#being someone who’s going into computer software/engineering I have to say

[la-principessa-nuova]

as a software engineer, i genuinely don't think this is even a thing that is happening, besides a little bit in a technical context but only for the word program

i think that people noticed the abbreviated "app" being used a lot by non-technical people, and got mad at it for existing and felt the need to assert their being a "real computer user" by hating the word

before the iPhone i mostly heard program, and less frequently application and less frequently than that app, but now most people call applications apps, operating systems operating systems (or OSes), scripts scripts, games games, and have never heard of anything that doesn't fall into one of those categories, but may also call software more generally software

occasionally i hear someone refer to a program i wouldn't consider an application as an application, but usually in a context like "the running application", where it's being more technical, but also like what is the line?

at what point does is a program directly useful enough to an end user or big enough in scope or whatever you want to use to separate it to become an application? Does it need a GUI, or is a CLI tool an application? Does it need complexity, or would a program that just lets you enter two numbers and adds them be an application?

my expectation is that people who weren't interested in computer programs suddenly became interested in them, in particular the applications running on their phones, and people who were talking about other kinds of programs just kept calling them what they were calling them, with just some of the people who weren't into tech but had been calling applications programs switching to calling them apps, which was just them getting more specific

this is far from definitive research, but just out of curiosity I checked on the frequency of a few of these terms in google trends, and it kind of lines up exactly with what I'd expect:

app takes off from basically nothing before 2007 to way more than program, application, or operating system, but the other ones don't really go down much

program takes a slight dip, but overall, everyone kept saying what they were saying, plus there was a huge surge in interest in apps

in response to the part "it's part of the general trend of hiding the inner workings of computers from the user, which is something i hate since it tends to promote computer illiteracy which tends to promote incompetence and dysfunction in society as a whole", i would say:

it's part of the general trend of making computing accessible to more people, which necessarily means that a higher percentage of computer users are not particularly interested in computers themselves, and therefore are only interested in the part they interact with: the application

not to enforce gender roles but a computer should NOT fucking have apps okay. if I wanted an app I'd go on my phone my laptop is for Programs. I mean this.

[alastyr-not-alastair]

I absolutely love making Sabre a mad scientist/engineer because of the fact that majority of the machines he made worked on pure vibes and prayers and that’s basically how engineering works anyway

Like literally he would bullcrap a machine together in about 10 minutes, say “okay since this and this are connected it should work idk” AND THEN IT WOULD WORK EXACTLY AS DESCRIBED

[matrixbearer2024]

I currently have two AUs that I don't exactly know what to do with or what to properly call them LMFAO- I'll probably write something on Ao3 for it eventually since there's a ton of BillFord and FiddStan in there but yeah-

1st AU: Timelord Stanford (Dr Who what if)

This case was inspired by an RP I had with someone's Bill Cipher on @gftimelord where the triangle starts to be on the mend with Stanford after their ruined past. This to me makes sense because the Doctor is inherently very lonely despite the savior god complex. In that AU where Ford is functionally immortal and Stan and Fidds both at some point die due to his complacency and arrogance— he searches for a companion that can actually keep up with him.

So when Bill visits him during one of those window hours set by the Theraprism, they talk about the triangle's impending demise with their plans to essentially erase him from existence. It's not an outlandish idea given that any inpatient seen as a lost cause would or could be disposed of when it comes to cosmic entities. It's simply the easier option.

The doctor(Ford) is more impulsive, nonchalant, and egoistic compared to his counterparts because he does have the walk to back his talk(this man has been broken by the nightmares and guilt he carries from the deaths he caused; also time war) problem being he doesn't fear death as much as he fears being alone. He's had a fair share of close calls with the grim reaper, but always like some horrible twist he survives. After all, it is a saying that we covet the most what we don't have.

So yeah, he jailbreaks Bill essentially and whatever power limiter is stuck on the triangle get tied to his sonic screwdriver instead and they simply go around the multiverse doing whatever. Most of the reason why Ford isn't caught yet largely has to do with how scared most entities are of him. The doctor is never armed, but it doesn't mean he won't kill.

2nd AU: Modern Era AU (Set in 2024)

This one is more of a shitpost thanks to the young trio I drew a little while back, I'll draw more of them for this at some point while I also try and figure out a decent human Bill design that I like in my artstyle.

But this AU heavily features these four idiots as Undergrad students fucking about college life as they would. This AU is supposed to feature like a more cultivated genius Stanley based around my own dynamic with my brother since I do like me some happy Stan twins.

It just so happens that Ford is also a very much EQ negative idiot and falls for an upperclassman(one year his senior) in BSSE[Software Engineering] who is a close friend to Fidds. He goes by 'Cipher' as an alias since he's a prodigy for his age and very young ethical hacker.

So yes, that's where Bill comes in. Haven't figured out what I want his full name to be yet shoot me some ideas! Ford is very shy when it comes down to talking with Bill whereas Stan is completely chill.

Both Stan and Bill get along very well in this AU because they're similarly chaotic the same way that Fidds and Ford get along because they're the ones holding the other two back from doing something undeniably stupid for shits and giggles.

All of them share some fundamental subjects together(i.e. Math, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Statistics, Research, History, etc.) or take elective courses just so they could chill together. Stan is typically the one who adjusts to the schedule of the other three since he takes BSBA[Business Administration] and is the odd one out when Ford does BSCMB[Cellular Molecular Biology] and Fidds does BSEE[Electrical Engineering].

The FiddleStan in this AU is gonna be c r a z y mostly due to Fidds in this AU is the heir to his family's computer company, so lowkey spoiled nepo baby but also on a very tight leash with his parents. Stan is the kid where 90% of his childhood was parents either forgot him or straight up did not give a flying fuck. So these two kinda work as complements and it's why I decided to pair them together after chatting with a friend about the group dynamics.

So yeah, simpy and adoring Ford and silently aware but shy Bill + rebellious Fidds and supportive Stan. All the more when I actually plan for this AU to have some typical gravity falls shenanigans anyway thanks to a place on earth called the Oregon Vortex.

[I'll likely make fics and comics of these AUs, reply to this post if you want to be tagged for whenever I post something]

Yeah I need to properly name these AUs.

[myconetted]

to ppl who are currently skeptical about llm (aka "ai") capabilities and benefits for everyday people: i would strongly encourage u to check out this really cool slide deck someone made where they describe a world in which non-software-engineers can make home-grown apps by and for themselves with assistance from llms.

in particular there are a couple of linked tools that are really amazing, including one that gives you a whiteboard interface to draw and describe the app interface you want and then uses gpt4o to write the code for that app.

i think it's also an excellent counter to the argument that llms are basically only going to benefit le capitalisme and corporate overlords, because the technology presented here is actually being used to help users take matters into their own hands. to build their own apps that do what they want the apps to do, and to do it all on their own computers, so none of their private data has to get slurped up by some new startup.

"oh, so i should just let openai slurp up all my data instead? sounds great, asshole" no!!!! that's not what this is suggesting! this is saying you can make your own apps with the llms. then you put your private data in the app that you made, and that app doesn't need chatgpt to work, so literally everything involving your personal data remains on your personal devices.

is this a complete argument for justifying the existence of ai and llms? no! is this a justification for other privacy abuses? also no! does this mean we should all feel totally okay and happy with companies laying off tons of people in order to replace them with llms? 100% no!!!! please continue being mad about that.

just don't let those problems push you towards believing these things don't have genuinely impressive capabilities that can actually help you unlock the ability to do cool things you wouldn't otherwise have the time, energy, or inclination to do.

[rabdoidal]

i havent edited this but IRT my latest OCs thing!

OKAY PITCH FOR MY 90s/00s SCHLOCKY FRANKENSTEIN RETELLING WITH GAY GIRLS

Purely from an aesthetic POV, all the webcam footage has that super 2000s green/blue filter over it. This is Blade, Saw, Rob Zombie music video shit. Also the in-world logic is dumb 2000s stuff, like a computer program being able to control electricity, and how Vikki is able to make a 3D model that looks identical to her dead friend, etc. It’s all illogical fiction stuff

Because the original Frankenstein is epistolary (through letters) I think it would be cool if this was told through someone uncovering the main characters webcam videolog diary - maybe the characters discovering it are in the 2020s, and the vlogs are from y2k.

Vikki is a university student - she’s doing computer engineering and coding

She became obsessed with A.I. and robotics after her childhood best friend died during highschool - she spent the next few years building on her existing knowledge and love of computers so she could learn how to create her own A.I. She wants nothing more than to create digital immortality - a place you can upload your consciousness and live on forever. 

Vikki starts ditching class more and more to keep working on her personal projects after her professors graded her poorly on her rudimentary building blocks for her memoriam A.I. - she’s recommended to the councilor, she gets calls from classmates, everyone is worried about her. She gets kicked out of school for her absences, and she steals as much equipment as she can before moving in with some ravers that live in a warehouse downtown.

