#i think they both got downloaded to my computer

[last-lab-on-the-hall]

How a "normal" STEM human being uses Microsoft Office programs:

Word - papers, essays, reports

Excel - graphs and tables

Power point - Presentations

OneNote - maybe some odd docs

How I use Microsoft Office programs:

Word - template emails, maybe a manuscript

Excel - All of my experimental protocols

OneNote - PDF editor

Power point - ALL MY STUFF literature notes, data screen grabs, actual processed data, things for slapping together presentations, SOPs, educational materials for the undergrads, animations, figures, actual presentations

[nexus-nebulae]

just realised that the first media we consumed that made us REALLY sympathetic for the monster was that fucking point and click Mystery Case Files Ravenhearst game. bc that entire game i was legitimately fucking TERRIFIED of the ghost lady in that game but the second i found out her husband was abusive i doubled down on trying to help her escape. and the ending of that game Did make me cry out of fear but hey at least i did in fact help her escape

[a-small-writer-in-a-big-world]

Drinks pt. 1: Kyle Gaz Garrick x android!reader

You had resigned yourself to your office since the incident. You had been nonstop reviewing the intel and data you had received for the piece of it that caused your the error so you could delete it before it messed up any more of your plans.

A couple days had passed and they went by in the routine you had observed. The 141 avoided you unless they needed you and kept any interactions at a professional level.

When you had finally found the piece of data and erased it, Gaz had already recovered.

You downloaded the recent data you had received into your processors and prepared to analyze them when there was a knock at your door. You unplugged yourself from the computer and called out to whoever it was.

"Sergeant Garrick." You nodded when he stepped in and he gave you a quick smile that you didn't return.

"Heard you've been working hard." He said and you nodded again. "Hope you don't feel too guilty about what happened."

"I want to fix my mistake so it doesn't happen in the future."

"You can't plan for everything, not in this line of work."

You titled your head. You wanted to argue that you could since that was what you were made for. It was your only purpose and before the incident, you had never failed. However, you understood that arguing about it could cause your true nature to be revealed, so instead you agreed.

"Just don't burn yourself out, yeah?" He offered you a smile that slowly fell when you didn't offer one back.

"Was there something you needed, Sergeant?" You asked, unsure of why he decided to visit you.

It was out of routine, out of pattern, especially because up until this point he hadn't exactly acted anything more than cordial with you. You had endless data and in it was everything about the 141, so you knew that Gaz tended to be on the friendlier side, however this different than the relationship that had been created between you both.

"Yeah, actually," he began and shifted on his feet. "I know you've declined before but I think you should join us for drinks."

"Why?" You blinked and he shrugged.

"You're part of the team and you've been working hard. I know you're just here to do your job but I think it'd be great if we got along."

You blinked. You hadn't thought about whether or not bonding with the team would make it easier to work than before. Not that you had much trouble with the job you were given, but it was different for humans, especially the 141.

The patterns you had recognized and from their backgrounds they all valued friendships and relationships in some capacity, something you had no capacity for.

"I see. If you think strengthening our relationship will increase work productivity then I will join you for drinks." You told him and his eyes widened.

"Really?" He scoffed when you nodded but a smile pulled at his lips. "I told Soap the puppy dog eyes would work."

You didn't say anything as he awkwardly chuckled to himself.

"We're going to a pub. Nothing posh." He explained and you noted the information. "We can walk together."

"Okay."

You didn't know what else to say and Gaz must've taken that as anxiety as he gave you a reassuring look.

"Don't worry, I doubt there will be a lot of people there." He said and you wondered if that would be comforting to you if you were human. "Worse comes to worse I can do the talking, yeah?"

"Yes."

Gaz stood in front of you for a moment as if he expected you to say something else. When you didn't, he nodded slowly and gave you an awkward smile before opened the door.

"See you tonight then."

"Yes...see you tonight."

Silence filled the room and you stared at the door.

You were not equipped for going out to drinks. You were only programmed to look at data and provide the best numbers, not socialize and make bonds with others. Judging by the way Gaz had acted in your silence, and from the other times you remembered how the other reacted, you would create unwanted tension that would potentially ruin the bonding experience.

The people who made you didn't except you to agree to something like this, so it wasn't in your programming.

You turned to the computer that sat on your desk.

What was in your programming was to take in information. You were every much machine and computer as the laptop was so if you downloaded the right information you could look it up whenever.

It was against the your coding. You were meant for data analysis only.

But if you stored the information about what to do when going to pubs and how to act in the setting separately to your data then perhaps you could get away with it once. For the betterment of the team.

You began to type of your computer and plugged yourself in.

A/n: does this make sense? idk i've never really written an android character before lol

[godbirdart]

Hello! I hope you are having a nice start to your week :) I seem to remember you recommending a certain tablet once and tried looking for it but couldn’t find it. Is there still one you recommend for art? I’ve got an ipad now but I was thinking of trying something different when it reaches the end of its days (but still hopefully a draw-on one). I think I’ve heard some tablets let you actually download programs and not just apps. I would love to just 1-time buy clip studio or something instead of the app subscription Dx

No worries if you don’t have a recommendation, I may have just misremembered. Either way, I hope you have a lovely evening and thanks for sharing your art! ^_^

Oh I can talk tablets for Hours don't even worry

I have a tablet that can download programs and that is this one right here!

The Huion Kamvas Studio 22

It's been retired from Huion's store for a couple years now, succeeded by Huion's new Kamvas Studio 24; the new, sleeker edition of my 22.

If you're looking for a tablet that can download actual software and not just act as a second display for your computer, you'll be looking specifically for a "Pen Computer". Huion currently offers two - the Kamvas Studio 24 and the travel-sized Kamvas Studio 16. Both come with Windows 11 preinstalled.

Huion also released the Kamvas Slate 10, and while it is categorized as a pen computer, it's designed to compete with tablets like the iPad or PicassoTab and operates on Android 12.

While the idea of an independent computer you can draw on the screen of isn't at all novel, they're still arguably "new" for the companies whose target demographic is artists. At the time of this post, Huion appears to be Wacom's main and only competitor in that field. Artisul, Gaomon and XPpen do not manufacture them. Options for standalone drawing tablets that can download software [not just apps like a phone] are largely limited to:

Huion Kamvas Studio 16

Huion Kamvas Studio 22

Huion Kamvas Studio 24

Wacom MobileStudio Pro 13

Wacom MobileStudio Pro 16

I know I hype up Huion a lot and that's primarily because I have actual firsthand experience with their products, but I cannot stress enough that the Huion can do the job just as well as the Wacom. If you're hellbent on the Wacom, get it when it's on BIG sale, or cheaper secondhand / refurbished. Wacom's MobileStudio line can start at around ~$2600 USD and up, whereas the Huion Kamvas Studio, while still costly, can start from ~$1700 USD. I've seen Kamvas Studio 22s floating around for around $1000 USD which is already $500 off what I originally paid for mine.

