'runaway Democrat legislator'

Unfortunately, this is a real thing in 2025...

'Danielle is loved. She will be missed in this form and forever embraced'

He also had a history of mental health issues

Ben Ferguson noted that Trump's legal position is different in the nation's capital

'Common sense'

Books The Wheel of Time Reading The Wheel of Time: Mat Cauthon Is an Onion in Knife of Dreams (Part 24) Mat’s camp, and his relationship with Tuon, look very different from Karede’s perspective… By Sylas K Barrett | Published on August 12, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share Well, I was going to cover chapters 36 and 37 this week, but I enjoyed chapter 36 so much I decided it deserved a week to itself. So here it is: the chapter in which Karede finally catches up with Tuon, and Tuon finally gets the sign she’s been waiting for. Near the Malvide Narrows, Karede rides towards the camp that Ajimbura has already scouted ahead to locate. He doesn’t know if he’s riding to his death, but he will do so for the High Lady Tuon. He has brought only a small party with him: two Guards, Hartha and a pair of Gardeners, and Melitene, Tuon’s der’suldam, with her damane, the captured Aes Sedai now called Mylen. Ajimbura is also with them, posing as an ordinary servant. He hears a bird call, but when it is repeated he realizes it is a signal, warning the camp of their approach. Riding into the camp, they are greeted by a mounted man named Talmanes Delovinde, who is surprised when Karede wants to speak to Thom Merrilin. He brings Karede to a group of people sitting on camp stools and blankets by a fire. Karede is surprised to see Mistress Anan, of all people, among them. There is also a tall, lean man with mustaches playing stones with a lady in braids who glares at Karede with obvious hatred, and a boy playing some other board game with a gnarled old man. He also recognizes Egeanin Tamarath, but it is the man with the long mustaches that Talmanes introduces as Thom. Before Karede can say anything, however, three Aes Sedai rush up. One of them, Joline, keeps insisting that Sheraine be released, while the two try to explain to her that she isn’t Sheraine anymore. The three gasp as they are shielded by Melitene and Mylen. A young man in a wide-brimmed black hat galloped up on a dark, blunt-nosed chestnut with a deep chest and flung himself out of the saddle. “What’s bloody going on here?” he demanded, striding up to the fire. Karede ignores him, however, because Tuon and Selucia have arrived with him. Karede knows without looking that Ajimbura has already slipped off to tell Musenge that the High Lady is indeed in the camp. Joline tells the man, Mat, that the damane has shielded them, and Tylin’s plaything orders Melitene to release the shields. Both Melitene and Mylen gasp, making him laugh, when their channeling doesn’t work on him, and he threatens to paddle them both unless they do as he says. Mat seems able to tell when women are channeling or holding the power, and Karede wonders if he is an Asha’man. Once everyone has released the Power, Karede addresses himself again to Thom, warning him that General Chisen has figured out his real purpose, and is on his way with enough men to wipe them out, in addition to Karede’s ten thousand, which he can use to trap them until Chisen arrives. But since fighting will endanger the High Lady Tuon, he offers a deal: If Thom returns her, he will allow the army to escape through the Narrows before Chisen arrives. Merrilin stroked one of his white mustaches with a long finger. He seemed to be hiding a smile. “I fear you have mistaken me, Banner-General Karede.” For the space of a sentence his voice became extremely resonant. “I am a gleeman, a position higher than court-bard to be sure, but no general. The man you want is Lord Matrim Cauthon.” He made a small bow toward the young man, who was settling his flat-topped hat back on his head. Karede thinks perhaps Merrilin is playing a joke on him, but Lord Mat remarks that Karede only has about a hundred Deathwatch Guards and maybe twenty Gardners. He also doesn’t believe Chisen has figured out what Mat is doing, but then he asks if Karede can get Tuon safely back to the Tarasin Palace. He warns Kadere that the entire Ever Victorious Army is ready to kill Tuon. Kadere, shocked at this strange turn of events, replies that he knows it, and that every man with him is prepared to die to protect Tuon. Mat turns to Tuon next—addressing her by name, to Karede’s dismay—and asks if she trusts Karede. She replies that she trusts the Deathwatch Guards with