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ms-demeanor · 2 months ago

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thoughts on using library computers to disguise your digital footprint? because if the machine gets wiped when you log out, and the library doesn't keep detailed records of what machine you were using when, then all someone else would have is IP data unconnected to a person and also mixed in with whatever else folks were doing on the library computers

The machine absolutely does not get wiped when you log out and there's very little chance that a library computer will let you fire up Tor. You're better off using a traffic anonymizer than you are trying to use public computers to cover your tracks. The IP address IS the big risk here.

Libraries are generally really good about protecting their patrons' privacy and I respect the hell out of them for that but computers log everything that you do and can be subpoenaed as evidence even if the library wants to protect user privacy.

Also, I love libraries but you should treat every public computer you come across like it has a keylogger installed on it because it might. Your city could have an overzealous city council that has more control than it should over the library board and has taken it upon themselves to add covenanteyes to the library computers. Your library crew could be fantastic but less tech-savvy than is ideal and may not realize it if malware is installed on one of the machines. The library may clear browser history twice a day but the ISP still has a record of where you went and what time you went there. Somebody could have literally plugged a keylogger into a USB port on the back of the machine.

The point of a traffic anonymizer is it hides where the traffic originated; each node knows where the previous hop came from and where the next hop went, but not what came BEFORE the previous hop or what happened after, or how long the chain was, so there is no way to tell if a message originated in the US or Brazil or Vietnam or Sweden. Sending traffic from a library does the opposite of this, and very clearly says "the person who sent this message did so from this geographic area; they sent messages from these five libraries so we know they're probably within X distance of these libraries" which is a hell of a lot easier to look for than "I can't even say what continent these messages originated from."

Let us say that you go to a library to log in to your protonmail account and email a journalist a link to a file that you've saved in cryptpad. You have the link written down so you don't have to go to a secondary site and you just go sit down directly at the computer and log in to protonmail and fire off your email to the journalist. The email is encrypted, so you know the contents of the email are safe. Let's say the browser history gets automatically wiped every time you close it, and you close it as soon as you stand up and walk away. Here's the incriminating information that generated:

IP address where you accessed your protonmail account

Your protonmail email address, the journalist's address, the time you sent the email, the subject line of the email

And here are the people who can be subpoenaed to share some or all of that information with the government:

The Library's ISP

The Library, who may not carefully track users but who do have event logs on the computers and traffic logs on the firewall

Protonmail

IF you only ever logged in to your protonmail account from that ISP one time, and if you've never logged in to your protonmail account anywhere that is close to your house or your job, you may be fine. But if you logged in to your protonmail on your personal cellphone at work so that you could send photos of documents to yourself, there's some data tying that account to a local IP address. If you set up the protonmail account on a whim at a coffee shop, there's some data tying that account to a local IP address. If you get an email back from the journalist and go to another local library to open it, there's some data tying that account to another local IP address.

And that gets narrowed down very quickly. "Who has access to these sensitive and leak-worthy documents through working at this entity who also lives within a 100 mile radius of these three login locations? Is it 50 people? Is it 5 people? Of the 15 people who have access to these sensitive and leak-worthy documents who work at this entity and live within 100 miles of the three login locations, who is likely to be doing the leaking? Do we fire them all? Do we interview them? Do we compare IP addresses that they've used to log in to work remotely and find that two of them have logged in at the coffee shop? Of those two, one has facebook selfies in a maga hat and the other has a less visible online presence. Let's check their traffic history. Did they check tumblr on a lunch break? Maybe once or twice? Maybe a few times? Sure seems like they are pretty dead-set against the administration. Let's double-check the access logs for this information. Let's review security footage. Let's install the monitoring on their workstation."

The thing is, they're not going to catch you leaking and then track down all the data you left behind to confirm it; they're going to see a leak and get a bunch of digital footprints and use that to narrow down suspect pools. They already know that access to the data is limited and will be reviewing prior access and carefully monitoring future access. You are already in their suspect pool by already being one of the people with known access to the data. Adding an IP address that is geographically close to you, even if it isn't your home IP address, to that is not going to make it *harder* to find you, it can only make it easier.

So just use Tor. You're safer using an anonymizer, which you likely can't do on a library computer. Create the leak email address when you're in a Tor browser, and only EVER access that email account from Tor.

Also I don't mean to jump on you about this, but between the post I've got about why you shouldn't use your work computer to torrent and the safer leaking practices post it's clear that people really don't understand what information they're leaving behind when they use computers and the internet, or how it can be a risk to them.

Accessing burner accounts from a clear IP address means that they're not burner accounts anymore, they're burned.

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mariacallous · 5 months ago

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US Treasury Department and White House officials have repeatedly denied that technologists associated with Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had the ability to rewrite the code of the payment system through which the vast majority of federal spending flows. WIRED reporting shows, however, that at the time these statements were made, a DOGE operative did in fact have write access. Not only that, but sources tell WIRED that at least one note was added to Treasury records indicating that he no longer had write access before senior IT staff stated it was actually rescinded.

Marko Elez, a 25-year-old DOGE technologist, was recently installed at the Treasury Department as a special government employee. One of a number of young men identified by WIRED who have little to no government experience but are currently associated with DOGE, Elez previously worked for SpaceX, Musk’s space company, and X, Musk’s social media company. Elez resigned Thursday after The Wall Street Journal inquired about his connections to “a deleted social-media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.��

As WIRED has reported, Elez was granted privileges including the ability to not just read but write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager (PAM) and Secure Payment System (SPS) at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS), an agency that according to Treasury records paid out $5.45 trillion in fiscal year 2024. Reporting from Talking Points Memo confirmed that Treasury employees were concerned that Elez had already made “extensive changes” to code within the Treasury system. The payments processed by BFS include federal tax returns, Social Security benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits, and veteran’s pay.

Over the last week, the nuts and bolts of DOGE’s access to the Treasury has been at the center of an escalating crisis.

On January 31, David Lebryk, the most senior career civil servant in the Treasury, announced he would retire; he had been placed on administrative leave after refusing to give Musk’s DOGE team access to the federal payment system. The next morning, sources tell WIRED, Elez was granted read and write access to PAM and SPS.

On February 3, Politico reported that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Republican lawmakers in the House Financial Services Committee that Musk and DOGE didn’t have control over key Treasury systems. The same day, The New York Times reported that Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said that DOGE’s access was “read-only.”

The significance of this is that the ability to alter the code on these systems would in theory give a DOGE technologist—and, by extension, Musk, President Donald Trump, or other actors—the capability to, among other things, illegally cut off Congressionally authorized payments to specific individuals or entities. (CNN reported on Thursday that Musk associates had demanded that Treasury pause authorized payments to USAID, precipitating Lebryk’s resignation.)

On February 4, WIRED reported that Elez did, in fact, have admin access to PAM and SPS. Talking Points Memo reported later that day that Elez had “made extensive changes to the code base for these critical payment systems.” In a letter that same day that did not mention Musk or DOGE, Treasury official Jonathan Blum wrote to Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, “Currently, Treasury staff members working with Tom Krause, a Treasury employee, will have read-only to the coded data of the Fiscal Service’s payment systems.” (Krause is the top DOGE operative at Treasury and CEO of Cloud Software Group.) The letter did not say what kind of access the staff members actually had.

Sources tell WIRED that by afternoon of the next day, February 5, Elez’s access had been changed to “read-only” from both read and code-writing privileges.

That same day, a federal judge granted an order to temporarily restrict DOGE staffers from accessing and changing Treasury payment system information, following a lawsuit alleging the Treasury Department provided “Elon Musk or other individuals associated with DOGE” with access to the payment systems, and that this access violated federal privacy laws. The order specifically provided a carve-out for two individuals: Krause and Elez. At a court hearing later that day, Department of Justice lawyer Bradley Humphreys asserted that the order said their access would be “read-only.”

“It’s a distinction without a difference,” a source told WIRED. Referring specifically to the PAM, through which $4.7 trillion flowed in fiscal year 2024, they said Elez should not have had “access to this almost $5 trillion payment flow, even if it’s ‘read-only.’ None of this should be happening.”

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Elez did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“People will be held accountable for the crimes they’re committing in this coup attempt,” Wyden tells WIRED. “I’m not letting up on my investigation of what these Musk hatchet men are up to.”

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darlingofdots · 6 days ago

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I am about 120 pages into Stone & Sky and like, I'm enjoying myself, I'm having a good time, but I've also found at least 6 grammar mistakes that definitely should have been fixed in the copy edit and in my opinion that is too many. You always get a couple typos and such even in very rigorously edited published books, but I feel like in the ongoing argument about whether the quality of editing is actually going down, this is a pretty significant data point. This is the tenth instalment of a long-running, solidly and internationally popular series, with a major publishing house, and I don't remember previous books being that bad.

#dottie rambles #rivers of london #stone & sky #to be clear this is not egregious #most people probably won't notice #but there's a couple instances of 'of' instead of 'have'#even in narration so not dialogue #and one instance where clearly a line of dialogue had been changed so the following paragraph didn't follow properly anymore #stuff like that

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drarrywords · 2 months ago

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The Precision of Spite

Part 1

They try—God, they try—to be normal.

They go for coffee like they’re not still trembling from the night before. Harry reads Draco’s newest sketchbook and says it’s “dangerously emotive,” which Draco thinks might be the highest compliment Harry’s capable of.

They begin work on a collaborative exhibition-slash-lecture: “The Aesthetic Brain”, a joint venture between the science and arts faculties. Draco proposes installations; Harry builds interactive modules mapping neural responses to each piece.

