#stranded copper wire

[ashensilver]

Various images of what I call "wrestling an octopus" and the associated results.

[ama-metal]

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

What’s a “public internet?”

I'm in the home stretch of my 24-city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in LONDON (July 1) with TRASHFUTURE'S RILEY QUINN and then a big finish in MANCHESTER on July 2.

The "Eurostack" is a (long overdue) project to publicly fund a European "stack" of technology that is independent from American Big Tech (as well as other powers' technology that has less hold in Europe, such as Chinese and Russian tech):

https://www.euro-stack.info/

But "technological soveriegnty" is a slippery and easily abused concept. Policies like "national firewalls" and "data localization" (where data on a country's population need to be kept on onshore servers) can be a means to different ends. Data localization is important if you want to keep an American company from funneling every digital fact about everyone in your country to the NSA. But it's also a way to make sure that your secret police can lay hands on population-scale data about anyone they might want to kidnap and torture:

https://doctorow.medium.com/theyre-still-trying-to-ban-cryptography-33aa668dc602

At its worst, "technological sovereignty" is a path to a shattered internet with a million dysfunctional borders that serve as checkpoints where thuggish customs inspectors can stop you from availing yourself of privacy-preserving technology and prevent you from communicating with exiled dissidents and diasporas.

But at its best, "technological sovereignty" is a way to create world-girding technology that can act as an impartial substrate on which all manner of domestic and international activities can play out, from a group of friends organizing a games night, to scientists organizing a symposium, to international volunteer corps organizing aid after a flood.

In other words, "technological sovereignty" can be a way to create a public internet that the whole public controls – not just governments, but also people, individuals who can exercise their own technological self-determination, controlling crucial aspects of their own technology usage, like "who will see this thing I'm saying?" and "whose communications will I see, and which ones can I block?"

A "public internet" isn't the same thing as "an internet that is operated by your government," but you can't get a public internet without government involvement, including funding, regulation, oversight and direct contributions.

Here's an example of different ways that governments can involve themselves in the management of one part of the internet, and the different ways in which this will create more or less "public" internet services: fiber optic lines.

Fiber is the platinum standard for internet service delivery. Nothing else comes even close to it. A plastic tube under the road that is stuffed with fiber optic strands can deliver billions of times more data than copper wires or any form of wireless, including satellite constellations like Starlink:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/30/fight-for-44/#slowpokes

(Starlink is the most antifuturistic technology imaginable – a vision of a global internet that gets slower and less reliable as more people sign up for it. It makes the dotcom joke of "we lose money on every sale but make it up in volume" look positively bankable.)

The private sector cannot deliver fiber. There's no economical way for a private entity to secure the rights of way to tear up every street in every city, to run wires into every basement or roof, to put poles on every street corner. Same goes for getting the rights of way to string fiber between city limits across unincorporated county land, or across the long hauls that cross national and provincial or state borders.

Fiber itself is cheap like borscht – it's literally made out of sand – but clearing the thicket of property rights and political boundaries needed to get wire everywhere is a feat that can only be accomplished through government intervention.

Fiber's opponents rarely acknowledge this. They claim, instead, that the physical act of stringing wires through space is somehow transcendentally hard, despite the fact that we've been doing this with phone lines and power cables for more than a century, through the busiest, densest cities and across the loneliest stretches of farmland. Wiring up a country is not the lost art of a fallen civilization, like building pyramids without power-tools or embalming pharoahs. It's something that even the poorest counties in America can manage, bringing fiber across forbidden mountain passes on the back of a mule named "Ole Bub":

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

When governments apply themselves to fiber provision, you get fiber. Don't take my word for it – ask Utah, a bastion of conservative, small-government orthodoxy, where 21 cities now have blazing fast 10gb internet service thanks to a public initiative called (appropriately enough) "Utopia":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/16/symmetrical-10gb-for-119/#utopia

So government have to be involved in fiber, but how should they involve themselves in it? One model – the worst one – is for the government to intervene on behalf of a single company, creating the rights of way for that company to lay fiber in the ground or string it from poles. The company then owns the network, even though the fiber and the poles were the cheapest part of the system, worth an unmeasurably infinitesimal fraction of the value of all those rights of way.

In the worst of the worst, the company that owns this network can do anything they want with its fiber. They can deny coverage to customers, or charge thousands of dollars to connect each new homes to the system. They can gouge on monthly costs, starve their customer service departments or replace them with mindless AI chatbots. They can skimp on maintenance and keep you waiting for days or weeks when your internet goes out. They can lard your bill with junk fees, or force you to accept pointless services like landlines and cable TV as a condition of getting the internet.

They can also play favorites with local businesses: maybe they give great service to every Domino's pizza place at knock-down rates, and make up for it by charging extra to independent pizza parlors that want to accept internet orders and stream big sports matches on the TV over the bar.

They can violate Net Neutrality, slowing down your connection to sites unless their owners agree to pay bribes for "premium carriage." They can censor your internet any way they see fit. Remember, corporations – unlike governments – are not bound by the First Amendment, which means that when a corporation is your ISP, they can censor anything they feel like:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/15/useful-idiotsuseful-idiots/#unrequited-love

Governments can improve on this situation by regulating a monopoly fiber company. They can require the company to assume a "universal service" mandate, meaning they must connect any home or business that wants it at a set rate. Governments can ban junk fees, set minimum standards for customer service and repair turnarounds, and demand neutral carriage. All of this can improve things, though its a lot of work to administer, and the city government may lack the resources and technical expertise to investigate every claim of corporate malfeasance, and to perform the technical analysis to evaluate corporate excuses for slow connections and bungled repairs.

That's the worst model: governments clear the way for a private monopolist to set up your internet, offering them a literally priceless subsidy in the form of rights of way, and then, maybe, try to keep them honest.

Here's the other extreme: the government puts in the fiber itself, running conduit under all the streets (either with its own crews or with contract crews) and threading a fiber optic through a wall of your choice, terminating it with a box you can plug your wifi router into. The government builds a data-center with all the necessary switches for providing service to you and your neighbors, and hires people to offer you internet service at a reasonable price and with reasonable service guarantees.

This is a pretty good model! Over 750 towns and cities – mostly conservative towns in red states – have this model, and they're almost the only people in America who consistently describe themselves as happy with their internet service:

https://ilsr.org/articles/municipal-broadband-skyrocket-as-alternative-to-private-models/

(They are joined in their satisfaction by a smattering of towns served by companies like Ting, who bought out local cable companies and used their rights of way to bring fiber to households.)

This is a model that works very well, but can fail very badly. Municipal governments can be pretty darned kooky, as five years of MAGA takeovers of school boards, library boards and town councils have shown, to say nothing of wildly corrupt big-city monsters like Eric Adams (ten quintillion congratulations to Zohran Mamdani!). If there's one thing I've learned from the brilliant No Gods No Mayors podcast, it's that mayors are the weirdest people alive:

https://www.patreon.com/collection/869728?view=condensed

Remember: Sarah Palin got her start in politics as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Do you want to have to rely on Sarah Palin for your internet service?

https://www.patreon.com/posts/119567308?collection=869728

How about Rob Ford? Do you want the crack mayor answering your tech support calls? I didn't think so:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/rob-ford-part-1-111985831

But that's OK! A public fiber network doesn't have to be one in which the government is your only choice for ISP. In addition to laying fiber and building a data-center and operating a municipal ISP, governments can also do something called "essential facilities sharing":

https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Orders/1999/fcc99238.pdf

Governments all over the world did this in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and some do it still. Under an essential facilities system, the big phone company (BT in the UK, Bell in Canada, AT&T and the Baby Bells in the USA) were required to rent space to their competitors in their data centers. Anyone who wants to set up an ISP can install their own switching gear at a telephone company central office and provide service to any business or household in the country.

If the government lays fiber in your town, they can both operate a municipal fiber ISP and allow anyone else to set up their own ISP, renting them shelf-space at the data-center. That means that the town college can offer internet to all its faculty and students (not just the ones who live in campus housing), and your co-op can offer internet service to its members. Small businesses can offer specialized internet, and so can informal groups of friends. So can big companies. In this model, everyone is guaranteed both the right to get internet access and the right to provide internet access. It's a great system, and it means that when Mayor Sarah Palin decides to cut off your internet, you don't need to sue the city – you can just sign up with someone else, over the same fiber lines.

That's where essential facilities sharing starts, but that's not where it needs to stop. When the government puts conduit (plastic tubes) in the ground for fiber, they can leave space for more fiber to fished through, and rent space in the conduit itself. That means that an ISP that wants to set up its own data center can run physically separate lines to its subscribers. It means that a university can do a point-to-point connection between a remote scientific instrument like a radio telescope and the campus data-center. A business can run its own lines between branch offices, and a movie studio can run dedicated lines from remote sound-stages to the edit suites at its main facility.

This is a truly public internet service – one where there is a publicly owned ISP, but also where public infrastructure allows for lots of different kinds of entities to provide internet access. It's insulated from the risks of getting your tech support from city hall, but it also allows good local governments to provide best-in-class service to everyone in town, something that local governments have a pretty great track record with.

The Eurostack project isn't necessarily about fiber, though. Right now, Europeans are thinking about technological sovereignty through the lens of software and services. That's fair enough, though it does require some rethinking of the global fiber system, which has been designed so that the US government can spy on and disconnect every other country in the world:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/10/weaponized-interdependence/#the-other-swifties

Just as with the example of fiber, there are a lot of ways the EU and member states could achieve "technological sovereignty." They could just procure data-centers, server software, and the operation of social media, cloud hosting, mobile OSes, office software, and other components of Europeans' digital lives from the private sector – sort of like asking a commercial operator to run your town's internet service.

