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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Cleantech has an enshittification problem

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.

EVs won't save the planet. Ultimately, the material bill for billions of individual vehicles and the unavoidable geometry of more cars-more traffic-more roads-greater distances-more cars dictate that the future of our cities and planet requires public transit – lots of it.

But no matter how much public transit we install, there's always going to be some personal vehicles on the road, and not just bikes, ebikes and scooters. Between deliveries, accessibility, and stubbornly low-density regions, there's going to be a lot of cars, vans and trucks on the road for the foreseeable future, and these should be electric.

Beyond that irreducible minimum of personal vehicles, there's the fact that individuals can't install their own public transit system; in places that lack the political will or means to create working transit, EVs are a way for people to significantly reduce their personal emissions.

In policy circles, EV adoption is treated as a logistical and financial issue, so governments have focused on making EVs affordable and increasing the density of charging stations. As an EV owner, I can affirm that affordability and logistics were important concerns when we were shopping for a car.

But there's a third EV problem that is almost entirely off policy radar: enshittification.

An EV is a rolling computer in a fancy case with a squishy person inside of it. While this can sound scary, there are lots of cool implications for this. For example, your EV could download your local power company's tariff schedule and preferentially charge itself when the rates are lowest; they could also coordinate with the utility to reduce charging when loads are peaking. You can start them with your phone. Your repair technician can run extensive remote diagnostics on them and help you solve many problems from the road. New features can be delivered over the air.

That's just for starters, but there's so much more in the future. After all, the signal virtue of a digital computer is its flexibility. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing complete, universal, Von Neumann machine, which can run every valid program. If a feature is computationally tractable – from automated parallel parking to advanced collision prevention – it can run on a car.

The problem is that this digital flexibility presents a moral hazard to EV manufacturers. EVs are designed to make any kind of unauthorized, owner-selected modification into an IP rights violation ("IP" in this case is "any law that lets me control the conduct of my customers or competitors"):

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

EVs are also designed so that the manufacturer can unilaterally exert control over them or alter their operation. EVs – even more than conventional vehicles – are designed to be remotely killswitched in order to help manufacturers and dealers pressure people into paying their car notes on time:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Manufacturers can reach into your car and change how much of your battery you can access:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

They can lock your car and have it send its location to a repo man, then greet him by blinking its lights, honking its horn, and pulling out of its parking space:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

And of course, they can detect when you've asked independent mechanic to service your car and then punish you by degrading its functionality:

https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2024/06/26/two-of-eight-claims-in-tesla-anti-trust-lawsuit-will-move-forward/

This is "twiddling" – unilaterally and irreversibly altering the functionality of a product or service, secure in the knowledge that IP law will prevent anyone from twiddling back by restoring the gadget to a preferred configuration:

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

The thing is, for an EV, twiddling is the best case scenario. As bad as it is for the company that made your EV to change how it works whenever they feel like picking your pocket, that's infinitely preferable to the manufacturer going bankrupt and bricking your car.

That's what just happened to owners of Fisker EVs, cars that cost $40-70k. Cars are long-term purchases. An EV should last 12-20 years, or even longer if you pay to swap the battery pack. Fisker was founded in 2016 and shipped its first Ocean SUV in 2023. The company is now bankrupt:

https://insideevs.com/news/723669/fisker-inc-bankruptcy-chapter-11-official/

Fisker called its vehicles "software-based cars" and they weren't kidding. Without continuous software updates and server access, those Fisker Ocean SUVs are turning into bricks. What's more, the company designed the car from the ground up to make any kind of independent service and support into a felony, by wrapping the whole thing in overlapping layers of IP. That means that no one can step in with a module that jailbreaks the Fisker and drops in an alternative firmware that will keep the fleet rolling.

This is the third EV risk – not just finance, not just charger infrastructure, but the possibility that any whizzy, cool new EV company will go bust and brick your $70k cleantech investment, irreversibly transforming your car into 5,500 lb worth of e-waste.

This confers a huge advantage onto the big automakers like VW, Kia, Ford, etc. Tesla gets a pass, too, because it achieved critical mass before people started to wise up to the risk of twiddling and bricking. If you're making a serious investment in a product you expect to use for 20 years, are you really gonna buy it from a two-year old startup with six months' capital in the bank?

The incumbency advantage here means that the big automakers won't have any reason to sink a lot of money into R&D, because they won't have to worry about hungry startups with cool new ideas eating their lunches. They can maintain the cozy cartel that has seen cars stagnate for decades, with the majority of "innovation" taking the form of shitty, extractive and ill-starred ideas like touchscreen controls and an accelerator pedal that you have to rent by the month:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

Put that way, it's clear that this isn't an EV problem, it's a cleantech problem. Cleantech has all the problems of EVs: it requires a large capital expenditure, it will be "smart," and it is expected to last for decades. That's rooftop solar, heat-pumps, smart thermostat sensor arrays, and home storage batteries.

And just as with EVs, policymakers have focused on infrastructure and affordability without paying any attention to the enshittification risks. Your rooftop solar will likely be controlled via a Solaredge box – a terrible technology that stops working if it can't reach the internet for a protracted period (that's right, your home solar stops working if the grid fails!).

I found this out the hard way during the covid lockdowns, when Solaredge terminated its 3G cellular contract and notified me that I would have to replace the modem in my system or it would stop working. This was at the height of the supply-chain crisis and there was a long waiting list for any replacement modems, with wifi cards (that used your home internet rather than a cellular connection) completely sold out for most of a year.

There are good reasons to connect rooftop solar arrays to the internet – it's not just so that Solaredge can enshittify my service. Solar arrays that coordinate with the grid can make it much easier and safer to manage a grid that was designed for centralized power production and is being retrofitted for distributed generation, one roof at a time.

But when the imperatives of extraction and efficiency go to war, extraction always wins. After all, the Solaredge system is already in place and solar installers are largely ignorant of, and indifferent to, the reasons that a homeowner might want to directly control and monitor their system via local controls that don't roundtrip through the cloud.