They don’t tell anyone what they are.

Because they don’t know.

Because sometimes Draco leans in and Harry pulls away.

Because sometimes Harry says too much, and Draco doesn’t say anything at all.

The first crack forms in the editing room.

Draco wants the final sequence to end in silence—a pure emotional climax with no explanation. No voiceover. No graph.

Harry disagrees.

“It’s meaningless without context,” he says. “People won’t get it.”

Draco's eyes narrow. “Or maybe you just can't stand letting someone feel something without dissecting it.”

Harry fires back, “And maybe you can’t make anything real unless someone is watching.”

They stand across the room like opposing theories.

Draco speaks again, but quietly. “Why do you do this? Every time we get close, you gut it. You look for a clean incision point.”

Harry’s jaw tightens. “Because I don’t trust it. Any of it.”

“Me?”

“Myself.”

And there it is—the ghost in the room. The thing neither of them will name.

Fear.

The second crack is louder.

A conference. A panel they both agreed to sit on, where the moderator opens with a simple question: Can neuroscience predict the aesthetics of love?

Harry responds clinically.

“Romantic attraction, as we understand it, is pattern recognition. Familiarity. Memory consolidation paired with neurochemical arousal. It’s not magic. It’s math.”

Draco watches him the way someone watches an approaching storm. When the mic passes to him, he doesn’t smile, “You can chart oxytocin and serotonin all you want,” he says. “But you can’t explain why someone walks into a room and undoes your entire world.”

The room holds its breath.

“Love is not a stimulus. It’s a consequence,” Draco finishes. “And some of us are still living inside it.”

He doesn’t look at Harry.

He doesn’t need to.

They don’t speak for two weeks.

The project stalls. Emails go unanswered. Gallery slots hang in limbo. Their names start becoming whispers in opposite corridors again—what happened, weren’t they working together, didn’t they used to hate each other?

Draco starts smoking again.

Harry stops sleeping.

They both keep creating in secret.

Harry builds a closed-loop simulation—a VR reconstruction of memory fragments from the last year. Visitors can walk through it, unaware that each frame is a filtered moment: Harry’s mind reliving Draco. Over and over. Like an algorithm trapped in longing.

Draco, meanwhile, sculpts something brutal: a large-scale installation of two figures back-to-back, joined by a thread pulled so taut it slices into their spines.

He calls it “The Anti-thesis.”

The final crack isn’t an explosion.

It’s quiet.

They meet in the gallery late one night, both there to finalize pieces for the opening. They stand before Draco’s sculpture, neither speaking.

Harry finally breaks. “Is this what we are?”

Draco doesn’t look at him. “You tell me. You're the one with the data.”

Harry steps closer. “I never wanted it to be like this.”

“And yet,” Draco whispers, “you always knew it would be.”

Harry's voice catches. “Do you really think we’re poisonous?”

“I think we’re flint and steel,” Draco says. “Beautiful until we burn the whole thing down.”

There’s no kiss this time.

Only a pause.

Only space.

And the slow, tragic decision to walk away before they ruin each other completely.

The exhibition opens without ceremony.

Draco arrives late, dressed like he’s attending a wake. He doesn’t glance toward the VR station where Harry’s installation is housed, and Harry—already seated behind the security-glass interface—pretends not to look when Draco passes.

They orbit each other like silent moons. Former collaborators. Former something else, too—but they’ve stopped naming it.

Students call their work “brilliant.” Critics murmur phrases like “disquieting synergy” and “twin genius.” No one notices that the artists don’t speak to each other. That their eyes are never in the same place at the same time.

Draco stands in front of Harry’s simulation once. He watches a girl wander through it with the headset on, laughing softly as fragments of memory reconstruct around her. She pauses before a moment Harry labeled July, rain, red scarf, recognition—a half-recreated evening, where a pixelated version of Draco had turned his head just enough to smile.

The girl moves on. Draco doesn't.

Harry begins breaking by precision.

His lab is cold. Clean. Too clean. His whiteboards are full of equations that no longer resolve, models with flaws he pretends not to see. He publishes a paper on “Neural Refusal: Memory Suppression and Emotional Pruning.” It’s full of quiet desperation disguised as science. Buried in footnotes, he defines a term:

Cognitive ghosting — The mind's attempt to overwrite a recurring figure that no longer resides in one's present but dominates all reflective architecture.

He doesn’t name Draco.

But he doesn’t have to.

His colleagues begin to notice he doesn’t smile anymore. He avoids sunlight. His coffee is replaced with energy drinks, his patience with silence. When someone mentions the art department, Harry simply blinks and says, “I don’t engage in unstructured variables anymore.”

As if Draco had been an experiment that failed to replicate.

Draco breaks louder.

He paints obsessively—large, erratic canvases of faceless bodies. His colour palette degrades from crimson to grey. He begins using scalpels instead of brushes, slicing his work before stitching it back together with thread.

His professors whisper. One of them suggests a leave of absence. Another asks if he’s seeing someone.

Draco laughs bitterly. “I was.”

He writes a series of untitled pieces. They are not published. They are not submitted.

He keeps one of them folded in his coat pocket, where it wrinkles and fades:

You called it pattern recognition. I call it a haunting.I haven’t slept since you stopped imagining me.

They start seeing each other in everything.

Harry, walking home from a lecture, glances up and sees Draco’s profile lit in the window of the sculpture lab—and almost crosses the street before catching himself. Before reminding himself: We don’t speak.

Draco, returning a library book, finds one in the neuroscience section with Harry’s name scrawled on the title page. He stares at it like it’s a relic. Like it still belongs to someone warm.

They never speak. But the silence hurts now.

They could have hated each other forever and been fine.

But now they’ve tasted softness.

And nothing feels safe.

Weeks pass. Then a month. Two.

The university feels clinical now. Their names are still attached to greatness, but never to each other.

There is a winter showcase. Draco’s final piece is unveiled: an enormous suspended structure of broken glass and violin strings, wired to a sensor that makes it hum when anyone walks beneath it. The sound is low. Disoriented. Longing.

It’s titled: “Things That Break Before the Sound Comes.”

Harry doesn’t attend. But the next day, the gallery curator finds a note slipped under her door in a sealed envelope:

I don’t know what I heard, but it was mine. Please tell him I was there.

It is unsigned. But the ink is smudged like rain.

Part 3

#drarry #harry potter #draco malfoy #draco x harry #drarry fanfic #fanfic #ao3 #fic rec #fiction #imagine your otp

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mammalsofaction · 6 months ago

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So recently I got back into PnF and have been marathoning it (to catch up for the revival), and I finally rewatched at2d again. I have no idea if anyone else has talked about it, but how did Perry create the necklace key, the homing device inside it that led to his lair, as well as that replication machine that replicated all of Phin's and Ferb's inventions?

Like, if Perry really is monitored nearly at all times, how was this possible? How did he get the technology? When could he have even gotten it installed? Could it be possible that maybe he got insider help from someone in OWCA (Carl maybe?) or... Just maybe... Perry could have gotten help from Heinz? The amnesia-inator is a thing after all, so he could have mind wiped whoever helped him just to ensure that no one knew about all of this. (Because clearly if Monogram knew about it, he'd instantly have it all shut down and potentially relocate Perry immediately if not jail him like other rogue agents).

Anyway, I hope you don't mind me dropping this on you! I was just curious to see what others might think!

Nonnie, I do not mind at ALL, and i always love love love listening about AT2D and lore theories.

Dwampy is a fan of handwaving lore implications in the show.

HOWEVER. The replication machine WAS mentioned, i think, at the beginning of the movie. The analyser is in Perry's (and likely every other active field agent's) hats. Monogram says they use it to replicate and reverse engineer evil inventions, both for their own use (see the re-modded "Amnesia-Inator"), and also analyse if any of Doof's inventions get smarter ("jury's still out").

But consider; being able to FIT a 3D analyser that works with such terrifying efficiency in a collapsible fedora implies that invention is small, durable and practically unnoticeable. So theoretically? If Perry could get his hand on the analyser, he DOESN'T have to be in the backyard. At the end of every work day he STILL gets to see whatever it was the boys worked on, and keep those plans in a personal archive (probably the same archive he uses to store the edited BFF photos with Doof and the AT2D photos with the boys) for what if situations.

The replication machine is probably accessible to ANY agent with the right kind of security clearance. As we know, from "Where's Perry," and "OWCA files" Perry's security clearance is PRETTY GODDAMN HIGH, since his biometrics are the only ones registered as a backup to un-initiate Doomsday lockdown protocols. He's probably what we call a gold access card for Danville's OWCA division: what Perry wants in his lair, he gets.

He doesn't have to be at home to see what the boys get up to in the backyard. The Flynn-Fletcher house is DROWNING in OWCA cameras and speakers. A security measure both for family's safety, as well as a precautionary measure against Phineas and Ferb's evil potential. Like we KNOW the genius scares OWCA, low key. (See Carl Undercover). I know the movie wants you to think Perry's secretly there all the time for sentimental reason, but like. Yeah that doesnt make logistical sense.

So yeah, Perry can't logically be there all the time for every invention what with how they work him to the bone, but he DOES see every adventure, collect every invention, and he DOES have access to OWCA's replication machine.

The homing device as a spare key to the lair AND the secret data archive is exactly what Phineas says it is: a blatant show of trust. It is absolutely impossible to think of it as anything other than Perry having SPECIFICALLY anticipated an emergency scenario where he CAN'T be there for the boys, one way or another, because of OWCA or some other evil thing. At this point, Perry's been hunted, captured, relocated and almost KILLED both by OWCA and other villains. His worst nightmare is of his family taken hostage. After the events of Carl Undercover he knows he can't trust his employers, not completely. And while he loves and trusts Heinz to not endanger the boys so long as he is kept oblivious to some CRUCIAL information, that's still too high of a risk.

