#disrupt 2019

[ag-updates-and-archives]

dlmpd Happy Birthday 🎉 to the great and powerful @anthonygreen666 . Congrats on “Slow Dose” with @nightverses !!! I hope to photograph you again sir!

posted april 18, 2024

[hesitantalienpicturedisc]

watching dan and phil games spooky week in 2023 and I've concluded that this isn't real. this isn't a real thing that's happening its some cruel trick some figment of my imagination and one day soon I will wake up and none of this will have happened. and it will be sad but at least the world will be familiar once more

[it-one-line-at-a-time]

"[Sighs] Fuck."

[unproduciblesmackdown]

meinnnn gott i was like boy this song can't be 8 & a half minutes....well the first 6 minutes of the video are phyllidia krampington loosing george salazar the krampus on everyone & their asshole (here her cousin, b/c although i swear on my life i have seen [phyllidia seducing the krampus via baby it's cold outside] photos, in this 2018 show that sequence is definitely about her trying to fuck melvin cooterstein in the ass. (note that she mentions the xmas villain's long-lost daughter harriet, as the [why are you so evil? / i don't kneauuraeaough....but it definitely doesn't have anything to do with xyz] but no long-lost presumed dead spouse, who would've been already mentioned in the 2019 show at this point though that's no incontrovertible evidence it's not relevant in this show. & my hypothesis is that if melvin is a long-lost anyone, phyllidia would be His long-lost daughter. but 50/50 could go either way! a beautiful relationship ft. the convenience of all these colonoscopies he keeps scheduling)) and then we meet the fancy tree! and don't get around to singing until phyllidia's exit & the krampus's partial sendoff to go feel better having some snacks (i.e., mingle & meander)

[j-esbian]

i know it’s been said a thousand times but i’m real tired of fast fashion clothes made out of tissue paper

[cheswirls]

aaaaa maybe it's time for me to reread fall into flying series in full

[reasonsforhope]

"The Biden Administration last week [early December, 2023] announced it would be seizing patents for drugs and drug manufacturing procedures developed using government money.

A draft of the new law, seen by Reuters, said that the government will consider various factors including whether a medical situation is leading to increased prices of the drug at any given time, or whether only a small section of Americans can afford it.

The new executive order is the first exercise in what is called “march-in-rights” which allows relevant government agencies to redistribute patents if they were generated under government funding. The NIH has long maintained march-in-rights, but previous directors have been unwilling to use them, fearing consequences.

“We’ll make it clear that when drug companies won’t sell taxpayer funded drugs at reasonable prices, we will be prepared to allow other companies to provide those drugs for less,” White House adviser Lael Brainard said on a press call.

But just how much taxpayer money is going toward funding drugs? A research paper from the Insitute for New Economic Thought showed that “NIH funding contributed to research associated with every new drug approved from 2010-2019, totaling $230 billion.”

The authors of the paper continue, writing “NIH funding also produced 22 thousand patents, which provided marketing exclusivity for 27 (8.6%) of the drugs approved [between] 2010-2019.”

How we do drug discovery and production in America has a number of fundamental flaws that have created problems in the health service industry.

It costs billions of dollars and sometimes as many as 5 to 10 years to bring a drug to market in the US, which means that only companies with massive financial muscle can do so with any regularity, and that smaller, more innovative companies can’t compete with these pharma giants.

This also means that if a company can’t recoup that loss, a single failed drug can result in massive disruptions to business. To protect themselves, pharmaceutical companies establish piles of patents on drugs and drug manufacturing procedures. Especially if the drug in question treats a rare or obscure disease, these patents essentially ensure the company has monoselective pricing regimes.

However, if a company can convince the NIH that a particular drug should be considered a public health priority, they can be almost entirely funded by the government, as the research paper showed.

Some market participants, in this case the famous billionaire investor Mark Cuban, have attempted to remedy the issue of drug costs in America by manufacturing generic versions of patented drugs sold for common diseases."

-via Good News Network, December 11, 2023

[nasa]

A Geminid meteor streaks across the sky as the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft is rolled out by train to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on Sunday, Dec. 13, 2015, in Kazakhstan. Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Make a Wish! How to See the Geminid Meteor Shower

Every December, we have a chance to see one of our favorite meteor showers – the Geminids. To help you prepare, we’ve answered some of your most commonly asked questions. Happy viewing, stargazers!

These radar images of near-Earth object 3200 Phaethon were generated by astronomers at the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory on Dec. 17, 2017. Observations of Phaethon were conducted at Arecibo from Dec. 15 through 19, 2017. At time of closest approach on Dec. 16 at 3 p.m. PST (6 p.m. EST, 2300 UTC), the asteroid was about 6.4 million miles (10.3 million kilometers) away, or about 27 times the distance from Earth to the Moon. Credit: Arecibo Observatory/NASA/NSF

What are the Geminids?

The Geminids are caused by debris from a celestial object known as 3200 Phaethon striking Earth’s atmosphere. Phaethon’s origin is the subject of some debate. Some astronomers consider it to be an extinct comet, based on observations showing some small amount of material leaving its surface. Others argue that it has to be an asteroid because of its orbit and its similarity to the main-belt asteroid Pallas.

