#incremental theory

[gravitascivics]

AN “INCREMENTAL” ETHOS

Of late, this blog reported on a distinction that psychologist Carol S. Dweck has made in how people view intelligence.  People tend to see intelligence as a given trait in terms of how much they have – entity theory – or as a malleable trait one can work on and increase – incremental theory.[1]  The last posting suggested that this basic distinction – how people see intelligence – can and does influence how people approach civic concerns.

          That posting, in passing, suggested that people who adopt an entity view might very easily attribute intelligence levels to inherited biological factors and further be attributed to such conditions of birth such as race, nationality, gender, or similar factors.  One should be clear here; there is no evidence to support such general attributions people make in their efforts to cast people they don’t like as “them” as opposed to “us.”  And included in such castigation is that “they” are not smart enough.

            This sort of thinking, in whatever guise it takes, hits directly, in a negative way, on federation theory in that it questions equality.  Here is a definition one can use for equality:  Equality is a social quality based on the belief that despite inequality in talent, wealth, health or other assets, it calls for equal consideration of all persons’ well-being, that all have an equal right to maintain their dignity and integrity as individual persons.  

What Dweck offers is an argument that varying levels of intelligence are mostly not determinant.  Sure, some people are blessed with exceptional intelligence.  Surely this blogger is not in Albert Einstein’s league when it comes to physics, or Pablo Picasso’s when it comes to art, or Chris Rock’s when it comes to humor, etc.  But he and most people are within ranges of intelligence that allow for meaningful interaction when it comes to governance and politics.

And this would be further enhanced by a population that believes intelligence is not a given trait in terms of how much one has, but a trait that one can improve on to meet the challenges one faces either individually or as a member of a political association.  The trick is to find out how that improvement occurs. 

Unfortunately, for the purposes here, those “hows” vary according to the challenges one faces.  Therefore, there is no set pattern in how to approach these efforts, but there are general modes of problem solving or investigation one can learn that, given the challenge, can be utilized to advance one’s intelligence given a particular area of concern.

So, for example, such instructional models, usually denoted as inquiry models, can be employed and they lend themselves to an incremental approach to intelligence.  These models are usually forms of the scientific method[2] or some process in which students apply a more logic-based activity such as the jurisprudential inquiry approach.[3] 

But short of those models, essentialist instruction (usually associated with recall objectives) can also be more friendly to this incremental view.  For example, Robert M. Gagne’s model, while essentialist in nature, strives for students to reflect on the material teachers present.

This deserves a bit more explanation.  In summary, here is what Robert Gagne called conditions of learning – five of them – and nine progressive levels or “steps” in which students can advance and engage with school subject content.  The conditions are: 

Verbal information which consists of knowledge claims one finds among various sources of subject information and can be interrelated with other information in meaningful ways. 

Intellectual skills are those abilities students can develop by which they process knowledge such as forming hierarchies, contextualizing relevant, new information, or acquiring information that adds distinctive attributes to what is being studied among other skills. 

Cognitive strategies consist of analytic abilities in which students can break down sets of information that assist in exposing problems, the problems themselves, or the information needed to solve those problems. 

Motor skills are those behavioral steps that students develop and, through practice, improve upon in which they tackle challenging academic issues. 

Attitudes are those sentiments students need to motivate themselves to address the material that classroom instruction presents to them.

Hopefully, readers can appreciate how these concerns draw educators beyond just seeing teaching as presenting content for the sake of students to recall that content.

And as for the levels or steps, they are: 

Level 1:  Reception (or capturing the attention of students),

Level 2:  Setting expectations (or students being informed about what they are to learn and why they are to learn it),

Level 3:  Relevant retrieval (or calling on students to recall what they know and is helpful in meeting a lesson’s objectives),

Level 4:  Targeted or selective perception (or presenting new information that students are to learn with an array of aids such as visuals, examples, discussions),

Level 5:  Verbal encoding (or presentation of the new information in a variety of language presentations such as graphics or case studies),

Level 6:  Responding (or student presentation of new information in various communicative approaches such as tests, demonstrations, interpretations – perhaps artistic productions),

Level 7:  Evaluative reinforcement (or teaching agents providing students with feedback as to the proficiency students demonstrate with the goal to improve on student performance),

Level 8:  Evaluative assessment (or determination of how well students have learned the content), and

Level 9:  Enriching the retained information (or have students transfer learned content to novel or real-life situations that do not totally match information learned but need to be adjusted or nuanced to be applicable).[4]

This is a far cry from a teacher presenting information and students committing information to memory, which is how essentialist instruction usually transpires.

          The point is that incremental approaches are out there and Dweck offers data that supports the belief that this view of intelligence is the more accurate way to view student potential.  Hopefully, for the sake of students and for the sake of approaching governance and politics from a federalist perspective, teachers will opt for strategies reflecting incremental understanding of intelligence, leaving behind strategies that entity theory encourages.

[1] Carol S. Dweck, Self-Theories:  Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Philadelphia, PA:  Psychology Press, 2000).

[2] For example, see Molly S. Bolger, Jordan B. Osness, Julia S. Gouvea, and Alexandra C. Cooper, Jennifer Momsen, “Supporting Scientific Practice through Model-Based Inquiry:  A Students’-Eye View of Grappling with Data, Uncertainty, and Community in a Laboratory Experience,” ASCB/Life Science Education, October 22, 2021, accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  https://www.lifescied.org/doi/10.1187/cbe.21-05-0128.

[3] For example, see Muhammad Japar and Dimi Nur Fadhillah, “Do We Need to Learn about Human Rights Values?,” Atlantis Press, 2018, accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  25891038.pdf.

[4] For example, see “Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction,” Information Technology/University of Florida (n.d.), accessed February 7, 2024, URL:  https://citt.ufl.edu/resources/the-learning-process/designing-the-learning-experience/gagnes-9-events-of-instruction/.

[potatoobsessed999]

WAIT. Waitwaitwaitwaitwait Scholomance series realization!!

Using malia creates mals. A little bit of malia creates little mals, a lot of malia creates big mals. Right?

The very littlest mals are the agglos, and they’re so small and insignificant as to be considered harmless. Nobody really minds about them. At worst they’re minor pests.

BUT then it turns out that the agglos were what broke the cleansing machinery in the graduation hall! The very tiniest and most seemingly harmless acts of malia - that is of exploitation, of using other living beings - were what paved the way for the bigger ones to cause all that devastation! Literally eating away at the defenses set up against them!

I am so obsessed with these books y’all. Naomi Novik is on a level I cannot even comprehend.

[makingmylifebetter]

Ok y’all don’t kill me bc my mind changes all the time but I think I got the timeline right in MY mind

[scumlafeccia]

I wonder what would happen if the tc clock app will find out abt the mostro di firenze case

[asterdeer]

tori was an amazing guest and very very funny but as someone who has multiple times considered the practicalities and interpersonal optics of buying enough sleeping pills to kms, hermie’s tight five KILLED (no gallows pun intended), 100/10

[thealchemyofgamecreation]

Mastering Cognitive Load: Unlocking the Secrets of Game Design

Discover the cognitive load theory in my latest game design blog article! Where I explore the powerful influence of cognitive load theory on creating captivating games. #GameDesign #IndieGameDev #UXDesign #GameDev #AdobeFirefly

[galactic-rhea]

The Midi-chlorian essay only a few asked

(or, How Is Anakin Skywalker a walking biological horror)

So I made this post and a few were actually interested, also i needed to write down all of this or I wouldn't be able to sleep.

