#High-Tech Factories

[akwyz]

Siemens Invests €2 Billion to Accelerate Global Digitalization and Sustainability Initiatives

💡 Siemens is all in! €2B global investment to fuel future growth and tech innovation. High-tech factories, AI labs, and more on the horizon. The future is NOW. 🌏🚀 #DIgitalTransformation #TechInnovation #AI #IndustrialMetaverse #Sustainability

Siemens’ new €2 billion investment strategy is a testament to the company’s commitment to forward-thinking growth and innovation. The plan, announced earlier today, features a significant emphasis on manufacturing capacity expansion, with funds being channeled into the creation of new high-tech factories, innovation labs, and education centers. This strategy further solidifies Siemens’ position…

[termagax]

genuinely i find the entire chunk of lore to be unsalvagable at this point like just throw it out and start over

[curiosityschild]

On the website for my county government for some reason and all five of our county commissioners look like supervillains. Like. It looks like someone travelled across the multiverse to pluck five supervillains from five different genres and got them all together to govern my county for some reason.

[buff-electra-truther]

Rough concept for Curie the Nuclear Flask (genderblind since the unit refers to both Pierre AND Marie Curie), nonspecifically based on mostly British models since they’re the most photographed/documented.

Kind of my pipe dream Dustin/Hydra figure, though it would NEVER fly in Germany because that’s such an anti-nuclear country. Curie is shy and fat, like Dustin (in reference to the nuclear industry using silence as their main PR tactic and nuclear flasks being physically heavy and sometimes downright enormous). They’re also suspicious but secretly benevolent and the real hero of net zero like Hydra. I made the character for my extended protag Electra AU/rewrite but you could kind of fit them in canon as a Rusty ally since nuclear plants technically ARE steam powered (just get rid of the damn anti-nuclear Light At the End of the Tunnel line if it isn’t gone already)

Curie is kind of a sardonic nerd, comparable to Tom Lehrer (though could also be played more as a mad scientist or quirky Miss Frizzle type). Despite showing constant experimental evidence that they’re damn near indestructible (nuclear flasks have been publicly crash tested to spectacular results, most notable in 1984 when a locomotive was rammed into one at 100 mph and got obliterated but the cargo was unscathed) everyone treats them like a terrifying hazard and they’re largely ostracized.

As a nod to Dustin almost singing it in the New Starlight revisions, Curie would probably sing There’s Me because “I may not be the one you want to see” and the message of always being there is just so fitting to nuclear power being a very reliable energy source vs other non-fossil ones. They’d play a basically identical role to Dustin in the final race where the protag finally is willing to trust and team up with them and their size is an advantage in a downhill race (they’d also be GREAT for defending against Greaseball and other physical hazards and him trying to hit them and Curie not selling it while he falls backwards howling would he hilarious)

[feodortum]

[dronetech]

Brand quality, considerate service EFT agricultural drone, high-end configuration, professional technical services, door-to-door delivery, one-on-one training!

Welcome to become our agent

https://www.effort-tech.com/en/z

[shadow4-1]

I'm just imagining helping Gaz upgrade the firewalls on the personal tech of the 141, and accidentally catching glimpses of their search history.

Like, it's not like you're actively trying to look. But the program you're updating has to check all of the websites/servers the 141 has been perusing. If anything is compromised you need to know, Laswell needs to be informed, etc.

Despite his name, Soap's history is bar far the dirtiest and most extensive. His searches consist of pretty much everything that a normal weirdo guy would look up. You're able to ignore most of it but you notice he'd cleared part of his browser data at some point and well...you couldn't help yourself. You check and immediately regret it.

public airsoft fuck

gun tongue fucking

military boot cock stepping

You can't bear to see any more so you delete the rest of his search data for him and move on.

Gaz's search history is surprisingly very normal. You almost snort at how much of a difference it is compared to Soap's. You also come to the realization that he probably already cleared and deleted his history. Then you also realize he probably knows you're looking at everyone's history and probably chose to leave these behind. You feel your face grow hot as you glance down the very short list.

best friends bestfriend blowjob

next door neighbor anal

massage porn

You huff and keep going, next is Price. You breathe a sigh of relief, he only has a couple searches and none of them have demeaning expletives in them. You spare them a passing glance.

Paddling adult film

Thigh high models

You raise a brow. Thigh high models, you could understand, but "paddling"? Like...spanking? With a paddle? You swallow thickly and shake your head. The shibari makes you wince too. Figuring out your Captain was into rope bondage and spanking was too much knowledge for one person.

Shibari classes near me

And, just like you'd expected, Ghost had no search history. You breathe a sigh of relief and do a sweep of the rest of his phone. Nothing. No recently viewed caches, cookies, pictures, or anything. The phone was so well taken care of it might as well have been brand new. You went back to the main browsing page, but before you could close out the app, you notice the page has a bookmark. You open up the bookmark tab and low and behold, there's two links. They look shady but you check them out anyway.

