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mariacallous · 4 months ago

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A short note here on what I’m covering and why. The political changes we’re seeing across the world are underpinned by technological ones that are now accelerating. For more than a decade, I’ve been trying to investigate and expose these forces. Since 2016 that’s included following a thread that led from Brexit to Trump via a shady data company called Cambridge Analytica and the revelation of a profound threat exploit at the heart of our democracies. But what’s happening now in the US is a paradigm shift: this is Broligarchy, a concept I coined last summer when I warned that what we were seeing was the proposed merger of Silicon Valley with state power. That has now happened. Writing about this from the UK, it’s clear we have a choice: we help lead the fight back against it. Or it comes for us next. Please share this with family and friends if you feel it’s of value. Thank you, as ever, Carole

Let me say this more clearly: what is happening right now, in America, in real time, is a coup.

This is an information war and this is what a coup now looks like.

Musk didn’t need a tank, guns, soldiers. He had a small crack cyber unit that he sent into the Treasury department last weekend. He now has unknown quantities of the entire US nation’s most sensitive data and potential backdoors into the system going forward. Treasury officials denied that he had access but it then turned out that he did. If it ended there, it would be catastrophic. But that unit - whose personnel include a 19-year-old called “Big Balls” - is now raiding and scorching the federal government, department by department, scraping its digital assets, stealing its data, taking control of the code and blowing up its administrative apparatus as it goes.

This is what an unlawful attack on democracy in the digital age looks like. It didn’t take armed men, just Musk’s taskforce of boy-men who may be dweebs and nerds but all the better to plunder the country’s digital resources. This was an organised, systematic, jailbreak on one of the United States’ most precious and sensitive resources: the private data of its citizens.

In 2019, I appeared in a Netflix documentary, The Great Hack. That’s a good place to start to understand what is going on now, but it wasn’t the great hack. It was among the first wave of major tech exploits of global elections. It was an exemplar of what was possible: the theft and weaponization of 87 million people’s personal data. But this now is the Great Hack. This week is when the operating system of the US was wrenched open and is now controlled by a private citizen under the protection of the President.

If you think I’ve completely lost it, please be advised that I’m far from alone in saying this. The small pools of light in the darkness of this week has been stumbling across individual commentators saying this for the last week. Just because these words are not on the front page in banner headlines of any newspaper doesn’t mean this isn’t not happening. It is.

In fact, there has been relentless, assiduous, detailed reporting in all outlets across America. There are journalists who aren’t eating or sleeping and doing amazing work tracking what’s happening. There is fact after fact after fact about Musk’s illegal pillaging of the federal government. But news organisation leaders are either falling for the distraction story - the most obviously insane one this week being rebuilding Gaza as a luxury resort, a story that dominated headlines and political oxygen for days. Or…what? Being unable to actually believe that this is what an authoritarian takeover looks like? Being unsure of whether you put the headline about the illegal coup d’etat next to a spring season fashion report? Above or below the round-up of best rice cookers? The fact is the front pages look like it’s business as normal when it’s anything but.

This was Ruth Ben-Ghiat on Tuesday. She’s a historian of fascism and authoritarianism at New York University and she said this even before some of this week’s most extreme events had taken place. (A transcript of the rest of her words here.)

“It’s very unusual. In my study of authoritarian states, it's only really after a coup that you see such a speed, such obsessive haste to purge bureaucracy so quickly. Or when somebody is defending themselves, like Erdogan after the coup attempt against him, massive purge immediately. So that's unusual. I don't have another reference point for a private individual coming in, infiltrating, trying to turn government to the benefit of his businesses and locking out and federal employees. It is a coup. I'm a historian of coups, and I would also use that word. So we're in a real emergency situation for our democracy.”

A day later, this was Tim Snyder, Yale, a Yale professor and another great historian of authoritarianism, here: “Of course it’s a coup.”

History was made this week and while reporters are doing incredible work, to understand it our guides are historians, those who’ve lived in authoritarian states and Silicon Valley watchers. They are saying it. What I’ve learned from investigating and reporting on Silicon Valley’s system-level hack of our democracy for eight long years and seeing up close the breathtaking impunity and entitlement of the men who control these companies is that they break laws and they get away with it. And then lie about it afterwards. That’s the model here.

Everything that I’ve ever warned about is happening now. This is it. It’s just happening faster than anyone could have imagined.

It’s not that what’s happening is simply unlawful. This is what David Super, an administrative law professor at Georgetown Law School told the Washington Post.

“So many of these things are so wildly illegal that I think they’re playing a quantity game and assuming the system can’t react to all this illegality at once.”

And he’s right. The system can’t and isn’t. Legal challenges are being made and even upheld but there’s no guarantee or even sign that Musk is going to honour them. That’s one of the most chilling points my friend, Mark Bergman, made to me over the weekend.

Last week, I included a voice note from my friend, tech investor turned tech campaigner, Roger McNamee, so you could hear direct from an expert about the latest developments in AI. This week I’ve asked Mark to do the honours.

He’s a lawyer, Washington political insider, and since last summer, he’s been participating in ‘War Game’ exercises with Defense Department officials, three-star generals, former Cabinet Secretaries and governors. In five exercises involving 175 people, they situation-tested possible scenarios of a Trump win. But they didn’t see this. It’s even worse than they feared.

