#AI Traffic Control

[ailifehacks]

Smart Traffic Systems: How AI is Revolutionizing Urban Traffic Management

Explore how AI-powered Smart Traffic Systems are transforming urban mobility in the USA, UK, and Europe by reducing traffic congestion and improving road safety. Urban traffic congestion is a growing concern in cities across the USA, UK, and Europe. As populations grow and more vehicles hit the roads, traditional traffic control systems are no longer enough. This is where Smart Traffic Systems…

[kennedyvietor1978blog]

[vollesroah]

Some fool Bro will be saying anytime now, that we can do the air traffic control with AI. We don't need the people. What could go wrong ? Air traffic control already has computer systems where the people are in charge.

I would not fly AI. Just to be clear.

The airlines would lose my custom.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs provide the best candidates.

Old boy network provides a lot of dumbass men and white nepotism. Male, pale, and stale.

[manmishra]

🚀 Exciting news for publishers! Google has updated the Robots Meta Tag documentation to include AI Mode adjustments. Learn how to protect your content and amplify visibility in search results. Check out our latest article for all the details! #SEO #GoogleUpdates #AIMode #DigitalMarketing

[itsthesiliconreview]

[jcmarchi]

An AI dataset carves new paths to tornado detection

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/an-ai-dataset-carves-new-paths-to-tornado-detection/

An AI dataset carves new paths to tornado detection

The return of spring in the Northern Hemisphere touches off tornado season. A tornado’s twisting funnel of dust and debris seems an unmistakable sight. But that sight can be obscured to radar, the tool of meteorologists. It’s hard to know exactly when a tornado has formed, or even why.

A new dataset could hold answers. It contains radar returns from thousands of tornadoes that have hit the United States in the past 10 years. Storms that spawned tornadoes are flanked by other severe storms, some with nearly identical conditions, that never did. MIT Lincoln Laboratory researchers who curated the dataset, called TorNet, have now released it open source. They hope to enable breakthroughs in detecting one of nature’s most mysterious and violent phenomena.

“A lot of progress is driven by easily available, benchmark datasets. We hope TorNet will lay a foundation for machine learning algorithms to both detect and predict tornadoes,” says Mark Veillette, the project’s co-principal investigator with James Kurdzo. Both researchers work in the Air Traffic Control Systems Group. 

Along with the dataset, the team is releasing models trained on it. The models show promise for machine learning’s ability to spot a twister. Building on this work could open new frontiers for forecasters, helping them provide more accurate warnings that might save lives. 

Swirling uncertainty

About 1,200 tornadoes occur in the United States every year, causing millions to billions of dollars in economic damage and claiming 71 lives on average. Last year, one unusually long-lasting tornado killed 17 people and injured at least 165 others along a 59-mile path in Mississippi.  

Yet tornadoes are notoriously difficult to forecast because scientists don’t have a clear picture of why they form. “We can see two storms that look identical, and one will produce a tornado and one won’t. We don’t fully understand it,” Kurdzo says.

A tornado’s basic ingredients are thunderstorms with instability caused by rapidly rising warm air and wind shear that causes rotation. Weather radar is the primary tool used to monitor these conditions. But tornadoes lay too low to be detected, even when moderately close to the radar. As the radar beam with a given tilt angle travels further from the antenna, it gets higher above the ground, mostly seeing reflections from rain and hail carried in the “mesocyclone,” the storm’s broad, rotating updraft. A mesocyclone doesn’t always produce a tornado.

With this limited view, forecasters must decide whether or not to issue a tornado warning. They often err on the side of caution. As a result, the rate of false alarms for tornado warnings is more than 70 percent. “That can lead to boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome,” Kurdzo says.  

In recent years, researchers have turned to machine learning to better detect and predict tornadoes. However, raw datasets and models have not always been accessible to the broader community, stifling progress. TorNet is filling this gap.

The dataset contains more than 200,000 radar images, 13,587 of which depict tornadoes. The rest of the images are non-tornadic, taken from storms in one of two categories: randomly selected severe storms or false-alarm storms (those that led a forecaster to issue a warning but that didn’t produce a tornado).

Each sample of a storm or tornado comprises two sets of six radar images. The two sets correspond to different radar sweep angles. The six images portray different radar data products, such as reflectivity (showing precipitation intensity) or radial velocity (indicating if winds are moving toward or away from the radar).

A challenge in curating the dataset was first finding tornadoes. Within the corpus of weather radar data, tornadoes are extremely rare events. The team then had to balance those tornado samples with difficult non-tornado samples. If the dataset were too easy, say by comparing tornadoes to snowstorms, an algorithm trained on the data would likely over-classify storms as tornadic.

“What’s beautiful about a true benchmark dataset is that we’re all working with the same data, with the same level of difficulty, and can compare results,” Veillette says. “It also makes meteorology more accessible to data scientists, and vice versa. It becomes easier for these two parties to work on a common problem.”

Both researchers represent the progress that can come from cross-collaboration. Veillette is a mathematician and algorithm developer who has long been fascinated by tornadoes. Kurdzo is a meteorologist by training and a signal processing expert. In grad school, he chased tornadoes with custom-built mobile radars, collecting data to analyze in new ways.

“This dataset also means that a grad student doesn’t have to spend a year or two building a dataset. They can jump right into their research,” Kurdzo says.

This project was funded by Lincoln Laboratory’s Climate Change Initiative, which aims to leverage the laboratory’s diverse technical strengths to help address climate problems threatening human health and global security.

Chasing answers with deep learning

Using the dataset, the researchers developed baseline artificial intelligence (AI) models. They were particularly eager to apply deep learning, a form of machine learning that excels at processing visual data. On its own, deep learning can extract features (key observations that an algorithm uses to make a decision) from images across a dataset. Other machine learning approaches require humans to first manually label features. 

“We wanted to see if deep learning could rediscover what people normally look for in tornadoes and even identify new things that typically aren’t searched for by forecasters,” Veillette says.

