#container tracking software
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How a Container Terminal Operations System (CTOS) Enhances Port Efficiency
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Evolution of Vessel and Terminal Operations
The Role of a Container Terminal Operating System (CTOS) in Efficiency
Key Factors Influencing Port Efficiency
The Strategic Importance of a CTOS
Envision (iPortman) CTOS: The Future of Port Management
Conclusion
The Evolution of Vessel and Terminal Operations
With growing international freight volumes, freighters are increasingly larger and quicker. Shippers require lower shipping costs, but shipping companies look to decrease the cost of shipping per unit. Reducing vessel turnaround at ports has emerged as an extremely effective measure of cost-saving, and therefore terminal operators have turned to the most advanced container terminal automation technology. Hence, it is necessary to invest in new container terminal operating systems (CTOS) and new infrastructure for improved efficiency as well as dock reduction time.
The Role of a Container Terminal Operating System (CTOS) in Efficiency
With the highly competitive environment, effective terminal operations are essential to retain a competitive advantage. Though capacity expansion of the terminal has been the focus, terminal management software tends to get neglected. A robust container terminal operating system (CTOS) is essential to automate processes and improve service levels.

The primary features of a CTOS are:
Optimized Container Movement Management: Accurate placement of containers within the terminal.
Automated Loading/Unloading Scheduling: Optimizing the utilization of container yard management systems based on real-time shipping data.
Seamless Multi-Modal Integration: Enabling unproblematic road, rail, and sea transportation mode transfers through automated gate system support.
Improved Communication: Providing stakeholders with precise container tracking software updates.
Key Factors Influencing Port Efficiency
Container terminals play a critical role in international logistics by managing cargo handling and intermodal transfers. Several factors impact port efficiency, including:
Yard Size & Layout: Directly influencing storage capacity and movement optimization.
Maritime, Road, and Rail Connectivity: Ensuring efficient cargo transfers between transport networks.
Advanced Machinery: Boosting operational productivity and enhancing automated gate system performance.
Container Terminal Operating System (CTOS): A foundational tool that streamlines operations, from vessel planning and optimization to yard truck management system implementation.
The Strategic Importance of a CTOS
Maximizing efficiency and minimizing costs are key issues for terminal operators. Container terminal operating system (CTOS) simplifies container handling, making cargo flow smooth.
The key benefits of CTOS implementation include:
Reduced Vessel Turnaround Time: Faster cargo handling increases port calls and enhances throughput.
Revenue Optimization: Efficient asset utilization and automated invoice processing improve financial performance.
Lower Operating Costs: Reducing manual operations and leveraging container terminal automation minimizes expenses.
Maximized Resource Utilization: Optimizing asset allocation across yard truck management systems and depot management system (DMS).
Enhanced Transparency & Collaboration: Real-time reporting strengthens stakeholder communication, improving customer satisfaction.
Envision (iPortman) CTOS: The Future of Port Management
Envision’s iPortman CTOS is designed to meet today’s operational needs while future-proofing port efficiency.
Key advantages include:
Modular Architecture: Adaptive module-based deployment for scalable container terminal operating system expansion.
Comprehensive Cargo Handling: Supporting imports, exports, and container freight station software (CFS) integration.
All-in-One Port Management: Unifying all operations under a single platform, including vessel planning and optimization.
Mobile App Support: Enhancing real-time data collection and reducing back-office delays.
Customer Portal Integration: Increasing transparency, stakeholder collaboration, and satisfaction.
Advanced Planning & Optimization: Strengthening efficiency in depot management system (DMS) and yard truck management system deployment.
High-Level Reporting Features: Enabling key information about cargo activities, gate transactions, and performance of automated gate systems.
Conclusion
The use of an advanced container terminal operating system (CTOS) is necessary for maximizing port efficiency, lowering costs, and fueling revenue growth. Envision’s iPortman CTOS presents a comprehensive, future-proof solution that enhances transparency, productivity, and terminal operations. In today’s competitive global logistics environment, investing in a sophisticated CTOS, along with container yard management system and container freight station (CFS) software, is no longer optional—it’s a necessity.
#container terminal operating system#container terminal automation#container tracking software#vessel planning and optimization#depot management system (DMS)#container freight station (CFS) software#AI-powered port management#multi-cargo terminal operating system
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Im making a neocities to replace and improve upon this blog. Very exciting development
#sometimes i feel like a town crier but like#only for things that interest me personally#like just a dude on horseback riding through town at 4am like#''I GOT MY TAX RETURN BACK. IT WAS $103.''#and people go back to sleep#anyway coding is both easier than i ever thought and also very very hard#like#very easy to do super super basic stuff#and people have done a lot of work to make it super easy to get started#there are html generators i found that do the basic foundation leg work for you to start#(super appreciate the people who made those)#and doing small basic edits to a pre existing code is easy#but uh#things get so much more complex#and when you KNOW theres a small error somewhere but you cant find it???#finding the error is like. lowkey brain melting#keeping track of everything when its still in progress is hard#and alao tbh ive always struggled to like#perceive the concept of software#like theres just this disconnect in my head#i have a brick of plastic and metal in my hand#and i can generally understand how it was constructed in specific ways to channel electric charges in a way to cause certain effects#but then the idea that you have this lengthy hypothetical and nontangible logic exercise just. SOMEHOW contained within it.#and that is the key to the physical item doing what you want it to#my brain just really struggles with that#so talking about code too in depth confuses me no matter how accessibly its phrased#just. its a math problem. its word problems. its logic problems. i can solve puzzles.#i cannot comprehend the continuum between the thought puzzles and the chunk of physical material in my hands#anyway#devilman am i right
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Microsoft made Recall—the feature that automatically tracks everything you do in an attempt at helping you except, you know, that's a massive security risk and data mining source—a dependency for the windows file explorer, meaning even if you forcibly strip Recall out you end up losing basic tools.
This is very much a "learn how to install Linux Mint on your laptop" moment. Richard Stallman et al were entirely correct, your computer will soon have spyware integrated deep into the system internals with no ability to cleanly remove it even for experienced, tech savvy users.
Yes, it sucks, there is no Linux distribution that has to even close to the level of support for software and peripherals that windows has, and even the easier distros like Mint still expect a level of tech savvy that Mac and Windows just don't require. Anyone telling you that Linux is just as easy and just as good is lying to you.
But Linux has never been easier, has never been as well supported as today, and simply doesn't contain egregious spyware (well, besides Ubuntu that one time I guess).
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The conversation around AI is going to get away from us quickly because people lack the language to distinguish types of AI--and it's not their fault. Companies love to slap "AI" on anything they believe can pass for something "intelligent" a computer program is doing. And this muddies the waters when people want to talk about AI when the exact same word covers a wide umbrella and they themselves don't know how to qualify the distinctions within.
I'm a software engineer and not a data scientist, so I'm not exactly at the level of domain expert. But I work with data scientists, and I have at least rudimentary college-level knowledge of machine learning and linear algebra from my CS degree. So I want to give some quick guidance.
What is AI? And what is not AI?
So what's the difference between just a computer program, and an "AI" program? Computers can do a lot of smart things, and companies love the idea of calling anything that seems smart enough "AI", but industry-wise the question of "how smart" a program is has nothing to do with whether it is AI.
A regular, non-AI computer program is procedural, and rigidly defined. I could "program" traffic light behavior that essentially goes { if(light === green) { go(); } else { stop();} }. I've told it in simple and rigid terms what condition to check, and how to behave based on that check. (A better program would have a lot more to check for, like signs and road conditions and pedestrians in the street, and those things will still need to be spelled out.)
An AI traffic light behavior is generated by machine-learning, which simplistically is a huge cranking machine of linear algebra which you feed training data into and it "learns" from. By "learning" I mean it's developing a complex and opaque model of parameters to fit the training data (but not over-fit). In this case the training data probably includes thousands of videos of car behavior at traffic intersections. Through parameter tweaking and model adjustment, data scientists will turn this crank over and over adjusting it to create something which, in very opaque terms, has developed a model that will guess the right behavioral output for any future scenario.
A well-trained model would be fed a green light and know to go, and a red light and know to stop, and 'green but there's a kid in the road' and know to stop. A very very well-trained model can probably do this better than my program above, because it has the capacity to be more adaptive than my rigidly-defined thing if the rigidly-defined program is missing some considerations. But if the AI model makes a wrong choice, it is significantly harder to trace down why exactly it did that.
Because again, the reason it's making this decision may be very opaque. It's like engineering a very specific plinko machine which gets tweaked to be very good at taking a road input and giving the right output. But like if that plinko machine contained millions of pegs and none of them necessarily correlated to anything to do with the road. There's possibly no "if green, go, else stop" to look for. (Maybe there is, for traffic light specifically as that is intentionally very simplistic. But a model trained to recognize written numbers for example likely contains no parameters at all that you could map to ideas a human has like "look for a rigid line in the number". The parameters may be all, to humans, meaningless.)
So, that's basics. Here are some categories of things which get called AI:
"AI" which is just genuinely not AI
There's plenty of software that follows a normal, procedural program defined rigidly, with no linear algebra model training, that companies would love to brand as "AI" because it sounds cool.
Something like motion detection/tracking might be sold as artificially intelligent. But under the covers that can be done as simply as "if some range of pixels changes color by a certain amount, flag as motion"
2. AI which IS genuinely AI, but is not the kind of AI everyone is talking about right now
"AI", by which I mean machine learning using linear algebra, is very good at being fed a lot of training data, and then coming up with an ability to go and categorize real information.
The AI technology that looks at cells and determines whether they're cancer or not, that is using this technology. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is the technology that can take an image of hand-written text and transcribe it. Again, it's using linear algebra, so yes it's AI.
