#lukasz talking

[footballandshit]

If you could bring back any Dortmund Player that played for Dortmund before who would you chose and why?

the first person that popped up in my head was shinji kagawa. i used to watch him play for us since i was young and even tuned into man utd games just to see him play during his few years there. i just really adore him!! so, purely for sentimental reasons, i would love to see him in black and yellow again 💛 another one is łukasz piszczek, which i think i don't even have to explain why 🫶

[dare-g]

Fugue (2018)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Petard (Part II)

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

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/31/the-blood-speech/#dudeface-from-chiapas

Biden's FCC unanimously passed a rules banning landlords from accepting kickbacks to force all their tenants to use one ISP as a rental condition. Last week, Trump's FCC boss Brendan Carr (who voted for the rule just last year) killed it, saying that he was sticking up for tenants, who would somehow save money from this sleazy arrangement:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/fcc-chair-nixes-plan-to-boost-broadband-competition-in-apartment-buildings/

In some ways, this is to be expected. The Trump agenda is about trussing and plating working people so rich sociopaths can conveniently devour them whole. On the other hand, this move lays bare the long-run historical phenomena that led to this moment. Case in point: back in 2013, I wrote a sf story about this very subject, Petard, which was published in MIT Tech Review's 2014 anthology Twelve Tomorrows, edited by Bruce Sterling:

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262535595/twelve-tomorrows-2014/

I love that story, and upon re-reading it, I realized that it was extremely timely. So timely, in fact, that I decided to serialize it over four days on my newsletter. If you're feeling impatient, you can tune into a four-part podcast version from 2014 and 2018:

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_278

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_292

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_293

https://archive.org/details/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_294_-_Petard_04

Here's part one of the story:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/30/landlord-telco-industrial-complex/#part-one

And now, onto part two!

My advisor is named Andronicus Andronicus Niyazov, and her parents had a sense of humor, clearly. She founded the Networks That Change lab three years ago after she fled Kazakhstan one step ahead of Gulnara's death-squad, but they say that she still provides material aid to the army of babushkas that underwent forced sterilization under old man Karimov's brutal regime. Her husband, Arzu, lost an eye in Gezi. They're kind of a twitter uprising power-couple.

I'm the only undergrad in the lab, and the grad students were slathering at the thought of having a bottle-washing dogsbody in residence. Someone to clean out the spam filters, lexically normalize the grant proposals, deworm the Internet of Things, get the limescale out of the espresso machine, and defragment the lab's prodigious store of detritus, kipple and moop.

Two days after telling them all where they could stick it, I got a meeting in AA's cube.

"Sit down, Lukasz," she said. My birth certificate read "Lucas," but I relished the extra consonants. I perched on a tensegrity chair that had been someone grad student's laser-cutter thesis project. It creaked like a haunted attic and its white acrylic struts were grubby as a snowbank a day after the salting trucks. AA's chair was patched with steeltape, huge black cocoony gobs of it. And it still creaked.

I waited patiently. My drop was in my overalls' marsupial pouch, and I stuffed my hands in there, curling my fingers around it and kneading it. It comforted me. AA closed the door.

"Do you know why my lab doesn't have any undergrads?" she asked.

I gave it another moment to test for rhetoricalness, timed out, then gave it a shot. "You don't want to screw around with getting someone up to speed. You want to get the wo rk done."

"Don't be stupid. Grad students need as much hand-holding as undergrads. No, it's because undergrads are full of the dramas. And the dramas are not good for getting the work done."

"Andronicus," I said, "I'm not the one you should be talking to –" I felt a flush creeping up my neck — "they –"

She fixed me with a look that froze my tongue and dried the spit in my mouth. "I spent four years in Dolinka prison in Kazakhstan. Three of my cellmates committed suicide. One of them bled out on me from the top bunk while I slept. I woke covered in her blood.." She looked at her screen, snagged her attention on it, ignored me for a minute while she typed furiously. Turned back. "What did your labmates do, Lukasz, that you would like to talk to me about?"

"Nothing," I mumbled. I hated being dismissed like this. Of course she could trump anything I was inclined to complain about. But it was so… invalidating.