All meteors appear to come from the same place in the sky, which is called the radiant. The Geminids appear to radiate from a point in the constellation Gemini, hence the name “Geminids.” The graphic shows the radiants of 388 meteors with speeds of 35 km/s observed by the NASA Fireball Network in December 2020. All the radiants are in Gemini, which means they belong to the Geminid shower. Credit: NASA

Why are they called the Geminids?

All meteors associated with a shower have similar orbits, and they all appear to come from the same place in the sky, which is called the radiant. The Geminids appear to radiate from a point in the constellation Gemini, hence the name “Geminids.”

A Geminid streaks across the sky in this photo from December 2019. Credit: NASA

When is the best time to view them?

The Geminid meteor shower is active for much of December, but the peak will occur during the night of Dec. 13 into the morning of Dec. 14, 2023. Meteor rates in rural areas can be upwards of one per minute this year with minimal moonlight to interfere.

What do I need to see them?

As with all meteor showers, all you need is a clear sky, darkness, a bit of patience, and perhaps warm outerwear and blankets for this one. You don’t need to look in any particular direction, as meteors can generally be seen all over the sky. If you want to take photographs, check out these helpful tips.

An infographic based on 2019’s meteor camera data for the Geminids. Credit: NASA

Do you have any advice to help me see the Geminids better?

Find the darkest place you can and give your eyes about 30 minutes to adapt to the dark. Avoid looking at your cell phone, as it will disrupt your night vision. Lie flat on your back and look straight up, taking in as much sky as possible.

A Geminid streaks across the sky in this photo from December 2011. Credit: NASA

What will the meteors look like?

According to Bill Cooke, lead for the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, “Most meteors appear to be colorless or white, however the Geminids appear with a greenish hue. They’re pretty meteors!” Depending on the meteor’s chemical composition, the meteor will emit different colors when burned in the Earth’s atmosphere. Oxygen, magnesium, and nickel usually produce green.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[halfax-a]

Cursing the high heavens that i did not have the money to buy a ticket to muse in amsterdam when they went on sale because i'm pretty sure i'm gonna be there that weekend 😭😭😭😭😭😭

[sayruq]

Meta identifies networks pushing deceptive content likely generated by AI

Meta (META.O) said on Wednesday it had found "likely AI-generated" content used deceptively on its Facebook and Instagram platforms, including comments praising Israel's handling of the war in Gaza published below posts from global news organizations and U.S. lawmakers. The social media company, in a quarterly security report, said the accounts posed as Jewish students, African Americans and other concerned citizens, targeting audiences in the United States and Canada. It attributed the campaign to Tel Aviv-based political marketing firm STOIC. While Meta has found basic profile photos generated by artificial intelligence in influence operations since 2019, the report is the first to disclose the use of text-based generative AI technology since it emerged in late 2022. Researchers have fretted that generative AI, which can quickly and cheaply produce human-like text, imagery and audio, could lead to more effective disinformation campaigns and sway elections. In a press call, Meta security executives said they removed the Israeli campaign early and did not think novel AI technologies had impeded their ability to disrupt influence networks, which are coordinated attempts to push messages.

[ravewing]

on the creation of animus magic

i was talking about the origins of animus magic with my discord recently and it made me want to share it here–

mind you, this is something that i had initially come up with around fourth or fifth grade, so it doesn't 100% comply with current canon and its a little shoddy but regardless i need to get it out of my system haha

waay way back in 2019 or so, i came up with a sort of 'origin story' that the dragons of pyrrhia told that explained where animus magic came from.

they believed that a sort of higher dragon spirit that was of simultaneously all and none of the tribes (my interpretation of them is the drawing at the beginning of this post) created the seven dragon tribes, and upon creating them, offered each tribe the power of animus magic.

both the rainwings and mudwings refused. the rainwings believed that such power would create an imbalance of harmony in the rainforest, and thus did not accept. the mudwings believed that if animus magic was wielded by a sib that wasn't a bigwings, then they might use it to overthrow the balanced system, and if a bigwings hatched with magic, then they might use it to steer their sibs in the wrong direction (again, imbalance and disruption of harmony).

the icewings, however, accepted the gift of animus magic, believing that with proper control and tradition, they could harness its power without falling to corruption. the icewings then offered this gift to the seawings, who accepted it.

the sandwings accepted the gift of animus magic from the high dragon spirit as well.

the skywings were very hesitant from the beginning. even though it was offered to them, they never gave a clear answer; many skywings believed that their raw power and physical might were enough to best the other tribes, and that animus magic was a shortcut that undermined their strength. still, because they did not explicitly deny, they still received magic– though it was quickly stamped out.

the nightwings, on the other hand, were not as patient as the other tribes. their thirst for knowledge and power was unquenched, and they sought to claim animus magic before it was even offered to them. they attempted to steal the magic directly from the claws of the high dragon spirit. it saw the actions of the nightwings as dishonorable, and as a result, they were left to pursue other forms of power— namely prophecy and mind-reading.

some dragons believe this origin story to heart, and they passed it down through generations as the definitive truth of where animus magic came from and why certain tribes have it while others dont. others, however, view the story as more metaphorical– to them, the higher dragon spirit and the tale of the tribes’ choices are more like allegories that are meant to teach younger dragonets a lesson about not being greedy or something idk.

