#theoretically there are like 40-something more of these on the way

[desperatepleasures]

Yumeichiya Art Book - Sakura Kinoshita & Kazuko Higashiyama

[n1ghtwr1ter]

At the end of my latest TLT reread and it’s been physically painful attempting to read the last 40+ pages of Nona. Like, the short shrift that Gideon/Kiriona gets given by the people in the story…the theoretical good guys who honestly only see her as a thing, as a means to an end with an inconvenient dead soul attached to it… It makes me want to rip my own heart out of my chest.

Nobody has cared about Gideon her whole life. Most people, in fact, if they remembered about her at all, went out of their way to tell her how much they wished she didn’t exist. In the final chapters of Gideon, she finally gets the thing she’s been desperate for her whole life: somebody telling her that they need her, they care that she exists, and they badly want her to go on doing it. This allows her to make peace with the prospect that at the ripe old age of 18, she needs to die so that that person can go on living and living and living, using the castrated remnants of her soul as fuel to do so. Not a great way to go, but at least Gideon would get to be useful to somebody, would get to be remembered for something.

And then she wakes up in the wrong body, and finds out that her sacrifice - her attempt to be useful in the most selfless way possible, in that her self will no longer exist - has been rejected. And not only that, but the person she tried to give herself to - the one who was supposed to care about her - went to extreme lengths to make completely sure that she no longer remembered about Gideon.

She literally cut Gideon out of her brain.

And now, drifting along in the worst sort of half life where she’s inhabiting her body but it’s no longer really hers, in very obvious fashion - there’s holes in it, her heart is missing, and it’s got her shitty father’s handprints all over it (not even touching how much of a violation that is), indelibly - she finally meets back up with the small group of people who could theoretically be relied upon to be glad to see her again.

But then the one who was supposed to care about her most tries to kiss her (massively OOC for Harrow), and turns out to not even be there - it’s some weird baby inhabiting her body, and doing a really shit job of it too. The rest of them won’t stop talking about how they need her to break into the Tomb - as if she was just another key, same as the ones they worked together to acquire in Canaan House, just bigger and more inconvenient - and/or how they both fucked and killed her mom, who also (surprise, surprise) wished that Gideon had never existed, but saw her as a thing that needed to be done for the good of the mission.

Ultimately, they all make it abundantly clear - Palamedes, Camilla, Pyrrha, and especially Nona, all these people who are supposed to be kind and good and right - that they would prefer she wasn’t there. That it just be her body, with no Gideon attached - at least not Gideon the way she is now, broken and rejected and miserable. They would all far have preferred that she not have her own inconvenient thoughts and feelings and desires and impulses - that she just be inanimate and let the important people, the grown ups, get things done.

They wish she didn’t exist. Same as everybody else in her life, save one, and now she’s left wondering whether Harrow really meant it at all. Because if she did, she wouldn’t have left Gideon to Kiriona’s fate.

And honestly? Really, truly? I know everybody in the fandom loves Pal and Cam and Nona and Pyrrha, but in the end I couldn’t give less of a shit about them. They are fucking side characters, and as intriguing as Nona has been from a worldbuilding standpoint, I ultimately resent having been forced to read 400+ pages of filler bullshit about fucking side characters. I am a butch, and I’m here for my sarcastic, loving, angry, vulnerable, forgiving, and yes, inconvenient sword butch. I’m here for Gideon. But Gideon has been fridged for the last two books of the series in which she is supposed to be a, if not the, main character.

And it feels like almost nobody else in the fandom feels the same way, which, fine. I’m used to that. I’m also used to being told I’m projecting; and I’m used to being told that I’m inconvenient too, in my thoughts and my opinions and the mere fact of my existence. I spent the first eighteen years of my life being told I was inconvenient. Yet another point of overidentification with Gideon.

But in case anybody still thinks that Nona proves that Gideon was an asshole all along, think about all of the above. Think about how it would make you feel to come back from not just death but from the erasure of your existence, something you chose in order to save the life of someone you loved, and be told that you’re inconvenient. Think about how you’d feel if you’d been told all your life that it would be better for everyone if you didn’t exist. And then tell me that Kiriona isn’t in the right and that I should give a rat’s ass what happens to literally anybody else.

It’s Kiriona Hours up in this House, butches. We’ve spent long enough caring about people who would prefer we weren’t around. For once in our entire lives we were told we were important; we were told we mattered; we were told we were the main character. We were going to, if not get the girl and save the world, at least get to do something real, something important, something like being the hero.

But that’s over now; we’re back to being wrong and bad and inconvenient thanks to the simple fact of our existence. So it’s time to embrace it. Let’s be a little shit. Let’s be kind of a dick. Let’s have our own agenda, let’s play our cards close to our heartless chest, let’s allow our circle of empathy to contract to ourselves and maybe one more person. That’s where I’m at right now. And I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

[recurring-polynya]

In the years since I've been running this blog, I've made a lot of jokes about Renji's seemingly ill-thought-out plan of:

Beat Captain Kuchiki

???

Profit Be with Rukia again

but I was looking at his volume poem the other day, and I think that I am an idiot, and beating Byakuya has never been connected to seeing Rukia again. It's a smokescreen. He does have an actual, actionable plan of training and working hard enough to become a vice-captain (specifically Byakuya's vice-captain), and then approaching Rukia again as her social equal. We know that beating Byakuya wasn't a key component of that, because he was planning to do it as soon as she got back from her mission.

The thing about defeating Byakuya is that Renji is purposely setting his sights a few degrees to the left of the truth to keep from falling into depression and despair. Trying to get Rukia back is a thing that he can try to do and fail, and in fact, he very well may. Beating Byakuya is impossible. No one believes he can really do it, least of all himself, which means, paradoxically, he can't lose. When you fail to do the impossible, you can shrug and say, "well, it was impossible, what did you expect?

I mean, it's right there in the poem: "I am going to focus on reaching the unreachable because if I think about Rukia, I am going to kill myself." And I don't think Renji is a guy who has a suicidal bent--the fact that he pursues this line of thinking is proof of that. But what is the difference between a person who thinks about killing themself and someone actively works to not to...? I don't know. It's complicated.

One of the most fundamental themes of Bleach is the idea that Hollows are fallen souls who lose their hearts and eat other souls in order to ease their pain, but they only end up creating more Hollows in the process except that we see examples again and again of shinigami pulling this exact shit (Byakuya, I am looking at you). I cannot figure out if Renji's drive to distract himself from the pain of losing Rukia is a play to avoid falling into monstrosity, or if it's pretty much a direct route. I mean, this is basically exactly the path that Gin and Tousen take--which makes it all the more interesting to me that Aizen rejects Renji as unsuitable for his conspiracy.

I can't put my finger on any particular thing that separates Renji from other characters in this respect, aside from maybe his fundamental Renji-ness-- the fact that he has other friends and connections? That he has hope, no matter how dim, that he may actually reunite with Rukia some day? That he's just a guy who reaches for life instead of death? (Mildly off-topic, but if there is one other character that this is also true of, I think it might be...Matsumoto???)

Anyway, another thing I like about setting himself against an impossible goalpost is that this would be a terrible idea for a human with a finite lifespan, but shinigami have all the time in the world. Go ahead, pal, pursue your impossible tasks, live your truth! I read a lot of stories about semi-immortal beings, and I love love love it when they seem very human and then they do some batshit insane thing that makes you realize, oh, they very much are not.

My favorite way to break my own heart is re-reading the "Fate is a Millstone" chapter, where we learn that Renji was a hair's-breadth away achieving his real goal of talking to Rukia again, only to have Fate throw him a face-full of pocket sand. I think it's extra salt in the wound, to be honest, if he's been pursuing the impossible goal of beating Byakuya as a distraction for all these years, only to arrive at a place where Rukia's life literally hinges on him beating Byakuya, a thing which is not just theoretically impossible, but something Renji has spent 40 years becoming intimately familiar with just how impossible it is.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

In defense of bureaucratic competence

Sure, sometimes it really does make sense to do your own research. There's times when you really do need to take personal responsibility for the way things are going. But there's limits. We live in a highly technical world, in which hundreds of esoteric, potentially lethal factors impinge on your life every day.

You can't "do your own research" to figure out whether all that stuff is safe and sound. Sure, you might be able to figure out whether a contractor's assurances about a new steel joist for your ceiling are credible, but after you do that, are you also going to independently audit the software in your car's antilock brakes?

