#traditional data centers

[madmantechnologies]

Traditional Data Centers vs. Cloud: Navigating the Digital Infrastructure Landscape

Introduction -

Businesses must continually make important decisions on their IT infrastructure in the quickly changing world of technology. Making the decision to switch to cloud computing solutions or remain in traditional data centres is one of the biggest decisions they face. Making an informed decision requires a grasp of the subtle differences between the two possibilities, each of which has advantages and disadvantages.

Traditional Data Centers: The Tried and Tested Workhorses

Enterprise IT infrastructures have traditionally been supported by traditional data centres. These on-premises facilities are located within an organization's walls and contain physical servers, storage arrays, networking hardware, and cooling systems.

Pros:

Control and Security: With data stored on-site, organizations have full control over security measures and compliance protocols, ensuring data sovereignty and confidentiality.

Predictable Performance: By managing their own hardware and software stack, organizations can fine-tune performance according to their specific requirements, ensuring consistent and predictable levels of performance.

Compliance: Traditional data centres enable organizations to adhere to industry-specific compliance regulations by keeping sensitive data within their premises, ensuring compliance with data protection laws.

Cons:

Capital Expenditure: A traditional data centre's construction and upkeep involve a large initial infrastructure investment, which covers hardware acquisition, setup fees, and continuing maintenance expenditures.

Scalability Challenges: It can be difficult and time-consuming to scale traditional data centres to handle increasing workloads or unexpected demand spikes; new hardware purchases and infrastructure modifications are frequently needed.

Maintenance overhead: The daily administration, upkeep, and troubleshooting of an organization's data centre infrastructure is their responsibility. This can be a resource-intensive task that takes time away from important company operations.

Cloud Computing: The Game-Changer in IT Infrastructure

Cloud computing, which provides on-demand scalability, flexibility, and cost-efficiency, has completely changed how businesses use and manage IT resources. Numerous services, such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS), are accessible through cloud solutions. These are the main advantages and difficulties:

Pros:

Scalability and Flexibility: Cloud computing allows organizations to scale resources up or down dynamically in response to changing demand, enabling optimal performance and cost-efficiency.

Cost Savings: Cloud solutions operate on a pay-as-you-go model, eliminating the need for upfront capital expenditure and enabling organizations to pay only for the resources they consume, resulting in cost savings and improved financial predictability.

Agility and Innovation: Cloud computing accelerates innovation by providing access to a vast array of services, tools, and technologies that enable rapid development, deployment, and iteration of applications.

Cons:

Security and Compliance Concerns: Entrusting sensitive data to third-party cloud providers raises concerns about data security, privacy, and compliance with industry regulations, necessitating robust security measures and compliance certifications.

Vendor Lock-In: Depending heavily on a single cloud provider may lead to vendor lock-in, limiting organizations' flexibility and portability between different cloud platforms.

Performance and Latency: Cloud solutions rely on internet connectivity, which may introduce latency and performance issues, particularly for applications with stringent latency requirements or data sovereignty concerns.

Making the Right Choice for Your Business

In the end, several variables, such as the organization's budget, performance requirements, scalability demands, and compliance obligations, will determine whether traditional data centres or cloud computing is preferable. Many businesses use a hybrid strategy, combining cloud and on-premises resources to strike the best possible balance between cost, scalability, and control. You may make well-informed judgments that promote innovation, efficiency, and growth in the digital age by comprehending the advantages and disadvantages of each strategy and matching them with your company's aims and objectives.

In conclusion, a variety of criteria, such as the organization's budget, performance requirements, scalability needs, and compliance duties, influence the decision between traditional data centres and cloud alternatives. Scalability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness are offered by cloud solutions, while control and security are provided by traditional data centres. Many businesses use a hybrid strategy, combining cloud and on-premises resources to strike the best possible balance between cost, scalability, and control. In the end, choosing the best IT infrastructure plan to support corporate growth and innovation in the digital age depends on knowing the particular requirements of the company.

Additionally, numerous people can view the data simultaneously thanks to this technology. This expedites and simplifies work. You may handle your data in real-time from any remote part of the world with the help of Madman Technologies, they are the best Cloud Computing and DC migration services in India.

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[torchickentacos]

13

13: Favorite Food

Hello!!! I LOVE food, and absolutely can't choose just one, so here's a top five. Longer post where I just talk about food.

Seafood. I just have to have the entire category here. I was pescetarian for a long time and would still be if I was just eating for myself. Flaky white fish battered and fried, sushi, oysters, salmon with herbs on top, crab and lobster, shrimp, the lil dudes in the shells, all of it. I have not met a fish I don't like. Seafood, especially sushi and shelled things, are a rare treat for me, but when I do eat it I'm in HEAVEN. But one of the best ones is fried tilapia with cajun seasoning or a southern seafood boil. My seafood tip: find a place near you that does seasonal seafood/rotational menus. Way more likely to be fresh.

Biscuits and gravy. Southern comfort food number one, in my opinion. Flaky biscuits coated in WHITE gravy, not like. turkey gravy. My mama always used chipped beef instead of sausage, but it's good just about however you make it.

Apple dumplings/apple pie. Same category because they're sort of the same dish but repackaged. Look, you've got a crust, apple, spices, and sugar. That's gonna be good no matter what you do with it.

Anita's breakfast burritos. A rare indulgence for my family but it's SO GOOD.

Finally, outback steak. It's more of an association thing because one night it was just me and my grandma, and we were hungry and she was like "let's be real fancy and get outback" because that's fancy shit to me. Last legit fancy resturaunt I went to was my Uma's 100th birthday dinner like eight years ago. ANYWAYS granny and I just stayed in and watched netflix and had a great time on the couch in the basement eating steak watching queer eye.

[nasa]

9 Out-of-This-World Moments for Space Communications & Navigation in 2023

How do astronauts and spacecraft communicate with Earth?

By using relay satellites and giant antennas around the globe! These tools are crucial to NASA’s space communications networks: the Near Space Network and the Deep Space Network, which bring back science and exploration data every day.

It’s been a great year for our space communications and navigation community, who work to maintain the networks and enhance NASA’s capabilities. Keep scrolling to learn more about our top nine moments.

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Dragon spacecraft lifts off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday, Nov. 9, 2023, on the company's 29th commercial resupply services mission for the agency to the International Space Station. Liftoff was at 8:28 p.m. EST.

1. In November, we launched a laser communications payload, known as ILLUMA-T, to the International Space Station. Now, ILLUMA-T and the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) are exchanging data and officially complete NASA’s first two-way, end-to-end laser relay system. Laser communications can send more data at once than traditional radio wave systems – think upgrading from dial-up to fiber optic internet. ILLUMA-T and LCRD are chatting at 1.2 gigabits per second (Gbps). At that rate, you could download an average movie in under a minute.

NASA’s InSight lander captured this selfie on Mars on April 24, 2022, the 1,211th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

2. Data analyzed in 2023 from NASA’s retired InSight Mars lander provided new details about how fast the Red Planet rotates and how much it wobbles. Scientists leveraged InSight’s advanced radio technology, upgrades to the Deep Space Network, and radio signals to determine that Mars’ spin rate is increasing, while making the most precise measurements ever of Mars’ rotation.

TBIRD is demonstrating a direct-to-Earth laser communications link from low Earth orbit to a ground station on Earth.

3. We set a new high record! The TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) payload – also demonstrating laser communications like ILLUMA-T and LCRD – downlinked 4.8 terabytes of data at 200 Gbps in a single 5-minute pass. This is the highest data rate ever achieved by laser communications technology. To put it in perspective a single terabyte is the equivalent of about 500 hours of high-definition video.

A 34-meter (112-foot) wide antenna at Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex near Canberra, Australia.

4. This year we celebrated the Deep Space Network’s 60th anniversary. This international array of antennas located at three complexes in California, Spain, and Australia allow us to communicate with spacecraft at the Moon and beyond. Learn more about the Deep Space Network’s legacy and future advancements.

An illustration of the LunaNet architecture. LunaNet will bring internet-like services to the Moon.

5. We are bringing humans to the Moon with Artemis missions. During expeditions, astronauts exploring the surface are going to need internet-like capabilities to talk to mission control, understand their routes, and ensure overall safety. The space comm and nav group is working with international partners and commercial companies to develop LunaNet, and in 2023, the team released Draft LunaNet Specification Version 5, furthering development.

The High-Rate Delay Tolerant Networking node launched to the International Space Station in November and will act as a high-speed path for data.

6. In addition to laser communications, ILLUMA-T on the International Space Station is also demonstrating high-rate delay/disruption tolerant networking (HDTN). The networking node is showcasing a high-speed data path and a store-and-forward technique. HDTN ensures data reaches its final destination and isn’t lost on its path due to a disruption or delay, which are frequent in the space environment.

The Communications Services Project (CSP) partners with commercial industry to provide networking options for future spaceflight missions.

