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Hello again Mr. Apollo! Iâm submitting my fun fact early today because Iâm probably gonna be preoccupied with birthday shenanigans later! 𼳠You donât gotta answer until later if you donât want, I mean technically you donât gotta answer at all but like. You get what I mean. Anywho!
Your cool bug fact today is that thereâs exactly one oxygen atom separating pseudoephedrine (the active ingredient in Sudafed) from methamphetamine (âŚmeth). The molecular structures of the two are EXTREMELY similar. On a somewhat related note, many organic molecules can be transformed into seemingly unrelated compounds, such as toluene (paint thinner) and benzaldehyde (artificial cherry flavor), in which two hydrogen atoms are swapped out for one oxygen. Yay chemistry! :D
~����
"...'yay, chemistry' is right. It's, I mean... It sure is complicated, I'll give it that."
(And I'm happy people much smarter than me are dealing with actually figuring it out...)
"But, uh... congrats, to whoever's having the birthday. I don't care too much for mine, but I know people really get into that stuff."
#~đ¸đđ¤đ¨đđŁđđđ ..//~ apollo responds#ace attorney ask blog#ask blog#// i got distracted as hell so i'm answering this later anyways lmao#// i remember learning about sudafed and meth in the singular forensic science class i took
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Kickstarting a new Martin Hench novel about the dawn of enshittification
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/2025/01/07/weird-pcs/#a-mormon-bishop-an-orthodox-rabbi-and-a-catholic-priest-walk-into-a-personal-computing-revolution
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 @wilwheaton:
http://martinhench.com
This is the third Hench novel, following on from the nationally bestselling The Bezzle (2024) and Red Team Blues (2023). I wrote Red Team Blues with a funny conceit: what if I wrote the final volume of a beloved, long-running series, without writing the rest of the series? Turns out, the answer is: "Your editor will buy a whole bunch more books in the series!"
My solution to this happy conundrum? Write the Hench books out of chronological order. After all, Marty Hench is a financial hacker who's been in Silicon Valley since the days of the first PCs, so he's been there for all the weird scams tech bros have dreamed up since Jobs and Woz were laboring in their garage over the Apple I. He's the Zelig of high-tech fraud! Look hard at any computing-related scandal and you'll find Marty Hench in the picture, quietly and competently unraveling the scheme, dodging lawsuits and bullets with equal aplomb.
Which brings me to Picks and Shovels. In this volume, we travel back to Marty's first job, in the 1980s â the weird and heroic era of the PC. Marty ended up in the Bay Area after he flunked out of an MIT computer science degree (he was too busy programming computers to do his classwork), and earning his CPA at a community college.
Silicon Valley in the early eighties was wild: Reaganomics stalked the land, the AIDS crisis was in full swing, the Dead Kennedys played every weekend, and man were the PCs ever weird. This was before the industry crystalized into Mac vs PC, back when no one knew what they were supposed to look like, who was supposed to use them, and what they were for.
Marty's first job is working for one of the weirder companies: Fidelity Computing. They sound like a joke: a computer company run by a Mormon bishop, a Catholic priest and an orthodox rabbi. But the joke's on their customers, because Fidelity Computing is a scam: a pyramid sales cult that exploits religious affinities to sell junk PCs that are designed to lock customers in and squeeze them for every dime. A Fidelity printer only works with Fidelity printer paper (they've gimmicked the sprockets on the tractor-feed). A Fidelity floppy drive only accepts Fidelity floppies (every disk is sold with a single, scratched-out sector and the drives check for an error on that sector every time they run).
Marty figures out he's working for the bad guys when they ask him to destroy Computing Freedom, a scrappy rival startup founded by three women who've escaped from Fidelity Computing's cult: a queer orthodox woman who's been kicked out of her family; a radical nun who's thrown in with the Liberation Theology movement in opposing America's Dirty Wars; and a Mormon woman who's quit the church in disgust at its opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment. The women of Computing Freedom have a (ahem) holy mission: to free every Fidelity customer from the prison they were lured into.
Marty may be young and inexperienced, but he can spot a rebel alliance from a light year away and he knows what side he wants to be on. He joins the women in their mission, and we're deep into a computing war that quickly turns into a shooting war. Turns out the Reverend Sirs of Fidelity Computer aren't just scammers â they're mobbed up, and willing to turn to lethal violence to defend their racket.
This is a rollicking crime thriller, a science fiction novel about the dawn of the computing revolution. It's an archaeological expedition to uncover the fossil record of the first emergence of enshittification, a phenomenon that was born with the PC and its evil twin, the Reagan Revolution.
The book comes out on Feb 15 in hardcover and ebook from Macmillan (US/Canada) and Bloomsbury (UK), but neither publisher is doing the audiobook. That's my department.
Why? Well, I love audiobooks, and I especially love the audiobooks for this series, because they're read by the incredible Wil Wheaton, hands down my favorite audiobook narrator. But that's not why I retain my audiobook rights and produce my own audiobooks. I do that because Amazon's Audible service refuses to carry any of my audiobooks.
Here's how that works: Audible is a division of Amazon, and they've illegally obtained a monopoly over the audiobook market, controlling more than 90% of audiobook sales in many genres. That means that if your book isn't for sale on Audible, it might as well not exist.
But Amazon won't let you sell your books on Audible unless you let them wrap those books in "digital rights management," a kind of encryption that locks them to Audible's authorized players. Under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's a felony punishable with a 5-year sentence and a $500k fine to supply you with a tool to remove an audiobook from Audible and play it on a rival app. That applies even if the person who gives you the tool is the creator of the book!
You read that right: if I make an audiobook and then give you the tools to move it out of Amazon's walled garden, I could go to prison for five years! That's a stiffer sentence than you'd face if you were to just pirate the audiobook. It's a harsher penalty than you'd get for shoplifting the book on CD from a truck-stop. It's more draconian than the penalty for hijacking the truck that delivers the CDs!
Amazon knows that every time you buy an audiobook from Audible, you increase the cost you'll have to pay if you switch to a competitor. They use that fact to give readers a worse deal (last year they tried out ads in audiobooks!). But the people who really suffer under this arrangement are the writers, whom Amazon abuses with abandon, knowing they can't afford to leave the service because their readers are locked into it. That's why Amazon felt they could get away with stealing $100 million from indie audiobook creators (and yup, they got away with it):
https://www.audiblegate.com/about
Which is why none of my books can be sold with DRM. And that means that Audible won't carry any of them.
For more than a decade, I've been making my own audiobooks, in partnership with the wonderful studio Skyboat Media and their brilliant director, Gabrielle de Cuir:
https://skyboatmedia.com/
I pay fantastic narrators a fair wage for their work, then I pay John Taylor Williams, the engineer who masters my podcasts, to edit the books and compose bed music for the intro and outro. Then I sell the books at every store in the world â except Audible and Apple, who both have mandatory DRM. Because fuck DRM.
Paying everyone a fair wage is expensive. It's worth it: the books are great. But even though my books are sold at many stores online, being frozen out of Audible means that the sales barely register.