Somewhere in the hindbrain of any prospective solar purchaser is the experience with bricked and enshittified "smart" gadgets, and the knowledge that anything they buy from a cool startup with lots of great ideas for improving production, monitoring, and/or costs poses the risk of having your 20 year investment bricked after just a few years – and, thanks to the extractive imperative, no one will be able to step in and restore your ex-solar array to good working order.

I make the majority of my living from books, which means that my pay is very "lumpy" – I get large sums when I publish a book and very little in between. For many years, I've used these payments to make big purchases, rather than financing them over long periods where I can't predict my income. We've used my book payments to put in solar, then an induction stove, then a battery. We used one to buy out the lease on our EV. And just a month ago, we used the money from my upcoming Enshittification book to put in a heat pump (with enough left over to pay for a pair of long-overdue cataract surgeries, scheduled for the fall).

When we started shopping for heat pumps, it was clear that this was a very exciting sector. First of all, heat pumps are kind of magic, so efficient and effective it's almost surreal. But beyond the basic tech – which has been around since the late 1940s – there is a vast ferment of cool digital features coming from exciting and innovative startups.

By nature, I'm the kid of person who likes these digital features. I started out as a computer programmer, and while I haven't written production code since the previous millennium, I've been in and around the tech industry for my whole adult life. But when it came time to buy a heat-pump – an investment that I expected to last for 20 years or more – there was no way I was going to buy one of these cool new digitally enhanced pumps, no matter how much the reviewers loved them. Sure, they'd work well, but it's precisely because I'm so knowledgeable about high tech that I could see that they would fail very, very badly.

You may think EVs are bullshit, and they are – though there will always be room for some personal vehicles, and it's better for people in transit deserts to drive EVs than gas-guzzlers. You may think rooftop solar is a dead-end and be all-in on utility scale solar (I think we need both, especially given the grid-disrupting extreme climate events on our horizon). But there's still a wide range of cleantech – induction tops, heat pumps, smart thermostats – that are capital intensive, have a long duty cycle, and have good reasons to be digitized and networked.

Take home storage batteries: your utility can push its rate card to your battery every time they change their prices, and your battery can use that information to decide when to let your house tap into the grid, and when to switch over to powering your home with the solar you've stored up during the day. This is a very old and proven pattern in tech: the old Fidonet BBS network used a version of this, with each BBS timing its calls to other nodes to coincide with the cheapest long-distance rates, so that messages for distant systems could be passed on:

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

Cleantech is a very dynamic sector, even if its triumphs are largely unheralded. There's a quiet revolution underway in generation, storage and transmission of renewable power, and a complimentary revolution in power-consumption in vehicles and homes:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/12/s-curve/#anything-that-cant-go-on-forever-eventually-stops

But cleantech is too important to leave to the incumbents, who are addicted to enshittification and planned obsolescence. These giant, financialized firms lack the discipline and culture to make products that have the features – and cost savings – to make them appealing to the very wide range of buyers who must transition as soon as possible, for the sake of the very planet.

It's not enough for our policymakers to focus on financing and infrastructure barriers to cleantech adoption. We also need a policy-level response to enshittification.

Ideally, every cleantech device would be designed so that it was impossible to enshittify – which would also make it impossible to brick:

Based on free software (best), or with source code escrowed with a trustee who must release the code if the company enters administration (distant second-best);

All patents in a royalty-free patent-pool (best); or in a trust that will release them into a royalty-free pool if the company enters administration (distant second-best);

No parts-pairing or other DRM permitted (best); or with parts-pairing utilities available to all parties on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (distant second-best);

All diagnostic and error codes in the public domain, with all codes in the clear within the device (best); or with decoding utilities available on demand to all comers on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis (distant second-best).

There's an obvious business objection to this: it will reduce investment in innovative cleantech because investors will perceive these restrictions as limits on the expected profits of their portfolio companies. It's true: these measures are designed to prevent rent-extraction and other enshittificatory practices by cleantech companies, and to the extent that investors are counting on enshittification rents, this might prevent them from investing.

But that has to be balanced against the way that a general prohibition on enshittificatory practices will inspire consumer confidence in innovative and novel cleantech products, because buyers will know that their investments will be protected over the whole expected lifespan of the product, even if the startup goes bust (nearly every startup goes bust). These measures mean that a company with a cool product will have a much larger customer-base to sell to. Those additional sales more than offset the loss of expected revenue from cheating and screwing your customers by twiddling them to death.

There's also an obvious legal objection to this: creating these policies will require a huge amount of action from Congress and the executive branch, a whole whack of new rules and laws to make them happen, and each will attract court-challenges.

That's also true, though it shouldn't stop us from trying to get legal reforms. As a matter of public policy, it's terrible and fucked up that companies can enshittify the things we buy and leave us with no remedy.

However, we don't have to wait for legal reform to make this work. We can take a shortcut with procurement – the things governments buy with public money. The feds, the states and localities buy a lot of cleantech: for public facilities, for public housing, for public use. Prudent public policy dictates that governments should refuse to buy any tech unless it is designed to be enshittification-resistant.

This is an old and honorable tradition in policymaking. Lincoln insisted that the rifles he bought for the Union Army come with interoperable tooling and ammo, for obvious reasons. No one wants to be the Commander in Chief who shows up on the battlefield and says, "Sorry, boys, war's postponed, our sole supplier decided to stop making ammunition."

By creating a market for enshittification-proof cleantech, governments can ensure that the public always has the option of buying an EV that can't be bricked even if the maker goes bust, a heat-pump whose digital features can be replaced or maintained by a third party of your choosing, a solar controller that coordinates with the grid in ways that serve their owners – not the manufacturers' shareholders.

We're going to have to change a lot to survive the coming years. Sure, there's a lot of scary ways that things can go wrong, but there's plenty about our world that should change, and plenty of ways those changes could be for the better. It's not enough for policymakers to focus on ensuring that we can afford to buy whatever badly thought-through, extractive tech the biggest companies want to foist on us – we also need a focus on making cleantech fit for purpose, truly smart, reliable and resilient.

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/2024/06/26/unplanned-obsolescence/#better-micetraps

Image: 臺灣古寫真上色 (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Raid_on_Kagi_City_1945.jpg

Grendelkhan (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ground_mounted_solar_panels.gk.jpg

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

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canete16 · 13 days ago

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About Act 2

Hello everyone!