How about the nutritional claims on your food and the sanitary conditions in the industrial kitchen it came out of? If those turn out to be inadequate, are you going to be able to validate the medical advice you get in the ER when you show up at 3AM with cholera? While you're trying to figure out the #HIPAAWaiver they stuck in your hand on the way in?

40 years ago, Ronald Reagan declared war on "the administrative state," and "government bureaucrats" have been the favored bogeyman of the American right ever since. Even if Steve Bannon hasn't managed to get you to froth about the "Deep State," there's a good chance that you've griped about red tape from time to time.

Not without reason, mind you. The fact that the government can make good rules doesn't mean it will. When we redid our kitchen this year, the city inspector added a bunch of arbitrary electrical outlets to the contractor's plans in places where neither we, nor any future owner, will every need them.

But the answer to bad regulation isn't no regulation. During the same kitchen reno, our contractor discovered that at some earlier time, someone had installed our kitchen windows without the accompanying vapor-barriers. In the decades since, the entire structure of our kitchen walls had rotted out. Not only was the entire front of our house one good earthquake away from collapsing – there were two half rotted verticals supporting the whole thing – but replacing the rotted walls added more than $10k to the project.

In other words, the problem isn't too much regulation, it's the wrong regulation. I want our city inspectors to make sure that contractors install vapor barriers, but to not demand superfluous electrical outlets.

Which raises the question: where do regulations come from? How do we get them right?

Regulation is, first and foremost, a truth-seeking exercise. There will never be one obvious answer to any sufficiently technical question. "Should this window have a vapor barrier?" is actually a complex question, needing to account for different window designs, different kinds of barriers, etc.

To make a regulation, regulators ask experts to weigh in. At the federal level, expert agencies like the DoT or the FCC or HHS will hold a "Notice of Inquiry," which is a way to say, "Hey, should we do something about this? If so, what should we do?"

Anyone can weigh in on these: independent technical experts, academics, large companies, lobbyists, industry associations, members of the public, hobbyist groups, and swivel-eyed loons. This produces a record from which the regulator crafts a draft regulation, which is published in something called a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking."

The NPRM process looks a lot like the NOI process: the regulator publishes the rule, the public weighs in for a couple of rounds of comments, and the regulator then makes the rule (this is the federal process; state regulation and local ordinances vary, but they follow a similar template of collecting info, making a proposal, collecting feedback and finalizing the proposal).

These truth-seeking exercises need good input. Even very competent regulators won't know everything, and even the strongest theoretical foundation needs some evidence from the field. It's one thing to say, "Here's how your antilock braking software should work," but you also need to hear from mechanics who service cars, manufacturers, infosec specialists and drivers.

These people will disagree with each other, for good reasons and for bad ones. Some will be sincere but wrong. Some will want to make sure that their products or services are required – or that their competitors' products and services are prohibited.

It's the regulator's job to sort through these claims. But they don't have to go it alone: in an ideal world, the wrong people will be corrected by other parties in the docket, who will back up their claims with evidence.

So when the FCC proposes a Net Neutrality rule, the monopoly telcos and cable operators will pile in and insist that this is technically impossible, that there is no way to operate a functional ISP if the network management can't discriminate against traffic that is less profitable to the carrier. Now, this unity of perspective might reflect a bedrock truth ("Net Neutrality can't work") or a monopolists' convenient lie ("Net Neutrality is less profitable for us").

In a competitive market, there'd be lots of counterclaims with evidence from rivals: "Of course Net Neutrality is feasible, and here are our server logs to prove it!" But in a monopolized markets, those counterclaims come from micro-scale ISPs, or academics, or activists, or subscribers. These counterclaims are easy to dismiss ("what do you know about supporting 100 million users?"). That's doubly true when the regulator is motivated to give the monopolists what they want �� either because they are hoping for a job in the industry after they quit government service, or because they came out of industry and plan to go back to it.

To make things worse, when an industry is heavily concentrated, it's easy for members of the ruling cartel – and their backers in government – to claim that the only people who truly understand the industry are its top insiders. Seen in that light, putting an industry veteran in charge of the industry's regulator isn't corrupt – it's sensible.

All of this leads to regulatory capture – when a regulator starts defending an industry from the public interest, instead of defending the public from the industry. The term "regulatory capture" has a checkered history. It comes out of a bizarre, far-right Chicago School ideology called "Public Choice Theory," whose goal is to eliminate regulation, not fix it.

In Public Choice Theory, the biggest companies in an industry have the strongest interest in capturing the regulator, and they will work harder – and have more resources – than anyone else, be they members of the public, workers, or smaller rivals. This inevitably leads to capture, where the state becomes an arm of the dominant companies, wielded by them to prevent competition:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

This is regulatory nihilism. It supposes that the only reason you weren't killed by your dinner, or your antilock brakes, or your collapsing roof, is that you just got lucky – and not because we have actual, good, sound regulations that use evidence to protect us from the endless lethal risks we face. These nihilists suppose that making good regulation is either a myth – like ancient Egyptian sorcery – or a lost art – like the secret to embalming Pharaohs.

But it's clearly possible to make good regulations – especially if you don't allow companies to form monopolies or cartels. What's more, failing to make public regulations isn't the same as getting rid of regulation. In the absence of public regulation, we get private regulation, run by companies themselves.

Think of Amazon. For decades, the DoJ and FTC sat idly by while Amazon assembled and fortified its monopoly. Today, Amazon is the de facto e-commerce regulator. The company charges its independent sellers 45-51% in junk fees to sell on the platform, including $31b/year in "advertising" to determine who gets top billing in your searches. Vendors raise their Amazon prices in order to stay profitable in the face of these massive fees, and if they don't raise their prices at every other store and site, Amazon downranks them to oblivion, putting them out of business.

This is the crux of the FTC's case against Amazon: that they are picking winners and setting prices across the entire economy, including at every other retailer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The same is true for Google/Facebook, who decide which news and views you encounter; for Apple/Google, who decide which apps you can use, and so on. The choice is never "government regulation" or "no regulation" – it's always "government regulation" or "corporate regulation." You either live by rules made in public by democratically accountable bureaucrats, or rules made in private by shareholder-accountable executives.

You just can't solve this by "voting with your wallet." Think about the problem of robocalls. Nobody likes these spam calls, and worse, they're a vector for all kinds of fraud. Robocalls are mostly a problem with federation. The phone system is a network-of-networks, and your carrier is interconnected with carriers all over the world, sometimes through intermediaries that make it hard to know which network a call originates on.

Some of these carriers are spam-friendly. They make money by selling access to spammers and scammers. Others don't like spam, but they have lax or inadequate security measures to prevent robocalls. Others will simply be targets of opportunity: so large and well-resourced that they are irresistible to bad actors, who continuously probe their defenses and exploit overlooked flaws, which are quickly patched.

To stem the robocall tide, your phone company will have to block calls from bad actors, put sloppy or lazy carriers on notice to shape up or face blocks, and also tell the difference between good companies and bad ones.

There's no way you can figure this out on your own. How can you know whether your carrier is doing a good job at this? And even if your carrier wants to do this, only the largest, most powerful companies can manage it. Rogue carriers won't give a damn if some tiny micro-phone-company threatens them with a block if they don't shape up.

This is something that a large, powerful government agency is best suited to addressing. And thankfully, we have such an agency. Two years ago, the FCC demanded that phone companies submit plans for "robocall mitigation." Now, it's taking action:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/telcos-filed-blank-robocall-plans-with-fcc-and-got-away-with-it-for-2-years/

Specifically, the FCC has identified carriers – in the US and abroad – with deficient plans. Some of these plans are very deficient. National Cloud Communications of Texas sent the FCC a Windows Printer Test Page. Evernex (Pakistan) sent the FCC its "taxpayer profile inquiry" from a Pakistani state website. Viettel (Vietnam) sent in a slide presentation entitled "Making Smart Cities Vision a Reality." Canada's Humbolt VoIP sent an "indiscernible object." DomainerSuite submitted a blank sheet of paper scrawled with the word "NOTHING."

The FCC has now notified these carriers – and others with less egregious but still deficient submissions – that they have 14 days to fix this or they'll be cut off from the US telephone network.

