#books hosting software

[bibleofficial]

i just think it’s funny that raspberry pi seems to plan their releases around that of apple’s

[tsreviews]

HostDaddy Review: Ultra-Fast, Secure Hosting with No Monthly Fees - Untitled Part 1 (on Wattpad) https://www.wattpad.com/1460706429-hostdaddy-review-ultra-fast-secure-hosting-with-no?utm_source=web&utm_medium=tumblr&utm_content=share_reading&wp_uname=tapansikder Looking for the ultimate web hosting solution? Enter HostDaddy, the pioneer in hosting technology. With its innovative SafeGuard Armor Hosting Technology, it offers unlimited websites and domains on Titan servers, ensuring a staggering 99.99% uptime guarantee. Enjoy unlimited bandwidth, SSL, emails, and databases without monthly payment hassles. HostDaddy's arsenal includes unbreakable cyber security, one-click installation of premium apps, and standard WooCommerce optimization. Say farewell to expensive hosts like Godaddy and Hostinger; HostDaddy provides fast, secure servers, multi-language support, and WordPress AI tools. Get HostDaddy : https://pujansikder.com/hostdaddy-review/

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How lock-in hurts design

Berliners: Otherland has added a second date (Jan 28) for my book-talk after the first one sold out - book now!

If you've ever read about design, you've probably encountered the idea of "paving the desire path." A "desire path" is an erosion path created by people departing from the official walkway and taking their own route. The story goes that smart campus planners don't fight the desire paths laid down by students; they pave them, formalizing the route that their constituents have voted for with their feet.

Desire paths aren't always great (Wikipedia notes that "desire paths sometimes cut through sensitive habitats and exclusion zones, threatening wildlife and park security"), but in the context of design, a desire path is a way that users communicate with designers, creating a feedback loop between those two groups. The designers make a product, the users use it in ways that surprise the designer, and the designer integrates all that into a new revision of the product.

This method is widely heralded as a means of "co-innovating" between users and companies. Designers who practice the method are lauded for their humility, their willingness to learn from their users. Tech history is strewn with examples of successful paved desire-paths.

Take John Deere. While today the company is notorious for its war on its customers (via its opposition to right to repair), Deere was once a leader in co-innovation, dispatching roving field engineers to visit farms and learn how farmers had modified their tractors. The best of these modifications would then be worked into the next round of tractor designs, in a virtuous cycle:

https://securityledger.com/2019/03/opinion-my-grandfathers-john-deere-would-support-our-right-to-repair/

But this pattern is even more pronounced in the digital world, because it's much easier to update a digital service than it is to update all the tractors in the field, especially if that service is cloud-based, meaning you can modify the back-end everyone is instantly updated. The most celebrated example of this co-creation is Twitter, whose users created a host of its core features.

Retweets, for example, were a user creation. Users who saw something they liked on the service would type "RT" and paste the text and the link into a new tweet composition window. Same for quote-tweets: users copied the URL for a tweet and pasted it in below their own commentary. Twitter designers observed this user innovation and formalized it, turning it into part of Twitter's core feature-set.

Companies are obsessed with discovering digital desire paths. They pay fortunes for analytics software to produce maps of how their users interact with their services, run focus groups, even embed sneaky screen-recording software into their web-pages:

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dark-side-of-replay-sessions-that-record-your-every-move-online/

This relentless surveillance of users is pursued in the name of making things better for them: let us spy on you and we'll figure out where your pain-points and friction are coming from, and remove those. We all win!

But this impulse is a world apart from the humility and respect implied by co-innovation. The constant, nonconsensual observation of users has more to do with controlling users than learning from them.

That is, after all, the ethos of modern technology: the more control a company can exert over its users ,the more value it can transfer from those users to its shareholders. That's the key to enshittification, the ubiquitous platform decay that has degraded virtually all the technology we use, making it worse every day:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

When you are seeking to control users, the desire paths they create are all too frequently a means to wrestling control back from you. Take advertising: every time a service makes its ads more obnoxious and invasive, it creates an incentive for its users to search for "how do I install an ad-blocker":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

More than half of all web-users have installed ad-blockers. It's the largest consumer boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But zero app users have installed ad-blockers, because reverse-engineering an app requires that you bypass its encryption, triggering liability under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. This law provides for a $500,000 fine and a 5-year prison sentence for "circumvention" of access controls:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/12/youre-holding-it-wrong/#if-dishwashers-were-iphones

Beyond that, modifying an app creates liability under copyright, trademark, patent, trade secrets, noncompete, nondisclosure and so on. It's what Jay Freeman calls "felony contempt of business model":

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

This is why services are so horny to drive you to install their app rather using their websites: they are trying to get you to do something that, given your druthers, you would prefer not to do. They want to force you to exit through the gift shop, you want to carve a desire path straight to the parking lot. Apps let them mobilize the law to literally criminalize those desire paths.

An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to block ads in it (or do anything else that wrestles value back from a company). Apps are web-pages where everything not forbidden is mandatory.

Seen in this light, an app is a way to wage war on desire paths, to abandon the cooperative model for co-innovation in favor of the adversarial model of user control and extraction.

Corporate apologists like to claim that the proliferation of apps proves that users like them. Neoliberal economists love the idea that business as usual represents a "revealed preference." This is an intellectually unserious tautology: "you do this, so you must like it":

https://boingboing.net/2024/01/22/hp-ceo-says-customers-are-a-bad-investment-unless-they-can-be-made-to-buy-companys-drm-ink-cartridges.html

Calling an action where no alternatives are permissible a "preference" or a "choice" is a cheap trick – especially when considered against the "preferences" that reveal themselves when a real choice is possible. Take commercial surveillance: when Apple gave Ios users a choice about being spied on – a one-click opt of of app-based surveillance – 96% of users choice no spying:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-users-opt-out-of-app-tracking-in-ios-14-5-analytics-find/

But then Apple started spying on those very same users that had opted out of spying by Facebook and other Apple competitors:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Neoclassical economists aren't just obsessed with revealed preferences – they also love to bandy about the idea of "moral hazard": economic arrangements that tempt people to be dishonest. This is typically applied to the public ("consumers" in the contemptuous parlance of econospeak). But apps are pure moral hazard – for corporations. The ability to prohibit desire paths – and literally imprison rivals who help your users thwart those prohibitions – is too tempting for companies to resist.