The first one is a cam site. The host of the channel is offline, but judging by their many saved livestreams, they're very active. You decide to turn back, but a very specific thumbnail catches your eye. It's the cammer, but with their mouth stuffed full of a random man's cock. It wouldn't have stopped you in your tracks if a) the man's leg tattoo didn't look so familiar and b) if the cammer didn't look suspiciously like you.

You immediately clear all of the data on the phone, essentially factory resetting it. When Gaz comes back into the tech closet you shove at his chest. He just chuckles and shrugs.

You're never doing this again.

[reminiscingtonight]

Tech Support

Alexia Putellas & Putellas!Reader (Jana Fernández x Putellas!Reader)

Word Count: 1.2k

[WOSO Masterlist]

“So I am… supposed to click this?”

Alexia’s hand is swatted away at record speed before she can make contact with the screen.

“No, this one.”

Who would’ve thought. Captain of the country. Legend of your club. The La Reina may be feared by players worldwide, but even she could be beaten by something as simple as a new phone.

The two of you have been at this for a couple hours now.

When your sister first slid the box across the table at you, your eyes nearly bulged out of your head. You didn’t even have time to thank Alexia before she crushed your dreams right then and there. What you first thought was a present for you turned out to be a resigned plea for help.

As the resident tech genius you were high in demand. Last week it was setting up your mami’s tablet. Yesterday it was fixing Olga’s laptop. And today it seems to be Alexia’s turn.

Though now that you think about it, “genius” may be a stretch. It’s not until the third time you stop yourself from throwing Alexia’s phone at her that she lets it slip that Alba was actually her first call for help. It’s no surprise to hear that your middle sister was quick to refuse, given that the last time she helped Alexia set up a phone resulted in heated words and staunch refusal to speak to one another for two weeks.

Given that she’s your club captain the loss in communication is something you can’t risk, but you’ve always thought of yourself as gifted when it comes to technology. If you could teach your mami how to use facebook without spamming her personal page with posts about you and your sisters, surely helping Alexia transfer her data and set up a new phone would not be too hard of a challenge.

Oh how you’re wrong.

Though you’re only eight years younger than Alexia, she still manages to struggle as if she’s well into her nineties.

Ask if she’s backed up her data? Might as well have told her to recite the first fifteen digits of pi.

Ask if she’s taken note of the apps she needs to redownload? Might as well have asked if she knew the secret to happiness.

Tell her to grant certain apps permissions to her phone? Might as well have told her you were transferring to Real Madrid.

Ask her to re-sign back into her multitude of accounts? Might as well have asked her to transfer to Real Madrid.

If you had known just how teeth pulling this would be, you would have left Olga to deal with Alexia herself.

Despite your clear and well-informed instructions of what to click where, which settings to enable or disable, Alexia kept bulldozing through your words, thinking she knew better.

Spoiler, she did not.

Jana’s already been by to give you some words of encouragement, but after the fifth time you quietly asked if she could make up an excuse to drag you out, she hunkered down on a nearby couch with Olga. The two of them, traitors at heart, are having a blast watching some trashy reality tv show while you struggle away with Alexia.

At this point you’re one more question away from factory resetting Alexia’s new phone, but a promise from Olga to buy you lunch and a burning desire to prove to Alba that you’re a better teacher than she is leaves you clinging to the last piece of sanity you have.

After what seems like an eternity, Alexia finally sits back from where she’s been hunched over your shoulder, poking and prodding at her phone.

“I still don’t understand why I have to set up a passcode when I could just use my fingerprint to unlock everything.”

The only word capable of describing Alexia at this moment in time is brooding. Arms crossed, face drawn in a frown, your thirty-year-old sister is brooding over your insistence at setting a passcode.

You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose. “What if you’re at training and you need Mapi to pull up something from your phone while your hands are busy?”

Alexia huffs, smile on her face as she thinks she’s got you. “Simple, I would never trust Maria with my phone!”

“Ale!” you groan. “That’s not the point.”

She’s not wrong. The last person to mistakenly trust the blonde haired woman with their unlocked phone received the device back with fifteen added stories to their instagram account. Though that was on the tamer side of what the defender was capable of, no one’s really let her borrow their phone since.

You catch Jana’s twinkling eyes over the back of the couch as she shares a giggle with Olga.

“Okay, what if I get hurt on the pitch and you’re too busy consoling me? I’m sure Jana would appreciate being able to use your phone to call mami to let her know I’ve been hurt.”

Alexia rolls her eyes. “First, Jana already has mami’s phone number. Pretty sure she likes your girlfriend more than the both of us.”

