#good thing to reflect on actually!

[tea-cat-arts]

I simply think this fandom doesn't give Wei Wuxian enough credit for the various ways in which he saved Lan Wangji

[waystarresourceco]

Kieran Culkin on Roman's playboy image and the way the actors/writers understanding of backstory fits together. (x)

[bonefall]

i found a god awful doc about this one person (who, too, is a god awful being) trying to reason why mudClaw would be a bad leader. I'ma try to find the doc but meanwhile I'll submit this because someone could have the link, I'll need your honest thought about it bcs why are we defending oneWhiker now

Anon, buddy, I'm gonna have to sit you down and gently discourage you from casually calling random human people "god awful beings" in my inbox like this. Not when you're just talking about relatively basic media analysis. That isn't ok or normal.

I hope that when I speak harshly, it's coming from a place of condemning hurtful actions and the tangible harm that they cause. I don't appreciate people trying to get me to directly beef with other people directly by requesting I break down their individual posts or analysis documents (when I ask for people to share links, it's so I can see and prepare to counter the ideas because they usually "float downstream" if they get popular); but in a second ask, you linked this document and there's nothing harmful in it. In fact, it's got a far more neutral tone than I'd take if I was writing an analysis about Mudclaw.

If you couldn't tell the difference between a document like this and one that contains active abuse apologia rhetoric, I would be filled with concern. But I don't think you read it. I think you maybe skimmed it and stopped reading, or just heard the title.

Because this document literally says this;

and your takeaway, something you felt so strongly about that you came to me hoping I'd validate it, was "Why Are We Defending Onewhisker Now."

Art is a tool we can use to explore our own biases, and teach us something about ourselves. That overwhelming sense of anger and disgust that you probably felt when you saw "Mudclaw Would Be A Bad Leader" made you jump to an emotional conclusion and you assumed something that was not said. I know the feeling. You might have had a reactionary impulse.

You are not a bad person for doing that-- you're human. You can grow.

Why did it upset you this much, though? Is there something very personal about this that set you off? ...are you spending a lot of time in spaces online that keep you angry? These are questions for you to reflect with.

I do not know the owner of this document or "what they've done," if anything, so I will not link it, because their Discord is at the bottom of the doc. If they are truly a "god awful being", please do not engage, just block and move on. Nothing is accomplished by following around 'A Bad Guy' and boosting their cat takes.

But something VERY bad WOULD be accomplished if I indulged an anon for a situation I know nothing about and unwittingly became part of a harassment campaign. How do I know that you've got good intentions?

I usually just delete unsolicited links to docs and videos that are 'fightbaiting' like this-- trying to get me to beef publicly with a 3rd person. But I've seen more of these than usual lately so I would like to try and cool it down.

[averlym]

fairest of the fair

[hephaestuscrew]

Renée Minkowski is extremely into the abstract concept of Crew Bonding in such a way that it impairs her ability to actually bond with the particular crew that she has.

She wants them to have Christmas dinner together and give each other Christmas gifts, but she's not made an effort to learn Eiffel's feelings about December 25th and to think about what he might like to do that day.

She wants them to each say what they are thankful for at Thanksgiving, but when she says she's "thankful to have such a great crew on this mission", it sounds extremely unconvincing, as if she's just saying what she thinks a Commander ought to say at a Thanksgiving dinner on a space station, rather than expressing any genuine sentiments or revealing anything personal about herself.

She wants them all to participate in the talent show "to boost morale... bond as a crew, and... have a great time doing it", but Hilbert and Eiffel's reactions make it clear that talent shows do the opposite of improving crew morale for them.

Christmas celebrations and thanksgiving dinners and talent shows are all things that could potentially have a positive impact on morale and bonding for some hypothetical space crews, but in the way Minkowski approaches them, none of these things are particularly helpful for the morale and bonding of the people who are actually in her crew. Minkowski puts real effort into group bonding activities for her crew, but they are always based on general ideas about crew bonding, rather than on thinking about the individuals around her and what she can do to connect with those people in particular.

