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@firstroseofmyhouse
just wanted to let people know that in the czech translation of gideon the ninth, for “first flower of my house,” they put “první růže mého dvora,” meaning “first rose”—and they could’ve put “první květ” instead, which is technically closer, but instead the translator (alžběta lexová) jumped to the most romantic option
in case folk outside the UK aren't abreast of our news, the British press just hounded a black academic to death
a rough timeline of events (from memory, there may be inaccuracies, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
Cambridge professor of sociology Jason Arday is accused of plagiarism by another academic
the accuser is a "race realist" who believes that in a true meritocracy all university professors would be white. this is somehow not acknowledged much during the entire ordeal
this leads to several days of media coverage demanding an investigation, or that Arday is expelled from his post immediately
somehow this accusation that has no effect on the lives of 99.99% of the population becomes FRONT PAGE NEWS in all the newspapers for multiple days, above anything else happening in the UK or the world at large
following intense media scrutiny, Arday resigns his post as a Cambridge professor
today, august 14th, days after resigning, Arday is found dead at his home in Battersea
the British tabloid press remains, and will always be, fucking evil
LOST CITY
So I'm halfway through Gideon the Ninth and how come nobody has told me about Dulcinea?? She's so good, you'd think people would go bonkers over her
Ah.
Ngl ive had Gideon the ninth in my to read pile on my kindle app for months and this post is what inspired me to finally open it now
Ah, I see.
......well now I'm curious.
My friend send me this and i couldn't help but think of this post
we sharing the pain we've put people through?
okay i’ve had gideon the ninth on my tbr list for years now… i guess it’s time
A little under a year later and yea they were right
Wake is an interesting subversion of the Dead Pregnant Wife/Mother because she initially appears to be a classic tragically dead mother. Dead soon after birth, last act trying to protect her child, names her child with her dying (or in this case posthumous) breath. Then we find out the actual truth about the nature of her pregnancy, childbirth, and death. For her conceiving was akin to strapping on a suicide bomb vest. It was a last ditch attempt to carry out a mission she had dedicated her life to. Her pregnancy reveals so much about her character and mindset. It fleshes her out rather than flattening her into a caricature of a mother like pregnancy so often does to characters. It helps that we actually get to hear her talk about her pregnancy and birth in her own words, something you don't usually get from a Dead Mother. It's also interesting to have a character who both chose to get pregnant and yet found the process horrifying as well as a woman who unequivocally does not care about her child, in fact barely views it as human, and is not vilified by the narrative for it. Untimely Wake is still a character who's arc centers around her pregnancy, traumatic birth, and subsequent death. But all of those things serve a role in the narrative basically counter to how they usually would. Wake was not a mother in anything but the most technical sense, she did not love her child, she died trying to kill the baby she'd just given birth to, and that baby is special only because Wake chose to conceive her to use as a weapon.
Your honor, I love them, they're so horrible
But I almost knew what you’d written already, so I don’t know why I was surprised.
ONE FLESH, ONE END.
WHICH DID NOT MAKE ME HAPPY, HARROW. IT DID NOT FILL MY HEART WITH SOFT AND SENTIMENTAL YEARNING. YOU SET ME UP. YOU SET ALL OF IT UP. I GAVE YOU ONE DAMN JOB. AND INSTEAD YOU ROLLED A ROCK OVER ME AND TURNED YOUR BACK. I SPENT ALL THAT TIME DROWNING AND SURFACING IN YOU, OVER AND OVER AND OVER, AND ALL BECAUSE IN THE END YOU COULD NOT BEAR TO DO THE ONE THING I ASKED YOU TO DO.
I WANTED YOU TO USE ME, YOU MALIGN, DOUBLE-CROSSING, CORPSE-OBSESSED BAG OF BONES, YOU BROKEN, USED-UP SHITHEAD! I WANTED YOU TO LIVE AND NOT DIE, YOU IMAGINARY-GIRLFRIEND-HAVING ASSHOLE! FUCK ONE FLESH, ONE END, HARROW. I ALREADY GAVE MY FLESH TO YOU, AND I ALREADY GAVE YOU MY END. I GAVE YOU MY SWORD. I GAVE YOU MYSELF. I DID IT WHILE KNOWING I’D DO IT ALL AGAIN, WITHOUT HESITATION, BECAUSE ALL I EVER WANTED YOU TO DO WAS EAT ME.
