#new York process servers

[walrusface]

Fratt Fic Recs (May 2025)

I am once again very, very excited by all the fantastic Frank/Matt fics that have been popping up on AO3 in the past few weeks. Some recs from what I've read recently below for anyone looking for some weekend reading.

Fic Title & Author: a name to a buried and a burning flame by must_must_jo Rating: E Word Count: 10,370 Status: Completed Author Summary: Matt was surprised when he found out Karen still talked to Frank. How could Matt be jealous, if he never deserved what he wanted in the first place? Notes from Me: Miscommunication tropes galore in this one! It's a lovely Matt POV, and you also get some great glimpses of Frank's developing feelings as well.

Fic Title & Author: Bag by Thunderhel Rating: E Word Count: 11,161 Status: Completed Author Summary: Red’s hands were firm in their hold of his face, a fact Frank didn’t really process until Red clamped his palms down, forcing their mouths apart by a few inches. Frank ran his tongue along his own lip, more out of breath now than he had been at the scene of his massacre, and waited for the yelling to continue. Waited for Red to deck him square in the jaw - he wouldn’t stop him if he tried. He waited for a judgment that didn’t come. “Who’d you think was in the bag?” Red asked, the words spoken almost directly into Frank’s mouth. Notes from Me: I think I saw this one being recommended in the Fratt Discord server (I lurk there a lot but am mostly far too shy to post anything) and it made me go back to re-read it. Such nice angst, such great smut.

Fic Title & Author: Curious Hands and Curiousier Intentions by computercloverfeild_15 Rating: Unrated (I'd pitch it at maybe PG?) Word Count: 4,148 Status: Completed Author Summary: After a drunk, impulsive decision, Frank finds Matt bleeding out in an alleyway. While he's wrapping the Devil's wounds, Matt can't stop himself from asking a question that's been on his mind for a while. Notes from Me: Matt gets drunk and touches Frank's face. I really love the depiction of Frank in this one as he's clearly flustered from trying to respectfully deal with Matt's attention.

Fic Title & Author: i'll be your best kept secret (and your biggest mistake) by mikaminato Rating: E Word Count: 10,815 Status: Completed Author Summary: Matt and Frank, living one day at a time and becoming each other's lifeline without even realizing it. Notes from Me: Oh this is just me in my natural habitat, shouting about mikaminato's writing and chewing the bars of my cage. This is GORGEOUS, and poetic, and I want to roll around in it forever so I have nothing half-way intelligent to add here.

Fic Title & Author: 'For God So loved his only son'… or The Harrowing by Merlin_the_not_so_magnificent Rating: E Word Count: 13,380 Status: Completed Author Summary: What if Matt hadn't listened to Karen and gone into Red Hook anyway. Leaving him badly injured and forcing Frank to face his feelings in the process of saving them both. Notes from Me: Did somebody order angst? Because this fic has buckets of it. Matt ends up caged in Fisk's Weirdo Zoo from the end of DD:BA, and Frank just about loses his mind trying to get him out of there. Glorious.

Fic Title & Author: the devil is my strength and my defense by ArtemideLamp Rating: E Word Count: 4,554 (so far) Status: Work In Progress Author Summary: Frank’s back in New York, finding himself in the company of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen and line between Red and Matt Murdock starts to blur more than he’d like to admit. Notes from Me: This is part 1 of an anticipated 3-parts, and it's got a lovely introspective tone so far - Frank returning to New York after the end of the Punisher S1, and of course running into Matt before too long. Frank's POV in this is really great, and I enjoyed the banter between him and Matt as well, and there's a steamy moment at the end that literally broke my brain (there was a lot of excited caps lock in my comment to the author on this one). Looking forward to the next two parts.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Emily Singer at Daily Kos:

President Donald Trump and co-President Elon Musk's cuts to the Social Security Administration's workforce and operations have caused massive problems for the popular social safety net program that 73 million Americans depend on to afford their basic cost of living. The Washington Post published a bombshell report on Tuesday, detailing the problems Musk has caused at the Social Security Administration through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. From the report:

[The Social Security Administration website crashed four times in 10 days this month, blocking millions of retirees and disabled Americans from logging in to their online accounts because the servers were overloaded. In the field, office managers have resorted to answering phones at the front desk as receptionists because so many employees have been pushed out. But the agency no longer has a system to monitor customers’ experience with these services, because that office was eliminated as part of the cost-cutting efforts led by Elon Musk. […] The turmoil is leaving many retirees, disabled claimants and legal immigrants who need Social Security cards with less access or shut out of the system altogether, according to those familiar with the problems.]

The problems are thanks to a myriad of choices Musk has made to how the agency runs. The Social Security Administration plans to cut roughly 7,000 employees—or 12% of its workforce—which current and former Social Security officials say could make it impossible for the program to keep up with the needs of the tens of millions of Americans who receive and apply for benefits annually. “Everything they have done so far is breaking the agency’s ability to serve the public,” Martin O’Malley, who served as Social Security commissioner under former President Joe Biden, told The New York Times. Musk and his DOGE bros also changed the way recipients can verify their identities to the agency, nixing the ability to do so over the phone and requiring the elderly and disabled people who receive benefits to do it either online or in-person. That’s an incredible burden for a population that is not as computer literate as others. It could also burden recipients who live in rural areas or areas with poor internet access. Going in person would be even more of a burden since many elderly and disabled recipients cannot travel to offices—if they could even get an appointment.

A memo obtained by the newsletter Popular Information said the new identity-verification procedure would lead an additional 75,000 to 85,000 weekly visits to agency offices. In turn, that would lead to “longer wait times and processing times,” the memo said. Already, wait times for appointments can be more than a month. Musk has had it out for Social Security since his buddy Trump put him in charge of finding waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. Musk criticized the social safety net program as a “Ponzi scheme.” He lied that the program is rife with fraud—lies that have led eligible people to lose benefits. He also helped force out the acting Social Security administrator and replace him Leland Dudek, an unqualified hothead who has acted vindictively since taking over.

In just over two months of the Trump/Musk regime, Social Security is in dire peril.

See Also:

The Bulwark: Musk Slashes Social Security as Republicans Debate What a “Cut” Is

Robert Reich: Why Social Security is in the worst crisis since its 1935 founding, and what you can do about it

[secret-origins-crossover]

Secret Origins: Masterlist

Okay, this is your captain Ghost speaking with more updates on this blog! I am slowly figuring out how this works, but I wanted to make a masterlist for the Secret Origins verse!

This is going to be a slow process though it’ll include links to the fanfiction, a potential discord server, lore, and so much more! I haven’t done this kind of thing often, so please bear with me if it isn’t immediately perfect.

