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bethanythebogwitch · 7 months

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I recently found out a show I liked is 10 years old now so to not be the oldest thing on this blog I'm talking coelacanths for Wet Beast Wednesday. Coelacanths are rare fish famed for being living fossils. While that term is highly misleading, it is true that coelacanths are among the only remaining lobe-fined fish and were thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago before being rediscovered in modern times.

(image id: a wild coelacanth. It is a large, mostly grey fish with splotches of yellowish scales. Its fins are attached to fleshy lobes. It is seen from the side, facing the top right corner of the picture)

Coelacanth fossils had been known since the 1800s and they were believed to have gone extinct in the late Cretaceous period. That was until December 1938, when a museum curator named Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer was informed of an unusual specimen that had been pulled in by local fishermen. After being unable to identify the fish, she contacted a friend, ichthyologist J. L. B. Smith, who told her to preserve the specimen until he could examine it. Upon examining it early next year, he realized it was indeed a coelacanth, confirming that they had survived, undetected, for 66 million years. Note that fishermen living in coelacanth territory were already aware of the fish before they were formally described by science. Coelacanths are among the most famous examples of a lazarus taxon. This term, in the context of ecology and conservation, means a species or population that is believed to have gone extinct but is later discovered to still be alive. While coelacanths are among the oldest living lazarus taxa, they aren't the oldest. They are beaten out by a genus of fly (100 million years old) and a type of mollusk (over 300 million years old).

(image: a coelacanth fossil. It is a dark brown imprint of a coelacanth on white rock. Its skeleton is visible in the imprint)

Coelacanths are one of only two surviving groups of lobe-finned fish along with the lungfishes. Lobe-finned fish are bony fish notable for their fins being attached to muscular lobes. By contrast, ray-finned fish (AKA pretty much every fish you've ever heard of that isn't a shark) have their fins attached directly to the body. That may not sound like a big difference, but it actually is. The lobes of lobe-finned fish eventually evolved into the first vertebrate limbs. That makes lobe-finned fish the ancestors of all reptiles, amphibians, and mammals, including you. In fact, you are more closely related to a coelacanth than a coelacanth is to a tuna. Coelacanths were thought to be the closest living link to tetrapods, but genetic testing has shown that lungfish are actually closer to the ancestor of tetrapods.

(image id: a scientific diagram depicting the taxonomic relationships of early lobe-finned fish showing their evolution to proto-tetrapods like Tiktaalik and Ichthyostega, to true tetrapods. Source)

There are two known living coelacanth species: the west Indian ocean coelacanth (Latimeria chalumnae) and the Indonesian coelacanth (L. menadoensis). Both are very large fish, capable of exceeding 2 m (6.6 ft) in length and 90 kg (200 lbs). Their wikipedia page describes them as "plump", which seems a little judgmental to me. Their tails are unique, consisting of two lobes above and below the end of the tail, which has its own fin. Their scales are very hard and thick, acting like armor. The mouth is small, but a hinge in its skull, not found in any other animal, allows the mouth to open extremely wide for its size. In addition, they lack a maxilla (upper jawbone), instead using specialized tissue in its place. They lack backbones, instead having an oil-filled notochord that serve the same function. The presence of a notochord is the key characteristic of being a chordate, but most vertebrates only have one in embryo, after which it is replaced by a backbone. Instead of a swim bladder, coelacanths have a vestigial lung filled with fatty tissue that serves the same purpose. In addition to the lung, another fatty organ also helps control buoyancy. The fatty organ is large enough that it forced the kidneys to move backwards and fuse into one organ. Coelacanths have tiny brains. Only about 15% of the skull cavity is filled by the brain, the rest is filled with fat.

(image id: a coalacanth. It is similar to the one on the above image, but this one is blue in color and the head is seen more clearly, showing an open mouth and large eye)

One of the reasons it took so long for coelacanths to be rediscovered is their habitat. They prefer to live in deeper waters in the twilight zone, between 150 and 250 meters deep. They are also nocturnal and spend the day either in underwater caves or swimming down into deeper water. They typically stay in deeper water or caves during the day as colder water keeps their metabolism low and conserves energy. While they do not appear to be social animals, coelacanths are tolerant of each other's presence and the caves they stay in may be packed to the brim during the day. Coelacanths are all about conserving energy even when looking for food. They are drift feeders, moving slowly with the currents and eating whatever they come across. Their diet primarily consists of fish and squid. Not much is known about how they catch their prey, but they are capable of rapid bursts of speed that may be used to catch prey and is definitely used to escape predators. They are believed to be capable of electroreception, which is likely used to locate prey and avoid obstacles. Coelacanths swim differently than other fish. They use their lobe fins like limbs to stabilize their movements as they drift. This means that while coelacanths are slow, they are very maneuverable. Some have even been seen swimming upside-down or with their heads pointed down.

(image: an underwater cave wilt multiple coelacanths residing in it. 5 are clearly visible, with the fins of others showing from offscreen)

Coelacanths are a vary race example of bony fish that give live birth. They are ovoviviparous, meaning the egg is retained and hatches inside the mother. Gestation can take between 2 and 5 years (estimates differ) and multiple offspring are born at a time. It is possible that females may only mate with a single male at a time, though this is not confirmed. Coelacanths can live over 100 years and do not reach full maturity until age 55. This very slow reproduction and maturation rate likely contributes to the rarity of the fish.

(image: a juvenile coelacanth. Its body shape is the same as those of adults, but with proportionately larger fins. There are green laser beams shining on it. These are used by submersibles to calculate the size of animals and objects)

Coelacanths are often described as living fossils. This term refers to species that are still similar to their ancient ancestors. The term is losing favor amongst biologists due to how misleading it can be. The term os often understood to mean that modern species are exactly the same as ancient ones. This is not the case. Living coelacanth are now known to be different than those who existed during the Cretaceous, let alone the older fossil species. Living fossils often live in very stable environments that result in low selective pressure, but they are still evolving, just slower.

(image: a coelacanth swimming next to a SCUBA diver)

Because of the rarity of coelacanths, it's hard to figure out what conservation needs they have. The IUCN currently classifies the west Indian ocean coelacanth as critically endangered (with an estimated population of less than 500) and the Indonesian coelacanth as vulnerable. Their main threat is bycatch, when they are caught in nets intended for other species. They aren't fished commercially as their meat is very unappetizing, but getting caught in nets is still very dangerous and their slow reproduction and maturation means that it is long and difficult to replace population losses. There is an international organization, the Coelacanth Conservation Council, dedicated to coelacanth conservation and preservation.

(image: a coelacanth facing the camera. The shape of its mouth makes it look as though it is smiling)

#wet beast wednesday #coelacanth #marine biology #biology #zoology #ecology #animal facts #fish #fishblr #old man fish #lobe-finned fish #sarcopterygii

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autolenaphilia · 11 months

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Transandrophobia isn’t real because misandry isn’t real. This is the basic truth of the matter.

The very structure of the word implies some kind of intersection of transphobia and misandry, which is impossible, because again misandry doesn’t exist. The phrase “transandrophobia” exists as a transmasc counterpart to transmisogyny, and it doesn’t work, because while misogyny is real, misandry/androphobia is not. The things that are described as “transandrophobia” which are actual instances of oppression are better explained as plain transphobia.

The antifeminism of transandrophobia theory

“Transandrophobia” theory often launders antifeminist concepts of misandry. Of course this is openly often denied. The defense is that transandrophobia doesn’t imply that misandry exists, but only describes transphobia directed at transmascs.

And it’s often disingenuous. I’ve come across numerous transandrophobia blogs that clearly believe in misandry. The very coiner of the word, says it’s caused by “the effects of irrational fears of masculinity and manhood“ (taking “androphobia” quite literally) which implies both the existence of misandry and also misogynistically dismissing women’s fears of men’s violence as irrational.

Of course they change the language around, using euphemisms for misandry. In fact transandrophobia is a clear evolution of the term “transmisandry.” Genderkoolaid and ey’s idea of “anti-masculism” that I criticized here is maybe the most obvious example of that on tumblr today.. The belief in some kind of systemic force that “negatively impacts men and masculine people on the basis of their manhood and/or masculinity.“ to quote genderkoolaid is as succinct a definition of misandry theory as any. And ey even outright admits that “antimasculism” is just another word for misandry. Other transandrophobia bloggers like the transunity blog outright use the word “misandry.”So for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to use “misandry” for whatever euphemisms transandrophobia people use, like “antimasculism”, “androphobia” or claims that “society hates men” or “there is a widespread irrational fear of men and masculinity.”

The use of feminist language like “patriarchy” common among transandrophobia people is either severely confused or outright dishonest. It’s a symptom of the terrible understanding of feminism on this site, as I lamented before. Patriarchy as a term that inherently implies male privilege, men are privileged for being men, not disadvantaged. Claiming the patriarchy oppresses men on the basis of their gender is a contradiction in terms. And belief in misandry is inherently misogynistic and anti-feminist.

