#dragon sector

[mostlysignssomeportents]

They were warned

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

Truth is provisional! Sometimes, the things we understand to be true about the world change, and stuff we've "always done" has to change, too. There comes a day when the evidence against using radium suppositories is overwhelming, and then you really must dig that radium out of your colon and safely dispose of it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/19/just-stop-putting-that-up-your-ass/#harm-reduction

So it's natural and right that in the world, there will be people who want to revisit the received wisdom and best practices for how we live our lives, regulate our economy, and organize our society. But not a license to simply throw out the systems we rely on. Sure, maybe they're outdated or unnecessary, but maybe not. That's where "Chesterton's Fence" comes in:

Let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_fence

In other words, it's not enough to say, "This principle gets in the way of something I want to do, so let's throw it out because I'm pretty sure the inconvenience I'm experiencing is worse than the consequences of doing away with this principle." You need to have a theory of how you will prevent the harms the principle protects us from once you tear it down. That theory can be "the harms are imaginary" so it doesn't matter. Like, if you get rid of all the measures that defend us from hexes placed by evil witches, it's OK to say, "This is safe because evil witches aren't real and neither are hexes."

But you'd better be sure! After all, some preventative measures work so well that no living person has experienced the harms they guard us against. It's easy to mistake these for imaginary or exaggerated. Think of the antivaxers who are ideologically committed to a world in which human beings do not have a shared destiny, meaning that no one has a moral claim over the choices you make. Motivated reasoning lets those people rationalize their way into imagining that measles – a deadly and ferociously contagious disease that was a scourge for millennia until we all but extinguished it – was no big deal:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measles:_A_Dangerous_Illness

There's nothing wrong with asking whether longstanding health measures need to be carried on, or whether they can be sunset. But antivaxers' sloppy, reckless reasoning about contagious disease is inexcusable. They were warned, repeatedly, about the mass death and widespread lifelong disability that would follow from their pursuit of an ideological commitment to living as though their decisions have no effect on others. They pressed ahead anyway, inventing ever-more fanciful reasons why health is a purely private matter, and why "public health" was either a myth or a Communist conspiracy:

https://www.conspirituality.net/episodes/brief-vinay-prasad-pick-me-campaign

When RFK Jr kills your kids with measles or permanently disables them with polio, he doesn't get to say "I was just inquiring as to the efficacy of a longstanding measure, as is right and proper." He was told why the vaccine fence was there, and he came up with objectively very stupid reasons why that didn't matter, and then he killed your kids. He was warned.

Fuck that guy.

Or take Bill Clinton. From 1933 until 1999, American banks were regulated under the Glass-Steagall Act, which "structurally separated" them. Under structural separation, a "retail bank" – the bank that holds your savings and mortgage and provides you with a checkbook – could not be "investment bank." That meant it couldn't own or invest in businesses that competed with the businesses its depositors and borrowers ran. It couldn't get into other lines of business, either, like insurance underwriting.

Glass-Steagall was a fence that stood between retail banks and the casino economy. It was there for a fucking great reason: the failure to structurally separate banks allowed them to act like casinos, inflating a giant market bubble that popped on Black Friday in October 1929, kicking off the Great Depression. Congress built the structural separation fence to keep banks from doing it again.

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton agitated for getting rid of Glass-Steagall. He argued that new economic controls would allow the government to prevent another giant bubble and crash. This time, the banks would behave themselves. After all, hadn't they demonstrated their prudence for seven decades?

In fact, they hadn't. Every time banks figured out how to slip out of regulatory constraints they inflated another huge bubble, leading to another massive crash that made the rich obscenely richer and destroyed ordinary savers' lives. Clinton took office just as one of these finance-sector bombs – the S&L Crisis – was detonating. Clinton had no basis – apart from wishful thinking – to believe that deregulating banks would lead to anything but another gigantic crash.

But Clinton let his self interest – in presiding over a sugar-high economic expansion driven by deregulation – overrule his prudence (about the crash that would follow). Sure enough, in the last months of Clinton's presidency, the stock market imploded with the March 2000 dot-bomb. And because Congress learned nothing from the dot-com crash and declined to restore the Glass-Steagall fence, the crash led to another bubble, this time in subprime mortgages, and then, inevitably, we suffered the Great Financial Crisis.

Look: there's no virtue in having bank regulations for the sake of having them. It is conceptually possible for bank regulations to be useless or even harmful. There's nothing wrong with investigating whether the 70-year old Glass-Steagall Act was still needed in 1999. But Clinton was provided with a mountain of evidence about why Glass-Steagall was the only thing standing between Americans and economic chaos, including the evidence of the S&L Crisis, which was still underway when he took office, and he ignored all of them. If you lost everything – your home, your savings, your pension – in the dot-bomb or the Great Financial Crisis, Bill Clinton is to blame. He was warned. he ignored the warnings.

Fuck that guy.

No, seriously, fuck Bill Clinton. Deregulating banks wasn't Clinton's only passion. He also wanted to ban working cryptography. The cornerstone of Clinton's tech policy was the "Clipper Chip," a backdoored encryption chip that, by law, every technology was supposed to use. If Clipper had gone into effect, then cops, spooks, and anyone who could suborn, bribe, or trick a cop or a spook could break into any computer, server, mobile device, or embedded system in America.

When Clinton was told – over and over, in small, easy-to-understand words – that there was no way to make a security system that only worked when "bad guys" tried to break into it, but collapsed immediately if a "good guy" wanted to bypass it. We explained to him – oh, how we explained to him! – that working encryption would be all that stood between your pacemaker's firmware and a malicious update that killed you where you stood; all that stood between your antilock brakes' firmware and a malicious update that sent you careening off a cliff; all that stood between businesses and corporate espionage, all that stood between America and foreign state adversaries wanting to learn its secrets.

In response, Clinton said the same thing that all of his successors in the Crypto Wars have said: NERD HARDER! Just figure it out. Cops need to look at bad guys' phones, so you need to figure out how to make encryption that keeps teenagers safe from sextortionists, but melts away the second a cop tries to unlock a suspect's phone. Take Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian Prime Minister. When he was told that the laws of mathematics dictated that it was impossible to build selectively effective encryption of the sort he was demanding, he replied, "The laws of mathematics are very commendable but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-end-end-encryption-ban-says-laws-mathematics-dont-apply-down

Fuck that guy. Fuck Bill Clinton. Fuck a succession of UK Prime Ministers who have repeatedly attempted to ban working encryption. Fuck 'em all. The stakes here are obscenely high. They have been warned, and all they say in response is "NERD HARDER!"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/05/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography/

Now, of course, "crypto means cryptography," but the other crypto – cryptocurrency – deserves a look-in here. Cryptocurrency proponents advocate for a system of deregulated money creation, AKA "wildcat currencies." They say, variously, that central banks are no longer needed; or that we never needed central banks to regulate the money supply. Let's take away that fence. Why not? It's not fit for purpose today, and maybe it never was.

