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‘Perversion of Justice’ revisited
Jul. 15th, 2025 03:12 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
slacktivist_feedA look back at what we've previously written here about Jeffrey Epstein, now that we're told he never actually existed.
Bibliographical cornucopia for linguists, part 2
Jul. 14th, 2025 09:20 pmlanguagelog_feed- "Context Shift, Word Drift: The Meaning Transference of the Word Prèet in Thai Society." Kumhaeng, Korrakot et al. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12, no. 1 (July 8, 2025): 1050. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-05454-y.
This research investigates the semantic change and conceptual metaphor of the Thai word prèet (/เปรต/), which originates from the Pali-Sanskrit term meaning “departed.” The primary objective is to explore how the term’s meaning has shifted in contemporary Thai society, where it is now used pejoratively to criticize behaviors such as excessive greed, gluttony, immorality, and social deviance. Data for this study are drawn from both historical texts, particularly the Traibhumi Phra Ruang (a prominent Thai Buddhist text from the 14th-century Sukhothai period), and modern Thai linguistic usage. The analysis employs conceptual metaphor theory, focusing on metaphors like SOCIAL DEVIANCE IS MONSTROSITY, MORAL FAILURE IS DEGRADATION, GREED IS HUNGER, and SPIRITUAL LIMINALITY IS MONSTROSITY. to understand how these shifts reflect changing cultural and societal values. Additionally, Impoliteness Theory is applied to examine how prèet functions as a linguistic tool for social critique. Findings show that the semantic evolution of prèet reveals an intricate relationship between language, culture, and metaphor, as it transitions from a religious concept to a vehicle for social commentary. The implications of this study highlight the dynamic nature of language in reflecting societal shifts.
- "When Dialects Collide: How Socioeconomic Mixing Affects Language Use." Louf, Thomas et al. EPJ Data Science 14, no. 1 (July 10, 2025): 47. https://epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjds/s13688-025-00563-9.
The socioeconomic background of people and how they use standard forms of language are not independent, as demonstrated in various sociolinguistic studies. However, the extent to which these correlations may be influenced by the mixing of people from different socioeconomic classes remains relatively unexplored from a quantitative perspective. In this work we leverage geotagged tweets and transferable computational methods to map deviations from standard English across eight UK metropolitan areas. We combine these data with high-resolution income maps to assign a proxy socioeconomic indicator to home-located users. Strikingly, we find a consistent pattern suggesting that the more different socioeconomic classes mix, the less interdependent the frequency of their departures from standard grammar and their income become. Further, we propose an agent-based model of linguistic variety adoption that sheds light on the mechanisms that produce the observations seen in the data.
- "Re-Examining Second Language Acquisition of English Reflexives: New Evidence for Lexical Learning Driven Process and against First Language Transfer." Zeng, Li et al. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12, no. 1 (July 9, 2025): 1063. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-05466-8.
This study re-examines second language (L2) acquisition of English reflexives by testing 98 first language (L1)-Chinese learners of L2 English with different proficiency levels and 12 native English speakers as controls. Using a truth-value judgment task, we systematically tapped the learners’ judgments of various types of antecedents including long-distance objects. The results show that L2 English learners’ errors in referring English reflexives to long-distance antecedents cannot be due to L1 transfer of Chinese reflexive referential pattern. Instead, these errors align with those documented in the literature on native English children’s acquisition of reflexives. Moreover, as L1-Chinese learners’ English proficiency improved, most of them unlearned the errors, and performed similarly to native English adult controls. This developmental trajectory recapitulates the pattern seen in native English children’s acquisition of reflexives. These findings cast doubt on the view of L1 Chinese transfer and provide support for the Lexical Learning Hypothesis.
- "Metaphor Interpretation in Jordanian Arabic, Emirati Arabic and Classical Arabic: Artificial Intelligence vs. Humans." Zibin, Aseel et al. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12, no. 1 (July 1, 2025): 942. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-05282-0.
This study examines how well humans, both Jordanians and Emiratis, and four AI tools—ChatGPT-4, ChatGPT-3.5, Google Gemini, and Ask PDF—can understand metaphors in Classical Arabic (CA) and its everyday forms in Jordanian Arabic (JA) and Emirati Arabic (EA). We tested fifty participants from Jordan and the UAE on their grasp of various colloquial and CA metaphorical expressions. Two distinct tests were employed, each comprising 40 items. Test 1 was administered to Jordanian participants and included 20 metaphorical expressions in Jordanian Arabic and 20 metaphorical expressions in Classical Arabic. Similarly, Test 2 was administered to Emirati participants and contained 20 expressions in Emirati Arabic and 20 expressions in Classical Arabic. The Mann–Whitney U test was employed to evaluate differences in accuracy and interpretation between AI tools and human participants from both regions in the contexts of colloquial and Classical Arabic. The results showed that participants from Jordan had a better understanding than the AI tools, likely due to their strong cultural background. In contrast, the Emirati participants performed similarly to the AI. The AI tools were more effective at interpreting CA metaphors compared to Emirati participants; AI tools are typically trained on diverse datasets and that usually leads to strong performance in interpreting formal or Classical Arabic expressions. These findings emphasize the need for improvements in AI models to boost their language processing abilities, as they often miss the cultural aspects required for accurately interpreting figurative language. This study adds to the ongoing discussion about AI and language interpretation, revealing both the potential and the obstacles AI faces when dealing with culturally rich and context-sensitive language.
Religions, topolects, language learning, AI — linguistics is exciting and ever changing, never boring.
[Thanks to Edward M "Ted" McClure]
Is Epstein actually Peanut the Squirrel?
Jul. 14th, 2025 08:12 pmcamestrosfelapton_feedYou may have all forgotten Peanut the Squirrel. Short version: a man rescued a baby squirrel, looked after it then it became a bit of an Instagram celebrity. In 2024, New York state authorities confiscated the squirrel and because it was also living with a racoon, euthanised it to test for rabies (it was negative). Sad story. Killing a guy’s pet squirrel sounds awful but also don’t interact with wild animals in that way for a long laundry list of reasons.
That there was a bit of a media storm about Peanut (sometimes styled “P’nut”) was not much of a mystery. The squirrel was internet famous and people saw it as unfeeling authorities killing somebody’s pet even though it was far more complicated than that.
However, the timing of Peanut’s death was in very close proximity to the 2024 US Presidential Election. Online, the Trump campaign did not have the same energy as it had in 2016 (one of the reasons I thought he would lose) but overnight Peanut became a symbolic martyr for the cause of MAGA. J.D.Vance and Donald Trump both made comments on the squirrel’s death, tying the event to the Democratic Party. Our old friend Vox Don’t-Call-Him-A-Nazi Day stated:
“If they’ll murder a harmless squirrel for no reason, do you really think they won’t kill you and your family if given even half the chance?”
https://web.archive.org/web/20250714191635/https://voxday.net/2024/11/03/they-kill-pets/
You can pick almost any major (or minor) talking point of the right these days and find a mess of hypocrisy and incoherence, so it is hardly a surprise that we will find that with the brief adoption of a dead squirrel by the MAGA movement.
In reality, the right doesn’t have any principled objection to killing wild animals and it is even fine with notable members of the Trump administration killing their own pets. More apparently (and disturbingly) they are not only absolutely fine with the federal government using sweeping powers and brute force to terrorise ordinary people but they are actually cheering it on.
Peanut is a good example of what I describe as “strong beliefs but not firm beliefs” on the right. Vance, Trump and Day may have been overtly cynical on the issue but Peanut gained traction on the right because people had genuine feelings on the issue. And then they forgot about them. Niether Trump nor the MAGA movement nor the right in general came out of the Peanut storm with a continuing interest in how best to deal with people adopting wild animals as pets.
In addition, Day’s comment is an excellent illustration of Wilhoit’s law:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288
Change the circumstances a little e.g. Peanut is killed in a Republican jurisdiction and the owner appears more culturally of the left, then the reaction on the right would have been different. I’m not saying every Trump supporter would have cheered on the killing of Peanut but it simply wouldn’t have been the thing it was. Additionally, more on the right would have mocked Peanuts’s owner for not understanding wild animals or not getting that animals die all the time etc etc.
Day’s warning about the government coming to kill you is not false. Government power is used to threaten ordinary people. What Day was omitting was that the policies he supports INCREASE both the power and likelihood of agents of the government doing that. The massive increase in violence by ICE in the US and the massive additional funding being given to the agency is an obvious example…but of course, for the right this is force being directed at a generalised “them” — a set of “others” who form an out-group who the right sees as being the appropriate target of government violence.
What has all that to do with Jeffery Epstein?
The right’s interest in Epstein wasn’t quite as shallow as their interest in Peanut the squirrel but it was similar. The Pizzagate and Qanon conspiracy theories claimed a vast conspiracy of child abuse was being conducted by the most powerful people in the world. Epstein’s crimes were real and that served two purposes on the right. Firstly for the more brain-melted Qanon section of the right, the real criminal case against Epstein looked like the crack that would break open the whole conspiracy they imagined. Meanwhile, for those on the right swimming in the same waters as Qanon, Epstein was a way of engaging with the same Qanon-like outrage without having to fully commit to the rest of the conspiratorial baggage.
Change the circumstance a little, and the MAGA crowd would have no problem with a wealthy sexual predator who targetted teenage girls, so long as the predator in question was seen as being on their side.
Will the right forget about Epstein the same way they forgot about Peanut? It won’t be as easy but certainly you can now see people trying to change gears on the topic. Here’s another old pal of the blog, Sarah Hoyt on the topic:
“The thing is…. is it the most important thing right now? And if so, why is it the most important thing right now? Sure, I don’t think Epstein killed himself. But he’s been dead now for…six years? And his list, such as it is, has been in the hands of the Biden administration funny fingers for that long.
But now, suddenly, if it’s not released this week, MAGA is going to take revenge on the administration and all is lost?
Give me a break. No, seriously. Also, go look at those accounts. Most of the accounts screaming on the blogs aren’t people I’ve seen there before. Twitter? I confess I don’t look closely at twitter accounts. Also those accounts can’t keep the Jew-hatred out of the screeds.”
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2025/07/13/okay-i-have-to-say-this/
I think it is still too early to tell. You can see different streams of the right trying to rationalise the shift but it is also clear that if the Trump administration had more gently changed track on Epstein or just more blatantly lied in a way to blame Biden, they might have got away with it.
I don’t think the Epstein issue will completely fracture the right. However, it does erode support for Trump himself on the more extreme parts of the right. That matters because a lot of Trump’s bully power in the Republican party comes from this capacity to direct trolls and online partisans to specific targets, and it is exactly these kinds of trolls and online partisans who are the most discombobulated by Trump’s reversal on the Epstein issue.
The half-life of right wing attention span functions the same for both Peanut and Epstein but the numeric value of that half-life is longer for Epstein. Put another way, if Trump on November 4 2024 has publicly stated that maybe Peanut’s death wasn’t a big deal, it might have cost him the election but if he’d said it on December 4 many people wouldn’t have even remembered who Peanut was or why they cared. Trump hit the wrong point of that attention span curve with Epstein.
Tom Holland Says Spider-Man: Brand New Day Will Go “Old School,” in a Good Way
Jul. 14th, 2025 06:20 pmtordotcom_feedTom Holland Says Spider-Man: Brand New Day Will Go “Old School,” in a Good Way
The movie starts production in Glasgow later this month.
