#computer distribution event

[townpostin]

Computers Distributed to 10 Madrasas in Mango, Jamshedpur

Event at Bag-e-Ahmed Marriage Hall sees computer distribution A significant computer distribution event took place in Mango on Sunday. JAMSHEDPUR – Computers were distributed to ten institutions in a program organized by Ekta Welfare Society at Bag-e-Ahmed Marriage Hall near Hussaini Mosque on Road No. 17. The event, held under the banner of Ekta Welfare Society, saw the presence of the society’s…

[ns-games]

2024 CrowdStrike Incident

I just wanted to document my day today. Since I feel this is a pretty major historical event in the history of computing.

From my understanding, the update that CrowdStrike pushed occurred last night, but I wasn't made aware of it until this morning.

I heard the notification for Microsoft Teams go off on my work phone a couple of times while I was still in bed. I decided not to answer right away since employees are supposed to call me directly if there's a production issue. However, around 5:30 this morning, I got a call from one of my team leads telling me that a CrowdStrike update got pushed earlier that has now "BitLockered" a bunch of computers.

For context, my team uses the term "BitLockered" for any time a computer crashes and requires the BitLocker encryption key to recover.

In any case, I was asked if I could run over to our local distribution center right away to start mitigating the damage. I immediately got up, got dressed, grabbed my work laptop and bag and left. I skipped my morning coffee and shower so I could get there ASAP.

When I finally managed to get inside the building, I started taking a look around the front office and saw several computers stuck on the Windows Recovery Mode screen. Already starting to look like a bad sign. I started booting up my work laptop, which I thankfully did not leave turned over overnight, and headed upstairs to a bank of production computers. As soon as I got up there, I saw a sea of Windows Recovery Mode screens.

By this point my Microsoft Teams notifications started going off non-stop, and I started running the recommended fix on one of the computers. Basically I was trying to make sure I understood how to perform the fix. At this point, it became apparent we were going to have to touch every endpoint in our network at every facility.

Around 6:00AM, I got a call from a manager from a separate facility asking me about what was going on. This is someone that's constantly just called me instead of submitting a help desk ticket, and I've tried to be patient with. Today I had to be a bit more blunt and state that I couldn't drop what I was doing to come over and help, but that someone would be there later today to assist. This manager continued to try and call me throughout the day, but I had to keep telling him that I was not going to be available all day.

Around 6:30AM one of my co-workers made it to the distribution center to help. I ran the fix on his laptop and we started working to fix each computer one by one. A bit later I noticed my mom texted me that she heard about this in the news. So I looked up "CrowdStrike" on Google and found that not only were we affected by it, but many other major companies were.

As we started getting workstations back online, it became apparent that was only going to be half the battle, as this issue caused most of our servers to crash as well. But at this point, we figured it would be best to continue to get as many workstations back up and running one by one. But because the servers were down, I kept getting asked if I could restore a connection, which unfortunately we couldn't do until the server team could run the fixes on our servers.

Eventually I was asked to join a Zoom call so I could start providing other facilities with BitLocker keys so they could start running the fix on their own computers. Some machines we determined could be fixed by reverting to a restore point. Others we had find a way to manually remove the "C-00000291*.sys* file by booting the computer into Safe Mode with Networking. Those devices ended up costing us a bunch of time to get back up and running.

By the time 5:00PM rolled around, I asked if I could go home and continue to work from there. So I took the opportunity to go home, get myself cleaned up, and continue to work. By 8:30PM it seemed that things had died down to the point we could stop for the day. I'm sure we've got a few machines we still need to apply the fix to, but we managed to get our core business back up and running within the matter of a few hours.

So yeah, long story. But I just felt like documenting it, given that this is an event that's probably going to be pretty well remembered in the history books.

[apod]

2024 October 20

Dark Matter in a Simulated Universe Illustration Credit & Copyright: Tom Abel & Ralf Kaehler (KIPAC, SLAC), AMNH

Explanation: Is our universe haunted? It might look that way on this dark matter map. The gravity of unseen dark matter is the leading explanation for why galaxies rotate so fast, why galaxies orbit clusters so fast, why gravitational lenses so strongly deflect light, and why visible matter is distributed as it is both in the local universe and on the cosmic microwave background. The featured image from the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium Space Show Dark Universe highlights one example of how pervasive dark matter might haunt our universe. In this frame from a detailed computer simulation, complex filaments of dark matter, shown in black, are strewn about the universe like spider webs, while the relatively rare clumps of familiar baryonic matter are colored orange. These simulations are good statistical matches to astronomical observations. In what is perhaps a scarier turn of events, dark matter -- although quite strange and in an unknown form -- is no longer thought to be the strangest source of gravity in the universe. That honor now falls to dark energy, a more uniform source of repulsive gravity that seems to now dominate the expansion of the entire universe.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap241020.html

[reasonsforhope]

Determined to use her skills to fight inequality, South African computer scientist Raesetje Sefala set to work to build algorithms flagging poverty hotspots - developing datasets she hopes will help target aid, new housing, or clinics.

From crop analysis to medical diagnostics, artificial intelligence (AI) is already used in essential tasks worldwide, but Sefala and a growing number of fellow African developers are pioneering it to tackle their continent's particular challenges.

Local knowledge is vital for designing AI-driven solutions that work, Sefala said.

"If you don't have people with diverse experiences doing the research, it's easy to interpret the data in ways that will marginalise others," the 26-year old said from her home in Johannesburg.

Africa is the world's youngest and fastest-growing continent, and tech experts say young, home-grown AI developers have a vital role to play in designing applications to address local problems.

"For Africa to get out of poverty, it will take innovation and this can be revolutionary, because it's Africans doing things for Africa on their own," said Cina Lawson, Togo's minister of digital economy and transformation.

"We need to use cutting-edge solutions to our problems, because you don't solve problems in 2022 using methods of 20 years ago," Lawson told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a video interview from the West African country.

Digital rights groups warn about AI's use in surveillance and the risk of discrimination, but Sefala said it can also be used to "serve the people behind the data points". ...

'Delivering Health'

As COVID-19 spread around the world in early 2020, government officials in Togo realized urgent action was needed to support informal workers who account for about 80% of the country's workforce, Lawson said.

"If you decide that everybody stays home, it means that this particular person isn't going to eat that day, it's as simple as that," she said.

In 10 days, the government built a mobile payment platform - called Novissi - to distribute cash to the vulnerable.

The government paired up with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) think tank and the University of California, Berkeley, to build a poverty map of Togo using satellite imagery.

Using algorithms with the support of GiveDirectly, a nonprofit that uses AI to distribute cash transfers, the recipients earning less than $1.25 per day and living in the poorest districts were identified for a direct cash transfer.

"We texted them saying if you need financial help, please register," Lawson said, adding that beneficiaries' consent and data privacy had been prioritized.

The entire program reached 920,000 beneficiaries in need.

"Machine learning has the advantage of reaching so many people in a very short time and delivering help when people need it most," said Caroline Teti, a Kenya-based GiveDirectly director.