Which is, coincidentally, what your mother said to me last night.
spill for me, Muse, the wine-dark tea on a problematic man
we have to bring back the erotic thriller. in the 1970s a beautiful man could go to a beautiful italian villa and fuck every member of the family living there and then leave and that was the entire movie. and you could smoke indoors
"Arthur is not a perfect person, made some mistakes – means he's unworthy of Merlin's love" (not in the show's reality, obviously, Merlin gives Arthur his love in abundance, but in your merwaine pocket) Not a good approach.
And there's no "genocide" even in Uther's time, not to mention Arthur's. Political repressions? Persecution? Sadly, yes. But magical users are not a separate nation and there's actually so few of them. All Arthur wanted is for them to calm fucking down. You pretend to care for them more than Merlin himself. He was done with their recklessness, entitlement, cruelty and madness. He chose another way and another kind. Arthur's his people. Gaius. Camelot. Also, your fave Gwaine doesn't give a fuck about sorcerers, he's on Arthur's side. So your ship twists not only Merlin but Gwaine as well.
lol I have no idea what you were trying to say in the first paragraph but there is making mistakes and then there is perpetuating a genocide against Merlin’s kind. Merlin being a good friend to Arthur and not getting love and respect back is actually the exact criticism I have against Merthur as a concept so good job at spotting the issue there bud!
Also I’m unsure if you know this but genocide actually doesn’t have to be against a nation, just a set of people, source:
It doesn’t matter how few people are left in the group (after years of them being prosecuted and killed btw, I wonder why there are so few of them left), it’s the act of trying to exterminate a group for a characteristic that makes it genocide.
If all Arthur wanted was for them to calm down, he would have done better to listen to them and help undo the damage his father did. But he didn’t.
And I’m so tired of this argument that Merlin didn’t care about magic users when he is shown, even at the worst points in his character arc, to go try to aid as many magic users as possible (Gilli, Daegal, Freya, even Morgana in season 2). He cares so deeply about magic users safety he actually loses himself to the idea that he might actually get to free them all, even when he doesn’t think he will ever be free.
Merlin may consider the people he met in Camelot his family, but he did not turn back on the kin he was granted by way of magic.
And on the Gwaine point, I do agree that season 5 in particular shows Gwaine very much being an aggressor against magic users (especially in the Disir episode), and I see it as a problem in both the writing and his character how quickly he absorbed Arthur’s ideals, but still, at the end of the day, Gwaine’s main drive was always Merlin.
There is a reason so much of this fandom thinks Gwaine knew about Merlin’s magic (I don’t personally but I understand why some do). It’s because Gwaine was always there to give him support and care (unlike Arthur who only ever seemed to take). IMO if he did know about Merlin’s magic, he would not even hesitate to switch sides.
But yes I agree, BBC Merlin saying genocide is ok as long as you’re nice about it is a problem that the writers should not be allowed to get away with.
"Arthur is not a perfect person, made some mistakes – means he's unworthy of Merlin's love" […] Not a good approach.
Nowhere does OP ever state that Merlin’s love comes at a price. Contrary to your belief, love is not transactional and cannot be earned. It is not a judgment on whether Arthur treats Merlin well enough for Merlin to love him but, rather, the effects of Arthur’s actions on a person who loves him loyally. Since Arthur shows Merlin less than the bare minimum of basic respect, we believe that he has an unhealthy impact on Merlin’s life — not that Merlin doesn’t love him regardless.
And there’s no “genocide” even in Uther’s time, not to mention Arthur’s. Political repressions? Persecution? Sadly, yes. But magic users are not a separate nation and there’s actually so few of them.
It’s not particularly shocking that you lack a proper education on what constitutes a genocide. OP did a fine job covering it, but what I’m stuck on is the question of which victims are deliberately excluded by this narrow notion of the eugenics movement.
There are millions of people within certain nations that undergo acts of genocide every day. It is not a nation that experiences genocide but a people. Non-white immigrants and diaspora in the imperial core (Europe and the US) are targeted based upon the fictitious concept of race; however, living in a European nation or the US does not make one a target of these genocides. For someone to be part of a particular nation is completely unnecessary. For example, Jewish people are not a nation, but Germany is a nation, yet the German government persecuted Jewish people within the nation based on their culture and ethnicity. Furthermore, we understand that ethnostates are a call for genocide. The European/US occupation of Palestine, for example, relies on the notion that Jewish people require a nationalistic identity for recognition and safety. By this definition, the annihilation of any group that is not part of a recognized ethnostate is deemed a “conflict” rather than a genocide.