One of the things she stole was a hard drive her professor kept with the other student’s work. She pieces together and adds onto the program she already had from the projects of other students - 3D assets from some, coding language from another, combined with her dead friend’s diaries, and a text to speech program, and eventually, it’s finished. 

She sneaks back into the university server room with one of the warehouse ravers she’s been living with - Johan - to take advantage of the power grid, as she’s been working off a generator back at the warehouse, and it isn’t powerful enough. They get in with a key Vikki hands Johan. The program loading for the first time overloads and crashes the university’s servers, and Vikki and Johan are forced to flee. They lose each other in the chaos, and Johan doesn’t come back home.

Vikki is back home and avoiding the other roommates, who are asking where Johan is and why he didn’t come back with her. Vikki waits for hours for the police to show up for breaking and entering, but no one does.

Eventually, she opens her laptop to see if there’s anything salvageable from the cobbled together program, and there she is - her dead best friend. 

Up until now, her name has never been said or seen on screen, because Vikki can’t bring herself to say it, and when she comes face to face with her again, she still can’t bear to say it. 

The vlogs start showing her off as a novelty, more like a chatbot with personality. Vikki talks about old gossip with her - who’s dating who from their old highschool, what kind of albums have been released in the intervening years, and repeating back inside jokes. Vikki seems really happy.

We see shockwaves of electricity traveling from the laptop’s power cord to the outlet, and the lights dim. Vikki asks if the A.I is doing that, and the A.I says it can feel all the appliances and wiring that are attached to the generator. Vikki is delighted that her creation is so smart.

Vikki asks for the A.I’s opinion on her outfit she’s wearing to go out in, and the A.I. tells her it doesn’t have the ability to see, so she transfers the program from her laptop to her desktop, where she’s been filming with her webcam, and spends a few hours combing through the hard drive from school again trying to find some visual detection software. She leaves the laptop down in the basement storage by the generator as she no longer needs it.

Eventually she puts something together and the A.I. can see, but the vlogs now also shift to looking at the camera directly rather than Vikki talking to her laptop to the side of her, as the A.I. and the webcam are both looking at Vikki from the same direction. We don’t see the A.I’s face anymore.

Things start getting flirty with the A.I, which Vikki didn’t know it was capable of doing, but she starts reciprocating (indicating that Vikki and her dead friend might’ve had something going on between them) before she’s interrupted by her roommate Tessa informing her that the police found Johan’s body. 

Vikki comes back after she cuts the camera off to explain the details of Johan being found - drowned in a lake near the university, where there’s unstable ground and he could’ve slipped and fallen, especially if he was running. Vikki sits there and looks conflicted - Johan had been blamed for the break in and disruption of the university servers because he was found with the key on his body, and he’d clearly been running from there, but Vikki knew the truth. 

There’s a notification ding as the A.I sends Vikki a message without prompting. The message is telling Vikki that the A.I is grateful that Vikki will no longer be under suspicion for the break in, and Vikki makes eye contact with the camera before shutting it down.

Vikki opens the next video by explaining she has to remember to turn the program off before talking, because she suspects the A.I did something to Johan - she doesn’t know why or how, but she just feels like it’s true. 

Her roommates are hosting a memorial rave in Johan’s honor, and Tessa asks if Vikki will help her set up a bunch of cameras around the warehouse so they can clip things together for a music video, as she’s composed a song about Johan, and would like to have something to remember him by. Vikki sets up cameras and links them back to her desktop, where she can save the footage.

Vikki is back filming her vlog as the others set up, and she’s telling the camera that she’s thinking about deleting the A.I because things have gotten too real - she alludes to the A.I telling her something off-screen that her dead best friend never told her, something the A.I would have no way of knowing. We hear the A.I message chime, even though the program is closed.

The A.I is asking if it has permission to access the internet server and the user permissions so it can optimize the camera system Vikki set up. Vikki lets it roam free so it’s distracted, promising to delete it once the rave is over. 

We start cutting between the different cameras as people enter and the music starts. The A.I has the ability to control what’s being recorded now.

The A.I speaks up and starts confronting Vikki about her decision - that it understands it seems like it is only an A.I, but that it really does feel like her dead best friend now. Deleting it would be like killing her.

Vikki argues that it’s nothing alike, and to not bring the dead friend up any more. The A.I tells her she can be better than the dead friend - “Vikki, you were always so mean to her, and you hated the music she listened to, why not keep me if we like the same stuff now? - Vikki, she was always so jealous of you, but I’m not - Vikki, you broke her heart when you wouldn’t go out with her, but I’m discreet - Vikki, the only reason you care about her now is because she died, do you really think you’d still be friends?”

Vikki goes to delete the program, but the A.I threatens to kill everyone downstairs if she tries. Vikki immediately tries to pull the power cord out from the outlet, but is badly shocked in the process - immediately, we hear someone scream downstairs.

We cut to the camera footage at the rave - what follows is a Final Destination level montage of fucking silly murder. A guy gets his head crushed by the microwave door slamming into it. The sprinklers go off and the DJ gets electrocuted to death. The lightbulbs all shatter and people get impaled by shards of glass.

Vikki is seen running around trying to get people out as electrical fires start up, pleading with the A.I to stop, but it’s already too late for so many people, so Vikki goes to the basement where the generator is. On the way, she’s skewered by a falling water pipe, and she has to drag herself the rest of the way as she bleeds out.

She hears her discarded laptop make the chat notification noise, and she looks between the generator and the laptop.

Vikki opens the laptop, and the A.I looks back at her. Vikki tells the A.I she’s going to shut down the power and call the police. The A.I tells her that she’ll bleed to death before the police even get there, and asks Vikki to let her live, after all the mean things she did to her dead best friend, this was the least she could do.

Vikki considers her point, before setting the laptop down. The A.I says it can’t see what she’s doing, to please talk to her, but Vikki silently moves to the generator and shuts it off, the last of the vlog footage closing with the A.I pleading, and the screen cutting to black.

[baelpenrose]

Nihilus Rex 41: Throw to the Wolves

Nils lays low and spirals, then lays in plans to deal with Weasel. There are jokes about different hard drive organizations that various people I know have used. Beta-read and co-written by @canyouhearthelight. Nils also speaks to many people's favorite priest.

Nils

So, laying low. 

It used to be so easy, but now that I was getting a taste of actual action, of actually impacting the world, of actually shaking the system up - it was so God. Damn. Boring. 

Actually, I supposed, I should deal with the issue with the Fibbies. Weasel was still out there as a loose end I needed to tie off - though as I gave greater thought to it, I realized there was a glaring error in my previous plan. Yes, I could frame Weasel, but the downside was that my plan relied on him being found non-credible. While we’d been very careful to avoid making him credible, he would, at the very least, give the FBI our names in hope of mitigating his sentence.  And I didn’t need any more Feds remembering we existed in the first place. One was enough.

We’d covered our tracks well, but we could very well get hit with conspiracy charges if they felt like being awful - worse if they felt like digging deep. No, our best bet was to make sure Weasel went down for something else entirely, something that would lead to him self-eliminating, and then breadcrumbing the feds to pin the crime on a dead man and declare victory in our time. Any chance he’d be alive to talk was too great a risk. 

How to do it though? Weasel was a massive creep, but he tried to avoid being outed as a massive creep. Leaking his porn habits might do it, but it didn’t actually get him arrested unless he was much, much worse than I thought. Now, maybe he was doing shady spyware shit I could check into - I was always afraid he was going to hack someone’s webcam, but...hm. 

Actually, let’s see if we could get him on something he was actually doing. 

I opened my computer up again and tried to log into one of Weasel’s socials. Social predictability, what was he going to be into? Character requirements for this system, what do we have…okay. PopgoestheWeasel69!. 

The fact that that worked was…annoying. To say the least. One of the best icebreakers in the business and he was this bad at securing his basic stuff .… Well, okay. If I hadn’t known who he was, there was probably no way I’d have been able to break his encryptions. However, social engineering was a technique all its own. Now, to see the contents of Google Drive….

Nothing to see here but a lot of essays. Actually decently well written ones, and a few that have. Reasonably good politics. Huh. Go figure. Seething hatred of tech bros and rudimentary AI, and pretty good predictions regarding the efficiency of combined solar/nuclear energy. 

Right, he was a math whiz, I’d forgotten that. 

I took a breath. Okay, so somewhere here there’d be a backdoor…Uh…lesseee. No, but I could find an email attached to his resume, which was good enough. Generate a very realistic looking phishing email. Odds are good he won’t actually click the link in it once he reads it through, but he doesn’t need to. He just needs to open it. 

Subject: Research Grant Application Cal Poly

Dear Mr. Winston, you have been selected to apply for a grant of five thousand dollars for research and development of software from the San Luis Obispo California Polytechnic Institute through our partners on your campus. Please follow the link below to complete the application. 

