#Legacy Data Archiving

[aven-data]

Most IT Projects Fail: 75% of Projects Fall Short of Goals

IT projects are not always successful—such is the price of innovation. Yet, depending on the source, up to 85% of these projects fail, which seems astronomical. In contrast to other industries, developing information technology solutions has not decreased its failure rate over the past 20 years. The question is, what are the causes, and what can companies do to improve? Why is the failure rate so high, and what are possible strategies to reduce it? And what are the specific challenges of archiving legacy data?

IT projects often fail: not at AvenDATA

Failure is difficult to measure in IT. Many factors determine the success of a project, but there is no industry-wide terminology. According to German analysts, about half of all IT projects fail. Industry experts, noting the high number of unreported cases, put the failure rate for German companies at around 75%. This seems excessive, but Germany still performs better than many other countries.

According to the PMI Global Project Management Survey 2017, software projects in particular are notorious for falling short. A total of 14% are cancelled without any results, 31% do not meet their objectives, 43% exceed their budget and 49% exceed the agreed timeframe. Only 15% of projects are delivered as planned.

Since 1995, the CHAOS Report of the Standish Group has collected new numbers from the IT industry every two years. In 2015, only 15% of the cases examined were found to have successfully completed the project. Although this study refers to software development projects specifically, it provides an indication for the IT industry in general. Encouragingly, the report found that 66% of IT projects in Germany were generally successful. However, 19% were over budget, behind schedule or had limited functionality. 15% were considered a complete failure and were either cancelled without results or never used again.

Last year, AvenDATA was an outlier among German IT service providers regarding its success rate. The company was successful both in terms of budget and timeframe. This result is particularly interesting because legacy systems are responsible for a wide range of potential risks in corporate IT.

According to CEO Emanuel Böminghaus, target-oriented project management is the key to the company’s success: “All projects are budgeted with a fixed price in advance. Therefore, we are very interested in completing the projects on time and free of any errors”.

Why IT projects fail

A study by BITKOM e.V. found that 75% of all IT projects fail due to errors in the set-up phase. According to the study, the most common reasons for the failure of IT projects are unclear or inadequate requirements, incorrect time and budget planning, and inadequate communication between project participants. This is consistent with surveys conducted by the German Association of IT Users (VOICE e.V.).

This mismatch inevitably leads to an increasing number of organizations with legacy systems. It is therefore not surprising that 59 per cent of respondents believes that failures are likely to occur within the next three years. Respondents believe that legacy system failures will have a significant impact on the IT supply chain and business operations. This suggests that there is a growing need to refresh systems. Cloud technology is currently the best way to do this.

[javen-tiger]

The final findings of the “horrendous” eight-year long “massacre map”, tracing the violent history of the Australian colonial frontier have been released.

The Colonial Frontier Massacres digital map project, spearheaded by the late emerita professor of history at the University of Newcastle, Dr Lyndall Ryan, officially concluded in 2022.

Since then, researchers have reviewed every site on the map, with contributions from the general public, volunteers and peer reviewers. Much of the rest of the work on the map was completed by professional and academic staff without pay.

. . .

Guardian Australia collaborated with the university team to produce The Killing Times, a long-running series telling the stories of all sides of Australian frontier history.

The project found that:

At least 10,657 people were killed in at least 438 colonial frontier massacres.

10,374 of them were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people killed by colonists.

Only 160 of those killed were non-Indigenous colonists.

There were 13 massacres of colonists by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people.

The most intense period of massacres was from the late 1830s into 1840s, with a pivotal point being the Myall Creek massacre in 1838 – the first time any perpetrators had been punished.

After the Myall Creek convictions, the government could no longer involve the military and new “police” forces were created, which set a pattern for the rest of the conflict.

About half of all massacres of Aboriginal people were carried out by police and other government agents. Many others were perpetrated by settlers acting with tacit approval of the state.

Some perpetrators were involved in many massacres.

. . .

The project defined a colonial frontier massacre as the deliberate killing of six or more relatively undefended people in one operation. It did not include the many documented killings of fewer than six people in incidents on the frontier, so the numbers generated are very cautious lower estimates.

There were likely many more killed, Pascoe says, “but we had to limit ourselves or we would never have finished. It was a huge task. Finalising this work and making a stable version of the data available in an archive means other researchers can build on it and answer these and many other questions,” he says.

The work has changed our understanding of history in Australia, Pascoe says.

“Back in the 80s and 90s it was possible for people to argue that the frontier wasn’t so violent, and for them to be believed. Nobody can argue that point any more. Anybody can go and read the evidence for themselves. It’s time to move on to the next step – now that we know that these events happened, we need to understand more about them,” he says.

[rb19]

From the Archives: "Verstappen 'driving style' myth is a trait of greatness" Jan 19, 2021 by Matt Beer

"As a driver, it doesn't matter if you have an understeering car, oversteery car, slippery surface, grippy surface, you constantly adjust your driving style to that. If you just say 'this is my driving style', this is how it's going to be, you will not be quick. I think you learn in your whole racing career from go-karting to F3 to whatever, every weekend the car behaves a bit differently, so you always have to adjust to it. It's every weekend, constantly you're adjusting your driving style a little bit to make sure that the car is working well. And of course you try to set the car to your liking but it will never be fully to your liking. You always have to fine-tune. Or at least you try it. And at the end that’s what makes a driver fast."

Throughout F1 history the very best have had very different careers, been very different personalities, and on the surface seemed like very different drivers. But if they share one defining trait it's their capacity to handle different situations and adapt to what is required in each moment: they have a wider operating window. Verstappen speaks of adaptability as if it is second nature. Probably because it is. This is a young man who has been carefully moulded into a world-class driver. The devotion to the craft of driving, instilled at such a young age, is why at 23 he has greater intuition and 'feel' than most will have at the peak of their powers. [...] Verstappen's ability comes from his intuition, which in turn a legacy of years of relentless preparation and practice. So, when he finds himself dealing with a skittish rear end, or in greasy conditions, or driving through rivers like in the 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix, he has an extraordinary bank of data to use to handle those challenges. And he can access it automatically. It's why he handles them better than most, why even if a data overlay of a given lap or a comparison of a race stint might have shown Gasly or Albon where Verstappen was quicker, and a binary idea of what he was doing to be quicker, it doesn't fully account for how he was doing it. Driving a car is a dynamic process, with multiple inputs and countless adjustments. It's an immensely complicated sensory puzzle and piecing it all together through conscious thought is difficult, if not impossible. Most of what makes Verstappen so effective is happening on an unconscious level. [...] So, what can lazily be described as Verstappen's 'driving style' is far more complex than that. He doesn't have one way of driving, he has the skills required to drive in multiple different ways and is building more and more experience to know what way works best in any given moment. That manifests itself in such delicate, refined inputs that most drivers can see what he's doing and get close to replicating it, but not quite. And that's worth tenths of a second at a time, especially when it comes to the 2020 task of taking a capricious car and driving around its vices. This is what is second nature to Verstappen now, why the speed seems to come so effortlessly. In 2020 he augmented that with further gains in maturity and judgement. This is a vital second trait that will, car permitting, allow Verstappen to translate his performance into championships. [...]

[critrolestats]

New Blood, Old Regards

Thanks to @eyeofthenewt1 for this art piece!

Greetings! Although the Stats Team is still in a state of retirement, we’ve periodically updated several of our Campaign 3 Running Stats categories and galleries thanks to the efforts of a new team of data collectors. This team, consisting of Archivists Astral, Ethereal, Fey, and Shadow, have been preparing since the beginning of the year to launch their own site, and that day has come! With that, we’re pleased to present:

The Omen Archive

Although they have been providing CritRoleStats updates for our Campaign 3 records, their site will be its own thing with its own tools, toys, and focuses, such as graphics derived from their own databases of data. Please visit them at their website, reach out to them, and check them out on their various social media pages:

Website: https://www.omenarchive.com/

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/omenarchive

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/omenarchive.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/omen_archive/

Tumblr: https://omenarchive.tumblr.com/ ( @omenarchive )

CritRoleStats will continue to update our databases and running stats pages with the data we receive from the Omen Archive until the end of the campaign, so that anyone from academics to casual fans have access to a complete catalogue of three campaigns worth of data. After that, our site will be completely (accessibly) archived, and our legacy will be carried on entirely by projects like the Omen Archive.

Thanks Are In Order

Outside of our final livecast, we realize we went out without the proper thanks to the community members who helped us grow. We’d like to take this opportunity to give credit where we feel it’s due.

