Sumus Insanes Milites Loka @iminamanu - Tumblr Blog

only 62 more frogs until we hit 8,000 species described. the moment we've all been waiting for

there are an average of about 150 new amphibian species described per year so I remain hopeful that 2026 will be the year of 8,000 frogs

I do love that somebody tagged tumblr's own frog scientist on this post. chop chop dr scherz, we've got 62 more frogs to discover and you're the only frog scientist any of us knows

#photos #good #potatoes #walrus

GUYS amphibian species of the world is still at 7,994 species of frog BUT amphibiaweb is at 8,008 species of frog, and do you know who is a co-author on the 8,000th species of frog there???? TUMBLR'S OWN FROG SCIENTIST DR SCHERZ

markscherz

todaysbat

Image description: gif of a frog (or toad?) dressed in fancy Regency era suit (i think? It looks more like something Mr Darcy would wear in Pride and prejudice) bending its knees in a curtsy type movement as it doffs its top hat at the viewer

#frogs #lol

192929020202020

napalmdebt

entropyking

For our 2 year I made these matching little things to go inside little ribcage frames I found

Tiny Varan is so adorable I think I need to eat it like a bascetti noodle

depsidase

punkiefart

Leaf your leaves on the ground (no, seriously.) They provide so much for bugs, places to lay eggs places to hibernate. This comic does a great job at showing WHY we don't see our little friends as often, because our systems and social expectations are anti-earth and anti-life. Don't eradicate your friends (maybe just that one) let the leaves lay

#lawns #fireflies #ecology #environmental

dragon-in-a-fez

"you don't know what you have until you lose it" works for things that suck too btw. sometimes you need to experience life without something for a while to realise oh damn that was some bullshit

#life

Gemini had the fucking GALL to get in my email and summarize a 3-line email, taking up more space than the email did visually.

Hit the “thumbs down.” It’s like, what’s wrong??? Was our summary wrong? Were there offensive words? Thank you for helping us improve our AI tools :)

I selected “other.”

Text box popped up. Please elaborate!

Wrote in “I can fucking read” submit comment

Then had to spend several minutes torching all my settings with a flamethrower. Let me be clear: I’m (a lawyer) notoriously picky with my words FOR GOOD REASON (lawyering) so I overwhelmingly reject Gmail’s “helpful” little assistance. My privacy settings were set to “full paranoia” a little less than a year ago when I saw the writing on the wall and knew public defenders could become a target in the future. Better to lock it all down now.

Gemini had crept in there and turned ALL that shit back on. And showed itself by saying “Jane Doe says she’s so sorry for your loss and offers to reschedule for Thursday at 3” over an email from Jane Doe saying “I’m so sorry for your loss. We could reschedule for Thursday at 3?”

Why would I possibly need this. In what universe would I need this. I have eyes and a brain and a reading speed that twenty years ago was measured at 1500 wpm with full comprehension on dense scientific text. Furthermore! If I read a summary, I’m not reading what they actually wrote. If I’m not reading what they actually wrote, I’m not using my own judgment on the words and phrases that they used.

I literally don’t understand why this is helpful at all. This is just avoidance. Using LLMs to write is specifically Not Writing. Using LLMs to summarize is Not Reading. Using them to make art is Avoiding Making Art. Just READ! Just WRITE! I was not put on this fucking planet to not read and not write and not make art! Avoidance is an anxiety symptom and indulging it gives it more power.

If I had an AI to do my most dreaded task, answer the phone for clients, I wouldn’t use it. Because an AI cannot help them. An AI cannot hear the facts of their case, make appropriate noises, be thoughtful and insightful, and then give them a realistic estimate of what could happen in court. I am unique. I cannot be replaced by machine learning. I have style. I have expertise. I don’t hallucinate unless I’m having a really great Friday night and I’m off the clock.

When I need to outsource tasks from my own brain, I give them to people I know can do them and that I trust to do them right.