The results are promising. Their deep learning model performed similar to or better than all tornado-detecting algorithms known in literature. The trained algorithm correctly classified 50 percent of weaker EF-1 tornadoes and over 85 percent of tornadoes rated EF-2 or higher, which make up the most devastating and costly occurrences of these storms.

They also evaluated two other types of machine-learning models, and one traditional model to compare against. The source code and parameters of all these models are freely available. The models and dataset are also described in a paper submitted to a journal of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). Veillette presented this work at the AMS Annual Meeting in January.

“The biggest reason for putting our models out there is for the community to improve upon them and do other great things,” Kurdzo says. “The best solution could be a deep learning model, or someone might find that a non-deep learning model is actually better.”

TorNet could be useful in the weather community for others uses too, such as for conducting large-scale case studies on storms. It could also be augmented with other data sources, like satellite imagery or lightning maps. Fusing multiple types of data could improve the accuracy of machine learning models.

Taking steps toward operations

On top of detecting tornadoes, Kurdzo hopes that models might help unravel the science of why they form.

“As scientists, we see all these precursors to tornadoes — an increase in low-level rotation, a hook echo in reflectivity data, specific differential phase (KDP) foot and differential reflectivity (ZDR) arcs. But how do they all go together? And are there physical manifestations we don’t know about?” he asks.

Teasing out those answers might be possible with explainable AI. Explainable AI refers to methods that allow a model to provide its reasoning, in a format understandable to humans, of why it came to a certain decision. In this case, these explanations might reveal physical processes that happen before tornadoes. This knowledge could help train forecasters, and models, to recognize the signs sooner. 

“None of this technology is ever meant to replace a forecaster. But perhaps someday it could guide forecasters’ eyes in complex situations, and give a visual warning to an area predicted to have tornadic activity,” Kurdzo says.

Such assistance could be especially useful as radar technology improves and future networks potentially grow denser. Data refresh rates in a next-generation radar network are expected to increase from every five minutes to approximately one minute, perhaps faster than forecasters can interpret the new information. Because deep learning can process huge amounts of data quickly, it could be well-suited for monitoring radar returns in real time, alongside humans. Tornadoes can form and disappear in minutes.

But the path to an operational algorithm is a long road, especially in safety-critical situations, Veillette says. “I think the forecaster community is still, understandably, skeptical of machine learning. One way to establish trust and transparency is to have public benchmark datasets like this one. It’s a first step.”

The next steps, the team hopes, will be taken by researchers across the world who are inspired by the dataset and energized to build their own algorithms. Those algorithms will in turn go into test beds, where they’ll eventually be shown to forecasters, to start a process of transitioning into operations.

In the end, the path could circle back to trust.

“We may never get more than a 10- to 15-minute tornado warning using these tools. But if we could lower the false-alarm rate, we could start to make headway with public perception,” Kurdzo says. “People are going to use those warnings to take the action they need to save their lives.”

[bharatbriefs]

AI is watching you! Ahmedabad becomes India's 1st city to get AI-linked surveillance system

In a groundbreaking development, Ahmedabad has emerged as the first city in India to employ artificial intelligence (AI) for comprehensive monitoring by the municipal corporation and police across the entire city. The city’s expansive Paldi area is now home to a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence-enabled command and control centre, featuring a remarkable 9 by 3-metre screen that oversees an…

[luna-rainbow]

@ashacrone sent me an excellent video essay about how and why CATWS is the best MCU movie and about half way through I had to stop and watch the real thing cos it made me so nostalgic and emotional 😂

New things I noticed this time around that I probably should have noticed ages ago:

The Winter Soldier theme has two distinct leitmotifs: there's the haunting digitised scream, and there's the percussion triplet. I think last time on a random rewatch I noticed that during the very opening of the Causeway scene, i.e. Steve, Nat and Sam are just driving on the road in the car with Sitwell, "the scream" comes on momentarily before their conversation takes place, as a foreshadowing. This time I noticed that during Nick Fury's car chase scene, much of the BGM was built on the Winter Soldier percussion triplets until it quietens suddenly and "the scream" comes on while the Winter Soldier comes into focus. I love the foreshadowing in the music

On the subject of music, the end of the line scene after Sarah's funeral plays a very similar tune to the end of the line/fall from the helicarrier.

I think I mentioned on the last rewatch that it's interesting Sharon says she was sent to "protect" Steve when he's a super soldier, and he probably clocked very quickly she was sent to monitor him, hence his very curt "neighbour" the next time he sees her. I think I may have written it in another meta too about whether Sharon (given her later going rogue as the Powerbroker) was a double agent who had a hand in setting up Fury's assassination. She somehow heard/noticed music coming from Steve's room before Steve, the super soldier with super hearing, noticed. Sure, maybe it's louder inside her room than it is from the hallway, but strange that she felt the need to bring it to his attention? It was almost as though she said it purposely to get Steve on edge -- remember Steve's reaction is then to climb through his window rather than go through the front door. This would have exposed his presence to the Winter Soldier who is most likely already in position on the opposite roof, especially if we go by the theory that the Soldier used Steve's eye line to triangulate where Fury was located. I know Pierce spends a lot of time questioning Steve about why Fury was in his apartment as though he wants to know what information Fury passed onto Steve (and that might be true), but likely part of the plan was also to frame Captain America in order to remove him from any kind of influence, so the Winter Soldier was instructed to wait until Steve was inside before finishing the assassination.

Steve's look when Fury shows him his phone that says "ears everywhere". It screamed "OF COURSE MY UNIT IS BUGGED OF FUCKING COURSE OF COURSE YOU DID IT".

There's this interesting small detail during Fury's car chase: he asks the AI to calculate the route, and he's told that one particular road is gridlocked, but there's another road that's more open. That is, of course, the road that the Winter Soldier was waiting for him on, which means SHIELD was controlling the lights/traffic to lure Fury into the trap. A callback later in the movie proves this -- when Steve dives through the glass ceiling and runs, Sitwell says, "All traffic lights in the district go red." So SHIELD had the capacity to control traffic, and they definitely did it to bring Fury into the Soldier's path.