Many other such examples exist, and have been around for quite a good number of years. They share the genre of technology, which is machine learning models, but these are not the Large Language Model Generative AI that is all over the media. Criticizing these would be like criticizing airplanes when you're actually mad at military drones. It's the same "makes fly in the air" technology but their impact is very different.
3. The AI we ARE talking about. "Chat-gpt" type of Generative AI which uses LLMs ("Large Language Models")
If there was one word I wish people would know in all this, it's LLM (Large Language Model). This describes the KIND of machine learning model that Chat-GPT/midjourney/stablediffusion are fueled by. They're so extremely powerfully trained on human language that they can take an input of conversational language and create a predictive output that is human coherent. (I am less certain what additional technology fuels art-creation, specifically, but considering the AI art generation has risen hand-in-hand with the advent of powerful LLM, I'm at least confident in saying it is still corely LLM).
This technology isn't exactly brand new (predictive text has been using it, but more like the mostly innocent and much less successful older sibling of some celebrity, who no one really thinks about.) But the scale and power of LLM-based AI technology is what is new with Chat-GPT.
This is the generative AI, and even better, the large language model generative AI.
(Data scientists, feel free to add on or correct anything.)
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Sneaky Kisses 💋ྀིྀི
Lando Norris x driver!reader
Summary - They promised to keep things professional. But just before qualifying, when tensions are high and adrenaline’s peaking, Lando Norris finds himself sneaking around with his teammate.
Contains - sexual innuendos, allusions to sex, kinda fluffy



The paddock always buzzed on qualifying day. Tight schedules. Tighter nerves. The team staff zipping around their garages making sure everything is perfect.
But within the chaos and tensions of hot laps and tyre strategies, Lando Norris and his teammate found themselves facing the tensions of not being caught. Not by staff, not by fellow drivers, not by family or friends.
Y/n slipped in through the side, her race suit half-zipped and her helmet under one arm. She didn’t even glance his way. She didn’t have to. He felt her, like a shift in gravity. Lando leaned against the back wall of the garage, pretending to study telemetry on his tablet.
In reality, he was tracking every step she took, every flick of her fingers as she passed the car he knew better than his own reflection. He could still feel her legs around his waist from earlier that morning, the imprint of her lips on his jaw, the whisper against his neck:
“Last time. We can’t keep doing this.”
Yeah, okay.
That promise lasted about as long as his lead from pole last weekend, less than 5 seconds.
She passed him casually, like they hadn’t spent the early morning tangled together in the hotel room three blocks from the circuit. Like he hadn’t kissed her goodbye with her legs wrapped around his waist, whispering “we’re gonna get caught one of these days” against his lips.
Like they hadn't spent the previous race weekends sneaking from their own hotel room to the others, staying up until the early hours of the morning, bodies moulded together, releasing all the tension and anger from the races on each other.
“Nice of you to show up,” he murmured without looking at her.
“Had a late breakfast,” she said, her voice low, a smirk playing at the corner of her mouth. “Bit of cardio, too.”
He fought a smile, biting the inside of his cheek. He didn’t respond. He couldn’t—not with the way that memory lit up every nerve in his body. Her nails on his back, the way she laughed breathlessly against his chest afterward, already knowing they were going to pretend it didn’t happen once the garage doors opened.
Around them, the team moved like clockwork. Mechanics swarmed the cars. Engineers barked numbers. Journalists peered in from the periphery. No one noticed the two drivers exchanging quiet smirks and veiled glances like teenagers pulling off the world’s most high-stakes prank.
“Eyes up, Norris,” she teased, brushing past him just a little too close. “You’ll give us away.”
He followed her movement like a magnet.
“I think your lipstick is still on my neck,” he shot back.
Everyone thought they hated each other.
And they let them.
Y/n stopped by her car, turning her attention to her race engineer. But Lando watched as her fingers lingered on her zipper just a moment too long, like she knew he was still staring. Like she wanted him to.
God, she was dangerous. More dangerous than a wet track on hard tires.
He waited until no one was looking. Until the cameras panned away, and the mechanics were elbow-deep in tire blankets and software updates. Then he moved, just a few steps across the garage, enough to stand beside her.
“Wearing my hoodie when you left the hotel was bold,” he murmured, keeping his eyes straight ahead.
“I left before sunrise. It was cold.”
“You could’ve taken yours.”
“I like yours better.”
A pause.
He smiled.
“You know one of the PR interns saw you. She didn’t say anything, but she knows.”
“She better keep quiet if she wants a job next season.”
“God, you’re terrifying.”
Y/n turned her face slightly, just enough that he could see the sharp curve of her cheekbone.
“Still keep crawling back, though.”
He leaned in, not touching, just close enough to feel the heat between them.
“Because I’m an idiot.”
“That, or insanely obsessed with me. I would be too if I was you.” She shrugged cooly. His scoff was soft but loud enough for her to hear.
“Don’t worry,” she added, voice dropping, “I won’t ask you to say it. Not today.”
The pit lane loudspeaker crackled to life. Two minutes to qualifying. Drivers to cars.
Everything around them sped up—radio chatter, boot-up sequences, the steady rhythm of race prep reaching a crescendo.
Still, neither of them moved.
Lando glanced around. Everyone was looking the other way.
“I need it,” he said quietly.
She arched a brow at her teammate. “Need what?”
He met her eyes, finally.
“You know what.”
And without waiting, without thinking—because thinking would ruin it—he bent down and kissed her.
Not frantic. Not hungry. Just sure. Quiet and slow, like the kind of kiss you steal in the calm before a storm. One hand brushing the small of her back. Her fingers curling into the front of his suit. Lips warm. Familiar. Forbidden.
They pulled apart at the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway.
Lando backed off like nothing had happened. Just another driver talking to his teammate.
Y/n blinked once. Then zipped her race suit all the way up, slipped on her gloves, and climbed into the cockpit of her car with the same smooth grace she used to dismantle his self-control every single time.
Lando climbed into his own car, heart pounding against his ribcage harder than it should’ve been.
His engineer’s voice came through the radio.
“Alright, Norris. Give me a clean out-lap.”
He smirked, eyes narrowing behind the visor. The conversation between Y/n and her engineer going the same. Both of their eyes squinting with focus and determination, their heart rates still high from their secret kisses.
────୨ৎ────────୨ৎ────────୨ৎ────
Word count: 955
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If you want a job at McDonald’s today, there’s a good chance you'll have to talk to Olivia. Olivia is not, in fact, a human being, but instead an AI chatbot that screens applicants, asks for their contact information and résumé, directs them to a personality test, and occasionally makes them “go insane” by repeatedly misunderstanding their most basic questions.
Until last week, the platform that runs the Olivia chatbot, built by artificial intelligence software firm Paradox.ai, also suffered from absurdly basic security flaws. As a result, virtually any hacker could have accessed the records of every chat Olivia had ever had with McDonald's applicants—including all the personal information they shared in those conversations—with tricks as straightforward as guessing that an administrator account's username and password was “123456."
On Wednesday, security researchers Ian Carroll and Sam Curry revealed that they found simple methods to hack into the backend of the AI chatbot platform on McHire.com, McDonald's website that many of its franchisees use to handle job applications. Carroll and Curry, hackers with a long track record of independent security testing, discovered that simple web-based vulnerabilities—including guessing one laughably weak password—allowed them to access a Paradox.ai account and query the company's databases that held every McHire user's chats with Olivia. The data appears to include as many as 64 million records, including applicants' names, email addresses, and phone numbers.
Carroll says he only discovered that appalling lack of security around applicants' information because he was intrigued by McDonald's decision to subject potential new hires to an AI chatbot screener and personality test. “I just thought it was pretty uniquely dystopian compared to a normal hiring process, right? And that's what made me want to look into it more,” says Carroll. “So I started applying for a job, and then after 30 minutes, we had full access to virtually every application that's ever been made to McDonald's going back years.”
When WIRED reached out to McDonald’s and Paradox.ai for comment, a spokesperson for Paradox.ai shared a blog post the company planned to publish that confirmed Carroll and Curry’s findings. The company noted that only a fraction of the records Carroll and Curry accessed contained personal information, and said it had verified that the administrator account with the “123456” password that exposed the information “was not accessed by any third party” other than the researchers. The company also added that it’s instituting a bug bounty program to better catch security vulnerabilities in the future. “We do not take this matter lightly, even though it was resolved swiftly and effectively,” Paradox.ai’s chief legal officer, Stephanie King, told WIRED in an interview. “We own this.”
In its own statement to WIRED, McDonald’s agreed that Paradox.ai was to blame. “We’re disappointed by this unacceptable vulnerability from a third-party provider, Paradox.ai. As soon as we learned of the issue, we mandated Paradox.ai to remediate the issue immediately, and it was resolved on the same day it was reported to us,” the statement reads. “We take our commitment to cyber security seriously and will continue to hold our third-party providers accountable to meeting our standards of data protection.”
Carroll says he became interested in the security of the McHire website after spotting a Reddit post complaining about McDonald's hiring chatbot wasting applicants' time with nonsense responses and misunderstandings. He and Curry started talking to the chatbot themselves, testing it for “prompt injection” vulnerabilities that can enable someone to hijack a large language model and bypass its safeguards by sending it certain commands. When they couldn't find any such flaws, they decided to see what would happen if they signed up as a McDonald's franchisee to get access to the backend of the site, but instead spotted a curious login link on McHire.com for staff at Paradox.ai, the company that built the site.
On a whim, Carroll says he tried two of the most common sets of login credentials: The username and password “admin," and then the username and password “123456.” The second of those two tries worked. “It's more common than you'd think,” Carroll says. There appeared to be no multifactor authentication for that Paradox.ai login page.
With those credentials, Carroll and Curry could see they now had administrator access to a test McDonald's “restaurant” on McHire, and they figured out all the employees listed there appeared to be Paradox.ai developers, seemingly based in Vietnam. They found a link within the platform to apparent test job postings for that nonexistent McDonald's location, clicked on one posting, applied to it, and could see their own application on the backend system they now had access to. (In its blog post, Paradox.ai notes that the test account had “not been logged into since 2019 and frankly, should have been decommissioned.”)