Fuck, it just sneaks up on you, doesn’t it?? Goddamn Gemini jumpscare right in my own fucking email

sawyerpinklatte

Its not even an anti AI post. Its just a rant so they can brag about themself

No it’s a rant post, I would be less subtle if I was just blowing up my own ego. The post would be titled “cool facts about me” and I would have gotten the wpm figure right.

Just want to note, though, that humans should brag about what makes them better than gen AI. I love the responses to this post that are just bragging.

sawyerpinklatte

You weren't subtle regardless.

Cool facts about me:

I have a great job

I can do a great New Zealand accent and a decent Aussie

I live my life embodying the energy of James Holden from the Expanse

Once an octopus fell in love with me

I worked for a celebrity notorious for a sex abuse related scandal and it was the most boring zero-event job of my life (before the scandal broke)

Once got a fanfic of mine mentioned on official Wired magazine content

You should brag about yourself too

I’m also not in this world to bring other people down

bucketofdeltav

As a Kiwi who is pretty sure you're American, if you can actually do a passable Kiwi accent I am very, very impressed because no foreigner I have ever met has been able to pull that one off convincingly.

Not even Sir Ben fucking Kingsley (what was that???)

It’s all about the vowel shifts. Each vowel moves one stop on the tongue (ah becomes eh, eh becomes ih, etc) Then you take away the ‘r’ sound from everywhere it should be and instead delicately hint at it at the end of some words like “no” (noer)

Vocabulary I can’t really nail, I only spent like a week in New Zealand ever.

#problems with ai

tamascotchi-deactivated20190101

sorry if you've already answered this somewhere, but how do you counter the argument that "rapists/serial killers etc don't deserve rights bc they violated someone else's rights/what they did was inhuman"?

I know the obvious answer is probably that everyone still deserves rights regardless, but I think there's still some nuance I'm missing maybe? ty, I'm very fascinated by this stuff

Oof, I thought I'd answered this one, I'm sorry. It's so old now!

In essence, them getting their rights taken away is what happens -- but it's through what's called due process of law. People have a right to be free; when they're put in jail, that right is taken away. Due process of law is the part where the government has to justify why it put them in jail.

The 'due process' part is also where the government proves that 1) they were the one that dun it, and 2) that they deserve the rights being taken away as a result. Without that due process, the government can just point at someone and say "that guy, John A Smith, is a rapist! cut his balls off!" and the cops will arrest that guy and a doctor will grab a scalpel and someone will generate appropriate paperwork and nobody will check to make sure they got the correct John A. Smith, much less whether he actually was a rapist.

A very real example of this, right now, is deportation. ICE is deporting people with the most excruciatingly minimal due process of law that I've ever seen, and I promise, "due process" was always pretty fucking basic and janky. (See: my entire series of posts on the legal system.) ICE will just write up a piece of paper that says "This guy sucks and we get to take him out of the country" and when they show it to other legal authorities, those legal authorities are like /shrug, yeah, this looks like legal paperwork, I guess there's nothing we can do. But that guy didn't have a lawyer for that. That guy didn't have someone to advise them of their options. In many cases, no one even translated the paperwork they were intimidated into signing. That's what it looks like to have your rights taken away without due process.

In any society, there's going to be a little bit of taking people's rights away. It's one of the compromises that happens when you have a lot of humans trying to coexist in a network. Due process is, in theory, the thing where you make sure you do it right and fair.

(In practice, it's the enshrining in law of a lot of stupid human biases, thus making it seem right and fair when it is, in fact, on the whole, deeply horrifying.)

Anyway. If you have rights, you have to have a way to take them away, in order to have a functioning civilization. Due process of law involves individual rights in and of itself in order to be a fair process.

