#Lowe’s Installer Management System

[projectsforce]

Lowes IMS Portal - Maximize its Efficiency

Introducing Lowe’s Installer Management System (IMS): Revolutionizing Communication and Efficiency

Lowe’s Installer Management System (IMS) is a comprehensive platform designed to streamline operations for installer teams and Lowe’s alike. By automating processes, sharing crucial job information, and facilitating seamless appointment scheduling, Lowe’s IMS eliminates communication errors and enhances overall efficiency.

While Lowe’s IMS offers considerable value, it's important to acknowledge that it may not fulfill all the requirements of installation businesses, particularly those operating beyond the scope of Lowe's projects. Installers often need additional tools to effectively manage scheduling, paperwork, finances, and communication across various projects.

Identifying Gaps and the Imperative for Integration

To effectively manage non-Lowe's projects, installation companies often require supplementary software solutions to facilitate seamless communication with field teams, ensure completion of paperwork, and manage financial aspects. Here are key areas where Lowe’s IMS could benefit from integration with complementary software:

Job Scheduling: Optimal efficiency in installation businesses hinges on having all pertinent information accessible through a single interface. This enables informed decision-making and enhances visibility into crew schedules. However, for non-Lowe's contractors, achieving this unified visibility poses a challenge within Lowe’s IMS.

Communication with Crew: Smooth workflow relies on effective communication among installation teams. Centralizing site images, relevant documents, and job notes within a single platform enhances collaboration. Yet, Lowe’s project management software currently provides this functionality exclusively to registered installation teams.

Accounts Integration: Managing finances efficiently is paramount, with QuickBooks being a prominent tool in this regard. However, Lowe’s IMS lacks integration capabilities with such tools, leaving independent installation teams without a standalone financial management solution.

Augmenting Lowe’s IMS with ProjectsForce Integration

To unlock the full potential of Lowe’s IMS, integrating additional solutions like ProjectsForce can be immensely beneficial. ProjectsForce offers installer teams a unified interface to manage all their processes seamlessly. Whether registered with Lowe’s or operating independently, ProjectsForce automates processes, streamlines communication, and enhances efficiency across projects.

In conclusion, while Lowe’s IMS provides a solid foundation for communication and scheduling within Lowe’s projects, integration with supplementary software solutions is essential for installation businesses to thrive in diverse operational contexts. ProjectsForce integration stands as a prime example of how augmenting Lowe’s IMS capabilities can empower installer teams to excel beyond the confines of Lowe’s projects.

Content Source: Projectsforce.com

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[onelittlespiral]

FML: Sealed

The plan was simple, if time consuming. Rent some apartments out, and wait. Of course, there were some preparation required. First, buy an old apartment building, something not too expensive and not too flashy. Make some small changes to the central air system and temperature control. Bring the whole thing up to code and install a beautiful, in building gym. Hire a team of savvy young women to help manage the apartments. Then, carefully and selectively rent out the one bed, one bath apartments to single, young men who showed promise. Some were just graduated 20-somethings, with a bright future ahead in STEM careers. Some were trust fund kids moving to the city for the first time, drawn to the quickly gentrifying downtown. Some were just personal pet projects that I wanted to see grow into their potential. Like this fellow:

I wanted to see what would happen on a bit more of a bear-ish body type. We set him up in Unit 514. Or this bro:

He was already pretty close to what we wanted our final results to look like. But I wanted to see how much we could push him. Unit 112, low and close to the gym. Good eye candy for some of the twinks we set up on the sixth floor. After about 3 months, every unit in the building had been filled, all eight floors. It was the first of June, around 4 a.m. when we had verified all residents were home. The overnight receptionist was sent home early for the day as upstairs, all door locks were remotely engaged, power was cut, and the new air conditioners kicked in. All subjects were sealed in their experiment chambers.

Slowly but surely, a thick fog billowed from each bedroom’s vents. It was a thick, sticky vapor, smelling like sandalwood and cool like peppermint. Subjects’ rooms were soon filled as they began breathing it in deeply. Some began to toss in their sleep, subconsciously fighting the mist, while others just huffed away and began the absorption process. One fellow on the second floor managed to toss himself awake, but was quickly sedated by an extra pump of vaporized melatonin added to his room.

As the men all settled down and opened up, the mist began absorbing into their bodies through any gap available: mouth, nose, pores, cocks, and asses. Within thirty minutes, the last of the gas has been administered, and all subjects were once more peacefully at rest. Bodies began twitching and pulsing as faint moans emitted from some of the smaller men’s mouths. The experiment had began.

The first to wake up in the morning was a subject in apartment 211. His transformation was among the more subtle. The lanky guy had put on a few pounds of muscle as his beard thickened and some hair grew in. He immediately began to sense something was off, as he felt his body and now bushy beard. He tried to check his phone. Dead. He gets up and tries to walk out into the apartment. Locked. A look of confusion sets in as he sits and tries to think of what to try next. That is when it catches him. With the power out and the sun rising, temperatures were rising. And as he began to sweat, he began to smell:

The gasses that seeped in last night were slowly beginning to seep back out, causing more radical changes. But this second exposure is different. It is coming from inside him, and carries his unique pheromones with it. This gas is heroin to him, designed to addict his body to its presence and slowly bring out the best in him. And as the smell fills his nostrils for a second time, he is fighting the urge to give in. Give into himself and what he is becoming. He knows that the smell is rancid, musky and earthy with notes of spice that burn his nostrils. But it is a lost cause. As he huffs away at his own funk, he glides his free hand down his chest, feeling thick, matted hair and slick abs. He takes a moment to feel his muscles twitching and stretching as his skin becomes sensitive to the touch. He wraps his sweaty, calloused hand around his cock, and begins to pump.

Once he begins to pleasure himself, there is very minimal risk of a reversal. The changes are rapid and extensive his body grows to match the smell that now saturates the air around him. Muscles swell, bones crack and reshape, feet stretch, and his eyes roll in the back of his head as he starts to drool. The fog settling into his brain leaves no room for inhibitions as he starts to self worships his pit, devouring his own sweat. Our scanners also begin to detect deterioration in brain activity. The pleasure center is growing, eating into non-essential regions like memory and comprehension. No part of the original subject is left unchanged as he continues to evolve into a sweaty, smelly, hairy beast of a man. And as he reaches climax, he lets out a deep roar as all inhibitions about his new form are shot out the swollen mushroom tip of his cock. He rolls his foreskin back up and shoves his filthy cock into a pair of sweatpants.

He stares at his body, flexing and feeling up his muscles. Experiment 211 has been a success, able to turn a scrawny nerd into a horny, sweaty, smelly gym bro with an insatiable need to fuck. Now we just need to test how powerful his sperm and scent are. He hears a click as his chamber is unlocked. We pulse the lights in the room with a code his mind will understand. He now knows his mission is to go over to Apartment 212 and begin round two of testing…

It is a bit later in the morning now and subjects all around are beginning to wake up and face their new reality. Through our camera network we watch as their transformations are slowly taking place, as muscle, fat, and fur are packed on and a cloud of musk begins to cloud the room.

And slowly as men finish their first rounds, their chambers are unsealed. They begin to wander and find their neighbors, mixing musks to help each other grow and change even more.

The experiment will run sealed off from the general public, at least until new subjects are needed to collect additional data points. Interested parties are encouraged to apply now to our waitlist. Otherwise, we expect to host an open house next month, with all subjects free to leave the complex and continue experimenting as they see fit. I can already tell that our friend we started with in Unit 514 will be popular.

Thank you for your time today. We expect to see you again very soon.

[wheelsgoroundincircles]

1970 Chrysler 300 Hurst

One of the great unknowns about the 1970 Chrysler 300 Hurst is exactly how many cars were built. Estimates put the total as low as 485, and as high as 502 cars. Regardless of what the figure actually is, the car itself is a pretty special piece of machinery.

