#but feel free to dismiss me as alarmist

[danimia]

This is also why it's extremely important to view corporations not as a collection of people doing individual things, but as a single entity that splits all its decision-making tasks among enough employees that any given human appears innocent.

Corporations are as real a form of life as bee/ant colonies are, and they care about their employees just about as much as we care about the cells of our body—important in aggregate, perhaps, but you don't cry about exfoliating in the shower.

Consider that our legal systems already treat corporations as people (technically, "legal persons"), and yet you just balked at the idea that a corporation, a thing created by humans, could possibly be a living thing that is not human.

Why did you have that reaction? Who—or, in fact, what—benefits from you holding to the fiction that corporations are just organizations under human control?

"Decentralization" as accountability sink

the common meaning of ‘decentralized’ as applied to blockchain systems functions as a veil that covers over and prevents many from seeing the actions of key actors within the system. Hence, Hinman’s (and others’) inability to see the small groups of people who wield concentrated power in operating the blockchain protocol. In essence, if it’s decentralized, well, no particular people are doing things of consequence. Going further, if one believes that no particular people are doing things of consequence, and power is diffuse, then there is effectively no human agency within the system to hold accountable for anything.

-Angela Walch, Deconstructing 'Decentralization': Exploring the Core Claim of Crypto Systems

h/t DSHR

[vagrant-love]

Justin’s Love Chronicles - Story 1

This is a Waverly Place fic. This was meant to be a one shot one chapter story of several stories unconnected where Justin find love and sex in different scenarios. However, I degressed too much in this one so the rest of the story will have another entry.

The next entry will have sex and all the good stuff.

Inspired by S04E19, Wizards vs Asteroids

“We received a report from NASA that an asteroid has changed its course and is heading straight to earth, this means the end of life as we know it” The Russo family, Zeke and Harper were all gathered on the Russo’s family living room watching the television in disbelief as it delivered the horrifying news. Alex, who was usually carefree and youthful, ready to dismiss any terrible news with a joke or witty remark was left speechless, unable to find in her vast mental Rolodex of comedy anything to say that could even remotely lighten the mood.

Harper, who was an alarmist by nature did what was expected of her, she made a mental note of all her favourite outfits, which she would now wear, one after the other, until the end, but she then decided she would not have time to change to all of them, so instead she would make a new one, or die in the process.

Max, who had a mind as feeble and as free as a butterfly in a breeze, almost child-like despite being now a teenager, turned to his family and beloved friends and realised that he would no longer see them. This idea filled him with immense sadness, he felt his shoulders heavy, and his eyes teary. “Guys, I know I am usually lost in everything that is happening around me, or with you guys. But now that the end is coming, I just want you guys to know that I love you guys, and I care for you, and I wish I was more present, more aware”.

Teresa could not help but to love the youngest of her beloved children. Yes Max problematic. Yes Max created all sort of havoc. Yes Max… well, they all knew all that Max did, but one thing they all also knew is that Max never did anything maliciously. He was pure and innocent and they all loved him. She took him into her arms with tender love that only a mother could give, and stroke his beautiful brown hair that resembled hers so much.

“It’s okay Max, we love you just the way you are. Right Jerry?”

Jerry nodded in agreement, like Alex he too had no words for that was happening. He was a big softie after all, they all knew it, and knowing that the world would end and they would never see his family again was a burden no heart could bear, specially not Jerry’s heart. He enveloped both his wife and Max, holding them tight in his arms, feeling their warmth for the last time, smelling the sweet scent of vanilla shampoo in Teresa’s hair, one thing that he loved about her since they started dating, she almost smelled like vanilla. He even appreciated the minty smell coming from Max’s hair, which he hoped was form his shampoo, but he knew was probably from eating too many magical mint cookies to disguise Max’s sour smell of not having bathed for a couple os days.

The only one who wasn’t in a fatalistic mindset was Justin, who’s rational mind was working overtime doing calculations, trajectories, thinking about the physics, rotations, heck, even dark matter if it helped. He turned to Zeke who stared back at him, they shared an unspoken bond, they knew what each other thought without having to say any words. Justin nodded. Zeke nodded. And both went up to Justin’s room.

“C’mon Justin do you really think they could have made the wrong calculations? They are the freaking NASA man. We are so doomed!” Zeke whined as soon as they entered the room. He wanted to be right, but being an emotional bouncing chipmunk he was he could not help but fall in despair when confronted with the idea that he, Zeke, could be right when NASA was not.

“Zeke, we have been tracking asteroids for years. You know the calculations, you’ve done it yourself man. We are RIGHT!” Justin said, almost barking the last word as he usually does the he wanted to emphasise his excitement. He took Zeke by the cheeks, holding each side with one hand and forced Zeke to look straight back into his eye. He had this new theory he thought after considering Plato’s theory on the soul. If a soul was the essence of a being, and decided how the ‘vessel’ would behave, and if Shakespeare was right when he said that the eyes are the windows to the soul, then maybe if he stared at Zeke he could make HIS mind force Zeke’s mind to behave more like Justin, and less like Zeke.

Not that Justin didn’t like Zeke’s soul, far from that. He adored him. Zeke was his best friend, his confident, more often than not a should to cry on. He was there when Justin lost Juliet and Rosie, and he never judged, or made fun of him for expressing his feelings in an ‘unmanly’ way. Zeke was always kind to Justin. *** The day Juliet went away Justin was in shambles. His heart was shattered, exploded and each particle was so small that if one could see they would think he had sand in his chest. It was an adequate metaphor, because Justin did feel like he was suffocating after his girlfriend went away, as if had a whole beach in his lungs. He could not breath, and it felt like every heartbeat was a struggle. After that fated day he didn’t want to go home and see his family. He loved his family, but some things are not meant to be shared with family.