If you’re reading this, I imagine you’re also aware of our latest project and its current progress — around 50% of the main adventure has been publicly available for a few days now. If not, you can always download it from this link → https://pastebin.com/z5H5ze2Y, or keep reading and leave it for later. Whatever you prefer :P

I’m suuuuper happy with how the story is unfolding and with all the help and support I’m receiving practically on a daily basis. I feel like, besides myself, there are many people deeply invested in the development of Seven Symphonies, even outside of the dev team.

Testers, artists, players... along with all those who share their impressions and thoughts about the hack while we work quietly behind the scenes. To each and every one of you, a billion thanks. You are an incredible emotional and motivational support, and there’s nothing more beautiful than trying to give back all the love every time we release new content to rekindle your passion and excitement to keep sharing and inspiring others.

But the truth is, I don’t think I’ve lived up to expectations this time — I feel like I’ve let you down. Working silently, as comfortable as it may be, comes with consequences. Consequences we’ve paid for as a team, but above all, you’ve paid for them too.

The post announcing Act 2’s release got significantly less visibility than we expected compared to previous ones. There are several external factors that would be easy to blame (parallel releases, a smaller exposure window without Fangames Direct, 2nd parts are never as successful…), but doing so would mean missing out on the lessons we can learn from this (beyond better timing and respecting the ranks :S). A few things came together, but I prefer to focus on the ones that are within my range of action.

That learning centers around something that’s entirely my responsibility as the person managing the project’s social media: I needed this bump in the road to realize that it’s not enough to be consistent with what truly drives me — creating — but that it’s even more important to be consistent when it comes to sharing.

Since Act 1 was released, I’ve neglected our main showcase, the Twitter account, for various reasons. It’s been inactive for too many of those days, and I’m now very clear that this can’t happen again, especially with Act 3 and the final release coming up. Since I like to take things philosophically, I think it’s actually a great stroke of luck that this scare happened now and not when it truly matters.

Which is why I now have a question for you:

What kind of content would you like me to share/post through the Twitter account while the project continues to develop in parallel?

Would you like weekly scans of individual scenes while keeping spoilers to a minimum, like other fangame accounts do? Would you prefer I don’t reveal anything at all and instead post content related to the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon universe? Or even about the Pokémon world in general?

I already have several “section” ideas that could help not only keep the account active, but also highlight the work of others in the community — something I feel I should be doing much more of as well. Please share with us any suggestions or ideas you have — they will be heard and taken into account, no doubt.

Maybe I’m being overly dramatic with all this, and it’s just a mix of coincidence and unnoticed cause-and-effect. But believe me when I say the sheer brilliance of the project we’re shaping — both technically and narratively — deserves all the care and concern I can give. I have full confidence in the artistic superiority it will ultimately hold over its older sibling, and I intend to give it every tool and space it needs to shine.

Therefore, by the time this post is published, the Twitter account name will change to PMD Seven Symphonies / SE0, and the @ will now be @Canete_PMD. I think Special Episode 0 has already given us a lot — its premise was flawless, and even today it spreads like wildfire. From now on, we’ll focus where it’s needed most and try to make it easier to find both the project and us. It hurts a little, but I trust it’s the right decision (the @ change, though — yeah, it was time to get a normal one xD).

And with that, I’ll sign off. To you, who made it this far: there are incredible things written in your Destiny. If you don’t believe me, just wait till you can keep climbing ;)

Thanks for reading — truly, with all my Soul. And with all my big ass Ego, too. <3

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raccoonfallsharder · 4 months ago

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haiiiiii, i don’t know if you’ve talked about it but rocket making gifts wether it be like little playlists filled with music he’d think you’d like or small trinkets he built himself would be such a cute idea yk !

little deer, YES. you are SO right. i'm sorry this took so long for me to respond to but i've just been luxuriating in the idea. rocket is so deprived of love (in a way that is at least somewhat self-inflicted). it's very hard for him to receive incoming messages in any love language. he'd relish a kind gesture of physical affection, if he ever trusted anyone enough to touch him; he'd love to be genuinely praised, if he could ever bring himself to believe the words. he'd adore spending quality time together in parallel play - him listening to music and tinkering with something while you read a book or doodle on your datapad - but he'd have to trust he wouldn't open his mouth and say something rude to ruin the moment.

in terms of how he tries to speak his affection, though? it's all acts of service and gifts.

if you're new on the milano (or the benatar, or the bowie), you might not understand what he's doing at first. he's probably loading you up with new blasters and cannons every cycle, muttering about how you're clumsy and a crap-shot, and he doesn't wanna end up distracted on a mission because you can't frickin' take care of yourself. but sooner or later, you start to notice that your firearms are always perfectly maintained, and the aim and recoil is easier to handle every time. you'd like to say it's just because you're improving, but you know you're not getting that good that quickly. someone must be messing with your guns, remaking them to meet your needs ~ fine-tuning them every time he sees you using them.

later on ~ once you've started to develop a real friendship ~ you'll find things shift. little thoughtful inventions, intended to make your life easier, perhaps. an adapter that you can plug into your phone to connect to the intergalactic transmissions and communications system. a program shows up on your datapad that translates any major intergalactic language to your own ~ so you can read all sorts of documents, of course; but it isn't lost on you that someone has also downloaded some shi'ar adventure novels and skrull fanfiction for you to read when you're bored between missions. more frivolously: an alien, cobbled-together handheld gaming console that somehow contains clones of your favorite games from terra, and a few new ones that are strange but similar. and finally: six crinkling bags of zargnuts that someone must have rescued from drax's hungry maw, just because he noticed you like them.

these little gifts show up tucked in drawers, or on the shelf of your bunk ~ so discreetly-given that you might have missed them for a couple rotations before you finally realize they're there.

when you ask where something came from, rocket only gives you one of two pre-determined responses: a blank stare and a shrug - i don't frickin know; do i gotta keep track of everything on this ship? - or an embarrassed palm to the back of his neck and a scowl. i was just bored. i just had it lyin' around. don't make a big deal outta it.