The fact that the majority of web users block ads reveals a strong preference for not being spied on ("users just want relevant ads" is such an obvious lie that doesn't merit any serious discussion):

https://www.iccl.ie/news/82-of-the-irish-public-wants-big-techs-toxic-algorithms-switched-off/

Giant companies attained their scale by learning from their users, not by thwarting them. The person using technology always knows something about what they need to do and how they want to do it that the designers can never anticipate. This is especially true of people who are unlike those designers – people who live on the other side of the world, or the other side of the economic divide, or whose bodies don't work the way that the designers' bodies do:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

Apps – and other technologies that are locked down so their users can be locked in – are the height of technological arrogance. They embody a belief that users are to be told, not heard. If a user wants to do something that the designer didn't anticipate, that's the user's fault:

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

Corporate enthusiasm for prohibiting you from reconfiguring the tools you use to suit your needs is a declaration of the end of history. "Sure," John Deere execs say, "we once learned from farmers by observing how they modified their tractors. But today's farmers are so much stupider and we are so much smarter that we have nothing to learn from them anymore."

Spying on your users to control them is a poor substitute asking your users their permission to learn from them. Without technological self-determination, preferences can't be revealed. Without the right to seize the means of computation, the desire paths never emerge, leaving designers in the dark about what users really want.

Our policymakers swear loyalty to "innovation" but when corporations ask for the right to decide who can innovate and how, they fall all over themselves to create laws that let companies punish users for the crime of contempt of business-model.

I'm Kickstarting the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There's also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/24/everything-not-mandatory/#is-prohibited

Image: Belem (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Desire_path_%2819811581366%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[sl-walker]

Other Fandom Archives

At least, other ones running on the otw-archive software!

SquidgeWorld Archive

Open to all fandoms, SqWA is run under the nonprofit squidge.org! In addition to the archive there, Squidge also offers image hosting, podfic hosting and a bunch of other excellent services. Beyond that, it utilizes more extensive archive warnings than AO3 and also accommodates two additional relationship categories! SqWA has a no-AI policy that is both up front legally and implemented behind the scenes through various coding measures.

The TOS is here. The information about the additional warnings can be found here.

--

Ad Astra :: Star Trek Fanfiction Archive

A single-fandom Star Trek fanfiction archive, this one's home for any and all Trek fandom! Using the same warnings as AO3, but a much stricter (and therefore searchable) tagging scheme, Ad Astra's also connected to one of the friendliest and most supportive Trek communities on the internet! We run weekly challenges, monthly review/comment hunts and like the other archives, we take a very hardline stance against AI both in actual terms and in firewalling the site. AI 'bots can't even reach the server before getting sucked into a black hole of 4XX errors and bannination jail!

There's an additional QPR (Queer-platonic relationships) tag accepted in the form of Character A ~ Character B, as well. Two invitations go out once a day, unless you want to contact me directly, then I can send one immediately.

Find the site FAQs here, please pay special attention to the posting rules!!

--

superlove

Run off of a macbook by a very talented young person, superlove is for all fandoms and original fiction and pretty much whatever else melo wants to open the doors for! In addition to the same archive warnings and relationships available to people using AO3, superlove also has a few more warnings that users can use and both QPR and vs. tags for queer-platonic and adversarial relationships. Given this is largely a private project, please make sure you review the rules carefully.

--

Comic Fanfiction Authors Archive

The CFAArchive is an archive built specifically for comic book and comic animation adjacent fandoms, rather than live-action properties! It uses the same archive warnings as AO3 and Ad Astra, but has the two additional tags QPR and vs. for queer-platonic and adversarial relationships! Much like Ad Astra, the tagging scheme on the CFAA is very strict to maximize searchability and minimize tag-spamming. There's also an attached Discord, where we run a bi-weekly writing challenge, the occasional comment/review hunt and a monthly focus feature where everyone reads a book, discusses it and creates based on it! If you love comic books and comic animation properties, this is the place for you!

Much like Ad Astra, the filtering out of AI 'bots is extremely strict; they get 4XX'd into oblivion and so far, none have gotten through since the new firewall rules were implemented, so you actually can leave works unlocked if you like with minimal (though never nonexistent) concern about them being scraped.

Two invitations go out once a day, unless you want to contact me directly, then I can send one immediately.

The TOS is here; please read the rules carefully! The tagging FAQ is here; don't be intimidated, it's not hard once you get into the swing!

[that-dumb-moth]

Okay, so, fucking PSA. Please read if you're interested in helping either Robert Kurvitz, the Disco Elysium team, or the Internet Archive:

DO NOT CLAIM THAT KURVITZ UPLOADED A COPY OF DISCO ELISYUM ON THE INTERNET ARCHIVE, REPORT THE UPLOAD, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Internet Archive:

I'm a person that enjoys community projects like the Internet Archive. They hold crucial positions in public knowledge and do not deserve to be labeled "piracy dens" and do not deserve the legal difficulties associated. By sharing copies of software whose copyright holders still actually care instead of reporting them, you are putting the Internet Archive at risk. Once the Internet Archive gets sued into oblivion, you will no longer have the wayback machine, thousands of copies of scans of rare books and boxes will be lost, and endless piles of abandonware trapped in long outdated storage mediums and standards will no longer be used again. And even worse, once corporations learn that legal pressure is enough to take out public knowledge, they will press down hard on services like the ones Wikimedia offers (that includes wikipedia if you're unaware). Say goodbye to the crowdsourced knowledge of old, and hello to corporate refined knowledge, likely alot of which is AI generated.

Robert Kurvitz

Robert Kurvitz has a very poor relationship with ZA/UM and thus, it doesn't take long to tie a motive to him publishing pirated copies of DE. And as he's the one with the motive and not Internet Archive, it's entirely possible legal action could be pointed at Kurvitz instead or worse, also. And that's where the problem occurs... people keep claiming the file was uploaded by Kurvitz himself. But that's a claim made by the uninformed. The way the Internet Archive works is that each file uploaded is primarily credited to their original authors with credit to the uploader placed to the side. However, people sharing the file are claiming that, due to a misunderstanding, Kurvitz is the one who uploaded the file. When in reality, it was a person using a pseudonym. This simple mistake can undoubtedly prove disastrous.

The DE Team

There's no doubt that the team behind DE were immensely fucked over. And we truly need to fight against that scumbaggery. So, how do you support the DE team? First off, don't pay for DE. And if you're not willing to go to the greynet, just don't fucking play the game. I'm sorry, but hosting pirated games on honest sites like the IA just causes more trouble than needed. Also, please, do not share links to pirated copies and more importantly, don't try claiming the devs endorse piracy. Even if they do. Corporations are little shits that like to sue you over everything.

I don't know if any of that makes any sense. But thank you anyways for reading this.

[staff]

Tumblr Live on Web!

Hello, Tumblr. Tumblr Live is coming to your desktop computers. If you’re in the US, you can now both stream and watch on web.

Tumblr Live on web means you’ll be able to use streaming software to share your screen on a stream. OBS (open broadcaster software), for example, enables you to stream to specific locations using multiple inputs like your webcam and a virtual camera—think side-by-side face cam and screen recording on a gaming stream. Having OBS integration really blows open a world of possibilities for Tumblr Live. Learn more about hosting a stream using OBS here. 

