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spooky-drusilla · 2 years

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Hi, hi, how are you? How's school? I feel like we haven't talked in a long time lol, I just saw you're reading The Secret History, what are you thinking? I read some time ago and honestly I liked it but it left me very confused, my friend kind of explained it to me but still, well hope you're doing okay!

Hiii!! Ikr, we haven't talked in so long!!!!!!!!

I'm okay - school is very hard at the moment, I'm always late on studies and there are endless lists of exercises to do😭😭 But honestly I've never understood the subject better, so I think maybe piling us with homework and stress is just their strategy lmao

I'm liking the secret history a lot!!! I just started the second part, but I gotta be honest - I've already looked up how it ends kahskshsk. I just can't handle suspense.

Plus I've seen a lot of discussions on whether Donna Tartt is making satire out of the characters, and I think she kind of is?? Although I would say it's more of a cautionary tale than satire (at least that's what it seems like up until the half of the book, I can't argue for what I haven't yet read). Like, Richard literally says his fatal flaw is always longing for the picturesque above all things. The Greek Class isolated themselves, genuinely thought they were better than everyone else, and lived for the ✨aesthetics✨ and academic elitism. Of course they're bad, and killing people is bad, and etc

So yeah qkhsksh I do believe the book isn't endorsing their lifestyle, I'm just hesitant to say that it's somehow mocking them, since it admits that their perspectives are thrilling and seducing to some level. Again, to me, it's more of a cautionary tale than anything else

And youuu? How are you? What did you think about the book (and what confused you about it)?? How's school?? I hope you're good too❤️❤️❤️❤️💕💕💕💕

#asks #personal #yozinha-z!!#I mean #This is literally a quote from the book:#“#While I felt a delicious pleasure in adjusting myself to fit this attractive if inaccurate image –#and‚ eventually‚ in finding that I had more or less become the character which for a long time I had so skillfully played –#there was never any doubt that he did not wish to see us in our entirety #or see us‚ in fact‚ in anything other than the magnificent roles he had invented for us:#genis grains‚ corpore glabelliis‚ arte multiscius‚ et fortuna opulentus – smooth-cheeked‚ soft-skinned‚ welleducated‚ and rich.#”#This is talking about the professor btw #The professor that we've been warned since the beginning that is an elitist asshole #TSH IS criticism!!! I agree with that!!!!#The author isn't endorsing them or saying you should follow their steps!!!!#But she very much agrees that their lives ARE appealing and beautiful in some way so I also wouldn't say it's mocking yk??#...I also think I'm too fired up as someone who hasn't even finished the book though LMAO #Can you imagine if I say all this but then in part two I read a sentece that completely changes my mind and I regret all this?#It would be v embarrassing #But yeah - maybe Im also interpretating the word 'mocking' wrong #bc I *do* think shes calling them all fakes and pseudo-intellectuals #Is that mocking? I just don't think shes calling them stupid or evil yk #Actually idk what im saying here‚ im just ranting at this point‚ im so sorry KAJSKHSJ

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probablynothing · 6 months

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I'll be real, all the discourse about AI art just reminds me of the discourse about digital art back in the mid-00s. "Digital art isn't real art, you didn't need to develop any art skills to do it." from people convinced that the only way to make real art is if you can put your fingers on it. "Digital art is just stealing other people's skills and pretending you have them." from the people who were convinced that using brushes and stamps were all you needed to do digital art well. "You should call yourself a digitalist, because you're not actually making art." Like. It's all the same, and I sure hope it ends the same. I hope everyone just gets tired of complaining and stops sharing their big opinions.

#bitching #man i can't wait for folks to get bored of complaining about this #genie's out of the bottle and unless you have a workable answer for all of it #that won't hand a blank check over to corporations #i'll probably just keep pretending I don't see your hot takes #This is hopefully all you'll see me say about this

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 months

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Solar is a market for (financial) lemons

There are only four more days left in my Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Rooftop solar is the future, but it's also a scam. It didn't have to be, but America decided that the best way to roll out distributed, resilient, clean and renewable energy was to let Wall Street run the show. They turned it into a scam, and now it's in terrible trouble. which means we are in terrible trouble.

There's a (superficial) good case for turning markets loose on the problem of financing the rollout of an entirely new kind of energy provision across a large and heterogeneous nation. As capitalism's champions (and apologists) have observed since the days of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, markets harness together the work of thousands or even millions of strangers in pursuit of a common goal, without all those people having to agree on a single approach or plan of action. Merely dangle the incentive of profit before the market's teeming participants and they will align themselves towards it, like iron filings all snapping into formation towards a magnet.

But markets have a problem: they are prone to "reward hacking." This is a term from AI research: tell your AI that you want it to do something, and it will find the fastest and most efficient way of doing it, even if that method is one that actually destroys the reason you were pursuing the goal in the first place.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/security/engineering/failure-modes-in-machine-learning

For example: if you use an AI to come up with a Roomba that doesn't bang into furniture, you might tell that Roomba to avoid collisions. However, the Roomba is only designed to register collisions with its front-facing sensor. Turn the Roomba loose and it will quickly hit on the tactic of racing around the room in reverse, banging into all your furniture repeatedly, while never registering a single collision:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/04/when-ais-start-hacking.html

This is sometimes called the "alignment problem." High-speed, probabilistic systems that can't be fully predicted in advance can very quickly run off the rails. It's an idea that pre-dates AI, of course – think of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. But AI produces these perverse outcomes at scale…and so does capitalism.

