fiat_lux

I appreciate you

Very. Different people have different bodies.

Even if the premise were undebatably true that being fat is an avoidable consequence by eating all of the “right” things in exactly the “right” quantities, which greatly oversimplifies the immense complexity of how bodies function, the target of intolerance should be:

• The companies that pump out garbage masquerading as food
• The regulatory environment that allows those companies to do so
• The systems which deprive people of the time, finances and ability to access adequate nutrition or medical support

By buying into anti-fat-acceptance, you:

• Place the entire burden of systemic issues on individuals who don’t have the power to fix them, and who have their own unique circumstances
• Go to bat for exploitative companies
• Enable damaging ableist tropes about superficial aesthetic ideals

I hope that helps!

No problem! The extra fun part is that ch can also be the abbreviation for child, although the spacing and context obviously settles that ambiguity. So, you could maybe read this as “do not toutchild” if you wanted to be silly.

It’s valid contracted Braille. The last two characters are out/ou and ch.

I’m not sure I understand. Peripheral hallucinations are a recognized type of hallucination, and hallucinations can involve anything from shadows or flashes of light through to full vivid imagery. It only requires perceiving anything that isn’t really there and but it feels real. The patterns or colors you see when you close your eyes are considered hallucinations too.

We had slightly different readings.

As he was writing he became aware that he was being watched, and a figure slowly emerged to his left. It was indistinct and on the periphery of his vision but it moved as V.T. would expect a person to. The apparition was grey and made no sound… V.T. was unable to see any detail and finally built up the courage to turn and face the thing. As he turned the apparition faded and disappeared.

He experienced a visual disturbance in his periphery manifesting as the false perception of a person. Even without it being interpreted as a person, that’s a textbook mild hallucination.

Once V.T. knew this he calculated the frequency of the standing sound wave … 18.97Hz … plus or minus 10%

Table IV on page 212 of this book shows frequencies causing disturbance to the eyes and vision to be within the band 12 to 27 Hz.

Most interestingly, a NASA technical report mentions a resonant frequency for the eye as 18 Hz (NASA Technical Report 19770013810).

He cited two sources inline with ranges narrower than 8-40Hz which indicate that vision can be affected at the same frequencies he measured in the lab. He even noted that everyone would have slightly different resonant frequencies.

No, it’s not a full research paper, but it is the citation you requested.

I believe the poster is referring to The Ghost in the Machine, Published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol.62, No 851 April 1998 (pdf)

If I saw this, I would not assume that Gawker, WikiLeaks, or FOX Weather would be included in a blocklist called “No-QAnon”. The list itself might not be smuggled, but it’s not accurately representing itself either. If it has simply evolved over time, then it needs to be renamed or split into separate blocklists.

Additionally, if someone installing this changes their mind or realizes that what they received is not what they expected, then requiring them to either directly modify the database or click “remove” over 3000 times is arguably a dark pattern.

Yeah, even there. A page loading is one thing, but browser features are somewhat independent of the content. There’s also a good chance this is being used as a hook for other Google products like Drive or Docs (which are basically websites under the hood) to allow offline file management, creation, etc.

It’s a bad choice, but it wouldn’t be the first bad choice Google has made.

Trauma responses are hard. I think it’s great you’re actively working on it and are conscious of your own biases, that’s huge. Good luck!

They need their features to work offline too probably.

This list is weird, aside from the length. They must be using a very greedy regexp for this many instances to have their names partially censored.

The text “buds” has been censored, all the instances using the TLD “university” have had “univer” removed, and the word “hangout” is also gone. “Shitpisscum” made it through, so it can’t just be about slightly naughty words. Also annihilation.social is listed 3 times for some reason.

Are these slurs in a culture I’m not familiar with? Does piefed do this everywhere?

Link is to a shit pdf on a proton drive. It’s a basic description of the Google auction house. The prices they list are largely driven by the bids advertisers place, but that’s not to say Google doesn’t charge a bigger minimum for different demographic segments, they very much do. As does Facebook etc.

For example, one reason that parents are worth less is because of the products they listed. Diapers cost less than business lawyers, so the margins are much slimmer, so advertisers aren’t going to bid as much for an ad placement.

It does miss one thing that is, in my opinion, one of the more revolting aspects of their auction house. As a bidder your dollar is worth less than a big company’s dollar, even as little as one tenth. You could bid a million dollars on an ad space that Apple only bid $100001 on and you’d lose. That gap is dynamically calculated (at least in part) based on comparative search rankings.

Here’s the text without their ad at the end:

The Price of Free Google

What the Ad Industry Pays to Target Americans

A Proton Mail analysis of 54,216 advertiser-defined profiles across the U.S.

The price of your attention

Every user has a price

Every Google search triggers an invisible, real-time auction where advertisers bid for access to your attention. These bids are calculated in milliseconds based on how likely you are to spend. This is how the system decides what you are worth to advertisers.