Why do we have central banks? The Fed – which is far from a perfect institution and could use substantial reform or even replacement – was created because the age of wildcat currencies was a nightmare. Wildcat currencies created wild economic swings, massive booms and even bigger busts. Wildcat currencies are the reason that abandoned haunted mansions feature so heavily in the American imagination: American towns and cities were dotted with giant mansions built by financiers who'd grown rich as bubbles expanded, then lost it all after the crash.

Prudent management of the money supply didn't end those booms and busts, but it substantially dampened them, ending the so-called "business cycle" that once terrorized Americans, destroying their towns and livelihoods and wiping out their savings.

It shouldn't surprise us that a new wildcat money sector, flogging "decentralized" cryptocurrencies (that they are nevertheless weirdly anxious to swap for your gross, boring old "fiat" money) has created a series of massive booms and busts, with insiders getting richer and richer, and retail investors losing everything.

If there was ever any doubt about whether wildcat currencies could be made safe by putting them on a blockchain, it is gone. Wildcat currencies are as dangerous today as they were in the 18th and 19th century – only moreso, since this new bad paper relies on the endless consumption of whole rainforests' worth of carbon, endangering not just our economy, but also the habitability of the planet Earth.

And nevertheless, the Trump administration is promising a new crypto golden age (or, ahem, a Gilded Age). And there are plenty of Democrats who continue to throw in with the rotten, corrupt crypto industry, which flushed billions into the 2024 election to bring Trump to office. The result is absolutely going to be more massive bubbles and life-destroying implosions. Fuck those guys. They were warned, and they did it anyway.

Speaking of the climate emergency: greetings from smoky Los Angeles! My city's on fire. This was not an unforeseeable disaster. Malibu is the most on-fire place in the world:

https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/

Since 1919, the region has been managed on the basis of "total fire suppression." This policy continued long after science showed that this creates "fire debt" in the form of accumulated fuel. The longer you go between fires, the hotter and more destructive those fires become, and the relationship is nonlinear. A 50-year fire isn't 250% more intense than a 20-year fire: it's 50,000% more intense.

Despite this, California has invested peanuts in regular controlled burns, which has created biennial uncontrolled burns – wildfires that cost thousands of times more than any controlled burn.

Speaking of underinvestment: PG&E has spent decades extracting dividends for its investors and bonuses for its execs, while engaging in near-total neglect of maintenance of its high-voltage transmission lines. Even with normal winds, these lines routinely fall down and start blazes.

But we don't have normal winds. The climate emergency has been steadily worsening for decades. LA is just the latest place to be on fire, or under water, or under ice, or baking in wet bulb temperatures. Last week in southern California, we were warned to expect gusts of 120mph.

They were warned. #ExxonKnew: in the early 1970s, Exxon's own scientists warned them that fossil fuel consumption would kick off climate change so drastic that it would endanger human civilzation. Exxon responded by burying the reports and investing in climate denial:

https://exxonknew.org/

They were warned! Warned about fire debt. Warned about transmission lines. Warned about climate change. And specific, named people, who individually had the power to heed these warnings and stave off disaster, ignored the warnings. They didn't make honest mistakes, either: they ignored the warnings because doing so made them extraordinarily, disgustingly rich. They used this money to create dynastic fortunes, and have created entire lineages of ultra-wealthy princelings in $900,000 watches who owe it all to our suffering and impending dooml

Fuck those guys. Fuck 'em all.

We've had so many missed opportunities, chances to make good policy or at least not make bad policy. The enshitternet didn't happen on its own. It was the foreseeable result of choices – again, choices made by named individuals who became very wealthy by ignoring the warnings all around them.

Let's go back to Bill Clinton, because more than anyone else, Clinton presided over some terrible technology regulations. In 1998, Clinton signed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a bill championed by Barney Frank (fuck that guy, too). Under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's a felony, punishable by a five year prison sentence, and a $500,000 fine, to tamper with a "digital lock."

That means that if HP uses a digital lock to prevent you from using third-party ink, it's a literal crime to bypass that lock. Which is why HP ink now costs $10,000/gallon, and why you print your shopping lists with colored water that costs more, ounce for ounce, than the sperm of a Kentucky Derby winner:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

Clinton was warned that DMCA 1201 would soon metastasize into every kind of device – not just the games consoles and DVD players where it was first used, but medical implants, tractors, cars, home appliances – anything you could put a microchip into (Jay Freeman calls this "felony contempt of business-model"):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

He ignored those warnings and signed the DMCA anyway (fuck that guy). Then, under Bush (fuck that guy), the US Trade Representative went all around the world demanding that America's trading partners adopt versions of this law (fuck that guy). In 2001, the European Parliament capitulated, enacting the EU Copyright Directive, whose Article 6 is a copy-paste of DMCA 1201 (fuck all those people).

Fast forward 20 years, and boy is there a lot of shit with microchips that can be boobytrapped with rent-extracting logic bombs that are illegal to research, describe, or disable.

Like choo-choo trains.

Last year, the Polish hacking group Dragon Sector was contacted by a public sector train company whose Newag trains kept going out of service. The operator suspected that Newag had boobytrapped the trains to punish the train company for getting its maintenance from a third-party contractor. When Dragon Sector investigated, they discovered that Newag had indeed riddled the trains' firmware with boobytraps. Trains that were taken to locations known to have third-party maintenance workshops were immediately bricked (hilariously, this bomb would detonate if trains just passed through stations near to these workshops, which is why another train company had to remove all the GPSes from its trains – they kept slamming to a halt when they approached a station near a third-party workshop). But Newag's logic bombs would brick trains for all kinds of reasons – merely keeping a train stationary for too many days would result in its being bricked. Installing a third-party component in a locomotive would also trigger a bomb, bricking the train.

In their talk at last year's Chaos Communications Congress, the Dragon Sector folks describe how they have been legally terrorized by Newag, which has repeatedly sued them for violating its "intellectual property" by revealing its sleazy, corrupt business practices. They also note that Newag continues to sell lots of trains in Poland, despite the widespread knowledge of its dirty business model, because public train operators are bound by procurement rules, and as long as Newag is the cheapest bidder, they get the contract:

https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-we-ve-not-been-trained-for-this-life-after-the-newag-drm-disclosure

The laws that let Newag make millions off a nakedly corrupt enterprise – and put the individuals who blew the whistle on it at risk of losing everything – were passed by Members of the European Parliament who were warned that this would happen, and they ignored those warnings, and now it's happening. Fuck those people, every one of 'em.

It's not just European parliamentarians who ignored warnings and did the bidding of the US Trade Representative, enacting laws that banned tampering with digital locks. In 2010, two Canadian Conservative Party ministers in the Stephen Harper government brought forward similar legislation. These ministers, Tony Clement (now a disgraced sex-pest and PPE grifter) and James Moore (today, a sleazeball white-shoe corporate lawyer), held a consultation on this proposal.

6, 138 people wrote in to say, "Don't do this, it will be hugely destructive." 54 respondents wrote in support of it. Clement and Moore threw out the 6,138 opposing comments. Moore explained why: these were the "babyish" responses of "radical extremists." The law passed in 2012.

