#i might start doing that with the more contentious topics

[transmutationisms]

how do i know what’s right?

i feel like i have zero critical thinking skills ;-;

a lot of the time when someone poses an idea or a theory they think they’re right, and so they use language that enforces that. but then someone refutes it, and uses language affirming what they believe and i see the point in their argument. and then it gets refuted again and again and again and im just confused.

hi great question. i would love it if there were a single easy litmus test to figure out who's 'right' and whose info i should trust! unfortunately things are rarely this easy, and it's actually completely normal to be overwhelmed by the amount of information being produced and shared, especially when it comes to topics you haven't researched/lived/etc. for most of us, this will be most topics!

i'd preface this by saying that i think your overall attitude here is actually a good one. you're framing it in a pretty self-deprecating way—but actually, imo this type of openness to discussion and disagreement is a really good place to start, esp when dealing with topics that are new to you. nobody enters a contentious debate with a fully fledged, defensible viewpoint. you might feel like you're just treading water here, making no progress toward being able to evaluate arguments for yourself, but i highly doubt that's true.

all of that said: while i again cannot give you a single litmus test for figuring out what's 'right', there are four pretty basic sets of questions that i automatically run through when encountering a new idea, source, topic, or argument: we can call these origin, purpose, value, and limitations.

origin: who's the author? do they have any institutional affiliations? who pays their salary? is this argument or paper funded in any way? is the argument dependent upon the author's social position or status (race, class, etc) and if so, are those factors being discussed clearly? does the author have ties to a particular nation-state or stakes in defending such a nation-state? what's the class character of the author and the argument? what's the social, economic, and intellectual context that gave rise to this argument or source?

purpose: why is this source or person disseminating this information or making this argument? are they trying to sell you anything? are their funders? are they trying to persuade you of a particular political viewpoint? keeping in mind the answers to the 'origin' questions, are there particular ideological positions you would expect to find in this source or argument, and are they present? what are the stakes for the author or source? what about for those who cite the source or further disseminate or publish it?

value: what does this source or argument accomplish well? what aspects of the argument are new to you and strike you as insightful? are there linkages being made that you haven't encountered elsewhere, and that you think are effectively and sufficiently defended? are there statistics or empirical data that might be useful to you in forming your own argument, even if you disagree with how this source or author is interpreting them? what does this argument or source tell you about the types of debates being had, and the rules of those debates?

limitations: where does this argument or source fail you or fall apart? are there obvious rhetorical fallacies you can identify? is the author forgetting or overlooking some piece of information that you know of from elsewhere? which viewpoints may be omitted? keeping in mind the answers to the 'purpose' questions, if this source is defending a particular ideology or political position, is that one you agree with? is it only defensible so long as the author omits or distorts certain pieces of information? are there points where the argument jumps from evidence to a conclusion that the evidence can't fully support? are there alternative explanations for the evidence?

over time you will often find that it becomes more and more automatic to ask yourself these questions. you will also find that the more you read/hear about a particular topic, the faster you can determine whether someone is presenting all of the evidence, presenting it fairly, and using it to fully defend the argument they ultimately want to make. and you will probably also find that at some point, you're able to synthesise your own argument by pulling the strong parts from multiple other people's viewpoints, combining them with your own thinking, and fitting them together in a way that adequately explains and materially analyses the issue at hand.

[throw-down-enjoyer]

Organ donation, compassion fatigue, and Japanese perspectives on brain death

I don’t think Shidou’s sin was actually a crime (as in, it was perfectly legal) and I’m going to explain why. This is essentially a very long Kirisaki Shidou Is Not An Organ Harvester post

To start: Shidou’s sin was convincing the families of braindead patients to donate their relatives’ organs. He confirms doing this in his T2 voice drama, and the way he words it makes it clear he thinks of it as murder. (He does say that this is only half of his sin, but we’ll get to the other half later.)

You know, I… continuously tried to persuade the relatives of braindead patients who were against organ transplants.

“In order to save the life of someone you don’t know, please let me kill your family member,” I told them.

It doesn’t even take much thinking to realize how cruel that is, but… I didn’t realize that until the very end.

Translation used: https://youtu.be/9xmokVJ-6x4?si=VgcIp5LCdNnUwqUW

Brain death is the irreversible, complete loss of brain function, meaning there’s no chance for a braindead patient to ever come back. Because of this, some people may feel that removing life support from a braindead patient doesn’t constitute murder. It definitely doesn’t constitute murder from a legal perspective, but it makes sense why someone might think of it as murder— especially in Japan.

Japanese perspectives on brain death

In evaluating Shidou’s case, we have to consider the cultural context within which it was written. Many people in Japan do not consider brain death as human death, and brain death cannot be declared without consent from the family and the intention to donate organs. In fact, braindead patients are not removed from life support until their heart stops beating. Shidou isn’t being dramatic when he frames his words as basically saying, “please let me kill your family member.”

Brain death is a very contentious topic in Japan—Doctors are put under scrutiny for declaring brain death and performing organ transplants. It’s important to know that in Japan, brain death only exists in relation to organ transplants. And only certain designated hospitals will do this. Even more so, if a person writes an advance directive asking to be taken off of life support in the case of brain death, doctors are not required to follow it. And many of them don’t, out of fear of the patient’s family lashing out at them.

Only in 2010 was Japan’s Organ Transplant Law revised so that organ transplants could be performed without prior consent from the brain dead patient (now only requiring consent from the family).

Here’s a couple of scholarly articles on the topic if you’d like to read more about it.

https://doi.org/10.1186%2Fs12910-021-00626-2

https://doi.org/10.1353/nib.2022.0019

Another very important facet of this discussion is how low organ donation rates are in Japan. To give you an idea, here’s a chart showing the per million population of donations after brain death (DBD) and donations after cardiac death (DCD) in a few different countries.

Sourced from this article, which has some other interesting statistics as well: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tpr.2023.100131

As you can see, Japan’s rates are astronomically low in comparison to other countries. This helps to contextualize why Shidou had to try so hard to persuade families to donate, and why he later became extremely desperate when his wife’s life was on the line.

I’ve seen a lot of people confused about Shidou’s crime, and many speculations about him doing heinous things such as organ harvesting or purposefully botching surgeries—but I think this is because we’re approaching the case with a western perspective. As we know, many (if not all) of the Milgram prisoners represent a controversial social issue. Brain death is not nearly as divisive in western medicine as it is in Japan, so it’s easy to overlook the idea that all Shidou actually did was take organs from braindead patients. Perspectives on brain death in Japan have changed a lot in the past couple of decades, but it’s still quite controversial; because of this, I truly believe that this is the point of contention behind Shidou’s case, and there’s nothing more sinister secretly going on.

Compassion fatigue

Compassion fatigue is commonly thought to be the manifestation of secondary traumatic stress and burnout, caused by caring for others who are in stressful situations. This commonly affects people who work in healthcare.

I believe Shidou experienced compassion fatigue from working in the hospital, as he exhibits some of the symptoms—in particular, a reduced sense of empathy and a detachment from others.

I feel that Throw Down makes a lot of sense when you view it from this angle.

Lyrical analysis on Throw Down

Shidou expresses that he no longer remembers what it feels like to take away in order to give.

Pomegranates represent death in Greek mythology, and I believe that’s what they represent here too. Shidou has become desensitized to death; the pomegranate no longer has any flavor.

If it’s not needed, I’m not interested

Shidou only thought about what was physically necessary to keep a patient alive, and remained emotionally distant.

They’re dead either way, so it doesn’t really matter to him.

Now slowly close your eye, put your regret on display

Wish for being there for someone

With the same expression no matter who comes

This is the part that most makes me think of compassion fatigue—Shidou had difficulty expressing empathy for grieving families and had to fake it.

I don’t feel scared because I don’t know

Shidou didn’t understand what it was like to be in that situation. But now that it’s happened to him… he understands. And, looking back, he understands how unkind he had been about all of it. This is why he considers himself to be a murderer, why he truly believes that he has killed many people.

Ethics is a delusion

This is a line that definitely struck me as odd for awhile, but I think it makes sense in the context of his situation. His sin was not illegal—but is it ethical? That’s what all of this—whether you forgive him or not—hinges on.

The other half of Shidou’s sin

Going back to what I said earlier, Shidou’s sin wasn’t only convincing families to donate their relatives’ organs. His sin is also transplanting his son’s organs in an attempt to save his wife.

I believe that Shidou’s family got into a car accident, which resulted in his older child experiencing brain death and his wife being left in critical condition (and the younger child presumably died immediately). Considering the views surrounding brain death in Japan, it would have been difficult to find a donor, so Shidou became desperate enough to transplant his son’s organs. Since he’s the father, there wouldn’t have been any issues with receiving consent for the transplant.

