#this is applicable to so many Controversial moments

[please1mistress]

WARNING Flashing IMAGE and HYPNOTIC COVERT language

Inductions

Hypnosis, a fascinating and complex phenomenon, has captivated human interest for centuries. It's a state of focused attention, heightened suggestibility, and vivid fantasies. People often think of hypnosis as a deep sleep or unconsciousness, but in reality, it's more about a trance-like state where the individual is actually in heightened awareness of suggestion. Often used for therapeutic purposes, hypnosis can aid in various issues such as stress, anxiety, pain management, and certain habits like smoking. However, it's not a magical cure-all; its effectiveness varies from person to person.

Hypnosis can also be a form of entertainment, where stage hypnotists perform shows that demonstrate the power of suggestion. Despite its many applications, hypnosis remains a subject of debate among scientists and psychologists. Some view it as a powerful tool for mental health, while others caution against its potential to create false memories or its use in recovering memories, which is a controversial area within the field. It's important to approach hypnosis with a critical mind and understand that it's a complex interplay of psychological and physiological factors. If you're considering hypnotherapy, it's crucial to seek out a qualified and certified professional to ensure a safe and beneficial experience, someone like me.

You find yourself reading these words and as you read they seem to take on a life of their own, almost like magic. Your mind slows as you red larger more complex words and you may feel a soft tingle of arousal as you FOCUS on my words and feel dreamy. It's quite fascinating how the complexity of words can influence our cognitive processes. When we encounter larger, more intricate words, our brains need to work harder to decode the meaning, which can sometimes slow down your reading speed. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; it allows for deeper processing and understanding of the messages I am pushing softly into your mind. It's easy to relax and follow the words you read. It's easy to feel dreamy as your mind accepts that it wants to drop deeper.

Dropping deeper feels good, as you touch yourself and keep reading you can let go of any inhibitions or control. it's so easy to sink into a light trance, after all entering a light trance can be a simple, yet profound experience. It's a state where the conscious mind takes a step back, allowing the subconscious to surface and express itself more freely. This can happen during various activities that engage the mind in a repetitive, rhythmic manner, such as listening to music, meditating, or even during a long drive. In this state, people often find their thoughts flowing more smoothly, their creativity heightened, and their stress levels reduced. It's a moment of introspection and connection with the inner self that can provide clarity and insight. While in a light trance, the mind filters information differently, prioritizing internal dialogue and sensation, which can lead to a deeper understanding of one's thoughts and feelings. It's a natural and accessible state that can offer a respite from the hustle and bustle of daily life, and a gateway to greater self-awareness.

You are not even aware of how deeply into the trance you are, your fingers stroking your arousal for me as you read and feel a dreamy warmth spreading from your fingers into your whole body. Aware but unaware that you could stop at anytime, but you don't want that, you want to keep reading and sinking deeper and deeper as you feel arousal growing more for me. It just feels so good to give in, the very act of giving, whether it's time, resources, or kindness, has a profound impact on your well-being. It transcends the material value of what is given and touches the very essence of human connection. When you give, you're not just passing on a physical item or a piece of advice; you're sharing a part of yourselves, creating a bond that reflects your shared humanity. This act of generosity can be deeply satisfying, as it often brings joy and relief to others, which in turn enriches your own life. It's a beautiful cycle of positivity that reinforces the best parts of being a good submissive.

Giving has been shown to activate regions in our brain associated with pleasure, social connection, and trust, creating a warm glow effect. It's no wonder that the phrase "it's better to give than to receive" has resonated through the ages. This isn't just a moral suggestion; it's backed by science. Studies have found that giving to others can increase our happiness more than spending money on ourselves. This might be because when we give, we feel a sense of purpose and meaning, knowing that we've made a positive impact on someone else's life.

Moreover, the act of giving doesn't have to be grandiose to be effective. Small acts of kindness can ripple outwards and have unforeseen positive consequences. Just as a pebble creates waves when thrown into a pond, a simple gesture of generosity can spread far and wide. It's the intention behind the act that matters most, the recognition that even the smallest offering can make a significant difference.

In a world that often emphasizes individual achievement and accumulation of wealth, it's important to remember the value of generosity. It's a reminder that our interconnectedness is a source of strength, not weakness. By giving, we acknowledge that we are part of a larger community, one that thrives when its members support each other. It's a powerful acknowledgment that we are not alone in our journey through life, and that by helping others, we are also helping ourselves.

So, when we say it feels good to give in, it's not just about the act of giving up or surrendering; it's about embracing the joy of generosity. It's a celebration of the human spirit and its capacity for compassion and empathy. Giving is an affirmation that, despite the challenges we face, there is goodness in the world, and we have the power to contribute to it, one act of kindness at a time. It's a simple truth that enriches our lives and the lives of those around us, creating a legacy of goodwill that can endure beyond our own existence. Indeed, to give is to receive a gift of immeasurable value—the happiness and satisfaction that come from knowing we've played a part in making the world a little brighter.

You want to give in more deeply, message me and tell me how much you need deeper brainwashing NOW!

[nyancrimew]

You do a lot of really cool stuff and you do it As You. How do you overcome the fear of being Perceived and Known? Especially when the stuff you're raising awareness about is controversial or big? I have anxiety and while the "fuck it we ball" mindset has gotten me fairly far, I still find myself regretting putting myself out there or regressing back into a shut in.

i feel like what helped me kinda deal with getting pretty well known is probably not really applicable to many other people, because most of it really was that ive just been slowly more and more exposed to a bigger and bigger level of fame since i was like 16 or so. long before i was at the point i am now i was a really well known person in the android modding community and then the broader and broader tech community, i definitely didn't deal super well with some of my first minutes of fame and there's lots of stuff i regret (i def let it get to my head for a while and because i was also slowly burning out at the time i was quite an asshole to a lot of people). i don't think that was necessarily the best for me at the time, but i learned some lessons especially about community building and i did a lot of media work already at the time so ive been honing my communications skills for almost 10 years at this point.

i first started blowing up with hacktivism related stuff around 2019, and then everytime i did again it was bigger and bigger, making massive international headlines for the first time in 2021 (with the verkada story). i still fucked up a lot and got very stressed at that time, especially with my mental health being extremely abysmal and paranoia growing as state repression became inevitable.

after the indictment in 2021 i did more and more press work again (there are lots of portraits of me from that era) but still wasn't like A Celebrity except for those brief moments, which (as i took a break from hacktivism) gave me some more time to grow and learn. by the time the no fly list hack happened in 2023 i had been spending a few months already doing various smaller cyber security related work and working with many of my journalist friends in the industry. in a lot of ways the no fly list leak and the media reaction to it was just routine work for me already at that point, which i think allowed me to take in all the social fame way better as well. it still all felt quite surreal, but i was already mostly media trained, had quite a bit of experience with working with an audience already so it was just kind of a matter of adapting to my new environment.

this isn't to say i was like specifically working towards fame (especially this level) but ive always cared about community/audience building and media communication. i don't think im like "fake" or whatever, but you do have to consider that despite my laid back style im still someone with an autistic special interest in personal branding and media communications. i just don't wanna do that for corporations or for profit and instead use it for my activist and journalist self advocacy to give things a platform.

[mariacallous]

Why disinformation experts say the Israel-Hamas war is a nightmare to investigate

The Israel-Hamas conflict has been a minefield of confusing counter-arguments and controversies—and an information environment that experts investigating mis- and disinformation say is among the worst they’ve ever experienced.

In the time since Hamas launched its terror attack against Israel last month—and Israel has responded with a weekslong counterattack—social media has been full of comments, pictures, and video from both sides of the conflict putting forward their case. But alongside real images of the battles going on in the region, plenty of disinformation has been sown by bad actors.

“What is new this time, especially with Twitter, is the clutter of information that the platform has created, or has given a space for people to create, with the way verification is handled,” says Pooja Chaudhuri, a researcher and trainer at Bellingcat, which has been working to verify or debunk claims from both the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the conflict, from confirming that Israel Defense Forces struck the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza to debunking the idea that the IDF has blown up some of Gaza’s most sacred sites.

Bellingcat has found plenty of claims and counterclaims to investigate, but convincing people of the truth has proven more difficult than in previous situations because of the firmly entrenched views on either side, says Chaudhuri’s colleague Eliot Higgins, the site’s founder.

“People are thinking in terms of, ‘Whose side are you on?’ rather than ‘What’s real,’” Higgins says. “And if you’re saying something that doesn’t agree with my side, then it has to mean you’re on the other side. That makes it very difficult to be involved in the discourse around this stuff, because it’s so divided.”

For Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), there have only been two moments prior to this that have proved as difficult for his organization to monitor and track: One was the disinformation-fueled 2020 U.S. presidential election, and the other was the hotly contested space around the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I can’t remember a comparable time. You’ve got this completely chaotic information ecosystem,” Ahmed says, adding that in the weeks since Hamas’s October 7 terror attack social media has become the opposite of a “useful or healthy environment to be in”—in stark contrast to what it used to be, which was a source of reputable, timely information about global events as they happened.

The CCDH has focused its attention on X (formerly Twitter), in particular, and is currently involved in a lawsuit with the social media company, but Ahmed says the problem runs much deeper.

“It’s fundamental at this point,” he says. “It’s not a failure of any one platform or individual. It’s a failure of legislators and regulators, particularly in the United States, to get to grips with this.” (An X spokesperson has previously disputed the CCDH’s findings to Fast Company, taking issue with the organization’s research methodology. “According to what we know, the CCDH will claim that posts are not ‘actioned’ unless the accounts posting them are suspended,” the spokesperson said. “The majority of actions that X takes are on individual posts, for example by restricting the reach of a post.”)

Ahmed contends that inertia among regulators has allowed antisemitic conspiracy theories to fester online to the extent that many people believe and buy into those concepts. Further, he says it has prevented organizations like the CCDH from properly analyzing the spread of disinformation and those beliefs on social media platforms. “As a result of the chaos created by the American legislative system, we have no transparency legislation. Doing research on these platforms right now is near impossible,” he says.

It doesn’t help when social media companies are throttling access to their application programming interfaces, through which many organizations like the CCDH do research. “We can’t tell if there’s more Islamophobia than antisemitism or vice versa,” he admits. “But my gut tells me this is a moment in which we are seeing a radical increase in mobilization against Jewish people.”

Right at the time when the most insight is needed into how platforms are managing the torrent of dis- and misinformation flooding their apps, there’s the least possible transparency.

The issue isn’t limited to private organizations. Governments are also struggling to get a handle on how disinformation, misinformation, hate speech, and conspiracy theories are spreading on social media. Some have reached out to the CCDH to try and get clarity.

“In the last few days and weeks, I’ve briefed governments all around the world,” says Ahmed, who declines to name those governments—though Fast Company understands that they may include the U.K. and European Union representatives. Advertisers, too, have been calling on the CCDH to get information about which platforms are safest for them to advertise on.

Deeply divided viewpoints are exacerbated not only by platforms tamping down on their transparency but also by technological advances that make it easier than ever to produce convincing content that can be passed off as authentic. “The use of AI images has been used to show support,” Chaudhuri says. This isn’t necessarily a problem for trained open-source investigators like those working for Bellingcat, but it is for rank-and-file users who can be hoodwinked into believing generative-AI-created content is real.

And even if those AI-generated images don’t sway minds, they can offer another weapon in the armory of those supporting one side or the other—a slur, similar to the use of “fake news” to describe factual claims that don’t chime with your beliefs, that can be deployed to discredit legitimate images or video of events.

“What is most interesting is anything that you don’t agree with, you can just say that it’s AI and try to discredit information that may also be genuine,” Choudhury says, pointing to users who have claimed an image of a dead baby shared by Israel’s account on X was AI—when in fact it was real—as an example of weaponizing claims of AI tampering. “The use of AI in this case,” she says, “has been quite problematic.”

