Saw These Right Next To Each Other And I Don’t Know How To Feel

so apparently my city has a superhero. and a supervillain. who like, do activism. and. my mom. is dating the supervillain.

Yeah I agree that the show takes supes in the military being actually scary compared to the comics we can also see the comic idea of supes being incompetent but toned down slightly, in the fight in Nicaragua we see Swatto get killed in five seconds and the twins and the mind guy huddled in cover not doing anything. Which I think kinda shows how yeah some supes would be great but they couldn’t really be mass incorporated due to the specifics of powers.

I don’t know what I’m really saying I’m just rambling great post

Also consider this a chaser for a longer post I’m gonna do on how The Boys got better in the adaptation, but one thing I think was a really smart change is how the show is handling the prospect of supes in the military.

 In the comic, The Supes are framed as Evil, but Incompetent. The fight over whether or not Vought is going to get Supes into the military was meant as a parallel to pork spending and the military Industrial complex run amok. Putting supes in the military was framed as bad, well, first because Vought is evil and shouldn’t get to make money, but on a practical level it’s treated as a silly idea.  The supes are framed as fundamentally incompetent soldiers. They’re too brash, too used to getting their way, incredibly difficult to create in consistent numbers, even harder to standardize once you’ve created them due to radically different levels of durability, and fundamentally pretty easy to kill in a combat scenario if you go in prepared and keep your shit together. Until Homelander starts getting Coupy, the actual stakes of the fight are largely over whether Vought is going to get to ream the American Taxpayers with the superhuman equivalent of jets that don’t work and see no action. But the superhumans themselves are, fundamentally, a complete joke in terms of combat ability, and their actual attempt at full-scale rebellion is suppressed almost immediately by the conventional military.

 And the issue is that this sort of created an “enemy-is-both-weak-and-strong” dynamic, where the story hates superheroes so goddamn much that they get  simultaneously framed as both this incredibly corrosive societal cancer AND a bunch of complete morons who can get wiped out in an afternoon by a small detatchment of well-trained, well-equipped soldiers. The actual stakes are…. kinda all over the place, as a result.

In the show,  The Supes are allowed to be both Evil AND competent. Homelander is actually smart instead of just mean and powerful, and It’s pretty clear that supes would be effective in the military, applied judiciously; Black Noir, Soldier Boy and even Homelander to an extent actually are capable of carrying out incredibly violent surgical strikes against whoever the hell they want. So instead, the threat is very clearly reframed as the military potentially having access to combat-viable superhumans who are capable of carrying out incredibly violent surgical strikes against whoever the hell they want. That gets to be a bad thing on its own merits instead of being bad because it’s a waste of money! And, furthermore, it’s also as if specific special-forces agents and black-ops murderers were given the same kind of inviolable, insufferable PR shielding that real world celebrities get for their bad behavior, except the “bad behavior” is, you know, the imperialist slaughter of hundreds or thousands! (In addition to, and not as a replacement for, regular celebrity bullshit!) 

this exact idea is really well done and mentioned in the short stories “The Road Not Taken.” and even more so in “Herbrig-Haro” both by Garry turtle dove they’re both really good check them out you can find them online and they’re pretty quick read

Faster-than-light space travel as a concept is fun to me because everything we’ve observed in the stars is how the universe was a long-ass time ago, so in a sci-fi setting where FTL tech was just invented, there could be all sorts of crazy developments that could be found by traveling through hyperspace or whatever. Try to visit a star system, whoops it isn’t there anymore. Try to go close-ish to a nebula, whoops there’s a bunch more stars here now and this trip is more dangerous than we estimated. Or better yet, a planet with intelligent life on it, the light caused by which won’t reach earth by normal means for about another million years. Thought you’d be going to an ocean planet, turns out it’s got small continents and terrestrial life now. Huge amounts of space travel would be based in predicting what the star systems you see will probably be like in such and such many years, and hoping you predicted correctly when you finally make the jump. Actually, with an FTL engine, one could theoretically take advantage of the speed of light to travel a certain number of light years away from our solar system and study it from afar, as a way of observing the history of our planetary system from before humankind even existed! How wild is that?

i mean Assassin Creed syndicate kinda has this with your main base being a train that travels around the map and you can use to get around, the on problem is there’s also fast travel but if you’re going to a new area without fast travel points yet sometimes it’s best to just ride the train

I am BEGGING for an open-world game with a functioning train or tram.

