#Image Storage Solutions

[ss-1990]

Advancing Diagnostic Imaging: The Importance of Radiology Machines Interfacing

In the ever-evolving landscape of medical diagnostics, Radiology Machines Interfacing has emerged as a pivotal component in enhancing efficiency, accuracy, and patient care. At the heart of this advancement lies the integration of Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) with radiology machines, enabling seamless communication and data exchange across the healthcare network.

DICOM Standards serve as the backbone of this integration, ensuring compatibility and interoperability among different imaging devices and software systems. By adhering to DICOM protocols, radiology machines can effectively communicate with PACS, transmitting high-quality medical images along with relevant patient data.

Furthermore, HL7 Integration plays a crucial role in streamlining the exchange of clinical information between disparate systems within the healthcare environment. By integrating HL7 messaging standards into the interface between radiology machines and PACS, healthcare providers can achieve real-time data exchange, thereby expediting diagnostic processes and improving patient outcomes.

Workflow Optimization is another key benefit derived from the seamless interfacing of radiology machines with PACS. By automating tasks such as image acquisition, storage, and retrieval, healthcare facilities can optimize their workflow, reducing manual errors and enhancing overall efficiency. This not only saves valuable time for radiologists but also ensures timely delivery of diagnostic reports to referring physicians.

Moreover, effective Image Storage Solutions are essential for managing the vast amount of medical images generated by radiology machines on a daily basis. PACS serves as a centralized repository for storing, archiving, and retrieving these images, providing instant access to authorized healthcare professionals whenever needed. Implementing robust image storage solutions not only facilitates efficient data management but also ensures compliance with regulatory requirements regarding data security and patient privacy.

Complementing the integration of radiology machines with PACS is the utilization of Radiology Information Systems (RIS), which serve as a comprehensive solution for managing radiology workflows, scheduling appointments, and tracking patient information. By integrating RIS with PACS and other clinical systems, healthcare providers can achieve a holistic approach to diagnostic imaging, streamlining operations and enhancing the overall quality of patient care.

In conclusion, the advancement of diagnostic imaging hinges upon the seamless interfacing of radiology machines with PACS. By adhering to DICOM standards and integrating HL7 messaging, healthcare facilities can achieve greater workflow optimization and ensure efficient image storage solutions. Combined with the capabilities of Radiology Information Systems (RIS), this integration paves the way for enhanced diagnostic accuracy, improved patient outcomes, and ultimately, the advancement of healthcare delivery.

[literallymechanical]

Okay so a guy in my solid state physics class was telling us about this muon scanning startup he worked at, GScan, and I'm going insane. I don't work there and I have no stake in the company, financial or otherwise, I just need to tell you about it.

Muons are short-lived subatomic particles, same charge as an electron but ~200 times more massive. On Earth, they're produced by cosmic rays colliding with the upper atmosphere, and they hit the ground at a rate of about ten thousand per minute per square meter.

They're moving extremely fast at ground level, like 0.99 c. So they careen right through matter, deflecting only very slightly around heavy atomic nuclei – they'll penetrate like a hundred meters into solid rock.

What do you do with this continuous shower of deep-penetrating charged particles, constantly blanketing every square inch of the Earth's surface?

(source)

The classic thing is use them to image the inside of massive structures, like we use x-rays to look inside living tissue – except instead of generating them yourself, you just use atmospheric muons. Muon archeology is a whole thing, they've used it to find hidden chambers in pyramids and stuff. Neat!

But this one Estonian company is doing some crazy bullshit and I love it.

Sandwich anything between a pair of portable muon detectors and get full 3D imaging of the interior, with sub-millimeter accuracy, by tracking the minute deflection of muons between them. Samples that are WAY too thick for x-rays, made of literally anything. Just put some muon detectors on some two by fours in a warehouse and call it a day.

You can just. Image anything??? Anything you want?? Completely passively!! Just detectors! No particle source! Put them anywhere. The detectors themselves are a mature technology, the company's tech is in the algorithms they use to get this level of spatial and elemental resolution.

You can detect failures inside cable-reinforced concrete bridges without cutting open the bridges.

Decommissioned Soviet nuclear submarine filled with concrete, with no drawings or documentation, that may or may not have spent fuel canisters in it? And you need to cut it up for storage? Just look at the muons.

One of the wackiest ideas is to put one detector under your bed and one on the ceiling, so you get a full 3D scan of your body every night, passively. I want one.

[prokopetz]

I think one of the biggest obstacles to getting a social media platform off the ground in 2023 is that big sites like Twitter and YouTube have created an expectation that registering an account should automatically come with effectively unlimited storage and bandwidth for whatever media you care to post, which creates a hard entry barrier for any platform without major financial backing. Like, we can wax rhapsodic about early 2000s forum culture all we like, but one of the main unwritten rules that allowed smaller forums to survive was never turning image hosting on for free accounts – either you made people figure out their own solutions for hosting images, or you charged a fee. If you were lucky, a forum with free registration might have let you host a banner for your signature on their servers, but that was it! Unless someone manages to convince large numbers of folks that a text-only social media platform is worth participating in, I'm not sure there's any good way forward for smaller outfits at this point.

[o-craven-canto]

Filters in the way of technologically advanced life in the universe and how likely I think they are

1. Abiogenesis (4.4-3-8 billion years ago): Total mystery. The fact that it happened so quickly on Earth (possibly as soon as there was abundant liquid water) is a tiny bit of evidence for it being easy. Amino acids and polycyclic hydrocarbons are very common in space, but nucleotides aren't, and all hypothetic models I've seen require very specific conditions and a precise sequence of steps. (It would be funny if the dozen different mechanisms proposed for abiogenesis were all happening independently somewhere.)

2. Oxygenic photosynthesis (3.5 billion years ago) (to fuel abundant biomass, and provide oxygen or some other oxidizer for fast metabolism): Not so sure. Photosynthesis is just good business sense -- sunlight is right there -- and appeared several times among bacteria. But the specific type of ultra-energetic photosynthesis that cracks water and releases oxygen appeared only once, in Cyanobacteria. That required merging two different photosynthetic apparati in a rather complex way; and all later adoptions of oxygenic photosynthesis involved incorporating Cyanobacteria by endosymbiosis. For all that it's so useful, I don't know if I'd expect to see it on every living planet.

3. Eukaryotic cell (2.4 billion years ago?): Probably the narrowest bottleneck on the list. Segregated mitochondria with their own genes and a nucleus protecting the main genome are extremely useful both for energy production (decentralized control to maximize production without overloading) and for genetic storage (less DNA damage due to reactive metabolic waste). But there's a chicken-and-egg problem in which incorporating mitochondria to make energy requires an adjustable cytoskeleton, but that consumes so much energy it would require mitochondria already in place. Current models have found solutions that involve a very specific series of events. Or maybe not? Metabolic symbiosis, per se, is common, and there may have been other ways to gene-energy segregation. Besides, after the origin of eukaryotes, endosymbiosis occurred at least nine more times, and even some bacteria can incorporate smaller cells.

4. Sexual reproduction (by 1.2 billion years ago): Without meiotic sex (combining mutations from different lineages, decoupling useful traits from harmful ones, translating a gene in multiple way), the evolution of complex beings is going to be painfully slow. Bacteria already swap genes to an extent, and sexual recombination is bundled in with the origin of eukaryotes so I probably shouldn't count it separately (meiosis is just as energy-intensive as any other use of the cytoskeleton). Once you have recombination, life cycles with spores or gametes and sex differentiation probably follow almost inevitably.