This is a problem you don't fix with your wallet, but with your ballot. Effective, public-interest-motivated FCC regulators are a political choice. Trump appointed the cartoonishly evil Ajit Pai to run the FCC, and he oversaw a program of neglect and malice. Pai – a former Verizon lawyer – dismantled Net Neutrality after receiving millions of obviously fraudulent comments from stolen identities, lying about it, and then obstructing the NY Attorney General's investigation into the matter:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/31/and-drown-it/#starve-the-beast

The Biden administration has a much better FCC – though not as good as it could be, thanks to Biden hanging Gigi Sohn out to dry in the face of a homophobic smear campaign that ultimately led one of the best qualified nominees for FCC commissioner to walk away from the process:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/15/useful-idiotsuseful-idiots/#unrequited-love

Notwithstanding the tragic loss of Sohn's leadership in this vital agency, Biden's FCC – and its action on robocalls – illustrates the value of elections won with ballots, not wallets.

Self-regulation without state regulation inevitably devolves into farce. We're a quarter of a century into the commercial internet and the US still doesn't have a modern federal privacy law. The closest we've come is a disclosure rule, where companies can make up any policy they want, provided they describe it to you.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out how to cheat on this regulation. It's so simple, even a Meta lawyer can figure it out – which is why the Meta Quest VR headset has a privacy policy isn't merely awful, but long.

It will take you five hours to read the whole document and discover how badly you're being screwed. Go ahead, "do your own research":

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/annual-creep-o-meter/

The answer to bad regulation is good regulation, and the answer to incompetent regulators is competent ones. As Michael Lewis's Fifth Risk (published after Trump filled the administrative agencies with bootlickers, sociopaths and crooks) documented, these jobs demand competence:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/11/27/the-fifth-risk-michael-lewis-explains-how-the-deep-state-is-just-nerds-versus-grifters/

For example, Lewis describes how a Washington State nuclear waste facility created as part of the Manhattan Project endangers the Columbia River, the source of 8 million Americans' drinking water. The nuclear waste cleanup is projected to take 100 years and cost 100 billion dollars. With stakes that high, we need competent bureaucrats overseeing the job.

The hacky conservative jokes comparing every government agency to the DMV are not descriptive so much as prescriptive. By slashing funding, imposing miserable working conditions, and demonizing the people who show up for work anyway, neoliberals have chased away many good people, and hamstrung those who stayed.

One of the most inspiring parts of the Biden administration is the large number of extremely competent, extremely principled agency personnel he appointed, and the speed and competence they've brought to their roles, to the great benefit of the American public:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

But leaders can only do so much – they also need staff. 40 years of attacks on US state capacity has left the administrative state in tatters, stretched paper-thin. In an excellent article, Noah Smith describes how a starveling American bureaucracy costs the American public a fortune:

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-needs-a-bigger-better-bureaucracy

Even stripped of people and expertise, the US government still needs to get stuff done, so it outsources to nonprofits and consultancies. These are the source of much of the expense and delay in public projects. Take NYC's Second Avenue subway, a notoriously overbudget and late subway extension – "the most expensive mile of subway ever built." Consultants amounted to 20% of its costs, double what France or Italy would have spent. The MTA used to employ 1,600 project managers. Now it has 124 of them, overseeing $20b worth of projects. They hand that money to consultants, and even if they have the expertise to oversee the consultants' spending, they are stretched too thin to do a good job of it:

https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html

When a public agency lacks competence, it ends up costing the public more. States with highly expert Departments of Transport order better projects, which need fewer changes, which adds up to massive costs savings and superior roads:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4522676

Other gaps in US regulation are plugged by nonprofits and citizen groups. Environmental rules like NEPA rely on the public to identify and object to environmental risks in public projects, from solar plants to new apartment complexes. NEPA and its state equivalents empower private actors to sue developers to block projects, even if they satisfy all environmental regulations, leading to years of expensive delay.

The answer to this isn't to dismantle environmental regulations – it's to create a robust expert bureaucracy that can enforce them instead of relying on NIMBYs. This is called "ministerial approval" – when skilled government workers oversee environmental compliance. Predictably, NIMBYs hate ministerial approval.

Which is not to say that there aren't problems with trusting public enforcers to ensure that big companies are following the law. Regulatory capture is real, and the more concentrated an industry is, the greater the risk of capture. We are living in a moment of shocking market concentration, thanks to 40 years of under-regulation:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Remember that five-hour privacy policy for a Meta VR headset? One answer to these eye-glazing garbage novellas presented as "privacy policies" is to simply ban certain privacy-invading activities. That way, you can skip the policy, knowing that clicking "I agree" won't expose you to undue risk.

This is the approach that Bennett Cyphers and I argue for in our EFF white-paper, "Privacy Without Monopoly":

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

After all, even the companies that claim to be good for privacy aren't actually very good for privacy. Apple blocked Facebook from spying on iPhone owners, then sneakily turned on their own mass surveillance system, and lied about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

But as the European experiment with the GDPR has shown, public administrators can't be trusted to have the final word on privacy, because of regulatory capture. Big Tech companies like Google, Apple and Facebook pretend to be headquartered in corporate crime havens like Ireland and Luxembourg, where the regulators decline to enforce the law:

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

It's only because of the GPDR has a private right of action – the right of individuals to sue to enforce their rights – that we're finally seeing the beginning of the end of commercial surveillance in Europe:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/americans-deserve-more-current-american-data-privacy-protection-act

It's true that NIMBYs can abuse private rights of action, bringing bad faith cases to slow or halt good projects. But just as the answer to bad regulations is good ones, so too is the answer to bad private rights of action good ones. SLAPP laws have shown us how to balance vexatious litigation with the public interest:

https://www.rcfp.org/resources/anti-slapp-laws/

We must get over our reflexive cynicism towards public administration. In my book The Internet Con, I lay out a set of public policy proposals for dismantling Big Tech and putting users back in charge of their digital lives:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

The most common objection I've heard since publishing the book is, "Sure, Big Tech has enshittified everything great about the internet, but how can we trust the government to fix it?"

We've been conditioned to think that lawmakers are too old, too calcified and too corrupt, to grasp the technical nuances required to regulate the internet. But just because Congress isn't made up of computer scientists, it doesn't mean that they can't pass good laws relating to computers. Congress isn't full of microbiologists, but we still manage to have safe drinking water (most of the time).

You can't just "do the research" or "vote with your wallet" to fix the internet. Bad laws – like the DMCA, which bans most kinds of reverse engineering – can land you in prison just for reconfiguring your own devices to serve you, rather than the shareholders of the companies that made them. You can't fix that yourself – you need a responsive, good, expert, capable government to fix it.

We can have that kind of government. It'll take some doing, because these questions are intrinsically hard to get right even without monopolies trying to capture their regulators. Even a president as flawed as Biden can be pushed into nominating good administrative personnel and taking decisive, progressive action:

https://doctorow.medium.com/joe-biden-is-headed-to-a-uaw-picket-line-in-detroit-f80bd0b372ab?sk=f3abdfd3f26d2f615ad9d2f1839bcc07

Biden may not be doing enough to suit your taste. I'm certainly furious with aspects of his presidency. The point isn't to lionize Biden – it's to point out that even very flawed leaders can be pushed into producing benefit for the American people. Think of how much more we can get if we don't give up on politics but instead demand even better leaders.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, coming out on November 14. It's about a generation of people who've grown up under good government – a historically unprecedented presidency that has passed the laws and made the policies we'll need to save our species and planet from the climate emergency:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

The action opens after the pendulum has swung back, with a new far-right presidency and an insurgency led by white nationalist militias and their offshore backers – seagoing anarcho-capitalist billionaires.

In the book, these forces figure out how to turn good regulations against the people they were meant to help. They file hundreds of simultaneous environmental challenges to refugee housing projects across the country, blocking the infill building that is providing homes for the people whose homes have been burned up in wildfires, washed away in floods, or rendered uninhabitable by drought.

I don't want to spoil the book here, but it shows how the protagonists pursue a multipronged defense, mixing direct action, civil disobedience, mass protest, court challenges and political pressure to fight back. What they don't do is give up on state capacity. When the state is corrupted by wreckers, they claw back control, rather than giving up on the idea of a competent and benevolent public system.

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/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

[kangals]

forgive me…. i am a little dumb… does that COI number mean stellina is like. 40% inbred?? i’m assuming no but could you explain what the numbers mean?

Stellina is more than 40% inbred 🙃 but yes, that is what it means.

COI = coefficient of inbreeding, or essentially how inbred a dog is. A parent-child breeding, or a breeding between full siblings would theoretically give you a dog that has a COI of 25%. On average, purebred dogs are at about 20%, but that varies depending on breed - some breeds are very diverse, others are very inbred. The collie breed average is estimated to be around 40%, which is very much on the high end - it means on average, collies are almost genetic full siblings. This website has breed breakdowns, for a visual reference.