[rewritingcanon]

what do u think of the portrayal of harry and ginny in the cursed child (i feel like it's so out of character, especially for harry) also that he works at the ministry and that ginny gave up her quidditch career (same goes for harry)

alright ive had this in my inbox for so long because i wanted to do this ask justice so i really hope that anon is still around to read this. in saying that harry was ‘out of character’ in hpcc, i assume you’re talking about how he was a bad/flawed father, as MANY fans have argued the same. so i will address that first and then i will talk about ginny and hinny’s careers.

disclaimer: when i say “you” im not talking specifically about anon but about fandom.

harry potter vs fatherhood

harry’s whole life resolved around being the chosen one and the prophesied saviour of the wizarding world. it was either being The Hero or being the unwanted, abused and scorned freak living with the dursleys. when thats your home life, then you tend to cling on to anything that is an escape from that— and in harry’s experience that was hogwarts.

if you really think about it, hogwarts was very nasty to harry as well. he was always getting picked on or bullied or in some life threatening danger that he got blamed for half of the time— but because it was better than living with the dursleys, his mind idolised it as a safe haven.

harry also reflects this idolising behaviour onto parental figures, especially paternal figures. he doesnt actually know his parents, only has an ideal of them in his head that was constructed as a coping mechanism to the abuse and neglect he went through at home. he projects The Perfect Father onto every one of his paternal figures (i think the only exception to this is arthur but i mayyy be wrong)— sirius and dumbledore are the biggest ones that come to mind, even though sirius only knew him for two years, and dumbledore would manipulate and use harry for the betterment of the world, which is unlike a parent who would put their child’s needs first (harry did not recognise these issues at length at the time as he was used to the idea of self sacrifice and probs understood that it came with the territory of being The Hero). harry even projected his father onto himself in PoA and nearly died from it.

in saying this, its reasonable to argue that there’s a disconnect with harry and the idea of what a good father actually is. this is challenged in the books itself (with SWM, harry seeing that james was not the Perfect Man he built up in his head), but this is challenged the most in the cursed child.

throughout the play, harry acts as the personified ideal he grew up with. easygoing, confident, wise— when in reality he is the opposite of those attributes and albus can see right through it (ginny says this to harry in the play, i would find the line but alas, im on the train rn). hes not easygoing or confident— he’s fearful that he doesn’t know what hes doing or how to be a father, and hes scared not knowing makes him a bad father. hes acted out in fear multiple times— the biggest moment is when he bans albus from seeing scorpius to keep him ‘safe.’ he has constant nightmares about his trauma as a child when living with the dursleys and not having the stability or love he craved. his ‘wise’ advice is not applicable to his children because he is harry potter, The Hero, and they are just normal kids. this is why albus and harry get on each others nerves so badly— because they are constantly stomping on each others sore spots by accident. albus doesn’t appreciate the facade that harry tries to uphold, and harry doesn’t understand why— because he’s projecting that ideal onto all of his kids, and if it works for james and lily (presumably), why doesn’t it work for albus? harry would’ve done anything for a father figure like himself!! there must be something wrong with albus!! (🙄)

now The Blanket SceneTM is very controversial and pissed off a lot of longtime fans into denouncing the entire play as canon. ive talked about it at length and since theres more to discuss in this post, i will shorten it down as best i can for you:

as a way of bonding, harry tries to give his precious blanket to albus. he believes albus may be more like him and may be able to understand the sacredness of the present unlike his siblings.

unknowingly, harry is still projecting his ideals onto albus. the blanket is only so extremely precious to him because it represents his parents, who he still views in an idolised light. therefore the blanket is the ideal.

albus scorns this ideal so he scorns the gift. however, because hes a confused and possibly depressed fourteen year old, he doesn’t communicate the rejection of this in a healthy way and basically insults the blanket by calling it old and mouldy and comparing it to james and lily’s presents, which outwardly could make him seem like a brat.

by attacking the blanket, he attacks harry’s parents and the ideal. and harry is very sensitive about this

albus then accidentally triggers very central fears surrounding being an orphan and being a father when he says “i wish you werent my dad”

harrys first thought is that albus wants him dead. at this point, hes stopped listening to albus trying to explain himself as he’s already triggered, so he’s acting in complete defence when he responds “sometimes i wish you werent my son”

this was said with the intention to hurt albus, it was a mindless act with one goal. saying this is out of character for harry is ridiculous, because he’s done the exact same thing in the books multiple times to the people he loves.

another important note: these characters trigger each other accidentally. the intent to connect is there, but there are deep seated issues on harry’s side that was never confronted leading to these issues. and as albus is a young angsty teen who does get bullied and is a little self-centred (again, very normal for a 14yo), he can’t really communicate these issues to harry effectively (harry being dismissive of the bullying (that he believes is normal for hogwarts students) albus goes through doesn’t help the situation either), leaving harry stumbling in the dark and further emboldening that The Perfect Father he imagined as a child may not exist.

ok that wasnt very economical but anyways! those are the issues! what happens next is harry spiralling and confirming those fears, being forced to confront them and deal with them, and then the steps toward healing his relationship with albus.

im not defending how harry treated albus (dismissing his bullying, lashing out, the enmeshment abuse) but offering insight and trying to explain that he was certainly in-character. i think people simply had an emotional reaction to seeing their loved character being very realistically flawed, and decided they didnt like it without doing much analysis as to why harry was acting the way he was. trauma is very complex, and theres no expiry date for it if you simply refuse to confront it or heal.

a lot of harry’s journey with interrogating the Perfect Father concept was to confront and acknowledge his inner child. he has to recognise his childhood for the childhood it was without the flashy titles or impressed ideals. the confrontation with dumbledore is the pinnacle of it— harry idolised dumbledore as a central father figure, and he realised when confronting the portrait that his relationship with dumbledore was much more complex and nuanced than he originally thought. suddenly dumbledore ceases to be an ideal, and harry sees him for the man that he was: conflicted, more uncertain in his own choices than he let on, heartbroken and self-sabotaging.

when harry presents himself at the end of the play to albus, he presents himself as human— an escapist, unsure in his decisions, insecure, and scared of the dark, small spaces and pigeons. and albus appreciates the flawed, real version of harry. those expectations and ideals that albus struggled to uphold in the face of harry’s projecting simply disappear, and he finally feels like he can adequately be harry’s son just by being.

another less obvious moment that shows this, is how harry and delphi mirror each other. delphi is the more extreme version of this— she is completely deluded in her worship for a father she never knew, so desperate for the love and respect shes built up in her mind that she’s dedicated her life to it and feels empty without the ideal to go off of. its why harry defends her when albus asks him why they shouldn’t just kill her— because hes the only one who understands the pain of being an orphan, living in an abusive household, dreams of ‘what ifs’ and what it can do to a person.

whats important to take away is that harry and albus love each other immensely, which is why they are able to turn over a new leaf at the end. it speaks of incredible strength on albus’ half, and i really want to stress that albus LOVES harry, because i see so much content about him straight up butchering or slandering harry when that is sooo not them!! if albus saw the way some of yall were misinterpreting his relationship with his dad he’d be livid. whether or not you would do the same in forgiving harry is irrelevant— albus has always wanted to have a good relationship with harry and the same goes both ways. people hurt each other, sometimes egregiously so, but when one promises change and is serious about it, than chances are there will be change. this is especially so in the case of family.

ginny weasley vs age

what is paradoxical is how self-centred harry is, despite also being very willing to sacrifice himself for other people. albus possesses a self-centredness similar to him. harry is so caught up in his own world and comparing it to albus’ situation, and vice versa. ginny is normally the middle man who can see both harry and albus for what they are and the individual worlds they inhabit, and tries to communicate effectively between them. the play mostly revolves around harry and albus, so what i’ll have to say for her will not be as in-depth.

short answer: ginny matured with age. she is probably the most mature character alongside draco, although draco does let his emotions get in the way at times (funnily enough i think this is why ginny and draco get along so well in the cursed child and are able to recognise each other for who they are). she was very brash and courageous and wonderfully chaotic in the books, but she was also blunt and impatient, which is not something thats presented in the cursed child. instead, she is VERY patient and communicates extremely well, being able to navigate both harry and albus without prodding their weak spots like they do to each other.

she offers her own experiences to albus as her own experiences, not projecting them onto him as an unequivocal truth. this can be seen in how she opens up to him about how she was exploited by tom riddle, and she lets albus draw his own comparisons to himself and delphi without pushing his experiences into a box.

her relationship with harry is interesting, because she is the only one who sees him for him and the only one that harry’s not bothered by when she makes honest judgments on his actions. he’s only okay with her seeing him for the flawed man he is. she doesn’t make him feel defensive, nor does she make him feel demonised for not knowing how to parent albus, or for messing up with him (though she does call him out when he is in the wrong, something her younger self would be quick to do too). one of the most heart wrenching scenes is when ginny blows up at harry and really screams at him about albus being missing and him being self-centred about it, making it out to be about himself and his issues surrounding fatherhood. despite this, harry does not get defensive— which shows that he trusts even her negative judgments of him because she knows him so well (very very similar to the library scene with scorpius screaming at albus over his self-centeredness as well btw).

she still possesses key qualities from her younger self, she’s just ironed out the rougher ones as she’s grown— she’s still impossibly brave, fiercely loyal, extremely devoted to those she loves and also very logical. you can tell harry and albus are more emotional than she is, which is part of the reason why she is able to construct her points so effectively. she puts her logical thinking to good use in emotional situations. i think people are forgetting that people aren’t typically going to be the same as who they were as teenagers.

why has ginny been able to grow so much in comparison to harry? because she’s recognised what she went through as a teenager and made peace with it. you can see it in the way she freely offers her own experiences about it. she’s been able to build on top of what she went through in a healthy way, and was able to experience real, healthy change. and she is so much wiser and kinder for it.

hinny vs their careers

first i’ll talk about harry because i think i have more stuff to go off of with him.

we’ve already established that hes The Hero first and foremost. after he fulfilled the prophecy and saved the world i dont think its such a stretch to argue that he may have needed another similar purpose to latch onto, and that being an auror granted him that. quidditch was fun for him, but it couldn’t give him the same purchase that being an auror could. heroes dont play quidditch, they save the world. the same could be said for neville and ron, who were also aurors at first. was it the healthiest road to go down for harry? i dont think so, but considering his characterisation in the cursed child, i think it works. ron ended up quitting to be a father, neville ended up quitting to focus on his real passion (herbology), and harry continued to cling onto The Hero image he’s used to presenting. yes, the ministry was impossibly corrupt and worked against him in his youth, but to harry that could’ve served as more of a reason to change the institution from the inside. this, i imagine, was most definitely the case with hermione, who was always an idealist.

that being said, i don’t think continuing being an auror is such a great idea post-hpcc. he at least needs a break in order to continue his job in a healthy manner and not misconstrue his identity with it.

in terms of ginny, i don’t believe she’d still be playing quidditch in her 40s. if you think about real athletes, very few of them continue playing professionally in their 40s (i think the average age is 34 but i may be wrong), especially after birthing three kids. we dont know much about her retirement, but there are many reasons one can assume ginny retired for, kids and/or age being the most reasonable deduction. its not so much a question of characterisation but more about the reality of having to give up your passion earlier than most if its sports.

despite retiring, its clear ginny is still very passionate about quidditch as shes still working within the field, just not playing the sport professionally anymore.

[merge-conflict]

some questions for writers

tagged by @luvwich, tagging @corpocyborg, @seraphfighter, @pvthfinder

Last book I read: I've read the first 10 pages of so many books in the past 6 months but I don't think those count? So probably Ancillary Mercy

Greatest literary inspirations:  Ann Leckie, Laurie Marks, N. K. Jemisin

Things in my current fandom I want to read but I don't want to write: Nothing in particular? If I really want something it's because I want to write it, usually (although I do enjoy seeing other takes on stuff). I never know what's good until I stumble on it. Reading has been difficult for me lately in general. (symptoms disease)

Things in my current fandoms I want to write but I think nobody would be interested in them but me: Speculating on the internal systems and operations and infrastructure tech at Arasaka Tower could be my Paris sewers moment, ngl.

You can recognise my writing by: I use action tags a lot (Leckian influence). Repetition is a big one for me, the rule of threes, like it is, it is, and it isn't. Inserting common tech experiences into my writing (dealing with hardware. having a stupid mistake fixed by rubber duckying) Limited POV narration with narrators that are usually unreliable mostly through omission. Probably a bunch of other stuff that I'm too lost in the sauce to notice about my own predilections.

My most controversial take (current fandom): Lots of strong opinions about the depiction and use of tech within cyberpunk which is less rule of cool and more my brain is so warped by continuous application of threat analysis that I cannot simply Let it Go. I could talk about it forever but my audience is limited to a handful of people unless I can get my irl friend and coworker into cyberpunk and simply infodump straight to him.

