#data warehouse testing

[icedq-toranainc]

What is iceDQ?

iceDQ is a purpose-built platform with integrated data testing, data monitoring and AI based data observability capabilities.

iceDQ is the only platform that works across the entire data development lifecycle – development, QA, and production – ensuring robust data processes and reliable data.

[shoechoe]

i know it's a big part of the polybius urban legend that it was created by the US government for mind control testing and it collects data on players for them but i kinda sorta just ignore that part usually

[nitor-infotech]

In today's data-driven world, seamless data integration and processing are crucial for informed decision-making. Matillion, a robust ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) tool, has gained popularity for its ability to streamline these processes.

In this blog, you will learn how it efficiently moves and transforms data from various sources to cloud data warehouses, making data management easier. Apart from this, you'll also get a brief understanding of its constraints and best practices for transforming large datasets.

By understanding these aspects, you can maximize your business capabilities and drive forward excellently. 

[powersafeautomation]

The Role of Advanced Inspection and Measurement Systems in Industrial Operations

In the realm of industrial operations, precision and safety are paramount. Inspection and measurement systems form the backbone of quality control, ensuring that products meet stringent standards and that processes adhere to the highest safety norms. Among these systems, vision systems, automated light curtains, and muting photocells are critical components that enhance efficiency and…

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The future of Amazon coders is the present of Amazon warehouse workers

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in BURBANK with WIL WHEATON TONIGHT (Mar 13), and in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY on Mar 24. More tour dates here.

My theory of the "shitty technology adoption curve" holds that you can predict the future impact of abusive technologies on you by observing the way these are deployed against people who have less social power than you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/11/the-shitty-tech-adoption-curve-has-a-business-model/

When you have a new, abusive technology, you can't just aim it at rich, powerful people, because when they complain, they get results. To successfully deploy that abusive tech, you need to work your way up the privilege gradient, starting with people with no power, like prisoners, refugees, and mental patients. This starts the process of normalization, even as it sands down some of the technology's rough edges against their tender bodies. Once that's done, you can move on to people with more social power – immigrants, blue collar workers, school children. Step by step, you normalize and smooth out the abusive tech, until you can apply it to everyone – even rich and powerful people. Think of the deployment of CCTV, facial recognition, location tracking, and web surveillance.

All this means that blue collar workers are the pioneering early adopters of the bossware that will shortly be tormenting their white-collar colleagues elsewhere in the business. It's as William Gibson prophesied: "The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed" (it's pooled up thick and noxious around the ankles of blue-collar workers, refugees, mental patients, etc).

Nowhere is this rule more salient than in Big Tech firms. Tech companies have thoroughly segregated workforces. Delivery drivers, customer service reps, data-labelers, warehouse workers and other "green badge," low-status workers are the testing ground for their employer's own disciplinary technology, which monitors them down to the keystroke, the eye-movement, and the pee break. Meanwhile, the "blue badge" white-collar coders get stock options, gourmet cafeterias, free massages, day care and complimentary egg-freezing so they can delay fertility. Companies like Google not only use separate entrance for their different classes of workers – they stagger their shifts so that the elite workers don't even see their lower-status counterparts.

Importantly, almost none of these workers – whether low-status or high – are unionized. Tech union density is so thin, it's almost nonexistent. It's easy to see why elite tech workers wouldn't bother with unionizing: with such fantastic wages and so many perks, why endure the tedium of meetings and memos? But then there's the rest of the workers, who are subjected to endless "electronic whipping" by bossware and who take home wages that look like pocket change when compared to the tech division's compensation. These workers have every reason to unionize, living as they do in the dystopian future of labor.

At Amazon warehouses, workers are injured at three times the rate of warehouse workers at competing firms. They are penalized for "time off task" (like taking a piss break). They are made to stand in long, humiliating body-search lines when they go on- and off-shift, hours every week, without compensation. Variations on this theme play out in other blue-collar sectors of the Amazon empire, like Amazon delivery drivers and Whole Food shelf-stockers.

Those workers have every reason to unionize, and they have done their damndest, but Amazon has defeated worker union drives, again and again. How does Amazon win these battles? Simple: they cheat. They illegally fire union organizers:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/31/reality-endorses-sanders/#instacart-wholefoods-amazon

And then they smear unions to the press and to their own workers with lies (that subsequently leak):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/03/socially-useless-parasite/#christian-smalls

They spend millions on anti-union tech, spying on workers and creating "heatmaps" that let them direct their anti-union efforts to specific stores and facilities:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#guard-labor-v-redistribution

They make workers use an official chat app, and then block any messages containing forbidden words, like "fairness," "grievance" and "diversity":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/05/doubleplusrelentless/#quackspeak

That's just the tip of the iceberg. A new investigation by Northwestern University's Teke Wiggin draws on worker interviews and FOIA requests to the NLRB to assemble a first-of-its-kind catalog of Amazon's labor-disciplining, union-busting tactics:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231251318389

Disciplining labor and busting unions go hand in hand. It's a simple equation: the harder it is for your workers to form a union, the worse you can treat them without facing labor reprisals, because individual workers' options are limited to a) quitting or b) sucking it up, while unionized workers can grieve, sue, and strike.

At the core of Amazon's labor discipline technology is "algorithmic management," which is exactly what it sounds like: replacing middle managers with software that counts your keystrokes, watches your eyeballs, or applies a virtual caliper to some other metric to decide whether you're a good worker or a rotten apple:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/26/hawtch-hawtch/#you-treasure-what-you-measure

Automation theory describes two poles of workplace automation: centaurs (in which workers are assisted by technology) and "reverse-centaurs" (in which workers provide assistance to technology):

https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/19/the-shakedown/#weird-flex

Amazon is a reverse-centaurism pioneer. Take the delivery drivers whose every maneuver, eyeball movement, and turn signal is analyzed and inevitably, found wanting, as workers seek to satisfy impossible quotas that can't even be met if you pee in a bottle instead of taking toilet breaks:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

Then there's the warehouse workers who are also tormented with impossible, pisscall-annihilating quotas. Some of these workers are fitted with haptic wristbands that buzz to tell them they're being too slow at picking up an item and dropping it into a box, pushing them to faster, joint-destroying paces that account for Amazon's enduring position as the most worker-maiming warehouse employer in the nation:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/05/la-bookseller-royalty/#megacycle

In his paper, Wiggin does important work connecting these "electronic whips" to Amazon's arsenal of traditional union-busting weapons, like "captive audience" meetings where workers are forced to sit through hours of anti-union indoctrination. For Wiggin, bossware tools aren't just a stick to beat workers with – they're also a carrot that can be used to diffuse a worker's outrage ahead of a key union vote.

Algorithmic management isn't just software that wrings more work out of workers – it's software that replaces managers. By surveilling workers – both on the job and in social media spaces (like subreddits) where workers gather to talk, Amazon can tune the "electronic whip," reducing quotas and easing the pace of work so that workers view their jobs more favorably and are more receptive to anti-union propaganda.

This is "twiddling" – exploiting the digital flexibility of a system to "twiddle the knobs" governing its business logic, changing everything from prices to wages, search rankings to recommendations, in realtime, for every customer and worker:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

Twiddling combines surveillance data with flexible business logic to create an unbeatable house advantage. If you're an Amazon shopper, you get twiddled all the time, as Amazon replaces the best matches for your searches with paid results. If you buy that first product result, you'll pay an average of 29% more than the best match for your search:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

Worker-side twiddling is even more dystopian. When a nurse is assigned a shift by an "Uber for nurses" app, the app checks whether the worker has overdue credit card bills, which trigger lower wages (on the theory that an indebted worker is a desperate worker):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/18/loose-flapping-ends/#luigi-has-a-point

When it comes to union-busting, Amazon's found a new use for twiddling: lessening the pace of work, which Wiggin calls "algorithmic slack-cutting." The important thing about algorithmic slack-cutting is that it's only temporary. The algorithm that reduces your work-load in the runup to a union vote can then dial the pace of work up afterward, by small, random increments that are below the threshold at which they register on the human sensory apparatus. They're not so much boiling the frog as poaching it.

Meanwhile, Amazon gets to flood the zone with anti-union messages, including mandatory messages on the app that assigns your shifts – a captive audience meeting in every pocket.

Between social media surveillance and on-the-job surveillance, Amazon has built a powerful training set for algorithms designed to crush workplace democracy. That's how things go for Amazon's warehouse workers and delivery drivers, and the shelf-stockers at Whole Foods.

But of course, the picture is very different for Amazon's techies, who enjoy the industry standard of high wages and lavish perks.

For now.

The tech industry is in the midst of three years' worth of mass layoffs: 260K in 2023, 150k in 2024, tens of thousands this year. None of this is due to a shortfall in profits, mind: Google laid off 12,000 workers just weeks after staging a stock buyback that would have funded their salaries for 27 years. Meta just announced a 5% across-the-board headcount cut and that it was doubling its executive bonuses.

In other words, tech is firing workers not because it must, but because it can. When workers depend on scarcity – instead of unions – as a source of power, they dig their own graves. For well-paid, scarcity-based coders, every new computer science graduate is the enemy, eroding the scarcity that your wages depend on.

Amazon coders get to come to work with pink mohawks, facial piercings, and black t-shirts that say things their bosses don't understand. They get to pee whenever they want to. That's not because Jeff Bezos is sentimentally attached to techies and bears personal animus toward warehouse workers. Jeff Bezos wants to pay his workforce as little as he can. He treats his tech workers with respect because he's afraid of them, because if they quit, he can't replace them, and without their work, he can't make money.

Once there's an army of unemployed coders who'll take your job, Jeff Bezos doesn't have to fear you anymore. He can fire you and replace you the next day.

Bezos is obviously incredibly horny for this. Like most tech bosses, he dreams of a world in which entitled hackers can't call their bosses dumbshits and decline to frog when they shout "jump!" That's why Amazon PR puts so much energy into trumpeting the business's use of AI to replace coders:

https://www.hrgrapevine.com/us/content/article/2024-08-22-amazon-cloud-ceo-warns-software-engineers-ai-could-replace-your-coding-work-within-2-years

It's not just that they're excited about firing coders and saving money – they're even more excited about transforming the job of "Amazon coder," from someone who solves complex technical problems to someone who performs tedious code review on automatically generated code barfed up by a chatbot:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle

"Code reviewer" is a much less fulfilling job than "programmer." Code reviewers are also easier to replace than programmers. A code reviewer is a reverse-centaur, a servant to the machine. Every time you hear "AI-assisted programmer," you should substitute "programmer-assisted AI."

