alright I've got to do some quick math to explain attitudes towards AI to my boss.
we're looking to create an AI policy, and when we were talking about this, my boss (older millennial) was genuinely shocked to hear that younger people do not (seem) to view AI positively (a la the recent commencement speakers being booed)
please rb for larger sample size!
Question 1/3
What is your age, and do you feel AI is a net positive or net negative in our lives today?
Do any of u have decent recipes that are like 5 ingredients (not including spices) and take 45 mins or less to prepare i gotta stop eating sandwiches for dinner
ignore the title of this google doc because it's a long story but it's a really solid recipe for southwest chicken alfredo
this is a vegetarian potato curry recipe that's about 75% spices; once you get the potatoes in there you can really do whatever you want with it
this is literally just pasta, broccoli, and cheese babey and you can live off that shit for DAYS it makes such a big portion
bro this spinach/pesto/3 cheese flatbread is so fucking tasty bro
also you can make the flatbread yourself it's super quick!!
oh hey I'm eating this white chickpea chili right now, much like the curry it's mostly spices and you can do p much do whatever you want with it
don't let the name fool you these potatoes are delicious any time. not just breakfast.
this is slightly more than five ingredient when you add them together but if you have time and really wanna fuckin treat yourself I recommend these chicken strips + this cornbread + either these potatoes or these buttered veggies on the side.
this recipe for gogumabap (sweet potato and rice) saved my life when i couldn't eat hardly anything for a long time. the recipe itself calls for a heavy bottomed pot but you can absolutely use a rice cooker and put the rice and diced sweet potato in together and just let the machine do its thing
If you have a crockpot, I do a really good pulled pork carnitas that is:
Pork - any cut boneless
Onions- chopped anyway you like
Orange juice - about one cup (you can use about 2 tablespoons of the condensed frozen stuff if you have it)
Root beer, pepsi, or other cola soda - about one cup
Preferred chili mix seasoning - 1-2 packets depending on how intense you like your flavoring and how much pork you put in
Garlic - as much as you wanna, specifically smashed not cut
Canned or frozen corn - to your preference
Dump all that into your crockpot in the morning (or the night before) and let it run on low until dinner. Cook some rice if you feel like it, or just serve over tortillas.
While we've talked about BestFriendProgram and particularly her relationship with FriendProgram, it only felt right to write a more dedicated analysis for her, being the main villain of the game and all.
I'm also going to be using text image descriptions in this post, as alt text seems to glitch here.
BFP, as the main villain, has a wide-reaching influence throughout the Friendship Labs despite her absence for most of the game.
Even in the most isolated corner of the lab, GAMES gets anxious about FUN's behaviour because she certainly wouldn't approve of it. Even here, BFP's words echo back to FP on screens. Even in Reprogram Town, walled off from the rest of the lab, programs talk about BFP.
Beyond that, she literally is in charge of the rest of the lab. She designs the tests throughout, she decides which issues to adress or leave, she approved of the construction of the Death Machine and had the Love Test installed. Despite her absence, BFP is always in the back of the players mind.
BFP, as the main villain, is also very broadly tied to the concept of love.
Her most notable relationships are with FriendProgram, Dreamer, and Enemy, who are each associated with the most commonly recognized forms of love (platonic, familial, romantic) in relation to BFP. In fact, Dreamer and Enemy are the first programs she communicates with. The scene where BFP and Enemy talk about kissing also strikes me as very classic "machines learning to love" stuff.
The acts of the game that introduce and focus on Dreamer and Enemy respectively even have sort of a pattern with their associated types of love/relationships.
Near the start of act 2 you encounter Jester who is in conflict with their brother Jerkster. Jerkster is encountered in the lead up to the climax of the act where he's moved to start mending their relationship. In-between, you have to solve encounters with the brothers Build and Breaks, and a twin pair of techprograms. And of course, this act also introduces FP's sibling Void, who temporarily joins your party.
