A recent New Scientist cartoon.
p.s. I will be in Madrid and Germany very soon! Details at www.tomgauld.com
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A recent New Scientist cartoon.
p.s. I will be in Madrid and Germany very soon! Details at www.tomgauld.com
Later:
kind of a side thought from a couple of my posts about writing but I think it deserves its own post, so here goes:
when you’re writing a conflict between two characters or factions of characters, you need to consider whether their disagreement over the premise or over the methods. put another way: do they disagree on the problem or the solution?
this is a genuinely tricky thing to identify, especially in very complex narratives, so let’s do some very simple examples.
the situation: pacifist nation X is about to be invaded by empire Y. the laws and cultural practices of the Xians make violence and death so abhorrent that even accidental death is as minimized as possible. the Ylings, on the other hand, are totally cool with straight up murder and think diplomacy is for wimps, but are also pragmatic enough that they won’t waste troops if they don’t need to. the king of X calls in his council and asks for their opinions.
character A: It is more noble to die for one’s beliefs than to live having broken them. We should allow the Ylings to invade us and if we die, we die. character B: If all life is sacred, then our lives are also sacred. We must fight back against the Ylings, even though that means we’d be committing violence.
A and B agree on premise but not solution: they both acknowledge that the Yling invasion is a bad thing that will lead to their deaths if unopposed and that the nonviolence code is important; what they disagree on is priorities and methods.
character C: We should invite them into our nation as honored guests. Maybe they’ll spare us or at least kill us more mercifully. character D: We should propose an alliance and intentional annexation in exchange for our lives. Being part of the Yling Empire is a pretty sweet deal, actually.
C and D agree on solution but not premise: they’re both okay with just letting the empire walk in and invade, but C thinks the invasion would be a bad thing and is just trying to minimize the damage, and D thinks it would be a good thing and wants to maximize the rewards.
character E: We should fight the Ylings and stay a sovereign nation; the nonviolence code is stupid and holding us back. character D: We shouldn’t fight the Ylings and try to be peacefully part of their empire instead; we’d be true to our code and reap the rewards of an alliance.
E and F disagree on both premise and solution.
Now, all possible permutations of this argument are fine. “Is this the best way to solve the problem?” and “What actually is the problem?” are both great sources of conflict. Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s entire plot is an argument over the methods to prevent death and crime, but everyone agrees that crime is bad; one of Zuko’s big character development moments is when he realizes that the problem with the world isn’t the other nations ungratefully rejecting the prosperity and unity offered by the Fire Nation, but that the Fire Nation routinely commits genocide in their quest to colonize the rest of the world.
The issue is when a disagreement over methods is treated like a disagreement over premise. The characters are positioned like one side’s entire worldview is correct and the other is wrong, but it turns out they actually disagree with what the other does rather than what the other believes.
A big giveaway that what you’re seeing is about methods and not underlying beliefs? If at any point it is said or implied that one character “goes too far.” “Too far” implies a point before that cutoff that the other characters or the reader would be okay with. You can’t go too far if going any distance in that direction is wrong. “Frollo in the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame goes too far when he tries to kill all the Romani in the city” implies that the problem isn’t racism in general, but mass murder specifically, and that if Frollo was only nonviolently racist, that would be fine!
Like, you know the joke about the guy who offers a woman a million dollars to sleep with him, then ten dollars after she accepts the million dollar offer, and when she’s offended and says she’s “not that kind of woman,” he says, “Oh, we agreed you were that kind of woman, now we’re just haggling over price”? If your characters are arguing about the best way to solve a problem, they have already agreed about the existence and nature of the problem. Now they’re just haggling over price.
Again: that kind of storyline is okay if you actually do want to discuss extremism v. moderation of the same basic principle. It’s okay for two characters to argue over the best way to free all of their country’s slaves. It’s also okay for two characters to discuss the best way of practicing slavery, if you want to show how ingrained it is in society or how even the character you think is a moderate is still evil or something. What doesn’t work is if your intention is to say how awful slavery is, but then the entire conflict is over the treatment of slaves rather than whether slavery is okay.
tl;dr: setting up the conflict as one over premise and then having all the action be a fight over methods undermines your story; at best it’s just confusing, at worst it turns your characters into hypocrites.
I would add a third piece to this (or really split out “solution” into two pieces):
There is the problem, the end, and the means, and those are all things that can be disagreed with in different ways.
Let’s take a very basic scenario. Two people live together. There is a bookshelf full of books and there are books all over the floor.
Disagreement on the problem:
Person 1 thinks there are too many books on the floor. Person 2 likes having books on the floor because it makes the house feel lived-in.