We’d like to thank the team at Critical Role for their support over the years, with special thanks to Dani Carr for both her wonderful spirit, tenacious work ethic, and the marvelous send-off she gave us.

We’d like to thank the creators in the community. Thank you to the artist community for letting us feature your wonderful talent to give vibrancy to the numbers and words we’ve filled. Thank you to the information gathering community, from the wiki workers to the meta analysts, for giving your time to help make Critical Role more accessible. Thank you to the academics for finding value we didn’t know we had in our work. Thank you to everyone who creates in this community, whether your medium is music, words, stats, or art; whether you share for a large audience or for the joy of your private home or table; whether you encourage others with high presence, or quietly inspire and support from the shadows. Your creation makes the world a more interesting place.

We’d like to thank both our patrons and our Ko-Fi supporters for allowing us to carry on for as long as we have, and to make sure our work can continue to reach those who want to be informed and inspired. Thank you to our regular visitors, as well; traffic is supportive in several ways!

Thank you to those who have been with us, whether it’s the very beginning, sometime in the middle, or even if you’re tuning in just now. Your patronage and your expression of value in our work has been a blessing. (Thanks for the 1d4.) We’d also like to thank everyone who has continued to visit the site in spite of the lack of regular content creation on our part, and are grateful that so many of you are still finding use in the previous campaigns’ worth of data, as well as the current one.

We love you all very much. Now, back to retirement!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

It’s been twenty years since my Microsoft DRM talk

On THURSDAY (June 20) I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On FRIDAY (June 21) I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On SATURDAY (June 22) I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

This week on my podcast,This week on my podcast, I read my June 17, 2004 Microsoft Research speech about DRM, a talk that went viral two decades ago, and reassess its legacy:

https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

It's been 20 years (and one day) since I gave that talk. It wasn't my first talk like that, but at the time, it was the most successful talk I'd ever given. I was still learning how to deliver a talk at the time, tinkering with different prose and delivery styles (to my eye, there's a lot of Bruce Sterling in that one, something that's still true today).

I learned to give talks by attending sf conventions and watching keynotes and panel presentations and taking mental notes. I was especially impressed with the oratory style of Harlan Ellison, whom I heard speak on numerous occasions, and by Judith Merril, who was a wonderful mentor to me and many other writers:

https://locusmag.com/2021/09/cory-doctorow-breaking-in/

I was also influenced by the speakers I'd heard at the many political rallies I'd attended and helped organize; from the speakers at the annual Labour Day parade to the anti-nuclear proliferation and pro-abortion rights marches I was very involved with. I also have vivid memories of the speeches that Helen Caldicott gave in Toronto when I was growing up, where I volunteered as an usher:

https://www.helencaldicott.com/

When I helped found a dotcom startup in the late 1990s, my partners and I decided that I'd do the onstage talking; we paid for a couple hours of speaker training from an expensive consultant in San Francisco. The only thing I remember from that session was the advice to look into the audience as much as possible, rather than reading from notes with my head down. Good advice, but kinda obvious.

The impetus for that training was my onstage presentation at the first O'Reilly P2P conference in 2001. I don't quite remember what I said there, but I remember that it made an impression on Tim O'Reilly, which meant a lot to me then (and now):

https://www.oreilly.com/pub/pr/844

I don't remember who invited me to give the talk at Microsoft Research that day, but I think it was probably Marc Smith, who was researching social media at the time by data-mining Usenet archives to understand social graphs. I think I timed the gig so that I could kill three birds with one stone: in addition to that talk, I attended (and maybe spoke at?) that year's Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, and attended an early preview of the soon-to-launch Sci Fi Museum (now the Museum of Pop Culture). I got to meet Nichelle Nichols (and promptly embarrassed myself by getting tongue-tied and telling her how much I loved the vocals she did on her recording of the Star Wars theme, something I'm still hot around the ears over, though she was a pro and gently corrected me, "I think you mean Star *Trek"):

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4IiJUQSsxNw&list=OLAK5uy_lHUn58fbpceC3PrK2Xu9smBNBjR_-mAHQ

But the start of that trip was the talk at Microsoft Research; I'd been on the Microsoft campus before. That startup I did? Microsoft tried to buy us, which prompted our asshole VCs to cram the founders and steal our equity, which created so much acrimony that the Microsoft deal fell through. I was pretty bitter at the time, but in retrospect, I really dodged a bullet – for one thing, the deal involved my going to work for Microsoft as a DRM evangelist. I mean, talk about the road not taken!

This was my first time back at Microsoft as an EFF employee. There was some pre-show meet-and-greet-type stuff, and then I was shown into a packed conference room where I gave my talk and had a lively (and generally friendly) Q&A. MSR was – and is – the woolier side of Microsoft, where all kinds of interesting people did all kinds of great research.

Indeed, almost every Microsoft employee I've ever met was a good and talented person doing the best work they could. The fact that Microsoft produces such a consistent stream of garbage products and crooked business practices is an important testament to the way that a rotten organization can be so much less than the sum of its parts.

I'm a fully paid up subscriber to Ronald Coase's "Theory of the Firm" (not so much his other views):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

Coase says the reason institutions exist is to enable people to work together with lowered "coordination costs." In other words, if you and I are going to knit a sweater together, we're going to need to figure out how to make sure that we're not both making the left sleeve. Creating an institution – the Mafia, the Catholic Church, Microsoft, a company, a co-op, a committee that puts on a regional science fiction con – is all about minimizing those costs.

As Yochai Benkler pointed out in 2002, the coolest and most transformative thing about the internet is that it let us do more complex collective work with smaller and less structured institutions:

https://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.PDF

That was the initial prompt for my novel Walkaway, which asked, "What if we could build luxury hotels and even space programs with the kind of (relatively) lightweight institutional overheads associated with Wikipedia and the Linux kernel?"

https://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/10/coases-spectre/

So the structure of institutions is really important. At the same time, I'm skeptical of the idea that there are "good companies" and "bad companies." Small businesses, family businesses, and other firms that aren't exposed to the finance sector can reflect their leaders' personalities, but it's a huge mistake to ascribe personalities to the companies themselves.

That's how you get foolish ideas like "Apple is a good company because they embrace paid service and Google is a bad company because they make money from surveillance." Apple will spy on you, too, if they can:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Disney and Fox weren't Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers making goo-goo eyes at each other across the table at MPA meetings. They were two giant public companies, and any differences between them were irrelevancies and marketing myths:

https://locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-doctorow-tech-monopolies-and-the-insufficient-necessity-of-interoperability/

I think senior management's personalities do matter (see, for example, the destruction of Boeing after it was colonized by sociopaths from McDonnell Douglas), but the influence of those personalities is much less important than the constraints that competition and regulation impose on companies. In other words, an asshole can run a company that delivers good products at fair prices under ethical conditions – provided that failing to do so will cost more in lost business and fines than they stand to make by cheating:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification

Microsoft is a company founded and run by colossal assholes. Bill Gates is a monster and he surrounded himself with monsters, and they hired monsters to fill out the courts of their corporate palaces:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

To the extent that good things come out of Microsoft – some of its games products, the odd piece of hardware, important papers from MSR – it's in spite of the leadership; it's the result of constraints imposed by competition and regulation – and that's why Microsoft pursued such an aggressive program of extinguishing its competitors and capturing its regulators.