Many sf writers have observed the odd phenomenon of corporate AI executives spinning bad sci-fi scenarios about their AIs inadvertently destroying the human race by spinning off in some kind of paperclip-maximizing reward-hack that reduces the whole planet to grey goo in order to make more paperclips. This idea is very implausible (to say the least), but the fact that so many corporate leaders are obsessed with autonomous systems reward-hacking their way into catastrophe tells us something about corporate executives, even if it has no predictive value for understanding the future of technology.

Both Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross have theorized that the source of these anxieties isn't AI – it's corporations. Corporations are these equilibrium-seeking complex machines that can't be programmed, only prompted. CEOs know that they don't actually run their companies, and it haunts them, because while they can decompose a company into all its constituent elements – capital, labor, procedures – they can't get this model-train set to go around the loop:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Stross calls corporations "Slow AI," a pernicious artificial life-form that acts like a pedantic genie, always on the hunt for ways to destroy you while still strictly following your directions. Markets are an extremely reliable way to find the most awful alignment problems – but by the time they've surfaced them, they've also destroyed the thing you were hoping to improve with your market mechanism.

Which brings me back to solar, as practiced in America. In a long Time feature, Alana Semuels describes the waves of bankruptcies, revealed frauds, and even confiscation of homeowners' houses arising from a decade of financialized solar:

https://time.com/6565415/rooftop-solar-industry-collapse/

The problem starts with a pretty common finance puzzle: solar pays off big over its lifespan, saving the homeowner money and insulating them from price-shocks, emergency power outages, and other horrors. But solar requires a large upfront investment, which many homeowners can't afford to make. To resolve this, the finance industry extends credit to homeowners (lets them borrow money) and gets paid back out of the savings the homeowner realizes over the years to come.

But of course, this requires a lot of capital, and homeowners still might not see the wisdom of paying even some of the price of solar and taking on debt for a benefit they won't even realize until the whole debt is paid off. So the government moved in to tinker with the markets, injecting prompts into the slow AIs to see if it could coax the system into producing a faster solar rollout – say, one that didn't have to rely on waves of deadly power-outages during storms, heatwaves, fires, etc, to convince homeowners to get on board because they'd have experienced the pain of sitting through those disasters in the dark.

The government created subsidies – tax credits, direct cash, and mixes thereof – in the expectation that Wall Street would see all these credits and subsidies that everyday people were entitled to and go on the hunt for them. And they did! Armies of fast-talking sales-reps fanned out across America, ringing dooorbells and sticking fliers in mailboxes, and lying like hell about how your new solar roof was gonna work out for you.

These hustlers tricked old and vulnerable people into signing up for arrangements that saw them saddled with ballooning debt payments (after a honeymoon period at a super-low teaser rate), backstopped by liens on their houses, which meant that missing a payment could mean losing your home. They underprovisioned the solar that they installed, leaving homeowners with sky-high electrical bills on top of those debt payments.

If this sounds familiar, it's because it shares a lot of DNA with the subprime housing bubble, where fast-talking salesmen conned vulnerable people into taking out predatory mortgages with sky-high rates that kicked in after a honeymoon period, promising buyers that the rising value of housing would offset any losses from that high rate.

These fraudsters knew they were acquiring toxic assets, but it didn't matter, because they were bundling up those assets into "collateralized debt obligations" – exotic black-box "derivatives" that could be sold onto pension funds, retail investors, and other suckers.

This is likewise true of solar, where the tax-credits, subsidies and other income streams that these new solar installations offgassed were captured and turned into bonds that were sold into the financial markets, producing an insatiable demand for more rooftop solar installations, and that meant lots more fraud.

Which brings us to today, where homeowners across America are waking up to discover that their power bills have gone up thanks to their solar arrays, even as the giant, financialized solar firms that supplied them are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, thanks to waves of defaults. Meanwhile, all those bonds that were created from solar installations are ticking timebombs, sitting on institutions' balance-sheets, waiting to go blooie once the defaults cross some unpredictable threshold.

Markets are very efficient at mobilizing capital for growth opportunities. America has a lot of rooftop solar. But 70% of that solar isn't owned by the homeowner – it's owned by a solar company, which is to say, "a finance company that happens to sell solar":

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/solarcity-maintains-34-residential-solar-market-share-in-1h-2015/406552/

And markets are very efficient at reward hacking. The point of any market is to multiply capital. If the only way to multiply the capital is through building solar, then you get solar. But the finance sector specializes in making the capital multiply as much as possible while doing as little as possible on the solar front. Huge chunks of those federal subsidies were gobbled up by junk-fees and other financial tricks – sometimes more than 100%.

The solar companies would be in even worse trouble, but they also tricked all their victims into signing binding arbitration waivers that deny them the power to sue and force them to have their grievances heard by fake judges who are paid by the solar companies to decide whether the solar companies have done anything wrong. You will not be surprised to learn that the arbitrators are reluctant to find against their paymasters.

