect.org/politics/democratic-majority-at-the-fcc-still-blocked/

“A torrent of lobbying money from the telecom industry has flooded Washington to block Sohn’s arrival at the FCC. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and T-Mobile doled out over $23 million lobbying Washington this year.”

And why would these companies spend millions to block Sohn from sitting on the Commission? Because she would help the Democratic majority pass policies that make broadband cheaper and faster for America, especially rural America where costs are highest and service is worst, and this will limit the telco monopolists’ profits.

There’s a new Democratic senate majority that’ll sit in 2023, so perhaps Sohn will finally be seated and start delivering relief to all Americans, even the turkeys who can’t stop voting for Christmas.

[Image ID: A hunter in camo firing a rifle whose barrel has been bent back to point at his own face. A muzzle flash emerges from the barrel. The hunter wears a MAGA hat. Behind the hunter is a telephone pole with many radiating lines. In the bottom left corner of the image is a 1950s-style illustration of a broadly smiling salesman, pointing at a box that is emblazoned with the logo for ALEC.]

[thorraborinn]

hey man, hope you're well.

bit of an arb question for ya - and i totally understand if you'd prefer to skip it because time & effort etc etc - but if you're game i'd really be interested in your thoughts on the ᛇ rune.

thanks dude, appreciate it. even if you nope the hell outta this ;)

cheers

I'm sorry that I left you on read for months. The honest truth is that at first I had trouble reigning in the scope of my response and knowing when to cut myself off from researching (there are still things I've yet to read that could influence my take on this), and then I got busy and just straight up forgot. I'm gonna give you a response that will be completely unsatisfying but hopefully better than no response.

For more on the details of the different linguistic theories about the rune that I only briefly mention below see "The Yew Rune, Yogh and Yew" by Bernard Mees.

The problem I have talking about this rune is that any examination of it produces a lot of questions, all of them very interesting, and some which call into question what we can know about runes in general. Talking about this rune is like untying a knot where every time you loosen a section another one tightens. There are a lot of people on the internet who claim to have figured it out but who have not realized that the conclusions that must logically follow are not things they're likely to accept. It's hard to talk about it at all without saying a lot. This is entirely unlike ᛈ *perþō(?) *perþrō(?) where it simply becomes a dead end quickly due to lack of evidence. With ᛇ there is an extreme overabundance of mutually-conflicting possibility, plus a history of the rune being innovated in ways that obscures how it was used prior to that innovation.

I recognize that most people who want to talk about runes on this website are mostly interested in magical/divinatory uses. For better or worse I don't have anything to say about that, but if that's what someone's into then I urge you to at least consider that the mundane aspects of a rune form the ground of speculation about everything else, and any magical/mystical speculation should at least be inclusive of things we can see and touch. And I think that if someone chooses not to grapple with the evidence, they're actually missing out on what's actually interesting about this rune.

Even giving it a single name is loaded. In text I call it "the yew rune" but thanks to the particularities of English that doesn't work out loud. There's no possibility of writing or speaking its name without making some bold assertions about linguistics, whether one knows it or not. I think the most accurate way to give it a "name" results in this entire paragraph-length sentence:

There were a few synonyms for 'yew (tree/wood)', which may have included any or all of *īwaz, *īhaz, *īgaz, *īhwaz, and *īgwaz; that may or may not have arisen by the splitting of an earlier proto-form that is difficult to reconstruct; and which had some degree of exchangeability in some places and times; and the earliest name of the rune could have been any of these but it was also identified with one or another at different times.

*īwaz informs the normal OE word for 'yew' and the Old Norse rune ýr; *īhaz informs the OE rune īh/ēoh. Sometimes they get shoved together into *īhwaz, which on the surface is just a way of abbreviating "the above explanation"*īwaz and *īhaz", but has potential to be read at face value if you're willing to grapple with some questions regarding Proto-Indo-European, Verner's Law, maybe Germanic reflexes of laryngeals. *eihwaz is a name I see a lot but which is either definitely wrong; requires either significant reanalysis of the languages it was used to write; or undermines the use of the comparative method for reconstructing rune names at all (which, hey, maybe it should be undermined, but the consequences for the rest of the runes would be significant). Sometimes when people propose *eihwaz or anything starting *ei- they are actually intentionally saying "runes are older than Proto-Germanic" which is an argument one can make but you have to actually make it, and they are usually neglecting that at that time, the word for 'ice' was *eisa- and so this doesn't actually restore balance to the runes anyway.

The next set of problems involves its use in writing. In the earliest inscriptions we have, it's used very rarely but when it is it's indistinguishable from *īsa(z), i.e., it writes /i/. Later on, it also comes to write a consonant that was probably something like [ç], the sound in German ich, which was present in some of these languages but cannot be the first sound in a word. It would actually be pretty satisfying to argue that the [ç] sound was original, and that /i/ is a later thing coming from the principle that a rune's name should start with the sound it writes. But this is the reverse of the evidence -- are we supposed to just be okay with the idea that the rune's original usage just happened by coincidence not to produce any surviving evidence for hundreds of years, and then suddenly did?

The īh rune in Codex Vindobonensis 795, c. 798 with sound value given "i & h"

It would eventually gain other sound values too, including /k/ in some Old English sources and of course it becomes (or rather, merges with ᛉᛦ into) the /ʀ/ rune in Old Norse, then a weird multifunctional vowel rune for a bit before settling on /y/ which was its main use into modern times.

Ideally, if you lined up the questions about the reconstruction of the name in one column, and the problems in what sounds it was used to write in another, you could find overlaps and find items in each column that reinforce each other; but in reality the questions tend to multiply instead.