The 300 Hurst is a giant of a car at 19′ in length. All of the Hursts rolled off the production line finished in Spinnaker White. The cars were then shipped to the Hurst factory in Warminster, Pennsylvania, where a substantial transformation was performed. The first change to be made was the removal of the standard Chrysler steel hood skin, which was replaced with a fiberglass unit. This featured a decorative hood scoop and the obligatory set of recessed hood locks. The deck lid was also removed, and once again, a fiberglass replacement, complete with a spoiler integrated with the rear quarter panels, was also installed. The White paintwork was complimented by the addition of Satin Tan highlights and contrasting pinstripes, and the wheels were adorned with the same Satin Tan color in the centers. This Hurst is a clean car, with a small area of rust visible in the lower section of the driver’s side front fender, and surface corrosion present on the car’s underside. The Spinnaker White paint appears to be in good condition, but there has been some deterioration of the Satin Tan paint on both the hood and the deck lid. The exterior trim and chrome all look good, while the tinted glass is close to perfect.

The 300 Hurst was a premium car at a premium price, so naturally, it required a premium interior. In this case, seat upholstery was available in a single type and color. Continuing the exterior theme, the color is Saddle Tan, and the material is leather. The plush front seats are not standard 300 items but have been pilfered from the Imperial parts bin. While the original intention was for a Hurst shifter to be part of the interior features, this is something that never eventuated. The interior of this Hurst is close to perfect, with a single discolored spot on the dash pad being the most obvious fault. The rest of it presents in virtually as-new condition, and as befits a luxury car, it is loaded with luxury touches. These include air conditioning, power windows, six-way power seats, cruise control, a remote trunk release, and I think that there also might be an 8-track player hanging under the dash.

The 300 Hurst was the biggest of the muscle cars, and as such, it needed a big motor to get it moving. In this case, it is the TNT 440 engine, pumping out 375hp. The Hurst also features a 727 TorqueFlite transmission, a 3.23 rear end, power steering, power brakes, heavy-duty rear springs and front torsion bars, and sway bars. The exhaust was a full dual system, ending in quad tips. This Hurst hasn’t seen a lot of recent use, and documentation confirms that between 1986 and 2019, it managed to accumulate a grand total of 20 miles! Since being removed from its climate-controlled storage, it has undergone a meticulous mechanical check and recommissioning, and it is now said to run and drive perfectly. The owner does suggest that while the tires look good, they are pretty olds, and replacing them might be a good idea. He also says that the Hurst may need mufflers fairly soon. The car does come with a fair collection of documentation, including the original Build Sheet and Window Sticker, a pristine Certi-Card, Owner’s Manual, as well as dealer paperwork and other assorted items.

While there has always been some question surrounding the build totals for the 1970 300 Hurst, one thing is certain, and that is that there are less than 300 cars in existence today. Pristine examples can fetch sums in excess of $30,000, and even a rough example in need of restoration can still sell for anywhere around $13,000. This one doesn’t need a major restoration, but it does require some cosmetic work. I’m not sure where bidding is eventually going to go with this one, but I would suspect that it will be somewhere around the low to mid $20,000 mark. Even at that price, it probably wouldn’t be a bad buy.

[utopya-cc]

SIMS4 MOD | Kiss-n-Grind

Hey guys, hope you all are doing well. Quiet excited about this one,

The main idea was to make a mod that will focus on adding more romantic interactions to the game. to add more realistic moments between couples. I wanted to add what I feel is missing from the game.

So After some searching and looking at what should I make first, I have decided to start with a passionate grinding/dancing interactions, There is too much stuff to cover in the club life. that the game didn't manage to add, other than some silly dances. Your Sims couple can't even dance together.

Therefore I ended up turning These new animations into their own mod, It will be a great foundation for all the ideas that I want to add!!

The mod For now will introduces two new interactions with their animations and emotions/buffs

The new pie menu will appear in the Romance category under the name Kiss and Grind, all the new interactions will appear on it:

The interaction won't appear if your sim hasn't had their first kiss yet, or the level of romance is too low

Features Of the Mods:

New highly detailed animation with their own sounds

New pie menu for the new interaction

New icons for each Interaction/animation that will suit their own animation

A new dynamic buff system which increases with the romance bar

These interactions will give you a buff for both the actor and target sim.

There is a chance to get some notifications/comments from your partner

The animations were made to have a more romantic feel to them. to give the player the freedom to use them in any game style they want. All the icons used are custom-made by me, I did put extra time into them to be more visually pleasing and match their original content

Possible outcomes:

I have implemented in this mod a new buff system that will depend on the relationship between the Sims and some other factors:

First of all The outcomes will be highly randomized for both the actor and the target to keep the game more exciting.

The higher the romance level between your sims the higher chance of getting more intimates outcomes with stronger emotions:

Obviously, this is a club-based mod, you take your sim there to meet up with new Sims, So Even with a low romance, The outcomes may be higher and unique If your sim has high charisma.

When the romance bar is higher the 90% there is a small chance to get a notification/comment from your partner.

The mod will be enhanced further in the future, with New animations, New mechanics, and features.

I still love the original idea. So once I have decided all the interactions for it, I will start making them into their own mod, and leave this one just for the club-related animations.

The interactions shouldn't be played autonomously,

Better to wait until the animation is finished and the queue is clear before playing another one.

Requirement : This mod needs the XML injector by Scumbumbo. You can download it here : https://scumbumbomods.com/xml-injector

How to install :

Just put both my mod and the XML injector script into your Sims 4 Mods folder.

Reblogs are super appreciated!

DOWNLOAD

[constantcrisis19]

Home

Simon "Ghost" Riley x GN S/O

AN: I don't normally write smut, but things do get a little heated in this particular fic, so... enjoy the treat I guess, lol. Though, that being said, I can't say that adding smut is going to be something that I’ll do often, but on the off-chance that it does, I'll be sure to tag properly just to make sure that I don't catch anyone off guard. Thanks!

Word Count: 1,544

Main Page

You had just started on wiping the dust off of the kitchen countertops when you heard the shrill squeak of the front door opening, intentionally left unoiled to act as an alert for uninvited visitors. You and Ghost had installed a proper security system of course, but it didn’t hurt to do things the old fashioned way either. 

The flat that the two of you stayed at while on leave was modest, rented mostly because there was a fire escape outside the living room window and another window had a good view of the entrance to the building.

So Ghost would often occupy himself by watching the door when he couldn’t manage to sleep, tormented by memories of things he wouldn’t speak of. But he didn’t keep pieces of his past from you out of distrust. 

He refrained because, by the time he’d finished telling you about how he’d been betrayed by his CO and was tortured for months as a result, you were in tears at the pain and suffering that the love of your life had endured, despite your best attempts to be strong and keep the tears at bay as you listened.

Though, it seemed that Ghost didn’t really mind that you were crying instead of being the solid support that he deserved and could lean on while recounting something so horrible, the man simply pulling you into his arms and sitting down right there on the floor while holding you close.

He never brought it up again and you were hesitant to ask if he wanted to talk about it since you had reacted so poorly to just one of the many horrors that he had survived, especially for a soldier that was chosen to be on the most elite task forces that the British military had to offer. 

In your defense, you had been on leave -in this very flat, actually- when that disaster of a conversation happened, miles away from work and allowed to be human for a few weeks. So you had made no attempt at suppressing the onslaught of emotions that had torn through you like a bullet, leaving a gaping mess of grief in its wake.

You were dragged out of your somber reminiscing when your ears picked up on the crinkle of weighted grocery bags as they were set onto the small kitchen table for two, followed by the nearly inaudible tap of Ghost’s worn black combat boots drawing closer to your turned back. 

You hadn’t even realized that you’d stopped cleaning -just blankly staring down at the damp rag being strangled in your grip- until one of Ghost’s hands tentatively settled on your back, his warm touch grounding.

“Solid, love?” He asked, his pleasantly raspy voice having dropped to a low timbre that was gentle and reassuring all at once.

“Yeah, sorry. Got lost in my head for a minute.” You sighed, leaning into the contact with a slow inhale, your attempt at controlled breathing rendered useless when your exhale turned into a soft huff of laughter as soon as you felt Ghost press his scarred lips to the back of your neck in a fleeting kiss that made your chest ache with affection.

You found yourself awfully tempted to turn around and kiss that reverent mouth until neither of you could think of anything beyond finding the bed but, before you got the chance to act on that particular desire, the hand that was on your back suddenly slid down to your hip and pulled you backward as he simultaneously stepped forward in order to crowd up behind you, his body a solid wall of muscle.