"Never forget that there is blood in the world's veins, Lukasz. You've done something clever with your years on this planet. You're here to see if you can figure out how to do something important, now. We want to systematize the struggle here, figure out how to automate it, but eventually there will always be blood. You need to learn to be dispassionate about the interpersonal conflicts, to save your anger for the people who deserve it, and to channel that anger into a theory of action that leads to change. Otherwise, you will be an undergraduate who worries about being picked on."

"I know –" I said. "I know. Sorry."

She held out a hand to stop me fleeing. "Lukasz, there is change to be had out there. It waits for us to discover its fulcrums. That's the research project here. But the reason for the research is the change. It's to be the bag of blood in the streets or the board-room or the prison. That's what you're learning to do here."

I didn't say anything. She turned back to her screen. Her fingers beat the keyboard. I left.

I pretended not to notice three of AA's grad students hastily switching off their infrared laser-pointers as I opened her glass door and walked back out to the lab. Everyone, including AA, knew that they'd been listening in, but the formal characteristics of our academic kabuki required us all to pretend that I'd just had a private conversation.

I pulled my laptop out of my bag and uncrumpled its bent corners. I'd only made it a week before and I didn't have time or energy to fold up another one. It was getting pretty battered in my bag, though, the waxed cardboard shell getting more worn and creased in less time than ever before. Not even my most extreme couch-surfing voyages had been this hard on my essential equipment. The worst part was that the keyboard surface had gotten really smashed — I think I'd closed up the box with a sharpie trapped inside it — so the camera that watched my fingers as they typed on the letters printed on the cardboard sheet was having a hard time getting the registration right. I'd mashed the spot where the backspace was drawn so many times that I'd worn the ink off and had to redraw it (more sharpie — a cardboard laptop owner's best friend).

Now the screen was starting to go, the little short-throw projector attached to the pinhead-sized computer taped inside the back of the box was misreading the geometry of the mirror it bounced the screen image off of, which keystoned and painted the image on the rice-paper scrim set into the laptop's top half. The image was only off by about 10 degrees, but it was enough to screw up the touchscreen registration and give me a mild headache after only a couple hours of staring at it. I'd noticed that a lot of the MIT kids carried big plastic and metal and glass laptops, which had seemed like some kind of weird retro affectation. But campus life was more of an off-road experience than I'd suspected.

But I'd never go glass-and-plastic. AA thought that the way to win a war was to shed your blood. I have a limited supply of blood. There's a lot more cardboard out there. Why fight with meat and blood when you can use free infrastructure and good code to organize a resistance. You'll never win a war of atoms against the Powers That Be. They'll always have more lethal atoms. When they're hitting you with a baton, your glass-and-plastic number will crumple just as surely as a cardboard laptop. The best way to beat a policeman's baton was to be somewhere else when he was swinging it.

I spent fifteen minutes unfolding the laser-cut cardboard and smoothing out the creases, re-sticking everything with fiber-tape from an office-supply table in the middle of the lab, and then running through the registration and diagnostics built into the OS until the computer was in a usable state again. The whole time, I was hotly conscious of the grad students' sneaky gaze on me, the weird clacking noise of their fingers on real mechanical keyboards — seriously, who used a keyboard that was made of pieces anymore? Was I really going to have to do that? — as their chatted about me.

Yes, about me. It's not (just) ego: I could tell. I can prove it. I was barely back up and running and answering all my social telephones when some dudeface from Chiapas sat down conspicuously next to me and said, "It's Lukasz, right?" He held out his hand.

I looked at it for a moment, just to make the point, then shook. "Yeah. You're Juanca, right?" Of course he was Juanca. He'd been burned in effigy by Zetas every year for four years, and his entire family, all the way to third cousins, were either stateside or in Guatemala or El Salvador, hiding out from narcoterrorists who were still pissed about Juanca's anonymizer, a mixmaster that was the number one go-to source of convictable evidence against Zeta members whose cases went to trial. If it wasn't for the fact that Juanca's network had also busted an assload of corrupt cops, prosecutors, judges, government ministers, regional governors and one Secretary of State, they'd have given him a ministerial posting and a medal. As it was, he was in exile. Famous. Loved. It helped that he was rakishly handsome — which I am not, for the record — and that he had a bounty on his head and had been unsuccessfully kidnapped on the T, getting away through some badass parkour that got captured in CCTV jittercam that made him look like he was moving in a series of short teleports.

