#energy modeling software

[hvac-eng]

BIM Software Solutions for Modern HVAC Applications

As the HVAC industry continues to evolve in 2025, Building Information Modeling (BIM) has become an indispensable tool for professionals seeking to optimize design, installation, and maintenance processes. For HVAC engineers, contractors, and technicians, selecting the right BIM software can significantly impact project efficiency and outcomes. Let’s explore the most effective BIM solutions for…

[zonetechai]

Explore the top 10 emerging technologies of 2025, reshaping industries and lifestyles. Discover innovations driving the future today!

[bi-writes]

whats wrong with ai?? genuinely curious <3

okay let's break it down. i'm an engineer, so i'm going to come at you from a perspective that may be different than someone else's.

i don't hate ai in every aspect. in theory, there are a lot of instances where, in fact, ai can help us do things a lot better without. here's a few examples:

ai detecting cancer

ai sorting recycling

some practical housekeeping that gemini (google ai) can do

all of the above examples are ways in which ai works with humans to do things in parallel with us. it's not overstepping--it's sorting, using pixels at a micro-level to detect abnormalities that we as humans can not, fixing a list. these are all really small, helpful ways that ai can work with us.

everything else about ai works against us. in general, ai is a huge consumer of natural resources. every prompt that you put into character.ai, chatgpt? this wastes water + energy. it's not free. a machine somewhere in the world has to swallow your prompt, call on a model to feed data into it and process more data, and then has to generate an answer for you all in a relatively short amount of time.

that is crazy expensive. someone is paying for that, and if it isn't you with your own money, it's the strain on the power grid, the water that cools the computers, the A/C that cools the data centers. and you aren't the only person using ai. chatgpt alone gets millions of users every single day, with probably thousands of prompts per second, so multiply your personal consumption by millions, and you can start to see how the picture is becoming overwhelming.

that is energy consumption alone. we haven't even talked about how problematic ai is ethically. there is currently no regulation in the united states about how ai should be developed, deployed, or used.

what does this mean for you?

it means that anything you post online is subject to data mining by an ai model (because why would they need to ask if there's no laws to stop them? wtf does it matter what it means to you to some idiot software engineer in the back room of an office making 3x your salary?). oh, that little fic you posted to wattpad that got a lot of attention? well now it's being used to teach ai how to write. oh, that sketch you made using adobe that you want to sell? adobe didn't tell you that anything you save to the cloud is now subject to being used for their ai models, so now your art is being replicated to generate ai images in photoshop, without crediting you (they have since said they don't do this...but privacy policies were never made to be human-readable, and i can't imagine they are the only company to sneakily try this). oh, your apartment just installed a new system that will use facial recognition to let their residents inside? oh, they didn't train their model with anyone but white people, so now all the black people living in that apartment building can't get into their homes. oh, you want to apply for a new job? the ai model that scans resumes learned from historical data that more men work that role than women (so the model basically thinks men are better than women), so now your resume is getting thrown out because you're a woman.

ai learns from data. and data is flawed. data is human. and as humans, we are racist, homophobic, misogynistic, transphobic, divided. so the ai models we train will learn from this. ai learns from people's creative works--their personal and artistic property. and now it's scrambling them all up to spit out generated images and written works that no one would ever want to read (because it's no longer a labor of love), and they're using that to make money. they're profiting off of people, and there's no one to stop them. they're also using generated images as marketing tools, to trick idiots on facebook, to make it so hard to be media literate that we have to question every single thing we see because now we don't know what's real and what's not.

the problem with ai is that it's doing more harm than good. and we as a society aren't doing our due diligence to understand the unintended consequences of it all. we aren't angry enough. we're too scared of stifling innovation that we're letting it regulate itself (aka letting companies decide), which has never been a good idea. we see it do one cool thing, and somehow that makes up for all the rest of the bullshit?

[nasa]

LaRue Burbank, mathematician and computer, is just one of the many women who were instrumental to NASA missions.

4 Little Known Women Who Made Huge Contributions to NASA

Women have always played a significant role at NASA and its predecessor NACA, although for much of the agency’s history, they received neither the praise nor recognition that their contributions deserved. To celebrate Women’s History Month – and properly highlight some of the little-known women-led accomplishments of NASA’s early history – our archivists gathered the stories of four women whose work was critical to NASA’s success and paved the way for future generations.

LaRue Burbank: One of the Women Who Helped Land a Man on the Moon

LaRue Burbank was a trailblazing mathematician at NASA. Hired in 1954 at Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory (now NASA’s Langley Research Center), she, like many other young women at NACA, the predecessor to NASA, had a bachelor's degree in mathematics. But unlike most, she also had a physics degree. For the next four years, she worked as a "human computer," conducting complex data analyses for engineers using calculators, slide rules, and other instruments. After NASA's founding, she continued this vital work for Project Mercury.

In 1962, she transferred to the newly established Manned Spacecraft Center (now NASA’s Johnson Space Center) in Houston, becoming one of the few female professionals and managers there.  Her expertise in electronics engineering led her to develop critical display systems used by flight controllers in Mission Control to monitor spacecraft during missions. Her work on the Apollo missions was vital to achieving President Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the Moon.

Eilene Galloway: How NASA became… NASA

Eilene Galloway wasn't a NASA employee, but she played a huge role in its very creation. In 1957, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, Senator Richard Russell Jr. called on Galloway, an expert on the Atomic Energy Act, to write a report on the U.S. response to the space race. Initially, legislators aimed to essentially re-write the Atomic Energy Act to handle the U.S. space goals. However, Galloway argued that the existing military framework wouldn't suffice – a new agency was needed to oversee both military and civilian aspects of space exploration. This included not just defense, but also meteorology, communications, and international cooperation.

Her work on the National Aeronautics and Space Act ensured NASA had the power to accomplish all these goals, without limitations from the Department of Defense or restrictions on international agreements. Galloway is even to thank for the name "National Aeronautics and Space Administration", as initially NASA was to be called “National Aeronautics and Space Agency” which was deemed to not carry enough weight and status for the wide-ranging role that NASA was to fill.

Barbara Scott: The “Star Trek Nerd” Who Led Our Understanding of the Stars

A self-described "Star Trek nerd," Barbara Scott's passion for space wasn't steered toward engineering by her guidance counselor. But that didn't stop her!  Fueled by her love of math and computer science, she landed at Goddard Spaceflight Center in 1977.  One of the first women working on flight software, Barbara's coding skills became instrumental on missions like the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) and the Thermal Canister Experiment on the Space Shuttle's STS-3.  For the final decade of her impressive career, Scott managed the flight software for the iconic Hubble Space Telescope, a testament to her dedication to space exploration.

Dr. Claire Parkinson: An Early Pioneer in Climate Science Whose Work is Still Saving Lives

Dr. Claire Parkinson's love of math blossomed into a passion for climate science. Inspired by the Moon landing, and the fight for civil rights, she pursued a graduate degree in climatology.  In 1978, her talents landed her at Goddard, where she continued her research on sea ice modeling. But Parkinson's impact goes beyond theory.  She began analyzing satellite data, leading to a groundbreaking discovery: a decline in Arctic sea ice coverage between 1973 and 1987. This critical finding caught the attention of Senator Al Gore, highlighting the urgency of climate change.

Parkinson's leadership extended beyond research.  As Project Scientist for the Aqua satellite, she championed making its data freely available. This real-time information has benefitted countless projects, from wildfire management to weather forecasting, even aiding in monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic. Parkinson's dedication to understanding sea ice patterns and the impact of climate change continues to be a valuable resource for our planet.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space! 

[ecrivainsolitaire]

A summary of the Chinese AI situation, for the uninitiated.

These are scores on different tests that are designed to see how accurate a Large Language Model is in different areas of knowledge. As you know, OpenAI is partners with Microsoft, so these are the scores for ChatGPT and Copilot. DeepSeek is the Chinese model that got released a week ago. The rest are open source models, which means everyone is free to use them as they please, including the average Tumblr user. You can run them from the servers of the companies that made them for a subscription, or you can download them to install locally on your own computer. However, the computer requirements so far are so high that only a few people currently have the machines at home required to run it.

Yes, this is why AI uses so much electricity. As with any technology, the early models are highly inefficient. Think how a Ford T needed a long chimney to get rid of a ton of black smoke, which was unused petrol. Over the next hundred years combustion engines have become much more efficient, but they still waste a lot of energy, which is why we need to move towards renewable electricity and sustainable battery technology. But that's a topic for another day.

As you can see from the scores, are around the same accuracy. These tests are in constant evolution as well: as soon as they start becoming obsolete, new ones are released to adjust for a more complicated benchmark. The new models are trained using different machine learning techniques, and in theory, the goal is to make them faster and more efficient so they can operate with less power, much like modern cars use way less energy and produce far less pollution than the Ford T.