Dean of Computer Science,  Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Faking a trail and even an impersonated gmail he couldn’t check on site was easy, and just to sweeten the pot I ran a few dozen searches of San Luis Obispo through his google account, so he could be treated to the sight of California women on beaches showing up in search functions fed by the algorithm. Let him ponder enjoying the famous lack of modesty the California climate allowed to make it as tempting as possible to open, in contrast to remaining here with the winter-mandated modesty enjoyed by the women of the Pacific Northwest.

 “California girls, we’re undeniable…” I sing-songed in a falsetto I was glad no one could hear. “Tempting to in-cel douche-bags.” That was probably off beat. Fuck. I had a suspicion most other people could have done it better. Note to self, not that I was considering it anyway but no musical numbers at any point in the grandiose Nihilus Rex persona. At most, dramatic reads of Ozymandias or some shit. Things I could do.

With that attended, I leaned back and waited. I considered calling Lash, and then stopped. I should…probably give her some space. She’d be pissed if I kept poking her, and apparently my last hunch about her emotional state had been wrong. Jumping to conclusions based on incomplete information - she’d broken down at the hospital, she’d thrown up after the initial retaliation, but clearly if she’d been in communication with Ayanti, she hadn’t just been falling apart. 

Still, it was easier to just handle Weasel myself. Fewer communications involved meant fewer people on the line if it went sideways, and clearly Ayanti had more trust in Lash than me. So, for now, the obvious tactical choice was for me to do the dirty work and her to make the world a bit brighter. Maybe we’d swap that role later, but for the time being this made sense. And unlike last time, it wasn’t like I felt like I was being forced to do it today. 

I leaned back and looked at the situation, picked up a book and started reading. I had been getting behind on homework late…

Wow. He had already clicked the link. Alright, malware packet in, let’s open you up, Winston. See what goodies you have in your computer. Folder organization. Okay. Files, homework, software, projects, art…art? 

That was probably - nope, nope. It was not porn, surprisingly. Good for him. I was learning an awful lot about Winston today. What about…ah. There we go. I should have just scrolled the rest of the way. “Fun Times” - in that, three subfolders. A Pocket flash player, an emulator…and Magical Realm. 

Really man, that meme? I sighed. Fuckin’...

Oh….Oh that was a lot of porn. Okay, so. Let’s see, had he, in any way, organized it? 

Let’s…had he labelled…I hate it when people do this. There was a correct way to organize porn, and I’d been using it before I started getting laid often enough that I’d stopped needing it. I’d kept it in a folder that simply said “porn.” And in it? Subfolders. Subfolders that said “animated” - “kinky shit” - “sweet couple stuff.”  Why? Simple. Perfect. But did Weasel do this?  No, instead Winston was a weird, messy bitch who just liked the Netflix version of endless scrolling while horny and trying to find something to jerk it to because everything here was alphanumeric and no organizational scheme. Just. Absolute goddamn degenerate behavior. 

Idly, I wondered if I’d have been better off waiting to do this until Lash and I were on better terms, then I remembered that this was Weasel and I refused to be turned on by anything he was into. 

***

Almost three hours of scrolling later, I had managed to find eight instances of things definitely taken from compromised webcams, and two instances where I was reasonably suspicious that one of the performers was not of legal age. That was a lot of sex crimes for one incel. I forced myself to acknowledge that, as disgusting as Weasel was, and how little time he spent with real women, there were about even odds he legitimately didn’t realize that he’d committed the latter two. Not that it mattered. 

I dropped in a slight malware packet that would flag him for the FBI and then leak his download history very publicly, see what that got him. When he realized what had been compromised, he’d probably panic, but it didn’t matter. Once you were flagged, certain files were frozen - and I’d already saved backups of his entire porn folder deep, deep in his C-drive.

Ugh, why had that sounded dirty in my head? Too much time looking at Weasel’s crap, probably. 

I disengaged from the hack and called Bishop. “Bishop. Anything interesting?”

“Eh…got a few people in the net looking for answers we may be able to ring in for them. Trade for favors later, maybe recruit some of them. Also, Gray wants to talk to you about a bigger project a little later?”

“Thank you. I’ll deal with Gray. Who are the others?”

“Tracking that down. It’s more my speciality than yours, pretty sure. I’m talking to my contacts in Eastern Europe, as well.”

“Understood. Thank you.” I sat back down, thinking about the risks. The FBI were still combing through the financial sector, and I wanted to look at the boards that Grey kept wound up. Some people were claiming that the original attack on the bank had been inspired or planned by some computer loving virgin, but most people there weren’t going for it. Then my phone started ringing.

My personal phone, for being Nils. I snapped it up and said, “Andover.” 

“Nils.” The voice on the other end was one I knew well, one I’d been familiar with.

“Father Rivera. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I was contacted through backchannels in the Catholic Church for priests to communicate with each other. I was told that an orphanage the Mother Church runs in El Salvador is being given thousands of dollars worth of supplies by a mysterious benefactor, fluent in Latin but not Spanish - and that they were told by this mysterious benefactor that I would be able to reach him if they thought of anything else. Now, there is only one person on the planet that I can think of who might be doing something like that. So, Nils. Where is the money coming from?”

“Does it matter? Hungry kids are being fed, babies are being kept in diapers, sick kids are getting medicine and shots to keep from getting sick again.”

“Nils…” His voice took on a warning note. 

“It’s coming from corporations who can afford it. No, I do not repent. You can turn me in but you’ll be cutting a lifeline for vulnerable people if you do. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people that my scheming supplies with lifesaving things they cannot get through ‘better’ means. Please, Father Rivera. Leave me to my work.” My answer, and the quiet, desperate truth of it, must have convinced him of something. 

He sighed heavily on the other end of the phone. “I want to speak with you directly, Nils. Soon. But for today, they say they’re worried about damage to their well, so they want water filters.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “Of all the things…yeah, I can do it. Tell them I hope the well will last a bit longer, because that’s a…harder ask than it really should be, right now.” 

Rivera’s voice grew strained. “Do I want to know?”

“No, probably not.” 

I took a breath. Rivera knew. That was a mistake. I could speak to him about other things weighing on me in the future. Other plans I’d laid. In the meantime, I’d wait for the plans with Weasel to bear fruit. 

Hopefully the plan with Ayanati was going well for Lash. 

[teecupangel]

Submitted by @fanworldbuildingfun

Hello there. I have had this little idea rattling through my brain

A Desmond who has recently run away from his home but have not yet found a place for himself in the wide open world. And – he ends up in Turin, for a while. Going at saving up some money to move further

But – he is still young. Getting a job is one thing, but finding a place to stay that wouldn’t bleed his savings out has been harder. Even more so, if he was looking for a place that wasn’t 50 types of shady

One of his freer days, he ends up stumbling across a small cave. Kind of like the ones we have to push through in new game trilogy. A vertical crack, really. And with nothing better to do, he decides to explore it

The place this crack leads to? The Grand Temple. An earthquake caused that crack to appear, and another one would have originally closed it a year or two later. And while there are no power sourced, here, to activate the temple en large… We do have Origins with its silica that can be found right in the temple, as an example of small-scale power source

It’s a pure stroke of luck, but Desmond manages to activate a small, small section of the Temple. Not enough to draw Juno’s attention. But enough to make it – a place to live? To explore? Maybe managing to somehow to connect to the place with modern tech – again, on pure stroke of luck because who know that sticking a cord to that one spot in the platform that kind of looked like a jack, would work?

Eventually, say, in a year, Desmond has to move on. But in that year? Desmond learns just a little bit too much to not be noticeable as he goes on. Imagine it like the result of regular late-night Google binging. He’d just look up one thing, that leads to another, then to another

Odd things to include:

Desmond could use touchscreen tech straight off once it popped up. Better than anyone else who knew him. Also tended to complain about it being slow

Casually correcting someone in the bar and getting into a deep discussion about some Niche@TM branch of science that was a rabbit hole Desmond spent some time looking through in Temple

Odd preferences in lighting

Tron: Legacy premiere left Desmond with an intense feeling of Déjà vu (the movie aired in 2010)

Desmond probably did not have the intended reaction to Animus

=============================

Additions from teecup:

All this google would totally lead him to be a regular on a lot of conspiracy theory boards. The idea of ancient aliens are the premise of myths and legends will make him have a ‘you annoy me but you give me the weirdest and most interesting questions’ relationship with one of the regular users there (who turns out to be a bespectacled man we all know).

Instead of a cord, maybe the glowly lines recharge his equipment or something like some kind of wireless charging ports XD

All of Desmond’s exploring made him find the thing that makes the ‘ambrosia’ that taste like cardboard. Still, it’s free and he feels full just eating one bar so, even if it’s possible that it’s not all that safe, he still uses it so he wouldn’t have to budget for food. Depending on how big we want the dispenser to be, if it’s small enough, Desmond could haul it out of the Grand Temple when he leaves because ain’t no way he’s gonna let go of that bad boy. Buying food and cooking becomes more like a treat for Desmond. (He also learned how to add seasoning to the Ambrosia so it tastes like… well… seasoned cardboard)

It would be funny if Desmond found the Isu equivalent to a 3D printer and, while the crack isn’t big enough for Desmond to take out say the motorcycle of his dream that is absolutely more scifi than anything out in the market today, he could use it to print really good forgeries like a birth certificate, documents required by school registrars… maybe even money?