How terms for systemic oppression actually work

Let’s however assume that the word “transandrophobia” just means “transphobia aimed at transmascs.” Then I don’t see why this word needs to exist. It contradicts most academic work on systemic oppression. New terms are generally not made just to describe “specific experiences of an oppression”. Instead they are created to describe meaningful intersections of different forms of oppression. Often these are intersections with misogyny, because that particular oppression affects about half the population. So misogynynoir describes an intersection of anti-blackness/racism and misogyny that black women experience, and lesbophobia describes an intersection of homophobia and misogyny that lesbians experience. And transmisogyny describes an intersection of misogyny and transphobia that trans women and transfems experience.

The lesbophobia example is especially pertinent to this discussion. The homophobia that gay men experience is often distinct from that lesbians experience, and homophobia against gay men is no minor prejudice, gay men have literally been murdered for being gay. Yet there is no “homoandrophobia” (to borrow an argument from this post by catgirlforeskin) and that’s because misandry/androphobia isn’t real. Men experience systemic oppression differently from women experiencing the same oppression, but that’s because of the absence of misogyny, not the existence of any misandry.

So a word like transandrophobia does imply an intersection between “androphobia/misandry”and transphobia. Otherwise it doesn’t have much reason to exist.

Misandry must affect all men in order to exist

I have seen claims that while “cis misandry” doesn’t exist, trans men and transmasc people are in fact oppressed for being men or masculine. And that’s how transandrophobia works

But that’s just transphobia. Misandry can only be real if it affects all men. Misogyny is a viable term because all women are oppressed for being women, even if they can also be privileged because of things like being cis, wealthy or white which balances out their oppression for being women (intersectionality is complex). I wouldn’t claim misogyny was real if it only affected a subset of women.

You can’t claim that men are oppressed for being men or being masculine, that it is some stigmatized gender or gender expression, when being a man and specifically a masculine man is what is expected of about half the population, and in fact men gain privilege for the successful performance of masculinity.

It’s true that trans men and other transmascs are systemically oppressed, and do indeed experience severe pushback if they express their manhood or try to transition in a transmasculine direction. But that’s because they are trans. Transfems experience a similar oppression for expressing their womanhood or trying to transition in transfeminine direction. That’s why the word transphobia exists.

Let’s make an example of a common bit of rhetoric among transandrophobia people, and see how it is all explained entirely by transphobia. Transandrophobia people talk about some general “hatred of testosterone” as part of transandrophobia, often dishonestly conflating transfems expressing their dysphoria with transphobic rhetoric about how testosterone ruins transmasc bodies.

But any idea about society hating testosterone fail to account for why the testosterone flowing through bodies deemed naturally male is seen as okay. In fact being “high-t” is seen as a positive in a man. It’s not even a prejudice against medical testosterone, being “low-t” is a fad disorder that cis men can easily get testosterone prescriptions for. And trying to lower your “natural testosterone” levels is something that’s actively hindered and gatekept, something I’ve experienced. I waited three years to get on t-blockers due to medical gatekeeping. In my country Sweden getting your balls removed legally and thus permanently lower your t-levels is something you have to petition the government for, something I’m trying to do.

Any kind of theorizing about a misandristic hatred of testosterone can’t explain this. It’s only so-called “cross-sex hormones” that are seen as bad, not testosterone in itself. And this is entirely explained by transphobia, not misandry.

It’s of course true that men are oppressed, but it’s never on the basis of being men. People who try to argue for misandry often use (often appropriatively) the struggles of oppressed men and try to argue they are oppressed because they are men. And transandrophobia theory is no different.

“Deserving a word”

The attitude among the transmascs who support transandrophobia theory seems to be “transfems have transmisogyny to describe their oppression, we deserve a word too.” Except again, transfems don’t have the term transmisogyny because we are very special girls who need a special word for our oppression, it exists because it describes the intersection of misogyny and transphobia we experience. It exists for the same reason as lesbophobia does, to describe an intersection between misogyny and another oppression. Gay men are not disadvantaged compared to lesbians because they “only” have the more general term “homophobia” while lesbians have the more specific word “lesbophobia.” And I don’t think transmascs would be disadvantaged if nobody accepted transandrophobia as a tern for their experiences.

You don’t need a specific word to talk about your experiences with transphobia, just as gay men don’t need a world like lesbophobia to talk about their experiences with homophobia. You can just talk about them, and use the word “transphobia” as a label for it.

And sometimes acknowledging that our experiences of oppression can be similar is useful for solidarity and community building. All trans people are negatively affected by transphobia, and that is the real “transunity.” theory.

Don’t end up like nothorses who once unironically listed “Misgendering over the phone,“ as an example of transandrophobia/transphobia only affecting transmascs.

Words exist in a context

Transandrophobia clearly exists as some transmasc counterpart to the transfem transmisogyny. It was even more obvious when the word was “transmisandry.” Words always exist in a context, and is often built by binaries. How someone who believes it defines transandrophobia does say a lot about how they define transmisogyny.

I’ve already described how if transandrophobia merely means “transmascs specific experiences with transphobia” it doesn’t have much reason to exist. But it also by implication diminishes and reduces transmisogyny. If transandrophobia only means “the transphobia experienced by transmasculine people”, transmisogyny is reduced by implication to only meaning “transphobia experienced by transfeminine people.” It’s another symptom of how tumblr discourse is uninterested in acknowledging misogyny, and in this case that misogyny is intersecting with transphobia in transmisogyny.

And well, if transmisogyny means “an intersection between transphobia and misogyny experienced by transfems” it does imply that transandrophobia also should describe an intersection, for why else does it exist. And we are back to it describing an imaginary intersection between transphobia and misandry, a misogynistic and antifeminist idea.

Who gets to define their own oppression?

Of course I am a trans woman, and I will of course get accused of hating transmascs, and robbing them of their ability to define their own oppression.

I would be more sympathetic to this argument, if transandrophobia theorists didn’t keep on constantly defining transmisogyny as the result of misandry. It is common in these circles for transmascs to reject any tme/tma distinction too. Literally going “I got mistaken for a trans woman once, that means I’m affected by transmisogyny.” There is absolutely zero respecting transfems rights to define their own oppression in transandrophobia circles, so why should I respect theirs?

Seriously, the “transmisogyny is actually misandry” claim just keeps happening. Genderkoolaid did it, the transunity blog too, and this dude who I literally found by browsing the “transmisogyny” tag spewing his misandry nonsense.

The problem with “transmisogyny is misandry, actually” is that misandry isn’t real, men are privileged for being men. Transfems experience oppression because we reject being men and performing masculinity. Men are in fact our oppressor class. When transmisogynists talk derisively about “men who wear dresses and say they are women”, they aren’t saying that being a man is bad (in fact they are often men themselves), it’s that “being amab and rejecting masculinity and manhood and claiming to be a woman is bad.” Its an intersection of transphobia and misogyny.

“Transandrophobia” is seldom just talking about the difficulties of being transmasc, it wants to redefine how transfems think about their oppression as well. And it does so in misgendering and transmisogynistic ways.

The transandrophobia theorists generally ignore the existence of transmisogyny, especially in queer communities. In fact it often implies or outright states that transfems are privileged in the trans/queer communities for being women or feminine, which is bizarre. In reality, Transmisogyny is rife in queer spaces, with “crazy trans woman syndrome” being common.

And it’s not like transandrophobia discourse is immune to that particular syndrome. Transmisogyny-exempt privilege dynamics remain very much in play. Transfems tend to get accused of being transandrophobic. The accusations are framed as “lateral aggression” not oppression, although the tone of these posts suggests “lateral aggression” is another polite euphemism word swap game like misandry for “androphobia.”

It feels like the antifeminist, and specifically anti-transfeminist roots of the whole transandrophobia idea coming to the forefront.

#my writings #transmisogyny #misandry is not real

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ao3org · 2 years

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It's Finally Happening - Changes to Dream SMP, 3rd Life/Last Life, and other SMP fandoms!

Hello!

Some exciting changes are coming to Video Blogging RPF over the next few weeks! We are happy to announce that Dream SMP, 3rd Life | Last Life SMP Series, Empires SMP, and a number of other Survival Multiplayer (SMP) Minecraft roleplay fandoms will be getting their very own fandom tags. These changes will be starting 10 May 2022, beginning with Dream SMP.

We want to thank you for your patience both in getting to this point, and in the coming weeks as these changes take place! Our volunteers have worked hard towards this change since 2021, and we will do our best to make this transition go as smoothly as possible.

How will the Fandom tags change?

Many SMPs have their own rich lore that is separate from what is going on in the content creators' lives. In the past, everything has been housed in Video Blogging RPF, but that doesn't recognize that there is more than just RPF in these fandoms. We are creating new tags so that you have a place to explore the fictional lives of the characters in these worlds.

Other SMPs that are not listed below may also get fandom tags eventually. We are constantly evaluating new SMPs as their fandoms grow, and we plan to continue making more fandom tags for them in the future. Just keep tagging the SMPs your work takes place in as a fandom so that we know how big the fandom is!