I had a sense that all this was going on even before I read Semuels' excellent article. We bought a solar installation from Treeium, a highly rated, giant Southern California solar installer. We got an incredibly hard sell from them to get our solar "for free" – that is, through these financial arrangements – but I'd just sold a book and I had cash on hand and I was adamant that we were just going to pay upfront. As soon as that was clear, Treeium's ardor palpably cooled. We ended up with a grossly defective, unsafe and underpowered solar installation that has cost more than $10,000 to bring into a functional state (using another vendor). I briefly considered suing Treeium (I had insisted on striking the binding arbitration waiver from the contract) but in the end, I decided life was too short.

The thing is, solar is amazing. We love running our house on sunshine. But markets have proven – again and again – to be an unreliable and even dangerous way to improve Americans' homes and make them more resilient. After all, Americans' homes are the largest asset they are apt to own, which makes them irresistible targets for scammers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

That's why the subprime scammers targets Americans' homes in the 2000s, and it's why the house-stealing fraudsters who blanket the country in "We Buy Ugly Homes" are targeting them now. Same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: "That's where the money is":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/11/ugly-houses-ugly-truth/

America can and should electrify and solarize. There are serious logistical challenges related to sourcing the underlying materials and deploying the labor, but those challenges are grossly overrated by people who assume the only way we can approach them is though markets, those monkey's paw curses that always find a way to snatch profitable defeat from the jaws of useful victory.

To get a sense of how the engineering challenges of electrification could be met, read McArthur fellow Saul Griffith's excellent popular engineering text Electrify:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering

And to really understand the transformative power of solar, don't miss Deb Chachra's How Infrastructure Works, where you'll learn that we could give every person on Earth the energy budget of a Canadian (like an American, but colder) by capturing just 0.4% of the solar rays that reach Earth's surface:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects

But we won't get there with markets. All markets will do is create incentives to cheat. Think of the market for "carbon offsets," which were supposed to substitute markets for direct regulation, and which produced a fraud-riddled market for lemons that sells indulgences to our worst polluters, who go on destroying our planet and our future:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

We can address the climate emergency, but not by prompting the slow AI and hoping it doesn't figure out a way to reward-hack its way to giant profits while doing nothing. Founder and chairman of Goodleap, Hayes Barnard, is one of the 400 richest people in the world – a fortune built on scammers who tricked old people into signing away their homes for nonfunctional solar):

https://www.forbes.com/profile/hayes-barnard/?sh=40d596362b28

If governments are willing to spend billions incentivizing rooftop solar, they can simply spend billions installing rooftop solar – no Slow AI required.

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28 - TOMORROW!) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

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/2024/01/27/here-comes-the-sun-king/#sign-here

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

Image:

Future Atlas/www.futureatlas.com/blog (modified)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/87913776@N00/3996366952

CC BY 2.0

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

J Doll (modified)

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_Sky_%28140451293%29.jpeg

CC BY 3.0

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

#pluralistic #solar #financialization #energy #climate #electrification #climate emergency #bezzles #ai #reward hacking #alignment problem #carbon offsets #slow ai #subprime

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merryfight · 1 year

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okay, real talk: how is a hologram going to hold a real knife to peel someone with? we've already established that the substitute needs a corporeal form in order to rub the genie lamp. is his knife also a hologram? is the next episode going to open with blue pixel elmo furiously trying to stab ryan as the blade and his fuzzy lil arm just keep harmlessly passing right through him? because that would be the best resolution to a cliffhanger i've ever seen

#AND HOW DID HE TIE RYAN UP #shane i need answers #puppet history #puppet history spoilers #the professor #the substitute #shane madej #ryan bergara #watcher #watcher entertainment

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memecucker · 1 year

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My take with AI art is the genie is out of the bottle and by the end of the decade it’ll be totally normalized and while you’ll still see plenty of detractors they will increasingly be seen as eccentric purists but there will never not be a demand for art made by people and we’ve been through this song and dance sooo many times in the past 150 years. Portraiture might not be as common as it was 200 years ago before photography but people still paint portraits and the practical effects was more that people who couldn’t afford an expensive portrait painting were able to have physical reproductions of their appearance and people increasingly found out the artistry in photography and how there’s a lot more to it than just clicking a camera.

Yes there’s an IP issue but my concern is more corporations using strong IP laws to their advantage bc IP laws have always been about protecting powerful business interests and not small creators

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sexhaver · 1 year

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Idk man I feel like its not really in the spirit of communism or good humanity in general for an overwhelming majority of artists to say "I don't want my work used in this way, and this type of technology unchecked has a track record of harming other communities while simultaneously producing a lower quality output and having a negative effect on the whole industry and allowing big corporations to further exploit us" and then for you to say "it's not technically stealing and also you shouldn't HAVE to rely on this art for your income because capitalism is bad anyways." Let me tell you, a transformative work by a human being is genuinely transformative, took time effort and creativity and ultimately pays homage to the original artist. That may be the law that these AIs are operating under but it is NOT the same and people have a right to be upset. You're getting an unfollow for this one and maybe you should learn to listen to communities better when they speak out for themselves.

