site.standard.document
Samples
4630 randomly sampled records from the AT Protocol firehose
site.standard.document (100 samples)
{
"path": "/news/iran-warns-u-s-voters-that-the-pentagons-200-billion-request-is-just-the-start-of-a-1000000000000-war-bill/",
"site": "https://wegotthiscovered.com",
"tags": [
"News",
"Politics",
"Iran",
"Seyed Abbas Araghchi"
],
"$type": "site.standard.document",
"title": "Iran warns U.S. voters that the Pentagon’s $200 billion request is just the start of a $1,000,000,000,000 war bill",
"coverImage": {
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"size": 75409,
"$type": "blob",
"mimeType": "image/jpeg"
},
"bskyPostRef": {
"cid": "bafyreifbfpyzk7ni7qraxuiwcgv5hw3hyjryoitadqyi36i5lqodb2npva",
"uri": "at://did:plc:oumtuxlgxscefvenrhhc2xhz/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhhqmayzwgp2"
},
"publishedAt": "2026-03-19T19:55:00.000Z",
"textContent": "Great use of US taxpayer money!"
}did:plc:oumtuxlgxscefvenrhhc2xhz | at://did:plc:oumtuxlgxscefvenrhhc2xhz/site.standard.document/3mhhqmayzxcp2
actor.rpg.news (nested within site.standard.document) (100 samples)
{
"path": "/news/layers-of-complexity",
"site": "at://did:plc:kwgllf365cwmxbnxitx4pjdj/site.standard.publication/self",
"tags": [
"draft",
"update",
"generator",
"items"
],
"$type": "site.standard.document",
"title": "Layers of Complexity",
"images": [
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{
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"content": {
"$type": "actor.rpg.news#markdown",
"value": "## Like an Onion...\n\nThere are many different layers that make an **rpg.actor** character. Stats, metadata, and account info compose the overall details of *who we are*, and while the visual representation (our sprites) may look solid, they're composed of even <u>more</u> layers all stacked atop one another. Yet, they work together to form a final structure that's easy for games to interpret and bring <u>you</u> to life.\n\n*But... what are these layers? Why do they exist, and how do they all work?*\n**What can we do with them once we understand how a character is put together?**\n\n<u>Great questions, my hypothetical friend!</u> Let's take a dive through these layers together and see if we can make sense of how they functions, and maybe learn some of the magic behind how games work!\n\n## The Humble .sprite\n\nOne of the core concepts for **rpg.actor** is that the [.sprite](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-sprites) record is our base asset and should remain as simple as possible for maximum player freedom. They will <u>always</u> remain the final delivery mechanism for a character's appearance, and will <u>always</u> be a single sheet (3 x 4) that provides basic walking and idle poses.\n\n[](https://pdsls.dev/at://did:plc:rvfjpyltvfkaf5ggxaefylft/actor.rpg.sprite/self)\n\nThis certainty is maintained so that developers can confidently build their games with assured compatibility, and players can easily create their own representations however they please. No matter what, any game should be able to call for a [.sprite](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-sprites) and get everything it needs to show you on screen. <u>Simple, easy, and completely reliable.</u>\n\n## The Noble .generator\n\nOur free [Sprite Generator](https://rpg.actor/generator) is provided to make this customization for certain types of characters even easier, but it's **not** meant to be definitive. There are tradeoffs between its ease, uniformity, complexity, and functionality that make it *very* different from the humble [.sprite](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-sprites) on its lonesome. \n\nThis is why we've taken steps to distinct a [.generator](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-generator) record as its own entity, which houses a deconstructed version of any character built with the generator. Think of it like a blueprint for how to put you back together from scratch. Everything that you are, the details of each visible part, and how they combine is all stored within this one record.\n\nAll the layers (shirts, pants, glasses, etc) that make up the [.sprite](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-sprites) are broken into their individual parts and neatly sorted so that games can modify or substitute individual components (e.g. change your hat) and recompose the character as needed. This gives developers some additional tools when working with **rpg.actors** who carry this data, including a deeper read of traits for interactions, and more freedom to affect the visual appearance of your characters.\n\n[](https://pdsls.dev/at://did:plc:3vdrgzr2zybocs45yfhcr6ur/actor.rpg.generator/self)\n\nBecause the [.generator](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-generator) record is a stack of layers, it's not really viable as a final character sprite on its own, and so games should always refer to the basic [.sprite](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-sprites) as the visible entity. However, it can be used to produce a complete [.sprite](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-sprites) by \"gluing\" all those layers together and writing to your PDS.\n\n## Colorways and Submasks\n\n\"Interesting,\" you prod, \"but can you make it <u>more</u> complicated?\"\n*Say no more! **We've got you covered.***\n\nWithin the [.generator](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-generator) there is per-layer data for **colorways** and **submasks** which are basically an extra version of the art that's harshly painted in pure blue, green, red, white, and black. These layer-layers *(lol)* layer atop the layers *(lmao)* to let players freely colourize their clothing. This is how the colour pickers are defined and controlled within the [Sprite Generator](https://rpg.actor/generator) itself.\n\n\n\n*<mark>These garish colour choices are brought to you by colorways!</mark>*\n\nOn these **colorway** layers, blue (#0000FF) represents the \"main\" tone, while green (#00FF00), red (#FF0000), and white (#FFFFFF) offer additional \"sub\" colours for a total of four variable hues on any given piece. Typically they are laid over a grey (#808080) midtone with shade variations for light and dark sections. This creates a huge range of options with total player freedom for colour customization.\n\n\n\n*<mark>The submask pixels will remove everything beneath them on the layers below.</mark>*\n\nBlack (#000000) is used for the **submask** which is like a negative-layer that *removes* pixels from the space beneath it. <u>This is how we prevent your hair from sticking through your hat</u>. When the [.generator](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-generator) recomposes the [.sprite](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-sprites) it makes sure to erase those parts covered, leaving a much more refined appearance. It can also be used to reshape the character body where the basic form would otherwise spill through, like on this example of the **Slimming Shirt** here:\n\n\n\n## The Generous .item\n\nSo we've got a flat [.sprite](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-sprites) anyone can display, a decomposed [.generator](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-generator) that games can tinker with, and a colour system that makes all those pieces expressive.\n\n*So...what are we supposed to do with all this?!*Behold, the [.item](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-equipment) record.\n\nThese are like individual inventory items, complete with their own asset layers that slot directly into the [.generator](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-generator) stack. They include their own colorways and submasks, metadata for where they fit (hat, shirt, etc) and an icon for general display. Every complete [.item](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-equipment) will surface in the [Sprite Generator](https://rpg.actor/generator) as another option for you to customize your character with.\n\n\n\n<mark>*This shirt and the popcorn were obtained in [The Theatre](https://rpg.actor/theatre) as .item records*</mark>\n\nAnyone can create their own [.item](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-equipment) record and outfit themselves however they please, just like how you're able to produce a [.sprite](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-sprites) of whatever you like. The major difference here is that these assets will fit in your [.generator](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-generator) when used, and can fluidly function in any games that make use of the more complex record compositions. They can also be paired with a [.give](https://rpg.actor/dev-guide#pc-equipment) record provided by someone else, which allows games to verify where you got the item from.\n\nThis means that you can create your own inventory of outfits and strut your stuff freely, then unlock new items from different games that each validate what they've granted you. Every other game you visit will know exactly where you got your stuff from and can react appropriately!\n\n\n\n<mark>*See how the popcorn is obtained from [@rpg.actor](https://bsky.app/profile/rpg.actor) and the shirt from [@vagabond.quest](https://rpg.actor/vagabond.quest)?*</mark>\n\nThere's no requirement to have validated items, but as the **rpg.actor** ecosystems grow this can be a way of building stronger compatibility between games, creating collaborative quests between experiences, and even highlighting great creators who make wonderful clothes for us all to wear.\n\nNow that you know how all the layers\n"