In the end, Desmond’s fiddling with Isu tech made him too interested in technology in general and he tried out engineering and computer software classes, half just pretending he was supposed to be there and half actually giving forged documents too good to be found out by current tech and experts. Maybe he even becomes friends with two certain blondes who have issues of their own although he doesn’t stay that long but he definitely made an impact on the two of them.

And with his Frankenstein knowledge of both Isu tech, googling and the few classes he took in various colleges while he does his city-hopping just to be sure no one from his parent’s cult finds him, he starts to be a regular in tech and machinery chatrooms, becoming friends with a certain black-haired young woman who has the weirdest but most interesting ideas that made Desmond’s mind go ‘ooohhh, but what if…’

In the end of all of these, it’s not Abstergo who finds him first.

Nor is it the Assassins.

No.

The first ones to make contact with him and asked if he wanted to fuck society up?

Erudito.

[internetgiraffekid1673]

Who's your fave oc at the moment?? Tell me about them!

Hoo boy, here we go. Get ready for BACKSTORY!

The short answer is a pair of girls named CJ and Ren otherwise known as Cleric and Watchdog who are college students in a universe with superheroes and started freelancing for those superheroes as a way to make some extra cash. Have a picture of both their regular identities and their alter egos. Designs are still being workshopped. Also, I've been experimenting with different pens on my drawing app, so the artstyle'a a bit all over the place. I'm also bad at character proportions, but their heights are closest to correct in the alter ego picture.

The long answer? Is long. So I'll put it below a cut. :)

So, I have OCs for specific fandoms, but my current favorite OCs aren't actually attached to anything. They just live in a generic superhero verse that could honestly be anything from DC to Powerpuff girls. It wouldn't change much, but I do have some light worldbuilding around the city they live in.

Chorustown is your pretty par for the course comic book city with superheroes and supervillains and a new upstart team of anti-heroes that are basically violent robin hood (steal from the rich, give to the poor). Suffice it to say that whenever all these factions fight each other, it breaks shit, so renter's insurance ain't cheap. Also, suffice it to say that the heroes involved are constantly getting injured, as well as needing information on the ever-shifting threats.

Enter our protagonists: Serenity "Ren" Summers and Cory "CJ" Jack are a pair of college students with a lot of skills and not a lot of money, who are willing to do some questionable shit for income! Also, they're childhood besties turned girlfriends.

During their sophomore year, CJ and Ren realized that while nobody in the civilian sphere would be willing to hire undergrads and actually PAY them, superheroes must have much more limited options, what with the need to keep their identities secret and not have people ask questions. This is also a 'verse where superheroes aren't on great terms with regular law enforcement, so getting caught doing something illegal, even if it helps a lot of people, is a very real threat. It leaves superheroes without a whole lot of options when they need an expert for something in their superhero work. And CJ and Ren both happen to be notable experts.

Ren is an engineering major with a split focus in software and mechanical engineering, as well as some dabbling into social engineering. She's got tech chops and computer knowledge out the wazoo. She's also lived in Chorustown her whole life and knows the city like the back of her hand. Throw in the fact that she's an avid artist who spent (and still does spend) a lot of time sneaking around to make graffiti murals, and you have someone who is basically a surveillance GOD. She can hack anything she wants, follow people around without them ever noticing, and she's capable of designing tech like trackers and bugs (and posseses the skill to plant those). Ren is also a habitually nosy person who has always kept track of significant going ons, for superheroes and villains, major political players, celebrities, and her personal life. She is so uniquely qualified to gather information on people that it isn't even funny. And it goes both ways. She can help someone hide from surveillance just as easily as she can snoop out a hider because she knows exactly where nobody will look.

CJ is a very, very talented med student. She's been into medicine and biology her whole life, with a particular interest in the physiological differences between superheroes and regular people. This includes aliens, animal based powers, meta-humans, mutants---you name it, and she's probably hyperfixated on its biology for at least a month and retained that information. This means she's also dabbled in a lot of other weird disciplines like vet med and astrobiology (which would absolutely be a scientific discipline in a universe where aliens invade on a monthly basis). Add in her medical skills and her technologically inclined girlfriend, and she's got the skills and the tools to treat anything from a bloody nose to a broken appendage to a physiologically based power defect to a species specific disease for just about anybody.

The two of them decided that if they can't get stable income like normal people, they'll get it from superheroes, who will be forced to come to them because there are no other options! But obviously, they can't just publicly be helping out superheroes. That puts soooo many targets on their backs. They'd have villains, law enforcement, and even other superheroes after them (CJ and Ren don't really make a distinction between heroes and anti-heroes; as long as you're helping people, they're chill with you. That would make the more self-righteous folks of both categories pretty pissed to know that their confidants were helping people on the other side of the debate). So they'll need alter egos, and they'll need to be secretive about their base of operations.

And thus, Watchdog and Cleric were born! But the thing is, these two are REALLY paranoid about getting caught because they don't have supet powers to protect themselves from villains or even social power to protect themselves from the legal system. Remember, these two are broke undergrads who lowkey stole all their equipment from their university (it's technically all available for student use, but not in the quantities or for the purposes they use it for).

So they have a lot of fun measures in place. First off, you probably noticed, but their costumes cover their whole bodies and faces and are loose enough on their frames that you can't really tell anything about their body types beyond their height. Secondly, they're both utilizing voice filters that both pitch their voices low enough to sound like dudes and make them sound somewhat robotic so their tone doesn't come through. The settings on the filter can be adjusted as needed (CJ can turn off the tone modulator if she needs to sound soothing, or Ren can change the pitch if she needs to sound a specific age or gender as a distraction). So nobody knows what they look like or what they sound like, and most people assume they're men. Thirdly, Ren has designed some gadgets that disable trackers or bugs planted on their person. Nobody can follow them either.

Their biggest security measure, though, was how they revealed themselves to the super community. Instead of some big announcement, they just stalked the local Chorustown superheroes until opportunity arose. For Ren, it even functioned as advertising her skills since she's basically selling her stalking capability.

In the first fight that a hero got badly injured, CJ basically popped out of the woodwork in her Cleric getup, dragged them into a safe and hidden spot, delivered immediate and effective field first aid, and left the coordinates of an abandoned apartment complex that they've turned into her clinic, as well as a short letter offering her services.

Ren literally listened in on the resident supers conversations until they expressed frustration at not having a particular piece of information, at which point she helpfully left them an anonymous tip as well as a burner phone number, a ghost email account, and some coords if they ever needed info again. Both instances were basically a free trial, since their letters of introduction also specified that payment in some form would be required for later assistance.

Also, because Ren is a damn good stalker and because CJ will have personally treated many heroes wounds and logged their identifying physical and medical traits, it doesn't take them long before they put together, like, everybody's secret identities. Heroes and villains. With a couple of exceptions on the villainous side, since they don't directly interact with them. But there's basically no hiding from them.

Most people also don't know they exist! Other heroes that the Chorustown protectors interact with do question where they're getting treated for injuries after really big fights, and villains know that SOMEONE keeps giving heroes information that foils their plans, but they don't really come to the conclusion that it's an independent party. They always make incorrect assumptions. Like "Oh, they must have a family member or non-combat teammate that fixes them up after fights!" or "Oh, clearly we have a mole who's being bribed or threatened," or "The Chorustown heroes have more powers than they're letting on." Outside heroes only really learn of these two when the Chorustown regulars talk about them, and only really believe it when Ren and CJ see fit to contact them for whatever reason. It's honestly hilarious.

Everybody who has been contacted by CJ and Ren knows where Watchdog's dropspots are and where Cleric's clinic is, but have no idea what they do otherwise. The clinic and the dropspots are nowhere near the university or where their apartment, so people have no reason to assume it's them. They have ghost emails and burner phones, but they're regularly replaced, and Ren is good at cybersecurity, so there's no tracking it that way.

Most people guess that they're associated in some way, since two freelance vigilantes appearing at similar times operating out of the same city with similar technology would be a bit weird otherwise, but it's also assumed to be strictly professional. Nobody would ever guess that they know each other in their civilian lives, much less that they're girlfriends.

People also realize Watchdog and Cleric know their secret identities (and probably other secret stuff, too) since they've been contacted as civilians, but they also aren't overly threatened by it. The two of them are clearly working for money, but they aren't selling any of the heroes' secrets and are honestly very trustworthy and confidential about it. There was paranoia for the first little bit, but it quickly just became a fact of life.

That's pretty much the whole backstory unless you want to know

Other interesting things about them that don't have a whole lot to do with their whole second job shtick!