i mean this in a very literal sense and not as an insult: you and everyone who agrees with you are modern-day Luddites. Luddites saw the advent of automation during the Industrial Revolution as a threat to the necessity of human workers and responded by destroying machines in cotton and wool mills.

the Luddites arguably had a point - automation did reduce the number of workers that mills (and all other factories) needed to run, and the existence of automation pushed those remaining workers to work even harder to increase productivity.

the Luddites also famously lost. workplace automation is still everywhere and growing . it's literally my job, in fact.

i understand that this entire development sucks for artists working off commission, but there really isn't any way to stop this from happening now that the genie is out of the bottle. that isn't how technology works. you can get mad at the people using AI to rip off/undercut specific artists, but that's about it. anything beyond getting mad is either fighting market forces wildly beyond your or anyone else's control, or advocating for increased copyright/IP law, which, like, you don't want that, please, for the love God do not let AI art trick you into thinking IP law is a good thing

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lovra974 · 9 months

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Maybe one day I'll write it...

So, imagine Pro Hero Dynamight. Although he is doing very well in his career and is in the top 10, he is still feeling trapped. He was stuck in an overachiever cycle where he had to do more and better every day. If he fails, his rank drops and goes back to square one. He had to struggle with journalist and analysts Heros 24/7 and he is very tired of it. Tired of this cycle but never being able to go out of it.

He barely goes home, he's always at his agency if not on a mission. If Kirishima was not working at his agency, he wouldn't see any other friend. He was pressured into taking care of everything on his own. And nobody managed to say a word to him about it.

He didn't see his parents for such a long time that Mitsuki is surprised he took her call. But Ms. Bakugo needed to verify if his son used his birthday present from last year. Yeah, I know, very important.

Bakugo didn't open it.

His birthday present was a ticket from a corporation called Dream Match. It's a super sophisticated matchmaker service where they pair you up with someone to do a shared dream.

A ticket cost over 5,5 millions yens. It will be lost if Bakugo doesn't make an appointment within a week.

He doesn't know it's a matchmaking service until he goes to their website. His parents told him it was some expensive vacation experience bullshit.

After pondering and conversing with Kirishima, he realizes that he is not obligated to do anything with his partner after the dream. So he goes, all nervous and suspicious, just hoping he would have a good sleep.

On the other hand, there is Y/N. She has an earth quirk and dreams to be a hero. Although she didn't attend a high-ranked Hero school, she was able to land a promising sidekick job.

But it was not what she expected. She was manipulated into signing a contract that required her to do the Hero's job, but she won't be given the post or recognition. Nobody will ever know she exists.

Although she has the same quirk as the Pro Hero of the agency, she is more powerful. And they take advantage of that. The media has no knowledge of her, she is kept in the shadow of the Hero. While the Pro is on a mission, she is there too, fighting without anyone seeing, pretending that the Hero is doing everything.

And she can't leave unless she drops her dream.

One of her friends gave her a Dream Match ticket to cheer her up. And she ends up being paired up with Bakugo Katsuki aka Dynamight without knowing.

XXX

In the dream, Bakugo is an exiled Barbarian Prince. He is the heir of the Dragon throne, descendant of Hoshi the Dragon King. He lost a battle and is sent into exile by his own father.

Mercenaries are sent to kill him by another kingdom. He finds a curious lamp on his way. Once in his hands, the genie trapped inside goes out.

Y/N is the genie and had the duty to grant him three wishes. Her magic binds her to the lamp and slowly take away her humanity. Each times she uses her magic without granting her master's wish, she looses her voice for some time.

Katsuki dreams to redeem himself. Y/N dreams to be free again.

#bakugou x reader #katsuki bakugo x reader #pro hero dynamight #pro hero bakugo x reader #bakugo katsuki x reader #soft bakugou #barbarian bakugo x reader #barbarian bakugou #pro hero katsuki #katsuki x yn

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corporategenie · 6 months

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#Top Accounting Services in Delhi #business #incometax #smallbusiness #gst #tax #startup #gstregistration #itr #corporate genie #gstupdates

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watcherwatts · 1 year

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something i fucking adore about puppet history, or at least this season of it, is how predictable (not the right word but i cant think of a better one right now) it is. not in the sense of like "ohh cmon we all knew that was gonna happen boooo" but in the sense of "oh my god i was right ! i knew that was gonna happen !" like, for example, from the beginning of this season, i knew that the professor was a hologram, i instantly theorized about the idea that hea a hologram and the box is his power source. and when i found out i was right ? i was ecstatic. i was so fucking excited that i was right. and thats what i love about this show. the fact that you are able to pick up on all these little hints and clues, all the little breadcrumbs and foreshadowing. we are given all these little things to pick apart and sink our teeth into. the fact that you are able to build theories upon them and even have your theories be correct, but even if you are wrong, or slightly wrong, its still all worth it. every episode leaves you on your toes, needing the ticking of time to go faster so you can get your grubby little hands on the latest episode. we are all putting together pieces of some grander, and probably way more surprising puzzle, and its so fucking beautiful. its so fun, and exciting, and just..god i love it.

