#your network IS your net worth

[theriverbeyond]

Counterfetts on Twitter (icon is Isobel from bg3) has a thread about it that also places the Charles business in the timeline in case that’s relevant (personally I only think it is as a comparison of how the royal family usually handles things). It doesn’t cover the more recent stuff though, so I’ll do an overview:

4th March a blurry paparazzi photo of Kate in the car with her mum is released. People use AI to remove the distortion and then make wild claims about it being a double because the AI made it not look like her, but that’s just how those enhancement features work. The photos too grainy to glean anything from except that she’s alive and conscious.

5th March the ministry of defence posts that she’s going to attend trooping of the colour in June. This is bizarre because the MoD don’t make those announcements, and it’s a long way off to be announcing that. The announcement is removed the same day.

10th March for Mother’s Day Kensington palace post a photo of Kate with her children, saying it was taken by William. She is not wearing a wedding ring. The photo is pretty obviously photoshopped and several media outlets put a kill notice on it.

11th March Kate tweets from the Kensington palace account that she likes to mess around with photo editing and apologises for the confusion. This is bizarre for several reasons, first that William took the photo but Kate’s taking the blame, and second that it is not in the format of an official announcement which ALL communications from royals or their representatives usually are. A photo of her in the car with William, supposedly on the way to two seperate appointments is released later. She is looking away from the camera and only her profile is visible. It is a BIZARRE photo to pick during this particular moment.

Over the next few days many different news outlets post articles about the marchioness of cholmondeley (pronounced chumly. Somehow) just introducing her out of nowhere. Apparently she is rumoured to be Williams mistress.

Tbh I don’t think there’s anything particularly malicious going on, I think she’s just either gained weight from surgery or had a temporary colostomy bag put in and the royal family is too misogynistic/ableist to let her be photographed like that. I do also think William is cheating on her but that’s just seperate to this whole thing. I think the lack of the wedding ring in the Mother’s Day photo has more to do with generative ai being used than a secret message hinting at divorce.

omg thank you anon.... i expected a link and instead u delivered this info directly into my inbox. #blessed

[vaperarmand]

SKLJDFSDF okay you're so right insane to be like 'this is so passe.....' about the old man selfcest vampire fucking. i assume this is just what normal people spend their time thinking about so all the ground must have been covered already. armand feeling resentful and shut out is so........ and meanwhile the daniels are just whispering and giggling about him but like, mentally. actually this is kind of the ideal scenario for young daniel because armand can still get in his head and also his older self can get in there too....armand and older daniel getting the closest they can to mind reading again by putting younger daniel in the middle, brainwise <3

YES THE DANIELS GIGGLING TOGETHER IS SOO NECESSARY. armand getting jealous and prickly and shy and the daniels having to like invite him in. young daniel kind of opening himself as a conduit for them so he’s getting mentally eiffel towered. in this scenario i think armand is eventually coaxed into joining them and they kiss his beautiful face and make him feel very loved. and additionally someone gets eiffel towered for real

[gideonisms]

Tor offering to @ people as IF I won't be @ ed by 3 different friends and 2 anons the millisecond any news drops

[thatguymaurille]

[hertypeofparty]

Weird as hell seeing a friend turn into a person you don't want in your life in front of your eyes like oh we are going to be strangers this time next year huh

[thesocialbarrel]

Your Network is Your Net Worth [INFOGRAPHIC]

Your Network is Your Net Worth [INFOGRAPHIC] We’ve all heard the statement “It’s not what you know, it’s WHO you know”, and that sentiment has only become stronger in the era of digital connection. One of the most powerful ways for an individual to grow their success is to tap into their influence network, whether it is derived from their corporate job or university. Investing in meaningful…

[avoicebehindthestars]

About bootlegging Good Omens...

I don't have the ranges to reach a lot of people, but I'm going to say this nonetheless.