'Zero Representation'

Aiming to boost discussion about AI in Africa, computer scientists Benjamin Rosman and Ulrich Paquet co-founded the Deep Learning Indaba - a week-long gathering that started in South Africa - together with other colleagues in 2017.

"You used to get to the top AI conferences and there was zero representation from Africa, both in terms of papers and people, so we're all about finding cost effective ways to build a community," Paquet said in a video call.

In 2019, 27 smaller Indabas - called IndabaX - were rolled out across the continent, with some events hosting as many as 300 participants.

One of these offshoots was IndabaX Uganda, where founder Bruno Ssekiwere said participants shared information on using AI for social issues such as improving agriculture and treating malaria.

Another outcome from the South African Indaba was Masakhane - an organization that uses open-source, machine learning to translate African languages not typically found in online programs such as Google Translate.

On their site, the founders speak about the South African philosophy of "Ubuntu" - a term generally meaning "humanity" - as part of their organization's values.

"This philosophy calls for collaboration and participation and community," reads their site, a philosophy that Ssekiwere, Paquet, and Rosman said has now become the driving value for AI research in Africa.

Inclusion

Now that Sefala has built a dataset of South Africa's suburbs and townships, she plans to collaborate with domain experts and communities to refine it, deepen inequality research and improve the algorithms.

"Making datasets easily available opens the door for new mechanisms and techniques for policy-making around desegregation, housing, and access to economic opportunity," she said.

African AI leaders say building more complete datasets will also help tackle biases baked into algorithms.

"Imagine rolling out Novissi in Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Ivory Coast ... then the algorithm will be trained with understanding poverty in West Africa," Lawson said.

"If there are ever ways to fight bias in tech, it's by increasing diverse datasets ... we need to contribute more," she said.

But contributing more will require increased funding for African projects and wider access to computer science education and technology in general, Sefala said.

Despite such obstacles, Lawson said "technology will be Africa's savior".

"Let's use what is cutting edge and apply it straight away or as a continent we will never get out of poverty," she said. "It's really as simple as that."

-via Good Good Good, February 16, 2022

[iavulture]

(Long post with some spoilers) Something fascinating about a sidequest in CoV

I know that I haven't been posting screenshots of Demon Haunt convos as frequently lately, but that's because I've been pushing through the game quite a lot to the end. Don't worry, though, for those who like them, they're still coming around as I make progress.

Anyway, I've been fascinated by this subquest, and it's not only because of the worldbuilding bits in regards to the demon summoning program as it's portrayed in SMTVV. As seen above, the game does acknowledge the use of technology in relation to the demons, and that the humans essentially have to do some things the old-fashioned way i.e. not going digital and using paper for security measures.

But what this researcher/sidequest giver says next is even more interesting, as seen in the next screenshots.

Some spoilers ahead for the novel series Digital Devil Story, which the MegaTen games are originally based off of! Read on if you don't mind and want to know my thoughts.

So you've decided to read on. Here are my thoughts on this:

Believe it or not, I love how this (possibly) relates to the very beginning of the SMT franchise, specifically Digital Devil Story. For those who don't know, Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei is the first novel of a trilogy by Aya Nishitani. Want a summary? It's about a genius highschooler named Akemi Nakajima, who develops the Demon Summoning Program to get back at his bullies (it's... complicated). And as future MegaTen installments are wont to do, things go horribly wrong as the program summons Loki and the Norse god wreaks havoc and kills people (and also... forces himself onto one of Nakajima's teachers and attempts to do the same to new transfer student/love interest Yumiko Shirasagi). In fact, Nakajima's actions end up causing the events of the rest of the trilogy, along with the events in the New Digital Devil Story hexalogy, which is a sequel series to the trilogy.

2. Continuing from #1, there's the name mentioned by the researcher: Atziluth. This is the name of the place where demons live and was first mentioned in Digital Devil Story (and in Strange Journey compendium entries); the games call it by other names such as Makai/the Expanse and the Netherworld/Da'at.

3. "Essentially, we perform pseudo-summons through computers to transmigrate demons into this world." This is pretty much what Nakajima does with the Demon Summoning Program, in that he used a computer with the program to summon Loki. For additional context, one should know that besides being a programmer, Nakajima is also an amateur magician, and previously came to a revelation that magic and programming are similar in that they had exact steps/algorithms that needed to be followed to produce a desired result.

I can only speculate as to how people in V's world came to have such tech, but my guess is that Bethel researchers at the very least had a hand in it, as Bethel is the one distributing phones with the DSP to people like Ichiro Dazai and Yuzuru Atsuta. If people can use phones to summon demons, why not through computers as well, just like how Nakajima did it with Loki?

To end this post, I just want to say that I like this worldbuilding in Vengeance. From what I understand, Atziluth sort of reminds me of the Digital World in Digimon, in that it's a place where monsters reside and can be taken into the human world through the use of technology. In fact, I'm reminded of what happens in Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth/Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory (which, btw, are great games and aren't exactly for kids, unlike much of the rest of the Digimon franchise).

Here's a link to an hourlong video by Marsh explaining the novel series: Demystifying Digital Devil Story - YouTube

Anyway, long post over! I certainly wanted to write something after a long battle against a certain fly and needed a deserved break. I hope you enjoyed it and learned a few things.

[antiporn-activist]

We knew this was coming, and it's here...

Teen Girls Confront an Epidemic of Deepfake Nudes in Schools

Using artificial intelligence, middle and high school students have fabricated explicit images of female classmates and shared the doctored pictures.

April 8, 2024

After boys at Francesca Mani’s high school fabricated and shared explicit images of girls last year, she and her mother, Dorota, began urging schools and legislators to enact tough safeguards.Shuran Huang

After boys at Francesca Mani’s high school fabricated and shared explicit images of girls last year, she and her mother, Dorota, began urging schools and legislators to enact tough safeguards.Shuran Huang

Westfield Public Schools held a regular board meeting in late March at the local high school, a red brick complex in Westfield, N.J., with a scoreboard outside proudly welcoming visitors to the “Home of the Blue Devils” sports teams.

But it was not business as usual for Dorota Mani.

In October, some 10th-grade girls at Westfield High School — including Ms. Mani’s 14-year-old daughter, Francesca — alerted administrators that boys in their class had used artificial intelligence software to fabricate sexually explicit images of them and were circulating the faked pictures. Five months later, the Manis and other families say, the district has done little to publicly address the doctored images or update school policies to hinder exploitative A.I. use.

“It seems as though the Westfield High School administration and the district are engaging in a master class of making this incident vanish into thin air,” Ms. Mani, the founder of a local preschool, admonished board members during the meeting.

In a statement, the school district said it had opened an “immediate investigation” upon learning about the incident, had immediately notified and consulted with the police, and had provided group counseling to the sophomore class.