Secret Origins is a passion project started by a fan (me!) and is meant to be for other fans. However, I’m the only moderator behind this account which means this is going to be self indulgent! The alternate universe crosses Danny Phantom, American Dragon: Jake Long, Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, and Miraculous Ladybug into the same world. Following their unexpected encounter, they decide to team up in order to take on bigger threats. However, “Secret Origins” is the prequel to something bigger.

In other words, Secret Origins is almost like MCU where there are mini storylines that weave into a main one! And with that, let’s get right to the fun, yes?

SECRET ORIGINS SYNOPSIS

An unexpected trip to Paris for the Fenton’s causes a chain of reactions no one thought possible. Phantom discovers there are other heroes, and Secret Origins follows how the “Secret Quartet” was formed, consisting of Danny Phantom, Jake Long, Adrien Agreste, and Randy Cunningham. However when they’re confronted with new dangers, well, it’s only a matter of time before trouble follows them as it always. Of course, they’ll also have the rest of their expanding team to back them up.

Secret Origins is inspired off of the alternate universe “Secret Trio” though has its own lore and information.

Are you willing to enter a world beyond your imagination? Only one way to find out…

MAIN CHARACTERS

Randy Cunningham: Randy’s your average, normal teenager… right? Wrong! What Norrisville doesn’t know is that he’s also the current Ninja, and there have been others before him. Though his world is about to get a whole lot bigger.

Danny Phantom: Danny’s life was quite ordinary… at least until an accident in his parents’ basement caused him to become a halfa, an odd phenomena making him half-human, half-ghost. Now, he’s also the hero, Phantom, and is ready to kick butt.

Jake Long: Amidst New York is a hidden protector of the magical world: the American Dragon. For Jake Long, being a shapeshifting teenager is nothing crazy! At least until he ends up pulled into something he never thought possible… and bringing up the rear is…

Adrien Agreste: Adrien Agreste is a boy who seemingly has it all: money, fame, brought up in a rich family but what Paris, France, doesn’t know is that he’s Chat Noir! He’s quite used to the hero life until something opens a new door and who knows what come out of that?

Supporting Characters

Marinette Dupain-Cheng: Marinette is Adrien’s partner-in-heroics. As the current holder of the Ladybug Miraculous, protecting Paris isn’t easy until she meets another hero who comes from another country and well, things won’t be the same.

[REDACTED]

NAVIGATION PAGE

about | muses | lore

asks | series

OFFICIAL TAGS

#origins au #origins verse (main tag)

#secret origins lore (lore tag)

#phan noir (platonic tag for danny and adrien’s friendship)

#ghost speaks (answers/replies to asks)

#🌙 (general server tag)

NOTE: This blog is still under development as I flesh out the crossover! Please be patient with me

[dertaglichedan]

EV Disaster: Fisker, Once Promoted by Joe Biden, Hits Bankruptcy Snag

Troubled electric vehicle company Fisker’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings have encountered a significant obstacle, as American Lease, the company set to purchase Fisker’s remaining fleet of SUVs, may back out of the deal due to technical issues.

TechCrunch reports that Fisker’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy process has hit a major snag. American Lease, a New York-based leasing company that agreed to purchase Fisker’s remaining fleet of over 3,000 electric Ocean SUVs, has filed an emergency objection to the liquidation plan. The objection stems from Fisker’s revelation that it may be unable to transfer crucial vehicle information to a new server not owned by the bankrupt company.

The purchase agreement between Fisker and American Lease, approved in July, has been a lifeline for the struggling EV startup. American Lease has already paid “tens of millions of dollars” to Fisker, enabling the company to fund its bankruptcy proceedings and settle debts. The funds have also been crucial in preparing Fisker to liquidate approximately $1 billion in assets that were previously under the control of an insolvent Austrian subsidiary.

Breitbart News previously reported on Joe Biden’s cozy relationship with Fisker:

In 2009, Biden promised that $529 million in new Department of Energy loan guarantees to Fisker Automotive to produce electric cars in Delaware would provide “billions of dollars in good, new jobs.” Four years later, Fisker filed for bankruptcy — without producing a single car in the U.S. As Breitbart News reported at the time, Fisker was granted the loan guarantees to produce a hybrid sports car called the “Karma” for the luxury auto market, with a price of $103,000. High-profile political figures lobbied for the deal. Fisker filed for bankruptcy failed in 2013 and taxpayers lost $139 million on the venture. Republicans noted: “The jobs that were promised never materialized and once again tax payers are on the hook for the administration’s reckless gamble.” Along with failed solar panel manufacturer Solyndra, Fisker was one of the highest-profile failures of the stimulus, which Biden oversaw, and which he has touted on the campaign trail as proof of his ability to handle America’s economic recovery.

[fa1lsoldier]

| FAILED SUPER-SOLDIER TURNED DANGEROUS CYBORG. | by nika. 25. he/they. EST.

EXPLORING THEMES OF. -> being a dutiful son even if it means destroying yourself in the process, wielding anger and pain as a double edged sword, and getting torn apart and building yourself back up again. | Please note he was originally written/made for a discord rp server. That server has since gone inactive. A brief version of his about under the cut. | READ RULES HERE (sideblog to /follows from @vigilanthe )

The only child of a waitress and delivery man, no one expected him to be much of anything. The most he and his parents could hope is that as an adult he could make enough money to help pay the family’s bills. His family struggled a lot with money due to loans with high interest rates, rent, etc. Joining the south korean military at age 18 as a means of supporting his parents/family, he and his family managed to survive paycheck to paycheck… until his father was severely injured in a hit and run accident. At age 28, due to the accident, his father needed frequent hospital visits which racked up a lot of medical debt. To help pay for their ever growing medical debt, he volunteered to join the South Korean army’s experimental corps, a selective branch of the military that was designed to help develop tools and soldiers who are able to keep pace with super powered individuals. The work was dangerous, but the pay was double what he was making as a regular soldier… 

At first, his job was mostly testing weapons, armors and tools for the corps. However, over time, the corps began to experiment with tech less and with people more. Thrust into a testing pool of 7 additional people, he was subjected to multiple injections and experiments, all in an effort to make stronger, faster and smart soldiers (super soldiers). Given the 5th version of the south korean super soldier serum, despite being a newer serum, it proved little better than the earlier version. He and some of the other test subjects experienced violently negative reactions to the serum. Instead of getting faster, stronger and better parts of his body disintegrated into an irreversible dust. Thanks to the super soldier scientists, he lost his jaw and hands. His condition was stabilized by the scientists/doctors but was deemed a failure.

An intern eager to prove their worth took pity on the failure known as “subject 5-8” and gave him a prosthetic jaw and hands. However, in their rush to make the failure useful,they accidentally have him wearable weapon prototypes. The jaw he was given, despite looking more or less like a regular human jaw, wasn’t. Instead it contained sharp, carnivore like teeth. And the hands he were given contained sharp, panther like claws. The intern realized their mistake too little too late. Biting and clawing his way free, Sam left a trail of blood in his wake as he fled the facility. 

