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howdoideletestrongvpnfrommymac · 2 months

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can vpn change my bluetooth location

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can vpn change my bluetooth location

VPN geolocation masking

VPN geolocation masking is a feature offered by Virtual Private Network (VPN) services that allows users to hide their actual physical location and appear as if they are accessing the internet from a different location. This is achieved by routing the user's internet connection through servers located in various regions around the world, thereby masking their true IP address and providing them with a different virtual location.

There are several reasons why individuals choose to utilize VPN geolocation masking. One of the primary reasons is to enhance online privacy and security. By masking their true location, users can prevent websites, internet service providers, and other third parties from tracking their online activities and personal information.

Another common use of VPN geolocation masking is to bypass geo-restrictions. Many streaming services, websites, and online content are restricted to specific regions due to licensing agreements or government regulations. By using a VPN to mask their geolocation, users can access blocked content and enjoy a more diverse online experience.

Additionally, VPN geolocation masking can help users avoid targeted advertising based on their actual location. By appearing to be located in a different region, users may see different ads or experience less personalized tracking.

It is important to note that while VPN geolocation masking can offer users increased privacy and access to geo-restricted content, it is not foolproof. Users should choose a reputable VPN provider and be aware of potential security risks associated with using VPN services.

Overall, VPN geolocation masking is a valuable tool for those seeking to enhance their online privacy, access restricted content, and maintain a sense of anonymity while browsing the internet.

Bluetooth location spoofing

Title: Understanding Bluetooth Location Spoofing: Risks and Prevention Measures

Bluetooth location spoofing is a technique used to manipulate the location data transmitted by Bluetooth-enabled devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and IoT devices. While Bluetooth technology is commonly used for wireless communication and device connectivity, it also broadcasts unique identifiers called MAC addresses, which can be exploited for location tracking.

One of the primary risks associated with Bluetooth location spoofing is privacy invasion. By spoofing the location of a Bluetooth device, malicious actors can track the movements of individuals without their consent. This can lead to various privacy violations, including targeted advertising, stalking, and even physical harm.

Furthermore, Bluetooth location spoofing can be used to deceive location-based services and applications. For example, a malicious actor could spoof the location of their device to access restricted content or services only available in certain geographic locations. This can result in financial losses for businesses and undermine the integrity of location-based authentication systems.

To mitigate the risks of Bluetooth location spoofing, both individuals and organizations can take several preventive measures. One approach is to disable Bluetooth when not in use, as this reduces the frequency of location broadcasts and makes it harder for malicious actors to track your movements. Additionally, users should be cautious when connecting to unfamiliar Bluetooth devices or networks, as these may be used as vectors for location spoofing attacks.

Furthermore, device manufacturers and software developers should implement stronger security measures to prevent Bluetooth location spoofing. This includes encrypting location data, implementing secure pairing protocols, and regularly updating firmware to patch vulnerabilities.

In conclusion, Bluetooth location spoofing poses significant risks to privacy and security. By understanding these risks and taking proactive measures to prevent exploitation, individuals and organizations can better protect themselves against malicious attacks and unauthorized tracking.

VPN impact on device location

A VPN, or Virtual Private Network, has a significant impact on the perceived location of a device. When you connect to a VPN server, your internet traffic is encrypted and routed through the server, masking your true IP address and location. This allows you to appear as if you are accessing the internet from a different geographic location than where you physically are.

The primary benefit of using a VPN to change your device location is enhanced online privacy and security. By hiding your real IP address, a VPN helps to protect your identity and sensitive data from hackers, trackers, and surveillance. This is particularly important when using public Wi-Fi networks, where cyber threats are more prevalent.

Moreover, bypassing geolocation restrictions is another advantage of VPNs. Many online services, streaming platforms, and websites employ geoblocking to restrict access based on users' locations. By connecting to a VPN server in a different country, you can circumvent these restrictions and access content that is otherwise unavailable in your region.

It's worth noting that while a VPN can change your device location virtually, certain services and apps may still be able to detect the use of a VPN. In some cases, you may encounter issues with accessing specific websites or services while using a VPN. Additionally, the speed and performance of your internet connection may be affected when routing through a VPN server.

In conclusion, a VPN can have a significant impact on your device location by providing enhanced privacy, security, and the ability to bypass geolocation restrictions. However, it's essential to consider potential limitations and trade-offs when using a VPN to change your online location.

Bluetooth GPS manipulation with VPN

Bluetooth GPS manipulation in conjunction with VPN technology offers a range of possibilities for users looking to enhance their privacy and security while using location-based services. By employing a Virtual Private Network (VPN) in combination with Bluetooth technology, users can manipulate their GPS location information to appear as if they are in a different physical location than they actually are. This can be particularly useful for individuals looking to maintain their privacy and anonymity while using GPS-enabled apps or services.

One potential application of Bluetooth GPS manipulation with VPN is the ability to access location-specific content that may be restricted based on geographical location. By manipulating their GPS coordinates through the use of a VPN, users can access region-locked content such as streaming services, websites, or gaming platforms that are otherwise inaccessible in their location. This can provide users with a way to bypass geo-blocking and enjoy a more unrestricted online experience.

Furthermore, manipulating GPS information via Bluetooth and VPN can also be utilized for enhanced privacy protection. By obscuring their true location and identity, users can prevent tracking by third parties and protect their personal information from being exposed. This can be especially important for individuals who prioritize their online security and wish to minimize the risks associated with sharing their precise location data.

In conclusion, the combination of Bluetooth GPS manipulation with VPN technology presents a novel approach for users seeking to leverage location-based services while safeguarding their privacy and security. By exploring the diverse applications of this innovative technology, individuals can unlock a new realm of possibilities for controlling their digital footprint and enhancing their online experience.

VPN and Bluetooth location falsification

Title: Enhancing Privacy: Using VPN and Bluetooth Location Falsification

In an era where digital privacy is increasingly under threat, individuals are turning to innovative methods to safeguard their online activities. Two such techniques gaining traction are Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and Bluetooth location falsification. While VPNs have long been heralded as a tool for anonymity, Bluetooth location falsification is a relatively newer concept, but equally effective in bolstering privacy.

VPNs operate by encrypting internet traffic, routing it through servers located in different geographic regions, thereby masking the user's true IP address and location. This not only prevents ISPs and websites from tracking online activities but also enables users to bypass geo-restrictions on content.

On the other hand, Bluetooth location falsification involves manipulating the location data transmitted by a device's Bluetooth signal. By spoofing their location, users can prevent apps and services from accurately tracking their movements and physical whereabouts. This is particularly useful in scenarios where apps require access to Bluetooth for functionalities such as location-based services or targeted advertising.

Combining VPNs with Bluetooth location falsification provides a comprehensive approach to enhancing digital privacy. While VPNs protect online activities from surveillance and tracking, Bluetooth location falsification safeguards against location-based tracking in the physical world.

However, it's important to note that while these techniques are effective in enhancing privacy, they are not foolproof. Users should still exercise caution and adopt additional measures such as using encrypted messaging apps and regularly updating security software to mitigate risks.

In conclusion, in the age of increasing digital surveillance, leveraging tools like VPNs and Bluetooth location falsification can empower individuals to take control of their online privacy. By incorporating these techniques into their digital arsenal, users can navigate the digital landscape with confidence, knowing that their privacy remains intact.

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itsjustxj-blog · 1 year

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Understanding Online Harassment: Impact, Prevention, and Response

Introduction

Harassment has become a widespread problem in the digital age, impacting people of all ages and backgrounds on numerous online platforms. Because of the anonymity and distancing effects of the internet, predators have become more brazen and destructive. The purpose of this article is to educate readers on the issue of cyberbullying by exploring its causes, possible solutions, and recommended responses.

Definition and Types of Online Harassment

Harassment in the digital realm occurs when someone uses technology for malicious purposes, such as stalking or threatening others. It has a wide range of possible manifestations (Vogels 2021), including but not limited to:

Cyberbullying: The act of harassing or frightening someone online, typically through the use of personal assaults, rumour-mongering, or the disclosure of private information.

Doxing: The malevolent act of publicly disclosing personal information without the individual's consent, such as an address, phone number, or facts about their place of employment, thus exposing the individual vulnerable to harassment and other forms of violence.

Revenge Porn: Sharing of private photos or videos without permission, which can cause severe emotional suffering and reputational harm.

Stalking: The continual monitoring, following, or tracking of an individual's online actions, which can result in worry, anxiety, and an invasion of privacy.

Hate Speech: Expressions of bigotry, racism, sexism, or other forms of discrimination that are directed at specific individuals or groups and are meant to be degrading or humiliating.

Impact of Online Harassment

Harassment in the digital realm has the potential to negatively impact victims' psychological, emotional, and even physical health (Gosse et al. 2021). Possible consequences consist of:

Psychological Distress: Persistent harassment has been linked to a variety of mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, and PTSD (Lindsay et al. 2016)

Social Isolation: Victims may avoid interacting with others out of fear of being subjected to more harassment or criticism.

Professional Consequences: Careers, job prospects, and professional relationships can all be jeopardised by online harassment, whether through reputational harm or the disclosure of private information.

Physical Safety Concerns: In severe circumstances, victims of online harassment may be subjected to further harm in the form of offline threats, stalking, or even physical violence.

Preventing Online Harassment

Individuals, communities, online services, and governments must all work together to end abuse in cyberspace. Here are a few precautions you can take (White & Carmody 2018):

Education and Awareness: A culture of respect and tolerance can be fostered by spreading education about the internet, encouraging good online citizenship, and encouraging empathy.

Stronger Platform Policies: There has to be effective reporting and moderation systems in place in addition to stringent guidelines prohibiting harassment, hate speech, and cyberbullying on all online platforms.

Privacy Settings and Security: Insisting that people take responsibility for the security of their own data by reviewing and adjusting their privacy settings, selecting secure passwords, and taking other precautions against data loss.

Reporting and Blocking: Encouraging victims to report incidents to the platform authorities and utilize blocking features to minimize contact with harassers.

Responding to Online Harassment

Document Evidence: If taking legal action becomes required, you should keep logs of harassing texts, screenshots, and other digital proof.

Seek Support: Get in touch with people you know you can trust, like friends and family, or groups that help victims of cyberbullying

Legal Action: Get in touch with solicitors to learn more about your options, which may include filing for a restraining order or filing criminal charges against the harasser.

Self-Care: Take steps to care for yourself by doing things that make you happy, getting professional help if you need it, and learning mindfulness techniques to help you deal with the emotional toll.

References

Gosse, C., Veletsianos, G., Hodson, J., Houlden, S., Dousay, T.A., Lowenthal, P.R. and Hall, N., 2021. The hidden costs of connectivity: nature and effects of scholars’ online harassment. Learning, Media and Technology, 46(3), pp.264-280.

Lindsay, M., Booth, J.M., Messing, J.T. and Thaller, J., 2016. Experiences of online harassment among emerging adults: Emotional reactions and the mediating role of fear. Journal of interpersonal violence, 31(19), pp.3174-3195.

Vogels, E.A., 2021. The state of online harassment. Pew Research Center, 13, p.625.

White, W.E. and Carmody, D., 2018. Preventing online victimization: College students’ views on intervention and prevention. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 33(14), pp.2291-2307.

#MDA20009 #Week8 #OnllineHarassment #Cyberbully

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intozitech · 1 year

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Privacy and Data Protection Concerns in Utilizing AI Video Analytics

AI video analytics is an emerging technology that is transforming the security industry. By utilizing cameras and software to analyze surveillance footage, organizations can gain valuable insights into potential threats and take proactive measures to prevent them. However, as with any technology that involves the collection and storage of data, there are concerns around privacy and data protection.

One of the biggest concerns is the potential for misuse of the data collected through AI video analytics. This data can include sensitive information such as people’s faces, license plates, and even biometric data. If this data falls into the wrong hands, it could be used for nefarious purposes such as identity theft or stalking. As a result, it is essential that organizations take steps to ensure that the data they collect is protected from unauthorized access.

Another concern is the potential for false positives. AI video analytics technology is not perfect, and there is always the risk of false alarms. If a false positive results in a person being wrongly accused of a crime or violating company policy, it can have serious consequences. Organizations need to ensure that their AI video analytics systems are calibrated correctly and that they have procedures in place to handle false positives.

