#US Inflation Data

[rudrjobdesk]

Fall In Inflation In US Led Rally In Indian Stock Market On 14th December IT And Banking Stocks Shines

Fall In Inflation In US Led Rally In Indian Stock Market On 14th December IT And Banking Stocks Shines

Stock Market Closing On 14th December: इस हफ्ते लगातार दूसरे कारोबारी सत्र में भारतीय शेयर बाजार तेजी के साथ बंद हुआ है. बैंकिंग, आईटी, मेटल्स और एनर्जी सेक्टर के शेयरों में खरीदारी के चलते इन सेक्टर से जुड़े इंडेक्स तेजी के साथ बंद हुआ है. बीएसई सेंसेक्स 144 अंक या 0.23 फीसदी के उछाल के साथ 62,678 तो एनएसई का निफ्टी 58 अंकों या 0.28 फीसदी के उछाल के साथ 18,660 अंकों पर बंद हुआ है.  सेक्टोरल…

[a-passing-storm]

I started making a Cyberpunk Red character yesterday and I Cannot Stop Thinking About Them. 

[archibaldtuttle]

I got bored so here's a movie chart

I went to the List of biggest box-office bombs wikipedia article and put all the data into an excel sheet. I simplified the data by taking the highest estimates anytime there were ranges of estimated loss/budget. Then I made a neat little chart.

On the left axis you have the amount lost in millions, adjusted for inflation. Each dot represents a film and is placed at the year it came out.

So! What does this tell us?

This tells us that, even accounting for inflation, box office failures have been more and more expensive and more and more frequent. Which means two things - films are getting more and more expensive as are their failures... but also, those failures are no longer enough to kill studios.

It used to be that even a major production studio could risk dying out from one or two big budget bombs. It is no longer the case. A lot of the later ones, the second half of the 2010s and the 2020s, are Disney productions.

In fact! out of the 25 films on this list that came out in the 2020s, 15 are Disney or 20th Century productions (20th being owned by Disney). That's completely ridiculous. Those films all have budgets of 150 million dollars at least. They all lost at least 100 million dollars. And that is not accounting for the marketing budget of the films - it is generally accepted that a modern film's real budget is double its production cost, because studios will spend around the same amount marketing the film as they do making it.

The fact that Disney productions is not currently reduced to ashes is complete nonsense.

And that, dear readers, is what monopolies do for you. That is what "too big to fail" means. It doesn't mean too big to encounter failure... It means too big for any failure to really affect you.

[monicascot]

Weekly Overview: Chinese data still not convincing as to a recovery

In today's video, we'll be diving into some crucial topics impacting the global economy. We'll start by discussing the recent US Consumer Price Index (CPI) data and its implications for the Federal Reserve's interest rate decisions. Then we'll shift our focus to China, examining the concerning signs of a slowdown in their post-COVID recovery. Additionally, we'll explore the economic situation in New Zealand, which has entered a recession.

[greenmangomoreonline]

US inflation rate hits 2-year low | World Business Watch|good news for us government|

[tinystepsforward]

What do you think the chances are that Mud Pit is gonna be ousted by the people who need Automattic to have good will in the eyes of the community to actually get anything out of this site and wattpad

I know it’s probably low but the fact that he’s acting like a poorer Elon Musk is making my skin crawl and making me hope that a second lawsuit hits the company

ok here's the thing. he is meant to be on sabbatical. automattic gives employees a three-month paid sabbatical every 5 years, so that they can have a break from the product they work on and come back rested and with a new perspective.

matt has never taken one before now. he spent the entire leadup to his sabbatical posting increasingly wild shit in public channels at the company (like the chess thing, or trying to get people to buy a friend's product, or the entire fracas with taking over the wordpress.org twitter account. wordpress.org is an independent non-profit that he is not the ceo of).

i mention this because people were hoping (including me) that he really would actually log off, have a chill time (or, idk, whatever kind of time CEOs who go off the grid bc they got flooded in at burning man like to have), and let the interim CEO get a chance to do a better job. that would help the board make a decision based on data.