That's why I do these Kickstarter campaigns, to pre-sell thousands of audiobooks in advance of the release. I've done six of these now, and each one was a huge success, inspiring others to strike out on their own, sometimes with spectacular results:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/books/2022/04/01/brandon-sanderson-kickstarter-41-million-new-books/7243531001/
Today, I've launched the Kickstarter for Picks and Shovels. I'm selling the audiobook and ebook in DRM-form, without any "terms of service" or "license agreement." That means they're just like a print book: you buy them, you own them. You can read them on any equipment you choose to. You can sell them, give them away, or lend them to friends. Rather than making you submit to 20,000 words of insulting legalese, all I ask of you is that you don't violate copyright law. I trust you!
Speaking of print books: I'm also pre-selling the hardcover of Picks and Shovels and the paperbacks of The Bezzle and Red Team Blues, the other two Marty Hench books. I'll even sign and personalize them for you!
http://martinhench.com
I'm also offering five chances to commission your own Marty Hench story â pick your favorite high-tech finance scam from the past 40 years of tech history, and I'll have Marty bust it in a custom short story. Once the story is published, I'll make sure you get credit. Check out these two cool Little Brother stories my previous Kickstarter backers commissioned:
Spill
https://reactormag.com/spill-cory-doctorow/
Vigilant
https://reactormag.com/vigilant-cory-doctorow/
I'm heading out on tour this winter and spring with the book. I'll be in LA, San Francisco, San Diego, Burbank, Bloomington, Chicago, Richmond VA, Toronto, NYC, Boston, Austin, DC, Baltimore, Seattle, and other dates still added. I've got an incredible roster of conversation partners lined up, too: John Hodgman, Charlie Jane Anders, Dan Savage, Ken Liu, Peter Sagal, Wil Wheaton, and others.
I hope you'll check out this book, and come out to see me on tour and say hi. Before I go, I want to leave you with some words of advance praise for Picks and Shovels:
I hugely enjoyed Picks and Shovels. Cory Doctorowâs reconstruction of the age is note perfect: the detail, the atmosphere, ethos, flavour and smell of the age is perfectly conveyed. I love Marty and Art and all the main characters. The hope and the thrill that marks the opening section. The superb way he tells the story of the rise of Silicon Valley (to use the lazy metonym), inserting the stories of Shockley, IBM vs US Government, the rise of MS â all without turning journalistic or preachy.
The seeds of enshittification are all there⌠even in the sunlight of that time the shadows are lengthening. AIDS of course, and the coming scum tide of VCs. In Orwellian terms, the pigs are already rising up on two feet and starting to wear trousers. All that hope, all those idealsâŚ
I love too the thesis that San Francisco always has failed and always will fail her suitors.
Despite cultural entropy, enshittification, corruption, greed and all the betrayals thereâs a core of hope and honour in the story too.
-Stephen Fry
Cory Doctorow writes as few authors do, with tech world savvy and real world moral clarity. A true storyteller for our times.
-John Scalzi
A crackling, page-turning tumble into an unexpected underworld of queer coders, Mission burritos, and hacker nuns. You will fall in love with the righteous underdogs of Computing Freedomâand feel right at home in the holy place Doctorow has built for them far from Silicon Valleyâs grabby, greedy hands."
-Claire Evans, editor of Motherboard Future, author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet.
"WonderfulâŚevokes the hacker spirit of the early personal computer eraâand shows how the battle for software freedom is eternal."
-Steven Levy, author of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and Facebook: The Inside Story.
What could be better than a Martin Hench thriller set in 1980s San Francisco that mixes punk rock romance with Lotus spreadsheets, dot matrix printers and religious orders? You'll eat this up â I sure did.
-Tim Wu, Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy, author of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
Captures the look and feel of the PC era. Cory Doctorow draws a portrait of a Silicon Valley and San Francisco before the tech bros showed up â a startup world driven as much by open source ideals as venture capital gold.
-John Markoff, Pulitzer-winning tech columnist for the New York Times and author of What the Doormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
You won't put this book down â it's too much fun. I was there when it all began. Doctorow's characters and their story are real.
-Dan'l Lewin, CEO and President of the Computer History Museum
#pluralistic#books#audiobooks#weird pcs#religion#pyramid schemes#cults#the eighties#punk#queer#san francisco#armistead maupin#novels#science fiction#technothrillers#crowdfunding#wil wheaton#amazon#drm#audible#monopolies#martin hench#marty hench#crime#thrillers#crime thrillers
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"Oh you know. just the basic effective and crazy projects you've made. Rumors about some 'Fountain of Youth' project. That seems to be quite a talk among the guards."
She recalled. Occasionally tapping her chin as she tried to recall some words or rumors about his work among the guards.
"Though I'm not one to really.. Socialize with other scientists. You just seemed to have peaked my interest with your gear."
She exclaimed as her smirk widened. Gesturing towards his tendrils. Caressed her chin in thought, figuring since he seemed like a high ranking scientist. He should know about other projects within this company.
"Though. If it isn't too much trouble. You wouldn't happen to know any new upcoming.. Projects. The boss has a plan for?"
(Got bored... But I also figured that my OCS should actually interact with others. And I have yet to interact with Kraken soo.)
Oddly. Miss Medea had hired a new person. Though.. This person was a mystery. Apparently they're a new 'Forensic Scientist'.
Odd since there had been no reason to have a scientist examine the deceased... Miss Medea could easily have any other scientist do such things yet she bothered hiring such a person...
Though this seemed to be the perfect moment to see who this new hire is or what they're about... Though, too bad the new hire was the first to approach Kraken after leaving a staff meeting.
"Soo you're the infamous Doctor Kraken I've heard about? Heard some things about you're.. Work."
They hummed as they approached Kraken. Obviously having a good distance away. Their eyes lazily look at Kraken. They held a small smirk while also having their hands in their lab coat pockets.
â @forensics-cj đŹ
(ooc: hello đ)
Kraken looked at the person who had suddenly popped into his presence. Raising one brow as he studied this new person "yes that is I " he started slowly turning to the person. His Tendrils shifting and moving behind him to continue his work.
He was very puzzled why Medea had suddenly hired some one like them but he honestly couldn't care less since he didn't give a shit who comes or go in this place. Well expect for his husband of course
"what kind of things ?" He asked wondering what was spoken about his work and projects he had done.
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Nami's intro!
MY ASK GAMES (they're all the same, just different fonts/cosmetics!):
Pastry/Sweets themed yandere ask game
Sea/ocean/tropical themed yandere ask game
Floral themed yandere ask game
ANONS:
-đ° anon
-𪥠anon
-⨠anon
-đ° anon
-đ anon
-đŚ anon
-đĽď¸ anon
-đŚ anon
-𩹠anon
-đ anon
-đšanon
-đťanon
-đŠanon
Hello Hello!~ I'm Nami, if you couldn't already tell ^^''
I come from a very small village in Finland, where beaches/the ocean and the stars are worshipped. I'll be using this blog as my little ramble wall for my yandere tendencies. (*^âż^*)
A little background about me; I've been a Japanese exchange student in Okinawa, Kyoto and Numazu; my greatest wish is to go back one day, this time to experience the high school life.
My Aesthetics include: Jirai Kei, Scene and Himekaji!
My diagnoses include: C-PTSD; BPD (Type 1 and 4), Bipolar disorder; and Leukocytosis along with sickle cell anemia.
A bit of my background: I've been hospitalized my whole life for my weak body; Everyone around me from the day I was born have subjected me to almost every category of abuse.