The EU has pretty advanced procurement rules, designed to allow European governments to buy from the private sector while minimizing corruption and kickbacks. For example, there's a rule that the lowest priced bid that conforms to all standards needs to win the contract. This sounds good (and it is, in many cases) but it's how Newag keeps selling trains in Poland, even after they were caught boobytrapping their trains so they would immobilize themselves if the operator took them for independent maintanance:

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

The EU doesn't have to use public-private partnerships to build the Eurostack. They could do it all themselves. The EU and/or member states could operate public data centers. They could develop their own social media platforms, mobile OSes, and apps. They could be the equivalent of the municipal ISP that offers fast fiber to everyone in town.

As with public monopoly ISPs, this is a system that works well, but fails badly. If you think Elon Musk is a shitty social media boss, wait'll you see the content moderation policies of Viktor Orban – or Emmanuel Macron:

https://jacobin.com/2025/06/france-solidarity-urgence-palestine-repression

Publicly owned data centers could be great, but also, remember that EU governments have never given up on their project of killing working encryption so that their security services can spy on everyone. Austria's doing it right now!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/austrian-government-agrees-plan-allow-150831232.html

Ever since Snowden, EU governments have talked a good line about the importance of digital privacy. Remember Angela Merkel's high dudgeon about how her girlhood in the GDR gave her a special horror of NSA surveillance?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24647268

Apparently, Merkel managed to get over her horror of mass surveillance and back total, unaccountable, continuous digital surveillance over all of Germany:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/06/24/germanys-new-surveillance-laws-raise-privacy-concerns

So there's good reasons to worry about having your data – and your apps – hosted in an EU cloud.

To create a European public internet, it's neither necessary nor desirable to have your digital life operated by the EU and its member states, nor by its private contractors. Instead, the EU could make Eurostack a provider of technological public goods.

For example, the EU could work to improve federated social media systems, like Mastodon and Bluesky. EU coders could contribute to the server and client software for both. They could participate in future versions of the standard. They could provide maintenance code in response to bug reports, and administer bug bounties. They could create tooling for server administrators, including moderation tools, both for Mastodon and for Bluesky, whose "composable moderation" system allows users to have the final say over their moderation choices. The EU could perform and/or fund labelling work to help with moderation.

The EU could also provide tooling to help server administrators stand up their own independent Mastodon and Bluesky servers. Bluesky needs a lot of work on this, still. Bluesky's CTO has got a critical piece of server infrastructure to run on a Raspberry Pi for a few euros per month:

https://justingarrison.com/blog/2024-12-02-run-a-bluesky-pds-from-home/

Previously, this required a whole data center and cost millions to operate, so this is great. But this now needs to be systematized, so that would-be Bluesky administrators can download a package and quickly replicate the feat.

Ultimately, the choice of Mastodon or Bluesky shouldn't matter all that much to Europeans. These standards can and should evolve to the point where everyone on Bluesky can talk to everyone on Mastodon and vice-versa, and where you can easily move your account from one server to another, or one service to another. The EU already oversees systems for account porting and roaming on mobile networks – they can contribute to the technical hurdles that need to be overcome to bring this to social media:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/14/fire-exits/#graceful-failure-modes

In addition to improving federated social media, the EU and its member states can and should host their own servers, both for their own official accounts and for public use. Giving the public a digital home is great, especially if anyone who chafes at the public system's rules can hop onto a server run by a co-op, a friend group, a small business or a giant corporation with just a couple clicks, without losing any of their data or connections.

This is essential facilities sharing for services. Combine it with public data centers and tooling for migrating servers from and to the public server to a private, or nonprofit, or co-op data-center, and you've got the equivalent of publicly available conduit, data-centers, and fiber.

In addition to providing code, services and hardware, the EU can continue to provide regulation to facilitate the public internet. They can expand the very limited interoperability mandates in the Digital Markets Act, forcing legacy social media companies like Meta and Twitter to stand up APIs so that when a European quits their service for new, federated media, they can stay in touch with the friends they left behind (think of it as Schengen for social media, with guaranteed free movement):

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

With the Digital Service Act, the EU has done a lot of work to protect Europeans from fraud, harassment and other online horribles. But a public internet also requires protections for service providers – safe harbors and carve outs that allow you to host your community's data and conversations without being dragged into controversies when your users get into flamewars with each other. If we make the people who run servers liable for their users' bad speech acts, then the only entities that will be able to afford the lawyers and compliance personnel will be giant American tech companies run by billionaires like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#230

A "public internet" isn't an internet that's run by the government: it's a system of publicly subsidized, publicly managed public goods that are designed to allow everyone to participate in both using and providing internet services. The Eurostack is a brilliant idea whose time arrived a decade ago. Digital sovereignty projects are among the most important responses to Trumpism, a necessary step to build an independent digital nervous system the rest of the world can use to treat the USA as damage and route around it. We can't afford to have "digital soveriegnty" be "national firewalls 2.0" – we need a public internet, not 200+ national internets.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/25/eurostack/#viktor-orbans-isp

[bloodchapell]

castle of sand — senku i. 17: visage of time

brief summary: all the things in the dark that light brings out

what to expect: slight (barely noticeable) deviance from canon, failed attempt of a kiss 💀

your sword's note: THIS WAS SO CUTE TO WRITE KILL ME NOW, all past and future parts + playlist of this series available on my mistresslist

"Ominous feeling in the environment, can't operate." You sat by the doors of the hut, resting your arms on the edge and looking outside. Senku took the hammer from his pocket and smacked you very softly and methodically with it, repeatedly, as if he was actually doing something. 

"Elaborate?"

"I have no elaborations." You sighed dramatically. "It's this feeling, like a hunch, but is based on nothing."

"Well some purple minion arrived from Tsukasa, that's ominous enough." 

"This is not about Gen." You interrupted immediately. "I am aware of Gen's ambiguity but I get him like a cup of water, he is no danger for us, he will be on our side in due time. This feeling is uncalled for, hence." 

"Well sorry, I can't help." A shrug from Senku. 

The iron bar was ready, sitting idly in the hut. Senku had found Chrome's copper and had melted it into a wire, which wrapped around the iron, confusingly, seemingly pointless. The only thing needed was lighting, which seemed somewhat primitive and fanciful, so you were all waiting for a storm. Suika was sitting beside you, looking around the hut, she was singing children's songs which you had taught her, clapping around while doing nothing. Senku looked at her, following along in his mind the lyrics of the songs he had learned in kindergarten with you. 

"I am thinking of cutting my hair..." You mumbled taking the strands away from your face. 

"Why?" 

"It is too hot, it gets annoying." 

And so, Suika grabbed a sharp blade and sat behind you. Senku pretended to do something else, but observed closely. 

"All done!" Suika said, walking around you to see. 

"You look like a perfectly diagonally slashed pineapple from Fruit Ninja." Senku laughed at you, putting his hand in an angle. 

"You can always be a perfectly diagonally slashed pineapple." You smiled. "I don't care that much about my appearance, especially in this stone world, but do not insinuate that my haircut —which my child did— is bad."

"Wow, a death threat, how innovative." Senku rolled his eyes. "It is okay, if you ignore symmetry and conventions of our society, but indeed Suika did her best so it is actually not bad at all."

He grabbed your face, turning it around to examine it, shrugged and let it go, to go back to his chore.

"I am somewhat bored, this is the perfect afternoon for doing so many things that are actually nothing, maybe watch a long YouTube video, or karaoke, or changing up my hair only to realize I don't like it... there is not much entertainment in this world..."

"Right!?" Gen said from the stairs. "So what is the gossip in this world? Why were you the first revived?" He climbed into the house, you were still wary of him, but in a boring world he was welcomed.

"Thinking capability...?" You asked, looking back at Senku, he nodded. 

"I don't think there is anyone else that thinks as much as she does, aside from me, for sure. If the catalyst for reviving someone with sheer willpower and nitric acid is thinking, no one else came to mind. And it worked."

"That is so sweet!" Calculated but swift, Gen knew what he was saying. Senku looked at you, you looked at him, then both sets of eyes went to Gen, a grimace lacking emotion, judgmental even. 

"No." You punctuated and that was it. 

"Sooo, how did you two get to know each other?" Gen asked with a cat smile. 

"Why is this relevant?" You asked.

"I am bored too." Gen noted like it was a simple statement, but you could see the traces of evil behind his facial facade. 

"Piece of shit." Senku nodded with a bothered smile. "We have studied together since we started studying, lived in the same apartment complex, what else...? That is about it." 

"And where does that lead us now?" Gen asked. 

"Full-time roommates, associates, archenemies even." Senku explained with detail, completely sure.

"Seems flawed." Gen said thinking. "What about this unnamed thing?"

"I'll kindly ask you to quit." You mumbled. Gen and Suika looked at each other, Suika shrugged. 

Senku avoided thinking about it, at least in that moment when he was inventorying Chrome's rocks; he had thought about it, enough, and he would think about it too once night fell, there was no point in losing neurons over the same concepts: familiarity, survival, attraction, instinct. He did not want to admit that he was also plagued, just as plagued as Chrome, as Gen, probably as Suika who in her eternal wisdom held her silence about the topic, but he was. He was plagued when he would inevitably hold you tightly in his arms when sleeping, his face pressed against your chest or vice versa, when he would glance at you and just know that even if a deity came down from heaven and made you bald, he would still find you attractive, when he would wonder why you lacked ambition when it came to romance, that was a big one. 