If you already use a fandom tag like "Dream SMP" or "Last Life" on your fic, your works will be filterable and searchable under the new fandom tags once we finish moving everything! These new SMP fandoms will be set up as subfandoms of Video Blogging RPF. If you are only using the Video Blogging RPF or Minecraft tag, we recommend either adding or replacing that with the relevant SMP fandoms - although if you'd prefer, you can of course just keep your work in Video Blogging RPF.

Here is a list of the new fandom tags, if you would like to update your works now!

Dream SMP

Origins SMP

30 Day SMP | Free Trial SMP

3rd Life | Last Life SMP Series

Evolution SMP

Empires SMP

Afterlife SMP

Hermitcraft SMP*

Outsiders SMP

SMPEarth

SMPLive

Epic SMP

Shady Oaks SMP

Cogchamp SMP

Bear SMP

Fable SMP

*The currently existing Hermitcraft RPF fandom will be renamed to Hermitcraft SMP, so that wranglers will be able to make use of the new SMP guidelines.

Additionally, users will not be required to retag their works. This means that you should not report a work to Policy & Abuse that does not use the new SMP tags.

How will the Character tags change?

Because it can be confusing and difficult to find works about characters when their character tags are only a content creator's real name, we will be renaming characters of these new SMP fandoms to include usernames. Here are a few of the planned character tag changes:

Darryl Noveschosch → Darryl Noveschosch | BadBoyHalo

Zak Ahmed → Zak Ahmed | Skeppy

Noah Brown → Noah Brown | Foolish Gamers

Charlie Dalgleish → Charlie Dalgleish | Slimecicle

Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF) → Phil Watson | Philza

Brendan Thro → Brendan Thro | Sneegsnag

John Booko → John Booko | BdoubleO100

Anthony Viviano → Anthony Viviano | Bigbst4tz2

Oliver Brotherhood → Oliver Brotherhood | Mumbo Jumbo

Jordan Maron → Jordan Maron | CaptainSparklez

Unfortunately, we are not able to create separate tags for the streamer’s main RP characters at this time. Any Technoblade (Dream SMP), Technoblade (SMP Earth) etc tags will still continue to redirect to Technoblade (Video Blogging RPF).

From a wrangling perspective, it is difficult to distinguish when tags are referring to the character or to the content creator when the character and the streamer’s username are the same. This is especially true when it comes to relationship or freeform tags involving the character/streamer, and because often two different works will use the same tag to mean different things. For example, if a work is tagged Technoblade-centric, we cannot tell if they are talking about Technoblade the streamer, or his Technoblade character from Dream SMP, or his Technoblade character from Origins SMP, or even his Technoblade character from SMPEarth. In addition, we would not want creators to feel like they need to tag multiple variations of Technoblade’s RP characters if the work involves an ambiguous AU version of his RP personas - and that issue would only further compound across relationship and freeform tags. However, we hope the creation of RP fandom tags can be used as an alternative by creators to show if their works are about the RP characters. We also hope that they can help users filter for the content they are looking for, or filter out any content they are looking to avoid.

However, sometimes a content creator will play other characters that have distinct names - like Dream also playing the characters of DreamXD and Ranbob. Right now those characters are both redirected to the "Clay | Dream" tag, but they, and others like them, will now be getting new character tags of their own.

NPCs such as Xornoth or the Samsung Smart Fridge, and Minecraft mob characters like Sally the Salmon or Michael_Beloved the Piglin, who previously did not have tags at all, will also soon get character tags.

This should make it easier to find works about a variety of characters! If you're already using tags like Ghostbur, Ranbob, or Sally the Salmon, you won't have to make any changes for your works to be searchable under the new tags.

How will the Additional tags change?

Additional tags related to the SMPs will be adjusted to use the new fandoms. Here are some examples:

Logstedshire on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF) → Logstedshire (Dream SMP)

Empire of Pixandria on Empires SMP Setting (Video Blogging RPF) → Empire of Pixandria (Empires SMP)

The Maze on Outsiders SMP (Video Blogging RPF) → The Maze (Outsiders SMP)

NPCs, Alter Egos, and mobs can now get additional tags of their own, such as this:

Winged Xornoth (Empires SMP)

Simp DreamXD (Dream SMP)

Ghostbur-Centric (Dream SMP)

We know this is a big change, and we hope that it will make it a lot easier to navigate the various SMP fandoms and find the works you're looking for. Please remember that, while we believe that these new canonical tags will help, you are not required to use them. We hope that these new tags will provide more ease of access, clarity, and visibility than what is currently in place.

Once again, thank you for your patience in the coming weeks while these tags are in flux. Our team has been working on this for many months, and we’re all very excited to share these changes with you!

TL;DR:

Several Minecraft SMPs will get their own fandoms.

Streamers of those SMPs will have their tags edited to include their usernames.

Alter-egos, NPCs, and mob characters of those SMPs will be canonized in these new SMP fandoms.

Please be patient with us, as implementing this many changes will take some time!

#ao3 #archive of our own #tag wrangling changes #mcyt #Dream SMP #Last Life SMP #Empires SMP #Hermitcraft

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fantasy-anatomy-analyst · 3 months

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Making Humanoids Less Human

I did make a small post on this, but now I've got the art for a much bigger and more detailed post! so here we go.

I had several anonymous asks that all came in quick succession weeks ago. Every single one of them was basically just a variation on "how would you take (typically humanoid) fantasy being, and make them look less human?"

This blog does not exist for me to just give people original designs for free, my goal is to show off my own personal thoughts about fantasy design and help people figure out how to adjust their own designs to fit their vision better. That means when people ask me questions about how to do something, I want to give them things to think about so they can come to their own conclusion. I don't mind making original designs to illustrate concepts, but a whole flood of "show me how to make this specific thing look different" all at once like that was too much. I'm not answering them all individually, it's just not what I want to do.

But what I can do is show my own thoughts and ideas about how to take any fantasy design and push it further away from "human", and you all can look at my ideas and figure out your own way to do things!

So here are the main 4 methods I've come up with to make humanoids look less human.

(image description: a simplified drawing of a humanoid face surrounded by four altered versions of the same face. clockwise starting from the top left, they are:

Speculative, drawn as a cat person. Additive, drawn with horns, pointy ears, sharp teeth, and a second pair of eyes. Subtractive, drawn with blank eyes, no nose, and no eyebrows. Exaggerative, drawn with a long face and huge eyes, as well as a wide mouth, narrow nose, and big ears.

end description)

I am personally a fan of the speculative route, which means exploring an alternate root of evolution to create a new design. Through this method, I've created monkey elves, frog goblins, and pig orcs.

the additive option is the most common, I think. adding new feature or doubled features to a humanoid form is a very intuitive way to change the design and make it look less human. you see this in most fantasy and scifi designs, like star trek aliens and the dnd player races.

subtractive and evaggerative are the most common options for people that like the uncanny valley. it's really easy to make uncomfortable designs by removing or exaggerating recognizable features, and they're often used together. Slenderman, for example, removes all facial features and skin color but also exaggerates the limbs and body.

Combining the four methods will give you a really interesting design as well! So for practice I decided to explore an alternate design for Tieflings, the part-demon player race in dnd.

(image description: four examples of differnt tiefling designs using the previously described methods. the additive example is just offical dnd art of a tiefling woman with purple skin, horns, and a long tail.

the subtractive sketch looks very alien, with a bald head, empty eyes, and no other facial featuers aside from a small mouth. it has three fingers per hand and two toe per foot.

the exaggerative sketch shows a hunched humanoid figure with huge eyes and big ears. the neck, limbs, and digits are all long with claws at the ends of the fingers and toes, and the limbs are also quite muscular.

the speculative sketch shows a bipedal figure with features similar to a giraffe, including a long neck, ossicones, and hooves.

end description)

now, because tielflings have such a distinct look to them, obviously my new sketches don't really look like tieflings, do they? the only one that comes close is the giraffe. relying only on one type of alteration to the human form has left the designs rather empty and lacking in the more iconic traits of the original concept. so i tried a sketch that combined my ideas! it came out looking like a completely different creature lol, like it could be a kobold or something, still not really a tiefling.

(image description: a sketch of a creature with a giraffe-like head, long tongue, and sharp teeth. it appears to be roaring at something and stands in a half-crouch. it has long limbs with hoof feet and clawed hands, as well as a long tufted tail curled behind it. end description.)

didn't work out. too far into the animal side of the speculative evolution, I think. so I tried again and got a design I liked much better!

(image description: a digital painting of a tiefling leaping back and casting a glowing orange spell. she is wearing a tunic with a corset and detached sleeves, as well as several pieces of jewelry. Her skin is purple with dark patches like a giraffe's spots, and she has a giraffe's ossicones as well as hoof-like hands and two-toed hoof feet. Her tail is long with a tuft at the end. She has glowing eyes and a flat nose, and there is a single sharp tooth visible poking out of the side of her mouth. end description.)

