#divya cc

[queeniecamps]

Yeah, Dadvid aus where David adopts max is pretty good, but step-dadvid is some untapped potential

[shesthespinstersimmer]

Grad season / Savannah

Ah yes… It’s graduation time again!

They both did very well – Divya got a degree in business, and Saanvi got a pre-law degree, Both with honors 🎓🤘🏾

After the ceremony, the family came home to celebrate. With two very special guests.

And who is this? Savannah?? Why, yes it it. They’ve stayed in rather close touch while attending university; and the romance bar never went down. Mmm hmm…(ignore Savannah’s complexion; after swapping out some skin tone cc, she got screwed - don’t worry I’ve fixed it, but no way was I gonna reshoot this lol)

Previous / Next / Beginning

[wannabe-simblr]

Divya cc list:

skin overlay + blush @northernsiberiawinds​ | nose + eyelid overlays | face overlay | pores | blush | hairline | contour | bindi | eyebrows | contacts | nose ring

Thank you to all the cc creators <3

[vivienneodusanya]

south asian rep — please read  !!

hi so i haven’t seen a post as of now about south asian rep in tsc and i need to get this out of the way~

firstly, we need to understand the countries that come under south asia -

-> Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives.

south asia is the most populated geographical region of the world, with some of the countries mentioned above being among the top 10 most populated countries in the world.

the south asian diaspora is one of the largest in the world, and despite being highly - educated and hard - working, is still underappreciated.

but let’s get to south asian rep, shall we ?

-> in general, south asians aren’t really represented, be it in books, movies or tv shows. most of the time there isn’t any south asian rep despite our substantial population -- and when we do get some sort of rep, usually it isn’t accurate. there are a few books + tv shows which get it right, ngl, but it’s very, very, very insignificant in number.

-> not to mention that in the books where we do get rep, most non-south asians choose to not read the particular book and educate themselves about our culture for reasons i’ll never comprehend bc they’re very ignorant [ tb to the time i was checking out a book by an indian author on goodreads and someone asked if the book was in english and even if it was in english, whether they would understand anything. um. ]

anyway, this is what i wanted to say with regard to south asian rep in tsc -- it’s really, very, positively poor.

i’m talking about two characters in the whole of tsc -- divya joshi from tda [ i was super-excited when i first read her name bc it was indian, but then i realised she doesn’t do much ] and of course, ariadne bridgestock from tlh.

ariadne is a really good character, don’t get me wrong, it’s great to see a queer brown girl. but there are two things which worried me about her character :

A) she sounds like a white person with brown skin. there’s nothing whatsoever mentioned about her culture, or anything related. she was conveniently unconscious for most of the book, but i hope that in coi this is corrected, bc if not i’m going to just curl up into a ball and cry.

B) her eyes. her freaking amber-coloured eyes. amber eyes are extremely rare [ about 5% of the world’s population if google is correct ].And of course, ariadne had to have them. And of course, the most attractive thing about her had to be the amber eyes. I mean, obviously brown women with brown eyes aren’t thaaat pretty, right ? [ I’m not saying indians don’t have amber eyes. Apparently very few do but I’ve personally never seen or heard of them ] oh, and the actress that cc said looks like ariadne on pinterest DOESN’T HAVE AMBER EYES.

idk i’m pretty sure some people are going to say that i’m making mountains out of molehills, but the problem is that -- like i mentioned above -- her eyes are seen as the most attractive part of her. poc women with light eyes are already unnecessarily exoticised, don’t perpetuate it, please.

this is coming at a time when most Indians, especially in white countries, are mistaken to be part of either the Black or Latinx community. And at a time when most Indian women are told that they ‘look pretty for an Indian girl’ [ this comment has been the source of countless rants by countless indian women ].

anyway, I’ve put up a few pictures of Indian women along with this post -- Indian women wHO HAVE DARK EYES AND WHO ARE BEAUTIFUL. Also, I’ve talked about Indians towards the end bc of the two south asians we got, both are Indian. There are no Pakistanis, Afghans, Bhutanese, Bengalis, Nepalese, Sri Lankans or Maldivians at all.

Go think about it.  