7. The space comm and nav team is embracing the growing aerospace industry by partnering with commercial companies to provide multiple networking options for science and exploration missions. Throughout 2023, our commercialization groups engaged with over 110 companies through events, one-on-one meetings, forums, conferences, and more. Over the next decade, NASA plans to transition near-Earth services from government assets to commercial infrastructure.

Middle and high school students solve a coding experiment during NASA's Office of STEM Engagement App Development Challenge. 

8. Every year, NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement sponsors the App Development Challenge, wherein middle and high school students must solve a coding challenge. This year, student groups coded an application to visualize the Moon’s South Pole region and display information for navigating the Moon’s surface. Our space communications and navigation experts judged and interviewed students about their projects and the top teams visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston!

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket soars upward after liftoff at the pad at 3:27 a.m. EDT on Saturday, Aug. 26, from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A in Florida carrying NASA’s SpaceX Crew-7 crew members to the International Space Station. Aboard SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft are NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov.

9. The Near Space Network supported 19 launches in 2023! Launches included Commercial Crew flights to the International Space Station, science mission launches like XRISM and the SuperBIT balloon, and many more. Once in orbit, these satellites use Near Space Network antennas and relays to send their critical data to Earth. In 2023, the Near Space Network provided over 10 million minutes of communications support to missions in space.

Here’s to another year connecting Earth and space.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[ephemerensis]

Cologne // Tim Drake x GN! Reader

hay guys! where Tim Drake and Red Robin (ur bodyguard for the time being) smell suspiciously the same— it’s like you can’t even tell the difference! no angst, this took me so long oh my goodness i’m gonna stick to writing what i know. stay tuned for hurt/angst i have a lot of grievances to spit out! not proofread.

Part 2

—

Gotham was the last place you’d expected to be sent off to, but it’s where you found yourself now. Despite being disgustingly crime ridden, it was the center of trade, commerce, business, and more importantly— information. Which is precisely what you’d been sent to offer.

Your family’s company recently made a ground breaking discovery in pharmaceuticals, creating a drug that could limit the spread of cancer cells without traditional side effects; YB-V they called it. However, the by-product of production was much more severe, resulting in a chemical compound capable of mutating all the cells in a person completely to become something other as if they belonged to a different entity. Given the right motivations and means, the cells could be manipulated by a third party, turning them into fully conscious puppets of some sort.

With data leaks and security concerns, and the serious nature of the consequences if your drug had fallen into the wrong hands, you were sent to deliver the research and development to the production team personally; placed in charge of overseeing production until launch.

Which all sounded good in theory, but as you found yourself twiddling your thumbs in a blacked out office space, getting briefed on the gravity of the situation by a police task force with some vigilante character hanging around behind you, you began to question what it was all worth.

“So let me get this straight, an email between Wayne Corp and ourselves was leaked and now a couple big shot villains want to steal it? What kind of bad guy reads emails?”

A burly officer with a thick white mustache and a pair of square set glasses cleared his throat awkwardly, “That’s correct.”

“Some tech team,” you scoffed. “I’m the only one that can access any of the files, it’s all biometrically locked. While this certainly puts a damper on my day, we should be able to proceed normally.”

“They have your identity too,” the figure in the back voiced. Red Robin, you’d been informed, one of Gotham’s crime fighters in spandex (allegedly.) Up until now he hadn’t spoken a word, loitering while the police explained everything to you.

“Which is why we brought you here,” the commissioner pipped, reaching for his coffee mug as he spoke. “Red Robin has agreed to watch over your activities for the duration of your time in Gotham. For your safety, and ours.”

Have this guy tail you? As if. You were occupied enough without having a stranger watch your every move. A vigilante at that, it’s not like you could look at his resume and review his history.

“While that is a gracious offer, I have my own bodyguards. They’re well trained and—“

“Not for Gotham, you don’t.” Red Robin stepped out from the corner he’d situated himself in, arms crossed and a frown plastered on his face. “And unless you want to stay in a bunker for three months, I’m your best bet.”

Silence fell as you stared at the masked man, contemplating your options. The underground bunker was out of the question. On top of running production, you had a company to run and a reputation to upkeep; meetings, galas, charity events to attend. And as much as you hated to admit it, they had to be right. Gotham knows Gotham, and with the crises you’d witnessed on screen it was clear their criminals were on a polarly different level.

Pressing your hands to the table, you stood up and turned around, “I see. And you being around won’t make me more of a target?”

“Not even you would know I’m there.”

Closing the distance between the two of you in a few paces, you stuck your hand out to him, “In that case, I look forward to working with you Red Robin.”

Standing near him, the faint smell of lavender was imminent and something deeper lingered under it, an amber of some sort. It was pleasant; Red Robin had good taste in cologne. And that is all you needed to trust him.

It took a second for him to shake your outstretched hand. In your palm, his grip was firm, rough gloves pressing into your satin skin. Secure, you’d decided, secure and reliable.

And just as he’d promised, you hardly noticed him. On the contrary, you were also never attacked; not in the days following the abrupt meeting, nor the week after that, nor the month after that. There was the occasional mention of trouble, or something that went bump in the night— but whether it concerned you or not it didn’t matter. Nothing ever happened.

When he was tucked away it felt like he was really gone, not even the eerie feeling that followed being watched lingered. The only thing that drew you back into the reality was when you’d catch the scent of lavender lingering or in the few cases where he’d appear before you. In his absence you felt almost lonely, despite your work occupying it all. So you soon found yourself leaving notes.

“Bought coffee for the office.”

And he began to write back.

“Just black next time, thanks.”

…

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Cornflower blue.”

“That’s a dumb name. Your costume is red, I think you got out branded by Nightwing.”

“In my defense, I didn’t design it.”

…

He didn’t say much in them, nothing that you could glean in depth anyway. But you found yourself oddly pleased with his nothing. It’s not like you cared so desperately for his identity, that was his to keep of course. You did care for his presence. Something about it was magnetizing, and because he hardly appeared before you, these were the tidbits you found yourself drawn to.

Not that you’d kept them, he would see. Despite knowing the situation you were in, it still felt like a strange game— where he knew every detail about you, and you knew nothing of him. Your feelings, at the least, these you could keep on your own.

“Do you need lab access? I know you follow me in, but if there’s an emergency or something…” Production and distribution for YB-V was run by Wayne Corp and like all things related to your project it was kept secure in an underground bunker while you worked to transfer the information your company developed.

While the scientists and developers were mainly in charge of carrying out the project, none of it could move forward without you. The security system had been meticulously set up so that you, and only you, could access the files with the research and instructions. And beyond even your capabilities, every stage written into the plan had to be completed before the next could be unlocked. So you had to be there, supervise and guide them during the entirety of the process.

Archaic, you’d decided. But necessary according to the rest of the world.

Red Robin accompanied you on these trips. Being underground and all, it was one of the few moments he went with you rather than watching from afar.

“No, I’ll find a way in if I need a way in.”

You looked back at him questioningly. You didn’t doubt his capabilities of course, but he said it with such ease, “Is it that easy to break into? I should increase security.”

He scoffed, crossing his arms. “It’s secure. I’m the issue.”

You turned back around shaking your head with a snort. He was growing on you, sass and all. Stopping by a display of notes and charts, you looked them over to ensure they aligned with protocol.

“I have to attend a gala next week, by the way.”

He hummed in response, a couple steps behind you like he usually was when you visited the lab.

“It’s at Wayne Manor… and I can get you an invite. Security is stricter than it is here, I’ve been told. It’d be troublesome to sneak around.” Ruffling through the papers, you extracted the one you needed, holding it up to your face.

“And I don’t have a date,” you added.

“…are you asking me out?” You could hear a hint of a smile in his voice, making your face burn red at the accusation.

You set the paper down, abruptly whipping around with the most serious expression you could muster, “Strictly for my safety! I don’t know how credible everyone attending is and—“

The smile on his face shut you up. Embarrassed and slightly dejected you looked around the room for something else to lock eyes on, clearing your throat.

“I would’ve loved to, but I won’t be there. Something came up that I need to take care of. But like you said, security is strict, you’ll be safe,” he interjected before you could say anymore. Honestly you couldn’t even be mad, he let you down so sincerely you had to believe it. The small smile plastered on his face and the gentle tone he used in opposition to his usual curt one melted you down far more than you would’ve liked it to.

“Right.” It took you a second to cough anything out, like you were thirteen and starstruck again by any character that tossed you a bone, “so much for you or the bunker, I could’ve hired the Waynes’ security.”

But you were disappointed, and his answer did surprise you. Busy? He hadn’t left your side your entire stay as far as you were aware, granted you couldn’t see him 95% of the time, but in principle.

He must’ve picked up on your downtrodden state because he leaned in teasingly, that familiar lavender scent washing over you, “You have your own bodyguards though, right? They’re well trained.”