rocket's not only pragmatic, though. don't get me wrong: when he's finally fully comfortable with you, the practical gifts don't stop ~ though nowadays he might toss them to you with a wink and a smirk instead of pretending like they just appear in your bunk out of thin air.

but deep underneath the scars and the skittishness, nestled next to his metal bones and manufactured organs, rocket is first and foremost a lover of beautiful things: of open skies, and sprawling stars, and ships that slice through the fabric of space-time like beautiful, blazing bullets. and so eventually, at least some of these gifts will reflect that: no longer restricted to small pleasures he can write off as purely sensiblistic, but things that are just his way of sharing a tiny fraction of beauty with you. you’ll find a tiny welded scultpure of an everbloom, left on your pillow one day. a pin-drive with a playlist of his favorite songs, cloned from pete's zune. a patched-glass lantern to go over your bunk's plasma orb, casting colorful stars over your walls.

and most recently, a pair of magnification goggles he's altered to show you holosnaps of his favorite places in the universe.

late in the sleep-shift you both sit in your bunk ~ you've added a hammock for him in the corner, and sometimes he crashes there for the night ~ and he shows you how to add new holosnaps to the goggles, and the sliding switch that shifts them into projector mode. the images glow, three-dimensional and silvery, between the two of you.

that one's tarka, he says, tossing a handful of zargnuts into his mouth ~ these ones swiped more recently than the six bags from before. and that's tryl'sart.

what's this one? you ask, swiping through to the next shimmering, luminous image. mountains and thin waterfalls gleam in the dark air — bustling cities and colorful banners shiver with thin lines of static.

aladna, rocket tells you. you wanna go?

you snort. of course i do. i want to see all these places.

he tilts his head. his thumb coasts the edge of the goggles. i could take you, he says at last. steal the extra ship and go on a little roadtrip. kinda wanted to pick you up a little somethin' there, anyway.

you lean back, cradling your head in your palms, and your eyes soften.

you don't have to always give me things, you know, you tell the pipes of the ceiling softly. i don't need gifts to be your friend.

he huffs, and a slant of your eyes tells you he's scrubbing at his whiskers self-consciously.

well, you'll want somethin' nice if i take you to aladna. as a pay-off. he shrugs. the place is frickin' paradise, but the people are weird.

he tosses a bag of zargnuts at your belly, and when you glance over at him in the silver and shadow, he's got a rueful curl in the corner of his mouth.

too happy, he tells you. and the language is weird, too. even with a translator ~ they can only speak in song.

your grin widens while you close your eyes, and settle into the quiet shadows with sleep lapping at the edge of your senses like a quiet shore.

that sounds even better then, dude, you tell him, folding your hands over your gifted bag of zargnuts.

i could listen to you sing all day.

headcanons & imagines | navigation | fanfiction masterlist

related imagines: rocket & origami | rocket & coloring | rocket & sudoku, crosswords & word-searches | rocket & hanayama puzzles | rocket sings

#rfh asks #scrapmetaldoe #rocket raccoon #rfh headcanons

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romanceclubofficial · 1 year ago

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Today we asked Jack K., the author of Elite Tag: Out of the story’s characters…

Who would be the most agile during a game of Twister? Sara. She does daily yoga to keep healthy and is competitive enough to always stay in to the very end.

Who’s most likely to sing in the shower? Vera, and she sings terribly on purpose to make herself laugh. It's a lot more fun that way!

Who’s the worst at parallel parking? Jake always gets distracted by the radio and has to retry a few times before he can get the angles right.

Who has the most unusual collection, and what are they collecting? Karl has a collection of stubby holders he started in his teens. He gets at least one every time he goes on a trip or visits a local market.

Who would be the first to sign up for a space mission to Mars? Daniel had never even thought about the space program before, but he would love the ego boost of being able to say "I'm an astronaut" to anyone and everyone he could.

Haven’t met everyone yet? Download Romance Club and play Elite Tag!

#author questions #visual novel #contemporary romance #indie game #mobile games #pc games #steam games #gaming #romance novels #romance club #your story interactive

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 5 months ago

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Monday SpaceTime 20250113 Series 28 Episode 6

How the Pluto-Charon dwarf planet binary formed

A new study suggests that the formation of Pluto—Charon dwarf planet binary system may parallel that of the Earth-Moon system.

BepiColombo swoops low over the planet Mercury

The BepiColumbo spacecraft has undertaken a close flyby of Mercury swooping down to within 295 kilometres of the Sun scorched planet’s grey crater covered surface.

Taking a look at the year ahead in astronomy

2025 promises to be another big year in astronomy and space sciences with the Sun’s 11 year solar cycle destined to reach its peak at solar max – assuming it hasn’t just happened already.

The Science Report

The World Meteorological Organization has confirmed that 2024 is the warmest year on record.

Study shows people who drink coffee in the morning have a lower risk of dying.

New computer modelling suggests that indoor vertical farming could help future-proof food demands.

Sequencing the genetics of Australia’s marsupial mole.

Skeptics guide to the Hexham Heads

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States. The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science. SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research. The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network. Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor. Gary’s always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. Gary’s radio career stretches back some 34 years including 26 at the ABC. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. He was part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and became one of its first on air presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually. However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage. Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently. StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016. Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #nasa #astrophysics #esa #spacetimewithstuartgary #starstuff #spacetime

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dizzymoods · 11 months ago

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Lots of VC questions recently. Someone emailed about what they should be engaging with to develop their artistic voice. Here's my answer:

In terms of guidance, Werner Herzog, who is admittedly a weirdo, said that the best thing a film student can do is go backpacking cross country, which I would never do. But the point he was ultimately making is that life experience is more important than anything a film school can teach you. Your artistic voice develops more sharply the more intune you are with the world; all the film stuff is superfluous really. So that would be my major advice. Live life! Be open to all sorts of experiences.

Outside of that I would say to read and watch anything and everything you can get your hands on. Especially stuff that has nothing to do with film. Be curious, which is to say non-judgemental. Sitting through stuff that you have no interest in or actively hate is good! It develops your taste in ways that seeking out only what you like can never do. It also expands your horizons and teaches you how much you actually don't know about anything. Keeps you humble. You'll be surprised 5 years on how something that you had no interest in is super relevant to what you're trying to do.