[bpod-bpod]

Well Packed

You probably wear the jeans that are in easy reach at the top of your overstuffed drawers more than those tucked at the back. Some genes, too, are easier to reach than others. Genetic material is tightly packed into a structure called chromatin, and which genes are expressed can depend on how this packing unfurls. Researchers hoping to understand how these structural changes guide the development of our lungs compared gene activity to packing structure in mouse lung starter cells (pictured) that produce a protein called Sox9 (red). They identified the proteins responsible for chromatin reshaping, and key signalling pathways vital to healthy lung development. Mice with a particular molecular pathway blocked failed to produce healthy lung linings and developed defective lungs. This knowledge could lead to explanations of how some developmental lung diseases take hold, and perhaps even reveal which existing treatments could be repurposed for other conditions.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Divya Khattar and Sharlene Fernandes, and colleagues

Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, August 2022

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A useful, critical taxonomy of decentralization, beyond blockchains

I keep getting sucked into discussions of web3, decentralization and cryptocurrency. It’s only natural: much of the rhetoric and stated goals of the people behind these technologies intersect with my longstanding causes, like access to cryptography and decentralized communities (what we used to call P2P).

The reason I say I get “sucked into” these discussions is that, despite the rhetorical overlap, I’ve sensed a significant ideological divergence between my position and the dominant web3 ethos. In general, I would say that I think there are only a few circumstances in which markets produce good incentives and distributions, and that these depend heavily on publicly accountable governance that set up their rules.

Which is not to say that I reject markets altogether. As John T Harvey — the “Cowboy Economist” — says, an economist who says that we must always use markets to attain our goals, or never use them, is like a carpenter who says, “I will only join those two pieces of wood together with a nail; screws are for commies!”

So I think markets are a tool, not a ethical imperative, and I think the core of the web3 project not only values markets beyond their worth, but also sees the problems of markets as the result “distortion by regulators” and wants to eliminate the publicly accountable governance (AKA “deregulating”) that I see as essential to getting good results from markets.

That means that while I often find myself having conversations with web3 advocates that feel like the excited conversations we had 20 years ago at the old O’Reilly P2P conferences (which I sat on the committee for), beneath the surface, there’s a deep and meaningful rift.

Here’s a superficial but telling example: when I decided to write this post, I had to brainstorm a graphic for the top of it. After some image searches, I decided I’d just go the hacky route and pull out my old Oxford English Dictionary and take a picture of the definition of “decentralization,” then jazz it up with the familiar topological diagrams illustrating different models of decentralization.

When I went looking for a hi-rez, CC-licensed version of that diagram, I came up empty — there were plenty of those diagrams, but they were all proprietary licensed, mostly from news websites catering to financial speculators thinking of “investing” in web3.

I was briefly stumped, but then I had an idea: those web3 decentralization diagrams look an awful lot like the diagrams from the P2P days. I searched for “p2p network diagram” and got an image that was basically identical to those proprietary web3 illos, except it was CC-licensed (under the ultra-rare Spanish CC BY-SA 2.5 license, no less!).

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P2P_Topology.jpg

That decade-old image is a pretty on-the-nose symbol of the difference between P2P and web3: the former directly produced public goods through appeals to sharing and generosity; the latter produces literally identical private goods through appeals to speculation, but claims that this will produce public goods.

Those claims aren’t all bullshit, either. This recent discussion between Danny O’Brien and The Blockchain Socialist makes for an interesting overview of the market-skeptical, leftist wing of the web3 world, and it bemoans the fact that people like me don’t pay enough attention to people like them, which may be true:

https://theblockchainsocialist.com/are-we-a-psyop-to-left-wash-crypto/

This was on my mind when I came across “The Web3 Decentralization Debate Is Focused on the Wrong Question,” a Wired article by Divya Siddarth, Danielle Allen and E Glen Weyl, two of whom are affiliated with RadxChange.

https://www.wired.com/story/web3-blockchain-decentralization-governance/

The authors start by drawing a distinction between the “global redundancy” model of blockchains — lots of computers operated by mutually untrusted parties who collaborate to create a system they all can trust — and a “subsidiarity” model, which is a little harder to describe, but which resonated with me.

Subsidiarity keeps data “as close as possible to the social context of creation;” relies on “a plurality of solutions” that are federated and interoperable; and it leverages and extends “online and offline trust and institutions.”

So what’s subsidairity look like in the real world? They start with TCP/IP, but also the Activitypub standard (which powers Mastodon), mesh networks, Wikipedia, Reddit community moderation, federated learning, and some more exotic technologies like “socially local identity systems.”