5. Multicellularity (800 million years ago?): Quite common, actually. Happens all the time among eukaryotes, and once in a very limited form even among bacteria. Now we'd want complex organized bodies with geometry-defining genes, but even that happened thrice: in plants, fungi, and animals. As far as I know, various groups of yeasts are the only regressions to unicellularity.

6. Brains and sense organs (600 million years ago): Nerve cells arose either once or twice, depending on whether Ctenophora (comb-jellies) and Eumetazoa (all other animals except sponges) form a single clade or not. Some form of cellular sensing and communication is universal in life, though, so a tissue specialized for signal transmission is probably near inevitable once you have multicellular organisms whose lifestyle depends on moving and interacting with the environment. Sense organs that work at a distance are also needed, but image-forming eyes evolved in six phyla, so no danger there (and there's so many other potential forms of communication!). Just to be safe, you'll also want muscles and maybe mineralized skeletons on the list, but I don't think either is particularly problematic. An articulated skeleton is probably better than a rigid shell, but we still have multiple examples of that (polyplacophorans, brittle stars, arthropods, vertebrates).

7. Life on land (400 million years ago): (Adding this because air has a lot more oxygen to fuel brains than water (the most intelligent aquatic beings are air-breathers), and technology in water has the issue of fire.) You're going to need a waterproof integument, some kind of rigid support system, and kidneys to regulate water balance. Plenty of animal lineages moved on land: vertebrates, insects, millipedes, spiders, scorpions, multiple types of crabs, snails, earthworms, etc. Note that most of those are arthropods: this step seems to favor exoskeletons, which help a great deal in retaining water. Of course this depends on plants getting on land first, which on Earth happened only once, and required the invention of spores and cuticles. (Actually there are polar environments where all photosynthesis occurs in water, but they are recently settled and hardly the most productive.)

8. Human-like intelligence (a few million years ago?): There seems to a be a general trend in which the max intelligence attainable by animals on Earth has increased over time. There's quite a lot of animals today that approach or rival apes in intelligence: elephants, toothed cetaceans, various carnivorans, corvids, parrots, octopodes, and there's even intriguing data about jumping spiders. Birds seem to have developed neocortex-like brain structures independently. Of course humans got much farther, but the fact that even other human species are gone suggests that a planet is not big enough for more than one sophont, so the uniqueness of humans might not necessarily imply low probability. (We seem to exist about halfway through the habitability span of Earth land, FWIW.) The evolution of sociality should probably be lumped here: we'll want a species that can teach skills to its offspring and cooperate on tasks. But sociality is also a common and useful adaptation: many species on our list (octopodes are a glaring exception) are intensely social and care for their offspring. I mentioned above that the land-step favors exoskeletal beings, which in turns favors small size; but the size ranges of large land arthropods and very intelligent birds overlap, so that's not disqualifying.

9. Agriculture and urban civilization (11,000 years ago): Agriculture arrived quite late in the history of our species, but when it arrived -- i.e. at the end of the Wurm glaciation -- it arrived independently in four to eight different places around the world, in different biogeographic realms and climates, so I must assume that at least some climate regimes are great for it (glacial cycles are a minority of Earth's history; but did agriculture need to come after glaciations? Maybe a shock of seasonality did the trick). And once you have agriculture, complex urbanized societies follow most of the time, just a few millennia later. Even writing arose at least three times (Near East, China, and Mexico), and then spread quickly.

10. Scientific method and industrialization (300 years ago): We're getting too far from my expertise here, but whatever. The Eurasian Axial Age suggests that all civilizations with a certain degree of wealth, literacy, and interconnection will spawn a variety of philosophies. Philosophical schools that focus on material causes and effects like the Ionians or Charvaka have appeared sometimes, but often didn't win over more supernaturalist schools. Perhaps in pre-industrial times pure materialism isn't as useful! You may need to thread a needle between interconnected enough to exchange and combine ideas, and also decentralized enough that the intellectual elite can't quash heterodoxy. As for industrialization, that too happened only once, though that's another case in which the first achiever would snuff out any other. I hear Song China is a popular contender for alternative Industrial Revolutions (with coal-powered steelworks!); Imperial Rome and the Abbasid Caliphate are less convincing ones. For whatever reason, it didn't take until 18th century Britain.

11. Not dying randomly along the way: Mass extinctions killing off a majority of species happened over and over -- the Permian Great Dying, the Chicxulub impact, the early Oxygen Crisis -- but life has always rebounded fairly quickly and effectively. It's hard enough to sterilize an agar plate, let alone a planet. Disasters on this scale are also unlikely to happen in the lifespan of planet-bound civilizations, unless of course the civilizations are causing them. A civilization might still face catastrophic climate change, mega-pandemics, and nuclear war, not to mention lesser setbacks like culture-wide stagnation or collapse, and I couldn't begin to estimate how common, or ruinous, they would actually be.

****

I have no idea how common the origin of life is, but the vast majority of planets with life will only have bacterial mats and stromatolites. Of the tiny sliver that evolved complex cells, a good chunk will have their equivalents of plants and animals, most of which may have intelligent life at least on primate- or cetacean-level at some later point. At any given time, a tiny fraction of those will have agricultural civilizations, at an even tinier fraction of that will have post-industrial science and technology. Let's say maybe 1 planet with industrial technology out of 100 with agriculture, 100,000 with hominid-level intelligence, 10 million with animal-like organisms, 100 millions with complex cells, and 10 billions with life at all?

[fateisfiction]

Well, That Bites ...

Vampire!Shouta, (temporary)Werewolf!Hizashi, Human!Reader

Part 1 of ???

Hizashi is bitten by a werewolf and undergoing treatment to reverse the transformation, but in the meantime, Shouta needs a reliable blood source. You're a friend from school and aware of Shouta's condition and volunteer yourself as a temporary solution. It's decided you'll move in with them to make everything easier.

Eventual smut (but not in this part)

Part 2

Shouta isn't the stereotypical posh Victorian vampire people expect when they find out he's a vampire. Sure, he’s a quiet night owl and fairly reclusive, but the ruffled collars and red velvet-lined coffins just aren't his vibe. He sleeps in a bed. He can absolutely walk in sunlight, he just needs extra SPF protection or else he’ll break out in an allergic reaction. (Not to mention the bright sunlight is absolutely exhausting.) And yes, he does drink blood.

And that's part of the problem. Ever since the incident with that one villain in the park, Hizashi's blood has tasted … bad. And that's where you come in.

A friend of theirs since highschool, you’ve been aware of Shouta's condition for a while. You know from experience that a starving vampire is a danger to the very people you’ve all sworn to protect. So you offer your own neck (or wrist) for Shouta, at least until they can figure out what's going on with Hizashi.

It's only a matter of days until the tests come back revealing that Hizashi has contracted lycanthropy. It's curable, but the treatment is a year-long regimen, and it's expected that it will take even longer for the taste to fully leave his system. The important thing is that it was caught early and he's already receiving treatment.