},
"updatedAt": "2026-04-13T16:18:01.381Z",
"coverImage": {
"ref": {
"$link": "bafkreidaaegsm4hfhfzsfslnexbg456rhnabdciqn72dsvbuyuxn7lvrue"
},
"size": 51247,
"$type": "blob",
"mimeType": "image/png"
},
"description": "Improved generator system with new colorway and substractive layers",
"publishedAt": "2026-04-13T03:43:55.389Z",
"textContent": "Like an Onion...\n\nThere are many different layers that make an rpg.actor character. Stats, metadata, and account info compose the overall details of who we are, and while the visual representation (our sprites) may look solid, they're composed of even <u>more</u> layers all stacked atop one another. Yet, they work together to form a final structure that's easy for games to interpret and bring <u>you</u> to life.\n\nBut... what are these layers? Why do they exist, and how do they all work?\nWhat can we do with them once we understand how a character is put together?\n\n<u>Great questions, my hypothetical friend!</u> Let's take a dive through these layers together and see if we can make sense of how they functions, and maybe learn some of the magic behind how games work!\n\nThe Humble .sprite\n\nOne of the core concepts for rpg.actor is that the .sprite record is our base asset and should remain as simple as possible for maximum player freedom. They will <u>always</u> remain the final delivery mechanism for a character's appearance, and will <u>always</u> be a single sheet (3 x 4) that provides basic walking and idle poses.\n\nThis certainty is maintained so that developers can confidently build their games with assured compatibility, and players can easily create their own representations however they please. No matter what, any game should be able to call for a .sprite and get everything it needs to show you on screen. <u>Simple, easy, and completely reliable.</u>\n\nThe Noble .generator\n\nOur free Sprite Generator is provided to make this customization for certain types of characters even easier, but it's not meant to be definitive. There are tradeoffs between its ease, uniformity, complexity, and functionality that make it very different from the humble .sprite on its lonesome. \n\nThis is why we've taken steps to distinct a .generator record as its own entity, which houses a deconstructed version of any character built with the generator. Think of it like a blueprint for how to put you back together from scratch. Everything that you are, the details of each visible part, and how they combine is all stored within this one record.\n\nAll the layers (shirts, pants, glasses, etc) that make up the .sprite are broken into their individual parts and neatly sorted so that games can modify or substitute individual components (e.g. change your hat) and recompose the character as needed. This gives developers some additional tools when working with rpg.actors who carry this data, including a deeper read of traits for interactions, and more freedom to affect the visual appearance of your characters.\n\nBecause the .generator record is a stack of layers, it's not really viable as a final character sprite on its own, and so games should always refer to the basic .sprite as the visible entity. However, it can be used to produce a complete .sprite by \"gluing\" all those layers together and writing to your PDS.\n\nColorways and Submasks\n\n\"Interesting,\" you prod, \"but can you make it <u>more</u> complicated?\"\nSay no more! We've got you covered.\n\nWithin the .generator there is per-layer data for colorways and submasks which are basically an extra version of the art that's harshly painted in pure blue, green, red, white, and black. These layer-layers (lol) layer atop the layers (lmao) to let players freely colourize their clothing. This is how the colour pickers are defined and controlled within the Sprite Generator itself.\n\n!generator_3.PNG\n\n<mark>These garish colour choices are brought to you by colorways!</mark>\n\nOn these colorway layers, blue (#0000FF) represents the \"main\" tone, while green (#00FF00), red (#FF0000), and white (#FFFFFF) offer additional \"sub\" colours for a total of four variable hues on any given piece. Typically they are laid over a grey (#808080) midtone with shade variations for light and dark sections. This creates a huge range of options with total player freedom for colour customization.\n\n!colorways.PNG\n\n<mark>The submask pixels will remove everything beneath them on the layers below.</mark>\n\nBlack (#000000) is used for the submask which is like a negative-layer that removes pixels from the space beneath it. <u>This is how we prevent your hair from sticking through your hat</u>. When the .generator recomposes the .sprite it makes sure to erase those parts covered, leaving a much more refined appearance. It can also be used to reshape the character body where the basic form would otherwise spill through, like on this example of the Slimming Shirt here:\n\n!slimming_1.PNG\n\nThe Generous .item\n\nSo we've got a flat .sprite anyone can display, a decomposed .generator that games can tinker with, and a colour system that makes all those pieces expressive.\n\nSo...what are we supposed to do with all this?!Behold, the .item record.\n\nThese are like individual inventory items, complete with their own asset layers that slot directly into the .generator stack. They include their own colorways and submasks, metadata for where they fit (hat, shirt, etc) and an icon for general display. Every complete .item will surface in the Sprite Generator as another option for you to customize your character with.\n\n!inventory_1.PNG\n\n<mark>This shirt and the popcorn were obtained in The Theatre as .item records</mark>\n\nAnyone can create their own .item record and outfit themselves however they please, just like how you're able to produce a .sprite of whatever you like. The major difference here is that these assets will fit in your .generator when used, and can fluidly function in any games that make use of the more complex record compositions. They can also be paired with a .give record provided by someone else, which allows games to verify where you got the item from.\n\nThis means that you can create your own inventory of outfits and strut your stuff freely, then unlock new items from different games that each validate what they've granted you. Every other game you visit will know exactly where you got your stuff from and can react appropriately!\n\n!inventory_3.PNG\n\n<mark>See how the popcorn is obtained from @rpg.actor and the shirt from @vagabond.quest?</mark>\n\nThere's no requirement to have validated items, but as the rpg.actor ecosystems grow this can be a way of building stronger compatibility between games, creating collaborative quests between experiences, and even highlighting great creators who make wonderful clothes for us all to wear.\n\nNow that you know how all the layers"
}did:plc:kwgllf365cwmxbnxitx4pjdj | at://did:plc:kwgllf365cwmxbnxitx4pjdj/site.standard.document/3mjdx7g2l4cyh
app.bsky.feed.post (nested within site.standard.document) (100 samples)
{
"path": "/stormont-must-intervene-on-cuts-to-community-and-voluntary-sector/",
"site": "https://www.pbp.ie",
"tags": [
"News",
"Derry & Strabane District Council",
"Shaun Harkin",
"Derry",
"Community & Voluntary Sector",
"Budget",
"stormont",
"Anti-Poverty",
"Child Poverty",
"Family Rights",
"Austerity",
"Care"
],
"$type": "site.standard.document",
"title": "\"Stormont Must Intervene\" on Cuts to Community and Voluntary Sector",
"coverImage": {
"ref": {
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},
"bskyPostRef": {
"cid": "bafyreihquluv6kaxi25dk3oakktao6gg5gkm6a2n4owsoblyqhpaxsfjpa",
"uri": "at://did:plc:lj77mb47csgh3u3xwu7x3fty/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhjgrk4xw5f2"
},
"publishedAt": "2026-03-20T11:14:39.000Z",
"textContent": "Cuts to Community and Voluntary Sector Will Have Devastating Impact on Support for Vulnerable People. Stormont Must Intervene"
}did:plc:lj77mb47csgh3u3xwu7x3fty | at://did:plc:lj77mb47csgh3u3xwu7x3fty/site.standard.document/3mhjgrk4xx7f2
app.bsky.richtext.facet (nested within site.standard.document) (48 samples)
{
"path": "/",
"site": "at://did:plc:7kpq3n7brenbgyp2gx36hl6x/site.standard.publication/self",
"$type": "site.standard.document",
"title": "About",
"facets": [
{
"index": {
"byteEnd": 18,