If you feel like you can't bare anything that NG has ever created, you don't want to hear about Good Omens, Sandman, Coraline etc. ever again, that's perfectly fine and a decision to be respected. Quite frankly, I've found myself feeling uneasy while I tried to read Sandman recently because I can't stop perceiving it through what I found out about the author. Hell, even the sex scene in Stardust doesn't sit right with me anymore...

BUT

If you are still a fan of any of Neil's ongoing franchise (GO, Sandman, DBD, Anansi Boys) and choosing to bootleg them just to "punish" him - think again. Neil's current net worth is $18M. Even if he doesn't ever earn another penny, he can spend up to $0.5M a year and live to be nearly a hundred without a care in the world.

What you'll actually be doing is informing the streaming networks (Prime and Netflix) that Neil's franchise isn't worth investing in anymore. And, as a result, you guessed it - the shows you still love WILL get CANCELLED. Make no mistake, just because Prime has greenlit Good Omens s3 doesn't mean that can't pull out on a whim.

Neil hates showrunning, he said as much himself. He's only persevering on Good Omens because he'd made a promise to Pratchett. So let me say it again: by bootlegging, you won't be punishing Neil. You'll be punishing YOURSELVES by literally telling the networks to cancel the show, because they won't get any money out of it. Or, if not cancel - limit the investment, as they did with GO s2, which will result in shorter episodes (in case of GO right now we're looking at 6x45m... would you rather get 6x30m instead?), fewer extras, lower budget on CGI and sets, and overall poorer quality.

In other words - you'll be cutting multiple artists' income. I'm not talking about top-tier actors like MS or DT - they'll do all right either way (although MS will mostly likely be heartbroken, as we know how much he loves Good Omens). I'm talking about all the extras and less known actors who perform minor roles! I'm talking about everyone involved in the production - in making of the sets, in creating the special effects, hell, in carrying equipment and pouring coffee! Those are the people you'll be punishing.

Seriously, aside from his promise to Terry, I'm convinced Neil couldn't care less. Otherwise why would he be so adamant about wrapping it up in just 3 seasons when it's winning distinction after distinction?

Last but not least, watching Good Omens legally and buying franchise doesn't harm the victims. If Neil really committed the atrocities he's accussed of, he'll be punished by the court! Punishing Neil isn't your responsibility!

So before you make a decision, please remember:

if the show you bootleg is cancelled as a result, you will have punished: yourself, the fandom, all the artists and people involved in the production

punishing Neil is NOT your responsibility

wanting the networks to continue the franchise you like doesn't harm the victims

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How the kleptocrats and oligarchs hunt civil society groups to the ends of the Earth

It's a great time to be an oligarch! If you have accumulated a great fortune and wish to put whatever great crime lies behind it behind you, there is an army of fixers, lickspittles, thugs, reputation-launderers, procurers, henchmen, and other enablers who have turnkey solutions for laundering your reputation and keeping the unwashed from building a guillotine outside the gates of your compound.

The field of International Relations has studied the enemies of the Klept in detail: the Transnational Activist Network is a well-documented phenomenon. But far more poorly understood is the Transnational Uncivil Society Network, who will polish any turd of sufficient wealth to a high, professional gloss.

These TUSNs are the subject of a new, timely scholarly paper by Alexander Cooley, John Heathershaw and Ricard Soares de Oliveira: "Transnational Uncivil Society Networks: kleptocracy’s global fightback against liberal activism," published in last month's European Journal of International Relations:

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:5e5a3052-c693-4991-a7cc-bc2b47134467/download_file?file_format=application%2Fpdf&safe_filename=Cooley_et_al_2023_transnational_uncivil_society.pdf&type_of_work=Journal+article

The authors document how a collection of institutions – some coercive, others organized around good works – allow kleptocrats to take power, keep power, and use power. This includes "wealth managers, company providers, accounting firms, and international bankers" who create the complex financial structures that obscure the klept's wealth. It also includes "second citizenship managers and lawyers" that facilitate the klept's transnational nature, both to provide access to un-looted, prosperous places to visit, and boltholes to escape to in the face of coup or reform. It includes the real-estate brokers and other asset facilitators, who turn whole precincts of the world's greatest cities into empty safe-deposit boxes in the sky, while ensuring that footlose criminal elites always have a penthouse to perch in when they take a break from the desiccated husks they've drained dry back home.