The way I went just from "hahaha they're just mitochondria before becoming forced symbionts and losing all autonomy" to the Medical Horror that would be Anakin Skywalker .

Let me explain, going from this theory, let me tell you that the average mammal cell can have between 800 to 2000 mitochondria. In Star Wars we're told that the average living being, has 2500 midi-chlorians per cell. The difference isn't that big, so we can assume that mid-chlorians are smaller than our real-life mitochondria, and it would make sense since the mitochondria have the best possible living conditions, whereas midi-chlorians, if they're free-life bacteria (as in, they aren't forced to live in the cells of another being) it would make sense if they're just smaller, let's say, sneaky, to increment their chances at living.

So Midi-chlroains don't just produce ATP, Force sensitives have a minimum of 4000-5000 midi-chlorians per cell. That's...a big number, but not very horrific. See, the amount of mitochondria is related to how much energy the organic tissue requires. The cells of muscular tissue and neurons are the ones with the highest mitochondria count. Also the mitochondria in the neurons are mobile and flexible, because just thinking burns ATP.

We can assume that using The Force burns insane amounts of ATP, so I assume it makes sense for Force Sensitives to have big amounts of Midi-chlorians. But! The problem with this is that we're told that the Midi-chlorians are attracted to the force, not born within it. But any multicelullar organism (with a few exceptions) need the mitochondria. Mitochondria have their own ADN, and they're always inherited from the mother, so we can assume that there's two different types of midi-chlorians: The ones any normal being borns with, and the ones that get attracted because of the baby's force potential. Either that, or both the mithocondria and the midi-chlorians exist simultaneously.

Which means that Jedi (or anyone who wants to know, really) would need to take several blood tests for midi-chlorians count. Because a newborns midi-chlorian count wouldn't be the same through a babie's infancy. UNLESS...The midi-chlorian infection (yes, i'm calling it that) ocurrs already since the pregnancy, if the force is strong enough for a fetus to be a possible force sensitive in the future, then I guess the midi-chlorians would get attracted to the parent during the pregnancy as well.

WHICH BTW, IT FITS WITH PADMÉ BECOMING FORCE SENSITIVE, at least for a while, like the discarded ROTS concepts. But also, would mean, that poor Shmi became a hella strong force-sensitive person as well, at least for a while.

And it would be a biological advantage if we take this route, because it would possibly make the pregnant being stronger and with a higher supply of energy.

It also explains why the jedi would only take a single blood test when the force sensitive is just a baby, because the infection is already settled. It can also be argued, that any baby born with a fairly high amount of midi-chlorians (like the 4000 per cell count minimum) would only increase, if only slightly, as the force sensitive grows because the midi-chlorians will get attracted regardless.

There must be a limit, or more like, a balance, that the midi-chlorian and the force potential of the individual met. As in, there's just enough force within the individual for a certain number of midi-chlorian, and all of this is probably decided already during the fetus formation or very early on the baby's life.

Now, Anakin...would be an abomination. Because his cells are so full of midi-chlorians, that it's scary to think how the cells aren't exploding or downright giving malfunctions to the rest of the cellular organelles.

If we go by the route of "midi-chlorians start infecting the force sensitive host mother during pregnancy" it means there were high chances of a misscarriage or an incompatibility between Shmi and Anakin, because holy cow, Anakin is just too much.

But you know what also, it could potentially mean? That Padmé's pregnancy was a risky one, fron the start -slowly nods-. Luke and Leia's force potential was lower than Anakin's, but there's still a lot to unpack there in terms of compatibility. We are never given the exact count of midichlorian count for the twins, but let's pretend it was low enough for Padmé to not inmediatly have a miscarriage. That, and also, maybe, Padmé isn't strong in the force to manipulate it, but maybe just close enough for the pregnancy to be carried to term, let's say, her midi-chlorian count is 3900, close enough.

Something similar with Shmi, I'm taking for granted that she also had a difficult and risky pregnancy (on top of it being a pregnancy she had no agency). It becomes worse because, unlike the twins, Anakin is just...50% human. The only possible genes Anakin has are from Shmi. So he's probably...genetically, almost a clone of Shmi but with a massive infection of Midi-chlorians (yes, this implies that Anakin has homogametic sex chromosomes, aka XX, there's no other possible explanation because he literally only has Shmi's genes to work with!).

But he's Space Jesus, though,so let's pretend that the "no father genes" helped with this and allowed Anakin to grow into a...normal-ish baby despite it all.

Midi-chlorians must be extremelly small, closer to the size of a virus in this case, viruses vary on size and the way they infect the cells is by hijacking the nucleus, which then can produce more viruses instead of its own proteins. This can vary anywhere between a production of 50.000 to 100.000 viruses produced by infected cells.

Which, btw, still fits somewhat with the mitochondria theory, because mitochondrias are believed to have been from a genus of bacteria called Rickettsia, which used to be believed to be the in-between of Viruses and Bacteria due their small size and extreme endosymbiotism.

Still, we aren't even told how many midi-chlorians Anakin had, just that it was over 20.000 and thus the chart couldn't even register it. Even if we're just counting 21.000 midi-chlorians per cell, that's...a lot. Even if the relationship is symbiotic and positive in nature, that's excessive, an infected cell will usually die faster. So Anakin's cellular death must be on record time.

The life span of a cell varies highly depending of the type of cells, white cells can live about 2 days, others about 5, and then there's others that live about 6 years in average.

Forget all of that, Anakin's cells die anywhere between a few hours and a week. Which also means a super fast regeneration and healing (Hey! that tracks, that's how he didn't die even though he should have, on several ocassions).

But that's not the only problem here, the production of energy is strong with this one, too strong. Again this should make the cells burst due too much ATP because of an increase on osmotic pressure. Anakin is producing so much damn ATP (which we can assume it becomes glycogen stored in muscles and fat tissue) his need to be active and just doing something skyrockets, he might as well be the equivalent of being high on meth since birth.

The accelerated cellular formation and death, gives me the horrific idea that Anakin was probably one of these babies that are born premature, but also that he probably was bron with, idk, teeth and already lots of hair. Maybe that's also why he got so tall of all sudden, lots of cellular grow, huh.

Anakin seems to age normally by what are we given by canon. So despite it all, his life-span or aging doesn't seem to be compromised, this is probably because of how strong he is with the Force. In the sense that...he needs the midi-chlorians to handle this much power, but he also needs the force to handle with that many midi-chlorians, otherwise he would have been already born dead.

See, ageing has a lot to do with stem cells. Anakin's stem cells need to be highly prolific and potent to keep cellular division happening at such a high rate, we can infer that any force sensitive has potent stem cells, so the force must inherently affect stem cells. So Anakin's stem cells must be monstruosities in efficiency. If Anakin donated stem cells to someone else, that person would either have a strong inhumne reaction against them or they would get some of the worst cancer ever seen. Again I'm no expert, but the fact Anakin doesn't develop cancer at all as soon as he was born is already impressive. The rate in which Anakin's cells die must be ridiculous, even has a baby, he must have required tons of energy and endure lots of stress which...tracks. The fact he gets electroshocked, burned, gravely wounded or whatever every week or so, must help him to no develop some cancer, which is a bit funny.

But it would also mean he can go long periods of time without eating or resting like...a normal human. Not saying that he doesn't need it, though, but his neural activity and use of the force must be high at all times to burn out that much energy. Theoretically, the production of glycose and glycogen helps him through long periods without sleep or food so he doesn't get long-term damage, or at the very least the ability to keep going, like I said, maybe is like being on drugs all the time; there's still the need to sleep and eat, but he can push his body to keep surviving beyond what's considered normal without having long-term damage. (Don't get happy, this isn't taking into account all of the stuff that happens to him, lol)

The balance between burning too much energy and not burning enough must be insane as well. As Vader, a lot of this probably watered down because all of his energy must be saved for...you know, surviving all the torture. But as a young teen/man amist war? Oh boy.