Privacy regulations are also a concern for organizations that utilize AI video analytics. In many countries, there are strict laws governing the collection, storage, and use of personal data. Organizations that fail to comply with these regulations can face significant fines and other penalties. It is essential that organizations are aware of the relevant laws and regulations in their jurisdiction and take steps to ensure compliance.

To address these concerns, organizations can take several steps to protect privacy and ensure data protection. These include:

• Limiting the collection of personal data: Organizations should only collect the minimum amount of data necessary to achieve their security objectives.

• Anonymizing data: Organizations can anonymize data by removing or masking personally identifiable information.

• Encrypting data: Organizations should use encryption to protect the data they collect from unauthorized access.

• Limiting access to data: Only authorized personnel should have access to the data collected through AI video analytics.

• Implementing data retention policies: Organizations should have policies in place for the retention and deletion of data to ensure that data is not stored longer than necessary.

In Conclusion, AI video analytics is a powerful technology that can revolutionize the security industry. However, organizations must be mindful of the potential privacy and data protection concerns associated with the technology. By taking steps to protect privacy and ensure data protection, organizations can maximize the benefits of AI video analytics while minimizing the risks. At Intozi, we prioritize data privacy and protection, and we offer AI video analytics solutions that comply with relevant laws and regulations, while also providing effective security measures for our clients, utilizing emerging technologies such as facial recognition and license plate recognition.

#AIvideoanalytics #dataprivacy #datasecurity #surveillance #facialrecognition #licenseplaterecognition #privacyconcerns #securitytechnology #dataprotection #artificialintelligence #securitysystems #securitysolutions #surveillancecameras #privacyrights #securityindustry #emergingtechnology #IntoziAI #protectingprivacy #technologyandprivacy

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nerdia-a · 2 years

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I am sorry for writing a response to you repost here - I hope it is ok. And sorry in advance for a structureless ramble.

I don’t know whether you are right or not. I know that any capacity to care has been systematically eradicated in Russian citizens for about a century. I know that Russian propaganda machine is ten times as well oiled and as effective as the one in Ukraine and Belarus, at least it used to be - luckily there are cracks showing now. But it follows people from the crib to the grave and that is not an exaggeration. I know that Russian police has proven time and time again that there is nothing they won’t do - you fight back and they drag you out of the view of cameras and break every bone in your body. What they are doing right now they believe to be the “nice” way. Should that stop people? I don’t know.

I know that the Russian government has perfected keeping its citizens in a state where they have just enough of a semblance of a normal life, just enough to lose, just enough veneer of legitimacy to make it easier to keep everyone docile. I don’t know if I can blame people for wanting a normal life.

I know that people who fought for freedom, for rights and for democracy in that country have been systematically killed, imprisoned, tortured and exiled again and again and again for so many generations by so many different shades of regimes, that nobody in Russia has any hope anymore. I know that 100% of the current legal and penal system is designed and utilized to destroy the life of anyone who protests, that those who use it are willing to break any laws and hire thugs and killers, and that if you give them a slight bit of aggressive resistance, they will show this aggression to everyone who doubts and you will be branded the horrible terrorist, only furthering their agenda and solidifying the support of those caught by propaganda.

People believe their future is worth fighting for. They just don’t believe they have a future.

Maybe you are right and they should revolt. But people say goodbye to their children every time they go to even protest. They accept that their relatives might lose their jobs. That their parents will curse them. That what they are doing they are doing not because they believe it will change something but because they can not do otherwise.

It is difficult to become a revolutionary. It is harder to choose to be a martyr after you have seen thousands of others suffer martyrdom and achieve nothing. And if you do not believe you will be supported by those around you - that is what aggressive resistance looks like to them.

For centuries Ukrainians have been doing the exact same thing, revolting because we couldn't stay silent, revolting even though it would get us killed. Killed because of 5 wheat stalks, killed over writing anything in Ukrainian.

If you look at the biography of almost any Ukrainian writer, poet, musician it's filled with suffering caused by the hand of Russian totalitarianism. Read about the "executed renaissance".

So that's why I'm incapable of feeling sorry for Russians subjected to propaganda. Because that propaganda for centuries has involved the subjugation and genocide of neighboring nations.

There used to be a whole lot of propaganda about why slavery and other manifestations of imperialism were justified, but anyone right now who says "it was a different time, they didn't know better" as an excuse is laughed out of the room because we know it's ludicrous. Same goes for Russians.

Germans LET Hitler come to power, despite there being people who saw him for what it was. Russians LET Putin come to power, he had their support though Chechnya, though Georgia, through Syria, through Crimea, and now through the rest of Ukraine.

Ukrainians have seen our smartest and brightest be disposed of for centuries, and we still have it in us to fight for our freedom. Your excuses, while heartfelt, are just that - excuses.

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ill-will-editions · 4 years

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QUARANTINE LETTER #5: UNRECONCILED Ron Sakolsky

Stop blaming me, accusing me, stalking me. Working yourselves into an anti-viral paralysis. All of that is childish. Let me propose a different perspective. See me as your savior instead of your gravedigger. You’re free not to believe me, but I have come to shut down the machine whose emergency brake you couldn’t find. I have come in order to suspend the operation that held you hostage. I have come in order to demonstrate the aberration that normality constitutes. Ask yourselves how you could find it so comfortable to let yourselves be governed. Don’t let those who’ve led you to the abyss claim to be saving you from it: they will prepare for you a more perfect hell, an even deeper grave. Thanks to me for an indefinite time you will no longer work, your kids won’t go to school, and yet it will be the opposite of a vacation. Vacations are the space that must be filled up at all costs while waiting for the obligatory return to work. I render you idle. Use the time I’m giving you to envision the world of the aftermath in light of what you’ve learned from the collapse that’s underway. The disaster ends when the economy ends. The economy is the devastation.

from “What the Virus Said”

Just when I was feeling most elated about prospects for the future given the strength of the Indigenous resistance sweeping Canada in early 2020, the coronavirus arrived on the scene with whiplash-inducing force to upstage everything in its deadly path unexpectedly shutting down whatever parts of the Canadian economy had not already been intentionally shut down by the Wet’suwet’en land defenders and those involved in solidarity actions that had immediately preceded the spread of the disease. Rather than framing The Virus exclusively within the kind of nightmare scenario that is typically associated with the mainstreaming of the term “surreal” (as if all there ever is to surrealism’s critique of reality is this dark side), I want to instead illuminate the surreal possibilities for social transformation that can be revealed by creating a surreal (rather than literal) analogy between the contagion of the virus and the contagion of revolt.

Starting in February of this year the appearance of a widespread Indigenous uprising on the stage of Canadian history swiftly moved the realm of the surreal from dreams of radical transformation to the direct action undertaken to bring it about. Railways, highways and ferries were blockaded, provincial legislatures, government administrative offices, banks and corporate headquarters were occupied. For many inconvenienced Canadians, such actions as these were considered to be unacceptable even though they would prove to be only a fraction as disruptive as the more authoritarian forms of state control that would later shelter under the legitimacy of saving us from The Virus.

Though the immediacy of the COVID-19 pandemic would quickly overshadow the earlier Indigenous revolt in the public eye, it is now evident to many that the smiley-faced mask of Canadian colonialism has been pulled off to reveal a state that in spite of its professed human rights and climate change awareness rhetoric continues to have no compunctions about invading Indigenous territory without consent to build pipelines for fracked natural gas and tar sands oil because of what it considers to be in the best interests of the almighty economy. As Tawinikay (aka Southern Wind Woman) has written, “If only one thing has brought me joy in the last few weeks, it began when the matriarchs at Unist’ot’en burned the Canadian flag and declared reconciliation dead. Like wildfire, it swept through the hearts of youth across the territories. Out of their mouths, with teeth bared, they echoed back: reconciliation is dead! reconciliation is dead! Reconciliation was a distraction, a way for them to dangle a carrot in front of us and trick us into behaving. Do we not have a right to the land stolen from our ancestors? It’s time to shut everything the fuck down”.

Just as Indigenous peoples have demanded their land back in rural areas while pronouncing the false hope of government-brokered reconciliation to be dead, the systemic dislocations to the economy brought on by the coronavirus have led urban anarchists to address fundamental land issues by calling for rent strikes. But why stop there? In response to the devastation associated with The Virus, we have heard calls for the cessation of not only rent, but mortgage and utility payments, even the cancellation of debt itself, the end of wage slavery, and demands for the cessation of arrests for minor offenses, the release of prisoners who have committed non-violent crimes, or flat-out prison abolition. As surrealists we might ask ourselves what other noxious aspects of reality might be called into question and transformed by beginning to imagine what might exist in their place.

Where I live in British Columbia, resource extraction has always been the name of the game, but the emergence this year of a widespread oppositional network ranging from “land back” Indigenous warriors to elder traditionalists and from Extinction Rebellion activists to anarchist insurrectionaries has been heartening. Together, this multi-pronged force disrupted business as usual in solidarity with Unist’ot’en and Wet’suwet’en land defenders, and threatened to bring the Canadian economy to a grinding halt. This time growing numbers of Indigenous peoples were not willing to be bought off by corporate bribes or mollified by a legal system that has never done anything but pacify, brutalize, or betray them in the process of stealing their land. This time people fought back in droves against the forces of colonial law and order. This time the air was alive with a spirit of refusal and rebellion with one action building upon another in a burgeoning movement that could not be stopped. When one railroad blockade would be busted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), another would spring up in its place elsewhere extending the frontlines of the battle all across the continent.

As I write, the wheel of change is still in spin. What the final outcome will be in relation to either the COVID-19 virus or the virus of revolt is unknown, especially in relation to the predatory nature of the times in which we live where the emphasis is often placed on the institution of statist forms of social control rather than grass roots mutual aid efforts in relation to the immanence of societal upheaval. Even though the pandemic has supposedly shut down the provincial economy with lightning speed, Coastal Gas Link’s pipeline construction efforts with their invasive industrial “man-camps” have still been allowed to continue to exist on unceded Wet’suwet’en territory with RCMP logistical support, thereby callously endangering the health and safety of the Indigenous inhabitants. It's abundantly clear whose lives matter to the Canadian government and whose don’t. Consequently, it will remain very hard for the authorities to put the genie of Indigenous rebellion back in the colonial bottle in the future. In the meantime, we are mourning what of value we’ve lost from the past, celebrating what we’ve created in the present, and still demanding the impossible.

#Quarantine Letters #Wet’suwet’en #COVID19

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cool-crap-daily · 4 years

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Here is a cool thing I wrote. It's meant to be a prologue, but the book it's a prologue to doesn't exist because I am lazy. If you don't like it, too bad, you just read the whole thing sucks to be you ig.

Earth.

A planet full of natural wonders, rich in resources, and green with life, reduced to a festering pile of rubble and poverty. Not decimated by some outside force, no, it was ruined by scientific advancement and the sinfulness of man. The paragons of those horrors were called The Ascended. The Ascended were a group of individuals who had used the secrets of The Breakthrough to ‘ascend’. Each of them gained levels of power akin to those of the gods of legend. Every man, woman, and child in The Empire knew their names. Havoc, Seraphim, Volt, Stratagem, Hive, and finally, The Beholder.

Havoc mastered the art of destruction. Originally the CEO of the world's leading weapons manufacturer, "Arcturus Armaments", The Breakthrough allowed him to fuse his mortal form with the instruments of chaos he created. Wielding atomic lasers and hypersonic rail-cannons as well as a panoply of other ordinances, he became an unstoppable courier of fire and death. To top it all off, his body was armor-plated in a composite meta-material that left him virtually invincible.

Seraphim, the biological angel of life, had mastered the power of healing, the inverse of Havoc. Once the world's foremost scientist of medical studies, she created technologies that saved millions of lives. After the breakthrough, however, she melded herself with prototype machines she'd been working on in secret and obtained the ultimate treasure. The terrible prize that so many in history had sought after. Immortality. Any wounds she received closed as quickly as they opened, her aging halted in its tracks. She had an immune system aided by nanotech so that no pathogen stood a chance against her. Alas, she gave in to her dark fantasies of endless reign and destroyed all notes, machines, and evidence of her immortality tech, so that only she would be without a mortal end.