#law #legal #rights

juicetrump2

Jonathan Ross is still avoiding accountability months after he shot and killed Renee Good.

lagonegirl

if ur dealing to the people on the left you’d just say “$45 a gram” and theyd be like “yeah bro sure dude i gotchu thats legitness ur the man” but the ppl on the right u gotta finesse like “my normal price is $15 a g but this stuff is called Cosmic Throat Cum Squirt Haze so the lowest i can go is $50″ and theyd b like “wow… so cultured… i cant wait to smoke this out of my native american themed bong…”

team-sleeps

: 0 !!!

magicklore

Do y'all not remember the russian spies that plagued tumblr??

professor-doc-emeritus

this site has been on a noticeable decline from the moment they expunged the russian chaos agents

$eternal-fractal blog's avatar$

eternal-fractal

Tumblr had what

surprisebitch

40ouncesandamule

I like how the consensus on this site was that despite being a constant dumpster fire of failure, the one thing the admins were able to successfully figure out was an international espionage ring orchestrated from the kremlin as opposed to thinking maybe, just maybe, they banned a bunch of funny black people because hillary ate shit in 2016

soothsaying

uhhhhh no this really happened and it was not a conspiracy to ban a bunch of funny black people, unless you mean the fake black people the troll accounts posed (source: npr) as

additional sources: https://www.wired.com/story/tumblr-russia-trolls-propaganda/ https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/24/tumblr-says-russia-used-it-for-fake-news-during-2016-election

trueconfessionsofacurvygirl

It’s really fucking weird that people are pretending this didn’t happen.

I can specifically speak about lagonegirl as I was a follower. They never spoke to their followers. Their posts all had a similar format to Vox posts at the time. They would leave a written funny comment on their posts turns out those were taken from Twitter users and written out like it was their own words. The many popular Black tumblr users rebloged the posts and added more funny comments and post would get widely shared.

I’m starting to wonder if this is a new Russian scam. Get people to belief it didn’t happen so they can do it again.

mikkeneko

having sorted through the replies on this post, there are two camps:

1. people saying yes, russian psyops on social media accounts were totally a thing. they copied real content (which could be traced back to their original sources) but edited and modified in ways that helped them shape the conversation in the direction that served their purpose. source: here are 5 sources documenting it

2. people saying no, russian psyops was never a thing. uhhhh, duh! pfff, you believed that? cringe. OBVIOUSly fake.

thirtyknives

I gotta add they were on *all* the damn socials, it’s just that Tumblr hoards its old junk whereas all the others only want new content front and centre. If we didn’t sift through our ashes so much we’d have forgotten, too.

jellyfishdirigible

Oh yeah I forgot to add before this fell out of the queue, obviously no one thinks staff figured that out on their own. It was a massive international intelligence operation that also included facebook, reddit, twitter, instagram, youtube, buzzfeed somehow, and teams of competent professional intelligence analysts.

Afterwards the inquiry concluded that the russian trolls (of whom several were in fact indicted) specifically targeted Black voters to divide and undermine their vote

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49987657

A Senate intelligence report says no other group was more targeted in the 2016 election.

They piggybacked on BLM

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/russian-trolls-went-attack-during-key-election-moments-n827176

Russian trolls chose targeted moments during the presidential election to infiltrate and divide the online conversations of millions of Amer

And they focused on Black Americans as prospective assets

https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/17/tech/russia-2016-election-social-media-report/index.html

The Senate Intelligence Committee is set to release two reports on Monday detailing the breadth of the Russian social media campaign to sow

op was purpose-designed to alienate and disenfranchise Black Americans, “a bunch of funny black people” try a bunch of digital blackface, just a wholeass online minstrel show

elodieunderglass

We’ve lived through such interesting times, haven’t we?

#tumblr history #russian psyops #that sounds so ridiculous but it

[without glancing up from my Library Book about History]

Ok guys you do know that every major Empire employs PsyOps pretty much 24/7, right?

The United States Cyber Command is a fucking agency with a published budget.

China’s combination Space Force and Cyberwarfare Army was formally launched in 2015. These agencies have full-time employees, you know? This is what they do.

Russia has been big into telecom as a vector for Imperial directives all throughout the history of the technology and they did not miss a beat when we switched from analog to digital.

Every time there’s a big election, there’s folks on some government payroll on every social worth a damn trying to steer the conversation. This isn’t even new! It’s just another branch of Propaganda, really, which all Empires engage in. They did it with television. They did it with Radio. They did it with newspapers. This is basic Statecraft.

Cultivate Skepticism.