anyhow this might be stupid or it might be revolutionary but if you guys like it then i might make some art related to this 'au' :)

[ag-updates-and-archives]

2019 Disrupt Festival in Austin

Date: June 24, 2019

2019 Disrupt Festival Austin360 Amphitheater, Austin, TX June 22, 2019

Photography and Review by Michael Mullenix

Texas played host to the birth of a new Summer Touring Festival this past weekend as the first ever Disrupt Festival took over the Austin 360 Amphitheater on Saturday, June 22nd. The all-day event featured 10 of the top bands in the Alternative/Post-Hardcore genres including Thrice, Memphis May Fire, Hyro The Hero, Circa Survive, Four Year Strong, Trophy Eyes, and finally The Used as the day’s headliners. Split between two stages (Mainstage/Second Stage), with each artist having a designated time and no overlap, the inaugural Disrupt Fest essentially felt like the combination of the now-defunct Warped Tour and Mayhemfest. The ultimate product was a sort of curated Warped Tour with Mayhemfest’s bone structure; and it kind of works. Every artist had a chance to shine, from new-coming Rap-Artist Hyro The Hero, or Pop singer Juliet Simms, to Metalcore firebrands Sleeping With Sirens. Best of all for the acts at the top of the bill it felt like a proper ascension to their Amphitheater performances. Bands like The Story So Far and Memphis May Fire felt graduated under the spotlight of the Amphitheater stage, and Circa Survive exerted enough energy to completely steal the show. Thrice’s already stunning performance was elevated to glossy perfection in front of a massive audience, and The Used brought a massive light show and were given ample room to go truly wild! Whereas the Warped Tour felt like a buffet of bands leaving their Rock Star egos at the door, Disrupt Festival is a vehicle designed to elevate these incredible artists into Super-Stardom. The night came to a roaring close when The Used were joined by Sleeping With Siren’s Kellin Quinn for the band’s seminal hit, Box Of Sharp Objects.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The flotsam and jetsam of our digital queries and transactions, the flurry of electrons flitting about, warm the medium of air. Heat is the waste product of computation, and if left unchecked, it becomes a foil to the workings of digital civilization. Heat must therefore be relentlessly abated to keep the engine of the digital thrumming in a constant state, 24 hours a day, every day. To quell this thermodynamic threat, data centers overwhelmingly rely on air conditioning, a mechanical process that refrigerates the gaseous medium of air, so that it can displace or lift perilous heat away from computers. Today, power-hungry computer room air conditioners (CRACs) or computer room air handlers (CRAHs) are staples of even the most advanced data centers. In North America, most data centers draw power from “dirty” electricity grids, especially in Virginia’s “data center alley,” the site of 70 percent of the world’s internet traffic in 2019. To cool, the Cloud burns carbon, what Jeffrey Moro calls an “elemental irony.” In most data centers today, cooling accounts for greater than 40 percent of electricity usage.

[...]

The Cloud now has a greater carbon footprint than the airline industry. A single data center can consume the equivalent electricity of 50,000 homes. At 200 terawatt hours (TWh) annually, data centers collectively devour more energy than some nation-states. Today, the electricity utilized by data centers accounts for 0.3 percent of overall carbon emissions, and if we extend our accounting to include networked devices like laptops, smartphones, and tablets, the total shifts to 2 percent of global carbon emissions. Why so much energy? Beyond cooling, the energy requirements of data centers are vast. To meet the pledge to customers that their data and cloud services will be available anytime, anywhere, data centers are designed to be hyper-redundant: If one system fails, another is ready to take its place at a moment’s notice, to prevent a disruption in user experiences. Like Tom’s air conditioners idling in a low-power state, ready to rev up when things get too hot, the data center is a Russian doll of redundancies: redundant power systems like diesel generators, redundant servers ready to take over computational processes should others become unexpectedly unavailable, and so forth. In some cases, only 6 to 12 percent of energy consumed is devoted to active computational processes. The remainder is allocated to cooling and maintaining chains upon chains of redundant fail-safes to prevent costly downtime.

[henrykathman]

The Miraculous Horror of Stop Motion

From the same artform that brought you Coraline and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, comes three stories that evoke the existential fear of art.

Original Music by Molly Noise

Bibliography below

Atrocity Guide. “The Animators Who’ve Spent 40 Years on a Single Film.” YouTube, 9 Oct. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=73hip3pz0Xs&pp=ygUMdGhlIG92ZXJjb2F0. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Brubaker, Charles. “The Japanese Studios of Rankin/Bass.” Cartoon Research, Jerry Beck, 14 Apr. 2014, cartoonresearch.com/index.php/the-japanese-studios-of-rankinbass/.

Bute, Paris. “Introduction to “a Rankin/Bass Retrospective from a New Perspective.”” Citizen Jane, Stephens College, 19 Nov. 2021, www.citizenjane.org/home/cwwicd2ucb2fvs64kgfaocfykjhaum. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Crome, Althea. “Coraline.” Althea Crome | Micro Knitter, 2012, www.altheacrome.com/coraline. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Harold Halibut. Directed by Onat Hekimoğlu, Slow Bros., 16 Apr. 2024.

