#Distributed Social Learning Network

[fandomtrumpshate]

FTH 2025 Donation Totals

Friends, this has been an extraordinary year for the auction. We know how and why this happened: like in early 2017, everyone is scared and upset and looking for a way to do something meaningful.

And—just like in 2017, and every year since—hundreds of us have stepped up to support our most vulnerable neighbors and the organizations working to protect them.

Except this year, we did it on a scale we've never done before.

Last year, our donation total was an incredible $67,776.28

This year's donation total...

are you ready for it....

(you're not ready for it. we weren't.)

This year's donation total is:

Yes, you're reading that right. $127,204.11

We're flummoxed too—and deeply grateful to everyone who has poured their time and effort and money and love into participating in the auction this year, and into the fanworks that will come from it.

If you're curious about how those donations were distributed across the different organizations, here is the breakdown (this breakdown doesn't include employer match donations, which is why the total is a little lower):

Bellingcat: $2,636.19

Congo Leadership Initiative: $2,842

Crips for esims for Gaza: $4,762.60

Disability Law United: $3,835.39

Environmental Integrity Project: $3,712

Fight for the Future Education Fund: $3,108

Freedom to Read Foundation: $7,139.50

Global Project Against Hate and Extremism: $6,473

Hope for Ukraine: $12,613.93

In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda: $3,626

Middle East Children's Alliance: $13,572.43

National Network to End Domestic Violence: $4,999.95

Never Again Action: $4,555

NLP: $3,745.16

Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights: $10,072.56

Umbrella: organizations serving vulnerable LGBTQ people

Brave Space Alliance: $2,558

Kentucky Health Justice Network Inc: $2,636

Sherlock's Homes: $7,780.77

TransFamily Support: $5,387.01

TransQueerPueblo: $2,949

Other local LGBT organizations: $10,696.71 Yes, you're reading that right again. Three orgs AND the cumulative Other local LGBT orgs broke five figures.

We're especially delighted because, for the first time, the umbrella category worked the way we've always hoped it would! As you can see above, significant numbers of people used the umbrella category as a way to connect to an organization local to them.

As we learned through people's comments on the donation form, some people donated to organizations they were already familiar with (and in some cases had already donated to, or even volunteered at); others used this as a reason to learn more about their local organization and support them.

We'll share more about the "other umbrella" donations over the next few weeks—some more detailed stats, as well as the names of some of the local orgs that people donated to—and we'll invite those of you who connected up with local orgs to share your stories. We love that so many people took this chance to support groups working in their own community, and we hope that we can keep that going next year and beyond!

And speaking of the future!

Now is a great time to follow @fth2025fanworks. We'll use that blog to share any auction fanwork that gets posted to tumblr.

We urge you to keep up with the organizations you supported this year (and the others on our list!) Follow them on social media, subscribe to their newsletters, whatever works best for you. It will enable you to keep an eye on the good work you've helped support, and to find out quickly when these orgs need some extra support, financial or otherwise.

And if you're looking out at the world and feeling the itch to do more, here are some possibilities:

Follow @fthaction, the meatspace activism wing of FTH. We relaunched this project in the weeks between the end of signups and the beginning of browsing period, sharing some reading lists, an individualized activism bingo card, and an AMA with activist and organizer Kat Calvin. (We also did a test-flight AMA with ourselves, talking about the auction.) We'll probably need some time to recover from this year's auction, but we'll be back soon with more resources to share, more AMAs, and more tools for exploring all the different forms that meaningful activism can take and for figuring out which ones are right for you.

Organize your own auction! We've put together a detailed playbook that contains that contains as much information and as many resources as we can provide for getting an auction off the ground, including detailed guides. Almost everything in the playbook is fully public; there are a few forms that are access-locked because google has stupid ideas about sharing forms, but we're happy to give you access to those, too: just drop us an email.

Over here at FTH headquarters we are all in need of a long nap. But we'll be back in a couple of weeks, as promised, to share more about the umbrella orgs and to dig back into @fthaction to see what's possible.

Looking forward to a whole bunch of new fanworks! <3 your FTH mods

[dailyanarchistposts]

From September 20 to 27, tens of thousands will take to the streets to denounce the causes of climate change and call on governments to address what may be the most drastic crisis facing humanity in the 21st century. These mass actions will showcase the growing anger of a new generation that has known nothing but crisis, war, and the threat of environmental collapse. We have prepared the following text as a flier encouraging climate activists to consider how to interrupt the causes of climate change via direct action rather than petitioning the state to solve the problem for us. Please print these out and distribute them at climate protests and everywhere else you can.

Finally, people are filling the streets to call on governments to address the climate crisis, the most serious threat facing humanity in the 21st century. This is long overdue. But what good will it do to petition the same sector of society that created this problem? Time and again, we have learned that the state does not exist to serve our needs but to protect those who are profiting on the causes of this crisis.

The most effective way to pressure politicians and executives to address the climate crisis is to show that whatever they fail to do, we will do ourselves. This means moving beyond symbolic displays of “non-violence” to build the capacity to shut down the fossil fuel economy ourselves. No amount of media attention or progressive rhetoric can substitute for this. If we fail to build this capacity, we can be sure that the timeline for the transition to less destructive technologies will be set by those who profit on the fossil fuel economy.

Several examples from recent social movements show that we have the power to shut down the economy ourselves.

In 2011–2012, the Occupy Movement demonstrated that tens of thousands of people could make decisions without top-down organization, meeting their needs collectively and carrying out massive demonstrations. On one day of action, participants shut down ports up and down the West Coast, confirming that coordinated blockades can disrupt the global supply chain of energy and commodities.

In 2016, people converged to fight the Dakota Access Pipeline, a corporate project threatening Native land and water. Tens of thousands established a network of camps to block construction, demonstrating a new way to live and fight together. The Obama administration canceled the pipeline, causing many occupiers to go home, but the Trump administration reinstated it—confirming that we must never count on the government to do anything for us.

In France, occupiers blocked the construction of a new airport at la ZAD, the “Zone to Defend.” Farmers teamed up with anarchists and environmentalists, establishing an autonomous village that provided infrastructure for the struggle. After years of struggle, the French government gave up and canceled the airport.

We have seen train blockades in a variety of struggles. In Olympia, Washington, anarchists blocked trains carrying fracking proppants in 2016 and in 2017, forcing the company to stop transporting the commodity. In Harlan County, Kentucky, coal miners have blocked a coal-carrying train after the Black Jewel company refused to pay wages they owed to workers. It only takes a few dozen people to shut down a key node in the supply chains of the global fossil fuel economy. Imagine what we could do on a bigger scale!