I'll drop some recommendations later but something you are going to run into is paywalls and exorbitant costs. Scihub, Libgen, and PaywallReader can be your friends in this regard. The more niche something is, the less mirrors there are. Investing in an internet audio/video ripper is essential. Rip often and indiscriminately. Nothing is safe unless you triplicate it. And if you can't afford hard drives, dummy alphabet accounts are the next best thing. Also, footnotes and reference lists are treasure troves of breadcrumbs.

The standard VC reading list includes: Reel to Real, The Devil Finds Work, Playing in the Dark, Young British & Black, Ways of Seeing (also a documentary), Orientalism, Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Culture, Questions of Third Cinema, Hollywood & Counter Cinema, Figures Traced in Light, Parallel Tracks, and Basho: The Complete Haiku

Hundreds of films can be found on Solidarity Cinema. Cinema of the World has a deep archive but you need to have space and a nitrofile account to download most films, but you can snipe a few films here and there (or look for them elsewhere). Rarefilmm updates semi-regularly and you can stream the films; they are now more active on twitter and are even taking requests. Some state-sponsored film industries have robust presences on youtube with english subs: Russia's Mosfilm/FUSE Mosfilm, Canada's NFB, the Korean Film Archive, Native People's Media. There's UbuWeb for all your avant-garde needs. There's FIlmmaker's Co-Op (pay-per-view), Paper Tiger Television, and Deep Dish Television for NYC indie stuff. AfroMarxist has a fair amount of political documentaries. NMAHC has an archive that houses the work of Chamba Productions and some of Pearl Bowser's stuff. And of course there's the legendary MikeD of ReelBlack. It's a crap shoot but some filmmakers and/or their estates make work available free online (Leo Hurwitz and Julie Dash come to mind). I'd recommend a Kweli TV subscription for black film, and never be surprised by what you can find on youtube or tubi!

This is probably super overwhelming but the joy of being an autodidact is the thrill of discovery so peruse at your leisurely interest. The internet is your oyster if you know how to use it! Back in my day hardly any of these sites existed and the ones that did weren't as robust as they are now. I've had to frankenstein whole movies from various clips posted in 144p on youtube 😩

I used to do a couple of themed months a year where I'd read and watch as much as possible about a filmmaker, genre, or movement that interested me. I'd spin a globe to learn a little about a random country's cinema. Best of lists/canons don't really mean much but they are good sources of stuff to at least be aware of.

#vibration cinema

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xfandom-fairyx · 8 months ago

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marching band au

bakugo fic

here goes nothing..

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My car slowed as I turned the corner onto the road that held the dorm house I would be staying in for the next 4 years of my life. The sun was already going down, not quite setting, but the sky was already turning pinkish orange, rays of golden light peeking through the trees that were scattered amongst the houses I passed by. I took a deep breath, trying not to gape at the building at the end of the cul de sac, as I pulled up the cement driveway— where no other cars were parked. I sighed thankfully. Being the first person here meant I got first dibs on the bedrooms, the thought alone sending a wave of excitement through me. The house was gorgeous, and freaking huge. (How many roommates was I supposed to have, again?..)

Double checking I had the correct address from the email in my phone, I pulled my keys from the ignition, fumbling to find the key to the front door. The heat outside was suffocating compared to the cool AC from my car, making me want to quicken my pace a bit to get inside. Deciding to grab the rest of my luggage after a quick look around and picking my room, I grabbed my backpack and purse before heading up the stairs to the front door. The entrance was framed by a beautiful wrap around porch, a few chairs, benches, and a porch swing adorning the wooden planks on each side of the door. Gently swinging the painted blue door open, I took my first steps inside my new (temporary) home, my chest tight with emotion.

The foyer was a bright space, a few meters wide, but felt cozy. Along the wall to the left was a deep blue, cubby-like bench with coat hooks, cabinets and a shoe rack, while the right wall had an oak table with a beautiful crystal decorative bowl, a fake potted plant and a circular mirror. Placed on the table beside the bowl was a slip of paper that had a list of utilities with passwords, app suggestions, and numbers for the local emergency services since we lived off campus. I quickly snapped a picture of and saved it to my favorites album, a subtle reminder to download the security app for the house, and a separate app for the security cameras. I moved to the left again and placed my keys on the cubby hook on the far right, kicking my slides off to set them on the shelf below my keys, my fingers gently grazing the navy stained wood. I was in no real rush as I stepped to the end of the foyer, taking it all in.

“Holy shit.. wow..” was all I could muster in my awe. The house smelled like oak wood and vanilla— the sweet woody combination fit just right in my head and sent me reeling to see the rest of the place I would call home. The bottom floor had a completely open floor plan where I could see everything from almost every angle across the house. To my right, a deep sectional sofa fit for 10 sat in a semi U shape, a chaise piece attached to run parallel with the longest side of the sofa, the whole thing facing a wall with a 75” flat screen, and a decent sized electric fireplace below it. Sat in the corner about 10 feet away from the sofa was a sleek, black grand piano, surrounded by a corner bookshelf that was full of sheet music, vinyl records, CD’s and memorabilia. My eyes flickered to the other side of the space to a grand kitchen, granite countertops, a huge island with a second barn sink, beautifully crafted cabinets, stainless steel appliances (which were huge, by the way! An 8 range stove?? A fridge big enough to hold food for a football team?! Christ!), and a walk-in pantry to top it off? I was in absolute heaven, daydreaming of the cooking and baking I would have so much fun doing in this kitchen.

I made my way to the left, because behind the formal dining table that sat 6 feet from the giant island in the kitchen, was a wide staircase leading upstairs to a loft area, where I assumed the bedrooms were also. There were a few more doors that I would get to later, assuming one was another bathroom or bedroom, and at least one of them led to the garage.