Tenth-grade girls at Westfield High School in New Jersey learned last fall that male classmates had fabricated sexually explicit images of them and shared them.Peter K. Afriyie/Associated Press

“All school districts are grappling with the challenges and impact of artificial intelligence and other technology available to students at any time and anywhere,” Raymond González, the superintendent of Westfield Public Schools, said in the statement.

Blindsided last year by the sudden popularity of A.I.-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, schools across the United States scurried to contain the text-generating bots in an effort to forestall student cheating. Now a more alarming A.I. image-generating phenomenon is shaking schools.

Boys in several states have used widely available “nudification” apps to pervert real, identifiable photos of their clothed female classmates, shown attending events like school proms, into graphic, convincing-looking images of the girls with exposed A.I.-generated breasts and genitalia. In some cases, boys shared the faked images in the school lunchroom, on the school bus or through group chats on platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, according to school and police reports.

Such digitally altered images — known as “deepfakes” or “deepnudes” — can have devastating consequences. Child sexual exploitation experts say the use of nonconsensual, A.I.-generated images to harass, humiliate and bully young women can harm their mental health, reputations and physical safety as well as pose risks to their college and career prospects. Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned that it is illegal to distribute computer-generated child sexual abuse material, including realistic-looking A.I.-generated images of identifiable minors engaging in sexually explicit conduct.

Yet the student use of exploitative A.I. apps in schools is so new that some districts seem less prepared to address it than others. That can make safeguards precarious for students.

“This phenomenon has come on very suddenly and may be catching a lot of school districts unprepared and unsure what to do,” said Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at the Stanford Internet Observatory, who writes about legal issues related to computer-generated child sexual abuse imagery.

At Issaquah High School near Seattle last fall, a police detective investigating complaints from parents about explicit A.I.-generated images of their 14- and 15-year-old daughters asked an assistant principal why the school had not reported the incident to the police, according to a report from the Issaquah Police Department. The school official then asked “what was she supposed to report,” the police document said, prompting the detective to inform her that schools are required by law to report sexual abuse, including possible child sexual abuse material. The school subsequently reported the incident to Child Protective Services, the police report said. (The New York Times obtained the police report through a public-records request.)

In a statement, the Issaquah School District said it had talked with students, families and the police as part of its investigation into the deepfakes. The district also “shared our empathy,” the statement said, and provided support to students who were affected.

The statement added that the district had reported the “fake, artificial-intelligence-generated images to Child Protective Services out of an abundance of caution,” noting that “per our legal team, we are not required to report fake images to the police.”

At Beverly Vista Middle School in Beverly Hills, Calif., administrators contacted the police in February after learning that five boys had created and shared A.I.-generated explicit images of female classmates. Two weeks later, the school board approved the expulsion of five students, according to district documents. (The district said California’s education code prohibited it from confirming whether the expelled students were the students who had manufactured the images.)

Michael Bregy, superintendent of the Beverly Hills Unified School District, said he and other school leaders wanted to set a national precedent that schools must not permit pupils to create and circulate sexually explicit images of their peers.

“That’s extreme bullying when it comes to schools,” Dr. Bregy said, noting that the explicit images were “disturbing and violative” to girls and their families. “It’s something we will absolutely not tolerate here.”

Schools in the small, affluent communities of Beverly Hills and Westfield were among the first to publicly acknowledge deepfake incidents. The details of the cases — described in district communications with parents, school board meetings, legislative hearings and court filings — illustrate the variability of school responses.

The Westfield incident began last summer when a male high school student asked to friend a 15-year-old female classmate on Instagram who had a private account, according to a lawsuit against the boy and his parents brought by the young woman and her family. (The Manis said they are not involved with the lawsuit.)

After she accepted the request, the male student copied photos of her and several other female schoolmates from their social media accounts, court documents say. Then he used an A.I. app to fabricate sexually explicit, “fully identifiable” images of the girls and shared them with schoolmates via a Snapchat group, court documents say.

Westfield High began to investigate in late October. While administrators quietly took some boys aside to question them, Francesca Mani said, they called her and other 10th-grade girls who had been subjected to the deepfakes to the school office by announcing their names over the school intercom.

That week, Mary Asfendis, the principal of Westfield High, sent an email to parents alerting them to “a situation that resulted in widespread misinformation.” The email went on to describe the deepfakes as a “very serious incident.” It also said that, despite student concern about possible image-sharing, the school believed that “any created images have been deleted and are not being circulated.”

Dorota Mani said Westfield administrators had told her that the district suspended the male student accused of fabricating the images for one or two days.

Soon after, she and her daughter began publicly speaking out about the incident, urging school districts, state lawmakers and Congress to enact laws and policies specifically prohibiting explicit deepfakes.

“We have to start updating our school policy,” Francesca Mani, now 15, said in a recent interview. “Because if the school had A.I. policies, then students like me would have been protected.”

Parents including Dorota Mani also lodged harassment complaints with Westfield High last fall over the explicit images. During the March meeting, however, Ms. Mani told school board members that the high school had yet to provide parents with an official report on the incident.

Westfield Public Schools said it could not comment on any disciplinary actions for reasons of student confidentiality. In a statement, Dr. González, the superintendent, said the district was strengthening its efforts “by educating our students and establishing clear guidelines to ensure that these new technologies are used responsibly.”

Beverly Hills schools have taken a stauncher public stance.

When administrators learned in February that eighth-grade boys at Beverly Vista Middle School had created explicit images of 12- and 13-year-old female classmates, they quickly sent a message — subject line: “Appalling Misuse of Artificial Intelligence” — to all district parents, staff, and middle and high school students. The message urged community members to share information with the school to help ensure that students’ “disturbing and inappropriate” use of A.I. “stops immediately.”

It also warned that the district was prepared to institute severe punishment. “Any student found to be creating, disseminating, or in possession of AI-generated images of this nature will face disciplinary actions,” including a recommendation for expulsion, the message said.

Dr. Bregy, the superintendent, said schools and lawmakers needed to act quickly because the abuse of A.I. was making students feel unsafe in schools.

“You hear a lot about physical safety in schools,” he said. “But what you’re not hearing about is this invasion of students’ personal, emotional safety.”

Natasha Singer writes about technology, business and society. She is currently reporting on the far-reaching ways that tech companies and their tools are reshaping public schools, higher education and job opportunities. More about Natasha Singer

A version of this article appears in print on April 11, 2024, Section B, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Fake A.I. Nudes Create Crisis in Schools. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

[serpentface]

As someone who watches a lot of insect husbandry videos who also enjoys imagining OCs based in other folks lore—- could an Archin colony be raised by/live along side another species? Or does the wider consciousness make it too hard to find Queen without some kinda Entourage Unit to be like ‘no we don’t wanna hang out with your unit’. Your world seems to have a p set timeline (or at least set in the sense it seems ur focusing on specific eras) but I can’t help but wonder what the future will be like for all these folks. I truly wish them the best. But they also feel very. Human (sophonts all grown in disapproval). So I could see them gettin into all kinds of trouble down the line as we do.

I haven't entirely thought about this notion before..

