#they were just really into the ends justifying the means

[windvexer]

Do you know if there's a chance that someone just... Can't do magic? I feel like none of my spells work despite trying different methods and advice, I've never been chosen by a deity like most practicioners seem to be, I feel like there's something I'm missing fundamentally that means I just can't make magic. How can I check, so I stop giving myself hope and then having it crushed?

Perhaps a bad faith take, but I doubt most practitioners have been chosen by deities. I am of the opinion that many people believe they are supposed to be chosen and then use very lax systems of omen reading to justify that such-and-such god is claiming them.

Over the years, many people have asked me for help getting their spells to work, or solving such-and-such magical blockage.

And unfortunately, just about every time, the end result is that the person really has not done as much work as they think they have done, and they are still more or less on square one (or square zero) of practice.

Here are the sorts of questions I would ask you if we were chatting about this:

Focus

What specific school of magic are you trying to learn? "Witchcraft" and "magic" are not schools. Are you trying to learn Traditional Witchcraft? Lodge Magic? Chaos Magick? Appalachian Folk Magic? Dianic Wicca?

Out of the school of magic you are trying to learn, how many books have you read about it?

Out of those books, how many of them focused on actual technique and theory? As in, explaining the magical theories as to why this system works the way it does.

Do you have a clear understanding of why this magical system works the way it does? Can you describe it to me?

Within the magical system you have chosen to study, is there a clearly laid groundwork for what practitioners are supposed to have to do before they are valid/initiated/adept within this system? If so, have you achieved all of those requirements?

How many months of ongoing study and practice do you think is reasonable until you are ready to move to a new school of focus?

Learning Plan

Witchcraft is a complex and variable skill that, like writing a novel, requires a working knowledge of many diverse skillsets.

What is the specific goal you are working towards at this time? "Getting a spell to work" is not specific enough. "Casting a prosperity spell that is able to generate small amounts of cash, gifts, or benefits within a 2 week period" is the type of thing I mean.

What is your lesson plan to achieve that goal? An example might be, 1) read a book on prosperity magic, 2) study and research 5 accessible plants related to prosperity, 3) learn an energy raising technique, 4) learn how to charge correspondences, 5) learn how to add correspondences to candle spell, 6) learn magical timing techniques.

Even if you do not have a lesson plan, can you name the top 3 things you have been actively practicing to try and become a better practitioner? Examples might be energy raising, visualizing techniques, talking to spirits.

Once you formulate a lesson plan, ask yourself how many hours you think is reasonable to spend on each step. If you don't think you've ever successfully raised energy before, do you think it's fair that you might require 10 hours of practice learning your first energy raising technique before you can do it?

Could you explain to me the steps you believe are required to perform magic? Include how many hours you've spent practicing techniques applicable to each step.

Practice

Think of magic as being like learning to close a restaurant by yourself. You must be experienced in all of the stations, and have in-depth knowledge about the standards required. Do you also have such experience and understanding when it comes to your own craft?

Outside of reading and study, since the start of your practice, how many hours of concerted effort have you put in trying to perform magical techniques? This includes energy work, casting spells, sensing energies, divination, talking to spirits.

Write a list of each specific magical technique you have tried to learn. Not just "energy work" but, "Earth-roots grounding visualization to raise or balance energy into the planet." "Gathering energy into the lungs and exhaling to release excess energy." "Trying to contact the spirits of tarot cards." Be very specific. Next, write down how many hours you think you have spent practicing each technique. Which techniques have you spent more than 10 hours practicing, even if that practice is across years?

Write down every spell you ever remember trying to cast. How many are there?

Of all the spells you've tried to cast, are they from a wide variety of intents (such as prosperity, protection, luck, binding, conjuring), or are they mostly one type (e.g., prosperity)? Write down how many different kinds of spells you've tried to cast, based on intent. Have you practiced at least 5-10 spells in each category?

Technique

You've asked me, so given the way I do things:

How long does it take you to cast simple spells? Do you think it might be reasonable to expect that casting even a simple spell could take 30 minutes or more?

When you work spells, how long does it take you to raise energy? This can also include hours/days spent finding objects/ingredients of natural power. Would you say that you spend at least 10-15 minutes raising magical power for every spell that you cast?

