#Contractor Pass System

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How I got scammed

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

Here's what happened. Over the Christmas holiday, I traveled to New Orleans. The day we landed, I hit a Chase ATM in the French Quarter for some cash, but the machine declined the transaction. Later in the day, we passed a little credit-union's ATM and I used that one instead (I bank with a one-branch credit union and generally there's no fee to use another CU's ATM).

A couple days later, I got a call from my credit union. It was a weekend, during the holiday, and the guy who called was obviously working for my little CU's after-hours fraud contractor. I'd dealt with these folks before – they service a ton of little credit unions, and generally the call quality isn't great and the staff will often make mistakes like mispronouncing my credit union's name.

That's what happened here – the guy was on a terrible VOIP line and I had to ask him to readjust his mic before I could even understand him. He mispronounced my bank's name and then asked if I'd attempted to spend $1,000 at an Apple Store in NYC that day. No, I said, and groaned inwardly. What a pain in the ass. Obviously, I'd had my ATM card skimmed – either at the Chase ATM (maybe that was why the transaction failed), or at the other credit union's ATM (it had been a very cheap looking system).

I told the guy to block my card and we started going through the tedious business of running through recent transactions, verifying my identity, and so on. It dragged on and on. These were my last hours in New Orleans, and I'd left my family at home and gone out to see some of the pre-Mardi Gras krewe celebrations and get a muffalata, and I could tell that I was going to run out of time before I finished talking to this guy.

"Look," I said, "you've got all my details, you've frozen the card. I gotta go home and meet my family and head to the airport. I'll call you back on the after-hours number once I'm through security, all right?"

He was frustrated, but that was his problem. I hung up, got my sandwich, went to the airport, and we checked in. It was total chaos: an Alaska Air 737 Max had just lost its door-plug in mid-air and every Max in every airline's fleet had been grounded, so the check in was crammed with people trying to rebook. We got through to the gate and I sat down to call the CU's after-hours line. The person on the other end told me that she could only handle lost and stolen cards, not fraud, and given that I'd already frozen the card, I should just drop by the branch on Monday to get a new card.

We flew home, and later the next day, I logged into my account and made a list of all the fraudulent transactions and printed them out, and on Monday morning, I drove to the bank to deal with all the paperwork. The folks at the CU were even more pissed than I was. The fraud that run up to more than $8,000, and if Visa refused to take it out of the merchants where the card had been used, my little credit union would have to eat the loss.

I agreed and commiserated. I also pointed out that their outsource, after-hours fraud center bore some blame here: I'd canceled the card on Saturday but most of the fraud had taken place on Sunday. Something had gone wrong.

One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.

"That was the fraudster," she said.

Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.

Wait a sec.

He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now – "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.

I'd given him my entire card number.

Goddammit.

The thing is, I know a lot about fraud. I'm writing an entire series of novels about this kind of scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

And most summers, I go to Defcon, and I always go to the "social engineering" competitions where an audience listens as a hacker in a soundproof booth cold-calls merchants (with the owner's permission) and tries to con whoever answers the phone into giving up important information.

But I'd been conned.

Now look, I knew I could be conned. I'd been conned before, 13 years ago, by a Twitter worm that successfully phished out of my password via DM:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That scam had required a miracle of timing. It started the day before, when I'd reset my phone to factory defaults and reinstalled all my apps. That same day, I'd published two big online features that a lot of people were talking about. The next morning, we were late getting out of the house, so by the time my wife and I dropped the kid at daycare and went to the coffee shop, it had a long line. Rather than wait in line with me, my wife sat down to read a newspaper, and so I pulled out my phone and found a Twitter DM from a friend asking "is this you?" with a URL.

Assuming this was something to do with those articles I'd published the day before, I clicked the link and got prompted for my Twitter login again. This had been happening all day because I'd done that mobile reinstall the day before and all my stored passwords had been wiped. I entered it but the page timed out. By that time, the coffees were ready. We sat and chatted for a bit, then went our own ways.

I was on my way to the office when I checked my phone again. I had a whole string of DMs from other friends. Each one read "is this you?" and had a URL.

Oh, shit, I'd been phished.

If I hadn't reinstalled my mobile OS the day before. If I hadn't published a pair of big articles the day before. If we hadn't been late getting out the door. If we had been a little more late getting out the door (so that I'd have seen the multiple DMs, which would have tipped me off).

There's a name for this in security circles: "Swiss-cheese security." Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese all stacked up, the holes in one slice blocked by the slice below it. All the slices move around and every now and again, a hole opens up that goes all the way through the stack. Zap!

The fraudster who tricked me out of my credit card number had Swiss cheese security on his side. Yes, he spoofed my bank's caller ID, but that wouldn't have been enough to fool me if I hadn't been on vacation, having just used a pair of dodgy ATMs, in a hurry and distracted. If the 737 Max disaster hadn't happened that day and I'd had more time at the gate, I'd have called my bank back. If my bank didn't use a slightly crappy outsource/out-of-hours fraud center that I'd already had sub-par experiences with. If, if, if.

The next Friday night, at 5:30PM, the fraudster called me back, pretending to be the bank's after-hours center. He told me my card had been compromised again. But: I hadn't removed my card from my wallet since I'd had it replaced. Also, it was half an hour after the bank closed for the long weekend, a very fraud-friendly time. And when I told him I'd call him back and asked for the after-hours fraud number, he got very threatening and warned me that because I'd now been notified about the fraud that any losses the bank suffered after I hung up the phone without completing the fraud protocol would be billed to me. I hung up on him. He called me back immediately. I hung up on him again and put my phone into do-not-disturb.

The following Tuesday, I called my bank and spoke to their head of risk-management. I went through everything I'd figured out about the fraudsters, and she told me that credit unions across America were being hit by this scam, by fraudsters who somehow knew CU customers' phone numbers and names, and which CU they banked at. This was key: my phone number is a reasonably well-kept secret. You can get it by spending money with Equifax or another nonconsensual doxing giant, but you can't just google it or get it at any of the free services. The fact that the fraudsters knew where I banked, knew my name, and had my phone number had really caused me to let down my guard.

The risk management person and I talked about how the credit union could mitigate this attack: for example, by better-training the after-hours card-loss staff to be on the alert for calls from people who had been contacted about supposed card fraud. We also went through the confusing phone-menu that had funneled me to the wrong department when I called in, and worked through alternate wording for the menu system that would be clearer (this is the best part about banking with a small CU – you can talk directly to the responsible person and have a productive discussion!). I even convinced her to buy a ticket to next summer's Defcon to attend the social engineering competitions.

There's a leak somewhere in the CU systems' supply chain. Maybe it's Zelle, or the small number of corresponding banks that CUs rely on for SWIFT transaction forwarding. Maybe it's even those after-hours fraud/card-loss centers. But all across the USA, CU customers are getting calls with spoofed caller IDs from fraudsters who know their registered phone numbers and where they bank.

I've been mulling this over for most of a month now, and one thing has really been eating at me: the way that AI is going to make this kind of problem much worse.

Not because AI is going to commit fraud, though.

One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

I trusted this fraudster specifically because I knew that the outsource, out-of-hours contractors my bank uses have crummy headsets, don't know how to pronounce my bank's name, and have long-ass, tedious, and pointless standardized questionnaires they run through when taking fraud reports. All of this created cover for the fraudster, whose plausibility was enhanced by the rough edges in his pitch - they didn't raise red flags.

As this kind of fraud reporting and fraud contacting is increasingly outsourced to AI, bank customers will be conditioned to dealing with semi-automated systems that make stupid mistakes, force you to repeat yourself, ask you questions they should already know the answers to, and so on. In other words, AI will groom bank customers to be phishing victims.

This is a mistake the finance sector keeps making. 15 years ago, Ben Laurie excoriated the UK banks for their "Verified By Visa" system, which validated credit card transactions by taking users to a third party site and requiring them to re-enter parts of their password there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090331094020/http://www.links.org/?p=591

This is exactly how a phishing attack works. As Laurie pointed out, this was the banks training their customers to be phished.

I came close to getting phished again today, as it happens. I got back from Berlin on Friday and my suitcase was damaged in transit. I've been dealing with the airline, which means I've really been dealing with their third-party, outsource luggage-damage service. They have a terrible website, their emails are incoherent, and they officiously demand the same information over and over again.