Pen computers are one hell of an investment but they're extremely convenient to have. I'm currently saving up for a Kamvas Studio 16 as my travel laptop barely has the power to support Clip Studio and I want to be able to take my work on the go without fumbling around with cords.

To anyone else reading: if I somehow missed the release of a pen computer from another art tablet brand, feel free to drop it in the replies! I'm usually on top of these but I've been so swamped with work the past two months I've barely enough time to check my social media most days lmao

[writing-rat]

Perverted Hacker

Content: 18+ Content, Smut, Strap-On, Cunnilingus, Sammy is a pervert

Summary: Sammy hacks into Joey's phone and sees her nudes. She already wanted to hook up with the older woman, this made her desire it more.

WC: 1808

Sammy was bored. They were in the truck as they had just finished kidnapping the girl and they were nearly out of the city when Sammy saw a glint of something under her seat. It then turned off. That was when she realised it was a phone and she knew who it belonged to since they had just taken their mask off in the car. Joey. Thinking, she grabbed it discreetly as she hooked it up to her computer. Sure, a high school student would do it, but she didn’t care. She was attracted to the woman that she figured out was a mother. It was obvious from the lock screen. Quick to hack into it, she stole all the photos before she unhooked it and looked behind. No one seemed to have noticed what she had done, Dean focused on driving while listening to his rap music.

“Hey, medic. Dropped your phone,” she spoke with a smile, looking at Joey. “Oh, thank you,” Joey responded with a soft smile, grabbing her phone. Sammy couldn’t help but glance down at her cleavage, the shirt she was wearing doing wonders for the 23-year-old's brain. She wondered how old Joey was too. Humming under her breath, she kept a separate tab open, making it smaller so people couldn’t see as she was looking through Joey’s text firsts, learning her name quickly. She smirked, she could track more info about her then. That’s when she went through her notes, finding out how long she had been sober. She was surprised that a woman as beautiful as Ana had a drug problem.

That’s when she decided to go to the photos, surprised that the first photo she saw was some of her nudes. She couldn’t help but click on it, admiring the woman. What she wasn’t aware of was that Joey had noticed. The medic knew that the hacker was a pervert already since she did openly stare at her tits when she unzipped her jacket. To be honest everyone did but Sammy was more obvious and even licked her lips. Sammy continued to look through her photos, loving to see the occasional nudes before she closed the tab. She would look more in-depth after the mission. She couldn’t help but fantasise about hooking up with the medic.

Soon enough they were at the mansion, everyone going in as Sammy stripped out of the navy blue jumpsuit she was wearing, revealing her yellow undershirt, black top, mesh top and her skirt. Joey couldn’t help but admire the girl before she looked away. “You have 5 minutes to set up the girl in a room and set up a lookout point. Meet back here,” the boss spoke. Joey immediately picked up the girl as Sammy went to help Joey. Joey didn’t push her away at all, just let her follow as she was soon getting out some handcuffs. “You always a pervert?” Joey asked the hacker when they were a distance away from people. Sammy looked shocked. “What?” she asked. “You staring at my tits then also downloading my nudes from off my phone,” she teased her, being more confident as Sammy had a heavy blush. “I was just curious about you then stumbled on them,” Sammy admitted, but didn’t look at the woman. “How old are you?” she blurted. “33, you?” Joey asked with a raised eyebrow. “23,” Sammy answered. Joey nodded as she sat Abigail down.

That’s when the both of them went down, not wanting to push everyone’s patience. They would talk more, Sammy knew it. She would also try and seduce her…

-

It had been 10 minutes since Joey got everyone’s observations and Sammy was on the lookout for the older woman, wanting to see her and hook up with her if possible. If she had more time she would want to get to know her. She was skipping around before she bumped into Joey as the 2 just turned a corner. Joey was on the bottom. “Damn. I knew you wanted me but didn’t think you’d bottom,” Sammy teased. That was when Joey suddenly switched positions and got up. “What makes you think that?” Joey asked, raising an eyebrow. Sammy just smiled. “So… what do you say about having a round? We won’t be seeing each other after this,” Sammy spoke, avoiding the question. “You’ve seen my address and name already I bet. You will be going to visit. Anyway, I’m professional. You aren’t… clearly,” Joey resisted. Sammy shrugged. “Can’t a MILF chaser have a chance?” she asked, pouting. “Tell me your name first then you can do whatever to me,” Joey reasoned. It was fair since Sammy knew her name. “Jessica, Jessica Hurney,” she spoke happily. Joey looked around around before she grabbed Sammy by the hand, and took her to a clean bedroom.

“What do you want to do?” Joey asked, letting Sammy take over. Sammy smirked before she pushed Joey down on the bed and straddled her. That was when Joey felt something. There was a strap-on, she could tell immediately when Sammy moved her hips again. Joey blushed hard. “I always wanted to dominate a MILF. Let me pleasure you,” she asked, looking at the older woman beneath her. All the other ones she got with were dominant after all. “Ok,” Joey breathed out and Sammy was quick to celebrate but also was quick to start kissing Joey.

Joey kissed back in surprise, her arms being pinned down by Sammy’s hand, the tattooed blonde straddling her and pressing her fake dick against Joey’s stomach. Slowly but surely her other hand was going under her shirt. “Want to be fully nude or not?” Sammy asked. Joey blushed. “Nude, you have more space then,” Joey explained, knowing that this was breaking a rule. The no grab-ass one. She didn’t care though, not at that moment in time. Sammy grinned excitedly as she started to kiss the girl again, using both hands this time as they went under her shirt, rubbing at her waist before she slowly started to pull it up. Joey kept her hands up as they were kissing, only removing their lips from each other to take off the shirt. Sammy also eyed her breasts, seeing she wasn’t wearing a bra. Sammy loved that as she kissed the corner of her lip, trailing to her jaw and her neck, her hands slowly unbuttoning her jeans and unzipping them too. Joey didn’t even realise until they were being pulled down. Sammy was disappointed to see she was wearing underwear yet delighted too. It showed how wet Joey was and she saw a big patch as she soon sucked on her breasts.

