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typewritingyip · 1 month ago

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The Arcturus Missions

Part Twenty - Missions

Part Nineteen

———

Initially from an outside perspective, one might think that every country was rapidly ready to work together after the initial invasion of Earth. Those early days of 1984 certainly felt like the start of something changing. Dozens of events happened before September 4th that year.

83 people were killed in a mine explosion in Japan, the Los Angeles Raiders won the Super Bowl, Apple launch the Macintosh computer, the first untethered spacewalk happens from the space shuttle, US troops pull out of Beirut, a national drinking age is set in the United States, the Olympic Games open in Los Angeles while the Soviet Union boycotts, multiple booms are set off in multiple airports during the year, and NASA space shuttle Discovery takes its maiden flight.

Even the days after the initial sightings the world still turns; Australia abolishes the death penalty on September 5th, genetic fingerprinting is developed on September 10th, Prince Harry is born September 15th, the US Embassy in Beirut is bombed September 20th, and October 12th has an assassination attempt on British Prime Minister Margret Thatcher.

Just because the world was under attack by an entirely foreign enemy didn’t mean that everyone was ready to work together.

Japan, the United States, the USSR, Ireland, and China were the first five countries to have mech suits ready for deployment and they all were entirely different. Japan had redesigned theirs from the base suit under production to resemble familiar animation from the country's entertainment industry, very colorful and reassuring to their public. The United States initially had very militaristic designs, using majority military contractors to build the suits but painted similarly to war planes of different eras. In the USSR, they also were very militaristic but unlike the US kept coloring to a minimum, they used the citizens of the outer parts of the USSR to build the suits. Ireland wanted to quickly join the game, they quickly started to repurpose the disrepaired oil rigs from the North Sea. Lastly, China effectively was able to contract certain works from other countries to assist them in their manufacturing of suits, mostly from the USSR.

The world kept spinning even while under attack, but for most of the first attacks it was remaining in either country sanctioned waters or off the coasts of major cities. With the Cold War going on, each country was on its own unless it had a major ally with suits.

—

Sunstreaker sat at the window, frowning out at the glowing city, fidgeting with his hands. Breakdown and Sideswipe were asleep but Jazz was pacing nearby, “Do you think the meeting would be this long?” Already shaking his head, Jazz sighed, “Not for Hound and a few others. Command will still be in the meeting but not one Hound could hear.” Sunny’s fist hit the window and he stood, “Then where the hell is he? Do you think he could have crashed already?” Jazz winced and absently rubbed at his implants, “I don’t think the crash would happen this soon, no.”

The Crash (verb): the overtaxing and overuse of a mech suit to the point of biological deterioration.

He looked back out the window, “Then where the hell is he?” Jazz sighed a bit, finally sitting down, “He’s probably talking with other mechs from the meeting. If half the people I know were there then it’s entirely possible the poor man is stuck in a conversation with Tracks.” The look Sunstreaker gave Jazz had the man lifting his hands, “We’d have gotten an alert if anything really bad happened. Sunny, Hound is fine. You don’t have to worry.” Raking his hands through his hair, the curls stand on ends and Sunstreaker shakes his head, “He’s the only one with experience commanding a group like us, I mean Jazz, if something were to happen to him it would either be you leading us or Breakdown and he’s down for two weeks with a concussion.” Nodding slowly, Jazz sighs, “I’m sure he’s just at command asking far to many questions, look, once Prowler gets back we’ll have an idea of what’s going on.” Sunstreaker turned back to the window, lightly scratching at his implants, Jazz scowled, “Don’t mess with your hardware so much, we don’t have a medic out here and it’s a pain to try and salvage.” Jazz’s own tech was older than Sunstreakers’ and betting integrated.

That was one thing about Sunstreaker, his tech matched his brothers exactly but it had taken him longer to integrate it, and the skin around the hardware was always a little red. Even after passing compatibility testing, the body preferred to reject the hardware whenever it could, a person who didn’t have the strongest bond with their tech would deal with a lot more of the compatability side-effects, such as nightmares. If it wasn’t for Sideswipe, Sunstreaker would have never been a pilot and would currently be sitting in a jail cell back on Earth probably still awaiting trial.

Jazz moves over and rests a hand on his shoulder, “Hound wont have crashed if he is just starting to experience overuse symptoms. And even if he did, the mechs here in Iacon wouldn’t have just left him on the street.” The door pinged behind them and Sunstreaker looked over, deflating at the sight of Prowl whose face was staring intently at a data-pad, but another mech came in behind him, staring around in bewilderment, “Wow,” Bluestreak’s hand reached out to touch one of the suits just as Prowl’s hand smacked his, “Don’t touch their suits, the humans are probably asleep.” He glances up and pauses, staring at Jazz and Sunstreaker, “Or not.” Jazz was grinning, but Sunstreaker dove for his helmet, cringing at the smell as he pulled it on and started to adjust settings. Waving an arm, Jazz is able to speak up first, “Hey, welcome home!” Bluestreak was grinning, walking over as Sunstreaker finally gets his helmet to pipe in the translations, sighing as they feed him both audio and captions on the visor.