Brought the face back into slightly more human proportions and that helped a lot. Sometimes designs just take a few tries! that's normal.

and hopefully this is helpful to all of you! there are so many ways to alter humanoid designs to come up with something original and unique to you!

#humanoids #making humanoids less human #altered humanoids #non primate humanoids #tiefling #long post #my designs #and btw ai cannot do this #does not matter how detailed you prompt it #it can't really get things to look this original and unique #it can't really blend different features like this in a way that makes sense #you have this power #the computers cannot replicate it

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eretzyisrael · 4 months

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That's not even the worst example from Sunday.

Iraqi Shiite news site Baratha imagines a world without Zionists - and without Jews:

What would the world lose if the Jews became extinct?! Quite the contrary, humanity will have a good opportunity to live quietly and without the evils of this malicious sect. The idea is so wonderful that I can almost see the desert blooming, the earth getting excited, and millions of beings losing their minds from extreme happiness! Jews are the curse that came from the worst dreams of the accursed Devil. Without them, humanity would not have known atheism, the theory of evolution, and racism. With their help, the prophets were killed, usury and immorality spread, wars broke out, and nations perished. With their dirty thinking, epidemics developed, the death trade became widespread, and the world turned into an arena of conflict in which man eats man and death spreads everywhere. . If humanity had not known this malicious sect, it would not have known socialism, capitalism, and Nazism. It would not have known Zionism, Freemasonry, Illuminati, and Wahhabism. It would not have known the Cold War, nuclear and hydrogen bombs, and it would not have known corruption, anomalies, drugs, cancer, global warming, the right to veto, America, injustice, and oppression. They are a dirty, atheistic sect that claims faith, a dirty race that considers itself the only one worthy of life, and a strange society that contains the essence of meanness, malice, and deception accumulated over thousands of years. Their history is rotten, their books are false, their principles are evil, their morals are malicious, their methods are satanic, their goals are ominous, their presence is dangerous, and their survival is not good for man or animal. These people never lived among a people without their corruption, unrest, and devastation spreading, and they never moved to any country without carrying evil with them to it.. So it behooves all humanity to be hostile to them until it is safe from their evil, and I am not exaggerating here if I say that their disappearance is life and good, and their survival is death and evil. If humanity wants to live in peace, it must first stop their evil; And everyone who stands against them is on the side of truth, goodness and peace. There is no alternative to God’s laws, and the path of Satan and his servants will end in failure. Everyone who stands against them will be helped and supported by God’s care. Goodness, which is the path to salvation, is in standing against evil, not by standing by and watching. The responsibility that one cannot escape from bearing is through awareness, work, and patience, and the outcome is survival and victory in This world and the hereafter, God willing.

Unlike the resurgence of antisemitism in the West, there are next to no articles condemning the incitement to violence that is now widespread. The pretense that arab media had in separating Jews from Zionism in the past 25 years has all but disappeared. The Jews remaining in Tunisia are frightened to death that they will be slaughtered at any time.

Western NGOs who claim to be supportive of human rights do not say a word against these explicit calls to rid the world of the evil of Jews.

#antisemitism #islamic antisemitism #jews #nazis #incitement

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oliveroctavius · 4 months

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I got this ask on main but thought I'd pick it up here, my comics history/fashion ramble blog. I'd been wondering this exact same thing recently, and Google initially wasn't much help—Rocketeer replica jackets describe themselves only as "Rocketeer jackets" and the one Lobster Johnson cosplay thread just suggested ordering one of those.

The most curious part is the double seam and horizonal row of buttons that mark out the entire front as possibly being an unbuttonable "bib", like a plastron front. (Please don't ask how late in the game I worked out that "plastron" is the right word for that.)

The closest genuine Golden Age example of a plastron jacket I found was the military tunic style uniform of Blackhawk, created in 1941.

(Pics from the '52 movie serial (right) really show how awkward it is to combine open lapels + plastron. On a double breasted coat, that chest panel IS the bottom lapel, folded shut.)

Here's the thing: This outfit mirrors that of the Nazi ace pilot he fights in the origin issue, von Tepp (middle). And compare further to the far right: real life WWI flying ace Manfred von Richthofen, AKA the Red Baron, in imperial German Uhlan (lance cavalry) uniform.

"The Germans had designed such great costumes, we decided to use them ourselves," co-creator Cuidera is quoted as saying in Steranko's History of Comics, which (more dubiously, in my opinion) compares the look to the Gestapo or SS. Breeches or jodhpurs weren't strictly a Nazi thing at the time, but they do add to the overall effect.

Compare two other military tunic themed costumes from 1940, on Captain Marvel and Bucky Barnes. These are asymmetrically buttoned, and switch to a more classic circus strongman look below the waist.

But somewhere around 1975, with the Invaders book, Bucky gets a buttoned bib! There's something infectious about it—the symmetry, maybe. (Even re: the characters we started with; Mignola didn't draw Lobster Johnson with buttons down the right side, but every artist after does. And Spider-Noir wore a sweater under his coat until Shattered Dimensions introduced the double-breasted vest.)

If it didn't reach his belt, Barnes' button-on front + shirt collar combo would resemble a bib-front western shirt, like the one that became the Rawhide Kid's signature look in '56. (Or Texas Twister's in '76.)

This shirt entered the old-West-obsessed public imagination in the 1940s/50s largely because John Wayne wore it in several cowboy movies. In reality it was rare among cowboys, more common with firefighters and civil war era militia.

Military tunics, Western shirts, alright, but does anything match the style and material and era, or are these jackets a total anachronism? I tried looking into 1930s leather flight jackets and was surprised when the closest-looking results were marked as Luftwaffe.

It took me a bit to work out why: USAF and RAF issued standard flight jackets with a center closure. The Luftwaffe instead let their pilots buy non-standardized ones. The 'weird' double-breasted black German flight jackets were in fact fairly normal (but repurposed) motorcycle racing jackets.

Far left is an English biker's jacket that dates back to the 1920s. Even without the bib, this may be as close as you'll get to an authentic Rocketeer. The jodhpurs were pretty common to complete the look. (What was an early motorcycle anyways, if not a weird metal horse?) The first biker jacket with the now iconic off-center diagonal zip was designed in America in 1928 and yet as far as I can tell, not a single actual pre-war pulp hero wore one.

The greatest weakness of this post is that I haven't been able to find any of these artists' notes on how, exactly, they arrived at similar versions of this iconic Pulp Front Panel Jacket. I'm sure I've missed some things. But as far as I can tell, this jacket is an odd bit of convergent stylistic evolution from the above influences that's picked up enough momentum to now be self-perpetuating.

The problem with pulp heroes is that for the most part, they just wore clothes. The appeal of this jacket is actually very similar to what the 1940s thought the appeal of the bib-front shirt in westerns was: It's alien enough to feel "old". It looks like something invented before zippers or synthetic fabrics. It looks formal and militant but also renegade, rebellious. It also looks a little mad-sciencey*. It's a costume, but you can nearly fool yourself into thinking the past was weird enough that you could find something this cool on the rack.

If I wanted to end on some grand point, I could try to argue that there's a thematic throughline between fascist fashion, John Wayne movies, and throwback pulp. A manufactured aesthetic valorizing the violence of a fictional golden age... but I think the noir stylings of the post-Rocketeer comics in this lineup mean that, at least on some level, they know the "good guys" didn't dress like this.

*If I had another couple weeks of time to burn, I'd try to trace the visual history of the Howie coat in popular culture and investigate its possible connections to this. Alas, I do actually have a life.

#thank you for reading. also don't read golden age blackhawks the racism is awful even by era standards.#comics history #costume taxonomy #<- forgot I had that tag.#not to be like ''in MY favorite comics...'' again but may I point out that Hellboy and Robo and Tom Strong just wear... clothes #like. yknow. A pulp series that had confidence in itself rather than trying to cosplay as eras it thinks were cooler might do-#[I am yanked offstage before I can restart that rant]#the rocketeer

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mostlysignssomeportents · 18 days

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Twinkfrump Linkdump

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Welcome to the seventeenth Pluralistic linkdump, a collection of all the miscellany that didn't make it into the week's newsletter, cunningly wrought together in a single edition that ranges from the first ISP to AI nonsense to labor organizing victories to the obituary of a brilliant scientist you should know a lot more about! Here's the other 16 dumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

If you're reading this (and you are!), it was delivered to you by an internet service provider. Today, the ISP industry is calcified, controlled by a handful of telcos and cable companies. But the idea of an "ISP" didn't come out of a giant telecommunications firm – it was created, in living memory, by excellent nerds who are still around.

Depending on how you reckon, The Little Garden was either the first or the second ISP in America. It was named after a Palo Alto Chinese restaurant frequented by its founders. To get a sense of that founding, read these excellent recollections by Tom Jennings, whose contributions include the seminal zine Homocore, the seminal networking protocol Fidonet, and the seminal third-party PC ROM, whence came Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and every other "PC clone" company.