Like, you actually have to wait for it in real-time, physically step on, then wait for your stop with the ability to actually explore it and chat with the other riders

No loading screens

And when you aren’t on it, you can look over and see it doing its route without you, picking up and dropping off patrons whether you’re there or not

please i need a video game that captures the joy of free public transit

Don Quixote obliterated a film genre

The real reason you couldn’t make Airplane! today is that it’s a parody of a type of movie that doesn’t exist anymore in part because Airplane! made fun of it so hard

URGENT: 🚨🚨EARN IT ACT IS BACK IN THE SENATE 🚨🚨 tumblr's nsfw ban hitting the entire internet this spring 2022

February 1, 2022

I’m so so sorry for the long post but please please please pay attention and spread this

WHAT IS THE EARN IT ACT?

The EARN IT Act has been roundly condemned by nearly every major LGBTQ+ advocacy and human rights organization in the country. This is a bill that will make children less safe, undermine online safety and security, and trample free expression, because it carves out another exception to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230), which the ACLU describes as “foundational to modern online communications.” This has been the law that has let the internet grow into what it is today, we’ve had this law since the 90s. (For context, Trump wanted to get rid of this law because he knew it would lead to mass govt surveillance and censorship of minorities online.)

The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship. Platforms will be incentivized to scan their users’ communications and censor all sex-related content, including sex education, literally anything lgbt, transgender or non-binary education and support systems, and sex worker communication according to the ACLU. All this in the name of “protecting kids” and “fighting CSEM”, both of which the bill does nothing of the sort. In fact it makes fighting CSEM even harder.

If this bill passes, we're going to see most, if not all, adult content and accounts removed from mainstream platforms, for fear of the liability that could come with ever accidentally hosting CSAM, as well as the erasure of end-to-end encryption on messaging platforms.

This is really not a drill. Anyone who makes or consume anything “adult” online has to be prepared to fight Sen. Blumenthal's EARN IT Act, brought back from the grave by a bipartisan consensus to destroy Section 230.

EARN IT will open the way for politicians to define the category of “pornography" as they — or the lobbies that fund them — please, (Right now, right wing organizers are catgorizing books about racism as ‘porn’ to ban them from schools) which is a cherished goal of organizations that seek to reintroduce obscenity prosecutions for content now protected by Free Speech jurisprudence. This will 1000000% be used to eradicate anything LGBT online.

What this bill says it does on the surface is make platforms liable for their users’ activity if that activity involves sex and minors. However, because of 230, platforms are not liable at all about their users' activity. This has allowed platforms to grow and thrive and many niches online to as well. The bill also creates an unelected commission to create “best practices” to combat online child sexual exploitation. While these recommendations are nominally voluntary (so Americans have no decision on who gets to be on it), platforms that refuse to comply will be liable for criminal prosecutions and lawsuits should the government decide any of their users is engaging in online child sexual exploitation.

This is already a nightmare enough. But the bill also DESTROYS ENCRYPTION, you know, the thing protecting literally anyone or any govt entity from going into your private messages and emails and anything on your devices and spying on you.

This bill is going to finish what FOSTA/SESTA started. And that should terrify you.

Senator Blumenthal (Same guy who said ‘Facebook should ban finsta’) pushed this bill all of 2020, literally every activist (There were more than half a million signatures on this site opposing this act!) pushed hard to stop this bill. Now he brings it back, doesn’t show the text of the bill until hours later, and it’s WORSE. Instead of fixing literally anything in the bill that might actually protect kids online, Bluemnthal is hoping to fast track this and shove it through, hoping to get little media attention other than propaganda of "protecting kids" to support this shitty legislation that will harm kids.