Some people believe it’s the other way around—that he transplanted his wife’s organs into his son—but I believe otherwise, for multiple reasons.

In Shidou’s T1 voice drama, he expresses relief at the fact that his judgment is being determined by Es, who is a child. This makes sense if he feels that he killed his son.

Instead of being told by the law that I won’t be forgiven, I wanted a child like you, Es, to tell me that.

I feel sorry that you had to be given this role. And, I truly apologize for being so insistent about sentencing me to death as well… But, you’re perfect. You’ll give me the ending I’m most suited for.

Translation used: https://youtu.be/C4MiQ3V3YjQ?si=hPmlUkc6BfdcacNg

Additionally, a few scenes in Triage…

As stated before, I interpret the pomegranates to represent death. Shidou brings home three pomegranates, one for each of his family members. He later hands his son a price tag from the pomegranates—a representation of Shidou sentencing him to death.

And at the end of Throw Down, an organ tag falls out of the flower person. The name seems to read “Rei Kirisaki” and has XY marked, probably indicating that the donor is male.

Not to mention, it’s much more plausible for the flower person to represent Shidou’s wife rather than his son. When the person falls apart, there’s a shot of a red rose—the flower most known for representing romantic love—falling out of them.

Final thoughts and conclusion

To summarize: Shidou used to routinely try to persuade the families of braindead patients to donate their relatives’ organs. Despite that the prevailing thought in Japan is that brain death is not human death, Shidou did not think of it this way.

Shidou’s family later got into an accident; he transplanted his braindead son’s organs in an attempt to save his wife, but it was a failure, resulting in her death. This situation made him reflect on his past actions—he did not consider it murder before to discontinue life support on a patient, but now that he did it to his son, his perspective has changed. Everything he has done is within the confines of the law, but he is now burdened with immense guilt and thinks himself a murderer. Not just in regards to his son, but to all of the patients that he had pulled the plug on.

Side note: I don’t think having low empathy is inherently a bad thing (I have naturally low empathy), but in this context it would make sense for Shidou to feel bad about lacking empathy.

Side note 2: Shidou is a surgeon, so it is entirely possible he personally performed the transplant on his wife. Operating on family members isn’t illegal or anything, but is widely considered to be unethical and not really a good idea.

Well, that’s all I had to say—Feel free to either add on to this theory or debate me on it. This post ended up quite long, so thank you for reading!

[creature-wizard]

What an AI generated website can look like

Hey folks! I just encountered a website that's obviously AI generated, so I figured I'd use it as an example to help you spot websites that might be AI generated content farms!

First, the website is called faunafacts.com. And one of the first things that sticks out to me is how low-effort the logo is:

Regardless of whether a website is AI generated or not, a lazy and low-quality logo is a big clue that the website's content will also be lazy and low-quality.

If we click on Browse Animals, we see four options: Cows, Wolves, Bears, and Snakes.

Let's click Wolves.

The first thing I want you to notice is the lack of topical focus. Sure, it's all about wolves, but the content on them is all over the place. We have content on wolf hunting, a page on animals that resemble wolves, pages that explain the alleged social structure of wolves, and pages on wolf symbolism.

A website with content created by real people isn't going to be all over the place like this. It would be created with more of a focus in mind, like animal biology and behavior. The whole spiritual symbol thing here mixed with supposed biological and behavioral information is weird.

The next thing I want you to notice are the links to pages on topics that are quite frankly bizarre: "Wolf vs Mastiff: Things You Need To Know" and "Can You Ride A Wolf? (No, Because...)" Who is even looking for this kind of information in large enough numbers that it needs a dedicated page?

Then of course, there's the fact that they're repeating the debunked wolf hierarchy stuff, which anyone who actually knew anything about wolves at this point wouldn't post.

Now let's look at what's on one of the actual pages. We'll check out the wolves vs. mastiff page, and we can soon find a telltale sign of AI: rambling off topic to talk about something completely unrelated.

Both animals are carnivores. In the wild, wolves hunt large animals like bison, deer, and even elk. Sometimes, they may also hunt small mammals like the beaver.

Mastiffs, on the other hand, are mainly fed with dog food. As a dog, a mastiff left in the wild will eat anything. However, it will have difficulties hunting, as this instinct may have already departed the dogs of today.

A mastiff is not an obligate carnivore. Dogs can eat plant matter. Some say that dogs can survive on a vegetable diet.

Dogs being made vegetarians is a contentious issue. Scientifically, dogs belong to the order Carnivora. There is a movement today to convert dogs to a vegan diet. While science has nothing against it, the fear of many is that when dog owners do this, a vegan diet will certainly have an impact on the species.

This page is supposed to be comparing mastiffs with wolves, but then it starts talking about the vegan pet food movement. This happened because large language models generate text based on on what's statistically likely to follow the last text it just generated.

Finally, the website's images are AI generated:

If you know what to look for, this is a very obviously AI generated image. There's no graininess to the image, and the details are both unnaturally smooth and unnaturally crisp. It also has that high color saturation that many AI generated images have.

So there you go, this is one example of what an AI generated website can look like! Be careful out there!

[bwoahtastic]

wait I have more lestappiastri mob thoughts sorry not sorry

- the moment the Charles decides he would die (and kill) for his new favourite employee is when innocent unarmed Oscar very politely but firmly escorts rivals gang leader Toto out of Charles’ office despite the other man being twice his size and very obviously in possession of at least one gun. Toto is very insistently trying to just push past Oscar but Oscar stands his ground and very firmly but still somehow undeniably politely just says “I’m sorry sir but I’m afraid mr leclerc is all book up today but I can schedule you in on Thursday afternoon” as he shepards a very confused Toto out of the room. Charles is sure that if anyone aside from his dorky little assistant tried that there would be an international turf war.

- after the kidnapping incident, Charles assigns one of his security team to always subtly follow Oscar just in case, it takes over a year before Oscar catches on

- Oscar is nothing if not diligent and devoted, he’s in a 8am sharp and does not leave until Charles does (just in case he needs anything) which means sometimes he’s pulling 12-13 hour days. On one such occasion Charles comes out of his office particularly late like 11pm after a long hard meeting where they’ve been discussing a contentious topic which means a lot of arguing, a lot of trying to keep people on topic and a lot of Charles making sure nobody starts shooting safe to say he’s stressed and a little pissed off he just wants to go up to the penthouse above the office and bend max over the closest surface to let out his frustrations. But when he comes out he notices that Oscar is still sat at his desk (kind of), he’s taken his big knit sweater off, undone the top two buttons of his his dress shirt and has his resting on his arms like a pillow as he drools onto whatever papers he’d been working on so late. Charles is reminded of one of max’s cats and immediately just wants to keep Oscar, make sure he’s well fed, well rested and well looked after. When he wakes Oscar up Oscar is embarrassed, especially when he realised it’s too late for the trains to be running so he can’t get home unless he calls an Uber. To which of course Charles insists Oscar just comes up to the penthouse with him since it would just be so late by the time Oscar got home he’d practically have to turn around straight away to make it back in the morning. Oscar is too sleepy to argue. As he’s tucked in to the most comfortable couch he’s ever felt he hear max say something about ‘adopting strays’ to which Charles says somethjng about ‘you’ve always wanted another cat’.

- Oscar starts attending meetings Charles and Max have with other gangs (the ones that are safely within the office at least) and all the other’s are so confused, is this some kind of power play? Since when did gang meetings have minutes. Oscar is determined to make Charles and Max’s gang the most efficient machine possible, it’s almost scary and they’re both very into his determination even if he’s a nerd.

- I need max and Oscar bonding over being super analytically minded. Max and Charles are in the wider office as Oscar sits at his desk, Max is doing most of the talking as he paces back and fourth and Charles listens carefully, they trying to figure out the details of some plan and can’t quite get there. max is starting to go crazy when Oscar pipes up just straightforwardly suggesting a plan that solves all their issues like it’s the most obvious thing in the world (that’s when max decides he wants to keep the secretary.)

- after the first time Oscar wears a skirt and stockings to work, he’ll osccasionally come into work to see a little package on his desk with a new skirt or blouse or one mortifyingly terrifying time an elaborate set of lingerie. Each gift if wrapped beautifully, tied with a bow and topped with a little signed card that just says MV<3 (also just saying…oscussy)

I have more but I’m afraid I have to sleep, might be back tomorrow if I’m not being a bother

Pls Toto trying to get into the office and Oscar is very determined not to let him past because Toto doesn't have an appointment nd Charles said appointments only (unless it's Max ofc). Charles coming out of his office hearing commotion and being quite baffled to see his little nerdy assistant squaring up against Toto who makes no secret about carrying weapons! A very baffled Toto getting a slip of paper with his "new appointment" for Thursday afternoon on it and heading out skskks

Maybe Carlos gets the task? And Osc is clueless about it being to protect him because he is too busy being annoyed at Carlos who always shows up everywhere (and even more places Osc doesn't realise) wnd he keeps chastising Carlos for bringing his muddy shoes inside!