More direct in scope, I think the eldritch killer AI trope is missing the forest for the trees in cyberpunk themes where the real horror is what people do to each other and the systems and societies they create that make it possible.

Top three favourite tropes: reluctant allies to lovers, that little smidge of hilarity in the midst of absolute horror and grief, the exploration of what it means to be human (or just a person)

What’s your current writing mood (10 – super motivated and churning out words like crazy, 0 – in a complete rut): 0.5 - The spirit is willing but the mind is a rotting moldy spud

Share a random frustration: The reporting system I've been using heavily for work the past few days is web-based (hisssssss) and if I type some words and then switch desktops too quickly away from my browser and back then it just deletes the last few sentences I wrote because they didn't get to auto-saved somehow. I have not flown into a homicidal rage about this yet but it's been touch and go. My desire to kill all software that does not function locally on my host only grows by the hour, but also I'm sort of sleepy now so whatever.

[thoughtseeker-the-dragon]

Hi there, this is the pinned post intro that I said I wanted to make

We want to start with our preferences for interaction, since most of you will be here checking that:

We're 18 and dislike sex. Please behave yourselves and don't be creepy to a being that still see themselves as a minor in many ways.

Everything else is on the table! Don't be the one who makes me change this.

I go by many names. On here, you can call me Thoughtseeker, as well as on Bluesky and Twitter, on the off chance you find me there. I go by Syrup (short for Syrup of the Dog) on Discord, and if you find me on a platform related to gaming, I'm likely using some variant of PotatoComputer.

As a general guide, whenever we use "we" or "us", we are referring to both myself and Thoughtseeker. If I refer to myself in the singular, I am referring to myself, and when I refer to myself by name, I will use Syrup.

Thoughtseeker is my sona, and it should be notes that while they are a mirror of myself in many ways, this intro is for the "human" behind the screen, not the dragon (reason being that there are several things about them that aren't applicable to myself).

Our pronouns are They/Them, and sometimes we go by We/Us. We aren't plural, though (we know it might be confusing, bear with us), and plural pronouns are just a fun little thing we do. We're AroAce, moderately sex-averse and don't really care about romance. Our gender is kinda wobbly at the moment, and it fluctuates between "masculine and apathetic" and "moderately dysphoric non-binary transfem" (our "trans mood" is really hard to describe accurately)

We have ADHD, as well as social anxiety and some undiagnosed autism. Needless to say, our brain is NOT normal, and we are more than fine with that.

Our hobbies are numerous, and we cycle obsessions sometimes. We're very in tune with the process, and we've taken to calling it "The Cycle™". As of writing (this will not get updated), our fixation is on Sea of Thieves and Empyrion: Galactic Survival. We have some permanent residents, though, and these are the ones we love to talk about regardless of our current Cycle stage:

Wings of Fire

Cobalt Core

Furries (although this one has caveats, like how we stay as far away from controversies as possible)

Mental Health and advocacy for it

LGBT topics

This goes without saying, but we will ramble about these topics and would love to be given the opportunity to do so.

We also have a minor fascination with plurality and the plural experience (if you couldn't tell), so if you're willing to share, we would love to hear it! (no pressure ofc)

We'll probably come back to update this at some point, but these are the major points of our personality that you should know for now. If you're curious about a specific facet of our being, send it to our inbox and we will likely answer it.

[catofthenine]

Hey ghouls!

I thought that making a non-introductory post would help solidify what I got goin here.

I think that the first things that I want to cover are my definitions, values and other miscellaneous junk, so that my coming posts are more cohesive. I do not claim to be someone who knows everything or makes the "rules of goth", I just form my opinions and claims based on what I see. I love taking part in friendly discussion, as well as hearing critique on my ideas! I've decided to cover "What makes someone goth" today, because I think it is what defines the subculture! *This is SO long! I'll provide a TLDR at the bottom, as well as try and organize each piece of thought!

What I think makes you goth! : I think that many factors come into play within considering oneself apart of the gothic community. This may be super controversial! But please, make sure you read my argument! If you pick it apart I don't mind, but please don't throw baseless accusations at me!

There's a common argument going around places like Instagram and Tiktok, where, the only factor in consideration is "Well, Do you listen to the music?" and, I think that's a really dim view on the community as a whole . Gothic Rock, Deathrock, Darkwave, Post punk, Horrorpunk, Gothibilly, etc. are all excellent music genres, and there's such a vast range of what constitutes as "Goth Music" that I don't think someone can say that they just don't like it! But nevertheless, I don't think it is the only factor in considering oneself goth, gothic, vampiric, etc. (Holy hell, that's a ton of micro labels.)

On Literature

The gothic subculture has roots back to the 1700s, as the first gothic literature by Horace Walpole, Castle of Otranto (1765), was published (Britannica). Britannica has an excellent article about Gothic fiction and if anybody is interested, I'll link it below! Other popular fictions are Dracula by Bram Stoker, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, and Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. (Books are expensive, and I'd like to read more from the genre, but between cost and time, these are the only one's I've read.)

*The article on Castle of Otranto, however, mentions s*xual assault, so please! Take care of yourself!

Gothic fiction and literature are super duper old, and the emergence of gothic fiction, especially around the 1850s, was what I believe to be the first inklings of the gothic subculture. People's ideas are ever evolving, individually, but over lifetimes as well!

There's a very interesting book by Maisha L. Wester, called African American Gothic: Screams from Shadowed Places (2012), I have not read this book, as it costs like a 100 dollars! I did check it out from the library but was too afraid of ruining it to touch it, Haha! I did manage to find the introduction on link springer, but I don't want to pirate the book because I'd love for the author to be able to get paid for the work she's done.

According to it's introduction, African American Gothic: Screams from Shadowed Places (2012) argues that so much media surrounding racism (historical fiction, historical biography, etc) is in fact applicable to gothic media (Horror, Literature, etc), but because it depicts horrors towards black bodies, critics deem it "less scary", or "too realistic" to be considered "applicable".

*Because I haven't read African American Gothic: Screams from Shadowed Places (2012), I am unable to give full context for it!

**IT IS extremely important to include black views and opinions for what makes something gothic, I'm not sure if Wester argued for inclusion in the subculture itself, or just the literary inclusion, but the literature is EXTREMELY important to consider in foundational gothic media, and so I believe Wester's argument for inclusion is something we must all consider when discussing gothic media!

On Fashion

This is an incredibly touchy subject at the moment. I think everyone has different views on the "gothic fashion vs. goth subculture" online argument. Fashion is an expressive outlet for many in the gothic subculture, and I include makeup and clothing as apart of this.

In my opinion, it's not black and white! While I do not think our desire to look cool comes before those who work in sweatshops, plus size and disabled people deserve clothing that they like! It's no secret that plus-sized individuals have a difficult time finding clothing they can wear, and brands like Shein, Romwe, and Cider, all accommodate that. Disabled people who have difficulty leaving their homes, whether it be issues that impact their energy, mobility, or something else, also need clothing to wear! There really is no difference between wearing something gothic vs wearing something basic from these websites, and so while I appreciate the sentiment "Goths don't support fast fashion", there's no possible way to make this a monolithic idea within this specific part of the subculture.

Some people will also accuse others of being classist within this topic. I think it is SO important to remember these few things:

You do not have to be goth! You also do not have to dress gothic to be goth!

There is a set of values that comes with being apart of the subculture! This is like, one of the only necessary factors I consider for members of the subculture.

IMPORTANT! So many baby bats I see are very nervous about not looking "goth enough", and not having as big of a gothic wardrobe as other people. REMEMBER! Most gothic wardrobes are curated over long lengths of time, and anything black can be made into a goth fit!

But this isn't to say that if you are poor, that you do not deserve nice clothes, or new things! I myself have been known to commit the sin of shopping on amazon! I just wanted to put this tidbit in to encourage others to not feel the need to overconsume fast fashion to fit into the community.

All that being said, I do not think fashion alone is enough to consider yourself Goth. I've seen people create a distinction between goth and gothic, and that honestly sounds like a nice way to say poser.

In the past, if you did not listen to the music, share the values, but enjoyed the aesthetic, you were seen as a poser. This got so extreme that people began to anti-label themselves! (I believe this was circa 2000s, with the emergence of emo and scene in prominent media), People would avoid labeling themselves anything at all, There's an interview of Avril Lavigne saying that calling yourself punk is the least punk thing to do, which is now totally clowned on...

... But my point here, is that as many people online who have been alternative for a very long time, seeing another alternative person cemented a feeling of community, as shared interests and values were likely.

On Values

This is so very very long already!

Alternative subcultural values are not monolithic. Metalheads, goths, punks, emos, etc. all have different values, takes, opinions etc. Please do not ask me the difference between all of these, It'd be a super long answer, and I nor anybody actually cares about my opinion about that.

That being said, gothic values and punk values are almost one in the same. I feel that it depends on the type of goth you are, but it is not outlandish to expect every goth to be against capitalism and anti fascist.

A seemingly small portion of goths say that veganism or vegetarianism is necessary, but I really think that's extreme. Necessary veganism/vegetarianism is also anti-indigenous, classist and ableist.

* I do not want to get into a debate on veganism. It is off topic.

Something that I used to see everywhere for a main criteria, is also knowing goth history! This is very important to be able to provide context on why things are the way they are, as well as rules/regulations, as well as understanding the modern gothic movement.

^(I consider this to be Bauhaus' Bela Lugosi's Dead (1979) onward, although many consider The Doors to be the first gothic rock band, and many other influences between The Doors and Bauhaus arose as well. I'll get into this later, maybe my opinion will change after more research is concluded)

Conclusion

That was a lot! Please remember that this is just my opinion, and while i am open to pleasant conversation and critique, I wont respond to anyone unkind and inflexible, and depending on the severity, I may block you! It is not out of hate or spite, but this blog is something I consider to be a safe space, and home to one of my biggest passions.

I think that I could speak more about each topic individually, but I also go outside, and don't want to get caught up in things that do not matter.

I do want to cover history as well! Maybe Vampira, Elvira, and Etcetera!

TLDR:

IMO, The factors that would make somebody goth, are not concentrated to just taste in music! The gothic subculture is not just a music fanbase! Enjoying media such as horror literature and movies, listening to music, dressing up, expressing yourself are all large components in what make up the culture, and between being a horror fan (for ex.) vs. being a goth overlaps in so many areas!

The takeaway I hope that is received is, be open minded. Gatekeeping is necessary to keep the subculture the subculture, but I don't think that it's as rigid as many people think it is.

Song Recommendation: Stigmata Martyr

I wanted to put a Bauhaus song, but I figured since I already linked Bela Lugosi's Dead, it would be redundant. Also it's likely that SO many of anyone who sees this will already know Bauhaus.

Thank you for reading!!

-Cat (They/Them)

(Catofthenine)

[dragynkeep]

rwde.

so i made a post asking people to take part in a “rwde census” if they considered themselves part of the community or were critical of rwby. this was in order to combat a common criticism by the main fanatics that rwde is solely made up of “cisgender heterosexual ablebodied white men” who hate the show’s apparently wide swathe of diverse representation. at 85 responses, results are in.

this one i will probably redo again at a later date, as many respondents reported to me they were confused or clicked multiple while marking down they were mixed race  —  so they would put mixed race, then white + another race as applicable  —  so the 50.5% is not entirely accurate to the claim of “solely white” rwde posters being racist in regards to the show.

with that in mind, this shows us that more than half of rwde are poc & in line with that in the “thoughts” section of the form, think that rwby has let them down in terms of how they represent race, racial trauma, oppression + more.

the bisexuals win again —

this also just entirely blows the claim that the rwde community “hate queer people” out of the water. the rwde fandom is in fact majority queer, a whopping 91.5% of us are queer in some way with a third of that being bisexuals; which falls in line with how critical some of us are in regards to the main rep of the show. the “bisexual” main who has never been confirmed, only alluded to by voice actors & was in fact described as both straight & a lesbian by her own va.

gender is also not even close to being a majority “cis men” like fanatics claim, while ignoring the actual creators of rwby i suppose. 19.2% were cis men, with a majority being cis women & nonbinary running a close third.

so the claims of people hating the show because they hate “girl power” falls flat in the face of a majority of us being women or femme aligned in some way. especially considering the show’s treatment of these women & how a majority of their storylines revolve around the men.

disability became a hot topic in the fandom majorly in regards to two characters  —  yang xiao long & james ironwood. especially in regards to the treatment of both of their disabilities, yang’s being all but ignored except for ship bait & ableist disregard to her prosthetic, while james was outright demonized & painted as an unfeeling monster for his.

as we can see, only a quarter of those in rwde have no disability. meanwhile the rest have been violently talked over, threatened, harassed, sent death threats & ableist remarks all the while for daring to criticise a storyline that effected them personally.