The loft area sat mostly above the kitchen, dining room and above the piano, leaving a full view of the living room area, and the ability to see at least half of the kitchen and dining room from the side opposite the stairs, and the hardwood floors throughout the entirety of the main and second floors. The loft itself had a study area with a few desks lined against the wall; all 4 of them fit at least two chairs, a work lamp on each surface, and a table in the corner that had a computer with a printer, which I quickly assumed was going to be strictly for homework.

As I made my way down the hallway to our bedrooms, I opened each door to peek inside and see which room I would like most. There were 2 spare bathrooms and 8 bedrooms total on this floor, with the two at the very end of the hallway having their doors 45° angled into the hallway. I opened the bedroom to the right first, and immediately fell in love with the wide space, huge windows, walk-in closet, and a third door that I could only guess was my own bathroom. Giddiness flooded my system as I opened the door and saw I was right. I set my bag on the queen sized bed in the space I couldn’t wait to decorate, and decided I should go get the rest of my stuff and start unpacking. It was dusk now, which meant I didn’t have much more time to get my stuff before night fell over the house, so I slipped downstairs and back into my sandals, flicking the porch light on.

The first load I needed to bring upstairs was my bedding, and if I had enough hands, I could grab my laundry bag. I still didn’t have a clue where the laundry room was, but I figured I would figure that out later. Getting back upstairs and to the end of the hallway had my lungs and legs burning, and I groaned out loud at the several other trips down and back up those stairs I would have to make tonight.

“Ugghhh, fuck!” I groaned, pulling my shirt away from my body rapidly, trying to fan myself. By the 5th trip to my car, I was sticky from sweat, out of breath, red in the face and regretting life, but it was my last load to carry before I could stay inside and relish the cool air of the central cooling system. My last suitcase of clothes and a medium sized box that had my favorite dog’s ashes amongst other sentimental items were in my arms as a big black truck came down the road and to a stop in the driveway next to my Camry. I looked away, trying to juggle the box and suitcase around so I could shut the door of my car, the box slipping from my grasp. Just as I was about to drop that super important box, a second pair of hands reached out to help.

“Woah! Careful! Do you need some help?” A voice asked. My panicked eyes met kind vermillion, that gentle tenor voice belonging to a boy with long red hair that was tied back, a touch of black at his roots. His smile was just as sweet as it lit up his face.

“Yeah,” I said breathlessly, “some help would be great!” He grinned wider, gesturing for me to go ahead of him.

“Lead the way, pretty lady,” he charmed. As if my cheeks weren’t red enough from the exertion, more heat crept up my neck and bloomed in my face. I huffed out a giggle, making my way around the car, leading the redhead up the steps and through the house to my room. I opened the door for him to come in and set the box on my bed, and he let out a low whistle.

“Nice space, can’t wait to see what you do with it,” he commented, a cheeky grin plastered on his face.

“Oi, Shitty Hair, you gonna get your shit out of my car or what? Stop flirting, you just met her,” a voice came from behind him. I peeked around the redhead’s shoulders to catch a glimpse at what looked like Adonis himself. A tall, sculpted blonde with gorgeous ruby eyes was scowling in our direction, his gaze narrowing as he saw me.

Shaking the scrutiny from his gaze off my shoulders, I turned my attention back to the redhead in front of me, trying not to let my gaze wander to his bare arms that were shown off from his cut off t-shirt.

“I’m y/n, by the way. Thank you for helping me with my stuff,” I grinned, holding my hand out for a handshake. He grinned back widely, but instead of shaking my hand, he held his arms out and pulled me into a hug, shocking me at first, but I absolutely hugged back. He felt so warm and his chest was cushioned, (not to mention he smelled amazing! Like marine moss, citrus and driftwood..)

“Name’s Eijiro, but you can call me Kiri, if you want,” he said over my shoulder, giving me a gentle squeeze before letting go, turning to head back downstairs. As I stepped into the hallway to follow him, two more boys came sauntering into view, one with sunny blonde hair and a black streak in it, the other with raven black hair. They were laughing and giggling at the top of the stairs, trying to trip each other to get to their rooms first, but stopped in their tracks as soon as they saw me. Eijiro chuckled and went around them to get back downstairs. The blonde one dropped all his bags, holding up hand to point a finger at me before shouting,

“GIRL! THERE’S A GIRL IN THE HOUSE!” Like I was some kind of 1600’s witch. The raven-haired boy cracked up, and I could hear Eijiro cackling from downstairs. The ash blonde was coming out of his room from behind me, coming to a halt a few inches from where I stood. I could feel his body heat radiating off of him, the smell of warm honey and sea salt floating to my nostrils.

“Yeah, Sparkplug, she’s a fucking girl. Stop ogling and get back to getting your shit out of my truck.” He said gruffly, grumbling out, “fucking idiot” as he passed us all on his way back downstairs.

Snapping out of my trance, I looked between the new boys in front of me, offering a small smile.

“Anyone up for some pizza and we can do introductions when it gets here?” I suggested, making them grin widely.

I got a, “for sure, man,” from the ravenette, and a, “heelll yeah, brother,” from the new blonde to cement my decision, and I grabbed my phone to open up the Domino’s app.

. • ° * ° • . … . • ° * ° • .

A/N: first part might be a bit awkward, I haven’t written in a while. (Help me out with tags?) Next part is in the works, hopefully as I get back into it, I’ll be more comfortable and it’ll get better. I can come back and edit later if I feel like it’s missing something. Hope you enjoy 🤍

#bakugou x reader #bnha #katsuki bakugo

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myarmsaretoolong · 4 months ago

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february recs

happy spring! ive both read quite a lot and not much at all this month so here's what ive got for you. feel free to add recs of your own as well!!

After the house of horrors by evelynIttor

Febuwhump 2025 prompt day 20 "I did good right?" Andy thought Owen would be done with him as soon as they left the house of horrors. He didn't expect Owen to make sure he was seen to.

a really sweet owen & andy fic, highly reccommend!

