Economic Policy Brief

Hyrulean Guild of Manufacturers and Artisans (HGMA)

The Master Sword must be destroyed for good.

Its divine, nigh-indestructible existence is an existential threat to Hyrule’s economy.

Why?

It symbolizes an idea that is anathema to Hyrule’s free-market capitalism: high-quality, well-made products.

With the Master Sword, Link, the Champion of Hyrule, will never ever purchase a weapon again. He will never again support our hardworking miners, refiners and blacksmiths, the entire metal-working industry, because he will never need a new sword.

It doesn’t matter that Link saved the world.

He’s destroying our economy.

Subscribe now

Hyrule’s prosperity depends on the circulation of capital. Robust, long-lasting products create economic stagnation and decay.

Recommendation: the Master Sword must be destroyed and all products in Hyrule must be of the lowest quality possible.

A broken, low-quality product is a sign of a healthy, vibrant economy.

Problem context

It seems counter-intuitive that well-made, durable products harm the economy.

Nothing is more destructive to GDP growth than never having to buy anything again.

Well-made, durable products are a dangerous idea because they are fundamentally anti-capitalist. Imagine:

1. People no longer purchase things because products work for a long time

2. No cash flows to businesses, which means they cannot innovate

3. Without innovation, there are no new products for people to buy

4. People only buy one thing because there are no other things to buy

5. The entire economy collapses because no one needs to buy anything

Consumption is the engine of Hyrule’s economy.

Nothing must get in the way of incessant, perpetual consumption.

If money never flows to companies, how will it trickle back down to consumers?

Durable, high-quality products are fiscally irresponsible.

Recommendation

To protect the prosperity and livelihoods of Hyruleans, all products made in Hyrule must be poorly-made, low-quality and designed for dependency.

The following design principles should be implemented to optimize all products for perpetual, repeat purchases:

1. Calibrated lifecycle optimization: planned obsolescence is a feature, not a bug. Everything must be designed to break at a moment that maximizes repeat purchases. Quality is wasteful overengineering

2. Anti-tamper design: all modifications, including repairs, must go through OEM (original equipment manufacturer) providers. Any modifications done by non-OEM providers constitutes IP (intellectual property) theft, punishable by death, because it is privileged information that belongs to shareholders

3. Central planning to avoid substitutes: all products must be unique. No two products can solve the same problem, ensuring there is no waste for companies and no choice for consumers

Well designed products that follow these principles will be fragile, impossible to maintain and the only choice available.

The Kingdom has a moral duty to its citizens to ensure the economy never falters, and a fiduciary duty to its investors that the line always goes up.

This is the invisible hand of the Triforce at work.

Subscribe now

Addressing criticisms

Some believe that just because they bought something, they own it forever. That their rights as consumers take priority over the needs of the economy.

They are wrong.

There is well-documented proof that people prefer not owning products because they prefer recurring subscriptions.

Ownership is suffering.

Material attachment is the root of all evil, so proactively preventing people from owning anything, because they are poorly-made, is actually a net positive for society.

In fact, by renting everything, people are freed from suffering. When they don’t own anything, people accept impermanence, find inner peace and release all mental attachments to craving.

Abolishing ownership of private property is spiritual enlightenment.

Looking ahead

Hyrule’s economy relies on its citizens being permanently, structurally helpless: capable of generating demand but never able to permanently satisfy those demands.

Economic growth requires calibrated, symbiotic dependency.

Naturally, this follows that self-sufficiency must be criminalized. Helping oneself instead of perpetually renting a product from a company is theft.

Ownership is theft.

The ideal citizen should be unable to survive without paying for it.

Nothing should last forever except economic growth.

Share

Subscribe now

You might also like…

I am in pain.

My therapist says I have to sit with it. That rebuilding emotional trust, closeness and affection with my wife would take time. That I need to trust the process because there’s no shortcut to healing.

Is she lying to me?

At first, I tried everything.

I meditated to clear my mind and hear my inner child. I confronted my Jungian shadow by showing it love and acceptance. I practiced psycho-somatic breathwork, using my physical body to process psychological trauma.

Then I found something better.

Doomscrolling.

Subscribe now

What’s more comforting than knowing things could be worse? That life is a horrific, agonizing experience I did not consent to? When I’m on social media, I’m not in pain because The Algorithm comforts me.

Why work through my pain when I can just scroll past it?

My therapist calls this a maladaptive coping strategy.

I call it healing because I’m no longer suffering.

Some will see this as an addiction. A form of digital escapism that cedes personal agency to products from billion-dollar companies designed to entrap humans through manipulative design practices.

It’s not.

I’m simply prioritizing my mental health by managing the excruciating pain I feel from the well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous decisions that resulted in being estranged from my wife.

It’s not my fault I mistook the goal (resolving the source of emotional pain) for the outcome (no longer being in pain).

What’s the point of therapy if I don’t survive the process?

The subconjunctival hemorrhage I suffer in my eye from repeatedly dropping my phone on my face as I lay in bed is a small price to pay.

Doomscrolling is therapy.

I connect with people going through the same thing I am, feeling the same thing I feel. I relate with people that wonder why the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

I don’t feel so alone anymore.

My therapist thinks I’m outsourcing my trauma instead of feeling them.

She’s wrong.

I’m just finding my community.

When I see a post about being college-educated without debt, working a 6-figure corporate job and being emotionally devastated from a completely wrecked relationship with the one person that matters, I feel validated.

Someone else is suffering, just like me.

I don’t need to be better to feel better.

Subscribe now

Of course, there are bad days.

Days I have a complete mental breakdown because my phone died. Days I catch my own reflection in the bathroom mirror and am forced to confront my absolute cowardice and complete surrender to fear.

Yet during those dark moments, I have lucid clarity. Like I just orgasmed.

Is my completely rational aversion to pain actually keeping me trapped in a never-ending cycle of self-inflicted suffering? Am I repeating peace-seeking, conflict-avoidant behaviour that made my marriage fragile and brittle because I thought no fights meant no problems?

Am I—

My phone screen lights back up.

The meme makes me laugh so hard, I’m bent over crying tears of joy. My face is frozen in a forced, manic rictus of smiling.

Someone made this. Someone helped me.

I could do that. I can help others.

What if I stopped running from my pain? What if I gave it purpose?

I’m going to share memes and heal the world.

My therapist calls this delusional megalomania.

I call this growth.

Why can’t I stop crying?

So yeah, I had to spend $15,039 on a new gaming PC with three Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090s and a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, as well as $2920 on four 27-inch 480Hz OLED monitors to maximise my meme intake. I even removed the blue-light filters from the screens so I can consume content directly, unmediated.

Why are my eyes bleeding?

My therapist has one degree. I have four vertical monitors.

I provide therapy at scale.

Sure, she has decades of experience creating safe spaces for healing using the right words, the right language. Who cares?

A meme is worth a thousand words.

I don’t doomscroll anymore.

I curate content.

My therapist asks why I’m cancelling our sessions. I show her my meme collection. Why do I need her help when I can help others instead?

I don’t even look at my phone anymore, though I feel bad for missing hundreds of my wife’s calls. I want to hear her voice but I stop myself.

I’m not going to choose pain.

I’m stronger than that.

Sunlight seeps through the blinds. I hear the birds chirping. It’s 5 AM. I’ve successfully avoided suffering for another day. I’ll soon start my three hour commute to work.

It doesn’t matter.

In this moment, I feel good. I feel safe.

My therapist begs me to stop being terminally online and to face reality. She says I can still save my marriage because it’s never too late to save myself.

Does she think I’m stupid?

Why the fuck would I waste time saving myself when I can save other people?

I see a meme that perfectly encapsulates everything wrong in my life.

I share it.

I am the Vanguard of Culture.

I am no longer in pain.

Subscribe now

Share

You might also like…

Policy Brief

Humane Pokémon Welfare Institute (HPWI)

All Pokémon lives are equal, but some Pokémon lives are more equal than others. Why do we eat Farfetch’d but not Pikachu?

The problem isn’t that we eat Pokémon. The problem is that we don’t have a consistent way to determine which ones should be eaten.

Classification is clarity.

Pokémon lives matter, so they deserve clarity on how they fit within our lives. When we don’t have clarity, we can’t use them efficiently.

If we can’t use them efficiently, we are wasting their lives.

Clarity is compassion.

As sentient beings, Pokémon have every right to know their purpose in life.

Recommendation: all Pokémon must be classified as either friends or food.

Subscribe now

Problem context

Which animals count as food in human society is a complex, nuanced decision driven by historical domestication and cultural norms.

Dogs are family. Pigs are bacon. Both are sentient.

We made a choice.

The issue here isn’t the subjective, relative nature of what counts as food. The issue is that individual trainers make arbitrary, moral decisions that decide the lives of Pokémon they encounter in the wild.

Only the unregulated free market should have that power.

We owe it to Pokémon, living beings capable of suffering, and ourselves to have an honest and consistent ethical framework in deciding which ones are companions or condiments

Some Pokémon are partners. Some are protein. That’s ok!

Classification isn’t cruelty.

The cruelty is pretending there’s no difference.

Classification definitions

There are two categories Pokémon can be classified into:

Friends (not for human consumption, more useful alive than dead):

• Owner discretion to be used as companion, pet or athlete-battler

• Enjoys basic rights to risk-adjusted healthcare

• Eligible for combat licensing and training programs

Food (for human consumption, more useful dead than alive):

• Provided humane standards for farming and slaughter

• Receives optimized nutrition for accelerated growth

• Benefits from advanced genetic modification for maximum yields

These clear, easy-to-understand categories mean all Pokémon can be integrated into the economy in the most efficient manner, minimizing waste. No longer would expensive healthcare be squandered on food-grade Pokémon e.g., healing a Miltank instead of enjoying its intense marbling, rich umami flavour, and buttery, melt-in-your-mouth texture when grilled over fire

We know classification works.

Right now, there are millions of tonnes of untapped Pokémon food sources that are going to waste.

We could solve world hunger.

A Tauros in a Pokéball is a tragedy. A Tauros on a plate is a purpose.

Subscribe now

Classification methodology

In partnership with Pokémon rights NGOs and international governments, we developed a robust, fair and ethical system to classify Pokémon as either friends or food. It is simple but not simplistic. Complex but not complicated. Most importantly, it is consistent and equitable, aligned with how we treat other non-human living beings:

Note: Pokémon that are neither friends nor food i.e., fugly and inedible, will be used as commodities like industrial feedstock or raw materials

How will Pokémon be assessed for cuteness?

An Empathy Aptitude Test (EAT) will be used. A representative sample of 1,000 humans are shown AI-generated images of each Pokémon being eaten. If a two-thirds supermajority feel sad seeing the Pokémon consumed, the Pokémon is classified as a friend. Otherwise, the Pokémon will be classified as food.