You wondered what color his eyes were behind the mask, a warm brown or a melancholy blue. Either way you’d decided you were done for, his were the type of eyes you could drown in; “Not for Gotham, I don’t.”

The night of the gala you didn’t expect much. You were supposed to represent your company of course, as their Gotham socialite, and you were to meet with your business partner. Up until now everything had been transactional, taken care of on invisible ends. Which was fine, but to maintain business relations you had to show up to these things.

And so it was about as dry as you’d thought it to be. Most of everyone was twice your age, many were so stuck in their desire for affluence it radiated off of them like maggots in a burn pile. Supposedly it was a charity gala, in reality it was an egoistic echo chamber and you were in no position to defy it.

Flitting around you sipped your champagne and made conversation and promises that didn’t matter until a hand graced your shoulder with the lightest touch, it felt almost invisible. Turning around you saw a boy with raven hair and the tamest of blue eyes. And he looked to be around your age, a moment of respite at last.

“Hi,” he breathed the word into a smile that was dazzlingly honest and strikingly warm in juxtaposition with the mood of the room.

“Hi,” you shook the hand he offered to you. His hands were rougher than you’d imagine an aristocrat’s to be, littered with callouses you attributed with a dedication to some sport, “I’m Y/N, I don’t think we’ve met before?”

“Sort of, I’m Tim.” In your correspondence with Wayne Corp, Tim had been your main contact; at least for big ticket decisions. In other words, he was your collaborator and your business’ partner. In your head you recalled all the times you poked fun at the archaic way he wrote his emails, like he was 52 and balding— in reality he was just the opposite.

“Oh! It’s nice to finally meet you! Thank you for working with us, we couldn’t have progressed this far without Wayne Corp.”

“On the contrary, thank you for trusting us. This project’s been a huge safety concern for you I’ve heard.”

You laughed, shaking your head, “Not at all! I have one of the best vigilantes in the city.” But this, he should’ve already known. Red Robin had to be cleared for access to certain things, and you’d corresponded as much through your emails. “I must say though, I was disappointed it wasn’t Nightwing at first, he used to be my favorite.”

Tim blinked at you for a spell and you couldn’t read his expression. Pleasant and cordial with some twinge of underlying distaste was the best way to describe it, something in the way his eyes glinted with a malice behind his smile. “Has that changed?”

He must love Red Robin.

“I suppose,” growing on you was an understatement. It was a strange ordeal because he wasn’t real. No name or title you could address, but everything you learned about Red Robin made you want to know more about Red Robin. He was magnetizing. “Have you met them? Is it a normal Gotham thing?”

“No,”his response came swiftly, “they’re usually in other parts of the city and I’m never out at night. Married to the office.”

“I see.” That would explain the emails.

“Do you… want to dance?” He extended his hand to you graciously, but with a gentle hesitance that made him seem softer than he was. In a way you felt like you were betraying your vigilante delusionship, but he hadn’t agreed to go with you and Tim was charming enough. Besides, business relations.

“Of course.” Placing your flute of champagne on a nearby table, you took his arm as he led you to the floor. He smiled in a demure sort of way that made your heart flutter like the excitement you’d felt interacting with Red Robin. Maybe you just liked the attention that much, that must be the correlation between the two.

“Do you know how to waltz?” Typically galas didn’t have much dancing at all, let alone organized ballroom dancing, but leave it to the Waynes to find a way to stun the crowd with their class and extravagance.

“Sort of, I’ve taken rudimentary classes.” Like when you were five.

“Perfect,” he grinned. He placed his hand faintly on the small of your waist while the other found purchase in your opposing palm, “I’ll lead. Just follow along, you’ll be fine.”

Miraculously you were fine. You started out with your eyes glued to the floor, following after him and avoiding his toes. But once you’d gotten into a rhythm, it all felt like floating.

“You haven’t stepped on my toes once,” he joked. Up close and under the mesmerizing ballroom light he looked angelic, the way the light caught in his lashes and the reflected off the blue of his eyes—like little golden flecks glimmering under supple flowing rivers.

“I’ve been trying not to!” you laughed.

“You look beautiful,” as if his eyes could get any more mesmerizing, they softened somehow with his words, “outfit and all.”

“Thank you,” at this you averted your gaze, and prayed the lighting didn’t highlight the flush of your cheeks. Out of being flustered or embarrassment, you didn’t know. On the one hand, a rich, beautiful, respectful man was complimenting you. On the other, you were wearing cornflower blue because it was someone else’s favorite color. Like you were twelve again and going to some middle school dance where you wanted to impress your hallway crush.

“Your Getty pictures don’t do you justice,” he continued. “Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t seen one bad photo, but you always look so serious and intimidating.”

It never occurred to you he’d Googled you before, it made sense now how he was able to single you out in the crowd. Maybe the thought was so foreign because you’d never paid him any mind, but now you were thinking you should’ve. At the very least because it’s polite and helpful to know the bare minimum, but if you were honest with yourself it’s because he struck a curiosity in you that needed to be sated—too breathtaking to be real and all you’d known was his face and arresting demeanor.

“Because I am serious and intimidating, I’m very good at my job you know. You’re not the only one married to an office,” you boasted. In reality you hated work, but worse still was posing for pictures. Especially at crowded social functions your parents ushered you to where you didn’t know a soul, you simply didn’t know what to do with yourself in front of a camera—that was your excuse anyway.

“That explains the dancing,” he quipped with a sideward smile.

Your eyes widened slightly in shock as your mouth fell open to scoff. “Hey! I thought I was doing pretty good!”

He burst into a contagious laughter that hypnotically made you follow suit. But you wouldn’t settle for that after all your efforts to keep up. With a look to the wayside, you pretended to lose touch of the tandem between your steps and lurch forward, consequently stepping on his polished brown loafers. And then it was his turn to be shocked.

“Woah! So much for trying,”Tim teased. Not that he lost his footing, he was as stable as ever. In his eyes you swore there was a glint of mockery, as if he knew and anticipated it.

“Oh did I hurt you,” you feigned concern before slipping into the most innocent smile you could muster. “I’m a terrible dancer, I can’t help it.”

“Aren’t you petty?”

“You have no idea.”

“Petty and pretty, how dangerous.”

Before you could fire some witty retort you noticed your steps slowing to a halt with the swoon of the music. He’d brought his hand above you to spin you once, slowly. The other on your waist moved to your lower back to support you as he pulled you into a dip and all you could do was follow. Something about the atmosphere had your heart palpitating. Or maybe it was the way he was looking at you, like you were an art piece on display, overhead light illuminating behind him as he stared down at you like an angel emerging from the heavens.

Sundering you to the earth, you couldn’t fixate your eyes on anything else, and though it was only for a moment it felt like eternity. You were close enough now for the scent of his cologne to waft over you faintly amongst the throng of strongly powdered people in the room. Lavender. A familiar lavender with all the base notes that’d been lingering around you for the past few weeks. Your look of awe faded to confusion.

Red Robin’s.

“Is that—“

But he wasn’t looking at you. Instead you followed his gaze down to your chest, eyes widening as you saw the little red laser mark hovering over your heart. Before you could react, you felt the air get knocked out of your lungs as Tim shoved you away. The sound of the gun firing pierced cleanly through the noise of the glitz and glamour, and something burned across the skin of the side of your arm.

You couldn’t tell if it was broken glass that cut you or something else, you couldn’t feel much of anything with the adrenaline flooding your body. Scared and discombobulated, you scrambled backwards as panic set into the crowd.

In the midst of the onset of gunshots and people scattering towards exits, Tim had rushed over to you. Kneeling beside you, he gave you a quick look over and gently pulled you up by your uninjured arm. As soon as you were up he rushedly dragged you away from it all, winding through the hallways of the manor wordlessly. Though it was probably for the better, because you didn’t have an ounce of air left in your lungs trying to keep up with his pace or a thought in your head after what you’d just witnessed.

The further you trudged along, the heavier your limbs felt and the harder it was to pry your eyes open after blinking. Which was strange, you hadn’t lost so much blood, but it must’ve been the confusion of it all or something you ate. A couple halls and turns later you arrived at a room. He ushered you inside, seating you on the bed before rummaging through the drawers.

“Are you alright? Does it hurt badly?” from the drawer he procured a bandage. He sat himself next to you, promptly wrapping the cloth tightly around your arm.

“No, it’s not bad,” truthfully it felt numb, which you couldn’t decide was a good or bad thing. You couldn’t think much of anything, focused on keeping your eyes from fluttering shut.

“I should’ve known they’d do something,” he’d muttered. As he finished, pushing himself off the bed, your head suddenly felt too heavy to hold up and your eyes too tired to function.

“Hey… are you okay? You don’t look so good.” He pressed the back of his hand to your forehead, feeling nothing abnormal and deepening his concern. But you couldn’t process what he was saying. With a lilt, you fell to your side, feeling the injunctive relief of not having to hold yourself upright.