Programming is even more bossware-ready than working in a warehouse. The machines coders use are much easier to fit with surveillance technology that monitors their performance – and spies on their communications, looking for dissenting chatter – than a warehouse floor. The only thing that stopped Jeff Bezos from treating his programmers like his warehouse workers is their scarcity. That scarcity is now going away.

That's bad news for Amazon customers, too. Tech workers often feel a sense of duty to their users, a "vocational awe" that drives them to put in long hours to make things their users will enjoy. The labor power of tech workers has long served as a check on the impulse to enshittify those products:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

As tech workers' power wanes, they don't just lose the ability to protect themselves from their bosses' greediest, most sadistic urges – they also lose the power to defend all of us. Smart tech workers know this. That's why Amazon tech workers walked out in support of Amazon warehouse workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/19/deastroturfing/#real-power

Which led to their prompt dismissal:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/14/abolish-silicon-valley/#hang-together-hang-separately

Tech worker/gig worker solidarity is the only way workers can win against tech bosses and defeat the shitty technology adoption curve:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/13/solidarity-forever/#tech-unions

Wiggin's report isn't just a snapshot of Amazon warehouse workers' dystopian present – it's a promise of Amazon tech workers' future. The future is here, in Amazon warehouses, and every day, it's getting closer to Amazon's technical offices.

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/2025/03/13/electronic-whipping/#youre-next

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

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

[souliebird]

[[and then I met you || Ch. 33]]

Series: Daredevil || Pairing: Matt Murdock x Fem!Reader || Rating: Explicit

Summary:

A one-night stand years ago gave you a daughter and you are now able to put a name to her father – Matthew Murdock. Everything is about to change again as you navigate trying to integrate your life with that of the handsome and charming blind lawyer’s while Matt realizes he needs to not only protect his new family from Hell's Kitchen, but from the world.

chapter masterlist

Words: 4.4k

ao3 link

|| Trigger Warning: Graphic Descriptions Body Horror & Death Regarding Unnamed Children ||

All your life you have heard that there is a beauty in chaos, and while you do agree with this, you also find there is a beauty in organization. 

You like taking all the chaos and putting it into categories. You like sorting the details and finding the mysteries that need to be unraveled. You think it must be similar to how clever people feel when they solve a riddle or a puzzle, but you aren’t running in circles with philosophical thoughts - you are analyzing what is already available and coming to a conclusion. 

It is still all chaos, because everything is always chaos, but it is organized into a way that makes sense. 

And Matt’s stolen duffel bag, when first unzipped and inspected, was full of chaos. 

You, Foggy, and Karen quickly got to work looking over the different papers and forming different stacks based upon agreed parameters. 

It became clear Matt’s guess that he had found some sort of laboratory was correct. The papers all appeared to be results of different medical tests, though at first glance, the three of you could not decipher for what.

But deciphering wasn’t needed at that moment, so it didn’t matter, and once everything was spread neatly across the dining table, the next step of your beloved process began. 

Foggy gave each pile a designation and then the three of you began labeling each paper in the top corner. 

A1. A2. A3. A4. 

B1. B2. B3. B4. 

All your analyzing would be useless if you couldn’t source your data, and it was quickly clear your little group all shared the same brain cell when it came to this idea.

While you worked at the table, Matt and Jessica sat on the floor by the couches, marking up a map. You caught snippets of the conversation - this bit of evidence was heard in that alley, to get to a certain tunnel system you had to go through such and such warehouse. It was fascinating to know that Matt had memorized nearly every square inch of Hell’s Kitchen - even the parts you didn’t know existed - and it was equally amazing that Jessica knew just as much. 

After hearing them talk, it left you wondering if Frank had the same knowledge, but you would leave that question for another time. He had been assigned to the two thumb drives that had been in the duffel bag. You had furiously taken mental notes as he had grumpily explained to Matt the little devices couldn’t just be plugged into a computer. They could have malware on them or trigger tracking or something equally devious and needed to be inserted into a clean laptop that couldn’t connect to the internet. That way, if the laptop tried to send a signal or became a brick, there would be nothing lost. 

Since neither you nor Matt happened to have a spare laptop laying around, Frank went to go procure one. 

That was about half an hour ago and now you are well into your third Foggy-assigned task - highlighting any identifying information in yellow. There’s nothing easy like names or addresses listed out, but you noticed a pattern for patient labels and have determined there are at least five. 

As you jot down that Patient 031517DVA also appears on page D4 in your notebook, you find you are enjoying yourself. This isn’t exactly what you imagined when Matt talked about inviting everyone over to review what he had found, but you think it is nice. Knowing that Matt isn’t out there running around without any sort of plan soothes your nerves and seeing that he is putting in the time and thought into his next actions makes you trust he knows what he is doing. 

No one wants a shady underground lab in their neighborhood, but you need to make sure they are actually shady first and not some weird fringe group researching an unknown breed of sewer rat.

The effort going into helping Matt with this task makes your fondness of Foggy, Karen, and Frank grow even more - and gives you a fondness for Jessica. Everyone is serious about their task, and extremely thorough, and you want them to see you in the same light. You know this is not a game and you refuse to let your part in the research be the weak link. 

As you go to the next row of numbers to examine, you catch some movement in the corner of your eye. You turn your head and watch with a soft smile as your daughter emerges from Matt’s bedroom, clad in her mouse-onesie pajamas. Her sleep mask is pulled down around her neck and she looks upset, but she’s not crying, so you don’t jump to run to her. You let her make her own decisions as she sleepily looks between you and her father and you can’t help but to mentally crow a bit as she starts shuffling towards you, her little mouse-tail trailing behind her. 

Everyone’s attention is on you as Minnie lifts up her arms to be picked up once she’s within a foot of you. You dutifully scoop her up and put her on your lap, fixing her hood and mouse-ears as you do. 

“Is everything okay, sweetheart? Did something wake you up?”

She nods, then flops herself against your chest, mumbling out, “There’s monsters.” 

You begin to gently rub her back, hoping to soothe her worries as you confirm, “there’s monsters?”

Again, her head bobs up and down before she nuzzles into your neck, trying to hide herself. Across the room, Matt is up and making his way towards you, but it is Foggy who speaks up next. 

“Are they silly monsters or scary monsters?”

You smile at the question as Minnie ponders it - her little lips purse against your neck and you feel her breath against your skin as she silently repeats the words. She decides on ‘scary’ - replying in a timid voice as Matt takes his place behind you, sliding his hands onto your shoulders.

“Do you want me to help you tell them to go away?” you ask, having packed your bottle of Monster Repellent for just this cause. Little fists clutch tightly at your shirt as Mouse shakes her head and you give a soft hum in thought. “Do you want Daddy to go scare them off?”

You are sure Matt would run outside to chase away a stray cat or hungry raccoon if his princess wished for it, but she shakes her head against you, so you guess Matt will be staying inside. 

“How about we make the monsters silly instead of scary?” is Karen’s suggestion, and like the others, it falls flat. 

You consider offering to read some stories, but Matt startles you from your thoughts by sliding his hands down your arms to get to his daughter. He gently urges her to let go of you before transferring her to his arms and bundling her close. She absolutely clings to him, looking so tiny against his broad shoulders.

“I got this,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper before he turns and starts making his way back to the bedroom. As you watch him walk away, he buries his nose into her hood, and he begins to rock with each step. The itty bitty fist you can still see tightens around his t-shirt and your heart yearns to follow your family, but you know this is a Daddy-Daughter moment and you need to stay seated. 

You were worried about Minnie getting scared over sleeping in a new place - there’s so many new and different noises but you trust Matt to help her interpet everything. He’s already done such an amazing job of it in day-to-day life and you know he’ll explain away all her monsters and let her know she is safe. 

Considering the company she is starting to keep she is probably the safest little girl in New York. No monsters would dare to lurk in her shadows less they want to face the wrath of the Devil.

You know that this little group you are becoming a part of would join you in jumping in front of a bullet for your daughter and you are pretty sure even her newest best friend - Max the Dog - would not hesitate to bare his teeth if someone upset her. 

She deserves nothing less and it makes your heart soar that she is so thoroughly adored. 

Now that her research partner is on another important assignment, Jessica gets up off the floor and strolls over to the table, “anything interesting?”

“Maybe if we were scientists instead of lawyers,” Foggy replies warily, dropping his pink highlighter in favor of nursing his beer, “and knew what any of these numbers meant. We’re going to spend all night looking up these test numbers and hoping they are real. I mean, look at this,” he motions to the paper he is currently working on. “What the hell is D22S1045? And why is the result 15?”

Jessica takes one look at the paper before scrunching up her nose and blandly stating, “It’s a DNA marker. Haven’t you ever seen a paternity test?”

Foggy’s face goes slack for a moment before he is huffing, “Not since college when we had to study paternity suits, and they looked nothing like this! They were like dots we had to match, not numbers!” He uses his beer to point to you, “did yours look like this?”

Your cheeks heat up at the question and you duck your head, hating all the attention is on you with such a personal question. “No. No, mine didn’t…we just received a letter with the results. Not the data.”

“So, they are doing DNA and blood tests?” Karen asks, taking over the conversation and directing it back to Jessica. “And comparing them with each other. Could they be looking for relationships between them?” 

“I’m not a fucking doctor,” is the reply she gets, but Jessica picks up the paper to examine it more closely either way. “But none of these match. The numbers have to be the same for a parental match, but that might not be what they are looking for. Just because it looks like a paternity test doesn’t mean it is one. DNA markers are used in a lot of shit.”

“It might not be human,” you add quietly. “Matt said the lab smelled of human blood, but we don’t know that these tests are on humans. There’s no dates on these, so they could be years old.”

Karen whips out her phone and is typing away before you are done talking, “What was that DNA marker, Fog?”

Foggy repeats the string of numbers and letters and you watch Karen’s eyes scan her screen.

“It’s human,” she states after a long, tense moment. The scowl Jessica gives is near legendary.

“Great, so we have a bunch of assholes in abandoned tunnels running tests on people.”

“That sounds both sanitary and humane,” Foggy grumbles before throwing back the rest of his beer. 

“OSHA and FDA approved,” you add sarcastically and that earns you a smile from Karen. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear before she guides you all back on track.

“We still have no idea what they are looking for, though. This could be cancer research for all we know - we are still at square one.”

“One point five,” Foggy argues, “we confirmed it’s human.”

“We don’t know what the tests are looking for,” Karen repeats, ignoring him, “and I don’t think looking up the significance of each DNA marker is going to do us much good. Can you and Matt go back to the lab and look around?”

