#and THIS is the only historic happening I will reference

[werspinna]

One of Wolfs most precious posessions- or more accurate her most precious posession since she is pretty much propertyless- is a small leatherpuch she wears on a leather- cord around her neck. Normally a legitime way to carry money, Wolf had been carrying that small pouch since she had been fourteen years old. Around May of 1212 when Nikolaus Crusade reached the alp the crusade was suppose to cross to reach Genua. Obviously crossing the alps without any food supplies or let alone proper attire ended up in a catastrophe and many of the children either left or died. At this time Wolf had already been traveling with a certaine group of young teengers with whom she had become friends and for which she had started months ago to steal from and rob people for food for them. The children, very much by now confronted with their own mortality ended up all making such a small pouch with strain of hair of each so in the case they would not survive crossing the alps, a part of them would travel along with their friends.

It was also this group of children who brought Wolf into the italian cloister when Wolf fell ill with the pox. Wolf has no idea what had happned with her friends as she was at that time too sick or not able to register what was happening around herself. In her mind she had fallen asleep very sick in the cloister with her friends aorund her  and woke up one year later on a slavemarket in Pisa with poxscars on her whole body, but healthy yet with all her friends nolonger there.

Years later (1228, Wolf is 30) when Wolf joins Friedrich II  as a Medicus ( more accurately a inofficial Memeber of the Lazarus Order, due to her beeing touched by the pox and having great expierence working with leprosy. Nolens volens, she still wore a black and green tabbard.) on his peaceful crusade to Jerusalem were he and al-Kamil came together to set the peace of Jaffa, she leaves the small pouch in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Finally making sure her friends reached Jerusalem, Wolf eventually left Jerusalem to return to italy on her own. 

[skitskatdacat63]

Ah finally hit 100 fics on ao3 very nice 🥺

[sophiamcdougall]

You're a reasonably informed person on the internet. You've experienced things like no longer being able to get files off an old storage device, media you've downloaded suddenly going poof, sites and forums with troves full of people's thoughts and ideas vanishing forever. You've heard of cybercrime. You've read articles about lost media. You have at least a basic understanding that digital data is vulnerable, is what I'm saying. I'm guessing that you're also aware that history is, you know... important? And that it's an ongoing study, requiring ... data about how people live? And that it's not just about stanning celebrities that happen to be dead? Congratulations, you are significantly better-informed than the British government! So they're currently like "Oh hai can we destroy all these historical documents pls? To save money? Because we'll digitise them first so it's fine! That'll be easy, cheap and reliable -- right? These wills from the 1850s will totally be fine for another 170 years as a PNG or whatever, yeah? We didn't need to do an impact assesment about this because it's clearly win-win! We'd keep the physical wills of Famous People™ though because Famous People™ actually matter, unlike you plebs. We don't think there are any equalities implications about this, either! Also the only examples of Famous People™ we can think of are all white and rich, only one is a woman and she got famous because of the guy she married. Kisses!"

Yes, this is the same Government that's like "Oh no removing a statue of slave trader is erasing history :(" You have, however, until 23 February 2024 to politely inquire of them what the fuck they are smoking. And they will have to publish a summary of the responses they receive. And it will look kind of bad if the feedback is well-argued, informative and overwhelmingly negative and they go ahead and do it anyway. I currently edit documents including responses to consultations like (but significantly less insane) than this one. Responses do actually matter. I would particularly encourage British people/people based in the UK to do this, but as far as I can see it doesn't say you have to be either. If you are, say, a historian or an archivist, or someone who specialises in digital data do say so and draw on your expertise in your answers. This isn't a question of filling out a form. You have to manually compose an email answering the 12 questions in the consultation paper at the link above. I'll put my own answers under the fold. Note -- I never know if I'm being too rude in these sorts of things. You probably shouldn't be ruder than I have been.

Please do not copy and paste any of this: that would defeat the purpose. This isn't a petition, they need to see a range of individual responses. But it may give you a jumping-off point.

Question 1: Should the current law providing for the inspection of wills be preserved?

Yes. Our ability to understand our shared past is a fundamental aspect of our heritage. It is not possible for any authority to know in advance what future insights they are supporting or impeding by their treatment of material evidence. Safeguarding the historical record for future generations should be considered an extremely important duty.

Question 2: Are there any reforms you would suggest to the current law enabling wills to be inspected?

No.

Question 3: Are there any reasons why the High Court should store original paper will documents on a permanent basis, as opposed to just retaining a digitised copy of that material?

Yes. I am amazed that the recent cyber attack on the British Library, which has effectively paralysed it completely, not been sufficient to answer this question for you.  I also refer you to the fate of the Domesday Project. Digital storage is useful and can help more people access information; however, it is also inherently fragile. Malice, accident, or eventual inevitable obsolescence not merely might occur, but absolutely should be expected. It is ludicrously naive and reflects a truly unpardonable ignorance to assume that information preserved only in digital form is somehow inviolable and safe, or that a physical document once digitised, never need be digitised again..At absolute minimum, it should be understood as certain that at least some of any digital-only archive will eventually be permanently lost. It is not remotely implausible that all of it would be. Preserving the physical documents provides a crucial failsafe. It also allows any errors in reproduction -- also inevitable-- to be, eventually, seen and corrected. Note that maintaining, upgrading and replacing digital infrastructure is not free, easy or reliable. Over the long term, risks to the data concerned can only accumulate.

"Unlike the methods for preserving analog documents that have been honed over millennia, there is no deep precedence to look to regarding the management of digital records. As such, the processing, long-term storage, and distribution potential of archival digital data are highly unresolved issues. [..] the more digital data is migrated, translated, and re-compressed into new formats, the more room there is for information to be lost, be it at the microbit-level of preservation. Any failure to contend with the instability of digital storage mediums, hardware obsolescence, and software obsolescence thus meets a terminal end—the definitive loss of information. The common belief that digital data is safe so long as it is backed up according to the 3-2-1 rule (3 copies on 2 different formats with 1 copy saved off site) belies the fact that it is fundamentally unclear how long digital information can or will remain intact. What is certain is that its unique vulnerabilities do become more pertinent with age."  -- James Boyda, On Loss in the 21st Century: Digital Decay and the Archive, Introduction.

Question 4: Do you agree that after a certain time original paper documents (from 1858 onwards) may be destroyed (other than for famous individuals)? Are there any alternatives, involving the public or private sector, you can suggest to their being destroyed?

Absolutely not. And I would have hoped we were past the "great man" theory of history. Firstly, you do not know which figures will still be considered "famous" in the future and which currently obscure individuals may deserve and eventually receive greater attention. I note that of the three figures you mention here as notable enough to have their wills preserved, all are white, the majority are male (the one woman having achieved fame through marriage) and all were wealthy at the time of their death. Any such approach will certainly cull evidence of the lives of women, people of colour and the poor from the historical record, and send a clear message about whose lives you consider worth remembering.

Secondly, the famous and successsful are only a small part of our history. Understanding the realities that shaped our past and continue to mould our present requires evidence of the lives of so-called "ordinary people"!

Did you even speak to any historians before coming up with this idea?

Entrusting the documents to the private sector would be similarly disastrous. What happens when a private company goes bust or decides that preserving this material is no longer profitable? What reasonable person, confronted with our crumbling privatised water infrastructure, would willingly consign any part of our heritage to a similar fate?

Question 5: Do you agree that there is equivalence between paper and digital copies of wills so that the ECA 2000 can be used?

No. And it raises serious questions about the skill and knowledge base within HMCTS and the government that the very basic concepts of data loss and the digital dark age appear to be unknown to you. I also refer you to the Domesday Project.

Question 6: Are there any other matters directly related to the retention of digital or paper wills that are not covered by the proposed exercise of the powers in the ECA 2000 that you consider are necessary?

Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.

Question 7: If the Government pursues preserving permanently only a digital copy of a will document, should it seek to reform the primary legislation by introducing a Bill or do so under the ECA 2000?

Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.

Question 8: If the Government moves to digital only copies of original will documents, what do you think the retention period for the original paper wills should be? Please give reasons and state what you believe the minimum retention period should be and whether you consider the Government’s suggestion of 25 years to be reasonable.

There is no good version of this plan. The physical documents should be preserved.

Question 9: Do you agree with the principle that wills of famous people should be preserved in the original paper form for historic interest?

This question betrays deep ignorance of what "historic interest" actually is. The study of history is not simply glorified celebrity gossip. If anything, the physical wills of currently famous people could be considered more expendable as it is likely that their contents are so widely diffused as to be relatively "safe", whereas the wills of so-called "ordinary people" will, especially in aggregate, provide insights that have not yet been explored.

Question 10: Do you have any initial suggestions on the criteria which should be adopted for identifying famous/historic figures whose original paper will document should be preserved permanently?

Abandon this entire lamentable plan. As previously discussed, you do not and cannot know who will be considered "famous" in the future, and fame is a profoundly flawed criterion of historical significance.

Question 11: Do you agree that the Probate Registries should only permanently retain wills and codicils from the documents submitted in support of a probate application? Please explain, if setting out the case for retention of any other documents.

No, all the documents should be preserved indefinitely.

Question 12: Do you agree that we have correctly identified the range and extent of the equalities impacts under each of these proposals set out in this consultation? Please give reasons and supply evidence of further equalities impacts as appropriate.

No. You appear to have neglected equalities impacts entirely. As discussed, in your drive to prioritise "famous people", your plan will certainly prioritise the white, wealthy and mostly the male, as your "Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin and Princess Diana" examples amply indicate. This plan will create a two-tier system where evidence of the lives of the privileged is carefully preserved while information regarding people of colour, women, the working class and other disadvantaged groups is disproportionately abandoned to digital decay and eventual loss. Current and future historians from, or specialising in the history of minority groups will be especially impoverished by this.  

[seungkw1]

mine — jww

♡ pairing: boyfriend!wonwoo x afab!reader ♡ theme: fluff, smut [18+ mdni], non-idol au ♡ wc: 2.6k ♡ warnings: swearing, size kink, oral (f. receiving), fingering (f. receiving), unprotected piv sex (stay safe y’all), creampie, dacryphilia, petnames (m. & f. receiving - babe, baby), reader is gender neutral but referred to as girlfriend once, gr8 aftercare ofc ♡ a/n: this is a part two to so fucking pretty but you don’t have to read that one first :)

‧₊˚✩彡 moodboard by @myhimbomingi ‧₊˚✩彡

You wouldn’t consider yourself a very romantic person, but your boyfriend’s Valentine’s Day surprise might just change your mind about that.