Joey meanwhile moaned as she threw her head back, feeling how Sammy’s finger rubbed against her wetness too. She was only in her underwear now, Sammy having taken off her boots somehow. “Please strip too,” Joey practically begged. Sammy smirked. “Call me daddy from now on,” Sammy giggled before she started to take off her vest, top and bra, revealing her bare breasts. While Sammy sucked on her nipples and rubbed her, Joey groped at the blonde’s breasts. Sammy let out a moan of pleasure as she was riding against the latina’s thigh before she suddenly ripped off her underwear.

“I want to make sure you stay nude for me,” Sammy growled just as Joey was about to protest, where she crawled down her body, her skirt being removed as she also wasn’t wearing underwear. She also kicked her shoes off before she sniffed Joey’s crotch, before licking. “Sammy,” Joey gasped, throwing her head back as she gripped at her hair. “First I want you to cum all over my tongue and fingers then all over my strap. Got it, baby girl?” Sammy growled. Joey nodded. “Yes Daddy,” she moaned as she gripped Sammy’s hair. Sammy smirked before she was licking more, sucking at the right times around her clit. Sammy also spanked her ass as Joey gasped, moaning louder. Sammy wouldn’t be surprised if everyone could hear now, and she loved how loud Joey could get as she started to press her middle finger against her entrance. Joey moaned louder.

“Please, need your finger,” Joey begged. Sammy just grinned before she entered it inside of her, still licking and sucking as one hand went and squeezed her ass. Sammy thrusted the finger in gently, realising that Joey was already quite loose. “You’ve masturbated recently,” Sammy stated, Joey moaning as she was embarrassed it was that easy to tell she had. “God, that’s hot. I want to watch you masturbate one day,” she kept speaking casually as she was fingering the older woman, licking and sucking her clit again. Joey whimpered as she came quickly and Sammy was lapping it all up as she was wanting every drop.

“Ready for my dick?” Sammy asked with a smirk. Joey blushed as she was nodding. “Please Daddy,” she practically begged. Sammy soon crawled up the older woman’s body as she kissed her again. Joey kissed back in desperation, moaning when Sammy was slowly entering inside her. Sammy meanwhile took that opportunity to enter her tongue into the older woman’s mouth, causing the both to moan louder as Sammy was glad she inserted a double-sided strap. She wanted pleasure after all too. Joey was getting louder once again, Sammy was sure she was louder than before though and she loved that. Everyone would know what they were doing. Sammy meanwhile kept thrusting, slow and gentle at first as Joey didn’t need to adjust. Soon though she got faster and rougher and it seemed Joey preferred it much more. That led to Sammy spanking her while they kissed too, Joey arching her back more. Sammy grinned as one hand kept ahold of her ass, the other rubbing her nipple. The 2 girls didn’t separate from the kiss until they couldn’t breathe. When they pulled away, however, a string of saliva kept them together as they caught their breath, kissing more as Sammy kept hitting Joey’s G-spot. Joey was wriggling around as she was moaning, unable to stay still, going crazy from all the touching that was happening. Sammy loved seeing the medic losing all control of her body as she kept kissing her a lot. Joey clenched against the toy, stopping Sammy from moving for a bit as it was obvious she had come. Sammy moaned as she was getting closer before she suddenly came herself, Sammy collapsing on her as they were breathing heavily.

“You were much better than I thought you would be,” Joey said, looking directly at Sammy. Sammy smirked. “I love to please people, what can I say?” Sammy teased. Joey shook her head as she was thinking. “We can continue hooking up after this mission,” Joey concluded and Sammy grinned.

Sammy couldn’t wait.

[startedwellthatsentence]

Question about browsers

I'm asking this because I think I have developed a use for browsers that is different to the normal person, and I want to see if that's true.

It started on my phone, actually, in which I Firefox (previously Chrome) for ONLY fanfiction, and Safari for everything else. Firefox is in a folder with my Kindle, Books, and Comixology apps.

Then I got two jobs that both use Microsoft (Teams, Sharepoint, etc.), and if I am logged into them both on the same browser they won't let me access ANYTHING because I don't have permission with one of my accounts, even though I do with the other. So I use Edge for one job and Opera for the other.

I use Firefox for my personal browser because of the security features.

I use Chrome for school, because I use Speechify for all of my readings and their web app only works on Chrome. (Speechify my beloved, I would not be capable of grad school without you.)

So I just want to know: is this normal?

[coleomegilla-maculata]

Whose instructions will you follow...?

(OC explanation under read more btw)

So I wanted to make a hypothetical "Selathiel Ending" where you follow its instructions. I would not really call it a "good ending" per se, at least compared to the secret(?) ending where Kinito is deleted (which in itself has some negative consequences if you believe Kinito isn't 100% evil).

My interpretation of Kinito being deleted, including the worlds where he has trapped others who downloaded him as shown in the deletion sequence, is either one of two things: 1) the users are somehow returned to their bodies they had before getting trapped in the digital world; 2) the users are dead but this allows their souls to pass on to the afterlife instead of remaining stuck in their own worlds.

With Selathiel's plan, it would basically be an exorcism to remove Kinito and/or whatever Presence he's got associated with him (assuming the hide and seek and bed scenes aren't just like, dreams or something? I don't know, you clearly don't die because you log right back onto the computer. I suppose something could haunt your dreams, but that's besides the point). However, both due to technicalities with the ritual AND because Selathiel sort of believes all who ended up trapped in Kinito's worlds are basically damned, the souls of the previous people are either flat out removed from existence or sent to purgatory/hell/The Bad Place/what have you. Selathiel is of course fine with this. It set out to remove evil, or what it perceived as evil at least, so this is the best outcome to it.

Selathiel will be mad if you choose to grant Kinito administrative access and will basically declare you beyond saving (see earlier point with damned souls), leaving the computer and locking you into the personalized world ending. With the secret floppy drive ending, it will sort of just be...neutral, I suppose? Kinito is gone, it still thinks you should have done what it told you to do, but the result was the same, so it leaves as it has no further business.

[unreleasedtaylorsongs]

Hey so, don’t do this!

I’m not dropping their URLs for obvious reasons (They’re both clearly newly made blogs anyway, possibly because they knew what they were doing was rude) but this is the absolute WORST attitude to have. There is so much to unpack here. and it’s kind of a bit comical. This got kind of long, so I’m putting the rest under a cut.

