#plausible sentence generators

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How plausible sentence generators are changing the bullshit wars

This Friday (September 8) at 10hPT/17hUK, I'm livestreaming "How To Dismantle the Internet" with Intelligence Squared.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

In my latest Locus Magazine column, "Plausible Sentence Generators," I describe how I unwittingly came to use – and even be impressed by – an AI chatbot – and what this means for a specialized, highly salient form of writing, namely, "bullshit":

https://locusmag.com/2023/09/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-plausible-sentence-generators/

Here's what happened: I got stranded at JFK due to heavy weather and an air-traffic control tower fire that locked down every westbound flight on the east coast. The American Airlines agent told me to try going standby the next morning, and advised that if I booked a hotel and saved my taxi receipts, I would get reimbursed when I got home to LA.

But when I got home, the airline's reps told me they would absolutely not reimburse me, that this was their policy, and they didn't care that their representative had promised they'd make me whole. This was so frustrating that I decided to take the airline to small claims court: I'm no lawyer, but I know that a contract takes place when an offer is made and accepted, and so I had a contract, and AA was violating it, and stiffing me for over $400.

The problem was that I didn't know anything about filing a small claim. I've been ripped off by lots of large American businesses, but none had pissed me off enough to sue – until American broke its contract with me.

So I googled it. I found a website that gave step-by-step instructions, starting with sending a "final demand" letter to the airline's business office. They offered to help me write the letter, and so I clicked and I typed and I wrote a pretty stern legal letter.

Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I have worked for a campaigning law-firm for over 20 years, and I've spent the same amount of time writing about the sins of the rich and powerful. I've seen a lot of threats, both those received by our clients and sent to me.

I've been threatened by everyone from Gwyneth Paltrow to Ralph Lauren to the Sacklers. I've been threatened by lawyers representing the billionaire who owned NSOG roup, the notoroious cyber arms-dealer. I even got a series of vicious, baseless threats from lawyers representing LAX's private terminal.

So I know a thing or two about writing a legal threat! I gave it a good effort and then submitted the form, and got a message asking me to wait for a minute or two. A couple minutes later, the form returned a new version of my letter, expanded and augmented. Now, my letter was a little scary – but this version was bowel-looseningly terrifying.

I had unwittingly used a chatbot. The website had fed my letter to a Large Language Model, likely ChatGPT, with a prompt like, "Make this into an aggressive, bullying legal threat." The chatbot obliged.

I don't think much of LLMs. After you get past the initial party trick of getting something like, "instructions for removing a grilled-cheese sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible," the novelty wears thin:

https://www.emergentmind.com/posts/write-a-biblical-verse-in-the-style-of-the-king-james

Yes, science fiction magazines are inundated with LLM-written short stories, but the problem there isn't merely the overwhelming quantity of machine-generated stories – it's also that they suck. They're bad stories:

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/24/1159286436/ai-chatbot-chatgpt-magazine-clarkesworld-artificial-intelligence

LLMs generate naturalistic prose. This is an impressive technical feat, and the details are genuinely fascinating. This series by Ben Levinstein is a must-read peek under the hood:

https://benlevinstein.substack.com/p/how-to-think-about-large-language

But "naturalistic prose" isn't necessarily good prose. A lot of naturalistic language is awful. In particular, legal documents are fucking terrible. Lawyers affect a stilted, stylized language that is both officious and obfuscated.

The LLM I accidentally used to rewrite my legal threat transmuted my own prose into something that reads like it was written by a $600/hour paralegal working for a $1500/hour partner at a white-show law-firm. As such, it sends a signal: "The person who commissioned this letter is so angry at you that they are willing to spend $600 to get you to cough up the $400 you owe them. Moreover, they are so well-resourced that they can afford to pursue this claim beyond any rational economic basis."

Let's be clear here: these kinds of lawyer letters aren't good writing; they're a highly specific form of bad writing. The point of this letter isn't to parse the text, it's to send a signal. If the letter was well-written, it wouldn't send the right signal. For the letter to work, it has to read like it was written by someone whose prose-sense was irreparably damaged by a legal education.

Here's the thing: the fact that an LLM can manufacture this once-expensive signal for free means that the signal's meaning will shortly change, forever. Once companies realize that this kind of letter can be generated on demand, it will cease to mean, "You are dealing with a furious, vindictive rich person." It will come to mean, "You are dealing with someone who knows how to type 'generate legal threat' into a search box."

Legal threat letters are in a class of language formally called "bullshit":

https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on-bullshit

LLMs may not be good at generating science fiction short stories, but they're excellent at generating bullshit. For example, a university prof friend of mine admits that they and all their colleagues are now writing grad student recommendation letters by feeding a few bullet points to an LLM, which inflates them with bullshit, adding puffery to swell those bullet points into lengthy paragraphs.

Naturally, the next stage is that profs on the receiving end of these recommendation letters will ask another LLM to summarize them by reducing them to a few bullet points. This is next-level bullshit: a few easily-grasped points are turned into a florid sheet of nonsense, which is then reconverted into a few bullet-points again, though these may only be tangentially related to the original.

What comes next? The reference letter becomes a useless signal. It goes from being a thing that a prof has to really believe in you to produce, whose mere existence is thus significant, to a thing that can be produced with the click of a button, and then it signifies nothing.

We've been through this before. It used to be that sending a letter to your legislative representative meant a lot. Then, automated internet forms produced by activists like me made it far easier to send those letters and lawmakers stopped taking them so seriously. So we created automatic dialers to let you phone your lawmakers, this being another once-powerful signal. Lowering the cost of making the phone call inevitably made the phone call mean less.

Today, we are in a war over signals. The actors and writers who've trudged through the heat-dome up and down the sidewalks in front of the studios in my neighborhood are sending a very powerful signal. The fact that they're fighting to prevent their industry from being enshittified by plausible sentence generators that can produce bullshit on demand makes their fight especially important.

Chatbots are the nuclear weapons of the bullshit wars. Want to generate 2,000 words of nonsense about "the first time I ate an egg," to run overtop of an omelet recipe you're hoping to make the number one Google result? ChatGPT has you covered. Want to generate fake complaints or fake positive reviews? The Stochastic Parrot will produce 'em all day long.

As I wrote for Locus: "None of this prose is good, none of it is really socially useful, but there’s demand for it. Ironically, the more bullshit there is, the more bullshit filters there are, and this requires still more bullshit to overcome it."

Meanwhile, AA still hasn't answered my letter, and to be honest, I'm so sick of bullshit I can't be bothered to sue them anymore. I suppose that's what they were counting on.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/07/govern-yourself-accordingly/#robolawyers

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #chatbots #plausible sentence generators #robot lawyers #robolawyers #ai #ml #machine learning #artificial intelligence #stochastic parrots #bullshit #bullshit generators #the bullshit wars #llms #large language models #writing #Ben Levinstein

[cronagorgonzola]

Any time i try to look up a simple question online i have to check the date for every article i look at cause if it's from like 2022 or later theres a good chance it was written by chatgpt and therefore completely unreliable and this is the lamest shittiest future we could have made for ourselves. Its so indescribably disappointing to get halfway through an article that seems like it could have plausibly been written by a human being who knows what theyre talking about only to notice sentences repeating or contradictory information between sentences and realize youre just reading a word salad spat out by a computer that only knows how to create sentences that look plausibly real

#.txt #we NEED strict regulations around ai writing #both for artistic integrity and to prevent the internet from being completely clogged up with computer-generated lies #ai cannot interpret and synthesize information all it does is mimic human speech #it understands the cadence of a sentence but not any of the information actually contained within #it is NOT a substitute for human writers! unchecked it is just a machine for producing plausible-sounding misinformation

[actual-changeling]

We need to talk about the Archangel Michael.

No, seriously we NEED to talk about Michael because I think she's going to be way more important than we currently think.

(quick side note: I will be jumping between pronouns for everyone involved because I go by vibes and also bc I'm trans and I like doing it. Hopefully it won't be too confusing, but I'll try to make it clear who I am talking about.)