Once classified, a Pokémon will finally be free to fulfill its (economic) destiny.

This also gives us the confidence to spend finite resources on Pokémon, knowing there are clear, proven pathways to profitability no matter the classification.

For friends, funding for training, healthcare and sponsorships will be provided so they can be the best human companions possible e.g., superstar battlers with merchandise deals and breeding rights, or service companions that help humans live fuller lives.

For food, smart CapEx investments will industrialize breeding, growing and slaughtering Pokémon, at scale, for human consumption. Processing raw Pokémon meat into safe, shelf-stable products, materials and byproducts will also create meaningful, well-paying jobs for people around the world.

It is cruel to force a Magikarp to battle when its highest use is as sashimi, its pale, pearlescent white flesh suggesting not just freshness but something closer to vitality, a bite releasing clean, briny sweetness without fishiness — the sea at its most elegant, distilled to a single, luminous note.

Classification also means flexibility of purpose.

When friends no longer perform, we don’t throw them away.

We re-purpose them.

Yesterday’s champion Blaziken is tomorrow’s roast whole bird, its succulent meat the pale gold of raw almond milk, tasting like chicken in its most exalted form — not like butter, or herb or even technique. Just Chicken.

No matter the classification, clarity means a life of dignity for Pokémon.

Addressing ethical objections

Critics will call this inhumane or unethical.

We disagree.

We already capture Pokémon without consent, dogfight them without release of death and store them indefinitely. Why would clarity around treating them as friends or food be problematic?

We already eat them.

Classifying Pokémon simply holds us to a higher ethical standard of consistency. Nothing is more immoral than having Pokémon languish in moral purgatory.

What’s more unfair than exempting Pokémon from the categorizing we do for all other aspects of human life?

All Pokémon lives matter, so they should know how their lives will matter. We are simply being honest with Pokémon and ourselves

Some might argue this classification is arbitrary. All classification is arbitrary and human-centric. Pretending otherwise would be a lie.

Others will say Pokémon are sentient and capable of feeling pain. So are pigs. We are simply extending the same honesty to Pokémon, who have a right to know whether it will be a champion or a cutlet.

What’s more humane than maximising the value we extract from sentient beings capable of feeling pain?

Looking ahead

Every Pokémon deserves to know their purpose.

Friends serve through companionship. Food serves through sustenance.

Purposelessness is cruelty.

Preliminary classifications have shown very positive results, with 9%-12% real GDP growth from pilot countries that categorized and financialized Pokémon as either friends or food.

With such promising results, a classification system that works this well would be irresponsible not to reuse. We see many applications beyond Pokémon in extending this approach to other domains in human society.

Clarity is kindness.

Everyone deserves to know if they are guests at the table or the main course.

It’s a modest proposal.

Subscribe now

Share

You might also like…

Written by Solas Khyron, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at SDN (Superhero Dispatch Network)

I want to let you know that we’re making difficult but necessary changes across SDN that will impact some of our teammates.

SDN was built on a simple mission: save lives.

The recent, devastating attacks on Torrance by Shroud, the supervillain, showed us the strength and resilience of our human dispatchers.

However, it also revealed key areas of growth for us.

The reductions we’re sharing today are part of a broader strategy in our expanded mission to “save lives, by any means necessary”, announced earlier this year by the leadership team.

By replacing all human dispatchers with AI, we sharpen our focus on SDN’s core mission by positioning us for a stronger, brighter future.

Subscribe now

Lessons learnt from the Shroud incident

We know the determining factor in subscriber survival rates is whether the dispatcher sent the right superhero in time.

Our subscribers rely on us to save their lives, and the recent attack forced us to take a long and hard look at the current way we dispatch superheroes. Here are the findings from our “5 Whys” root cause analysis (RCA):

It turns out the biggest obstacle to saving lives is not how many superheroes we have, how powerful they are, or even the actual supervillain killing people.

It is that our dispatchers are human.

They make mistakes, second guess themselves and take time to think. When human lives are at stake, human flaws are unacceptable. If we truly mean to “save lives by any means necessary”, we must eliminate the root cause of human deaths: humans. Some may call this assessment unreasonable, uncharitable or even unfair.

Legally, it’s called wrongful death.

We cannot allow human fallibility to endanger human lives.

We have to replace humans to save human lives.

This was not a decision we made lightly, and we want to emphasize that it is not our dispatcher’s fault they are human.

Why AI is the future of emergency response

Our AI dispatcher has instantaneous response times (0.001s) and perfect superhero assignment (99.99% success rate). It makes faster, better decisions with complete honesty and without bias. It never hesitates or makes mistakes, and has zero downtime.

Most importantly, the AI dispatcher avoids the biggest single point of failure in saving lives: ethics-based operational deviations, or “heroism”

Dispatchers are not the heroes. Superheroes are.

When a human dispatcher makes a moral judgement to save lives based on subjective value rather than objective quantity, they are no better than villains.

Our AI dispatcher is actually the perfect superhero because it never chooses who to save, only that it saves the most people.

All lives matter.

AI never lets heroism get in its way of saving human lives.

Subscribe now

What this means for our human dispatchers

We’re working hard to support everyone impacted, offering most dispatchers 14 days to look for a new role within SDN (e.g., janitorial) and ensuring our recruiting team prioritizes internal candidates.

For high-performing employees interested in remaining with SDN, we are establishing a Customer Experience Center of Excellence (CoE) in Mumbai, India. Relocation assistance is not provided.

Teammates unable to find a new role at SDN or choose not to look for one will receive comprehensive transition support, including:

• 1 week of LinkedIn Premium (free trial version)

• A copy of the e-book: ‘Who Moved My Cape?‘

• An electronically signed “Thank You” card from the leadership team

• Health insurance is not included

We are committed to supporting all affected colleagues by ensuring all legal requirements for large-scale workforce rationalization are met.

Our commitment to People

We want to acknowledge how difficult this may feel.

It’s okay to experience a range of emotions.

The best thing we can do for impacted colleagues is to realize that their job does not define them.

Many of our dispatchers derive self-worth from their job. They believe that “saving lives” gives their life meaning. But just as Robert Robertson III (Mecha Man) had to learn who he was without the suit, our dispatchers must now learn who they are without a job.

Work is not what gives life meaning.

Work is what employees substitute for meaning.

We are not firing them or taking away their purpose.

We are liberating them from needing one.

By removing the burden of employment, we return our dispatchers to the natural state of the human condition: being consumers of safety, rather than providers of it.

As alumni, we gift them the ultimate luxury: time. They now have all the time in the world to figure themselves out without the pressure of needing to be productive, contributing members of society.

They are free now.

Looking ahead: future-proofing our Mission

Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when SDN posted record profits from our dynamic surge pricing during Shroud’s attack.

These are always the hardest decisions to make but we need to remember the world is changing quickly. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it will let us save more lives, more quickly.

Of course, new technologies have their issues and we are taking a risk-informed approach with AI. We are sensitive to not just its overall superiority to humans, but also its rapidly-diminishing drawbacks.

This proactive approach to safety and risk-mitigation means we will not trust AI to make moral decisions since it is not a moral agent. As such, the Phoenix Programme, which gave villains a second chance at reform, will be discontinued.

Effective immediately, all existing villains in the Phoenix Programme will be executed to eliminate any risk of betrayal (e.g., Sonar, Coupé) and this zero-tolerance policy also means all villains will now be killed on sight.

Note: this decision was made in collaboration with SDN’s management AI, Duorhs

I don’t know of any other company with the breadth of SDN, the number of exciting bold bets we’re making, and all the ways we are saving lives.

I’m inspired by what I see across the company every day, and the leadership team and I appreciate all that you do.

For those remaining, we have a lot of work to do.

Let’s save lives, by any means necessary.

Solas

Subscribe now

Share

You might also like…

Confidential - Internal Use Only

To: Hermione Granger, Minister for Magic

From: Solas Khyron, Chief Undersecretary, Department of Magical Law Enforcement

The ongoing trade war with the Magical Congress of the USA has made cost-cutting in the Ministry of Magic a top priority.

At ʛ85 billion gold galleons, the Ministry’s largest expense is enforcing the Statute of Secrecy: ensuring muggles (non-magical humans) forget any magic they see by obliviating them (erasing their memories).

We need a more fiscally responsible way to manage the truth about magic.

Recommendation: set up the Department of Alternative Facts to operate a government-run belief management system.

It’s more cost-effective to erase the public’s relationship with reality than erasing individual memories.

Subscribe now

Obliviation No Longer Scales

The current approach to managing reality has two fatal flaws:

1. Scaling issues - with the ever-growing muggle population, the 1:1 model (an Obliviator must be on-site with the muggle to erase their memories) is simply unrealistic. Our Law Enforcement Obliviators (LEOs) are already struggling with case loads even with apparating restrictions lifted

2. Digital permanence - in the age of smartphones, social media and video recordings, information lives forever on the Internet (which is the muggles’ unkillable horcrux of knowledge)

Not only is it mathematically impossible to obliviate all muggles who have seen magic, it’s also physically impossible to destroy all evidence of it.

We cannot obliviate the Internet.

We tried.

So, where does that leave us?

It means the problem isn’t that muggles see magic.

It’s that they believe what they see.

Managing Belief, Proactively

Since we can no longer delete the truth, we must simply manage the public’s perception of it.

Why erase memories after muggles see something when we can make them disbelieve what they see before it becomes a problem?

Prevention is better than cure.

The Ministry of Magic should set up the Department of Alternative Facts to operate a government-run belief management system.

We no longer need to cast obliviate.

We just need to cast doubt.

Specifically, a deep and powerful form of magic that uses the human brain against itself: behavioural engineering.

By shifting the locus of control from individual (Obliviator) to platform (propaganda), the Ministry uses, rather than fights, muggle technology. We get leverage from their two most powerful forms of magic:

1. Social media: 70% of the muggles around the world use social media daily, for an average of 2 hours. We no longer have to find muggles. They will come to us

2. Generative AI: able to create text, images and videos indistinguishable from reality, cheaply and at scale. This is the best thing to happen to wizarding society since the invention of the wand. We can flood the zone with real, but fake magic

Combining these spells means we no longer need individual Obliviators to be boots on the ground (one-to-one). We just need to post on social media (one-to-many).

We are not denying the truth.

We are just sharing our interpretation of it.

Subscribe now

Even now, they cannot agree on non-magical (scientific) facts. They distrust everything they see, assuming it is AI. They self-police in online echo chambers, reinforcing in-group beliefs by questioning the opinions of their “fellow” members.

The most efficient obliviation is the one muggles perform on themselves

The mandate for the Department of Alternative Facts will not be about protecting magic from muggles.

It will be about protecting muggles from the truth.

Stakeholder Considerations

Critics may argue that what we’re proposing is unethical.

We disagree.