her life, and Karede doubly so. She even offers her condolences for the death of Karede’s wife and son in the Great Fire of Sohima, complimenting his son’s brave death in rescuing others from the fire. Karede is shocked that she has kept track of him. But he has another, much greater shock coming, after Mat orders Karede to take Tuon and Selucia as quickly as they can be ready. In a clear, loud voice, Tuon announces three times that Matrim Cauthon is her husband. Mat is shocked too, though for different reasons. He steps over to Tuon, taking her bridle, and asking why she said the words now. He knew she would, eventually, but she has hardly been behaving like a woman in love with him. Tuon remarks that they may come to love each other eventually, but that she always knew she would marry for duty. Then she demands to know how he knew she would say the words. Mat explains about the ter’angreal to the other world, to the people who look like snakes and will answer three questions, and how one answer he received was that he would marry the Daughter of the Nine Moons. Tuon raps him on the head for telling lies, even amusing ones, but he insists that it’s true and Edesina confirms his story. Mat demands that Tuon answer his question now, and Tuon tells him about the damane ability to tell fortunes. “I asked Lidya to tell mine just before I landed at Ebou Dar. This is what she said. ‘Beware the fox that makes the ravens fly, for he will marry you and carry you away. Beware the man who remembers Hawkwing’s face, for he will marry you and set you free. Beware the man of the red hand, for him you will marry and none other.” She adds that it was Mat’s ring that caught her attention first, and that now that he has fulfilled the last part of the fortune, she knows he is the one Lidya spoke of. Mat has to laugh at the strange circumstances, the ring he only bought because it stuck on his finger, the memories of other men that he would love to be rid of… and yet these things have gained him a wife. He remarks aloud that being ta’veren seems to work on himself as much as anybody else, then asks Tuon for a kiss. She tells him she’s not in the mood for kissing right now. She does, however, invite him to return with her to Ebou Dar, telling him that he has an honored place waiting for him there, now. He did not hesitate before shaking his head. There was no honored place waiting for Leilwin or Domon, no place at all for the Aes Sedai or the Band. “The next time I see Seanchan, I expect it will be on the field somewhere, Tuon.” Burn him, it would be. His life seemed to run that way no matter what he did. “You’re not my enemy, but your Empire is.”“Nor are you my enemy, husband,” she said coolly, “but I live to serve the Empire.” They are interrupted by the arrival of Vanin, who reports an army of about ten thousand soldiers about five miles away. Although led by a Seanchan, the rest are Altarans, Taraboners, and Amadicians. They are looking for men in armor like the Deathwatch Guards, and a woman fitting Tuon’s description. There is apparently a reward of a thousand crowns waiting for the man who kills her. Mat tells Karede that Tuon is still going with him, but Karede must leave a dozen Deathwatch Guards and some Gardeners, so that Mat can pretend to be him and draw the hunters’ attention. Tuon carefully packs away the silk rosebuds before going to bid farewell to Mistress Anan. As they ride out of the camp, the men of the Band stand and bow to her. Once they are outside of it, Tuon asks what Karede thinks of Mat. He responds that Mat is a good general, brave without being foolish, adaptable, and a man of many layers. He also is clearly very in love with Tuon. Tuon muses to herself that it is possible that Mat loves her, but it is certainly true that he is a man of many layers—he makes an onion look like an apple. She tells Karede that she needs a razor, and he suggests it might be better to wait. “No,” she said gently. “If I die, I will die as who I am. I have removed the veil.”