So! Welcome back to Alex's unhinged meta corner. In accordance with the usual essay rules, let's begin with my hypothesis before we go down a long, probably very unhinged spiral.

I completely underestimated how thorough I was going to be, so to not overwhelm everyone with a miles long post, I will be dividing this meta into parts and will post them as I finish them.

A lot of small details have been fluttering around my mind over the last few weeks, and I think I am finally starting to put all the pieces together—and there are a LOT.

Part 1: Season One and Michael's Rank

We know them as one of the three (four—but that's another post) Archangels next to Gabriel and Uriel. While Gabriel's title was that of the Supreme Archangel, Michael's is explicitly stated in episode one of season two as 'duty officer', which, broadly speaking, makes them the Watcher, the one in charge in the case of Gabriel's absence for whatever reason, taking command where he can't; usually that probably meant him simply being busy and not him being unemployed and naked.

Their position is further signified by their ring, which resembles the Ophanim, the many-eyed angel wheels.

They are the one to keep a literal eye on things—they find pictures of Aziraphale and Crowley in S1 in the Observation Files, they watch over the heavenly hosts, they oversee plans, everything.

Michael even takes it a step further and (presumably created) the grapevine with hell, having direct contact to higher ranking demons such as Ligur, most likely also Dagon, and Beelzebub.

This is where we get to my theory: Michael is actively working with demons against both heaven and hell. It doesn't mean that they care about preserving earth, though they might later on, but that whatever plans heaven currently has are to be stopped.

I'm going to take this one step further and say that Michael also knew about Gabriel and Beelzebub, and helped him escape.

Now to the fun part: the evidence!

In season one, they are interested in stopping Crowley and Aziraphale from preventing the apocalypse, but that does not mean that they agree with the plans heaven has for said event—only that they need it to happen so their own agenda can stay on track. She has information she technically shouldn't, like, well, literally all the details about how, when, and what is going to go down

This is due to heaven and hell's general cooperation, which is its own post, but all of that runs through them.

That 'apparently' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, it's the basic and plausible deniability that's required for them to not be in trouble. She is also in charge of ORGANIZING the troops, fulfilling her role as a navigator.

On top of that, the way she talks to Ligur highly mirrors the way two covert operatives might talk to one another, using phrases like 'our man' and 'working for you'. The mere assumption Michael makes here, that Aziraphale could be a spy, implies that there ARE already spies and angels working for hell.

Consorting with the enemy is allowed as long as it is done within a very specific framework, so Michael and Ligur are free to do so, while Aziraphale and Crowley are working outside of it, which gives heaven & hell the basis to punish them for it.

I think the phrasing of this sentence is also quite interesting.

Not "time to come back to heaven" or anything along the lines that takes Aziraphale's ethereal status into account, no, she simply says he needs to 'choose sides'—and who is to say that he needs to choose heaven or that heaven and hell are the only sides one can choose? Additionally, Michael is the one to bring the holy water to hell while they send one of the Erics, and while the trial as a whole holds a certain tension, there does not seem to be any open animosity between him and the dukes of hell.

In short, Michael is working with hell behind the scenes, likely pursuing their own goals, and standing in opposition to heaven.

Moving on to season two, and here it gets REALLY fun.

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

(hopefully it will just be five. it was supposed to be two. then three. but here we are)

#alex talks good omens #good omens #good omens season 2 #go2 #good omens meta #archangel michael #archangel uriel #archangel gabriel #good omens michael #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow #crowley x aziraphale #ineffable husbands #ineffable wives #ineffable spouses #ineffable divorce #the final fifteen #alex's unhinged meta corner

[inawearyworld]

free if you truly wish to be: chapter iii

plots are half revealed, and willy "mr accidentally steal yo girl" wonka gets his sorry ass saved by a woman wearing one of those "oh no my husband mysteriously floated away died" robes you see all over pinterest. (now there's a sentence i never thought i'd write.)

2023!wonka x oc, this chapter ~2.5k

i would like to thank mr mathew baynton in that one bts interview for those bits and pieces of fickelgruber analysis that will totally now be used here. and also for being generally wonderful. thanks mat ilysm

also i thought it would be sort of funny for at least someone in this world revolving around chocolate to be lactose intolerant and then of course i had to turn it into something sad and poetic bc of Who I Am As A Person

enjoy!! and thank you for all the support on this fic so far!!

part two fic masterlist part four

She had a lot to think about that night.

Felix hadn’t returned home yet, and she started to worry that the fateful flying chocolates weren’t quite as harmless as advertised. The young man who’d made them, too, was swirling about her mind in a haze of schoolgirl blushes and piercing guilt.

Florence Fickelgruber had chosen her lot when she agreed to take on that name. Who was she to imagine a freer life, one of candy-coated dreams and a clear conscience, of gazes and banter with someone her own age, of running her hand through curls that weren’t slick with expensive gel? Who was she to foolishly wish for anything different, when so many people were counting on her?

She missed her home, her family, and it hadn’t been lost on her that Felix had never told her about his own background. Their wedding was attended mainly by those surrounding the Fickelgruber business, as well as another flood of press. She’d had to blink so much that day, unused to being in front of cameras after a youth spent on the stage, but her new husband had preened next to her as if this focus on appearance was where he felt most at home. She remembered the crowd’s polite cheers fading in her mind as he had slowly lifted her chin while she accepted a forkful of the most extraordinarily decadent chocolate cake.

For that day, she had allowed the feeling of his hand on her face to eclipse that of the too-rich frosting stuck in her throat.

Then he came through the door, humming a jaunty tune, and she blinked, torn out of the memory that she felt an entirely different kind of guilt for indulging in.

“Felix? Darling, where have you been?”

“Oh, don’t you worry your pretty auburn head, my songbird. The boy’s finished, absolutely finished. No one will be flying about the Galeries Gourmet if the police have anything to say about it.”

“What-what do you mean?”

“He’s disturbed the peace, made a commotion, even encouraged the-the-the unfortunate to disgrace our sacred sanctuary of chocolate. And the Chief is none too happy about it.”

“Is he?” she said suspiciously, stepping in front of him-because, up until this point, he hadn’t looked her in the eye.

Felix was silent for a moment, cacao eyes darting. His wife’s gaze was strong and unyielding-don’t lie to me again, I can’t take it-but her head tilted innocently to the side, a sort of plausible deniability.

A sort of protection.

“Yes,” he breathed with a curt nod, and took her hands in his. “I promise you, it was a solemn thing.”

“Then what were you singing as you came in?”

The chocolatier blinked again, falling into an absolutely done sort of expression, and Florence’s head tilted to the other side.

“You’ve had another musical number without me.”

“I’m terribly sorry, pet.”

“You know you can’t hide from me, Felix,” she said, something that would have been playfully teasing but held an edge of desperation that he refused to pick up on.

“It of course wasn’t the same without you,” he drawled in that ever-dramatic way, bringing her into their living room. “We’ll make it up now. Dance with me, Florence.”

He snapped his fingers, and some unseen yet attentive servant placed a needle on a record. A crooning melody started to crackle and bounce across the high golden ceilings, and Felix spun his wife into him, twirling her about with a smirk that she could only imagine to be the result of a monopoly saved.

She swayed to and fro in his arms, trying desperately to sink into the music, unable to focus on anything but the wrenching pull of her battling guilts.

~

Florence spent much of the next day in a state of ping-ponging worry. She’d looked intently out of the mansion’s sprawling windows over the town square, wondering whether her forbidden new friend had taken her advice.

“Just…don’t give up.”

“I wasn’t planning on it.”

And who knows what they’ll do to him now?

The hours had passed in a blur, and then she was laid limp, unable to sleep, and mentally exhausted, next to her husband and his piccolo snore.

She had screwed her eyes shut and burrowed into him, trying to force herself to feel as secure as she did two years ago; then, the slight sound of a little girl’s singing voice lifted itself into her consciousness, followed by the blare of a police car.

Puzzled, Florence carefully got out of bed and went to the window once more. The girl she’d heard was the one with the sweet smile that she’d seen in the Galeria yesterday, and Willy Wonka was next to her, warning her to run. The Chief of Police and Officer Affable faced them, but this wasn’t to last-the former seemed to tell the latter to leave, and the latter obeyed.

