#Data Center Power Grab

[rebuiltzine]

The Green Lie: How Corporations Are Bulldozing Maryland Under the Banner of Climate Progress

Part of The New Land Wars series They call it clean energy.But there’s nothing clean about bulldozing forests, slicing through farmland, and suing families to make way for high-voltage transmission lines that don’t even benefit the people losing everything. The Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project (MPRP) is being sold to the public as an environmental necessity — a vital step toward…

[misfitwashere]

TIMOTHY SNYDER

FEB 5

Imagine if it had gone like this. 

Ten Tesla cybertrucks, painted in camouflage colors with a giant X on each roof, drive noisily through Washington DC. Tires screech. Out jump a couple of dozen young men, dressed in red and black Devil’s Champion armored costumes. After giving Nazi salutes, they grab guns and run to one government departmental after another, calling out slogans like “all power to Supreme Leader Skibidi Hitler.”

Historically, that is what coups looked like. The center of power was a physical place. Occupying it, and driving out the people who held office, was to claim control. So if a cohort of armed men with odd symbols had stormed government buildings, Americans would have recognized that as a coup attempt. 

And that sort of coup attempt would have failed. 

Now imagine that, instead, the scene goes like this.

A couple dozen young men go from government office to government office, dressed in civilian clothes and armed only with zip drives. Using technical jargon and vague references to orders from on high, they gain access to the basic computer systems of the federal government. Having done so, they proceed to grant their Supreme Leader access to information and the power to start and stop all government payments.

That coup is, in fact, happening. And if we do not recognize it for what it is, it could succeed.

In the third decade of the twenty first century, power is more digital than physical. The buildings and the human beings are there to protect the workings of the computers, and thus the workings of the government as a whole, in our case an (in principle) democratic government which is organized and bounded by a notion of individual rights.

The ongoing actions by Musk and his followers are a coup because the individuals seizing power have no right to it. Elon Musk was elected to no office and there is no office that would give him the authority to do what he is doing. It is all illegal. It is also a coup in its intended effects: to undo democratic practice and violate human rights. 

In gaining data about us all, Musk has trampled on any notion of privacy and dignity, as well as on the explicit and implicit agreements made with our government when we pay our taxes or our student loans. And the possession of that data enables blackmail and further crimes.

In gaining the ability to stop payments by the Department of the Treasury, Musk would also make democracy meaningless. We vote for representatives in Congress, who pass laws that determine how our tax money is spent. If Musk has the power to halt this process at the level of payment, he can make laws meaningless. Which means, in turn, that Congress is meaningless, and our votes are meaningless, as is our citizenship.

Resistance to the coup is the defense of the human against the digital and the democratic against the oligarchic. If Musk controls these digital systems, Republican elected officials will be just as helpless as Democratic ones. The institutions that they voted to create can also be “deleted,” as Musk puts it. 

President Trump, for that matter, will also perform at Musk’s pleasure. There is not much he can do without the use of the federal government’s computers. No one will explain this to Trump or to his supporters, of course. 

A coup is underway, against Americans as possessors of human rights and dignities, and against Americans as citizens of a democratic republic. Each hour this goes unrecognized makes the success of the coup more likely.

[blackkatmagic]

for the ask game! how about granta omega?

Sometimes, there are doors to the spirit world in the most convenient places.

Granta slips out of the wild tangle of electric and organic and into the sterile halls of the Senate building, light on his feet in the darkness. The air here hums, heavy and dark, and Granta breathes it in and smiles.

It never fails to satisfy, the fact that so many thousands of benders and Force-sensitives are so desperately chasing one poor, powerless thief around Coruscant, howling like tookas that just got their tails stepped on.

Well. For certain definitions of powerless. And poor.

Pulling his hood up, Granta hums a quiet tune, scanning the Vice-Chancellor’s office. Mas Amedda isn't quite stupid enough to leave proof of his involvement with the Sith out in the open, but it’s a near thing. And he’s certainly not that careful with proof of his corruption. If Granta didn’t know better, he’d think Mas Amedda was outright asking for someone to blackmail him into betraying Palpatine, and, well. Granta will graciously take him up on the offer if he’s so desperate for it.

It only takes a few moments of slicing to find what he needs, and Granta tucks the data chips away in his coat, neatens the office to erase all signs of his presence, and heads for the hall. There’s another door into the spirit world three levels down that opens up in a plain half-consumed by wires that grow and leaf like vines, and from there Granta knows a path through one of the more misanthropic spirits’ territory, leading to another exit deep in the Undercity. As much as Granta enjoys making the Senate Guard pull their collective hair out over his entrances and exits, sometimes it’s more productive to get out with less of a fuss—

Glass cracks, shatters, and the wind howls like an enraged thing, so strong that for an instant Granta is almost spun off his feet. He snarls a curse, wrenches around, and stopping a bender’s power is possible but not here, not suddenly. Getting away is a better plan, because once Granta is out of sight he’ll be faceless, unremarkable even to a clone trooper.

When he goes to run, though, the airborne shards of glass that are supposed to be shatterproof are still spinning through the air, and the trooper in the center of the storm has his blaster up and aimed, perfectly steady despite the gale.

All benders are at least a little annoying, in Granta's perfectly objective opinion, but airbenders are some of the worst.

“Surrender,” the clone says, a clear warning, and Granta rolls his eyes even as he takes a half-step back, gaze flickering up and down the hall. Getting back into the spirit world is possible even without retreating to the door he emerged from, but the idea of giving away what he is so early in the game is disappointing. Granta was hoping to see the Guard scramble around looking for clues for at least another few weeks while he set up all the pieces on the board.

“Little old me?” Granta asks, pitched to faux innocence that’s meant to infuriate. He takes another step back, calculating his odds of getting into Mas Amedda’s office again before the clone can reach it. “I'm just doing my civic duty. Shaking off a few cobwebs, uncovering the truth about our esteemed leaders. Are you really going to persecute me for that?”

“No,” the clone says, entirely, delightfully unimpressed. “I'm going to persecute you for burglary and breaking and entering. Hands up.”

Obligingly, Granta raises his hands, palming one of his knives as he goes. “Really,” he drawls. “How uninspired of you. Commander, wasn’t it? I think I've seen you around before—”

Movement. Impossibly quick, almost as quick as a Jedi, with the force of a hurricane behind it. Granta flings the knife even as he throws himself to the side, hits the ground and rolls beneath a scything kick, a burst of air so concentrated that it leaves a dent in the wall. It just misses him, though, and Granta whirls grabs for the blaster at the small of his back and puts two shots in the air—

Impact, hard enough to steal his breath, and the clone commander slams him up against the wall with all the force of a tornado, grabs for his hood—

The face is as easy to slip into as a new coat, and Granta throws his hands up, turns his cheek like he’s braced for a blow as the dark hood falls away. The commander freezes, breath catching audibly, and Granta looks up at him with a clone’s face, eyes wide.

“Commander,” he says, and it wavers, almost cracks—

“Fox!” another clone shouts, and instantly Fox is moving again, grabbing. Granta throws himself to the side, but Fox follows him, hits the ground on top of him, and Granta laughs as he lets his own face flicker back into being.

“Fox,” he repeats, halfway to mocking. “What a good name.” In an instant he’s pulled that face up, twists out of Fox’s grip as a sleek black fox and flips free, then bolts sideways even as the other clones lunge to catch him. This shape is quicker than a Human, though, and in an instant he’s hurtling back towards Mas Amedda’s office, rounding a corner with Fox scrambling behind him—

One step sideways, a leap, and he’s back in the spirit world, landing lightly amidst a forest of trees with metal-veined leaves, the mortal world falling way behind him.

“Thank you, Mother of Faces,” he says lightly, and when he rises it’s as a Human again. The opposable thumbs are so useful, after all, even if wearing different faces all his life has left him only vaguely attached to any of them.

And then, with a whirling gust, wind sweeps through the forest, rattling the tree leaves and startling Granta. He whirls, and across the half-there shimmer of distance that marks the separation, he can just see Fox in his bright red armor, stalking up the hall and straight towards the spot where Granta vanished. He stops there, close enough to touch, and even if Granta can't hear what he says when he raises his comm, he can guess. Laughs, leans in, and there's no way for Fox to feel the brush of fingertips that aren't in the same plane, but Fox still pauses, turns his head.

“How interesting,” Granta says, and he can feel the shard of the Mother of Faces inside him, present since the moment he was born, turn towards Fox in contemplation. She likes the clones, so set in their identity, forging their own faces out of sameness. And that makes Granta like them, too.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he can't play a few games, particularly when it comes to toying with Fox. The man is interesting, after all.

[ninelives2]

Nine Lives statement on the use of generative AI in fanfic

Hey, lovely readers and writers:

We've been talking about the uptick in people using generative AI to "write" fanfic, and thought we should make clear our position about it. Below is our collective statement.

As part of this process we've updated Nine Lives' Terms of Service and clarified our policy on plagiarism.