The number of times Eli has called you just to ask if Jana would be coming over for a family dinner would be insulting if you weren’t smitten with the idea of your girlfriend having fit right into your own family. Though the two of you haven’t officially been together long, years of friendship meant Eli was more than delighted when she found out the two of you were together. It also meant she was quick to catch Jana up on any and all family events she was hosting.

“Also, that’s not a problem because mami never misses one of our games so she’d already be there!”

It’s almost as if Olga can see the steam coming out of your ears. She’s quick to walk over, rubbing you back apologetically before throwing an arm around Alexia’s shoulder.

“Would you please set one for me, amor? Sometimes I misplace my phone and yours is closer.”

It’s maddening the way Alexia instantly starts nodding like a lovesick puppy. She plucks the phone right out of your hands, swiping until she can get to the right screen.

From over Alexia’s shoulder Olga gives you a wink.

With her girlfriend wrapped tightly around her, you take your cue to exit.

Jana opens her arms wide and you enter willingly. The older girl chuckles when you instantly bury your face against her stomach, arms tightening around her legs.

“I wanna go home,” you grumble, ignoring the way you can feel the vibrations of Jana’s laughter.

“Don’t you wanna stay for lunch?”

As much as you loathe the hours wasted on Alexia, the promise of free sushi did sound pretty good. All you have in your fridge is some leftover pasta from the night before, and you’re never one to pass up free food.

“Hermanita, what’s this I’m seeing about unlocking my phone with my face?”

You stiffen.

On second thought, leftovers didn’t sound too bad.

[kropotkindersurprise]

May 8, 2024 - Palestine Action activists rammed their truck through the fence around an Elbit Systems drone factory in Leicester, UK.

They climbed on the roof, broke holes in it and started throwing objects they broke off the building onto the sensitive high-tech equipment down below, damaging and destroying drones, parts and manufacturing equipment. Elbit Systems makes drones that Israel uses to slaughter innocent Palestinians. [video]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Kickstarting “The Bezzle” audiobook, sequel to Red Team Blues

I'm heading to Berlin! On January 29, I'll be delivering Transmediale's Marshall McLuhan Lecture, and on January 30, I'll be at Otherland Books (tickets are limited! They'll have exclusive early access to the English edition of The Bezzle and the German edition of Red Team Blues!).

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to last year's Red Team Blues, featuring Marty Hench, a hard-charging, two-fisted forensic accountant who spent 40 years in Silicon Valley, busting every finance scam hatched by tech bros' feverish imaginations:

http://thebezzle.org

Marty Hench is a great character to write. His career in high-tech scambusting starts in the early 1980s with the first PCs and stretches all the way to the cryptocurrency era, the most target-rich environment for scamhunting tech has ever seen. Hench is the Zelig of tech scams, and I'm having so much fun using him to probe the seamy underbelly of the tech economy.

Enter The Bezzle, which will be published by Tor Books and Head of Zeus on Feb 20: this adventure finds Marty in the company of Scott Warms, one of the many bright technologists whose great startup was bought and destroyed by Yahoo! (yes, they really used that asinine exclamation mark). Scott is shackled to the Punctuation Factory by golden handcuffs, and he's determined to get fired without cause, so he can collect his shares and move onto the next thing.

That's how Scott and Marty find themselves on Catalina island, the redoubt of the Wrigley family, where bison roam the hills, yachts bob in the habor and fast food is banned. Scott invites Marty on a series of luxury vacations on Catalina, which end abruptly when they discover – and implode – a hamburger-related Ponzi scheme run by a real-estate millionaire who is destroying the personal finances of the Island's working-class townies out of sheer sadism.

Scott's victory is bittersweet: sure, he blew up the Ponzi scheme, but he's also made powerful enemies – the kinds of enemies who can pull strings with the notoriously corrupt LA County Sheriff's Deputies who are the only law on Catalina, and after taking a pair of felony plea deals, Scott gets the message and never visits Catalina Island again.

That could have been the end of it, but California's three-strikes law – since rescinded – means that when Scott picks up one more felony conviction for some drugs discovered during a traffic stop, he's facing life in prison.

That's where The Bezzle really gets into gear.

At its core, The Bezzle is a novel about the "shitty technology adoption curve": the idea that our worst technological schemes are sanded smooth on the bodies of prisoners, mental patients, kids and refugees before they work their way up the privilege gradient and are inflicted on all of us:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

America's prisons are vicious, brutal places, and technology has only made them worse. When Scott's prison swaps out in-person visits, the prison library, and phone calls for a "free" tablet that offers all these services as janky apps that cost ten times more than they would on the outside, the cruelty finds a business model.

