#supercomputer indeed

[your-dear-memmy]

The reason why I could never kin Kokichi is because I know for a fact that little shit is probably really good at math and physics.

He is constantly playing 4d chess by calculating his every movement, and his very being runs solely on logic rather than 'baseless' emotions... Not to mention, to be able to draw those blueprints for Miu he must be some freaky jack of all trades.

[morverenmaybewrites]

Imagine Early Mornings with Bruce Wayne

Mornings in the Wayne Manor, you have found, are always a little disorienting.

You always wake alone, amidst sheets so soft that your bare skin tingles as you stretch against them.

There is a glass of water, drained, on his side of the bed. A bottle of painkillers, unopened.

There would be a note, short and painfully impersonal.

Left early for a meeting, it would sometimes say.

Or more rarely, it might say Library, a shorthand invitation to join him for a day of quiet reading.

More often, the note would simply say, Downstairs.

His codeword for the cave. By the time you wake, he would have been down there for hours.

In the first, few months of your relationship, you had found the notes amusing, if a little bit offensive.

“Those are not love notes,” you had complained to Bruce. “It feels like something my boss would leave me. Meeting this afternoon at three o’clock. Bring donuts.”

And while he had not laughed (indeed, he laughed so rarely that you sometimes wonder if laughter had calcified in his throat), but he had looked up from his notes and smiled.

The next morning, you had woken up to no note, but instead a mug of hot coffee and a brightly-colored box of donuts, the kind you’d see served in a business meeting.

His idea of a joke.

At least that was something you knew that the rest of Gotham didn’t: Batman actually had a sense of humor.

It is months later, when you wake to the sound of shifting cloth, and a sharp intake of breath, so soft it might as well have been silent.

He’s waking, you realize. This is the first time that you have woken up at the same time Bruce did.

Perhaps it’s the journalist in you, unable to be buried even after a year of being out of the business, or perhaps it’s simple curiosity, but you don’t move. You keep your eyes closed, struggling to keep your breathing steady. You pretend to still be asleep.

In all the time you have been together, you had never woken up the same time as him.

The first thing you realize is this: he wakes up in pain.

That should come as no surprise, you think, considering what he does. But this is the first time you’ve actually witnessed it, unchecked. Even in the Batcave, with Alfred, and later you, carefully stitching the muscle and fat and skin closed, he grits his teeth and barely makes a sound.

He does not scream.

(You often wonder if it is for your benefit. If he can read the distress on your face and decide to swallow down his pain rather than let you see it.)

But in the dawn of a new day, where there is no constant humming of his supercomputer, none of Alfred’s cutting banter, there is a nakedness to him.

Bruce lies on the bed for several minutes, so still that he might as well have been carved from stone.

It hurts him to move, you realize.

(And if you close your eyes, you can still see the injuries from last night, with startling clarity: the bruised ribs, the swollen eye, the gash that left his shoulder lay open the muscle and fat to lay bare the bone. You had swallowed down your tears the way he swallowed his screams.)

And then, Bruce does something odd.

He rolls to his side—

(A sharp intake of breath, so soft it might as well have been silent.

He is lying on his injured shoulder.)

And he holds you.

Bruce Wayne holds you.

One arm draped over your waist, squeezing once, so that you can feel the tension in the corded muscles, always so carefully hidden underneath bespoke suits and shirts that cost more than your monthly salary.

His lips find the back of your neck, the pressure so light that you could barely feel it.

The thought comes to you then, unbidden: he is afraid to wake you.

And that his lips are moving.

You wonder if he is whispering sweet nothings, like a lead in a romance film.

You wonder if he is praying.

And then, his arm tightens around you and you realize:

He is saying your name.

(And the way he says it, under his breath, against your skin, is it really so different from prayer?)

When he finally rises, it is just as quiet. The sound of skin against shifting satin.

You hear him drain the glass of water.

He picks up the unopened bottle of painkillers as if contemplating it, then sets it back down..

There’s the sound of a drawer opening, the scratch of pen or paper.

Your note for the day.

It does not take long to write a single word.

And soon, he leaves the note on top of the drawer, and he leaves.

You rise with your heart beating against your throat. You can still feel the ghost of his lips on the back of your neck.

You had never seen him like that. Felt him like that.

Not just loving, but worshipful.

He had spoken your name as if to draw strength from it.

You glance at the bottle of painkillers.

It’s unopened.

You pick up the note, on it is a single word:

Downstairs.

[the-east-art]

Code Lyoko Lets Go

Because a couple of ya'll (specifically @magicalpoptarts and @imjustheretofangirl003) invited me to infodump about Code Lyoko! So I will! There will be a readmore eventually cuz no way this is gonna be short.

Disclaimers first: I have not watched Code Lyoko in (ooof) probably a decade or so. This is what I remember which mostly means the parts of the show I enjoyed the most! That said you are welcome to fact check me by going to Youtube and watching the entirety of the show for FREE because it's all on youtube on Code Lyoko English Official. Hell yeah.

Code Lyoko is a French animated TV series from 2003 that ended in 2007. Code Lyoko, at a glance, is a Monster of the Week type show where four students at a boarding school combat an evil computer program by diving into a digital world. Very notably this show chose (in 2003!) the badass style choice to have the real world be 2D animation, and the digital world be 3D animation

Everyone has giant foreheads and I love it. Clearly the 3D animation is old, but I absolutely love the choice to have these two style going at once as a way to differentiate the two areas.

Our cast:

Odd Della Robbia - My fave. Usually relegated to Comedy Relief but also can be thought of as The Heart. His lyoko form is a kitty, what isn't there to love.

Ulrich Stern - More reserved and serious, he's the straight man to Odds' hijinks as well as roommates with Odd which creates *drama* between the two. He's athletic and has a lot of parental pressure.

Yumi Ishiyama - Also reserved, she's kind of a badass with both brawn (athletic) and brains (she can man the super computer which I'll talk about more later) She also has a lot of familial pressures - I think her and Ulrich are really meant to contrast and pair together (and indeed they are each others romantic interests). Her Lyoko outfit (ver 1) is one of my faves!

Jeremy Belpois - The computer genius nerd! The guy in the chair! He never receives a Lyoko Form (technically he went in there once but we never get to see what he looked like). He's a goal-oriented (workaholic) kind of guy and he's the one that first discovered the whole supercomputer.

Aelita Schaeffer - Just born yesterday character type, a significantly softer girl in juxtaposition to Yumi. She was a sentient, amnesiac being that already existed in the supercomputer when it woke up, and for a long time it isn't clear if she is a person or a program, and working to get her into the real world is a big plot point.

Xana - The big bad. the evil computer program. Xana I don't believe ever has an actual appearance, just different monsters and forms that it controls and manifests through. Xana wants to... destroy humanity. I don't remember if there's ever a reason given why, but Xana does a great job at being evil!

And that's the main cast! Honorable side character mentions

Jim is one of the teachers at the boarding school, a tough exterior and a heart of gold. He is usually the closest to discovering what the main cast is up to.

Sissy is the resident Mean Girl with a crush on Ulrich. She also ends up becoming closer to the cast and gets more depth over time.

Kiwi is Odd's dog that he hides in his dorm.

Edit: I forgot William but to be fair I don't really care about him lmao. He's a competing love interest for Yumi's affections. The group attempts to bring him into the fold and it does not go well. It's actually a good plot beat - for the group to try and bring in more help and for it to go poorly, which gives reasoning why they don't bring more people in in general. I just don't care for the love triangle.

The Plot:

One day, while looking for computer parts, Jeremy Belpois finds an abandoned factor and a giant computer inside of it.