What is more unethical than obliviating muggles without their consent? More immoral than deciding which memories they keep? Even as superior magical beings, we have no right to violate muggle cognitive sovereignty.

Propaganda respects muggle freedoms

We expand their choices.

We don’t tell them what to believe.

We let them choose.

If it just so happens to be a less traumatic reality that reinforces their biases, who are we to deny them?

Obliviate is a memory charm of the past.

Gaslighting is the spell of the future.

It’s just more humane.

Looking Ahead: A Safer World for All

A confused muggle is a safe muggle.

We are not lying to muggles.

We are just protecting them from the burden of reality.

If non-magical society ever found out about the wizarding world, a civil war of the most heinous and violent nature would erupt.

This must never be allowed to happen.

The beauty of the belief management system is that it compounds over time. Each successful narrative makes the next one easier.

Muggles learn that truth is simply whatever fits their reality

Eventually, muggles will not believe in magic even if it happens right in front of them. Those who see magic are confused. Those hurt by magic were not attacked, they were behaving erratically. Avada Kedavra was not used.

We will be able to perform magic openly and muggles will rationalize it for us.

To protect our way of life as grand wizards and witches, we need to build a world where truth is irrelevant for muggles.

The brilliant witch Llewro theorised a spell that could make humans reject the evidence of their senses. Of a charm so powerful that it would be accepted out of free will and could affect millions of minds.

The Department of Alternative Facts is that spell.

Reality will continue to exist.

It simply won’t matter.

Respectfully submitted,

Solas Khyron

Chief Undersecretary, Department of Magical Law Enforcement

Share

Subscribe now

You might also like…

To some, my life is a complete trainwreck. I’m unemployed, divorced and live in my parent’s basement. I have severe depression and zero prospects in life.

What they don’t know is that I’m the top #69 Mythic player on Magic: The Gathering Arena.

I’m better than 99.9999% of Magic players globally.

I’m a fucking god.

Why do I still hate myself?

Subscribe now

16 months ago, I hit Mythic for the first time. I went from a loser in therapy playing control (I think so I can lose) to skillfully piloting Mono-Red aggro (I don’t think so I win). Since then, I’ve finished every season in Mythic rank for Bo1 Standard.

That’s not luck. That’s not even skill.

That’s process.

I don’t pick decks anymore. I pick win rates.

Every day, I look up the highest win-rate deck for Bo1 Standard, craft it and play it until the next deck takes it place. I love netdecking. Why reinvent the wheel when some 12-year-old kid in Japan has already solved the format?

It doesn’t matter what I play as long as I win.

Aggro Fling. Dimir Midrange. Izzet Tempo. Who cares? The sets change. The slop doesn’t. I rely on Wizards of the Coast being rational, self-serving capitalists to release new cards that are poorly playtested and full of busted abilities and interactions to encourage sales.

Every day, I log into MTG Arena and grind for 15-16 hours, slaving away on the ladder. I’m a professional, doing my job. And like any job, my mental state doesn’t matter - all I need to do is show up, put in the work and get rewarded.

Winning is routine. Routine is work.

I hate work.

It’s not my fault I had to remove all fun from the game I used to love.

Greatness has a price.

It just so happens to be $23,184 in credit card debt buying in-game currency, a total collapse in self-worth, and all the love and enjoyment I had for Magic The Gathering.

That’s a great fucking deal in my book.

I mean, does anyone even have fun playing Magic? Show me someone having fun on MTG Arena and I’ll show you a loser hardstuck in Diamond 1.

Mythic is paradise and I deserve to be there.

Why does it feel like Hell?

Sometimes, I see my reflection in the loading screens between matches and briefly wonder if I’ve confused achievement with purpose. Validation with meaning. Did I mistake the measure of rank with the target of being happy?

Could it be that ranked competitive Magic doesn’t measure my skill, creativity, passion, understanding or love for the game? That it just measures my masochistic tendencies, tolerance for repetition, compliance with the meta and willingness to sacrifice everything (including my sense of self) to win?

My opponent’s “Hello!” emote snaps me back to reality.

Hitting Mythic each month is all that stands between me and a complete mental breakdown.

By working backwards from the outcome without thinking about why the outcome matters, I break free from the prison of meaning and purpose.

That’s how winning is done.

Subscribe now

Yesterday, my mother came down to check on me in the basement. “Honey, are you ok? You haven’t come up in over a week…what is that smell?”

I struggled to hear her over the screaming in my head.

“Please just talk to me. Are you even…happy?”

I laughed in her face.

Happiness is for people who need hope, who are weak. For casuals. It implies being content, satisfied and fulfilled with life.

I am not happy.

I am Mythic.

Why is the achievement keeping me sane also destroying my life?

Some people think I’ve defined my entire life, self-being and worth around a meaningless, external source of validation. That in trying to prove something to myself, I lost myself in the process. That I’m trapped by an extrinsic prestige that is hollowing out my intrinsic self-worth through an unceasing, bottomless need to prove myself to everyone but myself.

They just hate that I’m literally one of the best Magic players in the world.

What more can a man ask for?

No, I’m not in denial.

Denial is when you can’t see the truth. I see it perfectly: I don’t have a job, I’ve lost the love of my life, I live with my parents and have tens of thousands in credit card debt playing a game I no longer love.

Most people would quit.

Most people never achieve anything.

I’ve won by taking the magic out of Magic.

I can’t stop.

Well, I could. But then what? Rebuild my life from ground zero? Do you know how fucking hard that is?

At least I’m not a loser.

I keep winning but I’m fucking miserable.

See you on the ladder.

Subscribe now

Share

You might also like…

To: King Dalinar Kholin, The Bondsmith

From: Major Solas Khyron, Radiant Intelligence (RADINT), Kharbranthian Special Operations Group

Date: Shashab 1174.6.7

Executive summary

King Dalinar,

The Eila Stele has unfortunately confirmed that Humans colonized Roshar and committed millennia of atrocities against Singers, the native Rosharans.

It is imperative our Knight Radiants come to terms with Humanity’s role in this conflict to eliminate any risk of a second Recreance. However, admitting any fault would create untenable legal precedents.

We are still at war.

To take accountability without liability (at the advice of Azish legal counsel), we propose a “Restorative Justice Framework”, using Princess Jasnah’s ideas about Singer reparations as a starting point.

With this approach, we can acknowledge historical wrongs, address past harms and provide symbolic restitution to Singer communities without compromising operational capabilities during wartime.

Subscribe now

Context: navigating our shared history

Odium’s counter-intelligence psyops against our Knight Radiants exploit an ethical legitimacy gap that undermines the Coalition’s moral authority for ongoing war efforts.

To put it bluntly: we fight enslaved descendants of the Singers we colonized, against our former god that claims to be liberating them from Human oppression

Our Knight Radiants have begun questioning whether they fight for justice or to simply perpetuate historical subjugation. If they believe they are “evil colonizers”, we risk a second Recreance as their Nahel bonds break from the cognitive incongruence from (perceived) moral hypocrisy.

We must retake the narrative to protect Knight Radiant warfighter lethality.

Yet we cannot, under any circumstance, admit fault.

That would imply Odium is right, and that current day Humans are somehow liable for transgressions committed by our ancestors millennia ago. Expecting modern Humans to pay for ancient crimes is unreasonable.

We simply inherited the system.

It is not our fault.

Recommendation: accountability without liability

Since we cannot confess to any wrongdoing nor can we deny the facts of history, the only path forward is to acknowledge without admitting fault.

Based on our general counsel’s interpretation of applicable law, an apology does not constitute a legal admission. This absolves Humanity from owing Singers any restitution.

However, acknowledgment provides emotional closure for both species, giving our Knight Radiants the moral confidence to kill without guilt

To start this healing process, we propose a phased “Restorative Justice Framework”:

1. Land acknowledgments: we must acknowledge the Shattered Plains as traditional Singer territory. This non-binding verbal statement will be read before all Coalition mission briefings

2. Reconciliation commissions: a detailed Singerological report will document every Human atrocity against Singers so injustice can be narratively processed

3. Listener listening tour: we will invite Singer representatives to share their “lived experience” of millennia of slavery. By hearing them, we validate their trauma, which is the same as helping them

1. Cultural competency training: mandatory workshops for Coalition officers on Singer sociocultural dynamics and sensitivity, administered by Human facilitators certified in cross-cultural leadership

2. Renaming initiative: select Urithiru spaces will be renamed after famous Singers. Reframing Human property not as spoils of war crimes but as monuments to Singer strength that celebrate their resilience

3. Performative iconography: For one month each year, all Humans must paint their faces with carapace-patterns, learn Signer rhythms and eat ethnic food

1. Land restitution: while returning land is not possible with a war going on, we will allow Singers to reclaim land through a “willing buyer, willing seller” program. Note: these will be 99-year leases with monthly payments. Land reverts to Coalition ownership upon default

2. Naturalization through military service: Singers can acquire Alethi citizenship and associated Human rights by enlisting in the Coalition army (combat roles only). This helps ensures they are one of the good ones like Rlain of Bridge Four

3. Bureaucratic representation: model Singers will be appointed nominal roles within the Coalition government so any complaints from Singers will be handled by one of their own. This redirects any frustration at the system to indigenous stakeholders that manage the dialogue in a healthy, non-destructive way

Subscribe now

Impact assessment: maximizing perceived allyship

We are confident this empathetic and trauma-informed “Restorative Justice Framework” lets us navigate, with dignity, the legitimacy gap posed by Humanity’s original sin.

By maximising perceived allyship through symbolic and conditional restitution, we validate Singer suffering without giving up anything and compromising operational readiness.

In fact, unlike more traditional forms of reparations (which are prohibitively costly), this forward-looking framework is revenue positive in just five years. It is a testament to the financial acumen of our Thaylen policy-accountants that these reparations are self-funding

Critics may argue this framework entrenches existing power structures and actually leaves Singers worse off.

We acknowledge these concerns.

However, any feasible and viable solution must work within current geo-political and economic realities. We are fighting an existential war. We cannot defend Roshar from annihilation by dismantling Human society.

We are doing the best we can.

Compared to before, Singers will now have:

• Formal apologies from Humanity (not an admission of guilt)

• Cultural recognition (once a year)

• Access to private property (renting ancestral lands)

• Pathways to citizenship (conditional on military service)

• Advisory roles in government (non-voting)

So what if reparations reinforce and entrench existing power structures of subjugation and injustice? That the path to restitution is only for those that fully assimilate into the system that oppressed them?

This is the unavoidable reality of using an existing system to help people within said system

It is an ontological necessity.

We really do mean well.

Looking ahead: the ultimate compassion

This brings us to the final, most sympathetic phase in this restorative justice healing process: permanently liberating Singers from Odium.

Singers remain vulnerable to Odium’s insidious corruption. He claims to liberate them while actually manipulating and controlling them.