Working inside and outside the prison Marty Hench and Scott Warms figure out the full nature of the scam that the captive audience of prisoners are involuntary beta-testers for, and they discover a sprawling web of real-estate fraud, tech scams, and offshore finance that is extracting fortunes from the hides of America's prisoners and their families. The criminals who run that kind of enterprise aren't shy about fighting for what they've got, and they're more than happy to cut some of LA County's notorious deputy gangs in for a cut in exchange for providing some kinetic support for the project.

The Bezzle is exactly the kind of book I was hoping I'd get to write when I kicked off the Hench series – one that decodes the scam economy, from music royalties to prison videoconferencing, real estate investment trusts to Big Four accounting firm bogus audits. It's both a fast-moving, two-fisted crime novel and a masterclass on how the rich and powerful get away with both literal and figurative murder.

It's getting a big push from both my publishers and I'll be touring western Canada and the US with it. The early reviews are spectacular. But despite all of this, I had to make my own audiobook for it, which I'm pre-selling on Kickstarter:

http://thebezzle.org

Why? Because Audible – Amazon's monopoly gatekeeper to the audiobook world, with more than 90% of the market – refuses to carry my work.

Audible uses Digital Rights Management to lock every audiobook they sell to their platform. Legally, only an Audible-authorized app can decrypt and play the audiobooks they sell you. Distributing a tool that removes Audible DRM is a felony under Section 1201 of the 1998 DMCA.

That means that if you break up with Audible – delete your Audible apps – you will lose your entire audiobook library. And the fact that you're Audible's hostage makes the writers you love into their hostages, too. Writers understand that if they leave the Audible platform, their audience will have to choose between following them, or losing all their audiobooks.

That's how Audible gets away with abusing its performers and writers, up to and including the $100m Audiblegate wage-theft scandal:

https://www.audiblegate.com/

Audible can steal $100m from its writers…and the writers still continue to sell on the platform, because leaving will cost them their audience.

This is canonical enshittification: lock in users, then screw suppliers. Lots of companies abuse DRM to do this, but none can hold a candle to Amazon, who understand that the DMCA is a copyright law that protects corporations at the expense of creators.

Under DMCA 1201 commercial distribution of a "circumvention device" carries a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that if I write a book, pay to have it recorded, and then sell it to you through Audible, I am criminally prohibited from giving you the tool to take it from Audible to another platform. Even though I hold the copyright to that work, I would face a harsher sentence than you would if you simply pirated the audiobook from some darknet site. Not only that: if you shoplifted the audiobook in CD form, you'd get a lighter sentence than I, the copyright holder, would receive for giving you a tool to unlock it from Amazon's platform! Hell, if you hijacked the truck that delivered the CD, you'd get off lighter than I would. This is a scam straight out of a Marty Hench novel.

This is batshit. I won't allow it. My books are licensed on the condition that they must not be sold with DRM. Which means that Audible won't sell my books, which means that my publishers are thoroughly disinterested in paying thousands of dollars to produce audiobooks of my titles. A book that isn't sold in the one store than accounts for 90% of all sales is unlikely to do well.

That's where you come in. Since 2020, I've used Kickstarter to pre-sell five of my audiobooks (I wrote nine books during lockdown!). All told, I've raised over $750,000 (gross! but still!) on these crowdfunders. More than 20,000 backers have pitched in! The last two of these books – The Internet Con and The Lost Cause – were national bestsellers.

This isn't just a way for me to pay off a lot of bills and put away something for retirement – it's proof that readers care about supporting writers and don't want to be locked in by a giant monopolist that depends on its drivers pissing in bottles to make quota.

It's a powerful message about the desire for something better than Amazon. It's part of the current that is driving the FTC to haul Amazon into court for being a monopolist, and also part of the inspiration for other authors to try treating Amazon as damage and routing around it, with spectacular results:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dragonsteel/surprise-four-secret-novels-by-brandon-sanderson

And I'm doing it again. Last December, I went into Skyboat Media's studios where Gabrielle De Cuir directed @wilwheaton, who reprised his role as Marty Hench for the audiobook of The Bezzle. It came out amazing:

https://archive.org/details/bezzle-sample

Now I'm pre-selling this audiobook, as well as the ebook and hardcover for The Bezzle. I'm also offering bundles with the ebook and audiobook for Red Team Blues (naturally these are all DRM-free). You can get your books signed and personalized and shipped anywhere in the world, courtesy of Book Soup, and I've partnered with Libro.fm to deliver DRM-free audiobooks with an app for people who don't want to mess around with sideloading.

I've also got some spendy options for high rollers. There's three chances to name a character in the next Hench novel (Picks and Shovels, Feb 2025). There's also five chances to commission a Hench short story about your favorite tech scam, and get credited when the story is published.