During his escape, he killed many high ranking, irreplaceable scientists and soldiers. Because of the loss of so many valuable assets, he was branded a traitor by the South Korean military. Left with no choice but to flee the country to avoid getting arrested or killed, he took the first plane available, which just happened to be to New York. In New York, despite originally laying low and trying to live a more peaceful life, he found himself unable to turn a blind eye to all the injustices being conducted by both the American and South Korean government. He now works as a vigilante, targeting those who experiment on people as well as those who prey on the defenseless.

[lovelanguageisolate]

First Night in Bangkok

Christopher Hitchens once said that however hard you try to avoid cliché, visiting communist Czechoslovakia forces you to reference Kafka at some point.

Anyways, Bangkok really is a fucking trip, man. I feel like I died two days ago and reincarnated in a William Gibson novel. So very much.

Inhuman cybercapital futurity assembling itself in a thousand gleaming Hong Kong-domiciled gigabanks and digital nomad cafés and dancing girls as it chokes old Buddhist temples and shantytowns and struggling palms in a traumatically transcultural miasma of a myriad reactive nitrous oxide species coughed up by a million two-stroke motors.

After a brief nap in my luxury burbclave hotel, security guard and English-fluent beaming hotel staff staff at post, me trying to do battle against 15 timezone hours' worth of jetlag, I register for the first time that I've been dissociating. I'm hobbling around on the air cast I wear for my foot sprain and a collapsible Walgreens cane, of the kind I imagine two-bit hustlers using to beat drug dealers poaching on their turf. But I'm in my favorite mass-market synthetic ink tie dye shirt, made somewhere in Central America I don't recall off hand, my blue tourist shorts, and my Buddhist beaded mala, engraved with Sanskrit I cannot read, on plastic draw string, so hopefully everyone knows I'm a chill dude.

I am in an eight floor mega shopping mall. There are robots serving white frat boys and dutiful waiters in white masks who could be robots serving local Thai prep school kids in sky blue school uniforms 500 baht sirloin steak dinners.

There are as many languages spoken here it feels like as New York City. And hotels, restaurant, massage parlors, tailors, purpose built to pander to rich Arabs, rich Chinese, rich Americans.

There is a strange amodernity to all the floating signifiers. White spring break kids approximating Thai names and wai hand clasps. Chinese shirts with a Markov chain’s chants of floating English prestige nonsense. Transcontinental fake gold watch arbitrageurs. More virtual market makers than a Jersey City server farm somehow spun up and cast into human form.

Sub-orbital resort vacationers in one corner. The state messages of the network monarch on a giant billboard overlooking a four-story expressway overpass on another. Everyone communicating in signs, gestures, and humble Buddhist bows. Hindu, Christian, Mormon, Jew, Shiite, Sunni, and so many Buddhists, all sitting and eating and shopping and praying and coughing and sputtering and fucking and bowing to one another at the end of the world before the self-aware chatbots reconstitute all the anthropomass on the third rock from the nuclear furnace. And of course, on TV, a narcissistic reality TV star in orange bronzer and an oversized navy blue Brioni suit and red tie is inaugurated president of the United States for a second time.

And my $4 dinner, served by surgically masked waitstaff at the shopping mall of the omega point. The terminal object in the category of mass market commercialism. Another floating signifier: a featured photo on Wikipedia of beautiful Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where I've actually been, here mobilized as a metonym for the kind of steak restaurant this place is supposed to be. Of course, probably no one who works here has been to America. It reminds me of Gilles Deleuze’s characterization of capitalism as an inherently deterritorializing process—one that makes every place into every other place, until no one knows where they are.

And the strangest thing is that somehow, between the tourists trying to immerse themselves in the fakery, and the shop workers trying to perform, something genuine is created, even though the thing the performance refers to is fake—and everyone knows it.

Actually, maybe the craziest moment was when I was walking past the clothing hawkers. Of which there were just so unbelievably many. And they were selling wildly unlicensed branded merch for Luis Vuitton and Ralph Loren and Balenciaga and GUESS, etc. Some of them laughably implausible. But others effectively the real thing. The Asian tourists love those in particular. And I asked myself, “how did these knockoffs get so good?”

And then I remembered: Thailand is the place where all of this crap actually gets made! It’s all outsourced to here. They’re just cutting out the middle men seeking rent on the brand. And so I’m not really sure who’s the fraud here. Is it the unlicensed shirt hawker trying to take me for a ride and fudge their “tax” calculations? Or is it the Italian fashion house trying to charge me 20x what it costs the Thai sweatshop workers to make?

I see a case for each.

Obviously not JUST Thailand makes this. There’s also Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Honduras, Costa Rica, etc. All the groveling satellite states trying to scramble up the value-added ladder that capital and IP and telecom flows have turned into the 21st century's Manchester. All part of that big globalized textile mill.

Anyways, I got a pretty nice white dress shirt for like $15 and a truly label-less white bucket hat for $5. And I’m almost sure I got taken for a ride, but I was waaay too tired to haggle, and anyways, by any standard of justice as globalized as these clothing flows, I'm the one taking them for a ride.

I message my mother, half way around the world. It's 7:30 AM on the Eastern Seaboard of the US. It's 7:30 PM here in Bangkok. My mother says, "Keep your wits about you, man. You have to play the haggle game. It's in your Albanian blood. My grandmother would have taught you plenty, had she been there."

I can't help but think that they’d have been like, “no, please! Just take it! For free!! ” after 3 minutes of that. Those Bangkok street hagglers have never met an Albanian orphan.

Gonna go to a Buddhist temple tomorrow. First, tonight, a cocktail bar overlooking the city. In my $1000 black John Varvatos jacket with the Mandarin collar over the $15 off-brand shirt I just bought.

[seriouslycromulent]

The Surprising Reason John Larroquette Took His Career-Defining Role on 'Night Court'

The comedy ninja reveals all this week's 'Parade' cover story.

MARA REINSTEIN

UPDATED:JAN 19, 2023

Get in a car and drive about 30 miles north of Portland, Oregon, into southwest Washington. That’s where you’ll find actor John Larroquette.

He and his wife, Elizabeth, have lived on a piece of rural property for about five years. He collects books and likes to narrate plays in his home recording studio. Sometimes the couple head into the city to try new restaurants and go to the theater and concerts. “It’s really beautiful,” he says. “And at my age, it’s time to slow down and be out somewhere.”

In fact, Larroquette is so fond of his far-from-Hollywood lifestyle that not too long ago, he considered himself retired from the business with a fulfilling career and a room full of trophies to show for it. Never did he think he’d return to grueling TV work, let alone reprise the very role that made him a household name.

