I am reading some wh40k books now (and yeah, it started from rogue trader, but I got into it...), and I have noticed an interesting thing: biomancy and healing not really described in the books. (At least I haven't seen it mentioned yet). So it is most likely a rare ability. And actually it is very interesting that Heinrix is good at it. But for me it is really interesting, how does it work? Does he know a lot about medicine or is it some intuition? Did he have to study before using biomancy?
Although I may have missed some explanation from the game of course. Any thoughts about it?
Hi! Thank you so much for this very interesting question!
The answer might be a bit long since I have game dialog but also some book citations added.
Is Biomancy rare?
There is one comment in the game from DLC 2 - Lex Imperialis on Thassera where you can also stumble upon a biomancer and a lore check will reveal this:
"This man appears to belong to a rare variety of psykers — biomancers capable of recovering even from otherwise deadly wounds and diseases."
Based on this (how ever accurate it is) Biomancers might be quite rare among psykers.
Biomancy in books
There are indeed books where we can see biomancers in action - unfortunately not always from their Point of View or with deeper explanation how they do it.
Still I would like to recommend you especially the three Farsight books from Phil Kelly. Vykola Herat is an Inquisitior of the Ordo Xenos and a very skilled biomancer.
"For though she was a psyker, and one of the most powerful on the Eastern Fringe at that..."
I would assume she is stronger than Heinrix, seeing how fast she can close entire wounds etc.
She also has quite the character:
"'Don't be so hard on yourself,' said the slim female. 'You are only a Space Marine. Nobody expects you to think too deeply."
There is a tarot card tattoo on her forehead, that changes depending on her thoughts and situation.
Here some examples of how she uses her powers:
Changing her whole body to steel
"Long ago, trapped in a cell-like chamber aboard one of the Psykana's Black Ships, Vykola Herat had had nothing else but enclosing steel and copper wire for company. She hat taken the lessons of metal into herself. Like most other forms of biomancy, the act of changing her substance had once been as easy as taking a deep breath."
"She visualised her body turning to living steel from the inside out, feeling her inner organs harden and grow cold in response. An old trick, but it had saved her life on more than one occasion."
Here, she is attacked by a Tyranid and she is shocked when she realises, that the creature is after her memories.
"She screwed shut her eyes, trying to turn away, but felt the pair of tendrils push against her face, probing for a way in. A moment of utter, blinding agony - a dam bursting, a timed charge detonating. A starburst, a galaxy of sensation exploding outwards from her soul. The creature froze, utterly still."
Both Vykola and the creature were now both clad in metal - fused to a statue. I don't want to spoiler too much, but this was not planned, she was herself surprised it would happen. So it was basically like a reflex that happened, the powers just broke out of her and not really controlled. How her feelings play into this is also apparent here:
"She felt something build inside her, a revulsion that the creature had inspired in her. It was more than fear. The idea of it taking her memories, using them to feed the swarm, to refine the invasion, made her shudder. With that spasm of revulsion, her flesh turned back from inert metal to pliable muscle and sinew, bone and blood. Thank the Throne, the creature stayed as a thing entirely of metal, dead as a dropped ingot.
Keeping it that way was seomthing she had to concentrate on, channeling her anger into background noise of hatred. It was a little like keeping a count of spiralling numerals in the back of her mind as the seconds of a countdown ticked past, but as long as she maintained her focus, it would remain immobilised."
2. Healing
There isn't much explanation here unfortunately, just that she is so good at it that she can heal quite quickly and even restoring missing limbs or reversing aging is nothing problematic and quite fast:
"As the high commander watched, the scorch marks faded slightly, and the gouges that had been cut into her flesh began to close up and heal over."
"The bloody depressions the creature's claws had left in her shoulders hurt like whitefire, as did the ravaged mess of her nose, but they were already puckering and closing over ..."
"Her skin, once wrinkled and dull in its long battle agaisnt the ravages of time, was growing tatut once more, some of its youthful lustre returning."
"Her missing hand had already begun to grow back, as she had suspected it would - after all, of all the psychic disciplines, recuperative biomancy was the easiest to use with only subconsicous focus."
In "Blades of Damocles" by Phil Kelly she heals someone else:
"Vykola took the wizened claw in her long-fingered hands, and started to babble and yammer with a horrible, quiet intentisy. A red glow surrounded her hands..."
"Malagrea's skeleton became visible under the red-amber glow of her flesh, and the elderly astropath gave a keening whine of pain. She began to shake as Vykola's strange change reached a crescendo. Then it was done. Vykola took her delicate hands away to reveal Malagrea's crippled limb whole once more, hale and pink and utterly without blemish or wrinkle. If anything, it was more the hand of a young girl than the liver-spotted, veiny equivalent on the other side."
