Eva Stratt's double-parked coffee

I cannot sleep at night so now I'm running on adrenaline

The house in which I live you see is almost like a character

And the secrets of my husband set a truly odd parameter

I'm very well acquainted too with all the secret passages

I shelter in the lib'ry and overcome all challenges

And running in my nightgown is something I am so skillful at

Hearing footsteps in the darkness but of feet themselves there's not a trace

In short in matters terrible, hysterical and feminine

This is their canon dynamic when in mission.

Telimezh said, “It is a sunblade, Serenity, the weapon of the ancient princes, before Edrevenivar the Conqueror united the Ethuveraz. We did not know the Ceredada still had one.” “It is a gift of great honor,” Kiru added softly. “Although a trifle opaque as to meaning,” Csevet said with a frown.

On the ludicrously ostentatious Tethimada gift of sharadansho silk:

It was a beautiful object, and by itself it would have been an ostentatious gift. “A full set,” Maia said again. “We fear the meaning is not at all opaque,” Csevet said.

(2k, oneshot, pre-canon)

Frodo when speaking with Galadriel has this interaction;

‘I would ask one thing before we go,’ said Frodo, ‘a thing which I often meant to ask Gandalf in Rivendell. I am permitted to wear the One Ring: why cannot I see all the others and know the thoughts of those that wear them?’ ‘You have not tried,’ [Galadriel] said. ‘Only thrice have you set the Ring upon your finger since you knew what you possessed. Do not try! It would destroy you. Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor? Before you could use that power you would need to become stronger, and to train your will to the domination of others.’

Frodo here is given the information he needs to figure out how to wield the ring.

Very soon after this Boromir, a man who had been nothing but kind and enduring and who had saved Frodo's life once already, is ensnared by the ring and attacks him. To me, this marks the moment Frodo realises he will likely come to the same end, no one has the will to resist the ring.

Soon after that, Gollum joins him and Frodo acquires the means to essentially practice dominating someone's will. By the time this becomes relevant again it is clear that Frodo knows a great deal more about his charge than he used too and has already made his plan. In sight of the Black Gate, he tells Gollum this;

[In reference to the danger Gollum is in] You swore a promise by what you call the Precious. Remember that! It will hold you to it; but it will seek a way to twist it to your own undoing. Already you are being twisted. You revealed yourself to me just now, foolishly. Give it back to Smeagol you said. Do not say that again! Do not let that thought grow in you! You will never get it back. But the desire of it may betray you to a bitter end. You will never get it back. In the last need, Smeagol, I should put on the Precious; and the Precious mastered you long ago. If I, wearing it, were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or to cast yourself into the fire. And such would be my command. So have a care, Smeagol!’

He quite literally describes what happens in the final confrontation, like some books foreshadow their endings and some of them just have the main character tell you what will happen. It makes me so insane.

In my mind this is also Frodo trying to soothe his own conscience here. His words will not reach Gollum deeply enough, Gollum will always choose the ring in the end, but Frodo is still using that compulsion as a means to succeed in his divine martyr's quest, putting the burden on Gollum's body whilst he takes it upon his soul.

Of course, this was all preordained by divine decree, there is no other way for this story to end, which I feel like Frodo is more consciously aware of than many other characters, casting his growing despair and melancholy in a new light. Then, well, it all happens just as foretold;

‘Down, down!’ [Frodo] gasped, clutching his hand to his breast, so that beneath the cover of his leather shirt he clasped the Ring. ‘Down, you creeping thing, and out of my path! Your time is at an end. You cannot slay me or betray me now.’ Then suddenly, Sam saw these two rivals with other vision. A crouching shape, scarcely more than the shadow of a living thing, a creature now wholly ruined and defeated, yet filled with a hideous lust and rage; and before it stood stern, untouchable now by pity, a figure robed in white, but at its breast it held a wheel of fire. Out of the fire there spoke a commanding voice. ‘Begone, and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom.’ Then the vision passed and Sam saw Frodo standing, hand on breast, his breath coming in great gasps, and Gollum at his feet, resting on his knees with his wide-splayed hands upon the ground.