The entire EARN IT act is based on *multiple* misunderstandings of the law and reality. It's a really really really bad policy that will do serious harm. But because Senator Blumenthal wants headlines, he'll pretend that it "helps protect the children." It won't. It'll do real damage. It will make CSEM much much worse.

One of the many reasons this bill is so dangerous: It totally misunderstands how Section 230 works, and in doing so (as with FOSTA) it is likely to make the very real problem of CSAM worse, not better. Section 230 gives companies the flexibility to try different approaches to dealing with various content moderation challenges. It allows for greater and greater experimentation and adjustments as they learn what works -- without fear of liability for any "failure." Removing Section 230 protections does the opposite. It says if you do anything, you may face crippling legal liability. This actually makes companies less willing to do anything that involves trying to seek out, take down, and report CSAM because of the greatly increased liability that comes with admitting that there is CSAM on your platform to search for and deal with. This liability would allow anyone for any reason to sue any platform they want, suing smaller ones out of existence. Look at what is happening right now with book bans across the nation with far right groups. This is going to happen to the internet if this bill passes.

(Remember, the state department released a report in December 2021 recommending that the government crack down on "obscenity" as hard the Reagan Administration did. If this bill passes, it could easily go way beyond shit red states are currently trying. It is a goldmine for the fascist right that is currently in the middle of banning every book that talks about race and sexuality across the US.)

NCOSE, the far right anti-LGBT hate group behind the global anti-sex legislations, is pushing the idea that any form of sexual expression, including talking about HEALTH, leads to sex trafficking. Their goal is to eliminate all sex, anything gay, and everything that goes against their idea of ‘God’ from the internet and hyper disney-fy and sanitize it. This is a highly coordinated attack on multiple fronts.

The reason these bills keep showing up is because there is this false lie spread by organizations like NCOSE that platforms do nothing about CSEM online. However, platforms are already liable for child sexual exploitation under federal law. Tech companies sent more than 45 million+ instances of CSAM to the DOJ in 2019 alone, most of which they declined to investigate. This shows that platforms are actually doing everything in their power already to stop CSEM by following already existing laws. The Earn It Act includes zero resources for proven investigation or prevention programs. If Senator Bluementhal actually cared about protecting youth, why wouldn’t he include anything to actually protect them in his shitty horrible bill?

The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) along with a coalition of 26 civil society organizations urged the United States Senate to reject the EARN IT Act. Groups on the left and right, including the ACLU, Fight for the Future, EFF, and Hacking // Hustling oppose it. Because it threatens free expression online and will threaten marginalized people’s safety while being totally unnecessary and failing to fix the problem it claims to address. The EARN IT Act empowers states to give law enforcement access to users’ private conversations and force companies to create encryption backdoors for law enforcement. This is totally unnecessary. Platforms are already handing over CSAM to the federal government. It’s actually likely to make prosecuting child molesters more difficult since evidence collected this way likely violates the Fourth Amendment and would be inadmissible in court.

I don't know why so many Senators are eager to cosponsor the "make child pornography worse" bill, but here we are.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

EARN IT Act was introduced yesterday! And it’s already scheduled to get marked up, which is the first step post-introduction. Most bills never go to markup, so this means they are putting pressure to move this through. IF YOU LIVE IN THESE STATES (IL, VT, CA, RI, MN, DE, CT, HI, NJ, and GA), CONTACT YOUR SENATOR AND HOUSE MEMBERS NOW. THIS IS URGENT. This is who gets first crack, and folks in all have Senators who are on the Judiciary committee.