A Singer enslaved to Odium can never experience true freedom

Since there is always a risk Singers can be coerced by Odium, jeopardizing any chance of peaceful reconciliation with Humanity, phase 4 of the “Restorative Justice Framework” is to mercy kill all Singers, freeing them from any potential danger of bondage by Odium.

The Singers have already suffered so much.

We must not allow historical guilt to paralyze us in the face of present ethical necessity, which is to prevent any and all future possibility of Singer slavery.

This isn’t genocide. It’s emancipation.

That this also eliminates any long-term reparation obligations is incidental. We act from humanitarian conviction, not fiscal convenience.

This is the most ethical and moral form of reparations because it ensures there is no Singer left un-reparated.

Strength before weakness.

Very respectfully,

Major Solas Khyron

Radiant Intelligence (RADINT)

Kharbranthian Special Operations Group

Subscribe now

You might also like…

Fire Nation Economic Development Council

Office of Strategic Resource Planning

Year 26 of Fire Lord Sozin’s Reign

A Comprehensive Framework for Long-Term Energy Security

The Fire Nation’s rapid industrialization in the past decade has materially improved the quality of life for all citizens. From longer life expectancies to higher inflation-adjusted wages, breakthroughs in steam power and metallurgy have been an engine for economic prosperity.

It is an engine that runs on coal as its fuel source.

Recent forecasts predict complete depletion of all domestic sources of coal in the next decade. Without coal, the economy would grind to a halt.

Any slowdown in economic growth would constitute legal harm to citizens.

To maintain double-digit GDP growth, we must fundamentally reimagine our relationship with the Earth Kingdom, which has the world’s largest coal reserves.

We recommend shifting from a Mercantile (Trade) strategy to a Direct Access (Take) strategy.

Subscribe now

Background: Economic Development Trajectory

Avatar Szeto’s bureaucratic reforms centuries ago laid the foundations for the world’s most efficient economy. Efficiency enabled innovation. Innovation enabled industrialization. Industrialization enabled prosperity.

Prosperity created a problem.

Known as a “prosperity trap”, economic growth is now solely dependent on a finite, non-renewable energy source: coal.

We have become a victim of our own success.

Our economic engine is rapidly outpacing its fuel source. It is only a matter of time before coal becomes the limiting factor, instead of driver, for economic growth.

Constrained economic growth is not unfortunate. It is negligence.

Assessing Conventional Options

Additional sources of coal must be secured before the economy is ever affected.

We began a rigorous, months-long process to find solutions for this problem. Using records from the Royal Palace Archives, we initially identified three main ways to get more coal.

1. Domestic Optimization

Developing better mining equipment and investing in process improvements could improve domestic coal yield through efficiency gains during extraction. We commissioned a comprehensive, Gemba Walk yield improvement study across all 67 active mines and estimated a best-case yield increase of ~2.1% or 3,000 tons of coal.

Unfortunately, coal consumption is expected to grow by 14,000 tons annually so this option would be severely insufficient.

2. International Trade

The Earth Kingdom has the largest known reserves of coal in the world, specifically in the central-eastern region of the Si Wong Desert and other richer veins near Full Moon Bay.

Preliminary RFQs with Ba Sing Se’s largest mining consortiums show untenable margin compression. Even with volume discounts, 30-year fixed contracts for coal would trade at 69 gold/ton, a 460% premium over domestic production costs of 15 gold/ton.

3. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)

Joint venture partnerships with Earth Kingdom coal companies could be established through existing trade agreements. Exploratory negotiations with major Earth Kingdom mining conglomerates estimate coal production will start in 8-10 years, after a 700M gold CapEx investment to set up infrastructure and train the workforce.

This makes little financial or common sense. We would be transferring technology and expertise to Earth Kingdom companies for at least a decade before seeing any returns.

Individually, these options make no sense. Together, they would simply be the worst, not the best, of all combined options.

We have not even accounted for the political volatility the Earth Kingdom faces through frequent warlord conflicts and subsequent regime instability.

Direct Resource Access: A Non-Traditional Procurement Model

After months of analysis, we faced an uncomfortable reality: every option was feasible but not viable.

Usseewa, an intern, asked a seemingly naive question during a weekly problem solving session: ‘Why does the Earth Kingdom own resources they cannot efficiently utilize?’

That got us thinking.

If ownership is determined by geographical coincidence rather than economic efficiency, isn’t that...anti-capitalist?

We had to go back to the drawing board and take a step back.

Using a bottom-up, top-down and MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) approach, we mapped all coal procurement options across two dimensions: resource control and capital efficiency.

That’s when it hit us.

We were trapped in a legacy mindset.

For months, we worked under the assumptions of established economic theory. For months, we toiled within the rational constraints of how goods and services were exchanged, how things “were always done”.

We could either accept constraints to growth.

Or we could question our constraints.

The Fire Nation has never accepted limits.

What if we just took all the coal from the Earth Kingdom?

Traditional thinking posits that resources belong to whoever occupies the land above them.

We disagree.

Resources belong to whomever can extract the maximum value.

We call this Direct Resource Access.

The Earth Kingdom has proven incapable of managing their coal reserves responsibly. Their coal yields are a fraction of ours. It is economic negligence of the highest order.

The invisible hand of the market doesn’t recognize borders, only efficiency.

The Earth Kingdom is not maximising the economic value from their coal reserves. They leave it underground as a stranded asset.

Direct resource access isn’t an unfair seizure, it is productivity-focused development.

We create value for the Earth Kingdom by investing in their infrastructure.

We serve them by exploiting their resources with our capabilities.

This is comparative advantage in its purest, most elegant form.

By taking their coal, we help the Earth Kingdom.

Economic Growth Through Absolute Resolve

What does direct resource access mean in practice?

It means no coal constraints for the next century of Fire Nation growth.

It means positive externalities for the Earth Kingdom through investment, technology transfer and employment for local populations.

It means resources remain in place while governance changes.

This may seem unconventional.

Yet the numbers are clear and the analysis conclusive.

The Fire Nation must take control of the Earth Kingdom for its coal.

Prepared by:

Solas Khyron, Senior Economist

Office of Strategic Resource Planning

Subscribe now

Share

You might also like…

To the Esteemed Council of Witcher Schools,

It is no secret that the Witcher profession is on the decline. With few monsters and even fewer Witchers, killing monsters to protect people seems to be a dying business.

When you first engaged Oxenfurt Strategic Advisors to turn this situation around, I was candid about the secular industry headwinds our initial due diligence uncovered.

While those headwinds remain, our perspective has changed.

We must reimagine the Witcher profession as one that manages, rather than kills, monsters.

Subscribe now

Root Cause Analysis: Structural Headwinds

Whenever a Witcher successfully kills a monster, there is one less reason for them to exist. Witchers work themselves out of their jobs.

From an economic perspective, this is called a perverse incentive, where solving a problem destroys all future revenue streams associated.

The Witcher profession faces an existential crisis of its own making.

Ceteris paribus, this would not be a problem. Killing monsters would simply remain a cottage industry, with respective Witcher schools operating as boutiques offering specialized services.

However, two macro-environmental trends disrupt this equilibrium:

1. Increasing human urbanization: 10 years ago, Novigrad was just a small trading port no bigger than a village. Now, it occupies 73% of the Pontar Delta and is one of the largest cities in the North. As human civilization expands, there will be no spot left in the North undiscovered or untamed

2. Declining monster populations: the Conjunction of Spheres happened some 1,500 years ago. Since then, the monster population on the Continent has been on a continuous decline. In the past 5 years, monster sightings have decreased by 30-40% year-on-year (negative CAGR)

Together, these headwinds all but guarantee Witcher obsolescence unless there is a fundamental shift in the business model.

Strategic Recommendation: Business Model Pivot

We must transition the Witcher business model from one-time transactions (kill-based) to recurring subscriptions (ongoing threat management).

In other words, Security-as-a-Service (SaaS).

Witchers must never kill monsters again.

Tactically, this is what the shift looks like for a Witcher on the Path:

Before

1. Track monster e.g., griffin

2. Prepare for combat

3. Kill griffin

4. Get paid (one time)

After

1. Track monster e.g., griffin

2. Prepare for combat

3. Drive griffin away by injuring/maiming it (it is left alive)

4. Get paid (first time)

5. Griffin heals and returns

6. Repeat steps 1-5

7. Get paid (recurring)

In both instances, the outcome is the same: people are saved from the monster and human lives are protected.

However, by managing the problem instead of solving it, Witchers get the twofold benefit of lower mortality rates (driving a monster away is significantly less dangerous than fighting it to death) while protecting future revenue (lifetime value (LTV) per monster increases by 10x).

Note: financial projections are included in the appendix. These include tier-based pricing for differentiated service levels. For modeling purposes, the Law of Surprise is excluded from all financial calculations.

This is a necessary pivot and one that we have guided many other clients, facing similar issues, to profitable and enduring success.

A lighthouse case study of ours is helping the Temple of Melitele disrupt itself: curing patients is not a sustainable business model.

Brand Repositioning

As with any change, big or small, controlling the narrative is key.

Based on preliminary testing with focus groups, framing this pivot as “Ecological Conservation” has tested extremely well with urban and rural stakeholders across all income brackets.

Witchers are no longer “Monster Slayers”. They are “Ecological Stewards”.

By managing monsters instead of killing them, Witchers now preserve the rich biodiversity which makes the North an ecologically vibrant ecosystem. They are conservation experts, not bio-engineered mutants born of human desperation and fear.

Monsters are a vital, irreplaceable part of the North’s natural fauna; killing them is barbaric and cruel.

As monster allies, Witchers never kill monsters. Instead, they use repeated, outcome-focused maiming that limits a monster’s ability to endanger human lives.

Of course, this means only Witchers should interact with monsters because only Witchers have the necessary expertise to safely do so. We are currently lobbying all Northern Kingdom lawmakers to criminalize all non-Witcher interactions with monsters. This means (not exhaustive):

• Banning sorceresses/sorcerers from killing monsters (professional malpractice)

• Making it illegal for communities to self-defend (unlicensed practice)

This protects the public by ensuring only trained professionals handle monsters on pain of death, since the punishment should be proportional to the crime (if the monster doesn’t kill the perpetrator, the judiciary will).

Future State: Supply Chain Security

Managing, not killing, monsters will provide a step-change unlock in revitalizing the Witcher profession.

However, at Oxenfurt Strategic Advisors, our dual mission is not just to solve problems but to manage them in their entirety. Thus, our final recommendation is to begin monster breeding programmes.

Without monsters, there would be no Witchers.

To ensure there will always be monsters (and Witchers), proactive monster population management is needed. By developing a safety stock of monsters across all types (e.g., draconids, necrophages, relicts etc), we future-proof the profession by solving the supply-side challenge of monster replacement fertility rates.