He undid your bandages to look at the wound again before scowling as it dawned on him, “Tranquilizers.”

After rewrapping your arm, he hurriedly stalked towards the door, “You’ll be safe here, I’ll send someone.”

With whatever consciousness you had left you managed to slur a sentence, “Where are you going?”

“To find my brother.”

If he said anything after you didn’t hear it, because the moment your eyes fluttered shut, they stayed shut.

You didn’t know how long you were out. Not terribly so. When you’d awoken, it was still dark out. Tim must’ve flicked the light off when he’d left too, the only light that flooded in was from the streetlamp out the window. The drugs hadn’t cleared your system yet if the pounding in your head and brain fog you were experiencing was any indicator. And they didn’t even hit you directly, who knows where you’d be if they did.

In the streets you could hear the panic of people and the wail of police sirens, which would’ve settled your stomach if not for the fact that it clearly wasn’t over and the police weren’t entering.

You jerked your head towards the door as a loud thud sounded just outside of it. Looking around the room for a place to hide, there was none. And if there was one, you couldn’t see it with the lights out. Some commotion followed before what sounded like a body hit the floor.

Not knowing what else to do, you wrapped yourself in the bedding, pulling it to the floor behind the bed and huddling there. At the very least, no one knew you were in there but Tim, and surely he’d locked the door.

Nope.

The sound of the knob turning made your blood run cold. You drew the blankets tightly around yourself, hoping you’d amalgamate into the cloths if you’d clutched them tightly enough.

With the bed obscuring your view, you couldn’t see the perpetrator and you didn’t want to. You screwed your eyes shut as footsteps creaked on the wood pacing towards you. Against your will, you hands couldn’t cease trembling and you wondered if the other person in the room could hear your heart beating out of your chest.

This was it. If someone wanted to swoop in, now would be great.

The footsteps halted on the opposite side of the bed. You considered jumping out at them, throwing the blanket and bolting for it, but your limbs felt like they were filled with lead. And in any case, if they were armed you were done for anyway. So you held your breath and willed them away instead.

To your horror they’d started again in your direction. Silence. And then a hand touched the blanket and you couldn’t help it, you shrieked and covered your head with your arms.

But instead of force or a bludgeoning, they’d knelt in front of you, gently grabbing your arms as you thrashed. A familiar voice called your name out a couple times before you recognized it and opened your eyes.

“Hey, hey, hey, it’s me! You’re okay,” in the dark you couldn’t really see his face but it was Tim’s voice that called to you. Delirious and reeling, the relief flooded your body so intensely, the tears didn’t even have time to well before they were streaming down your cheeks.

Throwing your arms around him, you sobbed for all you were worth, “I was so scared, why’d you just leave me!”

You felt him stiffen beneath you at the sudden intrusion before softening and patting the back of your head with a gloved hand. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

And it felt so safe there, in his arms, secure but soft all at once. The familiar lavender mixed with the champagney smell from the gala soothed you in a way you’d never thought you’d needed.

“I thought they were gonna get me,” you choked out between sobs. This was in no way attractive, “and then I’d get kidnapped, and everyone would turn into puppets!”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. Not mocking or laughing at you like your more awake self would’ve expected, he was mellow about the whole thing. Sorry and really sorry for it—and it wasn’t even his fault.

When you calmed down enough to sound coherent, he pulled back to wipe the tears from your cheeks.

“Let me see that,” he nodded towards your bandaged arm. You stretched it out for him and he undid the gauze, “This doesn’t look too bad. Shouldn’t scar.”

Procuring new dressings, he took his time with it this time, applying a salve before wrapping it around you again.

“Tim?” you said his name just to say his name, because you liked the way it felt to say and you wanted to hear him speak. Instead he paused before resuming his work, “I’m Red Robin.”

“Oh.” That’s embarrassing. You were so certain of it too, but he did say he would send someone and he was probably with his family or waiting outside for things to settle. So instead you got the infinitely intangible Red Robin, “I thought you were busy.”

“Plans changed.” He was never this curt with you, not after knowing you anyway. He had to maintain secrecy, you knew this, but he’d find ways to say more anyway.

You flinched as he constricted your arm with the bandage, “You’re pulling it a little tight.”

This made him pause again, letting go of the wrap altogether this time as the circulation breathed back into your marrow.

Exhaling, he ran a hand through his raven hair, “I’m sorry.”

You blinked at him, still fighting to keep your eyelids open but worried nonetheless. This was unlike him, “Red?”

“Sorry, I’m just on edge. I should’ve known, I could’ve prevented this,” shaking his head, it was if he made up his mind, “Everything is transferred now, the project can wrap up without you. We’ll get you on the next flight back tomorrow.”

Somewhere in you an inkling of anger stirred, as if you were an object that could be sent as needed. But the strain in his voice was evident, how could hold a grudge against that? “I don’t want to leave yet.”

“You’re going.”

You huffed, “I’m not. And you don’t have to watch me anymore if it’s too much, I never expected that from you! You’re here now, you didn’t have to be, but you are— that’s more than my useless bodyguards or Wayne security have done and they’re paid for it. You put up with me and nothing has happened to me. I’m sorry for being so vulnerable, that’s my fault. Don’t you dare berate yourself, you haven’t done one wrong thing!”

He said nothing, just stared at you with something like curiosity. Under the pale moonlight and with his face obstructed you could only speculate.

You stuck out your injured arm to him again, urging him to take it, “Hurry and finish, I’m still sleepy.”

Wordlessly he finished binding your arm. As soon as he was done you fell on his shoulder, closing your eyes.

“Tim—“

“I’m not Tim,” he reiterated. There was something in his tone that you couldn’t quite place; annoyance?

“Oh,” you mumbled, feeling sleep creep up on you again, “you smell the same... I think I like him.” Surely it’s fine to confess this much, or that’s what you told yourself as you started to drift off, words slurring and thoughts blurring, “you should meet him, he’s a big fan.”

—

i have a final in 5 hours please with me luck (it’s 2am)

[civetfish]

Nerd-to-nerd communication

Something super pointless and self-indulgent I've had on the backburner for a while. I love trying to make the pieces they gave us fit together!

Al-AN and Robin would absolutely bond over learning about each other's biology. I could talk about this forever but I'll get into all of the headcanons I have for these two in another post eventually

Below the cut is another version with some extra bits and pieces and the transcription

Transcript :

Architect Anatomy A. Architect "Brain" - Doesn't "store" information so much as allow for easy communication with the network B. Brainstem - connects the information received to the central nervous/circulatory system C. "Heart" - Circulatory system pumps the bioluminescent fluid to other organ systems and surface veins. Each node connects to a vast vasculature network D. "Kidneys" - Organs that filter the bioluminescent "blood" and other bodily fluids, absorbing and distributing collected material E. Nerve Center - Receives raw sensory data and filters it. Filtering can be unconscious or intentional

F. "Respiratory" Tract - Intakes gases or liquids and filters out material for use. Disposes of waste on exhale. Provides cooling to internal systems

The respiratory tract functions less like a set of lungs and more akin to a computer's cooling system, with the ability to absorb material from the environment to use in other parts of the body. It also would likely help the architect's body analyze the environment it is currently exposed to on a molecular level. It is also truly unidirectional, with the intake vents near the "collarbone" and the exhaust vents on both sides of the abdomen

The architect organ cache in-game felt like it was definitely not a complete model of the internal organs, so I wanted to come up with something to fill some more space. I also just really liked the idea of Al-An being capable of something similar to breathing, without having a respiratory system in the traditional sense. Feel free to use any of this in your own headcanons if you would like :)

BONUS - a gif of all the layers!

[fatehbaz]

“Is it green energy if it’s impacting cultural traditional sites?”

Yakama Nation Tribal Councilman Jeremy Takala sounded weary. For five years, tribal leaders and staff have been fighting a renewable energy development that could permanently destroy tribal cultural property. “This area, it’s irreplaceable.��

The privately owned land, outside Goldendale, Washington, is called Pushpum, or “mother of roots,” a first foods seed bank. The Yakama people have treaty-protected gathering rights there. One wind turbine-studded ridge, Juniper Point, is the proposed site of a pumped hydro storage facility. But to build it, Boston-based Rye Development would have to carve up Pushpum — and the Yakama Nation lacks a realistic way to stop it.

Back in October 2008, unbeknownst to Takala, Scott Tillman, CEO of Golden Northwest Aluminum Corporation, met with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, a collection of governor-appointed representatives from Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana [...]. Tillman, who owned a shuttered Lockheed Martin aluminum smelter near Goldendale, told the council about the contaminated site’s redevelopment potential, specifically for pumped hydro storage [...]. Shortly thereafter, Klickitat County’s public utility department tried to implement Tillman’s plan [...].