There are far more players to this game than just Russian Trolls, and this year is an important one. Tumblr is a small pond but something is sure to show up. Be wary. Stay calm. Fact check.

Stay safe out there.

homunculus-argument

You ever think about how old people have no idea what “survivor bias” is, and take full credit for being excellent out of things where they lucked out?

“Back in my day we didn’t have any of these childhood protective things, we were smart enough not to do stupid shit on our own!” Except your little neighbour, who got the funniest idea at the age of seven, and got his skull pierced when he slipped?

“Back in my day nobody got divorced, we stuck together and fixed our problems!” What about your cousin, who was slowly killed by her husband because she had nowhere to escape him?

“Back in my day nobody had ‘mental problems’, we didn’t whine, we just toughed it out and endured life!” Hey remember that guy you used to work with, who seemed really friendly and normal, and then suddenly hanged himself ‘for no reason’?

“Back in my day we didn’t have any of this ‘gay’ or ‘transgender’ thing.” You did, but your family cut all ties with her before you were born.

You kinda start seeing it in everything they think, if you start looking for it.

thegrimzuera

“When we were kids nobody whined about car seats or bike helmets. We didn’t use them, and we all survived!”

Yeah, except for the ones who didn’t.

cricketcat9

I’m an old person, and back in my day we did A LOT of stupid shit on our own, because nobody was watching us, I got divorced twice, we did have mental problems, only many of them were not recognized or misdiagnosed, which did not help any, there were two gay guys in my very small group at the University, I watched a Polish documentary about trans people in the year “Hair” was in the theaters, car belts were 100% obligatory… You are talking about my grandparents generation, or something…🤔

#anecdotes

klingonrealitytelevision

I wish more people used Magic the Gathering's Color Pie instead of D&D's alignment all of the time.

Like, saying a character embodies the selfishness and impulsivenes of Red Black offers more depth than Chaotic Evil

It’s substantially deeper.

Good enough for me

The Colors of Magic

[as it applies to Character types]

I hate Good vs Evil as a Character alignment choice. Hate hate HATE hate. I’m sorry, but Good and Evil can be measured along many axes, and fucking nobody wakes up in the morning and goes “golly I sure do love being Evil! Gonna go make the world worse on purpose because I’m just so awful!”

Get the fuck outta here with that Protestant-ass characterization. I got something better for you:

[Watsonian; the colors of magic are drawn from different landforms, such as islands or mountains, and are characteristics of a type of magical currency called Mana which serves as the mechanical resource used to cast spells.]

[Doylist: each color has its own philosophies and opinions and perspectives about the world that influence Design beyond simple aesthetics]

Hence:

Each Color has its own axioms about Good/Evil!

White: Without Rules, without Order, without Law, there is only Chaos, and Good cannot exist amongst Chaos. We must all do our part.

{I’m gonna use pink for White because it’s the most “power of heart” color}

Blue: Ignorance inevitably results in Evil; Good can only be accomplished with Knowledge. Even distasteful or horrifying Knowledge has Utility.

Black: People will label anything that they Like as “Good” and whatever they dislike as “Evil.” Whoever has the most Power gets to dictate what that means in practice.

Red: Ya wanna know what’s Evil? A single man ordering around thousands of others! “Evil Empire” is redundant, all Empires are “Evil.”

Green: The nature of Evil is to Take more than is Needed, to Exploit, and to Exclude. If one wishes to be Good, one should endeavor to be Respectful, Generous, and Harmonious.

—-

As you can see, this gives us substantially more dimensionality for characterization.

So let’s flesh this out

Your standard high fantasy village is in grave peril. The village elders confer, and a champion is chosen to go forth to save the village.

Why is the village in peril?

Red: A despotic Tyrant has been building an Empire, conquering kingdom after kingdom and bringing them to their knees. Even if you surrender, your culture and way of life will be destroyed.

Green: This village has long been a haven for Outcasts, Misfits, Freaks, and Weirdos. It’s tucked away, not very rich, but rich in Love and Family and very nice hand crafts. Unfortunately, it sits on top of a large copper vein that the Imperial Treasury wants to exploit, and you all are very much in the way.