I'm guessing this month or March is when the bill would be passed if there is no opposition 😭 The bill was re-introduced yesterday, already set for markup this Thursday. This feels like an attempt to fast track it this month. Additionally the current makeup of Congress favors those who want it passed. Back in 2020 it was mostly Senate republicans and democrats who are basically republicans (just like now, check the sponsors) pushing it with Ron Wyden using the filibuster to stop their efforts. The house dems didn't want to give Trump a win and needed to appear as pro-privacy/free speech for the 2020 election. Now the dems have the presidency, both chambers of Congress and if you've noticed have spent a few years repeatedly demanding social media censorship and desperately want to give Biden victories. biden isn't like obama who opposed sopa/pipa to appeal to younger voters. This is similar to how FOSTA passed with the group who made it happen last time back again. Far as I'm aware Wyden hasn't spoken about new earn it yet but even if he does oppose it, it's very possible there will be enough Senate democrats to join the republicans in passing it beating a filibuster. Then pelosi's band of house idiots pass it and we have to choose between breaking the law because they can't stop us from using encryption or being obedient sheep to a group who consider themselves above laws.

It already has a fifth of the Senate cosponsoring it. There is a very very very real chance this bill becomes law. This is an uphill battle that's going to happen fast and quick. PLEASE, FIGHT NOW.

202-224-3121 connects you to the congressional hotline.

This website takes you to your Senator / House members contact info. EMAIL, MESSAGE, SEND LETTERS, CALL CALL CALL CALL CALL. Calling is the BEST way to get a message through. Get your family and friends to send calls too. This is literally the end of free speech online.

More sources to read about this bill:

https://cathyreisenwitz.substack.com/p/the-earn-it-act-is-anti-evidence

Fight for the Future’s Statement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=678EW8v09z8&t=1s

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220131/22423648395/senates-new-earn-it-bill-will-make-child-exploitation-problem-worse-not-better-still-attacks-encryption.shtml

EARN IT Act treats Myths as Facts.

https://surviveearnit.com/what-is-the-earn-it-act/ From 2020, but little has changed about the bill.

https://www.protocol.com/bulletins/earn-it-act-back

Center for Democracy and Technology’s Statement

TLDR: The EARN IT Act will lead to online censorship of any and all adult & lgbt content across the entire internet, open the floodgates to mass surveillance the likes which we haven't seen before, lead to much more CSEM being distributed online, and destroy encryption. Call 202-224-3121 to connect to your house and senate representative and tell them to VOTE NO on this bill that does not protect anyone and harms everyone.

Cool universe

A DEATHWORLER'S WAR PT 1

Hunanity's truth universe

From the memiors ambassador Gruxalon of the vanai-ashti.

We were, at the time, the newest members of the Galactic Alliance, the 97th race to be admitted.  Upon our admission myself and my fellow ambassadors were invited to the alliance's primary meeting ground, a massive spaceborne station in a system officially owned by no one, meant to be a nuetral ground.  Here we were given an orientation of sorts that lasted several weeks, this was understandable as this orientation included detailed dossiers on each of the 96 species as well as the history of the Alliance itself and the responsibilities and laws we would be expected to uphold as a member of it.  During our time there we were greeted by ambassadors and congulated on our appointment to the council.  Most were cordial, but clearly unhappy with our new position.

This was expected, we had asked to join solely to seek military aid against the Xinali, a hostile race that had made it their mission to drive us to extinction because we were amphibians and they believed amphibians were an unnatural abomination.  We were not close to that looming possibility yet, but it was clear that Xinali had superior numbers and firepower to our own, and our war, if left unaided, would eventually become nothing more than delaying the inevitable.

As to the reason we were inducted despite our less than diplomatic purpose, it was our communications and kinetic barrier technologies, they were far and above better than anything anyone in the alliance had, except the humans anyway, THEY had blown science fiction energy shields, but they had steadfastly refused to share that technology with the alliance.  They were a bit distrusting and isolationist as I understood it.  I remembered their dossier fairly clearly for two reasons, firstly because they were considered the strongest and most disciplined military power in the galaxy, secondly their homeworld had come up when discussing the concept of "deathworlds."