Meanwhile, Tillman cleaned up and sold another smelting site, just across the Columbia River in The Dalles, Oregon, a Superfund site where Lockheed Martin had poisoned the groundwater with cyanide. He sold it to Google’s parent company, Alphabet, which operates water-guzzling data centers in The Dalles and plans to build more. For nine years, the county and Rye plotted the fate of Pushpum — without ever notifying the Yakama Nation.

The tribal government only learned of the development in December 2017, when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) issued a public notice of acceptance for Rye’s preliminary permit application. Tribal officials had just 60 days to catch up on nine years of development planning and issue their initial concerns and objections as public comments. [...]

When the tribe objected, FERC said it could file more public comments to the docket instead of consulting. [...]

When asked what Rye could offer the Yakama people as compensation for the irreversible destruction of their cultural property, Steimle suggested “employment associated with the project.” [...] Presented with the reality that Yakama people might not want Rye’s jobs, Steimle hesitated. “Yeah, I mean I, I can’t argue that — maybe it won’t be meaningful to them.” [...]

Klickitat County’s eagerness creates another barrier to the Yakama Nation. In Washington, a developer can take one of two permitting paths: through the state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council, or through county channels. Both lead to FERC. In this case, working with the county benefits Rye: Klickitat, a majority Republican county, has a contentious relationship with the Yakama Nation [...]. “Klickitat County refuses to work with us,” said Takala. [...]

Fighting Rye's proposal has required the efforts of tribal attorneys, archaeologists and government staffers from a number of departments. [...]

And Rye’s project is just one of dozens proposed within the Yakama Nation’s 10 million-acre treaty territory. Maps from the tribe and the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife show that of the 51 wind and solar projects currently proposed statewide — not including geothermal or pumped hydro storage projects, which are also renewable energy developments — at least 34 are on or partially on the Yakama Nation’s ceded lands.

---

Headline, images, graphics, captions, and text by: B. Toastie Oaster (High Country News). “Green colonialism is flooding the Pacific Northwest.” As published at The Wenatchee World. 25 March 2023.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

I have never seen anything like this- it's a mansion in the middle of a residential area. Built in 2000, in Dallas, TX, it has 0bds. 1ba, & is listed for $2.4M.

Surprise! The beautiful entrance foyer. Does anyone want to buy a Bitcoin Mining Center?

This looks like a break room.

According to the description: Formerly AT&T, this upgraded turnkey Tier 2 Data Center is a Full Liquid Cooling Immersion System. True multi-use facility whether you need AI services, cloud hosting, traditional data center, servers or even Bitcoin Mining - this site has it all! This property comes with all equipment included!

I don't even know what I'm looking at.

Steel Reinforced CMU, 3 Phase Power, 2 Power Grids, Backup Diesel Generator, Sites on Main Branch Lines of Communication Infrastructure for Dallas, Fire Suppression, Electronic Access, Bulletproof Glass, Double Safe Room Door, Raised Floor. There's a safe room?

Upgrades include: 500kw 3 Phase Panels with digital monitors, Full Liquid Immersion System, 500kw Dry Cooler, 3 Phase Pump, 3 Slic Tanks, 5 New HVAC Units.

So, they can just sell all this? They said it's turn key. So, is it bitcoin or what? I wonder why they're selling it. That's suspicious- maybe it's not making money, anymore.

Out back. That's all they have, a wood stockade fence around the property?

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/13229-Southview-Ln-Dallas-TX-75240/118222349_zpid/

[probablyasocialecologist]

The cryptocurrency hype of the past few years already started to introduce people to these problems. Despite producing little to no tangible benefits — unless you count letting rich people make money off speculation and scams — Bitcoin consumed more energy and computer parts than medium-sized countries and crypto miners were so voracious in their energy needs that they turned shuttered coal plants back on to process crypto transactions. Even after the crypto crash, Bitcoin still used more energy in 2023 than the previous year, but some miners found a new opportunity: powering the generative AI boom. The AI tools being pushed by OpenAI, Google, and their peers are far more energy intensive than the products they aim to displace. In the days after ChatGPT’s release in late 2022, Sam Altman called its computing costs “eye-watering” and several months later Alphabet chairman John Hennessy told Reuters that getting a response from Google’s chatbot would “likely cost 10 times more” than using its traditional search tools. Instead of reassessing their plans, major tech companies are doubling down and planning a massive expansion of the computing infrastructure available to them.

[...]

As the cloud took over, more computation fell into the hands of a few dominant tech companies and they made the move to what are called “hyperscale” data centers. Those facilities are usually over 10,000 square feet and hold more than 5,000 servers, but those being built today are often many times larger than that. For example, Amazon says its data centers can have up to 50,000 servers each, while Microsoft has a campus of 20 data centers in Quincy, Washington with almost half a million servers between them. By the end of 2020, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google controlled half of the 597 hyperscale data centres in the world, but what’s even more concerning is how rapidly that number is increasing. By mid-2023, the number of hyperscale data centres stood at 926 and Synergy Research estimates another 427 will be built in the coming years to keep up with the expansion of resource-intensive AI tools and other demands for increased computation. All those data centers come with an increasingly significant resource footprint. A recent report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that the global energy demand of data centers, AI, and crypto could more than double by 2026, increasing from 460 TWh in 2022 to up to 1,050 TWh — similar to the energy consumption of Japan. Meanwhile, in the United States, data center energy use could triple from 130 TWh in 2022 — about 2.5% of the country’s total — to 390 TWh by the end of the decade, accounting for a 7.5% share of total energy, according to Boston Consulting Group. That’s nothing compared to Ireland, where the IEA estimates data centers, AI, and crypto could consume a third of all power in 2026, up from 17% in 2022. Water use is going up too: Google reported it used 5.2 billion gallons of water in its data centers in 2022, a jump of 20% from the previous year, while Microsoft used 1.7 billion gallons in its data centers, an increase of 34% on 2021. University of California, Riverside researcher Shaolei Ren told Fortune, “It’s fair to say the majority of the growth is due to AI.” But these are not just large abstract numbers; they have real material consequences that a lot of communities are getting fed up with just as the companies seek to massively expand their data center footprints.

9 February 2024

[coochiequeens]

This is why I can’t stand those stories about celebrities having kids through surrogates. They downplay the risks to the mother who goes through pregnancy and childbirth.

Fake or not, I mean I really hate to think of four kids dealing with an aunt/mom so oblivious to how those boys lost their mom so young and unwilling to modify plans but surrogacy does pose increased risks to the mothers and children they carry

“At the recent United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, The Heritage Foundation and the Center for Family and Human Rights drew attention to surrogacy and the dangers it poses to women at an event  that highlighted several instances of women who had been trafficked, rendered infertile, or even died as a result of surrogacy. Michelle Reaves was one such surrogate mother from California. She lost her life last year while delivering a baby for someone else, leaving her own son and daughter motherless and her husband a widower.

By its very nature, surrogacy commodifies both a woman’s body as well as that of the child. The women targeted to become a surrogate by the multi-billion-dollar fertility industry are often wooed by the opportunity to make tens of thousands of dollars in exchange for renting their body. In some cases, a surrogate arrangement is altruistic—perhaps the surrogate mother may want to help a friend or family member who desperately wants a baby, and she does not profit financially from the exchange. Nevertheless, regardless of the circumstances or motivation, in a surrogacy arrangement a woman’s body is used as a conduit for a transaction that provides a baby for someone else—and the risks for both her, and the baby, are significant.

Whether a surrogate mother is compensated or not, serious concerns involving health risks to mothers and babies remain, and the rights of children must not be ignored.

Children who are born as the result of a surrogacy arrangement are more likely to have low birth weights and are at an increased risk for stillbirth. When a woman carries a child conceived from an egg that is not her own—a traditional gestational surrogate arrangement—she is at a three-fold risk of developing hypertension and pre-eclampsia. Egg donors have spoken up about experiencing conditions such as loss of fertility, blood clots, kidney disease, premature menopause, and cancer, and the lack of data and studies on both short and long term health outcomes for egg donors makes true informed consent unattainable. While scientists do not fully understand the scope of these health considerations, it is clear that for both short and long-term outcomes, surrogacy is a frontier of unknowns; children, egg donors, and surrogate mothers may pay a physical or psychological price nobody yet fully knows or understands.”

[fairygodpiggy]

We're officially less than a month away from Ride the Tide!

So what is it all about, anyway?

Ride the Tide is a Summer festival celebrating XIV's player community 💙

Hosted by The Aetheryte Plaza, we bring together a wide variety of venues and performers across ALL North American Data Centers to provide fun and entertainment with La Noscea's coastal backdrop.

We first created Ride the Tide in April 2020 as a way to share cheer, company, and community in the midst of the pandemic lockdown, and we've been carrying on the tradition since!

(more info below the cut vvv)

Do you need to be an RPer to attend?

Roleplay is always welcome, and the staff will gladly roleplay - but it is not required! This is an event for everyone, so even if you don't RP, you are welcome!