Volt, the mover of mountains and Hermes incarnate, was once a man known as Ahmad Cunningham. He was the lead engineer of Athletonics Inc, the world's largest manufacturer of cybernetics, as well as his own startup: Fusoria Industries, the most advanced in Fusion power research. Using The Breakthrough, he molded his body into his most ambitious exoskeleton yet. This suit had so much potential that it needed impossible amounts of power to function. The only thing that could fuel such a bionic juggernaut was a prototype fusion reactor that he incorporated into the design. He could run and fly at incomprehensible speeds and could deliver enough energy in a single blow to flatten a skyscraper.

Stratagem, the shadow of the abyss and master of illusion, was a trillionaire like the others in her former life, but her field of choice was espionage and stealth technologies. The Breakthrough allowed her to become nothing but a whisper on the airwaves, just a flickering of distortion on the edge of the most advanced cameras on the planet. She cloaked herself in stealth tech decades ahead of anything else ever conceived. She was completely invisible to the naked eye, and utterly silent to the ear. The only sensors that could hope to detect her were the ones she herself invented and replaced her eyes with. She could look through concrete walls and magnify her view enough to see miles away.

Hive, the unfeeling swarm of symmetrical horror, was born out of a man named Stewart Stanford, the Head of Robotics and Androids Research of Rubicon Industries. Rubicon Industries used to be a competitor of Athletonics Inc. until the Ascended took over. Utilizing The Breakthrough, he uploaded his consciousness into his company’s hypercomputers, which were capable of processing petabytes of information per second. In doing so he gained unbelievable power but lost his humanity. After stealing FTL communication tech from a competing company, he could command his legion of millions of drones as if they were his body, seeing through myriads of eyes, controlling an endless swarm of weapons and tools. He could mine resources to create more drone factories and computers for himself, and there was nothing to stop him from doubling his forces every few weeks if left unchecked.

The final member of the Ascended was The Beholder. Unlike the others, who are all incredibly infamous, few knew much about The Beholder. He used to work as a scientist at Tesseract Labs, whose main goal was to discover the secrets of quantum mechanics and dimensional dynamics. Before The Breakthrough, they had produced an FTL communication prototype, but it had vanished mysteriously, and they lost their government grants. Just before they shut down, an infinite number of new avenues for research opened up thanks to The Breakthrough. The lab was back in action. Using the power of The Breakthrough, they built a machine to study the secrets of existence itself. The machine was to a particle accelerator as a particle accelerator was to a particularly uninteresting rock. Alas, the scientists became arrogant and dug too deep, and it cost them everything. A horrible calamity struck as they probed into the folds of reality, ripping the entire facility out of the fabric of the universe and whipping it into the deepest Oblivion as the machine imploded.

The only survivor, if one could even call him that, was the man who was operating the machine during the calamity. Alexander Belton. The Beholder. His consciousness was caught between the two sides of the schism, split into an infinite number of parts and pieced together again over and over for an abstract eternity. Slowly, he learned to control the forces beyond reality and started to hold himself together. He built himself a physical form, found his way through the ever-changing miasma of the ethereal beyond back to our world. Coming back into existence crippled him, though, limiting his power and preventing him from ever leaving again. He anchored himself to this plane. Still, he was the most powerful of the Ascended by far, able to manipulate reality and travel through spacetime effortlessly, though not able to interact with the past. No one knew anything about where he was, what his motives were, or if the stories were even true. The other Ascended denied his existence, but endless numbers of sightings and stories of hope from the oppressed said otherwise.

Together, the Ascended ruled the world uncontested, vowing a tentative truce, and promising to never allow anyone else to discover the secrets of The Breakthrough. They feared someone else could ascend using its power, jeopardizing their rule. They had scuffles occasionally, obliterating a few square miles of city here and there, but mostly they minded their business. They held a public meeting once a month to make decisions and ensure benevolent relations between them, as well as to agree on any new tenets to press onto the dying people of their world. They were corrupt, and they were only growing more so, but they enslaved the people in factories and power plants, under so much surveillance that the citizens were utterly powerless to stop them.

Each of them controlled a different aspect of The Empire. Havoc was in charge of all military efforts as well as policing the citizens. His loyal knights carried out executions and silenced hope, armed with weapons that had power mirroring his own.

Seraphim was responsible for all biological research and plague control, as well as the only hospital left in existence. The Hospital was only open to the most elite, and only they could even afford a visit.

Volt was in charge of all power generation for The Empire. All electricity was generated by four massive fusion reactors, one in each district. Each absolutely dominated its skyline and required only tiny amounts of fuel to run in comparison. The fuel that they did need, however, was incredibly hard to produce, requiring tens of thousands of hours of manual labor involving harsh chemicals and radiation to create even a single gram.

Stratagem worked day and night to make sure that every square inch of The Empire was surveilled by one of her cameras, bugs, drones, or agents at all times. This way, the Ascended could stamp out any notion of an uprising or rebellion before it even began. She had hundreds of operatives who scoured The Empire and cyberspace for any intel or data that the Ascended could use.

Hive controlled all construction and resource gathering, his body made up of an endless swarm. If another thirty-story domestic housing unit needed to be constructed, it could be done overnight. Any steel or alloys that were required, he strip-mined from the less habitable parts of the planet, placed onto automated trains that carried them back to the factories. If any single part of the logistic chain was broken or destroyed, there was enough redundancy in the system that he could fix it in a matter of hours or even minutes.

Together, the six Ascended ruled The Empire with an iron fist, surveying their dystopia with cold, calculated, pride. They took comfort in the fact that no human alive could ever hope to topple their rule. It all worked like a well-oiled machine; oiled with blood, but oiled nonetheless. They sat on their thrones in The Floating Citadel, basking in the perverted glory of their ultimate abomination. Earth.

But seven became eight, and now, The Godhunter stalks her prey.

[Initiate Epic Soundtrack]

#fiction #writers on tumblr #spilled thoughts #short story #writing prompt #writing #story #writers #writeblr #sci fi #dystopian

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kasaron · 5 years

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New Firearm Law Omnibus

Note: This is a Very Long Post.

This is essentially my recommendations for firearm related laws in the US, on a Federal Level. I’ve attempted to make it as comprehensive as I could, but if you see something I’ve missed or flubbed, or have criticisms, fire them off.

If you are a member of a firearm rights advocacy group (NRA, GOA, 2AF), or, hell, any kind of group which might support this push and can put me in contact with people who could lobby for these changes or signal boost to push to make this happen, contact me.

Definitions

Firearm

A firearm is defined as any mechanism or device which is, in operation, held in the hands or braced against the body which utilizes a chemical explosive to propel a projectile in a controlled, directable manner, and whose function thereof can reliably be used to maim or kill.

REASONING: This definition includes all man-portable or operable firearms, but excludes heavy weaponry (howitzers, etc), grenades, explosives, etc for separate regulation.

Prohibited Person

A prohibited person is defined as any individual who

A person who has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year or any state offense classified by the state as a misdemeanor and is punishable by a term of imprisonment of more than two years.

Persons who are fugitives from justice.

An unlawful user and/or an addict of any controlled substance; for example, a person convicted for the use or possession of a controlled substance within the past year; or a person with multiple arrests for the use or possession of a controlled substance within the past five years with the most recent arrest occurring within the past year; or a person found through a drug test to use a controlled substance unlawfully, provided the test was administered within the past year.

A person adjudicated mental defective or involuntarily committed to a mental institution or incompetent to handle own affairs, including dispositions to criminal charges of found not guilty by reason of insanity or found incompetent to stand trial.

A person who, being an alien, is illegally or unlawfully in the United States.

A person who, being an alien except as provided in subsection has been admitted to the United States under a non-immigrant visa.

A person dishonorably discharged from the United States Armed Forces.

A person who has renounced his/her United States citizenship.

The subject of a protective order issued after a hearing in which the respondent had notice that restrains them from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such partner. This does not include ex parte orders.

A person convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime which includes the use or attempted use of physical force or threatened use of a deadly weapon and the defendant was the spouse, former spouse, parent, guardian of the victim, by a person with whom the victim shares a child in common, by a person who is cohabiting with or has cohabited in the past with the victim as a spouse, parent, guardian or similar situation to a spouse, parent or guardian of the victim.

A person who is under indictment or information for a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.

Save which those who have undergone a rehabilitative program or procedure and have been adjudicated by the state to have been so rehabilitated.

REASONING: This is the already established NICS prohibited person’s list, save for a caveat which allows people to be rehabilitated.

Open Carry

Open carry is to be defined as any carrying or bearing of arms which is not included in the definition of concealed carry.

REASONING: This allows open carry to include everything as a catch-all.

Concealed Carry

Concealed carry is to be defined as any carrying or bearing of arms which is intentionally made to in majority or in whole obscure or obfuscate the location or presence of the arms in question by covering with clothing or camouflaging by some other means.

For this definition, holsters are to be considered as part of the profile or appearance of the firearm, save for such holster or other containment which cannot clearly be determined to hold a firearm.

REASONING: this allows Hide-In-Plain-Sight type guns and purse carry, and also allows for exceptions for accidental printing.

Safety

It shall be a requirement of all public schools to include a 2-week course on firearm safety which will include explanation of firearm function and mechanisms, how to safely unload a firearm, and the fundamental rules of firearm safety. Course planners shall consult with hobbyist organizations such as the NSSF for instruction on specifics.

Schools may also offer supervised trips to a gun range as an elective option, with written parent permission.

REASONING: If we provide a basic level of education of safety and training, we don’t need to require it as part of any kind of licensing. With so many gun owners in the US, it would be wise to equip children with how to be safe around a firearm and how to recognize unsafe behavior.

Parents, guardians, or legal stewards who knowingly or negligently make a firearm accessible to an individual under the age of majority who use a firearm in an offense shall be charged as an accessory to the crime the child commits.

REASONING: Instead of child lock laws, lay responsibility at the feet of parents who give unstable kids access to firearms or leave them out for kids to accidentally shoot themselves.

Bans

No law may make mention of a firearm or firearm accessory, including but not exclusive to muzzle device, loading device, optic, grip, stock, or barrel by name, type, configuration, feature or set of features for the sake of restriction, regulation or control, save where such presents a hazard due to improper manufacture, engineering, or design which affects the function of a firearm in such a way as to seriously and directly harm the user. Any law which is already established which violates this statute shall be preempted.

REASONING: It is impossible for the state to determine and adjudicate what firearms a person “needs,” and it should be up to the individual to determine their requirements based on their personal situation. Giving the individual the widest choice in terms of this while protecting them from defective or badly engineered firearms seems reasonable.

No law may make distinction between firearm or firearm accessories which can be carried or owned by police officers, police departments, or other members of police or government organizations. Any law which is already established which violates this statute shall be preempted.

REASONING: Police should not be given special treatment re:firearms.

Sale

No sale of a firearm may be made to any individual under the age of majority (18).

Individuals under the age of majority may possess and operate firearms under the permission of their legal guardians.

Individuals who are emancipated may petition the state for special exception to this provided they are not prohibited persons, and are determined to be knowledgeable in safety.

REASONING: Parents should be able to teach kids firearm safety, and kids who are emancipated should be able to have some means of defense.

All Post Offices and DMVs shall be established to provide NICS Background Checks upon request, and provide a notarized, dated notice of the result. The cost of this service shall not exceed $5, whose funds shall be directly given to the upkeep and maintenance of the NICS system.

REASONING: Making NICS affordable and accessible will make background checks more ubiquitous, without the risk of zoning people out due to city administrators banning gun stores.

Any individual who sells a firearm to another individual who furnishes such notice which is valid on the date the sale takes place will have no legal responsibility for the actions of the buyer.

REASONING: The seller did their due diligence if the person passed the check. This establishes that those who do not get a BGC CAN be investigated if the buyer commits a crime, and possibly charged with accessory.

Requests for a NICS check must be processed within 72 hours of the receipt of application, and rejection must include a clearly worded explanation of the reason for rejection. The provider of the check must make all due action to notify the individual of the result promptly, be it approval or rejection. A NICS notarized document is valid for 5 days upon it being notarized.

License

A nationally recognized license of concealed and open carry shall be established, whose total cost to obtain shall be no greater than $50, and whose acceptance shall be reciprocal across all states. Individual states may also offer state licenses for carry, but MUST recognize those who have this license, regardless of state of residence.

Written

A standardized test which shall include the following;

The four fundamental rules of firearm safety.

The basics of justified firearm use.

The procedure to follow after a justified shooting.

Practical

A standard NRA Type B-27 Target shall be used at 5, 7, and 10 yards, with 10 rounds at each distance.