It wasn’t as if a switch flipped at that moment.

More like…

An extinguished candle was finally relit.

Before she could overthink herself into inaction, Wren was grabbing her robe and slippers and bolting downstairs, the snore that echoed after her serving as reassurance that she wouldn’t be found out. In her haste, she had the passing realization that this would be the first time she’d leave the house with her hair down and uncoiffed in over two years.

Through this rush, she heard the plunge of something in the town square’s fountain along with the shouts of the Chief, and she ran faster, throwing open the door just in time to see him about to club a drenched Willy over the head.

“OFFICER!”

Both men turned to her in an instant. She let out the breath she’d been holding since first hearing the girl’s voice, rolled her shoulders back, dropped into the character she’d played for the past two years, and stepped forward.

“What on earth is going on?”

They stared, each with a different kind of shock, as she walked toward the fountain. The Chief returned his nightstick to its holster.

“Mrs. Fickelgruber,” he stammered, “I thought you would have thought-well, I guess he didn’t tell-you aren’t-”

“No, I’m not thrilled about you clobbering this poor young man in the middle of the night,” she said, placing a hand on Willy’s shoulder. He looked at her, still touched with the fear of the past minutes but now grateful, and she tried not to be struck by the freckles she saw behind his water-plastered curls.

“Who said anything about clobbering?” the Chief laughed somewhat nervously. “We were just having a chat. An impactful, memorable chat. Right, Mr. Wonka?”

Willy dragged his eyes to him and held them there, a bit speechless.

What was probably three seconds but felt like an eternity of strange silence passed.

“Memorable indeed.”

“Right, then,” the Chief said. “You’ll do good to continue to remember it. Goodnight, Mrs. Fickelgruber.”

With that, he entered his car and drove away, his tail lights fading in the distance as the remaining pair stood, a little shell-shocked, her hand still on his shoulder.

“Thank you,” he said after a while, his gaze still trailing the receding police car.

“You’re welcome,” she replied, giving his shoulder an awkward pat, which made her realize just how cold he was due to the impromptu fountain bath. “Oh, God, you’re freezing. Let me…”

As he turned towards her, she looked up, trying to see through her window in the dark. She could barely make out the shape of a sound-asleep Felix, still in bed.

“Come to the office, I’ve got the key. There’s a fireplace there; you can stay as long as you need to to warm up.”

“Are you sure?”

His eyes moved up the same way, then back to her, and she shook her head as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Of course.”

~

“Do you want anything to drink? Water, tea? Hot chocolate?”

She hadn’t turned on most of the lights so as not to draw attention, but she’d started a beautiful fire, which Willy sat by in a plush emerald-green chair. She’d rattled off the drinks on habit, but she turned to him upon saying the third, sharing his smile.

“The last one, please. But I’ll make it.”

“No, you need to rest-”

“I insist,” he said, moving to join her by the small bar in the office and searching through ingredients. “Unless that’s some sort of corporate sacrilege.”

“Making chocolate in enemy territory?”

He took a small jar of powder from his sleeve and shook it into two mugs, considering this, and his smile faltered a bit.

“Is it really that bad?” he asked. “That they’d…that they’d send the police after me? That business rivalry is thought of like a war?”

She pursed her lips and nodded solemnly.

“They…feel threatened,” she said slowly, “and, despite how professional they seem, they can’t be mature or rational about it. Apparently, you really do have the best chocolate in town.”

He neither confirmed nor denied, but gave half of a smile as he looked down at the drinks he was stirring.

“And I, for one, am quite looking forward to trying it.”

“Here, then,” he said, pulling something out of a coat pocket that had managed to escape the frozen flush. “Nothing too dangerous about this one. Just some good old Wonka magic.”

He opened his hand to her, revealing a small, wrapped treat, and she sighed.

“I’d love to, but I really shouldn’t. Not even the drinks.”

“Why not?” came the stunned reply, and she nearly laughed at just how sweetly scandalized the boy seemed to be at the idea of anyone denying themselves that pleasure.

“Milk has never really…agreed with me. Bad for the throat, and I’m a singer besides, as you know-I mean, I-well, it’s just…”

PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER.

“I shouldn’t.”

He took a moment, and she watched his eyes widen as he processed the shocking injustice of being genetically predisposed against chocolate.

“Does your husband know about this?”

“He does, but he doesn’t care. Says I’ll ‘grow out of it with time’, which I haven’t.”

“So he’s…”

“Essentially poisoning me, yes.”

They laughed a little, because, surrounded by echoes of Fickelgruber’s power, it was the only thing they could do.

Willy stared at the table for a moment, then pulled another vial, this one containing a liquid, from yet another pocket.

“Lucky for you, then, I’ve got milk made from the product of the finest almond trees on the islands of Seychelles,” he said as he deftly poured the liquid into her glass. “Guaranteed to go down sweetly, both on the taste buds and after.”

“...Thank you,” she murmured, touched by the gesture.

With a final flick of the wrist, he deemed the hot chocolate finished, and they each carried their mug to the fire.

“Wren,” he said thoughtfully as they sat down.

“Hm?”

She was instinctively flooded with warmth in the same way she was yesterday, though whether it was due to the stunningly perfect cocoa or hearing her name in his voice she wasn’t sure.

“Is it a nickname? Songbird, right?”

She saw in the fireglow that his face darkened a bit upon the memory of how Felix had always referred to her in the press, taking that potentially sweet title and spinning it in an almost dehumanizing manner. So someone did notice.

“Well…sort of. That was what my parents intended. They say a wren sang when I was born, so they gave me that name, and I loved it. But Felix assumed it was a nickname and suggested I should expand it; to sound more sophisticated in my performances, he said, but I knew half the reason was to fit with the alliteration. He’s always valued aesthetics above anything else.”

They were silent for a while, and the massive painting seemed to stare down at them, making the Fickelgrubers look almost menacing in the fireglow.

“That’s you?”

A moment passed.

“No. No, that’s not really me.”

Her voice was quiet, but decisive. Willy looked at her, really looked at her, and she felt more seen than she had in years.

“I want to help you,” she said.

“Hm?”

His head tilted to the side, a little stunned, and she nearly giggled as his now-drying curls flopped in front of his face.

How could anyone want to hurt him?

“I don’t know exactly what Felix and the rest have planned against you, but I know there’s something. He never really tells me anything, but I’ll…I’ll try to find out what I can, to distract him when needed. I don’t want you to be alone in this.”

“I’m not,” he said. “The others where I’m staying right now, we’re all in a rather precarious situation together, and I’ve got a few ideas, but…”

She watched the wheels turn in his mind, and after a few moments, he looked back up at her, for once lost for words.

“But thank you. Again. I’d…I appreciate it.”

“Thank you. For bringing some much-needed heart into this place.”

“I think you’ve done that rather well yourself.”

This was news to her often-guilt-wracked brain.

“...Really?”

“Well, of course. You clearly care, Wren…you’re kind, you’re poetic and talented, and far smarter than it seems they give you credit for. It’s in your eyes, too, I think. You can always tell the truth by a person’s eyes.”

Her heart had nearly stopped.

Somehow, though, she could tell that he was unaware of the full effect he had on her.

“Mr. Wonka-ah, Willy, I mean…”

“Forgive me if-I didn’t intend to-”

The clocks around the city chimed the hour, interrupting the two just as they had the day before, and the young man’s expression went from its dazed dawning to a startled realization.

“They’ll need me. Back where I’m staying, I mean.”

“Of-of course,” she said a bit awkwardly as they both stood up.

His hair had dried by now, falling in perfectly imperfect swoops around his face. He’d undone his necktie to keep its cold away from his neck, and his jacket was folded over his arm, and he was looking at her as if he hadn’t had a conversation quite like that with someone in a very, very long time.

And neither had I.

Or…ever, I suppose.

Until now.

“Thank you. Again.”

“You’re welcome. Again.”

She took a breath, let it out, and folded him into a hug, which he returned in an instant.