Last year, the Canadian Parliament passed bills guaranteeing Canadians the Right to Repair and the right to interoperability. But Canadians can't act on either of these laws, because they would have to tamper with a digital lock to do so, and that's illegal, thanks to Tony Clement and James Moore. Who were warned. And who ignored those warnings. Fuck those guys:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/15/radical-extremists/#sex-pest

Back in the 1990s, Bill Clinton had a ton of proposals for regulating the internet, but nowhere among those proposals will you find a consumer privacy law. The last time an American president signed a consumer privacy law was 1988, when Reagan signed the Video Privacy Protection Act and ensured that Americans would never have to worry that video-store clerks where telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes they took home.

In the years since, Congress has enacted exactly zero consumer privacy laws. None. This has allowed the out-of-control, unregulated data broker sector to metastasize into a cancer on the American people. This is an industry that fuels stalkers, discriminatory financial and hiring algorithms, and an ad-tech sector that lets advertisers target categories like "teenagers with depression," "seniors with dementia" and "armed service personnel with gambling addictions."

When the people cry out for privacy protections, Congress – and the surveillance industry shills that fund them – say we don't need a privacy law. The market will solve this problem. People are selling their privacy willingly, and it would be an "undue interference in the market" if we took away your "freedom to contract" by barring companies from spying on you after you clicked the "I agree" button.

These people have been repeatedly warned about the severe dangers to the American public – as workers, as citizens, as community members, and as consumers – from the national privacy free-for-all, and have done nothing. Fuck them, every one:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Now, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and not every one of Bill Clinton's internet policies was terrible. He had exactly one great policy, and, ironically, that's the one there's the most energy for dismantling. That policy is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (a law that was otherwise such a dumpster fire that the courts struck it down). Chances are, you have been systematically misled about the history, use, and language of Section 230, which is wild, because it's exactly 26 words long and fits in a single tweet:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Section 230 was passed because when companies were held liable for their users' speech, they "solved" this problem by just blocking every controversial thing a user said. Without Section 230, there would be no Black Lives Matter, no #MeToo – no online spaces where the powerful were held to account. Meanwhile, rich and powerful people would continue to enjoy online platforms where they and their bootlickers could pump out the most grotesque nonsense imaginable, either because they owned those platforms (ahem, Twitter and Truth Social) or because rich and powerful people can afford the professional advice needed to navigate the content-moderation bureaucracies of large systems.

We know exactly what the internet looks like when platforms are civilly liable for their users' speech: it's an internet where marginalized and powerless people are silenced, and where the people who've got a boot on their throats are the only voices you can hear:

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

The evidence for this isn't limited to the era of AOL and Prodigy. In 2018, Trump signed SESTA/FOSTA, a law that held platforms liable for "sex trafficking." Advocates for this law – like Ashton Kutcher, who campaigns against sexual assault unless it involves one of his friends, in which case he petitions the judge for leniency – were warned that it would be used to shut down all consensual sex work online, making sex workers's lives much more dangerous. This warnings were immediately borne out, and they have been repeatedly borne out every month since. Killing CDA 230 for sex work brought back pimping, exposed sex workers to grave threats to their personal safety, and made them much poorer:

https://decriminalizesex.work/advocacy/sesta-fosta/what-is-sesta-fosta/

It also pushed sex trafficking and other nonconsensual sex into privateforums that are much harder for law enforcement to monitor and intervene in, making it that much harder to catch sex traffickers:

https://cdt.org/insights/its-all-downsides-hybrid-fosta-sesta-hinders-law-enforcement-hurts-victims-and-speakers/

This is exactly what SESTA/FOSTA's advocates were warned of. They were warned. They did it anyway. Fuck those people.

Maybe you have a theory about how platforms can be held civilly liable for their users' speech without harming marginalized people in exactly the way that SESTA/FOSTA, it had better amount to more than "platforms are evil monopolists and CDA 230 makes their lives easier." Yes, they're evil monopolists. Yes, 230 makes their lives easier. But without 230, small forums – private message boards, Mastodon servers, Bluesky, etc – couldn't possibly operate.

There's a reason Mark Zuckerberg wants to kill CDA 230, and it's not because he wants to send Facebook to the digital graveyard. Zuck knows that FB can operate in a post-230 world by automating the deletion of all controversial speech, and he knows that small services that might "disrupt" Facebook's hegemony would be immediately extinguished by eliminating 230:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/zuckerberg-calls-changes-techs-section-230-protections-rcna486

It's depressing to see so many comrades in the fight against Big Tech getting suckered into carrying water for Zuck, demanding the eradication of CDA 230. Please, I beg you: look at the evidence for what happens when you remove that fence. Heed the warnings. Don't be like Bill Clinton, or California fire suppression officials, or James Moore and Tony Clement, or the European Parliament, or the US Trade Rep, or cryptocurrency freaks, or Malcolm Turnbull.

Or Ashton fucking Kutcher.

Because, you know, fuck those guys.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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/2025/01/13/wanting-it-badly/#is-not-enough

[szepkerekkocka]

@muszeresz @sztupy

[dragons-hoard-of-fandoms]

I call this specific brand of character "Antagonistic Yet Deeply Traumatized Child With An Affinity For Robots Who Deserved Better But Has Lost Pretty Much All Traces Of Their Former Identity And Has A Specific Male Relative They Keep Trying To Kill, And If I Think About Them Too Hard For Too Long It Makes Me Cry."

[mrmeepsmadmind]

i think red alert would find kinship with cocaine bear

i like how the lost light's security was just a paranoid guy & a depressed guy, it rlly speaks volumes about the sanity on that ship

i think they should've been unlikely besties. chill guy who wishes people would look at him and anything but chill guy who wishes people would explode rather than even give him a glance

[blondieart]

Some eepy doodles I've done over the course of a few days. Slapped on some colour on it to do something mindless this evening. I am SO tired. Have been all week. But I at least try to be creative each day. Anyway... Bunch of "Sector VII" stuff. Happy lil Cloud cuz he deserves being full of joy. 🦌 First time showing Rufus. Poor Yazoo had to deal with some pointless flirting from him. Leopard man is NOT having any of it lol. They happen to run into each other from time to time. Tseng X Rufus will be a thing eventually (I just think they are neat) but in the beginning he's trying his luck with Yazoo. - I actually kinda teased this way back when I posted this. And last but not least, two of my dragon oc's from my story "Sacred Wings". Just Silver Bleach and Poison Viper.

[vintagerpg]

Escape the Dark Sector (2020) is Themeborne’s science fiction themed follow-up to Escape the Dark Castle. It introduces a number of new mechanics, but at the core, the experience is largely the same: escape your cell, explore the station, try not to die, then probably die, because it is still really hard to not die!

Dark Sector adds some tactics to the mix. The players can, if they have ranged weapons, opt for ranged combat before closing in for hand-to-hand. One character per round can opt to flank for a bonus. While in ranged combat, too, you can remain in cover and perform non-combat actions (so long as SOMEONE on your team is shooting, otherwise, close combat begins). Being in cover means avoiding potential damage, too, which is a bit relaxing after Dark Castle.