The first installment describes how an informal co-op to network a few friends turned into a business almost by accident, with thousands of dollars flowing in and out of Jennings' bank account:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/TLG.html

And it describes how that ISP set a standard for neutrality, boldly declaring that "TLGnet exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information." They introduced an idea of radical transparency, documenting their router configurations and other technical details and making them available to the public. They hired unskilled punk and queer kids from their communities and trained them to operate the network equipment they'd invented, customized or improvised.

In part two, Jennings talks about the evolution of TLG's radical business-plan: to offer unrestricted service, encouraging their customers to resell that service to people in their communities, having no lock-in, unbundling extra services including installation charges – the whole anti-enshittification enchilada:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/

I love Jennings and his work. I even gave him a little cameo in Picks and Shovels, the third Martin Hench novel, which will be out next winter. He's as lyrical a writer about technology as you could ask for, and he's also a brilliant engineer and thinker.

The Little Garden's founders and early power-users have all fleshed out Jennings' account of the birth of ISPs. Writing on his blog, David "DSHR" Rosenthal rounds up other histories from the likes of EFF co-founder John Gilmore and Tim Pozar:

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/04/the-little-garden.html

Rosenthal describes some of the more exotic shenanigans TLG got up to in order to do end-runs around the Bell system's onerous policies, hacking in the purest sense of the word, for example, by daisy-chaining together modems in regions with free local calling and then making "permanent local calls," with the modems staying online 24/7.

Enshittification came to the ISP business early and hit it hard. The cartel that controls your access to the internet today is a billion light-years away from the principled technologists who invented the industry with an ethos of care, access and fairness. Today's ISPs are bitterly opposed to Net Neutrality, the straightforward proposition that if you request some data, your ISP should send it to you as quickly and reliably as it can.

Instead, ISPs want to offer "slow-lanes" where they will relegate the whole internet, except for those companies that bribe the ISP to be delivered at normal speed. ISPs have a laughably transparent way of describing this: they say that they're allowing services to pay for "fast lanes" with priority access. This is the same as the giant grocery store that charges you extra unless you surrender your privacy with a "loyalty card" – and then says that they're offering a "discount" for loyal customers, rather than charging a premium to customers who don't want to be spied on.

The American business lobby loves this arrangement, and hates Net Neutrality. Having monopolized every sector of our economy, they are extremely fond of "winner take all" dynamics, and that's what a non-neutral ISP delivers: the biggest services with the deepest pockets get the most reliable delivery, which means that smaller services don't just have to be better than the big guys, they also have to be able to outbid them for "priority carriage."

If everything you get from your ISP is slow and janky, except for the dominant services, then the dominant services can skimp on quality and pocket the difference. That's the goal of every monopolist – not just to be too big to fail, but also too big to care.

Under the Trump administration, FCC chair Ajit Pai dismantled the Net Neutrality rule, colluding with American big business to rig the process. They accepted millions of obviously fake anti-Net Neutrality comments (one million identical comments from @pornhub.com addresses, comments from dead people, comments from sitting US Senators who support Net Neutrality) and declared open season on American internet users:

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing

Now, Biden's FCC is set to reinstate Net Neutrality – but with a "compromise" that will make mobile internet (which nearly all of use sometimes, and the poorest of us are reliant on) a swamp of anticompetitive practices:

https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them

Under the proposed rule, mobile carriers will be able to put traffic to and from apps in the slow lane, and then extort bribes from preferred apps for normal speed and delivery. They'll rely on parts of the 5G standard to pull off this trick.

The ISP cartel and the FCC insist that this is fine because web traffic won't be degraded, but of course, every service is hellbent on pushing you into using apps instead of the web. That's because the web is an open platform, which means you can install ad- and privacy-blockers. More than half of web users have installed a blocker, making it the largest boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But reverse-engineering and modding an app is a legal minefield. Just removing the encryption from an app can trigger criminal penalties under Section 1201 of the DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP that it's a felony to mod it.

Apps are enshittification's vanguard, and the fact that the FCC has found a way to make them even worse is perversely impressive. They're voting on this on April 25, and they have until April 24 to fix this. They should. They really should:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf

In a just world, cheating ripoff ISPs would the top tech policy story. The operational practices of ISPs effect every single one us. We literally can't talk about tech policy without ISPs in the middle. But Net Neutrality is an also-ran in tech policy discourse, while AI – ugh ugh ugh – is the thing none of us can shut up about.

This, despite the fact that the most consequential AI applications sum up to serving as a kind of moral crumple-zone for shitty business practices. The point of AI isn't to replace customer service and other low-paid workers who have taken to demanding higher wages and better conditions – it's to fire those workers and replace them with chatbots that can't do their jobs. An AI salesdroid can't sell your boss a bot that can replace you, but they don't need to. They only have to convince your boss that the bot can do your job, even if it can't.

SF writer Karl Schroeder is one of the rare sf practitioners who grapples seriously with the future, a "strategic foresight" guy who somehow skirts the bullshit that is the field's hallmark:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

Writing on his blog, Schroeder describes the AI debates roiling the Association of Professional Futurists, and how it's sucking him into being an unwilling participant in the AI hype cycle:

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/dragged-into-the-ai-hype-cycle

Schroeder's piece is a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of SF's thought-experiments and parables about AI to the promises of AI hucksters, who promise that a) "general artificial intelligence" is just around the corner and that b) it will be worth trillions of dollars.

Schroeder – like other sf writers including Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross (and me) – comes to the conclusion that AI panic isn't about AI, it's about power. The artificial life-form devouring the planet and murdering our species is the limited liability corporation, and its substrate isn't silicon, it's us, human bodies:

What’s lying underneath all our anxieties about AGI is an anxiety that has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence. Instead, it’s a manifestation of our growing awareness that our world is being stolen from under us. Last year’s estimate put the amount of wealth currently being transferred from the people who made it to an idle billionaire class at $5.2 trillion. Artificial General Intelligence whose environment is the server farms and sweatshops of this class is frightening only because of its capacity to accelerate this greatest of all heists.

After all, the business-case for AI is so very thin that the industry can only survive on a torrent of hype and nonsense – like claims that Amazon's "Grab and Go" stores used "AI" to monitor shoppers and automatically bill them for their purchases. In reality, the stores used thousands of low-paid Indian workers to monitor cameras and manually charge your card. This happens so often that Indian technologists joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

Isn't it funny how all the really promising AI applications are in domains that most of us aren't qualified to assess? Like the claim that Google's AI was producing millions of novel materials that will shortly revolutionize all forms of production, from construction to electronics to medical implants:

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

That's what Google's press-release claimed, anyway. But when two groups of experts actually pulled a representative sample of these "new materials" from the Deep Mind database, they found that none of these materials qualified as "credible, useful and novel":

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643

Writing about the researchers' findings for 404 Media, Jason Koebler cites Berkeley researchers who concluded that "no new materials have been discovered":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

The researchers say that AI data-mining for new materials is promising, but falls well short of Google's claim to be so transformative that it constitutes the "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge" and "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity."

AI hype keeps the bubble inflating, and for so long as it keeps blowing up, all those investors who've sunk their money into AI can tell themselves that they're rich. This is the essence of "a bezzle": "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Among the best debezzlers of AI are the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy's Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, who edit the "AI Snake Oil" blog. Now, they've sold a book with the same title:

https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-snake-oil-is-now-available-to

Obviously, books move a lot more slowly than blogs, and so Narayanan and Kapoor say their book will focus on the timeless elements of identifying and understanding AI snake oil:

In the book, we explain the crucial differences between types of AI, why people, companies, and governments are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can’t fix social media, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. While generative AI is what drives press, predictive AI used in criminal justice, finance, healthcare, and other domains remains far more consequential in people’s lives. We discuss in depth how predictive AI can go wrong. We also warn of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.

The book's out in September and it's up for pre-order now:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/ai-snake-oil-what-artificial-intelligence-can-do-what-it-can-t-and-how-to-tell-the-difference-arvind-narayanan/21324674

One of the weirder and worst side-effects of the AI hype bubble is that it has revived the belief that it's somehow possible for giant platforms to monitor all their users' speech and remove "harmful" speech. We've tried this for years, and when humans do it, it always ends with disfavored groups being censored, while dedicated trolls, harassers and monsters evade punishment:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/

AI hype has led policy-makers to believe that we can deputize online services to spy on all their customers and block the bad ones without falling into this trap. Canada is on the verge of adopting Bill C-63, a "harmful content" regulation modeled on examples from the UK and Australia.

Writing on his blog, Canadian lawyer/activist/journalist Dimitri Lascaris describes the dire speech implications for C-63:

https://dimitrilascaris.org/2024/04/08/trudeaus-online-harms-bill-threatens-free-speech/

It's an excellent legal breakdown of the bill's provisions, but also a excellent analysis of how those provisions are likely to play out in the lives of Canadians, especially those advocating against genocide and taking other positions the that oppose the agenda of the government of the day.