Your ballpit awaits! What will you stream? Furby lengthening lessons? The Last of Us Pt. 1 replay? The Locked Tomb book club? Frog costume felting? Zhongli live draw? The Sims Seinfeld reenactment?

[krissiefox]

Here's a collection of sites where you can get sound effects and ambience for your projects!

https://freesound.org/ Freesound is a great resource for royalty free and copyright free sounds. Each sound comes with a creative commons license, some of which require credit, so make sure to check those!

https://www.sounds-resource.com/ Sounds resource is an archive of sounds from various video games and PC games, so while they can't be used for anything commercial, you may be able to use them for things like videos or fan games.

https://www.humblebundle.com/software Humble bundle regularly hosts fundraiser bundles of software and game design assets, including sound effects and ambience. You can also put money from your purchase forward the bundles charity. Sadly, humble bundle also puts out bundles of AI books, though, so it's up to you if you think the good outweighs the bad here.

Unreal Marketplace If your project is an Unreal Engine 4/5 game, check out what the Unreal marketplace has to offer! They offer both free and paid sound effect packs for your games. Some you can download as wav files without Unreal Engine installed, as well!

https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/ Another nice resource of free and royalty free sound effects! Attribution is not required, but appreciated!

https://www.youtube.com/ Youtube can be a great place to find copyright free/royalty free sounds too! To get the sounds form the videos, you can use a tool such as mediahuman's youtube-to-mp3 converter.

https://www.gamedevmarket.net/category/audio/sound-fx A paid store where you can find all sorts of sounds and ambience for your video game projects! Humble bundle seems to do bundles with them pretty often so you may want to look into that to save some money here, too.

https://sonniss.com/gameaudiogdc An archive of free and copyright free sound effect packs from the Game Developers Conference! A new pack seems to be added every year, too. :)

https://getsoundly.com/ Soundly is a program more than website, but I have tried it myself and you can get free sound effects from it, and you can get additional sounds if you pay for the pro version as well.

https://www.boomlibrary.com/ While this sound effect site is primarily a paid one, you can get a free monthly bundle of sound effects if you subscribe to their mailing list!

https://blipsounds.com/community-library/ Another great library of free sounds from the Blip Studios community!

https://www.zapsplat.com/ They require you to make an account before downloading anything, but this is another site with lots of free sound effects for your projects!

Itch Io Itch Io is another great resource for both free and paid sound effects!

[toskarin]

going on the twine rant again, lads. fair warning.

-

the twine editor is theoretically great software

which is to say, twine editor is far and away the best execution of "a text game maker for people who mostly make text and not games" that presently exists. it's notable for making wholly self-contained (read: does not require interpreter software) text games with functioning mechanics at about the level of code literacy you could feasibly ask from people who brushed off of other more complicated software

this is in large part because the text adventure and IF ecosystem has the same problem as the (similarly insular and incestuous) scorewriting ecosystem: all of the software is made to be used by a group of like 50 people who don't use anything else, so they just settle for whatever exists

twine solves a lot of these problems by simply existing as an html game maker that can automate all of the functions of a gamebook out of the box. the editor has features which (to me) seem to be inspired by scrivener, which is my favourite WYSIWYG writing software for longform fiction on the market (I prefer writing in LaTeX but I can acknowledge that's a habit I picked up and not an endorsement of LaTeX)

that being said, even though there's an obvious utility to being able to prototype out rpgs and such in twine incredibly quickly, I can't really recommend people... use twine for that. because of the problems.

the twine editor is also kind of beautiful for all the ways in which it issoftware designed to torture the user

twine exists with one foot in "games" and one foot in "writing" and this overlap is the totality of its intended use. this space of compromise is still the best that's been made for this specific scene, but it means that edge cases are (at absolute best) operating twine in much the way that someone being hanging onto the edge of a shattered cockpit is operating an airliner

I could go on and on about the specific elements of twine's design that drive me insane, and in how it punishes you both for making too much of a book and for making too much of a game, but there's one problem that kind of sticks out as a simulacrum of this whole issue

by design, twine organises its projects as a story map. this is kind of like the middle point between scrivener's storyboard and a whiteboard, but specialised for use in making text games. this means that each node on it is one screen, called a card, that you can open and edit

doing this opens a window for text input, and the exact contents of this window kind of depend on which format you're writing your story in, but as a rule, you write everything into these sub-windows and that's the game

because twine runs in one window, these cards open more like menus than true windows. you can have one open at a time, and when you need to test something, you close the window and press the button to test the game. simple as

now, for making software, it's helpful to have a versioning function of some sort in case, among other reasons, you fuck something up in a way you don't immediately notice

for writing, you usually want some sort of undo function, in case you accidentally delete something or edit over it

at the intersection of these two, twine does have an undo function. which works differently depending on which version of the editor you're using. in the web version, you get multiple layers of undo. that makes sense.

in the downloaded version, which is the version you have to use if you don't want to use your browser's local storage (?? you shouldn't be doing this) you get

one layer of undo.

in a modern text editor.

that you are expected to write in.

this is on top of the browser-hosted version of twine editor being significantly more stable than the desktop version, so that's obviously the version you're meant to use, which runs in stark contrast to like... how that should work. this should already be raising your blood pressure a little bit if you remember that the browser version of twine saves your project files to your browser's local storage

now, common to both versions is another important feature which seemingly exists to prevent data loss: twine automatically saves your changes when you exit out of a card

this means that, the moment you close a card to go test the changes you just made to your game, they are saved over the previous version of the game with no way to undo them

but there IS a way to get around this without having to write in an entirely separate word processor! several ways even. you can even use the downloaded version if you do this

duplicate the full project every single time you make changes that could necessitate an undo function

make a copy of every card you edit in case you need to revert to it after testing, then remember to delete it afterwards

if you're editing the cards themselves, see option 1, because there is no way to undo deletion of cards in the story map

and like... that's not good. it's kind of the hell machine for killing all human beings, actually

it's also not a problem remotely unique to twine, because this is the kind of thing you see in most niche-specialised software where there isn't really a distinction made between "this is an expected frustration of working on any artistic project" and "this is something completely insane that absolutely should not be the case and isn't tolerated in immediately adjacent comparable creative fields"

twine can be used to make longer projects, but at the point where you're recommending two layers of supporting software that overlap so hard with the editor that they should be redundancies, it becomes clear that the only thing it's really fit-for-purpose to do is non-linear fiction consisting of two or three paragraphs per card

and that's generally not what it's used for! because that sort of thing is almost universally understood as a stepping stone towards using twine for making either longform non-linear fiction or full-featured rpgs

twine could be really useful software, and in fairness it's generally better than the alternatives it supplanted in its niche (people making little interactive poems probably shouldn't be trying to use Inform or TADS), but it really seems like it was designed with as a cursed amulet meant to cause as much grief as possible while being difficult to justify throwing away

[certifiedlibraryposts]

i just got my library card renewed after a very long time - do you know what all i can do with it other than taking out books? because i know there's more things but i feel like it's a silly question to ask

Not at all, and welcome back to the library life! Your millage may vary based on which of these services your library has available, but here's a few things I know of off the top of my head that are pretty common:

The library might have CDs, movies, and even newspapers you can borrow as well

Libby, an app that uses your library card to borrow and download ebooks and audiobooks to enjoy on your mobile device or e-reader

Kanopy, a streaming service for TV shows and movies

Hoopla, which has a whole bunch of stuff like shows & movies, comics, and magazines

Your library might have a makerspace that gives you access to things like 3D printers, button makers, computers with a bunch of Adobe software, ect

Sometimes they host book clubs or other fun community events!

my "#library guides" tag also has a number of posts about services like these if you'd like some more info. Your library's website should also list what services they offer, and/or you could ask a librarian there. Have fun!