After turning it on through the controller room he learns about a sentient computer program that lives inside of the computer that has just been awakened, named Aelita. Aelita has no memories and simply woke up in the strange digital landscape of Lyoko - a strange place that appears like a forest with trees like pillars and endless pits between pathways. She is attacked by strange creatures, and takes shelter in a place called a tower.

Unknowingly to Jeremy, this also woke up the evil program known as Xana. Xana can take over towers (which makes them light up red) to create a connection to the outside world. Through that connection Xana wreaks havoc through a variety of means. this can mean basically creating monsters from stuff like creating a monster teddy bear, taking over peoples minds, controlling electronics, etc. Xana has a wide variety of abilities and the show never really states limits but like, in a good way that means that it doesn't usually get *too* stagnant.

Eventually (I really don't remember how) Odd and Ulrich and Yumi get involved with Jeremy, who figures out the the cause of the strange things happening in the real world are coming from the super computer he woke up. With Odd as their guinea pig (and eventually the others join) they use a strange room to digitize their bodies - a person steps in, Jeremy runs some programs from the Lab/Interfacing room, and they appear in the digital world of Lyoko, leaving the scanner they were in empty.

Their appearances and powers in Lyoko are determined on some subconscious level. When they appear in Lyoko they fight the monsters there and do their best to help Aelita get to the towers. Aelita basically has a key integrated into her that she can use on towers to shut them down. When she does this, the screen lights up with 'Code: Lyoko' (WOAH THATS THE NAME OF THE SHOW)

After Aelita does this, Jeremy runs a program he calls 'Return to the Past' which sends the entire world back in time to whenever Xana activated the tower. This undoes all the damage that Xana causes in the real world, and the only people who remember the world being reset are people who have been to Lyoko before (the main cast, naturally, although the first time he did it Jeremy had not been to Lyoko before so he also forgot the events that occurred). A Return to the Past does NOT bring people back to life, however, which maintains the stakes of any given situation as property damage can be undone, but if someone is killed that isn't something that can be fixed.

This is pretty much how the episodes progress - The Lyoko Warriors (the main cast) have something happening at school (a dance, a test, they're learning something in Science) and Xana begins to interfere with the real world, usually in a way that directly affects one of the Main Cast. The main cast then need to find a way to escape to the Supercomputer and get into Lyoko (since they aren't actually allowed to leave the school grounds - the cast getting stuck because of teachers or because of other commitments is a common dramatic beat). They go there, beat the monster, and get Aelita in the tower. In the overarching story they work on figuring out who Aelita is and if they can get her out of the computer, who made the computer in the first place, and how to defeat Xana for good while also navigating interpersonal conflicts and teenage drama.

They're teens so they get to the factory through the sewers using skateboards and scooters. It's great.

Misc Stuff:

There are four sectors in Lyoko, providing some variation in vibes, but they're all pretty bare bones. Eventually they discover another sector that's like the heart of Lyoko which is also pretty simplistic (it was early animation idk what to tell you). THEN they learn that if they travel through the digital ocean they can go to OTHER Lyokos (which disappointingly all are like copies or look the same the one we're familiar with).

Speaking of the digital ocean, all of the land areas and platforms of Lyoko are over what is called the digital ocean. The digital ocean is dangerous for our protagonists - if they call into it their code will be lost and they will, unable to be brought back to the real world. There are several tense scenes where the main characters have to kill the other or kill one another BEFORE they fall into the ocean.

When the Main characters die in Lyoko they appear in the Scanner room visibly shaking and gasping, leading to the common belief that the pain they experience in Lyoko translates to real world pain - including the feeling of death!

In order for people to go to Lyoko someone in the lab room has to activate the scanner programs. This is usually Jeremy, but is sometimes Yumi and I think eventually Aelita can as well? But I like the way that certain characters need to be able to get out of whatever sticky situation they're in to get the whole thing working - a minimum of two people needed is nice. Jeremy eventually also is able to code various vehicles for the crew to use in Lyoko.

Initially Odd had a future sight ability but it gets taken away partway through season 1 and I will ALWAYS be bitter about that.

The show reuses A LOT of animation because of the tight budget. My last rewatch it started to bug me, but I probably wouldn't mind as much now. (the scanner animation they reuse is actually my fave I love it every time) It also has some real pacing issues where several episodes in a row can feel really repetitive as the characters bang their heads against a problem and it feels like it ends the same way every time.

Ultimately what I love about Lyoko is the characters and the concepts. It's a show I think is RIPE for a good remake and re-imagining. The using the two versions of animation was really clever, the teenage monster of the week was exactly the kind of thing I loved to fantasize about when I was a kid, wishing that was my life haha. The designs are fun, the stakes are good but not TOO serious, and a lot of the story and characters I think could be expanded on or changed, such as giving Xana more of a background and adding more variety to the Lyoko world itself. (and maybe fix some plot beats I am unsatisfied with?????)

There were some seasons after 2007 in like uhh 2013 or 2015 or something??? Called Code Lyoko evolution, but the 2D portions of the show were now live action. I uh, never watched it.

If you have any questions or want to chat more about Lyoko let me know!!!! I love this show!!!! I loved watching it without any context for what was going on as a kid and I miss it!!!!!

I also really like the Gargage Kids Pilot (The Code Lyoko short pilot). It has a lot in common with the end product but also a lot different! Ulrichs Lyoko design is a completely different model and Lyoko has more dimensionality to it, some of their powers look like they cross over to the real world, and the vibes of the supercomputer factory is way different. (warning though the CGI models are UHHH rough looking. This must have been like 2002? BE NICE OKAY)

[capitan-baohao]

Supercomputer? ✨✨super✨✨ indeed

[parkertheenigma]

And now: PART ONE of the lore for Cascade

Let's start at the beginning before her creation...

Stellar cycles ago, a bot named C1-3 came online in Iacon. C1-3 was a bot with a serial number, meaning she didn't have a name of her own. C1-3 wasn't an approachable bot. She refused the need for companionship in friends and instead set the goal to become one of Cybertron's greatest scientific inventors. She was good, really good. But it became clear that she was thought little of. In the end, she'd be nothing but a spec of space dust to her superiors. So, C1-3 moved her work out of Iacon and away to the badlands of Cybertron. There, she began private research into Cybertronian evolution and sought to improve upon the cycle of a Transformers life. Her research made her very detached from her morality, and any sane bot in her position would simply give up the second it affected their mental state. But C1-3 found a way to push onward by erasing much of her empathy little by little to improve her work efficiency. As she worked, she grew hatred deep inside her. She'd always had it, but now that she was truly alone, she decided to address it. She began to hate what Cybertron stood for now, what the Autobots stood for, and she began to think about the war between Autobot and Decepticon. And the more she thought, the more she came to realize that perhaps… she shared the ideals of the Decepticons. No one knows if these conclusions were due to stellar cycles of solitude, the slow erasure of her empathy, or if she simply always thought like this. But that didn't matter. C1-3 sought the hidden Decepticons and pledged her loyalty. When asked for her name, she introduced herself as Malice for her hatred had grown into her very being. Malice would work as a scientific inventor alongside Shockwave, and for a long while, she used her brilliance to slowly bring the Decepticons back to strength. It all came to a temporary halt when a severe lab accident left Malice's body in critical condition. Malice refused to die and leave her genius to the memory of her peers, and so an idea was born. With the help of Shockwave, Malice had her mental consciousness transferred out of her body into a large and powerful supercomputer. She became one with nearly all Decepticon warships, systems, computers, and more, evolving to a higher purpose. However, she knew this would only be temporary. Malice looked upon her own body through screens, and wires tinted purple with her influence, and that's when she got another idea. A genius but especially cruel one...