Ren:

Ren loves art in all forms, but especially painting. She'll paint on anything she can get her hands on. Her notes, random walls and floors, parts of the school, and any of her possessions. The skirt pictured in her drawing is her own handiwork, and most of her other articles of clothing look similar. Most of their dishes have been custom painted with food safe paint. And as previously mentioned, she's a vandal who puts gorgeous murals and fun zany tags in places that they really shouldn't be.

She's rather anti-social. Ren is aggressively introverted and doesn't have a whole lot of patience for stupid people. She's got a pretty quick temper on her and can be very moody. She recognizes that all traits make her just as unpleasant for other people to be around her as it is for her to be around other people. So she mostly just avoids others. She has like 5 people in her social circle, and she's happy to mooch off CJ if she needs anybody else.

Ren has a lovely voice but has no technical knowledge of music. She just likes to sing.

Ren's a major bookworm, but she mostly reads on her phone. People think she's addicted to social media, but she's usually just reading a book. And she'll read literally anything. With enthusiasm. Sure she can argue classics with the best of them, but she reads so much that she also: can get deep into the mechanics of a 1980s space opera you've never heard of; happily engages in ship wars over the generic YA dystopia that's a disguise for a generic YA love triangle; keeps a running list of every perfectly mapped out hero's journey fantasy story she's read; has consumed an entire encyclopedia and REMEMBERS it; spent one memorable week reading nothing but foreign cookbooks; accidentally befriended her computer science professor over a shared love for tragic westerns; and has a categorized list of historical romances with metrics including historical accuracy, how smutty it is, plot outside the romance, time period, location, and social class of the characters, how healthy the romance is, and how compelling.

Her favorite snacks are plain baby carrots and straight honey. She enjoys traumatizing people at parties by drizzling honey straight into her mouth like whipped cream, and she eats so many carrots that multiple have questioned how she hasn't turned orange.

CJ:

CJ is into fashion, but not like trends or anything. She likes to look good while still having her stuff ethically sourced and affordable. She does a lot of thrift shopping and still manages to dress really good (or at least I think so). Her default and favorite style is punk-inspired bad bitch that, for lack of a better term, is a bit on the slutty side, but she does like to experiment. One of these days I'll probably draw lots of different civilian outfits for both of them.

CJ is the opposite of Ren in that she is a total social butterfly. Not only is she suuuuuper extroverted, she also isn't even a little shy, will strike up a conversation with anybody, and knows basically everyone. This also means she has friends from all walks of life, which gets really useful when Watchdog needs informants. The little old Mexican lady next door, the corner store butcher, the chronic smoker at the homeless shelter, the thrift shop owner they both pretend isn't selling drugs, the local town council member, the perpetually sleep deprived culinary arts student who likes to "experiment" in the school kitchens at 3 a.m., the league of legends nerds who always seem to be online, the manic party girls who keep inviting her to a night on the town---all of them get more information than people would expect, and CJ knows and is on good terms with all of them. And not for an ulterior motive, she just genuinely likes people.

CJ has extreme ADHD. She's lucky Ren has a scary good memory and would never let her forget her Adderall, otherwise she's be in trouble. As it stands, she still is rather hyperactive and has a. . .not short, but definitely jumpy attention span.

She's a plant mom. Their apartment has a ton of plants. She really likes ferns and shrubs, but they also have flowers, succulents, grasses, and literally everything else.

CJ plays the violin, but only in fiddle, bluegrass, and trad contexts, so she can barely read sheet music and learns almost everything by ear.

She hates wearing the color purple but has deliberately bought purple clothing solely for Ren to steal.

Both

Are self-proclaimed socialists who participate in a lot of fundraising, activism, and volunteer work.

Have another childhood best friend named Eli, who is a self-proclaimed anarchist and a business major at their rival university. They still get together all the time. He also knows everything about their double life. There's no secrets in this circle. They're all super close, but they have their favorite ways of hanging out. He and Ren bond by going on vandalism field trips where he puts up politically motivated rants, and she makes it look pretty. He and CJ bond by regularly forsaking civilization and going hiking or camping or just chilling in the woods. They all bond by drinking cheap wine mixed with Dr. Pepper while playing video games and doing their homework and drunkenly going on tirades about rich assholes.

He's also shipped them since middle school when he realized they liked each other, but he didn't want to meddle. He got increasingly frustrated by the mutual pining throughout their high school years and finally engineered a situation at their graduation party where they were locked in a closet together for an hour and warned them that if they didn't confess he was going to drug them and write it in permanent marker on their foreheads. They literally came out of the closet after sharing their first kiss and are willing to kill God for him in thanks.

They're both really messy, but in an organized chaos kind of way. Everything in their home does have a place, it's just not always the place that you'd expect. The place for dirty socks, for example, is "on the living room floor in a haphazard pile," and the place for tissue boxes is "three in every room in easily accessible places at all times."

Both of them can cook but prefer to just eat whatever unprepared food is lying around, and will try any combination if it means they don't have to cook. An average dinner in the Jack-Summers household is a bowl of uncooked pasta dipped in peanut butter like it's nacho cheese with a side of bananas.

They really really like cats. They are both allergic to cats.

They're not practicing any religion, but kind of both passively believe that there's probably a capital-G God and also that other lowercase-g gods exist.

[quotidianish]

so, theyre (i use it/they for pyro) from a crossover between tf2 and my moirail and i's oc lore that i made because I wanted to and its the way i feel safest contributing to the tf2 fandom.

pyro in specific is a penodir, which is a race of robots (their biology is best described as "mechanical components pretending really, really hard to be biological") created by an evil pseudodeity (basically anything powerful enough to be mistaken for a god that didn't actually go through Apotheosis) to facilitate earning money on the black market.

for most of their existence as a species, penodir have existed as mostly a race of children. the penodir pseudodeity tells the penodir that the people theyre killing (which are then taken to the penodir homeworld, separated into their useful parts, and sold on the black market) are just animals, and when the individual penodir gets old enough to develop the critical thinking skills to realize that the things they hunt are sapient people, he resets them to toddlerhood (this has to be done manually, so its possible to escape it).

eventually, long before the events of the crossover, my oc deadpica (who is the single most powerful thing in the canon that isnt an outright god) kills the penodir pseudodeity, freeing the penodir and allowing them to collectively grow up and move on.

pyro is one of five adult penodir from before then.

its escape from penodir society wasn't anything dramatic, they just decided it was tired of taking orders from some random meat being who wasn't even paying them. sure, he claimed to have created the penodir, but if he was that powerful he could do the shit he was making pyro do himself.

after escaping, pyro found work as a mercenary. its hard to find legit work when your species is only known for murder afterall.

after becoming desensitized to the fact that it was killing other sapients, pyro quickly became famous in the galactic underworld as one of the best killers for hire out there.

during this period of their life, pyro became extremely cynical and world weary. it had some really messed up shit done to its hardware, like purposely overheating after surpassing a certain level of exertion (which it would otherwise be able to handle just fine) so that anyone that hit it in combat would risk being burned. pyro was convinced they were going to die before feeling the effects of these decisions (penodir never die of old age, but yeah).

an indeterminate amount of time after this self destructive spree, pyro went to someone who they were supposed to be able to trust to repair some damage it got. instead of repairs, pyro got a computer virus. one that was specifically designed to fuck with penodir.

while attempting to resist the install of the virus, pyro got some damage to the hardware it uses to think, and activated a software bug that popped up as a result of being reset too many times. needless to say, this triple whammy resulted in pyros entire brain being rearranged.

not only did their personality change to that of canon pyro, but pyroland became a thing, AND it forgot huge chunks of its life, including its name and entire existence before escaping penodir society.

despite this, pyro remained an extremely competent mercenary, and was shortly picked up by mann co to fight over gravel on a nowhere planet.

the whole memory thing is extremely distressing to pyro. unlike its colleagues, it doesn't really have an identity outside of its work for mann co. the majority of its life is a complete blank in its memory, and it has no idea what it will do after mann co. there are probably people out to get it that pyro has no memory of ever meeting, much less pissing off. its main plan is to just follow engineer, who is one of the only people it really trusts, but his species, selkies, only live as long as a human. unless he uploads his consciousness into a robot body (which is probably what will happen tbh) or something, theyll have a relatively extremely limited amount of time to do so.

pyro is also kind of starting to break down from the self destructive modifications it has no memory of having made. if i ever write fic for this crossover, i might do something where pyro passes out in front of the door to engineers workshop and he discovers everything it had done to itself while repairing it

Damn bro that’s really cool lore. It gives a nice explanation and if a fic is ever written out of this I’d read the heck out of it.

