y. youre kidding me

Don’t put this dumb shit on my dash please. This is not advancing Palestinian liberation or achieving anything remotely materially beneficial to the cause. This is the cheapest most self-serving grandstanding possible on Tumblr Dot Com. Do you really think anyone is saying to themselves “oh gee well those dollars I WOULD have donated to humanitarian aid to Gaza are instead going to AO3.” Come on, man.

Look @staff I'm trying the new layout but in the past few days since my account was switched to it I've maybe been able to spend 15 minutes total scrolling because it's so distracting. I've stopped checking my activity because it takes too many steps. The same for my queue. I sent in feedback already but put that thing back where it came from or so help me

continually baffled by how fandom ~creators~ who objectively have pretty damn good ~engagement~ are THE most vocal about how fandom is increasingly apathetic and awful and entitled and how if you feel unloved because your ~content~ isn’t getting love you should just … stop? or change fandoms (as if that's something you can just do at the drop of a hat, lol)? like that is supposed to teach other fans a lesson? personally, i don’t see how that mindset results in anything other than a net increase in overall dissatisfaction, especially for the person who is disengaging with creativity or forcing their energies in certain direction because they have some secondhand idea of what reward should look like (and those goalposts keep changing based on what some BNF is feeling that week).

'Resilience' has gotten a bad rap because it’s been co-opted by capitalist shills, but man on every level but corporate, it's no bad thing. Continuing to do what you love and seeking to improve regardless of how your ""output"" is received carries its own reward.

there is honestly sooo much evidence that Brenner used Henry to "breed" Eleven and all of the other kids at Hawkins Lab:

we never learn anything about who El’s biological father is. it's never even posed as a really tangible question. all we know about Terry's pregnancy was that it was a surprise, and they were all worried about it since she was in the middle of doing these supposed "drug experiments" at the lab, which was also used as a cover for taking away El, blaming a "miscarriage."

if Terry was under the influence, she likely would not have ever been aware that she had been artificially inseminated.

Henry is of the right age for Brenner to have collected sperm samples from him. quick math with some science thrown in: El was 8 in 1979 and Henry was 32 (per the fandom wiki). therefore, when El was conceived, Henry would have been 23/24. we don't know the ages of the other kids at the lab, but there don't seem to be many who are older than Eleven. some of the kids who assaulted her looked like they could have been 15-18 (though this also depends on how much we're aging down the actors like the main cast lol). regardless, even if we ballpark one of the older kids being 18, Henry would have been 13/14 at the time of conception. people who produce semen can start developing sperm as soon as puberty begins, which can start as early as 11 years old. as icky as it feels, i would not put it past Brenner to take samples from Henry the instant he was viable.

the fact that there are age gaps between all of the kids is evidence that Brenner didn't want to raise any red flags about the pregnancies in his test subjects. it seems like anywhere from 1-4 kids at the lab could be around the same age, so Brenner would have played it safe by inseminating just a few women at a time to not raise any alarms.

Brenner admitted that Henry was difficult to control, so that would lead him to try and get "fresh" minds that he could mold from infancy so the kids wouldn't try to fight against him and would do exactly what he asked. he needed to be sure they'd have powers to begin with, though, so of course he tried taking from the only source he had.

this is less evidence, but just something the scene after Henry helps El and he gets physically punished for it reminds me of. him being tasered reminds me of livestock being physically reprimanded into behaving a certain way (ie. taser = cattle prod). and, hey, if you want good cattle, you breed your best bull.

and now, less quantifiable stuff to point at, but more evidence by way of the storytelling of the series... i talked about it in depth in this post where i discussed my personal thoughts and hopes for how they elaborate on the relationship between El and Henry, but to sum it up:

throughout the entire show, but especially in s4, there's been the discussion of "good vs evil" or "monsters vs superheroes" and how things are not so black and white, as Brenner put it. even Henry says that, no, Brenner was not a monster, he was just a mediocre man who was searching for purpose vicariously through his experiments.