The Kickstarter runs for the next three weeks, which should give me time to get the hardcopy books signed and shipped to arrive around the on-sale date. What's more, I've finally worked out all the post-Brexit kinks with shipping my UK publisher's books to EU backers. I'm working with Otherland Books to fulfill those EU orders, and it looks like I'm going to be able to sign a giant stack of those when I'm in Berlin later this month to give the annual Marshall McLuhan lecture at the Canadian embassy:

https://transmediale.de/en/2024/event/mcluhan-2024

Red Team Blues and its sequels are some of the most fun – and informative – work I've done in my quarter-century career. I love how they blend technical explanations of the scam economy with high-intensity technothrillers. That's the the same mix as my bestselling YA series Little Brother series – but these are firmly adult novels.

The Bezzle came out great. I hope you'll give it a try – and that you'll come out to see me in late February when I hit the road with the book! Here's that Kickstarter link again:

http://thebezzle.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/10/the-bezzle/#marty-hench

[seat-safety-switch]

In the glorious new Century we are approaching, the old empires will be ground beneath our feet as we rise to meet humanity's glorious destiny. The oppressors of mankind will at last be defeated, ushering in an eternal peace and boundless prosperity. Also, we're going to come up with new kinds of potato chips.

One of the first things my school guidance counsellor told me was that I was "too fucking dumb" to work at the potato chip factory in town. And for good reason. Although my academics were excellent, I had an attitude towards slacking even then that would have severely damaged the productivity of our proudest industry. He recommended that I instead go into theoretical computer science, where it seemed less likely that I would do any lasting damage to something important like the Russetizer®.

After I had burned out of a career of thinking about touching computers, and ended up scrounging for subsistence in a series of increasingly desperate small towns (like most of my graduating class) I thought about going back to the potato factory. Surely, they would accept me now. I have all this worldly experience, all these social oddities beaten out of me in favour of a newfound conformist urge to make just enough money to pay my mortgage and occasionally finance a round of golf at the cheap course.

Bad news, though. It turns out that while I was away, the practical computer scientists had taken over. When the venture capitalists realized that "we made a website for a thing" suddenly meant that you could charge a billion dollars for that thing, the hastily renamed High-Tech Potato Chip Company put the town on the map. And then, quickly thereafter, was erased from the map in a series of debt-based transactions. It has zero employees now, and the old factory was sold for scrap, but the corporate entity still makes several million dollars a year. This, despite the fact that nobody in town is sure exactly what it actually does, other than that it is "not making potato chips."

One night, I went to go see the place where the potato chip factory was. I wanted to stand where the Russetizer® once stood, before it was ripped out of the concrete and sent to some potato chip factory in a country that I can't find on a map. Unfortunately, my old high school guidance counsellor was there. Working as a security guard to supplement his retirement. I figured he would be real pissed to see me there, after all this drama, so I just turned around and left.

[xxgoblin-dumplingxx]

I’m loving so much the new disowned verse omg, it is so good, you are a genius.

But I’m curious, how did reader and jason met?

The apartment was in a cracker box of a building with thin walls. His neighbors were a young couple that fought about money 25/8 and an elderly 'Nam Vet who liked his porno but- he could cope.

It was different than Gotham. There weren't constant gunshots. And that was weird. But. He knew better than to think his PI license wouldn't make him some money. Even out in the sticks. There was always a contentious divorce. There was always something not quite right. Cops in over their heads.

And he'd have down time. He could read. Work on his bike. Fuck. Maybe even actually go see a movie... Sure. He knew eventually he'd get bored but. For now, he was looking forward to it.

He shut the door and locked it behind him, frowning just slightly and making a note to get a better lock while he was out. He doubted he could find anything super great in town- he'd probably have to order something but. He'd passed a hardware store in town so... it might be worth checking out. If he made friends with the old guy that probably ran it he could probably get some special orders if he needed it.

So he set off that direction, wandering on foot down the sidewalks and taking note of the other houses. It was the middle of the afternoon. And the lunch whistles at the old factory still sounded at nood and then 30 minutes later. Tucked away from the tree-lined main drag, the houses back here varied from run down to better homes and gardens.

That tracked.

They got better closer to the front. The older show homes outweighed the eyesores. American primitive lawn decor. A surprising number of pineapples- and he snorted, wondering if it had come from a big box store or if it was a signal. Or both.

Still.

By the time he made it to the hardware store, he was reasonably certain he could stay busy. All was not as Leave it to Beaver as the Town Council would have you believe. And the first place he was gonna leave a flyer was in the beauty shop. Those old biddies HAD to have some shit to stir up.

He shouldered the door open and a bell, an actual bell, chimed. And he smiled a little taking a deep breath. The smell of dust, tools, and old well-maintained wood hit his nose and he exhaled. Definitely not going to find any high tech locks here. But, he had a soft spot for independent shops.