However, computing power requirements kept scaling up, so you're either tied to the subscription or forced to pay for a latest gen PC, which is why NVIDIA, AMD, Intel and all the other chip companies were investing hard on much more powerful GPUs and NPUs. For now all we need to know about those is that they're expensive, use a lot of electricity, and are required to operate the bots at superhuman speed (literally, all those clickbait posts about how AI was secretly 150 Indian men in a trenchcoat were nonsense).

Because the chip companies have been working hard on making big, bulky, powerful chips with massive fans that are up to the task, their stock value was skyrocketing, and because of that, everyone started to use AI as a marketing trend. See, marketing people are not smart, and they don't understand computers. Furthermore, marketing people think you're stupid, and because of their biased frame of reference, they think you're two snores short of brain-dead. The entire point of their existence is to turn tall tales into capital. So they don't know or care about what AI is or what it's useful for. They just saw Number Go Up for the AI companies and decided "AI is a magic cow we can milk forever". Sometimes it's not even AI, they just use old software and rebrand it, much like convection ovens became air fryers.

Well, now we're up to date. So what did DepSeek release that did a 9/11 on NVIDIA stock prices and popped the AI bubble?

Oh, I would not want to be an OpenAI investor right now either. A token is basically one Unicode character (it's more complicated than that but you can google that on your own time). That cost means you could input the entire works of Stephen King for under a dollar. Yes, including electricity costs. DeepSeek has jumped from a Ford T to a Subaru in terms of pollution and water use.

The issue here is not only input cost, though; all that data needs to be available live, in the RAM; this is why you need powerful, expensive chips in order to-

Holy shit.

I'm not going to detail all the numbers but I'm going to focus on the chip required: an RTX 3090. This is a gaming GPU that came out as the top of the line, the stuff South Korean LoL players buy…

Or they did, in September 2020. We're currently two generations ahead, on the RTX 5090.

What this is telling all those people who just sold their high-end gaming rig to be able to afford a machine that can run the latest ChatGPT locally, is that the person who bought it from them can run something basically just as powerful on their old one.

Which means that all those GPUs and NPUs that are being made, and all those deals Microsoft signed to have control of the AI market, have just lost a lot of their pulling power.

Well, I mean, the ChatGPT subscription is 20 bucks a month, surely the Chinese are charging a fortune for-

Oh. So it's free for everyone and you can use it or modify it however you want, no subscription, no unpayable electric bill, no handing Microsoft all of your private data, you can just run it on a relatively inexpensive PC. You could probably even run it on a phone in a couple years.

Oh, if only China had massive phone manufacturers that have a foot in the market everywhere except the US because the president had a tantrum eight years ago.

So… yeah, China just destabilised the global economy with a torrent file.

[jadeharleyinc]

the scale of AI's ecological footprint

standalone version of my response to the following:

"you need soulless art? [...] why should you get to use all that computing power and electricity to produce some shitty AI art? i don’t actually think you’re entitled to consume those resources." "i think we all deserve nice things. [...] AI art is not a nice thing. it doesn’t meaningfully contribute to us thriving and the cost in terms of energy use [...] is too fucking much. none of us can afford to foot the bill." "go watch some tv show or consume some art that already exists. […] you know what’s more environmentally and economically sustainable […]? museums. galleries. being in nature."

you can run free and open source AI art programs on your personal computer, with no internet connection. this doesn't require much more electricity than running a resource-intensive video game on that same computer. i think it's important to consume less. but if you make these arguments about AI, do you apply them to video games too? do you tell Fortnite players to play board games and go to museums instead?

speaking of museums: if you drive 3 miles total to a museum and back home, you have consumed more energy and created more pollution than generating AI images for 24 hours straight (this comes out to roughly 1400 AI images). "being in nature" also involves at least this much driving, usually. i don't think these are more environmentally-conscious alternatives.

obviously, an AI image model costs energy to train in the first place, but take Stable Diffusion v2 as an example: it took 40,000 to 60,000 kWh to train. let's go with the upper bound. if you assume ~125g of CO2 per kWh, that's ~7.5 tons of CO2. to put this into perspective, a single person driving a single car for 12 months emits 4.6 tons of CO2. meanwhile, for example, the creation of a high-budget movie emits 2840 tons of CO2.

is the carbon cost of a single car being driven for 20 months, or 1/378th of a Marvel movie, worth letting anyone with a mid-end computer, anywhere, run free offline software that consumes a gaming session's worth of electricity to produce hundreds of images? i would say yes. in a heartbeat.

even if you see creating AI images as "less soulful" than consuming Marvel/Fortnite content, it's undeniably "more useful" to humanity as a tool. not to mention this usefulness includes reducing the footprint of creating media. AI is more environment-friendly than human labor on digital creative tasks, since it can get a task done with much less computer usage, doesn't commute to work, and doesn't eat.

and speaking of eating, another comparison: if you made an AI image program generate images non-stop for every second of every day for an entire year, you could offset your carbon footprint by… eating 30% less beef and lamb. not pork. not even meat in general. just beef and lamb.

the tech industry is guilty of plenty of horrendous stuff. but when it comes to the individual impact of AI, saying "i don’t actually think you’re entitled to consume those resources. do you need this? is this making you thrive?" to an individual running an AI program for 45 minutes a day per month is equivalent to questioning whether that person is entitled to a single 3 mile car drive once per month or a single meatball's worth of beef once per month. because all of these have the same CO2 footprint.

so yeah. i agree, i think we should drive less, eat less beef, stream less video, consume less. but i don't think we should tell people "stop using AI programs, just watch a TV show, go to a museum, go hiking, etc", for the same reason i wouldn't tell someone "stop playing video games and play board games instead". i don't think this is a productive angle.

(sources and number-crunching under the cut.)

good general resource: GiovanH's article "Is AI eating all the energy?", which highlights the negligible costs of running an AI program, the moderate costs of creating an AI model, and the actual indefensible energy waste coming from specific companies deploying AI irresponsibly.

CO2 emissions from running AI art programs: a) one AI image takes 3 Wh of electricity. b) one AI image takes 1mn in, for example, Midjourney. c) so if you create 1 AI image per minute for 24 hours straight, or for 45 minutes per day for a month, you've consumed 4.3 kWh. d) using the UK electric grid through 2024 as an example, the production of 1 kWh releases 124g of CO2. therefore the production of 4.3 kWh releases 533g (~0.5 kg) of CO2.

CO2 emissions from driving your car: cars in the EU emit 106.4g of CO2 per km. that's 171.19g for 1 mile, or 513g (~0.5 kg) for 3 miles.

costs of training the Stable Diffusion v2 model: quoting GiovanH's article linked in 1. "Generative models go through the same process of training. The Stable Diffusion v2 model was trained on A100 PCIe 40 GB cards running for a combined 200,000 hours, which is a specialized AI GPU that can pull a maximum of 300 W. 300 W for 200,000 hours gives a total energy consumption of 60,000 kWh. This is a high bound that assumes full usage of every chip for the entire period; SD2’s own carbon emission report indicates it likely used significantly less power than this, and other research has shown it can be done for less." at 124g of CO2 per kWh, this comes out to 7440 kg.

CO2 emissions from red meat: a) carbon footprint of eating plenty of red meat, some red meat, only white meat, no meat, and no animal products the difference between a beef/lamb diet and a no-beef-or-lamb diet comes down to 600 kg of CO2 per year. b) Americans consume 42g of beef per day. this doesn't really account for lamb (egads! my math is ruined!) but that's about 1.2 kg per month or 15 kg per year. that single piece of 42g has a 1.65kg CO2 footprint. so our 3 mile drive/4.3 kWh of AI usage have the same carbon footprint as a 12g piece of beef. roughly the size of a meatball [citation needed].

[movingthisblogcelestialtarot11]

what can indicate someone making a lot of money in their career?

Signs for making 💰

Sag sun—always working multiple jobs, having multiple interests. May be into stocks, trading, engineering, software engineering, marketing. May be into tourism.

Capricorn venus, Capricorn moon—Always working and grinding. Networks easily. But I notice with these placements they may go on to start a side job earlier than getting a full time job. That full time job may come later depending on aspects to the moon. Has a superseding reputation for their determination and professionalism.

For example capricorn moon aspecting saturn has had jobs come in later to their life. May not have had their first job until 20 and onward. They may have been working on a side hustle the entire time.

Jupiter 1h, Jupiter 10h—Success follows these individuals. Career opportunities opened themselves up to them. The more the native works on their mindset they become a manifesting success story! Though don’t be fooled these individuals have had to work on themselves immensely.

Venus asp jupiter—Cash flows in. Though with this placement the native can spend just as easily and create just as much as they lost. (Trine, sextile, conj.)

Venus 5h—makes money off of doing what they love! Most definitely has a side hustle alongside their job.

Aquarius, sun moon, rising—also can be known for their unique side hustles. May be into designing clothes of their own, making music, but there’s something so fleshed out and distinct about their side hustle people are attracted to. May have a blog, make music,

Gemini venus, sun, moon—very multifaceted in their skills. Almost everywhere and nowhere at once with how busy they are. Paired with Leo: they may have a high position in their community and attract a lot of people. It creates the perfect audience for them to sell to! May crochet or sell handmade items!