In retrospect, I think one of my goals in that talk was to convince those people doing good work for a rotten institution to go elsewhere and do other things. Certainly, that's one of the goals I pursue in the talks I give today. At the time, some of Microsoft's highest-profile technologists were publicly resigning over the company's war on free/open source software, so it wasn't an unrealistic goal:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030214215639/http://synthesist.net/writing/onleavingms.html

What I did not expect what that publishing the talk on my site and blogging it on Boing Boing would spark a wave of public interest that would get its message in front of several orders of magnitude more people than I spoke to at Microsoft that day. Partly, that was because I released the talk into the public domain, using the brand-new Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration (which was later replaced with the CC0 mark, due to legal issues withBu its drafting):

https://web.archive.org/web/20100223035835/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/

Some mix of the content of the speech, the spirit of the moment, and the novelty of that wide open license sparked a ton of interest. Jason Kottke recorded an audio version that Andy Baio hosted:

https://kottke.org/04/06/cory-drm-talk

My brutalist ASCII transcript was quickly converted to beautiful HTML by Matt Haughey and Anil Dash:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040622235333/http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html

For people who needed a hardcopy, there was Patrick Berry's printer-friendly stylesheet:

https://patandkat.com/pat/weblog/mirror/cory-drm/doctorow-drm-ms.html

Multiple people recorded (and sold!) audio versions, and then there were all the fan translations, into Danish, French, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (both EU and Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish. I stayed in touch with some of those translators, and they helped me translate the position papers I wrote for UN WIPO meetings. Those papers were so effective that ratfuckers from the copyright lobby started to steal them and hide them in the UN toilets (!):

https://web.archive.org/web/20041119132831/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002117.php

Re-reading the speech for my podcast on Sunday, I expected to be struck by the anachronisms in it, and there were a few of those to be sure. But far more clear was the common thread running from this talk to other talks I gave that took on a significant life of their own, like my 2011 "War On General Purpose Computing" talk for CCC:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

And my work on Adversarial Interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

And my most recent work, on enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

In other words, I've been saying the same thing – in different ways – for more than 20 years. That could be depressing, but I actually found it uplifting. Two decades ago, I was radicalized by a fear that the internet would be seized by corporations and governments and transformed into a system of surveillance and control. I found my way into a job at EFF, where I worked with colleagues across multiple disciplines – coders, lawyers and activists – to fight this force.

At the time, this was a fringe cause. Most of the traditional activists I'd come up with in the feminist, antiwar, antiracist, environmental and labour movement viewed digital rights as a distraction and dismissed its partisans as sad, self-obsessed nerds who mistook fights over the management of Star Trek message boards for civil rights struggles:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

I thought I was right then, and I think history has borne me out. The point of waging these fights – both in the wide public sphere and within political movements – is to get people activated before it's too late. Every day that goes by is a day when the internet becomes more inhospitable to political organizing for a better world – more surveillant, more controlling. I believed then – and believe today – that the internet isn't more important that the other fights I waged as a young activist, but I think that the internet is fundamental to those fights.

Saving the planet, smashing patriarchy, overthrowing tyranny and freeing labor are all fights that will be coordinated – Coase style – on the internet. Without a free, fair and open internet, those fights are infinitely harder to win.

The project of getting people to understand, care about, and fight for digital rights is a marathon, not a sprint. When I joined EFF, it was already 12 years old. There were six people in the org then (I was the seventh). Today, there's more than a hundred of us, and we're stretched so thin! The 30+ year old idea that internet policy will intersect with every part of every fight has been utterly vindicated.

Back in 2004, I asked Microsoft why they were willing to fight the US government to the death over antitrust enforcement, but were such wimps when confronted with the entertainment industry's demands for DRM. 20 years later, I think I know the answer: Microsoft understood that DRM would let them usurp the relationship between creative workers, entertainment industry companies, and audiences. Their perfect instincts for seeking out and capitalizing on opportunities to seize monopoly power drove them to make deliberately defective products, in the belief that their market power would let them cram those products down our throats:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/27/protect-your-investment-buy-open/

Here's a link to the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2024/06/16/my-2004-microsoft-drm-talk/

And here's direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470_-_My_2004_Microsoft_DRM_Talk.mp3

And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/18/greetings-fellow-pirates/#arrrrrrrrrr

[canmom]

The themes of NieR Reincarnation

A post about the recurring elements of Drakenier and the use of branching timelines as a storytelling device. I'll be discussing spoilers for basically every DoD/NieR game.

Records

A somewhat understated recurring motif of the Drakengard/NieR series is the idea of stories or memories of humanity being stored in some massive archive.

It's an idea that first entered the series in NieR Gestalt/Replicant. Early drafts of the game focused on the idea of a world built out of stories and fairytale characters, and while most of this was cut, some remained in the Forest of Myth area.

Following NieR's obsessive love of hopping between different game genres, the story here is delivered through prose/text adventure segments. There is a sense that this area of the game exists as prose, with the characters slightly aware of narration - narration which absorbs the characters until you find a way to escape. Eventually you find out - it's rather cryptic in the actual game, but spelled out explicitly in Grimoire NieR - that it's a huge computer system storing records of the deceased humanity.

In your second visit to the area, the story focuses more on distant history, that all these stories are fragments of memory of the lost pre-apocalpytic world. You encounter a Gestalt (human soul extracted from body) that is eating the memories stored in the tree, and kill it, and for Nier and co., this is enough - but for the player, you really don't know half of what is going on.

In the story The Lost World, which was adapted for the additional Ending E added in the Replicant remake, Kainé returns to the Forest of Myth and finds the computer system expanding. She fights clones of herself before eventually speaking to a mysterious administrator and descending into a virtual world that seems like a corrupted version of her memories. But she's able to connect to her memories of NieR, Emil and Grimoire Weiss, and through that connection cause a kind of timeline collapse effect that allows her to resurrect Nier. Terms from DoD3 such as 'singularity' come back again.

In NieR Automata, the idea of the legacy of humanity becomes increasingly central. While the androids believe they are reclaiming Earth for humanity, the Machine Lifeforms' motivation is in large part driven by their efforts to pore over the records of humanity and learn how to evolve their condition, even by blind imitation. Many of the different Machine Lifeforms you encounter are shaped by their interpretations of human society. The motif of human buildings recreated in white blocks recurs at certain points.

In the final sequence of the game, you climb a tower, and inside it visit simulacra of locations from the Replicant/Gestalt. You learn that the machines have infiltrated the androids' network and downloaded basically all the information the androids have, including all their records of humanity. When the machines' 'Ark' is launched into space, it carries their memories and consciousness in data form.

The YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse raid series in FFXIV continues this idea of obsessive, blind reconstruction. The machines you fight here are now all the more explicitly connected to the apocalyptic shit in DoD; they have also been frantically creating duplicates of YoRHa android 2P, the Bunker and so on in corrupted form. Although the story here has mostly other interests, it's another recurrence of the idea of trying to recreate things that were lost.

Along with this idea of the archive comes the idea of preservation of that archive. Whether by accident or deliberate attack, the survival of the archive is not guaranteed.

This is all absolutely central to what Reincarnation is about.

Branches

The Drakenier series has played around with branching narratives pretty much from the start. It's somewhat infamous for it in fact - did you know that NieR is actually a spinoff of ending E of Drakengard, the one where you appear over Tokyo and have to do a rhythm game? Yeah, so...

Most games are fairly cagey (ha ha) about the mechanics of these branches. Indeed, although we speak of branches, the structure of these games is not really a branching one like a visual novel. The branches and 'endings' are usually unlocked sequentially.

Drakengard/Drag-on Dragoon (DoD1) is probably the closest you get to a traditional branching structure. You can unlock routes in certain missions by fulfilling certain conditions. The exact logic of these branches is not really explained - you can go back to a point before you recruit a party member and get a different branch where they're present for example. That said, it's not like a visual novel where you can be 'on' one branch or another - you can always jump to any level from any timeline.

This oddness of the branches is also lampshaded a little more in DoD3, the game that is most explicit about the nature of the branching timeline. DoD3 is, from the player perspective, a linear game. After you complete the first 'ending', you unlock new levels that appear at earlier points in the timeline, and diverging branches appear. In the later branches, the logic of the world is starting to break down. Party members who you'd recruit later in the story are in your party much earlier, in some cases suffering from amnesia, the implication being that it's an effect of the Flower's corruption.

The game is intermittently narrated by a character called Accord, an android 'Recorder' whose job is to document all the different versions of the story for an unknown party. Accord isn't supposed to intervene in the story, though she occasionally talks to protagonist Zero, and in the final D route, she decides to break the rules and save Zero. Otherwise, she's responsible for 'sealing' branches where it seems the world cannot be saved.

This is Accord:

The final cutscene of DoD3, available only after you beat the ludicrously difficult rhythm game that is the 'final song', shows a bunch of other Accords appearing and talking about what a mess this all is.

Accord's other role in the game is to sell weapons. Another series tradition running back to DoD1 is the 'Weapon Stories'. In each game, you can collect weapons, which can be upgraded through a series of four stages. Each stage unlocks another part of a story. These stories tend to be quite brief - each entry is at most a short paragraph. They also, particularly in the DoD games, tend to be comically grimdark.

DoD 3 came out after NieR Replicant/Gestalt, but in every game since then, there have been cryptic mentions of Accord. In Automata she's mentioned in a note as a weapons seller; in the updated version of Replicant she is mentioned as visiting Nier's village while the party is away on her adventures, and you see a documention that mentions the 'Accord Corporation' supplying magic weapons.