'Adoption'-esque events are unlikely because a colony of archin is entirely self-sustaining (it may form wider allyships but does not require external support to continue existing)

The closest thing would be a single unit of archin surviving the destruction of the rest of their colony + the queen. An archin colony can rebuild itself from virtually nothing so long as they have their queen (though any units who die in the meantime will not be reformed, this is a unique 'person' that will never truly exist again), but without their 'womb' they will slowly die. In most cases where units are severed from their queen, the unit will be absorbed into an allied colony, or possibly killed by a hostile one.

If an archin colony that has reached the mainland ends up in this situation, finding another colony to merge into its unlikely, so that's a circumstance where an adoption-esque event could occur. If they managed to establish mutual communication with a sophont individual, they could become attached and treat them as a surrogate for a colony.

The unit would look for a sense of purpose in working towards a shared goal of themselves and their individual colony surrogate, in this case likely placing their ally's priorities above their own (archin units have personalities and can be highly opinionated, but will usually defer to group consensus in their colony- if their 'colony' is them and one individual person, they would still conceptualize that person as a group majority- they are not psychologically equipped to truly understand being simultaneously individual and sapient). They would seem very needy, wanting to remain in near constant communication and contact. Their ally would be basically covered in ants.

This dynamic would be 'unhealthy' by the standards of both species. I'd compare it to a parrot forming a mate bond with its human owner, it's using a human as a surrogate for social needs that they cannot truly provide, and at best merely approximate.

Units are an emergent property of a shifting group of 50+ individual archin who are constantly being replenished by new births, so this partnership would not last long, and within a year or two all members of the unit will have died. They would also slowly grow less communicative as their numbers drop (the lower number of individuals would simplify the computational power of their collective 'brain') until it's just a dwindling handful non-sapient ants, still bonded to their non-ant ally by scent.

A much likelier and less sad variant would be a colony (or an individual unit still attached to a colony) bonding with an individual person as an ally. I HAVE thought of this sort of thing before and it definitely happens.

This isn't like an adoption, more just an allyship and friendship. The bond would likely form as one mutually beneficial towards shared goals. The unit/colony involved would see this as a partnership between equals, and would not automatically defer to their ally (and may be very argumentative), but would be quite 'fair' in distribution of resources, and predisposed towards compromise and teamwork, so long as they remain convinced you share mutual goals and good intentions.

I've been thinking that most positive relationships between archin migrants and human mainlanders have formed around agriculture. An archin colony settling on your land and working towards a shared harvest would be highly beneficial for both parties, so long as there has been very effective and comprehensive communication methods developed. The archin get a safe place to nest, defense from predation, and access to a stable resource, the humans get sapient, tiny people on their lands who can perform excellent and near-constant pest control, and identify diseased crops and other issues much more effectively than humans can. Even in the case of a large colony that could eat a lot of crops, they would not necessarily compete heavily for resources, and can use some types of agricultural waste material to farm their own food (mostly types of fungus).

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Private equity plunderers want to buy Simon & Schuster

Going to Defcon this weekend? I'm giving a keynote, "An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet's Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse," on Saturday at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

Last November, publishing got some excellent news: the planned merger of Penguin Random House (the largest publisher in the history of human civilization) with its immediate competitor Simon & Schuster would not be permitted, thanks to the DOJ's deftly argued case against the deal:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/07/random-penguins/#if-you-wanted-to-get-there-i-wouldnt-start-from-here

When I was a baby writer, there were dozens of large NY publishers. Today, there are five - and it was almost four. A publishing sector with five giant companies is bad news for writers (as Stephen King said at the trial, the idea that PRH and S&S would bid against each other for books was as absurd as the idea that he and his wife would bid against each other for their next family home).

But it's also bad news for publishing workers, a historically exploited and undervalued workforce whose labor conditions have only declined as the number of employers in the sector dwindled, leading to mass resignations:

https://lithub.com/unlivable-and-untenable-molly-mcghee-on-the-punishing-life-of-junior-publishing-employees/

It should go without saying that workers in sectors with few employers get worse deals from their bosses (see, e.g., the writers' strike and actors' strike). And yup, right on time, PRH, a wildly profitable publisher, fired a bunch of its most senior (and therefore hardest to push around) workers:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/18/books/penguin-random-house-layoffs-buyouts.html

But publishing's contraction into a five-company cartel didn't occur in a vacuum. It was a normal response to monopolization elsewhere in its supply chain. First it was bookselling collapsing into two major chains. Then it was distribution going from 300 companies to three. Today, it's Amazon, a monopolist with unlimited access to the capital markets and a track record of treating publishers "the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/31/seize-the-means-of-computation/#the-internet-con

Monopolies are like Pringles (owned by the consumer packaged goods monopolist Procter & Gamble): you can't have just one. As soon as you get a monopoly in one part of the supply chain, every other part of that chain has to monopolize in self-defense.

Think of healthcare. Consolidation in pharma lead to price-gouging, where hospitals were suddenly paying 1,000% more for routine drugs. Hospitals formed regional monopolies and boycotted pharma companies unless they lowered their prices - and then turned around and screwed insurers, jacking up the price of care. Health insurers gobbled each other up in an orgy of mergers and fought the hospitals.

Now the health care system is composed of a series of gigantic, abusive monopolists - pharma, hospitals, medical equipment, pharmacy benefit managers, insurers - and they all conspire to wreck the lives of only two parts of the system who can't fight back: patients and health care workers. Patients pay more for worse care, and medical workers get paid less for worse working conditions.

So while there was no question that a PRH takeover of Simon & Schuster would be bad for writers and readers, it was also clear that S&S - and indeed, all of the Big Five publishers - would be under pressure from the monopolies in their own supply chain. What's more, it was clear that S&S couldn't remain tethered to Paramount, its current owner.

Last week, Paramount announced that it was going to flip S&S to KKR, one of the world's most notorious private equity companies. KKR has a long, long track record of ghastly behavior, and its portfolio currently includes other publishing industry firms, including one rotten monopolist, raising similar concerns to the ones that scuttled the PRH takeover last year:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/07/books/booksupdate/paramount-simon-and-schuster-kkr-sale.html

Let's review a little of KKR's track record, shall we? Most spectacularly, they are known for buying and destroying Toys R Us in a deal that saw them extract $200m from the company, leaving it bankrupt, with lifetime employees getting $0 in severance even as its executives paid themselves tens of millions in "performance bonuses":

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/06/03/private-equity-bosses-took-200m-out-of-toys-r-us-and-crashed-the-company-lifetime-employees-got-0-in-severance/

The pillaging of Toys R Us isn't the worst thing KKR did, but it was the most brazen. KKR lit a beloved national chain on fire and then walked away, hands in pockets, whistling. They didn't even bother to clear their former employees' sensitive personnel records out of the unlocked filing cabinets before they scarpered:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/23/exploring-the-ruins-of-a-toys-r-us-discovering-a-trove-of-sensitive-employee-data/

But as flashy as the Toys R Us caper was, it wasn't the worst. Private equity funds specialize in buying up businesses, loading them with debts, paying themselves, and then leaving them to collapse. They're sometimes called vulture capitalists, but they're really vampire capitalists:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/05/private-equity-buyout-kkr-houdaille/

Given a choice, PE companies don't want to prey on sick businesses - they preferentially drain off value from thriving ones, preferably ones that we must use, which is why PE - and KKR in particular - loves to buy health care companies.