I'm not an expert, but I'm theorizing that putting Anakin in an induced sleeep must be...fricking hard. Painkillers that work on him? fricking hard. Anesthesia? Probably the same used for big animals, he must be insane and awful for a doctor to work with! Just imagine it, he probably gets injured in such a way that would have anyone else fall unconscious, but Anakin remains awake and with tremendous amounts of adrenaline triggered by a stress response sustented by the extreme amounts of energy that the midichlorians produce.

When it happens in the central nervious system, excess of ATP can produce neuronal dysfunction. In fact, many degenerative mental illnesses have a lot to do with a malfunction of the mitochondrias. There's a corelation also with neurodivergency sometimes, like autism or ADHD. I will leave it there.

And with all of this...I also conclude that Anakin, on general basis, doesn't like sugary things and doesn't even rationalize why, but is because he has already enough glycose. Having something sugary probably gives him a headache.

God what has Star Wars done to me.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Zuck’s gravity-defying metaverse money-pit

Tomorrow (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

Think of everything that makes you miserable as being caught between two opposing, irresistible, irrefutable truths:

"Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops" (Stein's Law)

"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" (Keynes)

Both of these are true, even though they seemingly contradict one another, and no one embodies that contradiction more perfectly than Mark Zuckerberg.

Take the metaverse.

Zuck's "pivot" to a virtual world he ripped off from a quarter-century old cyberpunk novel (reminder: cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion) was born of desperation.

Zuck fancies himself an avatar of the Emperor Augustus (that's why he has that haircut) (no, really). The emperors of antiquity are infamous for getting all weepy when they run out of lands to conquer.

But the lachrymosity of emperors has little causal relationship to the anxieties of tech monopolists! Alexander weeps because he just loves a good conquest and when he finishes conquering the world, he's terminally bored. That's not Zuck's problem at all. When Zuck attains monopoly status, his company develops an autoimmune disorder, as his vicious princelings run out of enemies to destroy and begin to knife one another.

Any monopoly faces these destructive microincentives, but tech is exceptional here because tech has the realtime flexibility and speed that brick-and-mortar businesses can never match:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Sociopaths with tech monopolies are worse for the same reason that road-rage would be worse in a flying car: adding new capacity to indiscriminate self-destructive urges turns ordinary car crashes into low-level airburst warfare:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The flexibility of digital gives tech platforms so much latitude to break things in tiny increments. A tech platform is like a Jenga tower composed of infinitely divisible blocks. The Jenga players are the product managers and executives who have run out of the ability to grow by attracting new business thanks to their monopoly dominance. Now they compete with one another to increase the yield from their respective divisions by visiting pain upon the business customers and end users their platform connects. By tiny increments, they increase the product's cost, lower its reliability, and strip it of its utility and then charge rent to restore its functionality:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/24/cursed-bigness/#incentives-matter

This is the terminal stage of enshittification, the unstoppable autocannibalism of platforms as they seek to harvest all the value created by business customers and end users, leaving the absolute minimum of residual value needed to keep both stuck to the platform. This is a brittle equilibrium, because the difference between "I hate this service but I just can't stop using it," and "Get me the fuck out of here" is razor-thin.

All it takes is one tiny push – a whistleblower, a livestreamed mass-shooting, a Cambridge Analytica – and people bolt for the doors. This triggers the final stage: the "pivot," which is a tech euphemism for "panic."

For Zuck, the pivot got real after a disappointing earnings call triggered a mass sell-off of Facebook stock, history's worst one-day value incineration, which lopped a quarter of a trillion dollars off the company's market cap:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-19/dramatic-stock-moves-of-2022-led-by-meta-dive-nordic-flash-crash

This was when the metaverse became the company's top priority.

Now, in my theory of enshittification, the step that follows the pivot is death: "Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Many people have asked me about the conspicuous non-death of Facebook! That's where I have to fall back on Stein's Law: "Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops." Facebook can't continue to annihilate value, alienate its workers, harm the public, hemorrhage money in support of a mediocrity's cherished folly forever. Can it?

Admittedly, it sure seems like it can. Facebook's metaverse pivot has thus far cost the company $46,500,000,000. That is: $46.5 billion. That's even more money than Uber torched, seeking to maintain the illusion that they will be able to create monopolies on both transport and the labor market for driving and recoup the billions the Saudi royal family let them use for the con:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/11/bezzlers-gonna-bezzle/#gryft

Don't worry: the Saudi royals are fine! They cashed out at the IPO, collecting a tidy profit at the expense of retail investors who assumed that a pile of shit as big as Uber must have a pony under it, somewhere:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/19/fake-it-till-you-make-it/#millennial-lifestyle-subsidy

Uber has doubled the cost of rides and halved drivers' wages, using illegal gimmicks like "algorithmic wage discrimination" to squeeze a little more juice out of the nearly exhausted husks of its workforce:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

But Stein's Law hasn't been repealed. Drivers can't drive for sub-subsistence wages. Do that long enough and they'll literally starve: that's what "subsistence" means. We lost a decade of transit investment thanks to the Uber con, at the same time as traditional taxi drivers were forced out of the industry. Uber can't be profitable and still pay a living wage, and the fantasy of self-driving cars as a means of zeroing out the wage-bill altogether remains stubbornly, lethally unworkable:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Which means we're at the point where you can get off a commuter train at a main station and find yourself stranded: no taxis at the taxi-queue, no busses due for an hour, and no Uber cars available unless you're willing to pay $95 for a ten-minute ride in a luxury SUV (why yes, this did happen to me recently, thanks for asking).

As more and more of us are exposed to these micro-crises, the political will to do something will increase. This can't go on forever. "Don't use commuter rail" isn't a viable option. "Walk three miles each way to the commuter rail station" isn't viable either. Neither is "Pay $95 for an Uber to get to the station." Something's gotta give…eventually.

"Eventually" is the key word here. Remember the corollary of Stein's Law: Keynes's maxim that "markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." Sure, anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, but that is no guarantee of a soft landing. You can't smoke two packs a day forever – but in the absence of smoking cessation, the eventual terminus of that habit is stage-four lung cancer. Keep hammering butts into your face and your last smoke will come out a crematorium chimney.

Zuckerberg hasn't merely blown a whole-ass Twitter on the metaverse with nothing to show for it – he's gotten richer while doing it! In the past year, his net worth increased by 130%, to $59 billion, thanks to an increase in Facebook's share-price, driven by investors who stubbornly remain irrational, keeping the Boy Emperor solvent long past any reasonable assessment of his performance.

What are these investors betting on? One possibility is that the rise and rise of Facebook's share-price represents a bet on technofeudalism. Since the Communist Manifesto, Marxists have been predicting the end of capitalism. That end seems to have come, but what followed capitalism wasn't socialism, it was the return of feudalism, an economic system where elites derive their wealth from rents, not profits:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

Profit is the income you get from investing in capital – machinery, systems, plant – and then harvesting the surplus value created by workers who mobilize this capital. Capitalism produces massive returns for its winners – in the Manifesto's first chapter, Marx and Engels just geek out about how productive and dynamic this system is.

But capitalism is also a Red Queen's Race, where the winners have to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. Capitalism drives competition, as other would-be winners pile into the sector, replicating the systems that the current winners are using and then improving on them. This is why the prophets of capitalist end-times like the FBI informant Peter Thiel say that "competition is for losers."