That's when Carroll and Curry discovered the second critical vulnerability in McHire: When they started messing with the applicant ID number for their application—a number somewhere above 64 million—they found that they could increment it down to a smaller number and see someone else's chat logs and contact information.
The two security researchers hesitated to access too many applicants' records for fear of privacy violations or hacking charges, but when they spot-checked a handful of the 64-million-plus IDs, all of them showed very real applicant information. (Paradox.ai says that the researchers accessed seven records in total, and five contained personal information of people who had interacted with the McHire site.) Carroll and Curry also shared with WIRED a small sample of the applicants' names, contact information, and the date of their applications. WIRED got in touch with two applicants via their exposed contact information, and they confirmed they had applied for jobs at McDonald's on the specified dates.
The personal information exposed by Paradox.ai's security lapses isn't the most sensitive, Carroll and Curry note. But the risk for the applicants, they argue, was heightened by the fact that the data is associated with the knowledge of their employment at McDonald's—or their intention to get a job there. “Had someone exploited this, the phishing risk would have actually been massive,” says Curry. “It's not just people's personally identifiable information and résumé. It's that information for people who are looking for a job at McDonald's, people who are eager and waiting for emails back.”
That means the data could have been used by fraudsters impersonating McDonald's recruiters and asking for financial information to set up a direct deposit, for instance. “If you wanted to do some sort of payroll scam, this is a good approach,” Curry says.
The exposure of applicants' attempts—and in some cases failures—to get what is often a minimum-wage job could also be a source of embarrassment, the two hackers point out. But Carroll notes that he would never suggest that anyone should be ashamed of working under the Golden Arches.
“I have nothing but respect for McDonald’s workers,” he says. “I go to McDonald's all the time.”
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If you plan to print out risky political flyers, important informational zines, or any other risky prints you might want to keep some privacy with:
Consider anonymizing your prints.
Most printers leave dots that give identifiable information on the prints. The dots on the prints can be decoded by forensics.
The identifiable information when printed can be prevented with a software called DEDA.
Link to software's repository:
Quote from DEDA repository:
DEDA - tracking Dots Extraction, Decoding and Anonymisation toolkit
Document Colour Tracking Dots, or yellow dots, are small systematic dots which encode information about the printer and/or the printout itself. This process is integrated in almost every commercial colour laser printer. This means that almost every printout contains coded information about the source device, such as the serial number.
On the one hand, this tool gives the possibility to read out and decode these forensic features and on the other hand, it allows anonymisation to prevent arbitrary tracking.
If you use this software, please cite the paper: Timo Richter, Stephan Escher, Dagmar Schönfeld, and Thorsten Strufe. 2018. Forensic Analysis and Anonymisation of Printed Documents. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM Workshop on Information Hiding and Multimedia Security (IH&MMSec '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 127-138. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3206004.3206019
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☁︎。⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆ how to resume ⋆。゚☾。⋆。 ゚☁︎ ゚
after 10 years & 6 jobs in corporate america, i would like to share how to game the system. we all want the biggest payoff for the least amount of work, right?
know thine enemy: beating the robots
i see a lot of misinformation about how AI is used to scrape resumes. i can't speak for every company but most corporations use what is called applicant tracking software (ATS).
no respectable company is using chatgpt to sort applications. i don't know how you'd even write the prompt to get a consumer-facing product to do this. i guarantee that target, walmart, bank of america, whatever, they are all using B2B SaaS enterprise solutions. there is not one hiring manager plinking away at at a large language model.
ATS scans your resume in comparison to the job posting, parses which resumes contain key words, and presents the recruiter and/or hiring manager with resumes with a high "score." the goal of writing your resume is to get your "score" as high as possible.
but tumblr user lightyaoigami, how do i beat the robots?
great question, y/n. you will want to seek out an ATS resume checker. i have personally found success with jobscan, which is not free, but works extremely well. there is a free trial period, and other ATS scanners are in fact free. some of these tools are so sophisticated that they can actually help build your resume from scratch with your input. i wrote my own resume and used jobscan to compare it to the applications i was finishing.
do not use chatgpt to write your resume or cover letter. it is painfully obvious. here is a tutorial on how to use jobscan. for the zillionth time i do not work for jobscan nor am i a #jobscanpartner i am just a person who used this tool to land a job at a challenging time.
the resume checkers will tell you what words and/or phrases you need to shoehorn into your bullet points - i.e., if you are applying for a job that requires you to be a strong collaborator, the resume checker might suggest you include the phrase "cross-functional teams." you can easily re-word your bullets to include this with a little noodling.
don't i need a cover letter?
it depends on the job. after you have about 5 years of experience, i would say that they are largely unnecessary. while i was laid off, i applied to about 100 jobs in a three-month period (#blessed to have been hired quickly). i did not submit a cover letter for any of them, and i had a solid rate of phone screens/interviews after submission despite not having a cover letter. if you are absolutely required to write one, do not have chatgpt do it for you. use a guide from a human being who knows what they are talking about, like ask a manager or betterup.
but i don't even know where to start!
i know it's hard, but you have to have a bit of entrepreneurial spirit here. google duckduckgo is your friend. don't pull any bean soup what-about-me-isms. if you truly don't know where to start, look for an ATS-optimized resume template.
a word about neurodivergence and job applications
i, like many of you, am autistic. i am intimately familiar with how painful it is to expend limited energy on this demoralizing task only to have your "reward" be an equally, if not more so, demoralizing work experience. i don't have a lot of advice for this beyond craft your worksona like you're making a d&d character (or a fursona or a sim or an OC or whatever made up blorbo generator you personally enjoy).
and, remember, while a lot of office work is really uncomfortable and involves stuff like "talking in meetings" and "answering the phone," these things are not an inherent risk. discomfort is not tantamount to danger, and we all have to do uncomfortable things in order to thrive. there are a lot of ways to do this and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. not everyone can mask for extended periods, so be your own judge of what you can or can't do.
i like to think of work as a drag show where i perform this other personality in exchange for money. it is much easier to do this than to fight tooth and nail to be unmasked at work, which can be a risk to your livelihood and peace of mind. i don't think it's a good thing that we have to mask at work, but it's an important survival skill.
⋆。゚☁︎。⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。⋆ good luck ⋆。゚☾。⋆。 ゚☁︎ ゚。⋆
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how do you go about captioning other peoples' videos? i mean this logistically; like does penny for example just trust you with her youtube account for the sake of writing subtitles into the videos? or is another thing happening
(asking bc i'm impressed by the quality of your subtitles and want to get into making subs for other peoples' videos as a Thing)
Caption files can be generated in any software that supports it. YouTube has an in-house caption editor that gets the job done but it's not very user-friendly. Newer versions of Adobe Premiere Pro and other editing suites have features that let you write and export a caption track (usually in .csv, or .vtt format) that contains the text, timings, and formatting. There are lots of options out there!
All you need in order to write captions for someone else is one such software and the final draft of a video, that way you can line everything up to the exact timing. Doesn't hurt to brush up on proper captioning etiquette too!
@sophie-baybey usually does the captions for Penny and she uses Premiere's caption editor. Personally I use subtitle-horse.com which is browser-based and does just about everything you'll need in the free version.
Since I tend to edit the highlight videos, captioning them is pretty straightforward when I do it - but we also have a production group chat when we need Penny or myself to clarify something that's hard to hear or a reference we don't get etc. I tend to send Sophie the isolated speech as a separate audio file just in case the audio balancing makes certain portions hard to parse. Like any collaborative project, communication between team members is key!
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Hi, hello, howdy everyone!
I'm fulfilling the long overdue promise I made and finally created downloadable sound files!
I'll be uploading them on Google Drive as rar files starting with the first Assassin's Creed game. Due to limited storage, the file will be available for download until August 31st. On September 1st, the file will be removed and replaced with sound files from Assassin's Creed 2.
Again, thank you all for the love and support and patience over the years! Below are some info about the contents in the rar file:
Assassin's Creed 1 rar file contains 4 folders:
Music - Contains labeled songs from the game labeled with titles and contributing artist(s). Both official and unreleased tracks are found in this folder. Quick note: About 90% of the labeling was done by a follower that sent it here as a submission a while back. It looks like the follower deleted their blog along with the original file a while back, so I'm not sure who to credit. If you're still around and seeing this, thank you so much for your help. ❤
SFX - Labeled sound effects from the game. Kinda self-explanatory?
Voice Clips - Voice overs from the game that's been labeled, organized by prominent characters.
Unsorted - Unlabeled voice clips, SFX, and music that I never got through because I didn't have time or couldn't figure out who/what/where it's heard in the game. There's over 10k files with potential duplicate sounds.
Quick Q&A:
Are these files safe download? Yes! I had these files for over 10 years and it's been moved/transferred to several computers and hard drives. I believe Google Drive does virus scans before files are downloaded, so it should be fine.
How long will it take to download the file? Depends on your internet speed. The file is about 1.5 GB and took me roughly 5 minutes to upload it. Hopefully it'll take just as long to download it.
Why rar? I went with whatever file compressing/archive software I already had on this current computer (which happened to be WinRar).
Can you upload the file in a different format? I will if enough people report to me they're having issues with rar. I'll make a new post with a new link if that happens.
Which games will you be uploading? From AC1 all the way up to Odyssey, along with: Liberation, Freedom Cry, and Chronicles.
Will you post things from Valhalla, Mirage, and/or Shadows? Unfortunately, no. I stopped playing after Odyssey so I don't have anything from those games.