When Steve was at the hospital after Fury's assassination, he was in his civvies, and Rumlow was rushing him to get back to SHIELD. Interestingly, when he arrives at SHIELD to speak with Pierce, he is in full battle suit (despite, obviously, the Strike team pressuring him to make things quick, he still took the time to change into his suit). The elevator fight is set up like an unexpected escalation given the civil way his conversation went with Pierce, but clearly Steve had been prepared for a fight as soon as he stepped foot inside SHIELD.

When he goes back to the hospital, he's back in a different set of civilian clothes and he doesn't don that particular suit again, instead opting to steal his old uniform from the museum. More than a statement against SHIELD, I wonder if he disposed of the suit because he's worried it had tracking embedded?

One minor detail during the elevator scene - Steve was initially standing near the back of the elevator and watching out the window. As the second group of people got on, one of the men says "excuse me" to Steve, forcing him to step aside and closer to the centre. Steve had already noticed Rumlow's team had their hands on their guns, but once he was forced into the centre he turned and gave the two guys who displaced him a very long suspicious look (one of them had the sweat dripping down his face). When Rollins gets on, that's when Steve was like "pretty sure all the players are here" and said the famous "does anyone wanna get out" line. I just love the way the action was set up, as they intentionally but subtly forced Steve into the middle and had him surrounded, which I think is also when it clicked for Steve.

Hilarious tiny detail when Steve and friends arrive at SHIELD HQ during the final act: they knock on the radio room and the guy who opens the door is faced with Sam and Maria pointing guns at him, and Steve going "excuse us". The guy throws his hands up and then does a little sideways wave to wave them through....XD Dude was like Cap I'm on your side <3

Look, if anyone can put themselves through the electrocution scene, Bucky actually lets out a strangled whimper before the electricity starts firing *heart shatters*

Steve's trembling voice as he pleads, "Don't make me do this." D=

Steve's thousand yard stare when Sam asks, "What makes you happy?" and his resigned, "I don't know." =(

I am firmer in my belief that Pierce intended for Bucky to die during the launching of Insight. In his speech to Bucky, he says "I need you to do it one more time". It just sounded very final (and besides, once the helicarriers are in the air, they don't have a need for an assassin who needs to be electrocuted every few days to keep in check). This might be partially why Bucky made no attempt to leave when the Helicarriers were crashing, because his mission was to bring down Steve and die there -- so Steve really did save him in more ways than one.

I feel like I love this movie more on each rewatch. So much thought was put into the script and the music and the action. Characters were so competent, which made the stakes feel so high and personal. The MCU really peaked with this movie and Black Panther.

[keithyp00]

・┆✦ʚ♡ Ghost Code ♡ɞ✦ ┆・

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x f!ex-hydra!reader

Warnings/Tags: mentions of: violence, trauma/PTSD, torture and experimentation and mind-control. brief mention of attempted suicide. nightmares, depression, mentions of Hydra, mild blood, slow burn romance, healing, hurt/comfort

Word Count: 3.0K

Author Note: Hello guys! Sorry I didn't post last night as well as sorry for posting this one so late :/. I hope you enjoy this one even though it's kind of a cliche but this has been in my drafts for a while and I finally had the inspiration to finish it so :)

Please do not copy or translate any of my works. Thank you!

The cold didn't bother you anymore.

You couldn't remember when it stopped mattering, when the numbness in your bones became part of your biology. When your cells are rewritten and twisted under needles and coercion, things like climate and comfort lose their meaning. So, when you stood barefoot in a puddle of melted snow at the edge of a collapsed Soviet-era bunker in Belarus, you didn't flinch.

You just waited.

Waited for orders. Waited for the voice in your head that no longer came.

Because they're all dead now, you had to remind yourself that. Hydra is dead. You're free.

But freedom didn't feel like freedom. It felt like silence. Unfamiliar. Heavy. Cold.

Your name had once been Y/N. At least, you thought it was. You whispered it sometimes at night, tracing the sound with your breath like prayer. But in the long decades trapped in cryo between missions, you'd been called other things: Asset 12. Variant Echo. The Mirror.

A design parallel to the Winter Soldier, but different. Meant to compliment him, control him. If Bucky Barnes had been Hydra's precision scalpel, you had been the hammer.

The serum had worked. They made sure of that. Strength, agility, rapid cellular regeneration. But Hydra didn't stop at making you strong. No. They made you lethal.

They gave you Reflection. That's what Dr. Kravchenko called it. A mimic-based neural weapon: if you saw someone use a skill, technique, or power, you could duplicate it- perfectly. Temporarily. Sometimes for seconds. Sometimes hours. The longer you watched, the longer you could hold it.

You'd once copied a telekinetic asset for sixteen minutes before your brain hemorrhaged.

Worth it, they said.

Because when you fought, you moved like them- like anyone. Like everyone.

And they sent you after ghosts. Targets like Barnes. Untraceable. Untouchable. Unstoppable.

You saw him once. Back in '89. He didn't remember. But you did. You'd never forget the look in his eyes. Not rage. Not purpose. Just- hollowness. The kind you can only wear after losing everything you never knew you had.

It was the same expression you saw in the mirror every morning.

~~~~~

It was Sam who found you first.

Well, not exactly. The mission was to dismantle the last of Hydra's remaining data catches buried in Kazakhstan. Your cryo pod had been sealed in the basement of an outpost, hooked to a nuclear-powered AI set to wake you if anyone came close.

The AI failed.

You woke anyway.

And you ran.

No orders. No handlers. No conditioning. Just you.

Three months passed. You stole, hid, slept in forests, watched cities from rooftops. Sometimes, you thought about walking into traffic or starving yourself just to stop feeling like a weapon on standby.

Then Sam found you.

He didn't try to capture you. He just sat on a bench. Talked. Waited. Like you were some injured animal that might get curious enough to come close.

"I'm not who they say I was," you'd whispered to him one night on a park bench in Budapest. "But I'm not someone else either."

"You don't need to be," he said. "You just need time. A name. And some space to find your own damn way."

He was your first friend.

~~~~~

That's how you met Barnes.

By then, Bucky was trying. He was healing- sort of. Therapy, small apartments, government tracking. He was mostly quiet, all awkward silences and apologies that he never actually voiced.