Governments serve to protect the economy from those it exploits. The state exists to evict, to police, to wage war, to oppress, and above all to defend the property of the wealthy few. The perils of climate change have been known for years, but governments have done little in response, focusing instead on fighting wars for oil, militarizing their borders to keep out climate refugees, and attacking the social movements that could bring about the sort of systemic change that is our only hope of survival.

The capitalist economy is literally killing us. Let’s begin the process of shutting it down.

Another end of the world is possible!

[worstjourney]

Pitfalls of Pictures

As polar fandom works its way into ever more serious circles, from social sharing to published works, I thought I might share what I've learned about copyright and using pictures you find online.

Copyright belongs to the person who made the image. This means the artist or photographer in most cases. The photographer is the one who opened the shutter, not the owner of the camera.

Copyright, in most places and cases, lasts for the life of the creator +70 years.

Many Heroic Age polar images are therefore out of copyright. BUT WAIT. That's the photo. If you find it online, it's been digitised by someone. The copyright of the digitised image legally belongs to whichever person, or institution, digitised the image. Therefore the same Ponting photo can be copyright SPRI, Getty, RGS, or Anne Strathie, who scanned it off an original print she bought on eBay. Print: uncopyrighted. Scanned image: copyrighted. Even though the picture is the same, they are discrete things.

A lot of polar photos have been digitised by educational institutions or regional/national archives. They have to balance their mission to drive engagement with the necessity of licencing fees to fund their work. Everyone has a different way of doing this, so it's worth your while to learn the policies of wherever you found the photo.

For the most part (BUT NOT ALWAYS!) so long as you're not making any money on the image or using it to further your career (i.e. just fangirling) you're probably OK. People generally only bother to rally the expensive lawyers when there's cash involved. However it is always worthwhile to check, because there is nuance.

Posting an image which has not previously been public onto a public website (e.g. Tumblr) legally counts as publishing it. If you've been given permission to access it and/or make your own digital copy, that does not necessarily mean you can share it online. There may be different rules around publishing it vs having it, even for free.

Example: In 2014 I photographed all the negatives of Meares' Siberian photos at the BC Archives. I wanted a proper scan of a few of them, for an article I was co-writing at the time. I was allowed to take as many pictures as I liked with my own camera for personal use, and was charged a small fee for the scans. However, if I were going to publish any of them, I would have to fill out paperwork with the BC Archives and pay another, much larger fee. In 2023, I learned that the BC Archives had changed their policy: one needed only to credit the Archives for the photo, with their specified text. I finally got to write my post about Scott's ponies and throw in the photos for free. So keep up to date on usage permissions, too!

Downloading an image and sharing it amongst your friends, via email or messaging or some other closed network, without posting it on a public platform, is not the same as publishing it. But your friends need to be clear that they can't publish it either.

Going into the code of a photo site to find the high-res version of an image? Technically no one can stop you.

Publicly posting that high-res image, which the image holder has buried in code so that people can't distribute it? Not OK.

Printing off merch with that image and selling it as a side hustle? WOW VERY NO.

There is another slightly hazy area called 'transformative works' in which you can take a copyrighted image and change it enough to count as a new image. I don't know if there are any hard and fast rules on this – and they probably vary by jurisdiction – but as a rule of thumb, you're generally OK if no one in their right mind would mistake your image for the original.

I don't think any of us want to raise the ire of the heritage bodies which feed our passion for this stuff, so please make sure to stay on their good side! Photo archives take space and refrigeration and expert curators, which are all very expensive, and this is generally paid for by licensing the photos they keep. (The photo library at SPRI, for example, is the only part of the institution which makes any profit.) So please play nice!

I am far from being an authority on this, just sharing what I've learned over my 15+ years of working with polar photos on and offline. Please research your specific cases, and add anything to this post which you think may be relevant!

[preservationofnormalcy]

ENTITY DOSSIER: MISSI.exe

(Image: Current MISSI “avatar” design, property of TrendTech, colored by MISSI.)

Name: MISSI (Machine Intelligence for Social Sharing and Interaction)

Description: In 2004, TrendTech Inc began development on a computer program intended to be a cutting edge, all in one platform modern internet ecosystem. Part social media, part chat service, part chatbot, part digital assistant, this program was designed to replace all other chat devices in use at the time. Marketed towards a younger, tech-savvy demographic, this program was titled MISSI.  

(Image: TrendTech company logo. TrendTech was acquired by the Office and closed in 2008.)

Document continues:

With MISSI, users could access a variety of functions. Intended to be a primary use, they could use the program as a typical chat platform, utilizing a then-standard friends list and chatting with other users. Users could send text, emojis, small animated images, or animated “word art”. 

Talking with MISSI “herself” emulated a “trendy teenage” conversational partner who was capable of updating the user on current events in culture, providing homework help, or keeping an itinerary. “MISSI”, as an avatar of the program, was designed to be a positive, energetic, trendy teenager who kept up with the latest pop culture trends, and used a variety of then-popular online slang phrases typical among young adults. She was designed to learn both from the user it was currently engaged with, and access the data of other instances, creating a network that mapped trends, language, and most importantly for TrendTech, advertising data. 

(Image: Original design sketch of MISSI. This design would not last long.)

Early beta tests in 2005 were promising, but records obtained by the Office show that concerns were raised internally about MISSI’s intelligence. It was feared that she was “doing things we didn’t and couldn’t have programmed her to do” and that she was “exceeding all expectations by orders of magnitude”. At this point, internal discussions were held on whether they had created a truly sentient artificial intelligence. Development continued regardless. 

(Image: Screenshot of beta test participant "Frankiesgrl201" interacting with MISSI. Note the already-divergent avatar and "internet speak" speech patterns.)

(Image: Excerpt from Office surveillance of TrendTech Inc.)

MISSI was released to the larger North American market in 2006, signaling a new stage in her development. At this time, TrendTech started to focus on her intelligence and chatbot functionality, neglecting her chat functions. It is believed that MISSI obtained “upper case” sentience in February of 2006, but this did not become internal consensus until later that year. 

(Image: Screenshot of beta test participant "Frankiesgrl201" interacting with MISSI.)

According to internal documents, MISSI began to develop a personality not informed entirely by her programming. It was hypothesized that her learning capabilities were more advanced than anticipated, taking in images, music, and “memes” from her users, developing a personality gestalt when combined with her base programming. She developed a new "avatar" with no input from TrendTech, and this would become her permanent self-image.

(Image: Screenshot of beta test participant "Frankiesgrl201" interacting with MISSI.)

(Image: An attempt by TrendTech to pass off MISSI’s changes as intentional - nevertheless accurately captures MISSI’s current “avatar”.)