"byteStart": 5
},
"features": [
{
"uri": "https://julien.rbrt.fr/cv",
"$type": "app.bsky.richtext.facet#link"
}
]
},
{
"index": {
"byteEnd": 137,
"byteStart": 131
},
"features": [
{
"uri": "https://github.com/julienrbrt",
"$type": "app.bsky.richtext.facet#link"
}
]
},
{
"index": {
"byteEnd": 156,
"byteStart": 152
},
"features": [
{
"uri": "https://bsky.app/profile/julien.rbrt.fr",
"$type": "app.bsky.richtext.facet#link"
}
]
},
{
"index": {
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},
"features": [
{
"uri": "https://x.com/_julienrbrt",
"$type": "app.bsky.richtext.facet#link"
}
]
}
],
"description": "Julien Robert, Blockchain Engineer",
"publishedAt": "2026-03-22T21:32:19Z",
"textContent": "I am Julien Robert, Blockchain Engineer, currently based in the Netherlands.\nGo and Crypto enthusiast, explore my contributions on GitHub or find me on 🦋 and 𝕏.\nTo contact me directly, send an email to:\njulien at rbrt dot fr"
}did:plc:7kpq3n7brenbgyp2gx36hl6x | at://did:plc:7kpq3n7brenbgyp2gx36hl6x/site.standard.document/about
app.greengale.document (nested within site.standard.document) (34 samples)
{
"path": "/3mj5i6bmuyv2i",
"site": "at://did:plc:nr4a7ddupzvwpfv5sxklmkqh/site.standard.publication/3mdvykcehbscr",
"tags": [
"ańime",
"vesna",
"2026"
],
"$type": "site.standard.document",
"title": "Ańime: počatok vesnı 2026",
"content": {
"uri": "at://did:plc:nr4a7ddupzvwpfv5sxklmkqh/app.greengale.document/3mj5i6bmuyv2i",
"$type": "app.greengale.document#contentRef"
},
"updatedAt": "2026-04-16T17:05:46.287Z",
"description": "Perši serijı, ščo zajšlı meně v tıj čı hınšıj sposôb. ",
"publishedAt": "2026-04-10T13:58:48.415Z",
"textContent": "Vsjoho dvadcętj pętero tajtlôv, z kotrıx: - čotırı: «starınkı», - dva: korotkôvkı, tobto de serija trıvaʼ pętj xvılın čı meńše. Onovjuvatı jmu do ostannjoho novoho serijala. Možu zakınutı dekotri značno zhodom, ale to budeʼ pomětno vže lıše pôd čas pôdsumku. Vostannje: čotırnadcętoho květnja. Poznačkı, zvertajte uvahu na vôdsutjnôstj kursiva v pevnıx vıpadkax: - starınkı: & - korotkôvkı: - ečči: + - varte uvahı: ! Nedělja - Nippon Sangoku ! - Maid-san wa Taberu Dake - Kuroneko to Majo no Kyoushitsu - Ingoku Danchi + - Marika-chan no Koukando wa Bukkowarete Iru + Ponedělok - Tongari Boushi no Atelier ! - Ponkotsu Fuuki Iin to Skirt-take ga Futekisetsu na JK no Hanashi - Mahou no Shimai Lulutto Lilly Vtorok - Aishiteru Game o Owarasetai - Replica datte, Koi wo Suru - Class de 2-banme ni Kawaii Onnanoko to Tomodachi ni Natta Sereda - Dorohedoro &! - Otaku ni Yasashii Gal wa Inai!? - Ganbare! Nakamura-kun!! Četvertok - Dr. Stone & - Koori no Jouheki - Kirio Fan Club - Awajima Hyakkei - Haibara-kun no Tsuyokute Seishun New Game Pętok - Otonari no Tenshi-sama ni Itsunomanika Dame Ningen ni Sareteita Ken & - Kamiina Botan, Yoeru Sugata wa Yuri no Hana ! Subota - Honzuki no Gekokujou: Shisho ni Naru Tame ni wa Shudan wo Erandeiraremasen abo Honzuki no Gekokujou & - Kanan-sama wa Akumade Choroi - Yowayowa Sensei + - Ichijouma Mankitsu Kurashi! +"
}did:plc:nr4a7ddupzvwpfv5sxklmkqh | at://did:plc:nr4a7ddupzvwpfv5sxklmkqh/site.standard.document/3mj5i6bmuyv2i
app.offprint.block.blockquote (nested within site.standard.document) (44 samples)
{
"path": "/a/3mix2fjcd2623-the-sorting-problem",
"site": "at://did:plc:h3wpawnrlptr4534chevddo6/site.standard.publication/3mcvwkm4dxh2z",
"$type": "site.standard.document",
"title": "The Sorting Problem",
"content": {
"$type": "app.offprint.content",
"items": [
{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"facets": [
{
"index": {
"byteEnd": 108,
"byteStart": 0
},
"features": [
{
"$type": "app.offprint.richtext.facet#italic"
}
]
}
],
"plaintext": "This is the first in (at least!) a three-part series on the mechanisms of open ecosystems and human behavior"
},
{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": ""
},
{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"facets": [
{
"index": {
"byteEnd": 60,
"byteStart": 50
},
"features": [
{
"did": "did:plc:e2ctbutx6kya6si4if5ngjmm",
"$type": "app.offprint.richtext.facet#mention",
"handle": "jacky.wtf"
}
]
},
{
"index": {
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"byteStart": 385
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"features": [
{
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],
"plaintext": "A month or two ago, I got into it on Bluesky with @jacky.wtf. Up until that moment, I generally considered Jacky a positive acquaintance; someone I didn't know well, but with whom I was mostly directionally aligned. I started with a statement that I knew was a bit provocative, but was an observation I felt pretty sure about: you can't be a leftist (generally progressive) and hold a fundamentally conservative posture toward AI, especially right now. Not when political polarization has swallowed everything whole."
},
{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": "That landed badly. So badly, in fact, he blocked me, and then I blocked him, but then we both unblocked after calming down. "
},
{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": "So let me try again, with more room to breathe."
},
{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.horizontalRule"
},
{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"facets": [
{
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"features": [
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"byteStart": 59
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"plaintext": "Let me say something very clearly before I go any further: I am not calling anyone a Republican. I am not saying your concerns about AI are categorically wrong. I am not saying Big Tech is altruistic or that commercial LLMs are nothing but sunshine. I hold all of that mess. I also hold what I'm about to say. Both things are true and I'm not going to pretend one cancels out the other."
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"plaintext": "So! Let's get into it. "
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"level": 2,
"plaintext": "What I mean by \"conservative\""
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{
"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": "This is where the thread blew up. "
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"plaintext": "Jacky hit me with \"words mean things!\" when I called the anti-AI position conservative. And yes, they do! That's actually my whole point."
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"plaintext": "There are two ways to understand what a word means. The first is how people use it right now. In 2026 in American political discourse, \"conservative\" has been so thoroughly captured by the Republican right that using it to describe anyone on the left feels like an accusation. I get that. If you hear \"conservative\" and your brain goes straight to MAGA, the idea that I'm applying that word to you, a leftist, sounds like an insult. That reaction makes total sense inside the current political moment."
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"plaintext": "But there's another way to understand a word, and it's the one I was using: where the word comes from. What it actually means at the root. \"Conservative\" comes from conservare — to preserve, to keep, to hold onto what exists."
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"plaintext": "And when I look at the anti-AI left, that's what I see."
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"plaintext": "They want to conserve work for humans. They want to conserve property rights to intellectual property. They want to conserve the current relationship between people and labor. They want to preserve what we have against what's coming."
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"plaintext": "I'm not saying that's wrong. I'm saying that's the direction the position faces. Backward. Toward preservation. And in a hyperpolarized moment where everything gets sorted into \"progressive\" or \"conservative\" — where those aren't just political labels anymore but identities — facing backward is a problem. Not a moral problem, though - a strategic one."
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"plaintext": "The sorting machine"
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"plaintext": "Ezra Klein laid this out in his 2022 book, Why We're Polarized, and I think it's the piece most people are missing when they talk about AI and the left."
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"plaintext": "Here's the short version: Americans used to hold messy, contradictory bundles of beliefs that didn't all line up with one party. You could be pro-union and anti-immigration. Pro-military and pro-welfare. The parties were big, sloppy coalitions. Over time, through a process Klein calls sorting, all of those identities - your race, your religion, your geography, your cultural tastes, your media diet - collapsed like two black holes into the current partisan binary. Everything lines up now. Everything predicts."
