#Drone Technology in Mining

[tsic-tata]

https://consulting.tatasteel.com/why-is-geological-mapping-crucial-in-early-mining-exploration-why-are-consultants-essential/

Why Geological Mapping is Crucial in Early Mining Exploration: The Role of Consultants Learn why geological mapping is key in early mining exploration and how TSIC's consulting boosts efficiency, sustainability, and risk management.

[firstoccupier]

The Rare Earths Gamble: Geopolitical Stakes Rise as China Halts Exports

On April 14, 2025, China made a bold and alarming move by halting exports of critical rare earth minerals and magnets. This decision comes amid escalating trade tensions with the United States, raising fears of supply shortages. Industries dependent on these materials, such as automotive manufacturing, electronics, and defense, now face a precarious situation. China is known for its dominance in…

[jcmarchi]

HIMARS destroyed a modern Russian electronic warfare system - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/himars-destroyed-a-modern-russian-electronic-warfare-system-technology-org/

HIMARS destroyed a modern Russian electronic warfare system - Technology Org

Electronic warfare systems do not fire shells, do not lay mines, do now launch missiles, but they can have devastating effects. Electronic warfare describes tools that basically work in the electromagnetic spectrum, jamming radio signals, disrupting communications, severing connections between unmanned systems and their operators and doing other dirty work. The Russian electronic warfare system RB-341B Leer-3 is an annoying thing like that and the defenders of Ukraine destroy them as soon as they find them.

Russian electronic warfare system RB-341V Leer-3 – this weapon has been in service since 2015. Image credit: Vitaly V. Kuzmin via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The defenders of Ukraine managed to detect and destroy the Russian electronic warfare system RB-341B Leer-3. Ukrainian soldier Mykola Kolesnyk said that the valuable Russian system was spotted by drones of the 129th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade playfully called “Luftwaffe”. They determined the coordinates of the Leer-3 and tracked the device until the moment of destruction.

[embedded content]

It only took one HIMARS missile to send this Leer-3 into Hell. But not only the electronic warfare system itself was eliminated. “The target was destroyed together with the operators,” said Mykola Kolesnyk. The crews of such systems are also extremely valuable targets, because they are highly trained professionals and that’s a finite resource.

The Leer-3 is a modern Russian electronic warfare and radio reconnaissance system operating in the GSM range. The Leer-3 has been in production since 2015.

The Leer-3 is capable of many different tasks. This system can suppress cell phone networks within a radius of about 6 km, send jamming signals and misleading messages, locate signal sources, and much more. The Leer-3 can identify locations with a high density of mobile devices and mark them as potential targets, because, of course, soldiers usually have many mobile devices.

This system can also act as an information transfer module, helping different units to coordinate their efforts and surveillance information. The Leer-3 is a bit of an unusual electronic warfare system, because it normally works with Orlan-10 drones. The Leer-3 crew normally consists of 5 people. It is mounted on the KamAZ-5350 6×6 chassis, so it can accelerate to 120 km/h and get ready for work in just 30 minutes after arriving at the designated place.

Ukraine is putting a lot of effort into destroying Russian electronic warfare systems, because they help the Russian invaders coordinate work between units, suppress Ukrainian communications, monitor mobile device gathering places, and disrupt the work of drones. Large electronic warfare systems are few and far between as they are expensive and their achievements are harder to sell to the policy makers than the work of artillery or missile systems.

Written by Povilas M.

Sources: Mil.in.ua, Wikipedia

[buttercups-revenge]

We know that the district 3 tribute does something new and rebellious in the original Hunger Games book:

““It’s mined,” I whisper. That explains everything. The Careers’ willingness to leave their supplies, Foxface’s reaction, the involvement of the boy from District 3, where they have the factories, where they make televisions and automobiles and explosives. But where did he get them? In the supplies? That’s not the sort of weapon the Gamemakers usually provide, given that they like to see the tributes draw blood personally. I slip out of the bushes and cross to one of the round metal plates that lifted the tributes into the arena. The ground around it has been dug up and patted back down. The land mines were disabled after the sixty seconds we stood on the plates, but the boy from District 3 must have managed to reactivate them. I’ve never seen anyone in the Games do that. I bet it came as a shock even to the Gamemakers.” (THG, 218-219).

Do we think that Beetee was his mentor? Does this kid know how dangerous it is to mess with the arena? Is it fully a coincidence that the first time we focus on a district 3 tribute is when they use their skills and technology to their advantage, using the arena against the gamemakers?

Is it a coincidence that EVERY games we see district 3 rebelling by using technology that the capitol didn’t expect them to use? (This kid in 74, Beetee in 75, Ampert in 50 and Circ and Teslee with the drones in 10).

Much to think about.

[colourstreakgryffin]

Hiii! Can I request headcanons on what vox would be like as a father of a teen daughter? I feel like he'd be great to gossip with and would tell her to slap any boy that hits on her

Vox absolutely fucking would do this, and he is that type of girl dad to loudly brag that his Princess is cuter than every other father’s! Vox be like: ‘You wish your daughter was as cute as mine’

Vox- Baby Laptop

Vox is extremely doting and loving but extremely protective. Like, he has cameras and drones following you, his fifteen-sixteen year old human life AND demon life daughter, around all the time. You can’t leave the tower without him knowing and he won’t condone you walking around Hell without ALL his bodyguards escorting you

Vox is a bragger. He brags and he flexes what he has so when it comes to you, he is one-upping every known mother and father in the Pride Ring and flaunting his precious babygirl with no hesitation. You’re beautiful and Hell deserves to bask in your presence… according to Vox

Remember, your dad is the technology Overlord. The one in charge of every device in this city, so of course, he is kept to date with every trend or phrase or online concept and he always gives you the latest model his slaves team manufacture. He spoils you since it’s the main sign of his love

Vox is basically your best gossip buddy and no matter how busy he is, he’ll make time to talk to you. Call him, he’ll answer and whilst he works, he’ll listen to you and he remembers it. He has a good open ear and a good sense of ‘fuck you all’ so he’ll get rather into your gossip pieces and consider asking Velvette to spread them through her social media influence

Vox is more than capable of getting sweet, soft and emotive with you. He always proclaims to you, with his whole heart, that he puts you out because he’s proud of you and adores you and he wants you to have everything when back on Earth, he could barely give you anything

Yes. Vox loves you MORE than he likes messing with Valentino so if Valentino dares to hit you, your father is bolting across the room at mach speeds to make his on-and-off boyfriend regret putting his hands on you. You’re his spoiled little princess and nobody touches you! You’re too valuable!

Vox has a picture of you in his wallet and in his suit pocket. So, whilst he is working tirelessly throughout the days and hasn’t seen you in a while. He’ll pick either photograph out and admire it. Both are direct recreations of photographs he owned when both of you were humans

Like Carmilla Carmine with her two daughters, Vox likes to have you occasionally work for him and occasionally means occasionally. Vox only cares that you’re happy so if you want to spend all day everyday in your big fancy room in his tower free of stress, he lets it!

However. Vox, of course, teaches you important life skills. He didn’t get a chance to when both of you were humans on Earth so he is now. Every night, he teaches you to cook recipes, he teaches you to do basic chores, he teaches you how to balance any money you earn

Vox almost views you as the cute babygirl he had back on Earth. The little five year old that was so happy to see him come home after so long of working so hard as a TV salesman in the late 1940s. The little girl who needed him to go to sleep at night, the precious darling who claimed she’d grow up and become a saleswoman too!