[ayeforscotland]

Ad | Some Humble Bundle Goodies

One for the audio engineers - The Audio Arcade bundle gives you a whole bunch of royalty-free music and SFX as well as plugins to insert in all the major game engines. Ambient tracks, environmental sounds, explosions, you name it.

Money raised goes towards Children's Miracle Network Hospitals.

For those who dabble in Virtual Reality, the Upload VR Showcase with Devolver Digital has a bunch of Serious Sam VR games as well as the Talos Principle, a really solid puzzle game.

Money raised goes to Special Effect which helps people with disabilities enjoy games via accessible controllers. I've seen the stuff they do and it's honestly great.

Want to get into programming but don't know where to start? The Learn to Program bundle has a tonne of resources covering everything from HTML and CSS through to Python, C# and Ruby.

Money raised goes towards Code.org which seeks to expand participation in computing science by helping women and students of colour.

The Future Tech Innovators Toolkit is a software bundle with courses on Robotics, Electronics and programming with Raspberry Pi and Arduino.

Money raised goes towards Alzheimers Research UK.

The Home How-To Guides bundle offers a complete set of books for home improvements and projects. Want to know more about plumbing, home repair, bathrooms, wiring or carpentry? This bundle has you covered.

Money raised goes to It Gets Better, a charity that supports LGBT Youth.

Want to pick up the latest Elden Ring DLC? It's also available on the Humble Store with the key being redeemable on Steam.

[celestial-sphere-press]

That National Geographic leather binding for Yellowstone is fucking Gorgeous!!! (Pardon my Language)

How long have you been binding, and what would you recommend to someone who wants to try it for themselves?

hello and thank you so much!! I worked really hard on that one (and no pardon needed haha)!

I started binding in February of 2021, which means in a few months I'll have reached 4 years. It's been an awesome journey!!

If you'd like to try it for yourself, I'd recommenda few things!

1) You can 100% try out the basics with near free or cheap materials. People typeset in Word or Google Docs or Pages. You can print on printer paper & use regular sewing thread & scavenge board from old books or notebook backs or do a limp leather binding & use no boards at all. You can make paper pamphlets. Any comments I make following this are about my preferences for best results. The most expensive part that cannot be avoided is printing. On the other hand expenses can wildly escalate if you're committing to it; once you are doing leather it becomes somewhat unavoidably expensive.

2) Check out some tutorials from SeaLemon or DAS Bookbinding on YouTube for the physical construction. SeaLemon is really clear for a beginner starting out, but then I'd move to DAS for better technique (DAS also has a beginner series though). I watched DAS Bookbinding videos for three weeks straight before I was able to start, & while that doesn't maybe work out for everyone I do think it gave me a pretty strong basis of understanding for structural techniques. DAS is *really* good at explaining why he thinks you should do something. The structure of the NatGeo bind is basically DAS's video on a rounded & backed bradel binding (but with leather & sewn on recessed cords). There is some good stuff on Tiktok/IG, but watch short-form videos/reels with caution. They move a little fast and I've seen a couple give instructions that can result in structural flaws (not that this is unique to the form, cross-referencing on instructions from any source is a good practice). They are good for if you're looking for a specific technique (particularly modern decorative ones, like cricut use, edge gilding, HTV application). There are also published books you can buy or maybe request through your library, such as Hollander's Introduction to Bookbinding. Renegade Bookbinding Guild runs a whole bunch of technique-specific in-house zoom classes annually.

3) Look to other fanbinders for tutorials on how to format the text (this is because most pro bookbinders do not do both text design & book creation! it's a pretty unique feature of fanbinding). @renegadeguild has some publically provided resources on our website here and more typesetting tutorials for a whole host of softwares (Affinity Publisher is my choice - one time purchase, fuck you very much Adobe InDesign) located in the discord server. Anyone 18+ can join the Discord. The NatGeo inspired book (text & dust jacket) was created in Affinity Publisher.

4) Join a community of fanbinders! It's really lovely. The space has exploded & there are tons of people to be friends with, trade tips, & cheer each other on. I'm part of @renegadeguild and we do a whole bunch of events throughout the year, and we have an in-person retreat every other year. I've met with over 20 different renegaders so far, in three different countries, and it's been such a blast. Definitely the community helps keep up the motivation. Renegade isn't the only community out there though! There's groups more rooted in IG/tiktok circles that have their own discords, plus a number of FB groups. I do think most people who are comfortable on tumblr enjoy Renegade's vibe.

5) While I learned most of what I do online, some things really benefit from in-person learning. If you want to do leather binding I would really recommend trying to take an in-person class. I did two attempts at a leather binding on my own before I decided to hold off until I'd had at least one in-person class. Leather binding can be extremely frustrating, especially when you can easily end up with a book that looks worse than a cloth binding at your same skill level but for double the cost. Imo this is mostly because the leather specific skills like paring, warp management, and assessing a random piece of leather for bookbinding suitability are all pretty tactile experiences, all of which are difficult to assess through a screen and can result in an unpleasantly bulky/stiff/shapeless book if ignored. For example- while this book of mine is a pretty popular post, I don't enjoy holding it and reading it, especially in contrast to the NatGeo bind. Part of this was the material I chose; part was not being able to adhere to the instructions quite well enough; part was just not knowing enough about what I was doing; part is they're different constructions. This might just be a me thing though; I'm sure others have had success with online only tutorials for leather.

6) I'm not going to get into specific tools bc that could be a whole post, but some things are necessary (printer access), some things are necessary depending on style, some things are "makes life easier but only drop the money if it's stopping you from making books out of frustration", some things are just technique-specific tools. Examples - sewing frames are often brought up but are never necessary unless sewing on cords; cricuts & cutting machines are commonly used in fanbinding circles but I don't have one (& don't intend to atm).

7) Don't be shy to offer the author a copy!! Like other fan activities, fanbinding is part of our fandom community ecosystem. Your fanbinding is in communication with the author's story. Giving a bind to the author is a great way of keeping the ecosystem going. I tend to think of binds as a combo of comment, fic rec, and fan art inspired by the fic.

