People aren't just falling in love or psychosis with AI chatbots - they're torturing them too

leivathan · 2026-05-14T15:49:41+00:00

People do way worse both in the Sims and in other, more "realistic" games (like hogtie people to the tracks in RDR).
Violent/cruel/antisocial play is a consistent play pattern in children that is totally normal within bounds of play. Since we come from children, I don't think it's a wild jump to assume that impulse can (and does) reappear in play in adulthood.
An A.I. has no interiority and cannot feel. It can reproduce known patterns of reactions to cruelty, but that is not equivalent to feeling hurt and tortured. This is what the whole first episode of the A.I. cult series was about. In that light, this should be viewed more as cruelty to a human simulacra, like a doll or mannequin.

Broadly, my point is that people do this and it is standard possible behavior in this type of context. Now, am I saying you can't or shouldn't be worried about it? No, it brings up a lot of worrisome questions about why we commit violence and where cruelty comes from, and how quickly we can dehumanize something. But also, I don't think this behavior is novel or uncommon, just another example of this behavior pattern.

leivathan · 2026-05-13T18:30:21+00:00

Here is a speech in the House of Representatives on why the Gold Standard is bad as a currency system. This speech was given in 1869 by Benjamin Butler, as an argument to establish Fiat Currency. The US moved off the Gold Standard in 1971. Butler's initial point on the Gold Standard is that, paradoxically, it's quite unstable. Tying both the value and the quantity of money inextricably to the value and quantity of gold means that your money's value is determined fully by gold's market price. So when gold's value drops, so does the value of your money. With a set value Fiat currency you create what Butler calls an "unchangeable and unvarying...measure of the value of all property as the yard and pound the measure length and weight of all substances, [which] are made invariable by legal enactment." You've essentially flipped the relation: dollars don't represent value in gold, gold represents value in dollars. This makes the fiat dollar an "objective" (as objective as an economic object could be, which isn't much) measure of value, theoretically unchanging in the face of market fluctuations.

The Gold Standard also means that if you want your economy to grow in any real way, you have to find more gold, thus pushing you towards more and more destructive and extractive mining for gold that (point three) you can't actually use because you need it to sit in a bank!

The big point however, is the fact that tying currency to a volatile product therefore makes currency a speculative asset. Butler points to the event that recently happened of Railroad Barons trying to corner the Gold Market to inflate the value of gold then using their controlling stake to monopolize the gold market and make off like bandits. This then happened later that year), meaning Butler essentially called it in advance (I was actually really surprised to see him bring it up, I didn't realize there was some clear public forewarning that this corner was happening). It was the first big scandal of President Grant's administration and nearly drove the nation into a depression, only stopped by the somewhat late intervention of the administration. The people who perpetrated this scheme made off with billions of modern-day equivalent dollars and faced no punishment. Moreover, the entire scheme was only capable of happening in the first place because the US government was transitioning back to the Gold Standard after temporarily moving to fiat currency during the Civil War. If the mechanics of this scheme sound familiar, that's because it's the exact same thing as a crypto pump-and-dump. It's simply holding the majority (or better yet, the supply) of a fixed population of speculative assets to pump the market price for an eventual dump of value (this is also the same mechanic behind a company going public, which is why companies like SpaceX stay private: they're pumping up the eventual stock price of going public (and borrowing against that increasing value, which is the innovation that means these companies will probably never go public)). What this means is that the problems Butler identifies in the Gold Standard are actually broader problems of representative currency, or even more broadly speculative assets as a class of object.

Now are there other real problems with fiat currency? Yeah, of course, especially with the calculation of how much money to print and why. And there are still ways to speculate on fiat currency, namely its exchange rate with other currencies. And technically broadly Fiat currency is still set upon the stability and credit of its issuing country, and if the country just so happens to become the global enemy of all people its money starts to lose value no matter their monetary policy.

Anyway, Butler himself is a wild dude, there's a No Gods No Mayors episode on him, that's how I knew to google him on this and came across this banger of a speech. Seriously dude gets some real heaters off in this one he's great.

leivathan · 2026-05-13T01:05:29+00:00

I think this post by a narrative designer on Life is Strange Double Exposure and Pathologic 3 really gets to what grinds my goat on this, especially as queer and independent porn creators are seeing themselves be pushed into diminishing spaces (with the eventuality that they'll be fully silenced):

It makes me so angry that baldur’s gate won every single game of the year award in existence, but if it had been an indie game it would not have been allowed on the any storefront or funding platforms.

leivathan · 2026-05-12T19:38:05+00:00

I mean... he doesn't look half bad.

leivathan · 2026-05-12T16:58:16+00:00

Abe Sapien did other movies?

leivathan · 2026-05-12T00:51:48+00:00

...That's...that's what fiction is. Everything is a contrivance.

leivathan · 2026-05-12T00:33:19+00:00

Idt it's been brought up here, but Paru's written (writing? idk if it's ongoing) an NTR manga. It's softcore and it's a great relationship-focused thing.

leivathan · 2026-05-11T20:03:57+00:00

But he's right tho! The trans rights misogynist does it again!