After some discussion, and a rather complicated trial period, it's decided that you’ll move in with them for the time being. The guest room has been made up and repainted in a color of your choice, your furniture and belongings moved to storage, and you're settling into your new home, getting used to the new routine of living with the boys.

Things are fine the first week or so. You have the run of the house with Hizashi busy juggling his many jobs and Shouta spending most evenings grading papers while you watch TV. It's easy enough to tell when Shouta is getting hungry. He lingers in doorways, staring, and you can feel the hair on the back of your neck stand on end.

He hesitates, not wanting to ask, to trouble you for a bite. But he's hungry, and you taste so good. In the beginning he offered to use a butterfly needle and looked horrified when you joked that it wouldn’t do anything for your public image to turn you into a literal walking juice box.

Eventually you settle into a pattern. Whenever you feel his hungry eyes on you, your arm raises almost involuntary offering your wrist to him. You still wince every time his fangs sink in. The sharp sting quickly soothed by the mild numbing effects of his venom.

He often winds up sitting on the couch with you during his feedings. Limbs curled around you protectively while you watch a show or movie together. Letting out a satisfied hum, he’s careful not to waste a drop of your precious blood. He licks away a stray rivulet before placing a kiss on the already healing bite.

The process is draining, in more ways than one. On more than one occasion, he’s had to carry you off to bed afterward, tucking you in and letting you sleep. He always leaves a glass of water and a snack pack of cookies for when you wake up.

Hizashi's first full moon is unpleasant, but he's grateful that he doesn't have to go through it alone. Thankfully the medications prevent any physical transformation, but he gets really clingy. Leading up to the full moon, he goes into full den mother mode. The fridge is overstocked with snacks and drinks. He hovers, constantly checking in on you and Shouta. Piles of blankets and pillows are amassed in designated cuddle areas, each of the bedrooms, his basement studio, and of course the living room.

An entire corner of the living room has become a permanent pillow fort. The cozy space is filled with bean bags and fluffy blankets. He designated the space as his your “nest,” and every night, like clockwork, he herds you and Shouta into the fort just in time for a late night snack. Sprawling his lanky body across the two of you as he enforces mandatory cuddle time, taking care to ply you with snacks and drinks while Shouta snags a bite for himself. You have to hold back a giggle when he starts kicking his leg whenever Shouta runs his fingers through Hizashi's hair.

You’ve taken it upon yourself to wash the blankets weekly, letting in fresh air to air out the house while the boys are busy at work. Hizashi can't help it, but there's a distinctly dog-like smell filling the space now. You can't help but notice he looks sad whenever you ask him to help you put the fort back together once they're all clean.

It's not until Shouta drops a few tactful mentions about how the sweater you're wearing smells like Hizashi as he snuggles into you, or how Hizashi would love to see the two of you like this, all wrapped up in his favorite blanket, that it dawns on you. It's Hizashi's way of marking out his territory while trying to still give you space of your own. When Hizashi's comes home on laundry day the following week to find everything just where he left it, he’s all smiles as he sweeps you up into a big hug, absolutely spoiling you with attention.

Over time, the two of them become increasingly protective of you. For Shouta, there's a level of intimacy that comes with regular feedings. A bond that grows stronger the longer you’re with them, until the idea of you leaving when Hizashi is back to normal fills him with an irrational anger. To Hizashi, you're a part of his pack. You've even started to wear his clothes around the house.

On the rare occasion that the three of you all have a day off together, you find yourself sandwiched between them as they preen over you. Hizashi checking to make sure that Shouta's bites are healing nicely and not leaving any noticeable scarring, and Shouta massaging anywhere he can reach. He subtly takes note of your muscle tone, mentally creating a training plan to keep you in shape since you’ve had to cut back, your body still getting used to these new arrangements.

You have a close call responding to a villain attack one day and when Shouta and Hizashi get the call, they're rushing to the hospital. You wake up to Shouta hunched over, head resting next to yours on the pillow as the machines beeping around you track your vitals. You can tell from the darker-than-usual circles under his eyes that he was worried. Hizashi comes in carrying two paper coffee cups, perking up when he sees your eyes are open. You motion for him to stay quiet, wanting Shou to get some much-needed sleep.

You're discharged from the hospital later that evening with instructions to start taking an iron supplement. Shouta curses under his breath. Your iron levels are fine. He should know. He’s been carefully managing your diet since you moved in, making sure you're getting all the nutrients you need. All the nutrients he needs.

You spend the next week assuring the boys that you're fine. Hizashi's cuddle pile moves from the living room to your bedroom, the entire room turned into a comfortable nest. You noticed that they’ve started sleeping on the floor, almost as if they can't bear to be away from you. Shouta pulls you into his lap while he's grading, propping his chin on your shoulder as he looks over the assignments. When you get a bit restless, he wraps his arms around you, shoving his face into the crook of your neck. The sensation of his cool fangs against the sensitive skin of your neck send a shudder through your body, but you know he won't bite you.

You can't stand seeing them sleep on your floor. The morning brings a symphony of pops and cracks as they stand up, so when you realize they're not going to be giving up this new habit, you ask if they would rather sleep in the bed. When you move to sleep on the floor they're horrified. Where are you going? There's more than enough room for the three of you.

It doesn't take long to get used to the new sleeping arrangements. At first you were worried that you were coming between them, but Shouta assures you that there's nothing to worry about. Compared to him, Hizashi’s almost unnaturally warm, and while that can be an issue in the heat of summer, it also means you’ll never have to worry about the cold, and of course he's a cuddler. They can just set the AC a few degrees cooler to compensate anyway.

As for coming between them, Shouta and Hizashi had a few ideas, but they're gentlemen. They would never force you into anything you weren't comfortable with. Granted, after waking up on more than a few occasions with Hizashi's morning wood pressed firm to your back, only for the two of them to quickly excuse themselves off to their own bedroom, it was pretty clear that your presence wasn't detrimental to their relationship. In fact, judging by the sounds you pretended not to hear coming from the next room, thing were pretty damn great between them.

---

There's a chance I'll rewrite this and it'll become a full fic and if I do, it'll be super slow burn.

[deya131313]

I need more of your fankids and the Bunnydoll farm life 😭. It’s so cuteeee

OH! Thanks for asking! And sorry for taking so long to answer, this will be a long post!

Well...

As I said, Jax and Ragatha live on a farm, they have a big house and a big plot of land, on which there is a vegetable garden, garden, a poultry yard and a stable

I imagine something like this (sorry for the image from the internet, I'm just not very good at drawing buildings!)

House: They have a very large house, just right for their large family. On the ground floor there is a kitchen, living room and toilet, on the second floor there is a bedroom, children's rooms and a shower room, and they also have an attic and a storage room.

The land plot is divided into a garden, a vegetable garden, a poultry yard and a stable.

Garden: They have a garden with fruit trees - 10 apple trees, 4 cherry trees and 1 large apricot tree, and among the trees there are also raspberry bushes and red and black currant bushes.

Vegetable garden: In the garden they grow a lot of vegetables - tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, carrots, beets, radishes, cabbage, potatoes, corn(!) and even some peanuts.

Poultry Yard: Not a very large area. They only have 9 hens and 1 rooster, but the hens lay a lot of eggs.