First off, just because you used the word ‘please’ does not mean you’re being nice or have any manners whatsoever. Second, asking a stranger you never talked to before for something, giving them a deadline of a few days, then telling them to ‘be quick’ and that you ‘need’ something from them is actually so so so insane. I learned that lesson when I was twelve, the first year I had access to the internet. Technically, I learned it before then, because the same rules apply in real life. You don’t talk to strangers that way in real life. Too many people online have this idea that societal rules, general kindness and basic empathy don’t apply once they go online, and it’s one of the worst things that has ever happened to the internet. Also, what the hell do you ‘need’ unreleased demos for? Like, genuinely. I can’t even come up with anything as a joke. And uh, “Girl I know you’re active.” Huh??? I don’t care that you know I’m active, I’m not giving you anything regardless of how chronically online I am since you came off so harsh and demanding right from the start. For the next message, I’m assuming they meant ‘pick up the pace’ which, again, is demanding something from a complete stranger who owes you nothing. So no, I’m not giving anything to anyone who feels entitled enough to demand something from a stranger so brazenly. No one in the unreleased community, or any community I can think of, is willing to share things that they have spent years collecting to someone who demands like this.

As for the second person, I’ll admit, I at least have to admire their dedication. A few messages (the screenshot doesn’t show all of them) spanning across two and a half weeks before they eventually gave up. Kind of like a crazy guy on Tinder constantly messaging someone who has ghosted them due to their obsessive behavior. And that’s what this is! Obsessive behavior! I get being obsessed with Taylor Swift and her unreleased stuff; I am too! But it is not normal to demand for someone’s entire library that they spent over a decade collecting, especially someone that you have never messaged before.

I’d like to add: I know I don’t own any of Taylor’s demos. None of the live recordings, remixes, unreleased, demos, or anything of the sort are truly mine. But that does not mean I didn’t put effort into getting them. So much of my library is ripped from YouTube way back in 2013 with a YouTube to MP3 converter, then dragging it into iTunes and editing the metadata track by track, then photoshopping and editing pictures so I can make album covers for them. Some of my audios are from Vimeo (does that even still exist?) and converted into MP3s. Some of my library is downloaded from Tumblr also over ten years ago from blogs that have since been deactivated. Some of my library comes from sketchy MediaFire files that I had to go through one of those weird shortened links that redirect you to the actual download page. I’ve used so many ad blockers and malware protection programs over the years to get so much into my library. And it’s not even easy to share either. Obviously it’s copyrighted, and although I have a personal Google Drive I keep a ton of backups in for half of the files on my computer, I don’t want that to get taken down if I share music through it, and it would. Even websites like Mega eventually (slowly) catches on and deletes your files and gives you a warning. A few of those and your account is gone.

I’m not trying to be rude, but I’m not rewarding awful behavior. I’ve done enough of that and have learned my lesson. I hope these kinds of people can learn, too. I truthfully think these kinds of people should spend a year or so doing it themselves: scouring the internet for carefully guarded files, having to go through the trial and error of this sort of hobby, having to go through the whole ‘malware or audio file’ game, possibly having people say they want to be friends with you just for them to leave once you send what you’ve collected. My point is that it’s not effortless. You do not google ‘Taylor Swift unreleased download’ and get everything I or other collectors have. And you do not get anything from said collectors by stalking their account to see if they’re active and telling them to ‘pick up the pace’ when they don’t send it in the time you allocated for them without their agreement. Just be respectful to those you want something from. Don’t use people. Be compassionate and considerate. Don’t be like… this.

[xf-cases-solved]

S2E1: Little Green Men

Case: Welcome to season 2, where we start our journey with a melodramatic Mulder monologue. We love to see it. Or... hear it. Whatever. Point is, Mulder is feeling very poetic and melancholic about the Voyager program and the High Resolution Microwave Survey (both are real, btw), and this is relevant, bc at the long abandoned HRMS observatory in Puerto Rico, a transmission has suddenly started coming in. Could it possibly be from... aliens???

Well, Mulder certainly thinks so, and apparently so does his friend in congress, who tells him about the situation in Puerto Rico, and tells him to get his butt down there while he tries to hold off whoever it is who wants Mulder not to learn things this episode. Mulder—having no sense of self-preservation in the slightest and also a new job that he fucking hates—goes without a second thought. From there, the episode becomes a fun back and forth between Mulder's exciting Puerto Rican holiday (in a dark, abandoned building, as he makes melancholic tape recordings for Scully, bc that's who he was talking to in the voiceover, the fucking sap loser), and Scully desperately trying to get to Puerto Rico so that she can drag him back to Washington like a dog that got loose from its collar. Again.

Mulder and Scully both miss the X-Files and each other and it's cute as well as sad; Scully's "Mulder is doing something stupid" senses start tingling, so she guesses another password and breaks into Mulder's computer files; Mulder plays charades and pictionary with a terrified Puerto Rican man named Jorge; and Assistant Director Walter Skinner says NO to secondhand smoking. 

We're off to a great start, fam!

Does someone die in the cold open: Yes. Senator Richard Bryan murdered the High Resolution Microwave Survey project in cold blood 

Does Mulder present a slideshow: No, but he does eat an INSANE amount of sunflower seeds

Does the evidence survive the investigation: Well, Mulder literally says the words, "Nothing but evidence, and again, no evidence at all," so I'll let you take a guess.

Whodunit: You know, I don't think either of them were technically on a case this episode, so. No one, ig. 

Convictions: See above.

Did they solve it: Nothing to solve bc it wasn't a case, but also... yeah, no. They did not. -sad trombone sound-

[how do i determine if a case is solved? check the scale here: x]

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY: The Duolingo Owl. There are over seven thousand languages in the world, and yet, we as a species know so few (especially if you're American -- y'all, we do not do enough language learning in school). Learning a new language can broaden your mind, open you up to new cultures, and expand your social circle. You also never know when you may be trapped in a derelict building during a thunderstorm/alien invasion with a frightened Puerto Rican man you are incapable of communicating with because you didn't pay attention in Spanish class.  Lucky for you, the Duolingo Owl can help! By sending you moderately threatening lesson reminders every day, the Duolingo Owl helps ensure that you're on your way to learning a brand new language. So don't hesitate! Download Duolingo now to get started. The Duolingo Owl — our favorite little green man!

[as of the moment i am posting this, my duolingo streak is 2,632 days. anyway]

***

General Total Stats:

(green means stat has changed since last ep; red means new stat added to list)

Total Cases *Definitively* Solved So Far: 12 (nothin'. off to a good start guys!)