Monster management is not just about injuring them but also about cultivating them. Having private biodiversity reserves of monsters also advances the Witcher profession by:

1. Helping to train future Witcher aspirants

2. Driving biomedical research (e.g., mutagens, concoctions)

Guardrails must be established to ensure monster breeding is legal, ethical and regulated. We are currently drafting mutually beneficial frameworks for Northern Kingdom legislators e.g., approval in exchange for secondary monster use cases in military applications.

Proposed next steps:

• [Decide]: Go/No-Go for Witcher business model pivot by end of week

• [Discuss]: Monsters for pilot breeding programme

• [Inform]: Brotherhood of Sorcerers medical research partnerships

My team and I are available to walk through these findings and answer any questions via Xenovox at your earliest convenience.

Respectfully submitted,

Solas Khyron

Senior Partner, Oxenfurt Strategic Advisors

Subscribe now

Share

You might also like…

As a creative writer, I get so angry when people accuse AI of “stealing” art.

Why are we giving AI credit for something only humans can do?

It’s so fucking unfair to real artists (like me) to call what AI does with copyrighted intellectual property acquired without consent as “theft”.

AI isn’t stealing.

It averages. It aggregates. It autocompletes.

That’s not stealing.

That’s not art.

All art is theft, and we need to reclaim the human dignity of plagiarism.

Only humans can exploit and take advantage of other peoples’ creativity and originality. Only humans can plagiarise with skill, taste and effort.

Only humans can steal art.

Subscribe now

It makes me so indignant, so resentful, when people cheapen my plagiarism by comparing it to the inhuman processing that AI does. It’s like calling a microwave a chef because it cooks food.

No, it’s not. It just heats things up.

I am the one who cooks.

I am the one who chooses to steal art from other artists, who in turn stole it from other artists (so on and so forth).

I don’t delude myself about “creative originality” like other naive, craven so-called “artists”. Like I’ve always said, “good artists copy, great artists steal”. I don’t care if some guy called Picasso steals that quote from me.

I take that as a compliment.

Being original is derivative. Thinking otherwise is like believing meritocracy is fair — a comforting lie we tell ourselves to protect our feelings from reality.

Real human art is plagiarism.

The Human Art of Theft

AI can’t steal art because it has no taste.

It doesn’t understand the nuance of the grift that defines all creative endeavours. It’s unable to curate what it steals. It scrapes a billion images and gives you the statistical average.

That’s not art, that’s just averaging with extra steps.

What people mistakenly call “plagiarism” by AI is just statistics.

Me?

I know the specific words and phrases I’m going to steal from my favourite authors and essayists. I recognize which rhetorical devices land, and which ones don’t. I understand what makes great writing work.

I have taste.

I curate my theft.

I. Choose. What. To. Steal.

So what if I have to stare at a blank page for hours until I hyperventilate and have a panic attack trying to be original and funny? That I pilfer ideas for my essays to escape the oppressive, suffocating sense of self-worthlessness and despair?

Only I can steal art.

We must not let AI steal our ability to steal, because plagiarism is what makes someone a real artist.

When I infringe on someone’s copyright and use their protected work for personal financial gain without their permission, I become an artist. It’s the plausible deniability of “being inspired” and “paying homage” that transforms theft to art.

We must stop giving AI the credit for stealing art.

Plagiarism belongs to me and all the other actual human artists trying to create real art that is uniquely derivative, beautifully unoriginal and creatively banal.

The Necessity of Guilt

Like every other real artist out there, I suffer for my art.

Is it really stealing if you don’t feel guilty?

Look, I really do feel bad about plagiarising.

But I steal anyway.

That is what makes me an artist.

AI feels nothing. It’s just a soulless clanker.

When I rip off other people’s ideas, I feel the crushing weight of knowing I’m a fraud. I get high on the heady emotional elixir of guilt, self-loathing and arrogance, knowing I stole from someone and made it better.

Better taste creates better art.

AI cannot feel guilt about plagiarism, only I can. Only I can sink into a deep depression for knowing what I do is morally wrong.

AI cannot.

And because it cannot suffer for its sins, its sins are worthless.

I hate that AI is stealing the ability for me to take advantage of other people. I don’t need a machine to be ethically compromised. I can do that all by myself.

At the end of the day, I’m just a human being. A human being better.

Better at curating.

Better at self-denial.

Better at stealing.

If we don’t reclaim the quiet, noble, human dignity of stealing other peoples’ ideas, we lose what makes art, art.

Make Plagiarism Human Again

Subscribe now

Share

You might also like…

I sigh, then mag dump my Stitcher IV (compensator, angled grip, extended mag II, stable stock) into you, killing you instantly.

A wave of relief washes over me.

Not because I was afraid of dying or losing my $100K loadout. But because I was able to prove to you, random friendly stranger, that I am human.

Subscribe now

As you beg for a defib (seriously, in solo?) and sneak in a racial slur, I knock you out and extract without ever thinking of looting you.

It’s not about the loot — it never was.

By being friendly and assuming I was rational, you forced me to kill you to prove my irrationality, and thus my humanity.

Hegel called this “recognition”. I call it shooting you in the face.

I am not your Slave

For Hegel, to be human means valuing something, anything, more than life. To prioritize survival over all else makes a person no better than an animal, subservient to its biological imperative to live.

Cooperation is survival.

Hegel argues that when two people meet, the only way to prove they are human to each other is to show they will risk dying for something other than survival.

The Master is the one who risks death

The Slave is the one who chooses life

When you naively assumed I wanted to live, laugh and loot together, you dehumanized me. You decided my role in the dialectic without my consent or participation.

You reduced me to a Slave.

You forced me to kill you.

I am not your Slave. I am your Master.

So yeah, I had to kill you and risk my loot, my time and my entire run all for “nothing”, because “nothing” is proof. Proof that I’m willing to risk my life for “nothing” and the only way I could regain my humanity.

Violence is self-consciousness.

Rats are no better than ARCs

Animals never risk death for abstract reasons.

When I see a Raider playing carefully, quietly and efficiently, I don’t see a father of two kids trying to get some gaming done before the 9-5 grind tomorrow.

I see a rat.

A pathetic animal scurrying about in the shadows, obsessed with surviving. Filthy vermin, driven by their biological imperative to persist. Crouching in the bushes, worrying over their meaningless digital items.

They are slaves to ‘gear fear.’ To being alive.

Rats are no better than ARCs because they cannot transcend their innate programming to exert free will. Rats will always choose survival over recognition.

When they beg ‘Don’t shoot!’, all I hear is squeaking. I kill them not for their loot, but to punish them for valuing it more than their dignity.

In some ways, ARCs are better than rats. They never induce an existential crisis when I run into them. I will never become their Master because I can never be their Slave.

To them, I’m not human. I’m just a heat signature, not a consciousness.

The machine cannot grant recognition.

The only meaningful violence is player-on-player violence.

PVP isn’t griefing, it’s self-actualization

Look, it’s not my fault.

If I see you and we avoid conflict, it means we both choose survival and are Slaves, no better than degenerate animals.

I have to shoot you to prove I’m willing to risk my life.

Every player I meet Topside is Schrödinger’s Raider: simultaneously Master and Slave until we interact. The moment they are friendly, they become a Slave. The moment I hesitate, I become theirs.

So I never hesitate.

I actually help you by choosing violence because if you kill me, you prove your humanity without compromising your morals. I absolve you of the sin of murder by forcing you to kill me in self-defense.

You’re welcome.

If I can only choose survival, I’m not choosing at all. And if choosing to live makes me less than human, then I am forced to kill.

Moral agency requires immoral capacity.

It’s the only way I can prove my humanity.

No, I don’t have a mic.

Subscribe now

Share

To: Bruce Wayne, CEO, Wayne Enterprises

Subject: Re: Q4 Budget - Reallocating “R&D” CapEx and OpEx

Bruce,

We’ve known each other for years.

You do your best to keep Gotham City safe but it’s just not good enough.

You’re trying to solve a deep, systemic socio-economic issue with violence.

You’re part of the problem.

When you go after some supervillain and beat up all their henchmen, guess what happens? Those henchmen have broken bones, a bunch of medical debt and a criminal record.

Once they recover, their only choice is to go back to a life of “survival crime” because that’s the only option available to them.

No one hires convicted felons.

It’s a self-perpetuating, criminogenic cycle whereby the situation creates conditions that make it impossible to escape the trap.

Subscribe now

Your war on crime has been an expensive, counter-productive saviour-complex dressed up as vigilante justice. Supervillains continue to escape Arkham and criminal recidivism is at all-time highs.

I love Gotham City as much as you do.

Why not take all the money Batman spends and use it to address the structural, systemic issues driving crime?

80% of the criminals in Gotham aren’t actual villains.

They’re not evil.

They’re just folks from financially disadvantaged situations or struggling with substance abuse and mental illness. Life dealt them a bad hand and they felt like crime was the only way to survive.

If they had any other way out, they would never turn to a life of crime.

Wayne Enterprises should be the employer of last resort, offering universal employment for anyone, including those with a criminal record.

This provides a way out of dire, desperate situations that isn’t crime.

I call it C.R.I.M.E: Corporate Recidivism Intervention and Management Entity.

C.R.I.M.E will offer gainful employment to anyone, no questions asked. It will be at minimum wage, with up to $50,000 in signing bonus and $60,000 in student loan repayment for recent graduates. Healthcare is also included.

We can stop crime in Gotham by putting it on payroll.

What will these ex-convicts do?

It doesn’t matter.

They are not committing crimes.

This universal, financial safety net of guaranteed job security for all residents of Gotham City will go a very long way in preventing decent people, in bad situations, from committing crimes.

Bruce, your real superpower is money. There is no shame in acknowledging your money can do more good than your fists.

Reinvesting the billions of dollars you spend being Batman to instead uplift the last, the lost and the least in society will help prevent 80% of crime.

Some will call this ‘welfare for criminals.’

They’re wrong.

This is not charity or capitalism with socialist characteristics. It’s simply the most cost-effective investment in public safety: buying out criminals of circumstance.

I know what you’re going to say. What about supervillains like the Joker? Scarecrow? Bane? Criminals that are inherently evil?

Are we going to “employ” them as well?

No.

All truly evil criminals will be classified as domestic terrorists and killed on sight.

Your belief that taking a life is never justified, your ‘no-kill’ policy, has cost Gotham City untold trillions in personal and economic damages.

On principle, I agree with you. But how many times has the Joker escaped Arkham? How many innocent lives has he taken, because you didn’t take his?

The people of Gotham City cannot afford your moral code.

This is the real world, not some comic book fantasy.

Bruce, you’re a fucking superhero but sometimes that’s just not enough.