____________________________________________________

If you outsource the act of being a fan to AI, what does that leave you? Fan creators are powerful because they’re deeply participatory media consumers—they don’t passively absorb a work, but grab onto it and reshape it to their will.

Elizabeth Minkel, “Where the Wild Stories Are”

Nine Lives emphatically rejects the use of generative AI in creating and publishing fan fiction. Among the many other concerns about their use, sophisticated large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT pilfer and plagiarize the writing of creators without permission, credit, or compensation to churn out prose devoid of personality or author voice. Generative AI is replicative, not creative. It can rearrange the words and ideas found in the sources it is fed, even "sound" like the writing of a particular author, but it cannot come up with its own, original prose. There is no human mind involved in the process.

There are legitimate, often beneficial uses for AI, including making text accessible to people with a wide range of disabilities. But having a computer crank something out in response to a set of prompts and calling it "writing" - that's at best a pale imitation of the real thing, and in our opinion has no place in fandom.

We have updated our Terms of Service (TOS) to clarify that AI-generated works are not to be posted on the Nine Lives Archive, for two reasons: 1) Because AI-generated works are not your work; it’s a computer doing your thinking for you. The TOS already explicitly states that works published on the archive must be your own. And 2) because those LLMs were trained on the works of other writers, using AI to generate a Caryl story constitutes plagiarism, which is also already spelled out as being against the TOS.

That said: we don’t have the resources to police your work, and we don’t want people to report “violations”. We’re just going to say, “Please don’t use AI to generate fic at all, and specifically don’t use it to generate Caryl fic and post it on Nine Lives.”

As Tumblr user Mikkeneko puts it, “Generative AI… fails on every count. It's inaccurate, it's unethical, it's unreliable, it's wrong.”

----------------------------------------------------------------

For background information, additional viewpoints and concerns, here are a few links, starting with the Ellipsus blog guest post where the quote at the beginning came from. (The Tumblr post contains links to information about the environmental impact of the data centers required by AI. If for no other reason, that impact should be enough to stop you from using AI.)

https://www.facebook.com/FenWrites/posts/pfbid0ohYKyEYoyW5Ky3dULEM58WX3MAJrpPfLpM4yJ2RzcFUa6yXxd9A9UALLwZVxREDcl

[artbyblastweave]

Something I find interesting about the Lizard League is that these guys are supervillain supervillains, costumed in the classic mold- Salamander with the impossibly-skintight patterned-cloth costume, Iguana with the tight-tights-and-animal-headpiece combo, Komodo with that 70s-style strongman cowl-and-jersey, King Lizard with the Baron Strucker-style double-breasted greatcoat. These guys are unrepentant in their design. And in the comics, where the Sequid arc didn't happen till around issue 40, these guys were part of this established stable of villains who'd show up as fodder for montages and one-off fights where they needed to have a hero beating up someone who's clearly a supervillain, never mind who. That meant that their eventual escalation to nuclear terrorism after 30+ issues of low-rent stuff, and the ensuing clusterfuck, actually parsed as a meaningful escalation from the established status quo. These guys are breaking the rules. Supervillains do stuff like this sometimes, sure, but not this kind of supervillain- these guys are doing MCU-style unmarked-Kevlar terroristic supervillainy when they should be doing lizard-themed gimmick crimes or Super-friends stuff!

Well, no, that's not quite true. It feels true, but honestly there are plenty of examples of campy big-two villains doing flat-out nuclear terrorism pretty early on, actually. Just to pick some examples from X-Men, Magento did it in his first appearance, and the ANAD lineup's first real outing was to stop Count Nefaria from hijacking NORAD. Screwing around with the military's world-ending shit is downright commonplace for supervillains, once you start tallying it up. But between the goofy kid-gloves approach of a lot of early silver-age comics and the sheer volume of Stuff that's happened in the Marvel and DC continuities, the impact of attempted nuclear terrorism inevitably gets sanded down, it just becomes one more data point in the endless ebb and flow- hell, it can result in actual nuclear detonations, and eventually it's going to get sanded over. In the nineties, Vandal Savage actually nuked Montevideo using depreciated USSR stock. Is that salient, these days? This event that would have reshaped geopolitics had it happened in our world? So yeah, supervillains make a run on the nukes all the time- but it doesn't count if you do it in a onesie with your initials stenciled on it.

But Invincible, as a self-contained continuity, actually has the ability to maintain perspective and appropriately weigh a grab at the nuclear arsenal - it's very much not business as usual, it's not part of the typical cops-and-robbers runaround. It's not stealing a priceless diamond, it's not a bank job, it's not even rampaging through the city center with a giant robot. It's a credible attempt to end the world, it's a challenge to government power that they won't let stand, costumes or no. It's the government sponsored super team coming in guns blazing trying their damnedest to kill you from the word go, and its you trying to kill them equally hard because there's really no coming back from this if you lose. And it ends up that treating this situation with a commonsense level of gravity acts as a deconstructive backhand against every similar situation in the comics that ends with the villain shaking their fist and escaping at the last minute.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Shuham at HuffPost:

When she was working as an election official in Arizona years ago, Tammy Patrick encountered voters who supported what was then the state’s new “proof of citizenship” law for voter registration — only to realize that they had been disenfranchised by it. “They’d say, ‘I voted for that!’” she recalled of the voters, many of whom were “snowbirds, older people, who didn’t have the wherewithal to get [the correct documents] because the documents didn’t exist anymore.” “It was heart-wrenching,” Patrick said.

At the time, Arizona was the only state in the nation with a documentary proof of citizenship requirement for voters, and thousands of people have since lost out on the right to vote in state elections. Kansas, which later also tried its own citizenship requirement for voter registration, saw similar results. “Kansas did that 10 years ago,” Kansas’s Republican Secretary of State Scott Schwab told The Associated Press in December of his state’s own requirement, which prevented tens of thousands of voter registrations and was ultimately blocked in court in 2018. “It didn’t work out so well.” Nonetheless, despite data showing tens of millions of Americans don’t have ready access to proof of citizenship documents, Republicans are now pushing hard to require those records nationwide for voter registration. They haven’t been able to make it happen yet. But two efforts, one each from the White House and congressional Republicans, have made the prospect of a national proof of citizenship requirement a real possibility.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed the executive order “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.” In addition to ordering a slew of changes to voting machine standards and information-sharing arrangements between the federal and state governments, the order ― which is not a law ― instructs the Election Assistance Commission to change its national mail voter registration form to require documentary proof of citizenship. In Congress, the so-called SAVE Act would similarly mandate proof of citizenship documents. The bill passed the House last year and is scheduled for a vote in the House this week, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). Though neither effort is a law right now, they both present significant risks to millions of voters. The Trump White House has in its first two months asserted unprecedented executive authority over the federal government, even on matters legally outside its purview, like trying to shut down entire agencies created by Congress, and it’s not clear how far Trump is willing to take his power grab.

Millions At Risk

As things stand, would-be voters swear under penalty of law on registration paperwork that they are citizens, and state officials have various methods to confirm that citizenship, including by checking against Social Security data and state databases. But Republicans’ efforts to require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote ― a push that gained political support from widespread lies about non-citizen voting ― would change that. And if voters needed to provide documentary proof themselves, millions would be at risk of disenfranchisement.

Over 21 million voting-age American citizens don’t readily have access to documentary proof of citizenship, and over 3.8 million lack any of those documents at all, one 2023 survey from the Brennan Center for Justice and several other groups found. The impact would be felt across political and demographic lines: While poor voters, voters of color and indigenous voters are less likely to have certain documentation, states with high levels of passport ownership generally vote blue ― and Republican women are more likely to report taking their husbands’ last names, which complicates the process, the Center for American Progress noted in January. Both the White House efforts and the SAVE Act are also strangely vague when it comes to what documentation is required. Both mention passports as an acceptable proof of citizenship, but half of American citizens don’t have a valid passport. They both also mention the REAL ID Act of 2005, though so-called “REAL ID” cards don’t actually list citizenship status on them, and non-citizens can obtain REAL IDs. Both also list military IDs, but only if they specify citizenship. If not, the SAVE Act requires further documentation. The SAVE Act notes birth certificates can be used in conjunction with government-issued photo IDs; Trump’s order makes no mention of birth certificates at all, though it does say photo IDs can work when “accompanied by proof of United States citizenship.”

[...]

Trump’s Executive Order Is A Dramatic Attempted Power Grab

On top of its proof of citizenship requirement language, Trump’s executive order is alarming simply because it exists at all. American elections are almost entirely run at the state and local level, and any national rule changes must generally be approved by Congress. Trump’s apparent belief that he can simply declare changes to the nation’s elections represents an extremely aggressive assertion of presidential power. In the order, Trump instructs both independent agencies and Cabinet officials to pursue various investigations of (and vast changes to) the election system, including regarding election machine certifications and information-sharing between states and the federal government.

The SAVE Act is a massive abomination of a proposal that would disenfranchise millions of voters if it passed.

[likeablechelsey]

Why Mother Gothel Is the Worst Disney Villain—And Not in a Fun Way

Mother Gothel isn’t just selfish—she’s dangerous. Here’s why she’s the most disturbing Disney villain of all.