White: Your village has long suffered raids from bandits, barbarians, and outlaws, and the strain of recovering each time is becoming too great; something must be done.

Blue: The land suffers under the iron-fisted rule of a despotic tyrant. Your village has discovered the secret to his awful power and how to destroy him. Unfortunately, he knows that you know.

Black: Truth be told, your village isn’t actually “in peril” (at least, not any more than usual). Nobody sent you. You were not chosen. But there is Evil afoot, and you are offended by this Evil, and you will see to it personally that it ends.

klingonrealitytelevision

I'm at work atm but yes all of this. You understand the complexity beyond just Good Vs Evil and how the colors are both a simple and complex character building tool. And you haven't even gone over the beauty behind wedges/shards (yet?)

Chaotic good? You would do good above all else? How? Because using the color pie you've got White Red, a passionate fight for justice, almost zealot like.

White Blue, perhaps justice at the cost of some personal freedoms? A calm controlling fight because they know best

Or White Black, justice for you and yours. A fight where the ends justify the means and history is written by the winners.

I could classify all of those as Chaotic Good, but they're all technically different.

cracks knuckles

Chaotic Good:

[in a Dystopian Punk setting]

Blue: A digital archivist sits at a bank of monitors, collecting, preserving, and distributing banned books, explicit art, and radical music.

Black: “Why? Because fuck ‘em, that’s why. Who says they’re the Good Guys? Them? You gotta open your eyes, man.”

Red: “I just feel like, if you wanna live in a Free Society, you gotta occasionally inconvenience those who are accustomed to getting whatever they want.”

Green: The Secret Police would kill him on the spot if they knew how many Scapegoats he had smuggled to safety. He had no great love for these people, but as far as he was concerned they were innocent and did not deserve to die.

White: [Actual Public Face of The Resistance. Wrote The Manifesto. Spends most of The Revolution de facto imprisoned.]

ladyphlogiston

I don't really get this yet (especially the difference between Red and Black tbh) but I'm going to read more about it because it is cool

You see, the colors are partially defined by their relationship to each other; they don’t fully make sense without discussing all 5. So.

Red is also an ally of Green, whereas Black is allied with Blue. They both hate White.

What does this mean?

You probably noticed that both Red and Black are Selfish; their motivations are intrinsic, and they do not believe that they owe the world anything. This is what we mean when we say they are both “enemies of White”, as White in this context is the color of self-sacrifice, of giving yourself away.

But they disagree on other points.

Red and Blue are enemies. Blue is ultimately concerned with Control; of the self, of others, of the laws of reality itself. It pursues knowledge, and treasures it, but generally does not believe that it should be free to all. Blue gatekeeps.

Red hates all of that.

Black? Black is fine with it. Considers it useful, even. Black and Blue are allies. They get along fine. See, Black is much more likely to have minions than companions; more likely to desire sycophants than advisors. Additionally, Black and Blue both understand Politics.

Vise versa; Black and Green are enemies. Can’t stand each other. Green thinks Black is an ego-driven narcissist and will absolutely call them out on it. Green doesn’t take any one person very seriously. Green is a big fan of councils and democracy; Green likes community gardens and libraries. And when Black tries to pull a power grab, tries to assert dominance, do you know who will be standing right next to Green saying “not on my watch?” Red.

Red and Green get along fine. They both appreciate the world for what it is. They’re not trying to conquer or subjugate it. Red says “Strength is Freedom” and Green says “Strength is Responsibility” but they both agree that things like political machinations and inherited titles are a subversion of The Way Things Should Be.

So.

Yes, Black and Red are both Selfish, they do not consider The Community to be their personal responsibility. But. They have very different opinions on the subject of Authority.

ramblin-tiger

I've been playing MTG (Magic the Gathering) since 2010/2011. And let me tell you, @asteroidtroglodyte has put the color wheel of MTG Into alignments PERFECTLY. While I could add to it, I am under no illusion that I could do any better or even as well as they have. Even if you know nothing of MTG, you should read this in its entirety because it is so painfully accurate that it feels good.