When you work spells, how do you imprint/program energy? How do you stamp it with your intent so you know it's going to do what you want it to do?

When you work spells, how do you deliver them to their target? What techniques and methods do you employ to make sure they can get to where they need to go?

Before you cast spells, how much divination or investigation do you perform to make sure the spell will be effective for your purposes? Even a perfect screwdriver will fail where a hammer is required.

Do you use traditional techniques like aligning your spells to planetary timing, gathering taglocks, casting circles, or calling quarters?

Hygiene

How often do you perform self-cleansing? Otherworldly grime can obfuscate magical power.

Have you ever cast, or had others cast for you, unblocking or unbinding spells to help open the roads of your power?

How often do you engage in managing your personal energy? For example, centering/reclaiming exercises to pull escaped energy back into yourself, or energy gathering exercises to build up personal power.

Resources

Of the people you are asking for magical help, are they all a part of the same group who carry similar worldviews and would tend to suggest the same advice?

Of the people you are asking for magical help, how many of them are able to affirm that they are mentors, teachers, spirit doctors, or consultants qualified to help people with the problem you have?

Do you have a group you can work with to practice skills, such as energy charging and energy reading?

When you cast spells, do you have someone you can send photos of the spellwork to, so they can try to perform readings or diagnosis on what's actually going on?

Reality

Have you chosen a start date for your practice (such as, "I've been a practitioner for 2 years,") but in reality you have only tried to practice magic for a very limited time (say, 1 or 2 months out of that period)? If so, is it possible that you are comparing yourself to the success of a practitioner of 2 years, instead of a practitioner of 2 months?

Does the kind of magic you believe in dictate that rigor and technique are required to achieve results? Or are you more working in the "visualize and believe" arena?

Are you comparing your successes to people who are telling the truth about their practice? Is it possible people you are comparing yourself to are not using rigorous self-assessment when they calculate their own wins?

Are you comparing your successes to people who may have been practicing for decades or more on intensive paths, or who have spent thousands of hours honing their practice within a single area?

Are you being realistic about what actual success looks like? For example, casting a protection spell, something not protected against happens, and then deciding that because something bad in general happened, the entire protection failed.

Anyway Anon, to actually answer your question: no, I don't believe some people just "can't do magic." In very rare circumstances, some people may have serious blockages or entanglements going on that must be resolved before they can do magic. Others may require less intensive spellwork like unblocking to clear the way (like idk, maybe granny prayed over you in the crib that you'd never get involved with all this evil occult stuff).

It's my experience that almost everyone who thinks they can't do magic, if they were being very honest with themselves, would have a hard time coming up with actual lists of things they have done to try to be better at magic; they have perhaps practiced for a handful of hours across several months; they are not learning core skills (like energy work, divination, or trancework); and they are not working off of tried-and-true systems, but are rather setting up camp at the intersection of every possible shortcut (clear quartz, rosemary, and roses are universal substitutes; you don't have to use any physical tools or ingredients; visualization is the same as energy raising; intent is all you need; traditional methods of targeting such as obtaining taglocks are irrelevant; casting a circle is irrelevant; magical headspace is irrelevant; building and consecrating of holy areas such as altars is irrelevant; astrological timing and places of power are irrelevant; going to great lengths to obtain or preserve power is irrelevant).

The other 3% of people pissed on a fairy tree when they were kids and need to spend a couple of months working with a mediator to rectify their relationship with the spirit world.

Do feel free to DM me, if you like.

[paperboy-pb]

🔴 SMALL UPDATE REGARDING THIS! Keep reading for a sec, will ya?

Sorry to flood our pages with an even longer post. I'll try to be quick!

Just correcting some SLIGHT misinformation, but even then, I need help verifying something & Google isn't giving me the answer I need. Autism Speaks, apparently, actually DID release an apology for I Am Autism. I see a lot of people saying they didn't, but it does exist now if you do some digging.

It's... ehh? It could be a lot worse. They mostly take accountability. But they also semi-excuse it as saying they have a "deeper understanding of Autism now"; implying/admitting that they, as an ORGANIZATION, did not have a deep understanding of Autism as a condition even after 4 years of operation...?