Published on July 14, 2025
Screenshot: Marvel Studios
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1">Tom Holland Says <i>Spider-Man: Brand New Day</i> Will Go “Old School,” in a Good Way</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">The movie starts production in Glasgow later this month.</div>
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Published on July 14, 2025
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<img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" width="740" height="416" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Spider-Man-No-Way-Home-final-fight-740x416.png" class="w-full object-cover" alt="Tom Holland in Spider-Man: No Way Home" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Spider-Man-No-Way-Home-final-fight-740x416.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Spider-Man-No-Way-Home-final-fight-1100x619.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Spider-Man-No-Way-Home-final-fight-768x432.png 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Spider-Man-No-Way-Home-final-fight.png 1500w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" /> </figure>
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<p>The fourth Spider-Man film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, <em><a href="https://reactormag.com/the-next-spider-man-movie-has-a-title/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Spider-Man: Brand New Day</a></em>, is slowly moving toward production, and Peter Parker himself (aka Tom Holland) shared how this MCU film will be different than the last one, <em>No Way Home</em>.</p>
<p>In an interview with <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DMEKovBtK4d/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Flip Your Wig</a> (via <a href="https://www.ign.com/articles/tom-holland-reveals-how-difficult-shooting-spider-man-no-way-home-was-and-how-that-will-change-for-brand-new-day" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">IGN</a>), Holland said that playing Spidey again was like meeting up with an old pal, and that shooting for <em>Brand New Day </em>will be a breath of fresh air compared to <em>No Way Home</em>, since the latter was shot largely on stages due to Covid. “Now, we’re really going to lean into that old school filmmaking, and shoot in real locations,” he said, adding that this fourth film will feel more like the first one (<a href="https://reactormag.com/spider-man-homecoming-has-the-clearest-vision-of-spider-mans-most-important-message/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2017’s <em>Spider-Man: Homecoming</em></a>) than the previous sequels. <em>Brand New Day</em> will also see some new faces in a Spider-Man film: <em>Stranger Things</em> actor <a href="https://reactormag.com/sadie-sink-to-star-alongside-tom-holland-in-next-spider-man-movie/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Sadie Sink will star in the film with Holland,</a> and <a href="https://reactormag.com/jon-bernthal-spider-man-brand-new-day/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jon Bernthal’s Punisher will also be in the movie</a>.</p>
<p><em>Spider-Man: Brand New Day</em> begins filming in Glasgow later this month, and Holland also said that the reason they were “starting in Glasgow” is because the crew were putting together “a massive set piece” there. Glasgow is often used in films as a stand-in for New York City, so that news isn’t too surprising, but it’s nice to see the production make it clear that they’re moving away from CGI-ed sets when and where they can.</p>
<p>We’ll still have to wait about a year to see the film in theaters: <em>Spider-Man: Brand New Day</em> is currently set to premiere on July 31, 2026. The wait, Holland promises, will be worth it. “I think the fans are going to be over the moon with what we’re putting together,” he said.[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/tom-holland-says-spider-man-brand-new-day-will-go-old-school-in-a-good-way/">Tom Holland Says <i>Spider-Man: Brand New Day</i> Will Go “Old School,” in a Good Way</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/tom-holland-says-spider-man-brand-new-day-will-go-old-school-in-a-good-way/">https://reactormag.com/tom-holland-says-spider-man-brand-new-day-will-go-old-school-in-a-good-way/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818207">https://reactormag.com/?p=818207</a></p>
Why Do I Love Charts? Let Me Count the Ways.
Jul. 14th, 2025 06:00 pmtordotcom_feedWhy Do I Love Charts? Let Me Count the Ways.
Charts hold back chaos, and we should sing their praises!
Published on July 14, 2025
Photo by Niko Nieminen [via Unsplash]
Photo by Niko Nieminen [via Unsplash]
In my quest to work through all the tabletop roleplaying games that I own but have never run, I am currently gamemastering Fabula Ultima. Part of the attraction is that FU encourages a collaborative approach between players and gamemaster, an approach with which I am not especially comfortable. Personal character growth (for me at least) is inevitable.
In accordance with the collaborative narrativist spirit of the game, I have dialed back my control freak tendencies, which is why, while my master player character chart lists names, core stats, figured stats, defensive stats, classes and which class abilities each PC possesses, it does not detail what each ability does, nor does it list spells1.
All of which brings me to my question: Why are charts so cool2?
On a personal level, the charts I create for tabletop roleplaying games3 are a means of circumventing unreliable memory. All the character names are right there at my fingertips… provided I remember to open the relevant file. The charts I create for the works I review serve a similar purpose as I juggle a number of often incompatible review goals. Much the same is true for charts documenting the books I receive, especially since I don’t seem to have object permanence for ebooks.
More interestingly, a well-designed chart will highlight patterns that might otherwise be overlooked. This ensures that I do not, for example, build an entire scenario around player character abilities that none of the PCs actually have4, or spend an entire year without reviewing any books by women, or, on a more positive note, determine that no single publisher had a lock on Best Novel Nebula Awards, reveal that SFF authors prefer oligarchies to other forms of government, and that publishers currently seem oddly shy about unambiguously labeling books as part of series. Or, in what was for me an astonishing finding, that charts tracking absences are extremely confusing for most people. I didn’t know that! But now I do.
Most importantly, a well-designed, well-presented chart is a thing of beauty. What could possibly match the endorphin rush triggered by glorious data presented in an eye-catching, easily-comprehended format? Charts to order chaos, they illuminate an often-murky world, they make us as gods5!
At least, that’s why I love charts. No doubt there are dozens of equally compelling reasons to adore charts6. If I’ve overlooked your favorites, feel free to mention them below.[end-mark]
- Yet.
︎ - I know not everyone realizes that they think charts are cool. Charts are like broccoli, or liver, something everyone adores provided only that they are presented correctly. ︎
- You know how many older persons encounter some minor change that turns out to be their personal final straw? Having to remember to prepend “tabletop” to roleplaying games lest people think I am talking about computer games comes close to being that for me. ︎
- Ah, memories of the moment in a Traveller campaign where we realized that while we had a functioning starship, none of the remaining player characters had the navigation skill needed to get it safely from star to star. ︎
- And provide us with a deeper appreciation for the design choice that leads Excel to default to treating all data as dates. ︎
- Those long-suffering persons who languish under my house management skills at the theater would point out that the chart I create documenting when they worked and for how long plays an important role in their getting paid. Remember, money can be exchanged for goods and services! ︎
The post Why Do I Love Charts? Let Me Count the Ways. appeared first on Reactor.
Babylon 5 Rewatch: “War Without End, Part Two”
Jul. 14th, 2025 05:00 pmtordotcom_feedBabylon 5 Rewatch: “War Without End, Part Two”
While Sheridan is unstuck in time, the others continue with their timey-wimey plans on Babylon 4…
Published on July 14, 2025
Credit: Warner Bros. Television
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Sarah</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-two/">https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-two/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818043">https://reactormag.com/?p=818043</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-horizontal">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1"><i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “War Without End, Part Two”</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">While Sheridan is unstuck in time, the others continue with their timey-wimey plans on Babylon 4…</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/keith-decandido/" title="Posts by Keith R.A. DeCandido" class="author url fn" rel="author">Keith R.A. DeCandido</a></p>
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Published on July 14, 2025
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<p><strong>“War Without End, Part Two”</strong><br>Written by J. Michael Straczynski<br>Directed by Michael Vejar<br>Season 3, Episode 17<br>Production episode 317<br>Original air date: May 20, 1996</p>
<p><strong>It was the dawn of the third age…</strong> After a summary of <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-one/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Part 1</a>, we open in 2278 with Sheridan in the throne room of Emperor Mollari seeing the capital city of Centauri Prime burning. Mollari coughs raggedly, and orders Sheridan back to his cell with instructions to make peace with whatever deity he worships.</p>
<p>In 2254, Ivanova and Cole—after being ambushed by a couple of B4 personnel and dispatching them—stumble across an access panel and start on Ivanova’s plan to sabotage the station.</p>
<p>Sheridan becomes unstuck in time, briefly fading in near Zathras in 2254 before winding up back in the Centauri cell in 2278, where he is joined by Delenn. She says she hasn’t told the Centauri anything and that their son is safe. This intelligence rather surprises Sheridan…</p>
<p>In 2254, Ivanova creates a fake hull breach alert, which gets the entire deck evacuated, allowing the B5 crew to work in peace.</p>
<p>In 2278, Sheridan explains that he’s from the past, and Delenn—remembering what happened in 2260—says she understands, and says only that they built something great, but at a terrible price. But the only way to avoid paying that price is to let the Shadows win, which would be, y’know, <em>bad</em>. They’re then taken to Mollari, they assume to their deaths.</p>
<p>However, they are brought to a darkened throne room and a <em>very</em> drunk Mollari. It turns out that his super-villain act from the end of Part 1 was just that: an act. He behaved that way for the benefit of his Keeper—a parasitic creature, belonging to allies of the Shadows, who control and monitor Mollari. The only way to put the Keeper to sleep is for Mollari to drink heavily. However the time it stays unconscious gets shorter with each binge. Mollari allows Delenn and Sheridan to escape, on the condition that they and their allies work to free his people.</p>
<p>After they leave, G’Kar, with his left eye covered by a bandage, enters. Mollari calls him “old friend,” and urges G’Kar to kill him before the Keeper can wake up. However, the Keeper awakens while G’Kar is strangling Mollari, forcing the emperor to return the favor.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-04-1100x825.jpg" alt="G'Kar strangles emperor Mollari in Babylon 5: "War Without End, Part 2"" class="wp-image-818072" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-04-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-04-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-04-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-04-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-04.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p>As they’re being led to their escape vessel, Sheridan becomes unstuck in time again. Before he fades back to the past, Delenn urges him, “Do not go to Z’ha’dum!”</p>
<p>Vir walks into the throne room and finds the corpses of Mollari and G’Kar on the floor. He picks up the emperor’s medallion…</p>
<p>In 2254, Ivanova, Cole, and Zathras are bringing equipment from Epsilon III over to B4 from the <em>White Star</em>. Zathras rigged up a space suit for Sheridan to wear when he reappears in the hopes that it will help stabilize him. To Ivanova and Cole’s shock, this works, and Sheridan reappears in the suit.</p>
<p>Sinclair is also in an EVA suit, and he and Sheridan go outside to install some of the components. Ivanova triggers a fake fusion reactor overload, but the B4 crew’s response to that is to increase power, which causes a surge, which sends B4 into a time rift.</p>
<p>They come out in 2258—right when B4 appeared last. Zathras manages to stabilize everything, but they need to work quickly. Sheridan has become unstuck in time again and Sinclair looks like he’s twenty years older. He explains that, because he went through the time field once before, it’s still affecting him, even with the stabilizer. It’s why he didn’t want Garibaldi here, it would have affected him as well.</p>
<p>Sinclair works on the power core. Zathras looks for equipment to fix Sheridan’s stabilizer, but is captured by B4 security. He’s brought to Major Krantz, and then “meets” Sinclair and Garibaldi, who have just arrived from B5, answering the distress call.</p>
<p>Ivanova sneaks into CnC to boost the power and speed along the evacuation.</p>
<p>A figure in a space suit appears. Zathras gives the figure the repaired time stabilizer (just like we saw in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-babylon-squared/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Babylon Squared</a>”), and then the figure fades away.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-08-1100x825.jpg" alt="Delenn removes the helmet of her EVA suit in Babylon 5: "War Without End, Part 2"" class="wp-image-818076" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-08-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-08-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-08-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-08-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-08.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p>Cole is shocked to see Sheridan—without his suit. He came back, and now has an intact stabilizer. It turns out that, when Sheridan reappeared, Delenn gave him her intact stabilizer and she took his busted one and put on the EVA suit.</p>
<p>Ivanova’s sabotage starts to take effect, and the Sinclair and Garibaldi of 2258 start leading the evacuation of B4. Debris falls on Zathras, and Sinclair tries to rescue him, but Zathras urges him to go and save himself so he can fulfill his destiny. After everyone’s gone, Delenn rescues him.</p>
<p>While doing his bit when EVA, Sinclair tries to send a message to the Garibaldi of 2258, but he’s out of range.</p>
<p>Sinclair reenters the station and takes his helmet off, and we get the scene we saw in “Babylon Squared” again, except we see Delenn this time.</p>