“Those challenges have been in respect of shutting down agencies, firing federal employees and engaging in the most egregious hack of government. It all at the hand hands of DOGE, Musk and his band of tech engineers. DC right now is shell-shocked. It is a government town, USA, ID, the FBI, the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, CIA, no federal agency will be spared the revenge and retribution tours in full swing, and huge numbers have been put on administrative leave, reassigned or fired, and the private sector is as much at risk, particularly NGOs and civil society organizations. The more high-profile violate the law, which is why the courts have been quick to enjoin actions. “So yes, we've experienced a coup, not the old fashioned kind, no tanks or mobs, but an undemocratic and hostile takeover of government. It is cruel, it is petty. It can be brutal. It is at once chaotic and surgical. We said the institutions held in 2020 but behind institutions or people, and the extent to which all manner of power structures have preemptively obeyed is hugely worrying. There are legions ready to carry out the Trump agenda. The question is, will the rule of law hold?”

Last Tuesday, Musk tried to lay off the entire CIA. That’s the government body with the slogan ‘We are the nation’s first line of defense’. Every single employee has been offered an unlawful ‘buyout’ - what we call redundancy in the UK - or what 200 former employees - spies - have said is blatant attempt to rebuild it as a political enforcement unit. Over the weekend, the Washington Post reports that new appointees are being presented with “loyalty tests”.

Musk’s troops - because that’s what they are, mercenaries - are acting in criminal, unlawful, unconstitutional ways. Organisations are acting quickly, taking lawsuits, and for now the courts are holding. But the key essential question is whether their rulings can be enforced with a political weaponized Department of Justice and FBI. What Mark Bergman told me (and is in the extended note below) is that they’ve known since the summer that there would be almost no way of pushing back against Trump. This politicisation of all branches of law enforcement creates a vacuum at the heart of the state. As he says in that note, the ramifications of this are little understood outside the people inside Washington who study this for a living.

And at least some of what DOGE is doing can never be undone. Musk, a private citizen, now has vast clouds of citizens’ data, their personal information and it seems likely, classified material. When data is out there, it’s out there. That genie can never be put back into the bottle.

Itt’s what it’s possible to do with that data, that the real nightmare begins. What machine learning algorithms and highly personalised targeting can do. It’s a digital coup. An information coup. And we have to understand what that means. Our fleshy bodies still inhabit earthly spaces but we are all, also, digital beings too. We live in a hybrid reality. And for more than a decade we have been targets of hybrid warfare, waged by hostile nation states whose methodology has been aped and used against us by political parties in a series of disrupted elections marked by illegal behaviour and a lack of any enforcement. But this now takes it to the next level.

It facilitates a concentration of wealth and power - because data is power - of a kind the world has never seen before.

Facebook’s actual corporate motto until 2014 taken from words Mark Zuckerberg spoke was “Move fast and break things”. That phrase has passed into commonplace: we know it, we quote it, we also fail to understand what that means. It means: act illegally and get away with it.

And that is the history of Silicon Valley. Its development and cancerous growth is marked by series of larcenous acts each more grotesque than the last. And Musk’s career is an exemplar of that, a career that has involved rampant criminality, gross invasions of privacy, stock market manipulation. And lies. The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently suing Musk for failing to disclose his ownership stock before he bought Twitter. The biggest mistake right now is to believe anything he says.

Every time, these companies have broken the law, they have simply gotten away with it. I know I’m repeating this, but it’s central to understanding both the mindset and what’s happening on the ground. And no-one exemplifies that more than Musk. The worst that has happened to him is a fine. A slap on the wrist. An insignificant line on a balance sheet. The “cost of doing business”.

On Friday, Robert Reich, the former United States Secretary of Labor, who’s been an essential voice this week, told the readers of his Substack to act now and call their representatives.

“Friends, we are in a national emergency. This is a coup d’etat. Elon Musk was never authorized by Congress to do anything that he’s doing, he was never even confirmed by Congress, his so-called Department of Government Efficiency was never authorized by Congress. Your representatives, your senators and Congressmen have never given him authority to do what he is doing, to take over government departments, to take over entire government agencies, to take over government payments system itself to determine for himself what is an appropriate payment. To arrogate to himself the authority to have your social security number, your private information? Please. Listen, call Congress now.”

It’s a coup

I found myself completely poleaxed on Wednesday. I read this piece on the New York Times website first thing in the morning, a thorough and alarming analysis of headlined “Trump Brazenly Defies Laws in Escalating Executive Power Grab”. It quoted Peter M. Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at New York University, “programmatic sabotage and rampant lawlessness.” It was displayed prominently on the front page of the New York Times but it was also just one piece among many, a small weak signal amid the overpowering noise.

There’s another word for an “Executive Power Grab”, it’s a coup. And newspapers need to actually write that in big black letters on their front pages and tell their tired, busy, overwhelmed, distracted, scared readers what is happening. That none of this is “business as usual.”

Over on the Guardian’s UK website on Wednesday, there was not a single mention on the front page of what was happening. Trump’s Gaza spectacular diversion strategy drowned out its quotient of American news. We just weren’t seeing what’s happening in the seat of government of our closest ally. As a private citizen mounted a takeover of the cornerstone superpower of the international rules-based order, our crucial NATO ally, our biggest single trading partner, the UK government didn’t even apparently notice.

The downstream potential international consequences of what is happening in America are profound and terrifying. That our government and much of the media is asleep at the wheel is a reason to be more not less terrified. Musk has made his intentions towards our democracy and national security quite clear. What he hasn’t yet had is the backing of the US state. That is shortly going to change. One of the first major stand-offs will be UK and EU tech regulation. I hope I’m wrong but it seems pretty obvious that’s what Musk’s Starmer-aimed tweets are all about. There seems no world in which the EU and the UK aren’t headed for the mother of all trade wars.