After two years of jutting angles and sharply possessive grasps, it was remarkable to simply, softly, hold and be held.

They bid a last goodnight before parting ways, and as she took her time walking back to the mansion, the moon seemed brighter than ever before.

#wonka 2023 #wonka movie #wonka x reader #willy wonka x reader #wonka #willy wonka #timothee chalamet #timothée chalamet x reader #timothee x reader #timothee chalamet fic #timothee chalamet fanfiction #timothée chalamet #wonka fanfiction #wonka fanfic #mat baynton #mathew baynton #mathew baynton x reader #mat baynton x reader #fiytwtb

[definitelynotshouting]

“The universe sings,” Grian said.

He sounds vaguely distant- like he’s speaking from hundreds of blocks away rather than right next to Mumbo.

He turns on his bed, slow halting movements, to face him.

“Did you know?”

Mumbo can only stare.

“…Sings?” He asks. He shifts on his chair.

Grian seems to want to nod, but aborts the motion halfway, and hums instead.

“Yeah. The code. It sings, if you listen close enough,” Grian mumbles.

Mumbo opens his mouth, then closes it again.

Grian exhales a long breath, and his eyes drift close.

“Can you hear it?”

Mumbo watches the way Grian’s chest rises and falls, shallowly, slowly.

He closes his eyes, and strains to hear.

He hears- Tango out in another room of the house, pacing circles around the kitchen. Mumbo can tell it’s Tango by the shuffle in his walk.

He can hear birds outside, twittering. Wind rustling through branches. An animal- a pig, maybe, trotting along some grass.

It’s quite calming really- but he doesn’t hear singing. At least, he doesn’t think he does?

When he opens his eyes again, it’s to Grian staring right at him.

Mumbo exhales in one sharp breath- he didn’t realise he’d stopped breathing- and meets Grian’s gaze.

“Did you mean like, actual singing or- or was that metaphorical? Because I can’t hear anything other than trees, mate,” he says, only half-joking.

Grian huffs a small laugh, and shakes his head.

“Nah, it’s not really singing-singing. It’s music, though. You’ve definitely heard some of it- discs. That’s the easiest way to hear it. But that’s- so few of what’s out there. There’s more music, if you know how to listen for it,” he hums. His eyes close again, and he leans more into the mattress.

Mumbo pauses, and thinks on that for a moment. Music discs, huh? He supposes it seems plausible, that there’d be more music out there.

But then why has he never heard it? Mumbo doesn’t ever recall hearing ‘the code sing’. If it’s tied into music discs, then is it naturally generated? Is hearing it a ‘watcher thing’?

Mumbo glances down at his hands, traces lines of dirt under his fingernails.

He nods, though Grian can’t see it anyway. He makes some vague ‘see you later’ comment he can’t bother to think about, and carefully gets to his feet.

At the doorframe, he peers back.

Grian lies there, breathing steadily.

Mumbo turns and leaves, closing the door behind him.

////

headcanon that the minecraft soundtrack can be heard in the code, but only if you're 'in harmony' with it. cue other headcanon of watchers being very aware of the code

HEY ANON. ANON. I ADORE THIS HOLY SHIT I FUCKING LOVE THIS HEADCANON???? The idea that the universe is constantly singing to itself, and you can hear that through the Greater Code if you really carefully listen, is something i lowkey want to canonize SO BADLY holy shit. And this is such a lovely snippet too, im always such a sucker for deeply layered conversations like this.... i adore how youve given so much depth to the sentence "the universe sings" and the implications of how and why Grian is hearing it so much right now. [THROWS UP BLOOD] IM OBSESSED.......

Also this Mumbo dialogue especially is on point youve done such a good job of capturing his little speech patterns :] STUNNING JOB ANON IM SO FLATTERED U WROTE THIS!!!!! I really think i might canonize this concept just for how absolutely amazing it is, im utterly obsessed with it

#shouting speaks #asks #hunger au #art for me #<- litcherally cannot remember if i have a specific fic for me tag or not IG I'LL FIND OUT ONCE I HIT POST... #THE IDEA THAT TJE SOUNDTRACK ARE SONGS THE UNIVERSE SINGS TO ITSELF.... IM GOING BUCKWILD #i mean its already canon the universe SINGS but u KNOW my ass is gonna be listening to the full soundtrack #tears in my eyes as i picture grian listening to it..... #i hope its okay to yoink this anon bc im enamoured with the concept truly #gods and the idea that the music discs are specifically fragments of the universe singing that you can ACTUALLY HEAR.... #i like to think that like. making music discs is p much like making custom ones the way theyre doing it #but sometimes. sometimes you find treasure discs #or you fashion it from the remains of a creeper.. and you get a little window into what the Greater Code sounds like #weeping forever and ever that u wrote this for me im saving this in my special little works inspired by hunger au folder rn #❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ #fic recs #long post #txt

[moth-related-inquiries]

Arthur Morgan x Reader angst

Reader does not know where they belong amongst the gang. Or at all, really.

Warnings: super angsty, Micah Bell, reader is genuinely miserable, Arthur x reader if u squint, outlaws n shit!!! Ambiguous gender, reader falls for Micah's assholery, Micah is sexist asf,

listen while you read?:

Whenever Arthur rushed to his tent, you always knew it was because he'd received a special little letter. You haven't run with the gang for long, but you've been there long enough to know that the sulky man was only ever excited by one of two things: a big fish and Mary Linton. You didn't blame him, honestly. Serving as the camp's workhorse, he had little time to himself. When he did have time, he'd go on some love-struck search for his missing half. Though it'd been years since she'd sent him a letter, it seemed like she'd find some way to follow them everywhere. It was impossible, of course, since she had no way of knowing where they'd move, but she always managed to show up close to camp. At least close enough to get him to drop his workload and come to her aid.

You knew all this solely because you had a habit of watching. It wasn't really a bad habit, considering that you'd never dared to take a peek at anyone in their tent. It was just that—a habit. Or, perhaps, a part of your nature. It was something comfortable that you did even before your time in the gang. As a teenager, you'd sit outside the general store and just observe. You were too old to go to school yet too young to go inside any of the stores on your own, so you busied yourself with pretending to be a viewer. You'd spot many things: a man riding in with a bounty, a pair of women talking about the latest perfumes, or a dog jumping around in the mud. You'd always wanted to do those things, too, but never had the courage to get out of your spot.

Then came Dutch Van Der Linde, a man who'd seen that, despite your inactivity, you were far more capable than you let on. Though you weren't a great shot like his right-hand man, you weren't utterly terrible like Sean. Your words were clumsy and awkward, but you always finished your sentences. That was one thing he seemed to like about you: that you would always finish what you started, regardless of how badly you'd mess up.

Or maybe he just liked that you were a follower, regardless of how things ended up.

Nonetheless, he allowed you to stick around his gang, and you'd get things done. Though not without struggle at first, one of which would always embarrass you no matter how many times anyone thanked you for your effort. Even if you managed to feel good about your work, one back-handed compliment from Micah would send you right back to your tent with a shameful feeling in your gut. You'd often end up watching Arthur, your usual savior, spit some venomous words on your behalf, like he'd been the berated one. That's what made Arthur a saint in your eyes. Despite being a murderer, he managed to be good and do good things when he could. Even if he denied such things, it made him all the better in your eyes. It showed that he did not do good things for praise, but because he could.

You'd never be like Arthur, no matter how many times you'd observe him and try to pick apart the things that he did. He was a rare kind of man. Maybe he wasn't even a man at all, but perhaps an angel who fell from heaven. That was considerably more plausible to you since no other man had yet to even reach his near-impossible status of honorable degeneracy. So, you settled for just watching him. Listening to him. Living through him. Wanting him and wanting to be him.

Arthur, unsurprisingly, wasn't the only person to catch your eye. There were many like-minded men and women in camp who agreed with and admired Arthur, just like yourself. Though, unlike you, they'd actually work for his attention. Young Lenny was often Arthur's first choice of partner. You didn't understand why, considering that Lenny spent the majority of his time reading, until you'd actually had the opportunity to see him in action. He fought hard and got the job done, like a true outlaw.