“As you say, Highness.” Smiling, he saluted, gauntleted fist striking over his heart hard enough that steel clanged on steel. “If we die, we will die as who we are.” I just can’t help it, I’m a romantic. I always have been. And Mat and Tuon’s story is pretty dang romantic. As I’ve mentioned before, Tuon and Mat’s courtship has had more development than any of the other romances in the entirety of The Wheel of Time, and as a result, in some ways it’s the best romantic relationship in the series. I’m a big Perrin/Faile fan, of course, but the whole culture clash of how Perrin was supposed to react to Berelain got really old, really quickly, and I didn’t care for the way Faile only respected Perrin as an equal partner after he spanked her. There’s way too much spanking in these books, I’ll tell you what. While I have a lot of issues with Tuon as a person and the Seanchan in general, the way the courtship unfolded is really interesting and well done, especially since it is so different from what we’ve seen before. Nynaeve had to get around Lan’s tragic death wish, Elayne and Aviendha and Min had to come to terms with the idea of sharing Rand, and Rand had to accept that they were going to keep him despite his identity and the fact that he was most likely going to go mad and/or die within the next couple of years. The functional difficulties of the relationships were something they all had to get around or learn to live with, but the feelings were always strong, as they were with Perrin and Faile.  But Tuon isn’t in love with Mat, and Mat only fell in love with Tuon after knowing she was destined to be his wife and accidentally performing the first half of a marriage rite and also being sort-of forced to kidnap her. And it’s interesting that the most well-developed courtship in the series includes one partner who isn’t actually in love with the other, even by the time they get married. Although I do suspect, as Tuon herself does, that she will come to love Mat in time. He’s hard not to love, in my opinion, and his rapscallion ways are more of a performance than anyone realizes, including Mat himself. I have always felt like the lady doth protest too much when it comes to Mat’s insistence that he cares mostly for his own hide and doesn’t want to work. I mean, who really likes working? Or war? Mat doesn’t want to do traditional work and he doesn’t want to be in a battle, which just makes him a very relatable person. And we’ve never once seen him shirk what needs to be done once he was confronted with it. When Tuon offered him “an honored place,” in Ebou Dar, Mat could have been tempted. He might have considered, just for a moment, that accepting would mean an easier, possibly even safer life. He might have wondered if there would be less responsibility if he was placed at Tuon’s side than if he continued to have the responsibility of leading, and caring for, the Band, and the rescued Aes Sedai, and Aludra, and Egeanin and Domon, and Olver, and anyone else who happens to need him from now until the end of the Last Battle. He might have thought about the comfortable beds and good food he’d have in Ebou Dar, the games of dice and cards he could play (and win) against wealthy Seanchan nobles, before dismissing those options as not worth the sacrifice. But it doesn’t even enter his mind for a second. Because the good life isn’t really what Mat cares about. He likes it (again, most people do) but it doesn’t mean as much to him as his morality, his loyalty, and his genuine care for others. I mean, he adopted a kid. And although the Mat of Emond’s Field was a troublemaker who always tried to shirk any modicum of responsibility, he has actually grown to be a very responsible person, and began doing so the moment real weight landed on his shoulders. Which is why his first thought, even before himself or his burgeoning love for Tuon, is for those he is responsible for. And his last thought is his responsibility to Tuon herself, and to the promise he made to see her sent back to Ebou Dar safely. I’m also very interested in the fact that Mat and Tuon’s relationship is clearly a device of the Pattern, something that I’ve theorized Rand’s relationships with Elayne, Aviendha, and Min also is. However, it’s mostly speculation where Rand is concerned. I can argue that Aviendha ties Rand to the Aiel and Elayne to the current ruling class of the world and the might of Andor, specifically, and we can certainly see how all of them, and Min in particular, have provided much needed support to Rand as well as connecting him to what’s left of his humanity. It’s easy to see how having these three women tied to him, and being tied to them in turn, is benefiting Rand, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the Pattern is involved—not anymore than it normally is for every human life, anyway. I based my theory about Rand and his loves being a tool of the Pattern to ensure success at Tarmon Gaidon on Min’s vision and Aviendha’s experience in Rhuidean being driving factors for the three women, especially Aviendha, falling in love with him in the first place. And because aside from those prophetic visions, the relationships