And that’s before we even consider the national security ramifications. The prime minister should be convening Cobra now. The Five Eyes - the intelligence sharing network of the US, UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada - is already likely breached. Trump is going to do individual deals with all major trading partners that’s going to involve preposterous but real threats, including likely dangling the US’s membership of NATO over our heads all while Russia watches, waits and knows that we’ve done almost nothing to prepare. Plans to increase our defence spending have been made but not yet implemented. Our intelligence agencies do understand the precipice we’re on but there’s no indication the government is paying any attention to them. The risks are profound. The international order as we know it is collapsing in real time.

It’s a coup

We all know that the the first thing that happens when a dictator seizes power is that he (it’s always a he) takes control of the radio station. Musk did that months ago. It wasn’t that Elon Musk buying Twitter pre-ordained what is now happening but it made it possible. And it was the moment, minutes after Trump was shot and he went full-in on his campaign that signalled the first shot fired in his digital takeover.

It’s both a mass propaganda machine and also the equivalent of an information drone with a deadly payload. It’s a weapon that’s already been turned on journalists and news organisations this week. There’s much more to come.

On Friday, Musk started following Wikileaks on Twitter. Hours later, twisted, weaponized leaks from USAID began.

This is going to get so much worse. Musk and MAGA will see this as the opening of the Stasi archive. It’s not. It’s rocketfuel for a witchhunt. It’s hybrid warfare against the enemies of the state. It’s going to be ugly and cruel and its targets are going to need help and support. Hands across the water to my friends at OCCRP, the Overseas Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, an investigative journalism organisation that uncovers transnational crime, that’s been in Musk’s sights this weekend, one of hundreds of media organisations around the world whose funding has been slashed overnight.

It’s a coup

By now you may feel scared and helpless. It’s how I felt this week. I had the same sick feeling I had watching UK political coverage before the pandemic. The government was just going to ignore the wave of deaths rippling from China to Italy and pretend it wasn’t happening? Really? That’s the plan?

This is another pandemic. Or a Chernobyl. It’s a bomb at the heart of the international order whose toxic fallout is going to inevitably drift our way.

My internal alarm bell, a sense of urgency and anxiety goes even further back. To early 2017, when I uncovered information about Cambridge Analytica’s illegal hack of data from Facebook while the company’s VP, Steve Bannon, was then on the National Security Council. That concept of highly personalised data in the control of a ruthless and political operator was what tripped my emergency wires. That is a reality now.

The point is that the shock and awe is meant to make us feel helpless. So I’m telling a bit of my own personal story here. Because part of what temporarily paralyzed me last week was that this is all happening while my own small corner of the mainstream media is collapsing in on itself too. The event that I’ve spent the last eight years warning about has come to pass and in a month, 100+ of my colleagues at the Guardian will be out of the door and my employment will be terminated. I will no longer have the platform of the news organisation where I’ve done my entire body of work to date and was able to communicate to a global audience.

But then, it’s all connected. We are living through an information crisis. It’s what underpins everything. In some ways, this happening now is not surprising at all. Moreover, many of the people who I see as essential voices during this crisis (including those above) are doing that effectively and independently from Substack as I will try to continue to do.

And, the key thing that the last eight years has given me is information. The lawsuit I fought for four years as a result of doing this work very almost floored me. But it didn’t. And I’ve learned essential skills during those years. It was part of what powered me to fight for the rights of Guardian journalists during our strike this December.

The next fightback against Musk and the Broligarchy has to draw from the long, long fight for workers rights which in turn influenced the fight for civil rights that must now power us on as we face the great unknown. What comes next has to be a fight for our data rights, our human rights.

This was former Guardian journalist Gary Younge on our picket line and I’ve thought about these words a lot. You have to fight even if you won’t necessarily win. Power is almost never given up freely.

If you value any of this and want me to be able to continue, I’d be really grateful if you signed up, free, or even better, paid subscription. And I’d also urge you to sign up also for the Citizen Dispatch, that’s the newsletter from the non-profit I founded that campaigns around these issues. There is much more it can and needs to do.

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forsaken-headcanons · 3 months ago

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Sorta long hcs for 118o8 AND 007n7 ^_^!

118o8 AND 007n7 HC AGAIN!!!

Y’know how people hc that coolkidd and bluudud are brothers?

Basically it ties back to 118o8 and 007n7 being divorced, so whenever 007n7 and coolkidd got forsakened, she thought he had KIDNAPPED him. (Since they had custody over the kids/ switching weekends) (or weeks)

also idk if this is true but since bluudud DIED (from a car??? Can’t remember☹️), she also thought that 007n7 had taken him too

ALSO

- Neither 118o8 or 007n7 have told c00lkidd and bluudud that they’re divorced, only saying that they were just gonna “take some time for themselves for a little bit” (bluudud is aware of what happened, but doesn’t mention it)

- if 118o8 WERE to be forsakened, she’d most likely start arguing with 007n7 immediately (since they still thinks he stole the kids)

Tiny 118o8 hc

- she still checks up on bluudud’s room even though he’s no longer there (due to the habit forming, she also prepares snacks for him- forgetting he’s gone^_^)

- HC that she also used to be a lesser known hacker, (harmless pranks basically) where she would just wipe out people’s data on games sometimes or send a message to scare people.

- still is a bit rude due to her past actions as a hacker (like rage quitting or doing a genuinely “harmful” hack)

(Okay I’m done)

(Is 🍦anon taken??)

Bluudud got hit by a car, you say?

...

My name is Bluudud. Dad, I want some ice cream. Bluudud, that is my name, Bluudud. I want another. Bluudud. Where is my gamer headset. I'm running out on the road. There is a car. And it is going to hit me.