Leo sun, rising—Has a knack for presenting themselves in any community. Does well with meeting new people to gain new opportunities and experiences. Likable energy. Most likely to own a vlog, or a blog where they can talk and share their stories. Makes money off of being themselves. Very hardworking individuals and determined!

Scorpio rising—Works in silence, keeps their success limited to people who celebrate it. Highly successful, looked up to, and is intelligent with their finances. Knows how to save. They are a fixed sign so once they see something in their mind they will not stop until they manifest success!

Capricorn/saturn dom—knowing how to budget and is successful because of their ability to save money. Not just their job!

Libra moon/rising—May work in a job requiring long travels, be in a position where income is higher. They’re beauty and brains. Some men are construction workers with this placement and make a hell of a lot of money. If moon is in the 12h they’re more likely to travel long distances. Can become models, nurses, doctors.

Cancer 10h, libra moon, libra venus—Can work in home renovation, be a real estate agent. Makes a ton of money off of bringing in clients. If they have aspects to mercury, gemini, exalted mercury, they can talk anyone into buying a home or service.

Libra moon—may also know someone who offers them a higher paying job.

Saturn 3h—Very skilled individuals. Disciplined and goal oriented. Slow and steady wins the race. Takes their time to learn new skills in their career thus making them knowledgeable. Whereas their coworkers tend to gloss over—no these individuals tend to stay late hours and put in more effort. Had a huge chance of being recognized and moving up in their position.

Taurus 2h—Check where venus is placed. If making an aspect to jupiter, moon, the native can become financially successful. (Trine, sextile, conj)

Jupiter 2h—Controversial perspective but a lot of these natives feel as though they have enough money to get by. It just somehow comes in when they need it. Same for sag ruling 2h.

Virgo mercury, virgo 2h—Can be concerned with spending habits and analyze them. May budget a lot and try different methods for saving. Has a critical eye for finances. May make a monthly spreadsheet! Can be into nursing as well.

Venus 10h—If the benefic is positively aspected it’ll bring lots of success to the natives career. Chance to become widely known for their work. Their charm and interpersonal skills leas to success.

Aries sun—Competitive in the career field. Sun is exalted here so these natives truly want to be the best they can be. Authoritative, determined in their work. Grinds a lot. Similar to Capricorn but more extroverted. Passionate, enthusiastic, and it drives them to make great connections in their career.

Sun 6h—Brilliant ideas, determined and structured. Puts in energy to their work. Day to day activities yield long term results. Their determination is what really gets them there. Has a great relationship with their coworkers and bosses if positively aspected.

[are-we-art-yet]

Is AWAY using it's own program or is this just a voluntary list of guidelines for people using programs like DALL-E? How does AWAY address the environmental concerns of how the companies making those AI programs conduct themselves (energy consumption, exploiting impoverished areas for cheap electricity, destruction of the environment to rapidly build and get the components for data centers etc.)? Are members of AWAY encouraged to contact their gov representatives about IP theft by AI apps?

What is AWAY and how does it work?

AWAY does not "use its own program" in the software sense—rather, we're a diverse collective of ~1000 members that each have their own varying workflows and approaches to art. While some members do use AI as one tool among many, most of the people in the server are actually traditional artists who don't use AI at all, yet are still interested in ethical approaches to new technologies.

Our code of ethics is a set of voluntary guidelines that members agree to follow upon joining. These emphasize ethical AI approaches, (preferably open-source models that can run locally), respecting artists who oppose AI by not training styles on their art, and refusing to use AI to undercut other artists or work for corporations that similarly exploit creative labor.

Environmental Impact in Context

It's important to place environmental concerns about AI in the context of our broader extractive, industrialized society, where there are virtually no "clean" solutions:

The water usage figures for AI data centers (200-740 million liters annually) represent roughly 0.00013% of total U.S. water usage. This is a small fraction compared to industrial agriculture or manufacturing—for example, golf course irrigation alone in the U.S. consumes approximately 2.08 billion gallons of water per day, or about 7.87 trillion liters annually. This makes AI's water usage about 0.01% of just golf course irrigation.

Looking into individual usage, the average American consumes about 26.8 kg of beef annually, which takes around 1,608 megajoules (MJ) of energy to produce. Making 10 ChatGPT queries daily for an entire year (3,650 queries) consumes just 38.1 MJ—about 42 times less energy than eating beef. In fact, a single quarter-pound beef patty takes 651 times more energy to produce than a single AI query.

Overall, power usage specific to AI represents just 4% of total data center power consumption, which itself is a small fraction of global energy usage. Current annual energy usage for data centers is roughly 9-15 TWh globally—comparable to producing a relatively small number of vehicles.

The consumer environmentalism narrative around technology often ignores how imperial exploitation pushes environmental costs onto the Global South. The rare earth minerals needed for computing hardware, the cheap labor for manufacturing, and the toxic waste from electronics disposal disproportionately burden developing nations, while the benefits flow largely to wealthy countries.

While this pattern isn't unique to AI, it is fundamental to our global economic structure. The focus on individual consumer choices (like whether or not one should use AI, for art or otherwise,) distracts from the much larger systemic issues of imperialism, extractive capitalism, and global inequality that drive environmental degradation at a massive scale.

They are not going to stop building the data centers, and they weren't going to even if AI never got invented.

Creative Tools and Environmental Impact

In actuality, all creative practices have some sort of environmental impact in an industrialized society:

Digital art software (such as Photoshop, Blender, etc) generally uses 60-300 watts per hour depending on your computer's specifications. This is typically more energy than dozens, if not hundreds, of AI image generations (maybe even thousands if you are using a particularly low-quality one).

Traditional art supplies rely on similar if not worse scales of resource extraction, chemical processing, and global supply chains, all of which come with their own environmental impact.

Paint production requires roughly thirteen gallons of water to manufacture one gallon of paint.

Many oil paints contain toxic heavy metals and solvents, which have the potential to contaminate ground water.

Synthetic brushes are made from petroleum-based plastics that take centuries to decompose.

That being said, the point of this section isn't to deflect criticism of AI by criticizing other art forms. Rather, it's important to recognize that we live in a society where virtually all artistic avenues have environmental costs. Focusing exclusively on the newest technologies while ignoring the environmental costs of pre-existing tools and practices doesn't help to solve any of the issues with our current or future waste.

The largest environmental problems come not from individual creative choices, but rather from industrial-scale systems, such as:

Industrial manufacturing (responsible for roughly 22% of global emissions)

Industrial agriculture (responsible for roughly 24% of global emissions)

Transportation and logistics networks (responsible for roughly 14% of global emissions)

Making changes on an individual scale, while meaningful on a personal level, can't address systemic issues without broader policy changes and overall restructuring of global economic systems.

Intellectual Property Considerations

AWAY doesn't encourage members to contact government representatives about "IP theft" for multiple reasons:

We acknowledge that copyright law overwhelmingly serves corporate interests rather than individual creators

Creating new "learning rights" or "style rights" would further empower large corporations while harming individual artists and fan creators

Many AWAY members live outside the United States, many of which having been directly damaged by the US, and thus understand that intellectual property regimes are often tools of imperial control that benefit wealthy nations

Instead, we emphasize respect for artists who are protective of their work and style. Our guidelines explicitly prohibit imitating the style of artists who have voiced their distaste for AI, working on an opt-in model that encourages traditional artists to give and subsequently revoke permissions if they see fit. This approach is about respect, not legal enforcement. We are not a pro-copyright group.

In Conclusion

AWAY aims to cultivate thoughtful, ethical engagement with new technologies, while also holding respect for creative communities outside of itself. As a collective, we recognize that real environmental solutions require addressing concepts such as imperial exploitation, extractive capitalism, and corporate power—not just focusing on individual consumer choices, which do little to change the current state of the world we live in.

When discussing environmental impacts, it's important to keep perspective on a relative scale, and to avoid ignoring major issues in favor of smaller ones. We promote balanced discussions based in concrete fact, with the belief that they can lead to meaningful solutions, rather than misplaced outrage that ultimately serves to maintain the status quo.