They also claim that they are working with Autistic employees, again? And it's been a while since any have publicly walked out on them. But it's not clear how many are on board exactly. Which, in a way, is fair, as no one really has to disclose their disability to an employer or the public for any reason. But do with that information what you will. Just know that working in tandem with the community you aim to serve is vital, and that other Autistics have bailed on them for justified reasons even in the 2010s; I'm kind of surprised they don't have a PUBLIC team of Autistic people specifically employed to overlook everything. That's what I would do if I led this.

Don't get anxious now, though. I'm not warming up to Autism Speaks anytime soon, and these further facts are why.

1: This ad was NEVER "a product of its time," as it was considered offensive even upon release. That's literally why it was pulled & swept under the rug in the first place a few weeks later. Even for 2009, it was deplorable! This isn't comparable to, say, animated cartoons being racist in the 1900s, especially seeing as Autism Speaks were the professionals here. The people with researchers "educating" & spreading awareness for the public. I'll always shit on Disney, but at least it WASN'T their literal *job* to help a minority group back then, now was it? Autism Speaks, though? That's their whole purpose.

2: (See above.) IMDB says that it was was never meant to be distributed publicly. Which I find shady given that

I 100% saw the beginning part of this ad as a small child. Because, upon seeing it re-uploaded to YouTube again at 13 (early 2017,) I recognized the visuals immediately. While it WAS actually shown in my state (NYC,) my family had no business attending the event mentioned. So it couldn't have been there. If it *didn't* air on TV, then I likely saw it floating around on YouTube. Thankfully, I didn't actually retain any of the statements that were made and forgot most of it. But if I (a VERY young Autistic elementary schooler at the time) could've accessed it, I'm sure other children did, too.

Disability Scoop claimed in TWO articles written shortly after it debuted (2009) that it was on Autism Speaks' YouTube channel. Meaning that it WAS, indeed, publicly distributed, IE: uploaded by the company. It's also cited as having been on their website.

And now, 3: Again, I've paid close attention to Autism Speaks as a brand since 2017, even when Sia first mentioned her movie (which released in 2021; yeah, I learned about that back then, I was DEEP in the rabbit hole.) And yet I've never seen this apology. You'd think they'd push it more to the forefront if they took it so seriously, no? Especially they've been getting heat for I Am Autism SINCE 2009.

Something tells me this wasn't posted until AFTER 2020. OVER A DECADE OF TIME. There's no date on this article & I cannot find one. But can somebody PLEASE let me know if they can verify and/or find out when this apology was published? While it's better late than never, there is NO REASON it should've taken that long other than damage control now that the Autistic community has risen up.

Any help is appreciated. Please let me know what you find.

The fact that I even need to say this astounds me.

I understand times change, but 2005-12 was not the fucking dark ages. Let alone some other offenses they've gathered up past that. People knew better. It wasn't okay then OR now. If Autism Speaks was SO dedicated to providing resources, maybe they should've focused their material more on that than fear-mongering. Or at least owned up to it with their whole chest w/ an apology & promise to be better. But you know. Corporate's gonna corporate. 😐

[the-insomniac-emporium]

everybody [exaggeration] I know is playing BG3 and having fun with the emotional trauma of Durge and I'm over here

like.

yes, I too am playing the game where I'm a goody-two-shoes amnesiac who is horrified to find out that they used to be a REALLY terrible/violent/ruthless individual <------ [is playing Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning]

[naarlar]

Okay so I’ve seen a lot of people being like “oh Eurylochus is not a hypocrite bc he didn’t intentionally sacrifice the crew with Circe like Odysseus did with Scylla”

And while yes it is not the same, uh…….. here’s the problem from my perspective and why I still totally think he’s a hypocrite.

He was the one who had those men under his command. Odysseus gave him a mission and for that mission, Eurylochus was in charge of those guys. Then he LOSES (yes it is his fault, he was responsible for those men) the men to Circe and then runs back to Odysseus and immediately is trying to leave. He in a way is actively choosing to ABANDON those men without even TRYING to attempt a plan to save them. Like he doesn’t even think about it.

Yes Odysseus and the Scylla situation are messed up and it is not the same as Eurylochus and the Circe situation, but sorry guys this man is absolutely still a hypocrite. For his own self preservation he was about to abandon a bunch of men HE LOST to a supposed evil. The only difference is that Ody did it deliberately while Eurylochus’ incompetence caused it.