All officers of the law, federal agents, and other government employees who own and carry firearms as part of their regular duty are required to receive a national carry license; the officer in question may not at any time disclose his occupation and may not receive any special exemption, treatment, or provisions.

This license shall be furnished to the applicant, or a noted letter of rejection which clearly explains the reasons why the rejection was furnished, within a period of 60 days from receipt of the application.

REASONING: Police should be at least as well trained as the common man. Safety and basic capacity are a respectable baseline. This law set also allows for states to have looser in-state laws on carry (all the way through to constitutional carry), while also setting a maximum bar for it for states who would otherwise ban it or regulate it into oblivion.

Carry

All public lands, public parks, and places openly accessible to public foot traffic may not bar concealed carry, or the transit of firearms via open carry.

Buildings may be exempt from this so long as there is posted signage and passage is possible or reasonable around such buildings, and such prohibition does not significantly impair the ability of a citizen to travel while legally armed to their destination.

REASONING: I understand that buildings like court houses and the like will need to bar firearms, but places like public transit need to allow it because of needs of transportation. Instead of explicitly stating each case, it’s wiser to future-proof the issue and let courts decide.

Businesses may post signage prohibiting open and/or concealed carry.

Businesses who post such signage take legal responsibility for the safety of their patrons and may be found negligent if they do not provide ample security.

REASONING: Do not impair a person’s safety and then claim no responsibility.

Any individual found to be carrying on the premises may be given notice and told to leave, if they refuse, they are guilty of felony trespass.

REASONING: If you tell them to leave and they make a scene, they should be whacked with consequences, but if they missed the sign or just forgot they had a gun or whatever, informing them is usually enough.

Explosives

A hobbyist organization shall be formed which shall determine regulations of safety and operation for the commercial and recreational use of explosives.

REASONING: We have a loose organization of pyrotech people in the US already who know their shit, let them regulate how explosives are handled, same as we do for HAM radio. Also creates a new job sector for explosive technicians and would, over time, standardize education and procedures to improve safety without need for extensive government oversight.

Note:Edited to update CCW practicals. Edited to include time limits for NICS checks and NACL application. Added time-out for NICS check (meaning that individual can use one notarized document with copies to buy multiple firearms, which will free up the system from bloat.

#gun control #NRA #politics #for pops

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carryonsimoncarryonbaz · 5 years

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Whumptober prompts #5,#6, #7 in one fic

5: Gunpoint

6: Dragged away

7. Isolation

I got bogged down and fell behind on whumptober so here is my fic utilizing three prompts in a vain attempt to catch up. Not my best work for sure but here goes!

Baz

The moment Snow heads to the bathroom for a shower Bunce lunges at me, pulling a brightly coloured piece of paper from her pocket and waving it in my face.

I scoot away, until I’m wedged into the corner of their lumpy sofa. “What is the meaning of this attack, you fright?”

She flaps the paper at me again. “Read this!”

I pluck it from her fingertips and spread it out on my knees. It’s some sort of flyer. One of those god-awful things they have pinned to the bulletin board at the café on campus.

I roll my eyes at her and she knocks her shoulder into mine. “Read it.”

I’ve learned you don’t cross Bunce when she’s like this—reeking of intensity and too much caffeine.

The black print is stark against the orange paper. “PAINTBALL TOURNAMENT” is emblazoned at the top in 72-point font. Overkill, if you ask me. I skim the rest then turn to her. “Yes? Why are you giving this to me?”

“It’s for Simon.”

“Then why the devil aren’t you giving it to him?”

She crosses her arms and levels a glare at me over her glasses. She’s actually quite terrifying when she’s like this. “I’m giving it to you so you can take him there.”

“Why on earth would I take Snow to a paintball tournament?” I peer at the paper again. “With people we don’t even know?”

“So he can shoot things.”

Oh. I suppose there is some sense to that.

“Yes, fine, I get that, but why do I have to take him?” I can think of far better ways to spend an afternoon than crawling around in the dirt with a horde of chavvy wankers with a gun fetish.

Although crawling around in the dirt with Snow does have a certain appeal.

“So you can shoot things together.” She huffs at me. “You’ve said it yourself, Baz. He doesn’t get enough exercise. He used to train all the time. He used to go on missions, run himself ragged on those ridiculous quests the Mage sent him on.” She flops back against the sofa, all the energy gone out of her. “He doesn’t do any of that anymore.”

She’s right. He doesn’t. He’ll go for a run here and there but it’s not so easy with wings and a tail, even spelled invisible. They throw him off pace.

Snow joined a fencing club a few months back, but there’s no one there who can match him. He got bored after just a few weeks.

Much as it pains me to admit, Bunce has a point.

Simon might actually like this. An activity where he can use the skills he honed for years as the Mage’s Heir but not actually have to kill anyone or anything.

It could be good for him.

I suppose we could take the train. I’d rather not get any stray drips of paint on the Jag.

“Fine, Bunce. I’ll see if he wants to go.”

Snow is literally bouncing. He’s got his camouflage combat suit on, protective body armor all in place, goggles perched on top of his head. His tail is tucked away.

I’ve done an “out of sight, out of mind” on him and made his wings incorporeal. As long as he doesn’t think about them we should be fine. I debate casting a “these aren’t the droids you’re looking for” as well, for good measure, but decide that it’s not quite sporting. He’s already got an unfair advantage over the chunky tossers populating this place.

And an unfair advantage over me.

All that’s left to do now is choose our weapons and decide on an ammo package.

We’ve been assigned to a random team, since there are only two of us, and thank magic we’re on the same one.

I strap my ammo belt on. I was planning on the standard issue rifle and ammo package but Snow insists I get some high tech, stealth sniper rifle. “You’ve not done this before, Baz.”

“Neither have you, you nightmare.”

Snow scoffs. “Yeah, but I’ve played video games for years.” He steps closer and zips my suit all the way up, fingers resting on my chest for a moment. “Trust me. You’d rather be behind the line with the long-range weapon.” He leans in, words barely above a whisper. “With your eyesight and reflexes you’ll be fucking lethal with this.”

I do what he says. There is no way I can argue with Snow when he looks at me like that.

He gets the top of the line rifle and enough ammunition to supply a small army. Which I suppose is exactly what he is.

It ends up being far more entertaining than I anticipated. Snow’s right, I prefer a position a bit back from the fray, out of the direct line of fire, so I can pick off my opponents one by one from there.

He thinks I’m being strategic. Only if my strategy is getting as good a look at Simon Snow in action as I can.

Unlike Bunce, I’ve rarely gotten to see Snow in his element, when he’s relying on the pure power of his body and the instincts that have been honed in him. He’s powerful. He’s lethal.

He’s fucking breathtaking.

And I will take down every arsehole that even tries to take a shot at him.

My ammunition is soon running low and I belatedly curse myself for not listening to Snow. No matter. I wedge myself behind a bunker and peer through a crack, rifle at ready. I can watch Snow to my heart’s content like this. No one’s going to make an effort to ferret me out here. I’ve got the drop on them from my vantage point.

Snow is mesmerizing. He’s halfway across the battle ground now, yelling as he advances on the enemy forces, spraying them liberally with yellow paint. Kill shot after kill shot.

He’s a one-man platoon, on berserker mode.

It’s brilliant.

There are two enemy combatants advancing on him now, left and right, using the meagre hedges and undulations of the ground to cover their progress. I wonder why they haven’t sent a volley of paint at him yet.

I pick off the one on the left first, since he’s closer to Snow, and then turn my sights on the bloke on the right. I hit him too. Kill shots both.

But they don’t stop advancing.

According to rules they both should be out of play now. I reload and hit them again for good measure.

They don’t stop.

There’s something sinister in their stalking of Snow, even if he has decimated their ranks single-handedly. They should be shooting at him, not tracking him in this way.

I’m leaping over the bunker and racing across the no man’s land in an instant, eyes on Snow.

They tackle him from behind, which is clearly a violation of rule number three.

I’m not going to get to him in time. I don’t know what’s going on, but these two are a different sort than the regular paintball denizens we’ve run into so far.

They’re tall, lithe, faster than I would expect as they lunge forward and tackle Snow to the ground.

He’s not going down easy. Snow lands punches on them both, feet flailing as he kicks the legs out from under one of them and knocks his head into the other’s chest.

I’m almost to him when I feel a thud against my back. Some sodding git has nailed me with a paintball. And then another hits me. The abruptness of it catches me off guard and I stumble on a rock, going down in a heap. I’m back on my feet in an instant but I’m already too late.

The two blokes have a hold of Snow and they are dragging him into a forbidding two story structure with no windows on the far edge of the field. He’s not fighting back.

They’re moving far faster than any Normal should.

One looks back at me and gives me a smirk. A blood-red grin from a green-cast face.

Fuck.

Goblins.

Simon

My head’s throbbing when my eyes blink open. Fuck, it hurts. I try to reach up to rub my head but my hands are tied behind my back.

It all comes back to me. My mad rush across the field, the ambush.

Fucking Goblins. I don’t know why they can’t have an election or a hereditary monarchy or a parliamentary procedure instead of this fucking arbitrary method of choosing a king centered on who kills me.

That’s no basis for a system of government.

These two are grinning at me from across the room, smooth green skin, blood red lips. Fit and feral, the bastards. They finally figured out that it would take more than one of them to bring me down.

Took them long enough.

I wonder where Baz is. I’m sure he’s gone completely feral himself, if he witnessed them ambushing me.

It’s Penny and Baz’s biggest fear, that I’d be waylaid by murderous magical creatures someday when I was alone.

Well I wasn’t alone, it was in broad fucking daylight, and in a public place, for Merlin’s sake. A damn paintball venue, of all things. Proves my point, really. Baz and Penny can’t protect me every minute of every day, even if they’re right there with me. I have to be able to fend for myself. Like I always did before.

Just without magic this time.

The taller of the two saunters across the room. “Finally got you, Mage’s Heir.”

“Yeah, well, hope you two have it figured out which one of you gets the crown.”

Goblins may be fit and fast but they aren’t the smartest, not as far as thinking things through. They’d have had me years ago if they’d been savvy enough to stop trying to get me one on one.

If I can keep them talking, stall for time, that should give Baz a chance to find his way to me.

If anyone can hunt me down it’s him.

I doubt they’d kill me here, anyway. I’m sure they have to do it in front of some formal tribunal, to prove it’s actually me and that I’m actually dead. I mean, that’s what would make sense, from a political standpoint, but who knows with this lot.

Seems to be working, from the frowns on their faces. “Hadn’t thought of that, had you?” I say, bold enough to rub it in a bit, now that I know I’ve got them thinking.

That earns me a kick from the shorter goblin. “Shut your mouth, Chosen One.”

They retreat to a corner of the room and start bickering. Maybe they’ll kill each other off and do Baz’s work for him.

I’d not mind.

I think this is the structure at the far end of the battle field. I’d seen it and assumed it was a storage facility of some kind.

It is.

There are two lawnmowers and a small tractor. Rolled up fencing. A stack of wood in the far corner. Field maintenance it seems. I take stock, to see what might be useful as a weapon. The shovels and rakes appear to be the most promising.

The building is about two stories high but there’s only the one floor and then a little loft on the far side, with a ladder leading up to it. I can’t see if there’s anything up there from here. It’s dark and dim, just a few lights shining weakly high up in the rafters.

There are no windows. Just a door. A solid one.

The Goblins seem to have reached some sort of agreement. One leans against the wall and the other comes my way. “Get up.”

I don’t.

I’m not going to make it easy on them. I may be tied up but that doesn’t mean I have to be obedient. They’ll have to carry me if they want to take me anywhere. I’m not tall but I’m solid. I can make it difficult if I choose.

I do choose.

It takes both of them to get me across the space to the ladder. I’m kicking and flailing, shouting at them too, just in case Baz is near enough to hear me. He won’t even have to be that close, with his hearing, but I roar at them anyway. Makes me feel better, it does.

I’m not going to lie, I’m right furious these two got the drop on me. I let my guard down, thinking it was just Normals here.

Won’t be making that mistake again.

They finally drag me up the ladder, thumping me on every step as they take me up. I’m going to have bruises all over by then end of this.

It’s a small space, filled with boxes of paint balls, labeled by size and color. They shift two of the boxes and wedge me between them, tightening the ropes on my hands again and tying my feet now for good measure.