If this resonates with you, please feel free to join our discord. :)

Works Cited:

USGS Water Use Data: https://www.usgs.gov/mission-areas/water-resources/science/water-use-united-states

Golf Course Superintendents Association of America water usage report: https://www.gcsaa.org/resources/research/golf-course-environmental-profile

Equinix data center water sustainability report: https://www.equinix.com/resources/infopapers/corporate-sustainability-report

Environmental Working Group's Meat Eater's Guide (beef energy calculations): https://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/

Hugging Face AI energy consumption study: https://huggingface.co/blog/carbon-footprint

International Energy Agency report on data centers: https://www.iea.org/reports/data-centres-and-data-transmission-networks

Goldman Sachs "Generational Growth" report on AI power demand: https://www.goldmansachs.com/intelligence/pages/gs-research/generational-growth-ai-data-centers-and-the-coming-us-power-surge/report.pdf

Artists Network's guide to eco-friendly art practices: https://www.artistsnetwork.com/art-business/how-to-be-an-eco-friendly-artist/

The Earth Chronicles' analysis of art materials: https://earthchronicles.org/artists-ironically-paint-nature-with-harmful-materials/

Natural Earth Paint's environmental impact report: https://naturalearthpaint.com/pages/environmental-impact

Our World in Data's global emissions by sector: https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector

"The High Cost of High Tech" report on electronics manufacturing: https://goodelectronics.org/the-high-cost-of-high-tech/

"Unearthing the Dirty Secrets of the Clean Energy Transition" (on rare earth mineral mining): https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/18/clean-energy-dirty-mining-indigenous-communities-climate-crisis

Electronic Frontier Foundation's position paper on AI and copyright: https://www.eff.org/wp/ai-and-copyright

Creative Commons research on enabling better sharing: https://creativecommons.org/2023/04/24/ai-and-creativity/

[lightyaoigami]

☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ how to resume ⋆｡ﾟ☾｡⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎ ﾟ

after 10 years & 6 jobs in corporate america, i would like to share how to game the system. we all want the biggest payoff for the least amount of work, right?

know thine enemy: beating the robots

i see a lot of misinformation about how AI is used to scrape resumes. i can't speak for every company but most corporations use what is called applicant tracking software (ATS).

no respectable company is using chatgpt to sort applications. i don't know how you'd even write the prompt to get a consumer-facing product to do this. i guarantee that target, walmart, bank of america, whatever, they are all using B2B SaaS enterprise solutions. there is not one hiring manager plinking away at at a large language model.

ATS scans your resume in comparison to the job posting, parses which resumes contain key words, and presents the recruiter and/or hiring manager with resumes with a high "score." the goal of writing your resume is to get your "score" as high as possible.

but tumblr user lightyaoigami, how do i beat the robots?

great question, y/n. you will want to seek out an ATS resume checker. i have personally found success with jobscan, which is not free, but works extremely well. there is a free trial period, and other ATS scanners are in fact free. some of these tools are so sophisticated that they can actually help build your resume from scratch with your input. i wrote my own resume and used jobscan to compare it to the applications i was finishing.

do not use chatgpt to write your resume or cover letter. it is painfully obvious. here is a tutorial on how to use jobscan. for the zillionth time i do not work for jobscan nor am i a #jobscanpartner i am just a person who used this tool to land a job at a challenging time.

the resume checkers will tell you what words and/or phrases you need to shoehorn into your bullet points - i.e., if you are applying for a job that requires you to be a strong collaborator, the resume checker might suggest you include the phrase "cross-functional teams." you can easily re-word your bullets to include this with a little noodling.

don't i need a cover letter?

it depends on the job. after you have about 5 years of experience, i would say that they are largely unnecessary. while i was laid off, i applied to about 100 jobs in a three-month period (#blessed to have been hired quickly). i did not submit a cover letter for any of them, and i had a solid rate of phone screens/interviews after submission despite not having a cover letter. if you are absolutely required to write one, do not have chatgpt do it for you. use a guide from a human being who knows what they are talking about, like ask a manager or betterup.

but i don't even know where to start!

i know it's hard, but you have to have a bit of entrepreneurial spirit here. google duckduckgo is your friend. don't pull any bean soup what-about-me-isms. if you truly don't know where to start, look for an ATS-optimized resume template.

a word about neurodivergence and job applications

i, like many of you, am autistic. i am intimately familiar with how painful it is to expend limited energy on this demoralizing task only to have your "reward" be an equally, if not more so, demoralizing work experience. i don't have a lot of advice for this beyond craft your worksona like you're making a d&d character (or a fursona or a sim or an OC or whatever made up blorbo generator you personally enjoy).

and, remember, while a lot of office work is really uncomfortable and involves stuff like "talking in meetings" and "answering the phone," these things are not an inherent risk. discomfort is not tantamount to danger, and we all have to do uncomfortable things in order to thrive. there are a lot of ways to do this and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. not everyone can mask for extended periods, so be your own judge of what you can or can't do.

i like to think of work as a drag show where i perform this other personality in exchange for money. it is much easier to do this than to fight tooth and nail to be unmasked at work, which can be a risk to your livelihood and peace of mind. i don't think it's a good thing that we have to mask at work, but it's an important survival skill.

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ good luck ⋆｡ﾟ☾｡⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎ ﾟ｡⋆

[childrenofcain-if]

Has there been any instances where Mc and C did work together other than the fake baby thingy?

the science lab was filled with high schoolers scrambling to set up their projects, all of them either too caffeinated or not caffeinated enough for the stress of the prestigious state science fair in washington.

the tables were crammed with an impressive array of projects: models of volcanic eruptions, elaborate circuits blinking in synchronized colors, experiments with soil composition in tiny terrariums. but none of them held a candle to your table, and you knew it.

you worked quickly, your fingers deft as you adjusted the components of the intricate apparatus. the machine—an elegant contraption meant to demonstrate clean energy storage using solar capacitors—was you and C’s brainchild.

they had done the research, the design, the equations scribbled out with ruthless precision in their sharp handwriting. you’d handled the practical end of things: soldering wires, programming the software, ensuring that their theoretical masterpiece could actually, you know, work.

you didn’t notice the way C stood a few feet away, arms crossed tightly, their posture as stiff as a statue’s. their chalcedony green eyes followed your every move like a hawk watching its prey, catching each adjustment you made, each tool you reached for.

finally, they cleared their throat. “you’re doing it wrong.”

you sighed without turning around, tightening a bolt on the panel. “good morning to you, too, lacroix. nice to see you’re in a supportive mood today.”

“supportive?” their voice had that sharp, clipped quality it always took on when they thought you were being deliberately obtuse. “i’d be supportive if you weren’t—” they made an exasperated noise, gesturing vaguely at the machine. “look, the angles on the solar panels are all wrong. the light’s not going to hit them efficiently like that. it’s basic geometry. i explained this to you yesterday.”

“okay,” you said evenly, glancing at them over your shoulder. “anything else?”

C blinked, their expression flickering into something almost like confusion. “you’re just... accepting it? like that?”

“well, yeah,” you said, shrugging. “you’re the brains behind this, aren’t you? if you’ve got more suggestions, i’m open to them.”

C suddenly seemed at a loss for words. the tips of their ears turned a faint pink, and they glanced away.

“well, i, uh...” they began, before scowling at you like it was somehow your fault they’d stumbled. “fine! move the reflector two inches to the left.”

you did as they asked, your motions slow and deliberate. “happy?”

“stop talking to me,” C snapped.

you blinked at them, incredulous. “you’re the one bossing me around!”

C ignored you, their nose tilting upward in that infuriatingly haughty way they’d perfected.

***

when the judges arrived at your school’s section, the air grew thick with anticipation. there were four of them—an engineer from spacex, a college professor from MIT, a tech startup CEO, and some local entrepreneur who had been introduced as a ‘philanthropist.’

they moved from table to table with an efficiency that made your stomach churn. you’d been rehearsing your answers for days, but there was something about the way they scribbled on their clipboards that made even your confidence waver.

but the presentation began smoothly enough, much to your relief. C handled the technical explanations, their voice steady and precise as they guided the judges through the intricacies of your design. you handled the broader picture, spinning a compelling narrative about its real-world applications.

but when the judges started asking questions, something shifted.

“so, who came up with the original concept?” the engineer asked, pen poised over her notepad.

“well,” you started, “it was—”

“me,” C interrupted, their green eyes glinting. “i developed the initial framework.”

you gave them an irritated look. “what they actually meant to say was that it was a joint effort.”

“sure,” C drawled sarcastically. “you jointly borrowed my calculations and then messed up the assembly two separate times.”

you bristled. “maybe if your diagrams weren’t as convoluted as your personality, i wouldn’t have had to ‘mess up’ anything.”

“convoluted? that’s rich, coming from someone who thought capacitors and resistors were interchangeable—”

“that was one time, and it only happened because you mislabeled them!”

the judges exchanged glances, two of them clearly trying not to laugh, the other two looking mildly alarmed.

“would you say you two work well together?” another judge ventured cautiously.

“oh, absolutely,” you said, your tone dripping with sarcasm.

“can’t agree more,” C added, voice as flat as a table.

the judge raised an eyebrow, scribbling something down.

by the end of the presentation, both of you were red-faced and fuming, but the machine worked perfectly, and the judges seemed reluctantly impressed.

***

after the presentation, you and C sat side by side in the waiting area, the hum of chatter and distant applause filling the space. your hands rested in your lap, but when you shifted slightly, your fingers brushed against theirs. the accidental contact sent a jolt of heat up your arm, and you risked a glance at them.