"Yeah. You got the blood speech, huh?"

I nodded.

"It's a good one," he said. I didn't think so. I thought it was bullshit. I didn't say so.

We stared at each other. "Welp," he said. "Take it easy."

[inexplicifics]

Do you think we'll ever meet this man, from Must Brave the Thorns? "It is only that when I was quite young, I discovered entirely by accident - and much to his dismay - that the head of my father’s guards preferred men" Could be interesting, both to see someone who likes and knows Milena to see her flourishing, and also to see an older gay human meet some Witchers.

I have a WIP with him! He is very confused and also has met a friendly Bear.

I have no idea when or if that one will get done, so here's a snippet:

It’s been a week and a half before little Lady Milena sneaks out to join him on guard duty up on the wall, which she does about twice a month. He’s never reported it, even if he probably should. She’s not hurting anything, and it does the girl good to get away from her eldest sister’s nastiness once in a while. “Captain Lukasz,” she greets him gravely, just as she always does. “My lady,” he replies, just as gravely, just as he always does. She keeps pace with him as he walks his rounds, little soft slippers pattering gently against the stone of the wall, and says nothing. At last they reach the corner, where they usually stop and talk a while. Lukasz cannot decide on what to say, though. He can’t exactly ask her if she’s going to tell his secret to her father. Little Lady Milena takes a deep breath and says, “Marika has told me that when I am old enough to go to court, I will see a great many things that are strange to me. That - that I will witness or hear about a fair number of very private assignations.” Lukasz blinks. “That’s true,” he allows. Gods know he sees enough of that sort of thing while the family is at court. “She also told me that if the people having the assignation are my enemies, I should take careful note in case the information is useful to me someday; but if they are my friends, I should never speak of the matter, and do my utmost to preserve their privacy, so as to protect them.” She looks up at him solemnly. “I count you a friend, Captain.” She’s not going to tell. Lukasz bites down on a curse of sheer overwhelming relief. “I think your sister gives very good advice, my lady,” he says. “If you follow it, you are likely to gain the unending loyalty of your friends. Among whom I am honored to be counted.” Little Lady Milena nods. “I shall be sure to do so, then.”

[mariacallous]

The massive blackout that left Spain and Portugal in the dark on Monday brought home for many Europeans the overwhelming reliance their societies have on electricity—and the stability of the power system that provides it.

Western Europeans used to reliable trains and refrigeration were aghast at having to look for candles, but for much of the world, energy poverty (and brownouts and blackouts and rolling blackouts) is a frequent occurrence.

But the unprecedented blackout is helping shape an emerging new understanding in Europe of what energy security is and how it can best be addressed, after the continent spent decades worried more about dependence on fuel imports such as Middle Eastern oil or Russian natural gas. The need to ensure that climate-friendly policies, such as increasing use of renewable energy, go hand in hand with reliable electricity systems is shooting to the top of policymakers’ to-do lists.

Just days before nearly 50 million people were plunged into chaos due to a still-unexplained Iberian Peninsula-wide power outage, the International Energy Agency—itself a byproduct of energy availability fears stemming from the 1973 OPEC oil embargo—underscored the need for a new understanding of energy security that emphasizes a “holistic approach” including a more resilient power grid. 

What were a week ago just technical talking points became this week an urgent reality.

“One has to ask: What were policymakers thinking over the past decade? The focus was on decarbonization and headline targets, but what about the basic foundations, like grid stability and resilience?” asked Lukasz Olejnik, a researcher and visiting fellow at the War Studies Department at King’s College London. “Those weren’t addressed with the same urgency. It’s always a balance and a trade-off.”

It’s still not entirely clear what caused the entire power systems of Spain and Portugal to go dark in a matter of seconds just after midday on Monday, knocking out not just the lights but also all mobile and most landline telecommunications. Initial fears of a cyberattack seem to have been ruled out. Though experts say such an attack might just be technically feasible, it would require a huge investment in money and resources—although other widespread blackouts, such as one affecting India in 2020 or Ukraine in 2015, were caused by malicious actors.