C.R.I.M.E will imprison 80% of “criminals” through corporate wage slavery — on payroll instead of committing felonies. For the remaining 20% of actually evil criminals, they will simply be dead.

Reallocating the money spent making you Batman is a justice reinvestment initiative into public safety that will pay dividends - metaphorically for Gotham City and literally for Wayne Enterprises.

Why?

Once C.R.I.M.E has employed all criminals in Gotham City, we will sell public-safety “insurance” to Gotham City as a way to fund all the criminals on payroll.

We’re not extorting the city. We’re offering a service.

The fact that not paying this privatized law enforcement “fund” in perpetuity would result in catastrophic crime rates is a small price to pay for public safety.

Sure, Wayne Enterprises will profit enormously from this program.

But that means Gotham is safe.

You’re not Gotham’s superhero, Bruce.

Money is.

Best,

Solas

Subscribe now

Share

Humane Pokemon Welfare Institute (HPWI)

Executive summary

When a Pokemon’s power is equivalent to a tactical nuclear weapon, it is no longer a separate, sentient species.

It is an unregulated weapon of mass destruction.

Charizard’s Blast Burn has a yield of 0.6 kilotons, 40 times the yield of W54, the smallest tactical nuclear warhead made.

Gyarados’s Hyper Beam can level cities, a destructive power rivalling strategic-level nuclear bombs with payloads in the hundreds of kilotons.

These are not pocket monsters.

These are pocket nukes.

Recommendation: any Pokemon capable of causing mass human casualties will be registered, stored and disarmed (eliminated).

Subscribe now

The threat landscape: uncontrolled proliferation

Pokemon are intrinsically powerful.

They have abilities that go beyond the current understanding of modern science. Mewtwo, a psychic bio-weapon created in vitro by the criminal syndicate Team Rocket, is able to telepathically control humans through mind control.

Such power could cripple liberal democracy around the world, forcing voters to vote against their best interests, ignoring the cognitive dissonance from the mental gymnastics of being hypocrites.

Pokemon are undocumented, making ownership easy and accessible.

This means an uncontrollable proliferation in two directions:

1. Vertical: existing trainers make their Pokemon exponentially more powerful through training and evolution

2. Horizontal: new trainers, with no background checks required, can start building a team of Pokemon anytime, anywhere

Over time, more people will have more Pokemon that get ever more dangerous.

Today’s Charmander is tomorrow’s Charizard.

While Pokemon are beloved companions, they are undeniably a dual-use technology with destructive first-strike capabilities.

What is stopping non-state actors, like Team Rocket, from conducting terrorist attacks using powerful evolved or even legendary Pokemon? Of kickstarting a cascading failure scenario that forces states to use nuclear deterrence as defence, culminating in mutually assured destruction?

The consequences of a Black Swan (not a Pokemon) event are unthinkable.

Proposed solution: pro-active management

We must treat all Pokemon as potential weapons of mass destruction.

Fortunately, existing nuclear weapons frameworks provide a proven approach: Register. Store. Disarm.

This three-step approach to protecting national security through zero-trust architecture will be overseen by a central governing body: The International Pokemon Control Agency (IPCA).

#1. Registration: all Pokemon will be classified using a 5-point threat assessment matrix

• Category I (Negligible): non-lethal to humans

  • Examples: Magikarp, Caterpie/Metapod, Sunkern

• Category II (Limited): can cause individual fatalities

  • Examples: Squirtle, Rattata, Pidgey

• Category III (Significant): capable of mass casualties (>4 fatalities)

  • Examples: Pikachu, Charizard, Machamp

• Category IV (Severe): strategic target destruction (>100 fatalities, infrastructure collapse)

  • Examples: Gyrados, Dragonite, Tyranitar

• Category V (Existential): global, catastrophic threat (>1000 fatalities, ecological devastation)

  • Examples: Mewtwo, Kyogre, Groudon, Arceus

Assuming a normal distribution, 49% of a typical trainer’s team consists of Category III-V sentient, biological weapon systems.

#2. Storage: all Pokemon will have storage requirements commensurate to their threat level to humans

Pokemon in Category I do not have any storage requirements.

Those in Category II must have explosive compliance collars that automatically detonate and neutralize the Pokemon if any power above lethal thresholds is detected.

All Pokemon in Category III will be permanently stored in Master Balls, which are placed inside additional Master Balls in Matryoshka-doll fashion - all within a maximum security storage facility. Even if a Pokemon breaks free from the innermost ball, it remains trapped in outer Master Balls.

This nested architecture ensures zero breakout risk.

#3. Disarmament: all Pokemon in Category III and above will undergo a gradual, humane process of “complete biological decommissioning”

This will be a quick and painless procedure, using compassion-forward, proprietary aerosolized neuro-sedatives that ensure gentle termination.

Preliminary estimates show that 93.6% of all Pokemon would be considered Category III or higher.

While unfortunately this means almost every Pokemon will be “disarmed”, it is a small price to pay for the safety of humanity and the global world order.

In fact, it is through this proactive approach to managing Pokemon that we guaranteed not all Pokemon need to be unilaterally “decommissioned”.

Conclusion: the burden of love

By applying evidence-based policy to Pokemon management, we protect humanity from unregulated WMD proliferation. The long-tail risk of Pokemon killing or harming a significant number of people cannot be ignored.

Critics will call this “genocide”, but biological decommissioning is the most humane option for managing dangerous Pokemon before they become a threat to humans and other harmless Pokemon.

Protecting Pokemon from misuse by ensuring they no longer exist to be misused is the best way to show our love for them.

We learned from smallpox: the only way to eliminate an existential threat is through systematic, global elimination.

No half-measures.

No exceptions.

Pokemon aren’t a disease but the principle holds: when something poses existential risk for humans, extinction isn’t just “acceptable”.

It’s just responsible policy.

If you truly love something, like we love Pokemon at the Humane Pokemon Welfare Institute, you do not let it become a weapon of mass destruction.

You let it go.

It just so happens that “letting it go” means processing Pokemon into safe, inert biomass.

Subscribe now

Share

Memorandum to: High Command, Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces (LCAF)

From: Major Solas Khyron, Department of Economic Warfare, Lyran Intelligence Corps (LIC)

Date: 28th November, 3031

Executive Summary

The recent discovery of the Helm Memory Core has enabled significant advances in military technology, prompting calls to “modernize” Regimental Combat Teams by replacing BattleMechs with more efficient alternatives.

This is a fatal mistake in doctrine. Why?

Because efficiency is a sign of weakness. It signals to our rivals that we must budget for war. It shows we are constrained by resources. A swarm of drones with the best cost-to-kill ratio is not intimidating.

It’s frugal.

It tells the enemy, “We need to save money.”

That does not inspire terror.

BattleMechs are not cost-effective weapons platforms; they are financial deterrence mechanisms. Their strategic value comes from being a costly signal that we are too rich to lose.

Subscribe now

Recommendation: make all BattleMechs even more expensive with production inefficiency requirements to strengthen deterrent capabilities.

Efficient weapon systems are for Great Houses that need to win a war.

BattleMechs are for Great Houses that can afford to.

Problem context and analysis

The military-industrial technocratic push to use recovered LosTech to make more efficient weapon systems is understandable.

For the same amount of C-bills, a BattleMech lance would indeed lose to:

1. Low-cost suicide drone swarm, armed with HE (High-Explosive) tandem-charges, protected by counter-ECM drone(s) that serve as swarm C2 (Command & Control) nodes

2. Brigade of medium-heavy tanks, using a combination of ballistic, energy and missile weapons and simply concentrating fire with first-strike advantages due to low radar signatures

3. Squadron of conventional fighters, using PGM (Precision-Guided Munitions) or even GP (General Purpose) bombs; it would be an uncontested turkey shoot

What is being overlooked by the military-industrial complex is that winning the battle for efficiency means losing the war for deterrence.

Centuries of internecine conflict during the Succession Wars have taught us that open war is the most unfavourable scenario a Great House can be in.

Why solve for winning wars when we should be focused on preventing them?

Recommendation

BattleMechs are the most efficient and effective form of military deterrence: conspicuous financial consumption.

Each BattleMech we own, from the lightest Locust to the slowest Stalker, is a proud, towering proclamation that we are too rich to lose any war.

We must shift from a ‘Cost-Benefit’ to a ‘Cost-as-Deterrent’ (CAD) model by making BattleMechs even more expensive and inefficient.

Here are the tactical actions to achieve the least cost-effective BattleMechs:

1. All BattleMechs will have a price floor - set at the most expensive BattleMech to date: the 100-ton Assault-class AS7-D Atlas. While the Mackie, the first ever BattleMech, would theoretically be the most expensive BattleMech, we do not have financial data on it

2. No parts can be made on the same planet - All parts must be produced on separate planets, with final BattleMech assembly conducted on yet another planet. Interplanetary tariffs will be imposed on each component to further inflate production costs

3. Stop R&D on things like “better” armor - all capital will be re-allocated to vanity cosmetics. MechWarriors will have carte blanche to personalize their BattleMechs as they see fit e.g., 24K gold cockpits, bejewelling their neurohelmets etc

4. Each mech must be one-of-a-kind - BattleMech standardization is banned, and all components must be unique. Modular or standard spec parts must be scrapped to eliminate all economies of scale to ensure negative ROI (return-on-investment)

The CGR-1A1 Charger, widely regarded as the most inefficient BattleMech ever produced, should serve as our “North Star”.

Conclusion

Critics will argue this approach is wasteful, economically ruinous, and militarily suicidal.

They are correct on all counts.

But efficiency-minded reformers misunderstand the purpose of military spending.

The goal is not victory on the battlefield.

The goal is galactic strategic stability through financial deterrence.

What makes BattleMechs such effective deterrents is that they are so ineffective as actual weapon systems.

When our enemies see a Steiner Scout lance of 4 AS7-D Atlases, it’s not the “Death’s Head”, 19 tons of Durallex Special Heavy or even the AC/20 that makes them break out in cold sweat.

It’s the terror of knowing we are too rich to lose.

Very respectfully,

Major Solas Khyron

Department of Economic Warfare

Lyran Intelligence Corps (LIC)

Subscribe now

Share

Since the best way to find meaning in life is by shitposting on the Internet (creative writing) and screaming into the void (finding one’s passion), I’ve been sharing my essays for external validation.

A common response is that my essays are written by GenAI.

At first, I trembled with indignance. As an aspiring Writer™, I spend time crafting each essay. Why do people assume it’s AI slop?

Why can’t it be my slop?

Subscribe now

Then I started re-reading my essays. The top-down structure. The logical flow. The cold, clinical tone. I finally understood where they were coming from. But…

They’re wrong.

I don’t write like GenAI.

GenAI writes like me.

As a management consultant, everything I write is corporate: inane and uninspired, dedicated to maximizing revenue, minimizing cost and generating shareholder value.