They have gotten smarter.

Arseholes.

One leans down, all gleaming red smile again. “We’ll be back, Mageling. Can’t drag you out the front gate of this place in broad daylight but it’ll be dark soon enough.” His grin is all sharp teeth and cherry red lips. “Once they’re all gone Nigel will bring the car around and we’ll have you right where we want you.”

The other one chimes in. “You’ve had a good run. And now you’re running days are over.” They’re giving me matching smiles now, all cocky, thinking they’ve got me cornered.

They do but I’m not going down without a fight. They’ve given me their plan, so now I know what to expect. No subtlety at all.

The short one—Nigel, I suppose—checks his watch. It looks like a fucking Rolex. I don’t understand goblins, I really don’t.

“Come along, Terry,” he says. “We’ve got to get out of here before they do a sweep of the property for the night and put the gear back in here.” He smirks at me. “We’ll be back after sundown for you.”

They go down the ladder. I hear a door click and then I’m alone.

I scoot forward as far as I can, without getting too close to the edge. I wonder why they store the paint up here, rather than down of the main level. I’ll probably never know.

I give my hands an experimental wiggle but the ropes are tight. I try to twist my fingers to find the knots but I’ll give the goblins this—they know how to truss you up good and proper. I won’t be getting myself out of these rope shackles anytime soon.

I end up thinking about the spells I could have used when I had magic.

“Cutting the Gordian knot” is tricky—Alexander the Great may have cut an actual knot but most people use that spell for solving a conundrum, not an actual knot in a rope.

“Gotta help our Cinderelly,” would have brought out every rat and field mouse in the place, although I’m not sure I could have had them gnaw the ropes willingly.

Who am I kidding? Those spells would have never worked for me. Too complicated.

I’d have just called the Sword of Mages and sawed the ropes against the blade until I could break the strands.

Or I would have just gone off. Reduced the whole building to splinters.

I miss magic. I miss it with my heart and soul. I miss it so much I can taste it—the smoke and burning that used to come over me when I’d use it.

But I was never any good at it, was I?

I can’t let myself think about that. Not right now.

Not when I’m stuck here, with no way out and no idea where Baz is.

Fuck. I wonder if this is what Agatha used to feel like?

Bloody useless. I hate it.

Bet she did too.

Baz

I’ve been circling the building, trying to find a way in. There’s only the one door. I pull on the knob, rattle the hinges but I can’t rip it away, even with my vampire strength. I don’t know what they’ve done to it, the bastards, but it won’t budge. Goblins don’t have much magic but they do fucking have the market on making doorways do their bidding.

Even “open sesame” fails me. Fucking hell.

There’s not a window, not a crack in the foundations. Nothing.

I’m losing my mind. I heard Simon shout. I heard his voice through the solid walls of this god-forsaken structure. Why the fuck do you need an impenetrable fortress at a sodding paintball club?

My fangs have popped, my fists are clenched. I’m going to rip these bastards limb from limb.

Simon has to still be alive. There’s no way they’d go to their tribunal or whatever the fuck they call it without proof they’d captured him. Without proof they’d killed him.

I’m circling around again, looking for anything I might have missed my first time around when the goblins come out the fucking door a few feet away from me, all glamoured to look like members of fucking Duran Duran instead of their disgusting green selves—all big hair and frosted waves, eyeliner on point. It’s not a good look with the camouflage jumpsuits.

I’m on them before they even see me, silent and deadly. I knock into the taller one—he looks just like John Taylor—shifting him off balance. He bumps into the shorter one—more of a Nick Rhodes look on him—and then turns on me with a snarl.

I’m ready for him.

I snap his neck before he can even take a step.

The Nick Rhodes look-alike takes a step back, looks like he’s ready to run for it but I’m on him before he has the chance.

“Where is he?”

“Where’s who?”

“Don’t fuck with me. Where’s Simon?”

He tries to claw at me. Goblins have long, elegantly manicured nails but you’ll get a nasty rash if they scratch you. My hand goes up lightning fast and I catch his wrist. I bend it back until the bone snaps and he howls.

I mutter a “Silence is golden.” No good having anyone hear us. I can handle one goblin on my own and I don’t want an audience.

I’m not well versed in the memory spells the Coven uses on Normals that inadvertently witness displays of magic. Or the one my father uses on Vera from time to time.

Less seen the better then.

I make quick work of this goblin too, snapping his head with a twist. He goes limp and falls to the ground. I cast a “into thin air” on the corpses and rush to the door. “Open sesame” works this time, since they’re both dead and their magic has died with them.

I rush inside, scanning around the room for Simon. I hear a shout from above and I spot him, trussed up but grinning at the sight of me, on some sort of landing up a ladder.

I’m up it in an instant, casting “like a knife through butter” to shear through his bonds with my wand.

I’ve got my arms around him an instant later. “You bloody bastard. You courageous fuck. I told you it would be the bloody goblins, I told you those arseholes would never rest.”

Snow leans into me, head on my shoulder. It takes me a minute to realize he’s laughing. “Are you all right, Simon?” I catch his face between my hands and stare into his eyes.

He’s still smiling. “What are you laughing about, you nightmare? You could have been killed.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that spell,” Snow says. “I was sitting here, waiting for you to finally show up, you jammy bastard, trying to remember what spells would work to cut ropes. ’Like a knife through butter.’ You’d think, of all the spells, I’d remember that one.”

I rub my thumb on his cheekbone and shake my head. “You’d think.” I press a kiss to his forehead and then stand up, pulling him up with me.

Last time I listen to Bunce. Take him for paintball, she said. It’ll be good for him, she said. Bloody hell.

But when I look at Simon I know she was right, fucking Goblins and all.

He’s sweaty and bruised, with a lump on the side of his head, but his smile is wide, wider than it’s been in weeks.

#whumptober2019 #whumptober day 5 #whumptober day 6 #whumptober day 7 #carry on #wayward son #snowbaz #simon snow #baz pitch #Penelope bunce #sorry this is late

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sofiessketches · 4 years

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NASASocial experience at JPL

This is a LONG one, so I’m gonna put it under a readmore!

This was my first ever NASA Social, so I didn’t really know what to expect when I applied, what the chances were or what other sorts of people would be there. I was surprised I even got in, because compared to some of the other people I have very few followers, but I think there’s more to it than that! As Stephanie, the head of social media at JPL, said, “You were chosen for your insatiable curiosity, and for the stories you tell”. I really appreciate that the selection process was more about being a creator of SOMETHING that you truly care about.

I’ve been to JPL several times for tours and lectures, but it’s always exciting to come up to the front..there was a really long line, I’m assuming because of the event and also traditional media that was there to interview people.

Got my badge and headed in, and said good morning to the Curiosity model! (which I wish was as detailed as the real thing..I still love her tho. I’ve just been spoiled having gone on tours and doing a lot of research on Curiosity that I was able to spot what’s missing..)

Admiring how the light hits her..er..Chemcam

I never get tired of looking at this piece, but this was the first time I actually checked out the plaque next to it, which had a helpful diagram!

An installation displaying the information from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) and GRACE Follow-on missions, which in the words of my friend Sirina, shows us how screwed we are, in a beautiful way! I also realized the reason the screens are this shape is because the spacecraft are shaped like that...!

JPL’s inspiring slogan in a beautiful geometric typeface B)

We got to the meeting/conference room, with portraits of all JPL’s past and present directors around. The last seat at the front table appeared to be taken by the Mars 2020 wheel, so I asked if I could sit there with the wheel, and my day was made! I have to admit this may have been the highlight of my day. One of the first JPL-specific drawings I did was a study of an image Curiosity had taken of her own wheels on Mars, and after that I read a lot about how the wheels worked and how the design was less than ideal..it makes me happy to see the next iteration and how it’ll work out!

No pointy grousers for the sharp Mars rocks to snag on here!!! Just this...veeeeery shallow S-curve.

Everyone hanging out and social media-ing before the event began, waiting for more people to get there. I happened to sit next to a couple people I had pre-stalked on Twitter from the list they made of participants!

LOSING MY MIND EVEN MORE THAT WE COULD TOUCH AND PICK UP THE WHEEL???!?!!? It was pretty light, since it was a 3D model and not made of actual aluminum.

Lookin cute together. This is Kevin Baird, an awesome photographer! The only patches we had in common were the NASA meatball (not even the same one, though) and the SOFIA patch, which was strangely almost in the same spot on both of our jackets.. (on the back left side)

Then Stephanie, JPL’s social media head, came and proposed to us with space grade aerogel, and of course we all said yes.

After an introduction, Linda, another social media expert at JPL, brought over a top secret looking box, which she explained will have some cool graphics relating to Mars 2020 on the front and inside soon (excited to see that!!)

Inside were material samples of several components of Mars 2020, including the many layered thermal blanket, the ropes that will lower the rover onto the surface of Mars (which can hold the weight of 1 car EACH, and the rover will be suspended by 80 of them) as well as the parachute material (orange), which was remade for better strength and lightness.

We also got to hold a replica of the sample cache tubes that Mars 2020 will be filling!

At 10:00, the event we were there for, the State of NASA, came on (a budget rollout explaining briefly how much money the government will be giving to NASA in 2021 and what it’s for) so we watched Jim Bridenstein in front of some incredible engines...

And I just..get excited when I see the rover on the screen ok..

There was a super cool internal view of how the Mars 2020 will be depositing sample caches! The video is below:

youtube

Anyway, the budget rollout declared 22 billion to NASA and 3.3 billion of that to the development of the human landing system, which will go toward landing humans and science on the moon for the Artemis program. You can read more here about this.

After that, Director Watkins and Dr Zurbuchen came to answer questions, and we learned a bit about Mars Sample Return, and the mission that will come before that but after Mars 2020, which will map icy areas in Mars’ poles. (Really looking forward to learning more about that!!) I gave Dr Zurbuchen some stickers I made and he gave me his card......!

Soon after, we headed to the Science building, to learn about MOXIE (Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment) (I’ve noticed, the bigger the budget on these missions, the more effort they put into making the acronyms for everything sound cool) This technology demonstration is on Mars 2020 to prepare for larger scale carbon dioxide to oxygen conversion from Mars’ atmosphere for human use. This size of MOXIE creates only about enough oxygen to keep a small dog alive. Still impressive!!!

Wandered around the MOXIE lab a little and took a peek at the rest of what was on the walls and tables..

After that, we went to the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, where Mars 2020 was not, but that’s a good thing! I’m actually not sure which part is in the box there.. but soon after we left, it left too!

Teeny tiny Mars 2020 model hidden at the end of the viewing area...

Best.

At the indoor mars yard, a couple InSight engineers talked to us about how they use this area to test software before they send it to Mars. Here from left to right are the engineering models for Mars2020, InSight, and Curiosity.

Her name is Maggie!

One of my goals in life is to be able to stand in front of the arm and draw it until I understand what the hell is going on.

Also going to insert some pics I took last week because I was lucky enough to get a tour from my friend Sirina, where there were engineers inside working on the arm:

Next, we headed to the Mars Sample Return testbed!

It makes me excited to be in the rooms with dirt regolith inside.. also SmalBoSSE is the best acronym I’ve seen all day...

The “volleyball” that Mars 2020′s sample caches will eventually be stored in, to be fetched by another rover, launched into orbit around Mars and picked up to be sent back to Earth!

More freaking out about rover wheels. This is a prototype of one that will be on the rover to pick up the samples; the wire is slightly deformable which is great for offroad Mars action.

The rover will be a joint effort between NASA and ESA.

I love seeing these posters with hints of other projects going on. So cool!!

Last stop (cry) was Mission Control, aka The Center of the Universe, where all the data the Deep Space Network gets from spacecraft comes in.

The view from inside from my previous tour!

*eyes emoji when I see Mars 2020*

The darkroom and Curiosity’s Ace’s desk, where they send commands to Curiosity at 10:30AM Mars time.

Spitzer’s end of mission from Monday (top) vs the day after it was decommissioned (bottom).

Center of the Universe!!!

Ouagh don’t step on it! Well you can..

It was sad to say goodbye to our excellent guides, but we’ll be keeping in touch!! ;)

I also got a bunch of awesome pictures taken of me, which I was surprised by, because usually I’m the last one people take pics of..!

My jacket, which they posted on JPL’s instagram... gosh!!!!!!

And some stickers/new business card design (did I post this here yet??) I gave to everyone I met!