Heard of the "surprise billing epidemic"? That's where you go to a hospital that's covered by your insurer, only to discover - after the fact - that the emergency room is operated by a separate, PE-backed company that charges you thousands for junk fees. KKR and Blackstone invented this scam, then funneled millions into fighting the No Surprises Act, which more-or-less killed it:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#doctor-patient-unity

KKR took one of the nation's largest healthcare providers, Envision, hostage to surprise billing, making it dependent on these fraudulent payments. When Congress finally acted to end this scam, KKR was able to take to the nation's editorial pages and damn Congress for recklessly endangering all the patients who relied on it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/14/unhealthy-finances/#steins-law

Like any smart vampire, KKR doesn't drain its victim in one go. They find all kinds of ways to stretch out the blood supply. During the pandemic, KKR was front of the line to get massive bailouts for its health-care holdings, even as it fired health-care workers, increasing the workload and decreasing the pay of the survivors of its indiscriminate cuts:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/11/socialized-losses/#socialized-losses

It's not just emergency rooms. KKR bought and looted homes for people with disabilities, slashed wages, cut staff, and then feigned surprise at the deaths, abuse and misery that followed:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kendalltaggart/kkr-brightspring-disability-private-equity-abuse

Workers' wages went down to $8/hour, and they were given 36 hour shifts, and then KKR threatened to have any worker who walked off the job criminally charged with patient abandonment:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farben

For KKR, people with disabilities and patients make great victims - disempowered and atomized, unable to fight back. No surprise, then, that so many of KKR's scams target poor people - another group that struggles to get justice when wronged. KKR took over Dollar General in 2007 and embarked on a nationwide expansion campaign, using abusive preferential distributor contracts and targeting community-owned grocers to trap poor people into buying the most heavily processed, least nutritious, most profitable food available:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

94.5% of the Paycheck Protection Program - designed to help small businesses keep their workers payrolled during lockdown - went to giant businesses, fraudulently siphoned off by companies like Longview Power, 40% owned by KKR:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/20/great-danes/#ppp

KKR also helped engineer a loophole in the Trump tax cuts, convincing Justin Muzinich to carve out taxes for C-Corporations, which let KKR save billions in taxes:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/02/broken-windows/#Justin-Muzinich

KKR sinks its fangs in every part of the economy, thanks to the vast fortunes it amassed from its investors, ripped off from its customers, and fraudulently obtained from the public purse. After the pandemic, KKR scooped up hundreds of companies at firesale prices:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/30/medtronic-stole-your-ventilator/#blackstone-kkr

Ironically, the investors in KKR funds are also its victims - especially giant public pension funds, whom KKR has systematically defrauded for years:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/22/stimpank/#kentucky

And now KKR has come for Simon & Schuster. The buyout was trumpeted to the press as a done deal, but it's far from a fait accompli. Before the deal can close, the FTC will have to bless it. That blessing is far from a foregone conclusion. KKR also owns Overdrive, the monopoly supplier of e-lending software to libraries.

Overdrive has a host of predatory practices, loathed by both libraries and publishers (indeed, much of the publishing sector's outrage at library e-lending is really displaced anger at Overdrive). There's a plausible case that the merger of one of the Big Five publishers with the e-lending monopoly will present competition issues every bit as deal-breaking as the PRH/S&S merger posed.

(Image: Sefa Tekin/Pexels, modified)

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/08/vampire-capitalism/#kkr

[i-luv-queen]

Explanation below:

2004

Katamari Wiki summary (written by me):

“An umbrella was designed and distributed Sony Computer Entertainment Korea for the Korean release of Katamari Damacy. Unfortunately, those who had preordered the game didn't receive the umbrella in time (or at all). An official stated: "It is the distributor's responsibility to fail to protect the rights of pre-order buyers and to have problems such as supplying supplies to offline stores before the official release date," said an official. A sincere apology to the pre-order buyers who have seen the show should be preceded, and proper measures will be needed to prevent this from happening in the future.” The umbrellas ended up becoming incredibly rare, being labeled as "ultra miracle super rare umbrellas" by the King in an announcement.”

Game Mecca:

“Sony Korea held a pre-sale event for “Katamari Damacy” from the 3rd to the 8th, and those who purchased the game through pre-order were given the privilege of receiving the game ahead of the official release date on the 12th, as well as an umbrella with the Prince on it. It was announced that it would be paid as a free gift.

However, Katamari Damacy did not arrive until the 12th, 10 days (at the latest 11 days) after the original delivery date, and even the special umbrella mentioned as a reservation bonus was not delivered.”

2024

In 2024, Graniph collaborated with Bandai Namco to produce merchandise based on various Namco IPs, including Katamari. Included in this collection is an umbrella, which has not been a product concept for 20 years. One can only hope that the production of this item will not be as chaotic as the previous one.

[the-gt-fairy]

Day 18: Fire

--

Little late with this one! Was away from my computer most of the day, and also had a lot of characters to draw lol

Anyway, I like to think a big part of borrower culture is oral storytelling. They don't exactly have a good way to mass distribute books, and it's also nice to have a communal events with the other borrowers

Flashlight Girl aka Juliet (cuz I had a dream where she was named that) particularly likes telling spooky stories

[angsthology]

there’s another side that you don’t know — rvstw

beach day nowhere close to being done i give u this instead. also some of these events have nothing to do with each other

daisymaerose

liked by awstenknight, texcessive, and 50,725 others

daisymaerose hi i made a song instead of doing my college assignments please listen to it it’s called “ballad of a homeschooled girl”

and i will answer exactly 5 questions go

see all 503 comments.

siriuslyricciardo what are you majoring in?

daisymaerose siriuslyricciardo computer science :")

backbiteroo OUT OF NOWHERE HELLO???

sargeanthood caption is so real

liked by daisymaerose

webbsonsos girl do your assignments??

daisymaerose webbsonsos 😐

vettelperalta daisymaerose YAKSHWJSH girlie not impressed

dunphyrrari HELLO??????????

dunphyrrari i js woke up wtf

mclarenovia omg do u guys think there would be an album

daisymaerose mclarenovia if it comes to that sure

sixteenparx daisymaerose EXCUSE ME

waynegasly daisymaerose WHAT DO YOU MEAN IF IT COMES TO THAT

fromthevau1t daisymaerose daisy-mae rosario the album coming to u 2022

sixteenparx hi awsten

dunphyrrari I JUST??? FINISHED???? LISTENING TO IT????

dunphyrrari each 😭😭 day 😭😭 that 😭😭 im alive 😭😭 its social 😭😭 suicide 😭😭 ure so real for that

dunphyrrari babe what did college do to you

liked by te1enovia and selvnika

wdcalbon the entire gang in the credits 🥹🥹

gaslytv wdcalbon even nika???

selvnika gaslytv the fuck does that mean?

te1enovia selvnika from the years ive known u u have rendered useless. and b4 u start, ur dad is my sponsor not u

selvnika te1enovia i... wow... ouch

atticusingh 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

liked by daisymaerose

selvnika they let toddlers into college now?

daisymaerose selvnika ***

selvnika daisymaerose WOAH

te1enovia daisymaerose LMFAOOOO

te1enovia u will be the star of the future as u are now

buttoncunt te1enovia professing your love?

te1enovia buttoncunt not to you

buttoncunt te1enovia MF

annabcthschase me when i learned that mae goes to an ivy league

trobedisuns annabcthschase LIKE ACTUALLY??