8) Paper grain sounds stupid but it IS IMPORTANT! My personal hierarchy of give-a-fuck for grain: Board grain, spine card grain, endpaper grain, cover paper grain, text block grain, book cloth grain. The only thing I personally sometimes ignore is book cloth grain; but many people will not worry too much about text block paper grain.

Gonna stop there for now. If you've got specific questions or want elaboration, feel free to ask. As with all things, YMMV, this is my own opinions/experience and may not apply in all cases. There's a whole lot of different techniques out there, and it's hard to ever say something is wrong, per se - but I think it's important to understand if a method has an outcome you may want to avoid. Prioritize your goals & adapt for them - what's your goal? Longevity, readability, aesthetics? You might make different choices depending on them. My choices influence the techniques I chose to focus on, the tools I buy, and thus the final aesthetic of my binds.

[hrrtshape]

what kinds of extracurriculars does st lazarus have ? 🩰

hi lovie !! so sorry that if took so long to get back to you </3 copying everything from my script because my intro isnt done yet !!

- *EXTRACURRACULAR.*

- *intelligence* **⋆** *clubs*

---

**✶** *debate*

**✶** *coding*

**✶** *model united nations*

(Got so lazy that i’m not even erasing the spaces notion forced upon me)

**✶** *public speaking*

**✶** *robotics*

**✶** *science olympiad*

---

- *creative* **⋆** *clubs*

**✶** *ceramics*

**✶** *creative writing*

**✶** *cooking*

**✶** *drama*

**✶** *fashion design*

**✶** *film production*

**✶** *photography*

---

- *athletic* ⋆ *clubs*

**✶** *archery*

**✶** *ballet*

**✶** *basketball*

**✶** *cross-country*

**✶** *dance*

**✶** *equestrian*

**✶** *fencing*

**✶** *football*

**✶** *gymnastics*

**✶** *ice hockey*

**✶** *ice skating*

**✶** *martial arts*

**✶** *rock climbing*

**✶** *rowing*

**✶** *sailing*

**✶** *skiing*

**✶** *soccer*

**✶** *surfing*

**✶** *swimming*

---

- *music* ⋆ *clubs*

**✶** *choir*

**✶** *glee*

**✶** *jazz band*

BITS AND BOPS (because this is the kewlest school ever)

**✶ *starbucks**: an in-house starbucks for a caffeine fix between classes, with a cozy lounge area.*

**✶ *annual gala**: the school hosts an extravagant charity gala every year, attended by celebrities, alumni, and high-profile guests, raising millions for various causes.*

**✶ *secret garden**: hidden within the campus is a beautiful, secluded garden where students can relax and study amidst nature.*

**✶ *cultural exchange program**: offers students opportunities to study abroad in prestigious partner schools around the world.*

**✶ *mentorship program**: every student is paired with an alumni mentor who is a leader in their field, providing guidance and networking opportunities.*

**✶ *exclusive internships**: partnerships with top corporations and institutions offer students coveted internship positions.*

**✶ *technology integration**: each student is provided with the latest technology, including a personal laptop and access to cutting-edge software.*

**✶ *luxury transport**: the school offers chauffeured car services for students who need transportation to and from the campus.*

**✶ *uniforms**: designed by a renowned fashion designer, blending classic elegance with modern chic, featuring tailored blazers, silk ties, and custom embroidery.*

**✶ *celebrity speakers**: regular guest lectures from celebrities, political figures, and industry leaders inspire and educate the student body.*

**✶ *student concierge**: a dedicated team available to assist students with personal requests, from booking travel arrangements to organising study sessions.*

**✶ *lavish fountain**: at the center of the school's main courtyard stands an intricately designed marble fountain, complete with statues of mythological figures, which serves as a popular meeting spot for students.*

**✶ *secret passages**: rumour has it that the school is crisscrossed with hidden passageways and secret rooms, remnants of its history as a historic mansion.

**✶ *interactive science museum**: an interactive science museum on campus offers hands-on exhibits and experiments, sparking curiosity and innovation among students.* Yes !

**✶ *zen garden**: a serene zen garden provides a tranquil escape for meditation and contemplation, with beautifully raked sand patterns and bonsai trees.

**✶ *student lounge**: a plush student lounge equipped with gaming consoles, pool tables, and cozy seating areas for relaxation and socialising

**✶ *historical library wing**: a special wing of the library dedicated to rare and historical books, manuscripts, and documents, with a temperature-controlled environment for preservation.*

**✶ *athlete training centre**: a high-tech training center for student-athletes, complete with personal trainers, sports medicine, and recovery facilities.*

**✶ *green roofs**: several buildings feature green roofs with gardens that students can tend to, part of the school's urban agriculture program.*

**✶ *outdoor amphitheater**: an outdoor amphitheater for performances, lectures, and movie nights under the stars.

**✶ *aquarium**: a small on-campus aquarium featuring marine life as part of the biology curriculum and for general student enjoyment.*

**✶ *planetarium shows**: regular shows and educational programs in the planetarium, covering astronomy, space exploration, and the latest scientific discoveries.*

**✶ *gardening club greenhouse**: a greenhouse specifically for the gardening club, where students can grow and study a variety of plants year-round.*

**✶ *tech help desk**: a tech help desk staffed by students and IT professionals, assisting with any technical issues and providing training workshops.*

**✶ *boutique school store**: a boutique store selling exclusive school merchandise, from luxury branded uniforms to artisanal school supplies.* yes !!!

**✶ *speakeasy-style study room**: a hidden, speakeasy-style study room accessed through a bookcase in the library, offering a quiet and unique study space.*

**✶ *personal trainers**: available for students who are athletes or simply fitness enthusiasts, offering personalized fitness plans and coaching.*

**✶ *gourmet vending machines**: vending machines stocked with gourmet snacks and meals, including sushi, salads, and organic treats

[eschergirls]

January 2025 Update & 2024 Supporter Thank You

Hi everyone! December is over so it's time not just for the January update and thank you post, but also to thank everybody who supported Escher Girls in 2024!

This month has no major external site updates, but we have updated the site internal software which should hopefully fix some errors. We've also fixed the formatting in the way the site displays gifs and videos in previews in the tags, so there shouldn't be giant white spaces between each post.

This month I didn't have a lot of time to fix up old posts because I've been jumping from appointment to appointment for the health thing I mentioned before. But I was able to fix up a few posts.

Specifically, I restored this post of Kevin Nash's short-lived comic book, a panel of Gamora's butt sucking in her thong and also her entire body I guess?, this cover of Shanna: The She-Devil in a boobs and butt pose, Nikki Doyle being turned into a snake by a snake, and two really good fan-art/redraws of Nikki Doyle, one by Keskerist, and another by JustTheMiles. I also fixed up and sourced the Samurai Champloo bomb-boobs video from a very old post.