C was staring angrily at the floor as if it had just demanded to drain their bank account, half of their face buried in the high collar of their dark green turtleneck. the tips of their ears had turned even more pink. their foot tapped against the floor in rapid, agitated beats.

when the winners were announced, your names rang out together, tethered like an inevitability.

you and C locked eyes, both startled, before standing up in unison. the applause was loud, but all you could focus on was the awkwardness of walking side by side to accept the award.

you still fell into step beside them, the trophy handed over in a flurry of handshakes and flashes from the crowd’s cameras.

the microphone passed between you two for the acceptance speech.

“we’d like to thank our school for supporting this project,” you began, glancing at C.

“and, of course, this wouldn’t have been possible without the cooperation of my... partner,” they added, their jaw tightening as if the words physically pained them to say.

you were tempted to laugh at how they looked like they were having a particularly bad case of indigestion, but managed to keep a straight face for the cameras.

***

after the ceremony, the two of you lingered near the refreshment table. C cleared their throat awkwardly, avoiding your gaze.

“you did... good,” they muttered.

you cocked your head, thinking you misheard them. “what?”

“i said you did good,” they repeated, louder this time. “you didn’t embarrass us. much.”

you snorted. “thanks, i guess. you weren’t too bad yourself.”

C hesitated, their eyes darting to the trophy in their right hand as their other hand fidgeted with the edge of their aldervale prep blazer.

“you’re smart though,” they said finally, their voice softer than usual. “you would’ve won without me.”

the admission startled you. “was that... a real compliment?”

this time, C’s cheeks turned pink as well, and they huffed loudly, turning on their heel. “i’m leaving. and i’m taking the trophy.”

“wait, what?” you snapped out of your stupor and hurried after them. “that’s not fair, lacroix! we both won!”

“too bad, starkid,” C called over their shoulder, their tone maddeningly smug. “you want it? come and get it.”

you groaned, chasing them through the crowd. “lacroix, get back here!”

and for the first time all day, C’s smile was genuine enough for their dimples to show.

[probablyasocialecologist]

The latest, AI-dedicated server racks contain 72 specialised chips from manufacturer Nvidia. The largest “hyperscale” data centres, used for AI tasks, would have about 5,000 of these racks.  And as anyone using a laptop for any period of time knows, even a single chip warms up in operation. To cool the servers requires water – gallons of it. Put all this together, and a single hyperscale data centre will typically need as much water as a town of 30,000 people – and the equivalent amount of electricity.  The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is currently opening one of these behemoths somewhere in the world every three days. Even so, for years, the explosive growth of the digital economy had surprisingly little impact on global energy demand and carbon emissions. Efficiency gains in data centres—the backbone of the internet—kept electricity consumption in check.  But the rise of generative AI, turbocharged by the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, has shattered that equilibrium. AI elevates the demand for data and processing power into the stratosphere. The latest version of OpenAI’s flagship GPT model, GPT-4, is built on 1.3 trillion parameters, with each parameter describing the strength of a connection between different pathways in the model’s software brain.  The more novel data that can be pushed into the model for training, the better – so much data that one research paper estimated machine learning models will have used up all the data on the internet by 2028. Today, the insatiable demand for computing power is reshaping national energy systems. Figures from the International Monetary Fund show that data centres worldwide already consume as much electricity as entire countries like France or Germany. It forecasts that by 2030, the worldwide energy demand from data centres will be the same as India’s total electricity consumption. 

30 May 2025

[smg-69]

Little details I love about the SMG4 series

Smaller characters like Boopkins and SMG2 riding on other characters’ shoulders

Almost all of the memes SMG3 references are dead memes, fitting for the Lord of the Internet Graveyard.

Meggy always has slightly better animation than the rest of the crew which is in line with her massive amounts of main character energy

Compared to the other human characters (Tari, Chris, Saiko, etc.), Three and Four come across as being a bit more alien

The animation quality increasing with the seriousness of scene

No matter the seriousness of the scene, Mario still looks like he was animated in GMod

The really subtle edit cuts when they switch between animation software.

Background characters almost always being weird as hell

Three’s Cafe actually getting more customers after the Meme Factory was built (since Four’s whole plan was to attract more foot traffic through the Showgrounds)

The absolutely absurd amounts of Easter Eggs hidden in the smallest of details, even where it’s just barely seeable

How expressive Bob is despite his face just being a void with eyes

Meggy’s first human model matches Lizzie Freeman’s voice and how her version of Meggy was a little quieter and shyer, but her second and most recent model feels tailor-made for Elsie Lovelock’s voice and her more fiery ginger take on the character.

The continuity of Mario hating Among Us and Four hating Big Chungus

Mario is an ass to his friends sometimes but he’ll still kill anyone else who’s an ass to his friends

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Science Vocabulary

for your next poem/story

Word — Science Meaning; Public Meaning

Bank - land alongside a river/lake; a place where people store money

Bar - unit of measure of atmospheric pressure; place to drink alcoholic beverages

Belt - collection of asteroids in a disc shape; materials worn around waist to support clothes

Bonding - electrostatic attraction between atoms; making an emotional connection

Charge - force experienced by matter when in an electromagnetic field; demand a price for rendered goods/services

Code - software/computer language; encrypted message

Crust - outermost layer of planet; edge of pizza/pie

Current - water or air moving in a direction; belonging to the present time

Cycling - flow of nutrients or elements; riding a bicycle

Dating - determining age of site/artifact; initial stage of romantic relationship

Driver - influential factor; someone who drives a vehicle

Dwarf - celestial body resembling small planet; characters from Snow White

Fault - fracture in a rock with movement; responsible for accident/misfortune

Fetch - distance traveled by wind/waves over water; go far and then bring back something/someone

Force - strength/energy of action/movement; make someone do something against their will

Grade - gradient/slope; level of proficiency

Hertz - the SI unit of frequency; rental car company

Jet - gas stream ejected from an accretion disk surrounding star; an aircraft powered by jet engines

Mantle - planet layer between crust and core; important role passed from person to person

Matter - physical substance in general; be of importance, have significance

Model - computer simulation; promotes fashion/product

Mole - SI unit used to measure amount of something; small rodent-like mammal

Plastic - substance that is easily shaped/molded; synthetic material

Pressure - force per unit area that gas/liquid/solid exerts on another; use of persuasion to make someone do something

Productive - creating organic matter through photo/chemosynthesis; busy and efficient

Sample - to take a sample for analysis; a small part of something

Scale - system of marks used for measuring; device used for measuring weight

Shear - difference in wind speed/direction; cut wool off of

Shelf - a submarine bank; a surface for displaying/storing objects

Stress - pressure/tension exerted on a material object; mental/emotional strain

Submarine - existing/occurring under the sea surface; a ship that stays submerged under water for extended periods

Surf - line of foam on seashore from breaking waves; riding a surfboard

Swell - sea movement in rolling waves that do not break; to become larger in size (e.g. a body part)

Source ⚜ More: Word Lists

[gabbrofan27]

for how much I love outer wilds I really struggle to come up with ideas about the characters. God forbid I try to make a hatchling oc too like nothings gonna get done if I put pencil to paper lmao. its much easier to think about the world and ideas for that, like hearthian culture

Ill think of four things right here: pre, during, and post loop hatchy, and something about gabbro for good measure

everyone in the village does a bit of everything just due to population size, but hearthians do still specialize in things. I like to think that, with the ease they’re able to repair everything in-game, hatchling would have worked with mechanical things and hardware, likely shadowing slate (though gossan is their “parent hearthian” figure). while Hal worked on the software and linguistics of the translator, hatchy built the thing and got it to work. By time of first solo flight, they’re intimately familiar with their ship and its controls, but isn’t the best at actually using said controls

they spent a lot of time in the loops just getting really good at random things. flying the real and model ship, reading and writing nomai (or what nomai they can find, maybe trying to speak it with solanum), short-term injury and medical treatment, and most of all, tolerating alcohol. There wasn’t too much they could really do with 22 hours in terms of long-term skills or projects, especially when nothing carries over to the next loop, and others just didn’t interest them. They forgot essential skills over time due to disuse, and in general just got worse off, like with cooking, normal socialization, mental and emotional management

post loop is a bit hard since I really need to flesh out a lot of post-loop stuff already, but oh well live and learn. they’re tensely okay with being out of the loops, but become acutely aware of their newfound permanence. A lot of adventurous spirit, and general comfortability under stress, gets lost for fear of injury, and much of what they do is an attempt to stay frozen in time. not thinking about things or wanting to deal with what has happened, they can’t understand the thought of piercings or tattoos (they exist somehow I’ll figure it out later) on gabbro and others, and the sight of gossan’s eye and tektite’s leg slowly spikes their anxiety. I think, a lot of time is spent in fear of the time they’ve been granted, since now they don’t know what’s going to happen next

gabbro’s really popular with the tadpoles specifically. Their ability to just… let things happen and go on, is just the energy that the newly hatched tadpoles need at times (some more than others). it’s a relief for a lot of the other adults and hearthians who, while they love the tadpoles and the tadpoles love them, really don’t have either the time or patience to sit with a tadpole for an hour or two. Sometimes gabbro lets a couple of the tadpoles lay on them to sunbathe, the three or four of them just lying there in the sun for a bit. the tadpoles are like normal babies or little rascals for a couple hours out of the day for sure, but then they energy-crash and just need someone to watch them and be with them for comfort. gabbro’s just the panacea for their dopey nature when they’re tired

this took half an hour. The real question is how many hats does esker have and did they give hand-me-downs to tephra yes or no

[mariacallous]

AI’s energy use already represents as much as 20 percent of global data-center power demand, research published Thursday in the journal Joule shows. That demand from AI, the research states, could double by the end of this year, comprising nearly half of all total data-center electricity consumption worldwide, excluding the electricity used for bitcoin mining.