[afurtivecake]

It's easy to get the impression that Tetsuji never cared enough to rein in Riko's behaviour and temper but I think it's the opposite. I think Riko grew up constantly being told stuff like, "You have to learn to control your temper" and, "Is that any way to behave?" by Tetsuji. I think Tetsuji would have even disciplined him harshly every time he was caught acting out of anger. But all that is coming from Tetsuji - the man who would beat a kid if they displeased him in any way. How can you ever really take to heart the words of someone who demonstrates the exact opposite of what they preach? How are you supposed to not learn that the real lesson is, "Become the one who has all the power over everyone else and you will never have to suffer criticism for how you behave ever again."

[lord-squiggletits]

Saw someone say "Megatron and Optimus barely interact in IDW1" and that feels like a very has-only-read-MTMTE thing to say kskdodndd because like sure they didn't co-star in the same long running series for 50+ issues like other characters did (like MTMTE characters interacting with each other or exRID or WB/TAAO) but to say they BARELY interact??? They interact a lot both in superficial "blah we're fighting a war" ways and in super lore important moments/series and also in incredibly homosexual there-is-no-straight-explanation-for-this moments like

Off the top of my head these are some series/storylines/issues where they interact directly. Defining interaction as anything from "the whole story is about them" to "their interaction is a plot element but not necessarily the main focus" to "they interact but only for a few lines":

The Autocracy trilogy (Autocracy, Monstrosity, Primacy)

Stormbringer

All Hail Megatron

The Transformers ongoing 2009 (with emphasis on Chaos Theory and Police Action for the most gay moments)

That one issue where Megatron grabs OP's spark through his chest Mortal Kombat style

Dark Cybertron

MTMTE (past OP in Elegant Chaos, Functionist Universe OP, and current day OP during Dark Cybetron and Megatron's trial)

And then there's other times where IDW1 Megatron and Optimus aren't in front of each other interacting/speaking with each other but are still thinking of each other:

The prelude to Dying of the Light where OP hears the LL distress signal and is afraid (not explicitly for Megatron but like he put Megatron on that ship)

MTMTE, Megatron tells Ravage that something he said to Optimus was the turning point of how he viewed himself

MTMTE again, Megatron all but says aloud that he made Tarn into Tarn to spite Optimus

One of the GI Joe crossovers where Optimus symathizes with a Joe over what it feels like 'to believe in someone who everyone else sees as past redemption' while an image of Megatron is literally behind him in his thoughts

So like, IDW MegOP has plenty of canon interactions and even if not all of them are very long moments (i.e. are only a few lines alluding to each other) there's still plenty of interactions between them. Plus I would say that it's pretty powerful how even the small, blink-and-you-miss-it dialogue moments actually indicate that Megatron and Optimus view each other as focal points where different decisions/beliefs they had revolved in some way around the other person. I think it's cool and compelling that IDW Megatron and Optimus express so often (even if only in thought) that the other person shaped who they became, or THEY did something specifically in reaction/spite towards the other, or where something they did to the other troubles them and lingers in their minds.

[sysig]

A very normal scientist doing very normal gene splicing experiments (Patreon)

[fromtheseventhhell]

I also find it funny that fandom will only accept Lyanna being her non-conforming, wild self in the context of saying that Arya isn't meant to be pretty; Any other day we get back-to-back posts about how Lyanna is actually super traditionally feminine cause she sniffled at a song once, so she's actually more like Sansa. Instead of constantly speaking on Arya and Lyanna, how about you guys reflect on why your standards of beauty for women are attached to how well they perform feminity within the patriarchy?

[puppyeared]

learning abt friendship decay and "not reaching out to your friends for months at a time unprompted is not neurotypical behaviour" has me feeling a certain way

[daily-hanamura]

[cas-poisoning]

The way people write John in fic bothers me so much sometimes. Not to judge other people’s writing specifically, just the general fanon characterization of John Winchester. Yes he’s bad a father. Horrible. So much to unpack there. Yet I find it so disappointing when I go to read a fic and he’s like. Cartoonishly villainous. Excluding the fans that actually like John (which is even more crazy), it feels like everyone treats him as like this big bad one dimensional monster which imo is a disservice to the complex relationship Sam and Dean have with them. It’s also a symptom of a broader pattern in media, or even real world events. It’s so much easier to flatly paint anyone bad as inhuman, one dimensional, and just plain evil. Monstrous. But the reality is, every horrible person is still a person. Humans are capable of the evil we do, not monsters.