That key, and everything the boys see, was Perry saying, "I do. I trust you. I was there in spirit for every adventure you've ever been on, and no matter what, I have your back. I TRUST that you have mine. I TRUST that you know the right thing."

And to make that key the locket on his collar, with a picture of his boys? It's saying "I trust you because you mean as much to me as I do to you. I trust you because you are family."

Nonnie, I'm sure you don't need me to tell you how absolutely HUGE that is. Perry has very valid abandonment and control issues, and he is NOT easily impressed. I choke up, watching that scene. I still do.

TLDR; there IS a rational explanation to the replication machine that is Perry-going-behind-OWCA's-back related, and sadly not Perryshmirtz related. Honestly using the amnesia machine is possible but probably not too well thought out, which would be uncharacteristic. Perry loves and trusts his boys a LOT, and also hes an overthinker. Valid. What's new?

#perry the platypus #phineas and ferb #Phineas flynn #Ferb Fletcher #At2d #Across the Second dimension #fuck i love this movie so much #THANKS FOR THE DISTRACTION NONNIE #choice of asks #choice of meta #pnf

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writing-until-i-drop · 10 months ago

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What's In A Name? Chapter Seven

Meg Harding and Kate Carter were inseparable until their friends died five ago, then she ran to New Orleans to save lives as a paramedic. But when Javi calls on his two oldest friends to help him collect data, counting on their matching natural instincts for tornadoes, Meg goes home for the first time in years. That's where she meets Tyler and the rest of the Wranglers, the YouTube storm chasers her dad likes to watch, and finds herself fitting in more with them than with Storm PAR. Meg only plans to stay for the week but will it be easy to leave when the dust settles?

If a certain cowboy has a say in it, nothing about leaving is going to be easy.

A/N: Time to get back to taming tornadoes

AO3 Link

Previous Chapter

Meg woke with the sun, giving Tyler a kiss on the cheek as she snuck out of bed, sliding her pillow between his arms. She poked her head in Kate’s bedroom only to find it empty, could she have been in the barn? Meg rushed down the stairs and out the front door, ignoring the rain, and Cathy shouting after her, a glimmer of hope in her chest. Kate was sitting at the desk, flipping through her old research, wearing the same clothes from the night before. She looked up, grinning from ear to ear and Meg felt herself getting excited, smiling back.

“Are we back?” Meg wasn’t sure what she would do if Kate said no, she needed her best friend back, her other half, her matching shade. She wanted them to be on the same page just like they used to be.

“We’re back, Mud Bug.” Meg shouted in excitement, jumping in the air. “Think Tyler can get me a new model up and running?”

“You bet your ass, baby.” Kate hugged her tight, spinning them both around, their unbridled laughter filling the barn for the first time in a long time. “What changed your mind?”

“You, my mom, Tyler,” Kate shook her head as they pulled apart, “He asked me how much more I was willing to let that tornado take from me and I realized I’d already let it take three of my friends, I wasn’t going to let it cost me another. Not you, not when I just got you back.”

“You’ve always had me, Katie my Lady,” Meg hugged her again. “And we’re going to finish this together, for them.”

“God, I’m so glad you’re doing this with me.”

“Always,” Meg was grinning from ear to ear, matching the expression on Kate’s face. “Want to help me wake Tyler? Like we used to do with Jeb?” Kate snorted,

“Definitely.”

The two girls strolled back towards the house, soaking themselves from head to toe. Cathy spotted them from the kitchen, smiling at their intertwined hands.

“I’ll cook breakfast, you’ll be needing it.” They thanked her, giggling as they trekked up the stairs. “But you’ll be cleaning up all that mud you’re tracking!” A small price to pay. When they got to the guest room, Tyler was still sound asleep, clutching the pillow, and with a mischievous glance, the girls threw themselves on top of him.

“Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

“Huh? What?” Tyler struggled beneath their combined weight, blinking up at them. They were wearing matching grins, their drenched clothes soaking him and the sheets in seconds.

“We’re gonna do it, baby,” Meg wheezed happily, Kate wriggling on top of her.

“Do what?” Tyler asked, his voice raspy from sleep.

“Tame a tornado!” Kate cheered, beating excitedly on Meg’s back. “Get up, come on,” Meg and Kate scrambled off of him, heading straight out of the bedroom, Tyler calling after them.

By the time Tyler got to the barn with his laptop, Kate had all of her data laid out on a workbench and Meg was up in the loft, using the pulley system Jeb had helped her install to lower barrels of solution to the ground.

“Mornin’, darlin’,” Meg called out, tearing up her hands as she slowly lowered one of the heavy, yellow barrels. “Kate, babe, you know where I left my gloves?”

“Tyler, can you toss her the red gloves on that desk over there?” Kate pointed towards Parveen’s desk, which had been uncovered sometime in the night.

“Yes, ma’am. So, we’re doing this?”

“We’re doing this,” Kate and Meg responded together, making him smile. He grabbed the gloves and climbed up the ladder to the loft, passing them over to Meg.

“You gotta stop sneaking out of bed in the morning, baby,” She rolled her eyes, giving him a peck on the lips.

“I’ll write it in my vows,” Tyler was staring up at her like a man in love, smiling softly with expressive eyes. She kissed him again, cupping the back of his head. Tyler’s lips were soft and warm against hers, his tongue slid across her bottom lip but she pulled back. “You know, I’m gonna find you gettin’ Kate that new model pretty sexy.”

“Yeah?” He grinned,

“Yeah.” Tyler bit his bottom lip, looking more handsome than Meg thought he had a right to, watching her turn back to the barrels before sliding down the ladder and joining Kate at the workbench. Meg took a minute, watching two of the most important people in her life, standing side-by-side, huddled close over a laptop.

Meg wanted to get used to this, being back in the barn, watching Kate be smart, the excitement of an upcoming chase brewing in her chest. She could see it now, Lily working on Cairo at Parveen’s old workbench, Dani fixing up Tyler’s truck in the middle of the barn, Boone editing videos at Jeb’s desk, Dexter working on the scientific instruments in Addy’s corner, while she checked over her supplies. It would be like old times but different in the best kind of way.

Cathy made them break for breakfast at some point, preening like a proud mother hen that they were getting back to Kate and Parveen’s research project. Afterwards, Meg took the time to mop her and Kate’s muddy footprints from the floor before rejoining the duo in the barn. Only to be turned around by her shoulders by Kate and pushed back towards the house,

“Time to get dressed, Mud Bug.”

“We goin’?”

“We’re going,” Kate confirmed, “You ready for this?” She held out her hand,

“Born ready, babe,” And for the first time in years they did their secret handshake. “But I’m gonna need to borrow some clothes.”

Dressed in Kate’s jeans and a Sooner jersey tied off at the waist, Meg did a check of everything she had left in her medical kit after the tornado from a few nights before, making a mental note of everything she needed to restock on. Mostly bandaids, gauze, and alcohol wipes.

“Did you mean that, what you said in the barn?” Tyler came up from behind, kissing Meg’s neck. She leaned back into his chest, reaching up to cup the back of his neck, his arms wrapped around her waist.

“About bein’ ready to chase today?” Her squeezed her hip and it dawned on her what he was talking about. “About needing my gloves to move those barrels?” Her palms really were torn up but she had taken a few minutes to bandage them up.

“Are you always going to be like this?” Tyler kissed her neck again, sending a shiver down her spine.

“Obstinate? A pain in the ass? Teasin’?” His teeth grazed over her pulse point, stealing some of her desire to go chasing instead of staying in Cathy’s spare bedroom all day. “You askin’ me about what I’m gonna write in my vows, Arkansas?” Tyler hummed, covering her neck in kisses. “We’ve gotta go, Ty.”

“You gonna answer my question?” Meg turned in his arms, wrapping her arms around his neck, taking in the moment. Tyler was too handsome, standing there in an orange flannel shirt, wearing a backwards baseball cap, staring down at her with those big green eyes of his. “I know it’s only been a few days, darlin’, but…” He trailed off, eyes squeezing shut. “I feel like-” He exhaled sharply. “I’m not good with words, baby.”

“You’re doin’ fine, Ty.” She brought him down into a kiss, “I’ll be writin’ it in my vows, hell, I could write them tonight, but,” He caught her lips in another, needy kiss. “Let’s give it a little bit more time before we call the preacher though.” Tyler kissed her until she was dying for air, her mind consumed by thoughts of him.

What would happen when she went back to New Orleans? Her heart hurt at the thought but she couldn’t just abandon the life she had built there to what, see if when the adrenaline faded they were still infatuated with each other? It wasn’t practical, it wasn’t responsible, but a part of her wanted it more than anything in the world.

“Let’s go tame a storm, baby,” Meg pulled away first, Tyler not releasing his hold on her waist. His eyes went wide, cheeks flushing dark red, “What?”

“You’ve got a really delicate neck, darlin’.” Meg groaned, knowing exactly what had happened.

“I bruise like a peach,” Cathy was going to have a field day when they got downstairs. “Let’s go.”

Downstairs, Cathy sent Kate to the truck with a bag of sandwiches and Tyler with a cooler, pulling Meg into the kitchen for a quick word.