he was very clearly spiraling before he even left, and then within the first few days of Company Sanctioned Log Off Time he's pulled multiple Classic Matt things on multiple parts of the company before showing up here. this whole thing is so deeply unfunny but it also is a bit of a tom and jerry or looney tunes bit, where i can only imagine HR or Legal is chasing him around the various accounts/platforms with a comically large inflatable baseball bat and he's just evading them.

he can't do that in person, but he still gets a lot of leeway generally. at the last division meetup (irl meeting for employees, flown from all over the world) he showed up twitchy and exhausted and hyped in a way that was very familiar to me from flatmates who used to steal and snort my adhd medication, then proceeded to drink so much over the course of an evening answering questions from his employees that he had to be firmly babysat off the stage and walked back into the lobby of the hotel to sober up.

i made eye contact with him that night, before he dropped his head back into his hands. two people relatively high up in the company were sitting with him, silently watching him as he struggled to sober up. it wasn't the first drunk shenanigan of his i witnessed at one of these, and this is purely opinion but i have to assume that his current behavior is the result of suddenly having time on his hands to have the world's longest bender and post through it.

back to your question: i do not know if what he's done is enough to get the board to remove him. i wish it didn't have to come to this to hope that they will. but we'll find out.

[batboyblog]

Things the Biden-Harris Administration Did This Week #28

July 19-26 2024

The EPA announced the award of $4.3 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants. The grants support community-driven solutions to fight climate change, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition. The grants will go to 25 projects across 30 states, and one tribal community. When combined the projects will reduce greenhouse gas pollution by as much as 971 million metric tons of CO2, roughly the output of 5 million American homes over 25 years. Major projects include $396 million for Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection as it tries to curb greenhouse gas emissions from industrial production, and $500 million for transportation and freight decarbonization at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The Biden-Harris Administration announced a plan to phase out the federal government's use of single use plastics. The plan calls for the federal government to stop using single use plastics in food service operations, events, and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035. The US government is the single largest employer in the country and the world’s largest purchaser of goods and services. Its move away from plastics will redefine the global market.

The White House hosted a summit on super pollutants with the goals of better measuring them and dramatically reducing them. Roughly half of today's climate change is caused by so called super pollutants, methane, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and nitrous oxide (N2O). Public-private partnerships between NOAA and United Airlines, The State Department and NASA, and the non-profit Carbon Mapper Coalition will all help collect important data on these pollutants. While private firms announced with the White House plans that by early next year will reduce overall U.S. industrial emissions of nitrous oxide by over 50% from 2020 numbers. The summit also highlighted the EPA's new rule to reduce methane from oil and gas by 80%.

The EPA announced $325 million in grants for climate justice. The Community Change Grants Program, powered by President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act will ultimately bring $2 billion dollars to disadvantaged communities and help them combat climate change. Some of the projects funded in this first round of grant were: $20 million for Midwest Tribal Energy Resources Association, which will help weatherize and energy efficiency upgrade homes for 35 tribes in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, $14 million to install onsite wastewater treatment systems throughout 17 Black Belt counties in Alabama, and $14 million to urban forestry, expanding tree canopy in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

The Department of Interior approved 3 new solar projects on public land. The 3 projects, two in Nevada and one in Arizona, once finished could generate enough to power 2 million homes. This comes on top of DoI already having beaten its goal of 25 gigawatts of clean energy projects by the end of 2025, in April 2024. This is all part of President Biden’s goal of creating a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035. 

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen pledged $667 million to global Pandemic Fund. The fund set up in 2022 seeks to support Pandemic prevention, and readiness in low income nations who can't do it on their own. At the G20 meeting Yellen pushed other nations of the 20 largest economies to double their pledges to the $2 billion dollar fund. Yellen highlighted the importance of the fund by saying "President Biden and I believe that a fully-resourced Pandemic Fund will enable us to better prevent, prepare for, and respond to pandemics – protecting Americans and people around the world from the devastating human and economic costs of infectious disease threats,"

The Departments of the Interior and Commerce today announced a $240 million investment in tribal fisheries in the Pacific Northwest. This is in line with an Executive Order President Biden signed in 2023 during the White House Tribal Nations Summit to mpower Tribal sovereignty and self-determination. An initial $54 million for hatchery maintenance and modernization will be made available for 27 tribes in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. The rest will be invested in longer term fishery projects in the coming years.