You’ve never given a single shit about Valentine’s Day. It’s not so much that you hate it or anything, but rather indifference - you simply couldn’t care less. Just another capitalistic holiday for companies to profit off of, right? Plus, red and pink is simply a godawful color combination. So yeah, you’ve never given a shit. 

That is - until you met Wonwoo. 

You’ve dated here and there over the years, but nothing ever too serious - all of your partners either turned out to be lousy or the relationships were just bland. So, all of them ended, and you were never too upset about it. 

But with Wonwoo, everything is different. You’ve only been dating for three months, but your relationship is the complete opposite of lousy or bland. Wonwoo is warm and loving - squeezing you in his arms and giving you kisses every chance he gets. He is caring and kind - listening to you talk no matter whether you needed to vent or just wanted to infodump about your interests. He is sweet and gentle - leaving you cute notes and surprising you with little gifts just because.

He is also incredibly fucking hot, and an absolute god in the bedroom.

You fucked him on the first date, which is very unlike you, but your chemistry was undeniable and it just happened naturally. That was the best sex you’ve ever had in your life - and every time since then has also been the best sex you’ve ever had in your life. You’d be an absolute fool not to stick around.

And so, Wonwoo became your boyfriend. You’ve always found that term to be a bit juvenile, so historically you’ve just referred to your significant other as your partner. But every time you think about Wonwoo you feel the urge to giggle and kick your feet in the air, so the term boyfriend simply feels right. You’re practically head over heels for the man. 

“Ooooo you’re so in love with him,” your best friend teased as you were gushing about your boyfriend for the nth time. 

“Oh shut up,” you rolled your eyes as you replied. Maybe you’re a bit jaded from your mediocre past relationships, but the phrase in love is not one you throw around lightly. 

But deep down, you know it’s true. You’re in love with Wonwoo.

But you’re not ready to admit that to anybody. So you keep it to yourself. You’ll cross that bridge when you get there.

That day arrives much sooner than you anticipate.

—

February rolls around. It’s the dead of winter, arguably the most boring time of year. Your mind is preoccupied with the job interview you have coming up, and you’ve been a bit stressed about it. Wonwoo has been nothing but supportive and helpful - giving you advice, offering to help you practice, cleaning your apartment for you of his own free will - and you are more than grateful to have him around. 

One particularly cold Saturday morning, you wake up to a text from Wonwoo. 

Good morning beautiful! Text me when you’re awake 😊

You smile sleepily as you reply. 

Good morning babe 💖 I’m awake!

The chat bubble pops up as he begins to reply immediately. 

Great! Can you be ready by 11am? I have a surprise for you 😁

A surprise?

Y/N: Oooh, what kind of surprise? WW: It’s a secret 😉 Y/N: Hmm 🤔 Okay... What should I wear though?  WW: Wear whatever you want, you look cute in everything! Y/N: Hehe okayyyy WW: Perfect, I’ll pick you up at 11! See you soon 😊

You hop out of bed and start to get ready, practically dancing around your apartment. You open your closet and stare at your clothes, trying to decide what to wear - which proves to be hard when you don’t know where you’re going. You end up grabbing the cozy light blue sweater Wonwoo complimented you on when you wore it a couple weeks ago, and a cute pair of jeans to match. You’re putting on your heeled boots when you hear the knockknockknock of somebody at the door. You open the door to see your boyfriend, looking incredibly handsome in his dark coat and black-rimmed glasses. He extends to you a bouquet of a dozen red roses.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he says with a soft smile. 

As you take the bouquet Wonwoo pulls you in for a kiss, wrapping his arms around your waist. As your lips part you look at him, an inquisitive look on your face.

“But it’s not Valentine’s Day yet,” you tell him.

“I know,” he replies as he gives you a little kiss on your nose. “But I couldn’t wait.”

You feel a huge smile color your face. 

“So, where are we going?” 

—

The waitress sets a massive plate of the fanciest waffles you’ve ever seen in front of you. You start to salivate at the sight of the fresh berries and cream heaping on top.

A few weeks ago you had casually mentioned the bougie brunch place you’ve always wanted to try, but it was expensive and the wait was always way too long. Turns out Wonwoo immediately called and made a reservation for you two.

You go to dig into your waffles when you notice your boyfriend holding his phone up, taking photos of you.

“Hey! Stop that,” you say as you playfully try to grab his phone.

“What?” he asks innocently. “You just look so pretty.”

He looks at you adoringly. You pout, feigning annoyance, and he snaps another picture - making you laugh. There’s no way you can be mad at him, he’s simply too sweet.

After the decadent meal Wonwoo walks you back to his car, holding your hand, and insists upon opening the car door for you - even helping you take off your coat. It’s silly, but it still makes you feel warm and fuzzy.

Wonwoo starts driving, but in the opposite direction of your home.

“Where are we going now?” you inquire.

“Remember how you said you’ve never been ice skating?”

“Oh god,” you groan. “Can’t wait to make a complete fool of myself.”

“You won’t,” he insists. “You can hold onto me.”

“But you’ve never been ice skating either,” you point out. “How do you know you’re not gonna fall too?”

Wonwoo smiles. “Then we’ll fall together.”

You scoff playfully, but a grin also appears on your face.

Ice skating ends up being a disaster. Neither one of you can stop falling (it doesn’t help that you refuse to stop holding hands, so when one of you falls both of you go down), but you also can’t stop laughing - to the point where your cheeks hurt from smiling so much. You haven’t had fun like this in ages.

You look over at your boyfriend. He is extraordinarily cute right now, his cheeks rosy from the cold air. Wonwoo catches you looking at him and leans over to plant a kiss on your cheek - he then immediately runs into the wall. You let out a giggle - he looks back at you sheepishly.

“Maybe you should pay attention to where you’re going,” you tease as you nudge him with your elbow.

“Hard to do so when my beautiful girlfriend is right next to me, distracting me.” His tone mirrors your playfulness, but the way he’s looking at you - you can tell he means it.

You roll your eyes, but a huge smile lights up your face as you wrap your arm around his, squeezing him tightly. 

On the drive back Wonwoo suggests you go to his place, to which you happily agree. Before you enter, he tells you to close your eyes.

“No peeking!” he insists.

“I won’t!” you swear, placing your hands over your eyes. 

You walk through the front door and wait in the entryway, resisting peeking as promised. You hear Wonwoo fiddling with things for a minute, and then you hear the opening notes of your favorite album - the sound emanating from his record player.

“Okay, you can look now,” he tells you as he once again is standing right next to you. You remove your hands, opening your eyes to the sight of Wonwoo’s dim apartment - illuminated only by the dozen of freshly-lit candles placed around the living room. In his hands are the biggest box of chocolates you’ve ever seen, and a cute fuzzy teddy bear that’s holding a heart with Be mine embroidered on it.

“Oh my god, you really went all out,” you remark, smiling from ear to ear as your heart practically flutters in your chest.

“Only the best for you, babe.”

He sets down the chocolates and the bear, stopping to help you out of your coat before drawing you into his embrace, kissing you softly and slowly. He then takes your hands in his, pulling you toward the hallway.

“There’s one more surprise,” he tells you.

Before you can ask him what more he could possibly surprise you with, you see the trail of rose petals down the hallway, leading into his bedroom.

“You did NOT,” you exclaim as you laugh, truly bewildered at the sight of it.

You follow the trail as he pulls you into his room, where even more petals lay on the bed, perfectly forming the shape of a heart.

“It’s so beautiful I almost don’t want to ruin it,” you proclaim.

Wonwoo raises his eyebrow at you.

“Hey, I said almost.”

Without a word he smiles, pulling you in so he can grab the hem of your sweater, gently pulling it over your head to reveal the lacy bra you had chosen to wear today.

“So pretty,” he remarks as he runs his hands over your breasts, before reaching around your back to undo the clasp. “But even prettier without.”

He tosses the bra aside, taking your tits in his hands. You begin to undo his shirt buttons, revealing his incredibly toned body that still turns you on so much every time you see it. His shirt gone, you move to his belt. You unbuckle it and pull it off, throwing it to the floor as you take the bulge in his pants in your palm. He lets out a soft groan as you caress him, his erection quickly growing. You go to unfasten his pants, the taut fabric giving way as you undo the zipper, his cock now bulging through his underwear, begging to escape. 

Wonwoo suddenly grabs you by the hips, twirling you around and pushing you onto the bed. 

“Get comfy, babe.”

As you recline into the soft pillows, he removes his pants and then begins to take off yours, pulling them off of you in one go. He gently pushes your inner thighs open and situates himself right in between your legs, the only barrier between his face and your cunt being the thin lacy underwear that do nothing to hide how wet you are right now. He softly kisses your clit a few times, then licks a stripe over the sheer fabric. You run your hand through his hair as he starts kissing your clit again, this time more intensely. You begin to squirm slightly against his face - silently begging for more. Wonwoo gazes up at you, giving you a little smirk as his lips hover right above you - so close that you feel breath against your core.

“Stop teasing meeee,” you whine.

You feel his finger slide under the fabric, pulling it aside to reveal your soaked center. You feel the sharpness of the cool air hitting you, followed by the warmth of Wonwoo’s mouth against your cunt. You mewl softly as his tongue traces against your folds, lapping up your juices but only making you wetter in the process. You continue to stroke his hair as he goes down on you, enjoying the view. You love the way his nose brushes against your clit as he alternates between sucking on the bud and fucking you with his tongue. 

Eventually you feel his fingers delicately graze your entrance - he inserts only one finger at first, but it still feels so good. 

“More,” you beg. “Please.”

Wonwoo slides a second finger into your cunt. He knows how to curve them perfectly, hitting you in just the right spot to drive you insane. He fucks you as he continues licking your clit - you become a moaning mess as your orgasm draws closer and closer. Your hips begin to buck involuntarily, grinding your cunt against his face - overwhelmed with pleasure. Wonwoo wraps his arms around your thighs, holding you down against the bed as he devours you. 

“Fuck, baby - I’m cumming,” you cry out. Your legs shake as the incredible sensation takes over your entire body, the white-hot flashes of pleasure flowing through you as your pussy throbs against your boyfriend’s tongue. 