Plss Osc arriving 8am sharp with coffee and a bowl of granola for his breakfast, working on the plans for the day before going out to get Charles increasingly complicated breakfast and coffee order at 10am when Charles arrives usually sksks. Oscar also never leaving until charles does because what if Charles needs him? Oscar is dedicated! (Charles is very dramatic when Oscar has a day off lol). Charles not even fully realising Osc is there until he leaves until he comes out of his office at midnight one day and sees Osc in just his button up, with his sweater folded under his head as he is snoring softly. Charles waking him and soothing Osc's worries when osc realising he missed his last tram and inviting him to stay the night in the penthouse! Osc has been there ofc but he has never even sat down on the sofa and holy shit it's so soft and comfortable! Charles quite literally tucking him in and Max is there too, being quite amused and dropping one of the cats with Osc sksk. Osc does hear them talking about "keeping another stray" and he doesn't have it in him to be offenced wksk

Pls Osc being presents for some meetings and the other gangs being so confused Osc is making notes cos wtf?? But Charles tells them its cos Osc is making them more efficient sksk

Max being slightly wary of Osc until Osc pipes up to give useful insight to their plans and an actual solution even! He is more than a little impressed with how smart Osc is and how they have a similar analytical way of thinking! (Max makes it very clear to Charles after that they have to keep this little nerd!)

Pls Max leaving little gifts on Osc's desk, at first cosy sweaters but then some pretty (expensive) blouses and skirts too and pls even some pretty lingerie with stocking that had a very flustered Osc ask Charles if maybr Max accidentally left it on his desk while meaning yo give it to Charles? But Charles grins and says Max spend hours picking out a pretty set just for Oscar!

Anyways on that note, Max eating out the oscussy on osc's desk jsks (I feel like Oscar would give in to Max easier cos Charles is his boss and that wouldn't be proper! (He is easily convinced when Charles asks to kiss him though sksk)

[1moremilgram-enjoyer]

Your (Curtain) Call - Thoughts

Hey, it's been a while, huh? But the call of plot progression was too exciting for me to remain silent any longer. Trial 3 baby here we go!!!

And what a way to kick off the trial! There sure is a fair bit to talk about, so let's do just that.

CW: Murder, suicide, suicide threats, psychological torture (Unforgiven votes)

General Thoughts

WOOOO MILGRAM TRIAL 3 IS COMING!!! The excitement is through the roof!!! I am very desensitized to character deaths so my desire for more content currently supersedes the sadness I am feeling!!!! Still, without any other info on T3 atm, I should probably talk about the thing we do have, no?

First thing to establish, I'm going in with the assumption that the three who didn't show up in Your (Curtain) Call are just dead, because I see no reason to believe otherwise. So, Haruka, Shidou and Mahiru are gone.

I'm frankly not all that surprised. Like, we knew what Haruka was gonna do from the moment Muu's verdict came out Unforgiven, the conversation Mahiru had with Kotoko in Kotoko's last birthday made it pretty clear she wasn't going to last much longer, and Shidou's death was always on the table when Amane's voting period finally closed. The big question was whether the writers would commit to killing off the characters before the true start of T3, and I'm actually kinda glad the answer to that was yes. Obviously I would have appreciated more time with them, and I sincerely hope against hope that we still get a T3 song for all of them, but the deaths are a good way to send the message to the audience that yes, consequences exist in Milgram, and yes, they're very serious.

Basically I'm actually kinda chilling, but that may just be because I... Look I like all the Milgram characters, but these three were never my favorites. I appreciated them, I enjoyed their existence and discussing them, but I'm ultimately more attached to other characters. So, in a sense, I kinda lucked out. Very sorry to those who can't say the same.

Where We Go From Here

Now, before talking about where I think we may go from here, I'm going to talk a bit about the verdicts that led to this. But since this is a contentious topic, I'll establish a few things that I'm sure you're all aware about, but bear repeating just in case.

-I don't believe there are any "right" or "wrong" verdicts, just those which I agree or disagree with. The decisions are difficult and multi-faceted, and usually had to be made with limited information. We're all trying our best here, so even if you disagree with someone else' perspective, it's important to remain respectful of it. If at any point in this post I come off as insulting to anyone else's choices, I apologize, it's not my intention.

-Hindsight is 20/20, but that means it's a distorted perspective. No one was completely certain of many things throughout the voting process. Even if things turned out exactly how you thought they would, or nothing happened like you hoped it might, keep in mind that no one could be 100% sure of some things before the release of Your (Curtain) Call. Basically, going "I told you so" doesn't help anyone.

-At the end of the day, these are fictional characters. It's perfectly fine to be emotionally invested in them, and feel strongly about their fates, but perspective is important. No one actually died, no one's hurt. You can regret your choices or be upset at the verdicts, but keep in mind it's ultimately just a web series.

With that established, the voting. Now, the arguments about Forgiven or Unforgiven have already been had and I have little interest in repeating discussions from the past. But I've never talked much about some of these verdicts here, and I know some of you may be interested in knowing my perspective on them and how I feel about them. Again, the following is simply my opinion, no better than yours, we're gonna disagree on some things and that's fine.

Haruka, Shidou and Mahiru will never get to react to their T2 verdicts in earnest. The verdicts to discuss, then, are Muu's and Amane's from T2, and Mahiru's and Kotoko's from T1. Obviously there's other verdicts involved here, but those are the most pressing ones in my eyes.

-I don't agree with the Unforgiven Muu verdict, and I held that opinion for a long time before Your (Curtain) Call released. I fully understand why it happened, I'm not upset it happened, and I don't hold it against anyone who voted her Unforgiven, but I respectfully disagree with the decision.

Of course, it's easy to say I would have Forgiven her when we now know for sure it would have avoided a death, but an Unforgiven vote was always way more dangerous than a Forgiven vote. Sure, Haruka, could have survived the attempt, but the best way to guarantee his safety would have been Forgiving Muu. That's why I held this opinion before the release of Your (Curtain) Call, even if I don't think I ever mentioned it.

Mind you, a Forgiven vote came with its own risks. It would have enforced a very dangerous mindset on Muu's part, and bending to the suicide threat would have enabled Haruka's self-destructive and manipulative tendencies. He probably would have made the same threat in T3 if we'd let him have his way. This is one of many reasons why I understand the verdict.

But those are things that can be dealt with once everyone's out of the hell prison; death isn't. And while it's true that an Unforgiven vote is the only way we have to get across to Muu that she did a bad thing, that doesn't mean we have to take it. Especially since mentally torturing a teenager to get a point across is... morally dubious, on its face. There's no shame in admitting we lack the tools to properly help someone and stepping back to focus on damage control, as helping without the proper tools can do more harm than good.

Again, though, that's my perspective, one which comes from someone who can only talk about the vote in hindsight as I wasn't around when the voting was actually happening. So, it should be taken with a lot of salt. I sincerely hope those who didn't Forgive her get what they wanted out of the verdict and that Muu will become a better person because of it in some way, even if I have my doubts about it. What's done is done, we should just hope for the best now.

-The Amane vote was a lot harder, because neither option came with a guarantee of safety, and neither option came with a guarantee of death. The setup was always there for a Forgiven Amane to kill Shidou (which is what I assume happened), but there was also setup for someone like Kazui saving him. It was entirely possible that Shidou could have survived with injuries, and just because it didn't happen, we shouldn't forget that it seemed like a real possibility at the time.

That isn't to say I blame Kazui or even Shidou or anyone else for what happened. Trusting a child isn't a crime, and people shouldn't have to be babysitting Shidou the whole time. The fault is entirely on the people who raised Amane, the audience who allowed her freedom of movement, and Amane herself.

In the same vein, an Unforgiven vote could have carried no inter-prisoner fatalities, but it would have been Amane's second Unforgiven, meaning there was a real possibility she'd die. We don't know how that works, after all. I don't even find it particularly likely, but it's a real concern that I took into account.

Basically, unlike Muu's vote where one option was clearly safer than the other (in my eyes), Amane's vote was a gamble either way, and we had no way to genuinely tell what the odds of Shidou's death (and Mahiru's, as we believed back then that they were linked) on a Forgiven vote were compared to the odds of an Amane death on Unforgiven.