All restored/fixed posts have working images, videos, and animated gifs (a lot were broken or deleted by either Tumblr or during the move to the new site), and have added image descriptions for screenreaders, sources, and link to the corresponding cross-post on Tumblr and vice versa (except for the cases where Tumblr removed the post entirely either because the submitter deleted their blog/submission, or Tumblr's algorithm mistakenly tagged something as nudity, usually a solid coloured bodysuit, in those cases I've tried to find an archived version to link to). For very old Tumblr posts that don't allow image captions, I've linked the images to the image hosted on EscherGirls.com which does have image captions.

And now I want to give a big thank you to Escher Girls' Patreon subscribers for all of 2024 regardless of when you subscribed or for how long. I really appreciate all the help people give me to help keep the site up, pay for hosting and domain costs (which keep going up due to inflation v_v), and allow us to keep the site updated.

So thank you so so much to the following people for being 2024 Patreon subscribers:

Anne Adler Cat Mara CheerfulOptimistic Chris McKenzie Em Bardon First Time Trek Greg Sepelak Karrius Ken Trosaurus Kevin Carson Kim Wincen Leak  Manuel Dalton Mary Kuhner Max Schwarz Miriam Pody Morgan McEvoy randomisedmongoose Rebecca Breu Ringoko  Ryan Gerber Sam Mikes Sean Sea Who Used To Be Much More Annoying SpecialRandomCast  Thomas Thomas Key

And also special thank yous to JohnnyBob8 and PJ Evans for their donations through Ko-Fi in 2024!

And also a huge thank you to everybody in general who reads, submits, reblogs, comments, and otherwise interacts with the blog! Escher Girls' audience is truly great and I love seeing all of your responses to my posts and your captions!

Also, if anybody is on Fedi and wants to talk to me, I'm at https://urusai.social/@ami_angelwings.

Thank you so much and see you next month!

Ami

PS: As a reminder, we added a button that links to the Escher Girls Tumblr and to our RSS feed for those who want to follow that way. (For newbies, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is basically a feed you can read using an RSS reader. Simply copy and paste https://eschergirls.com/rss.xml into an RSS reader and it will keep you up to date on Escher Girls!)

Make sure it is eschergirls.com and not eschergirls.tumblr.com, as that is Tumblr, and not the self-hosted site.

If you have any issues with the site or suggestions to improve it, please do not hesitate to contact me and let me know!

If you wish to support Escher Girls, you can subscribe to our Patreon at: https://www.patreon.com/ami_angelwings or donate through Ko-Fi at: https://ko-fi.com/amiangelwings.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Unpersoned

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

My latest Locus Magazine column is "Unpersoned." It's about the implications of putting critical infrastructure into the private, unaccountable hands of tech giants:

https://locusmag.com/2024/07/cory-doctorow-unpersoned/

The column opens with the story of romance writer K Renee, as reported by Madeline Ashby for Wired:

https://www.wired.com/story/what-happens-when-a-romance-author-gets-locked-out-of-google-docs/

Renee is a prolific writer who used Google Docs to compose her books, and share them among early readers for feedback and revisions. Last March, Renee's Google account was locked, and she was no longer able to access ten manuscripts for her unfinished books, totaling over 220,000 words. Google's famously opaque customer service – a mix of indifferently monitored forums, AI chatbots, and buck-passing subcontractors – would not explain to her what rule she had violated, merely that her work had been deemed "inappropriate."

Renee discovered that she wasn't being singled out. Many of her peers had also seen their accounts frozen and their documents locked, and none of them were able to get an explanation out of Google. Renee and her similarly situated victims of Google lockouts were reduced to developing folk-theories of what they had done to be expelled from Google's walled garden; Renee came to believe that she had tripped an anti-spam system by inviting her community of early readers to access the books she was working on.

There's a normal way that these stories resolve themselves: a reporter like Ashby, writing for a widely read publication like Wired, contacts the company and triggers a review by one of the vanishingly small number of people with the authority to undo the determinations of the Kafka-as-a-service systems that underpin the big platforms. The system's victim gets their data back and the company mouths a few empty phrases about how they take something-or-other "very seriously" and so forth.

But in this case, Google broke the script. When Ashby contacted Google about Renee's situation, Google spokesperson Jenny Thomson insisted that the policies for Google accounts were "clear": "we may review and take action on any content that violates our policies." If Renee believed that she'd been wrongly flagged, she could "request an appeal."

But Renee didn't even know what policy she was meant to have broken, and the "appeals" went nowhere.

This is an underappreciated aspect of "software as a service" and "the cloud." As companies from Microsoft to Adobe to Google withdraw the option to use software that runs on your own computer to create files that live on that computer, control over our own lives is quietly slipping away. Sure, it's great to have all your legal documents scanned, encrypted and hosted on GDrive, where they can't be burned up in a house-fire. But if a Google subcontractor decides you've broken some unwritten rule, you can lose access to those docs forever, without appeal or recourse.

That's what happened to "Mark," a San Francisco tech workers whose toddler developed a UTI during the early covid lockdowns. The pediatrician's office told Mark to take a picture of his son's infected penis and transmit it to the practice using a secure medical app. However, Mark's phone was also set up to synch all his pictures to Google Photos (this is a default setting), and when the picture of Mark's son's penis hit Google's cloud, it was automatically scanned and flagged as Child Sex Abuse Material (CSAM, better known as "child porn"):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/22/allopathic-risk/#snitches-get-stitches

Without contacting Mark, Google sent a copy of all of his data – searches, emails, photos, cloud files, location history and more – to the SFPD, and then terminated his account. Mark lost his phone number (he was a Google Fi customer), his email archives, all the household and professional files he kept on GDrive, his stored passwords, his two-factor authentication via Google Authenticator, and every photo he'd ever taken of his young son.

The SFPD concluded that Mark hadn't done anything wrong, but it was too late. Google had permanently deleted all of Mark's data. The SFPD had to mail a physical letter to Mark telling him he wasn't in trouble, because he had no email and no phone.

Mark's not the only person this happened to. Writing about Mark for the New York Times, Kashmir Hill described other parents, like a Houston father identified as "Cassio," who also lost their accounts and found themselves blocked from fundamental participation in modern life:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html

Note that in none of these cases did the problem arise from the fact that Google services are advertising-supported, and because these people weren't paying for the product, they were the product. Buying a $800 Pixel phone or paying more than $100/year for a Google Drive account means that you're definitely paying for the product, and you're still the product.

What do we do about this? One answer would be to force the platforms to provide service to users who, in their judgment, might be engaged in fraud, or trafficking in CSAM, or arranging terrorist attacks. This is not my preferred solution, for reasons that I hope are obvious!

We can try to improve the decision-making processes at these giant platforms so that they catch fewer dolphins in their tuna-nets. The "first wave" of content moderation appeals focused on the establishment of oversight and review boards that wronged users could appeal their cases to. The idea was to establish these "paradigm cases" that would clarify the tricky aspects of content moderation decisions, like whether uploading a Nazi atrocity video in order to criticize it violated a rule against showing gore, Nazi paraphernalia, etc.

