#sfs virus warning
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SFS Hack
For the sake of keeping this a bit shorter I've decided to create this post and link to the original, much reblogged post about this matter. its contains a lot of info thats definitely worth a read(!) but for now: Factsheet:
SFS uploads are currently NOT possible (see above).
CC (custom content) files ALWAYS end with .package.
Script mods files ALWAYS end in .ts4script
On Windows: if a CC folder on SFS or downloaded zip file contains a .exe do not run it! immediately remove it and empty your trashcan/bin.
On Mac: If a CC folder on SFS or downloaded ZIP file contains a .dmg do not open it and drag it into your App folder! Immediately remove it and empty your bin.
For creators: change your password if you have a SFS account, always use a randomly long(!) generated password (LastPass, Password (Apple)!
My own downloads are also stored on Dropbox.
I only use SFS as a 2nd link for all my downloads so if you download then use the Dropbox links for now. if you do use SFS then pay attention to the following:
If any zip or package file from me has been updated in march/April 2025 (at SFS):
Do not DOWNLOAD the file/zip from SFS and please let me know!!! ( I still have to check ALL folders manually for this...)
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hi! sorry to bother! any sci fi recommendations with women in them? gay women would slap but i don’t want to be too demanding.
that is not too demanding at all! all of these are heavily focused on women & almost all have gay protags:
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone - poetic romance novella about two women on opposing sides of a war spanning all of time, unfolding through letters
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson* - a tense, dark story about a world in which travel between parallel universes is monopolized, and a woman who is dead in almost every single one
Ammonite by Nicola Griffith - 90s lesbian/feminist scifi classic; thoughtful social sci-fi set on a world where a virus killed off all men and most of the women, about an anthropologist who's come to study the inhabitants and test a vaccine
The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey - domestic thriller about a brilliant scientist whose husband clones her to make a "better" (more docile & housewife-y) version of her - and is then killed by the clone, leaving the two women to cover up the murder
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling - unsettling, claustrophobic horror about a caver on an alien world, her untrustworthy handler being her only contact with the surface world
The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed* - bleak, heartwrenching 90s cyberpunk about a lesbian news reporter in a dystopian regime who uncovers more than she bargained for
Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki* - emotional & hopeful scifi/fantasy mix about a trans violin prodigy, her teacher who has a deal with the devil, and an alien running a donut shop
some more, rapid-fire: Dawn by Octavia Butler* (iconic classic sf, first contact); The Telling by Ursula K. Le Guin (social sf, envoy-on-alien-world); The Seep by Chana Porter (utopian, unique take on alien invasion); The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa (space opera, spy thriller); The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart (time travel, murder mystery); The Outside by Ada Hoffman (cosmic horror); Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta (dystopian YA, mecha); Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy* (classic sf, time travel)
(*books with an asterisk are ones I'd particularly recommend looking up the content warnings for, as they can get quite heavy)
#i could keep going honestly there is SO much good scifi with women in it.#&it was no bother at all!!! i love recommending scifi :]#in fact feel free to get way more specific than that. this was easy mode#books
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Hi :) For some strange reason I keep getting a "this file contains a virus or dangerous program" warning in the downloader on the "Meduza_TS4_EuropeanFolkScarf" file from the OneDrive link. Tried several times, but it just won't download. Can you maybe take a look at the files? The other files are fine, without any warnings (it's the first time I've gotten a warning on one of your files, and these warnings tend to be rare).
Hi!
I've downloaded the file from OneDrive myself to see if I would get the error. I was able to download it without my browser screaming at me. I had also run my antivirus to scan the downloaded zip file and it found nothing dangerous about the file.
I know it's not helpful at all, but have you tried using other browser? I'm on Firefox. Alternatively, you could try downloading from SFS - I was able to upload it there (unlike the dress).
I'm sorry but I can't think of better solution right now. 😕 I've got no idea what could be wrong with that upload.
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Your recolors of the shutters were flagged as containing virus by windows defender:
Trojan:Script/Wacatac.H!ml
Hello, I have Bitdefender and it didn't detect anything when I downloaded the set just now. Has anyone else experienced any virus warnings through sfs?
This article here at Cybernews lists the ways a computer can get that virus, I think/hope in your case it's a false positive.
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The Demonstration
By Borg 5 of 9 SF
Introduction
In September 2022 I was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of paralysis called transverse myelitis. In my case, antibodies attacked my spine instead of a virus I had been fighting. During a 24-hour span, I went from being able to walk to not being able to support my weight. The paralysis kept creeping up my body like rising water, fortunately stopping at the abdomen. But it took powerful steroids and intense physical therapy to regain my ability to even shuffle down the hall with the aid of a walker.
Over the month and change I spent in the hospital, I experienced a lot of stress and worry, but also a lot of interesting sensations. My cybernetics kink helped preserve my sanity in these moments, and so I have folded many of my experiences into this transformation story. Kink can be a lot of things, and a protective mechanism is one of them. I am grateful to my kinky eccentricities, which I used to be ashamed of, for helping me through this crisis. My love did too– she was there for me every day and night.
But this is a work of fiction. Although my condition provided inspiration for this piece, the specific events depicted are far from anything which happened in real life. Which brings me to:
Content warnings: This is a work of erotic cybernetic fiction. It includes: a gender-neutral first person perspective, being taken apart, being awake during cyborg conversion, playing with the idea of consciousness. It contains a female dom, male drones, and relations with both.
—-
Chapter 1: Amnesia
The first thing you remembered were the bright lights flooding your eyesight. The discomfort of the tubes in your esophagus and the plastic mask over your mouth and nose. In the periphery of your vision you can see beings in powder blue surgical masks bent over your abdomen. You feel tugging and pulling as they work on something inside your abdominal cavity. But there is no pain. There is little sensation at all.
How did I get here? What is happening? You can’t remember anything. Your head swims, no doubt an effect of all the drugs pumped into your system. But you can’t move.
“Doctor, the drone is awake”
“OK, we’re almost done here.”, another voice off to your other side replies. There is a high pitched whir as the doctor secures something to your shoulder. It clamps down. You don’t feel anything but the pressure. You try to move your head to look down at your body but it is held firmly in place.
Then, blankness as you are put back under.
—
You are suddenly aware of your senses again. An unspecified amount of time has passed.
You’re in an upright position, strapped to a rack. You try once more to look down at your body, but your head again cannot pivot downward.
The room looks sterile. There is a cart off to your left with laboratory equipment. You scan the room. Across from you is a monitor displaying what appears to be x-rays of a figure from both the front and profile views. Wires snake through the body, hooking to solid objects embedded within: Devices inside the ribcage, abdomen, with smaller electronics throughout. Behind the right eye is shown a circular implant. And behind that, items in the brain and replacing the ears. There are no legs below the thigh. It is then that you realize you are suspended above the ground. You try to form words, but nothing comes out. You hear voices:
“The drone is online”
“Vitals holding stable”
There is a dull ache behind your own right eye that would seem to correlate with what is on the monitor. Is this you on the screen? Before you can fully digest what you’re seeing, they speak again:
“Alright, let’s get it prepped. Flush the jacks”
“OK, flushing”, comes the reply.
A cool rush flows through your veins at the entrance point of your jacks: arms, right side of the lower abdomen, left side of the neck, and where your nipples and external genitalia were. You taste something metallic as the chemicals are excreted through your lungs.
You catch a glimpse of your naked, scarred form on a reflective metallic surface. The image is distorted, but you can make out stapled-shut stitches and small implants scattered over the body, protruding from the skin. Your right eye has been removed, and electronics are recessed in the orbital socket. What have they done to me?
“Ocular implant?”
“Ocular implant.”
A human clad in baggy silvery protective garb blocks your view. The face is obscured by a breathing mask and a glowing blue augmented reality lens over one eye. You can almost make out the HUD from the front, the text and images reversed. It holds up a device up to your face. It goes far into your eye socket, delicately clicking into place as it connects with the cybernetics in your skull. You hear a faint high-pitched whine as it powers on. There is a brief burst of static in your eardrums as your vision shows glitches, like a corrupted video file trying to recover. Then, clarity– more than you ever had.
Other humans come into view. One carries a bulky chest plate piece. Another human, from before, returns with another piece: one which is contoured with a bulge. And, yet another, a round half-dome. The material of these components is an alloy unlike anything familiar.
The human with the half-dome attachment comes forward and off to the left, out of your periphery. You feel cold metal and static-electric tingling as the material makes contact with your bare head. It fully grips the left side and top of your head but on the right only covers the crown, leaving the hairless flesh dotted with implants exposed.
The human with the chest plating approaches you and holds the front plate over your implant-riddled chest as the back plating dangles to the side. The being carefully aligns connection points on the underside of the plate with the jacks protruding from your body. Another brings the back plating around, again aligning it.
“1.. 2.. 3” one says. They push the plates together in unison, the connections entering the jacks, your new chassis penetrating your body. Fusing with it. It is part of you now.
A low-rise backpack made of the same material is carefully slotted into the backplate, and you feel tugging sensations as it is locked firmly into place, and a vibration as it comes to life. There is a new heaviness, that of your new chassis pushing you down with its weight. But you don’t budge.
Finally, the engineer holding the piece with the bulge holds it in front of your crotch. The one who installed the chest plating pulls a thick hose from the bulge, and slowly feeds it into the port which has replaced your primary genitalia. Through the center of the hose’s jack is a curved metallic rod. The rod slowly, and smoothly, glides into your port. There’s a strange sensation as it penetrates, going impossibly deep inside your body. A slight pinching, the nerves being stimulated in ways they have never experienced. It makes its way inside your urethra until it finally pushes through the internal sphincter leading to the bladder, or whichever biomechanism your bladder has become. The ring around the base of the cable twists and locks itself into place. There is a cool, almost painful sensation of fluid being pulled from you. Or is it being fed into you? The sensation is constant. It hurts a little, but it’s not a bad feeling.
Cables are picked up off a tray to your left, and your headgear is plugged into the back of the muscled chassis. More cables are attached from the backpack to the jacks on your temple, and finally, from the side of the codpiece into the backpack
An engineer hits a key and the bonding process begins.