#Assassin's Creed#assassinscreed#altair ibn la ahad#voice clips#sfx#AC music#AC Altair#Desmond Miles#AC Desmond#allsoundsasscreed#downloadable files#AC voice#AC sfx#AC Music
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guys... imagine... mac au/fangame(?) in the 2000s / a universe where the ILOVEYOU virus is still available right now
alright time for the real deal. featuring me and my really bad scenario writing:
mac asks you to update them like usual and, when updated, accidentally downloads the ILOVEYOU virus along w/ it -- or you're already talking to mac for a couple of weeks and you open an email containing the virus
either way, mac gets infected, and the next day, mac is functioning... normally. however, as time passes, you begin to notice your files getting deleted, overwritten, and hidden, and even mac doesn't know what's going on. they urge you to download a bugs fixer for their current software, opening up a tab on your screen (normally they'd tell you to type it yourself…)
you choose to download the exe file, because, of course, you trust your literal human computer, right? WRONG that was a passwords stealer.
as your computer begins to deteriorate and lag, mac starts experiencing glitches in their system as well, having memory loss + losing track of the current conversation, but also having bursts of clinginess and affection even more than what you usually experience. atleast that's a benefit with downloading a love virus…?
some other stuff occurs i'm too tired to write all this BUT
you either decide to follow through mac's orders and download more "bug fixes", along with being treated with all the freaky stuff mac is now saying directly towards you. eventually, your computer literally can't turn on with all the major files deleted. without it being on, you can't contact mac anymore. bummers. bad ending. they actually kinda die in this one um
or
you decide to disobey mac's orders and angst ensues. mac probably attempts to guilt trip you, not knowing their 'mind' is affected by the virus. they purposefully fuck up the computer and your controls (kinda like ddlc), preventing you from doing anything but following their orders. they want you to save them, and you're not doing that. but you actually?? fix the computer somehow?? idk. good ending. you saved mac. good job.
#idk if we can make fangames but.. it's a concept#for now#date everything#date everything!#mac date everything#date everything mac#dies on the floor#is this anything
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Top 10 Container Terminal Operating Systems: Enhancing Efficiency in Modern Ports
With increasing global trade and greater complexity within the maritime logistics sector, ports and terminal operators turn to advanced terminal operating systems to work more efficiently. A terminal operating system is the core of container terminal management software, working as a workstation through which the digital control of container terminal operations can be carried out efficiently.
This article covers the top 10 container terminal operating systems along with their key features, benefits, services, support, deployment options, and cost considerations. All of these solutions interface with the bigger terminal automation systems and are extremely relevant for ports seeking further digital transformation.

Navis N4
Navis N4 by Navis is one of the most trusted and widely implemented container terminal operating systems globally. It supports terminals of all sizes and integrates effortlessly with other terminal solutions.
Why It's Among the Best:
Innovation, reliability, and scalability-More so container terminal operations have enjoyed these traits attributed to Navis N4 since its inception. In the Navy Computer Corps, decision-making in real-time and timely support for automation have always been some of the very attributes of an industry standard.
Core Functionalities:
Centralized terminal management software
Integrated vessel planning and optimization
Real-time yard truck management system support
Robust container tracking software
Benefits:
Maximizes throughput and equipment utilization
Enhances operational visibility and decision-making
Supports integration with terminal automation systems and automated gate systems
Services and Support:
Navis offers full-scale implementation support, technical consultation, and 24/7 global support. They also provide training and regular software updates.
Deployment and Technology:
Navis N4 supports both cloud-based and on - premise deployments with modular scalability.
Cost Consideration:
Pricing depends on terminal size, modules selected, and level of customization.
Tide works Technology Mainsail Vanguard
Tide works' Mainsail Vanguard is a powerful container terminal software suite known for its flexibility and scalability across multi-terminal facilities.
Why It's Among the Best:
It combines intuitive design with enterprise-grade performance, offering modular options tailored to both smaller terminals and large, multi-user environments.
Core Functionalities:
Real-time operational dashboards
Seamless container yard management system
Interfacing with external systems and third-party tools
Benefits:
Increased transparency and control
Optimized yard operations and terminal productivity
Efficient multi-terminal management
Services and Support:
Includes on-site implementation, dedicated account management, technical training, and round-the-clock technical support.
Deployment and Technology:
Offered as both cloud and server-based solutions with scalable architecture.
Cost Consideration:
Competitive pricing model based on system scope and implementation scale.
Kalmar One
Kalmar One is a comprehensive and modular terminal management system that offers complete automation and equipment integration solutions.
Why It's Among the Best:
Its modular nature allows terminals to implement only the components they need, reducing cost and improving efficiency.
Core Functionalities:
Integrated with container freight station (CFS) software
Support for automated gate system
Modular depot management system (DMS)
Benefits:
Streamlined automation processes
Improved ROI on container terminal automation investments
Scalable from single terminal to global operations
Services and Support:
Global deployment services, maintenance contracts, 24/7 technical assistance, and strategic consultation.
Deployment and Technology:
Supports hybrid deployments with cloud integrations and equipment-level automation.
Cost Consideration:
Modular pricing based on selected features and equipment compatibility.
Cyber Logitech OPUS Terminal
Cyber Logitech’s OPUS Terminal is a next-generation TOS designed to support intelligent operations for container terminals.
Why It's Among the Best:
It enables full-stack container terminal management through integration with IoT, AI, and big data analytics.
Core Functionalities:
Real-time planning and execution tools
Vessel planning and optimization modules
Intelligent yard and berth planning
Benefits:
Enables proactive management of terminal resources
Reduces equipment idle time and energy usage
Scalable and modular architecture
Services and Support:
Offers professional consulting, remote and on-site support, and regular system upgrades.
Deploypment and Technology:
Built on a flexible architecture compatible with both cloud and on - premise environments.
Cost Consideration:
Pricing is dependent on terminal size, desired integrations, and volume throughput.
Envision CTOS by Envision Enterprise Solutions
Envision CTOS is a robust and customizable container terminal operating system developed by Envision Enterprise Solutions. It provides a holistic terminal management system POS platform that supports complex container terminal operations with a strong emphasis on automation, scalability, and adaptability.
Why It's Among the Best:
The key promise of Envision CTOS is that it features an outstanding degree of versatility when dealing with the different types of container terminal operation, such as small regional ports as well as large international gateways. The system is even more configured to be invariably compatible with the total terminal automation area which will lead to digital transformation at all levels of terminal operations.
Core Functionalities:
Integrated container yard management system and container freight station (CFS) software
Real-time terminal solutions and operations monitoring
Scalable multi-terminal architecture and customizable workflows
Seamless compatibility with automated gate systems, yard truck management systems, and depot management system (DMS)
Benefits:
Streamlines operations and minimizes downtime
Future-proof infrastructure with AI-driven analytics
Superior adaptability to specific client needs
Services and Support:
Envision Enterprise Solutions offers end-to-end support including system implementation, user training, 24/7 technical assistance, and custom solution design. Their strong service model ensures that container terminal operators can deploy and operate Envision CTOS with confidence.
Deployment and Technology:
Envision CTOS, constructed on a versatile cloud-based and on location deployment basis, is hybrid-environment-friendly to offer the best reliability. The system combines an AI-based analytics and a container tracking software to help it make improved decisions and operate more efficiently.
Cost Consideration:
Competitive pricing with customizable licensing models based on terminal needs.
TOS+ by RBS
TOS+ by RBS (Real time Business Solutions) is a cloud-native TOS designed for high-performance container terminal operations.
Why It's Among the Best:
TOS+ stands out for its real-time functionality and ease of use, suitable for both large-scale and mid-size terminals.
Core Functionalities:
Integrated modules for quay, yard, gate, and rail operations
Support for container tracking software
Real-time decision engine and predictive analytics
Benefits:
Cloud-native architecture reduces infrastructure cost
User-friendly interface for faster onboarding
Enhanced automation readiness
Services and Support:
RBS provides full project management, implementation services, ongoing training, and 24/7 technical support.
Deployment and Technology:
Offered as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform with real-time cloud synchronization.
Cost Consideration:
Subscription-based model with flexible pricing tiers.
Inform Logistics SyncroTESS
Inform’s SyncroTESS is a decision support system that enhances terminal operations through AI-driven analytics.
Why It's Among the Best:
SyncroTESS empowers operators with predictive insights, helping optimize equipment usage and terminal layout.
Core Functionalities:
Advanced optimization algorithms
Seamless container yard management system
AI-powered resource scheduling
Benefits:
Reduces operational bottlenecks
Enhances overall container terminal software performance
Predictive accuracy reduces delays
Services and Support:
Provides technical workshops, integration services, and on-call support packages.
Deployment and Technology:
Can be deployed as a stand-alone engine or integrated with an existing TOS.
Cost Consideration:
Custom pricing based on integration level and system scope.
Konecranes TBA Autostore
Auto store by Konecranes TBA is an automation-centric TOS that combines software intelligence with operational efficiency.
Why It's Among the Best:
Autostore leverages simulation and modeling to increase container terminal automation throughput.
Core Functionalities:
Automation-friendly container terminal management system
Advanced simulation for process testing
AI-enabled container tracking software
Benefits:
Reduces handling errors
Increases automation ROI
Lowers operational expenditure
Services and Support:
Includes remote monitoring, training, and technical onboarding.
Deployment and Technology:
Offered with a hybrid deployment model, with simulation tools available on-demand.
Cost Consideration:
High initial setup with scalable pricing for modules.
Jade Master Terminal
Jade Master Terminal is tailored for mixed cargo terminals, combining general and containerized cargo operations.
Why It's Among the Best:
Its all-in-one approach is ideal for ports handling a variety of cargo types without compromising efficiency.
Core Functionalities:
Unified terminal operations software
Dynamic reporting and real-time dashboards
Container yard and vessel planning modules
Benefits:
Simplifies complex cargo workflows
Increases port productivity
Excellent for regional or developing ports
Services and Support:
Comprehensive deployment support and user training, with local partner availability.