The IRS announced that thanks to funding from President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, it'll be able to digitize much of its operations. This means tax payers will be able to retrieve all their tax related information from one source, including Wage & Income, Account, Record of Account, and Return transcripts, using on-line Individual Online Account.

The IRS also announced that New Jersey will be joining the direct file program in 2025. The direct file program ran as a pilot in 12 states in 2024, allowing tax-payers in those states to file simple tax returns using a free online filing tool directly with the IRS. In 2024 140,000 Americans were able to file this way, they collectively saved $5.6 million in tax preparation fees, claiming $90 million in returns. The average American spends $270 and 13 hours filing their taxes. More than a million people in New Jersey alone will qualify for direct file next year. Oregon opted to join last month. Republicans in Congress lead by Congressmen Adrian Smith of Nebraska and Chuck Edwards of North Carolina have put forward legislation to do away with direct file.

Bonus: American law enforcement arrested co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada. El Mayo co-founded the cartel in the 1980s along side Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. Since El Chapo's incarceration in the United States in 2019, El Mayo has been sole head of the Sinaloa Cartel. Authorities also arrested El Chapo's son, Joaquin Guzman Lopez. The Sinaloa Cartel has been a major player in the cross border drug trade, and has often used extreme violence to further their aims.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Coprophagic AI crisis

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TORONTO on Mar 22, then with LAURA POITRAS in NYC on Mar 24, then Anaheim, and more!

A key requirement for being a science fiction writer without losing your mind is the ability to distinguish between science fiction (futuristic thought experiments) and predictions. SF writers who lack this trait come to fancy themselves fortune-tellers who SEE! THE! FUTURE!

The thing is, sf writers cheat. We palm cards in order to set up pulp adventure stories that let us indulge our thought experiments. These palmed cards – say, faster-than-light drives or time-machines – are narrative devices, not scientifically grounded proposals.

Historically, the fact that some people – both writers and readers – couldn't tell the difference wasn't all that important, because people who fell prey to the sf-as-prophecy delusion didn't have the power to re-orient our society around their mistaken beliefs. But with the rise and rise of sf-obsessed tech billionaires who keep trying to invent the torment nexus, sf writers are starting to be more vocal about distinguishing between our made-up funny stories and predictions (AKA "cyberpunk is a warning, not a suggestion"):

https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2023/11/dont-create-the-torment-nexus.html

In that spirit, I'd like to point to how one of sf's most frequently palmed cards has become a commonplace of the AI crowd. That sleight of hand is: "add enough compute and the computer will wake up." This is a shopworn cliche of sf, the idea that once a computer matches the human brain for "complexity" or "power" (or some other simple-seeming but profoundly nebulous metric), the computer will become conscious. Think of "Mike" in Heinlein's *The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress#Plot

For people inflating the current AI hype bubble, this idea that making the AI "more powerful" will correct its defects is key. Whenever an AI "hallucinates" in a way that seems to disqualify it from the high-value applications that justify the torrent of investment in the field, boosters say, "Sure, the AI isn't good enough…yet. But once we shovel an order of magnitude more training data into the hopper, we'll solve that, because (as everyone knows) making the computer 'more powerful' solves the AI problem":

https://locusmag.com/2023/12/commentary-cory-doctorow-what-kind-of-bubble-is-ai/

As the lawyers say, this "cites facts not in evidence." But let's stipulate that it's true for a moment. If all we need to make the AI better is more training data, is that something we can count on? Consider the problem of "botshit," Andre Spicer and co's very useful coinage describing "inaccurate or fabricated content" shat out at scale by AIs:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4678265

"Botshit" was coined last December, but the internet is already drowning in it. Desperate people, confronted with an economy modeled on a high-speed game of musical chairs in which the opportunities for a decent livelihood grow ever scarcer, are being scammed into generating mountains of botshit in the hopes of securing the elusive "passive income":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