She Doesn’t Just Hurt Rapunzel—She Gaslights Her

Mother Gothel doesn’t steal a voice or turn into a dragon. She does something worse. She traps a child and convinces her it’s love.

That’s not clever. That’s abuse.

Mother Gothel isolates Rapunzel in a tower for 18 years. She controls her completely—what she reads, what she eats, how she dresses. But the real damage isn’t physical. It’s psychological. Gothel manipulates Rapunzel into believing the outside world is too dangerous. That she needs her. That her captivity is protection.

That’s gaslighting.

Dr. Ramani Durvasula, clinical psychologist and expert on narcissistic abuse, explains it this way:

“Narcissistic parents don’t just lie. They twist your reality. They make you doubt yourself at every turn.”

That’s what Gothel does for almost two decades.

She Doesn’t Love Rapunzel—She Uses Her

Gothel never loved Rapunzel. She loved her hair.

The magic in Rapunzel’s hair keeps Gothel young. That’s why she kidnapped her. That’s why she kept her hidden. That’s why she said “I love you” but never showed it.

When Rapunzel confronts her, Gothel doesn’t apologize. She mocks her. She doubles down. And when Rapunzel tries to leave, Gothel says the quiet part out loud:

“You want me to be the bad guy? Fine. Now I’m the bad guy.”

She always was.

A 2024 study published in The Journal of Child and Family Studies found that psychological abuse in parent-child relationships leaves long-term damage on self-esteem, decision-making, and identity development. That’s exactly what Gothel does. And Disney plays it terrifyingly straight.

She’s a Coward

Gothel doesn’t fight heroes. She doesn’t outsmart kingdoms. She hides in a tower and preys on a kid. That’s not cunning. That’s cowardice.

Most Disney villains have big goals—power, revenge, chaos. Gothel has one: eternal youth. That’s not ambition. That’s vanity.

When she dies, she doesn’t sacrifice. She doesn’t redeem herself. She grabs at the magic like a junkie chasing her last hit. She fades into dust.

Good riddance.

She’s the Most Realistic Villain

That’s what makes her so disturbing.

Ursula? Fantasy. Maleficent? Myth. Gothel? You’ve met her. Maybe she was a parent. A boss. A partner. Someone who smiled to your face and controlled you behind it.

She uses love as a weapon. That hits closer to home than a poisoned apple ever will.

This makes her more dangerous than any spell-caster or sword-fighter. She’s subtle. She’s charming. She’s familiar. And you don’t see the damage until it’s already done.

Disney Didn’t Flinch—And That’s Good

“Tangled” doesn’t sugarcoat Gothel. It shows the damage, the control, the escape. That matters.

In 2025, more people will recognize psychological abuse for what it is. According to the CDC, nearly 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men experience severe emotional abuse in their lifetime. And we’re only just starting to talk about it in the media.

Gothel’s story isn’t just fiction. It’s a warning.

Final Thought: Stop Calling Her “Complicated”

Gothel isn’t “complicated” or “misunderstood.” She’s manipulative. She’s selfish. She’s dangerous.

Disney made a villain that doesn’t need claws or curses. Just control. That’s what makes her the worst.

⸻

Sources:

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2025). Children’s mental health: Data and research. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.cdc.gov/children-mental-health/data-research/index.html

• López, M., & Jiménez, J. (2024). The effects of psychological abuse on children’s emotional and behavioral development. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 33(2), 295–310. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-024-02715-0

• Durvasula, R. (2022, July 22). 6 telltale signs of narcissistic abuse [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cheHaFs9Xn0

[lokigirlszendaya]

The Force works in mysterious (and fabulous) ways

Polygamous Bad Batch x OC

Warnings: Slow burn, oblivious OC

Chapter 2: Glitter in the Shadows

“Stealth mission,” Hunter said, dragging a hand down his face. “We go in silent, we get the intel, we get out. No unnecessary contact.”

Talia raised her hand like she was in a classroom. “What counts as necessary contact? Like, if someone’s outfit is super cute, and I just have to say something, does that count?”

Crosshair rolled his eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn’t detach. “She’s gonna get us all killed.”

Tech muttered something about probability curves under his breath.

Hunter ignored them. “We infiltrate the droid relay station on the outskirts of Kinteer. No lightsabers, no distractions. You stay behind me, got it?”

Talia gave him a salute, grinning. “Totally! No lightsaber. No distractions. Just me and my fabulous self!”

That was not reassuring.

It started off well enough. The Batch moved like shadows through the craggy terrain, weaving between rusted droid parts and decaying stone structures. Talia floated behind them, silent as silk, managing to look like a whimsical ghost and a glitter bomb all at once.

She was humming.

Humming.

Hunter glanced back, mouthing seriously? at her.

She gave him a big thumbs-up.

Then came the entrance: a narrow vent shaft that led into the communications center. One by one, they slid in. Wrecker barely fit. Talia followed last, somehow emerging without a speck of dust on her robes.

Tech connected to the control panel with a soft beep. “I’ll download the data. Give me two minutes.”

Hunter turned to Talia. “Stay. Quiet.”

She mimed zipping her lips. Then added a key turn. Then threw away the imaginary key.

He should have known better.

⸻

Thirty seconds later:

A clanking noise echoed through the hall.

Crosshair froze. “What was that?”

Talia had wandered over to a droid arm on a shelf and was now… wearing it like a purse.

“I just thought it looked cute!” she whisper-shouted. “Like, salvage-chic, you know?”

The droid arm twitched.

“Uh-oh.”

The arm activated.

The shelf collapsed.

An entire rack of droid heads crashed to the floor in a deafening avalanche of metal skulls and static crackles.

Tech stared in pure horror.

Alarms blared.

Hunter sighed. “So much for stealth.”

⸻

The next few minutes were utter chaos.

Droids poured into the hallway. Wrecker roared with laughter as he plowed through them like a battering ram. Crosshair took position in a ventilation duct, popping heads with perfect precision. Tech protected the data core, hands flying across the controls.

And Talia?

Talia was pirouetting.

Spinning, laughing, flipping midair like a dancer in a nightclub—deflecting blaster bolts without even looking at them. One shot pinged off a panel, ricocheted off a droid’s shoulder, and hit the control panel that activated the self-destruct. She blinked. “Oopsie.”

“You triggered the self-destruct?!” Tech shouted.

“Well, that’s one way to make an exit!”

Hunter grabbed her wrist. “We’re leaving. Now.”

They fled the way they came, the base exploding behind them in a shower of fire and melted bolts.

They mad it to the Marauder safe and sound. Well mostly.

Talia flopped dramatically into a seat, fanning herself. “Ugh. That was exhausting. Also, like, so many blaster bolts. One of them grazed my hair, Hunter. I could feel it.”

Hunter turned toward her slowly. “You set off every alarm. You alerted the entire base. You started a chain reaction in the power core—”

“But we got the data!” she chirped. “And look!” She held up the droid arm like a trophy. “Accessory.”

Wrecker laughed until he couldn’t breathe.

Even Tech cracked a smile—barely.

Hunter just leaned back and groaned.

“She’s gonna be the death of us,” Crosshair muttered.

But no one could deny it—she’d pulled it off. Somehow.

Again.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Inside Climate News:

Illinois is already a top destination for data centers, and more are coming. One small Chicago suburb alone has approved one large complex and has proposals for two more.

Once they’re online, data centers require a lot of electricity, which is helping drive rates up around the country and grabbing headlines. What gets less attention is how much water they need, both to generate that electricity and dissipate the heat from the servers powering cloud computing, storage and artificial intelligence. 

A high-volume “hyperscale” data center uses the same amount of water in a year as 12,000 to 60,000 people, said Helena Volzer, a senior source water policy manager for the environmental nonprofit Alliance for the Great Lakes.

Increasingly, residents, legislators and freshwater advocacy groups are calling for municipalities to more carefully consider where the water that supplies these data centers will come from and how it will be managed. Even in the water-rich Great Lakes region, those are important questions as erratic weather patterns fueled by climate change affect water resources. 

Illinois already has more than 220 data centers, and a growing number of communities interested in the attendant tax revenue are trying to entice companies to build even more. Many states in the Great Lakes region—Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota among them—are offering tax credits and incentives for data center developments. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity has approved tax breaks for more than 20 data centers since 2020. 

“Hyperscale data centers are the really large data centers that are being built now for [generative] AI, which is really driving a lot of the growth in this sector because it requires vast data processing capabilities,” said Volzer. “The trend is larger and bigger centers to feed this demand for AI.”

Much of the water used in data centers never gets back into the watershed, particularly if the data center uses a method called evaporative cooling. Even if that water does go back into the ecosystem, deep bedrock aquifers, like the Mahomet in central Illinois, can take centuries to recharge. In the Great Lakes, just 1 percent of the water is renewed each year from rain, runoff and groundwater.

In Illinois, 40 percent of the population gets its water from aquifers. In some places, like Chicago’s southwest suburbs in Will and Kendall counties, the amount of water in those aquifers is dwindling. 