Of course, it also includes the PR managers and philanthropic ventures that allow the klept to launder their reputation, to make themselves synonymous with good deeds rather than mass murder. Think here of how the Sacklers used charity to turn their family name into a synonym for culture and fine art, rather than death by opioid overdose:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/11/justice-delayed/#justice-redeemed

Beyond providing comfort to "Politically Exposed Persons" and "High Net-Worth Individuals," TUSNs are concerned with neutralizing TANs. Activists in these transnational networks play an inside-outside game: in-country activists will recruit peers abroad to bring attention to the crimes of their local kleptocrats. These overseas partners target the klept in the places they go to play and spend, spoiling their fun – and if they succeed in getting corrupt leaders censured abroad, then in-country activists can leverage that bad press to fight the klept at home.

To fight this "Boomerang Effect," TUSNs seek to burnish corrupt officials' reputations abroad, getting their names on humanitarian prizes, beloved sports teams, cultural institutions and great universities. They seek to capture international governance institutions that might wrong-foot kleptocrats, co-opting them to enable and even celebrate looters.

When it comes to elite philanthropy, TUSNs are necessarily selective. Kleptocrats' foundations don't fund anti-kleptocratic groups – they stick to "education, public health, the environment and the arts." These domains steer clear of human rights questions that might implicate their benefactors. Russian oligarchs love children's charities and disability rights – provided they don't target the Russian state.

If charitable giving is reputation laundering's carrot, then "reputation management" is the laundry's stick. Think of organized copyfraudsters who clone websites that have criticized their clients, then backdate the articles, then accuse the originals of infringing copyright in order to get them de-listed from Google or taken offline altogether:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#dark-ops

Reputation managers also spend a lot of time in court. In the UK – the world's leader in libel tourism, thanks to a legal system designed to let posh monsters sue muckraking journalists into silence – Russian oligarchs have perfected the art of forcing their critics to shut up and go away:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/04/londongrad/#enablers

Indeed, London is a one-stop shop for the global klept, a place were forelock-tugging Renfields will buy you a Mayfair mansion under cover of a numbered company, sue your critics into silence, funnel your money into an anonymous Channel Islands account:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/07/the-klept/#pep

They'll sell you whole galleriesworth of "fine art" that you can have relocated to a climate-controlled container in a Swiss or Irish freeport:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poesy-the-monster-slayer/#moneylab

They'll give your thick-as-pigshit progeny a PhD and never check to see whether he wrote his thesis himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSE%E2%80%93Gaddafi_affair

Then they'll hook you up with a cyber-arms dealer to hunt your enemies by capturing their devices:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/27/gas-on-the-fire/#a-safe-place-for-dangerous-ideas

But don't let Brexit stop you from shopping for bargains on the continent. The Golden Passports of the EU – available in a variety of flavors, from Maltese to Cypriot to Portuguese – offer the discerning failson access to the luxury good shops and fleshpots of 27 advanced economies, making it a favorite of the Khmer Riche – the junior klept of Cambodia's ruling faction:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/cambodia-hunsen-wealth/

But golden passports are for amateurs. Skilled klepts travel on diplomatic passports, which offer the twin benefits of free movement and consequence-free criminality, thanks to diplomatic immunity. The former Kazakh dictator's son-in-law enjoyed a freewheeling diplomatic life in Vienna; one daughters of the dictator of Tajikistan had a jolly time as an envoy to DC; another, to London (where else?).

All this globetrotting serves a second purpose: when rival elites seize power back home and force the old guard into exile, those ex-monsters can show up in the lands they called their second homes and apply for asylum. It turns out that even bomb-the-boats UK will welcome any asylum seeker who enters via the private jet terminal at City Airport (to be fair, these "refugees" have extensive properties in Zone 1 and country places in the Home Counties, so they won't need housing).