Genetic COI is a relatively recent thing, as before we had DNA tests we had to rely on “pedigree COI” aka literally laying your dogs pedigree out on paper, counting how many times certain dogs appeared over the generations, and then doing calculations based on that. These tend to be significantly lower than the genetic COI because that doesn’t take into account the overall gene pool of the breed. Stellinas pedigree COI was somewhere around 18% when I calculated it iirc, which is still high but significantly lower than her genetic COI. That’s because the amount of dogs originally used to create the modern collie breed was very small, so all collies today are pulling from the same small pool of DNA. When you have breeds that are all direct descendants from the same handful of dogs, and with how COI only accrues higher and higher with each generation… it’s totally possible to end up with thousands of dogs that are genetic siblings.

The good news is that despite their very low genetic diversity, collies are still a healthy breed with a respectable average lifespan on 12-14 and few major health issues. But that’s despite the high COI, not because of it. On the other hand take the Doberman breed, which has a similar average COI around 40%. Something like 2/3 Dobermans will die from a heart disease called DCM, which makes seemingly healthy dogs just drop dead. And because virtually every Doberman is a genetic full sibling with each other, there’s no real way to just breed away from it. The breeds essentially in a death spiral unless there’s some miraculous medical breakthrough, or unless they start breeding Dobermans to other, unrelated dogs to try and increase diversity. Which is a huge can of worms by itself. so while collies are still doing, all things considered, really well, they're very much the exception and not the rule. unfortunately because there's no immediate repercussions, that means a lot of collie breeders and clubs will hand-wave off the high COI as "oh that's not a problem for us" which, like. yeah. for now.

so tl;dr: yes COI is how inbred a dog is. yes it being high is bad. you can have a high COI and still be healthy (and have a low COI and be unhealthy), but it's still really not great and should be avoided. however in breeds where the COI is already high, there's not really a feasible way to get around it.

[applestorms]

a "quick" little logistical refresher on shinigami eyes & lifespans, mostly for myself but also bc i keep seeing posts talking about this that bother me:

when ryuk first presents light with the offer of shinigami eyes, it comes with an added explanation of the primary (biological?) differences between human & shinigami. specifically, along with the difference in sight distance and ability to see names & lifespans, shinigami use their DN's as a kind of base survival mechanism. while no human weapon/physical attack could ever hurt them, and they have no biological need to eat/sleep/drink/etc, the one thing they do have to do is write down names, at least enough to ensure that their life counter doesn't tick all the way down.

presumably, this is one of the reasons why shinigami can't see each others'/their own lifespans: not just because it is unnecessary, as ryuk says, but also because it is constantly changing as it ticks down, bringing the shinigami closer & closer to their own death until they refresh it by writing down another name. if we could see shinigami lifespans, they would be shifting every second/minute/hour/[insert shinigami-based time measurement here]-- in a way, time is their basic life function.

this means that, by necessity, humans are different. a human lifespan cannot change-- or, even if it does have the ability to adjust under certain circumstances, it still absolutely cannot be influenced by the DN. the DN influencing lifespans goes inherently against the point of using the DN as a way of getting more time, as it would mean that at maximum, all shinigami could only get approximately 40 seconds of life for every kill. they would have to be much more regularly active to keep living under such circumstances, which goes against the whole lazy/slothful shinigami realm thing that's set up early on.

sidenote1: theoretically, you could maybe consider a circumstance where time is a lot more fluid, where human lifespans tick down just the same as shinigami and get transferred/sucked over when their name is written in the DN. but considering the fact that (iirc) it is never depicted like that in any animated/live action mediums, and that the explanation seems more focused around the mathematical approach of, "well if you have 60 years listed and you're 40, the shinigami gets 20 years for writing your name," i'm inclined to disregard this idea or call it mostly non-canonical.

so, following this logic, when light kills with the DN he is almost undoubtedly killing people before the end of their stated/written lifespans. the DN's influence on reality is not something that is predetermined by these written lifespans for the reasons listed above, so if light kills someone at the time they were meant to die, a la BB, it is purely by chance. (e.g. lind l. tailor might've been slated to die that day, but his death could still be considered "unnatural," since it was ultimately caused by the DN.) this tends to be the line of reasoning that people follow when they say that, "everything in DN was ryuk's fault," assuming not just that the DN's influence is unnatural, but that the presence of a shinigami itself is somehow breaking the natural flow of how humanity would've existed on its own when freed from such a presence.

this of course brings up the interesting if somewhat complicated question of free will in the DN universe, though i think we can get a clearer view on this by asking a simpler question first: what is a "natural lifespan" anyway?

intuitively, if we are working under the assumption that humans have at least some semblance of free will, it's easy to assume that a natural lifespan is something that humans can influence. i.e. if you eat healthy, work out regularly, take care of yourself mentally, etc. you can improve your length & quality of life, or just the opposite if you do not. however, this again seems to go against the already established principle of "human lifespans do not change," so i don't think this explanation fully fits.

instead, i actually think there might be a similar logic working here as how diavolo's king crimson stand works in jojo pt. 5-- namely, that there is some fated/destined route that all of humanity is destined to go down, should they be free to go their own way. this implies that at least some/all human action is predetermined to a degree, with deaths being fated/unavoidable if the lifespan counter decrees it, just in the same way that a death cannot in any way be avoided if written in the DN. even if nobody (that we know of in-story, anyway) can see it, there is a destined timeline of human action & existence that will play out naturally should humanity be left alone from any exterior forces, shinigami or otherwise.

the question is only how much the action of shinigami influence this destiny in the long run-- like, does the existence of KIRA in the early 2000s influence the lifespan of children born in japan even after light's death in 2010/2013/2006? presumably, yes, as it would be a huge pain for shinigami if they could no longer trust lifespan counters to accurately depict times of death, and the influence of the DN supposedly only works on those whose names are directly written down. so, perhaps the predetermination only works on a smaller scale, looking only at the destiny of each individual human at the time they are born?? something to consider.

EDIT: actually, scratch that, the answer to that should probably be no-- the entire point is that light's influence is somewhat meaningless in the long run, even if humanity still remembers KIRA distinctly long after light's death, as we see in the c-kira & a-kira post-canon stories. the real question here is whether or not the lifespans of kids born at the time of KIRA's reign are influenced-- which again the answer to which should probably be no, as the DN's influence is limited. guess it just feels weird to think about, that everyone remembers KIRA so distinctly but their lives are still destined the same either way. a bit of weird writing, perhaps? again, this gets into the question of what specifically is being predetermined here-- we see the twin towers still standing post-2001 in story at one point, so were those deaths simply not predetermined in this universe?? big sigh.

sidenote2: even going along with this explanation, i don't think you have to entirely divorce the existence of free will from the DN universe, or at the very least you don't have to believe that every single individual action a human takes or emotion they feel is strictly predestined. this could start getting into more formal philosophical arguments though, and i'm not reading any more hume if i can help it.

ironically, this all kinda goes directly against the idea that light is somehow destined/fated to rid the world of evil by being a teenage serial killer-- if anything, it means that light is specifically going against his fated path by using the DN. you could maybe even make the argument that light is one of the only people in the world acting with true free will, freed from his destined path through the power of an outside force. it's very very very interesting to me in this context that humans using the DN seem to lose their destined lifespans entirely, seemingly breaking from their fated paths entirely purely by gaining such a power, the only lasting remnants of fate's influence being a vague doom hanging over their heads (rip minoru tanaka). i mean-- i guess you could still argue that even that was still fated, that there's like another layer of shinigami-based destiny on top of the base-level human destiny, but this is starting to get stupid so i'm gonna stop talking about fate for now.

point is: please stop saying that beyond could somehow tell that L or naomi or mello were all gonna die soon in the future due to KIRA. he had no way of knowing that-- their lifespans would be written the same regardless of whether or not light got the DN, because the DN by necessity cannot influence the written, predetermined human lifespans. thank you for reading my speech, mic drop.

[scientia-rex]

Medicine is a numbers game. I use probability all the time. If you don't understand probability, you'll look at someone with chest pain and have no fucking clue how likely it is that you're looking at a heart attack. You may not even know what the other top contenders are. GERD is common. Anxiety. An angry rib muscle. Lots of options. Most of the time, most chest pain won't be a heart attack, but sometime it'll be something worse--an aortic dissection that's rupturing will kill you even faster than most heart attacks.