Factually, Senku had spent his time before conciliating sleep the last nights wondering about it; yes, he was against relationships and he thought love was illogical despite being science, but it bothered him that you were not paying attention to it, he would have noticed if you were, he would have seen your eyes flutter away from his gaze if you were getting flustered with his presence, or he would have heard a very reconditioned ramble about your feelings as a metaphor, but he did not. From your side, nothing had changed since the acknowledgement, you held him as close as before, you treated him the same as before. He wondered, and wondered, and wondered, why you didn't care for reciprocation? Or why you were fine with things being like they were? He wanted to know, but he did not want to ask. 

A loud thud from the sky. 

The villagers were talking about hiding from the wrath of the heavens, you laughed, after all lighting could kill and they were simple minded people. There was something comforting about thunderstorms. For some reason your mind wandered away as you all walked towards a mountain as per Chrome's guidance to catch some lighting. It had been a year before petrification, when Senku still hated you —allegedly not—, despite that he still crashed at your place to use your telescope, it was 3am or so, and you were watching a meteor shower together, he rambled about Leonids and you rambled about the feeling of the sky falling upon you, and then the clouds obstructed the lens and the sky roared in thunders; your words diverted to talking about the storm, and oddly, probably because of the sleep deprivation, Senku stayed quiet and listened to you. 

When you came back to reality, the rain had ceased and you were at the top of the mountain, with newly acquired strong magnets. The walk back to the village was full of chatter, Senku explaining to Chrome what to do next, Ginro mocking Kinro for the loss of his gold spear, Kohaku threatening Gen, it felt nice, but in that moment you missed the simplicity of modern life, at least from that Leonids thunderstorm.

"Still like thunders as much as ever?" Senku elbowed you softly to get your attention, it took you a second to process, but you nodded. "Tell you after?" 

"M'kay." 

He wanted to talk, chat about something stupid only you could understand, probably something modern, maybe Gen could understand too but he was still in a gray trust area, but he was busy. 

Melting more copper for the discs took some extra exploitation that thankfully Gen and Gan'en took care of. Making the generator was oddly simple, Chrome flattened the copper with corundum, Kohaku and Suika polished the edges and you covered the wire with lacquer. 

"Aren't you allergic to lacquer?" You asked, holding Senku's face. "You are going to die... and with that utterly ridiculous appearance after all! Years of farming charm, for nothing!" 

"I won't die, my farmed charm will remain in my inventory."

The generator was probably one of the easiest projects completed, forgetting the hellish iron baking and the life-endangering lighting chasing, but alas, it was done. Gen tricked Ginro and Kinro into powering the generator by insinuating that electricity could make gold and silver spears. So while they practiced, Senku and Chrome ran off to make something off bamboo while Suika, Gen and you cooked the lunch that Kohaku brought. Lunch was boring and you took a nap with Suika on the floor for an hour or so. 

The big reveal happened when it got dark. Chrome and Senku climbed to the top of the hut. You stood watching beside Gen and Kohaku, with Suika in your arms so she could see better how the light turned on once the bamboo filament entered in contact with the wires. It was a dim light that barely illuminated the thickness of the dark, it was nothing compared to neon or led lights from the city that would blind everyone, but it was so bright, it was like a star of its own realm, a star you all had built from nothing, a star to defeat the horrors of darkness, a spectacle of the world you used to know. It engulfed everyone's attention, rightfully so, even Kinro and Ginro looked at it in awe as they kept spinning the generator, and for a while everyone was silent, admiring it. Senku looked back at you, a grin of pride in his face, of accomplishment, one you reciprocated back with watery eyes; his eyes then darted to Gen, like telling you to look at him, and you did, the mentalist in complete shock, or fascination, or both. 

Everyone diverted to their own minds after that. Chrome entered the hut, Kinro and Ginro rested, Suika jumped to talk to Kohaku about it, Gen sat by a tree. Senku stayed on top of the hut, and you sat by his side. 

"That was dazzling." 

"I thought of the Leonids thunderstorm earlier." Senku said it straightforwardly. 

"Well, a rather interesting coincidence, me too. Nice memory, right?" You smiled at each other, and the silence sat with you for a while. "The light."

"What about it?"

"It's like a visage of time. Sometimes I feel like it is impossible to truly bring back civilization... not saying at all that I doubt you, but it seems so complicated in my mind. In the old world, advancements were made from things that already existed, and progress was a gradual process; we are working with nothing... it feels like it is impossible to bring back everything despite the science being there... and of course, it would not be the same, Heraclitus said it."

"The old man did, 'No man steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he is not the same man.' You are right... scientifically speaking at least, the only constant in this universe is change." 

"Well, look at you." You smiled at him. "Quoting an old master." 

"Don't get it twisted." His grin held a softness unusual to it. Your eyes followed his face, dimly with the light of the stars and the bonfire. 

"I'm proud of you." You cheered. "Not for quoting Heraclitus —well maybe a little—, but for everything; we all contributed to this, but without you it would have been a lost cause from the beginning."

"I don't care for gratification."

"Don't get it twisted, I am not thanking you for anything." Your clarification bothered him, you were right after all. "You don't need to act all cool and heartless with me, accept my words or perish, I know you have a heart buried somewhere between those science facts and witty remarks."

"Excuse me?" He asked baffled. "Unlike some others, I prefer to stay smart." 

"I think I am my own way of smart." You shrugged, pushing him sideways with your shoulder. "I am not neglecting my emotions in prowess of being cool."

"Oh you are not? Then what is up with us?"

"Refer to 'in prowess of being cool' now." You giggled. 

"Then in prowess of what?"

"Never imagined you wondered about it." A shrug from you, the night breeze blew on your asymmetrical hair. "I am fine with this. I think I have good levels of self control. I don't need anything."

"Where is your ambition?" Senku shook you, without much force.

"I don't think I have something like what people call a crush, I don't need to go on a date or hold your hand, I simply love you, it's simplistic. Regardless, it is not like you care, so...?"

After making sure to look around a few times and see that everyone was focused on their own matters, Senku nodded, but evil Senku did not stay satisfied so he pressed his hand on top of yours and leaned in close to your face.

"My! What a lovely—" Before Gen could complete his purr of nonsense, you moved away from Senku so harshly that you lost balance and inevitably rolled down from the top of the hut, falling ungraciously to the ground. 

"I'll assume that the person who fell from the slide with about the same height as a kid when we were in pre-k is fine and alive..." Senku mumbled as if his heart was not about to go out of his chest, not only because you fell but because his double-triple checking missed Gen. 

"...Alive." You mumbled too. Suika and Kohaku ran to check on you, Kohaku lifting you from the ground and sitting you up very softly. "I always thought I had dreamt falling from the slide... turns out it was real... it doesn't compare to this unraveling, but it is unassociated with the fall itself."

"Ah! I see, I know why, dear." Gen smiled, a little concerned though. 

"Gen, come here." You signaled and he knelt down, so you whispered something only audible for him to his ear and he stood up and ran to hide behind Chrome. 

"Witness aggression program, I love coercion into silence." Senku praised as he sat by your side, checking you better than his double-triple checking of the area. "Well the fun is over Kingdom, reunion now in the headquarters... Gen stays out like the family dog during a stormy night for being an asshole."

"No fair." Gen pouted.

"Sorry, animal rights have not yet been invented." Senku shrugged and walked to the hut, holding your hand. "It's for stability goddamnit, my patient here is idiotic and fragile." Senku pointed at you. 

"God dam mint." Suika repeated after Senku. 

For maybe 20 minutes, Senku talked about Gen's ambiguous moral standing to Kohaku, Chrome and Suika, while you rested defeated, too done with everything to participate and honestly drifting into sleep. You closed your eyes and heard Chrome trying to convince Gen to join because science was bad, Gen denying, Kohaku intervening, another explanation on morals that Senku butchered and you could have done better... that until Kohaku heard a noise and everyone rushed outside. 

"What happened..." At the edge of the entrance of the hut you asked. 

"Our family dog was mugged and is now dead." Senku summarized. 

"Oh." 

"Never fucking mind he is alive, we don't have to worry about explaining to Suika that not all dogs go to heaven after all." Senku sighed, logically happy that Gen wasn't dead. 

"Oh, good."

Kohaku brought Gen to the hut, and after laying him down, you saw how beaten he was. Senku prepared some herbs and placed them around his wounds and that was about it. Since Gen was too weak to give his testimony, Suika decided to go to the village to investigate, you told her to be careful and so the night ended. 

Kohaku and Chrome stayed over, just to check up on Gen, eventually you fell asleep but you felt Kohaku lying down beside you, so you instinctively hugged her. And as petty as Senku was, he laid down in the other side and pressed his back against yours very firmly just to remind you that he was there and he felt betrayed. 

Suika came back in the morning, and you all stood up at different times as if it had been a slumber party. 

"Magma...!" Suika said fidgety. 

Kohaku explained what had happened at their generational event and how she beat Magma to marry Ruri, and Suika pointed out how Gen had mislead Magma during the magnet's thunderstorm and he probably believed that Gen was the "sorcerer" that had arrived to the village. 

The day was slow, Kohaku trained with Ginro and Kinro, who agreed to join the kingdom, Chrome and Senku discussed who-knows-what and you brushed Suika's hair and talked to her about different things you considered she should know, like a basic lesson on language like the abc and showing her how to write her name. 

At night, everyone went to their huts, you walked Suika and Kohaku to the bridge and said the usual goodnights to them, then walked back to the hut. Senku was preparing some more ointments and Gen whispered something, so he leaned in to listen.

"Pfttt, fujoshis would have eat that up back in my time." You giggled pointing at them. 

"Shut up." Senku was quick to bark, but then signaled you to come closer and whispered to you. "We have a deal, all over cola."

"Ew." 

"I mean, whatever tickles his tickles." Senku shrugged and you laughed at his appropriation of your mannerisms. "Next thing we are making is glass."