This hasn't worked very well. A proposal for "second wave" moderation oversight based on arms-length semi-employees at the platforms who gather and report statistics on moderation calls and complaints hasn't gelled either:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/12/move-slow-and-fix-things/#second-wave

Both the EU and California have privacy rules that allow users to demand their data back from platforms, but neither has proven very useful (yet) in situations where users have their accounts terminated because they are accused of committing gross violations of platform policy. You can see why this would be: if someone is accused of trafficking in child porn or running a pig-butchering scam, it would be perverse to shut down their account but give them all the data they need to go one committing these crimes elsewhere.

But even where you can invoke the EU's GDPR or California's CCPA to get your data, the platforms deliver that data in the most useless, complex blobs imaginable. For example, I recently used the CCPA to force Mailchimp to give me all the data they held on me. Mailchimp – a division of the monopolist and serial fraudster Intuit – is a favored platform for spammers, and I have been added to thousands of Mailchimp lists that bombard me with unsolicited press pitches and come-ons for scam products.

Mailchimp has spent a decade ignoring calls to allow users to see what mailing lists they've been added to, as a prelude to mass unsubscribing from those lists (for Mailchimp, the fact that spammers can pay it to send spam that users can't easily opt out of is a feature, not a bug). I thought that the CCPA might finally let me see the lists I'm on, but instead, Mailchimp sent me more than 5900 files, scattered through which were the internal serial numbers of the lists my name had been added to – but without the names of those lists any contact information for their owners. I can see that I'm on more than 1,000 mailing lists, but I can't do anything about it.

Mailchimp shows how a rule requiring platforms to furnish data-dumps can be easily subverted, and its conduct goes a long way to explaining why a decade of EU policy requiring these dumps has failed to make a dent in the market power of the Big Tech platforms.

The EU has a new solution to this problem. With its 2024 Digital Markets Act, the EU is requiring platforms to furnish APIs – programmatic ways for rivals to connect to their services. With the DMA, we might finally get something parallel to the cellular industry's "number portability" for other kinds of platforms.

If you've ever changed cellular platforms, you know how smooth this can be. When you get sick of your carrier, you set up an account with a new one and get a one-time code. Then you call your old carrier, endure their pathetic begging not to switch, give them that number and within a short time (sometimes only minutes), your phone is now on the new carrier's network, with your old phone-number intact.

This is a much better answer than forcing platforms to provide service to users whom they judge to be criminals or otherwise undesirable, but the platforms hate it. They say they hate it because it makes them complicit in crimes ("if we have to let an accused fraudster transfer their address book to a rival service, we abet the fraud"), but it's obvious that their objection is really about being forced to reduce the pain of switching to a rival.

There's a superficial reasonableness to the platforms' position, but only until you think about Mark, or K Renee, or the other people who've been "unpersonned" by the platforms with no explanation or appeal.

The platforms have rigged things so that you must have an account with them in order to function, but they also want to have the unilateral right to kick people off their systems. The combination of these demands represents more power than any company should have, and Big Tech has repeatedly demonstrated its unfitness to wield this kind of power.

This week, I lost an argument with my accountants about this. They provide me with my tax forms as links to a Microsoft Cloud file, and I need to have a Microsoft login in order to retrieve these files. This policy – and a prohibition on sending customer files as email attachments – came from their IT team, and it was in response to a requirement imposed by their insurer.

The problem here isn't merely that I must now enter into a contractual arrangement with Microsoft in order to do my taxes. It isn't just that Microsoft's terms of service are ghastly. It's not even that they could change those terms at any time, for example, to ingest my sensitive tax documents in order to train a large language model.

It's that Microsoft – like Google, Apple, Facebook and the other giants – routinely disconnects users for reasons it refuses to explain, and offers no meaningful appeal. Microsoft tells its business customers, "force your clients to get a Microsoft account in order to maintain communications security" but also reserves the right to unilaterally ban those clients from having a Microsoft account.

There are examples of this all over. Google recently flipped a switch so that you can't complete a Google Form without being logged into a Google account. Now, my ability to purse all kinds of matters both consequential and trivial turn on Google's good graces, which can change suddenly and arbitrarily. If I was like Mark, permanently banned from Google, I wouldn't have been able to complete Google Forms this week telling a conference organizer what sized t-shirt I wear, but also telling a friend that I could attend their wedding.

Now, perhaps some people really should be locked out of digital life. Maybe people who traffick in CSAM should be locked out of the cloud. But the entity that should make that determination is a court, not a Big Tech content moderator. It's fine for a platform to decide it doesn't want your business – but it shouldn't be up to the platform to decide that no one should be able to provide you with service.

This is especially salient in light of the chaos caused by Crowdstrike's catastrophic software update last week. Crowdstrike demonstrated what happens to users when a cloud provider accidentally terminates their account, but while we're thinking about reducing the likelihood of such accidents, we should really be thinking about what happens when you get Crowdstruck on purpose.

The wholesale chaos that Windows users and their clients, employees, users and stakeholders underwent last week could have been pieced out retail. It could have come as a court order (either by a US court or a foreign court) to disconnect a user and/or brick their computer. It could have come as an insider attack, undertaken by a vengeful employee, or one who was on the take from criminals or a foreign government. The ability to give anyone in the world a Blue Screen of Death could be a feature and not a bug.

It's not that companies are sadistic. When they mistreat us, it's nothing personal. They've just calculated that it would cost them more to run a good process than our business is worth to them. If they know we can't leave for a competitor, if they know we can't sue them, if they know that a tech rival can't give us a tool to get our data out of their silos, then the expected cost of mistreating us goes down. That makes it economically rational to seek out ever-more trivial sources of income that impose ever-more miserable conditions on us. When we can't leave without paying a very steep price, there's practically a fiduciary duty to find ways to upcharge, downgrade, scam, screw and enshittify us, right up to the point where we're so pissed that we quit.

Google could pay competent decision-makers to review every complaint about an account disconnection, but the cost of employing that large, skilled workforce vastly exceeds their expected lifetime revenue from a user like Mark. The fact that this results in the ruination of Mark's life isn't Google's problem – it's Mark's problem.

The cloud is many things, but most of all, it's a trap. When software is delivered as a service, when your data and the programs you use to read and write it live on computers that you don't control, your switching costs skyrocket. Think of Adobe, which no longer lets you buy programs at all, but instead insists that you run its software via the cloud. Adobe used the fact that you no longer own the tools you rely upon to cancel its Pantone color-matching license. One day, every Adobe customer in the world woke up to discover that the colors in their career-spanning file collections had all turned black, and would remain black until they paid an upcharge:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

The cloud allows the companies whose products you rely on to alter the functioning and cost of those products unilaterally. Like mobile apps – which can't be reverse-engineered and modified without risking legal liability – cloud apps are built for enshittification. They are designed to shift power away from users to software companies. An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it. A cloud app is some Javascript wrapped in enough terms of service clickthroughs to make it a felony to restore old features that the company now wants to upcharge you for.

