Breaking the chains of new forms of slavery 173. This distorted view of the human person is reflected today in various forms of servitude directly linked to the digital economy. Nothing in the world of AI is immaterial or magical. Every seemingly immediate and flawless response is the result of a long chain of mediation, involving vast networks of natural resources, energy infrastructure and, above all, people. A significant part of the digital economy’s functioning relies on the silent work of millions of people engaged in essential yet largely unseen activities, such as data labeling, model training and content moderation, often involving disturbing material. In many cases, these workers are young people, predominantly women, working under demanding conditions for minimal wages. Added to this invisible labor is the even harsher work of extracting the resources required for the production of the devices and microprocessors on which AI depends. In some regions of the world, children and adolescents work in dangerous conditions, crushing the materials from which rare earth elements are extracted. The bodies of these people are scarred, injured and worn down so that computational flow may continue uninterruptedly. Furthermore, criminal networks use online platforms, messaging systems, anonymous payment methods and profiling techniques in order to recruit, control and transport victims of trafficking — very often minors — reducing men and women to “data” to be tracked and “packages” to be moved around within the same digital circuits that support much of the global economy. This reality deeply challenges the moral conscience of our time. It is not enough to invoke efficiency, nor to celebrate the benefits of innovation, if they are built on a chain of exploitation that remains deliberately hidden. If technology promises emancipation, yet produces new forms of global subordination, it stands in contradiction to the fundamental principle of human dignity.

Stratt was a historian. She wasn't just pirating for the sake of entertainment for the astronauts, she was doing a full historical backup of the planet. Who knows how much knowledge and communications ability, how much art and culture and history, how much niche knowledge of how to make specific pieces of modern technology or modern medicines, was lost as the wars for resources isolated everyone, as the death tolls led to the deaths of specialized trade workers and scientists, as the power grids failing across the planet (or cut off, potentially) led to all the cloud servers going dark. Stratt was facing methods of combating extinction and she did her best to ensure that if/when the Hail Mary worked, it would send back not just the hope of the future in the solution to the astrophage, but the restoration of history and culture and knowledge.

Some AAVE speakers pluralize 'child' as 'childrens'. People get racist about this ("It's already plural!"), but 'children' actually comes from Middle English speakers doing the same thing: slapping their plural marker on word already pluralized by an extinct plural marker.

To oversimplify: in Old English, 'childer' ('ċildra') was the plural of 'child' ('ċild'). Middle English developed an '-en' plural marker, which we see in 'oxen'. Instead of updating to 'childen', people slapped their preferred '-en' onto the end of 'childer' - so now we have 'child-er-en'. AAVE carries on this tradition with 'child-er-en-s'.

"Pure" language is just impurity obscured by the passage of time.

"Specialina has rare squirrel blood passed down from the time a secret ancestor married a squirrel god. This gives her super powers to climb trees and find nuts!" 👍👍👍 Inheritable traits are a thing after all.

"Because Specialina has rare squirrel blood, she is entitled to rule over the rodent kingdom, and if she is kept from her rightful throne bestowed by her ancestry, the vile rat people will continue to corrupt the land." ⚠️⚠️⚠️ Oops, no one is entitled to rule over others, especially through genetics. And think about why a certain group of people is your designated "evil" race.

We've been live for a month, and what a whirlwind it's been! Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who's supported the project so far. We genuinely could not get off the ground without this early support.

Since we launched, we've published some incredible writing:

Our launch post, explaining what Fansplaining: The Publication is all about.

Fansplaining editor @lincodega on the elements of The Pitt that make it ripe for fanfiction (as well as what journalists can't stop getting wrong about the Pitt fandom).

@morgan-leigh on Three Bags Full (first titled Glenkill in its original German), the beloved mystery novel that was the source for The Sheep Detectives film.

Soila Kenya on non-native English speakers reading and writing fanfiction in English, the language that has the most global "linguistic capital" in fandom.

@annejamison on the Good Omens series finale as a metatextual commentary about fandom and fanfiction—and one that gave the characters back to the fans.

@elizabethminkel on depictions of tech on television, and how we read these characters in light of our shifting feelings about real-life tech.

We've got so much more in the works, including:

Thai GL fandom

Conlang enthusiasts

Fandom stats as fanworks

Covering Game of Thrones

Negative comments vs bots on AO3

Homestuck's fanworks

Gay pirates

And, of course, @hellotailor recapping The Vampire Lestat over the next two months! ✨

If you like what we’ve been doing, please become a subscriber!

Subscriptions start at $7 a month/$70 a year. We also have a significant discount for students, educators, un/underemployed folks, etc. Email [email protected] and we'll be happy to share the code.