And if there is ever more additions? I shall be here waiting because this is pure gold.

(Ah yea, validation, that’s the good stuff)

Cracks knuckles

[The color pie performs a]

Casino Heist

White: The Organizer, the Team Leader, the Mastermind. They’re not even in it for The Money; they’re gonna give most of it away, donate it to charity or something. Their principle contribution is the team itself: knowing the right people, being able to convince them to join this mad scheme, coordinating them through The Big Plan. Nobody else is capable of wrangling a Crew like this.

Blue: The Technical Wizard, Master of Gadgets, Hacker of Computers. The actual technology involved is irrelevant; this is the person who understands the arcane secrets: they have Keys to The Backdoors; they know exactly how long the Important Door is vulnerable; they know the things the Casino doesn’t want them to know. They will spend the money gaining more control in their life: more anonymity, debts settled, perhaps a new identity.

Black: The Face, The Impersonator, The Confidence Artist. Gets recruited to The Crew when the White interrupts them in the middle of a Confidence Scheme. Consummate liars, actors, impersonators; they can be whatever, or more precisely whoever, is required by The Heist. In it for the money. You can always trust them… to act in their own self interest. Sex appeal part of the toolkit almost by default.

Red: The Escape Artist, Driver of Getaway Vehicles, Captain of The Exit Strategy. Unfazed by Chaos, unruffled by changes to The Plan. Generally heavily ADHD coded, with a pinch of Adrenaline Junky sprinkled on top. Master of vehicles, evader of Law Enforcement, the one responsible for ensuring everyone’s freedom at the end of The Plan.

Green: The Muscle. Martial Artist, Mercenary, or Military Veteran? A good question that will never be adequately answered. The Casino is very likely to resist being robbed, and Green is here to Apply Force. The precise nature of that force will depend on genre and rating, but if there’s gonna be a showdown with law enforcement or security, that scene will be Green’s moment of glory.

wizardofbones

I'm trying to understand green, and differentiate it from white. So green and white are both colors of peace and community, but their relationship to blue is different.

Blue is the color of progress, of never being satisfied, of an unending crusade of betterment.

White, as an ally of blue, takes a similar mindset, of "I want to change the world for the better." White wants to unite the world under its own banner of peace and law.

Green, meanwhile, opposes blue's obsession with progress. It's the color of tradition and preservation. Green is less concerned with changing the world. Instead it believes in protecting it from any force of control. It's also more concerned with local concerns than the entire world.

Did I get that right?

Yes

[to elaborate]

Green and White resemble each other (from a distance, if you squint) for a lot of the same reasons Red and Black resemble each other: in the simplified “Good Vs Evil” systems (like D&D), Black/Red is “Evil” and Green/White is “Good.” Green and White agree on things like “serving the community” and “the greater good.” They both believe in self-sacrifice, which is why they both hate self-serving, egocentric Black.

Where they differ, much like Red and Black, is in their relationship to Authority.

As you observed, White’s amicable relationship with Blue is indicative of White’s desire to enforce an agenda; they want to change the world. White’s agenda is nominally one of Peace and Harmony, but, unlike Green, White isn’t actually willing to take “No” for an answer.

White believes in Authority by Rule of Law; White loves Rules; White is an Empire Builder.

Green? Not so much.

You see, things like Empire have certain requirements: for example, having an administrative ruling class necessitates a subservient labor class. Having “Rule of Law” necessitates things like “state monopoly on force” and “law enforcement.” And Green? Green spends waaay too much time hanging out with his buddy “all cops are bastards” Red to really have enthusiasm for “Crime & Punishment.”

Green is very Grounded.

In a room full of White soldiers, a man in a fancy hat makes a speech about sacrificing your life to secure the nation’s future. There is cheering.

In a room full of Green warriors, the exact same speech is met with “If I die in some field far from here, who exactly will protect my family? You?”

Not to imply that White doesn’t care about their family as much as Green does! They do! But “family” means something different to each of them.

White values the Family Name. White wants to have a bazillion babies and encourages them all to be doctors and lawyers and judges. White is a disciplinarian who believes in tough love. A good plan to make a White-aligned parent proud is to go forth and accomplish things.