Malice directed Shockwave to split her bodies spark in half, connecting one to her supercomputer and leaving the other half intact with the body. Then, she began to reprogram her own body and now empty mind into a completely new being. She reversed engineered her own body to something similar to a lifeless doll, creating a completely new being from herself. She'd use this new being as a way to aid the Decepticons by using the body as a sort of sleeper agent to spy on the Autobots from within… without it ever realizing. She named her creation Cascade, as being bestowed a name would be the only act of kindness Malice would ever commit. A name was more than Malice ever received when she came online. She felt that, at least, this would mean something. Cascade would be almost completely separate from Malice entirely, as she was indeed her very own being. Her mind, though, was partially her own. A very small part in her mind transferred data to Malice that would act as intelligence to aid the Decepticons. Malice sent Cascade with no memories or motives to Iacon and left fate to decide the rest. In a way, she abandoned her creation, but in return, she'd gain so much from this...

To be continued

[kkeidawrites]

Scorched Enigma

Day 22 of Blacktober! Still feel like shit but have fun and make sure to participate in the poll!

This is the third installment of Toy Enigma

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Taking his advice, Superman flies over to St. Martin’s Island and lands on the front steps of the largest estate on the island as Y/n had instructed.

Ringing the doorbell, Superman takes in the exterior of the estate, it was indeed a large house but it fit Y/n’s rich girl personality.

The front door opens and a child appears in front of him. A little boy looked up at him with his green eyes, amazed at the sight of Superman at his doorstep.

“Woah!! Superman is standing at the front door!” He exclaims, bouncing excitedly in place.

“Um, hello.” Superman says and the boy grins.

“Dillan, what has mom told you about opening the door? You don’t know who it is or what they want.” Another voice scolds as they pull the star struck boy into the house, this time a girl no older than a teenager comes up to the door.

“Superman?” The girl questions and the man of steel waves awkwardly.

“Wait are you really him? You’re The Superman right?”

He levitates a bit to show her that he was legit and the teen gasps in disbelief. Dillan pokes his head back through the doorway.

“No way! I can’t wait to show my friends online! The Superman at my house-“

“Alright, you two, go and call your other nine brothers and sisters to the table. It’s time for dinner.” He hears Y/n say and the two children groan sadly but leaves from the door to do what she says.

Y/n opens the door to reveal herself and gives Superman a polite nod and motions him to come into her home.

Superman steps into the house and looks at the intricate details of the statues that stood by the front door, they were Greek from what he could tell and looked to be pristine in its condition.

“Momm!! Taylor is locked away in the bathroom again!” Y/n sighs softly as she closed the door behind the hero. She begins walking and Superman follows behind her, he looks around her home, it was nicely decorated.

They walked by the stairwell, and Superman could hear arguing from upstairs.

“Taylor! Open the door!” The same girl fusses.

“Lynn, there are nine more bathrooms that you can use, there’s no need for you to use the one your brother is in!” Y/n says up the carpeted staircase.

“But, that one has my phone in it! Come on Taylor!” Banging on wood is heard and Y/n sighs again.

Superman, could see children either running down a hallway or a child walking and making their way to what he can assume was the dining room.

“Um, how many children do you-“

“I have eleven in total. You had actually arrived at the time where it’s time for us to eat dinner.” She explains and leads them into a study.

Pressing the button under the grey and white desk, the statue that was overlooking the study opened into a staircase leading into the ground.

Walking down the steps, Clark sees a Y/n floats over to one of the large supercomputers. As she typed away at the keyboard, Clark looks around the large area, it was filled with statues of African, Greek and Egyptian women.

“Why are all the statues just women?” He asked, curiously staring at Hathor the Goddess of Love.

“I’m sure you’re not here for all of that, here you go.” She says and moves to the side to let Clark look at the computer screen.

It was a picture of Brainiac, but a diagramed version of him.

“Brainiac is rebuilding his body by using Luthor’s money and technology however, there is just one thing that Luthor can’t buy. And it’s this,” she presses a button and the screen changes to show a strange device, like a pin cushion for someone sewing.

“What is it?” He asks.

“It’s a psi-amplifier to take over your mind. You remember when Luthor played “dead” a couple of months ago? He’s made contact with Brainiac and it would seem that the two are working together.” She explains leaning against a wall.

“Luthor isn’t that stupid, he wouldn’t work with Brainiac, he doesn’t know what he would do to the world.” Clark says.

“Then you’re not ready for what he’s going to do in the future. I don’t have an idea as to where this is but, I’m sure your bat friend can help you with that part.” She gives him a look as Clark looks at her with surprise.

“How did you-“

“I’m just not as slow as other people are. I even know Diana.” Y/n tells him then presses another button on her computer.

The printer spouts out the information of the device he needed to locate on a small piece of paper and Y/n handed to Superman.

“This is all I can do for you unfortunately, but, you can at least figure out what you need. If you need my help, you know where to find me.” she says and Clark nods.

“Thank you, I appreciate the help.” Y/n smiles at him.

“Come on, I’m sure you want to go ahead and get this done, I’ll walk you out. I’m late for dinner and I’m sure my babies are waiting on me, which I try to tell them not to do.” Y/n rambles as she leads them both out the lair.

Returning to the front door, Y/n watches as Superman opens her front door and leaves out but then levitates a few feet away from her house. Y/n crosses her arms as she watches him and looks up at the flying man.

In the nearby window, all the children from inside gathered at the glass to see the famous hero in red and blue.

“Good luck Superman.” Y/n said and he nods and waves at the kids who wave back excitedly and flies off.

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Batman and Superman flew side by side as they made their way to the first piece of the device.

The Batwing’s location indicated where they needed to go, blinking steadily as they approached the coordinates Batman was able to pinpoint.

“We should be there in the next couple of hours, it’s supposed to be a particular material that we need to get.” Batman says.

“Right, so far I still don’t see anything, it’s just an endless list of forestry and wildlife.” Superman tells him as he uses his superhuman vision to see further ahead.

His eyes widen and he stops, Batman stops as well.

“What is it?” Batman asks.

“There’s something out there, it’s coming in fast.” Superman tells him and Batman looks down at his surroundings beacon. Nothing was in a five hundred mile radius but, Batman never took his friend’s word for granted.

“I don’t see anything on my beacons but what do you see?” Batman asks.

Using his superhuman vision, Superman sees a total of seven missiles heading right for them.

“It’s missiles, seems like someone doesn’t want us out here.” Superman says.

As the missiles neared, Superman takes the lead of flying ahead and knocking out the first missile with his fists.

Batman uses his own missiles to take out the other two missiles that came close to his Batwing. Suddenly, his beacon starts to go off and he reads the warning message, the words in capital letters and red bold font.

“Just two more!” Batman hears Superman say and looks up just in time to see the man of steel fly off to face the final bombs.

“Superman wait! There’s something different with those missiles!” Batman warns and Superman stops flying so quickly in the air and instead grabs the two final missiles in his hands.

As soon as he grabs them, the exhaust of the missiles go out and melts in his hands, the silver metal wrapping around his arms and coating the rest of his body.

Superman tries to shake off the suddenly alive metal but that didn’t do anything as it takes over the rest of his body. It forms a coffin like casing around his body and with his concentration off, his power of flight is diminished and he drops like a rock into the tress below.

“Superman!” Batman yells and grunts when the Batwing is suddenly rocking. He looks to his right and sees that the engine of his Batwing is on fire and it drops down a bit from the air.

He couldn’t see anything around him that was attacking him and didn’t have enough time to try to figure it out as his other engine was attacked. Feeling the Batwing begin to fall from the air, Batman pushes the eject button and is suddenly ejected from his seat.

As he is parachuted, he watches his vehicle crash into the trees and explode.

“Damn it. What was that?” He asks.

Meanwhile with Superman, he struggles in his metal prison and unfortunately he wasn’t able to speak to let his partner know where he was.