You feel a needle enter you. Then another. Each time, the sting of the metal pushes through your flesh into deeper tissue. Some make connections with pinhole ports, others stick into biological systems.
Something appears in your head, like an inner monologue but foreign to you. It is raspy and robotic: “Neural network online. Firmware 55.1.” Did you speak it or just imagine it?
Time: 545011200. You have nothing to compare it to.
“Unit. State your designation,” the engineer queries the cybernetic network which now comprises your brain.
You stiffen slightly. There is a strange burbling in your mind as the programming hijacks your brain. It becomes louder until it overwhelms you. Then: “AX-5 series drone. Unit identifier 74J-96-B”, you speak in unison with it.
The programming releases you, dropping you back into free will. Why is it in my head? What is going on? And why do I crave it?
With some effort, you look down. There is a halting servo sound as your head moves jerkily– malcoordinated. You see your arm ends above the elbow. It terminates in a gleaming jack. One of the humans carries a prosthesis. Instead of a hand, a metal claw is at the end, and myriad unfamiliar tools extend from the side. Some are needle-like, some like tiny robotic fingers. You are hungry for it to be attached to your port. You need it. Just as you were thinking that, your arm automatically pivots forward to accept the new limb. It is carefully secured to the port sideways, then twisted to lock into place. A feeling of euphoria courses through you. An especially thick hose is fed from your back into your manipulator arm.
Another key is hit, activating another device. Electric pins and needles shoot up your arm, but the sensation is not entirely unpleasant. There is again the feeling of being taken over, ascending into bliss. Your arm slowly raises, claw opens and closes and the tools fan out from the side of your wrist and back, like a wave. Calibration complete. You hold it up so you can see the piece in detail, gazing upon it in wonder. Every movement you make, you hear the faint sound of tiny motors. You feel like you are about to orgasm. It is building. Then, a voice snaps you out of it:
“OK, shut it down”
A switch is flipped. Your head goes limp as you stand. The manipulator arm returns to a rest position. Vision off. Consciousness off.
Chapter 3: Retraining
You regain consciousness. Systems power on. Eyelid flickers. Your one eye opens. Two seconds later you are perfectly awake. You scan the room. You are still in your recharging station.
Time: 545356800. 345600 seconds have passed since your previous activation [4 days].
The doors across from you open. A female figure enters. She is medium height, stocky with broad shoulders, hair pulled back, captivating eyes, and dressed in a white lab coat. Her heels click as she primly moves across the hard floor, directly to the workstation in the corner. She hits a button with a gloved finger then turns to watch.
The cables holding you into the rack detach with a hiss, and you’re released to gravity. With a heavy thud, your rubber-soled cybernetic feet hit the ground. It is the first time you are aware that you now have lower legs. But you feel nothing except for a quick static electric sensation shooting up your leg to your thigh. The shock echoes up and down your leg, resonating inside your body until it decays back to nothing, like a struck door-stop spring. It is not entirely unpleasant although it should be: There is something inside of you which it satisfies.
The woman gazes at your body before looking you in the eye. “Drone, state your designation”. As she says these words, you stay fixated on her eyes. It’s difficult to look away. And, as you realize this, her pupil flashes red for a quarter second. With each instantaneous flash, a rapid pulse materializes inside your head, foreshadowing what will immediately follow. Programming seizes control of your mind once again.
“AX-5 series drone. Unit identifier 74J-96-B” you again say, your voice not yours.
“Your controller is keyed to my mind, drone. You are now locked to me, and only I can control you.”
Once again, you are dropped back into free will. And it is here you first realize you cannot move your limbs. Your feet are planted in place. Attempting to move your arms produces little effect. Whatever atrophied remnants of your biological muscle remain cannot overpower the mechanical limbs they are encased in. Your entire body feels stiff and heavy.
“Walk towards me.”
You hear her commands in your head as she speaks the same thing a split second later, eerily doubling the voice.
Your limbs are now unlocked. Cautiously, you attempt to take a step. At first, the leg sticks to the ground. With some concentration, it lifts, but you cannot place the foot precisely where you want. The foot again lands harshly, a slight distance from where you intended it to. More static shocks echo throughout your lower extremities, leaving behind an intriguing tingling sensation. They reach a higher point than they previously did, now firmly up to your inner thighs. The misstep knocks you off balance, but your stabilizers quickly kick in and you are automatically righted.
“The neurons need to form new connections with your new limbs. All the programming you contain only goes so far; the old pathways and muscle memory in your brain needs to all be rewired. Your neural network needs to be trained.”
Without warning, she gives you a firm shove. You begin to helplessly tumble backwards, but the stabilizers once again activate, forcing your leg to step back, avoiding a fall.
“But, even though you cannot willfully move your limbs with coordination, your programming has certain routines that will take control in an emergency. Think of them as additional brainstem reflexes.”
She turns her back to you, walks across the room, then turns to face you again. You look away, but even without seeing her eyes, the voice appears in your mind:
“Try again. Walk to me.”
Your posture stiffens and you once again are looking your controller in the eyes. Your leg comes up easier this time. But, placing it back on the ground correctly proves to be a chore. With some concentration, you manage to get the leg closer to its target, foot hovering near its destination. Your foot thuds into the ground awkwardly. Balance is lost, but you are able to right yourself without a cybernetic assist. More electricity arcs through your legs. It reaches the crotch, leaving behind the pleasant tingling.
“The shocks are probably hitting some pleasurable areas for you right now.”
This remark takes you aback. How would she know about the experience of drones?
“This is what the other ones have reported, at least. Oh, you thought you were the first?”, she says with a smirk. “We are putting together drones for a big demonstration. No, you’re maybe the fifth, or sixth one. I lose count. The others are in hibernation, hooked to the charger until the big day. And that’s where you’ll go when we’re done with you here. I hear they orgasm sometimes. Well, sometimes that’s not so subtle.”
“I am done with you for now, 96-B. I must go tend to one of the other units. You’re pretty charged up; I can just power you off where you stand.”
“Wait, no!”, you think. You don’t want to be turned off here! Her eyes flash. Your systems begin powering down, one after the other. Within a second, you stand in the middle of the floor, your head drooping forwards. The tiny status lights on your implants dim. Your mind is the last system to click off.
—
Time: 545616000. A delta of 259200 seconds [3 days]. You are pulled by your controller down the hallway. She holds onto a thin metal strip which has been clamped to the mount point on your chassis, near your sternum. You are able to walk, although your limbs feel distant and abstract. Since your body doesn’t have the same sensory input as a human body, any relevant senses and proprioception information is fed back to your brain as data you must cognizantly pick apart. This makes coordination and navigation largely a cerebral activity at first.
But, eventually, your neural network is programmed, and it becomes automatic. Perhaps a little too automatic. As you settle into a rhythm, you glide down the hallway, feeling as if your limbs are someone else’s. The heaviness and stiffness never did dissipate, a consequence of your powerful mechanical appendages. But your walking is still halting and awkward.
The controller takes off her lab coat. As she slowly removes the fabric, a gleaming cyborg body is revealed. Her body is coated with a perfectly form-fitting covering. It isn’t black or silver, but a mixture of both. Tubes snake down one arm, connecting to flat devices attached to her abdomen. Her wide hips and pleasingly domed stomach catch your eye, as well as the tiny mechanical arms mounted at the sides of her torso, 2 per side.
“You need adjustment, drone.”. The robotic appendages unfold. Small tools at the ends whir to life as she moves towards you.
“This performance level won’t do. I have been authorized to upgrade you to something better. There’s too much flesh; too much conflict inside of you. It needs to be suppressed.”
A phallic device uncoils from her crotch as she circles behind you. She begins breathing heavily in anticipation.
“The human nervous system is too slow to retrain, and ill-equipped to manage your redesigned limbs and cybernetic organs. It will be replaced with something that suits you a bit better. Something which brings you closer to perfection.”
With those words, she plugs into your rear port. It is like any other machine plugging into your body, like being in the recharging station. That thought comforts you. As she places her rubber-coated hand over your mouth, the phallus is pushed into you as far as it can go. A flat metal ring around your rim rotates, locking the phallus into place. She moans, and the nanobot transfer begins. A cool liquid rushes as microscopic robots, submerged in a silvery stabilizing fluid, begin flowing inside of you. Her robotic arms come around to your front. One, with a small flat tool on it, wriggles underneath your left pectoral plate. Others make their way inside as well, finding their ways past the small spaces between other plate segments. Two into the right side of your abdomen, through the small cracks in your chassis– the pathways which lead to sensitive systems and flesh.
There is a fast, pulsing sensation from your rear implant: rapid but small electric zaps traversing from the port into your abdomen. You feel it up your spine. Some of them reach to the brainstem. Many would find this sensation disturbing, but you are so turned on that it only registers as a curious discomfort.
Her other gloved hand reaches around, cupping the domed implant where your right ear was. The dome opens, allowing the thick tube snaking out of her palm into your headgear. The innermost panel in your braincase opens, letting it worm into your mind. A jarring, disorienting electric shock goes through your head. You are being programmed. New devices are being built inside your body, turning you into something closer to an automaton. This idea is not unpleasurable.
She grips you tightly. As the tools wriggle, making modifications inside your body, her heavy breathing intensifies. Her tools occasionally brush against human flesh, creating a thin, focused, tingling sensation along the path they trace. You feel the cool rush as the nanobots continue to stream into you. Her gloved hand around your mouth involuntarily squeezes your jaw as she lets out a moan. Your entire body feels pins and needles now, dissolving into pleasure. It is unbearable. Several times, you have wanted to let out a yell, but you are unable to move your mouth with her hand over it like that– not that any unauthorized sound could be produced from your voicebox anyway.
As your mind is rewritten, your eye turns to a blank stare. A small amount of silver, oily nanobot fluid spurts from your front port.
You are ready.
Chapter 4: The Demonstration
CW: Rapid dismantling, robot deactivations. Don’t worry: They will be fixed, and reassembled, and they love it.