<p>In B4’s CnC, Sinclair tells everyone to head back to the <em>White Star</em>. He’ll set everything up and rejoin them. Cole refuses to accept that, because if it was automatic, he wouldn’t have to stay behind. He plans on going to the past and not coming back. Sinclair confirms that, and Cole says he’ll go instead, but Sinclair says it <em>has</em> to be him. He reveals that the letter he got at the top of Part 1 was in his own handwriting from 900 years previous. He has to go because he’s already gone.</p>
<p>Zathras then speaks to Sheridan, Sinclair, and Delenn alone. He’s referred to all three of them as “the one” at different points, and Zathras explains that in Minbari culture, everything is in threes—three castes, three languages, the Grey Council is nine (three times three), etc.—and that includes the one. Sinclair is the one of the past, Delenn is the one of the present, and Sheridan is the one of the future. They form the beginning, middle, and end of a great story.</p>
<p>Sinclair and Zathras stay on B4 while everyone else disembarks to the <em>White Star</em>. Using a triluminary, Sinclair undergoes a transformation while remembering several past incidents that hinted at this.</p>
<p>On the <em>White Star</em>, which goes through the time rift to 2260, Delenn explains that human and Minbari souls became intermingled a thousand years ago—and her own transformation was to restore the balance. But Sinclair couldn’t present B4 to the Minbari as a human, because the Minbari of the past wouldn’t accept that.</p>
<p>Cole figures out the rest of it: Sinclair transforms himself into a Minbari and brings B4 to the fight a thousand years previous, accompanied by Zathras and two Vorlons, and identifying himself as “Valen.”</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-02-1100x825.jpg" alt="Sinclair, transformed into the Minbari Valen in Babylon 5: "War Without End, Part 2"" class="wp-image-818070" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-02-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-02-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-02-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-02-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-02.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>Nothing’s the same anymore. </strong>Sinclair turns out to be <s>Minbari Jesus</s> Valen. This goes a long way toward explaining why Valen’s prophecies tended to come true…</p>
<p><strong>Get the hell out of our galaxy!</strong> Sheridan disappears completely from the <em>White Star</em>, but then reappears in the future—but inside his future self’s body. It’s unclear what happened to the Sheridan that was already there in the future.</p>
<p><strong>Ivanova is God.</strong> Most of the damage done to B4 that forced the evac in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-babylon-squared/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Babylon Squared</a>” turned out to be by Ivanova. Go her.</p>
<p><strong>The household god of frustration.</strong> Garibaldi only appears in this episode in archive footage from “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-babylon-squared/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Babylon Squared</a>.”</p>
<p><strong>If you value your lives, be somewhere else.</strong> Delenn’s actions since the start of the show all come into focus here, as she is a major mover and shaker toward Sinclair going back in time to become <s>Minbari Jesus</s> Valen.</p>
<p><strong>In the glorious days of the Centauri Republic…</strong> As predicted by Lady Morella in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-point-of-no-return/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Point of No Return</a>,” Vir is seen to be taking on the mantle of emperor after he finds Mollari and G’Kar’s dead bodies.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-06-1100x825.jpg" alt="Vir holds the emperor's medallion in Babylon 5: "War Without End, Part 2"" class="wp-image-818074" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-06-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-06-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-06-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-06-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-06.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.</strong> G’Kar and Mollari appear to be friends now, or at least not mortal enemies. They kill each other, as predicted, but not at all the way we expected…</p>
<p><strong>We live for the one, we die for the one.</strong> In a lengthy exposition dump that’s mainly there to show how J. Michael Straczynski adjusted his storyline once he lost his male lead at the end of season one, Zathras explains who, exactly, “the one” <em>is</em>—er, well, that is, <em>are</em>.</p>
<p><strong>The Shadowy Vorlons.</strong> Two Vorlons accompanied Sinclair-as-Valen when he introduced himself to the Minbari, which probably helped sell the whole thing.</p>
<p><strong>Looking ahead.</strong> Delenn has a flashforward to her watching Sheridan sleep, only to be interrupted by a woman’s voice. This scene will come to pass in “Shadow Dancing.”</p>
<p>We see the fullness of Mollari and G’Kar’s strangling of each other, first mentioned in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-midnight-on-the-firing-line/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Midnight on the Firing Line</a>” and foreseen by Mollari in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-the-coming-of-shadows/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Coming of Shadows</a>.”</p>
<p>We have previously been told that Sheridan will die if he goes to Z’ha’dum, so Delenn’s urging of Sheridan not to go to there is understandable, though if he’s still alive seventeen years hence, he obviously doesn’t die—exactly. This will all be explained in “Z’ha’dum” and the first several episodes of season four.</p>
<p>The Keeper is of Drakh origin—we’ll see more of the Drakh in the future. Mollari’s acquisition of the Keeper will happen in very aptly titled season-five episode, “The Fall of Centauri Prime.”</p>
<p>G’Kar will lose his left eye in “Falling Toward Apotheosis.”</p>
<p><strong>No sex, please, we’re EarthForce.</strong> Sheridan and Delenn will have a son. This rather surprises Sheridan. Also we get our first Delenn-Sheridan kiss, though it’s really only Sheridan’s first time kissing Delenn because time travel…</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-05-1100x825.jpg" alt="Delenn speaks with Sheridan about the future in Babylon 5: "War Without End, Part 2"" class="wp-image-818073" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-05-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-05-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-05-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-05-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-05.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>Welcome aboard.</strong> Back from <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-one/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Part 1</a> are Michael O’Hare as Sinclair, Tim Choate as Zathras, and Kevin Fry as the Centauri guard. Back from “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-babylon-squared/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Babylon Squared</a>” is Kent Broadhurst as Krantz, while Bruce Morrow plays Krantz’s second-in-command. Choate will return in “Conflicts of Interest,” while O’Hare will return (via archive footage from “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-and-the-sky-full-of-stars/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">And the Sky Full of Stars</a>”) in the movie <em>In the Beginning</em>.</p>
<p><strong>Trivial matters. </strong>This obviously continues from <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-one/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Part 1</a>, and also finishes telling the other side of the story told in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-babylon-squared/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Babylon Squared</a>.” Indeed, large chunks of this episode consist of footage from that first-season episode, mixed in with new material.</p>
<p>Sinclair sends a message to the Garibaldi of 2258 to watch his back, a reference to Garibaldi being shot in the back in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-chrysalis/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Chrysalis</a>,” an event still in the security chief’s future.</p>
<p>Before his transformation, Sinclair remembers the Soul Hunter telling him that the Minbari are using him and Delenn saying that the Minbari were right about him, both from “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-soul-hunter/">Soul Hunter</a>,” and Neroon telling him he talks like a Minbari in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-legacies/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Legacies</a>.”</p>
<p>We first heard Valen described as a Minbari not born of Minbari—and also that no one knew where he came from—in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-passing-through-gethsemane/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Passing Through Gethsemane</a>.”</p>
<p>There are many inconsistencies with “Babylon Squared.” Delenn is wearing a different-colored outfit from the one we saw on her sleeve in the prior episode. The B4 crew’s capture of Zathras does not match what Krantz described in the prior episode (this was a conscious choice, as filming the scene as described would have added three minutes to an already-overcrowded script, so J. Michael Straczynski just bagged it). In “B<sup>2</sup>,” Krantz never mentions the explosions of the Shadow ships and subsequent EMP that we saw in Part 1, which doesn’t really track. The moaning of the EVA-suited figure in “B<sup>2</sup>” was definitely male, though this episode has it be Delenn in the suit. No mention was ever made in “B<sup>2</sup>” of two of B4’s personnel being taken out by two people in black outfits.</p>
<p><strong>The echoes of all of our conversations.</strong></p>
<p>“Come on, grab what you need—we’re running out of time.”</p>
<p>“Cannot run out of time. There is infinite time. <em>You</em> are finite, <em>Zathras</em> is finite, <em>this</em>—is wrong tool. No, not good. Never use this.”</p>
<p>—Ivanova trying and failing to rush Zathras.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1100" height="825" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-03-1100x825.jpg" alt="Babylon 5: "War Without End, Part 2"" class="wp-image-818071" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-03-1100x825.jpg 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-03-740x555.jpg 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-03-140x105.jpg 140w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-03-768x576.jpg 768w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Babylon-5-War-Without-End-2-03.jpg 1200w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1100px) 100vw, 1100px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Warner Bros. Television</figcaption></figure>
<p><strong>The name of the place is Babylon 5.</strong> “No one ever listens to Zathras.” One of the difficulties with aggressively plotting out a five-year storyline for television is that sometimes changes happen due to circumstances beyond your control, like actors leaving the show. In particular, J. Michael Straczynski’s storyline was given a punch in the solar plexus by Michael O’Hare’s departure at the end of season one. Not all of Sinclair’s role in the overall storyline—most particularly his going back in time to become <s>Minbari Jesus</s> Valen given how much of that was seeded in season one—was something that could be just transferred to another character.</p>
<p>This two-parter is an attempt to get the storyline’s breath back following that gut-punch (he says, abusing the metaphor). On the one hand, you can see that some of the fixes are wielded with a very large hammer; on the other, you gotta admire the fact that Straczynski <em>mostly</em> pulled it off.</p>
<p>His solution to Sinclair no longer being “the one” all by himself, since both he and Sheridan can’t be “the one” is very Catholic. (While he is an atheist, Straczynski’s family is Catholic, and he was likely raised in that tradition.) By throwing Delenn into the mix, we get a three-as-one thing, which is very Creator-Child-Spirit (not to mention the “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(writing)" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">rule of three</a>” that is a truism in writing). And Minbari culture has already, as Zathras said, been established as doing lots of things in threes. You can still see the spackle, but at least it covers the hole.</p>
<p>The solution to the much older Sinclair seen in “<a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-babylon-squared/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Babylon Squared</a>” is very elegant, since the possibility of being rapidly aged by the temporal rift was seeded in that first-season episode with the death of that poor never-named Starfury pilot. So that part, at least, works out, though the whole, “It happened just the way I remembered it” thing doesn’t really make much sense from only two years on the way it would have from two decades on.</p>
<p>And then we get the always-intended revelation that <s>Minbari Jesus</s> Valen is a time-displaced (and chrysalis-transformed) Sinclair, finally paying off all the hints we got throughout season one.</p>
<p>But the best part of this whole two-parter is the revelation of the full story behind Mollari and G’Kar killing each other. It’s absolutely brilliant, since everything we know about these two in general and Mollari’s premonition in particular points to the two of them ending their years of acrimony with a final double-murder. So to reveal that it’s a mercy-killing on G’Kar’s part to free Mollari, and that Mollari’s violent response is solely due to the reason for the mercy-killing is a masterstroke. It’s completely unexpected, especially as it starts with Mollari referring to G’Kar as his old friend. While the revelation in <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-one/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Part 1</a> that the good guys will win the Shadow War is a bit of a spoiler, this apparent rapprochement between two old enemies is a magnificent bit of foreshadowing, adding still more complexity to an already-complex dynamic between the two most interesting characters on the show.</p>
<p>On the one hand, saving these dual revelations for the last episode would’ve made for a banger of a finale. On the other hand, putting it midway through like this (a) means we don’t have to wait until four years after he left the show to find out Sinclair’s final fate, and (b) is a great tease for the future of the Mollari-G’Kar dynamic, which will get so much more interesting in season four. (B) works so much better as a bit of dramatic foreshadowing than it would have as the culmination of the storyline.</p>
<p><strong>Next week:</strong> “Walkabout.”[end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-two/"><i>Babylon 5</i> Rewatch: “War Without End, Part Two”</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-two/">https://reactormag.com/babylon-5-rewatch-war-without-end-part-two/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=818043">https://reactormag.com/?p=818043</a></p>
Who Gets a POV In Your Story? It’s a Political Decision
Jul. 14th, 2025 04:00 pmtordotcom_feedWho Gets a POV In Your Story? It’s a Political Decision
Everyone in a story is a person, and nobody is an NPC.