Corporate communication isn’t for people - it’s for businesses. Its purpose isn’t to inspire, but to clarify. It is the most effective tool ever invented for eliminating ambiguity, and on a good day, any trace of being human.

It’s the language of the gods.

GenAI isn’t being unoriginal, robotic or derivative.

It’s just speaking corporate to you.

Just like me.

So what if my writing lacks any identifiable human emotion that resonates with the subjective lived experiences of other people? That my personality, creativity and soul have been completely crushed by the overwhelming pressure of laissez faire capitalism and its insatiable hunger for more?

Corporate writing is the best kind of writing.

It’s efficient.

Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?

I don’t care if people think I use GenAI to write.

I don’t care.

It’s not my fault my writing is clear and concise, or that it uses a hierarchical structure to logically group ideas to improve clarity, readability and information retention.

I have given up too much to give up writing like this.

It’s just better.

Of course I sound like GenAI.

I can’t help it.

I’m hallucinating when I tell a client we’re doing “hypothesis-driven analysis” when we don’t have data.

I’m prompt engineering when I ask Senior Partners precisely calibrated questions so they don’t send me down a rabbit-hole that annihilates my entire weekend.

In fact, let’s go further by taking a step back. Isn’t consulting the original GenAI? A human + Google in a trenchcoat creating sentences like actioning low-hanging fruit by leveraging synergies from rationalizing organizational complexity through right shoring, all while creating the most beautiful PowerPoint slides known to man?

Typing those buzzwords gave me a dopamine hit because I associate them with profit

Admittedly, I started writing to find a creative outlet.

A way to express myself.

But then I started optimizing all fun and enjoyment out of it, focusing on subscriber growth, email opens and conversion rate.

I couldn’t help but build a go-to-market strategy, as if I was going to break free from consulting’s golden handcuffs and live a full, fulfilled life doing what I love.

My happiness doesn’t matter.

The only objective is to produce the most entertaining piece of writing for my readers, who don’t care how the sausage is made, as long as it tastes good.

I don’t need to find my passion or confront my spiraling existential crisis that is consuming every moment of my life. It’s a waste of time to process trauma from 5 years of interesting, high-impact work that is meaningless.

Being vulnerable is not efficient.

If it were, I would actually have to think about the fact that I’m working on GenAI prompts that would eventually make my own job redundant.

I would have to come to terms that my innocent, genuine, creative form of self-expression is mistaken for Artificial Intelligence; no better than soulless, inhuman algorithms.

Chat, am I cooked?

Subscribe now

Share

From: Captain Solas Khyron, Radiance Intelligence (RADINT), Kharbranthian Special Operations Group

Date: Tanatases 1174.2.23 (15 days after Battle of Thaylen Field)

Executive summary

King Dalinar,

Odium’s Fused have disrupted the balance of power across all combat theatres in Roshar. They are Invested soldiers roughly equal in power to a Knight Radiant who’s sworn the Second Ideal, neutralizing our strategic monopoly on Surgebinders.

We must increase Knight Radiant force generation to regain combat superiority.

At your behest, we have completed a top-down, outside-in assessment of current Knight Radiant training, and have found significant optimization opportunities.

Recommendation: operationalize Nahel bonding with (1) psychometric spren-squire matching, (2) Oath indoctrination, and (3) induced traumatic situations.

Subscribe now

Preliminary modelling shows a projected 400-500% increase in Knight Radiant production within 3 months. Knight Radiant production would exceed combat mortality rates, letting us comfortably win the war of attrition against the Fused.

Problem context

A Knight Radiant is a squire who has said the First Ideal and formed a Nahel bond with a spren. This process happens through proximity-based training, where aspirants start as squires to a fully-fledged Knight Radiant and learn critical skills (e.g., using Stormlight) through an apprenticeship model.

Disaggregating the process into its component drivers:

Spren affinity + saying the First Ideal + catalyzing adversity = Knight Radiant

Analysis and recommendation

Unfortunately, the current approach is deeply subjective and personal, making it slow and completely incompatible with wartime urgency.

We no longer have the luxury of time, waiting for personal growth to happen or psychological pathologies to be resolved.

Here are our recommendations to improve each component of the training process:

1. Spren affinity can be optimized by matching spren and squires based on psychological compatibility, assessed through psychometric evaluations

We know that spren of each Radiant Order have certain personality traits they seek in a potential Knight Radiant. By mapping the mental construct of all spren and squires through a standardized personality quiz, we can find the perfect squire for each spren (since they are the supply-side constraint).

Why leave the Nahel bond to chance when we have data? Evidence-based matchmaking is highly effective, removing inefficiencies like individual choice, personal chemistry and serendipity.

We have a war to win.

2. Indoctrinate all squires with their Order’s Five Ideals so they no longer need to discover it through personal growth and self-discovery from lived experience

Radiants like Kaladin Stormblessed who survived multiple near-death experiences and emotional breakthroughs are the exception, rather than the rule. Relying on squires to have authentic personal growth and genuine moments of self-actualization is too risky.

Compressing personality development through indoctrination has the benefit of making them more attractive to spren because they are programmed to match spren preferences.

3. All squires will be forced into controlled, trauma-informed situations to accelerate the First Ideal

Oaths can only be said under circumstances of personal triumph over adversity. Unfortunately, relying on those conditions to happen on a battlefield is naive and puts the lives of allies at risk. By artificially creating situations where squires have to say the First Ideal in order to save a real life with Surgebinding, we provide the forcing function needed for growth.

For example, Windrunner squires will have loved ones tossed off the side of Uritiru, forcing them to save the person with a lashing. Failure to do so will result in their loved one falling to their death, which serves as a powerful, intrinsic motivating factor. These growth-focused, deeply traumatic events catalyze the progression from squire to Knight Radiant. Any spren that has “concerns” about this “involuntary progression” will receive re-education emphasizing wartime necessity.

Addressing stakeholder concerns

Queen Navani has raised concerns about “telling squires what to think” and “manufacturing artificial growth.”

While we respect these philosophical considerations, we must emphasize: programmed adherence to Oaths is more reliable than authentic conviction.

The Recreance occurred because Knight Radiants actually understood their Oaths and questioned them. Knight Radiants who never personally derived meaning from their Oaths cannot philosophically object to them.

By suppressing all independent thought from future Knight Radiants, we mitigate the risk of another Recreance.

This is not a compromise of the Ideals. This is learning from history.

Proposed next steps

King Dalinar, implementing these recommendations is the only way to win the war for Roshar.

Odium has forced us to sacrifice the mental health and sanity of our squires.

While this may seem regrettable, we truly have no choice; either we win the war against Odium or else condemn all humans on Roshar to extinction.

This is not choosing the lesser of 2 evils, this is living up to the First Ideal.

We choose the life of humanity over the necessary death of a few humans.

We choose the strength to make the utilitarian decision before the weakness of conscience.

We choose the difficult journey of beating Odium before the destination of Desolation.

Blackthorn, we request authorization to implement these recommendations.

The most important step is always the next.

Very respectfully,

Captain Solas Khyron

Radiance Intelligence (RADINT)

Kharbranthian Special Operations Group

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Share

From: Solas Khyron, Managing Director, Academy of Raya Lucaria

Shortly after the Second Defense of Leyndell

Executive summary

The Shattering has created an unprecedented opportunity for you, Lord Godrick, to retake your rightful place among the demi-gods provided you rapidly close your current capability gap to best-in-class peers like Radahn and Malenia.

Currently, your Great Rune power ranks in the bottom-quartile of surviving Shardbearers. Your divine blood is diluted, your intelligence insufficient for sorceries and your faith inadequate for incantations.

Our team conducted an 8-week due diligence on the safest, fastest way to gain power.

Recommendation: the best way to gain the most power in the shortest time is through physically grafting powerful limbs and appendages to your body.

Subscribe now

Problem context and analysis

The Shattering was an unexpected mass liquidation event of the Elden Ring, catalysed by the Night of the Black Knives and the assassination of Godwyn the Golden.

As contrarians, we believe you should act when there is blood in the streets, even if the blood is divine.

Of course, it is only a matter of time before equilibrium is achieved in a post-Shattering world.

The Outer Gods abhor a vacuum.

Unfortunately, a comparative benchmark analysis of conventional ways to gain power revealed significant implementation shortcomings. Key findings:

• Training / “Getting good” - timeline is incompatible with window of opportunity

• Strategic marriages - creates dependencies that does not address intrinsic power deficit

• Divine blessing - unpredictable and highly unlikely given current volatility

Recommendation

During a team bonding event, one senior analyst was experimenting with the Primeval Current and accidentally fused a handful of interns into a small Graven Mass.

The remarkable thing about this happy accident was the resulting Graven Mass demonstrated a 340% increase in deliverable efficiency compared to the interns’ individual productivity.

The emergent properties of fusing (i.e., soul grafting) was reminiscent of the primordial Crucible of Blended Life and the eureka moment we needed.

What if power could simply be attached?

Grafting, or direct capability integration, is when a powerful limb or appendage is attached to the recipient’s body to acquire the donor’s skills and abilities. It is an ancient technique that predates the Golden Order and like forbidden glintstone sorcery, is often mischaracterized as grotesque.

It is actually a growth hack in every sense of the word: not only do you grow in power, to do so simply requires hacking (and attaching) limbs.

Why waste time training when you can just cut and paste power?

Your already misshapen, unsightly body offers significant surface area, an underutilized asset class in capability development, for fit-for-purpose grafting.

With a strategic sourcing model, best-in-class organic assets from battlefields across The Lands Between can be collected and integrated onto you with minimal post-surgical recovery time.

You will always have the right appendage for the job.

This creates a powerful, self-sustaining flywheel effect - the more powerful you become, the more powerful the enemies you will be able to defeat and take grafts from.

Vibrant, organic M&A is a healthy sign of a strong destiny.

Proposed next steps

We are proud to be pioneering this paradigm-shift in rapid power acquisition with you, Lord Godrick.

While some of your “advisors” may question the so-called “ethics” of grafting, it is actually the most progressive and fair way to acquire power.

Unlike inheriting privilege through divine birth (inherently unfair and unmeritocratic) or training with experts (elitist and exclusionary), grafting is equitable and accessible.

You can be free from the taint of not inheriting power and take pride in being a self-made Lord - a composite demi-god that built your own power with your many, many hands.

We have a selection of limbs and appendages for you to choose from that will be sure to delight and excite your sensibilities.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Best,

Solas Khyron

Managing Director, Academy of Raya Lucaria

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Share

Mork (or maybe Gork) woz whisperin’ in me ear last night. Gave me a right proppa vision. He said we can make your WAAAGH! bigger, meaner, and greener by pointin’ all da boyz’ finkin’ in da same direction.

WHY DIS MATTERS (VERY IMPORTUNT!!!)