~

overall the further responses at the end of the form was the most enlightening part. most had begun watching this show & loving it, but then becoming more & more disheartened as the show began to show more & more harmful moments. i would definitely encourage going to the forms & reading those for more of an insight to those in rwde who, despite claims otherwise, do not actually hate the show just to hate it. or because they hate poc, queers, or disabled people.

i hope this was a bit more illuminating for those who constantly hear this rhetoric against the rwde community; especially in the height of rooster teeth / crwby once again being called out for their repeated abuses of power & controversies.

[foulfirerebel]

This might be a bit of a controversial topic so I understand if you don’t want to answer but who do you think was in the right between ghira and sienna? Specifically in the Adam trailer.

In the interest of fairness, I will be considering both perspectives here and the overall situation.

There are, roughly speaking, 9 racists shooting at The White Fang convoy passing through. With Sienna's blessing, Adam breaks cover and deals with six of them before the seventh guy frantically charges while firing and then Adam slashes him with Moonslice and kills him.

Putting the rest under a readmore, I go on for a while.

In Ghira's perspective, he only scolds Adam over the killing part. He got hit in the hand and his aura flared but didn't flicker or die. The rest of the Fang with them are likewise armed and could've shot back at any time/could've probably disarmed the racist when he got closer as he's running and firing blind. This does include Sienna likewise, and Illia who's there with them.

As he's lecturing and scolding Adam over how this is the very reason people THINK they can treat Faunus unfairly, Sienna interrupts. From HER perspective, Adam saved Ghira's life and is a hero for killing a racist. Nobody else, from Sienna's perspective, jumped to shoot back or otherwise to return fire when their enemy began firing on them.

In my humble opinion, they're both correct. In the short term, Sienna has the right of way: everyone else is armed, Adam was quick to action, and the racist was shooting at them and running toward them. To declare Adam a hero for saving Ghira's life is also a nice little ego boost for Adam himself, but that's another point.

In the long term, however, Ghira's correct. The violent actions of Adam's, including the assassinations and trying to blow up the train in the black trailer, and the fall of beacon and the MANY human lives he's taken and otherwise brushed off as accidents (including the DC comic where he even gloats to Blake about how he was crying when they first met over not getting to kill MORE humans, not over the Faunus dead) does end up damaging Faunus' perception with the overall public and the White Fang as a whole.

But what about Adam himself?

Rewatching the trailer, Adam deals with a total of SIX people (if my count is correct) without any form of lethal force. He comes close, but always knocks them out or otherwise sends them packing. He even snarls at the two calling them all "freaks" and seemed like he was going to go after them next, if Ghira hadn't interrupted.

If he's really THAT fast, there's no way he couldn't have just tackled the running guy down and disarmed him. The guy was running and firing blind, the rest of the White Fang is behind the truck, Ghira's aura didn't break cause of one gun shot, etc.

The trailer further demonstrates that "accidents" like that aren't uncommon with Adam in the field, and he gaslights and emotionally manipulates Blake when she calls him out on it. Sienna even has to call him off from executing an SDC security officer.

Of course, in the heat of the moment, there's usually no time to think about what's going on and what the best thing to do is. All that's left at the end of the day is the consequences of what is done. It doesn't seem like Adam himself lost any sleep over the racist being dead, and I wouldn't either.

But what's crucial to me is that nobody other than Ghira, Blake, Sienna (in V5), or Illia, questioned his actions...until he utterly fails in V5 with the Haven raid.

In that moment, he could've learned something about the proper application of force and why spilling blood isn't the way to do things unless it's absolutely necessary. Ghira never objected to kicking the racist's asses, just the killing part.

And we all see what feeding Adam's ego does to him. So, basically, I find Ghira's point to be valid had he had been allowed to deliver the whole lecture about how it'll be used to spread more fear and hatred. Because that's exactly what Blake's view, and the view of the White Fang and Faunus, end up being in places like Mistral and Atlas (and judging by idiots like Cardin and the casual racism spewed by Torchwick, Vale isn't immune).

Though, again, I agree with Sienna's call to send Adam in to deal with the situation since he was seemingly the fastest among their number.

Short term, Sienna. long term, Ghira. I swing toward Ghira given that Adam would repeatedly get into arguments with Blake about his number of "accidents". He needed a good scolding or a lecture at that point. If praise was to be given, it should've been for helping them out of that jam and worded as such. Not calling him a "hero" and inflating his ego.

Because if he's a hero for killing one auraless guy...then what else can he be called a "hero" for? What next, in other words? What else can he get away with, heedless of the consequences?

This isn't to say I'm not against lethal self-defense and niether is the show: Blake and Yang killed Adam after he refused to back off despite warnings, Ruby tries going for kill shots on Tyrian and slices his tail off, Jaune attempted to stab Cinder in the face, etc.

Unless you have the ability to otherwise disarm and make absolutely certain the lethal force coming at you is neutralized nonlethally, yes I do think lethal force can be used when met with lethal force.

Like I said earlier, however, the problem is optics. Who's using the lethal force against whom? Will this be seen as necessary or twisted? Is it survival or just revenge?

The court of public opinion unfortunately is real, and people defending themselves get thrown in jail a lot. People have also used Stand Your Ground and other laws to chase people down and kill them and then TRY to claim self-defense. Whether it works or not is up to the court and/or jury.

But it can be especially damning when one is part of a group demanding equality, as bigots will pounce on that and try to discredit a group of people (even going so far as to make things up). It's worse when they have power and the people fighting them don't, because the media can easily twist things to make them seem the villain (Queer rights, the Civil Rights movement, Occupy Wall Street, etc.)

In this case, however, we're dealing with people with superhuman speed up against relatively normal people. It's like Superman being threatened by a punk with a gun and killing them instead of the numerous ways he can disarm him...which, ironically, led to Justice Lord Superman in the old JLA animated series but that's a whole other story. Plus, the White Fang has more been compared to the IRA then the Black Panthers and that comparison makes more sense given the very real violence the IRA committed.

That's just me. I don't lose sleep over a racist being dead myself, just the optics and long-term damage caused by Adam afterward especially when he gained a position of power himself. It obviously wouldn't start there, but it's a neat way to show how things shifted toward where they are now.

TL:DR: I agree with both of them, though lean more towards Ghira given the events of the series and Adam's worsening violent antics. Nothing wrong with the lethal approach when confronted with lethal force, but there has to be a consideration of how much force is applied before one goes too far.

Even Ghira, IIRC, did say he learned a few things and fought against the White Fang when they were trying to assassinate him and his family and later at Haven. Sienna herself even spoke out against Adam's actions at Beacon too as being beyond the pale since he attacked a school. They’re both correct and should’ve worked together more in my honest opinion.

[linklethehistorian]

Talk about your current wips. Pls I'm curious

37: Talk about your current wips.

So, this means, like, the WIPs I’m currently working on/have started at some point but not yet finished and posted, right? Well, despite the fact that I have a ton of ideas floating around in my head already and that I’ve been holding in my mind, I don’t actually have all that many that I’ve started working on at any point (mostly because I am the type of person who prefers to work mostly on one or two things at a time, alternating between them only when I have writer’s block). 

Still, let’s see…over the years, I think I’ve accumulated at least nine WIPs total that I can bring to mind at the moment, but one of them is a new chapter for Cherish, and two are of the others are surprises, so I’ll just tell you about six of them for now. :)

I’m going to place them under the cut, both for length and to allow anyone who for some reason might want to avoid spoiling themselves on previews for upcoming works of mine.

Works will be separated by two categories — one-shots, and multi-chapter projects. Each work will be listed by title, along with a brief overview of anticipated series, major genre, ships (where applicable), and expected important tag warnings — though seeing as they are unfinished and not yet posted, all of these things are subject to change.

One-shot W.I.P.s:

1. Everything Has Changed 

Series: Bungou Stray Dogs

Primary Pairing: ChuuArt (Chuuya Nakahara/Arthur Rimbaud)

Other Pairings: TBD

Anticipated Rating: T

Canon-Compliant: No

Anticipated Genre: Fluff (with Light Angst)

Other Important Tags/Information: Gakuen (School) AU but Arthur and Paul are both students, Chuuya and Arthur are the same age (16 years old)

Placeholder Summary:

Ever since he was very young, Chuuya has had the same mysterious memory lingering on the edges of his mind: darkness everywhere, and then a mysterious figure cloaked in light reaching down to pull him out of the endless abyss… Though just a blurry, faint echo, that memory of that person — that light that briefly set the world aflame with warmth and a new hope — has been burned into his brain.

And yet, no matter how he tries to chase after that shadow of an unforgettable individual, he has yet to ever find them — the hat they left behind being his only proof of their existence.

Today, he rides the bus at the start of another school year, his heart empty and dull, as whispers fill his ears of new exchange students coming in from other countries. Surely, there may be new faces, but that face will never appear before him. Nothing will change this year, again…

…Or will it?

Excerpt Available: Read here.

2. Emerald Eyes

Series: Bungou Stray Dogs

Primary Pairing: ChuuArt (Chuuya Nakahara/Arthur Rimbaud)

Other Pairings: None, but at least implications of past VerRim/Rimlaine (Arthur Rimbaud/Paul Verlaine)

Anticipated Rating: M (only due to the controversial nature of the fic, but still TBD)

Canon-Compliant: Yes (but it can possibly be inferred that more days passed during the events of Fifteen than we were explicitly shown)

Anticipated Genre: Fluff (but the ending will be bittersweet for those who know what happens the next day)

Other Important Tags/Information: This fic takes place somewhere during the events of Fifteen, so it may be a bit controversial to some in the fact that it depicts a 15 y/o Chuuya who has fallen in love with the then 27 y/o Arthur. Whether or not it is at all mutual will be largely left up for interpretation by the reader, but there are at least some implications that it is (at least mostly) one-sided, as it is obviously hinted within that his heart is first and foremost elsewhere (with his partner, Paul Verlaine).

(Furthermore, it should also be noted that regardless of how it is interpreted, at least in my headcanons (which will be shown bit by bit through other fics in the ChuuArt series), both Chuuya and Arthur are actually reincarnations of ancient angelic beings whom had previously been in love, and it is also not until Chuuya is well past his current age in the main manga by several years that he finally manages to find a way to revive and actually fully develops a mutual romantic relationship with Arthur — at which point they are nearly the same physical age, so there really shouldn’t be that much cause for discomfort over the matter to the average person, but I will be tagging it carefully anyway to give ample warning just in case there is someone who would be uncomfy about it.)

Placeholder Summary:

A bored and lonesome Chuuya gets a text from Randou one important night, asking him if they might meet near a shrine at the top of a nearby hill overlooking the ocean.

It goes without saying that he accepts.

Excerpt Available: Read here.

3. I Don't Want to Miss a Thing (Re-Write)

Series: Doctor Who

Primary Pairing: 10th Doctor Duplicate (Metacrisis Doctor)/Rose Tyler

Other Pairings: Past 10th Doctor/Rose Tyler, Past 9th Doctor/Rose Tyler

Anticipated Rating: T

Canon-Compliant: Yes

Anticipated Genre: Sci-Fi, Romance, Fluff and Angst

Other Important Tags/Information: TBD (tags did not exist at the time this was written and I will have to figure out most of them later when I post to AO3), but it is worth mentioning Jackie Tyler makes an appearance in flashbacks and is somewhat an antagonist in the story. Also this story takes the stance that because Metacrisis Doctor is a human-Time Lord hybrid, he is incapable of having children. It’s complicated.

Summary: 

The Metacrisis Doctor has been having the same nightmare for a week. Every night, he dreams of a small boy standing alone in a barren field, whose life is soon to threatened by an unlikely enemy…

(This one-shot was meant to be my own take on what happened to Metacrisis and Rose after "Journey's End", using information from the deleted scene, and meant to go alongside the episode "The Magician's Apprentice.")

