Whumpster Fire

I probably should have blocked them much earlier, but I was morbidly curious about how they would dig in. In the end, they blocked me, possibly because I suggested that I might share these screenshots, but more likely because they didn’t get a harassment ally out of me and decided to move on to another target. I’d strongly recommend that everyone block and report this account.

Having talked to the person who was the initial target of this interaction, this user is apparently a serial block evader, a la the infamous Oxford comma guy – they create numerous blogs, spinning up new ones almost daily, for the expressed purpose of harassing a handful of people whose media preferences they hate, often with violent rape threats.

Why is this person not going after Game of Thrones fans? It was a hell of a lot bigger than Hazbin Hotel, and, well, two words: Red Wedding.

Why is this person not going after Harry Potter fans--to the extent that they think a random fan nobody outside that fandom has ever heard of is worse than someone actively funneling billions of dollars into anti-trans legislation? Even if you take Rowling completely out of the equation, the Potter books contain sexual assault, severe bullying, and so, so many kinds of bigotry.

Why is this person not going after American Gods fans? Entirely aside from being written by Neil Gaiman, the book's plot hinges on unexamined violence toward women.

More to the point:

Why is this person not calling the CREATORS to task?

The answer is simple:

It's fandom wank. That's all it is and all it ever was.

The first was Hazbin Hotel, which was "Charlie, princess of Hell, is tired of the angels coming down to purge the souls of sinners when they get to a high enough level, so she wants to set up a hotel that will redeem those souls so they can leave Hell peacefully instead. Nobody believes she can do it, but she's supported by her girlfriend and an extremely powerful and mysterious demon named Alastor." (Charlie wanted to call the hotel "Happy Hotel," but Alastor changed the sign with his powers at the end of the pilot.)

The second is Helluva Boss, which I know less about, but it's like a political thriller except all the characters involved are demon nobles.

Just to point this out: people absolutely are "taking the creators to task," which is a phrase that here means "Engaging in absolute massive harassment campaigns towards the creator for literally YEARS which regularly blow up again every few months when somebody finds something new to get mad about." I don't know what the original thing that started part of the internet's massive hateboner for Vivziepop is because I don't have time to wade through endless bullshit over fandom drama, but from the discourse icebergs I've seen, at this point it's a self-reinforcing cycle where literally everything the woman says or does or puts in her shows gets interpreted in bad faith and taken as proof she's an evil person, because it's taken as gospel that she's the fucking Antichrist so therefore every tweet / artistic decision is motivated by her being evil.

It's my rideshare driver from my doctor's appointment ranting about Jews to me from the front seat because he hasn't seen my magen david yet. I limp home.

It's the (white) person doing lunch service with a keffiyah lanyard and red hand pins at the hospital. I no longer feel safe receiving my kosher meal from him.

It's a doctor I work with. It's a doctor when I was a patient.

It's all but one of the professors in the department I minored in and roughly a third of the professors in the department I majored in. I have been taken out of class and yelled at by fellow grown adults in academia for apolitically acknowledging Jewish history in passing. Given failing grades with no explanation, accused of plagiarism I did not commit - only by these people.

It was the entire student government at my university. The cooperative silent treatment would have been impressive if it wasn't comical. At least I have a great story now.

It's the people I lived with, who swore they knew nothing of the conflict and became homicidal within 24 hours of a new housemate moving in. I still don't know what she told them. I fled for my life. I miss my chefs knife.

It's my leadership when I was in the Army, the people we were helping when activated for disaster response.

It's my landlord.

It's the teachers in my local school district.

My neighbors.

The tech doing my EKG to his captive audience. The chaperone doesn't comment.

The artists in my painting group.

These people are identifiable of the far right and the far left. Their commonality is they desire someone to hate, a group they deep down know is not powerful to project their problems onto instead of facing the true giant of systemic failures and purposeful oppression backed by actually and nearly insurmountably powerful individuals. They engage in magical thinking, conspiracy theories, and extreme cognitive dissonance. They allow these beliefs and feeling to impact their behavior towards strangers, and during their professional work. They make their patients unsafe, attempt physical harm, commit ethical violations and target students, abandon the truth and justice they have committed their careers to, break oaths, commit perjury. Nobody I mentioned here was a protestor. Nobody I mentioned here was a random person accosting me on the street, or this list would go on forever. None of these people were coworkers or only classmates, or this list would go on forever. None of these people were those I had power over in a professional environment. But all of these people were someone I had some form of relationship with, however temporary. All of these were people I had placed an amount of trust in, to be responsible, to keep me safe, to not act this way.