3. Other examples
"She fought away the instinct to send a pulse of biomantic force..."
She also uses her powers to escape from shackles:
"Only when they had made orbit did Herat lengthen her hands into spines, slip the cuffs off without a whisper of resistance, and ram two bony spikes through the back of her guard's neck."
There is also a healing scene in "A Thousand Sons" by Graham McNeill where biomancer Hathor Maat is trying to heal a woman from parasites in her head. It seems that the biomancer is "sensing" the parasite there, he even says "I see you". He also uses gestures like curling or spreading his fingers to help him to focus on what he is doing.
"'I see you' said Hathor Maat, curling his finger as though hooking a fish. Lemuel smelled a sickly aroma of something burning."
"'The tiniest fraction of a misstep and I may end up burning out the mechanism that allows her to breath or pumps blood from her heart. I have its body and am slowly boiling it alive.'"
"Hathor Maat dug his fingers downwards, spreading the tips wide and smiling as the smell of burning meat grew stronger. He worked within Camille's skull for over an hour before nodding to himself."
Heinrix - good at biomancy
As for Heinrix - why do you think it is interesting he is good at it? Did you expect him to be a weak psyker because he is also an Interrogator? Maybe you can explain that a bit more.
He is a sanctioned psyker, meaning he had to go through years of training and trials to be allowed to live and being sanctioned and he spent a few years in the guard (and survived!) so back then he was already an experienced battle psyker. When he joined the Inquisition, Xaiver was specifically interested in his powers to help with interrogations. He also spent decades healing himself and is still using his powers regularly in his duties as Interrogator.
So he has the training and the practice and a lot of experience. He does not have the usual psyker augments because Xavier wanted them gone - likely to have his full power potential available. The augments help psyker to control their powers, but they seem to also limit them to some regard (at least the usual psyker augments).
Has Heinrix medicae knowledge?
Heinrix does have some knowledge of anatomy, and has witnessed vivisections.
He mentions this on Santinals Pride:
"I once was witness to the vivisection of such a creature. These parasites are called Drukhari medusae. As long as its current host lives, a medusae has no need to attack and dominate your mind. If its host dies, be careful not to let it latch onto your head."
In DLC 1 - Voidshadows - if the RT decides to help with the investigations and to do the autopsy, Heinrix (if present) has to say this:
Heinrix bends over the corpse. "{name}, take heed, all these mutilations are a facade. They were inflicted postmortem, clearly a while after. He died instantly from a stab to the heart. He was killed by a professional, someone who knew exactly what they were doing."
I can also imagine that being a biomancer helps at least a bit to understand bodily processes especially after years of practice. He wouldn't know how to name a specific bone of course, so a conversation with a chirurgeon would be a bit limited, but he would likely know what an organ does, where it is positioned and how damage to it would affect a body.
Is medicae knowledge required for biomancers? How does biomancy work?
There is a very nice explanation in the book "Ahriman: Eternal" by John French:
"At their simplest, the powers of the psychic, the sorcerer and the witch were the same: they used the ether to change reality. No matter the root, that was its result. Formulae, spells, artefacts, subtle arts and training all were just ways to make an ideal real by will. Simple. But reality was stubborn. The greater the violation of nature, the more power it took, and that power writhed like a snake when grasped. So it was not enough to have power; to wield it you needed the will to focus the idea of what you wanted, and the will to make it so. The greater the idea, the greater the power, the greater the will... To stop a pebble from falling you needed to make the idea of the stone not falling more real than that of gravity."
Keep in mind that the game uses sorcery basically with the same meaning like psychic or psyker (e.g. soul touched by sorcery etc.)
Witch would likely refer to unsanctioned psykers - Heinrix also calls Idira that quite often.
I think for biomancy and other disciplines this is the same.
While it is not mention above, psykers have to be careful not to draw too much power as it could lead to the psyker losing control and perils of the warp. It is especially dangerous during warp travel:
"Heinrix's eyes narrow. "Why are we wasting time and entertaining the risks of using psyker abilities in the warp? For what? So that you can keep your pet predator? Isn't it about time you rid your menagerie of this exotic menace?"
We also know from Heinrix that he used biomancy involuntarily when his powers first emerged. It was triggered by a strong emotional response when he got bitten. It was uncontrolled and I doubt he specifically imagined the grink's and his aunt's blood to boil. That would be very odd, since he had no idea he had these powers. I think he himself felt a certain heat in his body by the pain and anger and since he was focused on those who had caused this pain - first the grink and then the aunt - it happened that his powers caused their blood to heat up as well.
Though to be honest - I am still not sure if with boiling one's blood really means a rise. In the Warhammer 40k Lexicanum it is described as rising of blood pressure.