He was a no-nonsense kind of kid, which Arthur seemed to value. Not long after Colter did they become closer. Brothers. Not brothers, as in two boys growing up together or being related biologically, but brothers who learn from each other. You'd always wanted to be as effortlessly balanced as Lenny. Sophisticated in your own right, but willing to get your hands dirty with no fuss. A perfect brother. You were anything but that. It was true that you, too, would get things done. However, you possessed a far less methodical mind. You were too scatterbrained to finish things in one go and too finicky to be a perfect brother. Far too abnormal to amount to being anything like Lenny Summers, and yet you were older than him.

Age didn't seem to matter when it concerned your abilities, though. No matter how young or old you were, there would always be someone better. Whether it were being better at being thirteen or thirty-two, they'd beat you in a heartbeat no matter your true age.

Abigail Roberts was your favorite example to bring up. She'd always been a very mature woman, even in the face of her husband, John Marston, a grown man who acted like a fifteen-year-old boy when faced with the consequences of his own actions. While there were many women in unfortunate circumstances like her, she did what she could to make life good for her son. Many, including her stubborn husband, considered her a camp leech now that she was no longer of use. Which you despised. Abigail was so much more than people let on. Beautiful, graceful, smart, and most importantly, a loving mother.

She's had her ups and downs and continues to, but the most impactful thing she ever achieved in life was Jack. A sweet, curious little boy with a newfound obsession for the Knights of the Round Table. He was, in every way, the soft spot of the camp. It's ridiculous to admit, but you were envious of both of them. You wanted to be a virtuous parent like Abigail, too. To be able to cultivate your legacy in a purely determined manner and retain your glory despite having given life only four years ago. However, you also wanted the reboot given to little Jack, too. A fresh start to a new life. The funny little possibility of growing up to be the first great knight of West Elizabeth.

You'd never amount to anything close, though. And you knew it. Even Micah Bell, an utterly disgusting and hateful excuse for a man, achieved far greater than you. So much so that he felt like your presence at camp was the most useless of them all. Below the women, who he claimed were just mouths to feed and fuck; below the drunkards, who acted as breathing furniture; and below little Jack, a child so defenseless that he could be lured away in the middle of the night and nobody would be any wiser.

You never truly discouraged him because he was the only one to tell the truth about you. Unlike everyone else in camp, who had so much ahead of them and so many tales for future generations of children to play pretend with, you would not be remembered in a jovial manner. Your life would never, no matter how hard you tried, be anything other than an allegory of shame and failure.

A/N: I just woke up and wrote this for some obscure reason that I don't even know. 😋 I hope yall like it, tho. Let me know if yall like the 'listen while you read' !!

#red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #rdr2 x reader #arthur morgan #arthur morgan x reader #angst #angstycowboy #Spotify

[typhlonectes]

Cognitive Biases

Fundamental attribution error  (FAE, aka correspondence bias)

Tendency to overemphasize personality-based explanations for behaviors observed in others. At the same time, individuals under-emphasize the role and power of situational influences on the same behavior. Edward E. Jones and Victor A. Harris' (1967) classic study illustrates the FAE. Despite being made aware that the target's speech direction (pro-Castro/anti-Castro) was assigned to the writer, participants ignored the situational pressures and attributed pro-Castro attitudes to the writer when the speech represented such attitudes.

Implicit bias  (aka implicit stereotype, unconscious bias)

Tendency to attribute positive or negative qualities to a group of individuals. It can be fully non-factual or be an abusive generalization of a frequent trait in a group to all individuals of that group.

Priming bias

Tendency to be influenced by the first presentation of an issue to create our preconceived idea of it, which we then can adjust with later information.

Confirmation bias

Tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, and discredit information that does not support the initial opinion. Related to the concept of cognitive dissonance, in that individuals may reduce inconsistency by searching for information which reconfirms their views (Jermias, 2001, p. 146).

Affinity bias

Tendency to be favorably biased toward people most like ourselves.

Self-serving bias

Tendency to claim more responsibility for successes than for failures. It may also manifest itself as a tendency for people to evaluate ambiguous information in a way beneficial to their interests.

Belief bias

Tendency to evaluate the logical strength of an argument based on current belief and perceived plausibility of the statement's conclusion.

Framing

Tendency to narrow the description of a situation in order to guide to a selected conclusion. The same primer can be framed differently and therefore lead to different conclusions.

Hindsight bias

Tendency to view past events as being predictable. Also called the "I-knew-it-all-along" effect.

Embodied cognition

Tendency to have selectivity in perception, attention, decision making, and motivation based on the biological state of the body.

Anchoring bias

The inability of people to make appropriate adjustments from a starting point in response to a final answer. It can lead people to make sub-optimal decisions. Anchoring affects decision making in negotiations, medical diagnoses, and judicial sentencing.

Status quo bias

Tendency to hold to the current situation rather than an alternative situation, to avoid risk and loss (loss aversion). In status quo bias, a decision-maker has the increased propensity to choose an option because it is the default option or status quo. Has been shown to affect various important economic decisions, for example, a choice of car insurance or electrical service.

Overconfidence effect

Tendency to overly trust one's own capability to make correct decisions. People tended to overrate their abilities and skills as decision makers.See also the Dunning–Kruger effect.

Physical attractiveness stereotype

The tendency to assume people who are physically attractive also possess other desirable personality traits.

(via: Cognitive bias - Wikipedia)

#sociology #psychology #social psychology #philosophy #politics #cognitive bias

[loving-n0t-heyting]

Alright, some context before I ask theis, because I don't want to misrepresent myself even by implication:

I am extremely economically right-wing. I am also pro-incarceration for quite a few crimes. I am generally not on the "democracy" side of the democracy to non-democracy scale. I think it would be okay if prisons were run hereditarily, if the position of Warden were generally given to the second or third son of a local Earl.

THAT BEING SAID:

There's no contradiction between prisons being a net cost to the taxpayer, and the demand for prisons being heavily driven by people who profit from them, that sort of thing happens all the time! The USA is rife with crony capitalism. It's not at all uncommon for something that is overall unprofitable to be promoted because it benefits a small group of wealthy and influential figures who can lean on politicians and media companies. Look at the defence industry. Look at protectionist tariffs. Look at corn syrup.

It's absolutely possible that if nobody were profiting from, for example, prison phone calls, or those prison dramas on American television like "OZ" or "Orange Is The New Black" (which make huge amounts of money, and are perceived as "realistic" or "gritty" because prisons exist) that there would be less incarceration.

Advertising, mass media, and campaign donations are not minor influences.

BTW, what's this about natural gas in Gaza?

there is absolutely a lot of crony capitalism going on in the us prison system, and this certainly creates some vested interest in engorging the prison population. but, like i said, it just cannot plausibly do all the heavy explanatory lifting ppl claim for it wrt the extent of us mass incarceration

its surprisingly hard to find much aggregated info on campaign finance and advertising in local judicial elections, but it kinda defies belief that they are the object of a vast industrial conspiracy to promote mass incarceration and that this more or less explains entirely why the us has so many of its ppl locked up. if it were so, one would to begin with expect the conspiracy to regularly promote judges to office with a consistent pro-imprisonment bent, rather than for sentencing severity to cycle with elections. indeed, it would be a hell of a lot more efficient to make sure these judgeships were all appointed, so the System could install them directly without the mediation of routine popularity contests. this doesnt look like the machinations of a crony capitalist cabal hand in hand with the state, it looks like individual mostly local elected bureaucrats pandering to a base that wants revenge all on its own

i probably am risking giving the impression i think judicial elections are the be all and end all of the crisis of mass incarceration in the united states. obviously thats not the case; states like cali with only limited electoral accountability for judges are hardly all bastions of freedom, and ofc this ignores legislative interventions like mandatory minimums and truth-in-sentencing laws. but it is useful as a way to point out the limitations of "just follow the money!"s explanatory power

"israel/us are bombing gaza for natural gas" was a silly theory being propagated on social media among some leftists

#ask #the cybersmith

[merionettes]

part 1 of how rubicon got written is here. this is part 2, aka the essay about etc.

the thing about the storyboarding/drafting process that there is no way to describe is how totally obsessed i was for the duration. afterwards i tweeted something like, this is the closest i've ever experienced to demonic possession. i would get up, write all day—like, all day—and go to bed. turn off the lights. then i would just lie wide awake in the dark with lines and scenes and dialogue scrolling through my head until i gave in and opened my notes app. i could not turn it off even if i wanted to. and i didn't want to, i was riding that streak as far as it would take me. because i couldn't look down, right? i could sense what i was attempting to do and anything other than total tunnel vision full speed ahead eyes on the prize would mean i had to acknowledge it.