plus, this ties into a huge reason why i love shane madej so much. why he is such an inspiration to me, especially creatively. because who else is going to do something like this ? who else is going to craft an entire multi-season puppet show about a puppet teaching insane events in history, with trivia segments for ryan bergara and whoever that episodes guest is to compete for the title of history master, that in-show puppet shows, and a musical number, where the host of the show, the professor, ends up being sent back in time and immediately eaten by a dinosaur because ryan bergara made a deal with the devil and a genie because he was sick of loosing every episode, he then realizes what a mistake he made and during the professors funeral, where it is revealed that all the puppets were turned into puppets because of the professors weird time shit and are now in some kind of limbo where theyve also created a hologram of the professor, so he kinda wishes that he never made the deal, so the weird limbo hologram professor gets sent to the now and does the show as a disguise for the fact that he wants to become fully corporeal by skinning ryan bergara and wearing him like a meat suit and successfully? (we were left on a cliffhanger) does so, MEANWHILE, back during the crustaceous period, the dinosaur that ate the professor gives birth to him, the egg hatches and now the professor is part dinosaur and has a t-rex mom and pterodactyl/pterosaur dad who love him very much, however its the fucking crustaceous period so guess whats heading the way of that sweet little family. AND THERES STILL AN ENTIRE EPISODE LEFT. who else could even do something like this? think back to the hotdaga. what started out as a silly little hotdog on a skateboard turning into a fully fleshed out story with musical numbers. he even combed through every unsolved voice over file to compile clips to create an entire fucking song using ryans voice. this is where shane excels, his creativity truly shines. he is a mad genius, a fantastic artist. shane is and always has been a storyteller, and i am so fucking proud of how far hes come. i am so happy that he is truly able to delve into his passions and create.

puppet history is such a genuinely well crafted story, a work of art, and i am so excited to see the finale of this season. thank you to everyone that has put their efforts, their hearts, and their souls into this show. thank you @wearewatcher.

i love you.

#watcher #ghost posts #puppet history #long post #puppet history season five #shane madej #puppet history spoilers #puppet history the professor #the professor #puppet history lore #puppet history theory #watcher entertainment #wearewatcher #we are watcher #it reminds me a lot of my arg days #i want to study you under a microscope shane madej

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eldritch-thrumming · 9 months

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i saw that review on letterboxd of all the rhetorical questions for barbie and like… the more i think abt it, the more i’m certain that the review’s author fundamentally misunderstood the film. barbie land is not a utopia in the way that adults would think abt a utopia, like the author seems to imply… barbie land is canonically shaped by little girls playing with their dolls. that’s why we see a supreme court. thats why there are nobel prizes and authors and lawyers (also because that’s how the toys are marketed… would there be a mermaid in ur utopia??? there would be in mine!). that’s why barbie and ken don’t necessarily know what a boyfriend and girlfriend are “meant” to do (not to mention that the author’s assumption that sex is fundamental to a romantic relationship is problematic at best). that’s why barbie is indifferent to ken (i personally had the life size barbie and my sister had the barbie dream house—we had the working woman barbie game, i had the genie barbie gameboy game, we had countless barbie dolls; we didn’t own a single ken doll lol). barbie land is a world created by and for little girls as they play with their dolls (she says in a comment on the original post “don’t little girls play with their dolls in a sexual way?” and yeah, sure, some do. but i didn’t and i’m sure there are others who didn’t… just like there are some girls who completely mutilated their own dolls and made them into horrifying creatures)… that’s why stereotypical barbie starts having an existential crisis—because a grown woman begins to play with her doll again and starts reshaping barbie land… we, as the audience, are meant to understand this as an outlier to how barbie land is canonically created. the author also calls ken “crass” and “slovenly”… maybe after he builds the patriarchy in barbie land he becomes “crass” but i wouldn’t call him slovenly at any point in the film (i suppose this is just semantics tho).

also, please stop saying that barbie land is a reversal of the real world. it isn’t, even if that may have been the filmmakers intentions. again, barbie is indifferent to ken. she does not abuse him, she does not treat him like he exists to service her by cooking or cleaning or providing other favors for her… barbie does not oppress ken in the way that men oppress women in the real world (we have no idea if he owns property or where he lives and she doesn’t seem to particularly care—extremely different from the fact that women couldn’t have their own bank accounts or credit cards, get a mortgage on their own or divorce their husbands through no fault divorce until the second half of the 20th century in the us… within a lot of our mothers and grandmothers lifetimes!!!!) and it is a complete disservice to conflate or equate the two. we actually see barbie drawing clear boundaries around her time and space in regards to ken—this is not a reversal of misogyny as women and girls experience it in the real world, by any stretch of the imagination.

is the film perfect or revolutionary or radical? of course not. it was produced by major studios and corporations in hollywood. of course the barbie movie is a fucking commercial for barbie, like… to expect anything different is just extremely dumb on your part if u saw the trailer, saw the marketing, saw the interviews, bought a ticket, and sat ur ass in the theater, like be fuckin serious. but don’t do women and girls a disservice by discrediting the world and thoughts and ideas it could open up for them by seeing themselves be taken seriously on screen in a major summer blockbuster with stupid fucking questions because u want to feel superior to everyone else because YOU and ONLY YOU see through the capitalist marketing of lipstick pop girlboss feminism (especially when juxtaposed with the way the female characters are treated in oppenheimer, which we cannot help but compare to the barbie film with the viral marketing of barbenheimer).