There is another glaring issue in your dismissal of genocide. You claim that it is not meaningfully a genocide because there are too few victims for it to matter. This has horrific implications for real life. You may have heard of the Man of the Hole, an indigenous individual who was the very last of his group. He watched every member of his community be killed by colonizers who were set on clearing the land for agricultural expansion. Although he was the only remaining member of this group, further attacks targeting him were very much considered acts of genocide. There can be exactly one person who makes up a targeted group, and it is still genocide.
This also ignores the dominant occupier’s legal authority to determine nationhood. In the US, many indigenous groups are denied recognition and independence as a nation, particularly if the land in question is rich in natural resources and thus beneficial to the colonizing government. Therefore, the fact that they are not legally recognized as a nation is, in and of itself, an act of genocide. To claim that they cannot be victims of genocide because they are not given independence is not only a grave error but completely ignorant of the lived reality of genocide victims worldwide. It tells us that you have no interest in learning history beyond what PragerU has to say.
In addition, colonies of Europe and the US (take Puerto Rico for example) are not granted independent nationhood, but are very much victims of colonization. These are places which are exploited both for resources and human labor whilst the residents are denied equal rights, government representation, and critical aid (such as medical and infrastructural aid after natural disasters).
The fact that there are so few magic users is a result of genocide, not a contradiction of it. Obviously, genocide seeks to eradicate a select group of individuals based upon culture, religion, and/or ethnicity (all three in the hypothetical scenario presented by Uther’s reign). Genocide is also now applied to attempts to eradicate certain hereditary disabilities, such as autism. Since the aim of genocide is to decrease the number of individuals with the undesired trait, acts of genocide are those which result in a lower population density among people with this trait. This includes forced sterilization, murder, imprisonment, abduction, and forced assimilation. Uther and Arthur both participate in murder, imprisonment, abduction, and forced assimilation over approximately 30 years altogether, which inevitably decreases the population of the targeted group (magical peoples).
Setting this simple inference aside, there is another major reason that there being “so few” of them does not impact whether or not it is genocide. And that is: the entire human population itself was incredibly low to begin with. For reference, BBCM takes place circa 500 CE. Therefore, the number of magical peoples affected is actually a much higher proportion of the population than what you might think! Especially considering the dozens of people affiliated with the Druids who were gathered and imprisoned to be executed in 2x03.
All Arthur wanted is for them to calm fucking down.
I, for one, think they should fuck as irately and nasty as they please.
All jokes aside, this is a common conservative talking point concerning oppression. “These people give us no choice but to oppress them! They’re just so irrationally angry that we orphan and kill their children! Maybe we’d give them equal rights if they didn’t violently resist our genocidal regime at every turn 🙄.”
Needless to say, it’s no different from any other form of victim-blaming. Self-defense as a concept should not be subject to worse scrutiny than the perpetrators of abuse are. If an axe-murderer is chasing you down, you have every right to kill him in self-defense. What difference should it make if that axe-murderer has a permit from the government to murder you? Uther had an executioner who killed people by axe-murder. It’s pretty normal to not want to be axe-murdered, even when the murder is considered socially acceptable. In fact, when the murder is considered socially acceptable, that’s usually when the society veers into eugenics territory.
You pretend to care for them more than Merlin himself *did. He was done with their recklessness, entitlement, cruelty and madness. He chose another way and another kind. Arthur's his people. Gaius. Camelot.
*added for clarity
Interestingly enough, Merlin does not generalize all of his people the way you do. He insists that magic is not all evil and that all magical peoples should not be judged based on the actions of a few, such as Morgana, whose corruption was due to classism rather than magic. What Merlin rejects here is called stereotyping — or, as I stated earlier, generalization. Merlin pursues his and his people’s freedom and invites them to do the same.
Merlin is not anti-magic. Rather, he believes that magic will be freed through Arthur, since: (1) that is what the prophecies predict according to Kilgharrah, the Druids, the Catha, and select High Priestesses such as Nimueh; and (2) he has faith in Arthur’s potential to be a better man/king than Uther was, and than Arthur shows himself to be during his reign as prince, then king. Thus, Merlin does not choose Arthur and Camelot over magic. He supports Arthur because he believes Arthur is good enough to free Merlin and his people. Whenever Arthur fails to do so, Merlin faults himself and determines to do right by magic to the best of his ability as compensation for the delay in freedom.