Displayed at Shannon Forrey’s desk!

This was a truly amazing experience, my first time attending one of these events, I learned so much and had such a great time surrounded by inspiring and talented people. Thank you again to everyone at JPL who made it possible and to all the scientists and engineers who took the time to share their work with us! I’ll never forget this day.

Also, I want to make some art based off what I learned, so keep an eye out for that in the upcoming weeks!

#nasasocial #nasa #nasajpl #jpl #mars 2020 #mars sample return #mars insight #mars curiosity #curiosity rover #stem #science #space #deep space network #mission control #state of nasa

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wislewabe1976 · 5 years

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United States of Paranoia: They See Gangs of Stalkers

Nobody trusted him. His family guided him to get help. Be that as it may, Timothy Trespas, an out-of-work recording engineer in his mid 40s, was certain he was being stalked, and not by only one individual, yet many them.

He would see the agents, he stated, camouflaged as common individuals, sneaking around his Midtown Manhattan neighborhood. In some cases they chanced upon him and murmured drivel into his ear, he said.

вЂњNow you perceive how it works,вђќ they would say.

At first, Mr. Trespas thought about whether it was all in his mind. At that point he experienced an enormous network of similarly invested individuals on the web who call themselves вђњtargeted individuals,вђќ or T.I.s, who depicted experiencing exactly the equivalent thing.

The gathering was sorted out around the conviction that its individuals are casualties of a rambling scheme to bug a huge number of ordinary Americans with mind-control weapons and multitudes of supposed posse stalkers. The objective, as one posse stalking site put it, is вђњto decimate each part of a focused on individualвђ™s life.вђќ

A developing clan of disturbed minds

Mental wellbeing experts state the account has grabbed hold among a gathering of individuals encountering crazy manifestations that have pained the human personality since days of yore. But now exploited people are interfacing on the web, arranging and opposing medicinal clarifications for whatвђ™s happening to them.

The people group, minimalistically evaluated to surpass 10,000 individuals, has multiplied since 9/11, supported by the web and encouraged by real worries over government observation. An enormous number seem to have whimsical issue or schizophrenia, therapists say.

Yet, the marvel remains basically unresearched.

For the couple of pros who have looked carefully, these people speak to a disturbing improvement throughout the entire existence of psychological instability: a great many debilitated individuals, united together and requesting acknowledgment based on shared paranoias.

They fund-raise, hold mindfulness battles, have worldwide meetings and battle for their causes in courts and legislatures.

Perhaps their greatest triumph came a year ago, when adherents to Richmond, Calif., convinced the City Council to pass a goals restricting space-based weapons that they accept could be utilized for mind control. A comparative campaigning exertion is in progress in Tucson.

An вђecho chamberвђ™ of paranoia

Dr. Lorraine Sheridan, who is co-creator of maybe the main investigation of posse stalking, said the network represents a risk that separates it from different gatherings advancing upsetting thoughts, for example, anorexia or suicide. On those themes, the web teems with therapeutic data and treatment options.

An web scan for вђњgang-stalking,вђќ notwithstanding, turns up page after page of results that see it as truth. вЂњWhatвЂ™s startling for me is that there are no counter locales that attempt and persuade focused on people that they are delusional,вђќ Dr. Sheridan said.

вЂњThey end up in a shut belief system reverberation chamber,вђќ she said.

In instructional tracts on the web, veterans of the development disclose the ropes to rookies:

вђў Do not draw in with the voices in your head.

вђў If your relatives let you know youвђ™re envisioning things, they could be in on it.

вђў вЂњDo not visit a psychiatrist.вђќ

The clan plays hooky and callings, and incorporates legal advisors, warriors, craftsmen and engineers. In Facebook discussions and bring in care groups, they sympathize over the suspicion of their friends and family and offer accounts of dark vans that circle the square or collaborators recruited into the campaign.

ImageA T.I. subgenre has bloomed on Amazon. Left, the front of John Hallвђ™s вЂњGuinea Pigs: Technologies of Control,вђќ and Robert Duncanвђ™s вЂњHow to Tame a Demon.вђќ

They have independently published many digital books, with titles like вЂњTortured in Americaвђќ and вЂњMy Life Changed Forever.вђќ In several YouTube recordings they offer tributes and attempt to report proof of their stalking, notwithstanding going up against clueless strangers.

вЂњThey needed to fundamentally obliterate me, and they did,вђќ a youthful mother in Phoenix says in a single video, holding back tears. She lost guardianship of her girl and was sent to a social wellbeing medical clinic, says the lady, whose name is being retained to secure her protection. вЂњBut I am going to battle back for the remainder of my life.вђќ

She includes, вЂњAnd think about what, Iвђ™m not crazy.вђќ

Dr. Sheridanвђ™s study, composed with Dr. David James, a scientific therapist, inspected 128 instances of revealed group stalking. It discovered every one of the subjects were in all probability delusional.

вЂњOne needs to think about the T.I. wonder regarding individuals with distrustful indications who have hit upon the pack stalking thought as a clarification of what's going on to them,вђќ Dr. James said.

A hodgepodge of scheme theories

Perhaps obviously, the network is partitioned over the shapes of the connivance. Some accept the money related world class is behind it. Others accuse outsiders, their neighbors, Freemasons or some combination.

The movementвђ™s most unmistakable voices, notwithstanding, will in general accept the observation is a piece of a mind-control field test done in anticipation of worldwide mastery. The military foundation, the hypothesis goes, never abandoned the desire of MK Ultra, the C.I.A.вЂ™s scandalous program to control the psyche during the 1950s and вђ™60s.

A driving advocate of that view is an anesthesiologist from San Antonio named John Hall.

In his 2009 book, вЂњA New Breed: Satellite Terrorism in America,вђќ Dr. Corridor gave his own record of being focused on. Specialists dyed his water, he composed, and besieged him with voices making lethal threats.

The book made a sprinkle due to the delivery person: an authorized individual from the restorative foundation who was telling the individuals who feel focused on that therapists were deluding them. A janitor knows as much about the human personality, he wrote.

Dr. Corridor, 51, was welcomed for a meeting on вЂњCoast to Coast AM,вЂќ an intrigue disapproved of radio show situated in California that is said to arrive at a huge number of audience members. From that point forward, he stated, вЂњI had presumably three or 4,000 messages from individuals saying: вЂItвЂ™s transpiring in this state.вђ™ вЂItвЂ™s transpiring in Florida.вђ™ вЂItвЂ™s transpiring in California.вђ™ вђќ

The similitudes of the cases addressed a wide-running effort, he said. вЂњIf the therapists need to state this is schizophrenia or silly issue, thatвђ™s fine,вђќ he said. вЂњBut all of these unfortunate casualties have the equivalent story.вђќ

While Dr. Corridor has confronted examination from the Texas Medical Board over his psychological wellness, he holds his permit. After some time, in any case, numerous other people who recognize as group stalking exploited people end up out of work. They are ridiculed by associates, endured by family. Companions and mates fall away.

A guise for violence

The despair that outcomes has driven some to lash out in violence.

Many in the network, for instance, are persuaded that Aaron Alexis, who executed 12 individuals at the Washington Navy Yard in 2013, was an injured individual. Mr. Alexis, a previous mariner, abandoned a record blaming the Navy for assaulting his mind with вђњextremely low frequencyвђќ electromagnetic waves. In favor of his shotgun were carved the words вђњmy mythical person weapon.вђќ

It was hazy when Myron Mayвђ™s mental pain started, however by the fall of 2014, it had turned out to be excessively. He quit his place of employment as an investigator in New Mexico and made a trip to Florida. There, he recorded a tribute about how posse stalking had destroyed his life.

вЂњAs you can see right now,вђќ he says into the camera, вЂњI am absolutely not crazy.вђќ

Laying out his case, he portrays a scene at a service station where he accepted someone in dull glasses was impersonating his developments. вЂњIt was truly creepy,вђќ he said. вЂњEverything I did, he did.вђќ

Later in the video, he appeals to God for absolution for his future sins. вЂњFather,вЂќ he says, вђњright now I ask that you look down on all the focused on people over the globe. Help them to adapt to this madness.вђќ

On Nov. 20, 2014, Mr. May strolled into a library at Florida State University, where he had graduated in 2005, and shot three individuals, leaving one incapacitated. He challenged the police to slaughter him, at that point discharged toward them before being lethally shot, authorities said. He was 31.

ImageOfficers remaining over the assemblage of Myron May on Nov. 20, 2014, after the taking shots at Florida State University.CreditMark Wallheiser/Associated Press

The lion's share of peopl

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rpgsandbox · 5 years

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In the all-too-near future, the world slides into the Greater Depression, the United States affected most dramatically. Nationalism surges, and the social safety net is in tatters. Corporations control governments openly, corruption is commonplace, and the citizenry is starkly divided between those who have and those who go without. Urban sprawl runs amok, and great metroplexes connect the great cities into teeming, soulless metropolises, their lights shining across the countryside.

The heartland of America is largely abandoned, the bread basket now empty. Law enforcement and the government have given up on these regions, and utilities are scarce and unreliable. Few can survive within these outlaw areas. Few humans, that is.

For in these forgotten and empty places in the rust belt, the tissue of reality tears wide, and energy from nightmare dimensions and planes of utter terror seep into this world. These places, called demongrounds, grow more substantial, expanding each day, and creatures from these hell-places walk freely there, and from the demongrounds they infiltrate the metroplexes to feed their inhuman hungers and bring ruin to all.

Some of these strange and terrible creatures are remembered through folklore and legend — monsters such as vampires, demons, ghouls, and their like — while others are utterly fantastic, extradimensional and alien beings from beyond time and space. Together, these minions of darkness are opposed to all life, and they struggle to extinguish the last lights of human civilization.

Some few stand against them, humans banded together and armed against these dreadful forces of darkness. These minion hunters stalk them in the cities and even in the demongrounds, but the greatest challenge they face is the realization that these monsters do not work alone: they are aided by humans who have made terrible pacts with the forces of darkness, selling out their own kind for power and survival.

This is the world of DARK CONSPIRACY.

In 1990, Game Designers Workshop first brought Dark Conspiracy to life. It was a robust and acclaimed roleplaying game series, far ahead of its time with canny predictions about the shape of things to come.

In 2019, Clockwork Publishing brings it back. For the first time in more than 20 years, Dark Conspiracy will be available in print in a deluxe new version of the acclaimed roleplaying game, with an updated system and setting, featuring all-new art and content.

The relaunch will begin with the release of the Dark Conspiracy quickstart adventure, the Dark Conspiracy core rulebook, accompanied by the Dark Conspiracy Gamemaster Screen and Resource, and more. Future supplements will include sourcebooks detailing gear, psychic powers, minions, and will further explore the world of Dark Conspiracy.

The Rules

Our version of DARK CONSPIRACY uses and updated and streamlines version of the original rules. The resulting system is straightforward, runs quickly in play, and players can grasp it easily.

The basic chance of success is equal to the relevant skill of the task being attempted plus the associated attribute that skill belongs to: Skill Rank + Attribute = Skill Value.

All actions a character (whether minion hunter or nonplayer character) attempts are handled on a single d20, attempting to roll equal to or below the Skill Value. The d20 result itself is not modified, just the Skill Value being attempted.

The Skill Value may be modified by the general difficulty of the task being attempted, such as due to environmental factors, conditions, how injured the character is, or other factors. The Difficulty Modifiers range from +6 for a Routine task to –9 for an Impossible one.

A roll of 1 is always a success and a 20 is a failure, no matter what the modified Skill Value is.

A roll of 10 lower than the modified Skill Value is an outstanding success (like a critical in other games), and a roll of 10 higher than the modified skill value is an outstanding failure (a fumble in other games).

Initiative is based on a combination of a character’s relevant combat skill rank plus their Agility attribute plus a roll of 1d6.

Each combat turn is broken into six five-second combat phases. In each combat phase, characters can perform a minor action and a combat action, as well as multiple reactions and/or free actions.

Minor actions include things like bracing, moving at a walk or trot, switching gear, and standing from being prone.

Major actions include aiming, firing, attacking in melee, readying a weapon for later use, reloading, running, using an object, throwing something, and disengaging.

Reactions include blocking (parrying) and reactive attacks. The more you attempt in a round, the harder it gets.

Free actions are things like dropping items, going prone, and brief talking.

