#ask number 133

[omni-scient-pan-da]

Hello!! I saw your tags on one of my posts, I figured I'd send you an ask with my reply since I realized I had quite a lot to say XD

I definitely agree with the idea that Atsushi is connected to The Book somehow. 

Actually, you suggesting that Atsushi was ‘made by The Book’ is something I find particularly interesting. I personally have a theory that Sigma is The Book transformed into a human form, and what you said about Atsushi fits so incredibly well with the Sigma theory in my little gremlin brain.

(I saw in one of your posts you aren’t caught up with the manga, so I’ll keep this vague to avoid spoilers)

So far, Atsushi and Sigma have been shown to have very similar personalities. With all of the mysteries surrounding Sigma in the series, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn he and Atsushi may be more connected to one another than we have been led to believe thus far. 

So considering their seemingly important connection to each other, plus my thoughts regarding Sigma, your idea that Atsushi was made by, or is in some way a figment of The Book, sounds very plausible to me and the implications of it are driving me wild!!!

The idea that Atsushi himself has used The Book in the past, and was actually the one who created abilities (I saw you talk about this in one of your posts) is also very interesting to me!

I’d say as far as probability goes, Atsushi being the one to create abilities is not unlikely. I know the manga has mentioned abilities have been around for quite a long time (at least a few hundred years), but I’ve been rather skeptical myself about whether or not I believe that. 

To me, abilities feel a lot more ‘new’ in the bsd universe than the provided history wants us to believe. 

I personally think that if The Book is powerful enough to conjure up a floating casino, and implant eight years worth of memories of that casino into every person's mind, then it is also entirely possible that abilities have only been around for 10 or so years, and all info negating that is the result of 'false memories'. 

Atsushi being the one to write abilities into existence would make the most narrative sense, as he is the main character and should be at the centre of all of this if possible. It would also explain why his ability is considered to be so powerful. 

As for my thoughts on how Atsushi creating abilities would tie into him being the one to find The Book, I’d say it’s hard to come up with any substantial theories at this point, considering how little we know about The Book.

But something that could be interesting would be a reveal that either Atsushi himself, or his tiger, is actually a human/tiger embodiment of one of The Book’s pages. This reveal would explain why Atsushi’s tiger has regenerative abilities, as one of the properties of The Book itself is that it is unable to be destroyed by abilities. 

If this is true, and Atsushi’s tiger is a page from The Book, and is thus connected to The Book himself, then his finding of The Book could result from a natural, unconscious, yearning to rejoin the page he unknowingly harbours to the rest of The Book.

And, this would tie in nicely to my theory on Sigma being The Book, as Atsushi and him shared that moment of connection during the Sky Casino arc when Atsushi saved Sigma from falling.

Also, interesting thing there- We learn that Sigma used his ability on Atsushi right before he fell to disclose the location of the page to Atsushi. But we never actually see Sigma use his ability. So, what is he never used his ability at all? What if the unconscious part of Sigma that is The Book, connected in a sense to the unconscious part of Atsushi that is a page from The Book, and the information was passed between them through the connection they share via The Book? And not Sigma’s ability?

Overall your ideas on Atsushi and his ties to the creation of abilities are super interesting to me! And thank you for the kind words you left on my post, I'm glad you enjoyed my theory on Ango!! :)

I hope my thoughts here read as coherent, though I proofread this multiple times I wrote this rather late so apologies if I don't make sense!! Also sorry for the length, I have a tendency to ramble.

No need to apologize!! This is all super well thought out and I loved hearing your take on it!! Also thank you for keeping it vauge, I have since almost caught up to the manga now? I've read all the way through Chapter 99, which is the last chapter published in Volume 22, since I prefer to read the physical manga copies rather than the version published online

I never thought about how the tiger regenerates and the book can't be destroyed... I always thought it was interesting that Atsushi was able to heal fast because of his tiger abilities? Because as far as I'm aware, there's no correlation between healing and tigers? (Unlike say... Healing and snakes, for example, with snake oil being marketed as a fake cure all, or there being two snakes around the caduceus which is somehow associated with health, healing and Apollo even though it's Hermes's staff, although both of these correlations tend to be more white/European based correlations with mythology, and so I had assumed that maybe tigers were related to health or healing in Japanese culture or mythology and my euro-centric education hadn't included it)

Atsushi and his ability being created by the book makes a lot more sense to me if the book is the reason he has regenerative abilities rather than the tiger then, and I hadn't even thought of that before you mentioned it

I also think it would be super interesting if Sigma was the book? I do think that it's interesting how Sigma could be created from nothing, with no memories of the past, like if the book is all powerful then someone must have purposefully created him with no memories? And if so for what purpose? Why would creating a fully grown adult man with no backstory be useful to someone? Him being an actual human representation of the book would explain a lot and I think you make really good points there