Proton analyzed 54,216 advertiser-defined profiles across 251 U.S. cities using real ad-market pricing.

● Highest-value user: $17,929/year
● Lowest-value user: $31/year

That’s a 577x difference. This disparity is not an anomaly — it is the business model.

“Google doesn’t just build a profile from the information you knowingly provide. If you sign up for services, click ads, or ignore others, that creates signals the system can use to infer much more than you realize. It can start with age or interests, then expand into assumptions about income, family status, political leanings, or religion.
When the system isn’t sure, it tests those assumptions by serving different ads, links, or recommendations and watching how you respond. It doesn’t just tracking who you are. It’s constantly learning, so it can price access to you more precisely.”
— Eamonn Maguire, Director of Engineering, Machine Learning & AI

Who the system values most — and least These two profiles illustrate how the same system assigns radically different value.

$17,929/year
● 35–44, male
● Bozeman, MT
● Not a parent
● Desktop, heavy user

High-intent, high-margin services:
● business lawyer
● home renovation
● golf courses

$31/year
● 18–24, male
● Fort Smith, AR
● Parent
● Android, casual user

Price-sensitive, lower-margin searches:
● cheap diapers
● family apartments
● toddler clothes

Same system. Same country. 577x difference.

Value is not distributed equally
The gap between the average and the median shows that a small number of high-value users disproportionately influence the system.

The top 10% of users generate 43% of total value.

● Average value: $1,605/year
● Median value: $760/year

Most users are worth far less than the system’s top performers.

How your value is calculated

Your value is constantly recalculated

Your value is not fixed. It is continuously recalculated based on signals that predict the likelihood of a commercially valuable action.

These signals include:
● What you search
● When you search
● What device you use
● Who you are inferred to be

High-intent searches — such as legal services, insurance, or financial products — command significantly higher prices than general browsing or informational queries. Your value can change from one moment to the next depending on what you do. In this system, behavior matters more than time spent

The signals behind the price

Your device changes your value

Device usage has a measurable impact on how users are valued.
● Desktop: $2,894/year
● iPhone: $1,338/year
● Android: $585/year

Desktop users are worth nearly 5x more than Android users — even when everything else is the same.

These differences reflect observed behavior — including conversion rates and commercial intent — not the cost of the device itself. Your device becomes a proxy for purchasing behavior.

Parents are systematically valued less

Parental status affects how users are priced within the system.

Non-parents are worth ~17% more on average.

The gap increases during peak earning years:
● 25–34: +24%
● 35–44: +34.5%

Having children reduces your perceived commercial value.

Same age — same location — same device. Different value.

Value peaks in midlife

User value is highest between the ages of 25 and 44.

This period corresponds with:
● Major financial decisions
● High-value purchases
● Career-related services

As users age, overall value declines — but does not disappear. For users 65+, approximately 75% of value is concentrated in:

● Health
● Real estate
● Financial planning

The system adapts by narrowing focus rather than reducing targeting.

Gender is not a primary driver of value

Gender has a measurable but limited impact on how users are priced within the ad ecosystem.

Average values across genders are broadly similar — with differences in the single digits.

Differences in value are driven primarily by how advertisers price categories of demand — not by gender alone. Higher-value industries — such as finance, legal services, and B2B technology — tend to influence outcomes more strongly than identity itself.

As a result, gender can affect value indirectly, but it is not a consistent or defining factor.

Where you live affects what you’re worth

Local economies shape how much advertisers are willing to pay for access to users.

Location alone can dramatically change what you’re worth.

Highest-value markets include:

1. Edmond, OK
2. Bozeman, MT
3. Naperville, IL
4. Santa Fe, NM
5. Durham, NC

Lowest-value markets include:
247. Greensboro, NC
248. Gulfport, MS
249. Fort Smith, AR
250. Lowell, MA
251. West Valley City, UT

More usage means more value

Frequency of use acts as a multiplier on user value.

● Heavy users: $3,611/year
● Average users: $843/year
● Casual users: $362/year

Heavy users generate nearly 10x more value than casual users. More usage doesn’t just increase your value — it multiplies it.

This creates strong incentives to maximize engagement.

There are two surprising aspects of this to me. Firstly that the employees feel confident enough to express concern about Palantir’s actions in official channels. I would have thought that the nature of their work was obvious enough that this would be a cultural taboo and therefore self-censored. I guess some of them have limits to suspending disbelief for what they had likely internally framed as “work for the benefit of national security” or “job pays too well to care”.

The second part is that not all of this official channel discussion was immediately wiped by Palantir, but perhaps they also relied on the premise of self-censorship in preventing these conversations at scale.

Either way, I’m somewhat relieved there’s someone at Palantir worried about this at all. The more of them who are worried by this, the more leaks we’ll see.