If you are a veteran player and would like to know more about specific changes, consult the section "What has Changed?" below.

Here’s what stands out with this new edition:

This version of Dark Conspiracy is aimed specifically at a modern audience and modern gamers. The system is an updated version of the popular alternate rules system presented in The Empathic Sourcebook and has been optimized for rapid resolution of action sequences and conflicts. Unnecessarily complicated system elements are now resolved using the standard dice mechanic.

Character generation has been streamlined, and the overwhelming superiority of military-based careers has been re-balanced in favor of allowing players to choose a wider variety of background options.

The original game was cannily accurate about the shape of things to come when it first appeared, but some background elements have not aged well. The setting has been revised and updated, modernized but still in the original flavor and keeping many core concepts intact.

One of the core aspects of this game are in its title: the conspiracy itself. The dark invaders are powerful and malignant, but they are being aided and abetted by humans, trading members of their own kind for temporary power or survival.

Many classic fantasy or folklore-based monsters and dark races from the original game — the fey, vampires, harpies, mummies, ogres, living skeletons, manticores — have been replaced with creatures and entities more suitable to an audience jaded by decades of exposure to horror films and games, or are modified into something more terrifying to the modern audience. Some are intact, but are not what they seem.

Indianapolis is presented as the default setting for the core book, and the game’s scope has been expanded to include demongrounds in other locales around the world, including Berlin.

These are only some of the changes, but veteran fans of the game will find that this new edition is still recognizably Dark Conspiracy, and newcomers will enjoy a strong and distinct game with a unique flavor, unlike anything else.

The initial plan for the Dark Conspiracy line includes five books, a gamemaster screen, a quickstart adventure, and three card decks. These are described below:

DARK CONSPIRACY QUICKSTART ADVENTURE

Decades ago, the town of Lakeview, Wyoming was depopulated and submerged when the nearby Cedar Mountain Dam was built. Now in a single night, the lake has unexpectedly drained, exposing the town and its terrible secrets. A team has been sent to investigate, and what they discover may destroy them. This 48-page quickstart adventure contains all the rules you need to play Dark Conspiracy, including a group of pre-generated hunter characters.

DARK CONSPIRACY CORE RULEBOOK

This full-color 256+ page hardcover core rulebook contains everything you need to create characters, play, and gamemaster the world of Dark Conspiracy. Here's an overview of the contents:

Introduction – World Background, How to Use this Book, Intro to Roleplaying, etc.

Characters – Background, Picking Roles, Campaign Type, Attributes, Age, Initial Experience, Education, Careers (Civilian, Criminal, Government, Military, Outsider, Special), Skills & Skill Descriptions, Empathic Abilities, Skills and Secondary Attributes, Secondary Activities, Contacts, Starting Money and Equipment, Character Generation Example, Sample Characters

Between Investigations – Healing, Maintenance Activities, Training/Education, New Opportunities, Skill Improvement (Experience and Training)

Dark Times | World Overview – Intro and Background/History, Life in the Dark Times, Urban Sprawl, Government Collapse, Environmental Collapse, Rise of Fascism/Xenophobia, Collaboration, Major Demongrounds Worldwide

System – Basic System, Empathic Success Sidebar, Combat, Movement, Time/Turns, Initiative, Panic, Ranged Combat, Melee Combat, Unarmed Combat, Combat Special Rules, Aimed Attacks, Autofire, Movement While Attacking, Ammo, Secondary Fire, Explosions, Fire, Falls, Poison, Radiation, Environmental Damage, Damage, Wounds, Stun, Knockdown, Hit Locations, Healing, First Aid, Medical Treatment, Vehicles and Vehicle Combat

Equipment – Personal Gear, Tools, Spy Gear, Medical Supplies, Other Equipment, Weapons, Guns, Ammunition, Explosives, Hand-to-hand Weapons, Body Armor, Electronics & Computers, Communications Equipment, Surveillance Equipment, Analysis Equipment, Robots, Artificial Intelligence, Personal Cybernetics, Vehicles, Cars, Trucks, Motorcycles, Scooters, Small Boats, Fliers

Referee Section – Duties of the Referee, Bringing the World to Life, The World of Dark Conspiracy, Secret History, The World as It Is, The Dark Ones, Empathy, Running Games, Character Creation, Adventure Creation, Campaign Creation, Scene Setting, Continuity, Handling NPCs, Character Arcs, Handling Success/Failure, Handling Empathic Abilities in Play, Handling Communication/Information Equipment and Maintaining Horror, Institutional Conspiracies, Dealing with the Police/Govt/Authorities, Dealing with the Press, Reward, Experience, Aftermaths

Encounters – Handling NPCs and Monsters, Urban Encounters, Corporate Encounters, Govt. Encounters, Rural Encounters, Demonground Encounters, Human NPCs, Handling Human NPCs, Stock NPCs (Average/Generic, Cops, Bikers, Cultists, Derelicts, Gangers, Government Agents, Guards, Soldiers), Animals, Handling Animals, Animals (Ant Swarms, Bears, Bee Swarms, Great Cats, Dogs, Horses, Snakes, Wolves), Minions, Handling Minions, Minions (Bloats, Blood Vultures, Cerberoids, Chimeras, Giant Roaches, Slithers, Spongies), Designing Your Own Dark Minions, Dark Races | Darklings, Handling Dark Races, Dark Races (Animated Objects, Bloodkin, Trolls, Vampires, Changelings, Daemons, Extraterrestrials [Energy, Humanoid, Insectoid, Tentacular], Ghosts, Morlocks, Nukids, Undead [Mummies, Zombies])

Paranormal Technology – Dark Tech, Overview of Dark Tech, Dimensional Travel, Biotech, Animator Generators, Cyborgs, Nanotech, Quantum Physics and the Dark World, Cybernetics, Dark Tech Experiments, Weapons, Alien Tech, Overview of Alien Tech, Cybernetics, Human Augmentation, Weapons

The World / Locations – Intro, Indianapolis, The Indianapolis/Cloverdale Demonground, Berlin, The Berlin/Brandenburg Demonground

Reference Sheets – Skills, Combat Summary, etc.

Character Creation Worksheet, Character Sheet, Index

DARK CONSPIRACY GAMEMASTER SCREEN RESOURCE

This three-panel sturdy cardboard screen protects the referee's secrets from prying eyes, and provides a variety of useful tables for quick reference. This package also contains a booklet containing a ready-to-play adventure and other resources.

DARK CONSPIRACY: THE UNNATURAL

This full-color 128-page bestiary vastly expands the roster of unnatural and extranormal entities that plague the world of Dark Conspiracy, including story notes and potential rumors about each.

DARK CONSPIRACY: THE PARANORMAL

This full-color 128-page sourcebook provides further information about the paranormal in the world of Dark Conspiracy, including additional empathic powers and abilities, and more about the Demongrounds and their effects upon reality.

DARK CONSPIRACY: ARMORY

This full-color 128-page sourcebook contains a variety of additional weapons, gear, technology, vehicles, and rules for customizing them, as well as more esoteric tools that hunters might bear against the Dark Ones and the Minions, or used against the hunters themselves!

DARK CONSPIRACY: ACCESS DENIED

This full-color 128-page adventure anthology contains a variety of short and mid-length adventures and locations for use in any Dark Conspiracy campaign.

DARK CONSPIRACY: MONSTER CARD DECK

This 55-card deck describes many of the creatures of the world of Dark Conspiracy, including physical descriptions, their statistics, their motives, and their tactics. Indispensible for any referee's use!

DARK CONSPIRACY: ARMORY CARD DECK

This 55-card set includes a variety of guns, explosives, hand-to-hand weapons, and other equipment usable for any Dark Conspiracy characters or non-player characters.

DARK CONSPIRACY: RUMOR CARD DECK

This 55-card set includes rumors, conspiracy theories, and secret societies and can be used to flesh out rumors the investigators stumble upon during play or to quickly generate adventure plots.

Crowdfunding campaign ends: Wed, May 8 2019 4:00 AM (GMT +1)

Website: [Clockwork Publishing] [facebook]

#RPG #crowdfunding #Dark Conspiracy #Clockwork Publishing

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denversecvidcam-blog · 5 years

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Countersurveillance, backwards observation, sousveillance Countersurveillance is the act of keeping away from observation or making reconnaissance troublesome. Advancements in the late twentieth century have made counter observation drastically develop in both degree and multifaceted nature, for example, the Internet, expanding commonness of electronic security frameworks, high-elevation (and perhaps equipped) UAVs, and vast corporate and government PC databases.

Backwards observation is the act of the inversion of reconnaissance on different people or gatherings (e.g., nationals shooting police). Understood precedents are George Holliday's chronicle of the Rodney King beating and the association Copwatch, which endeavors to screen cops to avert police ruthlessness. Counter-observation can be likewise utilized in applications to avert corporate spying, or to track different hoodlums by certain criminal substances. It can likewise be utilized to deflect stalking strategies utilized by different substances and associations.

Sousveillance is opposite observation, including the account by private people, instead of government or corporate substances. George Orwell's tale Nineteen Eighty-Four depicts an anecdotal extremist observation society with an exceptionally basic (by the present gauges) mass reconnaissance framework comprising of human agents, witnesses, and two-way "telescreens" in individuals' homes. As a result of the effect of this book, mass-reconnaissance advances are ordinarily called "Orwellian" when they are viewed as tricky.

The epic question features the negative impacts from the abuse of reconnaissance at Reflection House. The focal character Kerryn introduces mystery Denver video camera security systems to screen her housemates – see likewise Paranoia.

The book The Handmaid's Tale, and also a film dependent on it, depict an extremist Christian religious government where all residents are held under steady reconnaissance. In the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander utilizes PCs to get data on individuals, and additionally other normal reconnaissance strategies, as a specialist.

David Egger's tale The Circle displays an existence where a solitary organization called "The Circle" creates the majority of the most recent and most elevated quality advances from PCs and cell phones, to observation Denver video camera security systems known as "See-Change Denver video camera security systems". This organization moves toward becoming related with governmental issues when beginning a development where legislators go "straightforward" by wearing See-Change Denver video camera security systems on their body to keep keeping insider facts from people in general about their day by day work action. In this general public, it winds up obligatory to share individual data and encounters since it is The Circle's conviction that everybody ought to approach all data openly.

Be that as it may, as Eggers delineates, this inflicts significant damage on the people and makes an interruption of intensity between the legislatures and the privately owned business. The Circle presents outrageous belief systems encompassing required observation. Eamon Bailey, one of the Wise Men, or originators of The Circle, trusts that having the apparatuses to get to data about anything or anybody, ought to be a human right given to the majority of the world's citizens.[164] By taking out all insider facts, any conduct that has been regarded despicable will either move toward becoming standardized or never again thought to be stunning. Negative activities will in the long run be destroyed

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knowcriminallaw · 5 years

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Federal Criminal Law Variations vs. State Criminal