The latest theory is that the failure in Spain and Portugal stemmed from an over-reliance on renewable energy, especially solar panels, which deliver electricity to the power grid in a different way than traditional forms of power generation, such as nuclear or natural gas plants. Essentially, the evolving explanation is that the power grid did not have enough slack—inertia, in technical terms—to handle a sudden change in the output apparently caused by a drop in solar generation in southwestern Spain. 

This is an issue that has vexed researchers for years as renewable energies such as wind and solar power have come to play a bigger role in electricity generation. The challenge posed by adding large amounts of renewable energy to the power grid is not just that the wind doesn’t always blow nor the sun always shine, but also that those sources deliver energy differently than do traditional forms of power generation. That can make power grids unstable at times of stress. When Monday’s blackout came, Spain’s grid was overwhelmingly powered by solar power, with only moderate amounts of nuclear energy, wind power, hydroelectric plants, and gas-fired turbines making up the balance.

There are a couple of previous big blackouts and studies of power grid resilience that are especially relevant for Spain’s case. In Texas, which like Spain has an isolated electricity system, essentially cut off from neighboring regions, researchers for years worked to understand how stable the grid would be as more renewable energy was added to the system. Texas had a massive power failure in 2021 during an extreme winter storm when the grid’s electricity sources struggled to perform in the frigid temperatures. In south Australia, a similar event occurred in 2016 as renewable sources of power overwhelmed a power grid built to operate according to old physics and older-generation technologies.

“In terms of renewable energy, the energy transformation needs to happen, but we need to acknowledge that there are new challenges for grid operators,” said Georg Zachmann, an energy expert at Bruegel, a think tank in Brussels.

What this week’s blackout brings in sharp relief is the need to reassess what energy security really means. For residents of Spain and Portugal, the loss of power, communications, transport, water supplies in some cities, access to cash machines, and even the ability to buy food in the space of minutes was jarring. Several Spanish regions asked the central government to mobilize the army to ensure order and deter looters as darkness fell. In a matter of hours, the country went from a spring afternoon to a nearly Mad Max scenario.

“Ultimately, people need a reliable source of energy. Building a modern civilization on unstable infrastructure is impossible,” Olejnik said.

For years, even though energy policy is mostly determined at the national level, the European Union has sought to balance its own vision of energy security, an energy transition to low-carbon sources of energy, and more affordable energy for consumers. That has always been a trilemma, with some goals (such as weaning off cheap Russian gas in favor of pricier imports from elsewhere) ticking one box while aggravating others. 

But the accelerated drive toward a low-carbon energy system—Spain just over a week before the blackout celebrated a day when 100 percent of the country was powered by renewable energy—has recast the debate about what it means to be energy secure.

“Europe’s energy security problem in the past has been oil and gas, and now we want to move to a world where the imports are solar panels and we have electrified systems, which means much less import dependence but which brings with it a couple of other challenges,” Zachmann said. “Essentially all our electricity depends on this, the largest machine in the world, and we need to design it to have enough redundancy and ability to recover.”

In years past, when renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar power made up a smaller portion of the electricity mix, and legacy generators were still around and operating, grid stability was easier to achieve. But as policy decisions in some countries (such as Germany’s nuclear phaseout) or simple economics drive existing, reliable-but-dirtier baseload power generation out of the mix, the whole system threatens to become much more volatile.

There are a couple of solutions on the horizon: one technical, and one political. 

The technical fix is to make changes to the power grid to make it better able to handle the new types of power generation that are required if Europe is to meet its goals of lowering carbon emissions and complying with climate change objectives. Those technical fixes can include changing the physical way that power generators interact with the grid to make a 20th-century analog system more akin to a 21st-century digital system. 

Another approach is to backstop the power grid by adding stability the old-fashioned way, literally, by installing massive flywheels and fancy devices that spin the way that traditional turbines do, which helps integrate huge amounts of volatile new power generation.