This morning, I got a scam email asking me for more information to complete my damaged luggage claim. It was a terrible email, from a noreply@ email address, and it was vague, officious, and dishearteningly bureaucratic. For just a moment, my finger hovered over the phishing link, and then I looked a little closer.

On any other day, it wouldn't have had a chance. Today – right after I had my luggage wrecked, while I'm still jetlagged, and after days of dealing with my airline's terrible outsource partner – it almost worked.

So much fraud is a Swiss-cheese attack, and while companies can't close all the holes, they can stop creating new ones.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post about it whenever I get scammed. I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it's also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[dostoyevsky-official]

Trump administration disbands taskforce targeting Russian oligarchs

A memo from the attorney general, Pam Bondi, issued during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs. The taskforce brought indictments against the aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska and TV tycoon Konstantin Malofeyev for alleged sanctions busting, and seized yachts belonging to the sanctioned oligarchs Suleiman Kerimov and Viktor Vekselberg. It also secured a guilty plea against a US lawyer who made $3.8m in payments to maintain properties owned by Vekselberg.

Trump Green-Lights Bribery and Corruption With New Executive Order

President Donald Trump has instructed Attorney General Pam Bondi to pause prosecutions of companies that bribe foreign government officials to win business. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been “stretched beyond proper bounds and abused in a manner that harms the interests of the United States,” hurting American competitiveness, Trump wrote in an executive order signed Monday. [...] The order’s legality was not immediately clear. Generally, the Constitution requires the president to “take care that the laws” passed by Congress “be faithfully executed.” Presidents do have some enforcement discretion, but they cannot override laws, according to the ACLU. Major companies such as Goldman Sachs, Glencore and Walmart have all come under FCPA scrutiny, according to Reuters.

///

"It's going to mean a lot more business for America," Trump told reporters while signing the order in the Oval Office on Monday. Trump wanted to strike down FCPA during his first term in office. He has called it a "horrible law" and said "the world is laughing at us" for enforcing it. Anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International said FCPA made the United States a leader in addressing global corruption. (x)

///

“It sounds good on paper, but in practicality, it's a disaster,” Trump said. “It means that if an American goes over to a foreign country and starts doing business over there, legally, legitimately or otherwise, it's almost a guaranteed investigation indictment, and nobody wants to do business with the Americans because of it.” [...] Gary Kalman, executive director of Transparency International U.S., said Trump’s order “diminishes—and could pave the way for completely eliminating—the crown jewel in the U.S.’s fight against global corruption.” [...] In one of its most significant victories, the Justice Department announced Oct. 16, three weeks before Trump’s election victory, that mega-defense contractor Raytheon Company of Virginia would pay over $950 million to settle foreign bribery and related charges in a scheme to help foreign governments purchase PATRIOT missile systems and operate and maintain a radar system. In one of the schemes, Raytheon engaged in a campaign from 2012 and 2016 “to bribe a high-level official” within the Qatar government’s military “in order to assist Raytheon in obtaining and retaining business” from it, the DOJ said, citing admissions and court documents filed in the Eastern District of New York. [...] Raytheon’s “criminal schemes to defraud the U.S. government in connection with” the contracts “erodes public trust and harms the DOD, businesses that play by the rules, and American taxpayers,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Kevin Driscoll of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division also said at the time. (x)

this is the most relentlessly pro-corruption administration in american history. the guiding animus seems to be how much corruption can we do, how can we help others get away with corruption, how can we halt justice, etc

[gremlinmodetweeker]

König of the Icks - The Great Return of the King

Now, I know what you all are thinking. Gremmy, why are you linking a 40 minute STRANGE ÆONS video? Why is a video of one man's journey into DIY hell so important for me to understand? What is the importance of Groverhaus in the world of König?

It's because he is Grover.

I'm telling you right now that König is a DIY nut and he fucking sucks at it.

Art from This Post

König grows up with a professor for a father who was always called effeminate for being a quiet, mousey man.

Growing up, children used to make fun of König for how sweet and gentle his father was. Kids always used to make fun of König's masculinity, which when you're a developing 12 year old boy, has devastating consequences that ripple through the rest of your life

One of the many consequences is the fact that he thinks he's more of a man when he does his own DIY for his house. He genuinely thinks you do not need a degree or training, you cna just watch youtube videos and you'll never need to hire a contractor

To add onto this, König is the most frugal fucker you've ever met. That will be it's own later post, I swear, but for right now you need to understand that's he's super cheap, and he thinks he can fix any problem he faces on his own without professional help

As such, König goes out of his way to buy a really shitty little house with you. He promises he'll make it into a palace. He's a strong, powerful military man and he is a man of commitment.

His promises mean nothing.

König first tries to do his own plumbing. This has disastrous repercussions.

After you finish draining the basement, König decides he wants to replace everything in the bathroom because it's all been water damaged.

After he finishes cleaning out the mould he artfully cultivated on the ceiling, he gives in and hires a plumber.

He tries to put in tiles on his own after the plumber is gone but they end up looking more like a Roman floor mosaic rather than a smooth tiled floor.

You both end up tearing up what he did and hiring a contractor to put in a beautiful tiled floor with a resplendent back splash

After about two months of König's destruction followed by a contractor coming in on short notice to fix the damages, the bathrooms end up exactly how you wanted.

You suffered too much. It's a Pyrrhic victory

Then König turns his eyes to the kitchen. You can scream all you like, but in one day he pulls down all the cabinets, throws out the appliances, and all that's left is a deep freezer in the basement and a sink.

He tries to explain that putting a head of lettuce in and out of the freezer at regular intervals is perfectly fine and can be done for weeks on end, but the next morning you're kicking him out of the house to get a new fridge.

He tries installing the cabinets into the drywall and then tries to attach a microwave underneath and the whole thing comes down in five minutes.

Another day passes, and König hires a contractor to install his cupboards. He ends up having to buy another copy of the ones he already had because he ended up destroying the ones he tried installing and the contractor couldn't use them.

He then goes on to try and jerry-rig the electrical system and ends up in hospital.

The electrician that comes in afterwards. He flicks three switches, drinks a glass of water, uses the washroom, eats lunch and charges you over a hundred for the whole ordeal.

Every mistake König makes comes with devastating costs. You can only hope that he keeps his job at KorTac because he burns through cash.

He's so cheap in every other area of life, but the problem is that you can't get it through his thick man skull that no, he is not more of a man for doing his own DIY projects. No, he is not saving money by doing it himself. He is actively digging a hole with his own pride and manhood on the line.

After five years, you do actually end up having your promised palace. The house is fantastic. It's stunning. Everyone loves it.

König did none of it.

König had to hire contractors each step of the way, nearly doubling the price by the end

Your house is perfect, but the cost of the professionals and the cost of therapy is daunting.

You love your husband, you really do, but sometimes you wonder why you love him

It's because he's a wonderful husband

He's just too stubborn for his own good

Bonus

When he offers to help set up a nursery, you end up setting it up yourself

The only thing he does is put the furniture together.

He gets huffy about it, but there's nothing he can do.

He tries to make some toys for them, but he ends up sewing the most horrific teddy bear you've ever seen.

Teddy bears should not have fuzzy teeth.

It's a genuine abomination and you end up using it as a Halloween decoration.

He goes back to the drawing board and ends up whittling a set of cute toys and building a dollhouse.

Evidently, König can't paint a wall without destroying the carpet, but he can make some impressive wood statues and whittle some cute animals

He ends up selling these toys on the side as an old man, and it's very cute, but you'll never forget when he tried to build the home of your dreams together

Cute little ducks mean shit when you had to freeze lettuce

Konig Dump

Konig Headcanons

[burnorgetburned]

okay. OKAY. I JUST WANT TO SAY.

NEW MUSIC STYLE. NEW ART STYLE. NEW MAGIC SYSTEM, NEW GIRLS, MORE CLARA DOLLS, MORE HOMURA OUTFITS, MORE EVERYONE OUTFITS, and AAHAHAHAHSGH.

Homura wins by style points alone.

Anyway. Choice screenshots and my thoughts on them. Plus a few wild theories. Replies, tags, and your own reactions are VERY welcome.

(You're doing great, sweetie!)

First of all, I’ve already said this, but Homura has usurped Kyubey. She is the contractor in this new system. She calls magical girls and asks them if they can bear the responsibility of fighting (LEAGUES better than Kyubey's misleading BE A HERO language), using a magical lizard phone. She knows better than anyone else how heavy this is.