Stable: THIS IS THE WORK OF RAGATHA. They have 5 horses, and each horse is Ragata's favorite. There are 3 mares and 2 stallions in the stable:

Ash, mare, light grey, ash-coloured, dapple-coloured, riding horse of Ragatha

Brownie, mare, dark bay, also ridden by Ragatha, but sometimes by Jax

Rusty, mare, dark red in color, the color of rust, hence its name, Christian's horse

Nut, stallion, bay-piebald, with a special spot on his forehead, almost perfectly round, sometimes ridden by Christian

Raven, stallion of a completely black color, Rocky's riding horse

And now about their children:

ROCKY

Age: 17

Pronounce: she/her

The eldest daughter of Ragatha and Jax. She is a rabbit, but her fur color is dark red like Ragatha's hair, and she mostly has her features, such as round pupils, white sclera, mouth with fully separated upper and lower teeth (not like Jax's), and hair. Otherwise, she resembles her father, she is tall, with long thin arms and legs, but she, like Baxy and Kiki, has a tail. Rocky's is very fluffy, which is why Jax often calls her "sweet little tail"

She is quite cheerful and friendly by nature, but cautious with new people, and her trust must be earned. She can be grumpy and closed, sometimes irritable

Rocky's relationship with her parents:

CHRISTIAN

Age: 14

Pronounce: he/him

The second child in the family, he looks like Ragatha, or rather, he is as human-like as she is. Only his hair is purple. He is a little shorter than Ragatha, strong-built like her, a real little farmer.

He is very calm, kind, friendly and sociable, but this does not mean that he is soft-hearted. On the contrary, he is very confident and always finds a solution to everything. Of all of them, he has the most tender love for his mother and the greatest respect for his father.

Christian's relationship with parents:

BAXTER

Age: 11

Pronounce: he/him

Third child, and this guy is the most problematic of them all in terms of his behavior. He's just an absolute rascal! He's just like Jax, He has the same purple fur, yellow sclera, square pupils, and teeth, only he has a nose on his face. And he has a tail. His character is sometimes simply unbearable, he is constantly running around, disturbing everyone, making fun of everyone and creating problems. The only one he doesn't make too rude jokes about is little Ki, because if she cries, he simply won't live. He often gets into trouble with Rocky for his pranks and he is a little afraid of her, but still continues to do mischief.

Baxy's relationship list:

KIKI

Age: 2

Pronounce: she/her

She is the smallest and she is also a rabbit, she has a special mixed color of fur - it is pink and purple, and her hair is reddish pink. Her eyes have yellow sclera, but with round pupils, and she also has separate teeth. She should grow up to be average height like her mother, but slim and thin like Jax.

She is still small, but she already has her own character - she is curious, funny and cheerful. She loves everyone without exception.

Finally, Kiki's relationship list:

The relationships between siblings are also special. None of them hate, envy or despise each other. They all love each other, just in their own way! Even Rocky loves Baxter, and Baxter loves Rocky

Their relationship looks like this:

Phew... It turned out to be a lot, and I hope you enjoy reading it! I described everything in enough detail!

If something is unclear, don't hesitate to ask!

[felipeandletizia]

July 23, 2025: Princess Leonor's speech at the Princess of Girona Awards ceremony

President, mayor, councilors, authorities, friends who have wanted to share this meeting today: thank you for your presence, for making it possible for us to be united today in this Gran Teatre del Liceu. I must admit that I feel compelled to be here, in this “sanctuary of the arts”, which is what we can read on one of the walls of the Saló dels Miralls. This theatre is a symbol and identity of Barcelona, a Mendoza city of prodigies that I am approaching with summer readings to welcome in Oviedo the illustrious Catalan that is Eduardo Mendoza.

A few weeks ago, Dvorák's opera Rusalka was performed here, and I was watching some images from the stage just as the curtain fell. Everyone who had just participated in the performance, now without the eyes of the audience on them, hugged each other, excited by the emotion and collective effort after delivering artistic excellence, in this case expressed in an opera. That's the enthusiasm I see in the lives and work of our award winners, the impressive energy of the six women and men we just heard.

Manuel, an architect who dares to think differently, excited because, although he accepts that we live in constant crisis and uncertainty, this is the best time to be young and combine architecture and sustainability.

Valentina, a Colombian entrepreneur who faced many no's but never lost her enthusiasm for ensuring that vulnerable women have access to preventive healthcare thanks to her device for the early detection of breast cancer.

Andreu, the engineer who thought—you heard him!—that he was stupid and transformed his frustration into enthusiastic energy to create a math learning system that helps thousands of students around the world.

Toni, another engineer whose eyes light up when he talks about the energy transition and whose enthusiasm for the challenge of large-scale renewable energy storage spreads to us.

Gabriela, a neuroscientist driven by a conviction: everyone deserves decent healthcare. And that's why she created a platform that helps millions of Guatemalans.

And Pablo, who refuses to allow premature babies in many parts of the world to lack the basic conditions to thrive. And who, as an engineer, decided that a life of service to others was what fulfilled him. His enthusiasm when explaining how his low-cost incubators work is impressive.

The six of you tackle the complexity of the world and transform it into clear, accessible and effective solutions. The six of you have anticipated the challenges and have worked long-term in a world where everything is urgent. The six of you have chosen the difficult path, that of commitment, purpose, awareness of what is right, of what needs to be done.

I thank the six of you for dazzling us with your determination and patience to move forward and persevere, and to put so much talent at the service of society. And I also thank the trustees for their support so that the Princess of Girona Foundation, with the work of its entire great team, is an accomplice and promoter of the way our awardees look at the world: a view that does not look for shortcuts and that is often built in silence and with conviction, with the ethic of a job well done and the search for the common good, with the enthusiasm to improve people's lives. Thank you.

[marshallpupfan]

Some time ago, I said I was going to re-arrange my Marshall collection. I wanted to dust everything, add in another bookshelf, rearrange things, and generally try to spruce up the whole thing. Geez, how long ago did I say I was going to do this? Hang on...

*Checks archive*

That was back in November?? That much time has passed already? Geez, I thought it was only three months or something. Time flies.

In any case, the reason I never posted any updates on my entire collection is because... er... well... I never finished it. I didn't like how it was turning out, and instead of doing something about it, I did what I often do; put it off and then never get back to it. It's been sitting incomplete for six or seven months now, and although I kept telling myself "I'll get to it, soon", the "soon" part just never happened.

And I think I know why. It was fun to maintain when it was just a few shelves, and I enjoyed getting that display case to show how big it had grown... but to be honest, I think it's too big now. It all takes up so much room... especially the plush dolls, as there are just so MANY of them. I have two bookshelves dedicated to JUST the dolls, as you can see from the image I posted in November.

Shockingly, that's not even all of them. I went a little crazy, buying all of these. I'll admit, I'm not too proud of that anymore. A part of me wants to downsize. Not get rid of them, but maybe put some in storage and only display the ones I really like. I'm not sure what I'll do just yet, but something's gotta be done.

The plush dolls aren't the only issue. I'm starting to get way too much of other things, too. Admittedly, I was trying to slow down until I could figure out what to do, but I kept getting more as gifts (that's no offense to those who gifted them to me, I really appreciate it!), and now I'm even more lost for a solution. Not to mention, my TV is placed among my collection, and because there's no place to hide all the wires and such, they tend to get spewed about whenever I hook my laptop to it, or my various game consoles, since I dig them out quite often to stream them to a friend who also likes retro gaming. If you're curious, that's a Sega Genesis (or Mega Drive, for anyone outside of the USA) you see in the bottom-left corner. It's not too uncommon for that little zone in my room to be a mess of wires.