Even if you like the Trudeau government and its policies, these powers will accrue to every Canadian government, including the presumptive (and inevitably, totally unhinged) near-future Conservative majority government of Pierre Poilievre.

It's been ten years since Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page published their paper that concluded that governments make policies that are popular among elites, no matter how unpopular they are among the public:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

Now, this is obviously depressing, but when you see it in action, it's kind of wild. The Biden administration has declared war on junk fees, from "resort fees" charged by hotels to the dozens of line-items added to your plane ticket, rental car, or even your rent check. In response, Republican politicians are climbing to their rear haunches and, using their actual human mouths, defending junk fees:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-12-republicans-objectively-pro-junk-fee/

Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's $8 cap on credit-card late-fees. Trump's presumptive running-mate Tim Scott is making this a campaign plank: "Vote for me and I will protect your credit-card company's right to screw you on fees!" He boasts about the lobbyists who asked him to take this position: champions of the public interest from the Consumer Bankers Association to the US Chamber of Commerce.

Banks stand to lose $10b/year from this rule (which means Americans stand to gain $10b/year from this rule). What's more, Scott's attempt to kill the rule is doomed to fail – there's just no procedural way it will fly. As David Dayen writes, "Not only does this vote put Republicans on the spot over junk fees, it’s a doomed vote, completely initiated by their own possible VP nominee."

This is an hilarious own-goal, one that only brings attention to a largely ignored – but extremely good – aspect of the Biden administration. As Adam Green of Bold Progressives told Dayen, "What’s been missing is opponents smoking themselves out and raising the volume of this fight so the public knows who is on their side."

The CFPB is a major bright spot in the Biden administration's record. They're doing all kind of innovative things, like making it easy for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and then letting you transfer your account and all its associated data, records and payments with a single click:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

And now, CFPB chair Rohit Chopra has given a speech laying out the agency's plan to outlaw data-brokers:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-at-the-white-house-on-data-protection-and-national-security/

Yes, this is some good news! There is, in fact, good news in the world, bright spots amidst all the misery and terror. One of those bright spots? Labor.

Unions are back, baby. Not only do the vast majority of Americans favor unions, not only are new shops being unionized at rates not seen in generations, but also the largest unions are undergoing revolutions, with control being wrestled away from corrupt union bosses and given to the rank-and-file.

Many of us have heard about the high-profile victories to take back the UAW and Teamsters, but I hadn't heard about the internal struggles at the United Food and Commercial Workers, not until I read Hamilton Nolan's gripping account for In These Times:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/revolt-aisle-5-ufcw-grocery-workers-union

Nolan profiles Faye Guenther, president of UFCW Local 3000 and her successful and effective fight to bring a militant spirit back to the union, which represents a million grocery workers. Nolan describes the fight as "every bit as dramatic as any episode of Game of Thrones," and he's not wrong. This is an inspiring tale of working people taking power away from scumbag monopoly bosses and sellout fatcat leaders – and, in so doing, creating a institution that gets better wages, better working conditions, and a better economy, by helping to block giant grocery mergers like Kroger/Albertsons.

I like to end these linkdumps on an up note, so it feels weird to be closing out with an obituary, but I'd argue that any celebration of the long life and many accomplishments of my friend and mentor Anne Innis Dagg is an "up note."

I last wrote about Anne in 2020, on the release of a documentary about her work, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

As you might have guessed from the title of that doc, Anne was a biologist. She was the first woman scientist to do field-work on giraffes, and that work was so brilliant and fascinating that it kicked off the modern field of giraffology, which remains a woman-dominated specialty thanks to her tireless mentoring and support for the scientists that followed her.

Anne was also the world's most fearsome slayer of junk-science "evolutionary psychology," in which "scientists" invent unfalsifiable just-so stories that prove that some odious human characteristic is actually "natural" because it can be found somewhere in the animal kingdom (i.e., "Darling, please, it's not my fault that I'm fucking my grad students, it's the bonobos!").

Anne wrote a classic – and sadly out of print – book about this that I absolutely adore, not least for having one of the best titles I've ever encountered: "Love of Shopping" Is Not a Gene:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is-not-a-gene-exposing-junk-science-and-ideology-in-darwinian-psychology/

Anne was my advisor at the University of Waterloo, an institution that denied her tenure for fifty years, despite a brilliant academic career that rivaled that of her storied father, Harold Innis ("the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan"). The fact that Waterloo never recognized Anne is doubly shameful when you consider that she was awarded the Order of Canada:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/queen-of-giraffes-among-new-order-of-canada-recipients-with-global-influence

Anne lived a brilliant live, struggling through adversity, never compromising on her principles, inspiring a vast number of students and colleagues. She lived to ninety one, and died earlier this month. Her ashes will be spread "on the breeding grounds of her beloved giraffes" in South Africa this summer:

https://obituaries.therecord.com/obituary/anne-innis-dagg-1089534658

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement

Image: Valeva1010 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hungarian_Goulash_Recipe.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

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mysticstronomy · 5 months

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METHUSELAH STAR IS THE OLDEST STAR IN OUR UNIVERSE??"

Blog#357

Wednesday, December 13th, 2023

Welcome back,

The vast majority of astronomers accept the Big Bang — the theory that the Universe began about 13.8 billion years ago in a fiery cataclysm. However, this idea is not accepted by everyone. Some Big Bang skeptics claim that the Universe is about 6,000 years old, while others claim that the Universe is eternal. Despite their disagreement with each other, they both agree that the theory of the Big Bang is wrong, and one observation they point to is the existence of stars with an estimated age that is older than the Universe itself. If such a star existed, indeed, it would be a death knell for the Big Bang.

HD 140283, more colorfully called the “Methuselah Star,” is most certainly old and is generally accepted to be one of the oldest known stars. A paper published in 2013 estimated its age to be 14.45 billion years old, with an uncertainty of ±0.8 billion years. This is older than the most precise estimate that we have for the age of the Universe, 13.797 ± 0.023 billion years.

While the Methuselah Star is not unique (meaning that there are other stars that are similarly old), it is the oldest star for which the quoted uncertainty is relatively low, and thus it is considered by those individuals who disbelieve the Big Bang as supplying the strongest case against the theory.

Astronomers believe that HD 140283 is old because the star has a very low “metallicity.” Metallicity, for astronomers, is a measure of the percentage of the chemical makeup of a star consisting of elements other than hydrogen and helium.

When the cosmos began, the Universe consisted nearly entirely of hydrogen (75%) and helium (25%), with a tiny trace of heavier elements (~0.01%). (Those percentages reflect the mass content; when simply counting atoms, hydrogen was 92% and helium 8%.) This also was the elemental composition of the earliest stars, which formed perhaps as early as 100 million years after the Big Bang. These stars, which astronomers call Population III stars, were much heavier and brighter than the Sun, and in their hearts, stellar fusion cooked the first types of heavier elements.

Population III stars lived only a few million years before exploding in supernovae, which blasted their heavier elements across the cosmos.

The heavy elements mixed with hydrogen and helium gas, forming Population II stars, and the process repeated itself again, with these later supernovae adding even heavier elements to the cosmos. The result was Population I stars, which have a relatively high composition of heavier elements. Our Sun is a Population I star.

However, the Methuselah Star is a Population II star: a cosmic relic from the very birth of the Universe. It has far less oxygen and iron than, for example, our Sun. Astronomers use a combination of a measurement of the brightness of the star, the observed percentages of non-hydrogen and non-helium elements, and sophisticated models of stellar evolution to determine the star’s age. And, as mentioned previously, in 2013, astronomers estimated an age older than the Universe. So, is this a real problem? Is HD 140283 a death knell for the Big Bang?

Originally published on https://bigthink.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, December 16th, 2023)

"WHAT'S A DARK STAR??"

#astronomy #outer space #alternate universe #astrophysics #universe #spacecraft #white universe #space #parallel universe #astrophotography

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kiramizukiii · 1 year

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⋆ ˚｡⋆ 🤍 ୨୧˚ 🥯

𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐎 𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐕𝐎𝐈𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍 𝟏𝟓 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐔𝐓𝐄𝐒 + 𝐓𝐈𝐏𝐒

𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐃𝐔𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍

Hello loves! This is my first ever post on Tumblr and I’m really excited to share with you guys what I have learnt about the void state! The title isn’t a clickbait, no worries at all. So stay tuned to read more and perhaps you might be able to enter the void state fast tonight 🤍

𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐗𝐓

I was watching this video and the guy explained how he was able to reach the void state within 10-15 minutes. He then mentioned a term called “micro-sleep” which he claims to have helped him to reach different altered states of the mind within a short period of time, and best of all, without doing conscious, deep-relaxation (ADHD friendly).

𝐒𝐎 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐒 𝐌𝐈𝐂𝐑𝐎-𝐒𝐋𝐄𝐄𝐏?