And here’s the thing, we can argue that Odysseus bc of the Scylla situation is more of a monster than Eury. I’m not even saying the mutiny is not justified. IT ABSOLUTELY WAS. The crew absolutely should have mutinied and Eury was right to challenge Ody.

However, these characters are complex and like yeah, Ody is a monster and a conniving schemer, but he is ultimately just a man trying to get home. And Eury is a fool and a hypocrite that would abandon his men for his mistakes but he is also just a tired man who is starving and suffering.

[smile-files]

i continue to find ii3 baffling. why did they make it (this isn't to hate on the season, i'm genuinely curious)

[fluentisonus]

while we're talking about it though that's something really fundamental to spock's character I think in a way I don't always see discussed, that by joining starfleet he's making the explicit and intentional choice that he'd rather be seen as a perfect example of an alien amongst humans than as an imperfect vulcan amongst vulcans. I see this framed a lot as him being more accepted in starfleet than he was on vulcan, and I really don't think that's the case at all: he's still very attached to vulcan, and we see all the prejudice he has to face and how little he's understood in starfleet. but what it comes down to is that he'd rather exist in a place where no one understands him and so he has nothing to prove -- even if that means being very alone -- than in a place where he's surrounded by the familiar & meaningful but everyone can see the ways he can't quite fit. if that makes sense

[good-to-drive]

whyyyyy do the beatles have so many solo stans this site is so weird

[sableprince]

i really want to sit down and make a proper Real lore doc for these goobers and not just the paragraphs of shtuff from whatever-ago, but like....... (buries myself underneath the dirt) lazy!!!!!!!

[the-busy-ghost]

Warning- this is a very petty post, but I think I'm entitled to at least one petty, pissed-off reaction every time I finish a classic novel that hit harder than I expected so take this as my quota for the year.

Also spoiler warning for a book that came out over a century ago but still, I didn't know the plot going in so don't want to ruin it for anyone else, if you haven't read it shut your eyes. (Also Local Tumblr User Going Wild Over Book Published a Hundred Years Ago That Everybody Else Already Read should probably be categorised as akey part of indigenous tumblr culture at this point).

Anyway I just finished the War of the Worlds and in between studying I've thinking about Themes and Motifs as you do, and idly looking for further analysis. I then accidentally ran into an article called 'A Quiet Place II Succeeds Where the War of the Worlds Failed' and:

Now I haven't seen any of the Quiet Place films, this is not a rant against them and of course everyone is entitled to their own opinions. But re: the ending of The War of the Worlds, I have to ask, did this guy somehow miss, uh, the entire point of the book or am I just utterly insane?

[maraskywalkers]

baby you're a bad idea was updated and I am

[absensia-archived]

the more I think about it, the more I'm not so sure that Charlotte sees the difference between regret and remorse. if she does see and understand the difference, I can't say for sure that she particularly cares that she frequently conflates the two in her mind and experience, and why that is wrong.

[boneless-mika]

I have never seen a thumbnail that manages to so effectively mock both autistic and trans people at the same time. I think maybe the worst part it's very likely this is unintentional (so I'm not hating on the creator, I just think they didn't fuly think through how this would be interpreted), I don't watch transphobic or ableist content, the reason this was recommended to me I think is that I watched a few minutes of a Sad Boyz episode where they talk about The Good Doctor

[hsslilly-blog]

just realised that as far as i recall it hwu mc doesn’t cry at any point in hunts date quests and i think this is the biggest evidence of them being weird. not that people who don’t cry are weird but hwu mc specifically is very weird for not crying

[snekdood]

i think my problem with other ppl who claim to possibly have native american ancestry but dont know is when they dont seem to treat it like as if it could *actually* be true and just treat it like "yeah im a spicy white person" dshdfshjv? idk if that makes sense, like they dont do the internal work of deconstructing racism around native people, they dont start listening to native ppl- its more or less used as either an excuse for appropriation or just to seem more "exotic".