Guess what happened next?

Yup, Larroquette, 75, is suiting back up as wise-cracking, endearingly smarmy lawyer Dan Fielding in a new version of the irreverent sitcom Night Court (premiering Jan. 17 on NBC). Set decades after the 1984-92 original, it still chronicles the colorful cast of characters passing through the New York City after-hours courtroom. But now, the Honorable Abby Stone (Melissa Rauch), the daughter of Judge Harry T. Stone (Harry Anderson), bangs the gavel.

Fielding starts the series as a process server, though not for long. “As an actor, I thought it would be an interesting idea to revisit a character 35 years later in his life and see what happened to him,” Larroquette says. “I can’t do the physical comedy and jump over chairs anymore, so my conversations with the producers were about how to find the funny.”

Call it the latest unexpected turn for a seasoned star who began his professional journey as a DJ for “underground” radio in the 1960s, moved from his native New Orleans to Los Angeles to jumpstart his career, once took a gig in exchange for marijuana, played a Klingon in the third Star Trek movie and completed rehab to kick his heavy drinking—all before his very first audition for Night Court in 1983. After the sitcom’s last episode, he won his fifth Emmy (for the drama The Practice) and a 2011 Tony for the Broadway revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He and Elizabeth, wed for 47 years, have three grown children.

“I honestly wish I had a tape recorder going at all times because he’s led such an interesting life and has such wonderful stories,” marvels Rauch, his co-star and a Night Court executive producer. “He’s super-quick, funny and definitely tells it like it is.”

Exhibit A? His interview with Parade, in which he discusses life and death, and everything in between.

Did you sign on to the series right away or was it a tough sell?

When Melissa [Rauch] presented the idea to me, I immediately said, “No thank you.” I didn’t like the idea of being compared to my 35-year-old, younger self. These conversations went on for a year. Then, one day, she told me that she wanted to be on-camera as well, so I decided to try and do it. We ended up pitching the show together, and it got picked up. You know, in New Orleans, there’s a French word called “lagniappe,” which means “a little bonus.” That’s what I consider myself. She’s the heart of the show.

Sadly, a few of your co-stars—including Harry Anderson and Markie Post—have died in recent years. What was it like being on the set without them?

Very emotional. Harry passed away in 2018, but it’s still a tender spot in my heart because he and I were together for a long time even outside of work. Markie and I were very close, and we had exchanged a few emails about the show before she died [in 2021]. She was a big cheerleader for it. And Charlie [Robinson, who played the clerk “Mac”] died when we were shooting the pilot last year. I saw him a lot because we both love the theater. Being on the set—I don’t say this glibly—but it was like seeing dead people. I’d always remember how I had this bizarre and completely sincere family for nine years.

Going back to the 1980s, why did you originally take the Dan Fielding role?

It was a paycheck. This was 1983, and I was still a journeyman actor going from job to job. I was a regular on a series in the ‘70s [Baa Baa Black Sheep], but then I took a few years off to do some extremely heavy drinking. After I got sober and realized I wasn’t going to die, I thought, “What am I going to do?” I had been in a pretty big [1981] movie called Stripes with Bill Murray. I read for Ted Danson’s role in Cheers.

Wait, how far did you get in the Sam Malone casting process?

Oh, I just walked in and did a cold reading along with every other 32-year-old actor at the time. But then I auditioned for the judge in Night Court. The producers asked me to read for this other role of Dan Fielding and I said, “Sure.” Even if I hated the role, I would have taken it because I needed to make money to help pay the rent and support my family and be a responsible member of society. It was luck that I really liked it. Then I got lucky again when NBC picked up the show as a mid-season replacement.

During the height of the show’s popularity, you earned four consecutive Emmys for your performance. That must have felt beyond validating.

Obviously, being acknowledged by your contemporaries was an incredible honor. I don’t say that blithely. It was a remarkable, remarkable feeling. And I was up against some formidable talent—mainly all those guys from Cheers.

Why do you think the character was and is so appealing?

I think because he allowed the audience to know that he wasn’t a bad guy. He was more like a feckless buffoon. He also really wanted to be loved. As a matter of fact, in our pitch, we screened an old scene of Fielding in a hospital bed telling Harry, “I don’t have a life; I have a lifestyle. Nobody has ever said, ‘I love you.��” So when we find Fielding again, he’s loved and lost. And Harry’s daughter forces him out of his cave. It’s a real full-circle moment.

Let’s go back to your own start. Did you have any music skills coming out of New Orleans?

Well, I started playing clarinet in third grade, then I moved to the saxophone in the 1960s. But I euphemistically say that I could talk better than I could blow. So, I took that sax out of my mouth and became a DJ and started using my voice as much as I could. I’ve always loved the analog aspect of audio. I still have some reel-to-reel tape recordings and old microphones.

Is that how you ended up narrating the opening prologue for [the 1974 horror classic] The Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

No, no, that wasn’t through any kind of past work. In the summer of ‘69, I was working as a bartender at a small Colorado resort in a little town called Grand Lake because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with my life. [Director] Tobe Hooper happened to be in town and we became friendly. Flash forward four years, and I found myself in L.A. collecting unemployment checks and trying to decide if I wanted to be an actor. Tobe heard I was in town and asked for an hour of my time to narrate something for this movie he just did. I said, “Fine!” It was a favor.

Per the Internet, he gave you a joint in lieu of payment. True?

Totally true. He gave me some marijuana or a matchbox or whatever you called it in those days. I walked out of the studio and patted him on his back side and said, “Good luck to you!” Now, I have also narrated the consequential films and did get paid. You do something for free in the 1970s and get a little money in the ‘90s. I’m not a big horror movie fan, so I’ve never seen it. But it’s certainly the one credit that’s stuck strongly to my resume.

But you’ve appeared on the big screen plenty of times. Did you have movie-star aspirations following all your TV success?

The movies I’ve done are mostly forgettable. Blind Date [from 1987] is an exception, but that’s because of Bruce Willis and Kim Basinger. And Blake Edwards directed it. It was funny. But my face is not made for a really big screen. It’s a broad, clown-like face. It’s good for a TV two-shot. And you ride the horse in the direction that it’s going and television was always right there and offering me stuff, so I kept doing that.

You also performed in a musical for the first time in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in 2010. How was that change of pace?

I was hesitant to do it because I had never sung and danced on stage. I was convinced I was going to be fired in the first two or three weeks. I’d keep going in my head, “five, six, seven, eight!” just trying to get the steps down. But I loved the lifestyle of being a stage actor in New York. I loved working with Daniel Radcliffe, and we became fast friends. It got to a point where I couldn’t wait to get to the theater and try it again that night. If you’re given the opportunity to do something that may be a stretch, I think it’s important to try and see if you can pull it off.