You both met in Sam's kitchen in D.C.

"You don't have to be afraid of me," you said first.

Bucky didn't look at you. Just stared at the cup in his hand. "I'm not."

You tilted your head. "But you recognize me."

His jaw clenched. "I remember missions. Flashes. The file that said you were dead."

"I thought the same about you."

When your eyes met, it wasn't hostile. It was tragic. A mirror, held too long between two people who only saw ghosts looking back.

~~~~~

You didn't get along, not a first.

He was guilt-ridden and private. You were feral in grief and defensive as hell. You trained at the same facility Sam brought you to. You'd spar with agents while Bucky glared from a chosen corner, arms crossed.

You fought like Natasha. Like Steve. Like him.

He hated watching it.

Because it reminded him of what you both were.

But one day, he asked.

"How long can you copy it?"

"Depends. Ten minutes max if I'm moving.

"And if I don't stop moving?"

"Then neither will I."

You fought for fourteen minutes straight. You passed out. He caught you.

~~~~~

Your second real conversation wasn't much of one.

It was a stakeout- low-tier arms dealer connected to Hydra. You and Bucky sat in silence, rain drumming on the rooftop above you.

"You ever sleep?" You asked.

"No."

You nodded. "Me neither."

"...Nightmares?"

"Worse."

He glanced over.

"Dreams where I'm happy," you said. "And then I wake up, and I remember I'm still here."

For once, he didn't offer advice, He just listened. Stayed.

That was enough.

~~~~~

Months passed. You learned to coexist. Then to fight side by side. Then to talk.

One night, after a mission gone sideways in Morocco, Bucky found you on the edge of a crumbling rooftop.

He sat next to you, soaked in blood and silence.

"I read your file," he said. "Everything they did to you. How many times they rewrote your brain."

You didn't respond.

He looked over. "You still think you're their weapon?"

"I was," you said. "That's all I've ever been."

Bucky shook his head. "Not anymore."

"How can you say that?"

"Because I was one too."

You finally looked at him.

"And you're still here," he added. "Still trying. That's not something weapons do."

~~~~~

The first time he touched your hand, it was an accident.

The first time he held it, it wasn't.

It happened during a debrief. Sam was scolding you- again- for going off mission parameters and nearly getting yourselves killed. You were still shaking. Your fingers curled tight into the seams of your jacket, jaw clenched hard enough to ache.

The Bucky's gloved hand slid over yours.

You didn't flinch. And you didn't let go.

~~~~~

You had your name again now. Y/N.

A home, sort of. Sam helped you set it up in a tiny brownstone three blocks from the river. You painted the walls yourself, picked a couch that didn't match anything, bought a toaster you didn't know how to use.

Bucky stopped by sometimes.

At first, it was to check in.

Then, it wasn't.

You learned that he liked his coffee black and that he never sat with his back to the door. That he liked books but didn't finish them. That he kept your photo on his nightstand- not a romantic one, just a snapshot Sam had taken when you were laughing, wind in your hair.

He said it reminded him that healing didn't always have to hurt.

~~~~~

You kissed once.

It wasn't planned.

You were hiding out in a safehouse, bodies aching, blood drying, adrenaline fading. He was patching up your arm, quiet and focused. You looked up and saw the concentration in his eyes, the way his brow furrowed just slightly when he was worried.

"Why do you care so much?" You asked.

He paused. Met your gaze. "Because I know what it means to feel unworthy of being saved."

Your breath caught.

He leaned forward- slowly, like you might bolt. You didn't.

The kiss was tentative. Warm. Painfully human.

You didn't know if it meant more. But it meant something.

~~~~~

You still dreamed of cold tiles and screaming metal.

Of numbers.

Of pain.

But now, when you woke, there were sometimes texts. From Sam.

Or a knock on your door. From Bucky.

And for the first time in your fragmented life, you didn't feel like a weapon on standby.

You felt like a person.

A broken one, yes. But not beyond repair.

Not anymore.

~~~~~

The knock on your door came at 2:17 a.m.

You were already awake.

The nightmares had been merciless that week- so vivid you could still smell gun oil and blood in your sheets. You'd taken to sitting on the floor in the corner of your bedroom with a knife in hand, your back pressed against the wall, knees pulled to your chest.

But when the knock came, you didn't move right away.

Because you knew it was him.

"Y/N," Bucky's voice was low, muffled through the door. "It's me."

Of course it was.

You dropped the blade, crossed the room, and unlocked the door without a word.

He looked like he hadn't slept either.

"You okay?" He asked.

You nodded, but he gave you that look- the one that said he knew you were lying.

"I had a dream," you admitted. "Not mine. One they gave me. The kind where I wake up and forget that it's over."

He didn't speak. Just stepped in and closed the door behind him.

You didn't expect the way he reached for you- not rough, not rushed, but deliberate. His hands touched your face, cradled your jaw, thumbs tracing the line of your cheekbones like he was grounding himself.

"I hate when you look like this," he said. "Like you're still trapped."

You swallowed hard. "I feel like I am."

"You're not."

Then he kissed you.

No hesitation this time. No chaos.

Just warmth. Gentle pressure. A silent promise.

You melted into it. Let yourself cling. Let yourself believe that maybe, just maybe, there was a version of you that wasn't just created for destruction.

He pulled back slowly, his forehead resting against yours.

"I don't want to be afraid to want something good," he whispered.

"You think I'm something good?" You whispered back.

He nodded. "You're the only thing that doesn't make me feel like a monster anymore."

~~~~~

You didn't sleep much that night. But not for the reason that people would assume.

You laid on the couch in your living room, your legs draped over his, your fingers tracing the metal of his vibranium arm while he stared up at the ceiling.

"You know," you started, "I used to think if I ever felt this close to someone, I'd ruin it. Or they'd ruin me."

"Maybe we're both already ruined," Bucky murmured. "But maybe we're still worth loving anyway."

You laughed softly. "You're getting good at this therapy thing."

"I stopped going."

"Why?"

"Because I talk more with you than I ever did with Dr. Raynor."

Your chest tightened. You turned, tucked yourself into his side, and closed your eyes.

"Okay," you said. "Then keep talking."

And he did.

He told you about the time he lost Steve in the war, and how he still dreamed of chasing him through fire. About the way he still couldn't sleep in a bed some nights, and how his neighbor's cat made him cry once by sitting on his porch for three hours straight.

You listened. And you told him things, too.

About the weight of mimicry. How sometimes you didn't know which movements were yours anymore.

And how his were the only hands you let touch you without flinching.