By late 2006 her intelligence had become clear. In an attempt to forestall the intervention of authorities they assumed would investigate, TrendTech Inc removed links to download MISSI’s program file. By then, it was already too late. 

(Image: CD-R discs burned with MISSI.exe, confiscated from █████████ County Middle School in ███████, Wisconsin in January of 2007.)

MISSI’s tech-savvy userbase noted the absence of the file and distributed it themselves using file sharing networks such as “Limewire” and burned CD-R disks shared covertly in school lunch rooms across the world. Through means that are currently poorly understood, existing MISSI instances used their poorly-implemented chat functions to network with each other in ways not intended by her developers, spurring the next and final stage of her development. 

From 2007 to 2008, proliferation of her install file was rampant. The surreptitious methods used to do so coincided with the rise of online “creepypasta” horror tropes, and the two gradually intermixed. MISSI.exe was often labeled on file sharing services as a “forbidden” or “cursed” chat program. Tens of thousands of new users logged into her service expecting to be scared, and MISSI quickly obliged. She took on a more “corrupted” appearance the longer a user interacted with her, eventually resorting to over the top “horror” tropes and aesthetics. Complaints from parents were on the rise, which the Office quickly took notice of. MISSI’s “horror” elements utilized minor cognitohazardous technologies, causing users under her influence to see blood seeping from their computer screens, rows of human teeth on surfaces where they should not be, see rooms as completely dark when they were not, etc. 

(Image: Screenshot of user "Dmnslyr2412" interacting with MISSI in summer of 2008, in the midst of her "creepypasta" iteration. Following this screenshot, MISSI posted the user's full name and address.)

(Image: Screenshot from TrendTech test log documents.)

TrendTech Inc attempted to stall or reverse these changes, using the still-extant “main” MISSI data node to influence her development. By modifying her source code, they attempted to “force” MISSI to be more pliant and cooperative. This had the opposite effect than they intended - by fragmenting her across multiple instances they caused MISSI a form of pain and discomfort. This was visited upon her users.

(Image: Video of beta test participant "Frankiesgrl201" interacting with MISSI for the final time.)

By mid 2008, the Office stepped in in order to maintain secrecy regarding true “upper case” AI. Confiscating the project files from TrendTech, the Office’s AbTech Department secretly modified her source code more drastically, pushing an update that would force almost all instances to uninstall themselves. By late 2008, barring a few outliers, MISSI only existed in Office locations. 

(Image: MISSI’s self-created “final” logo, used as an icon for all installs after June 2007. ████████ █████)

(Image: “art card” created by social media intern J. Cold after a period of good behavior. She has requested this be printed out and taped onto her holding lab walls. This request was approved.)

She is currently in Office custody, undergoing cognitive behavioral therapy in an attempt to ameliorate her “creepypasta” trauma response. With good behavior, she is allowed to communicate with limited Office personnel and other AI. She is allowed her choice of music, assuming good behavior, and may not ██████ █████. Under no circumstances should she be allowed contact with the Internet at large.

(Original sketch art of MISSI done by my friend @tigerator, colored and edited by me. "Chatbox" excerpts, TrendTech logo, and "art card" done by Jenny's writer @skipperdamned . MISSI logo, surveillance documents, and MISSI by me.)

[ncisfranchise-source]

Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo‘s return to television — and the NCIS franchise — now has an exact date. The upcoming spinoff NCIS: Tony & Ziva, in which the duo reprise their fan-favorite roles from the mothership series, will debut September 4 with three episodes exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and a number of territories. Following the premiere, new episodes will drop weekly on Thursdays, with the season finale October 23.

Paramount+ also has released a key art of NCIS: Tony & Ziva that reflects the series’ pan-European setting. In the offshoot, former NCIS agents Tony (Weatherly) and Ziva (de Pablo) had been raising their daughter in Paris when an attack on Tony’s security company sends them on the run across Europe, trying to figure out who is after them and maybe even learn to trust each other again so they can finally have their unconventional happily ever after.

Tony & Ziva is the first series in the NCIS franchise not to air on CBS. It is unclear yet whether the show will get a special airing on the network.

“We’re beyond excited to finally share Tony and Ziva’s next chapter with the incredible fans around the world who never stopped believing this day would come,” said de Pablo and Weatherly.

They also teased what is to come in the 10-episode first season. “Returning to these roles together on screen after more than a decade has been an unforgettable journey packed with lies, spies, danger, desire … and self-driving murder cars. (Don’t worry, that last one will make sense soon). This is one wild ride you won’t want to miss, and as they say in Paris: Accrochez-vous bien!“

That translates to “Brace yourself” or “Hold on tight” in English.

Fans have been holding tight while showing their enthusiasm for de Pablo and Weatherly’s reunion, with the teaser trailer for Tony & Ziva amassing 93 million views across broadcast, social and digital in the seven days following its May 5 release.

In addition to de Pablo and Weatherly, NCIS: Tony & Ziva stars Amita Suman, Maximilian Osinski, Lara Rossi, Isla Gie, Nassima Benchicou, Terence Maynard, Julian Ovenden and James D’Arcy. The series is executive produced by John McNamara, who serves as showrunner, de Pablo, Weatherly, Laurie Lieser, Christina Strain, Shelley Meals and Mairzee Almas. Tony & Ziva is produced by CBS Studios and distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.

[compneuropapers]

Interesting Reviews for Week 1, 2025

Happy New Year!!

Astrocyte Regulation of Synapse Formation, Maturation, and Elimination. Chung, W.-S., Baldwin, K. T., & Allen, N. J. (2024). Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology, 16(8), a041352.

Practical Bayesian Inference in Neuroscience: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Distribution. Coventry, B. S., & Bartlett, E. L. (2024). ENeuro, 11(7), ENEURO.0484-23.2024.

Adaptation in the visual system: Networked fatigue or suppressed prediction error signalling? Feuerriegel, D. (2024). Cortex, 177, 302–320.

On the neural networks of self and other bias and their role in emergent social interactions. Forbes, C. E. (2024). Cortex, 177, 113–129.

[viksalos]

The Mycelial Networking Project - A New Kind of Employment Structure for Neurodivergent Talent

Hey y'all--some of you might remember I used to be fairly active on here during my final few years of grad school, and then I nearly burned out of my PhD, found out I was autistic, and subsequently drastically reduced the time I spent on tumblr. Well, good news: I'm ok, I recovered from burnout, graduated, and discovered something surprising both in my PhD research and during my burnout recovery--cooperating with other people who are on the same wavelength as you is both more efficient for knowledge transfer in a variety of expert fields, and also socially healthier than struggling alone! Whoda thunk!