Can you talk a bit about your personal life? You seem a little reclusive.

Reclusive isn’t accurate, but I’m definitely an introvert. Elizabeth and I met doing the play Enter Laughing and got married in 1975. She puts up with me, and you can’t ask for much more than that. Our kids are grown. My daughter Lisa is a graphic designer and my son Jonathan has had a podcast for the past 17 years called Uhh Yeah Dude. And my youngest son, Ben, is a musician who graduated from the Berklee School of Music. He actually composed the new theme music for Night Court. They’re all lovely, and I love them dearly.

That’s quite a professional and personal success story, no?

You know, considering where I’m from and the kind of culture I grew up in, yes. I’ve been very successful in my chosen field. And I’m grateful for having done that because there were times when I thought I would not live, much less have a career. It’s nothing to be taken for granted. But I’m very old now. Three quarters of a century. I’m sort of playing with house money from now on, regardless of what happens.

Sorry, but 75 isn’t very old!

Yes, it’s old. It’s old. Please. It’s old. There are certainly people who live longer, but I can go down the list of wonderful friends and coworkers who are now deceased. One being Kirstie Alley, my costar in [the 1990 comedy] Madhouse, who was younger than I am. She was a lovely person, and so funny. There are only a few more exits on the freeway and you’ve got to choose one. But I’m not afraid of the hereafter and I don’t bemoan it. It’s been an interesting ride, and all rides eventually end.

Do you have any sort of words to live by?

As corny as it sounds, take things one day at a time. You know, I learned when I stopped drinking at age 32 that all you have is right now. Use the present in your life as much as you can.

Source: https://parade.com/celebrities/john-larroquette-night-court-cover-story

-----

My thoughts (please feel free to ignore):

I'm sure someone in the fandom has already posted this interview John did last year with Parade magazine when the new Night Court premiered. But I can say that it's new to me, so I'm sharing it in case it's new to someone else too.

I apologize for the highlighted purple sections above. That's just me marking the parts of the interview that resonated with me the most.

I don't know about anyone else, but some parts of his answers to the questions made me feel kind of sad. Partially because he's clearly experiencing grief at the loss of his friends. And partially because John himself may not be with us for much longer (although I hope I'm wrong and he beats Betty White to 100).

But I was talking to my mother about some of his answers, and she said that as someone who has reached an age milestone herself, she understands his perspective. And I guess I do too.

It's important to remember that in any other profession, John would likely be retired by now. So we should really be grateful for any roles he takes or public appearances he makes, and hope that his days ahead are filled with the calm, joy and laughter that he so rightly deserves.

[shiningcrystal-prettycure]

I haven't touched this blog, and Tumblr itself in a while, but here we go...

I officially announce my PreCure and Club Penguin fan series...

I've been wanting to create such a series for a very long time, and it's now time! I'll give you some history about how this project came to be, and I'll explain the things to come!

In late 2023, I created my AO3 account, and I began to create concepts for the series, like the main character names, items, locations, and the villains.

In January 2024, I named the series Crystal Heroes Pretty Cure, which was the original name for this project, and then in February, I talked about my plans for this series. Unfortunately, many setbacks had befallen the project, and it was to the point where I almost abandoned it entirely. My personal life was not helping either. Between moving back in America with my dad to New York from New Jersey, and having to find a new school after my disabilities started preventing me from working at my previous school, as well as family issues, I didn't have the energy to work on it anymore. However, so many people and events have encouraged me to resume work on this project and helped me set goals for it in the process.

Celebrating Club Penguin's 20th anniversary this year is the main goal here. Taking things people know from the game and putting them in a new light, putting them in the perspective of the main characters, as well as giving classic characters new personalities and traits, will make things feel fresh and new again. The adventures that will unfold in the world of Shining Crystal will represent the experience of playing Club Penguin, as well as representing the values of friendship, playing fair, community help, respecting others, and working together that the original game had set off to teach it's young players. Action, fantasy and slice-of-life tales will collide as our characters save the world from mysterious enemies, while also having to deal with relatable everyday life and duties. A mysterious sky kingdom will serve as where the story will unfold, while the island where Club Penguin is set on will serve as the main setting. The second goal I have for this is to help people experience Club Penguin in a new way. With all the drama and controversy surrounding private servers or revivals of the original game, it's inevitable that people will be seeking alternative means of engaging with the community. I am not saying that I am the only one who'll provide these alternatives, but helping contribute to the community with a work like this will benefit people who are looking to engage with the community in the long-run. The third and final goal? Being a passion project that I'll love, and one that I hope everyone else will. I love writing and creating, and that's because it's a personal escapism from what I'm stressed about in my life, like my disabilities, political issues, and just struggling to live in general. I know that I can't avoid these issues entirely, and I have to speak up about them, but sometimes, I like doing what I love to just get away from the world, and I hope people love what I do. If they don't, it's OK.

I am currently in the process of writing the first chapter, and this week will be dedicated to revealing information about the series, such as character bios, art and designs, the story and lore, and more! I hope you are excited as I am!

~Flora ♡

[embodiedfutures]

ONE OF OUR FORMER VOLUNTEERS NEEDS YOUR HELP! PLEASE SHARE!

Hi! My name is Camaria, I am 18 years old, and a first-generation low-income freshman at Barnard College of Columbia University. Currently, I am in the process of planning for surgery in October for the removal of a benign jaw tumor, Ameloblastoma.

I became aware of this issue in December 2022 and have been going under treatment as it was a cyst. I spent nearly 5k of my savings paying for that treatment. However, in July, it was discovered that the cyst changed forms, becoming a solid tumor. This is forcing me to undergo serious surgical removal and reconstruction of my jaw. The tumor is eating up my teeth and bones as we speak, so I need this surgery as soon as possible.

I moved away from home a week after hearing the news: from New Orleans, LA to New York City. I am alone in college with little known family near me, planning for this surgery. Both of my parents have no money or savings to help pay for my surgery. My dad was laid off from his welding career due to bad eyesight from age. My mother is supporting my two younger siblings, ages 12 and 17, working as a server in a restaurant to make ends meet.

Bone implants are predicted to cost around 9-12k, and hospital bills are unknown. I also need to get prosthodontist work and dental implants as they are removing at least 7 teeth from my bottom row. Those will cost around 6k-8k, not including the $800 per dental implant. My insurance doesn’t cover any of the costs for my implants or prosthodontist work.

The surgeon has requested I pay 50% of the bone implant cost upfront, amounting to between 4.5k-6k before my surgery date of October 25th.

All donations will go towards the costs of helping me pay my bills. I can’t do this on my own and I’m pleading for help.