“Is it time for me to call Rabbit and declare myself a winner?” She gently touched Meg’s neck, inspecting what she was sure was only a small hickey. Meg batted away her hands,

“No, there are no winners yet.” Cathy perked up,

“Yet?” Meg rolled her eyes, hurrying towards the front door. “Yet?” Cathy called out after her, throwing her hands up in exaggerated frustration as Meg basically threw herself in the backseat, telling Tyler to step on it.

Kate could not sit still, she was far too curious about everything in Tyler’s truck to not look around like a kid in a candy store. She was fully slipped out of her seat belt, dangling over the center console, digging through everything on the floorboards.

“What are you two getting into?” Tyler asked, focused on driving but getting increasingly more distracted. Meg’s hand touched something that crinkled beneath the driver’s seat and hollered in excitement when she pulled it out.

“Cheese Doodles, hell yeah!” She tossed one back, it was only mildly stale. “Ooh, Sour Patch Kids.”

“Stop it,” Tyler admonished, Kate settled back in her seat but didn’t stop snooping.

“You have a lot of stuff in here.” She flipped down the visor,

“Yeah, that…that’s a mirror.” Tyler sounded so done with them as Meg continued to list off every snack she found tucked away in the back. Kate opened the glove box, signed photos of Tyler spilling out. Meg burst out laughing as Kate reacted in a mix of horror and embarrassment, quickly shoving it closed. “Have you ever been in a car before?” Kate’s embarrassment didn’t last long though as she started flipping switches Meg knew she shouldn’t be touching. Meg, instead of saying anything, just sat back and watched the show.

“You got a lot of gadgets.”

“Don’t touch that, there’s guards there for a reason,” Tyler warned but Kate went about what was decidedly not her business, flipping each of the red safety guards.

“What do these do?” Meg laughed, watching Tyler try to stop Kate from setting off the rockets and then trying to keep his composure when she did. Kate, to her credit, immediately apologized and stopped messing around with things.

“Alright,” He pointed at the weather map on the screen showing three storm cells, “What about these two little ones just west of Enid?”

“Yeah, but this one to the east has the sky all to herself,” Kate pointed at the screen. Meg rolled her eyes, texting Lily about the whole fireworks thing.

“Yeah, I’m not falling for that one again.” Kate threw Meg a “can you believe him” look that had her giggling and Tyler sighed. “You serious?”

“Tell you later.”

“Baby, tell her not to be mean to me,” Tyler whined, reaching his hand back. She squeezed it, loving that he was keeping her included even though she was in the back seat.

“Katie my Lady, tell the man which direction to go.”

“Don’t start taking his side,” Kate sassed with a laugh, pointing Tyler in the right direction.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Hey!”

Taglist: @theforevermorereject @beltzboys2015-blog @writingrose @sinners-98-world @nerdgirljen @candlejuice @a-court-of-roscoe-and-baby @football1921 @katiemcrae @emma8895eb @itsdesiree86 @closetspngirl @lostinwonderland314 @samanddeaninatrenchcoat @winterassassin1804

Next Chapter

#tyler owens x oc #tyler owens #twisters fanfic #twisters 2024 #twister 1996 #twisters #what's in a name fic #fanfiction #fanfic #bet writes

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natsukihappyhousehold · 2 months ago

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ferris first event

It was yesterday when I checked my love interests profile and affection meter from the informant. Unfortunately, the informant is useless.

Another unfortunate system in WataShuya that's still present in the third installment is that I can only have one event every breaktime. Checking in or updating the love interests data with the informant is sadly one of those events. So after meeting up with the informant character, the system prompted me to have lunch without triggering any event with the love interests.

I thought the system would fix this bothersome feature, but I guess not.

If I can move around too much, I'll probably trigger too many events at the early parts of the game

That's why today I'll make sure to start planning for my Julius-senpai Love Conquest!

The option for today's break time option is--

[Look for Otto-senpai] [Look for...]

Feri-senpai, obviously.

[Infirmary] [Student Council Room] [Wander around the school]

This is the options for my 'break time event'. First, I need to locate the current location of my target. Thankfully, there are only three choices right now. 'Wandering around' is the default choice carried over from the previous installments, the 'student council room' is obviously because all my love interests are student council members, and the 'infirmary' is an option that I get from the informant.

I can only choose one out of these choices, and if I'm unlucky, I won't get to trigger any event with Feri-senpai or any love interests today.

But just my luck, I know that today is Feri-senpai's house-sitting duty in the student council room with Subaru-senpai. So I choose student council room with no hesitation.

Subaru-senpai and Reinhard-senpai told me that they usually have a house-sitting rotation, and that they'll add me to the schedule later while they hash out the details this week..

But there's clearly something fishy about this week. Yesterday, it was Feri-senpai and Julius-senpai on duty, and today it's Feri-senpai and Subaru-senpai... Are they trying to talk to Feri-senpai one-on-one about his cold treatment towards me?

If that's so, this WataShuya's installment is pretty neat. Although I have a lot of grievances, it's a good point that the love interests are helping me without my prompting.

I arrive at the student council room.

"--likes it! Where'd you get that?"

"Hm, should Feri-chan tell~?"

Oh, it's not a serious discussion. I knock on the door. "Excuse me, Senpai. May I come in?"

"Mofuko?!" Without waiting for Subaru-senpai to open the door, I enter the room.

"Good morning, Subaru-senpai, Feri-senpai."

"Mo-morning..." Subaru-senpai greets me with an awkward smile. He probably doesn't think I'll be here so soon.

"Morning." Feri-senpai smiles, but I can see that his eyes aren't smiling at all.

That's what Subaru-senpai is worried about...

[Ferris Affection Down!]

And that's the crux of my problem.

Before I raise Julius-senpai's affection meter, I need to do something about Feri-senpai's affection meter first.

Because of the existence of the relationship chart, any romantic route in this game will be influenced by the relationships between my love interests.

From the same chart, I have the information that Feri-senpai and Julius-senpai are childhood friends and that they regard each other highly. In other words, there's a high chance that Feri-senpai will be involved heavily in Julius-senpai's route.

I can guess that my very presence in the student council is the reason why it keeps dropping even though I didn't do anything to offend him. Because of that, his conflict with Julius-senpai will probably be about how "unworthy" I am for Julius-senpai's love. It's likely that in the middle of Julius romance route, Feri-senpai will destroy my romantic flags.

The only thing I can do to change the situation is making an actual effort to raise his affection meter by triggering an affection raising event. However, it might create another complicated trouble if I'm too good at raising his affection meter.

Ugh, this is tough...

In Julius-senpai's route, there's a bomb called Feri-senpai. And in Reinhard-senpai's route, there's a bomb called the Sword Saint status.

On the other hand, I don't like cute-looking troublesome character with a dark past like Feri-senpai, while Subaru-senpai is just too plain and weird for me.

There's the option of a probable secret character like Otto-senpai, but I don't want to hinge my happy ending on something so uncertain.

"Mofuko, aren't you having lunch with your new friends?"

[I want to have lunch here.] [I want to spend time with Feri-senpai.] [I want to spend time with Subaru-senpai.]

My true reason is option two, but I know that going on a frontal attack when Feri-senpai's affection meter towards me is lower than acquantance is just suicide, so--

"I want to have lunch here. I know I haven't gotten my schedule yet, but if there's something I can do I want to help."

How is it? That's a good girl response, right? Even Feri-senpai shouldn't be able to diss me!

"Oooh! Mofuko, you're so diligent!" Subaru-senpai clap his hands as he looks at me with awe.

[Subaru Affection Up!]

"Does that mean nya think your classmates aren't worth your time, General Affairs Officer-chan?"

[Ferris Affection Down!]

Why?!

The normal reaction should be Subaru-senpai's, right?! Why is Feri-senpai so antagonistic towards me?!

"Wh--Ferris! We've talked about this, right?!" Subaru-senpai looks at Feri-senpai in agitation, yet Feri-senpai only pouts as he stretches lazily.

"Feri-chan doesn't care~ Feri-chan only agrees with her joining the council, but Feri-chan never agrees to play nice with her, isn't he?"

Well, I don't want to get along with a character like you either.

I just need him to stay in his lane when I get into Julius-senpai's route. Is that so hard to do? With the rate this is going though, I can see Feri-senpai butting into the others' routes just because he hates me.

Don't tell me he'll be the rival character?! He's so annoying!!

I keep up the smile on my face as I sit down at my desk next to Reinhard-senpai.

"Mofuko, don't take it to heart, okay? Our Ferris may be a bit difficult, but he's not a bad guy!"

I smile to reassure Subaru-senpai. "It's fine, Subaru-senpai. I don't mind."

"Mofuko..." Subaru-senpai looks at me in wonder.

[Subaru Affection Up!]

What an easy guy.

No wonder Subaru-senpai's affection meter for me is super high. Even a simple gesture like not minding his friend's rude behavior can raise his affection like this.

I take out my lunch box from its wrapping and prepare to eat. Subaru-senpai peeks at my desk and his face brightens up at my lunch.

"That's a cute lunch! Mofuko's handmade?"

"Yes, I made it myself."

"Whoa, that's amazing!"

At Subaru-senpai's enthusiasm, I tilt my head as I regard my own handmade lunch. Because I used a lot of vegetables, it is kind of colorful. I glance at Subaru-senpai's desk to check his lunchbox.

Wait, that's a dekoben right?! His lunch is cuter than mine!!

Compared to my veggie lunch box with its simple shapes, Subaru-senpai's colorful lunchbox is brimming with loveliness. The rice balls are shaped into pandas, and the vegetables are shaped into stars. The sausages are decorated with nori to make a silly octopus faces.

"Senpai, is that..."

"Oh, mine?!" Subaru-senpai grabs his lunch and shows the content to me. "I made it together with Beako! We're having matching lunch today! What do you think?"