Capitalism's "profits" stand in contrast to the feudalist's "rents." Rents are income you get from owning something that other people need to produce things. The capitalist owns the coffee-shop, but the feudalist owns the building. When a rival capitalist opens a superior coffee-shop and drives the old shop out of business, the capitalist loses, but the rentier wins. Now they can rent out an empty storefront in the neighborhood everyone's coming to because of that hot new cafe.

Feudal and manorial lords also made their fortunes by extracting surplus value from workers, but these rentiers don't care about owning the means of production. The peasant in the field pays for their own agricultural equipment and livestock – control over the means of production is necessary for worker liberation, but it's not sufficient. The worker's co-op that owns its factory can still find the value it produces bled off by the landlord who owns the land the factory sits on.

The jury's still out on whether American workers really see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires," but America's capitalists have a palpable, undeniable loathing for capitalism. The dream of an American "entrepreneur" is *PassiveIncome: money you get from owning something capitalists and/or workers use to create value. Digital technology creates exciting new possibilities for rent-extraction: a taxi-operator had to buy and maintain a car that someone else drove. Uber can offload this hassle onto its drivers and rent out access to the chokepoint it created between drivers and riders, charging all the traffic can bear. This is feudalism in the cloud – or as Yannis Varoufakis calls it, cloudalism.

In Varoufakis's Technofeudalism, he describes Amazon as a feudal venture. From a distance, Amazon seems like a bustling marketplace of manic capitalism, with sellers avidly competing to offer more variety and lower costs in a million independently operated storefronts. But closer inspection reveals that Amazon is a planned economy, not a market.

Every one of those storefronts pays rent to the same landlord – Amazon – which determines which goods can be offered for sale. Amazon sets pricing for those goods, and extracts 45-51% of every dollar those sellers make. Amazon even controls which goods are shelved at eye-height when you enter the store, and which ones are banished to a dusty storeroom in a distant sub-basement you'll never find:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

Zuck's metaverse is pure-play technofeudalism, Amazon taken to the logical extreme. It's easy to get distracted by the part of Zuck's vision that will convert us all into legless, sexless, heavily surveilled low-resolution cartoon characters. But the real action isn't this digitization of our fleshy wants and needs. Zuck didn't spend $46.5B to torment us.

The cruelty isn't the point of the metaverse.

The point of the metaverse is to rent us out to capitalists.

Zuck doesn't know why we would use the metaverse, but he believes that if he can convince capitalists that we all want to live there, that they'll invest the capital to figure out how to serve us there, and then he can extract rent from those capitalists and start earning "passive income." It's an Uber for Cyberpunk Dystopias play.

Zuck's done this before. Remember the "pivot to video?" Zuckerberg wanted to compete with Youtube, but he didn't want to invest in paying for video production. Videos are really expensive to produce and the median video gets zero views. So Zuck used his captive audience to trick publishers into financing his move into video. He fraudulently told publishers that videos were blowing up on Facebook, outperforming boring old text by vast margins.

Publishers borrowed billions and raised billions more in the capital markets, financing the total conversion of newsrooms from text to video and precipitating a mass extinction event for print journalists. Zuck kept the con alive by giving away (fewer) billions to some of those publishers, falsely claiming that their videos were generating fortunes in advertising revenue. These lucky, credulous publishers became judas goats for their industry, luring others into the con, the same way that the "lucky" guy a carny lets win a giant teddy-bear at the start of the day lures others into putting down $5 to see if they can sink three balls in a rigged peach-basket.

But when we stubbornly refused to watch videos on Facebook, Zuck stopped spreading around these convincer payouts, and precipitated a second mass-extinction event in news media, as the new generation of video journalists joined their predecessors in Facebook-driven unemployment. Given this history, it's surreal to see publishers continue to insist that Facebook is stealing their content, when it is so clearly stealing their money:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Metaverse is the new Pivot to Video. Zuckerberg is building a new world, which he will own, and he wants rent it to capitalists, who will compete with one another in just the way that Amazon's sellers compete. No matter who wins that competition, Zuckerberg will win. The prize for winning will be a rent increase, as Zuckerberg leverages the fact that your "successful" business relies on Facebook's metaverse to drain off all the value your workers have produced:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/

This can't last forever, but how long until Zuck's reality distortion field runs out of battery? That's the $46.5B question.

The market can certainly remain irrational for a hell of a long time. But the market isn't the only force that regulates corporate outcomes. Regulators also regulate. Europe's GDPR is now seven years old, and it plainly outlaws Facebook's surveillance.

For nearly a decade, Facebook has pretended that this wasn't true, and they got away with it. Mostly, that's thanks to the fact that Ireland is a corporate crime-haven with a worse-than-useless Data Protection Commission:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. Facebook has finally been dragged into EU federal jurisdiction, where it will face exterminatory fines if it continues to spy on Europeans:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/07/luck-of-the-irish/#schrems-revenge

In response, Facebook has rolled out a subscription version of its main service and its anticompetitive acquisition, Instagram:

https://about.fb.com/news/2023/10/facebook-and-instagram-to-offer-subscription-for-no-ads-in-europe/

For €10/month, Facebook will give you an ad-free experience across its service offerings (it's €13/month if you pay through an app, as Facebook recoups the 30% #AdTax rents that the feudal Google/Apple mobile duopoly extracts).

But this doesn't come close to satisfying Facebook's legal obligations under the GDPR. The GDPR doesn't ban ads, it bans spying. Facebook spies on every single internet user, all the time. The apps we use are built with "free" Facebook toolkits that extract rent from the capitalists who make them by harvesting our data as we use their apps. The web-pages we visit have embedded Facebook libraries that do the same thing for web publishers. Facebook buys our data from brokers. Facebook has so many ways of spying on us that there's almost certainly no way for Facebook to stop spying on you, without radically transforming it operation.

To comply with the GDPR, Facebook must halt surveillance advertising altogether. There's no way to square "spying on users" with "you can't surveil without explicit consent, and you can't punish people for refusing."

And of course, "not spying" isn't the same as "not advertising." "Contextual advertising" – where ads are placed based on the thing you're looking at, not who you are and what you do – is hundreds of years old. Context ads underperform surveillance ads by a slim margin – about 5% – but they're vastly more profitable for publishers. That's because surveillance ads are feudal, controlled by rentiers like Facebook, who own vast troves of the surveillance data needed to run these ads. Traditional ad intermediaries (agencies, brokers) took 10-15% out of the total advertising market. Ad-tech companies – the Google/Facebook duopoly – take 51% out of every ad dollar spent.

Eliminate surveillance ads and you torch their feudal estates. Facebook will always know more about someone reading a news article than the publisher – but the publisher will always know more about the article than Facebook does:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-ban-surveillance-advertising

There are rents under capitalism, just as there are profits under feudalism. The defining characteristic of a system is what happens when rents and profits come into conflict. If profits win – for example, if productive companies beat patent trolls, or if news publishers escape Facebook's rent-extraction – then the system is capitalist. If rents win – if investors continue to bet large on the metaverse as its losses pass $50 billion and head for the $100 billion mark – then the system is feudal.

Anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. The question isn't whether the platforms will eventually become so enshittified that they die – the question is whether they will go down in an all-consuming fireball, or whether they'll go down in a controlled demolition that lets us evacuate the people they've trapped inside them first:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/09/let-the-platforms-burn/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/30/markets-remaining-irrational/#steins-law

Image: Diego Delso (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Puente_de_las_cataratas_Victoria,_Zambia-Zimbabue,_2018-07-27,_DD_10.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

[whereserpentswalk]

Remember that part of the purpose of propaganda is to convince you that you're helpless, and it's working, even on people who seem immune to other forms of propaganda. Like, I saw a post that was such a blatant violation of tenant's rights, that any mention of those rights existing or the ability to sue would probably cause the landlord to back down. But people were telling OP she shouldn't try anything because it's impossible for capitalists to lose in courts. Like, you realize you're running capitalism's propaganda wing for them?

If your position is that small scale resistance is useless because capitalists always win under our system, that incremental change is useless because democracy isn't real, and that revolution is useless because capitalists are too strong, then your "leftist theory" is capitalist propaganda.

[gravitascivics]

ENTITY OR INCREMENTAL

If readers are of the mind, think back to middle school (or if you are as old as this blogger, think back to junior high).  Ask: is intelligence or how well they did at school the product of inborn intelligence or from figuring out how that learning game was played?  American psychologist, Carol S. Dweck, argues that this basic distinction in how people see intelligence plays a big role in how likely individual students will perform at that level of instruction.  And, consequently, how they will be likely to experience success from that point on when it comes to schooling.[1]

          This blog last addressed Dweck’s work in a posting, “A Middle School Challenge,” back in 2019.[2]  It reports how this psychologist labels each view.  The “I’m just smart or I am not” view is given the name entity theory, while “I just have to figure out how to learn this stuff” view is named incremental theory.  She claims these two views or theories prevail among students.  Students tend to see intelligence either one way or the other.

The first, entity theory, sees intelligence as a given amount a person has from birth.  The more one has, the easier it is to learn new material or content.  It is judged to be a fixed, tangible, or concrete quality, and is part of what makes a person who he/she is.  People either have it or they don’t.

On the other hand, the other view, incremental theory, Dweck describes as malleable, changeable through effort, and has a dynamic quality.  In short, in this second view, people can become smarter or more intelligent.  Yes, it calls for people to work at it, but such challenges take on a puzzle quality and have a higher likelihood of being experienced in positive ways.  And making mistakes in the process can even be given a positive slant since they are opportunities to advance learning.

Asking middle school students, through her research, Dweck found that “entity” students tended to agree with the following statements:

“The main thing I want when I do my schoolwork is to show how good I am at it.”

“I mostly like schoolwork that I can do perfectly without any mistakes.”

“I have to admit that sometimes I would rather do well in a class than learn a lot.”[3]

Whereas incremental students were likely to agree with:

“I like schoolwork that I’ll learn from even if I make a lot of mistakes.”

“It’s much more important to me to know new things in my classes than it is to get the best grades.”

“I like schoolwork best when it makes me think hard.”[4]

Ask any teacher which set of biases they wished their students shared, and this blogger believes they would overwhelmingly want their students to see schoolwork and learning through the “incremental” lens as reflected in the above quotes. 

Yet, this blogger believes that most teachers do not see this distinction being based, at least in part, on how their students view or understand intelligence.  As a matter of fact, he also believes that many, if not most, teachers share in the entity theory of intelligence themselves.  If true, this can be detrimental in many ways, including ones in which they – and their students in upcoming years – view civic concerns.

For example, if intelligence is a set element of one’s makeup, is it determined by biological factors?  Can those factors be related to such classifications as race, gender, nationality, and the like?  While the emphasis of this posting is not on these concerns; in passing, they seemed worth considering.

But overall, incremental students consistently chose options reflecting exhortation of effort.  While entity students tended to choose, when it came to schoolwork, options of avoidance, alternative options to study and work such as avoiding subjects or courses, and even entertained cheating on tests.  Incremental students were more apt to seek out the challenges involved.  The next posting will apply these distinctions to the concerns of civics more directly.

[1] Carol S. Dweck, Self-Theories:  Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (Philadelphia, PA:  Psychology Press, 2000).

[2] Robert Gutierrez, “A Middle School Challenge,” Gravitas:  A Voice for Civics, October 11, 2019, accessed February 3, 2024, URL:  https://gravitascivics.blogspot.com/2019_10_06_archive.html.

[3] Dweck, Self-Theories, 33.

[4] Ibid., 33.

[arscorpii]

these aerial shots of the streets in the scene where anthy was about to jump off a building in episode 37 remind me of a network of blood capillaries gradually flowing with some foreign substance (the way the red lines were drawn certainly resembles some liquid substance). the camera panned towards anthy from the 1st to 4th picture, and the streets gradually turned from pure white to white with some red.

before the suicide scene, utena and anthy were enjoying tea and cookies at akio's place, and they were wearing their school uniforms. anthy indirectly hinted at "poisoning" the cookies. in response, utena directly stated that she had "poisoned" anthy's tea. both accepted the poison into their systems (bodies) without any hesitation or qualms. noticeably, in this scene, utena didn't wear the rose crest ring that she took off at the beginning of the episode. i'd like to think of the streets gradually turning from white to flowing with red liquid as the visualisation of the poison they consumed in this scene gradually circulating in the system (via blood vessels and capillaries); thus, these points represented utena and anthy's bond/relationship with each other up until before the suicide attempt (white) and after (flowing with red).

up to at least the moment utena found out about anthy and akio at the end of episode 36, utena and anthy hadn't been honest with each other, despite utena saying to anthy that she could come to her if anthy had any problems, and that they can help each other through anything (episode 25). from the point akio began making bold moves in grooming utena (episode 30 onwards), which led to sexual assaults and rape, utena had started to keep things out of anthy's knowledge/unable to tell certain things to anthy.

a prominent example of this would be the scene in episode 36 where anthy asked about utena's whereabouts the night utena went to the dueling arena with touga. other examples are in episodes 30 and 35. anthy, on the other hand, hadn't been honest with utena from the very beginning. from my understanding, from both sides, the dishonesty with each other came from the dire need to preserve the sanctity/purity of their bond (and the despairing inability to open up about respective sufferings). both utena and anthy didn't wish to taint their bond with their ugly stories of truths. the situation was more adverse for anthy because letting utena know the truth could derail all of akio's plans.

(note the network of streets) with regard to the series, colour theories were ever-present in every visual aspect. white was equated to purity and innocence; red was synonymous with violence and danger. i think these meanings suited the visuals of the post-suicide attempt scene, the purity of their bond was incrementally coloured with violent truths from one another. moreover, i also think the post-suicide attempt scene further reified the cantarella scene. in other words, the post-suicide attempt scene was the more literal take/depiction/iteration of the cantarella scene (if that makes sense), with the visuals of the white streets flowing with red as the connecting factor between the two scenes.

the final visual of the "poisoned streets" before anthy urged utena to leave the school. the poison was freely and fully flowing through every street. throughout the suicide scene, utena and anthy were both in their sleepwear. this may connote a more vulnerable and honest disposition without any facade, as well as a better understanding and more equal footing with one another, compared to when they were in school uniforms during the cantarella scene. utena was also wearing her ring here, which may highlight her choice to play the role of a prince for anthy's sake to the end.

in addition, i think the streets flowing with poison could also be seen as a network of empty/dried blood capillaries finally flowing with blood; akin to a dead body coming back to life. after a person dies, the first visible change would be pallor mortis (within 15 to 20 minutes), wherein the body begins to pale because blood stops moving through the capillaries. with regard to this information, the visuals may indicate a sign of rejuvenation of the bond between utena and anthy after opening up to one another. the bond between them became more human, alive (flowing with blood), as opposed to being hollow (dried out blood capillaries; like death). to me, i believe both interpretations could work simultaneously for the visuals of the streets.