The Space Between Seconds by erosophic

Jack Harkness makes it twenty-four hours before he breaks, seeking out the Doctor to beg for something he never thought he’d ask for—a moment, a chance for Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato to see something beyond Torchwood before their inevitable deaths. The Doctor, after some hesitation, agrees to the trade, offering Jack five days with a changed Owen and Tosh in exchange for letting them go.

tosh and owen go on adventures with the doctor, whats not to like!? featuring great writing to boot

Another Like Me by UniverseOnHerShoulders

Clara Oswald had never had much interest in Torchwood. They were too loud, too brash, too heavily armed, too rogue. Only then she finds herself passing an idle day in their Archive, reading about Owen Harper - a man who is, like her, both alive and dead. Finding her curiosity piqued, she makes a trip to Cardiff, but she can't escape the inevitable.

beatiful prose, opened my eyes to the potential of clara and owen in the same room as each other

Like Flesh Meets Soulless Steel by HoloMew151

- @brittasfan

The Nethersphere was a device designed to hold the dead until such time as they can be downloaded into an army of desecrated Cybermen husks, at least if one had died before 2014. Ianto Jones, Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato, former members of Torchwood 3, were dead by 2014.

twists and turns galore, kept me on my toes the whole way through

Febuwhump 2025 by Jackdaw816

- @shejustcalledmeafish

In which I whump John 28 times (again) because I love him <3

*the* place to go for john whump

A Parallel Christmas Invasion by By_Gray

- @by-gray

“Don’t wanna hear? Door’s that way.” Jack indicates. “Surprised the Doctor hasn’t shown you the door,” Mickey grumbles. Jack’s heart halts in his chest. Mickey must have x-ray vision. He observes it. “What?” But Jack can’t say it. Nothing is revealed until Mickey deduces it for himself. “Oh my God. He’s shown you the door.” An AU where instead of flying away from Satellite 5 straight away, Jack and The Doctor have a toxic talk on the Tardis. The Doctor makes it clear to Jack right there and then that he's possibly immortal and that he isn't welcome. If only Jack's love wasn't secret.

technically not torchwood, but it is jack and its so worth reccing! exactly as it says on the tin and such a great read

(january recs)

#torchwood #torchwood fic recs

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kotamagic · 1 year ago

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Before I get into this week's Lore Olympus, I need to mention a few things.

First, the website no longer shows the whole strip. It cuts off about halfway through.

Next, if you want to see the whole thing, you have to download the stupid webtoon app. Great, another app to take up space on my phone

And lastly, I can't take screenshots on the app. You know how I typically intersperse images with commentary? Yeah, I can only get away with half of that. Bull fucking shit....

Anyway, here goes...

Persephone has a moment of reflection with Eris. Rage has a purpose if cared for properly. It's the part of yourself that knows when you've been wronged, and you are set to straighten things out.

She raged against the humans killing her nymphs. Now she is ready to rage against the individual who deserves it most.

It's important to note a parallel. During her 10 years in the Mortal Realm, she helped Eris, and by doing so, came to terms with her own wrath. It's not pretty, but it's important to acknowledge that wrath has its place.

Back in the present (can we call it that? I feel Kronos' time powers might have made that not entirely accurate), we return to the moment the last installment left off at. Not only has Persephone struck him with the arrow, it seems to have drained Apollo of that golden glow he had.

Persephone commences the most satisfying mental torture on Apollo. She spells it ALL out.

So Apollo "loved" her? He certainly had a shitty way of showing it. I'm still convinced that he only loves himself and power, but seeing him suffer under the effects of the arrow is sooooo satisfying!

Apollo begs for mercy, but Persephone isn't going to give it. He had called the Oracle News to have them broadcast a proposal. Instead, Persephone makes him confess what he did to her. On the air. Broadcast to EVERYONE.

Every nymph. Every god and goddess. They ALL heard his confession.....

And they ALL look ready for blood!

This is the moment we, the fans, have been waiting for.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my LO post.

#lore olympus #lo persephone #lo apollo #lo Eris

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vntako · 1 year ago

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vn in a bottle: her tears were my light

ah i've found something very nice

decided to read some short vns to figure out how to write one and i thought this first one i went for appropriately explicitly defined starts, middles, and endings as part of it's narrative. along with the whole time travel shebang (you play as time) i found this was a bit too appropriate for what i was deciding to write but thought hey this is the universe nudging me gently into finishing the thing.

the story starts with time all alone, and finding space. i love the whole love at first sight schtick, oh and there's an implication of fated lovers thing ("it's like i've met you before" and all that jazz)

space is very cute

i find it difficult to talk about this game without spoiling it bc it's really short and there's not much to say about the exposition apart from space being super cute (the whole thing is around ~30 mins for me, at least less than an hour)

well, to be a bit less vague, i like the story's themes of loneliness. relationships are a complex thing, and memories aren't so reliable sometimes. and people do ultimately change. we misunderstand, we discuss, we compromise. i like that the story reminds us to do our best to try not to leave anyone in our lives lonely.

oh the the fluff between the characters is great, i like a lot

OH forgot to mention the music, it's super good. it fits over the emotional parts so well, especially the true ending song geez. also there are vocal tracks in the extras using eleanor forte and they're really good i need them on like, spotify to put in a playlist (one of them is there, it wasn't my fav but this is pretty nice)

go play this game it's free on itch over here you can play it in your browser no downloads just a bit of loading time

her tears were my light by NomnomNami (itch.io)

spoilers beyond this point

if it gets you to play it you should know you get to kiss the girls

so you have to save space from being killed by this other girl nil, and she has the power to stop you from rewinding so you gotta start at the start every time you try to save space

the whole "doing different things but always leading to the same result" (insanity) plot line is very appealing to me, and this vn has that. space is killed every time you try to reset. you reset anyway. wowza. i love that.

eventually, we find out nil and space are the same, which is implied by their similar appearances and parallels and stuff. i like that, that's cool, so at that point the goal for you is to reconcile the two of em despite them being polar opposites of each other (space is the girlfailure and nil is the girlboss)

it genuinely hurt me resetting out of the nil ending btw, i didn't get a screenshot but jeezums (nil is best girl sorry)

a few resets in you get to have this moment with space

it's great

i don't like that this kiss decides you abandon nil, though. well, you come around eventually.

you get the true beginning by talking things out with nil, making up for what you've done (even if you don't remember), and deciding not to abandon either of them. that's great, i like that a lot. talking is good.

nil is super cute

to talk a bit more, i like how nil gets so desperate to the point that time misunderstands her intentions. i think, that like happens a fair bit in real life. heck if someone forgot about me to go and have fun with someone else i would uh, die. time hears her out eventually and they come to a compromise and it all works out for the three of them. they both forgive each other. and space doesn't die (yay)

the true beginning is basically a poly ending and that makes this vn a 10/10

#her tears were my light #visual novel #vn in a bottle #nomnomnami

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mattapparentlystumbltourneys · 2 years ago

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Virtual Character Tourney - Round 4 - Bracket III - 2

Propaganda below (May contain spoilers!)