What kind of activities and contests are there, and how do I participate?

We have a wide variety of games that will be offered. I'll be making posts in the near future that highlight each booth; but to summarize, there will be cooking challenges, fishing, fighting contests, cliff diving, scavenger hunts, card games, fortune telling, and fashion contests!

While most of these require you to simply go to the respective booth and tell the staff you wanna do the thing, certain activities (like the fashion contest) require you to sign up well ahead of the festival so you can plan your glam and how you will impress the judges!

Keep an eye out for further information in case you want to sign up!

What if I just want to vibe and enjoy the atmosphere?

That's fine! There is no one way to enjoy the festivities. So long as you aren't being disruptive or mean-spirited, you are free to engage with the festival in whatever way that you're comfortable with!

What about the giveaway?

We have a pool of prizes for the grand giveaway - from special dyes and minions all the way to mounts, game time cards and even artwork and custom screenshots!

To be eligible to win, you must have an active subscription to FFXIV and be a member in The Aetheryte Plaza discord - since we'll run it in the server. Winners will be announced in discord at the END of Ride the Tide.

You do not have to be at the festival in game for the entire time if you are not able to stay.

Can trial accounts enter the giveaway?

The reason we can only allow subscribed users to enter is because 98% of the prizes offered are in-game items that require being traded. Trial accounts are not allowed to give or receive trades, send or receive mogmail, nor can they access the marketboard.

These are the more frequently asked questions, but if you have any others, you're welcome to send an ask or DM me!

[profoundbondfanfic]

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Something Wicked This Way Comes by aileenrose Rating: Mature Word count: 9.5k

Just like every summer, Dean and Sam are tracking tornadoes. Surprisingly, it's the nerdy computer scientist that sweeps Dean off his feet.

Every June, Dean and Sam make good on an old tradition and an easy way to make money, for them anyway—storm chasing across the plains, capturing footage other chasers wouldn’t dare dream of, at the risk of their own safety. But Sam is graduating college soon with his girlfriend Jess, and Dean knows that one day, they won’t get this chance again.

But in a twist of fate, the two of them encounter an old rival, Crowley, in a bar in Tulsa. And, incidentally, a data analyst from the Storm Prediction Center named Cas Novak, dressed like he’s completely out of his element in a bar full of tornado tourists, but wherever Dean turns in town, Castiel is there—and, Castiel comes to his rescue as well, right when the world figuratively and literally crashes down around him.

Growing up, I wanted to become either a storm chaser or a meteorologist, neither of which came to fruition. This fic, though, has always reignited a spark for me, and the author shows off every bit of research they did just to make it feel true-to-life. It also calls back to the original canon with plenty of lines, and a climactic scene that changes both of their lives in any story, in a barn, albeit this time with potentially more hazardous consequences.

The writing draws you in from the first scene and takes you through a few days in the life of a storm chaser, on the backroads of Oklahoma, hunting down one of nature’s deadliest forces—and as well, Dean meeting the love of his life by pure happenstance, with the two embarking on a new life together as the credits roll. It’s a fic I’ve come back to time and time again, and definitely one that stands out as unique!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A link-clump demands a linkdump

Cometh the weekend, cometh the linkdump. My daily-ish newsletter includes a section called "Hey look at this," with three short links per day, but sometimes those links get backed up and I need to clean house. Here's the eight previous installments:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

The country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla is .ai, and that's turned into millions of dollars worth of royalties as "entrepreneurs" scramble to sprinkle some buzzword-compliant AI stuff on their businesses in the most superficial way possible:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-fever-turns-anguillas-ai-domain-into-a-digital-gold-mine/

All told, .ai domain royalties will account for about ten percent of the country's GDP.

It's actually kind of nice to see Anguilla finding some internet money at long last. Back in the 1990s, when I was a freelance web developer, I got hired to work on the investor website for a publicly traded internet casino based in Anguilla that was a scammy disaster in every conceivable way. The company had been conceived of by people who inherited a modestly successful chain of print-shops and decided to diversify by buying a dormant penny mining stock and relaunching it as an online casino.

But of course, online casinos were illegal nearly everywhere. Not in Anguilla – or at least, that's what the founders told us – which is why they located their servers there, despite the lack of broadband or, indeed, reliable electricity at their data-center. At a certain point, the whole thing started to whiff of a stock swindle, a pump-and-dump where they'd sell off shares in that ex-mining stock to people who knew even less about the internet than they did and skedaddle. I got out, and lost track of them, and a search for their names and business today turns up nothing so I assume that it flamed out before it could ruin any retail investors' lives.

Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory, one of those former British colonies that was drained and then given "independence" by paternalistic imperial administrators half a world away. The country's main industries are tourism and "finance" – which is to say, it's a pearl in the globe-spanning necklace of tax- and corporate-crime-havens the UK established around the world so its most vicious criminals – the hereditary aristocracy – can continue to use Britain's roads and exploit its educated workforce without paying any taxes.

This is the "finance curse," and there are tiny, struggling nations all around the world that live under it. Nick Shaxson dubbed them "Treasure Islands" in his outstanding book of the same name:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780230341722/treasureislands

I can't imagine that the AI bubble will last forever – anything that can't go on forever eventually stops – and when it does, those .ai domain royalties will dry up. But until then, I salute Anguilla, which has at last found the internet riches that I played a small part in bringing to it in the previous century.

The AI bubble is indeed overdue for a popping, but while the market remains gripped by irrational exuberance, there's lots of weird stuff happening around the edges. Take Inject My PDF, which embeds repeating blocks of invisible text into your resume:

https://kai-greshake.de/posts/inject-my-pdf/

The text is tuned to make resume-sorting Large Language Models identify you as the ideal candidate for the job. It'll even trick the summarizer function into spitting out text that does not appear in any human-readable form on your CV.

Embedding weird stuff into resumes is a hacker tradition. I first encountered it at the Chaos Communications Congress in 2012, when Ang Cui used it as an example in his stellar "Print Me If You Dare" talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8

Cui figured out that one way to update the software of a printer was to embed an invisible Postscript instruction in a document that basically said, "everything after this is a firmware update." Then he came up with 100 lines of perl that he hid in documents with names like cv.pdf that would flash the printer when they ran, causing it to probe your LAN for vulnerable PCs and take them over, opening a reverse-shell to his command-and-control server in the cloud. Compromised printers would then refuse to apply future updates from their owners, but would pretend to install them and even update their version numbers to give verisimilitude to the ruse. The only way to exorcise these haunted printers was to send 'em to the landfill. Good times!

Printers are still a dumpster fire, and it's not solely about the intrinsic difficulty of computer security. After all, printer manufacturers have devoted enormous resources to hardening their products against their owners, making it progressively harder to use third-party ink. They're super perverse about it, too – they send "security updates" to your printer that update the printer's security against you – run these updates and your printer downgrades itself by refusing to use the ink you chose for it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

It's a reminder that what a monopolist thinks of as "security" isn't what you think of as security. Oftentimes, their security is antithetical to your security. That was the case with Web Environment Integrity, a plan by Google to make your phone rat you out to advertisers' servers, revealing any adblocking modifications you might have installed so that ad-serving companies could refuse to talk to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

WEI is now dead, thanks to a lot of hueing and crying by people like us:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/google_abandons_web_environment_integrity/

But the dream of securing Google against its own users lives on. Youtube has embarked on an aggressive campaign of refusing to show videos to people running ad-blockers, triggering an arms-race of ad-blocker-blockers and ad-blocker-blocker-blockers:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-will-the-ad-versus-ad-blocker-arms-race-end/

The folks behind Ublock Origin are racing to keep up with Google's engineers' countermeasures, and there's a single-serving website called "Is uBlock Origin updated to the last Anti-Adblocker YouTube script?" that will give you a realtime, one-word status update:

https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/

One in four web users has an ad-blocker, a stat that Doc Searls pithily summarizes as "the biggest boycott in world history":

https://doc.searls.com/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

Zero app users have ad-blockers. That's not because ad-blocking an app is harder than ad-blocking the web – it's because reverse-engineering an app triggers liability under IP laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which can put you away for 5 years for a first offense. That's what I mean when I say that "IP is anything that lets a company control its customers, critics or competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

I predicted that apps would open up all kinds of opportunities for abusive, monopolistic conduct back in 2010, and I'm experiencing a mix of sadness and smugness (I assume there's a German word for this emotion) at being so thoroughly vindicated by history:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

The more control a company can exert over its customers, the worse it will be tempted to treat them. These systems of control shift the balance of power within companies, making it harder for internal factions that defend product quality and customer interests to win against the enshittifiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The result has been a Great Enshittening, with platforms of all description shifting value from their customers and users to their shareholders, making everything palpably worse. The only bright side is that this has created the political will to do something about it, sparking a wave of bold, muscular antitrust action all over the world.