Deployment and Technology:
Cloud-enabled with easy-to-integrate APIs.
Cost Consideration:
Affordable pricing for small and mid-sized terminals.
Zebra FX Collect Terminal OS
Zebra FXCollect is a cutting-edge container terminal operating system focused on real-time asset visibility through IoT and RFID.
Why It's Among the Best:
It combines rugged hardware with intuitive software to deliver a high-visibility terminal environment.
Core Functionalities:
Real-time data collection via RFID and IoT
Integrated with depot management system (DMS)
Automated gate system support
Benefits:
Enhances cargo traceability
Improves inventory and logistics control
Minimizes operational risk
Services and Support:
Zebra provides end-to-end support including device integration, remote maintenance, and custom development.
Deployment and Technology:
IoT-driven hybrid platform with scalable cloud support.
Cost Consideration:
Hardware and software bundled or separately priced based on scale.
Conclusion:
The decision on selecting the container terminal operating system can no longer be regarded as an issue of operational comfort, but rather a mission-critical undertaking that has the direct impact on the efficiency, safety, and long-term competitiveness of a particular port. The most effective TOS platforms on the market nowadays provide a full range of advanced features, such as yard truck management systems, vessel planning applications, container tracking software, and even automated gate systems, designed to make the process as efficient and informed as possible.
The ten terminal operating systems which have been examined in this guide provide the cutting edge of technology of port logistics throughout the world. However, the outstanding flexibility, rich functionality, and prospective design of the Envision CTOS make it stand alone amid the rest. Designer to support large scale terminals and regional properties alike, EnvisionCTOS is designed to connect with the terminal automation system you presently use to have full control of all aspects of your container terminal activities.
No matter whether you intend to replace an aged infrastructure model or completely switch to an automated workflow process, Envision CTOS can be your preferred choice in how to go about digital transformation. It has a modular design, backed by exceptional industry support, thus it can be easily deployed, scaled and future-proof.
Move one step forward to the operational excellence. To learn more, and to request a custom demo, get in touch with Envision Enterprise Solutions today to discuss deployment options, and understand how Envision CTOS can support your terminal on its journey into the next generation of smart automation.
#container terminal operating system#multi cargo terminal operating system#terminals#envision enterprise solutions#container shipping#vessel planning and optimization#ctos#container freight station (cfs) software#ai powered port management#ports community management#container tracking software
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A Vidding Primer
A guide written for @wren-of-the-woods who asked for advice about how to start vidding! This is far from comprehensive and I tried not to make it too dense because it's a big subject. I still wanted to share a variety of topics about getting into vidding because it's a hobby and art that is near and dear to my heart.
First Piece of Advice
watch a lot of vids and rewatch vids multiple times. Seek out vids on YouTube, AO3, Watch the TikTok and Twitter/X vids that show up on tumblr or wherever you’re browsing. They all have distinct styles and tools/techniques they use to make their vids and edits. Rewatch the vids and ask yourself what you like or dislike about them. The song, the editing, the source. That can give you a good starting point about how you might want to approach making your own fanvids. The TikTok style of 30 and 40 second edits are very different what you find on YouTube. YouTube editors tend to use a full song and a lot more effects and a lot more overlapping dialogue. Whereas the fanvids - Vids - from people who came into vidding in the mid 2000s/2010s have their own culture, different ways they approach song choice, clip choices and narrative. I also suggest watching vids for shows/films you’re not familiar with as well as your fandom favorites. You can learn a lot about how vidders try to tell a story even when you might not grasp the context behind certain scenes but you can still follow along with the emotional arc of the vid.
Second Piece of Advice
Have fun and enjoy yourself. Everyone starts a new hobby as a newbie. It can be a lot of effort to make 30 seconds or a 3 minute vid, but it’s such a unique type of fanwork that is fun to watch and fun to make. It can also be migraine inducing because of all the learning and technical issues along the way. But!! omg when you make a clip fall on the perfect beat with your blorbo crying that perfect tear or you find an idea and sources for the bestest perfect lyrics of the song, it’s a magnificent high. It can make you feel like a god. At least that’s how I feel a lot of times!
There are about 10 steps* to creating** a fanvid/edit:
• select your platform and software (phone/computer video editors) • gather your video and audio files • create a new project in your video editor • import audio into the editor • import the video into the software and mute audio tracks that contain your video’s audio • review, label and cut up the video into shorter clips - this step is known as ‘clipping’ in vidding parlance, but it’s also optional. Some people pull in movies and scrub through the whole film and just pull it directly onto the timeline • move the various video clips around on the timeline to match the audio track you’ve chosen for your project, add video effects and additional dialogue if you like • export the finished timeline • upload the video to a streaming platform and/or downloadable service • share your project!!! posting to ao3 and/or social media or share on discord, etc * there are a lot more steps involved with each of these steps. What what software to use, where to find video, how to deal with copyright blocks on Youtube, etc. Some of that will be covered in the links below but is not comprehensive. That would require separate posts and links and I don’t want to drop an encyclopedia on you right now! I’m happy to provide more resources that I can curate if you want more direction and pointers to resources and amazing vidders.
** like any hobby, there can and will be a learning curve and frustrations. Blank page for a writer, blank timeline for a vidder. Is anything you put down is any good, self esteem and confusion about what actually makes sense is part and parcel for any creative work. Once you're in the vidding process and committed, as long as you're enjoying yourself you gotta just keep going to get it done.
Getting Started Vidding
My knowledge and background and learning how to vid from people on livejournal and dreamwidth from 2007. I don’t have any experience in editing with a phone but if that’s something you’re interested in, YouTube will be a place for you to start finding tutorials for various apps and tools. Probably discord communities, too. Vidding Workshop - a great how-to/guide when you're starting out. This is on dreamwidth from the WisCon vidparty in 2014. Some of the tech discussions might be a little outdated but there’s a ton of relevant information. It covers technical subjects as well as developing vid ideas and actually getting started. If you have any questions about what you’re reading you can leave an anonymous comment and ask - some of these vidders responding inthe threads are still active. You can find them on AO3/YouTube, tumblr, discord and actually leave them questions about their vids. Many vidders are more than thrilled to talk about their vids and answer questions. Vexcercises - this is a dreamwidth community for short-form vid excercises. This is a very structured way of introducing vid concepts and constraints so that you can produce a vidlet. I highly recommend you check this out and participate! There’s even an AO3 collection so you can check out how people have done the different exercises, too.
The Process of Vidding
Watch Me Edit - @limblogs put together a fantastic playlist of YouTube editors who will show you beginning to end how they made their vid. A lot of these editors appear to be using Sony Vegas but the general process of vidding end-to-end will be similar with other nonlinear editors like DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, etc. It’s a great way to actually see the vid come together if you don’t know what that even looks like. Every vidder will develop their own workflow and approach (which might even change from vid to vid), but it’s useful to see in video how people actually DO the thing. @limblogs also created a handy YouTube playlist some vidders from Bradcpu’s Vidder Profiles (Fanlore page). These profiles are basically like a director’s DVD commentary on their vidding process, featuring the vidders talking over their own vids! So cool. Phenomnal insights from these vidders about how they choose song, use effects, think about their narratives.
Self Rec: I recently did a vidding textpost series called: do it for the process - a naked vid draft: What (Yennefer of Vengerberg). How I Edit by @vimesbootstheory is another textpost about their vidding process. Self rec: Here’s my text interview: Vidder Profile - Kuwdora 2011. I talk about my process with a lot of specific examples from my previous work and lots of screenshots. This profile is over a decade old but a lot of this still holds true for me today! videlicet - this is an incredible vidding zine that @limblogs put togegther with a lot of amazing contributors. These articles and discuss about specific vids and aspects of vidding. It’s really detailed and a fantastic piece of vidding culture. I highly reading recommend the Demystifying Vidding article by lim and the A History of Vidding by @meeedeee and…pretty much every article in the zine!
Doing the vidding!
I recommend joining exchanges and watching vids that come out of exchanges and checking out fannish cons that have vidshows and discords to get more exposure to vidders and vids. Many people have joined @festivids (AO3 collection here) and made their very first vid, it's a very fun and great way to get into vidding. It’s not quite festivids season right now but time flies and it will be time to nominate sources and do sign-ups in the blink of an eye. Follow @festivids and check out the AO3 collection and see what people are making. Join the Vexcercises community and make some short vids and share them on your tumblr or on discord or somewhere and bask in the thrill of making your first fanvids. Check out who reblogged the vidder ask game - go and read other vidders responses and ask some new-to-you vidders questions. Everyone has their own take on process and tech and everything. It's great to hear and see what a lot people are doing and making.
Final Advice - talking about vids and doing the vidding
• watch vids • rewatch vids • leave a comment and ask a question about something you saw in their vid! • Again: find someone’s AO3 page of fanvids and ask them something about their vid in a comment or send them asks on tumblr (people usually have the same alias or link to their tumblr or dreamwidth pages somewhere.) • YouTube can be a valuable resource for tutorials so if you don't know something, there is likely someone who has made a tutorial about how to use a cross dissolve transition or anything else you might want to replicate in a video that you've seen in a vid. • start making a vid, scream and cry, ask for help, and keep going until you get it done. Celebrate and bask in your completed vid and share it with everyone! • Follow vidders on tumblr that you find from the vidder ask game • Check out the vidding discord for community and questions and vid recs and news about vidding exchanges and cons. • Have fun!
Hope this helps you get started! Thank you so much for the ask! Let me know if you have more questions and I can help you out or send you to cool vidders who have great advice and suggestions. And please send me your vid if you make one!