Another option, and one that increasingly comes up in conversations about Spain’s blackout, is furthering the integration of Europe’s electricity network. Part of the problem this week was that Spain and Portugal are almost entirely isolated from the rest of Europe, electricity-wise: There are only a handful of interconnectors with France that allow cross-border flows of electrons north during the day, when Spanish solar is plentiful and cheap, and French nuclear power south at night.

But that greater interconnection has been a dream pursued in vain for years. As Zachmann noted in a paper, there are political and economic questions that stymie progress, including the thorny question of who pays and who benefits when cheap power flows to neighbors, raising prices locally. 

But the bigger question right now, as was the case with financial integration in years past, is whether tighter bonds create more resilience and add shock absorbers to a complex system, or whether that just creates a bigger pool of risk if something goes wrong. Had Spain been better integrated with Europe’s power grid, it is unclear whether the result would have been to keep the lights on or to spread the blackout continentwide.

“Is it better to have more connections, or is it better to avoid the risk of contagion?” Zachmann asked.

[11vein]

would you ever make a discord server? (I would join)

also silly goofy question: what oc of yours is most likely to listen to country music?

i probably wouldn’t, as much as i want to loL

i’ve had a bad history with making discord servers and frankly… i dont want to make a server thats going to end up with a bunch of teenagers who are only going to talk about ghost and “omg i think tamari would eat glass” lmao (sorry if thats rude but its just true and ive seen it in other friends’ servers)

anyway to ur other question… probably lukasz or phoebe! both of them were raised religious in some way or another and probably grew up listening to stuff like that

[my-chaos-radio]

Release: January 27, 2009

Lyrics:

You spin my head right round, right round

When you go down, when you go down down

You spin my head right round, right round

When you go down, when you go down down

Hey, walk out that house with my swagger

Hop in there with dough, I got places to go!

People to see, time is precious

I looked at my cotty, are ya out of control?

Just like my mind where I'm goin'

No women, no shawties, no nothin' but clothes

No stoppin' now, my Pirellis on roll

I like my jewelry that's always on whoa

I know the storm is comin'

My pockets keep tellin' me it's gonna shower

Call up my homies, it's on

Then pop in the next 'cause this mix'll be ours

We keep a fade-away shot

'Cause we ballin' it's Platinum Patron that be ours

Lil mama, I owe you just like the flowers

Girl, you the drink with all that goodie powers

You spin my head right round, right round

When you go down, when you go down down

You spin my head right round, right round

When you go down, when you go down down

From the top of the pole I watch her go down

She got me throwin' my money around

Ain't nothin' more beautiful to be found

It's goin' down down

From the top of the pole I watch her go down

She got me throwin' my money around

Ain't nothin' more beautiful to be found

It's goin' down down

Hey, shawty must know I'm the man

My money love her like her number one fan

Don't open my mouth, let her talk to my fans

My Benjamin Franklins

A couple of grands, I got rubber bands

My paper planes makin' her dance

Get dirty all night, that's part of my plan

We buildin' castles that's made out of sand

She's amazin', fire blazin'

Hotter than Cajun, girl won't you move a lil' closer?

Time to get paid, it's maximum wage

That body belong on a poster

I'm in a daze, that bottom is wavin' at me

Like, "Damn it, I know you"

You wanna shoot like a gun out of holster

Tell me whatever and I'll be your gopher

You spin my head right round, right round

When you go down, when you go down down

You spin my head right round, right round

When you go down, when you go down down

From the top of the pole I watch her go down

She got me throwin' my money around

Ain't nothin' more beautiful to be found

It's goin' down down

From the top of the pole I watch her go down

She got me throwin' my money around

Ain't nothin' more beautiful to be found

It's goin' down down

Yeah, I'm spendin' my money (ah), I'm out of control (ah)

Somebody help me she takin' my bank roll

But I'm king of the club (ah) and I'm wearin' the crown

Poppin' these bottles, touchin' these models

Watchin' they asses go down down

You spin my head right round, right round

When you go down, when you go down down

You spin my head right round, right round

When you go down, when you go down down (ah)

Songwriter:

You spin my head right round, right round (ah)

When you go down, when you go down down (ah)

You spin my head right round, right round (ah)

When you go down, when you go down down

A. Grigg / Allan Peter Grigg / Bruno Mars / Justin Franks / Lukasz Gottwald / Luke Gottwald / Michael David Percy / Michael Percy / Peter Burns / Peter Jozzepi Burns / Philip Lawrence / Phillip Lawrence / Stephen Coy / Timothy John Lever / Timothy Lever / Tramar Dillard

SongFacts:

👉📖

[misspeculiar-principe]

"Why is it considered a no-no to talk about your past relationships with the current person you are dating?"