Total Number of "Mulder/Scully, It's Me": 3

Total Number of Times Scully Has Conveniently Not Seen Something Crucial: 6 (yeah, you know what, i'll say her conveniently not getting to puerto rico until after the whole -gestures at whatever that whole bright light situation was- counts)

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Been in Mortal Danger: 8 (i feel like if he had been in legitimate mortal danger then he would have died, but nothing hurt him, just freaked him out a little)

Total Number of Times Scully Has Been in Mortal Danger: 8

Total Number of Sexually Charged, Uncomfortably Intimate, and/or Flirty Moments Between Friendly Coworkers: 13 (there were a few i could count here that are borderline, but the two that definitely cross the line are mulder saying "i used to only be able to trust myself... now i can only trust you. and they've taken you from me," bc what the fuck, and then also the end where he says "i still have my work, i still have you," and scully grabs his hand, bc again, what—and i cannot stress this enough—the fuck)

Total Number of Autopsies Scully Has Performed On Screen: 3 (none, but it was actually really adorable how mulder was dictating to her in the recording about the state of jorge's body. i mean, rip jorge, but he was doing his best to give her information about the scene, not just for himself, but bc he knew she'd need as much documentation/evidence as possible to come to any conclusions)

Total Number of Times Scully Plays Doctor: 2

Total Number of Times Mulder Talks to an Informant: 14 (he doesn't come up much, but i'll count senator what's his face as an informant, sure) 

Total Number of Times People Making Out in a Car Are Hurt or Killed: 2

Total Number of Times Someone Correctly Guesses a Password: 3 (the impenetrable computer password of special agent fox mulder: trustno1. god i love the 90s)

Total Number of Nosebleeds: 4

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Tasted/Sniffed/Touched Something Questionable Without Following Proper Safety Procedures: 2 

Total Number of Times Someone Says "Trust No One": 3 (ok, i wasn't sure how to count this bc it was said aloud, but then it was also caught in a loop being said on the tape, and so instead of counting every individual time, i'm just going to a singular blanket tally for the whole episode)

Total Number of Times Someone Says "I Want to Believe": 3

Total Number of Times Someone Says "The Truth is Out There": 2

Total Number of Cigarettes Cigarette Smoking Man Has Smoked: 8 (but skinner told him NO SMOKING!! 😡) 

Total Number of Maggie Scully Sightings: 1

Total Number of Lone Gunmen Sightings: 1

Total Number of Alex Krycek Sightings: 0 :(

Total Number of Times I Had to Look Up What State the Episode Takes Place in Even Though I Literally Just Watched It: 9½ 

Total Number of Times I Had to Look at an Episode's Wikipedia Page to Fill This Out Because It Was Fucking Confusing and/or Too Boring for Me to Pay Attention: 5 

[oh good, the next episode is the host. that's definitely an episode i don't find unbearably disgusting and haven't watched in years bc i always skip it when i rewatch the series. so excited. hooray 😐]

[tyguy275]

Chromebook Tech Literacy Masterpost

I've seen a lot of posts about the systemic death of tech literacy in schools with the advent of ChromeOS, and instead of responding to them one by one, I want to create a masterpost to destroy the system. First: FUCK CIPA. The Children's Internet Protection Act is a United States FCC act that standardizes internet safety across the country. Public schools are not required to comply with this act, but they will lose discounts offered for the E-rate program. In short, if you don't want to put up web filters, then you don't get government grants for technology and Internet. Fuck that. Many of these workarounds bank on my personal experiences, so some solutions may not work with your web filters, but they definitely are a step in the right direction. For talking with friends: chat rooms are your friend. Many chat rooms for professional use act just like Discord, and many are just a single text channel. Several I've used include: Google Messages, Rumbletalk, Slack, Element, ClickUp, Pumble, and... in a pinch, Google Docs can give you a shared document that's practically impossible to block. For watching videos: some chat rooms, especially Rumbletalk, allow you to directly embed a YouTube video. This is rare, however, so we found some workarounds. Canva has a video search and embed function that allows you to play YouTube videos straight from the editing page of their slideshows. For anime, a website that I don't think is maintained as well but should still work is AnimeTribes. It is a .ru site but it is perfectly safe, as long as you don't click on ads. I've never seen it redirect you otherwise, and the owner used to be commonly found on the chat page. Another piracy site is 9Anime, which doesn't work on Chromebooks but is an infinitely better source in general. A non-anime video piracy site is Arc018, which is my favorite. It does redirect you decently commonly, but just take care to avoid those redirects and follow piracy suggestions that I will lay out further down. For adblocking: the easiest method is to use uBlock Origin. Though, with all the stuff that Google has been doing, I'm not entirely sure if it works anymore. I gave up on Chrome the second I could get away from it and I suggest you all do the same. For playing games: so. I'm a nerd. I play Pokemon games. SO if you do too you're in luck. The only thing I could come up with was to download GPemu, a ChromeOS based emulator. Unfortunately it's pretty bad, but apparently there's an alternative called EmulatorJS. I never used it myself, but if someone wants to try it and let me know how it goes, that would be appreciated. HOWEVER, none of these work without the games to play them with. I'm going to detail piracy safety later, but for now: Vimm's Lair recently got axed by Nintendo's DMCA, but some ROMs may still be available. Another source (which is admittedly undergoing some major changes) is The Internet Archive. I haven't done a lot of searching on the Archive, and I don't know if it works on Chromebooks, but try it and let me know :).

Circumventing the web filter: While those solutions work for specific things you can do online, these present a general solution, capable of multitasking and providing you much more extended freedom. The first is CroxyProxy, a completely free proxy service that can be added through the Chrome Web Store. If the Web Store is blocked, it can be accessed via the direct website or through specific IP addresses. These change frequently, and I’m absolutely positive the ones that I have access to are blocked or simply go nowhere useful. The other option, assuming you have a home computer connected to the Internet at all times, is Chrome Remote Desktop. It will work as long as both computers are signed in to one shared Google account and both are connected to the Internet.

But Ty... none of this works for me: Oh boy. I guess it's time for my trump card. The pinnacle of my Chromebook workaround career has culminated in this. The ultimate destruction of ChromeOS, all without jailbreaking the computer and getting in a LOT of trouble (don't do that please). My magnum opus came from my blossoming understanding of emulation and, specifically, Windows images. During my senior year, I successfully used a trusted and necessary source (unblockable) to emulate a Windows computer entirely through a single Chrome tab. This source… Microsoft Azure. This cloud computing service allows the creation of a remote desktop that will save data when offline. The biggest hurdle with Azure is that… it costs money. However, when I did it, I got 200 hours of emulation FREE, and I would highly recommend you find the same deal, if it still works. Things to note: you can make multiple accounts, but you will need to also have separate payment cards, as multiple accounts with the same card will flag and not be usable. The frame rate is decently shit, and there is no physical graphics card, so the vast majority of games will not run. I mostly used it for Discord. However, feel free to experiment and make it your own. Use this knowledge wisely, and run free, my friends. Fuck CIPA, and fuck ChromeOS!