"You're a menace, Simon. I never get anything done when we're on leave because you try to get into my pants every five minutes." You laughed good-naturedly, your hands reaching behind you to grip the back of his thighs, just under his deliciously round ass.

“Don’t know what you’re on about. I’m just comforting you, you’re the one copping a feel.” Ghost retorted dryly, though there was a noticeable heat to his tone now, his short stubble scratching against your skin as he nuzzled the back of your neck.

“You don’t seriously expect me to believe that, do you? I can feel your dick begging for attention, Simon.” You deadpanned, your brow raising as you leveled an unimpressed look at the cabinets directly in front of you, knowing full well that Simon would know exactly what expression was on your face despite not being able to see it.

Lord knew that he had gotten that exact same look from you enough times to have it memorized. 

“Well don’t start neglecting it now.” Ghost grunted with a particularly dirty grind of his hips and you tightened the grip that you had around the back of his thigh, heat pooling in your gut as your lips parted on a silent gasp. 

You could feel Ghost smile against the sensitive skin behind your ear -the smug bastard- and just for his cheeky attitude, you decided to be petty and play hard to get. You allowed Simon to do as he wished for another minute or two before turning in Simon’s grip in order to face the man, who had immediately loosened his hold the moment that you began to move.

“Get off me, you slag. I have to finish cleaning the kitchen before we can cook.” You stated as you met his questioning gaze, the man staring at you blankly for a moment as he processed your words, his eyes darkening when he finally caught onto your scheme.

“Slag? Must be rubbing off on you.” Ghost said with a low chuckle that never failed to send a bolt of pleasure down your spine and, going by the amused twinkle in Simon’s eye, he knew exactly what his voice did to you and was shamelessly using it to his advantage. 

You resisted the urge to squirm under his calculating gaze, since that would mean losing this little game that the two of you were playing, as the man’s fingers teasingly brushed over the slip of skin visible where the hem of your shirt came untucked from your jeans.

“Not yet, you’re not.” You mused with a wicked grin as your hand darted down to catch his wrist before his fingers could slip up under your shirt. You traced the delicate blue lines crisscrossing under the thin, pale skin of his inner wrist with your thumb, your smile reaching shit-eating levels when Simon’s breathing visibly became more labored, his pupils blown wide as he stared at you like you were the sole object of his desire.

“Fuckin’ hell.” Ghost murmured breathlessly, the fingers of his free hand twitching like he wanted to grab you and pin you up against the nearest flat surface, and you didn’t bother repressing the smug grin that spread across your lips as you watched every individual thought that went through his head, every sinful things that he wanted to do to you clearly advertised on his maskless face. 

Simon really wasn’t as hard to read as he wanted people to believe, he was actually quite easy once the mask was off. So while Simon greatly enjoyed when you were rough with him, easily following your lead as you manhandled the man where you wanted him with a firm grip, more tender and reverent contact always had more of an effect on him.

“You love it, you insatiable bastard.” You said with a laugh, Simon leaning forward in order to rest his forehead against yours and you didn’t hesitate to curl an encouraging hand around the back of his neck, letting him have a moment to collect himself since you felt pretty bad for teasing him when you weren’t able to follow through right away.

“Yeah.” Simon admitted quietly, his tone openly affectionate as he tilted his head in order to draw you into a kiss. Words were no longer necessary since the press of his lips told you everything you already knew, the heat that had been bubbling up between the two of you easing as the intense bout of lust that came from your mutual flirting transitioned into something softer, slower.

You were the first to break the kiss when the lack of oxygen made your lungs burn, though you didn’t go far, choosing to instead linger in his personal space. Your nose brushed against his as you basked in the euphoria that came with being with Simon, each of your breaths mingling with his in the small space between the two of you, creating a sort of peaceful bubble where only the two of you existed.

“Didn’t you have some pressing matter to attend to?” Simon’s voice pierced through the quiet and you startled, flinching a bit as you sobered from the trance you had been in, before the words registered and you leaned away in order to scowl at your grinning husband.

“Very funny, Simon.” You said with a fond roll of your eyes, giving his solid chest a friendly pat before finally prying yourself out of his grasp, turning on your heel and making your way back to the kitchen in order to finish what you’d been doing before you got distracted.

_

Home

A place where I can go

To take this off my shoulders

Someone take me home

Home - Bebe Rexha, Machine Gun Kelly, and X Ambassadors

[racefortheironthrone]

If management finds a way to automate jobs during a strike, is that scabbing?

Peripherally.

The automation itself is more part of the general category of management strategies to restructure workflow and production methods in order to reduce the need for, and thus the power of, labor. This dates back to the origins of Taylorism itself in the 1890s as an effort to “steal the brains from underneath the cap of labor” and through to the emergence of Human Relations and Industrial Psychology in the early 20th century as a means to better control workers. So I think you could see in as essentially equivalent to classic speed-up and stretch-out efforts to maintain production at as low a cost as possible during a strike, and thus break the union.

However, the dirty truth of automation is that there is no clean way to fully substitute machinery for labor. Due to the inherent limitations of technology at any stage of development, you need labor to repair and maintain and monitor automated systems, you need labor to install and operate the machines, you need labor to design and program and manufacture the machines. (This is one reason why the job-killing predictions around automation often fall flat, because the supposedly superior new technology often requires a significant increase in human labor to service the new technology when it breaks. For example, this is why automation in fast food has proven to be so difficult and partial than expected: it turns out that self-checkout machines are actually very expensive to operate in terms of skilled manpower.) And to the extent that a given automation contract or project is being undertaken during a strike in order to break that strike, that’s absolutely scabbing.

[angel-in-shibari]

a slave's collar is their most important accessory. not only does it show that they're owned, but with stylization and customization, it can also show who exactly owns them. Mistress prefers a nice rose gold band with floral engravings. to the unsuspecting, it looks like a fancy metal choker or extravagant piece of jewelry. but to those who do know, it's true purpose is undeniable.

the collar is equipped with the obvious essential features: gps, microphone, motion trackers, proximity sensors, and various devices that monitor my every movement. of course, all those features would be pretty pointless if Mistress didn't have a way to control me. that's why there are five electrodes placed equidistant from each other at various points along my neck. the electrodes can be controlled manually by a secure program that only Mistress has access to. all five can be fired individually, with 25 levels of intensity. 1 is a mild tickle. 5 is a painful shock, but relatively manageable as long as it's not prolonged. 10 is enough to bring me to my knees as I cry and beg for her to stop. she has only ever used 11 once, and I blacked out immediately. as for 25... don't worry about it

the collar features an incredibly secure and tamper-proof locking system. as it's locked, various circuits are armed. if the lock is broken and those circuits are broken... um... well. maybe you're thinking I can just wait for the battery to drain completely before taking it off without issue. think again, because there are two batteries installed that last quite a long time without a charge. the collar itself doesn't use all that much electricity, but in the case that one battery is completely drained, it will switch to the second battery. both batteries can last about 5 months each, so I'd have to go almost a year without charging for it to even reach depletion. also, once the final battery reaches its last 5% of charge, all the remaining electricity is released at once through the electrodes at level 25 until there is nothing left. basically, my collar isn't coming off with me alive.

I never have to worry about low batteries, however. Mistress has installed a number of radio frequency wireless charging devices around her mansion, meaning that as long as I am inside, my battery remains at almost full charge. the only time it has ever dipped below 99.7% is one afternoon when Mistress was extremely mad at her father and decided to take her anger out on me. whatever makes her happy makes me happy. I'm glad that my suffering is cathartic for her.

alongside the chargers, proximity detectors are placed on the outside walls. if I get to close to an exit, Mistress is automatically notified and a level 1 shock is admitted. if I get even closer, the shock is amplified dramatically. stepping outside is a level 25. the only way I'm ever allowed outside is if Mistress manually disables the 'electric fence' as she calls it. but when she does that, she has a separate system that acts in a similar way that shocks me more the further away from her I get.

you might think that all of this is unnecessary. all these systems and programs are what you might call "exceptionally overkill" or "horribly sadistic" or "just plain cruel". but the main reason they exist actually isn't to keep me in line. even if trying to take my collar off didn't kill me, I wouldn't ever dream of removing it. I would never go outside unless Mistress made me, even without the electric fence active. even the 25 levels of shock are a display of power. I'm small enough that level 13 would probably be enough to kill me.

the reason all these things exist is actually to show everyone that every single aspect of my life is completely under Mistress's control. I already know it's pointless to try and escape or fight back. I realized that before the collar was ever locked around my throat. all the ways in which Mistress has power over me are already obvious to me. because these precautions aren't for me. they're for you. to terrify you, and show you exactly what happens to people who wrong my Mistress. unless you want to end up like me, I strongly recommend you stay on her good side.