In any case, I just need to figure out something. It's all becoming a little overwhelming, and due to that, I've neglected it... to the point it became a mess. Something needs to be done, and I'm just not sure what or when I'll do anything about it.

If... and that's a big if... I come up with something soon and organize everything, I'll see about finally posting that update for everyone... that I promised all the way back in November. Don't get your hopes up or anything, because my motivation right isn't too high right now. We'll see what happens.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

New blue light-emitting lasers leverage low-toxicity colloidal quantum dots

Blue lasers, lasers that emit a light beam with a wavelength between 400 nm and 500 nm, are key components of various technologies, ranging from high-resolution displays to printers, medical imaging tools and data storage solutions. A key advantage of these lasers is that they generate coherent and intense light beams that can be leveraged to develop highly advanced optical technologies. One approach to developing blue lasers entails the use of colloidal quantum dots (CQDs). These are nanoscale semiconducting particles with unique optical properties associated with their size. Lasers based on these nanoscale particles could have notable advantages, including enhanced power-efficiency and tunability. Most quantum dot-based lasers developed so far utilized cadmium (Cd) particles that emit red light, while efforts to introduce similar blue light-emitting lasers were sparser.

Read more.

[emiplayzmc]

BEHOLD. An Ambyu-Lance ref sheet! Made exclusively because I now have an Ambyu-Lance OC and needed a consistent way to draw them + some lore for my AUs lol.

Actual design for Ware (my Ambyu-Lance guy :D) + some other Ambyu fanarts (👀 to the one person I told about this you know what I mean 👀) coming very soon ^-^ Just needed to get the anatomy ref sheets out.

Individual images + facts and anatomy below :)

Hospital Variant Ambyu-Lance.

-Hospital variants work with major health concerns such as serious viruses, major replacement / removal of parts, yearly system updates, etc. As is in their name, they reside in the major hospitals of the Cyber World

-These variants can heal anybody, no matter what Dark World they're from and no matter if they're a human or monster.

-Identified by red-tinted liquid within their heads and yellow eyes, paired with a red-topped torso.

Repair Shop Variant Ambyu-Lance.

-Repair shop variants work with minor conditions and easier solutions than hospital variants, like the difference between a clinic and an actual hospital - in other words, non-emergencies. They can do system updates, check-ups on internal processes, and minor fixes like a broken faceplate or glitched wiring.

-Repair shop variants can only work on Darkners within Cyber City, such as Addisons, Swatchlings, Tasques, etc. Their magic isn't strong enough to do major fixes like a hospital variant, and they're generally not programmed to know HOW to perform major healing processes that aren't magic-based.

-Identified by more purple-tinted liquid within their heads and green eyes with a red-topped torso.

Law Enforcement Variant Ambyu-Lance.

-Law enforcement Ambyu-lances keep the general safety and laws of Cyber City in place. They're police officers, firefighters, traffic controllers, generally in any situation that calls for keeping other people safe or dispelling illegal violence.

-Law enforcement Ambyus have enough healing magic to act as paramedics for short bursts of time if they need to, but it's generally only long enough to get an injured person to a hospital or repair shop.

-They are identified by red-tinted liquid inside their heads and yellow eyes, paired with a blue-topped torso.

Virus Control Variant Ambyu-Lance.

-Virus-control variants deal specifically with rogue malware and viruses across Cyber City.

-Their axes are imbued with program freezers within attacks - these are essentially paralytics that they use to catch malwares / infected persons and keep them under control until they're able to be destroyed (malware) or taken to a hospital (infected people). They have no healing magic.

-They are identified by purple-tinted liquid in their heads with green eyes, paired with a blue-topped torso.

-Ambyu-Lances stand at a consistent height of 4 feet, 9 inches (57 inches) with no variation between individuals, unlike Addisons who can have a minimum height of 5'6 (Spamton height lol) and a maximum height of 6'2.

-Magic, like in Addisons, runs in wires through their body to their hands from a central tank. These wires are visible through the gaps between coils in their arms, and cam extend as far as the arm can stretch.

-Their arms, legs, and necks are made of springs, and can extend and stretch. Put them on a set of stairs and they can fold over each stair like a slinky doing handstands. Of course they can only extend a fixed amount.

-Their central torso is split in the middle like a capsule pill, and can open if the need comes to repair internally.

-The hospital cross on the center of their torso can also open, allowing a smaller bit of access to the internal chest cavity for quick storage of smaller items.

-Their eyes are fixed to one side of their head, but the eyeballs can roll backwards to see through the inside of their head to the other side. If the eyes get stuck in one position, they're essentially blinded on the opposite side of their head until the eyes are fixed.

-The siren on their head can, of course, be activated manually, but it can also go off accidentally when an Ambyu-Lance is startled or excited, and involuntarily when in pursuit (mostly this happens to the Law Enforcement / Virus Control variants).

-The liquid inside their head is their lifeblood, basically. The glass covering it is one of the hardest parts to break on their bodies to protect the liquid inside. You can decapitate an Ambyu-Lance and it'll still be alive as long as the glass of their head is intact.

[literary-illuminati]

2024 Book Review #5 – The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

I read Nayler’s The Mountain in the Sea last year and, despite thinking it was ultimately kind of a noble failure, liked it more than enough to give his new novella a try. It didn’t hurt that the premise as described in the marketing copy sounded incredible. I can’t quite say it was worth it, but that’s really only because this novella barely cost less than the 500-page doorstopper I picked up at the same time and I need to consider economies here – it absolutely lived up to the promise of its premise.

The book is set a century and change into the future, when a de-extinction initiative has gotten funding from the Russian government to resurrect the Siberian mammoth – or, at least, splice together a chimera that’s close-enough and birth it from african elephant surrogate mothers – to begin the process of restoring the prehistoric taiga as a carbon sink. The problem: there’s no one on earth left who knows how wild mammoth are supposed to, like, live- the only surviving elephants have been living in captivity for generations. Plop the ressurectees in the wilderness and they’ll just be very confused and anxious until they starve. The solution: the technology to capture a perfect image of a human mind is quite old, and due to winning some prestigious international award our protagonist – an obsessive partisan of elephant conservation – was basically forced to have her mind copied and put in storage a few months before she was killed by poachers.

So the solution of who will raise and socialize these newly created mammoths is ‘the 100-year-old ghost of an elephant expert, after having her consciousness reincarnated in a mammoth’s body to lead the first herd as the most mature matriarch’. It works better than you’d expect, really, but as it turns out she has some rather strong opinions about poachers, and isn’t necessarily very understanding when the solution found to keep the project funded involves letting some oligarch spend a small country’s GDP on the chance to shoot a bull and take some trophies.

So this is a novella, and a fairly short one – it’s densely packed with ideas but the length and the constraints of narrative mean that they’re more evoked or presented than carefully considered. This mostly jumps out at me with how the book approaches wildlife conservation – a theme that was also one of the overriding concerns of Mountain where it was considered at much greater length. I actually think the shorter length might have done Nayler a service here, if only because it let him focus things on one specific episode and finish things with a more equivocal and ambiguous ending than the saccharine deux ex machina he felt compelled to resort to in Mountain.