"Like many psykers unaware of their curse, I found out when a strong emotional reaction triggered an involuntary response." Heinrix falls silent. Then he sighs and reluctantly continues, "My great-aunt had a pet grink. One day, it bit me, and I boiled it from inside out." The Interrogator looks away and adds more quietly, "And when my great-aunt slapped me for what I'd done, I boiled her too."
So based on this you don't need to specifically know or learn medicine to be able to use biomancy. But maybe it can help to get more creative with what you can do.
It is easy to notice that he is using or preparing his powers but apparently also when he loses for a moment a bit of control because then we get the description of sudden coldness appearing.
"What?" Heinrix stares at you in alarm. You feel the room grow colder, but perhaps your mind is playing tricks on you.
There are several times where he raises a hand - maybe that helps him to focus his powers. Here he was closing his eyes, because there is no danger around him, he can take the time to concentrate on what he wants to do:
"Heinrix hesitates for a moment, then closes his eyes and raises one hand."
But - there are also situations where he is very angry and then slips- here the RT destroyed the cogitator on Kiava Gamma and Heinrix is quite mad about this - since he stopps himself immediately afterwards I doubt he had planned to attack RT and to interfere with her heart or blood. It looks to me that this is a bit like before when he killed the grink and his aunt as a child - he is angry and that anger, that inner heat is now turning on RT. But luckily, he is more in control now and can stop it before real harm is done:
"Heinrix clenches his fists — and you feel your heart begin to beat twice as fast, and the sudden rush of blood to your head causes your vision to blur. "The results of this mission could have made all those deaths mean something, but you just rendered them worthless!"
Compared to when he actually intended to harm someone (although that could also still count as attack in affect as he is quite emotional in this situation as well, but he does not stop himself):
The Interrogator remains still for another second, then his eyes glaze over, his face twists, and the air around him turns icy cold. Marazhai twitches and coughs strangely, his pale face turning purple. He staggers and reaches for his blade…
But here it is planned (DLC 1 Voidshadows):
The Interrogator touches different spots on the prisoner's body, coldly commenting on the effects his sorcery is having on the writhing man. He makes his blood boil, then freeze, then boil again. He arrests his heart, makes it beat rapidly, then back again. At last, Heinrix steps away.
We also learn that he can "sense" his body:
"He gestures feebly at his eyes. "I can't see a thing. Give me a moment… to ascertain what they've done to me…" The air around him grows noticeably colder. "Blast it… I can't sense my body…"
He likely targeted the xenos in his mind but it was forced against himself:
"My fervent desire to boil a few hundred xenos in their own skin on my way out of here proved stronger than death."
"If I knew, I wouldn't be pondering the question right now, {name}. I think…" He pauses, seemingly listening to something. "The circlet on my head wasn't inhibiting my abilities — it was turning them inward. Binding them inside my body. They made me torture myself with warp energies… I was burning and mutilating my internal organs… Damned xenos!" Heinrix clenches his fists in fury and immediately winces from the pain."
And here an example where he can quickly heal RT:
"{name}… allow me…" Heinrix, quite bruised and dirty himself, reaches out with his hand. A chill makes the pain subside, and you feel the bone pop back into place."
So, to bring a long post coming to an end - a lot seems to be based on feelings and intuition and visualising what you want to achieve.
If a biomancer likes to heal a wound, maybe it is enough to look at it and imagine that it closes or that the flesh mends together - if it would take that much more concentrating on single cells than I would assume it would take much longer and not being "on the fly" as it is described in some books (-> of course, there we have often very powerful psykers and they wield their powers with ease, it doesn't mean that it is that simple or fast for other psykers with less power, so take my examples not too seriously).
We do know from Heinrix that he spent a long time regrowing his eye and also - nerve connections. But he did not managed to get the new eye to have the same iris color than his original one - so it isn't that easy, simply "wishing" things into existence.
"Xavier didn't care that I was a maimed freak — he needed me for my sorcery, nothing more. But I decided I would be more useful if I could start to look more like a human again." Heinrix brings his hand to his face. "Repairing my eyeball took the longest. Even the nerve connections took less effort. Years went by before I managed to eliminate all the visual aberrations and I could see as well as I had when I was a child."
I think biomancers can sense disturbances in a body, disruptions due to poison, illness, injury etc. The more knowledge they have about what caused this, it might help to heal it, but I don't think it is always required.
But depending on what you want to achieve, especially if it is dangerous or difficult, you would need much more concentration and strength of will and also power for it to work. And there is always the risk of corruption. Even powerful Ahriman asked the thousand sons to not resort to using their powers for mundane things - and overuse of their powers could also lead them to get corrupted (they call it flesh change).