This stuff works. After Kazakh state goons murdered at least 14 protesters at a Zhanaozen oil facility in 2011, human rights groups around the world took up the cause. But they were effectively neutralized by TUSNs, with former UK PM Tony Blair writing on behalf of the Kazakh government to the EU condemning any kind of international investigation into the mass killings (add "former Prime Ministers" to the list of commodities for sale in the UK to sufficiently well-resourced murderer).

The authors close their paper with two case-studies. The first is of the daughters of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, Gulnara and Lola. And President Karimov was indeed a dictator: he trapped his population within his borders, forced them to use unconvertible scrip in place of money, and ordered the murder of hundreds of peaceful protesters, plunging the country into international isolation.

But while Uzbeks were sealed within their borders, Gulnara Karimov became an international player, running a complex network of businesses that mixed the products of the nation's oilfields with her family's fortune. She solicited – and received – bribes from Teliasonera, MTS and Vimpelcom, who were all vying for the contract to provide service in Uzbekistan. All told, she extracted more than $1b in bribes, laundering them through Latvia, Hong Kong and New York. She acquired real-estate in France and Switzerland, and her spree continued until her father collaborated with Uzbek security to seize her assets and place her under house-arrest.

Lola Karimova-Tillyaeva was Gulnara's estranged younger sister. She and her husband Timur Tillyaev ran the Dubai-based SecureTrade, which did extensive business with "opaque Scottish Limited Partnerships," laundering more than $127m in a single year to offshore accounts in the UAE and Switzerland. They acquired many luxe assets – a jet, a Californian villa, and an LA perfumier.

Lola styled herself as the face of the Karimovas abroad, a "philanthropist and cultural ambassador." She was a UNESCO ambassador and commissioned works of monumental art – and also sued the shit out of news outlets that reported factual matters about her family repressive activity at home. She organized AIDS charities in the name of Uzbekistan – even as her father was imprisoning a writer for publishing a book explaining how to have safer sex.

The second case-study is on Isabel dos Santos, "Africa's richest woman," daughter of Angolan dictator Jose Eduardo dos Santos. Isabel's vast fortune stemmed from her personal capture of vast swathes of the third-largest economy in Africa: "telecommunications, banking, diamonds, real estate and cement, among many others." Isabel enjoyed seemingly limitless access to state credit and co-investment, and was given first crack at newly deregulated industries. Foreign firms that invested in Angola were required to "partner" with Isabel's businesses.

Isabel claimed to be a "self-made woman" – a claim credulously parroted by the western press, including the FT. She used her homegrown fortune to become a major player abroad, especially in Portugal, where she was represented by the leading Portuguese law-firm PLMJ. Her enablers are who's who of corruption-loving lickspittles: McKinsey, Ernst and Young, Boston Consulting Group, and the Spanish BigLaw firm Uri Menendez.

Isabel cultivated a public facade of philanthropic giving and public spirited activism, serving as head of the Angolan Red Cross. She attended Davos and spoke at the LSE (she was also invited to Oxford, but her invitation was subsequently rescinded). On social media, she dismissed critics of her wealth and corruption as "colonialists," decrying their "racism" and "prejudice."

Isabel dos Santos's corrupt sources of wealth were finally, irrefutably exposed through the Luanda Leaks, in which the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists mapped the network of "top banks, management consultants and legal firms that were central to dos Santos’s operations."

Both case studies shed light on the network of brilliant, driven enablers and procurers without whom the world's greatest monsters would falter. It's a rare window on a secretive world, one that is poorly understood even by its inhabitants. As Michael Mechanic wrote in Jackpot, his 2021 book on vast, intergenerational fortunes, the winners of the lucky orifice lottery often lack any real understanding of how The Money is structured, grown and protected:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#affluenza

This point was reiterated by Abigail Disney, in a brave piece on what it's like to grow up subject to the oversight of these millionaires who babysit the children of billionaires:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/19/dynastic-wealth/#caste

This is an important contribution to the literature. We naturally focus on the ultrawealthy individuals whose reputations and fortunes are the subject of so much attention, but without the TUSNs, they would be largely helpless.