My hobbies: Gardening; Kendo/Kenjutsu, Writing, piano, cosplay, baking, cleaning, sewing. Housewifing (cooking, baking, cleaning). Art, stargazing, tarot readings.
My passions: Japanese history and folklore; Forensic Pathology and medical science; My garden; especially my tangerine orchard! ă˝(>â<â)ă
Favourite food: Tangerines, Taiyaki, Takoyaki, KakigĹri(ââżâżâ)âĄ
Favourite song: Edo Gimmick; Sunshine Pika Pika Ondo; Secret Garden, Backlight; Where the wind blows, Propose, Insanity.
Favourite artists: Ado, Rebzyyx
Favourite color: Cyan, Orange; Fuschia.
Words that describe me: Internet, sleeping, chronically online (಼ďšŕ˛Ľ)
I'M 15 YEARS OLD SO 20+ DNI!!!
Dislikes/hate: CHEATERS; CHEATERS!! spiders and bugs.
Favourite animal: Fox, Seal and Tiger
Favourite youtubers: Pewdiepie, Markiplier, Ulttis, Sillis, LDshadowlady, Ihascupquake, flamingo, Jacksepticeye, MKGamerr, Caseohh
Favourite flower; Buttercups, chocolate cosmos, spiderlily, bleeding heart, Weeping Begonia.
Personality explained with a few words: Extremely shy, to the point I can be perceived as stern (âŻ_â°)
Hyperfixations: Minecraft Storymode, One Piece, Love Live School Idol Project, Creepypasta.
all my fandoms: (I dont know if i forgot to put my dear hatchet man but it's supposed to be there. along with horimiya and a bunch of other rpg horror games)
NOTE; IM IN A LOOOT OF OTHER FANDOMS SO I TEND TO FORGET!!! (i forgor to put huniepop..=)
My top kins: Shirahoshi; Akane Kurokawa; Mikan Tsumiki; Kobeni; Toriel; Mafuyu Asahina; Nene Kusanagi; Chara; Kris; Kotonoha Katsura; Yuri (DDLC); Pomni;
MBTI: ISFJ (SI FE TI NE)
TRITYPE: 692
ENNEAGRAM: 5W4
SOCIONICS: SEI
ATTITUDINAL PSYCHE: LEFV
MORAL ALIGNMENT: CHAOTIC NEUTRAL
BIG 5: NEUROTICISM
BIG 5(SLOAN): RLUAI
SEXUAL: 3 and/or 5
INSTINCTUAL VARIANT: SP/SX
AGREABLENESS: 75%
CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: 75%
OPENNESS 80%
TEMPERAMENT: MELANCHOLIC DOMINANT
SUN SIGN: AQUARIUS
MOON SIGN: ARIES
RISING SIGN: GEMINI
ZODIAC: AQUARIUS
BIRTHDAY: JANUARY 22ND
BOUNDARIES!
Anti's, Fetishizers, homophobes, judgmental people, terfs, etc DNI!!!
INTERACT: other irl yandere's!! Everyone with the same interests as me!
And that's about that.. âŽ( ̄Ď ̄;)â
Thank you for visiting my page!!!_:(´ŕ˝`ă â ):_
#irl yandere#obsessive love#yandere#actual yandere#yanblr#yanderecore#female yandere#yan blog#yancore#irl yan#yandere girl#clingy yandere#spilled thoughts#intro post#yandere thoughts#obslove#obsessive thoughts#obsessive yandere#actually obsessive#yandere blog#yandere things#yandere tendencies#yande.re#yandere gf#yandere community#obsession#obsessivecore#Nami's seasideđŚđ#actually bpd#bpd thoughts
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×â°â⤠Hi my name is soleil! đ¤ im a minor đ¤ basic dni đ¤ she/her đ¤ CONAN GRAY, HOZIER, Alec Benjamin, Noah Kahan, Laufey, Mitski, Lana del Rey, ABBA, Arctic Monkeys, Queen, The neighborhood, David Bowie, The smiths đ¤ cabin 9 đ¤ slytherin đ¤ FORMULA 1 đ¤ history, english, science > any other subject đ¤ GREEK MYTHOLOGY đ¤ i want to be forensic psychologist or marine biologist đ¤ i love to read and get involved in fandoms đ¤ DINOSAURS đ¤ snakes are cool đ¤ looking at the night sky/astronomy đ¤ reading đ¤ long care rides with headphones and a book đ¤
×â°â⤠Marauders/Harry Potter(fuck jkr) đ¤The song of Achilles đ¤ All of us villains đ¤OUABH đ¤Shatter Me đ¤ AGGTM đ¤ TFOTA đ¤ TIG/TGG đ¤ Lore Olympus đ¤ Grey Crow(i donât actually know if this is a fandom or not) đ¤
×â°â⤠HTTYD đ¤ Fantastic Mr. Fox đ¤ Dead poets society đ¤ Arcane đ¤ camp cretaceous đ¤ Pride and Prejudice đ¤ Flipped đ¤ Anne with an E đ¤ loki đ¤ percy jackson đ¤ Hunger Games đ¤ Harry Potter đ¤ Twilight đ¤ The notebook đ¤ 10 things i hate about you đ¤ snl đ¤ Tangled đ¤ award shows đ¤
×â°â⤠Apple music(what i actually use) and Spotify bc i donât know why my music taste is honestly itâs kinda all over the place also my airbuds
×â°ââ¤Currentlyies(these will probably be consonantly changing)
â Reading: The Picture of Dorian Gray
â Listening to: Would You Fall in Love with Me Again
â Watching: Would You Fall in Love with Me Again Edits
×â°â⤠My lovely moots: @vividiangelo @apollosmusee @viivdle @midiosaamor @sugarcandydoll @starrynightsxo @deprivedofbraincellsandsleep @xoxo-lenah @agirlwiththoughtsandnegativity @helpimhopelesslyinlove @his-littlefox @art-of-fools @blackstargazer @wish-i-were-heather @marbledmoonstones @miela @love-and-books320 @rabbitholessk @thejudeduarte @thenightmareinyourcloset @shattermelyhfmlblog @ant-thebooknerd @shamelesswolfstarshipper @graaaaaayy @certifiedfantasyreader @cromulentreader @mt-jupiter @tunguszka20 @rizzgoddessans @ur-mother-is-ketterdam @marr03 @anything-for-my-moony-1971 @sweetreveriee @allisoon0930 @reggieisfit @bookish-phile @sitting-in-a-library @thebombofficial (sorry if i missed you)
×â°â⤠tags-
asks: #soleilâsasksâŠ
random/rants: #rantingw/solâžââş
moots: #moots༯
tag/dash games: #taggamesâ§Ë°
×â°ââ¤i got inspiration and ideas from my moots intro posts so if you are my moot and i probably used some somethings from you so hereâs đŤ´credit for youđŤś
×â°â⤠other blog(s) -
marauders blog: @c0rl3on1s
old intro post
#NEWINTROPOST! finally#took me so long to actually do it from when i said i was gonna do it#soleilâsasksâŠ#rantingw/solâžââş#moots༯#taggamesâ§Ë°#marauders#harry potter#the song of achilles#all of us villains#onceuponabrokenheart#shatter me#a good girls guide to murder#the folk of the air#the inheritance games#the grandest game#lore olympus#grey crow#CONAN GRAYYY#HOE FOR HOZIER#greek mythology#dinosaurs#how to train your dragon#fantastic mr fox#dead poets society#F1#formula one#Formula 1
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A young man stands in his bedroom. It just so happens that today, the 27th of July, is this young man's birthday. Though it was years ago he was given life, it is only today that he will be given a name.