The new research is published in a commentary by Alex de Vries-Gao, the founder of Digiconomist, a research company that evaluates the environmental impact of technology. De Vries-Gao started Digiconomist in the late 2010s to explore the impact of bitcoin mining, another extremely energy-intensive activity, would have on the environment. Looking at AI, he says, has grown more urgent over the past few years because of the widespread adoption of ChatGPT and other large language models that use massive amounts of energy. According to his research, worldwide AI energy demand is now set to surpass demand from bitcoin mining by the end of this year.

“The money that bitcoin miners had to get to where they are today is peanuts compared to the money that Google and Microsoft and all these big tech companies are pouring in [to AI],” he says. “This is just escalating a lot faster, and it’s a much bigger threat.”

The development of AI is already having an impact on Big Tech’s climate goals. Tech giants have acknowledged in recent sustainability reports that AI is largely responsible for driving up their energy use. Google’s greenhouse gas emissions, for instance, have increased 48 percent since 2019, complicating the company’s goals of reaching net zero by 2030.

“As we further integrate AI into our products, reducing emissions may be challenging due to increasing energy demands from the greater intensity of AI compute,” Google’s 2024 sustainability report reads.

Last month, the International Energy Agency released a report finding that data centers made up 1.5 percent of global energy use in 2024—around 415 terrawatt-hours, a little less than the yearly energy demand of Saudi Arabia. This number is only set to get bigger: Data centers’ electricity consumption has grown four times faster than overall consumption in recent years, while the amount of investment in data centers has nearly doubled since 2022, driven largely by massive expansions to account for new AI capacity. Overall, the IEA predicted that data center electricity consumption will grow to more than 900 TWh by the end of the decade.

But there’s still a lot of unknowns about the share that AI, specifically, takes up in that current configuration of electricity use by data centers. Data centers power a variety of services—like hosting cloud services and providing online infrastructure—that aren’t necessarily linked to the energy-intensive activities of AI. Tech companies, meanwhile, largely keep the energy expenditure of their software and hardware private.

Some attempts to quantify AI’s energy consumption have started from the user side: calculating the amount of electricity that goes into a single ChatGPT search, for instance. De Vries-Gao decided to look, instead, at the supply chain, starting from the production side to get a more global picture.

The high computing demands of AI, De Vries-Gao says, creates a natural “bottleneck” in the current global supply chain around AI hardware, particularly around the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the undisputed leader in producing key hardware that can handle these needs. Companies like Nvidia outsource the production of their chips to TSMC, which also produces chips for other companies like Google and AMD. (Both TSMC and Nvidia declined to comment for this article.)

De Vries-Gao used analyst estimates, earnings call transcripts, and device details to put together an approximate estimate of TSMC’s production capacity. He then looked at publicly available electricity consumption profiles of AI hardware and estimates on utilization rates of that hardware—which can vary based on what it’s being used for—to arrive at a rough figure of just how much of global data-center demand is taken up by AI. De Vries-Gao calculates that without increased production, AI will consume up to 82 terrawatt-hours of electricity this year—roughly around the same as the annual electricity consumption of a country like Switzerland. If production capacity for AI hardware doubles this year, as analysts have projected it will, demand could increase at a similar rate, representing almost half of all data center demand by the end of the year.

Despite the amount of publicly available information used in the paper, a lot of what De Vries-Gao is doing is peering into a black box: We simply don’t know certain factors that affect AI’s energy consumption, like the utilization rates of every piece of AI hardware in the world or what machine learning activities they’re being used for, let alone how the industry might develop in the future.

Sasha Luccioni, an AI and energy researcher and the climate lead at open-source machine-learning platform Hugging Face, cautioned about leaning too hard on some of the conclusions of the new paper, given the amount of unknowns at play. Luccioni, who was not involved in this research, says that when it comes to truly calculating AI’s energy use, disclosure from tech giants is crucial.

“It’s because we don’t have the information that [researchers] have to do this,” she says. “That’s why the error bar is so huge.”

And tech companies do keep this information. In 2022, Google published a paper on machine learning and electricity use, noting that machine learning was “10%–15% of Google’s total energy use” from 2019 to 2021, and predicted that with best practices, “by 2030 total carbon emissions from training will reduce.” However, since that paper—which was released before Google Gemini’s debut in 2023—Google has not provided any more detailed information about how much electricity ML uses. (Google declined to comment for this story.)

“You really have to deep-dive into the semiconductor supply chain to be able to make any sensible statement about the energy demand of AI,” De Vries-Gao says. “If these big tech companies were just publishing the same information that Google was publishing three years ago, we would have a pretty good indicator” of AI’s energy use.

[britishassistant]

The Villainous Paranoiac Sues for Character Defamation (2)

“Nii-san?!”

The lump in Idia Shroud’s bed lets out a pitiful groan.

“Nii-san, are you alright?! Are you hungry?! Sick?!” Ortho demands. “Hold on, I’ll do a scan to see what’s wrong!”

A pale, long fingered hand emerges from beneath the covers. It points languidly.

“…sekai…”

“Eh?” The android crowds closer to the bed. “What is it Nii-san? Your computer? Did something bad happen in one of your games? To Precipice Morai? Did an anime get cancelled?”

“…Isekai…”

“Isekai?” The android asks, confused. “Nii-san, what—?”

“I CAN’T ACCEPT THAT A REAL LIFE ISEKAI WOULD COME FROM SUCH A LAME LIGHT NOVEL!!”

It’s with this impassioned cry that Idia Shroud throws off his duvet, hair flaring wildly.

“After all, there are so many worlds that would be so much more likely to be real?! A tech punk world like LoPri just violates several laws of physics, not to mention thaumaturgy?? Plus the characters are so bland and uninspiring, how is it meant to enrich the blackened hearts of this Wonderland if they’re real?! At least if they were from Hyrule or Laputa or Exandria, they could teach us valuable life lessons that would lead to world improvement!”

His fist hits the mattress. “But no! And on top of that, this happens at the same time as they’re leaking that a LoPri movie is in the works?! That’s so cheap!! It’s like an awful marketing tactic that takes your cherished childhood hopes and dreams and crushes them for a few wads of madol!! I can’t believe—”

“Nii-san, wait!” Ortho begs. “What do you mean, there’s been a real life isekai? The sensors you installed should have noticed a large amount of energy coming from something like a world-crossing event.”

Idia jabs an accusatory finger at his computer screen, where the illustration and photo are posed side by side. “Apparently, not if they hijack Night Raven’s carriages to get here!”

Ortho’s optic sensors dilate and contract as his facial recognition software runs.

“…It’s a match.” He says. “Barring the 4% deviations from differing mediums, this person looks almost exactly like the illustrations from Lost Princess. And the Dark Mirror reported they’re entirely magicless…”

Idia jumps when the facsimile of his younger brother appears in his space. “Nii-san, what should we do?! If she really is from this other world, she’s a criminal, isn’t she? Should STYX take her into preventative custody??”

“Eh—Calm down, Ortho.” The elder Shroud says sternly, as if he hadn’t been in near hysterics only a moment ago. “It’s illegal to lock people up if they haven’t done anything wrong yet.”

“But Nii-san—!”

“Besides, as a bad guy she’s like, seriously wimpy.” It takes a moment or two of flailing in the bedclothes before Idia’s phone is retrieved. “See? According to the wiki, even the worst stuff she does is thanks to abusing her rich family’s power and money. Without that, she’s as pathetic as some hero who’s had all his strength sucked out. Even more harmless than a level one slime.”

Ortho’s synthetic brow furrows. “I guess…”

“Heh. Some of those LoPri simps online might even say that this is divine retribution. Getting banished to a world where she’s worth less than nothing.” Idia slumps, flicking through his apps idly. “Ah, the fates are cruel. Why’d I have to be inflicted with this?”

“I will monitor the villainess, Nii-san.” Ortho announces. “If she attempts to partake in any criminal behavior, it will be reported to the authorities, so Nii-san’s daily school life may continue unimpeded.”