Disagreement on the end:
Person 1 and 2 have agreed that there are too many books on the floor. Person 1 thinks the ideal end is that the house has exactly one bookshelf worth of books in it. Person 2 thinks the ideal solution is every book remaining in the house but simply being somewhere that is not the floor.
Disagreement on the means:
Person 1 and 2 have agreed that the ideal solution is every book remaining in the house and being on a bookshelf. Person 1 thinks they should buy more bookshelves to fit every book. Person 2 thinks they should double- or triple-stack their shelves rather than spend money on new bookshelves.
This is obviously a very light example, but I think it’s not just problem/solution but “do we agree what problem we are solving, do we agree what the solution should be, do we agree on how to get there.”
Hong Kong: 87 Groups Condemn Arrests of Activist’s Relatives
Foreign Governments Should Counter China’s Escalation of Cross-Border Abuses
(New York) – Hong Kong authorities’ unjust arrests of the father and brother of the prominent US-based activist Anna Kwok is an escalation of the Chinese government’s use of cross-border repression, 87 international and diaspora rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, said today in two joint statements.
Anna Kwok’s father, Kwok Yin-sang, 68, was arrested and formally charged under a national security law that carries a punishment of up to seven years in prison. Her brother was also arrested and later released on bail.
“The Hong Kong authorities took an unprecedented action by charging the family member of an exiled activist with a national security crime to try to silence her,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Foreign governments should respond to this assault on basic liberties by speaking up about the case and taking concrete actions to protect their citizens and residents from the Chinese government’s long arm.”
The groups said that foreign governments should put in place effective measures to protect exiled activists and other critics of the Chinese government from Beijing’s transnational repression.
HELLO?????? IM NOT WELL?????
WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!
VIKTOR
VIKTOOOOOOOR
Just found out about AO3 getting scraped by some bright spark for a dataset they uploaded on Huggingface, the intent being for the dataset to be used in AI training.
Earlier this year, I found out that all of the books me and my friends had written had ended up in the illegally created LibGen dataset used to train Meta's latest Llama models.
I'm not tired, as such, but I'm getting the sense of a dial being twisted.
By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.
Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.
This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):
Executive functioning skills range from working memory to cognitive flexibility to inhibitory control, and beyond. They power our daily func
Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):
Practical Strategies for Enhancing Executive Functioning Difficulties in Adults With Autism - Living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as
Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.
But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:
Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.
Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation
Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.
Meditation
Martial arts
Sports in general
Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)
Woodworking
Cooking
If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers
Things can be easier. You might always have a disability around this (I certainly always will), but it can be easier. You do not have to be this stuck forever.
thank you very much
You know what, since I'm thinking about it anyways, let's talk formalwear accessories. Most of these are traditionally menswear but a bit of gender fuckery is good for the soul, and frankly most of these are about making your mass-produced clothing fit and lay properly without having to go to the tailor.
Shirt stays: these go around your thighs to hold your shirt down, so that it stays smooth and tucked in. They're usually elastic, with 1-3 clips, and if you wear skirts frequently this is a GREAT way to make sure your top doesn't ride up. The clips will be visible if you're wearing something tight, so loose pants or skirts are where these do best. There's also an insane version that clips to your socks, but that is for lunatics. If you wanted, you could also use one of these clips to hold up thigh-highs.
These do a great job of smoothing and narrowing the waist area by keeping your shirt from bunching there.
Sleeve garters: usually metal, leather, elastic, or silk. These are usually worn with button-down shirts to adjust where your cuff falls on the wrist or hand. They're properly worn on the upper arm, and you pull the fabric of the sleeve above the garter until you cuff is where you want it. Because this creates a puff of sleeve at the bicep, it also broadens the appearance of the shoulders. It's great if you're working with your hands or if your sleeves are often too long for your preference.
Waistband clip or belt adjustment clip/buttons
Three different ways of tightening the waistband of a pair of pants or a skirt. You're not going to get more than an inch or so tighter without weird bunching, and for most of these you'd want them to be hidden under a shirt or jacket, but they do the job if that's something you're having issues with.
Collar pins: There are so many fun ones out there, both with and without chains. They're not terribly practical, though the slight weight may help keep your collar where you want it. Also consider collar tips, which pin (surprise) to the very tips of your collar points.
Sweater clips/guards: meant to hold your sweater or cardigan mostly closed. Great if your cardigan doesn't button, or if you don't like it to be buttoned all the way.
There's tons of other stuff out there like this--etsy is a great place to find this stuff. A lot of these are old solutions to the very modern problem of mass-maufactured clothes not being as one-size-fits-all as advertised, but they're also a fun way to put a bit of personality into businesswear.