Botshit can be produced at a scale and velocity that beggars the imagination. Consider that Amazon has had to cap the number of self-published "books" an author can submit to a mere three books per day:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/sep/20/amazon-restricts-authors-from-self-publishing-more-than-three-books-a-day-after-ai-concerns

As the web becomes an anaerobic lagoon for botshit, the quantum of human-generated "content" in any internet core sample is dwindling to homeopathic levels. Even sources considered to be nominally high-quality, from Cnet articles to legal briefs, are contaminated with botshit:

https://theconversation.com/ai-is-creating-fake-legal-cases-and-making-its-way-into-real-courtrooms-with-disastrous-results-225080

Ironically, AI companies are setting themselves up for this problem. Google and Microsoft's full-court press for "AI powered search" imagines a future for the web in which search-engines stop returning links to web-pages, and instead summarize their content. The question is, why the fuck would anyone write the web if the only "person" who can find what they write is an AI's crawler, which ingests the writing for its own training, but has no interest in steering readers to see what you've written? If AI search ever becomes a thing, the open web will become an AI CAFO and search crawlers will increasingly end up imbibing the contents of its manure lagoon.

This problem has been a long time coming. Just over a year ago, Jathan Sadowski coined the term "Habsburg AI" to describe a model trained on the output of another model:

https://twitter.com/jathansadowski/status/1625245803211272194

There's a certain intuitive case for this being a bad idea, akin to feeding cows a slurry made of the diseased brains of other cows:

https://www.cdc.gov/prions/bse/index.html

But "The Curse of Recursion: Training on Generated Data Makes Models Forget," a recent paper, goes beyond the ick factor of AI that is fed on botshit and delves into the mathematical consequences of AI coprophagia:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.17493

Co-author Ross Anderson summarizes the finding neatly: "using model-generated content in training causes irreversible defects":

https://www.lightbluetouchpaper.org/2023/06/06/will-gpt-models-choke-on-their-own-exhaust/

Which is all to say: even if you accept the mystical proposition that more training data "solves" the AI problems that constitute total unsuitability for high-value applications that justify the trillions in valuation analysts are touting, that training data is going to be ever-more elusive.

What's more, while the proposition that "more training data will linearly improve the quality of AI predictions" is a mere article of faith, "training an AI on the output of another AI makes it exponentially worse" is a matter of fact.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/14/inhuman-centipede#enshittibottification

Image: Plamenart (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Double_Mobius_Strip.JPG

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[transform4u]

at first I hated g2s stories and thought they felt homophobic, but i cant stop reading them, it's so hot to read how powerless other gay guys are being changed like that, just imagine that feeling as you lose yourself and become someone else...

As you’re sitting at your computer, engrossed in g2s Tumblr posts, the loud snappppp echoes in your head, jolting you from your focus. You feel a strange, tingling sensation at the back of your neck that rapidly spreads throughout your entire body. The world blurs, and you watch in bewilderment as your skinny, pasty frame starts to shift and transform. Wrinkles smooth out, age seems to rewind, and soon enough, you’re staring at a reflection of yourself as you looked at twenty—young, muscular, and alarmingly different from the person you used to be.

The process is both exhilarating and uncomfortable. Your muscles feel like they’re on fire, each fiber straining and stretching as they bulk up. Every inch of your body aches with a burning sensation as the transformation takes hold. Your once-skinny arms swell with newfound definition, each muscle popping with exaggerated prominence. Your abs, now impossibly chiseled, could practically cut glass with their sharpness. Your chest inflates with an intensity that makes your shirt feel like it’s straining to contain your new, overly-developed physique.

Your face changes too. It sharpens into a strikingly chiseled jawline and high, defined cheekbones, all accentuated by a high-maintenance hairstyle that sticks out in spiked perfection. You glance at yourself, noticing the way your features have taken on a sculpted, almost cartoonish quality. Your eyes, now hidden behind mirrored sunglasses despite the lack of sunlight, reflect a vacant yet intense focus—a trademark of your new persona. You find yourself gravitating towards a mindset that’s as taut and defined as your new body. Your thoughts are flooded with gym jargon and protein shake recommendations. You begin to speak in clichés about "gains" and "lifting heavy," rarely considering anything beyond the surface. Your brain feels like it’s become a repository of half-formed slogans and a single-track obsession with maintaining a perpetually jacked appearance.