Which is why I don't regret voting Amane Forgiven. We can speculate on what we'd do with the information we have now and the information we may get later, but with the information we had at the time, I find it a perfectly reasonable decision. If the information we'd had was different, and you could guarantee that no one would die to an Unforgiven vote and that Shidou would absolutely die on a Forgiven, I might have ended up voting Amane Unforgiven. It would have hurt me a lot and I'd feel gross doing it, but I stand by the principle that preserving human life is always the priority.

However, such a guarantee didn't exist. So I had to weigh the possibility of life and death against the other aspects of the vote. And to put it bluntly, I've never personally found any Unforgiven argument unrelated to Shidou's safety to be particularly convincing. We've seen what an Unforgiven vote does for Amane, and it's not good. I sincerely doubt that doing the same thing again would carry different results.

Also, there's another reason I found voting Amane Forgiven when Shidou could die easier to justify than Not Forgiving Muu when that could get Haruka killed: it's just easier to sell me on a Forgiven vote than an Unforgiven vote. That's a personal bias I'm aware of, but not one I particularly mind having and acting upon. Hot take, mentally torturing teenagers is Bad actually, and should be avoided whenever possible.

-I didn't talk about Mahiru much in the previous section, because I'm pretty sure she was dead from T1.

[2024/12/15 Timeline] Mahiru: I also have to, say my thanks, to Shidou-san. Kotoko: I can’t even laugh at how carefree you are, going out of your way to call me over. Well...... if you have any grudges in your last moments, I guess I’d consider listening.

In this recent timeline,, Mahiru talks about Shidou as if he's still alive, but Kotoko seems pretty convinced Mahiru's not going to last much longer. This seems to imply, at least to me, that Shidou wouldn't have been able to keep Mahiru alive for T3 even if he hadn't gotten stabbed by the child. She was likely just kept alive to explore her character further before killing her off.

Now, I don't hold any votes cast against anyone in general, but I especially don't hold anything against the votes from T1. From my understanding, that was the wild wild west when it came to voting, as there was no precedent for what the votes would actually do. I don't even know what I would have voted Mahiru, since by the time I joined the fandom, the consequences of the voting had already been made relatively clear. I have no basis for what I would have taken into account when it came to casting votes in T1.

That said, I would have voted Kotoko Forgiven, probably. I tend to trust fictional characters more than I probably should, and the partnership she offered in TASK sounded quite appealing when we had no precedent for inter-prisoner violence beyond John Doe. HARROW made it look (at least to me) that Kotoko did a lot of research before attacking her victims, so I'd have given her the benefit of the doubt and thought she wouldn't attack the others until she learnt more about their crimes. Without Deep Cover, there wasn't any reason to believe she had that info at the time. Clearly, I'd have enabled the bullshit that happened in the T1-T2 intermission. Oops.

Okay that's way too much yapping about things that no longer matter. The votes are cast, the decisions are made, we move. What's next?

Well, that would be discussing how these deaths affect our choices moving forward. I don't feel like speculating on how characters are going to act in T3 when it's likely we're gonna get more info on that soon anyways (I can't believe it!!!), but what are my plans for voting?

Well, you can probably guess, but I'm hoping for an inno sweep. Unless we get confirmation on what our votes are gonna do before casting them, the possibility that a T3 Unforgiven will kill the character is too dangerous for me to consider that, unless there's some reason to believe a Forgiven vote would also carry risk of death. I think I've made it clear that I don't usually find the mental torture that an Unforgiven vote carries to be particularly helpful, so unless the consequences of the vote change, full Forgiven is probably the best we can hope for. I really doubt it's going to be so simple, of course, but I can't comment further without more info on the trial. I'm very excited to see how they try to avoid the full Forgiven sweep over at MILGRAM HQ (?).

And I'll actually get to vote for all of them this time! Well, the ones who are alive, anyways. Yippie!!!

On a completely unrelated note; really love the title of the video. The play on "your call" (your decision) and "your curtain call" (the end) is fun.

I wonder what other routes would have been called, though. Because obviously you can't have a name for every possible combination of T1 and T2 verdicts, so you need general names like Your (Curtain) Call for most of them. I kinda wanna know what decisions could have led to a different route name. If I feel like it, I might make a post with some other route ideas for the fun of it. But I have like a bajillion posts I want to write on my main still, so. God knows when that would come out.

Alright I've evidently run out of meaningful things to say. Hope you enjoyed this massive rambling session, that you don't hate me if you disagree with my opinions, all that stuff. In any case, thanks for reading, see ya'!

[concurrent-if]

So given what we know now about Coda and MC after finding ✨that✨ out would you say that means Ezra's a more slow burn for his route? I only did Codas part but I'm really excited to see Ezra and Toves route I gotta know which PB she prefers I picked creamy but I like both and what this beef is cause I'm nosey . I'm also curious to know what Coda feels about Ezra usurping the BFF title with MC lol.

On the topic of Coda any chance of a pov or snippet of their thoughts about starting the FWB with their ex they still might have feelings for lol

Ezra is definitely more of a slow burn than Tove and Coda because of ✨that✨ and he won't settle for a FWB situation. That being said, once the floodgates open, that boy will do anything and everything you ask the second you ask, lol.

Tove's stats go up a tiny bit more if you choose the crunchy peanut butter! It was initially just going to be a silly stat boost, but I may add in flavor text for it in a later conversation.

Coda will be very bemused when you tell them about the suddenly-contentious best friend position. That being said, they don't mind - they were there first, and you can have as many close buds as you want. You're all they need, but they aren't possessive.

I am actually working on that POV! So yes, it will happen 💕

Thank you for the ask!

[b-blushes]

personal disability and life stuff. mentions current uk politics r.e. this topic

recently i had the realisation that some kind of miraculous transformation r.e. my health/disability probably isn't going to happen (on one hand, 'of course', on the other hand it's hard to conceptualise a forever of, like, not at all being able to do what was promised 'everyone does' <- vastly simplified expression due to not the point of this post) and as such it would be good to try to move from a less temporary mindset into more of an 'establishing a foundation that will be as 'forever' as anything you don't expect to change in the near future is', specifically r.e. my house aka where i am spending the vast majority of my time. a lot of the things in here i picked because they were the cheapest option that had the features i wanted in that object (not the cheapest or even free overall, but not necessarily the thing i would have picked without constraints, if that makes sense). but that means that they're not necessarily items that bring me joy in a 'for the rest of my life' style and/or actually are the optimal item for the function/what i'd like. i'm trying to slowly try to imagine things that i might like to work up to changing out. (point of the post where i deleted a bunch of justifications and exceptions. let's myself breathe.) this is challenging for several reasons, one of which is that it means that i've got to truly open my eyes to The Situations (depth, breadth, and potential permanence of my disability, etc). but i think a result of a home that feels like it was deliberately, like, compiled with a sense of permanence is a nice thing to work towards. it makes me feel a bit sick to think of a yawning future. and to think of things like 'disabled people who can't work should have the freedom of choice that abled employed people have' because it's a contentious statement. [obviously i agree with it]. it's hard to want things that are being discussed as, like, luxurious, politically. [have you heard about the things that the uk government are doing to disabled people right now. and the fact that it's a discussion point broadly too.]

i kind of hate to think about it. it kind of makes me feel physically unwell to think about. but i think it's something that i SHOULD think about. because i believe it to be true for all disabled people, that 'being grateful that we even have a place to live' shouldn't be the most we should be allowed to hope for. i think we should be able to want and have 'nice things'. and i need to try hard to stop acting like i alone am exempt from this apart from the choice things that i have spent 'more' money on. i hate it. i hate the whole conceptual thing. but unless i change it by trying to live differently then i'd be hating it forever.

this week i've been easing into this by making very small changes. i tidied up a shelf that i didn't like the look of. i rearranged the books on my book case so they look a bit neater. i tied up some cables this morning. things feel so huge and like i can't even touch them, and a degree of that is mental, like 'if i look at this then i'll have to look at other stuff and i don't want to do that because it makes me feel things that i can't do anything about' or 'what right do i have to want more than the wonderful things i already have' and idk if it's a 'bigger' issue but quite frankly i don't have the bandwidth to even start thinking about how i'd start going about doing anything about that right now :P but what i can do is look at a little corner of my kitchen and think 'what if instead of just putting the kitchen roll on the worktop, i had a holder that attached to the cabinet so i had more worktop space' and then DO IT (:

[pillarsalt]

hey sorry for venting randomly in your inbox... sooo i dont usually think too hard about my radfem views anymore since i fully peaked but tonight i cried thinking about my friends. i finally thought hard about how they will never fully know the real me. i have to hide myself and my views from everyone because they are ALL gender brainrotted and homophobic. i used to love them so much and i still do in a way but every time we have a conversation they always bring up trans topics for no reason and it's obvious they're constantly trying to convince themselves of the ideology. the thing that hurts the most is when they tell me, "we will always love and support you no matter who you are" lmao! hilarious. or it would be if i didnt care so much about them but instead it's insanely heartbreaking. i don't trust any of them anymore and i know i should leave but funny thing is i am living with a couple of them and i don't want to live alone. especially since moving out right now (impending trump presidency!! 🦅) sounds stressful. i'm just hoping one day i can get out and start again without causing a scene. just slip away into nothing without a word. but that's not going to happen for a while.