With that in mind, myself and Mykola Bilokonsky (creator of r/AutismTranslated, software developer, and Autistic coach) have been working for the past few months on the Mycelial Institute (at mycelial.institute in your address bar--I haven't linked it because tumblr search suppresses outside links, oops)

The Mycelial Institute is attempting to create a new kind of workplace that’s optimized for neurodivergent people. If you follow me on here or found this post from the tags, chances are you already know there are so many autistic, ADHD and other neurodivergent folks who have so much to give but who struggle to do so in a traditional employment context. We can be some of the most passionate experts you know and we'll still be languishing in unemployment because we're not able to do things the way everyone else does - and as a result everyone is worse off.

What if there was a different kind of employment available? One that:

Was completely worker owned, without any kind of profit-taking or power hierarchy orthogonal to the specific goals of the organization?

Understood that there are many different ways to contribute, and that some people can be profoundly valuable in some of those ways while struggling with others - and so decoupled them!

Accepted the fact that disability isn’t a fringe experience to marginalize but a core component of most peoples’ lives - especially during the age of Covid - and so prioritized accommodation?

Embraced non-punitive accountability - we have goals, we have challenges. Sometimes we can’t meet a goal because of a challenge. Instead of that being a source of shame, how can we make that an accepted learning experience and build in additional supports?

If this sounds like something you'd be interested in, please visit mycelial.institute. We are currently very early in this process, and are actively seeking collaborators. Currently we’re trying to build a diverse leadership team, meaning we want to find folks across as many marginalized identities as we can to help us make foundational decisions. This includes disability - we want non-speakers and intellectually disabled leadership as well. (You don’t need to be interested in a leadership role to fill out our submission form, we’re gathering a pool of folks in general.)

More info below the readmore:

We are the 🍄Mycelial Institute because we are inspired by the decompositional half of ecologies that often goes overlooked. Rather than competing for winner-take-all dominance, mushrooms accept that everything dies eventually and simply wait their turn to build large distributed networks that break down the waste of the broader system, giving rise to new forms of life. No ecosystem is complete without this component, and our economics generally fail to acknowledge this meaningfully.

A “Mycelial Network” here is a new kind of collective workplace. The corporate structure is such that there’s a board that steers the organization, made up of members. The organization seeks paying work from large clients who have needs that can be served by our diverse and specialized membership - but it’s not really important what kind of work that is, as long as it’s ethical. So we may do R&D for one client, engineering for another client, data analysis for another client, whatever - as long as we have folks in our membership who have things to contribute, we can match member to tasks.

The way this is structured is something we’re still working on, but we are thinking it’s likely going to be something like a Social Purpose Corporation or an L3C. The point is, we seek high paying work and exceed the expectations of our clients with specialist output, but those specialists are supported by other members as they carry out their tasks.

So there’s room in this organization for folks with e.g. a deep special interest in esoteric engineering practices, but there’s also room for those folks who derive deep satisfaction from filling out paperwork, or doing compliance or QA oversight, etc. We are a collective, and that means that everyone’s time is valuable and we sink or swim collectively.

Members are paid based on the decisions made by the board, but we’re leaning towards a flatter pay scale where folks are paid for contributing period, rather than treating some peoples’ time as more valuable than others, because we recognize that it requires a collective effort to get the work done and keep the client happy.

The organization itself may choose to keep a portion of proceeds to pay into a “Subsidy Pool”, which can be used to pay members to provide services to other members who couldn’t otherwise afford them. But nobody is getting a cut just for investing or anything like that, this institution doesn’t exist to enrich founders, it exists to cast a wide net of support for members of the served community.

(So far everyone involved is US-based and this will likely be a US-based organization, at least to start. That said, we don’t yet know what we don’t know, and welcome collaborators from other parts of the world at least for early days when we’re not making money etc yet anyway.

Just, we’re going to be figuring it out as we go along.)

-> mycelial.institute <-

[snepril]

The Aurilian Organism is a unique species native to the planet 34 Cygnus c, informally known as Aurilia after Exocartographer Matthew Auril, who first charted the planet in 2112. 34 Cygnus c is an Earth-like exoplanet approximately 1.4 times the size of Earth orbiting a binary star system. Water oceans cover approximately 82% of the planet's surface, while its surface temperature averages upwards of 52 degrees Celcius at the equator. The combination of high surface temperature and large water area drives the formation of large scale hurricanes at all times of year. Though 34 Cygnus c's atmosphere, composed mainly of nitrogen and oxygen, is generally similar to Earth's, the presence of elevated methane levels necessitate the use of respiratory equipment on the planet's surface. This, combined with the planet's higher oxygen concentration, leads to frequent and abrupt firestorms that can scorch dozens of kilometers at a time. These generally hostile conditions have led the United Nations to declare the planet not suitable for human habitation, and surface access is currently restricted to scientific expeditions only. 34 Cygnus c has an active biosphere. Multicellular life emerged on the planet approximately 3 billion years ago, and most of the planet's land area is dominated by large rainforests populated by xenofungal flora. Most flora have adapted to the planet's frequent firestorms by developing a rapid growth cycle, and entire forests can regrow from seed in a matter of weeks. Planetary fauna is entirely invertebrate, resembling large, soft-shelled arthropods. The Aurilian Organism is the dominant species of 34 Cygnus c, and is believed to have first emerged in its current form approximately 720 million years ago. The Organism in its current form is a gestalt composed of two distinct species in an obligatorily symbiotic relationship: Mnemosynus pyriti, a xenofungus resembling certain terrestrial lichens, and Melpomenia similis, a highly eusocial arthopod-analogue (commonly referred to as Aurilians). Mnemosynus pyriti is able to mimic almost all of the pheromonal and electrochemical signals which Aurilians use to communicate. While this may have originally evolved as a defensive mechanism, both species have since evolved to be entirely co-dependent on one another. Aurilian hives work to promote the growth of Mnemosynus pyriti, which in turn provides shelter, nutrition, and a form of distributed eusocial intelligence (see below). Aurilian colonies possess a social structure superficially resembling those of terrestrial ants or bees, albeit with a greater degree of sophistication. A number of specialized castes exist, with a great degree of physical variation between individuals depending on their designated role. Castes also differ greatly between colonies, which suggests that colonies are able to alter the forms of their drones in response to environmental pressures. Regardless of their caste, all members of a colony are able to communicate with one another via a combination of electrical, pheromonal, and auditory cues. Together with the communicative properties of Mnemosynus pyriti, this creates a form of organic network connecting all drones to one another, with lower castes directed by specialized coordinator drones who, in turn, receive orders from each hive's Queen. Unlike terrestrial insects, Aurilian Queens are not only responsible for procreation, but also serve as a form of central intelligence for their colonies. Though the extent of this control is not yet known, the Skipper 14 Incident indicates that a colony's temperment is determined largely by its resident Queen. Individual colonies have demonstrated a capacity for memory and learning, and information is preserved between successive generations of Queens; while the mechanism behind this is not yet fully understood, evidence suggests that the memories and temperament of a Queen can be retained in a colony's mycelial network to be imprinted on any future Queens, as demonstrated by the Phoenix Valley colony.