A hundred or so spectators file into the theater. On stage, the controller looks over the crowd, all silhouetted against the bright lights. The onlookers are an anonymous cluster of shadows. But you stand, well-lit. You are one in a lineup of androgynous cybernetic forms, all in different configurations, and in differing levels of conversion. Flanking the group are guards whose helmets conceal what lies beneath. A crosshair is projected onto their visors which displays where they are looking. Are they robots or cyborgs? Flesh with implants like you? Or, A crude mess of metal, wires, and sensors. Perhaps they are a combination of both, the biological components disfigured to accept the enhancements without regard for aesthetics or beauty. You aren’t even sure what you are classified as, given the recent and severe alterations to your mind and body.
You gradually become aware of your controller speaking to the crowd. “...it doesn’t need to sleep. It doesn’t need to stop to eat or excrete– it is entirely self contained. All it needs is to be plugged into a recharge station occasionally. “
“And, each one of these cyborgs are field-reprogrammable. We will now give a demonstration.”
A cyborg which appears to have been a male steps forward, its vacant eyes staring dead ahead, every bit under hive control as you are. You hear a periodic hissing sound as it is fed oxygen through tubes to its mouthpiece. There is a faint high-pitched electronic whine as its servos engage. It moves across the floor towards you. As it comes face to face with you, you can smell its PVC, rubber and plastics.
This maintenance drone examines you for a few seconds, then circles behind, just as the controller had done before. Its manipulator arm reaches around, coming across your torso, pulling your back against its chest. The drone raises its humanoid palm to the side of your head. Your conscious mind is alarmed. “What does it intend to reprogram me for?”, you think to yourself, thoughts racing. But your ear-dome obediently opens, betraying your fleeting feelings of resistance. The cybernetic tongue easily snakes inside you, pushing into the braincase, forming connections with what makes you you. Does the other drone desire this, or is it simply following its programming? It is a moot point– there is little difference between obedience and desire.
The controller looks on, pleased, as your mind is further rearranged.
And then it suddenly stops.
The drone retracts the cable into its palm, still gripping your torso with its other hand. Latches on your body open in sequence, each one audibly clicking as it disengages. Your left leg clatters to the floor. Without a signal from your spine, it aimlessly pivots at the knee a few seconds before running out of power and ceasing all motion. The right leg does the same. Your manipulator falls from the mount point in your upper arm, the tools randomly operating. Pale flesh is clearly visible around the jack on the end of the detached limb: human and machine grown together as one.
The maintenance drone pulls out. As it does, your abdomen falls in sections to the floor, one segment after the other. It is left holding just your upper chest, neck, and head, like a cybernetic bust.
“You see, these drones are completely modular”, the controller states with pride, addressing the crowd. “Every part of them is encased in a cybernetic unit which can easily be swapped between different drones.”
The maintenance drone carries you over to a stand which has a hook and cables, and slots the hook into a mount point on your back. You hang suspended as the drone connects the cables to your jacks. The familiar cold rush flows through your body. The chemical taste in your mouth. Yet another drone begins picking your old parts up from the floor and placing them in a carrying case.
“If one component fails, you can simply pull the corresponding module from another drone, or from a supply of spare parts.”
Another drone stands to the side of your station, staring blankly. The maintenance unit you were interfacing with goes over to the drone to your side. A click is heard as the drone’s arm is disengaged from its shoulder, exposing a metallic interface. From the forearm down, the arm appears mostly human, but with two wires snaking down it like a technological caduceus. They terminate at a web-like glove covering the backs of the fingers, the wrist, and wrapping around to the palm. It has two flat, rectangular implants– one on the back of the hand, and one on the back of the forearm. The drone approaches you with the appendage and secures it to your shoulder. Nerves come to life conveying sharp, prickly sensations to your brain where the skin is exposed. It continues, removing parts from one drone and securing them to your body. Part after part snaps in until you are rebuilt. And, until the drone next to you is a hanging torso. It is still conscious, and does not seem particularly bothered by being stripped. The maintenance drone wheels it off of the stage.
She turns back to the crowd and continues, “One of the best things about these drones is that they always obey. They have no choice, nor do they desire to have a choice. No matter the demand, they will do it”. She looks over at one of the guard drones in polished black plating. Her eyes flash. The guard drone pivots towards another drone, raises its arm cannon, and aims straight ahead. They pause. The other drone stands, motionless, expressionless, dutifully accepting its fate. Suddenly, lightning crackles from the guard’s cannon and strikes the drone in the chest. With a quick whir of servos, the drone jolts, quickly taking two steps backwards, its stabilizers preventing it from losing balance. A bright web of electricity dances across its muscled plating, outwards from the impact point. Its body judders and the left leg falters. Dozens of glowing electric fingers make their way down the limbs before dissipating. Sparks fly as connections are severed and circuits fuse. Smoke begins emanating from its body. Other components are now unable to function, and the drone is aware that thousands of its systems are in a cascading failure. But its face does not register any emotion. The stabilization finally fails. The drone falls to its knees, slumps sideways, and ultimately comes to rest. It lies awkwardly crumpled. The manipulator continues to whir away for another several seconds before finally ceasing. A faint odor of ozone wafts across the stage. In your mind you hear: “Unit 97-X disconnected from hive”, the sole acknowledgement that the drone has been deactivated.
The controller pauses to let the shock of the situation sink in. She then continues with her pitch.
“Not to worry. There is rarely damage that can be done to these drones which is truly unfixable. It will be up and running again within a few hours of repairs. In the worst case scenario, the braincase is impenetrable to nearly anything, and can almost always be salvaged.“
Four drones descend on the broken cyborg. One carries a leg off. Another drone arrives, taking its place. A steady stream of drones, going to and from, carrying various parts off to be repaired or recycled. Plating. The manipulator. Cables.
“These braincases have a backup which can keep both the electronic and biological components alive for two hours after separation from the body.”
Other smaller components that cannot be identified. An ocular implant. The top section of the headgear. Is one.. the face?
The pitch continues, “And remember, these fully interchangeable braincases are not only useful inserted into cyborgs or humanoid robots. They can also be used as the central processing unit for large machinery, and they are also quite powerful as a processing node for distributed AI systems. Well, AI is getting a lot less “artificial” with these advances, isn’t it? Marrying the analytical and cognitive abilities of a biological brain with the cold, raw processing speed of a computer– It is one of the largest technological leaps this decade”
As the drones begin to disperse, the fate of the damaged drone comes into view. Nothing is left but a small metal spheroid. The last salvage drone picks it up and hands it to the controller. She rotates it in her hand before holding it up to the public.
“As you can see, the green LED is on, indicating the brain is still active and healthy. Of course, it is in complete sensory deprivation at the moment. Of course, some of them enjoy that. You can keep a braincase in that state or sleep their consciousness. Your choice.”
She flicks a switch on the side of the braincase and the light turns from green to blue and begins to softly pulse. Without looking away from the audience she hands the oblong object back to the drone, which carries it offstage.
You feel something. Envy? You wish to experience this level of disembodiment. Perhaps someday you will be chosen. The thought excites you.
“The next step is to hook it up to diagnostics, where you will get a detailed rundown of which regions are damaged, if any, and require a cybernetic replacement.”
“These drones are the next generation of manufacturing, surgical, rescue, repair, and military cyborgs. Their endurance and versatility is unmatched. And, as of right now, we are accepting orders for these units. You can supply a biological body for a drone order, or for a higher price we will supply one of our own bodies which have been conditioned pre-conversion specifically for popular dronehood tasks. Costs vary depending on how your chosen drone is equipped and how extensive the cybernetic modifications are. Please ask to see a pricing chart. Thank you.“
The lights dim on stage. And you are inspired to fulfill your final purpose.
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Filling the gaps - part 11 - afbodykasa
Edit 12/27/21: Added a download link with a psd-file for recolorists :)
Another default replacement for a nightlife outfit: afbodykasa. I spent way too much time on this. I edited the textures so often and I never got to a point, where I said: “Yeah. This looks fine.” I’m still not satisfied with the result, but I am tired of it and for now it looks the way it looks. 😕
These are recolors of Bri_Anna’s WDS Gown mesh. And boy, what is going on with me? There is so much fiddle-faddle, very dark and/or washed out shadows, layers and patterns. The more I look at them, the more I’m like: “Do I like that? Do I really? ... Eh. I guess so...?”
They are categorised as everyday, formal and maternity clothes. They might spawn on townies. They use the normal shoe sound.
If you don’t want to use the default, a custom version is included as well. The custom dresses share a normal map, so they come merged only. The merged file contains all 3 abominations dresses. They are tooltipped.
All files have been compressed. Preview pictures are included in the archive.
The mesh is not included! It is available at MTS. Even though it’s pretty old and I can’t seem to find a recent post by the creator, I don’t feel comfortable to include the mesh, when it is easily accessible still.
By the way, if you visit Bri_Anna’s page at MTS and are tempted to visit their linked site (The well dressed sim) don’t. My anti-virus software rang it’s alarm multiple times, so it is probably not a good idea to visit.
+Credits+
Mesh: Bri_Anna
Textures: Iamliz13, Kgcowbelle, Maya40, Morganna, Poe, Riekus13, Serena_Moonstone, Sherabim
+Download (SFS)+
Quick & Dirty Install instructions:
Default Replacement:
Delete any default for afbodykasa you might already have!
Put “DR_afbodykasa-Bri_Anna-WDSGown_12Raben“ and the mesh in your downloads folder.
Custom Dresses:
Put "AF-body-Bri_Anna-WDSGown-kasa-merged_12Raben” and the mesh in your downloads folder.
+PSD for more recolours - download+
Requested by @cindysimblr. (Thank you for your kind words. A custom version is included in the archive of the replacement. 😊) I use gimp to make my recolours, so I hope, this file can be opend with other programms. Be warned though: It’s a wild jumble of not only textures, but english and german language as well. I included the normal map in this archive.
Happy simming!