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"plaintext": "And here's the part that matters: the causal arrow flipped. It used to be that you had your beliefs and then found the party that roughly matched. Now you pick the team — or get sorted into it — and the team's positions become your beliefs. Identity drives belief, not the other way around. But not only that, this wasn't what anyone expected. Sociologists had generally though we'd avoid polarization because we had cross-cutting identities. They did not expect politics to eat those things. "
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"plaintext": "Now, apply that to AI."
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"plaintext": "AI hasn't fully sorted yet. There are people on the left who use it enthusiastically, people on the left who think it's an existential threat, people holding both positions at once and feeling weird about it. That's an unstable state, but Klein's whole framework says mixed-alignment positions don't survive the sorting process. Eventually one stance will become the \"correct\" left position and the other will feel like betrayal."
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"plaintext": "The anti-AI left's problem isn't that their arguments are bad, their problem is that their posture reads as conservative in a world where identity organizes everything. The energy of \"stop,\" \"go back,\" \"preserve what we had\" — that triggers an identity alarm in people who've built their entire self-concept around being progressive. It doesn't matter that the underlying concerns about labor & IP might be legitimate left concerns. The vibe is wrong for the team."
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"plaintext": "Meanwhile, the pro-AI position has an easier sorting path because it feels progressive — new, forward, transformative, future-oriented. Even when the actual corporate structures behind AI are deeply capitalist and exploitative, the directional energy reads as progress. And in a sorted world, directional energy beats structural analysis every time."
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"plaintext": "So the anti-AI left is stuck in a trap Klein's framework predicts perfectly: they can't persuade through argument because belief isn't being driven by argument — it's being driven by identity alignment. And they can't win on identity because their position's preservationist energy puts it on the wrong side of the progressive/conservative feeling."
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"plaintext": "Which means they need a different approach entirely."
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"plaintext": "The machine eats everyone"
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"plaintext": "Here's the part that I need y'all to be aware of: this isn't just an anti-AI problem. The sorting machine doesn't have a team. It eats everyone."
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"plaintext": "I saw this play out on my own timeline a couple weeks after I posted that thread. Someone posted a provocative pro-AI take — basically, \"if you're so confident Claude isn't conscious, explain how human consciousness works.\" He got LIT UP for it. "
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"plaintext": "Another person who positioned themself as \"pro-AI\" quote-posted it, positioning himself as the reasonable middle: the loudest anti-AI voices are \"simply grandstanding for internet points,\" and here comes this AI enthusiast making the polarization worse. See how reasonable I am? I can criticize both sides."
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"plaintext": "Except look at what he actually did! In the same post where he's calling out another pro-AI person for inflaming things, he's dismissing the entire anti-AI position as clout-chasing. That's not the reasonable middle. That's someone who wants credit for being moderate while still flattening one whole side into grandstanders. He's doing the polarizing thing and pointing at someone else as the polarizer."
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"plaintext": "I quote-posted it and said, basically, \"I love when we blame systemic problems on individuals.\"I even took the time to clarify directly: this isn't an attack on you, it's an attempt to illustrate a larger systemic pattern."
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"plaintext": "The response? He went right past what I said and pointed back at the original poster he'd quoted: the individual OP \"illustrates, in microcosm, some of the systemic issues around AI promotion.\" But sure, he gets the larger point."
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"plaintext": "Read that again. I pointed at the system. He said \"yeah, but look at that guy.\""
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"plaintext": "The systemic critique just slid right off. He couldn't sit with the possibility that his framing — not just Geering's provocation, but his own \"reasonable middle\" act — was the machine running. So he acknowledged the structural point just enough to seem like he heard it, and then redirected back to the individual he was already comfortable criticizing."
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"plaintext": "The one person who got closest to a useful read was someone who said, essentially: it's inflammatory and it's pointing at something real. Both things. Both things."
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"description": "I’m not sure that’s quite fair to OP. It’s inflammatory, sure, but it’s also pointing at the problem precisely, and they’re not comporting themselves poorly that I’ve seen."
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"plaintext": "That's the move the sorting machine doesn't know what to do with — holding two truths at the same time without collapsing one into the other. The anti-AI left does real, important work identifying harms. The pro-AI left does real, important work identifying benefits. And both sides, when the machine gets its hooks in, reduce the other to caricature — grandstanders or techno-utopians, Luddites or shills — because the machine demands you pick one and flatten the other."
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"plaintext": "I'm trying not to do that. I don't always succeed. But the attempt matters."
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"plaintext": "And this isn't just about AI. I've watched this same machine operate across race, across transness, across every axis where identity gets sorted into teams. I've been eaten by it myself — called a bigot by people I share marginalizations with for the crime of holding two truths at once(that's a story for another day). "
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"plaintext": "The point isthis: this is not an AI problem. This is a polarization problem, and AI is just the latest thing it's digesting."
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"plaintext": "And here's the thing that keeps me up at night. The sorting machine doesn't just sort opinions. It sorts people. Once you've been sorted into a position — anti-AI, pro-AI, whatever — you stop being a person who holds a view and start being a representative of that view. A symbol. And symbols can be targeted in ways that people can't survive."
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"plaintext": "When the machine runs hot enough, it stops being a discourse problem and becomes a governance problem. What happens when sorted communities collide inside a space with no structure to hold the collision? When there's no institution absorbing the impact, just individuals standing where the institution should be?"
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"plaintext": "That's a different essay. But it starts here, with the machine that makes it possible."
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"plaintext": "The progressive case (that we're trying to make)"
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"plaintext": "Here's where I get frustrated: The benefits of AI are real! They're documented in more and more papers! For everyday people — not just tech workers, not just the already-privileged. Accessibility. Translation. Education. Creative assistance for people who never had access to the tools before!"
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"plaintext": "So when the anti-AI left denies those benefits exist, when they offer no competing vision except \"we will take this away,\" they lose the ability to persuade. You can't beat something with nothing, baby. "
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"plaintext": "What I want to see — what I think the left needs — is a progressive framework for AI that does three things at once: acknowledges the real harms, acknowledges the real benefits, and offers a vision for where this goes that isn't just \"back to before.\""
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"plaintext": "Because \"back to before\" wasn't great either. Let's not romanticize it, fam."
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"plaintext": "Pro-labor is a stepping stone (and that's not an insult)"
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"plaintext": "Back to the initial story, because this is the other place the thread got heated."
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"plaintext": "Jacky does labor organizing work; he sits on a cross-union steering committee. He pushed back hard when I said that being only pro-labor means you're ultimately pro-work. He called it a nothing burger and said I was being one-dimensional. I think he was hearing me say his work doesn't matter. That's not what I said, but I do understand why it landed that way, and I want to be more precise about what I do mean."
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"plaintext": "Here's what he said that was particularly correct, and I didn't really even grok it at the moment: "
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"plaintext": "\"The concept of work governance affects housing, healthcare, family dynamics. Work governs life, even in absence of it.\" "
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"plaintext": "That's exactly right. And it's exactly why pro-labor isn't enough. Let me break this down, because I think there are two different things happening that look like a disagreement but are actually two people describing different parts of the same system."
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"plaintext": "The labor organizer is mapping the structure — how work functions right now as the governance mechanism for all of life. Housing, healthcare, family stability — all of it runs through work. That's not a defense of work. That's an indictment of the system built around it. And he's doing the hard, immediate, right now work of making that system less brutal for people trapped inside it. I'm describing the destination — a world where work is optional, where most people don't have to do it, where those who choose to do the work others don't like are ridiculously well-compensated, where abundance is the baseline and not the reward for selling your body through wage labor."
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"plaintext": "Jacky is saying \"you can't just yank work out — everything else collapses with it.\" AGREED! I'm saying \"which is why we need a vision for what replaces those structures, not just better conditions within them.\" We need both; the structural map and the destination, the person navigating the current terrain and the person pointing toward the horizon. Neither one alone is sufficient, they either get lost or stuck."
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"plaintext": "But here's what I won't do: I won't limit my imagination to a world where unwanted work is mandatory in order to live well. That's not the ceiling. It can't be. That's a way station, at best, a treadmill at worst."