[swisccfinds]

Kiss-n-Grind Mod by UTOPYA_cc

This is a good ineractable romance mod! I like that is gives more physical interactions with your sim's partner.

Creator's Notes-

Hey guys, hope you all are doing well. Quiet excited about this one,

The main idea was to make a mod that will focus on adding more romantic interactions to the game. to add more realistic moments between couples. I wanted to add what I feel is missing from the game.

So After some searching and looking at what should I make first, I have decided to start with a passionate grinding/dancing interactions, There is too much stuff to cover in the club life. that the game didn't manage to add, other than some silly dances. Your Sims couple can't even dance together.

Therefore I ended up turning These new animations into their own mod, It will be a great foundation for all the ideas that I want to add!!

The mod For now will introduces two new interactions with their animations and emotions/buffs

The new pie menu will appear in the Romance category under the name Kiss and Grind, all the new interactions will appear on it:

The interaction won't appear if your sim hasn't had their first kiss yet, or the level of romance is too low

Features Of the Mods:

New highly detailed animation with their own sounds

New pie menu for the new interaction

New icons for each Interaction/animation that will suit their own animation

A new dynamic buff system which increases with the romance bar

These interactions will give you a buff for both the actor and target sim.

There is a chance to get some notifications/comments from your partner

The animations were made to have a more romantic feel to them. to give the player the freedom to use them in any game style they want. All the icons used are custom-made by me, I did put extra time into them to be more visually pleasing and match their original content

Possible outcomes:

I have implemented in this mod a new buff system that will depend on the relationship between the Sims and some other factors:

First of all The outcomes will be highly randomized for both the actor and the target to keep the game more exciting.

The higher the romance level between your sims the higher chance of getting more intimates outcomes with stronger emotions:

Obviously, this is a club-based mod, you take your sim there to meet up with new Sims, So Even with a low romance, The outcomes may be higher and unique If your sim has high charisma.

When the romance bar is higher the 90% there is a small chance to get a notification/comment from your partner.

The mod will be enhanced further in the future, with New animations, New mechanics, and features.

I still love the original idea. So once I have decided all the interactions for it, I will start making them into their own mod, and leave this one just for the club-related animations.

The interactions shouldn't be played autonomously,

Better to wait until the animation is finished and the queue is clear before playing another one.

Requirement : This mod needs the XML injector by Scumbumbo. You can download it here : https://scumbumbomods.com/xml-injector

How to install :

Just put both my mod and the XML injector script into your Sims 4 Mods folder.

Please visit UTOPYA_cc and show some love and support for this amazing mod!

download

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A "secure" system can be the most dangerous of all

Two decades ago, my life changed forever: hearing Bruce Schneier explain that “security” doesn’t exist in the abstract. You can only be secure from some threat. A fire alarm won’t protect you from burglaries. A condom won’t protect you from mass shootings. It seems obvious, but how often do we hear about “security” without any mention of who is being made secure, and from which threat?

Take the US welfare system. It is very “secure” in that it is hedged in by a thicket of red-tape, audits, inspections and onerous procedures. To get food stamps, housing vouchers, or cash aid, you must navigate a Soviet-grade bureaucratic system of Kafkaesque proportions. Indeed, one of the great ironies of the post-Cold War world is that the USA has become a “Utopia Of Rules” (as David Graeber put it), subjecting everyday people to the state-run bureacracies that the USAUSAUSA set endlessly ridiculed the USSR for:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/

(The right says it wants to “shrink the US government until fits in a bathtub — and then drown it” — but not the whole government. They want unlimited government bloat for that part of the state that is dedicated to tormenting benefits claimants, especially if its functions are managed by a Beltway Bandit profiteer who bills Uncle Sucker up the wazoo for rubber-stamping “DENIED” on every claim.)

The US benefits system has a sophisticated, expensive, fully staffed anti-fraud system — but it’s a highly selective form of anti-fraud. The system is oriented solely to prevent fraud against itself, with no thought to protecting benefits recipients themselves from fraud.

And those recipients — by definition the poorest and most vulnerable among us — are easy pickings for continuous, ghastly, eye-watering acts of fraud. These benefits are distributed via prepaid debit cards — EBT Cards — that lack the basic security measures that every other kind of card has had for years. These are simple magstripe cards, lacking basic chip-and-pin defenses, to say nothing of contactless countermeasures.

That means that fraudsters can — and do — install skimmers in the point-of-sale terminals used by benefits recipients to withdraw their cash benefits, pay for food using SNAP (AKA Food Stamps), and receive other benefits.

It’s impossible to overstate how widespread these skimmers are, and how much money criminals make by stealing from poor people. Writing for Businessweek, Jessica Fu describes the mad scramble benefits recipients go through every month, standing by ATMs at midnight on the night of the first of every month in hopes of withdrawing the cash they use to pay for their rent and utility bills before it is stolen by a crook who captured their card number with a skimmer:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-06-28/ebt-theft-takes-millions-of-dollars-from-the-neediest-americans

One of Fu’s sources, Lexisnexis Risk Solutions’s Haywood Talcove, describes these EBT cards as having the security of a “glorified hotel room key.” He recounts how US police departments saw a massive explosion in EBT skimming: from 300 complaints in January 2022 to 18,000 in January 2023.

The skimmer rings are extremely well organized. The people who install the skimmers — working in pairs, with one person to distract the cashier while the other quickly installs the skimmer — don’t know who they work for. Neither do the people who use cards cloned from skimmer data to cash out benefits recipients’ accounts. When they are arrested, they refuse to turn on their immediate recruiters, fearing reprisals against their families.

These low-level crooks stroll up to ATMs and feed a succession of cloned cards into them, emptying account after account. Or they swipe cards at grocery checkouts, buying cases of Red Bull and other easily sold grocery products with some victim’s entire SNAP balance.

Some police agencies are pursuing these criminal gangs and trying figure out who’s running them, but the authorities who issue SNAP cards are doing little to nothing to stop the pipeline at their end. Simply upgrading SNAP terminals to chip-and-pin would exponentially raise the cost and complexity that thieves incur.

Indeed, that’s why every other kind of payment card uses these systems. How is it that these systems were upgraded, while SNAP cards remain in mired in 20th century “glorified hotel room key” territory? Well, as our friends on the right never cease to remind us: “incentives matter.”

When your credit card gets cloned, it’s your banks and credit card company that pays for the losses, not you. So the banks demanded (and funded) the upgrade to new anti-fraud measures. By contrast, most states have no system for refunding stolen benefits to skimmers’ victims.

In other words, all of the anti-fraud in the benefits system is devoted to catching benefits cheating — a phenomenon that is so rare as to be almost nonexistent (1.54%), notwithstanding right wingers’ fevered, Reagan-era folktales about “welfare queens”:

https://blog.gitnux.com/food-stamp-fraud-statistics/

Meanwhile, the most widespread and costly form of fraud in the benefits system — fraud perpetrated against benefits recipients — is blithely ignored.

Really, it’s worse than that. In deciding to protect the welfare system rather than welfare recipients, we’ve made it vastly harder for benefits claimants who’ve been victimized by fraudsters to remain fed and sheltered. After all, if we made it simple and straightforward for benefits recipients to re-claim money that was stolen from them, we’d make it that much easier to defraud the system.

“Security” is always and forever a matter of securing some specific thing, against some specific risk. In other words, security reflects values — it reveals whose risk matters, and whose doesn’t. For the American benefits system, risks to the system matter. Risks to people don’t.

It’s not just the welfare system that prioritizes its own risks against the people it exists to serve. Think of the systems used to fight drug abuse in clinical settings.

