#enumeration system

[themadzarka]

Are the children allowed to interact with each other? any of them friends or rivals?

this is for the 7 souls 9 children ask game. I think I might be a little (fashionbly) late to the party

MASTERPOST

Prev | 18 | Next

They sure can interact.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

End-stage capitalism

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in BLOOMINGTON TODAY (Apr 4), and in PITTSBURGH on May 15. More tour dates here.

Karl Marx predicted that capitalism would eventually fail, torn apart by its own contradictions. He called the bourgeoisie, who epitomized these contradictions, capitalism's "grave diggers":

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels marvel at capitalism's adaptability, its ability to reinvent itself in the face of seemingly terminal crises and emerge in a new form. For nearly two centuries, Marxists have treated capitalism as an intermediate stage between feudalism and socialism – a lengthy, but still impermanent, regime whose purpose was to produce the systems of plenty that socialism would deliver to democratic control.

But as capitalism lurched from crisis to crisis, some Marxists speculated that capitalism would give way to something even worse. In 2023, Yanis Varoufakis proposed that capitalism might end up being a transitional phase between feudalism and another kind of feudalism – technofeudalism:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/28/cloudalists/#cloud-capital

But Trump's disastrous policies – tariffs, suspension of the rule of law, pointless military expansionism – doesn't serve Varoufakis's technofeudalism or any other kind of feudalism. As Hamilton Nolan writes, Trump represents a rupture of the customarily unshakable class solidarity of the wealthy. Trump's policies are not good for business. Trump is going to make America much, much poorer – and since the vast majority of American wealth is held by a tiny minority of very rich people, any program that vaporizes an appreciable fraction of American wealth will make a lot of rich people a lot poorer.

Hamilton Nolan wrote about this a couple days ago, enumerating all the ways that Trump – who LARPed a TV businessman – is extremely bad for business:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/divergence-from-the-interests-of

Gutting state capacity

As Nolan writes, there are plenty on the right who don't care about the idea that public education produces the skilled workers needed to run and expand the economy, and who believe that paving half the national parks and putting a $500/day admission price on the remainder will suit them just fine. But even the most hardcore plutocrat needs a functional immigration system so they can source workers who can do the jobs Americans won't – or can't – do. You can't be a finance guy in a country with a collapsed, corrupt Treasury Department that periodically reaches into institutional bank accounts and drains them of millions in pursuit of "obscure witch-hunts":

“stupidly breaking the parts of the government that allow our financial markets to function smoothly with no apparent plan" is not “populism” any more than a bite from an alligator is a kiss

Ending the rule of law

Anyone who claims to love "free markets" loves the rule of law. The predictability of a laws-based society is a necessary precondition for capital formation, long-term investing, and the use of contracts to coordinate business within a transparent, known set of rules.

Trump's lavish corruption – his crypto companies (which someone called "a tipjar for the Oval Office"), his sale of commutations and pardons to flagrant criminals, and his purging of Democrats within the DoJ to create space for "buffoons" who run his witch hunts – all offer good reason for investors to stay the hell out of America, and for businesses to get the hell out of the country:

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5182515-senate-democrats-complaint-ed-martin/

The spectacle of the top executives of world's most powerful multinationals openly paying bribes to Trump, while seated at Trump's own members' club, makes an eloquent case for seeking your business opportunities in another country – practically any other country:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/05/trump-dinner-mar-a-lago

Then there's Trump's interference in the Fed, "endangering financial markets for short term political gain":

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-bid-to-control-fed-puts-us-economy-at-risk-by-kenneth-rogoff-2025-01

And finally, there's his defiance of federal court orders, and his attacks on law firms that employ lawyers who had the temerity to sue him. As Nolan writes, "This is not good for business." Sure, it's grimly satisfying to think about all those rich fools who howled because Biden had the temerity to suggest modest tax hikes and improvements to labor law now having to watch as "the world’s most sophisticated corporate legal regime [is replaced] with a system in which you must grovel at his toes in a ridiculous red hat in order to get anything done."