And she looks amazing while doing it. Look at that outfit! Look at her steampunk-esque aesthetic! Her throne. Which, notably, has glowing magenta eyes and her wings as a backrest.

The moon is either actually, physically repurposed, or she’s made something that looks like it. Not only that, but the pins going into the moon are exactly like the pins that went into her soul gem when she was being experimented upon in Rebellion. Those pins, according to the artbook, are for draining her gem of grief to keep her just before the point of witching.

Well, here’s my first wild speculation: Homura has not only taken over Kyubey’s job as a contractor but also its job of disposing of grief. That moon steampunk device is maybe for collecting, concentrating, and distilling grief into energy - hence the strange tesla coils connected to red liquid in the second screenshot above. She's doing what Kyubey says it's doing - turning the grief of people into energy to prolong the universe's lifespan.

I for one support her reality-warping shenanigans.

Here are some voices over a phone, sometimes speaking over each other, sometimes together. They call Homura “Akuma-sama” (!!!) which is a distinct upgrade from calling her Good-For-Nothing. They say “Just bring hope” like a mission statement. Are these her contracted girls? Or her Clara Dolls? They seem to show her a lot of respect.

I’ve also said this, but I strongly feel that this and the girl shown later are some of Homura’s new contractees. Their magic is darker. It warps the world around them, even. Their outfits incorporate black a lot more, too, though that might be the lighting.

Look at the little sigil on the top left-middle! Looks a lot like Homura’s lizard sigil shown when she was consuming the universe, just with a longer lizard.

And, of course, the image of Madoka throwing herself off of a building. “Wraith” and “Legend of Bestie” (lmao) show up here. I’ve actually been really looking forward to seeing what they’ll do with Madoka’s… self-sacrificial tendencies, so this might be part of that. Or, because of “Wraith”, it’s… well, I’ll get to that later.

On the other hand, it might not be Madoka. It might be the girl who the speaker in the phone call calls her "best friend", jumping to her death because of a wraith, and Homura saving her to fulfill a wish.

So glad that the insane architecture from Rebellion is making a comeback. Love what you’ve done with the place, Homura. Look at all those cranes!

The outfit changes are very cool to me. I honestly don’t have speculation for why Sayaka is covered in bandages, but I do have speculation for the changes!: they’re older. Years have passed. Since they’ve changed and grown, their outfits have changed, too. I don't have proof of this - I just like the idea.

Light shines down on Madoka. Petals fall towards her as flowers bloom above. Behold, Homura's extremely subtle and inscrutable feelings. (Sorry for the blurry Madoka, but I am not going through the ordeal of uploading screenshots to my computer again because Tumblr does not like mobile users).

Homura is apparently waiting for Madoka here. She's standing right in the fountain's water and holding a Victorian umbrella like a vampire. Right now we can see that the visuals of this movie will not miss.

Is this a routine thing for them or is Homura just showing up to greet them this one time, for some reason? No clue. Madoka's expression as she notices Homura could indicate either.

Eagle-eyed people on Twitter noticed this, but in these shots, Sayaka already has her bandages.

Aside from the multiple and/or teleporting Homuras, there's also a Clara Doll in a ballerina dress and a cute Clara Doll peering over the side of the tower like a little kid.

The tower is interesting. It appears to be made of books or pages, and there's chains throughout it. More notably, it's in the shape of a helix - infinity symbols on top of each other.

Please appreciate these Clara Dolls. I'm sure they're working hard.

But seriously, those Clara Dolls' details. One has a witch's hat. One has an apple on its head. And the one with a teacup appears to have not only a lizard's tail but a replica of Homura's Devil outfit. Appreciate them!

Here is Homura(?), lounging or trapped on a chair filled with even more of those pins. Look at her closely. She's wearing a strange combination of her magical girl outfit and her Devil outfit - her shoulders are bare, and she has... feathers? She's sitting on a bunch of nails. But she also has two soul gems - one in her hand, and one hanging from her neck.

Is she cleansing them? Eating them? Holding people hostage? I don't know, but I support her completely.

She looks so tired.

So: here's some of what I think might be going on.

Homura is using wraiths to repress her worst memories. We know already that wraiths take memories and emotions from their victims. Well, there's no reason it can't be used as extremely terrible coping! Homura actually does this in the Wraith Arc, too - she lets a wraith take her feelings for Madoka.

If it is Madoka, it explains the shot with Madoka throwing herself off a builing - what if Homura has seen this happen in the loops, and out of pain lets a wraith pull it right out of her? The shot says "WRAITH" and billows with smoke. A wraith could have taken Madoka's form to act out this memory. And it doesn't need to be a memory - it could also represent Madoka's self-sacrifice and almost suicidal tendencies. This, too, would explain the multiple Homuras. All wraiths using her form.

This puts forward powerful enemies for the plot, as well as an interesting point of literally fighting Homura's demons. Most importantly, this lets everyone see Homura's pain.

Other wild dartboard speculations:

Homura will try and present herself as a villain. This is, honestly, kind of guaranteed, but it bears mentioning that her magical girls will be very likely to try to defend her.

Kyubey may appear to try and turn the girls against Homura.

Homura made the new magical girl who is drawing a bow. She has a lot of design choices from the Quintet, and people have already noticed how much she looks like Madoka. This new girl plays a role of the hero to Homura's pretend-villain, eliminating the risk that her friends will get seriously hurt.

The new magical girl is actually Madoka. Or the Law of Cycles. Or Kriemhild Gretchen.

The girl who jumps from the tower is a contractee being asked to take a leap of faith. She does so, and Homura rewards her with magic.

[thatdisasterauthor]

Hey! I've been curious about is how air support/planes are coordinated for fighting wildland fires. It seems like most of them are contracted from... Someone...? But generally the sources I've been able to find have been pretty unclear on how it's organized/how the system works. I was wondering if you had any insight/good places to start reading?

If there's ever anything you want to know about Wildland Firefighting, the Red Book is where you want to go! Here's the 2024 version, and you can always find it by googling "Wildland Firefighting Red Book." It might not have ALL the answers, but it's a chonky document and will have a lot.

Now, as to your specific question, yes, a lot of wildland planes are contracted from private companies. There are some federally owned planes, though, and some various state owned ones.

All wildland resources, planes and otherwise, are organized through a system called "Interagency Resource Ordering Capability," or IROC. And I do mean all resources. Every wildland firefighter in the country is listed in this database, every engine, every plane, every portapotty contractor we have deals with. IROC is used to track what everyone is doing, where everyone is going, and what is needed where.

Last summer on my district we had two SEATs, an Air Attack, and a LAT on contract with us, and a Type 3 helicopter. That meant those resources were on our district ALL THE TIME. They were ours and we got first dibs on using them. But sometimes we'd have other planes that were stationed with us but weren't ours. Maybe an extra SEAT, or another LAT, and we had some Smokejumpers with us too so their plane was always around. Those resources that weren't assigned to us were usable by us, but they could (and did) easily get pulled elsewhere depending on need. We could also pull things from other districts if WE needed it.

So let's say a big fire kicks off, and we send out all OUR planes. But maybe it's not enough, maybe we need more. So I'd mosey on into IROC and create a request for what we need, then that would get passed up the chain to land on the IROC portal of whoever might have said resource available. If it is indeed available, wherever it is available from will send it out. If it isn't, they'll say sorry and send it back.

The exact rules for how resources can be moved around and pulled from one incident to another depends on if they're a local, state, or federal resource. But there's other considerations as well such as protecting life vs. protecting just property vs. protecting just land. Really depends, and sometimes it's just a judgement call. Usually it will be the incident commander who makes the initial request, since they're the ones on the ground and familiar with conditions. They'll then pass it to dispatch and dispatch will handle it from there, escalating to higher ups if needed for tricky judgement calls. (Other times we'll make the call ourselves because sir, you do not need three VLATS for a two acre fire that's just creeping...)

When it comes to if you'll actually GET the plane or other resource you ask for, a big part of that is the preparedness level. The levels are 1-5 with one being "we have tons of resources to share so you'll probably get whatever you want" to five being "everybody's busy so you're probably not going to get anything you ask for, good luck."

Aaaand. Yeah. Basically the answer is "intricate computer system that coordinates everything in the entire country and thus takes fucking forever to load anything."