#forsaken headcanons #forsaken #forsaken roblox #roblox forsaken #�� anon #007n7 forsaken #c00lkidd forsaken #bluudud forsaken

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kandoros · 4 months ago

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The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells

These are the best science fiction I've read since James S. A. Corey's Expanse series, in some ways even better. At least four of these books had me up way too late reading them, well into the "I'm going to pay for this at work tomorrow" hours. The other three I finished on weekends.

The main character is a robotic/cyborg security guard, the self-named Murderbot. In this setting you can make purely technological artificial intelligence, but it seems to be cheaper to get most of the way with tech, and then add in a cloned human brain for the adaptive and creative thinking bits. Think Robocop, but instead of a resurrected dead person, it's just cloned tissue here and there.

And Murderbot is very definitely not a person, and does not want to be:

Dr. Mensah said, “That’s not an attitude a lot of humans are going to understand. We tend to think that because a bot or a construct looks human, its ultimate goal would be to become human.”

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

This series makes me think that Star Trek really did Data dirty. Instead of having him wanting to become human they could have gone in a much more interesting direction. Imagine if the Borg Queen had tried to covert him and he just rejected her totally because "Just ugh, no. I'm already better than you."

But Murderbot does have that human brain, and it causes it a lot of trouble. Guilt mostly at first (it gave itself that name for a reason), helplessness (most of the humans it had interacted with before the series were basically corporate slaves, indentured servants on a generational level whose highest hope was to save up enough money that their kids could get upgraded to management, a system Murderbot can't shoot or punch), fear of itself being enslaved again (it had hacked the electronic bit that the company could use to control and kill it, but it had to keep that hidden), and then finally fear that its humans could be killed.

It's basically a giant ball of neuroses and stress, and it's vastly entertaining to see how it deals and adjusts to that.

Another major character in the series is just amazing; the Asshole Research Transport. ART is a fully sentient ship Murderbot meets in the second book. It's got the same losing-its-crew fear Murderbot has, and its reactions to that are the chef's kiss.

At one point it downloads a smaller copy of itself into an unarmed shuttle and threatens another armed transport:

“I lack a sense of proportional response. I don't advise engaging with me on any level.”

At another point, it thinks one of its friends is being held hostage. Step one of it's plan?

“Iris: “Peri, you can’t bomb the colony.”

Perihelion: “You are incorrect, Iris, I can bomb the colony.”

It just straight to orbital bombardment. I don't even remember if there was a step two, something like telling the people it was attacking why it was doing that or how to get it to stop. I think it may have just assumed they'd be able to figure out what they did wrong and why the angry sky-god had commenced with the smiting.

I'd like to read more of course, but the end of the last book seemed to be a pretty good natural stopping point for the series. There's a few comments on reddit that Martha Wells had signed a multi book contract with her publisher and that two more might be Murderbots, but this is a pretty satisfying conclusion. There's also supposed to be a TV series coming out.

Really, really recommend reading these. They're to quality; enough splody bits that I enjoy them and enjoy characterization to make the splody bits mean something.

Next on my list is S. A. Barnes Ghost Station. It's got a crew of astronauts occupying a base on a planet where an alien civilization fell in order to maintain residency and ownership for their corporate overlords. I'm not that far into it; it seems to be going into an Event Horizon horror direction, where the demons they have to survive might be caused by the main character's past, the dead aliens, or just something humanity in general finds escaping itself out in the dark of space.

#The Murderbot Diaries #Martha Wells #Reading List 2025

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reading-writing-revolution · 2 months ago

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Nice little guide on how to protect your data...

#hackers #data #data privacy #privacy #internet privacy

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paranoidginger · 9 months ago

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Respawn Malfunction- Destabilization-3

Characters: Spy (TF2), Medic (TF2), Engineer (TF2)

TW: Body Horror, Dark Themes, Needles

Nearly two months had passed since the initial incident, and Medic had managed to regain most of the Spy's trust again, getting his answers despite his silent wishes that he would be able to witness the Destabilization process first-hand.

It had been one of the rare times that their team won, and going into the weekend it was a wonderful way to raise everyone's spirits for the next week's battles, not to mention that it gave Medic time to mull over his data and theories as to what had gone wrong to cause such a severe malfunction in the team's Spy that handful of weeks ago.

What the Medic wasn't expecting, was for the Engineer to bust down his door after Saturday's breakfast, half-carrying the Spy; his current object of interest within his studies. Nor did he expect his silent wish to be answered.

"Doc! Something's wrong with Spy!" Engineer called sharply, helping his partner to sit down as the Medic set aside his reading and moved to meet the pair, tipping the Spy's chin up slightly to get a clearer look at his face once he arrived.

"Tell me vhat is going on, meine freund." Medic said quietly, letting go of the Spy's face and looking to Engineer as his patient remained silent, save for his raspy and unsteady breathing.

"W-We were in the workshop, an' I was goin' tah work on his gear a bit, and he just started tippin' over... I-I caught 'im but he's burnin' up, and he's got that scared look in 'is eyes, scared the livin' daylights outta me-" The Engineer explained as quickly as he could, his ramblings interrupted by the Medic as he pulled Spy to his feet once again.

A look of fear crossed the Spy's face as he folded in on himself, clasping a hand over his mouth as his labored breaths turned to hacking coughs, only standing by the will of the Medic, who diligently kept him on his feet.

"Ve will have to move quickly zhen! Engineer please help our dear spy undress, You can pull zhat curtain to make a little private room, I vill be right back." With that, Medic shifted the Spy's weight over to Engineer who hesitantly nodded, carefully helping Spy to the little area and pulling the curtain shut.