So when it comes to John, like yes, he is deeply deeply flawed. He really hurt his kids. But often when people write him, it feels like he makes all of his terrible decisions for the sake of being mean and terrible and abusive, which undermines the dynamic because the reality is people can be abusive or neglectful or toxic without being a complete monster 100% of time. It would almost be easier for Sam and Dean if John had actually been like that. But he was their father, who did what he thought was best, and loved them even if he didn’t show it. They have fond memories with him. He’s their father. Which is what makes it so hard for them to actually unpack the trauma they have, because it is so so difficult to realize a person you love is actually actively hurting you. Harder than realizing a villain in your life is just being a villain.

[sophiethewitch1]

www!reader WILL call batman a pussy for not killing on her private twitter. she does it like every other day. its cathartic

[trekkele]

Sometimes you read a fic thats “written out of spite” and its like holy shit can I make you mildly-to-extremely annoyed more often??? And sometimes you read a fic thats “written out of spite” and its like yeah i can tell.

[foxgirltail]

Yes, microsoft trying to make a "zero-water" data center (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-unveils-zero-water-data-170002064.html) is unambiguously a good thing. Obviously any reduction of pollution or water usage is a good thing. No, I don't think that means that ai's usage of water is something to singlehandedly be up in arms about.

By all means, be upset about ai! Just don't only be upset about ai for this or that when basically every other industry on the planet has the same exact problems.

A single cotton t-shirt requires 2700 liters of water, 5 trillion liters of water are used annually for fabric dying, and 20% of all water pollution is from garment production (source: https://www.wri.org/insights/apparel-industrys-environmental-impact-6-graphics)

This medium article (https://medium.com/@notkavi/stop-acting-like-ai-uses-a-lot-of-water-fafea5573c63) compares the numbers cited in the same study as the latest news articles about ai water usage ("Making AI Less 'Thirsty' by Pengfei Li et al https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.03271) to the water needed to make beef. GPT-3 used as much water to train as it takes to feed 12 usamericans their average annual burger-patty supply. One quarter-pounder uses as much water as 36k GPT-3 queries or 3.6k GPT-4 queries.

Here is a comparison of Microsoft's water usage in 2022 to the water usage of golf courses:

In 2022, Microsoft claimed it used 1.7 billion gallons (6.44 billion liters) of water. Between 2003 and 2005, the golfing industry used approximately 2.08 billion gallons (7.87 billion liters) of water DAILY for course irrigation. (water usage of golf courses has dropped an estimated 29% between 2020 and 2005 - https://www.gcsaa.org/media/news-release/2022-news-releases/2022/07/26/golf-courses-reduce-water-usage-by-29-percent-according-to-national-survey - this still amounts to ~1.48 billion gallons or ~6.74 billion liters daily. 2 days of golf is more than a year of Microsoft's water usage)

Source for golf water use: https://www.usga.org/content/dam/usga/pdf/Water%20Resource%20Center/how-much-water-does-golf-use.pdf

Source for ai water use: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tech/ai-chatgpt-water-power-usage-b1106592.html

Yes, the world would benefit from less water usage for ai. But when you posit ai as uniquely evil for it's water usage, I have a hard time believing you actually have an issue with the water usage. Instead it seems like you just want a reason to dislike ai.

My goal is for all of these industries, and many more, to severely reduce their water consumption, or to even stop existing as industries at all! Is that yours as well? If so, why doesn't it feel like it.

[itspileofgoodthings]

my mom told me I needed to just rest in the fact that I am a good teacher and I don’t need to be constantly on the lookout for improvement at every single second. it really helped tbh.