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Make sure to like, comment, and reblog!

Be sure to check out the first two chapters below!

Part 1:Bottom

Part 2: Top

[mariacallous]

Since Elon Musk announced that he’ll be stepping back from his daily work with DOGE, perhaps you’ve been wondering if he has anything else to fill that time now that he’s shut down operations at America’s humanitarian-aid provider, wrecked much of the nation’s scientific-research infrastructure, and disrupted the communications systems at the Social Security Administration. One way to find out would be to ask Grok, his entry in the A.I. sweepstakes. “Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, xAI, has been making significant moves in Memphis,” Grok reports. “But these have sparked controversy.”

Indeed they have. Last year, Musk’s team secured an abandoned factory that used to belong to Electrolux, the vacuum-cleaner people on the edge of the city’s Boxtown neighborhood. As Musk explained at the time, “That’s why it’s in Memphis, home of Elvis and also one of the oldest—I think it was the capital of ancient Egypt.” With typical modesty, he renamed his vacuum factory Colossus, and started stuffing it with Nvidia graphics-processing units, or G.P.U.s, the basic building blocks of A.I. systems. At the moment, he has two hundred thousand of these G.P.U.s, and he’s headed for a million; by some estimates, he is expected to build the “largest supercomputer” in the world.

All that processing takes power to run, and so the xAI team moved about thirty-five mobile methane-gas-powered generators onto the site to support the data center. These are truck-mounted units, many of them designed by Caterpillar, which give off some of the same brew of pollutants as other gas-combustion device—including nitrogen oxides and formaldehyde—and which are currently operating without a permit. “xAI has essentially built a power plant in South Memphis with no oversight, no permitting, and no regard for families living in nearby communities,” the Southern Environmental Law Center said, in a report released in April. (Full disclosure: I volunteer every year to judge the S.E.L.C.’s Phil Reed prize for best environmental writing about the South). The S.E.L.C. has called for an “emergency order” from the city to require xAI to cease the use of these generators, with a twenty-five-thousand-dollar daily fine if the company refuses. The mayor of Memphis, Paul Young, a supporter of the project, addressed the concerns at a meeting with community members in March. “I want to figure out how we can exploit this project for us,” he said. “I know you all feel like it’s us getting exploited, but we need to speak from a place of strength.” After the S.E.L.C. issued its report, Young explained that the company has a permit application pending with the Shelby County Health Department to run fifteen generators. “There are thirty-five, but there are only fifteen that are on,” he said. “The other ones are stored on the site.”

It turns out that Young may be wrong about that number. SouthWings, a group of volunteer pilots who help monitor environmental problems, overflew the site with thermal-imaging equipment that showed at least thirty-three of the generators giving off lots of heat—indicating that they were fired up and running at the same time. (Young’s office and xAI didn’t respond to requests for comment.) Taken together, they would produce about four hundred and twenty megawatts of power—the equivalent of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s big gas-fired power plant nearby.

Memphis was, indeed, home to Elvis—but it was also, of course, where Martin Luther King, Jr., who came to the city to support striking sanitation workers, was assassinated, and it remains a place of sharp economic and racial division. It will surprise no one to learn that the neighborhoods in South Memphis surrounding Musk’s facility—including Boxtown and Westwood—are predominantly Black and also home to a number of industrial facilities, including chemical plants and an oil refinery. The area already has elevated levels of pollution compared with leafier precincts, and, according to Politico’s E&E News, “already leads the state in emergency department visits for asthma.” Those same neighborhoods came together at the beginning of the decade to fight, and ultimately defeat, the proposed forty-nine-mile-long crude-oil Byhalia pipeline, which would have run through the area. In that process, a new political star emerged: Justin Pearson, a young African American who rode that battle into the state legislature (from which he was later expelled for joining an anti-gun-violence protest on the floor of the Tennessee House after a shooting at a Christian school, only to soon be reappointed by the county and reëlected to office in the next election).

Pearson and his brother KeShaun, the director of a group called Memphis Community Against Pollution, are now helping lead the fight against xAI. They were prominent voices at a town hall of the Shelby County Health Department in late April, which a local NBC affiliate described as “unlike any other town hall in recent memory, with dozens of Shelby County sheriff’s deputies, Memphis police officers and Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers standing inside and outside of Fairley High School.” Citizens were allowed two minutes each to speak, but there were no responses to questions; after two hours the proceedings ended.

A company spokesman was shouted down at the meeting, but his written statement insisted that “XAl is going above and beyond the required emission control requirements. The Solar SMT-130 turbines will be equipped with SoLoNOx dry low emissions (D.L.E.) technology and selective catalytic reduction (S.C.R.) systems that lower nitrogen oxides (NOx) to 2 ppm.” The “Solar” here, though, has nothing to do with the power source—it’s the name of Caterpillar’s turbine division, which stems from the Solar Aircraft Company, founded in the late nineteen-twenties, whose name was derived from the fact that it was based in sunny San Diego.)

“I feel like my community is being disrespected,” Justin Pearson (whom I got to know during the Byhalia fight) told me in an e-mail. “I feel like my friends and neighbors and family members are being ignored—both by xAI itself and city leaders championing this data center that is emitting pollution into our air. Some of those leaders have mentioned the money that xAI will supposedly bring to Memphis, but what good is money if we have to struggle with polluted air? As the elders here say, ‘All money ain’t good money.’ ” He added, “Folks are angry and fearful. Some neighbors have expressed fear about letting children play outside or not enjoying time in their backyards because they don’t know what kind of pollution is in the air.”

Had Musk wanted to proceed differently, he could have. A report last year, from researchers at a number of energy and tech firms, made it clear that building arrays of solar microgrids is a quick and highly affordable plan for powering such data centers. “While building off-grid solar microgrids of this magnitude would be a first, it’s very possible to do with technology that exists today, and to scale it quickly,” the researchers found. They actually looked at Musk’s Memphis project and concluded that its use of portable gas generators was at best a one-off solution: “Most users of rental power plan to transition once possible because this approach carries very high costs and generally reliability is lower than permanent infrastructure.”

But cost is evidently not a big issue for Musk. (DOGE claims to have saved a hundred and sixty billion dollars in government spending, but a new analysis by the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service estimates that it only did so at a cost of a hundred and thirty-five billion dollars, because it has operated so quickly and ineptly.) Neither, judging from DOGE’s performance, is saving lives, but he could help do so in Memphis, if he wanted to. Pearson says, “Solar panels and battery storage would be a much cleaner alternative to methane gas turbines. Solar panels also don’t pump smog-forming pollution or chemicals like formaldehyde into nearby communities.”

More to the point, Musk’s actions in Memphis seem to presuppose that his experience in Washington will prove typical. There, he managed to enact his slash-and-burn damage in a few short weeks before leaving town, albeit with an approval rating even lower than the President’s. In Tennessee, he’s running into forces seasoned by several generations of struggle. During the Byhalia-pipeline dispute, Pearson recalled, “a representative from the pipeline company called my community the ‘path of least resistance.’ It seems like corporations don’t expect us to fight back, but we’ve proven that wrong time and time again. We’re going to do it again.” 

[archoneddzs15]

Sega Mega CD - Shadowrun

Title: Shadowrun / シャドウラン

Developer/Publisher: Compile / LMS Music

Release date: 23 February 1996

Catalogue No.: T-66024

Genre: RPG

Shadowrun. Many games come into our lives and alter who we are, becoming a part of us for the rest of our lives. Shadowrun is one such series that after the first time I played it I had become heavily engrossed in everything to do with the canon behind it. This game is an especially strange beast if you've played the SNES (Data East) and Sega Genesis (Bluesky Software) Shadowrun games.