Mecha are able to cross the room in only a few strides, generally Cybertronians’ are slightly smaller than the average suit but they move just as quickly, next thing Sunstreaker knew was he was back in Bluestreak’s palm stumbling against it, “Damnit!” Sunstreaker desperately grabs at one of Bluestreak’s servos before Prowl moves over just as quickly, “Bluestreak, do not pick up any humans.” Sunstreaker just manages to get the microphone in his helmet on, a small speaker opening up on the side, “Bluestreak, this isn’t funny!” It was as if the room stopped for a moment, Bluestreak was frowning at Sunstreaker and looked to Prowl, “But he is so small and hard to see from far away.” Jazz was struggling not to laugh as Sunstreaker flips him off, “I can understand you now, asshole.” The room shook slightly as Prowl walked over, resting a hand on Bluestreak’s shoulder, “I’d recommend putting the human down before he starts to pull at your plating.” The result was Sunstreaker hitting the window sill surface from a few feet up and groaning, rolling onto his side briefly.

Prowl sighed deeply, “And they are fragile without their armor, like if we were to walk around without our plating, having exposed protoform.” Bluestreak winced and tried to reach out again but stopped, “I, I…” Sunstreaker slowly got back up, rubbing his arm painfully, “I’m alright Blue, but fuck, please be careful.” Jazz had already climbed for the window to Prowl’s open palm, then up his arm to his shoulder, “These guys don’t have the magnets that I do Blue, especially Sunny and Sides, their suits are too new and didn’t need those parts.” He leans back against Prowl, smiling as the mech moves to sit, already pulling out a tablet, “The humans will have to sleep soon, so whatever you wish to talk about I’d recommend doing so now.” They stare a glance before Bluestreak turns to Sunstreaker, offering his hand, “I’ll be careful.” Slowly and carefully, Sunstreaker climbed onto Bluestreak’s palm, sparing a glance towards the window before looking at Blue.

They didn’t go anywhere, Bluestreak just held Sunstreaker a bit closer, “I can hardly see you down there, without your suit.” Sunstreaker rolls his eyes, “That is such bullshit Blue and you know it, you just want to be able to hold an organic.” “Maybe.” They shared a smile, but Bluestreak shook his head, “No, I just, I want to say I was sorry for what happened. I didn’t realize.” Nodding, Sunstreaker fixed his helmet slightly, “That is kind of the point. We know there are some of your kind that don’t particularly like organics like us and even only part organics are seemingly shunned.” He sighed slowly, rubbing at his implants briefly, “Us pilots are very much leaning towards that inbetween.” Bluestreak nodded, keeping his hand still, “Well, I’m glad you’re on our side in this fight, Sunny.” It almost made him feel better, almost.

Looking back out the window, Sunstreaker sighed, “Do you know how the meeting with Hound went?” Bluestreak shrugged and josulted Sunstreaker a bit, “No, not really. I wasn’t in the meeting, why? Has he not come back yet?” Shaking his head, Sunstreaker rubbed at his face, “No and now I’m starting to worry, Hound is the kind of guy to push himself to the limit to protect people, and those people probably would be us.” With a bit of a nod, Bluestreak slowly sets Sunstreaker down, “Why else are you worried?” Glancing back, Sunstreaker stared at Bluestreak, “Cause he’s the only one who can actually lead us, keep us alive, and on mission.” He pauses for a moment, glancing towards the other room, “If he’s not okay and we fail, then I’ll have doomed my own brother to death.” Sideswipe might have made sure Sunstreaker got a place in the pilot program, but Sunstreaker got them on Arcturus One, “Oh.” Blue nodded and crouched to be at eye level with Sunny, “You’ll have to explain that to me at some point, I, I know organics age faster than we do. Sure, we die but not as quickly as organics.” Smiling sadly, Sunny turns back to the window, “I’m a young pilot Blue, I’ve got at least another twenty years in me.” And that made Bluestreak’s spark clench painfully.

—

Everyone was asleep when Hound returned, headache back to a painful degree that even the dimmed visor and diminished audio could no longer help. Mirage had been nice enough to help him back to the building but Hound had insisted on going up himself so as to not disturb the others. The door was even painfully loud when he went in.

The living room was empty, the door to the bedroom shut and the door to their makeshift garden also closed, meaning everyone should be either in bed or at least asleep. Everyone had a preference for where their suit would sit through the night and Hound shuffled as quietly as he could over to his designated space, easing himself to the floor before turning off his assistance suit and visual feed, sighing as he removed the pieces attached to his implants. The areas of his implants throbbed painfully. It took a lot longer than normal to get out of the mobility suit, wincing at every pinched connection, Hound knew this was the signs of overuse but hadn’t expected them yet. Though to be fair with himself, he’d never piloted a mech this long and consistently, ever.