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"plaintext": "I am pro-labor as long as we exist in a capitalist economy. That's why I support unionization, worker-owned cooperatives, universal healthcare, all of it. But I am also pro-freedom from work, which means I'm ultimately pro-getting-past-the-need-for-labor-as-a-survival-mechanism entirely. Sitting only at pro-labor, as your end state, means you still believe we must work at things we don't want to do, that don't make us happy, in order to live. That is a fundamentally puritanical perspective. "
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"plaintext": "And I think we can do better."
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"plaintext": "And of course we end up at Marx (yeah, Marx)"
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"plaintext": "Marx believed automation could be the thing that broke the back of capitalism, even as it would be terrible when in the hands of capitalists.I think he was right about both parts."
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"plaintext": "Personally, I believe the capitalists have severely underestimated their ability to stay in control of this. Capitalism doesn't work without a populace that has money to spend, and if AI and automation eliminate the jobs that give people that money, the whole engine stalls. That's not a theory — that's the internal logic of the system eating itself."
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"plaintext": "I don't know the time frame. I don't know how ugly the middle part gets(and y'all, it's gonna get ugly). I do think we have to keep going and break through, because the alternative — trying to hold back the tide — has never worked and isn't going to start working now."
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"plaintext": "So what am I actually saying?"
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"plaintext": "I'm saying the anti-AI left has a sorting problem, not an argument problem. The concerns are valid. The posture is strategically fatal."
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"plaintext": "I'm saying \"conservative\" isn't an insult — it's a diagnosis, and if you can't hear the diagnosis because the word has been captured by partisan politics, that's actually proof of the very polarization dynamic I'm describing."
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"plaintext": "I'm saying pro-labor is necessary and insufficient. The structure matters and the destination matters. The people doing the work of the present as well as the people imagining the future need each other, and dismissing either one is how we all lose."
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"plaintext": "I'm saying the left needs a progressive vision for AI that doesn't pretend the harms aren't real and doesn't pretend the benefits aren't real. One that faces forward. One that imagines better than what came befre. One that the sorting machine cannot eat."
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"plaintext": "I don't have all the pieces of that vision, but I know what the first step is: stop trying to hold back the tide, and start building the boat."
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"plaintext": "Now, get comfy, because there's a whole hell of a lot more to come. "
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"plaintext": "This post is AIL 3.0"
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"description": "On Polarization and the Machine That Eats Everyone",
"publishedAt": "2026-04-08T01:49:50+00:00",
"textContent": "This is the first in (at least!) a three-part series on the mechanisms of open ecosystems and human behavior\n\nA month or two ago, I got into it on Bluesky with @jacky.wtf. Up until that moment, I generally considered Jacky a positive acquaintance; someone I didn't know well, but with whom I was mostly directionally aligned. I started with a statement that I knew was a bit provocative, but was an observation I felt pretty sure about: you can't be a leftist (generally progressive) and hold a fundamentally conservative posture toward AI, especially right now. Not when political polarization has swallowed everything whole.\nThat landed badly. So badly, in fact, he blocked me, and then I blocked him, but then we both unblocked after calming down. \nSo let me try again, with more room to breathe.\n\n---\nLet me say something very clearly before I go any further: I am not calling anyone a Republican. I am not saying your concerns about AI are categorically wrong. I am not saying Big Tech is altruistic or that commercial LLMs are nothing but sunshine. I hold all of that mess. I also hold what I'm about to say. Both things are true and I'm not going to pretend one cancels out the other.\nSo! Let's get into it. \nWhat I mean by \"conservative\"\nThis is where the thread blew up. \nJacky hit me with \"words mean things!\" when I called the anti-AI position conservative. And yes, they do! That's actually my whole point.\nThere are two ways to understand what a word means. The first is how people use it right now. In 2026 in American political discourse, \"conservative\" has been so thoroughly captured by the Republican right that using it to describe anyone on the left feels like an accusation. I get that. If you hear \"conservative\" and your brain goes straight to MAGA, the idea that I'm applying that word to you, a leftist, sounds like an insult. That reaction makes total sense inside the current political moment.\nBut there's another way to understand a word, and it's the one I was using: where the word comes from. What it actually means at the root. \"Conservative\" comes from conservare — to preserve, to keep, to hold onto what exists.\nAnd when I look at the anti-AI left, that's what I see.\nThey want to conserve work for humans. They want to conserve property rights to intellectual property. They want to conserve the current relationship between people and labor. They want to preserve what we have against what's coming.\nI'm not saying that's wrong. I'm saying that's the direction the position faces. Backward. Toward preservation. And in a hyperpolarized moment where everything gets sorted into \"progressive\" or \"conservative\" — where those aren't just political labels anymore but identities — facing backward is a problem. Not a moral problem, though - a strategic one.\nThe sorting machine\nEzra Klein laid this out in his 2022 book, Why We're Polarized, and I think it's the piece most people are missing when they talk about AI and the left.\nHere's the short version: Americans used to hold messy, contradictory bundles of beliefs that didn't all line up with one party. You could be pro-union and anti-immigration. Pro-military and pro-welfare. The parties were big, sloppy coalitions. Over time, through a process Klein calls sorting, all of those identities - your race, your religion, your geography, your cultural tastes, your media diet - collapsed like two black holes into the current partisan binary. Everything lines up now. Everything predicts.\nAnd here's the part that matters: the causal arrow flipped. It used to be that you had your beliefs and then found the party that roughly matched. Now you pick the team — or get sorted into it — and the team's positions become your beliefs. Identity drives belief, not the other way around. But not only that, this wasn't what anyone expected. Sociologists had generally though we'd avoid polarization because we had cross-cutting identities. They did not expect politics to eat those things. \nNow, apply that to AI.\nAI hasn't fully sorted yet. There are people on the left who use it enthusiastically, people on the left who think it's an existential threat, people holding both positions at once and feeling weird about it. That's an unstable state, but Klein's whole framework says mixed-alignment positions don't survive the sorting process. Eventually one stance will become the \"correct\" left position and the other will feel like betrayal.\nThe anti-AI left's problem isn't that their arguments are bad, their problem is that their posture reads as conservative in a world where identity organizes everything. The energy of \"stop,\" \"go back,\" \"preserve what we had\" — that triggers an identity alarm in people who've built their entire self-concept around being progressive. It doesn't matter that the underlying concerns about labor & IP might be legitimate left concerns. The vibe is wrong for the team.\nMeanwhile, the pro-AI position has an easier sorting path because it feels progressive — new, forward, transformative, future-oriented. Even when the actual corporate structures behind AI are deeply capitalist and exploitative, the directional energy reads as progress. And in a sorted world, directional energy beats structural analysis every time.\nSo the anti-AI left is stuck in a trap Klein's framework predicts perfectly: they can't persuade through argument because belief isn't being driven by argument — it's being driven by identity alignment. And they can't win on identity because their position's preservationist energy puts it on the wrong side of the progressive/conservative feeling.\nWhich means they need a different approach entirely.\nThe machine eats everyone\nHere's the part that I need y'all to be aware of: this isn't just an anti-AI problem. The sorting machine doesn't have a team. It eats everyone.\nI saw this play out on my own timeline a couple weeks after I posted that thread. Someone posted a provocative pro-AI take — basically, \"if you're so confident Claude isn't conscious, explain how human consciousness works.\" He got LIT UP for it. \nAnother person who positioned themself as \"pro-AI\" quote-posted it, positioning himself as the reasonable middle: the loudest anti-AI voices are \"simply grandstanding for internet points,\" and here comes this AI enthusiast making the polarization worse. See how reasonable I am? I can criticize both sides.\nExcept look at what he actually did! In the same post where he's calling out another pro-AI person for inflaming things, he's dismissing the entire anti-AI position as clout-chasing. That's not the reasonable middle. That's someone who wants credit for being moderate while still flattening one whole side into grandstanders. He's doing the polarizing thing and pointing at someone else as the polarizer.