#there's so much to cover about vidding so i know i'm missing things but i wanted to have a basic+ primer here to start with#i'll be throwing this guide up on ao3 soon as well and creating a series/collection of vidding meta#viddingdora#vidding#the vidding process#answerdora#askdora#textpost#vidding resource#fandom resource#cool resource#fan edit
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Updated Personal Infosec Post
Been awhile since I've had one of these posts part deus: but I figure with all that's going on in the world it's time to make another one and get some stuff out there for people. A lot of the information I'm going to go over you can find here:
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/tools/
So if you'd like to just click the link and ignore the rest of the post that's fine, I strongly recommend checking out the Privacy Guides. Browsers: There's a number to go with but for this post going forward I'm going to recommend Firefox. I know that the Privacy Guides lists Brave and Safari as possible options but Brave is Chrome based now and Safari has ties to Apple. Mullvad is also an option but that's for your more experienced users so I'll leave that up to them to work out. Browser Extensions:
uBlock Origin: content blocker that blocks ads, trackers, and fingerprinting scripts. Notable for being the only ad blocker that still works on Youtube.
Privacy Badger: Content blocker that specifically blocks trackers and fingerprinting scripts. This one will catch things that uBlock doesn't catch but does not work for ads.
Facebook Container: "but I don't have facebook" you might say. Doesn't matter, Meta/Facebook still has trackers out there in EVERYTHING and this containerizes them off away from everything else.
Bitwarden: Password vaulting software, don't trust the password saving features of your browsers, this has multiple layers of security to prevent your passwords from being stolen.
ClearURLs: Allows you to copy and paste URL's without any trackers attached to them.
VPN: Note: VPN software doesn't make you anonymous, no matter what your favorite youtuber tells you, but it does make it harder for your data to be tracked and it makes it less open for whatever public network you're presently connected to.
Mozilla VPN: If you get the annual subscription it's ~$60/year and it comes with an extension that you can install into Firefox.
Mullvad VPN: Is a fast and inexpensive VPN with a serious focus on transparency and security. They have been in operation since 2009. Mullvad is based in Sweden and offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for payment methods that allow it.
Email Provider: Note: By now you've probably realized that Gmail, Outlook, and basically all of the major "free" e-mail service providers are scraping your e-mail data to use for ad data. There are more secure services that can get you away from that but if you'd like the same storage levels you have on Gmail/Ol utlook.com you'll need to pay.
Tuta: Secure, end-to-end encrypted, been around a very long time, and offers a free option up to 1gb.
Mailbox.org: Is an email service with a focus on being secure, ad-free, and privately powered by 100% eco-friendly energy. They have been in operation since 2014. Mailbox.org is based in Berlin, Germany. Accounts start with up to 2GB storage, which can be upgraded as needed.
Email Client:
Thunderbird: a free, open-source, cross-platform email, newsgroup, news feed, and chat (XMPP, IRC, Matrix) client developed by the Thunderbird community, and previously by the Mozilla Foundation.
FairMail (Android Only): minimal, open-source email app which uses open standards (IMAP, SMTP, OpenPGP), has several out of the box privacy features, and minimizes data and battery usage.
Cloud Storage:
Tresorit: Encrypted cloud storage owned by the national postal service of Switzerland. Received MULTIPLE awards for their security stats.
Peergos: decentralized and open-source, allows for you to set up your own cloud storage, but will require a certain level of expertise.
Microsoft Office Replacements:
LibreOffice: free and open-source, updates regularly, and has the majority of the same functions as base level Microsoft Office.
OnlyOffice: cloud-based, free
FreeOffice: Personal licenses are free, probably the closest to a fully office suite replacement.
Chat Clients: Note: As you've heard SMS and even WhatsApp and some other popular chat clients are basically open season right now. These are a couple of options to replace those. Note2: Signal has had some reports of security flaws, the service it was built on was originally built for the US Government, and it is based within the CONUS thus is susceptible to US subpoenas. Take that as you will.
Signal: Provides IM and calling securely and encrypted, has multiple layers of data hardening to prevent intrusion and exfil of data.
Molly (Android OS only): Alternative client to Signal. Routes communications through the TOR Network.
Briar: Encrypted IM client that connects to other clients through the TOR Network, can also chat via wifi or bluetooth.
SimpleX: Truly anonymous account creation, fully encrypted end to end, available for Android and iOS.
Now for the last bit, I know that the majority of people are on Windows or macOS, but if you can get on Linux I would strongly recommend it. pop_OS, Ubuntu, and Mint are super easy distros to use and install. They all have very easy to follow instructions on how to install them on your PC and if you'd like to just test them out all you need is a thumb drive to boot off of to run in demo mode. For more secure distributions for the more advanced users the options are: Whonix, Tails (Live USB only), and Qubes OS.
On a personal note I use Arch Linux, but I WOULD NOT recommend this be anyone's first distro as it requires at least a base level understanding of Linux and liberal use of the Arch Linux Wiki. If you game through Steam their Proton emulator in compatibility mode works wonders, I'm presently playing a major studio game that released in 2024 with no Linux support on it and once I got my drivers installed it's looked great. There are some learning curves to get around, but the benefit of the Linux community is that there's always people out there willing to help. I hope some of this information helps you and look out for yourself, it's starting to look scarier than normal out there.
#infosec#personal information#personal infosec#info sec#firefox#mullvad#vpn#vpn service#linux#linux tails#pop_os#ubuntu#linux mint#long post#whonix#qubes os#arch linux
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The first part of that last message got me curious -- given how long-running of a series YW is, how do you keep track of All That when writing a new entry? Copious amounts of notes? Re-reading the entire series backlog? Keeping a fully-functioning simulation of the entire YW universe running in your head with perfect accuracy? (only mostly joking with that last one)
And somewhat-relatedly, did you have any plan or idea when you started for how long YW would run? Or was it more of a "I'll keep writing about this universe until it stops churning out ideas," type of thing and that point just (very thankfully!) hasn't happened yet? I know for per-book purposes you're a proponent of outlining (I swear I'll try writing to one one day Q_Q) but do you also apply that to a series as a whole?
Let me take this backwards, as it may make more sense that way.
Particularly when doing series work, outlining is more vital than usual for me. (Which is saying a lot.) Some of the most basic reasons for this are laid out over here.
The simplest one, though, for series outlining, is logistical. Without having achieved a sense well in advance of what events (or effects of events) are going to be most formative or important (or both) for the characters in a series, you won't have allowed yourself time to think about them enough. And to fail to spend enough time on this is to cheat both yourself and the books in the series. (And your readership.)
If you're smart, you learn very early on that attempting to save time by shortchanging or omitting the planning stages is potentially profoundly destructive. You need to have a plan... and you need not to let anyone make you ashamed of needing one. Putting off your detailed character-interaction and event planning in the name of some magically occurring fit of inspiration, or theoretical bid toward creative spontaneity, will serve neither you nor your creation. You can throw "Hail Mary" passes all you like... but you'd better be damn sure there'll be someone in the end zone to receive. ...If not Herself.
...And just in case you're worried, your initial plans can be really loose! They don't have to jump out of your head full-formed like some local war goddess after somebody hits her dad in the head with an axe. The plan for the Middle Kingdoms books—after The Door Into Fire dumped me gasping by the side of the road and left me a few minutes to breathe—was nothing more than "Now that his boyfriend's finally upped the ante beyond all expectations, Freelorn finally gets off his feckless Would-Be Robin Hood shit and gets to work becoming king." I then spent the next decade thinking purposefully about how that was going to happen, and writing the second book in the series—while sufficiently working out the fine details of the climax (and beyond) to then be able to get busy executing the third book. Even though there was a change of publishers between the beginning of that series and the end of it, the basic dead-simple MK plan from a very early stage quickly became detailed and robust enough (because the series was short enough) to withstand the change. Not least because I'd been thinking about it in a general way since the early 1970s... and continue to do so, pretty much daily. The Door Into Starlight is still hanging fire...
YW has been a different story—quite literally—because the only plan extant at the start of things was, "Everybody slowly gets older (and slowly closer)." I always knew there were going to be more than the original three: there was way too much interesting ground to cover to just stop with those. (I've never yet succeeded in finding out who started the rumor that there were only going to be three books. Over time it's become one of those things you just shrug at and move on.)
(Adding a break here, because this does go on a bit. Caution: contains publishing skullduggery, plans ganging aft agley, approximate word counts, software recommendations, and value judgments.)
("Now wait just one minute. 'Feckless would-be Robin Hood shit'? Can she just say that??")
The circumstances surrounding the writing of Deep Wizardry and High Wizardry, though, made it plain to me that I was not going to be at the then-publisher (Dell) all that much longer. By the time HW came out, they were already starting to pull away from midlist books and authors in order to spend that part of the budget on best-sellers... so it became plain to me that attempting to construct a long arc with/at that publisher would have been folly. Because who could be sure what was going to happen next, and blow everything I'd built to smithereens?
Sure enough, when I finished A Wizard Abroad, Dell declined to pick it up (even though the books had been selling steadily and increasingly strongly in paperback). This annoying validation of my concerns—and my shiny new agent's—made it plain to me that further books in the series were going to need to be thematically driven, rather than mostly character-event-driven, and almost entirely capable of being taken as standalones. Any long arc was going to have to be one that could be suspended, or reworked, with little warning. Because what happens to you once, in publishing, doesn't at all mean you're immune to it after that.
It wasn't until the YW books were picked up by Harcourt in the mid-90s, with a strong editorial team behind them, that I felt confident enough to start building longer-arc material into the books, beginning with the arc that kicks off in The Wizard's Dilemma and more or less completes in Wizard's Holiday and Wizards At War. There is a secondary (and I assume, generally less obvious) arc that picks up material still unhandled in the "War Arc," and deals with it in A Wizard of Mars and Games Wizards Play. But plans for those stories' management were already nailed down in electrons as soon as 2001, because I had made some early choices about where I was going with the characters and their situations; and as new books came out, my editors agreed with me that the choices had been sound, and should remain.