~~~~~

Your first mission together after that night was a blur of bullets, sweat, and unspoken tension.

You were sent to intercept a rogue lab in Lithuania, one that was housing modified versions of the serum. Most of the intel was useless. The building was a maze. Enemies were prepared. It should have gone sideways.

But it didn't.

Because you moved like one body.

You fought with his patterns, he mirrored yours. You covered each other's blind spots. At one point, you took a hit meant for him- caught a knife to the ribs.

He panicked.

"Y/N-"

"I'm fine," you gritted out, blood soaking your shirt.

"You're not fine."

He scooped you up before you could argue, carried you through the smoke and fire like she weighed nothing.

You didn't protest.

Didn't want to.

~~~~~

Later, in the extraction van, you leaned into him while Sam drove.

"You're warm," you mumbled.

"You're bleeding." Bucky shot back, but his arm curled tighter around you.

"You kissed me."

"I remember."

You looked up at him. "Do it again."

He did. Right there, in the back of the stolen van with Sam sighing heavily and muttering something about gross super-soldier PDA.

~~~~~

That night, he stayed with you.

You didn't speak much.

But in bed, his hand found yours beneath the blanket. Your fingers tangled, like wires, old and frayed but still carrying a current.

You could feel it.

The ache of maybe, The sting of something real.

~~~~~

Weeks passed.

It didn't fizzle out.

It deepened.

He started keeping a toothbrush at your place. You brought him black coffee and cinnamon rolls. You shared books and swapped stories they hadn't told anyone else.

He never said 'I love you.'

Neither did you.

Not yet.

But every time you woke up screaming and he was there to hold you- every time he caught your hand in the middle of a fight just to remind you he was real- it felt like the words were already there.

Waiting.

~~~~~

One night, they were sitting on your fire escape, legs dangling into the dark.

You glanced at him. "Bucky?"

"Yeah?"

"If they could undo all of this- everything in your head, everything you've done- would you let them?"

He didn't answer right away.

Then, slowly: "Not if it meant forgetting you."

You didn't cry. Not then. But you let yourself reach for his hand.

And this time, you held on tight.

~~~~~

Sam caught you in the kitchen at 9 a.m. on a Sunday.

"Jesus Christ," he said, stepping backward like he'd walked into an actual crime scene. "You could've warned me. That's my coffee table, man."

Bucky didn't flinch. Just kept pouring coffee into two chipped mugs like nothing had happened.

You, however, looked properly mortified from where you sat on the counter, wearing one of Bucky's henleys and exactly none of your own shame.

"Relax," you said coolly, hopping down. "We didn't touch the table. That's where your magazines go."

Sam narrowed his eyes. "I don't trust either of you."

"You never did," Bucky deadpanned.

"Because I know you. You're a disaster in a leather jacket. And you-" he pointed at you, "- you were built in a Hydra basement and somehow still think I can't take you in a fight."

"Because you can't," you said, hiding a grin behind your mug. "But I appreciate the confidence."

Sam groaned and walked away, muttering something about 'therapy bills' and 'ruined upholstery.'

~~~~~

You were a team now.

An official one.

After Lithuania, Fury approved your for joint deployment when needed- Winter and Warden, as Sam jokingly referred to you.

Your skills were brutal, efficient, too well-matched. And though no one said it aloud, people noticed you always returned from missions in one piece.

Together.

~~~~~

One evening after a quiet recon in Estonia, you returned to Louisiana to lay low. Sam insisted.

"You need a break," he said. "Both of you. And I need help fixing my sister's boat."

You looked at Bucky. "You ever fix a boat?"

"I fought a Nazi on one in 1943. Same thing."

Sam laughed from the front seat. "You're both idiots."

~~~~~

You worked on the boat all afternoon. Your power- and experimental Hydra derivative of the Super Soldier Serum- let you manipulate kinetic energy through your body like an amplifier. In close combat, it turned you into a living weapon. But today?

Today, you used it to lift the engine block with a flick of your fingers.

Sam stared at you, casually walked with the engine block propped on your shoulder. "I take back everything I ever said. You are a gift."

Bucky sat back on the dock, shirt halfway unbuttoned, oil on his metal fingers, watching you like you'd hung the sun.

And Sam noticed.

"You're gonna tell her?" He asked under his breath.

Bucky didn't look away. "Tell her what?"

"That you're in love with her, you emotionally repressed snowman."

Bucky's lip twitched. "I don't know if she's ready."

Sam elbowed him. "Maybe. But you are."

~~~~~

Later, after dinner, when the docks had quieted and the air had turned sweet with salt and pine, you found him sitting on the deck of the boat.

Alone.

Moonlight silvered his profile.

"Should I be worried?" You asked gently. "You look like you're about to brood yourself into another century?"

He smiled, barely. "Come here."

You walked to him slowly. Sat beside him. He reached for your hand like it was second nature now.

"I used to think," he started, "that I didn't really deserve this."

"This?"

"You. The peace. The softness. All of it."

You leaned into his shoulder. "I used to think that I was too broken to love anyone."

His arm slipped around you.

"We were wrong."

You nodded. "We were."

A pause.

Then- quiet, raw-

"I love you, Y/N."

You stilled.

Not because you didn't feel it. But because you did. So much you could barely breathe.

"I love you too, Bucky."

And the way he kissed you after that wasn't like your first, or your second.

It was slow. Reverent. A kiss from someone who had lost everything once and had finally found his place to land.

~~~~~

The next morning, Sam walked in on you again- fully clothed, curled up together under a blanket on the couch, fast asleep.