[stellanix]

something i saw once that has stuck with me ever since was a comment on a post about some scientific discovery made by the mars rover perseverance that said "why are we wasting time looking at rocks when we should be preparing for colonization?

another comment was on a post about the environmental issues surrounding the spacex launch site in southern texas, which said "human expansion to mars delayed to protect some turtles"

and comments like these perplexed me. space is a subject of science, and people interested in space are always talking about the wonders of the unknown, and how many fascinating and beautiful things are out there. so how could people interested in space be so fundamentally uncaring and incurious not only about the places they're supposedly interested in, but about nature in general?

it's not just random people in twitter replies who are like this. elon musk once posted this picture:

thing is, that's not mars, that's the moon during a lunar eclipse (when sunlight tinted red after passing through earth's atmosphere lights up the moon in earth's shadow). you'd think that someone known for wanting to bring people, himself included, to mars would care enough about mars to at least know what it looks like, but apparently not

he also rather infamously says he wants to nuke the ice caps of mars to warm the planet up. the ice caps of mars look like this, by the way (image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin/Aster Cowart):

they are beautiful places, that hold an irreplaceable scientific record of the geologically recent martian climate, and are shaped by unique processes. there's no other place quite like them in our solar system. but elon musk thinks we should nuke them. again, no care, no curiosity

nothing has made me feel jaded and cynical about the entire enterprise of spaceflight quite like learning that the people ultimately in charge of it and funding it don't give a shit about space. it's not just elon musk. space nerds love quoting kennedy's "we choose to go the moon" speech as inspiration, but kennedy is also on record saying "I'm not that interested in space" in a conversation where he was arguing to the nasa administrator that they should prioritize beating the soviets to the moon over space science. no curiosity, only a desire for geopolitical showmanship and maintaining hegemony. it's the same thing when many modern politicians only seem to care about space exploration as a way of keeping a technological lead over china

this leaves the people who do genuinely love and care about space in an awkward position. they basically have two choices: A) become jaded and give up on space exploration, or at least parts of it (abandoning human spaceflight but maintaining interest in robotic science missions, for example) or B) give in. work with military contractors. spout the jingoistic rhetoric that the politicians writing the checks want to hear, even if you don't believe it. go along with the colonialist ideology, the hypercapitalism, and the extractivism. sell your soul for pictures of mars and let your passions be exploited for the ends of powerful people who don't care

the sad reality is that our society only values those things deemed useful or profitable. we hear it all the time. the idea that schools should only teach things useful for jobs, that people who try to make a living in fields like art, the humanities, or philosophy are all getting useless degrees and will inevitably end up stuck working retail, and of course, the idea that space exploration is a waste of time and money

space nerds are often deeply insecure about their greatest passion, because it's true, space exploration offers no immediate practical benefit. but they still love space and want to explore it

so they believe the lies. they repeat the colonialist ideology. they say there's money in mining asteroids, that we can terraform planets and let number go up forever. they let themselves be exploited by companies and governments that see everything in the universe and all the people in it as things to be used, and that will ultimately chew them up and spit them out if it's expedient to do so. and those who reject the ideology and keep their love for the cosmos pure often find themselves with no place in the project of space exploration

i don't know how to fix this, but i do hope that i will live to see the day when our curiosity and interest and love for the wider universe is valued for its own sake, and no longer shackled by colonialism, capitalism, and political ambitions

[mariacallous]

At the 2023 Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas, prominent AI tech companies partnered with algorithmic integrity and transparency groups to sic thousands of attendees on generative AI platforms and find weaknesses in these critical systems. This “red-teaming” exercise, which also had support from the US government, took a step in opening these increasingly influential yet opaque systems to scrutiny. Now, the ethical AI and algorithmic assessment nonprofit Humane Intelligence is taking this model one step further. On Wednesday, the group announced a call for participation with the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, inviting any US resident to participate in the qualifying round of a nationwide red-teaming effort to evaluate AI office productivity software.

The qualifier will take place online and is open to both developers and anyone in the general public as part of NIST's AI challenges, known as Assessing Risks and Impacts of AI, or ARIA. Participants who pass through the qualifying round will take part in an in-person red-teaming event at the end of October at the Conference on Applied Machine Learning in Information Security (CAMLIS) in Virginia. The goal is to expand capabilities for conducting rigorous testing of the security, resilience, and ethics of generative AI technologies.

“The average person utilizing one of these models doesn’t really have the ability to determine whether or not the model is fit for purpose,” says Theo Skeadas, chief of staff at Humane Intelligence. “So we want to democratize the ability to conduct evaluations and make sure everyone using these models can assess for themselves whether or not the model is meeting their needs.”

The final event at CAMLIS will split the participants into a red team trying to attack the AI systems and a blue team working on defense. Participants will use the AI 600-1 profile, part of NIST's AI risk management framework, as a rubric for measuring whether the red team is able to produce outcomes that violate the systems' expected behavior.

“NIST's ARIA is drawing on structured user feedback to understand real-world applications of AI models,” says Humane Intelligence founder Rumman Chowdhury, who is also a contractor in NIST's Office of Emerging Technologies and a member of the US Department of Homeland Security AI safety and security board. “The ARIA team is mostly experts on sociotechnical test and evaluation, and [is] using that background as a way of evolving the field toward rigorous scientific evaluation of generative AI.”

Chowdhury and Skeadas say the NIST partnership is just one of a series of AI red team collaborations that Humane Intelligence will announce in the coming weeks with US government agencies, international governments, and NGOs. The effort aims to make it much more common for the companies and organizations that develop what are now black-box algorithms to offer transparency and accountability through mechanisms like “bias bounty challenges,” where individuals can be rewarded for finding problems and inequities in AI models.

“The community should be broader than programmers,” Skeadas says. “Policymakers, journalists, civil society, and nontechnical people should all be involved in the process of testing and evaluating of these systems. And we need to make sure that less represented groups like individuals who speak minority languages or are from nonmajority cultures and perspectives are able to participate in this process.”

[bluejaysandblackbats]

Keepsafes

Fandom: Batman, DC Comics

Summary: AU where Martha and Thomas survive, and they adopt the batkids.

Chapters: 35/?

Characters: Bruce Wayne, Thomas Wayne, Martha Wayne, Alfred Pennyworth, Harvey Dent, Dick Grayson, Cassandra Cain, David Cain, Talia al Ghul, Damian Wayne, Jason Todd, Tim Drake

Relationships: Thomas Wayne/Martha Wayne/Alfred Pennyworth, BruHarvey, BruTalia

Additional Tags: Canon Divergent AU, Hurt/Comfort, Bruce Wayne is Not Batman, Angst, Alfred Pennyworth Knows All, Bruce Wayne Only Has One Child, Bruce Wayne is Not An Only Child, Bi Bruce Wayne

Chapter Thirty-Five: Fake Gazebo

As the months passed, Bruce returned to school, Martha enrolled Dick at the Academy, and Thomas’ contractor put the finishing touches on Dick’s surprise in the yard. Thomas brought Bruce, Martha, and Alfred to the backyard before sunrise to show them what he’d prepared. “Honey, the sun isn’t even out… Can’t we wait until the sun is out to see the gazebo?” Martha complained as Thomas led them out back. Bruce, Martha, and Alfred had blindfolds on. 

“Okay, so I might’ve lied about something. We’re not getting a gazebo,” Thomas replied. “Um… Maybe it’s best if you all take off your masks now.” 

Martha and Alfred let go of his hands, Alfred let go of Bruce’s hand, and they all looked ahead at the aerial rigging system along with the net. “It’s been secured by a professional, and I feel like it’s a lot safer than Dick jumping off the banister and swinging from the chandelier… Which I’ve seen Dick do when he thinks no one is watching. I know he’s homesick and restless and—. Why is no one talking? Do you all hate it? You hate it. Do you think he’s going to hate it?” Thomas asked. 

Bruce took a deep breath. “This is the sickest gift you’ve ever given anyone, Dad,” Bruce replied.

“It’s insensitive?” Thomas asked.

“No, Thomas, sick is good, darling,” Alfred answered. Bruce nodded in agreement. 

Thomas beamed. “Martha?” Thomas asked. 

Martha hugged Thomas, and she whispered, “And here I thought you didn’t want him here.” 

“Well, we’re coming up on the six-month mark, so I wanted to convince him to stay on with this… I can’t really put into words how much it means to have him around, but I’ve grown to love him as a son. I couldn’t imagine the manor without him,” Thomas explained as Martha stared over his shoulder. 