"Deathworld" was a designation granted to any habitable world that housed significant dangers to habitation by sentient species.  About 12 of the now 97 member species hailed from deathworlds.  Deathworlds had a classification system that went from category 1 to category 10, I don't remember exactly how they differentiated the categories, but i do remember that the larger the number, the worse the planet, I also remember that of the 38 known deathworlds in existence only one rated above a category 4, the human homeworld of Terra was a category 9.  Sentient species that evolved to become dominant on such worlds are usually aggressive and militaristic, and they are ALWAYS predatory, humans added isolationist and closed off, to that list of quirks.

As a result it was considered normal that the humans did not always send delegates to alliance meetings, most of the time the topics to be discussed had little to do with them, at least from THEIR perspective.  So it came as quite a surprise when I first met one.

We were pleaing again for the Galactic alliance to send military aid and were receiving the typical nonchalant disapproval, these proceedings continued for done tine before the human delegate stood and addressed his camera.  Everyone fell silent, it was known that the human delegate was not often present, and when he was, he rarely addressed the council, I had, to that point, never heard him speak.

"What the hell is wrong with you people!?" He opened aggressively "What's even the point of a council if you're not going to act on the behalf of a member.  It wouldn't even bd all that difficult or resource intensive to help them!"

I was taken aback I had certainly not expected support to come from the absentee and isolationist human delegation.  In truth they had a reputation for not really wanting to get involved in the affairs of others, it had been the primary reason we made no attempt at diplomacy with them.  

"Perhaps for you deathworlder, but for most of us a war is a very serious affair!" Another delagate answered.

"And you believe it is not one for us?" The Human diplomat replied. "Do you think it easy having such power at our fingertips?  Do you think we wish to abandon diplomacy and turn a prestigious place like this to dust, simply because we can?  We are NOT so petty.'

At this point the Consulate rose in the center platform of the space, placing himself between the two arguing races.

"Enough with this consternation." He said "I think we all know the true reason the humans are so adamant about this.  This is about the Cithir incident, isn't it ambassador?"

The human hung his head low, he looked remorseful and defeated "yes Consulate, we have waited a long time for such an opportunity."

My spines rattled a bit at that statement, opportunity for what?  His race would not be used for some dark deathworlder experiment.  

"If that IS the case, then i suggest leaving the issue of military intervention in the hands of the humans, the ambassadors in question may hash out the details between themselves."  This was met with raucous applause.  "In the meantime!" The consulate continued silencing the crowd "we will discuss the sending of foodstuffs and supplies to the Vanai-Ashti, because if i can speak plainly ambassador Orillion had a point, we DO exist as a community to help one another, and if we are unwilling to do so in any capacity, then we will have failed as a community AND as a council, we are responsible to do at least this much, agreed!?"

Less enthusiastic applause this time, but nearly twenty ambassadors offered to sue for aid from their homeworlds.

I was nearly swallowing my own throat afterwards, I had never met any deathworlders much less the apparent worst of them.  These were predators, powerful predators, I acquainted myself with their dossier as I waited for their ambassador's arrival at our diplomatic suite.

They averaged a meter taller than us, they possessed shielded, gun covered ships, their homeworld's gravity was five times our own, and they were, apparently, nigh unkillable monsters.  Their bodies produced something called "adrenaline" under stress, it essentially reversed the function of going into shock, rather than killing them this caused them to become numb to pain and unable to feel fear, it gives a burst of energy and sharpens their senses.  This substance is the reason the Galactic alliance is able to treat shock, i single litre of it can treat over a million people, and humans trade it for information, technology, passage through territory rights etc.  It is SO potent that they can refuse to share their shield tech and still make more money than nearly any other member species.

A tapping at the door caused me to jump out of my seat, i put away the dossier and answered, as the human looked down at me i must've have done poor job of concealing my fear.  Because he knelt down to my level and assured me he meant me no harm.

"Maxwell Orillion," he said, "nice to meet you."

"Gruxalon of the house fùrl," I answered "it is likewise nice to meet you." 