"'No,' said Ahriman. 'I do not use my powers to accomplish things I can do without them. You should not either."
"Astartes first, psykers second,' said Ahriman. 'We forget that at our peril."
In any case, I hope that answered your questions or at least helped a bit.
I also have Heinrix's dialog from the game (including DLC 1 - Voidshadows) here, if you like to see if you missed something).
Start disappointing people and not backing out of it when they are upset, reject feeling ashamed of everything including of yourself, start saying No to things you do not want to do not just things you're scared of, do more of those things you're scared of but wish you could do, make your own plans and execute them, decide to do or not do something without basing it on who will Dislike it.
Free Will takes practice, and the chance of making someone somewhere Slightly or even Very Disappointed In You. But you're an adult and you can't be made to stand in a corner anymore.
genuine writers getting wrongly accused of using ai because of witch hunt and proper grammar/structure in their works must be what being a woman in the 1600s who is wrongly accused of being a witch because she can read and is intelligent feels like
I am so frustrated that, for the first time ever (that I remember), I am putting down a soapbox to publicly rant.
I have a little program called Winscript that is great for clearing all the shit Microsoft probes into my pc - all the trackers, bloatware, privacy crap - all gone!! Shooed away!! Yay!!
I was trying to clean up my laptops files as it's a slow little bugger the second I open a browser, and decided to use Winscript for a 2nd time to do some real deep-cleaning, especially if Microsoft managed to smuggle some shit back in like OneDrive.
Now, Winscript warned me to back up my files before attempting to delete OneDrive, but I was sure I had already deleted OneDrive the first time around, and the files were de-synced anyway, so surely it would've been fine - it's like spraying Raid even though you haven't seen that roach in a hot minute. I totally should've backed it up anyway, but my instinct was right in the end as you'll see.
I told Winscript to go stab at my stuff and it came back.
erm. Where did my desktop files go. Also. Why can I no longer access my documents.
Oh boy. Luckily, Winscript creates restore points for you so I paced around my room anxiously waiting for my laptop to restore itself. However, I was slightly devastated to learn that the 'restore' in restore point only applies to SYSTEM changes, NOT files. In hindsight, that makes a lot of sense, as I wondered how it restores files like pictures without them being a jagged crumple of corrupted pixels, but regardless... AGH!!!!!!!
I desperately looked around in my files to see what could be done. I noticed my downloads folder was totally fine. Maybe if I sign into OneDrive it'll magically have everything... - nope! It's totally empty but also telling me it has no storage left and needs my money (????).
I click and I click, and...what the fuck. My desktop files are back. But not on my Desktop-desktop, in my desktop files via the User filepath. Documents works there too.
But this makes no sense...? Your desktop *IS* on the User filepath, it's the USER'S DESKTOP. What the hell is going on???
Then I look at the filepath of the desktop with my files...
"C:\Users\jester\Desktop"
...and then I look at the desktop tab on File Explorer and copy the path...
"C:\Users\jester\OneDrive\Desktop"
You little shit. You made my desktop the ONEDRIVE DESKTOP INSTEAD OF MY ACTUAL FUCKINGGGGGG DESKTOPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!! AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME THIS INFORMATION!!!!!!
I look more at the files in my user to verify everything's there, and I notice this little fucker:
and I KILL IT.
*pop!* Desktop and Documents vanished. An undeniable confirmation that Microsoft cuckoo'd my fucking nest and left its shitty little OneDrive eggs there to eat my hard-earned worms.
I pin my CORRECT desktop and documents to File Explorer, and all is right in the world.
Windows 11 users, make sure OneDrive hasn't got its disgusting hands on your stuff and mimicking your desktop like the parasite it is. Back up your files, get Winscript and KILL IT. KILL IT NOW.
i am now going to back up my stuff lel
(for assurance that I'm not THAT stupid, my laptop isn't my main computer, the important stuff is safe on numerous drives, I would've just lost a lot of old photos and files I was working on the past week. Annoying, but not the end of the world.)
Finally fixed my dell laptop and like, figured out how to fix my HP despite being told it was fried through years ago, because HP/dell have shared multiple part manufacturers forever and their builds are pretty similar
And I just
I have to bitch about this
So for the past few months my Windows 11 download has basically been making it to them my laptop will go into sleep mode and refuse to wake up, but blare the fucking fans the whole time and overheat, which has cooked through my main fucking battery.
And all of the solutions online never touched on this, but it literally worked for two fucking computers because it's THE EXACT SAME PROBLEM
Which is this
This, or rather these, are cmos/bios batteries. They typically last a few years, sit on the motherboard, and power the cmos chip that stores date/time and bios settings. Their slow death makes your computer shittier and for some ungodly reason, it's a bitch to get an actual manufacturer's repair shop to replace them.