Published on July 14, 2025
Photo by Aaron Burden [via Unsplash]
Photo by Aaron Burden [via Unsplash]
POV is one of those writing issues that get a little bit thorny—because there are people out there who will tell you there are Strict Rules about how many POVs you can have, and how much you can shift between them, and so on.
A lot of people seem to hate omniscient narrators—despite the fact that many of the world’s most beloved books are written in omniscient third person. But also, some very influential writers advocate a strict economy of viewpoints, in which a book must establish its POV characters early on and not introduce any more POVs later on, no matter how convenient it might be to see events from a particular character’s perspective.
Because I don’t believe in rules—literally, there are no rules when it comes to writing—I feel like you should use as many POVs as you want to, as long as they’re helping you tell the story in the most entertaining, immersive way possible. Have a single first-person narrator, or a few. Have a single third-person POV, or a ton. Go omniscient, whatever. Go nuts.
The question of who gets to have a POV in a story is artistic—but also kind of political, because it goes to the heart of whose perspective counts.
When I started out writing fiction as a career, I mostly wrote in the first person, because I love a mouthy, obnoxious first-person narrator. But I kind of hit a wall, and I read some writing advice that said it was easier to sell short stories written in the third person. Plus writing in the third person felt like a fun challenge, so I switched. And sure enough, I found that writing in third person forced me to describe things differently, and to think about the position of the narrator in relation to the events in a way that I hadn’t with first person. (The first draft of Lessons in Magic and Disaster was written in first person, but I changed it to third person in revision for a similar reason.)
My first novel, Choir Boy, has a single third person POV, that of the main character, Berry. But the narrator is free to make all sorts of silly observations about the town where Berry lives—like, I think there’s a long elegiac section about the slow decline of the noodle-stretching factory across the street from Berry’s apartment at one point. Still, I kept my narrator from going too omniscient, because I’d internalized a strong prohibition (especially in science-fiction circles) on “head-hopping,” or allowing the reader to glimpse more than one character’s thoughts at any given moment. I had learned to think of an omniscient narrator as the third rail of fiction: touch it at your peril.
Imagine my surprise when the biggest successes of my career came from a novelette called “Six Months, Three Days” and my novel All the Birds in the Sky, both of which feature gently omniscient narration. There’s one moment in All the Birds in the Sky that I was convinced would make people rage-quit the book. It’s the bit where Laurence and Patricia are sitting under the escalator speculating about people based on their shoes—and then the narrator reveals that they’ve guessed correctly about the last guy who went past, who is indeed an assassin named Theodolphus Rose. I almost cut this bit several times, convinced people would tell me it was the reason they abandoned the book. Instead, people kept telling me it was their favorite moment in the entire book.
Lately, I’ve read more and more books that casually throw in extra POVs here and there—some side character who’s only stood in the background of scenes will suddenly have a POV chapter in the final stretch of the book. I feel like young-adult fiction started playing fast and loose with POV in the 2010s, and this has now seeped into adult fiction. I’ve also seen more ambitious experiments, like The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan, where each chapter is told from a brand new POV.
Some of my favorite memories of reading involve surprising POV shifts—like, I remember being a kid and reading Terrance Dicks’ surprisingly good novelization, Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion. Dicks would dip into the head of a random side character for a few paragraphs, someone who might not have even gotten any dialogue on screen, and it was dazzling. Everyone has their own opinion, even the guy standing in the corner while the Doctor grandstands!
There’s something kind of magical about realizing that everyone in a story is a person, and nobody is an NPC.
Still, I have often found myself feeling cautious about adding more POVs to a story—because I do have the sense that a POV should be immersive. In other words, you should fully inhabit the mind of a character if you’re going to see through their eyes. It’s a bit of an imaginative lift each time, which requires you to think about who this person is, where they come from, how much information they have, and what’s going on. I do think that even if a POV only appears a couple of times in a long book, you need to make sure there is a unique attitude and set of concerns animating this person, so it stands out from the other POVs at least somewhat.
I get more annoyed when a book has multiple first-person narrators whose voices are too identical—but even with third-person POVs, ideally you want them to be thinking differently. It’s sort of the same problem as when all your characters talk the exact same way.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about POVs, because I’ve found out the hard way that it’s super challenging to make readers fully identify with someone whose thoughts we never experience. I’m not saying it’s not doable, it’s just tough—especially with characters who make unsympathetic choices or behave even a little selfishly.
When I wrote The City in the Middle of the Night, I decided that only Sophie and Mouth would have POVs in the book. (In fact, originally it was going to be just Sophie, and after I had written a couple of drafts I realized the book needed more of an edge, so I promoted a random smuggler to a second POV.) At the time, making Sophie first-person present tense and Mouth third-person past tense felt a bit daring, even though young adult fiction had been doing this sort of thing a lot.
Anyway, at a certain point I ran into a question: should I give Bianca some POV chapters as well? For those who haven’t read the book, Bianca is someone who starts off idealistic and radical (but unaware of her own privilege in various ways), and she ends up becoming a bit of a monster. I have a certain amount of sympathy for Bianca, even though her actions are unforgivable. (I also have a sneaking suspicion that if Bianca were a man, she would have had a lot of people defending her and demanding a redemption arc.) In any case, I toyed with giving her a POV, to make her actions more legible to the reader. But I didn’t want to give her equal space to Sophie and Mouth, and I wasn’t sure if it would work to just dip into her POV a couple of times. More importantly, I wanted to preserve the surprise of Bianca’s heel turn, and I didn’t think I could do that while letting people in on her thought process.
I’ll never know how things in the book would have turned out if I’d given Bianca some POV chapters, but on balance I’m glad I didn’t. It kept the focus on what I wanted the book to be about: Sophie and Mouth both bought into other people’s ideals of justice and community, and they both learn the hard way that they need to make their own.
But more recently, I have been finding that when in doubt, it’s usually a good idea to give someone a POV. In my upcoming novel Lessons in Magic and Disaster, I originally included only a couple of brief sections from the POV of Jamie’s mother Serena. And I found some of my beta readers had a hard time feeling invested in Serena or understanding why she does the things she does in the story. The book fails miserably unless you care what’s happens to Jamie’s mom. And I have so much love and empathy for Serena, someone who consistently tries to do the right thing and struggles to shoulder the weight of grief and trauma.
So I gave Serena way more space in the book, including a huge chunk of flashbacks to her early years as an activist and her marriage to Jamie’s other mother, Mae. As soon as I did this, it was obviously the right choice: it deepened all of the other themes and relationships in the book to have this level of understanding of Serena’s joys and struggles.
So lately, I’ve been thinking about the politics of POV.
The issue of whose perspective is included in a story feels inherently political. A character who’s only seen from the outside inherently becomes a bit of a cipher—or an NPC, as I said above. I wrote before about the idea that we should stop talking about characters having agency in a story and instead talk about whether a character gets to be an authority on their own life. The characters who matter in a story tend to be the ones whose opinions shape how we feel about the overall events.
So as I start crafting my next couple of novels, I’m increasingly thinking about how to be a bigger POV slut—because I think it’s a matter of simple fairness to allow as many voices as possible to exist within the story.
I do think a POV character needs to pull their own weight narratively—not just in terms of witnessing events that nobody else in the story could have witnessed, but also by adding a different sensibility. Or set of concerns. Or something that might change how we think about the story a bit.
Especially when someone is a character that readers might be predisposed to judge harshly because of internalized prejudices, I think it’s important to try to represent that person’s viewpoint in the story. But also, people whose actions shape the narrative, in ways that feel startling or confusing, can really benefit from getting to tell their side of the story. Lately I’m noodling on the idea that it’s not so much a question of “How can I structure the story in such a way as to keep the narrative moving” as “Who is being silenced in this story, and do they deserve a voice?”
I guess I’m craving more anarchy in my stories, because I have read some stories lately that were gloriously promiscuous in their use of viewpoints, and I was surprised by how much it enhanced the experience. And because I feel like the dominant experience of 2025 is being trapped in our own perceptions of reality, with less and less ability to know how other people are thinking and feeling about the same events. One of the great joys of fiction is that it lets you understand that any one event can be understood from many different angles. (See: Rashomon.)
A few caveats apply: I still love an omniscient narrator and I’m probably going to try to keep making that happen. Also, here’s where I admit that my next novel, the one that I’m hoping comes out in 2026, has only one POV for reasons that I hope will become clear. Finally, I do think that if a POV fails to stand out or feel unique, it can be worse than not going into that person’s mind at all.
All in all, though, I have been getting the feeling lately that the era of POV puritanism—the idea that you gotta pick a small number of major POVs and stick to them—is over, and the era of “anything goes” has begun. And I couldn’t be happier, not just from a writing standpoint but also from a standpoint of wanting to experience as many ways as possible of looking at a story within that story.[end-mark]
Buy the Book
Lessons in Magic and Disaster
A young witch teaches her mother how to do magic—with very unexpected results…
This article was originally published at Happy Dancing, Charlie Jane Anders’ newsletter, available on Buttondown.
The post Who Gets a POV In Your Story? It’s a Political Decision appeared first on Reactor.
Everyone’s Favorite Cetacean: The Dolphin
Jul. 14th, 2025 03:00 pmtordotcom_feedEveryone’s Favorite Cetacean: The Dolphin
Dolphins, with their playful personalities, are among the most beloved aquatic creatures…
Published on July 14, 2025
Photo by Ranae Smith [via Unsplash]
Photo by Ranae Smith [via Unsplash]
On the opposite end of the cute spectrum from the orca is what we mostly mean when we say “dolphin”: the bottlenose dolphin made popular by films and television shows, notably Flipper, and some of its relatives including the spinner and the spotted dolphin. Orcas are actually the largest of the dolphins, and both are, more broadly, toothed whales, related to the beluga and the sperm whale (versus baleen or krill-sifter whales like the humpback). Toothed whales are predators, and as a class, they’re highly intelligent. We’ve certainly seen that when it comes to orcas.
Dolphins with their playful personalities, relatively unthreatening size, and their naturally adorable, smiling faces are the most appealing and accessible of the cetaceans. They seem to enjoy human contact, or at least not to be overtly stressed or terrified by it. “Swimming With Dolphins” experiences are a staple of the vacation industry.
Human-dolphin contacts go back a long way. There’s an ancient Greek story of a man called Arion, a poet and singer who had been robbed and thrown overboard by the crew of a ship. A dolphin rescued him and carried him on its back to the shore. May be a myth. May not be. It’s not impossible, from what we know of dolphins.
These are highly social animals. They live in pods or family groupings, and they have a language, though it’s not exactly like the human version. It appears that they have names, and call each other by them. They hunt together, and they use strategy and tactics. They play—constantly, enthusiastically, creatively.
And they use tools. Take for example the dolphins of Shark Bay in Australia. A particularly sprightly series of articles describes two different groups, the spongers and the shellers (as well as the beachers, who herd fish to shore and beach themselves to feed).
The spongers select a sponge from the sea bed and fit it to their noses, and use it as a sort of glove to protect their skin while they forage for sea perch. They’ll carry a sponge around and reuse it. It’s not a natural or instinctive behavior; it’s passed down from mother to daughter and sometimes son. Spongers tend to associate with each other, share tips and finer points, and refine their art as they mature.
Shellers are a different cultural group, a bit more equally divided between the sexes. They lift giant sea snail shells from the bottom, scoop up fish, carry the shells to the surface, wiggle and flip them over, and dump the fish into their mouths. The level of sophistication it takes to do this, and the number of steps and the degree of finesse, is pretty impressive.
But not all that surprising. Dolphins have big brains for their size, comparable to humans. Also like humans, they have a highly developed neocortex (associated with problem-solving and self-awareness among other things) and Von Economo neurons, which are linked with emotions and social cognition. There’s a lot going on there; how much, we’ve barely begun to understand.