(context of what made this possible: i was unemployed at the time.)

for the first ~50k or so i was afraid that at any minute i could falter. when i got to the nationals meltdown, that was when i knew i could do it. like, no matter what happened after that, i had the willpower and the chops and i knew where i was going. even if the streak died.

but it didn't. i wrote 100k in a little under 4 weeks. i've never experienced anything like that in my creative life. 

—then obviously i had to get a new job and come back down to earth and it took 21 months to get from there to posting the epilogue. still. i will probably be chasing that high for the rest of my life. that was the part that like… made the rest of it possible. no matter how difficult or frustrating it was. that generated the roadmap. 

i've talked about this before in comments but i had insanely strong opinions about what was "right" and what wasn't. sylvain's narrative voice was a huge part of that. it's inextricable from the content; it shaped the story; it is the story. for the first couple months it also made me an unhinged stylistic tyrant. if there was one single unnecessary word that struck me as inorganic, as existing solely to make the sentence more digestible or to convey information beyond the fourth wall, it had to go. i could not rest until it did. 

once again: this is not generally the relationship i have with writing. lol. it's the demonic possession talking. this is why you have a ton of sentence fragments and stylistic tics and a refusal to let one single shred of information into the text that did not strike me as something sylvain would plausibly think or acknowledge he was thinking. and like, yeah. probably it didn't always make for the smoothest reading experience or the most satisfying narrative development. i'm dead certain there are people who picked this fic up and the bumps drove them out of their mind until they threw in the towel. i just didn't care. 

part of that was a reaction to my own old style—you know, the discomfort of shedding old skin. i'd look at those early scene attempts and see all the habits and crutches i'd been trying to move away from over the last two years and double down on The Voice. but part of it… i would get early feedback that wasn't at all wrong, like "what if [clarifying narration]," "what if [more interaction]," and i'd just think, but that's not true. in exactly those words! which is crazy.

(this is why it was fortunate this was fanfiction i was writing for free, i didn't have to compromise my bonkers experience any more than i wanted to.)

to be clear this feeling didn't last two years. i was eventually able to edit like a normal person. it did last probably longer than ideal. and the point when i was no longer running on unleaded creative adrenaline was when i started to really struggle with the middle of the story. i had to make choices as a writer, instead of relying on the purity of my divine vision or whatever, and i second-guessed myself a lot. it was much easier to feel that absolute bone-deep certainty of Right and Wrong, True and False. and the thought of fucking up when i'd gotten so far was unbearable—like, being so close to making the thing in my head reality and then dropping the ball and breaking the suspension of disbelief.

distance also made it possible to perceive what i was doing and be like, jesus mer what the fuck are you doing. why are you devoting so much of your time to a hobby, why are you investing so much of your life in something you will never be able to truly share, why are you living in a hole with no one else in it. why are you putting yourself through the wringer to get it down "right." why does it matter if it's as good as it can be. why do you care. why is this worth it.

i assume this was pretty obvious before this post, but if not it must be now. this story isn't really about figure skating. for me it's about writing; who knows what it's about for you. i didn't sit down and think, great, felix will be a metaphor. that's just how it happens. 

the experience of writing a novel for the first time: i'm saying this with my whole chest because at one point i wouldn't have, aloud. but what's the point in calling it anything else? i know exactly how much i invested in this. i'm the only one who can know. that's sort of the point. 

here's a giant collage of the inside of my head. i made it for myself and i take it very seriously. not exactly groundbreaking to say this is the ultimate exercise in solipsism. when you're doing that—what greater gift is there than to have someone else meet you in exactly the same place. any writer would kill for the kind of responses this story has gotten, and i don't mean praise. i mean the close reads, the free response essays, the total and complete validation that this thing inside your head that only you can see is real, actually. when i say thank you, it's not for liking it or praising it—it's for taking it seriously. i loved this thing. i still love this thing. thank you for taking it seriously.

#rubicon #writing

[mostlysignssomeportents]

But as ever-larger, more concentrated corporations captured more of their regulators, we’ve essentially forgotten that there are domains of law other than copyright — that is, other than the kind of law that corporations use to enrich themselves.

Copyright has some uses in creative labor markets, but it’s no substitute for labor law. Likewise, copyright might be useful at the margins when it comes to protecting your biometric privacy, but it’s no substitute for privacy law.

When the AI companies say, “There’s no way to use copyright to fix AI’s facial recognition or labor abuses without causing a lot of collateral damage,” they’re not lying — but they’re also not being entirely truthful.

If they were being truthful, they’d say, “There’s no way to use copyright to fix AI’s facial recognition problems, that’s something we need a privacy law to fix.”

If they were being truthful, they’d say, “There’s no way to use copyright to fix AI’s labor abuse problems, that’s something we need labor laws to fix.

-How To Think About Scraping: In privacy and labor fights, copyright is a clumsy tool at best

Image: syvwlch (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Print_Scraper_(5856642549).jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

#scraping #privacy #labor #human rights #FARC #colombia #HRDAG #wayback machine #new york times #copyright #robots.txt #Mario Zechner #monopoly #price fixing #austria #clearview ai #biometrics #biometric privacy #plausible sentence generators #criti-hype #ai #llms #stochastic parrots #computational linguistics #chokepoint capitalism #llcs with mfas

[maaarine]

Aphantasia can be a gift to philosophers and critics like me (Mette Leonard Høeg, Psyche, March 20 2023)

“Bringing this scene to my mind, I don’t ‘see’ anything.

I have aphantasia, the neurological condition of being unable to visualise imagery, also described as the absence of the ‘mind’s eye’.

Still, I know that those visual elements were there; they’re stored in my mind as knowledge and concepts; and I have particular and strong emotional responses to the thought of the light and colours.

Until very recently, I had always assumed that my experience of reality was typical, and that being able to see only things that are actually there – present and visible in the external surroundings – was normal.

But discovering that I have aphantasia brought to my awareness differences in perception and self-conception between me and others that I’d always registered on some level, and felt disturbed by, but had never consciously thought about.

The further I’ve delved into research on this neurological anomaly, the more extensive its explanatory reach has proven.

It has been like finding the master key to my life and personality, and has significantly deepened my understanding of my psychology, my philosophical views, and my aesthetic and literary preferences. (…)

The philosopher Derek Parfit was aphantasic, and described his memories as propositional and stored in sentences.

I would rather describe my imagination and memories as conceptual and emotional – consisting of thoughts, feelings and sensations.

I cannot visualise my childhood home but, with a combination of conceptual and spatial memory, I can describe it – and, if I do, I notice I’ll start moving my hands and body as if I were in the house. I can feel it, almost physically, when I think of it.

Zeman also supplied me with a report on the first systematic study of the neuropsychological and neural signatures of aphantasia, which confirms many of the hypotheses formed on the basis of self-reporting and anecdotal evidence.

It connects aphantasia to introversion and autistic spectrum features; to difficulty with recognition, including face-recognition; to impoverished autobiographical memory and less event detail in general memory; to difficulty with atemporal and future-directed imagination, including difficulties with projecting oneself into mentally constructed scenes and the future; to elevated levels of IQ; and to mathematical and scientific occupations. (…)

The aphantasic absence of the mind’s eye may account for a particular kind of ‘visual vulnerability’.

This would, conversely, explain my exaggerated negative and depressive response to ugly surroundings – since aphants don’t have the option of compensating for any external lack of beauty with exciting internal visuals.