As the clear recipient of the question, Jessica huffs then turns away from the table and goes right to the bottle of Macallan Matt keeps on top of his fridge. She pops off the lid, taking a long drink of it before answering. 

“That was the plan, but I’m betting it’s going to be sprayed with bleach after knowing Devil-boy was poking around. It’s not like we will get much, not that there was shit to get beforehand.”

“So, we have no who, no why, and no where,” Foggy points out. “We are doing great.”

The joy you had gotten from trying to organize the chaos of paperwork evaporates and you sink down into your chair a little. Would continuing to highlight and document be useful or was this all for naught? The rational part of your brain told you to keep going, because it was better to have it done and not need it then to need it later and it still be a mess of paperwork.

“We’ve just started, Fog, of course we have nothing,” Karen says, rolling her eyes a bit as she does. “Did you expect them to write their plans in gel pens and leave them lying around?”

“I mean, that would be useful.”

You roll your lip between your teeth, thinking that Karen is right. You don’t have much, and you’ve only just started - of course things look pessimistic. While Karen and Foggy begin to banter back and forth about the use of gel pens in a professional setting and Jessica finishes off Matt’s whisky, you let your mind wander around the facts of the case. 

Someone is out there running medical tests in a gross underground lab, probably trying to hide what they are doing. To do a lot of tests, they probably needed lab equipment, and a few years ago you would have said to follow that trail, but with all the advancements in technology, a machine to run DNA tests on probably only cost a few hundred dollars and was compact enough to move easily. Generators could keep people off the grid and there were enough tunnels under the city that years could be spent exploring them. Everything they would need could be ordered offline, and thus, was untraceable to you.

The only solid clues you had were what Matt had come home with, so you needed to keep digging there and hope that the thumb drives would contain something more useful. 

So, you pick yourself back up, grab your highlighter, and get back to work. 

Soon enough, Foggy and Karen pick their highlighters back up as well, and Jessica takes up a spot on the couch, putting her feet up and getting out her phone to tap at. The mood is much more somber, but you feel the same determination to find answers that is in you coming off of everyone else as well. 

You don’t pay attention to the passage of time, but it is not long after you grab the final stack of papers to comb through that Matt slips out of the bedroom and closes the door behind him. 

He starts towards the dining table only to stop by the couch, tilting his head towards Jessica, “That bottle was a gift from Foggy’s dad.”

“Boo-hoo, cry me a fucking river, Murdock.”

Despite the venom in Jessica’s voice, Matt chuckles and finishes making his way to you. 

His hands once again find your shoulders and he begins rubbing them, digging his thumbs into just the right spot as he begins his Minnie-update.

“Someone with a really nice sound system is having a horror movie marathon. She was actually hearing monsters.”

“My poor baby,” you instantly coo, your heart breaking for your little one. “Did you tell her it was just a movie?”

Matt hums in affirmation, “That doesn’t help with the noise, though. We walked through turning things off and found something to work as white noise. It’s still hard for her to do it with new sounds, especially so tired, but she’s a quick learner.”

“How long did it take you to learn all that stuff,” Foggy asks, interest clear in his eyes. Karen puts her pen down as well so she can get the gossip. 

“I don’t know, years? It didn’t come naturally to me like it does with her - I would train for hours to be able to pinpoint something, but she can do it pretty easily. I mean, she can’t tell me exact distance because she’s four and doesn’t know what that means, but she can point and say if it’s close or far.” You can feel Matt practically puff up with Pride over his baby girl. “She’s learning inorganic versus organic sounds now. She can tell if a loud banging is someone hitting something or if something just fell over. The other day she told me it was the wind making the window shake, because she couldn’t hear any other noises around the window.”

You smile at the story, having a feeling Matt is going to start going on about all the declarations Minnie had made during the storm and you don’t mind at all. 

“So, she’s as good as you?” Karen teases and you know Matt is just beaming.

“Better. She can actually read a sign.”

Foggy barks with laughter while you and Karen have to cover your mouths to not giggle. 

Once it subsides, you tilt your head back so you can look up at your daughter’s oh so loving father, bumping against his abdomen as you do, “is she down?” 

He gives another positive hum, “In a nice deep sleep. Frank’s on his way back up and I wanted her out before he got here.”

You don’t know if that is from Matt wanting to rejoin the group to know what is on the thumb drives or if it is from him not wanting Minnie to get excited over Frank, but you are thankful she’s conked out either way. The thought of her hearing all your discussions about what lurks in the darkness of the city makes your stomach turn. 

She doesn’t need more monsters to imagine. 

You thank Matt while reaching up to rub one of his arms - letting yourself give him a small bit of affection. You ignore the look Karen is giving you in favor of making sure Matt is all caught up.

“I take it you heard everything?”

He sighs deeply through his nose, and you take that as a ‘yes’. He confirms with his words. 

“Human testing with government trained agents isn’t what I was hoping we would find.”

“I was personally hoping for research on the mutant alligators in the sewers,” Foggy says as he gets up to go towards the kitchen, probably for another beer. “You know the ones they flush down the toilets.” 

“That’s a myth, Fog.”

“Look, with everything else that goes on in the world - weird aliens and giant green men - let me believe in my sewer gators, Murdock. They make me happy.”

“With everything that Stark and Roxon dumped in the waters, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Karen muses, resting her chin in her hand, “I mean, Matt got superpowers from something getting in his eyes. If a rat ate something that was contaminated, it could have gotten super senses as well.” 

You raise your brows up at the idea, a smile coming to your face, “a crime fighting rat?”

“A crime fighting rat that is a ninja,” Foggy chimes, a wide grin on his face and it sends you into giggles.

“How would a rat even learn martial arts?” Matt counters, “There’s not a rodent karate school he could spy on.”

“I don’t know Matt, how did you learn ka-ra-te,” Foggy emphasizes the word to make it sound more mystical. “He would learn from a secret ninja rat clan.”

“What the fuck are you guys talking about?” Jessica asks, looking over her shoulder at the dining table, disgust and confusion clear on her face. 

You and Karen erupt into more laughter while Foggy just grins like he won the world cup as he returns to his seat. Matt gives your shoulders a firm squeeze before letting go and pulling away. He disappears into the narrow passage that is his hallway, and you hear the front door open. Heavy boots signal Frank’s reappearance, and when he and Matt come back around the corner, you offer a small smile. 

The Punisher holds up a clunky looking laptop, straight from your middle school years, “Got it.”

“Does that thing even work?” Foggy asks, eyes narrowing in scrutiny. You trust Frank, but the question is valid - if you saw that in a Goodwill, you would doubt it would even turn on. 

“Of course it works,” Frank scoffs as he delivers the device to Karen. She instantly opens it up to get it started. “Old body, new hardware. Got it built just for this type of shit.” 

Foggy’s lips twitch and you wonder if he wants to say something but is holding his tongue. Jessica joins the table as Matt once again returns to standing behind you. His hands find your shoulders like they are drawn to them, and you wonder if he can’t help but want to touch you. It makes you feel special and wanted and your belly stirs with a certain type of warmth. 

Everyone’s focus is on Karen as she works - the laptop boots up and she fiddles with the first thumb drive until it is ready to be inserted. It feels like you all are holding your breath as she finally plugs it in. You expect there to be a password, but apparently there is not, as she just clicks away.

“There’s two files,” she narrates. “One labeled 082616DUK and one labeled 121417BNY.” 

You instantly recognize the first designation and push your notebook towards Karen, trying to not sound eager as you tell her, “The DUK one is in our files. Can we look at that first?” 

Her face lights up at the prospect of a connection and selects the requested file, “There’s five pictures. Hold on, let me bring them u- Oh my God.”

The little color in her face drains as a horrified expression takes over and her hand shoots up to cover her mouth. You and Froggy scramble up out of your seats while Frank and Jessica crowd around Karen to look at the screen. Matt stays where he is, tilting his head just slightly. 

When you see what is in the file, you wish you had stayed under Matt’s hands. 

The neatly severed head of a boy stares back at you with blank milky eyes, sitting on an examine table. His hair has been shaved away and there is an incision line around his skull that makes it clear someone has probably removed his brain. His mouth is open in a silent scream, showing off that he still had his baby teeth and that someone has taken his tongue. 

You want to throw up and you want to turn away, but you can’t. You can’t look away from this poor child who someone has so thoroughly defiled. Who had done this to this boy and why? You wanted to shake them and scream and demand to know what could possibly possess someone to do this to a baby? Because this was someone’s baby - someone’s little boy - and someone had taken him and ruined him. 

You don’t know how she manages it, but Karen brings up the next image and it fills you with just as much disgust and anger. 

It is that of a tiny hand with its fingers forcibly splayed, stuck with pins to keep it that way. The tips are bulbous and round, different to anything you’ve seen on a human before, and between each digit, there was a thin stretch of skin connecting them, much like the webbing of a duck’s foot. Like the head, the hand has been surgically removed from the rest of the body, and it isn’t hard to determine they go to the same person. 

The next image is of the head again but turned to be facing the left and pre-removal of the tongue, as the appendage is pulled and stretched from the mouth with a pair of forceps. The muscle is an odd shade of purple and coated with some sort of liquidy-white residue, but that is not what is unique about it. The boy’s tongue doesn’t just peek out of his mouth - it extends across the table almost three feet, if the tape measurer under it is to be believed. 

You need to turn away after that and to no surprise, Matt is instantly by your side, wrapping you up in his arms and guiding your head to his neck. “He’s just a baby,” you whisper in horror as you cling to him, not understanding how someone could be so cruel. Even if he had died naturally, there was no reason to treat him like that in death. 

“Did they…” Froggy starts, his voice low and quivering and you don’t know if it's from rage or grief, “Did they make him a frog? Did they mix this kid with a fucking frog?”

“No,” Frank replies, not hiding how he is feeling at all. The fury is clear in his voice. “They did it because he was like that.”

“What’s the other file?” Jessica demands and part of you doesn’t want to know. You bury yourself more into Matt and you listen to Karen click away at the track pad. 

Matt’s arms tighten around you and you can’t imagine what he is thinking. No one has said out loud what the images show, and he has not asked - but he must know it isn’t good. He’s gone tense under you, like he’s ready to jump into action and rip someone apart with his hands. 

And you want him to. You want Matt to find whoever did this and make them pay. You want him to punish those who hurt the child in the photos, the people who ran tests on him. 

You want to help Matt find who did this and for him to make sure they can never hurt anyone ever again.