He looks obviously happy to have the same menu as a middle school girl... but won't a middle schooler like Beatrice be embarrassed by a kid's lunchbox like that?

[I'm glad for you, Subaru-senpai.] [Aren't you embarrassed as a boy?] [It looks good and delicious.]

Definitely not the second choice, at least in front of Feri-senpai. "It looks good and delicious. You must be a good cook, Subaru-senpai."

[Subaru Affection Up!]

What an easy guy.

I wonder if I choose the second option? Will it lower his affection?

Subaru-senpai chuckles as he puts down his lunchbox. "Thanks, but I'm still not as good as Rem. She's the best at cooking, you should taste her food sometimes!"

........Rem?

That's a name I just heard for the first time.

A girl? Who is that? Is that one of the girls that Subaru-senpai is close to? A rival in Subaru-senpai's route? The fact that she's name-dropped in this timing tells me that she'll play an important role.

There's no harm in asking him. "Who is--"

Feri-senpai plucks a sausage from Subaru-senpai's lunchbox with a cheeky grin, "Feri-chan will have this~"

"Oi, Ferris, you bastard! That's the one filled with Beako's love! Take the other one instead!!"

That's your problem, Senpai?

"Excuse me..." I turn around as someone knocks on the door of the student council room. A male student is watching us with a worried look. "There's something I need to ask..."

Subaru-senpai groans as he looks back and forth between me, Feri-senpai, and the male student. Feri-senpai huffs as his ears twitches. "Don't worry, I won't eat Subaru-kyun's lunch and Newbie-chan."

I know why Subaru-senpai is worried. If he leaves, this will be the first event Feri-senpai solo event. All this time, there's always a buffer between us so Feri-senpai is always on his best behavior (at least).

There's no telling what he'll say to me if I'm left alone with him now. But--

[Please don't leave me.] [Go and do your best.] [I'll go instead, don't worry.]

--If I choose to leave, I won't get any event with Feri-senpai. If I want to make a progress in WataShuya, the only thing I can do is push through. "Go and do your best, Subaru-senpai."

Subaru-senpai frowns as he thinks for a moment before he closes his lunchbox and gets up from his seat. "At least be nice to Mofuko, okay?"

Feri-senpai waves his hand as Subaru-senpai walks to the door. As Subaru-senpai walks past me, he pats my shoulder and whispers in my ears. "Don't worry about Ferris, I promise he's a good guy."

Well, Feri-senpai is the stereotypical cat-type and delinquent temperament character rolled into one, of course I know it'll be hard to gain his trust. "I know, thanks for the warning, Subaru-senpai."

Subaru-senpai smiles as tension drops from his shoulders.

[Subaru Affection Up!]

What an easy guy.

"Okay, I'm Natsuki Subaru, here at your service!" Subaru-senpai pushes the male student away from the room and closes the door behind them.

I look at Feri-senpai who has been watching me ever since I enter the student council room. His tail flicks slowly like a cat waiting to pounce on a prey. He looks indifferent, but the distaste in his gaze is hard to ignore for the past week.

Should I start the conversation to break this stalemate?

[Can you please stop looking at me?] [Do you want to have taste my lunch?] [Feri-senpai, what do you have for lunch?]

In this scenario, playing nice yet aggressive should be the preferable choice!

"Do you want to have a taste of my lunch, Feri-senpai?" I raise my lunchbox towards him without fear. I hold back my victorious grin as Feri-senpai blinks in bewilderment, his ears twitch in interest.

From the past week and today, I get the feeling that me and him just "playing nice" doesn't suit him at all. That's why the next thing I'll try to raise his affection is a passive-aggressive method!

Not being frontal but not being a doormat either! I can do this!

I'm waiting for Feri-senpai to take a karaage from my lunch, but instead he pushes back against the backrest of his seat in exasperation. "Feri-chan doesn't like you."

[*acknowledges it*] [*fake playing dumb*] [*surprised and sad*]

"I know." As I put down my lunchbox, I make sure to look him in the eyes. His affection meter for me is already below acquaintance, so if I try to butter up to him, he'd feel disgusted instead.

"I know Feri-senpai doesn't like me, but even so, I want to be here."

Feri-senpai's type of character is one who is either loves a) people appealing to them, or b) people challenging them. I've tried appealing to him for a week and it doesn't work.

And if I'm right in analyzing his character stereotype--

[Why do you dislike me?] [I don't want you to dislike me.] [I hope we can get along well.]

I offer my hand to Feri-senpai. "I hope we can get along well in the future."

I don't need to know his reason for hating me. At least not right now. His affection meter towards me is too low, so whatever he says will be done in order to hurt me if I ask him now.

Besides, I'll know the answer in another Feri-senpai's event in the future.

The only thing I can do is to face his animosity head on and shows him that I'm a protagonist with a strong mentality that will not lose to him.

I heard the click of a 'CG' as Feri-senpai looks surprised as I offer him my hand.

[Ferris Affection Down!]

Dammit!! Why?!

I chose the optimal choices and yet this thing keeps happening!! Is there no way for me to raise his affection meter?!

I heard another click as Feri-senpai lets out a giggle as he covers his mouth, "Geez, Mochizuki-chan is such a two-faced liar."

...What does that even mean?

"But well, that's fine too, for now."

[Ferris Affection Up!]

Huh...? Wait, this is the first time I successfully raise Feri-senpai's affection meter, right?! What is that lowered affection before?!

So is he calling me a two-faced liar supposed to be a good thing or not? Seriously, which one is it? How did I manage that?

"Senpai, what do you mean--"

"Let's stop talking and eat, 'mkay? Feri-chan is super hungry~" Feri-senpai takes out a melon bread from a plastic bag near him and unwraps is.

Urgh, I don't understand him!!

In the end, I end up having lunch in silence with Feri-senpai before Subaru-senpai joins us. Even though I can't exactly say that I successfully remove Feri-senpai's thorns, I can say that the atmosphere between us is not as prickly as before.

And I manage to get a CG with a bonus expression so I think I did pretty well!

#otoge matchmaker route au #natsuki subaru #ferris argyle #actually mofuko did a lot of goof #she should be able to raise ferris affection quite a lot but because she doesn't really know who ferris is she choose “incorrectly” a lot

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tunastime · 7 months ago

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Hello beloved tuna 💚

How about a number 9 for the spotify wrapped?? (And if u feel like throwing any SEN guys in there I would simply love to see them)

HI THEO. you can tell I've been listening/reading too much murderbot when I start writing in the cadence that freaking kevin r free uses to do the audiobooks. so here, have some SEN ranchers. this song is actually on the SEN ranchers playlist! so I drummed up a little something that I think takes place around that time, where tango is about to receive notice that he's to come back to the Prometheus

(794 words)

Jimmy feels the pressure of all his emotions in his chest like a bubble about to burst. He's made of complex metal lattice, wires and tiny fibers that move like muscle, tubes and chambers holding cooling fluids and lubricants, silicon that filled spaces left behind and protected the various moving parts, made up his skin filled with sensors. Still, the part of him that felt, that processed emotion in a way he wasn't sure he was supposed to, still created that sense of feeling in his chest, as if the air filters and chambers of fluid had seized up all at once and were grinding to start again.

It wasn't a bad feeling though. This one he liked. A lot. It was the closest he had felt to being real in a long time. But it sucked to know that he liked it, and that he only liked it because it made him feel present, because the present was a time in which he knew minutes were slipping through his hands in a way his internal clock couldn't properly count.

Way back, when Tango first arrived, almost three months ago, he had told Jimmy that he was only there for a month. The successes and failures of their botanical project had meant Tango had stayed longer. It had given them more than enough time to become friends, dissect the little things that made them something other than human, find a piece of each other within the parts most similar. It was odd. And good. And Jimmy liked the idea of being like someone, rather than so different from his shipmates.

Tango was in his room now—their room, maybe, if Jimmy were feeling brave. The thought of sharing, be that personal space, personal data, personal storage, memory, RAM, emotion, feeling, thought, was a thing that was equally as confusing as it was terrifying. Jimmy was made of emotion—concocted from a hacked emotional core that HASA allowed to be installed in him, and with no way of processing any of the emotion, to filter it through subroutines designed to handle it, to manage it, with the secondary buffer it was supposed to have, Jimmy had too many times fallen victim to its overwhelming charge of his system. So sharing that very large, very vulnerable part of him wasn’t something he thought Tango could handle. Tango simply wasn’t housing an emotional core. Sure, his processor was large, and the long-term storage he had was complex (and Jimmy would know, they’d both poked around in his code and parts as a fun side project, considering Tango had finally decided that Jimmy should simply upload the rest of his data into Tango’s memory in case their project ended early. Tango had been reluctant to do that when he first arrived—he was built to learn, not to just store and retrieve. But what was learning but storing and retrieving, Jimmy had argued, and by the time their three months were meeting a yet-unknown close, they’d gone and backed up the data into Tango’s skull, and looked for fun), but he didn’t have the emotional capacity Jimmy did. And maybe he wouldn’t for a long time.

But he’d let him in. Just like Tango had let Jimmy root around inside his code and trusted him not to delete something essential. And Jimmy hated the idea that he might be losing this soon. He’d overheard Fwhip at some point, talking low to Tango in the hallway. Something about callbacks and data transfers, names of admirals Jimmy had never heard of, but sounded important. He had meant to ask Tango, but had never summoned the strength or reason to do so.