The inventory system is more robust, allowing for up to four items, depending on their size. Ammo is a thing, with different types having variable effectiveness depending on the enemy. Every character has a cybernetic enhancement as well, which is another tool in the toolbox. Oh, and Dark Sector has the best health tracker! Dark Castle just has a notepad, while the collector's box introduced a tracker styled as a chain that uses little black skulls, which is cool. But Dark Sector uses pre-printed EKG charts, so you can plot the peaks and valleys of your HP until you flatline. I love it.

Alex Crispin’s art fare pretty good here, too! I thought shifting gears to science fiction might mess things up, but that is definitely not the case. I might like the Dark Sector art a hair better, even. Oh, and the sold-separately soundtrack is a banger, featuring some nice synthwave influences.

[besttalkindia7]

Jonathan Bloomer: A Best Journey in the Financial World

[mariamagdalenaposting]

Thinking about that Skyrim meme that was like "Siding with the Imperials in the Skyrim Civil War because there is no way this agrarian society will industrialize under feudalism"

[foone]

Have you heard about the Polish Train company, Newag, and the bullshit it turns out they got up to?

So, the regional rail operator Koleje Dolnośląskie bought some Newag Impuls back in 2016 . In late 2021, some of them need to have major maintenance done, as they've been in service a while. So the company SPS (Serwis Pojazdów Szynowych) gets the contract to fix them. They basically take the train apart, replace a bunch of it, following all the rules in the documentation Newag gave them, and... it won't move. The train says everything is fine, the brakes are off, there's plenty of power, but you push the throttle up and it won't move.

SPS spends a while trying to figure out what the fuck is wrong, with no luck. So they hire some hackers from the Polish security group Dragon Sector. Dragon Sector figures out how to get into the code of the computer system that runs the train, and OH MY GOD.

So it turns out there's a secret train-lock system. If it's on, the train won't move. This will be triggered in some situations you might think are normal: the clocks are wrong, the serial numbers of the various parts have changed, and a firmware mismatch between the main computer and the power system. Now, the fact that it makes sense to not run the train in these situations until someone can check it? that doesn't extend to the fact the train uses a SECRET lock system, rather than just popping up an error message telling you what's wrong. There's also the problem that while these are all potential error problems, they can't be cleared by anyone with the technical manuals, which are supposed to cover everything about how to run these trains. Only Newag themselves can reset this system.

Which, you know, keeps SPS from properly fixing them. Only Newag can fix them now, but not because SPS lacks any technical ability, but because Newag sabotaged their own trains. But don't worry: it gets worse.

So now that Dragon Sector knows what's happening, they get to look at other trains. It turns out the trains aren't all running the same software, and there are other tricks in there.

One of them is a "how long has the train been stopped?" check. If the train hasn't hit 60 km/h in 10 days, the train locks itself and won't move until Newag can clear it. So, like, if a train is ever out of service, like it's going to a repair place... it'll break itself. Unless the repair place is owned by Newag.

But two of the trains go further: See, these trains have GPS built in, right? You may be able to guess where this is going...

THEY JUST MAKE THE TRAIN CHECK IF IT IS PARKED AT THEIR COMPETITORS' REPAIR YARD AND BREAK ITSELF IF IT WAS.

The sheer audacity of this move. This is frighteningly bullshit anti-competition self-sabotage.

This has, obviously, made some parts of the Polish government to start investigating this. Newag may be (and hopefully will be) in a lot of trouble.

For more info, there's a great video of a presentation by the three people from Dragon Sector who did the hacking, which was presented at the 37th Chaos Communication Congress in Germany.

Ars Technica also has an article on it, but it predates the presentation so it doesn't have some of the later details.

Anyway, the good news is that in the end the hackers at Dragon Sector were able to unlock most of the trains: A few had additional trickery that they didn't want to hack around, because it might break the train's certification. For the others, they discovered undocumented "cheat codes" in the software that they could use to bypass the secret lockouts... presumably the same ones that Newag would have used when they "repaired" trains.

[aboudalhaj]

The Rising Cost of Living in Gaza: A Struggle for Basic Necessities Amid War and Blockade

The escalating cost of living continues to place an unbearable burden on individuals and families in areas ravaged by conflict and embargoes. The image provided paints a stark picture of the harsh reality faced by communities—where even the most basic necessities come at exorbitant prices. Essential items such as cooking oil, sugar, and basic hygiene products are not only overpriced but often scarce due to the ongoing war and economic blockade.

For example, a modest bottle of sunflower oil is priced at an astounding $14.72, while a small packet of sugar costs $9.37. Potatoes and onions, once staple and affordable foods, now cost $8.03 each. Even basic hygiene products like soap and tahini are priced at $5.89 and $13.38, respectively. These prices, which continue to climb, highlight a dire economic situation that makes survival a daily struggle for countless individuals.

The root causes of this crisis lie in the devastating impact of war and prolonged blockades that have crippled local economies, destroyed infrastructure, and limited access to international markets. Local production is stifled, and imports are restricted, leading to inflation and a scarcity of goods. The situation is further exacerbated by unemployment and widespread poverty, leaving many unable to afford even the bare minimum required for sustenance.

In addition to food and hygiene, other sectors such as healthcare and clothing are also affected. Many families cannot afford proper medical treatment or seasonal clothing, leaving them vulnerable to illness and harsh weather conditions. The lack of access to affordable and quality resources perpetuates a cycle of poverty, malnutrition, and disease, particularly among children and the elderly.

The international community must recognize the severity of this humanitarian crisis and take action to alleviate the suffering. Lifting restrictions, providing financial aid, and ensuring the flow of essential goods are critical steps toward restoring dignity and hope to those affected. Until then, millions will continue to live under the shadow of deprivation, with the rising cost of living as an ever-present reminder of their plight.

I urge you to take a stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza. My family, like countless others, is struggling to survive these harsh conditions. You can help by donating to our campaign or simply sharing it with others to raise awareness. Together, we can bring hope and support to those in need.

✅ My Campaign ✅ 🔍Vetted by @90-ghost here 🔍✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #300 )✅️ here

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[starlit-typewriter]

Genshin SAGAU, Creator of Teyvat, but not Humanity Part 1

Playing around with the idea of The creator of Teyvat, not being the creator of humanity.