To ensure that they can supply citizens with safe drinking water, officials from six suburbs southwest of Chicago—Joliet, Channahon, Crest Hill, Minooka, Romeoville and Shorewood—made an agreement with the city two years ago to buy millions of gallons of water a day from Lake Michigan. They are currently building a $1.5 billion pipeline to transport the water, which is expected to be completed by 2030. 

Illinois is unique among the Great Lakes states when it comes to water. The Great Lakes Compact each state signed in 2008 bans diversions of water from the lakes to communities outside the basin, but it makes an exception for Illinois thanks to a 1967 Supreme Court ruling allowing Chicago to sell water to farther-flung municipalities. 

“We are concerned about the planning of the explosion of data centers, and if these far-out suburbs are actually accounting for that,” said Iyana Simba, city government affairs director for the Illinois Environmental Council. “How much of that was taken into account when they did their initial planning to purchase water from the city of Chicago? This isn’t reused wastewater. This is drinking water.”

[creatingnonsense]

It’s time to ramble about my least favorite thing in the Pokémon games (and why it’s good in PLA and Gen 5 to some degree)

I hate the application of the Pokédex in game.

I understand the concept but now it’s just a money grab anymore. ‘Oh we will put out two games that are exactly the same except for like two game variants and the legendary and you’ll have to either 1. Have friends who can buy the other game and trade, 2. Buy both and play through both to trade them to one another, or 3. Trust in those random codes or trades and pray someone gets you the Pokémon you need eventually!’

The reason Gen 5 did it well is because it gives you more incentive to get both games, as the world changes some and the story/gym leaders shift slightly. Gen 8 did this as well to some degree, but I feel like changing up the gym leaders wasn’t comparable to changing up the entire town. While it makes sense why the changes aren’t there, (cause Gordie and Bea came after Allister and Melony, we can assume the town was centered around their types first before the other two were replaced. I assume they were second cause Melony likely passed it down to her son.) it’s still pretty basic of a change and the shift doesn’t even effect much.

Now.. some more reasons why I hate the dex application

-Hard to get without others/more money spending

-Barely gives you anything in the end game (unless you’re a shiny hunter, shiny charm is cool but doesn’t do that much compared to your efforts).

-It makes no sense for what the idea is.

To clarify on that last one, the Pokédex is supposed to be a dex filled with every single *obtainable Pokémon in the region. This is supposed to be something spread throughout the region and any trainer can use it.

..so why are there unobtainable or shouldn’t attempt to be obtainable legendaries or mythical’s on the list? You want every single trainer who wants to ‘complete the dex’ and ‘catch them all’ to go get all of those and possibly ruin the ecosystem or have too much power?

What about the Pokémon you can’t even find within that region due to that version?? Are you expecting some trainer to just buy a Pokémon from far off and travel it here for the dex or whatever?

Regardless.. the last thing I really hate before going into how I’d fix it is how it’s seen as both ‘finished’ and ‘incomplete’ in pretty much every game.

I thought we were filling it out? So why does catching the Pokémon happen to upload every piece of data about it? Why in the anime can they use the Pokédex to understand a Pokémon but we have to fill it out to even be shown what a Caterpie’s type is.

I know it’s meant to be ‘you fill it out by catching the Pokémon and it’ll unlock the info for you for your journey’ but I just.. I don’t like it.

So, here’s how I’d fix it.

I’m heavily piggybacking off of PLA for this

1. Give more incentive to buy the other versions if you won’t change it. (I mean like I want whole new storylines, characters, etc. Sure it’s work but if I’m paying like 120 dollars or even 160 with the new switch 2 if I get it, I deserve something worth that.)

2. Make the dex full of Pokémon only obtainable in that version (once you complete it, you get the shiny charm, however- you can transfer Pokémon from the other version and it’ll add it to the dex)

3. Make it so the player *is* actually the one filling out the research (PLA) so it makes sense that they have to put in the effort. Every other game is set in the future and so it makes no sense why we get a dex we have to fill to use other than they need that game mechanic now.

[Fun fact, before catching Arceus in PLA I got every Pokémon’s entry to 10, as that’s what I expected it to want. Turns out it’s just ‘catch’ every Pokémon to prove it existed.. so now I have a full living dex and all of that time spent. But it was actually fun to do it!! Compared to other games atleast.]

4. Probably the most reasonable, make it so you can get version exclusives in game by either trainer trades, something like the Alter of the Sunne and Alter of the Moone where you can go to the ‘other version’ but let me actually do other version things, like catch exclusives and get my other legendary somehow.

Anyways.. it’s always pissed me off. I understand the mechanic in game and that it’s a really good ‘hey get your friends together to play!’ But my friends can’t afford to keep up with Pokémon games like I can and aren’t even interested in it so I’m at a loss for it. I feel like this with trade evolutions too but.. can we not force everything to be reliant on others in the Pokémon games? Trade evolutions? Friend trade. Exclusive extra legendary they give you just so you can trade for their extra legendary? Friend trade. Pokédex filling? Friend trade. I hate it so much cause it’s so expensive if I want to attempt it and then so boring to replay the entire game twice. I only replayed Sword willingly and actually had fun somehow.

[darkmaga-returns]

International Climate Litigation: A Trojan Horse for Global Climate Policy?

In an unprecedented move, 99 countries have convened at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague to seek an advisory opinion on climate change. Led by nations like Vanuatu, this legal campaign asks the ICJ to define the obligations of states to combat climate change and protect vulnerable countries. Proponents hail it as a milestone in the fight against global warming, while skeptics question its motives, effectiveness, and potential consequences. Let’s unpack this monumental case and consider whether it’s just another Trojan horse for sweeping global control.

The Case: Climate Liability on Trial

This case stems from a resolution passed by the United Nations General Assembly, urging the ICJ to clarify the legal responsibilities of states regarding climate change. It centers on two key questions:

To what extent are nations legally obligated to curb emissions and mitigate climate change?

What reparations are owed to nations disproportionately affected by climate impacts, particularly small island states facing rising sea levels?

The ICJ’s advisory opinion, while not legally binding, could set a powerful precedent, influencing future climate negotiations, lawsuits, and policies.

The Driving Force: Island Nations’ Desperate Gamble

Island nations like Vanuatu have long been vocal about their vulnerability to rising sea levels and extreme weather. They argue that wealthy, industrialized nations bear a disproportionate responsibility for a “climate crisis” and must act urgently to rectify the damage.

To those indoctrinated, their case seems compelling: why shouldn’t the major polluters compensate those most affected? But dig deeper, and the waters become murky. Sea level data, for example, shows far less consistent trends than alarmists suggest, with variability influenced by natural phenomena like tectonic activity and ocean circulation. Moreover, pinning global temperature changes solely on human emissions ignores the complexity of climate systems and the significant role of natural variability.

[madamegixxysticks]

Why I don't do AI.

In the most plain and simple explanations possible that I would never use AI generation or any of that in my works. U - U

Blatant thief

This goes especially for the "This but in that artist's style" ones, the machine scopes the internet for many artworks, even if they have copyright and uses them discriminably in their datasets. This reason is what upsets many other artists besides myself about this thing.

It basically just steals and gets away with it.

2. Environmental damage

This may surprise some of you, but the data centers AI uses gobble up more energy than ENTIRE CITIES and even some whole darn COUNTRIES.

Besides electricity, these data centers use insane amounts of water in order to keep those computers from overheating and going ka-boom, water that should've been used to... Oh, I dunno... Give people something to drink? Watering veggie gardens? Something productive?

Google themselves even admitted their CO2 production went up by half because of the AI data centers!

3. The horrific labor conditions to keep it "safe"

I'd rather not get into this reason, so I'll be brief.

THEY. ARE. USING. SLAVE. LABOR.

Not joking, the folks training ChatGPT to tell the difference between what is and what's not cool are only paid two bucks an hour.

I cannot imagine the psychological scars those folks have because somebody has to be unfortunate enough to see ONE inappropriate image, but to have it be your job and be only paid 2 dollars per hour is just a massive, bright AND on fire RED FLAG to me.

4. Even I'm not THAT lazy.

... This one speaks for itself, while I DO prefer chilling on my bed or playing video games, if I wanna make art, I grab my pencil and sketchbook.

I'm sure if I didn't have drawing skills, I'd ask someone to draw it or even commission it.

And if I wanted to find out what something looked like, a search on my browser is enough for me to usually find what I'm looking for, and unlike AI it doesn't take THAT much power (or time.)

[autisticsupervillain]

FTF: Cosmological Rabbit Hole

The side show where we look at a franchise to determine how big it's cosmology is and determine how powerful all of it's characters are. We'll determine who scales to what and demonstrate all the powers and abilities the characters of this verse have to offer.

This Week's Verse....

Pressure!