#sims#sims 2#ts2#sims 2 default#sims 2 medieval#fillingthegaps#dldrclothing#dldrbodyshop#dldrafbody#dlafbody#ts2 dl
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“Epiphany”- Taylor Swift (Romanogers)
A/N: Credit to @letstrywritingmaybe for stealing your writing style with your Folklore Twist fic, and thx for supporting this sfs (:
The clouds drift across the sky blocking out the rays of sunlight from the overcast weather. Just outside the hospital lays a woman with fiery red hair as she rests her eyes. A blonde man makes his way to her to lay a comfortable distance away from her on the green grass. He closes his eyes as well. The woman feels the presence of another person invading her quiet time, she turns ready to scare them away, but her expression softens when she recognizes him as the doctor she saw running down the hall earlier. She takes in his appearance, he looks tired almost falling asleep out on the lawn, they were similar in height though she wonders how he was able to keep going in that tiny frame of his. He should’ve run out of energy by now from the amount of hours he’s logged, but he still persisted. His blue eyes open as he shifts his position to face her, he gives her a shy smile.
“Sorry if I’m bothering you ma’am. I just needed to be outside for a bit.”
“This is your turf, I should be the one apologizing for being in your space. You seem very familiar with this spot.”
“... I usually come out here when things get a little too hectic…”
His eyes are downcast avoiding her gaze, she knows the expression all too well. She used to wear the same one when she would lose a man on the battlefield. She thought after the war, it would be over, but she’s still haunted by the memories.
“... she didn’t make it Doc?”
“... no she didn’t…”
“It’s not your fault Rogers… it isn’t your fault…”
“It doesn’t make it any easier.”
“I know.”
They two stay silent for a moment as they both think back to all the horrors they witnessed. He with his many patients succumbing to the virus unable to say their last goodbyes to loved ones. Her with her comrades falling from bullets across the field without any warning.
“Do you want to talk about it Miss Romanoff?”
“... we were on the beach… I was shot through near my hip… I told them it was just a flesh wound and to keep going… they didn’t leave me behind… we had to leave them instead…”
“... it’s not your fault either.”
“Somethings you just can���t unsee… what about you? Do you want to talk about it?”
“... she was an old friend… she lived a good life but… her family wasn’t allowed to see her… her last moments were spent with me… her lungs were already too damaged… I held her hand through the plastic…”
Some things are meant to be locked away and never spoken of or acknowledged. Yet there was something comforting in sharing secret burdens with a stranger seeking solace in the same spot under the drifting clouds. They both meant to catch up on some sleep, to just nap outside for twenty minutes with the gentle breeze of the wind as a blanket. Just a moment of relief, to make sense of all that they’ve seen.
“I should leave. Thank you for the company Miss Romanoff.”
“Natasha. You can call me Natasha.”
“Nice to meet you Natasha, I’m Steve.”
Steve gets up to head back inside the hospital for the rest of his never ending shift. Natasha smiles as she gazes up at the clouds, a peak of sunlight escaping from behind. She remembers Clint’s words as he called her from his bed connected to an oxygen tank.
“I’m recovering Nat, don’t worry. I have a great doctor, his name is Steve. He may not look it, standing just over five feel and weighing maybe a hundred pounds, but he’s a fighter. He’s keeping me alive. I’ll be out of here in no time.”
She closes her eyes once more as she steadies her breathing. A sense of peace washes over her, something she hasn’t felt in all the years she’s been alive. Inside the building, Steve feels the same. A calming energy surrounds him as he continues to tend to his patients.
Only twenty minutes to sleep
But you dream of some epiphany
Just one single glimpse of relief
To make some sense of what you've seen
#romanogers#sfs#inspo credit to letstrywritingmaybe#featuring smol steve as a doctor#hella short but the song is short too
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The Alpha Incident (1978)
another bill rebane film!
this one was cursed from the getgo (but really most of them are to some degree or another) in that the disc it was supposed to be on in my box set did not actually have the film on it so i just streamed the fucker from youtube
The VERY FIRST LINE of this film is ‘It doesn’t make any sense’
I couldn’t be happier.
two of us can’t understand half the stuff this hillbilly man on the train is saying but @gwenfrankenstien is conveying the gist of it. he knows the other man is a fed and is Transporting Something Suspicious
which is the Mystery Thing From Mars the science guys at the start were talking about
there’s some really excellent things happening in the score.
the science mans talking about the mars organism are just SO BORED its hilarious
nosy train hillbilly is the one who ruins everything by breaking things, i think.
they put some jello on a rat!
this movie also has some occasionally bewildering cuts/scene transitions
there’s an ominous buzzing when government man calls the government to report stuff and i genuinely cant tell if it was intentional or audio error on the copy we watched lmao
‘HANK YOU DONE FUCKED UP’ @gwenfrankenstien
oh and then everyone gets QUARANTINED what a thematically appropriate film.
everyone gets PISSED OFF at being QUARANTINED and the actual biochemist is trying very hard to keep control of everything and then someone of course attempts to fuck right off.
the biochemist shoots him in the arm and the guy who got shot just kinda shamefully follows him back to the office.
speaking of the mars virus organism thing, ‘itd be really funny if it turns out it has no effect on humans after all’ @gwenfrankenstien
i feel like thats too clever for this movie tho
anyway in the rats the primary symptom seems to be ‘head explode’
the guy who got shot is whining about his civil rights!!!
hank recognizes he fucked up and feels so bad and i feel so bad for him!!
i am pretty fond of the choice of setting this all at like, a rail stop in the middle of nowhere. its kinda neat
‘we can’t fall asleep, if we do we DIE’ OOOOOOOH DRAMA
They’re sending amphetamines
GOVERNMENT SPEED
YOU CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON UNCLE SAM.
‘Time for them to get fuckin blasted on meth’ @bioelectriccell
sorry the funniest part of the movie is what @gwenfrankenstien said and its ‘i figured out who beard scientist reminds me of and its. tom mulcair’ and this is only funny if you’re canadian.
there’s fifteen minutes left in the movie and nothing has happened to anyone. @gwenfrankenstien may have been onto something.
wow it takes until 1h24m for someone to fuckin’ die in a movie thats 1h34m
and then uhhhh jenny kills herself so suicide warning outta fucking NOWHERE
im pretty sure the movie forgot about hank
@gwenfrankenstien says ‘its billiam i suspect that the very end will be like. hank in town spreading virus’ so lets see
they apparently developed a cure offscreen and that gets delivered and - ITS FUCKING CYANIDE AND JACK KEELS OVER DEAD AND BIOCHEMIST TOM GUY HAS A FUCKING CRISIS HOLY SHIT WHAT A TWIST
and then some dudes in hazmat suits show up to clean up but TOm Biochemist isn’t dead bc he didnt take the cyanide but he SURVIVED because he didnt get infected BUT THEN THE HAZMAT SUIT GUYS SHOW UP and i think its implied he gets incinerated bc it looks like a spark about to ignite a flamethrower? or maybe they just shot him
ANYWAY it was like a solid 5/10 on the beetsometer for most of the movie and then the last 20 minutes are REALLY AWESOME the twist was GREAT WOW.
‘ think it had the makings of a very solid sf horror novella’ @gwenfrankenstien
emoji of the film: migrainetime.emoji
[Watch it on Youtube!]
#The Alpha Incident#sci-fi classics#ralph meeker#stafford morgan#john goff#bill rebane#movie with link
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Pluralistic: 27 Mar 2020 (Mar-a-Lago Virus, plutes cash in on stimulus, postal voting vs USPS collapse, "civility" and the Confederate playbook, Bojo has covid, reasonable covid food-safety advice, SF cocktail delivery, flu pandemic photos, free hi-rez covid stock art, Warren campaign frees its software)

Today's links
The US is now the epicenter of the pandemic: Trump has murdered millions.
Plutes cash in on stimulus: $170B for real-estate tycoons.
States prep for postal voting: But the GOP has all but murdered the USPS.
"Civility" and the Confederate playbook: The right's call for "civility" has a long, dishonorable history.
Boris Johnson has coronavirus: He greenlit national pox-parties, now he has it.
Reasonable covid food-safety advice: Sanitize your hands and your cart, practice social distancing, and…you're done.
San Francisco cocktail delivery: Courtesy of the DNA Lounge.
Flu pandemic photos: Mask-slackers beware!
Free hi-rez covid stock art: Make your pandemic more visually varied.
Warren campaign frees its software: Free, open and universal campaigning tools.
This day in history: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2019
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming appearances, current writing projects, current reading

The US is now the epicenter of the pandemic (permalink)
The US is now the epicenter of the global coronavirus pandemic, henceforth known as the Mar-a-Lago Virus. It has the highest number of infections of any country in the world.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
There have "only" been 1,000 US deaths so far. The "only" is there because there are so many more to come, when the vast number of incubating cases start manifesting symptoms and begin to die.
Trump wants the country to go back to work by Easter, because in his version of the Trolley Problem, the most important thing is saving the trolley.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/25/21193670/trump-easter-coronavirus-isolation-relax-rules-economy-social-distancing
We had so much warning. But the president said it wasn't anything to worry about.
Now, a lot of people are going to die.
Most of the dead will be old – from the demographic most likely to have voted for Trump (which isn't to imply that only Trump voters will die, or that they deserve to die – only that Trump chose to put his base at risk).
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/24/grandparents-optional-party/#turkey-shoot
Many will have contracted their infections by deliberately seeking out crowded public places as the pandemic started spreading, because Fox News told them that doing so was a way to own the libs.
Fox News viewers – who skew elderly, even by the standards of TV watchers – are also disproportionately at risk from coronavirus. Fox News is now a suicide cult.
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#fox-cult
But so many people will die because of this. Old people. Young people. People with disabilities. People who just had very bad luck. Kids.
And that's before you get to all the people who have car wrecks or heart attacks or slip-and-falls and can't get treatment in overloaded hospitals.
When Hoover fucked up by giving in to plutes and crashed the economy, he got tent cities, or "Hoovervilles."
Trump's fuckup will end with mass graves. Trump Mausoleums? Mar-a-Plague-Pits?
We will get through this. But Trump will have murdered so many of us before it's over.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/26/21196267/coronavirus-usa-cases-covid-19-pandemic-china-number-positive-trump

Plutes cash in on stimulus (permalink)
The stimulus package that the GOP Senate passed has the largest-ever giveaway for real-estate plutes in US tax history: $170 billion in tax-cuts over 10 years for couples with more than $500K in annual capital gains.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/business/coronavirus-real-estate-investors-stimulus.html
The President who will sign the bill into law is a real-estate investor who stands to make a fortune from it. His inner circle is packed with similarly situated rentiers.