“Eh? Well, uh.” Idia’s attention fights with the gacha he’s just opened, but ultimately surrenders to the colorful world within. “Only if it’s a low priority thing, okay?”

“Roger!”

***

Vil is distracted.

Not enough for his makeup to be anything less than perfect. Certainly not enough to make his class work, modeling, or acting suffer.

But enough that the poison apple he’s trying to polish has nearly given him the slip twice already.

That is unacceptable. If he cannot maintain a firm standard of discipline, how is this Epel meant to absorb any of his lessons?

Vil cannot allow this to continue.

He saw the villainess the magicless interloper yesterday morning, on his way to History class. Wearing some truly shapeless castoffs that can only have come from the dumping ground that passes for a Lost and Found, raking leaves away from the statue of the Beautiful Queen.

Vil had mostly convinced himself that it was purely his imagination. An unfortunate side effect of working on so many projects at once.

Surely what he had heard was merely a word that sounded like the fantasy names his script contains. The author had to take inspiration from somewhere, after all. And word association tricked him into believing that some potato who bore a little resemblance to his mental image of the villainess was, in fact, the person in question.

An honest, if slightly embarrassing mistake.

And then Rook reported over breakfast that the magicless janitor had somehow wormed their way into becoming a student, and a Prefect. Of the most prestigious magic school in the country. Despite the aforementioned complete lack of.

And all those foolish doubts Vil had spent so long laying to rest reared their ugly heads again.

A long, perfectly manicured finger taps the cafeteria table.

The potato is sitting with Clover and Diamond from Heartslaybul, alongside two first years and that little monster. From his position, Vil can see the back of their head if he inclines his own just slightly.

“Epel.” The boy in question jumps at the sound of his name. “Tuck your elbows in, your dorm mates shouldn’t need to defend themselves every time you lift food to your mouth.”

“My ba—ah, I mean! I, I apologize.”

Immediately, his arms go from imitating a chicken’s spread wings to an eastern dragon’s bent forelegs.

Behind Epel and slightly to the left, Rosehearts blocks Vil’s view of the magicless prefect. With the way his shoulders are tensing, his voice raising, he’ll likely be there a while as he metes out his slovenly attempts at discipline on his juniors.

Vil suppresses a grimace as he sighs. He’s going to get frown lines at this rate…

He needs to put this from his mind. If the sheer force of his not inconsiderable will is somehow lacking, then he needs to try something else. Obtain some definitive proof one way or the other so this irritating matter can be settled once and for all.

Proof…

A collection of ideas begin swirling in Vil’s head. Nothing concrete, just associations and possibilities of possibilities. Not enough for a proper plan of action.

Not yet, anyway.

***

Idia’s back cracks as he stretches.

“GG Muscle Red-shi,” He mutters as he types. “You carried hard for that secret boss encounter.”

Only a few moments after he hits send, Muscle Red’s response pops up.

Muscle Red: You give me too much credit, my friend. It was your strategic thinking that won us the day.

Muscle Red: This old man will need to log off shortly, but I wish you a pleasant evening and good hunting.

Gloomurai: NP Muscle Red-shi! GN

He tries to ignore the disappointment in his chest as Muscle Red’s avatar disappears. It’ll be hard to top the fun he had in that raid, so he may as well just log off this game. Maybe catch up on some of the anime he’s been letting build up so he can binge it all at once…

Ah, but there was that one that Ortho said he might be interested in, but that Idia had been too busy to start watching yet! The one about an otaku security robot that was exasperated with the scientists it had to look after…

“Hey, Ortho, we can start I’m a Murderbot But I’m Keeping A Diary…” Idia turns to where his brother is meant to be charging in the power station in the corner.

It’s empty.

“Ortho?”

There’s no one in the room except Idia right now.

He tries to tell himself that it’s fine, that Ortho’s fine, he’s probably just…just gone on a snack run? Yeah, he must’ve realized Idia was getting low on food and decided to help! What a good, kind brother Idia has! There’s no way he’s in any kind of trouble that he needs Idia to save him from, right?

Right??

Idia’s able to stave off the anxiety for a record-breaking four point two seconds before he turns to his computer, bringing up the “Find My Brother” program and sending his tablet whizzing out the door to the coordinates it brings up.

Why is he in the library at this time of night? Idia gnaws on his fingernails as the tablet gets closer, and prepares to use the mic once he can see Ortho’s back.

“…you’re planning to cause trouble, I will report you to the Headmaster and the relevant authorities.”

Idia straightens at his brother’s serious tone coming through the speakers.

It’s the work of a moment to gain access to the feeds of the library’s security cameras. Although there’s only three of them, and they’re really shoddily placed for actual monitoring purposes…

“Oh that’s rich.” The villainess scoffs, low voice made tinny over his speakers. “I’m not the one causing trouble here. Besides, it’s a public library. All students are free to look up reference materials on whatever they’d like.”

“Materials on restricted subjects are monitored.” Ortho declares. “Failure to return them to the library is logged against a student’s profile. You have not returned [SEVEN] books by their assigned due date.”

“So, Overblot is considered a restricted subject then.” Uh, hard pass on the villainess’ tone in that reply, it’s just as sus as some sixth ranger smiling to themselves while everyone else’s back is turned. “Why exactly is that? Is it the same reason there’s no primary sources on it in any of the history books or scholarly articles?”

“That is classified information.” His baby brother says coolly. “You do not have even the lowest level clearance, so it does not concern you.”

The villainess’ voice drops dangerously. “Doesn’t concern me?”

Idia begins prepping to set off the fire alarms in the headmaster’s suite. If the villainess makes any move against his brother, he’ll not only make sure the ultimate authority figure is there to catch her, he’ll publish her past and every embarrassing search she’s made since coming to Twisted Wonderland online for everyone to see. Maybe even post her address online so those LoPro simps can avenge their faves in person?

“Things that jeopardize my safety don’t concern me? Things that endanger my wellbeing don’t concern me? Threats to my life don’t concern me?!”

It’d be easier to watch if the villainess hit the wall, flipped a table, threw some books on the floor, something. Instead Idia’s on the edge of his seat, eyes fixed on his monitor like he’ll get jumpscared if he looks away.

He flinches when the villainess does, movement made jerky by the old cameras. Seriously, this is why he can’t stand live action analog horror!

But it is kinda weird how the figure opposite his brother is hunching over the table like that. Almost as if standing is difficult?

“..f you think,” Ortho’s mics can barely pick up the sound. “That I’m just going to wait in the wings until another one finally kills me—that I’m going to die quietly—then you’re sorely mistaken. I don’t care who you are. I’m not going to let anyone or anything stop me. I refuse to end up in some forgotten grave in this twisted world!”

Kind of a mid monologue tbh. He was low-key expected something…more villainous? But considering how trash LoPri is it makes sense.

It’s the kind of cringe that almost makes you feel bad for the one you’re meant to be rooting against.

“You’re injured.” Ortho says, uncertain. “Partially healed rib fractures and a torn posterior tibiotalar ligament. How—?”

“Sorry, but I’m afraid that doesn’t concern you…?”

“Ortho Shroud.” His kindhearted brother supplies.

“Shroud-san.” The first year bows stiffly. “I’d like to say it’s been nice to make your acquaintance, but it really hasn’t.”

The villainess attempts to stride away from Ortho—well limps is more like it, holding herself stiffly and putting much more weight on her left ankle than her right, when did that happen? Surely it would’ve been flagged somewhere in the school records if something serious enough to cause those injuries had happened. It’d be noted in her student file, if nothing else.

Idia frowns. Then he accesses the school’s mainframe.

Wow this is. Really half-assed. You’d think the headmaster would put a bit more effort into filling out this kind of thing!

It’s a weird parody of the file Idia created for himself and Ortho in his second year at Night Raven, which the headmaster was too inept to create himself. In Idia’s, Ortho is nominally listed as a student, even if he doesn’t get graded or even enrolled in any classes like a regular student.

In the villainess’, half of that careful formatting has been thrown out the window in the name of grading a “two in one” student. Some of the information is missing or contradictory, and the rest seems to focus on the magical familiar rather than the human prefect.

There is a section way down the bottom of the file where there’s some notes from Nurse Kamac recording visits to the infirmary. But for some reason, the broken ribs have the amendment from the headmaster of “incurred before enrollment” and so don’t list how it happened, and the only notes for the ankle injury are that it occurred a few days later during a “Heartslaybul dorm head challenge”.

Idia pushes his fingers against his eyes as he groans, stretching his aching back and trying to crack it again.

This has nothing to do with him and Ortho. That much the vi—Prefect had gotten right. It may be weird that sh-they’re checking out all the books on Overblot the library has to offer, and are this badly injured only within a few days of starting the new semester, but it could be nothing! Certainly it’s not enough to be worth reporting to their parents.

“Ah, Nii-san? Were you looking for me?” Ortho sounds apologetic over his speakers. “Don’t worry, I’ll come back to the dorm right away!”