The aphantasia also explains, at least in part, why, in contrast with most people I meet, I find it hard and unnatural to tell my life story.

I don’t really think of my past, and when asked about it, I find it difficult to recall and recount.

Nor have I ever had specific ideas or visions for my future – only abstract thoughts of wishing to be happy, intellectually stimulated, healthy, with good people in my life, and access to natural beauty.

The flipside of this disconnection from the past and the future is seemingly an increased ability to be present. (…)

Aphantasia could certainly explain why Parfit’s theory resonates so strongly with me – as well as my sympathy for Eastern contemplative and monist theories such as Buddhism that advocate self-abandonment, detachment and renunciation.

While many people find such non-essential ideas of personhood and existence disturbing and estranging, to me they’re not only obviously plausible, but also highly relatable – and easy to practise.

When I introspect, I literally see nothing – and on that basis, it is likely more difficult to create and uphold an idea of a centred, essential and continuous self.”

#article #aphantasia #i still struggle to believe #that ppl can see things #in their mind

[max1461]

Here's great strategy you can use in an argument, and by great I mean horrible, god I hate it.

Let's say there's some cluster X of things X_1, X_2, ..., X_n that are associated with one another. These things needn't bear any strong correlation or logically necessary connection. And the association between them needn't be strong, it needn't even be characterized by any clear defining property. They need only be associated enough that X has a name which can plausibly be used to describe any of the X_i's. Names, oh, names are so powerful. Naming things is the mind killer. Anyway. Now let's say (modulo valance) that someone is arguing for X_i. But you don't like X_i. So here's what you do. You pick some other X_j, such that X_j is unambiguously bad. Now you argue that "X_j is X". Maybe you back this up with all kinds of convincing data. X_j is X. We all know X_j is X. Only an idiot, or an ideologically-blinded fool, could deny that X_j is X. And X_j is bad, we all agree that X_j is bad! So X is bad, this is straightforward.

Oh the great equivocative power of "is". What a word!

Anyway, now comes the coup de grâce. You argue that "X_i is X". Of course, the evidence is clear! X_i is certainly X! X_i is undeniably X. Only a fool could say that X_i is not X! And QED, you have shown that X_i is bad.

Importantly, X_i and X_j needn't share any relevant features in common, the reasons that X_j is bad needn't apply to X_i at all! But X_j "is X", and X_i "is X", so they are interchangeable!

Here are some real life examples:

welfare programs "are socialism", and Stalinism "is socialism", and Stalinism is horrible, therefore welfare programs are horrible

sentencing gay people to death "is homophobic", and some media trope you saw in a kid's cartoon "is homophobic", and sentencing gay people to death is indefensible, so the kid's cartoon is indefensible

You get the idea.

I think this fallacy is very common. I think it has two parts, a formal part and an informal part. The formal fallacy is the inference

P -> X, Q -> X, Q -> Y, therefore P -> Y.

It's going "given a subset Q of some superset X, and another subset P of X, what applies to Q must apply to P". This is just not valid reasoning. But there's also an informal part, which is that for this type of reasoning to be persuasive, X must almost always have a name. Without naming X, I think this type of argument rarely works. It especially helps if you can say that P and Q "are" X, I suppose because there are contexts in which the semantics of the copula are transitive and people falsely generalize this to contexts in which they are not.

#navel gazing

[saintmeghanmarkle]

Allegedly and Pure Speculation from Benjamin Smallbook on Quora Tonight - Its Time We Turned Up The Heat in the Markle Kitchen. Is this plausible? Is our Saint angering British Media to the Brink? by u/daisybeach23

Allegedly and Pure Speculation from Benjamin Smallbook on Quora Tonight - “It’s Time We Turned Up The Heat in the Markle Kitchen.” Is this plausible? Is our Saint angering British Media to the Brink? From Quora:Journalists at one of the UK’s top news agencies are getting together with colleagues at France’s biggest agency, Agence France Press, to put pressure on Markle and her husband, to come clean about the kids that nobody can mention. I believe, but have no firm evidence of this, other than whispers, that the Anglo-French media operation is being supported by the Palace.Clearly the Palace feels that enough is enough. Maybe they think that now is the time to regroup, and introduce Eugenia and Beatrice as A-lister working Royals. The recent health scares in the Family seems to have focused the minds of the ‘men in grey suits’ at the Palace.The awful news is soon to be released that the Princess of Wales has been suffering from an undisclosed form of cancer. The new direction, with a new start, doesn’t need any distraction from the duplicitous actress and her husband.Press-releases have flown from Montecito, and they have angered those who have been gagged.One press-release told, “The Duchess of Sussex has instructed Jake Rosenberg, a New York-based photographer, to take pictures of Prince Archie and his sister Princess Lilibet. The photoshoot will coincide with the launch of the Duchess’s lifestyle and cookery brand, American Riviera Orchard.”But what angered people was the sentence, “The photos of the children will be for our own family, and not distributed for general use.”What game is this woman playing? And what stupidity is the public displaying by going along with this idiotic charade?No births have ever been officially medically verified, and her pregnancies were suspect, to say the least. Remember, Markle and her dipsy husband lied to us about the birth of the ‘Archie Doll’. Their announcement stated The Actress was in labour, when in reality, the ‘child’ had already been born! And when Harry was filmed holding a baby which was supposedly only two hours old, he said, “It’s surprising how babies change in the first two weeks.” What the hell was that all about?The late Queen would have been informed by her own security services, long before the immaculate birth took place! It would be naïve to think otherwise. At the same time, the media would have been issued with a gagging order. From that day on, none of the UK national publications mentioned ‘surrogacy, Markle and fake pregnancy’ in the same sentence. In fact, they couldn’t even announce that a gagging order was in place.Even the birth certificates were suspect, as was the non-naming of the Godparents. The paparazzi were out in force, but not one picture emerged of any cars leaving or driving back to Frogmore Cottage. This is one big scam that hopefully will be busted very soon.Rumours as to why the Royal Family is going along with this, are rife. Blackmail and ‘playing the race card’ are top of the list. The Royal Family is as white as white can be, and the despicable woman knows it. She also knows what she’s doing. post link: https://ift.tt/jBsziPG author: daisybeach23 submitted: March 23, 2024 at 06:09AM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit disclaimer: all views + opinions expressed by the author of this post, as well as any comments and reblogs, are solely the author's own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrator of this Tumblr blog. For entertainment only.

#SaintMeghanMarkle #harry and meghan #meghan markle #prince harry #fucking grifters #Worldwide Privacy Tour #Instagram loving bitch wife #Backgrid #voetsek meghan #walmart wallis #markled #archewell #archewell foundation #megxit #duke and duchess of sussex #duke of sussex #duchess of sussex #doria ragland #rent a royal #clevr #clevr blends #lemonada media #archetypes with meghan #invictus #invictus games #Sussex #WAAAGH #american riviera orchard #daisybeach23

[preet-01]

I haven’t seen anything like this ANYWHERE so I’ve been craving it for forever now —

Ok so an interviewer is being particularly flirty with Danny, like he’s all laughs and touches and Daniel of course complies because he thinks it’s all friendly, but weirdly enough all his harem makes an appearance in the interview to interrupt it because their all jealous and wants to get him away!!

Ahhh I loved this idea!!!!

I think the interviewer would be Will Buxton. People may hate him, but he does get flirty with some drivers and is generally just like that so Daniel doesn’t think it’s anything odd when Will’s resting his hand on his shoulder or laughing a little bit too much at his jokes. It’s just how Will is and Daniel is always willing to reciprocate the energy given to him.

This is probably post-qualifying f1tv show when drivers are just walking around the paddock, going from garages to hospitality.

Will and one of the other f1tv hosts are talking to Daniel about him qualifying in the top 10 when Lando interrupts the interview. No one really thinks much of it because it’s Lando and he’s always finding his way to interviews with Daniel. None of Lando’s excuses for getting Daniel away work because he’s got a debrief to go to and his press officer is glaring.

George and Lewis are next to try, but not even Lewis looking like that one interview with Will is able to take Daniel away from this interview. They have to give up when someone from the team is requesting their presence for some fan zone event they have to be at.