Additionally, the lack of explanation about where special abilities come from has been on my mind since the very beginning of the manga amxnxkskk and as I mentioned in one of my posts before, it could be because I'm used to My Hero Academia, where they explain where quirks come from at the beginning of every episode, but the lack of explanation about their origin, and also the way that Atsushi just... Never knew about the fact that he had an ability makes me suspicious about abilities' origins

Also something that just occurred to me to further back up the idea that abilities were created recently is the fact that Atsushi has never once asked the members of the ADA how they realized they had abilities? If it was a common occurrence for people to not know they have abilities until something happens, like how Atsushi didn't know he had the weretiger ability until Dazai pointed it out, I would think that Atsushi would have asked the other members of the ADA what sparked their realization that they had abilities, the same way he starts asking them what they did before they joined the ADA

Granted, this could be something brought up in the light novels, and I just haven't read them, or from a Doylist perspective maybe it wasn't brought up because it wasn't relevant to the plot (whereas asking about previous occupations is relevant to the plot because it gives a reason to reveal that Dazai used to be in the Mafia kinda thing) but taking a Watsonian approach to why it wasn't included in the main manga at least, I think Atsushi knows that it's uncommon to realize you have an ability 18 years after you've had it

Which then begs the question to the reader... How do they just know they have an ability?

If abilities were created recently and merely implanted false memories of people having had them for a while, it would make sense that the characters have just "always known" they've had an ability because the book would have implanted that knowledge in their heads and no one would have thought anything of it, and if Atsushi's ability was created separately in a way that makes him/his ability different than the others, it would explain how he's the only one who wasn't born with the knowledge that he had a special ability

Anyways I don't think I really had too much more too add to this post, I'm mostly just elaborating on ideas that have already been stated but these were just a few more things that occured to me to back up a few more of these points because it's something that's been scratching at the back of my head this entire time skxnakskwkw

Thank you so much for your ask! I really enjoyed it and I'm interested to see where the manga goes from here!!

[txttletale]

Saw a tweet that said something around:

"cannot emphasize enough how horrid chatgpt is, y'all. it's depleting our global power & water supply, stopping us from thinking or writing critically, plagiarizing human artists. today's students are worried they won't have jobs because of AI tools. this isn't a world we deserve"

I've seen some of your AI posts and they seem nuanced, but how would you respond do this? Cause it seems fairly-on point and like the crux of most worries. Sorry if this is a troublesome ask, just trying to learn so any input would be appreciated.

i would simply respond that almost none of that is true.

'depleting the global power and water supply'

something i've seen making the roudns on tumblr is that chatgpt queries use 3 watt-hours per query. wow, that sounds like a lot, especially with all the articles emphasizing that this is ten times as much as google search. let's check some other very common power uses:

running a microwave for ten minutes is 133 watt-hours

gaming on your ps5 for an hour is 200 watt-hours

watching an hour of netflix is 800 watt-hours

and those are just domestic consumer electricty uses!

a single streetlight's typical operation 1.2 kilowatt-hours a day (or 1200 watt-hours)

a digital billboard being on for an hour is 4.7 kilowatt-hours (or 4700 watt-hours)

i think i've proved my point, so let's move on to the bigger picture: there are estimates that AI is going to cause datacenters to double or even triple in power consumption in the next year or two! damn that sounds scary. hey, how significant as a percentage of global power consumption are datecenters?

1-1.5%.

ah. well. nevertheless!

what about that water? yeah, datacenters use a lot of water for cooling. 1.7 billion gallons (microsoft's usage figure for 2021) is a lot of water! of course, when you look at those huge and scary numbers, there's some important context missing. it's not like that water is shipped to venus: some of it is evaporated and the rest is generally recycled in cooling towers. also, not all of the water used is potable--some datacenters cool themselves with filtered wastewater.

most importantly, this number is for all data centers. there's no good way to separate the 'AI' out for that, except to make educated guesses based on power consumption and percentage changes. that water figure isn't all attributable to AI, plenty of it is necessary to simply run regular web servers.

but sure, just taking that number in isolation, i think we can all broadly agree that it's bad that, for example, people are being asked to reduce their household water usage while google waltzes in and takes billions of gallons from those same public reservoirs.

but again, let's put this in perspective: in 2017, coca cola used 289 billion liters of water--that's 7 billion gallons! bayer (formerly monsanto) in 2018 used 124 million cubic meters--that's 32 billion gallons!

so, like. yeah, AI uses electricity, and water, to do a bunch of stuff that is basically silly and frivolous, and that is broadly speaking, as someone who likes living on a planet that is less than 30% on fire, bad. but if you look at the overall numbers involved it is a miniscule drop in the ocean! it is a functional irrelevance! it is not in any way 'depleting' anything!