The story of Pressure centers around the mysterious corporation UrbanShade, a megacorp that centers around exploiting the supernatural for massive profits. While they do protect humanity from broadly world threatening supernatural forces, their primary concern is their bottom line, with any supernatural entities that they can't exploit for profit either sold or destroyed under their watch. To this end, they built a blacksite at the bottom of the ocean in the Let-Vand Zone, where the ocean pressure is inexplicably much lighter than it should be. It's a perfect place for containing supernatural entities, as any escapees would be immediately crushed to death by ocean pressure upon exiting the Let-Vand Zone.

Like their Wikidot inspiration, the UrbanShade Corporation believes in using death row inmates as free labor, tasking them with building the blacksite. Enter Sebastian Solace, an inmate convicted for nine murders whom the UrbanShade Corporation got their hands on. The subjected him to human experimention, injecting him full of DNA from various sea life both natural and abnormal in an attempt to get humans to breath underwater. The attempt was successful at the cost of turning him into a sea hybrid abomination with three eyes, three arms, a shark tail for a bottom half, and the lure of an anglerfish.

When Sebastian discovered that UrbanShade was both aware that he'd been framed for his crimes and had the opportunity to reverse his new condition but choose not to out of convenience, he elected for some nice cold revenge. Sebastian faked being effected by sleeping darts and broke out during transport, murdering a guardsman before making to unleash every monster the Blacksite has in containment.

You, dear Player, are the latest convict that UrbanShade has grabbed to clean up their mess. Go down to the Blacksite, recover all the data you can, steal the energy crystal supplying power to the building, and get out for a free "get out of jail" card. And if any of the monsters try to stop you, just remember: you can be replaced.

The Convict

The Convict is the low end baseline for every other monster in the game, as every threat can at least hurt them, if not one shot them outright. So, I'll use them as a starting benchmark.

The Convict's scuba gear is custom built to withstand the depths of the ocean as deep as 1200000 studs below the depths of the ocean:

For those that don't speak Roblox, 1 stud is 28 cm. So that depth is 336000 meters below the surface, with 476493.09 psi. 93029455 Joules given the surface area of a human or 93030 kilojoules (Small Building Level)

Do note the draw back of "built in with a collar that shoots a bullet into you if you try to escape" however.

There's some consistency to this scaling, as the Convict can take hits from Good People, an assimilating monster that had up to that point absorbed 108 people.

The average human contains about 125,822 calories. Multiply by 108 then convert to joules to get 56855438784 joules or 13 Tons of TNT (City Block Level). That's how much energy Good People was absorbing by digesting that many people in rapid succession. That many calories being forced into your system would likely make your heart explode.

Yes, I did just power scale Roblox by calculating vore. You're welcome.

Keep in mind, Good People is one of the weaker monsters in the facility, with it being sent back to lick its wounds by UrbanShade security and doing relatively little damage to the Convict.

Speed wise, the Convict doesn't really have anything going for them beyond aim dodging bullets from the Blacksite's turrets, which have been helpfully taken over by P.AI.nter the rogue AI.

In terms of equipment, the Convict can carry various flashlights, key cards, and medkits that do as advertised, along with a few more useful tools. The code scrambler hacks into security panels the Convict isn't authorized for, the Flash Beacon blinds pursuing monsters, the Party Special and Dweller Chunks slowly regenerate health when consumed, the Notebook which grants a random item, and the Monster Tracker that tracks nearby hostiles. Also the Diving Gear does its job letting the Player breath underwater seemingly indefinitely.

Most impressive however, are the revival tokens, disposable items that bring the Convict back to life once each on the spot.

Sebastian Solace

Sebastian himself acts as your begruding shopkeeper, trading the Convict the tools above in exchange for the data they're collecting, which he plans to sell to third parties in exchange for escaping the doomed blacksite.

Sebastian is treated as one of the most dangerous monsters in the facility, as Mr. Shade, CEO of UrbanShade himself instructs his men to "shred your mags until your trigger fingers bleed" when confronting him. When he isn't scrounging for gear to pawn off on Convicts, he's hunting down UrbanShade security personel with relish, taunting them over the speakers all the while. He's stolen a SCRAMBLER device that disrupts communication devices and monster trackers in his presence, allowing him to get the drop on guards unnoticed, while his file describes him as outmaneuvering and speed blitzing guards. Despite his massive size, Sebastian is conspicuously fast, outright speed blitzing the Convict whenever they find a file to steal it for himself.

Sebastian has even been implied to be able to warp and bash down steel doors with his blows, if what we see of the aftermath of his escape is any indication.

Sebastian is so strong that even just throwing the Player around when annoyed with them takes off half their health and if they make the mistake of flashing him twice with the Flash Beacon, he's liable to shoot them dead.

Other Monsters

Most other monsters don't have much going on scaling wise beyond "being able to hurt/kill/blitz the Convict" so I won't waste too much time here.

P.AI.nter:

Initially just an AI made to make auto-generated art and NFTs, P.AI.nter's creator turned out to be too competent a coder for his own good when his bot turned out to be sentient and self aware. Murdering his creator in front of him, UrbanShade employees stole P.AI.nter and set him to work farming crypto currency to maximize profits. P.AI.nter is so miserable in this state he actively overheats his own processors in a slow attempted suicide. UrbanShade is aware of this, but doesn't care, because he can still mine NFTs even in brain death.

When Sebastian set everyone free, P.AI.nter was eternally greatful, as returns the favor by stalling the Player at every turn. Be that shooting them with the Blacksite's turrets, locking them in rooms with monsters, luring them into encountering Good People, or using music to activate the kill switch in their diving gear.

Sadly, his half melted circuits leave him a mood flipping mess. He goes from apologizing to the Convict to bloodthirsty taunting in an instant, leaving him a bit emotionally unstable. Poor guy.

Eyefestation

Sebastian wasn't the only time UrbanShade tried experimenting on "disposable" subjects. UrbanShade wanted to create a way for its agents to kill people with a glance, coming up with a very painful surgery that would allow subjects to shoot radiation from their eyes and melt a subject's brain on eye contact. To this end, they tested the process on local sharks in the area, turning a bull shark into a multi eyed monstrosity, with eyes even inside its own gullet. Naturally, the tortured beast set about killing any UrbanShade staff it could find when set free, telepathically forcing the victim to gaze into its eyes so their brain can melt. Trying to blind it only pisses it off. Keep your willpower about you, resist the pull, and look away. Eyefestation is just a regular shark otherwise.

The Angler (and variants)

The Angler and all of its variations are giant, indescribable monsters with the faces if angler fish who charge down the halls at blinding fast speeds. The signal of their charge is a cry and the flicker of lights above, caused by an EMP pulse they constantly emit.

They kill on contact via absorbing all the bio-electricity from your body and the strongest of them, Pandemonium (a seperate species that nonetheless behaves mostly identical), can bash down the facility's bullet proof doors, taking considerable effort from the Convict to hold back.

Squiddles

No relation to Homestuck. These shadows squid creatures are docile so long as you leave them in the dark and don't shine your light at them. They are among the weaker enemies, doing negligible damage.

Wall Dwellers

Humanoid creatures who, well, dwell in the walls. They use acic spewing holes on their back to burrow their back halves into walls, camouflaging their remain front to ambush prey. If killed by another monster such as an Angler, they're dropped meat grants temporary regenerative properties. They're deadly enough to rip your neck open before you can react and they hunt in groups. Keep an eye out.

Searchlights

Finally, some big game. These whale sized aquatic organisms are over 80 million year old super predators. With impenetrable armor on their tops, they hunt with the search lights beneath them, skewering whatever they see and dragging it up to swallow it whole, killing the Convict instantly if spotted.

Mask of Sadness

The Mask of Sadness is a theater mask that melts the warer into the blobby flesh monster known as Good People, causing it to go around animalistically assimilating people on contact.

I covered some of its scaling already, but there are some things to note still. In the incident in which it was captured, the blob absorbed 725 people in a packed theater, absorbing their souls, and growing so enormous that it accidentally knocked a street lamp down and burnt the building and itself to ashes.

Using the formula discussed earlier, that would be 91220950 calories or 381668455000 joules (91 Tons of TNT, City Block Level+)

Good People is highly flammable and once its body is melted to ash, it will have to start again with just one host. As such, the version the Convict scales to is much weaker than when it was first captured.

Valcula Void Mass

Inarguably the most powerful being in the facility, this extraterrestrial mass of sentient nothingness needs to be constantly evaporated to keep the Blacksite from "becoming nothing but a black smudge on the world maps".

Partially freed during Sebastian's break out, the Void Mass's spawn have spread all over the facility, instantly devouring any who would be foolish enough to enter its hiding place. If another player isn't there to rescue them, the Convict is effectively cooked. Naturally, UrbanShade uses small drops of this deadly, acid like substance as bullet tips to increase their guns killing power.

Given the meteor it arrived on has a radius of about 8.4 meters, it would weigh around 9,930,850 kgs. Moving at 75,000 m/s, it'd hit with an energy equivalent to 6.7 Megatons (City Level). The Void Mass at its smallest tanked that impact without a scratch. It it broke containment now, it could feasibly end the world.