Please feel free to reblog or comment with more suggestions, because I would love to add them!

[andrevasims]

hi! i was wondering, how do you play ts1 in 2024? have u intalled the base game disc and all the expansion packs the old fashioned way on a present day windows or just downloaded the game from online somewhere? (is that even possible?) i would love to play ts1 with all the ep's but have failed miserably so far :-[ only the base game has worked on my old laptop but i was unable to successfully install any ep's and idk what to dooo

Me personally, I have a physical copy of The Sims Complete Collection (one disc for all EPs) and use a cracked executable to bypass inserting the disc.

Most, if not all, EPs for both TS1 and TS2 have SecuROM anti-piracy DRM on their discs, which since Windows 10 has been completely blocked from doing anything whatsoever. Like it might not even show any error, it might just do literally nothing in response to attempting to run anything off a disc that has SecuROM on it.

If you can get past the installation process, then as far as I can tell, all you need is a cracked executable to start playing it.

That's all I had to do after installing TS1, I'm really not sure where any compatibility issues would come into play tbh because I've succssefully installed TS1 with the same disc multiple times and been able to play it using same cracked executable on both Windows 7 and 10. I've never used Windows 11, but this next bit might be more relevant in that case:

If you can't even get the installer to run, I had to do a workaround for that when I reinstalled TS2 that involved copying the disc contents of every EP/SP to folders on my computer, opening Command Prompt, then navigating to the folder of each EP/SP's copied disc contents and running the "autorun.exe" using Command Prompt.

Honestly though, if you're trying to install the EPs one at a time, I'd recommend finding a copy of the Complete Collection (or just pirating it lol).

I have all the EPs on individual discs, but the data on my copy of Makin' Magic got corrupted, so every time I tried to install TS1 one EP at a time, I would get through all of them, then when it got to Makin' Magic it'd say "There's an error, the installation has stopped."

Except EAxis had the genius idea of making the installer overwrite files as it was running, even if it didn't successfully finish installing the EP. So after trying & failing to install Makin' Magic, I would have to completely reinstall TS1 from scratch because it overwrote the game files with now completely unusable ones since the EP they were for wasn't even fully installed.

As for piracy, there's plenty of copies of TS1 & all its EPs out there. Literally just google "Sims Complete Collection Free Download" and any website that says something like "old game download" or "archive" or "abandonware" should have a functioning/non-virus copy of the game lol.

One caveat though, is that the format of the downloaded version might be an ISO, which is basically a digital version of the CD. But you need to "mount" the ISO using a virtual drive program, which makes the computer think you inserted a physical disc into a CD drive. I haven't had as much luck with getting games to run via virtual drive, so I stick to ones that are just the installation files themselves.

[crmsndragonwngss]

Do you have any tips or guides on how to make gifs?

I do! Firstly, this guide here is probably the best guide I've seen for gif making. It's concise and easy to follow, and it's what I used to learn myself. They have a lot of resources as far as programs go, but I'll list what I use below. As always, never download and install anything from unknown sources without doing your own due diligence. Run everything through your antivirus and/or virustotal before installing always always always!

This is kinda long, so imma put it under the cut lol. Also note that I use windows (Win10), so things may not work the same way for mac or linux

Before you can actually make the gifs, you need a way to download high quality videos! I like jdownloader 2 because I find the interface to be user friendly, it gives you the option to download multiple elements (like srt files), and it works with more websites than lots of other video downloaders (and their user support is leagues better as well). My second choice is yt-dlp, which isn't necessarily more complex but might look a little more intimidating. Both are great programs, but a quick note about jd2: DO NOT download it from anywhere else but the link above. The developers package adware in all their installers EXCEPT for that one (I hate it too, and I think it's fundamentally unethical, but at least they're up front about it and they have an adware free version). Both methods automatically download the highest quality video available in your source link, so you don't have to worry about fiddling with that.

Now on to extracting frames! My method of choice is ffmpeg. It looks more intimidating than it is, and it's honestly the best way to extract frames imo. Like yt-dlp, it uses your computer's command console, which means you'll need the relevant command lines to run it. This tutorial is great to get you started, and it includes a command line for if you only want to extract frames from a specific part of your video. If you want to extract every frame from the entire video, you can either input the start and end times of the video into that command line, or you can use this version (I use both depending on what I'm doing):

ffmpeg -i "file path" "out-%05d.png"

Always make sure you're working with png files. To make quality gifs you have to start with quality images, and png files, unlike jpg, are lightweight and lossless, meaning you won't end up with compression artifacts and fuzziness

To get the file path for your video, select the file, then in the upper left hand corner of your window select home > copy path. It will copy the path in quotes, so replace the entire section "file path" with the path you just copied. Then copy and paste the entire line into your command console. The tutorial above says this as well, but be sure to create a folder for your frames, go into that folder and click the file path bar at the top of the window, then type "cmd" to open the console. This will ensure your files are dumped in that folder

So now you need a way to actually MAKE the gif. This is... a little more tricky. You can use gimp, I think, though it's certainly not my program of choice. You could buy PS but like... ew. OR you could do what I did and arr it. I use a portable version of CS6 that I downloaded literally a decade ago, and unfortunately the website I got it from isn't up anymore. I did a quick search and found this on reddit, but again, do your due diligence before downloading and installing anything!