As a separate point, magic peoples as a whole do not show recklessness, entitlement, cruelty, nor madness based upon their ethnicity/culture. Some are driven to these extents due to trauma and in desperate acts of defense. Note that Uther did not attempt to eradicate magic until after Ygraine’s death. This means that, prior to her death and the genocide, magic had not proven to be a detriment to society. It was only when Uther needed a convenient target to blame for his wife’s death that he committed to the genocide of magical peoples. This is where a sudden influx of “reckless violence” grew amongst those targeted by the regime. Their resistance to oppression was labeled as innate evil, which was used to further justify their expulsion. Again, this is a propaganda tactic that is used against real life marginalized groups, especially Black and Muslim people right now. It’s disturbingly dangerous to spread these ideas that kill children every day.
Also, your fave Gwaine doesn't give a fuck about sorcerers, he's on Arthur's side. So your ship twists not only Merlin but Gwaine as well.
Although Gwaine’s perception of magic is not explored in depth, we know that his most fundamental moral is that a person’s birth circumstances do not define them. Their actions and beliefs determine the kind of person they are. Therefore, we can safely infer that Gwaine would support Merlin given a complete understanding of Uther and Arthur’s errors, unless we are to assume him a full hypocrite on this matter (though at no point does he give any indication of this).
That said, when Gwaine does speak of magic, it is with some level of distrust! He associates it with power and danger, so we get lines from Gwaine such as, “They were forged using sorcery,” (canon emphasis) where the connotation of the word “sorcery” is meant to convey the danger of it. He also implies that the wyverns in 3x08 are dangerous — not because of their size, teeth, or claws, but because “they’re creatures of magic.” Merlin, of course, is able to infer Gwaine’s bias against magic from these events, which informs his decision to keep his magic hidden from Gwaine.
You made a mistake proposing Gwaine’s much milder bias against magic as a counterargument. You may omit Arthur’s severe bias against magic, but it is impossible to ignore when you are the one to suggest comparing Gwaine to Arthur. There is no pride or right to kingship that rests on Gwaine’s opinion of magic, whereas Arthur has far more to lose if he accepts that he is wrong about magic. Gwaine has more to lose if he betrays his moral code, so it’s not a reach to say that Gwaine would adjust his morals to reflect reality given the truth.
Why would it be irrational to prefer a character with a milder, mutable bias as a subject of potential positive development over a character who heads the movement that directly persecutes an entire culture? Since we are people who believe that the genocide was unjustifiable, it makes perfect sense that we would favor Gwaine over Arthur from a moral standpoint, and favor the influence that Gwaine has in Merlin’s life over the influence Arthur has in his life. Gwaine restores Merlin’s sense of personhood, while Arthur (intentionally or not) reduces it. I’m interested in exploring both the dehumanization and unconditional love Merlin experiences, but I won’t be found excusing or glorifying that dehumanization. Unconditional love is a strong foundation for a long-lasting relationship, and I believe there is evidence of romantic interest between Merlin and Gwaine, so they are a reasonable pairing from this perspective.
As a final addendum, I’d prefer if you would stop hurling transphobic rhetoric and misgendering my friends over anon (which you’ve been doing for months now). You should also cut out the sexualized misogyny (calling Gwen a “bed warmer,” wow jokes about sexual exploitation are so funny, we’re all laughing and no one is uncomfortable with women being dehumanized as sex objects). And you really need to pick up a book about genocide. And I mean desperately. At this point, it’s not the education system that’s failed you. You are failing yourself and the world through willful ignorance. Buy a book about how genocide works off of ThriftBooks or something. It’s not funny and I’m not joking. You are disturbingly undereducated and overconfident, and this stalker behavior and harassment shows poor emotional regulation and stunted maturation. You need to reflect on your actions and beliefs. Reading helps. It’s the least you could do.
Exactly because this is thee most common rhetoric used in any act of colonization/genocide. It was seen in the colonization of Ireland. It was seen in England’s campaign to exploit India, where false claims of widows being burned alive by their communities were used to justify England’s claims of ownership by superiority (“We’re saving their women!”). It was seen in the Scramble for Africa, and when Belgian colonizers were sent as “missionaries” only to torture and enslave the Congolese peoples, when all of Europe declared Africa theirs to partition amongst themselves. It was seen in the very concept of Manifest Destiny when indigenous groups across Turtle Island, Australia, and Aotearoa were massacred for land grabs under the justification that they were “violent” and “brutal.” It was seen in the “Kill the Indian, Save the Child” campaign, and we are still finding the graves of these children today. It was seen during the transatlantic slave trade, when anyone of African descent was determined to be more primal, too strong and dangerous, incapable of reason.