UrbanShade

While Pressure itself is largely a fairly grounded horror game with fairly consistent Small Building to Wall Level scaling (and a City Block Level feat if you count... eating people as a feat.) the lore documents are where most of the verses best scaling comes from.

Just from the above, we've already established that UrbanShade security personel can shot acidic nothingness bullets, shoot radiation from their eyes, telepathically communicate, breathe underwater, and should upscale a disposable schmuck like the Convict in armory. That's plenty impressive enough. But, that's nothing on the tech UrbanShade has waiting in the wings.

There's just a lot about UrbanShade that we simply don't know. The lore makes it clear that we're only experiencing a small part of a much larger mythos, so there's a lot we just don't have the context for. We know UrbanShade has access to the corpse of Thor and has a weapon called the Heavenbreaker, but without context, we don't know how powerful these weapons are. But, even still, there's a lot we can intuit.

The Trenchbleeder's are several stories tall mechanical behemoths built to drain the Let-Vand Zone of all its natural resources for profit. Weighing 220,600 tons and being big enough to flatten a Searchlight with one foot.

At the end of the game, a Trenchbleeder deliberately steps on a Searchlight to save the Convict. Assuming that Searchlight's move comparable to real whales (13 m/s) and the Trenchbleeder would've generated energy equivalent to 4.3 Tons of TNT (Large Building Level+) effortlessly with that step. The Blacksite's external canons should upscale, as they're the things actually protecting the facility and the Trenchbleeders from attack.

More impressive than that, however, UrbanShade was able to contain the Analog Horror Christmas Tree, who killed Santa and replaces him with evil versions every year.

Given that UrbanShade's weapons can shoot down these evil Santas, they'd have to be able to one-shot a man who withstands kinetic energy equivalent to 39.96 Teratons of TNT (Country Level) and move at 3.9% light speed. (Relativistic)

Source:

So, yes. Awe inspiringly powerful. When taken into context with other tidbits of lore (IE. UrbanShade has been to hell and all of their employees are predestined to go there when they die.) paint a picture of UrbanShade as a devastatingly powerful and dangerous organization.

Full Cosmology

The Pressure Cosmology has a higher dimensional realm in it called the Mindscape.

This realm and everything in it is viewed as mere fiction by you, The Player.

The Player is repeatedly addressed by Sebastian and The Convict themself as an independent character on several occasions, with the Convict begging the Player to take their body back to safety when dying or Sebastian referring to various different convicts as the same person. Every time the Convict dies or makes it out alive, the Player just possesses a new Convict. Sebastian even meets up with the Player in between runs to give them information on whatever killed the Convict this time, at the behest of his "employer".

So, Pressure as a whole has the Mindscape transcending a 4D universe and a Player who transcends that, creating a 6D cosmology. Who scales to it? Well, it's difficult to say.

The Multi-Monster is an enigmatic eldritch monster cameoing from Doors who recognizes the Player from that game on sight, implying a shared cosmology. UrbanShade, who know of the Mindscape, consider him so dangerous that they refuse to have any unredacted information on him.

So he's a likely candidate for 5D.

There's also the strange Mr. Lopee. Implied to be Sebastian's "employer" who he gathers information for, Mr. Lopee takes it upon himself to kill the Convict if they ever fall out of bounds or fall behind other Players in the multiplayer. If the Convict dies to Lopee, Sebastian meekly says "he won't let me talk about that" as Lopee stands over him. So Lopee is certainly a major player in the plot, but he doesn't have enough to concretely scale him to anything yet.

Also Gaster is in it, but that's just a cameo. A shout out to an Undertale fan project a friend of the creator did. No Undertale/Pressure crossover scaling today sadly.

Conclusion:

Pressure on its surface is a pretty simple Roblox horror game that gets some comfortable Small Building Level scaling, but under its fascade is a deep lore that gets characters as high as City Block, City, and even Country Level, with some solid Low Complex Multiversal scaling for its God-Tiers.

Not bad. Definitely the most powerful Roblox verse I've ever seen. Not that I've seen very many tbf, I'm not a Roblox guy... City Block Level Sebastian is not something that I ever expected to see....

Now, it is a take in some circles of the power scaling community that the gap needed to definitively one shot a character through raw power alone is about 10x.

With that in mind, here's the final tally.

Weakened Good People, The Convict (and those who scale): 13 Tons of TNT (City Block Level)

Peak Good People: 91 Tons of TNT (City Block Level+)

Searchlights, Sebastian, Puddles of Void Mass: 130 Tons of TNT (Multi-City Block Level)

(Given that Sebastian casually throwing you around deals half your health, he casually slaughters those with better gear than the Convict, and he's generally considered one of the stronger monsters in the building going off how much trouble he gives UrbanShade in his document as opposed to how easily Good People are handled, I'm willing to put him in the one shot range even without his gun. He makes pretty clear you'd already be dead if he had any choice in the matter if you piss him off enough.)

(The Anglers specifically one shot with hax as opposed to raw power)

Trenchbleeder: 1300 Tons of TNT (Small Town Level)

Valcula Void Mass: 6.7 Megatons (City Level)

Analog Horror Christmas Tree and UrbanShade's weapons: 39.96 Teratons (Country Level)

The Mindscape: 5D (Low Complex Multiversal)

The Player: 6D (Complex Multiversal)

[motorspexx]

The Volvo 850 was launched in 1992 as a front-wheel-drive family car with a transversely mounted 2.0 to 2.5-liter inline-five engine. It featured a sophisticated multi-link rear suspension and a focus on safety and comfort. But beneath its practical image, the 850 had solid engineering — enough for Volvo to take it racing.

In 1994, Volvo entered the British Touring Car Championship with the 850 Estate — the first time a wagon had competed at this level. Developed in collaboration with Tom Walkinshaw Racing, or TWR, the BTCC-spec 850 was fully race-prepped.

It ran a naturally aspirated 2.0-liter inline-five engine producing around 280 horsepower at over 8,000 RPM, mated to a six-speed sequential gearbox. It featured front-wheel drive, a limited-slip differential, race-tuned suspension, and AP Racing brakes. The body was stripped and reinforced, weighing in at roughly 975 kilograms.

Aerodynamically, the estate shape wasn’t ideal. Its tall rear created more drag compared to the sedan. But the longer roofline added stability, and the car’s unique profile helped grab media attention.

The car was driven by Rickard Rydell, a Swedish touring car specialist, and Jan Lammers, a former Formula 1 and endurance driver. Despite its unconventional form, the 850 Estate showed competitive pace.

While it didn’t win races, it scored consistent mid-field results — including a best finish of fifth place at Snetterton. It laid the groundwork for future success. In 1995, Volvo switched to the 850 saloon, retaining the same mechanical setup but with better aerodynamics. That year, Rydell won two races and finished third overall in the championship standings.

The estate only ran for one season, but it left a lasting impression.

Volvo 850 Estate BTCC 1994 Technical Specifications

General Model Volvo 850 Estate Year 1994 Series British Touring Car Championship BTCC Team Volvo TWR Tom Walkinshaw Racing Drivers Rickard Rydell Jan Lammers

Engine Type Volvo B5204T based inline 5 Displacement 2 0 liters 1984 cc Configuration Naturally aspirated 5 cylinders Power Output Approximately 280 hp at 8500 rpm Torque Estimated 245 Nm Valvetrain DOHC 20 valves Engine Management Racing spec ECU developed by TWR

Transmission Type Xtrac 6 speed sequential gearbox Drivetrain Front wheel drive Differential Limited slip differential

Chassis and Body Chassis Modified production unibody Body Style 5 door estate station wagon Construction Seam welded reinforced for racing Weight Approx 975 kg per BTCC regulations Roll Cage FIA spec full roll cage Aerodynamics Front splitter minimal rear wing estate roofline provided natural rear stability

Suspension Front MacPherson struts with coil springs and adjustable dampers Rear Delta link rear axle with coil springs and adjustable dampers Setup Fully adjustable racing suspension

Brakes Front AP Racing ventilated discs with 4 piston calipers Rear AP Racing solid discs Brake Bias Adjustable

Wheels and Tires Wheels 18 inch center lock alloy race wheels Tires Dunlop racing slicks BTCC control tire

Interior and Safety Interior Stripped with single racing seat Harness Racing harness Fire System Onboard fire suppression system Dash Digital dash and data acquisition system

Performance Estimates Zero to sixty mph Around 4 point 5 seconds Top Speed Approximately 150 mph depending on gearing and track

Notable Results 1994 Best Finish 5th place at Snetterton Overall Points Consistent mid field performance Public Impact High media attention due to unconventional estate body style.

[13thpythagoras]

"Taiwan will open a national cybersecurity center in August to counter threats from quantum computing, AI, and state-sponsored cyberattacks"

"Let's say that, in 10 or 20 ...5-15 years, “Future You” logs into your account, only to see that it's been zeroed out.

Your life savings have been transferred elsewhere.

How could this be? What happened to your password, your 2FA, and the security measures that used to help lock down your account?

A hacker used something called a quantum computer to speed past all those safeguards, right to your money.