Hekimoglu, Onat, and Gabriel Schmitz. “Unite Berlin 2018 - Harold Halibut and Making a Stop Motion Game.” Unity, YouTube, 6 Aug. 2018, youtu.be/9usssSQc0wQ. Accessed 6 May 2023.

Jon "Sikamikanico" Clarke. “The Making of Harold Halibut.” XboxEra, YouTube, 21 Mar. 2024, youtu.be/WMyxM9t3o7A. Accessed 19 June 2024.

LAIKA Studios. “Sweater and Gloves: Knitting Coraline by Hand.” YouTube, 11 July 2017, youtu.be/zUvkfcGR-7U. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Mad God Productions. “Phil Tippett’s “Mad God.”” Kickstarter, 17 May 2012, www.kickstarter.com/projects/madgod/phil-tippetts-mad-god/posts.

Olson, Mathew. “Report: Michel Ancel Accused of Abusive, Disruptive Practices on beyond Good & Evil 2.” VG247, 25 Sept. 2020, www.vg247.com/report-michel-ancel-accused-of-abusive-disruptive-practices-on-beyond-good-evil-2. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Ono, Kosei. “Tadahito Mochinaga: The Japanese Animator Who Lived in Two Worlds.” Animation World Network, AWN, Inc, 1 Dec. 1999, www.awn.com/animationworld/tadahito-mochinaga-japanese-animator-who-lived-two-worlds.

Orland, Kyle. “Claptrap Voice Actor Accuses Gearbox CEO of Assault, Underpayment.” Ars Technica, 7 May 2019, arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/05/claptrap-voice-actor-accuses-gearbox-ceo-of-assault-underpayment/. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Pilling, Jayne. A Reader In Animation Studies. Indiana University Press, 1998. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/book/40033.

Prehistoric Beast. Directed by Phil Tippett, Tippett Studios, 1984. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlaXIRTjNfo

Randles, Jonathan. “VFX Studio with Star Wars, Jurassic Park Credits Goes Bankrupt.” Bloomberg Law, 1 May 2024, news.bloomberglaw.com/bankruptcy-law/vfx-studio-with-star-wars-jurassic-park-credits-goes-bankrupt. Accessed 19 June 2024.

Shanley, Patrick. “Gearbox Software CEO Accused of Contempt in Latest Filing.” The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Aug. 2019, www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/gearbox-software-ceo-accused-contempt-latest-filing-1235064/. Accessed 19 June 2024.

The Making of “Jurassic Park.” Directed by John Schultz, Amblin Entertainment, 1995. https://youtu.be/8r01mk6F_Pk

The Making of Mad God. Directed by Maya Tippett, Shudder, 2021. https://youtu.be/sfUOHh0xmwc

The Tale of the Fox. Directed by Irene Starewicz and Ladislas Starevich, UFA GmbH, 10 Apr. 1941. https://youtu.be/Us_Pn6Q1dBQ

Wikipedia contributors. "List of films with longest production time." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 12 Jun. 2024. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.

Wikipedia contributors. "List of media notable for being in development hell." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 19 Jun. 2024. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.

Wikipedia contributors. "List of Rankin/Bass Productions films." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 9 Jun. 2024. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.

Wikipedia contributors. "Tadahito Mochinaga." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 28 Nov. 2023. Web. 19 Jun. 2024.

Wilson, Josh. “Phil Tippett: 24 Frames per Second < the Fabulist Words & Art.” The Fabulist Words & Art, 5 Nov. 2021, fabulistmagazine.com/24-frames-per-second-the-phil-tippett-interview/.

Worse than the Demon. Directed by Maya Tippett, Shudder, 2013. https://youtu.be/ghKqvDNRe4c

[lurkiestvoid]

You're being targeted by disinformation networks that are vastly more effective than you realize. And they're making you more hateful and depressed.

(This essay was originally by u/walkandtalkk and posted to r/GenZ on Reddit two months ago, and I've crossposted here on Tumblr for convenience because it's relevant and well-written.)

TL;DR: You know that Russia and other governments try to manipulate people online. But you almost certainly don't how just how effectively orchestrated influence networks are using social media platforms to make you -- individually-- angry, depressed, and hateful toward each other. Those networks' goal is simple: to cause Americans and other Westerners -- especially young ones -- to give up on social cohesion and to give up on learning the truth, so that Western countries lack the will to stand up to authoritarians and extremists.

And you probably don't realize how well it's working on you.

This is a long post, but I wrote it because this problem is real, and it's much scarier than you think.

How Russian networks fuel racial and gender wars to make Americans fight one another

In September 2018, a video went viral after being posted by In the Now, a social media news channel. It featured a feminist activist pouring bleach on a male subway passenger for manspreading. It got instant attention, with millions of views and wide social media outrage. Reddit users wrote that it had turned them against feminism.

There was one problem: The video was staged. And In the Now, which publicized it, is a subsidiary of RT, formerly Russia Today, the Kremlin TV channel aimed at foreign, English-speaking audiences.

As an MIT study found in 2019, Russia's online influence networks reached 140 million Americans every month -- the majority of U.S. social media users.