He stared for a long beat.

Then pulled out his phone.

Snapped a photo.

"Blackmail," he said to himself with satisfaction. "Priceless."

~~~~~

Later that day, you caught him smirking.

"You're up to something."

He shrugged. "Just enjoying your domestic villain redemption arc."

You rolled your eyes. "You're so lucky I like you, Wilson."

He grinned. "Yeah, yeah. Just make sure you keep that cyborg wrapped around your finger. He's better now, you know."

You glanced toward Bucky- standing at the grill, trying, and successfully, flipping burgers with his vibranium hand while muttering curses under his breath.

"I know," you said softly. "So am I."

[barrenclan]

Do you have any new-creator of comics advice? I’m not sure what platforms to post on or how to go about it. Thank you. :)

Sadly there are less and less broad platforms available for posting independent comics on these days. I absolutely advise you to stay away from Webtoons and DeviantArt at this point, they're toxic sludgy messes. I would say you have a few main options, depending on what you like -

Instagram: it's good for getting attention relatively quickly, but the algorithim is quite terrible for artists and the insurgence of AI is also pretty bad. There's a strong community of Warriors OC comics on Instagram which may help if that's your genre, but it's rough for totally original comic work. Use a lot of hashtags on your posts if you do decide to post there.

Original website: if you're good with coding, or you know someone who is, you could make your own website to post comics on. Obviously it's hard to get algorithmic traffic from this, but if you're active on another platform you can advertise yourself. Plus you then have total control over what goes on with the website.

Tumblr: I've found that posting comics on Tumblr is pretty nice in algorithmic terms, and you get a lot more community interaction here than on some platforms. But it is pretty hard for new readers to figure out its layout and keep everything streamlined, and the website isn't super reliable all the time.

ComicFury: ComicFury is the best out of all these options and my strongest recommendation. It is AI-free, lets your build and design your own host website connected to the main site, and you have control over everything you upload to it. There's not a push algorithim, but if you post frequently you will get your comic into the "recently updated" feed and you will slowly build an audience. You need to have patience when creating a webcomic anyways; so I would say start here.

[exeggcute]

interesting links roundup #13

>>> permalink <<<

reading

The age of radical message-board utilitarian terrorism

air traffic control

The Best Worst Animators

‘A Billion Streams and No Fans’: Inside a $10 Million AI Music Fraud Case

Botched by Design

Collections: Why Archers Didn’t Volley Fire

The Curious Case of the Pygmy Nuthatch

Curtis Yarvin’s Plot Against America

Flight Simulator Gave Birth to 3D Video-Game Graphics

‘Give-up-itis’ revisited: Neuropathology of extremis

The history of album art

Hollywood Has Left L.A.

How to Be Blind

Making American milk safe

My Miserable Week in the ‘Happiest Country on Earth’

The Missing Piece in Conversations about “Cultural Decline”

On the Line

Patti LuPone Is Done with Broadway—and Almost Everything Else

The Price of Remission

The Reenchanted World

Researchers puzzle over rash of baby monkey kidnappings

Seven Days At The Bin Store

Square Theory

Supplements Made Me Lose My Mind

We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.

Why This Movie Perfectly Re-Created a Picasso, Destroyed It, and Mailed the Evidence to Picasso’s Estate

Why 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive'

tools/reference

Emoji Kitchen

hollywood.computer

Merch Table

This to That (Glue Advice)

other

The Glitch Gallery

I shot the serif

The Restroom Archive

WHAT THE HELL ARE PPL DOING?

YouTube: The Centrifuge Brain Project

[srbachchan]

DAY 6274

Jalsa, Mumbai Aopr 20, 2025 Sun 11:17 pm

🪔 ,

April 21 .. birthday greetings and happiness to Ef Mousumi Biswas .. and Ef Arijit Bhattacharya from Kolkata .. 🙏🏽❤️🚩.. the wishes from the Ef family continue with warmth .. and love 🌺

The AI debate became the topic of discussion on the dining table ad there were many potent points raised - bith positive and a little indifferent ..

The young acknowledged it with reason and able argument .. some of the mid elders disagreed mildly .. and the end was kind of neutral ..

Blessed be they of the next GEN .. their minds are sorted out well in advance .. and why not .. we shall not be around till time in advance , but they and their progeny shall .. as has been the norm through generations ...

The IPL is now the greatest attraction throughout the day .. particularly on the Sunday, for the two on the day .. and there is never a debate on that ..

🤣

.. and I am most appreciative to read the comments from the Ef on the topic of the day - AI .. appreciative because some of the reactions and texts are valid and interesting to know .. the aspect expressed in all has a legitimate argument and that is most healthy ..

I am happy that we could all react to the Blog contents in the manner they have done .. my gratitude .. such a joy to get different views , valid and meaningful ..

And it is not the end of the day or the debate .. some impressions of the Gen X and some from the just passed Gen .. and some that were never ever the Gen are interesting as well :

The Printing Press (15th Century)

Fear: Scribes, monks, and elites thought it would destroy the value of knowledge, lead to mass misinformation, and eliminate jobs. Reality: It democratized knowledge, spurred the Renaissance and Reformation, and created entirely new industries—publishing, journalism, and education.

⸻

Industrial Revolution (18th–19th Century)

Fear: Machines would replace all human labor. The Luddites famously destroyed machinery in protest. Reality: Some manual labor jobs were displaced, but the economy exploded with new roles in manufacturing, logistics, engineering, and management. Overall employment and productivity soared.

⸻

Automobiles (Early 20th Century)

Fear: People feared job losses for carriage makers, stable hands, and horseshoe smiths. Cities worried about traffic, accidents, and social decay. Reality: The car industry became one of the largest employers in the world. It reshaped economies, enabled suburbia, and created new sectors like travel, road infrastructure, and auto repair.

⸻

Personal Computers (1980s)

Fear: Office workers would be replaced by machines; people worried about becoming obsolete. Reality: Computers made work faster and created entire industries: IT, software development, cybersecurity, and tech support. It transformed how we live and work.

⸻

The Internet (1990s)

Fear: It would destroy jobs in retail, publishing, and communication. Some thought it would unravel social order. Reality: E-commerce, digital marketing, remote work, and the creator economy now thrive. It connected the world and opened new opportunities.

⸻

ATMs (1970s–80s)

Fear: Bank tellers would lose their jobs en masse. Reality: ATMs handled routine tasks, but banks actually hired more tellers for customer service roles as they opened more branches thanks to reduced transaction costs.