Masterlist | Next Part

~~~

You were never much of a gamer.

Not that you disliked games of course, but it never quite clicked with you the way it did others. You’d try a couple of games on and off, but there would always be a point where it’d become boring.

Not that there was anything bad about the games themselves, you freely complimented the design and effort it goes into making these masterful pieces of art and code.

You just, weren't a gamer.

Until Genshin Impact

You can still remember the day you heard of it.

You were chatting with friends and one of them brought up this new game they saw a promotion for that they were interested in trying.

It was this anime-esque gacha game.

They showed you a couple trailers and promotional materials, and you must admit they were quite appealing.

However you didn’t intend to try it, knowing that you’d eventually drop it and move on.

But your friend still pestered you, claiming that there’s no harm in trying and dropping another game, after all it’s free anyways, so you’re not losing out on anything monetary.

Skeptical, you joined them in trying out the game.

And

Well

Let’s just say your friend got more than a couple of “I told you so’s” that day

It was beautiful.

The art, the music, the characters.

Everything about this game just, clicked.

You understand why people got so obsessed with certain games.

Why they would be willing to pay for things such as this.

Why this is such a large industry.

It’s, well it’s fun.

It was honestly quite frightening how quickly the game pulled you in.

You never understood the term “completionist”, until it started to apply to you.

Every quest, every domain, every achievement

You did it all

Every dialogue, every story, every entry in the archive.

You read it all.

You scoured the forums for bits of lore, and shrieked with your friend every time something new was dropped.

Genshin was all consuming.

It was honestly quite concerning, if it weren’t for the fact it was time gated with its resin cap and limited content, your outside life probably would’ve suffered.

On some level you probably knew that this was not normal. Your friends who were all gamers as well were never as obsessed over a single game as you were over Genshin.

But you reassured yourself, this is the first game that made you feel this way, its natural for you to go a little overboard.

I’m sure it’ll die down as I try out other games.

But you never really did.

No other game, no matter how popular or similar or highly rated.

Other games from Hoyoverse fared slightly better in terms of attention span.

But you always went back to Genshin.

Not that it bothered you.

Genshin was enough, considering you still had real world responsibilities to balance.

And that was that.

Until, well.

Until Fontaine.

You see, you’d always enjoyed the characters of Teyvat.

But you’ve never quite simped after them the way the fanbase did.

You admired their aesthetics and enjoyed their stories. But they never quite drew you in.

Even your main, was quite honestly determined by meta and whatever character you’ve managed to get your hands on.

There was never a “waifu” or “husbando”.

It was always the world and story that drew you in rather than individual characters.

Iudex Neuvillette was an exception.

The exception

He felt right.

You immediately knew you had to pull for him.

So you did.

And playing him was amazing. He was as meta breaking as you’d hoped and, well, you just liked him.

“Your first official Husbando” your friends would tease. You understand why they would go such lengths for a specific character now.

He was special.

He was a Dragon.

He felt, right.

You quite never understood why

Not until you entered the world of Teyvat.

That story,

Well,

That begins from the other side of the screen.

~~~

“I bet we can definitely open up a whole new sector in Fontaine if all goes well don't you think?” Hu Tao chattered as she and Zhongli strolled back to Liyue Harbor.

Zhongli hummed in agreement, only half paying attention to the conversation. He could tell Hu Tao noticed, since she was keeping the topic of conversation to light topics that anyone with half a mind could parse through. Only enough relevance so that he wouldn’t get lost in thought, but not so much that he had to focus on the conversation.

She was considerate like that, he knew since she had let many of his oddities slide, especially when he was still adjusting to mortal life.

Not that he was free from old habits mind you.

Zhongli doubted he would ever truly be able to blend into a crowd of mortal without some level of adept arts concealing his presence, however he was able to blend in enough so that the average nosy person was able to wave off his eccentricities a simply a facet of his personality rather than something deeper.

He cannot forget that it was thanks to people such as Hu Tao who were willing to let him in without many questions that allowed him to get to this point. Something he will be forever grateful for.

Be that as it may, it did not change the fact that some things will forever be kept secret.

His near encounter with the Hydro dragon for one.

Even from the other side of Qiaoying village where he’d made himself scarce, he could feel the amount of blessings placed upon the man.

He truly was favored by the creator.

Not that that was any surprise.

What was surprising was his own blessing.

Though much smaller, he still treasured the gift given to him by the creator of Teyvat.

Teyvat, after all, was a world of Dragons.

It was due to the advent of The Primordial One, did they lose their authority.

Not that many people knew.

Most people didn’t

The true History and creation of Teyvat was kept tightly wrapped, even the most learned scholars of the Akademiya could only infer at what truly happened, as well as the origin of humanity.

The true name of the creator was lost to time, only their title of the creator of Teyvat remaining. The mortals who lived on Teyvat daren’t give them another for fear of evoking their wrath.

They had plenty to be wrathful about.

Zhongli would only imagine his own rage, if anything similar happened to Liyue.

Imagine putting in centuries upon centuries of work only for an outsider to come in, destroy your work and reshape it for their own people. Before proceeding to have the audacity to name him as a contributor to their success and praise alongside such an usurper.

Just imagining it makes him angry.

That is why, the creator’s title is rarely evoked.

Names have power after all.

Names of gods even more so.

To evoke their name, their title, is to ask for attention.

Attention that would be safer left elsewhere.

Not that mortals knew the true reason.

The commonly accepted reasoning was that the creator of Teyvat has long turned their gaze elsewhere, satisfied with the current ruling of Teyvat, having entrusted their powers to Celestia and the Archons.

Zhongli would feel guilt at this blatant lie and rewriting of history if he could.

But he cannot, because to feel guilt would be to regret his actions and to wish something was different.

But he knew that he, along with all of humanity, Liyue Harbor, his Adepti and friends. They would not have existed, they would not have lived, has history played out justly.

The world is not just.

The world simply is.

He feared to an extent that the Hydro dragons would try to force a more cruel version of justice upon Fontaine, condemning them all as usurpers, when they had no idea, or even power over what had happened in the past.

Thankfully it seems that Focalors’s plan to integrate him into humanity worked. Stemming any sort of “justice” he may enact on humanity for the crimes of The Primordial One. In fact, he seems to have great fondness over humanity, absolving them of their sin and saving them from the prophecy that threatened Fontaine for so many centuries.

However, he knew that he was exempt from this mercy. Zhongli knew that when the time came, the Hydro dragon, or well Iudex Neuvillette would spare no effort in holding him accountable for his actions in usurping the original order of Teyvat.

Which is exactly why he avoided the man, dragon? as he did.

“-ello, earth to Zhongli, ”

Zhongli blinked, Hu Tao’s voice dragging him back to their situation at hand.

“Ah, my apologies, I seemed to have been lost in thought”

She clicked her tongue at him, “Aiyyaa, honestly Zhongli, I wonder sometimes if your age is getting to you, I was trying to get your attention for quite a while”

“Is that so,”

Zhongli couldn’t help but smile at her exaggerated groan.

“I was merely thinking about some old history,” he started, preparing himself to finish the history of Qiaoying village that he was telling Hu Tao on their way over.

“Oh no, there’s no need for that,” she waved off, a slight grimace on her face.

He knew how bored she was by the story the way over, so it served as a perfect distraction on the way back to stop her from questioning any further.

“Honestly a girl can only listen so much about the different varieties of teas and their subtle notes and flavoring before she has to burst yo know,” she complained.

“Well, the history of tea has a -”

“Oh look we’re almost there!” She pointed out, most likely in a desperate bid to stop him from droning on.

He was being slightly unfair to her, he knows, but it never ceases to become unassuming when people try to fake interest in a topic, only to regret it when they realize just how much there is to know about it.

Of course it can never compare to when someone has a genuine passion for the topic and wants to engage further, but those mortals are rare.

More often than not, he can use his vast knowledge as a smokescreen too, well, as Paimon would most likely put it. Bore people into leaving him alone.

He waves off Hu Tao as she bounces back home, and allows himself to take a stroll through the streets of Liyue Harbor.

The Lantern Rite was ending, another celebration successfully done under the hard work of the Qixing

He gazed around at all the sights, the lanterns, the food stalls, the beautiful atmosphere of people enjoying the celebration.