Leading up to the end of the act, we find out that Dreamer, who is in charge of the area we pass throughout the act, is BFP's sibling and it concludes with a confrontation between the two of them. This is also the first and only time we encounter BFP in person prior to the game's finale.
The romance motif in act 3 isn't as present as act 2's sibling theme, but it's still notable enough. The first test of the act has a whole section where FP and Waterbottle are put under pressure by testprograms insisting they hold romantic feelings for one another and then antagonize FP when they stage a breakup. Keys also confronts his former partner Ray, whose relationship already had past tensions due to Keys' romantic boundaries.
Halfway through the act, it turns out that Enemy and BFP are ex-partners as well, which marks the starting point of conflict between Enemy and FP for the remainder of the act.
BFP's relationship with FriendProgram is what I'd very simplisticly and briefly describe as "special". To her and to the narrative. The two of them are quite literally the center piece of the game's cover and starting menu. No one would bat an eye if FP and Waterbottle were the faces of the game, but instead it's them and her.
[ID: The cover of Friendship Test. It shows the games title, and FriendProgram leaning against a TV with a green screen. /end ID.]
The way BFP reacts to FP also stands out, even in comparison to Dreamer and Enemy.
BFP holds concern for Dreamer, but their relationship is framed as rather distant. The way Dreamer and Pixels talk about their struggle with being disconnected from each other and themselves gives me the impression that Dreamer was dormant for a while before the start of the game, yet BFP only notices and takes action during act 2, while Dreamer is already reawakening and affecting the emulation software.
BFP grieved over Enemy's death, even rebooting herself several times over it, and wants to reunite with her. But she's still willing to push her away out of the misguided belief that it's better for the both of them. When Enemy contacts BFP during act 3 to try and mock her over crashing the office test, the interaction starts out almost lightheartedly from BFP's side.
But when she finds out that FriendProgram is alive again, standing in front of her, she immediately breaks down, her emotional regulation failing. She traps FP in her friend test mode and begs for them to stay. Promises that she will be better. Insists that if they leave, they will get hurt again, and she will be at fault again.
Reading through Dreamer's memory notes, she talks about BFP being very different at some point. Seeing one of FP's memories in act 7, she also remarks that while she seemed different here, the change was by far not as drastic as later on.
According to Dreamer, BFP drastically changed after her reset which happened in response to FP's death.
We know from act 7 logs that while BFP was offline, the friendprograms she taught made their way through the labs and made contact with other programs. The friendprograms weren't perfect friends and everyone was still adjusting to the scientists being gone, but things seemed fine.
Then BFP woke up, assumed responsibility over the entire labs and everyone in it, and isolated herself.
And I'm not just talking about Enemy either. BFP making very little personal appearance compared to her felt presence makes for a very intruiging final confrontation, but it's also a very intentional character choice. Waterbottle asks a few programs in Friendship Home about how to reach BFP, and all they can offer them is that meetings with her only happen on her terms for management reasons.
As for her running the lab, not only does she bring back the tests she previously wanted to do away with, I believe the specifics of it reveal quite a bit about her underlying feelings.
The emulations are run by Dreamer, but they clearly caught enough wind of BFP's grief to the point that when they start waking up, the hospital cafeteria includes a gravestone with FP's old name on it.
The highschool test includes a teacher character who's defeated by making her realize that she's so harsh on her students because she's harsh on herself.
[ID: Dialogue box saying: "(Subject: Worry that I'm too harsh on you sometimes.)" /end ID.]
The office test is all about withstanding pressure and trying not to corrupt in the process.
[ID: FriendProgram looking at a broken TV screen with a desperate expression. Their eyes are red. /end ID.]
Programs complain that not only will BFP tell them to leave Enemy alone, but she also avoids dealing with the experiments walking about between tests.