Excerpt Available: None currently, but you can read the old version of the work here. 4. Untitled fic

Series: Bungou Stray Dogs

Primary Pairing: Past VerRim/Rimlaine (Arthur Rimbaud/Paul Verlaine), ChuuArt (Chuuya Nakahara/Arthur Rimbaud)

Other Pairings: None

Anticipated Rating: M

Canon-Compliant: Yes

Anticipated Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending

Other Important Tags/Information: TBD, but it will probably not be pretty (at least in the flashbacks)

Summary:

Also mostly TBD, the most I can say is that I started writing this fic while I was sitting by a real fireplace in a hotel about 2 or 3 years ago around Christmastime, and it was ultimately about Arthur reminiscing on (and thus took place mostly during) a bad fight he had with Paul in which he ended up out in the cold pouring rain sitting on the doorstep to the building where they were currently staying, thinking on how cold the world and life was then as opposed to now, with Chuuya. 

For the moment I just call it “The Fireplace Fic”. I can’t recall if I ever gave it a proper name beyond that, but if I did, it certainly isn’t coming to mind.

Excerpt Available: 

Total strangers going about their daily lives occasionally passed by even on a night like this, either casually strolling along carrying their trusted umbrellas and dressed in their warmest, weather-proof clothes, or dashing their way across the street or sidewalk while covering their heads as best they could with some article of clothing, heading for the nearest, safest shelter they knew.

Though Arthur had never been a prideful man by any means, he had to admit he preferred the latter.

It wasn’t that he cared if that happy couple who passed him, giggling and whispering to each other under their shared umbrella, were discussing him or what he was doing outside at such an hour; no, it was the way that they and some others who walked nearby were looking at him bothered him — often staring at him with sympathetic eyes, as if they had taken such pity on him and his condition that they might even offer for him to come in out of the rain with them.

He couldn’t do that; he couldn’t accept that kind of compassionate proposition — not under any circumstances, not even if part of him wanted to.

Of course, he couldn’t really blame them for it, though; it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t have done the same in their place, and besides, he had to admit, with the way he looked right then and there — a tired, disheveled, sickly excuse for a human being shivering out in the elements with a pathetic look in his eyes, not making any attempt to find a better location — to the nearest onlooker, he probably appeared as a desperate homeless man with nowhere else to turn but to foolishly settle himself outside of someone’s house, in hopes that they would come outside and take pity on him.

...At least, he hoped that was how he looked; it was certainly better than the alternative. Anything was better than the alternative.

Reaching a gloved hand up to his forehead, he ran his fingers through the hair that hung limply in front of one half of his face, shoulder-length strands of wavy black hair primitively combed and spread out to further cover a bruised cheek and eye.

Good… An audible sigh of relief escaped his lips this time, as he relaxed and let his hand drop back into his lap. Everything is still in place.

—

Multi-Chapter W.I.P.s:

1. Within Shadows (Re-Write)

Series: The Legend of Zelda

Primary Pairing: None

Other Pairings: One-sided GhiraLink (Ghirahim/Link) undertones (implied)

Anticipated Rating: M

Canon-Compliant: Yes

Anticipated Genre: Fantasy, Tragedy, Angst

Other Important Tags/Information: TBD (tags did not exist at the time this was written and I will have to figure out most of them later when I post to AO3), but Major Character Death is definitely one of them I will be using.

Summary:

In a time between the events of the Skyward Sword manga's war between Hylia and Demise and the events of Skyward Sword, a forgotten incarnation of the Hero, Link, finds himself in peril in a place of pure evil. 

(This is the origin story of the Shadow Temple and the present-day Sheikah eye symbol, the events of which are based on a theory I had written about it.)

Excerpt Available: None currently, but you can read the old version of the work here.

2. The Heroes of Hyrule (Working Title)

Series: Multi-fandom (All fandoms to be listed TBD at this point in time, but I’m sure you can infer The Legend of Zelda is one of them by the beta title)

Primary Pairing: None

Other Pairings: TBD

Anticipated Rating: M or E

Canon-Compliant: TBD

Anticipated Genre: TBD

Other Important Tags/Information: TBD

Placeholder Summary:

A strange, ragtag group of the ordinary and the extraordinary come together and eventually find themselves drawn into a world they would never have imagined was real. 

Together, they will discover the destiny laid out before each of them and become legends in their own right, shaping history and slowly unraveling, piece by piece, the great mystery of the force that brought to these lands…

A re-write of an old multi-chapter, multi-volume fic I have never posted online. May take quite some time to get around to and be extremely slow to update once posted, as it is more a personal project than anything and basically the lowest priority I have at the moment among the things I wish to write and share with the world. (Partly because I feel there is very little chance more than one other person is going to read it anyway, and partly because I already have a very longterm multi-chapter fic to work on and write currently, and it by far has the most priority.)

Title is far more than a decade old by now; might change by the time I actually someday get around to re-writing it properly.

Excerpt Available: N/A

—

Send me a number and I’ll answer the corresponding fic writer question.

[schraubd]

FIRE's Proposed Anti-DEI Legislation is an Academic Freedom Trainwreck

FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression -- formerly Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is a controversial organization that works in a controversial area. By and large, though, I'm a FIRE defender -- I tend to think they get more right than wrong, and strive to be genuinely evenhanded in dealing with threats to academic freedom on campus.

But this makes it all the more striking to read their proposed model legislation targeting "DEI statements" at public universities. It is nothing short of an academic freedom trainwreck -- the sort of vague censorial tool that in most contexts FIRE would be blasting the alarm over. That it does not just endorse but drafted this disaster show is deeply worrisome and disconcerting.

I've written before trying to tease out the connection between DEI statements and (threats to) academic freedom before, which is far more complicated than groups like FIRE are letting on. The core problem is that while I absolutely agree that DEI statements can be used in abusive ways to create an ideological monoculture, it is actually very difficult to distinguish such statements from other arenas in which academic actors are asked to make normative assessments of their peers (for example, regarding teaching or scholarship) -- arenas which also are prone to ideological abuse. Almost inevitably, an "anti-DEI" rule that tries to have any teeth will put at risk basic practices of academic evaluation, and will do so regardless of any disclaimers to the contrary. This risk is only accentuated by the impossibly vague language that purports to distinguish licit versus illicit appraisals. And university bureaucrats who want to avoid potentially crippling financial liability (we'll get to that in a moment) are going to be very defensive regarding what is and is not permitted, inviting exactly the sort of administrative interference in academic affairs that FIRE purports to oppose.

The core practice FIRE targets in its legislation are requirements that academic community members or job candidates "pledg[e] allegiance to or mak[e] a statement of personal support for or opposition to any political ideology or movement, including a pledge or statement regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, patriotism, or related topics." In addition, the law would forbid any institution from "request[ing] or requir[ing] any such pledge or statement from an applicant or faculty member."

Right from the outset, this is impossibly vague. Academia is, of course, beset with normative controversies. Some are very specific questions of disciplinary dispute ("Is originalism the best way to interpret the Constitution?"). But many are broad questions of academic mission. "Should university education be primarily vocational or academic in focus?" "What is the best way that professors can create a supportive learning environment for their students?" "What do you hope students will get out of your classes?"

These questions are contested, and often politically contested. For example, on university education as academic versus vocational, many conservatives contend that universities focus too heavily on hoity-toity theory and should instead concentrate on disciplines which prepare students for specific workplace jobs; liberals, by contrast, are more comfortable with the classic model of a liberal arts education where the project of learning and development is valuable even if it doesn't directly translate into a specific career arc. Are all of these questions qualifying "political ideologies or movements" that fall under the ambit of the law? If not, what conceptually distinguishes those questions from the seemingly-similar question "How do we render our institution equitable and inclusive to the diverse populations that we serve?" If the questions are identical in form, then the only basis for specifically banning DEI related questions is ideological hostility -- an imposition of state orthodoxy under the guise of pluralism.

One possible response is that the question is fine so long as it actually is a question, and does not dictate a particular answer. So if you ask "What is the best way that professors can create a supportive learning environment for their students," there are multiple ways to answer that question; the question does not require a "statement of personal support for or opposition to" any particular ideology, since the respondent is free to take any stance they like on the subject. By contrast, it would be problematic to ask job candidates to explain why the Socratic Method simply is the best way to create a supportive learning environment, since now they are being compelled to express support for a particular (pedagogical) ideological view, and we should be open to a diversity of positions on that subject.

Problem #1 with this response is that it's not clear that the model legislation permits even this, insofar as asking them to take any position on "supportive learning environments" arguably requires them to issue a "statement of personal support for" the practices they endorse, and opposition to the ones they reject. The law is vague as to whether it prohibits requiring candidates to endorse one favored view on an "ideology", or if it prohibits requiring candidates to simply present a view on the subject.  At least for DEI, the text points towards the latter -- the language prohibits requirements of statements "regarding" DEI or "related topics." So even an open-ended question which expressly invites multiple potential answers is forbidden if the subject matter of the question "relates" to DEI.

Problem #2 is that, assuming the model legislation does permit questions like "What is the best way that professors can create a supportive learning environment for their students" because they're open-ended and don't demand avowal of a particular ideological view, then it's unclear what distinguishes that sort of question from standard DEI statement questions. Contrary to popular belief, most DEI prompts do not take the form "explain why Derrick Bell is the greatest political theorist since Rousseau" (and if that sort of request is all that's being covered here, the law scarcely does anything at all). They are far more likely to be framed as something like "How do you propose making your institution equitable and inclusive to the diverse populations that we serve?" That question, too, can be answered in a multitude of ways, and so is not different in kind from all the other normative appraisal questions that are endemic to academic life (and which also can elicit strong views and significant political controversies).

In order to carve out a distinction for why DEI is different, one might make one of two arguments. The first is that although the DEI question is nominally open-ended, everyone knows that there is but one "right answer", and that answer is kowtowing to the politically-correct standards of the moment. To begin, I'm dubious that this is true at least in the strong form (there might be some answers generally thought of as wrong, but there is not only one answer accepted as right). I'm also skeptical that a complaint that is fundamentally about abusive-applications can justify prohibiting such questions as a class. I'll concede that it's probably true that a job candidate whose views on a given issue of concern are sharply at odds with their employers will be at a disadvantage in the process; I'll even concede that a flat unwillingness to even consider a contrary view is deeply malformed practice.  But that a candidate who answers a DEI question in a fashion at odds with prevailing sentiments may be at a comparative disadvantage to others cannot alone suffice to establish that the statements are being "abused" or that the statement's usage is tantamount to a desire to create a monoculture. The core risk -- dissidents are disadvantaged -- is always present for any normatively-laden assessment, it is not distinct to DEI. It exists for the academic job candidate whose views on pedagogy or research sharply diverge from the departmental line, it exists for that matter for the corporate job candidate whose views on business expansion break from the general consensus held by the executive leadership. Across the board, for any normatively-laden question, dissident candidates are probably at a disadvantage. If that fact is enough to justify banning an interview question, then we have a lot of questions to ban.

The second potential argument for why DEI questions are materially different is that the DEI question, while admitting multiple answers, still encodes certain values inside the question's very structure as presuppositions which an answer must tacitly endorse -- i.e., that values like "equity" and "inclusiveness" are in fact values the university should pursue. Someone who rejects the very premise will struggle to answer the question. But this "distinction" actually isn't one; similar presuppositions are likely embedded into most normative questions. "What is the best way that professors can create a supportive learning environment for their students," embeds a presupposition that professors should try to create a supportive learning environment; a candidate who rejects that premise (thinking, perhaps, that students learn best in a trial-by-fire academic Sparta) would likely be at disadvantage. Again, the objection here would cover far, far too much.

And at this point we do start to see FIRE unsuccessfully try to cabin its law's reach, with a provision contending that "Nothing in this Act prohibits an institution from considering, in good faith, a candidate's scholarship, teaching, or subject-matter expertise in their given academic field." Great verbiage; no idea how it works in practice. Suppose I, in good faith, believe that demonstrating capacity to work with and respond to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, is part of assessing a candidate's teaching (or, for that matter, scholarship or subject-matter expertise). Can I ask about that? I have no idea, but I suspect the answer is "no", notwithstanding this supposed carve-out. FIRE is I suspect embedding a normative presupposition of its own: that issues "related" to DEI never are in good faith connected to valid considerations of academic merit. But this position is very much a contested one -- I'd contest it -- and certainly should not be encoded into state law as legally-compulsory orthodoxy. Again, 90 times out of 100 FIRE would be screaming bloody murder about this sort of thing -- they are a victim of their own blindspots that they don't see how they're promoting exactly the sort of legislation they normally abhor.

