flower through disarray

1. The FBI's Famous Cases & Criminals archive (fbi.gov/history/famous-cases) has detailed breakdowns of real fraud cases, Ponzi schemes, and confidence operations. The language they use is clinical and precise, which is perfect for getting the procedural details right.

2. The FTC Consumer Sentinel Network publishes annual reports on the most common fraud tactics in the US. Great for understanding how modern scams actually work and what makes people fall for them.

3. The Smithsonian's American Art Museum has a free digital collection of forgery case studies. If your character forges documents or art, this is gold.

4. Court Listener (courtlistener.com) is a free legal database where you can read actual court transcripts from fraud trials. Want to know how a real con artist talks under oath? This is where you find out.

5. The Internet Archive's collection of old newspaper crime sections. Search for "confidence man" or "swindle" in papers from the 1920s through 1960s and you'll find incredible real stories that would feel too dramatic for fiction.

Bonus: The Psychology of Fraud section on the Association for Psychological Science website has accessible articles about why people trust, how deception works cognitively, and what makes someone a convincing liar. Essential reading if you want your con artist characters to feel psychologically real.

1. The court holds Google responsible for statements made by its AI, considering them Google's statements (search engines have limited liability for results in their engine as they're the words of other sites/companies/people), meaning when their AI lies/hallucinates they're liable for the defamation/harm resulting from those statements.

2. Google's defense that customers are generally aware of the lack of reliability and are responsible for fact checking was dismissed. As the court pointed out, that would "significantly diminish" AI Search's stated purpose and it can't be distinguished from Google's business practices/statements as a search tool.

3. Studies have found about 91% of Google's everyday AI responses are accurate, leaving millions of searches per HOUR with potential liability for falsehoods. 56% of correct responses weren't supported by the sources the AI listed. Both of which mean Google is now liable for a LOT more AI "errors."

4. Google was held liable for 80% of court costs in this case and this precedent is expected to reverberate around the world. This is a massive shift from the 3rd-party search provider role Google has previously played and it comes right as they've tied ALL searches to their AI search.

2) any vegetable is better than no vegetable

but it's an entirely new level of tragic when somebody you've actually spoken to gets turned into a bot account. it's like peeking at a zombie apocalypse through the window and realizing one of the shambling corpses was your friend.

and then the zombie catches sight of you, lurches up to your window, and shouts through the glass that they accidentally reported your account to tumblr and you'll be deactivated unless you click this link.

if you get something like this ↑ they're gonna follow up by instructing you to contact tumblr support on discord and give you contact info; or they're gonna link a website that looks sort of like tumblr support and say you have to email them; or any variety of "you must now contact tumblr, here is how you contact tumblr."

whatever they send you, it Does Not lead to tumblr. it leads to the master zombie that bit them and inducted them into the ranks of the undead, and will bite you the second they have your email and password. i might be confusing zombies and vampires. anyway,

it's easier to fall for these messages because the blog doesn't LOOK like a bot blog, because it ISN'T a bot blog. it's a normal person's blog that got accessed by a bot, meaning the blog's content CLEARLY looks like a real active user when you click on it. and yes—it might even be a blog you already know. sometimes bots like this go down a blog's DMs or reblogs and message people they've previously interacted with.

I just worry I’m missing things others are getting and I wanna actually be able to describe why I like certain things without sounding like a broken record.

I can’t analyze to save my life but I wanna learn

I think the place to start is with the consciousness that all media is a collection of choices. All of it. Everything that is in a piece of media is a decision that someone made, from the big themes to the individual pixels on the screen in a video game, those are only there because someone made a decision that caused them to be there.

With that as the foundation, you can start asking the needful questions.

I find a useful place to start asking questions is "why X rather than Y?"

In any given piece of media you want to analyze, pick a choice that is being made and imagine what it would be like if a different (or opposite) choice had been made.

Say, in Star Wars, what if Luke had decided to join his father and overthrow the Emperor? If the movie had made that choice, how would it have changed the film? What would it feel like is the point the movie is trying to make then? What if Vader was not Luke's father?

Or, what if the good guys' lightsabers were red and the bad guys' sabers were blue? What does that change? What are the things you instinctively associate with those colors, why would swapping them around feel wrong? (or would it actually feel really right? If so, why?)