What will the name of this young man be?
â˘
â˘
â˘
đ¸ The Basics :
Name : Evan
Pronouns : He/Him
Age : A minor!!
Gender : Male
Sexuality : Gay
Nationality : American
Star Sign : Leo
MBTI : INTJ-T
I love nicknames, call me whatever.
Iâm usually around from 8AM to 1AM CDT.
Music sideblog : @evan-radio
đ My Resume :
Loser CEO, the âweird kidâ since birth, Professional Ghostbuster, Supervillian, and Midwestern Cowboy (the fun way, not the cop way), Lab Experiment #0727
𪲠My Music :
AJJ, boygenius, Bug Hunter, Cage The Elephant, Car Seat Headrest, Crywank, Lemon Demon, Lord Huron, Los Campesinos!, MCR, Noah Kahan, ODO, Pat The Bunny, Radiohead, Rex Orange County, Seb Lowe, Sleep Token, Tally Hall, Tame Impala, Teen Suicide, TFB, The Smiths, Vundabar, Weezer :/, Will Wood/WWATT, Wingnut Dishwashers Union, and more.
đ˘ Tags :
# evan speaks -> I talk. A lot. // # evan rants -> I tend to be very emotional // # evanâs memories -> nostalgia mode // # evan canât vote -> US politics // # evan draws -> my art // # EvanRadio -> my sideblog for music // # i love my mutuals -> typically multiple mutual appreciation posts per day
đ Rules & Boundaries :
Iâm a minor!! Donât be weird!!
Obviously, any form of discrimination is off limits.
Cringe culture is dead, all are welcome, and Iâm always open to learning.
Asks and anons are open, notifs are off so feel free to spam, but I canât promise Iâll see it right away. Absolutely feel free to interact and ask, I will have full convos w/ you through reblogs. I answer DMs on a case-by-case basis. If you are over 18, please do not DM me.
đŚ Fandoms and characters ->
â
Dead Poets Society
â
House MD
â
Supernatural
â
Sherlock
â
Ghostbusters
â
Homestuck
đŚ Incoming fandoms ->
â
Hannibal, Good Omens, Saw
đ Backseat Fandoms ->
â
IT, Stranger Things, Over The Garden Wall, Scooby-Doo
đŚ Fandom Graveyard ->
â
Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Creepypasta
đŚ Kinnies ->
â
Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock)
â
Egon Spengler (Ghostbusters)
â
Castiel (Supernatural)
â
Steven Meeks (Dead Poets Society)
â
Richie Tozier (IT 2017)
â
Rory Keaner (My Babysitterâs A Vampire)
đŞ Other Movies :
The Truman Show, Stand By Me, Velvet Goldmine, Jaws, The Goonies, Breakfast Club
đ Other Interests :
Reading, writing, art (drawing, painting, digital and traditional), etymology, science, history, math, forensics, biology, marching band (alto sax), sharks
đ Other Facts :
- I love my car like itâs my child #TOMATER SUPREMACY đŚ
- Richard Cameron Defender for life (see here)đ
- Blog theme changes frequently đŚ
- i LOVE doing little doodles and drawings of my friends đ˘
- I love my mutuals and you guys are my best friends btw đ
- More mouse bites!! This vexes me! Medicine drug!! đŚ
- ADHD đŞ˛
- Iâve got a bad habit of viewing notifications but never responding to them, if this happens please just tag me again đ
đŚ A Note :
I am very indecisive and this post will be edited very often (see counter below)
𧪠Dead Poets Society :
@pingunaa @ghostboyhood @wordssricochet @meekspeaks @poetsinnyc @wilsons-three-legged-siamese @midwest-quill @apparitiongnostic @de4d-poet-kisser @yourfavvgal @asclexe @lv3buzzz
If I forgot someone/if you want to be added just lmk :)) if I forgot you Iâm so so sorry
Edited - |||| ||
#introduction#intro post#dead poets society#homestuck#supernatural#bbc sherlock#ghostbusters#house md#good omens#saw#hannibal#evan speaks
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how about 14, 15, 34 & 36 if you're still accepting ask game asks? feel free to skip some if they seem too annoying to answer publicly lol
14. Least favourite prosecutor?
hmmmm. honestly. it'd have to be edgeworth BUT SPECIFICALLY IN AA5. i loved edgeworth as a prosecutor in the trilogy but there was just...no fucking reason to bring him back in that capacity in dual destinies to me when the point was supposed to be focusing on all the new characters that were introduced....like. idk. they could've made APOLLO the damn prosecutor somehow (if edgeworth can play defense attorney then y'know.....) and i think it would've fit better than jamming edgeworth in there and being like "look!!! look!!! phoenix and edgeworth going up against each other again!!!! doesn't that make you want to buy our game!!!!!! buy our game!!!!!!!" if you're going to introduce new characters and new storylines then COMMIT TO IT!!!!!!!!!
15. Least favourite ship?
i suppose i don't really have one but that's just because i don't think about shipping in ace attorney at all anymore? not in romantic contexts at least (except to make jokes. i love jokes). i lose my mind over feenris art whenever i see it but it's more of an "AUGHHHH THE FUCKING IMPACT THEY HAD ON EACH OTHER'S LIVES" than an "AUGHHHH I NEED THEM TO KISS" sort of thing (very few people talk about iris. i have to take what i can get). i have wrightworth filtered out but it's not that i have an issue with it at all (you can find it on my blog even), it's just So Prevalent Everywhere that it eventually became such a chore to slog through wrightworth posts when looking through tags unrelated to wrightworth that i was like Fuck It and blocked it HAHA. i simply do not have a least favorite ship i'm afraid. shipping is just totally uninteresting to me in this particular fandom which i think makes sense because ace attorney is not a series that has ever heavily focused on romance.
34. Do you think Miles Edgeworth should get another Investigation-game or do you think another character deserves a spin-off?
give another character a spin-off 100%. give ema skye her own game where she's running around khura'in doing forensic science things. give kay faraday a game where she's acting as an actual vigilante. hell man i'd even take a game where trucy goes off on her own to do an international tour and gets wrapped up in the most wild cross-national investigation you've ever seen in your life. edgeworth has already been inserted way too many times into games that had nothing to do with him (like phoenix) as well as having TWO investigations games. give him a break.
36. Do you like where the franchise is heading or did you prefer the atmosphere in the original trilogy?
i do not like where the franchise is heading but that's just because it really and truly seems like the franchise itself has no fucking idea where it's heading. if they never released another ace attorney game i would be perfectly fine because the thought of an aa7 makes me cringe. i don't think it's going to fix anything i think it's going to make even more of a mess. if phoenix and edgeworth get shoehorned into one more case that doesn't concern them at all when they have so many new characters they're struggling to do anything with i'm going to secondhand embarrass myself out of my skin. Somehow. so yeah i prefer the atmosphere in the original trilogy but it's only because the original trilogy Somewhat Had Its Shit Together.