[goddesspharo]

no excuses meme: BEFORE THE BEGINNING

[no excuses WIP meme: ask me about my WIPs]

BEFORE THE BEGINNING — three sentences (or more) about something that happened before the plot of my current project

I constantly play with time in my fics (call me Chris Nolan with the way I can't write linearly!) so I'm sure I'll allude to this at some point in the Jurassic Park AU.

The process server hands Jake the manila envelope at 9:59 pm on the dot, which a bit of googling reveals is exactly one minute before the cut-off time in New York City for serving divorce papers on any given business day. He copes with the exquisitely painful knowledge that Nat must've requested rush service from the agency by polishing off every half-full bottle of alcohol in their brownstone – God bless all the booze they hadn't gotten around to cracking open because Hondo called two days before Christmas asking them to get on the first flight to Argentina to check out a cretaceous fossil they might have uncovered – while blasting on repeat that one Dave Matthews Band song that everyone old enough to use the Salinger siblings' bad decisions as a benchmark for their own terrible life choices knew. In hindsight, maybe convincing Natasha that spending Christmas Eve in layover hell was a good idea is the reason he's getting divorced now. However, instead of noodling on that, Jake opens his inbox at half past midnight and takes four tries to hit the reply button on Bradshaw's e-mail about a mysterious opportunity to reinvent the field of paleontology. It takes him entirely too long to find what he's looking for through his Macallan haze before he finally taps on the thumbs up emoji – he hopes; it could also be either the Angelina Jolie thigh emoji or an eggplant – before hitting send and passing out on top of an empty pizza box that Natasha would have killed him for having in their bed if she could stand being in the same room as him.

[dweemeister]

November 15, 2023

By Jonathan Mahler, James B. Stewart, and Benjamin Mullin

(The New York Times Magazine) — It was April 2022, and David Zaslav had just closed the deal of a lifetime. From the helm of his relatively small and unglamorous cable company, Discovery, he had taken control of a sprawling entertainment conglomerate that included perhaps the most storied movie studio on the planet, Warner Brothers. The longtime New Yorker had always loved movies, and against the advice of several media peers, he had moved to Hollywood and taken over Jack Warner’s historic office, hauling the old mogul’s desk out of storage and topping it off with an old-time handset telephone. So far things were going great. He had met all the stars and players, was widely feted as the next in line to save the eternally struggling industry and was well into the process of renovating a landmark house in Beverly Hills. “You’re the dog that caught the bus,” the billionaire octogenarian cable pioneer John Malone, one of Discovery’s largest shareholders, told him. All he needed to do now was pay back the $56 billion in debt that he piled onto the new company to make the deal happen.

Money is never just lying around Hollywood, and the town was still reeling from the pandemic. But that was OK. Zaslav had set a “synergy target” — cost cuts, essentially — of $3 billion in the next two years, and now, with the clock ticking, he got to work. To help, he had brought along his chief financial officer from Discovery, an amateur pilot and former McKinsey consultant named Gunnar Wiedenfels. As spring turned to summer, they laid off hundreds of workers, shuttered or reorganized divisions and suspended or canceled hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of programming. Anything we don’t think is awesome, Zaslav told executives, stop production right now. Turn the cameras off.

Cuts are the norm after a merger, but Zaslav and Wiedenfels were pushing things hard, and in sometimes unorthodox directions. By shelving several nearly completed projects — including the animated, direct-to-streaming movie “Scoob!: Holiday Haunt,” and the fourth season of the postapocalyptic TV series “Snowpiercer” — they saved millions in postproduction and marketing costs, as well as residuals down the line, and they locked in hefty tax breaks up front. Like so much of what happened in Hollywood, all this was reminiscent of a Hollywood production — in this case, the beloved 1967 Mel Brooks comedy “The Producers.” There, the producers, Max Bialystock and Leopold Bloom, realized that under the right circumstances, a producer could make more money with a flop than a hit. For Zaslav and Wiedenfels, the money would come from making sure that no one would get to see the shows in the first place.

Then they came for “Batgirl.” The big-ticket streaming project had just finished filming in Scotland when Zaslav took over, and he and Wiedenfels had immediately identified it as a target — a “free ball,” as Zaslav described it to several colleagues. The audience test scores for a very early cut were not encouraging. Still, a number of executives warned him not to shelve it. “Batgirl” was a $90 million entry in a multibillion-dollar universe of movies and television shows based on DC Comics. Michael Keaton was reprising his role as Batman, and sequels were already in the works. Plenty of movies had tested poorly but still earned millions. Killing an all-but-completed movie would alienate the people Zaslav — or at least Hollywood — needed most: the people who made the movies. It was to no avail. On Aug. 2, the word came down: “Batgirl” was dead.

As predicted, the backlash was immediate and emotional. Stunned, the film’s up-and-coming directors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, tried to look at their footage, but their access to the production server was denied. The head of the DC unit, Walter Hamada, who was not consulted on the decision, asked to be released from his contract and would leave before the end of the year. Courtenay Valenti, one of the most respected development executives at Warner Brothers, was equally devastated and would be gone in a matter of weeks, ending a 33-year run at the studio. The news dominated the Hollywood trades for days. Under fire, Zaslav defended the decision in an earnings call with analysts, saying he shelved “Batgirl” to protect the DC brand. More quietly, Zaslav also sought cover in the authority of Bryan Lourd, the powerful co-chairman of Creative Artists Agency and a leading arbiter of Hollywood mores. As Zaslav told it to several associates, Lourd had supported the decision, observing that it wasn’t in the interest of C.A.A. clients, like the film’s star, Leslie Grace, to be associated with a bad movie. But a C.A.A. spokeswoman denied that. “Bryan Lourd was not consulted in advance of the studio’s move to cancel ‘Batgirl,’” she said.

At Discovery, producers referred to having their budgets slashed as “getting Gunnared,” and Wiedenfels maintains a hard-boiled, McKinsey-esque attitude toward the bottom line. “It’s hard work,” he says. “You don’t make friends.” Zaslav, a born salesman who would prefer to make friends, is more reflective. “You do sometimes get bloodied,” he said in a wide-ranging interview at Warner Brothers Discovery’s corporate headquarters in New York. But business is business. “We have made unpopular decisions because they were necessary.”

That joke about selling to Saudi Arabia in the end. Just... no.

[organizeworkers]

Brooklyn restaurant workers move closer to becoming New York City’s first unionized pizzeria

Alex Dinndorf, a server at Barboncino, told amNewYork Metro that a union would provide him and the others with job security.

“We realized that we’re used to being fired for any reason,” said Dinndorf, who’s been at Barboncino for two years. “It’s a service industry problem.”  

Several workers reached out to the Emergency Workers Organizing Committee (EWOC), which formed in March 2020 to support people struggling with a lack of workplace protections during the pandemic.