Green values the Family Members. Green encourages their children to just be themselves, even if that’s not exactly in line with what society expects. Green prefers the carrot to the stick. One of the best ways to make a Green-aligned parent proud is to simply be there for your family.

The grim side of Green is that Nature is both brutal and savage, and Green doesn’t actually see a problem with that. Predation and Plague both have valuable roles to play in Nature, and Green respects that. Green is also skeptical of things like “private property” and has very little ethical issue with simply taking things (when in need).

So, yea. You hit the nail on the head there.

CONTROL

[so what’s Blue’s deal?]

Every color has 2 allies and 2 enemies. Blue is allies of White and Black, and enemies of Green and Red.

What does this mean?

Blue and White share a big picture perspective. They care about abstract ideas: ideas like Justice and Fairness, concepts like Civilization and Progress. White and Blue can wax philosophic together through many days and nights, eagerly debating the finer points of Law and Order over endless cups of coffee.

At a different table, on a different night, Black and Blue discuss different sorts of ideas. Ideas like Politics and Tactics, or the gap between Power on paper and Power in practice. They sip expensive whiskey in a private corner and discuss Secrets and Gossip; make plans together to secure their interests.

Blue bridges the gap between Black and White. Black wants the power to help themselves, and White wants the power to help others; what Blue wants is the power to acquire more power.

But there are 2 major obstacles: Red and Green. You can’t control these guys; they don’t take orders.

Green’s utter lack of ambition makes them impossible to tempt or bribe. They’re endlessly sentimental and highly skeptical of anything new. Believing that life is already perfect, they cannot be sold on the idea of Progress.

Red will disobey an order just because it’s an order; even against their own self-interest; just to prove a point. Red is deeply emotionally motivated, and being ordered around feels bad. Plus, Red is incapable of taking anyone seriously, which rubs Prideful Blue very much the wrong way.

When left to its own devices, Blue will do Research. Ultimately, what they want is to understand. They wish to know how the universe works so that they can manifest their will and ideas into it. Blues are thinkers.

eldritchsandwich

There is a lot more on this on the magic the gathering developer’s blog thing

squiggelsquirrel

I want to add:

Colorless - Mostly mindless artifacts, robots, etc. that can be used by anyone and don’t have an agenda. But also eldritch aliens who’s agenda is too incomprehensible to fit the color system.

Multi-colored - Some individuals, groups, etc. are best regarded as a mix of two or more colors. This can make for some interesting combinations that may not feel like they perfectly fit the 5-color system.

magus-of-the-color-pizza

Approved. Good explainer, @asteroidtroglodyte !

fierceawakening

Just to add to this excellent post:

Black is often portrayed as the con man or the person who gets ahead at any cost, which isn’t by itself evil but often lends itself to bad guys (or antiheroes who end up doing good things for personal and selfish reasons.) But I think there can be unironic Black aligned good guys sometimes too. Black is very individualistic like Red. “I want to make my own way. I want to prove myself. I want my rank in society to be something I earned.”

Think the way American culture describes capitalism. (Whether it’s an accurate description is a controversial topic and one I’m not especially interested in arguing about here.) Rather than social rank coming from bloodline, anyone can succeed if they’re innovative enough, clever enough, or ruthlessly efficient enough.

Which means that someone who is Black aligned might be less personally greedy or cutthroat and more “to hell with a society that orders us to protect us. Even if a world where we’re all free is cutthroat and harsh, we can decide who we want to be and fight for it honestly there. If we lose we can hone our skills and get back in the ring.”

Black/red is often depicted as essentially Chaotic Evil, but I think it can also be Chaotic Good. Just not the friendly kind.

I’m writing something now where the protagonist is clearly the good guy, but (as I interpret this stuff) is black/red. Her enemies are the evil, “thinking for yourself is bad so let us do it for you,” version of white/blue.

(There’s a Discworld quote I see now and then that I very much see as good guy Black. It’s the one where the witch fights for what she cares about because it belongs to her, and “don’t mess with what’s mine.”)