"For the bottle, of course!" You said and Senku looked at you with a questioning face. "...And science-y stuff."

"Suika can't see very good, right?" Out of nowhere, Senku asked. You nodded, bothered by the fact that the small problem hindered her self worth so much. "First thing we are making is glasses for her." 

"Senku..." Moved to almost tears you said with tenderness.

"N-No don't even try it!" He said immediately. "It's for efficiency, if we level her up she will do a better job." 

His lame attempt for excuse did not permeate far and you knew the truth, so you thanked him, but at his refusal and denial of caring you launched yourself to hug him, imprisoning in your arms both as a joke and as a genuine act. 

taglist: @thelonestarinthesky, @bookworm-center, @iheartpieck

[theeternalbanquett]

Invisible, Abandoned, Alone

The Doll knelt silently on the side of the road, still enough to allow a fine layer of falling snow to rest on its body. However the occasional lurching of its gears wouldn't allow any more than that light dusting.

It showed the tell tale signs of chronic abandonment. Its leg joints were choked with weeds that connected them to the ground and the dull, scratched up porcelain was a far cry from the polished, flawless sheen of a Doll with regular maintenance. Its clothes were caked in mud and mildew; no more than rags and tattered bits of cloth in some places The Doll did not shoo away any creature who laid claim to the fabric.

It had no reason to care, no reason to do anything but sit here and wait for the final turn of the shuddering gear it had in the place of a heart.

Every witch, every home had eventually tossed it aside. It would make some mistake it should have avoided or say the wrong thing and suddenly every entity, Doll and Witch alike, would act as if it didn't exist. It would do its best to make up for it but it was too late. It was already marked as the scapegoat.

The last one lasted long enough to make it relax, to make it feel safe and secure. Only to make another mistake and be ostracized for it, losing it all. Again.

Just as it got it hopes up that this last Miss would find a place for it and that it would finally fit in somewhere, it was back out on the street.

And so it wound up here, kneeling and waiting. Entities passed by it every day and never gave it a glance. There weren't any more Witches willing to take it on, there was no one else for it.

It wished desperately for someone to come and see it, to give it another chance. It wanted nothing more than to serve and be helpful but no one would ever teach it how to do those things.

For a while it cried over that. It would do anything, correct any behavior, if only someone would just see that..

No one ever did.

So it stayed until the weeds grew over its legs, until its clothes were no more than strands of rotten fabric held together by dirt and mold, until its body was a mass of cracked porcelain and copper wires, until the gear in its chest broke off one too many teeth and stopped turning forever.

As the magic flowing in its system slowed then came to a stop it smiled with what was left of its face and released the last breath it would ever take.

Finally, it was Still.

[a-bit-of-writing]

16/30 - Delicate

Fandom: Five Nights at Freddy’s Characters: Springtrap Words: 709 Summary: Springtrap’s not what he used to be - more rot than man, more wires than will - but he still remembers how to move quietly. How to wait. How to break things that don’t know they’re fragile yet.

30 days of fanfiction challenge

The corridor breathed with him.

Old air wheezed through cracked tiles, catching on trailing wires and the greening lace of mold. Every surface glittered faintly with decades-old moisture, as if the pizzeria itself were sweating out memories. Somewhere overhead, a failing fluorescent bulb sputtered like a dying heartbeat and Springtrap answered with one of his own.

A delicate one.

Because after all the screams and the silent years entombed in a back room, even rage had to be rationed. One wrong twitch and the spring-locks might bite again, grinding bone and rust into powder. One indulgent breath of fury and the frayed tubing along his spine would finally tear free. Like a marionette held together by resentment, he had learned a terrible patience: move slow, think slower, and never, ever let the rotting husk forget its purpose.

Afton remembered pieces.

A birthday banner sagging above a stage.

The chemical snap of purple gloves.

Laughter that tasted like frosting and later tasted like copper.

He tightened on those fragments until they splintered. Memory was brittle; obsession, elastic. Delicate balance.

Tonight new footsteps disturbed it.

Click. Click. Click.

Quick, eager, living steps - the kind that hadn’t haunted these hallways in years. A night guard with a cheap flashlight and cheaper optimism was patrolling wholly unaware that hope, in this place, was porcelain thin.

Springtrap straightened.

Inside the suit, sinew rasped against corroded mesh. Wet strands of hair - no, moss - clung to the inner skull. He felt the familiar slide of something loose in his chest cavity: a child’s party whistle fused to rib and wire, chirping faintly whenever he inhaled. It was comical, tragic, and made his hatred diamond-sharp.

He shuffled forward. One foot dragged, metal grinding tile; the other landed soft as a cat’s paw. A rhythm: scrape, whisper, scrape, whisper like a lullaby with razors hidden beneath each note.

Around the corner the guard’s flashlight swept past an open doorway and froze. The beam quivered, bounced once off the peeling pirate-cove mural, then settled on the thing blocking the hall.

Springtrap let the light crawl over him. Torn ear hanging, jaw stuck half-open like a crooked grin, eyes gleaming gold where the suit’s mesh had rotted to lace. He heard the guard gasp, a sharp, delicate intake that trembled on the edge of a scream.

“W-who’s there?”

The voice was young. Too young to have learned a truth Afton knew by heart:

Fear doesn’t shatter.

It splinters.

And each splinter spins a story sharp enough to draw blood.

He took one step. Scrape, whisper.

Another. Scrape, whisper.

The guard stumbled back, radio crackling useless static at his hip. “Stay back! I-I’ll call for-”

Call for what? Police? Morning? God?

Delicate things, all of them easily broken.

Springtrap lunged.

For a breathless second the corridor lights flickered bright, pinning them in mercury glare: the gargled screech of rusted servos, the guard twisting, the suit’s fingers flowering open like skeletal petals- 

-then darkness swallowed the flash, leaving only the sound of a body hitting tile and the slow, grotesque creak of metal hinges settling.

Silence settled, but not peace. Never peace.

Springtrap crouched over the fallen guard, studying the fragile rise and fall of a chest still sucking air. How thin the boundary between beating heart and broken machinery. He could almost feel the pulse through his own ruined glove, faint as a moth trapped in paper.

Delicate.

With care uncanny for so monstrous a creature, he reached down and plucked the security badge from the guard’s collar. Bent, inspected it, let the nameprint smear beneath a damp, moss-stained thumb. Then he pinned it back. Precise, thoughtful, like a craftsman admiring frail work before shattering it.

Because balance required sacrifice.

He leaned close until the guard could smell rotted fabric and dried blood, until a single murmur escaped the fetid speaker inside Springtrap’s jaw.

“Shh.”

A lullaby with razors.

When the music box in the prize corner chimed the half-hour, Springtrap straightened. Wires strained, bones protested, but hatred pulled marionette strings tighter. He turned and retreated into the dark, leaving hope bleeding quietly across cracked linoleum, another porcelain dream crushed underfoot.

Behind him, the suit’s shredded ribbons brushed the floor like wilted blossoms.

And Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza breathed out in relief, already hungry for the next delicate thing to wander inside.

[betterthantheywerebefore]

Conversion #063 (repost)

Original text: "I immediately had the intention to change the very boring pose to something indicative of how heavy those massive metal railguns really are, and then added to that the idea of giving it a hunchback and very Chaotic manner to its design. I wanted to fill that back area with grotesqueries, as I had decided to make this suit into a daemon engine of sorts. 

The pose was pinned and altered, the weapons were attached - including weapons less Tau-like than before, riffing off that idea I had of them swapping them out after their ammo runs out - and the power plant area on the back was filled to the brim with gross biological parts and muscle strands. 

I really like how this came out. Like, really. The supplementary tubes and pipes, made from putty and actual wire alike, really brought it all together. It’s so immensely gratifying to continue having so much fun with these conversions, even when I don’t expect one to be as fun as it turns out to be."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is the first model I tend to show people to explain what I'm going for, in a large part because I'm so proud of it! He's not perfect, but I wrestled myself away from touching him up any further, having already spent far too long fussing over the details.

The nasty gunky back was what got me into really enjoying the look of a glossy finish. At first I was using it wholesale on skin - but that's not how skin is - and now I'm restricting that use to when that disgusting sheen is best implemented, i.e., to contrast with the matte armour of the rest of the suit.

I also used a little bit of a copper corrosion effect! I won't be implementing it across every model, for one reason because I want the impression of a somewhat newer conversion to the Heinous Powers for a lot of the marines, but I think it works well on extra decrepit vehicles like this.

Bonus pictures:

[space-writes]

seven sentence sunday/someday

tagged by @willtheweaver, thank you! this sunday, i give to you seven lines of Beach Date from A Question of Trust ft me and Ashenivir being really really normal about Rizeth dressing down approximately 5%

[ID - a purple decorative divider]

<If you had me in a state of undress, Ra’soltha, I have the feeling you would also have us rapidly removed from this beach.> Ashenivir dropped to his knees at Rizeth’s side, out of breath and grinning. “And why might that be, Master?” “Because you cannot keep your hands to yourself.” Rizeth tucked his copper wire back into his pocket. He wore lighter robes than usual, in colour and style, with an open neck that displayed—by Rizeth standards—an absolutely obscene amount of collarbone. His hair was pulled into a loose knot at the base of his neck, though a few irresponsible strands had escaped to frame his face. Ashenivir laid a hand on his knee. “Can you blame me?”

[ID - a purple decorative divider]

no-pressure tagging @chauceryfairytales @sarandipitywrites @mjjune and @olliexwrites

Obedience taglist: @foxboyclit @belovedviolence @thegreatobsesso @notwritinganyflufftoday @exeiguess (ask to be +/-)

[cherry-baby-shifts]

What Himiko Toga (MY WIFE) is like in my mha reality.