Contrast this with blockchain/global redundancy projects, which: “maximally remove data from social context” and rely on transactions, not social relations; seek “universalized solutions” that work in all contexts; and rely on “global consensus and redundant verification.”

The technical design and ethos of global redundancy is meant to provide security and robustness, but global redundancy has proven itself to be both volatile and brittle, vulnerable to shocks, like China shutting down mining, or Kazakhstan’s crypto-mining destabilization:

https://restofworld.org/2022/crypto-miners-fleeing-kazakhstan/

What’s more, a market-based approach works at cross-purposes to redundancy, because the tool relies on profit-seeking, self-interested miners who can realize efficiencies of scale, which drives consolidation, which crowds out most individual miners, and pushes even very large miners into mining pool consortia.

A useful accompanying chart contrasts the two approaches; where Subsidiarity relies on “social context,” Global Redundancy is “Contextless.” Subsidiarity has “Commons governance;” Global Redundancy has “Coin-voting governance.” Some of these contrasts are very abstract but important, for example, Subsidiarity uses “Distributed permissioning” while Global Redundancy is “Permissioned through fungible assets.”

With this framework, the authors consider three of web3’s major programs and contrast the Subsidiarity and Global Redundancy approaches: Identity and Reputation; Data Empowerment; and Organizational Innovation.

Global Redundancy struggled with identity because it is grounded in the idea of pseudonymous ledgers. By design, it’s easy to set up lots of identities in blockchain-based systems, and the main design challenge of permissionless blockchains is preventing “Sybil attacks” where bad actors set up multiple identities and use them to influence platforms by pretending to be lots of people at once.

This is a genuine problem in Global Redundancy system, and there are lots of proposed solutions to it, but the current frontrunner is gathering unique biometrics and using them for proof of personhood, which has lots of problems, both in terms of privacy (you can’t replace your biometric if it’s captured by an attacker!) and equity (not everyone has eyes, fingerprints, or any other biometric except DNA, which is its own nightmare).

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richardnieva/worldcoin-crypto-eyeball-scanning-orb-problems

Under Subsidiarity, identity is “about relationships (status as employee, citizen, student, platform contributor),” not “universal identification.” The authors point to longstanding cryptographic protocols like “web of trust” and identify modern successors to old, PGP-style keysigning parties, like “Spritely, BackChannel, KERI, Āhau and ACDC.” In the Global Redundancy framework, “Data Empowerment” is mostly about data ownership, where each of us has a personal data store that we grant companies access to based on market-based bids and sales. This just doesn’t work. Most valuable data is “relational” — created by interactions between two or more people. That means that buyers can just find the seller with the lowest price (like if the person you sent email to values the contents less than you do).

Treating information as property is a really poor fit. It’s not that information isn’t valuable, it’s that the value of information isn’t well-captured by market systems. People are valuable, but not because they’re for sale! The way you can tell people are valuable is that they’re not for sale:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/feb/21/intellectual.property

Beyond this “relational” problem with data markets, there’s this: the most valuable information is aggregated. It’s not that Facebook makes a lot of money from your data: it’s that combining your data with billions of others’ data produces value. That’s why “data dividends” (where Facebook pays you for your data) are a bad idea:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/10/why-getting-paid-your-data-bad-deal

Finally, there’s the problem of inequality and data-markets. If privacy is a human right, it shouldn’t be a luxury. Protecting privacy by pricing data just means that the people with the least have to sell the most.

The authors argue that there’s another way. Subsidiarity, which uses “data cooperatives, collaboratives, and trusts with privacy-preserving and -enhancing techniques for data processing, such as federated learning and secure multiparty computation.”

They cite an example of a credit-union whose members agree to allow a company to mine its data to figure out how to offer loan refinancing to those members and a public agency analyzing predatory lending practices.

This reminds me of Ben Goldacre’s recent, stupendous “Better, broader, safer: using health data for research and analysis,” a report for the NHS on safe, responsible and effective research programs using the incredible storehouse of health data the NHS holds:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/better-broader-safer-using-health-data-for-research-and-analysis/better-broader-safer-using-health-data-for-research-and-analysis

Goldacre argues for the creation of “Trusted Research Environments” built on open, interoperable code that’s managed and hosted by the NHS. Researchers don’t ever access the data directly — rather, they are able to securely submit queries to run against it within a secure environment that the NHS exercises total control over.