I see so many patients who come in with a symptom that the Internet, whether Google or influencers, has told them is associated with this one thing. It's often the thyroid. And yeah! A fucked-up thyroid can cause all kinds of symptoms. But here's the deal: if I check your thyroid and it looks normal, it's probably not your thyroid that's causing the symptoms. It could be something else we understand. It is very often something we don't understand. But the fact that I can tell you modern medicine doesn't understand some process doesn't mean your naturopath or chiropractor or Certified Hormone Expert Influencer does understand it because they have this different way of looking at the body. Look, long, long before I wanted to be a doctor, I wanted to be an herbalist. I'm queer, I'm a woman(ish), I am neurodivergent, I am not The Man. I'm not beholden to the system; the system doesn't care for me and wishes I would sit down and shut up, most days. And I have a background in research science and statistics. I used to have a rubber stamp that said "Denied" and one that said "Approved" and I'd hit piles of paper for research applications at an R-1 university, in triplicate, with my stamps, because I understood research well enough to get a Human Subjects Division job evaluating it. If a naturopathic approach to thyroid worked well, I would be doing it. I'm a utilitarian. I don't give a rat's ass about the theoretical underpinnings of modern medical practice, I want things to work. Ideally I would like to know why they work, too, but hey, we can't always have it all.

So the dozens of patients I get every month who are looking elsewhere for answers, looking to people who don't actually know any better but are good at pretending they do, who pay money for elaborate supplement regimens or unvalidated genetic tests or (my personal least favorite) "memory-improving games," I have to be calm and professional and diplomatic about what I say. I can't say, "That's quack shit." I can't say, "Your favorite influencer is a liar and an idiot." Not just because I'd get lower patient satisfaction scores, but because patients wouldn't believe me, and they would reactively like me less and the other guy more. (You're calling me stupid? You're saying I wasted money? If I believe you're just a shill for Big Pharma, that hurts less.)

It takes years, even decades, to understand how to put together the probability maps. Chest pain in a patient under 40? Highly unlikely to be a myocardial infarction, but not totally impossible, especially if they've been doing cocaine. In a patient over 60? Much more likely. Is the pain crushing? Is it sub-sternal? How long has it been going on? Is it constant, or intermittent? Does the patient smoke? What other health conditions does the patient have? These are all deeply important questions, and I remember feeling overwhelmed by things like this all the time in medical school. It's taken so long to build my knowledge, and my background in research is only tangentially valuable most of the time.

Please don't believe authority just because it looks good. Don't trust people because you want to trust them. Learn about the scientific process, learn how the sausage gets made, and then you'll be in an infinitely better position to know whether this is a "wow! science!!!" or a "wow! science bullshit!" moment.

[orcinus-veterinarius]

Hiya! Would you be willing to explain why keeping captive right whales is completely nonviable, as you mentioned? I’m fascinated, but the adhd simply will not let me parse scientific papers.

That's a fantastic question! While it would be wonderful if captive breeding were a viable option for this critically endangered species, it just isn't possible under any realistic conditions.

For starters, their size. Orcas are the largest mammals successfully held in captivity, and we all know how difficult (and controversial) that is, with only a very small handful of facilities ever pulling it off with any semblance of success. Tilikum, the largest captive orca (although I believe that record has since been overtaken by a male in China), was 22.5 feet (6.9 meters) long and weighed 12,500 pounds (5,700 kg). Most other orcas in human care, particularly the females, are considerably smaller. Compare that to a northern right whale. Even the smallest adults are over 40 feet long—double Tilikum's length—and weigh 88,000 pounds (40,000 kg)—seven times his weight—while the biggest specimens on record reached up to 61 feet (18.5 m) and an incredible 234,000 pounds (106,000 kg).

A tank for an animal that size would be far beyond anything we have the ability to engineer and maintain. Think of how deep it would have to be for the whale to even turn around! The water pressure would be astronomical, wreaking havoc on the building materials even if it were possible to build the structure. And remember—someone has to dive to clean it! Our theoretical right whale habitat would have to be a sea pen, but even the 100-acre facilities proposed with orcas in mind are nowhere near deep enough. While right whales are considered to inhabit "coastal" waters, they do not live right up by the shoreline, like certain orca ecotypes and other small delphinids. They are a pelagic species, designed to live out in the open water column, as are all baleen whales. So, the pen would have to be a floating habitat miles out into the open water (think of an offshore oil rig), with netting sturdy enough to not be destroyed by a 50 ton whale and long enough to extend hundreds of feet to the ocean floor. We're talking probably thousands of square miles of netting, that would have to be routinely inspected for safety and upkeep. So, you would probably need a submersible, since no human can dive that deep. On top of that, it would be difficult to find such a larger stretch of ocean in their habitat without shipping lanes, underwater noise, or pollution. And let's just forget about the logistics of staffing that place—or worse, funding.

Additionally, we wouldn't be able to feed them by tossing fish into their mouth like with dolphins. Northern right whales feed on tiny crustaceans and zooplankton, cruising along and filtering the creatures from the water with their baleen. Assuming our right whale keepers were somehow able to acquire the insane amount of food the whale requires (potentially over 5000 pounds of zooplankton a day), it would need to be scattered throughout the massive habitat to facilitate feeding. I imagine this would probably look something like the way Georgia Aquarium feeds their whale sharks from a little boat, although on a much larger scale. And since the food obviously can't be kept alive, we would need to develop someway of delivering the daily vitamins that are lost in the freezing process—and to keep hundreds of tons of krill frozen on a floating kitchen in the middle of the ocean.

Of course, the ultimate goal of this project would be to breed northern right whales... that means we need to take everything we just talked about and double it, at a bare minimum. For the breeding program to be successful, it would need a whole lot more than just two whales. And unfortunately, even if we lived in world with magical floating thousand-acre sea pens, unlimited krill, and endless money... we still don't know if it would even work. Right whale breeding habits are poorly understood, with the whales mating in cold northern waters before migrating 1,000 miles south to calve. Despite our best theoretical efforts, these migratory patterns could very well be necessary for successful reproduction.

Thank you again for the ask! This was actually a lot of fun to think about! If you want to read about JJ, the only baleen whale ever successfully housed in (temporary) human care, you can find an article and pictures here.

[kazamajun]

Did Kazumi want Kazuya killed?

I like Kazumi a lot as a character. Her design and music themes are bangers. One thing just always bothered me though, how she seemingly loved Kazuya but then requested that Akuma kill him back when he was only five years old. So I did a little investigating to try and make sense of it, rewatching both the story mode and intros and old trailers, and what I turned up was quite interesting.

Evidence for:

Akuma's pov flashback where Kazumi says "Kill him for me... And also... Kazuya..."

Akuma seems to believe it's what she wanted, and is how he interpreted the promise to Kazumi.

Evidence against:

The wording and phrasing is questionable. "Kill him" ... "and also" - why not just say "kill them" if she meant both? Additionally, ellipses are most often used to indicate omissions of words. What is being cut out?

This is perhaps answered where we get a more fleshed out version of the scene, like the 2014 SDCC trailer. The same footage is also in Japanese here, if you'd rather spare yourself the English dub. Transcription of dialogue: "If I die, if I can't stop Heihachi, then you must do it for me." "Kazuya? That boy is still too young. And Heihachi will soon realize that he was born with my powers. Heihachi is more powerful than you realize. Who knows what Heihachi will do to Kazuya or to countless others? It is up to me. I must stop Heihachi." "Even if this power consumes me and kills me in the process." No mention of killing Kazuya, in fact she seems concerned for his welfare. Why worry about him like this if she's asking for him to be killed? Evo 2014 reveal trailer transcription: "You're here. That must mean the time has come. Kazuya? I must stop him. I must stop Heihachi. By now I'm sure that Heihachi has realized he was born with my powers." Similar to the SDCC one, just shorter, as this one came out first. And again the same implication that she's worried about Kazuya's fate. From the PS4 opening cinematic: "My beloved Heihachi will inevitably engulf the world in war and destruction resulting in the loss of many innocent lives." No Kazuya mention at all.

Kazuya himself does not seem to believe it. He calls it absurd and laughs, and in the final confrontation with Heihachi, Kazumi's theme plays towards the end of this whole sequence. Also while not in the story mode; in the opening cinematic (and also in the trailers linked above) Kazuya says "You killed my mother!" before their fight, indicating that he is avenging her.