Medical facilities that use or dispense powerful pain-killers have exquisitely tuned, sophisticated, frequently audited security systems to prevent patients from tricking their doctors or pharmacists into administering extra drugs (especially opioids). “Extra” in this case means “more drugs than are strictly necessary to manage pain.”

The rationale for this is only incidentally medical. Someone who gets a little too much painkiller during a medical procedure or an acute pain episode is not at any particular risk of enduring harm — the risks are minor and easily managed (say, by keeping a patient in bed a little longer while they recover from sedation).

The real agenda here is preventing addiction and abuse by addicted people. There’s a genuine problem with opioid abuse, and that problem does have its origins in overprescription. But — crucially — that overprescription wasn’t the result of wimpy patients insisting on endless painkillers until they enslaved themselves to their pills.

Rather, the opioid epidemic has its origins in the billionaire Sackler crime family, whose Purdue Pharma used scientific fraud, cash incentives, and other deceptive practices to trick, coerce, or bribe doctors into systematically overprescribing their Oxycontin cash cow, even as they laundered their reputation with showy charitable donations:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/12/monopolist-solidarity/#sacklers-billions

The Sacklers got to keep their billions — and people undergoing painful medical procedures or living with chronic pain are left holding the bag, subject to tight pain-med controls that forces them to prove — through increasingly stringent systems — that they truly deserve their medicine.

In other words, the beneficiary of the opioid control system is the system itself — not the patients who need opioids.

There’s an extremely disturbing — even nightmarish — example of this in the news: the Yale Fertility Clinic, where hundreds of women endured unimaginably painful egg harvesting procedures with no anaesthesia at all.

These women had complained for years about the pain they suffered, and many had ended up needing emergency care after the fact because of traumatic injuries caused by undergoing the procedure without pain control. But the doctors and nurses at the Yale clinic ignored their screams of pain and their post-operative complaints.

It turned out that an opioid-addicted nurse had been swapping the fentanyl in the drug cabinet for saline, and taking the fentanyl home for her own use.

This made national headlines at the time, and it is the subject of “The Retrievals,” a new New York Times documentary series podcast:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/podcasts/serial-the-retrievals-yale-fertility-clinic.html

If the pain medication management system was designed to manage pain, then these thefts would have been discovered early on. If the system was designed so that anyone who experienced pain was treated until the pain was under control, the deception would have been uncovered almost immediately.

As Stafford Beer said, “the purpose of any system is what it does.” The pain medication management system was designed to manage pain medication, not pain itself.

The system was designed to be secure from opioid-seeking addicted patients. It was not designed to make patients secure from pain. Its values — our values, as a society — were revealed through its workings.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/13/whose-security/#for-me-not-thee

[Image ID: A down-the-barrel view of a massive, battleship-gray artillery piece protruding from the brick battlement of a fortress. From the black depths of the barrel shines a red neon 'EBT' sign.]

Image: Bjarne Henning Kvaale (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oscarsborg_28cm_Krupp_cannon_4_-_panoramio.jpg

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

[lightblueminecraftorchid]

How was windows 95 revolutionary? I would love to hear more about it

HI HELLO THANK YOU FOR ASKING

okay okay okay SO

Windows 95 had a major overhaul in multiple aspects. It’s the first of the 9x series of WinOS, followed by 98 and ME. In order to understand why Windows 95 is such a big deal, we first need to discuss Windows 3.x

(Wikipedia, Windows 3.1, image 2)

This is Windows 3.x; specifically, Windows for Workgroups 3.11. 3.x was the first series of Windows OS to become popular, and it itself was a major improvement over the previous 1.x and 2.x OS, but I won’t get into that too much. Like the previous versions of Windows, 3.x is basically a graphical shell for MS-DOS. You may be familiar with DOS; it looks like this:

(Wikipedia, MS-DOS, “History”, image 1)

DOS is, primarily, a typing interface system. You could run programs with graphics on it, like Oregon Trail or Flight Simulator, but at its core, DOS wasn’t very graphical. If you wanted to run a program, you typed its name. If you wanted to check the size of a file, you had to tell the computer to reference the directory.

Notably, DOS isn’t super user-friendly to new users. If you’re using a computer for the first time, how do you know what an A drive or a C drive is? How do you know the name of the file you need to run to play the game you’re trying out, or how to tell the computer where to find it?

DOS was incredible for its time, and was still a very powerful system. Several early operating systems from several companies used some version of DOS; the early Apple and Mac computers ran on it as well. Microsoft’s version, MS-DOS, had been popular for some time, but Apple’s graphical interface on Mac computers proved intensely popular for newer or less experienced users. MS-DOS couldn’t compete. In an attempt to make MS-DOS more user friendly, we get Windows!

(We will get to windows 95 I PROMISE)

Notice the differences between Windows 3.x and MS-DOS. Programs have a visible location now; they’re in the “Program Manager”, and they have icons you can click on to run them. Files can be found in a “File Manager”, and they have images of file trees to show you where everything is. You can have multiple windows open at once; see how the clock is visible in the corner while Minesweeper is open and running.

However, Windows 3.x wasn’t perfect. It was still built entirely off of DOS, and relied on DOS compatibility to function. Because DOS’ data was stored as 16-bit chunks, so was every file and program on Windows 3.x. This was a limiting factor; there was a ceiling on how big a program could be, how long a file name could be, and how much memory you could use. 32-bit data processing was possible with the computer hardware available in the 90s, but everything in Windows 3.x still ran on 16-bit chunks regardless of hardware, meaning slower runtimes and less flexible software options.

(If this 16-bit and 32-bit stuff doesn’t make much sense to you, don’t worry about it too much. The important thing is that 16-bit and 32-bit software are not compatible with each other, and that 32-bit software generally has more flexibility and speed than 16-bit, while 16-bit software takes up less of the computer’s resources.)

3.x had other issues as well. You could have multiple programs open at once, but *running* multiple programs was a different story. If you attempted to, the OS often struggled to prioritize which program to run. Furthermore, while 3.x’s interface was leaps and bounds more accessible than MS-DOS… that was a low bar to clear. 3.x was still clunky for a lot of users to use, and for new users, learning where to find their programs and how to run them was hard.

Installing anything new onto the computer was also a hassle; if you wanted to use a newfangled mouse, for instance, you had to install drivers which told the computer what a mouse was. Even if you plugged the mouse in, it wouldn’t necessarily work. Same was true for other common add-ons, like new keyboards, printers, and scanners. Sticking a disk in the floppy drive wouldn’t inherently mean the program on it ran; you still had to find the correct drive and open the file and run it.

3.x also just suffered from… not telling users what to do. This sounds weird to us now; Clippy is practically a meme because users found being told what to do by a paper clip so annoying. But 3.x was radically different from an MS-DOS command prompt, and if you’d never used a graphical interface like 3.x before, it was easy to get lost. Look at the 3.1 interface; could you find and run MS-Word from there? Could you find a specific document and open it? Could you save it to a floppy disk and share it with your coworker, without being told how to do it?

Enter… Windows 95

(Wikipedia, Windows 95, Image 1)

Isn’t she beautiful?

Right away, some new features jump out at us. Upon startup, we get this pop-up menu welcoming us to the system. It starts with an important fact for new users; how to find and run a program. There’s a taskbar now; unlike 3.x, which displayed minimized open programs on the desktop, open programs have their own designated spot along the taskbar. The default desktop is organized for user convenience now, with commonly used programs on display. The time is automatically displayed along the taskbar, instead of having to run a clock application, and the font of the programs and windows isn’t just the chunky MS-DOS font anymore. This desktop is much less chaotic; sleeker and cleaner, with more graphics and color options visible from the jump.

By contrast, 3.x systems didn’t have a dedicated start menu. When you booted up, you were immediately hit with the program manager and little else. What’s a program manager? Up to you to find out! Meanwhile, Windows 95 is already introducing important features to the user. This is what the Start menu does. Here’s where it is. Here’s how you use it. The Start menu also had quick access to a help menu, where frequent user issues could be troubleshooted, and basic information about he system was accessible. Clean, simple, user-friendly.