Easing himself out of the piloting chair, he doesn’t even bother with opening the suit, instead shuffling over to the cot he has for missions, pulling off the barrier clothes pilots wear with the assistance suit. It was sticking to his skin both from sweat and blood. It takes another long few minutes to pull on the clothes laid out on the cot before falling onto it face first, trying to relieve the stress on his implants, pressing his face into his pillow Hound moaned painfully. Headaches, body aches, implant irritation; were all the first stage of overuse symptoms and they’d only get worse until the body adapted to the amount of use. Adapt or die.

Hound was laying face first on the cot, hands resting over the implants on the back of his head and sighed slowly, it was dark and comfortably warm. His head was pounding and it felt like his body had been hit by a bus, he was stiff and just wanted to sleep. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to get to sleep.

—

Staying asleep however was not in the cards for him, as only a few hours later something was hitting the chest of his suit. Hound groaned and dragged his hands over his head before getting up, moving over to the suit release and opening the front of the suit. Squinting against the flood of light, Hound kept a hand on his head, “Morning,” his voice was gruff with sleep and Sunstreaker was glaring, “What the hell.” Sighing deeply, he comes out of the suit and nearly falls, “God, damnit..” he sighs and looks back to Sunstreaker, “Yes?” “Where were you? What the hell happened at that meeting? Prowl wouldn’t say anything.” Sighing deeply, Hound rubs his face, “There is a bar in Iacon that plays music from earth.” That quickly dropped Sunstreaker’s sour expression, shifting to one of shock, “What?” Nodding, Hound rubs at his implants next, his hands came away with dried blood and he scowled, “There is a bar somewhere in Iacon that picked up on radio signals from Earth, they put them through some sort of mechanism to clear up the audio.” Stepping around Sunstreaker, Hound starts towards the bathroom, rubbing his hands on his pants, “It’s from thirty years ago, but still.” Sunstreaker shakes his head a bit, “So it’s the best hits of the eighties?” Giving a so-so gesture, Hound shrugs, “Sort of.” He goes into the bathroom, the door closing and locking behind him.

Sunstreaker scowled again, “That doesn’t explain what happened at the meeting!” His fist collides with the door before he turns away, heading over to where Sideswipe was setting up breakfast, he glances up as his brother approaches, “That sounded like a fun conversation.” Huffing, Sunstreaker walked over and picked up one of the bowls, scowling down at the fluorescent contents, “What is this?” Sideswipe was heating the fluorescent noodle like substance and shrugs a bit, “Not a clue, but Jazz made it for me before the last mission and it’s pretty decent. Just kinda tastes like potatoes.” Nodding a bit, Sunstreaker sits and starts to eat, shaking his head a bit, “I can’t believe him, the guy looks half dead.” Sideswipe hums, “Let the old men be old men, come on Sunny, just relax about it.” Scowling, he starts to shake his head, “I can’t relax about it cause you don’t give a fuck.” Sideswipe was fast, but Sunstreaker was faster, just dodging the bowl full of hot food.

Hound came back out of the bathroom to chaos, which he didn’t appreciate. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe were on the floor, shoving at each others faces, Prowl was standing to the side with Jazz perched on his shoulder like a pirate, Breakdown was frowning down at the twins from the table and Bluestreak had appeared from god knows where. Rubbing his face for a moment, Hound takes a breath, “What the hell are the two of you doing!” Both twins shot up and pointed at each other, “he started it!” They shouted in chorus and Hound started towards them, “I don’t care who the hell started it, it’s over now. Get your helmets on, we aren’t leaving anyone out of this conversation.” His head went back to pounding, the shower having relieved it for hardly a moment. Glancing towards Breakdown, he nodded slightly as he too was giving signs of a headache. It took a moment for them all to get to their suits and get their helmets on, Hound wincing as it connects and Breakdown doing the same.

It was likely that his signs of overuse would be exacerbated with the concussion, Hound hoped silently that he’d follow the two weeks of rest order.