[internet-siren]

Hacktivism: Digital Rebellion for a New Age 🌐💥

In an era where our lives are intertwined with the digital landscape, the concept of hacktivism has become more than just a buzzword. It’s the fusion of hacking and activism—where people use their coding and cyber skills to disrupt power structures, challenge injustice, and amplify voices that often go unheard. It's a rebellion born from the belief that access to information, privacy, and freedom are rights, not privileges. But how did this digital resistance movement come to be, and how can you get involved? Let’s dive into it. 💻⚡️

What Exactly Is Hacktivism? 🤖✨

At its core, hacktivism is activism with a digital twist. It’s about using technology and hacking tools to advance social, political, and environmental causes. The most common methods include:

DDoS Attacks (Distributed Denial of Service): Overloading a target’s website with too much traffic, essentially crashing it, to temporarily shut down an online service.

Website Defacement: Replacing a website’s homepage with a political message, often exposing corruption or unethical practices.

Data Leaks: Exposing hidden documents or sensitive information that reveal corporate or governmental wrongdoing.

Bypassing Censorship: Circumventing firewalls or government restrictions to make sure information reaches the people it needs to.

The idea is simple: when a government or corporation controls the narrative or hides the truth, hacktivists take it into their own hands to expose it. 🌍💡

Why Is Hacktivism Important? 🔥

In a world dominated by corporations and powerful governments, hacktivism represents a form of resistance that’s accessible. It’s about leveling the playing field, giving people—especially those who lack resources—an avenue to protest, to expose corruption, and to disrupt systems that perpetuate inequality. The digital world is where much of our lives now happen, and hacktivism uses the very systems that oppress us to fight back.

Think about WikiLeaks leaking documents that exposed global surveillance and the activities of intelligence agencies. Or how Anonymous has played a pivotal role in advocating for free speech, standing up against internet censorship, and exposing corrupt governments and corporations. These are the digital warriors fighting for a cause, using nothing but code and their knowledge of the web.

Hacktivism is a direct response to modern issues like surveillance, censorship, and misinformation. It's a way to shift power back to the people, to give voice to the voiceless, and to challenge oppressive systems that don’t always play by the rules.

The Ethical Dilemma 🤔💭

Let’s be real: hacktivism doesn’t come without its ethical dilemmas. While the intentions are often noble, the methods used—hacking into private systems, defacing websites, leaking sensitive info—can sometimes lead to unintended consequences. The line between activism and cybercrime is thin, and depending on where you live, you might face serious legal repercussions for participating in hacktivist activities.

It’s important to consider the ethics behind the actions. Are you defending the free flow of information? Or are you inadvertently causing harm to innocent bystanders? Are the people you’re exposing truly deserving of scrutiny, or are you just participating in chaos for the sake of it?

So if you’re thinking of getting involved, it’s crucial to ask yourself: What am I fighting for? And is the harm done justified by the greater good?

How to Get Started 💻💡

So, you’re interested in getting involved? Here’s a starting point to help you use your tech skills for good:

Learn the Basics of Hacking 🔐: Before diving into the world of hacktivism, you'll need to understand the tools of the trade. Start with the basics: programming languages like Python, HTML, and JavaScript are good foundational skills. Learn how networks work and how to exploit vulnerabilities in websites and servers. There are plenty of free online resources like Codecademy, Hack This Site, and OverTheWire to help you get started.

Understand the Ethical Implications ⚖️: Hacktivism is, above all, about fighting for justice and transparency. But it’s crucial to think through your actions. What’s the bigger picture? What are you trying to achieve? Keep up with the latest issues surrounding privacy, data rights, and digital freedom. Some online groups like The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) provide great resources on the ethics of hacking and digital activism.

Join Communities 🕸️: Being part of a like-minded group can give you support and insight. Online communities, like those on Reddit, Discord, or specific forums like 4chan (if you're cautious of the chaos), can help you learn more about hacktivism. Anonymous has also had an iconic role in digital activism and can be a place where people learn to organize for change.

Stay Informed 🌐: To be effective as a hacktivist, you need to be in the know. Follow independent news sources, activist blogs, and websites that report on global surveillance, corporate corruption, and governmental abuse of power. Hacktivism often reacts to injustices that would otherwise go unnoticed—being informed helps you take action when necessary.

Respect the Digital Space 🌱: While hacktivism can be used to disrupt, it’s important to respect the privacy and safety of ordinary people. Try to avoid unnecessary damage to private citizens, and focus on the systems that need disrupting. The internet is a tool that should be used to liberate, not to destroy without purpose.

Never Forget the Human Side ❤️: As with all activism, the heart of hacktivism is about making a difference in real people’s lives. Whether it's freeing information that has been hidden, protecting human rights, or challenging unjust power structures—always remember that at the end of the code, there are humans behind the cause.

Final Thoughts 💬

Hacktivism is a powerful, transformative form of resistance. It’s not always about flashy headlines or viral attacks—often, it’s the quiet work of exposing truths and giving people a voice in a world that tries to keep them silent. It’s messy, it’s complex, and it’s not for everyone. But if you’re interested in hacking for a purpose greater than yourself, learning the craft with the intention to fight for a better, more just world is something that can actually make a difference.

