Things that I knew about: that the mass incarceration of people in the USA , particularly black men, has direct ties to/is an extension of slavery.
Things I did not know: this specific shit about Louisiana HOLY FUCK this is evil.
I’m from Mississippi and it’s like this in my home town. Enslaved prisoners clean roadways, pick cotton, everything they’ve done since before slavery was supposedly ended. What they teach in schools is nothing but propaganda.
genuinely i don’t think it’s possible to easily explain the explicit part of online friendships to people who don’t Understand. i don’t mean like, explicit in the sense of “oh you’re sexting” or whatever. no. i mean when you and your friend start gleefully making up explicit sexual scenarios for your shared blorbos and you get giddier and giddier as you add more detail and you’ll be grinning at your screen as you type away at mach speeds. and it’s entirely nonsexual in an interpersonal sense, you’re not really getting Into it, but ohhhhh it’s soooooo fun and satisfying. and you can NEVER tell someone who doesn’t also do this that your mood is actively improved like fivefold because you and your friend played Sexual Tuoys together because they’ll go “what the FUCK.”
#i kinda love the title visser i just wish they had eva on the cover#it refers to both visser 1 and visser 3. it's a title of power. it's v1's identity and it's not mother because she *isnt* a mother#to madra and darwin she is a visser. she infests them to make them act like her children#it's fundamentally about power and the yeerk empire and v1's identity in a way that the title visser communicates
But! By that standard, The Andalite Chronicles is about power in the Andalite Electorate, and about War-Prince as an identity. None of the Chronicles is about an entire species; they're all about individuals and titles. And half of Hork-Bajir Chronicles is narrated by non-hork-bajir!
So like, if the series was called Seer, Ellimist, Prince, and Visser, it'd be consistent! OR if it was called The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, The Ellimist* Chronicles, The Andalite Chronicles, and The Yeerk Chronicles. But it's NOT, and it bugs me SO MUCH, because I am EXTREMELY NORMAL about the grammar of parallel structure.
*It's super unclear whether "Ellimist" is a category name or title, so I'll allow that it doesn't have to be Ketran Chronicles.
Visser overlaps directly with the story, and shows the wartime culture of the species over whatever's going on back home. All three other Chronicles are prequels, what bits in the present used as framing devices for a story that already happened. Maybe that's why?
That's my take as well. The present day stuff is just a framing device for the three Chronicles books. (I think; full disclosure, Ellimist Chronicles is one of the three Animorphs books I haven't read, and one of the other two is the second Alternamorphs.)
In other words, the Chronicles books are stories set in the past with present-day framing narratives, where the present-day Animorphs only appear as brief cameos (the end of Andalite) or the person the story is being told to (Hork-Bajir and Ellimist). Visser, on the other hand, while a great deal of it is flashbacks to earlier times, is set in the present day. We cut back to present-day Edriss multiple times, the Animorphs play an active role in the story, and the present-day Council of Thirteen member Garoff 168 technologically inserts himself into one of the flashbacks.
Moreover, framing devices in Animorphs are cheap. How have no Controllers picked up the obvious personally identifiable information in the stories, lack of surname notwithstanding? How is Rachel writing down what happens during her death? How does Jara Hamee know what Esplin 9466' was thinking? You're not supposed to think to hard about it. But the present-day stuff in Visser is significant.
I'm as guilty as anyone else of having referred to Visser as "a Chronicles in all but name," but these days I'm pretty sure that's not true.
Still a crime that Alloran gets to be on the cover but Eva doesn't.
Senshi is gonna bond with Yasha over atypical dietary preferences and swap ideas about cooking bugs. Fjord and Chil are going to be the only ones Taking Things Seriously together and then some big turtle will show up and Fjord and Marceille will scream about it together. Nott is going to be fighting a strange and immediate instinct to pick Izutsumi up by the scruff of her neck with her mouth.