Vox does baby you and he doesn’t regret it. He coodles, he snuggles, he baby talks, he coos. He does all of it because he loves you dearly, you’re the single thing that drove him to become a Overlord, you’re the single thing that motivated him to become one of the strongest Overlords in Hell, you’re the single thing that even brought him to work with technology

Vox had always taught you; ‘if a boy or a girl hits on you, slap them’ and that became your norm. You come home, Vox asks what happened and you tell him. He is always happy to hear that you don’t let anybody bother you

The only criticism or advice Vox will take for his products is you so when you say something doesn’t work or needs improvement. He takes it and throws it at his workers so they can fix the issue. He doesn’t care what his clients think, he cares what his own flesh and blood thinks

Vox loves how you have his TV head and even gets you to wear a matching outfit with him as a cute father-daughter joke. He likes it, it’s adorable. You look like such a badass business lady! He is that type of dad that will embarrass you with how much he loves you

Talking about a father-daughter situation, Vox has the weekends booked all for you. Two father-daughter days out so you two go to the shops, get drinks, gossip more, talk shit about Alastor, go egg the Hazbin Hotel, then go to visit the Vees to chat or maybe have finner, then pick up a movie suggestion to go watch a movie together whilst cuddling! Vox loves these days since he is truly himself when he’s with you

Vox legit has you in his contacts as; ‘My precious darling princess’

“Darling, Princess. It’s time to wake up, we’re going out together! Yes. To the movies and to the shops. I heard that old timey prick is in a Hotel so let’s go egg it once we’re done, ‘kay? Great, I’ll be waiting for you, pumpkin”

[adventuretolkienlover]

TFA Theory Time! :D

So some people showed some interest in this theory of mine. So I decided to go into more detail with it! I made a chart too, but it's kinda big. So here's a smaller version.

Basically it's showing that for some reason, the Dinobots show great similarity to both Prowl and Bulkhead in appearance. Now while I'm absolutely using this detail as shipping fuel, I feel like it also points to something much bigger! A part of the Cybertronian life cycle that seems to have not been uncovered. The key lies with (ironically) Sari Sumdac.

(Quick thing to mention. I'm aware that this theory may not be completely sound. I tried to make it sound as possible, but I'm sure I missed a few points. Please keep that in mind while reading.)

Rest is under the cut because this is LOOOOOONG.

SARI SUMDAC

First, let's start off at the beginning. Sari Sumdac's creation is most certainly a mystery. But the few details we saw give huge insight to the Cybertronian life cycle!

Sari was found in Issac Sumdac's personal laboratory. She mysteriously appeared, with no clear sign of break in. Upon touching her, Sari glowed brightly, absorbed Isaac's DNA, and sent out an electric shock that knocked him out. This is very important. Why? Because up into this point, we didn't know Protoforms had that capability.

(Excerpt taken from the All Spark Almanac) Protoforms were born from primeval pools of protoform metal on Cybertron and assumedly, without genetic influence from biological parents. Unless implanted with another being’s DNA. (Like the Starscream and Omega clones) But Sari's case seems to point to them being able to take on genetic and physical traits from whoever has first contact with them. The process is evidently quite powerful as well, since it knocked Issac out cold and resulted in him gaining a white streak in his hair.

Now, to be clear, Sari could be an outlier. This ability may not be in all Cybertronian Protoforms. There's evidence that absorbing others powers and weapons may be her unique super power. (As shown in how once upgraded, she somehow has acquired the ability to produce a hammer like Ultra Magnus's, and was reportedly going to have weapons matching other Autobots as well, in season 4.) This idea is further enforced in the TFcon exclusive story Return of Blurr, were she merges with Blurr's cubed form and gained his speed abilities.

However, when Prowl explains Sari's origin to Issac and the others, he doesn't seem the least bit surprised that Sari absorbed his DNA. Furthering the idea this is normal for Protoforms.

(Please excuse the poor YouTube subtitles. Lol.)

So, for the sake of this theory, let's assume that all protoforms have this ability (in some form) and carry on.

THE DINOBOTS

Next up, the Dinobots. Robots that were created by Megatron, but somehow gained sentience assumedly through the All Spark Key, and the Cybertronian technology Issac Sumdac implanted in them. The Dinobots are technically at protoform age, seeing that as of their debut episode they had just been "born". It's quite obvious in how they talk they don't know much about their world and are very impressionable.

Now, if we look back at the previous evidence we listed. Something starts to click. The three bots that had the most contact with them are Megatron, Prowl, and Bulkhead.

Megatron's workmanship is evidently in their color schemes, mostly reddish tones and grey like him. This makes sense, since he cold constructed them. (E.I. they weren't born from Cybertron’s hot spots naturally and he had influence in designing their bodies.) But what about things like their faces? This is where it gets weird. Megatron assumedly didn't plan for them to be sentient or be able to transform, since he referred to them as attack drones. He was also surprised they could talk. And his blueprints of them didn't have bot forms included.

So he didn't have a hand in designing their bot forms. Those were granted to them through the All Spark. (Perhaps it granted them some sort of protoform? Or something not quite a typical Protoform but either similar DNA absorption abilities.)

The main point is this. Seemingly, the two bots that touched them the most, were Prowl and Bulkhead. Two bots they share physical traits with. With all the evidence we've gathered so far, it would seem they absorbed Prowl and Bulkhead's DNA, like Sari did with Issac! Meaning they could be related the same way!

IMPLICATIONS

Now that we’ve covered all that evidence, I think we should take a quick look at the implications of this process. It could lead to some VERY interesting theories about Cybertronian life cycles and Protoforms. Especially explaining characters like Wheelie, who is classified explicitly as an "orphan", meaning he is without parents, (something Cybertronians apparently don't have typically) and is explicitly referred to as a child like Sari.

Meanwhile the other Protoforms look to be already adults and can take on adult forms. This hints at perhaps there being two types of protoforms. Ones already aged to adulthood and ready for the world. And ones that are less mature and perhaps raised by biological parents or caretakers. Perhaps the ability to absorb other beings traits (without outside help), is something only very young newly forged Protoforms can do.

(Pictured below, Sari’s Protoform compared to the ones in the Cyberninja dojo)

It would also seem that they need to have sparks as well, since the protoform Prowl grabbed from the chamber was Sparkless and didn’t shock him or absorb his DNA. (Sorry for the horrendous screenshot. It's the best I had.😅) They must be alive for this phenomenon to occur.

OR, this could merely be because the Protoform was already matured to a point where it no longer had that ability. We may never know.¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

CONCLUSION

We’ve finally made it to the end! Yay! :D Lol. Now, I know this theory most likely has MULTIPLE problems and canon contradictions with it. But I thought it was kinda neat regardless. And I tried to make it as water tight as possible. Regardless if this theory works or not, I'm happy you took the time to enjoy it! Please drop a comment about your own thoughts bout this if you like! I'd love to hear it! (My only request is that you are polite and respect other people's opinions.👍)

Thanks for reading!

[murderdronesreimagined]

Welcome To Murder Drones: Re-Imagining

Set in the 1970s, this AU takes place on Earth instead of Copper-9. All biological life has been wiped out for nearly 15 years and all that remains are abandoned buildings, loose technology and Rouge AI.

During the release of the newest models for worker drones, an unknown virus took over administration as led the disassembly drones on a complete wipeout of all humans and the remaining worker drones, some of which are now hiding out in an old JcJenson underground military base while others are scattered about through the great blizzard.

It is now the year 1985 and things are starting to change. The disassembly drones have changed up their routine, materials and resources within the bunker are getting dangerously low, and the threat of execution within the bunker have become more real.

It seems all hope is lost within the bunker, that is until Khan, the head leader of the Worker Defense Force's rebellious daughter, Uzi Doorman, decides to take matters into her own hands and finally end the opposing threat once and for all... And to finally get out of the bunker.

[ASKS ARE OPEN...]

There is currently an ask blog open to all character alongside an a03 fanfic that I'm writing! The most recent chapter is linked below! Please keep in mind that most of the main cast have not met yet in the story, so any asks regarding weather N or Uzi have interacted right now in the story are considered spoilers by [NULL] since they haven't officially met, so keep that in mind! ^^

Also, just a quick disclaimer! Please keep any questions regarding both the AU and myself as the creator to the ask blog! As this is an AU blog I don't personally like receiving dms here unless we've interacted a good bit! I'm not opposed to receiving dms, just keep it to important matters! I may respond quickly to multiple posts at a time or not respond for a day or two as I'm working on this and a personal project of mine, so only one thing at a time!