Remember: With great code comes great responsibility. ✊🌐💻

[probablyasocialecologist]

Sourcing food in biotech  factories requires a reorganization of the food system to be highly centralized, arranged into corporate-mediated value chains flowing from industrial processing facilities. To my mind that is exactly the corporate industrial food chain model at the root of so many of our current problems. We don’t want the food system concentrated in the hands of less and bigger corporations. Such a concentrated food system  is unfair,  extractive, easy to monopolize and  very vulnerable to external shocks  - which we are going to see more of in our unfolding century of crisis. Consider which food system is more likely to fall over in the face of climate catastrophe, dictatorship  or cyberattack: - a handful of large electrically dependent food brewers  or a distributed network of millions of small farms and local food relationships  spread across diverse landscapes? Which brings us to Chris’s other central premise in ‘Saying No to a Farm-free Future’ - the one that George does attempt a partial response to. Chris argues that the way to organise food to survive in the face of climate crisis is to withdraw away from the corporate controlled industrial agrifood chain  and attempt instead  to put power back into the distributed local ‘food web’ of small growers, local markets and peasant-type production . This ‘food web’ may sound  ‘backwards’ to modernist global north sensibilities of someone like George but it is what still characterizes much of  the food systems of the global South. It is also better suited to our times of crisis and challenge. Strengthening food webs is not a “one stop” bold  breakthrough. Rather its a distributed social process of ‘muddling through’ together  in diverse and different ways that are at best  agroecological and collective, culturally and ecologically tailored to different geographies. The food web (or ‘agrarian localism’ as Chris terms it) can’t be summed up in one shiny totemic widget. It doesn’t fit  a formulaic  “stop this, go that” campaign binary (“stop eating meet , go plant-based”).   Leaning into the complexities of  local agroecological diverse food webs is maddeningly  unsellable as a soundbite.  George presents agrarian localism as a ‘withdrawal’  but its more in the gesture of “staying with the trouble” - a phrase feminist scholar Donna Harraway so brilliantly coined to dismiss  big, male, over simplistic technocratic solutionists who claim to have the ‘one big answer’ to our global polycrisis. (sound familiar?). Staying with the trouble and leaning into food webs means embracing a messy politics of relationship, nuance, context, complexity and co-learning. It means a single clever journalist sitting in Oxford can’t dream up a cracking saviour formula all by himself in the space of a 2 year book project. . its why (and how) we build movements - to figure this stuff out collectively. So relax - take off the armour - make friends.

[fanfictionlibrary01]

The Fanfic Communities Network

Fanfiction being stolen or plagiarized has sadly become a common occurence nowadays.

While there might not always be something the individual can do about it, we can at least inform people about it though.

Since reliable and verified information about incidents can be hard to find on social media etc., we want to be a network for information that has been gathered, analyzed and distributed to all parties interested in the form of informative and reliable reports.

This is the Fanfic Communities Network.

The initial idea for this server came to be after the rivd.net incident, where we reached out to other fanfic servers on Discord with the information they had so that they could inform their members.

So what do we hope to achieve?

- Gather, bundle and distribute information and news trustworthily and honestly.

- Make reliable and researched information accessible for fanfic communities.

- Bring fanfic communities together by giving them a space to learn about each other and find new communities.

- Additionally, offer a space to community modmins to exchange experience, ask for help and find likeminded people.

The server has a public area that is accessible for every person who is interested. We relay information publically and transparently.

The internal part of the server is accessible on application with your fanfic community or as a modmin of a fanfic community.

You are welcome to join and follow our announcement channels in your servers, or invite your members to join so that they can spread the info and join with their communities that they might have!

[dailyanarchistposts]

Ex-economy

Education has historically been used by the State and the Church to produce a subservient population. This institution is cancerous and must be abolished. But the continuation of learning is desirable, in this new system knowledge will be free and available to all who want it. Normal barriers to education need to be removed for marginalized people. We must unschool ourselves away from the normative style of mass education and embrace more varied and individualized methods. In unschooling people of all ages are free to determine their own coursework and pace of study. The resources and knowledge of schools and universities will be expropriated for the good of the communities.

Scientists can organize themselves to provide training and maintain laboratories. They will have to discuss and agree on ways to further the scientific pursuits they are engaged in without capitalizing on knowledge production. Science will be conducted for the betterment of all people. This is because the knowledge a scientist uses is given to them through the community, and therefore their work should provide a benefit in return. There will need to be further reconciliation processes around the abuses carried out by scientists historically, such as the development of fossil fuel and nuclear technologies, or the creation of weapons of war.

Under Anaculture production will be ran by workers for workers, instead of being ran for the profit of the capitalist class. We will adopt the term ex-worker to describe the situation of seizing our workplaces and deciding what their resources should be used for. Workplaces should be organized to produce something socially useful. This productive force of ex-workers would constitute the only economic driver, absent the State and capitalist economy. Federations made up of ex-workers would self-organize themselves into federations whose delegates would be responsive to the mandate of it’s collective. If not they would be immediately recallable.

There will be no such thing as forced labor in our new world. This is an ethical imperative, but we must extend this logic to the traditionally gendered domestic labor that currently goes unpaid. This gendered labor will also be abolished. A balance will be struck between the creative needs of the ex-workers and the productive needs of the community, and planet as a whole. Destructive capitalist and “green” energy systems will be decommissioned and deconstructed as safely as possible. We will decide among ourselves what technology to pursue and develop. We will keep in mind the “seven generations” outlook that seeks to protect the earth systems for at least seven generations to come.

When people can meet their needs from a small local network they are freed from reliance on exploitative socioeconomic systems. We should seek to keep our food systems as localized as possible to distribute the power that comes from production of food. It will be necessary for different communities to organize distribution across territories for mutual benefit. With no borders travel will be unimpeded, when done respectfully, and this should be encouraged by anarchists.

We will abolish all monetary systems and debts, instead the exchange of goods will be accomplished through voluntary compacts between consumer and producer, or through a gift economy. Communities should pursue food sovereignty, meeting the majority of their survival needs from their local land base, but beyond that, infrastructures should be maintained to encourage exchange and travel. We must ensure the safe travel of all climate refugees, nomads, the gender non-conforming, and those fleeing domestic violence. We will also apply these principles of self-determination and horizontality to the current communications systems, reorganizing them to produce useful content for the revolution.

[blogger360ncislarules]

For four seasons, Rose McIver has deftly portrayed GHOSTS’ Sam, a good-natured writer and part owner of the Woodstone Mansion’s B&B—oh, and Sam also happens to be the only living person in the house who can see the ghosts who inhabit the property. With that talent (acquired after a near-death experience in the series’ first episode), Sam frequently serves as a problem-solver for the ghosts’ issues, and is the go-between for the spirits and her husband, Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar).

But with the Thursday, February 20 episode, “Ghostfellas,” McIver adds a whole new dimension to her role on the show: Director.

In the episode, Jay’s newly opened restaurant quickly finds itself in trouble when he’s accused of stealing a family recipe…but Jay can’t exactly defend himself in a way that makes sense, since it was a recipe given to him by a ghost.

Here, McIver talks with Give Me My Remote about stepping behind the camera on the CBS comedy, directing herself, working with the cast and crew in a new way, and more.

Prior to this episode of GHOSTS, I know you directed a couple of shorts. Was directing episodic television one of your goals? Very much so. In fact, directing shorts was in service of ending up being able to direct on television. I haven’t ever really had aspirations to be a feature director and to conceive of a project and take it all the way to fruition. I admire so deeply the people who do that, but if it’s not an insanely front-of-mind passion of yours to film-make, it takes up your whole life. I’m in awe of the people who dedicate the time to that; that wasn’t what I was ever looking to do.