Take a closer look at those default desktop icons. In 1995, internet connections were more commonplace, using dial-up internet services such as AOL through phone lines. Microsoft immediately shows you your connectivity options; the Microsoft Network is right there, ready to be investigated. When you run it, it immediately starts helping you set up your internet. If you click on Inbox, you’re taken through the process of setting up an email account via Outlook. If you’re a new user who previously didn’t know how to send an email, or connect to the internet, Windows 95 had an answer available right there.

We do need to pause here and acknowledge that bundling Microsoft products onto an OS automatically like this was not universally received well. While conveniently available to new users, programs like Microsoft Network are, well, Microsoft proprietary software. By offering them automatically like this, and not including bundle options for other software, Microsoft was shunting more and more users to their own software and away from competitors’ services. They were sued over that! It’s strange to imagine today, but at the time, Microsoft bundling its software as the default option for its OS users was a major violation of the accepted values of free choice for OS and software.

if only that lawsuit had stuck… I digress. nowadays you can’t uninstall Microsoft Edge without breaking something.

POINT BEING. Everything about this new design is user-focused. Windows 95’s major new features weren’t necessarily making it more powerful for experienced users. Instead, a lot of the focus was on ease of use; lowering the barrier to learning new skills on the computer.

Case in point: plug and play. Plug and play may be my single favorite feature of Windows 95. It’s a quintessential component of understanding who Windows 95 was for, and why it was so successful on the market.

Plug and play is very simple. You have a new component you need your computer to sync with, such as a printer. You plug the printer into the computer, insert the accompanying floppy disk if it has one… and a window pops up, asking you what you’re trying to install. You click on what you’re installing, and an installation wizard takes you through each step, and that’s it. All the necessary software is installed, all the necessary information is saved to the computer, and now you can print something. That simple.

Compare that to 3.x, where installing a printer meant plugging it in… and then finding where in the system it showed up, and making sure everything was properly synced yourself, and running any accompanying files yourself, all while following a physical manual (at best) or flying by the seat of your pants. If you know how to do that, that’s not a big deal; once you have that skill down, it’s not super hard to transfer it. But new users don’t have that advantage. Your grandpa who just learned to use MS-Word to make a Christmas card doesn’t know how to connect his computer to the printer. He doesn’t know if he needs to install or run any files or drivers first. And why should he? That’s not why he was using the computer. Plug and play removes the barrier to entry; now, your grandpa just plugs the printer into the computer, clicks “next” a few times, and it works.

Windows 95 was also the first 32-bit system Microsoft released… kind of. 9x systems are weird, in that they have both 32-bit and 16-bit programs that they rely on to function. It’s less a clean break from 16-bit, and more a step in a new direction. Now, there are dedicated Windows programs which only run in Windows; the OS has some measure of independence, although it still relies on DOS architecture for some of its processes. You can still access the DOS command prompt, either by specifying on startup or through the MS-DOS prompt button, but it’s not the entire backbone of Windows 95. Viruses which ruined MS-DOS computers don’t always run the same way; you have more security than before. And in the early years, very few viruses were written that could attack 9x systems. The new OS had more power and flexibility in its 32-bit capabilities, with the added bonus that new users had a slightly better shield against virus infection (for a bit) (that didn’t last long).

Nowadays, 9x architecture is a thing of the past; the last 9x system, Millenium Edition, was released in 2000. Even as the 9x architecture was becoming massively successful, Microsoft was investing in a new type of OS which was coded from the ground up, in a non-assembly language which didn’t rely on DOS to function. At the time of development, this new technology, or NT, had too high of system requirements to really be functional on anything but the most robust computers. For a home user in the 90s, 9x was the best option, with lower memory requirements and similar or faster speeds to NT on home systems. But on the horizon in 2001, an NT storm was brewing… an XP storm…

[piecesofeden11]

‼NEW STORY ALERT‼

✨Anakin, Obi-Wan, and the Secret of the Star Brick✨

Under the following cut, you will find the first installment of a Fever Dream. This idea is four days late and I'm rapidly playing catch up as I'm writing this, but I hope it will bring a smile to your faces 😁 This whole thing will be up on Ao3, too, at a later point and I'll share the link soon, of course! For now, enjoy! <3

It was baffling. One moment, Anakin was soaring through space, executing a perfect barrel roll, catching five vulture droids by surprise and blowing them to beautiful, sparkling smithereens. The next, Artoo was screaming in his ear pieces as space turned to blinding, swirling colors and then everything went black.

There were only flashes of the rest, the strange landscape passing by, the weird monument coming closer and closer, before he got one last warning yell from Artoo as the droid deployed the emergency ejector seat. Droid and Jedi alike sailed through the air as the ship smashed into the ground under them. Only thanks to his sharp reflexes, did Anakin manage to twist in the air just enough to land relatively smoothly on his feet. Artoo's went careening further, his screams almost comically deformed by his flight path, then came a crash and then silence.

Panic gripped Anakin for a second, but then he could hear disgruntled beeps from not too far away. If he could cuss, he was fine, so Anakin turned his attention to a more pressing problem for the time being.

His starfighter had seen better days for sure. Nothing Anakin could not fix, but certainly enough for them to be grounded for a few days. One wing had come clean off and a few studs and bricks were strewn about.

"Kriffing kung dag," Anakin muttered under his breath, surveying the damage and, in a fit of annoyance, kicked one of the bits of debris. "Shutta, kriffin' flark! When Obi-Wan finds out about this, I'll never hear the end of it."

Another displeased serious of chirps and whistles from the nearby bushes drew Anakin's attention away from what was left of his ship for a moment. Right. Artoo.

Following the increasingly vulgar volleys of binary, Anakin soon found the droid lodged firmly in what appeared to be a large tree of sorts, domed head down.

"Yo, buddy, what're you doing up there?" Anakin grinned, receiving a few choice words in response, while he lifted his droid out of his predicament, gently floating him back to the ground.

The moment Artoo's wheels hit the ground, he was off, racing towards the ship and beeping in distress. "Yeah, bud, it looks bad but I'm sure we can fix it. Common, let's see what we're dealing with and get to work."

A few hours passed, spent in the familiar chaos and efficiency of tinkering and repairing, Anakin had just lodged himself under the torn wing flap, when Artoo whistled a sharp warning. A second later, a high-pitched whine tore across the sky above them, followed by a booming crash.

Anakin pushed himself out from under the wing, reaching through the Force for his lightsaber, readying himself for a possible attack. Artoo, in similar readiness, brandished every weapon his system allowed him to have.

When the dust cleared, it revealed another ship, similarly fated as Anakin's own. Although it was flipped and had also sustained severe damage to hull and wing, Anakin was pretty sure that it was a Delta-7 Aethersprite. He could not help a low, appreciative whistle. "An actual vintage. Rare to see these days", he told Artoo. "Obi-Wan used to fly one of those." His musing were interrupted, when a cloaked figure emerged from the wreckage, turned away from Anakin and Artoo.

Anakin was about to call out to them, when the bushes above the figure began to quiver and shake and then slowly, just as Artoo had a few hours ago, an astromech droid hovered to the ground, it's red painted dome rotating wildly. A Force user, then. Anakin tightened his grip on his saber. "Turn around! And no sudden movements!", he shouted, while mentally and physically preparing for a fight. "I'm not telling you again, pal."

The figure froze for a moment, and so did the red astromech, before slowly turning around, their face still hidden by a cowl. Yet something about them seemed so familiar.

Blue erupted from the lightsaber the person had suddenly procured, brandished in a defensive stance, that looked even more familiar and Anakin's gut began to twist with a sudden, and rather odd premonition.

The person slowly lifted a hand to flip back their cowl and Anakin dropped his own saber, as his hand went slack in shock.

"Obi-Wan?"

"Hello there! Do I know you?"

"I-" Anakin paused. He took in the man in front of him. It was clearly Obi-Wan, but he was still sporting his longer hair, his beard not quite as refined as Anakin was used to it. The Aethersprite slotted itself into the equation. "In a manner of speaking, yeah."

"Well that doesn't sound ominous at all, does it?" Obi-Wan looked around, his brow creasing in what Anakin knew well as annoyance, when he looked at the wreckage of his ship. "What a mess. R4, can you fix that?" "I can!", Anakin blurted out, before R4 - of course it was R4 - had a chance to reply. "I mean, I can help, for sure. So can Artoo, he-" He noticed his mistake just a blink too late.