“Honey, you should turn around,” Martha whispered. Thomas let go and turned around to see Dick standing with his fists balled up. Tears streamed down his cheeks as his chest heaved up and down. 

Thomas opened his mouth to say something, but Dick advanced forward and pushed his face into Thomas’ stomach. He held his hands in tight fists at his side as a few muffled sobs escaped clenched teeth and fabric. Thomas blinked away tears with a tight jaw as he embraced Dick for the first time. He trembled as Thomas held him, and he fought hard to stop crying to speak. “Ultimately, it is your decision, but I want you to know we’d love it if you stayed with us from here on out. We don’t have to talk about it now, but I’m throwing my hat in there. I want us to be a family,” Thomas whispered. 

**

Bruce picked Kate, Beth, Bette, and Dick up from school in the Land Rover after he got out of class. “Who’s going to the gym with me?” Bruce asked. 

“I’m going with Uncle Dylan and Bette to Build-A-Bear ,” Beth answered. 

“ Et tu, Bette? ” Bruce pouted. 

“I don’t know what that means, but are you going to be home to watch the Scooby-Doo movie with me?” Bette asked. 

Bruce grinned. “I would love nothing more, Bette… We’re watching it at seven, right?” Bruce asked in reply. Everybody in the car answered with a loud, ‘yes’. “Okay. Okay. I didn’t know everyone in the car was so serious about Scooby. Do you guys mind if Harvey and Gilda drop by to watch with us?” 

“That’s eleven people,” Dick stated. 

“ Whoopie, give him the Abel Prize, ” Beth answered sarcastically.

“It’s the Nobel Prize, you moron,” Dick snapped back. 

Kate turned toward the window and covered her ears, but Bruce nudged her with a single knuckle. “How’s it goin’, champ?” Bruce whispered. 

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Kate muttered. 

Bruce nodded. “Dinah’s probably gonna be at the gym… It’s Friday,” Bruce reminded her. Kate shrugged. “Tomorrow… You and me. Philadelphia. A couple of cheesesteaks and the aqua—. Cut it out, you two! Good grief!” 

Dick and Beth laughed at him, and Kate snickered without meaning to. “Sorry, Bruce,” Kate apologized through her laughter. “And I’d love to go tomorrow.”

“Good. We’ll leave at oh-seven-hundred, Binks,” Bruce replied as he pinched Kate’s cheek. “And Dick, the Abel Prize is for math.” 

**

Martha spent the afternoon in her gallery, painting a frog she saw in the garden. Dick rested his chin on her shoulder as he watched her work. “Are you gonna do an art gallery?” Dick asked. 

“Wha—? No. No, I couldn’t do that. That’s for real artists. This is just a hobby for me,” Martha replied. 

Dick sat beside her and tilted his head. “I don’t know. I think you’d have to be a real artist to paint something like that. Besides, you can do an art gallery thingie in the ballroom and donate the money to charity,” Dick suggested. Martha looked at Dick and squeezed his face in her hand. 

“Has anyone ever told you how charming you are?” Martha asked. “Do you want a cookie?” 

“Yeah,” Dick smiled. 

“You can get a cookie, sweetie pie,” Martha smiled. Dick leaped out of his seat and paused before turning to Martha. 

“Um… Do you want a cookie, too?” Dick questioned. Martha nodded even though she wasn’t hungry. 

“I love you, sweetie,” Martha said without thinking, and Dick froze. “I—.”

“I love you more,” Dick replied before kissing her cheek and running off. Martha held her hand to her heart while Alfred entered the room. 

“What did you say to Dick? He practically launched himself down the hall using the power of sheer joy and upper body strength,” Thomas laughed. 

“I told him I loved him,” Martha replied, “And you know what, I definitely meant it… I’ve been trying so hard to just let him say it first, but it slipped out. And he—. He kissed my cheek.” 

“That’s the cutest thing I’ve heard since Bruce’s little song about hot juice when he was six,” Thomas laughed. Martha chewed her lip to keep from laughing. 

**

Bruce picked Dick up early from school and talked to the person at the front desk. “Hello, Bruce,” the desk attendant smiled. 

“Hi, Mrs. Appleton… Um, do you know what the problem is? They didn’t really explain on the phone,” Bruce whispered in the softest tone of voice he had. 

“Dick’s not in trouble… They’re trying to get him to tell who—. Well, maybe it’s best if you speak to him to get to the bottom of this,” Mrs. Appleton whispered. 

Bruce nodded as she led him to one of the administration rooms, where Dick sat with a busted nose and two black eyes. “Can I talk to him alone for a few minutes?” Bruce asked. She nodded and closed the door. 

“I got hit in the face with a ball during P.E.,” Dick lied. 

Bruce leaned forward. “No one has to know. Give me their names. It’s three of them, right?” Bruce asked. 

“Why do you say that?” Dick replied. 

Bruce lifted Dick’s hand, dropping it for dramatic effect. “Bruises on your wrists are different sizes, and I know they’d never land a hit on you fighting fair,” Bruce whispered, “Give me names and tell me why they did it. I’ll give an Oscar-winning performance out there if you tell me exactly what I wanna know.” 

Dick sighed, listed off names, and explained everything leading up to it while Bruce took mental notes. “Can you cry on command?” Bruce asked.

“I could throw up if you asked me to,” Dick replied. Bruce exhaled through his nose as he smiled. 

“I don’t think we’ll need that. I’ll deal with it. I promise, but I need you to cry, and I’ll say you’re too shaken up to talk about it,” Bruce reassured him. 

“What are you gonna do?” Dick asked. 

“Don’t worry about it. Now, start crying, so I can take you to the clinic and see if Dad’ll reset your nose,” Bruce sighed.

**

Harvey soaked in the tub while Bruce shaved in the mirror. Gilda went out with her friends but told Harvey she’d be home early. “I wanted to give Gilda something. Do you think she’ll be home before we go to sleep?” Bruce asked. 

“You got Gilda a gift?” Harvey asked in reply.

“Uh-huh. I had a study group the other day, and she picked the kids up for me,” Bruce replied, “I wanted to let her know I appreciated her for helping me out.” 

“That’s sweet of you. I think she’ll love whatever it is,” Harvey replied, “I had a conversation with Dick like you asked me to. He didn’t tell me anything. He asked a lot of questions—.”

“Like what?” Bruce interrupted. 

“Who did I trust in the D.A.’s office? How long would it take before I became a D.A.? Stuff like that,” Harvey answered. 

“What did he seem like?” Bruce questioned.

Harvey shrugged. “A little uncomfortable… Nervous… He knows something, but I’m not gonna get anything from pushing him,” Harvey replied. 

“And work? How is it?” Bruce questioned. Harvey looked at him and softened. 

“I’m alright if that’s what you’re asking. I know I’ve been edgy lately, but I’m okay. Different medication, fewer side effects, and I’m back on my A-game,” Harvey answered, “I’m ready to get back to normal.”

Bruce reached into the tub, and Harvey’s eyes widened. “Normal?” Bruce asked. Harvey grabbed his hand and pulled it closer. 

“Normal,” Harvey answered.

[quaranmine]

ugh. Trump + Musk administration is mass firing probationary federal employees, starting from yesterday. That's employees with less than 1-2 years of working in their position--even experienced people, not just new people, because the probationary period can sometimes reset even if you get promoted into a new job within the same agency. So far it honestly looks like a blanket firing of all of them for some agencies. Which is illegal, by the way. You're only allowed to fire them for performance reasons and it's impossible to claim that every one of these people was a bad performer, especially when they have personnel documents indicating otherwise. There will be lawsuits over much of this.

Of course, they know this--maybe that's why they removed the Democratic members of the Merit Systems Protection Board, who weigh in on complaints of improper firing of federal employees. Without members of both parties present, the board lacks quorum and can't decide on cases.

If it is all probationary employees in the government, that could be up to 200,000 people nationwide. The largest layoff in American history used to be IBM firing 60,000 people in 1993, by the way. This isn't even touching the less obvious effects of government layoffs either, such as private sector contractors losing jobs or state + local govt employees losing jobs when grant money is pulled.

The firings include people at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. This includes 3,400 members of the Forest Service, 10% of the agency. Full-time firefighters were exempted, but fire support, fire mitigation, and backup/collateral firefighters included. This includes people who oversee nuclear weapons, people working in housing, 10% of people working for the CDC, Veterans Affairs researchers, and USDA staff. More are expected by the end of today, and next Tuesday.