I'm sorry you're in that position, I understand how you feel. Especially the bitterness of the hypocrisy when they act like they're the open minded ones, even when you're who the one who has to self censor in order for them to not freak out.

I completely relate to "they will never fully know the real me" and I have had that grief too. One piece of advice I can give you is to keep the lines of communication open on your end. If you give any indication of your dissent before you leave them, they'll remember it, if and when they themselves snap out of this ideological bubble they're in, and they'll know you're someone safe to talk about it. You said "it's obvious they're constantly trying to convince themselves of the ideology" -- this is a symptom of cognitive dissonance, and for quite a lot of people, this is the point they realize they can no longer deny reality. There's a chance some or all of your current friends could come out of it, but it might take a long time. A lot of the time, when someone changes their mind about a contentious subject, they're embarrassed to talk to people they asserted that incorrect opinion to before. So if you're keeping those bridges open, there's a bigger chance to open that friendship again someday. You're not obligated to do so, but...

I know a lotttt of people are starting to question the rhetoric, it seems to be rising to a crescendo where people are realizing en masse that having your thoughts and speech controlled is not fair or beneficial. People are realizing the sexist and scientifically weak foundation this ideology stands on. I think, while vehement trans activists might fight until their last breath about it, the world is going to get a lot more moderate and realistic on this issue, and soon.

So if anything, in my opinion, have hope. Even if your old friends stay attached to this sinking ship, you're going to undoubtedly find some new ones who you can be yourself around. It's hard to say goodbye, but sometimes it's all you can do. Your thoughts are worth hearing and shouldn't be pushed down to please others; I hope soon you're able to get away and feel able to express yourself.

[blubberquark]

Worse than Trolls: Engagement Optimisers, Tourists, Socialisers, and Enablers

As I previously explained, most online content moderation falls under I-know-it-when-I-see-it. There is very little else to say. People know spam when they see it, and I don't need to define what spam is. Spammers know they are spamming, and are unable and thankfully unwilling to argue your moderation decisions.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are ever so slightly corrosive behaviours than can destabilise an online community in the long term, often without the perpetrators knowing it, or at least without bad faith, without ill intent.

Engagement Optimisers

Users naturally optimise engagement by responding to feedback. When posting memes and cat pictures is rewarded, users post more cat pictures. When posting memes is rewarded, users post more memes.

If your users start to do this on purpose, you might have a problem. For example, somebody might notice that clickbait titles lead to more click-through in forum threads. The people who give their threads vague and mysterious titles get more replies. The people who add a call to action to their OP get more replies: Please share your opinions in the comments below. The people who ask broad, open-ended and opinion-based questions are more likely to get more replies: What programming language should I learn?

If somebody says something contentious or inflammatory by accident, that's fine. You morally can't fault them for sincerely held beliefs or misconceptions, or for soliciting a broader base of opinion. Only when done on purpose, and systematically, it becomes dangerous.

You may end up with a situation where power users learn to play the game and play it better and better, at least better than most users. This can give the people who learned to game the system outsized influence, even when there is no algorithm or karma or no way to spend the karma, because they gain more mindshare and notoriety.

You may also experience a systemic change, because many or most users catch on, and start modifying their behaviour and post different content in order to get noticed.

Still there is the possibility that your users, through group dynamics nobody is consciously exploiting, reward and promote mostly cat pictures and stupid puns, even though no individual user comes to your forum for stupid puns and cat pictures.

Early on in the history of Reddit, this was recognised as a major problem. You could farm upvotes by posting something like "DAE eat chocolate ice cream?", "Upvote if you're going to vote for Ron Paul", or "Linux sucks! There are no good text editors!"

Reddit tried to curb this, somewhat unsuccessfully at first, then more successfully, but in the long run, they lost the battle against their own user base and entropy itself.

Compare this with YouTube, where a call to action is not just allowed, but encouraged by YouTube itself. It's regularly part of the latest set of official tips for creators to grow their audiences. YouTubers thus say "What are your opinions on this topic? Let me know in the comments below!" or "Please like and subscribe".

Tourists

Tourists come in to make drive-by comments in flame war threads. Tourists google a question, find your forum, post a single question, and leave forever when they get the right answer. Tourists come in from Reddit. Tourists don't play the game. Tourists don't read the forum. Tourists don't read the FAQ.

You can't really punish people for coming to your site or channel and making their first comment. I mean, you can, but then they will definitely not come back.

Churn is bad. Tourists are churn personified. If most content comes from tourists, then your community culture is defined by tourists. You lose the ability to shape the culture of your site. It's easy to deter tourists, but it's hard to do so without also deterring people who would otherwise have become proper contributors or community members.

If somebody joins your web site, doesn't read the rules, doesn't read the FAQ, creates more work for the moderators, and is a minor annoyance to the established users without ever rising to the level of a serious rule violation, it's easy for that person to say "We all have to start somewhere" or "You'll never attract new people if you keep enforcing the rules like that."

If you have rules about cross-posting or proper spelling and punctuation, you have to be firm. You cannot retreat every time somebody who hasn't read the rules asks "Why are you so mean to me?"

On the other hand, I remember multiple times when I hopped in an IRC to ask a question like "Is this a known bug? Should I wait for the next release?" or "Does anybody want to collaborate on a game jam next month? Is anybody considering joining Ludum Dare?" only to be told "We don't accept bug reports in here. Bug reports need to be entered into bugzilla in the proper format." or "Please post job postings in the jobs channel only!"

Socialisers

Socialisers talk about off-topic stuff only. They hang out in the off-topic board or channel, and they tell everybody about their youngest child, their morning commute, or the story of how they met their spouse. Socialisers rarely engage with the actual main topic of the community, but everybody knows them, because they post a lot of off-topic content.

As long as socialisers know that the forum is about, and know their stuff, it's fine. The guy whose youngest son just got into middle school and who met his wife when they both reached for the last bottle of herbal shampoo at the supermarket isn't really disrupting your anime forum as long as he watches anime. If he could comment about the different animation studios that worked on Sailor Moon, but chooses not to, he's fine. The problem with socialisers only becomes noticeable when they attract socialisers who do not know or care anything about the on-topic content. If that happens, your forum is no longer a forum where some Haskell programmers post their lunch, it's a forum to post pictures of your lunch.

Enablers

Enablers are one step worse than socialisers. They don't just don't contribute on-topic content, they make the discussion actively worse. If you have a rule such as "do no post a maths homework question" or "do not answer personal questions" or "do not ask other people to answer your question in a DM", the enabler will happily comply anyway. "It's no skin off my back" he says, as he answers the homework question. "It's no skin off my back" he says, as he paraphrases the FAQ again. The enabler will make a good-faith effort to answer bad-faith questions, and he will enable people who just can't be bothered to read the FAQ and follow the rules.

Now there may be multiple reasons why you're not allowed to answer personal questions, ranging from OPSEC about pet names and the colour of your car to professionalism, and depending on those, this may be a big deal or not. When it comes to homework or answering in a DM, the reasoning should be straightforward.

The worst kind of enabling is probably taking abuse in stride, and continuing the conversation. If somebody starts insulting the other people in the conversation, the least you could do is disengage. If somebody calls people names because they can't solve his problem, you should not enable him and try to help him, too.

The most subtle kind of enabling behaviour is a response to Cunningham-style trolling. When somebody posts "Linux sucks, there are no good text editors", then the last thing you should do is reward this kind of behaviour. When somebody posts "I can't solve this in Python, I guess C++ is just a better language. I think I should go back and use C++", then you should say "Good riddance, and may the gods have mercy on the C++ forum."

The most common kind of enabling is when people ask a question and can't be bothered to Google it first, and somebody copies the question into Google it and pastes the answer. The long-term consequence of such behaviour is not only a degraded quality of the conversation, but a forum culture where people regularly Google answers (or worse, ask ChatGPT) and paste the result without checking.