Jimmy watches Tango out of the side of his vision. Tango stayed because he had something to do. Maybe if Jimmy sabotaged their data, Tango would stay. Maybe if he changed something, fixed part of the system but not another, took data into long-term storage where they couldn't access it. Whatever he could do. Tango would stay here. And he wouldn't be alone.

But he couldn't do that to Tango. Which is why this feeling hurts so much. He liked it, because it hurt. And he hated it, because it meant he was coming to terms with the idea that Tango was leaving.

Scott called it grief. Jimmy thinks that robots shouldn't have learned how to grieve. It made looking at his friend Tango that much harder. It made watching him try to laugh and smile that much more difficult. But tucked away in Jimmy's room, watching the display surface show reruns of media Jimmy had long since seen, Tango laughs, and Jimmy grins his way. He’s getting better at that—laughing. Jimmy likes it.

And maybe he likes grief. Just a little.

(send me a number 1-100 and I'll try to write a little something based on the song!)

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apelectricalservicesadelaide · 9 months ago

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Enhance your home connectivity with APElectrical Services. We specialize in installing data points in houses, ensuring reliable internet access and seamless network performance.

#Installing Data Points in House

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aspiringtrashpanda · 9 months ago

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Find the prompt list HERE.

── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ──

DAY 26 Prompt: Horror Movie/Game C/W: Mind control, attempted drowning 1.9k

Day 26 - Horror Game/Movie

The title screen of Siren Seaside: Paradise Shores practically emanated sunshine. The beautifully rendered waves lapped at a sandy shore, a rhythmic rush of water timed to the motions. Gulls cawed in the background, looping a predetermined route through fluffy clouds slowly panning to the right, slipping behind the row of tropical, fruit-bearing trees that led away from the golden beach.

You couldn’t hit PLAY any faster, excited to start the cozy seaside-life RPG that had popped up on your D.D.D. overnight. Levi must have sent an invite code to your device sometime after midnight, the code meant to automatically install the game.

He knew you were a fan of slice-of-life games, farming simulators and the like, so a gesture such as this wasn’t that odd. If anything, he had given you something to look forward to after classes ended.

Now comfortable in your casual clothes, your uniform draped over one of the many chairs in your room, you decided to get right to Siren Seaside. Perching on the edge of your mattress, you figured you could relocate later, once you got a feel for the gameplay and what was required to progress.

A cute little gull in a sailor’s cap flew down from the picturesque sky, stuck the landing in the sand and waved to the little avatar you had designed to resemble yourself.

“Welcome to Paradise Shores!” The bird squawked. “We’re so happy you could join us.”

You smiled down at your D.D.D. screen, the gull’s cheery dance a fleeting moment before it deflated. An animated exhale told you the bird was disappointed. “See, Paradise Shores has fallen on some hard times lately…But surely, you can help us!”

The jingling music seemed to swell in the background as the bird perked up. It was a pleasant melody, all marimba, bass, and the soft tap of a snare. It was certainly evocative of a vacation. What you wouldn’t give for a piña colada in a coconut husk, right about now.

“The island goddess is upset with us, for we’ve been too busy to worship at her altar…” Lifting its speckled wing to rub at its brow, careful not to knock its tiny sailor’s hat, it shot you a sheepish grin. With new enthusiasm, it explained, “That’s where you come in! If you can appease the goddess with some foraged offerings, she’s sure to breathe new life into Paradise Shores!”

The screen swiped to the next part of the tutorial, a graphic of waves pulling in the tide as instructions popped up onto your screen, as well as a request to grant access to other apps on your D.D.D.

FIRST TASK: Earn Paradise Points by moving throughout your world. Siren Seaside requires access to your camera, location, and fitness data to promote interacting with your reality to progress in game. Try taking a few steps while looking through your camera!

You did as you were asked, rising from your bed and navigating through your room, through the lens of your D.D.D. You laughed, watching as the screen shifted with your movements. If you stepped towards the left, shifted your body in the same direction, you could make out a path leading into the island’s jungle. Swinging the device to the right pointed towards the pier.

There was a voice singing along to the music now. Something low and jolly, harmonizing nicely with the brisk marimba. It resonated in your bones, an almost familiar nostalgia to the notes singing incomprehensible lyrics.

Your gut told you to head for the pier.

Stepping out of your room, you navigated towards your goal while walking through the House of Lamentation. You learned quickly that it didn’t matter what direction in which you were stepping in your reality. As long as you kept the screen angled to your destination in-game, then you progressed towards the pier.

You were starting to notice a twang to the voice chanting in the music. It warmed your heart, the quirky little intonation choices the musician made. The melody seemed to swell with every step towards the waves that lapped at the legs of the pier, nearly knocking the pastel barnacles from the support beams. It was almost mesmerizing, the way the sea moved with the music, cresting at the highest note of the melodic malloting and falling away at the command of the voice.

The ocean itself glittered like jewels, freshly polished and examined beneath a spotlight. The seabreeze dusted your cheeks, cool and salty, and you wanted nothing more than to just submerge yourself into the water. It had been so long since you had been to the beach. Memories of dipping your toes into the shallows, laughing as you were sprayed by a nearby wave when it crashed onto the shore, flashed behind your eyes.

Life was easier back then, wasn’t it?

You wet your dry, chapped lips, watching the water on the screen undulate in time to the steady beat of the soundtrack. You had a sports drink in the fridge, didn’t you? That would certainly quench your thirst.

Allowing the tap of the snare, the clash of the hi-hat to accent the clap of your feet against the ground, you molded your movements to the melody swimming through your mind. Two steps forward, two pretty lines, almost cooed, by that achingly familiar voice. You stepped to the right–the music didn’t like that.

But the left? The marimba jingled in delight.

Your throat itched, and no matter how much saliva you managed to swallow, it wasn’t enough. You were thirsty. So very thirsty. Longing for those better times, those beach days long gone where you could sip lemonade while the waves lapped at your ankles, at your waist, at your collarbones.

You were almost in the kitchen, the sports drink beckoning you. One sip and you’d be there, upon tropical shores. You were so parched, dehydrated, left to shrivel up and die in the scorching savannah in the southern region of the Devildom. That calming voice, the voice that promised relief.

You just needed to reach into the fridge.

One more step, and you would quench your thirst, dip your toes into the metaphorical ocean within the bottle. The voice encouraged you, praised your resolve. You were doing so well. You were going to get everything you wanted.

Just one.

More.

Step.

“H-HEY!”

It was a distant sound, barely even perceptible as you settled into the cool bliss of the game, spirals of blue cradling your limbs and satisfying that pesky thirst. Oh, how sweet the taste of the drink, of the gentle crooning in your ear. Drink, it sang. Drink, and you will find peace. The way you sunk into the abyss, supported by those sugary sounds of comfort, floating in what you knew to be the heaven you had always longed for…Why, this game knew you better than you knew yourself.

SPLASH!

A flash of indigo, a tug on the collar of your shirt. Everything moved so slowly, sluggishly, like you were being pulled through mud. You felt the fingers dig into your wrist to check your pulse. You felt the quivering lips on your own, breathing life into your lungs.

Next thing you knew, you were spewing water from your lungs, oxygen scorching the inside of your chest as your eyes flew open.

“ARE YOU INSANE?!” Leviathan nails dug into your shoulders, frenzied eyes glistening as tears tracked down his face. Looming over you, he nearly eclipsed the pretty undulation of the aquarium reflection on his ceiling.

You blinked. Your eyes stung, your lashes wet and your sinuses on fire. Each inhale shocked your system, and you barely dislodged his grip to roll over before you spit up water into his face.

“I…” Speaking hurt. It hurt so much. But Levi was crouched there, confusion clashing the panic in his amber gaze, and you knew you had to explain. With a cough, you tried again, “I thought I was in the kitchen? I was so thirsty.”

Levi glanced around his room, as if he thought he was missing something. “Why would you think you’re in the kitchen?!”

Spluttering, all you could manage was a meek, “How did you know where to find me?”

“Because you passed everyone like a zombie and they’re freaking the Devildom out!” Levi threw up his arms, his aura overwhelming, pressing into you from where he paced around his room. It was oppressive, all fear and paranoia and the slightest pinch of betrayal.

The world seemed fuzzy, as if you were peering in from outside your body. What happened? Why were you drenched? Why were you in Levi’s room?

Why was he losing his shit?

“Seriously!” His canines glinted in the blue light of the aquarium, “What were you thinking?”

Your tongue heavy in your mouth, it took effort to respond, “I was playing Siren Seaside… I was headed towards the pier…”

Brilliant eyes flicked to the D.D.D. glitching in the vice grip of your hand, water damage frying its insides. “Siren Seaside? Where did you hear about that?”

“You didn’t install it for me?”

“N-no?”

Something inside you went cold, an ice cube plopped into your stomach. Your voice dropping, piecing the puzzle together as you admitted, “It was on my D.D.D. when I woke up…”

“That’s because it’s cursed. It’s a cursed game!” Though Levi voiced your realization aloud, it failed to soothe your humiliation, your terror. “It’s meant to trick players into drowning themselves!”

“Oh.” You answered dumbly, gooseflesh erupting over your forearms, creeping up your neck. You blinked your aching eyes, finally acknowledging the smudges and handprints on the glass of Levi’s massive aquarium.

You supposed it made sense. Sirens were known to lure people to their death by drawing them in with a dangerous melody. You should have realized that. Hell, you had witnessed Levi and Beel struggle through making a cocktail while listening to Lucifer’s recording of a siren’s song. How had you missed something so obvious?

Though the song, the voice, had felt so familiar. That’s what had mesmerized you, wasn’t it? That comforting twang, that gentle laugh. The game had used a voice that you associated with safety.