this, i feel, is obviously leading to an understanding on Eleven's end that she has both done monstrous things and is still a good person at heart. she strives to be good, she pushes against being the "monster," but she will have to admit that, sometimes, she behaves in monstrous ways. however, that does not make her a "monster."

this could very easily jump into her being blood-related to Henry, worrying that it makes her more of a monster, before realizing that evil is not genetic. like, it's not that far of a stretch to place this narrative over blood relations while the kids at Hawkins Lab already all view themselves as "siblings" due to their upbringing.

on the opposite side of the coin, this feeds into the discussion that Henry is not a pure-blooded monster. not only will Eleven have to realize that she is capable of being a monster, but Henry is capable of not being a monster. he is, just like Brenner, simply a man who happened to find himself in fantastic circumstances.

mental health just straight up plummeting

had to un-reblog the funny weird al/AI bait and switch post bc the replies were full of weirdos comparing anti-ai people to white supremacists and other weird takes

the transgender experience of seeing other trans ppl talk about transitioning & being like dang i wish that were me when you're already a year and a half into it at this point

y are people so obsessed with splitting hairs over their art style(s??) why do people care so much about drawing something outside their style(???) or changing up something about their style. just calm down

Me, trying to decide whether Agnes is similar blorbo to Eve or if different.

I think different.

I want to shake Eve sometimes. I want to tell her to stop doing things that are not healthy for her. I want her to quit getting in the way of her own happiness.

I just want to wrap Agnes in a blanket and give her a hot cup of tea and not let anything bad happen to her ever again because she has done nothing wrong and deserves none of the bad things.

But they're very similar characters in terms of how Kathryn's talked about Eve - who has always been the good girl, who has always tried to be good - and I think given her own separate arc, Agnes would follow something similar to Eve's, except that there is no Brendan.

Or - no - Agnes is. different.

Hm.

More thoughts needed. Maybe later.

My migraine tracker app has gone from, when there's an ongoing headache, having an icon in the notification tray (good, useful, a swipe and one click to get to the notes to write down when I took stuff), to now "checking in" periodically with a popup notification being like "Hey! You've had a headache for X hours, are you feeling any better?" (bad, feels accusatory/impatient, not helpful for tracking anything).

Like look I know I've had a migraine for 26 hours, *I live in the body that has the migraine*, just let me note when I took stuff so I know when I can take stuff again, christ.

my former therapist told me "everything you are and become and will be is something learned; you cant be something if you didn't learn it somewhere. nothing is inherent about anyone, except for something genetic" and honestly it is still messing with me on some level

shootin star rollercoaster ROUND ROUND ROUND

The thing about public transportation is that it often operates at a loss or at least pretty thin profit margins no matter how much the ticket prices get raised. In a lot of places, service is bad, operator pays get cut while they're overworked, wait times are ridiculous, no one can get places in a timely manner most places, if you can get places at all, and a profit still isn't being turned

But the money and human suffering and indignity that public transport saves can't be quantified by profits from ticket sales. "Can people get places in your city easily to work, to school, for leisure, for socializing? How much money do you save when your workers get to their jobs on time? When people can access healthcare and government buildings easily? How much pain and suffering and human life do you save when people know they'll never be stranded in your city or town no matter the time, day, or how much pocket change they have?" these aren't questions answered by "it makes profit" and the necessity of infrastructure can't be measured by profit, you have to think long term, you have to look at benefits in more abstract ways, and all Business Models are deeply bad at that kind of planning. It isn't a mystery why a machine that exists to make profit right now isn't a machine that's good at making a robust system that focuses on long term benefits, fiscal or ethical. the fact that people are still struggling futilely to turn something with benefits that abstract and that vital into a dispenser of narrow, short-term return is fucking infuriating

Public transportation should be free and well-funded because a place where no one can get anywhere is a place no one can exist in public, and that's bad for the economy but it's also bad for human fucking dignity

I do want to say, my views on AI “art” have changed somewhat. It was wrong of me to claim that it’s not wrong to use it in shitposts… there definitely is some degree of something problematic there.