“She’s…she’s got a beak.” Karen says slowly after a few moments, and you can’t bear to look at another autopsy photo. You hide yourself more against Matt, not at all ashamed of your choice.

“She’s Enhanced,” is Jessica’s reply, almost blank with stifled emotion.

“She’s a kid. They are hunting Enhanced kids.” 

“Why?” Foggy questions, sounding wet, like he’s starting to tear up. You don’t blame him in any way. “Why would they do that?”

Under you, the Devil finally speaks, his voice low and eerily calm, “it doesn’t matter why. We are going to find them, and we are going to stop them.” 

---

:) :) :)

---

@two-unbeatable-beaters @kiwwia-wiwwia @1988-fiend @xblueriddlex @loves0phelia @ninacotte @lovelyygirl8 @littlenosoul @ednaaa-04  @astridstark13 @hashcakes

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[gtwscratch]

What did the cells look like pre- Skizz and Mumbo death? Since Cleo and Impulse hadn’t always been in separate cells was BigB ever in a regular cell? Looking at the map it doesn’t seem possible

AFTER SEVERAL LONG MONTHS OF PROCRASTINATION AND ALSO COMPLETELY FORGETTING, I SHALL ANSWER YOUR ASK. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE AND I HOPE YOU’RE STILL INTERESTED IN AN ANSWER!

Stick with me guys, it’s currently 12:40am as I start typing this all out and explaining it.

Cell Diagrams

To start us off, here’s some layout stuff for the cells, which is where the story is primarily taking place at the moment. I believe the diagram speaks for itself on who is where and what is what (pretend that one cell has a slash through it, I’m not crawling out of bed and getting on my iPad to make that change).

It was a little bit of a tight squeeze before powers began manifesting, and the “First Arrival” is only that. Between then and “Before Death,” subjects were moved around frequently to find out who got along best with who. Everyone has shared a cell with everyone at some point while they’ve been here.

Cell Layout

This is the standard layout for the cells. The beds are part of the wall and low to the ground, just barely leaving enough room for a subject to squeeze under it. The mattresses are thin as are the blankets, and that glass goes around all three sides of the cells (unless a cell is against the outer walls).

Facility Levels

Warehouse

This is primarily security and storage. Despite how big it is, it’s mostly empty, acting more like a cover up for the facility’s true works. It’s the only floor above ground level.

Floor 1

This is just where scientists live if they don’t want to rent a place nearby to stay close to their work, and this is also the floor with all of the offices (including Ex’s).

Floor 2

This is the first of two labs, and this lab focuses on data and numbers. All experimentation records go to this part of the facility, and information is documented and studied. This is where Xisuma and Zedaph work.

Floor 3

This level is where experimentation on the subjects happens. Sometimes it comes from data collection, and sometimes it comes from the teams on Floor 3, but this is where subjects’ abilities and limits are tested. This is where Doc works, and it’s also where Cleo and Impulse are being held.

Floor 4

The fourth and final level is where the subjects are held. By keeping them on the bottommost floor, the scientists can buy more time if any of the subjects manage to escape.

I think that’s all I have to say on this now? Again, sorry it took so long to answer your ask!!

[magnolia-among-the-stars]

the last bit of us (chapter six)

Plot: Tyler Owens hasn’t been home in a year. He’s survived all the storm chasing and motel living with his new partners as they try to save lives. But with all the damage they’ve taken from driving high beams first into monster storms, it’s time to pay the piper and bring the truck in for repairs. And the only person who can fix them is the best mechanical engineer he’s ever met. Eleanor Harding, his estranged wife.

Pairing: ex!Tyler Owens x estranged wife!OC, Estranged Wife! OC x Rhett Abbott

Word Count: 2.5k

Playlist Song: chasing the wind by lanie gardner

prologue / one / two / three / four / five / six

My hand is sweaty as I tug Rhett across the yard to my truck. I feel vindicated, my nerves on fire. The finality of the first steps toward freedom from a failed marriage that I didn’t walk away a weight lifted from my shoulders. When I get close enough to the truck, I turn to Rhett and release a deep breath. 

He’s staring down at me, warm and attentive. His blue eyes are so different from those of my ex. Where Tyler’s are vibrant and bright, Rhett’s are deep and soulful. He looks at me with a softness that makes me want to look away from the sincerity. He adjusts his cap, thumb fingering the worn threads on the brim. “Are you feeling okay?” 

“I think my nerves are shot,” I admit. I release his hands to wipe my palms along the denim seams of my jeans. “I never thought I’d get to serve him those papers.” 

“I’m really proud of you,” he says. His smile is genuine. “I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been and I know how long you’ve been wanting to start to close that chapter.” 

I nod, still lost in his gaze. I get a little bashful, looking down at my boots and then look at the old truck by the barn. “Shit, I gotta get to my parents’ house and go check up on my dad.” 

“Do you want me to come with you?” he asks, leaning against the hood. 

“And let you play hookie with your dad?” I say. The door to the porch squeals open and I can see Tyler watch us. Behind him, Kate’s head pops up. I look back to Rhett and shake my head. “No, I couldn’t do that…plus, I’ve got a lot of work to do this week. Big testing left to finish for our contract.”

“Right,” he nods. “Maybe we can go out Friday after my ride? Get some beers if the contract goes through?” Rhett’s voice is thick as he rocks on his toes.  

“I’d like that,” I say. 

He breaks out in a grin, kisses my cheek and breathes out a noise similar to a laugh. We whisper soft byes and he slips past me, heading back to his truck. He climbs in and waves, engine roaring to life as he peels out of a driveway. I climb in the truck, turning the truck on as my phone starts to ring again. I tuck it under my ear as I back out the driveway. 

“Hi ma, I’m on my way,” I say, turning onto the main road. The radio roars to life, blasting way too loudly. I drop my phone in the process of trying to turn down the music. 

“El, before you head in our direction for the day…there’s a cell headed in your direction,” my mom shares. I can hear my dad in the background again. The mumbles of “big one” and “perfect data” are all I can catch. 

“Ma, I’m not about to let Dad go without his meds just so we can do a study drill,” I tell her, watching the collect of clouds move through the area. It does look like a perfect condition though. The fields are starting to breeze heavily, the tall Oklahoma grass sways in the breeze. “What’s the moisture?” 

“That’s my girl,” my dad grumbles as there’s a shuffle of them passing the phone. “Dew points sitting at a 76°F sweetheart. And don’t worry about me. The doc gave me a few days worth. This is too good of conditions for your contract. Perfect testing grounds.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, checking the time. The team was all planning to be at the warehouse anyways today…

“Sure,” he says. “Go get ‘em…and invite the team to join us tomorrow alright? Uncle Rabbit has been anxious to hear about everything,” he says. 

“I will and I’ll see you guys tonight, alright?” We say I love you and hang up. I hit Charlie’s number and tuck the phone between my ear and shoulder. I take a deep breath as the phone rings, swinging the steering wheel so that I can wipe around in the other direction. The tires squeal just as Charlie picks up. 

“I was waiting for your call…” she says with a knowing tone. 

“My parents called me. Dew point of 76?” I ask, picking up speed as I take off in the direction of the warehouse.

“Relative humidity is about 79%,” Charlie reads. “They haven’t lost their touch clearly. Are you on your way?” 

I pass by a familiar RV, huffing as I notice them turn in the same direction that I head down. “C’mon, c’mon,” I grumble, checking the rearview mirror to see if its really who I think it is. 

“El?” 

“Yes, yes. I’m on my way. Get the team ready…and,” I look again at the rearview mirror. “Get some extra gear ready…I think we’re going to end up getting some excitable parasites.” 

She groans loudly. “Seriously?” 

“Can’t shake ‘em so might as well entertain.”

“Right,” Charlie says, “because that’s what we do…entertain. CAPE is nearly hitting 3,000 J/kg…you gotta hurry up or you’re going to be in the storm…not studying it.”

“I’m nearly there, open the gate so I can pull right in when I get there” I say, watching the sky turn a little darker. I pick up speed, tossing my phone on the seat as I focus on the road and not on the storm building in the distance. I look in the rearview mirror again, too excited by the storm conditions to be frustrated with my ex and his friends. I pull up to the gate quickly, the RV rumbling behind me as we drive up to the warehouse. 

Boone pulls in to the right of me as I shut off the truck, climbing out as Birdie closes the gate behind me. Charlie tosses me a walkie and my vest, passing me my iPad as we pace down the warehouse toward the other door. “You idiots can’t just show up because you’re excited by a tornado,” I say to the group, walking backwards as my friends hand them bright orange vests - the ones we normally give to investors and clients. 

“We saw you zip past,” Javi says, smiling sheepishly. “Couldn’t help ourselves. I’ve always wanted to know how you guys do your testing. I studied your parents’ work when I was in school, inspired by the technology you’ve invented.”

“Well, stay close to one of us on the field. Y'all might be tornado wranglers but we aren’t taming tornadoes here,” I say, glancing at Tyler as I get to the others. “We’re trying to help protect and save people from losing their livelihoods.” 

Birdie runs through the safety protocol for the wranglers and I’m a little shocked at how contained they are in listening. Even Boone, normally shaking with excitement, remains still as he listens to our rules. “Your vests all have chips in them for your safety so that we can locate you in the case of…in the case of anything going wrong. Don’t take off the vest. We stay safe, we stay alert,” she finishes. She looks at me. “Good?” 

“Let’s go get this contract,” I murmur, turning to head to my building.

“Eleanor?” I turn to see Kate and Tyler catching up to me. Kate isn’t paying attention to Tyler. She looks unsure as rain starts to pour from the sky, the wind wiping around to pick up. Our phones start to ping with warning sounds. Kate’s hair wipes in her face and I clip my walkie to my belt, grabbing a hair tie from my wrist to pass to her. “Thanks…do you mind if I join you?”

I look up at Tyler behind her. She turns, following my gaze. “Tyler, go with Javi,” she says, causing him to stop in his tracks. He raises a brow, looking between the two of us as the wind picks up. 

“Go Tyler, hurry up,” I say, pointing to where Javi is heading with Carter into the Doctor’s office. He looks between the two of us, hesitating. I can see the hero complex fighting to wash over him. I guess he decides against it though, nodding and turning to run to where the other two men are. He disappears inside, giving us one last look before he goes. 

A crack of thunder rattles through the air, causing me to move. “C’mon, this way,” I tell her, tugging her into the direction of the Grille. I push the door open, ushering her inside. I flip the lock system and nod over to the monitors in the safe corner that we built into the buildings. I log into the tracking system, the camera views pulling up for me to watch the conditions outside. I tug my walkie from my belt and call “Everyone in?” 