Kazumi has a reason for wanting Heihachi dead. The Hachijos sent her there as a 'sleeper agent' of sorts to take Heihachi out if he became a threat to the world, which he does after killing Jinpachi and taking control of the Zaibatsu. Kazuya, being a five year old, is no such threat obviously. It does not make any logical sense. If the Hachijos were in the habit of killing their own offspring, their lineage wouldn't go far. And if him being Heihachi's son was the concern, why even have him? Additionally, she genuinely loved Kazuya, something even Heihachi admits. Either way, a young child does not fit the profile of the 'scum' that the Hachijo apparently try to wipe out.

Miscellaneous:

Heihachi seems not to believe it initially; although his reason for questioning it is purely the passage of time as Akuma waited over 40 years to fulfill this promise.

A potential thought as to why Kazuya was perhaps not mentioned as one of Akuma's targets in the other cinematics occurred to me as perhaps it being a plot point that they wanted to keep under wraps, but this was easily debunked by the story trailer a few months before the console release, showing the fight between Kazuya and Akuma. There is also a showdown between them in a 2016 trailer that matches neither of the story mode battles.

If Kazumi thought that Kazuya needed to be killed, she could theoretically have done it herself, easily. After her illness that activated her devil gene, Heihachi believed she was not in control of herself and she supposedly never remembered her attacks on him after she went back to 'normal'. And yet, during those times, her target was only ever Heihachi. If Kazuya was supposedly a threat to be ended too - why did that never happen when she lost control?

Late addition/edit: In Akuma's reveal trailer, the wording is altered again to "And also unfortunately, my dear son Kazuya" but this line is said AFTER Akuma has made the promise to Kazumi to repay his debt. And again, it is vague. Unfortunately Kazuya what? Unlike all the lines re Heihachi, she never actually says he must die. A potential reading of this could be that Kazumi felt Kazuya would be better off dead than suffering whatever Heihachi would do to him -- but then, if the goal was a mercy killing, waiting 40 years after the damage has already been done makes NO sense.

Conclusion:

It is my personal evaluation that Akuma most likely misinterpreted Kazumi's words (or perhaps misremembers them as it's been decades - hence why the dialogue in the flashback is an abrupt and chopped-up handful of words vs the more extensive scene seen elsewhere) and that her wish was for Heihachi to be taken down for the sake of the world, and her son. Akuma, being who he is, would lean towards interpreting any kind of ambiguity as referring to violence and death.

In an out of character sense, the vibe I get is that originally Akuma's hit list was only supposed to be Heihachi but at some point late in development they decided they wanted to have a Kazuya vs Akuma fight added in too hence that no-context bit in the 2016 trailer that doesn't match any scenes in the actual final story; and then the mangled flashback of Akuma's happens in the story mode to facilitate the fights that happen in the final version of the game.

But in an ic sense, Akuma misinterpreting Kazumi seems the most likely to me. I don't think he was deliberately lying, his vibe is sincere enough and he calls her Kazumi-dono which shows great respect. IMO, it's good to remember that characters can be wrong about things sometimes and that just because they believe something that doesn't necessarily mean that it is true.

[pokemon-card-of-the-day]

Pokemon Card of the Day #3243: Pidgeot (Expedition)

Pidgeot was a Pokemon that was completely based on its Poke-Power. Being able to shuffle a weakened Pokemon back into the deck had some interesting implications, from preventing the loss of Prizes off a weakened Pokemon to refreshing the deck to avoid running out of cards. This was on a package that didn't have much else on it to work with, but it was the type of thing that theoretically worked well with the right sort of deck.

80 HP was pretty low for a Stage 2 by this point. You'd see a lot of Stage 1 Pokemon in that territory. The difference wasn't huge in some spots, but being open to the Magcargo KO and being 2-hit by things that even did 40, let alone 50, damage, wasn't too pleasant. Granted, Pidgeot was a supporting Pokemon so it meant a bit less here, but it was worth noting. Lightning wasn't a terrible Weakness to have, with the main effect being in e-On where you could run into something like Team Aqua's Manectric. A Fighting Resistance completely blanked Tyrogue in Neo-On and gave a nice cushion against things like Machamp, Donphan, and Team Magma's Groudon in general. There was no Retreat Cost here, which was extremely important for something that had to be Active to do its job but also didn't want to attack.

Beating Wings was a unique Poke-Power. It could be used once on your turn and Pidgeot had to be Active, which usually meant pairing this with a way to switch to it. You could shuffle 1 of your Benched Pokemon and all attached cards into your deck. This could deny Prizes sometimes, and this was useful as long as you had ways to build up new Pokemon to make up for it. You really needed to pair this with a bulky Pokemon to make it worthwhile most of the time, though some niche scenarios like cycling Beedrill around to keep the opponent locked down also existed. If Pidgeot did find its spots, it could really change the course of a game.

Sharp Beak started at just 20 damage for 3 Colorless Energy. There was a coin flip, and heads got 30 more for a respectable 50. The fact that it was just on a coin flip meant that this wasn't an attack you wanted to aim for.

Pidgeot had some nice moments, as hiding a weakened Pokemon away or cycling a Pokemon to use coming into play Powers again had its uses. The format wasn't exactly the most kind to this at the time, as a lot of decks were going to be going for the offensive route and super bulky things weren't dominating. There was an argument for trying to pair this with Wailord ex to make it even harder to KO enough things to win or trying to play around with Beedrill and this. It really never caught on back then, though decks using a later Pidgeot with the same gimmick did show up some in a later format so the concept was solid.

[vidavalor]

I know we're all keeping you from posting the major sexy metas by inundating you with questions but the stuff you post is just SO INTRIGUING lol. Sooo, you think they use toys too, then? ;-) Gosh, I think they are further ahead than most of us! We can probably learn a thing or two from them. Do you think they may have inspired the Kama Sutra? On that note, I wonder what your thoughts are on spirituality/divine love and sex, or sex magick, and what of that you see reflected in Good Omens perhaps?

hi @procrastiel how are you, my darling? Ask and ye shall eventually receive (sorry for the delay). Really fun questions-- thank you! :)

The sex toy reference in GO: Lockdown and some thoughts on Crowley and Aziraphale, mindfulness, and Tantric Eye Gazing under the cut.

<<further ahead than most of us>> They have a few thousand years head start so one would hope.

<<you think they use toys too, then? ;-)>>

Do with this excerpt from the forthcoming Cake meta on GO: Lockdown what you will:

The Bundt cake exploded in popularity in Buddy Holly's America of the 1950s when the Nordicware company developed the Bundt pan with its distinctive shape. To date, Bundt cake is really the only type of cake named after the pan-- one might even say, the device-- used to bake the cake, rather than after the kind of cake itself. While you can bake many kinds of cake in a Bundt cake pan, the traditional choice is... pound cake.

<<inspired The Kama Sutra?>>

I don't think they inspired it since they at least tried to be a secret for some time but there are some things tied to it that seem relevant a bit maybe? The most direct thing to tantra that I noticed is maybe an allusion to Tantric Eye Gazing (sometimes also called "Soul Gazing").

This one is fun because there's actually some science behind it as well. It's been proven that staring into a trusted partner's eyes for about 40 to 60 seconds causes your body to start to generate the hormone oxytocin, the bonding chemical that some people call "the love hormone." Look into someone's eyes a little longer-- a couple of minutes or more-- and your body starts to flood with oxytocin.

The effects include decreased cortisol (stress hormone) production-- so less anxiety-- and an increased sense of calm/peace, etc., but it also causes a deeper connection between partners. You can theoretically do it anywhere you both feel safe and comfortable enough to be a bit vulnerable and where you are probably not going to be interrupted-- so, the bookshop, for them. If you practice Tantric Eye Gazing in bed, the love hormone flood deepens intimacy between partners and contributes to a more pleasurable experience. The preoccupation with Crowley's eyes and his whole serpent gaze is potentially a nod to something like this as well.

Aziraphale is, as we know, obsessed with Crowley's eyes. He painted half the shop their color. He lives for kinky lunch and being gazed at... he even got The Bentley to take off its sunglasses lol. Meanwhile, Crowley's favorite song is that besotted pinefest "Pale Blue Eyes" so it's not like it's a one-sided thing. They could have kind of fallen into aspects of Eye Gazing without knowing it is a thing, honestly, but I'd wager since they've been around forever, they know what it is. Plus, well, there's also crepes, which winds up defined around it fundamentally being about eventually coming back to a position that makes it easier to kiss and emphasizes eye contact, which is a way of emphasizing a focus on intimacy.