This is really just step one in reducing the federal workforce--Trump also passed an Executive Order on Tuesday demanding agencies to conduct large-scale Reductions in Force (RIFs.)

[from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras]

Small personal vent…feel free to pass this by!

You know what’s especially depressing about incidents where something bad has happened and now there’s a lot of money (among other things) at stake?* People come out of the woodwork to tell you how you can’t trust anyone else. Somehow, these random strangers find out about your situation and they start cold calling you *by the dozens* to make sure that you know that everyone else is lying to you or looking to screw you over. Your insurance company? Your contractor? Your neighbors? The county inspectors? All actively working against your interests, they say! And maybe there are elements of truth in all that — I’m not so naive as to think my insurance company is especially invested in my well being — but that’s not why these people are telling you this. They don’t want to actually help. They just want you to trust only *them* instead, which of course actually translates to “they want you to PAY them” instead.

It’s really pernicious. It’s hard enough to deal with these incidents without so many people also working so hard to make you feel like you’re all alone. They call everyone else a scammer so that they can undermine your confidence in the support system that is supposed to be helping you, and all so that they can get in on the scam themselves. I can’t deal with all of this entirely by myself; I have to put my trust in *someone*. But I’m not going to start with the person who is actively trying to scare and isolate me. So frustrating.

*I am talking, in this instance, about a fire. No one was injured, no one is now homeless, we’re all insured. It could be much worse. But it’s not great.

[lightsaber-dorphin]

Jedi Order Bureaucratic Structure

I’ve been working for a while on worldbuilding the inner workings of the Jedi Order. Below is a flowchart of the administrative bodies, their duties, and any other admin bodies they oversee. More details on each below the cut.

These are different groups involved in running the Jedi Order. For different roles within the Jedi, see my Jedi Order Corps and Subdivisions.

High Council: (Finance, bylaws, PR, major trials)

Determines the budget(s)

Relations with the Senate

Only body that can expel members

Librarian's Assembly: (Ensures knowledge is available to Jedi)

Fund academic researchers (many Jedi researchers work directly for the assembly)

Archives: (Run the Archives & research)

Host academic conferences

Protect important artifacts

Run basically directly by the Librarian's Assembly

Department of Classes: (Adult education)

Organize all classes that aren't geneds

Set criteria for certifications/ degrees

Help members get degrees from external organizations

Council of Reassignment: (Oversees transfers & is Jedi CPS)

New Initiate paperwork

Transfers between corps and/or branches

Helps members leave the Order

Checks the CoFK when necessary

Padawanship paperwork filed here (crèchemasters sign off, padawan signs off, check master for red flags/ not allowed to take apprentice, sometimes mind healer signs off)

Council of Justice: (Attourneys & internal justice system)

Try & punish cases committed by Jedi & internal to the Jedi Order

Mediate interpersonal disputes

Lawyers for the Order

Cannot expel members

Council of Outreach: (Manages outposts & patrols)

Assigns Jedi to satellite locations or watchfolk posts

Hires other outpost staff

Ships supplies to & from outposts

Tracks the locations of missions & sends Vanguards to areas that haven't been visited recently

Council of Temple Maintenance: (Oversees internal services and temple upkeep)

In charge of the cleaning droids

Coordinates trash & recycling with Coruscant government

Has the occasional member who can do specialized maintenance (ex. plumber, electrician)

Volunteers sign up to fix things

Hires outside contractors when there isn't a Jedi with the necessary skills

Assigns Jedi to living quarters

Interior decor

Delegates chores such as taking out the trash, mopping, dusting, etc.

Padawans and initiates are often assigned these chores as punishments

Kitchenmasters: (Mess halls)

Make & serve food in the mess halls

Label the food with which species can eat it

Order food supplies

Supervise initiate clans helping in the kitchens

Quartermasters: (Distribute supplies & manage finances)

Bulk-order supplies for the Order

Provide mission allotments

Desk operators help members pick up supplies

Accounting

Transport Office: (Run the hangar bay & speeder pool)

Responsible for the Order's vehicles

Mechanics

Vehicles are checked in & out like a library for cars & ships

Hire external staff when there aren't enough Jedi

Temple Guard: (Security & emergency response)

Guard against exterior threats to the temple

Security during criminal situations

Really good at sensing danger to temple inhabitants

First responders (fire & police-- MedCorp handles EMS)

Change lightbulbs and smoke detector batteries

Odd jobs on behalf of the CoTM

Uses the lore by Adsecula in "Nameless"

Council of Reconciliation: (Central hub of Jedi outreach & diplomacy)

All aid requests go through them

Sets mission objectives

Approve or deny aid/ mission requests

Reviews behavior of Jedi on missions when there are issues

Mission Consignment: (Assign Jedi to approved missions)

Desk jockeys

Not officially divided by type of mission/ Jedi role needed, but missions will be passed to people who are more familiar with the experts required

Organizes specifics for missions such as transportation and housing

Council of First Knowledge: (Runs Initiate & Padawan dorms, clans, & childhood education)

Initiate clans members live together with their crèchemasters rotating out night shifts

Padawans & Senior Initiates live in individual rooms in designated halls with some crèchemasters living in each hall

Department of Seekers: (Regulates conduct of Seekers)

Create regulates for what Seekers can & cannot do & how they should act

Investigate reported misconduct by Seekers

Crèche: (Organizes care for Initiates)

Sort Initiates into clans

Run events/ field trips/ etc.

Set educational standards

see my post about Living Quarters in the Jedi Temple

Department of Primary Classes: (Classroom education for younglings)

Standard elementary school operation stuff

Provides the general education classes all Jedi take as younglings

Circle of Healers: (Sets certification requirements)

Certified to train medical professionals for a variety of degrees

Determines when Jedi have fulfilled requirements for medical certifications

Sets the qualifications for Force-specific medical degrees

Halls of Healing: (Healthcare within the Order & internal outreach)

Like a local hospital but also has general practitioners

IRB: (Reviews research for ethical concerns)

Institutional Review Board

"Under FDA regulations, an Institutional Review Board is group that has been formally designated to review and monitor biomedical research involving human subjects. In accordance with FDA regulations, an IRB has the authority to approve, require modifications in (to secure approval), or disapprove research. This group review serves an important role in the protection of the rights and welfare of human research subjects."

IRB for the entire Order, not just the MedCorps

[naxalbari1967]

There is no differnce between US and Israel

The thing about Israel it’s not just the bombs and bullets. It’s the reach. It’s the grip. You’re looking at a state that’s managed to thread itself into every inch of US power. Congress? Bought. Presidents? On a leash. You think your tax dollars go to roads or schools? Nah. They go to sending weapons to one of the most militarized regimes on Earth so they can bulldoze homes, shoot journalists, and starve Gaza. Billions. Every single year. No audit. No question.

Meanwhile Americans can’t pay rent. Can’t afford health care. Got student debt dragging them into the ground. Whole cities falling apart. But sure let’s wire billions overseas so Israel can keep its apartheid machine running smooth. So it can flatten refugee camps with US-made jets. So it can drop white phosphorus on neighborhoods and call it defense.

And the media? Don’t even start. Every outlet runs the same script. Every anchor cries on cue. But nobody shows you the kids under the rubble. Nobody airs the names of the families wiped off the map in one night. They’ll give airtime to think tanks that take money from defense contractors. They’ll push the talking points from the embassy like they’re facts. Every time Palestinians fight back even with rocks or fire balloons it’s “terrorism.” Every time Israel shells a hospital it’s “a response.” It’s not journalism it’s PR for apartheid.

They’ve normalized collective punishment. Turned open air prisons into “security zones.” Blamed the occupied for being occupied. And every time the world pushes back the whole machine screams antisemitism like a smoke bomb to cover up war crimes. That word gets weaponized to shut down criticism while actual Jewish voices calling out genocide get smeared or silenced. It's not about protecting Jews. It’s about protecting the power of a settler regime backed by the empire.

And let’s talk about the wars they push us into. Iran. Syria. Lebanon. Every few years there’s a new crisis manufactured out of thin air. A new enemy Israel wants America to fight. And like clockwork the lobby goes to work. Politicians line up to swear loyalty. Media beats the drums. Troops get sent. Trillions get burned. Blood spills and the arms dealers pop champagne.