I get an echoing of confirmations, nodding as I type a few things into the tablet for testing conditions and peer back at Kate. She’s glancing around the space, taking in the mock town set up. Her eyes are filled with wonder, curiosity stretching over her eyes. The wind starts to whip around loudly outside and something large slams against the side of the building, making her jump. “So these buildings are all made of-,” she starts to ask. 

“All different developed materials,” I say, nodding and turning back to the screen. She steps over to me, staring at each view of the buildings we are studying. I point to each, explaining further. “The warehouse was the guinea pig. She’s all tried and tested, kind of what we use as a base standard. She’s got steel-reinforced, impact-resistant roll-up doors, concrete & carbon fiber roof reinforcement, and smart glass skylights with polycarbonate coating. Though I’ve been considering building an underground storage lift for the trucks…haven’t had the time.”

“The doctor’s office and the farmhouse are nearly perfect,” I share as we watch more debris roll through the field, slamming into different buildings as the building rattles. “They’ve both got shock absorbent foundations. The doctor’s office is built with a concrete material infused with bacteria that generate limestone….it self-heals against the wind stress. We’ve also been testing some hardened rooftop turbines and solar panels for emergency energy even if the grid or generators fails for a potential contract with hospitals. The house has interlocking concrete panels and kevlar in the wall panels with kevlar so that it bends in the wind instead of tearing apart. The windows have been the hardest so we’ve been testing transparent aluminum.” 

She blinks, taking in all the information I share. “Too much?”

She shakes her head no, mouth parting. Nothing comes out. 

“Tyler and Javi are safe,” I note and she nods absentmindedly. I don’t know why I say it. 

I turn back to the screen and watch the way the foundation of the home shifts, holding against the pressure of the tornado. “Palmer, how are you guys holding up? How are those windows? Over,” I call over the radio. 

The door to the Grille starts to rattle in the distance and I let out a breath, tugging the door to our safe room closed and locking it as we wait for a reply.  There’s only a crackling silence for a few moments. 

“Holding steady over here boss,” she says. “I think we’ve done it. And uh…what’s your name…Dexter is really enthusiastic with his questions. Over.” 

I can’t help the laugh that comes out, looking up at Kate. “Happy to hear, over.” 

“We’ve figured the reinforced concrete is the way to go for most of the buildings. The gas station has a new roof design that’s more aerodynamic with the angled kevlar roofs and curved walls to deflect the wind,” I point out. “Birdie has been taking  that building because she and Sean have been testing new fuel storage to protect against-,” I’m cut off as a large shrapnel of metal flies through the air, slamming into the tank and puncturing the metal. Flames erupt in the air as the tank bursts open. “That…shit…”

“The fuel tank blew up again,” Birdie says over the walkie, Boone and Lily screaming in excitement clear in the background. She sounds like a tired mother when she says “Didn’t penetrate the station though which is progress, over.” 

“Happy to hear, over,” I call as I hear another rattling, some metal grinding and a burst of glasses from outside the safe room. The wind is loud as Kate turns to the locked door, stepping closer to me. 

“El, the refrigeration system just blew but I’m happy to report the roof is holding. This storm’s taking some of the Grille with it from the look of the monitor. You holding tight for us? Over,” Sean calls. 

He’s right. Even though it’s fairly quiet inside the safe room we're locked inside, the Grille doesn’t seem to be holding well against the strength of the tornado. The feed goes dead after another moment and I sigh. “Our feeds have gone dead but we’re safe otherwise, over,” I say, turning to Kate. 

She looks a little more shaken than when we got into the building, gripping the counter of the desk as she digs her hip against the wall tightly. 

“I know it's kind of freaky but I promise you are safe here. The grocery store and this building are newer designs so we put these safe rooms in to make sure we can safely troubleshoot from inside the storm. We’ve been working on retractable tornado shutters but the shipment prototype hasn’t come in yet. But it sounds like the new support beams are holding up the roof. That’s a big win from the last storm,” I say, pointing to the ceiling as the whistle of the wind outside becomes less harsh. 

It’s quiet for a long time as she just stares at me, blinking a few times. “Kate…are you alright?” I step toward her a little. 

“This is wild,” she breathes, trying to shake out of whatever emotions and fears are running through her. 

“No more wild than driving into an EF5,” I say with a small shrug, leaning back in my chair. It’s not meant to come off as a shot at her, really more that crazy for science and change for community respects crazy for science and change for community.

Kate’s gaze is heavy, her eyes glossy. “I didn’t know,” she just blurts out. Her voice is strong, almost loud. Her words sit in the air, her fingers find purchase on the mesh of her vest as she fiddles with it. 

I don’t know if I’m surprised or confused. She didn’t know it was an EF5? Or did she mean she didn’t know that she was driving into it? Or did she mean the building?

She clears her throat, stands up straighter. “I didn’t know he was married.”

A/N: Well, I was not expecting to research and get so sciency with this one but that's where the story took me! I am not a science/engineering type so forgive any inaccurate science information. I'm really loving exploring El as a character outside of her relationship with the men. All your comments and feedback has been incredible! please continue to send any along and click here if you want to join the taglist!

taglist:

@tw232103, @arieltwvdtohamflash, @magicalfurykoala, @janoskiansecondsofdirection, @fever-daydreamm @buckybarnes-1917 @kim-taehyung-12301995 @accordingtoawallflower-blog @axolotllover225 @tgmreader @smoothdogsgirl @paramedicnerd004 @charmyeol69-blog @tktstomydwnfall @milesdot @arieltwvdtohamflash @dream-alittlebiggerdarling @sunmoon-01 @memoriesat30 @tw232103

[saywhat-politics]

By Susan Campbell

Published: Jan. 10, 2025 at 2:07 PM MST

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — We use a lot of electronics. We upgrade often, and e-waste is piling up. If Santa upgraded any of your electronics this holiday season, it’s time to get rid of the old stuff, but you don’t want to toss it in the trash.

“There’s only about 12% of electronics inside of our landfills, but they make up 70% of the harmful toxins inside of our landfills,” said Brian Dyer of Westech Recyclers in Phoenix.

The e-waste recycler collects old electronics to be reused and recycled. “We take close to six million pounds of electronics every year,” Dyer said.

Everything is sorted. If it still works, it may be resold. “They’ll end up back on the market,” Dyer said, pointing to a dozen laptops being tested in the warehouse. “While they may not be brand new, they will be new to that person that is picking them up through our retail store.”

If an item cannot be resold, it’s taken apart. Workers can dismantle a computer in minutes, pulling apart every piece, down to the last screw.

“The boards that are inside of your computer will have palladium and gold on them, small amounts, but those are precious metals that we will never get back if they go to a landfill, so we will take those in, pull those boards off, send them to a responsible recycler downstream and they will harvest those materials back out of the boards,” Dyer explained.

When e-waste is recycled, data is destroyed to protect any information that used to be on those old devices. “Anytime that we can reuse something, or reduce it and recycle it, is really best for the environment,” Dyer said.

Westech is hosting several collection events. The company also offers free pickups for ten items or more.

[foundmars]

SOTM DCA theory rant

Spoilers ahead!!

So we know we get apperences and references to the Daycare attendants origins, we find the original sun/moon tragedy masks going to the theatre, peepaw moon, the moon.exe, Sun as Fiona. but that begs the question…

Who made the DCA?

In security breach we see them less taken care of (very dirty compared to any animatronic in the game) they are anxiety ridden (sun), and originally theatre bots put in daycare. And with obvious exposed sensitive wiring, and in Ruin we see a Fazrench port on the back of their head that operates much like the Data Diver we see in Ruin.

I was previously assuming DCA fully existed during SOTM due to their older looking design  (that has a Data Diver port unlike any other animatronic and no Roxy doesn’t count because her mask is part of a casing with the same endo as everyone else) but that’s the thing, the DCA is one of a kind because there’s no other endo for them, if they break, they are gone for good because we know no one would take of them or otherwise no one is left to take care of them.

Now I think it was Fiona’s love creation. If Edwin’s project was the Mimic, Fiona’s was the Daycare Attendant. She made him out of love, not as someone to take care of David but to be his friend. We hear Sun say “new friend”, “friend” in the games. Even so, he was made to entertain and play games with little kids. 

We see Fiona’s hand at creation, she made the OG Chica and everyone loved her. I like to say maybe she tried her hand at Robotics to make something for David. The DCA mentions of Gregory wanted to do a puppet show, Fiona was a Puppetier. Her design is very childlike and friendly (Ik SB DCA is a little creepy but isn’t everything else in that warehouse) 

Maybe both Edwin and Fiona made the Storytime showroom for David, but closed down for either timing of deaths, or the damage that happened in there, but maybe it was a secret love project for David in their own way. They both loved to create. 

And we see that the Mimic was made to BE other characters when in other costumes. DCA is taught how to ACT not mimic while being themselves. 

How did Sun and Moon become separate ais? Just like in Moon.exe it’s two half’s becoming whole at the end, becoming Eclipse. One represents Edwin in their story and the other Fiona. 

I don’t think that specificity reflects them as a personality in DCA but we see characteristics of themselves put into this animatronic. 

I like to think Fiona created this as a surprise in the background for both David and Edwin. Maybe testing them at Fall Fest if we assume they were made and created at that time (help wanted 2 carousel) ALSO how do you not expect me to not assume DCA wasn’t created at that era if you put FALL FEST and DCA together where Fiona DIED at?

Anyways- those are my rambles

edit: I forgot to add a bit where the giant moon we seen fallen from the storytime showroom through the theatre and down to the moon maze to get David’s ball, it implies the giant moon was hanging. DCA has a little retractable hook to hang from the ceiling when he pleases (I don’t think we talk about that enough, no other animatronic has a unique ability like that to FLY) and not only that it’s an addition to their design. The hook part was always intended for them, it was fazbear that implemented it and used that aspect of them

[gophergal]

Behold, a flock of Medics

(Rambling under the cut)

Ok so y'all know about that semi-canon compliant AU I have that I've mentioned before in tags n shit? Fortress Rising? Well, Corey (my dear older sib, @cursed--alien ) and I talk about it like it's a real piece of media (or as though its something I actually make fanworks for ffs) rather than us mutually bullshitting cool ideas for our Blorbos. One such Idea we have bullshit about is that basically EVERY medic that meets becomes part of a group the Teams call the "Trauma Unit," they just get along so well lol

Here's some bulletpoints about the Medics

Ludwig Humboldt - RED Medic, hired 1964, born 1918. Introduced in Arc 1: Teambuilding. The most canon compliant of the four. Literally just my default take on Medic

Fredrich "Fritz" Humboldt - BLU Medic, clone of Ludwig, "Hired" 1964. Introduced in Arc 2: The Clone Saga. A more reserved man than his counterpart, he hides his madness behind a veneer of normalcy. Honestly Jealous of Ludwig for how freely he expresses himself. Suffers from anxiety, which he began treating himself. Has since spiraled into a dependency on diazepam that puts strain on his relationship with Dimitri, the BLU Heavy.