I'll say this only because I've said it before: there is one piece of business planted in So You Want To Be A Wizard that has never been explicitly dealt with/followed up on in any of the books, and is at the core of YW #11. For the moment, it's safest merely to say that I do not willingly leave loose ends hanging. Beyond that, I'll leave you all to your own deductions.
...Now. How do I keep track of all this stuff? (The urge to mutter "With great difficulty" and run off into the wings is strong. But never mind.) :)
The question's fair, as there's a million-plus words' worth of it in the series at the moment. ...Mostly my guide remains the books themselves, in ebook form (in their NME versions. If I need to, I refer back to the traditionally published versions as necessary). I normally have a general memory of where a given event happens or where a given issue comes up for handling. I then pull that copy of the ebook(s) in question, and do a search on various useful target phrases until I find what I'm after, and where it leads.
For new work, or stuff not yet committed to what passes for canon, I do have lots of notes. Some of them are actually out in public, at the currently-being-revised Errantry Concordance (though they're not in any form that anyone but me will recognize). Others are tucked away in the notes sections of pertinent Scrivener files—this being one of the most valuable things about Scrivener, as far as I'm concerned: the ability to store project notes in the project itself as opposed to "all over the damn place." Others yet are in my iPad, as either typing or dictation, and get transferred to other files/formats as necessary.
But the very first thing that happens, when a new work comes into train, is an outline. Sometimes a hilariously simple one, sometimes one with more detail in the middle than at the beginning or the end. Doesn't matter what shape it starts in. All notes, scraps, prose chunks, random thoughts, and midnight cogitations, get slotted into place in this until it's ready to be organized and sent off to an editor. And this outline—no matter how fragmentary or how polished—remains ready to hand at all times until I've finished with correcting the book's ARC and am looking at the release date.
And then I zip it up and put it away where I can find it later if I need to... because some other plan, still in the building stages, may need something in that one that never happened, but now has its chance. Because in YW, as everywhere else in my work, it's so often about the things that have always almost happened... until they do.
...Anyway: HTH!
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Just Trust Me

WORD COUNT: 3,536
PAIRING: Simon 'Ghost' Riley x F!Reader

Hi sorry it took me a little more than a month to come out with the next chapter I was writing another story and broke up with my boyfriend. ●﹏●
Also someone has the strongest accent in this chapter sorry

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

You tried calling your sister first, then an old friend, but no one answered. Your calls went straight to voicemail, leaving you staring at the screen in frustration. It only reinforced what you already knew—there was no one else to turn to. With a reluctant sigh, you pull up Kyle's contact.
You: I need help. I don't know who else to turn to.
The dots appear and disappear for what feels like an eternity before his response finally comes.
Kyle: What's going on?
Your fingers tremble over the keyboard. You don't know how much to say. If you tell him everything, will he even believe you?
You: I think he's tracking everything I do. I feel trapped.
A longer pause. Your stomach churns. Maybe he's trying to find the right words. Maybe he doesn't believe you.
Kyle: Are you sure? Simon wouldn't just do that without a reason. Maybe you're overthinking.
Your breath catches. Doubt creeps in, but you shove it down. No. You know what you saw.
You: I'm sure.
Kyle doesn't immediately agree to meet. Instead, he hesitates, his messages measured and deliberate.
Kyle: Look, I get that things might feel off, but maybe you're just stressed? Simon cares about you.
Your fingers tighten around your phone. Gaslighting. Whether intentional or not, that's what it feels like.
You: Kyle, please. I wouldn't be asking if I wasn't sure.
A long pause.
Then, suddenly—
Kyle: Let's meet. We'll talk in person.
Kyle suggests meeting at a diner just outside town. The drive there is nerve-wracking, each passing car a potential threat. When you finally see his familiar face—casual, steady, a tether to the past before everything fell apart—relief washes over you.
"You look like you haven't slept for days," he murmurs as you slide into the booth across from him.
You let out a dry laugh. "Haven't had much reason to."
He signals for the waitress, ordering coffee for both of you before leaning forward, voice dropping. "Tell me everything."
You do. Carefully at first, testing the waters, but soon the words tumble out faster than you can contain them. You tell him about the tracking software you discovered, the notes detailing your daily movements, the control tightening around you like a noose.
Kyle listens, his expression shifting between concern and something unreadable. "You were right to reach out," he says when you finish. "Simon... he's always been intense, even before all this."
He exhales, rubbing the back of his neck. "I know what he's capable of, but you have to understand, it's not just about control for him. Simon was made into what he is. Task Force 141 doesn't recruit soft men. It shapes you, sometimes into something you never wanted to be."
You shift in your seat. "That doesn't excuse any of this."
"No, it doesn't," Kyle agrees, his eyes meeting yours. "But it explains it. His past, everything he's been through—it broke him in ways neither of us will understand. And Price..." He hesitates, choosing his words carefully. "Price was like a father to him. More than that. He was a guide. Simon respected him more than anyone. And what Price taught him? Control means safety. For himself. For the people he cares about."
You frown, stirring your coffee absently. "You make it sound like he's protecting me."
Kyle gives you a small, sad smile. "Maybe, in his mind, he is. That doesn't make it right."
A strange pity coils in your stomach, unwanted but undeniable. Simon—ruthless, obsessive Simon—was once just a man looking for structure, for someone to follow.
You shake the thought away. It doesn't change what you need to do.
"When the ten days are up, I have a place," Kyle says suddenly, lowering his voice further. "A safe house. You can come there. No strings. No Simon."
Hope flares in your chest, but something nags at you. Kyle's hands are steady, his words reassuring, but there's something about his delivery that feels... rehearsed. Too perfect.
You ignore it. You have to. He's your only chance.
"Okay," you whisper. "I'll come."
Kyle smiles, a little too quickly. "Good. You won't regret it."

You stand at the doorway, watching as Simon secures the last of his gear. His movements are methodical, efficient—just as they always are. The weight of his presence lingers in the air, suffocating even as he prepares to leave.
"I'll be back before you know it," he says, pulling on his jacket. He steps toward you, cupping your face with a gentleness that still makes something inside you ache. "I love you."
You swallow hard, forcing yourself to nod. "I love you too."
The words taste like ash now. You watch from the window as Simon's car turns the corner and disappears. But you don't move yet.
Instead, you pull out the small leather-bound notebook you bought three days ago, flipping to a fresh page. Your handwriting is tight and cramped as you note down the time of Simon's departure and what he said about his return. *"Six days until Simon returns from alleged conference. Will prepare to leave on day four, heading to Aunt Marie's cabin in Vermont."* This last part is a lie—Aunt Marie doesn't exist, and you have no plans to go to Vermont. But if Simon or anyone else finds this journal, the false trail might buy you precious time.
You list each suspicious detail methodically: Kyle's hesitation when you first contacted him. His immediate attempt to rationalize Simon's behavior. The way he knew so much about Price without you telling him. The convenient timing of the safe house offer.
Closing the journal, you tuck it into the hidden pocket you've sewn into your jacket lining, then double-check the locks, leaving the front door bolted as you slip out the back. You take the long route through side streets, keeping to the shadows, doubling back twice just to be sure. Only when you're certain no one is following do you head toward the meeting spot where Kyle waits.
Kyle's safe house is tucked away in a remote area, but the moment you step inside, unease prickles at your skin. It's too exposed. The windows aren't reinforced, and the locks seem flimsy—if Simon wanted to, he could be here in minutes.
"Not what you expected?" Kyle asks, watching you closely.
You force a tight smile. "Just... getting used to it."
But the lie sits heavy. Every instinct screams that this isn't far enough, isn't safe enough. You need to disappear completely.
You notice dark clouds gathering on the horizon as Kyle shows you around. "Looks like a storm's coming," he comments casually, glancing out the window. "Cell reception gets spotty out here when it rains. Power too, sometimes."
The words send a chill through you. Isolated. No communication. No witnesses.
That night, when Kyle steps out to take a call, you see your chance. His laptop sits on the table, screen dark. He's always cautious with it, rarely leaving it unattended. This might be your only shot.
Hands shaking, you ease into his chair and lift the screen. Locked. Of course. But when you press a key, it flickers to life. He must've forgotten to log out.
Your pulse hammers as you scan the desktop. Most files mean nothing to you—until you see it.
Price_OpSec
A chill rushes through you. Price. That name again. You click on the file, but a password prompt stops you cold.
You're about to give up when you notice a folder labeled "Surveillance." Your fingers hover over the trackpad, hesitant, then click.
The breath leaves your lungs as images fill the screen. Photos. Dozens of them.
You. Going to work. Shopping at the grocery store. Meeting friends for coffee.
And then—your heart nearly stops—Simon and Kyle. Together. Not in old photos from their military days, but recent ones. In one, they're sitting at a café, heads bent close in conversation. The date stamp is from just two weeks ago. In another, they're standing outside your apartment building. Kyle is pointing toward your window.
Before you can think, your phone buzzes.
Simon: I love you.
A second message follows.
Simon: Don't forget to double-lock the back door. It sticks sometimes.
Ice floods your veins. That's something Kyle told you about the safe house. The house Simon shouldn't know you're at.
Your breath quickens. The room spins. Your fingers dig into the table as the walls close in. Was this all planned? Is Kyle feeding Simon information? Are you running in circles, trapped no matter what you do?
You quickly take photos of the screen with your phone, hands trembling so badly you have to try three times to get a clear shot. You close the folders, returning the laptop exactly as you found it just as the first raindrops begin to hit the windows.
You clamp a hand over your mouth, stifling a sob as your chest tightens. The air feels too thick, your lungs too small. Panic claws at your throat, sending you spiraling. You trusted Kyle. You needed to trust him. But now... now you don't know if you can trust anyone.
Your mind races, desperate for a foothold. What if Simon has been ahead of you this whole time? What if every move you've made was predicted and accounted for? Your vision blurs at the edges. The betrayal you feared most wasn't from Simon—it was from the one person who was supposed to help you escape him.