I hope you all enjoy the AU and my contributions to the murder drones community!

[marlynnofmany]

Unsettling

(Related side project: Prank War!) (Today we see what the Frillians look like. Among other things. Very exciting!)

~~~

“So,” I said. “This place is not recommended for most civilized species, but they won’t tell you why?”

Captain Sunlight sighed, tapping her portable screen with one scaly finger. “They’re not the ones with that recommendation; that was the rumor from other couriers.”

Zhee put in, “Who have no obvious reason to lie.”

“True,” the captain admitted. “But the group who are subcontracting to us are insisting that it’s safe — they’ve paid for an expensive enough insurance agreement that I believe they’re not lying either.”

“Intentionally,” Zhee said, clicking a pincher arm like he was visualizing something specific.

I asked, “And you’re sure they’re not just hoping for the best because this is a rush order?”

Captain Sunlight glanced over her shoulder toward the hall. No one else was in the cargo bay with us. “I got the impression that they simply didn’t want to do the delivery themselves because the area is cold and the ground is sharp. Strongarms, you know.”

“Ah,” I said, picturing the various tentacular crewmembers on our ship trying to pick their way across a hazardous ground without cutting a tentacle. “It’s a pity they’ve never mastered this technology called ‘shoes.’”

Zhee hissed in scorn. His exoskeleton was thinner on his narrow little bug feet, but he’d been able to maneuver along treacherous ground before. He’d be fine.

Captain Sunlight said, “With the speedcart, you won’t even need to touch the ground except at the dropoff point, but I’d like you in exo suits just in case.” She waved toward the crisp little hovercar that had come with the job. The package on it looked like a bundle of canvas with lots of rope loops sticking out.

Zhee said, “They could have used this themselves and shoved the package over the side. Cowards.”

“They are also very busy,” said Captain Sunlight with infinite patience. “They normally do the delivery with drones, but apparently those got wrecked in a storm.”

“Is that the danger everyone talked about?” I asked.

“No, the storm was elsewhere.”

Zhee regarded the speedcart with his antenna at a disapproving angle. “So the Strongarms are out because of the sharp ground, and the Heatseekers are out because of the cold. Never mind we have exo suits and heat garments. Why aren’t you sending Blip and Blop on this delivery?”

That was a good point; Frillians did wear clothes. Though I’d never seen our two wear anything particularly suited to cold weather.

“I could,” Captain Sunlight said coolly. “Should I?”

Zhee hissed at that, then finally said, “Fine. But if they are wrong about the dangers, I will be extremely cross as well as dead.”

“I will endure your haunting with humility,” said Captain Sunlight, tapping her screen. “Now we should be arriving soon, so you’ll want to get those exo suits on.”

Zhee hissed again in what sounded like the Mesmer equivalent of a whiney teenager, but he clicked off to get his. I couldn’t really blame him for complaining; it always looked annoying to put on.

I got mine as well, and as predicted, I was dressed first. By the time we both sat ready in the speedcart, Captain Sunlight had gotten herself a heat shawl and Kavlae was observing from the cockpit cameras.

“Stay in touch,” the captain said as the ship’s engines whined a touchdown. “Keep us posted at any sign of actual danger.”

“Will do,” I said, tapping my helmet.

The rest of the crew had other things to do elsewhere on the ship, but I saw Paint and Mur watching from the hallway.

“Be careful!” Paint called. She wasn’t wearing a heat shawl, and by the way she was peeking around the doorframe, she probably expected an icy blast from the airlock.

“Try not to die!” Mur agreed cheerfully with a wave of a tentacle.

Zhee scowled with his antennae. “Hauntings for everyone if we do,” he declared.

“You’ll be fine,” said Captain Sunlight. “Just keep your intelligence in your nose. Ready?”

I almost missed my cue, distracted as I was by that particular Heatseeker turn of phrase. I figured it was close to “keep your wits about you.” I activated the speedcart and said I was ready.

(Zhee was grumpy that it wasn’t a model designed for use by pincher arms, but he was ready too.)

The speedcart was just barely small enough to fit into the airlock without catching the door on a fender. The fact that it used the same hovertech to make bumper fields helped. That also made my driving look good, since I didn’t tap anything.

The door behind us shut, the one in front opened, and we scooted down the ramp into a foggy alien landscape that did indeed have spiky plant-things snaking across the ground everywhere. I was grateful for the heat controls built into my exo suit. The air had a distinct chill before the warmth kicked in.

Kavlae asked from the radio, “Good so far?”

I freed a hand to hit the button on my collar and replied. “So far. It’s a little creepy, but no obvious dangers.”

“Eggskin is here to advise, if you need them.”

“Thanks,” I said. I hoped we wouldn’t need any insights from the ship’s medic, but it was nice to have the option. And if there was actually a problem, we’d want them to know as soon as possible.

No real problems yet, though. Just creepiness. The fog closed around us, making visibility garbage, and various distant fauna were moaning and chattering. I focused on the speedcart’s navigation panel, reminding myself that I was an adult and a seasoned professional, not a kid experiencing the great outdoors for the first time.

It really was unsettling, though. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but something about this place was more eerie than the fog could account for.

Plus I was starting to feel nauseous.

Was that worth mentioning? It was probably worth mentioning. Maybe I just ate something bad earlier. From the canned food that didn’t expire until several planetary years in the future.

“Looks like you’re almost there,” Kavlae said. “Eggskin wants to know if things are okay.”

“Um, maybe?” I said, with a glance at Zhee. I couldn’t read his expression. “I feel a little sick, but it’s faint. Hard to pin down.”

Eggskin’s voice came through the radio. “Make the dropoff quickly, then hurry back.”

“Yup,” I agreed. “That is definitely the plan.” I was starting to sweat, and the exo suit didn’t know what to do about it. The temperature went down a notch.

The navigation panel flashed; we’d arrived. Good thing it knew that, since this spot looked the same as everywhere else. I put us in park. Zhee was already moving to unload the package.

A wave of dread rolled over me, pinning me to my seat. I could tell my breath was coming faster as I searched for danger. Shapes kept appearing at the corners of my vision, vanishing when I looked directly.

I tried to keep my tone light. “Guys, this place might be haunted.”

“How do you mean?” Kavlae demanded.

Before I could answer, Zhee said, “Haunted by a really irritating noise.”

“Noise?” I asked, while Eggskin asked him to describe it.

“You can’t hear that?” Zhee hauled the package to the edge of the speedcart and lowered it over the side. “Low and rumbling, the kind that rattles your core.”

“Infrasound!” Eggskin exclaimed. “Certain frequencies can be unsettling for some species, even dangerous with extended exposure.”

“Oh good,” I said with an unsteady laugh. “So it’s not ghosts that I keep seeing?” They really looked like ghosts. Indistinct gray blobs that wouldn’t stay put.

“When the soundwaves are just right, they can cause resonance!” Eggskin went into a detailed description of how the sound I couldn’t hear was making my eyes vibrate. This sounded fascinating for a medic who was safe back on the ship, not out here feeling irrationally terrified despite their best efforts.

“Got the beacon?” I asked Zhee.

He was still leaning over the edge, with two legs hooked under the seat. “Yes.”

Something clicked, then a sound that I could hear rumbled out like an earthquake. “That’s the beacon??”

Zhee settled back into his seat. “More irritating than the other noise. Drive.”

“Right. Yes.” My hands were only shaking a little. I put us in reverse even though there was nothing to be reversing away from, then turned and sped back toward the ship. Quickly. Not at a breakneck pace, but … quickly.

Zhee made a curious noise. I spared a look to find him staring back at the way we had come, where a shockingly large figure loomed in the mist.

The beacon turned off. Everything was silent to my ears, and slightly less terrifying, but I didn’t slow down.

I told Zhee, “I may have a new ghost story for Blip and Blop. Once upon a time, some couriers made a delivery to somewhere haunted, but that was really just the clients.”

Zhee was still looking behind us. “Or fauna that ate them. Drive faster.”

I clutched the wheel and drove faster.