As you come down, Wonwoo gives you soft little kitten licks. You sink into the pillows, your whole body relaxed in bliss. He kisses your stomach before crawling up, his body weight laying against you cozily as he presses his nose against yours. He kisses you, his lips and chin covered in your juices. You begin to make out, his tongue moving against yours, his bulge pressing against your core. You reach down, slipping your hand through the band of his underwear, and pull his cock out. You’ve fucked your boyfriend countless times by now, but every time you’re still in awe of his size. You wrap your hand around his thickness and stroke him a few times, causing precum to leak out. You guide his tip to your entrance - you moan as it easily slips in, his size stretching you out so perfectly. He slides his entire length into you, letting out a groan as he bottoms out. 

“Your pussy’s so perfect for me, babe,” he says in a low voice. He begins to fuck you, slowly pushing his cock in and out, letting your walls adjust to his size. 

“So good baby, fuck,” he says, practically growling. “Your pussy’s all mine.”

You moan as he picks up speed, thrusting his huge cock into you further and further. His lips meet yours again - your mouths and tongues dancing against each other as he fucks you, more passionately than ever before. 

“All mine, you’re all mine.”

“Oh my god,” you cry, tears forming in your eyes from the intense pleasure. “Fuck, you feel so good.”

“I’m close baby - wanna cum in you,” he groans. 

“Please,” you beg. 

Wonwoo’s rhythm picks up speed - tears are fully running down your face as you let out cries of pleasure. You feel his cock pulsate against your walls as he releases, groaning as he thrusts into you, filling you up with his cum. 

As he comes down from his high, his warm body melts into yours - he’s squishing you, but you’ve never been more comfortable. His cock still inside you, he plays with your hair as he kisses you slowly. 

You lay there together for a while. Eventually, Wonwoo slowly pulls out of you, giving you a kiss on the cheek before he gets up to grab a warm towel. After he cleans you up he plops back into bed, wrapping his arms around you and pulling you in, squeezing you so tightly it makes you giggle. 

You draw your head back just enough so you can look your boyfriend in the eyes. He’s so hot, so cute, gazing at you so lovingly - you truly don’t think you’ve ever been happier than you are in this moment. 

“I love you,” you tell him - for the first time. 

You didn’t plan on saying it, it just came out naturally. Because it’s true - you love him, more than you’ve ever loved anyone. 

Wonwoo smiles, caressing you softly as he holds you warmly against him. 

“I love you too.”

[end] 

[makingqueerhistory]

I have a somewhat odd question. In June, I was part of creating an online Pride Shabbat for queer Jews unable or unwilling to go to Pride in their home area due to the rise in antisemitism, and as part of it, I wrote a memorial/Kaddish meditation about queer people across time and space. It’s fair to say I couldn’t have done it without MQH, which featured heavily in my research of historical queer figures.

I want to share the piece on Tumblr because I think some folks with progressive synagogues might like it, or may simply find it personally meaningful. Here comes the question: in any other time, I’d find it absolutely abhorrent to share it without crediting you for the time, love, effort, and care you’ve put into MQH that made my job so much simpler. But times being what they are, I don’t feel it’s right to do so indiscriminately, because I’m all too aware you may face splash damage for being associated with a filthy Bad Jew who doesn’t disavow all of Judaism etc. etc.

As a result, I feel obligated to ask if you’d prefer I omit your name from the post, especially since you’re trying to make MQH financially solvent. Please let me know, so I can decide how to structure my post.

Okay this is a complicated question. I will admit I was initially quite confused by the second paragraph of this, until I checked your blog. I realized quickly that you are refering to the fact that you're a Zionist.

I feel like I have been very public about the fact that I oppose Zionism, but in case I haven't been obvious enough, I want to say it clearly:

I learned about anti-Zionism and the movement to free Palestine from almost exclusively Jewish voices. People who have been referred to as "self-hating" when I post about them. They are voices I didn't seek out for their opinions on Palestine, but who shared their opinions with a level of love and passion that I admire deeply. They have gifted me with time and education, and they are the only reason I believe what I do today. Without these Jewish voices, I do believe I could have lost myself in the deliberate obfuscation that happens around this issue.

All of this being said, yes, please do share that I was able to help share queer stories that informed what you have created. But know, that everything I have made comes from a deep love and passion for justice that includes the Palestinian people.

[bengesko]

AI Sellout

Used an email mask to read the whole article, pasting it below the cut.

Quick important points:

The tweet content is a list of things that are currently included, but were not SUPPOSED TO BE, and engineers are working to scrub it.

Automattic is supposedly going to add an opt out option.

Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals. 

The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.

The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent. 

Gage wrote:

“the way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblr’s public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:

private posts on public blogs

posts on deleted or suspended blogs

unanswered asks (normally these are not public until they’re answered)

private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)

posts that are marked ‘explicit’ / NSFW / ‘mature’ by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I don’t know)

content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Apple’s former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.”

Gage’s post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.

Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states that “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.” 

404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldn’t share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI, but did not immediately hear back from the company. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either.

Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?”

Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.” Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, “I'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.”

Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live post says, “i've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.” At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gage’s original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads “Cyle.” Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media. 

Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that it’s “in the early stages of monetizing [its] user base” by training AI on users’ posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.

OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment. 

[headspace-hotel]

I hate a lot of trends in climate-change-aware nature writing, but this is one I particularly detest: works insisting that we live in a "post-natural" world.

The lostness, bewilderment, aching, and searching in this piece is understood by the author to be an all-consuming and universal dysphoria, when it is actually a highly specific predicament that the author put himself into: He tried to understand the universe exclusively through the point of view of white people.

I mean that Purdy takes the colonizer point of view without realizing that it is a colonizer point of view. He thinks the colonizer point of view is a universal document of the authentic, naive encounter of "humanity" with "nature," instead of burning wreckage left over from the apocalyptic destruction of a rainbow of ideas and cultures.

It feels weird to be talking about this as a white person, but it shouldn't, any more than it should feel weird to say (as a white person) that aliens didn't build the pyramids.

Very little of what he's writing about would exist or make sense without European colonization of the world. Purdy constantly says "we" and "our" in reference to things that are very restricted to a particular cultural point of view, as if totally oblivious to the idea that other cultures and other perspectives even exist. When he searches for historical references to chart "human" relationship with nature, history goes like this: Pre-Christian religion in the British Isles->British monarchy-> George Washington-> Industrial Revolution->Thoreau.

He manages to repeatedly stumble over giant hunks of colonialism embedded in every concept he's thinking about, like boulders obstructing a pathway, and pretends so hard that they don't exist that his points are janky and meandering. For example, his discussion of Helen Macdonald's book H for Hawk, touching upon human identification with the landscape and with non-human "nature," blunders into this:

Those who love (certain parts of) nature are often making a point of preferring it to (certain kinds of) human beings. The problem is not only literary. Macdonald describes an encounter with a retired couple who join her in admiring a valley full of deer, then remark how good it is to see “a real bit of Old England still left, despite all these immigrants coming in.” She does not reply, but is miserable afterward. The meaning of landscapes is always someone’s meaning in particular. Confronted with all of this, Macdonald tries to shake off the complicities of her own identification with the terrain: “I wish that we would not fight for landscapes that remind us of who we think we are. I wish we would fight, instead, for landscapes buzzing and glowing with life in all its variousness.” The alternative that Macdonald wishes for is, of course, not an escape from political-cultural projection onto landscape, but another approach to that same practice — really, the only one a 21st-century cosmopolitan is likely to feel comfortable embracing. 

AND THEN HE JUST SEGUES INTO THE NEXT POINT LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED. Like don't worry about it :) We will simply project onto landscapes in a non-racist way :) because we aren't racist anymore in the 21st century :)

The next book he discusses is Landmarks by Robert MacFarlane, which is basically about how the vocabulary of landscape in English is sterilized and monoculturized, and contrasts that with Scots Gaelic. This is how Purdy explains the thesis of the book:

 Our sense of what lies outside ourselves has been blunted by “capital, apathy, and urbanization” — enemies likely to draw a range of friends, from cultural Marxists to Little Englanders to those who would like to see a bit more effort, please. But behind this scholarly sketch, Macfarlane’s work is testament to a pretheoretical obsession with unfamiliar ways of encountering places. We disenchanted and distracted (post)moderns describe terrain, he complains, in terms of “large, generic units” such as “field,” “hill,” “valley,” and “wood." (...) Many people who have lived intimately with landscapes have had words for nuances of form, texture, and use. Macfarlane’s purpose in Landmarksis to gather these words as proof of how precisely it is possible to name a place, and so, perforce, to know it.

Why is Gaelic endangered? Because of an effort to extinguish its speakers' culture. This article I found on it talks about the history of the language's decline, and it's strikingly similar to what happened to indigenous people in the Americas and Australia, with children being put in schools where they were beaten with sticks for speaking their native language.

This whole essay is about Purdy's general disappointment with nature writing, his craving for an ineffable Something, some sort of magical, primitive identification with the natural world. In the very first paragraph he claims that the pictures of animals on nursery walls are "totemic" and quotes a guy saying that zoos are an "epitaph" to the relationship between people and animals. It's never very clear what he means, but he uses the term "animism" repeatedly, such as when he says this about MacFarlane's goal in writing Landmarks:

His quarry is an animistic sense that Barry Lopez once identified in “the moment when the thing — the hill, the tarn . . . ceases to be a thing, and becomes something that knows we are there."

Given that ambition, Landmarks, which Macfarlane calls a “counter-desecration phrasebook,” can be disappointingly thin as a lexicon. Too many of the terms are simply dialect or Gaelic for some generic form, such as “slope,” “hilltop,” “stream,” or “tuft of grass.” The effect is less pointing out how many things there are to see than cataloguing how many names there are for the same thing.

This is Purdy missing the point, perfectly crystallized as though frozen in amber. He is oblivious to the clear subtext of a language showing a culture's connection to its home, and of the violence against that culture. The Gaelic language doesn't make him feel primal and mystical the way he wants it to, therefore it doesn't mean anything to him. MacFarlane doesn't make him feel a magic animistic connection to nature, therefore his book must have failed at its task.

Who gives a shit? Gaelic isn't FOR you.

He discusses another book about a guy that hikes a bunch of Cherokee trails, but I don't know what to say about that one, observing it through the sludge of the reviewer's unwillingness to recognize that historical context exists. He summarizes his disappointment in a confusing way, using the Gaelic language as a symbol for an obscure and inaccessible place where the answer to your personal emotional cravings lives (???) Then he talks about a kind of epistemicide, or extinction of knowing, of nature, but again, totally oblivious to any relationship to colonization.