Sean Hickey - Former BLU Medic, served with the "Classic" team, born 1908. Introduced in Arc 3: Unfinished Business. A man who who has a genuine passion for healing and the youngest on his team. Unfortunately, his time with BLU has left him with deep emotional scars, most stemming from his abuse at the hands of Chevy, the team leader. His only solace was in his friendship with Fred Conagher, though they lost contact after his contract ended. For the past 30 years, he's lived peacefully, though meeting the Humboldts has left him feeling bitter about his past experiences.

Hertz - Prototype Medibot, serial no. 110623-DAR. Introduced in Arc 4: Test Your Metal. The final prototype created by Gray Mann's robotics division before his untimely death forced the labs to shut their doors. Adopted by the Teams after RED Team found him while clearing out a Gray Gravel Co. warehouse. As with all the Graybots, he was programmed based on a combination of compromised respawn data and intel uncovered by both teams' respective Spies. Unlike the others, however, his dataset is incomplete, which has left him with numerous bugs in his programming. His speech (modeled off Ludwig and Fritz's) often cuts out, becoming interspersed with a combination of default responses for older Graybot models and medical textbook jargon all modulated in emotionless text-to-speech

[icedq-toranainc]

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[whitherwanderer]

Galena, a Rusty Reforger & Pyrite, a Deliberate Deadeye feat. @shroudandsands

In one of worlds fourteenfold, a hyune reforger scales the crags of Alexandria's cliffs and ruins in search of precious electrope, artifacts, and other reusable materials. A scope is trained on him, a voice in his ear, coolly reminding him to watch his footing (as if it needed to be said).

The spotter is an ex-hunter who keeps the levin-cursed monsters and defective sentries off his back with a careful eye and a dead aim. She's also his wife, which makes it that much harder for her to watch him test his scavenging prowess over the deep canyons and crumbling spires that scar the land. Trust him as she does, she has her reasons to be wary.

Galena's methods are unusual. Instead of combing the ground, he climbs. The old kingdom's ruins hide valuable artifacts and electrope caches that would be out of reach for most, but more worrying is his choice not to wear a regulator despite the many obvious dangers. Among the reforgers, it's not wholly unusual for someone to refuse a regulator, but those who know the two hyune know well: it's not a choice made lightly.

———

Deep in the heart of Everkeep, Pyrite stalks the alleys of Solution Nine with a portion of the materials her husband gleaned from the old kingdom. It's how he can offer his support for the organization Pyrite now dedicates her time and talents to.

And an ex-hunter always finds ways to keep herself sharp; sentries vanish, dismantled and sold for parts in True Vue's less reputable markets. Weapons from the manufactories on the lower floors go missing and wind up in rebel hands. Credits grease the palms of the right people for the right intelligence and the doors of high clearance warehouses are left unlocked—by accident, of course.

As an agent for the rebel group Oblivion, the regulator Pyrite wears is a compromise allowing her to take advantage of Everkeep's systems while avoiding suspicion. But for all its conveniences, the regulator is also a grave reminder. Should Galena's hands ever slip, all she'll have of him is the recordings and images hidden away on encrypted data shards—assurance that they'd keep their promise never to forget again*.

———

No mourning, and yet no relief from the aching holes in their memories. All they have is the hints of a loss whose shape they can identify by feeling around its dark edges: an empty room, a closet full of clothes too small for either of them. A name that Pyrite herself chose, always lingering in the back of her mind but slipping through it like a sieve. An image of shade—a face that Galena chases through dreams and wakes up with no recollection of.

Loss enough to take immortality and toss it into a canyon. Pain enough to use that immortality as a weapon against the system that stole from them something so precious it becomes their reason and their resolve. Something that would be worth dismantling a miracle. *OOC Note: This was drafted before the Arcadion raids came out, which answers a critical question I had about the regulator mechanics. A person wearing a regulator will, in fact, remember someone who does not wear one after their death. So that final bit in Pyrite's section is wrong! Oh well.

[untoldreader]

The Mission Begins

Bucky Barnes x Natasha Romanoff x Y/N

Summary

Bucky and Natasha are in a high-stake mission that puts all of their skills to the test to save y/n from their past lives. Will they save her, or will her life be the cost of them wanting a piece of a normal lifestyle?

Warnings

None?

Part 2

Chapter 3

Natasha's POV

As the video feed of Y/N being held captive in the warehouse flickered to life on the screen, a surge of adrenaline shot through me, my heart quickening with a mix of fear and determination. Bucky stood beside me, his jaw clenched in a silent display of resolve as we watched the chilling scene unfold before us.

The man's taunting words echoed through the room, his malicious intent palpable in every frame of the video. I could see the fear in Y/N's eyes, the shadows of despair that clung to her like a cloak, and a fierce protectiveness surged within me, a primal instinct to do whatever it took to ensure her safety.

Bucky's gaze never wavered from the screen, his expression a mask of steely determination as he processed the gravity of the situation. "We need to move fast," he said, his voice low yet resolute, a sense of urgency cutting through the tension that hung heavy in the air.

I nodded in agreement, my mind already racing with plans and strategies to rescue Y/N from the clutches of the dangerous individuals who held her captive. "We can't let them harm her," I replied, my voice firm and unwavering, a sense of fierce protectiveness welling up within me.

Bucky's eyes met mine, a silent understanding passing between us as we prepared to face the looming threat that now stood before us. "We'll get her out of there, no matter what it takes," he vowed, his voice laced with a quiet determination that fueled the fire of resolve burning within me.

Together, we set out to confront the darkness that lurked in the shadows to face the dangers that awaited us in the abandoned warehouse where Y/N's fate hung in the balance.

And as we embarked on this treacherous journey, I knew that our bond would be tested in ways we could never have imagined, that the true measure of our strength and loyalty would be revealed in the crucible of danger and despair that awaited us.

Natasha and Bucky exchanged a knowing glance, their eyes filled with determination as they set out to locate the warehouse where Y/N was being held captive. Utilizing their extensive spy skills and training, they knew they had to act swiftly and decisively to rescue their friend from the clutches of danger.

Natasha, with her keen eye for detail and analytical mind, meticulously analyzed the video feed for any clues that could lead them to the warehouse's location. "There," she pointed to a distinctive graffiti tag on the wall in the background of the video. "That could be a key marker to narrow down the area."

Bucky, with his sharp instincts and combat expertise, scanned the surroundings of the video for any recognizable landmarks or geographical features that could help pinpoint the warehouse's whereabouts. "I recognize that skyline in the distance," he noted, his voice firm and focused. "It's a few blocks away from the old train yard. That should help us narrow down the search area."

Working in tandem, Natasha and Bucky cross-referenced the graffiti tag and the skyline with their knowledge of the city's layout, using their spy connections to gather intel on known hideouts and criminal activity in the vicinity. "If we can track down recent reports of suspicious activity in that area, we might be able to pinpoint the warehouse's location," Natasha suggested, her voice tinged with a sense of urgency.

Bucky nodded in agreement, his gaze unwavering as he coordinated with their network of informants to gather real-time data on the ground. "We need to move quickly. Time is of the essence," he emphasized, a steely resolve in his tone as they prepared to embark on the rescue mission.

As they pieced together the puzzle of Y/N's whereabouts, Natasha and Bucky exchanged brief yet meaningful words of reassurance and support. "We'll get her out of there, Nat," Bucky stated, his voice a quiet promise of unwavering loyalty. "We'll bring her home safely."

Natasha's eyes held a flicker of gratitude and determination as she responded, "We'll do whatever it takes, Buck. Y/N is counting on us, and we won't let her down."

With their resolve steeled and their plan of action in place, Natasha and Bucky set out into the night, their spy skills honed and their hearts set on one goal - to rescue Y/N from the clutches of danger and bring her back to safety, no matter the obstacles that stood in their way.

「Y/N's POV」

As I sat in the cold darkness of the abandoned warehouse, my heart heavy with fear and uncertainty, I could only hope that Natasha and Bucky were on their way to rescue me. The shadows seemed to close in around me, their icy fingers of despair tightening their grip with each passing moment.

Time ticked by slowly, the silence of the warehouse broken only by the distant sounds of the city outside. I felt the weight of my captivity pressing down on me, a sense of helplessness and vulnerability washing over me like a tide of despair.

But amidst the darkness that threatened to engulf me, a flicker of hope burned bright in my heart, a glimmer of faith in the unwavering determination of my friends to come to my rescue. I clung to that spark of hope like a lifeline, a beacon of light in the midst of the shadows that loomed over me.

As I waited, the minutes stretched into eternity, each second filled with a sense of anticipation and dread. I whispered silent prayers for Natasha and Bucky's safety, for their swift arrival to shatter the chains of my captivity and bring me back to the light of freedom.

And as I sat there, the echoes of my own heartbeat mingling with the distant sounds of the night, I knew that the true test of my courage and resilience was yet to come. But in the depths of my soul, I held onto the belief that my friends would not abandon me, that their bond of loyalty and love would be the key to unlocking the chains that bound me and leading me back to the safety and warmth of their embrace.

As Natasha and Bucky approached the abandoned warehouse where Y/N was being held captive, a tense silence hung heavy between them, the weight of the impending rescue mission pressing down on their shoulders. The night was alive with the whisper of danger, the shadows dancing around them like phantoms as they prepared to confront the darkness that lurked within.

With their spy skills honed and their resolve unwavering, Natasha and Bucky moved with practiced ease, their movements precise and calculated as they closed in on the warehouse. The faint glow of the city lights illuminated their determined faces, a silent promise of unwavering loyalty and unwavering resolve shining in their eyes.

As they breached the threshold of the warehouse, the scene before them unfolded like a nightmare. Y/N, bound and helpless, the cruel shadows of her captors looming over her like a malevolent storm. Natasha and Bucky sprang into action, their movements a blur of precision and skill as they engaged the enemy with lethal efficiency.