#i had to block a bunch of people so their barbie takes would stop showing up in my for you tab lol #i just wanna read steddie fanfic and reblog cute barbie gifs not see ur lame ass takes abt how barbie is evidence that both patriarchies #AND matriarchies are bad #there is not a society on earth where women treat men the way women have treated women for millennia… even the matriarchies smh #the way men have treated women*** literal smh!!!!#barbie spoilers #tagging this as barbie spoilers but not using the barbie tag bevause i don’t want to get into all that tbh #i’m just frustrated… esp as someone who teaches film #every time a female led film comes out we have to have these same convos over and over #let’s talk abt how oppenheimer glorifies the atomic bomb and doesn’t acknowledge the indigenous populations that the bomb was tested on!!!!#let’s talk abt how oppenheimer doesn’t even acknowledge the japanese experience of the bomb!!!! bevause oppenheimer is the real victim #let’s talk abt how christopher nolan repeatedly uses the trope of mentally ill suffering crazy woman to propel his male protagonists story!!#he’s just so sad :( that he killed thousands of ppl :(#anyways i’m over it lol #ok wait making this non rebloggable bevaude i don’t wanna argue w anyone i literally jus wanna say my piece into a void 🙏

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sthefystarker · 1 year

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Holiday Gift Exchange for @starker-sorbet

@starkerfestivals Holiday Gift Exchange for @starker-sorbet

Moodboard + drabble-ish? Hope you like it, darling! <3

*Warning: SIM, mentions of blood and violence.

Tony Stark didn't consider himself a romantic person, not at all.

Ever since the press had branded him as narcissistic, pedantic, and an arrogant power-monger (perhaps being arrogant was a major disadvantage of being an only child, he thought), Tony knew that being his father's son, carrying the family legacy and the stigma that was passed down from generation to generation, being able to carry the burden of the Stark name on his back, as he grew up, Tony had to build his emotional barriers and become what he had least wanted all along: to be a son of a bitch. Yet life itself demanded it of him. In order to survive.

The Mercenary of Death, that soulless egomaniac who just for the fun of it slept with everyone, but never discovered for himself, next to someone, what love really was. That was why, even if he didn't know it, Tony Stark felt incomplete.

Nevertheless, he was a very busy man. In his world, having money equaled having power. The more money he had, the more power he acquired. And Tony soon discovered that very few people wanted to get serious with him. This reality, often, in his lonely nights, the ones where his inner demons fought, made him laugh through his tears. Because everyone wanted something from Tony Stark, but no one seemed to really want him.

Little by little, Tony, by survival instinct, had to bury that soft part of him. The one where he put his selfishness aside, and focused on genuinely caring for the other person. In short, in a cruel corporate world, full of business deals and hidden tricks up his sleeve, Tony Stark's heart seemed to harden each time. A heart of iron, that seemed to resist every betrayal and stab in the back from people who claimed to call themselves, his friends. Rhodey, Happy and Pepper were the exception, of course. They were always his exception. And Tony believed for a moment that they would be, forever.

Until one fine day, after several years where Tony is not only a billionaire philanthropist but also a superhero, Iron Man meets a boy with curious eyes and brown hair, this young man just saved his life, while fighting with some dangerous criminals who wanted to steal one of his latest inventions: The Extremis.

He is very talkative, Tony notes, as this young man repeats to him over and over again that it is not necessary to get his money, that he had helped him because those men were doing evil, and it was the right thing to do. Tony, of course, didn't understand any of that. His life could be calculated in billions and billions of dollars and this guy had just saved him.

"Look, imagine I'm like the genie in a bottle: You just saved Tony Stark's life! You have 3 wishes." Tony told him with a serious expression, although with a certain humor in his voice.

The boy shook his head. "I still can't believe I'm talking to you," the young man guffawed, "it's just that, I'm your biggest fan!"

Oh. That piqued Tony's interest: the boy was gorgeous. Not only that, but he seemed to be a lot smarter than he looked. Tony wanted to test him.

And he wasn't disappointed.

Peter Parker far exceeded his expectations. In Tony's eyes, Peter was the purest being he had ever known. That terrified him, because he sensed that at any moment someone else would come along and take him away, or worse, taint him with evil.

And Tony, despite considering himself to be without goodness, wanted Peter to be his. For him alone. And so he confessed it to the young man, on a rainy night, because Tony could no longer keep it to himself.

"Don't be silly, Tony. If anything, it makes me love you even more. I'd be very happy if you'd go out with me." The young man told him, his cheeks flushed but with a firm look that made him rethink things.

Tony nodded, and took the first step, one that would completely change both of their lives: he approached the young man's face, gently stroked his hair, moving it a little away from his forehead, and kissed him."

From that moment on, Tony Stark's life would take a 180-degree turn. Weeks and months passed, and Peter remained by his side, unconditional. Making love to this young man was something that seemed otherworldly, and Tony swore he would protect him from all evil, and Peter, ecstatic, believed his promises. The young boy did not ask for much, except that Tony would only love him back.

Tony's hands were shaking, in his pocket he always carried a small box with him, waiting for the perfect moment to propose his hand.