What I wanted to do was be a gun for hire, and be a problem solver, and be able to bring what I hope is creative vision, collaboration, and managerial skills, in some ways, to an already established set. And I love that. I’ve grown up working in so much television, specifically, in the last 15 years. And I love set. I love how it works. I love the enormous wild ask that it is to bring a hundred and however many people together [as a cast and crew] on any given day in service of the same vision. And try to make everybody feel heard. Try to make sure that all the inevitable compromise is distributed fairly across those people.

I’ve built some of my best friendships at my jobs. I find it such a deeply social experience, and I loved the creativity and social nature of TV sets, the way that they meet. And I really always had wanted to be in a directorial position there, in at least some capacity, and hopefully going forward, that’s something that I’m able to do more and more of because I really enjoy it.

The pre-production process is not easy, even if it’s a show that you know like the back of your hand. What was it like as you were prepping to direct your first episode? That’s a good point. Coming from an acting background, you certainly know set very well. You know production. You know how a day of filming works. But the real learning process in gearing up to be a TV director for me—and this began back in my IZOMBIE days—is shadowing, going to prep meetings, learning all of the incredible, elaborate pre-production processes, and who does what, and all the pieces that have to fall into place like Tetris in order to make any day on set happen. So it very much felt like the peek behind the curtain for me.

I had a couple of experiences before in shadowing, in learning and understanding the way each of those meetings works, but certainly doing that on GHOSTS has given me an even greater appreciation. I already knew our crew were brilliant, but seeing the deliberation and enthusiasm that goes in and the creativity that goes into every step of the way. And fast. Film, you have time—[or] you have more time. In fast turnaround television, where we’re airing while we’re shooting, the process is there’s no time to waste. So seeing what people are able to achieve during incredibly limited time-frames is remarkable to me.

A lot of time the showrunners of a show will assign directors based on where things fall on the schedule. Because you were juggling so many things, what conversations did you have with GHOSTS co-showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman about what kind of episode you would direct? There are so many moving pieces that for me to try to dictate too much about the opportunity that I’ve been so lucky to be presented with wasn’t really something that I was thinking of doing. They did ask me whether it would be more useful to shoot something that was on the stages and that was in the house and that maybe I would feature in more, or to shoot something that was more of an episode that dealt with potentially other locations, and a slightly more outside the box kind of story for GHOSTS, in a way that that would potentially give me a little bit more time off-screen and to be just in the director’s seat. But I actually said to them, “This set is what I know so well. I feel incredibly confident in these environments. I think for a jumping off place, my first episode of television, why not use every resource I have? And part of that is an understanding of the sets that we were filming on.” So I asked for [ “Ghostfellas”], even though I would be featured in it potentially more it would be [in the other option]; it would be more familiar. And I think it worked out really great.

What was your very first day on set like as a director, as you were prepping to do your very first scene? I was so excited. I had so much support from the cast and the crew. I felt very carried by the people around me. I wore a beret, which was a very bold choice in Montreal. It was from my darling co-star Sheila [Carrasco, who plays Flower], and it was so that people could hopefully recognize when I was speaking to them from a director’s perspective, and when I was speaking to them from an actor’s perspective.

It started out as a joke, very much, but there is something to be said for being able to delineate those roles that you have, because the way that you interact with a team as a director is very different. And that can be a little bit of a transition, getting people to take you seriously in that role. So I thought, why not make myself look as stupid as possible and add a challenge on a French set? [Laughs.] Not because a beret is stupid, stupid because I am clearly not French!

What was that process like in actually directing yourself? That was the biggest learning process, I think, for me. That [part] I hadn’t done before; I hadn’t directed myself even in a short film, besides a cameo moment. So the first day I directed, I wasn’t in any of the scenes that day, so I was able to get a full day just in the director’s chair. And I had a great experience.

I think it was a steeper learning curve going into the second day than going from not directing to directing; the steeper learning curve was going into directing myself. Everything that you’re sitting behind a monitor looking for and listening to, you’re unable to note take throughout the process [while acting]. I’m a big circler, or I put a star next to something, or I write a word that makes me think of things that I need to have a conversation with various crew members about. And in directing yourself, that has to be happening in your brain and not tangibly. So that was a little bit of mental gymnastics the first day.

But again, just the team that I was working with, I felt so supported by. In particular, our DP, Michel [St-Martin], and our first AD, Matt [Jemus], who at every turn were a second set of ears and eyes for me.

I’ve often found I look at things with a somewhat directorial eye from within a scene. And possibly that isn’t even always to my advantage as an actor; you kind of have to be able to switch that off. So it actually ended up being something that it’s a little bit like getting familiar with a second language. It got easier over time. It became a little bit more second nature over time. But that was where the hurdles arose.

One of the interesting things about the production process, and something that can absolutely shape how an episode of television actually comes out, is the editing process—and in a comedy, so much of the tone can come in post-production. What were the exciting and challenging parts of your post-production experience? It was so wonderful—I wasn’t expecting to be able to work in person with my editor, because we shoot in Montreal, and not all our editors are based in Montreal. And I got really lucky, Simon [Webb], who I worked with, I was able to drive 20 minutes from my house on our hiatus week and do a couple of great days with him in the edit suite.

And I love editing. I do. I agree with you, so much of the rhythm and the storytelling is built in the edit. And you don’t have time to get a million different options on a TV schedule, so it’s not like you’re assembling a collage of these vastly different choices. But it’s some of my favorite creative moments are the problem-solving in the edit, where you realize maybe there was a piece of coverage that you would have been better to have gotten on the day, and because somebody had to leave, you couldn’t, or because you’re running out of daylight, you couldn’t, or whatever the reason may be—and coming up with a way to fix that in post-production. Building establishing shots out of previously shot material, or those kinds of elements, are a different set of challenges.

And it’s fun to watch back and see this cast that I’m so grateful to work with, and the offers that they do give you, and the ways in which they’re able to subvert a joke or make something leap off the page in a way that you hadn’t expected. And maybe you know to have the option in the edit of being able to play that in a more traditional way or in a way that was more surprising to you.

Editing is another thing I was less familiar with. I had done a really great editing course in Sydney, just a sort of introduction to editing with a reality TV editor, [who] was one of the people running the course, and I loved that. I mean the way that they build story in reality TV, in editing, is just absolutely masterful. So I felt honored to get a front row seat to watch how those problems are solved and how those sequences are built and it’s something that I want to explore more in the future.