'stopping us from thinking or writing critically'

this is the same old reactionary canard we hear over and over again in different forms. when was this mythic golden age when everyone was thinking and writing critically? surely we have all heard these same complaints about tiktok, about phones, about the internet itself? if we had been around a few hundred years earlier, we could have heard that "The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth."

it is a reactionary narrative of societal degeneration with no basis in anything. yes, it is very funny that laywers have lost the bar for trusting chatgpt to cite cases for them. but if you think that chatgpt somehow prevented them from thinking critically about its output, you're accusing the tail of wagging the dog.

nobody who says shit like "oh wow chatgpt can write every novel and movie now. yiou can just ask chatgpt to give you opinions and ideas and then use them its so great" was, like, sitting in the symposium debating the nature of the sublime before chatgpt released. there is no 'decay', there is no 'decline'. you should be suspicious of those narratives wherever you see them, especially if you are inclined to agree!

plagiarizing human artists

nah. i've been over this ad infinitum--nothing 'AI art' does could be considered plagiarism without a definition so preposterously expansive that it would curtail huge swathes of human creative expression.

AI art models do not contain or reproduce any images. the result of them being trained on images is a very very complex statistical model that contains a lot of large-scale statistical data about all those images put together (and no data about any of those individual images).

to draw a very tortured comparison, imagine you had a great idea for how to make the next Great American Painting. you loaded up a big file of every norman rockwell painting, and you made a gigantic excel spreadsheet. in this spreadsheet you noticed how regularly elements recurred: in each cell you would have something like "naturalistic lighting" or "sexually unawakened farmers" and the % of times it appears in his paintings. from this, you then drew links between these cells--what % of paintings containing sexually unawakened farmers also contained naturalistic lighting? what % also contained a white guy?

then, if you told someone else with moderately competent skill at painting to use your excel spreadsheet to generate a Great American Painting, you would likely end up with something that is recognizably similar to a Norman Rockwell painting: but any charge of 'plagiarism' would be absolutely fucking absurd!

this is a gross oversimplification, of course, but it is much closer to how AI art works than the 'collage machine' description most people who are all het up about plagiarism talk about--and if it were a collage machine, it would still not be plagiarising because collages aren't plagiarism.

(for a better and smarter explanation of the process from soneone who actually understands it check out this great twitter thread by @reachartwork)

today's students are worried they won't have jobs because of AI tools

i mean, this is true! AI tools are definitely going to destroy livelihoods. they will increase productivty for skilled writers and artists who learn to use them, which will immiserate those jobs--they will outright replace a lot of artists and writers for whom quality is not actually important to the work they do (this has already essentially happened to the SEO slop website industry and is in the process of happening to stock images).

jobs in, for example, product support are being cut for chatgpt. and that sucks for everyone involved. but this isn't some unique evil of chatgpt or machine learning, this is just the effect that technological innovation has on industries under capitalism!

there are plenty of innovations that wiped out other job sectors overnight. the camera was disastrous for portrait artists. the spinning jenny was famously disastrous for the hand-textile workers from which the luddites drew their ranks. retail work was hit hard by self-checkout machines. this is the shape of every single innovation that can increase productivity, as marx explains in wage labour and capital:

“The greater division of labour enables one labourer to accomplish the work of five, 10, or 20 labourers; it therefore increases competition among the labourers fivefold, tenfold, or twentyfold. The labourers compete not only by selling themselves one cheaper than the other, but also by one doing the work of five, 10, or 20; and they are forced to compete in this manner by the division of labour, which is introduced and steadily improved by capital. Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour increases, is the labour simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors press upon him from all sides. Moreover, it must be remembered that the more simple, the more easily learned the work is, so much the less is its cost to production, the expense of its acquisition, and so much the lower must the wages sink – for, like the price of any other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production. Therefore, in the same manner in which labour becomes more unsatisfactory, more repulsive, do competition increase and wages decrease”

this is the process by which every technological advancement is used to increase the domination of the owning class over the working class. not due to some inherent flaw or malice of the technology itself, but due to the material realtions of production.

so again the overarching point is that none of this is uniquely symptomatic of AI art or whatever ever most recent technological innovation. it is symptomatic of capitalism. we remember the luddites primarily for failing and not accomplishing anything of meaning.

if you think it's bad that this new technology is being used with no consideration for the planet, for social good, for the flourishing of human beings, then i agree with you! but then your problem shouldn't be with the technology--it should be with the economic system under which its use is controlled and dictated by the bourgeoisie.