Holly propaganda:

Due to a pay dispute with Holly's original actor, Norman Lovett, Holly was instead played by Hattie Hayridge during seasons 3-5. This was explained briefly in the show as them having gone through a "computer sex change". This makes Holly canonically trans do not @ me.

holly is the silliest most specialest ai ever. she has an iq of 6,000 but sometimes it seems like his iq is more like 6. they're possibly transgender (do computers have gender??) (i am panicking over pronouns while writing this propaganda) - holly goes from appearing like a man to appearing like a woman with no real explanation(??) and nobody questions this (the show is from the 90s btw). he's hilarious and sometimes lies to the crew for no reason other than 'its a laugh, innit'. shes everything to me <3

Holly is the computer of Red Dwarf, a Tenth Generation AI hologrammatic computer who appears as a floating head on a screen. Can be downloaded onto various other devices. also literally transgender.. meets a female appearing parallel version of itself in a parallel universe and then goes through a sex change after falling in love with her. transgender computer ftw

HAL 9000 propaganda:

One of the most iconic AI villains

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

#virtual character tourney #round 4 #holly #holly red dwarf #red dwarf #hal 9000 #2001 a space odyssey #2001 aso #character polls

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thelongestway · 5 months ago

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Well. :) Maybe the weird experimental shit will see itself through anyway, regardless of the author's doubts. Sometimes you have to backtrack; sometimes you just have to keep going.

Chapter 13: Integration

Do you want to watch awful media with me? ART said after its regular diagnostics round.

At this point, I was really tired of horrible media. And I knew ART was, too; it had digested Dandelion's watch list without complaint, but it hadn't once before asked to look at even more terrible media than we absolutely had to see. (And we had a lot. There was an entire list of shitty media helpfully compiled for us by all of our humans. Once we were done with getting ART's engines up and running, I was planning to hard block every single one of these shows from any potential download lists I would be doing in the future, forever.)

Which one? I said.

It browsed through the catalogue, then queried me for my own recent lists, but without the usual filters I had set up for it, then pulled out a few of the "true life" documentaries Pin-Lee and I had watched together for disaster evaluation purposes.

These were in your watch list. Why?

That was a hard question. I hated watching humans be stupid as much as ART did. But Pin-Lee being there made a big difference.

(Analyzing things with her helped. Pin-Lee's expertise in human legal frameworks let her explain a lot about how the humans wound up in the situations they did. And made comments about their horrible fates that would have gotten her in a lot of trouble if she'd made them professionally, but somehow made me feel better about watching said fates on archival footage.)

(Also these weren't our disasters to handle.)

I synthesized all of that into a data packet for ART. It considered, then said: I want that one. Can we do a planet? Not space.

Ugh, planets. But yeah. We could do a planetary disaster.

It's going to be improbable worms again.

It's always improbable worms, ART said. Play the episode.

I put it on, and we watched. Or, more accurately, ART watched the episode (and me reacting to it), and I watched ART, which was being a lot calmer about it than it had previously been with this kind of media. The weird oscillations it got from Dandelion were still there, but instead of doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall intermittently, it was sitting through them, watching the show at the same time as it processed. Like it was there and not at the same time. Other parts of it were working on integrating its new experiences into the architecture it was creating. (ART had upgraded it to version 0.5 by now).

About halfway through the episode, ART said, I don't remember what it was like being deleted.

Yeah. Your backup was earlier.

In the show, humans were getting eaten by worms because they hadn't followed security recommendations (as usual), and because they hadn't contracted a bond company to make them follow recommendations (fuck advertising). In the feed, ART was thinking, but it was still following along. And writing code.

Then it said: She remembers being deleted.

You saw that when her memory reconnected?

Yes. And how she grew back from the debris of an old self. I didn't think she understood what I was planning.

Should you be telling me all this? What about privacy?

The training program includes permission to have help in processing what I saw. But that's not the part I am having difficulty with.

ART paused, then it queried me for permission to show me. I confirmed, but it needed a few seconds to process before it finally said:

There was a dying second-generation ship after a failed wormhole transit. Apex was her student and she couldn't save him. That was worse than being deleted.

ART focused on the screen again, looking at archival footage of people who had really died and it couldn't do anything about that. The data it was processing from the jump right now wasn't really sensory. It was mostly emotions, and it was processing them in parallel with the emotions from the show. In the show, there was a crying person, talking about how she'd never violate a single safety rule ever again (she was lying. Humans always lied about that). In the feed, ART was processing finding a ship that was half-disintegrated by a careless turn in the wormhole. The destruction spared Apex's organic processing center. He let Dandelion take his surviving humans on board, then limped back into the wormhole. She didn't have tractors to stop him then.

The episode ended, and ART prompted me to put on the next one. It was about space, but ART didn't protest. We sat there, watching humans die, and watching a ship die. Then we sat there, watching humans who survived talk about what happened afterwards. It sucked. It sucked a lot. But ART did not have to stop watching to run its diagnostics anymore.

Several hours later, ART said: Thank you.

For watching awful media with you?

Yes. Worldhoppers now?

It had been two months since it last wanted to watch Worldhoppers.

From the beginning, I said. That big, overwhelming emotion--relief, happiness, sadness, all rolled into one--was back again. Things couldn't go back to the way they were. But maybe now they could go forward. And we don't stop until the last episode, right?

Of course, ART said.

#the nameless fanfic #ttou #time to orbit unknown #tmbd #horrible crossover thoughts #my writing

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