You could also, if you want to, take Aziraphale's "you like waiting inside" comment below a bit in this direction as well, because the idea with Tantric Eye Gazing in bed is that it is meant to bring about a sense of a kind of hyper-awareness of the present and to feel grounding-- not at all things these two like or need lol-- but, just as you can try this outside of bed and it's a different experience, it is also different in bed, depending on when and how you and your partner try it. One way is just while inside your partner but before actively moving much. "You like waiting inside" is already "you like just hanging out inside me and taking your time and driving us both insane" so it's not really far off to throw the eye thing in there as well.

Aziraphale does mean on one level that Crowley just likes being in the actual bookshop, yeah, but Aziraphale also both used the bookshop as euphemistic for his body earlier in the season and says the comment in the Marguerite's scene with a suggestive tone, so it's not out there to go there with it, imo. There are other things it suggests as well, really, but none that I can see that directly conflict with the idea of it being also related to Eye Gazing.

Tantric Eye Gazing is basically a mindfulness exercise as well and they are both overtly into trying to combat the blahs of life with mindfulness in scenes we've already seen-- the way they both breathe in the magic shop in the present in S2 and Aziraphale with the sushi in 1.01, for a couple of examples. This isn't just a way of coping with anxiety and depression; they are examples of sensual living. They both are already highly sensitive but add in the openness to experiencing things like food and music on a deeper level and it's not hard to reach the conclusion that they treat sex the same way, if not even more so.

The sushi scene is also an example of tying that sense of mindfulness to sex directly. I mean, Aziraphale taking that peaceful, centering breath and breathing in the brine there and hearing the miracle chime and assuming it was Crowley apparating in beside him so he wasn't expecting to silently ADHLKDJEKJKFLE GABRIEL! when he opened his eyes and looked towards where he thought Crowley would be...

...and that look? Yeah, they've tried and like and frequently do the eye thing lol.

The actual Kama Sutra itself? When I read your question, the gif below was what I pictured-- just Crowley tossing the whole book up and them picking pages out of the air and the running commentary...

"Absolutely not." "Hm, maybe that one." "You're bendy enough for this one." "Was this one not legally torture in several kingdoms at one point?" "That can't be comfortable." "We're magical and I think that would kill us..." lol

They probably tried what of it looked fun, as they seem willing to give anything that interests them a whirl.

<<sex magick in GO>>

I've made a note to put together some more coherent thoughts and do a separate thing on this at some point. It's a very creative question & I'd like to devote some more thought to it first. Thanks for the ask. :)

[akariarda]

New sibling

Misako informs Lloyd that he will get a new sibling. (Yes, Misako is 39 or 40 years old in this fic). Lloyd does not react well to the news and seeks comfort by talking to Kai.

Request from ao3

Misako sighed. She knew she should be happy, but she couldn't be if she didn't know how Lloyd and Garmadon would react to the news.

She knew Garmadon would be overjoyed. She hoped Lloyd would be happy too... even though she had a bad feeling about it.

Misako tossed the test into the trash and sighed again.

Theoretically, she knew she could be pregnant for a few more years. But did she expect that?

Not at all.

When she heard someone arriving, she walked towards the entrance.

"Hi, Mom!" Lloyd said happily when he entered.

"Lloyd." Misako smiled and hugged him. She had to do this now. She couldn't keep it to herself.

"Can you come sit on the couch for a moment?" Misako asked him. "I have news."

"Good or bad?" Lloyd froze. It surprised him that she didn't ask how his day was.

Misako didn't answer but pointed for him to sit.

"What happened?" Lloyd was becoming increasingly anxious. "You and Dad aren't leaving, are you?"

"No one is leaving, sweetheart," Misako said gently, placing her hand on his shoulder. "Someone is coming."

"Are you happy about that?" Lloyd watched her carefully.

"I can't be happy if you're not happy," Misako said, tenderly stroking his face.

"What’s the news?" Lloyd was growing more curious.

"You're getting a new sibling," Misako said.

"What?!" Lloyd was taken aback. "How?"

"I'm pregnant, Lloyd," Misako said tightly.

Lloyd paused for a moment and stepped back from her.

"Why?" he asked, bewildered.

"Lloyd." Misako tried to approach him, but he moved away.

"Why did you decide this now?"

"Things don't work that way," Misako said sadly. "You can't choose when you're going to be pregnant."

"Why isn't me enough for you?" A few tears fell down Lloyd's face.

"Of course you're enough for us, sweetheart," Misako said quietly, trying again to reach him. "I love you the most in the world, as does your father."

"Then why do you want to replace me?" Lloyd asked through his tears.

"Of course we don't want to replace you," Misako thought she might cry too. "You are the best thing that ever happened to us. For so long we couldn't have children..."

"No." Lloyd stood up.

"What's going on here?" Sensei Garmadon asked, confused, as he entered.

Lloyd walked quickly by him and out of the monastery.

"Lloyd, wait!" Misako started after him, but Sensei Garmadon caught her by the arm.

"Tell me what’s happening," he gently said to Misako.

"I knew this would be a bad idea, I knew it," Misako said, a few tears running down her face.

"What is it?" Sensei Garmadon asked gently, wiping her tears.

"I told him." Misako sighed and sat down.

"What?" Sensei Garmadon was tense. He knew it was something big.

"I told him I'm pregnant, that’s what." Misako said, putting her head in her hands to stop crying.

Sensei Garmadon felt butterflies in his stomach. He couldn't believe it.

He wanted to jump for joy and hug her... but it wasn't the right moment.

"That’s wonderful news..." Sensei Garmadon managed to say. "The best since we found out we were having Lloyd."

"But Lloyd thinks we want to replace him," Misako said quietly. "I... can't bear if he's..."

"It's okay, calm down," Sensei Garmadon gently said, hugging Misako. "This will pass; later he will be happy too."

"Are you sure?" Misako asked, burying her head into his shoulder.

"For sure." Sensei Garmadon ran his hands through her hair as he held her close. "You'll see, as soon as he gets back, he'll change his mind, and..."

~~~~~~

"What happened, Lloyd?" Kai asked when he saw him coming with red eyes.

"I'm scared," Lloyd said with a lump in his throat.

"Who’s coming?" Kai took a fighting stance. "Serpentine or..."

"No one like that." Lloyd sighed and sat down. "I'm afraid that Mom and Dad want to replace me."

"What?" Kai was at a loss for words.

"Mom's pregnant," Lloyd said in one breath.

"What?!" Kai exclaimed in astonishment. "That's great! Congratulations..."

"I don't know if it's great," Lloyd said sadly.

"Having a sibling is the most beautiful thing in the world," Kai said, sitting beside Lloyd. "I don't know what I would do without Nya..."

"But it's not the same," Lloyd said angrily. "You and Nya are a small difference, and I and..."

"A big difference isn't a problem," Kai comforted him.

"How do you know?" Lloyd looked at Kai. "I felt like someone wants to take my place."

"Now I'm going to tell you something," Kai said seriously. "I thought I would be the Green Ninja. I was a hundred percent sure of it.

Then one son of Garmadon came and took it from me. I felt like everyone had replaced me.

Instead of getting angry, I accepted him, and it hurt, but he became like a young brother to us all.

Even though we were scared... because we had to take care of him and train him.He..."

"I know you're talking about me," Lloyd said, smiling a little.

"See, you're already feeling better." Kai said proudly.

"Is it really cool to have a younger sibling?"

"Of course it is," Kai laughed. "You'll teach him and protect him. Play with him or her, save him or her from your parents when they get mad.

You'll be his or her hero, the coolest big brother."

"That sounds nice," Lloyd smiled.

"Of course it does." Kai patted him on the shoulder.

"I'm actually happy!" Lloyd said cheerfully, standing up.

"Of course you are." Kai laughed. "I can't wait to tell the others... Oh and Wu, he'll fall to the ground with happiness when they find out he'll have another nephew!"

"Maybe it'd be better if I told them," Lloyd felt a bit foolish, stealing Kai’s joy. "Or Mom and Dad."

"You're right." Kai said. "Are you going?"

"I have to go home and sort things out first," Lloyd said and hurried off.

~~~~~~

"Mom, Dad!" Lloyd shouted as he entered the monastery.

"Lloyd?" Misako said, coming to him. "Listen..."

"I'm sorry!" Lloyd said, hugging Misako. "I'm so happy. I want to be a big brother!"

Misako smiled and kissed him on the forehead. "I didn't want to hear anything more."

"I told you," Sensei Garmadon cheerfully said from the kitchen, joining the hug. "Soon there will be one more of us."

[ravenofspades]

i believe the time has come to reveal my greatest secret: quite possibly the single stupidest lancer build i ever did come up with. it has known quite a few names, but i shall simply refer to it as The Orbital Suplex Build.