Now I'll talk a little bit about my actual process. The actual process of making frames into layers into a gif I got from that first tutorial I linked. I took that process and made an action on PS so that I never have to do it manually again because I'm lazy and my memory is dogshit and I didn't want to have to consult a guide every time I wanted to do something lol. Everything else I learned through experimenting and my own experience as a photographer, so I encourage you to play around with everything to see what you like and what works for you

For coloring, I fiddle with levels, brightness/contrast, and color balance adjustment layers until I'm happy with how it looks. You can use curves instead of levels if you want finer control (or if you want to produce effects like matte), but levels works just as well and has a histogram right there in the panel, which makes it easier to adjust the exposure based on the image's actual data

For sharpening, I have a couple of custom actions I use. Here's what they look like:

The first one (bound to the F2 key) gives a smoother appearance, and I like to use it for kpop gifs where the subjects are already airbrushed and smooth without much texture, or wide shots where detail isn't super important

The second one (bound to the F3 key) is the one I use when I want to preserve texture in the image. Closeups of people where you can see their skin texture, or busy images with lots of detail benefit most from this one

The basic gist of it is, the "sharpen" filter does exactly what it says on the tin and it's usually all the sharpening an image needs, and the "surface blur" filter erases or dampens artifacting created by the sharpening filter. Sometimes I'll run the action twice, or use them both in combination to get the effect I want. Here's what the difference looks like in practice, featuring two very cute dudes:

F2 sharpening action

F3 sharpening action

You'll notice in the first two gifs, there's not much in the way of texture to preserve. Yoongi's skin is smooth and airbrushed, and the scenery is all metal and concrete shot with a wide aperture, which makes the background nice and blurry and smooth. In the second set, Jesse has facial hair and stubbly texture on his throat that I wanted to preserve, so I used the action with the lighter surface blur

My advice on all of this though, again, is to play around with it and see what you like! And if you have any more questions, feel free to ask! I'm by no means an expert, but I'll do what I can to help!

edit: oh, a quick note about speed! The tutorial I linked above mentions changing the delay to 0.05, and that's great for full speed gifs! But if you want them slow like my gifs above, I set the delay to 0.08. Sometimes I'll slow them down even more by setting the delay to 0.09 or 0.1, but any higher and you start to lose some of that smoothness

[calmingpi]

Siblings computer ran out of battery just after lucrezia got downloaded into agatha, so heres the current sturmhalten (and end of circus arc) commentary

Im going to hand the phone to sibling, because they want to write it out themself, but also i told them they cant be too explicit so they said they'd censor things. I also put my foot down and said they cant call lars a "candy-ass," even if they meant it as a compliment about his ass

"Circus:

Payne and Countess Marie are both very fun characters, and good caretakers to the rest of the cast. Good Munkustrap and Cassandra vibes.

Lars is sweet, and im assuming he will die horribly and brutally. I have no hope for him. Nice butt. I wanna say Rum Tum Tugger but IDK, he isnt confident enough.

I want Zeetha to **** ** **** *** ***** *******-**** and i think her hair is neat. She should **** DuPree. Bombalurina, big time.

Pix is adorable and I love how schemey but sweet she is. She's like someone who steals your skittles then gives you a single peppermint and a smile. Like, not what i wanted, but you're very pretty so ill take what i can get, do you want my wallet too, or? Honestly, Rumpleteaser.

Thats honestly all my opinions on the circus people, the rest are fun but not fleshed out enough for me to hold harsh opinions.

Krosp is such a good contrast to Agatha and I like how much he obviously cares for her. she was one of the first people to show him kindness, and he clearly is repaying it in an angry feline way. Hes like a big brother who is also a cat. Hes an angry Asperagus the Theatre Cat.

I've hit Tarvek and I don't buy this cutesy sweet boy act at all. I KNOW YOU'RE A BITCH. MAN UP AND BE THE DIVA BASTARD I KNOW YOU ARE CUT THIS UWU BABY SHIT. loser. He's great. Mr. Mistofolees, but not the movie version. Pure classic era Mistofolees.

I think all the Jägers should **** ********* ** *** ********** and im not allowed to elaborate. Theyre all three Rum Tum Tuggers trying to out Rum each others Tuggers.

Anevka. Baby. Baby girl. She was the greatest guy arouuunnnnnddd! "What about the murder?" WHAT MURDAAAHH? im a transformers fan so robot women i am absolutely not immune to. Skimbleshanks if he wore prada.

Calm is making me stop. Anyway calm needs to post transformers opinions now becauses faes been watching that in exchange for GG readings."

... Sibling is a huge fan of cats the musical

[bleachbleachbleach]

Soul Society in 64-bit

Earlier, I wrote about the timey-wimeyness of District 80.

In the palace of my mind, this is what that looks like:

This is a screenshot from the very popular and well-known "this came downloaded on my device from factory" game, Nanosaur (1998).

Like many games of the era, there's a mysterious white fog, within which the rest of the environment hides until you move into it and the program has to load it. But if you go to the edge of the game's map, you just continue to walk interminably through the white fog. There's no wall you hit; you just keep walking through white and could keep walking through white forever. Can you be lost forever in the mist? Maybe. But if you turn around, you magically return immediately to the edge of the map. (I'm sure this technical limitation was not at all unique to Nanosaur. Nanosaur just happens to be the only computer game I played that wasn't from the Scholastic Book Fair.)

But anyway, thinking about this today made me think about Rukia firing up the chic, round, 90s gumball iMac in Isshin's office to play Nanosaur, and shouting the entire time, "THIS IS JUST LIKE HOME FR!!!!!!!!!" much to Ichigo's deep disbelief/concern for Soul Society.

(In Nanosaur, you play a dinosaur from the future who's been sent back in time with 20 minutes to steal eggs before the asteroid hits, and for some reason you have a jetpack and are armed with multiple types of projectile weapons. Rukia would absolutely fuck with this game and beat all of Isshin's high scores.)

--

Similarly, my vision of what sewers are is almost 100% based on what sewers look like in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. (Even though I've read the Magic School Bus book about the water cycle, and I've been to a sewerage museum! Both premier avenues for learning about sewers!)

I feel like when (in the anime's universe) Hanatarou and Ganju were working at the combini with the manager who had a crush on Ganju, the manager invited Ganju over to Nintendo and Chill. But Ganju, not understanding the intent of the invitation, assumed it also included Hanatarou and brought him along. Which resulted in Ganju and Hanatarou playing the combini manager's Nintendo and Hanatarou, shouting just as loudly as Rukia, "IT'S JUST LIKE HOME FR!!!!"

Unlike Rukia and Nanosaur, Hanatarou was terrible at OoT. But he got really good at flying around with all the chickens.

IDK, there's just something about Soul Society that makes it feel like it should be perceived in 64-bit.

[thanatoast250]

Every piece of Bloomacncheez has slowly disappeared off the internet. YouTube, Wikia, etc. They’re entitled to their privacy but I’m just curious if they’re okay. Did they finish college? Did they reach their dreams of working in animation? Things I think about some time.

Hey there, Anon

Bloo's DeviantArt is still up along with her Tumblr pages (main and art here) and Twitter, but if she has started using social media again, it isn't under her BMNC moniker.