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/24/launderers-enforcers-bagmen/#procurers

Image: Sam Valadi (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/132084522@N05/17086570218/

CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

--

Colin (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Palace_of_Westminster_from_the_dome_on_Methodist_Central_Hall_(cropped).jpg

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

[boag]

If you’re in your 20s and your circle isn’t discussing Riverdale meta it’s time to find a new circle . Your network is your net worth

[theambitiouswoman]

Turning Rejection into Your Superpower 👑✨

We all know that dealing with rejection can be tough. Whether you've been turned down for a job, a date, or a project, rejection can hurt and mess with your confidence. But what if I told you that rejection could be your superpower? By learning how to deal with rejection effectively, you can use it as a catalyst for personal growth and success.

Bounce Back Stronger:

The first step in turning rejection into your superpower is to embrace resilience. Understand that rejection is not a reflection of your worth as a person. Everyone faces rejection at some point in their lives. What sets you apart is how you bounce back from it. Develop a mindset that sees rejection as a chance to learn and grow. Each rejection is a stepping stone on your path to success.

Analyze and Learn:

When you face rejection, take some time to analyze the situation. Ask yourself what went wrong and what you can learn from the experience. Did you lack certain skills or qualifications? Were there specific areas where you could have improved? By analyzing and learning from your rejections, you can make better decisions moving forward.

Boost Your Confidence:

Rejection can knock your confidence down a few notches. But self confidence is your secret weapon. Remind yourself of your achievements and what makes you awesome. Create a list of your achievements, skills, and qualities that make you unique. The more you believe in yourself, the easier it is to handle rejection.

Set Realistic Goals:

Dream big, but also set goals that are doable. Breaking your ambitions into smaller, achievable steps is like navigating with a map instead of wandering around aimlessly. This approach not only makes your goals more manageable but also increases your chances of success, reducing the likelihood of rejection.

Ask for Feedback:

Don't be afraid to ask for feedback when facing rejection. Constructive criticism is gold. Reach out to those who said no and politely inquire why. Use their feedback as a guide to refine your skills and approach.

Network, Network, Network:

Your network is your net worth. Connect with people who share your interests and dreams. Attend events, join groups, and use social media to build your circle. Networking can open doors you never knew existed.

Be Persistent:

Persistence is your superpower's sidekick. Success takes time, and rejection is just part of the journey. Many well known people faced plenty rejections before achieving their goal. Don't give up. Keep working towards your dreams, and let rejection fuel your determination.

Growth Mindset:

Adopt a growth mindset. Believe that you can develop your skills and intelligence through effort and practice. When you see rejection as a temporary setback instead of a roadblock. It becomes just a bump in the road to your dreams and you'll become more resilient when faced with rejection moving forward.

Rejection is part of the game. How you handle it is what matters. Embrace it, learn from it, and use it as fuel to propel you toward your goals. Success often comes after a series of rejections, but with the right mindset, you'll turn each "no" into a stepping stone to your goals.

[absoluteconceptofbeauty]

if your main circle isnt discussing lezzing out

its time for u to find a new circle

your network is your net worth

[theriverbeyond]

ok i finally got crocs bc they were on sale... does anyone know a shop that sells those crocs charms individually vs in a 10-50 pack

[generalluxun]

I know it wasn't intended by the writers and even from a purely in universe perspective it was likely not a conscious decision but...

It really does feel like Andre was setting Chloe up for failure.

There's obviously letting doing Sabrina most of Chloe's labor for her thing.

But we also have that whole aspect where he taught her explicitly to cheat, extort, threaten and bribe her way to victory. A strategy that works for him because he's not doing that stuff to the people he wants to vote for him, but that ends up making Chloe hated by her peers.