It's the second-biggest giveaway in the stimulus package, and it will also give windfalls to wealthy oil and gas investors.
The House is expected to vote on it today.
(Image: Rich Brooks, CC BY, modified)

States prep for postal voting (permalink)
States are scrambling to prepare for a postal ballot-based election next November.
https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2020/03/23/states-begin-prep-for-mail-in-voting-in-presidential-election
Postal ballots tend to benefit Democrats, whose voters are disproportionately unable to get off work to vote, and who are more likely to live in regions where GOP statehouses have closed polling places, adding long drives and long queues for in-person voting.
That's why Red States often have state laws that prohibit unrestricted postal voting, insisting that voters must provide a "good reason" for their desire to exercise their franchise to a bureaucrat who gets to decide whether or not they can participate in elections.
Of course, if Trump throws hundreds of thousands – or millions – of (disproportionately GOP-voting) seniors into the coronavirus volcano to appease the market-gods, the survivors may be gunshy about voting in person, even if they continue as fully paid-up Trump cultists.
There are serious challenges to reorienting towards a largely postal election, including mobilizing printing resources during a lockdown.
But even more challenging is the post office itself, which is on the verge of collapse.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/23/coronavirus-postal-service-june-145683
The USPS is a miracle of self-funding resilience, a universal, small-d democratic institution that serves the whole nation. But its existence is a thorn in the side of shareholders UPS and Fedex, who donate lavishly to Congressjerks who fuck with the post office.
Requiring the post office to fund pension liabilities for workers who aren't born yet is transparent fuckery. Combine that with a sharp decline in mail usage during the lockdown and the service is now on the brink.
That would be bad news, and not just for elections. The USPS is key to America's emergency preparedness, and has been since the Cold War, when it was projected to serve as a survivor-counting/corpse-hauling service after nuclear armageddon.
It's the only institution that could deliver covid meds to every household in America in a single day.
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/25/national-emergency-library/#going-postal

"Civility" and the Confederate playbook (permalink)
You may have heard conservatives insist that the reason they stick up for eugenicists and other cryptofascists is that they're standing up for "civility" against the "social justice mobs."
This rhetoric isn't new: it's literally the same thing that slavery apologists said in the runup to, and aftermath of, the Civil War: "we're not in favor of slavery, we're just opposed to the shaming and social exclusion of slavery advocates.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/29/conservatives-say-weve-abandoned-reason-civility-old-south-said-that-too/
When we learn about the antebellum slavery debate, we hear about slavery's defenders – but the mainstream debate over slavery wasn't about its merits, it was about the incivility of abolitionists, and how that compromised the free speech of enslavers.
Slavery advocates were cast as a disfavored minority, shouted down by mobs who refused to hear them out. But discrimination against slavers was a funny kind of discrimination: half the millionaires in America were slavers in a single southern town.
Likewise, the right-wing figures who today claim that they are censored and cast out by the intolerant left are millionaires who fill arenas and appear regularly on Fox News, the most popular cable network in America.
They publish books with Big Five publishers and go on multicity tours. They're courted by "progressive" news outlets as paid on-air commentators to provide "balance." If that's discrimination, sign me up.
John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln, professed love of Black people, and claimed he was animated by anger at the suppression of honest debate on racial politics, unable to share "my thoughts or sentiments" about slavery in polite society.
Slavers cast anti-slavery rhetoric as "orthodoxy" and cast themselves as realists who were willing to speak truth to power.
Does that sound familiar?
The abolition movement – including Lincoln – focused on these slavery apologists, understanding that they provided the cover for the continuation of slavery.
Lincoln insisted that Douglas go beyond lamenting the angry rhetoric of abolitionists and instead describe what he stood for – beyond his support of slavers' right to "choose how they wanted to live."
He demanded that Douglas go beyond his campaign speeches against "mob rule" and state plainly whether he wanted an America with or without slavery.
In her Washington Post op-ed, Eve Fairbanks suggests that we do the same for the "reasonable right" – pin them down. Sure, you don't like "cancel culture," but what do you stand for? What kind of world do you want?
(Image: Anthony Crider, CC BY)

Boris Johnson has coronavirus (permalink)
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has coronavirus.
https://twitter.com/borisjohnson/status/1243496858095411200
Under Johnson's leadership, the UK pursued a month-long plan to turn the nation into a giant pox-party, hoping to attain quick "herd immunity."
He was following a promising strategy devised for less-lethal, less-contagious flus, which was manifestly unsuited to coronavirus, as experts argued at the time. As a result, infections now rage out of control in the UK.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fnl0n6/im_a_critical_care_doctor_working_in_a_uk_high/#fla1iq6
During the planning of this "herd immunity" strategy, Johnson's chief advisor Dominic Cummings acknowledged that it would likely murder elderly people: "if that means some pensioners die, too bad."
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/24/grandparents-optional-party/#death-panels
After Johnson tested positive for coronavirus, Cummings was seen fleeing Number 10 Downing Street at a dead run.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/dominic-cummings-seen-running-no-114514496.html
(Image: Think London, CC-BY, modified)

Reasonable covid food-safety advice (permalink)
There's a viral (ugh) video going around in which an MD in scrubs (at home!) shows you what you should do when you come back from the grocery store. It's frankly terrifying. It's also wrong.
As Don Schaffner, a food microbiologist, notes in his thread, not only is this advice wrong, it could make you very sick — either because you ate the soap that you washed your food in, or because you left your groceries on your stoop for 3 days.
https://twitter.com/bugcounter/status/1243319180851580929
There's no evidence that washing your food with soap will kill coronavirus, and even less evidence that you can get the virus from eating. There is, however, millennias' worth of evidence that you can die from food poisoning.
Schaffner's advice for groceries boils down to: wash your hands before and after grocery shopping. Wipe down the cart handle. Shop efficiently. Keep your distance from other shoppers.
You know, common sense.
(Image: Lyza, CC BY-SA, modified)

San Francisco cocktail delivery (permalink)
Hey, San Francisco! Craving a cocktail? The DNA Lounge will deliver a mason jar's worth (~3 servings) of Black Manhattan (w/Slow and Low honey & orange infused rye), Sazerac, brown sugar margarita (w/a little orange) or lavender lemonade gin cooler.
https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2020/03/26.html
The DNA is a San Francisco institution, one that runs on a shoestring and is continuing to pay its employees, even as other SF venues (snapped up by predatory corporate behemoths) shut down.
https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/22/preppers-are-larpers/#help-dna
They've also got a bunch of livestream events coming up, including a benefit for the Gay Gaming Professionals, a Death Guild set, and Hubba Hubba Revue's Burlesquerpiece Theatre.

Flu pandemic photos (permalink)
During the 1918 flu pandemic, California went on lockdown. The governor ordered statewide shutdowns, and "mask slackers" who refused to wear masks faced arrest.
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/f/flu/0030flu.0009.300/1
The California Sun has rounded up an amazing set of images of California life during the 1918 flu from libraries, museums, and other sources," in gorgeous hi-rez.







Free hi-rez covid stock art (permalink)
If this image seems familiar, that's because it's one of the only open-licensed images of the novel coronavirus, courtesy of the CDC. It's been used millions of times in just a few weeks.

https://tinyurl.com/u457y2d
An effects house called Covert has stepped in to fill the visual gap with a collection of gorgeous,crazy hi-rez covid renders: "No licensing, royalties or any credit is required for their use."
https://wearecovert.com/free-covid-19-animations-renders-images/



Warren campaign frees its software (permalink)
Elizabeth Warren's campaign has released seven of its sophisticated campaigning tools as free/open software.
https://medium.com/@teamwarren/open-source-tools-from-the-warren-for-president-tech-team-f1f27d2c7551
The Warren campaign had a large cohort of software developers and created a suite of outstanding tools, as well as making improvements to standard tools, including improvements to the texting tool Spoke that reduces the cost of using it by ~97%!
https://www.wired.com/story/elizabeth-warren-campaign-open-source-tech/
The projects are hosted on Github:
https://github.com/Elizabeth-Warren/
This isn't just an opportunity for campaigns, but also for small shops that provide integration and support to them. Obviously election campaigning is in a mess at the moment, but this is seismic.
This day in history (permalink)
#15yrsago Nepali media crackdown thwarted by bloggers https://web.archive.org/web/20050328204722/http://insn.org/
#10yrsago LibDem MPs won't fight for debate on Digital Economy Bill https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/lib-dems-tories-and-labour-pledge-to-ram-disconnection-through
#5yrsago Top homeland security Congressjerk only just heard about crypto, and he doesn't like it https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150327/07312030462/congressional-rep-john-carter-discovers-encryption-worries-it-may-one-day-be-used-computers-to-protect-your-data.shtml
#5yrsago NSA-proof passwords https://theintercept.com/2015/03/26/passphrases-can-memorize-attackers-cant-guess/
#5yrsago Welfare encourages entrepreneurship https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/welfare-makes-america-more-entrepreneurial/388598/
#5yrsago Here's the TSA's stupid, secret list of behavioral terrorism tells https://theintercept.com/2015/03/27/revealed-tsas-closely-held-behavior-checklist-spot-terrorists/
#5yrsago San Francisco Sheriff's Deputy ring accused of pit-fighting inmates https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/S-F-jail-inmates-forced-to-fight-Adachi-says-6161221.php
#1yrago Elizabeth Warren's latest campaign plank is a national Right-to-Repair law for farm equipment https://medium.com/@teamwarren/leveling-the-playing-field-for-americas-family-farmers-823d1994f067
#1yrago Mystery solved: why has a beach in France been blighted by washed-up parts for toy Garfield phones for more than 30 years? https://www.lemonde.fr/big-browser/article/2019/03/27/l-affaire-des-echouages-de-telephones-garfield-en-bretagne-enfin-resolue_5442290_4832693.html
#1yrago McDonald's will drop opposition to increases in the federal minimum wage https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/26/mcdonalds-lobbying-minimum-wage-1238284
#1yrago Front-line programmers default to insecure practices unless they are instructed to do otherwise https://net.cs.uni-bonn.de/fileadmin/user_upload/naiakshi/Naiakshina_Password_Study.pdf
#1yrago Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez schools Republicans on the true costs and beneficiaries of the Green New Deal https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1110700996282343424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources: Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/), Slate Star Codex (https://slatestarcodex.com/), Kottke (https://kottke.org), Advertising Pics (https://advertisingpics.tumblr.com/), Fipi Lele.