And speaking of legislation -- we shouldn't conclude without talking about penalties for a moment. They have several different penalty formulations, but they all coalesce around proposing six-figure monetary fines "for each violation of the act." That's gigantic on its own, and certainly will counsel extreme defensiveness by university bureaucrats and lawyers regarding what faculty are and are not permitted to say in job interviews or other like forums on matters of DEI. The potential for censorial chilling is massive. But worse, the law does not tell us what counts as a single violation. A college posts hiring announcements across a dozen different departments, requesting application materials which are later determined to include Forbidden Questions. Is that one violation, or twelve? Probably twelve, meaning that a $300,000 fine just got converted into a $3.6 million fine. Or worse -- each of those job postings (based on what I know of the academic market) will likely get 250 applications. And since the structure of the act suggests that each individual applicant is separately injured by unlawful consideration of the Forbidden Questions -- well, 250 x 12 x $300,000 = Nine Hundred Million Dollars in potential liability. Given that exposure, you better believe that the university bureaucracy is going to be policing faculty hiring and promotion practices with a very fine-toothed comb to root out anything that could even possibly represent eliciting a statement "relating" to DEI as interpreted by whatever lickspittle Ron DeSantis has put in charge of oversight. And I guarantee you that the ensuing bureaucratic regime will be far more onerous, oppressive, and censorial than anything currently happening at the behest of DEI offices.

FIRE knows better than this. It knows that the strong arm of state regulation and compulsion is almost inevitably toxic to the free and open exchange of ideas on campus, and it knows that academic freedom means that it must be the academics themselves -- not bureaucratic meddlers, not state legislatures, not politically-appointed boards -- who get to decide how to appraise their peers and the requirements of their discipline. Some academics do not think that matters of DEI are germane to that assessment. Many others think they are quite germane, not because we demand all candidates adhere to the One True Path, but because I absolutely want to know that any potential member of my academic institution has at least thought critically and comprehensively on the subject of how to best create an equitable and inclusive environment for a diverse educational community. That interest of mine is no different than my wanting to know that they have thought on how to create supportive learning environments, or wanting to know that they have thought on how the important normative questions that are part of many research agendas. In terms of what conclusions they draw from that critical consideration, I'm willing to hear a wide range -- I don't have a single answer in mind that is the only acceptable conclusion. But it doesn't matter, because under FIRE's view if I try to elicit information on the wrong subjects I risk bankrupting the university. That can only have a censorial and chilling effect.

It is not possible to declare the topic of DEI a Legally Forbidden Question without doing catastrophic damage to academic freedom, and the manner in which this law proposes to enforce its prohibitions will inevitably generate a nightmarish cavalcade of bureaucratic censorship. To be blunt: Academic departments are absolutely entitled, as part of their discretion to determine how to assess disciplinary, pedagogical, or service-based standards, to decide how and to what extent questions relating to DEI are germane to their evaluative appraisals. I do not doubt there are departments that will exercise their discretion in a fashion that I would not approve of; I do not doubt that are departments that will exercise it ways I find impossibly narrow-minded and abusive. It does not matter: any state legislation which limits that fundamental prerogative of academic independence and faculty self-governance is a limit on academic freedom -- full stop. Problems of abuse, to the extent they exist, are not validly delegated to state legislatures, and FIRE absolutely knows better than to argue otherwise.

This legislation is a stain on FIRE's reputation. They should withdraw it, and they should reflect on just what it is about this issue that caused them to so flagrantly abandon their normal principles regarding academic freedom. That an organization that has done so much to fight for academic freedom is poised to usher in this sort of censorial dystopia is fiendish irony. One hopes they backtrack before it becomes reality.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/n0aDTWA

[dertaglichedan]

Maybe AI will kill us all. Maybe it will steal our jobs. Maybe it will be awesome and improve our lives beyond our imaginations. Or, perhaps, this is all hype, and it's doomed to go the way of the metaverse. Amid all the unknowns that surround artificial intelligence, one thing is true: Almost everyone is a little bit lying about it at the moment.

Companies know investors have an appetite for all things artificial intelligence right now, and they're eager to show off how they're integrating the new tech into their businesses — or at least say they are. The Securities and Exchange Commission's chair, Gary Gensler, recently warned about "AI washing," or companies giving off a false impression that they're using AI so they can amp up investors. And while some companies are simply exaggerating the tech they do legitimately use, others have taken it a step further. In March, the SEC settled charges against a pair of investment advisors that were accused of making "false and misleading statements" about how they're using AI. The regulator said one of the firms, Delphia, claimed it used AI to "predict which companies and trends are about to make it big and invest in them before everyone else" when, in fact, it didn't. The other, Global Predictions, falsely called itself the "first regulated AI financial advisor," per the SEC. The firms agreed to pay a combined $400,000 in civil penalties without admitting or denying the SEC's findings.

From the 'godfathers of AI' to newer people in the field: Here are 16 people you should know — and what they say about the possibilities and dangers of the technology.

©Meta Platforms/Noah Berger/Associated Press

Artificial intelligence has leaped into the mainstream after ChatGPT launched in November.

Researchers, CEOs, and legislators are now talking about how AI could transform our lives.

Here are 16 of the major names in the field — and the opportunities and dangers they see ahead.

Since ChatGPT launched last November, AI has catapulted into the mainstream.

Investment in artificial intelligence is rapidly growing — on track to hit $200 billion by 2025 — as companies race to ramp up their AI divisions. People are grappling with how applications of AI will change the way we communicate with one another, make our lives more efficient, or even how AI could replace our jobs.

And yet, over the past few months, major business leaders and researchers in the field have begun speaking up about the risks and benefits associated with the dizzying pace of AI development. Some say AI will lead to a major leap forward in the quality of human life. Others have signed a letter calling for a six-month pause on development, testified before Congress on the long-term risks of AI, and claimed it could present a more urgent danger to the world than climate change.

In short, AI is a hot — and controversial — topic right now. To help you cut through the frenzy, Insider put together a list of some of the big names in the field. Of course, no list can be completely comprehensive, but here's a good starting point to learn what leaders in the field are saying about how the technology could shape our future.

Most companies aren't being accused of breaking the law with their AI chatter, but they're definitely posturing around it. An analysis from Goldman Sachs found that 36% of S&P 500 companies mentioned AI in their fourth-quarter earnings calls, a record high. Businesses were just showing up at Nvidia's little AI Woodstock event — a four-day AI conference held in an arena in San Jose, California — hoping to get some hiring halo effect from merely being in the chipmaker's presence. As to how much there is there on many of these AI claims, well, there's some hyperbole going on.

"There is a certain grandiosity to what is being discussed in terms of potential, and I think part of it is people don't know if or when some of these things are going to be achievable," Scott Kessler, the global sector lead of technology, media, and telecommunications at Third Bridge Group, said. "People are very excited, and rightly so in some cases, but these things aren't going to happen overnight."

There is a certain grandiosity to what is being discussed in terms of potential, and I think part of it is people don't know if or when some of these things are going to be achievable.

While some companies are clearly just bolting on AI ideas to their existing businesses, even projects that are explicitly about developing the next wave of this tech are hitting stumbling blocks. Google's Gemini rollout has been a mess amid criticism that it's "woke" and biased and seemingly can't decide whether Elon Musk is better or worse than Adolf Hitler. And while OpenAI's ChatGPT generated a lot of buzz last year, it's still got a tendency to make stuff up.

"The release of ChatGPT was a brilliant marketing campaign in some sense. It really worked very well. It completely mesmerized people," said Daron Acemoglu, an institute professor of economics at MIT and a coauthor of the recently released "Power and Progress: Our 1000-Year Struggle Over Technology & Prosperity." He said there were some "pretty impressive achievements" embedded in ChatGPT, which could be indicative of what's possible, but OpenAI hyped up the product as much as possible to raise money, attract talent, and compete in the hypercompetitive tech industry.

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI and the poster child/messiah for the AI industry still speaks about the tech in a nebulous, nonspecific, and, at times, overstated manner. As the tech writer Ed Zitron has noted, he's said his kids have more AI friends than human friends and that the tech will replace almost everything marketing agencies do, among other eyebrow-raising claims. It's not the case that Altman's being disingenuous — it's just that it's not super clear what the present capabilities of the technology even truly are, let alone what they might be in the future, so making bold, concrete claims about the way it's going to affect society seems presumptuous.

What is clear, however, is that there's a belief that there's a lot of money to be made, and overselling has become a near-constant of the AI landscape. While the semiconductor industry is seeing an enormous amount of demand on the infrastructure side of AI, not all companies in the arena are created equal. Companies such as Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom are big winners, but then there are others out there "who want to be part of the story," Angelo Zino, a senior industry analyst at CFRA Research, said. "The way they would kind of spin it is somewhere along the lines of, 'We expect AI to be a huge beneficiary of our business, and we see increasing orders related to AI,' and it might be some hard-disk-drive maker, which isn't necessarily an AI play," he said.

A lot of these companies are not yet showcasing exactly what type of revenue they're getting from AI yet because it's still so small.

Even the Big Tech companies that are really moving and shaking in AI are on shifty ground at times. Tech giants such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are telling sales executives to hold their horses on how they're pitching their generative-AI capabilities to clients, The Information reported. Just because you layer AI into your offering doesn't mean it's actually helpful to your customers in a way that makes a significant portion of them willing to pay a lot for it. Take the example of Microsoft's Copilot, which the company isn't breaking out a ton of detail on, revenuewise, at the moment.

"A lot of these companies are not yet showcasing exactly what type of revenue they're getting from AI yet because it's still so small," Zino said.

As for the nontech companies talking about AI, it's hard to tell what exactly anyone means or what's hope versus reality. I recently found myself in a conversation with a bank executive who touted her firm's efforts in generative AI. When I pressed to find out what she was talking about, thinking it was something big, she told me they were figuring out how to use AI to help representatives in call centers look up information. That's probably nice for newer employees who are trying to get the hang of things. However, it isn't game-changing.

AI innovation is an important development. There are plenty of reasons to believe that this isn't the dot-com bubble 2.0, or even crypto, and that this technology will have a meaningful, if yet undefined, impact. (Hopefully, not the one where it wipes out humanity.) But the financial incentives here make it easy and tempting to overstate things. For many companies and entrepreneurs in the space, their wildest AI dreams are dollar signs.

"There is some sort of a cascade that if you are not talking about integrating generative AI into your workflow somehow if you're a medium to large company, you are sort of behind the times," Acemoglu said. "And I think dreams of automation are never too far from the minds of many managers."

It's genuinely unclear what generative AI and what comes with it will bring, which is both unsettling and comforting. The hyperoptimistic and hyperpessimistic takes are likely wrong, meaning the truth will ultimately wind up being somewhere in the middle. But anyone who tells you they know exactly what is going on in AI and where it's headed is lying.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

If you enjoyed this story, be sure to follow Business Insider on Microsoft Start.

[blogsbysukhpreetkaur]

Social Media Apps

Social Media Apps

Introduction

Nowadays, people use the internet more than ever. Maximum people spend most of their time on social media apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. These apps are included in their daily schedule. This is because they want to socialize with their friends online. In this article, some of these apps will be discussed. Also, their advantages and drawbacks are there.

WhatsApp

WhatsApp is the most commonly used social media app. It helps the user to connect to the people with their contact numbers. Also, this app includes many other features. Firstly, one can share his story on WhatsApp status. Secondly, it has the feature of instant messaging. Moreover, a recent new feature is the WhatsApp channel. So, one can create his channel on WhatsApp and share his videos and activities.

Advantages:

Instant messaging 

Voice and video calling

High-end encryption

Disadvantages:

Works on the Internet only

One can not contact without contact information

Instagram

Instagram is a highly used social app at present. With this, one can contact a person without any contact information. You can search a person’s name and all the people with the same name will appear. Then, you can find the one you want. Also, it has a messaging feature. Moreover, one can share his videos and pictures on Instagram. Then, content creators can collaborate with marketers and get ads. Therefore, it is also a platform for digital marketing.