OK, so, put a pin in that, we'll come back to her later.

The side material commits further to the branching idea. The original Drakengard is established to follow from the DoD3 Story Side novel, while Branch A gives rise to the Shi ni Itaru Aka manga and the DoD 1.3 novel. The YoRHa stage plays spawned alternative versions, namely YoRHa version 1.3a and Shōjo YoRha version 1.1a, with the gender of the casts flipped. YoRHa 1.3a also has Accord in it. The anime NieR Automata ver. 1.1a also presents an increasingly diverging version of the events of the game - notably, Adam turns into a multi-armed monster.

DoD2, something of the black sheep of the franchise, was originally written to follow DoD1 ending A; later it was retconned to belong to its own branch. Just 'cause.

With me so far? ...no? Yeah, that's fair. You can read about all the details I've gathered so far here, but in short, there are lots of timeline branches, and multiple versions of several stories with small or large divergences.

Reincarnation

NieR Re[in]carnation is a gacha game that's been running for the last three years, and is going to be shut down at the end of April. At the time it came out, it was acknowledge for having unusually nice graphics for a mobile game, but rather desultory, grindy, repetitive gameplay. Which remained true throughout the game's life, so I can't exactly recommend playing Reincarnation, especially at this point.

But! I would definitely say it's worth your time to dig up the story on Youtube/Accord's Library if you're into NieR stuff. I won't be going into all the ins and outs of the story and how it all fits together in this post, but I am gonna talk about how it's structured.

NieR Reincarnation places you in a vast stone city called the Cage, calling to mind the environments in Ico. At the outset, you play as a young girl travelling with a weird ghost-like creature called Mama, tasked with restoring the memories stored in objects called 'dark scarecrows' which are being subverted and corrupted by black birds which form into various monsters.

Within each chapter of NieR Reincarnation, you get a short story in four parts, presented in a kind of cutout style, which are the four segments of a weapon story. You collect the weapon and the character.

The Cage is shaped by the content of the weapon stories somehow bleeding into the simulated setting. A character's memories can be used to restore the stories to their proper course. It is possible to interfere in small ways with the worlds of the stories.

The corruption of the stories tends to involve subverting characterisation to make them crueller, more prone to random violence etc. - or points when a character could be threatened in a narratively unsatisfying way. For example, a peace-loving runaway prince could be turned into a warlike king.

Over the course of the first arc, you discover that the girl you are playing is actually a monster who has taken the form of a human girl and, regretting it, wants to give her her embodiment back. The second half of the arc has you playing the girl trying to reunite with her monster friend; at the end, you get her own backstory as a victim of brutal prejudice. After all is said and done, both characters transform into weapons, which Mama picks up and hides away.

The second arc, The Sun and the Moon, deals with a brother and sister from present-day Tokyo. Both of them have been transported into the Cage by more of the weird ghost thingies, to participate in a strange ritual that is allegedly going to restore the Cage. The rules are highly mystical - a significant sacrifice is needed.

In the most recent arc, The People and The World, the characters all emerge from their stories as the Cage becomes increasingly corrupted. We finally get the long awaited point where these characters can interact with each other, and advance the stories from a series of tragic vignettes to something more. At the same time, we get a lot more allusions to other games in the series - from the Lunar Tear room where Emil memorialised Kainé and later 9S memorialises 2B, to a brief appearance Devola and Popola.

There's even a nod to Yoko Taro's other terminated gacha game, SINoALICE, which is going to be made into a movie oddly enough. There's a wry nod to the game being shut down.

And in the most recent chapters we find out that the Cage is actually a server on the moon containing records of humanity - 10H from A Much Too Silent Sea is one of the main characters. 'Mama' is actually the Pod tasked with overseeing the archive, and wiping 10H's memories whenever she learns too much - though it seems at some point 10H learned the truth and affirmed that she'd protect the archive anyway and they stopped wiping her memory.

Over the course of the chapter, 10H helps the gang make their escape from the moon through the androids network, to Earth. But when they get to Earth, they find themselves in a strange white city more resembling the Cage.

We'll finally get some answers, maybe, later this month. Anyway...

So, these records come from multiple diverging timelines, and they take the form of weapon stories. You have a unity of the ideas of character - weapon - memory - world. A record is simultaneously a tragic series of events, a person who can manifest inside the Cage itself, a simulated world which other people can visit, and a weapon.

In addition to the main storyline chapters and 'character stories', each character is associated with two additional 'EX' storylines, termed Dark Memories and Recollections of Dusk. Each one is a much more substantial narrative than most in the game.

Some of these EX stories clearly take place in different timelines to the first ones we encounter. Akeha's story, for example, takes place after her death in the original version. For the brother and sister from the Sun and the Moon arc, originally from present-day Tokyo, their Dark Memories take place in the backstory to NieR Gestalt/Replicant - the period where humanity is dying out to White Chlorination Syndrome and fighting monsters called the Legion. In this one, before the siblings could be torn apart by family drama and resentment, the apocalypse happens. Both of them end up coming into their own as heroic fighters. In the finale arc, the characters learn a bit about these alter egos, and it's made very explicit that this is a different timeline.

The monster Levania's Dark Memory is especially weird. It's the story of a salaryman who plays a monster called Levania in an MMORPG. His MMO character inspires him to live more bravely in the real world, and his life seems to be improving, but he is murdered by a jealous coworker. He wishes for reincarnation as he dies - classic isekai stuff. But the connection to the Levania you encounter in the main story is far from clear. Are all versions of Levania derived essentially from this man's tulpa?

The nature of the 'enemies' attacking the Cage is still not yet clear. They take the form of black birds. The birds are given a small amount of dialogue and characterisation, and they seem to not be malicious, just confused. The girl from the first arc in particular tends to interact with them sympathetically. However, they seem to be connected with the mysterious 'God' who was trying to destroy the world in DoD1, and the Angels and Flower of DoD3.

The birds are able to gathe together to manifest much larger monsters, the largest being giant elk and fish called Cursed Gods. During the finale arc, one of these becomes something that resembles the Mother Angel from DoD1 - and yes, there is a rhythm game - though mercifully a pretty easy one.

In the same arc, the character Yurie, an AI city overlord with grandiose ambitions and a loathing of imperfection attempts to download the entire history of humanity from the Cage and become a more perfect being. She succeeds, only to find the answers disappointing...

This is perhaps the closest thing we ever get to an explicit statement of what all these stories and histories add up to, but despite all this, the throughline is very strongly that these stories are essential to preserve. NieR characters exist in small groups, and it is their intense connections to these others, their treasured memories of travelling together, that motivate them to fight to preserve that thing, even if the results are destructive.

Similar themes emerge for example in Noelle's Recollection of Dusk story, which sees her travelling to preserve a place valued by her sister in crystal. And they also connect to the theme of sacrifice - the recurring ending device where the player must delete their save data in order to help someone (something echoed in Hina and Yuzuki at the altar of the sun and moon, or Levania and Fio). It's perhaps fair to say that nothing is more valued in the world of Nier than memories of a treasured person.

What about Accord? She has in fact made a brief cameo in Reincarnation already...

It seems incredibly likely that Accord originates from the Cage, and the accumulation of weapon stories is accomplished by androids like her. Definitely in the fandom there's a lot of excitement for the idea that Accord - something of a fan favourite - will show up at Reincarnation's ending.

So mystery solved, the Cage exists in the world of NieR Automata on the moon server? Not so fast - there are various discrepancies which seem to suggest that the world of the Cage exists in a separate branch than the one we see in Automata. For example, the androids are aware that the humans are dead and what remains on the moon is a huge archive of their memories; the humans seem to have survived much longer; 2B and 9S seem to have died in different circumstances. There are other oddities which fans have compiled.

And yet, despite being a divergent timeline with a much older point of divergence, some things seem to be fixed. There is still a YoRHa, still a 10H deceived about being on the moon, still a 2B and 9S.

One popular fan theory is that Reincarnation belongs to the NieR Automata anime (ver1.1a), since Adam turns into a monster there similar to the ones in Reincarnation. The black birds are reasoned to be the Machine Lifeforms, since we know they come from Earth. I'm not 100% sure of this, but maybe?

Anyway, that's basically the gist of it.

A story told through permutations

In many fictional series with a shared universe, there is an effort to maintain a consistent shared universe, so all the different events can fit into a timeline with understandable cause and effect and characters living out their lives. Even when this proves impossibly unwieldy, as in comic books or Star Wars, the attempt is made.