In a strange position where I think there are massive, massive social harms to the proliferation of AI (misinfo, deepfakes, predatory 'companions', surveillance, labour rights) but also feel the mainstream arguments against it range from unconvincing (water) to actively harmful (copyright; "soul").
Like, I often hear "plagiarism machine that's killing the planet" but I'm very convinced that the copyright panic is actually harming artists far more than helping them. Strengthening Disney and Getty's IP rights in the name of "protecting artists" is a very bad thing, I think!
People often compare "AI bros" to "NFT bros", rightly so (often the same obnoxious people). Yet in the same breath, many will also essentially say right-click-saving an image is theft. I can't stand the spread of slop either, but I think that argument could set a dangerous precedent in other ways.
Or, you frequently hear "well, analytical AI is good, but generative AI is bad", but there isn't really a hard difference between the two. They often share identical underlying architecture. Like, transformers power both BERT and GPT. Vision Transformers handle tumour detection and image generation.
Moreover, tools classified as "analytical" are frequently used for facial recognition that automates surveillance & discrimination, and tools considered "generative" like diffusion models are also used in medical imaging for anomaly detection and classification. There isn't a hard "one good, one bad".
tl;dr on this one: the loudest AI criticisms are the ones that serve existing power structures, and yet its most serious harms are the ones that don't.
And it's a frustrating thing to see, because it's like, who benefits from the messy conversation around this stuff? The copyright panic benefits Disney/Getty/Adobe/etc. The analytical vs generative framing benefits companies selling surveillance tools. Presenting environmental stats taken wildly out of context benefits people who want to dismiss AI criticism entirely by making critics look innumerate. Meanwhile, the actual harms—like predatory companion apps targeting lonely teenagers, facial recognition enabling police harassment of Black neighbourhoods, algorithmic benefit denial systems destroying families, labour displacement without social insurance—don't have wealthy institutional advocates the way "protect our IP" does.
And then, I don't know, the criticism also becomes weird and individualistic. Like I have a dear friend who is a disabled artist who writes her own code for image gen and gets torn apart for it on the regular with straight up ableist disability porn ("X person drew with their feet, why can't you?").
Like, to be clear I think these companies are by and large straight up evil. Sam Altman releasing 4o is like. Practically criminal. Musk actively removing safety guardrails as a selling point, deploying it on a platform that's already a misinformation vector to generate racism and child exploitation.
But I just worry the current way these things are spoken about ends up actually obfuscating those harms. I might roll my eyes at some rando using an LLM to write their emails, but like I don't buy that they're doing something any more evil than taking a flight or eating meat or leaving the lights on.
And this kind of individualized critique is just the "ecological footprint" thing again, literally invented by BP's ad agency in the early 2000s to shift responsibility from fossil fuel corporations to individual consumers. The impact matters, but I wish it wasn't being discussed on Shell's terms.
AND I think that framing prevents good regulation. If your position is 'this shouldn't exist at all and I won't tolerate anything less than the technology not existing,' it's harder to advocate for 'here are the specific features and practices that should be required/prohibited.'
I strongly look forward to there being less of this shit everywhere. Every product suddenly has an AI feature nobody wants. LinkedIn AI-generated posts. Google AI overview and its wrong answers. Facebook flooded with Jesus made of shrimp. That viral UberEats fake Reddit post from the other day!!!
There's so much marketing hype; all the hype and some of the hate are often doing the same work of avoiding talking about its biggest dangers. I'm sick of AI bullshit everywhere, afraid of its worst applications, and also disillusioned with the way it's being talked about in many of my circles.
Anyway, one of these days I'm going to do an effortpost about Ethnically Ambiguous Homer Simpson. A truly fascinating look into training data and messy slapdash attempts at mitigating AI bias.