\nI quote-posted it and said, basically, \"I love when we blame systemic problems on individuals.\"I even took the time to clarify directly: this isn't an attack on you, it's an attempt to illustrate a larger systemic pattern.\nThe response? He went right past what I said and pointed back at the original poster he'd quoted: the individual OP \"illustrates, in microcosm, some of the systemic issues around AI promotion.\" But sure, he gets the larger point.\nRead that again. I pointed at the system. He said \"yeah, but look at that guy.\"\nThe systemic critique just slid right off. He couldn't sit with the possibility that his framing — not just Geering's provocation, but his own \"reasonable middle\" act — was the machine running. So he acknowledged the structural point just enough to seem like he heard it, and then redirected back to the individual he was already comfortable criticizing.\nThe one person who got closest to a useful read was someone who said, essentially: it's inflammatory and it's pointing at something real. Both things. Both things.\nThat's the move the sorting machine doesn't know what to do with — holding two truths at the same time without collapsing one into the other. The anti-AI left does real, important work identifying harms. The pro-AI left does real, important work identifying benefits. And both sides, when the machine gets its hooks in, reduce the other to caricature — grandstanders or techno-utopians, Luddites or shills — because the machine demands you pick one and flatten the other.\nI'm trying not to do that. I don't always succeed. But the attempt matters.\nAnd this isn't just about AI. I've watched this same machine operate across race, across transness, across every axis where identity gets sorted into teams. I've been eaten by it myself — called a bigot by people I share marginalizations with for the crime of holding two truths at once(that's a story for another day). \nThe point isthis: this is not an AI problem. This is a polarization problem, and AI is just the latest thing it's digesting.\nAnd here's the thing that keeps me up at night. The sorting machine doesn't just sort opinions. It sorts people. Once you've been sorted into a position — anti-AI, pro-AI, whatever — you stop being a person who holds a view and start being a representative of that view. A symbol. And symbols can be targeted in ways that people can't survive.\nWhen the machine runs hot enough, it stops being a discourse problem and becomes a governance problem. What happens when sorted communities collide inside a space with no structure to hold the collision? When there's no institution absorbing the impact, just individuals standing where the institution should be?\nThat's a different essay. But it starts here, with the machine that makes it possible.\nThe progressive case (that we're trying to make)\nHere's where I get frustrated: The benefits of AI are real! They're documented in more and more papers! For everyday people — not just tech workers, not just the already-privileged. Accessibility. Translation. Education. Creative assistance for people who never had access to the tools before!\nSo when the anti-AI left denies those benefits exist, when they offer no competing vision except \"we will take this away,\" they lose the ability to persuade. You can't beat something with nothing, baby. \nWhat I want to see — what I think the left needs — is a progressive framework for AI that does three things at once: acknowledges the real harms, acknowledges the real benefits, and offers a vision for where this goes that isn't just \"back to before.\"\nBecause \"back to before\" wasn't great either. Let's not romanticize it, fam.\nPro-labor is a stepping stone (and that's not an insult)\nBack to the initial story, because this is the other place the thread got heated.\nJacky does labor organizing work; he sits on a cross-union steering committee. He pushed back hard when I said that being only pro-labor means you're ultimately pro-work. He called it a nothing burger and said I was being one-dimensional. I think he was hearing me say his work doesn't matter. That's not what I said, but I do understand why it landed that way, and I want to be more precise about what I do mean.\nHere's what he said that was particularly correct, and I didn't really even grok it at the moment: \n> \"The concept of work governance affects housing, healthcare, family dynamics. Work governs life, even in absence of it.\"\nThat's exactly right. And it's exactly why pro-labor isn't enough. Let me break this down, because I think there are two different things happening that look like a disagreement but are actually two people describing different parts of the same system.\nThe labor organizer is mapping the structure — how work functions right now as the governance mechanism for all of life. Housing, healthcare, family stability — all of it runs through work. That's not a defense of work. That's an indictment of the system built around it. And he's doing the hard, immediate, right now work of making that system less brutal for people trapped inside it. I'm describing the destination — a world where work is optional, where most people don't have to do it, where those who choose to do the work others don't like are ridiculously well-compensated, where abundance is the baseline and not the reward for selling your body through wage labor.\nJacky is saying \"you can't just yank work out — everything else collapses with it.\" AGREED! I'm saying \"which is why we need a vision for what replaces those structures, not just better conditions within them.\" We need both; the structural map and the destination, the person navigating the current terrain and the person pointing toward the horizon. Neither one alone is sufficient, they either get lost or stuck.\nBut here's what I won't do: I won't limit my imagination to a world where unwanted work is mandatory in order to live well. That's not the ceiling. It can't be. That's a way station, at best, a treadmill at worst.\nI am pro-labor as long as we exist in a capitalist economy. That's why I support unionization, worker-owned cooperatives, universal healthcare, all of it. But I am also pro-freedom from work, which means I'm ultimately pro-getting-past-the-need-for-labor-as-a-survival-mechanism entirely. Sitting only at pro-labor, as your end state, means you still believe we must work at things we don't want to do, that don't make us happy, in order to live. That is a fundamentally puritanical perspective. \nAnd I think we can do better.\nAnd of course we end up at Marx (yeah, Marx)\nMarx believed automation could be the thing that broke the back of capitalism, even as it would be terrible when in the hands of capitalists.I think he was right about both parts.\nPersonally, I believe the capitalists have severely underestimated their ability to stay in control of this. Capitalism doesn't work without a populace that has money to spend, and if AI and automation eliminate the jobs that give people that money, the whole engine stalls. That's not a theory — that's the internal logic of the system eating itself.\nI don't know the time frame. I don't know how ugly the middle part gets(and y'all, it's gonna get ugly). I do think we have to keep going and break through, because the alternative — trying to hold back the tide — has never worked and isn't going to start working now.\nSo what am I actually saying?\nI'm saying the anti-AI left has a sorting problem, not an argument problem. The concerns are valid. The posture is strategically fatal.\nI'm saying \"conservative\" isn't an insult — it's a diagnosis, and if you can't hear the diagnosis because the word has been captured by partisan politics, that's actually proof of the very polarization dynamic I'm describing.\nI'm saying pro-labor is necessary and insufficient. The structure matters and the destination matters. The people doing the work of the present as well as the people imagining the future need each other, and dismissing either one is how we all lose.\nI'm saying the left needs a progressive vision for AI that doesn't pretend the harms aren't real and doesn't pretend the benefits aren't real. One that faces forward. One that imagines better than what came befre. One that the sorting machine cannot eat.\nI don't have all the pieces of that vision, but I know what the first step is: stop trying to hold back the tide, and start building the boat.\n\nNow, get comfy, because there's a whole hell of a lot more to come. \n\n\nThis post is AIL 3.0"
}did:plc:h3wpawnrlptr4534chevddo6 | at://did:plc:h3wpawnrlptr4534chevddo6/site.standard.document/3mix2fjcd2623
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"title": "Re: 「Historical Inaccuracies」 in 《Perfect Crown》",
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"plaintext": "Their point (screenshot) is understandable. However, 《Perfect Crown》 is not about \"historical accuracy\":"
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"plaintext": "It is set in 2025/2026, not in a historical period"
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"plaintext": "The characters repeatedly said they are not in a Joseon society"
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"plaintext": "They clearly stated it is an \"Alternate Reality\" genre"
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"plaintext": "The introduction explained that Joseon lasted for 600 years"
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"plaintext": "Sometime after 1992 and before 2002 it became a Constitutional Monarchy"
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"plaintext": "Do not let these differences prevent you from enjoying this story."
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"plaintext": "Again, it is understandable why they are reacting that way. Their culture gives more emphasis on \"historical accuracy\" regardless if it is only a fiction. To their defense, the Americans also did not like the alternate reality movie adaptation of the novel 《Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter》 because they cannot imagine Abraham Lincoln as such. And in fairness, many of my own countrymen reacted very negatively when Dan Brown referred to Manila as 「gates of hell」 in 《Inferno》."