[accessible-tumbling]

So we go through and reblog fundraisers for people in Gaza that we receive in the inbox, but with the number of asks we get, we've gotten really behind on going through them. So I'm going to make some posts linking to a bunch of the ones we've been sent in the past couple of months.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

@aiamaher: [link] Vetted by association.

@hadiasuudb: [link] #65 on @/gazavetters list.

@ghadahalmadhoun7: [link] #4 on @/gaza-evacuation-funds list.

@abedallhferwanagaza: [link] #60 on @/gazavetters list.

@steadydreamenthusiast: [link] #133 on @/gazavetters list.

@yusra-maryam58: [link] Post discussing verification by association.

@twins-zain-yazan: [link] #22 on @/gazavetters list.

@ahmed79ss: [link] Post discussing verification.

[deerspherestudios]

Hello dears! I am Ali and I am asking you to support my campaign to help me achieve my goal. I desperately need your support now to help my family survive and be safe. Gaza is a very dangerous place both in terms of living and lives. I need your financial support to enable me to get the basic needs of my family until the Rafah crossing is reopened to transport my family to safety and peace. Please help a family survive through your small donations or through your contributions to others. Thank you so much for standing by those in

😭🇵🇸 need.https://gofund.me/36240bc1

Link to donate is HERE ! 🍉Listed at #133 on GazaVetters list. 🇵🇸 At the time I'm writing they're currently at €2,919 / €100,000.

Help the numbers keep going if you can afford it! Share if you can't!

[sugar-grigri]

Noticed that in Part 2 there's notable chapters named after sounds... and the Ear Devil is the important one in these recent chapters. It's like shutting out the world by erasing them and everyone else trying to say "no, you have to listen and be present with us"

I think that if we interpret everything a little more meta, the disappearance of the ears and hearing, or the perception of noise, is a pretty clear warning to the reader, it's even quite mocking. 

You can see that people forget the principle of a telephone without questioning the potential usefulness of the object they had in their hands. Moving on from the meta, it's a vital piece of information about Chainsaw Man's power. It's a cascading oversight. If you forget the Second World War, then you'll forget the Nazis, and maybe even fascism in general. 

But above all, I think there are huge concepts in Chainsaw Man that we don't question, or even forget. It's not our general understanding of the work that's being criticised, it's the fact that, once again, we're not paying attention to the whole of a chapter that's being presented to us. The noise, the background, the muted reactions, the breakdown, the title, these are all pieces of information, and it's they that inform us, so it's our senses as readers. The more Fujimoto seems to support something, the more you have to question him. It's not insignificant that this criticism is made through Pochita, who is also Fujimoto's mascot.

Pochita could eat ears and we'd end up not questioning them, just like all those people, we're no better. It's the same thing with Fujimoto, he does a lot of things in the background, in innuendo, but we don't perceive anything. 

I think the chapter where there's an awful lot going on in the background without paying attention in part 2 is, for example, chapter 156. Did you pay attention to any of that ?

But......?

More ? Have you been trying to help Denji again ? And Denji didn't break the rules, the deal had been broken by Barem who went after his family.

No, you didn't, Denji fainted on his own, you didn't give him that injection, or at least it didn't make him fall asleep. It's probably the other way round.

How could Denji and Pochita have felt his legs being cut off? Because they could hear. And how could they hear ? That was the main question we had to ask ourselves, given the title of the chapter.

Yet people concluded that Yoshida was still a piece of shit, a dog subservient to the public hunters. So a mole does exist, given the leak of information about the PS plans. And how did Asa and Fami find out about Denji's ultra-secret position?

You can see the phone. But you don't question its purpose. What's the phone for? And what is the point of all these contradictions?

Understand the implications of everything and don't forget anything, Chainsaw Man is a constant surprise. We've missed something. Part 2 is nothing more than Fujimoto discussing his work with his fans. Denji's existential crises? Artistic crises about the essence of the work, which is Chainsaw Man. Hear the noise all the way through.

This last panel comes from chapter 133, which is really the chapter that questions the work the most, featuring Yoshida and Denji in particular. Why am I throwing this chapter away? Because chapter 173 told me to ?......

Did you see the number three?

All these chapters deal with Denji's dream.

"Be present with us". Pay attention to everything so you don't miss the train.

[spade-riddles]

Every time Taylor played I Can See You, she also played Maroon the same night. I heard she's no longer playing either anymore because she has officially played Maroon 8 times, and I Can See You 3 times. 👀

The 3 times that she paired both songs together were all dates in relation to the birthdays of Kaylor. 2 times were Karlie's birthday anniversaries, and the other 1 was the 13th of Pride Month.

8/3 - I Can See You and Maroon

6/13 - I Can See You/Mine and Maroon/Cornelia Street

8/2 (365 days later due to leap year) - I Can See You/I Can Fix Him and Maroon/Red

Yesterday when we got the Going Anon for seemingly Maroon, it was the 138th show. 138 is the official Kaylor number as it represents the combination of both their birthdays 13 and 8/3 meeting in the middle by the 3.