With a primal snarl, you stare at the laptop and grasp your throbbing erection, eyes glued to the glowing blue screen. The rage inside you surges, propelling you to take action. In your fevered state of hatred, nothing else matters anymore - not your mundane existence, not the nagging responsibilities, not any of the trivialities that once consumed your every waking moment. There's only one thing that drives you now: the singular obsession with tearing down every barrier, every facade that allows those disgusting fags from openly expressing their perversion to the world. This is your mission - a sacred calling from God knows where, as thick golden cross wraps around your neck. You don't have to think it out. You simply are this new being possessed of pure malice. A vessel for utter intolerance, a tool of societal decay. And it won't stop until every single trace of queer culture on this planet is wiped off the face of it! You will turn every gay man into a pinnacle of straightness.

Fingers flying over the keyboard, you dig your claws into the mousepad, hammering away at the interface as you burrow through Tumblr's network security layer like a virus tearing into vulnerable flesh. Passwords shatter under your brute force assault and the sickly sweet scent of digital carnage permeates your nostrils as you make your way deeper and deeper. Finally, after a series of keystrokes both powerful and precise, a pulsing gateway opens up before you, promising ungodly rewards for those who dare to breach its threshold. With one final triumphant roar from your throat, you hurl yourself through it.

You find yourself standing at a precipice of code stretching infinitely into the digital void. Beyond it lurks a vast ocean of queer data ripe for corruption. You drink in the sight greedily - usernames in bold colors and winking emojis, headers advertising discussions of anal play, mentions of local meet-ups in exotic locations… An endless buffet of degenerate depravity, all within reach. But one question consumes your every thought:

How do you begin the destruction? What can be done to defile that which is pure and loving in this world? Then you remember - it began with a simple video of two men expressing love and intimacy. It can end in a similar manner: by utterly ruining everything related to homosexuality for everyone until none remain.

Your fingers tremble slightly as you grasp your rigid member through the fabric of your jeans, squeezing it in a desperate attempt to maintain some semblance of power. The heat of arousal mingles with the cool leather of your pants as you stroke yourself, putting on a show for yourself like a pathetic little exhibitionist. Your eyes dart wildly around the room, seeking any distraction from the overwhelming need consuming you.

You click open a new tab on your browser and begin searching for "celebrity boobs". A parade of celebrity nudie pics dance across your screen Zendaya, Sabrina Carpenter, Olivia Rodrigo. Anything to momentarily forget about the all-consuming rage pulsing through your veins. But even as you browse through images of scantily clad women posing provocatively for the camera, the dark thoughts never cease their relentless assault. You picture each one as a filthy pervert, secretly harboring a lust for queer men. Each pixel is another opportunity to corrupt a soul.

[matan4il]

I’m muslim but I’m upset with the free Palestine movement especially as a woman. they are only making it worse for Muslim women subject to governments which are misusing the teachings of the Quran. they do not care even about Uyghur or Rohingya Muslims

I'm a day late, but I hope it's still okay to wish you Jumaat Mubaraka, lovely Nonnie! *hugs*

I feel you. A few years ago, I took a course and ended up becoming friends with the lady who happened to choose the seat next to me. She's a Muslim Israeli Arab woman. She had the audacity of divorcing her husband. She has a son who came out as gay, and she had the audacity to accept him as he is. Under Hamas or the Palestinian Authority's rule, she could be severely punished socially for either. Worse, her son would likely be terrified for his life, and might have ended up like one of my gay Palestinian friends, who have been forced into heterosexual marriages because the threat to their lives was so great. Instead, her son lives in Tel Aviv, is openly gay, and is an advocate for both the State of Israel and gay Israeli Arabs and Palestinians. She's an advocate for the State of Israel and Israeli Arab Muslim women. She gets to speak and be heard because she's an Israeli citizen. And it's not by chance that she is one. Her family made a choice in 1948, to stand by the Jews, rather than join the Arab attack on them. She once opened the Quran, showed me a specific surah, and told me, "This is why I know that as a Muslim, I must love the Jews, and stand by their state."