A central feature of web3 is the DAO (Distributed Autonomous Organization): a blockchain-based, smart-contract governed meant to create accountable “peer-to-peer, holocratic communities.” Like me, the authors like the sound of this — and like me, they’re skeptical that DAOs achieve their stated aims.

Under the Global Redundancy framework, DAOs have been plagued by smart-contract bugs. Smart contracts have a “dual complexity” problem — to rely on them, you need to be able to understand their code and their financial terms, and not many people understand either, let alone both:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/02/shadow-banking-2-point-oh/#leverage

The authors identify a tension between “flexibility and automaticity” — the ability of a community to respond appropriately to changing contexts and the automatic, instantaneous execution of smart contracts.

This is what Hilary Allen called “Driverless Finance,” and she likens it to the “suicide notes” — inflexible lending terms — that precipitated and then accelerated the 2008 financial crisis:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4038788

DAOs try to patch this with “democratic governance” — but because they are locked into the Global Redundancy model of identity, they struggle with “one person, one vote” and generally default to “one token, one vote” — creating a situation where a small group of whales can vote to take all the minnows’ money for themselves.

The other patch for this is to rely on Web 2.0-style governance, which is to say, they abandon Global Redundancy in favor of centralized tools that have all the vulnerabilities and failure modes that Global Redundancy was invented to get rid of.

The Subsidiarity approach to organization looks a lot more like a “platform coop” or “Exit to Community” — a way for projects to transfer ownership to the communities they serve. They also talk about Radicalxchange, a nonprofit project that two of the authors are involved with:

https://www.radicalxchange.org/about/

They’re big on some technical innovations in community structure, like “quadratic voting” and democratic deliberation tools like Pol.is and Loomio. They also endorse Gitcoin as a way of funding public goods.

What distinguishes all of these is “community participation and empowerment, federating together organizations to build larger-scale cooperation rather than acquisitions or purely financial contracts.”

I found this essay fascinating and thought provoking, especially in this moment, in which all asset prices are tanking, but crypto “assets” are just imploding.

https://www.ft.com/content/5887ef43-d43a-4608-a1ac-aacc99f076b9

As a speculative bubble bursts, the everyday people who hoped to find economic stability are left holding the bag. One especially hard-hit group are artists who were hoping to fund their work with NFTs. Today on her blog, Molly White examines this phenomenon:

https://blog.mollywhite.net/digital-artists-post-bubble-hopes-for-nfts-dont-need-a-blockchain/

(NB: if your only contact with White is her dry quick hits on Web3 is Going Great, you’re missing out — her long-form essays on her blog are essential reading)

White points out that the thing that supposedly created value for NFTs — uniqueness by dint of cryptographic signatures — is something artists have done for a long time, without any blockchain involved. PGP-signed works a well-established, niche category.

Back when a Florida high school principal illegally canceled the school’s entire summer reading program to keep the students from reading my novel Little Brother, we sent cases of free hardcopies to the students — and I also emailed PGP-signed, personalized copies to dozens of students:

https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-cory-doctorow-book-pulled-from-florida-schools-20140610-story.html

The thing is, PGP basically sucks. It’s really hard to use and even harder to use well. In fact, PGP is so creaky that a lot of people just pretend it doesn’t exist. Take the debate over the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which will mandate interoperable, end-to-end encrypted messaging. Opponents of this — who have a legitimate concern that this could weaken the security of messaging tools and put billions of people all over the world at risk — have said that end-to-end, interoperable messaging is impossible:

https://doctorow.medium.com/end-to-end-encryption-is-too-important-to-be-proprietary-afdf5e97822

Now, it’s pretty clear that these technologists know about PGP. It’s 30 years old, of course they know about it. When they say E2EE/interoperable messaging is impossible, they mean, “It’s impossible to do in such a way that anyone will use it” because, to a first approximation, no one uses PGP, while billions of people use, say, Whatsapp.

But I’m not convinced that PGP is so wonky just because it is trying to do something hard. PGP, remember, is 30 years old, and dramatically under-resourced. When Snowden used PGP to contact journalists with his disclosures, the tool he used had a single, half-time volunteer maintainer:

https://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-email-encryption-software-relies-on-one-guy-who-is-going-broke-2015-2

As I wrote, “I think that the true lesson of OpenPGP is that end-to-end, interoperable encryption is absolutely possible, but it helps if you don’t have to design it to run on a Compaq 486 IBM PC clone running Windows 3.0, and if the maintenance of the project is managed by multiple engineers, not a single part-time semi-volunteer working for donations in his spare time.”