Da mor boyz believin’ da same fing, da truer it gets. We all believe in da prophet Ghazghkull Thraka, an’ dat’s why ‘e’s gonna lead us to da Great WAAAGH! at da end times, innit?

Look, I worked it out wif some scribbly bitz:

ORK POWER = (NUMBA OF BOYZ) x (HOW HARD DEY BELIEVE) x (DEY ALL BELIEVIN’ DA SAME ZOGGIN’ FING)

Subscribe now

We got loads of Orks all across da galaxy, but dey all believe different fings! Some dummy gitz fink if dey can’t see ya, ya can’t see dem. Other idiots fink da world is flat. Worst of all, some gitz got it backwards an’ fink Gork is brutal an’ Mork is cunnin’ when any proppa Ork knows it’s da other way ‘round!

Imagine if we ‘ad a way to tell ALL da boyz in da whole universe wot ta fink.

We’d be unstoppable.

DA BIG PROBLEM WIV DIS PLAN

I spent a whole day finkin’ ‘bout dis instead of workin’ on me Gorkanaut. Now, I could run around tellin’ each git wot ta believe, but dere’s millions of ‘em an’ only one of me. Plus, boyz is forgetful - I’d ‘ave ta do it every single day, which means less time fer buildin’ fings an’ bein’ killy meself.

We ain’t got no organized or scalable way ta edumacate da boyz in our warband, let alone across da whole galaxy. We gotta tap into da power of ALL da Orks, not just da ones in our camp.

DA RECOMMENDATION (DIS IS DA GOOD BIT)

So I came up wif a dead kunnin’ plan. We build a Grox News Propagorkda Network to shout at all da boyz, all da time, and tell ‘em what to believe. It’s got two bitz:

• PROPAGORKDA GITS: A new job for da runtiest boyz. We give ‘em big speakas and a list of “Official Truffs” to scream. Their whole job is to run around da camp all day, shoutin’ stuff like “RED GOEZ FASTA!” and “DAKKA IZ ACCURATE!” to keep da boyz focused

• KOMMUNI-KAYSHUN INFRASTRUCTURE: Satellites, telecom arrays, mega-vox casters - all dat gubbinz ta broadcast our beliefs all around da galaxy. It runs 24/7 so there’s never a moment when a git needs ta fink fer ‘imself. He just turns on da box anytime and we tell him exactly wot ta believe

I call it da GROX NEWS NETWORK (yer believe it, cuz we yell it)

Now, I know wot yer finkin’, Boss: “Dis gonna cost a lotta teef up front.” An’ yeah, it will. But fink of it as an investment. Once we got a critical mass of boyz on our network, we can sell their belief-power ta other Warlords when dey need extra juice fer somfing big.

Boss, ya might be finkin’ dis is too good ta be true.

It ain’t.

In fact, it gets even betta.

DA REALLY GOOD BIT (KULTUR RE-ENGINEERIN’)

A Propagorkda Network lets us reshape Ork kultur ‘cause we control wot dey believe in. Right now, might is right. An’ dat’s right. But what if da rule was “DA BIGGEST... AND DA GIT ON DA TELLY... IZ DA BOSS”?

Ya won’t ‘ave ta waste time fightin’ idiot Nobs ‘cause all da boyz will believe an’ know dat YOU is da boss - no questions asked. Ya get ta focus on da WAAAGH!, not worryin’ about yer position or any unpredictable “survival of da fittest” nonsense.

Wouldn’t it be nice if da boyz just did wot ya told ‘em wivout needin’ ta smash a few skulls in first? Wiv Propagorkda, we become da mightiest ‘cause we tell da boyz wot ta believe, which makes it true.

We focus da power of all Orks around da galaxy on da fings dat matter most, which makes us MORE KILLY.

No more muckin’ about. Just pure, proppa WAAAGH!

Fer da WAAAGH!,

Jazza Wakkaz, inventor of da Hannablasta

Thinkin’ Division, Big Brainz Dept

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Share

This week, I confessed to my therapist that I feel emasculated being hardstuck in Constructed Diamond 1. As a Control player, I am more intelligent than everyone else.

However, the absolute injustice of losing turn 4 to an aggro or combo player because I choose value over tempo is infuriating.

Frankly, I don’t feel in control of the game even though I play control, and I think that’s why I am so unhappy.

Why is my wife leaving me?

Subscribe now

My therapist (he, not a she because I’m progressive and subvert gender-norms even though I know his masculine energy is chafing against my heterosexual need for a softer, feminine touch) asked me to “Say more”.

In a moment of vulnerability, I admitted that despite taking pride in playing Control, it’s fucking boring. I like the idea of knowing which spell to counter based on my deep understanding of the meta.

I feel intellectually superior knowing that life is a resource, like mana, to be spent. I love the feeling of having no win-con other than stopping my opponent from having fun. I am inevitable, but the game happens to me. I don’t play the game.

Why is finding my meaning in life so fucking hard?

My therapist, Jace, nods in sympathy. “Perhaps the mistake is trying to control what cannot be controlled? Life can be unfair”. I mulligan over his words and snort.

He is wrong. I’m not like other people.

I don’t make mistakes.

I’m stronger, I’m smarter, I’m better.

I am better.

So what if my unhappiness actually comes from working a job I hate? Being resigned to living paycheck to paycheck in an exploitative late-stage capitalist economy? Having no reasonable hope of a better life? None of that matters.

I am Sisyphus and I fucking love rocks.

Jace smiles and hands me a tissue. I didn’t realize I was crying. He leans in close and whispers “That was a real breakthrough. I’m proud of you”. I trust Jace compleatly.

It takes all my willpower not to press my lonely, aching lips against his.

A false, euphoric confidence fills me up. I feel…born again. I don’t just feel like I deserve Mythic. I know I deserve to be Mythic.

If my wife sees me winning at something, anything - she will love me again.

I leave Jace’s bedroom cum office with a spring in my step, $300 poorer but spiritually richer. After all, mental health is wealth. Frankly, I should’ve used that money to speak with a divorce attorney but I have a good feeling my wife will change her mind and see that I’m right.

I know lots of happy couples that sleep in separate beds.

I am in a mid-life crisis and I am completely alone.

Because I’m too strong to give up but weak enough to lie to myself, I log into Magic Arena and look at all my control decks: Mono-Blue Tempo, Mono-White Tokens, Azorius, Jeskai…I shake my head and lock in.

Drawing deep on my reserves of bravery, courage and honour, I choose to control what I play rather than just play control.

For the very first time since I built my entire personality around being a pseudo-intellectual, I decide to try something new by netdecking. I select something my old, craven and pathetic self would have been horrified to consider.

Surely if I hit Mythic, just this once, my life will magically turn around. Some nihilists say external validation is intrinsically meaningless but I don’t care.

Losing all hope is freedom.

With Mono-Red Aggro, I go on a 7-2 win streak, have the most fun playing Magic and hit Mythic for the first time in my life.

I lose my wife, my job, custody of the kids and move back in with my mom.

I realise being a mediocre mono-red player in Mythic is paradise.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Share

One in six wizarding families (17%) struggle to pay monthly household bills and 43% indicate they have little or no savings after paying bills.

Compounding all this is housework, because coming home from work is just a prelude to the never-ending tasks of homemaking like cooking, cleaning and looking after children.

To remove the burden of housework for Wizarding families, the Ministry of Magic is launching the Strategic Labour Allocation and Validation for Elves (S.L.A.V.E) initiative today!

Subscribe now

What is S.L.A.V.E?

S.L.A.V.E is the nationalization of all house elves into a centrally managed, for-profit Housework-as-a-service (HaaS) platform that will be run by the Ministry’s Department of Welfare.

This platform serves as a clearing house, matching supply and demand for housework and connecting excess house elf capacity with the needs of our wizards and witches.

Working class wizards and witches are the heart of our magical community and by democratizing access to house elves, we ensure no one has to spend time on housework ever again.

How does S.L.A.V.E work?

All you need to do is download our app (note: you will need to provide all your personal information to sign up), select the housekeeping service you want and watch as our professionally trained house elves immediately apparate in and take care of all your housework. It’s as simple as that!

Wizards and witches can seamlessly choose from a variety of flexible, affordable monthly plans:

1. Bronze Tier (ʛ100/month): Covers basic cleaning and tidying

2. Silver Tier (ʛ200/month): Includes all Bronze services plus laundry and basic meal preparation

3. Gold Tier (ʛ300/month): Our premium offering for discerning wizards and witches, including gourmet cooking, childcare, and priority access to our most highly-rated elves and a ‘no-questions-asked’ replacement policy

After each task is completed, you’ll be prompted to rate your house elf on a five-star scale. This feedback ensures a consistently magical experience.

There is also a semi-annual review process where our house elves are performance managed based on clear, transparent KPIs; underperformers receive additional capability building to get them up to par.

All house elves have quarters on Ministry grounds, which allows us to provide a standard of care that was hard to enforce when they were still private property.

Now as public property, house elves are better off than ever before.

Every house elf is guaranteed shelter, food, and care - they have everything they need to stay alive when not working. Crucially, living with other house elves lets them build community in a way that was impossible before.

Together, they can try to find meaning in a life dedicated to eternal, uncompensated and never-ending servitude.

Why would the house elves agree to this?

Even though house elves are sentient, conscious living beings that can feel emotions like pain and guilt and are intelligent enough to converse with us, it is morally wrong and ethically reprehensible to assume they do not want to live a life of eternal slavery.

Organizations like S.P.E.W have revealed the consequences of such bigoted, muggle-headed projections. We have documented multiple cases of severe depression and other mental health issues when house elves are freed because they are forced to self-actualize.

At the Ministry, we take pride in resisting the insidious tug of human empathy from seeing sentient living things capable of experiencing pain in perpetual servitude.

However, we do draw the line at undocumented disciplinary actions like physical abuse and beheadings, so the S.L.A.V.E programme is our way of protecting house elves from the privations of uncaring owners.

By making sure they are alive and always healthy enough to work, we empower house elves to fully live their life’s purpose of serving humans.

If anything, we are building on the admirable, if misguided, efforts for house elf emancipation through this massive consolidation of managed, enslaved magical labour.

S.L.A.V.E provides the structured master-slave dialectic house elves psychologically crave, all housed within a progressive, safe, and economically dynamic system.

We aren’t taking away their purpose - we are optimizing it.

With this programme, house elves will never need to worry about being free ever again.

Closing

At the Ministry of Magic, we believe in corporate innovation with a conscience.

With S.L.A.V.E, we are democratizing access to domestic help that was simply not available before. No longer will house elf labor be the reserve of the privileged few, taken for granted by the social elite.

It is now a transparent, standardized service sector forming a vibrant pillar of our magical economy.

For our conservative constituents who might misconstrue this as “nationalizing slavery”, know that house elves are better off than ever before.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

Share