Resorts are equally weird.

You disembark, board a shuttle and end up in Bougainvillea Territory, except there's all the same stores you're familiar with and row after row of RE/MAX realtor signs. Palm trees, lush vegetation strewn with trash, and corners turned barren by trampling feet. Someone's dragged a busted couch there to people-watch as all the gringos get wheeled over to their one to two weeks of Designated Fake-Ass Paradise.

The concrete looks cheap, there's SE VENDE signs everywhere, but everyone's smiling. Someone's piping a Smooth Jazz version of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", and I'm drinking a Virgin Piña Colada. Might as well be sucking on liquefied candy floss.

Walt's rocking one of his Hawaiian shirts, and we're waiting for our little chalet to be prepped. Then it's sex and napping until six-thirty or thereabouts.

My one regret is our Event Organizer telling us we'll need to be at the front desk by 9 AM tomorrow for a sort of onboarding exposé about all the shit none of the three of us are interested in.

Zip lines? Yeah, sure - if that zip line leads to a chaise longue, I'm game.

Airports are weird.

You're geographically somewhere, but sociopolitically? You're in Quantum Flux. You're Schrodinger's Passenger. You've seen the Gate and the Key, and the Plateau of Leng has a Duty-Free strip that carries Givenchy perfumes and Hugo Boss sunglasses. You're Nowhere, and Nowhere is as pleasantly sterile as your average shopping mall.

Cuno? Cuno's seen the Gate and the Key, Cuno's not even regional anymore; Cuno's off on the Fucking Plateau of Leng! Watch Cuno get all Non-Euclidian on you, pig!

did i evger share this thing

Alphabet Soup

Tomorrow's the big day; the polycule is off on vacation for a week.

I won't list where, but I will say that helping your early-sixties boyfriend through the check-in process on his smartphone is probably the worst best idea ever.

See, it makes sense if you're around Sarah and I's ages. I personally hate filling out forms on a phone, but it's just a question of ergonomics and legibility. Sarah? She's flip-flopping between TikTok and our charter's app. Zero issues on her end.

Walt, though?

Oh, brother.

He has no real excuse, either: our CRM suites pose no challenge to him, but as soon as something official needs to be entered in a form that's only accessible through a phone app, he winces. What should've taken fifteen minutes ended up taking half an hour. That said, part of me thinks this doesn't matter. We're checked-in, we've got our boarding passes all squared out - everything's good.

Can't tell that to Walt, though. Three days, now, he's been hounding us around the apartment with a clipboard in hand, double and triple-checking that we've got everything we need to relax and also everything we need to remain reachable and capable, if an emergency takes shape at work. I'm bringing my laptop, Palpatine is all set to allow for SSH connections over Wi-Fi, and John has the run of the ship for the week. There's no new promos to finagle; just calls to make and appointments to keep. Should be easy-peasy on his end.

Fingers crossed...

"Why don't you mention who you are, for real? Why are there no direct IRL pics of you on your blog, or even referrals to other platforms?"

Because Tumblr is my sanctum. I've constructed a life for myself with time and effort, I have two people I love and work with, and have no reason to be anything else, to the Hellsite, than the Brain Gremlin dude who sometimes posts about car dealerships being run by utter morons.

I'm not a celebrity, there's no relevancy in anyone being able to connect the dots anyplace else; this is just a facet of me.

On the day Tumblr requires someone's real name as a sign-in, I'm deleting this blog. I have a Facebook account, but it predates the Real Names policy on this particular network. Even if you know me IRL, you can't find me. I don't want you to. I do not want to be found unless I choose to share my credentials.

So no Carrd, no Linktree - zilch. Want to get to know me? Read my blog. I'm not about to give anyone a summarized bullet-pointed list of my talking points and of which Icks I might trigger in especially susceptible people.

As to why? Because to me, any other policy sounds like social suicide, in the age of doxxing and of someone's entire life potentially ending up in a Pastebin file.

Internet Safety

Fear is bad, don't do it.

my favorite dune posts ever

You win the game, and the final screen reads Congratulations! You're now a genocidal monster and your first love hates your guts!

kind of shit at backgrounds, so i tried to practice.😭😭😭 anyways, dune video game concept

Lisan al-Ghaib

The Hellsite has a thing against White Savior narratives, and for good reason. The idea that general-purpose Natives have some elixir for mindfulness, mental health or even sociopolitical stability is nothing new. It's as tokenistic as you think if you take it at face value, but I think the more classic examples in the genre like Dances With Wolves or, God forbid, Avatar (a revised copy of the previous title, in many ways) tend to focus on something that's a smidge more positive - namely in that the Other - not the Noble Savage, so much as someone with an entirely external perspective - has the power to help us progress. A very debatable posture.