-- SSC Atlas @ LL8 -- [ LICENSES ] IPS-N Blackbeard 3, IPS-N Caliban 1, SSC Atlas 3, HA Sherman 1 [ CORE BONUSES ] Titanomachy Mesh, Full Subjectivity Sync [ TALENTS ] Duelist 3, Juggernaut 2, Brutal 2, Technophile 2, Iconoclast 1, Combined Arms 1 [ STATS ] HULL:0 AGI:4 SYS:6 ENGI:0 STRUCTURE:4 HP:10 ARMOR:0 STRESS:4 HEATCAP:4 REPAIR:2 TECH ATK:+4 LIMITED:+0 SPD:8 EVA:18 EDEF:12 SENSE:3 SAVE:14 [ WEAPONS ] FLEX MOUNT: Kraul Rifle MAIN MOUNT: Terashima Blade (Supermassive Mod) [ SYSTEMS ] Synthetic Muscle Netting, Jäger Kunst I, Jäger Kunst II x3, Reinforced Cabling

now this did require an above average amount of the demon known as math (i had to do some addition). moreover, it's not exactly, how should I say, good, useful, or, y'know, viable at this level. but. if you really, really, really just wanna send people into fucking orbit, then here you go, this is the single funniest way you can do that. technically the only talents you really need are Juggernaut 2 and Duelist 3, but the others are either because this is an actual character i played, or for fun. Brutal 2, for example, deals 1 extra knockback if you crit.

also Jäger Kunst I & II are there for the funny. you could theoretically use the Ramjet from Nelson 3 on this build but it's already stupid enough as is.

the point of this build, and why we needed to use the Atlas, is yeet the enemy into the air so high they take maximum fall damage, that being 9 AP kinetic for 9 hexes in the air. how do we achieve this lofty goal?

boost, run into the space of some enemy mech, and then, because knockback goes away from you, and because you're an Atlas pilot so you can just cockroach your way directly under a larger mech, you smack the enemy directly in their mechanized crotch so fucking hard that it sends them 60 feet straight up in the air (2 knockback from Wind Stance on the Terashima Blade, plus 2 knockback from the tuned Supermassive Mod, plus 1 knockback from Titanomachy Mesh, and if you crit that's 1 knockback from Brutal 2). you then use Blademaster 3 to immediately ram them as a free action (and Reinforced Cabling coupled with some typical Atlas bullshit to actually move upr to them). because we boosted earlier, Juggernaut 2 procs, so this ram knocks our opponent 40 additional feet into the air (1 knockback from the ram, 1 knockback from Titanomachy Mesh, and 2 from Juggernaut 2). additionally, you can then ram again as another free action due to Titanomachy Mesh for 20 more feet. but you could instead grapple.

because we took Synthetic Muscle Netting this is something we can just straight up do on any mech, no matter the size, ignore the fact that i have ZERO hull on this mech this is totally gonna work (just swap some agility for hull if you're struggling). now assuming you win the contested grapple check because no way in hell did you just throw something size 1/2, the enemy must now move with you. because you have Reinforced Cabling, you can just pull yourself back down to the ground, and you therefore take no damage. the enemy cannot do this but moves with you nonetheless, and impacts the ground at mach Fuck You, taking 9 AP kinetic damage, and because you rammed them earlier, hey, they're prone. so you overcharge and hit them again, and because they're prone, yippee, more damage.

all that work for two sword hits and 9 AP kinetic damage means you're dealing an average of, like, 19 kinetic damage a turn. not great. but, extremely fucking funny. you can also just chose to leave the enemy in the air for your friends to take potshots at from behind cover, or just hit someone really, really fucking hard away from you so that they have to boost to get back. again, in no way is this build viable, but it's got some tricks, and it is funny. sometimes funny can be pretty good too.

also you can probably do this with 2 sword hits (this being get someone 9 hexes in the air) but we don't gotta worry about that because then they're not prone at the end

[nighthaunting]

Important facts about Jack Krauser which the fandom ought to recognize, before we get too far down the poor discarded soldier woobie train:

He was a Major. A commissioned officer rank he would have needed a degree, specialized training, and at least 12 years of military service to become. O4 paygrade. In today's money, for an estimated length of service of 15 years, Jack would have been making something like $11,485 a month (factoring in allowances and hostile fire pay) plus bonuses during Operation Javier. As a Major he would theoretically have command of anywhere from 300 to more than 1000 troops. He would be an executive officer, and be in command of his entire special forces company. Even with his arm being messed up an honorable discharge would net him a full military pension/benefits and also, with the work he would have done to advance his career to the point of becoming a Major in the first place, everything he'd need on his resume to go get a new job as an operations manager/mid-level executive and then continue working his way up to his own golden parachute. He is 38-40 at Most in 2004.

Of course Leon reacts with incredulity at seeing him in Spain, and thinks the only reason Krauser must be there is because he has a grudge against the government: even with his supposedly career-ending injury, he had a lengthy and decorated service record that would have opened doors for him as a civilian had he been ok with settling down and going to work for Lockheed Martin or whatever.

Unfortunately Krauser's favorite movie is Fight Club and he feels like his life only has meaning when he's in combat or whatever so he joined a worm cult, cultivated an obsession for the World's Most Beautiful Government Agent, and then died with double bone-claw hands having sacrificed everything including his ability to jerk off for something that he himself ultimately admits is wrong and pointless.

[i-prefer-base-twelve]

Feeling lots of ways about my fanfic, now that new people are finding it.

On the one hand, it's amazing. I hesitated to start posting it because I thought it was beyond the pale of self-indulgent. But no! People actually love it! Some have said it's their favorite fic in the fandom, and some have even said it's their favorite fanfic of all time. Several people have asked to translate it into other languages. That's... beyond my wildest dreams for its reception. It's incredibly exciting and also incredibly validating.

See, I create other stuff. Original stuff. I LOVE creating stuff and want to quit my day job more than anything, because my god I could use an extra 40 hours a week for creating stuff. But, like all indie creators in this post-twitter era, I struggle to find an audience for it. And after awhile I start to wonder if that's maybe because I'm actually not any good at creating stuff. But I can point back to this fic and say, hey, look, you actually are totally capable of creating something people love, you're probably just bad at marketing.

And, related, I'd really like to write more fanfic while people are excited about reading it again! But you see. That takes away time from the above Other Stuff, which can at least theoretically make actual money.

Of course, I have ADHD, so odds are just as good that I spend this fall learning macrame instead of any of that.

Did I have a point here? I dunno. Thank you for reading and enjoying my writing. I think that was the point. It really does mean a lot.

[fallingsatellive]

Things I've learned via important research for my epic high fantasy-hard science fiction hybrid novel:

It's theorized that "almost" every large galaxy has a supermassive black hole at the centre. What "almost" means in this context I have no idea. But astrophysicists do know that the Milky Way has one, named Sagittarius A* because of its position in Earth's night sky near the constellation.

Drain flies (Psychodidae) on average live for a maximum of around 35 or so days, only 20 of which are spent as adults, 40 hours as pupae and 9 to 15 days as larvae.

A "worldline" is an object's path in 4th dimensional space, differing from trajectory by the inclusion of time.

An "iron star" is a term for a hypothetical type of star that might be possible in the very far future of the universe, which have fused their nuclei into iron-56 via quantum tunneling (which is something that's exactly as cool as it sounds).

Psychodidae belong to the order Diptera, also known as true flies, which includes mosquitoes, houseflies and craneflies as well. True flies are most closely related to scorpionflies and fleas.

Quantum tunneling is actually really important to theoretical physics, not least because of the hypothesis that it's one possible cause of big bang.

Drain flies are also sometimes called moth flies, which is a much more sympathetic name than drain fly. IMO.

A "black hole firewall" describes a hypothetical phenomenon where an object falling into a black hole will be met with high-energy quanta right at the event horizon.

Adult moth flies breed only once, usually only a few hours after finishing the pupal stage.

Clogmia albipunctata is the species usually associated with the term "drain fly" that you see in your bathroom if you keep the door closed after showers too much.

C. albipunctata lives about the average of 35 days, but with only 12 of those days spent as an adult and more as a larva.

Adult moth flies mostly consume only water and sometimes nectar. The larva feed on organic detritus though.

Moth flies are covered in very fine water-repellant hairs and are thus mostly protected from drowning. They're also resistant to chemicals like bleach and are mostly unaffected by boiling water.

Moth flies are very cute and I really likethem