No

He could never regret what he did.

Not since it lead to peace and happiness like this.

And

If things are as he suspects.

He may never have too.

He feels it once more.

The glow of the creator's blessing.

He can feel it swirling within him as he steps through Liyue Harbor.

He wonders if they can see it as he does. Sees the beauty and resplendence of humanity.

Look, he wants to scream

They are nothing like The Primordial One

They are good, kind and beautiful.

Humans may not be your creation, they may not have originated from this world but that does not mean they do not deserve to stay.

But he doesn’t

First of all because he feels that screaming these things in the middle of a busy street may attract some weird looks.

But also out of fear, fear that any attempt to disrupt this fragile peace could lead to destruction.

Because it is fragile, it has only been a couple of years since the creator has turned their eyes to Teyvat.

Those who have been blessed have been careful in their own way not to destroy this chance that the creator has given them.

A chance to prove themselves, not only as people deserving of their attention and blessing, but as a people.

To prove themselves just as worthy of the dragons of staying in Teyvat.

Because they all know, in their hearts of hearts, that what the creator has created, they could just as easily destroy.

While some may tease him for his age, there is no denying that with age comes experiences that the younger generation may never know.

He himself, whilst having been born long after the disappearance of the creator, witnessed firsthand how it had affected the world.

How Godly remains tainted the earth for far longer than it used to.

How miasma and abyssal energy started to leak forth.

How Leyline disorders became more and more commonplace.

Teyvat was breaking.

It was falling apart.

But perhaps.

With this new chance, it could be fixed.

He could still remember the day the creator first turned their gaze upon Teyvat.

Or well, more specifically, the first time they turned their gaze on him.

He had heard rumors of an outlander from Mondstatdt making their way to Liyue. Tales of their feats and defeating Dvalin with the wayward Anemo Archon were as prevalent as talks about the upcoming Rite of Descension.

He had taken note of it of course, outlanders were rare after all, but he hadn’t expected this one to be quite, consequential.

Not until he met them.

He felt their approach funnily enough, the unbranded aura they carried within them. While he could’ve written it off as an aspect of their outlander status, internally he knew it not to be true.

He was far too young to have ever met the creator, or even the original dragons.

But he has stumbled upon their remnants.

Pure remnants, unlike the gnosis which have been twisted and altered by the time it had spent in the hands of The Primordial One.

It was, indescribable.

Free, yet grounded.

Unwavering yet fluid.

Swift yet languid.

It

It simply was

It was the essence of Teyvat.

The essence of the land he lived and fought and bled and laughed in.

How could he not worship it.

How could he not fear it.

He had felt Childe walk in with bated breath, distracting himself with his cup of tea to settle his nerves.

What did this mean?

Was this the end of Liyue, of humanity, of Teyvat?

Over the centuries people have accepted the creator’s complacency in the affairs of Teyvat.

What does it now mean that they have focused their gaze once more on this land.

Destruction

Salvation

He daren’t hope or guess.

But

Well,

The Traveler was kind.

They had no ill will towards the people of Teyvat.

While it was clear they had their own mission to stove for, they did not hesitate in helping those they can along the way.

If the creator has blessed one such as them, one so kind to humans, one with no ill will.

Perhaps.

A seed of hope planted itself in him, and refused to budge.

As time went on, the seed grew.

Hope grew.

The tiny seed of hope that he tried so hard to ignore and deny could be ignored no longer when he received a blessing himself.

He could still remember it so clearly.

It was a normal day, nothing out of the ordinary. He went to work, had tea, chatted with passersby.

There were no great feats.

No great revelations, or offerings.

Yet he felt it for the first time.

A blessing.

A pure, gentle, powerful blessing.

He could feel the sentiment behind it, weak as it was.

Relief, excitement, apprehension.

He wanted to cry, to pray. To thank them for giving him a chance, for giving the people of Teyvat a chance.

But fear held him back.

It still does to this day.

That’s the problem with gods, their pleasure and their wrath can often look the same.

Even as he compared notes with Barbatos and the Adepti, confirming that many of them have been given blessings.

While some like Ganyu, rejoiced in this blessing eager for a chance to prove themselves worthy of this world.

People such as him were still fearful.

Fearful of what this meant and what they wanted.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was when he realized that xiangling was also blessed.

Not that the girl knew, after all the creator was very rarely spoken of, only ever mentioned in ancient rites and the most descriptive of history books.

But she had the blessing, a human.

From that point he saw so many others, so many humans, mere mortals given their divine blessing and gaze.

An exorcist, an author, a member of the Qixing.

It spread across Teyvat, whispers as people soon realized that there was a god, an unknown god blessing them.

Granting them abilities beyond their visions, oftentimes enhancing them to levels beyond previously known human limits.

No one dared to say their name, they were insinuations, and speculations, but no one dared disturbed the fragile peace that has settled.

It is an understanding between those who have it.

Those who know, know and those who don’t are kept in the dark.

But it seems that the Creator has turned their gaze to Teyvat and to humans.

~~~~

Masterlist | Next Part

~~~~

Tell me what you guys think!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Picks and Shovels Chapter One (Part 4)

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

This month, I'm serializing the first chapter of my next novel, Picks and Shovels, a standalone Martin Hench novel that drops on Feb 17:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels

The book is up for presale on a Kickstarter that features the whole series as print books (with the option of personalized inscriptions), DRM-free ebooks, and a DRM-free audiobook read by Wil Wheaton:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/picks-and-shovels-marty-hench-at-the-dawn-of-enshittification

It's a story of how the first seeds of enshittification were planted in Silicon Valley, just as the first PCs were being born.

Here's part one:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/09/the-reverend-sirs/#fidelity-computing

Part two:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/10/smoke-filled-room-where-it-happens/#computing-freedom

Part three:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/11/socialism-for-the-rich/#a-lighter-shade-of-mauve

And now, onto part four!

The San Antonio girl—the daughter of a local real-estate broker—had no idea what floppy disks the president was talking about, so he showed her the catalog and she immediately called the rep in Colma. The receptionist was on the ball and passed the call on to Shlomo, who immediately grasped the catalog’s significance and approved an expensive Federal Express courier.

“Our general counsel advised us to seek an injunction and file a suit,” Bishop Clarke said.

“It would have been better to talk, of course,” the rabbi said. “Nobody wanted to drag those three little girls into court. They’re like family, even though they left.”

Up until then, they’d all been telling the same story, but something about what Rabbi Finkel said stopped its momentum. I’d been practicing my listening, trying to be like Lucille, listening with my eyes and my ears. The rabbi’s statement jolted the other two. Now we’re coming to the crux, I thought. This is the part where I come in.

“They were good at their jobs,” Bishop Clarke said, almost wistful.

“They surprised us,” Father Marek said.

“Perhaps we could find an accommodation,” the rabbi said. The three men looked at each other. How long had they been in business together, in each other’s pockets, maybe at each other’s throats? The story of interfaith harmony was such a juicy one, the stuff of magazine cover stories. Was it true, though?

“They just need convincing,” Bishop Clarke said. His smile flickered on and off. He must have had dental work. The standard-issue teeth just didn’t come that way: shining, white, perfect symmetry. On, off. Maybe he practiced it in front of a mirror.