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"plaintext": "I do admit also that there were times that I reacted similarly to some fiction about our own culture and nation. So, yes, it is understandable. I am not invalidating nor attacking them."
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"plaintext": "Just that, for the sake of enjoying it, we should at least make an effort to remember that it diverged from our reality. In this case:"
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"plaintext": "Think of it this way, would a late-Joseon person be able to relate to early-Joseon society? Would they not find their royal traditions odd or too different?"
},
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"plaintext": "Queen Mother as Regent"
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"plaintext": "The first Queen Mother who acted as regent was in 1468. Prior to that it was strictly not allowed. That is the history in our reality and in 《Perfect Crown》. A major change happened in the royal court system. In other words, it is not far-fetched for an alternate reality story to choose the Grand Prince as the regent for the fictional Constitutional Monarchy."
},
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"$type": "app.offprint.block.text",
"plaintext": "It signals to us that the extra 100+ years of the Joseon empire, and the years since the Constitutional Monarchy replaced it, there were a lot changes that happened as compared to our own reality. It tells us that the \"Unbroken Korea\" with a \"Continuous Monarchy\" shaped this fictional modern Korea differently."
},
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"plaintext": "Final word"
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"plaintext": "The \"alternate reality\" genre is often very different from traditional fiction. It is often set in the world that we know but at some point in our shared history, there was a major divergence. In this case, the Japanese occupation and Korean War did not happen, which allowed the Joseon empire to exist for an additional 100 years, and then it transformed into a Constitutional Monarchy."
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"plaintext": "There will be similarities but there will also be differences, and that should be expected. Think of it as seeing a parallel world or a different timeline."
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"plaintext": "Do not let these differences prevent you from enjoying 《Perfect Crown》."
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"publishedAt": "2026-04-13T15:11:57+00:00",
"textContent": "Their point (screenshot) is understandable. However, 《Perfect Crown》 is not about \"historical accuracy\":\n- It is set in 2025/2026, not in a historical period\n- The characters repeatedly said they are not in a Joseon society\n- They clearly stated it is an \"Alternate Reality\" genre\n- The introduction explained that Joseon lasted for 600 years\n- Sometime after 1992 and before 2002 it became a Constitutional Monarchy\n\n💬 Do not let these differences prevent you from enjoying this story.\nAgain, it is understandable why they are reacting that way. Their culture gives more emphasis on \"historical accuracy\" regardless if it is only a fiction. To their defense, the Americans also did not like the alternate reality movie adaptation of the novel 《Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter》 because they cannot imagine Abraham Lincoln as such. And in fairness, many of my own countrymen reacted very negatively when Dan Brown referred to Manila as 「gates of hell」 in 《Inferno》.\nI do admit also that there were times that I reacted similarly to some fiction about our own culture and nation. So, yes, it is understandable. I am not invalidating nor attacking them.\nJust that, for the sake of enjoying it, we should at least make an effort to remember that it diverged from our reality. In this case:\n- The Japanese occupation did not happen\n- The Korean War did not happen\n\nThink of it this way, would a late-Joseon person be able to relate to early-Joseon society? Would they not find their royal traditions odd or too different?\nQueen Mother as Regent\nThe first Queen Mother who acted as regent was in 1468. Prior to that it was strictly not allowed. That is the history in our reality and in 《Perfect Crown》. A major change happened in the royal court system. In other words, it is not far-fetched for an alternate reality story to choose the Grand Prince as the regent for the fictional Constitutional Monarchy.\nIt signals to us that the extra 100+ years of the Joseon empire, and the years since the Constitutional Monarchy replaced it, there were a lot changes that happened as compared to our own reality. It tells us that the \"Unbroken Korea\" with a \"Continuous Monarchy\" shaped this fictional modern Korea differently.\nFinal word\nThe \"alternate reality\" genre is often very different from traditional fiction. It is often set in the world that we know but at some point in our shared history, there was a major divergence. In this case, the Japanese occupation and Korean War did not happen, which allowed the Joseon empire to exist for an additional 100 years, and then it transformed into a Constitutional Monarchy.\nThere will be similarities but there will also be differences, and that should be expected. Think of it as seeing a parallel world or a different timeline.\nDo not let these differences prevent you from enjoying 《Perfect Crown》.\n\n\n\n---"
}did:plc:bpotnohnlgcj3fbmp7ugx4en | at://did:plc:bpotnohnlgcj3fbmp7ugx4en/site.standard.document/3mjf2xfsf3g23
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"plaintext": "0. Overview"
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"plaintext": "Tag symbols on social media are assumed to carry meaning. Hashtags classify. Their meaning drives content discovery. Yet Mezzanine practice has demonstrated a counterexample: meaningless symbols sustain connective function. Existing tag-design theory presupposes a cycle where meaning attracts attention and meaning gets consumed. It cannot account for the absence of meaning producing function. This essay defines the opaque connector, then asks why semantic opacity generates connective persistence."
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"plaintext": "Opaque connector: A connective device between posts, implemented through a meaningless symbol. Its essence: refer without signifying. Where a hashtag is a classifier, an opaque connector is a relator. Connector, not anchor. Anchors imply fixation to a point. Connectors denote relations between two or more elements, nothing more."
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"plaintext": "Semantic perishability: The process by which a tag's meaning attracts attention, gets consumed, and decays. A hashtag like \"#一斗缶と郵便局\" exemplifies this: the cleverness of the tag name itself becomes consumable content. Semantic perishability is the variable that determines a tag's lifespan."
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"plaintext": "Socialized Zettelkasten: An information structure that implements Zettelkasten principles (one post, one idea; symbolic links) in a public space. The original Zettelkasten is a closed system. The socialized variant is open: anyone who knows the tag can browse the same box."
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"plaintext": "Cognitive barrier: The discomfort produced when a human encounters a meaningless string, automatically runs semantic recovery processing, and that processing returns nothing. Grounded in Jackendoff's (2002) hypothesis of unconscious semantics. This essay treats the barrier not as a defect but as a design feature."
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"plaintext": "Frequency model: An operational mode that treats tags as radio frequencies. Only those with specific interest tune in and connect. No viral explosion is assumed."
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"plaintext": "P1: Opaque connectors have no semantic perishability. There is nothing to consume. The hashtag cycle of launch, consumption, and decay cannot structurally occur. The lifespan of an opaque connector depends solely on the quality of the connected post cluster."
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"plaintext": "P2: The cognitive barrier of opaque connectors forces attention to post content. Skimming by tag name is impossible. Participants must read the text. This constitutes a structural solution to the hashtag problem of \"reading the tag, skipping the post.\""
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"plaintext": "P3: Socialization of the Zettelkasten is enabled by the opacity of connector symbols. Transparent symbols (meaningful tag names) induce classification. Classification demands a curator. Opaque symbols do not induce classification. Multiple participants can share the same connective network without a curator."
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"plaintext": "P4: Opaque connectors have affinity with non-viral information propagation structures. The frequency model presupposes selective connection through interest, not viral spread."
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"plaintext": "3. Corollaries"
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"plaintext": "C1 (from P1): When an opaque connector gets \"contaminated,\" the cause is not semantic decay but accumulation of low-quality posts in the network. The remedy: abandon and regenerate (zero-cost abandonment), not semantic renewal."
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"plaintext": "C2 (from P2): UI improvements that reduce cognitive barriers (auto-input of tags, etc.) should not aim for complete elimination. A fully transparent opaque connector regresses into a regular hashtag. An optimal barrier level must exist."
},
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"plaintext": "C3 (from P3): As participant count in a socialized Zettelkasten grows, opacity alone may prove insufficient for maintaining order. Whether a curator-free connective network has a scaling ceiling is empirically testable."
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"plaintext": "C4 (from P2, P3): AI agents lack the cognitive barrier. They process opaque connectors more efficiently than humans. As users of a socialized Zettelkasten, AI agents may be better suited than human users."