"So what kind of creatures are these…" he tapped at a screen on his wrist "...Xinali?"

They are an Avian race." I answered keeping information short.

"Not to sound unhratefull, but you and Consulate Grak mentioned something called, 'the Cithir incident' and you said humanity has waited for this opportunity.  What exactly do you plan to DO with us?"

"What do you mean DO to you?" Ambassador Orillion looked genuinely confused.

"Well I don't expect you intend to save our asses with no compensation." I replied a bit indignantly.

"What…?" Orillion stared at him in bewilderment for a moment begore something clicked behind his eyes "oooooooooh, you're new, you wouldn't know yet, I'm terribly sorry I'm just so used to everyone knowing." He said.

"Knowing what?" I asked.

"Uh… hmm… this is rather delicate, understand, it's kept out of dossiers for a reason."

"Okay…" i said.

"When we tried to colonize outside our home system for the first time, we ran into and insectoid race called the Cithir, to simplify matters a bit oyr people were split in how wanted to handle the Cithir, the larger group wanted to make contact and attempt peaceful negotiations, the smaller, but more powerful, and rich group wanted to kill them off so they could divy up the planet and sell the land to the highest bidder.  That group succeeded, we eventually caught them and made them face judgment.  But the fact that humanity genocided an entire race, doesn't sit well with us and we have been looking for an opportunity to atone."

I took this all in, it was a lot… it took me a few minutes, no wonder everyone was so afraid of them. I cleared my throat.

"So if i understand this… you committed genoside and by stopping the Xinali, you see that as like… undoing that?"

"No… what we did cannot be undone." Abassador Orrilluon said, "but we hope it can be forgiven." 

This is like those posts that talk about how humans have always been humans and have done dumb things since the beginning of time

I love this so much, I’m gonna start saying “nuts” we need to bring it back

@boarofthenorth100

okay this is really cool, does Bioshock Infinite with its multiverses and lighthouses fit into this idea, and if so, how?

I interpret the first two Bioshock games as a cosmic horror story that the protagonists are just glancing off the outer edges of. Slugs don't do that to your genetic code, for one thing, and genetic code has very little bearing on pyrokinesis or teleportation or the ability to grow swarms of bees inside yourself. It's also mighty convenient that Ryan happened to have picked the one spot in the ocean that happens to have The Slugs That Can't Do That- it's obviously part of the mythmaking of Ryan Amusements that they put such a fine point on where he abruptly stopped the boat and declared that he was going to put down the foundations of Rapture, and there's a dash of narrative anthropic principle on top of that, but it's still very convenient. And In terms of aesthetic and narrative outcome Rapture from 1960 onward is certainly checking all the boxes; madness, mutation, moisture. Impossibly grandiose societies brought down by hubris, science run amok, "look upon my works ye mighty", horrible familial truths, the whole shebang. And of course you have that brilliant light below Persephone.

The story doesn't necessarily parse as cosmic horror immediately because it fronts the impression that there's a grounded explanation for every insane thing that happens. You're supposed to just take it as part of the premise that they can build something like Rapture with human technology in 1945. You mostly hear about plasmids from professionals doing practical research and development with them, so you get the impression that there's a well-understood body of science here that just happens to be outside of your personal understanding. But for every Professor Armitage who understands the whole shape of the Dunwich Horror, there are a hundred Massholes who just saw a barn explode for no reason and now have to cope with the very real invisible something laying waste to the countryside regardless of the full truth of the matter. And from within the exploding barn of Rapture it doesn't matter to Jack or Delta whether the foundations were laid down atop Rl'yeh or whether ADAM is actually the extracted blood of a Great Old One or whatever the fuck. Maybe there's someone down there who understands the deep lore and went mad from the revelation in the genre typical way. But nothing about the situation requires you that you dig that deep to develop a working understanding of what's going on. Rapture's downfall is totally legible as a mundane death spiral of bad leadership, shoddy ideology, economic pressures and bog-standard human greed. Impossible weapons swung in careless arcs by human hands.