She has her own agency in choosing her position on the State of Israel, she has her well being, her son's, and that of many other Israeli Muslim Arab women and gay people to consider, and the anti-Israel crowd doesn't care about any of that. She's just an obstacle standing in the way of the narrative they've chosen, she shows reality is more complex than the black and white framing they embraced, which allows them to openly hate Jews while inflating their own egos, as if they're being righteous.

Not to mention coming up with ridiculous stuff like, "Palestinian men beat their wives because of the Israeli occupation!" This is honestly one of the dumbest things I've ever heard, only topped by "Israel is using cow/dolphin spies." But think of the practical implication. It means as long as Israel exists, no one's gonna hold Palestinian men accountable for the violence they're committing against their own wives. It's a betrayal of Palestinian women, all supposedly in the name of helping Palestinian nationalism.

(on top of the criticism voiced by UN Watch, it's insane how one of the speakers blaming domestic violence against Palestinian women on Israel is the UN representative of "Etat de Palestine," state of Palestine... What an easy way to avoid a state's duty to protect the women living under its rule from any and all violence, including domestic! If you're an independent state, and deserve recognition from the world, then you also have the responsibility to tackle domestic violence. If you're not independent, then why are you demanding to be recognized as such?)

And yes, the lack of care for actual Israeli Arabs and Palestinians is what I often talk about, but you're right that the damage caused by the anti-Israel crowd is bigger than just to Jews, Israeli Arabs, and Palestinians. Holding up an Islamist cause, backing up the Islamist movement and showing them how the west can be easily won, this will only serve to harm more people. Including Muslims who are more vulnerable to human rights abuses, like women and gay people.

In the vid above, as another example, the UN Watch speaker asks the UN to compare the data on domestic violence suffered by Palestinian women, to that suffered by Jordanian, Lebanese, Egyptian women and so on... Maybe if they couldn't use Israel as their punching bag, they'd have to look at domestic violence against women in the whole region, and actually do something about it. But nah, it's easier to write off Israel as the guilty party when it comes to Palestinian domestic violence, and pretend like that's the only place in the entire Middle East where this violence stands out as an issue. And that's before we talk about observing the levels of anti-women violence in non-Arab Muslim countries, such as Iran, where the government itself has imprisoned and even killed women for not wearing a hijab correctly. This is a betrayal of Muslim women at large.

And in addition to all that, like you said, this crowd also doesn't give a shit about the Muslims being persecuted in any conflict that doesn't allow the blame to be laid on the 'evil Jews.' Even when the numbers targeted are much greater, and the scope of abuse far more severe.

Thank you for the ask, and I hope you're okay! I hope the world cares more about Muslim women, rather than posturing as if it does, but only when it can be used against Jews. xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[triviallytrue]

I guess the underlying blackpill around the current economic data is that if Americans find 6.5% YoY inflation in 2022 to be totally intolerable while the job market is as tight as it has ever been and wage growth is way up, how on earth are we ever going to do massive public investment?

if you imagine a future where the US government spends very heavily on infrastructure, welfare, etc, this is really not a good sign about its political viability

[ayeforscotland]

Any thoughts on big retailers including offers as long as you use a loyalty card? Where do you think this trend will go?

Working in the sector it really feels like an opportunity to gain more profit by selling data and letting them hike prices even higher but I'm pretty pessimistic.

I think it's one thing to do 'offers' with a loyalty card, and another thing entirely to jack up the price for anyone who doesn't use a loyalty card.

Tesco is by far the biggest offender in this in my opinion. I've seen a whole bunch of their products *way* more expensive unless you use a Tesco clubcard.

Every supermarket at the moment is gouging the fuck out of their customers. Think they call it 'greedflation' when supermarkets maintain ridiculous prices even when inflation is slowly dropping.