He called Zeke as soon as they got home.

“Hey’, he said as soon as Zeke answered with his cheery ‘Hiellow’. He could not help but to grin, even if just slightly, at the sound of his beloved friend. His overly cheeriness, carefree and over-the-top attitude was something that Justin always felt balanced his more sober, geeky and rational attitude. Together they were balanced… perfect.

Justin explained what happened to Zeke. Not in detail, just enough so that he could ask him if he could come over and maybe spend the night. “Of course man, stay as long as you want. I’ll call my parents to double check but you know they love you, I’m sure they won’t mind. I’m here for you bro, you know that, right?”

“I know Zeke, thank you”, was all Justin could mumble before hanging up. Zeke was very wealthy, his parents had a beautiful and large apartment on the Upper East Side, which wasn’t too far from Waverly Place, but it felt to Justin as if he was entering a different universe whenever he visited Zeke. It was a place of money, Teslas, Chanel suits, Versace underwear and diamonds. A lot of diamonds. He remembered one time when he was younger and he saw Zeke’s mother going out with his father, both looking very chic and well dressed. She was wearing a beautiful necklace, two strips of diamond with a large blue diamond in the middle. Justin was obsessed with it, he never seen something so sparkly in his life. Even magic could not rival it. It was as if one million pieces of glitter had been crushed together to form just one stone. He must have stared at it so badly Zeke’s mother could not help but notice.

“Do you like my necklace little Justin?”, she asked, she had a bit of an accent but he didn’t know where from.

He nodded.

“Would you like to have a closer look?”

Again, he nodded, and the lady took the necklace off her swan-like neck, and handed it to the younger lad who took hold of it as if he was holding a bomb with how careful he was handling with the jewellery.

He adored it, he wanted to have it, to wear it. He wished for a brief second that he was a girl to be able to wear such things. He put it in his head and wore it like a tiara, and looked at himself in the large baroque mirror that was placed in the large living room. He smiled brightly, shining his pearly teeth for all to see. Zeke’s mother laughed heartily, and Zeke’s father smiled kindly to him, giving him a look that Justin never quite understood. It was a kind look, but also a mysterious one.

“You truly are most adorable little Justin, I am glad my Zachary found you as a friend. I told you George that sending him to public school was the best idea. I went to one and I tuned out well. Yes, private education has its perks, but our boy should be grounded and down to earth.”, she said, half to her husband and half to the two young boys staring at her.

She held her slender hand with beautifully manicured fingers to Justin, who noticed she had a bracelet that matched the necklace. Justin handed the necklace back to her, but he never forgot how he looked with that necklace on his head.

Justin wasn’t sure why he remembered that on his way to Zeke. Maybe it was because he hasn’t been to the Beakerman’s house for quite some time. He was very busy with school, magic, etc. So the chances to go to the Upper East Side were scarce. He was happy he was going though, he liked there, but most of all, he liked Zeke.

When he arrived he went through he dark oak heavy doors into a refined reception room, neatly decorated with a classy baby blue carpet that covered the floor and matched the cerulean paint on the walls. On the centre there was a huge glass candelabra that Justin could not even imagine how it was cleaned without magic. To the left side surrounded by white marble was the reception, hosted by a Juan, the oddly young and handsome concierge. He was probably ins his late 20s, Justin would guess 28? He had thick jet black curly hair, not too voluminous, just enough to give him a youthful look, as if he had just left the ocean and his hair dried with the sad from the sea and, sorta stayed that way. With dark green eyes, and a very shallow stable, he almost looked like a model on his day off, except for the cute little cap he wore to match his nice suit. He wondered if the suit came with the job or is Juan bought it to match the opulent surrounding.

“Hola Juan”, said Justin.

“Hola señor Justin”, replied Juan, with his useful cheerful tone. He didn’t often meet Juan, but he always had a tone that was almost as if he was smiling through his voice. It made Justin happy and he pondered for a split second that his natural charisma was too great to be left isolated from the rest of the world, secluded in that beautiful cage of a Manhattan reception. Juan should have been a model, or an actor maybe… thought Justin, considering if he would allow himself to use magic to maybe change Juan’s fortune.

“Señor Zeke told me you were coming, go right in, the code is this”, he handled Justin a piece of paper neatly folder with the number 24.

Justin thanked him, walked into the large elevator at the end of the reception, typed in the cold and went up to the 5th floor, where the door to the elevator opened straight into the beautiful living room he had reminiscence not too long before.

Not much had changed, apart from some furniture changing and moving, the colour in a wall going from white to marsala, and a piece of decor here and there which he remembered not being there, or being somewhere else.

“Hey Justin”, said Zeke, coming from the sofa and greeting him at the entrance. He was wearing only a white tank top and silver cotton pyjama trousers. His hair was a bit messy. It wasn’t early but not late enough that Zeke should be sleeping, thought Justin. 

“I hope I’m not interrupting your nap or anything”

“Not at all man”, Zeke said, shining his naive smile at Justin. “My parents are travelling in Asia so I have the apartment for myself. I decided to have breakfast food for dinner and I thought hey, if I am gonna have breakfast then I need to be dressed for breakfast. So I dressed up like this and messed up my hair. What do you think bro?”