seem to develop almost out of nowhere, and there’s not that much explanation of why he loves each of them. Perrin’s relationship with Faile makes more sense. We know a lot about what they value about each other and why they make a good team. They feel like a team when they’re together in a way that Rand and his lovers do not. Min is a good support for Rand, but of course he doesn’t have time or space to develop an equal relationship where he supports her in turn. Aviendha and Elayne have their own lives and duties to focus on, which Rand isn’t a part of, although Aviendha and Elayne are a great team with each other, which is one of the reasons I loved it so much when the television show made them a couple. Mat and Tuon aren’t a team, exactly, but we can see how well they balance each other. Mat is particularly good for Tuon, and will continue to be, because anyone with her level of power needs someone who is utterly unafraid to speak frankly to her and who is uninterested in showing her the deference Seanchan society demands. The Imperial family recognizes this need, of course—that’s why they have the relationship they do with their Truthspeakers. But no Seanchan-born Truthspeaker, however wise, could bring Tuon the perspective Mat can, and his leverage in their relationship also comes from outside Seanchan culture and societal rules. Plus, I just love the mental image of Mat swanning around upsetting things in the Seanchan royal court, arguing with Tuon and calling her by her first name, scandalizing the Seanchan Blood one minute and then offering the Empress better tactical advice than her best generals the next. And then topping it all off by referencing some mischief he and the Dragon Reborn got into when they were boys. I’m really happy to finally get the exact wording of what Lydia Foretold for Tuon’s future. It’s mostly what we’ve learned from her POV sections, like the fox and the ravens, and remembering Hawkwing’s face. However, the part about carrying her away and setting her free is new information, and it shows that Tuon didn’t just let herself be captured so that she could learn more about Mat, though she did want to learn more about Mat. She also let herself be captured because that exact detail was in the fortune she was given. We also know that the fortune told her that Mat would set her free… provided that she was correct that he is the man Lydia foresaw. She wasn’t quite certain, it seems, until the moment Mat fulfilled that part of the fortune. Tuon hasn’t brought up the fact that Mat knows the Dragon Reborn to him yet. Maybe she didn’t want to call attention to the fact that he successfully lied to her about it, or maybe she only wants to bring it up when it’s relevant, or when she has the leverage to try to use that connection to her own advantage. It’s hard to say, but it’s certainly part of why she feels like Mat “makes an onion look like an apple.” I had to laugh at that, because all I could think of is that bit in Shrek when Shrek tells Donkey that ogres are like onions. Tuon: Mat Cauthon is like an onion.Karede: He stinks?Tuon: Yes… No!Karede: He makes you cry?Tuon: No!Karede: He’s the fox who remembers Hawkwing’s face and the man your damane foretold you were going to marry?Tuon: That’s… not what onions are like. I also laughed when Mat observed, in a bit of a daze, that being ta’veren works as much on him as it does on everyone else. Are you really only realizing that now, Matrim? I keep thinking about way back in The Eye of the World when I was still getting to know these incredible characters and they went to Mordor Shadar Logoth and Mat took the obviously cursed dagger from the place where they were specifically told not to touch anything. It was so very stupid and yet charming, and also very appropriate for the character who was obviously partly inspired by Peregrin Took. I believe I made a comment at the time about someone needing to stitch Mat’s hands inside his pockets. And now, look at how far he’s come, how much he’s grown and changed. And yet, how much he hasn’t changed, too. The Shadar Logoth dagger was obviously a huge mistake with very bad consequences for Mat, for Rand, and for anyone else who has had the misfortune to cross Mordeth-Fain’s path, but other times Mat’s impulsivity has served him well, really. The same impulse to pick up the dagger led him to pass through both redstone doorways, and those actions turned out to be incredibly important, both for Mat’s fate and that of his friends… and probably the world. I imagine that his leadership as a general will be critical when the