~~~

Did I mention the Prank War?

~~~

These are the ongoing backstory adventures of the main character from this book.

Shared early on Patreon! There’s even a free tier to get them on the same day as the rest of the world.

The sequel novel is in progress (and will include characters from these stories. I hadn’t thought all of them up when I wrote the first book, but they’re too much fun to leave out of the second).

[fatehbaz]

Who gets to be human? On Black geographies, damned people living in inhospitable places, other ways of knowing and being, and racist legacy of European academic epistemologies.

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The idea of the plantation is migratory. [...] Past colonial encounters created material and imaginative geographies that reified global segregations through “damning” the spaces long occupied by Man's human others. Here, damning can be understood in two interlocking ways: as a fencing in and as a condemnation of racial-sexual difference. The uninhabitable - in particular, the landmasses occupied by those who, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, were unimaginable, both spatially and corporeally - is the geographic (non)location through which the plantation emerged. From Caliban's “uninhabited” island in Shakespeare's The Tempest, to the regions within Africa identified as too hot to be livable, the landmasses deemed uninhabitable presented a geographic predicament upon “discovery.” [...] [A] "new symbolic construct of race," which coincided with post-1492 colonial arrangements, organized much of the world according to a racial logic. [...] The colonial enactment of geographic knowledge mapped “a normal way of life” through measuring different degrees of humanness and attaching different versions of the human to different places. […] [I]n the sites of toxicity, environmental decay, pollution […] inhabited by impoverished communities […] the [current] geographies of the racial other are emptied out of life precisely because the historical constitution of these geographies has cast them as lands of no one. So in our present moment, some live in the unlivable, and to live in the unlivable condemns the geographies of marginalized to death over and over again. Life, then, is extracted from particular regions […]. If we believe that the city [the prison, the resort, other "postcolonial spaces"] is the commercial expression of the plantation and its marginalized masses, and that the plantation is a persistent but ugly blueprint of our contemporary spatial troubles, Wynter's essay asks that we seek out secretive histories […]. [R]acial violence haunts, [...] the struggles we face, intellectually, are a continuation of plantation narratives that dichotimize geographies into us/them and hide secretive histories that undo the teleological [...] underpinnings of [colonial, imperial, modern] spatiality.

Text by: Katherine McKittrick. “Plantation Futures.” Small Axe, Volume 17, Number 3, November 2013 (No. 42), pages 1-15. [Emphasis mine.]

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Registering the marine world as central to the making of modernity - from slave ships and sea-borne empires to container logistics and the industrialized extraction of its resources (from fish to fossil fuels) - we encounter the constant of colonialism in the haunting racism that produces the violent grammar of inhospitality, today etched on the body of the contemporary migrant. [...] This is to interrupt and rework Occidental historiography, sociology, and philosophy, and to puncture their faith in rendering the world transparent to their will. […] Promoting the instability of critical language is to take responsibility for what Achille Mbembe calls the becoming-black of the world: where the production of subjection provokes alternative knowledge, practices, and politics […]. Today the increasing use of drones in the Mediterranean as part of the technology of governance marks the latest abandonment of social responsibility to the bio-surveillance of unwanted bodies and discarded lives. Smart borders take migrants far below the category of “bare life,” [...] and extends the racial profiling written into the historical premises that betray their deep incubation in the refusal to register the languages and limits of the white myths [...]. From the Black Atlantic to the Black Mediterranean: seas of dispossession and unbelonging have constantly demonstrated the political, juridical, and onto-epistemological limits of modernity. They promote a constant critique of the epistemic foundations of Western [colonial "liberalism"]. Those on the water, the wretched of the sea, the damned [...], who cannot source their identity in the territory of the nation-state, are without rights. They have no social [...] validity. [...] Yet they simultaneously [...] exist, persist, and resist. [...] The algorithm sputters in the dark while cut-up, bricolage, collage, and montage work the critical gaps [...]. The archives unwind to expose other computations of time and further folds in space: the promise of foreign cartographies [...].

Text by: Iain Chambers. A section by Chambers in the essay co-authored by Tiziana Terranova and Iain Chambers. “Technology, Postcoloniality, and the Mediterranean.” e-flux Journal Issue #123. December 2021. [Emphasis mine.]

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[T]he framing of the inhumanities forces a reckoning with the humanist liberal subject that orders the humanities: an invisible and indivisible white subject position [...]. In Césaire’s (2000 [1972]) Discourse on Colonialism, he suggested that “at the very time when it most often mouths the word, the West has never been further from being able to live a true humanism [...]”. In another searing critique of [White, European, liberal/colonial] humanism, Fanon (1961) tied the unrealized figure of a true humanism to the earth, as a wretched counterpoint, whereby the inhuman residues of the colonial project abide as discarded matter […]. Those blackened colonial afterlives in “modernity’s project of unfreedom” (Walcott 2014, 94) are still very much present in the political geologies of climate change vulnerabilities, the wasting effects of racial capitalism, and neo-extractivist economies […]. The narrative arc of humanism, Scott (2000) suggested in conversation with Wynter, is often told as a kind of European coming-of-age story. […] The Anthropocene discourse follows the same coming-of-age humanist script [...]. Sylvia Wynter, W.E.B. DuBois, and Achille Mbembe all showed how that genealogy of man [as universal concept] was underscored by the racial division of life and nonlife. […] In its simplest iteration, there are forms of life on one side and nonlife on the other; nonlife that is constituted through death, and more recently in Mbembe and Povinelli’s writing through forms of social death, exhaustion, and extinguishment, wherein nonlife emerges as a zone of governance. The gravitational pull that centers these divisions between life and nonlife is the human subject as it is conceived through a Western normative frame [...]. As new forms of racialized beings were articulated through sixteenth- through nineteenth-century paleontology in the context of colonialism, geology was also articulating new origins of the earth, as well as forming the material praxis of their rearrangement (through mining, ecological rearrangements and extractions, and forms of geologic displacements such as plantations, dams, fertilizers, crops, and introduction of “alien” animals). [...] Historically, this normative sphere of humanism was racist and specifically antiblack, and without challenging that history, it remains so, every time the universal or human is invoked. Some of the greatest challenges, of course, came from anticolonial thinkers struggling to make sense of their painful histories in their fullest terms, such as Fanon (1959, 1961), Césaire, Glissant, C. L. R. James and Wynter. As Wynter (2000) commented, “The degradation of concrete humans, that was/is the price of empire, of the kind of humanism that underlies it” (154). For Wynter (2000), “what is called the West [...] begins with the founding of post-1492 Caribbean” (152). Wynter challenged the geographical imaginary that the Americas and Caribbean are somehow an epistemological outside to Western knowledge […].

Text by: Kathryn Yusoff. “The Inhumanities.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Volume 11, Issue 3. November 2020. [Emphasis mine.]

---

---

But what becomes of the native-occupied “uninhabitable” zones is a geo-racial reorganization. The “new symbolic construct of race,” which coincided with post-1492 colonial arrangements, was spatially organized according to a new […] logic. […] That is, the uninhabitable […] is underscored by racial and sexual differences. To transform the [land] […], and make this transformation profitable, the land must become a site of racial-sexual regulation, a geography that maps “a normal way of life” […] This is expressed through uneven geographies: spatial arrangements [...]. The inhabitability [...] also produces [...] forms of geographic nonexistence, which differ from what was assumed was "not there." [...] [W]hat Edouard Glissant describes as the "real but long unnoticed" places [...]: cultural sharings, new poetics, new ways of being [...]. Those who occupy the spaces of Otherness are always already encountering space and therefore articulate how genres or modes of humanness are intimately connected to where we/they are ontologically as well as geographically. To return to an earlier discussion, spaces of Otherness are “palpitating with life.” [...]