Unfortunately, that moment never came. Because it was taken away from him.

When Tony found Peter on the floor one day, bleeding and with no chance of coming back to life, he went mad. Completely insane, because in his arms lay lifeless the reason for his sanity. He tried everything, he even turned to the Mystic Arts to see if he could bring him back to life, but his best friend, Strange (who just seemed to be going through the same situation with his ex-fiancée Christine), advised him to try something else, because handling the Mystic Arts took time and that, of course, was the last thing Tony wanted.

Tony just wanted to kill them all. He wanted to kill the culprit who destroyed the person he loved most in the world. Tony Stark wanted to carry out his revenge. So in a fit of rage, he began injecting himself with more Extremis than necessary and made an exclusive deal with Clea: he would jump between universes until he could find a Peter Parker who was just as lonely and broken as he was.

Although nothing and no one could ever replace his Peter, Tony had reached the breaking point, one where he couldn't be too picky: he just wanted to be with Peter Parker. No matter who he was, Tony was confident he could fall in love again. If all the Peter Parkers in the Multiverse shared the same soul, then it wouldn't take much for him to fall in love again.

Until one fine day, he found it.

"Mr. Stark…?" Ayoung man murmured. His hair was a bit more disheveled and his features were younger than I remembered. He was wearing a suit that looked much like the one he had once designed.

Tony could see the blood dripping from Peter Parker's fingers, that Peter Parker seemed to be very violent, judging by the pile of corpses lying at his feet.

He knew he would have no problem with that, figuring they could still say nice things to each other and make love-laden promises in their moments of intimacy.

He could see how disbelief was painted on Peter's face, as if Tony really was a ghost, or some figment of his imagination. It was there that Iron Man knew he had finally hit upon the right universe. After all, he couldn't be such a son of a bitch to himself and snatch the happiness of another Tony Stark in any universe. God knows they would need each other.

"Hello, Peter." Tony smiled, because he knew the man wouldn't put up much resistance if he proposed to destroy the world together.

And then, nothing and no one would separate them. Not again.

#starker #starkerfestivalsevents #sfholidayexchange22 #starker fandom #My Moodboard #My Writing #gift exchange #marvel #superior iron man

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kimhortons · 29 days

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though dump [016]

narealize ko rin the more na lagi kong binabanggit o nirereklamo or nilalagay dito, mas nagiging makatotohanan siya. remember, back in 2020 pandemic, i was in a dark situation sa buhay ko, i really wanted to move out of our house dahil nga sa conflict namin ng tatay ko. sabi ko nun, ayaw ko na sa bahay, gusto ko na lumayo sakanila, dun ko narealize na gusto ko na mag settle nalang sa bicol and here i am.

also remember, nung bawat post ko nalang dito noon how miserable my life is at work before, halos araw araw ko isumpa yung trabaho ko nun lalo na yung bisor ko nun na napaka impakta haha. sabi ko nun gusto ko lang naman ng work na may fixed schedule at weekends na off, look at me now. huhu

naalala ko may post din si faye last time na parang connected dito, na kapag daw may sinabi kang gusto mo mangyari, uudyokin ka talaga ng universe na kumilos para makuha mo yun. naalala ko rin yung post ni nikko noon sa fb about sa law of attraction, though may humor na kasama, yung point niya e kailangan talaga samaan parin ng actions. hindi yung parang mag wiwish ka lang sa genie na ibigay sayo yung gusto mo ng parang magic. haha. nag sisimula talaga mag manifest yung bagay na gusto mo pag sinamahan mo ng kilos.

kaya nag iingat din ako minsan sa mga bagay na naiisip ko, lalo pag mga negative thoughts, baka kasi mangyari din in real life. ewan ko kung nag manifest nalang din yung mga katoxican na nangyayari ngayon sa work dahil sinimulan ko rin ng reklamo unti unti or talagang toxic lang at nareveal lang siya saken.

hindi ko rin namanifest yung promotion kasi i tend to push it away, lagi kong ini-instill kasi na ayaw ko naman talaga umakyat ng corporate ladder, kasi ayaw ko ng responsibility at gusto ko lang sumahod ng sapat at mabuhay ng matiwasay. andun rin kasi talaga yung kailangan mo magpa bibo para makuha mo yung attention nila na para dun ka sa role na yun. e hindi naman nga ako pabibo talaga.

though sumama parin talaga yung loob ko dahil nalaman ko nga na ako yung ina-eye ng client pero hindi ako yung gustong irecommend ng boss ko. pinersonal narin siguro. wala naman kasi dapat siya magagawa kung ako yung gusto ng client pero dahil nga dalawa kaming candidate, siya yung nirecommend at dahil torned din si client kasi mas nakakasama naman kami ng boss namin, e pumayag nalang sa recommendation. hehe

dun ko naman biglang narealize na baka hindi rin ako para dito? baka way lang 'to para mapunta ulit ako sa mas deserve ko pa ulit, baka sinubukan lang ng universe kung kaya ko mag deal sa ganitong environment.

parang ang dami kasing red flag din sa mangement, nabubulagan lang kami ng magagandang benefits at maayos ka deal with the client. kaya mag titiis nalang kami.

narealize ko rin after ko matapos yung recording ni faye, our company is most likely to be a va agency than bpo. yung pagkaka describe kasi niya sa agency e halos ganun yung samin. hehe. like maraming pool ng clients, tapos pag nawalan ka ng client yung recruitment samin naman maghahanap ng client ulit na mag mamatch sayo. yung mga manager namin yung gumagawa ng invoice ng client namin, tsaka nung one time nadiscover rin namin kung magkano talaga yung binabayad ng client samin na dapat sahod namin kung hindi sila kumukuha ng part dun. haha pero ewan gulong gulo parin ako kasi bpo parin kami haha.