[hawkaye]

“What do you appreciate about each other?”

[littlelemontarte]

marco saying that it wasn't a nice feeling to realise piszczu wasn't there during preseason but that he thinks they'll stay in touch (and that they kept in contact over the summer break) i'm 🥺

[blacksurvivalnostalgichanges]

Nicky:God, I hate being alive. I want to die in a national park under mysterious circumstances.

(half an hour later)

Nicky:Okay I'm done being dramatic. I finally started my homework and it's not that bad. 

[ballerinadellamusica]

The Phantom of the Opera Białystok Calendars: 1- Upiór 2- Christine 3- Raoul Obsada: Damian Aleksander Tomasz Steciuk Paulina Janczak Edyta Krzemień Kaja Mianowana Bartłomiej Łochnicki Łukasz Talik Rafał Supiński

[draikaesehoch]

Are you kidding me, that's so unnecessary

[my-chaos-radio]

Release: April 7, 2015

Lyrics:

You're the one I wanna talk about, talk about

Had a few but you knock them out, knock 'em out

Might just let you meet my mama now, mama now

Might just let you lock it, lock it down

'Cause I've been loving how you are with me, are with me

Ain't no fussing ain't no arguing, arguing

Every plane needs a pilot, pilot

Tell me baby who you're flying with

Like ooh ah, wanna, wanna be around you

Got me breaking, breaking all of my rules, oh

It's all the little things that you do

That got me like ooh, ooh

When I wake up

You're the first thing that comes to mind

Wanna see you like all the time

Yeah we be loving so hard

When I wake up

You're the first thing that comes to mind

Wanna see you like all the time

Yeah we be loving so hard

We be loving

We be loving so hard

We be loving

We be loving so hard

Ain't nobody love him like I love him

Ain't nobody steal him

Damn we be loving hard

We be loving

We be loving so hard

We be loving

We be loving so hard

I'm missing when I'm holding him

Missing when I'm kissing him

Damn we be loving hard

Tryna find, find the words to say, words to say

To describe what you mean me, mean me

Side by side like the yin and yang, yin and yang

Like the stair up to my little wing

And it be hard, it'd hard at times, hard at times

But in the dark boy, you are my light, are my light

The boom boom to my dynamite, dynamite

Baby, you, you are my ride or die

Like ooh ah, wanna, wanna be around you

Got me breaking, breaking all of my rules, oh

It's all the little things that you do

That got me like ooh, ooh

When I wake up

You're the first thing that comes to mind

Wanna see you like all the time

Yeah we be loving so hard

When I wake up

You're the first thing that comes to mind

Wanna see you like all the time

Yeah we be loving so hard

We be loving

We be loving so hard

We be loving

We be loving so hard

Ain't nobody love him like I love him

Ain't nobody's steal him

Damn we be loving hard

We be loving

We be loving so hard, so hard

We be loving

We be loving so hard, so hard

I'm missing when I'm holding him

Missing when I'm kissing him

Damn we be loving hard

We be loving

We be loving so hard

We be loving

We be loving so hard

Ain't nobody love him like I love him

Ain't nobody's steal him

Damn we be loving hard

Songwriter:

We be loving

We be loving so hard

We be loving

We be loving so hard

I'm missing when I'm holding him

Missing when I'm kissing him

Damn we be loving hard

Henry Walter / Jeremy Coleman / Lukasz Gottwald / Rebbeca Gomez / Rick Witherspoon

ArtistFacts:

👉📖

Homepage:

Becky G

[gabrielabe]

His voice still turns me on.