50kidgaroos annabcthschase HOLDUP

carlandowife annabcthschase do you know which one?

annabcthschase carlandowife nope i just saw someone mention it

strollonsos18 carlandowife princeton!

carlandowife strollonsos18 😧😧

icekkonens oh my God i have been waiting for this moment: what are your cats’ names?

daisymaerose icekkonens kimi, lucy, and as of recent: bagel 🥰

roolovebot daisymaerose BAGEL where did this bagel come from

floweralbon roolovebot cds (cat distribution system)

te1enovia for anyone wondering atticus is in the credits solely for being a grammar police

liked by daisymaerose

te1enovia 🎵 daisy-mae rosario • ballad of a homeschooled girl

liked by atticusingh, calumhood, and 5,736,536 others

tagged: mickschumacher and selvnika

te1enovia update: the worst person you know is on a plane with the best person you know and ... cat

see all 3,726 comments.

mickschumacher which one am i?

te1enovia mickschumacher cat

selvnika i am assuming im the best person u know 😙😙😙😙😙😙😙😙

te1enovia selvnika thats also mick

selvnika te1enovia h03

schupastry MICKEYYYYYYYYY

sargeanthood AY BONZI WHATCHU DOIN HERE

fiftyfivetexts the last slide?? 😭😭

georgerussell63 where are you kids off to?

backbiteroo georgerussell63 to beating your ass on the track prob

-> liked by te1enovia

formulasos omg its my dream come true. MY WORLDS COLLIDING idc how small it is

dunphyrrari love your music taste

dunphyrrari EVERYTGING I DO IS TRAGIC EVERY GUY I LIKE IS GAY 🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣

norrislftv dunphyrrari damn why are u always at the scene of the crime

dunphyrrari norrislftv what crime

norrislftv dunphyrrari over-cuntism

daisymaerose 😁😁❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

liked by te1enovia

honeybenslie knowing they were probably in the same room when those texts send makes it funnier

the car texts was copy pasted straight out of the groupchat and believe me the person the story came from is okay with it, i would know. ☆ taglist; @treehouse-mouse @disneyprincemuke @yansbolobao @leilanixx @judespoision @vellicora @bborra

[pttucker]

"Huh. Actually, ahjumma, your son's gone to some place with someone. But that place is…" "Are you perchance speaking of that?" Han Sooyoung followed Lee Sookyung's pointing finger and turned her head. The TV mounted on the wall was playing a news footage. The scene on the screen showed a man wearing a white coat floating in the jet-black sky, with Kim Dokja dangling off that man's arm. – Breaking news! < Kim Dokja's Company >'s president kidnapped! Han Sooyoung's jaw dropped to the floor as she muttered softly. "…What the heck is that?" For some unfathomable reason, the Earth's media had found out about that event. Lee Sookyung and her rather relaxed expression stared at the screen for a little while, then she nodded her head. "That boy. He's still so popular." "Ahjumma?! Don't you get that it's a pretty serious problem??" "But, he looks like Yoo Joonghyuk-gun. So, what can be a serious problem?" "Because that's not the 'Yoo Joonghyuk'. That's the problem."

Oh man, where do I even begin?

First off, it’s still completely wild to me that Earth’s news continues to broadcast. That electricity for TVs and computers and communication in general is still being produced. That power lines and internet cables are still intact.

Like this all seems like such a huge apocalyptic scenario without even talking about the actual apocalyptic scenario, just the fact that scenarios exist in general with giant monsters and groups of Incarnations and Constellations out to do no good and straight up Death as the penalty for failing even simple scenarios and and and...and yet the news still persists. I guess I’m so used to seeing canons where stuff like this happens and all of society completely breaks down all Dawn of the Dead style.

Of course, now it’s switched to reporting on things like Kim Dokja, the random nobody who’s been at the forefront of completing the Main Scenarios alongside his party, who are also random nobodies aside from Yoo Joonghyuk, the famous pro gamer lmfao.

Secondly...

His mom’s reaction!!!

“Ma’am your son has been kidnapped.”

*News literally shows a completely helpless Dokja being slung across someone’s arm and carried off.*

Lee Sookyung: “Oh it’s just Joonghyuk, I’m certain he’s fine. My son’s so popular.”

adkfjsldjfksdkfadfs

Dokja’s mom is 100% fine with her son being kidnapped by Yoo Joonghyuk without any further context whatsoever.

(To be fair, she was the one to realize that Joonghyuk was the person most loved by her son back in that arc so…)

Oh man, what is the rest of the world thinking? DO THEY THINK THE SAME THING? “Oh isn’t that guy Kim Dokja’s companion? Nbd.”

Thirdly! The way Joonghyuk just keeps rewinding the TV and glaring at Secretive Plotter as he takes Dokja away. Oh man, he’s so pissed.

It may very well be the last thing he ever does in this regression but he’s so gonna throw hands the instant he sees Secretive Plotter again.

Fourthly!!! Bihyoung absolutely distributed that footage. He may be Dokja’s secret dokkaebi BFF (not so secret anymore) but he knows a good show when he sees one.

[piratesexmachine420]

Colon three is played out. We need to start innovating our emoticons again. Here are some suggestions:

:}

:>

:J

:$

:h

:Γ

:🙠

:尿

:😃

::

:I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine's resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!

:-)

[naboman]

𝐓𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫

Chapter five: the uninvited. Description: The project is put into practice and, with it, some of the ghosts of the past reappear to torment the secretary. Warnings: None.

[Previous] [Next]

A figure in the darkness, looking straight at me

"Did you really find Tokyo Manji?! Creepy!" Tsubasa disconnected from the computer just to listen to my account, wide-eyed, as if she were hearing the account of a supernatural event from Ed and Lorraine Warren, and being a cynic, I took advantage of the moment to gloat.

'I deserve a bit'. I think with satisfaction.

"I know, I know," I agreed proudly, crossing my legs and slipping my arms behind my neck.

"And what do they look like? Do they have war scars? Severed limbs? " The boy's glasses were crooked due to his bad posture in the chair, he stretched so much that he looked more like a meerkat snooping around outside his burrow.

