Critiques of the Night

why is there an upgrade button on gmail. why does twitter want me to scan my palm to get into my account. why is google a chatbot. why does the transit app make a transit app wrapped for me. why does youtube keep shoving its infinitely scrollable shortform content down my throat. why do my doctor and psychiatrist and therapist want to use an ai notetaker during our appointments. why do free trials want my credit card number. why are most scholarship websites just data brokers. how do i make capitalone stop sending me mail. why is my school making its own special chat gpt powered chatbot. why is every third video on instagram an undisclosed ad. why is nothing online real anymore. why is everything so FUCKING STUPID

my dead wife. the ad free internet

I've been against dress codes for most of my life, but it had never occurred to me to analyze their incentive structures like this. It really is just yet another instance of threatening children with authority figures, isn't it?

for those unaware today india experienced one of its biggest protests in half a decade. there were protests all over the nation for various causes but the major one was in delhi. all we asked for was the resignation of the education minister because he's failed the students of this nation time & time again. but we were met with brutality, the police had barricaded the main site of protest (jantar mantar). metro stations were shutdown, the public was restrained from reaching the protest site and all the adjoining areas had signal jammers to make sure the crowd had no access to constant updates. they had us blocked from all the sides. they were lathi (baton) charging students from one side & releasing tear gas from the other. you couldn't walk 100 m on streets without having a tear gas shell thrown at you. there were many students, women & kids bleeding — some from their head. some couldn't walk anymore. the police had removed their nameplates & acted with full impunity to resort to unprecedented levels of violence. they were pelting stones at us, beating up people for no reason, forcefully detaining them and attacking us constantly with tear gas & rubber bullets. they wouldn't let you exit either. the crowd was peaceful & looking out for each other yet they were met with violence. i made a friend who was all alone & she asked to join me & my friend because a policeman wouldn't leave her alone. he constantly prodded her for personal info, invited her back to the jeep saying they have food there, wouldn't stop following her around. you couldn't call or ask anyone for help, we were left to fend for ourselves & be on a constant lookout if you did not want to be beaten up to death by police. all for what? asking a resignation? shame on this country.

"I don't recruit Sera because she has problematic views on mages" Sera is the representative of the average Thedosian in a cast full of people who cannot relate to that experience of just being A Normal Guy. The average Southern Thedas peasant doesn't hate mages, they are scared of magic itself like I hate to rain on your Mage Rights parade but that is the reality of the games' world. And Sera handles being surrounded by magic and mages a lot better than most people of her background (aka your average commoner) would. Do you have this level of vitriol towards the various actually anti-mage male characters or is it just the woman who gets singled out for not being a perfect #ally.

so fun how as a tenant you just have to double check everything your landlord says against the actual law because they WILL demand money from you for repairs you legally are not responsible for. why do I need to be an expert in tenant's rights in order to not be exploited. why are there no consequences for landlords who lie to their tenants in order to extract more money from them

Something I think people learning to draw black characters or just generally any nonblack artist should really think about is like, do you engage with Black artists? Like outside of looking at their tutorials and tips, do you follow black artists? Do you look at, and study their style and the way they draw black characters? I think thats a really important aspect for nonblack artists, you can say x y z, but are you like actually engaging with black art especially outside of the public eye? This of course goes for any artform but i here was specifically talking about art in the sense of painting, drawing, animation, etc.