“Mm. I was thinking we could start binging that series together…”

“It’s not good for you to stay up late watching anime, Nii-san!” His younger brother scolds. “…But, I guess a few episodes of I’m a Murderbot But I’m Keeping A Diary can’t hurt!”

He grins. “I’ll get it queued up for when you get back. TTYL.”

Yeah, this is definitely worth more of his time than worrying about some weird magicless Prefect. Even if part of him itches at the memory of h-them saying “another one finally kills me”…

Definitely not his problem. Definitely not gonna think about it.

Definitely

***

It would seem that the Headmaster has decided to make the magicless Prefect into a gopher-slash-amateur investigator rather than looking into the mysterious injuries of each dorm’s Magift players himself.

Vil’s heard from Rook and from some of his other dorm members that the first year and their little monster have been interviewing everyone involved in an accident.

Of course, it’s only a matter of time until they begin questioning those who have not been affected, to rule out some causes if nothing else.

So, when Rook spots them, along with a redheaded potato, a blue potato, and Diamond, he motions his vice dorm head to bring them over.

“You must have had some reason for spying on us.” He says to the motley group. “Out with it and maybe I’ll let you off with a warning.”

“Busted~” Diamond says cheerily. “Well, can you guys keep a secret?”

“Mais, bien sûr Monsieur Magicam!” Rook proclaims. “Consider our lips sealed!”

“We think that the injured Magift players are being deliberately targeted.” The blue haired second potato says. “We’re investigating potential suspects who could be behind the a—”

“Dude!” The redheaded first potato hisses. “You can’t just TELL ‘em!”

“Yeah!” The monster yowls. “They’re suspects!! If we tell ‘em that, they’ll know we think they’re suspicious!!”

“You just told them anyway…” The magicless first year mutters.

“Hm.” It doesn’t surprise him as much as it should to hear that this year’s games are being deliberately sabotaged. And given a certain someone’s uncharacteristic enthusiasm at the dorm head meeting recently, he’s fairly sure he knows who’s behind it.

“While it is rather rude of you to cast aspersions on myself and my vice dorm head like this, I believe we could provide some assistance with this matter.”

The monster perks up. “Great! Then—”

“However.” Vil crosses his arms. “I’m a busy man. I can’t offer my assistance without being assured that it’ll be worth my time. I need something in return first.”

“Man, shoulda figured.” Potato #1 sighs. Potato #2 shakes his head. “Nothing’s ever easy, is it?”

Diamond hushes both of his underclassmen. “So? Whaddya need, Vil-san?”

Vil carefully does not smile. Not yet. “You. I need you to help me with something.”

The magicless prefect blinks at the end of his pointer finger. “Huh? Wh—if you don’t mind my asking, why me?”

“Your presence compared to the others’ makes you most suited for the task.” He turns to his bag and flicks through the contents until he finds what he’s looking for. “It’s hardly a trial. I just need someone like you to fill in for a certain role.”

Vil holds out a copy of the script.

The magicless prefect reaches out warily, as if Vil’s handing them a serpent rather than a few pieces of paper.

“This is the script for a movie I’ll be starring in.” He says. “I’d like you to help me practice my cues. You’ll be reading the lines that aren’t highlighted.”

And, seeing Diamond’s hand creep towards his phone, he adds. “Given that this is confidential until the film’s release, the production company has been assured that I refuse to be party to any leaks, and will prosecute those who create them to the fullest extent of the law.”

Diamond’s hand suddenly changes direction to scratch his cheek instead.

The Prefect takes the script, eyes scanning over it.

“Eh—how come the names are blacked out?” Potato #1 asks.

“To prevent leaks, of course.” Vil lies smoothly. “Now, do you want my help, or don’t you?”

The villainess’s teeth snag on her lower lip. Vil keeps his own from curling at the sight of the dry and torn skin there.

“Alright.” The villainess says. “How does this work?”

Vil straightens. It wouldn’t do to show his triumph at this juncture.

“If you start halfway down the page, I will respond. Make me aware if I deviate from what’s on the page in any fashion.”

The villainess nods, clearing her throat. “He-hem. You wished to see me, brother?”

Vil slips into the character as easily as buttoning a shirt. “My wishes are immaterial. But we need to talk.”

“What could be so important to waylay the young heir?” The villainess’ lip curls as she reads. “I hardly merit the attention, usually.”

“You know what I’m talking about.” He snaps, dignity and guardianship offended. “Your behavior is completely inexcusable.”

The villainess balks, her tone hardening from mockery. “My behavior? I do believe I need clarification, brother. I have done nothing to dishonor our family—”

“If that’s what you think, then you’re even blinder than I imagined.” His fury is ice, solidified through years of abnegation and honor. “Your conduct towards our sister has been abominable. Either you correct it, or I shall correct you.”

“C-correct?!” The villainess stutters, unsightly for a scene partner. Vil will need to recommend someone else for the final production. “I have done nothing to—”

“For once we agree.” Righteousness straightens his spine, quickens his stride. “You have done nothing to make her feel welcome or as if she belongs. Ignoring her at school? Making snide remarks to tear down her confidence? Who do you think you are, to commit these acts with such audacity? It seems you’ve forgotten who has the natural right to live in this household, and who is here merely due to Father’s generosity and goodwill.”

“I—”

“I don’t want to hear your excuses.” He scolds the unsightly cuckoo before him. “I am telling you what will happen. You will be civil towards our sister. You will be polite to her. And you will still your sharp tongue every time it decides it wants to say something unkind. If that means you never speak again outside the necessities, then so be it.”

“Wait, please wait, please, stop—”

And now going off script? Will blunders never cease? Vil continues the monologue as best he can in the face of such unprofessionalism.

“And if you disregard my words—if you fail my instructions in any way? Well.”

He tilts his head, channeling Gracey Enji in every pore of his being. “What will happen to you will make the punishment you received for ruining Asahiko’s high school debut feel like the gentlest kindness by comparison.”

And the villainess—

The Prefect flinches, curling in on themself as if in anticipation of a blow.

Their eyes are staring down, unseeing, as their mouth babbles, clearly not even trying to stay on script any more.

“No, no, I’m sorry, I won’t, I, I didn’t—!”

But somehow still reciting exactly what’s written on the page despite that.

There are two ways to read these lines, Vil is suddenly realizing.

One is as a hero decisively warning a scheming villainess that his patience with her wiles has run dry and that there will be consequences for her actions.

And the other…

“The hell do you think you’re doing?!”

Potato #1 has moved into Vil’s space, shoulders tensed like the first year was about to lay hands on him if not for Rook’s intercession. His vice-warden’s grip strength clearly has taken the potato by surprise, uniform wrinkling as he attempts to yank himself free.

Potato #2 is hovering around the Prefect, the monster whining and tearing holes in their too-long trousers. “Prefect, are you okay? Do, do you need something, a, ah, some water maybe? Hey, hey, Prefect, Yuu, look at me, please?”

“Ooh-kaaay!” Diamond pops up between Vil and his underclassmen, perfectly fake smile not quite as magicam-ready as it usually is. “Not that this hasn’t been su~uper interesting, you’re a master of your craft Vil-san, really, but y’know we’ve gotta lot of work to do with this investigation thing, hate to see the dorm head if he thought we were playing around, you know how it is, right~? C’mon guys, we’d better get moving, this is an important date and we can’t be late!”

Potato #2 nods at Diamond, an arm tight around the Prefect’s trembling shoulders as he pulls them away, still murmuring low platitudes. Potato #1 is still glaring daggers at Vil even as he shrugs out of Rook’s grip. He picks up the copy of the script on the ground—when had it fallen?— and shoves it at his vice dorm head.

“Next time someone tells you they wanna stop,” He spits. “Maybe listen instead of just doin’ what you please. Freaking tyrant.”

The insult stings, but Vil controls himself as Potato #1 scoops up the whining monster and strides after the rest of the motley little group.

He can still hear the panicky, shuddering hitches in the Prefect’s breathing, after all.

“Roi du Poison?” He blinks back into himself to see Rook peering at him in concern. “Vil? Are you all right?”

“F-fine, I’m fine.” He turns sharply on his heel. “Come, Rook. It’d be best to return to the dorm for now. Epel may be attempting to shirk his etiquette lessons again.”

“…Oui, Roi du Poison.”

He doesn’t say another word the entire walk back to the Mirror Chamber, which Vil finds deeply irritating as it means his thoughts keep circling back to the other interpretation that dawned on him for this role.

But it’s ridiculous, he assures himself as they emerge outside of Pomefiore. Just a combination of his previous experience and some, some personal issues the Prefect clearly has that have mixed poorly in his mind. Gracey Enji is the male lead. Vil’s chance to play the hero, for once in his career. There’s no way that Bella DeNiâmerée intended for the character to come across in any other fashion than the style in which Vil has been playing him. No chance in the slightest.

Certainly not as a high school senior threatening a child five years his junior in a way that they cannot defend themselves from.