Medic arrived moments later with a large plastic bin, a barely contained grin on his face as he set it on the floor of the curtained space. Any real worry for the other man simply overridden by his curiosities. As long as he remembered not to put his hands through him, he wouldn't be hurting him, and he would respawn in one piece again anyway.

"Spy, in zhe bin please!" He spoke in a cheerful tone, gesturing to the plastic tote as he moved to help the man step into the container and sit down, his body still wracking with choking breaths and hot pain that spread throughout his chest and abdomen.

"What in sam-hill are you doin' all this for? First you ask me to undress the man now you're puttin' him in this?" Engineer gestured to the container, his heart aching as the man he loved stared fearfully towards him, the only part of him still covered being his head, thanks to the balaclava that Engineer knew he rarely removed. "You're treatin' him like some sorta lab rat, Doc, this doesn't seem much like helping him! I just don't understand-"

"Ah, zhe explanation vill show itself shortly, I'm certain of it! I'm sure our dear kamerad vill be greatful for your support, as vell!" Medic chimed, reaching down and grabbing the bottom edge of the Spy's balaclava. "I apologize, meine freund, can't have zhis getting in zhe vay again."

The Medic paused as the man's clumsy and quivering hands grabbed at his wrists to no avail as the medic peeled away his mask, the surface of his skin growing shiny and slick as he tried to speak, only to find his lips unable to part, and breaths impossible to take as he began to grab at his face, quiet gurgles the only sound he could make, his hands pulling away from his face with thick strands of viscous fluid.

The Engineer took a small step back, a look of horror and disgust across his face as he watched the Spy's face melt and contort, the other man's eyes rolling back slightly as the parts of his body that should have been solid and bone began to collapse in on themselves.

Spy wanted to scream... He wanted and he tried, but the only sounds he could manage were small bubbling gurgles as his body burned and liquefied, the sounds he could still make slowly fading as the small amount of air still trapped inside of him escaped, leaving him mute and defenseless.

All Engineer could do was stand and watch in absolute horror as the minutes dragged on, and his lover quite literally melted in front of him, a hand covering his mouth as he watched in silence.

Medic, on the other hand had been watching intently, taking careful notes as the process went on, ethics clouded by curiosity and morbid interest as he simply watched and waited.

Slowly, the Spy's entire being dissolved into itself as the others observed, leaving nothing but a thick, translucent fluid in the bottom of the container he had been made to sit in, and the man's eyes by the time the process was complete.

"Doc..." The Engineer finally broke the silence, his voice cracking and quivering ever so slightly as he spoke "W-what did I just watch..."

"A respawn malfunction at its peak! Zhis happened just a couple of veeks ago as well!"

"Spy ain't respawned since yesterday, sawbones, how can you think this is because of that machine?!" Engineer spoke quickly, hesitating for a moment before walking up to the bin and kneeling down beside it. "This just ain't right..."

"I zhink zhis one vas delayed for some reason, like an incubation period on a virus, except zhe result is Spy turning into zhis slime! By all means it should kill him, but as far as I know, He is still completely alive in zhat state!"

"He's still... Oh God..." He looked down at the contents of the bin, covering his mouth once again as he watched the thick substance slowly congeal into a round-ish sort of shape, the Spy's eyes moving to look up at him.

Hesitantly, the Engineer lowered his gloved hand into the large container and gently touched the side of the gelatinous mass that had once been the Spy, watching as his surface rippled in a small, neat pattern, inching closer and stretching slightly into the Engineer's gloved palm.

"Can you... Is there a way to fix this?" The Engineer asked quietly, sparing a desperate glance at the team's doctor before returning his gaze to the Spy.

"I have no idea! Zhe last time, I ran a few tests und zhen euthanized him via electric shock. Zhe method vas quite messy though, I vas cleaning bits of him out of zhe lab for days after he exploded." He shrugged "I could try a couple more zhings vith him, if you don't mind"

"If you're not gonna just fix this, it's better to just put him down... Watchin' that happen to him... It looked like it hurt... There's no way to tell if he's still hurtin' either." There was a pained look on his face, tears stinging at his eyes beneath his goggles as he carefully traced his gloved hand over the rippling surface of what had once been the Spy... That still was the Spy.

"I could see if zhe medigun has any effect. I can also see vhat injectable painkillers could do." He wrote something else in his notes before leaving the small curtained area, returning with his medigun and a box full of syringes and various injectables. "Up to you vich ones ve try first, meine hard-hatted freund!"

The Spy's gelatinous form inched closer to the Engineer, his surface rippling harder than before as his eyes turned to look up at the doctor, The Engineer watching carefully as the blob that was Spy moved and pulsed.

"Just try the medigun, Doc... He looks scared..." The Engineer responded in a careful tone, still cupping his hand around the Spy's side.

The Medic shrugged slightly, turning on the medigun and aiming it at the Spy, watching carefully as the Spy seemed to relax, the pulsing of his rippling surface slowing and eventually stopping and his rounded form flattening slightly.

"Oh! Zhat's an interesting reaction!" The Medic chirped leaning in a bit closer to the bin and propping the medigun on his knee as he reached out to lightly poke at the Spy with his gloved hand.

Engineer watched worriedly as the blob in the large container pulled quickly away from the medic, a pair of nubs forming and wrapping around his hand.

"Ohoh! Look at zhat! Zhe medigun must have stabilized him in a vay zhat he can move... He's even got little hand nubs!"

"I... I don't think we should keep goin' like this, Doc..." The Engineer's brows furrowed as he looked to the Medic, a frown crossing his lips.

"He should be fine like zhis for just a little longer, I have so many more tests to run!"

It took some time, but the Engineer was able to talk sense into Medic, protective over the translucent mush that had become of his Spy as the pair decided on how to make him respawn again.