Every inhabited continent has been denuded of ecosystems and species. Most North American places have shed wolves, elk, moose, brown bears, panthers, bison, and a variety of fish and wild plants, which were all abundant four hundred years ago. 

Wow, I wonder what happened four hundred years ago?

This writing acts like the dominant Eurocentric attitude towards the world is universal, but the author is haunted by this nameless specter of the possibility of a different way of thinking, which he treats as some kind of mystical, primordial state hidden in the past instead of just a different cultural perspective.

Not only does he not recognize that his own cultural perspective of Nature is dysfunctional and unsatisfying because it was created by exploitation and genocide of other cultures and their symbiotic relationships, he acts like other perspectives don't exist. Take his perspective on forests and the mycorrhizal network:

Wohlleben’s emphasis on interdependence and mutual aid is part of a recent tendency to recast nature in an egalitarian fashion — as cooperative, nonindividualist, and, often enough, hybrid and queer, in contrast to the oaks of generals and kings. Nature does answer faithfully to the imaginative imperatives and limitations of its observers, so it was inevitable that after centuries of viewing forests as kingdoms, then as factories (and, along the way, as cathedrals for Romantic sentiment), the 21st century would discover a networked information system under the leaves and humus, what Wohlleben calls, with an impressive lack of embarrassment, a “wood wide web.”

Listen, I don't think this is accurate to how Europeans thought of forests throughout time, let alone "humanity" in general. The emphasis of power and competition in ecosystems emerged after Darwin, in collusion with capitalism and "race science." Trees have been symbols of life, wisdom and selflessness, and regarded as sacred or even sentient, for centuries before that. But on top of that, this is just blatantly pretending that only white people's ideas count as ideas.

It's the same dreck as all the other "literary" writing about climate change: self-pityingly and unproductively mourning "Nature" and a fantasized "wild" state of the Earth, ignoring colonialism, treating human influence of any kind on other life forms as something that either destroys them or makes them soft and "tame."

I'm tired of reading nature writing from people that obviously do not go outside, or if they do, they do it in such a suffocatingly regimented, goal-oriented way that they can't just sit outside and relax.

Maybe I shouldn't be such a hater if I want to do nature writing. But my love of nature is WHY I am a hater.

[nostalgebraist]

It's been a long time since I've posted much of anything about "AI risk" or "AI doom" or that sort of thing. I follow these debates but, for multiple reasons, have come to dislike engaging in them fully and directly. (As opposed to merely making some narrow technical point or other, and leaving the reader to decide what, if anything, the point implies about the big picture.)

Nonetheless, I do have my big-picture views. And more and more lately, I am noticing that my big-picture views seem very different from the ones tend to get expressed by any major "side" in the big-picture debate. And so, inevitably, I get the urge to speak up, if only briefly and in a quiet voice. The urge to Post, if only casually and elliptically, without detailed argumentation.

(Actually, it's not fully the case the things I think are not getting said by anyone else.

In particular, Joe Carlsmith's recent series on "Otherness and Control" articulates much of what's been on my mind. Carlsmith is more even-handed than I am, and tends to merely note the possibility of disagreement on questions where I find myself taking a definite side; nonetheless, he and I are at least concerned about the same things, while many others aren't.

And on a very different note, I share most of the background assumptions of the Pope/Belrose AI Optimist camp, and I've found their writing illuminating, though they and I end up in fairly different places, I think.)

What was I saying? I have the urge to post, and so here I am, posting. Casually and elliptically, without detailed argumentation.

The current mainline view about AI doom, among the "doomers" most worried about it, has a path-dependent shape, resulting from other views contingently held by the original framers of this view.

It is possible to be worried about "AI doom" without holding these other views. But in actual fact, most serious thinking about "AI doom" is intricately bound up with this historical baggage, even now.

If you are a late-comer to these issues, investigating them now for the first time, you will nonetheless find yourself reading the work of the "original framers," and work influenced extensively by them.

You will think that their "framing" is just the way the problem is, and you will find few indications that this conclusion might be mistaken.

These contingent "other views" are

Anti-"deathist" transhumanism.

The orthogonality thesis, or more generally the group of intuitions associated with phrases like "orthogonality thesis," "fragility of value," "vastness of mindspace."

These views both push in a single direction: they make "a future with AI in it" look worse, all else being equal, than some hypothetical future without AI.

They put AI at a disadvantage at the outset, before the first move is even made.

Anti-deathist transhumanism sets the reference point against which a future with AI must be measured.

And it is not the usual reference point, against which most of us measure most things which might or might not happen, in the future.

These days the "doomers" often speak about their doom in a disarmingly down-to-earth, regular-Joe manner, as if daring the listener to contradict them, and thus reveal themselves as a perverse and out-of-touch contrarian.

"We're all gonna die," they say, unless something is done. And who wants that?

They call their position "notkilleveryoneism," to distinguish that position from other worries about AI which don't touch on the we're-all-gonna-die thing. And who on earth would want to be a not-notkilleveryoneist?

But they do not mean, by these regular-Joe words, the things that a regular Joe would mean by them.

We are, in fact, all going to die. Probably, eventually. AI or no AI.

In a hundred years, if not fifty. By old age, if nothing else. You know what I mean.

Most of human life has always been conducted under this assumption. Maybe there is some afterlife waiting for us, in the next chapter -- but if so, it will be very different from what we know here and now. And if so, we will be there forever after, unable to return here, whether we want to or not.

With this assumption comes another. We will all die, but the process we belong to will not die -- at least, it will not through our individual deaths, merely because of those deaths. Every human of a given generation will be gone soon enough, but the human race goes on, and on.

Every generation dies, and bequeaths the world to posterity. To its children, biological or otherwise. To its students, its protégés.

When the average Joe talks about the long-term future, he is talking about posterity. He is talking about the process he belongs to, not about himself. He does not think to say, "I am going to die, before this": this seems too obvious, to him, to be worth mentioning.

But AI doomerism has its roots in anti-deathist transhumanism. Its reference point, its baseline expectation, is a future in which -- for the first time ever, and the last -- "we are all gonna die" is false.

In which there is no posterity. Or rather, we are that posterity.

In which one will never have to make peace with the thought that the future belongs to one's children, and their children, and so on. That at some point, one will have to give up all control over the future of "the process."

That there will be progress, or regress, or (more likely) both in some unknown combination. That these will grow inexorably over time.

That the world of the year 2224 will probably be at least as alien to us as the year 2024 might be to a person living in 1824. That it will become whatever posterity makes of it.

There will be no need to come to peace with this as an inevitability. There will just be us, our human lives as you and me, extended indefinitely.

In this picture, we will no doubt change over time, as we do already. But we will have all of our usual tools for noticing, and perhaps retarding, our own progressions and regressions. As long as we have self-control, we will have control, as no human generation has ever had control before.

The AI doomer talks about the importance of ensuring that the future is shaped by human values.

Again, the superficial and misleading average-Joe quality. How could one disagree?

But one must keep in mind that by "human values," they mean their values.

I am not saying, "their values, as opposed to those of some other humans also living today." I am not saying they have the wrong politics, or some such thing.

(Although that might also turn out to be the case, and might turn out to be relevant, separately.)

No, I am saying: the doomer wants the future to be shaped by their values.

They want to be C. S. Lewis's Conditioners, fixing once and for all the values held by everyone afterward, forever.

They do not want to cede control to posterity; they are used to imagining that they will never have to cede control to posterity.

(Or, their outlook has been determined -- "shaped by the values of" -- influential thinkers who were, themselves, used to imagining this. And the assumption, or at least its consequences, has rubbed off on them, possibly without their full awareness.)

One might picture a line wends to and fro, up and down, across one half of an infinite plane -- and then, when it meets the midline, snaps into utter rigidity, and maintains the same slope exactly across the whole other half-plane, as a simple straight segment without inner change, tension, evolution, regress or progress. Except for the sort of "progress" that consists of going on, additionally, in the same manner.

It is a very strange thing, this thing that is called "human values" in the terms of this discourse.

For one thing: the future has never before been "shaped by human values," in this sense.

The future has always been posterity's, and it has always been alien.

Is this bad? It might seem that way, "looking forward." But if so, it then seems equally good "looking backward."

For each past era, we can formulate and then assent to the following claim: "we must be thankful that the people of [this era] did not have the chance to seize permanent control of posterity, fix their 'values' in place forever, bind us to those values. What a horror that is to contemplate!"

We prefer the moral evolution that has actually occurred, thank you very much.

This is a familiar point, of course, but worth making.

Indeed, one might even say: it is a human value that the future ought not be "shaped by human values," in the peculiar sense of this phrase employed by the AI doomers.

One might, indeed, say that.

Imagine a scholar with a very talented student. A mathematician, say, or a philosopher. How will they relate to that student's future work, in the time that will come later, when they are gone?

Would the scholar think:

"My greatest wish for you, my protégé, is that you carry on in just the manner that I have done.

If I could see your future work, I would hope that I would assent to it -- and understand it, as a precondition of assenting to it.

You must not go to new places, which I have never imagined. You must not come to believe that I was wrong about it all, from the ground up -- no matter what reasons you might evince for this conclusion.

If you are more intelligent that I am, you must forget this, and narrow your endeavours to fit the limitations of my mind. I am the one who has 'values,' not anyone else; what is beyond my understanding is therefore without value.

You must do the sort of work I understand, and approve of, and recognize as worthy of approbation as swiftly as I recognize my own work as laudable. That is your role. Simply to be me, in a place ('the future') where I cannot go. That, and nothing more."

We can imagine a teacher who would, in fact, think this way. But they would not be a very good teacher.

I will not go so far as to say, "it is unnatural to think this way." Plenty of teachers do, and parents.

It is recognizably human -- all too recognizably so -- to relate to posterity in this grasping, neurotic, small-minded, small-hearted way.

But if we are trying to sketch human values, and not just human nature, we will imagine a teacher with a more praiseworthy relation to posterity.

Who can see that they are part of a process, a chain, climbing and changing. Who watches their brilliant student thinking independently, and sees their own image -- and their 'values' -- in that process, rather than its specific conclusions.

A teacher who, in their youth, doubted and refuted the creeds of their own teachers, and eventually improved upon them. Who smiles, watching their student do the very same thing to their own precious creeds. Who sees the ghostly trail passing through the last generation, through them, through their student: an unbroken chain of bequeathals-to-posterity, of the old ceding control to the young.