"Be with you in a minute!"

The voice made him jump. Not the gruff voice of a grumpy old fuck he expected. And it made him search of the source. Curious. "No worries," he said, walking a little farther towards where he'd heard it. Finding a young woman on a ladder stocking some boxes of bolts on a shelf. A pink canvas gardening apron tied around her hips to hold more boxes. "You got door locks?" he asked.

"Aisle 5 next to the paver catalogs," you tell him, steadying yourself so you can turn and glance down at him.

"Perfect," he said, "Thanks."

"Mhm, let me know if you need anything else," you tell him.

Jason paused and looked around, "Think you can put a tool box together for me I just moved and-"

"Ah, yeah. One Bachelor special," you tell him," Jumping down from the ladder, "I think I can get you fixed up. At least enough to get you started. You'll be smashing your thumbs in no time."

"Got a first aid kit too?"

"Right up at the counter," you snort. "But if you want anything special, you gotta see Adam at the Pharmacy. Mine are pretty basic."

"I can deal with basic- at least until you sell me a band saw-"

"Oh lord."

[book--brackets]

Summaries under the cut

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery

Anne Shirley, an eleven-year-old orphan, has arrived in this verdant corner of Prince Edward Island only to discover that the Cuthberts—elderly Matthew and his stern sister, Marilla—want to adopt a boy, not a feisty redheaded girl. But before they can send her back, Anne—who simply must have more scope for her imagination and a real home—wins them over completely.

The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless Lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . . Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg.

She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

Charlie Bucket's wonderful adventure begins when he finds one of Mr. Willy Wonka's precious Golden Tickets and wins a whole day inside the mysterious chocolate factory. Little does he know the surprises that are in store for him!

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

Tally is about to turn sixteen, and she can't wait. In just a few weeks she'll have the operation that will turn her from a repellent ugly into a stunning pretty. And as a pretty, she'll be catapulted into a high-tech paradise where her only job is to have fun.

But Tally's new friend Shay isn't sure she wants to become a pretty. When Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world—and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally a choice: find her friend and turn her in, or never turn pretty at all. Tally's choice will change her world forever....

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen often think of life before the war. It's now 1943 and their life in Copenhagen is filled with school, food shortages, and the Nazi soldiers marching through town. When the Jews of Denmark are "relocated," Ellen moves in with the Johansens and pretends to be one of the family. Soon Annemarie is asked to go on a dangerous mission to save Ellen's life.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a perfectly normal boy. Well, he would be perfectly normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the world of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures for Bod in the graveyard: the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer; a gravestone entrance to a desert that leads to the city of ghouls; friendship with a witch, and so much more.

But it is in the land of the living that real danger lurks, for it is there that the man Jack lives and he has already killed Bod's family.

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Jess Aarons has been practicing all summer so he can be the fastest runner in the fifth grade. And he almost is, until the new girl in school, Leslie Burke, outpaces him. The two become fast friends and spend most days in the woods behind Leslie's house, where they invent an enchanted land called Terabithia. One morning, Leslie goes to Terabithia without Jess and a tragedy occurs. It will take the love of his family and the strength that Leslie has given him for Jess to be able to deal with his grief.

The BFG by Roald Dahl

Captured by a giant! The BFG is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and jumbly. It's lucky for Sophie that he is. Had she been carried off in the middle of the night by the Bloodbottler, the Fleshlumpeater, the Bonecruncher, or any of the other giants-rather than the BFG-she would have soon become breakfast.

When Sophie hears that they are flush-bunking off in England to swollomp a few nice little chiddlers, she decides she must stop them once and for all. And the BFG is going to help her!

Graceling by Kristen Cashore

Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight—she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug.

She never expects to fall in love with beautiful Prince Po.

She never expects to learn the truth behind her Grace—or the terrible secret that lies hidden far away . . . a secret that could destroy all seven kingdoms with words alone.

A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein

Here in the attic of Shel Silverstein you will find Backward Bill, Sour Face Ann, the Meehoo with an Exactlywatt, and the Polar Bear in the Frigidaire. You will talk with Broiled Face, and find out what happens when Somebody steals your knees, you get caught by the Quick-Digesting Gink, a Mountain snores, and They Put a Brassiere on the Camel.

[txttletale]

You've spoken at length about how the Lancer setting is just wildly incongruent with what the authors think it is at length, and I agree wholeheartedly. My question is, largely for the purpose of if I ever want to run a game of it again, how would you make the setting carry that tone the authors think it has without too terribly much rewriting? Say, from the point of 'there was a revolution to overthrow seccom'? I love the 'gallant warriors of liberation in giant robots' and would like it if the game actually was that.