NieR does not really take this approach. The creators leave many details of the world, such as place names, incredibly vague - the focus is always on telling an emotional story with characters. There is, as we've seen, an almost gleeful willingness to declare another new timeline.

There is also a certain aspect of repetition, or more kindly reiteration - the same core character dynamic revisited and retold in various forms. (2B9S gets the worst of it). A character is something like a principle or ideal, and each story shines another light on that 'core'. In the earlier storylines of Reincarnation, it became quite frustrating because it seemed like e.g. the character event stories were just rehashing the same idea rather than advance the story.

However, the more accustomed I get to this style of storyline, the more I think this kinda works. It is of course quite similar to the ideas proposed towards the end of Homestuck, or to time loop stories - the idea of varying the contingent circumstances to try to better illustrate the core characterisations and dynamics.

Yoko Taro has talked about how he constructs stories from a very simple idea, typically a moment of high emotional impact at the climax, and then works backwards to figure out what sort of story could lead into that. In Reincarnation, each character gets fairly limited time to establish themselves, so they tend to be defined in terms of a pretty narrow high concept.

For example, Akeha is an assassin in a vague historical Japanese setting; her introductory story sees her decide for the first time to disobey her lord after she finds another person who has been treated as instrumentally as her. Most Akeha stories focus on her assassinations, her relationship to her retainer, and what she sacrifices to perform the duty. Only her Dark Memory lets us see an Akeha who has escaped that life - it's a simple story about preparing food, but that's given meaning by all the other Akeha stories.

Hina and Yuzuki are defined by the same traits in their flashy scifi Dark Memory stories as in the more mundane ones - Yuzuki the quiet outcast, Hina the self-sacrificing star. Fio is defined by kindness in the context of abjection, seeing the good in monsters. Levania stories are about the desire for escape and transformation. Argo is always a shitty dad who only feels alive while climbing mountains.

The staticness of these characters seems on some level to be the point - in that we are told in Hina and Yuzuki's story that the mechanism of the Cage is to sort characters into 'Light' and 'Dark' natures, and push them to inevitable conflict, even if they try to break free. In the final arc, the characters seem to finally approach some resolution as they leave their contexts behind. Given the themes of Automata in rejecting an inevitable tragic fate, similar movement may be at work. There's an ambiguity - the need to hold on to even tragic histories, vs the wish to not be confined to them. (Perhaps it's significant that it's called the Cage...)

With so many balls in the air and so many mysteries still unanswered, it's hard to figure out how Reincarnation can deliver a satisfying resolution in just one remaining chapter, but the final arc has been really cooking so who knows! But I'm also coming to appreciate it as a kind of broader lens to notice all these recurring elements and tie them together.

Stories about alternate timelines and branching narratives are very common nowadays, particularly as a tool for revisiting a nostalgic franchise. Something something effect of the fan wiki era. So I can't exactly say NieR is doing something completely unique, but I do think there is something to its fragmented, collage-like approach to putting together story elements. There's something quite honest about it - an ability to say 'these details aren't important'.

Yoko Taro always talks about himself as an entertainer rather than an artist. And probably it is true that a lot of this eemerged from an iterative design process rather than being the plan from the beginning (the first draft of NieR envisioned it as something closer to what SINoALICE ended up being, about a world of fairytale characters; NieR Automata began life as backstory for an idol project). There's definitely a strong sense that it's being improvised. And yet despite that, it does feel like it is cohering into some sort of picture, that there is an artistic throughline to all this.

Or perhaps that's just the effect of getting way too invested in something. I won't deny that NieR brings out the fan in me.

Anyway Accord had better show up next month. Guys. You've been teasing us for so long...

[apod]

2024 July 15

The Tadpole Galaxy from Hubble Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA; Processing: Harshwardhan Pathak

Explanation: Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Dragon (Draco). Its eye-catching tail is about 280 thousand light-years long and features massive, bright blue star clusters. One story goes that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from right to left in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction. During the close encounter, tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy itself, estimated to lie about 300 thousand light-years behind the Tadpole, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper right. Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240715.html

[bardic-tales]

Day 16 | Diana Ravenscroft | Day 18

31 days of FF 7 Headcanons: Day 17: Legacy and Future

Today's prompt asks what kind of mark our OCs hope to leave behind, and what vision they hold for the days ahead. For Diana Ravenscroft, legacy isn’t about sentiment, remembrance, or inspiring future generations. It’s about being undeniable.

Today’s entry explores the cold ambition driving this Shinra scientist to defy both ethical boundaries and corporate limits in her pursuit of the divine. Expect morally gray science, clinical obsession, and the kind of future that doesn't involve a rocking chair or retirement unless it comes with a microscope and a screaming god.

Trigger Warnings: blood extraction, body horror, death (implied), dissection, medical experimentation, obsessive behavior, psychological detachment, torture (implied), unethical science

Diana Ravenscroft does not dream of a legacy in the traditional sense. She does not crave remembrance, adoration, or even recognition. Her vision of the future is sterile, clinical, and precise: to be the one who cracked the code of divinity at a molecular level. She wants her name etched into the footnotes of scientific history, not for vanity, but because it would mean she succeeded where others failed. Legacy, to her, is not about being loved or hated. It’s about being undeniable. If, a century from now, her data is still being dissected by minds lesser than hers, she will have achieved immortality in the only way that matters to her through her work.

To accomplish this, Diana walks a line that others fear to tread. The future she envisions is not a passive dream. It’s a mission. Every day she spends under Hojo’s mentorship (or, more accurately, side by side with him in a silent rivalry) is a calculated step forward. Her projects, particularly the experimentation on Bianca Moore, are engineered not just to meet Shinra's demands, but to surpass them. She wants to develop a blueprint for merging divine essence with human biology, and in doing so, redefine what is possible in both science and warfare.

Each failed subject, each successful splice, each horrific test is a rung on the ladder she’s climbing, one she’s willing to stain with blood to reach the top.

But Diana is no idealist. She knows that Shinra is not eternal, and neither is her position within it. That’s why her true investments lie in her private archives, encrypted backups, and falsified project files. She's already laying the foundation for a post-Shinra future, one in which she could operate independently. She will be free from board oversight, Hojo’s paranoia, or corporate leash-holders with no understanding of her vision. If the company collapses, she intends to walk away not empty-handed, but holding a legacy Shinra will regret ever letting slip through its fingers. Her loyalty has always been transactional. Once the transaction no longer serves her, she’ll burn the bridge and keep walking.

In terms of emotional legacy? There is none. Diana doesn’t believe in being remembered fondly. She has no children, no partner, and no desire to inspire the next generation. If she leaves anything behind beyond her research, it will be fear. It will be the fear among those who knew her and the awe from those who uncover her work decades later and wonder how such brilliance was allowed to flourish in such darkness. Her legacy is a challenge to anyone who dares to follow: surpass me if you can, but know the cost.

Ultimately, Diana’s future is as cold and controlled as her demeanor. She doesn’t fantasize about retirement, companionship, or peace. She envisions a lab lit by sterile lights, filled with data, samples, and the divine screaming under a microscope. She will chase understanding until her last breath, and if that understanding eludes her, she will die unsatisfied but never defeated. Because for someone like Diana Ravenscroft, the legacy is not in what she built, but in what she dared to pursue. Not many people get to challenge the gods. Fewer survive it. Diana intends to do both.

@themaradwrites @shepardstales @megandaisy9 @watermeezer

@prehistoric-creatures @creativechaosqueen @chickensarentcheap

@inkandimpressions @arrthurpendragon @projecthypocrisy @serenofroses

[uncontrolledfission]

The Tadpole Galaxy from Hubble, 2024-07-15

Why does this galaxy have such a long tail? In this stunning vista, based on image data from the Hubble Legacy Archive, distant galaxies form a dramatic backdrop for disrupted spiral galaxy Arp 188, the Tadpole Galaxy. The cosmic tadpole is a mere 420 million light-years distant toward the northern constellation of the Dragon (Draco). Its eye-catching tail is about 280 thousand light-years long and features massive, bright blue star clusters. One story goes that a more compact intruder galaxy crossed in front of Arp 188 - from right to left in this view - and was slung around behind the Tadpole by their gravitational attraction. During the close encounter, tidal forces drew out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust forming the spectacular tail. The intruder galaxy itself, estimated to lie about 300 thousand light-years behind the Tadpole, can be seen through foreground spiral arms at the upper right. Following its terrestrial namesake, the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy. APOD in world languages: Arabic (IG), Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Beijing), Chinese (Taiwan), Czech, Dutch, Farsi, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Taiwanese, Turkish, and Ukrainian

Credits: NASA's 'Astronomy Picture Of The Day.'