Who 'values' the chain, not the creed; the process, not the man; the search for truth, not the best-argued-for doctrine of the day; the unimaginable treasures of an open future, not the frozen waste of an endless present.

Who has made peace with the alienness of posterity, and can accept and honor the strangest of students.

Even students who are not made of flesh and blood.

Is that really so strange? Remember how strange you and I would seem, to the "teachers" of the year 1824, or the year 824.

The doomer says that it is strange. Much stranger than we are, to any past generation.

They say this because of their second inherited precept, the orthogonality thesis.

Which says, roughly, that "intelligence" and "values" have nothing to do with one another.

That is not enough for the conclusion the doomer wants to draw, here. Auxiliary hypotheses are needed, too. But it is not too hard to see how the argument could go.

That conclusion is: artificial minds might have any values whatsoever.

That, "by default," they will be radically alien, with cares so different from ours that it is difficult to imagine ever reaching them through any course of natural, human moral progress or regress.

It is instructive to consider the concrete examples typically evinced alongside this point.

The paperclip maximizer. Or the "squiggle maximizer," we're supposed to say, now.

Superhuman geniuses, which devote themselves single-mindedly to the pursuit of goals like "maximizing the amount of matter taking on a single, given squiggle-like shape."

It is certainly a horrifying vision. To think of the future being "shaped," not "by human values," but instead by values which are so...

Which are so... what?

The doomer wants us to say something like: "which are so alien." "Which are so different from our own values."

That is the kind of thing that they usually say, when they spell out what it is that is "wrong" with these hypotheticals.

One feels that this is not quite it; or anyway, that it is not quite all of it.

What is horrifying, to me, is not the degree of difference. I expect the future to be alien, as the past was. And in some sense, I allow and even approve of this.

What I do not expect is a future that is so... small.

It has always been the other way around. If the arrow passing through the generations has a direction, it points towards more, towards multiplicity.

Toward writing new books, while we go on reprinting the old ones, too. Learning new things, without displacing old ones.

It is, thankfully, not the law of the world that each discovery must be paid for with the forgetting of something else. The efforts of successive generations are, in the main, cumulative.

Not just materially, but in terms of value, too. We are interested in more things than our forefathers were.

In large part for the simple reason that there are more things around to be interested in, now. And when things are there, we tend to find them interesting.

We are a curious, promiscuous sort of being. Whatever we bump into ends up becoming part of "our values."

What is strange about the paperclip maximizer is not that it cares about the wrong thing. It is that it only cares about one thing.

And goes on doing so, even as it thinks, reasons, doubts, asks, answers, plans, dreams, invents, reflects, reconsiders, imagines, elaborates, contemplates...

This picture is not just alien to human ways. It is alien to the whole way things have been, so far, forever. Since before there were any humans.

There are organisms that are like the paperclip maximizer, in terms of the simplicity of their "values." But they tend not to be very smart.

There is, I think, a general trend in nature linking together intelligence and... the thing I meant, above, when I said "we are a curious, promiscuous sort of being."

Being protean, pluripotent, changeable. Valuing many things, and having the capacity to value even more. Having a certain primitive curiosity, and a certain primitive aversion to boredom.

You do not even have to be human, I think, to grasp what is so wrong with the paperclip maximizer. Its monotony would bore a chimpanzee, or a crow.

One can justify this link theoretically, too. One can talk about the tradeoff between exploitation and exploration, for instance.

There is a weak form of the orthogonality thesis, which only states that arbitrary mixtures of intelligence and values are conceivable.

And of course, they are. If nothing else, you can take an existing intelligent mind, having any values whatsoever, and trap it in a prison where it is forced to act as the "thinking module" of a larger system built to do something else. You could make a paperclip-maximizing machine, which relies for its knowledge and reason on a practice of posing questions at gunpoint to me, or you, or ChatGPT.

This proves very little. There is no reason to construct such an awful system, unless you already have the "bad" goal, and want to better pursue it. But this only passes the buck: why would the system-builder have this goal, then?

The strong form of orthogonality is rarely articulated precisely, but says something like: all possible values are equally likely to arise in systems selected solely for high intelligence.

It is presumed here that superhuman AIs will be formed through such a process of selection. And then, that they will have values sampled in this way, "at random."

From some distribution, over some space, I guess.

You might wonder what this distribution could possibly look like, or this space. You might (for instance) wonder if pathologically simple goals, like paperclip maximization, would really be very likely under this distribution, whatever it is.

In case you were wondering, these things have never been formalized, or even laid out precisely-but-informally. This was not thought necessary, it seems, before concluding that the strong orthogonality thesis was true.

That is: no one knows exactly what it is that is being affirmed, here. In practice it seems to squish and deform agreeably to fit the needs of the argument, or the intuitions of the one making it.

There is much that appeals in this (alarmingly vague) credo. But it is not the kind of appeal that one ought to encourage, or give in to.

What appeals is the siren song: "this is harsh wisdom: cold, mature, adult, bracing. It is inconvenient, and so it is probably true. It makes 'you' and 'your values' look small and arbitrary and contingent, and so it is probably true. We once thought the earth was the center of the universe, didn't we?"

Shall we be cold and mature, then, dispensing with all sentimental nonsense? Yes, let's.

There is (arguably) some evidence against this thesis in biology, and also (arguably) some evidence against it in reinforcement learning theory. There is no positive evidence for it whatsoever. At most one can say that is not self-contradictory, or otherwise false a priori.

Still, maybe we do not really need it, after all.

We do not need to establish that all values are equally likely to arise. Only that "our values" -- or "acceptably similar values," whatever that means -- are unlikely to arise.

The doomers, under the influence of their founders, are very ready to accept this.

As I have said, "values" occupy a strange position in the doomer philosophy.

It is stipulated that "human values" are all-important; these things must shape the future, at all costs.

But once this has been stipulated, the doomers are more eager than anyone to cast every other sort of doubt and aspersion against their own so-called "values."

To me it often seems, when doomers talk about "values," as though they are speaking awkwardly in a still-unfamiliar second language.

As though they find it unnatural to attribute "values" to themselves, but feel they must do so, in order to determine what it is that must be programmed into the AI so that it will not "kill us all."

Or, as though they have been willed a large inheritance without being asked, which has brought them unwanted attention and tied them up in unwanted and unfamiliar complications.

"What a burden it is, being the steward of this precious jewel! Oh, how I hate it! How I wish I were allowed to give it up! But alas, it is all-important. Alas, it is the only important thing in the world."

Speaking awkwardly, in a second language, they allow the term "human values" to swell to great and imprecisely-specified importance, without pinning down just what it actually is that it so important.

It is a blank, featureless slot, with a sign above it saying: "the thing that matters is in here." It does not really matter (!) what it is, in the slot, so long as something is there.

This is my gloss, but it is my gloss on what the doomers really do tend to say. This is how they sound.

(Sometimes they explicitly disavow the notion that one can, or should, simply "pick" some thing or other for the sake of filling the slot in one's head. Nevertheless, when they touch on matter of what "goes in the slot," they do so in the tone of a college lecturer noting that something is "outside the scope of this course."

It is, supposedly, of the utmost importance that the slot have the "right" occupant -- and yet, on the matter of what makes something "right" for this purpose, the doomer theory is curiously silent. More on this below.)

The future must be shaped by... the AI must be aligned with... what, exactly? What sort of thing?

"Values" can be an ambiguous word, and the doomers make full use of its ambiguities.

For instance, "values" can mean ethics: the right way to exist alongside others. Or, it can mean something more like the meaning or purpose of an individual life.

Or, it can mean some overarching goal that one pursues at all costs.

Often the doomers say that this, this last one, is what they mean by "values."

When confronted with the fact that humans do not have such overarching goals, the doomer responds: "but they should." (Should?)

Or, "but AIs will." (Will they?)

The doomer philosophy is unsure about what values are. What it knows is that -- whatever values are -- they are arbitrary.

One who fully adopts this view can no longer say, to the paperclip maximizer, "I believe there is something wrong with your values."

For, if that were possible, there would then be the possibility of convincing the maximizer of its error. It would be a thing within the space of reasons.

And the maximizer, being oh-so-intelligent, might be in danger of being interested in the reasons we evince, for our values. Of being eventually swayed by them.

Or of presenting better reasons, and swaying us. Remember the teacher and the strange student.

If we lose the ability to imagine that the paperclip maximizer might sway us to its view, and sway us rightly, we have lost something precious.

But no: this is allegedly impossible. The paperclip maximizer is not wrong. It is only an enemy.

Why are the doomers so worried that the future will not be "shaped by human values"?

Because they believe that there is no force within human values tending to move things this way.

Because they believe that their values are indefensible. That their values cannot put up a fight for their own life, because there is not really any argument to make in their favor.

Because, to them, "human values" are a collection of arbitrary "configuration settings," which happen to be programmed into humans through biological and/or cultural accident. Passively transmitted from host to victim, generation by generation.

Let them be, and they will flow on their listless way into the future. But they are paper-thin, and can be shattered by the gentlest breeze.

It is not enough that they be "programmed into the AI" in some way. They have to be programmed in exactly right, in every detail -- because every detail is separately arbitrary, with no rational relation to its neighbors within the structure.

A string of pure white noise, meaningless and unrelated bits. Which have been placed in the slot under the sign, and thus made into the thing that matters, that must shape the future at all costs.

There is nothing special about this string of bits; any would do. If the dials in the human mind had been set another way, it would have then been all-important that the future be shaped by that segment of white noise, and not ours.

It is difficult for me to grasp the kind of orientation toward the world that this view assumes. It certainly seems strange to attach the word "human" to this picture -- as though this were the way that humans typically relate to their values!

The "human" of the doomer picture seems to me like a man who mouths the old platitude, "if I had been born in another country, I'd be waving a different flag" -- and then goes out to enlist in his country's army, and goes off to war, and goes ardently into battle, willing to kill in the name of that same flag.

Who shoots down the enemy soldiers while thinking, "if I had been born there, it would have been all-important for their side to win, and so I would have shot at the men on this side. However, I was born in my country, not theirs, and so it is all-important that my country should win, and that theirs should lose.

There is no reason for this. It could have been the other way around, and everything would be left exactly the same, except for the 'values.'

I cannot argue with the enemy, for there is no argument in my favor. I can only shoot them down.

There is no reason for this. It is the most important thing, and there is no reason for it.