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New SpaceTime out Friday
SpaceTime 20241213 Series 27 Episode 150
Venus was never habitable according to new study
A new study has shown that the planet Venus has never been habitable, despite decades of speculation that the Earthâs sister planet was once much more like Earth than it is today.
Perseverance exploring the Jezero crater rim
NASAâs Mars Perseverance rover has been continuing its sightseeing tour of the Jezero crater rim, with this week's travel itinerary including an up-close look at Pico Turquino.
NASA Demonstrates âUltra-Coolâ Quantum Sensor for First Time in Space
NASAâs Cold Atom Lab, a first-of-its-kind facility aboard the International Space Station, has taken another step toward revolutionizing how quantum science can be used in space.
The Science Report
Permafrost thawing could lead to an increase in wildfires in Arctic and sub-arctic regions.
New DNA forensics to help fight crime.
Earthâs oldest, largest, and most experienced animals being wiped out by human activity.
Skeptics guide to new Nessie images.
SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.
The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com
SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.
SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/
SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary
SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary
SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary
SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary
SpaceTime -- A brief history
SpaceTime is Australiaâs most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program â averaging over two million downloads every year. Weâre also number five in the United States. The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science. SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research. The show began life in 1995 as âStarStuffâ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporationâs (ABC) NewsRadio network. Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadioâs evening anchor and Science Editor. Garyâs always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. Garyâs radio career stretches back some 34 years including 26 at the ABC. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. He was part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and became one of its first on air presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABCâs Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually. However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage. Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently. StarStuff was rebranded as âSpaceTimeâ, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016. Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch â which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.
#science#space#astronomy#physics#news#nasa#astrophysics#esa#spacetimewithstuartgary#starstuff#spacetime#string theory#dimensions#cosmology#brian greene#hubble#hubble space telescope#hubble telescope#hubble tension#edwin hubble#solar system#outer space#planets#jwst#jwst images#james webb space telescope
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The big and important intro post
I finally made one! I might decorate it later, maybe not.
Quick and very important note:
If your blog has no description/title/pfp/posts I probably will block you. Even just one of these tells me you aren't a bot. I've had a massive issue with bots recently and had to clear out a ton of followers today.
You can call me Tea/Albert, neither being my real name for privacy reasons! Other nicknames are also cool!
I use she/they pronouns, and I am queer
I mainly reblog, but occasionally you may stumble upon a text post or even my art. I promise at some point I'll get to tagging all of these so you can find things!
Current fandoms:
-Ace attorney
-Death note
-Moriarty the patriot
-Tokyo ghoul
-Botw/totk zelda especially
-Cult of the lamb
-saiki k
-Parkour civ (how did I get here?)
-Alien stage (though I haven't posted it so far)
-Forbidden deductions
-sherlock, the books, though I have been slowly watching the BBC version.
-omniscient readers viewpoint- though I've only read the webtoon so no spoilers please!
-Neon Genesis Evangelion
Probably more too, I'll add them as I remember them.
Currently watching (last updated 26/1/25)
-Aot
-Code Geass
-Arcane
-Case Closed (on occasion)
-Bsd
Favourite music artists:
-Ghost and pals
-Kikuo
-Maretu
-CĂś shu nie
-eve
-yaelokre
-Malice Mizer
Asks and anon asks are open, but please keep everything sfw!
I won't be answering any donations asks.
Trivia below the cut :D
-My favourite colours are purple and bright red
-my favourite animals are giraffes and crows
-Currently I have somewhat an obsession with vampires, and most of my oc lore is centered around that.
-i am terrible at sports but I do ariel silk and hoop (though I am horrible at it)
-Some careers I was interested in when i was younger: author, fashion design, forensic science, astronomist.
-Some careers I'm interested in currently: game dev, something in law (I'm highly indecisive), Some form of artist.
-I love bugs and like to collect facts on my favourites, but I WILL scream if one creeps up on me. I love them only when they're expected.
-my mbti type is infp
More another time maybe! (I'm procrastinating rn) thank you for reading!
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â Video Transcriptâ
Hi there! Detective Ema Skye here. If youâre watching this video, chances are Iâm the lead forensic investigator in your local precinct. Well, things are changing around here. Since my promotion, I've been travelling around nonstop. You'd think I'd be busy, but I also have a lot more free time on my hands ⌠Thereâs only so much science you can do on a plane, you know. Anyway, I thought Iâd use my time to spread the word about my job ⌠what goes down, what the day-to-day life of a world class forensic investigator looks like⌠a sort of pro-bono Q&A! You lucky things. Just hit that ask button with đ
°ď¸ and let the scientific questions flow! Easy as pie. Pick your poison - fingerprinting, luminol testing, X-ray spectroscopy, toxicology screening⌠blood splatter interpretation, DNA analysis, crâ
(cameraman): Ahem.
Can it, you. Canât you see Iâm talking here?
(cameraman): Eep!
Point is, no matter the inquiry, Ema Skye is on the case! Iâm looking forward to hearing what you come up with. See you around!
â END â
[This is an Ema Skye ask blog! (No rps at the moment, sorry). Square brackets like these are for OOC commentary!]
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evan rosier ; 7teen ; slytherin ; french egyptian ; he/them/idc ; autism master ; taxidermy enjoyer ; forensic sciences enthusiast ; bugs and other oddities appreciator
here are uhm . some people i know
@imnotactually-a-crouch
@sobsloudlybutprettily
@effiepotteristheloml
@werewolf-from-mars
@dorcasistiredaf
@3rats-ina-trenchcoat
@prongsie-piee
(ooc : this is a silly evan rosier rp blog run by @sleepinginmygrave . if this is not pleasant to you please leave !! ask @ev-enhotterthanyou if you wish to join :] )
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Hello, im Stevie Corcoran, but Iâd prefer if you called me Bird. Uh..what else do I say here?
((Just talk about yourself a little, who are you, where are you from, what do you like?))
Uhm, I donât quite understand how to use this app? but my daughter suggested I create a blog. Some of the stories I have would âdo wonders on tumblrâ according to her.
Anyways, Iâm Bird, my pronouns are he/him, I got my bachelors degree in forensic science at UW, I switched my major twice starting out (fine arts, psychology.)
I am single and unmarried, I have a 12 year old daughter. We live in a small duplex close to PPTH and we have two cats, Adam and Lawrence. My friend Gabi @plastic-surgeon-gabi also lives with us.
I donât recommend asking me medical questions about the living? thatâs not really my area. But please ask any forensics questions! Iâd be happy to answer!!
I do, however, work in a hospital (PPTH) as a forensic scientist and teacher. My social circle consists of what my father would refer to as âthe wrong crowd.â
Iâve got a large scar on the left side of my face and Iâm blind in that eye. I messed around with fireworks a lot as a teen.
Some fun facts ?
⢠Iâve got adhd
⢠Iâm very good at card games
⢠I also paint
I think thatâs it? my daughter set this account up for me. I think itâll mostly be work-rants.