We want to. We try. Someday maybe we’ll crack the code of dolphin language. We’ll learn more about how they perceive the world: how their sonar works, and what it feels like.
We know it can act like ultrasound, allowing them to see into and through a solid body. They’re fascinated by pregnant human swimmers. Imagine being able to look at another person and see what’s going on under the skin, and know what’s happening inside. We have to invent machines for this. Dolphins come with it already installed.[end-mark]
The post Everyone’s Favorite Cetacean: The Dolphin appeared first on Reactor.
Bibliographical cornucopia for linguists, part 1
Jul. 14th, 2025 02:58 pmlanguagelog_feedBibliographical cornucopia for linguists, part 1
Since we have such an abundance of interesting articles for this fortnight, I will divide the collection into two parts, and provide each entry with an abstract or paragraph length quotation.
- "Word Learning as Category Formation." Caplan, Spencer. PLOS ONE 20, no. 7 (July 3, 2025): e0327615. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0327615.
A fundamental question in word learning is how, given only evidence about what objects a word has previously referred to, children are able to generalize to the correct class. How does a learner end up knowing that “poodle” only picks out a specific subset of dogs rather than the broader class and vice versa? Numerous phenomena have been identified in guiding learner behavior such as the “suspicious coincidence effect” (SCE)—that an increase in the sample size of training objects facilitates more narrow (subordinate) word meanings. While SCE seems to support a class of models based in statistical inference, such rational behavior is, in fact, consistent with a range of algorithmic processes. Notably, the broadness of semantic generalizations is further affected by the temporal manner in which objects are presented—either simultaneously or sequentially. First, I evaluate the experimental evidence on the factors influencing generalization in word learning. A reanalysis of existing data demonstrates that both the number of training objects and their presentation-timing independently affect learning. This independent effect has been obscured by prior literature’s focus on possible interactions between the two. Second, I present a computational model for learning that accounts for both sets of phenomena in a unified way. The Naïve Generalization Model (NGM) offers an explanation of word learning phenomena grounded in category formation. Under the NGM, learning is local and incremental, without the need to perform a global optimization over pre-specified hypotheses. This computational model is tested against human behavior on seven different experimental conditions for word learning, varying over presentation-timing, number, and hierarchical relation between training items. Looking both at qualitative parameter-independent behavior and quantitative parameter-tuned output, these results support the NGM and suggest that rational learning behavior may arise from local, mechanistic processes rather than global statistical inference.
- "Investigating Intentionality in Elephant Gestural Communication." Eleuteri, Vesta et al. Royal Society Open Science 12, no. 7 (July 9, 2025): 242203. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.242203.
A crucial feature of language is the ability to communicate cognitive goals to a specific audience, i.e. goal-directed intentionality. Core criteria for this ability include (i) audience directedness: signalling in the presence of an attentive audience, (ii) persistence: continuing signalling until goals are met, and (iii) elaboration: using new signals following communicative failure. While intentional use has been demonstrated in individual gestures in some non-primates, primates—in particular apes—show this ability across many gestures. But is goal-directed intentionality across many gestures restricted to primates? We explored whether savannah elephants use many gestures with goal-directed intentionality. We presented semi-captive elephants with desired and non-desired items, recording their communicative attempts when an experimenter met, partially met or failed to meet their goal of getting the desired item. Elephants used 38 gesture types almost exclusively when a visually attentive experimenter was present, demonstrating audience directedness. They persisted in gesturing more when their goal was partially as compared with fully met but showed no difference in persistence when the goal was met or not met. Elephants elaborated their gesturing when their goal was not met. We find goal-directed intentionality across many elephant gestures and reveal that elephants, like apes, assess the communicative effectiveness of their gesturing.
- "Mountain Chickadee Chatter: Scientists Are Decoding the Songbird's Complex Calls." Haley, Sofia Marie. The Conversation, May 27, 2025. http://theconversation.com/mountain-chickadee-chatter-scientists-are-decoding-the-songbirds-complex-calls-247091.
The extensive vocal repertoire of mountain chickadees has yet to be fully documented. There are five basic categories of call types:
-
- Contact calls: communicate identity, sort of like a name, and location.
- “Chick-a-dee” calls: coordinate flock movement and communicate a variety of complex information about the environment, from food availability to predator presence and type.
- Alarm calls: alert others of the presence of a predator.
- Begging calls: used by chicks or females to elicit feeding behavior from males.
- Gargle calls: advertise dominance over other individuals in a flock, primarily used by males.
“Chick-a-dee” calls contain several elements resembling the basic elements of human grammar. Essentially, the various sounds a chickadee utters mean different things, similar to words in human languages. And the way that a chickadee combines these sounds changes the meaning. Word order matters, just like grammar matters in human language. If a chickadee were to phrase its calls in the wrong note order, the call would no longer convey the same meaning, even if composed of the same elements.
The author distinguishes between the two large categories of songs and calls. A video is included; in it you can hear the author distinguish and mimic different types of bird talk
- "The Emoji Tongue." Longreads, July 1, 2025. http://longreads.com/2025/07/01/emoji-language-keith-houston/. Excerpt from Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of Emoji. Houston, Keith. 1st ed. W. W. Norton & Company, Incorporated, 2025. https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324075158.
In 2015, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary went all-in on the still-novel phenomenon of emoji. That year, the guardians of the venerable OED named the FACE WITH TEARS OF JOY emoji ()—now, as then, the world’s most popular emoji—as Word of the Year, beating out such zingers as “ad blocker,” “Brexit,” “lumbersexual,” “on fleek,” and “sharing economy.” For emoji to be blessed in this way by the OED was remarkable enough, but it also invited a question: if was a word, did that make emoji a language?
This morning I stood out on my stoop and listened to a flock of crows conversing. After about 5 minutes, I could distinguish a variety of different caws and calls. Some were soft and subdued, almost like whispers, others were excited and raucous. I was convinced that, if I listened to them for half a day and observed their behavior in relation to the caws and calls, I would be able to figure out what they were communicating to each other.
Then I sat down at my computer and wrote some messages to friends. It has become my custom to follow my signature with the emoji for a snail, which happens to be my logo, and has been for many decades. I don't know if it will come through in WordPress, but I'll give it a try: VHM . That is pronounced "snail / wōniú / ghongha / ciplēkirā / katatsumuri / etc., etc., etc."
[Thanks to Edward M "Ted" McClure]
BEWARE THE CON RATS
Jul. 14th, 2025 01:00 pmcakewrecks_feedSummer is the reward students get for successfully completing another year of educational excellence. Or for partying all year and flunking out. (Nobody said life was fair, kids.)
So while graduation season may be over, I think it's time our bakers had a little summer schoolin'.
Bakers? Welcome to "How-To-Spell-'Congratulations'-101."
I can see it's going to be a long day.
Alright, let's practice: C-O-N-G-R-A-T-U-L-A-T-I-O-N-S. See? Now you try.
I dare you to read that aloud.
("Comgratatum?")
Try again.
G, you shouldn't have.
No, really.
And don't think I'm not on to your latest scheme, bakers. You know, the one where you just pipe a heap of scribbles halfway through the word and hope no one notices?
Cheater.
The best part is how you can still clearly see those last two are misspelled. Next time just chuck some High School Musical flotsam on there.
At this point, even I have forgotten how to spell it. I would "COHGRADULITTE" you, bakers, but I don't think I can handle that level of irony.
Let's try a new approach: just shorten it to "Congrats!" That's easy enough, right?
*sigh*
What is wrong with you people?
For a wild, hopeful second there I thought this had something to do with comic conventions starting up week:
"Watch out for those Con Rats!"
...but then I realized I it was a different kind of "con." Rats.
Well, you've all failed the course, bakers. So, hey, get out there and continue collecting a paycheck for brutalizing the English language! Woo! Yeah!
Oh, and kids? Stay in school. Or don't.
Honestly, your bakery manager probably won't give a con rat's @ss.
Thanks to Nancy H., Jessica E., Julia L., Michelle W., Meghan H., Amanda N., Julie D., Elizabeth B., & Bailey for the pep talk!
*****
P.S. Here's a (hilarious) reminder that English is almost as confusing as these cakes:
P Is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever
*****
And from my other blog, Epbot:
Wind and Truth Reread: Chapters 78-80
Jul. 14th, 2025 02:00 pmtordotcom_feedWind and Truth Reread: Chapters 78-80
Day Seven begins with visions of the past and foreboding for the future.