Russia began using troll farms a decade ago to incite gender and racial divisions in the United States

In 2013, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a confidante of Vladimir Putin, founded the Internet Research Agency (the IRA) in St. Petersburg. It was the Russian government's first coordinated facility to disrupt U.S. society and politics through social media.

Here's what Prigozhin had to say about the IRA's efforts to disrupt the 2022 election:

"Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once."

In 2014, the IRA and other Russian networks began establishing fake U.S. activist groups on social media. By 2015, hundreds of English-speaking young Russians worked at the IRA. Their assignment was to use those false social-media accounts, especially on Facebook and Twitter -- but also on Reddit, Tumblr, 9gag, and other platforms -- to aggressively spread conspiracy theories and mocking, ad hominem arguments that incite American users.

In 2017, U.S. intelligence found that Blacktivist, a Facebook and Twitter group with more followers than the official Black Lives Matter movement, was operated by Russia. Blacktivist regularly attacked America as racist and urged black users to rejected major candidates. On November 2, 2016, just before the 2016 election, Blacktivist's Twitter urged Black Americans: "Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it's not a wasted vote."

Russia plays both sides -- on gender, race, and religion

The brilliance of the Russian influence campaign is that it convinces Americans to attack each other, worsening both misandry and misogyny, mutual racial hatred, and extreme antisemitism and Islamophobia. In short, it's not just an effort to boost the right wing; it's an effort to radicalize everybody.

Russia uses its trolling networks to aggressively attack men. According to MIT, in 2019, the most popular Black-oriented Facebook page was the charmingly named "My Baby Daddy Aint Shit." It regularly posts memes attacking Black men and government welfare workers. It serves two purposes: Make poor black women hate men, and goad black men into flame wars.

MIT found that My Baby Daddy is run by a large troll network in Eastern Europe likely financed by Russia.

But Russian influence networks are also also aggressively misogynistic and aggressively anti-LGBT.

On January 23, 2017, just after the first Women's March, the New York Times found that the Internet Research Agency began a coordinated attack on the movement. Per the Times:

More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.

They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners.

But the Russian PR teams realized that one attack worked better than the rest: They accused its co-founder, Arab American Linda Sarsour, of being an antisemite. Over the next 18 months, at least 152 Russian accounts regularly attacked Sarsour. That may not seem like many accounts, but it worked: They drove the Women's March movement into disarray and eventually crippled the organization.

Russia doesn't need a million accounts, or even that many likes or upvotes. It just needs to get enough attention that actual Western users begin amplifying its content.

A former federal prosecutor who investigated the Russian disinformation effort summarized it like this:

It wasn’t exclusively about Trump and Clinton anymore. It was deeper and more sinister and more diffuse in its focus on exploiting divisions within society on any number of different levels.

As the New York Times reported in 2022,

There was a routine: Arriving for a shift, [Russian disinformation] workers would scan news outlets on the ideological fringes, far left and far right, mining for extreme content that they could publish and amplify on the platforms, feeding extreme views into mainstream conversations.

China is joining in with AI

[A couple months ago], the New York Times reported on a new disinformation campaign. "Spamouflage" is an effort by China to divide Americans by combining AI with real images of the United States to exacerbate political and social tensions in the U.S. The goal appears to be to cause Americans to lose hope, by promoting exaggerated stories with fabricated photos about homeless violence and the risk of civil war.

As Ladislav Bittman, a former Czechoslovakian secret police operative, explained about Soviet disinformation, the strategy is not to invent something totally fake. Rather, it is to act like an evil doctor who expertly diagnoses the patient’s vulnerabilities and exploits them, “prolongs his illness and speeds him to an early grave instead of curing him.”

The influence networks are vastly more effective than platforms admit

Russia now runs its most sophisticated online influence efforts through a network called Fabrika. Fabrika's operators have bragged that social media platforms catch only 1% of their fake accounts across YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Telegram, and other platforms.

But how effective are these efforts? By 2020, Facebook's most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were run by Eastern European troll farms tied to the Kremlin. And Russia doesn't just target angry Boomers on Facebook. Russian trolls are enormously active on Twitter. And, even, on Reddit.

It's not just false facts

The term "disinformation" undersells the problem. Because much of Russia's social media activity is not trying to spread fake news. Instead, the goal is to divide and conquer by making Western audiences depressed and extreme.

Sometimes, through brigading and trolling. Other times, by posting hyper-negative or extremist posts or opinions about the U.S. the West over and over, until readers assume that's how most people feel. And sometimes, by using trolls to disrupt threads that advance Western unity.

As the RAND think tank explained, the Russian strategy is volume and repetition, from numerous accounts, to overwhelm real social media users and create the appearance that everyone disagrees with, or even hates, them. And it's not just low-quality bots. Per RAND,

Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels. ... According to a former paid Russian Internet troll, the trolls are on duty 24 hours a day, in 12-hour shifts, and each has a daily quota of 135 posted comments of at least 200 characters.

What this means for you

You are being targeted by a sophisticated PR campaign meant to make you more resentful, bitter, and depressed. It's not just disinformation; it's also real-life human writers and advanced bot networks working hard to shift the conversation to the most negative and divisive topics and opinions.