Last Battle finally arrives. And his knowledge of the Aelfinn and Eelfinn will no doubt be critical to rescuing Moiraine, as well. I’m just feeling really fond of Mat and the man he has grown into. And now he is married to an Empress, which makes him royalty, too. Little Mat who tried to release a badger into the field before Beltine would be absolutely shocked to know what his future held for him. I’m actually feeling kind of fond of Tuon too, though the presence of the leashed Sheraine tempered that a lot. Still, I think Tuon is adaptable like her new husband. She’s also pragmatic and possesses a strong sense of duty. I think, with time, she could be brought to have a different perspective on channelers, both because of her own connection to them and through exposure to other cultures. After whatever truce she and Rand are able to come to is established, the Seanchan Empire won’t exist in isolation anymore, but next to many other lands and cultures. Even if female channelers in Seanchan-controlled lands are still collared, Aes Sedai will be a reality in their world, as will Asha’man. At a certain point, I think the Seanchan way of life will have to bend to that. Tuon is pragmatic, and she does care about her people, so I think she will start to see things differently after a while, too. The fact that the damane can now learn Healing might also be a factor in changing the Seanchan cultural mindset about channelers, eventually. Karede was repulsed by the idea of being Healed with the one power, but does think that he would allow it if he was at death’s door, and wonders if it could have saved his wife. How many people, finding themselves desperate to save their own lives, or those of people they love, might feel the same? And once they accepted Healing, how might that change their view of damane? Damane have always been weapons, first and foremost—weapons that are used against non-channelers. The Seanchan Empire was built on the power of the a’dam, and maintained using sul’dam and damane, so people have real reason to fear them, even beyond superstition around channeling being connected to the Dark One. But if damane are ever used to care for people, I think that would make a difference, over time, in how they are perceived. And of course, we know that Tuon herself possesses the ability to learn to channel, which means that (if the Aes Sedai are correct about there being a genetic component to the ability to channel) she is likely to pass it on to at least some of her children. We’ve been told that any woman found to be marath’damane has her name stricken from her family record, even if they are born to the Imperial family, but Mat Cauthon would never let any daughter of his be collared, no matter what his status with the Empire, and with Tuon, ends up being. I still like Karede, too, and it was really fun seeing Mat and his unusual entourage through Karede’s eyes. How bewildering to stumble into this without context! But now that Mat is Tuon’s wife, Karede will probably end up knowing him pretty well—at least if Mat ends up coming to live with Tuon at some point. The Deathwatch Guards protect the Imperial family, after all, and Mat is part of it now. They might even ride to the Last Battle together. Last week I compared Karede to characters like Lan, and then this week his observation that the Deathwatch Guards’ “honor is duty, and duty often means death,” reminded me very strongly of Lan and Rand’s mantra about death being light as a feather and duty heavier than a mountain. It is clear that Karede thinks little of giving his life for Tuon, but the idea of failing her is beyond comprehension. That line of thinking seems very common in Seanchan society, which is very duty driven even for the lower classes, but it carries a little extra weight here with Karede and the Deathwatch Guard. I also loved the moment where Tuon actually repeated that Mat was her husband. Mat was stunned, Karede was shocked, and it was all-in-all a very serious moment, punctuated by the wonderfully comedic line “Bloody Matrim Cauthon is my husband. That is the wording you used, is it not?” Perfection. Next week we’ll see how Mat fares against the army chasing Karede, whether Tuon makes it back safely to take her place in Ebou Dar as the Daughter of the Nine Moons, and a little something more about Pevara and the Red Ajah’s intentions towards bonding Asha’man, as we finish up Knife of Dreams with chapter 36 and the epilogue.[end-mark] The post Reading The Wheel of Time: Mat Cauthon Is an Onion in <i>Knife of Dreams</i> (Part 24) appeared first on Reactor.

