From Sparks to Embers and back

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someone on reddit explained 😭

To Light, Crime was the source of society's "Rot." And his philosophy on what constituted "crime" was basically about normal-ass people who were willing to break the law. you know, the laws Cops enforce.

It also explains why he's indiscriminate rather than surgical. Because of his own biases, he never stops to consider the flaws in the methods of who gets arrested, or how that never actually seems to have an impact on Crime Rates tm. Cops (like Light) simply see this as evidence that they're not arresting enough people! That they're not going far enough! And these are the values our protagonist was raised with. A surgical strike would let Real Criminals off the hook, while targeting people who, yes, may be more evil by orders of magnitude, but they do it in a LEGAL way!

I’m gonna assume writers know whether or not their own works are ai because they either write them themselves or have ai write for them.

but as for readers (or writers who read other writers’ works), no, you can’t tell unless the writer themself says their works are ai generated. anything else is witch hunt, speculations and possibly wrongful accusations — all of which harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more.

so if at any point you think an untagged work is ai and if that bothers you, quietly click away. but you can never know for sure based on vibes. because everything ai writes, a human writer does. that’s what ai was trained on and what it was trained to mimic.

every “ai telltale” is something humans write before, otherwise ai wouldn’t have been able to mimic it in the first place. because it needs human-made works to mimic on.

-> Phonics For Adults <-

I am nearly 29, knew I was trans since 17 and I have been on HRT (estrogen) on and off for the past 18 months with testosterone for the last 6. Currently: 8mg Estradiol Enanthate weekly, plus 25mg testosterone weekly.

The hypothesis: The body auto-converts excess T→E and excess E→T, so it can handle high levels of both without much trouble. Women regularly take testosterone during menopause — this should be doable.

My theory: Take high E to block natural T production, then supplement a tiny bit of T to compensate. Should keep everything contextually balanced.

Six months in, and I just got my labs back. My doctor (not amused by this experiment) is shocked: I'm healthier than I've ever been across every metabolic marker. Dead center on every single metric. Blood pressure normal (first time ever). Weight stable. I have some breast growth starting, but no solidified nodules — so with raloxifene I could revert 90%+ if I wanted (TBD). They are very sensitive, for better or worse.

I have noticed my body becoming more feminine (appreciated), which is saying something since I am naturally broad and muscular. Think of a very masc blacksmith-NPC-character-model kind of build. I have curves now. Skin is overall softer. Body hair is much thinner (previously was bold, black, and gnarly). Face is smoother, jawline more defined, but the face itself is a bit rounder, especially in the cheeks.

Mental state is solid. Making real progress on projects, feeling hopeful, taking more risks and actually being comfortable with it. More open, more outgoing. Before this was quite depressed, anxious, paranoid, unable to make decisions, and just felt worthless, now its the exact opposite - I have tried every anti-depressant around, and had great luck with LSD, but this has been by far the most 'calm', happy, and level-headed I have ever been. That said, on pure estrogen, my mental clarity is certainly sharper. The combo is still clear enough though.

someone on reddit explained 😭

But I feel I should make clear that D&D the game itself is not exactly at fault here: like, okay, it is sort of at fault in the sense that it is a game of fantasy killing people with swords and magic. And it is easier for people to accept the killing with people with swords and magic part when they can imagine that their characters are at least to a degree justified. That is sort of just built into the game (and the game has built into its lore varying levels of making the fantasy of killing certain types of guy justifiable).

But D&D is not at fault for making people go "okay so it's bad when you kill orcs simply because they're orcs. It's better when you kill people who are bandits, who are a class of evil criminals where killing them is actually wholesome and sensible." Like, yeah, most people probably don't think about it that deeply, but the reason people don't think about it that deeply is ultimately ideological.

In older editions of D&D, which were much clearer on the expected gameplay being "go into the dungeon and steal the stuff," there wasn't really this layer there. The rules for combat were generally quite harsh on player characters so combat was certainly something they didn't want to get into too casually, but ultimately the player characters were just going into the dang monsters' house and stealing their stuff. The monsters were arguably the ones acting in self-defense (but they're evil so who cares).

But in the WotC editions the self-defense justification is still fraught because modern D&D especially is an action game. It's a game where characters mostly have access to various methods of visiting violence upon their environs and where the gameplay itself rewards them for violence, because combat is the main source of experience as written in all WotC editions of the game and characters primarily grow in combat effectiveness.

The self-defense angle I feel is not supported by the game's rules itself, but is more of a narrative contrivance introduced by groups to make their characters feel more heroic.

My friend @tenleaguesbeneath once described it as, and I am paraphrasing, "characters hunting things for sport but the things attack them first so they can claim self-defense." Characters want to get into fights (because that's where the rewards are), characters primarily grow in terms of being able to get into cooler fights, but because getting into fights on purpose isn't heroic there's an angle of "those goblins started it" to make the characters feel more heroic.

The weird Oreos don’t sell… but the weird Oreos just being around and visible make people buy more regular Oreos.