AKA a bunch of random things cause i miss her and want her and I am so bored and going feral rn so here we go.

Sleeps like a cat, curled up in a tight ball, preferably draped over me. She has one favorite hoodie she refuses to wash because “it smells like us.”

Laughs when nervous. Like full giggles while she’s bleeding or being threatened. It unnerves everyone, which she loves.

Will nuzzle under my arm or into my side when I am not giving her attention.

Bites everything. Everyone. My arms, her favorite book, the spot at the table she has claimed. Everything.

Has no internal filter. Will say “You look so cute I want to wear your skin” like she’s commenting on someone’s outfit.

Extreme rejection sensitivity. If she thinks someone she loves is mad at her, she spirals hard. She doesn’t get angry, she panics.

Surprisingly emotionally intelligent. Picks up on shifts in mood instantly, especially in people she is close with. She’ll know her friends are going through something before they do.

Has episodes of derealization/dissociation after big emotional outbursts.

Keeps all her favorite people’s hair strands in a little glass vial she keeps on her desk. Mine is wrapped in copper wire.

Her love language is giving me her knife. I give her mine. It's hot. You get it.

Can’t fall asleep unless she’s touching me. Wrist, ankle, pinky, something.

Jealous AF. Not in a violent way (unless pushed), but more like “Who is she? Is she prettier than me? Should I drink her?”

If I'm ever passed out or injured, she curls around me protectively and won’t let anyone touch me. After mission clean ups are a nightmare.

Has a little book of “dream outfits” she’d wear if she ever lived a normal life. It’s all frilly skirts, sailor uniforms, bloodstained tights, and hearts carved into leather jackets. I find it and get her almost everything in there.

Can identify blood types by smell. Thinks AB negative smells smart and B positive smells sour.

Doesn’t like being called crazy unless it’s me saying it, then she loves it because I say it with reverence.

Collects broken mirrors and writes on them with lipstick with messages like “I love you so much I could eat you alive.”

[ama-metal]

Copper Stranded Wire Rope: A Comprehensive Guide

A flexible and necessary component, copper stranded wire rope is used in a variety of applications. It is essentially a flexible rope made of several individually wrapped copper wires. Its history goes back centuries, when marine applications and shipbuilding were its main uses. But as technology has developed over time, its use has risen, and it is now an essential part of many different industries, including mining, aviation, and telecommunications. Due to its distinctive qualities, which include high strength, flexibility, and corrosion resistance, it is a crucial part of numerous applications. In conclusion, copper stranded wire rope flexible has advanced much from its early days in marine applications, and its present applications and utility are still growing.

Types of Copper Stranded Wire Rope

There are a few things to think about when it comes to different varieties of copper stranded wire rope. The flexibility and strength of the rope might be impacted by varied configurations, to start. The 1x7, 7x7, and 7x19 are some layouts that are well-liked. The wire's coating may also affect how long it lasts and how well it resists corrosion. Nylon, polyurethane, and PVC are some examples of typical coatings. Your unique application and the environment it will be subjected to will ultimately determine the sort of it you choose. But don't worry, you'll discover the perfect suit for your needs among the various possibilities accessible.

Advantages of Copper Stranded Wire Rope

When it comes to Copper Stranded Wire Rope, there are several advantages that make it a popular choice across industries. First and foremost, copper stranded wire rope flexible is incredibly strong and able to withstand heavy loads without breaking or degrading over time. This makes it ideal for use in applications where strength is a must-have.

Another major benefit of copper stranded wire rope is its flexibility. Unlike other materials, copper stranded wire rope can bend and twist without losing strength or durability. This flexibility makes it an ideal choice for applications where the rope needs to move or adjust frequently.

In addition to strength and flexibility, it is also highly resistant to corrosion. Even when exposed to harsh environments and corrosive substances, it will hold up well and maintain its structural integrity.

Lastly, it is durable and built to last. When properly maintained, it can withstand years of use without breaking down or deteriorating in performance.

Overall, these advantages make it a strong and reliable choice for a variety of industries and applications.

Disadvantages of Copper Stranded Wire Rope

Let's face it, nothing is perfect in this world, and the same goes for copper stranded wire rope. One of the major disadvantages of copper stranded wire rope is its cost. It's not cheap, and rightly so, given its high strength, flexibility, and corrosion-resistant properties. The other disadvantage is its limited use in electrical applications. Copper is a great conductor of electricity, but in certain cases, it may not be the best choice. And lastly, it may not be the lightest option out there, which could be an issue for some applications. But hey, every material has its pros and cons, and the same goes for copper stranded wire rope.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Utah’s getting some of America’s best broadband

TOMORROW (May 17), I'm at the INTERNET ARCHIVE in SAN FRANCISCO to keynote the 10th anniversary of the AUTHORS ALLIANCE.

Residents of 21 cities in Utah have access to some of the fastest, most competitively priced broadband in the country, at speeds up to 10gb/s and prices as low as $75/month. It's uncapped, and the connections are symmetrical: perfect for uploading and downloading. And it's all thanks to the government.

This broadband service is, of course, delivered via fiber optic cable. Of course it is. Fiber is vastly superior to all other forms of broadband delivery, including satellites, but also cable and DSL. Fiber caps out at 100tb/s, while cable caps out at 50gb/s – that is, fiber is 1,000 times faster:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g

Despite the obvious superiority of fiber, America has been very slow to adopt it. Our monopolistic carriers act as though pulling fiber to our homes is an impossible challenge. All those wires that currently go to your house, from power-lines to copper phone-lines, are relics of a mysterious, fallen civilization and its long-lost arts. Apparently we could no more get a new wire to your house than we could build the pyramids using only hand-tools.

In a sense, the people who say we can't pull wires anymore are right: these are relics of a lost civilization. Specifically, electrification and later, universal telephone service was accomplished through massive federal grants under the New Deal – grants that were typically made to either local governments or non-profit co-operatives who got everyone in town connected to these essential modern utilities.

Today – thanks to decades of neoliberalism and its dogmatic insistence that governments can't do anything and shouldn't try, lest they break the fragile equilibrium of the market – we have lost much of the public capacity that our grandparents took for granted. But in the isolated pockets where this capacity lives on, amazing things happen.

Since 2015, residents of Jackson County, KY – one of the poorest counties in America – have enjoyed some of the country's fastest, cheapest, most reliable broadband. The desperately poor Appalachian county is home to a rural telephone co-op, which grew out of its rural electrification co-op, and it used a combination of federal grants and local capacity to bring fiber to every home in the county, traversing dangerous mountain passes with a mule named "Ole Bub" to reach the most remote homes. The result was an immediately economic uplift for the community, and in the longer term, the county had reliable and effective broadband during the covid lockdowns:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Contrast this with places where the private sector has the only say over who gets broadband, at what speed, and at what price. America is full of broadband deserts – deserts that strand our poorest people. Even in the hearts of our largest densest cities, whole neighborhoods can't get any broadband. You won't be surprised to learn that these are the neighborhoods that were historically redlined, and that the people who live in them are Black and brown, and also live with some of the highest levels of pollution and its attendant sicknesses:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/10/flicc/#digital-divide

These places are not set up for success under the best of circumstances, and during the lockdowns, they suffered terribly. You think your kid found it hard to go to Zoom school? Imagine what life was like for kids who attended remote learning while sitting on the baking tarmac in a Taco Bell parking lot, using its free wifi:

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/02/elem-s02.html

ISPs loathe competition. They divide up the country into exclusive territories like the Pope dividing up the "new world" and do not trouble one another by trying to sell to customers outside of "their" turf. When Frontier – one of the worst of America's terrible ISPs – went bankrupt, we got to see their books, and we learned two important facts:

The company booked one million customers who had no alternative as an asset, because they would pay more for slower broadband, and Frontier could save a fortune by skipping maintenance, and charging these customers for broadband even through multi-day outages; and

Frontier knew that it could make a billion dollars in profit over a decade by investing in fiber build-out, but it chose not to, because stock analysts will downrank any carrier that made capital investments that took more than five years to mature. Because Frontier's execs were paid primarily in stock, they chose to strand their customers with aging copper connections and to leave a billion dollars sitting on the table, so that their personal net worth didn't suffer a temporary downturn:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions

ISPs maintain the weirdest position: that a) only the private sector can deliver broadband effectively, but b) to do so, they'll need massive, unsupervised, no-strings-attached government handouts. For years, America went along with this improbable scheme, which is why Trump's FCC chairman Ajit Pai gave the carriers $45 billion in public funds to string slow, 19th-century-style copper lines across rural America:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/27/all-broadband-politics-are-local/

Now, this is obviously untrue, and people keep figuring out that publicly provisioned broadband is the only way for America to get the same standard of broadband connectivity that our cousins in other high-income nations enjoy. In order to thwart the public's will, the cable and telco lobbyists joined ALEC, the far-right, corporatist lobbying shop, and drafted "model legislation" banning cities and counties from providing broadband, even in places the carriers chose not to serve:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband/

Red states across America adopted these rules, and legislators sold this to their base by saying that this was just "keeping the government out of their internet" (even as every carrier relied on an exclusive, government-granted territorial charter, often with massive government subsidies).

ALEC didn't target red states exclusively because they had pliable, bribable conservative lawmakers. Red states trend rural, and rural places are the most likely sites for public fiber. Partly, that's because low-density areas are harder to make a business case for, but also because these are also the places that got electricity and telephone through New Deal co-ops, which are often still in place.