Featured Essays weapons I Can’t Shake Weapons I love it when a movie decides to be about everything. By Leah Schnelbach | Published on August 12, 2025 Credit: New Line Cinema Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: New Line Cinema I spent the weekend thinking about Zach Cregger’s Weapons. I want to talk about it briefly—specifically how Cregger writes his story to contrast with two of his biggest influences, Magnolia and Prisoners, in a really interesting way. (Spoilers for Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling 1999 drama Magnolia and Denis Villeneuve’s 2013 thriller Prisoners—both of which you should watch as soon as possible, if you haven’t.) There are some superficial same-nesses. The most obvious ones: Weapons’ structure is fractured into six points of view, as Magnolia’s is shattered into at least eight, intercut over the course of its more than three-hour runtime. As in Prisoners, kids have gone missing, throwing a community into turmoil. Weapons’ color palette and setting are a riff on those in Prisoners’—they both take place in small-ish Pennsylvania towns, and the light is that same maddening thin grey light that finally drove my parents to take the drastic measure of moving us to Florida. Where High Jackman’s Keller Dover is a poor, struggling carpenter (lol), Josh Brolin’s Archer is an upper-middle-class contractor with a shiny McMansion and employees who report to him. Where Prisoners opens with a gruff adult male voice reciting the Lord’s Prayer, Weapons opens with a lilting, high-pitched young girl telling us the events of the movie like she’s telling us a bedtime story. In Weapons, Alden Ehrenreich’s troubled cop Paul has cultivated a mustache that is a close cousin to the one John C. Reilly’s troubled cop Jim Kurring wears in Magnolia. Where Prisoners ends with both girls saved, and with Jake Gyllenhaal’s Detective Loki just about to discover, and presumably rescue, Keller Dover (before an emotionally fraught cut-to-black), Weapons takes us back to the our young narrator, who tells us that some of the victims have been put in a home, others are just now relearning to speak again, and one has been sent away from the town to live with other relatives. While most of the cast makes it out alive, there is no happy ending here. And finally where the title “Prisoners” refers to the prisons of trauma that all the characters are trapped in, “Weapons” refers to the way each characters desires and addictions are weaponized against them in one way or another. But really the resonance here is in how Weapons differs from Magnolia and Prisoners. Where Magnolia’s threads pull people together for a couple of transcendent moments, Weapons is about how we’re too fractured to come together. If this makes any sense: Magnolia feels to me like one of the sprawling, “era-defining” literary novels of the 1990s, where mostly white men wrote books that spanned decades, told from many different perspectives, often jumping off from or converging on one historical point. Think Infinite Jest, Underworld, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Snow Crash, The Corrections—that kind of thing. Magnolia is the filmic version of that. And as with some of those novels, it feels like the work of a young man, with a young man’s preoccupations and blindspots. Magnolia has nurse Phil Parma (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) reaching Frank Mackey (Tom Cruise) just in time for the man to talk to his patient, Frank’s dying father, Earl Partridge. Frank at least has the catharsis of crying over his body, and Earl wakes just long enough to see his son before he dies. After that, an emotionally exhausted Frank chooses to visit Earl’s wife in the hospital, implying that he and his would-be stepmother might develop a bond, even if he and his father couldn’t. Officer Kurring and Quiz Kid Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) come together to right a wrong of Donnie’s, and Jim later, maybe, connects with a woman named Claudia. And of course, at the center of it all, an inexplicable frogfall brings Los Angeles to a halt, and leads most of the characters to believe that they’re witnessing a moment of divinity cracking through quotidian life. In Prisoners the two main characters are basically alone. Keller Dover has built a life with a family, a community of friends, and a deep well of Christian faith, but at the center of that he’s still alone and suspicious, trusting no one, prepping for a doomsday that could come any time, haunted by his own father’s death to the point that he can’t be the father his kids need because he thinks he has to be a superhero. He takes justice/vengeance into his own hands rather than trusting the God he claims to believe in. Detective Loki keeps himself alone intentionally, tries and discards belief systems, lets his work become his whole world. Neither man can lean on anyone else, which