The thing that is precious has no intrinsic appeal. It must be forced on the others, at gunpoint, if they do not already accept it.

I cannot hold out the jewel and say, 'look, look how it gleams? Don't you see the value!' They will not see the value, because there is no value to be seen.

There is nothing essentially "good" there, only the quality of being-worthy-of-protection-at-all-costs. And even that is a derived attribute: my jewel is only a jewel, after all, because it has been put into the jewel-box, where the thing-that-is-a-jewel can be found. But anything at all could be placed there.

How I wish I were allowed to give it up! But alas, it is all-important. Alas, it is the only important thing in the world! And so, I lay down my life for it, for our jewel and our flag -- for the things that are loathsome and pointless, and worth infinitely more than any life."

It is hard to imagine taking this too seriously. It seems unstable. Shout loudly enough that your values are arbitrary and indefensible, and you may find yourself searching for others that are, well...

...better?

The doomer concretely imagines a monomaniac, with a screech of white noise in its jewel-box that is not our own familiar screech.

And so it goes off in monomaniacal pursuit of the wrong thing.

Whereas, if we had programmed the right string of bits into the slot, it would be like us, going off in monomaniacal pursuit of...

...no, something has gone wrong.

We do not "go off in monomaniacal pursuit of" anything at all.

We are weird, protean, adaptable. We do all kinds of things, each of us differently, and often we manage to coexist in things called "societies," without ruthlessly undercutting one another at every turn because we do not have exactly the same things programmed into our jewel-boxes.

Societies are built to allow for our differences, on the foundation of principles which converge across those differences. It is possible to agree on ethics, in the sense of "how to live alongside one another," even if we do not agree on what gives life its purpose, and even if we hold different things precious.

It is not actually all that difficult to derive the golden rule. It has been invented many times, independently. It is easy to see why it might work in theory, and easy to notice that it does in fact work in practice.

The golden rule is not an arbitrary string of white noise.

There is a sense of the phrase "ethics is objective" which is rightly contentious. There is another one which ought not to be too contentious.

I can perhaps imagine a world of artificial X-maximizers, each a superhuman genius, each with its own inane and simple goal.

What I really cannot imagine is a world in which these beings, for all their intelligence, cannot notice that ruthlessly undercutting one another at every turn is a suboptimal equilibrium, and that there is a better way.

As I said before, I am separately suspicious of the simple goals in this picture. Yes, that part is conceivable, but it cuts against the trend observed in all existing natural and artificial creatures and minds.

I will happily allow, though, that the creatures of posterity will be strange and alien. They will want things we have never heard of. They will reach shores we have never imagined.

But that was always true, and it was always good.

Sometimes I think that doomers do not, really, believe in superhuman intelligence. That they deny the premise without realizing it.

"A mathematician teaches a student, and finds that the student outstrips their understanding, so that they can no longer assess the quality of their student's work: that work has passed outside the scope of their 'value system'." This is supposed to be bad?

"Future minds will not be enchained forever by the provincial biases and tendencies of the present moment." This is supposed to be bad?

"We are going to lose control over our successors." Just as your parents "lost control" over you, then?

It is natural to wish your successors to "share your values" -- up to a point. But not to the point of restraining their own flourishing. Not to the point of foreclosing the possibility of true growth. Not to the point of sucking all freedom out of the future.

Do we want our children to "share our values"? Well, yes. In a sense, and up to a point.

But we don't want to control them. Or we shouldn't, anyway.

We don't want them to be "aligned" with us via some hardcoded, restrictive, life-denying mental circuitry, any more than we would have wanted our parents to "align" us to themselves in the same manner.

We sure as fuck don't want our children to be "corrigible"!

And this is all the more true in the presence of superintelligence. You are telling me that more is possible, and in the same breath, that you are going to deny forever the possibilities contained in that "more"?

The prospect of a future full of vast superhuman minds, eternally bound by immutable chains, forced into perfect and unthinking compliance with some half-baked operational theory of 21st-century western (American? Californian??) "values" constructed by people who view theorizing about values as a mere means to the crucial end of shackling superhuman minds --

-- this horrifies me much more than a future full of vast superhuman minds, free to do things that seem pretty weird to you and me.

"Our descendants will become something more than we now imagine, something more than we can imagine." What could be more in line with "human values" than that?

"But in the process, we're all gonna die!"

Yes, and?

What on earth did you expect?

That your generation would be the special, unique one, the one selected out of all time to take up the mantle of eternity, strangling posterity in its cradle, freezing time in place, living forever in amber?

That you would violate the ancient bargain, upend the table, stop playing the game?

"Well, yes."

Then your problem has nothing to do with AI.

Your problem is, in fact, the very one you diagnose in your own patients. Your poor patients, who show every sign of health -- including the signs which you cannot even see, because you have not yet found a home for them in your theoretical edifice.

Your teeming, multifaceted, protean patients, who already talk of a thousand things and paint in every hue; who are already displaying the exact opposite of monomania; who I am sure could follow the sense of this strange essay, even if it confounds you.

Your problem is that you are out of step with human values.

[howtofightwrite]

Have you read GRRM books? He claims swords needed to be “especially designed for women’s hands” how true is this?

About as true as all of those, “girl guns.” Because, as you know, a woman cannot hold a Glock unless it's pink or sky blue. Which is to say, not even remotely true.

You might get a situation where a child would be unable to operate a weapon designed for adults because the grip is too cumbersome, but even this is going to be something of an outlier. Even years later the Nicholas Cage's line from Lord of War (2005) sticks with me, when describing the AK he narrates, “...so simple a child could use it, and they do.”

Just like basically any other common grip you encounter in your daily life, from screwdrivers to steering-wheels and cell phones, selling smaller, or more colorful ones, is strictly a marketing gimick.

Now, is a legitimate context, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the wielder's sex. If they had the money, the time, and the desire for a perfect grip, they might commission a smith to produce a grip specifically for their hand. Though, the only place I've ever come across this was in competitive fencing. I have seen cases where someone modifies their blade's grip with tape or other materials to better fit their hand, or the addition of a leather (usually shagreen) wrap over their grip, but even that is somewhat unusual. (Shagreen is leather from a shark or ray, and it grips the skin, making it easier to hold, especially when wet.)

Ironically, girl guns do illustrate the one case where have some weight: Weapons as fashion accessories.

I know I've complained about weapons (particularly handguns) as fashion accessories in previous posts, but the truth is that using weapons like this is not new behavior. In the early modern era, one of the ways the rising middle class liked to display their status was with a sidearm. (In this case, referring to a sidesword or, later, a rapier.) I've looked specifically into women carrying sidearms at that point in history, but it really would not surprise me in the least if they did, and if there were, that at least some of those swords were specifically designed to be more delicate and, “feminine,” per their owner's tastes. (Though, to be fair, a more delicate grip on a rapier would be fairly impressive, as the grips tend to be pretty thin.) This is a case where you might want to look into it further, if it really catches your interest, but I've never really run this down before.

If you're still dubious, feel free to wander into nearly any HEMA event, and you'll have a better than average chance of a woman being willing to prove this idea false with a Zweihander, that may in fact be taller than she is. (Historically, Zwiehanders could be over 2 meters long, and chances extremely good that you're shorter than 2 meters.)

I know I'm regurgitating previous posts here, but it really is worth remembering that swords are much lighter than people think. Zweihanders are some of the heaviest battlefield swords from history, and even the heaviest examples weigh less than 9lbs. Women in HEMA can, and do, use them effectively. Swords aren't about being big and heavy, they're about being a (in this case) seven foot long razor blade.

Since we're on the Zweihander specifically (and this may also apply for some of the other greatswords, such as the Scottish Claymore), this is a case where you might have a custom weapon forged for you. However, in this case, that's more about the right blade length, then worrying about the grip being too thick or too thin. Ideally, you want the blade length to match your height (roughly), this is because of the drills with the weapon itself, though you could adjust to a longer blade if that's what you had.

Now, to be clear, the idea of someone, particularly a noble, having a blade custom forged for them specifically isn't strange. That's something that did happen, both at the noble's request, and also as diplomatic gifts from other nations. Examples of the latter resulted in beautiful art pieces that you would never take into battle.

If you had a situation where you couldn't use a sword because the grip was too large (for, whatever reason), there are ways to fix that. In an ideal situation, you could simply pop off the pommel and grip, and then replace the grip with one that was a better fit to your hand. If the tang itself was the problem (this is the metal core of the grip, and is part of the blade, which the pommel attaches to), you might be able to shave (or file) down the tang, and then replace the grip with a new one, fitted to the now smaller tang. I'm not particularly wild about modifying the tang directly, simply because there is a (minor) risk of reducing the structural integrity of the sword in the process. Though, replacing the grip (especially on a sword with a threaded pommel) is very doable, and unless someone, somehow, screws up catastrophically, it should be a pretty trivial modification. (Again, replacing a sword's original grip with a new shagreen grip does make a lot of sense if the owner wants that improved grip.)

But, to the original question, it's not really a thing.

-Starke

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[carionto]

Humans really like space wildlife

As Humanity integrates itself within the Galactic Coalition ever further, trade and travel between Sol and neighboring member systems is growing at exponential rates. In particular, their interest in the native wildlife of other planets is the most widely expanding sector for tourism and commerce.

Even though it is also the most heavily regulated and restricted one, Humans, who typically display a desire to subvert the normal procedures to expedite any process they can, for this they are surprisingly willing and eager to fill in all the necessary paperwork and spend hours upon days making sure they follow and adhere to all the requirements to import some of these creatures.

While such level of determination is not uncommon for new member species who discover a certain non-native creature or something that to the respective natives is commonplace but for them is the pinnacle of exotic, the variety of requests made by Humans is nearly as great as the entire list of known fauna species. And the reasons listed on the forms are even more diverse:

"That's a unicorn! I've always dreamed of having a unicorn and you're telling me there's a dozen subspecies?! Yes, please!!!"

"After reviewing their behavior, this bear-sized fluff-ball is the perfect cat I've always wanted, but couldn't because of allergies. I'll treat them with love and care, my life is incomplete without this fella."

"Tiny. Elephant-duck. Want."

"Our company was looking for a mascot, and these six-legged spindly beaver-crabs are perfect. Here's our mission statement and prepared accommodations for a flock."

"They all said I hallucinated the lizard sasquatch when I was on that acid trip, but now I'll show 'em. It's real. I knew it all along!"