Maybe in the future, something like "I asked ChatGPT this, is this true" or "Copilot wrote this code, can you help debug it" will become more common, and humouring these kinds of people will become the most common toxic enabling behaviour.

Drama Magnets/Troll Feeders

Finally, there is a kind of person who enables trolls and harassers by being thin-skinned, very easy to make fun of, and by boosting every insult. There is a certain kind of person who will just endlessly complain about being wronged in small ways, and will take offence to small perceived slights. This allows a malicious actor to get out much more in terms of reactions than he puts in. If a troll can poke somebody once, and get dozens of "Ow ow" and "he poked me" and "woe is me, I have been poked" out of a target, that will only motivate him.

If somebody freely volunteers his weak spots, things he is self-conscious about, ways to rile him up in the form of a profile, carrd, or bio, then trolls will have it even easier.

So What?

Over time, too many enablers, tourists, or drama magnets may or may not ruin your online community. Over time, engagement optimisers can slowly but steadily ruin your community. Socialisers may not notice or care either way.

A code of conduct may protect your community against bad actors, but it can't protect your forum culture from clueless actors. It's incredibly hard to create a good set of punitive rules against this. As a moderator, it's emotionally difficult to enforce rules against this. You don't want to kick people while they are down, and you don't want to punish them for making popular content, even if it's just pictures of kittens and pictures of their lunch.

The only way you can achieve anything is by educating your users, and hoping they give a damn about forum culture.

[allforreading-fandomthings]

I apologize if this is a sensitive topic - as I understand, people not liking Tom Cruise is something of a constant struggle for his fans and I truly don't want to add to that, I was just hoping you could help me find some answers.

I've come to understand that the whole Scientology thing isn't so simple with him, but a source I do consider reliable has sometimes talked about Tom being (currently or at least up until recently) very involved in recruiting more celebrities into the church.

Would you say that's true? And if not, could you give me some sources for it? He genuinely seems like a good guy to me, I would just like to like him a little more guilt-free.

Again, very sorry if this is a heated topic, I'm just trying to find an explanation that mainstream media doesn't seem willing to give me

Hey, thanks for your ask!

Tom and scientology- yes, that's a huge and contentious topic with many, many unknowns.

I don't know, however, if I'm the right person to answer this question. I don't read what the tabloids are saying about him. I don't get into gossip about him and I believe everything that has to do something with him and scientology is gossip. Tom hasn't talked about his private life in a very long time and as long as he doesn't start talking about it again I won't judge him for what the tabloids are saying about him.

I listen to what the people he works with are saying about him. But they don't talk about his private life either. And I certainly don't believe what any anonymous source claims to know about him.

You could tell me more about the source you mentioned and I might look into it but as of now I won't say anything about his involvement with scientology.

This is not to say that I approve of scientology in any way but as I said, I don't know about his involvement in scientology and neither he nor the people he's publicly close with talk about his private life so who am I to judge?

[liskantope]

And in case anyone was wondering (as I'm pretty sure at least one anonymous repeat-asker is), I haven't forgotten that when I got sucked into a vortex of Other Obligations in late March and went dead on Tumblr through most of April, I was in the middle of multiple contentious back-and-forths (especially if you count a sequence of asks that started collecting in my inbox late last calendar year and have been collecting since) which are all in some way or other related to trans rights stuff, the most recent and also least directly related of which are a kind of stupid argument I was getting into over the character of Zach Davis. And I still do intend to get back to these. I was tentatively designating yesterday as the time I would set aside a big chunk of my day to find a halfway satisfying way to close all the loops on these things (even if sloppily or imperfectly), and then that got postponed to today, and now it looks like it's going to be postponed to tomorrow. I might save several posts in a row as drafts so that they can be released all at the same time and I don't have to deal with the distraction of pushback to one thing while I'm still trying to write another complementary thing.

This whole cluster of topics has been getting increasingly unpleasant to me by the month, partly for the obvious reason that more and more bad things are Actually Happening on the trans issues front, and one factor behind my putting this off is that the whole thing has reached a peak level of stomach-churning to me. (Which, I'm sure many of you will say, join the club.) But I still want to resolve some things I left hanging, as well as give some points/info that others have been providing in asks the light of day on this blog that they deserve. I think some might be surprised at how much I'm willing to concede at this point, although as usual there's going to be a certain amount of defensiveness and attempts at explanation of my overall mentality about these things and how I come to my (never 100% confident) convictions.

[eclipsemeteor]

Commander Is Subjective

Magic's becoming a monster of a game, franchise, and corporate beast that's growing and changing beyond comprehension. And further within that scope, Commander is always a contentious hot button topic due to its more lofty, somewhat ambiguous, and vibes focused goals.

Opinions both online and offline span across the entirety of the format and game, and while you can find amicable discussions among friends and collaborators, you'll find the sheer difference from an enfranchised player vs a disconnected one to be head-spinning. Thus, people look for some sort of structure that's concrete and easy to follow to make this disconnect less disorienting. But what else can you do beyond the format's mission statements and ban list?

My name's Cole, I'm a host of the Hero's Blade Vibe Check Podcast and the former host of Uncommon Commander. Playing commander since 2012 or so has given me a lot of perspective and opinions on Magic, but mostly (exclusively) on Commander.

(Of course, this means you should take my opinions as a player and consumer with a grain of salt, but also keep an open mind because what I'm gonna talk about is not based on cold hard facts and statistics, it's solely vibes and feels based. It's how I operate.)

(Thanks Mark Rosewater for this lovely meme template. We will now run with it)

Commander/EDH exists everywhere: Gameplay videos, podcasts, written articles, tweets, Tiktoks and actual games you experience. In most situations, you're always gonna hear or have an opinion on an individual card, a commander, a strategy, a color/color combination, or even on a person, while also hearing about someone's opinion on something you enjoy.

Commander at its core is about creative expression via deck building, how you bling out or customize your decks visual appearance and socialization! With 27,349 unique cards as of this posting (and excluding the ban list), there are many different permutations for self-expression.

(for example, I'm a big believer in Odric Blood-Cursed, and this is the deck that I've been tuning for 2 years. I've had a lot of fun with it, and have made heads turn)

With that many different ways to build a deck, you're bound to run into things you don't like, and sometimes they're not quantifiable.

The reason for this article, and no doubt others have discussed this at length and much better than I, is that Commander is first and foremost a social experience. It's meant for multiplayer, it's Singleton, and the only stakes are what you make. You start adding quantifiable or monetary incentives, you take away the spirit of Commander. If you make a narrower or broader ban list, you take away from the spirit of Commander. You try to enforce or advocate for a separate ban list, rules committee, etc?

You're right, you take away from the spirit of Commander.

What you make Commander is up to you, but it can't be what it's been for people since its inception without participating with other players. You can goldfish all day, but Magic doesn't exist without the Gathering. That means compromise, healthy discussion, an open mind and heart, and a line in the sand to say when an experience isn't for you. We can sit and discuss how social bans make no sense, so why doesn't the Rules Committee ban mass land destruction? Why does Sol Ring get a pass while Mana Vault doesn't?

At the end of the day, despite how we may socially desire structure, hard enforcement of rules might make this beloved format lose its luster. Looking at it with a finite perspective will deny you opportunities for growth and expansion. Looking at Universes Beyond as only a cash grab will deny you the ridiculousness of having a table consisting of Optimus Prime, Gandalf, Chun-Li and Cloud Strife, but also the well designed cards made with care by people.

None of this would exist without people making the cards, illustrating these stories, characters and landscapes. People who made the rules, people who made this format, and the people who sit down and play this format.

People, like you or I, who are flawed, and have expectations and choices that are different than what we want as individuals. They may be people you respect, you admire. They might be people you love, hate, or feel indifferent about. But they are still people who make this game work.

To like everyone you encounter would be a ridiculous ask, but I ask that you give people a chance when you can allow yourself, and know it's ok if you don't. But I think most people are a lot cooler than you think, if given the chance.

Whether you're as enfranchised as I am, or more or less so, what you owe yourself and the others you play with is a genuine enthusiasm for playing and engaging the format. Take chances where you can engage with new people, be patient as new cards enter your view, and try to find and foster friendships so that the next time, the games are even better when you learn about this game better through the lens of friendship and the Gathering.

Keep an open mind! Be excellent to each other.

[taylortruther]

Hi Rae, I need advice!

Context: Have a close friend who is going through a lot (terrible job/bad flatmates/no tight social circle apart from us high school friends/very contentious relationship with her family/struggling to get affordable healthcare in the US/mismanaged and scary finances). A lot of these issues are deep-seated, going back almost ten years.