Eventually, Medic decided on acid, testing it on one of the samples he had taken the first time and watching as it destroyed and dissolved the sample swiftly and with no remains.

Once the short test was finished, the Engineer stood and gathered the Spy's things, leaving the defenceless blob alone with the doctor as he departed for the respawn chamber.

The Medic knelt down beside the plastic tub, a grim expression on his face and a large syringe filled with the eroding chemical, making eye contact as the Spy's amorphous form pulsed and rippled.

"I apologize, zhis vill hurt, it is simply zhe most efficient method I can zhink of. At least it vill be over quickly." The Medic gently patted the Spy, taking a small breath before inserting the needle into his gel-like body.

The needle stung as it made its way into him, pressure building up and sending splitting pain through him before the burning began, the acid eating a gaping hole through him as it slowly made it to his eyes, his world going black before the agony finally disappeared along with his consciousness.

Engineer was there, already waiting as the respawn machine pieced the Spy back together, shoving his consciousness into the new body as the man wobbled slightly on his feet, blinking as the Engineer quickly moved up to him, carefully looking him over.

"You're not feelin' like you're gonna melt again, are you?" Engineer asked quickly, pulling Spy into a hug, feeling as the taller man returned the gesture, burying his face in the Engineer's shoulder as he began to cry. "Shhh... it's okay sunshine... It's alright... Come on now, let's get you dressed."

Engineer carefully helped him along, concern still clear on his face as he helped the Spy with his mask, making sure it sat evenly on the man's face before cupping his cheeks in his hands and pressing a gentle kiss to his lips.

"I won't let this happen again... I-I don't know what I'd do if you got stuck like that..." The Engineer spoke softly looking up at the Spy's face "I don't care what it takes... I'm gonna fix that machine so it doesn't happen again."

"Thank you, mon amour... I-I do not know what I would do if I were to get stuck like that either..." The Spy whispered, gently resting his forehead against the Engineer's, both of them hoping that the incident never repeated again.

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

@thatonesimp-e @sprite-or-something

#tf2 #team fortress #tf2 spy #tf2 fanfiction #spy tf2 #engineer tf2 #tf2 engineer #medic tf2 #tf2 medic #angst #practical espionage #engiespy

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alwaysmicado · 10 months ago

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i just know if you ever tried to break up with nathan he might *let* you leave, but he would keep tabs on you and stalk you forever

You’re so right, Anon!

Nathan isn't the kind of guy who just lets go.

The man created an AI by combing through the entire internet’s data—your socials are practically child’s play for him. He wouldn’t need to "hack" anything because, let’s be real, he probably already built backdoors into every app you use. You could block him, delete him, deactivate everything, but you know deep down he's watching you through some obscure security protocol you’ve never even heard of.

He wouldn’t stop at just checking in. Oh no, Nathan would analyze every photo, every post. That Instagram story you posted? He’s already run it through some advanced facial recognition software to figure out who you’re with, how often you’re seeing them, and—most importantly—whether they’re a threat to his perceived superiority.

The guy you went to brunch with last weekend? Yeah, Nathan’s already pulled up his LinkedIn, his last five jobs, and his questionable Reddit posts from 2013.

Then there are the subtle things he’d do, just to mess with you.

You’re scrolling through your feed, and suddenly you notice an ad for vodka, his vodka, the exact brand he always drank. Coincidence? Not with Nathan. He’s leaving little breadcrumbs, digital fingerprints, so you know he’s still there. Watching. Waiting.

If you dared to date someone new, it’d only get worse. He'd run psychological profiles on your new flame, digging through their online history like some kind of deranged investigator. And if that poor soul ever posted something innocent like, "Out with my amazing new partner tonight," Nathan’s eyes would narrow. His hand would tighten on his glass. He’d be thinking: Him? Really?

And suddenly, your new guy starts having weird glitches on his phone. Like, weird stuff. Apps crashing. Texts going missing. Maybe one day, all of his favorite playlists are replaced with Nathan’s favorite songs—songs with creepy, passive-aggressive lyrics that sound suspiciously personal.

But of course, no one could ever measure up to Nathan. He’d probably scoff at the very idea. In his mind, he’s not just the ex—you’re the one who made the wrong choice. You can move on, but Nathan? He’s already ten steps ahead of you, digitally weaving himself into the fabric of your life whether you like it or not.

In the end, you wouldn't just be trying to move on from a relationship—you’d be trying to escape a person who doesn’t think “moving on” even applies to him.

– – –

Thank you so much for this ask! 🖤 Nathan Bateman Masterlist

#ask #nathan bateman x reader #cw stalking #nathan bateman #nathan bateman x you #nathan bateman x gn!reader #nathan bateman ex machina #nathan bateman fanfiction #nathan ex machina

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infinitestarsdev · 1 month ago

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Devlog 2025-05-23

Phew! It's Friday! (Sort of. Sorry this one is later than usual, I had to get up super early to get it done.)

Still hacking away at my backlog, but making progress!

We 're working on another, really cool portrait which I can't tease yet, and, thanks to our patrons, several new crew outfits that I can tease!

[image in the header <3]

The pool of available outfits for the crew is growing quite nicely, and you'll have a solid wardrobe of options for them once the outfit selector is polished and implemented.

In the meantime, I think I've isolated the issue with the mobile build!! (Yay!) But will report back soon.

A large majority of time also went towards migrating all our Infinite Stars dev data (All the builds, the dev assets like the full scale layered sprites, backgrounds etc and other data) are being moved over to a different Google account to future proof and ensure business continuity. It's a much larger project than I anticipated. (It's also not made easier with Google intentionally blocking gmail accounts from 'transferring ownership' of existing data to Google Workspace accounts. Silly, I know.)