[daysofyellowroses]

fries

carmen berzatto x reader | 1.1k

prompt was: Carmy getting all sassy and dom like bc his girl spent money on herself instead of using his card/calling him and telling him that you wanted something and to pick it up off hold on his way home!! That is such a HC for me I feel Carmy would be super pouty if his girl bought something expensive or ‘necessary for him’ like your makeup, hair stuff, clothes, shoes, etc. ESP food he like gets so upset when she will pick herself up McDonald’s or smth and is like “baby why didn’t you tell me you were craving a burger and fries” - as requested by @thecapricunt1616 thank you so much, i hope you enjoy 🌼

🐻

Sometimes you think you know everything about your boyfriend. If someone quizzed you, you would ace it. It's only been just under a year since you started dating Carmy but in that time you had learned everything about him, or so you thought.

There were things that you didn't know every detail about, like his family, particularly his mom, but you knew that he would talk about those things in time, when he was ready.

What you didn't expect was that he would have a certain..kink, one you wouldn't have expected him to have but was a very pleasant surprise. 

It had happened incrementally, you first noticed when you came home after work one day with a pair of new sneakers. When you showed them to Carm he seemed a little..off. It wasn't exactly something to celebrate but you found it a little odd that he didn't seem to care when usually he was so attentive and loving.

You put it down to a long day at work and forgot about it. 

Until it happened again, when you came home after a splurge on makeup and skincare products. He found you putting them away in the bathroom and just walked away, leaving you deeply confused. 

When you asked him if everything was okay he said it was, and you decided not to push it. You noticed that he was a little more attentive than usual, keeping you in his lap while you relaxed on the couch, insisted on getting you whatever you wanted, carried you to bed when you started falling asleep. It wasn't that he never did those things usually, you just felt like he was doing more somehow.

Deciding to test out the beginnings of a theory, you waited a week or so before deciding to really treat yourself, splashing out on a pair of expensive heels that you had wanted for so long. As you were the first one home, you put the shoes away and waited for Carmy to get home.

He was his usual sweet self, and you were a little excited to test out your theory. You waited until Carm was making dinner, and you were sitting on the counter watching him.

“Oh my god, I have to show you something,” You smiled, getting down from the counter. “I'll be right back.”

You went to your bedroom, opening the closet and reaching into the back to take out the bag with your new shoes before carrying it to the kitchen behind your back. 

“Look what I got,” You grinned, holding out the bag. “I may have gone a little overboard but I really wanted these.”

You set the bag down on the ground and took the box out, feeling Carmy's eyes on you. 

“How beautiful are these?” You opened the box and took out one of the shoes. “They were almost three hundred but I figure I'll keep them forever so..”

“Three hundred?” Carm raised a brow, his hand on his hip. “You spent three hundred?”

“Yes, I did,” You smiled, feeling like your theory was about to be proved. You looked at the shoe in your hand, turning it slowly. “But work is going well and I really wanted them so..”

“You shouldn't have bought them,” Carm sighed, reaching for the dish towel that was draped over his shoulder and wiping his hands. “That's too much.”

“I'll buy what I want,” You frowned, putting the shoe back in the box. “It's my money I'm spending, not yours.”

“But it should be.” Carmy muttered, meeting your eyes.

“What do you mean?” You asked, stepping closer to him and setting the box in your hands down on the counter. “I don't expect you to drop that kind of money on me.”

“I want to,” Carmy insisted, his arm moving around your waist. “I know that you can afford all those things you want, but..I want to treat you, I want you to tell me what you want and let me get if for you, or take my card and go get it.”

“Please don't feel like you have to do that,” You smiled, touching Carmy's cheek. “I don't care if you buy me things or I buy them myself, just being with you is all I want.”

Carm was quiet for a moment, gently stroking your waist before leaning in to kiss you, your arms moving around his neck.

“It's more than that,” Carm murmured softly against your lips, pulling back to meet your eyes. “I know you don't expect me to, and I know I don't have to but..the thought of seeing you in clothes that I bought you, knowing you're out treating yourself to things and using my money to do it..I want that.”

You take in his words, your hands lightly touching the back of Carm's neck. “Does it..does the thought of that do it for you?”

“Big time,” Carm nodded, and you felt your heart race. “I keep thinking about you coming home, showing off all the things you bought on my card, giving me a little show..”

“I think I know what I should buy first then.” You grinned, leaning in to kiss Carm. 

Dinner is delayed, and you don't quite make it to the bedroom, but you feel like you've never been happier. 

As it turned out, Carm wasn't lying about wanting you to spend his money. You didn't go crazy, you weren't going to buy something just for the sake of it. But when you came home with a bag full of new lingerie and handed his card back to him, Carm had you screaming like you never had before. 

So, once a week or so you treat yourself to a little something, just to bring out a more possessive, dominant side of your boyfriend, loving how he can go from adorable and soft to calling you a spoiled brat and having you begging for more.

And apparently, his fondness for you spending his money wasn't limited to clothes, shoes and underwear, but there was one exception. 

You had come home from work with a McDonald's, knowing Carmy would be home late and that you weren't in the mood to cook. You were just sitting down to eat it, scrolling through your phone when the front door opened.

“Hey,” You smiled, picking Carmy's card up from the table and taking a sip of your milkshake as you handed it to him.

“What's this?” Carm frowned, pointing to the food on the table.

“This?” You grinned, pointing to the McDonald's bag. “Just a little restaurant, you've probably never heard of it, it's only got like a billion locations.”

“Very funny,” Carm sighed, pushing his hand through his hair.

“Are you..pouting?” You grinned. “Over a burger?”

“I could have made you a better burger,” Camy shrugged. “That's all.”

“I know,” You nodded, swishing your shake with a grin. “But only your money can get this.”

“You think I can't make you a milkshake?” Carmy raised a brow.

“Not like this,” You teased. “You don't know the secret ingredients.”

“I'm making you a damn shake. And a burger."

[vashtijoy]

jose's star: a love token??

So I was on reddit this morning for my sins, which are many, and someone asked why they didn't get the 2/13 scene where Jose's star shows up faded and dead. This scene:

Most people thought this was something to do with Akechi's confidant, so obviously I datamined it at once:

The Star fading has, ostensibly, nothing to do with Akechi at all. But, it is conditional—and on something you might not expect: The Star will only fade if you have established one or more romance routes.

[tech]

This scene is called from the scheduler, on the evening of 2/13, in sdl02_13_PM_D_RE(). For every romanceable confidant, it checks two things:

Is their romance route active? (that is, is the flag set?)

Are they at confidant rank 10?

If these conditions are met, the game increments a counter. And if that counter is greater than zero, this star event will play.

wtf??

Obviously this raises a boatload of questions.

Why does the star only fade if you are in love with one of the girls? What is it about that that causes the star to fade? Or, conversely, what is it about not being in love with one of the girls that might mean you still need the star?...

The immediate Doylian explanation for this is that the text you get from your girlfriend(s), asking you to meet up on 2/14, is tagged onto the end of this scene. But that itself is strange. The game splits scenes into "minor events" for far less than this; I can't think offhand of another text chat or phone call I've seen which hasn't been its own little event, though I'm sure there must be some.

You can check the star on 3/19 and see that it still "emits a mysterious light"—though this appears to be the case even if the star faded. There's no alternate scene where you never get the text, which is de rigueur for texts like this. As an example, that short nothing little text you get during Sae's Palace before going to the courthouse has at least four variations. This is standard.