“So, do you all need those helmets to understand us?” Bluestreak bends down towards Sunstreaker, offering a hand carefully even as Sideswipe kicked at his wrist, “Don’t fucking touch him.” “Stop arguing, now!” Hound’s voice was loud but slightly strained, climbing up to the table. Everyone fell silent, Bluestreak helping Sunstreaker to the table, Prowl lowering Jazz to the surface and helping Breakdown up before Sideswipe, stepping back slightly to take a seat. Sighing, Hound rubbed his face a bit, swearing, “Fuck, my head is killing me and your arguing is not helping.” Everyone stayed quiet as he slowly sat down, “Firstly, as I briefly mentioned to Sunstreaker earlier this morning. Yesterday, Mirage saw that I was struggling with a migraine and brought me somewhere quiet and dark to rest for a little while. After that, I found out that the specific bar he took me to clears up intergalactic radio waves for entertainment.” he sighs a bit, smiling some, “They were playing music from Earth.” The reaction all happened at the same time, Jazz shouted, Sunstreaker grins, Sideswipe practically jumped for joy and Breakdown smiled, “From when?” Breakdown’s voice was quiet but distinct, “From about thirty years ago, they were playing a radio station out of Los Angeles.” Sunstreaker paused and nodded slowly, “We really are thirty lightyears from home.” There was a weight that settled over them, Jazz nodded slowly, “But we're alive.”

Hound nodded, adjusting his visor for a second, “We are and were out here for a reason, so that does bring up what was discussed in my meeting with command yesterday.” Jazz shifted a bit, “Hound, are you sure now is the best time to discuss this?” Nodding a bit, he pushes off the ground, “You all deserve to know what plans have been made.” Sunstreaker reaches out and holds his arm a bit, “It can wait till after you’ve eaten and taken something for your headache.” Shaking his head, Hound holds up a hand, “We’ve all got new assignments, separate from each other.” The silence would have been welcoming were it not so compressing, “What?” Sideswipe was slack-jawed, “The hell do you mean?” “I mean, we all are getting new assignments with different commanders for our safety and for the sake of Cybertron.” Sighing slowly, Sunstreaker let go of Hound, “Is this the cause of the overuse or cause of me being caught?” Hound shook his head, “It’s neither, we need to be at our best and the five of us fighting together is not it.” “That’s such bullshit, you’re having us separated because of Sunny.” Sideswipe moves over and shoves Hound, who shoves his back, “This isn’t about that! This is about keeping all of us alive and from killing each other, damnit!” Hound almost tore off his helmet just to throw it.

Instead he kicked one of their empty bowls across the room before turning on Sideswipe, “We aren’t made for following one pilot's orders and I sure as hell wasn’t made to be a commander 24/7, yet that is where we were currently standing.” He spreads his arms wide, “It’s only for three months, to see which works better. Sides, you and Sunny won’t be far from each other, your commanders are deployed together.” He holds up a hand, turning, “Jazz, you will be returning to your previous post under Prowl, it was recommended.” Jazz glanced back to Prowl with a smirk, “I’m sure it was.” Hound’s face almost burned, that look was certainly more than just a friendly one before he turned to Breakdown, “You’re still on rest for two weeks, but once that’s done, you will be under Megatron’s command with me, technically but we won’t be stationed together.” The twins were both glaring and Breakdown nodded a bit, Jazz almost looked lost in thought, “It’s only three months. If this doesn’t work out then we return to what we’ve been doing.” Sideswipe scoffs, “Oh yeah, like that’s been so great. Bluestreak trying to kill Sunny, you suffering from overuse, and Breakdown down and out with a concussion. Face it, you're in over your head.” Hound looked at him, clenching his jaw before looking at Sunstreaker, “You will be working under Ironhide with Bluestreak and a few people from the Primesgaurd. I hope while you’re there you learn to be more intelligent than your brother.” Sunstreaker winced as Sideswipe turned to gawk at Hound and started towards him, “Hound,” “Sideswipe, you’ll be working under Elita-One, it’s about time you came to understand the chain of command cause this shit ain’t cute.” He steps forward, pointing at him, “If this doesn’t cool your head, then you’ll be grounded and your mech will join the Odyssey in storage. Am I clear?” Sides mouth open and closed silent before Hound nodded and turned away, heading for the ladder, “I am going to take the rest of the day off to get rest, I suggest you all do the same, overuse is coming for us all and it’s coming fast.” He slides down the ladder easily.

—

“What the hell did I do to deserve that?” Sideswipe was pouting, scowling towards Hound’s mech which had been closed off for hours now. Jazz had left to go into Iacon with Bluestreak and Prowl, Breakdown had returned to rest as well, leaving the twins sat together on the window sill, staring out at the shining city, “I don’t know Sides, what could you have done to deserve that? Be serious, you shoved and insulted our commander.” Sunstreaker sighed, eating a protein bar and frowning down at it, “Of course he’s not going to put a lot of trust into you now.” Sideswipe scoffed and went back to repainting his assistance suit, “Who asked you?” Sunstreaker gave him a look and leaned back, “I don’t know and honestly, you’re being a bit of a dick right now.” He moves over and starts down the ladder, “I’m going to get some rest, I’d suggest you do the same. It helps with the side effects of overuse.” “I’m not suffering from overuse. I’m not the old man.” Sunstreaker stared at Sideswipe, at his twin, “Sides, we all are showing symptoms, you might want to check your implants, your bleeding again.” His feet hit the floor and he starts walking towards the bedroom, “That and being a bigger asshole than after the Bermuda mission.” “Fuck you.” Shrugging slightly, Sunstreaker went into the bedroom to get some rest.