Her main YouTube page has been down for quite a long time due to some old Copyright issues. This was way back in the old day when Viacom and Universal were hellbent on striking anything and everything that had semblance of their properties, and her page got hit with a bunch of issues from her old parodies. She and I tried to fix it a long time ago but once College time got around, we were both just so busy that we didn't end up getting around to it.

Her Wikia page was deleted because I didn't feel comfortable with how it had been used in the past. When I found out that it existed, I was super excited because it was something I could have worked on and just been a nice thing for her. But I also found out that people were using it to allegedly stalk her; since Wikia/Fandom pages can be edited by anyone, there were anonymous users using it to talk about how she disappeared and how they "found her" and were "watching from the shadows". It was super creepy and I started to clean it up, making the whole wiki nice and pretty and cleaning out as much as I could that would lead people to trying to stalk her or The Classy Peanuts. I became the Content Administrator, so I had full rule over what would and would not be posted, and I made several pages about her, her parodies, characters, and the many people that were either working on or going to work on the stuff (including one for myself that I was going to finish up last).

But the longer I worked on it the more I felt like something was off, and considering Wikia/Fandom doesn't like it when Wikias/Fandom pages are made about IRL people, I reached out and asked a moderator/developer about whether the work I was doing was safe or not, since I didn't want to put either her or any of the other Classy Peanuts (or really anyone) in danger of stalkers and the like. He told me that if that Wikia/Fandom were made today, it would likely be shut down for precisely the reasons/concerns that I had, even though Bloo didn't ever post anything about her IRL life outside of her birthday (I knew about a little bit more about her life, but I never shared any of it, obviously) and there wasn't going to be anything about her or the Peanuts' IRL lives on there. So that being said, I figured that the safest course of action would be to delete the Wikia/Fandom. I have all of the pages downloaded/archived on my computers in the chance that I ever get back in contact with Bloo or one of the Peanuts reaches out to me and says it's okay, but as it stands, the Fandom is down and will not be returning for their safety and respect. So I personally apologize for that.

However, I was informed that I could probably make a page for her on Wikitubia (I think that's what it was called?) because her page has over 10k subscribers, which is the minimum requirement for having a page. I was told that Fandom has more moderation that would help with keeping people from stalking her or posting irrelevant or personal information. It's currently in my ever-growing list of projects, but it'll be up eventually. Probably.

As for the rest of your questions, I can't say. The last time I talked with Bloo was when she was still in college, but she was trying very hard to stay focused and buckle down for everything. There were parts of our interactions and conversations that gave me concerns for her. She was under a lot of stress, and her taking a break from Tumblr (and online in general) was a good thing for her. She was in her final year of college the last time I spoke to her, so I imagine that she did graduate. A lot of her courses and focuses were in Illustration, and she was phenomenal at it, so I like to think that she ended up working what she wanted to. She's a strong person, so I like to believe that she overcame the stresses she was under and did achieve her dreams. At the end of the day, though, I can't give you any direct confirmations though; the last time we talked was back in 2015 or 2016, and her email closed due to inactivity a couple years ago.

The only other people that I can think of that would be able to help you or anyone else more than that are the other Classy Peanuts who knew her IRL because they lived near her and hung out all the time. But the last time I talked to one of the Peanuts they just told me, quote, "if we don't share details about our lives with the public/internet, it means we don't want anyone knowing". Granted, I wasn't exactly level-headed when I asked about it; the last couple conversations I had with Bloo had me concerned for her safety and health, so I was kind of a wreck and very pushy with this person. It's definitely a conversation I could have handled better, though I suppose there's not much I can do about it now.

I think about BMNC a lot, too. I think about all conversations we had, all the times before then where we helped each other get through hardship, all the silly back-and-forths in the early hours on weekdays despite us having classes in the morning, all those fun times. They're good memories and help me keep going when I'm feeling crummy. I still send her Happy Birthday messages on her DA and Tumblr in the off chance she sees them.

I'm sorry I can't be of more help, though. I wish I had more answers for you and all of the people that come to me about it. I don't mind answering questions, I just feel bad that I can't give good and satisfying answers to them.

[cryptocism]

Oh my god this new chapter,.. gnawingbthe bars of the enclosure etc etc. what gave you the ideas for the kids being conjoined twins?

not sure how much i should be screening for spoiler-y asks n answers if anybody is still on the earlier chapters but! i wanted to answer this one so spoilers ahead for anybody who hasn't read chapter 17

i came up with it pretty early on! long enough ago that the details are fuzzy but iirc when i was making all the clone backstories, i was really invested in the idea that one of them wouldn't have powers. partially for character dynamics, also because i think having a range of abilities forces interesting workarounds (i.e. Jude and Nathaniel using Jude's speed paths to supplement Nathaniel's lack of powers)

then i was going back and forth on how to explain why Nathaniel didn't have powers, if an explanation was even necessary, etc. which coincided with me thinking a lot about the different applications of technoplasm and just how insane of a material it is to exist

then Impulse issue #56 where CRAYDL downloads, copies, and replicates Tim and Kon's genetic matrices using technoplasm came to mind and it felt a lot more feasible that technoplasm could literally be programmed for a human form

i thought abt CRAYDL just building Nathaniel from scratch, but there wasnt a motivation i could think of that was strong enough for CRAYDL to do that. (like maybe they didn't want Jude to be lonely or something, which fell a little flat bc obviously they werent concerned about Thad being on his own) also i wanted Nathaniel to still have some bio-connection to Jude and the other clones. so: technoplasm integration felt like a cool direction, and meant Nathaniel needed some essential part of him be technoplasm-made. any kind of amelia condition didn't really work because there are plenty of folks without limbs that are doing just fine and dont require medical intervention, (and i really didnt think CRAYDL would try an operation so risky if there wasnt a fatal threat) so it had to be something else and conjoined twins felt like a good direction to go. there's plenty of conjoined twins who are also doing just fine and dont require intervention, but this would be a case where separation was necessary for survival.

although i wrote Jude and Nathaniel as both parapagus and craniopagus twins (the grammar there may not be right but basically: joined both at the pelvis/abdomen and the head) which i dont believe (?) is a type that's ever actually occurred. keeping with sci-fi's grand tradition i fudged the science for the sake of the story u know how it is

but yeah of course after that the possibilities of a bio-computer technoplasm-integrated character got me Extremely Excited. tons of functionally-immortal self-programming computer-hacking fun. plus i had an excuse to give Jude heterochromia and a cool birthmark :P