For some reason though, windows 11 speeds up the degradation of these and has even more nightmarish reactions to an even some what dying cmos battery than usual. So like, even if you replaced it recently, if you went through a major install on a windows 11 machine it will for some ungodly reason still majorly eat it. Post major updates, you're fine, it's just ass.
So, six dollars. Cmos replaced (it's literally a coin battery). 98% of problem fixed and PCs that were previously unable to boot at all brought back to life, go into terminal, powercfg/a and check whether sleep state 3 is enabled. If not, registry, run key to enable state 3.
Computer can now awaken. (And fully power on/run without issues if bricked sometimes.)
Did this, battery swap, and checked the barrel port despite having only just replaced it on the off chance there was any damage. Nope.
Anyway, it's so stupid and annoying I just want this to exist somewhere on the internet for someone else to see so they don't end up going through hell like me.
Microsoft's latest update for Windows 11 (with Copilot+) includes a feature called "Recall" that you might want to disable. The Recall records everything on screen you do. This means it stores information like your passwords, browsing history, images, videos, messages, and emails. To disable it, type the following command as admin user:
if your main art tool is krita or any other non adobe thing, you can switch from windows to linux mint.
if you play single player games through steam you can switch to linux mint
if you just use the computer to surf, why the fuck would you even be on windows switch to linux mint.
you go to linux mints website, pick cinnamon. fladh that on a usb (guide is on the linux mint website its easy) then you install linux mint from the usb. and you will NEVER have to worry about windows fucking your shit up ever again. linux mint is stable, FREE!!, developed open source, anyone can contribute and see what is being done, and it wont fuck you.
i see all these debloat 11 posts and i dont understand... just install linux mint its literally free, and a better os than 11. if you are the kind of person who looks for ways to debloat 11, you have enough knowhow to switch to linux mint.
caveat being if you use adobe programs for work, adobe hates linux and refuses to make it work. i know some older adobe software works, but it might not be feasable for everyone.
but if the previous points apply, you can switch and be free. save the serial number for your windows, try linux mint and see.
you can even load mint from the usb just to try it out! you can try other linux oses too, but im focused on mint because its the one ive been on and ive had a great experience.
hey can I tell you something. linux mint just released a big update. I know this because I got a notification telling me the update was available and I could install it if I wanted to. I didn't because I forgot about it, and lo and behold the update did not install itself or even so much as prompt me a second time. later I remembered and looked for it, it took about a minute to find and I didn't even have to look it up. It had a link to the page on what (exactly) was gonna change and was very readable and clear. I clicked the update, it ran a few things, then was like "hey I'm done, the update will kick in when the computer restarts". I went on doing my thing. when I restarted the computer, it ran a few things it normally doesn't and BOOM the computer was updated. I disliked it. the ui on the start menu was slightly different and the remapping software I needed to use my keyboard properly didn't work. so guess what? I went into Timeshift, a utility installed by default (but easily uninstallable!) on the standard Mint installation which saves a "snapshot" of the OS every however often you tell it to (for me, once a day), and told it to revert to my last snapshot. Tells me to make sure I have no unsaved work, then runs some whatever for two minutes and restarts. BOOM the computer is back on the old version, no huss no fuss no coconuts. the old start menu is back (it probs would've been easy to reconfigure it in the new v but) more importantly, my keyboard works exactly how it's supposed to again, just like that! and by the time the next major update comes out the bug in my keyboard util will probably have been fixed. and if it doesn't, no prob! just ^^^^^. or use a different one. or send a request. or find the command that makes it work anyway. less than 10 minutes googling easily.
Hey. Hey Windows users. You don't know how bad you have it.
Then you should consider at least TESTING Linux out. You can test linux without doing ANYTHING and without ANY risk of losing your files. Yes, really. you can run it off a pendrive with very little effort.
And I can help. I've been using Linux on and off since 2016 and in 2024 I finally decided to make the full shift and I really don't miss windows at all. with Tumblr constantly complaining about the shitty new windows updates and how IA is being force fed to us at every corner, I've decided to compile this (hopefully short) guide to Linux created for people who have never touched anything tech related before.
what is Linux?
Linux is an operating system like Windows or mac, except its fully open sourced so many groups and companies have build upon it. We call those variations "distributions" (or distros) and there are hundreds of them. They're different in many ways - some made to run in really old computers, some made with programmers in mind, some created for particular applications like medical systems, some made to emulate old games, some made for regular users. You can (and should!!) search for some distros that are fun or suit you in particular, but for new users i recommend UBUNTU or POP!_OS, because they're easy to use and hard to break.
Be honest, Should I change to Linux?