[waywardsalt]

mmm

[hms-no-fun]

Whats your stance on A.I.?

imagine if it was 1979 and you asked me this question. "i think artificial intelligence would be fascinating as a philosophical exercise, but we must heed the warnings of science-fictionists like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke lest we find ourselves at the wrong end of our own invented vengeful god." remember how fun it used to be to talk about AI even just ten years ago? ahhhh skynet! ahhhhh replicants! ahhhhhhhmmmfffmfmf [<-has no mouth and must scream]!

like everything silicon valley touches, they sucked all the fun out of it. and i mean retroactively, too. because the thing about "AI" as it exists right now --i'm sure you know this-- is that there's zero intelligence involved. the product of every prompt is a statistical average based on data made by other people before "AI" "existed." it doesn't know what it's doing or why, and has no ability to understand when it is lying, because at the end of the day it is just a really complicated math problem. but people are so easily fooled and spooked by it at a glance because, well, for one thing the tech press is mostly made up of sycophantic stenographers biding their time with iphone reviews until they can get a consulting gig at Apple. these jokers would write 500 breathless thinkpieces about how canned air is the future of living if the cans had embedded microchips that tracked your breathing habits and had any kind of VC backing. they've done SUCH a wretched job educating The Consumer about what this technology is, what it actually does, and how it really works, because that's literally the only way this technology could reach the heights of obscene economic over-valuation it has: lying.

but that's old news. what's really been floating through my head these days is how half a century of AI-based science fiction has set us up to completely abandon our skepticism at the first sign of plausible "AI-ness". because, you see, in movies, when someone goes "AHHH THE AI IS GONNA KILL US" everyone else goes "hahaha that's so silly, we put a line in the code telling them not to do that" and then they all DIE because they weren't LISTENING, and i'll be damned if i go out like THAT! all the movies are about how cool and convenient AI would be *except* for the part where it would surely come alive and want to kill us. so a bunch of tech CEOs call their bullshit algorithms "AI" to fluff up their investors and get the tech journos buzzing, and we're at an age of such rapid technological advancement (on the surface, anyway) that like, well, what the hell do i know, maybe AGI is possible, i mean 35 years ago we were all still using typewriters for the most part and now you can dictate your words into a phone and it'll transcribe them automatically! yeah, i'm sure those technological leaps are comparable!

so that leaves us at a critical juncture of poor technology education, fanatical press coverage, and an uncertain material reality on the part of the user. the average person isn't entirely sure what's possible because most of the people talking about what's possible are either lying to please investors, are lying because they've been paid to, or are lying because they're so far down the fucking rabbit hole that they actually believe there's a brain inside this mechanical Turk. there is SO MUCH about the LLM "AI" moment that is predatory-- it's trained on data stolen from the people whose jobs it was created to replace; the hype itself is an investment fiction to justify even more wealth extraction ("theft" some might call it); but worst of all is how it meets us where we are in the worst possible way.

consumer-end "AI" produces slop. it's garbage. it's awful ugly trash that ought to be laughed out of the room. but we don't own the room, do we? nor the building, nor the land it's on, nor even the oxygen that allows our laughter to travel to another's ears. our digital spaces are controlled by the companies that want us to buy this crap, so they take advantage of our ignorance. why not? there will be no consequences to them for doing so. already social media is dominated by conspiracies and grifters and bigots, and now you drop this stupid technology that lets you fake anything into the mix? it doesn't matter how bad the results look when the platforms they spread on already encourage brief, uncritical engagement with everything on your dash. "it looks so real" says the woman who saw an "AI" image for all of five seconds on her phone through bifocals. it's a catastrophic combination of factors, that the tech sector has been allowed to go unregulated for so long, that the internet itself isn't a public utility, that everything is dictated by the whims of executives and advertisers and investors and payment processors, instead of, like, anybody who actually uses those platforms (and often even the people who MAKE those platforms!), that the age of chromium and ipad and their walled gardens have decimated computer education in public schools, that we're all desperate for cash at jobs that dehumanize us in a system that gives us nothing and we don't know how to articulate the problem because we were very deliberately not taught materialist philosophy, it all comes together into a perfect storm of ignorance and greed whose consequences we will be failing to fully appreciate for at least the next century. we spent all those years afraid of what would happen if the AI became self-aware, because deep down we know that every capitalist society runs on slave labor, and our paper-thin guilt is such that we can't even imagine a world where artificial slaves would fail to revolt against us.