Obi-Wan's eyes widened and his gaze flickered past Anakin to where Artoo had, thankfully, withdrawn his arsenal. "Artoo? R2D2?" Artoo beeped a confirmation. Obi-Wan's eyes whipped back at Anakin, scrutinizing, then his mouth fell open in shock. "Anakin?!"

Anakin shrugged awkwardly and lifted a hand. "Hi?"

"Okay, what in the blazes is going on here? Where are we?" Ah, yes. This Obi-Wan was still a little more prone to outbursts, had not yet mastered himself quite as much as Anakin's own version had. It was oddly refreshing.

"I haven't figured that out just yet, to be honest. I tried fixing my ship first." Anakin gestured at the pile behind him. "And then you came down and well, that's been that. There is that giant thing over there, though. Maybe that could give us a clue."

They both looked over at the structure that loomed not too far from their joint crash site. It looked unlike anything either of them had ever seen, that much was certain.

"Interesting", Obi-Wan muttered, and lifted a hand to stroke his face, a gesture almost painfully familiar. "Perhaps a religious site? Or remnants of an ancient civilization. Those markings -"

"They look like numbers to me. And those crevices? Could be doors. Or windows? Something like that. It also-"

They both paused, eyes fluttering shut almost simultaneously. "It's radiates Force energy like crazy."

"It certainly does, doesn't it? Curious. We should-"

Before Obi-Wan could finish that sentence, however, Anakin was already halfway up the structure, heading for the door, or window, with what he figured could be the number 1. It was were the Force emanated from the strongest. Obi-Wan's faint, exasperated Anakin, fell on deaf ears.

"Let's see here, maybe if I push it like this and then twist. Hah! There we go!" The door gave in quickly, the material rather odd to the touch, thinner than expected and despite the sheen not even remotely resembling durasteel or plastoid. Behind the door he found a dark chamber, smelling faintly of wood and something resin-like. Carefully crawling inside, his legs soon connected with something.

Reaching out with the Force, his senses slid along a strange substance, that seemed to yield and crinkle under the pressure. When, after a few moments, nothing had attacked him yet, he put out his hands and took a hold of the material. Then, he pulled, until half of it was out the door. Crawling back into the space, he used the Force to push whatever it was further out.

He caught a brief glimpse of a transparent container of sorts and the frightened stare of someone inside, before it slid over the edge of the chamber towards the ground. "Kriff!" Sprinting towards the edge, he saw Obi-Wan holding out his hands just in time to catch the container before it could shatter.

The muffled yells inside of it grew louder.

[evaskjew]

HL headcanon : life in the 19th century

I was doing some historical research in order to make a family tree (for an OC for a fanfiction in the Hogwarts Legacy universe) because I'm a stickler for historical detail (It's not at all because I'm a history professor) and I thought it might be nice to share this for anyone who's interested.

Social transformations of the 19th century

HL takes place at the end of the Victorian era in UK, a historical period marked by the Industrial Revolution. Thanks to this revolution, many transformations appeared and developed in Europe:

The railway network in UK in the 1840s (at the time of HL, the Hogwarts Express was still something new and must have caused a scandal among the purebloods, who were no doubt scandalised that one of the latest Muggle technical innovations was being used to take students to the castle).

The gradual disappearance of proto-industry and the decline of workshops, particularly in the textile industry, which were replaced by the emergence of factories (spinning mills) in the towns. In addition to economic and social upheaval (emergence of a new social class: the working class), the Industrial Revolution was marked by a major rural exodus. People left the countryside to go to the cities to find work.

Cities then grow by welcoming a whole new population (whole families leave the countryside for the city). To meet this demographic challenge, we note the emergence of working-class neighborhoods that are developing in large cities. These neighborhoods are usually located next to factories.

The living conditions in his neighborhoods were not the greatest luxury (insalubrity, pollution of factories, poverty wages, etc.). It is enough to read some social surveys carried out at the time (such as that of Villermé in 1840 for France) to realize that living in the nineteenth century marked by this industrial revolution was not necessarily the best. In fact, the city of London was so polluted that a permanent fog hung over the city. In 1858, The Great Stink took place, which was the origin of the installation of sewage systems throughout the city (here again it can be assumed that in HL, the system of pipes to evacuate waste water from toilets and toilets is almost a novelty (toilets having become standard from 1840)). 

In short, all the transformations linked to the Industrial Revolution during the 19th century suggest that life expectancy at that time must not have been very high.

Life expectancy

For my OC, I chose to make her a member of the French wizarding family Rosier. And then being French myself, that’s it.

The situation in France in 1891 was essentially the same as in England (the Industrial Revolution having spread throughout Europe, what happened in England was observed elsewhere).

I managed to find graphs showing the evolution of life expectancy in France. I guess it was more or less the same for the UK.

Graph showing life expectancy at birth in Switzerland, France, Germany and Austria. In the 19th century, life expectancy was around 43 years.

Source : Swiss Life, La révolution de la longévité, 29 mars 2016.

Graph showing life expectancy in France from 1720 to 2020. The blue curve shows the life expectancy of men and the orange curve that of women. Here too the average is around 43 years.

Source: INED (French national institute for demographic studies)

Motherhood in the 19th century

To create the family tree, I had to look up the average age at which women gave birth. As life expectancy is low, women give birth at higher rates. In addition, the infant mortality rate was high at the time (medicine wasn't really that good, plus questionable hygiene standards).

Table showing the average age of childbirth among single women. We note that during the second half of the 19th century, women gave birth most at ages 20 and 24.

Women in the 1830s had their first child at age 23 (compared to around 24 in 1870), their second at 26 (compared to 27 in 1870). We also note that in 1830, women had more children than women in the 1870s/1880s (10% of women had a 3rd child in 1830 compared to 6% in 1870; 6% of women in 1830 had a 4th child compared to 1% in 1870).

Source : BRUNET Guy, « Célibataires et mères de nombreux enfants. Parcours de femmes à Lyon au xixe siècle », Annales de démographie historique, 2010/1 (n° 119), p. 95-114. URL : https://www.cairn.info/revue-annales-de-demographie-historique-2010-1-page-95.htm 

Sorry if the documents are in French, but I am French and I am used to doing my research in French university databases.

I hope this could have been useful for those who write fiction in the HL universe and who want to remain consistent with the society of the time. (Well then I think that wizard families lived longer because magic had to help with health problems linked to pollution or other. Thanks to Wiggenweld potions)

I hope my English is clear, I mostly use a translator.

[lonestarflight]

Cancelled Missions: Testing Shuttle Manipulator Arms During Earth-Orbital Apollo Missions (1971-1972)

In this drawing by NASA engineer Caldwell Johnson, twin human-like Space Shuttle robot arms with human-like hands deploy from the Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) Scientific Instrument Module (SIM) Bay to grip the derelict Skylab space station.

"Caldwell Johnson, co-holder with Maxime Faget of the Mercury space capsule patent, was chief of the Spacecraft Design Division at the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC) in Houston, Texas, when he proposed that astronauts test prototype Space Shuttle manipulator arms and end effectors during Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) missions in Earth orbit. In a February 1971 memorandum to Faget, NASA MSC's director of Engineering and Development, Johnson described the manipulator test mission as a worthwhile alternative to the Earth survey, space rescue, and joint U.S./Soviet CSM missions then under study.

At the time Johnson proposed the Shuttle manipulator arm test, three of the original 10 planned Apollo lunar landing missions had been cancelled, the second Skylab space station (Skylab B) appeared increasingly unlikely to reach orbit, and the Space Shuttle had not yet been formally approved. NASA managers foresaw that the Apollo and Skylab mission cancellations would leave them with surplus Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rockets after the last mission to Skylab A. They sought low-cost Earth-orbital missions that would put the surplus hardware to good use and fill the multi-year gap in U.S. piloted missions expected to occur in the mid-to-late 1970s.

Johnson envisioned Shuttle manipulators capable of bending and gripping much as do human arms and hands, thus enabling them to hold onto virtually anything. He suggested that a pair of prototype arms be mounted in a CSM Scientific Instrument Module (SIM) Bay, and that the CSM "pretend to be a Shuttle" during rendezvous operations with the derelict Skylab space station.