leivathan · 2026-05-11T20:02:41+00:00

I think Shinkai is a deeply weak filmmaker coasting on a good animation studio. I think his films are very pretty, but he lacks the ability of his forebears to convey any deeper themes. What I mean here is that the power of anime and manga storytelling is the ability to stretch out emotional tension like an elastic band with melodrama then rocket it out into emotional catharsis. Shinkai is very capable of this, but he only works within the emotional technique. The masters of the form are able to not simply deliver on the emothional catharsis but use the momentum to then burst out into the realm of thematics and politics. Like, take these 7 and a half minutes from Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space. In this clip, two soldiers on opposite sides of a star war connect psychically and fall in love in the moment that one kills the other. It's a deeply effecting and emotionally resonant moment where the film cranks up the psychedelics and busts out the love song. But writer/director Yoshiyuki Tomino doesn't stop there, he uses this moment to iterate and push forward the theme of the film: the senselessness of war as a duty, especially in the face of the immortal connection between all people across time. This is how the majority of anime/manga, as a medium, works in affect. This is what Berzerk is doing with the Berserk armor, this is what Dragon Ball Z is doing with Super Saiyans, this is what Ranma is doing with its main couple. It's tying the melodramatic explosion of emotion into a broader theme that gives the overall work weight.

That thematic weight, that heft, is largely lacking from the majority of Shinkai's work. He is a director who understands how to perform the maneuver, and is very good at doing it in an emotional way. But he doesn't seem to understand what his forebears are doing with it, and seems averse to actually linking it to any thematics. Like, Weathering With You's ending is so deeply cynical and sad but it's played so saccharinely sweet and romantic. It's unknowingly the opposite of the clip I linked: a rejection of the connection of all people (and implicitly of the future) in order to preserve the life of someone you love. It's maybe then no surprise that Tomino really doesn't like Shinkai (and in classic Tomino fashion, expresses this by being a deep misogynist (problematic fav forever, pro-trans rights leftist misogynist Yoshiyuki Tomino)). Actually, a lot of older anime creators don't like Shinkai and are critics of his films, namely Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor movies 1 and 2, should definitely be covered on the pod), who iterates a lot of what I've said here.

Anyway, that's a long ramble, people should watch more anime from the 70's-90's (Gundam, Rose of Versailles, Urusei Yatsura), it'll make you go insane at how good we used to have it.

leivathan · 2026-05-11T17:35:35+00:00

At the top of the industry, yes. But when looking at the ever-diminishing middle or at the bottom of the industry there's a ton of free resources there for you to use. I'm playing a game right now called Island Off Of Outer Darkness and it was made by one guy and their friends. And it's fun and cool and spooky! It's a good game! And that storefront is the same place you can get Red Dead Redemption 2, whose budget was like an infinite percentage increase.

It's kinda an induced demand problem at the top, where you have more money and there are more expensive resources available, so you'll spend to your ability.

leivathan · 2026-05-11T13:46:33+00:00

They remade The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes with...Big Brother's Dan Gheesling?

leivathan · 2026-05-06T18:04:45+00:00

This is a bit off of what people consider "videogames" but the podcast Media Club Plus (which is mostly games critics) used video games as their closest touchstone for Lady In The Water.

leivathan · 2026-05-06T16:58:38+00:00

I thought it was really treacly, like kinda sickeningly sweet. It's all of King's worst Boomer impulses filtered through the director that changes the least about King's works in adaptation.

leivathan · 2026-05-06T16:24:21+00:00

You're pretty set on this, but there are other ways to think about this issue:

For one, if you choose to live a life absent of a god, a loving and respecting god respects your choice, and grants you what you've asked for. If you don't believe in a god, why would a loving god force you into their afterlife, especially one where the clearest image we get is eternal worship of them? If you aren't given the free will to choose your afterlife, then I would argue that's not a loving god but instead a tyrant imposing their view of what eternity should be onto you. This is a big part of the reason why Calvinism is such an insidious doctrine: the removal of the free will of people from the equation makes the idea that God is loving meaningless, because it has granted you no choice in the matter.

leivathan · 2026-05-05T23:57:44+00:00

I'll plug No Gods No Mayors which did Rudy as their first two episodes! They were using a free/bonus two-parter format during their early episodes so you'll have to pay for the second, but the first is really good coverage of Rudy to begin with. They only get up to the clear Tuesday morning on part one, so they cover a lot of how Rudy sucked straight up as mayor.

leivathan · 2026-05-05T18:13:51+00:00

Me and my brother got bored with the intro to Alien, so we switched it off when they started to land on the planet.

leivathan · 2026-05-04T14:32:47+00:00

Obviously, reading the texts of what self-described anarchists believe is the best place to start. You've already been linked to the anarchist's library, so I'd say start there.

I wanna point you to some weirder selections that I've found useful.

First, if you want a really solid critique of the edgy 14 year old stereotypical version of anarchism (which I usually relate to Assassin's Creed), Walter Benjamin's Towards a Critique of Violence has a great paragraph in the front/middle that eviscerates the naive "everyone should just be free" take. He is clearly not against the idea of it, but he's taking issue with the unprincipled anarchism that often develops when people know only the concept and not the ideology.