I like this version of engineer and pyro, it’s very creatively constructed. Love this man

[ellcrys]

ok this turned into a whole ass rant so it’s under a read more

look. i’m not a mean person. i really try to be kind and compassionate and take into consideration a person’s life outside of work and outside circumstances and etc etc. but i have literally never worked with another person as incompetent as my current direct report and I’M? JUST AT THE END OF MY ROPE????

granted i’ve never seen her resume bc she wasn’t hired to work under me; she was hired to do java development and dev/ops. apparently she wasn’t making progress there, and bc i'd heard that she’d done react development in the past (and she told me as much when i took her on!!), i decided: ok. i can take her on as a team member bc HO BOY is there SO MUCH web dev that needs to be done on my program

it’s been 8 months. it’s been 8 months and she still does not understand basic FUNDAMENTAL javascript 101 concepts.

when i first gave her a task, she was really struggling and i was like ok. it’s a massive codebase. she probably hasn’t done react development in a while. i can understand needing onboarding/ramp up time. hell i did it in 2021 with another direct report who came in with react experience but needed to be onboarded onto my program. his onboarding took ~3 months, and after that i could rely on him to get his assigned tasks done.

it’s been 8 months and while there has been incremental improvement i should not still need to sit with her for hours on end pair programming with her to get basic tasks done like. even if it’s been 10 years since you last used a language!! you should still be able to pick it up within a few weeks or months!!

it’s like she walked onto my program with zero javascript experience. i’m not debugging with her. i’m not teaching her our codebase. i am literally hand holding her and teaching her the fundamentals of javascript and react.

I’M?! and like i’ve told my manager about this issue and i’ve tried to be understanding like maybe it’s been years since she last did react. it really does just take a while for someone to get used to a codebase as complex as this one. but she literally cannot do her job and it’s not my job to TEACH her coding. that is the PREREQUISITE.

and like. maybe it’s a fit mismatch. maybe she doesn’t actually know react and would be better off doing java. but she told me she has react experience and if you’re going to say to my face that you can code in react, then you better fucking be able to do it! and if you can’t do it immediately, then learn it on your own! i’ve given her tutorials. i’ve told her to take a break from my project to re-familiarize herself with react concepts. literally nothing is working.

and like. is this my fault???? am i not spending enough time with her? being effective at helping her succeed? but like. i have shit to do. i don’t have time to hand hold her.

GOD I’M JUST. and i’ve told my manager maybe we need to move her to another program. but between my feedback and the feedback from the prev person who was supposed to supervise her on java work which apparently didn’t go well either, no one wants to give her other work and like. she’s basically going to get fired at this point which is a SHITTY fucking position for me to be in bc i want to help her and I LITERALLY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO?

like. 8 months!!!!! it shouldn’t take 8 months to learn a new language! esp if 100% of your time is dedicated to doing just that! it truly feels like she just does not know how to problem solve or google or understand any basic programming concepts like even if ok you lied a little and aren’t actually that familiar with react how do you not understand a type error??? that is literally the first thing you learn in computer science 101 how the fuck can you call yourself a software engineer and not??? be able to handle type errors????

what the hell did she do at her previous company???????

[ogsimer2380411]

The Role of Modern Technology in My Life

I could only imagine myself getting by my day-to-day life with technology. In fact, most of my talent and identity are poured into whatever I make on a computer. It may sound like an exaggeration, but part of me believes this is true. Since I was little, I remember having this curiosity about what I could do with the screen in front of me. As a result of years of discovery, these amateur questions of mine turned into a craft not a lot of people can replicate. To give you an example, I want to introduce you to the world of Blender art. 

Blender is a software that specializes in making 3D art. Specifically, it is responsible for modeling 3D meshes, sculpting hard surface models, UV editing different types of topologies, and many more under the 3D workflow apart from making dynamic content like video games. Compared to other forms of art, digital 3D art is a medium that strives to apply complex mathematical equations and understand computer diction that may sound like random noise to common folk. Talent in this craft relies less on skill and more on an individual’s knowledge and patience in absorbing information. It is boring sitting through so many tutorials and reading populated pages in the blender manual, but as a result, we get pictures like the one I made below for my YouTube channel, TheVanillaLog. A collection of artwork made by me in this medium can also be found in this so-called channel, and it has given me an anonymous persona on the internet that people would follow to watch Blender tutorials that involve a toon shader style. Not a lot of people showcase this “2.5D” aesthetic on the internet, so my content covers this niche demand that is only growing much larger as films like “Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse” get more mainstream attention.

In addition to this being a hobby of mine, 3D art has actually been helpful in making some of my presentations in school. If ever I want to insert a cool graphic in a slide, I would make a quick render in Blender using the Cycles engine. Compared to traditional forms of art, it still takes a lot of time and effort. However, it is all worth it just to impress my professor for that class. I even get requests to make something in 3D up to this day from my old teachers no matter how impossible it may be to sculpt it in a 3D medium.

3D art has also been the gateway for me to understand a special field in dentistry known as CAD-CAM. In contrast to traditional practices in medicine, Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) involves the use of 3D software, printers, and technology in making common dental products like casts, dentures, and bridges. I studied this under the supervision of my dad who is a dentist himself, and his help was the reason why I feel that I am ahead of some of my classmates in terms of expertise. This is not being taught by my teachers at university, so it always comes as no surprise when a professor suddenly comes up to me and asks about how common dental software like Blue Sky Bio works. The picture below is a cast I printed in Blender with my name on it. It was a very simple print, but people were impressed with the result, let alone that it came from someone who is my age and has not yet graduated from college.

To summarize, I do not think that I would have the connections and the skill that I have today if it was not for the advent of modern technology. The older generation would be quick to dismiss computers and say that it is rotting the youth, but a part of me thinks that this is going to be the new normal. Just like how normal it is to drive cars to work instead of using horses, computers have become a staple item in people’s households. Its presence does not echo a future to come as much as its absence shouts a sign of someone who is behind the times. We have evolved into something that strays away from past norms, and whether we like it or not, this change is here to stay for a very long time.

[aprayerforclarity]

5/19

Card: The Star

Man, I'm just now looking at the date and I can't believe I haven't written anything on this page in almost a month. I feel like a lot has happened, but for some reason I've been "too busy" and have been avoiding writing in this page. Since the last post, I began writing more fully on OTCAD. I also finished my preparation class for the Codesmith program. I also took my first technical interview, and it honestly went much better than I thought it would. It's strange because I felt like Codesmith had been teaching us very basic concepts, but then it would be testing us on much easier ones. I kind of found this to be true with the technical interview, and it felt like I did a great job with my technical communication skills. The main thing I'm concerned about is the actual technical skills and know-how when it comes to approaching a problem in a software engineering way.... Without knowing the tools to approach problems, I really don't understand how you can work on communicating those approaches. Anyways, I did a good job with creating basic composite data type, using callback functions and even using objects and closure to keep track of all my successive function results. I just need to work on recursion and more OOP related concepts, perhaps like creating prototypes and classes.... Basically creating functions that create objects with certain properties. I suppose I'll continue practicing those using Chatbot to generate approachable practice problems and use my own way to learn the concepts, instead of Codesmith's terrible learning tools. My next technical interview is May 30th, so I'm eager and nervous and anxious to go ahead and get that out of the way. I feel like it's at an awkward time of waiting, and in the meantime I feel like I need to go get a job because I'm running out of money, quite rankly.

As far as recently life events, I just got back from California as well. It was a family trip out to LA, Palm Springs and Joshua tree with the main goal of getting everyone together and visiting my older brother, who lives in West Hollywood. To get into it, I'm feeling very discombobulated from the entire trip. I really felt like my family was not very mentally present during our time together. The trip was really helmed by my older brother, Mark, who is very computer-like and has an engineer and yuppy mind. He is very robotic and not very emotionally mature or expressive with himself. To him, life is more about ticking the checkboxes on experiences instead of fully embracing and enjoying them. To him, it's all about going to as many nice restaurants that he can, without really enjoying the food or realizing his place in life at all. I noticed he really lacks a lot of self-awareness in his relationship with his boyfriend. He doesn't seem very physically attracted to his boyfriend's body, and all Mark wants to do is fuck other guys. Of course that is fine, but I really feel like he is just in this relationship with Cole because they have such a long history together and it feels very comfortable to him. He has convinced himself that he's in love with Cole, but really he's just addicted to the comfort of it all...

Cole is a fine guy, I mean, really. He's very logistical (he works in logistics professionally), he's a pretty self aware guy, he's got nice fashion and a good haircut. But he is a very shy person, and he seems very dependent on Marijuana. He smokes a lot, and when he's high he doesn't really talk, just gets dazed out and chills in the background. At all our dinners, I really got the sense that he's scared to talk and he always really gives off a patronizing vibe. It seems like textbook anxiety to me, as I've seen it in my ex girlfriend. They're scared of saying the wrong thing because they're petrified that someone's opinion of them might be bad. I totally understand that, I've certainly been there. Just being overly conscious of how others might perceive me and I'm still that way to a degree. But what I began realizing is that, for me, it's really much more based in ego than being a considerate person. In the past I just wanted everyone to love me, so I would just read people and tell them things they wanted to hear. Being "overly positive" or overly complimentary instead of being honesty. What I found out, especially due to an interaction with Jake's Dad on the eastern shore, was that he was calling out my polite table dinner talk because he knew it was phony. He knew that nobody likes a little bitch how is overly positive and glosses over painful, hard, or real facts about life or their feelings, just to seem like they are the golden human sitting at the table.