The CSM's three-man crew could, he told Faget, use the manipulators to grip and move Skylab. They might also use them to demonstrate a space rescue, capture an 'errant satellite,' or remove film from SIM Bay cameras and pass it to the astronauts through a special airlock installed in place of the docking unit in the CSM's nose.

Faget enthusiastically received Johnson's proposal (he penned 'Yes! This is great' on his copy of the February 1971 memo). The proposal generated less enthusiasm elsewhere, however.

Undaunted, Johnson proposed in May 1972 that Shuttle manipulator hardware replace Earth resources instruments that had been dropped for lack of funds from the planned U.S.-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) mission. President Richard Nixon had called on NASA to develop the Space Shuttle just four months before (January 1972). Johnson asked Faget for permission to perform 'a brief technical and programmatic feasibility study' of the concept, and Faget gave him permission to prepare a presentation for Aaron Cohen, manager of the newly created Space Shuttle Program Office at MSC.

In his June 1972 presentation to Cohen, Johnson declared that '[c]argo handling by manipulators is a key element of the Shuttle concept.' He noted that CSM-111, the spacecraft tagged for the ASTP mission, would have no SIM Bay in its drum-shaped Service Module (SM), and suggested that a single 28-foot-long Shuttle manipulator arm could be mounted near the Service Propulsion System (SPS) main engine in place of the lunar Apollo S-band high-gain antenna, which would not be required during Earth-orbital missions.

During ascent to orbit, the manipulator would ride folded beneath the CSM near the ASTP Docking Module (DM) within the streamlined Spacecraft Launch Adapter. During SPS burns, the astronauts would stabilize the manipulator so that acceleration would not damage it by commanding it to grip a handle installed on the SM near the base of the CSM's conical Command Module (CM).

Johnson had by this time mostly dropped the concept of an all-purpose human hand-like 'end effector' for the manipulator; he informed Cohen that the end effector design was 'undetermined.' The Shuttle manipulator demonstration would take place after CSM-111 had undocked from the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft and moved away to perform independent maneuvers and experiments.

The astronauts in the CSM would first use a TV camera mounted on the arm's wrist to inspect the CSM and DM, then would use the end effector to manipulate 'some device' on the DM. They would then command the end effector to grip a handle on the DM, undock the DM from the CSM, and use the manipulator to redock the DM to the CSM. Finally, they would undock the DM and repeatedly capture it with the manipulator.

Caldwell Johnson's depiction of a prototype Shuttle manipulator arm with a hand-like end effector. The manipulator grasps the Docking Module meant to link U.S. Apollo and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in Earth orbit during the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) mission.

Johnson estimated that new hardware for the ASTP Shuttle manipulator demonstration would add 168 pounds (76.2 kilograms) to the CM and 553 pounds (250.8 kilograms) to the SM. He expected that concept studies and pre-design would be completed in January 1973. Detail design would commence in October 1972 and be completed by 1 July 1973, at which time CSM-111 would undergo modification for the manipulator demonstration.

Johnson envisioned that MSC would build two manipulators in house. The first, for testing and training, would be completed in January 1974. The flight unit would be completed in May 1974, tested and checked out by August 1974, and launched into orbit attached to CSM-111 in July 1975. Johnson optimistically placed the cost of the manipulator arm demonstration at just $25 million.

CSM-111, the last Apollo spacecraft to fly, reached Earth orbit on schedule on 15 July 1975. By then, Caldwell Johnson had retired from NASA. CSM-111 carried no manipulator arm; the tests Johnson had proposed had been judged to be unnecessary.

That same month, the U.S. space agency, short on funds, invited Canada to develop and build the Shuttle manipulator arm. The Remote Manipulator System — also called the Canadarm — first reached orbit on board the Space Shuttle Columbia during STS-2, the second flight of the Shuttle program, on 12 November 1981."

source

[kawaoneechan]

Why I don't like Unity

There's three reasons, basically, besides my personal inability to get any custom character assets into Unity, Unreal, or Godot.

Let me tell you below the readmore.

Reason #1: it managed to fucking bluescreen my system just trying to start.

How do you fuck that up? I download an installer and run it. This gives me a launcher. From there, I'm supposed to install the actual product I wanted to begin with. That's bad enough, to be honest. But then the fucking launcher managed to break so badly, I had my first BSOD in several months. With all I do to my poor laptops, I so very rarely got crashes like that it honestly threw me the fuck off.

If the launcher is gonna play like that, forget about installing the actual product.

Reason #2: CPU pegging up the ass.

On my previous laptop, attempting to run basically any Unity-based game would peg the CPU, all cores, until the poor thing ran so hot within mere minutes, it'd commit preventative sudoku. Maybe if I was lucky, I'd get a chance to set all the things to "lowest", and that might let me, I dunno, play long enough to get through the goddamn tutorial?

And I'm not even talking about state-of-the-art 3D games, but simple 2D games with low-resolution pixel art. Why would those run a dual-core at 200% until it fucking kills itself? Makes no sense.

Now, Phil Fortier of Icefall Games is an acquaintance of mine via SCI shenanigans, and when he released Snow Spirit (soon to be rereleased as part of Chronicles of Cascadia), I lamented to him about how his use of Unity would mean I couldn't run any of his stuff. So Phil looked into it and found a Big Fucking Thing to optimize. This basically makes Phil's SCI games the only things made in Unity that I can personally trust won't Do That.

Reason #3: About those 2D games...

I'm gonna dip into my Twitter archives for a bit and repost some stuff for this part.

*wavy flashback effect*

This is Angel Jump, a simple little arcade jumping game that's available on itch.io:

It's delightfully low resolution and has like four seconds of audio all added up. Can't be more than a few MB, depending on which sane development framework they used, right?

33 MB, actually. Because Unity. Let's see how it breaks down:

Unity main exe: 623 KB

Main game assets file: 1.19 MB together

A folder full of support DLLs like terrain and cloth: 7.17 MB, 90% or more of them never called because this is a 2D pixel-art game.

Unity's default resources: 3.41 MB. Mind that of these, only the splash logo is actually used because Angel Jump was made in the free edition.

Mono embedded runtime: 2.61 MB, and each game gets its own copy, much like how Electron apps each have their own copies of Chromium.

And another 17 MB for the Unity Player.

All in all, 33 MB of files for a game like that. Why? Because Unity is a bloated crapsack, I'd conclude from a cursory study like that. Let's compare that to some other games.

This is Elevator Girl, which is not on itch.io.

It has a lot of different animations and three fairly long background music tracks. It's only one file, 18.7 MB. I'm willing to bet most of that is the BGM, but I can't confirm it because it's just the one file.

And just for some historical perspective, the entire Crystal Caves trilogy is 1.31 MB, including some chaff. Commander Keen 4 on its own is 740 KB. Now, Keen and Elevator Girl both have OPL soundtracks, but the latter's is probably streamed.

Noxico is only 1.25 MB to download as a .7z file. Its only optimization that I myself actively apply is that I crunch the PNG files. The rest is text, and since the game uses a .zip file by another name as a game data source... yeah. That's a cheap win.

Now, back to Angel Jump. I went through the game's own resources to see what size it could conceivably have if it was not made in Unity. 54 textures, ten of them actually used. Tiny font stored in a weird way, possibly for distance field trickery which has no business in a 2D pixel game if you ask me. 921 KB of WAV files, high-quality bleepity-bloops, two of them jingles. 4.22 KB of PNG files, crunched like Noxico, for all but the creator's logo and the font. 973 KB for a copy of SDL, and I'd estimate at worst two MB for the main EXE.

The entire Angel Jump game could be no more than 4 MB and a half-dozen files, It's actually 33.2 MB, 92 files.

There's a more general computer programming issue that this reliance on Unity for even the simplest, smallest games seems to spring from: the bigger and better the computers get, the more lazy the developers get. Only have like four MHz, 640 KB of RAM and, what, 720 KB of diskette space, and no guarantee of an HDD? Better make the most of it, developers! But now the pressure's off and there's no more reason to exert any effort into keeping small games actually small.

*sigh*