Other news, we/I survived a super crazy month of family and business happenings. The month isn't over yet, but I'm definitely feeling like I can start breathing again.

(Ooh! I also have some fantastic crew pinups to share soon! So keep an eye out for those!)

Have a great rest of your weekend, thanks for being amazing humans, and keep being kind to those around you. <3

#visual novel #infinitestars #art #scifi #choicesgame #sciencefiction #vn #amwriting #gamedev #space

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ncisladaily · 14 days ago

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Christian Ochoa Lavernia (Silo) is set as a series regular and Clayne Crawford (Chad Powers), Keanush Tafreshi (V/H/S/99), Medalion Rahimi (Hacks), Raza Jaffrey (Homeland) and Tessa Ferrer (Swagger) will recur in Season 2 of The Agency: Central Intelligence (fka The Agency) for Paramount+ with Showtime. The title, The Agency: Central Intelligence reflects the focus of the second season.

They join series lead Michael Fassbender, along with Jeffrey Wright, Jodie Turner-Smith, Katherine Waterston, Harriet Sansom Harris, John Magaro, Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Andrew Brooke, India Fowler, Reza Brojerdi, Alex Reznik and Richard Gere.

Production on Season 2 is currently underway in London.

Based on the French series Le Bureau des Legendes, The Agency follows Martian (Fassbender). a covert CIA agent ordered to abandon his undercover life and return to London Station. When the love he left behind reappears, romance reignites. His career, his real identity and his mission are pitted against his heart; hurling them both into a deadly game of international intrigue and espionage.

Ochoa Lavernia will play Grandma, undercover agent with Grandpa.

Crawford portrays Viking, wanted by the CIA in connection with a dangerous military group.

Rahimi is Darya, niece of a powerful Mullah and Hassan Zamani’s girlfriend.

Jaffrey plays Craig, data analyst on the Iran Desk.

Ferrer portrays Robyn, US Air Force nurse in Suffolk, England.

Jez Butterworth and John-Henry Butterworth (Ford v Ferrari, Edge of Tomorrow) return as writers and executive producers.

Keith Cox and Nina L. Diaz executive produce for MTV Entertainment Studios, along with David C. Glasser, Ron Burkle, David Hutkin and Bob Yari for 101 Studios, George Clooney and Grant Heslov for Smokehouse Pictures; Alex Berger for TOP – The Originals Productions; Ashley Stern and Pascal Breton for Federation Studios/Federation Entertainment of America; Fassbender and Joe Wright.

The series is co-distributed internationally by Paramount Global Content Distribution and Federation Studios.

Ochoa Lavernia is known for his work on The Diplomat, Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, Halo and Silo among others. He’ll next be seen in Guy Ritchie’s In the Grey. He’s repped by JWM Entertainment Group, TalentWorks Agency (US), and Grantham-Hazeldine (UK).

Crawford just wrapped the Hulu series Chad Powers opposite Glen Powell. He was most recently seen in Lethal Weapon for Fox and was a regular on Rectify, for SundanceTV. He’s repped by Gersh, Principal Entertainment LA and Yorn Levine.

Rising actor Tafreshi’s previous work includes Shudder’s V/H/S/99, and a supporting role in the Weird Al biopic, Weird. Tafreshi is repped by Main Title Entertainment and Realm Talent.

Rahimi can currently be seen recurring in Season 4 of Hacks. She’s known for her role as Special Agent Fatima Namazi in NCIS: Los Angeles, and on the film side, she is currently producing and starring in The Weekend on Cape Cod When Everything Changed. She’s repped by Untitled Entertainment and Gersh.

Jaffrey will next be seen in the limited series Malice on Amazon, opposite David Duchovny and Jack Whitehall, and in indie horror film The Refuge. Previous credits include Starz’s The Serpent Queen, and his critically acclaimed role of Asair Khan in Showtime’s Homeland. He’s repped by United Agents, Verve and Principal Entertainment.

Ferrer was a series regular for two seasons on AppleTV+’s Swagger, as well as a regular on Grey’s Anatomy and AT&T’s Mr. Mercedes. She recurred on George Clooney and Grant Heslov’s Catch 22 for Hulu and FXX’s You’re the Worst, among others. She’s repped by Lasher Group, Innovative Artists Entertainment and Surpin, Mayersohn, Coghill, LLP.

#Medalion Rahimi #the agency

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andmaybegayer · 2 years ago

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Last Monday of the Week 2023-10-23

Testing the limits of my kitchen

Listening: I've been using my enormous playlist of Japanese Jazz Fusion as background music at home. This is Galactic Funk by Casiopeia.

youtube

Reading: There's a great PBS video on insect metamorphosis that debunks the whole Butterfly Soup thing and explains the much, much more bizarre truth: even before they enter a chrysalis, caterpillars have started to develop butterfly parts inside their bodies. Big chunky caterpillars contain a half-built butterfly. Inside the chrysalis they simultaneously dissolve the remainder of the caterpillar parts and finish the butterfly on the existing scaffolding.

youtube

There's a great paper referenced in that video which is this one, which is about findings from time-lapsed 3D CAT scans (which I guess makes it 4D) of caterpillars as they pupate.

There's actually quite a few interesting papers on following metamorphosis with modern imaging technology, including a big old thesis that I have only just started to dig into and that I do not understand.

Watching: Nothing.

Playing: I got a little obsessed with Bullets Per Minute, a rhythm FPS roguelike. Well, more of a tempo FPS roguelike, since you have to fire, reload, jump and dash on a very regular 88bpm 4/4 rock/metal soundtrack. Here, I've cut some clips together.