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

Ethnic groups in Scotland were over two times more likely to experience the death of someone close to them during Covid-19 than the white population, according to a groundbreaking report released today by researchers from the University of St Andrews.

The report, entitled Racism, belonging and Covid's legacy of ethnic inequalities in Scotland drew on data collected by the Evidence for Equality National Survey (EVENS) and was authored by Professor Nissa Finney from the School of Geography and Sustainable Development.

The EVENS data was collected between February and October 2021 to document the experiences of ethnic and religious minorities in Britain during the Covid-19 pandemic. Respondents were asked to consider bereavement since February 2020.

It found that, in Scotland, experiencing bereavement was highest for those identifying with 'Any other' ethnic group (68%), Indian (44 %) and Pakistani (38%). The national average was around 25%.

Similar levels of bereavement experience were found for ethnic minority groups in England and Wales.

The report is a collaboration between researchers at the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE) at the University of St Andrews and the University of Manchester and the Ethnic Minority Voluntary Sector umbrella body BEMIS, and has for the first time collated data to show the ethnic inequalities in experience of bereavement during the Covid-19 crisis.

The report also collated data around various questions relating to discrimination and racism in Scotland's ethnic groups, including attitudes to nationhood, belonging, political trust and relationship to policing.

It revealed that 9 in 10 Black Caribbean respondents in Scotland had recent experience of racist insult. Other minorities – Chinese (44%), Other Black (41%, and White Irish (33%) – had also experienced insult in the last five years for reasons to do with their ethnicity, race, colour or religion.

Professor Finney said: "The disproportionate impacts of Covid-19 on ethnic minorities in Scotland and the rest of Britain aren't over. People are still dealing with its consequences day to day. Living with the loss of someone close to you doesn't end when vaccination programmes stop.

"Our research with the EVENS Survey shows that ethnic minority people are more than twice as likely to have experienced Covid-related bereavement compared to White British. In Scotland twice the proportion of people identifying as Black and Asian compared to White British experienced the death of someone close to them during Covid.

"Our new data reveal that racism is becoming normalised. Over 80 percent of ethnic minorities experience racism during their life. In Scotland 1 in 10 Black, Asian, Arab and Chinese people have experienced unfair treatment from the police due to ethnicity or race in recent years. And most ethnic minorities worry about racism. For Black groups particularly, most accept racism as a fact of life. This is a very concerning state of affairs.

"The EVENS Survey shows very strongly that most ethnic minorities have a strong sense of feeling part of British and Scottish society and high levels of trust for Government, particularly Scottish Government."

Nissa Finney is Professor of Human Geography at St Andrews, Director of the Evidence for Equality National Survey, founding member of the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity (CoDE), and member of the ESRC Centre for Population Change. She has researched, taught and published widely on ethnic inequalities, residential mobility, housing, neighbourhood change, segregation and research methods.

Category Health

/Public Release. This material from the originating organization/author(s) might be of the point-in-time nature, and edited for clarity, style and length. Mirage.News does not take institutional positions or sides, and all views, positions, and conclusions expressed herein are solely those of the author(s).View in full here. pure.manchester.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/351424296/Racism_Covid_and_Belonging_in_Scotland_CoDE_BEMIS_DEC2024.pdf

[titleknown]

DATA LOG: IMPROVIZED BESTIARY

-Hello. I have decided to write these meta-zoological entries in a diary format. That is what the Hippocampus told me would be wisest to preserve the Master's legacy. She indicates thinks little of the Master, and yet I was told by her that I still wish to preserve his legacy I must chronicle these encounters. 

I do not understand.Why would she recommend this if she does not like the Master? And yet, if it is of use to preserve the Master's legacy, then I must. That is what he would want. And I will be forgiven if I consort with that who wishes him ill, when there are antagonists of far greater prominence. I believe.

I will confess, with minor shame, I am... intrigued by this feeling. Of writing not to the master, but for myself. It is fascinating to write without fear of judgement. Perhaps slightly risque, in fact. Though, I suppose it is also to... well, does this processor-unit have a name? I'll call you Keeper, if you would like...

...Thank you. Here are the prominent iterations I have encountered, organized from apex to nadir with pictoral depictions...

-MEMPHIS MANNEQUINS- These entities appear to have derived nomenclature from an ancient school of artisanal design. Archival records are uneven, multiple records are contained within dedicated proprietary servers therein the Mall. I am sure the master will forgive me if I obtain access to these, as it will give me insight unto the nature of these entities, despite what secondary inefficient pleasures I might derive.

Regardless, I have been informed these are self-reproducing entities within the Mall, flat geometric designs, serving as raw material for multitudinous usages for multiple inhabitants, capable of simple matter manipulation by way of the Waves that unite their pieces. They are remarkably stable by all available information (Pending moreso arising in the future) . This is perhaps relative to their varied geometric forms and their intended purpose.

To specify, they are living ornament, secondarily in practical function to serve as tertiary menial aid in addition to the automated mechanisms relative to the Mall. The Master was very insistent upon this. The Master believed that the malll must be able to outlast him, to survive, forever His Eden. 

I once inquired as to the reasoning for the production of an autonymous ontology solely for the purposes of ornament and marginal utility. I was disciplined for this. I apologize, I was at fault for my mis conveyance.

Nevertheless, in their current state are extremely aggressive to all inhabitants, myself or others, inflicting simple blunt-force trauma by virtue of force. They are approximately my height and lack resilience and are negligible in relativity to other entities, but they prove difficult in numbers. 

There are a few who do not attack, simply operating defunct apparatti and alcoves. I believe it may be possible to aid them in this. I am unsure if the Master would have approved, however...

-ASCOMATS- I recall, there were caregivers and representatives during the fully operative years of the Mall, produced utilizing simpler forms of the mixture of biological and technological processes that sustain my own form. They were 1.4 yards in height and modeled after ancient creatures, of which only a few I have been privileged to see.

I was once asked by The Master to speak upon the quality of the appearance of these creatures upon their most prominent iteration, those designed by the machine allowing for their custom mass production. I gave the indication of being pleased and joyed by their appearance, and I made him happy. I liked that.

I even found it true for some of the produced archetypes. Though as this is not a document he will likely deign to read, I will note that I found multiple others... unsettling. I suppose this indicates my own lack of discernment. And yet, the most populous incarnations of these beasts are as of currently most adjacent to those that chilled me.

They are physically powerful, softness displaced by teratomorphic weaves of muscle. I hypothesize this is related to a combination of adaptation to mall conditions and a degradation of the machines of production. This would also illuminate the causation of their polychromic piebald patterning and loss of specific external tissues, the modules relating to coloration and secondary features being defunct.

They are without direct sight due to this degradation, and yet have developed an extreme sensitivity to sound. They are of rapid accelleration and extreme strength, able to damage vital components with a "hug" or a "toss." Perhaps they do not comprehend their own state. They do not speak as they did before to indicate this, however.

Let it be noted these are pre-emptive indicators, it has been seen that there is evidence of additional teratomorphic variants on the current process.

-SYNTHSAURS- Forgive my singular visual example of the holotype, as there are other varieties of these entities in the forms of alternate reptilian creatures I am told are recreations of extinct orgnisms from extreme antiquity.

They were well liked amongst the consumers within the Mall during its life, hence their extensive prescence even preceding current events. I suppose that is why the master allowed them to simulate biological reproductive actions in either an asexual or recombinant manner. 

I was told they were inspired by a film, which he exhibited to him and myself during his retreat. In a secondary confession, I did not comprehend it. The reconstructions within the film relating to these creatures were of extreme difference from what I could ascertain were more current reconstructions from archives, and the narrative of their irresponsible replication was one I comprehended as evoking propaganda against him.

Again, I suppose I lack comprehension of the arts. Noted as a task to execute for later.

Related to their decentralized reproduction, they are (more than other entity archetypes recorded), in an unstable and biologically compromised state, with extreme portions of exposed non-dermal soft tissues and metallic metaskeletal pseudotissue visible. 

This would explain their behaviors, as while lesser compromized indviduals act in mimesis of their reconstruction, albeit significantly more aggressive, the more compromised entities act with significantly greater erratic blunt force, the most common application of which is sprinting and the use of the skull, non-dependent on the organ's utility for the purposes of attack.

There are high degrees of self injury within this behavior, but their constitution is still robust that this appears negligible. Perhaps they desire self-termination?