Which brings me back to public goods. White’s idea for unique, PGP-signed digital artwork is fantastic, but without speculators, how do we produce the code that enables people to use it? Maybe we have to get rid of PGP and start over — 30 years’ worth of technology debt may demand a bankruptcy — but starting over still requires investment.

Image: Txelu Balboa (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P2P_Topology.jpg

CC BY-SA Spanish 2.5: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/es/deed.en

[Image ID: The OED definition of 'decentralization,' overlaid with flow-diagrams illustrating different decentralized topologies.]

[Image ID: A chart with two columns. The first column is 'Subsidiarity/Network' and its values are: Social Context; Trusted Relationship Substrate; Privacy as Contextual Integrity; Commons Governance; Adaptive Coordination; Overlapping Social Institutions; Distributed Permissioning; Security through Diversification. The second column is headed 'Global Redundancy/Ledger,' with these values: Contextless; Global Node Substrate; Privacy through Cryptography/Pseudonymity; Coin Voting Governance; Automatic/Automated Organization; Code is Law; Permissioned by Fungible Assets; Security through Quantitative Replication]

[funkychunkyjunky]

meet Divya!! i’ve been wanting to make a multiple armed sim for so long and i finally found the perfect cc here!! as always i’m wcif friendly! c:

Divya Khapour: obsessive, lovey-dovey, moody

[cant-think-of-anything]

Ykw? I'm actually surprised CC gave the Rosales and Divya and Rayan dark eyes. But some part of me is afraid in TWP some of them will also end having "grey flecks" or some other kind of bs and I hate that.

Oh I would literally use white out on that part of the book if that happens

It's likely that I'll be reading it on a kindle but still

the fact that there's more ginger rep than there is characters of color with fully dark features

[spooky-drusilla]

Okay but @ti-bae-rius has intrigued me???

Gimmie some key words of the characters personality (as you imagine) and I can try give you a flower?????

Hmm I'll try!!

For Thaís, CC has already described her as tough, doesn't take any shit from anyone, is loyal and supportive, and a very good friend.

I always imagined Thaís to be the brute force of the group, since Ty and Anush seem more on the intelectual side, Dru has never shown any special passion for fighting, and I always imagined Kit relying more on his magic (and, as you know, I also want him to be a healer.) So yea, I think she'll be a fighter.

In TDA, she's shown to be bored during the meeting that Julian is holding about the Cohort, so, since that's her only canon apparition, I also put that as one of her core traits - being apathetic and not caring too much, even in stressful situations (for better or for worse). Coupled with Dru's love for horror and gore, I always thought of them both doing the dirty work for the team and being the ones to stay calm under pressure.

And now I realize you just asked for keywords and I gave you a text lmao so here's what I gathered from my own ramblings: tough, resilient, levelheaded, unflappable (I didn't even know that was a word), loyal, friend, fighter

For Anush, his arc in TDA was based around him being in the Cohort. I'm not sure if that will continue in TWP though, since it hasn't been mentioned in GotSM nor SoBH. He is shown to grow out of the Cohort and to have a fairly good relationship with Divya, who was the one to scold him for being part of it. Perhaps a few keywords would be sorrow, familial love, repentance, forgiveness. (I also think Lauryn might have more interesting words to give you)

Tbh you know about this more than I do ajksdhjkasdh if you wanna add some words that you think define them better pls do!!

[deshamukalamu]

Thirukanapuram sowriraja perumal chitrai Aamavasai divya Dharshanam (at Thirukkannapuram, Tamil Nadu, India) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cc-PbW4Lgp4/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[queeniecamps]

First contact, girl was LATE to parents day lol

[my-lady-of-roses]

In these last few days I've seen a lot of hate towards CC, and I mean a lot. And even though I agree with some of the points that have been made, I think those words that have been tagged to her like "disgusting," "gross," or "terrible person" are excessive and unjust. I feel uncomfortable with some decisions that Cassie has made with the diversity she wants to portray. I'm not the kid I was when I read her work for the first time, but I am still grateful. Because in 2007 (I read it in 2009 but still) we entered in a hotel full of vampires, and the three main ones were a Latino boy, an Asian girl and a black guy. And they were vampires, they were bad guys and they were cool. I still find it exceptional. Before Magnus I didn't know you can be bi, or a guy who uses make up, and still be cool. And these things have multiplied over the years, and these are things young people need to see. TSC's cast of characters has become the most diverse one I've ever seen (and if you know some one better (or similar), please let me know). Even when I differ with her in the form she reprensents diversity, and even been perfectly aware that it is not perfect, I am grateful, because it is the best we have.