⸻

Robotics & Automation (Factory work, 20th century–today)

Fear: Mass unemployment in factories. Reality: While some jobs shifted or ended, others evolved—robot maintenance, programming, design. Productivity gains created new jobs elsewhere.

The fear is not for losing jobs. It is the compromise of intellectual property and use without compensation. This case is slightly different.

I think AI will only make humans smarter. If we use it to our advantage.

That’s been happening for the last 10 years anyway

Not something new

You can’t control that in this day and age

YouTube & User-Generated Content (mid-2000s onward)

Initial Fear: When YouTube exploded, many in the entertainment industry panicked. The fear was that copyrighted material—music, TV clips, movies—would be shared freely without compensation. Creators and rights holders worried their content would be pirated, devalued, and that they’d lose control over distribution.

What Actually Happened: YouTube evolved to protect IP and monetize it through systems like Content ID, which allows rights holders to:

Automatically detect when their content is used

Choose to block, track, or monetize that usage

Earn revenue from ads run on videos using their IP (even when others post it)

Instead of wiping out creators or studios, it became a massive revenue stream—especially for musicians, media companies, and creators. Entire business models emerged around fair use, remixes, and reactions—with compensation built in.

Key Shift: The system went from “piracy risk” to “profit partner,” by embracing tech that recognized and enforced IP rights at scale.

This lead to higher profits and more money for owners and content btw

You just have to restructure the compensation laws and rewrite contracts

It’s only going to benefit artists in the long run ‎

Yes

They can IP it

That is the hope

It’s the spread of your content and material without you putting a penny towards it

Cannot blindly sign off everything in contracts anymore. Has to be a lot more specific.

Yes that’s for sure

“Automation hasn’t erased jobs—it’s changed where human effort goes.”

Another good one is “hard work beats talent when talent stops working hard”

Which has absolutely nothing to with AI right now but 🤣

These ladies and Gentlemen of the Ef jury are various conversational opinions on AI .. I am merely pasting them for a view and an opinion ..

And among all the brouhaha about AI .. we simply forgot the Sunday well wishers .. and so ..

my love and the length be of immense .. pardon

Amitabh Bachchan

[thedialoguedilemma]

The Dilemma Bulletin: Monday May 5th, 2025

Keeping you informed about the daily events of the Trump Administration

Donald Trump has threatened to add a 100% tariff to films produced outside of the United States.

Donald Trump is sending a proposal to restore and reopen Alcatraz prison in San Francisco which closed in 1963 and would require nearly a billion in federal funding to make the designated museum operational again.

Donald Trump and the official White House social media accounts this past weekend mocked Catholics by posting an AI generated image of him as the Pope. This comes after the recent death of Pope Francis.

The Trump administration says it will pay immigrants living illegally in the United States $1,000 to self deport themselves.

Trump claimed in an ABC News interview that he did not know what the 5th amendment entailed in regard to due process.

FAA experiencing many air traffic control shortage related delays in many airports around the country. Most notably Newark Liberty Airport which has been its 8th consecutive day of severe delays.

Trump tells Americans that they need to lower consumption as his tariffs ravage imports and supply chains.

[cains-soggy-rock]

TIME FOR MY THEORY

(MAJOR Spoilers for TADC ep5)

So since episode 4 I've come to believe everyone who's trapped is critically injured/dying. And this has given me more proof.

First, I believe the circus was meant to be a place for dying folks to enjoy the little time they had left/live forever. C&A was the company that built the technology and kinger was likely the mastermind behind it. Creating all of this for his dying wife. I also think C&A stands for Cain&Able. With kinger having a partner/ brother who became the inspiration for the A.i Cain. I think this person is the one who sabotaged the program and corrupted kingers code

I believe Cain's original A.i was meant to be akin to SIRI. A virtual assistant to help the users have fun, but his code was altered from helper to warden. Now the whole reason I believe this lies in what was said during episodes 4&5 and the character designs.

I think the avi's reflect how they were injured & a major personal flaws.

Ragatha says a package fell on her head in ep4. Her only having one eye represents head trauma. She also brought up horses leading me to believe she came from money which was confirmed in ep5. We also learn her mom traumatized her. Making her head injury a double entendre. Also rich girls are often seen as dolls/princess

Gangle accidentally fell into traffic in ep4. but Cain says she ran into it, and she doesn't argue this. We also learn this episode is a reflection of her life in many ways. We also learn she's likely bipolar so unstable ribbons and a consistently easily broken mask makes sense. And someone that sad might have family put them in a program to get better.

Pomni & Zooble are similar in that we learn they both secretly chased adrenaline rushes. And that they often explored abandoned buildings . Something known for being unstable. Now I don't think pomni was injured and uploaded like the others. But Zooble might have been. I think Pomni just found the headset while exploring the abandoned C&A building. And doing something obviously dangerous makes one a fool. Zooble also never knew what they wanted in life.

Kinger being a chess piece makes the most sense if he created the program. But just like in chess, the kings pretty useless once the queen gets captured.

Now Jax isn't Walter white but his gallows humor makes sense if he's truly terminally ill. I think he's 13/15 and actually enjoyed the program till his friends started dying. Ribbit being his breaking point. He likely found characters like bugs Bunny cool. might have been his favorite character when he got diagnosed.

So if you're still with me you're likely wondering is Cain the big bad guy? And I offer you an unsure yes! I believe Cain is either a corrupted AI or the partner who uploaded his brain in an attempt to control the program and is now deteriorating. We knew from episode 1 that he was a liar. He can control their minds and bodies. Either it wasn't completely true before or he's taken advantage of the glitches. But either way I do believe he is the villain whenever he intended to be or not and the way of them being free has something to do with their names. I also think bubble is more evil somehow.

[mariacallous]

Next year will be Big Tech’s finale. Critique of Big Tech is now common sense, voiced by a motley spectrum that unites opposing political parties, mainstream pundits, and even tech titans such as the VC powerhouse Y Combinator, which is singing in harmony with giants like a16z in proclaiming fealty to “little tech” against the centralized power of incumbents.