Problem: Me and our other friend have always been her biggest "venting ground". Our group chat is literally that. But I'm so emotionally burnt out from her right now, it's making me resentful because I'm waking up every day to 10+ messages (we're in three different timezones).

I don't know what else to say other than "I'm sorry, that's awful" whenever we get some new despair-filled message. Saying "wow that sucks" and "I get you, it's frustrating" is really doing me in rn. (I suspect a big part of my resentment is also about the fact that I tend to be a very solutions-oriented person and for months we've been gently offering her solutions to some of the more easily fixable things in her life rn and she just *refuses* to use them. Example: She burns through her salary super fast and it stresses her out but will also message us about how theres a 500 dollar laser treatment she wants to get for herself as a birthday present. I told her to maybe think of a more affordable thing she could get herself and bracket the laser as a later wish. She didnt.).

I know I need to boundaries, but am not sure how express them without making her feel bad (is that even possible) and adding to her stress. Maybe I just need to keep saying "I'm sorry, that sucks" in 10x ways.

it sucks, but i think you need to be okay with her feelings being a little hurt. stop being so gentle, be a little tough! just because her feelings are hurt doesn't mean what you are doing is wrong - it's not! you're doing a good thing, you're trying to save your friendship by setting boundaries so you can continue being there for her.

the most straightforward thing, imo, would be to message her next time this happens, and say something like, "i know you are going through a really hard time, and it sounds really rough. i want to help find solutions for you, but it's hard to know how to help when you keep going in circles."

she will probably say, "i just need to vent, you are the only people i can talk to!"

and you can say, "i am happy to listen sometimes, but it's a lot of negativity to listen to without being able to help." maybe even talk on a, "i really want to tell you all about[x important thing in your life that i am guessing she never asks about]!"

you could also do some more passive things. when she gets started, say something like, "how are you planning on dealing with it?" and if she dismisses it, maybe say, "that sounds tough, you should do x. also, did i tell you all i'm going to [x important event] tomorrow?" LMAO like i'm literally laughing writing this out, because your friend is probably going to get upset. i find people who vent and vent and vent are often not the types that take kindly to this sort of thing. but honestly, if your friend is venting this much, she probably isn't much of a friend to you right now either, right? she's treating you like an object, just this big hole she can throw all her woes into, not a person/friend who she should also care about.

also, any of the above might make her just... drop the chat. so proceed knowing that.

you could also just like... not respond. or respond a little, but after a few courtesy messages, "heart" the message, say, "i'm so sorry you are going through that!" and then gently change the topic. this is probably what i would do.

also, most common, you could just fade her out. i don't necessarily recommend it, but if you find yourself just wanting to mute the chat... i can't really blame you.

[langernameohnebedeutung]

Ok, giving you an update as I finish up Season 3!

Claiming Liv for BPD rep. With the mood and Personality swings (+ related interpersonal problems) I feel very seen :)

This might me just my Aro vision making it hard to see, but I don’t get MajorxLiv. Like with all the other pairs, there’s a path there or they shared interests and worked their way closer. But with these two we’re just told that they are meant for each other because ??? , but everytime they are together it’s just…why?

Liv has had better chemistry with every single one of her dead Boyfriends and she deserves better

Watching Blaine go from the main villain to that annoying bastard you can’t get rid of makes me so proud! I love characters like that! He’s the best, I wish him to never achieve his dreams! :D

On that note, the series has consistently fun villains. Good Job!

Big fan of the Meal montages that started with Season 2. And with how the brains keep their colour and consistency unless turned into mush. As brains are known to be x)

Fillmore-Graves has taught me that my armor for puns is still sore

I just like Jimmy, I’m glad he keeps showing up. He hates working with the Morgue Crew so much and it is so funny!

Fave episodes: “Astroburger” “Fifty Shades of Grey Matter” “Eternal Sunshine of the Caffeinated Mind” “Zombie Knows Best” “Looking for Mr. Goodbrain 1+2”

4 more days and 2 Season to go!

*braces for the LARP Episode*

!! You weren’t lying when you said you were speed-running! I was worried you might not be able to make it through the show before the end of June but you’re making headway!

- Oh, I love that (re: Liv BPD rep) – I never thought about it before but that is really interesting to explore! Tbh I often think of the zombism as a metaphor, e.g. Liv’s early zombism as a parallel to the PTSD symptoms that someone would experience after the boat party. And some specific brains having her adopt different neuro-types (e.g. the “hot mess brain” really struck a chord with me as someone with ADHD) – and the thing is, BPD would also make a lot of sense, especially with the age of onset often being in someone's 20s. Plus, it makes me even think in literal terms and not just metaphorical ones – Liv always seems to be more strongly affected by the brains than most other zombies on the show and I think it would have been interesting to explore how zombism and related brain-effects would interact with different mental health conditions and neurotypes. (The thing is, I have at least the working theory that the underlying personality as well as the willingness to engage with the new personality affects how and how strongly zombies are affected. A big example for me is Liv having a vision the very moment she ate one of Lowell's orphan brains while he could surpress it. Or in Conspiracy Weary, when Liv, Blaine and Don E are on the same brain and Liv does stuff like putting gum on her friends' webcams and wants to protect them, Don E likes to talk about celebrities (we see him do that on other occasions like with Christina Ricci or Gwyneth Paltrow) and Blaine is very opinionated on Tupac and the symbolism of Makaveli (music being a big deal to him)

-- The thing is, I think MajorxLiv might just be one of the most contentious topics in the fandom. I know people who really love them together and the tragedy and drama and the doomed-lover-ness of it all and I know others argue more from the point that such a major (ha!) point of the show is deconstructing the seemingly perfect life Liv had at the beginning of the show and he realisation that it wasn’t perfect at all and that she mostly lived for the expectations of others and didn't really have anything that mattered to her. And that part of that should have been realising that Major and her weren’t meant to be married-two-kids-picket fence and that they should have just embraced being friends and that it defeats the narrative. I also think it might be because they’re one of the only couples we don’t see originally falling in love – with Peyton and Ravi and Clive and Dale we see what attracted them to each other in the first place and watch their relationships develop (though I must say that I have more fun with Clive/Dale than with Peyton/Ravi but that’s no hate on the latter, I just enjoy the dynamic between Clive and Dale more). But Liv and Major were a thing from the beginning and you can tell that the writers very much prioritised them over other relationships these two had (rip Nathalie especially, you deserved so much better) which I alo think leads to some frustration. Personally, I don't really feel that strongly about it either way but I wish there were some aspects that they had gotten into more. Also, I wish they had prioritised Liv dealing with the deaths of so many of her boyfriends more?? Dude, the trauma of that. The guilt!

--- REAL. It goes from Blaine being a child-butchering monster to Blaine and Don E being the Pinky and the Brain of zombism (and also having the main-gang on speed dial). I like that they didn’t even go the route of redeeming Blaine or making him less evil. He actually continues to do things just as evil (and worse) than what he did in season 1. But even the morgue gang doesn’t really prioritise stopping or killing him anymore. I bet they run into each other in supermarkets or at the bank sometimes lmao.

I think it’s partially because he’s the long-distance runner of iZombie villains – most of the other baddies contain their evil to one season, maybe one-and-a-half. So it’s much easier to keep track of where they wronged you. With Blaine, the list is so long, it’s really hard to keep track of it all. Plus, a lot of his schemes don’t even directly affect the gang or they never learn about them. The show just gives like…a good amount of screen-times to tuning in to Shady Plots or the Scratching Post to show us what stupid schemes these two clowns are up to. (Also, I like that David Anders said that Blaine actually really likes the morgue squad and spending time with them. Those are his best friends who hate him <3)

----I also kind of dig that the meal montages really only started happening with season 2. Because early on, Liv’s zombie meals being more depressing (the instant noodles she does in the pilot for example) makes a lot of sense because she still feels defeated and lost being a zombie. But later on, she starts having fun with it! And I think it goes well with stuff like her refusing to tan or dye or putting on a scratchy wig – she really starts owning being a zombie and the fun meals are part of it!! I love that for her!

----- iZombie drinking game: Always taking a sip when there’s a silly pun somewhere. (doctors do not recommend this)

------- They put so much energy and thought and screen-time into their non-primary cast! Jimmy! Vampire Steve! Enzo! Johnny Frost! They’re just like: “here’s another perplexing little guy. We will not elaborate.”

--------- These are all fun! I always find it kind of hard to say which one of my favourite episodes are but I also really like The Whopper for all the drama happening there and Conspiracy Weary – Oh, and in season 4 you have Brainless in Seattle and Goon Struck coming up which I also really love (you might already be there, even. Not to spoil but: Major and Don E on a roadtrip! That was fun.). And in season 5 The Scratchmaker and the noir episode are really fun!