You see, at the end of 1995, we saw the last Mega CD releases. In the US, the last game to be released for the Sega CD is a half-arsed update to "Demolition Man", a run-n-gun based on and featuring grainy FMV clips from the Sylvester Stallone movie. Then, in Europe, came The Adventures of Batman and Robin. That game was clearly based on *just* the driving levels from Mega CD Batman Returns and greatly expanded on, and featured splices of an "original episode" of Batman the Animated Series specifically for the game.

For a while as the year 1996 began spinning into rotation, there would be no new games for the Mega CD, making it seem like The Adventures of Batman and Robin was indeed the last ever Mega CD game to be released.... which it did end up being if you lived in Europe. That is until, in some miracle on the 23rd of February 1996, Compile resurrected the aging Mega CD devkits and worked together with Japanese tabletop RPG distributor Group SNE and Chicago-based tabletop RPG company FASA Corporation to release one last Mega CD game once and for all. That game would end up being based on a tabletop RPG that, since its inception in 1989, has remained among the most popular role-playing games. This is Shadowrun.

Mega CD Shadowrun is a pretty good game. You play as one of four characters: Rokudou, Shikumo, Mao, and D-head and battle your way through Tokyo in the year 2053 while discovering a massive conspiracy that could potentially destroy the city of Tokyo as we know it. The game is divided into a few sections: a "digital comic" mode similar to Snatcher and Dead of the Brain, a top-down RPG mode outside of battle similar to the original Legend of Zelda, Golvellius or Ys, the Battle mode which triggers within the top-down view and plays in the same way as how games like Final Fantasy 6 do it, and a "Matrix" mode where your characters hack into the Matrix supercomputers.

The main character (Rokudou) acts pretty cool and a little harsh at times but is quite appealing because of it, and the story has some nice ideas, but is maybe a little muddled in places thanks to the language barrier. The action scenes play like an average Squaresoft Super Famicom RPG game, but look nice enough so the game gets away with it. Good enough to satisfy the role-playing fever for a while. My only complaint that I can level against the game is that I can't really recommend this game to those that can't understand Japanese at a native level, and that there are no voice acting or CD redbook music to be had here. All the music is generated via the Mega CD's PCM sound chip combined with the Mega Drive's YM2612 FM synth, though there are two hidden CD audio tracks, none of which are used.

Another weird point is that the characters look good in the visual novel scenes due to Compile making use of the Mega CD's scaling features, but during the RPG segments, they look super tiny and cute. It's a damn shame that games like this never get a complete playable English translation. I really wish that would happen though, but it seems like an English translation to Mega CD Shadowrun is currently suffering from development hell and may never be completed. What a shame.

[time-travelling-chaos]

So, one of the main goals of my thesis project is to understand some chemical reactions by running computer simulations. A few months ago, I was having some hard time with a particular step, so I lauched some calculations but those turned out to not be extremely relevant for the projet, and I never analysed the results. Except that now I have to write down said thesis and to check all the data I have. So I went back to those calculations, and of course, some of them had some errors. A lot of errors can be understood pretty easily, as the software will give you some kind of indication of what failed, but here there was nothing. No clue. Most of the time, when this happens, it's because the time limit of your calculation was reached, and it was automatically killed. Now, there are a lot of rules on the university supercomputer, usually to avoid having one person using all the ressources, and one of those rules is that you cannot run a calculation for longer than 48h. I do a lot of calculations, so when I have to check if an error is due to the time limit, I usually quickly glance at the time when it started (just the hour, not the day) to see if they are the same, so I did just that with that specific calculation. Started at 6 on some day, ended up at 7 on another one. So not 48h. Which makes it unlikely to be a time limit problem. But at this point I have no clue what the problem could have been, the results to this point make sense, it's not something that requires a lot of computer ressources, nothing. At this point, I remember that I have seen this error before, so I find the calculation where this happened, and obviously at that time, it was indeed a time limit problem. I go back to the one I was trying to analyse and look at the time once more, and notice something strange. The calculation did not last 48h. It did last 49h. Which is not supposed to be possible. But I have seen, occasionally, some calculs last a few more seconds/minutes than the time limit, because some process can take a bit of time to stop. But still one full extra hour? That seems way to much for that. Anyway, at that point, lab is closing so I have to leave. Still, it keeps coming back into my mind. How did I get one more hour on my calculation? Is this a specific problem with the software that cannot stop properly (it's a beta version that hasn't been tested that much)? Maybe it's a bug on the supercomputer itself? Not so common but not so uncommon either. And then it hit me. There is one reason why something could have happen over the course of on extra hour, or at least would have appeared to have lasted longer. The spring time change. So I checked, and of course that calculation had been running during that specific week-end.

[cantheykillmacbeth]

The Squip from Be More Chill should be able to kill Macbeth!

Largely due to the unconventional birth clause, as it is a robot pill that is activated after being consumed by a human with Mountain Dew. Or at least that it’s manufactured instead of born. The birth parent clause is more ambiguous as we don’t know who created squips or what gender they are.

I would also argue that it can pass with the gender clause, too. While it appears as Keanu Reeves, it is canonically “as genderless as an iPhone” and is largely referred to with it/its pronouns in canon. But it would also probably be okay with he/him pronouns and being referred to as a man since it really only has an appearance for its user’s comfort, so maybe not.

As for how it would kill him – being an intangible hologram generated by a swarm of nanobots in a teenager’s brain – I can only assume rogue hockey stick incident.

Yes, The SQUIP from the Be More Chill musical could kill Macbeth!

The SQUIP indeed applies for the Unconventional Birth Clause due to being a manufacture supercomputer, though it's creators are left ambiguous.

As for the Gender Clause, I'm not so sure. I can't seem to find any sources that back up these "canonical it/its pronouns" or "genderless as an iPhone" claims (though it would make sense contextually), and mostly see SQUIP being referred to with masculine-presenting terms and he/him pronouns. ((unfortunately from what ive seen they only use it/its pronouns in a dehumanizing way which irks me but im not gonna get into that)) I'll leave the SQUIP uncategorized for the Gender Clause, at least for now.

Thank you for your submission!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Renee DiResta at The UnPopulist:

The Russians—and Iranians—did indeed play at being disgruntled Americans during that race. But in 2020, the accounts that most persistently and effectively worked to delegitimize the American presidential election belonged to the sitting president of the United States and his inner circle. For months, a cluster of campaign surrogates, ideologically-aligned influencers, and hyper-partisan media steadily beat the drum of “The Steal.” Therefore, EIP found itself in the unexpected position of assessing not voting “misinformation” so much as an expansive and deliberate propaganda campaign that managed to persuade its adherents that a free and fair election was in fact rigged—ultimately leading to a violent effort to prevent its certification. Since 2020, the same formidable network of political elites, influencers, and grassroots activists, has continued to systematically erode public trust in American elections, using its power not only to frame online discourse but to target those who stand in its way.

“Misinformation” is not the challenge we face in American politics. “Misinformation” implies that a fact is wrong, or a claim has been misinterpreted. The information challenge plaguing election 2020 was something else entirely. The stories that the EIP tracked—allegations of ballots being destroyed or being “found,” dead people and undocumented immigrants voting, live people using maiden names to cast more than one vote, Sharpie markers being handed out to deliberately invalidate ballots, CIA supercomputers or Dominion machines changing votes—originated and spread via highly active, authentic, participatory online crowds that believed, with religious zeal, that an election was being stolen right before their eyes. They believed that because that is what they were being told. The frame of “The Steal” came from the top. But the “evidence” to support it came from ordinary people who worked backwards, starting from a preexisting conclusion and then looking for substantiating evidence around them. This led them to view even their own neighbors and local election officials—including Republicans—with suspicion. The rumors of election fraud were driven by a sincere conviction at the grassroots, exacerbated by the speed at which sensational stories go viral on social media today—information flies before the facts can even be established. But their real lift came from boosts by explicitly ideological and cynical right-wing influencers.