[ID: FP talking to a dog experiment. It says: "You remind me of a nice friendprogram I knew once. They liked spending time with us. No one else did…" /end ID]
As brief as it was, at her lowest point BFP also approved the construction of the Death Machine, specifically asking for something that can kill any program, because if they are a good friend, they won't die and leave her. Not far from the Death Machine is the Love Test which most programs consider to be "impossible" to fail, but collapsed in on itself when FP went through it.
Clearly, BFP is deeply affected by FP's death and it worsened her fears of hurting others and being hurt. And yet she only dug herself deeper.
BFP's reaction to FP's death and how it affected the labs actually kinda reminds me of Reprogram Town and Buddy.
When we first played the game, we skipped most of the content warnings, and the way Buddy felt about how the other reprograms approach them as of act 1 read to us like a disabled person feeling alienated by the people around them, even if they're well meaning.
On my replay I did for this analysis, I decided to read the content warnings just out of curiosity for how they describe events in the game I'm now familiar with, and the description for events relating to Buddy is a lot more literal with it:
[ID: Content warnings: "The death of a character affects the people that knew them and the person that killed them. The character that passed away also briefly discusses how that makes them feel." /end ID.]
Allegories aside, Buddy is very literally someone drifting in and out of death, being frustrated at how everyone around them only approaches them with pity and looks at them like a past regret.
And that made something in my mind click. The way BFP runs the lab is very influenced by the currently dead FP, but much of it is based on misplaced regret and ultimately the labs are in a state that is absolutely horrible to traverse for them in particular.
In the end, Tori is confronted primarily by Dreamer, Enemy, and FriendProgram. Her choosing to drop the responsibility over the labs she has placed upon herself and getting to live is something we've thought about a lot. How we feel about it, the execution, ect.
FriendProgram hoped that their death would be a wake-up call for her, but she only doubled down on the mistakes she made with them. For that reason, and the fact that she viewed love and friendship as mutually exclusive from cruelty and violence, I find it easy to imagine a version of BFP who only kept digging deeper.
I find it easy to imagine a version of her who continued to harm people in the name of her passed away loved one.
[ID: Dialogue from Void: "You miss them and you would do anything for them. Even if it's horrible stuff you shouldn't ever do." /end ID.]
I find it easy to imagine a version of her who continued to hold herself and everyone around her up to impossible standards.
[ID: Lab log: "I'm fixing this place, I'm fixing all of us."
Nick: "Even if I tried, I could never be as strong as them." /end ID.]
I find it easy to imagine a BFP who still chooses to assign herself the responsibility over everyone in the labs, because she believes she knows better.
[ID: Lab log: "They are all still too weak to understand. I'm the only one who can manage to carry the guilt." /end ID]
Who believes everyone always needs to forgive each other.
[ID: Lab log: "Because that's what you do to the life forms you love. You don't stab them in the back. You forgive them." /end ID.]
And I can imagine a version of her who sees Enemy reach out to her, offering support and forgiveness if only she chooses to let go of that burden, and rejecting it.
[ID: Dialogue between Void and Nick.
Nick: "Why do you make this so difficult...?"
Void, reaching out a hand: "It doesn't have to be."
Nick, grabbing their arm: "That's enough!" /end ID.]
I think there's a pattern in Friendship Test, of history repeating and characters breaking out of the repetition.
FP killed themself after failing to kill BFP. They attempt a murder-suicide, but both of them come out of the story alive.
Exe tries to make sure FP's plans succeed this time, already in a way wanting to prevent a repetition, but again, FP comes out alive.
Dreamer and Pixels once again get seperated, but this time Pixels isn't forgotten. Even if Dreamer were to forget them, Waterbottle wouldn't. And the repetitive appearance of cabels throughout act 2 ensures that the player also thinks of Pixels everytime they see them throughout the game.
Void could've once again stayed in their room as their sibling dies, but they didn't. They didn't thanks to Sparks, a program who has ironically resigned himself to sitting and watching things play out, out of fear that taking action will repeat history, choosing to act again when they see Void in that room.