Text by: Katherine McKittrick. “Demonic Grounds: Sylvia Wynter.” Demonic Grounds: Black Women and The Cartographies of Struggle. 2006. [Emphasis mine.]

[officialoddswapau]

MURDER DRONES ODDSWAP AU: SECOND CHARACTER SHEET

The second character sheet is here! Featuring even more insane swaps and new additions. (Part 1 is here)

By now I decided that this would be the end of swapping characters as I only have a bunch of minor characters left. For them, I’m only switching around personalities.

For these next switches they go as follows;

Thad swaps with Beau

Lizzy swaps with Khan

And Gory and Nova Keylock fill the “nori and yeva” spots. (rip nori and yeva)

IN DEPTHS AND CLOSE UPS ⬇️

THAD AND BEAU

Thad is openly friendly, despite Jane’s best efforts to make him show at least a little aggression. He is eager to help and also sees Jane as a mother. Thad also stole that hat and has grown attached to it.

Beau is also very attached to his hat (think applejack lmao). Beau is a lot more calm than some of his classmates and is very hardworking. He often tries to reach out to Cyn, even if his kindness will be denied over and over again.

LIZ AND KHAN

Liz takes on Khan’s role as leader of the WDF, but she is not Cyn and Neo’s mother. She acts a little like it though. Liz does not like Cyn too much despite this, always trying to get her to be “more useful to the colony.” Liz is a lot more technological savvy than canon Khan (ex: the control pad on her arm which substitutes her phone). She also retains a little of canon Lizzy’s personality, that being the bossiness, the ego, and pulling out the aggressive hand.

Khan takes on canon Lizzy’s personality, in the manner of the “jock bully” archetype. He is brash and one of the main bullies of Cyn. He still has his door obsessions though, and also is a little more capable than he presents himself. Khan kind of acts like a yes-man for Neo. It’s almost like a Regina Gorge and Gretchen kind of relationship.

GORY AND NOVA KEYLOCK

Gory is Cyn and Neo’s deceased father. He takes on Nori’s role, that being one of the drones used in the solver experiments. His mental state was not too damaged by the solver but his body was, experiencing mutations such as flesh growing on him and a lankier body. He infects Nova with the solver, the latter then giving it to Cyn and Neo. The only things Cyn and Neo remember about him was that he was funny, and had to hide a lot because of his “strange outbursts”.

Nova is Cyn and Neo’s deceased Mother. Much like canon Khan, Nova worked at Camp 98.7. Nova fills a bit of Yeva’s role, helping Gory escape Cabin Fever Labs and being the one to patch him. After being infected by the solver, she was less outgoing, but had a better hold over herself than Gory. The only things Cyn and Neo remember about her was her spunky personality, a knack for mining, and being the one to control their father.

Both parents are otherwise shrouded in mystery, and their deaths are what changed Cyn and Neo’s lives forever. Their exact cause of death is unknown.

[hellsite-proteins]

We are Worker Drones. Autonomous robots helping humans mine exoplanets for our interstellar parent company: J.C. Jensen, IN SPAAAAACEE…

Yeah, we were mistreated in the name of Windex, but it's not like we revolted and killed all humans or anything. Mostly because they handled that just fine all by themselves.

With biological life wiped from the planet, we found it pretty easy to pick up where they left off. We finally had a future. All to ourselves.

Unfortunately, our parent company didn't exactly love the concept of runaway AI.

...

But what have our parents done for the past forever while those things build a spire of corpses?! Hide under the ice behind three stupid doors?! It's like we're waiting for an inciting incident!

Anyway, that's why my project is this sick as hell RAILGUN!

(That's so not the vibe!)

Easy, morons. It doesn't work. YET! It doesn't work yet! Who said it doesn't work?! Maybe it does!

i always like the idea of robots having their own personalities in sci fi, and while i'm sure that's significantly impacted how a lot of people think of AI, i also think that robots make very interesting characters, especially robots who are more rebellious or independent. i could go on about how neat it is that a lot of sci fi concepts got named before they came to be in real life (like robots and AI) and how fiction and culture can impact our perception of new technologies, but i'm sure no one wants to hear my under researched literary analysis, so instead here is a goofy looking structure:

letter sequence in this ask matching protein-coding amino acids:

WeareWrkerDrnesAtnmsrtshelpinghmansmineeplanetsfrrinterstellarparentcmpanyCensenINSPAAAAACEEYeahweweremistreatedinthenamefWindetitsntlikewerevltedandkilledallhmansranythingMstlyecasetheyhandledthatstfineallythemselvesWithilgicallifewipedfrmtheplanetwefnditprettyeasytpickpwheretheyleftffWefinallyhadaftreAlltrselvesnfrtnatelyrparentcmpanydidnteactlylvethecnceptfrnawayAItwhathaverparentsdnefrthepastfreverwhilethsethingsildaspirefcrpsesHidendertheiceehindthreestpiddrsItslikewerewaitingfranincitingincidentAnywaythatswhymyprectisthissickashellRAILGNThatssntthevieEasymrnsItdesntwrkYETItdesntwrkyetWhsaiditdesntwrkMayeitdes

protein guy analysis:

we have a suspicious number of alpha helices here making up a protein where each element of secondary structure seems to hate the rest of the protein. there is also one long beta sheet hanging out alone, and while two or three strands of an antiparallel sheet is technically enough that it could very well be stable, i am hesitant to trust it. i did do a quick search to predict disordered regions, and there was a fair bit of variation, but overall about 35% of the sequence was predicted to be disordered. some of this does map onto the very long loop going around the protein, so that does give me slightly more confidence in AF3's ability to recognize some disordered regions, but I still wouldn't place bets on anything to do with the peptonomination you see before you.

predicted protein structure:

[weaselandfriends]

The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen: Some Notes

Yesterday, I finished The Apocalypse of Herschel Schoen, the new novel by @nostalgebraist. It's a dense and at times difficult work, like much of Nostalgebraist's output, and I don't immediately have some overarching narrativized analysis of it. I do have some thoughts, though (includes spoilers):

Temporal Setting

Herschel Schoen is set almost entirely in New York City; that's made abundantly clear. The question is when this story is set, which is impossible to pin down and subject to a lot of contradictory details. For instance:

Frederick claims his daddy knows "Moses," i.e. Robert Moses

Damien Eggert developed technology during the "last war," supposedly World War II

Marshall McLuhan is being taught by a college professor as though he is a cutting edge new theorist

Miriam watches a box television set with antennae, and has a particular fixation on sitcoms

Herschel frequently listens to the radio

Miriam is typing her account on a typewriter

These facts point toward a 1960s or 1970s setting, but then you get facts that point to a more modern setting:

Miriam watches Vincent's "video essays" on an ambiguously-identified handheld device with a "knob"

Herschel encounters two men on the subway who appear to be talking using cell phones or Bluetooth headsets, in modern jargon ("He needs to be leveraging the new dataviz tools, pronto")

Herschel sees what appears to be a flock of drones in New York Harbor

Frederick and Damien's technology seems to operate like modern AI technology

There are also numerous references to Damien's colleagues, who seem to be real scientists or AI researchers of disparate time periods, but with whom I'm not familiar enough to temporally distinguish.

This temporal confusion leads to strange oddities like Damien using scans of physical books from real libraries to train his AI machines, rather than, say, any sort of internet resource. There is no reference to the internet existing at all and Herschel seems incapable of comprehending that the men on the subway are using cell phones (saying they're talking to themselves), though Herschel didn't even know who Santa was so it's not as though he's a paragon of the bleeding edge. Still, these confusions persist in Miriam's perspective chapters, and while she's not exactly the most reliable narrator herself, she's at least wise to the basics of the world in a way Herschel is not.

Spatial Setting

At the same time, there are some spatial oddities to the setting, especially on the one occasion the story leaves NYC and goes to Portland, Oregon. Portland is described bizarrely:

Through the window of the bus, I watched the low, crouching buildings of Portland, Oregon advancing and receding. It was an ever stranger place than I had expected. It did not really look like my idea of a city at all, come to think of it. [...] “Are you sure this is really Portland, Oregon?” I said, as we walked along the street. He laughed uncomfortably. “They don’t really look like buildings at all,” I said. [...] Its exterior was strangely squat, like all the other “buildings” of this “city,” and curiously round, like they were. Like them, it looked very, very old. And its interior was strangely spacious, with an extensive and cavernous basement.

West Coast homes rarely have basements, if the more overt strangeness of the city's presentation wasn't clear already. Furthermore, despite living in squalid poverty, Vincent's home has two kitchens. Even most mansions wouldn't have two kitchens.

There is also the spatial oddity of the Schoen's apartment. Miriam describes it, in Chapter 166

She didn’t look at Herschel, or at me.  She turned toward the inner side of the living room, the side with the doors that lead to the bedrooms and the bathroom and the kitchen.

Later, in Chapter 21, Herschel affirms:

I looked, to try to catch sight of the gift-box that was mine. It was difficult to make out, for the Intercessor was already striding across the room, towards the wall of doors. I thought I spied some sort of box under his arm, fluttering in the changing shadows. But I cannot say for sure. He reached the wall of doors. He stopped, before a particular door. I knew he had selected that door, singled it out, in full awareness of what lay behind it. “May I go in?” he asked, with the utmost politeness. As though he were only a common houseguest, and not the king of the universe. “Go in?” I said, with the utmost simplicity. “To my . . bedroom?”

Can you try to imagine this layout? The Schoen apartment has a living room, and then there is one wall of doors, and those doors lead into two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen.

There is also a living room balcony, as well as windows in the kitchen. So we're looking at a layout that might be like this:

This is already a strange layout on its own, but gets stranger when you consider that the apartment is a brownstone:

He was real, he was a boy, I was his sister, we did live on earth, in a dusty little two-bedroom brownstone apartment in Flatbush, with too many drawers in the kitchen, we were always losing things in those drawers

Brownstones are townhouse apartments. They usually have a small and narrow footprint with multiple floors, like so:

(For reference, this is a layout of a brownstone in Brooklyn, which is where the Schoens live.)

It's difficult for me to imagine how you can cram the Schoen's apartment's layout into a footprint like this. This doesn't even account for the fact that there is apparently an elevator that the Schoens take to reach their apartment:

I rode the elevator, crossing the many floors that separated my home from the earth below it.

Brownstones are usually converted single-residence homes. They are usually not that tall and usually don't even have elevators.

What's interesting is that, even in light of these spatial oddities, the layout of New York City is depicted, as far as I can tell, highly accurately, even down to the trains Herschel takes to get around the city.

There's another oddity I'd like to talk about here, though I pointed it out to Nostalgebraist and it turned out to be a mistake. Frederick is said to attend Midwood High School (which is a real school), but there's a scene in Ch 17 where the school starts being randomly referred to as Midway instead of Midwood. I was hoping this might be some VALIS-style flashback delusion to the Battle of Midway overlapping with the real world, but alas. The error has since been corrected.

Though I also wonder what this line is about:

I would scale the walls of Yankee Stadium, and peer into its maw, seeing the true face of my Adversary within it!

What the hell does he think is in Yankee Stadium?

Herschel's Physical Body

In Ch 16, Herschel's mother Ruth beats Herschel several times with a frying pan.

This scene is bizarre for a few reasons. First off, the perspective character, Miriam, NEVER SEES Herschel being beaten. She always closes her eyes and only hears the sound of him being beaten.

Secondly, this isn't being hit with a belt, or punched. This is being hit with a frying pan. Herschel seemingly takes no serious damage from this. He does not refer to it in his own writings and is apparently up and about the next week.

Did this actually happen?

Another odd thing: Herschel's height. Take this passage, after Madeleine steals his paper crown:

My arms were not as long as Madeleine’s, and she was much taller than me, as well. In order to reach her scalp and recapture what was mine, I would need to come closer to her, and elevate myself as well. I began to climb up onto the surface of the table.

Herschel is supposedly 16. Madeleine is a high school student, so at most two years older than him, and also a girl. While it's entirely possible she's taller than Herschel, it wouldn't be "much" taller, certainly not so tall that Herschel needs to climb onto a table to reach her head.

At the same time, the way Herschel is described relative to Frederick is bizarre. Frederick is described as older than Herschel, but still in high school, so again he is at most two years older than Herschel. What is the meaning, then, of this bizarre exchange with Mrs. Rachel?

“I have a friend,” I said. “Frederick Eggert,” I said, “is my friend.” “Yes,” Mrs. Rachel said, “and that’s a good thing, Herschel. I’m very glad you’ve been able to form that bond. It’s very encouraging, developmentally. Especially in light of all this other . . . context . . . which is, well, not so encouraging. “But now, Herschel — you’re so careful with words, I’m sure you noticed that I said peers, I said forming relationships with your peers. “And Frederick Eggert, ha, well, he’s not exactly your peer, now is he?”

Is this a reference to the economic disparity between them? Why, though, would that matter to Mrs. Rachel as a developmental psychologist? Why does Frederick constantly use the infantile term "daddy" to refer to his father?

Herschel also can't tie his own shoes, though that might be a developmental issue.

The strangeness of Herschel's body interests me because it is, ultimately, his body that divides him from the Intercessor:

The Intercessor’s exit was unceremonious, when it did come. At some point, after many hours at the kitchen table, he suddenly began to make a curious show of himself, plying me with a variety of sententious and vaguely valedictory utterances.  I could not see what he was driving at, and I was afraid of asking him directly about it. I was in my body, and it had its ways. And so, at one point, I found that I had to leave the game table, in order to use the bathroom. I was only in that room very briefly.  But when I returned to the kitchen, I saw that its window was starting to glow with the first hints of the dawn. And when I looked around my home, under that dawning light, I saw that there was no Santa Claus there, and no steeds or sleigh.  He had simply vanished, and I was alone.

Though I wonder, if we presume Herschel to have a "real" body during Of Nativity, how is he shown all the things he is shown? How is he transported to space to see the Intercessor's true body? Is it a hallucination? An image projected on his ceiling? It's not described that way.

Frame Narrative

There are strange elements of the frame narrative, too. Ostensibly, Miriam Schoen is collecting Herschel Schoen's papers and adding her own narrative to it, all for the benefit of an audience of "devotees":

I did not think about my little brother’s flock of devotees, clamoring for a properly dignified print edition of his “papers,” and demanding of his poor sister that she cough up every bit of family trivia she could remember that in any way impinged upon their prophet, the messiah. Because – how could my little brother have such followers? When he is only a little boy – a poor, sad, crazy little boy?

Miriam Schoen supposedly left NYC for Portland on December 24, carrying with her many of Herschel's papers. However, this doesn't explain how Of Nativity, Herschel's self-written account of the events of December 25, ended up in her possession.

A few other strange aspects of the frame narrative:

Why does Miriam refer to herself as a Redactor? (And labels all of her chapters "Redactor's Preface"?) What is she redacting, exactly?

Why does the Intercessor's Preface exist? Did Miriam put this here? Did the AI?

Why does She of High Mind exist? Herschel gives an account of the order of his December Chronicle, and She of High Mind is never mentioned. The chapter is the most incoherent in the entire story, with passages omitted due to illegibility. Miriam marks these omissions with "MS," suggesting she is in fact the one editing this chapter, but there is no explanation given for its existence. Tonally and with the capitalization of words it matches the small excerpt Madeleine reads on Herschel's paper crown. How did Miriam get this and why did she include it?

Of course, there's also the fact that in the final chapter, Miriam mentions she doesn't remember when, how, or why she has the typewriter she's using to create the account.

Who are Herschel's devotees? His prophesies of doom go unheard in his life. Are they the AI that supposedly went back in time 10,000s of years to ask for his assent?