((*a note : Anna was 12 in season 8, 4 in season 1))
((Okay me here âşď¸ house oc ask blog :) my main is @1mlostnow and Iâm Evan, he/they. I am a minor! Please no nsfw. CDT timezone. Interacting with others included in @ppth-staff so go check out those posts!! Bird speaks in regular text, I havenât quite decided what mine will be yet. Probably blue text and double parentheses. I am also Gabi (previously mentioned) @plastic-surgeon-gabi ))
((description post #1, continuously edited))
((Lore Post))
((ever-growing staff list at PPTH))
((this will most likely be edited frequently as I develop this character))
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Important Blog Notes!
!! Spoilers are tagged as "(game abbreviation) spoilers", in as many ways I can think. So a spoiler for Apollo Justice Ace Attorney will be tagged as "#ajaa spoilers" as well as "#aa4 spoilers".
-> -> Hangout/RP discord server is now active! <- <-
A general tag directory is located -> here <- . AU information is -> here <- I write fanfic sometimes. Direct link to my Ao3 works list here.
Additionally, I archive all of my posted art on @brodartrokihousuke, if you just want to see that.
I also run a DD/post-DD oriented Apollo ask/rp blog at @surging-eyes-seeing-through (+ an AU-oriented one at @surging-eyes-seeing-au). Inbox open unless I say it isn't. Currently slow to respond.
(Tagging as ships is fine, just don't be weird about it. I don't ship much so nothing'll really be intended as ship content unless I explicitly mention it.)
Personal/about me/whatever under the cut!
Anyways, hello! You can call me Brodoroki or Brody, though I will honestly respond to Apollo as well. I'm a 23 year old asexual/nonbinary/panromantic (he/they fine) who has been riding an Ace Attorney hyperfixation for... around 10 years now. I love anything Apollo related, though DGS/TGAA is pretty up there too.
I LOVE discussing/talking about Ace Attorney in general so feel free to send dms or asks about things!! I have played all of the games (though have not finished PWvPL and GK2) so I have opinions on all of them..
When I'm not actively playing an AA game my post schedule may be lacking or nonexistent. I'm probably not dead, just out of ideas!
Now to finish off with some facts about myself.
I am closest in age to Ema Skye & Klavier Gavin!
I'm a certified open water scuba diver!
I was originally going to college for forensic science, but am now going for geoscience/paleontology!
My partner and I are working on a webcomic called The Old Hunt!
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97 with Ran, if you'd please đđ
occupy my brain
pairing: ransom drysdale x f!reader
word count: 1.2k
warnings: ransom being his usual self should be warning enough. implied smut. please note that my blog is rated 18+. minors dni. ageless/empty blogs will be blocked without warning.
prompt: 97. passionately making-out against a wall
a/n: i'm not gonna lie, posting this kind of hurts for obvious reasons but i don't want to sit on the prompt forever either because it's simply too good for that. this is the part one of come on down that i was talking about.
Death had always been a passion of yours, but youâd never fantasized about it quite as vividly as you had over the past couple of weeks.
One might have thought it came with the profession, but no.
It felt truly unfair that the texts you were studying told you exactly what poisons were most likely undetectable in the average blood test, how they were to be administered, how long your victim would suffer before his inevitable demise, eyes bulging as he struggled to take another labored breath âŚ
Instead, he let out another annoyed sigh and you rolled your eyes.
Youâd been going down rabbit hole after rabbit hole for the better part of the evening and he hadnât even opened his damn laptop.
When you first got the job as Harlan Thrombeyâs research assistant, youâd been ecstatic. Youâd applied for it without ever expecting a call backâafter all, he was one of the most prolific writers of crime fiction alive while you barely made it into your grad program. Sure, knowledge of forensic science was somewhat of a prerequisite to any self-respecting mystery writer, but still. You were sure there were hundreds of fretting English majors begging for the opportunity, and in the end, it fell to you.
Of course, your excitement was soon to be nipped in the bud when you met the other research assistant, who you would be working closely with over the entirety of the summer: Harlanâs very own grandson, Ransom Drysdale.
In the beginning, you tried. You really tried. But there was nothing to be done.
He was an asshole who seemed to be under the assumption that if he pressed just the right buttons, all the actual work would get done by you and simply fall into his lap at the end of the day; just the way itâd probably been all his life.
And because the first couple of times, you were playing nice and letting him get away with it, you were now stuck in this nightmare of a position. Sat on the couch in his large and strangely empty living room on a Friday night, daydreaming about extremely potent poisons.
Ransom sighed loudly again and your eyes snapped to him. He was still draped across his armchair, feet dangling off the armrest, an extremely bored expression on his stupidly handsome face.
The fact that, despite his horrible attitude, his features still had that effect on you made your blood boil even more.
"You know, if you actually did the work we agreed on, you probably wouldnât have to sigh every five seconds," you said sharply.
An easy smirk appeared on his lips. "How else am I gonna get your attention?"
"How about by being less of a pain in my ass?"
Ransomâs eyes dipped down for a moment, only to return to yours with an amused glimmer you didnât care for. His grin widened. "Whereâs the fun in that?"
"This isnât about fun, Ransom. This is my job. You know what that means?" Poisons and choking. "It means that certain things are expected of you."
He didnât look particularly impressed. "Like what?"
"Like, I donât know, research? Doing whatâs asked of you instead of just being a prick?"
He snorted. "Thereâs just so many better ways we could spend our time," he drawled, in a tone that you could dissect all too easily.
Unbelievable.
"Keep dreaming," you muttered through clenched teeth, ignoring the way your heart twisted.
He was an asshole. You dealt with enough of those in your labs, and you made a point of not delegating any more brainpower to their presence than was necessary to get through long evenings. It was as easy as that.
Then again, none of the lab guys were quite this infuriating.
Ransomâs gaze had started wandering again, slower this time, more deliberate. You could feel a tingle go down your spine.
"Weâll see," he finally said, his voice very low.
You had to leave.
You slammed your laptop shut with a lot more force than necessary.
"You know what?" You grabbed your bag off the floor resolutely. "Itâs late and I still have a lot of stuff to get done before I talk to your grandfather tomorrow, and youâre no help at all, so Iâll just get going."
He shook his head, the self-satisfied grin still not budging; for some reason, that only bugged you more. You were already half-way to the door when you heard him murmur, "Arenât you just a ray of sunshine."
And that was it.
Your bag dropped to the floor with a resolute thunk as you turned to glare at him. "You know what, Drysdale? I donât know why I bother with you anymore. I should just tell Harlan that youâre a slacker."
Something flickered in Ransomâs eyes, but it vanished almost as instantly as it came. "He already thinks that anyway," he said dryly, finally getting out of his damn chair to face you. "And you wouldnât."
"Why wouldnât I?"
"Because âŚ" he said, taking a measured step closer. "Then you wouldnât have an excuse to come to my doorstep anymore."
A slightly manic laugh bubbled up in your chest, jumbling your heartbeat on its way up. "Are you kidding me? I would love to never have to see you again."
Ransom tilted his head. "Youâre a terrible liar." He took another step.
"What are you doing?"
You wanted to move backwards, away from him, but your feet seemed to be firmly rooted to the ground. He was close enough to touch now, and you balled your hands into fists.
Of course, he noticed. His grin morphed into something almost wicked.
"How long," he said, his voice even lower now, "are you gonna keep pretending thereâs nothing between us?"
You couldnât breathe. Otherwise, you mightâve smelled the cologne on his shirt and any last coherent thought wouldâve left your body. You already found it impossible to look away from his eyes.