This is empire work. It’s not about defense. It’s about domination. It’s about using the US like a blunt weapon to enforce a world order where some people get to live free and others get buried. Israel is not unique in this. It’s part of the same pattern. Colonize displace kill repeat. Whether it’s Iraq Vietnam Chile Congo Palestine — the blueprint is always the same. Propaganda first. Sanctions second. Bombs last.

And regular people? We get screwed both ways. We pay for the weapons and we pay for the silence. We get fed lies while kids get buried in mass graves. And when we speak out we get smeared as extremists. While the real extremists sit in government offices signing weapons deals and smiling for cameras.

This is not just about one country. This is about the system. The pipeline that connects Wall Street to war zones. That turns grief into contracts. That launders state terror through think tanks and lobby groups and news desks. That keeps the machine running while pretending it’s a beacon of morality.

You are not crazy for being angry. You are not wrong for seeing through the noise. And you don’t need permission to call it what it is. It’s mass murder with paperwork. It’s occupation with a press pass. And it won’t stop until more people get loud enough to drown out the lies.

[on-a-lucky-tide]

Lambert returns to the bar and tries again. Another part of Architect!Bert and Barman!skel. Part 1.

CW: mutism, Lam-butt is cringe.

Lambert had a late conference call with a contractor in Japan the following evening and grabbed a pot of noodles from the takeaway on his way home. He told himself it was easier than going out of his way for his usual dinner at this time of night, and the bar would be crowded by drunks anyway, and his reluctance to go was absolutely nothing to do with making a tit out of himself in front of the new barman. The noodles ended up cold and in the bin, and his mind wandered away from the schematics on his desk to the mental schematics of a broad shouldered, scarred hunk of hotness.

Fixations weren't anything new. Lambert was used to them. From the six months in secondary school when he had become obsessed with jazz music to the point Vesemir caught him planning to shoplift a saxophone, to the year he raided religiously on World of Warcraft every night to the detriment of his social life. His brain craved dopamine and latched onto anything that could provide it. Eskel was a big, handsome shot of it; novel, interesting. Like a fucking laser pen to a tomcat. It would pass.

Lambert’s next two trips to the bar went much the same as the first, but without the foot-in-mouth moment of being an absolute prick to someone who definitely didn’t deserve it. Lambert watched Eskel work, desperate to talk, but too worried about being a dick again to open his stupid mouth. Aiden ribbed him for it out of Eskel’s earshot, muttering something about steak and thirst, or—an attempt at wit and humour that left Lambert scowling, his skin prickling with a deep awareness of being in Eskel’s presence. He couldn’t explain it. It was more than the pleasant hum caused by a good saxophone solo.

There was an irritating air of mystery around Eskel. That was it. Lambert could see the intelligence and character lurking behind his eyes, like a lion napping in the sun, fierce and sharp but happy to bask lazily as the antelope gallivanted around it. The sun. Yeah, those eyes, not quite the piercing white yellow of the sun, more a deep, honey-gold that reminded Lambert of the foil packets that came with expensive coffee; the kind that made you feel warm and comfortable on your cushioned window seat while it poured with rain outside. And Lambert would have sworn blind he could hear Eskel humming sometimes; a low, soft rumble carrying a familiar tune, but barely audible beneath the bass of the bar’s music system.

Even while he was at work, Lambert’s mind kept drifting to Eskel. During one particularly laborious meeting, he ended up sketching a quick outline of Eskel’s face at the corner of his designs before he even realised what was happening. He scrunched it up, threw it in the bin, only to extract it for his portfolio before he left for the bar that night. It was a good likeness and—just shut the fuck up and stop judging him, alright?

Eskel was working that night, of course, and greeted Lambert with a wave of the hand. Lambert’s whiskey was on the bar before his arse found the stool, and he cleared his throat. “Hey, Eskel, I… uh. I think we started off on the wrong foot. I’m… what I said, that wasn’t… that wasn’t… cricket.”

There were those glittering eyes again. Glittering. Yeah, that was amusement. Lambert hid his scowl with a swig of whiskey and prodded the beer mat in front of him. His mac and cheese arrived within fifteen minutes, the bacon still sizzling on the surface, and he tried again. “This is weird for me, alright? Sal and I, we used to chat shit all night. He was a blockhead, but he was good company. He knew stuff, you know? Kind of stuff you only learn—” Lambert waved his hand vaguely at the door, “—out there.”

Eskel’s gaze dropped briefly, and Lambert was worried he’d managed to upset him, for real this time. When Eskel looked up, he tilted his head in apology. Lambert chewed on the inside of his cheek, which seemed to prompt a flash of inspiration. He leaned down from the stool, arse cheek balancing precariously on the edge, and yanked his notebook free. “How about writing? You can write, ye—? You know, forget I just asked that.” Lambert felt his ears warm, but Eskel didn’t seem to be offended. The same soft shine, the head tilt. He reached for the pencil that Lambert had placed beside the pad, and wrote two words, ‘Sounds good.’

Lambert grinned. “I’m… uh, Lambert. I shoulda introduced myself earlier, but… you already knew my dinner order, most interesting thing about me, really—the dinner part.”

Eskel looked thoughtful before he plucked up the pencil again and scratched a question. ‘What’re the drawings for?’

“Boring shit,” Lambert murmured, nudging the tightly bound scrolls with his toe. “I’m an architect. Residential. You know, houses, flats.” Of course, he fucking knew what residential meant. Lambert felt the heat under his collar again and took another fortifying sip of whiskey.

‘Can I see?’

“You want to see a bunch of angles and pencil scratches?”

‘Yes. Don’t have to if you’re shy.’

“I’m not fucking—all right, move the bowl—”

Lambert stooped down to snatch up the first scroll he came to and then hesitated… his passion project was a mere inch to the left. And that was the most impressive, wasn’t it? Eskel didn’t need to know that no business in their right mind would fund something so extravagant for the poorest in society. It was an easy flex. Lambert tugged the scroll free and unfurled it on the bar. He weighted the edges down with his bowl and half-drunk tumbler of whiskey and glanced up at Eskel for his reaction.

Usually, people puffed their cheeks out in confusion at the architectural scribbles and mumbled some vague comment of appreciation. But Eskel examined it for a long moment, head tilting to and fro. When he picked up the pencil, Lambert held his breath as if awaiting the verdict of a shareholder, and—

‘Reminds me of the KAEC.’

Lambert’s jaw metaphorically hit the bar. “You know about the KAEC?”

‘I’ve been there.’

The KAEC—or King Abdullah Economic City—was an architect’s paradise. A complete flop, of course. With a target population of two million by 2035, it was currently a ghost town of just seven thousand. But it was meant to be one of five sustainable mega cities built in Saudi Arabia, aimed at placing the country in the top ten investment destinations. It was the kind of sprawling vision that could manifest when money was no issue, with some of the most cutting-edge structural designs and engineering in the business. It had been Lambert’s dream to go and visit, but the company kept him busy, and he used his holiday to go look after the old man, you know. He’d get there, eventually… “Really?” Lambert croaked.

‘Yeah. About 10 years ago.’

“Why—? How—? What did it look like?”

‘Big.’

Eskel didn’t smile with his mouth, but the way his eyes shone like that, Lambert knew he was being grinned at. Lambert huffed and folded his arms across his chest, his own eyes narrowed.

Eskel wrote again, ‘Sorry. It was quite something—‘ he tore the page off to start another, ‘—I’ll bring some photos next shift’.

Lambert’s lips quirked in one corner. The first glimmer of a smile. “Sounds good. You know, I think I’ll treat myself to a dessert. One of those tall, chocolate-y fuckers that’ll give me early onset diabetes.”

‘One tall chocolate fucker coming up.’

Turned out that Eskel couldn’t only make a good mac and cheese, pour a good Godfather, but he could also make an absolutely cracking sundae

[katjohnadams]

H'okay. So. I would like to tell you about my mother, but the problem with being related to awesome people Of Note™ is that you have to be carefully vague so you don't fuckin doxx yourself. So forgive me if some of the following is imprecise.

I adore my mother. She is absolutely a legend and a role model for me. When her school was desegregated (yes, I'm a bit old but also that wasn't very long ago), she made it her mission that day to make friends with the only black girl who came to her school and sit with her at lunch. When the school called my grams to "warn" her, grams threatened them over the phone and told them they had best not bother her daughter or her friends ever again, so help her God.