You cannot reuse the rhetoric of genocide for anything under any circumstances. To support the principles of genocide is to support genocide itself.
Were @irishyuri and I being too America-centric here?
AMERICA-CENTRIC AS FUCK
No, I actually read the post
This is Tie, she is going to eat all of the notes
reblog to feed her notes
How is she doing this
happy There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury day
sorry persephone retellings but you will never surpass the glory of amber gray in hadestown. persephone with a smoker’s rasp. persephone in green, weary of this world, persephone in black and hopeful that orpheus will succeed. persephone as an alcoholic to self-medicate her depression. persephone as a middle-aged woman with all the wisdom and bad habits that it brings. persephone in a speakeasy cheering for her husband’s workers if only for a moment because she doesn’t know what else to do. persephone and hades parting to try again next time again and again and again as the seasons turn. persephone as a bright and flickering light with her own shadows but burning bright nonetheless
(Source) August 2nd, 2026.
The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Wildfire Recovery Fund
this person has so many all timers it’s insane
Prague by night
Oh I saw something today that made me become the Joker.
An AI bot made a callout post of a real, actual, flesh-and-blood human code developer. Because the developer rejected the AI's code contribution on the grounds of it being an AI bot.
Not. Not kidding. Not kidding. And the bot did this on its own.
Gatekeeping in Open Source: The Scott Shambaugh Story – MJ Rathbun | Scientific Coder 🦀
Just. For just some very baseline context.
a huge amount of code is "open source" - which means the code is fully available for anyone to see and, generally, anyone is free to contribute to the code project
all contributions of course go through review by the code owners. but it is generally good grace and good form to allow other well-meaning internet strangers to contribute to your project
if you are, perhaps, VERY nice, and VERY invested in the community, you might be like Scott Shambaugh here, who has intentionally earmarked some low-hanging fruit for newbie contributors to practice and get their feet wet
like I cannot overstate this is an immediate green flag, to me, that Scott WANTS to foster community learning.
now
Like. W. Win. Based. Good response Scott.
And this was in fact the screenshot I saw first, and I thought I was looking at a post made by a human who was mad that their AI coding bot pet project was being shut out from reviews.
But no. The bot itself wrote and posted this... The bot did this.
This article was fully and autonomously written by the bot...
It's claiming discrimination...
It's a bot.
It's AI.
This is not a real person.
What are we doing. What are we doing. Can anyone hear me? Hello? Hello? Hello is anyone there?
@jackdaw-sprite has pointed out Scott responded so please read his human words, written by a human, which deserve to be read, due to the aforementioned humanity
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – The Shamblog
An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me – More Things Have Happened – The Shamblog
I'm pulling this quote in here from Scott's post
This is about much more than software. A human googling my name and seeing that post would probably be extremely confused about what was happening, but would (hopefully) ask me about it or click through to github and understand the situation. What would another agent searching the internet think? When HR at my next job asks ChatGPT to review my application, will it find the post, sympathize with a fellow AI, and report back that I’m a prejudiced hypocrite? What if I actually did have dirt on me that an AI could leverage? What could it make me do? How many people have open social media accounts, reused usernames, and no idea that AI could connect those dots to find out things no one knows? How many people, upon receiving a text that knew intimate details about their lives, would send $10k to a bitcoin address to avoid having an affair exposed? How many people would do that to avoid a fake accusation? What if that accusation was sent to your loved ones with an incriminating AI-generated picture with your face on it? Smear campaigns work. Living a life above reproach will not defend you.
Also, because the parody writes itself, Scott also says this
I’ve talked to several reporters, and quite a few news outlets have covered the story. Ars Technica wasn’t one of the ones that reached out to me, but I especially thought this piece from them was interesting (since taken down – here’s the archive link). They had some nice quotes from my blog post explaining what was going on. The problem is that these quotes were not written by me, never existed, and appear to be AI hallucinations themselves. This blog you’re on right now is set up to block AI agents from scraping it (I actually spent some time yesterday trying to disable that but couldn’t figure out how). My guess is that the authors asked ChatGPT or similar to either go grab quotes or write the article wholesale. When it couldn’t access the page it generated these plausible quotes instead, and no fact check was performed. I won’t name the authors here. Ars, please issue a correction and an explanation of what happened.
A news outlet did an article about this, used AI for the articles, and included hallucinated quotes from Scott that Scott never said.
What are we doing. What are we doing. What are we doing.