I don't know. Truth to be told, some programs are pretty tied to Windows or Mac and work worse on Linux - if you need them for work, you probably are better of sticking to windows, at least during work hours. And any distro in Linux is less user friendly than windows - you will probably need to google "[program name] linux" once or twice to check why its not working. Maybe even lose your fear of the terminal and learn a few command lines.
but here comes the beauty of Linux: You can try it without changing anything in your pc.
You can download the distro you want on a pendrive and run it from the pendrive. Nothing will be download to your computer. There are no risks. You can test how things run on it, how it looks, you can even tweak it around and change stuff. And if you like it, you can install it as a dual boot.
what is dual boot?
With dual boot you separate part of your hard drive so windows doesn't have access to it and install a second operating system on it, while keeping the old one unaffected. Whenever you turn on your computer you can choose if you want to use Windows or Linux. In the old days, this was done by deleting the whole hardrive first, but today this doesn't happen anymore.
I would recommend backing up your files just to be safe, but I've never seen anyone lose anything while dual booting. If you have some space in your hardrive (anything over 10gb is fine, but I Would suggest at least 50gb for some wiggle room) you can take that away from Windows and install Linux on it. Linux isn't stupid like Windows so it will have access to the files you have saved on windows (as long as you remember your password) so don't worry about that: you're free to write your fanfic on Linux, save it, and the next day continue writing it on Windows.
I've kept a windows/Linux dual boot for about 8 years before I decided to get rid of windows and I can't recommend it enough. The only downside is that you have 50gb less on your windows side, which does not matter.
OK, but why the fuck should i do that?
Good question. Right now Window sucks balls more than it has ever sucked before. It sucks very bad. It runs about a thousand background process for no reason other than fuck you, it shoves ads and AI into everything you do and it's using your data to train more AI and send you more ads. Linux does nothing of the sort: everything is in your control. No program is running on the background without your consent, you can delete anything, uninstall anything, change whatever you want. Yes with great powers come great responsibilities, but unless you plan on deleting big files named "System" you're going to be fine.
it's true that Linux takes a little while to get used to. Even the most user friendly of distros are more complex than windows because it wants to be good FOR YOU, and it can only do that if you put the effort to make it so. If you don't want anything particular, in 30 minutes you can make it great. I honestly think that the average tumblr user would love linux: the trial and error, spending hours customizing everything, adding weird little extensions on your browser so every time you close something it explodes. and again, you can do ALL THAT without risking losing what you have on windows.
Also, don't you miss having fun with your computer? Don't you miss when it worked as you wanted and had silly little games and you didn't feel like you were being used all the time? You can have that back. for free.
I suck at computer! I can't do that
Look deep into my eyes now. computer is a skill you can acquire. the worse (the WORSE) thing that can happen while installing Linux is that you delete your files. That's IT. Anything else can be fixed by plugin in USB drive and trying again. Backup your files and all the risk is null. Don't let Microsoft and Google convince you to eat garbage while they tell you its as good as it gets.
ok but does it look ugly?
it can look ugly. Some distros are horrendous, some look like 90's computers, but most of them look modern and way prettier than windows, plus you can edit anything you don't like. Here is how mine currently looks with VERY little tweaking (this is POP! OS 24.04). I also show myself downloading GIMP so you can see how easy it is.
can it run [thing]?
probably yes. Again, if you need a very particular program for work you should google it. The only thing I used to run on windows and can't on Linux is League of legends and Valorant, because riot games has a stupid anti-cheat system. Any other game and program I use runs perfectly fine.
Cool, I want to try, what do I need?
Part 1: testing it on a pendrive (no risk at all)
You need a empty USB drive. That's it. But you also need to lose the fear of using your computer - its yours, don't let Microsoft tell you otherwise. Search for the distro you want to try and download the .ISO file. I recommend starting with POP_OS right now because it's pretty easy to use and is made with gaming in mind, so it comes with some video drivers preinstalled, but you can (and should!!) google "linux distros" and see what comes up. remember: you can use it directly from the pendrive - no installation needed, so you can just try some out.
After you chose a distro and download the ISO file from their website, download RUFUS. it will look like this
plug in your pendrive and don't worry about anything that isn't boot selection (they're just information on the format of your pendrive and the default is fine). Put your .iso file, name it something cool and click start and bang, there you have it.
Next, find out how to access your computer BIOS. Usually you need to hold an F10 key while it turns on or something, but each brand comes with a particular key so just google "[name of your computer] bios key". Mine is a Lenovo laptop and it has a little hole next on the side you need to press with a paper clip. Shut Down your computer and turn it on again pressing whatever you need to press. Now, this is the scariest part of this whole thing, which isn't very scary at all, but you will se something like this:
First, go over to security (over there, at the top) and turn OFF secure booting. It sounds bad but that's just windows being stupid. You can google about it if you feel unsure (i am in fact a stranger online) but on the wikipedia page for secure boot you have the following quote "[Microsoft] was accused by critics and free-software/open-source advocates (including the Free Software Foundation) of trying to use the Secure Boot functionality of UEFI to hinder or outright prevent the installation of alternative operating systems such as Linux." So. You know.