Sideswipe reached up and touched at his implants, which were sticky with fresh blood and he sighed deeply, heightening irritability and aggression, one of the many stages of overuse. It really was coming for them all and now they’d be spread thin at best, separated from each other. Sideswipe through the sealed paint can across the room. He needed a drink but the first batch wouldn’t be ready for ages. He swore and laid back, staring out at Iacon.

———

A/N

Wow, that took a while for me to actually be able to sit down and write this. I probably won’t post another part till the New Year but we will see.

I want to thank you all for all your support and love, it has meant a lot to me. I can’t believe that we’re 20 parts into this crazy journey and it’s only just starting.

Tags!

@lunarlei68 @whirlywhirlygig @loop-hole-319 @pixillandjester @alek-the-witch @not-a-moose-in-disguise @goddessofwind8water @neurologicalglitch @dersereblogger @pixel-transformers @mrcrayonofdoom @wireplaces @twilightfreefaller @original-blog-name-2 @devilangel657 @robbin-u @childofprimus @miniartistme @starwold @tea-enthusiasm @valeexpris606 @celticdoggo @bird599 @agentsquirrelsgotrobots @aquaioart @dimencreasatlas @thatwandercat @artdagz @seisha974 @starscreamloverfr @halenhusky309 @leethepiper @cat-cassette @blue-wrens @sirassban @astridkolch @cosmique-oddity @garbageenthusiast @osqindaxend @xervias @azulabutterfly @fryseem @spring-mc

And once again thank you to @keferon for this amazing AU! 💜

#transformers #tf mecha universe #mech pilot jazz au #the arcturus missions #maccadam #hound #breakdown #sunstreaker #sideswipe #prowl #jazz #bluestreak

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williamemmersonusa · 28 days ago

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William Emmerson: Designer, Sculptor, and Innovator

William Emmerson is a British designer and sculptor based in Los Angeles, renowned for blending vintage and modern styles through innovative technology. Since founding his company, Emmerson Troop, in 1997, he has crafted custom furniture design and interior designs that exude warmth and practicality, catering to both commercial and residential clients. His studio is located at 10660 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90024.

For inquiries about William Emmerson, you can visit:

#industrial designer #interior designers in los angeles #california interior designers #santa monica custom furniture and interior design #hospitality interior design firms los angeles #custom industrial design services in los angeles

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vintagehomecollection · 7 months ago

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The Los Angeles House: Decoration and Design in America's 20th-Century City, 1995

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Brian Merchant’s “Blood In the Machine”

Tomorrow (September 27), I'll be at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles with Brian Merchant for a joint launch for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine. On October 2, I'll be in Boise to host an event with VE Schwab.

In Blood In the Machine, Brian Merchant delivers the definitive history of the Luddites, and the clearest analysis of the automator's playbook, where "entrepreneurs'" lawless extraction from workers is called "innovation" and "inevitable":

https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/

History is written by the winners, and so you probably think of the Luddites as brainless, terrified, thick-fingered vandals who smashed machines and burned factories because they didn't understand them. Today, "Luddite" is a slur that means "technophobe" – but that's neither fair, nor accurate.

Luddism has been steadily creeping into pro-labor technological criticism, as workers and technology critics reclaim the term and its history, which is a rich and powerful tale of greed versus solidarity, slavery versus freedom.

The true tale of the Luddites starts with workers demanding that the laws be upheld. When factory owners began to buy automation systems for textile production, they did so in violation of laws that required collaboration with existing craft guilds – laws designed to ensure that automation was phased in gradually, with accommodations for displaced workers. These laws also protected the public, with the guilds evaluating the quality of cloth produced on the machine, acting as a proxy for buyers who might otherwise be tricked into buying inferior goods.

Factory owners flouted these laws. Though the machines made cloth that was less durable and of inferior weave, they sold it to consumers as though it were as good as the guild-made textiles. Factory owners made quiet deals with orphanages to send them very young children who were enslaved to work in their factories, where they were routinely maimed and killed by the new machines. Children who balked at the long hours or attempted escape were viciously beaten (the memoir of one former child slave became a bestseller and inspired Oliver Twist).

The craft guilds begged Parliament to act. They sent delegations, wrote petitions, even got Members of Parliament to draft legislation ordering enforcement of existing laws. Instead, Parliament passed laws criminalizing labor organizing.

The stakes were high. Economic malaise and war had driven up the price of life's essentials. Workers displaced by illegal machines faced starvation – as did their children. Communities were shattered. Workers who had apprenticed for years found themselves graduating into a market that had no jobs for them.