When did 138 truly become noticed by the masses? No other than the I Can See You MV of course.

When the music video premiered, the time was set at 1:38am July 9th. Naturally, many fans outside the know were confused by this choice since "1:58" from Last Kiss made more sense given the date July 9th.

Taylor later changed the time from 1:38 to 1:58, but we know she does not make any mistakes. It was not lost on us that a main feature of the MV was a blonde coder that ultimately breaks her free, played by Presley Cash. The birthday of Presley Cash you ask? The 13th of Pride Month.

Given this string of connecting evidence, I believe we did not get the Going Anon message wrong.

(Spade, still going, going, going? 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏼🍷)

While this may be Maroon, it was not a surprise song. In actuality, this message called attention to the date of a super collision. Where all 3 times that I Can See You being played with Maroon had some form of an 8/3 or 13 time gap between the dates they were played and Nov 1st.

8/3 - I Can See You and Maroon (313 Business Days, 130 Weekend Days, or 13 Holidays after Nov 1st)

6/13 - I Can See You/Mine and Maroon/Cornelia Street (38 shows after Nov 1st)

8/2 - I Can See You/I Can Fix Him and Maroon/Red (13 shows prior to Nov 1st)

Not only did she interconnect all of the above, but additionally when we got the going anon for Maroon yesterday on the 138th show... with doing some calculations it proves that every time she played Maroon links back to Nov 1st through either an 8/3 [8/2] or 13 time gap.

Here are the other 5 occurences besides the 3 listed above:

5/26 - Maroon and Getaway Car (113 shows before Nov 1st)

8/27 - Maroon and Afterglow (82 shows before Nov 1st)

2/26 - Maroon/Forever and Always (8 months and 3 days before Nov 1st)

6/21 - Maroon/The Black Dog/Come Back...Be Here (38 Weekend Days or 133 Days before Nov 1st)

5/11 - Maroon and Hey Stephen (13 Weeks and 83 days before Nov 1st)

In other words from Nov 1st when we got the Going anon Maroon submission, there were 8 connected dates to locate that included 8 Maroons and 3 I Can See Yous that were meant to be uncovered by using 8/3 and 13 coded time gaps that all occured simultaneously with Nov 1st as the overarching starting point.

Oh and does it help that Maroon's track duration in general is 3:38?

I think it is more than safe to say we got this one right. ✔✔✔

🤯

[liquidcrystalsky]

I looked up some stuff and i think Fresh Season 2024 is the point where finally the point where splatoon 3 caught up to Splatoon 2.

For normal battle stages, Splatoon 2 had 23 at the end, and with marlin airport, Splatoon 3 now also has 23

Splatoon 2 had 139 main weapons, splatoon 3 currently has 133 (almost but basically there)

Splatoon 2 had 2 story modes and side order dropped along with the season, making 3 having 2 story modes as well

Salmon Run immediately right off the bat was better than splatoon 2 (in game feel, for content, we got more maps than 2 with Jammin' Salmon Junction last year)

S2 had 161 gear items, S3 breezed past it the last 2 seasons and has over 220

S2 had 27/31 splatfests (depending on who you ask). S3 had 15 splatfests, 6 big runs, and 4 eggstra works giving a total of about 25 events in game plus 25 unique challenges!!!! but this season theres gonna be another splatfest probably and an eggstra work bringing the number of events not including challenges to 27

S2 had 16 music tracks which would play during ink battles, S3 just got 18. For splatfest songs S2 had 4, S3 just got its 5th.

If you're only looking at the sheer numbers of content i think this is now just the only time where you can confidently say splatoon 3 is now "more" than splatoon 2 which is really odd cuz it's been a year and a half. For a year and a half a game on the exact same console which a lot of people already owned had More content than Splatoon 3

Salmon run fans stay winning though

[maangajuice]

🚨Urgent help is needed for my family🚨

✅ Verified campaign – please check the end of the story 🔍📌

Hello dears! I am Ali and thank you for looking at us with compassion and I ask you to support my campaign to help me achieve my goal. I am in dire need of your support now to help my family survive and be safe. Gaza is a very dangerous place both in terms of living and life. I need your financial support to enable me to get the basic needs for my family until the Rafah crossing is reopened to transport my family to safety and peace. Please help a family survive through your small donations or through your contributions to others. Thank you so much for standing by those who are there 😭🇵🇸 Need.https://gofund.me/36240bc1

Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #133 ) Vetted here by @90-ghost

everyone !!! pls!!!!!! repost + donate if you can!!!!!!!