But the more the bureaucratic apparatus is “redistributed” among the various bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties , the more keenly aware the oppressed classes, and the proletariat at their head, become of their irreconcilable hostility to the whole of bourgeois society. Hence the need for all bourgeois parties, even for the most democratic and "revolutionary-democratic" among them, to intensify repressive measures against the revolutionary proletariat, to strengthen the apparatus of coercion, i.e., the state machine. This course of events compels the revolution "to concentrate all its forces of destruction" against the state power, and to set itself the aim, not of improving the state machine, but of smashing and destroying it.

-- Vladimir Lenin, The State & Revolution

In the heady days after the revolution, the air buzzed with potential. The future was today. Hazy, gaseous dreams of liberation patiently awaited their turn to be forged into something you could touch. But those days didn't last for long. The coalition was already a fragile thing during the revolution, and now that it was faced with the levers of Union's imperial machine each hairline crack became a chasm. The corporate armies, who had marched under the banner of the enormous profits locked away behind Harrison Armory's legal monopolies, had reached their personal horizons and refused to move an inch further. The moderates and high-class intellectuals saw the wealth that Union funneled from its edges being distributed generously to the citizens of the Core Worlds and declared a new economic paradigm of post-scarcity and mutual wealth. The anarchist cells with their mysterious reality-hacking mechs were the first to come to the only inevitable conclusion: the revolution was not over.

Now that the old order had been surgically deposed, the new order was finding itself fitting comfortably in its throne. Humbled and stripped of its previous privileges, Harrison Armory was welcomed back into the halls of power under the smiling auspices of free enterprise. Groundbreaking legislation was still being written in the halls of ThirdComm--guaranteeing the right of worlds to self-determination, the rights of clones to live freely, even radical and heretofore-unthinkable proposals laying the groundwork for an end to NHP-shackling. But the old revolutionaries had grown weary and cautious (and, of course, had begun to personally experience the economic benefits of Union's vast hegemony). To enforce this legislation, they argued, would be a de facto redeclaration of war against the corpostates, a disaster for the trade networks on which our wealth depends. To those who still harboued the hopes of revolutionary change, this was a loud and clear signal: the war had not ended. The revolution was not over.

The All-Galaxy Revolutionary Front as it exists now is a set of strange bedfellows. The disciplined combat battalions of the Communist Party fly in perfect harmony, distinguishable by their red battle flags, mass-produced in collectivized forges with reverse-engineered corpo tech. The motley individual oddities that the anarchists call their mechs, their open-source physics-bending HORUS peculiarities, strike unpredictably, in and out of ThirdComm's sight. But the one thing which binds them all, as they fight for the liberation of the peripheral worlds, for the wealth of mines and factories to enrich the people of the planets they're built on instead of fueling ever-replenishing consumption in the distant Core, is that they still have those old revolutionary dreams.

This is what it means to be a Lancer: to be willing to struggle. To acknowledge that the revolution is not over.

[theinconvenientlifestyle]

middleeasteye

Police in the UK have used powers under the Terrorism Act to detain six pro-Palestine activists involved in a direct action protest against an Israel-owned arms factory.

Last week, members of Palestine Action were arrested after crashing a modified prison van into an Elbit Systems factory in the Filton area of Bristol.

Video footage shared by the group showed activists spraying red paint and using sledgehammers to damage machinery inside the facility.

Under the Terrorism Act, police can detain individuals for up to seven days, with the possibility of extending this period by an additional 14 days without formal charges.

In response to the arrests, dozens of pro-Palestine activists staged a protest outside Hammersmith Police Station on Sunday, where some of the detainees were taken after their arrest.

A spokesperson for Palestine Action described the use of the Terrorism Act as "unprecedented" and condemned the police for attempting to discredit their activists.

Elbit Systems opened its Filton site in Bristol in May 2021 with a £9m ($11.5m) investment. The facility focuses on advanced manufacturing and the development of high-tech military systems, including drones and surveillance technology.

Palestine Action has been targeting Elbit Systems sites across the UK for years due to the company's role as one of Israel's largest arms manufacturers.

Elbit's weapons have been used in conflicts with Palestinians, including in the ongoing war in Gaza, where Israel faces accusations of genocide at the International Court of Justice.

Elbit supplies 85 percent of Israel's military drones and land-based equipment. It also exports drones, aircraft components, military electronics and other military systems to Britain.

[blankandhappytales]

Masterlist of stories and flash fiction..

It's about time I got up off my butt and put together an easy to reference list. I'll improve the tags and descriptions in the future, but for now these are all the ones I could find in my search for all my pieces. 😁

New(ish):

Untilted (I'll get round to it!): You could save your friend from being turned into a drone, but why bother when you know she'll be so much hotter as one?