"Tsu-kun, they're all students, not former war fighters!" I waved my hands, trying to appease the boy, with a sigh escaping my lungs, as I could never have thought that my co-writer would be such a fanatic about hooligan groups. "They're just a bunch of bums riding motorcycles and committing crimes, does that answer your question?"

"I think it will."

"Good." I concluded, stretching my arms lazily in an attempt to rouse my muscles, not very successfully, but it'll have to do.

"It's impressive, I have to admit…" The treasurer muttered quietly with some disbelief, walking away with some papers in his hands, and I still haven't asked him what the hell this bastard is doing in the journalism club room.

Then again, Yuuma wasn't used to paying me compliments, so that brief mutter in turn inflated my ego like never before.

"By the way, what did you come here for?" I blurted out as soon as the opportunity allowed, "don't say you came just to see me…" I let my evil smile slowly form.

"The President wants your report, incompetent," He replied with no patience whatsoever, the scowl on his face showing that he'd had a bad night's sleep or that Yuuma was just in a bad mood.

"Thank you in advance, now you can leave, I have things to sort out!" I waved my hand dismissing him, he just frowned and quickly left the room with heavy steps, closing the door harshly behind him "goodbye!"

"Rude, as usual," Tsubasa commented, opening the documents tab on the computer.

"That's very subjective" I retorted with gusto, approaching the boy to finally start the week's report. Miyura was in charge of printing the newspaper, so we'd have plenty of time before she came back with piles and piles of paper on our desk ready to be printed with the information and distributed like fallacious political propaganda throughout the corridors of this school "Well, let's get started!"

"Right," He began, filling in the title with a commonly used heading, then patiently skipping a few lines to make room for the first paragraph, "so?"

"Well…"

I slowly recalled the issues surrounding Tokyo Manji, along with what I had discovered about the world of delinquency in school environments. My notes on discursive topics prepared evenings before, together with the materials from my research, gave us great material to discuss.

As I explained to Tsubasa what to do, my mind crawled deeper and deeper, until it returned to the night before, where I experienced what a youth biker gang was like live and in color…

19:20 AT NIGHT

"So you have a high position and you didn't even make a point of telling me? What a cruel thing to do…" I gave the boy a betrayed look, but used to my bad manners, Mitsuya quickly realized the sarcasm dripping from my voice like a mockery. "You know, I could never have noticed all your pomposity with my naked eyes."

"At least I can say that I do what my job requires," the young man retorted acidly, although there was a mean smile on his lips that made me clench my jaw rudely.

"What are you implying, sir?" I asked, looking at him minutely, with my arms crossed as I carefully stretched to look at his face properly.

"Nothing much, miss, nothing much… " He feigned naivety, averting his eyes, and yet the little smile gave him away.

I clenched my fists and sighed longingly.

"Imbecile, anyone can look after a bunch of useless if they handle them properly!" I grumbled loudly, "Don't think that what you do makes you a big shot."

"Your friendliness captivates me more and more, Miss [Name]" Mitsuya's smile disappeared at the onset of my unscrupulous arrogance.

We remained silent until the motorcycles stopped not far from us and a crowd of uniformed schoolboys, clad in black and gold, got off them. I didn't make any comment, and my muteness seemed to annoy Mitsuya, who glanced at me every now and then, as if he expected me to say something or at least show some reaction. But the only thing I kept on my countenance was a hard expression of lowered eyebrows and suspicion.

The headlights illuminated us in the darkness, and soon, with the light, we were easily identified near the temple. We were looking in opposite directions, so I can tell you that I was astonished when a very tall young man came up to Takashi with his arms open and a beaming smile, as if I hadn't seen him for ages. He had a shaved head and a design in the little that was left of his hair, if I may also add that the most distinctive thing about his appearance was certainly the cut on his lip.

It wasn't long before they were both greeting each other vigorously. I was a little surprised, I admit, because I had never seen Mitsuya with such a broad smile, like a child unwrapping a birthday present.

"You make it sound like you didn't see me the day before yesterday" My schoolmate laughed, numbed by the conversation.

"I'm just excited," the taller one retorted hurriedly, "it's been a while since we've kicked some ass together, huh, Taka-chan?" His laughter infected the lilac-haired boy.

For a moment, his friend's gaze landed on me, but fortunately no comment was made.

"Mitsuya!" I heard a shout, a little further away, a blond man in braids with his hands stuffed in his pockets next to another blond man, this one much smaller, however, "come here!"

"Right! I'm coming!" He shouted back eagerly, breaking away from the tall young next to him to put his hand on my shoulder; for a moment, I wondered if he was trying to reassure me, "Come on."

"As you wish," I said dismissively, raising my shoulders as I entwined our arms, something that surprised Mitsuya, making him jump in his composure, but he continued walking with our arms linked without saying anything.

Until, at a certain point in our walk, the delinquent approached me to whisper in my ear:

"You're acting strange, what's wrong with you?" He asked hurriedly.

"You need to be a bit more specific." I moaning quietly, making a fool of myself.

"Are you… Are you…" He searched for words as I gave him a questioning look "docile!"

"Your words hurt my little heart, I'm not a dog, 'Taka-chan'" I pretended blatantly and he was embarrassed at the sound of the nickname coming out of my mouth "But, if you must know, I'm only doing this because I don't want to get too close to your strange friends. So do me a favor and be helpful."

Mitsuya couldn't say that I was being indecent in my precautions, he knew that himself, so he just sighed and kept walking.

"You're awful," he muttered one last time, to which I just thanked him with a little smile.

A few steps back, my companion's old friend asked him what the scandalous whispering was about, to which he just casually replied that it was a school argument.

"What do you know…" The tall blond looked proud, looking us up and down "aren't you going to introduce your girl?"

"You didn't say you'd bring a girl," the shorter one promptly added, nibbling on a soft, pink candy.

I wrinkled my nose a little at the question, but Mitsuya quickly responded.

"It was last minute" The boy in the black uniform next to me cleared his throat before stepping forward to continue, dragging me along with him "this is Kawaguchi [Name], we're working in partnership, so I thought you could bring her here without any problems."

"Did you rehearse that or did you just improvise?" I asked quietly, and he just ignored my comment, turning his gaze to the blond, who was now going up on the stone steps of the temple, looking at us curiously.

"It doesn't look too bad," shrugged the little blond, getting up from his seat and receiving multiple glances, "at least Emma will have someone to talk to."

Incomprehensible murmurs drifted through the air at the end of his speech. Soon afterwards, I was invited to stay under the care of said 'Emma' so that I wouldn't be in the middle of the gang members, something I accepted without objection. The girl was a little too friendly with someone had just met. Her questions were predominantly about my relationship with the leader of the second division, something that made me feel like a Shinjuku prostitute.

In the end, I managed to gather a lot of information about the relationship between gang members and their peers. I wrote it all down and then put my little notepad away.

"But come on," Emma snapped me out of my reverie, coming close to my ear, "are you going to tell me that you don't have even a little crush on him? Not a bit?"