Just about the only places in America where people like their internet service are the 450+ small towns where the local government provides fiber. These places vote solidly Republican, and it was their beloved conservative lawmakers whom ALEC targeted to enact laws banning their equally beloved fiber – keep voting for Christmas, turkeys, and see where it gets you:

https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map

But spare a little sympathy for the conservative movement here. The fact that reality has a pronounced leftist bias must be really frustrating for the ideological project of insisting that anything the market can't provide is literally impossible.

Which brings me back to Utah, a red state with a Republican governor and legislature, and a national leader in passing unconstitutional, unhinged, unworkable legislation as part of an elaborate culture war kabuki:

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/24/1165975112/utah-passes-an-age-verification-law-for-anyone-using-social-media

For more than two decades, a coalition of 21 cities in Utah have been building out municipal fiber. The consortium calls itself UTOPIA: "Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency":

https://www.utopiafiber.com/faqs/

UTOPIA pursues a hybrid model: they run "open access" fiber and then let anyone offer service over it. This can deliver the best of both worlds: publicly provisioned, blazing-fast fiber to your home, but with service provided by your choice of competing carriers. That means that if Moms for Liberty captures you local government, you're not captive to their ideas about what sites your ISP should block.

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, Utahns in UTOPIA regions have their choice of 18 carriers, and competition has driven down prices and increased speeds. Want uncapped 1gb fiber? That's $75/month. Want 10gb fiber? That's $150:

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/15/utah-locals-are-getting-cheap-10-gbps-fiber-thanks-to-local-governments/

UTOPIA's path to glory wasn't an easy one. The dismal telco monopolists Qwest and Lumen sued to put them out of business, delaying the rollout by years:

https://www.deseret.com/2005/7/22/19903471/utopia-responds-to-qwest-lawsuit/

UTOPIA has been profitable and self-sustaining for over 15 years and shows no sign of slowing. But 17 states still ban any attempt at this.

Keeping up such an obviously bad policy requires a steady stream of distractions and lies. The "government broadband doesn't work" lie has worn thin, so we've gotten a string of new lies about wireless service, insisting that fiber is obviated by point-to-point microwave relays, or 5g, or satellite service.

There's plenty of places where these services make sense. You're not going to be able to use fiber in a moving car, so yeah, you're going to want 5g (and those 5g towers are going to need to be connected to each other with fiber). Microwave relay service can fill the gap until fiber can be brought in, and it's great for temporary sites (especially in places where it doesn't rain, because rain, clouds, leaves and other obstructions are deadly for microwave relays). Satellite can make sense for an RV or a boat or remote scientific station.

But wireless services are orders of magnitude slower than fiber. With satellite service, you share your bandwidth with an entire region or even a state. If there's only a couple of users in your satellite's footprint, you might get great service, but when your carrier adds a thousand more customers, your connection is sliced into a thousand pieces.

That's also true for everyone sharing your fiber trunk, but the difference is that your fiber trunk supports speeds that are tens of thousands of times faster than the maximum speeds we can put through freespace electromagnetic spectrum. If we need more fiber capacity, we can just fish a new strand of fiber through the conduit. And while you can increase the capacity of wireless by increasing your power and bandwidth, at a certain point you start pump so much EM into the air that birds start falling out of the sky.

Every wireless device in a region shares the same electromagnetic spectrum, and we are only issued one such spectrum per universe. Each strand of fiber, by contrast, has its own little pocket universe, containing a subset of that spectrum.

Despite all its disadvantages, satellite broadband has one distinct advantage, at least from an investor's perspective: it can be monopolized. Just as we only have one electromagnetic spectrum, we also only have one sky, and the satellite density needed to sustain a colorably fast broadband speed pushes the limit of that shared sky:

https://spacenews.com/starlink-vs-the-astronomers/

Private investors love monopoly telecoms providers, because, like pre-bankruptcy Frontier, they are too big to care. Back in 2021, Altice – the fourth-largest cable operator in America – announced that it was slashing its broadband speeds, to be "in line with other ISPs":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/27/immortan-altice/#broadband-is-a-human-right

In other words: "We've figured out that our competitors are so much worse than we are that we are deliberately degrading our service because we know you will still pay us the same for less."

This is why corporate shills and pro-monopolists prefer satellite to municipal fiber. Sure, it's orders of magnitude slower than fiber. Sure, it costs subscribers far more. Sure, it's less reliable. But boy oh boy is it profitable.

The thing is, reality has a pronounced leftist bias. No amount of market magic will conjure up new electromagnetic spectra that will allow satellite to attain parity with fiber. Physics hates Starlink.

Yeah, I'm talking about Starlink. Of course I am. Elon Musk basically claims that his business genius can triumph over physics itself.

That's not the only vast, impersonal, implacable force that Musk claims he can best with his incredible reality-distortion field. Musk also claims that he can somehow add so many cars to the road that he will end traffic – in other words, he will best geometry too:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

Geometry hates Tesla, and physics hates Starlink. Reality has a leftist bias. The future is fiber, and public transit. These are both vastly preferable, more efficient, safer, more reliable and more plausible than satellite and private vehicles. Their only disadvantage is that they fail to give an easily gulled, thin-skinned compulsive liar more power over billions of people. That's a disadvantage I can live with.

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/2024/05/16/symmetrical-10gb-for-119/#utopia

Image: 4028mdk09 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rote_LED_Fiberglasleuchte.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[ritchie-richtea]

> started a new sketchbook! expanding on brian having copper wire for hair, i think jonny delights in teasing him. plus another bedhead doodle. i didnt mean to draw another but it was all i could think of lol

> ID below (credit and thanks to @majorshatterandhare !) and in alt text -

[ID: three photos of pencil-on-paper doodles of Drumbot Brian of the Mechanisms. The are all bust drawings. Brian has shoulder-length curly hair, a triangle nose, lines on his face deniting the metal plates of his skin coming together, and short facial hair.

Photo One: Brian is angled towards the right side of the photo. He wears collared shirt under a vest or coat. A tube arm with a circular fist hand holding a strand of his hair out, and he looks at it. At the top there appears to be text which is blurred out and part of a circle in the upper left hand corner. Below there is an arrow pointing down.

Photo Two: A very similar drawing to the first one, but the arm is gone and Brian’s eyes are closed. His hair has been let go of, and is coiled up, it is a lot curlier than the rest of his hair. By his head is the word “Boing” in all uppercase. To the right is a tiny doodle of Jonny’s head, recognizable by his goggles and eye make up. Above Jonny “hehehe” is written in all uppercase. Above Brian the arrow from Photo One can be seen. Below him hair and the top of his head from Photo Three are visible.

Photo Three: Brian is fully facing the viewer, with his curly hair sticking out all around his head. His eyes are closed and his mouth is neutral. In this drawing the lines and rivets of his metal neck plating can be seen. His shirt has the top of the Hello Kitty logo, with a bow on the right ear on it. Above him the bottom of the drawing in Photo Two can be seen and to the left a circular shape is cut off.

End ID.]

[soulemnity]

sure !

this is stevie !! full name is vivian stelle, but she prefers stevie. she has a devil fruit—sen-sen no mi—that she ate when she was around 6-7. i have another post with her colors here ! at the time of the time-skip, she is 19 (around luffys age lol)

her devil fruit allows her to produce live wires from any part of her body, from her hair to her fingers to even her mouth if she really wanted to. those wires, being live wires, will shock anything they touch but herself. she can control her wires up to thirteen feet away from her body, but grasp gets fuzzy at fifteen, and is lost by sixteen.

as she got more proficient with her wires, she likes to use them to swing around like spider-man (lol). a technique she favors during fights is turning her braids into wires when someone tries to grab at them so they get shocked instead. it’s possible to contort her wires so that there’s strands of the copper sticking out to create more painful strikes, but it requires concentration and a bit more training than she currently cares to do, so she has yet to master this. (she has a start on it though !)

another silly thought is her learning to control her wires enough to make her braids work like hands

stevie was raised by her father, vivian jules (45), and her two aunts, florie (47) and kara (37)—her dad’s sisters. her mother, alex petra, was a few months younger than jules, and was killed when stevie was a little more than a year old when she and jules were caught up in the crossfire of a fight between a pirate crew and the marines. they werent married, so petra hadnt taken jules’ last name (and probably wouldnt have even if they were married).

florie and kara acted as two different moms to stevie. florie was more motherly in a mother-hen way, while kara was more motherly in a “mama didnt raise no bitch” way. jules, while protective and sometimes worried for stevie’s safety, is plenty supportive of her desire to go out to sea, just cautious. he used to travel with petra; after her death, he still liked the sea, just not the dangerous aspect of it. jules know well that he has no right to stop his daughter though and provides love where he can

when stevie first ate her devil fruit, she’d snuck onto her father’s ship (he does imports). she snooped around, found the fruit, took a bite, and suddenly there were funny string falling from her palms. down there, she played with the funny strings until one of her father’s men came and found her. their island was a small one, so he had no clue what those strings were, and reached out to investigate.

she never quite forgot the day she nearly killed a man. she became so afraid of touching another person and accidentally killing them that it took her until she was 13 to start relearning control over the intensity of her wires again.

thanks anon !! ive been wanting to dump about her for a bit <3

[dev1lsadvocate]

@darkdevoured

The haze of perfumed smoke curled around Mizora as she lounged against the edge of the satin-draped dais, flicking ash into the candlelit, watching the swirl of bodies before her. All around, limbs entwined in a tangle of heat and breath — at least a dozen of them — warm skin slick with desire, the musky scent of arousal thick in the air, punctuated by whispered gasps and the soft rustle of shifting silk. Every joint and sinew writhed in pleasure, yet in her own body only impatience thrived.

She exhaled another plume of smoke, eyes half‑lidded, scanning the tableau as if it were an ill‑conceived play. The tremor of thighs, the damp press of torsos, the promise in each heated sigh were undeniably intoxicating… But not enough to hold her attention.