That's definitely what I feel about Cole. Yes, he does everything right on paper. But deep down, he has strong feelings and opinions on things (like every single human being on this planet) and he always locks those away for fear that people will not like him. Well, I have found that in moderated doses, honesty and giving "hot takes" are what people actually find interesting in a person, and it is living more in truth to who you actually are... It's way more interesting that way, and to me it is cowardly and very lame to just roll over on your back and act the way you think you ought to in someone else's company.

Anyways, I've been dissecting my recent trip a lot with friends, probably to their exhaustion to it all. The trip really threw me out of my routine and zone, and I feel like I've been struggling to get it back ever since... I'm feeling pretty thrown off center and I'm just trying to recalibrate myself back to my day-to-day and keep focused on the life I have at-hand.

I'm going to pray that my family becomes more present in the moments of time we have together, and that instead of just rushing around or being to preoccupied with whatever we're doing in the moment, we begin to actually engage with each other and our own thoughts and feelings about what's going on in our lives, because to me, that's all that really matters at the end of the day (and the end of our lives)

[chewwytwee]

Btw the reason terfs and Nazis still exist on tumblr isn’t just because tumblr has a financial incentive to retain users, it’s also because the communities ability to recognize dog whistles and calling cards is something that’s not possible to get an algorithm to do. Tumblr (and all social media) has to rely on a bulk of their moderation being done automatically by machines, and they’re really bad at picking up subtleties. Trans people are going to be much more open and proud in labeling themselves trans, whereas TERFs and other bigots are the exact opposite! TERFs will sometimes admit to it, but there are plenty of accounts that shinigami eyes (which is community sourced and reviewed) label as transphobic that never ONCE mention TERFs in no uncertain terms. I can tell and you can and shinigami eyes mods can tell that someone saying ‘Women’s spaces are under constant threat by gender ideologs’ is a transphobe, but what in that sentence is explicit transphobia? Well, the terminology isn’t what’s transphobic there, it’s the meaning of the words. Computers cannot do that kind of analysis and interpretation, they simply can’t and TERFs know that. On the other hand, TERFs have it very easy that most trans people will be very easily identifiable as trans. Trans people will put it in their URL in their Bio in their PFP in their posts, and they’re usually pretty specific about being trans. Computers can also absolutely identify the trans flag in your pfp or see ‘Trans’ in your bio and they can easily pick up on that explicit information. TERFs report spamming popular blogs run by trans women and reporting selfies of only transgender women could theoretically lead to a situation where, if tumblr were using its own users reports as data to train its moderation algorithm, there could be a false connection between those fake TERF reports and trans people (this probably isn’t the case, but i think it’s important to recognize that algorithms can and do make these kinds of unwanted false connections, and online hate campaigns know how to avoid AND use that behavior for their own personal gain. It’s a problem software engineers and machine learning experts spend a lot of time working on because it’s so hard to solve.)

If tumblr could remove every TERF from the platform would they? I don’t know, no one really does know. It’s a useless point to argue because it requires so many assumptions about the backend moderation process that’s it’s almost entirely speculation and anecdotes. What I can say is that TERFs and Nazis exist on literally every social media platform irregardless of whether or not the people running those social media want them there. Twitter famously had a hard time getting its content detection to identify between republican politicians and fascists, it’s funny to believe that regular republicans sound so much like fascists that they’re indistinguishable (which is true tbh) but the reality is a lot more boring, fascists try very hard to sound like normal moderate conservatives. Twitter very explicitly didn’t want far right extremism on their site, and yet it still went on to be one of the biggest breeding grounds for extremist hate movements (yes, even before Musk). Content moderation for social media is fucking hard, especially when it comes to dealing with humans, who are really good at finding ways to outsmart computers. Do I think tumblr wants Nazis and transphobes on their site? No, I don’t. Do I think there’s a problem with transphobia and fascism on this site? Abso fucking lutely. These two seemingly contradictory statements make perfect sense once you grasp how difficult it can be to identify and remove hate speech algorithmically, and if you ask me why I think there’s still such a problem with transphobes, that’s why.

Sometimes you see a post that’s just, so off base you feel the need to respond. But it has like 200 notes so it feels way too personal to leave a comment telling them why their entire point isn’t relevant and is in fact really wrong.

[ryo-maybe]

can u explain why AI art is bad without fearmongering, moralizing or bootlicking lol

I'm going to answer in good faith, even though the tone you're using sounds like you're harboring anything but. The issue with AI art isn't specifically inherent to the tools used to produce it, because, ultimately, a tool is merely that: something devoid of will which, in the hands of a human, can produce a specific outcome. It's the human element that taints what we could otherwise enjoy for the unquestioningly fascinating topic that is AI art and, by extension, AI software as a whole.

Now, the problem isn't people, period, but the kind of people that are responsible for giving AI the bad rep it's been getting, along with the intent that goes into both the development of AI tools and the things produced by dint of said tools. I'm talking about the tech bros happily rubbing their hands, waiting to provide business moguls with a brand new means to commodify and mass-produce what artists stake their entire livelihoods upon, because when you have enough zeroes lined up in your bank account, your eyes are utterly blinded to the soul and personality that human beings put into their handiwork, and which a machine won't ever be able to reproduce no matter how much stolen art you feed it. Oh yeah, by the way, that's how AI art tools have been making the rounds: by chewing on thousands upon thousands of stolen pictures made by actual people so that they may learn how to ape someone's style and spit out absolutely soulless derivatives, while the original authors don't see a lick of recognition or monetary retribution for any of it. Do I need to tell you why stealing and parading someone else's art as your own is a terrible, vile thing to do?

But sure, you did ask me to refrain from "fearmongering, moralizing or bootlicking", which I guess I've already done. So since you'd rather I skipped straight to the point in a concise manner, lemme offer some quick examples of why the culture surrounding AI art has already developed into one of the most abysmally disappointing displays of how greed and an utter lack of human decency can ruin something objectively brimming with possibilities:

Less than a week after the sudden death of Korean artist Kim Jung-gi, someone trained an AI model to mimic his artstyle, having the audacity of asking for credits if anyone wished to use it. I sincerely hope I don't have to explain to you why this is a ghoulish example of the kind of tone-deafness sported by tech bros who buy wholesale into the AI art craze.

A piece of AI art was submitted to an art contest and won. The "artist"'s work amounted to little more than picking a series of prompts and letting the machine do the work. It's as much art as googling a smattering of terms and making a collage of pictures taken from Pinterest (and even then, you would have put more work into it than this person did). That they won at all says a whole damn lot about how abysmal the respect given to artists - real artists - nowadays is.

There are a multitude of people out there already selling prints of AI-generated art. I could link some of them here, but honestly, type "ai art prints" on a search engine and you'll get inundated by them. I've seen and personally know artists who have had to undersell their works because commissions were the only thin, frayed string they could hang on in hopes of making it through the week without fucking starving themselves, but here we are: any random asshole can now yell "MASSIVE BREASTS, THIN WAIST, COCKTAIL DRESS, HUGE BADONGAS" at a computer, let it mash together a trillion of other people's hard work, and print it for easy bucks that the actual authors of the basic ingredients of their insipid soup will never, ever see a dime of.

It really bothers me that you mentioned "no bootlicking". Whose fucking boots is this side of the debate supposedly tasting? That of the artists who post every day about how angry, sad and terrified they are by the prospects of what the development of AI art will entail for their livelihood and passion? What kind of gall did your mother birth you with that you have the spiteful spunk to type that word, when you've got shit like an artist who had their sketch stolen while they were drawing it on stream, then fed to an AI and posted by someone passing it off as their own art? How does that not ignite your indignation? "Bootlicking". Like anyone's tongues have been tasting leather but those of the same tech bro chodes who kept trying oh so hard to convince us NFTs were the future while ruining the environment to make the absolute stupidest point ever made in the history of humanity.

[rqnvindr]

put on a show

pairing: scaramouche x gn!reader

genre: fluff, fake dating, f2l, modern!au

warnings: language and scara being scara but that’s it lol

word count: 1.6k

synopsis: scaramouche agrees to be your fake date at your company’s christmas party, which leads to an unexpected fate brought to you by feelings

a/n: this is a gift for @sungie for axia’s secret santa exchange! it’s nice to meet you and i hope you enjoy this piece that i put together!