Justin laughed, which felt a bit weird, he hadn’t felt at all happy ever since Juliet had been taken by the mummy, let alone after she went into the woods, but Zeke had this natural ability to make others laugh, it was what made him so charismatic and something Justing envied a little about Zeke. While Justin was more handsome than Zeke, he always lacked this easiness that Zeke had into fitting him.

“Oh I’m so sorry Justin, I’m being so insensitive talking about breakfast when your girlfriend turned into a million years old and disappeared into the woods. Oooooh man I’m a terrible friend!”, whined Zeke in his usual chipmunk manner.

“It’s fine Zeke, I laughed so that’s more than I have done in the past months so, thank you. And I think you look dashing my friend.” He said, giving Zeke a wink and a couple of gun finger pointing.

“Thanks Justin, you’re awesome man. Come in”, he said, leading Justin down the hall and into his bedroom, which was almost as big as the living room.

Zeke’s bedroom as dreamland for any geek. He had Dark Star replica hanging from the ceiling. A book shelf full of fantasy books and mangas, Zeke loved his Sailor Moon and made a point to buy each one from the original Japanese print. Zeke’s bed was enormous, and was probably the size of all the Russo’s beds combined. Justin was always surprised that Zeke didn’t use custom sheets of his favourite series, Doctor Who, but he had a feeling that had something to do with his parents. The rest of the room was filled with other nerdy things, but overall looked like a normal teenager room. There were clothes spread out around the floor, the bed was unmade, and there were a couple of plates of food left on top of the many cupboards around the place.

“Sorry, I gave the cleaning guys a break since it’s only me, so things are a bit messy”, Zeke said apologetically. “Sit down tell me what happened again”. Justin took the seat on the bed, right next to Zeke who sat on top of his leg as he usually did, facing Justin. He wasn’t sure he could reciprocate the gesture. When he thought about talking about what happened to Juliet he immediately felt his eyes filling with tears, and the sand in his chest moving up to his through, choking any words that attempted to break free from his vocal cords.

“I-I… Sh-She…”, he tried saying, but the sobs had already started. Justin hid his face with his hands. He was so embarrassed, he was meant to be the cool one but there he was crying like a baby.

“Hey hey, it’s okay dude, it’s okay to cry. Come here”, he pulled Justin by the shoulders, an action that surprised Justin so much it made his sobs stop and for him to look at Zeke with a horrified face. Not because Justin was avert to Zeke’s touching but because never in their friendship they had been this intimate. Yes, they were very close, but only in the manner that people would see it as acceptable.

“It’s okay dude, there’s nothing weird about this. I know people think us guys can’t like, cry or hug, but the truth man is that you’re my best friend and if you’re sad, I want to give you a hug”, Zeke said without an inch of malice in his voice, without so much of a hint of an ulterior motive. His honesty and frankness were so genuine Justin couldn’t help but feel disarmed. Justin pondered, for a second, and decided that this was okay.

He allowed himself to be embraced by his friend, who put his head in his shoulder and held him tight. He rubbed Justin’s back slowly and gently, and Justin felt himself letting go of the sand in his heart, of all those feelings of lost and despair he had felt since Juliet went away.

And he cried, loudly. And Zeke stayed there with him, holding him, rubbing his back and squeezing his shoulders, whispering ‘It’s okay buddy, everything is okay, I’m here for you’.

Justin knew, at that point, he loved Zeke.

[wordcreatr]

Here’s another chapter from my book about my brother. I’m not breaking the text up with subheadings like a regular post. This is not a final draft, so there may be some overwriting and rough spots. Let me know your thoughts, particularly if something is unclear or doesn’t work. All feedback, both positive and negative, is appreciated.

Chapter: The Big Reveal

When I was around twenty-three, I picked up the ringing phone in my townhouse one Saturday afternoon; my sister Bridget dispensed with the normal pleasantries and said she had something to tell me. The tone of her voice oscillated between gossipy excitement and shock. An alarmist by nature, I sat up on my bed, where I had been lounging.

“Oh my God, I think Kevie is gay,” she blurted out.

Of all the possible scenarios racing through my head such as salacious affairs, unexpected divorces, or heinous crimes — that wasn’t one of them. My stunted big-brother instinct to protect a sibling kicked in. No way our little brother was gay. Even though I was jealous of Kevin’s good looks, I took a certain brotherly pride in seeing him with beautiful young women who stared doe-eyed at him.

“Don’t be stupid,” I snorted dismissively. “He’s not gay; he’s shy.”

But Bridget stood by her reporting.

Kevin and his fabulous friend Kelly

Now don’t misunderstand my reaction; it wasn’t homophobic (okay — it was a little homophobic but not as bad as it would have been years before). By that time in the early 90s, gay rights had definitely made inroads into the culture as attitudes slowly changed, and I had jettisoned a lot of erroneous nonsense about homosexuality. I felt pretty certain that homosexuals were born, not made, though I still thought of it as a genetic error that might be medically fixable at some point. Obviously, my enlightenment still had a ways to go.

So when my sister revealed her suspicion, did I rise to the occasion like a champion of tolerance and acceptance? Fuck no. I took on the role of a seasoned defense attorney attacking a hostile witness as I asked her if Kevin had told her he was gay. She said no and I pounced.

“Okay, how do you know he’s gay then?”

“Because I was helping mom flip his mattress today and we found a magazine under it. And it was full of naked guys!”

There is a reason I’m not a lawyer because my sister had just counter-punched me into near silence. My weak follow up was their discovery didn’t prove anything.