Hell of a lot of fun, I've been in the market for a really fast paced shooter. I tried to replay Titanfall 2, which is good. I also had a good time playing Warframe missions I was way too high level for, eventually I remembered watching the ZeroPunctuation on this and picked it up.

BPM feels great and is also a really fascinating old-fashioned indie roguelike. The game has almost no tutorials, you just get dropped into levels. Items have absolutely bare minimum descriptions and no hard numbers, the fan wiki is full of notes very clearly the result of trying to puzzle out exact damage numbers and percentile improvements from the player side of the game.

It is not hostile though! Very forgiving accessibility options if you aren't great with rhythm and good difficulty modes. I've done two full clears on normal difficulty and like with most roguelikes, that was a product of familiarity and getting the Good Items early in my run (thank you infinite ammo + revolver)

Making: Made a full spec Wedding Meal (vegetable biryani, dal, and soji) for Friends over the weekend. Easier than I expected! A lot of prep but not actually that time consuming, as long as like me you're good chopping one million vegetables.

Also finished hacking on monctl to have a command line interface. It allows fast USB control of a Gigabyte monitor. I have started poking at Display Data Channel to better generalize monitor control because I want to get a second monitor soon but this works great for now.

Tools and Equipment: If you have a dishwasher you should pretty much always use it to wash, even if it's only half full. Your dishwasher probably uses under 12 liters of water to do a full wash cycle, less on Eco modes. You are almost never going to beat it for economy or sterilization, so the only things you should wash by hand are things you either cannot put in the dishwasher (e.g. cast iron) or things you need washed right now.

#last monday of the week #Youtube

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harkaranscanvas · 1 year ago

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Creative Advertising Exercise

Hey Urban Nest community! 🌟

Creating a compelling advertising campaign is crucial for capturing attention and driving sales. Today, we’re sharing our top strategies with a Creative Advertising Exercise that will help you craft an engaging campaign, tailor-made to resonate with your audience.

Whether you're promoting a new product or revamping your brand, this exercise is designed to spark creativity and drive results.

Objective:

Develop a creative advertising campaign for Urban Nest that effectively engages young urban dwellers and drives interest and sales.

Step 1: Define Your Campaign Theme 🎨

A strong campaign starts with a cohesive theme that ties all your elements together.

Theme: “Urban Living Redefined”

Description: This theme emphasizes transformation and personalization, highlighting how Urban Nest can help customers create a stylish and functional living space that reflects their unique personality and urban lifestyle.

Step 2: Craft Your Key Message 📢

Your key message is the core idea you want to communicate.

Key Message: “Transform your apartment into a stylish urban sanctuary with Urban Nest’s modern and affordable decor.”

This message should be consistent across all campaign materials to ensure clarity and impact.

Step 3: Develop Creative Executions Across Channels 📺

Let’s break down how to implement your campaign theme and key message across different media channels.

1. Social Media Magic 🌟

Platforms: Instagram, TikTok

Idea: “Apartment Makeovers” – Showcase stunning before-and-after apartment transformations using Urban Nest products.

Execution:

Visuals: Side-by-side photos and quick videos showing the transformation process.

Caption:

“From drab to fab! 🌟 Swipe to see how Urban Nest turned this space into an urban oasis. #UrbanLivingRedefined”

Call-to-Action: Include “Shop the look” links or promote urban living tips.

Example Post:

Caption: “Turn your city apartment into a modern sanctuary with @UrbanNest. Use code URBANLIFE for 10% off your first order. #UrbanLivingRedefined #UrbanNest”

2. Pop-Up Events in Urban Areas 🎪

Location: Urban Community Centers and Popular City Spots

Idea: “Urban Nest Pop-Up Experience” – Host pop-up events where city dwellers can explore Urban Nest products in person.

Execution:

Setups: Create mock urban apartments with different decor themes (industrial, modern, chic).

DIY Stations: Allow visitors to create their own decor items.

Promotions: Offer exclusive event discounts and host social media contests.

Example Setup:

Event Flyer: “Visit the Urban Nest Pop-Up Experience this weekend! Discover stylish decor, DIY your own pieces, and enjoy exclusive discounts. 📍Location: Urban Plaza, Date: July 15-16”

3. Online Decor Quiz 🧩

Platform: Urban Nest Website

Idea: “What’s Your Urban Style?” – An interactive quiz that offers personalized decor recommendations.

Execution:

Quiz Design: Include questions about style preferences and living habits.

Results: Provide a curated selection of Urban Nest products based on quiz results.

Call-to-Action: Offer a discount to quiz takers on their first purchase.

Example Quiz Question:

Question: “How would you describe your ideal urban apartment ambiance? a) Industrial b) Modern c) Minimalist d) Chic”

4. Email Marketing Campaign 📧

Platform: Email

Idea: “Urban Nest Inspirations” – A series of emails featuring decor tips, product spotlights, and customer success stories.

Execution:

Email Series: Send weekly emails with themes like “Small Space Hacks”.

Personalized Recommendations: Use data to offer tailored product suggestions.

Call-to-Action: Include “Shop Now” links with special discounts.

Example Email:

Subject: “5 Easy Decor Hacks to Transform Your Urban Apartment Today!”

Content: “Hi Alex, ready to upgrade your apartment? Check out these 5 decor hacks featuring our top-selling products. Plus, enjoy 15% off your next order with code URBANHACKS.”

Step 4: Review and optimize 🔄

After launching your campaign, track its performance across all channels. Use metrics like engagement, click-through rates, and sales conversions to gauge effectiveness. Adjust your strategy based on what’s working best.

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