lurkerdemon

[lurkerdemon]

[lurkerdemon]

Happy Belated Father’s Day

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Hey to all those who may want to read a few things before the Superman movie, i HIGHLY recommend these two comics:

Superman for All Seasons

All Star Superman

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You've heard of the man, the myth, the legend. Now get ready for the woman, the omen, the portent.

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>First, we’ve discovered that about a quarter of all the internet connection in or out of the house were ad related. In a few hours, that’s about 10,000 out of 40,000 processed.

>We also discovered that every link on Twitter was blocked. This was solved by whitelisting the https://t.co domain.

>Once out browsing the Web, everything is loading pretty much instantly. It turns out most of that Page Loading malarkey we’ve been accustomed to is related to sites running auctions to sell Ad space to show you before the page loads. All gone now.

>We then found that the Samsung TV (which I really like) is very fond of yapping all about itself to Samsung HQ. All stopped now. No sign of any breakages in its function, so I’m happy enough with that.

>The primary source of distress came from the habitual Lemmings player in the house, who found they could no longer watch ads to build up their in-app gold. A workaround is being considered for this.

>The next ambition is to advance the Ad blocking so that it seamlessly removed YouTube Ads. This is the subject of ongoing research, and tinkering continues. All in all, a very successful experiment.

>Certainly this exceeds my equivalent childhood project of disassembling and assembling our rotary dial telephone. A project whose only utility was finding out how to make the phone ring when nobody was calling.

>Update: All4 on the telly appears not to have any ads any more. Goodbye Arnold Clarke!

>Lemmings problem now solved.

>Can confirm, after small tests, that RTÉ Player ads are now gone and the player on the phone is now just delivering swift, ad free streams at first click.

>Some queries along the lines of “Are you not stealing the internet?” Firstly, this is my network, so I may set it up as I please (or, you know, my son can do it and I can give him a stupid thumbs up in response). But there is a wider question, based on the ads=internet model.

>I’m afraid I passed the You Wouldn’t Download A Car point back when I first installed ad-blocking plug-ins on a browser. But consider my chatty TV. Individual consumer choice is not the method of addressing pervasive commercial surveillance.

>Should I feel morally obliged not to mute the TV when the ads come on? No, this is a standing tension- a clash of interests. But I think my interest in my family not being under intrusive or covert surveillance at home is superior to the ad company’s wish to profile them.

>Aside: 24 hours of Pi Hole stats suggests that Samsung TVs are very chatty. 14,170 chats a day.

>YouTube blocking seems difficult, as the ads usually come from the same domain as the videos. Haven’t tried it, but all of the content can also be delivered from a no-cookies version of the YouTube domain, which doesn’t have the ads. I have asked my son to poke at that idea.

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Jimmy Olsen, opting to make some spare money on the side (there's a new camera that just dropped and it's worth more than his normal salary can afford), signs up for a Clinical Trial.

I DO NOT OWN THESE CHARACTERS OR THEIR WORLDS. I DO NOT INTEND TO MAKE MONEY WITH THIS POST. IF THIS POST IS ON TIKTOK, INSTAGRAM, YOUTUBE, OR ANYTHING OTHER THAN TUMBLR I DID NOT CONSENT TO THAT. IF THIS DISCLAIMER IS MISSING THEN THE POST WAS EDITED TO NEGATE IT.

It'll pay more than enough for that new camera he wants, and he just has to use his two weeks of saved vacation time from work to do it.

But he should have read the fine print.

Because he went to sleep in his bed, and woke up in what looks like a hotel room without any windows.

He pushes the emergency button on his watch, trying to summon Superman, but nothing happens.

Wherever he is, it's so well fortified that Superman can't hear the frequency the watch is going off at.

After the initial freak out though, the doctors come in and explain how the trial will work; two weeks of taking a pill in the morning and getting a shot in the afternoon, blood draws once every three days to monitor any side effects, consulting with a personal doctor every day, and he gets to basically actually have a two week vacation.

The secrecy, the doctors say, is due to it being a Government Run Clinical Trial, and they really are sorry for drugging him, but they figured it would be less stressful than throwing a black hood over his head on the way to the location.

Jimmy does not forgive them.

This is shady as shit.

But also, the doctors very notably did not say he could leave before the trial was up.

The best thing he can do is play along until he can find a chance to escape.

Except that the pills glow a little. The shots definitely glow, and not just a little. If he struggles, they sedate him and give him the meds anyways, and he wakes up in his hotel/prison cell, groggy. If he doesn't talk to the doctor about how he's feeling physically every day, they strap him down and run tests with various scanners.

There's no windows. The doors, every single one of them, need a key card and a thumb print scan to open. There is no cell phone signal; he knows because he overheard the armed guards complaining about it. No matter how many times he whispers for Superman, the Man of Steel doesn't come.

Hell, at one point, when Jimmy was actively struggling against getting injected again, he quite literally screamed for Superman, only for nothing to happen.

Everything is soundproofed, then.

He's not sure how long it's been, but he's fairly certain it's been over two weeks, unless they changed the schedule for the pills and the shots without telling him. Also, his hair is getting longer than it would have in two weeks.

And things are starting to get weird. Well, weirder.

His eyes sometimes glow red. One time he accidentally started floating. They held a jar of some strange glowing orb near him and his breath started frosting over.

He's sleeping more.

He can feel his heart slowing down more and more every day.

He knows he's dying.