In effect, the classic examples in the genre contend that it's not really about "saving the Natives" or even becoming their saviour, but rather about the unformed or troubled protagonist finding themselves thanks to the Natives' input. I've always thought that Wolves' Sioux never needed Dunbar, Dunbar needed them. The Na'vi never needed Jake Sully, some other member of the People would've eventually filled in the blanks and become Toruk Makto. Instead, Jake Sully needed the Na'vi to fix himself. There's nothing magical there, despite the First Nations spiritualism that mostly coats the genre, ripped out of its context and sort of propped up the same way mindfulness is now pulled out of its own context and served up to the masses, as if living with a little anxiety or stress were somehow a symptom for something more insidious. The world forgot Herbert's object lesson, and suggested that for some people, especially damaged goods, the only way to find purpose is to subsume yourself in another culture. You emerge as the saviour, kill the monster, and fulfill your role in the story.

Taking up someone else's problems to fix yourself isn't an actual solution; I think any two-bit psychologist could tell you that. Even if Dunbar and Sully emerge whole and healed from their own tales, they're behavioural abnormalities. Power doesn't allow you to stay humble. Power corrupts.

Ask Shaddad. Ask the Bene Gesserit. Ask the Harkonnens, who never saw their end coming.

Back when Frank Herbert first wrote Dune, Eastern mysticism was taking off much in the same way we're seeing meditation and yoga. He pulled an interesting bait-and-switch in showing us a protagonist who seemed set to go from a mostly nameless aristocrat to your typical conquering hero - but he realized that some faiths can be noxious. Some currents can twist the mind. After all, Paul Atreides' own story addresses the fact that he comes to align with fundamentalists, and does so willingly.

In many ways, George Lucas tried to play the same melody with Anakin Skywalker being set up as the Force's hero, only for the will of the Galaxy to be made manifest through his son, instead. The problem is, unlike Herbert, Lucas lacks subtlety. The danger of messianic thinking more or less deserves a dream-state vignette on Dagobah, where Luke beheads Vader and sees his own face in the depths of his father's mask. Herbert, in comparison, makes those fears concrete. Paul was on shaky ground the moment he embraced the moniker of Muad'Dib, and slipped into something I might as well call psychosis, after drinking the Waters of Life.

Chani lost the man she fell in love with. Paul Atreides lost himself.

White Savior narratives aren't meant to be seen as the Civilized Man saving the day. They're meant to be seen as an outsider protagonist needing an external point of view to face the abyss, more or less.

If you're an optimist, the protagonist is thankful for the wisdom he's received and plays his part, not for prophecy or for Ego - but for basic care and consideration. Consider Shogun's Blackthorne, by the end of the series. He wasn't one to calculate his next move - he's clearly a man of passion. Japan gave him something to hold onto - and then squeezed around him like a vice made up of niceties and political manoeuvring. Yoshii Toranaga, on the other hand, is the chess player. Blackthorne's fate is the grimmest of the brighter ends of the White Savior genre. He didn't save anyone or anything; he merely proved useful.

If you're a pessimist, you turn to Dune or to any of your local Fire-and-Brimstone preachers.

Considering, when I hear the Hellsite dismiss Dune as just another story written by a White guy about some other White guy saving some vaguely Middle-Eastern-coded people; that tells me a lot of armchair critics haven't picked up the books or watched the movies.

If anything, Dune's very premise gives reason to those of you who decry Colonialist rhetoric. Dune isn't just a seminal science-fiction classic; it's also a warning about what happens when faith goes haywire, and of what happens when the balance of power tips in the worst direction possible.

86% here.

I'm 41, a Chow Hound sort of gamer who dabbles in absolutely everything at least once - especially once it's obvious it has a cultural impact. I don't finish a lot of games, nor do I buy many, but I still frequent Mom-and-Pop video game stores with rental services in my neighbourhood, and I used to use and abuse of Steam's refund policy. My backlog is immense, and I'm probably crazy enough to think that having any sort of sense of wider currents in the Geek subculture sort of requires that you keep your gaming consoles up-to-date. Gaming's expensive, but if you're not focused on being on the bleeding-edge, it's easy enough to focus on what's last-gen or to scoop up the dregs of hardcore gamers or paypigs. Considering, I download most of my indies and buy my few AAA titles physically on the second-hand market.

Piracy is mostly reserved for Abandonware or for titles that are technically still supported by their publishers, even if they're languishing in a "sunset" status. A common example would be Fable III, which is all but unplayable legitimately thanks to MS' shuttering of Lionhead's servers.