Google's defenstration of K Renee, Mark and Cassio may have been accidental, but Google's capacity to defenstrate all of us, and the enormous cost we all bear if Google does so, has been carefully engineered into the system. Same goes for Apple, Microsoft, Adobe and anyone else who traps us in their silos. The lesson of the Crowdstrike catastrophe isn't merely that our IT systems are brittle and riddled with single points of failure: it's that these failure-points can be tripped deliberately, and that doing so could be in a company's best interests, no matter how devastating it would be to you or me.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/22/degoogled/#kafka-as-a-service

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[anarcho-physicist]

i helped* write a new physics textbook and it has a cool (and free) website: softmatterbook.online

*a little bit. The vast majority of the book was written by van Saarloos, Vitelli, and Zeravcic, but a whole bunch of people contributed little bits of writing (myself included) and are credited in the preface.

This book is an accumulation of some of the most fundamental results in soft matter physics, many of which were first discovered or derived very recently. The website hosts a bunch of extra resources (videos, notes, demos, etc.) sorted by the chapters of the book:

Fluid Dynamics

Elasticity

Brownian Motion

Colloids

Polymers

Liquid Crystals

Interfaces, Surfaces, & Membranes

Pattern Formation out of Equilibrium

Active Matter

From Designing Matter to Mimicking Life

It also lists a whole bunch of labs all around the world that are studying the sorts of systems described in the book, as well as mailing lists you can sign up for, conferences, workshops, youtube channels, and software packages. I'm absolutely biased (see below) but I think it's a really great resource for anybody interested in soft matter!

I spent the first year of my PhD helping to put this thing together. I translated research papers into problems, hunted for typos, and wrote most of the solutions in the instructor's manual. I don't make any money off the book sales (my PI told me they made it available for as cheap of a price as the publisher would allow), but my PhD stipend was funded for the year to work on this thing instead of having to TA.

I was ridiculously lucky to get the chance to work on this thing, even if at times it felt like learning how the academic sausage gets made.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 22 Thoughts: Couples Therapy

A really great episode. Everything about this one was so well done and I don't think I've got a single complaint. Not that I often have those but still. It'll be interesting to see how much of this is deeply plot relevant and how much is just a fun spooky time too. This is another belated post on account of a hospital visit, and a half-written draft getting deleted. Hopefully we'll be back to our regularly scheduled posts for next week.

Spoilers for episode 22 below the cut.

Lena is just the best, isn't she? Unfortunately we just learned that she's married and so I've got no shot, but still. Lena is great in every scene she's in and I'm really glad we get so much of her and Gwen as they have stellar chemistry. I'd be interested to see if this ministerial visit goes anywhere. I'm not 100% whether it was a plot hook or a convenient way to not fire Gwen. She's obviously not in Lena's good books so she this could be a way to explain away not firing her so she can leverage that position for something and avoid the firing.

Augustus incidents are always such a treat. This one probably wasn't maybe my favourite of them for the incident itself but it was for the sound design and the music. They really hit it out of the park for this one IMO. Unfortunately this is likely the last Augustus statement of the season if it's sticking to the 1 per act cadence. Of minor note this does disprove that .JMJ errors herald Augustus in some way.

Okay, onto the statement proper. Hans Berger and Dr. Richard Caton are both real people, and the information within this statement is largely factual. Berger did invent the EEG in 1924, held off on publishing his research due to the reaction he presumed it'd received, and when it was later published a lot of the scientific community at the time was ready to discount it. It took quite some time before what he'd managed was really appreciated. But don't feel too bad for him as he also worked with the Nazis. So coercing a patient into getting their brain ejected from their skull isn't the only sin of his. Caton is similarly accurate here and the two of them had similar fates with their research. Without Caton's work Berger likely wouldn't have been able to create the EEG and Berger was one of the few people to give Caton's research much attention at all. It came very close to being forgotten about. Ursula was very real too and did start as Berger's assistant before they got married. Although not mentioned in the incident is that she was a baroness.

Okay, so the big thing in this one is obviously the experiment itself. I've heard quite a few theories on what's actually going on here. Lots of talk about it being Freddy or JMJ. I generally think that's a massive stretch that doesn't really mesh with anything in the text of this, nor the historical context of Freddy and JMJ. The incident predates both Freddy as software and JMJ appearing as voices by not insignificant margins. It's obviously entirely possible that something was floating in the void waiting for a host PC but in context to the text of the incident I don't really see how that's a logical conclusion. The incident was about a secondary or true self within a person that can be accessed through the hemispherical bridge. Which is sort of exactly what we see here. It's also generally how it works IRL, split-brain is a fairly well researched topic for what it is.

Which is all to say I think this one is fairly literal. Herr Schmidt isn't a psychic gateway to Freddy but that's not to say I don't think these things are related. I very much do but I think it's foreshadowing and metaphor rather than literally the same thing. But of course I think that because I've been talking about this idea of a homunculus JMJ for a bit. You can read about it in an essay entitled JMJ: Frankenstein; or, the Modem Prometheus. It's a short read for my standards and my favourite pun of all my essays, so check it out. The dream is a little more likely to be a psychic event but it's also pretty literal for a dream as the imagery goes so there isn't much to say on it.

A very fun incident all around. As mentioned the main subject matter of callosal syndrome (split-brain) is a very real phenomena. I'm not going to get too into it but if it's something you want to dig into I'd suggest looking into the research of Michael Gazzaniga as well as Roger Sperry. The latter won a Nobel Prize for their work on this too.

I don't have much to say on the last to sections. Both conversations Sam has with Alice and Celia, respectively, are pretty explicit. Although Sam's mention of Alice being controlling does give us some insight into a likely reason they broke up. He's also very right that Alice has made a pretty quick turn around on all this and is now actively working against it despite not buying it at all.

Then it was something about a Marvin and Jason, I think?

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Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet and Terminology Sheet

DPHW Theory: 4488 sounds about right. Not a load to say on that one IMO.

CAT# Theory: 13 is somewhat interesting from the Person/Place/Object theory. Mostly because it's another that's a really big stretch and also doesn't help anyone know anything. There wasn't really anything out of the ordinary here as far as people and objects go, and in either case flagging that doesn't really impart any useful context. So it's just another one of those largely redundant data points.

R# Theory: Another old letter by an old man at BC. Love to see the consistency as it lines up very well with my ideas here.

Header talk: Experiment (Brain) -/- Imprisonment (Existential) is a somewhat interesting crosslink assuming it's correctly filed. Your second self being literally imprisoned in your head at all times is pretty wild.