Tomorrow's quantum computers are expected to be millions of times faster than the device you're using right now. Whenever these powerful computers take hold, it will be like going from a Ford Model T to the Starship Enterprise.

This spike in speed may undo the security measures that protect every piece of data sent over the web today. And it's not just your bank account that could be at risk. This threat could affect everything from military communications to health records. And it would play out on a vastly larger scale than the headline-grabbing data breaches that have affected countless consumers in recent years.

But here's the good news: This apocalyptic, break-the-internet scenario is preventable—if we act now."

Flash forward 5 years- we didn't "act now" and now it's too late. All internet connected banks will be drained by quantum computing. It won't just be them spying on us. They will drain all bank accounts of digital dollars, and we watch Taiwan like we watch the smartest student in class. This quote / link is from 2020-

https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2020/quantum-computers-will-break-the-internet-but-only-if-we-let-them.html

[baelpenrose]

Project Praetorian 49: Bleeding Edge, Part I

The kids have their second major battle, their first totally unsupported combat engagement. This battle gets a lot rougher. Before it's over, we will see our first praetorian casualty. Imperator has kept a lot of secrets, and a Praetorian will pay the price. Beta-read by @canyouhearthelight

Xavier

Everyone was twitchy as the team grabbed their gear and piled into the dropship. The two newbies looked especially nervous. Mark was already staring at the GPS and the satellite tracking data of where the alien craft was supposedly coming down. Echo and Amyrillis were in the cockpit of the dropship - apparently Amaryllis had been flying the damn thing in simulation for ages, hell, even a few non-combat live flights.

Still, Mark was neurotically looking over the display already, like he was trying to figure out what to do. They’d talked about maneuvers, drilled them, but the newbies didn’t…

“Hey. Xavier. You’re second in command here, right?” Dante asked.

“Yeah?” 

“You guys fought before?”

“Twice. Won both times.”

“Lost anyone?”

“Not yet. Stay close, and do what Mark and I say.” 

Dante nodded. Xavier glanced over to Casey. Mark’s eyes were flicking across the team. Molly looked like she wanted to say something as Kimmy fiddled with her weapon. Jared was busy tightening his rig, checking everyone else’s. 

Micah had stripped the magazine out of his weapon, racked back the bolt, and checked the rounds in the magazine, then reloaded it. He’d done it several times in the last several minutes. Xavier was idly drumming his hand on his leg, wishing that Micah would stop the weapon checks. 

Vergil was checking his scope - he’d been playing with bigger and bigger rifles, with more outrageous recoil compensation. But now he had the most outsized post-market ear protection possible and a truly monstrous muzzle brake, and he was looking at Kimmy. “You nervous?”

“Apparently I can’t die, and you saw how I was scarfing down as we were getting ready.”

Xavier was trying to watch, vaguely annoyed at the way Mark never took a moment to deal with people's issues when he was trying to do tactics, but of course, Curtis had talked to him about this - that wasn’t really Mark’s job. It was his, and to a degree, Casey’s. He was senior NCO, and Casey was moving into being another one. Mark was the officer, Mark’s job was to be actual commander, worried about tactics. 

“If you’re nervous, you don’t have to be. We’ve been practicing for this nonstop. This time we actually have our own, dedicated pilot, our dropship is hardened. Our comms are better. We’re better coordinated. We know what we can do, and we know what they can do. We’ve got support from two platoons of Imperator grunts, and they’re bringing gunships with them.”  He signed as he spoke, and Molly turned and translated for Mia. At some point they’d need to make sure that squad kept together, or find some universal language equivalent…Translating orders in the field would be an ongoing problem…

Mia herself was remarkably calm, and Jonathan was checking the straps on Shiloh’s armor, making sure none of it rubbed, the gentleness of his movements belying the incredible power in his frame. 

Xavier took a breath. They could do this. He tried not to think about the horrors they’d seen last time. “Casey, you have all the ammo you need?”

“More than enough. Everyone should.”

“Yeah. Uh…Mark…any update on?”

“Yeah.” Mark’s face was pale. “There’s a reason this is taking forever. The target of the landing site, this time, is in rural Guatemala. We’re only gonna get lucky with them avoiding major population centers so much longer - and there’s gotta be a reason the early landings are all western hemisphere.”

“On task?”

“Right. I just…want to understand the enemy. Figure them out better.” His eyes took on a far away look. 

Xavier snapped his fingers. “Mark. Tactics. Strategy later.”

Mark nodded. “Right. So it looks like there’s a canyon near where they’re setting down - Semac Champey. The town they’re hitting is called Lanquin, apparently associated with the native Maya people.” 

“On the nose, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, Spain then the aliens. Trajectory says…one sec…Echo, where are they looking like they’re setting down?”

“About two klicks up the canyon from the town, though from the looks of things if we get unlucky they’re gonna be on the walls of the canyon instead of in it.”

“But if they start on the walls they still have to deploy surface-atmo dropships to bring themselves down from the walls, or they have to be willing to rappel down the sides, which pretty much makes them sitting ducks for Jonathan and Vergil - not a pretty prospect.”

Xavier cut in. “Can’t they pretty much rain hate on us if they’re high enough up then rappel down in peace?”

“Not really. If they try they’re relying on being able to see us - and the canopy of trees at the bottom of the canyon is pretty damn thick. One of the advantages of bullets as opposed to plasma bolts - unless we’re running tracers, which we aren’t, they can’t see where the shots are coming from in the daytime.”  Mark started getting nervous. “Echo, we know where in relation to Lanquin the enemy dropship is coming down?”

“Uh…Coming down a bit coastward, actually, like they’re dropping in from orbit on a ballistic arc, it looks like, using thrusters to guide them down. We had that a little from the last dropship, and the signatures are looking scattered.”

“Interesting. Maybe more than one?”

“Maybe but they’re also all coming down three klicks east, and a tiny bit north - some are gonna be inside the canyon, some are gonna be on the ridge. Think an enemy force about half the size of the last one we fought?”

“And against that we have no backup.”

“I think we have like a company of troopers. And they’re gonna arrive late.”

Xavier sucked in his breath. They did have almost twice the Praetorians, but half of them were newbies. He glanced at Amaryllis and Dante - not quite. They were trained, they just weren’t meshed with the rest of the team. Like Echo. With any luck they’d be just as good as she was. Then again, the thing that had made them so devastating wasn’t individual capability, it was their teamwork - yes, they were lethal, but they knew how to work together. Shiloh and Jonathan were far from the most powerful, but they coordinated so well that no one, absolutely no one, beat them in certain exercises for that reason. He couldn’t help but worry that the lack of training time with their newest members was going to be a problem.

Mark was already planning. “Alright. So, I figure we’ll drop and disperse in this section of jungle, about a kilometer outside Lanquin - there’s a ridgeline, here, for Jonathan to set up shop that gives him adequate room to play hell on the walls with the MG if they start crawling down them, and they’re gonna have to walk into the open to try to push the position. Vergil’s gonna set up in the trees and do basically the same thing, but he’s going to hold his fire until he starts seeing Spikes. Myself, Jared, and Molly are going to serve as a mobile reserve, with me and Jared mostly serving to destroy and disable critical enemy deployments while Molly attempts to disable any mobile shielding array. Kimmy, Mia, and Micah are going flanking along the ridge. If things get too hot, they can withdraw. Micah, teleport. Kimmy, do some gymnastic parkour. And Mia…just run. In the meantime, get into position and cut up their attack to the best of your ability. When things get really colorful we’re going to pull back to the chokepoint a little further up the road, and let Casey and Xavier turn everything into crispy bits.”

Xavier had feelings about being kept in reserve to massacre the enemy if they got far enough up, but he saw the sense of the plan. 

Dante spoke first. “Me?”

“You’re doing the same thing as Vergil and Jonathan, but like Vergil, you’re holding fire til we see vehicles, then you’re firing to pop those open. Save your weapon and actually test it. Shiloh, you’re with me, Jared, and Molly. Echo, I want you to go with us too, see if you can’t get a piece of enemy tech and hack their battlenet and get a better idea of what’s happening so we can figure out where to go. Amaryllis. You’ll stay overhead, and come in with rocket pods and chaingun if we need you.”

Everyone let out a whoop. 

Casey looked around alongside Xavier and for a moment their eyes met. Xavier gave her a nod. Mark took her hand and squeezed, and Xavier swapped a look with Shiloh. 

Xavier spoke to everyone. “Alright. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Let’s try to keep everyone alive this time. Any luck we keep all those civvies safe and they find alien corpses and wonder what the hell happened.” He glanced at Molly. “We get lucky, no humans have to die today. We can rout them without them ever touching the village. Send them scrambling back to their dropships.” 

Kimmy

First out of the dropship with her makeshift squad, and holding the carbine in her hands. She was running behind Mia, who was effortlessly running, even as the comms buzzed in their ears.