Currently writing: I'm getting geared up to start work my next novel, "The Lost Cause," a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation.
Currently reading: Just started Lauren Beukes's forthcoming Afterland: it's Y the Last Man plus plus, and two chapters in, it's amazeballs. Last month, I finished Andrea Bernstein's "American Oligarchs"; it's a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I'm getting really into Anna Weiner's memoir about tech, "Uncanny Valley." I just loaded Matt Stoller's "Goliath" onto my underwater MP3 player and I'm listening to it as I swim laps.
Latest podcast: Data – the new oil, or potential for a toxic oil spill? https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/03/23/data-the-new-oil-or-potential-for-a-toxic-oil-spill/
Upcoming appearances:
Quarantine Book Club, April 1, 3PM Pacific https://www.eventbrite.com/e/quarantine-book-club-cory-doctorow-tickets-100931360416
Museums and the Web, April 2, 12PM-3PM Pacific https://mw20.museweb.net/
Upcoming books: "Poesy the Monster Slayer" (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627
(we're having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250757531
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583
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When live gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
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How I feel about the current health crisis is constantly changing from time to time. While I am bottling my security from the word of God, the situation also revealed to me some behaviors which slipped in. The reality is when I haven't felt the impact it can affect on the grounds I am at, maybe I care lesser than any person I know--I was less worried than them. Oblivious of its damage, I was the one behind my computer screen wondering about the crash of my little shares in stock market debating if I will still hold or sell. Glutton and heedless as I can be, I bought a few more shares.
When news ringed to my ears about the outbreak, I was that one grabbing newspapers in the public places and the newspaper shelves at Ocean campus. I was that one stealing hours from my study time to research what is happening in China. I was that instead of maybe folding my hands together.
My Chinese friends experienced discrimination and racism along with the public's fear, so I want to understand things how it shifted from the midst of chaos, people turned to blame and hate. However, I became distant from the news due to the volumes of readings my major classes demand from me because of the coming midterm examinations. The next time I get a sense of what is really happening is from text messages from my family & friends around the globe, but my concerns swell knowing how it has already affected what I have always treated home, The Philippines. That was only the time the lever was pulled and the alarm starts ringing. IT IS HERE. Numbers of cases raise day to day. Then, the impact goes closer under my bootsoles. In the beginning of March, cities & counties around SF were declaring their cases. Trying to be careful between unreliable and reliable news, I became exposed to a plethora of theories, claims, hearsay, and pieces of information. Early March, SF declared its state of emergency not because we have a case but as a preparation to open facilities. Some people did not understand what it means. Other than that, with the muti-cultural and the rich diversity we are in, everyone just became fearful each day. They were all panic buying. Supermarkets and wholesale groceries including Costco were left with empty shelves. Some were fighting over tissue papers and water bottles. Some people who are greedy bought packages of personal hygiene products which they are now selling online tripled its original price.
Is there a coming famine in the land?
The group of friends I am with continually prayed over our lunch at the cafeteria. Some shared how traumatic it is for families living separately in geographic locations, and I know that first hand. Some shared how most people talked with them about the trauma they are experiencing as an international student hearing what is happening in their hometown. Some locked themselves in their rooms. Some called in sick to avoid the outside world. Some relied on and continually meet virtually. Due to this, it encouraged us to seek God more and deeply pray for his loving hands to help us and comfort those people.
I had talked with a coworker about a month ago. I asked her how is she feeling. Instead of telling me how she is feeling, she shared with me what is happening around her and about the news bombarding her. I listened to her interpreting she had these all filled up in her head and claimed this now as her feelings. I asked another coworker and he said if only one of us gets the virus, we will all be infected. But an older coworker answered me differently when I asked her the same question. She told me, "I am not afraid of the virus. If I will get it, God allowed it. If I will die, God knows it". I am not saying her answer is the only correct answer compared to the two, but it conforted me that what she is feeling is mutual as mine, and I think how we look deep down within us is really important even if it screams fear for what or security from who?
Although I am concern, I am not afraid. I know God is bigger than anything in this world and He is always in control . I can always Trust him like how the people of faith from the old and new testament tasted the fulfillment of His promises.
Eventhough, I feel sad about the changes and the news around. I have not buy a can good to stock in my pantry yet. I turned to be this person looking around how most people forget WHO we needed. While some I know figured it out in their lives, most people around were lost, and they are being eaten alive with worries and fear--- and I still give them credit for that. But I just want to say that I hope everyone of us remain calm and cooperate to what authorities are are asking us to do, and if you believe in God, rest in his protection and know that He is almighty! In situations like this, it is easier to see the damages it caused and focus on our own security, let us mourn with those who lost their love ones, and if we can turn it around, let us see that we are so much stronger when we face this all together with the help of our loving and merciful Heavenly Father! Along with that, I made a short list of things we can do to for ourselves while helping the people we love dearly and those around us. (It is on the photos below. 🏞🌅)
As for me, I am continually practicing healthy precautions and I am still trying to inform the public as a student leader. Also, it made me realized how many hours I have for myself right now because of changes, but I am grateful knowing that I can spend those hours nurturing my spiritual needs along with my body and mind, so I had developed my plans already.
Last night at my church, my pastor who is also a full-time registered nurse shared how things are going on in his workplace. While many of them were courageous enough to be at their work, most of these medical staff were driven with fear to be exposed thinking of their families at home; just like many we know. Some of them forget their disaster badges, so they call in sick to not do the work. Thankfully, some of them encouraged one another that this is the time they are truly needed: Compassion, service, and kindness. If only one can speak positivity and hope even though it will not change the situation in a second, we can lighten the burden instantly.
Earlier that night, I meet with a group of Christian leaders and staff with my sister. We talked about how most people in this health crisis, and how we can still continue our ministry. Name & Name developed this article of ideas on how we can still communicate with people we love and how we can still meet them virtually. Ideas on how to still play with your friends. How to make them know you care, and many different things! Feel free to benefit from this. (🔗 is on the comment)
Right now, I am experiencing the transitions and changes the Covid-19 is making in my surroundings' life and in my life. My classes were modified and transitioned online. In short, I will unlikely get the most of this sem. To others, science labs, art classes, and music classes will have to find a way they can do to continue instruction refraining from face-to-face meetings. Most of the faculty & students' plan for the upcoming Spring break was now affected because our Spring break was moved earlier. I know a bunch of people who canceled their trip due to many reasons. However, I do think I needed this break to reflect in life. In a crisis like this, were social distancing is adviced. Ironically, this is also the time where I get to spend (more) time with my family. It made us closer together and apprecaite that families matters for all of us. Moreover, this testing we are facing makes me se how communities come along together in unity, and how peoplw pray for all the world. We will be resilient. We will be prayerful. We can conquer this in God's time and for God's glory.
On the otherside of how I see the silverlining of this crisis, when I received the emails regarding our campus closure and switching into online learning because of the Covid-19 cases happening around us from school to school. I realized how severely critical it is. IT IS HERE. Although there is no case yet at my college, the community is facing it already closer in my proximity. Still, I will chooses to be Calm. Trusting in the plan of the Lord!
This story I am writing is my experience, but it doesn't have to be me or about me. This can be one of the voices of many, this can be one of the feelings of a person in a crowd. This can be a perspective resonating with more than one person in the room, or this can be the realization of "where do I stand" and "what can I do because there is a plague in the land?" or it could be the time where it reveals something important to you when you ask "what do I treasure?", "what am I afraid of?" or a bold statement of "I know God will rescue us."
While I may not be the first one to kneel down and pray in my personal prayer--which I must have done first rather than being concern on my profits and shares-- for the current crisis we are facing, I am so thankful that God warned me the potential of being sef- centered, and he changed me to be compassionate and pray for the world. I am further grateful too because this made me closer to God and realize the potential ministry which can root up from this and how I can develop more into maturity and love for one another. From my experience, I realized a fact that what we are facing right now reveals people's heart's content. It stirred it up and filled it more in so many different ways. That is why I want to pray along with you right now.
Heavenly Father,
There are those families who are worried right now of their family members in their houses and in far places. I pray Lord that you help them not to worry but to understand certain health precautions they needed to do. I pray Lord that you take away the worries in their hearts and that you mercifully replace it with peace that is coming from you. Please grant them security and protection as they do their daily chores and may they always come to you in this time of need.
We also pray for those people who are suffering from the co-vid19 right now; People of different races, rich and poor, young and old. This just shows to as that no one is above any one of us and that we are all equal. Whether we live in the upstate or down in the slums we are out of control in what is happening around us, and we know Lord that you are the only one who is in control of our situation. You alone are above our situation and your name is above this virus. Father, we pray that let everything happen according to your will. May this be an awakening to us to call upon your name and seek your loving hands to guide us on what to do. Also, not only to look back and reflect on how we treated other people or what things we have so far accomplished, but look forward instead for the afterlife we will face most especially after our death. We pray Lord that may this be a turning point to people who haven't know you yet, and may this be an opportunity for your people to give comfort to those who are suffering and ill. May we shed light to those who are in the darkness, confused, and isolated. Use us, Lord, to be a blessing and encouragement to everyone. Give us hands that are helpful and a heart that listens and understands.
We also pray for the families who are bereaved, and for those people who are still in medication. We express our condolences and sympathy to them, and may those people in medication be comforted in their pains. Lord, we ask for your healing hands to grant them the recovery they needed.
We thank you, Lord, for the medical staff, the doctors, the nurses, the aids, and the first responders we have. Thank you, Lord, for their time and the talents and skills you have given them. I pray Lord that you continually give them a strong immune system as they treat and care for patients. Take care of their families, their little ones, their partners, their children as they leave their houses to go into their workplace and give the need of the people infected by the virus. Lord, continually create a compassionate heart like yours to willingly serve along with their disaster badges. Give them strength, wisdom, and understanding as they tend to the needs of everyone. As they look left and right seeing discouraging situations of the reality that we are in a health crisis and they are in a chaotic workplace right now, may they find peace in you Lord. Take away their fears and worries. Grant them security and rest that is coming from you. We thank you for them.
