nooo I was gonna say Urbz!

I loved it. Loved the historical setting and its exploration of racism, imperialism, capitalist exploitation at that time and place with the perspectives of diverse characters.

I already enjoy linguistics and learning languages, so I may be biased towards already liking the premise of the novel. (And dark academia is totally up my alley.) The way the author explores the nature of language and how certain parts of ideas always get lost in translation was pretty cool; and using that as a form of magic (that could then be exploited only from native speakers of the language no less) was so cleverly done.

Add in the character conflicts between the four friends, a campus strike, and working class solidarity (with a dash of “be gay do crime”)… I was hooked.

Adding on to what many have already said to give it a name: multiple intelligences

ah I see what you’re saying, more efficient ways to get the same data. Makes sense. Thanks for explaining.

I understand completely. It’s happened to me too many times now to be a coincidence. For a while there whenever I talked to myself “alone” I would sometimes pretend I was also talking to LaMDA, the AI. Now I know it’s probably not LaMDA. But it’s not outside the scope of possibility for Google or Meta to be listening 24/7 if it’s an AI overseeing the panopticon.

I said it has happened to me mulitple times, and I have done experiments. I have given the listeners false information to see if and when it will spread. I have seen whole products pop up out of nowhere in nearby stores because of this. I have seen shitty half-assed tv shows and movies suddenly show up on billboards, as if with only an understanding of the bullet points of my overall speech, and even then with the shaky understanding of an AI trying to fill in the blanks.

Only thing I can think to suggest (that hasn’t been suggested already) is to purposely poison the well by sometimes loading it with falsities for obscuration.

yeah just getting some people around to the whole idea that, right now, voting is part of how we all have to work together to get along somehow on this big rock, and that means compromises sometimes. sometimes ugly compromises.

my favorite asmr triggers are tapping, scratching, wood, and slime