Alastair Zaraza⛥🔯⛧⚧🏳️‍🌈 they/xe/it

It's like, remember why ivermectin became a buzzword? It helped people fight off COVID *in countries where parasite infections were endemic*, because the parasites were suppressing their immune systems. This is analogous. Being cooked by disinformation sets ppl up to be credulous to LLMs.

I don't think that's fundamental, is the thing, though. It's the result of an information landscape in end-stage decay where all the most historically reputable journalism outlets have gone to shit, no one knows what's authoritative & they're desperate for someone to TELL them.

a small pumpkin with a smiley face drawn on in sharpie pen sits within a larger pumpkin carved to look like its home

a pumpkin man sits inside a pumpkin house, is the house made of flesh, or is he made of house? he smiles for he does not know

And of course it is a child rapist's administration yelling "pedo" at everyone they want to shove in a concentration camp.

This came across my feed back to back with a news item about a 15-year-old autistic kid getting kidnapped off the street by ICE, btw.

"On October 10th, the ‘Pink Pony Club’ singer performed at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, and used the performance as an opportunity to share her disapproval over the ongoing ICE raids in the United States, telling fans, “Fuck ICE forever”. Footage of the comment by Roan quickly circulated on social media, which has led to the Department of Homeland Security responding to the matter. In a statement to TMZ, the Department of Homeland Security’s Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, said: “‘Pink Pony Club’ is good. Pedophiles are bad. That’s who we’re getting off of our streets. Get a grip.”

I'm having a lot of least favorite told-you-sos I've ever been right about, this year.

Important: The Wizard Zine does not accept any material that contains orbs; adult or sexually explicit content (especially orbs); abuse or harming of women or children; crystal balls; any rape scenes; warlocks; potions; magical staves; orbs for orbs' sake, or magepunk. We do not accept any religious, witchcraftical, or political themes. We do not accept any submissions written in Ancient Verses Unknowable by Mortals, Wizard Vernacular, the language Mordor, or 19th Century styles. We do not accept any submissions told in a tome, goetia, diary or letter or journal format, written in numbered chapters, told as memories, or told entirely as from the planes beyond the seventh circle (someone recounting past events while planesdrifting). We do not accept any submissions created with the use of, or any assistance from, Artificial Intelligence (AI). We do not accept fan fiction. We do not accept wizard vellum.

jeez wizard zine

The Post laid off seemingly the remaining of their liberal-leaning staff members on Opinion last Thursday, when some of them were observing Yom Kippur.

from @oliverdarcy.bsky.social for Status
status.news/p/washington-post-opinion-cuts-adam-oneal

I apologize to the car when I yell at it too tbh

"those are GROCERIES in the passenger seat - ok sorry I know you're trying your best but please chill?"

no, i think that reflexively endorsing cruelty and dismissiveness towards non-human things before understanding them is bad

many people on here have intentionally explicitly chosen to pursue a strategy of being cruel to conversation partners out of a belief that cruelty is justified and/or politically effective if your interlocutor has opinions you disagree with strongly

i think that’s bad personally

(I'm no longer as mad about this as I used to be, but I did fully move 800 miles to get my circadian rhythm to give me three business hours instead of none)

(sleep disorder voice) y'all daywalkers get breakfast spots?? =P

Feeling a little morose.

1 like = 1 line from Robert E. Howard's letters to Novalyne Price, 25 Feb 1936

With commentary.

0: Dear Novalyne:

Theory: it's backlash to demonization of cluster B (known for showing emotion) - folks who were abused for showing emotion are having a turn at attacking a trait of folks who harmed them.

All of this of course incentivized bc holding individuals accountable for their actions is hard!

Not unrelatedly, rank and file tech work is way more diverse than the top echelons, and the people in it with the most Hitler particles are usually the ones who class-identify as temporarily embarrassed C levels!

Anyway I'm gonna be taken out in the alley and whacked someday by the Survivors of Autistic Oversharing society and I've just gotta make my peace with that

I went down a rabbit hole about this recently and concluded that (a) my abuser obviously had an avoidant style but (b) it's a whole deliberate choice to gaslight someone every day?? (c) the internet is rapidly becoming an absolute mess of balkanized neurotypes/abuse damage experiences & I HATE it

Support one of the only genuinely gutsy and subversive cartoonists working 2day

Like as an example: the hundreds of nearly identical stories about a partner who has been texting an ex. Replies run the gamut from "you're being controlling" to "how dare she speak to a man".

What do you want to bet they're testing what subtle changes in vocabulary bring out from the audience?

the moment the shoggoth calls me "petal" unprompted I am fucking booking it out the door at top speed

idk if it was ever anything else but clearly lying is the dominant meta in the discourse game right now and it’s really exhausting for people who’ve been maining honesty

That other phenomenon was that kids were getting pressured to make & appear in similar types of videos, sometimes by adults who were messaging them the first type of videos as example.

I agree that the disturbing algorithmic kidslop made by & with adults was caused by exactly what you say, though.

Overall this is great. But I have to bring something to your attention. Elsagate was actually two interrelated phenomena, and you described one of those very accurately, but the other phenomenon was the part where the child abuse happened.

bringing in notes always helps a lot for me!

idk I think in this case it's a common-use summary of "keeps repeatedly taking lethally negligent actions", in the same way as one would say "wow that young forklift driver who comes to work on Xanax is looking to kill someone"

i think we have an obligation to accurately assess reality, partly because i believe that gives us more power over reality. stretching the truth is not going to help us make a better world.

it feels very, very lonely to believe this sometimes. well, no. all the times.

I just thought of a worrying possible reason why we're seeing more AI astroturf in the reddit talkshow groups:

I bet people are using that stuff to research the efficacy of different kinds of manipulative wording, and that's why you sometimes see versions of the same story posted back to back.

usually when the gvmt makes the military angry we get military juntas but i think we might be the first ever people to witness what happens when a gvmt just makes the military really fucking sad

What would you say are good resources for doing that? Like, places to go for a reliable catch-up summary?

Nag letter from the Guardian: "You've read 42 articles in the last year We know. You’ve seen these notes to support us – 42 times so far this year – but you haven't responded. It’s a little awkward for both of us. But wait:"

This doesn't make me want to subscribe to the Guardian, it makes me want to tell the Guardian about DBT