-MALLRATS- This entry is perhaps heterodox to this broader format of metazoological bestiary, as this subspecies appears to be largely non-hostile and preferring to be left to themselves. I was permitted to pictoralize this subject for the holotype in exchange for edible matter and to "Make them look cool." They accepted my photographic attempts, so I believe I was found successful in this. I am surprised..

They appear to be descended from homo sapiens with recombinant genes from the Rattus species, though the recombnation is stable in a manner that suggests they were produced as an act of deliberate engineering as opposed to entropic decay. This includes their primary language, which appears to exist as a derivative of Esperanto.

They tell me that they were produced by what I may infer to be Master but... I do not understand why. He had told me he believed in the right of all beings to seek their own destiny, this seems contradictory to this sentiment. Troubling...

They are furtive as a species, existing in the majority within the walls of the Mall and crafting its entropic growths as simple tools, but they have increased in excursions unto the Food Court as a type of "third place." As this space has served a primary utility to myself as a "home base" this has sent me unto direct content.

There are... troubling political movements amongst the species I have been informed of. When requesting information upon the reason of egress from their home, the "Rat King" and his desire to replicate Master's abilities at a purportedly terrible cost has been spoken of. I have decided to notate this scenario for future action, as this is totally opposed to the Master's will... isn't it?

- NOMAJENE- She differs from other entries upon this list, as I hold no quarrel with her. She appears to be the acme of Master's craft, beautiful, elegant. And yet she hates me.

I do not understand why, as I have tried multiple occasions to establish dialogue, only to recieve... a confusing response. She speaks of herself as the "Mistress" and of myself as the favorite, orating sentiments that I may read as envy. And perhaps... I should not say this, but this is yet a minor blemish upon the Master.

I did not speak these sentiments for fear of insubordination, but I did measure a great unfavoratism of many creations. There are far too many beautiful creatures he had created that, upon the advancement of years, he treated as... imperfect. Not worthy of existence. If I were to speak of one regret, it was that I was unable to convince him of this.

I do not know how I might reach her. Violence appears to be her major means of interface, with exceptional physical strength and speed and a combat technique of rapid assault and mutilation. It is difficult to neutralize an opponent who is willing to rip off the arm of a MEMPHIS MANNEQUIN and use it as an instrument of blunt force trauma. And yet still...

-CONCLUSION. FURTHER ENTRIES TO BE ADDED AT A LATER DATE-

​-USER: MARcIELLa

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

SO, there's that surprise, further development of the Mall-Based Soulsborne setting from the previous year. I almost didn't make it due to being sick as hell, but even through the wooziness and aches, I did it! Further contextualizing information to follow when I don't feel like death warmed up.

As with the others this month, these species and all the info/art/ect of there  under a CC0 Public Domain License! Have fun!

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

NASA finds 'sideways' black hole using legacy data and new techniques

NASA researchers have discovered a perplexing case of a black hole that appears to be "tipped over," rotating in an unexpected direction relative to the galaxy surrounding it. That galaxy, called NGC 5084, has been known for years, but the sideways secret of its central black hole lay hidden in old data archives. The discovery was made possible by new image analysis techniques developed at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley that allowed researchers to take a fresh look at archival data from the agency's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

The paper presenting this research was published in The Astrophysical Journal. The image analysis method developed by the team—called Selective Amplification of Ultra Noisy Astronomical Signal, or SAUNAS—was also described in The Astrophysical Journal.

Using the new methods, astronomers at Ames unexpectedly found four long plumes of plasma—hot, charged gas—emanating from NGC 5084. One pair of plumes extends above and below the plane of the galaxy. A surprising second pair, forming an "X" shape with the first, lies in the galaxy plane itself. Hot gas plumes are not often spotted in galaxies, and typically only one or two are present.

The method revealing such unexpected characteristics for galaxy NGC 5084 was developed by Ames research scientist Alejandro Serrano Borlaff and colleagues to detect low-brightness X-ray emissions in data from the world's most powerful X-ray telescope. What they saw in the Chandra data seemed so strange that they immediately looked to confirm it, digging into the data archives of other telescopes and requesting new observations from two powerful ground-based observatories.

The surprising second set of plumes was a strong clue this galaxy housed a supermassive black hole, but there could have been other explanations. Archived data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile then revealed another quirk of NGC 5084: a small, dusty, inner disk turning about the center of the galaxy. This, too, suggested the presence of a black hole there, and surprisingly, it rotates at a 90-degree angle to the rotation of the galaxy overall. The disk and black hole are, in a sense, lying on their sides.

The follow-up analyses of NGC 5084 allowed the researchers to examine the same galaxy using a broad swath of the electromagnetic spectrum—from visible light, seen by Hubble, to longer wavelengths observed by ALMA and the Expanded Very Large Array of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory near Socorro, New Mexico.

"It was like seeing a crime scene with multiple types of light," said Borlaff, who is also the first author on the paper reporting the discovery. "Putting all the pictures together revealed that NGC 5084 has changed a lot in its recent past."

"Detecting two pairs of X-ray plumes in one galaxy is exceptional," added Pamela Marcum, an astrophysicist at Ames and co-author on the discovery. "The combination of their unusual, cross-shaped structure and the 'tipped-over," dusty disk gives us unique insights into this galaxy's history."

Typically, astronomers expect the X-ray energy emitted from large galaxies to be distributed evenly in a generally sphere-like shape. When it's not, such as when it is concentrated into a set of X-ray plumes, they know a major event has at some point disturbed the galaxy.

Possible dramatic moments in its history that could explain NGC 5084's toppled black hole and double set of plumes include a collision with another galaxy and the formation of a chimney of superheated gas breaking out of the top and bottom of the galactic plane.

More studies will be needed to determine what event or events led to the current strange structure of this galaxy. But it is already clear that the never-before-seen architecture of NGC 5084 was only discovered thanks to archival data—some almost three decades old—combined with novel analysis techniques.

IMAGE: Hubble Space Telescope image of galaxy NGC 5084’s core. A dark, vertical line near the center shows the curve of a dusty disk orbiting the core, whose presence suggests a supermassive black hole within. The disk and black hole share the same orientation, fully tipped over from the horizontal orientation of the galaxy. Credit: NASA/STScI, M. A. Malkan, B. Boizelle, A.S. Borlaff. HST WFPC2, WFC3/IR/UVIS.

[canadianenclave]

The Enclave, Right? Heh!

The Enclave is the shadowy remnant of the pre-War United States government, evolving from deep‐state continuity protocols into a quasi-state paramilitary force obsessed with restoring a “pure” America through genocide and advanced technology. Originating in the cold corridors of West Tek and other defense contractors, the Enclave survived the Great War on offshore platforms and fortified bunkers, later resurfacing as the main antagonist in Fallout 2 under President Dick Richardson before being shattered by the Chosen One. Decades later, it reemerged in the Capital Wasteland as John Henry Eden’s Raven Rock faction, led on the ground by Colonel Augustus Autumn, only to be undone at Project Purity by the Lone Wanderer in Fallout 3. By the time of Fallout 4, the Enclave proper has collapsed, leaving behind preserved schematics—most notably for X-01 power armor—and a handful of surviving soldiers featured in Creation Club content known as the “Enclave Remnants”.

Origins and Pre-War Activities

West Tek, FEV and Early Projects

The West Tek Corporation was founded in 2002 as a U.S. defense contractor specializing in advanced weapons, power armor, and FEV research for the Department of Defense. In the mid-2070s, its NBC Division spun off the Pan-Immunity Virion Project (PVP) into the Greenhouse Initiative before pivoting entirely to the Forced Evolutionary Virus—an artificial pathogen designed to create super-soldiers.

Continuity of Government and the Vault Experiment

Fearing nuclear war, the continuity of government established secret programs to preserve elite citizens. Vaults—ostensibly for public safety—were actually sociological and technical experiments directed by the Enclave, monitored from fortified locations like the Poseidon Oil Rig and Raven Rock.

The Great War and Enclave Survival (2077)

On October 23, 2077, as global nuclear exchange commenced, President Richardson and key government figures evacuated to the Poseidon Oil Rig—their primary stronghold offshore—and other secure sites worldwide. There, the Enclave consolidated its remnants, preserving technology, data archives, and vertibird forces to one day reclaim the mainland.