It's why some topics seem to go from non-issues to constant controversy and discussion, with no clear reason, across social media platforms. And a lot of those trolls are actual, "professional" writers whose job is to sound real.

So what can you do? To quote WarGames: The only winning move is not to play. The reality is that you cannot distinguish disinformation accounts from real social media users. Unless you know whom you're talking to, there is a genuine chance that the post, tweet, or comment you are reading is an attempt to manipulate you -- politically or emotionally.

Here are some thoughts:

Don't accept facts from social media accounts you don't know. Russian, Chinese, and other manipulation efforts are not uniform. Some will make deranged claims, but others will tell half-truths. Or they'll spin facts about a complicated subject, be it the war in Ukraine or loneliness in young men, to give you a warped view of reality and spread division in the West.

Resist groupthink. A key element of manipulate networks is volume. People are naturally inclined to believe statements that have broad support. When a post gets 5,000 upvotes, it's easy to think the crowd is right. But "the crowd" could be fake accounts, and even if they're not, the brilliance of government manipulation campaigns is that they say things people are already predisposed to think. They'll tell conservative audiences something misleading about a Democrat, or make up a lie about Republicans that catches fire on a liberal server or subreddit.

Don't let social media warp your view of society. This is harder than it seems, but you need to accept that the facts -- and the opinions -- you see across social media are not reliable. If you want the news, do what everyone online says not to: look at serious, mainstream media. It is not always right. Sometimes, it screws up. But social media narratives are heavily manipulated by networks whose job is to ensure you are deceived, angry, and divided.

Edited for typos and clarity. (Tumblr-edited for formatting and to note a sourced article is now older than mentioned in the original post. -LV)

P.S. Apparently, this post was removed several hours ago due to a flood of reports. Thank you to the r/GenZ moderators for re-approving it.

Second edit:

This post is not meant to suggest that r/GenZ is uniquely or especially vulnerable, or to suggest that a lot of challenges people discuss here are not real. It's entirely the opposite: Growing loneliness, political polarization, and increasing social division along gender lines is real. The problem is that disinformation and influence networks expertly, and effectively, hijack those conversations and use those real, serious issues to poison the conversation. This post is not about left or right: Everyone is targeted.

(Further Tumblr notes: since this was posted, there have been several more articles detailing recent discoveries of active disinformation/influence and hacking campaigns by Russia and their allies against several countries and their respective elections, and barely touches on the numerous Tumblr blogs discovered to be troll farms/bad faith actors from pre-2016 through today. This is an ongoing and very real problem, and it's nowhere near over.

A quote from NPR article linked above from 2018 that you might find familiar today: "[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we'd surely be better off without voting AT ALL," a post from the account said.")

[zegrasdrysdale]

[ christmas in michigan ] l. hughes

day four of malia’s christmas fic marathon

paring : Luke Hughes x jack bsf!reader

summary : (Y/N) is forced to get along with Luke when Jack invites her to the Hughes lake house for Christmas

warning(s) : heavy makeout, some sexual content, some angst

author’s note : i have been wracking my brain to write something for luke and i have been waning to write something angsty for the fic marathon so this is how this came to be. enjoy :)

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The last thing (Y/N) wanted to do was spend Christmas at the lake house because she knew he was going to be there too. Then Jack said that he wanted her there and she can never say no to her best friend.

That's how she ended up sitting on a plane from Newark to Detroit after the Devils game between Jack and Luke. It isn't a very long plane ride but she doesn't like how close Luke is sitting to her. She tries to keep all her attention on Jack and tries to ignore Luke, but sometimes the youngest Hughes makes a comment or two because he can't seem to keep his mouth shut when (Y/N) is around.

It's not that she has something against Luke, but it seems like he does.

When he came to Newark after his Michigan season ended last season, he made his presence very known. Luke would interrupt her and Jack's hangouts or invite himself to things that they were doing. He always had a snarky comment when she was around.

(Y/N) has no idea what she did for Luke to act like this when she's around. She's just his brother's best friend. That's all she's been since Jack was drafted in 2019.

When Luke gets up to use the bathroom, she is relieved that she gets a few moments of peace. Jack decides to disrupt that peace though.

"Can you do me a favor for the next few days?" Jack asks. She knows what's coming but she looks over at her best friend. "Can you try to get along with Luke while we're at the house? I don't like when my best friend and brother fight. Makes me feel like I'm caught in the middle."

"Because you are," she replies. Jack raises his eyebrows with an 'are you kidding me' look on his face. "Fine. You owe me big time. Maybe get your little brother on the same page too. He's the one that has an issue with me. I have nothing against Luke but he has some vendetta against me when I did nothing wrong."

Before Jack can say anything else, Luke sits back down in his aisle seat. "What are we talking about?" he questions as he looks between his older brother and (Y/N).

"Nothing that concerns you," she retorts.

Luke smiles and asks, "Then why did I hear my name come out of your mouth? Miss me that much when I went to pee?"

"In your dreams, Baby Hughes," she replies. (Y/N) knows he hates being called 'Baby Hughes'.

He rolls his eyes and looks at something on his phone. He puts in his AirPods and she feels a sense of peace.