[zagreus]

🚨Urgent help is needed for my family🚨

✅ Verified campaign – please check the end of the story 🔍📌

Hello dears! I am Ali and thank you for looking at us with compassion and I ask you to support my campaign to help me achieve my goal. I am in dire need of your support now to help my family survive and be safe. Gaza is a very dangerous place both in terms of living and life. I need your financial support to enable me to get the basic needs for my family until the Rafah crossing is reopened to transport my family to safety and peace. Please help a family survive through your small donations or through your contributions to others. Thank you so much for standing by those who are there 😭🇵🇸 Need.https://gofund.me/36240bc1

Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #133 )

[wolfxe]

🚨Urgent help is needed for my family🚨

✅ Verified campaign – please check the end of the story 🔍📌

Hello dears! I am Ali and thank you for looking at us with compassion and I ask you to support my campaign to help me achieve my goal. I am in dire need of your support now to help my family survive and be safe. Gaza is a very dangerous place both in terms of living and life. I need your financial support to enable me to get the basic needs for my family until the Rafah crossing is reopened to transport my family to safety and peace. Please help a family survive through your small donations or through your contributions to others. Thank you so much for standing by those who are there 😭🇵🇸 Need.https://gofund.me/36240bc1

Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #133 )

€2,313/€100,000!

Ali Helles needs help evacuating her family from Dair Al-Balah. her brother is severely injured and they are living in tents. every cent counts, please donate if you can!!

[pluckyredhead]

For your Fourth World reading do you have a reading order you could share with us? Or recommendations on where to start? Sorry if this has been asked before

No need to apologize! I've been meaning to write up my Fourth World recs so thank you for the reminder. Also it is unfortunately a short list lol.

The Fourth World by Jack Kirby:

Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen: Kirby wrote and drew issues #133-148. This is where he launched the Fourth World, and where we first saw Darkseid and a number of other characters and concepts. It is a little tangential to the main Fourth World storyline (and some of it, like the two Goody Rickels issues, is REALLY weird and not necessarily in a good way). I would say if you are interested in the Fourth World from a comics history perspective, you should read Kirby's Jimmy Olsen, but if you are interested from a blorbo perspective and just want to read about Orion or Scott or whoever, you can skip it.

New Gods (1971): This is Orion's series. An absolute must, this is the heart of the Fourth World. The original run is issues #1-11 (there are a couple series that pick up the numbering, but the first 11 issues are the real deal).

Forever People (1971): I would say this is the other book that is really central to Kirby's magnum opus and the themes he was exploring. Again, less interesting from a blorbo perspective (I'm sure Mark Moonrider is someone's blorbo...) but it's only 11 issues so I would recommend reading it for the historical/thematic value. Do it for Kirby!

Mister Miracle (1971): The other blorbo! Kirby's original run is #1-18.

New Gods (1984) #6: In 1984 DC reprinted the original New Gods run as double-sized issues (so #1 contains the original #1 and #2 from 1971, etc.). Issue #6 reprints the original New Gods #11 and then adds new material to "conclude" Kirby's story. But you'll want to continue and read...

The Hunger Dogs (also called DC Graphic Novel #4): This was Kirby's conclusion to the Fourth World saga. It's not his original vision, but it's the most DC would allow him. He is not quite at the heights he was in 1971, but it's nice to see him get a chance to conclude his tale, and it's a must-read if you ship Orion and Lightray.

The Fourth World by people who aren't Jack Kirby:

New Gods (1991): This is Rachel Pollack's run and it's excellent. The art is extremely 1991 but the writing makes up for it. The last three issues of the series are written and drawn by John Byrne instead, and they're fine - you can read them or skip them, doesn't matter.

Orion (2000): Walt Simonson's run, AN ABSOLUTE MUST-READ. RUN DON'T WALK. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE READ THIS. Orion suffers so much and it's so delicious to me.

Solo #7: There are only two pages of Fourth World content in here but it's Orion betting Scott he can come up with a death trap Scott can't escape and then literally just trying to kill him for fun while Lightray has a panic attack. Orion and Scott are both lunatics and I love that for them. Brothers of all time.

Both of DC's YA graphic novels about these characters, Mister Mircle: The Great Escape by Varian Johnson and Daniel Isles and Barda by @ngoziu, are excellent.

AND UNFORTUNATELY THAT IS IT. Scott and Barda are in JLI which I will always recommend, but it's not strictly speaking a Fourth World book. Orion is in Grant Morrison's JLA which is a classic, but he doesn't have a huge role in it as I recall. You should already be reading Kelly Thompson's current run on Birds of Prey because it's perfect but Barda is especially perfect in it.

The nice (?) thing about the Fourth World is that every writer basically completely ignores all previous writers except Kirby so there's not a lot of continuity to track. If you read Kirby, you can encounter the characters anywhere else and know everything you need to know.