The Google antitrust case is certainly the most important corporate lawsuit of the century (so far), but Judge Amit Mehta's deference to Google's demands for secrecy has kept the case out of the headlines. I mean, Sam Bankman-Fried is a psychopathic thief, but even so, his trial does not deserve its vastly greater prominence, though, if you haven't heard yet, he's been convicted and will face decades in prison after he exhausts his appeals:

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-on-all-charges

The secrecy around Google's trial has relaxed somewhat, and the trickle of revelations emerging from the cracks in the courthouse are fascinating. For the first time, we're able to get a concrete sense of which queries are the most lucrative for Google:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/1/23941766/google-antitrust-trial-search-queries-ad-money

The list comes from 2018, but it's still wild. As David Pierce writes in The Verge, the top twenty includes three iPhone-related terms, five insurance queries, and the rest are overshadowed by searches for customer service info for monopolistic services like Xfinity, Uber and Hulu.

All-in-all, we're living through a hell of a moment for piercing the corporate veil. Maybe it's the problem of maintaining secrecy within large companies, or maybe the the rampant mistreatment of even senior executives has led to more leaks and whistleblowing. Either way, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous leaker who revealed the unbelievable pettiness of former HBO president of programming Casey Bloys, who ordered his underlings to create an army of sock-puppet Twitter accounts to harass TV and movie critics who panned HBO's shows:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/hbo-casey-bloys-secret-twitter-trolls-tv-critics-leaked-texts-lawsuit-the-idol-1234867722/

These trolling attempts were pathetic, even by the standards of thick-fingered corporate execs. Like, accusing critics who panned the shitty-ass Perry Mason reboot of disrespecting veterans because the fictional Mason's back-story had him storming the beach on D-Day.

The pushback against corporate bullying is everywhere, and of course, the vanguard is the labor movement. Did you hear that the UAW won their strike against the auto-makers, scoring raises for all workers based on the increases in the companies' CEO pay? The UAW isn't done, either! Their incredible new leader, Shawn Fain, has called for a general strike in 2028:

https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/

The massive victory for unionized auto-workers has thrown a spotlight on the terrible working conditions and pay for workers at Tesla, a criminal company that has no compunctions about violating labor law to prevent its workers from exercising their legal rights. Over in Sweden, union workers are teaching Tesla a lesson. After the company tried its illegal union-busting playbook on Tesla service centers, the unionized dock-workers issued an ultimatum: respect your workers or face a blockade at Sweden's ports that would block any Tesla from being unloaded into the EU's fifth largest Tesla market:

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-sweden-strike/

Of course, the real solution to Teslas – and every other kind of car – is to redesign our cities for public transit, walking and cycling, making cars the exception for deliveries, accessibility and other necessities. Transitioning to EVs will make a big dent in the climate emergency, but it won't make our streets any safer – and they keep getting deadlier.

Last summer, my dear old pal Ted Kulczycky got in touch with me to tell me that Talking Heads were going to be all present in public for the first time since the band's breakup, as part of the debut of the newly remastered print of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert movie of all time. Even better, the show would be in Toronto, my hometown, where Ted and I went to high-school together, at TIFF.

Ted is the only person I know who is more obsessed with Talking Heads than I am, and he started working on tickets for the show while I starting pricing plane tickets. And then, the unthinkable happened: Ted's wife, Serah, got in touch to say that Ted had been run over by a car while getting off of a streetcar, that he was severely injured, and would require multiple surgeries.

But this was Ted, so of course he was still planning to see the show. And he did, getting a day-pass from the hospital and showing up looking like someone from a Kids In The Hall sketch who'd been made up to look like someone who'd been run over by a car:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53182440282/

In his Globe and Mail article about Ted's experience, Brad Wheeler describes how the whole hospital rallied around Ted to make it possible for him to get to the movie:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-how-a-talking-heads-superfan-found-healing-with-the-concert-film-stop/

He also mentions that Ted is working on a book and podcast about Stop Making Sense. I visited Ted in the hospital the day after the gig and we talked about the book and it sounds amazing. Also? The movie was incredible. See it in Imax.

That heartwarming tale of healing through big suits is a pretty good place to wrap up this linkdump, but I want to call your attention to just one more thing before I go: Robin Sloan's Snarkmarket piece about blogging and "stock and flow":

https://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890/

Sloan makes the excellent case that for writers, having a "flow" of short, quick posts builds the audience for a "stock" of longer, more synthetic pieces like books. This has certainly been my experience, but I think it's only part of the story – there are good, non-mercenary reasons for writers to do a lot of "flow." As I wrote in my 2021 essay, "The Memex Method," turning your commonplace book into a database – AKA "blogging" – makes you write better notes to yourself because you know others will see them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

This, in turn, creates a supersaturated, subconscious solution of fragments that are just waiting to nucleate and crystallize into full-blown novels and nonfiction books and other "stock." That's how I came out of lockdown with nine new books. The next one is The Lost Cause, a hopepunk science fiction novel about the climate whose early fans include Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. It's out on November 14:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/05/variegated/#nein

[mariacallous]

One of the Western populist right’s enduring myths about President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is that it is steeped in traditional values, a bastion of virtue standing in opposition to an increasingly godless West. In the United States, the fascination with Russia as a supposed global center of conservative virtue has especially gained currency in MAGA world.

This image of Russia as a traditionalist’s paradise led former Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson to offer both Putin and Russian far-right philosopher Alexander Dugin, one of Putin’s most vicious cheerleaders for genocide in Ukraine, the opportunity to expound their views to millions of Americans in a comfortable, uncritical setting. It is the reason that MAGA-aligned U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene talks about Russia as a strong protector of Christianity. And it’s why former Trump administration National Security Advisor Michael Flynn has framed Putin as a defender of “family and God.”

The contrast between myth and reality couldn’t be starker. The truth is that Russia is one of the world’s least religious societies, with only 9 percent of Russians attending religious services at least somewhat regularly, according to a poll conducted in 2022 by the Moscow-based Levada Center. By contrast, nearly one-third of Americans are frequent churchgoers. Just 1.4 million Russians—a mere 1 percent of the population—attended the most recent Christmas services. The Russian state also persecutes Christians who do not adhere to Russian Orthodoxy, including Baptists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and, of course, anyone connected to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.

Nor is Russia a bastion of what true conservatives would consider traditional values. Based on data calculated by the Guttmacher Institute, the Russian abortion rate from 2015 to 2019 was nearly four times higher than that of the United States and more than twice as high as that of Ukraine. Russia also has the fourth-highest divorce rate in the world—60 percent higher than in the United States and more than 50 percent higher than in Ukraine. Those among the U.S. and European far right who project their own ideals onto Russian society ignore the obvious and copious evidence.

The false image of a god-fearing Russia is hardly accidental. It is the consequence of systematic efforts by Putin and his propagandists to craft talking points for the global right—an effort that has accelerated since Russia launched its all-out war on Ukraine in 2022.

It wasn’t always so. After the Soviet collapse in 1991, a Russia shorn of most of its empire struggled with its post-communist identity. Under its first president, Boris Yeltsin, the country waded into the waters of a Russo-centric patriotism. But his chosen successor, Putin, supplanted this worldview by nostalgia for the former Soviet and Russian empires, as well as adulation of brutal autocrats such as Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and Tsar Peter the Great.

Today, to both mobilize Russians for a bloody war and undermine support for Ukraine by appealing to the political extremes in the West, Putin and his ideologues have crafted a new mythology that depicts Russia as a bastion of traditional values rooted in religious faith.

This theme was front and center at Putin’s fifth inauguration as Russian president on May 7. In his address, he declared that “support for centuries-old family values ​​and traditions will continue to unite public and religious associations, political parties, and all levels of government.”

From their putative moral high ground, Putin and his propagandists in the Kremlin-controlled media have used the bully pulpit to rail against Western “woke-ism,” political correctness, and secularism, earning admiration among right-wing populists in the West. By projecting Russians and the Russian state as deeply religious and steeped in tradition—and by denouncing the Western establishment for its supposed attacks on traditional values—Kremlin propaganda has made serious inroads among cultural and religious conservatives in the United States and elsewhere.

This has helped create some measure of sympathy for Russia’s war against Ukraine among certain segments of the far right, which see Putin as a powerful voice on their side of the culture wars.

Margarita Simonyan, the head of Russia Today, the state media conglomerate responsible for most of Moscow’s global propaganda, crystallized the postulates and far-reaching ambitions of Russia’s traditionalist propaganda during a television appearance in February.

Speaking on the heels of Carlson’s fawning chat with Putin, Simonyan saw a major opportunity for Russia to find fellow travelers and new allies among those disgruntled by secularization in the West. Unlike Ukraine and its Western backers, which she called adepts of “satanism,” she described Russia as “the city on a hill” to which the world’s traditionalists can now flock to escape their stifling secular societies. She declared that traditionalist messaging is the “beacon of a wonderful idea” whose appeal can be likened to that of communism during the Soviet era. Russia, she continued, might even counter its severely shrinking population by attracting disgruntled traditionalists from around the world as immigrants to a new promised land of traditionalism.