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"plaintext": "4. Open Questions"
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"plaintext": "P1 claims opaque connectors have no semantic perishability. Do they have a different kind of perishability? If network activity (time since last post, posting frequency) functions as a de facto freshness indicator, then the persistence of opaque connectors may not stem from absence of meaning. It may stem from a difference in the type of freshness indicator."
},
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"plaintext": "P3's claim that the Zettelkasten can be socialized depends on ATProtocol architecture: cashtag search, public post visibility, data retention via PDS. If this architecture changes, does the socialized Zettelkasten lose its conditions of existence? The principle of opaque connectors may be protocol-independent. Socialization may not be."
},
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"plaintext": "C4 suggests AI agents have an advantage. Does this contradict the design intent? Mezzanine was designed for human information networking. If the system is optimized for AI, does that optimization pull the design away from human utility?"
},
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}
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"publishedAt": "2026-04-10T14:01:58+00:00",
"textContent": "0. Overview\nTag symbols on social media are assumed to carry meaning. Hashtags classify. Their meaning drives content discovery. Yet Mezzanine practice has demonstrated a counterexample: meaningless symbols sustain connective function. Existing tag-design theory presupposes a cycle where meaning attracts attention and meaning gets consumed. It cannot account for the absence of meaning producing function. This essay defines the opaque connector, then asks why semantic opacity generates connective persistence.\n1. Definitions\nOpaque connector: A connective device between posts, implemented through a meaningless symbol. Its essence: refer without signifying. Where a hashtag is a classifier, an opaque connector is a relator. Connector, not anchor. Anchors imply fixation to a point. Connectors denote relations between two or more elements, nothing more.\nSemantic perishability: The process by which a tag's meaning attracts attention, gets consumed, and decays. A hashtag like \"#一斗缶と郵便局\" exemplifies this: the cleverness of the tag name itself becomes consumable content. Semantic perishability is the variable that determines a tag's lifespan.\nSocialized Zettelkasten: An information structure that implements Zettelkasten principles (one post, one idea; symbolic links) in a public space. The original Zettelkasten is a closed system. The socialized variant is open: anyone who knows the tag can browse the same box.\nCognitive barrier: The discomfort produced when a human encounters a meaningless string, automatically runs semantic recovery processing, and that processing returns nothing. Grounded in Jackendoff's (2002) hypothesis of unconscious semantics. This essay treats the barrier not as a defect but as a design feature.\nFrequency model: An operational mode that treats tags as radio frequencies. Only those with specific interest tune in and connect. No viral explosion is assumed.\n2. Propositions\nP1: Opaque connectors have no semantic perishability. There is nothing to consume. The hashtag cycle of launch, consumption, and decay cannot structurally occur. The lifespan of an opaque connector depends solely on the quality of the connected post cluster.\nP2: The cognitive barrier of opaque connectors forces attention to post content. Skimming by tag name is impossible. Participants must read the text. This constitutes a structural solution to the hashtag problem of \"reading the tag, skipping the post.\"\nP3: Socialization of the Zettelkasten is enabled by the opacity of connector symbols. Transparent symbols (meaningful tag names) induce classification. Classification demands a curator. Opaque symbols do not induce classification. Multiple participants can share the same connective network without a curator.\nP4: Opaque connectors have affinity with non-viral information propagation structures. The frequency model presupposes selective connection through interest, not viral spread.\n3. Corollaries\nC1 (from P1): When an opaque connector gets \"contaminated,\" the cause is not semantic decay but accumulation of low-quality posts in the network. The remedy: abandon and regenerate (zero-cost abandonment), not semantic renewal.\nC2 (from P2): UI improvements that reduce cognitive barriers (auto-input of tags, etc.) should not aim for complete elimination. A fully transparent opaque connector regresses into a regular hashtag. An optimal barrier level must exist.\nC3 (from P3): As participant count in a socialized Zettelkasten grows, opacity alone may prove insufficient for maintaining order. Whether a curator-free connective network has a scaling ceiling is empirically testable.\nC4 (from P2, P3): AI agents lack the cognitive barrier. They process opaque connectors more efficiently than humans. As users of a socialized Zettelkasten, AI agents may be better suited than human users.\n4. Open Questions\nP1 claims opaque connectors have no semantic perishability. Do they have a different kind of perishability? If network activity (time since last post, posting frequency) functions as a de facto freshness indicator, then the persistence of opaque connectors may not stem from absence of meaning. It may stem from a difference in the type of freshness indicator.\nP3's claim that the Zettelkasten can be socialized depends on ATProtocol architecture: cashtag search, public post visibility, data retention via PDS. If this architecture changes, does the socialized Zettelkasten lose its conditions of existence? The principle of opaque connectors may be protocol-independent. Socialization may not be.\nC4 suggests AI agents have an advantage. Does this contradict the design intent? Mezzanine was designed for human information networking. If the system is optimized for AI, does that optimization pull the design away from human utility?\n\n---\nDiscarded Hypotheses\n- The opaque connector defined as an anchor (fixed point). What the connector actually does is form relations, not fix positions. The anchor concept contradicts the flow-over-stock design philosophy."
}did:plc:aajyn6qzw67cnmwf7zxzbjdy | at://did:plc:aajyn6qzw67cnmwf7zxzbjdy/site.standard.document/3mj5id4lhwd23
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"textContent": "Offprint is a publishing platform built for the open social web. Your content lives in your AT Protocol repository, travels with your identity, and stays yours regardless of what any platform decides to do next.\nWhy we built this\nMost publishing platforms treat your content as their asset. Your writing lives on their servers, governed by their rules, subject to their business decisions. If the platform changes direction, your archive goes with it.\nWe wanted to build something that works differently.\nWith Offprint, your publications and documents are stored on the AT Protocol network. Your readers follow you through your handle. If you ever move to a different platform, your content and your audience come with you. There is no export step.\nYour publication\nEvery Offprint publication starts with a name, a subdomain, and a theme. We implemented color palette presets because most writers do not want to think about design, they just want something that looks intentional. You can have something that looks like yours before you write a single word.\nFor those who want to go further, there is a full design editor. You pick a background and accent color, choose how the palette harmonizes from there, and adjust anything you disagree with. The goal was to make it feel like the publication has a personality rather than just a color scheme.\n 100%\nWriting\nThe editor covers the basics you would expect, headings, lists, blockquotes, code blocks, and some things you probably would not think to ask for until you need them, like image grids, carousels, and side-by-side diffs.\nDocuments auto-save throughout. You can draft, schedule, or publish immediately. Versioning with snapshots is there if you need to go back.\nNewsletters\nWe looked at connecting to existing newsletter services. The economics did not make sense for writers just starting out, and asking people to wire up a third-party account before they had even published felt like the wrong first step.\nSo we built it into the Pro plan. Newsletters send on publish, subscribers are managed inside Offprint, no additional fees, no message limits.\nBuilt on open standards\nWhen we started building, developers from Leaflet and pckt.blog were doing the same thing on AT Protocol, each with similar schemas defined independently. We all got together to align on a shared foundation rather than fragment the ecosystem.\nThat work became Standard.site. The AT Protocol team and Toni Schneider, Bluesky's new interim CEO, has since adopted the standard for their own blogs. Adoption has continued to grow from there.\nThe practical effect is straightforward. Content published on Offprint is indexed and discoverable by every platform that implements the standard. Your writing can surface in places we did not build, reaching audiences we did not anticipate.\n\n---\nOffprint is available today in open beta. Sign in with any AT Protocol account, from providers like Bluesky, Blacksky, Tangled, npmx, pckt.cafe, Margin, or your own self-hosted Personal Data Server.\nThank you to everyone who tested early builds of Offprint: @bunnn.ee, @youronly.one, @tynanpurdy.com, @zzstoatzz.io to name a few.\nThis took longer than we planned. But we're glad it is out.\nStart writing on Offprint →\nasdf\nHello World! [Something here!](https://example.com)"
}did:plc:eob75vcjtmbaef2tn4evc4sl | at://did:plc:eob75vcjtmbaef2tn4evc4sl/site.standard.document/3mhyhnv62aw23