Published on July 14, 2025
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<p class="syndicationauthor">Posted by Drew McCaffrey</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/wind-and-truth-reread-chapters-78-80/">https://reactormag.com/wind-and-truth-reread-chapters-78-80/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=817798">https://reactormag.com/?p=817798</a></p><post-hero class="wp-block-post-hero js-post-hero post-hero post-hero-vertical">
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<h2 class="post-hero-title text-h1"><i>Wind and Truth</i> Reread: Chapters 78-80</h2>
<div class="prose post-hero-description prose--post-hero">Day Seven begins with visions of the past and foreboding for the future.</div>
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<p class="post-hero-author text-xs font-aktiv uppercase font-medium [&_a]:link-hover">By <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/lyndsey-luther/" title="Posts by Lyndsey Luther" class="author url fn" rel="author">Lyndsey Luther</a>, <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/paige-vest/" title="Posts by Paige Vest" class="author url fn" rel="author">Paige Vest</a>, <a href="https://reactormag.com/author/drew-mccaffrey/" title="Posts by Drew McCaffrey" class="author url fn" rel="author">Drew McCaffrey</a></p>
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Published on July 14, 2025
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<p>Welcome to Day Seven, Cosmere Chickens! Things are certainly heating up on a <em>lot</em> of fronts this week. The war on the Shattered Plains is growing more desperate, Azimir is in deep, deep trouble, and Queen Fen of Thaylenah and Jasnah face a difficult decision. Meanwhile, in the Spiritual Realm, Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain are having to face some hard truths about their pasts. We have a lot to delve into this week (as always), so please join in for this week’s installment of the <em>Wind and Truth </em>Reread!</p>
<p>The book has been out long enough that most of you will hopefully have finished, and as such, this series shall now function as a re-read rather than a read-along. That means there <em>will</em> be spoilers for the end of the book (as well as <strong>full Cosmere spoilers</strong>, so beware if you aren’t caught up on all Cosmere content).</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>Paige’s Commentary: Plot Arcs</h3>
<p>It’s Day 7, and we’re drawing ever closer to the contest of champions! Let’s dive in with chapter 78, “A True Radiant,” which opens with Sigzil planning out the next phase of his defense. He doubts himself, as he always does, but he speaks up for what he believes they should do and the other generals listen to him. They’re trying to keep the singers and Fused away from Narak Prime and the Oathgate, so they concoct a plan to draw the enemy where they want them to go, in order to keep the focus off of the Oathgate. At least for the time being. But as Sigzil knows all too well, they’re dangerously low on Stormlight and doing all they can to conserve it. This plotline is full of desperation, as are most of them in this book, but somehow the circumstances surrounding Sigzil and his troops and the situation in Azimir feel the most precarious as things stand at the start of Day 7.</p>
<p>Sig heads out and speaks to a few soldiers, trying to bolster their confidence, and it feels remarkably like what Adolin often does in terms of remembering names and speaking to as many soldiers as he can. It’s quite heartwarming. As he seeks out Leyten, he asks Vienta about how long they might last with the Stormlight they have. Her answer is not encouraging: She doesn’t think it likely that they’ll last three more days. When he finds Leyten, his friend is in a reflective mood, asking Sigzil, “[D]o I belong here?” He’s doubting himself, and doesn’t feel like he’s a true Radiant, but Sig invokes Kaladin and since Leyten respects their former commander, he accepts that Kaladin trusted them to be in charge. As he encourages Leyten, Sigzil realizes that he’s found himself. It’s extremely satisfying to see him accept what he’s become and embrace the challenge of leading:</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Sigzil was, at long last, the man he’d always wanted to be.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>POV Shift!</p>
<p>Venli and her comrades are in the chasms with the chasmfiends, heading toward Narak. They encounter an obstruction and the chasmfiends just pick them all up and carry them over it. Those big guys are quite handy! Venli talks with Leshwi, who doesn’t think she can go on, feeling useless and purposeless. Venli assures her that she was strong enough to walk away from Odium—and that was the hard part—and tells her that if she stays with the listeners, Leshwi won’t be a god among them, but she will be free.</p>
<p>Then there’s a cool moment, when Venli feels Curiosity from the big daddy chasmfiend; Venli guesses that he wants to know the source of the song as much as the listeners do. The chasmfiend, Thundercloud, finds a bridge wedged in the chasm and lifts Venli up to look at it. Another cool bit is how she projects to Thundercloud what the bridge would have looked like when it was new. I love the way they can communicate in these ways!</p>
<p>POV Shift!</p>
<p>Jasnah and Fen receive a message from the Windrunners who went to scout out the singer fleet on its way to Thaylen City. They confirm that the ships are full of rocks and that it’s a fake force. Fen knows that Jasnah now wants to move Radiants to the Shattered Plains, but she’s worried about her city and the likelihood of her people being attacked without those forces to protect them. Jasnah says she has Dalinar’s authority to send the Radiants and Fen doesn’t like that answer. Jasnah, however, is determined to do the most good, and she feels certain that means assisting the forces at Narak.</p>
<p>Chapter 79 is titled “The Rhythm of Longing” and features POVs from Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain. They’re each in a vision, embodying a past version of themselves, watching scenes transpire from their youth or, as in Rlain’s case, their relatively recent past. It’s a pretty straightforward chapter, with events we’ve read about before: Shallan remembers telling stories to her frightened brothers as they’re all hiding during a fight between their parents; Renarin is remembering a time Adolin rescued him from bullies; and Rlain is remembering when he “volunteered” to take dullform and be a spy among the humans. They’re all sad memories, but these experiences got our Radiants to where they are now.</p>
<p>Chapter 80 is titled “Seeing the Future” and starts with Adolin learning how to use binoculars. He thinks they’re incredible and says he wants a hundred of them, but Colot breaks it to him that there’s only one pair, and that Adolin is holding them. Peering through the binoculars, they observe some Heavenly Ones in the distance, and Adolin gets the feeling that something is going to happen today.</p>
<p>POV Shift!</p>
<p>Navani is in the past at Urithiru and she and Dalinar see people leaving with all of their belongings. They find the Tower Bondsmith of that day trying to mediate a talk between a Windrunner and a group of a hundred Skybreakers. Navani names him Melishi and Dalinar tries to send her close to him using Connection, but instead she finds herself in Melishi’s body.</p>
<p>The Windrunner is telling one of the Skybreakers that they need to stay together but one Skybreaker speaks for the others and she says that “the fight” is not their fight. The Windrunner disagrees and both he and the Skybreaker spokeswoman look to Melishi—Navani—to mediate. She doesn’t know what to say so she asks to discuss it in a calmer setting, which sets off the Skybreaker. She accuses the Windrunner of deception and running cons, and demands to know what he’s hiding. She knows where they came from and how humankind destroyed their old world and complains that the Windrunner and Melishi refuse to let her tell everyone. Then she reveals that they’ve already told everyone else the truth before she abruptly departs.</p>
<p>The Windrunner speaks with Melishi/Navani and he tells her he’ll gather the Radiants but that a fight is coming. Before he goes, Navani tries to get more information and asks him about the accusations that he’s been lying, and what he’s been lying about, but the Windrunner remains cold and unyielding, leaving without explaining.</p>
<p>POV Shift!</p>
<p>Back to Adolin, where he consults with Kushkam and they try to make a plan out of a seemingly hopeless situation. They discuss plugging the tunnels into the dome over the Oathgate and Kushkam says he’ll work on it. Adolin hears Maya saying that help is coming and, of course, thinks she’s bringing Windrunner spren. Kushkam doesn’t know what good that will do them, and Adolin feels much the same way.</p>
<p>As Adolin goes to check on his Plate, he encounters the young girl who wanted to join the Alethi army. He had sent her to May to learn archery but, unfortunately, she’s not very good at it; she’s just too small to draw a bow. May sends her off and has a pointed word with Adolin about the necessity of getting enough sleep. She’s too funny; she says she’s his ex, so she’s the closest thing his wife has to an advocate. It made me like her a lot more when she said that!</p>
<p>Notum shows up and says that he can see glimpses into Shadesmar but suddenly sees something very unsettling: a thunderclast soul. Adolin immediately runs outside, shouting and calling for his armor. Then he sees the hulking form rising from the field: The thunderclast has arrived.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>Lyndsey’s Commentary: Character Arcs & Maps</h3>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1500" height="839" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-78.png" alt="Wind and Truth Chapter Arch - Chapter 78" class="wp-image-817804" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-78.png 1500w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-78-740x414.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-78-1100x615.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-78-768x430.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /></figure>
<p>Chapter 78 has an interesting blend of Heralds portrayed on its deteriorating arch. Battah, patron of the Elsecallers and the Counselor, serves two purposes here: She’s symbolic of a chapter in which Jasnah appears, and her role is also emblematic of Sigzil, who is functioning as a strategic counselor. Sig (and Queen Fen) are also displaying attributes of leadership, which accounts for Jezrien’s inclusion. And Kalak is here for Venli’s POV, in his position as patron of the Willshapers.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1500" height="811" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-79.png" alt="Wind and Truth Chapter Arch - Chapter 79" class="wp-image-817803" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-79.png 1500w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-79-740x400.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-79-1100x595.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-79-768x415.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /></figure>
<p>Chapter 79’s arch Heralds are Shalash, Palah, and Jezrien. This is a VERY heavily character-driven chapter, with deep dives into Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain’s pasts and events which shaped them into the people they are today. As such, Shalash (patron of the Lightweavers) and Palah (patron of the Truthwatchers) make sense to be included here. But why Jezrien? As has happened often times over the last couple months, I’m mystified as to his inclusion. We see no leadership (except in Eshonai’s actions, but that would be a stretch) or Windrunners here.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1500" height="839" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-80.png" alt="Wind and Truth Chapter Arch - Chapter 80" class="wp-image-817802" srcset="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-80.png 1500w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-80-740x414.png 740w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-80-1100x615.png 1100w, https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-Chapter-Arch-Chapter-80-768x430.png 768w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" /></figure>
<p>Finally, we have Jezrien, Vedel, and Battah heading up chapter 80. Jezrien likely represents Adolin, who’s making some big leadership and strategy decisions over in Azimir, as well as the Windrunner we see in Navani’s vision over in the Spiritual Realm. Battah can also stand for Adolin, as he’s serving as a wise counselor, carefully going over the tactics and studying the battlefield in order to hold out as long as possible. Vedel often appears on Adolin chapters, as the order he’s most closely aligned with are the Edgedancers.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Leyten</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“He died, you know,” Leyten said, with a half smirk. “Two bridge runs later. Gabaron, the man who consigned me to the bridge crews? Dead.”</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>We can hardly blame Leyten for a touch of schadenfreude here. When someone sends you off to <em>literally die</em> for an imaginary offense, only the very best of people wouldn’t feel a touch of justice in watching this fate unfold.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“I’m not a true Radiant, Sig. I’m a guy who likes to sit and count how many uniforms we need before we run out. I don’t belong in the sky, glowing.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Ah, imposter syndrome. And maybe a touch of survivor’s guilt as well.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“Sig… I miss him, Kaladin. But you should know, I’m just as proud to serve under you.”</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Nothing like a heartfelt discussion in which two characters really connect and share their deepest insecurities to signal that one of them’s about to die.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Sigzil</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>As the camp rushed to execute his plans, and his generals found his ideas worthwhile, Sigzil discovered something remarkable.<br><br>This was him. This man who could lead.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>And, speaking of things that narratively foreshadow the reader to coming events… What’s this, Sigzil, believing in himself? Well, obviously he’s about to get knocked down a peg (or in this case, a whole ladder). Otherwise how will he climb back up?</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Here, beneath red lightning and on a plain full of chasms he’d claimed as his own, Sigzil found himself. In a way that training with Master Hoid, or learning beneath Kaladin, had never done for him.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>On the one hand, I’m happy for him that he’s finally found acceptance of his place and his value. On the other, knowing full well what’s about to happen to him… this is utterly heartbreaking.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Venli</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Even with all that, she found she loved this place.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>This whole sequence of observations from Venli is truly beautiful. She has grown enough that she’s not focused on herself, but rather on the beauty of the nature around her. Her journey from self-absorbed jerk only out for herself to a fully realized, empathic individual is quite a thing to witness.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Leshwi/Venli</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“You were strong enough,” Venli said to Praise, “to turn against your orders, your own kind, and your god because you knew it was right. <em>That</em> was the difficult part, Leshwi. Just keep going.”</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>It’s wild, knowing where Venli started her character journey, to see her displaying this level of empathy for another.</p>