A Change in Perspective: (Slow corruption, tech control, chipped, masturbation, second tense) - You find yourself implanted with a control chip, but every attempt to get it removed just seems to slide out from between your fingers. All is Fair in Love & Hypnotism: (Slice of life, humour, hypnosis, self-care) - A Domme decides to lightly punish her sub for not taking care of herself.

All that Glitters: (Forced femme, rubber, tech-control) - Finn finds a higher calling beyond corporate sabotage

Bambi:

Bambi Betrayal: (f/f, brainwashing, tech control, betrayal, bambification) - Charity attempts to reason with Lex who is under the control of the Bambi virus.

Family Affair: (f/f, brainwashing, tech control, betrayal, minor incest themes) - Charity introduces the joy of Bambi to the local strip club.

Bambi: Banded: (f/f, brainwashing, tech control, betrayal, forced femme.) - A mind control headband? Why not. All shall be blonde and ditzy!

Betrayal is a Dish Best Served Obediently: (Dollification, tech-control, objectification, betrayal) - Rae discovers what has become of her friend after betraying her to the Dolls.

Bimbo Chip: (Tech-control, chipped, VR, Bimbofication) - Emma surrenders to the chip in the back of her neck.

Broadcast Control: (Tech-control) - The radio station prepares for a very special test broadcast.

Chasing the Score: (Tech-control, subtle indoctrination, gaming. f/f) - Getting the high score can open you up to all sorts of interesting messaging.

Cock goes in: (m/f, conditioning, hypnosis) - Alex has provided a rather more-ish way to empty out her mind.

Cocktails and Broomsticks: (Magic, witchcraft, oral fixation) - Your Mistress decides to have a little fun with you whilst out for drinks.

Cum to the Darkside: (f/f, corruption, betrayal, tech control, twinning) - Do you hope that your best friend would ever betray you to oodles of mind control?

Darkest Desires: (tg, succubus, corruption, enthrallment) - George finds out that being damned has some perks and benefits.

Darkest Desires

Enthralled

Hostile Takeover pt.1

Domestic Bliss: (slice of life, maids, hypnosis, very short, f/f) - A parental visit causes a minor argument between Domme and Sub.

Down Slope Doll: (f/f, headphones, brainwashing, tech-control) - If you go down to the slopes today, be none of your friends have other ideas about having some 'fun' with you.

Droned: (f/f, Hive, Assimilation, tech-control, betrayal) - Mia becomes a little more intimate with the hive than she'd like.

Halfway Down the Stairs: (f/f, headphones, tech-control) - Megan finds just enough of herself to try and sneak out of the brainwashing facility to try and save her friends.

Her Perfect Doll: (Forced femme, hypnosis, Fem Domme) - Finn discovers just how deep his hypnotic conditioning goes.

Factory Reset: (Tech control, robotization, damsel in distress, objectification, female solo.): A nosy reporter find herself on a factory production line after asking too many questions.

Franchised Perfection: (Tech-control, transformation, celebrity, forced fem) - The Kardashian brand finds a fresh, new way to franchise itself to the masses.

Looper: (Tattoo, self-induction): A very special tattoo helps Melissa see the hypnotic side of life.

Mal-Adjusted: (Tech control, hypno-virus, corruption, female solo, betrayal): Cassie finds herself under assault by a powerful computer virus hell bent on spreading it's influence.

Nesting Instincts: (Tentacles, corruption, transformation, breast growth, Hive) A researcher is given a fresh purpose when captured by a tentacle nest.

Perfect Pink Kitty: (rubber, slice of life(ish), kitty ears, tech control) - Jake starts to regret agreeing to playing with Jamie as his insecurities get the better of him, but the cute kitty ears he's wearing have other ideas.

Positive Reinforcement: (f/f, slice of life, hypno-positivity) - Martha has a novel way of helping to convince Aya that her coursework really should get done. Repetition Knows Best: (f/f, slice of life, mind control, hypnosis) - Ella toys with her friends mind, building on all the ground work she's laid so far.

Seductive Reasoning: (f/f, hypnosis, conditioning, cougar seduction) - Melissa finds out she really is into older women.

Sisterhood: (gender neutral, assimilation, transformation, bimbofication) - You've been targeted for Bimbofication. Resistance is futile.

Switching Off: (masturbation, headphones, self-conditioning, very short) - Anna helps herself become even more enamored with her Bimbo conditioning.

Symbosis: (conditoning, bimbotization) - Willow learns to accept a new mindset.

The Human Element: (tech-control, objectification, robotization, dollification) - Sometimes it's the human element of your newly minted doll which proves problematic.

The Bonding: (Tentacles, hentai, kidnapping) - If you go down to the woods today... Remember to close your windows, okay? Okay! Their are things that go squelch in the woods, otherwise.

Workplace Distraction: (m/f, very short, work place fun) - Who doesn't want to get hypno-triggered like a good little corporate drone?