#td

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tomorrowxtogether · 1 year

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Meet Tomorrow X Together: A guide to the group's members, tour, awards and more

Since its debut in 2019, Tomorrow X Together, also known as TXT, has become of the most recognizable groups to rise out of South Korea's music scene. From chart-hitting releases to record-setting firsts, Tomorrow X Together continues to make its name known in the industry and across the world.

And with over 14.3 million followers on Instagram, 10.7 million followers on Twitter and 8.9 million monthly listeners on Spotify, Tomorrow X Together's success is not slowing down any time soon. The group recently embarked on the U.S. leg of its world tour with stops in New York, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and more.

Here's everything you need to know about the K-pop group Tomorrow X Together, from its members to its milestones and "Act: Sweet Mirage" world tour.

Who is Tomorrow X Together?

Tomorrow X Together (pronounced Tomorrow by Together) is a five member boy group under Big Hit Music, a subsidiary of HYBE Corporation. Big Hit Music is also home to BTS, while stars including Seventeen, Nana and Enhypen are in the HYBE family of artists.

Comprised of members Yeonjun, Soobin, Beomgyu, Taehyun and Hueningkai, the group debuted with "Crown" in 2019. Tomorrow X Together is the second boy group to debut under Big Hit Music.

How many members are in Tomorrow X Together?

There are five members:

Yeonjun (Full name: Choi Yeon-jun) Born Sept. 13, 1999. Hometown: Seoul, South Korea.

Soobin (Full name: Choi Soo-bin) Born Dec. 5, 2000. Hometown: Ansan, South Korea.

Beomgyu (Full name: Choi Beom-gyu) Born March 13, 2001. Hometown: Daegu, South Korea.

Taehyun (Full name: Kang Tae-hyun) Born Feb. 5, 2002. Hometown: Seoul, South Korea.

Hueningkai (Full name: Kai Kamal Huening) Born Aug. 14, 2002. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii

What are Tomorrow X Together fans called?

The fandom name for Tomorrow X Together is "MOA.""MOA" stands for "moments of alwaysness," meaning that Tomorrow X Together and the fans share each and every moment always and forever, and together gather pieces to complete one dream.

Tomorrow X Together world tour 'Act: Sweet Mirage'

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On May 6, Tomorrow X Together kicked off the U.S. leg of the "Act: Sweet Mirage" world tour. The tour began earlier in South Korea on March 25 with two back-to-back shows at the KSPO Dome in Seoul. During the tour, the group will visit 16 cities across the globe with more dates to come.

On the U.S. leg, Tomorrow X Together's stops include:

Charlotte, North Carolina – Spectrum Center (May 6).

Belmont Park, New York – UBS Arena (May 9 and May 10).

Washington, D.C. – Capitol One Arena (May 16).

Duluth, Georgia – Gas South Arena (May 19 and May 20).

San Antonio, Texas – AT&T Center (May 23 and May 24).

Los Angeles – BMO Stadium (May 27 and May 28).

Tomorrow X Together milestones

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Since debut, Tomorrow X Together has released three studio albums, one reissue, six EPs and multiple singles.

At the time of its debut, Tomorrow X Together was the fastest K-pop act to top the Billboard World Albums and World Digital Song Sales charts with the single "Crown" and EP "The Dream Chapter: Star." The group has hit several Billboard charts, including the Billboard 200 with three Top 10 entries and "The Name Chapter: Temptation" reaching No.1. On the Billboard World Albums chart, Tomorrow X Together has five No. 1 hits.

Throughout its career, Tomorrow X Together has won many awards. In 2019, the group won several new artist awards, including Rookie of the Year at the Asia Artist Awards, Best New Male Artist at the Genie Music Awards and Best New Male Artist at the MAMA Awards. In 2023, the group won the World K-pop Star award at the Circle Chart Music Awards. At the 2023 Hanteo Music Awards, Tomorrow X Together received the main award, or bonsang, and the Global Artist Award for Asia.

On July 30, 2022, Tomorrow X Together became the first K-pop group to perform at Lollapalooza. The group will be returning to the festival in 2023, but this time as a headliner, alongside Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lana Del Rey, Odesza, The 1975 and Karol G.

In 2021, the group was awarded the 2021 Men of the Year Pop Icon Award by GQ Japan. In 2022, Tomorrow X Together received the Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism commendation, a prestigious government award, in South Korea.

Tomorrow X Together was also named among the "K-Pop Star to Watch" for Billboard's K-pop issue in 2023.

#txt #tomorrow x together #230512 #article #USA Today #soobin #yeonjun #beomgyu #taehyun #hueningkai

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