It doesn’t last very long because as soon as the plane lands at a little past one in the morning, Luke practically pushes (Y/N) off the plane.

She can’t wait to go back home to Newark.

Jack slowly drives them to the lake house because of the layer of snow and ice on the ground. (Y/N) fights Luke for the passenger seat and loses. She has to squeeze in the back seat with a bunch of bags and she is not happy at all.

Maybe she does have something against Luke Hughes. It isn’t just because he’s Jack’s annoying younger brother either. Who lets a guest sit in the backseat with three heavily packed bags because the trunk is filled with hockey gear?

Luke. That’s who.

The lake house is dark when Jack, Luke, and (Y/N) pull up. She knows that Jim and Ellen will be getting in later with Quinn since his game just ended a little bit ago. Tonight, it’s just the three of them in this house.

Jack better get his referee shirt out because it’s going to be a long few hours until Quinn, Ellen, and Jim get in.

As predicted, Luke just grabs his things and goes to his room. (Y/N) is stuck with Jack outside in the snow. She sighs and looks at the middle Hughes.

“What is his fucking problem?” (Y/N) mutters under her breath. “He’s ridiculous.”

She pulls her bag out of the car and Jack says, “He does this every time. He grabs his own stuff and leaves us out to dry. Quinn and I don’t like it either but we deal with it.”

With a light sigh, (Y/N) follows Jack into the house. The door closes behind them and the long few days begins.

“So, the guest bedroom is upstairs across from Luke’s room,” Jack tells her. She opens her mouth to object but Jack keeps talking before she gets the chance to. “I’m aware that sucks for you and I’m sorry. I know being here is the last thing you want to do because Luke is here with his stupid vendetta against you but I want my best friend here. If he causes such a problem for you, can you try to ignore him? I don’t want the two of you to fight.”

A frown forms on her face because she can tell how frustrated Jack is getting with the two of them. The last thing she wants is to upset Jack or make him pick sides between his younger brother and best friend.

“I’ll go talk to him when I’m settled, okay?” (Y/N) tells him. “Maybe you can go get food and drinks while I do that just in case a fight breaks out. I don’t want you to get in the middle.”

Jack nods and the frown on her lips is replaced with a smile. (Y/N) walks up the stairs and down the hallway to her temporary bedroom.

A door closes down the hall so she assumes Jack is in his room. Before she can close her door to unpack, she hears Luke’s voice coming from his room. A very curious (Y/N) presses her ear to Luke’s door.

“… what I’m going to do, Rut,” he’s saying when she begins listening in. He probably on the phone and Rutger McGroarty is most likely on the other side of the line. “What am I supposed to do? She has something against me when I want to pin her against something, dude. It's killing me that she's right across the hallway right now and I can't go over there and just fuck her into that mattress.”

Her eyes widen when she realizes that he’s talking about her. Quickly, she retreats across the hall and shuts her door as quietly as she can so she doesn’t alarm Luke to the fact that she heard what he said. She leans against the door with a sigh.

Confusion floods her body. If Luke wants to fuck her then why does he constantly act like she’s this a person when he can just … fuck her? He constantly pushes her away or says something that annoys her.

She isn’t blind. He’s atttactive and she wouldn’t be totally against it. It just never occurred to her that he would want to sleep with her considering the way he acts when she’s around. The way he’d completely cover her since he is so big and she’s so tiny. How he could probably get her to come with just-

A door shutting downstairs brings her out of her head before that thought could get away from her. She blinks a few times when she realizes what she was about to think about. She hears a car pull out of the driveway and watches the lights disappear down the street.

Frustration floods her entire body when she can't understand why Luke keeps acting like this when he feels completely different. She charges across the hallway to get answers.

(Y/N) pounds on Luke’s bedroom door. “Luke Hughes!” she shouts. “Open the door.” She doesn’t care if he’s still on the phone with Rutger.

"I'm on the phone," he calls back.

She pushes open the door and her eyes fall on Luke, who lays on his bed. "You are the most confusing and irritating person I think I have ever met," she spits at him. He looks at her with wide eyes when she bursts into the room. "I mean, why can't you just man up and tell me exactly how you feel instead of treating me like shit whenever you're around me? It's exhausting."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You're not quiet when you talk on the phone," she tells him. "I heard you on the phone with Rutger when I came upstairs to unpack." She watches his jaw drop and eyes practically pop out of his head. "Yeah. I heard what you said to him. Something about how you think I have something against you, when I don't by the way. What else did I hear you say? About how you wish you could've come across the hallway and fucked me into the mattress. Yeah. I think that's what I heard."

Luke quickly hangs up the phone and sits up. "Who said I was talking about you?" he questions.

"I'm the only one across the hallway from you, dumbass," she retorts. She runs her fingers through her hair with a deep sigh as soon begins to get out of bed. "If you want to fuck me, then tell me. Be a big boy and put on your big boy pants and-"

As she talks, Luke stomps over and cuts her off by crashing his lips to her in a rough kiss. His hand is on the back of her neck and his fingers curl into her hair so she doesn't go anywhere.

It's a wet and filthy kiss from the beginning, but it catches her off guard so she has to push herself away from him so she can wrap her head around what just happened. She doesn’t get very far because of his hand on the back of her neck.