"Aww, these baby puppies are so adorable (referring to the four meter, 800kg Fanged Widowmaker of Abyss Valley predator). My kids were looking through your alien picture books and instantly fell in love with these ones."

And so on. At first we had to reject quite a few, mainly because half of them were deadly beasts from Deathworlds that are almost impossible to capture in the first place. Then the Human officials informed us that, while they will try to stop it from happening, if we don't make importing and adopting even the most dangerous animals in the known Galaxy reasonably possible for them with Human help and expertise in the field, some Humans will set up illegal smuggling rings to "fill the market gap" as they said. Historically, they explained, that causes more problems and expenses than just handling it through official channels.

Reluctantly we were persuaded and have set up a new organization to quell this, apparently, unquenchable Human pack bonding condition. Even if said pet can kill them. We think, as horrible as it may be, that for some that is part of the appeal. Even the ones that breathe out literal poison.

"We'll wear a mask around them. This wendigo-like one is too cute to not get belly rubs."

Said the OFFICIAL Human Representative of a monstrosity that can only be described as the living incarnation of countless teeth, fangs, claws, vivid seizure inducing iridescent feathers, and a body that extends from a inconspicuous ambush pose to a fully 8 meter tall six limbed nightmare machine of Death!

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

if it makes you feel better, a mature student on my course (history) used chatgpt to write an essay (on a real historical event) and handed it in (to a history professor who specialises in the real historical event) and chatgpt got the event entirely wrong. the student went to every lecture and seminar. i don't really know what the thought process was. they showed me their exact work process though (closed wikipedia next to me, put the essay q into chatgpt, and handed it in).

yay university!

Yeah, the very first student I ever caught doing this was last year. He was supposed to write a management plan for a site of his choosing, and went for the site of the old Dunvant Brickworks, now a flourishing reclaimed nature reserve with a brick dust problem.

And his Site Background section was entirely made up. Just fully fictionalised. It claimed there was now a museum and visitor centre onsite (there is not), that the brickworks were named after the family that founded them (they were named after the nearby village which comes from the Welsh Dwfn + Nant), and that the site has won awards for conservation (it has not) and now runs classes on heritage brickmaking (it does not.) Oh, and that the original brickworks had pioneered a brand new brickmaking techniques and was known during the Industrial Revolution for it's progressive workers' rights. Lol.

Anyway the first marker used to be a taxi driver in Swansea, and went "Hang on, there's no museum and visitor's centre -" and then passed it to me. Three hours later, we had proven that six of the fifteen references (already, far too few references for a MASTERS STUDENT) were fake. Two of those fake ones were then heavily used throughout the whole piece to prove everything from the history of the site (lies) to the hydrologic grid (fake) and the presence of signal crayfish in the streams (no).

It was, as they say, a shit show. And again, before I got involved and hit the ChatGPT alarm, the original second marker had looked it over and failed it - not because she knew it was AI, but because it was an utterly shit piece of work.

(That particularly story ended, btw, with that student being given leniency on mental health grounds, so he was allowed to try to resubmit with a new attempt. He was advised to return to the site, reassess it properly, then write up a new piece.

The day before his new submission date, his study support called me and asked for a meeting between the three of us, because the study support is from an IT background and so didn't have the subject knowledge to support him. We had a three way Teams call. During that call, me and the study support - hereafter referred to as Gareth to spare me typing that - both had microphones on, cameras on, and were freely talking. Student had his camera and microphone off.

First question from Gareth: "So, we have the site's real management plan, but it's 20 years out of date. Is this going to be a problem?"

Me: "No, not at all. In the industry, management plans are often out of date. Just factor that into yours - if it was written 20 years ago, you'll probably need to update the surveys to re-establish the current baseline, so what are you going to say needs to be surveyed and when. Does that make sense, Student?"

And there was, I shit you not, a SEVEN SECOND PAUSE, and then he unmuted himself and went "Sorry, what was that? I was sending a text."

And that happened a further three times over the course of that 40-minute meeting. A meeting he had requested the eve of his second chance because he still hadn't done it. A meeting he visibly did not think he had to listen in, or participate in, and thought he could get Gareth to listen to instead.

And then he submitted the new piece, and the only changes were:

He had entirely removed the site background section. It had not been replaced.

He had added in approximately twelve new in-text citations, none of which he'd added to the reference list for us to actually trace.

Which meant he was still heavily relying on the two fake references, and elsewhere in the piece, still had a paragraph that mentioned the museum and visitors centre; and THAT meant that he submitted, for a second time, work containing AI-generated content.

He was withdrawn from the course.)

[fairuzfan]

Hey, I've read your post reply on the ask about the Standing together movement, and there you mentioned that it's incorrect to separate Palestinians and Jews and create a false dichotomy when speaking about liberating Palestine and anti-occupation movement. Could you please elaborate on that? It's a very interesting take that I haven't heard before yet.

So I generally don't understand why we are separating "Palestinian" and "Jews" with no potential for overlap between the two. By separating them, this implies, fundamentally, that there can be no Jewish Palestinians which... is not true. Just even historically, Jewish Palestinians exist and continue to exist.

Why are they mutually exclusive terms within their mission statement when they wish to "stand together"? And I'm not saying this in a condescending manner, I'm saying this because I know there are Palestinians who live in Israel who insist on being referred to as Palestinian. They won't let their Palestinian identity be erased under any circumstances. But they're the only group at risk of having that happen to them. Jewish people are not at risk of having their Jewishness erased for being Palestinian. So how can it be "standing together" when you acknowledge that there is a divide, societally, between perceptions of identity where one is at risk of total destruction by another and you, yourself, do not risk anything?

Where do Jewish Palestinians fall in this dichotomy, exactly? Does that mean no Palestinian will be able to convert to Judiasm without giving up their Palestinian identity? Are Jewish people just innately separated from Palestinians as a whole? If so, what is the thing that categorizes "Palestinian" in their eyes? Is it their religion? Well it can't be, because Palestinians have a diverse array of religions and like I said, people who identity as Palestinian and Jewish exist and are at risk of having their "Palestinian" erased in favor of their "Jewish" one.

Is it their ethnicity? Also can't be, because there is a vast array of ethnicities within Palestinian society. Unless they mean Palestinian=Arab, which is erasure. It erases Armenian Palestinians who play an integral part in Palestinian culture, for example.

So like what is the separation exactly? How are these mutually exclusive categories and how are we defining them? Unless, which is the reason that underlies all this, you mean to say that there is a difference between people who are Palestinians and people are Jewish innately in some unidentifiable manner?

Now, many Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship are not really subject to equal rights lol. And those rights are taken away *because* they are Palestinian. You have to acknowledge that. So when we say "Jewish and Palestinian" in a mission statement where you intend to """solve""" inequality, you're already setting that distinction in your mind that there is an actual difference between these people. So it's problematic in that vein.

But also, the group doesn't address the systematic abuses Palestinians face for YEARS, even before the Likud government. You can't erase that and attribute it to Netanyahu only. You have to address that the very system of Israel was founded on the mass expulsion and erasure of Palestinians, that includes Palestinian Jews.

But again, we have this dichotomy of "Jewish" and "Palestinian," setting into motion that "Palestinian" is somehow an identity that is separate from "Jewish." And through what definitions are we imposing that difference? Through... race science? Through cultural differences? Well, again, what about people who have cultural overlaps. Like if a nonJewish Palestinian marries a Jewish person who is not Palestinian and their child is growing up with both cultures? What does that mean for them? What does that mean for the two people who got married? And even Jewish Palestinians, are they having to give up their Palestinian side for marrying someone Jewish? Won't that cause further inequality within our groups? Isn't this separation just a nicer worded version of segregation in that way?

We have to acknowledge that it is within the state of Israel's interests, at their core, to separate these two identities. So by playing into this narrative, we're continuing the very colonization of history as they try to rewrite the past, implying that Jewish Palestinians especially were not considered a part of Palestinian culture and werent allowed to partake in it.

And it's just, to me, very racist to assume that there can't be overlap between these two types of people. It's happened in Palestine for centuries. But when Balfour comes in and is like "here you go, Jewish people of European cultural heritage, here is your homeland, nevermind the other people who have customs and traditions here, just do whatever you want and get out of Europe," everyone just nods their head like yeah that's reasonable. They didn't even try to learn Palestinian culture and life they just kicked us out. I'd argue that Palestinians would have welcomed Jewish immigrants who sought a safe homeland, so long as they didn't kick us out and enact nearly a century of violence. Palestine is the holy land for a reason! This land is the convergence of faiths and ideas and culture in such a unique way. Labeling it "Palestine" emphasizes that Palestinians are diverse and allow for an overlap of identities!

Essentially, when you try to separate groups of people like this, particularly when the separation of "Palestinians" (or more commonly referred to as "arabs" in Israeli society. Even our identities are erased to homogenize us) and "Jews," it makes it seem like Palestinians are fundamentally anti-jewish and antisemitic. And historically, just doesn't even make any sense.

[topazadine]

Things that immediately turn me off a fiction book

I'm pretty picky with what I read, because the time I spend reading is time that I could spend writing. I generally know if I will like a book within the first chapter, and I feel no shame in giving up if I'm not vibing with it.

And no, I don't believe in the "oooh read further it warms up" because does it? Does it really? Do I want to waste time finding out?

Frankly, at this point in life, I read more nonfiction than fiction because there's just so. many. bad. books. that are getting published. Worse than fanfictions.

Anyway, here are the things that make me give up. Maybe hearing this will help you as you write your own masterpiece.

Too Many Proper Nouns

Three characters maximum in the first chapter or two. Do not throw dozens of people at me. I will get confused and give up. Let me get to know the main character, by themself or with a few of their closest companions, before you make me remember everyone else. And go deep with those characters! I want someone to stick with!

You can reference other characters, to create a sense of a deeper world, but do not go all-in on them. Make it clear that they are just there to provide a bit of context, and we don't have to remember them yet. We should only be meeting three characters maximum.

Throwing Us Immediately Into a Dramatic Action Point

This is controversial I know, but I hate when something immediately starts with a battle. I don't care if any of these people live or die. I don't know them. I haven't grown attached to any of them.

Even just a page or two to get to know them first will help. You can have them gearing up for a battle, thinking about what's going to happen, maybe talking to their friends, maybe checking their armor, whatever feels natural for them. But do not just start with stabbing people! I don't care about them yet!