Scotty and Josh aren’t at the race, but they are watching the interview live and texting the others about the journalist getting a little to handsy when Will’s hand finds its way to Daniel’s hips.

“A very popular guy, you seem to be,” Will says with a laugh when Charles comes up to them. Charles doesn’t get more than a hug before Silvia is dragging him away — she knows that any longer and the two will be front page news.

“They just want to say congratulations, good ones the lot of them,” Daniel replies, trying his best to not blush bright red.

In the end, they send in the big guns. In any other situation, the others would be doing their damnedest to keep Max from Daniel since they already spend so much time together due to being under the Red Bull umbrella. But they’d much rather deal with Max than have to make room for Will Buxton.

Max had been in the press conference beforehand, but now he knows exactly how to get Daniel away from Will. It’s a simple thing, “Helmut is looking for you.” A plausible enough sentence since Daniel currently drove for RB.

No one needed to know that “Helmut is looking for you,” was code for “I need you right now.”

#answered #daniel and his harem of boyfriends

[liskantope]

With regard to the recent testimony of several presidents of major universities about their policies on antisemitic speech, my orbit seems divided into people who are ignoring the story entirely and people who have reacted to it with nothing but outrage and exasperation toward the university presidents. I also find the whole event and situation frustrating and disturbing, but I'm wondering if I'm the only one out there who can't help feeling some significant degree of sympathy with the university presidents and why they might feel like they're in a bind under that type of questioning.

(I haven't gotten my hands on a more comprehensive video that shows the hearing -- the only video I was able to find that looked it might contain this was 5 hours or something -- but this treatment by David Pakman contains about the most footage I've seen. Notice how Pakman, perhaps not deliberately, distorts the sense of the MIT president's meaning in her sentence, "I've heard chants, which can be antisemitic depending on the context, when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people" by seeming to rearrange the quote in his mind so that the phrase "calling for the elimination of the Jewish people" is placed earlier in the sentence implying that calling for the elimination of the Jewish people is only sometimes antisemitic. Which is not at all what she said.)

Here's the thing: accusations of antisemitism and particularly the use of the term "genocide"/"genocidal" in speech content are being thrown around quite loosely nowadays. The way the presidents squirmed around struggling to navigate how to answer the questions was cringeworthy to be sure, and made worse by the fact that they didn't explain what they meant by "become conduct", but it's kind of understandable that they wouldn't want to straight-up say "Yes, we have a no-tolerance policy towards all calls for genocide against Jews" knowing that will immediately be turned onto them the next time a pro-Palestine slogan which someone on the pro-Israel side might interpret as antisemitic is uttered on their campus. For instance, "From the river to the sea!" seems to take on a range of meanings depending on who you ask, from "Get all Jews out of that whole piece of land!" to (according to for example Robert Wright) "Let's have a one-state solution where Palestinians get equal rights throughout that whole piece of land!"; the former can certainly be argued to be genocidal whereas a lot of protesters will probably (perhaps quite sincerely) claim the latter meaning.

(It's like during that whole debate about whether or not it's okay to punch a Nazi: I think a lot more of us may have been comfortable saying that Nazi-punching is generally okay, if it hadn't been for the fact that there was a visibly large overlap between the people advocating Nazi-punching and the types who tended to wield very broad criteria for who qualifies as a Nazi.)

I don't really have the time or energy to try to develop a full-blown stance on where the boundaries of free speech should be on college campuses or anywhere else. My general inclination would be to draw the line at speech that advocates intolerance of groups that include people that would be on the campus. So for instance, speech advocating genocide of Jews as a general group (which would include Jewish students/faculty/staff on campus), let alone speech expressing hatred toward or otherwise harassing/threatening any individuals or subsets of Jewish students/faculty/staff at the university, should not be tolerated under university policy. Speech advocating removing Israeli Jews from the state of Israel (the most extreme interpretation of "From the river to the sea!") is pretty disturbing and frighteningly reminiscent of early Nazi policy, and Jewish students wouldn't be unreasonable to feel deeply offended by it and I don't feel great about allowing it, but I'm not sure if it crosses that line. I don't know. The policy position I'm suggesting could plausibly be what the university presidents were espousing, but it was hard to tell without further clarifications from them, and it may just be wishful thinking on my part.

I do agree with David Pakman and others that, almost certainly, if you replace "antisemitic" with "anti-black" or "anti-Asian" or "misogynistic" (or probably even "anti-Muslim"), those university presidents would have without hesitation sung a very different tune, and that is an issue that needs to be examined and reckoned with. I'm not sure I'd say that it's evidence that Jews are uniquely hated among marginalized groups exactly, but it's a reflection of the fact that this recent general turn of events has kind of broken the guiding lines of certain strains of US progressive ideology.

#current israel-palestine conflict #antisemitism #genocide #david pakman #robert wright #punching nazis #free speech

[ephemeral-antiquities]

In regards to the general headcanon that Vincent Sinclair communicates through sign language….

Here’s my idea, everyone…

Obviously, we know that Vincent is not deaf, he is hearing. The only chance I could think is if his hearing was somehow affected in the surgery separating him from Bo, which isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility but still.

Though, that does not make it entirely irrational for him to communicate through ASL. However, there lies one problem in this headcanon, allow me to explain.

Sign language is more than simply hand gestures, and a lot of signs involve facial expressions. As my teachers always used to say about expressions, “if it doesn’t feel weird, you’re doing it wrong”. ASL relies on facial expression to indicate tone (among many other things) and expression is just as much a part of the sign as hand movement. A vast majority of the time, Vincent’s face is covered so his expression is not easily visible, and there’s the elephant in the room. Basically, to sign without visible expressions is.. not easy to put it simply, if not downright impossible.

I do believe that Vincent would communicate through sign though, at least partially. Without a doubt I believe a vast majority of his communication with others would be non-verbal. The method through which he would communicate I think would vary vastly depending on context and target audience. Signing to Bo and Lester is very plausible, in my opinion, or those he is comfortable enough to remove his mask around, but to others you may very well get a notepad or some other form of non-verbal communication.

But I also believe he would speak. It would be rare, though, as I imagine it would be physically painful for him, not to mention downright tiring (I get it). One or two sentences is the most (on a good day) you would get out of him, verbally. I have little information on this but I would imagine it’s not out of the realm of possibility that in the aforementioned surgery his vocal chords could have been somehow damaged, nevermind the scarring it left behind which could interfere severely with his ability to communicate verbally. Babies are small, after all.

I’m going off on a tangent now, though, so allow me to summarize and wrap things up.

Yes, I believe Vincent Sinclair 100% communicates, primarily, through non-verbal forms. Yes, I believe that part of that includes the usage of sign language in certain cases. But yes, I believe he will speak when absolutely necessary (in urgent situations, or when Bo isn’t listening or doesn’t care to pay attention to his signing) and it always catches Bo and Lester off guard. The two would be in the middle of a conversation, and out of nowhere they hear this scratchy, trembling voice (from severe lack of use + damage) from just out of their line of sight. I think they would never get used to Vincent’s voice, because it’s such a rarity and when it is heard it stops you in your tracks and makes your hair stand on end, just for a moment.

On a final note, while I do believe he speaks on occasion and communicates through different non-verbal means, I believe Trudy would have taught him sign first when she realized that speaking was more or less out of the equation. English is his spoken language, but in terms of communication, I believe sign would be the language of his heart.

🤟

#disclaimer: I am not deaf so I am not an expert on this it is simply based on my learning #so if anyone who is deaf sees this and there is incorrect information PLEASE correct me! #I love this headcanon deeply but in spme situations it unfortunately isnt entirely realistic #I do want to continue learning ASL #<- side note #ASL is one of my favorite languages honestly #and in a way it lines up with the timeline #Im rambling but I love ASL and HoW #ephemeral antiquities #house of wax #house of wax 2005 #vincent sinclair #that collective headcanon that Vincent Sinclair signs #we love you Vincent you are beautiful as you are #sign and non-verbal communicate on my man