The protection of wildlife is pretty clearly something he’s deeply invested in – even if he didn’t outright say so in the acknowledgements, it just about sings out from the pages of both books. Specifically, he’s pretty despairing about it – both books to a great extent turn around how you convince the world at large to allow these animals to live undisturbed when all the economic incentives point the other way, a question he seems quite acutely aware he lacks a good answer to.

Like everyone else whose parents had Jurassic Park on VHS growing up, I’ve always found the science of de-extinction intensely fascinating – especially as it becomes more and more plausible every day. This book wouldn’t have drawn my eye to nearly the degree it did if I don’t remember the exact feature article I’d bet real money inspired it about a group of scientists trying to do, well, exactly the same thing as the de-extinctionists do in the book (digital resurrection aside). The book actually examines the project with an eye to practicalities and logistics – and moreover, portrays it as at base a fundamentally heroic, noble undertaking as opposed to yet another morality tale about scientific hubris. So even disregarding everything else it had pretty much already won me over just with that.

The book’s portrayal of the future and technology more generally is broader and less carefully considered, but it still rang truer than the vast majority of sci fi does – which is, I suppose, another way of saying that it’s a weathered and weather-beaten world with new and better toys, but one still very fundamentally recognizable as our own, without any great revolutions or apocalyptic ruptures in the interim. Mosquito's got CRISPR’d into nonexistence and elephants were poached into extinction outside of captivity, children play with cybernetically controlled drones and the president of the Russian Federation may or may not be a digital ghost incarnated into a series of purpose-grown clones, but for all that it’s still the same shitty old earth. It’s rather charming, really.

[the-truth-immense-knowledge]

The Underground world of Horrid alchemists

Hello truth beholders, I have some juicy knowledge for you to suckle on, the teat provided by a user which prefers to remain anonymous, less her death be a shortcoming by the powers that be....

Goblins are a terrifying entity to even think about, my friends. However sensationalized by modern media they may be, watered down to funny, goofy relatively harmless small green men. This should, however, not detract in the SLIGHTEST from your horror for what is to come. My friend mentioned above let me in on a horrifying secret, but before I give you the horrid truth, hidden by the powers that be, look at this image. In you mind, encapsulate and tell me what you see...

Yes my friends, this just what you think it is. A baby. But, if you look just a wee bit closer, you can see a small, rapidly moving object.... a goblin. Hold your gasps, it will only get worse. Submitted by Isla White, the same person supplying the rest of the information by taking heavily classified documents, living in California in Albany took this photo of their 5 month old son, Jeff White.

To her horror, however, she could never imagine what she would envision when she put the image through infrared waves, as a joke between her Husband, who was having an affair with her at the time, Brad Harding (the couple had a divorce over work-life complications and the cheating, as mentioned above.)

This led her to a month of rapid criminality, taking documents from the storage room, as a civil servant working in admin, this was highly illegal, but this did not deter her from discovering the truth....

This image was not doctored, goblins are real. And this was hidden by the CIA, why? Because THEY work with the goblins! Ever wonder how in spy movies, these agencies have much higher tech equipment than the general public ever can grasp, such as a TALKING car? This, is because of the alchemist that work below, casting wicked sorcery to make these miracles of technology work!

Pseesh! You may declare. This woman is lying, speaking utter untruths. But I must disturb you and pry you third eye open further. Ever had an object held dearly to you, only to be missing, never to be seen again. This video will explain everything.

This, right here, is a toy well beloved by a child of the age of 12 of the month of January of the day of the 24th. With no batteries installed, we placed it on one of our emerald infused sonar-grams. Immediately it buzzed to life, which these energies detected beta-213 particles by our trusty Larthum equalizer. Love particles.

This is what the Goblins use, we all know the power of love and friendship is real and tangible, epics of plenty have been written of beasts being slayed with just the power of friends joining together. These tales were not just that, tales, but forewarning of the future the goblins will have. They use this power of love and twist it in horrible ways, inspector gadget being a shining example of such a thing, with the aforementioned talking cars.

You may be asking what to do with this information, as goblins are inherently invisible. There is only one solution. Buy infrared goggles and detectors to forewarn you of these 2 feet invaders, and when you can use your right to bear arms and blow them init paste across your kitchen wall. Good luck, soldiers of light.

[sinsinewave]

so i had a project idea, inspired by DeArrow and my annoyances with e621's search syntax

as many of you probably know, e621's tagging is kinda.. transphobic (refer to the TWYS Policy), to put it very mildly

and on top of that, i find the search syntax inadequate at best (give me my blooming boolean operations!) --

so my first thought when thinking about all that was, well, why not run my own bloody image board; i tend to just make my own damn software if i dislike something anyways

but like you can see how that's a horrible idea, it'd need tebibytes of storage, and moderating what is essentially a furry porn site sounds like a sisyphean nightmare

additionally, e621 has the critical mass problem of for example youtube; people won't switch because it's where all the artwork is, a new site will have next to nothing for a long time --

which leads me to the actual idea, inspired by DeArrow, which is a browser extension that un-clickbaitifies youtube titles and thumbnails

what if instead of running the whole image board, i ran a crowdsourced alternate search and tagging backend?

that'd only need maybe gibibytes of storage which costs next to nothing, and even moderation can in some part be crowdsourced with a vote system, since actual content moderation is handled by e621 already, and the actual artwork is drawn from an existing big platform so building critical userbase mass is much simpler

and all the backend would need to do is run a database with a search system that maps artwork IDs to sets of tags, which the frontend injects in place of e621's own search interface and tag listing; that's light enough that even a like 5-10€ VPS might handle that

alternatively, it could have a dedicated frontend, doesn't matter really --

as for the tagging, there's even a very trivial solution to the transphobia problem

like 97.3% of searches are for appearance rather than canon gender, so just use trait-based tagging (yes i was inspired by Rust lmao)

instead of tagging a character 'female' because they have tits and you can't see what's between their legs, just tag them 'has_breasts', that's most likely what someone is actually looking for anyways

and if gender tags are to be a thing at all, base those on canon gender, or don't include them if that's not known --

anyway guess it's coding time

might make my trainspotting tool first though, idk

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

NASA tests innovative technique for super-cold fuel storage

In the vacuum of space, where temperatures can plunge to -455°F, it might seem like keeping things cold would be easy. But the reality is more complex for preserving ultra-cold fluid propellants—or fuel—that can easily overheat from onboard systems, solar radiation, and spacecraft exhaust. The solution is a method called cryogenic fluid management, a suite of technologies that stores, transfers, and measures super-cold fluids for the surface of the moon, Mars, and future long-duration spaceflight missions.

Super-cold, or cryogenic, fluids like liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen are the most common propellants for space exploration. Despite its chilling environment, space has a "hot" effect on these propellants because of their low boiling points—about -424°F for liquid hydrogen and about -298°F for liquid oxygen—putting them at risk of boiloff.

In a first-of-its-kind demonstration, teams at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, are testing an innovative approach to achieve zero boiloff storage of liquid hydrogen using two stages of active cooling which could prevent the loss of valuable propellant.