"I can't believe humans would hunt the thylacine to extinction, humans are fundamentally evil" Hey, did you know that extinction was long thought to be impossible, and within 50 years of humans realizing that extinction via overhunting was a possibility it practically stopped happening? Did you know that humans are so desperate to prevent more losses that they're funneling millions of collective hours and billions of euros into helping other species? Hours and euros that could be spent on humans, and species on whom humanity's own survival does not depend? Did you know that due to an accidental introduction of rats, the Lord Howe Island stick insect population was brought down to 24 individuals and now there are tens of thousands of them?
This bug. This bug that, to most humans, is utterly useless, relatively gross, and completely foreign. Humans saved it because humans do not want to cause another extinction ever again if they can avoid it.
I get in theory why people complain about het ships or whatever, I get wanting to watch queer media I really do, but I guess where y’all lose me is like. I saw some asshole on a post about Sinners complaining it was “hetslop”—this person was specifically doing so while also claiming Remmick was a queer character and thus they were justified in caring more about him than the Black protagonists. which is a whole other disgusting can of worms that has been well addressed by others at this point. but even in the absence of that part of the argument, like, no, i actually don’t think that a hunger for queer stories is an especially good excuse to deride and dismiss a piece of landmark Black filmmaking, especially as a non-Black person. I have a post that’s been going around encouraging folks to engage with more Native stories and characters, and I had someone come onto that post saying in the tags that they’d need these stories to be queer in order to care. and I just think that, you know, sucks! like obviously as I queer Native also want to see more of those stories too. but idk how else to put it other than to say that Black people and people of color shouldn’t have to be like you in order for you to care about our narratives and experiences. and I think some of y’all are using this disdain for heterosexuality as a cover for your unexamined racial biases. it’s not okay to be racist to people just because those people happen to be straight, and you continue to be white before you are queer.
assumes Essek and Caleb are now living with the Brenattos full-time
Caleb: *solo parenting a 2 week old halfling baby, getting 0 sleep and letting no one help him*
Veth: *living in a 24-hour dream spa that Caleb won't let her leave because he feels guilty about forcing her to give birth early, sipping a martini and getting a massage by imaginary hunky men.*
Essek and Yeza: *doing the dishes*
Yeza: "So, do you guys think you'll ever move out?"
Essek: "Yes, when Caleb stops feeling guilty."
Yeza: "Ah. So never, then."
Essek: "Yes, I think this is probably our new normal. I'm so sorry."
Yeza: "It's alright. There are worse things. How do you feel about a beef stew for dinner?"
My one boring tip to anyone in their 20s is to resist the temptation to rot in your room every time you get a free moment. Dismiss any neuroses you have about going outside and "being perceived". Be a dictator about it, plan your hangouts like they are binding commitments. No excuses! Go to the bar with your friends. Be kinda hungover at work. Socializing is like exercise; even if you don't feel like you want to, you should still do it because it's good for you.
I went to a market recently that was absolutely swimming in appropriation of First Nations religious and cultural items.
I'm talkin white people selling rattles and dream catchers, white people banging First Nations style drums, white people teaching talking stick workshops, that kinda shit
So what do you do when you see this crap? How do you show your disapproval in a way that makes them give a shit?
I'll tell you what I do. The point is to show them that appropriating Indigenous cultures will lose them customers.
When I see fakey Native art I say something like "Oh wow, you make dreamcatchers! What nation are you from?" (Use tribe in the states)
I used to ask point blank if they were Native, but I'd nearly always get some Cherokee great grandmother bullshit, or even "I'm not sure, I could have some Native in me!"
Most of the time they don't know what I'm talking about, because they're not Native and don't know that this is a very normal thing to ask when meeting another Native.
When they ask me what I mean I say "I mean your tribe, which First Nation are you from?"
This is the point where they sheepishly mumble that they are not First Nations.
I let my face fall and say something like "Oh. That's disappointing" or "Wow. Unfortunate."
I let it get awkward. And then I leave, shaking my head in disapproval.