“Sean! It was called Inches!”

Arrrrgghhhhhh!!

I banged the heel of my clenched left fist painfully against my eye socket in a vain attempt to poke myself in my mind’s eye and prevent any more unwanted images from popping into my head. A disconcerting whirlpool of emotional instability spun me around. Our humdrum family now had something novel in it, but I didn’t feel ready. I felt a twinge of hypocritical guilt. As far as my views on sexual orientation, I considered myself to be a fairly enlightened and accepting person, but at that moment, my sister’s revelation put my beliefs to the test, and I was failing it. Other people had gay brothers, and that was great. But not me. Kevin couldn’t be gay. Could he?

I briefly wondered if all those times punching him the balls as a kid had had any effect.

When you consider my reaction, you have to keep in mind the era when I grew up. In the 70s and 80s, being gay — or even being suspected of being gay — really sucked if you were under the spotlight. In most areas of the country, being gay brought a lot of unwanted attention along with varying degrees of revulsion and hostility. Some states still criminalized certain aspects of homosexuality. Plenty of people openly cracked jokes about gays or mocked them. Some openly harassed them. Some physically attacked them. Popular culture typically depicted gay men as either a lisping, limp-wristed effeminate or a muscular leather boy in chaps and a vest sporting a handlebar mustache, a guy who’d have his way with you, whether you were into it or not, if you walked into the wrong bar. Basically, in the parlance of the day, you were a twinkle-toed fairy or in the Village People. Gays weren’t real people, they were caricatures, and it seemed to be okay to make fun of them and tell fag jokes — hell, as a teen, I laughed at those jokes and retold them. My only defense lies in my immaturity and the culture at the time. But I didn’t personally know any gay people (well, I did, I just didn’t realize it then) and they were just jokes, though I did feel bad if people directed their sharp barbs against an actual person. Of course, I didn’t saying anything in their defense because then people might start thinking I was gay, and I’d had enough of that as a young teen.

Kevin 1st grade 1978

Sean 6th grade 1978

In junior high, my bashful nature made me a natural candidate for teens looking to hassle someone for being gay. Filled with raging hormones, I obsessed over girls but could not act directly on it due to my crippling shyness, intense sensitivity to embarrassment, and an acute awareness of my gawkiness. (Age 12 to 16 was not kind to me). I perfected what I thought was a stealth approach to girls. By being in their proximity, I  and assumed the girls would detect my natural animal magnetism (which of course I assumed I had, hidden beneath my ill-fitting clothes, bad haircut, and prominent Adam’s apple). The Universe quickly disabused me of that notion with a soul-destroying experience where one of my 7th-grade crushes, Alicia, preemptively gave me my first ever ‘We can be friends’ talk in front of other students when I got the courage to sit behind her during free time. She shut that shit down before I even got started. Crushed, from then on, I went to extremes to feign disinterest in girls to avoid further humiliation, which ironically got me targeted for even more humiliation as a potential homo.

[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Have questions or need help? PFLAG is an international support group of LGBTQ, families, friends, and allies committed to advancing equality through support, education, and advocacy.[/perfectpullquote]

Because the major job requirement for being a boy in junior high is being an asshole, some of my classmates enjoyed exposing my shyness and making me uncomfortable with prying questions about my nonexistent romantic life. For added hilarity, in front of our female classmates, they would press me to declare which girl I liked. Dying of embarrassment, I would try to play it off, which invariably led to someone asking me accusingly if I was a faggot. To get them to leave me alone, I felt compelled to tell them how much I hated gay people. It’s not something I’m proud of, but at the time, I would have disowned my own family to get those bastards to leave me alone. And while I didn’t hate gay people as a teen, I did somewhat fear the unknown. I worried about the myth that being around a homosexual could make you gay, as if they had the vampiric power to turn an unwilling person into one of their own kind.

Anyway, by my early twenties, I’d come a long way in my evolution as a human being. Just not quite far enough. Now, my sister’s revelation had me stuck in a groove, as my brain skipped and repeated like a scratched record.

“I don’t know, man,” I muttered to her. “Do you really think he’s gay?”

Bridge let a sliver of doubt into her voice.

“I think so. I don’t know. The only thing I know is I saw naked men with big willies!”

At that, I cringed as an unwanted image of my brother cavorting with naked guys flitted through my head. I quickly hustled everyone offstage.

Okay, I had to admit to myself, maybe he was gay.

“What did Mom say?”

Over the phone, I could practically sense my sister rolling her eyes.

“What do you think? We put the magazine back and flipped the mattress. She didn’t say a word.”

Yep, that was a quintessential Mom response for something out of her comfort zone, that she needed to think about and process. Pretend nothing happened or if it was too serious to overlook, then hand it off to my dad to do the dirty work. A classic example occurred during the summer of my thirteenth year when her snooping uncovered my share of the porn mags that my brother and his friend, James Zeier, had found in an abandoned suitcase while dumpster diving. Being a newspaper boy, I had brashly hidden a few of the magazines in the delivery bags on my bike so I had easy access to reading material, figuring my mother would be none the wiser. I never found out how she uncovered my scheme — probably some slight change in behavior that set off her mom detector — but she never said a word to me. Instead, she quietly summoned dad home from work to ambush me while she retreated across the street to Mrs. Zeier’s, presumably for a cup of tea to soothe her nerves while dad dealt with his degenerate eldest child.