"Thereâs no us here," you said.
"Maybe you should leave, then," he answered, sounding despicably level-headed. "You know where the door is."
"I am."
Neither of you moved. The amused spark in his eye felt close enough to ignite something.
"Or," he continued, the distance between you small enough to count the freckles next to his eye, "you could stay. And weâll see."
"Shut up," you snapped, but there was no conviction behind it. Your head was hammering.
"Or what?" he said smugly. "Youâre gonna call me a prick again?"
He was too close.
"I said, shut up!"
"Make me."
It caught you off guard, thatâs what it was.
Youâre not sure what happened next, only that your shoulders were suddenly crashing against the wall and Ransomâs mouth was on yours, hungry, unforgiving, all-consuming.
And for some reason, instead of pushing him away, your fingers tangled in his hair and pulled him closer, tugging on the dark strands until he groaned hoarsely against your lips. His hands were large on your waist, on your neck. Slowly, his knee wedged between your thighs, pulling you closer onto him until your hips started moving on their own accord.
He kissed you like he had something to prove, and fuck; maybe he had a point. You werenât sure. Youâd stopped thinking.
Ransom Drysdale was deadlier than any poison; and much more addictive.
thank you for reading đ if you want to see more of my writing, check out my masterlist or follow @intrepidacious-fics for update notificationsâand yes, there will be another part to this. eventually.
#ransom drysdale x reader#ransom drysdale fic#ransom drysdale x you#ransom drysdale fanfiction#ransom drysdale oneshot#knives out fanfiction#knives out oneshot#occupy my brain#ren đ
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The seductive, science fictional power of spreadsheets
Tomorrow (Apr 30) at 2PM, Iâll be at the San Francisco Public Library with my new book, Red Team Blues, hosted by Annalee Newitz.
This week, John Scalzi was kind enough to let me write a guest-editorial for his Whatever blog about the themes in my new crime technothriller, Red Team Blues; specifically, about the ways that spreadsheets embody the power and the pitfalls of science fiction at its best and worst:
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2023/04/26/the-big-idea-cory-doctorow-2/
If youâd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, hereâs a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/29/gedankenexperimentwahn/#high-on-your-own-supply
Yes, spreadsheets. Marty Hench (the protagonist of Red Team Blues) is a 67-year-old forensic accountant who specializes in unwinding Silicon Valley financial frauds, a field he basically invented 40 years ago, when, as a PC-struck MIT dropout, he moved from Cambridge to San Francisco to recover the stolen millions hidden in spreadsheets.
Working through this bookâââand its two sequels, which travel back in time to the 1980s and Martyâs first encounters with VisiCalc and Lotus 1â2â3âââI was struck by the similarities between spreadsheets and science fiction.
While many people use spreadsheets as an overgrown calculator, adding up long columns of numbers, the rise and rise of spreadsheets comes from their use in modeling. Using a spreadsheet, a complex process can be expressed as a series of mathematical operations: we put these inputs into the factory and we get these finished goods. Once the model is built, we can easily test out contrafactuals: what if I add a third shift? What if I bargain harder for discounts on a key component? If I give my workers a productivity-increasing raise, will the profits make up for the costs?
These are the questions that anyone managing a complex system asks themselves all the time. Historically, the answers have sprung from intuition, from fingerspitzengefĂźhlâââthe âfingertip feelingâ of how a systemâs components work and what their potential and limitations are. But intuition can calcify, become a rigid set of rules that increasingly diverge from the best strategy.
By contrast, spreadsheets yield a set of crisp, instantly tallied answers to any question you put to them. Change the input and watch as that change ripples through the whole system in an eyeblink. If youâre adding three more people to your camping trip, will the amount of additional water require renting another vehicle? No need to guess: just check and see.
This has a lot in common with science fiction, a genre full of thought experiments that ask Heinleinâs famous three questions:
What if?
If only, and
If this goes onâŚ
These contrafactuals are incredibly useful and important. As critical tools, science fictionâs parables about the future are the best chance we have for resisting the inevitabilism that insists that technology must be used in a certain way, or must exist at all. Science fiction doesnât just interrogate what the gadget does, but who it does it for and who it does it to:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/20/love-the-machine/#hate-the-factory
One of science fictionâs key methods comes from sf grandmaster Theodore Sturgeon: âask the next question.â Ask a question, then ask âwhat happens next?â Do it again, and again, and again:
https://christopher-mckitterick.com/Sturgeon-Campbell/Sturgeon-Q.htm
This technique produces excellent, critical ways of interrogating technological narrativesâââcheck out this delightful example of the possible pipeline from self-driving cars to ransomware gangs to mutual aid societies to the reinvention of the train:
https://dduane.tumblr.com/post/715940904747352064/you-can-make-your-mercedes-ev-go-faster-for-60-a
The commonalities between sf and spreadsheets donât stop thereâââsf and spreadsheets share pitfalls, too. A spreadsheet is a model and a model is not the thing it models. The map is not the territory. Every time a messy, real-world process is converted to a crisp, mathematical operation, some important qualitative element is lost.
Modeling is an intrinsically lossy operation. Thatâs why âall models are wrong, but some models are useful.â There is no process so simple that it can be losslessly converted to a model. Even the actions of the nanoscale transistors in a microchip, which toggle between â0â and â1,â are rarely in a state of âno voltageâ and âvoltage.â That clean, square-wave line thatâs used to describe what happens in a chip is a lieâââthat is to say, it is a model.
The wave isnât square, itâs a squiggly line that hovers around zero and around one. Under normal circumstances, âzeroâ and âzero-ishâ is a distinction without a difference. But when computers go wrong, itâs sometimes because a sufficiently ambiguous âzero-ishâ acts like a âone.â Thatâs true all the way up the stack. On engineering diagrams, the nanoscale lines that electrons travel along inside a chip are represented as sharp paths, the kind of thing a Tron-cycle would lay down. But in the real world, we get all kinds of weird effects at that scaleâââelectrons sometimes tunnel through those lines, performing a spooky quantum trick that reminds us that Newtononian physics are also just a model.
Every real-world phenomenon contains qualitative and quantitative elements, but computers can only do math on the quantitative parts. This creates a powerful temptation to incinerate the qualitative and perform operations on whatever dubious quantitative residue is left in the crucible, often with disastrous results.
Remember during lockdown, when a pair of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign physicists produced a model of covid spread that predicted that the campus could safely reopen, predicting no more than 500 cases over the entire semester and no more than 100 cases at any one time? The physicists were openly contemptuous of their epidemiologist peers, saying that this kind of model making lacked the âintellectual thrillâ of real science.
UI was so swayed by the crisp, precise model that they invited students back to campusâââonly to shut down again in a matter of weeks, with 780 active cases on campus and more rolling in every day.
The model reduced qualitative factorsâââlike the propensity of undergrads to get drunk, take off their masks, and lick each othersâ eyeballsâââto a quantitative probability, using the highly precise, scientific technique of taking a wild-ass guess. That guess was wrong. The campus reopening was a super-spreader event.
Any model runs the risk of hiding the irreducible complexity of qualitative factors behind a formula, turning uncertainty into certainty and humility into arrogance.
Think of how we replaced contact tracing with exposure notification. Contact tracing has a qualitative foundation: public health workers establish rapport with infected people, win their trust, and get them to fully enumerate the places theyâve been and the activities they participated in.