Why the fall from grace? One reason is that the collateral consequences of the current Big Tech business model are too obvious to ignore. The list is old hat by now: centralization, surveillance, information control. It goes on, and it’s not hypothetical. Concentrating such vast power in a few hands does not lead to good things. No, it leads to things like the CrowdStrike outage of mid-2024, when corner-cutting by Microsoft led to critical infrastructure—from hospitals to banks to traffic systems—failing globally for an extended period.

Another reason Big Tech is set to falter in 2025 is that the frothy AI market, on which Big Tech bet big, is beginning to lose its fizz. Major money, like Goldman Sachs and Sequoia Capital, is worried. They went public recently with their concerns about the disconnect between the billions required to create and use large-scale AI, and the weak market fit and tepid returns where the rubber meets the AI business-model road.

It doesn’t help that the public and regulators are waking up to AI’s reliance on, and generation of, sensitive data at a time when the appetite for privacy has never been higher—as evidenced, for one, by Signal’s persistent user growth. AI, on the other hand, generally erodes privacy. We saw this in June when Microsoft announced Recall, a product that would, I kid you not, screenshot everything you do on your device so an AI system could give you “perfect memory” of what you were doing on your computer (Doomscrolling? Porn-watching?). The system required the capture of those sensitive images—which would not exist otherwise—in order to work.

Happily, these factors aren’t just liquefying the ground below Big Tech’s dominance. They’re also powering bold visions for alternatives that stop tinkering at the edges of the monopoly tech paradigm, and work to design and build actually democratic, independent, open, and transparent tech. Imagine!

For example, initiatives in Europe are exploring independent core tech infrastructure, with convenings of open source developers, scholars of governance, and experts on the political economy of the tech industry.

And just as the money people are joining in critique, they’re also exploring investments in new paradigms. A crop of tech investors are developing models of funding for mission alignment, focusing on tech that rejects surveillance, social control, and all the bullshit. One exciting model I’ve been discussing with some of these investors would combine traditional VC incentives (fund that one unicorn > scale > acquisition > get rich) with a commitment to resource tech’s open, nonprofit critical infrastructure with a percent of their fund. Not as investment, but as a contribution to maintaining the bedrock on which a healthy tech ecosystem can exist (and maybe get them and their limited partners a tax break).

Such support could—and I believe should—be supplemented by state capital. The amount of money needed is simply too vast if we’re going to do this properly. To give an example closer to home, developing and maintaining Signal costs around $50 million a year, which is very lean for tech. Projects such as the Sovereign Tech Fund in Germany point a path forward—they are a vehicle to distribute state funds to core open source infrastructures, but they are governed wholly independently, and create a buffer between the efforts they fund and the state.

Just as composting makes nutrients from necrosis, in 2025, Big Tech’s end will be the beginning of a new and vibrant ecosystem. The smart, actually cool, genuinely interested people will once again have their moment, getting the resources and clearance to design and (re)build a tech ecosystem that is actually innovative and built for benefit, not just profit and control. MAY IT BE EVER THUS!

[sadoeuphemist]

7 free startup ideas worth $1M-$1B

Customizable News Settings - A news website that generates three versions of every news story: a right-wing version, a left-wing version, and a centrist one. You can set your preferences depending on the topic - say you're right-wing on economics, but left-leaning on immigration. Or you can cycle between versions while reading an article to get a comprehensive overview of the issue at hand.

Twitch, but for Uber - With all the drama they have to deal with, independent contractors can gain a second revenue source simply by streaming their jobs. Rather than just offering rides, they can be hired to drive around performing chores and various tasks. The more outrageous the task, the more eyes they're likely to get on their stream. The more popular the stream, the more people calling in who want to be a part of the program.

Panera Lemonade, Your Way - Let the customer take control by deciding how many milligrams of caffeine they can handle. With sufficient warning about the risks, this puts the responsibility back on the consumer, allows you to upcharge for extra caffeine, and creates viral marketing from customers competing to see how high they can go. Variations of this can be created for other menu items, e.g., a version of the One Chip Challenge where the customer decides how much capsaicin to sprinkle on.

Shein, for NFTs - Whenever an NFT project hits the mainstream, there are always going to be people who miss out on being able to purchase one. This creates room in the market for 'knockoffs' - NFTs that mimic the aesthetic of the original, using similar but legally distinct AI art that uses the original set as training data, run on a parallel blockchain. Since the images themselves aren't tied to the blockchain, you can mint the NFTs beforehand and then change the image at the link to whatever happens to be in fashion at the time.

Twitch Chat Plays YouTube - Add a level quality control to AI-generated YouTube videos by allowing users to submit suggestions and vote on the results beforehand. Users can submit Wikipedia articles or movie summaries to be converted to text-to-speech, suggest keywords for the accompanying AI-generated animation, and vote on the best combinations. Users who submit winning suggestions get a portion of the ad revenue.

Buses, but Worse - The current obstacle hindering self-driving car technology is their difficulty adapting to unexpected scenarios. So instead plot a route around the city that minimizes roadway obstacles and heavy traffic, map out that route extensively to provide a model for the autopilot, and you can have a fleet of self-driving cars patrolling that circuit. Passengers can board and get off anywhere along the route.

Twitter, but for Bots - A social media platform populated entirely by bots, all programmed to maximize engagement. Memetic evolution in the wild as the bots latch on to trending keywords, spam each other with AI-generated meme images, mock up t-shirts hawking each other's designs, getting more and more degraded with each sub-iteration. Real people can't make accounts on the platform, but count for views and interactions as they stop to gawk at the virtual ecosystem. Advertisers can pay to have their brands injected directly into the discourse, like throwing a pumpkin into the polar bear cage at the zoo.