Yes, the doe‑eyed brunette from earlier managed to follow instructions well enough. But it wasn’t her. Not by a long shot. Everything felt so half-hearted: the over-eager poses, the weak moans, the rhythm was all wrong. It lacked that fierce devotion Mizora craved — the tremor in each kiss, the shuddering whimpers that spoke of genuine desperation under her touch, the roaming hands eager to have her closer, no matter what.

She’d been indulging in dark‑haired, petite women more frequently these days, chasing that fleeting spark… Yet every time she settled for one of them, her thoughts slipped back to Aurelia. As if no one else could truly sate her hunger.

How utterly tedious. Mizora thought with a snarl. And how... Disconcerting.

The cambion stood up in a sharp, sudden motion, cutting through the haze of sweat and smoke. "That's enough," she snapped, voice like a whipcrack as she gave a loud, sharp, commanding clap of her hands. "Gather your clothes, darlings. We're finished."

Around her, the entangled limbs and flushed faces of the orgy untangled in confusion. A few blinked up at her, dazed and unsure, while others sat up abruptly, eyes wide.

"What? Finished?" one man stammered, breathless and still half-hard. "But—"

"If there’s something specific you want, mistress," purred a lithe tiefling woman, crawling closer on all fours, "you only need to tell us. We can adjust. We can please you. Just say the word."

"Yes," another chimed in, her voice desperate. "Whatever it is we’ll follow it. You only have to command."

But Mizora’s ruby gaze was distant, distracted, already leagues away from the pile of willing bodies and perfumed arousal. Her wings flicked once in irritation. For the first time she regretted using her infernal charm for personal indulgences.

“Sweet things,” she drawled, already walking off to open the door. “You could reenact the Nine Layers with perfect choreography and it still wouldn’t do the trick.”

With a languid flick of her wrist, she stubbed out her cigarette, tail flicking with bored annoyance as she held the door open. “Honestly,” she murmured under her breath, “I simply expected more from you.”

The sharp motion of her head that followed conveyed a clear message: Out. Now.

She didn’t even wait for them to scramble for their clothes. Let them fumble and gawk, she had more important things to tend to.

She grabbed her silken robe from the chaise, wrapping it around her as she made her way to her boudoir, plucking a fine quill and a piece of fresh parchment from her lacquered desk. Ink shimmered as she dipped the tip, and then began to write in a sweeping, perfect handwriting:

Dearest Aurelia,

I’ve secured new lodgings within the city, something with a bit more charm, a bit more height, and a rather breathtaking view of the ocean. You’ll find the sound of the waves quite soothing when one needs clarity… Or company.

I would be delighted if you visited. The place feels awfully spacious without a sharp tongue and clever mind to fill the air.

With anticipation, M.

She sealed it with a kiss of fire and her personal sigil, eyes narrowing fondly at the parchment as she retrieved a slender strand of fine copper wire from her vanity, twisting it between her fingers and murmuring the incantation for the Sending spell. Her eyes glowed briefly with infernal light as she whispered the message into the weave of magic. The words shimmered into the ether, racing across planes to find Aurelia’s mind.

"Let’s see if this pulls you in, little orchid."

[bigasswritingmagnet]

Blood Will Out ch 1/30: Catalysis

Summary: When Agatha Sannikova learns she is, in fact, Agatha Heterodyne, she inadvertently kicks off a series of events that reopens old wounds, drags secrets into the light, and brings war to the doorstep of the all but defenseless Mechanicsburg. Saturnus struggles to crush his enemies with a town almost as broken as his body; Agatha, determined to undo the chaos she's unleashed, plunges into the depths of Castle Heterodyne.

Raised by a literal saint and the devil incarnate, Agatha - with an unleashed mind, a burning spark, and a band of very unexpected allies - will fight to do the unthinkable: be a good Heterodyne and a good person.

[The long awaited (by me) sequel to Relatively Speaking, This Will Probably be Fine and NOT a prequel to Helpful, in a Heterodyne Sort of Way, due to plot reasons.]

AO3 link | Next >

The Heterodyne Valley was peaceful in the night. If one did not know its history, it would be easy to think of it as an oasis of fertile farmland and forest amidst the hardscrabble farms clinging to the unforgiving rock on the other side of the mountains. Cupped by the gentle hands of the valley, Mechanicsburg sat still and quiet in the darkness. 

At an hour so late it was early, when the bars had closed but the bakers had not woken, Mechanicsburg was visible only as winding rivers of dim lamp light twining through pools of darkness. As they moved away from the tourist attractions and towards the Tumbles, the rivers split into tributaries: smaller streets lined with houses and more reasonably priced shops. One such shop was Muller’s Miscellaneous, where machinists could buy parts and sell scrap. 

To the left of the building was a dingy alleyway. During the day it was used to haul materials and merchandise in and out. This late at night, the only occupants were a two-headed rat and the frantic tabby cat it was chasing. The alley led around to the back of the shop, providing access to the door and window. 

The door was locked tight. The window was open. Fresh scratches marred the wood around the latch, which now hung slightly loose, forced out of place by a hand unused to breaking, let alone entering. Through the open window was the storeroom. It was filled with stacked metal sheets of varying compositions and sizes, buckets of gears, boxes of screws and nails, Gordian knots of copper wires. In the very center of it all, surrounded by a mandala of half-built parts and materials…

…was a girl.

She was approximately fifteen, splayed legs showing the gangliness of an unfinished teenage growth spurt, her long blonde hair breaking free of its ponytail to press sweaty strands against her ashen cheeks. Behind thick round glasses, her eyes were glazed. Her mouth hung open as she panted for air, unable to breathe past the blood that trickled from her nose.

Agatha’s headaches were usually like a vice or a bear trap, a sharp pressure that faded quickly when she let it drive her away from whatever had brought on the attack. But she had not let it drive her away this time, and after an hour, it had become spikes of white hot metal in her brain, pulsing with her heartbeat.

She had never been in so much pain in her life.

She did not let it stop her.

Agatha had been trying to build this for five years, and for five years she had been driven to tears of frustration as the pain chased her away. But not this time.

She wasn’t sure what had made that specific headache different, why this time the pain had filled her with a spiteful, stubborn contrariness, but it had. Agatha had decided she was far too old – almost an adult, as far as she was concerned – to allow her own misfiring neurons to hold her back. She was sick of it. Sick of the feeling of things being just out of reach, sick of knowing she could do things and not being able to.

Sick of failure.

‘I’m impressed at your recovery,’ Doctor Sun had said, the immovable calm to Saturnus’ unstoppable stubborn indignation. ‘But the damage is not all from your heart or the muscle atrophy.” 

In a strange way, though, it had gotten easier to think. The constant, endless agony was so consistent, she could almost let it fade into background noise.

Agatha’s trembling fingers hovered over a pile of neatly sorted screws, trying to remember what she’d been doing. Right. The joints in the legs. She tried to imagine the chair climbing up the stairs that connected to the road outside the bakery.

‘No, you can’t just give yourself a new pair of legs. The problem is in your brain. The part of it that connects with the muscles is damaged, and that is not something I can repair – and neither can you.’

He kept trying, though. The memory of Saturnus on the floor, face covered in blood from hitting the nightstand on the way down, haunted her still.

Like a spider. Second and fourth sets would operate as counterbalances – hold it steady while the first set reached and the third set pushed forward. Carefully she checked her blood-spattered notes, reminding herself of what kind of joint she was trying to build. What did it look like again?

‘A chair? Oh yes, being pushed around by some minder, that sounds perfect, letting the whole world know I can’t even turn a wheel with my own strength. I leave this house on working legs or in a box!’

A chair that could walk and climb, propelled by clockwork. The idea had flown in on wings of pain.

Blatantly evil Lord Saturnus may be, but Agatha loved him dearly, just as much as she did the virtuous Teodora. In her head, Grandfather came as easily as Lord Saturnus – easier, even . Grandm — Teodora was a bulwark against the world, protector and defender, and within the stronghold of her home, there was Saturnus to understand.

He never told her she wasn’t broken, or that there was nothing wrong with her. Neither did he let her succumb to self-loathing. Broken is not the same as useless. Though she was just some orphan that a friend of his estranged son had dumped on him, he loved her like flesh and blood.

It was getting hard to see. White light was chewing at the edges of her vision, and she had to squint to see past the colored halos dancing in front of her. She hadn’t even turned anything on yet, but she was sure she smelled something burning. 

Hands clamped down on her shoulders, and the screws tumbled from her fingers. She had to blink several times to focus on the face in front of her, and it took another few seconds to recognize Herr Müller, whose shop she had chosen to…patronize.

“Miss Sannikova!” He was shouting, but he wasn’t angry – he looked scared, actually. Perhaps he was just making sure he could hear her. His voice was so far away from her ears. “Agatha!”

“I can pay for the pieces,” she said, and heard only a strange gurgling sound. “I wasn’t sure how many I’d need so I thought I would pay for what I used, after.”

“Get a doctor!” Müller bellowed over his shoulder. “Agatha, can you hear me?”

His mouth kept moving but the pain in her head was audible now, roaring in her ears, making it impossible to even hear herself think. She began to hum, a cracked and broken sound that had no melody.  

Saturnus, seated in the hated wheelchair beside the hospital bed of the girl who did not know she was his granddaughter, found himself distracted by the thought of what an excellent tableau they all made. Agatha lying between them, drawn and pale. On either side, her grandparents, perfect visual and moral opposites.  

Saturnus had been an intimidating figure, once upon a time, built in size and shape much like a particularly clean-shaven bear. Even when middle age had come to call, thinning his copper hair and softening his middle, he had maintained his strength. 