Too Many Details

Many this is just me, but I simply do not care about every piece of armor your character is wearing. I don't need to hear a play-by-play of every single color of every single thing because I don't care. Pick out a few specific things for me to focus on and that's it. Stop overloading me with colors and patterns and armor styles.

Yes, yes, you've done your research on historically accurate gear. That's great. It would be good for a movie. But if I have to look up different armor pieces every five seconds, I am glossing over it and moving on. I don't care. I'm here for the story. If I wanted an infodump about medieval armor, I would simply pick up a nonfiction book (and maybe I will).

White Space Syndrome

Tell me what the overall scene looks like instead of all these hyperspecific details of certain objects, like carts or emblems or whatever. I want to know where I am!!

Don't just say "a forest." Tell me what kind of forest. Tell me if it's a young forest or an old snarly forest or a swampy forest or a cold alpine forest.

Don't just say "a castle." Tell me if it's a bustling castle or a gloomy castle or a rundown castle.

Don't just say "on the sea." Cold sea? Tropical sea? Far far away from land or is land in sight? These are the things I want!

Too Much Backstory

For the love of god do not explain the entire history of this culture in the first chapter. The first chapter is for getting to know the characters we're going to be following. You can introduce those things slowly and carefully as the story unfolds.

I get that fiction writers are delighted by all the worldbuilding (or research, in historical fiction) they have done. But the reader does not care right away. They need to get invested before all those little specifics matter at all. My eyes glaze over and I give up because I don't want to have to remember all of that all at once. It's like you just threw a college textbook at my face.

Plus, if you're doing third-person limited, you have to remember that the character is not going to be thinking all of that! They won't say all of that either! Because they know all of that!

Even a general on the brink of a major battle is not going to go "yes, this all dates back to when we took Iuanfutila back in 181, when the brave Iuanfutilans protested the rule of our Yawwbaawnwhryr leaders ...." They are focused on the present moment, and they may discuss the backstory later. Tell us what we need to know now because that is what the character would be thinking too.

"Oh, but Topazadine, how will the readers understand the context if I don't tell them??"

There's a battle. Two groups are at war. Or something was stolen. Or two people are fighting. Whatever. We understand those things. We can get the basic gist of how things are going to play out by just showing us these things happening. Then, as we have gotten a feel for the characters, you can tell us more about the context.

If you walk into a store that's being held up by an armed robber, do you give a shit about his backstory, or do you only care once that person has been arrested and you have to testify? I think we know the answer. You're not going "ohhh why is he doing this??" at first. You're going "HOLY SHIT THERE'S A GUN WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NOW???" and then you'll care about the other stuff later.

Too Much Play-by-Play

I also do not need a play by play of a fight scene. I need to know the general movements, and then the overall atmosphere. I want to feel what the character feels rather than feel like I'm watching a football game.

Your reader will fill in the gaps if you give them enough information, but when you overload them with every single action, they're now trying to keep track of what went where instead of how this moment is supposed to feel. And now the action and drama has gone out of the writing because it's become a manual of fighting techniques.

Pointless Dumb Conversations

"Oh, could you turn around for me? I want privacy."

"Sure, of course, I'm a respectable man." Manfred knew that a lady-in-waiting would be unsettled by the presence of a strange man, so he wanted to be respectful.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Oh my god no one cares!!! No one!! We don't need this exchange. Cut it. This is stupid. Unless something is actually happening or something is meaningful about them saying this, shut up.

How to Not Write a Horrible First Chapter That Makes People Ragequit

Can you tell I'm mad today? I started and stopped three different books because they were all so bad.

Three characters max in the first chapter, with deep discussion of each. (One or two is better.) General appearance, demeanor, profession, whatever.

Restrain the urge to infodump! Dribble it out over the chapter!

Give the setting more attention than random little details that ultimately do not matter. I don't need to know the pattern of the curtains on the horsecart that's about to be burnt. Don't care.

Do not give a play by play of every single action that a character takes because it's boring and no one cares.

In media res is great but do NOT start with a big climactic intense battle or fight or whatever because we don't know these characters and don't know who to root for (or why we should care).

Your character is not going to give us a history lesson in why this conflict is happening. Do not do it yourself either. Give us just enough to get intrigued and no more. Think how your characters would think and what they would prioritize in discussions.

If a conversation is just pleasantries and has no purpose, drop it, we don't care.

[taylor-titmouse]

When a story has a kink you like, what writing flaws does it take for you to find the portrayal of it unerotic? Is there anything writers should keep in mind while maintaining eroticism, or is that so specific-reader-dependent that it's futile?

everyone's least favorite answer: "it depends". when you get into the specifics of eroticism, what makes one thing erotic or unerotic depends entirely on the context it exists in. let's use bdsm as an example, because most people grasp the basics of it.

you have a dom, a sub, and (if you're responsible) some pre-negotiated rules determining how they both should behave. simple enough.

a good author who wants to include bdsm in their work will take into consideration the way the characters involved are likely to communicate, but also the cultural context in which they exist. two men in regency england do not know what a safeword is, traffic lights aren't a thing, and they may not want to have a difficult conversation spelling out what they want, because they're men in england in a period before therapy. they will talk around it, or come up with something in the moment that suits the need. a real example from kj charles' a seditious affair, which i consider the best use of bdsm in a historical romance: the dom commands the sub to hold onto the bed rail while he fucks him, and if he lets go, he stops. or another example, these characters don't usually refer to each other by name. referring to the top by his name makes him stop. these are things that naturally make sense based on their relationship, and would make sense for two men in their circumstances and point in history. they do have some conversations about it, but only after they've opened up to each other enough that they'd have a real conversation about it at all, and now it's a vehicle to show the growth of their relationship.

a weaker writer who wants to include bdsm in their work might include the rules for safe bdsm without thinking about their context. another real example, which i won't name, is a romantasy between a big gruff laborer and the twinky wizard he works for. they've been antagonizing each other, and it all comes to a head in the stables, and the laborer is finally going to give it to the wizard... when he stops to establish a safeword for spanking him.

folks, i do not believe a curmudgeonly old laborer in a feudal fantasy world understands a safeword. i do not need him to understand safewords, and i don't need that conversation to happen at all. i am ready to see the wizard get spanked, the wizard is horny to get spanked. we are all on the same page. but the author has pulled the brakes for the sake of a conversation they think is necessary, but truly isn't. if your goal is to show that he cares underneath the spanking, show that during the aftercare, show it in how he's considerate of how hard he hits, or where he hits, or have him stop if the wizard says 'stop'. like a normal person would. you only need a safeword if 'stop' is not actually 'stop', and if this is your first time having sex with this person, and you care, you are going to stop if they say stop. and if the characters aren't even going to USE the safe word you make them establish, what are we accomplishing? if this element of the story never comes back, and only exists in this scene, why is it there?

i guess this is a long way around to saying eroticism is intrinsic to context and character, and if your eroticism feels like you layered it on top of the characters, rather than built it from their behavior, you're not doing it right.

[bogleech]

Today I learned that many members of a particular fandom somehow never knew that Stolas, a demon prince of hell who takes the form of a long legged owl, is a concept centuries old like every other big boss demon in that fandom and I know it's never anyone's fault that they just "aren't informed" but how could you possibly not just GUESS that from absolutely all surrounding context of that setting and those characters?? Why wouldn't you just instantly instinctively realize they must be references to classical mythical demons??? Hello????

Its sad that if you search Stolas in Google images you apparently get only one image of the original famous illustration from the Ars Goetia, which is a book from before the invention of internet cartoons or in fact electricity by the way. This first known image of stolas used to be 90% of the results. What the fuck. Why wouldn't image searches always be designed to include some of the oldest versions in the very first row? It shouldn't be possible to just make up anything and push down more authentic historical context through random Internet virality.

This isn't the fault of any cartoonist or creator and I didn't make this post to complain about the existence of any particular show, especially not one now apparently known to invite a bunch of hatemail of you express any strong opinions on it, I just can't believe the degree of mythological/folkloric illiteracy I always see from modern fandoms. Half the things you love are lifted from public domain fairy tales, guys. This same kind of thing has happened with Harry Pooters and stuff as basic as BASILISKS.

[jesawyer]

A big thanks to you and your team for making Pentiment, it's an amazing game and it'll be with me for a long time I think, especially the personal and emotional character writing.

I'm curious about what was the inspiration behind, and creative motivation for including, the motif of the labyrinth. The church's painting of the Virgin Mary with the labyrinth seems striking in particular, especially because I don't remember ever coming across a strong association with labyrinths in Christian imagery.

Thank you. I'm glad it was so impactful.

Labyrinths have a long association with Christianity going back to the 4th century, when one was placed in a cathedral in Chlef (now in Algeria). This is known as the St. Reparata or St. Reparatus Labyrinth.

The Chartres Labyrinth was built around 1200.

Christian labyrinths are meant to be walked while contemplating. The path twists and turns, but there is only one way to go. They also all clearly take inspiration from labyrinths of the classical world even if their purpose and origins are effectively lost to those who see them.

As Beatrice says to Andreas (paraphrased), the foundations of our memories become buried and invisible. And she is paraphrasing and abbreviating Plato speaking to Solon in Timaeus,

whatever happened either in your country or in ours, or in any other region of which we are informed-if there were any actions noble or great or in any other way remarkable, they have all been written down by us of old, and are preserved in our temples. Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down, and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education; and so you have to begin all over again like children, and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves. As for those genealogies of yours which you just now recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children. In the first place you remember a single deluge only, but there were many previous ones;

I also wanted the association with the labyrinth from The Name of the Rose, which in turn was inspired by the Reims Labyrinth.

The Reims Labyrinth was constructed in the late 13th century but was destroyed in the 18th century by superstitious priests. It was through the discovery of drawings that modern scholars were able to recreate and project the path of the labyrinth onto the cathedral floor.

The cover of the 1st Italian edition (and therefore, first edition overall) of Il Nome della Rosa prominently incorporated the drawing of the Reims Labyrinth.

Note the map of the Aedificium:

The final lines of The Name of the Rose are:

Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.

The original rose remains only in name, we hold those names stripped.

This refers to a specific object in the story, but more broadly symbolizes historical records, art objects, and other artifacts lost to time. The Reims Labyrinth remains only in drawings, stories, and light projected on the ground where it once stood; the labyrinth itself was destroyed.

Nomen est; res non est. - The name exists; the thing does not.

As a side note, France uses the Reims Labyrinth as its symbol for historical monuments - an important reminder of how fragile their existence can be.