No, this discussion with Morgana about the star, and your plans to hang out on Valentine's Day, should have been at a minimum two different minor events. And they are not.

From an IC/Watsonian perspective, this has to mean that the star only fades if you are dating a girl. If you aren't, it seems the star has something left undone, something that requires its wishing power, and does not fade....

I'll leave the implications of that one as an exercise for all of you. Incidentally, a shoutout to the innocent redditor who hit on this theory by himself and proceeded to get downvoted to hell. smh

revision history

Click here for the latest version.

v1.0 (2024/04/16)—first posted.

[mysterycitrus]

hihihi! tim drake in college real?

oog indeed mein freund

so ur tim drake, ur seventeen, and ur dad has just come back from the dead. u hollowed urself out until there’s nothing left and ur ribs are broken but you’ve never felt better. if u stop moving for more than a second the weight of the world hits u. there’s another kid wearing ur uniform and u have to watch as this new robin and bruce, the bruce u fought for, the bruce u left everything behind for, the bruce u nearly died for, debut as gothams dynamic duo. but it’s fine. u did what u had to do. u feel great, actually.

then ur brother who u love more than anything sits u down and tells u he’s enrolled u in college in california. ur so angry ur spitting. he trusts u and now he’s not even giving u the choice to stay. u want to kick and scream and hold on till ur hands are bloody, but he tells u that he’s worried. he’s been so scared for u since ur dad died. he thinks ur losing urself. he wants u to make choices for urself without bruce. he wants u to spend time with ur friends who are alive again and miss u. he wants u to take a chance to live ur life away from gotham, away from that burden.

he tells u: robin is never truly gone, alright? it’ll never leave. i need u to trust me that it’ll still be u no matter how many other kids wear the cape. i need u to trust that i love u more than what ur able to do in tights.

and he knows this better than anyone. he’s asking u to extricate tim drake from robin and batman and red robin. to remember what it felt like to choose. and after all these years u can’t say no, so u pack ur bags and leave for the west coast.

college is fine. u keep changing majors. u pick up photography as a joke, thinking about snapping photos of the boy wonder from a distance, to print in the basement dark room after school. it’s a laugh, and ur gonna drop it until donna troy finds out, and u spend a long time on the roof of the tower with her taking photos of the sunrise. it’s been a while since the sunrise was the start of ur day. it feels….. unfamiliar. she tells u about how ur brother became nightwing. she tells u about the heartbreak of having to move on. she tells u about choices.

kon’s right down the hall. he can hear u but u can’t hear him, so sometimes you’ll whisper a question for him to shout back. he obligingly poses for ur still life class. he and steph make fun of how u can’t decide what to study. it’s painful to become tim drake and nothing else again, but it happens in increments. u make friends with people in ur tutoriasl. ur less pale — u pinken under the sun easily, peeling flesh turning red and painful, but u look less like a corpse. ur hair is longer, and bart buys u a claw clip shaped like an avocado.

the new robin is growing up, and he explains colour theory to u for one of ur classes. he’s an asshole, but he’s trying. when asked politely, he draws character sheets for bart’s dnd group with minimal grumbling. red and yellow suit him, and looking at him in the costume feels less painful, and more nostalgic.

u brainstorm new ideas for urself, new roles, new ideas for the team, but there’s no rush. u have time. if u see bruce, u kno there’s someone else at his back, watching him through the night. dick texts u life updates, but they’re funny, not desperate. the world continues to spin. u, tim drake, are still alive.

[masterofthecygnetsignet]

Theory about the structure and timeline of Sunrise on the Reaping: Given that Suzanne Collins is known for the present tense, the fast pacing, and the immediacy and visceralness of her writing, what if the book supposedly about Haymitch's games isn't even about Haymitch's games at all?

What if it's one of those stories told in the same style as Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds, with a highly intense story that unfolds and ends in a matter of mere minutes or hours, told as the time is tracked ever so incrementally? Or, the plot could even occur in a singular, decisive, whirlwind day with so many determining moments. Basically, the story could be anything with a very narrow, elapsed timespan, like Dead Wednesday by Jerry Spinelli, and that could allude to Collins' general themes of war (and the "fog of war" affecting or obscuring humans' rational judgment). The book could potentially be about how people lose sight of the bigger picture in the midst of all the smaller ongoings, how they lose sight of the forest for the trees, like how the tributes had been entranced by the deceptively decadent, lush Cornucopia that particular year of the Quarter Quell. Haymitch, like Katniss, does have the specific ability of seeing through all the puffery, frivolity, and superficiality of the substanceless Capitol after all. Perhaps, the plot could mimic that game's facade, seemingly all flash, no substance, but with a lot beneath to pick apart, the machinery of it all?

Essentially, my question is: what if all of the plot's events happen before the reaping, on that very morning. What if none of the book covers the games themselves, but the politics and what it takes, on the Gamemakers' end, to orchestrate a truly modern version of the games, as compared to the more primitive arena, seen in TBOSAS?

[rosewaterandivy]

the verbal thing comes and goes

Summary: eddie's first study(ing) date with an appearance from hawkins own lothario.

Warnings: eddie’s senior year 2.0, no Upside Down, scary smart debate team captain reader, NHS president and tutor nancy wheeler, ap music theory nerd and general nuisance robin buckley, pretentiousness alert - you have been warned!

W.C.: 1973

Eddie’s early, for once in his life.

He stands on the Wheeler’s doorstep worrying the strap of his backpack with his thumb. It’s Thursday, and he’s nearly done with his second read-through of Notes from the Underground. Turns out, reading Russian literature and annotating it at the same time is a bit of a commitment. So much so, that scribbling in his Hellfire notebook has fallen by the wayside.

He has highlighters now (yes, plural); who the fuck does he think he is?!

A guy who wants to stay in the same English class as you, that’s who.

Which brings us to his earlier than usual arrival for the study group.

He pushes the doorbell and hears the chimes clang from inside the house. There’s a bit of grime on his cuticles, he’d been fucking with an oil change for the van a few hours ago. Luckily, there’s not a smear of brackish fluid left on the pristine white button.

Mike loafs to the door and opens it with his usual fanfare, which is to say, none.

“What’re you doing here?”

“You mean at your house? Where your sister is? Who’s in my group for this English project?”

Each rhetorical question brings Eddie incrementally closer to Mike and inside the house, who backs away slowly, dead eyed stare and all.

“Psh, get outta my face twerp.” Eddie says, ruffling Mike’s stupidly long hair.

The door shuts behind him and Mike inclines his head toward the stairs, “Think they’re waiting on Buckley, you can head on up.”

Mr. Wheeler grunts in agreement from his lay-z-boy recliner in the living room.

Briefly, he wonders if he should take off his shoes. There’s a pile by the door and carpeted stairs, even Mike is wandering around in socks. And Eddie doesn’t want to be rude, or responsible for whatever mud he’s probably tracking in.

After toeing off his Reeboks, he takes the stairs two at a time and follows the sound of voices down the hall.

It’s an idyllic scene.

Namely, that Nancy has one of the most certifiably girly rooms Eddie has ever had the misfortune to see. But also, that you’re seemingly dressed in pajamas which consist of men’s plaid boxers, socks scrunched around your ankles, and an oversized t-shirt with a warped Tweety Bird face plastered on it. Your hair is up and off your shoulders, tied back with an obnoxiously bright scrunchie, and your face is freshly scrubbed.

It looks like a sleepover, if the legends are true, but neither you nor Nance are currently jumping on her bed and hitting each other in slow motion with pillows, a dusting of goose feathers filling the air.

“Hey Munson,” you greet, patting the spot next to you, “Take a load off.”