This is the context in which the Luddite uprisings began. Secret cells of workers, working with discipline and tight organization, warned factory owners to uphold the law. They sent letters and posted handbills in which they styled themselves as the army of "King Ludd" or "General Ludd" – Ned Ludd being a mythical figure who had fought back against an abusive boss.

When factory owners ignored these warnings, the Luddites smashed their machines, breaking into factories or intercepting machines en route from the blacksmith shops where they'd been created. They won key victories, with many factory owners backing off from automation plans, but the owners were deep-pocketed and determined.

The ruling Tories had no sympathy for the workers and no interest in upholding the law or punishing the factory owners for violating it. Instead, they dispatched troops to the factory towns, escalating the use of force until England's industrial centers were occupied by literal armies of soldiers. Soldiers who balked at turning their guns on Luddites were publicly flogged to death.

I got very interested in the Luddites in late 2021, when it became clear that everything I thought I knew about the Luddites was wrong. The Luddites weren't anti-technology – rather, they were doing the same thing a science fiction writer does: asking not just what a new technology does, but also who it does it for and who it does it to:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

Unsurprisingly, ever since I started publishing on this subject, I've run into people who have no sympathy for the Luddite cause and who slide into my replies to replicate the 19th Century automation debate. One such person accused the Luddites of using "state violence" to suppress progress.

You couldn't ask for a more perfect example of how the history of the Luddites has been forgotten and replaced with a deliberately misleading account. The "state violence" of the Luddite uprising was entirely on one side. Parliament, under the lackadaisical leadership of "Mad King George," imposed the death penalty on the Luddites. It wasn't just machine-breaking that became a capital crime – "oath taking" (swearing loyalty to the Luddites) also carried the death penalties.

As the Luddites fought on against increasingly well-armed factory owners (one owner bought a cannon to use on workers who threatened his machines), they were subjected to spectacular acts of true state violence. Occupying soldiers rounded up Luddites and suspected Luddites and staged public mass executions, hanging them by the dozen, creating scores widows and fatherless children.

The sf writer Steven Brust says that the test to tell whether someone is on the right or the left is simple: ask whether property rights are more important than human rights. If the person says "property rights are human rights," they are on the right.

The state response to the Luddites crisply illustrates this distinction. The Luddites wanted an orderly and lawful transition to automation, one that brought workers along and created shared prosperity and quality goods. The craft guilds took pride in their products, and saw themselves as guardians of their industry. They were accustomed to enjoying a high degree of bargaining power and autonomy, working from small craft workshops in their homes, which allowed them to set their own work pace, eat with their families, and enjoy modest amounts of leisure.

The factory owners' cause wasn't just increased production – it was increased power. They wanted a workforce that would dance to their tune, work longer hours for less pay. They wanted unilateral control over which products they made and what corners they cut in making those products. They wanted to enrich themselves, even if that meant that thousands starved and their factory floors ran red with the blood of dismembered children.

The Luddites destroyed machines. The factory owners killed Luddites, shooting them at the factory gates, or rounding them up for mass executions. Parliament deputized owners to act as extensions of law enforcement, allowing them to drag suspected Luddites to their own private cells for questioning.

The Luddites viewed property rights as just one instrument for achieving human rights – freedom from hunger and cold – and when property rights conflicted with human rights, they didn't hesitate to smash the machines. For them, human rights trumped property rights.

Their bosses – and their bosses' modern defenders – saw the demands to uphold the laws on automation as demands to bring "state violence" to bear on the wholly private matter of how a rich man should organize his business. On the other hand, literal killing – both on the factory floor and at the gallows – was not "state violence" but rather, a defense of the most important of all the human rights: the rights of property owners.

19th century textile factories were the original Big Tech, and the rhetoric of the factory owners echoes down the ages. When tech barons like Peter Thiel say that "freedom is incompatible with democracy," he means that letting people who work for a living vote will eventually lead to limitations on people who own things for a living, like him.

Then, as now, resistance to Big Tech enjoyed widespread support. The Luddites couldn't have organized in their thousands if their neighbors didn't have their backs. Shelley and Byron wrote widely reproduced paeans to worker uprisings (Byron also defended the Luddites in the House of Lords). The Brontes wrote Luddite novels. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was a Luddite novel, in which the monster was a sensitive, intelligent creature who merely demanded a say in the technology that created him.

The erasure of the true history of the Luddites was a deliberate act. Despite the popular and elite support the Luddites enjoyed, the owners and their allies in Parliament were able to crush the uprising, using mass murder and imprisonment to force workers to accept immiseration.

The entire supply chain of the textile revolution was soaked in blood. Merchant devotes multiple chapters to the lives of African slaves in America who produced the cotton that the machines in England wove into cloth. Then – as now – automation served to obscure the violence latent in production of finished goods.

But, as Merchant writes, the Luddites didn't lose outright. Historians who study the uprisings record that the places where the Luddites fought most fiercely were the places where automation came most slowly and workers enjoyed the longest shared prosperity.