“I’m…” Levi’s breath ghosted over your ear, and you heard him plop down behind you. Before you could ask him what he was doing, his arms wound around your waist, pulled your spine to his chest. His long legs–sweatpants damp from the unavoidable splash of tugging you from the tank–bracketed yours, his entire frame curling around you as if to protect you from further harm. “I’m so glad I caught you.”

Your breath caught in your throat. He was trembling, you could feel his bones rattling against yours. Squeezing you tight, he nuzzled his face into the column of your throat, and you could have sworn you heard him whine something solemn and mournful.

“Levi!” You protested, his grip around your middle turning a little too demon, “I can’t breathe!”

“Gah! S-sorry!” With a yelp, he loosened his arms, but refused to move from his position. It hurt your heart–Leviathan wasn’t the most physically affectionate of your housemates. You must have really scared him to prompt such a reaction.

Hooking his chin over your shoulder, he gestured to the device flickering in your hand. In a commanding voice, low and rather unlike him, Levi insisted, “Now, give me your D.D.D. We’re putting it in rice and deleting that game right away.”

As he grumbled to himself, his octave reflective of his distress, you couldn’t help but think…

That pretty crooning that harmonized beneath the marimba hadn’t sounded that different.

── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ──

OBEY ME! MONTH MASTERLIST

#obey me month #day 26 #obey me leviathan #obey me levi #leviathan I love you #obey me nightbringer #obey me fanfic #obey me shall we date

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mostlysignssomeportents · 2 years ago

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A link-clump demands a linkdump

Cometh the weekend, cometh the linkdump. My daily-ish newsletter includes a section called "Hey look at this," with three short links per day, but sometimes those links get backed up and I need to clean house. Here's the eight previous installments:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

The country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla is .ai, and that's turned into millions of dollars worth of royalties as "entrepreneurs" scramble to sprinkle some buzzword-compliant AI stuff on their businesses in the most superficial way possible:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-fever-turns-anguillas-ai-domain-into-a-digital-gold-mine/

All told, .ai domain royalties will account for about ten percent of the country's GDP.

It's actually kind of nice to see Anguilla finding some internet money at long last. Back in the 1990s, when I was a freelance web developer, I got hired to work on the investor website for a publicly traded internet casino based in Anguilla that was a scammy disaster in every conceivable way. The company had been conceived of by people who inherited a modestly successful chain of print-shops and decided to diversify by buying a dormant penny mining stock and relaunching it as an online casino.

But of course, online casinos were illegal nearly everywhere. Not in Anguilla – or at least, that's what the founders told us – which is why they located their servers there, despite the lack of broadband or, indeed, reliable electricity at their data-center. At a certain point, the whole thing started to whiff of a stock swindle, a pump-and-dump where they'd sell off shares in that ex-mining stock to people who knew even less about the internet than they did and skedaddle. I got out, and lost track of them, and a search for their names and business today turns up nothing so I assume that it flamed out before it could ruin any retail investors' lives.

Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory, one of those former British colonies that was drained and then given "independence" by paternalistic imperial administrators half a world away. The country's main industries are tourism and "finance" – which is to say, it's a pearl in the globe-spanning necklace of tax- and corporate-crime-havens the UK established around the world so its most vicious criminals – the hereditary aristocracy – can continue to use Britain's roads and exploit its educated workforce without paying any taxes.

This is the "finance curse," and there are tiny, struggling nations all around the world that live under it. Nick Shaxson dubbed them "Treasure Islands" in his outstanding book of the same name:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780230341722/treasureislands

I can't imagine that the AI bubble will last forever – anything that can't go on forever eventually stops – and when it does, those .ai domain royalties will dry up. But until then, I salute Anguilla, which has at last found the internet riches that I played a small part in bringing to it in the previous century.

The AI bubble is indeed overdue for a popping, but while the market remains gripped by irrational exuberance, there's lots of weird stuff happening around the edges. Take Inject My PDF, which embeds repeating blocks of invisible text into your resume:

https://kai-greshake.de/posts/inject-my-pdf/

The text is tuned to make resume-sorting Large Language Models identify you as the ideal candidate for the job. It'll even trick the summarizer function into spitting out text that does not appear in any human-readable form on your CV.

Embedding weird stuff into resumes is a hacker tradition. I first encountered it at the Chaos Communications Congress in 2012, when Ang Cui used it as an example in his stellar "Print Me If You Dare" talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8

Cui figured out that one way to update the software of a printer was to embed an invisible Postscript instruction in a document that basically said, "everything after this is a firmware update." Then he came up with 100 lines of perl that he hid in documents with names like cv.pdf that would flash the printer when they ran, causing it to probe your LAN for vulnerable PCs and take them over, opening a reverse-shell to his command-and-control server in the cloud. Compromised printers would then refuse to apply future updates from their owners, but would pretend to install them and even update their version numbers to give verisimilitude to the ruse. The only way to exorcise these haunted printers was to send 'em to the landfill. Good times!

Printers are still a dumpster fire, and it's not solely about the intrinsic difficulty of computer security. After all, printer manufacturers have devoted enormous resources to hardening their products against their owners, making it progressively harder to use third-party ink. They're super perverse about it, too – they send "security updates" to your printer that update the printer's security against you – run these updates and your printer downgrades itself by refusing to use the ink you chose for it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

It's a reminder that what a monopolist thinks of as "security" isn't what you think of as security. Oftentimes, their security is antithetical to your security. That was the case with Web Environment Integrity, a plan by Google to make your phone rat you out to advertisers' servers, revealing any adblocking modifications you might have installed so that ad-serving companies could refuse to talk to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

WEI is now dead, thanks to a lot of hueing and crying by people like us:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/google_abandons_web_environment_integrity/

But the dream of securing Google against its own users lives on. Youtube has embarked on an aggressive campaign of refusing to show videos to people running ad-blockers, triggering an arms-race of ad-blocker-blockers and ad-blocker-blocker-blockers:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-will-the-ad-versus-ad-blocker-arms-race-end/

The folks behind Ublock Origin are racing to keep up with Google's engineers' countermeasures, and there's a single-serving website called "Is uBlock Origin updated to the last Anti-Adblocker YouTube script?" that will give you a realtime, one-word status update:

https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/

One in four web users has an ad-blocker, a stat that Doc Searls pithily summarizes as "the biggest boycott in world history":

https://doc.searls.com/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

Zero app users have ad-blockers. That's not because ad-blocking an app is harder than ad-blocking the web – it's because reverse-engineering an app triggers liability under IP laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which can put you away for 5 years for a first offense. That's what I mean when I say that "IP is anything that lets a company control its customers, critics or competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

I predicted that apps would open up all kinds of opportunities for abusive, monopolistic conduct back in 2010, and I'm experiencing a mix of sadness and smugness (I assume there's a German word for this emotion) at being so thoroughly vindicated by history:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

The more control a company can exert over its customers, the worse it will be tempted to treat them. These systems of control shift the balance of power within companies, making it harder for internal factions that defend product quality and customer interests to win against the enshittifiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The result has been a Great Enshittening, with platforms of all description shifting value from their customers and users to their shareholders, making everything palpably worse. The only bright side is that this has created the political will to do something about it, sparking a wave of bold, muscular antitrust action all over the world.

The Google antitrust case is certainly the most important corporate lawsuit of the century (so far), but Judge Amit Mehta's deference to Google's demands for secrecy has kept the case out of the headlines. I mean, Sam Bankman-Fried is a psychopathic thief, but even so, his trial does not deserve its vastly greater prominence, though, if you haven't heard yet, he's been convicted and will face decades in prison after he exhausts his appeals:

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-on-all-charges

The secrecy around Google's trial has relaxed somewhat, and the trickle of revelations emerging from the cracks in the courthouse are fascinating. For the first time, we're able to get a concrete sense of which queries are the most lucrative for Google:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/1/23941766/google-antitrust-trial-search-queries-ad-money

The list comes from 2018, but it's still wild. As David Pierce writes in The Verge, the top twenty includes three iPhone-related terms, five insurance queries, and the rest are overshadowed by searches for customer service info for monopolistic services like Xfinity, Uber and Hulu.

All-in-all, we're living through a hell of a moment for piercing the corporate veil. Maybe it's the problem of maintaining secrecy within large companies, or maybe the the rampant mistreatment of even senior executives has led to more leaks and whistleblowing. Either way, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous leaker who revealed the unbelievable pettiness of former HBO president of programming Casey Bloys, who ordered his underlings to create an army of sock-puppet Twitter accounts to harass TV and movie critics who panned HBO's shows:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/hbo-casey-bloys-secret-twitter-trolls-tv-critics-leaked-texts-lawsuit-the-idol-1234867722/

These trolling attempts were pathetic, even by the standards of thick-fingered corporate execs. Like, accusing critics who panned the shitty-ass Perry Mason reboot of disrespecting veterans because the fictional Mason's back-story had him storming the beach on D-Day.

The pushback against corporate bullying is everywhere, and of course, the vanguard is the labor movement. Did you hear that the UAW won their strike against the auto-makers, scoring raises for all workers based on the increases in the companies' CEO pay? The UAW isn't done, either! Their incredible new leader, Shawn Fain, has called for a general strike in 2028:

https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/

The massive victory for unionized auto-workers has thrown a spotlight on the terrible working conditions and pay for workers at Tesla, a criminal company that has no compunctions about violating labor law to prevent its workers from exercising their legal rights. Over in Sweden, union workers are teaching Tesla a lesson. After the company tried its illegal union-busting playbook on Tesla service centers, the unionized dock-workers issued an ultimatum: respect your workers or face a blockade at Sweden's ports that would block any Tesla from being unloaded into the EU's fifth largest Tesla market:

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-sweden-strike/

Of course, the real solution to Teslas – and every other kind of car – is to redesign our cities for public transit, walking and cycling, making cars the exception for deliveries, accessibility and other necessities. Transitioning to EVs will make a big dent in the climate emergency, but it won't make our streets any safer – and they keep getting deadlier.