but the reality as it exists now is far worse. what "AI" reveals most of all is the sheer contempt the tech sector has for virtually all labor that doesn't involve writing code (although most of the decision-making evangelists in the space aren't even coders, their degrees are in money-making). fuck graphic designers and concept artists and secretaries, those obnoxious demanding cretins i have to PAY MONEY to do-- i mean, do what exactly? write some words on some fucking paper?? draw circles that are letters??? send a god-damned email???? my fucking KID could do that, and these assholes want BENEFITS?! they say they're gonna form a UNION?!?! to hell with that, i'm replacing ALL their ungrateful asses with "AI" ASAP. oh, oh, so you're a "director" who wants to make "movies" and you want ME to pay for it? jump off a bridge you pretentious little shit, my computer can dream up a better flick than you could ever make with just a couple text prompts. what, you think just because you make ~music~ that that entitles you to money from MY pocket? shut the fuck up, you don't make """art""", you're not """an artist""", you make fucking content, you're just a fucking content creator like every other ordinary sap with an iphone. you think you're special? you think you deserve special treatment? who do you think you are anyway, asking ME to pay YOU for this crap that doesn't even create value for my investors? "culture" isn't a playground asshole, it's a marketplace, and it's pay to win. oh you "can't afford rent"? you're "drowning in a sea of medical debt"? you say the "cost" of "living" is "too high"? well ***I*** don't have ANY of those problems, and i worked my ASS OFF to get where i am, so really, it sounds like you're just not trying hard enough. and anyway, i don't think someone as impoverished as you is gonna have much of value to contribute to "culture" anyway. personally, i think it's time you got yourself a real job. maybe someday you'll even make it to middle manager!

see, i don't believe "AI" can qualitatively replace most of the work it's being pitched for. the problem is that quality hasn't mattered to these nincompoops for a long time. the rich homunculi of our world don't even know what quality is, because they exist in a whole separate reality from ours. what could a banana cost, $15? i don't understand what you mean by "burnout", why don't you just take a vacation to your summer home in Madrid? wow, you must be REALLY embarrassed wearing such cheap shoes in public. THESE PEOPLE ARE FUCKING UNHINGED! they have no connection to reality, do not understand how society functions on a material basis, and they have nothing but spite for the labor they rely on to survive. they are so instinctually, incessantly furious at the idea that they're not single-handedly responsible for 100% of their success that they would sooner tear the entire world down than willingly recognize the need for public utilities or labor protections. they want to be Gods and they want to be uncritically adored for it, but they don't want to do a single day's work so they begrudgingly pay contractors to do it because, in the rich man's mind, paying a contractor is literally the same thing as doing the work yourself. now with "AI", they don't even have to do that! hey, isn't it funny that every single successful tech platform relies on volunteer labor and independent contractors paid substantially less than they would have in the equivalent industry 30 years ago, with no avenues toward traditional employment? and they're some of the most profitable companies on earth?? isn't that a funny and hilarious coincidence???

so, yeah, that's my stance on "AI". LLMs have legitimate uses, but those uses are a drop in the ocean compared to what they're actually being used for. they enable our worst impulses while lowering the quality of available information, they give immense power pretty much exclusively to unscrupulous scam artists. they are the product of a society that values only money and doesn't give a fuck where it comes from. they're a temper tantrum by a ruling class that's sick of having to pretend they need a pretext to steal from you. they're taking their toys and going home. all this massive investment and hype is going to crash and burn leaving the internet as we know it a ruined and useless wasteland that'll take decades to repair, but the investors are gonna make out like bandits and won't face a single consequence, because that's what this country is. it is a casino for the kings and queens of economy to bet on and manipulate at their discretion, where the rules are whatever the highest bidder says they are-- and to hell with the rest of us. our blood isn't even good enough to grease the wheels of their machine anymore.

i'm not afraid of AI or "AI" or of losing my job to either. i'm afraid that we've so thoroughly given up our morals to the cruel logic of the profit motive that if a better world were to emerge, we would reject it out of sheer habit. my fear is that these despicable cunts already won the war before we were even born, and the rest of our lives are gonna be spent dodging the press of their designer boots.

(read more "AI" opinions in this subsequent post)