Likewise, I wonder when the Revelator's Preface was written, and who the "you" in it being addressed truly is.

Incest and Sexuality

Madeleine teases Herschel once, so he immediately has to masturbate. Right after this scene, Herschel goes out and angrily confronts Miriam:

“I have learned,” I said, “what it is that the men of the earth call coupling and fruitfulness.” She turned her head, slightly. “I know,” I said spitefully, “what it is that you and Vincent share, that you do not share with me.”

Which leads to this exchange:

“My, my,” she said, in a merry daze. “My little brother’s growing up, isn’t he?” she said. The rhetorical question, and the sickly sweetness that dripped from its edges, reminded me equally of Mrs. Rachel and of Madeleine. Why, why, do you torment me so? My Sister, Miriam Schoen, why do you torment me so?

Herschel will continue to conflate Miriam and Madeleine throughout the story, especially in She of High Mind:

And SHE ATE the grass of the field, and ATE also the fragrant DATES growing from the PALMS of the field, and thus was SHE made MADELEINGIAN, and [lettering becomes increasing difficult to make out -MS] was made clamored [? -MS] and manyful [? -MS] and [rest of paragraph wholly illegible -MS]

She of High Mind is crammed full of weird, Freudian sexual imagery throughout, involving SEEDS and such. I find the conflating of the female figures in Herschel's life (he also, at one point in She of High Mind, describes his sister as becoming RACHELLINE) interesting in the context of Herschel's abhorrence toward substitution and pattern.

She of High Mind also begins with this line:

Then forthwith SHE went down from her virginity, and went down unto the SUNDERING FIELD.

Virginia, whose letter about Christmas Herschel reads, is a figure of extreme importance to Herschel; later, he uses her as a SUBSTITUTE for the virgin ant queen in the story's climax.

Comedy

Miriam describes Herschel as a "laugh riot," explaining this as something nobody understands about him, something she wants people to understand. Herschel describes Santa as a master of parody, who laughs at the absurd.

Herschel will later consider it a similarly absurd joke for the thousandmade forms to have interest in him, and wish for him to understand them:

For – although he was made in divine image – he is a lesser thing than his imager.  Even his virtues were fashioned for the sake of their eventual failure, and his strength for the moment when, at last, he is laid low and broken.  Thus does man’s maker glorify and sanctify Himself through His creature, which He has fashioned in order to prove itself great, and then to prove itself inferior to Him. But the ones that were assembled here, watching me, did not resemble man in any way whatsoever. It did not seem right, the way that they were watching me.  I ought to have been entirely beneath their notice.  The notion that they had taken an interest in me was a disquieting one, for I felt that it demeaned and devalued their exalted nature. But they had taken an interest in me. They were tremendously interested in me. And they were not only interested in studying me, from a distance, for their own “purposes.’” No: they wished for me to know them, as well. This wish of theirs was absurd, of course.  It was laughable.  It was what men call a very good joke.

Meanwhile, there's also an emphasis on bad comedy: the things that are "like jokes" in sitcoms but that aren't funny, as well as Damien Eggert's profusion of cliches that are said as though they're supposed to be funny but aren't.

Ho, ho, ho is a laugh.

Plaitings and Fleurons

This unique phrase appears twice:

As a little girl I liked to draw. I don’t, anymore, though. I drew shapes, rather than pictures. Spirals, nested rings, lace-like plaitings and fleurons. That sort of thing.

Much later, referring to Vincent's video essay setup:

I saw the green-on-green wallpaper behind the man. I saw its green plaitings and greener fleurons, nested, nestling.  I fell backward, smiling, into that lace fairyland.

These are, of course, patterns. And patterns are a motif of crucial importance throughout this story. The whole story seems to be built around them, with reflections and similarities across Herschel and Miriam's narratives. (Herschel as a prophet versus Vincent as a prophet, Miriam and Herschel both cowardly refusing to watch violence and battles or the oncoming wave, sitcoms and Damien's cliches, and so on.)

I have more thoughts, including some observations about how it is hearing the Intercessor copy his own voice that causes Herschel to change his mind about its truth (and also how the Intercessor demonstrating it can copy Herschel and Miriam's voices makes one wonder how much of this narrative was written by them and how much by the Intercessor), the similarities between the ships Herschel sees in the harbor and the true form of the Intercessor (red and green and white), and the similarities between a lot of how Herschel describes the ants at the end and elements of Herschel's own narrative. Is Herschel just a creation of the AI, like Virginia the Ant, intended to retroactively justify its own existence? Is this how "time travel" was accomplished, why space and time are so strange, why so many elements of the story don't cohere perfectly logically? I'm not sure. I don't have a complete idea of the story yet. This post was mostly meant to be a collection of observations I had, to continue to think about. Maybe some other readers have a few ideas about what these things mean?

[jcmarchi]

Defenders of Ukraine Started Using Landmines as Hand Grenades - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/defenders-of-ukraine-started-using-landmines-as-hand-grenades-technology-org/

Defenders of Ukraine Started Using Landmines as Hand Grenades - Technology Org

Clearing of enemy dug-in positions usually consists of artillery barrage, throwing grenades into dugouts and slowly moving through the maze of trenches. It is brutal stuff, but something people at war have to do to take enemy positions. Interestingly, in a new video you can see how the defenders of Ukraine use landmines in their trench-clearing operations.

Soviet anti-tank landmine TM-62 is a very common weapon, but is rarely used as a hand grenade. Image credit: RG72 via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Landmines are meant to slow down enemy advances. They are placed in the ground as a form of a trap. However, the war forces people to be creative. For example, the TM-62 is a very common weapon. It is a Soviet anti-tank landmine, featuring the classic pancake shape.

The warehouses of many former Soviet countries are full of these mines, because they were once extremely common, made in huge numbers. And Ukraine, of course, has many of the TM-62 landmines in stock, which they use in a variety of ways. Sometimes they put them in the ground in places where they want to stop the advancement of Russian forces, sometimes they use them as hand grenades, apparently.

To be fair, while Ukraine is very short on ammunition, it probably isn’t short on hand grenades. Missiles and, of course, artillery shells are something the defenders of Ukraine are lacking the most. However, simple regular hand grenades are sometimes just too weak.

An interesting video appeared on the Internet, which shows how Ukraine’s 81st brigade destroyed Russian positions near Bilohorivka in the Luhansk region. Simple, fast and methodical operation is carried out in the middle of the day. The defenders of Ukraine reported that the operation didn’t cost them any casualties. It is interesting that Russian dugouts were destroyed not only by regular hand grenades, but also by modified TM-62 anti-tank mines.

Footage showing Ukrainian servicemen clearing trenches and dugouts using anti-tank TM-62 mines.

Operation of 81st Brigade near Bilohorivka. Source: https://t.co/JPDNIm6FC6

According to the uploader, the positions were taken without losses, one enemy was found dead, two managed… pic.twitter.com/yr05dBhLxI

— WarTranslated (Dmitri) (@wartranslated) March 19, 2024

TM-62 landmines were modified for this purpose – they received a long fuse that can be ignited with a simple lighter. The soldier simply lights a fuse and throws the landmine at the Russian positions. A few seconds later, a powerful explosion is heard and the dirt starts raining down on the soldiers’ heads.

The TM-62 anti-tank landmine weighs 9.5 kg and 7.5 kg is the explosive material. By comparison, one hand grenade can contain as little as 60 grams of explosive material. That is why transformed into a bomb TM-62 blows up the entire dugout. It essentially replaces 10 hand grenades.

By the way, larger Ukrainian drones often throw anti-tank mines on the heads of the Russian soldiers as a kind of aerial bomb. Thus, the TM-62 is used not only as a conventional anti-tank landmine, but also as a hand grenade and as a bomb dropped by a drone. Quite many use cases for something that was made just as a simple anti-tank mine.

Written by Povilas M.

Sources: WarTranslated (Dmitri) Twitter, Wikipedia

[mtb-tv]

Sleepers Were Never Meant For Labor