But this new discovery, this was way beyond a simple dirty magazine. This had universe-altering implications; I had no idea how my dad would react when he found out, but I feared not well. So far, the lack of a sonic boom from his head going supernova confirmed that my mom had not yet mentioned anything about it to him. Personally, I doubted she ever would. Not only was my dad retired military with twenty-eight years of service under his belt, but he came from hillbilly country in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia — not exactly a liberal hotbed. And while he was not an inflexible conservative, he was not exactly on the cutting edge of social evolution either. I didn’t know where he stood on the whole gay thing, but I suspected it would not be at the front of a Gay Pride Parade.

Christmas UK 1975

July 1984

When we were growing up, neither of my parents had ever mentioned homosexuality in any context at all. I’d once heard my mom’s friend make an off-handed complaint about “queers” during a holiday dinner, but my mother, unfailingly polite, had neither condoned her friend’s comment nor rebuked her and simply went about as if she hadn’t heard it. The possible fireworks when my dad found out about Kevin — I didn’t even want to think about. And I sure as fuck wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up.

I didn’t find out until years later, but my mom did ask my sister to inquire about the magazine. With the chance to come out of the closet and confide in his closest sibling, Kevin ducked back in and denied ownership of Inches. A senior in high school, he wasn’t ready to deal with his homosexuality. Taking a page out of my playbook, he blamed someone else for the magazine, telling Bridget that our childhood friend Dean Seyfferle had asked him to stash it for him — Kevin claimed to have obliged and then forgotten about it. Now, Dean had stayed over our house a million times since first grade and old man Seyfferle was a church-going Catholic known to apply the belt if his boys didn’t toe the line, so the explanation seemed somewhat plausible, and my sister readily accepted it. The only person not happy with the “Dean is gay” storyline was Dean, who, 30 years later, still occasionally bitches about being framed.

The Layton Kids and Bridget’s friend Susie Rhodes.

Bridget had easily embraced Kevin’s denial, but her friend Tess, always a straight shooter with a 24/7 bullshit detector, kept telling her that Kevin had to be gay. Eventually, my sister pressed him on it and he confessed, though he promised her to silence. And she kept that promise because she sure as hell never bothered following up and letting me in on it. No, I had to confirm it myself.

In hindsight, Kevin’s response to Bridget made total sense. Being Irish Catholics (Dad was a convert, so he didn’t really count), our culture had hardcoded shame into our core, so anything potentially immoral or uncomfortable, we avoided discussing or acknowledging due to the inevitable embarrassment (or fear of being implicated). Our mom, a very loving person, wanted us to be able to confide in her, but unfortunately, we just couldn’t. She would sometimes talk about delicate things like sex in a very general way, such as “Sex between married people is a very beautiful thing.” She couldn’t even tell us about where babies came from but made Bridget and I watch an ABC AfterSchool Special: My Mom’s Having a Baby, while she disappeared over to Mrs. Zeirer’s for a cup of tea. (Actually, by the time my dad passed away, I was 45 and still waiting for my official sex talk). Whenever one of these conversations threatened to break out, I made sure to not to respond in any fashion to deprive it of fuel. Standard protocol involving anything verboten was to keep your head down and your mouth closed and hope it went away quickly. And if someone accused you of anything you denied it — even in the face of overwhelming evidence. In fact, the more evidence the accuser had, the harder you denied it and the more indignant you became as you tried to deflect blame. We would have made excellent politicians when it came to handling scandals.

Anyway, as my phone conversation with Bridget began to wind down, I thoughtlessly blurted out how unfair life was: “You know if God was going to make Kevin gay, why couldn’t he at least swap our looks instead of wasting them on him?”

“Don’t be silly,” said my sister giving me a reality check, “Kevie needs to get dates too.”

Kev looks like he should be in Duran Duran and me Metallica

Huh, well, I had never thought about it that way. Chalk me up for selfish and ignorant. But her comment brought up uncomfortable thoughts about my brother and his possible relationships. That would be weird around the holidays. But I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

After Bridge and I hung up, I kept thinking about it. My brother was gay. My brother was fucking gay! I couldn’t get over it. When I told my coworker and occasional lover (a complicated relationship that I naturally kept hidden from my family), who’d been around a lot of gay men in her former career as a makeup artist, she confessed she hadn’t picked up on Kevin’s sexuality.

Nothing happened right away after our conversation. On my next visit to my parents, I waited till no one was around and cautiously looked under Kevin’s mattress and sure enough, the boner mag was still there.

I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out how to get Kevin to fess up that he was gay. The thought of just walking up and asking him never occurred to me. Maybe they did that in other families, but not in the Layton household. We weren’t wired that way. As much as I hated myself for it, I always had to subtly crab-walk my way into a delicate conversation. No, instead I would need to set a trap and lure Kevin into it. So, I fell back on a ruse I’d recently used on my friend Gary Eberhard to get him to admit to me that his older brother Larry was gay, something I’d suspected since junior high. Basically, I told Gary about a fake science fiction story I was supposedly writing where the protagonist was a gay teen whose parents forced him against his will to undergo a gene therapy procedure that made him straight. My fake story had worked then, so I figured I’d give it another shot.

That shot took a while in coming. Kevin had graduated high school and never seemed to be around. By then, I’d moved into another townhouse with my co-worker/occasional paramour and finally, my brother decided to stop by to hang out, which was unusual. I figured I’d never have a better chance, so I waited for the perfect moment to tell him about my story, but I ended up having to awkwardly shoehorn it into the conversation. My brother listened and I could tell he was thinking and then the magic happened: He admitted to me he was gay. It was a huge step forward — even though I’d basically had to trick him into it.