Discovery is the part of a lawsuit where the parties can demand relevant documents from one another: memos, contracts, correspondence.

Tortious interference is the legal offense of stepping between two contracting parties in a way that induces one of them to violate their contractual obligations. Suing for tortious interference is the commercial version of a jilted wife confronting her erstwhile husband’s lover, as though his infidelity was her fault.

Fidelity’s lawyers—an outside firm with a reputation for aggression and a roster of blue-chip clients and high-profile cases, including IBM’s ongoing troubles with the Department of Justice over its alleged antitrust violations—had drawn up a complaint asserting that CF had induced Fidelity’s suppliers to violate their confidentiality and exclusivity agreements, while simultaneously inducing the company’s best customers to forgo their contractual obligations (and semireligious duty) to buy their supplies from Fidelity and its sales agents in their congregations.

These sweeping allegations gave Fidelity’s lawyers sweeping discovery powers: all documents and accounts related to CF’s manufacturing, promotion, and sales, right down to the printers who supplied their catalogs.

CF wasn’t powerless in the face of this onslaught. Their lawyers—a much cheaper and hungrier firm of lawyers, without the pedigree or track record of their opposing counsel—had secured the right to redact irrelevant, sensitive material from the documents they turned over, and, more crucially, they had convinced the judge to let them do something novel.

The bishop hoisted a banker’s box onto the table and set it down with a thud. He lifted the lid like a conjurer’s trick and brought out two thick binders of paperwork, bristling with dividers. “This is the hardcopy,” he said. “It’s almost nothing. Photocopies of handwritten memos, mostly.”

He reached back in and produced a mauve box of floppy disks, the five – and – a – quarter – inch kind that already seemed slightly quaint, compared to the small, rigid three – and – a – half – inch floppies that all the new computers were using. He produced a second box. A third. A fourth. A fifth. The pile grew.

“Ten boxes of floppy disks,” the bishop said. “No one had ever asked such a thing of our judge, but he said that two computer companies should be able to accept electronic submissions from one another. He said it was obvious that this was the future of discovery, and that we were the perfect litigants to start with, since our dispute was about their piracy of our formats and disks, so of course we’d have compatible systems.

“Somewhere in here is the evidence that they are going to fail in court, the evidence that will force them to come back to the table and negotiate, to talk, the way they should have in the first place. They’ve found some good ways of doing things, and we’re interested in that. We want to work with them, not ruin them. We could arrange a sale of their little company to Fidelity, on preferable terms, but with something in there to recognize their clever little inventions and innovations. They’d get something, rather than nothing.” The bishop spread his hands, patted the air. It’s only reasonable, his hands said.

“Better they get the money than the lawyers,” the rabbi said.

“Something is always better than nothing,” Father Marek said. “Even an idiot should be able to see that.” The other two shot him looks. He scowled at them.

“We need someone who can make sense of all this.” The bishop pointed at his precarious tower of floppy disks. “They thought that they’d overwhelm us with electronic records. That our lawyers were so conservative that they wouldn’t be able to sort through them. It’s true, they’re not set up for this. No one is, but someone could be. We think that for the right kind of person, someone who understands accounting and computers, these records will be easier to handle.”

There it was. They looked at me, three worried sets of eyes. This wasn’t how they normally operated. They were taking a risk. I wondered whose idea this was. Not Father Marek: he wanted vengeance. He’d be happy to smash CF, make an example of them. Rabbi Finkel? Perhaps. I could see that he was a thinker, someone who looked around corners. The bishop? He’d done most of the talking. But I got the impression he always did most of the talking: a Mormon bishop, after all, didn’t wear a dog collar or a beard and yarmulke. Mormon bishops are laypeople, after all. They look secular.

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

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/2025/01/13/wanting-it-badly/#discovering-e-discovery

[nyoomfruits]

osctober day twelve

prompt: fairytale pairing: lando/oscar word count: 600w a/n: set in the same universe as this drabble :)

“So,” Lando says, when he makes his way into the tiny little office Oscar has in the McLaren Motorhome. He shares it with the other race engineers, so it’s just four desk pushed together in the teeniest space ever. “I had the most interesting conversation with my daughter today.”

“Did you,” Oscar says, barely looking up from his laptop, where he’s going over the latest data. He knows there’s time to win for them in the first sector. If only he can figure out how.

“Yeah,” Lando says, leaning against the wall across from Oscar. “She says you’ve been telling her stories. Fairytales, to be exact.”

Oscar abandons his laptop, looks up with a guilty look on her face. “Listen, I’m sorry, but you were having all these interviews, and she was bored, and the nanny was like, on her last leg, and I offered to tell her a story, and I don’t know, I just panicked so I just started telling her the first thing that popped in my head, and then she like that so she kept asking, and-“

Lando holds up his hand. “I’m not mad. I wanted to uh. Thank you, actually. I mean. I know how hard it must be for her sometimes, flying all over the world, me being busy all the time. I’m glad she has you.” He pauses, and then hastily adds. “And the nanny, and others, of course. But. Yeah. You, too.”

“Oh,” Oscar says. “Yeah. Thanks. I don’t mind. She’s a good kid.”

“Hm,” Lando says. “She told me what the stories were about.”

Oscar stares back at his laptop, pretends to be very interested in Lando’s FP2 data all of sudden. “Did she?”

“Prince Lando, huh?” Lando says, amused tone in his voice. “Nice touch.”

“Thanks,” Oscar says, trying really hard not to blush.

“Say, tell me,” Lando says, pushing off the wall, making his way over to Oscar’s desk. He towers over him like this, something that doesn’t happen often. Oscar has to look up to meet his eye. “This Prince Lando. Does he ever meet his princess?”

“Uh,” Oscar says, trying not to let his disappointment at the question show. “I mean, he’s been pretty busy with the dragon riding and the defeating evil wizards, but I can pencil it in for the next story, if you want.”

Lando shakes his head. “Let me rephrase that. Does he ever find his… prince?”

Oscar’s head shoots up, meets Lando’s eyes. Lando’s smiling, head tilted to the side. Curious. Open. Genuine. “I. Uh. He might?”

“Hm,” Lando says. “And what if he doesn’t want a prince? What if there’s a knight he’s got his eyes on? A very loyal one. Kind, too. Funny. Gets along with the prince’s daughter. What if he wants him?”

Oscar breathes out a little shakily. “Then I’d say he’d have to go get him, yeah?” He says. His palms are sweating. His everything is sweating. What is even happening right now.

Lando nods. “Sounds like a plan,” he says, and then he leans forward and presses his lips against Oscar’s in the softest, gentlest kiss he’s ever received. Before he can even properly respond Lando has pulled away, made his way back over to the door. In the doorway, he turns around. “Dinner?” He asks, like he’s asked so many times.

“Yeah, I, yeah,” Oscar says, trying not to trip over his own feet in his haste to get out of his chair, his lips still tingling from the kiss, the sparkle in Lando’s eyes a promise for much more to come.

The door to the tiny little office closes behind them with a decisive click.

