Gwendolonia

ever think about how communications infrastructure (telegraph to the internet) being built along colonial trade routes. ever think about how its imperialism and white supremacy all the way down. ever think about infrastructure as colonial tools as media

no one would argue that telegraph wiring, electricity, and trains are inherently evil. Yet, they were tools of British imperialism in Nigeria. Same as American developments of the Philippines. The colonial sublime. Let’s think about media and communications technology as a tool that extends power and not as a self-driving weapon that no one wields. Let’s think about why I would talk about this…

This is what I imagine every time they add another modern vehicle mount to FFXIV.

the thing about mothers in fiction is that a lot of fandoms seem to be under the impression that the worst thing a woman can possibly do is be a bad mother. like they can forgive deadbeat dads easily but the moment a woman is a bad or even mediocre mother she's the devil incarnate to them. and then you're like "i like her and i think she's interesting" and they immediately go "oh so you think it's okay to be a bad mother (which is the most evil thing a woman can be)". and don't even get me started on how they react to female characters who are bad stepmothers

when you eat a Normal Sandwich (bread meat greens cheese relish) and your body goes ooohhh fuck! oh fuck! what have you done! heartbeat GO! sweating GO! temperature GO! like sorry man I'm just trying to keep you WORKING!!!!!!!! ASS HOLE!

celestia is such a funny character like she's constantly manipulating twilight and friends to do shit instead of just asking and you could arguably frame that as being bc she's a "god" and pushing fate to her design or whatever, except that she engages with the group like a normal and relatable person, which makes it more like villainous machinations, except 90% of this manipulation goes towards things like "I don't want my party to be boring shit again. put my little country girl blorbos in there with zero prep so they fuck it up bad"

you think you've fucked anything up around princess celestia and she's like heh. no worries. all according to keikaku

Celestia instantly makes more sense as a character when you ignore the princess stuff and remember that she's a 1000+ years old wizard. Of course she does manipulative trickster stuff to teach moral lessons and/or cause chaos to amuse herself, that's classic wizard behavior. Of course sometimes she's actually socially awkward and bad at personal relationships and has bad ideas that she thought were good that result in her eating shit embarrassing style, that's classic wizard behavior. Of course she lets the aristocrats and nobles run around being assholes she's still running on wizard advisor programming, she's basically trying to merlin the entire upper class of equestria instead of just a king and some knights. "Yeah uuhhh we'll release the incarnation of chaos himself from his ancient prison because we think this shy girl can be friends with him", terrible plan if you're thinking like a ruler, amazing plan if you're thinking like a wizard. Just look at Canterlot 'Castle' for five seconds and ask yourself if that's in any way a castle. No. Wizard tower, yes. Wizard.

You are so right actually

I feel like in the past ten years, boycotting has stopped being a tool for forcing action on specific policies and become a form of harassment and monastic self-denial. Less “I will not be giving my money to you until you improve these specific conditions” and more “don’t touch the contaminated thing, lest you also become contaminated.”

probably the worst attitude tumblr unintentionally cultivates is "the world out there is completely dangerous for you and no one can possibly understand you, so you should isolate yourself from it and avoid interacting with it as much as possible"

Whenever you decide to use a tool, you should consider “what is this tool designed to do” and for LLM’s that answer is “maximize user engagement.” Anything else is in service to that goal.

Btw, if you ever wanted an indicator of the ideological censorship that now exists, and how pervasive it has become? The poem I was looking for, with its implication that maybe it might not have been a bad thing to blow up parliament way back when, was published in a children's book two decades ago. Without incident. Now I can't even SEARCH for that poem without receiving a telling off for its contents.