These influencers very effectively, and repeatedly, turned online rumor into perceived reality, and suspicion into conspiracy. These weren't isolated trolls or tiny fringe websites. They included Donald Trump’s sons, Charlie Kirk, and Benny Johnson, for example, and they had millions of followers in aggregate. When they succeeded in making an allegation go viral, news outlets like Fox and OANN would pick it up, and millions of viewers outside of social media would see what “some people online” were saying.

This political machine—consisting of a nexus of top politicians, MAGA grassroots, social media influencers and traditional right-wing media—highlighted random allegations of irregularities to undermine trust in an election that it was afraid it would lose and which it did lose. A president who refused to accept defeat continued to amplify conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, illegal ballots, and shadowy cabals for months (now years) after election day. His supporters believed him so completely that they were willing to resort to violence to put him back in the White House.

The Propaganda Machine Entrenches Itself

Nor did this process stop after the last election. If you saw the viral stories of pet-eating Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, or malevolent FEMA workers working to steal land and lithium following Hurricane Helene, you have seen this same process in action in recent weeks. A sensational allegation appears—“They’re eating the pets!”—hyper-partisan influencers boost it—“BIG IF TRUE!”—and prominent elected officials (like JD Vance) pick it up when it serves their political aims. Threats follow, targeting whatever hapless group or individual the angry people choose to scapegoat. Immigrants. FEMA workers. Weathermen. If the allegation is found to be false, the goalposts move: OK, the politician says, the specific claim in that particular rumor might have been wrong, but the concern expressed in the story is real. This is how, for example, a video of indeterminate animals on a grill, not in Springfield, Ohio, and not involving Haitians, nonetheless made the rounds on right-wing Twitter.

This process is repetitive, but we seem unable to interrupt it. Why? Because of another long-running delegitimization campaign by this same nexus: A deliberate effort to demonize fact-checks, content labeling, and platform responses to viral lies as a “censorship-industrial complex.” Social media platforms did act in response to the election rumor mill in 2020. They leveraged their procedures to take down inauthentic foreign state-sponsored trolls, and implemented election-specific policies to address premature claims of victory, false claims of fraud, or posts that deliberately misled by telling people to vote on the wrong day. (In 2022, some sites added policies to prohibit threats to election officials that had been proliferating at an alarming rate.)

[...] But MAGA politicians and their allies spun these facts quite differently. In 2020, most of the viral and misleading election-related claims were in support of Donald Trump; consequently, a significant portion of the platforms' enforcement actions involved right-wing speakers. For right-wing politicians and influencers, this was irrefutable proof of anti-conservative bias—not of a problem of falsehoods and lies on their side. They leveraged the narrative to fuel a growing right-wing backlash against Big Tech.

[...] Perhaps the most visible among them today is Elon Musk, CEO of X (formerly Twitter) and an influential figure with over 200 million followers. Musk’s acquisition of the social media platform two years ago gave right-wing political elites a useful ally deeply sympathetic to the notion of an anti-conservative bias in social media. During the 2022 election, Musk briefly continued to support then-Twitter’s commitment to tackling foreign interference: when the EIP worked to expose Russian, Iranian, and Chinese influence operations in conjunction with Twitter’s integrity teams, Musk amplified and praised the work. However, as Musk increasingly engaged with election-denying influencers, some, like former Trump administration staffer Mike Benz, began to press their advantage, even calling on Musk to fire specific moderation team “censors” by name.

Musk obliged. In order to eliminate the “censorship regime” of Old Twitter, he also released the “Twitter Files,” a cherry-picked selection of internal communications between platform staff and outsiders in government, academia, or civil society. Largely ignored by mainstream media, the Files caused a huge sensation within right-wing and heterodox Twitter. The effort sought to provide evidence to justify the belief that Twitter and its collaborators in government and academia had conspired to suppress conservatives in 2020—and to delegitimize any kind of content moderation. In reality, the files largely showed Twitter employees doing their best to make hard decisions, regularly opting not to take action on accounts that government or other outsiders suggested they look at, and in fact actively attempting to avoid moderating prominent conservatives. (One can debate to what extent the state should speak to private platforms, but the small number of flagged posts that were taken down suggests that the platforms weren’t fearing reprisals, and X’s own lawyers stated that the materials “[did] not plausibly suggest” evidence of censorship in legal filings following their release.)

In November of 2022, the House flipped to Republican control. That shift operationalized the effort to delegitimize and silence researchers like myself who’d studied the Big Lie and engaged with Big Tech. Leading that charge was Congressman Jim Jordan, himself an election denier, who ushered in a bold new version of McCarthyism by launching investigations into platforms, people, and institutions that had pushed back against the narrative of election fraud. Subpoenas went out—including to me—demanding information and interviews in response to the spurious allegations of the Twitter Files, imposing a significant monetary and time cost. The effort wasn’t about finding the truth so much as punishing those who had spoken it. And as was the case with McCarthy, no documents that were turned over, and nothing that was said, could ever actually exonerate the accused. Researchers, civil society organizations, and election integrity groups were baselessly reframed as the real villains, accused of orchestrating a vast conspiracy to suppress speech and rig elections. In other words, the MAGA propaganda machine levitated baseless allegations of censorship it itself had made to impose real censorship. And it has succeeded.

Some institutions and researchers backed away from election work, afraid of threats and continued government attention. Stanford University exited the space; the Election Integrity Partnership is not operating in the 2024 election. Other civil society and academic institutions are still tracking election rumors, but no longer speaking directly with state or local election officials or tech platforms. Governments backed away from engaging with tech companies even about suspected foreign interference. Platforms themselves have become vague about the extent to which they will moderate or fact-check rumors and conspiracy theories. The political backlash they faced for a few high-profile mistakes—like the ill-considered temporary suppression of coverage of Hunter Biden’s Laptop—has put them back on their heels.

Networks adept at spreading rumors and conspiracy theories require a networked response—which is why this concerted targeting campaign set out to dismantle collaboration, ensuring fewer obstacles to their messaging in the 2024 election. Meanwhile, policy and product changes at X since 2022 have also significantly aided the cause. Musk himself, once an advocate for platform neutrality, has become a vocal Trump surrogate. His personal political identification is not a problem; business leaders are entitled to their beliefs and speech. However, he is simultaneously X’s largest account and the governor of its policies. He has an unparalleled ability to capture attention due to how his platform recommends content, as well as a predilection for amplifying conspiracy theories that reinforce his political beliefs. He recently re-aired debunked claims about voting machines that cost Fox News a $700 million settlement.

The MAGA propaganda machine has weaponized phony claims about “censorship” to intimidate those who call out their obvious lies.

[pengychan]

[Good Omens] Come What May, Prologue

Summary: While completely improvised, Gabriel's plan to transfer his memories in the container fly before erasure was rather solid. It came very close to working, too. But 'close' was not enough. [SPOILERS FOR SEASON 2] Characters: Gabriel, Beelzebub, Crowley, Aziraphale, Murien, Michael, Uriel, Saraquael Rating: T   All chapters will be tagged as ‘come what may’ on my blog.

A/N: Bitches will get the best possible happy ending for their ship, uncomplicated and 100% satisfying, and then decide to create Problems. That's me, I'm bitches.

***

“... He doesn’t have a desk.”

“I’m sure it won’t take him long to clear--”

“Uriel. He has never had a desk.”

Michael’s word came out cold and clipped; it caused Uriel to go quiet, and Metatron to turn to her. It was a long, piercing look. “Do you believe he’s lied to us?”