Daphna Thier, a labor educator with EWOC, said the volunteer-run organization has helped around 130 union campaigns, including some still actively unionizing, in New York City. Barboncino Workers United, which is what the workers called their union-in-the-making, decided that Barboncino was worth fighting for.

Restaurant unions, up until recently, have been largely formed by workers at chain restaurants such as Starbucks and Chipotle. Thier, who worked as a New York City bartender for more than a decade, is hopeful that Barboncino Workers United could set a precedent for more small businesses.

Read more from the article:

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Eclipses create atmospheric gravity waves, student teams confirm

Student teams from three U.S. universities became the first to measure what scientists have long predicted: eclipses can generate ripples in Earth's atmosphere called atmospheric gravity waves. The waves' telltale signature emerged in data captured during the North American annular solar eclipse on Oct. 14, 2023, as part of the Nationwide Eclipse Ballooning Project (NEBP) sponsored by NASA.

Through NEBP, high school and university student teams were stationed along the eclipse path through multiple U.S. states, where they released weather balloons carrying instrument packages designed to conduct engineering studies or atmospheric science experiments. A cluster of science teams located in New Mexico collected the data definitively linking the eclipse to the formation of atmospheric gravity waves, a finding that could lead to improved weather forecasting.

"Understanding how the atmosphere reacts in the special case of eclipses helps us better understand the atmosphere, which in turn helps us make more accurate weather predictions and, ultimately, better understand climate change."

Catching waves in New Mexico

Previous ballooning teams also had hunted atmospheric gravity waves during earlier eclipses, research that was supported by NASA and the National Science Foundation. In 2019, an NEBP team stationed in Chile collected promising data, but hourly balloon releases didn't provide quite enough detail. Attempts to repeat the experiment in 2020 were foiled by COVID-19 travel restrictions in Argentina and a heavy rainstorm that impeded data collection in Chile.

Project leaders factored in these lessons learned when planning for 2023, scheduling balloon releases every 15 minutes and carefully weighing locations with the best potential for success.

"New Mexico looked especially promising," said Jie Gong, a researcher in the NASA Climate and Radiation Lab at the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and co-investigator of the research on atmospheric gravity waves. "The majority of atmospheric gravity sources are convection, weather systems, and mountains. We wanted to eliminate all those possible sources."

The project created a New Mexico "supersite" in the town of Moriarty where four atmospheric science teams were clustered: two from Plymouth State University in Plymouth, New Hampshire, and one each from the State University of New York (SUNY) Albany and SUNY Oswego.

Students began launching balloons at 10 a.m. the day before the eclipse.

"They worked in shifts through the day and night, and then everyone was on site for the eclipse," said Eric Kelsey, research associate professor at Plymouth State and the NEBP northeast regional lead.

Each balloon released by the science teams carried a radiosonde, an instrument package that measured temperature, location, humidity, wind direction, and wind speed during every second of its climb through the atmosphere. Radiosondes transmitted this stream of raw data to the team on the ground. Students uploaded the data to a shared server, where Gong and two graduate students spent months processing and analyzing it.

Confirmation that the eclipse had generated atmospheric gravity waves in the skies above New Mexico came in spring 2024.

"We put all the data together according to time, and when we plotted that time series, I could already see the stripes in the signal," Gong said. "I bombarded everybody's email. We were quite excited."

For students, learning curves bring opportunity

The program offered many students their first experience in collecting data. But the benefits go beyond technical and scientific skill.

"The students learned a ton through practicing launching weather balloons," Kelsey said. "It was a huge learning curve. They had to work together to figure out all the logistics and troubleshoot. It's good practice of teamwork skills."

"All of this is technically complicated," Des Jardins said. "While the focus now is on the science result, the most important part is that it was students who made this happen."

IMAGE: Plymouth State University students Sarah Brigandi, left, and Sammantha Boulay release a weather balloon from Moriarty, New Mexico, to collect atmospheric data on Oct. 14, 2023. Credit: NASA

[mariacallous]

De-extinction startup Colossal Biosciences wants to bring back the woolly mammoth. Well, not the woolly mammoth exactly, but an Asian elephant gene-edited to give it the fuzzy hair and layer of blubber that allowed its close relative to thrive in sub-zero environments.

To get to these so-called “functional mammoths,” Colossal’s scientists need to solve a whole bunch of challenges: making the right genetic tweaks, growing edited cells into fully formed baby functional mammoths, and finding a space where these animals can thrive. It’s a long, uncertain road, but the startup has just announced a small breakthrough that should ease some of the way forward.

Scientists at Colossal have managed to reprogram Asian elephant cells into an embryonic-like state that can give rise to every other cell type. This opens up a path to creating elephant sperm and eggs in the lab and being able to test gene edits without having to frequently take tissue samples from living elephants. The research, which hasn’t yet been released in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, will be published on the preprint server Biorxiv.

There are only around 30,000 to 50,000 Asian elephants in the wild, so access to these animals—and particularly their sperm and eggs—is extremely limited. Yet Colossal needs these cells if they’re going to figure out how to bring their functional mammoths to life. “With so few fertile female elephants, we really don’t want to interfere with their reproduction at all. We want to do it independently,” says George Church, a Harvard geneticist and Colossal cofounder.

The cells that Colossal created are called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and they behave a lot like the stems cells found in an embryo. Embryonic stem cells have the ability to give rise to all kinds of different cell types that make up organisms—a quality that scientists call pluripotency. Most cells, however, lose this ability as the organism develops. Human skin, for instance, can’t spontaneously turn into muscle or cells that line the inside of the intestine.

In 2006, the Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka showed it was possible to take mature cells and turn them back into a pluripotent state. Yamanaka’s research was in mice cells, but later scientists followed up by deriving iPSCs for lots of different species, including humans, horses, pigs, cattle, monkeys, and the northern white rhino—a functionally extinct subspecies with only two individuals, both females, remaining in the wild.

Reprogramming Asian elephant cells into iPSCs proved trickier than with other species, says Eriona Hysolli, head of biological sciences at Colossal. As with other species, the scientists reprogrammed the elephant cells by exposing them to a series of different chemicals and then adding proteins called transcription factors that turn on particular genes to change how the cells functions. The whole process took two months, which is much longer than the 5 to 10 days it takes to create mouse iPSCs or the three weeks for human iPSCs.

This difficulty might have to do with the unique biology of elephants, says Vincent Lynch, a developmental biologist at the University at Buffalo in New York who wasn’t involved in the Colossal study. Elephants are the classic example of Peto’s paradox—the idea that very large animals have unusually low rates of cancer given their size. Since cancer can be caused by genetic mutations that accumulate as cells divide, you’d expect that animals with 100 times more cells than humans would have a much higher risk of cancer.