Prosecution occurs at both the federal and the state levels and so a federal violation is one that is prosecuted under federal criminal law rather than under state criminal law under which the majority of the crimes committed in America are prosecuted. Federal offenses normally involve federal government agencies such as the United States Drug Enforcement Agency, FBI, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the DHS, the Internal Revenue Service, the Border Patrol, Secret Service, or even possibly the Postal Service. There is a network of twelve circuits in the Federal court system, distributed throughout the United States. Each circuit has a central location along with a number of smaller district courts located in cities nearby. U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit (Washington, DC) U.S. District Court, D.C.- Washington, DC U.S. Court of Appeals, 1st Circuit (Boston, MA) Example: U.S. District Court, District of Puerto Rico- Hato Rey, PR U.S. Court of Appeals, Second Circuit (New York, NY) Example: U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York- Brooklyn, NY U.S. Court of Appeals, 3rd Circuit (Philadelphia, PA) Example: U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey- Newark, NJ U.S. Court of Appeals, 4th Circuit (Richmond, Virginia) Example: U.S. District Court, Western District of North Carolina- Charlotte, NC U.S. Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit (New Orleans, Louisiana) Example: U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas- Houston, TX U.S. Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit (Cincinnati, OH) Example: U.S. District Court, Western District of Tennessee- Memphis, TN U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit (Chicago, IL) Example: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Indiana- South Bend, IN U.S. Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit (St. Louis, Missouri) Example: U.S. District Court, Southern District of Iowa- Des Moines, IA U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit (San Francisco, CA) Example: U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California- Sacramento, CA U.S. Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit (Denver, CO) Example: U.S. District Court, Northern District of Oklahoma- Tulsa, OK U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit (Atlanta, Georgia) Example: U.S. District Court, Middle District of Georgia- Macon, GA Average Federal crimes can contain: Drug distribution Crimes affiliated immigration to the U.S. Crimes that include weapons charges Gang activities White-collar offense Electronic crime and fraud Factors to Engage a Federal Criminal Defense Attorney The federal criminal justice process is not meant for individuals to represent themselves. In case you are detained, you want a lawyer to stand up to your rights, fight back against overzealous police officers, and obtain the very best result possible. Speak to a qualified federal criminal law firm in your area to learn more about what you’re up against. Many federal law firms, like Carver, Cantin & Mynarich in Missouri provide a free initial consultation, where they will walk you through the details of your federal charges, explaining possible outcomes and outline a strategy they might pursue. This is 1 reason for a lawyer. You do not need to wander aimlessly at any stage during the legal system without a manual. Getting lost in a jumble of legislation and questionable convictions aren't just scary but can put the remainder of your life in peril. The viability of your life ought never to be a bargaining utility when you are facing time in court. The state court and federal court have been two entirely different strategies -- with different courthouses and judges. Federal judges will preside over national criminal situations, while elected state court judges preside over state criminal circumstances. Assistant U.S. Attorneys litigate federal situations, whilst country district attorneys and city attorneys insure state crimes. Criminal defense attorneys are the best investment to make regarding case identification. Not merely do they know the intricacies of the legal system, however they can look at your situation with unbiased and fresh eyes. They also spend their lives working to defend you and your nearest and dearest from regulations that are unnecessary. It's their passion to keep others from an outcome too harsh for the crime. An experienced lawyer isn't only able to assist you with your situation, but in addition, utilizes their trained intellect to find issues with the prosecution. Just because someone was arrested on suspicion for a crime does not imply that the presumed victims aren't to blame in some manner as well. Every case differs, and tiny details can serve to sufficiently swerve a court ruling. Nobody would like to be given much more of a punishment that is representative of the crime. Often, the area is greeted with a personal sense of shame and guilt, instead of having an enthusiastic and greedy attitude. So then, the question would be : why do so many people put off finding a criminal defense attorney? Without a lawyer that understands a situation, how then can anybody keep from unnecessary charges? Having a large number of individuals arrested yearly for a whole slew of criminal offenses, it becomes simple to bulge into a single group: guilty. This isn't accurate a sizable quantity of the moment. The media and common culture like to consider from the stunning, and so it will become hard to slough off the word when in the courtroom. A defense attorney understands the difficulty society induces and thinks on your innocence. Individuals commonly misinterpret the thought that they should hire an attorney only after they have been arrested or charged with a violation. This, however, is entirely a farce. Without an attorney present during police interrogations, then there's absolutely not any counselor there to help you from admitting to a crime you did not commit or from saying anything which could serve as a detriment for your own defense. Regardless of what crime you've been charged with, it is essential to procure legal representation that is knowledgeable and experienced in navigating the criminal justice strategy. This is of special importance if you've been charged with a federal crime because the terms for national fees are so stringent. Some Cases Tried by a Federal Criminal Defense Law Firms might be: Sexual Assault Attempted Killing and Conspiracy to Enact Murder Bank Fraud Liquidation Fraud Bribery Conspiracy Embezzlement Extortion Extortionate Extensions and Collections of Credit Federal Bank Robbery Firearms Charges Use or Carrying Firearms Relation to a Crime of Violence or Drug Selling Offense Confiscation Proceedings Forgery Harboring a Fugitive Health Care Theft Hobbs Act Extortion, Stealing and Public Corruption Kidnapping Loansharking Postal Fraud and Digital Making Untrue Statements Misprision of a Felony Mortgage Fraud Money Laundering Narcotics Charges Obstruction of Justice Perjury Public Corruption RICO Financial Fraud Sexual Abuse of Children Stalking Tax Cheating Theft of Government Assets Unlawful Hiring of Aliens What are the Penalties for federal charges? Another significant gap between federal crimes vs. country crimes is the essential sentence. Federal justices have been instructed by the federal sentencing guidelines when giving a sentence. Mandatory minimum prison penalties that national sentences tend to be much more lengthy than nation paragraphs. Even when their offenses are alike, a person being stranded for a federal crime will typically face a much more unpleasant punishment than somebody who has been convicted of a state crime. There is a large system of federal prisons throughout the You may reside at any of them depending on a number of factors. If you have psychological or physical medical issues, you will most likely go to a Federal Medical Center like the one in Springfield, MO. MCFP is a common name for the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners. The centers where phrases are completed differ, as well. Individuals sentenced to do time to get a federal crime is going to be delivered to federal prison, although people who serve time for a state crime is going to probably be sent to state prison. Federal prisons tend to home more non-violent offenders (such as individuals convicted of same-sex offenses ), whilst local prisons home mostly populations of people convicted of violent crimes.

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hempstarchelsey-blog · 5 years

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👋WELCOME!!!!!!

Cannabidiol (CBD) is just one of over 85 cannabinoids that is identified in the cannabis plant. CBD is becoming increasingly popular amongst the masses for having a wide scope of medicinal benefits – due to clinical reports and mounds of test data showing little to no side effects and a lack of psychoactivity (typically associated with marijuana products and high THC).

HempWorx CBD products are made with certified organic hemp grown in Kentucky and are 100% free of any synthetic or artificial ingredients. We have 80% purity levels whereas our competitors have 15-40%. Everything is tested in an FDA Approved facility.

Hemp Worx products are 100% safe and effective to use. We are trusted by top doctors and health professionals worldwide. Additionally, our products have been made using the purest, and most potent ingredients backed by mounds of clinical data and stability testing.

#Tip ➖ Search this info group for any key words you are interested in like "anxiety", "ADHD", and "compensation plan" for all related posts.

📝 Rules.

You will be swiftly banned if you post your “CBD opportunity” in here or message members of this community. 🔥👏🏼 Contact THE PERSON WHO ADDED YOU TO THIS GROUP to place an order or register as an Affiliate

F A Q

What is Hemp-Derived CBD?

HempWorx products are made from industrial hemp plants grown on Kentucky farms. Cannabidiol (CBD), a constituent that naturally occurs in industrial Hemp, is just one of over 85 cannabinoids that is identified in the cannabis plant. Our oil is CO2 extracted resulting in a solvent free, pure extract.

How Much CBD Oil Should I Take?

There is no easy answer to this. Our starting advised serving size is 20 drops twice a day but we generally recommend exploring to see exactly works for you. Many will start out with 1/3 - 1/2 of a dropper (5-10 drops) and work their way up to a full dropper twice a day.

How Are HempWorx Products Superior?

There are 4 categories that really separate HempWorx from the rest. Price- We know that CBD is expensive so we pride ourselves in negotiating the best supply contracts, farming relationships, and vendor relationships to bring the most effective Hemp-Derived CBD products to market, at an affordable price. Quality - We also use the highest quality raw materials and our products are produced with organic methods. Farming - Additionally, we have partnered with the top domestic and compliant Hemp farms protected under the 2014 Farm Bill and Government Pilot Program for Hemp Research. Proven Results - Lastly, we know our products work! We give our customers a 30-day money back guarantee just to prove how confident we are that our products yield massive results.

Are your products safe?

Yes. All our hemp crops are grown free of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides, so our quality starts with our hemp plants. From the time our hemp oil is harvested to the manufacturing and shipping of our products, we test our hemp oil multiple times to ensure accuracy in potency information and to check for contaminants like pesticides, herbicides, heavy metals, and mold, as well as cannabinoid content. We also use a subcritical CO2 method when we extract our hemp oil, instead of harsh solvents. CO2 is a much healthier choice than other potential solvents and is "generally regarded as safe" (GRAS) by the FDA.

What's the difference between this and the hemp products I buy in the grocery store?

Hemp products sold in stores are most often made with hemp seed oil, which can contain only trace amounts of CBD. While it has been noted that hemp seed oil can be a great source of nutrition, its marginal quantity of CBD per weight makes it unfeasible as a CBD supplement. Our Full Spectrum Hemp Oil, however, is extracted from the stalk of specifically selected hemp cultivars, offering higher percentages of CBD by weight and additional nutritional benefits from the contents of our oil.

Exactly what's the difference between Hemp and Marijuana?

Scientifically, industrial Hemp and Marijuana are the exact same plant, with a genus and species name of Cannabis Sativa. They have a drastically various hereditary profile though. Industrial Hemp is constantly a stress of Cannabis sativa, while marijuana can be Cannabis sativa, Cannabis indica, or Cannabis ruderalis. The significant distinction is how commercial hemp has actually been reproduced compared with a marijuana form of Cannabis sativa. Generally speaking, industrial hemp is really fibrous, with long strong stalks, and hardly has any flowering buds, while a marijuana pressure of Cannabis sativa will be smaller sized, bushier, and filled with blooming buds. However, more recent industrial hemp ranges in the USA are being bred to have more flowers and greater yields of cannabinoids and terpenes, such as our Kentucky hemp we're now utilizing! 99% of the time marijuana has a high amount of THC and just a really low quantity of CBD. Hemp, on the other hand, naturally has a really high quantity of CBD in many circumstances, and only a trace amount of THC. Thankfully, the cannabinoid profile of hemp is ideal for people trying to find take advantage of cannabis without the ‘high.’ Hemp is utilized for making organic supplements, food, fiber, rope, paper, bricks, oil, natural plastic, and so a lot more, whereas cannabis is generally used simply recreationally, spiritually, and medicinally. The term marijuana oil can describe either a marijuana or hemp obtained oil, because marijuana and hemp are 2 various kinds of marijuana. In the USA the legal definition of commercial hemp," per Section 7606 of the Agricultural Appropriations Act of 2014, is "INDUSTRIAL HEMP– The term "industrial hemp" indicates the plant Cannabis sativa L. and any part of such plant, whether growing or not, with a delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis."

Is a standard hemp seed oil the like a high-CBD hemp extract?

Absolutely not. Standard hemp oil, which can be discovered really inexpensively at a supermarket, is a much various product than our CO2 hemp extracts (not from seed). Basic hemp oil is produced by cold pressing the seeds, whereas our hemp extract is a subcritical CO2 extraction of the hemp plant itself, not the seeds. Hemp seed oil is thought about to be a fantastic nutritive food, however it doesn't have the naturally occurring terpenes, cannabinoids and other parts that our extracts do have.

Where do you source your hemp and CBD from?

HempWorx products are made from industrial hemp plants grown on Kentucky farms.

What kind of testing/analysis is performed on your items?

All of our products are manufactured in an FDA registered, FDA food registered, FDA approved, CGMP certified, and cruelty free facility. We undergo extensive stability testing and can provide a Certificate of Analysis and Chromatography Test.

What is the Endocannabinoid System (ECS)?

"The endocannabinoid system (ECS) is a group of endogenous cannabinoid receptors located in the mammalian brain and throughout the main and peripheral worried systems, including neuromodulatory lipids and their receptors." Wikipedia. There are 2 primary kinds of receptors in the ECS, CB1 and CB2. CB1 receptors are mainly found in the main nerve system and brains of mammals, and CB2 are normally found in the peripheral anxious system. There are two main cannabinoids mammals produce- 2AG and Anandamide (called after the Sanskrit term "ananda" which translates to "peace"). For hundreds of millions of years every vertebrate on Earth has actually been equipped with this ECS, a vital system in the body, and it has been learnt about in the clinical and medical communities since the 1980's. Nevertheless, it's still not taught about in most medical schools.

Does cannabidiol (CBD) and other natural hemp based constituents show up on a drug test?

CBD is considered to be undetectable in saliva or urine tests, though there remains a rare instance that the small trace amounts of THC may be detected. All of our products comply with all regulations regarding minimal THC content, and our full-spectrum hemp oil contains less than 0.3% of THC by volume, as required by law. However, we recommend you check with your employer.

Is this legal?

Under the 2018 Farm Bill, CBD derived from Hemp Seed Oil that has less than 0.3% THC by dry weight is federally legal. Our products comply within these guidelines. Click here for a copy of the 2018 farm Bill.

Link to quality documentation --->

http://www.hempworx.com/cbd-oil-100-certified-and-lab-tested

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