Father, we pray for everyone who is fearful right now. We pray for those people who are transitioning in these changes happening around us. We pray that we become more understanding on the decisions of authorities. Grant us the craft to be creative and find a solution in the changes in our routines. Help us to use our time wisely and productively. Father, we pray for those who are upset for their plans were not able to manifest due to restrictions. For the people who want to meet their families, grant them peace in their hearts so they will not worry as they care for their family. We pray father that you grant disciple and understanding for students who will face a challenging semester of class suspensions and online learning. We pray that you send help for elderly students who will find it difficult to access technology. We also pray for working students and all employees around the world that you would please provide all their needs as they rely on you despite the cuts in their hours at work or the WFH. We pray that you encourage those who are graduating this year and may they realize that their success is important, but it is not everything that matters. Grant them patience Lord and let them be cheerful in their success. I pray for the parents, Lord. Let their big heart trust in you, oh Lord. Grant them strength and let them know that you are taking care of them and it concerns you whatever their concerns are.
We pray for the church, Lord. Help us to be more prayerful and sensitive to the things we can do to help. Grant us Lord peace that is coming from you which surpasses all understanding. Grant us faith to continually minister to the needs of the people. Strengthen us, Lord, and bless us.
Lord, we declare your lordship above us. We rest in your plans and in your will knowing that you are in control of everything. We know Lord that you are a Big God. We believe in you and we ask that you help us have victory over this virus. As you heal the people and the land which are both sick right now, we ask Lord for forgiveness of our sins and that you cleanse us with the holy blood of the sacrificial lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ. Send healing not only in our physiscal body, but in our spiritual life as well that you might be glorified forever.
Thank you, Lord for our security and our faith to trust in you. Thank you for your love and your grace. May you be lifted high as always. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.
Wishing you good health, safe travels, and may peace be with you,
The Msg Diaries
*Due to many responsibilities on school, work, and private meetings The Msg Diaries has to face. This article did not undergo proofreading, so please please forgive and bear with it. Thank you so much!
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Gates Foundation Moves to Eradicate Polio Globally NBC Bay Area
The Invoice and Melinda Gates Basis says it is going to commit $1.2 billion to the trouble to finish polio worldwide. The cash shall be used to assist implement the International Polio Eradication Initiative’s technique by 2026. The initiative is making an attempt to finish the polio virus in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the final two endemic international locations, the muse stated in an announcement Sunday. The cash additionally shall be used to cease outbreaks of latest variants of the virus. The announcement was made Sunday on the World Well being Summit in Berlin. The inspiration says in an announcement on its web site that it has contributed practically $5 billion to the polio eradication initiative. The initiative is making an attempt to combine polio campaigns into broader well being companies, whereas it scales up use of the novel oral polio vaccine kind 2. The group is also working to make nationwide well being techniques stronger so international locations are higher ready for future well being threats, the assertion stated. “The final steps to eradication are by far the hardest. However our basis stays devoted to a polio-free future, and we’re optimistic that we are going to see it quickly,” stated basis CEO Mark Suzman. Pakistan has reported 20 polio instances to this point this 12 months, all within the north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Afghanistan, which has registered two instances this 12 months, beforehand lacked entry to vaccines due to violence and the Taliban banning polio groups in areas underneath its management. Nevertheless final 12 months, a number of months after they took over Afghanistan, the Taliban agreed to permit United Nations well being employees to start a nationwide marketing campaign. Pakistan has lengthy struggled with Islamic militants concentrating on polio employees and the police defending them, falsely claiming that vaccinations are a Western marketing campaign to sterilize kids. This 12 months, it has the added problem of unprecedented rainfall destroying highway networks and well being services, limiting vaccination drives, and displacing communities. Polio is the state of paralysis attributable to the extremely contagious poliovirus. Right here’s what it is advisable know to guard your loved ones. Regardless of the billions of {dollars} which have gone into the trouble to eradicate polio since 1988 — this system prices about $1 billion yearly — the World Well being Group and companions have missed repeated deadlines to wipe out the illness and have come underneath sustained criticism for failing to adapt to challenges. Lately, for instance, there have been extra instances of polio linked to the oral vaccine utilized in eradication efforts than these attributable to the wild virus. Quite a few consultants have additionally questioned whether or not extra money is what’s wanted to eradicate polio, because the initiative is already among the best funded in world public well being and has hardly ever confronted any funding gaps. Though WHO and companions have lowered the incidence of polio by greater than 99%, that progress was largely made within the first 10 years. The illness stays stubbornly entrenched in war-torn areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan and there have been dozens of vaccine-triggered outbreaks in Africa and elsewhere in recent times, together with the U.S. and Israel. An unbiased panel shaped to guage the eradication effort’s progress has repeatedly recognized vital strategic errors made by international locations, WHO and their donors, warning that their reluctance to vary course, amongst different points, might in the end enable polio to resurge. The eradication initiative is a public-private partnership led by a gaggle of nationwide governments that features the Gates Basis, Rotary Worldwide, the World Well being Group and the U.S. Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention. Supply hyperlink Originally published at SF Newsvine
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Review: Children of Time
Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Genre: sci-fi
Year: 2016
Notes: Winner of the Clarke Award in 2016
Humanity has conquered the stars, colonized space, terraformed… the usual. A scientific experiment of accelerated evolution though a nanovirus doesn’t go as planned, and the scientist behind it, Avrana Kern, goes into cryostasis waiting for help. Hundreds of years pass: humanity collapses, and another civilization arises thanks to the nanovirus on the terraformed planet. Only it’s not the monkeys Kern had planned: another species picks up the virus and starts its personal journey through evolution and civilization. Meanwhile, humanity’s future looks grim. The ark ship Gilgamesh awakens some of its occupants: the classicist Holsten Mason is needed, since they have picked up a signal from afar, a signal from the old empire of the Earth. It could be valuable tech, it could be a deadly trap, or something else entirely…
It’s hard to convey everything without giving away too much, so I’ll stop here with the plot. The story is interesting, even though it could be a novel from the 50s for theme and spirit. Not necessarily a bad thing, but be warned. There isn’t a great amount of sense of wonder either, everything that appears is familiar to the average sf reader (cryostasis, arc ships, terraforming, etc). There’s a bit more sense of wonder in the chapters that follow the evolution on the terraformed planet, as it is definitely interesting to see an animal of the Earth a lot of people find disgusting create its own civilization and history, going through moments similar to ours (they form a religion, go through a sort of Middle Ages and Renaissance, risk extinction due to a big war, etc). On the ark ship humanity lives a new history, going through what feels like a new Middle Ages, and so on. We see this from the eyes of Holsten Mason, taken in and out of cryostasis in various occasions and for various reasons.
While other ark ship characters manage to be interesting (like Lain or Guyen), it’s worth mentioning that Mason is… empty. He’s a classicist, and that’s pretty much what we know about him. He’s not a real character, but an empty shell for the reader (and, I suppose, the author) to wear. He certainly has no clear fatal flaw or character arc. I wish this was the book’s biggest problem. No, the truth is that I am baffled about how could it have won a prize like the Clarke… because while the story is interesting (though not groundbreaking and, to me, not prize-worthy) the writing is awful, there’s no other way to put it. There’s an embarrassing amount of omniscient / invasive narrator, which constantly breaks the pov of the character in question to tell us things the character doesn’t know. The amount tell instead of show is noteworthy and not in a good sense, coming at its worst at the novel’s ending, which is summarized to us instead of, well, shown. Not only the author doesn’t show us stuff, but he constantly repeats things that the pov of the chapter already knows and that have been said countless times. Immersion in the story is nearly impossible, and I hate it, because the plot has some elements that are good and fascinating… buried under bad writing.
Example here (minor spoilers ahead)
At a certain point Mason realizes that, in their encounter with Avrana Kern’s distress beacon they had not talked to an AI, but to a real person – or what remains of her – belonging to the old empire’s civilization. That revelation has no effect on the reader, but it could have had a tremendous effect if we hadn’t had a chapter with Avrana’s pov. The reader could have wondered, together with the Gilgamesh’s crew, if that thing was human or AI… and later, found out that there was something human within that voice. This book is full of wasted occasions like these.
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Saturday, September 11, 2021
Record heat, fire danger plague West after hottest summer on record for U.S. (Washington Post) Punishing heat waves have plagued the West all summer and, even at the brink of fall, another sweltering blast has moved over the region. The heat has brought record-setting temperatures in the Southwest and is exacerbating a volatile fire situation farther north. This latest heat wave enveloping the West coincides with an announcement from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that the months of June through August matched the Dust Bowl summer of 1936 as the hottest on record for the Lower 48 states. “A record 18.4% of the contiguous U.S. experienced record-warm temperatures,” NOAA wrote. The excessively high temperatures of the moment are being generated by a large and unusually strong zone of high pressure or heat dome parked over the Four Corners area, a situation that has occurred repeatedly in recent months. Temperatures near the core of the heat dome are generally 10 to 20 degrees above average, and its influence extends everywhere west of the Central Plains. On Thursday, record highs in the 90s and low 100s are predicted from California to Colorado. Excessive heat warnings are in effect for parts of the desert Southwest, including Las Vegas, where the forecast high is around 105 degrees. Death Valley could hit 120 degrees.
A foiled fire (SF Chronicle) As California’s Caldor Fire burned through South Lake Tahoe, the blaze destroyed dozens of cabins. Standing tall in the face of the blaze, though, was a shining example of fire prevention: a house wrapped in what appeared to be tin foil. While the building wasn’t actually wrapped in everyone’s favorite food storage material, it was protected. It turns out, wrapping buildings in fire blankets or aluminized structure wrap is a legitimate fire prevention method, and clearly worked in this case. The wraps prevent embers from entering buildings, keep flames from making direct contact with the buildings, and reflect heat from nearby blazes. According to Fumiaki Takahashi, an engineering professor, wrapping houses against fires can block up to 92% of the convective heat and 96% of the radiation from nearby blazes, but is only effective for a short period “while the wildfire front passes—five to 10 minutes—but longer protection would be needed to prevent structure-to-structure ignition.” The foil used is also far from your standard Reynolds Wrap: while its outside is aluminum, its inside is made of woven threads of polyester and fiberglass, and it’s laminated with a high-temperature adhesive. 200-foot rolls are sold for just under $700.