"Technologies for reducing propellant loss must be implemented for successful long-duration missions to deep space like the moon and Mars," said Kathy Henkel, acting manager of NASA's Cryogenic Fluid Management Portfolio Project, based at NASA Marshall. "Two-stage cooling prevents propellant loss and successfully allows for long-term storage of propellants whether in transit or on the surface of a planetary body."

The new technique, known as "tube on tank" cooling, integrates two cryocoolers, or cooling devices, to keep propellant cold and thwart multiple heat sources. Helium, chilled to about -424°F, circulates through tubes attached to the outer wall of the propellant tank.

Teams installed the propellant tank in a test stand at NASA Marshall in early June, and the 90-day test campaign is scheduled to conclude in September. The tank is wrapped in a multi-layer insulation blanket that includes a thin aluminum heat shield fitted between layers. A second set of tubes, carrying helium at about -298°F, is integrated into the shield. This intermediate cooling layer intercepts and rejects incoming heat before it reaches the tank, easing the heat load on the tube-on-tank system.

To prevent dangerous pressure buildup in the propellant tank in current spaceflight systems, boiloff vapors must be vented, resulting in the loss of valuable fuel. Eliminating such propellant losses is crucial to the success of NASA's most ambitious missions, including future crewed journeys to Mars, which will require storing large amounts of cryogenic propellant in space for months or even years. So far, cryogenic fuels have only been used for missions lasting less than a week.

"To go to Mars and have a sustainable presence, you need to preserve cryogens for use as rocket or lander return propellant," Henkel said. "Rockets currently control their propellant through margin, where larger tanks are designed to hold more propellant than what is needed for a mission.

"Propellant loss isn't an issue with short trips because the loss is factored into this margin. But, human exploration missions to Mars or longer stays at the moon will require a different approach because of the very large tanks that would be needed."

IMAGE: The tank for NASA’s two-stage cooling tests is lowered into a vacuum chamber in Test Stand 300 at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Credit: NASA/Kathy Henkel

[theshipsong]

how i make gifs with only free software

this is adapted from what i did on macOS for years; i now run desktop linux due to planned obsolescence / apple's addiction to waste. if you use macOS, homebrew was my real introduction to using the shell and linux-like package management, and look at me now. every single gif i've made here (#spicagif) and on my sides @chongmiz and @buwanbyul use this method.

three programs mentioned here are command line-only, but optional; all this actually takes is VLC and GIMP.

acquire video 🏴‍☠️. my bittorrent client of choice is transmission, and yt-dlp (cli) is great if what you want is on youtube or vimeo

take screenshots in vlc by holding down the snapshot hotkey (sft+s is default); i tend to reduce playback speed for action sequences. you can also extract frames with ffmpeg (cli) which is a vlc dependency that should install automatically with any package manager, but it only makes sense if you've exported a clip of the part you want. both options are annoying.

open these screenshots as layers in gimp and edit away. my order of business is usually scale -> crop (save .xcf) -> sharpen -> color. this will give me a repetitive strain injury because i have not found a solution other than clicking every layer and hitting ctl+f

if you need subtitles or a watermark, which i do more on my k-pop side @buwanbyul, i recommend @animstack (yes an actual official linux-adjacent blog!)

i do not actually export gifs, they are webps:

honorable mentions

sshfs: i don't keep video on my laptop or like attaching external storage to it, so i torrent straight into my headless server over ssh. i realize normal people do not have this but this is how i "stream" from my own media library

pcmanfm: i browse files with ranger, but handling that many images without thumbnails is foolish. pcmanfm is very lightweight and is meant to replace more established file browser GUIs like thunar and dolphin

edit 2025/02/26: just mentioning @vlc-official @gimp-official

[whitherwanderer]

4 // reticent

Accessing Everkeep Data Terminal Network . . . Please remain still for regulator scan or insert identification tag. Verifying user registration . . . User PYR-0562 registration verified. Access granted. Welcome back, Pyrite. Memory storage shard detected in port A. Displaying memories. IMG_1051 IMG_1052 IMG_1053 IMG_1054 IMG_1055 IMG_1056 > IMG_1055 Loading IMG_1055 . . . Loading failed. Memory corruption detected.

Blue light from the terminal screen cast a sickly glow across the room, making a sleepless Pyrite look all the more weary as her eyes strained against the blocky remnants of a corrupt image. Despite the distortion of the image turning the figures pictured into little more of a hint at a person, she could recognize herself in one of them; the suggestion of a smile on her face, her arm slung around a brunet man that could be none other than Galena, though she had no recollection of this moment preserved in light.

He had long since awoke and found her there, alert but not wholly present, as she delved into their personal records. She could still feel the press of his lips on her cheek before he left their darkened apartment to begin the long trek out to the driftdowns. She only opened the image back up when she was sure he was long gone.

Between them in this disembodied memory, observed secondhand through a broken lens, was a third figure.

Younger. Much younger. Not more than ten years old. Held in their arms with a certain pride she could almost remember feeling once. Blonde, like her, but otherwise featureless. The conclusion was as obvious as it was maddening. But when? How?

The longer she stared, the more it ate at her how much was missing. A name she wanted to call out in a long-learned habit, though her tongue could never quite form the syllables. A face she could almost see in the white, flickering moment as her eyes closed, but something always pulled her away from recognition of a face. Everyone was aware of the cloud. Everyone had these holes in their memory. So why did this eat at her so?

The blinking prompt beneath the image tempted her sorely. She had already found the futility in taking up its offer, however…

Repair IMG_1055? [Y/N] >  Y Repairing IMG_1055 . . .

What is it they say about the definition of insanity?

She watched the loading bar fill, tick by painful tick, until there came a chime at the door that, for all its intended pleasantness, nearly sent her to the floor with a jolt. “Who’s there?” she calls.

“Pyrite? It’s me,” a young woman called over the comms unit just outside, “Sphene.” Pyrite froze in her seat, her blood set to ice. She clapped the terminal closed and kept her hand atop it as if it might shout her secrets if she didn’t, then looked down to examine herself.

“I apologize for calling upon you at this hour. I haven’t woken you, have I?”

“No,” Pyrite calls back urgently. “No, I was already awake. Just- just give me a moment to get myself decent, your Majesty.”

“Oh! By all means.”

Fully clothed, but caught obviously unprepared for any guest, let alone the bloody Queen of Reason herself. Not that Sphene was known to judge, but the impropriety of greeting her barefoot did cross Pyrite’s mind. So too did the thought of keeping her waiting at the door.

Pyrite hurried to the entrance, pressing her hand to the pad beside it that saw the shades open and the lights of Solution Nine to fill the room before another press lifted the door, revealing the young queen’s expectant, spring green stare and warm smile. Coiffed, crowned, and poised, wide eyes and the wringing of the young queen’s hands indicated something was troubling her, but she brightened the moment Pyrite smiled back at her, however wearily.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting, your Majesty,” she Pyrite offers, harried though it is, and the queen’s eyes close with a gentle shake of her head.

“Don’t be, my dear Pyrite. It’s still quite early,” the regent assured. She paused, looking back over Pyrite’s shoulder for a moment before smiling to politely inquire. “May I come in?”

Pyrite was keenly aware she’d been sorting through the records and attempting repairs for hours now. The Everkeep administrative systems would have caught it, wouldn’t they? The visit from the queen couldn’t be a coincidence.