This last paragraph reminds me of something I realized over a year ago: antisemitism is a conspiracy about Jewish power. Whichever "side" the antisemite sees themselves as on, or what nefarious thing thry believe the Jews are doing, they claim the Jews have too much power, and they are using it to do bad things.

“I hacked mine, I said. You’d be free of them. You could dump your armor, get on a transport. This had started as a way to distract it, but the more I talked the more I wanted it to say yes.”

And then

“What do you want?

I suddenly got: I want to kill you.”

(Platform Decay spoilers, but not related to the plot)

I occasionally get the urge (?) to count frequencies of things in the Murderbot Diaries, enter them in a spreadsheet and stare at them.

Former rental SecUnits like Murderbot are designed to be able to interface with various systems, mainly SecSystems but also others. Since Murderbot had to survive as a rogue for so long before finding places and people that it could belong, it's particularly adept at hacking, convincing, and controlling them. While it was a company unit, the systems it had daily interactions were HubSystem, SecSystem, and MedSystem.

HubSystem appears to work like a central executive (rather like the one in the classic working memory model), monitoring and controlling SecUnits (and other constructs). It enforced obedience via governor modules. It also acted as a gateway to database when SecUnits had to look up some task-relevant information.

SecSystems are found any place that requires security, monitoring through cameras, assessing risk/threat when something happens. Murderbot often seems to find them friendly and helpful. SecSystems and SecUnits probably have a natural, strong affinity.

MedSystem used to be something Murderbot used only when it was assisting its clients when they were injured. It sometimes gave instructions when its client wasn't close to a medical facility. It was only after meeting ART that it started using it for itself.

"Other" includes Central (aka AdaCol1) in Network Effect, AdaCol2 in System Collapse.

I didn't include targetControlSystem in Network Effect, as it wasn't a standard System.

These were the main systems that Murderbot regularly interacted with initially. But when it had to go to a place inhabited by groups of humans, it had to interact with multiple systems. There was a sharp increase in such 'other' systems in the latest book.

Of course, using a human HubSys introduces its own vulnerabilities such as humans having worse reaction time and multitasking capability, and it doesn't actually seem to be that hack-proof. I think MB mentions not being able to hack people's augments at some point, but the CombatSecUnit derived killware in Exit Strategy was able to incapacitate augmented humans with attacks against their augments or internal interfaces, and ART straight-up killed a couple of the contaminated colonists through their hardware. So there are definitely tradeoffs there, but there's also tradeoffs to giving your SecUnits projectile weapons instead of energy weapons as their built-in guns

son of a bitch

On one hand, selecting for disability and disorder absolutely is eugenics and should not be encouraged.

On the other hand, we already select for some disabilities and disorders in order to protect the kids who would have them! Tay-Sachs is the obvious example; we do not want these children to die horribly so we try to make sure they're not conceived in the first place.

On the other hand, a potential parent selecting for disability is concerning because not all disabilities show up in the womb, and some are acquired. Do we want to encourage people to become parents if they're already wanting to walk away from any difficulty?

On the other hand, there are disabilities and there are disabilities. What if a potential parent is like "listen, ADHD I can handle, but the disability you're talking about is so severe I don't think I could handle it"? Is that eugenics, or recognizing one's own limits?

On the other hand, if we could ask the fetus "here's what you'll deal with; do you want to live?" would it say yes or no? Some quadriplegics love living. Some amputees who lost part of a leg will say they wish they'd died instead. Every disabled person will have a different answer, including two who have near-identical disabilities and life circumstances. Hell, I'm disabled and whether I'm saying "it doesn't bother me" or "I wish I was anyone else" comes down to the day.

On the other hand, does it make a difference if the answer to "why do you want an abortion" is "I don't want a baby" or "I don't want a baby I perceive as defective"? Do we judge one but not the other? Why?

I could go on like this for hours. I don't think OP is right and I also don't think they're wrong. I'm not sure there is a "right" answer. I definitely don't think there's a one-size-fits-all answer. Life is THE most annoying bitch on earth that way sometimes. And insofar as there is an answer, I actually think it lies with creating support, not restricting abortion. Would you still say "abort" if you had an extra $10k a year? What about someone to watch the kiddo on Saturdays so you could have some decompression time? Is there a load-bearing straw we can remove to spare the camel's back, or is the camel simply not capable of hauling this particular shipment of straw?