Well, shit, he’s certainly got a load alright.

He slings his bag to the floor and leans back against the foot of Nancy’s bed, taking a seat next to you.

“Didn’t realize this would be an all nighter Wheeler.”

Nancy glances up from her notes at your soft laugh. But before she can reply, there’s a clatter from below and Mike bellowing something about food.

“Oh, Rob must be here,” she says with a smile. “She said she was bringing pizzas or something.”

The three of you make your way down to the kitchen, where Robin has been cornered by Mrs. Wheeler. Her blue eyes are wide as she clutches the edge of the pizza boxes, nodding along politely with whatever Nancy’s mom is going on about.

“Oh Bucks,” Eddie says, swooping in to take a box before she can crush it, “For me? You shouldn’t have!”

Robin looks relieved, mouths thank you from where she’d been stopped by the counter. She’s just come from her job at Family Video and is still wearing the stupid vest to prove it. It’s got cheesy buttons like ask me about our newest releases! and Eddie has half a mind to do so.

That is before Steve Harrington comes swanning into the room with a few cans of soda. He stops short, surprised with Eddie’s presence at the Wheeler’s kitchen table. But then you trot in the room, lost in conversation with Nance and he sees Steve’s eyes blow wide as a blush warms his cheeks.

He’s looking at you because of course he is. The universe can’t seem to cut Eddie a break without throwing King Steve a bone(r).

It’d be comical if it wasn’t so typically teenage tragic.

For Eddie, that is.

“Oh, uh, h-hi,” Steve stammers in greeting, “I just grabbed whatever since I didn’t know what you’d like.”

It’s all Eddie can do not to roll his eyes.

Buckley had mentioned Steve not having as much swagger with the ladies as of late, but damn, Eddie didn’t think he’d have to witness it.

Still, it’s not as though he feels sorry for the guy.

Not when you give Steve a smile in thanks, but nudge Eddie’s shoulder with your hip.

“Outta my spot Munson.”

The contact of your thinly veiled hip against his jacket has got him spinning. If he wasn’t wearing the damned thing, he could’ve felt the warmth from your skin. He grunts and shoves over, sticking to monosyllables until he can get himself together.

Mrs. Wheeler eyes him briefly before stepping out of the room, a lingering glance that says watch yourself as she settles in the living room.

Seated around the table, various hands grab for slices of pizza that land in greasy splotches on paper plates. Robin is talking a mile a minute about someone who returned Fast Times stopped at a very pivotal point in the film.

Steve rolls his eyes and pops the tab of his soda. Leaving Eddie to beg Mike’s earlier question:

“What’re you doin’ here?”

This said between bites of pizza, stringy cheese decorating his lips. Spying his predicament, you toss a paper towel at his face and continue listening to Robin’s tales of Family Video.

“Could ask you the same,” Steve replies with a measured tone.

“English project.” Eddie pauses to take a swig of Mountain Dew, “Now you, Harrington.”

“Rob doesn’t drive, so I dropped her off.”

“Dropping off implies leaving, y’know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He’s adopted a curt tone, as if he’s offended by Eddie’s rationale. So he decides to drop it for now.

And sure enough, Steve eventually does leave. Right after hauling in Robin’s overstuffed backpack and trumpet.

Eddie notices how Steve’s eyes linger on you, flitting to and fro, and tries to tamp down the roil of jealousy in his gut.

It’s only once the group is back upstairs and working on the project, the door minduflly cracked open at Mrs. Wheeler’s behest, that he feels himself relax. After all, he can’t dedicate too much of his time to feeling like a possessive meathead with Nancy delegating.

Currently, you’re all huddled over your novels and passing around copies of notes on each text. Nancy’s are neat and tidy, Robin’s are a downright mess, but yours are something else. Color-coded with a key in the upper right-hand corner of the page, not a smear of ink to be found. It’s like the Holy Grail of notes.

They also smell faintly of your perfume.

Eddie’s notes aren’t as batshit as Robin’s, but there are plenty of sketches to be found in the margins. He hopes they’re acceptable, he’s never really willingly taken notes over a book before. Much less, painstakingly copied three sets of said notes for distribution.

He’s more familiar with a different type of distribution.

Speaking of which:

“Shit, I gotta go.”

He hastily packs his bag while Nancy lists off his task for the project. You’ll see each other in class, obviously, but there won’t be another study session until next week. NHS is rolling out their individual tutorials, and she’s got stuff for the school paper. Debate team meets weekly for practice in addition to their class, you’ve got to start prep for research on a few topics. Robin has band shit and life shit, as she calls it, so everyone is pretty much swamped until then.

Even Eddie, with his tutoring from Nancy and Hellfire meetings and Corroded Coffin practices and shows. And, apparently, there’s another meeting with Mrs. Meloy next week to see how he’s “adjusting.”

He says his goodbyes quickly and dashes down the stairs, surprised to hear the sound of you behind him. He turns, tugging on his shoes, inquiring, “Nance forget to tell me something?”

You smile with a shake of your head, “Nah, just thought I’d see you off.”

“Ah, yeah. Prime time for creeps, good lookin’ out.”

He gets a laugh out of you, which lights something in his chest with a dull warm glow. Shouldering his backpack, he makes way for you to open the door and follows you onto the porch.

The last of the summer sun eeks across the sky leaving bands of creamsicle orange and pink behind. You glance up, exposing the delicate tendons of your neck, the elegant slope of it. And it’s all he can do not to press his lips to the sweat gathering in the hollow of your throat.

Eddie clears his throat instead and stands there awkwardly as you enjoy the summer evening. The air is humid, and a dampness permeates the otherwise pleasant moment. You sigh softly, having taken your fill of the sky for now, and turn your gaze to him.

He feels like an ant under a magnifying glass might, not used to the attention and fearful of what’s to come.

“I expected you would’ve called by now,” you say casually, with a fond pull of your lips, “But you’re just full of surprises Munson.”

He scuffs the toe of his sneaker against the pavement and shyly glances down. He notices the weight of his bag now, the sweat beginning to bead along his skin. It’s uncomfortable and his van is within sight, he’s so close and yet so far.

All because you’re staring at him, attempting to have a conversation with the guy who said he doesn’t read much and yet had some of the finest penmanship and annotations you’d ever seen littered all across your copy of Dune.

He’s surprising and you like surprises well enough, but Eddie is becoming more and more of a mystery to you which is somehow even more appealing.

Of course, he knows none of this.

All he knows is that a pretty girl in a Tweety Bird shirt and boxers is looking at him with a secret smile on her face, and he feels like he’s hurtling toward oblivion or humiliation.

“Maybe I lost the note?”

Lies. It’s squirreled away in his most prized possession, a battered copy of Tolkein’s Fellowship of the Ring.

“How tragic,” you tease, “If only we had been taught to memorize things like phone numbers and addresses.”

“Yeah, that would be something.”

You laugh, “Oh, wait. Lucky for you I have it right here.” You tap your temple with a manicured nail, and pull a face as if you’re about to snarl but your eyes are bright and teasing.

“Look,” Eddie says, a laugh falling from his lips, “Maybe I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

“Oh really,” you drawl, arms snaking across your chest. “When a pretty, smart girl gives you her number and offers up her time and expertise, you, Eddie Munson, think twice?”

“Generally, from past experience, yes.”

You kiss your teeth and let out a soft tsk. “Well, don’t.”

“Think?”

The smile you give him could launch a thousand ships.

“About this? Not even once.”

And with that, you turn on your heel and walk back into the Wheeler’s house leaving him dazed and more than a little confused.