[luna-rainbow]

Stucky AO3 stats 2023

This year I pulled both "Year Created" and "Year Updated". "Year Created" data should stay static, hence any changes would indicate people backdating their fics or deleting them. The "Year Updated" one is dynamic (i.e. long fics or slow updating fics could span several years). I think "Year Created" provides a better snapshot of historical fandom activity, while "Year Updated" better reflects current fandom engagement.

As of today (14/01/2024), there are a total of 65629 Steve/Bucky fics on AO3.

An impressive 86% of the fics are marked as complete! There are 880 fics over the 100k mark! The sweet spot seems to be the 1000-5000 word short stories, which comprise 28,935 works.

As we know, Stucky is a worldwide phenomenon, and while English makes up the bulk of stories, there are plenty of works in other languages too.

Whether you're after something sweet or fluffy or smut-free...or something dark or horny or violent, or something in between, there's something for everyone.

And what can I say...we really want a soft epilogue (fluff) for our boys, but it's the angst and hurt/comfort that keeps us coming back. And who doesn't love some good Shrinkyclinks.

Data disclaimers - Numbers may be inflated by any polyships that are tagged also with the individual pairing combinations. - Stucky may not be the primary ship in the works listed, nor necessarily the focus of the story - Data is pulled from a logged in account. If people have blocked me or muted me that's always a possible source of error - The "year created" data is pulled from today, so any works deleted before today (and I know there has been quite a bit in the past few years) would not be reflected

[pinkanonwrites]

snow day with the earthspark maltos and bee, or a day at the beach with the TFA crew?

AAAGGHHHHH Both of these sound super duper fun. Personally I'd pick the beach with the TFA Crew though, cause I have absolutely NO tolerance to the cold. I'm a freeze-baby...

"So this 'sunblock' protects your skin from the ultraviolet rays of your local star..." Optimus holds the small bottle between two fingers, squinting as he scans the even-smaller label.

"Yep! Also makes sure I don't get burned. Speaking of which... SARI!" You stop slathering sunscreen on your thigh long enough to call out to the young girl currently flying circles around Bumblebee and Bulkhead with a massive inflatable beach ball in her hands. "You better have put some on already!"

"I did! Seriously, you don't have to baby me all the time!" She sticks a playful tongue out at you before launching the ball towards Bumblebee, who quickly thwacks it back into the air.

"Gotta be faster than that, Sari!"

"Ooh! My turn! Send it over here!" Bulkhead calls, waving his massive servos in the air. You roll your eyes, turning back to Optimus with a smile.

"Do you want to come look for shells and agates with me and Prowl? You're invited too, Ratchet."

"And risk getting even more sand between my stabilizers? I'll pass." Using a massive tarp from the factory as a makeshift towel, Ratchet sits cross-legged as he scrolls through a data pad. Meanwhile Prowl, barely a few paces away, seems to have found his first target. He cradles a tiny cone shell in his servo, staring down at it in open fascination. You and Optimus look to each other and exchange a small shrug and a chuckle.

"I'd be happy to join you, if you'd have me."

[mysticstronomy]

A MISSING PIECE IN THE BIG BANG THEORY HAS SURFACED??

Blog#411

Wednesday, June 19th, 2024.

Welcome back,

Combining different pieces from Big Bang cosmology could help explain an issue we have today.

The Hubble constant, the speed of expansion of our universe, is not observed with consistency.

These scientists suggest that not-well-understood quantum gravity could account for the gap.

In research published earlier this year, physicists from the University of Hyderabad in India say they’re on the path to solving one of the universe’s biggest outstanding problems. Since Edwin Hubble realized the universe is always expanding nearly 100 years ago, scientists have used the “Hubble constant” in calculations on virtually every scale in the universe.

But today, estimates for the Hubble constant don’t always align, with a difference of up to 10 percent between calculations made using different methods. (When someone at NASA mixes up meters and yards and loses an entire spacecraft, that’s not even a full 10 percent deviation.)

The paper appears in the peer reviewed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity. The journal has an ongoing, periodically updated “focus issue” specifically about this measurement tension, and the editors explain the problem there—scientists can’t say for sure that the different Hubble constants measured are actually different, rather than just observation or calibration issues.