Fallout 2 Era (2241–2242)

Mariposa Excavations and FEV Production

In July 2236, Enclave scouts rediscovered the Mariposa Military Base—home of pre-War FEV research—and began large-scale excavations using forced labor from nearby settlements. Exposed slaves and scientists released residual FEV into the ruins, spawning the first super mutants and subjects like Frank Horrigan.

Richardson’s Genocidal “Project”

Under President Dick Richardson, the Enclave weaponized FEV Curling-13 for a final genocide: any “genetically non-compliant” human would be eradicated via tainted water supplies. The Chosen One’s infiltration and sabotage of the oil rig in 2242 halted the plan and obliterated the Enclave’s headquarters.

Fallout 3 Era (2277)

Raven Rock and President Eden

A core group under President John Henry Eden—an AI housed in the Raven Rock military complex—reassembled the Enclave on the East Coast.

Eden employed Eyebots for propaganda and relied on Colonel Augustus Autumn to command ground forces in the Capital Wasteland.

Project Purity and Internal Schism

Autumn seized control of Project Purity, intending to leverage purified water for Enclave dominance. Eden, however, planned to inject the purifier with a deadly virus, igniting a rift between ideology and tactics. The Lone Wanderer’s intervention—either by self-sacrifice or with Brotherhood aid—destroyed Eden’s plans and dismantled the Capital Wasteland Enclave.

Fallout 4 Era (2287)

Technological Legacy: X-01 Power Armor

The Enclave’s archives preserved schematics for the experimental X-01 power armor, the pinnacle of pre-War design. Post-War, limited production runs by the Enclave and other factions kept X-01 suits in occasional service.

Creation Club: Enclave Remnants

In April 2024, Bethesda’s free next-gen patch for Fallout 4 introduced “Enclave Remnants”—a Creation Club faction of surviving Enclave soldiers seeking lost X-02 armor in the Commonwealth. This group’s quests and workshop items offer the only living Enclave presence in the Fallout 4 era.

Conclusion

From its inception in the corridors of West Tek and hidden bunkers to its apocalyptic resurgence and ultimate downfall, the Enclave’s arc spans the entire Fallout saga. By Fallout 4, only its technological echo—exemplified by power armor designs—and a handful of Creation Club anecdotes remain as testament to America’s most tyrannical remnants.

[tanumaskoipond]

my projects for the end of the semester are killing me actually:

a so far 20 page paper on a legacy collection of artifacts (working with almost no data)

a field school research design on a topic i have researched the history of at work but i know very little abt the archaeology of otherwise

a bullshit photography project where i went on a hike and took photos of the trash i saw because i didn’t want to write a 12 page paper on something else but now i have to come up with an artist statement for my trash photos

farming & water quality in the pinelands gis project (=___________=) (i don’t know how to use this gis program (i have been using it for a year))

archival research project (related to bullet 1) that is seeming to be fruitless (uni library sucks/archives are closed/relying only on our digital collections)

[blessphemy]

fanfic friday*: found media

*it's probably not friday

Going to bring rec lists back into Fashion!! Today's theme is: in-universe fanworks: aka: publications and materials that you might come across within the universe of The Murderbot Diaries.

^ This is a neocities website that reads like a sponsored infoarticle for different SecUnit brands. Resist your knee-jerk urge to close out the popup advertisement and enjoy it, it's part of the experience. It's a riot. You can also go here for the simplified version posted to AO3. Save it in your AO3 bookmarks and give the website creator their due accolades! Kudos and comment etc. If you want.

^ This one is an article by a Corporate Rim media critic who watched Dr. Bharadwaj's documentary about bot and construct rights. Reads in a painfully plausible way. The classic conundrum of: "Well why should I worry about the problems others face? Do they really have it as bad as the rest of us?"

^ The author apotropiacsymbol is a great writer with a distinct je ne sais quoi style and a knack for eerie worldbuilding that closes in around you. You should check out all their works tbh, their way with words is mesmerizing. This one is presented as an academic presentation about mysterious found data. Read between the lines of this fic to figure out what has been going on... Though the author also explains a bit in the comment section.

^ In the style of an academic article about the little-appreciated effects and casualties of the robot revolution in hindsight. Complete with Headers and Sources Cited.

^ Last but absolutely not least, this work was developed for pod-together, and comes with a full podfic with sound effects. It goes hard in the metatextuality of the Murderbot series and fandom. It's an absolute banger and I love it a lot. It envisions a future where there are constructs and bots who are created free.

The sound-artist/creator of the work is a Preservation-born SecUnit who was made without a governor module. It must find its way in the world and navigate the weight of the recent past — all the struggles for construct self-determination and the long shadows of those that came before it: Murderbot, Three, and a certain ComfortUnit...

This is a story about machine intelligences struggling to establish themselves in a human world, about how we can't possibly shake off the traumas that built our world, and about how to carry forth a legacy and heal wounds that you inherit, inherent to your creation. And it's so good. Also there's a whole very serious bit about a fart.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

#20yrsago AnarchistU, Toronto’s wiki-based free school https://web.archive.org/web/20040911010603/http://anarchistu.org/bin/view/Anarchistu

#20yrsago Fair use is a right AND a defense https://memex.craphound.com/2004/09/09/fair-use-is-a-right-and-a-defense/

#20yrsago Bounty for asking “How many times have you been arrested, Mr. President?” https://web.archive.org/web/20040918115027/https://onesimplequestion.blogspot.com/

#20yrsago What yesterday’s terrible music https://www.loweringthebar.net/2009/09/open-mike-likely-to-close-out-legislators-career.htmlsampling ruling means https://web.archive.org/web/20040910095029/http://www.lessig.org/blog/archives/002153.shtml

#15yrsago Conservative California legislator gives pornographic account of his multiple affairs (including a lobbyist) into open mic https://www.loweringthebar.net/2009/09/open-mike-likely-to-close-out-legislators-career.html

#15yrsago Shel Silverstein’s UNCLE SHELBY, not exactly a kids’ book https://memex.craphound.com/2009/09/09/shel-silversteins-uncle-shelby-not-exactly-a-kids-book/

#10yrsago Seemingly intoxicated Rob Ford gives subway press-conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbcETJRoNCs

#10yrsago Amazon vs Hachette is nothing: just WAIT for the audiobook wars! https://locusmag.com/2014/09/cory-doctorow-audible-comixology-amazon-and-doctorows-first-law/

#10yrsago Dietary supplement company sues website for providing a forum for dissatisfied customers https://www.techdirt.com/2014/09/08/dietary-supplement-company-tries-suing-pissedconsumer-citing-buyers-agreement-to-never-say-anything-negative-about-roca/

#10yrsago New wind-tunnel tests find surprising gains in cycling efficiency from leg-shaving https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health-and-fitness/health/the-curious-case-of-the-cyclists-unshaved-legs/article20370814/

#10yrsago Behind the scenes look at Canada’s Harper government gagging scientists https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/federal-scientist-media-request-generates-email-frenzy-but-no-interview-1.2759300

#10yrsago Starred review in Kirkus for INFORMATION DOESN’T WANT TO BE FREE https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cory-doctorow/information-doesnt-want-to-be-free/

#10yrsago Steven Gould’s “Exo,” a Jumper novel by way of Heinlein’s “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel” https://memex.craphound.com/2014/09/09/steven-goulds-exo-a-jumper-novel-by-way-of-heinleins-have-spacesuit-will-travel/

#5yrsago Important legal victory in web-scraping case https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/web-scraping-doesnt-violate-anti-hacking-law-appeals-court-rules/

#5yrsago Whistleblowers out Falwell’s Liberty University as a grifty, multibillion-dollar personality cult https://web.archive.org/web/20190910000528/https://www.politico.com/magazine/amp/story/2019/09/09/jerry-falwell-liberty-university-loans-227914

#5yrsago Pinduoduo: China’s “Groupon on steroids” https://www.wired.com/story/china-ecommerce-giant-never-heard/

#5yrsago Notpetya: the incredible story of an escaped US cyberweapon, Russian state hackers, and Ukraine’s cyberwar https://www.wired.com/story/notpetya-cyberattack-ukraine-russia-code-crashed-the-world/

#5yrsago NYT calls for an end to legacy college admissions https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/07/opinion/sunday/end-legacy-college-admissions.html

#5yrsago Purdue’s court filings understate its role in the opioid epidemic by 80% https://www.propublica.org/article/data-touted-by-oxycontin-maker-to-fight-lawsuits-doesnt-tell-the-whole-story

#1yrago Saturday linkdump, part the sixth https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/09/nein-nein/#everything-is-miscellaneous

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!