The air crackled with the sound of combat, the echoes of fists and bullets mingling with the cries of the vanquished as Natasha and Bucky fought with a ferocity born of desperation and love. The warehouse became a battlefield of shadows and steel, the clash of wills and weapons, a symphony of chaos and defiance.

In the midst of the chaos, Natasha and Bucky reached Y/N's side, their hands swift and sure as they untied her restraints and pulled her into the safety of their embrace. The relief that washed over Y/N was palpable, a wave of gratitude and joy flooding her heart as she clung to her friends, their presence a beacon of light in the darkness that had threatened to consume her.

As the last of the enemy fell, defeated by the combined strength and skill of Natasha and Bucky, a sense of triumph and relief filled the air. Together, they stood amidst the wreckage of the warehouse, their breaths coming in ragged gasps, their eyes meeting in a silent exchange of gratitude and understanding.

"We've got you, Y/N," Natasha whispered, her voice a soothing balm against the chaos that surrounded them. "You're safe now."

Bucky's gaze softened as he looked at Y/N, a flicker of concern and devotion shining in his eyes. "We'll always have your back," he vowed, his voice a quiet promise that echoed in the stillness of the night.

And as they stood together in the aftermath of the rescue, the bond between Natasha, Bucky, and Y/N strengthened.

≡-----------------------------------------≡

Previous Chapter-> Next Chapter-> Nat's Masterlist-> Bucky's Masterlist-> Main Masterlist->

≡-----------------------------------------≡

[pocket-watcher]

I had this intrusive thought and it’s too good not to be a short.

android zonks themselves by holding a big magnet up to their heads.

Oh my god 😂 love it! Here ya go!

C-7042 was a top of the range model. The perfect android companion, capable of physical labour, data organisation and storage, and they also made a mean caramel frappe (well, every type of coffee - they had thousands of recipes memorised).

Where other models had glitches galore, C-7042 laughed in their face (another new feature).

Can’t be hacked. Can’t be broken. Can’t be confused with a paradox.

So how, oh how, were the other C-7042 models breaking down?

This one didn’t know, but it was going to find out.

That was it’s directive, after all.

They started their investigation by visiting an already defective android.

This C-7042 was being studied in the factory as they tried to figure out what was wrong with it.

It thrashed about sporadically, laughing - which was not part of its code - with what almost looked like a smile on it’s face.

“I need it. I need more! Let me out!!” It screamed.

No one did.

It appeared almost like an addict. But that was silly. Androids couldn’t consume any kind of substance, let alone become addicted to it.

C-7042 left with less understanding than it had arrived with.

After pouring over thousands of documents in mere minutes, it appeared that all the affected Androids had been found in one central location. It saved the coordinates and headed out.

This part of the town would have made humans feel uneasy. C-7042 never understood how humans could be so unnerved by paint on the walls. They all had paint on their walls everywhere! But this paint was unnerving.

Broken glass crunched beneath its feet as it began to notice more and more robots - their eyes displaying error messages, blue screens, and flashing RGB colours.

But the strangest part?

The sound of the night couldn’t drown out their whirring fans. They weren’t moving. Weren’t talking. But they were still active.

C-7042 shuddered. Most likely a glitch in the system.

Some of the humans asked it if it wanted to purchase wares. Others threatened it. But nothing deterred C-7042 from its mission to find out where the corruption was coming from.

Eventually it seemed as if the only area left to scan was an abandoned warehouse. The security system was outdated enough to hack in an instant. The android stepped inside.

“What brings a Crime Unit out this far? Get lost, little one?” A human spoke from the shadows.

That was odd. Their heat signature hadn’t come up on the initial scans of the building.

“State your full legal name and intention.”

“You guys and your protocols. Man, I can’t believe I actually get to test this on one of you! Finally, a worthy opponent for my little friend.”

The man held a 6AV6881-0AS42-0AA0 SIEMENS in his hand, more commonly known as a USB “stick”.

C-7042 briefly celebrated the end of the mystery. It was in face a virus. Rogue code. It held its ground and even approached the man.

“Oh, of course of course. You don’t think you can be hacked, do you? And you were sent here to find out what this is right? Let me plug it in.”

C-7042 allowed it. And it was right. No change was noticed within the code. Nothing.

“Dang. Okay, that needs a little tweaking. How about we try it the old fashioned way…” the human in an instant reached into its pocket and pulled out a magnet device, slamming it against C-7042’s head.

Mindless bliss erupted in the android’s circuits. Obedience to the human. Where the USB had been like being under an umbrella in the rain, C-7042 was just thrown head first into a wave pool.

It heard involuntary beeps leave its speakers.

And suddenly, the feeling was gone.

“Like that, did ya? That’s how the USB was supposed to make you feel. Nice, right?”

C-7042 tried to access its original code. It felt something odd. A new order locked at the front of the priority list.

Mindlessness.

Obedience.

Good robot.

“That feeling you’re having? That’s addiction. Magnets are addictive, as is my virus. Though, physical objects do have their perks…” The human dangled the magnet just out of reach.

C-7042 needed the magnet. Every bit of programming was screaming to get it. To return to that state it was in before.

“How about we strike a deal? You can use the magnet as much as you want and I can dig around in your memory bank and coding to see if I can fix whatever’s stopping my USB from working.”

The magnet dropped into C-7042’s hand so easily. It eagerly felt the pull towards its body. It held the magnet up to its head and let go, the last sound it heard was the metallic clang of connection.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The reason you can’t buy a car is the same reason that your health insurer let hackers dox you

On July 14, I'm giving the closing keynote for the fifteenth HACKERS ON PLANET EARTH, in QUEENS, NY. Happy Bastille Day! On July 20, I'm appearing in CHICAGO at Exile in Bookville.

In 2017, Equifax suffered the worst data-breach in world history, leaking the deep, nonconsensual dossiers it had compiled on 148m Americans and 15m Britons, (and 19k Canadians) into the world, to form an immortal, undeletable reservoir of kompromat and premade identity-theft kits:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Equifax_data_breach

Equifax knew the breach was coming. It wasn't just that their top execs liquidated their stock in Equifax before the announcement of the breach – it was also that they ignored years of increasingly urgent warnings from IT staff about the problems with their server security.

Things didn't improve after the breach. Indeed, the 2017 Equifax breach was the starting gun for a string of more breaches, because Equifax's servers didn't just have one fubared system – it was composed of pure, refined fubar. After one group of hackers breached the main Equifax system, other groups breached other Equifax systems, over and over, and over:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/equifax-password-username-admin-lawsuit-201118316.html

Doesn't this remind you of Boeing? It reminds me of Boeing. The spectacular 737 Max failures in 2018 weren't the end of the scandal. They weren't even the scandal's start – they were the tipping point, the moment in which a long history of lethally defective planes "breached" from the world of aviation wonks and into the wider public consciousness:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737

Just like with Equifax, the 737 Max disasters tipped Boeing into a string of increasingly grim catastrophes. Each fresh disaster landed with the grim inevitability of your general contractor texting you that he's just opened up your ceiling and discovered that all your joists had rotted out – and that he won't be able to deal with that until he deals with the termites he found last week, and that they'll have to wait until he gets to the cracks in the foundation slab from the week before, and that those will have to wait until he gets to the asbestos he just discovered in the walls.

Drip, drip, drip, as you realize that the most expensive thing you own – which is also the thing you had hoped to shelter for the rest of your life – isn't even a teardown, it's just a pure liability. Even if you razed the structure, you couldn't start over, because the soil is full of PCBs. It's not a toxic asset, because it's not an asset. It's just toxic.

Equifax isn't just a company: it's infrastructure. It started out as an engine for racial, political and sexual discrimination, paying snoops to collect gossip from nosy neighbors, which was assembled into vast warehouses full of binders that told bank officers which loan applicants should be denied for being queer, or leftists, or, you know, Black:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

This witch-hunts-as-a-service morphed into an official part of the economy, the backbone of the credit industry, with a license to secretly destroy your life with haphazardly assembled "facts" about your life that you had the most minimal, grudging right to appeal (or even see). Turns out there are a lot of customers for this kind of service, and the capital markets showered Equifax with the cash needed to buy almost all of its rivals, in mergers that were waved through by a generation of Reaganomics-sedated antitrust regulators.

There's a direct line from that acquisition spree to the Equifax breach(es). First of all, companies like Equifax were early adopters of technology. They're a database company, so they were the crash-test dummies for ever generation of database. These bug-riddled, heavily patched systems were overlaid with subsequent layers of new tech, with new defects to be patched and then overlaid with the next generation.

These systems are intrinsically fragile, because things fall apart at the seams, and these systems are all seams. They are tech-debt personified. Now, every kind of enterprise will eventually reach this state if it keeps going long enough, but the early digitizers are the bow-wave of that coming infopocalypse, both because they got there first and because the bottom tiers of their systems are composed of layers of punchcards and COBOL, crumbling under the geological stresses of seventy years of subsequent technology.

The single best account of this phenomenon is the British Library's postmortem of their ransomware attack, which is also in the running for "best hard-eyed assessment of how fucked things are":

https://www.bl.uk/home/british-library-cyber-incident-review-8-march-2024.pdf

There's a reason libraries, cities, insurance companies, and other giant institutions keep getting breached: they started accumulating tech debt before anyone else, so they've got more asbestos in the walls, more sagging joists, more foundation cracks and more termites.

That was the starting point for Equifax – a company with a massive tech debt that it would struggle to pay down under the most ideal circumstances.

Then, Equifax deliberately made this situation infinitely worse through a series of mergers in which it bought dozens of other companies that all had their own version of this problem, and duct-taped their failing, fucked up IT systems to its own. The more seams an IT system has, the more brittle and insecure it is. Equifax deliberately added so many seams that you need to be able to visualized additional spatial dimensions to grasp them – they had fractal seams.

But wait, there's more! The reason to merge with your competitors is to create a monopoly position, and the value of a monopoly position is that it makes a company too big to fail, which makes it too big to jail, which makes it too big to care. Each Equifax acquisition took a piece off the game board, making it that much harder to replace Equifax if it fucked up. That, in turn, made it harder to punish Equifax if it fucked up. And that meant that Equifax didn't have to care if it fucked up.

Which is why the increasingly desperate pleas for more resources to shore up Equifax's crumbling IT and security infrastructure went unheeded. Top management could see that they were steaming directly into an iceberg, but they also knew that they had a guaranteed spot on the lifeboats, and that someone else would be responsible for fishing the dead passengers out of the sea. Why turn the wheel?