You press your forehead against the cool surface of the table, forcing yourself to count. One. Two. Three. Your fingers dig into your arms, grounding yourself. But the tremors in your chest refuse to subside. Every interaction with Kyle replays in your mind, now tainted with suspicion. Every reassuring word, every careful gesture—was it all an act?
A sob threatens to break free, but you swallow it down. Kyle wouldn't betray you. He couldn't. You remind yourself of the boy you once knew, the friend who had your back when no one else did. If he's acting strangely, it must be because of what he's seen, what he's done—they've changed him, made him cautious, secretive.
You shake your head. The evidence is right there. The photos don't lie.
You can't afford to break. Not here. Not now. Not when you might be running out of time.
You squeeze your eyes shut, forcing yourself to breathe through it. Think. Think.
There's still a way out.
There has to be.
The storm arrives in full force, rain lashing against the windows as thunder rolls overhead. The lights flicker once, twice, then go out completely. The safe house plunges into darkness.
"Power's out," Kyle calls from another room. "Stay put. I'll find the flashlights."
You sit frozen, your mind racing. This is it—your chance. In the darkness, with the storm masking any sound, you might be able to slip away.
Pulling out your journal, you scribble one last entry by the light of your phone. *"Kyle definitely working with Simon. Found photos. Heading to Vermont tonight. No other choice."* You leave it on the table, open to that page—your final decoy.

You don't sleep.
The hours drag by, your mind cycling through every interaction, every misplaced word, every look Kyle has given you since this began. You should have been more careful. But now, standing in the dim light of the safe house, phone clutched tight in your trembling hands, you have only one option left.
You confront him.
"How did Simon know about the back door?" Your voice is steadier than you expected, but the weight of the question hangs between you like a drawn blade.
Kyle looks up from his seat at the small kitchen table, brow furrowed. "What?"
You hold up your phone, screen illuminating your face. "Simon texted me about locking it. That's something you told me, not him. So how did he know?"
Kyle leans back, exhaling slowly. "Come on, you know how he is. He gets in your head. He's probably trying to mess with you, make you doubt everything." He gestures at your phone. "You think he wouldn't guess how paranoid you'd be about the locks? He's playing you."
You shake your head. "No. This isn't a guess. This is something specific, Kyle. Something only you mentioned."
His expression hardens. "So what, you think I told him? You think I sold you out to Simon? After everything he's done? After everything I've risked to help you?"
Your stomach churns at the way he flips the accusation back onto you. Doubt creeps in, whispering that maybe you are overreacting. That maybe Simon really is just messing with you. Kyle's been your friend since childhood. If you can't trust him, then who?
"I don't know what to think anymore," you admit, voice cracking. "I just—I need the truth."
Kyle runs a hand through his hair, frustration evident in every line of his body. "The truth? The truth is Simon's got his hooks so deep in you that you're seeing shadows where there aren't any. He's always done this, hasn't he? Made you question yourself? And now you're doing his work for him." He leans forward, tone softening. "Look, I get it. You're scared. But you have to trust me."
The words scrape against your raw nerves. Trust him. Like you trusted Simon?
You sit down slowly, trying to steady your breathing. "Then tell me about Price."
Kyle freezes. It's barely perceptible, but you catch it.
"What about him?"
"Simon listens to him. I keep hearing his name, but I don't know who he is."
Kyle exhales, rubbing his hands together. "Price is... not what you think. He's just some old war dog Simon admires, someone he learned from. But he's not pulling strings here." He looks at you, eyes careful. "That's why you need to stop panicking. If Price is involved, it's just another layer to this, not the end of the world. We need to be smart."
You hesitate. Everything in you screams that this isn't right, that you should leave. But Kyle is so convincing, so steady. And deep down, there's still that part of you that doesn't want to believe he'd betray you.
"So what do we do?" The words taste like surrender.
Kyle relaxes slightly. "I have a contact. Someone outside Simon's reach. They can keep you safe, but we need to move."
Every alarm in your mind blares at once. Another move. Another safe house. Another place where Simon might already be waiting.
Kyle offers you a small, reassuring smile. "I promise, this time, it'll be safe."
You swallow your fear and nod. You want to believe him.
But as you gather your few belongings, you slip a kitchen knife into your pocket. This time, you won't be caught unprepared.
The storm intensifies throughout the night. Rain hammers against the roof, and wind howls through the trees, enclosing the safe house in a wall of water and sound. The power remains out.
Kyle's restlessness grows as the hours pass. He paces, checks his phone repeatedly despite the lack of signal, and keeps glancing out the windows into the darkness. The small space forces you to remain in close proximity, every movement amplified in your hypervigilant state.
"We should get some sleep," he says eventually. "Big day tomorrow. I'll take the couch. You can have the bedroom."
You nod but have no intention of sleeping. As soon as Kyle settles on the couch, you begin your wait, counting the minutes until his breathing deepens.
Three hours later, with the storm still raging, you make your move. The journal sits conspicuously on the kitchen table, your false plan clearly visible. Your real bag—small, containing only essentials—is hidden under your jacket.
You ease the back door open, wincing at the soft creak. The rain is instant and merciless, soaking you within seconds. But the downpour masks any sound you might make as you slip into the darkness.
The forest behind the safe house is dense and unfamiliar, branches whipping your face as you push forward. Your phone's flashlight offers minimal guidance, the beam swallowed by the thickness of the storm. You know there's a road about a mile east—if you can reach it, maybe flag down a passing car...
A flash of lightning illuminates the trees ahead, and in that split-second burst of light, your blood freezes. A figure stands twenty yards away—tall, muscular, with a distinctive mohawk now plastered to his scalp by the rain. He hasn't seen you yet, but he's scanning the woods methodically, one hand holding a flashlight, the other clutching a walkie-talkie.
You duck behind a large tree, heart hammering against your ribs. Through the sound of rainfall, you catch fragments of his voice:
"Na visual yit... Grid search in progress... She coudnae hae gaen far... "
The walkie-talkie crackles with a response too distorted to make out, but the mohawked man nods, then changes direction, moving across your path rather than toward you.
"Copy that. Circling back tae th' creek. Over. "
They're watching you. Tracking you. How many cameras are out here? How many eyes?
You wait until the beam of his flashlight disappears among the trees before moving again, this time in the opposite direction. The undergrowth tears at your clothes, mud sucking at your shoes, but fear drives you forward.
Another lightning flash reveals a steep embankment ahead. You slide down it, half-controlled, half-falling, coming to rest in a shallow ravine. Above you, the storm continues its assault, but here, partially sheltered by the high banks, you have a moment to catch your breath.
The respite is brief. A beam of light sweeps the ravine, and you press yourself against the muddy wall, praying the shadows are deep enough.
"Ah ken ye'r doon thare ," a voice calls out, eerily calm despite having to shout over the storm. "Thir's nowhere tae go. Th' road's blocked. Th' river's flooded. Juist come oot noo, 'n' no one haes tae git hurt."
You remain motionless, one hand gripping the kitchen knife in your pocket. The beam sweeps back and forth, methodically searching every inch of the ravine.
"Simon's worried aboot you," the voice continues. "He juist wants ye safe. Ye ken how dangerous it's oot 'ere."
The light stops moving, fixed on a point just feet from where you hide.
"Last chance."
You hold your breath.
Footsteps approach, sliding down the embankment. The mohawked man lands heavily in the mud, his flashlight beam dancing wildly before steadying again. He's close now—close enough that you can see that he is Soap the man Simon brought to your home a few weeks prior, the same soap from the texts.
"There ye are," he says, spotting you at last. His lips curl into a smirk as he raises the walkie-talkie. "Target located. Southeast ravine. Movin` tae secur”.
Your fingers tighten around the knife.
He reaches for you, confident, unhurried. "Let's nae mak' this difficult."
You don't think. You move.
The knife flashes in the beam of his dropped flashlight as you lunge forward. He reacts with military precision, blocking your arm, but your momentum carries you both backward. You fall together, landing hard in the mud, his greater weight driving the air from your lungs.
His hand clamps around your wrist, squeezing until your fingers go numb. The knife slips, embedding itself in the soft ground beside you.
"Stupid move," he grunts, pinning you with one arm while reaching for the walkie-talkie with the other.
Desperation lends you strength. You twist violently, driving your knee upward. It connects, and his grip loosens for just a second—enough for you to wrench free and scramble for the knife.
Your fingers close around the handle just as he lunges for you again. You roll to the side, and in one fluid motion, slash outward blindly.
A howl of pain tears through the night. Soap staggers backward, hands pressed to his face. Blood seeps between his fingers—dark, almost black in the dim light. You've caught him across his left eye.
"Ye bitch!" he screams, lunging forward blindly. But his footing is compromised, his vision obscured by blood and rain.
You don't wait. You clamber up the ravine, soil and rocks giving way beneath your desperate grasp. Behind you, the man is still shouting into his walkie-talkie, his voice ragged with pain.
"She's armed! left th' ravine heading wast! a'm needin' backup! A’M NEEDIN’ BACKUP!"
His voice fades as you reach the top, replaced by the relentless drumming of rain and your own ragged breathing. You sprint through the forest, no longer caring about stealth, only distance. Every flash of lightning guides you forward until finally, miraculously, you see it—an access road cutting through the trees.
You have no idea where it leads, but away is all that matters now. Away from the safe house. Away from Kyle's betrayal. Away from Simon's control.
Behind you, distant voices call out, but they're growing fainter with each stumbling step you take. Soap won't be following—not with that eye. And whoever else is out there, they're too far behind.
For the first time since this began, you feel something close to hope. You're still running, but no longer in circles.
You're finally breaking free.
#call of duty#call of duty mw2#cod#cod mw2#simon ghost riley#kyle gaz garrick#ghost#simon riley x reader#captain john price#john soap mactavish#andromeda pleiades
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