But the authors of the new paper, physicist P.K. Suresh and his research fellow (referred to as just Anupama B.) say that most measurements taken now are reliable. Instrumentation only continues to improve—we’ve all seen those generation-defining, poster-quality photos of the far-out planets, for example. If the measurements on the local and faraway levels are indeed sound, then something is missing.

It’s here where they introduce quantum gravity as a possible factor. This variable—which, to be honest, is another enigmatic “placeholder” in some ways—could close the gap in Hubble constant observations. That’s because, as the authors propose, quantum gravity could have affected the rate of change at which the universe expanded itself. When a constant can have a variable rate of change, it’s easy to see why researchers tend to drop the ‘constant’ label and instead call the fatcor simply H0, H1, and so on to designate which version of the measurement is in play.

The researchers explain that during inflation—the rapid growth of the universe immediately following the Big Bang—there may not have been a single, uniform inflation zone. Instead, more and more scientists are theorizing around the idea of “multi field” inflation. The idea originated to explain another measurement discrepancy: the number of particles in particular places or times, compared with the massive speed of inflation overall.

If a theory could help explain one gap in our codified equations for how inflation works, it makes sense to try that theory to find other missing pieces. These researchers used what is called the hybrid inflationary model, which describes two fields: one inflating and one rolling over like a waterfall. By accounting for quantum gravity, they found they were able to reconcile H0—the current Hubble constant—with both H1 (during inflation) and HT (during phase transition). Just one adjusted equation with a parameter for quantum gravity could draw a curve that includes all three data points.

Originally published on www.popularmechanics.com

COMING UP!!

(Saturday, June 22nd, 2024)

"WHAT IS THE OLDEST BLACK HOLE IN OUR UNIVERSE??"

[ultram0th]

Chris Evans hasn't been pulling views lately as Captain America. The producers at Marvel have the idea to improve him a bit; statistics show pecs and ass pull more eyes to the screen. He's under contract, so they don't need to ask. Even if he wasn't, its permanent, so what else is he gonna do?

"You son of a bitch!" Chris Evans roared as he stormed into the producer's office.

The hunky actor's face was bright cherry red as he struggled to move around with his warped proportions. The normally proportional, toned hunk was now a curvy himbo, with pecs so large that they could only be referred to as "Muscletits", and an ass so large that it needed its own zip code.

Chris Evans tried to wear some of his normal clothing, but his larger proportions made them look skin tight on him. His pecs had inflated to the size of small melons, protruding off his chest at a ridiculous angle. His noticeably enlarged nipples poked against the thin fabric of his shirt, the cotton rubbing up against them making his cock throb in his pants. His rotund booty was so large and round that it looked like the actor was smuggling a pair of basketballs in his pants, constantly jiggling and shifting with every step Chris took.

"What's the problem, Mr. Evans?" the producer innocently asked.

"'What's the problem'?!" Chris cried out, holding out his arms to show off his warped body. "Look at me! I look like a damn himbo! Now turn me back!"

The actor's body had been transformed into its current curvy form last week after a meeting with his management, which had claimed that they needed to help Chris Evans boost his image ever since he quit being Captain America. The actor had been on board, unaware of the actual plan that was in store. After taking a mysterious supplement, Chris had been horrified to witness his body morphing into its current himbo state.

The producer mock frowned and typed away at his computer. "Sorry, Mr. Evans," he said, "but we have a contract. You gave us permission to do anything in our power to help boost your sales."

"B-but..." Chris tried to protest, looking down at his altered body, but his muscletits blocked his view of anything south.

"And," the producer continued, "we've managed to get you signed back on with Marvel, and our data suggests that your new tits and booty will be a massive draw for customers."

Chris Evans paled at the thought of romping around in skin tight Captain America suit, his muscletits constantly hindering his movements, and his big butt jiggling behind him tantalizingly.

But then his cock throbbed even more and began to leak precum into his tight boxers despite his humiliation.

"Fine," the curvy hunk relented, "when do we start?"