To this end, the Kremlin announced a new decree on Aug. 19 that eases residency rules for refugees from countries where “traditional values” are under attack from “neoliberalism” and other supposed secular ills.

Aging Russian kleptocrats such as Putin, who formerly served in the security services of the atheist Soviet state, engage in performative religion at most. As the investigations conducted by the late Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny documented, the Russian ruling elite, including Putin himself, is obscenely wealthy and deeply corrupt. But state media outlets diligently portray them as god-fearing believers, generous patrons of monasteries, supporters of religious media, and sponsors of newly built churches—all paid for with money they have stolen from the Russian people.

These performative good works are applauded by the security service operatives who control the upper reaches of the Russian Orthodox Church. Purged and brought under complete state control under Stalin, the church has consistently promoted the aims of Soviet and now Russian policies. It is a vocal supporter of Putin’s war against Ukraine.

At the apex of performative piety stands Putin. Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill, born Vladimir Gundyayev and believed to be a former security services operative, has lavished praise on Putin for being “truly the first Orthodox president” of Russia. The link between Putin’s proclaimed religiosity and something approaching a divine right to rule Russia has also become part of the new ideological canon—back to the roots, if you will, of Russian Orthodoxy as an imperial church.

“May God help you to continue to carry out the ministry that God himself has entrusted to you,” Kirill said during Putin’s inauguration in May. Given the long-standing collusion between the Kremlin and a compliant church, it is little wonder that religious leaders actively support Putin’s war and encourage Russia’s young to lay down their lives.

To mask the degradation of spiritual and religious life, Russia has built a vast Potemkin village of new churches. Around 30,000 new parishes have been added in the post-Soviet era, averaging nearly three every day since 1991. Given Russians’ negligible interest in religion, they stand largely empty.

Simonyan’s comparison of Putin’s traditionalist, pseudo-Christian posturing with the global appeal of communism is apt in ways that she did not intend. Like communism, whose façade of equality and social justice masked mass repression and the emergence of privileged, all-powerful elite, today’s Russia has little patience for moral and ethical principles. Instead, the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church serve the exigencies of a kleptocratic mafia that rules over a deeply damaged, militaristic, and highly unequal society.

Indeed, in time, Russia’s newest state ideology is very likely to become another God That Failed—the title of a landmark 1949 book in which six Western intellectuals broke with communism, declaring that it was just a cover for a new form of dictatorship.

For the moment, none of this matters to the Western populist right, which has blithely ignored the carnage that Putin has inflicted on Ukraine. Nor will Russia’s performative religiosity put those Westerners off; their projection of virtue onto Putin’s Russia has become too important a part of their cynical politics. If your enemy is the West’s liberal and tolerant society, then the enemy of your enemy is your friend.

[loraluna]

Rating Rune Factory Wedding Dresses (Because I have some opinions)

Rune Factory (1)

10/10

I honestly think this dress is top tier in terms of design. The snowy white with pops of color, the scalloped flowy sleeves, the barely exposed shoulders, that lovely subtle headdress and veil, it's all so pretty and elegant to me. I believe it suits all the girls in RF1 beautifully, though I do feel like Tabatha (center) and Rosetta (right) are standouts~

Rune Factory 2

6/10

It's a very lovely design overall though I do think it creates a bit of an odd silhouette. There are still many elements to appreciate, like the lacey detailed edges and the bold but uncommon use of green. I also give them bonus points for containing a dress sprite of he/him character Ray (right) in the game's data (Trans RF character confirmed?) I think the dress best suits curvier girls like Yue (left) but it's also a real treat to finally see Dorothy's (center) lovely eyes~

Rune Factory Frontier

2/10

This dress really doesn't do it for me. I can tell they were going for more of a ceremonial robes vibe rather than a traditional wedding dress and from a distance it almost works but the outfit up close is just bulky and unflattering. Maybe if they fixed the headdress or gave the robe some really pretty accents or beading it could work, but as it is, it's probably the last thing I'd wanna be virtually married in. The one thing I do like is that it gives most of the girls a unique updo for their wedding day.

Rune Factory 3/RF3 Special

3/10

This used to be my least favorite RF wedding dress before that honor went to Frontier. The more I look at it, the more I realize that most of my disdain lies with the headdress and not the dress itself. The actual dress is fine, in fact there are some parts I really like, the sheer material on the upper arms for one, or the shawl, I just don't think it particularly looks like a wedding dress. That headdress though...oh boy, it looks like someone just glued a bunch of random sh*t they found to a headband and called it a day. It's just very cluttered and doesn't scream 'wedding' at all. If I have to pick a stand out it would probably be Raven (center) since her pose and hair color hide many of the design fails. Also Daria (right) because it seems like the sort of chaotic outfit she, herself would design.

Rune Factory Tides of Destiny/Oceans

5/10

This game didn't get the usual character portraits so the images aren't great, but my opinion on these dresses was very so-so, I definitely wouldn't call them ugly, and I do love the colors and rare use of a real bouquet, they just didn't seem to stand out all that much. Especially in terms of RF costumes. They seem a little bulky on the models but I honestly think they could have fixed that by just having character portraits. Not bad. Not great. Just middle of the road dresses. As standouts I'd pick Sonja and Electra (left and center). Their hair colors complement the dress and Electra is already suited to the poofy ballgown look anyway.

Rune Factory 4/RF4 Special

8/10

RF4's dress has a very ethereal, almost fairy-like look to it, which I personally find very gorgeous. It's pretty busy like many of the previous dresses, but unlike those, I feel like the elements here actually work together. The long flowy veil and blue rose accents are just beautiful, as is the detailed corset and neckpiece making up the torso. I'm not personally a huge fan of the flower petal looking design on the hips, but it does fit well with the whole aesthetic. As for standouts, It looks tailor made for Frey (left), but I definitely think taller, long haired girls like Dolce and Margaret (center and right) look amazing in it as well.

Rune Factory 5

9/10

I think this dress is beautiful as a whole, a bit more traditional and subdued than previous wedding outfits but personally I love it. The silhouette is flattering on everyone and the color scheme is unique among the other dresses by sticking with only warmer colors as opposed to the cool blues and greens of past games. I also love how the tint of the roses changes slightly depending on who's wearing the dress. All in all it reminds me a lot of the subtle elegance of RF1's dress and that makes it a win for me. For standouts I think Fukka's (center) complexion and hair go beautifully with the dresses colors. Ludmilla (right) also looks divine with the rosy aesthetic~

What's your favorite wedding look from the RF series? Who wore it best? Comment or tag if you feel like dishing some opinions of your own (Or just answer my poll ;)

[blueiscoool]

Archaeologists Discover 1,000-Year-Old Mayan scoreboard in Mexico

A stone scoreboard used in an ancient soccer-like ball game has been discovered at the famed Mayan Chichen Itza archaeological site in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, archaeologists said this week.

The circular piece, measuring just over 32 centimeters (12.6 inches) in diameter and weighing 40 kilograms (88 pounds), displays hieroglyphic writing surrounding two players standing next to a ball, according to a statement from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

"In this Mayan site, it is rare to find hieroglyphic writing, let alone a complete text," said Francisco Perez, one of the archaeologists coordinating the investigations in the Chichanchob complex, also called Casa Colorada.

The stone, believed to be a scoreboard, dates from between 800 AD and 900 AD.

The ball game was a traditional practice of Mesoamerican peoples and is believed to have had ritual undertones.

INAH researchers are now preparing to take high-resolution images of the text and iconography for detailed study, while preparing it for conservation.

The Chichen Itza complex, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, is one of the main archaeological centers of the Mayan civilization in the Yucatan Peninsula. According to official data, about 2 million people visit the site every year.

[carbon-cyanide]

☆ Monday morning writing sessions ☆

This summer ended up being very different from the field work research on water pollution & bioremediation that I originally intended to conduct. Being chronically ill has presented additional hurdles in my PhD journey that were unexpected, but not necessarily unwelcome. An unintended positive to come out of all these diagnoses is the prioritization of "slow living" and a better work/life balance.

I've lived so much of my life masking my chronic pain and neurodivergence so giving myself permission to slow down is scary, but I know it will ultimately result in better work and a healthier lifestyle.

So instead of traveling and collecting samples, and attending community meetings -- I ended up writing my first manuscript for publication and became the project lead for a sustainable solarpunk data center proposal that got funded through one of the University's top climate action programs.

Grad school has been so much more about being flexible and adaptable than it is about memorization or traditional "studying" -- at least for me, it's been more about juggling expectations versus realities while learning how to advocate for the problems I want to solve with my research.

Water is central. Water is life.