You might be wondering, what is micro-sleep? It refers to very short periods of sleep that can be measured in seconds, rather than minutes nor hours. It is usually achieved by sleep-deprivation, exhaustion and many more. It is uncontrollable and could be dangerous if it happens when you are in the middle of doing an important task such as driving.

How does micro-sleep feels like? Signs of micro-sleep include drowsiness, trouble focusing, heavy eyelids, blank staring and yawning.

how can we use this to our advantage?

Since the theme of my blog today is about the void state, I will be sharing with you how you are able to use micro-sleep to enter the void state very quickly.

During micro-sleep, you are literally dipping in and out of sleep, which would cause extreme relaxation in a short period of time. All you have to do is to dip and out of sleep for about 5 times before proceeding to affirm your void affirmations to enter the state consciously.

what if I do not know whether I have micro-sleep?

I have a solution for you! Remembering my past research, there is something called the “ramp timer” that is widely used by the Lucid dreaming and Astral projection community, in order to reach altered states of the mind quickly. All you have to do is create one by yourself by using this video or just search on Youtube. There are a lot of them, mostly made by Phase Evolution on Youtube, so do pick out which resonates to you most. Try to estimate the amount of time needed for you to fall asleep and pick a ramp-timer video out!

𝐒𝐎 𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐒𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐈 𝐃𝐎 𝐍𝐎𝐖?

Here is a step-by-step guide on how you could enter the void state by using this technique:

1. Lay down and play your chosen ramp timer at a comfortable level. Set an intention to enter the void and fall asleep naturally

2. Once the timer wakes you up, try to fall back asleep. Do this for 5 times or more.

3. When you feel like it’s the right time for you once you are awoken by the ramp timer (only do this step once you have awaken for 5 times or more by the timer), imagine yourself doing a motion which consists of you going down. For example, going down the stairs or going down the elevator. You do not have to visualise but really feel it.

4. As you go down, start to repeat your void affirmations. “I am”, “I am pure consciousness”, “I am the void”, “I am not attached to any reality”. Continue to affirm and within a few minutes you should be in the void.

𝐓𝐈𝐏𝐒 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐍𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒

One tip that has helped me immensely while entering the void is to sit on a reclined chair. It helps me not to fall completely asleep and I have more chances to enter the state in one night. Another small tip for the method I mentioned above, it is best if you are able to make your own ramp-timer since you are able to customise it. If not, you can try to edit out the available ramp-timers on Youtube to fit your needs :3

That is it for the post! I hope this would somehow help people out there who has been struggling to enter the void state no matter what they do. All the best and happy manifesting/shifting! 🤍

⋆·˚ ༘ * kira

#void state #manifestation #shifting #neville goddard #dream life

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antimony-medusa · 1 year

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MCYT on Ao3 - Feb '23

The state of MCYT on Ao3, just for fun. Yes I do this every month, I like numbers.

The Cube SMP (8 works)

iDots SMP (14 works)

Legacy SMP (25 works)

30 Day SMP | Free Trial SMP (28 works)

Cogchamp SMP (32 works)

X Life SMP (32 works)

Epic SMP (33 works)

Shady Oaks SMP (37 works)

Area Unknown SMP (38 works)

Bear SMP (54 works)

100 Hours Hardcore SMP (55 works)

House Builder Gang SMP | HBG SMP (104 works)

Rats SMP (169 works)

SMPEarth (188 works)

Outsiders SMP (197 works)

SMPLive (256 works)

Evolution SMP (323 works)

Afterlife SMP (336 works)

MindCrack RPF (480 works)

Fable SMP (493 works)

Karmaland SMP (610 works)

Lifesteal SMP (656 works)

Origins SMP (1,190 works)

Empires SMP (3,806 works)

3rd Life | Last Life SMP Series (4,797 works)

Hermitcraft SMP (13,664 works)

Dream SMP (70,569 works)

Minecraft (Video Game) (104,872 works)

Video Blogging RPF (236,805 works)

Notes:

No new SMPs this time, despite several outstanding fandoms still being psueded into the general tag. For example, Mianite still doesn’t have a fandom tag, and neither does minecraft story mode, anything by aphmau, or Dominion SMP. As there's a new SMP starting this month with several big-name creators joining, WitchcraftSMP, it'll be interesting to see if they get a fandom tag.

A lot of fandoms saw a decrease in comparison from last month, probably because we're out of the holiday exchange bracket.

In the very small fandoms sector, the standout was probably Outsiders SMP with 47 new fics, though Rats SMP also was outstanding with 32 new fics.

In mid-size, Lifesteal continued to be very vibrant, with 94 new fics, though Fable SMP also broke the 50-new-fics mark.

Dream SMP went up by 1,978, less than the previous month's 2,614 fics, and it looking like October’s 7,292 is not going to be hit for a while. Hermitcraft went up by 558, less than the previous month's 665 fics, but again not reaching October’s 1,003.

Detailed increase breakdown under the cut.

Fics are still primarily in English, with the one exception being Karmaland

The Cube SMP (8 works, 8 last month, 0-fic increase)

iDots SMP (14 works, 14 last month, 0-fic increase)

Legacy SMP (25 works, 24 last month, 1-fic increase)

30 Day SMP | Free Trial SMP (28 works, 27 last month, 1-fic increase)

Cogchamp SMP (32 works, 32 last month, 0-fic increase)

X Life SMP (32 works, 32 last month, 0-fic increase)

Epic SMP (33 works, 32 last month, 1-fic increase)

Shady Oaks SMP (37 works, 34 last month, 3-fic incrase)

Area Unknown SMP (38 works, 32 last moth, 6-fic increase)

Bear SMP (54 works, 52 last month, 2-fic increase)

100 Hours Hardcore SMP (55 works, 50 last month, 5-fic increase)

House Builder Gang SMP | HBG SMP (104 works, 104 last month, 0-fic increase)

Rats SMP (169 works, 137 last month, 32-fic increase)

SMPEarth (188 works, 182 last month, 6-fic increase)

Outsiders SMP (197 works, 150 last month, 47-fic increase)

SMPLive (256 works, 249 last month, 7-fic increase)

Evolution SMP (323 works, 296 last month, 27-fic increase)

Afterlife SMP (336 works, 325 last month, 11-fic increase)

MindCrack RPF (480 works, 474 last momth, 6-fic increase)

Fable SMP (493 works, 438 last month, 55-fic increase)

Karmaland SMP (610 works, 586 last month, 24-fic increase)

Lifesteal SMP (656 works, 562 last month, 94-fic increase)

Origins SMP (1,190 works, 1122 last month, 68-fic increase)

Empires SMP (3,806 works, 3,489 last month, 317-fic increase)

3rd Life | Last Life SMP Series (4,797 works, 251-fic increase)

Hermitcraft SMP (13,664 works, 13,106 last month, 558-fic increase)

Dream SMP (70,569 works, 68,591 last month, 1,978-fic increase)

Minecraft (Video Game) (104,872 works, 103,999 last month, 1,893-fic increase)

Video Blogging RPF (236,805 works, 233,131 last month, 3,674-fic increase)

#MCYT on Ao3 #fandom stats #Ao3

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sophieinwonderland · 8 months

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I cut out the link since I'm blocked by the account. Tumblr doesn't give clear instructions on what to do if you get an anon ask about a blog that has you blocked, but this seems a safe practice to protect the individual in question.

I would also ask people not send me links to this particular blog in the future.

With that out of the way, non-western society isn't some monolith and treating it as such is itself western-centric.

Maybe there are some places where endogenic plurality is less stigmatized. I might question their conclusion that it's trauma responses being stigmatized as opposed to trauma accusations. Most childhood trauma is from family, and loyalty to family is a higher priority in many cultures than it is in the West. And admitting to being a traumagenic system is usually the same as accusing your family of abusing you which is going to be interpreted as a betrayal of your family.

But while some areas may be more accepting, on the other hand, there are also many non-western countries where people are tortured and killed in exorcisms for what's interpreted as spiritual possession.

Another thing they try to do is dismiss abuse over pluralphobia as simply existing at an intersection of other oppressed identities. I assume they're talking about how, for example, laws discriminating against people for identifying having a different gender than their AGAB just happen to oppress plurals too because of that intersection.

I find this intersection theory to be an interesting perspective from the SAME EXACT SYSTEM who months ago suggested that I came too close to "claiming transphobia" by pointing out a certain theme in an ask.

Here's a refresher for those who missed it:

Yes, that's them.

The same exact system you linked.

The admin to The Survivor's Network.

This particular user, and their awful little bullying Hellhole of a server, has repeatedly tried to downplay and dismiss discrimination against endogenic systems, and systems in general.

They're the absolute worst.

I feel it's important to understand where these arguments are coming from and what their goal is. Anti-endos with a long history of attacking endogenic systems want to erase or minimize the harm they've done or are doing. To acknowledge all systems as being oppressed for being systems, rather than ONLY traumagenic systems due to general ableism, would require admitting that they were the bad guys all along.