Her smile widened from ear to ear. Why did this feel like a guilty conscience on display? “‘Course. Please, come in.”

As Pyrite stood aside to let the young queen enter with polite thanks, her hands were kept folded neatly at her middle. Her scintillant dress cast prisms of light about the floor, turning as she did once she reached the middle of the room. Pyrite touched the pad against the wall once more and the door slid closed, quieting the distant sound of Sphene’s name called down the hallway.

The resulting beat of silence frayed Pyrite’s already buzzing nerves.

“Restless morning?” she asked the queen. An attempt at smalltalk to soothe the nerves. It was not so long ago that they gossiped like schoolgirls after all.

“Restless is… one way of putting it,” the queen tone nearly touches upon sardonic humor. This does little to put Pyrite’s nerves at ease.

“...How have you been, Pyrite?” Sphene asks tentatively, turning to look upon Pyrite with a smile that spoke of genuine concern. Like a check-in after an illness. Why did the queen’s once-comforting visits now feel like interrogation? “You look well, and that is heartening enough. I hope the same goes for dear Galena?”

“I am, and so is he,” Pyrite said cooly, motioning towards the sofa. She didn’t take a seat until the queen accepted the offer, happily perching on the edge of the cushion and smoothing her dress over her lap.

“But somehow I get the feelin’ you didn’t come by just to tell me I looked well,” Pyrite remarks lightly, and Sphene’s eyes glint with delight.

“Ah… subtlety has never been my strong suit, has it?” the queen admits, casting her gaze to her knees. Her smile remains warm. “In truth, I was rather worried about you and Galena.”

Play dumb, instict told her. “Worried? Why for?” Pyrite asks, sitting back. Was this too casual? Did it read as too confident?

“I heard a spot of troubling news from the hunters afield in the Thunderyards. That one of our valiant huntresses had suddenly handed in her notice of resignation…” Her Majesty hints, jeweled gaze lifting to the fool’s gold of her host’s.

Pyrite clicks her tongue. “Loudmouths, the lot of ‘em,” she jokes, and Sphene lifts her fingers to her lips to giggle. The apparent ex-huntress sighs, her head tilting to one side. “They speak true, I’m ‘fraid. I’m lookin’ fer new work. Somethin’ to keep my edge honed. And the change is… welcome, I suppose.”

Not a complete lie. Not the whole truth, either.

“Ah, so that’s the way of it. New employment,” the queen surmises with approval in her tone. “Blessed are we to have ambitious people like you seeking new challenges and finding more ways they might serve our fellow Alexandrians. I do not doubt your skills can be put to good use elsewhere, within the keep or without.”

She pauses, her hands folding on her lap again to wring gently. Here it comes, Pyrite tells herself with an inhale. Surely this wasn’t honest trouble, was it? It was only their personal records, their rightful property, And she can’t have been the first to go digging through the past. She certainly wouldn’t be the last. Could it really be so dangerous to go fishing for memories lost in the cloud?

“...I gather Galena also seeks such new challenges?” comes a tentative worry, and the young queen’s smile is one of honest apprehension. “I spied him at Mosaic this morning and I couldn’t help but notice that he had forgone the use of a regulator.”

Pyrite’s lip is pinched between her teeth, but she manages to finally exhale. So that’s what drew the queen’s attention to them. Washed over with the relief that her prying into the past would have consequences for herself and her husband, she could speak to the Queen of Reason with some degree of candor. Sphene, for her part, did seem honest in her concern. Her delicate hand pressed to her chest as she made plain her case.

“Just this month we’ve seen a one hundred and sixty-eight percent increase in soul use among the reforgers. Of course we cannot accurately capture full scope of the risk with so many who don’t wear regulators, but we’re still seeing a rate of nearly ten accidental deaths per year on average, seven of which are caused by aggressive wildlife and the other three—”

She stopped herself short, and Pyrite realized how deeply furrowed her brow must have been as Sphene began to cite statistics they were both fully, painfully aware of. Galena wasn’t just taking a risk in choosing not to wear the regulator and continuing to operate in the field; it was downright recklessness. But it was still his choice, and Sphene knew this.

Both took a beat to release their tension, the queen adjusting herself to face her host fully, her smile apologetic. Pyrite obliged her with a tired smile of her own.

“I’m sorry,” Sphene laughs, pained but earnest.

Pyrite forgives her with a shake of her head. “You care for him. Couldn’t possibly be cross with Her Majesty for worrying over her subjects’ well being.”

“I do care for him, just as I care for you, Pyrite,” the queen agrees quietly. “Queen or not, you are dear friends to me, and I would do anything within my power to make your lives as happy and fulfilling as I can, even if that means merely providing a listening ear. So please, know that if there is anything you would like to talk about—anything at all—you may confide in me as you would any other.”

Her plea is honest, heartfelt. Pyrite knows well that the queen’s word is her bond, even as she smiles cooly. “I appreciate it, Queen Sphene. Truly, I do,” Pyrite tells her. A part of her doesn’t lie. “Might be I’ll take you up on that someday.” Both know, of course, that the offer would remain on the table. Untouched.

Sphene’s smile wanes, gladdened, but plainly disappointed. She seemed to recognize the appropriate time to leave her host to her thoughts, and rises to her feet. Pyrite follows suit.

“I shan’t press. Ever have you kept your counsel, and to ask it of you now may well be brazen indulgence, I fear. I ask no more of you except that you forgive me if I’ve overstepped.” Sphene’s expression wanes pleasantly apologetic before she takes a determined step towards the door with Pyrite close behind.

With the press of the door panel and the hiss of hidden hydraulics, the sound of conversation down the hallway fills the silence once again. Pyrite soaks in the relief of nearly having her privacy once again, until Sphene’s hand catches the door.

She turns, her voice lowering. “If I may be brazen once more, might I prevail upon you to ask Galena if he would reconsider the use of a regulator? I wouldn’t presume to disrespect his choice but…” It’s she that bites her lip this time. “It would break my heart to learn that tragedy had struck and I was powerless to keep his memory safe.”

Pyrite blinks, unmoving. It takes a moment for her to remember to offer some sort of condolence in the form of a nod and a smile. “I’ll talk to him, Queen Sphene,” she promised. She did not promise the content of that conversation, but Sphene smiled gratefully nonetheless.

“That is all I ask. Thank you, Pyrite. Be well.”

Pyrite watches her depart, motes of refracted light following her across the floor as she is excitedly flagged down by the small group conversing down the hallway, eager to catch up with the young queen. She pushes off the door and closes it, breathing in the silence.

But a few steps to her terminal to check on the progress of the repairs, and she is unsurprised to see it report failure to repair yet again. The error code is frustratingly familiar. 

Unable to repair. Error code: ORIG-0053

But perhaps it wasn’t a dead end. She taps at the display, punching the code into the database for a workaround or some other solution—bootleg or otherwise. She couldn’t have been the first to attempt this.

Instead of solutions, however, she is greeted by a message.

Please, do not despair. Your precious memories are held in the Cloud for safekeeping until such time as you are ready to reunite with them. Until then, I ask only for your patience. All will be well.

The terminal is slapped closed again, and Pyrite silently seethes for reasons she doesn’t quite understand. There must be others who went looking and shook with silent rage for all the answers that seemed to slip through their fingers. There must be.

She just had to find them.