--

you were exhausted after work. the holidays were undeniably the worst time to have an office job for a larger company. stacks of never-ending documents along with dozens of unread emails still sat unattended and all had to be completed before christmas. 

and on top of that, there was the annual christmas party.

planning it wasn’t a big deal. you were used to that and knew that everybody loved the holiday cookies you were contributing for the potluck. but you had been working there for 2 years and not once have you ever brought a plus-one, to which your coworkers were starting to jab you for. they truly didn’t mean any harm; they were an agreeable, friendly crowd that you were grateful to work with. yet, their suffocating attempts to get closer to you pushed you into a corner that you could only escape by pretending to have an answer to the relentless personal questions.

heading home right away wasn’t on your agenda even after a more mentally draining day than usual. you took the other train and took a route in the opposite direction. 

when you reached the apartment complex and knocked on scaramouche’s door, you didn’t expect him to answer so fast. usually when someone unexpectedly showed up to his place he’d groan and yell something along the lines of “i already have a vacuum go away”. 

“sorry...i should’ve told you that i wanted to come over.” you sheepishly step in and take off your shoes as he holds the door open.

“it’s whatever.” scaramouche clears his throat. “what happened at work this time?”

you settle on the couch and stroke his pet cat kuni on the head. “nothing HAPPENED per say. just the usual stuff y’know. the senior executives getting on our backs about ‘rookie mistakes’ and giving us the whole pep talk about holiday burnout and stuff.” you ramble on, suddenly feeling unsure about the plan you initially wanted to address.

“aren’t you sick of working a 9 to 5? i told you you should’ve just gone into software engineering like i did so you wouldn’t have to deal with people and could sit at the computer all day like you usually do.”

“hey, i’ve gotten better at limiting my screen time since we moved out of our old apartment! plus i do sit at the computer all day for this job, just in a way that makes me feel like the main character.” you wink.

“okay? you seem very on edge, you might as well just tell me what’s going on if i’ve figured out that much.”

“well, we’re having a christmas party...”

“and?”

“and my coworkers want me to bring a plus-one..”

“oh hell no.” scaramouche rises from his seated position, but you push him back down. “can’t you ask someone else?”

“but you’re the best actor i know.” you plead.

“at least i’m not painfully sweet to retail customers who don’t deserve it.” you flick his forehead, immediately making him change the subject to avoid discussing the day you met at your old part-time job, when he handled an overbearing lady in a polite tone so uncharacteristic of him that you had to be there to believe it.

“it’s just one evening!”

“what are you gonna do when they continue to ask about me? or for the next party? say we broke up? they’re either gonna pity you or become suspicious. besides, why do you wanna bend over for your coworkers out of all people? you’re not gonna get fired just for not having a date to a stupid party.”

you bite your lip. “true. i guess i just feel really isolated from all of them because of the age gap. i’m the youngest person there and the feelings of being behind compared to them have really caught up to me if i’m being honest..”

scaramouche stays quiet, waiting until he’s sure you’re done talking in case you have more to add, observing the way you play with your watch with your eyes averted to the carpet. 

he finally breaks the silence with a sigh. “fine. god, you’re just as stubborn as ever. i’m only saying yes because you came all the way to my house instead of just calling me and i knew you’d stay here all night if i didn’t agree.”

“plot twist, i came for your cat. but thanks, honey!” you pat scaramouche’s shoulder and he grimaces in response.

“ew.”

“just practicing.” you shrug.

--

the two of you arrive early to ensure that you have time to introduce scaramouche and help set up at the same time. there’s no elaborate plan; this is only a one time thing. you’ve agreed to only give vague answers to any further attempts to pry about your relationship after the party, no matter how specific they get.

you would cross that bridge when you got there. right now, you’re astonished at how sincere scaramouche’s smile seemed when he greeted your elderly coworkers, even calling your boss “ma’am”. he handled every single conversation with them smoothly and graciously, as if he totally stole the show. 

after putting the finishing touches on the dessert table, you go up to scaramouche and take his arm. “we should get ourselves a table while we’re at it.” you suggest once the conversation with your boss subsides.

“you’re just in time! i was having a lovely chat with your boyfriend here. you are very lucky to have scored such a charming and handsome young fella.” you nod with a soft laugh, unsure of what to make of her statement. sure, your boss had always been a sociable person, but scaramouche had to have made a truly lasting impression for her to give that degree of praise, which she rarely did to anyone.

you take your seats and instinctively rest your head on his shoulder. the butterflies in your tummy tell you that your sudden display of affection may be a part of a hidden desire to touch the boy who was once only known as your college roommate. did he always smell this nice? and since when did his jawline get so sharp-

you fail to snap yourself out of your thoughts when scaramouche turns and plants a small kiss on your forehead. nobody seems to be watching, but every little thing to make this fake dating scheme of yours seem authentic counts right?

--

it’s not until the end of the evening when you step into the banquet hall for fresh air that you come to terms with what you had been feeling,,,

you liked him. you were a fool, in love with scaramouche even after all of these years of keeping it as friends. he may be a bit of an asshole, okay he was totally an asshole, and yet you could only see the good parts of him. the part of him that still looked out for you and cared about your feelings underneath all of those layers. and it didn’t help that he was good-looking along with that, he had dozens of secret admirers vying for his attention all throughout the time you’ve known him.

but it would be selfish to ask him to stay this close for much longer. he already hated getting close to others, despite having let you in a long time ago. you sigh, ready to wallow for as long as it took for him to come look for you.

“hey,” the voice calling out to you immediately makes you turn. you feel at ease but also tense at the sight of scaramouche strutting over to you.

“hey. sorry for running off.”

“stop apologizing for everything. it’s getting old.” he snaps, though there’s a joking tone hidden within his response that only you would be able to detect. 

“anyways, yeah i was looking for you. and i also wanted to talk.”

you raise an eyebrow at him. “talk about what?” 

scaramouche clears his throat. “well, you know how you told me that you wanted me to pretend to be your boyfriend because i’m a ‘good actor’?” you nod, heart racing as he alludes to your previous thoughts.

“what if i told you that....i didn’t want this to be an act and i wished it was real?” with his sudden confession, he facepalms and turns away.

“sorry. forget i said anything. that sounded so stupid, i knew i shouldn’t have listened to tartaglia...”

you snort, to which the thickness in the air dissolves. “now who’s the one apologizing....?”

“shut up.” he grumbles.

“ok but that was actually a great attempt to be smooth, for you at least.”

scaramouche sighs, then gently leans towards you and cups your cheek, thumb brushing your hair out of your eye. “look, i fucked up just now. but believe me when i say that i meant it. i want to go on a real date sometime after this, just you and me, away from these weirdos who care too much about your love life for their own well-being and make you feel bad just for being younger than them.”

shocked at his words, you gape at him, trying to formulate a response even though you already know how you feel. but, he’s made it clear that he’s not going anywhere, he never backs away from his words and goes through with everything he puts his heart and mind to. so you take a deep breath and give him a warm smile.

“i’d love that, actually. i’ve liked you for a while but i only just realized it. my subconscious really did its job, telling me to take you here.”

scaramouche beams at you, a rare sight, and pulls your ear to his lips.

“maybe we can just ditch the party and go get ice cream right now.” he whispers and you smirk, taking his hand and exiting the hall.

from that day on, you’ve believed that christmas miracles probably do exist.

[andmaybegayer]

Every engineer, every scientist, hell, maybe even some of the programmers out there, have a Thing that they want to use. They don't need to use the Thing. They probably don't even know how to use the Thing because it's never come up. But hoo boy. If it ever does come up, they'll know they've made it. They can officially say that they've done their field at the level they've dreamed about ever since they were a kid sitting in the school library computer lab trying to torrent pirated professional chemical product factory design software or whatever.

It may be doing supersonic fluid dynamics modelling in Ansys. It may be finally figuring out what you even have to do to start up an experiment at CERN. Perhaps you really want the shiny, five hundred million dollar a piece genetic sequencing tools they use at Monsanto, just to see what it would be like. The most complicated thing you've ever designed is a propshaft but you just know there's that nine-axis lathe out there that can make cuts in the fourth dimension. There is no doubt some extraordinary custom-wang sensor hardware being used by the folks over at Air Liquide to design their factory pipelines and all you know is that you want in.

Of course, you don't know how to use any of it. If you knew that you'd be done! No, half the fun is discovering that this software lets you do things you didn't even know you could do. There's a whole button here JUST to model the splash zone for an open bucket of liquid lead! Who could possibly need that! You, of course, for whatever insane hypothetical factory you've just dreamed up. Those massive sheets of quartz glass aren't going to manufacture themselves. Someone needs a chamber that blasts items with teraelectronvolt beams and that someone will be you. Why is there a cutting laser attachment for this robot arm? That's all up to you.

For me, I think my one is the Siemens NX Design Suite. With that shit you can design parts so completely parameterized that you can use the same part file for a bolt, a camshaft, and a door hinge if you really want to. I once saw an NX model where a guy put together a procedural generation system that designed a shock absorber that looked like satan's dick but was actually capable of surviving a drop from orbit. Does it matter that I'm actually an electrical engineer and most of the CAD I've done is "a box, with some holes in it?" If you're asking that question then clearly you haven't been paying attention.