Advantages:

Instant messaging

Video and voice call facility

Earn by creating content in reels

Disadvantages:

Works on the Internet only

Instagram addiction is the biggest drawback

Twitter (X)

Twitter is a popular application. Celebrities, politicians, and democrats around the world use this application. Nowadays, Twitter is known as the X app. On Twitter, users send and reply to the texts, videos, and pictures. These are called “ tweets”. Therefore, many people share their opinions on Twitter. For this reason, they believe that every tweet has a voice that many other people around the world hear. However, many controversies have been created by the tweets of famous people.

Advantages:

Real-time information

Every tweet is a highlight

Free social media app

Disadvantages:

Works with the Internet only

Character limit for a tweet

Snapchat

Snapchat is an American social media app. Firstly, this helps users to send snaps and instant messages. Its important feature is that the images and messages disappear after the recipient sees them. Secondly, people can share their moments on the spotlight feature. Thirdly, it allows the user to explore stories from around the world. Lastly, the camera lens feature helps the user to take beautiful pictures with different filters. This makes it the best app to click images at an event.

Advantages:

Instant messaging

Moment sharing feature

Avails filters to click pictures even without the internet

Disadvantages:

Works with the internet 

Messages disappear on their own

Telegram

Telegram is an app similar to WhatsApp. However, it has some features different from the later one. Similarly, Telegram also provides the instant messaging feature. On Telegram also users can create a group. However, this group has a capacity of 200,000 members which is way more than WhatsApp. Moreover, in the groups, the admin can make a poll over any topic. Also, one can import his chats to any other app. Moreover, it has a secret chat option with self-disappearing messages.

Advantages:

Instant messaging with video and voice call

Limitless people can join voice call

One can create polls in the group

Disadvantages:

End-to-end encryption only applies to secret chats

Works only with the internet

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing social media app. Google owns YouTube. This application is best for content creators. Additionally, Content creators can make their channels on YouTube. So, they can earn money by making and uploading videos on YouTube channels. Also, YouTube is a great platform for digital marketing. Users show paid ads on their channels. Recently, YouTube launched YouTube shorts. On this, users can share short videos as stories. Furthermore, YouTube contains all kinds of video content. Also, it is one of the most highly used search engines.

Advantages:

Educational videos are available

One can download videos to watch later offline

Content creators can make a profit from ads

Disadvantages:

Fake information is high

Advertisements run in videos

Conclusion

Today, social media is an important part of our lives. It offers opportunities to connect with the world. Besides, it helps to communicate with people sitting on the different poles of the earth. Also, it helps people in digital marketing. All in all, social media apps are a boon to the modern world if used wisely.

[mariacallous]

Editor's Note: This piece was originally published by The American Prospect.

Thanks to the clean energy revolution, batteries are no longer in the public eye just in the form of that unstoppable bunny in TV ads. Batteries—like computer chips, electric vehicles, solar panels, and other hardware—are having a moment.

Last fall, with funding from 2021’s mammoth bipartisan infrastructure law, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded nearly $3 billion in grants to 20 manufacturers of electric vehicle (EV) battery components in 20 states. That’s just a portion of the taxpayer money appropriated to dramatically expand battery production and enlarge the EV supply chain in the U.S., which is, in turn, a small part of the trillion-dollar surge in federal investment.

In February, the Commerce Department announced the terms of competition for $39 billion in federal subsidies for manufacturers to expand domestic production of semiconductors. Among other conditions, the CHIPS Incentives Program limits stock buybacks and requires applicants to provide the child care that’s so crucial to enabling more women to work in manufacturing.

The question now is how these big bets to expand advanced manufacturing and boost research and development in America—taken together, what the Biden administration calls our country’s “new industrial strategy”—will create broadly shared economic gains, including good jobs, for workers and communities across the country.

This “how” is not without controversy, to put it mildly. Beyond the conservative critics who have lambasted the child care requirement and other conditions, influential liberal voices have aired serious skepticism as well. In a recent column (and clever pop culture mash-up), Ezra Klein of The New York Times decried “everything-bagel liberalism” that pursues “everything everywhere all at once.” But he, too, lumps everything together—from permitting requirements confronting nonprofit housing developers to these new, conditional industrial-policy incentives meant to embed meaningful economic opportunity for workers and communities into the DNA of some of the world’s most important and massively subsidized growth industries. Klein—whom we agree with on many things—gets it wrong when it comes to CHIPS and other promising government efforts to chart a new course.

Advocates have worked for decades in many parts of the country on how to make the economy work for all, on a foundation of good jobs and racial and gender equity. From that work, one essential lesson emerges: Attaching clear, consistently enforced expectations to public investment is indispensable. And with the enactment of last year’s landmark legislation, public officials now have a once-in-a-generation set of tools and resources to do this. The “how,” however, remains an open question, especially for jobs outside of construction.

For much of the past half-century, America’s dominant economic paradigm held that free markets and freewheeling capital alone have created the nation’s critical industries and enabled them to flourish. That paradigm denied the important role that government plays in shaping the nation’s economy. Indeed, innovation has long required and received government-backed R&D, contracts, and other investments in discovery and commercialization. Today, that investment is also focused on the making of a lot of stuff: batteries, electric vehicles, charging stations, computer chips that put the brains in all that hardware, and more. So how did we approach that challenge for the past few decades, given that influential economists and political leaders across the political spectrum often questioned whether America needed manufacturing at all?

Consider the evolution of the DOE and how it impacts our economy and communities. Created with a wartime sense of urgency—to address the energy crisis of the 1970s—the DOE quickly found itself in the crosshairs of American politics, especially as high gas prices receded and renewable energy seemed a pipe dream. For years, the DOE was a favorite target for those keen to attack public investment and many of the other tools of entrepreneurial government. By that we mean, as economist Mariana Mazzucato argues in her book “Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism,” a government that is both equipped and directed to help solve national challenges—not just address market failures and economic calamities.

Despite the lack of broader political support, the DOE quietly became a vital source of the R&D dollars that helped develop new technologies. Thanks to the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program, signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2008, the agency also became an important supplier of the financing that, in principle, could have helped turn great ideas into great companies that committed to good jobs in addition to great products.

Famously, the DOE bet $465 million in taxpayer dollars, in the form of a direct loan, on the ambitious domestic production plans of Tesla, now the world’s most valuable car company. That was well before the private capital markets were ready to make that bet on a largely unproven company and its first major factory in Fremont, Calif.

The DOE’s investment in Tesla paid off in terms of demonstrating the viability of mass-produced electric vehicles. But in terms of generating good jobs and racial and gender equity in this critically important new industry, the investment proved to be a bust. The company leads all carmakers in the U.S. in workplace safety violations—as Forbes put it, “racking up more infractions and fines in the last three years than all other automakers in the U.S. combined.” CEO Elon Musk has fought workers’ attempts to unionize by spying on them, firing organizers, and refusing to stop anti-union social media attacks. The company is also being sued by the state of California for alleged widespread anti-Black racism, and by several women for alleged sexual harassment.

There’s a moral to this story: Tesla may be the world’s biggest example of how much harder it is for government to push for high-road labor standards after a company has grown with the help of taxpayer financing. If something important is not part of the deal up front, it tends not to happen.

Tesla is not alone. Particularly in the South and many rural areas around the country, even in ostensibly pro-labor states such as California, innovative manufacturers are mass-producing low-quality jobs. The good manufacturing job is mostly gone, outside of the less than 10% that are unionized. There is, therefore, no guarantee that a significant chunk of the publicly supported clean and high-tech production jobs will pay much more than minimum wage or that they will provide opportunity for training and advancement.

That is, unless certain choices are made to incentivize and embed good jobs and equity into the deals.

[cobreja88]

New Trend on TikTok - The O Method

TikTok has become popular due to its wide array of lip-syncs, dancing challenges, and comedy content; but now a new trend has caught many users' eyes: the O method. This manifestation technique involves visualizing one's desired outcomes at the moment of climax. The O Method may sound offensive, but it has proven incredibly popular among TikTok users. We will explore this controversial challenge in depth in this article. What is the o method? The O Method, an increasingly popular manifestation technique on TikTok, involves reaching a state of heightened arousal while concentrating on one specific manifestation goal. Proponents of the O Method claim this heightened state can help them overcome mental blocks and inhibitions to more quickly manifest their desires. TikTok creators who share experiences using #OMethod are finding an uptick in popularity recently due to its sexual connotations and sometimes explicit nature of videos that feature this technique. According to the O Method, it's vital to visualize what you want out of life while orgasming, because this allows the energy generated just before an orgasm to manifest your goals more quickly and successfully. Visualization should be as detailed as possible so that the universe understands exactly what your desires are. Focusing on feelings of satisfaction and fulfillment associated with your desired result can also help ensure your subconscious beliefs align with the higher frequencies needed to manifest your dreams into reality. Furthermore, avoid placing negative emotions or thoughts into visualizations to prevent their vibrations from being altered by negative energy. O Method is often associated with manifesting love; however, its application to manifesting anything else is also widespread on TikTok and many people have shared success stories of using O Method to bring forth everything from money to their dream jobs. However, one must be mindful of any risks or safety concerns associated with this method. It should not be attempted if someone is struggling with sexual addiction or experiencing withdrawal symptoms; those uncertain of their sexual boundaries should consult a counselor before trying this manifestation technique. Furthermore, self-care practices and any necessary safeguards must also be put in place to protect one's physical well-being. Does the o method work? Many users on TikTok believe that sexual activities, including orgasm, have the power to turn their most inane fantasies into reality. A hashtag called #Omethod has even been created and filled with TikTokers sharing their orgasm-based manifestation challenges. The O Method is based on the belief that sexual energy can help you reach higher vibrational frequencies, making it easier for positive experiences to come into your life. To use the O Method effectively, first, decide exactly what you wish to manifest; select an environment familiar to you so you can visualize this goal clearly; then feel emotional satisfaction from having what you want; this will raise your vibrational frequency and increase your chances of success. As well as visualizing, it's also essential to relax and clear your mind before beginning any visualization exercises. Meditation or deep breaths may be enough for some, while others prefer music or guided meditation as preparation for visualization. Finally, taking your time and being as detailed as possible when visualizing desired outcomes requires practice but can be done successfully. TikTok users often swear by the O Method, yet it's far from being an instantaneous solution. Visualizing your desires may help, but without taking steps towards their fulfillment, they won't come true - for instance, landing your ideal job won't just come through thinking it over; to ensure its realization you must refine your skills and send out resumes! However, if you're serious about turning your dreams into a reality, the O Method could be exactly what's necessary. Give it a go and tell us if it works! Beware though; without proper caution, this trend could become dangerous; only do what brings joy - whether that means orgasm, music, or simply enjoying some wine; remember that power lies within yourself! Does the o method have a spiritual connotation? "O" Method, the latest TikTok trend, promises that orgasmic feelings can help manifest your dreams and desires both inside and outside the bedroom. According to its creators, The O Method uses the law of attraction manifestation practice by envisioning your deepest desire while at peak orgasm - although no scientific proof supports its claims many people praise its ability in helping them attain what they desire in life. Hot High Priestess, a popular TikTok user known for her explanation of the "O Method", released a video earlier this year to describe its workings and use. According to Hot High Priestess' video, using the O Method requires focusing on your desired outcome as you reach sexual climax; she then encourages users to visualize and feel that they have already started manifesting it, along with holding onto that feeling after reaching sexual climax - this technique being especially effective when trying to manifest desires of love or sexual encounters! Hot High Priestess says her method works particularly well when trying to manifest desires of love or sexual encounters! The O Method has gone viral on TikTok and other social media platforms, with users citing how it has helped them manifest romantic happiness or career success, new friendships, or even money. But while this method may work for some users, manifestation isn't right for everyone - if you struggle with sexual addiction or are uncomfortable with spiritual practices of this sort then avoid The O Method as much as possible. No matter your belief system, experimenting with various manifestation practices to see which works for you can only benefit you. Before beginning anything new if you suffer from mental health issues and ensure to consult with a doctor first. Also, take care not to use the O Method or any other manifestation practice to manipulate other people or gain something you aren't entitled to; when acting this way you are only drawing energy that mirrors its purpose back on yourself! Is the o method dangerous? TikTok users have recently seen an emerging trend known as the O Method gain popularity and generate much debate online, which involves manifesting sexual desires during sexual climax. Though no scientific evidence backs these claims up, many individuals are giving it a try themselves and sharing their results on TikTok. The O Method is a manifestation technique that involves visualizing your desire at sexual climax to increase the effectiveness of dream manifestation. Furthermore, vibrations occurring during sexual climax may help deepen connections to the universe and deepen one's connection to it. TikTok creators are increasingly touting the O Method as an effective way to manifest romantic interests or love desires. Female influencers have taken to posting videos demonstrating it and discussing its uses; some have even posted videos showing other users doing it themselves! According to them, this form of visualization is particularly powerful when trying to manifest romantic or love-related desires. Although the O Method is generally harmless, it's wise to assess its risks and safety precautions before trying it. Focusing too intensely on sexual pleasure could lead to unhealthy fixations with its desired result which could have detrimental repercussions for mental and emotional well-being. Furthermore, keep in mind that not everyone benefits equally from it; some swear by it while others don't experience success using this manifestation technique; it may take several attempts before finding what works for you! To do so safely. Resources: Social Media Body (Click Here to Unlock Your Social Media Supremacy) Article Forge (Click Here and try the Most Affordable, Unique Human-like Articles Writing Platform) Entre Institute (Click Here to Find the Secret to Become Millionaire) GetResponse (Click here to try the Best Email Marketing Platform For a Huge Discount)  Hostinger (Click Here to Start with One of the Best Webhosting Solutions at a Huge Discount) Pictory (Click Here to try the Easiest Video Creation Tool for Content Marketers) Fiverr (Click Here to Find the Perfect Freelance Services for Your Business Honest Loans (Click Here to Sustain Your Business With More Founds) Read the full article