I've done this list with every diverse character I could think of, you can tell me if I forgot someone. I only put the labels we are certain about, although we can intuit some others.

Adaon Kingson (black, bi/pan)

Alastair Carstairs (half Persian, gay)

Alec Lightwood (gay)

Aline Penhallow (half Chinese, lesbian)

Anna Lightwood (non binary, lesbian)

Anush Joshi (Indian)

Ariadne Bridgestock (Indian, lesbian)

Bat Velasquez (Latino)

Beatriz Medonza (Latina)

Catarina Loss (black)

Charles Fairchild (gay)

Cordelia Carstairs (half Persian)

Cristina Rosales (Latina, poly)

Diana Wrayburn (black, trans)

Diego Rosales (Latino)

Divya Joshi (Indian)

Elliott (black, bi/pan)

Gwyn ap Nudd (bi/pan)

Helen Blackthorn (bi/pan)

Henry Fairchild (disabled)

Hypatia Vex (black, bi/pan)

Jaime Rosales (Latino)

Jem Carstairs (half Chinese)

Jia Penhallow (Chinese)

Julian Blackthorn (demisexual)

Kadir Safar (brown)

Kieran Kingson (bi/pan, poly)

Kit Herondale (bi/pan)

Leon Verlac (bi/pan)

Lily Chen (half Chinese, half Japanese, bi/pan, Buddhist)

Magnus Bane (Indonesian, bi/pan)

Maia Roberts (black)

Malik Safar (brown)

Marisol Garza (Latina)

Mark Blackthorn (bi/pan, poly)

Matthew Fairchild (bi/pan)

Michael Wayland (mlm)

Mina Carstairs (half Chinese)

Rafael Lightwood-Bane (Latino)

Raphael Santiago (Latino, ace-aro)

Rayan Maduabuchi (Nigerian)

Sebastian Morgenstern (bi/pan)

Shinyun Jung (Korean)

Simon Lovelace (Jewish)

Sona Carstairs (Persian)

Tessa Gray (poly)

Thomas Lightwood (mlm)

Ty Blackthorn (mlm, authistic)

Woolsey Scott (gay)

[pinkladymv-remade-blog]

yall i forgot i wasnt giffing shortass teasers anymore and selected the same amt of frames in the slider of the import video frames to layers window and i think my ps just Shot itself dead

[bookishnerdreviews]

Queen Of Air And Darkness Book Review

Author: Our lady and saviour Cassandra Clare

Rating: 5/5 (what did you expect??)

DON’T MIND ME CRYING IN THE BACK! Honestly, the emotional capacity of this novel superseded all expectations. Cassie’s ability to make me care more about her characters than anyone irl is inspiring and terrifying. 

I honestly believe that Queen Of Air And Darkness is CC’s most sophisticated and advanced work yet; she seems to improve with every instalment of The Shadowhunter Chronicles. Her writing bridges the seemingly immense gap between maturity and humour - keeping her style relatable and funny whilst also being artistic and well-developed. Her 3rd person narration adopts the nature of the character she describes - Julian’s sections are compassionate and tortured, Mark’s whimsical and longing, Diana’s brave and believing. I can’t deny her talent.

I have to dedicate an entire paragraph to Ty Blackthorn because... I mean he is just everything I needed from 21st century media representation. Cassie doesn’t sugar-coat the less ‘quirky’ side of autism: the struggles, the confusion, the isolation. But, more importantly, she showcased all the wonderful things about it, my favourite scene being Ty and the starfish. As an autistic person, this means the world to me, especially since fans of the series love Ty despite/because of his nature.

That’s the end of my spoiler-free section! I’m not going to say this book is perfect (see spoilery section for details) but generally, adored this finale (if you can call it that) and I recommend it to anyone. To non-TMI fans, TDA is 10 times better than TMI, if you didn’t like TMI you might love this series anyway.