The motto of Magpie Killjoy's seminal Steampunk Magazine was: "Love the machine, hate the factory." The workers of the Luddite uprising were skilled technologists themselves.

They performed highly technical tasks to produce extremely high-quality goods. They served in craft workshops and controlled their own time.

The factory increased production, but at the cost of autonomy. Factories and their progeny, like assembly lines, made it possible to make more goods (even goods that eventually rose the quality of the craft goods they replaced), but at the cost of human autonomy. Taylorism and other efficiency cults ended up scripting the motions of workers down to the fingertips, and workers were and are subject to increasing surveillance and discipline from their bosses if they deviate. Take too many pee breaks at the Amazon warehouse and you will be marked down for "time off-task."

Steampunk is a dream of craft production at factory scale: in steampunk fantasies, the worker is a solitary genius who can produce high-tech finished goods in their own laboratory. Steampunk has no "dark, satanic mills," no blood in the factory. It's no coincidence that steampunk gained popularity at the same time as the maker movement, in which individual workers use form digital communities. Makers networked together to provide advice and support in craft projects that turn out the kind of technologically sophisticated goods that we associate with vast, heavily-capitalized assembly lines.

But workers are losing autonomy, not gaining it. The steampunk dream is of a world where we get the benefits of factory production with the life of a craft producer. The gig economy has delivered its opposite: craft workers – Uber drivers, casualized doctors and dog-walkers – who are as surveilled and controlled as factory workers.

Gig workers are dispatched by apps, their faces closely studied by cameras for unauthorized eye-movements, their pay changed from moment to moment by an algorithm that docks them for any infraction. They are "reverse centaurs": workers fused to machines where the machine provides the intelligence and the human does its bidding:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/17/reverse-centaur/#reverse-centaur

Craft workers in home workshops are told that they're their own bosses, but in reality they are constantly monitored by bossware that watches out of their computers' cameras and listens through its mic. They have to pay for the privilege of working for their bosses, and pay to quit. If their children make so much as a peep, they can lose their jobs. They don't work from home – they live at work:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/22/paperback-writer/#toothless

Merchant is a master storyteller and a dedicated researcher. The story he weaves in Blood In the Machine is as gripping as any Propublica deep-dive into the miserable working conditions of today's gig economy. Drawing on primary sources and scholarship, Blood is a kind of Nomadland for Luddites.

Today, Merchant is the technology critic for the LA Times. The final chapters of Blood brings the Luddites into the present day, finding parallels in the labor organizing of the Amazon warehouse workers led by Chris Smalls. The liberal reformers who offered patronizing support to the Luddites – but didn't imagine that they could be masters of their own destiny – are echoed in the rhetoric of Andrew Yang.

And of course, the factory owners' rhetoric is easily transposed to the modern tech baron. Then, as now, we're told that all automation is "progress," that regulatory evasion (Uber's unlicensed taxis, Airbnb's unlicensed hotel rooms, Ring's unregulated surveillance, Tesla's unregulated autopilot) is "innovation." Most of all, we're told that every one of these innovations must exist, that there is no way to stop it, because technology is an autonomous force that is independent of human agency. "There is no alternative" – the rallying cry of Margaret Thatcher – has become our inevitablist catechism.

Squeezing the workers' wages conditions and weakening workers' bargaining power isn't "innovation." It's an old, old story, as old as the factory owners who replaced skilled workers with terrified orphans, sending out for more when a child fell into a machine. Then, as now, this was called "job creation."

Then, as now, there was no way to progress as a worker: no matter how skilled and diligent an Uber driver is, they can't buy their medallion and truly become their own boss, getting a say in their working conditions. They certainly can't hope to rise from a blue-collar job on the streets to a white-collar job in the Uber offices.

Then, as now, a worker was hired by the day, not by the year, and might find themselves with no work the next day, depending on the whim of a factory owner or an algorithm.

As Merchant writes: robots aren't coming for your job; bosses are. The dream of a "dark factory," a "fully automated" Tesla production line, is the dream of a boss who doesn't have to answer to workers, who can press a button and manifest their will, without negotiating with mere workers. The point isn't just to reduce the wage-bill for a finished good – it's to reduce the "friction" of having to care about others and take their needs into account.

Luddites are not – and have never been – anti-technology. Rather, they are pro-human, and see production as a means to an end: broadly shared prosperity. The automation project says it's about replacing humans with machines, but over and over again – in machine learning, in "contactless" delivery, in on-demand workforces – the goal is to turn humans into machines.

There is blood in the machine, Merchant tells us, whether its humans being torn apart by a machine, or humans being transformed into machines.