is part of why the case is so difficult—if they’d been capable of communication and cooperation the movie would have been at least an hour shorter. But in the end Prisoners makes the intriguing choice to hint at a supernatural element in an otherwise coldly realist film, giving us a detective who manages to rescue a terrified child, and most likely her father, possibly through, if not divine intervention, than a divine nudge. Weapons offers us no such relief. The powers-that-be seem to have given up, there is no heroic detective, no connection possible, and the only supernatural element we see is malevolent. In fact, the only thing that breaks through characters’ isolation is Aunt Gladys’ ability to reach into their minds, as she visits Justine, Archer, and James suring dreams or altered states to assess them as threats. (Hilarious how the town engages in a kneejerk witch hunt, because of course they do, only for the film to reveal an actual witch, whom none of the adults suspect until it’s too late.) It feels more mature to me—or maybe the word I’m looking for is not mature but nihilistic? It feels like it’s partly about the fact that we can’t ever truly know each others’ perspectives. It’s about how we can’t truly know our partners or our children or our families. The inside of the human head is as much of a mystery as the world outside of it. Even when Julia Garner’s Justine and Josh Brolin’s Archer combine forces to hunt for the kids, what might feel triumphant in a different movie ends up feeling sickly and defeated. Justine ends up killing two people in self-defense, and when Archer finally discovers the children trapped in the basement he paws through the room looking for his own child, literally pushing other kids aside as he calls his son’s name. Meanwhile, poor Alex Lilly, whose life has been an unrelenting nightmare for months, saves himself. When everyone comes together in Weapons there’s no sense that any borders have been transcended, or that any divinity is pushing things along. Alex is able to turn his aunt’s magic against her because he’s studied her ritual. His parents only stop trying to rip him to pieces because his classmates get to his aunt and kill her, breaking the witch’s mind control over them—but meanwhile he still has control over the other 17 children, right? The only catharsis in the film comes in the form of those children tearing a woman to pieces, showering themselves in her blood—and they’re only doing it because Alex told them to. It’s catharsis for us. Not for them. Like a lot of films this year, Weapons is a cry of grief, but I think it’s leavened with enough humor, and enough people act like people would actually act, that it works. Cregger isn’t screaming “GRIEF!!!!” in your face—he’s much more screaming “WHY IS EVERYONE ACTING LIKE NOTHING’S WRONG???”, and that I find relatable. But most of all, it’s that solitude. In Weapons, everyone is alone. Organizations fail. Religion is never mentioned at all; the story skips up to a month after the vanishing, so we see the makeshift “Maybrook Strong” altar that people have set up at the school, but we don’t see the vigils that undoubtedly happened earlier on. The cops are useless; when the case is “solved” it’s by a teacher and a parent, the only two people in town who refuse to move on with their lives. We we know from the opening narration that the town officials were so “embarrassed” about the case that the whole thing has been covered up—which is why it takes a child to tell us the story like an urban legend or a fairy tale two years after the events. I’ve seen a lot of people talking about what the movie is about, but I think the answer is that it’s about whatever grief and addiction we bring to it. It’s about our own isolation in a world that seems committed to collapse.[end-mark] The post I Can’t Shake <em>Weapons</em> appeared first on Reactor.

By the time you finish telling Meta’s AI how your boss ruined your life, a stranger halfway across the world might already be reading it over lukewarm coffee. The stranger’s job isn’t to help you heal; it’s to give your robot therapist a performance review. According to contract workers speaking with Business Insider, Meta’s chatbot conversations aren’t the locked diary people imagine. They’re training material. And the “class” is staffed by low-paid raters in outfits like Outlier (owned by Scale AI) and Alignerr, who are tasked with grading how Meta’s AI handles your late-night oversharing. Become a Member and Keep Reading… Reclaim your digital freedom. Get the latest on censorship, cancel culture, and surveillance, and learn how to fight back. Email Subscribe Already a supporter? Sign In. The post How Conversations You Never Shared With AI Can Still Land in the Laps of Offshore Contractors appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Massachusetts Police Training Center Targets 'Moms for Liberty' as a Hate Group