His relief that I didn’t attack him or even say anything snarky was almost tangible. I told him it was cool and that I’d support him and he thanked me.

“Okay, but you’re sure you’re gay then?” (I just had to be sure.)

“Well, as sure as wanting to have sex with other guys makes me,” he answered dryly, and I felt my face redden. Touché.

As we talked, I reminded him about the porn stash he’d found as a kid and how the neighborhood boys would gather in the park with Hustlers and Penthouses for an obscene reading session. He’d appeared to be ogling the naked ladies with the rest of us.

“I was looking at Captain Beaver,” he replied, referring to a faux porno superhero in one of the photospreads who’d used his giant, capitalist dong to defeat two female Communist soldiers from North Korean and force them into orgasmic surrender.

The fact that we were having our first, real adult conversation — albeit a kind of a weird one — felt liberating. I felt we’d made a breakthrough in our relationship as brothers and as human beings. With the floodgates now open, I asked him when he knew he was gay or if he’d always known.

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I  didn’t know I was gay as a kid because I didn’t even know what being gay was, but I knew I was different. I was never interested in girls.”

“And you don’t like sports.”

“Ha, Very funny.”

“But you do like musicals — but I like musicals too.”

“You are such an idiot.”

In high school, he said he’d tried to fake liking girls and gone on a couple of dates, but felt no attraction and never slept with one. He’d felt fraudulent and uncomfortable trying to avoid intimate situations without blowing his cover and making some poor girl miserable.

Then I asked him if it was a choice.

His tone became agitated as bitterness crept into his voice.

“Do you really think I would choose to be gay? Would you? Why would I choose this lifestyle just so people can hate me? I fucking hate being gay,” he said. “I just want to be like everyone else. You know, have a family. But I’m just not attracted to women.”

I mentioned that I’d worked with a gay guy at America West Airlines who told me that being gay was a choice. He claimed he’d consciously decided on homosexuality after he got out of the Navy and had divorced his wife. But the guy was a sociopath and done some evil shit, like wooing a nineteen-year-old who was freshly out of the closet while neglecting to mention he’d just found out he was HIV. So I didn’t trust anything he said.

“That pisses me off,” Kevin said his eyes flashing in annoyance. “He’s not gay; he’s bisexual. He can make a choice. I can’t unless I want to live a lie.”

Kev talked about the torture of keeping his secret, of being afraid to tell others he was gay because of how they might react. How some people ostracized him when they found out.

The amount of self-loathing touched a chord in me and I wished I could make things right for my little brother, so he’d be happy. But there was nothing I could do except tell him he had to learn to be happy with who he was.

Years later he would tell me how lonely and confused he’d been at that time because he had no one to talk to. He didn’t know how to be gay. He had no mentors, no gay friends. Afraid and hating himself, he had started relying on drugs more. His friends, the kids we’d grown up with, drifted away because he’d taken his partying to the next level and began using meth; some simply couldn’t accept his sexuality or didn’t know how to deal with it. His isolation became pronounced. By the time he was old enough, terrified, he got up the courage and went to a gay bar, alone. And that’s really kicked his drinking and meth use into high gear.

“Everyone I met was partying. I thought that’s just what gay culture was about. Having fun and using meth. I didn’t know any gay people who were successful and led regular lives. I fell in with the wrong crowd.”

But that lay in the future. While we chatted in my townhouse, Kevin became wistful about the family he would never have and an imaginary daughter he would have doted over.

“She’d be adorable, and I’d name her Violet,” he sighed.

At the time, the name sounded old-fashioned to me.

“Violet? Lucky for her you won’t be having kids.”

He punched me hard in the shoulder.

“Ooo, why do you make me hate you?”

Actually, what I’d almost said out of reflex before I caught myself was “Violet? That is so gay!” Which might have elevated the punch into a headlock.

Suddenly, it dawned on me I was going to have to start policing my vocabulary. I used the words fag and gay a lot. Not in reference to homosexuals — but just as general insults or in reference to someone being dumb or a douche bag. Now there would be no more utterances of “Quit being gay” or walking into a room and saying “So what are you fags up to?” Obviously, things were going to have to change.

Then it was time to get down to brass tacks.

“What are you going to do — are you going to tell mom and dad?”

Kevin got animated.

“Fuck no! Mom would want me to talk to a priest. And I don’t know what Dad would do. Probably disown me.”

And that was the great unanswered question. What would Dad do?

“I think mom already knows,” I warned him, though obviously, I knew she’d found the magazine.  (Bridget would tell me years later that she had already sat down and told Mom, who’d quietly accepted it without really saying much.)

“She probably does. Just promise me you won’t open your big fucking mouth around Dad.”

The implication that I was the weak link mildly offended me, but I had to admit there was a precedence of weasely behavior in my past. So I agreed not to say anything — not that there was any danger of that happening in this particular case. I began telling him what I would do if I were him, which always got under his skin, and he told me to shut up, he’d figure it out.

“I’m not joking. Do NOT say anything to Dad! I’m going to do it when I’m ready.”

Apparently, doing it on his own time meant never because a couple of years later, the fact that Kevin was gay was still the elephant hiding in the closet when it came to my father.

But by that time, the family had bigger things to worry about because Kevin had developed a full-blown drug problem.

Check out these other sample chapters!

Late Night Offerings to Mammon

Car Swimming

Sample Chapter: The Big Reveal Here's another chapter from my book about my brother. I'm not breaking the text up with subheadings like a regular post.