"Not a bit" I clicked my tongue playfully, allowing myself to see the hypothesis in a comical way "I would never feel anything for a little lawbreaker. These relationships are a waste of time."

"How pessimistic," Emma replied with disappointment in her voice.

"Maybe so, but my thoughts led me to where I am today," I retorted indifferently.

"Well…" Emma paused silently, as if thinking through what she wanted to say, linking her arms behind her back and staring at the starry sky above "they're good people, believe me, even if it's not romantically, I still hope you'll change your mind about Mitsuya-kun."

"At this point, I think that's impossible," I replied, looking down at my own feet with a forced smile.

Soon, the meeting was over and the members were all saying goodbye to each other. I stood there for a few seconds, watching the crowd gather and chatting contentedly, wondering how these people got along so well when they were so different; while I was a little red dot standing out among my own kind.

I sighed, letting the thought fade away. I gathered my belongings and started down the temple stairs alone. I dialed the number on my cell phone, preparing to leave as discreetly as possible.

The cold touched my shoulders and knees, then I shivered, shivered with cold because my own body heat wouldn't generate enough to warm me up. I was startled when I reached the last step, and minutes of distraction later the cold was replaced by the warmth of a soft fabric, the temperature and smell were familiar, nostalgic, although I didn't recognize where from, but I remained frozen in the same place, in complete shock.

Someone was behind me.

"You have the worst habits, you'll end up dying of hypothermia."

The voice left me static and incredulous, sending me back to the past in less than a second as the air carried its lazy, rebellious sound to my freezing ears. I was breathless, wondering if it was a haunting making me question my sanity, which was no longer exactly stable.

After a while, I finally caught sight of a strand dyed yellow, which blended in with the black hair, and I was greeted by bright yellow eyes that stared back at me. Like the abyss that faces a man when stared at for too long.

"What are you doing here… [Name]-chan?"

"I could ask you the same thing, Hanemiya."

[deramin2]

Watched "Spaceman" (2024) tonight starting Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, Kunal Nayyar, Isabella Rossellini, and Paul Dano tonight and absolutely loved it. Will be sitting with that one. It was like a long introspective poem on eBay it means to be human and how people create their own loneliness and how to break out.

Adam Sandler not a fan of Adam Sandler's comedy, especially the early work he's known for, but hot damn does he do great dramatic work on weird intense films about how self-centered men destroy their own lives. (Love Uncut Gems (2019) too.))

This is the most polarized ratings distribution I've ever seen. Peeler either loved it (correct answer), or hated it (reviews show they didn't understand it at all and it wasn't their taste).

Best comparison I can make is: What if 2001 A Space Odyssey had a giant spider space alien therapist instead of a murderous computer and was mostly sad but ultimately refused to stay sad?

This felt very Ursula Le Guin's Hanish cycle like "Rocannon's World" and "The Left Hand of Darkness." Or Octavia Butler. The sci-fi is there to frame human introspection.

"If you're going through hell, keep going" the movie.

Warnings:

Spiders: a main character is a gigantic black hairy spider alien, (friendly).

Vertigo: the camera is always slowly rotating for virtually the entire film and intentionally a little disorienting.

Loneliness and isolation: main theme.

Pregnancy loss: short section of part memories.

Unreality: not entirely clear if the events are real or hallucinations. Very dream-like. Memories dug up and reexperienced.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Gigantic asteroid impact shifted the axis of Solar System's biggest moon

Around 4 billion years ago, an asteroid hit the Jupiter moon Ganymede. Now, a Kobe University researcher realized that the Solar System's biggest moon's axis has shifted as a result of the impact, which confirmed that the asteroid was around 20 times larger than the one that ended the age of the dinosaurs on Earth, and caused one of the biggest impacts with clear traces in the Solar System.

Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System, bigger even than the planet Mercury, and is also interesting for the liquid water oceans beneath its icy surface. Like the Earth’s moon, it is tidally locked, meaning that it always shows the same side to the planet it is orbiting and thus also has a far side. On large parts of its surface, the moon is covered by furrows that form concentric circles around one specific spot, which led researchers in the 1980s to conclude that they are the results of a major impact event. “The Jupiter moons Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto all have interesting individual characteristics, but the one that caught my attention was these furrows on Ganymede,” says the Kobe University planetologist HIRATA Naoyuki. He continues, “We know that this feature was created by an asteroid impact about 4 billion years ago, but we were unsure how big this impact was and what effect it had on the moon.”

Data from the remote object is scarce making research very difficult, and so Hirata was the first to realize that the purported location of the impact is almost precisely on the meridian farthest away from Jupiter. Drawing from similarities with an impact event on Pluto that caused the dwarf planet’s rotational axis to shift and that we learned about through the New Horizons space probe, this implied that Ganymede, too, had undergone such a reorientation. Hirata is a specialist in simulating impact events on moons and asteroids, so this realization allowed him to calculate what kind of impact could have caused this reorientation to happen.

In the journal Scientific Reports, the Kobe University researcher now published that the asteroid probably had a diameter of around 300 kilometers, about 20 times as large as the one that hit the Earth 65 million years ago and ended the age of the dinosaurs, and created a transient crater between 1,400 and 1,600 kilometers in diameter. (Transient craters, widely used in lab and computational simulations, are the cavities produced directly after the crater excavation and before material settles in and around the crater.) According to his simulations, only an impact of this size would make it likely that the change in the distribution of mass could cause the moon’s rotational axis to shift into its current position. This result holds true irrespective of where on the surface the impact occurred.

“I want to understand the origin and evolution of Ganymede and other Jupiter moons. The giant impact must have had a significant impact on the early evolution of Ganymede, but the thermal and structural effects of the impact on the interior of Ganymede have not yet been investigated at all. I believe that further research applying the internal evolution of ice moons could be carried out next,” explains Hirata.

Interesting for its subsurface oceans, Ganymede is the final destination of ESA’s JUICE space probe. If everything goes well, the spacecraft will enter orbit around the moon in 2034 and will make observations for six months, sending back a wealth of data that will help answer Hirata’s questions.

TOP IMAGE: Kobe University HIRATA Naoyuki was the first to realize that the location of an asteroid impact on Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is almost precisely on the meridian farthest away from Jupiter. This implied that Ganymede had undergone a reorientation of its rotational axis and allowed Hirata to calculate what kind of impact could have caused this to happen. Credit HIRATA Naoyuki

CENTRE IMAGES: On large parts of its surface, the Jupiter moon Ganymede is covered by furrows (right) that form concentric circles around one specific spot (left, red cross), which led researchers in the 1980s to conclude that they are the results of a major impact event. Credit HIRATA Naoyuki

LOWER IMAGES: Distribution of furrows and the location of the center of the furrow system shown in the hemisphere that always faces away from Jupiter (top) and the cylindrical projection map of Ganymede (bottom). The gray regions represent geologically young terrain without furrows. Furrows (green lines) exist only on geologically old terrains (black regions). Credit HIRATA Naoyuki