Fear flashes in Luke's eyes for a split second, but she is so close that she was able to see it. She feels guilty that she pushed him away like that. “If you didn’t want me to do that, I’m sor-”

“Don’t you dare apologize,” she snaps. She takes a sharp breath. “Just give me a second, okay?”

He nods and loosens his grip in her hair so she can back away if she wants. She doesn’t move though.

She stares up at him and thinks about how bad of an idea this would be. Sleeping with her best friend’s younger brother is a terrible idea, especially when Luke has been nothing but rude and annoying toward her.

That just means that no one will probably know what has happened between them.

(Y/N) licks her bottom lip before she gets on her toes to bring their lips together in another hot kiss. Luke seems surprised by this kiss but he does hesitate in returning it.

Her heart races in her chest. This was the last thing she thought would ever happen between them.

The two of them have been at each other’s throats for years. Now they’re kissing like it’s what they’ve wanted to do the entire time.

Maybe it has been the entire time for Luke. She can’t say that she hasn’t had a thought here or there about getting with the youngest Hughes brother. If anything to break the obvious tension between them.

Before she realizes what she’s doing, (Y/N) grasps at the t-shirt Luke is wearing. She pulls him flush against her body and she feels something poke her upper thigh. A small smile forms on her lips.

“You got a hot dog in your pocket or something?” she asks between kisses.

“Shut up,” Luke snaps. “I don’t carry food in my pocket, you asshole.”

“Then you really must’ve wanted me.”

“You have no idea.”

Those words cause her heart to jump in her chest while Luke leans down and picks her up. He’s nearly a foot taller than her so it can’t be very comfortable for him to kiss her. She wraps her legs around his waist.

She attaches her lips to his jaw and carefully kisses the sensitive skin. “You better not leave a mark,” Luke warns her. “I don’t want to explain to my brothers that you turned into a vampire or something.”

To spite him, (Y/N) softly nips at his jaw. Luke turns and drops her on the mattress. She stares up and finds that his swollen lips and wide does just does something for her.

“Get down here, Hughes,” she tells him. “Need you.”

Almost like he was waiting for her to say that, Luke crawls into the bed and hovers over her. Their lips reattach in a filthy kiss that almost causes her to plead for more.

He pulls away and looks down at her. She finds herself chasing his lips. “You’re okay with this?” Luke asks. “I don’t want you to think I’m pressuring you or anything.”

“Luke, if you don’t touch me in the next five seconds, I’m going to get out of your bed and go across the hall to do it myself,” she tells him. “Fuck me like you hate me.”

A sly smirk forms on his face and she knows she’s in for it until Jack gets back.

༺═──────────────═༻

Three orgasms in less than two hours had to be some kind of record. Her body still shakes as Luke cleans her up. She’s completely spent.

He definitely fucked her like he hated her. She’s worried that she might not be able to walk in the morning. The only reason there wasn’t a fourth orgasm was because she heard Jack pull into the driveway.

“If you need to stay for a few minutes, you can,” Luke tells her. “I can go distract Jack until you leave.”

She nods and Luke begins to get dressed. He throws on the clothes he wore when he got here. Her eyes stay on him for a second before she says, “We need to talk about this, Luke. I don’t want this to turn into a fight that we can’t get past.”

Luke looks over as she sits up and secures the blankets under her arms. The tension has broken between them and she doesn’t want something to form after this.

He comes over to her side of the bed that she’s occupying. It catches her very off guard when he leans down and presses a soft yet chaste kiss to her already swollen lips. She raises her eyebrows and looks up at him. She probably looks very confused.

“Hope that explains how I feel,” he tells her as he stands back up. “We’ll talk about it, but right now you need to get across the hall before Jack catches you naked in my bed. I’m not sure I’m ready to explain this to him. I’m sure you aren’t either.”

She shakes her head. “Come across the hall tonight,” she suggests. “We can talk then, yeah?”

Luke smiles and nods before he leaves her alone. There are footsteps on the stairs and voices coming from the living room. (Y/N) sighs and falls back against the pillow that’s under her head.

It would be a lie if she thought that Luke didn’t rock her entire world for the last two hours. He absolutely did, and she wouldn’t be opposed to doing it again. Maybe not as rough next time.

Very slowly, (Y/N) begins to get dressed. She’s shaky on her legs but she manages to get her clothes in without falling over.

Much to her luck, Jack and Luke are walking down the hallway when she leaves Luke’s room. Jack freezes when he sees her. She forces a smile as she looks between the two Hughes boys. “Hi.”

Jack looks up at his brother. “You hurt her and I will send Nico after you,” he tells Luke. “I swear to God, Luke.”

Her eyes widen and a smile forms on Luke’s lips. Jack definitely put two and two together because of how red Luke’s lips are and the fact that she is walking out of Luke’s room.

Walking is a stretch though. Limping is more like it.

“I’ll never hurt her,” Luke replies. “Again.” He looks at a nervous (Y/N) standing in front of Luke’s room. “I’d kick myself if I ever hurt her.”

The nervousness she was feeling melts away and she smiles.

Christmas in Michigan no longer sounds like the worst thing in the world.

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