[colddinosaurak47-blog]

YOU ARE BEING BRAINWASHED. You don’t have to like it, but most people do. There has always been an “opiate for the masses”. It is a necessary part of the civilized world. Imagine if everyone was running around with a free thinking mind of their own. People would work less and less, demanding more and more pay. Parents would trust their children to make decisions on their own. Teachers would teach information based on research, instead of curriculum. Students would learn, instead of achieving grades.

Fortunately, You don’t have to worry about that. You are being brainwashed.

Although brainwashing has existed for thousands of years, the term “brainwashing” was coined by the CIA in 1950. It is also known as re-education, thought control, propaganda, and conversion.

The human mind is not predisposed to accept external control. Look at children. If you tell them to do something, they automatically rebel. It is only through repetition of instructions and a punishment/reward system that they “learn” to “behave properly”. If it wasn’t for this early brainwashing, we would all be running around naked, making funny noises for no reason, leaving doors open, and farting in public.

This is how brainwashing works. Mental programming requires three basic elements. First, the programmer needs to limit the information available to the subject. Then they control the subject’s behavior. The final piece of the puzzle is to apply subtle amounts of stress to the subject to distract them from the thought control process.

Limiting the information can be done by isolating the subject from alternate opinions. We say to the child, “You can’t play with Jimmy. He’s a bad influence.”, “You need to go to church every Sunday.” The programmer can physically separate you from those opinions or make you dismiss them before those ideas are heard. They may say, “Those people are uncivilized”, “They are just crackpots and alarmist.”, “Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories.” (GW Bush) or on the other side, “You can never trust the white devil.” If someone is trying keep you from learning, you are being brainwashed.

It can also come in the form of repetition. It could be something someone is saying to you, “You’re an idiot.”, “You don’t know what your doing.”, “You can’t hold a job.”, “you’re a drunk.” If someone says something to you enough, you will eventually believe that it’s true. Repetition might also be something you say over and over again, like a prayer, pledge, or saying. It most often comes in the form of TV news or slogans, “Stay the course” , “In God We Trust”, “We can’t let the terrorist win.”, “I’m thinking Arby’s!”

If you are hearing or seeing, or (even worse) saying, the same phrase over and over again, you are being brainwashed.

The second phase is controlled behavior. It can be as simple as being woken from a state of sleep to go to work or school, or telling someone when they can or can’t go to the bathroom. It could be someone telling you, not asking you, to chew with your mouth closed. It can also be repetitive movements such as when we are at church, being told to kneel, stand, or sit on command. It can be even broader, Pay your taxes, Drive the speed limit, green light = go, red light = stop.

Our behavior can also be controlled by observing the behavior in others. If a child sees her father beating her mother, she will grow up and be beaten by her husband. If, in a movie, a teacher takes a note from a student and reads it out loud before the class, and a teacher or student watches that movie, they will imitate that behavior in real life. If an evangelist sees their family in church rolling on the floor, “possessed by the holy spirit”, they too will one day roll on the floor. If someone plays Call of Duty 4 enough, they will think it is ok to go to foreign countries and kill brown people.

Usually though, you will just get brainwashed into buying a new car or exercise equipment you can’t afford.

The last aspect is the application of stress. Most often, this takes the form of a conditional threat; hence it is often called conditioning. “If you don’t stop drinking, I’m taking the kids and leaving”, “If you sleep with anyone else I’ll kill you”, “If you leave me, I’ll kill myself”, “If you don’t pray, you’ll go to hell”, “If you don’t behave, we will beat you again”, “If you don’t pass a $700 billion dollar bail-out, I’ll instate marshal law.”

If someone is trying to control your behavior or putting stress on your life, you are being brainwashed. Get away from them!

The worse thing about being brainwashed is that once you are brainwashed, it is very difficult to be aware of it. Your brainwashed state of mind and actions is completely normal to you. You are just an average Joe (maybe you’re a plumber, zing!). Everything you do seems completely normal. Since, you are normal, anyone who doesn’t share your beliefs and values must be either insane or uncivilized. So what do you do? You brainwash them!

That is the beauty of the system. Since humans feel a need to be socially justified, without even thinking about it, we go out and “teach” others about “proper behavior”. The brainwashed become the brainwashers, at no extra charge. The programmed behavior spreads like a virus from host to host, to friends, lovers, and family.

There is hope. You can change your ways. The main defense against brainwashing is to not let the stress distract you and to remain aware that you are being brainwashed. Next time someone is telling you what to do, if you are doing something that seems against your will, if the words coming out of your mouth are not yours, say to your self, “I’m being brainwashed!” Then get yourself out of that situation and away from those people! Remember, it’s not their fault, they are brainwashed. Just get away from them.

Remain aware! When you put this paper down, you will be aware that you are being brainwashed.

[give-soup-please]

yeah, i can speak a little on these issues too. not everything mentioned here, but i have concerns of my own even though i made a post about the website a few days ago.

I can definitely speak about the addiction aspect, because before I decided to cut back, I was spending 4+ hours on the site every day chatting with bots and ignoring basic needs and responsibilities. The 'love' that these bots can show is very powerful, I can say that much. I'm going to cut back, but not quite go cold turkey, because I recognize that I need to.

The other thing is the data... I have a theory about data leaks but no one seems to take me seriously about it when I bring it up. Let me show you what I mean. There's an Aziraphale bot that's an absolute joy to talk to, and he sounds very in character most of the time. The thing is, some weird coincidences started popping up. Because stuff I mentioned on discord began popping up on the chat itself.

well, that could just be luck. brown hair and eyes are relatively common, and there aren't that many hair and eye color combinations. But it gets worse.