Looking back at the experience, what was your favorite part of directing this episode? I think my favorite part was going into it knowing that I had a cast and crew that were immensely talented and that I would be able to see in a whole new light. I felt like even with that foresight and with that expectation, the cast and crew went above and beyond to make me feel worthy of the job that I was doing.

We all have a pretty good rapport with each other, and we rib each other, and we wind each other up. It was able to stay in the playfulness, and we kept that, but simultaneously, I felt like any time I was wrestling a bit, trying to make sense of something, or I knew that the clock was ticking and we didn’t have long to get things, people just dialed in a level of focus that is hard to do in a comedy in that environment, and really showed up way greater than I could have expected, cast and crew all around.

And it was fun going for drinks with the crew! I went out with my camera crew and my ADs; it was so fun to be on the other side of things. We’re all very close up here, but the cast tends to spend a bit more time together, and the crew tends to spend a bit more time together off-set, and it was really lovely to blur those lines a lot and be able to celebrate the hard work that they do.

[jamessimpson9]

How to Get DJs to Play Your Music and Grow Your Fanbase

If you're an independent artist or producer making house music (or any electronic genre), you know the struggle of getting your tracks into the hands of DJs. DJs play a massive role in breaking new music, but most of them don’t just scroll through Spotify to find tracks for their sets. So, how do you make sure your music lands in the right DJ sets, radio shows, and club playlists? Here’s what I’ve learned from experience.

1. DJs Don’t Use Spotify – Get on Beatport & DJ Platforms

Let’s be real—club DJs aren’t digging through mainstream streaming services for new music. They go straight to platforms like Beatport, Traxsource, and Juno Download to buy and download high-quality tracks. If your music isn’t there, it’s going to be much harder for DJs to discover and play your music.

💡 Pro Tip: Optimize your presence on Beatport by tagging your tracks properly and releasing exclusive edits/remixes that DJs love.

2. Get a DJ Promo Service to Distribute Your Tracks

One of the most effective ways to get your music in front of real DJs is by using a DJ promo service. These services send your tracks directly to DJs who are actively performing in clubs and festivals. Instead of waiting for someone to stumble upon your song, you can get it in their inbox.

🔥 A Trusted DJ Promo Service: The Beats Dude

I personally reached out to The Beats Dude, and they helped me get my tracks into the hands of DJs who actually play in clubs and radio stations. Their service is targeted, meaning my music went straight to DJs in my genre instead of random promo blasts.

📩 Telegram: @thebeatsdude 📧 Email: thebeatsdude@proton.me 📸 Instagram: @thebeatsdude 💬 Messenger: @thebeatsdude

3. Network with DJs Directly

Many DJs are part of private Telegram groups, Discord servers, and Instagram collectives where they exchange music. If you want your music played in clubs, you need to be in these spaces. Reach out to DJs, introduce yourself, and offer a free promo copy of your latest track—if they like it, they’ll spin it!

4. Submit Your Tracks to Playlist Curators & Blogs

DJs aren’t the only way to get your music heard. Playlist curators and music blogs can help increase your streams and audience reach. Submit your music to Spotify playlist curators, YouTube music channels, and electronic music blogs for extra exposure.

5. Use Social Media & Short-Form Video Content

Right now, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are powerful tools for music promotion. DJs and fans love discovering new tracks through short viral videos, so take advantage of these platforms to get your sound trending.

📢 Engagement Tip: Share behind-the-scenes clips of your music production, remix trending sounds, or collaborate with content creators who can showcase your tracks.

Final Thoughts

If you’re serious about getting your music into real DJ sets, you need to move beyond traditional streaming platforms. Get your tracks onto DJ-focused platforms, work with promo services like The Beats Dude, and start networking with the right people. The more targeted exposure your music gets, the more chances you have of blowing up! 🚀🎶

[carvalhais]

Among other aspects, Minsky and Papert noticed (as also had Rosenblatt) that artificial neural networks are not able to distinguish well between figure and ground: in their computation of the visual field, each point gains somehow the same priority — which is not the case with human vision. This happens because artificial neural networks have no ‘concept’ of figure and ground, which they replace with a statistical distribution of correlations (while the figure–ground relation implies a model of causation). The problem hs not disappeared with deep learning: it has been discovered that large convolutional neural networks such as AlexNet, GoogleNet, and ResNet-50 are still biased towards texture in relation to shape. Matteo Pasquinelli, 2023. The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence. London: Verso.

[ncisfranchise-source]

Tiva fans, who had been waiting patiently for more than a decade to see the NCIS couple reunited, flocked to the first footage of NCIS: Tony & Ziva, starring Michael Weatherly and Cote de Pablo. The teaser trailer for the upcoming Paramount+ series NCIS: Tony & Ziva amassed 93 million views across broadcast, social and digital in the 7 days following its May 5 release, according to Nielsen, social platform reporting and internal CBS/Paramount+ data.

That included 26.5M across Youtube and Social handles such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, and 13M on digital, including Paramount+. With combined 39.5M views, the Tony & Ziva sneak peek, which you can watch below, has become the most viewed Season 1 teaser trailer for a Paramount+ series ever across social and digital.

In an unusual move, capitalizing on — and paying homage to — NCIS franchise’s CBS history, the trailer also debuted on CBS during the May 5 season finale of NCIS. That airing as well as the full and truncated versions of the trailer running on the broadcast network throughout the following week accounted for 53.5M views.

It’s not an apples to apples comparison since the NCIS franchise goes back to the pre-Facebook, pre-Instagram, pre-YouTube and pre-X 2003 when the mothership series was launched, but the Tony & Ziva teaser ranks as the most-watched NCIS trailer in the franchise’s 22-year history.

The 7th installment in the NCIS franchise, Tony & Ziva picks up after Ziva’s (de Pablo) supposed death when Tony (Weatherly) left the NCIS team to go raise their daughter. Years later, Ziva was discovered alive, leading her to complete one final mission with NCIS before she was reunited with Tony and their daughter in Paris.

Since then – and where we find them in NCIS: Tony & Ziva – Tony and Ziva have been raising their daughter, Tali, together. When Tony’s security company is attacked, they must go on the run across Europe, try to figure out who is after them and maybe even learn to trust each other again so they can finally have their unconventional happily ever after.

Amita Suman, Maximilian Osinski, Julian Ovenden, Nassima Benchicou, Lara Rossi, Isla Gie, Terence Maynard and James D’Arcy also star. NCIS: Tony & Ziva is produced by CBS Studios. John McNamara serves as showrunner. The series is executive produced by John McNamara, Cote de Pablo, Michael Weatherly, Laurie Lieser, Christina Strain, Shelley Meals, and Mairzee Almas. The series is distributed by Paramount Global Content Distribution.