“Death shaming” (The Atlantic) Recently, Elizabeth Bruenig, a staff writer at The Atlantic, called on news organizations to stop “death shaming” unvaccinated victims of COVID. Newspapers and TV stations have covered a number of these deaths as cautionary tales, “with notes of shame or contempt subtle in some tales and bold in others,” Bruenig writes. “If persuasion is the target, then the aim seems off—a general problem in our democracy, where persuasion is a key method of self-governance but something we’re less and less amenable to. In that sense, the strange case of vaccine persuasion is just another entry in the annals of our disillusionment with our own liberal democracy.”
Olaf weakens after hitting Mexico’s Los Cabos as Cat 2 storm (AP) Hurricane Olaf slipped back to tropical storm force on Friday after slamming into the Los Cabos resorts at the tip of Mexico’s Baja California Peninsula and then drenching the region with torrential rains. The storm came ashore near San Jose del Cabo late Thursday as a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 100 mph (155 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. But winds had dropped to 50 mph (85 kph) by midday Friday, when it was centered about 20 miles (35 kilometers) south-southeast of Cabo San Lazaro. At least 700 local residents spent the night in shelters while while an estimated 20,000 foreign tourists hunkered down in their hotels. State Civil Defense Deputy Secretary Carlos Alfredo Godínez said he had received no reports of lives lost.
The other 9/11 (Foreign Policy) In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States this month, a leading Chilean university, the University of Concepción, held a series of panel discussions on their legacy. The program referred to the events as “the other Sept. 11.” “Other” because, in Chile, Sept. 11 is best known as the date of the country’s own national tragedy: the 1973 U.S.-backed coup against leftist President Salvador Allende that ushered in over 16 years of military rule. The Nixon administration worked to help foment the coup as part of its broader Cold War efforts against real and perceived Soviet-friendly governments across the globe, including in many Latin American countries. In its wake, Washington supported the government of general-turned-dictator Augusto Pinochet, despite knowledge that his security forces had killed political opponents. By the Pinochet dictatorship’s end in 1990, over 3,000 Chileans were dead or missing, and thousands more had gone into exile. In fact, the two 9/11s are linked: The U.S. role in the 1973 coup helps explain why Chile and other Latin American countries were reluctant to embrace the U.S.-led military interventions at the turn of the century.
France bans unvaccinated American travelers (CNN) A French government decree issued on Thursday bumped the United States and Israel from the country's "green" list, down to "orange," effectively prohibiting nonessential travel to France for unvaccinated visitors. Under France's rules, unvaccinated travelers from either country will still be allowed in provided they have an essential reason for travel, however they'll need a negative Covid-19 test before travel and must quarantine for seven days on arrival. France's move follow restrictions imposed on US travelers from several other European destinations. Earlier this week, Spain changed its entry policy for arrivals from the US, requiring them to have a certificate proving double vaccination.
Russia and Belarus Inch Closer to a Full-Blown Merger (NYT) President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia threw his embattled, authoritarian ally in Belarus a fresh lifeline on Thursday, pledging cheap natural gas and more than $600 million in new loans as part of a push to more closely integrate the post-Soviet neighbors. Mr. Putin and President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus met in person for the sixth time in the past year, hammering out a long-delayed integration plan that some analysts had speculated could bring the two countries to the brink of a full-blown merger. Late Thursday evening at the Kremlin, the two leaders finally announced the contours of such a plan, but one that focused on aligning the two countries’ economies while leaving aside thornier political questions.
Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil leaders charged with subversion (AP) Three leaders of the group that organized an annual Tiananmen candlelight vigil were being held in custody Friday after they were charged with subversion under Hong Kong’s national security law, as authorities intensify a crackdown on dissent in the city. The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China’s chairman Lee Cheuk-yan, as well as vice-chairs Albert Ho and Chow Hang-tung were charged with inciting subversion of state power under the national security law. The alliance itself was also charged with subversion. For the past 30 years, the alliance organized the candlelight vigil that saw tens of thousands of people mass in the city’s Victoria Park to commemorate China’s bloody military crackdown against pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. It was the only large-scale public commemoration of the crackdown on Chinese soil, featuring crowds of people lighting candles and singing songs to support democracy.
Twin tropical storms threaten flooding, mudslides in Taiwan and Vietnam (CNN) Vietnam and Taiwan are bracing for twin tropical storms which are expected to make landfall over the coming days, with typhoon Chanthu strengthening into a Super Typhoon in the past 24 hours. Taiwan has issued a sea warning on Friday for Super Typhoon Chanthu, known as Kiko in the Philippines, which is currently expected to pass over the island on Saturday before heading north towards Shanghai and the Chinese coastline. Chanthu is currently displaying wind speeds of 240 kilometers per hour (149 miles per hour), although it may weaken slightly as it nears Taiwan. At the same time, in the South China Sea, tropical storm Conson is due to make landfall in Vietnam on Sunday afternoon, with the country putting 500,000 soldiers on standby ahead of its arrival. Conson is known as Jolina in the Philippines.
After over a year of confinement, Singapore looks to ease coronavirus restrictions on migrant laborers (Washington Post) In Singapore, praised by epidemiologists for its swift response to the coronavirus pandemic, and lately for its high vaccination rate—which, at 81 percent, is among the best in the world—migrant laborers have borne the brunt of measures to contain the virus. For nearly 17 months, more than 300,000 low-income workers, mostly men from India, Bangladesh or China, have endured social distancing curbs stricter and longer than the wider population. Since April 2020 they have been largely confined to their dormitories, allowed to leave only for work, essential errands or to visit designated “recreation centers” once a week. What once was seen as a necessary health policy to control the outbreak—which at its peak last year saw infections in the dormitories reach nearly 1,400 a day—now serves as salient reminder of the gap between migrant workers and other residents in the wealthy city-state, who’ve been leading relatively normal lives for months after the virus was almost stamped out. From Sept. 13, Singapore plans to “gradually ease” restrictions on these migrant workers, starting with a month-long trial program that will allow up to 500 each week from dormitories that have had no new cases in the last 14 days to visit preselected places for six hours.
As flights resume, plight of Afghan allies tests Biden’s vow (AP) Evacuation flights have resumed for Westerners, but thousands of at-risk Afghans who had helped the United States are still stranded in their homeland with the U.S. Embassy shuttered, all American diplomats and troops gone and the Taliban now in charge. With the United States and Taliban both insisting on travel documents that may no longer be possible to get in Afghanistan, the plight of those Afghans is testing President Joe Biden’s promises not to leave America’s allies behind. A particular worry are those whose U.S. special immigrant visas—meant for Afghans who helped Americans during the 20-year war—still were in the works when the Taliban took Kabul in a lightning offensive on Aug. 15. The U.S. abandoned its embassy building that same weekend. “For all intents and purposes, these people’s chances of escaping the Taliban ended the day we left them behind,” said Afghanistan war veteran Matt Zeller, founder of No One Left Behind. It’s among dozens of grassroots U.S. groups working to get out Afghan translators and others who supported Americans.
Facebook, Ray-Ban debut picture-taking smart glasses (Axios) Ray-Ban Stories, the smart glasses being debuted by Facebook and Ray-Ban today, are most notable for just how much they look like a standard pair of the brand’s sunglasses. That speaks to both the most promising and troublesome aspect of the $299 glasses: They look and feel just like a standard pair of Ray-Bans while adding the ability to capture photos and video. The $299 glasses have three main “smart” features: they can record photos and 30-second videos via dual 5-megapixel cameras, they can play “open-air” sound without headphones and they allow users to take phone calls. Photos and videos are shared only to a companion smartphone app, where the owner can then decide whether and where to share the images and videos.
Research on beards, wads of gum wins 2021 Ig Nobel prizes (AP) Beards aren’t just cool and trendy—they might also be an evolutionary development to help protect a man’s delicate facial bones from a punch to the face. That’s the conclusion of a trio of scientists from the University of Utah who are among the winners of this year’s Ig Nobel prizes, the Nobel Prize spoofs that honor—or maybe dishonor, depending on your point of view—strange scientific discoveries. The winners of the 31st annual Ig Nobels being announced Thursday included researchers who figured out how to better control cockroaches on U.S. Navy submarines; animal scientists who looked at whether it’s safer to transport an airborne rhinoceros upside-down; and a team that figured out just how disgusting that discarded gum stuck to your shoe is.
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Quick question! Does simfileshare protect me from any viruses? Like if I download something t from tumblr and use simfileshare to download it or however your site works, will I be warned/ or protected from a virus?
There’s no extra virus protection on SFS, no. You should only download stuff in file formats that make sense (.package files - yes! exe files - think twice), and always scan stuff yourself before opening or installing it, just like you would with any other file host.
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Thanksgiving travelers try to reach destinations, miss virus The Associated Press
COVID Travel: Millions of Californians Drive, Fly Despite Warnings To Stay Home For Thanksgiving KPIX CBS SF Bay Area
Washington Post ripped for story on world's 'dread' about Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Fox News
Millions of Americans defy advice to avoid Thanksgiving travel CBC News: The National
Millions of Americans risk traveling over Thanksgiving holiday amid skyrocketing coronavirus case numbers KTLA Los Angeles
View Full Coverage on Google News
from Top stories - Google News https://ift.tt/3malVUd
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Thanksgiving travelers try to reach destinations, miss virus The Associated Press
COVID Travel: Millions of Californians Drive, Fly Despite Warnings To Stay Home For Thanksgiving KPIX CBS SF Bay Area
Millions of Americans risk traveling over Thanksgiving holiday amid skyrocketing coronavirus case numbers KTLA Los Angeles
Millions of Americans traveling despite pandemic warnings ABC 10 News
A Thanksgiving marked by surging covid-19 cases and questions about a leading vaccine candidate Washington Post
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