<p>On Leshwi’s side, I can only imagine how difficult it must be to change yourself when you’ve spent <em>literal millennia </em>as one thing… then having that taken from you, and having to not only rebuild who you are, but to lose the things you loved most (namely, flight). Leshwi is learning to grapple with a disability; it’s the equivalent of someone losing the ability to walk.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Queen Fen</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>But what if by listening to you now, I throw everything away, Jasnah?</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>I’m glad that Jasnah doesn’t immediately discount this fear, because it <em>is</em> a valid one. Queen Fen has a lot at risk here, and a huge amount of responsibility as the leader and protector of her people.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Jasnah</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p><em>Do the most good</em>, she thought to herself. When decisions grew difficult, she relied on this guiding philosophy.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Interesting, and perhaps we can see a parallel here to Hoid, and a glimpse into why they were initially drawn to one another. Hoid has said that he’d be willing to watch one world burn to save the Cosmere as a whole; the “lives of the many outweigh the lives of the few” concept.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Shallan</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>She was a child. Hiding in a corner. Crying while her parents shouted at each other.<br><br>Hers wasn’t a <em>unique</em> story, she knew.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>But a new piece of information for us. We knew that Shallan’s childhood wasn’t a happy one, of course, but this all-too-real experience of a child watching their parents’ love fall apart is a revelation—especially given what we now know about Shallan’s mother. It seems as though Chana was trying to force herself into a new mold, to recreate herself, and it… was not going well. Was this because of her growing mental instability, or just because she’d spent so much of her long, long, <em>long</em> life as a soldier that her attempt at constraining herself to the bounds of a housewife simply wasn’t sustainable?</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>As an adult, she sometimes told herself the lie that everything had been wonderful up until her mother’s death; but as with many lies in her life, she had let that one live too long.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>As a child of a broken family, I understand this all too well. Some of us do have a tendency to try to look back with rose-tinted glasses; we don’t want to think ill of the people who raised us and loved us.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>This memory was <em>authentic</em> joy. The looks her brothers gave as she ignored her own pain and fear and told them a tale she’d imagined…</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>A beautiful memory, and a beautiful gift she gave to her brothers. A moment of peace in a tumultuous household, and a thing that many storytellers and entertainers can relate to. Sometimes, as with people like Robin Williams, those carrying the heaviest burdens can also bring to others the greatest joy.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Together, despite parents who seemed not to care, they became a family <em>anyway</em>.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>In a way, this almost seems like a melding of blood family and found family. They’re related by blood, but still actively <em>choosing</em> one another. In my opinion, this is the strongest bond there can be; shared history, blood, and experience alongside an active effort and choice to continue nurturing the relationship and one another.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Renarin</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>[…] the elder him saw something new he’d missed when younger. Those nervous postures, the way the boys kept glancing to one another, feeding their actions with nods? These boys… they were <em>afraid</em>.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>How perceptive of him! I’m not surprised that he missed it when he was younger; he was so focused on his own fear that the fear and pain of others wouldn’t be as obvious.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Why would his friends—people he <em>perceived</em> as his friends—treat him this way? Where had these sudden emotions come from? What had he done wrong, and could he be sure to never do it again?</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>These social anxieties are so <em>real</em>, and reveal a deeply kind and naive little boy. Betrayal often hits people like Renarin the hardest.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>And storms, Renarin loved him for it. He didn’t need saving as he once had, but he <em>remembered</em> how it felt when Adolin had shown up. Like a hero from some story…</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>You know, Sanderson <em>could </em>have gone the route of Renarin resenting Adolin for saving him, but I’m glad he went with the less cliché one. It also makes Renarin a more kind and relatable character, I think, that he resents <em>himself</em> rather than the person coming to his aid.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p><em>What will this day do to the young you?</em><br><br>“Show me that I can’t trust people,” Renarin said. “Because I can’t read them. For years I was afraid that every friend would turn out to secretly hate me.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Hoo boy. This is an anxiety I’m <em>intimately </em>familiar with. When someone you trust betrays you, it cuts deep and leaves a scar that never really heals.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Adolin</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Adolin Kholin had been protecting the weak since he could walk. Strange, that Renarin was now the knight.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>This is an interesting observation, and one that several characters voice. I think what it all comes down to is that pesky “I am what I see myself to be” aspect of the Radiant powers. Adolin doesn’t ever see himself as a Radiant; he doesn’t <em>want</em> to take the Oaths, to be beholden so tightly to his word. And so he becomes something else, still protecting those who cannot protect themselves, but in his own way.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Rlain</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>They’d just been talking about how the parshmen were invisible to humans, but they treated him the same way a lot of the time.<br><br>He waited for the objections, or at least for someone to say they’d miss him. Instead they all perked up.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Poor, poor Rlain. It seems like he’s unwanted and stuck on the outside wherever he goes. With the singers… with Bridge Four… with the people in Urithiru…</p>
<p>I went to see <a href="https://reactormag.com/pixars-elio-grapples-with-loneliness-on-earth-and-in-the-communiverse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Elio</em> (the new Pixar film)</a> with my son this week and I can see some parallels here between how Elio felt unwanted and wanted to escape to an alien world. (Side note, but if you’ve enjoyed Pixar films in the past or have small kids, definitely go check <em>Elio</em> out, it’s one of their stronger films and doesn’t seem to be getting much of a media push.) In the past, we’ve discussed in this reread how Rlain’s exclusion is often due to unconscious racism, especially within Bridge Four. And his exclusion from his own people also appears to be, at least partially, because of prejudice; this time for his sexuality. It’s stated that he’d had an unfortunate encounter with another malen while in mateform, and the other singers never treated him the same afterward. Rlain says that he thought they found it amusing, but they’re still treating him like an outsider. Different. Not willing to conform, and unwanted because of it.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>No, they simply… well, they didn’t know him. They didn’t care to know him. He was always there, but never relevant. The quiet one at the edge of the conversation.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Don’t misunderstand me; It isn’t <em>all</em> due to prejudice. Part of it does just seem to be Rlain’s personality. But I don’t think the mateform incident helped any. The only person who’s ever really, truly wanted him around…</p>
<p>…is Renarin. ::<em>swoon</em>::</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>[…] he remembered how not a single one of his friends had spoken up to request he stay.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>Ouch.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Navani</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“Any fight to defend people is our fight.” <br><br>The Skybreaker sniffed and rolled her eyes. It seemed that dealing with Windrunners was the same regardless of the era.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>This is an interesting take, and not one I’d expect of Navani, to be quite honest. She has never seemed the type to trivialize protecting the downtrodden.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Zabra</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>“So…” she said softly. “You’re saying I need to get me a set of Shardplate.”</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>I appreciate her drive, and I understand her <em>need</em> to be useful, to prove herself worthy, to protect her people. I also appreciate how she <em>does</em> listen to Adolin. Once he gives her a logical reason for why she can’t do certain things, she accepts it. She obviously doesn’t like it, and immediately comes up with a new idea that needs to be shot down, but she <em>does</em> listen.</p>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Strategy</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>[…] what we need to do is make them think that by attacking Narak Three, they’ll be getting what they want: a way to demoralize us.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>In this chapter, we see Sigzil debating with the other generals on the Shattered Plains over what to do with Narak. It is vital that they retain control of Narak Prime, and they go back and forth a bit on whether to pull their troops to defend that plateau alone, or guard the Oathgate on Narak Two.</p>
<p>Eventually Sigzil convinces them that the best strategic plan is to fool the enemy into thinking that they have reserves of Stormlight on Narak Three, drawing them to attack it in an effort to demoralize the troops in the remaining three days. In reality, those Stormlight reserves are an illusion, leading the enemy to waste precious time attacking a plateau with no strategic value.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="468" height="308" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-map-detail.jpg" alt="Map Detail from Wind and Truth" class="wp-image-817805" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Dragonsteel</figcaption></figure>
<h4 class="wp-block-heading"><strong>Azimir</strong></h4>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The bronze fortification at the center, roughly circular with a rounded top, had expanded further. […] Outside it was a long, wide ring of stone ground that […] was coated in crusted blood and corpses. … That wide field was also strewn with debris that had been pushed outward, in columns, thirty or forty yards by the attackers as they made their assaults: forming barricades behind which the defending soldiers sometimes took up positions. All together, it formed a star pattern.</p></blockquote></figure>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>The idea was to fill some of the hallways with Soulcast bronze, so when the enemy battered down the door, they found the path had turned solid. Trouble was, if they plugged too many, their own forces couldn’t make it in to fight.</p></blockquote></figure>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>[…] see that larger corridor across the way, where they’ve pushed debris to the sides more than others? I think that happened intentionally, not as part of a failing line. I suspect they’re preparing that corridor for a large assault today.”</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>In my little diagram here, I’m assuming those columns to be horizontal rather than vertical, based on the “star pattern” description. I’m also going to assume that the Azish still have a ring of defenders along the outer edge, to stop the singers from leaving the dome. I’ve also drawn a super basic idea of how the hallways likely function; a twisting, labyrinthine warren intended to slow the enemy and force them into close-quarters fighting should they manage to exit the inner dome.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="468" height="430" src="https://reactormag.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Wind-and-Truth-map-detail2.jpg" alt="Map Detail from Wind and Truth" class="wp-image-817806" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Credit: Dragonsteel</figcaption></figure>
<p>Adolin knows the Fused are on the way, which is going to strain their already weak defenses to the breaking point. And, even worse…</p>
<p>Here comes the thunderclast.</p>
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<h3 class="wp-block-heading"><a></a>Drew’s Commentary: Invested Arts & Theories</h3>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p><em>I’m sorry.</em></p></blockquote></figure>
<p>I feel like I’m the one who should be saying this, because the epigraphs in this part of the book aren’t all that exciting. Once upon a time, I harbored a hope that this letter was from Hoid to Valor, laying the groundwork for an epic Shardic-scale tragedy and love story. But I very quickly had to admit that, no, this is Hoid’s reply to Jasnah’s breakup letter.</p>
<p>Alas.</p>
<p>This is extra disappointing because my section this week is going to be so thin. These three chapters are packed to the brim with character development, introspection, and growth…but they hardly touch on the magical elements of the story and world <em>at all</em>. After a beefy write-up last week, we’ve got slim pickings now.</p>
<p>But that doesn’t mean we’ve got <em>nothing</em>.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>A theory: the meeting of storm and storm had never again been so violent as it had been that first time, when plateaus had been destroyed. Was that another clue? Had this location caused the violence of that convergence? Were others weaker because they happened elsewhere? Or was it what they’d guessed originally: that the violence of that first convergence had been caused by the Everstorm’s exultant inception?</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>On reread, we understand that Odium’s perpendicularity, hidden below Narak, was the main cause of the more violent meeting of the storms, back in <em>Words of Radiance</em>. Presumably, the growing strength of Odium is also why the Everstorm just plain <em>defeated</em> the highstorm over Narak earlier in <em>Wind and Truth</em>.</p>
<p>This has my mind thinking about other potential interactions between Shards, and the importance of perpendicularities. If Sazed had been more capable of action during <em>The Lost Metal</em>, what would have happened in Bilming? Would he have set off some kind of reaction by trying to intervene directly over Autonomy’s shardpool? What about Odium on Sel, or, perhaps most intriguingly, on Threnody? According to Khriss, Threnody doesn’t have a regular shardpool, but rather intermittent and temporary perpendicularities that pop up when some “morbid” event happens (possibly the creation of Shades). If Odium—or Retribution, now—went back to Threnody, we could see some truly crazy stuff happening.</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote><p>Our new leader has told us where we came from, what humankind did to its homeworld, and you two refuse to let me tell everyone.</p></blockquote></figure>
<p>A minor tidbit here, but an interesting one: Nale took over the Skybreakers shortly before the Recreance. He spent quite a long time after Aharietiam doing who-knows-what, before returning to the fold in his own twisted way.</p>
<p>And it seems it was <em>his</em> testimony about Ashyn and the destruction there that put some of the first cracks in the Radiants’ resolve.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that’s all I’ve got, as far as noteworthy lore and theories go. Lyn’s expansive character breakdowns are the real feature this week, but never you worry—there’s plenty more to come!</p>
<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-dots" />
<p><a></a>We’ll be keeping an eye on the comment sections of posts about this article on various social media platforms and may include some of your comments/speculation (with attribution) on future weeks’ articles! Keep the conversation going, and PLEASE remember to spoiler-tag your comments on social media to help preserve the surprise for those who haven’t read the book yet.</p>
<p>See you next Monday with our discussion of chapters 81, 82, and 83![end-mark]</p>
<p>The post <a href="https://reactormag.com/wind-and-truth-reread-chapters-78-80/"><i>Wind and Truth</i> Reread: Chapters 78-80</a> appeared first on <a href="https://reactormag.com">Reactor</a>.</p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/wind-and-truth-reread-chapters-78-80/">https://reactormag.com/wind-and-truth-reread-chapters-78-80/</a></p><p class="ljsyndicationlink"><a href="https://reactormag.com/?p=817798">https://reactormag.com/?p=817798</a></p>
Happy First Rescueversary, Luna!
Jul. 14th, 2025 12:04 pmdaily_otter_feed
Via Vancouver Aquarium, which writes:
Happy first rescueversary to sea otter Luna! Found separated from her mother on Vargas Island near Tofino, BC on this day in 2024, she was deemed non-releasable and transferred to the Vancouver Aquarium alongside pup Tofino later that year.
Recursive summarization
Jul. 14th, 2025 10:20 amlanguagelog_feed
The mouseover title: "I saw an article that said it was a 3 minute read then offered an AI summary, and I believe it may be included in an eventual epitaph for civilization."
The Aftercomic:
Of course it's not just news…
- "Ambience Healthcare’s “Patient Recap” Offers Clinicians the First Chart Summarization Technology from an Ambient AI Platform"
- "WhatsApp adds Meta AI-powered 'Message Summaries' for all those unread texts"
- Using Meeting Summary with AI Companion
So far, none of the AI helpers offer emotionally indicative grunting noises. At least not as far as I know, though maybe Grok is on it?
Accurate graphical summarizations would actually sometimes be useful. Current AI poster generation is about posters to advertise an event, not the sort of figures that would be useful as a summary of complex material, e.g. here:
Susan’s Salon 2025: 13-14 July
Jul. 13th, 2025 03:24 pmcamestrosfelapton_feedCats are cooler than dogs but dogs are nicer people.
- Susan’s Salon is a weekly post for reader comments on any topic they like. This includes personal news, self-promotion, politics, general interest, knitting patterns or anything else including invisible ink formulas.