You can do this for the very big questions, like themes and entire plots, but you can also do it in the very minute. Read a poem and ask yourself why the author picked this word rather than one of its synonyms. Maybe it's for the meter, maybe it's for the tone, maybe it's to match vocabulary. Imagining a different word or a different phrase in the poem, how would that change how it feels to read? What it feels like to hear it spoken out loud?

The answer to many questions you'll ask about a piece of media are entirely banal. Like, in 3D animation, some things look the way they do because that's just how a particular software suite handles that particular task. Light reflections, physics simulation, motion blur, etc. Plenty of video games look the way they do in no small part because they are built within the constraints of their engines. Sometimes paintings have the colors they do not because an artiste is imbuing every choice with profound meaning, but because those are the colors the painter could afford, or which were available at the time. And those banal answers are still useful, even if they don't sound deep.

But the important bit is, the more questions you ask (however banal), the more answers you'll learn, and the more you'll understand about the mediums you're interested in, and the more you'll become able to interpret the choices that are made and work towards building an understanding and constructing a reading.

If you start from the understanding that everything (everything! literally every single thing!) in a piece of media is a choice, a decision that could have been made differently, and you ask yourself why it wasn't, you'll be in a decent position to start to interrogate the art you enjoy.

Outside of that, there are lots of books on art appreciation, and tons of people doing videos on media literacy on YouTube. I think Crash Course has some high-school level courses in English and Theatre and Film on their channel, which can be another good place to start.

Also, just, generally... Media literacy is a skill, not a trait. It's a thing which you practise doing, and in practising it you inevitably become better at it. Nobody starts out good at it, literally everybody is improving with practise all the time, and literally the only way to get any better is to try to do it to the best of your ability as much as possible, working the muscle so it will start to grow.

"Can you find me?"

"I found you"

Me being me, I always try to write something for Pride and Halloween. It is Pride month. So.

The hero's breath hitched at the villain's closeness. She would blame the cold, gentle press of the blade at her throat.

The villain's gaze dipped down to the hero's mouth.

"You're allowed to have what you want," the villain said. "You're allowed to take it."

"Most people, when they're begging me to kiss them," the hero replied, breathlessly, "would just say please."

The villain's smile notched wider, more alluring, and infinitely more dangerous. Her free hand was pressed to the wall by the hero's shoulder, bracketing her in against the rough brickwork against her back.

"Most people, golden girl, wouldn't be turned on by a knife at their throat."

"Well," the hero managed, only a little indignant, "that's just categorically untrue. Have you been on tumblr, lately?"

The villain's eyebrow arched.

The hero flushed. She swallowed. Her treacherous attention did a full on a Judas, straying from the villain's bright eyes to the curve of her lips. Indelible. That was the name of the colour. The hero had spent a wildly unproductive, or productive depending on one's perspective, evening narrowing down the particular shade of the villain's mouth online.

The knife trailed down, a sharp kiss of contact, tracing the swallow.

What would it be like, to kiss her? Soft as a slow-acting poison? Or as wild and claiming as the look in the villain's eyes?

"You realise," the villain said, "that you didn't deny it."

Damn. She hadn't, had she? But, then, perhaps they were past that. Had been from the moment the villain shoved her up against the wall and the hero's heart only raced faster in her chest. Not to run away, like was wise, but to get close. Close enough to close the gap between them entirely.

"It's a very nice knife," the hero said. "I don't think you get to take the credit."

"Ah, so this is all about the knife."

"You have shapes carved into the handle!"

They were kind of the villain's tell. Intricate fingerprints left at the scene of the crime.

"You noticed."

"It's my job to notice you," the hero said.

"So this," the villain leaned in further still, her breath ghosting over the hero's ear. "Is purely professional, then?"

Would the villain pull back, if the hero gave a defiant liar of a 'yes'? It had been professional, once. She was sure of it. Somewhere along the line, her professionalism had fallen head over heels along with the rest of her.

The hero reached up, seizing the villain's wrist, and flipping them.

The villain didn't look perturbed to be pinned to the brickwork. She grinned, lazy. Head tipped to one side as if to offer up her throat.