Last summer, my dear old pal Ted Kulczycky got in touch with me to tell me that Talking Heads were going to be all present in public for the first time since the band's breakup, as part of the debut of the newly remastered print of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert movie of all time. Even better, the show would be in Toronto, my hometown, where Ted and I went to high-school together, at TIFF.

Ted is the only person I know who is more obsessed with Talking Heads than I am, and he started working on tickets for the show while I starting pricing plane tickets. And then, the unthinkable happened: Ted's wife, Serah, got in touch to say that Ted had been run over by a car while getting off of a streetcar, that he was severely injured, and would require multiple surgeries.

But this was Ted, so of course he was still planning to see the show. And he did, getting a day-pass from the hospital and showing up looking like someone from a Kids In The Hall sketch who'd been made up to look like someone who'd been run over by a car:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53182440282/

In his Globe and Mail article about Ted's experience, Brad Wheeler describes how the whole hospital rallied around Ted to make it possible for him to get to the movie:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-how-a-talking-heads-superfan-found-healing-with-the-concert-film-stop/

He also mentions that Ted is working on a book and podcast about Stop Making Sense. I visited Ted in the hospital the day after the gig and we talked about the book and it sounds amazing. Also? The movie was incredible. See it in Imax.

That heartwarming tale of healing through big suits is a pretty good place to wrap up this linkdump, but I want to call your attention to just one more thing before I go: Robin Sloan's Snarkmarket piece about blogging and "stock and flow":

https://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890/

Sloan makes the excellent case that for writers, having a "flow" of short, quick posts builds the audience for a "stock" of longer, more synthetic pieces like books. This has certainly been my experience, but I think it's only part of the story – there are good, non-mercenary reasons for writers to do a lot of "flow." As I wrote in my 2021 essay, "The Memex Method," turning your commonplace book into a database – AKA "blogging" – makes you write better notes to yourself because you know others will see them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

This, in turn, creates a supersaturated, subconscious solution of fragments that are just waiting to nucleate and crystallize into full-blown novels and nonfiction books and other "stock." That's how I came out of lockdown with nine new books. The next one is The Lost Cause, a hopepunk science fiction novel about the climate whose early fans include Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. It's out on November 14:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

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/2023/11/05/variegated/#nein

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mariacallous · 4 months ago

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As the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) continues to rampage through the United States federal government, essentially guided by Elon Musk, the group has also been upending traditional IT boundaries—evaluating digital systems and allegedly accessing personally identifiable information as well as data that has typically been off-limits to those without specific training. Last week, The New York Times reported that the White House is adding Musk-owned SpaceX’s Starlink Wi-Fi “to improve Wi-Fi connectivity on the complex,” according to a statement from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. The White House's Starlink internet service is reportedly being donated by the company.

Spotty internet is an annoying but highly solvable problem that WIRED has reported on extensively. Of course, the White House is a highly complex organization operating out of a historic building, but network security researchers, government contractors, and former intelligence analysts with years of experience in US federal government security all tell WIRED that adding Starlink Wi-Fi in a seemingly rushed and haphazard way is an inefficient and counterproductive approach to solving connectivity issues. And they emphasized that it could set problematic precedents across the US government: that new pieces of technology can simply be layered into an environment at will without adequate oversight and monitoring.

“This is shadow IT, creating a network to bypass existing controls,” alleges Nicholas Weaver, a member of the nonprofit International Computer Science Institute's network security team and a computer science lecturer at UC Davis. He adds that while secret and top secret information is typically (but not always) processed only on special, separate federal networks that have no wireless access, the security and uniformity of White House Wi-Fi is still extremely important to national security. “A network like the White House unclassified side is still going to be very sensitive,” he says.

“Just like the Biden Administration did on numerous occasions, the White House is working to improve WiFi connectivity on the complex,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt tells WIRED in a statement.

A White House source who asked not to be named supported the switch, arguing that in some areas of the campus, “the old Wi-Fi was trash.”

Researchers point out that while Starlink is a robust commercial ISP like any other, it is not clear that it is being implemented in compliance with White House Communication Agency requirements. If the controls on the White House Starlink Wi-Fi are more lax than on other White House Wi-Fi, it could introduce security exposures and blind spots in network monitoring for anomalous activity.

“The only reason they'd need Starlink would be to bypass existing security controls that are in place from WHCA,” claims former NSA hacker Jake Williams. “The biggest issues would be: First, if they don't have full monitoring of the Starlink connection. And second, if it allows remote management tools, so they could get remote access back into the White House networks. Obviously anyone could abuse that access.”

One baffling aspect of the arrangement is that Starlink and other satellite internet is designed to be used in places that have little or no access to terrestrial internet service—in other words, places where there are no reliable fiber lines or no wired infrastructure at all. Instead of a traditional ISP modem, Starlink customers get special panels that they install on a roof or other outdoor place to receive connectivity from orbiting satellites. The New York Times reported, though, that the White House Starlink panels are actually installed miles away at a White House data center that is routing the connectivity over existing fiber lines. Multiple sources emphasized to WIRED that this setup is bizarre.

“It is extra stupid to go satellite to fiber to actual site,” ICSI's Weaver says. “Starlink is inferior service anyplace where you have wire-line internet already available and, even in places which don't, inferior if you have reasonable line of sight to a cell tower.”

Weaver and others note that Starlink is a robust product and isn't inherently unreliable just because it is delivered via satellite. But in a location where fiber lines are highly available and, ultimately, the service is being delivered via those lines anyway, the setup is deeply inefficient.

While Starlink as a service is technically reliable, incorporating it in the White House could create a long-term federal dependence on an Elon Musk–controlled service, which could create future instabilities. After European officials raised concerns earlier this month on whether Starlink might stop serving Ukraine, Musk posted on social media: “To be extremely clear, no matter how much I disagree with the Ukraine policy, Starlink will never turn off its terminals … We would never do such a thing or use it as a bargaining chip.”

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meret118 · 3 months ago

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How Americans Are Surveilled During Protests

https://www.wired.com/story/uncanny-valley-podcast-how-americans-are-surveilled-during-protests/

Internet Sleuths Slam Trump for Photoshopping MS-13 Tat on Deported Dad’s Hand

https://www.thedailybeast.com/internet-sleuths-slam-trump-for-photoshopping-ms-13-tat-on-deported-dads-hand/

DOGE Is Just Getting Warmed Up DOGE has tapped into some of the most sensitive and valuable data in the world. Now it’s starting to put it to work.

But in theory, an API for all IRS data would make it possible for any agency—or any outside party with the right permissions, for that matter—to access the most personal, and valuable, data the US government holds about its citizens. The blurriness of DOGE’s mission begins to gain focus.

Even more, since we know that the IRS is already sharing its data in unprecedented ways: A deal the agency recently signed with the Department of Homeland Security provides sensitive information about undocumented immigrants.

. . .

The Washington Post reported this week that DOGE representatives across government agencies—from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Social Security Administration—are putting data that is normally cordoned off in service of identifying undocumented immigrants. At the Department of Labor, as WIRED reported Friday, DOGE has gained access to sensitive data about immigrants and farm workers. And that’s just the data that stays within the government itself.

This week NPR reported that a whistleblower at the National Labor Relations Board claims that staffers observed spikes in data leaving the agency after DOGE got access to its systems, with destinations unknown. The whistleblower further claims that DOGE agents appeared to take steps to “cover their tracks,” switching off or evading the monitoring tools that keep tabs on who’s doing what inside computer systems. (An NLRB spokesperson denied to NPR that DOGE had access to the agency’s systems.)

What could that data be used for? Anything. Everything. A company facing a union complaint at the NLRB could, as NPR notes, get access to “damaging testimony, union leadership, legal strategies and internal data on competitors.” There’s no confirmation that it’s been used for those things—but more to the point, there’s also currently no way to know either way.

www.wired.com/story/doge-is-just-getting-warmed-up-data-immigration/

Trump Is Still Trying to Undermine Elections

Now that Trump has installed election deniers throughout his Administration, he has been busy dismantling the guardrails protecting voting and voters.

. . .

As Marc Elias, an elections lawyer who litigates on behalf of Democrats, told me, “When Donald Trump says that he does not believe there should be voting machines, you should believe him. When he says there should only be voting on Election Day, you should believe him.”

. . .

“In claiming to fire a commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, the president violates the law, the separation of powers, and generations of Supreme Court precedent.” He added that the F.E.C.’s commissioners “are confirmed by Congress to serve the vital role of protecting the democratic rights of American voters. As the only agency that regulates the president, Congress intentionally did not grant the president the power to fire FEC commissioners.”

Less than two weeks later, Trump issued an executive order that states, “No employee of the executive branch acting in their official capacity may advance an interpretation of the law as the position of the United States that contravenes the President or the Attorney General’s opinion on a matter of law.”

In plain language, this mandate cancels the independence of independent agencies and, in the context of the F.E.C., gives the President the ability to make and adjudicate campaign rules to his advantage. The Democratic National Committee, along with the Democratic Congressional and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committees, is now suing Trump and Bondi’s office, on the ground that the order violates federal law, but for now it stands.