And yes, my being curious about the medium (both as a gamer and as someone who dabbles in the sociopolitics of the gamedev space), I also willingly check out truly horrendous shit, from Deadly Premonition's "so bad it's great" undertones to Ubisoft's Skull and Bones debacle.

Thank fuck for modern refund policies...

Reblog with your score

This. We all wish we could institute some sort of Leftist Nirvana where all our bugaboos never come up, but that's just not how life works.

Your Sociodemocratic heroes can still be bigots. The genius that'll figure out how to make Leftist policies slot in with American (and more generally North-American) Exceptionalism could still find some other way to disappoint you, and your best friend who's forever respected your use of neopronouns could still blindside you with something regressive.

So, considering, stop chasing ideological purity. You'll never find it. Focus on one thing, champion the fuck out of it, and leave the rest to other, similarly-focused people. Plus, it's more honest. When you make it your business to find everyone else's failings, you can't introspect and find your own.

So, basically a whiskey Gusher?

Yep.

"Rent's going down ridiculously fast!" chimes in one of my cousins, who lives near the US-Canada border in the open countryside, in what's possibly the cheapest spot in the province.

The catch is that it's remote. Incredibly remote. As in "nothing gets there" sort-of-remote.

If you're stuck trying to make it in the 'burbs, get ready to spit out nearly five hundred thou every eight to nine months in rent, in and around Montreal. And that's for the cheap spots.

If the polycule and I were off-grid enthusiasts, we could live like kings off of a single paycheck. We aren't. We like having nice things. That complicates everything else.

On Cringe

"You're nearing 41 and you still play video games? Cringe."

I laughed with actual good humour at the employee's comment. "You want to know what's actually cringe, in my book? Living your life thinking you owe someone a specific representation that fits your age or social standing. I sincerely hope you've got something in your life that fills you with enough joy that you can indulge in it unashamedly. There's just no better feeling out there. For me, it's cracking open a game after hours. For you, well..."

Cringe culture is dead. If you want to be a feral cave goblin, go be a feral cave goblin. If you want to go nuts with a side project, go nuts. Don't waste precious time trying to be someone else's idea of who you are.

On Enshittification

Cory Doctorow's coined term might specifically relate to UX, but I'm increasingly starting to see signs of it in some of the "Boomer" platforms I frequent - namely YouTube.

It used to be movie recap channels were bottom-of-the-barrel cruft, now they're constantly popping up in my Trending row. Moreover, most of them now increasingly rely on AI-generated scripts and voiceover to do most of the actual work, and only apply absolutely horrid guesswork, when it comes to the plot. Movie recap channels used to be run by people who actually watched the movies they recapped, now it's mostly the domain of idiots figuring they'll watch the trailer a few times, gawk at some stills and extrapolate something from there - typically in bad English, and with WHOIS lookups for their account emails that typically return IP ranges located in and around Kolkata, India.

I'm seeing more and more of the Web sort of devolve to a posture where what you read doesn't matter, what you post doesn't matter, your level of effort has zero value, and all that's sought-after is your Watch time. If they can bilk you for monetization, nothing else matters.

Say I'm interested in behind-the-scenes content for an old favourite of mine, Roland Emmerich's Stargate. From an actually-produced video that fits these criteria, I'm just two jumps away from garbage misreading the movie's script or rehashing its themes to shore up more nonsense about Nibiru, the Age of Aquarius, Reiki alignment charts in accordance with old Seichem body maps - the whole Quack Wellness package. Pair that with most TV content outside of my local producers increasingly feel like bespoke brain rot, and I'm left thinking that the older I get, the more I'm made aware of how marketers truly do like the average customer: complacent, dumb, credulous - and always eager to crack their wallet open.

Add in my own work experience and, well... It ain't a pretty picture.

Professors in Pop Culture: (swinging into class while swashing buckles against Eldritch entities or your average, currently-problematic stand-in for the concept of the Colonial Savage)

The Professors I Worked With: "Hey, fuckoids; Daddy's got a migrane like a motherfucker. I'm not doing this shit right now. Pack up and leave, I'll just drop an ace for all of you. See you during Redaction Week. Don't forget to ring me up if you need, like, an extra month for your thesis. Or, like, a year. I don't care."

The only real tightwads were the faculty deans - and these guys, you could tell they'd never done applied research in decades. What gives you the image of the castrated snob with a bowtie is inter-office politics, not Academia in and of itself.

professors who have only interacted with other academics for years: “what do you MEAN you don’t know multi-variable calculus yet??”

professors with small kids: “thank you for not putting the lab equipment in your mouths when I turn my back”

Which is why I never actually let Benny say his piece.

Ring-a-ding-ding this, asshole.