Okay I love shit like this and have to add: if you don’t like the garter shirt stays for any reason, next best is the stirrup kind.
But menswear doesn’t get to have all the fun! Here are a few traditionally womenswear accessories:
Hem weights keep your skirt from flying up. You can get sew in and temporary ones.
Lingerie pins keep the straps of your dress and your bra together! They can be hidden or very cute. You can go for vintage ones if you’re obsessed like me or just find either fancy safety pins or small bar pins.
Some also come in groups of three with chains that keep the straps from sliding off your shoulder.
(Often these will get mistaken for baby or doll pins because they are very small, 2-3 cm in length.)
Glove clips hold your gloves to your belt or purse whole you aren’t wearing them, but keep them close at hand (ha).
There are SO many things like this and I love discovering more of them. Humans like to be comfortable and not fussing with their clothes all the time. We’ve forgotten so many ways that people have solved common problems in the past.
if it sucks hit da bricks <- litany against sunk cost
take it easy but take it <- litany against burnout/apathy cycle
fuck it we ball <- litany against perfectionism
now say something beautiful and true <- litany against irony poisoning
casting these before getting out of bed like buff spells before a raid boss
Kaga-Yuzen Kimono
Norishige Sugimura
-Anaïs Nin, 1939
These two are amazing!
@x-heesy 💃🏻🕺🏻 Friday vibes!
I want whatever it is that these two have
Context! This is called a Jack and Jill! It's a contest in a style called West Coast Swing.
Here's the thing... it's ALL improv. The whole thing. And those two? Randomly matched.
Dance is a sport where strangers fall madly in love for a few minutes. And I need more all the time.
damn, what sorcery that she's doing that in BOOTS?
I’m sorry, wait stop. That was IMPROV???
Dance like this is a magic I just can’t fathom.
Oh yeah the fun thing about being even a base level performance dancer is that you can actively see their communication the entire time! Some of it is more obvious than other but if this was choreographed they wouldn’t need to communicate hardly at all. Lemme break down a few spots!
The moment in the beginning when they started dancing helped them set the tone and energy for eachother so they knew what type of dancing to expect, and they proceeded to pull from that vibe the entire time.
Around the quarter mark when they’re spinning around, green shirt looks at purple shirt’s feet, watching to see if purple was going to move. Purple then takes that and begins to move backwards, into the hand switch (which would have been far more fluid choreographed) and as purple raises their arm, green does the dramatic lean back utilizing the visual element of her hair. Unclear if purple necessarily was the reason but they were definitely asking for some sort of flair and green definitely delivered.
An easier one to see was that the trust fall was not planned but you could see the Very Direct Communication from the purple to the green offering that opportunity. Green didn’t have to take it but when they saw the opportunity they then positioned themselves and timed it with the music so the drop in the music coincided with their torso hitting purple’s arms.
Also the little coordinated butt wiggle at the end when green let purple lead was hilarious loved that.
There’s more but I don’t feel like giving a play-by-play but maybe y’all can see more of it now that I’ve pointed out examples! Remember folks, dancing with others is about communication!
This line killed me
Fastest Growing Fandoms on AO3 This Week (04/21/2025)
Every week I pull data on how many fics are in each fandom and compare to the previous week, then calculate the percentage increase to determine fastest growing fandoms. Since this naturally skews towards smaller fandoms, I have included the same data filtered to Over 1k, 5k, & 10k fics.
Overall:
Over 1,000 Fics:
Over 5,000 Fics:
Over 10,000 Fics:
Source: AO3 Fandom Dashboard
you'll get the urge as an artist or a writer to say out loud the things you're worried about "the proportions are off" "kind of out of character" "i'm not good at summaries" "didn't get as much detail as i wanted" "i made a mistake and here's how" and that's the self-conscious part of your brain telling you "it's bad and if you don't tell them you know it's bad then they'll think you're stupid" but you've got to ignore that little voice and pretend you think it's good or else that little voice is going to ruin your life
Some of the best advice I have ever gotten was from a creative writing professor. She said never apologize for your work. Never critic it before someone else does.
Her reasoning was you are the creator. You made your work from nothing and can see all the flaws and seems and holes. But your audience may not see any of it. Maybe they will; maybe they won't. But if you TELL them about the holes and the mistakes and the problems....they will 100% see them. So don't tell them. Don't sabotage yourself just because you think you're not good enough.
you may think it took the terror fandom a lot of effort and dedication to become the #1 producer of erectile dysfunction fics but let me tell u. it wasn't hard
Crow and cherry blossoms, by Imao Keinen (1930).