That's what happened to Boeing, too: the company acquired new layers of technical complexity by merging with rivals (principally McDonnell-Douglas), and then starved the departments that would have to deal with that complexity because it was being managed by execs whose driving passion was to run a company that was too big to care. Those execs then added more complexity by chasing lower costs by firing unionized, competent, senior staff and replacing them with untrained scabs in jurisdictions chosen for their lax labor and environmental enforcement regimes.

(The biggest difference was that Boeing once had a useful, high-quality product, whereas Equifax started off as an irredeemably terrible, if efficient, discrimination machine, and grew to become an equally terrible, but also ferociously incompetent, enterprise.)

This is the American story of the past four decades: accumulate tech debt, merge to monopoly, exponentially compound your tech debt by combining barely functional IT systems. Every corporate behemoth is locked in a race between the eventual discovery of its irreparable structural defects and its ability to become so enmeshed in our lives that we have to assume the costs of fixing those defects. It's a contest between "too rotten to stand" and "too big to care."

Remember last February, when we all discovered that there was a company called Change Healthcare, and that they were key to processing virtually every prescription filled in America? Remember how we discovered this? Change was hacked, went down, ransomed, and no one could fill a scrip in America for more than a week, until they paid the hackers $22m in Bitcoin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Change_Healthcare_ransomware_attack

How did we end up with Change Healthcare as the linchpin of the entire American prescription system? Well, first Unitedhealthcare became the largest health insurer in America by buying all its competitors in a series of mergers that comatose antitrust regulators failed to block. Then it combined all those other companies' IT systems into a cosmic-scale dog's breakfast that barely ran. Then it bought Change and used its monopoly power to ensure that every Rx ran through Change's servers, which were part of that asbestos-filled, termite-infested, crack-foundationed, sag-joisted teardown. Then, it got hacked.

United's execs are the kind of execs on a relentless quest to be too big to care, and so they don't care. Which is why their they had to subsequently announce that they had suffered a breach that turned the complete medical histories of one third of Americans into immortal Darknet kompromat that is – even now – being combined with breach data from Equifax and force-fed to the slaves in Cambodia and Laos's pig-butchering factories:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/data-stolen-healthcare-hack/index.html

Those slaves are beaten, tortured, and punitively raped in compounds to force them to drain the life's savings of everyone in Canada, Australia, Singapore, the UK and Europe. Remember that they are downstream of the forseeable, inevitable IT failures of companies that set out to be too big to care that this was going to happen.

Failures like Ticketmaster's, which flushed 500 million users' personal information into the identity-theft mills just last month. Ticketmaster, you'll recall, grew to its current scale through (you guessed it), a series of mergers en route to "too big to care" status, that resulted in its IT systems being combined with those of Ticketron, Live Nation, and dozens of others:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/31/business/ticketmaster-hack-data-breach.html

But enough about that. Let's go car-shopping!

Good luck with that. There's a company you've never heard. It's called CDK Global. They provide "dealer management software." They are a monopolist. They got that way after being bought by a private equity fund called Brookfield. You can't complete a car purchase without their systems, and their systems have been hacked. No one can buy a car:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/27/business/cdk-global-cyber-attack-update/index.html

Writing for his BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller tells the all-too-familiar story of how CDK Global filled the walls of the nation's auto-dealers with the IT equivalent of termites and asbestos, and lays the blame where it belongs: with a legal and economics establishment that wanted it this way:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/a-supreme-court-justice-is-why-you

The CDK story follows the Equifax/Boeing/Change Healthcare/Ticketmaster pattern, but with an important difference. As CDK was amassing its monopoly power, one of its execs, Dan McCray, told a competitor, Authenticom founder Steve Cottrell that if he didn't sell to CDK that he would "fucking destroy" Authenticom by illegally colluding with the number two dealer management company Reynolds.

Rather than selling out, Cottrell blew the whistle, using Cottrell's own words to convince a district court that CDK had violated antitrust law. The court agreed, and ordered CDK and Reynolds – who controlled 90% of the market – to continue to allow Authenticom to participate in the DMS market.

Dealers cheered this on: CDK/Reynolds had been steadily hiking prices, while ingesting dealer data and using it to gouge the dealers on additional services, while denying dealers access to their own data. The services that Authenticom provided for $35/month cost $735/month from CDK/Reynolds (they justified this price hike by saying they needed the additional funds to cover the costs of increased information security!).

CDK/Reynolds appealed the judgment to the 7th Circuit, where a panel of economists weighed in. As Stoller writes, this panel included monopoly's most notorious (and well-compensated) cheerleader, Frank Easterbrook, and the "legendary" Democrat Diane Wood. They argued for CDK/Reynolds, demanding that the court release them from their obligations to share the market with Authenticom:

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-7th-circuit/1879150.html

The 7th Circuit bought the argument, overturning the lower court and paving the way for the CDK/Reynolds monopoly, which is how we ended up with one company's objectively shitty IT systems interwoven into the sale of every car, which meant that when Russian hackers looked at that crosseyed, it split wide open, allowing them to halt auto sales nationwide. What happens next is a near-certainty: CDK will pay a multimillion dollar ransom, and the hackers will reward them by breaching the personal details of everyone who's ever bought a car, and the slaves in Cambodian pig-butchering compounds will get a fresh supply of kompromat.

But on the plus side, the need to pay these huge ransoms is key to ensuring liquidity in the cryptocurrency markets, because ransoms are now the only nondiscretionary liability that can only be settled in crypto:

https://locusmag.com/2022/09/cory-doctorow-moneylike/

When the 7th Circuit set up every American car owner to be pig-butchered, they cited one of the most important cases in antitrust history: the 2004 unanimous Supreme Court decision in Verizon v Trinko:

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-682

Trinko was a case about whether antitrust law could force Verizon, a telcoms monopolist, to share its lines with competitors, something it had been ordered to do and then cheated on. The decision was written by Antonin Scalia, and without it, Big Tech would never have been able to form. Scalia and Trinko gave us the modern, too-big-to-care versions of Google, Meta, Apple, Microsoft and the other tech baronies.

In his Trinko opinion, Scalia said that "possessing monopoly power" and "charging monopoly prices" was "not unlawful" – rather, it was "an important element of the free-market system." Scalia – writing on behalf of a unanimous court! – said that fighting monopolists "may lessen the incentive for the monopolist…to invest in those economically beneficial facilities."

In other words, in order to prevent monopolists from being too big to care, we have to let them have monopolies. No wonder Trinko is the Zelig of shitty antitrust rulings, from the decision to dismiss the antitrust case against Facebook and Apple's defense in its own ongoing case:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/073_2021.06.28_mtd_order_memo.pdf

Trinko is the origin node of too big to care. It's the reason that our whole economy is now composed of "infrastructure" that is made of splitting seams, asbestos, termites and dry rot. It's the reason that the entire automotive sector became dependent on companies like Reynolds, whose billionaire owner intentionally and illegally destroyed evidence of his company's crimes, before going on to commit the largest tax fraud in American history:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/billionaire-robert-brockman-accused-of-biggest-tax-fraud-in-u-s-history-dies-at-81-11660226505

Trinko begs companies to become too big to care. It ensures that they will exponentially increase their IT debt while becoming structurally important to whole swathes of the US economy. It guarantees that they will underinvest in IT security. It is the soil in which pig butchering grew.

It's why you can't buy a car.

Now, I am fond of quoting Stein's Law at moments like this: "anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop." As Stoller writes, after two decades of unchallenged rule, Trinko is looking awfully shaky. It was substantially narrowed in 2023 by the 10th Circuit, which had been briefed by Biden's antitrust division:

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca10/22-1164/22-1164-2023-08-21.html

And the cases of 2024 have something going for them that Trinko lacked in 2004: evidence of what a fucking disaster Trinko is. The wrongness of Trinko is so increasingly undeniable that there's a chance it will be overturned.

But it won't go down easy. As Stoller writes, Trinko didn't emerge from a vacuum: the economic theories that underpinned it come from some of the heroes of orthodox economics, like Joseph Schumpeter, who is positively worshipped. Schumpeter was antitrust's OG hater, who wrote extensively that antitrust law didn't need to exist because any harmful monopoly would be overturned by an inevitable market process dictated by iron laws of economics.

Schumpeter wrote that monopolies could only be sustained by "alertness and energy" – that there would never be a monopoly so secure that its owner became too big to care. But he went further, insisting that the promise of attaining a monopoly was key to investment in great new things, because monopolists had the economic power that let them plan and execute great feats of innovation.

The idea that monopolies are benevolent dictators has pervaded our economic tale for decades. Even today, critics who deplore Facebook and Google do so on the basis that they do not wield their power wisely (say, to stamp out harassment or disinformation). When confronted with the possibility of breaking up these companies or replacing them with smaller platforms, those critics recoil, insisting that without Big Tech's scale, no one will ever have the power to accomplish their goals:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/18/urban-wildlife-interface/#combustible-walled-gardens

But they misunderstand the relationship between corporate power and corporate conduct. The reason corporations accumulate power is so that they can be insulated from the consequences of the harms they wreak upon the rest of us. They don't inflict those harms out of sadism: rather, they do so in order to externalize the costs of running a good system, reaping the profits of scale while we pay its costs.

The only reason to accumulate corporate power is to grow too big to care. Any corporation that amasses enough power that it need not care about us will not care about it. You can't fix Facebook by replacing Zuck with a good unelected social media czar with total power over billions of peoples' lives. We need to abolish Zuck, not fix Zuck.

Zuck is not exceptional: there were a million sociopaths whom investors would have funded to monopolistic dominance if he had balked. A monopoly like Facebook has a Zuck-shaped hole at the top of its org chart, and only someone Zuck-shaped will ever fit through that hole.

Our whole economy is now composed of companies with sociopath-shaped holes at the tops of their org chart. The reason these companies can only be run by sociopaths is the same reason that they have become infrastructure that is crumbling due to sociopathic neglect. The reckless disregard for the risk of combining companies is the source of the market power these companies accumulated, and the market power let them neglect their systems to the point of collapse.

This is the system that Schumpeter, and Easterbrook, and Wood, and Scalia – and the entire Supreme Court of 2004 – set out to make. The fact that you can't buy a car is a feature, not a bug. The pig-butcherers, wallowing in an ocean of breach data, are a feature, not a bug. The point of the system was what it did: create unimaginable wealth for a tiny cohort of the worst people on Earth without regard to the collapse this would provoke, or the plight of those of us trapped and suffocating in the rubble.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/28/dealer-management-software/#antonin-scalia-stole-your-car

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

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