Then, move over to BOOT (right next to security, also on the top) and change the order of priority so your pendrive is the first option. If you feel unsure, you can have a step by step guide (like this one) opened on your phone.
Don't change anything else. Move to exit (last option on the top) and click to save and exit. your computer will reboot and you will be taken to the Linux that now lives in your pendrive.
Part 1 done! hell yeah!
You're now using Linux! test it around, maybe write a bit of fanfic on it. open tumblr and tell me about it. I don't know. sky is the limit. It will probably be a bit slow because it's running on a USB drive, but that's life.
part 2: If you want to dual-boot (back up your files to be sure)
From the USB driver linux, there will be an installer and you can just click install with no additional steps - most installers now will allow you do edit your memory hard drive so you can partition it (select a section off of it to be dedicated to Linux). just continue the installation and it will ask where you want to install it. If the installer DOESN'T let you partition your hardrive, you just have to go back to windows (see how bellow) and do it through disk management. If the installer allows you, but you're scared, disk management will probably make you feel safer (even if there is no difference from doing it from the Linux installation manager or windows disk management). Everything you might need is on this website and is not hard at all. Windows will guide you through it too:
Remember, 50gb of volume size is more than enough (i think they'll ask you to input the size in mb for some reason, so 50.000 mb = 50 gb). If you will download a lot of programs/games you might want to put 100gb-200gb, but you can always try again if you decide you want more space.
this is the part where you might lose your files - the disk manager will delete any files saved on the end of your hard drive to create that partition. USUALLY there are no files saved on the end of your hard drive so nothing gets deleted, but again, back up your shit to be safe.
To go back to windows, you need to turn off your computer, go to BIOS again, then BOOT, and change the order again so Windows is on top. You don't need to turn secure boot on (unless you play any riot games, bc their anti cheat fucking sucks). If that's annoying for you to do it every time you want to change systems, you can make it so that as soon as you turn you computer it asks you which one to boot (check out how here) but honestly i never bothered.
AAAAND that's it. Pick up a day you're bored and try to do it. try it out! learn something new! Sure, it's a more dramatic change than going from google chrome to firefox (and honestly right now you should consider going from firefox to Zen Browser or Libre Wolf), but it's not as hard or as dangerous as people think it. And if you don't want to use it daily, at least you can download a retro gaming distro so you can play old games in style.
If you decide to use Linux, i would recommend not losing that pendrive. If anything happens, you can plug it back and re-install it. and if you decide you're ready to leave windows for good, you'll want to reinstall linux on the part of your hard drive that windows now lives. Doing that uses exactly the same steps as above, but chose the other partition instead. in that case back those files up because its possible this time it will delete all your files (some installers allow you to chose which folders to keep, but some don't).
remember! YOU OWN YOUR COMPUTER! you don't need to be getting ads in your own house, or feeding the AI slop machine. you can have fun with computers again.
This is an awesome use of what is probably a master's degree if not a doctorate and I am 100% thrilled that she shared it even though it was embarrassing and she squeaked.
this is Hannah Fry, Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.
Text of tweet under the cut because it is loooong.
But... Stochastic Parrots.
Timnit Gebru was fired from Google in December 2020 for refusing to retract a research paper, and every single warning that paper made about large language models has now happened at a scale the industry spent 4 years trying to make people forget about.
Her name is Timnit Gebru.
She co-led the Ethical AI team at Google. She co-wrote a paper called "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" with Emily Bender at the University of Washington and two other researchers. The paper was 14 pages long. It was submitted to a top AI ethics conference. And it was the reason Google decided that one of the most senior Black women in AI research could no longer work there.
The story Google told publicly was that she resigned. The story she told, confirmed by 2,695 of her colleagues in an open letter, was that she was fired by email while on vacation because she refused to either retract the paper or remove her name from it.
The paper had not even been published yet.
Here is what she actually wrote, and why every prediction inside it has now come true.
The first warning was about scale itself. Bender and Gebru argued that training ever-larger models on ever-larger scrapes of the internet would produce systems that appeared fluent but had no actual understanding of language. They called these systems stochastic parrots because they would repeat patterns from training data with statistical confidence and zero comprehension. The paper predicted that this apparent intelligence would fool both users and developers into trusting outputs that were structurally incapable of being reliable.