And he knows that, for some reason, that's the goal; when he'd been in a sleepy haze, and the scientists and doctors had thought him unconscious, he'd heard them talking about him almost having the same biology as 'Phantom', and that all that was left was the brainwashing stage.

That they were just waiting for him to die before they did that.

But the closer he gets to death, the stronger he becomes. He hides it, of course, but it's difficult to hide a bent metal chair leg. He doesn't know if that happened due to enhanced strength or...or something else.

Then one day he looks up to see his eyes glowing red, but in the way that Superman's do before he uses laser vision. The floating gets more pronounced. He accidentally froze his morning coffee when he blew on it.

For some reason, his body appears to be developing the same or similar powers to Superman, and he has no idea why, or if it's permanent.

But he won't get answers if they refuse to tell him anything face to face.

So he pretends to be unconscious more; that way they'll talk more around him.

He learns that Phantom was a hero, despite the bullshit they're saying he knows one when he hears about one, who they took down.

That they experimented on him until all that was left was...the small glowing orb in a jar they kept shoving at his face.

And something in Jimmy knows that Phantom can still be saved.

If he can time it right, he can try to punch his way through enough of the guards and scientists to get to a part of the compound in the open air, somewhere he can get help.

Somewhere Superman can finally hear him.

He just has to do half the work.

Fine.

The more he plans, the more he feels an odd attachment to the orb in the jar. To Phantom.

Something inside him knows that's just a kid, and he can't explain how it knows.

Then, one day, when the timing is right, and he feels like he's on the cusp of...something, he strikes.

He takes a deep breath, just as they go to inject him again, feels his heart finally slow to a stop, and throws the metal table at the doctors in the room.

He doesn't even pause to acknowledge that his feet aren't touching the ground. That he's flying.

He's already across the room and grabbing Phantom, using the momentum to punch out the steel door.

The weapons they try to use on him to stop him sting, but Jimmy tanks it and barrels forward, breaking down door after door without stopping.

Then, after getting blinded by a sun he hasn't seen in an unknown number of days, he's out in the open air.

"Superman! Help!"

With an army rallying behind him, a rescued hostage in his arms, and Jimmy actively fighting off a nervous breakdown, Superman hears him.

And Superman is pissed.

~~~~~~

Clark has been out of his mind with worry.

Jimmy Olsen has been missing for seven months, and no one can pinpoint where he is.

He can't hear Jimmy's heart, and the only thing preventing him from believing that Jimmy's dead is the staunch refusal to do so, and Bruce reassuring him that the evidence in Jimmy's apartment indicated that whoever took him wanted him alive.

So after seven months of no word, he finally, finally hears Jimmy's hoarse, terrified voice scream for him.

He's there before he fully realizes that he's moved, and...

Jimmy's floating.

Jimmy doesn't have a pulse.

Jimmy's very clearly alive somehow despite that, ragged with unkempt blue hair and beard so pale the blue was almost white, skinnier than he should be, glowing pale red eyes, and cradling a jar with a glowing orb inside of it.

"They did to him what they were trying to do to me, and I don't know what they did," Jimmy gasps, hands shaking. "I can fly, I have laser vision, I have frost breath, I don't know what...I don't..."

Behind Jimmy, a small army of men in white suits rushes out of a hole in the wall, leveling strange weapons at his friend.

The same friend they experimented on, for seven months, and probably did irreversible damage to if they managed to foist Kryptonian abilities upon a human body.

Clark reaches out and closes Jimmy's eyes, cutting off and containing the laser vision his friend was gearing up to use from stress alone.

Then, slowly, Superman turns to look down at the men in white suits below him, who appear to be having the sudden and startling revelation that they'd messed up.

The Man of Steel loses a little time after that.

Or; The GIW opens a Clinical Trial to try to create a new halfa after experimenting on their captured subject, Phantom, so much that Phantom was forced into his Core. The Clinical Trial only lasts for two weeks; but after that they can keep whoever signs up for it indefinitely, because at that point they're so ecto-contaminated they don't count as human and fall under the anti-ecto acts. Then, they can create their own halfa and brainwash the halfa into doing their dirty work. Jimmy Olsen, desperate to escape, has been slowly adapting to have the powers of Superman, who is his friend and who would absolutely be able to save not only Jimmy, but whoever these scientists turned into a glowing orb. Since ecto is adaptable, it adapted to the powerset that Jimmy thought he needed. This includes the very last ability he got; invulnerability, but on a lesser scale than Superman's own, hence why anti-ghost weapons only stung him.

[lurkerdemon]

with love. you have to fact check shit. yes you. you still have to fact check shit. a lot of people are great at fact checking stuff they don’t want to be true, but somehow are still absolute ass at fact checking stuff that’s rhetorically convenient to them. even people my age, who I KNOW grew up doing internet/bibliography literacy workshops, and being warned not to believe anything that isn’t reliably sourced, people who DO harp on fact checking conservative output or whatever, are still kneejerk sharing unsourced shit that is partially or wholly untrue or misleading, because it suits whatever narrative they’re pursuing in that moment, without even a “take this with a grain of salt”. fact check!!!!!! look at the sources!!!!! yes it’s a drag!!! do it!!!!!

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light of Aurora, Anastasia Trusova, acrylic, 2021

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Whoops I forgot to post my stainglass style Ember…

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Ah these children who always create problems for poor mothers....

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some fandoms need to see this

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Okay so I found the most incredible horse statue while doing research for my job and guys. Are you ready for this. Are you sure you're fucking ready for this thing

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"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??"

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bb!jason + a kitten in other news i hit my elbow and it really hurts