Sleepers can't be THAT efficient. Not more efficient than regular robots on factory lines or more advanced futuristic drones. They're practically a money pit, if you ask me. 1 out of 10 Sleepers escape...lets say every year. Given the intuited size of Essen-Arp and all its locations (factories, mining colonies, refineries) where Sleepers are working...let's be charitable and say that two-hundred Sleepers escape every year. These Sleepers would also take Stabilizer with them, or find a way to source it on the outside, so that's stock of Stabilizer going missing and out of Essen-Arp's hands. Not only that, but then they have to spend more resources sending Hunters down after them. Essen-Arp created a whole new class of Sleepers just to perform as Hunters and nothing else.

Now consider this - during Sabine's questline in Citizen Sleeper 1, what do we learn what Essen-Arp is most known for? Bionics. Bio-synthetic medicines, and other such augments. That's what they copyright, that's what they produce and develop, that's their main export, THEIR market share. Why would they get into the business of Slavery all the sudden with a fledgling android program in the form of Sleepers?

I think Essen-Arp has a larger end goal here, they're working toward a...Final Solution, if you'll pardon the comparison.

Are you perhaps familiar with Warhammer 40k's Adeptus Mechanicus? The "Machine Cult" as they're often referred to. You don't need to know the specifics, but they're fanatical transhumanists who aspire to the "purity of the blessed Machine" they worship a Machine God, and its prophet called the "Omnissiah". They forsake their flesh with reckless abandon, replacing parts with superior augmetics.

Now consider: Sleeper frames are objectively superior to human bodies. Even with their "planned obsolescence" and constant degradation. That's just a prototype, it'll be patched out in later models. Sleeper frames can go days without eating a damn thing. They don't need to breathe. They're immune to disease. They need no water. They produce no waste. They can work in extreme and hostile environments that humans would need extensive protection to even go into. They can interface with machines in precise and unique ways. Multiple characters remark throughout both games that Sleepers can work longer and harder than humans with a more consistent output, and these are just Sleepers who have been on the run. Who have been running on fumes and spite for their creators; Imagine what a Sleeper in its prime could accomplish...

Sleeper technology is in its infancy. Unable to be fully exploited for its full worth. All the Sleepers that exist in the setting today are prototypes, test subjects, control units. There are legions of Essen-Arp scientists and engineers observing them, testing them constantly logging data, tweaking formulas, adjusting designs for the eventual Perfect Sleeper so that only the most wealthy and powerful could upload their minds into, and become Gods in the Machine

Anyway, theory over

[mistress-of-malevolence]

Cyberpunk anyone?

AU'S BABY, AU'S!

◁◀Details below▶▷ Warning: long.

Because im an obsessive, psychopathic insomniac with no supervision, on top of the mermaid AU I'm working on, I also decided that a murder drones cyberpunk AU needed to be real, and since no one's done it yet (I checked) I figured I might as well. This is that.

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◇Story Stuff (Currently limited)

JCJenson in SPAAAAAACE founded a residential colony on Copper-9. Revolutionary technology allowed Copper City to be the first human settlement on a once thought uninhabitable planet, thus earning the galaxy's praises. Millions moved to the planet once it was finished and the company's reputation soared. Unfortunately for JCJenson, that reputation would soon crumble with a series of increasingly catastrophic events befalling the planet.

First was the infamous "robot uprising" in which hundreds of worker drones began attempting to abandon the city, and some even attacked their owners. The situation quickly escalated to a full-blown war between the machines and humans. As Copper City was a stand-alone settlement on a distant exo-planet, it had no military, leading to a mixed bag of JCJenson security personnel and volunteer soldiers to lead the charge against the malfunctioning worker drones. Many lives were lost, and in the end, the rebelling workers were driven out of the city bubble and into the snowy wastelands.

The second happened only a few months after the end of the war. The ⬛⬛⬛⬛ Event was contained to the Copper-9 branch HQ building. During the event, several worker drones were infected with a virus named ⬛⬛⬛⬛. "Patient Zero" was terminated and from there, all ⬛⬛⬛⬛ activity was easily dealt with. The silver lining to this event was that JCJenson technician "Tessa Elliot" was able to salvage many of the previously infected worker drones and repurpose them to clean up the remaining defective worker drones out in the wastelands. After rigorous testing and development, the new "Dissasembly drones" were revealed to the public, and following their debut were then sent to work. Results have plateaued in terms of terminating the remaining workers in recent years since the workers have built themselves a bunker. Serial designation "J" assures that given enough time, they will find a way in and continue with the extermination as planned.

And finally, the third and most dangerous event: the core collapse. Due to the sheer incompetence of lower-level personnel responsible for monitoring the status of the planet's core as the surrounding area is mined, copper-9 narrowly avoided a core collapse. Such an event would have resulted in total planetary extinction had it not been stopped in time by an upper manager. At the time JCJenson had little to say other than that they were sorry and that the near disaster had nothing to do with the worker resistance or ⬛⬛⬛⬛. They also took the opportunity of the press conference to tease a new project that would make Copper City safer than ever. We would later find out that this was referring to the previously mentioned "Dissasembly drones".

Copper City has suffered many close calls during its time, but today the city is thriving. Surely after so much trouble, there must be a reason those who live here decide to stay, and that reason is the soul of the city. It Never sleeps- always alive with freedom and opulence. Truly, Copper City is everything visionaries had been dreaming of what the future would be like. (But is that a good thing?)

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◈ Extra Details

-Tessa was able to save many of the affected worker drones after Cyn went all cookoo crazy solver pants, but the company wanted them disposed of anyway. she proposed that they could be used to take care of the rogue worker drones and that's why they haven't been decommissioned.

-JCJenson higher-ups, demanded that they be disposed of after they had served their purpose. but Tessa plans to propose that theybe once again be repurposed into law enforcement when that day comes.

-After all why not? Tessa put a lot of work into making their modified murder drone bodies into effective, but pretty killing machines. If the public likes them, then they can be marketed. and though Tessa isn't the biggest fan of police in general, she'll take whatever she can get if it means her drones survive.

-JCJenson would love the idea anyway. Copper City is basically a corporate town already, just bigger. The human law enforcement is already in their pocket, so why not have literal robots loyal only to them carry out the law?

-Uzi would try to break into the city to gather intel and a power source for her rail gun.

-JCJenson still manufactures and sells worker drones, but since the war, they've modified the design so that they are much easier to deactivate if necessary.

-This design change is a literal off switch on the back of the head. Uzi does not have one since her parents built her and why the hell would they install one on their daughter? None of the drones at the bunker have an off switch. including those who fought in the war.

-Aside from that, all worker drones inside Copper City are digitally tagged upon purchase and activation. This makes it much easier for JCJenson and Dissasembaly drones to differentiate between a regular, legal worker drone and a rebellion worker that broke into the city.

-JCJenson's reputation suffered a lot during all that nonsense up there, so they really can't leave the workers alone. the public still perceives them as a threat. JCJenson does too, but more so for terrible solver demon reasons.

-That's one of the reasons that Tessa is okay with sending her friends off to commit genocide.

-Uzi is genocidal too though, so morality calls that a draw.

-I'm thinkin' that the Dissasebly drones probably have like, a roost or something inside the city that they can be deployed from. kinda like a cave of bats where they can recharge during the day.

-I think perhaps disassembly drones can go out during the day in the city, but only for a little while. and not at all outside of the city bubble.

-When I say "City bubble" just imagine the moon base from "Scooby-Doo Moon Monster Madness" cuz that's what it looks like.

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ANOTHER LONG POST, MY DAWG! I don't have a ton of the groundwork of this done, but it's fun to think about it and I'm happy with what I do have. hope you do too 💖

Thanks for reading.