*SPOILERS AHEAD DUDES*

Right, I did have a couple of problems with this book. First of all, Cassie’s unstoppable need to pair up every single character into a relationship. I could have done without the Diego/Divya scene at the end, Cameron/Livia in Thule seemed forced, and Kieran/Mark/Cristina felt empty by the end. I did LOVE Kierarktina for the most part, just the ending felt a bit limp. Secondly, Thule didn’t really do it for me. It was the only trope that CC hadn’t fallen victim to, and I just thought it was unnecessary? I understood why it happened and if you liked it, I’m glad! It just wasn’t for me. Also, the parabatai bond just... went? They turned into massive giants and...just...what???

Rant over. Now, the good bits! Drusilla Blackthorn guys! She deserves the world, I love her character development and the complex relationship between her, Ty and Kit. I love that we got to see more of Helen and Aline, too. They’re each other’s foils in a way - Helen being soft and steady, Aline sparky and exciting. Their dynamic was brilliant. And the wedding?!?! I wasn’t expecting that man I was crying. Alec’s little speech was beautiful and I’m over the moon that he was elected as Consul.Cassie knows how to indulge her fans almost as well as she knows how to break them.

This is probably my favourite instalment of the Shadowhunter Chronicles so far!

[urahora]

Modernization Of Buses Under the TDP Government

The Andhra Pradesh State Transport Corporation (APSRTC) will modernize all significant bus stops around the state to offer improved amenities for travellers. TDP's Latest News is the source for everyone to see the updates. In the initial phase, up to 21 bus stops have been chosen for this initiative. In order to relieve congestion at bus terminals in key cities and to generate more commercial space for sustainable development, APSRTC is also preparing to build four new bus terminals using the public-private partnership (PPP) model. R P Thakur, the vice-chairman and managing director of APSRTC has highlighted a number of areas that need to be improved, giving the bus stops a facelift and offering customers adequate services that meet their demands. Nara Chandrababu Naidu, the Chief Minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh at that time said that 21 bus stations, including all of the stations at district headquarters, have been determined based on the number of bus operations and the average daily passenger count.

R P Thakur, the vice-chairman and managing director of APSRTC has identified several areas that need to be improved, giving the bus stops a facelift and offering customers adequate services that meet their demands. 21 bus stations, including all of the stations at district headquarters, have been determined based on the number of bus operations and the average daily passenger count. The other bus stations under the project are Visakhapatnam (Dwaraka),  Nellore Potti Sri Ramulu, Machilipatnam, Eluru, Addanki, Kakinada, Guntur, Atmakur, Ongole, Rajamahendravaram, Pileru, Kadapa, Kurnool, Anantapur,  Vizianagaram, and Srikakulam covering each and every district in the state of Andhra Pradesh. To modernize bus stops, officials including TDP MLAs and TDP Leaders have chosen nine emphasis areas under the Leadership of Nara Chandrababu Naidu. A sufficient number of restrooms based on the average daily passenger volume, restrooms for people with special needs, WiFi services, baby feeding rooms, floor repairs, better seating facilities inside bus stations, painting, and better lighting in bus station premises are all to be provided as part of the modernization drive under the state government of Andhra Pradesh by TDP Party. The Top TDP Achievements made by the government have become  TDP Contributions.

The corporation has added cutting-edge technology to its high-end new buses, such as the Fire Detection & Suppression System (FDSS), Anti Lock Braking Systems (ABS), Disc Brakes, Retarder Brake for High Speed & Ghat Buses, Automated Manual Transmission (AMT), CC Cameras in Divya Darshanam Buses, Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), and Speed Limiting Device (SLD). The bus stations which were modernized had innovative passenger facilities such as better lighting, toilets, comfortable seating in waiting halls, digital display boards of bus schedules, and drinking water. The works on 21 bus stations are contract-based and are given for tenders. The Contractor for these tenders is finalized in the month of September. Nadu-Nedu was the name of the program for which this project took place and aimed at a transformation through visible development.

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YES OFC WE CAN TAKE DIVYA

WHILE WERE AT IT TAKE ANUSH TOO

Take the joshis I dont trust cc

good good I like where this is going

I swear if anush isn't a main character-ish we're going to have very big problems