Holding Metatron’s gaze was never easy, but Michael did, unflinching. “I know he has.”

Uriel frowned. “But why lie about a desk?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t trust him,” Saraqael spoke up, and looked over at Michael. “Can I start the memory wipe now?”

“Yes. Do that.”

***

The average adult human brain has the ability to store the equivalent of 2.5 million gigabytes digital memory. While it may seem impressive, the mind of an archangel - let alone that of the only first-order archangel in existence - is not built like that of a human. Its capacity is infinitely superior and can therefore contain nearly limitless information, which comes in handy when you’re immortal and there are indeed countless things, names and events to remember.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that the storage has to be full. Some archangels - specifically, the only first-order archangel in existence - do have quite a lot of empty space left for the data to move around like tumbleweed in a bad Western movie. However, the mind’s capacity is exponentially higher than any supercomputer in the world, and the amount of data in it is exponentially higher than that in any human brain. Or that of many, many human brains glued together with several supercomputers thrown in here and there. The more data, the more time is needed to delete it.

This is all to say that, however efficient the memory wipe is, it takes time. Not much time, but time nonetheless; enough for the subject to know it’s happening. It is generally painless, though.

Unless the subject in question is foolish enough to fight it.

***

“NO!”

Gabriel jerked upright, the half-open match box falling from his fingers. The fly-- the gift -- flew off, still empty, but he hardly noticed. He fell on his knees, clutching his head with another cry. He knew instantly that something hadn’t worked - odd, with a plan so brilliant - and now a hole had opened up in his mind, a back hole capable of pulling in galaxies and reducing them to nothing. 

He had seen black holes at work, or-- had he? He didn’t recall. Those memories, too, were being pulled into the black, stripped from him, erased entirely. 

It had started, it was happening and he couldn’t stop it.

“No, no, no, no, no--”

Archangel Gabriel stood and forced himself to move, forced himself to walk and then run as fast as he could with his memories and sense of self being actively ripped away by… by… who was doing this to him? He didn’t know. He didn’t remember.

The elevator. I need to get downstairs, I must go down, I must--

Where was the elevator? Was he going the right way? He needed to get in it to take him… to take him where?

Down. Down. Must go down. They’re there.

Who?

They-- no. No. Please. There is someone. It must go-- I must go--

Where?

Before… before…

Before what? What was happening?

Doesn’t matter. The most important thing… the only important thing--

Even with his thoughts disjointed and flashing across his mind in a futile attempt to escape the pull of nothingness he - who was he? - almost, almost made it to the elevator. At that point he could not recall where said elevator was supposed to take him, but he had to get in. He only knew as much, that he had to go because… because…

Almost there, he managed to think.

Where?

Closer. I’m getting… I'm getting…

Close. But ‘close’ was not enough. 

The black hole tore away the last lingering memory he’d been trying to hold onto. It hurt, like something vital being snatched from his fingers. Purple irises flickered, then dulled to green, blinking in confusion at the threshold of an elevator that had been reached too late.

The archangel Gabriel was no more.

Just above the hollow shell, and just as empty, the container fly kept buzzing softly.

***

NUMBER DEACTIVATED

For a few moments, Beelzebub stared. Then they stared some more. They tilted their head, and squinted for good measure. The words on the screen made no more sense than they did before. 

NUMBER DEACTIVATED

That had never happened. That was not supposed to happen. Why would Gabriel deactivate his number? And most of all, why would he do that without so much telling them? The idea he may have had second thoughts about their entire… agreement, and all that came with it, briefly crossed their mind - only to be immediately dismissed with a scoff. 

No, of course not. He would not. The most pompous archangel of all Heaven was currently wrapped around their little finger, which would have been quite useful to Hell if not for the fact they were, unfortunately, wrapped just as firmly around his. Quite a mess they had gotten themselves into. And neither of them wanted out, Beelzebub was sure of it. 

So what was going on? Something smelled fishy, and not just because Dagon had been in the room. They tried to call again, just to see if something would change, and it did. Now the message that pinged on the screen had more words. 

Unfortunately, none of them was good.

NUMBER DEACTIVATED. FOR FURTHER COMMUNICATIONS, CONTACT ARCHANGEL MICHAEL.

***

“Oh, and this is your station, sir! I mean-- I know I don’t have to call you that, you’re technically below me, but I was never in charge of anyone before. So, I hope I don’t mess up?”

Muriel smiled, watching the new junior recording angel - 38th class, one below them, they had no idea there was a rank below theirs! - look over the scrolls and the archive he was now tasked to help them keep in order and update and all that. He turned to them, and smiled back. 

Did he look… vaguely familiar? Muriel must have seen him around before, even though their office was so remote, they saw very few angels. 

“You’re doing great!” he exclaimed, like he’d just seen them perform the miracle of miracles. “And… where am I again?”

“The archives. Ah, a lot of angels have never been around here, it’s all right! I’ll show you around,” they offered, still a little giddy at the notion that they now had someone else to work with on a daily basis. Things could get a little lonely in that corner of Heaven; Saraquael’s arrival had been the biggest thing to happen in… nearly five centuries, they guessed.

“This is a new junior recording angel, 38th class. He will work under you, so do show him the ropes. Jibreel, you will do everything they tell you to. Is that clear?”

Muriel could quickly tell that a lot of things were not all that clear to Jibreel, but that was all right. They liked explaining things, and he liked to listen. And he smiled a lot. They liked that, too.

Yes, they were going to get along swimmingly.

***

[On to Chapter 1]

[parakaryote]

I haven't been doing much with the perytons because I'm very unsatisfied with their design, but here's something for you: the inhabitants of Within-the-Loop, the ancient megastructure they live on, have siblings!

There have been a few other planets discovered within the Milky Way Galaxy which host life-forms with markedly unusual biochemistry that all arose at around the same time (~5 billion years ago). Each uses a different solvent, and some are boron- or metal oxide-based instead of carbon-based. (No silicon-based life-forms, though.)

All of the planets hosting them orbit K-type stars, and upon closer inspection all have some sort of self-maintaining artificial structures, invariably including a supercomputer which periodically manufactures and sends out semi-autonomous bots to survey the biosphere. It seems the creators simply wanted to see how much was possible regarding synthetic life.

Perytons are the only sophonts among this collection, though. Indeed, the life of Within-the-Loop is by far the most complex — the life on most of the other planets never got past the prokaryote stage, and the second most complex biosphere after Within-the-Loop is comparable to the early Paleozoic.

[anueutsuhos-touhou-profiles]

Keiki Haniyasushin:

Keiki Haniyasushin is a sculptor god, capable of making idols of all shapes and sizes. They can be used for a variety of purposes, like toys, religious sites, and even just home decorating. She cannot create life, per say, but a spirit almost always inhabits the bodies she makes.

The beast spirits fear and despise her as an "evil god of destruction", and to be honest, they're not that far off. She and her Haniwa army have been destroying the nature of the Animal Realm and replacing it with cold technology. And, to some extent, her defense of the humans was because she could gain faith and power from them. Indeed, some people would say she is only exchanging one dystopia for another.

That said, nothing she does has been done with hate and malice in mind. She did truly desire to help the human spirits, and even wished to eventually make peace with the beasts. She finds it awful that Yachie keeps referring to the human spirits as "resources".

Keiki is, of course, the "villain" and final boss of Wily Beast and Weakest Creature.

Keiki's lair was within a massive Kofun tomb in the Primate Spirit Garden. While the outside looked like it matched the time period these were built in, on the inside, it looked like a vast futuristic hallway, like something out of Tron.

When Keiki is confronted by the protagonist, she tries to explain to her that the beast spirits are manipulating her, and that the idols serve the side of humanity. The beast spirit possessing the protagonist gets into an argument with Keiki, which ends in the protagonist ultimately siding with the beast spirits.