Brian and I are having a joint book-launch tomorrow night (Sept 27) at Chevalier's Books in Los Angeles for my new book The Internet Con and his new book, Blood in the Machine:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-internet-con-by-cory-doctorow-blood-in-the-machine-by-brian-merchant-tickets-696349940417

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/26/enochs-hammer/#thats-fronkonsteen

#pluralistic #books #reviews #brian merchant #luddism #automation #history #gift guide #steampunk #makers #tina #inevitablism #reverse centaurs #amazon #arise

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thelarriefics · 7 months ago

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FAMOUS/FAMOUS FIC REC, Part II: Below you'll find more fics where both Harry and Louis are famous. (Part I)

📖 Darling, so it goes by @disgruntledkittenface (195k)

Harry Styles is a world-famous actor at the height of his career but a personal low point when he meets His Serene Highness Prince Louis of Monaco by chance. He doesn’t think they’ll ever see each other again, but after striking up a correspondence, it turns out they have more in common than he thought. Then they start to fall for each other. Louis is different from anyone Harry has dated before and their relationship moves fast as Harry realizes he’s ready for a change. Soon Harry finds himself adapting to an entirely new life, in a country where he doesn’t know the rules, the customs, even the language. Harry is used to people underestimating him, and he’s more determined than ever to prove them wrong. He just needs Louis to meet him halfway. Grace Kelly AU.

📖 Glass Closets and Greenhouses by @tiredtiredtz (60k)

Charlton Athletic defender Louis Tomlinson and worldwide sex symbol Harry Styles are rumoured to be hooking up after a viral video filmed at Harry’s Wembley show was posted online by Tommo’s twin sisters. Sources close to the pair tell us the couple have been dating for a while, with rumours of house hunting, marriage and even kids on the cards! Styles, 29, is as well known for his whirlwind love life as his chart topping music. Most recently linked to British fashion designer Alex Millet-Sloan, Harry has stayed tight-lipped on rumours of any romantic rendezvous between himself and footballer Tomlinson, 31, yet fans online are convinced that all evidence points to #Tomlinstyles being the real deal.

📖 Take on Me by @haztobegood (60k)

Actor Harry Styles is preparing for his next leading role as Antonius the Gladiator with the help of Louis Tomlinson, Hollywood’s top stunt coordinator. When the demands of Harry’s career get in the way of their training, the pair head to a secluded cabin to complete their training. Then, Louis begins to share senses with Harry. What is causing this mysterious connection and can Louis and Harry figure out how to stop it before they leave the cabin?

📖 We Are World Class by @bluegreen28fics (50k)

In the midst of Louis' divorce, Harry and Louis have to keep their relationship a secret. When Harry falls pregnant, they find that this is not as easy as one might think. or, the footballer!Louis & actor!Harry AU where everyone is way too interested in their sex life.

📖 My Hands at Risk, I Fold by @yourgorgeouscolors28 (43k)

"Sometimes, when Louis first wakes up, he thinks he’s back in the hospital, and panic hits him." Or, Harry is a famous popstar, Louis is a famous football player and one injury changes everything.

📖 I Do by @brightgolden (40k)

After moving to Los Angeles when he was just eighteen years old with the hope to be a household name in Hollywood, Harry Styles finally earns himself an Oscar several years down the road. But his new found fame is rattled when he bumps into a certain Louis Tomlinson backstage after four long years. It doesn’t take beyond one coincidence for his past to catch up to him and Harry finds himself tirelessly trying to replace what he had lost.

📖 Rooms on Fire by @softfonds (34k)

Ten years ago, Louis helping Harry through a heat was the start of a romance that ended in heartbreak. Now, Harry's marriage is over thanks to his husband's very public infidelity, and Louis is fresh off a Golden Globe win. The last thing they both expect is to be cast in the same movie.

📖 Give It To Someone Special by @elsi-bee (34k)

At the behest of his agent, former child actor Louis Tomlinson signs on to star in the HeartStamp channel’s first Christmas movie featuring a same-sex love story. It may be cheesy, but at least it’s a path to get back into the industry. Now if only his co-star would stop being so critical, and confusing, and overwhelmingly distracting.

📖 My Kind of Rain by @lululawrence (30k)

Tim McGraw/Faith Hill AU where Louis is Tim, Harry is Faith, and just when Louis thinks he is going to get some rest, his entire world turns upside down thanks to the man with curly hair and the voice that seems to sing right to Louis' heart.

📖 Flowers for your crown by @dreaminrainbows (14k)

Harry has a little secret that is not really a secret and Louis is oblivious.

📖 The way you move for me baby (lights me up like nobody else) by @thechavier (12k)

"You know I wrote a song back in the day called little black dress?" He didn't imagine the little spark in his eyes, nor the pleased smirk on his lips, nor the tongue peeking out to wet them. "Why do you think I chose it for tonight?"

📖 Maybe I Miss You by @chaotic-bells (3k)

Zayn does not cope well with losing Louis' friendship.

#masterpost #famous/famous fics

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