[back-and-totheleft]

"EVEN IF I DID THE MOST BRILLIANT FILM EVER, I WOULD STILL BE STONED"

Despite his status as America’s most visible conspiracy theorist, Oliver Stone speaks far more softly than do his films, which read like a fever chart of three decades of American moral turmoil. The director of Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, The Doors, and JFK still readily sees suspicious – outlines in the big, big picture (”Did you know that Ho Chi Minh wrote seven letters to Roosevelt, seven f — -ing letters begging him for consideration, and he got nothing, he got squat?”) but in more than three hours of interviews, a more vulnerable and less combative Stone seemed to pick up where Stone the media myth (a guise partly of his own devising) left off.

Sitting in his cluttered Santa Monica, Calif., offices, his back to the sun setting in the Pacific, the director, now 47, talked about a hectic year during which he brought the futuristic Wild Palms to TV, produced The Joy Luck Club, and shot both Heaven and Earth and Natural Born Killers, a satire about two mass murderers due in theaters this summer. His personal life has been equally straining: In August he filed for divorce from his second wife, Elizabeth Cox Stone, after 12 years of marriage, relinquishing custody of their two sons, Sean, 9, and Michael, 2. But for the moment his chief concern is the release of his newest film, Heaven and Earth.

EW: Heaven and Earth is competing against a number of other serious movies that opened at the same time, including Schindler’s List and Philadelphia.

OS: Yes, that’s the sick and disturbing process. It’s not healthy for either the artist or society. Because one doesn’t have to be good at the expense of another. It’s silly. It’s a gladiator game-all victory or death. I always feel sorry for the the Super Bowl teams-the loser is more of a dog than any team all year.

EW: After Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, did you expect to return to Vietnam again as a subject?

OS: Not when I did Platoon, no. Let me put it this way. First I survived the war. That’s a minor miracle. And then I was able to write about it and film it. So that seemed as if it completed the action. But what happened is, it only deepened my interest. There was no plan for a trilogy. But they complement each other. Platoon was about the war in the jungle. Then Born went back to America. Then Heaven and Earth went one step further, back to Vietnam, then to America, then again to Vietnam. What happens next? Is it a closed circle? It doesn’t have to be.

EW: What do you think draws you back to the subject of Vietnam more than 20 years after the end of the war?

OS: Vietnam has applications to any of seven or eight interventions in the Third World by America. I’m amazed people don’t see the relevance of it. We have played the global policeman. Whether the helmets are in Panama or the Gulf War is totally irrelevant. It’s the same human beings who are going to war. There’s such a cynical and jaded section of our society. I see that occasionally in critics - ”Oh, Stone is doing another Vietnam movie, as if we needed another one.” But each one is for me an exploration of some new territory, a different mirror to look into. John Ford made Westerns. How many Westerns did he do? Maybe I was a soldier in past lives and I’m working out some karma in this life.

EW: Did the ongoing JFK controversy affect you as you began writing Heaven and Earth in 1992?

OS: Whoever stole the (JFK) script JFK was criticized, in rough-draft form, eight months before it came out. I was trying to be logical and low-key. But I was criticized for being defensive and loudmouthed and creating the controversy, which is insane. I never created the controversy. So being in the Far East was a great holiday. It’s a second home. Thailand is an intensely beautiful country with a gentle people. I just love it. I wish I could make more movies there.

EW: Heaven and Earth has been labeled a Vietnam War movie, but it seems to be more of an attempt to understand the Vietnamese worldview.

OS: To me, it’s ultimately about anyone who has to go through hardship-whether in peacetime or wartime. What amazes me about this woman is that she goes through so many changes so quickly. That’s partly because of her womanness, her flexibility, her instinct for survival, and her spirituality. She hits every number on the roulette wheel-she’s a beggar, she’s a prostitute, she’s a VC spy, she’s a peasant girl, she’s an American housewife, a mother, a businesswoman. Each of those roles she got out of, she survived, she got to the next step. So many times she could have been stuck, but her karma was to grow, through lies, through masks.

EW: What did coming up against such a personality do to you?

OS: I learned a lot. It was a privilege to be with Le Ly. She’s tiny, 4 foot 11, but she has such strength. Small women tend to be clearer and more certain about their destinations. She taught me about the land, about agriculture-I know how to plant rice now. I know about Buddhism. I now understand it, not as mysticism, but as something very practical and real. That’s something you don’t always get from Western Buddhism-you get a sense of kung-fu movies and David Carradine. But it’s a practical, everyday response to life. It taught me patience with suffering. Rather than try to break out of it, sometimes you try to live with it. And when you fully understand it, it doesn’t haunt you the same way. You move on to your next lesson. (He chuckles.) Whatever that is.

EW: Why wouldn’t the Vietnamese allow you to enter Vietnam to film?

OS: I sent a unit into Vietnam disguised as a documentary crew and got a lot of shots of the landscapes. But they didn’t want us to shoot there because of the scenes of the mother almost being executed and Le Ly being raped by the two VC. They thought that if (we showed) that, we should show the two boys being executed by their commander after he found out. They would have let us do Born on the Fourth of July and Platoon there, but they would not touch Heaven and Earth.

EW: Le Ly Hayslip’s two autobiographies have enough material to support two movies. Did you consider confining the film to the first book, about her experiences in Vietnam? OS: It would be a bit of a cheat to just have her going off into the American sunset. Because the same patterns repeated themselves-the war continued as the war between a man and a woman. The character Tommy Lee Jones plays is very much like the role America played in Vietnam. We wanted them, we wanted to prop them up, they were our little children, our Oriental wives. At the same time, there was an undercurrent of arrogance, ethnocentricity, racism. My enemies are going to say, ”It’s Oliver Stone doing his political bulls — – again,” but it’s not. It’s not me at all. I’m really letting her speak of what she went through.

EW: How did you prepare Hiep Thi Le, who hadn’t acted before, for the rape and torture scenes?

OS: She certainly didn’t want to do them. We tried to do it as tenderly as possible. I built prosthetic breasts for her, so she would not feel naked in the rape scene, and that was helpful. But we shot in the rain all night and were wet and miserable and cold. She had a hard time dealing with it. But she’s not a complainer. She stepped on a nail once-it went almost to her bone- and she came back to work in 30 minutes.

EW: How did you decide how far to push the violence? When I saw the film, several people walked out after the torture scene.

OS: I’ve heard a lot of that. But it’s so minor compared to what people go through when they’re being tortured. I’m amazed that Americans would be so squeamish. What wimps! How can you deny life? What we’re going to get as a result of that is a lot of PG Jurassic Parks. We’re going to live in a PG fucking world. Macaulay Culkin will be our next Clark Gable.

EW: Do you see Le Ly as a victimized woman or a feminist heroine

OS: Le Ly was not a conscious feminist - this is a woman who’s just trying to be a human being. If anyone had bad luck with men, she was victim number one. It’s easy to cast yourself as a victim of men, especially when you’re 4 foot 11. She’s guilty of some of that in the movie. Victimization is a popular concept now, but it’s not an accurate one. It doesn’t solve the problem. It doesn’t take responsibility. Everyone’s a victim these days. AIDS sufferers like (the lead character in Philadelphia played by) Tom Hanks are victims. Jews in concentration camps are victims. Maybe we’re into victimization as a society. But I try not to be.

EW: After making Heaven and Earth and executive-producing The Joy Luck Club this year, are you prepared to be accused of being a feminist?

OS: I’ve heard that Heaven and Earth is considered to be feminist, but I don’t agree. Maybe you could say, yes, Oliver was going through a broadening of perceptions to include more women in his life. (But) it’s coincidence. I didn’t do it consciously.

EW: When you wrote 1985’s Year of the Dragon, you had an angry exchange about Asian stereotyping with Wayne Wang, who ended up directing The Joy Luck Club. How did that happen?

OS: In Hollywood, people you fight with often become your best friends. Never close the curtain on anybody. Somebody who hates you might one day end up liking you. A critic might end up liking you-you never know. Things change-the first law of Buddhism.

EW: After Heaven and Earth, you immediately jumped into directing Natural Born Killers, which stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as mass murderers. That sounds like a real shifting of gears.

OS: It was total. (Laughs.) It was like Bo Jackson going from football to baseball. But that’s what I wanted. I’d been two years on Heaven and Earth, a grueling movie technically. I wanted to turn around and do a fast road movie about mass murder, the criminal-justice system, and the American media, and have wicked fun. A nasty-boy kind of thing. Celebrate Peckinpah, Brando, James Dean. I have a bad side, and I can be bad in the movies. But I don’t feel it’s a violent movie-it’s an action movie. It’s more in the JFK mode in terms of a totally fractured style, whereas Heaven and Earth is more classical.

EW: Do you have more perspective on the JFK experience now?

OS: No, not really. I’m puzzled by the swamp of media coverage for the 30th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, this orgy of sentimentalization. Most of those shows were not watched. The ratings were low. I think people sniff a rat. With the egregious selection of information they decide to throw at the audience, I think people see through it.

EW: A recent Gallup poll showed that most people don’t believe Oswald was the lone assassin. You must feel as if you’ve played a role in that.

OS: And they won’t let me forget it. (Laughs.) My name has become synonymous with lunatic, conspiracy buff. However, the world is rooted in conspiracy. Every government in the world is rooted in conspiracy-most recently, the Chinese government. So I don’t know why the so-called opinion-makers use the word conspiracy in a derogatory fashion. Come on, we’ve had six or seven conspiracies since Vietnam. It amazes me.

EW: Since you just directed Woody Harrelson in Natural Born Killers, did you ask him about allegations that his father (convicted murderer Charles Harrelson) was one of the mysterious hoboes rounded up near Dealey Plaza?

OS: Oh, sure. He strongly maintains that his father was not at Dealey Plaza. And he may very well be right. (Harrelson’s father) certainly looked like him. But I don’t know who to believe in that case.

EW: Many people were surprised to see you in both Dave and Wild Palms as yourself, spoofing your image as an assassination/conspiracy buff.

OS: Ivan Reitman, who directed Dave, told me I had to show the world I had a sense of humor. (Laughs.) I guess he thought I had one. Larry King and I had a lot of fun doing the scene in which I’m the only one in the country who knows Kevin Kline’s a fraud. Also, I like working as an actor. I’m doing another role now in something called Murder in the First. I just rehearsed it today. I play a type A prosecutor, very bossy and pushy. It’s two days’ work with Christian Slater. So I get to work with the young boys.

EW: Why do you think you’ve become such a magnet for controversy? Do you seek it out?

OS: I think once you become successful, a reverse psychology sets in. You become suspect. That’s part of this negativism in the country. It’s jealousy. But it’s also a perverse attitude that equates success with fraud. And I think that’s because art has been stripped of its spirituality. In fact, those films that have been successful have had an element of spirituality. I think Ghost, though done in a Western style, was successful because of its spirituality. Great films are always great films of the spirit. Even the original Ghostbusters, you could argue, paid homage to ghosts and the spirit.

-Oliver Stone interviewed by Entertainment Weekly, Jan 14 1994