[gallusrostromegalus]

Does Nobody chat it up with other deities from other sectors? Or are they kind of a hodge-podge of all deities all at once?

No, because Nobody is functionally the Life Machine's uterus and placenta.

The Life Machine itself, however, is very aware of, communicates with, and even has *Romance* with the neighboring Life Machines.

The AEIWAM Life Machine is really something akin to a Sixteen Dimensional Elder God that is also A Barnacle. It's sessile in it's peculiar cross-sections of reality, anchored to Earth in the localities of the greater Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan, The Black forest of Germany, parts of the Chihuahuan Desert in the US and Mexico, and most recently, the entirety of the London Metropolitan Area encircled by the M25 London Orbital Motorway, and curiously, it's Spirit-world equivalent location, Reverse London.

What's odd about Reverse London is that, unlike it's Soul Society, Schwarzwalden and Hueco Mundo, you can't actually get to Reverse London from anywhere in Spirit World.

If any Shinigami wants to visit their colleagues in Wing Bind/the NDMA, they have to go to the living world in a gigai, get on a fucking plane, actually enter Regular London, locate one of the portals, and from THERE they may enter Reverse London, provided all their paperwork is in order. The same is true of any witch that wants to visit soul society- they must first fill out a mountain of paperwork, get on a plane to Japan, physically enter the Hiroshima prefecture and make contact with a Shinigami there to open a portal into soul society.

It makes schlepping across the Dangai or Garganta look like a breeze!

What's going on is that Each Life Machine only impregnates and gives birth once. The other Life Machines covering Earth offer their neighboring Machines choice pieces of themselves, not unlike a male octopus tearing off his Spermatophoe limb for a female. If the proffered piece of reality is acceptable, the recipient Life Machine takes it and embeds it into her own matrix, and uses the sample to create her daughter.

The Current Life Machine is the third in her line. The first was based only in Japan, but then received the Chihuahuan desert from her mate. The second one drew souls associated with both regions, and eventually received the Chihuahuan desert from her mate. She gave birth and passed on about 35,000 years ago. About 2,000 years ago, The Current Life Machine accepted London and Reverse London into her polydimensional body in exchange for Mount Dogo and began building her daughter by creating Nobody to oversee that process.

To put it another way, one God jizzed London into another God <3.

The reason Reverse London isn't accessible via spirit world is that it's not fully integrated into the fetal Life Machine yet. If things had gone according to plan, souls could start to travel between Reverse London and Spirit World in about 2450, but ah. The whole small-g-godslaying thing. So now it's sort of integrating itself at random, which is more than a little dangerous because the Dragons and other ectofauna of Reverse London are nothing like Spirit World has ever seen, and the hollows and Yokai of Spirit world the same to Wing Bind. Strange Things have been appearing in the outer districts of the Rukongai for some time now- Aquatic horses with a taste for flesh, Ominous black hounds and Strange Women in Ponds. In Reverse London, there are reports of Foxes being even Cheekier than usual, going from petty theft to Bank Fraud and Crypto currency trading.

As for the assorted Gods of this and other worlds- No two Life Machines operate with the same internal logic, so while the AEIWAM Life Machine has it's Hollows, Yokai and Kami, other life machines are operating under entirely different rules, so who knows what is running around elsewhere.

[chaliceofthescales-if]

Sector 7, or Schai, depending on who you are. An otherwise barren dry desert on which nothing grows with a busy bustling tourist city as its main focus. A city of indulgence, excess, and sin, the shiny glittering lights hide the dark truth behind the City of Wonders. Many will do anything to get out of the gutter and different groups often take advantage of that. So when two strange people approach you, offering a lifetime's worth of payment for protecting someone and going to find a special cup that may or may not actually exist, who are you to say no?

Chalice of the Scales is the first book in the Turnwheel of the Twelve Saga. It will be a shorter smaller game with the total amount of words read during each play through being about 40k, which is about the size of a novella or 80 pages front and back in a real book. It's inspired by different sources including Dungeons and Dragons and JRPGs/RPGs. The focus will be mostly on storytelling and adventure, but romance will also play a rather big part. While it leans more towards storytelling, there will be a decent amount of stat-based gameplay/mechanics as well.

You play as a Sector 7 Bodyguard for Hire. That means you're poor as dirt. You're approached by two mysterious hooded figures who offer to pay you a lifetime's worth of money in exchange for you to protect your Charge and find the Chalice of the Scales. You, obviously, accept thinking it's an easy job. Turns out, it's anything but. Now you have to create a group to set out and the Scales' Relic, which hasn't been seen in over 1000 years, while also trying to make sure no one dies.

Genre: Adventure, Romance, Fantasy Post-Apocalyptic

Rating: 18+

Tracked Tag: #chalice of the scales

Status: In Development (Writing)

Demo || Romance Options || FAQ || Ask Guidelines || Tag Navigation || World Lore || Current Anonymous Survey Form || The Full Saga || Dev's Main Blog ||

Create and customize your bodyguard for hire. Choose their gender, pronouns, appearance, and personality and more.

Protect your Charge and make sure he isn't killed or kidnapped by the assassins after him while trying to find the lost Relic.

Explore Sector 7 of Astelle, also called Schai. Traverse dry barren deserts, smog filled cities, and the Great Divide on your quest.

Do research and follow leads to find out where the Chalice is located. Fight back against Relic Hunters and other groups to safely deliver the Chalice to its Warden.

Romance any of your 6 companions: Merlion - Your Charge, Astor - The Guardian, Elise - The Cleric, Bran - The Relic Hunter, Korone - The Navigator, or Starling - The Assassin.

Build your relationships with others in the group and find out their stories. A good relationship with someone may unlock different choices during gameplay.

One final question... Where is the Warden?

Merlion Corwell (he/him) - Your Charge. Two mysterious hooded people paid you quite well in advance to protect him and find the Relic. A fairly easy job, in hindsight. Now if only he would stop wandering off and getting into trouble.

Astor Wryth (he/him) - The Guardian. A real-life Guardian, like from the legends. Structured and well-put together, he's very adept with his abilities as a Guardian, but is very out of touch with his Warden.

Elise Fairthing (she/her) - The Cleric. A sweet and energetic Cleric who decided to join you on your quest after you crash her trip. She possesses a decent amount of knowledge and history about the Twelve.

Bran Noire (they/them) - The Relic Hunter. A shoddy Relic Hunter who let themself get captured by you. Rather irksome and arrogant, they're bold, loud, brash, and are, unfortunately, a fantastic shot.

Korone Noire (they/them) - The Navigator. A stoic and Machiavellian Navigator who knows the land of Schai like the back of their hand. Despite being quiet and thoughtful, they are somehow related to Bran.

Starling Rhise (she/her) - The Assassin. A woman once your enemy, now your (reluctant) ally. Calm and intelligent, she possesses an adventurous spirit and a grudge that won't go away anytime soon.

[blondieart]

@toosweetoftea Saw your tags while I was outside to draw and it made me so happy! Bunny Aerith brings me joy. X3 Hope I get to introduce all of the cast over time and share my silly lil ideas for them. My TH folder and the profiles are far from done but my "Sector VII" stuff so far is over here & I usually throw art/updates into my tag. >v<