Not any more. Not ever again, as a point of fact. Spending just under a decade half-dead and immobile, bedridden and insensate, took its toll. Even after Agatha had drawn him back into the waking world, even with wife and granddaughter ensuring he stuck with the tortures Sun had the nerve to call ‘physical therapy’, he’d never regain more than a fraction of his old strength. He was an old man now, and he looked every inch of it, right down to sitting in a wheelchair with a blanket over the useless sticks of his legs.  

In contrast, his wife, whom time had touched with a much gentler hand. 

Teodora Vodenicharova was tall and slender, with bright brown eyes and a long, elegant face. Their frantic race to get dressed and to the hospital had not left her time to put herself together in her usual impeccable appearance. Her long gray hair was still in a braid, not wound up in its usual complex bun, and her dress did not match the sash around her waist.     

Despite all her time in Mechanicsburg, she maintained the fashions of her homeland, and wore simple dresses of muted colors, given shape by embroidered sashes and brightened by flashes of color at the hems and buttons. It rankled Saturnus that she dressed like a peasant, and often he wished she would let him deck her in the jewels and finery befitting the Lady of Mechanicsburg.

Not that she required fine clothing to be distinguished from the common folk. Even now as she stood braced for the explosion of fury and outrage she knew would be coming, she held herself tall and proud, regal as any queen, just as always.   

Saturnus turned his head away from her, and his gaze fell on Agatha’s locket on the bedside table, wound up in its chain. Saturnus reached out and picked it up, but did not open it. He could feel the effect of the locket, but he was a grown man and a strong Spark, so it was nothing but a faint tingling in the base of his skull. Nothing he could not ignore. He doubted he would even notice if he didn’t know it would be there. 

“How did you ever manage it?” he asked, turning the locket over in his hands. “All those years, watching her suffer, listening to her talk about herself like that? Knowing what it was. Knowing you could stop it.”

Teodora said nothing. He laughed briefly, soft and humorless.

“Funny. I’m pretty sure I was meant to be the evil one in this relationship.”

He heard Teodora’s sharp inhale. In a few quick strides she rounded the bed to stand beside him. When she spoke, it was with a rage that trembled with the effort of keeping quiet.

“Is that supposed to wound me? As if your good opinion was ever anything but a curse? As if I never prayed that you would grow bored and send me away again? Don’t you dare fool yourself into thinking that my heart has gone soft with time, Lord Heterodyne.”

But all he did was let out a soft, amused hum, and give her a condescending smile.

“So that’s it, then. The great, noble Teodora Vodenicharova played dutiful wife by her husband’s side, not for love, not for duty…but because you enjoyed seeing me brought low. Seems you fit into this family quite well.”

“How dare you—!” Teodora, white with rage, actually tried to slap him. He caught her arm easily and dragged her in, meeting her furious glare with his own hard, cold stare. 

“You certainly seem wounded by my poor opinion,” he said.

“That is not why I did it, and this has nothing to do with you. I did what I thought was necessary,” Teodora hissed, her voice hoarse. “I did what I thought was best to keep. Her. Safe.”

“And if I think this is a cruel and terrible thing, what does that say about you?” He released her and sat back in the wheelchair. He’d consented to it only to get to the Great Hospital to see Agatha, far too terrified to even feel the sting to his pride.

“Barry said she started breaking through when she was five— ”

“If he’d done it to anyone but flesh and blood,” Saturnus interrupted. “I’d be downright proud of him.”

Saturnus saw the words hit Teodora, saw her flinch, and bore down.

“But as it is, I am having trouble understanding why you were willing to go along with your son putting our granddaughter’s mind on a choke-chain leash without having the decency to tell her WHY!”    

For the first time in all their years of marriage, Teodora took a step back – but Teodora was Teodora. She had stood up to the Lord of Mechanicsburg, again and again and again, and had not just lived but won. Teodora was kind and gentle and would come down like a hammer on any threat to those she loved as fiercely as any Heterodyne. When Saturnus had declared her sons ruined, told her that he planned to kill them and start over, Teodora had stopped him. Not just stopped him, forced him to stand down, forced him to hand his beloved town to his “ruined” son, permanently, and let him rule and ruin as he pleased. 

And Saturnus loved her still, with all his heart.   

“What would you have done, in his place?” she challenged. “You think a five-year-old has the capability of understanding such an abstract danger? She would have had that thing off in seconds. Even now, I don’t think she’s old enough. She’ll get frustrated or want the pain to stop—”

“She thinks she is broken!”

“We cannot keep her safe.”

The words were like a hammer blow.

“Those headaches are half the reason no one thinks she could possibly be who she is!” Teodora said. “If anyone ever so much as doubted that? They would come for her, and there is no guarantee this town could protect her. Your pride was nearly the death of you, but I will not let you put her in mortal danger simply because you don’t want to admit that you are not the man you were, and this town cannot do what it is meant to do.” 

“She—”

“Am I wrong?”

“She needs—”

“Am. I. Wrong.” 

Saturnus couldn’t look at her. Yes, he was furious on Agatha’s behalf. Yes, it was a horrific thing to do to a girl, to keep doing to her. But it was no small part of him that did not want to admit that this device was better protection than he could provide. That this pain might be the best thing they could do for her.

He could not protect his grandchild.

Again.

Agatha stirred, her eyelids fluttering open. Her brow furrowed.

“Ow,” she whispered. Her gaze fell on Saturnus and Teodora. Her hazy expression grew puzzled. She looked around at the hospital room, and down at herself, and realized where she was. “Am I in trouble?”

“No,” Teodora said gently, reaching out and squeezing her hand. “No, darling, you’re not in trouble.”

“Important life lesson,” Saturnus said, attempting to sound jovial. “If you scare everyone badly enough, you can get away with anything.”

“Saturnus,” Teodora scolded, but Agatha giggled weakly. Her smile faded when Saturnus reached out and stroked her hair.

“What the hell were you doing?” he asked, gently.

“I was building you a chair,” she said softly. “Something you wouldn’t have to push. I thought maybe if you didn’t need help, you wouldn’t mind being seen in it. But every time I tried to build it, I got the headache and I just…”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“I was just so tired of being broken.” She began to cry, and Saturnus felt his heart break in ways he didn’t know it could. He took Agatha’s hand in both of his, squeezing tightly.

“Don’t do it again,” he said, nearly begging. “Broken or not, yours is a marvelous mind, and I would not have you cauterize it for anything – but especially not for me.”

“I wanted to help .”

“I know, I know. Here. When you’re well enough to leave, we’ll go back home and build it together. And go nice and slow, so neither of our bodies has reason to try and kill us, hmm?”

Her smile was weak, and he knew it wouldn’t be satisfying. She was a teenager, a Spark, a Heterodyne , and Saturnus knew that there was no feeling like watching your first big project cut a swath of destruction across the land and being able to think I did that, all on my own.  

“Oh,” Agatha said. “You’ve got my locket.”

She reached for it, but Saturnus pulled away.

“No jewelry in the hospital,” he lied. “Put it on when you go home.”

“The doctor wants to keep you overnight, just in case,” Teodora said, putting a gentle hand on Agatha’s knee. “We’ll see how you feel in the morning.”

Agatha nodded and closed her eyes. Neither Saturnus or Teodora spoke until Agatha’s breathing was the slow, steady rhythm of sleep.

“You didn’t tell her,” Teodora said, not voicing the question. 

“I thought it would be best to wait ‘til we get home. The locket, her parents – when we tell her, she’ll be angry, and I’d rather she not shout at us where half of Mechanicsburg could hear.”

“We’re not telling her.”

“Like hell we’re not—”

“ No. She’s too young, and she’s a terrible liar.”

“After all that, you still want her to wear it,” Saturnus said, amazed. “After what we just saw, what she just said, you still —”

“Do you think I’m enjoying this?” Teodora demanded. “I hate this just as much as you do, but we do not have a choice, Saturnus.”

“If you don’t tell her, I will.”

“No. You won’t.”

“And how exactly will you stop me? Kill me?”

The expression on Teodora’s face was very like the one she’d worn the day she’d told him he would not be killing their sons. When she spoke, her voice was ice and steel.

“I do not need to kill you.”

Saturnus tried to glare at her, but it was like trying to stare down the sun. And still, he loved her. More, really. When she got like this, he couldn’t help but think if she’d been a little less compassionate, she could have rivaled the Skull Queen herself.

He looked away.

“I can’t do it again,” Teodora said, in a much gentler voice. “I can’t. Klaus Barry was bad enough – for both of us. I won’t lose another grandchild.”

Agatha inhaled sharply, and they both froze. But she simply sighed in her sleep and rolled over.

They watched over her in silence until visiting hours ended, both too lost in their own thoughts, feeling no less trapped and miserable for worries shared.

They did not speak again until the next morning, when a breathless, terrified nurse appeared at their door to tell them that Agatha was gone.

[elusivegreen]

So I have a chain that I started when I was still working in traffic engineering. Copper links, small, taken from stranded wires. I cut one for each day I worked there, and just hadn't twisted them all up yet. With how slow it's been at work, I brought it in to finish building it.

My coworker was, LAUGHING at me. He lost it, couldn't even talk between cracking up. Was calling me "the jeweler". I kinda blinked, and tilted my head, because this was the first time in many years someone has, openly made fun of me.

This time I wasn't embarrassed, wasn't mad, just so confused. Like. Sorry that I have a creative outlet? I don't just watch tiktok without headphones. I have something I can do with my hands when I don't have good signal on my phone. Even my foreman was, somewhat surprised and impressed by what the links looked like but this guy's first response was to try and bully me.

Glad that, doesn't work anymore. Means I've grown a little.