A Taxonomy of Chatbot AI Users

The CEO: doesn't understand how any of this works, but he does understand that it means potential cost-cuts for basic Admin tasks or Customer Service interactions. Typically assumes that we're at the level where C3PO's sapience is achievable, is disproportionately pissed when their LLM of choice shits the bed and tells a customer to [insert a random mySQL function call from an entirely different website here].

The Rubbernecker: asks us if our chatbot service runs offline and we can issue them a demo, is usually under the impression that all chatbots are ChatGPT 4 and that you can ask any model whatsoever to shit out a decent apple crumble recipe. Is amusingly disappointed when the Customer Service bot for a string of dealerships can't return queries concerning recent developments in American politics or booking rates for the Carribbean. Like the CEO, ultimately thinks that computers are now bulky Disney-esque Fairy Godmothers that will one day Solve Everything.

The Griever: probably saw the Black Mirror episode where Imogen Poots clones Domhnal Gleeson, realizes her digital clone of her dead lover is far too perfect, and eventually consigns it to the attic of her picturesque Scottish cottage. Mostly sticks to Character.ai and to self-made clones of lost pets or relatives and is entirely aware that the exercise turns morbid once the bots wander off-of-alignment and invent or hallucinate details that aren't related to the personas being spoofed. Still hasn't stopped, as the 'bots are now digital worry stones ready and waiting to be summoned at the first sign of anxiety.

The Horndog: typically lurks around CrushOn, Dopple or any other variant on would-be "unlocked" LLM services. Never creates a chatbot on their own, but instead ferrets out kink scenarios that fit their exacting needs. All you need is a few saved convos to figure out you're looking at someone who's barely eighteen, lonely, desperately hormonal and clinging onto childlike expectations regarding relationships or sexuality. Insecurities practically seep through the setups that are initiated, and most instances end with you thinking that Goddamn, some of you probably need therapy.

The Fic Writer: has no set platform and oftentimes splits a wider persona across various different services. They're accomplished writers in their own right, and chatbot services tend to come across as more freeform testing grounds for their OCs. If a character is named Kyle, then Kyle exists on Character.ai for all narrative segments, Dopple for all steamy scenes and Tavern AI for anything more casual. The Fic Writer is mostly only curious and has no real need or want to fully subordinate to an AI-powered variant on their own character. Definition material is impeccably-written, the tone is consistent - you can tell this was a crafted experience, and not a spur-of-the-moment thing.

The one problem is that the definition's last update dates back to six months ago. You're witnessing what's left after a curious writer digs deep into a new medium, realizes it isn't the best fit imaginable and then discards it.

The Weeaboo: like the Fic Writer, the Weeaboo spends a lot of time on his definitions. Unlike the Fic Writer, however, the Weeaboo is active. Weeaboo accounts routinely have several hundred chatbots on offer and are the primary purveyors of material for Horndog users. The one hitch in the works is that every single bot that's on offer is a variation on "What if Blorbo from my shows, but [variable]?"

On the one hand, that allows Weeaboos to maximize their content delivery. On the other, it results in chatbot sites routinely being crushed under the weight of Genshin Impact stans all suddenly needing a whole new bot for their tiny, granular adjustment to Gamer Boyfriend Scaramouche's persona.

You're kind of left thinking that in most cases, the characters they fixate on aren't that well-written by the canon developers anyway, and that most of what's on offer is a mass of projections and extrapolations. At this point, why even bother? Just make an OC, man - free your mind! You're tethered to a bottom-of-a-napkin character concept put together by a South-Korean sweatshop team and a good two-thirds of your interest is highly dependent on the Graphics team's effort to flesh out the character's visual identity!

The Literal Kid: you're left scratching your head. They have a single bot on offer, it has no example coversation and the greeting isn't much more than "Hi, I'm [character] from [Anime or Manga Here]!"

The real kicker? This blank-faced nothing-burger is in the Trending lists and has one point two million recorded messages, while literal works of art languish in the lower hundreds of Public posts.

The Stan: this is someone whose only desire, in relation to this tech, is to simulate the act of developing a close friendship or a romantic attachment with real-life people. Most services block and ban posters of IRL bots, but the service isn't entirely automated. Tne end result is that with some timing, you can spot the work of the occasional rare male Swiftie, along with various fans from various Pop Culture music currents. Fake K-Pop Lead Who's Now Your Boyfriend might exist on your portal of choice for all of a day or two at the most, but the use stats for bots of this type tend to balloon insanely quickly.

The Edgelord: they think they're funny for generating a Hitler chatbot on an NSFW portal. Before the banhammer falls, savvier users proceed to abuse and exploit these bots in all the ways possible. Naturally, if someone creates an expy for the poster-child for man's hubris and expects most users to treat them like the person they're based off of, the userbase will relentlessly bowlderize it and post pics on Reddit.