You may feel like you need to educate them on cultural appropriation but here's the thing: it's 2025. They know. Brenda the middle class reiki shaman is FULLY aware that her smudge fans are stolen culture. She doesn't care. The only way to make them care is to hit them where it hurts: the wallet.
Make them think that you would have purchased what they are selling if it was AUTHENTIC.
If you wanna go the extra mile send an email to the organizers, in your best white people voice, and tell them that you are disappointed that they are facilitating culture theft.
not to be a snitch, but if this is happening in the US you can also straight up report Brenda for a fine up to $250k under the Indian Arts and Crafts Act.
There's something very poignant in how Abu is approaching playing Mercy where he's so clearly aware that how he looks makes other people perceive him as a threat and so he is constantly and consciously diminishing his presence to come across less threatening given that Abu is himself a black man. Mercy goes out of their way to be deferential and polite to Bowen, avoids eye contact with Archon Exemplar Petra so as to minimize the amount of perceived threat he poses. His first word he says to her is "mercy". There's this awareness in Mercy and how he's played of how people make snap judgements based on looks and how that can lead to people reacting violently to otherwise neutral acts (Mercy going into a town seeking community and instead finding steels and fists) which speaks to the reality black men live in
Julien killing Koral is such a good character moment - that whole scene. He's made it a life goal to kill as many Tachonis as possible, but because Occtis asked him to, he was willing to talk to Koral first and maybe spare his life. It's only when he realizes Koral was an unrepentant actor in the massacre of his family and home that he decides to kill him.
The Julien Davinos of two weeks ago was so angry at his losses that he wouldn't have hesitated, but he's calmed down just enough, bonded just enough with Occtis, that he waited to be sure that Koral deserved to die before killing him. I said ages ago that everything Julien does has to be viewed through the lens of someone furious in grief, and that he would probably change as time went on, and I think we're see the start of that.
i got these knockoff boots online and instead of the brand name on the tag they have the name of an apparently nonexistent martin scorsese movie??? what the fuck
this post led to a series of events that had martin scorsese himself reacting to his alleged movie goncharov and it has less than 400k notes almost 3 years later?
Azune Nayar is not someone who was failed in his youth by the adults around him.
Azune Nayar is someone whose childhood and youth were marked by adults who, faced with bad choices, made the less-worse one because they cared about him.
His parents starved themselves to give him and his sister the chance of being recruited as child soldiers by a mercenary group, because that was the only way to protect him from starvation.
Thjazi Fang saw a child abandoned by the roadside, desperately, determinedly, and implausibly claiming he could fight. Thazi Fang was in the middle of waging a rebellion against the powers of Araman. That rebellion wasn’t the best place for a child of twelve. But it was a better place than abandoned by the roadside or picked up by another mercenary group, and Thjazi cared, so Thjazi took him in and assigned him to noncombat work away from the front lines.
By 15 Azune was fighting on the front lines. (In an earlier war, the same was true of Thazi at that age.)
Thjazi’s rebellion failed. He asked his brother Hal to look out for the teenage Azune. Hal did so, treating Azune as part of his family. Hal did the same for other people who needed it. Being like family wasn’t the same as being Hal’s kid.
The tragedy of Azune isn’t that he was failed or abandoned or uncared for or used. The tragedy of Azune is that the best that people who cared about him could give him still wasn’t the same as what he needed, because being an adult doesn’t make you all-powerful. Azune’s problems weren’t created by those who loved him. They were created by the world he lives in.
Azune lived his adult life for the Torn Banner because it was the life he knew; or out of loyalty; or because they were the ones trying to change that world into something different.
He offers understanding and empathy to enemies (Julien) and strangers (Vaelus). He learned that somewhere.
He will self-immolate for a cause. He likely learned that from his parents, who did it for him, and from Thjazi, who did it for the same cause.
Practicing the Unspeakable Vice of the Greeks @mapleandgingeroatmeal - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