This was 2020. GPT-3 had just come out. The paper predicted the hallucination problem before anyone had a word for it.
The second warning was about bias amplification. The paper documented in detail that internet-scale training data contains systematic overrepresentation of dominant viewpoints and underrepresentation of marginalized ones. The models would not just absorb this bias. They would amplify it, because the optimization process rewards confident outputs, and confidence in language patterns tracks frequency in the training set.
The prediction was that hiring tools built on these models would discriminate against women. That healthcare triage tools would underperform on Black patients. That loan approval systems would entrench inequality while presenting their decisions as neutral algorithmic judgment.
Every one of those things has now been documented in deployment.
Amazon's hiring algorithm penalized resumes that contained the word "women" in any context. Healthcare risk scoring algorithms used by major US hospitals were found to systematically underestimate the medical needs of Black patients. Apple Card's credit algorithm gave wives credit lines 10x lower than their husbands for the same financial profile.
The third warning was about environmental cost. The paper calculated that training a single large language model produced emissions equivalent to the lifetime output of 5 cars. The prediction was that the race to scale would create an environmental footprint that would eventually rival entire industries.
In 2024, Google's emissions were up 48% from 2019, and the company explicitly blamed AI infrastructure. Microsoft's were up 29%, same reason. Both companies have now quietly abandoned the climate commitments they were publicly celebrating the year Gebru was fired.
The fourth warning was about documentation. The paper argued that the training datasets being assembled were too large for anyone to actually audit. Nobody at Google, OpenAI, Meta, or any other lab could tell you with confidence what was in the data their models were trained on. This was not a temporary problem to be solved later. It was a permanent feature of the approach.
In 2023, researchers discovered that the LAION-5B dataset, used to train Stable Diffusion and other major image models, contained thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. The companies that had trained on the dataset had no way of knowing. The paper predicted that category of failure 3 years before it was found.
The fifth warning was the one Google cared about most.
Bender and Gebru argued that the deployment of these systems would centralize linguistic and cultural power in the hands of the small number of companies that could afford to train them. The internet would become a place where the dominant voice was a statistical average of dominant voices, presented as a neutral assistant. Languages underrepresented in the training data would degrade over time as more web content was generated by these systems and fed back into the next training run.
This is now happening in real time. A 2024 study found that 57% of new web content in English is AI-generated or AI-assisted. Researchers studying low-resource languages have documented active degradation in translation quality, because the synthetic content fed back into training is itself worse in those languages.
The paper Google fired her for predicted the model collapse problem before model collapse had a name.
The mechanism behind why this all happened is the part of her work that nobody quotes.
Gebru's argument was not that AI is dangerous in some abstract sci-fi sense. Her argument was that AI is dangerous in a very specific structural sense. The technology was being built by a small group of researchers who shared similar backgrounds, worked at similar companies, and were rewarded for shipping products faster than competitors. The incentive structure made it impossible for safety, ethics, and bias concerns to slow anything down. Anyone inside the system who raised those concerns was either ignored, sidelined, or removed.
She was making that argument from inside Google.
Then Google proved her right by removing her.
The team Google had built to make sure their AI was safe was dismantled in 90 days because they did the job they had been hired to do. Margaret Mitchell, the other co-lead of the Ethical AI team, was fired two months after Gebru for searching through her own emails for evidence of how Gebru had been treated.
Gebru did not stop. She founded DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute, in 2021. The mission is to do AI research outside the control of the companies that have a financial interest in not hearing the answers.
Every prediction in the Stochastic Parrots paper has now been validated by deployment. Hallucinations are an industry-wide problem the largest labs cannot solve. Bias amplification has been documented in hiring, healthcare, lending, and criminal justice. Environmental costs are larger than entire small countries. Training data audits remain impossible. Model collapse is an active research crisis at every major lab.
The question worth sitting with is the one almost no one in the industry will say out loud.
Every researcher with the technical credibility to call out these problems watched what happened to her in December 2020 and made a calculation about their own career. The number of people willing to speak publicly about safety and ethics issues inside the major AI labs collapsed after that firing and has not recovered.
The researcher Google fired for warning about exactly what is now happening was right.
The company that fired her is now the second-largest deployer of the technology she warned about.
And the people inside that company who agree with her are not allowed to say so.
I don’t think we ought to normalize or justify bullying as a means to keep people from being annoying — a sentiment that in and of itself could make for a whole article’s worth of conversation — but I do think we should make a habit of politely but directly telling people “hey I didn’t like that”, “that wasn’t funny”, “you are mistaken”, and the like if it’s called for, and more importantly, you should be able to take a “that wasn’t funny” for instance without taking it personally, because protecting a polite harmony where no one can criticize each other, not even politely, is also really, really bad.
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