“Okay. Should be a small group of enemies up ahead - if you can hit it, quick and quiet, before they fire back…”

Kimmy ran ahead, slinging her carbine across her back and pulling her MP5, even as Mia picked up the pace to something obscene. Micah was falling behind them. Kimmy saw something strange - figures, bipedal, moving weird. Like huge frogs. Six of them were even bigger - spiky lizards, moving like apes, with snakey necks. 

She hadn’t seen the aliens, not in person, but she’d seen cadavers, and seen them in film, and she knew what to do. She rushed forward, shoulder rolling into the brush and throwing a grenade ahead of her into their midst. Micah blurred, reappearing with a loud pop and began spraying bullets into their midst from another angle. Kimmy opened fire, and then Mia was in the middle of them. Mia sprinted in, charging back and forth, firing fast, rapid bursts, finally dropping her carbine into the sling, and switched to pistol. When she’d almost cleared, she shot a Spike in both knees before shooting it almost point blank in the head.

Mia reloaded her weapons, and the flanker squad reloaded their magazines before they kept rushing. “Good job, guys.” Kimmy said, quietly, signing to Mia. 

She took a breath, and they kept moving up the ridge. There was a small group of the frog-guys…Croaks, moving up a ways down.  Micah just dropped a grenade down on them - even if he’d taken a few extra seconds to double check where it’d land. A few more shots from the carbine and the last ones went down, tumbling down the ridge, dead.

A band of Spikes were already moving up and she practically cartwheeled behind a boulder as they began spraying plasma in her direction. The armor absorbed the heat, though she winced at the pain - she started shooting back, and managed to drop one of them, though it took far, far too much. They were, unlike the croaks, smart enough to get behind trees and rocks, and then found themselves flanked by Micah, who had taken advantage of the noise to warp himself again - even if he was shaking, he was now at their flank and was steadily picking them off. 

Mia rushed forward, zig-zagging as she came on and taking advantage of her reflexes, even as Kimmy continued to shoot, suddenly taking the Spike’s other flank - and then Kimmy found her rock half melted, and dove away from it, a burn bursting in agony across her back. She scrambled, pain already receding as her body healed, but her armor hung wrong off her body, and Micah rushed over. 

“Shit. Your armor’s ruined. Your jacket’s fucked.”

Kimmy pulled a spare jacket out of her rucksack, and threw it on, then tossed aside the body armor. “No point in body armor, it doesn’t stop the blasts. Maybe the jackets can catch some of the heat. We’ll keep going a little further.” She grabbed an FSR out of the bag and scarfed it, already craving food to make up for what she’d just had to regenerate. The taste was foul, the food was dense, but it didn’t matter. “How are we doing on ammo?”

“Doing well enough, but…Shit!” 

Mia was already sprinting, and Kimmy grabbed a branch and vaulted herself into a clump of brushes. A mixed group, much larger than the previous, was approaching, spotting the destroyed force, and looking around. Kimmy pulled a grenade off her belt, and in only a moment, they all launched their grenades, scattering the attackers - and sprayed the zone down with fire. 

Forcing herself forward, Kimmy realized they’d made a mistake - as they rounded a bend, a huge force of Spikes became visible, and for just an instant, they saw each other. Then she ripped a grenade off her belt, threw it into their midst, and jumped down the slope. As she fell, she grabbed a branch and tumbled, tucked, and flipped. As she felt the adrenaline course through her, she saw a tree come up, and kicked off another overhanging branch with her feet, grabbed another with her hands, flipping round and round to kill her momentum before flinging herself into empty space…

Then she was falling again, then hitting the lower ridgeline and rolling, continuing to run. Micah had teleported down, gasping, and Mia was apparently running the way only she could, hoping to hit a trailhead and rejoin them, even as Kimmy fired frantically up at the enemy, who were now pursuing but now had no real angle to shoot. She fled, backtracking up the trail and hoping to rejoin the line of the team.

“Mark! Get us some backup! Or make sure Vergil is ready to cover us!”

Vergil

His heart caught in his throat when he’d realized that somewhere along the way, the plan had gone wrong for the flankers. He was already seeing Jonathan laugh as the bigger boy scythed down those attempting to climb down the northern side of the canyon, enemy bodies rolling down the sides. Jonathan then shifted his weapon to fire simply down the throat of the canyon as a wave of Croaks began appearing, firing blindly in the general direction of the gunfire. A few plasma bolts had flashed in their direction, but with the cover of the tree canopy to shield their location from sight, the enemy were firing blind - even if now some of the trees were ablaze in ways that he didn’t like. 

He could see, through the scope, and even without it if he concentrated, what looked like a Spike. He didn’t have a great angle on the target, so he took aim and carefully sighted - then fired. He saw the figure drop. 

Then he saw what he’d been dreading. Some large, too-smoothly moving vehicle, with heavy weaponry approaching, attempting to burn through the brush. He pointed it out to Dante, who began powering up his railgun and sighting at the alien tank. He knew the railgun could punch through the armor - Dante had explained that on the dropship. Punching through shields was another question. 

Vergil forced himself not to focus on that when he heard the crackle of screaming through the comms.  “We’re coming up the south ridge! We need cover! Mia’s falling back, she just linked back up with us! Can you see us yet?”

He twisted in his position, even as Jonathan let out another long burst with the MG and scythed down another dozen or so enemy fighters. Vergil saw Kimmy jumping in a way that made his guts twist with worry, then she turned around, and fire off a series of bursts, pursued by enemy troops. Mia was rushing, but she was tired, slightly burned, and Micah was ragged. 

He fired once, twice, and then a third time. Each shot was a dead Spike. He had to reload, and then as he did so, the most spectacular crack he’d ever heard as Dante’s railgun fired. Actinic lightning trailed the tungsten slug as it ripped through the air, stripping electrons off molecules as it went, and slammed into the tank, the force simply too extreme for the shields to deflect and the dumb, straightforward violence of a hypersonic projectile immune to the premature detonation a missile would have suffered. It ripped through the tank’s armor as though it were tissue with such horrific force that the shockwave pulverized muscle and bone of the crew, and Vergil could see a spray of what was definitely biological material leave the exit hole on the far side of the tank. Then the machine’s containment for its power source failed and the tank exploded, sending globules of blue-white starfire into the jungle around it with an even more horrible boom.

His eyes burning, Vergil tore his gaze away slightly faster to escape the pain, even as Jonathan took advantage of the enemy troops now backlit by the burning tank to begin slaughtering them. The enemy on the ridge, shocked by the destruction, fell as Vergil took ten shots in as many seconds, every shot a headshot. Before they could recover, Mia and Kimmy had countercharged, and even as they had gone all the way through their enemy and started to come back around. Micah had teleported into the middle and executed the squad leader. The flankers began picking their way back down the hill. 

Then another dropship - a simpler, surface-atmosphere affair, began pulling from the southern side of the canyon, and Dante’s railgun began crackling as he charged it again.

“Hold that position and do what you can about those dropships. Apparently there’s another force that got dropped in behind us. Shiloh, stay with them, help out the flankers when they get back. Flanking team, disrupt more after you get back and Shiloh looks you over. We’re going to check out another force that got dropped off. Amaryllis, you said there was another point that got enemies dropped in? Yeah, go deal with that, then take Casey and Xavier to the far side of the village, another force got dropped off over there and I want them taking out that choke point. Drop my force off at the south ridge.”

Vergil took another shot, but for a moment, he thought he saw something flickering in the treeline on the ridge, but couldn’t identify it.

He took aim, but before he did, he wrote it off as nerves. 

Then he spotted another Spike who had the decoration he had definitely come to recognize as an officer’s mark and took the shot, sending its brain matter across the dirt.

Amaryllis

The engines whined as she lifted the gunship up and the teams got back in. D&D logic said you weren’t supposed to split the party, but military history said force multipliers were a thing. She thought fantasy rules should apply to this, based on everything, but then again this was definitely sci-fi and even if they got shelved together there were distinctions and everyone said Mark knew what he was doing, so she’d roll with his judgment call. 

She deployed Casey and Xavier where she was so instructed, wondering at the prudence of leaving the two most emotionally stable people in the same spot, then dropping Mark and the rest of that squad on another ridge, where Mark indicated they were going to be flanking a fourth enemy force. 

Then she took off, going to the position where supposedly, the enemy were beginning to unload heavy forces.  

She kept her ears open on the comms, but she was nervous. They were going to be fine. They were going to be fine.

She opened up the targeting and looked down, opening the fire selector for the chainguns. There were a lot of infantry up there and she should probably sweep that as quickly as she could.   The guns, firing a barrage of .50 caliber hate, raked back and forth across the aliens scrambling to deploy, and before they could do anything to get their artillery set up to respond she was firing off her rockets. Then she looked at her counters - she might have had a little too much fun with that. The rockets were unguided, so she could use them a little against shielded targets, but missile use required shields to be down.

Still, that target had pretty well been scraped off, and she was already going wide to see what Mark and his team were up to, trying to recon scan the battlefield. Dante was probably doing fine, he was in a good position. Maybe she should go give that area some support..?

No, she decided. She’d stay high, and pull in with air support when called. That was the responsible thing.