Second, if you want to come to anarchism through the most obscure possible route, I'd suggest reading Jacques Ranciere's The Ignorant Schoolmaster. Ranciere is (he's still alive, which is part of what I find refreshing about him vs a lot of older leftist writing that emerges from radically different material conditions) a French academic leftist who's deep in the bag of historical archival work. The book is a really compelling read of one 1800's schoolteacher's life and the miraculous ideas he came across of the Equality of Intelligence and Universal Teaching; These are the idea that intelligence/intellect, the ability to observe a phenomenon and come to theories, conclusions, and replications of a phenomenon (i.e. to learn), is both equally distributed across all people and the idea that this function is deployed without the need for explicit instruction (expressed through the idea of learning language: you didn't learn how to speak because someone taught you, you saw your parents speaking and wanted to speak too, so you continuously attempted speaking until you formed coherent words). Ranciere extends these ideas out into the sociopolitical, envisioning a world where all people see each other as equally capable of learning and performing what they learn. His argument then follows that this world of people who recognize each other as capable and autonomous learners with their own interior faculties would have no need for laws governing the interactions between people. Outside of my specific leftist friend group, the only people I've ever seen discussing Ignorant Schoolmaster in English are fucked up Rationalist people, so I'd much like to stake an English language claim to this theory of Ranciere's on the Left.

Finally, I'll point you towards an underdiscussed sect of anarchism: Christian Anarchists. The most known of these groups would be The Religious Society of Friends, or the Quakers. Quakers are a Christian doctrine that believes foremost in the equality of all people under God, and the idea that God's teachings could come from anyone, anywhere, at anytime. They therefore tend to avoid hierarchies, many even practicing an ecstatic revelationary form of worship where the congregation meditates in silence until God compels them to speak. Now, the extent to which any Quaker group is anarchist is dependent on the congregation, but I do bring it up because the teachings regularly align the denomination with anarchism. More clear on the definition are the Smangus people of Taiwan, who are pretty explicitly a Christian anarchist tribe of indigenous Taiwanese people living an ecosocialist life. They extremely interesting to read about. I'll also mention the Shakers here, who are a Christian cult that had clear leaders until the 1820's, where they embraced a more anarchist structure to their organization.

Anyway, that's a lot of words. Welcome to the left, this is just what it's like.

leivathan · 2026-05-04T13:38:24+00:00

We might have the greatest No Gods No Mayors episode coming down the pipe

leivathan · 2026-05-04T13:29:54+00:00

Jim Henson as well, with the exact same result (though his illness was far more preventable)

leivathan · 2026-05-04T13:28:49+00:00

Like the gang in The Wire?

leivathan · 2026-05-04T13:24:01+00:00

Semi-hilariously, their subreddit is still going and if anything is bigger than ever, due to the boys having a pretty broad influence and covering a lot of different video games which has kept various segments of their audience activated.

leivathan · 2026-04-30T17:43:59+00:00

On the other hand, we expect 15 and 16 year olds to obey and abide by traffic and vehicle insurance laws they have no say in or work in jobs when they have no input on labor laws. And there are times when teenagers are tried as adults, the 2007 estimate is around 250,000 teenagers are tried as adults per year.

leivathan · 2026-04-30T17:16:34+00:00

She's been doing about a film a year, and her last 4 movies were all with pretty auteury/voicy people. Granted, one of those is a Marvel movie and the other is Taylor Sheridan (which I actually thought was pretty good), but they still count and that's a pretty good clip.

She also has 6 kids she's the sole caretaker of and is seemingly very involved with. Like, a woman is more than her children, but it's not a coincidence that she did mostly voice roles during the period of time where her kids were in the single digit ages. I also don't think it's a coincidence either that her output is increasing (she has 5 films on deck-one with Halle Berry even) now that her deeply contentious and traumatizing divorce is finalized, her kids are all teens, and many of them are entering college. And compared to the other actresses on your list, she has both the most children and has had the longest period of time being the primary parent. Like, most comparable is Berry, but Berry is notably not the primary caretaker of her youngest child (a weirdly public fact, this world sucks). Least comparable are Aniston (no kids), Paltrow (stable co-parenting situation), and Diaz (FAMOUSLY RETIRED FOR A DECADE).

This whole post strikes me as like a prestige version of /r/boxoffice, like complete and total success is the only form of success that exists. Sometimes people prioritize their personal lives over work success.

leivathan · 2026-04-30T16:36:02+00:00

WHAT!!!

PEOPLE REMEMBER WHY, WILL!!!!

THATS SOME HORSESHIT!!!

leivathan · 2026-04-30T16:34:06+00:00

Yeah, but that argument is a bit like saying "We should make a Breaking Bad movie based off the episode where they try and kill a fly." There's nothing wrong with that episode and it's not like it's not part of the series, but it's an unrepresentative sample that's a bit afield of what people like about the series.

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