My mother went into the Air Force when women were still expected to stick to clerical duties and keep their heads down. She did not fucking do that. She earned her rank through hard work, brilliance, and being too damn stubborn and too damn good for them to ignore her.

She has a master's in mathematics and is an expert in radar. I have watched this woman do literal orbital trajectory calculations in her head, like it was nothing. At 70-ish, she still leg presses 200lbs. For fun.

She had a very high level of security clearance. She was a vital part of America's Missile Defense Program. She is possibly the smartest person I know and was a national strategic asset both as an airwoman and as a private contractor. I'm pretty sure our landline was bugged several times when I was a child.

She overcame sexism, fought racism, and did what she believed served her country and her fellow human beings best. While we disagree on a lot of politics, I have never questioned the absolute truth of her soul or the power of her mind.

I tell you all this so you will understand how much I love her when I say: my mom may be one of the dumbest people I know at times. Mostly about Basic Common Sense.

Like, you know those Christmas sugar cookies with the little Christmas tree in them? The Alice and bake ones? She got those for us one year and baked them. They smelled great, so I came to the kitchen to see if I could steal one while they were still fresh.

Instead, I found my mom puzzling over the tray.

"Hey, what's up?"

"The tree didn't come out. That's so strange!"

I looked at the tray, and sure enough, instead of trees, there were just green swirls.

"Did... Did you knead the dough?"

My mother nodded, still confused. "Of course I did!" she replied, as if she would ever forget such a vital step in baking!

"... Mom."

And she did love to bake, and she was good at it! More or less. But at one point she was on a cheesecake kick. She started experimenting with flavored cream cheeses like strawberry and the like. Then Kraft released cheesecake flavored cream cheese. Naturally, she had to make that into a cheesecake! Of course!

And so I wandered into the kitchen to see my mom staring in dismay at the freshly baked cheesecake, toothpick in hand (which she had just used to poke the cheesecake for doneness and then taste).

"Is something wrong?"

"It's just the cheesecake..."

"What about it?"

"... It just tastes like cheesecake!"

"... Mom, what- what were you expecting?"

Several seconds pass as I watch this, I reiterate, genius woman consider the past few hours of her life. "Y'know, I guess it makes sense..."

In two decades, she still can't work the universal remote but she's been working with computers and programming since punch cards. She sent her first text message ever in 2021. She has likely forgotten more things about missile and radar systems than I will know about everything in my whole life, and yet coined the quote, "It's too dirty to throw in the garbage!"

I love her. She's so cool. But I really question how she spent her XP sometimes 🤣

[agentconniereid]

The F.B.I's Café

Chapter 1: Meet Cute

Pairing: Spencer x oc (Sasha Petrov)

Warnings: None! At least that I can think of...

She was a baker, he was an F.B.I agent. Can I make it anymore obvious?

Considering nearly every prediction of how that day could've gone, I truly should've been more excited. However, the only thing I felt as I woke up that morning, was dread. It was the day of the grand opening of my café, the one I'd been working towards my entire life. Well, maybe not my entire life. My first choice was to become a spy, but that's not quite realistic, is it? Damn you James Bond.

Despite the monumental gravity the day was supposed to hold, the dread I felt was supported by the equally monumental amount of work that needed to be completed. While opening a café theoretically seems like a tranquil practice, my life in recent years has been nothing of the sort. Lease agreements, contractors, licences, insurance, what am I going to do if the place burns down, my landlord's a dick. There were a million things going through my mind as I navigated the dingy metro system.

When I finally arrived at my café and started the gruelling process of getting the place ready to open, I couldn't help but notice something. Lia wasn't there.

Lia, my sweet, sweet, foolish assistant. She said she'd be there by 7.00 A.M, but as I looked down at my watch on the hand that wasn't putting cookies in the oven, I read 7.30 A.M. That girl is dead.

I baked what I had left in the refrigerator the night before. Cookies, pies, brownies, pastries. I then unloaded the sourdough bread and freshly baked desserts into the display case and shelves strewn across my bakery. All. On. My. Own. Once all the machinery and lights were on, the desserts and my precious bread delicately placed in their designated spots, I finally flipped the sign hung on the front door from closed, to open.

5 minutes passed, then 10, then 15. No Lia, no customers. I sighed, disappointed that Lia still wasn't there, but took the opportunity to relax a little before having to socialise. I grabbed a book from my bag, the one I decided would be most suitable this morning. Empty Planet, I loved it as a kid and wanted that kind of nostalgic comfort after such a stressful few months.

Not even a few lines into the book, I heard the bell I attached to the door ring, signalling someone had entered my cafe. I was anticipating Lia, I wanted to see her sweet face for me to scold. But I was met with a tall, bedheaded, tired looking man. He wore a brown blazer over a light coloured patterned button up and a crooked tie under a light grey sweater vest. As I said, his hair was messy, very messy. It was light brown, curly, and much longer than a guy would usually like it. As he approached the counter, I noticed the smaller details of his face. His scruffy stubble, his button nose, his dark purple eyebags that accompanied his brown honey-like eyes that seemed to shimmer in the sun.

"Um, hello?" his voice pulled me from my trance. Even his voice was sweet, like honey. "Oh, sorry. Hello, see anything that catches your eye?" I asked with a smile, trying to seem friendly despite the frustrating start to my morning. Y'know, as friendly as you can be while running on 3 hours of sleep and a missing assistant.

"Are those... Cookies?" he asked, his eyes fixated on the chocolate chip cookies in the display case. He was almost drooling. "Yeah, just baked them like less than an hour ago. I suggest you get them while they're warm." I chuckled, amused that my cookies had him so mesmerised. "Can I get six?" he asked, his eyes finally meeting mine. Six? Do they look that good? "Um, sure... They look good, huh?" I giggled as I grabbed a paper bag for his cookies. "Oh, no! They're not all for me! I'm buying some for my team." he blurted out, looking somewhat embarrassed. 'Team'?

"Team?" I vocalised my thought. "Oh, um- Coworkers." he stammered, like he said something he shouldn't have. "Right." I chuckled as I handed him his cookies. "Anything else?"

"Can I just get, um... Black coffee with as much sugar as physically possible?" the man hesitantly requested as he reached for the bag. I let out a soft giggle at his peculiar order.

"So... Coffee whithout the ghastly bitter taste?" I joked as I made my way to the little moka pot station I had set up. He returned my laughter. "You could say that."

I'm aware that such a method of coffee making seems rather lacklustre for a self-proclaimed café. However, I find that those irritatingly tricky espresso machines make the process of brewing coffee far too complicated. But, I also just find moka pots rather charming.

I finished up his drink and walked over to him. "A diabetes inducing black coffee for..." I trailed off with my hand outstretched to him for him to receive his affectionately named drink. "Spencer." he snickered as he took the it from me. "Spencer." I repeated. His name rolled smoothly off my tongue and rung comfortably in our ears, as if it was ment to be said in my voice. That's how it felt to me at least. He seemed to feel the same, as a slight tilt of his head accompanied the smile he already wore. "...This is usually the part where you'd say your name."

Oh.

"Oh- Sasha. It's Sasha."

(A.N. EEEEEEE FIRST CHAPTER'S DONE!!!! Not a lot of interaction between Spencer and Sasha, ik BUT TRUST ME! We will get our sweet sweet fluff eventually... But not without some angst.)

[taradiddled]

Ada: Let me see if I understand this shit. Exposure to magic in Hell will elongate a demon’s lifespan. But in the hundreds and thousands of years, imps have still been living and dying at the same rate as mortals, after being steadily denied access to the same fucking magic they themselves helped create in the first place. Have I got that right?

Lucifer: …well, when you put it like that…yes. That’s right.

Ada: I see. Magic, as a commodity, is mostly passed around the upper echelons of Hell, mostly nobility, and by blood. Acquiring magic is possible, but only conditionally, by binding oneself to a someone who already has magic to spare, through contracts, just like Sinners do. The contractors hold all the power, as well as just how much magic their contractee is able to use, effectively putting the contractee in debt to the contractor.

Lucifer: …that sounds accurate.

Ada: Just checking. So! There is no upward mobility in Hell, unless you sell yourself out to some asshole noble, or, like me, are fucking someone powerful.

Lucifer: Golly. I guess so.

Ada: Goony, I love you, but I am going to tear these bastards a thousand new assholes for exploiting this fucking system.