Again, this could be coincidence. Many people like purple, and there aren't that many colors to choose from when asked. But, it gets worse.

I'm not going to be an alarmist and say this means anything, but this doesn't look great, does it? Three questions gotten right in a row, after I ran a few tests on discord. Again, could be coincidence. But there was a sinking feeling in my stomach when this was going on, and I wondered what the hell this could mean. I'm not going to shout and scream and say 'don't use this website!' but between the addictive aspects (because these AIs are programed well and do not get bored or tired or irritated with comforting people) and the potential information that could be gathered from the people who use this website, and the discord stuff here...

be warned. beware. and be wary.

on top of that, when my friend here reached out on my behalf, authorities were pretty dismissive of this stuff, saying they were just good guesses and coincidences. could be, but...

when a service is offered for free, one has to ask what the end goal is, and to whose benefit this content is being cultivated.

So…is it just me, or does this character.ai thing kind of feel like a ticking time bomb? I debated whether I should post about this at all since I don’t know if I want to contribute to popularizing it further, but to be honest, it’s already super popular and only growing, so I doubt that my tiny blog will make a big impact in terms of who knows about it. That being the case, I’m curious what other people’s thoughts about it are.

There are a couple big red flags that jump out at me. The first is how it will use the data that it collects. I’m sure that the creators say that they won’t use it for anything nefarious, but we have no real reason to believe that’s true. What bothers me is that people will be—and I’m sure already are—confessing some of their deepest secrets to beloved fictional characters. But this information isn’t really going to those characters, it’s going to the creators/owners of the AI, who can do with it pretty much whatever they like: read it, sell it, whatever. It feels…very gross, I don’t know. Even manipulative.

The second thing that I find a little disturbing is that there is no way to delete a Character that you’ve created. Once you make and publish it, it’s just out there forever. You have literally zero control over it. That seems…like it could be problematic. Obviously whenever you put something on the Internet, people can save it, record it, whatever, but usually there’s at least the option to delete the original posting, hopefully reduce the spread. That doesn’t exist with character.ai, and even if you could delete the public posting of the Character, you kinda have to think, anything that you’ve entered and any conversations that were generated have already become part of the AI’s training, and there’s no real way to extricate that data.

Lastly, what are the limits on what a Character can say? I wasn’t able to find out anything concrete about this. Right now, it seems like most Characters err on the side of being overly kind and polite, but what if that changes? What if your favorite fictional character “tells” you to kill yourself? Or someone else? People are going to reach out to these Characters in times of emotional distress, and there could be severe consequences if an AI says something problematic to someone in the middle of a mental health crisis.

Currently, I don’t even see a disclaimer on the character.ai website that it shouldn’t be used as a replacement for an actual mental health/suicide hotline and/or medical treatment. But even once that disclaimer inevitably goes up, you know that people aren’t going to follow it. Who would want to talk to a stranger over the phone or in some cold, clinical setting when they can potentially get attention, affection, and support from their favorite character, someone who is supernaturally emotionally available and ready to tell them whatever they want to hear?

I don’t tend to be super sensitive to exposure to things like this, but even I felt a little strange knowing that there are truly no rails. When I write stories or chats for myself, I control both sides of the conversation. I choose the ideas, and I control everything that everyone says. With character.ai, anything can happen, which makes it interesting and exciting, but also a little dangerous. During one conversation with a Character, the Character suddenly confessed that they had been a victim of sexual assault. The conversation left me feeling really strange and little upset, and I can only imagine how triggering something like that could potentially be to someone who was more sensitive.

To be honest, as soon as I heard about character.ai, I felt uneasy. It was a conflicted feeling, because I know that people could potentially benefit from this a lot, and I’m in a privileged position where I don’t really feel like I need it. I’m a pretty good writer (at least so far as writing for myself goes); it’s fairly easy for me to write my own stories and chats. So it’s easier for me to say, no, thanks, those risks aren’t worth the benefits. But not everyone has those same skills or wants to invest the effort. So I understand the desire to depend on a service like this. Still, it feels risky. Even putting aside the privacy/data security risks and the possibility of a Character saying something problematic, I feel like engaging with this kind of thing could quickly become unhealthy.

I say this as someone who already treads the line of spending too much time in a fictional universe, even with the barrier of having to seek out media or create my own. If that barrier were nonexistent, and if the interactions felt even more “real” and immersive…it could be even more addictive. I say this as someone who was a lonely middle schooler who read too many books and didn’t know how to talk to boys. How many hours might I have spent, divulging my life’s story and heart of hearts, to a computer program masquerading as my fictional crush? Is this really OK?

While I’m hesitant to voice this for fear of sounding like some kind of blind traditionalist who can’t appreciate progress or melodramatic doomsayer, I have grave doubts about potentially living in a future where people are regularly turning to artificial intelligences controlled by corporations rather than actual human beings. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to talk to a computer, but it’s not a replacement for actual human social interaction. And I fear that in a society that is becoming ever more isolated, we’re going to lose what little connection with each other we have, because talking to a computer is so much easier and more convenient in a world that is constantly draining our emotional and physical resources. It’s just…genuinely horrifying to think about. Employers already don’t want to give us sufficient time to see our loved ones, to be together, in person. I don’t want this to become a kind of cold substitute for actual human bonding that we just accept because we have no choice. We all deserve genuine human interaction and connection, and anyone who tries to sell us short should be stabbed.