Similarly, there's encouraging her Audrey impersonation, which even if we ignore the creep factor. Still means he is rewarding her for engaging in damaging and anti social behavior that only serves to make her miserable and more dependent on him.

His total tolerance for Audrey's overt cruelty towards her can also feel like it feeds into this. Again I don't think he is necessarily aware of or planning it, but this still serves to, A, not make Audrey upset with him, and B, mean he remains Chloe's primary source of affirmation and affection.

Add in him in season 1 being willing to act against her if she impacted 'him' negatively and it really does kind of feel like he, at least subconsciously, wanted Chloe to need to hang off of him forever and to generally lack other support networks or avenues of self sufficiency.

I mean, yes. There's a reason I'm very much on the 'Audrey's behavior is bad and abusive, but André's is worse' wagon.

Audrey is openly abusive to those around her, that is clear. She also wants absolutely nothing to do with kids. She removes herself from her daughters lives. She does it out of selfishness, but the net result is she she does not *make* herself a role model.

André on the other hand loves having a kid! They play great with the press. They make for awesome photo opportunities, and now and then he can play family just like in movies! What he doesn't like is *raising* a kid. He himself is horrible an self centered, so he doesn't think that maybe he needs to change his behaviors for the child, so he passes all of his Andreness on to them.

I know guys who were pretty useless until they had a kid, I know guys who are pretty useless with anything that *isn't their kid, but both groups still realize that *parenting* is something you have to do right, something worth changing or at least concealing your worst-self behaviors from. André can't even go that far.

André goes past 'oops haha silly me' or 'overworked parent' tropes too. The man is filthy rich. He could *make* time for his daughter if he wanted to. He also fails so completely on the very basics of parenting when *he has the resources to get help*. It shows he hasn't even really tried.

Well, he tries like a 4yr old tries when they don't want to do something. One half-hearted attempt, then they whine.

How do we have obvious proof, canonically, that this is on André? Look at Zoé. She had as much if not more contact with Audrey, and we are not giving her credit for being a *good* influence, are we? So then it comes down to the influence of the other parent, and what differences does canon show us there? Hmmm.

Look like André is a net negative in a child's life.

Oh and miss me anyone who claims children are just 'bad seeds'. That line of thinking can go jump in a wood chipper.

[lvlystars]

23:47 — s.mg

“okay, promise you won’t get mad at me?” mingi holds out a pinky to your blindfolded figure, and you’re left in confusion when you feel his pinky finger grazing your hand. you furrow your eyebrows. “why would i get mad at you, love?”

“just promise!” he urges you, and you hold your hands up in the air before letting out an ‘okay!’ and hooking your pinky with his, promising that you wouldn’t get mad over whatever he had planned.

“you’re not crossing your fingers or anything, right-”

“mingi get on with it!” you push him, growing impatient as you both stood outside your apartment door, ready to go in and just ring in your birthday while you're in bed, peacefully cuddled up in your sheets and sleeping.

mingi holds you back from entering your home last minute as he whispers in your ear. “just to let you know that although i am your boyfriend, this was all wooyoung’s idea-”

“YOU TOOK AN IDEA FROM WOOYOUNG?!?!” you exclaim, now dreading what state your apartment is in. you step backwards as you stumble a little, the black blindfold still restricting you from seeing anything around you, making mingi hold you tightly in his arms as he grows nervous.

“listen, we wanted it to be a surprise…” mingi trails off, then clears his throat. “let’s just go in, yeah? and then you’ll see the surprise!” he smiles brightly, trying to keep any evidence of stress or nervousness evident on his face.

you both soon walk into your shared apartment, and you take off your blindfold to be met with about an army’s worth of mingi cutouts all facing you, staring you down as you stare back at them with shock. you couldn’t even count up to 20 before losing track, and you feel all the colourful words come up into your mouth. turning towards him, mingi grins sheepishly at you before bolting out the door, whipping open the door to the staircase as you chase after him.