Happy reading!

[wallabywhump]

you still have my heart (i'll get it back)

Rating: Teen & Up Word count: 7,106 Chapter: 2/3 Pairing: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Tommy Kinard, Firehouse 118 Crew & Tommy Kinard Tags: Breaking Up & Making Up, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, POV Tommy Kinard, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, (Specifically a single sentence for Tommy), Tommy Kinard's Abandonment Issues, Drinking, Pride, Pride Parades, Kissing, Mentioned Vincent Gerrard

"By the way," Tommy leans against the counter, "what's your name? It's covered by the sticker." "It's Esme," she says, and her eyes crinkle with the force of her smile, "you know, all this year with my name badge covered, only three people have asked me my name! Some Captain from the 133, you, and one of the other people from the hurricane last year. He's actually here today!" Tommy freezes, dread runs down his spine. "Tom." "Hi Buck!" Esme calls. Esme looks past the counter in the direction Evan's voice just came from, and Tommy wants to run and hide. "You guys probably know each other, huh?" Esme asks. Tommy swallows. "You could say that," he whispers, looking up at the ceiling and praying for strength, or for the ceiling to collapse, he'd take either right now.

Buck and Tommy break up. Then make up. Then get back together again.

Read on AO3

Chapter Two written for @bucktommyweek day number six, prompt: Pride.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

By Jonathan Howard

It doesn’t bode well for the future that leaders of major American institutions say naked emperors are wearing beautiful clothes.

We need to make every effort to get people who disagree, even sharply, in dialogue with one another. In a previous article, I wrote an open letter to the Stanford President, Jonathan Levin, regarding a conference at his university, Pandemic Policy: Planning the Future, Assessing the Past. As SBM readers know, this conference featured doctors who mostly didn’t treat COVID patients, but instead spread misinformation about it and tried to purposefully infect people with it. My letter predicted that the conference would be a giant exercise in deliberate amnesia. As such, I encouraged President Levin to reject censorship and simply play videos of the speakers from the first two years of the pandemic.

Sadly, President Levin embraced censorship. Instead of honestly informing the conference attendees about the speakers, he whitewashed their pandemic record with the following speech:

Good morning and welcome to everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to be here.

Now, you might wonder: Why is Jon Levin opening this conference on pandemic policy? You might say, Jon is no public health expert. And I might say: Well, I did run a business school during the COVID pandemic, so I have some experience making pandemic policy decisions. They also say you learn most by making mistakes. So I think there are probably a thousand Stanford MBAs who are willing to argue that I’m basically a world expert.

However, that’s not why I’m here.

When I was invited to participate in this event a few months ago, it was with the understanding that the goal was to bring together people with different perspectives, engage in a day of discussion, and in that way, try to repair some of the rifts that opened during COVID.

That struck me as a valuable goal, and the sort of goal we should aim for at Stanford. So I agreed to give a few brief remarks to that effect.

What followed was disappointing. When I was invited, I asked around and indeed the organizers were talking to some well-known people with quite different views who were likely to speak. However, it was not so straightforward. Some invitees weren’t able to make it, or withdrew, or didn’t want to participate in an event with other speakers whose views and behavior they found attacking or abhorrent.

When an initial and partial agenda was posted, it was immediately perceived as one-sided, and as I’m sure you all noticed became the subject of op-eds and social media posts.

Ironically, instead of repairing rifts as intended and perhaps spurring fresh thinking, the process seemed to reopen old and existing divisions.

As an observer and as the leader of this university, I found the episode dispiriting, in a way that goes beyond the specifics of this particular event.

We have many issues today at Stanford, and on other campuses, where views are divided, and in some cases, like this one, where feelings are raw.

Yet I believe we need to make every effort to get people who disagree, even sharply, in dialogue with one another. I believe it’s essential for us to do that as members of the faculty and university leaders – not just because it’s a way to advance knowledge, but because we need to model that behavior if we want to expect it from our students. And in today’s world, we absolutely need to ask and expect our students to be able to engage with, listen to, and debate with people with whom they disagree. My view is that we need to err on the side of talking to one another.

So I hope today’s conference will come off in a way that involves just that – thoughtful and robust discussion across different perspectives. I hope it yields some important insights about future pandemic policy – we certainly need that. Perhaps it does even bridge a few divides among those in the room.

And I hope even more that all of you will join in the larger project of trying to make Stanford and other campuses forums for the type of robust and thoughtful discussion that is at the heart of universities when we’re at our best.

I wouldn’t have been have afraid to mentioned that many of these doctors predicted COVID would kill less than 50,000 Americans and that the mass infection of unvaccinated youth would lead to herd immunity in 3-6 months.