By contrast, exposure notification measures whether two Bluetooth radios were within range of each other for a predetermined interval. It substitutes signal strength for a personâs own understanding of their experience. Now, people can be wrong about their own experienceâââwe lose track of time, we misremember emotionally charged events, and so onâââbut that doesnât mean we can substitute Bluetooth measurements for personal experience.
Thatâs why, despite all the clever privacy-preserving math and interesting analysis, exposure notification was a bust, something between a distraction and a false-confidence-generating disaster. Contact tracing ended the 2014 ebola outbreak. Exposure notification just wasted a lot of time:
https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/
Itâs just too easy to forget which parts of a model are based on guesses and which parts are based on ground truth. And even if you can keep track of those differences, itâs even harder to re-check the modelâs ground truth to determine whether the underlying factors have changed. Thatâs how we got into so much trouble with collateralized debt obligations, which were supposed to be ârisk-freeâ mortgage derivatives that could be safely insured and invested in.
The formulas behind CDO hedging were designed by some of the worldâs smartest mathematicians and physicists, who simply assumed that market actorsâââfrom loan-originating bank officers to insurance underwritersâââwould act in reliable, predictable ways. They were so very wrong that they brought the world economy to the brink of ruin:
https://www.wired.com/2009/02/wp-quant/
This is also science fictionâs failure-mode: any science fictional âask-the-next-questionâ exercise represents a series of guesses or speculations or maybe possibilitiesâââbut when you combine that guesswork with the deceptive certainty that comes from inhabiting a cracking story, itâs easy to mistake âguessingâ for âprediction.â
Prediction is hard, especially about the future. The assumptions that go into a prediction are always incomplete, not least because human beings have free will and agency and can change the circumstances that go into the assumptions. The very best science fiction embodies this principle. Iâm thinking here of the likes of Ada Palmer, an historian and sf writer whose deep historical knowledge informs her sf and her pedagogy at the University of Chicago:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/10/monopoly-begets-monopoly/#terra-ignota
Palmer is famousâââeven notoriousâââfor her annual four-week undergraduate LARP in which students re-enact the election of the Medicisâ Pope. Itâs four weeks of alliances, betrayal and skullduggery by the students, each of whom is enacting the agenda of a real-world Cardinal or other power-broker.
The final investiture is done in full costume at the universityâs massive faux-gothic cathedral, and going into that climax, of the four candidates, two are always the same, because the great forces of history are bearing down on that moment to ensure that the champions of the two dominant power-blocs are in the running. But the other two? Theyâre never the sameâââbecause the agency of the actors jockeying for power change the outcome, every single time, in absolutely unpredictable ways.
Like any other model, sf is wrong, but sometimes useful. Thinking about jetpacks and flying cars is âusefulâ insofar as it gets us to interrogate how we think about cities, about mobility, about privilege and geography. But itâs not a prediction. Worse, the endless tales in which flying cars are presented a fait accompli is a gift to grifters raising money for the objectively stupid idea of flying cars. After all, we all know flying cars are inevitable, so itâs basically a risk-free investment, right? With flying cars just around the corner, wouldnât it be irresponsible to build a city with mass-transit instead of helipads?
Thereâs a whole range of thought-experiments that got transformed into predictions and then certainties: self-driving cars, âgeneral artificial intelligence,â infinite life-extension, space colonization, faster-than-light travel, cryptocurrency, etc etc.
Spreadsheets donât just lead their users astrayâââthey also trick their creators. The very same people who transform wild-assed guesses about hairy, unknowable outcomes into neat mathematical relationships are perfectly capable of acting as if those relationships are based on fact, rather than supposition. The Great Financial Crisis wasnât just about people who didnât understand the uncertainty in the hedging algorithm going all-inâââthe people who made those models were also fooled by them.
Itâs very easy to get high on your own supply. Iâll never forget the sf convention panel I was on with Robert Silverberg about sfâs supposed predictive value, where the subject of Robert A Heinlein came up, and Silverberg sniffed, and, in that trademark bone-dry way of his, said, âAh yes, âRobert A Timeline.ââ
Sf isnât just full of writers who mistake their suppositions for predictionsâââthe canon is full of tales in which brilliant people can and do predict the future, with near-perfection. Think of Hari Seldon, the hero of Asimovâs Foundation series, who is able to forecast the future several millennia out. Or Heinleinâs first-ever story, âLife-Line,â in which a genius inventor destroys the insurance industry by creating a computer that can predict your exact date of death using statistical methods.
Thereâs something wild about this phenomenon, in which writers make stuff up and then assume that anything that cool must also be accurate. One tantalizing explanation for this comes from EL Doctorowâs (no relation) essay âGenesis,â from his 2007 collection âThe Creationistsâ:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/41520/creationists-by-e-l-doctorow/
Doctorow tells the history of the Genesis story, which the Hebrews plagiarized from the Babylonians. In Doctorowâs telling, the Babylonian mystics who made up the Genesis story assumed that it had to be true, because they considered themselves to be nowhere near imaginative enough to have come up with something as great as Genesis. An idea that amazing had to be divinely inspired.
I like this because itâs a story of being led astray by humility, rather than hubris.
Imaginative exercisesâââwhether or not they are assisted by mathematical models and self-updating digital spreadsheetsâââare powerful tools for thinking about the future we want, and to guide our attempts to make that future come true. All models are wrong but some models are useful, of course!
Iâm on tour with Red Team Blues right nowâââIâm writing this post while waiting for my flight to San Francisco, where Iâm appearing at the public library with Annalee Newitz tomorrow (4/30) at 2PM:
https://sfpl.org/events/2023/04/30/author-cory-doctorow-and-annalee-newitz-conversation-red-team-blues
One especially fun stop on this tour will be on May 5, at the Books, Inc in Mountain View, where Iâll be talking about the book with Mitch Kapor, the creator of Lotus 1â2â3, who knows a thing or two about spreadsheets:
https://www.booksinc.net/event/cory-doctorow-books-inc-mountain-view
The tour is bringing me to Berkeley, Vancouver, Calgary, DC, Gaithersburg, Toronto, PDX, Nottingham, Hay, London, Manchester, Edinburgh and BerlinâââI hope to see you!
https://craphound.com/novels/redteamblues/2023/04/26/the-red-team-blues-tour-burbank-sf-pdx-berkeley-yvr-edmonton-gaithersburg-dc-toronto-hay-oxford-nottingham-manchester-london-edinburgh-london-berlin/
Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Mountain View, Berkeley, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, DC, Gaithersburg, Oxford, Hay, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!
[Image ID: A Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet with green-on-black, low-res type; its center has an irregular vignette revealing a space station.]
#pluralistic#el doctorow#parables#gedankenexperiments#contrafactuals#qualitative factors#quantization#collateralized debt obligations#cdos#science fiction#false precision#great financial crisis#models#spreadsheets#red team blues#the map is not the territory#warnings#prediction#fingerspitzengefĂźhl
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Welcome nerds.
Welcome to my study blog. I am starting uni this semester and decided I want to make a student blog. Why tf not. This will just be a little place where all my notes will go.
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My name is Rèmus, and I'm majoring in forensic science a BSc! Studying in Canada.
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