The hero considered leaving. Considered leaving her standing there, aching with want. Considered telling her to beg.

"Does your heart feel more in control now?" the villain asked. "Or are you simply giving up your excuses?"

The hero kissed her.

Maybe, to shut her up. Mostly, just to kiss her. A ravenous, greedy thing - the sort she didn't allow herself, as a rule. Duty. Discipline. Kissing the villain was pure indulgence. Touching her, sliding her fingers along the villain's waist, through her hair, trying to get everything at once.

"Oh," the villain breathed. Her arm curled around the hero, drawing her fearlessly flush. "Very good."

The hero made a small, pitiful sound.

She wasn't sure if kissing her nemesis was very good at all. It was probably very, very, very bad.

But god, she didn't ever want to stop.

The villain's blade hit the alleyway with a discarded clatter and then she was taking too, claiming, just as hungry. Cavernous things made full with each other's company, at least for a while.

Eventually they pulled back, restless. The villain's eyes were bewitched and bewitching, as she dragged her thumb over the hero's parted panted lowing lip. Lipstick smeared.

She smiled. Dark and satisfied.

"Left my mark on you," she murmured.

"Indelible," the hero replied, and sucked the villain's fingers into her mouth.

The villain nearly buckled against the wall with a soft gasp and the hero smiled. Dark. Satisified.

"Yeah," the villain said. "You are." Her expression turned almost...fond, just for a moment. "My girl."

And, for the first time, the hero wondered if the villain had fallen too.

The hero released the villain's fingers and cocked a brow, keeping her voice as light as she could.

"Yours?" She pulled back, to give the villain space to stalk after her, like the tugging of a lure. "Don't get ahead of yourself, darling. It was just a kiss."

The villain laughed.

"Well, then," she said, and summoned her blade back to her hand. A shadow sweet in the night. "Consider this just me seducing you, then."

The car pulled up at the end of the allway. Invitation or kidnapping. Thrill either way. Waiting like a promise.

The hero swallowed, again.

The villain smiled, and gestured an elegant hand.

"After you," she said. "My girl."

jiji, as i would come to name her, was finishing up ringworm treatment & was thus in isolation away from the other shelter cats. the staff informed me that while she was safe to be adopted out, their shelter policy was that she had to be the last cat i saw that day to avoid any risk of spreading the infection. i assured them that that wasn’t an issue for me — i was here for one cat and one cat only

they repeatedly asked if i was sure about this — i really didn’t at least want to look at any other cats?? my answer didn’t change. yes, i’m sure. i’m here for jiji. no one else.

and so after a bit of paperwork and some wrangling to get her into the cat carrier, jiji came home with me

i quickly learned, however, that the reason jiji had been at the shelter for over three months was that she was, to put it mildly, an asshole. she had been a stray for some time, given birth to kittens very young, and generally had had a rough go of it, so her disposition was understandable, but the fact remained. she was an asshole. upon our first meeting in the shelter, she grabbed onto my foot and started bunny kicking my shoe with gusto. she stole my food as i was eating it. she scratched me so frequently that a coworker noticed & expressed concern.

however, up until this point, i’ve left out a critical detail of the story. a year ago today, possessed by some sort of temporary cat-induced mania, i didn’t adopt one cat. i adopted two.

on the same day, from a totally different shelter, i also adopted a tiny little one eyed kitten named ramona. how i ended up with ramona is another story for another day — the important part is that she was very young and very small, and she joined my hardened stray in my postage stamp sized apartment approximately one hour later

i did my absolute best to follow the standard protocol for introducing cats to each other. i tried to keep ramona in my bedroom and jiji in the living room and to introduce them slowly

but the separation lasted about two days, however, because jiji, my asshole former street cat who viewed my limbs as her favorite scratching posts, took one look at this scruffy little one eyed thing, asked “is anyone going to be this kitten’s mom?”

You get the whole walk cycle and the little sprint at the end.

Sometimes her sprints last for like 4 or 5 seconds and she can shoot herself off the couch or into a wall if she gets a grip with her back claws. If she does it next to a wall, her head smacking into it sounds like someone is trying to break into the house. She doesn't wake up.