I have some thoughts about why most of this rarely gets discussed, even by people for whom runes are an important part of their religion. I think we have a cultural predisposition to recognized systematic order and balance as a sign of legitimacy, to the point that it even overwhelms material evidence. What this rune is evidence of isn't an original cohesive and complete system (whether or not that existed), but rather of persistent intervention over the course of a thousand years -- it cannot be understood in isolation of stone, parchment, and human hands. This is anecdotal but it seems that most people who are into runes at all are really only interested in that "original" pure unadulturated state that they suppose must have been the first iteration of runes, and view everything that comes after -- that is, all actual evidence -- as valuable only insofar as it points back toward that idealized system. But not only doesn't ᛇ do that (though admittedly, one day it might, if the right theory comes along), it shows that the way people interacted with runes over generations calls into question our assumption that the other runes do provide reliable evidence for that. I think that for most people who post about runes online or even write books about runes for a popular audience, this is in such violation of common sense that they don't find it worth consideration, and generally side with whatever one of the simple theories about it they most recently read. Even among professional linguists, most attempts to explain the rune simply aren't just neutral answers, they are expressions of panic and attempts to restore order. Admittedly, a theory could still be proposed that puts all this to rest. But the way people respond now, while it hasn't, while people habitually latch onto explanations that they clearly don't understand, is still revealing of our epistemologies.

If you want to find meaning in this, I might suggest something like this. One of the distinguishing characteristics of yew wood is its flexibility and springiness (making it so suitable for bows that ýr can simply mean 'bow' in Old Norse). Whatever the rune's earliest name was (or set of names were), it was somehow seemingly set up to stay relevant a thousand years in the future. Despite being redundant already in the earliest examples we have (maybe even when it was first used??), it found new usage for writing a [ç]-like sound (presumably *īha- was pronounced somewhere in the vicinity of [iːça]). Old Norse was eventually going to need a rune for /y/, and *īwaz was set up to produce a word by regular phonological development: *īw > ý (see also *tīwaz > Týr), and it's almost creepy how they thought to preserve that name despite needing to move it to a different graphic form, given that *elhaz/algiz worked perfectly well as the name of a rune for writing /ʀ/, but lacked a y.

[Edit: I should clarify that I don't actually think there's anything unexplainable or mystical about this -- I think it's a combination of the same opportunistic innovation that is characteristic of rune use in general and a little bit of coincidence].

So basically ᛇ is distinguished by how often it's been bent and twisted and made to fill gaps that arose as a result of language change while always maintaining continuity with its earlier forms. Its name may or may not have alternated between some closely-associated variants, but it was never changed outright, unlike a bunch of others. It exhibits a plasticity that's fitting for a rune meaning 'yew,' and it was given that name long, long before demonstrating its suitability. All this can only be seen by taking the long view, looking at how it unfolds over time, by specifically turning away from an idealized, atemporal proto-Elder Futhark.

[hurtmemoreplease]

any advice for people who want to dm you and say hi, but are really shy?

Hi! This is a great question, and I'm gonna be indulgent and take my time answering it. I do this sometimes - you'll simply have to put up with me rambling. My answer is gonna be in two parts; general guidelines for how to message an internet stranger or interact with people in this context, and then I'll do my best to narrow the focus down to me.

You've probably heard this part before, and that's because it is the most critical of everything. I'm just another person. Don't put an internet blogger up on a pedestal. We're all here on the clown website.

Okay, now for the actual advice. When messaging an internet stranger, the general assumption is that you know them better than they know you. You've seen them post about their hobbies, their favorite media, maybe even their partners or their general life situation. You might not KNOW these things anymore, but it generates a sense of familiarity that is NOT reciprocated. If you do know that stuff, then there's this information gap, right? You might think "oh we both love Ryunosuke Fujinami from Urusei Yatsura," or "we both struggle with feeling alienated from our families," but that's one sided! They don't know that about you. Try to imagine if a complete stranger messaged you - it would be REALLY hard to hold a conversation, especially if they just say "hi!" or hit you with some generic pleasantries. The fix to this is have some prepared conversation topics - with actual insightful things to say! You might not end up using them, but it's better than realizing you have nothing to say and stalling out.

Another part of the general advice is to try to know why you're messaging someone, and to make sure your... attitude? Demeanor? Is right for that. I'll try to clarify what I mean! If you think they're cool, and want to be friends, then come in with an understanding that you're both just people, who might have common interests, and express that! If you want advice on something, then you should probably ask if its okay first, but don't beat around the bush about it. If you want them to have sex with you, probably don't message them! Or I mean. At least have some tact about it - make sure its not your ONLY reason. All I'm really trying to get across here is that its worth making sure you know your goals going into ANY situation.

I think.... there's more I could say, honestly. But it comes down to a lot of individual circumstances and who you are as a person. I think those points cover the bulk of it; know who you are and what you want, and be ready and able to communicate it.

Now onto the hard part (for me.) Advice on... how to talk... to me. Jeez. Um... I don't think there's a lot to say about me that is unique. I like engaging on my hobbies and media. I get very insecure a lot, and worry that I'm being difficult to talk to, or being a burden. It's hard for me to believe compliments or admiration are deserved or sincere. I love my girlfriend more than anything. I'm probably gonna struggle to engage with you if you come out of the gate swinging and being flirtatious, but I'm pretty weak to getting flirted with once I'm a little more comfortable with someone. I can promise you I will give you a fair shake and do my best to engage with you! Sorry if that's not helpful!!