But elephants have cancer rates even lower than humans—a surprising fact given their vast size. One hypothesis for elephants’ cancer-defying biology is that they carry lots of copies of a tumor-suppressing gene called P53. Humans, on the other hand, only have one copy of this gene.

P53 is good for elephant health, but it could be the reason that up until now scientists have struggled to create iPSCs from elephant cells, Lynch says. One way the gene seems to work is by stopping cells from entering a state where they can duplicate indefinitely, which is one of the key features of iPSCs.

Hysolli says that she’d like to reduce the time it takes to create elephant iPSCs, and refine the process so the Colossal team can produce them at a greater scale. The iPSCs will be particularly useful if Colossal’s scientists can turn them into sperm and egg cells, something that Hysolli’s team is already working on. Since there is a relatively limited supply of elephant eggs and sperm, one problem facing the de-extinction project is getting enough genetic diversity to support a population of functional mammoths—develop them from too few individuals, and you risk the negative effects of inbreeding. Being able to create sperm and egg cells in the lab should help with that, Church says.

These cells could also be useful for conservation work, Hysolli says. Colossal has partnered with researchers working on elephant endotheliotropic herpes virus (EEHV), a leading cause of death for young Asian elephants. The iPSCs could be a good way to figure out how the virus infects different cell types. The cells will also be useful for testing whether Colossal’s edits to produce mammoth-like fur and fat layers are working as scientists hope.

“I have no doubt that given enough time and money they will overcome the technical challenges of making a woolly-mammoth-looking elephant,” says Lynch. But he’s less convinced of the ecological benefits of de-extinction. The startup intends to introduce the elephant-mammoth hybrids into the wild to re-create the role once played by the mammoth in the Arctic ecosystem, grazing the land and trampling snow cover, potentially decelerating the melting of permafrost.

“How many hairy Asian elephants do you need to make that work?” Lynch asks. Whether there really is a niche for edited elephants in the Arctic 4,000 years after mammoths last roamed the area is a question that conservationists are still grappling with. Sure, scientists might be able to create mammoth-like Asian elephants, but whether we should is open to much debate.

Colossal’s scientists will be glad if they get to that point. Although they have elephant iPSCs, much of the work of creating elephant-mammoth hybrids is ahead of them. They must figure out how to create elephant sperm and egg cells, master the right edits to tweak their elephants, and take their creation through the 22-month Asian elephant gestation period. And then they have to do it enough times to build a population that can actually deliver on some of their ecological aims.

“It feels very significant,” Church says of the iPSC breakthrough. “This is a very big deal.” If Colossal is going to deliver on its de-extinction mission, then there will be many other moments like this ahead.

[shcpcrsistcd]

@galacticglaze

natasha rarely left the compound these days, preferring to keep close to base in case one of the other remaining avengers, scattered across the planet and the universe needed to get a hold of her for a report. the ones on earth could reach her via phone, but for others like carol or the remaining guardians, the easiest way to get into contact with earth was at the compound itself. still... sometimes the former spy needed to leave, needed a change of scenery... or a harrowing reminder of her and her friends' failures. the larger cities had suffered the most with the blip, new york, san francisco and dc... new york had never exactly been paradise, but the before and after pictures said everything anyone needed to know. even a year later, many buildings were in need of repair and streets were lined with destruction and garbage. after the battle of new york, nearly ten years ago, the rebuilding of the city had been fairly quick, but fast forward those ten years... and half of the people who'd worked in construction, repairs and sanitation snapped away and general morale down amongst the population that remained, cleanup was... a much slower process. slow... but not at a stand still. everytime she went into the city, there was a little more progress that she could see, but the faces remained the same. that was to be expected. everyone had lost someone in the blip.

she kept the cap on her head that covered the crimson roots that had started coming in pulled low. while she and rogers weren't exactly wanted criminals and could come and go as they pleased without trouble, natasha didn't want to be recognised. the looks she got when she was... she didn't want to deal with them. the ones of betrayal for not having stopped the snap... or the ones that still saw her as some kind of hero. she was no hero and she never was. she never really... wanted to be. she just wanted to atone for the mistakes of her childhood, to wipe her ledger clean. her routine when leaving was the same every time... training... either at a gun range, a ballet studio or fogwell's gym, a hole in the wall in hell's kitchen where she would hit a bag for a few hours. today, it had been the last one and now... she was heading for a diner down the street from it, the most recent newspapers and her tablet in hand so she could torture herself keep herself informed as to the goings on while she forced herself to pick at a somewhat proper meal. she let herself inside and found a booth, setting her boxing gloves into the seat before sliding in herself setting her things on the table in front of her. she mustered up a small, thin lipped smile at the server as she came over to pour a fresh cup of coffee and asked for her order. "just the coffee for now. thank you." she said, her voice low. she took a sip from the off white mug, her eyes scanning the room and pure instinct. the diner was full and yet... the voices she did hear were hushed. everywhere and everyone was quieter these days and this place was no exception despite it once being the completely opposite. she refocused her attentions on one of the newspapers, thumbing through it, occasionally glancing up to observe for any change in activity inside or outside or to sip from her coffee. again, out of pure instinct, always keeping herself aware of her surroundings.

the sound of the bell when the door opened tore her attentions away from her paper again as she observed the new customer who's walked in. blind... as indicated by the stick and sunglasses. a quick glance around told her that all tables were still currently occupied. she took in a breath before sitting back in her side of the booth. "hey... all the tables are taken, but... feel free to join me if you'd like. can't promise i'll be much of a conversationalist though."

[plethoraworldatlas]

Since 2022, generative AI, which can produce text, images, or other data, has undergone rapid growth, including OpenAI's ChatGPT. Training these AI tools requires feeding the models a large amount of data, a process that is energy intensive. Hugging Face, an AI-developing company based in New York, reported that its multilingual text-generating AI tool consumed about 433 megawatt-hours (MWH) during training, enough to power 40 average American homes for a year.

And AI's energy footprint does not end with training. De Vries's analysis shows that when the tool is put to work -- generating data based on prompts -- every time the tool generates a text or image, it also uses a significant amount of computing power and thus energy. For example, ChatGPT could cost 564 MWh of electricity a day to run.

...

This extreme scenario is unlikely to happen in the short term because of the high costs associated with additional AI servers and bottlenecks in the AI server supply chain, de Vries says. But the production of AI servers is projected to grow rapidly in the near future. By 2027, worldwide AI-related electricity consumption could increase by 85 to 134 TWh annually based on the projection of AI server production.

The amount is comparable to the annual electricity consumption of countries such as the Netherlands, Argentina, and Sweden. Moreover, improvements in AI efficiency could also enable developers to repurpose some computer processing chips for AI use, which could further increase AI-related electricity consumption