The curse is set, Gollum attacks Frodo within the crucible of the volcano, biting the ring off of his finger and thereby sealing his own fate. His celebration at being reunited with his precious sees him slip and tumble into the chasm below.

Eva. Stratt. Eva Stratt is a bulldozer who takes out Antarctica and the Sahara and commanders an entire Chinese naval aircraft carrier.

('rich text' means e.g making your italics look like this in your text editor by hitting the 'italic' option; writing html means writing '<i>look like this</i>' instead. are the formatting options done with HTML <tags> or not, basically.)

LinkedIn post by Jürgen Geuter, research director at art + com

Very few narratives piss me off as much as the whole "let's give marginalized people LLM assistance for inclusion".

Inclusion does not mean giving marginalized people shittier versions of a thing. Sure you can give kids from poor backgrounds an LLM to "learn" but what you are saying is that poor people are not worthy of having trustworthy sources of information. When you say that older or lonely people can talk to chatbots to feel less alone you are saying that some people are not worth a social life.

“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”

it's a really good video! and it's hardly the only one of its kind. as soon as i watched it, i got about 10 more recommended to me, all from knitters who could tell scishow's knitting video was 1) wrong as hell 2) likely based on genai "research" 3) implicitly misogynistic in its usage of genai and by extension its dismissal of knitting as a science worthy of intentional, human research, and 4) overtly misogynistic in how the script of the episode itself discussed knitting.

(side note: the original scishow video has been taken down, but here's a reaction video from a scientist/knitter that contains the scishow video in its odious entirety! it's way worse than i thought it would be!)

and yeah the video was taken down, and yeah hank issued a half-hearted apology and then followed it up with a video about how he has since learned that knitting is great actually. but then he went on to apparently spend the bulk of that video praising weaving, which is both a different fucking thing, and traditionally a male profession.

you could say that the reason that the backlash to the knitting video didn't make much of a splash outside of the fiber arts community is just because of scishow's reputation for accurate science compounded with the good will that hank green has personally built. and i think that's true, but i also think that the ways in which fiber arts and knitting in particular are dismissed as "grandma hobbies" is a huge part of that. i think that the very misogyny that devalues knitting and other fiber arts, that played such a predominant role in scishow's video on it, is what helped to keep this under wraps as long as it did.

i fully believe that if the chatgpt'd video in september 2025 had been about the history of world war ii or automobiles or other interests that are not gendered as silly little lady diversions, this spotlight/intervention on his genai use would've happened in september 2025. but instead hank green, who has a massive, science-minded following, has spend the intervening time making wishy-washy videos about how complex the issue of genai usage is. and if youtube's algorithm has caught onto the fact that you have concerns about genai and have watched scishow or hank green content in the past, you have probably seen one such wishy-washy video! like this one here, where he uses weasel words to explain why actually corn production has a way worse impact on our finite potable water supply than data centers!

i'm not saying that the facts shared in the video aren't true. what i am saying is that there is maybe some personal motivation behind the making of it. if this and videos like it are perhaps fueled by a desire to justify one's own behaviors, it is playing out in front of an audience of millions and millions of people. so you really cannot compare it to an individual struggling with ai addiction. this is someone with a platform built specifically on science, learning, accuracy, and skepticism, and they are using that platform to downplay the impact of genai.

the cocoon of reassurance and forgiveness that i have seen spring up around hank green.... gives me some pause. particularly given that he has not said he is going to quit using genai. i've seen a lot of posts on how the Lesson here is that genai addiction can happen to anyone no matter how smart you may think you are. i've seen a lot of individuals saying how it reminds them of their own struggle with genai addiction. i don't think that's an accurate comparison. i feel like we are more in the territory of, like, a youtuber who built their entire brand on combating gambling addiction getting a sponsorship with a gacha game and going on to say how this one is way less addictive than other gacha games, guys, trust me!