We’ve had more flu deaths among children this year than COVID deaths. With President Levin’s admonition to “listen to” people in mind, let’s revisit just one of the videos I presented to him. In this video, from November 2020 Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said “we’ve had more flu deaths among children this year than COVID deaths”.

The first reported COVID death in the US was on 2/28/2020. By the time Dr. Bhattacharya recorded that video, COVID had killed at least 133 children according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. During that same time frame, the flu killed 9 children. The next year, just 1 child died of the flu while COVID killed several hundred children. Currently, the CDC reports 1,935 COVID deaths and 438 flu deaths amongst children since the start of the pandemic, though obviously children should be vaccinated against both viruses.

Yet, according to President Levin, its fine for people to have “different views” on this topic. He feels “we need to make every effort to get people who disagree, even sharply, in dialogue with one another.” Sounding more like a college freshman than a university President, President Levin feels everything is a matter of opinion and what really matters is that no one get their feelings hurts. In President Levin’s telling, it’s not wrong for Dr. Bhattacharya to say that 9 is larger than 133, however it is wrong for people like me to say this isn’t a “different view” and it shouldn’t be a topic of “dialogue”.

I supposed I’ll be accused of silencing debate and discussion, but 133 is larger than 9. This wouldn’t have been controversial in 2019. When someone spreads dangerous, blatant misinformation, honest brokers call it out, even if the person spreading the misinformation has fancy credentials and can speak in scientific jargon. It’s not that hard. President Levin, however, expects us all to be open to the possibility that 9 is larger 133, and it doesn’t bode well for the future that leaders of major American institutions say naked emperors are wearing beautiful clothes.

[stabbyfoxandrew]

Is it still okay to ask for two? If so could i get some arsonist neil and angel neil please🙏 (if only one then arsonist neil pls)

WIP Wednesday (4/3) | Arsonist Neil / Firefighter Andrew AU (Part 133)

“Hey, Andrew,” Renee begins as she walks up to him. “Will you do me a favor?”

“Already am, Walker.” Andrew says, gesturing down at himself.

“Another favor? Just a little one,” Renee says. Andrew lets out a breath.

“What?”

Renee points to the floor above them. “Will you go upstairs and come down the pole so the kids can see how it works? Some of them asked if they could try it but… Shauna is afraid they’ll—”

“Fall and crack their tiny skulls open?” Andrew finishes.

Renee grimaces. “Uh, yeah.”

“Fine.” Andrew shrugs. He likes coming down the pole. It’s the single best part about this job. Well, that and the occasional life saving he gets to do. Plus the added perk of ending up with 10’s number. Damn it! Andrew was trying not to think about… He shakes his head to clear it of arsonist thoughts and trudges up the stairs.

When he gets to the hole, he looks down to where Renee’s teacher friend has gathered the majority of the tiny, motley crew. After clearing his throat, he says, “Are you ready down there?”

Renee looks up at him and gives a thumbs up before turning back to the kids. “Hey guys, my friend Andrew is going to come down and show up how fast he can put on his gear! Count to three with me, okay?”

[tododeku-or-bust]

🚨Urgent help is needed for my family🚨

✅ Verified campaign – please check the end of the story 🔍📌

Hello dears! I am Ali and thank you for looking at us with compassion and I ask you to support my campaign to help me achieve my goal. I am in dire need of your support now to help my family survive and be safe. Gaza is a very dangerous place both in terms of living and life. I need your financial support to enable me to get the basic needs for my family until the Rafah crossing is reopened to transport my family to safety and peace. Please help a family survive through your small donations or through your contributions to others. Thank you so much for standing by those who are there 😭🇵🇸 Need.https://gofund.me/36240bc1

Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #133 )

‼️‼️

[metrohearts]

🚨Urgent help is needed for my family🚨

✅ Verified campaign – please check the end of the story 🔍📌

Hello dears! I am Ali and thank you for looking at us with compassion and I ask you to support my campaign to help me achieve my goal. I am in dire need of your support now to help my family survive and be safe. Gaza is a very dangerous place both in terms of living and life. I need your financial support to enable me to get the basic needs for my family until the Rafah crossing is reopened to transport my family to safety and peace. Please help a family survive through your small donations or through your contributions to others. Thank you so much for standing by those who are there 😭🇵🇸 Need.https://gofund.me/36240bc1

Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #133 )

hello, ali!! i’m so sorry for all you are going through, my friend!! i wish that i had the means to donate more to your campaign, but i will share your message and do my best to help spread your story. i am sending you and your family much love and healing in these dark times of hardship!!! <3

i will link your campaign here so it is easily accessible!!! https://gofund.me/36240bc1 if anyone has the means to donate, please consider giving to ali!! and thank you to anyone who shares and interacts!! 🫶🏻