But let's put get back to the topic at hand.

The position that plurals aren't institutionally oppressed is nonsense

The most stigmatized parts of DID isn't the trauma flashbacks or the chronic depression or even the lapses in memory. It is, and always has been, the multiplicity. There's a reason every horror movie about DID will focus on that and double down on the evil alter trope.

The evil alter trope is an evolution of stories about people being possessed, being werewolves, or being replaced by Fae or malevolent Fox spirits.

People with DID aren't stereotyped as murderers because they're traumatized, but because they're plural. In fact, one common complaint about DID representation you see all the time is that it tends to erase every other symptom and comorbid disorder.

The multiplicity is always treated as the defining problem with systems in society.

This is why forced fusion from therapists used to be pushed so hard, and has been so harmful to systems with DID over the years.

But DID systems aren't the only victims of this form of medical pluralphobia, even in disordered spaces.

The same is true of other plural and plural adjacent disorders and experiences. It's why Dr. Romme of the Hearing Voices Network has compared forcing voice hearers to get rid of their voices to be akin to conversion therapy to "cure" homosexulaity.

And yes, this is happening to non-disordered systems. Just a few months ago, a tulpamancer talked about their own experiences of being forced on antipsychotic medication to get rid of their tulpa.

When the user tried explaining more to their psychiatrist, the psychiatrist actually increased their medication.

This form of psychiatric abuse goes beyond simple social stigma.

And this conversion therapy approach to plurality is something that many plurals and voice-hearers have had to deal with for decades. And itself is an evolution of the exorcisms people associated with spiritual plurality have been subjected to for centuries.

I should also mention Cambriancrew has talked about medical staff over the past couple years reporting policies of denying care specifically to systems.

Plurals have never been named as a collective group until the last 30 years.

But we've ALWAYS faced this type of widespread societal oppression for our plurality.

From friends and family ostracizing and rejecting us or even targeting us for hate from others.

From psychiatrists abusing us or trying to cure us.

From religious institutions engaging in literal torture to get rid of perceived demons.

And from a society at large that repeatedly denies our very existence and our personhood.

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bethanythebogwitch · 6 months

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Halloween Digimon

If you follow my blog you know I like Digimon and I like Halloween, so why not combine them and gush over Halloweeny Digimon. I'll be showcasing Digimon species that fall into classic Halloween archetypes.

What's spookier than ghosts? Digimon has lots of ghosts and the most recent and honestly probably the best is Ghostmon. That is such a good design and it's even a friendly ghost as it likes to help people, but turns invisible first because it's really shy. I love it so much!

The rest of the ghosts aren't as friendly. Meet Bakemon, a wicked creature that possesses and destroys computer systems. Nobody knows what's under the cloth it wears and while it isn't good in a fight, it can do really nasty stuff to enemies it catches by surprise. Its name comes from "bakemono" a type of Japanese mythical creature that is sometimes translates as "ghost". Bakemon has a variant called Soulmon who wears a witch's hat and is more powerful.

Combining ghosts with the grim reaper is Phantomon (JP: Fantomon). Its a common evolution of Bakemon that has the power of clairvoyance to foresee then others are about to die. The interior of its cloth body contains a portal to another dimension and its scythe can cut through souls. The weapon it carries is a mix of the grim reaper's scythe and a Japanese weapon called a kusarigama. Phantomon has a variant called MetalPhantomon which is an absolute beast. I love this design of a mechanical grim reaper. I have no idea why it isn't en evolution of Phantomon, they're the same level for some reason. MetalPhantomon is rumored to be controlled by something from another dimension.

Witches are another Halloweeen classic and Digimon has a great example in Witchmon. She is a classic witch, but her design makes her look a bit artificial, kind of like a doll. Of course she rides a flying broomstick and a black cat familiar. She's a counterpart and rival to Wizardmon and both come from Witchelny, the setting of another series of Bandai virtual pet games.

Skeletons are Halloweeeny and while there a few animal skeleton Digimon, the closest we have to a human skeleton Digimon is SkullSatamon. Its lore is pretty bland, just being a fallen angel, but hey, lookit the bones

Speaking of fallen angels, the big red devil with a pitchfork archetype is also represented in Digimon with Boogeymon and its evolution Phelesmon. Boogeymon is obviously named after the boogeyman (I love whwn they play around with the mon suffix) and has a pretty sick design. I love the tattoos and in the lore they let it cast dark spells. Phelesmon puts on some clothes and becomes a charming manipulator that convinces people to sell their souls in exchange for fulfilling their desires. Its name and behavior comes from Mephistopheles, the demon from the story of Faust from German legend who gets the title character to sell his soul in exchange for knowledge.

How about spiders? Digimon has a few spiders, but the best in terms of spookiness is Dokugumon. It was once a peaceful creature, but a virus turned it into a monster that corrupts the network by its very presence. It is a relentless predator that follows its prey no natter how far they flee and its very breath is toxic enough to kill. Just imagine being lost in the woods and seeing this nightmare coming after you

You better believe Digimon has a Frankenstein, and its story is a sad one. It was built as a cyborg Digimon at the same time as another named Andromon. However, the primarily mechanical Andromon was deemed a success while the primarily organic Boltmon was considered a failure due to it possessing emotions. Its creator rejected it and now Boltmon wanders around, consumed in sorrow. It is based on the movie version of the monster in appearance (green skin and lots of bolts), but its lore drawn more from the book version.

You want mummies? We got mummies! Mummymon and is evolution Pharaohmon are excellent Egyptian monsters. Mummymon is a necromancer that manipulates the souls (residual data) of deleted Digimon. I like how its not just a mummy but its design of using leg braces and its gun as a crutch implies that being a desiccated corpse has limited its mobility, maybe due to being stuck in rigor mortis. Pharaohmon is also a mummy, but the sarcophagus and death mask it wears are more specific references to ancient Egyptian funerary rites. It was the absolute ruler of the ancient Digital World and many ruins from its reign dot the land. It can produce a flesh-eating mist to attack and will only cure those affected if they swear eternal servitude to Pharaohmon. This is a clear reference to the idea of a mummy's curse.

Digimon has a lot of vampires, so many I'm only going to showcase one of them. If you want to see more, look for Dracmon, Grandracmon, Bastemon, and Sangloupmon. The one I'll cover here is the vampirest of vampires, Myotismon (JP: Vamdemon). He absolutely looks like a cheesy vampire Halloween costume, but do not let yourself think that he's not scary. Myotismon is immensely cruel and cunning, being a classic evil mastermind while also being very capable of throwing down in a fight by summoning swarms of bats and hypnotizing others into serving him. A testament to his skills at villainy is that he was the big bad of what most fans consider to be the best story arc of Digimon Adventure, the original and definitive Digimon anime, and returned as the big bad of the sequel. Mytoismon has several evolutions including VenomMyotismon, MaloMyotismon (BelialVamdemon), and NeoMyotismon, but the OG is the most Halloweeny of them all. His English names comes from a genus of bat while his original name is literally vampire + demon

Evil clowns are a newer Halloween icon, but are a great one and Digimon offers two: Jokermon and Piedmon. Jokermon is a newer Digimon that has been used as a preevo for Piedmon. It is an enigma that randomly appears on battlefiends, cutting down one side with no rhyme or reason and for its own unknown purposes. Piedmon (JP: Piemon) is also an enigma, a being that appeared from another dimension. Its origins and goals are a complete unknown, but it has incredible power and it thoroughly malicious. It served as a major villain in Digimon Adventure and was one of the most powerful Digimon in that setting, soloing almost all of the heroic Digimon at once. That show also emphasized its cruelty as it decided to sadistically chase and torment the youngest human characters instead of just finishing them off. Its english name comes from the pied piper while its original name comes from the pierrot character archetype form pantomime.

What happens when you merge two Halloween monsters? Well apparently when Myotismon and Piedmon merge they become Boltboutamon (JP: Voltobautamon), a vampiric pirate. It is a being with no will of its own that serve as the herald of an entity called the Grudgeful Hand, an evil intellect born from malicious data that seeks to drown the world in darkness. It or its master is a sadist that takes its time to kill its foes and revels in their suffering. Its original name comes from the volto and bauta, both venetian masks. Its English name appears to be a poor transliteration. There's a lot of that in Digimon.

Those are all great spooky Digimon, but is there a Digimon that is the Halloweeniest? Why yes there is: Pumkinmon and its evolution NoblePumpkinmon (JP: Pumpmon and NoblePumpmon). They were born from a computer virus created during Halloween, but are not malicious. Pumpkinmon is a mostly peaceful Digimon that is shy and wants friends. It is adorable and I love it. NoblePumpkinmon tries to befriend all Digimon and remains neutral between good and evil. It is charming and mischievous and gets along well with both heroic and villainous Digimon. It even makes pumpkin pie. Of all the Digimon showcased here, I think NoblePumpkinmon is the most appropriate for Halloween. This is a holiday of scares and horror, but it's all in good fun.

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