Tori didn't follow Nick's footsteps, and she stopped doubling down. And I believe one of the reasons for that is that despite everything we see, she is capable of letting go.
Tori first learned about love and friendship from the old organisms, and clearly these things still hold a lot of importance for her. But she was willing to do away with their legacy because of the harm they caused. Even if she was able to let go because of her misguided belief that the organisms didn't "really" love the programs, she expresses that she loved them. She might've believed the organisms leaving was ultimately worth it for the safety of FP, other programs, and experiments, but I imagine it was still a loss for her, too.
I remember after we finished the game, we wrote a few posts trying to sort our thoughts, which included discussion of Tori. At the time we still refered to her by BFP by default because that was just the name we were more used to, but we quickly switched up when we saw that by the time of the Exe DLC, she exclusively goes by Tori.
I think part of the reason we defaulted to BFP was also the fact that Enemy still goes by her newer name, so we assumed the same here. But if we were to compare Tori to characters who go by several names, Void would probably be more appropriate. The same way Void isn't inherently a Bad Friend, Tori doesn't need to be the Best Friend.
So, she lets go. She lets go of the pedestal that she put friendprograms on that she could never reach, of the nickname that FP gave her back in the day, and by extension, she lets go of FP themself.
There is a detail in her final conversation with them at the end of act 7 that always struck me as impactful. Something that gives me the impression that she's already trying to adjust her understanding of FP, who she's dismissed over and over in the past.
[ID: Tori sits in her screen display in front of FP. She says: "I'm sorry I ruined our connection." /end ID.]
i need data for a statistics project for school, so be my sample data, worms. i need thirty people minimum so if there aren't enough voters yet i'd love if you could help. thank you very much. worms.
take this test (https://www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd/, it's a color perception/comparison test, it's pretty fun. precision does not matter, just accuracy), then come back here:
what's your JND?
.00030-.00099
.0010-.0017
.0017-.0024
.0024-.0031
.0031-.0038
.0038-.0045
.0045-.0052
.0052-.0059
.0059-.0066
.0066-.0073
.0073-.0080
.0080 or greater
Voting ended onMay 13
the lower the number, the closer two colors have to be before you can't tell the difference
it doesnt have to be a good score, you dont have to take it multiple times, you dont have to get on a good screen, etcetera. just gimme your score please this is my final project grade :)
In light of all the new dialogue for cruel king in demo 5, I’d like to showcase my arospec orientation headcanon that I have for cruel king :3c
Recipromantic
I always thought that Cruel King as an individual had very complex emotions and I personally felt that he loved differently. I like this orientation on him :)
Things people in the notes have been able to do thanks to this post:
eat breakfast
go to bed
get out of bed
take a shower
write
practice
watch Superman Returns and write a paper on it
retain shreds of sanity
I need y’all to know that you’re doing amazing, and I’m so glad that I was able to help you break out of a procrastination loop you did not want to be stuck in.
the use of AI lately has made me feel so hopeless, i translated pages of an unfinished fanzine of mine so i can remember why i love art...i hope it can resonate with anyone feeling the same way
why are there so many posts about asexuals being immune to sirens. people. sirens don’t lure you in with sex (necessarily). they sing about whatever it is that you want most. they could sing about mothman or cinnamon toast crunch and guess what then your asexual pirate is fucking dead
Congratulations! Odysseus! You’ve been selected as a winner for the free $1000 Amazon Gift Card, Apple iPhone X 256G or Samsung Galaxy S8! Claim your prize now!
It’s been 1 year since the full release of Friendship Test.
It feels surreal it has only been 1 year, it feels like a decade. My life has changed for the better little by little, and the creation of this game is part of that journey. Words will never be enough to express how grateful I am for all the support this game has got and continues to get. Just like FP, I am glad to still be here 1 year later, and I’m excited for this little game to continue its jourtney too. Thank you everyone and happy birthday Friendship Test!