“SONG MINGI!” you scream, running up the stairs and following him into a random open apartment as he screams bloody murder, throwing his arms up in the air as he waves them around.

before you can register where you even were at the moment, the lights flash on and screams erupt all around you as cameras are pointing towards you.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY Y/N!!!!”

you pull your phone to check the time, and shining right back at your face were the numbers 00:00, indicating that it indeed was your birthday.

you start to thank everyone as they wished you happy birthday, some people giving you pats on the back while others were screaming in your face and lightly giving you birthday beats. as you talk to everyone, you can’t help but look for a particularly tall, silver-haired man who might be lurking amongst the crowd, hiding himself from your wrath, when you spot him in the hallways towards the bedroom.

mingi doesn’t even notice you marching over to him before he yelps out as he’s dragged into a bedroom.

“did you plan this?” you ask him, crossing your arms as you look up at him.

“YOU SCARED THE SHIT OUT OF ME!” he shrieks, holding his chest as he breaths heavily. you slap his arms as he flinches, putting his arms down. “well?”

“...yes.” he hangs his head down.

you fake a scowl before giving in and going in for a hug, taking mingi by surprise as he slowly hugs back.

“thank you.” you whisper to him, pinching his side playfully.

“AH- oh uh, you're welcome, baby.” he breathily laughs, flinching as he wraps his arms around you in a warm embrace, rubbing your shoulders in endearment.

you both stay silent before you interrupt the silence.

“now where’s wooyoung?”

wc. 643

a/n: for miles! heppy birdday kilometres @star1117-archives

tagging 🏷️ —

@welcometomyoasis @etherealyoungk @amxlia-stars @seuonji @spicyseonghwas @haowrld @kyeomyun

networks 🔗—

@preciousillusions-net @cacaokpop-fics @k-labels

ⓒ lvlystars

[wickworks]

Crescent Loom & genetic algorithms

I recently got an email about Crescent Loom asking about opening it up with an API or something to fine-tune the parameter space of its bodies & neurons, and I put enough thought into writing a response I thought it'd be worth sharing here too:

The idea of incorporating a genetic algo came up enough during development that I actually made this graphic to respond with:

In short, as a biologist, I've found myself more interested in making a game about intelligent design than evolution (lol). My thoughts have evolved somewhat since the initial "scope" issue — my party line for years has been that I'm making this thing in order to let people get their hands into the guts of biological nervous systems, not to let them press a button and have the computer give them a funny animal. Crescent Loom as a game already struggles with being too close to being a fishbowl screensaver maker (you make your little guy… and then what?) and trying to automate more of the creation process only worsens that problem. I also think that "evolution" games that use genetic algorithms as their primary mechanic are honeypots that trap developers working in this field but never produce compelling gameplay because of a fundamentally cursed problem that the most interesting thing the program is doing is not directly visible to the playe. "It's getting better at doing stuff? I guess?" — it's a fun mechanic to program, not play. And weirdly people almost always only think of doing it for biology-themed games, not ones like Kerbal that are doing the same damn thing but the idea of evolution isn't as close at hand (though there's been some cool demos done for driving games). But I hear where the idea is coming from that searching the parameter space is not a fun process, and the story that "centaurs" of humans running things with a computer taking care of the details outperforming either working alone is an alluring one. Getting an open API with CL handling the UI of weaving a nervous system and allowing it to be modified or plugged into whatever you want would open up a lotta possibilities — genetic algos, sure, but also stuff like CL-made networks driving robots or something. And if you had emailed me like two months ago, that's where my email would have ended, but I recently connected with someone who's done basically that: check out FEAGI and Neurorobotics. Mohammad's been working on a very much more implementation-agnostic neural-net-genetic-algorithm series of projects. Definitely less "pick up and play" than CL, but it's about as close to that open API idea that I think we're ever going to see. He's doing it better than I could ever do with CL, so it's kind of nice to be able to say that that dream's taken care of so I can focus on education & accessibility rather than making it a general-purpose tool.

[dr-rabbit-3]

If you're friends don't ship beckory kill em and get new friends

Your network is your net worth.

Love Fazbear entertainment.