Personally I feel like it’s one of those problems that’s best solved via lawmaking—specifically, AI generations shouldn’t be copywrite-able, and AI companies should be fined for art theft and “plagiarism”… even though it’s not directly plagiarism in the current legal sense. We definitely need ethical philosophers and lawmakers to spend some time defining exactly what is going on here.

But for civilians, using AI art is bad in the same nebulous sense that buying clothes from H&M or ordering stuff on Amazon is bad… it’s a very spread out, far away kind of badness, which makes it hard to quantify. And there’s no denying that in certain contexts, when applied in certain ways (with actual editing and artistic skill), AI can be a really interesting tool for artists and writers. Which again runs into the copywrite-ability thing. How much distance must be placed between the artist and the AI-generated inspiration in order to allow the artist to say “this work is fully mine?”

I can’t claim to know the answers to these issues. But I will say two things:

Ignoring AI shit isn’t going to make it go away. Our tumblr philosophy is wildly unpopular in the real world and most other places on the internet, and those who do start using AI are unfortunately gonna have a big leg up on those who don’t, especially as it gets better and better at avoiding human detection.

Treating AI as a fundamental, ontological evil is going to prevent us from having these deep conversations which are necessary for us—as a part of society—to figure out the ways to censure AI that are actually helpful to artists. We need strong unions making permanent deals now, we need laws in place that regulate AI use and the replacement of humans, and we need to get this technology out of the hands of huge megacorporations who want nothing more than to profit off our suffering.

I’ve seen the research. I knew AI was going to big years ago, and right now I know that it’s just going to get bigger. Nearly every job is in danger. We need to interact with this issue—sooner rather than later—or we risk losing all of our futures. And unfortunately, just as with many other things under capitalism, for the time being I think we have to allow some concessions. The issue is not 100% black or white. Certainly a dark, stormy grey of some sort.

But please don’t attack middle-aged cat-owners playing around with AI filters. Start a dialogue about the spectrum of morality present in every use of AI—from the good (recognizing cancer cells years in advance, finding awesome new metamaterials) to the bad (megacorporations replacing workers and stealing from artists) to the kinda ambiguous (shitposts, app filter that makes your dog look like a 16th century British royal for some reason).

And if you disagree with me, please don’t be hateful about it. I fully recognize that my current views might be wrong. I’m not a paragon of moral philosophy or anything. I’m just doing my best to live my life in a way that improves the world instead of detracting from it. That’s all any of us can do, in my opinion.

out of curiosity, what would happen if mosquitoes were to cease existence entirely? i've never known what they add to nature. i don't think they're useless, i simply do not know

lots summarized here:

basically: nobody really knows either, that’s a very hard thing to quantify. my guess: various ecosystems experience a drop (how much?) in productivity due to a lack of pollination and food for various aquatic and flying animals that depend on mosquito larvae and adults for food. particularly in areas like the Arctic which have tons of mosquitoes in the short summer, food/pollination would probably be felt especially bad—lots of birds, other insects, bats, etc must eat a lot of those trillions. certainly anything that specializes on mosquitoes (including mosquito-eating jumping spiders and mosquito-eating mosquitoes, plus plants that depend solely on them for pollination [there’s got to be some]) will go extinct.

maybe also creatures that mosquitoes keep in check through competition or disease also change their populations: again, hard to say exactly what will happen.

I think the most important thing with this question though is less about what we can predict and more about what we can’t. beyond mosquitoes, that’s what worries me most about insect declines: all the stuff they do that we don’t know about that keeps us all living the way we’re used to. it frightens me to think of people casually saying (and meaning it too) that all mosquitoes disappearing would be a good thing, as though real ecosystems were toys that humans ought to play with as we please without us and the rest of the world ever suffering the consequences—we all should have learned this lesson by now and taught it to anyone who does not know it