- Nothing hateful and no cranky exchanges please.
Sunday Sweets: C'est Bon!
Jul. 13th, 2025 01:00 pmcakewrecks_feedBonjour, mon amis! Today's sweets are mostly inspired by Marie Antoinette, so you know what that means: Prepare your eyeballs for an over-the-top feast of excessiveness!
(And no, we won't be having any gruesome headless sweets commemorating Marie's rather gruesome end. Sheesh. Get your mind out of the guillotine.)
Yep, it's all decadence and girliness from here on out! And yay for that, because have I mentioned I've been helping my husband Matt at football camp all week? Yes, I've been sharing a house with 25 teenage boys for the last five days. I could use a little girliness up in here.
Fortunately this first beauty is a sight for my pink-deprived eyes:
And how appropriate that it includes a fabulous fondant fan, because I'm already feeling the need to fan myself!
[Swoon!] Such loveliness!
And here's the lady of the hour herself...
By CakeCentral member Lindasuus
...sweetly putting to shame every Barbie-torso-stuffed-in-a-cake ever made.
This one is so absolutely flawless and stunning, I'm convinced it doesn't really exist.
By Cake Coquette (More detail shots at the link)
We've all just collectively dreamed it or something. (We have excellent imaginary taste, you and I!)
Now here's a solution to that pesky problem of how to hide plastic cake pillars: Simply pipe a decorative cage of icing between the tiers for an elaborate camouflaging exoskeleton of awesomeness!
Er, on second thought, you might want to just leave that to the pros.
I thought this Fabergé Egg cake was a winner on its own ... (Seriously, doesn't it look like a 1st place trophy to you? Or is that the football camp talking?)
...but then I scrolled down and realized the egg was only one quarter of the whole cake!
Wow. The layers look like carved marble or porcelain, and I love those unique shapes, too. It's hard to believe the tiers wouldn't shatter when you went to cut a slice!
I think more food should be adorned with edible pink tassels, don't you?
I love this color scheme so much; fun, flirty, and fit for a queen. I bet ol' M.A. would lose her head over it!
Oooh, sorry Marie. Too soon?
Submitted by Anne Marie B. and made by Rosey Confectionary Sugar Art
Oh, don't stare at me with that doleful expression. Turn your attention instead to the amazing miniature dessert table in your boudoir. And hey, is that rug edible too? Incredible.
Here comes another amazing egg cake. I'm not really sure if fancy eggs are a Marie Antoinette thing, but they're both similarly lavish, so it works for me.
Just gorgeous. If I was serving this cake, I don't think I'd let them eat it, youknowwhatI'msayin?
(Like "Let them eat cake?" Marie's famous line? You know? Yes? Never mind.)
This is probably my favorite cake today:
Submitted by Devon C; by Cake Opera Co.
I thought it was Marie masquerading as a... um... masquerader, while holding a kangaroo for fun, but the website informs me that this is actually an 18th century French figurine, masked to conceal her illicit rendezvous, and juxtaposed by the fawn in her arms meant to represent birth and innocence.
So, I was close.
All of these fanciful confections make me want to host a Marie Antoinette party! How about you? Here's a checklist of everything we need:
Powdered wigs, macarons, frilly shoes, masks, more fancy eggs (I guess they really are a thing) tiny top hats, (pretty sure that's NOT a thing, but I'll go with it), and of course, cake!
Does this cake remind you of a hot-air balloon, too?
Submitted by Promise W. and made by Ganache Patisserie
And did you know that the first manned hot-air balloon ride took place in front of Marie Antoinette and the French court? And that it was "manned" by a sheep, a rooster, and a duck?
True story.
Here's another one: this cake is fantastic! Do you see the little movie-scene applique? Too cool.
I'm not sure how inspired by Marie Antoinette this final cake is, but it's incredible. At over three feet tall and almost two feet wide, I'm pretty sure this is the cake they serve you when you die and go to heaven:
Oh, wait. Actually this is the signature cake for the Hilton Hotel in Silver Spring. Which, after a week at football camp, sounds enough like heaven to me.
Happy Sunday!
*****
If today's Sweets are right up your style alley, then I have JUST the tea for you:
This blend is made in France using the roses and apples grown in the Versailles palace garden. Omigosh! If that's not tea fit for royal-tea, I don't know what is. Plus it comes in that gorgeous pink tin. Talk about a perfect gift for any tea-lover.
******
And from my other blog, Epbot:
The effect of AI tools on coding
Jul. 13th, 2025 12:09 pmlanguagelog_feedJoel Becker et al., "Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity", METR 7/10/2025:
Despite widespread adoption, the impact of AI tools on software development in the wild remains understudied. We conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to understand how AI tools at the February–June 2025 frontier affect the productivity of experienced open-source developers. 16 developers with moderate AI experience complete 246 tasks in mature projects on which they have an average of 5 years of prior experience. Each task is randomly assigned to allow or disallow usage of early-2025 AI tools. When AI tools are allowed, developers primarily use Cursor Pro, a popular code editor, and Claude 3.5/3.7 Sonnet. Before starting tasks, developers forecast that allowing AI will reduce completion time by 24%. After completing the study, developers estimate that allowing AI reduced completion time by 20%. Surprisingly, we find that allowing AI actually increases completion time by 19%—AI tooling slowed developers down. This slowdown also contradicts predictions from experts in economics (39% shorter) and ML (38% shorter). To understand this result, we collect and evaluate evidence for 20 properties of our setting that a priori could contribute to the observed slowdown effect—for example, the size and quality standards of projects, or prior developer experience with AI tooling. Although the influence of experimental artifacts cannot be entirely ruled out, the robustness of the slowdown effect across our analyses suggests it is unlikely to primarily be a function of our experimental design.
(See also this version…)
A graph of their results:
This Swedish thesis confirmed those survey results, but did not test actual development time — the METR results show that users' opinions about productivity are by no means always accurate. Of course those METR results were based on Claude 3.5 — Claude 4 might be different. Or might not be. And maybe making coders feel good is worth a 19% productivity decline…
(Here's someone who's really enthusiastic about using Claude Code — I assume the latest version — but again, it's opinion and not productivity measurement.)
Articles like "Generative AI is Turning Publishing Into a Swamp of Slop" (7/10/2025) suggest that LLMs are enhancing "productivity" in certain corners of the publishing industry. So it would be interesting to understand (beyond the obvious reasons) why coding is different, and what the implications are for other applications.
The METR discussion includes some attempts to "very roughly gesture at some salient important differences", which would apply in other fields. My own concern, based on considerable experience, is that the motives of the administrators (and consultants) responsible for tool choice are pretty clearly not always aligned with productivity improvements. Or user satisfaction, for that matter…
Asterisk the Gaul
Jul. 13th, 2025 10:49 amlanguagelog_feedA learned friend recently sent me a draft composition on medieval Chinese history in which he referred to "*" as an "asterix". This reminded me that ten years ago I wrote a post, "The many pronunciations of '*'" (12/17/15), on this subject and we had a lengthy, vigorous discussion about it.
Given that lately we've been talking a lot about Celts, Galatians, and so on, I think it is appropriate to write another post on Asterix the Gaul, that famous French comic book character, and how he got his name. Also inspired / prompted by Chris Button's latest comment.
I often hear "*" pronounced "asterix" or "asterick", and so on (e.g., "astrisk" [two syllables], esp. in rapid speech). It's hard even for me to pronounce "*" or type the symbol those ways, so ingrained is the pronunciation "as-ter-isk".
First, a little refresher course on "*", how / when it came about, how it is written, how it is pronounced, and what it signifies:
The asterisk (/ˈæstərɪsk/ *), from Late Latin asteriscus, from Ancient Greek ἀστερίσκος, asteriskos, "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star.
Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm or C*-algebra). An asterisk is usually five- or six-pointed in print and six- or eight-pointed when handwritten, though more complex forms exist. Its most common use is to call out a footnote. It is also often used to censor offensive words.
…
The asterisk was already in use as a symbol in ice age cave paintings. There is also a two-thousand-year-old character used by Aristarchus of Samothrace called the asteriskos, ※, which he used when proofreading Homeric poetry to mark lines that were duplicated. Origen is known to have also used the asteriskos to mark missing Hebrew lines from his Hexapla. The asterisk evolved in shape over time, but its meaning as a symbol used to correct defects remained.
In the Middle Ages, the asterisk was used to emphasize a particular part of text, often linking those parts of the text to a marginal comment. However, an asterisk was not always used.
One hypothesis to the origin of the asterisk is that it stems from the 5000-year-old Sumerian character dingir , though this hypothesis seems to only be based on visual appearance.
Now, on to how Asterix the Gaul and the other characters in the comic got their names.
All the fictional characters in Asterix have names which are puns on their roles or personalities, and which follow certain patterns specific to nationality. Certain rules are followed (most of the time) such as Gauls (and their neighbours) having an "-ix" suffix for the men and ending in "-a" for the women; for example, Chief Vitalstatistix (so called due to his portly stature) and his wife Impedimenta (often at odds with the chief). The male Roman names end in "-us", echoing Latin nominative male singular form, as in Gluteus Maximus, a muscle-bound athlete whose name is literally the butt of the joke. Gothic names (present-day Germany) end in "-ic", after Gothic chiefs such as Alaric and Theoderic; for example Rhetoric the interpreter. Greek names end in "-os" or "-es"; for example, Thermos the restaurateur. British names usually end in "-ax" or "-os" and are often puns on the taxation associated with the later United Kingdom; examples include Mykingdomforanos, a British tribal chieftain, Valuaddedtax the druid, and Selectivemploymentax the mercenary. Names of Normans end with "-af", for example Nescaf or Cenotaf. Egyptian characters often end in -is, such as the architects Edifis and Artifis, and the scribe Exlibris. Indic names, apart from the only Indic female characters Orinjade and Lemuhnade, exhibit considerable variation; examples include Watziznehm, Watzit, Owzat, and Howdoo. Other nationalities are treated to pidgin translations from their language, like Huevos y Bacon, a Spanish chieftain (whose name, meaning eggs and bacon, is often guidebook Spanish for tourists), or literary and other popular media references, like Dubbelosix (a sly reference to James Bond's codename "007").[68]
Most of these jokes, and hence the names of the characters, are specific to the translation; for example, the druid named Getafix in English translation – "get a fix", referring to the character's role in dispensing the magic potion – is Panoramix in the original French and Miraculix in German.[69] Even so, occasionally the wordplay has been preserved: Obelix's dog, known in the original French as Idéfix (from idée fixe, a "fixed idea" or obsession), is called Dogmatix in English, which not only renders the original meaning strikingly closely ("dogmatic") but in fact adds another layer of wordplay with the syllable "Dog-" at the beginning of the name.
The name Asterix, French Astérix, comes from astérisque, meaning "asterisk", which is the typographical symbol * indicating a footnote, from the Greek word ἀστήρ (aster), meaning a "star". His name is usually left unchanged in translations, aside from accents and the use of local alphabets. For example, in Esperanto, Polish, Slovene, Latvian, and Turkish it is Asteriks (in Turkish he was first named Bücür meaning "shorty", but the name was then standardised). Two exceptions include Icelandic, in which he is known as Ástríkur ("Rich of love"), and Sinhala, where he is known as සූර පප්පා (Soora Pappa), which can be interpreted as "Hero". The name Obelix (Obélix) may refer to "obelisk", a stone column from ancient Egypt (and hence his large size and strength and his task of carrying around menhirs), but also to another typographical symbol, the obelisk or obelus (†).
For explanations of some of the other names, see List of Asterix characters.
The translators who created all of these different versions in so many languages are to be commended for maintaining the humorous spirit of the onomastics in the original. "Vive 'Astérix le Gaulois'!"
Selected readings
- "The many pronunciations of '*'" (12/17/15)
- "Asses and asterisks" (8/14/17)