Keiki declared that she intended to destroy the protagonist's weak organic body, and give her a new, immortal clay body. This horrified the beast spirit possessing the protagonist enough that they assumed control and forced her to run away, Keiki giving chase. As the fight progressed, they exited Keiki's tomb and fought in the skies above the Animal Realm. The entire Haniwa army and all the beast spirits came out to help their respective sides.

After an intense final battle with awesome music, Keiki was finally defeated, and she surrendered.

She met with Yachie Kicchou afterwards, and agreed leave the Animal Realm and move into Gensokyo, taking her army and her loyal human spirit followers with her. She wished that everyone could just get along, but Yachie rebuked her.

The technological advancements in the Animal Realm still remained, however, and in fact the rest of Hell now envies it for how modern it is.

The ending heavily implied Keiki was going to somehow cause more problems in Gensokyo, but she's never appeared again since this game. It's possible that Covid-19 caused ZUN to have a change of plans for Touhou 18 and onwards, considering he's mentioned it affecting his work.

Her spellcards take the form of basic shapes, like squares, triangles, and circles. They appear to have been brought to life if their names are any indication. Her attacks are mostly colored using the primary colors of pigment: red, blue, and yellow.

ZUN has stated that Keiki's reign over the human spirits represents humanity overrelying on technology. Basically, you could see the Haniwa as a robot army, and Keiki as like a god supercomputer who enslaves humanity "to protect them from themselves".

Keiki is actually based on Haniyasushin, the god borne of the feces left behind when the mother god, Izanami, burned to death after giving birth to Kagutsuchi, god of fire.

Yes this makes her a literal piece of shit.

[lucerosalin]

The neural connections within the brain give rise to the feeling of self, which we experience as consciousness. Humanity is not merely a "lump of meat" but rather possesses a self that feels, suffers, and finds joy. A central question is why humans suffer. In modern society, suffering has become a prominent issue. Suffering seems to be an inherent part of survival, as it prompts us to think, to act, and to strive for relief. Although unpleasant, it appears to serve a purpose.

A person can indeed "die of a broken heart," a notion that now seems more than just myth or folklore. The body and mind are interconnected, meaning that mental struggles can manifest physically, and physical problems can impact the mind. To achieve internal balance, one must seek tranquility in both body and mind, a harmony that often feels elusive.

Ultimately, humans are composed of a physical body, with the brain—a complex organ formed over millions of years of evolution—generating the feeling of self. The brain, akin to a supercomputer, holds mysteries we are still uncovering.

To alleviate suffering and find solutions to our problems, I recommend writing down your thoughts, examining them critically, and working towards rational solutions. Thoughts arise because we have brains.

1994_Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio

Thoughts on book

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Swirling polar vortices likely exist on the Sun

Like the Earth, the Sun likely has swirling polar vortices, according to new research led by the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR). But unlike on Earth, the formation and evolution of these vortices are driven by magnetic fields.

The findings, published [xxxxxx] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), have implications for our basic understanding of the Sun’s magnetism and the solar cycle, which could in turn improve our ability to predict disruptive space weather. The new research also paints a picture of what we might expect to see at the solar poles during future missions to the Sun and provides information that could be useful in planning the timing of such missions. 

“No one can say for certain what is happening at the solar poles,” said NSF NCAR senior scientist Mausumi Dikpati, who led the new study. “But this new research gives us an intriguing look at what we might expect to find when we are able, for the first time, to observe the solar poles.”

The research was funded by NSF and NASA with supercomputing resources made available on NSF NCAR’s Cheyenne and Derecho systems. 

A mystery at the Sun’s poles

The likely presence of some kind of polar vortices on the Sun does not come as a surprise. These spinning formations develop in fluids that surround a rotating body due to the Coriolis force, and they have been observed on the majority of planets in our solar system. On Earth, a vortex spins high in the atmosphere around both the north and south poles. When those vortices are stable, they keep frigid air locked at the poles, but when they weaken and become unstable, they allow that cold air to seep toward the equator, causing cold air outbreaks in the midlatitudes.

NASA’s Juno mission returned breathtaking images of polar vortices on Jupiter, showing eight tightly packed swirls around the gas giant’s north pole and five around its south. The polar vortices on Saturn, seen by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, are hexagonally shaped in the north pole and more circular in the south. These differences offer scientists clues into the makeup and dynamics of each planet’s atmosphere. 

Polar vortices have also been observed in Mars, Venus, Uranus, Neptune, and Saturn’s moon Titan, so in some ways, the fact that the Sun (also a rotating body surrounded by a fluid) would have such features may be obvious. But the Sun is also fundamentally different from the planets and moons that possess atmospheres: the plasma “fluid” that surrounds the Sun is magnetic.  

How that magnetism might influence the formation and evolution of solar polar vortices — or whether they form at all — is a mystery because humanity has never sent a mission into space that can observe the Sun’s poles. In fact our observations of the Sun are limited to views of the face of the Sun as it points toward Earth and only offers hints at what might be transpiring at the poles. 

A ring of vortices tied to the solar cycle

Since we have never observed the Sun’s poles, the science team relied on computer models to fill in the blanks about what solar polar vortices might look like. What they found is that the Sun is likely to indeed have a unique pattern of polar vortices that evolves as the solar cycle unfolds and depends on the strength of any particular cycle.

In the simulations, a tight ring of polar vortices forms at around 55 degrees latitude — the equivalent of Earth’s Arctic circle — at the same time that a phenomenon called the “rush to the poles” begins. At the maximum of each solar cycle, the magnetic field at the Sun’s poles disappears and is replaced with a magnetic field of opposite polarity. This flip-flop is preceded by a “rush to the poles” when the field of opposite polarity begins to travel from about 55 degrees in latitude poleward.

After forming, the vortices head toward the poles in a tightening ring, shedding vortices as the circle closes, eventually leaving only a pair of vortices directly abutting the poles before they disappear altogether at solar maximum. How many vortices form and their configuration as they move toward the poles changes with the strength of the solar cycle. 

These simulations offer a missing piece to the puzzle of how the Sun’s magnetic field behaves near the poles and may help answer some fundamental questions about the Sun’s solar cycles. For example, in the past many scientists have used the strength of the magnetic field that “rushes to the poles” as a proxy for how strong the upcoming solar cycle is likely to be. But the mechanism for how those things might connect, if at all, is not clear.

The simulations also offer information that may be used for planning future missions to observe the Sun. Namely, the results indicate that some form of polar vortices should be observable during all parts of the solar cycle except during the solar maximum.

“You could launch a solar mission, and it could arrive to observe the poles at completely the wrong time,” said Scott McIntosh, vice president of space operations for Lynker and a co-author of the paper. 

The Solar Orbiter, a cooperative mission between NASA and the European Space Agency, could give researchers their first glimpse of the solar poles, but the first look will be close to solar maximum. The authors note that a mission designed to observe the poles and to give researchers multiple, simultaneous viewpoints of the Sun could help them answer many long-held questions about the Sun’s magnetic fields. 

“Our conceptual boundary now is that we are operating with only one viewpoint,” McIntosh said. “To make significant progress, we must have the observations we need to test our hypotheses and confirm whether simulations like these are correct.”

IMAGE: In the simulations, a tight ring of polar vortices forms at around 55 degrees latitude, the equivalent of Earth’s Arctic circle. After forming, the vortices head toward the poles in a tightening ring, shedding vortices as the circle closes, eventually leaving only a pair of vortices directly abutting the poles before they disappear altogether at solar maximum. How many vortices form and their configuration as they move toward the poles changes with the strength of the solar cycle.  Credit: Copyright UCAR