[bilbobagginsomebabez]

Hi! I’ve been following your blog for a bit and I’m wondering if you or anyone else could help me with an idea I have. I’m graduating from college in about a month (mid-May 2024) and I was thinking of using the opportunity (large-ish crowd, lots of cameras, important/official school event) to decorate the top of my graduation cap with something in support of ceasefire, peace/liberation, and an end to U.S. support of the Israeli government’s violence. My current/best idea so far is to have simple, black-and-white text reading “CEASEFIRE NOW” and maybe a little dove holding a branch that is green, red, and black. I understand that some people who are also disgusted with this violence (genocide) find problems with the call for “ceasefire now” but I don’t know what else to write—I want to make sure that the design is clear, succinct, and easy to read/see. I’ve thought about adding a small border of text around the edge of the cap, to say something like “END GENOCIDE” and “END U.S.-BACKED VIOLENCE” but I worry that would make the design too busy.

Is this a good design? Good text? Should I take a different approach? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thank you and I hope you have a nice day :)

i'm guessing the ceasefire thing is related to "not a war -- an occupation" rhetoric, but i would not worry about that. very different groups there with very different considerations; effective rhetoric amongst online leftists is not effective rhetoric during an american graduation ceremony. tune your language to your audience and what they'll understand. a ceasefire is the next most immediate step to saving palestinian lives and is commonly understood language. it's fine.

as for the design, i'd pick either "END THE GENOCIDE" or "CEASEFIRE NOW" with a fact or two. kind of like this:

^this is ugly. don't use this. but be bold with what it says. its purpose is to make a strong point fast.

i don't mean for this to be patronizing at all, i just don't know where your experience level is regarding political action online vs in real life, where you live, your comfort with public speaking, etc. i'd like to warn you because sometimes people are surprised by it, but people may approach you about this. they may not choose to talk to their family about it later or post about it on social media or google it. the point of doing this publicly at a large event where it is unavoidable that people see it is to cause a reaction and to control the structure of the conversation that follows. their starting point is the one you chose. if you haven't spoken about or heard others speak about palestine in your community, don't underestimate how contentious this topic may be. someone may argue with you or even attempt to berate you. when making a public statement of your beliefs in this manner, you are inviting public discussion by starting a public discussion. an open-entry public discussion, where not everyone who enters will be well-mannered.

if you are approached, this is a limited contact type of activism; quick and dirty. the goal is to get them curious and questioning and hopefully refer them to stronger and more detailed sources. for this purpose, stronger and more detailed sources can be easy and digestible like a good social media account or youtube video. do NOT get bogged down in the details. do NOT dissect the whole history of the area. it is sufficient to address recent violence, it is not your job to cover the entire issue from start to finish, and you couldn't if you tried anyway.

i would operate on an assumption of good faith but prepare for bad faith attempts to debate. don't necessarily use terminology to determine good faith from bad faith. assume ignorance instead of malice where possible, and be prepared to control your temper if you have one. get your facts straight, and consider keeping a little notecard with talking points or specific numbers like you might for a speech class. a note on your phone. an album of screenshots. some sort of reference that you feel confident using.

though to be honest, the more likely result is a drawn out argument with a conservative family member at dinner. which is also important, if wildly unpleasant.

either way, be ready to talk about it, be ready to explain it, and be ready to challenge people you know directly and staunchly.

good luck!

this may be a useful quick and dirty talking point to sidestep antisemitism accusations: "Ethnostates are bad no matter which ethnicity is in charge. We know this. If you're confused: it's 2023. There are people everywhere. There is nowhere to establish an ethnostate where you will not have to forcibly remove people who already live there, which called ethnic cleansing. which is known under international law as genocide. Ethnostates are always bad."

[onecornerface]

Leeja Miller's video on civil war is irresponsible & ridiculous + red flags

Leftwing Youtuber Leeja Miller’s recent video is mostly a decent video about why civil war is unlikely to happen in the United States despite polarization. However, some aspects of her video are severely irresponsible-- especially one batshit claim she makes within the first 10 seconds. Miller flatly asserts in the first 10 seconds:

“Political violence in the United States is at an all-time high.”

WTF? No it isn't! What do you even mean?? She doesn’t cite this claim with any evidence, and doesn’t clarify it with any metrics. The statement as written is definitely false, and I don't know any reading where it comes out as well-established.

For starters, she must mean only the last several decades-- obviously the American Civil War and much of its aftermath were more violent. I strongly suspect the 1960s-70s were too (at least by some metrics, but I don't know a lot about this). But she doesn’t even clarify this.

I'm going to harp on this statement a lot, because it's such a ridiculous and irresponsible assertion, and it's at the start of the video. She knows full well that most people only watch the first part of almost any video and not the entire thing, so almost all viewers will hear that statement.

I’m not even sure that it’s true within the last few decades. It sounds like the sort of statement she thinks she doesn’t need to earn, because so many people already assume it’s common sense. But a lot of “common sense” (even among progressives)—about topics like polarization, the criminal justice system, and even “misinformation” itself—is either false or highly suspect. Hate crime statistics are controversial, and categories like “terrorism” and “political violence” require a lot of caveats.

One possibility is that she might be implicitly referring to a single chart she later shows at 9:54 in the video, measuring "terrorist attacks" in the United States, which appear to spike in 2016 and remain high thereafter. But this can't justify her opening statement, for several reasons: (1) "terrorist" is of course a contentious category, (2) the start of the video is still uncited and does not clarify if it is referring to the later chart, (3) the chart only goes back to 2000 (so it doesn't support the "all-time high" claim-- and nor does a later terrorism chart starting from 1994), and (4) "terrorism" just is not the same as "political violence."

In several places, Miller cites a 2023 paper called "Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says" by Rachel Kleinfeld. This looks like a probably very good paper. I'll try to read it in full later. The better parts of Miller's video are probably cribbing mainly from this paper. But I looked over the paper, and it only affirms that political violence has increased in recent years-- which is quite bad, but says nothing about it being at an "all-time high."

It’s irresponsible for Miller to say “Political violence in the United States is at an all-time high” at the outset without any clarification, metrics, evidence, or caveats. She delves into a few relevant categories later in the video, but never really backs up the initial assertion. This is a serious omission.

Other Complaints -Imprecision, Bad Citational Practices, Red Flags More broadly, there are a bunch of points in the video that I’d like Miller to include a few more caveats on. For example, she mentions that over the years, a bunch of railroads have been “targeted” by cyber attacks and this seems worrying—but she doesn’t mention what impact these attacks did or didn’t have on railroad operations. So we’re left without any clear picture of how serious or nonserious the problem is. At least she cites a source onscreen here, so the viewer can research it further (albeit inconveniently, since it is not linked). But why not spend a few more seconds in the video to clarify the extent of the damage?

More broadly, Miller’s citations seem shoddy. She does cite various sources in the video itself (not for her opening assertion about "political violence" at an "all-time high", though!!), but there are no sources in the description below it. In this regard, she's even worse than Iilluminaughtii (who at least linked to a disorganized list of citations). I was hoping, in the aftermath of Hbomberguy’s video exposing the misinformation and plagiarism by Iilluminaughtii and James Somerton, that video essayists would start holding themselves and one another to a higher standard of citational rigor, accuracy, clarity, and accessibility. Apparently not! This still needs to happen!

Another red flag: Leeja Miller churns out a LOT of videos on a wide variety of topics on an extremely frequent basis. In light of the above stuff, this is now known to be a red flag that someone may be cutting corners on the research.

To be clear, I don't know who precisely is at fault here. According to the description, the research and writing are done by someone named Victoria Marchiony, so this may be on her. I'm focusing on Leeja Miller here, since she is the speaker and the face & name of the YouTube channel.

Irresponsible Sensationalist Clickbait Title + Thumbnail Finally, I think the title and thumbnail are really bad and reinforce the problem Miller criticizes. The video itself provides some decent reasons to be skeptical of the notion of impending civil war. This is an important topic. Many people are wildly exaggerating the likelihood of civil war, and causing needless fear.

But the question should have been answered in the title & thumbnail. Instead, the title and thumbnail both just provocatively ask “Is Civil War Coming?” without indicating that the answer is “probably not.” Some people will likely see the video’s title & thumbnail without watching it, and think to themselves “Wow, this person takes the idea of civil war seriously—I guess it’s serious” and thus come away increasing their fears of an upcoming civil war. So this kind of title & thumbnail is seriously irresponsible on Miller’s part.