Military adventures

Trump is apparently going to go to war with Iran, Canada, Denmark, Mexico, and several other countries to be determined at a later date. Sure, America's military spending is higher than all the rest of the world's combined, but getting involved in several wars at once is – once again – not good for business. For one thing, he's going to kill Boeing, Lockheed, and all the other US-based arms dealers that rely on a friendly relationship with America's erstwhile allies for billions of dollars per year in business. Things are no better for the companies that do other kinds of business with the countries America is apparently on the brink of war with. This kind of "Hitlerian" program of economic growth was a failure in the previous century, and it will fail again:

Did Hitler’s wild invasions ultimate make Germany richer? No. They started a world war. And, no matter what anyone tells you, world war is not good for business.

Tariffs

Finally, there's Trump's deranged tariff plan. As David Dayen writes for The American Propsect, these aren't really tariffs at all – they're sanctions, punishments visited upon every country in the world (even uninhabited islands!) for a bunch of imaginary crimes:

https://prospect.org/economy/2025-04-03-theyre-not-tariffs-theyre-sanctions/

Trump's tariffs make no sense as an economic policy, but they are familiar to anyone who's spent time around organized crime (like, say, Trump):

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/donald-trump-2016-mob-organized-crime-213910/

Dayen likens Trump's approach to "a mob boss moving into town and sending his thugs to every business on Main Street, roughing up the proprietors and asking for protection money so they don’t get pushed out of business." Trump's demands – such as they are – include forcing America's trading partners to do away with their privacy, food safety and antitrust laws:

https://tacd.org/wp-content/uploads/TACD-Statement-Tariffs-3-April.pdf

Even if it was worth it for other countries to dismantle their laws to enjoy continued access to US markets (it isn't), no one trusts that giving in to Trump means that he'll carry out his end of the bargain. As Brad DeLong reminds us, Trump personally negotiated the USMCA terms that Canada and Mexico have been living under since he last left office, and those are the two countries he's most pissed off at:

https://braddelong.substack.com/p/draft-mar-a-lago-discord

This isn't capitalism – it's gangsterism. It's a system that will annihilate trillions of dollars in value to put billions of dollars in the pockets of Trump and a few of his cronies – at the expense of all the other rich people.

Nolan concludes that Trump is "insane" – that his actions are irrational, disconnected from reality, impossible to understand. For Nolan, the question isn't "What is Trump trying to accomplish?" It's "how has this insane man managed to gain control of the government of the world’s richest and most powerful nation?"

He's got a hell of an answer, too:

That, my friends, is the unfortunate outcome of an economic system that has so profoundly failed to enforce economic equality, and a political system that so profoundly failed to protect its democracy from the influence of capital that it allowed itself to be totally captured by extreme lunatics backed by extreme wealth.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/04/anything-that-cant-go-on/#forever-eventually-stops

[prokopetz]

I think a big part of my preoccupation with building tabletop RPG systems where every rules toy has an explicitly enumerated order of operations comes from being the sort of person who will open a new pill bottle, peel off the safety seal, remove the cotton wadding, retrieve a pill, then proceed to throw the pill in the trash and stuff the cotton wadding into my mouth.

[artbyblastweave]

Did you ever read WW historia?

I have now!

In terms of pure visuals, easily the prettiest thing I've read this year (in the February-to-February sense of the term, I'm not pulling a 30-rock cutesy non-statement here.) It definitely feels constructed as a negotiation with some of the tensions I've been waving at, but it's a deft one- handily resolving the overarching "what's the exact nature of the project here" energy through its aggressive commitment to a specific direction- an epic in the idiom of the Illiad or the Oddessy- it's status as the narrative of the founding of a nation, with enumerated mythological lineages for the Amazons, godly politics-of-personality jerking around the protagonists even at their best-intentioned, slaughters predicated on myopic cries for "justice" that are couched in a fundamentally misogynistic moral ordering of the universe (Getting Oresteia flashbacks with Apollo.) Zeus is a particularly compelling villain in the piece, with that cheerful, condescending, paternalistic adherence to a bronze age morality that's not nearly as alien to the present day as one might like it to be. From within his own moral system, he does nothing wrong, which is as good a condemnation of that system as any.

What I really like about it is how it in particular addresses the longstanding tension- not unique to Wonder Woman as a franchise, but always present to some extent- of an impossibly-advanced sequestered utopia trying to provide guidance to a population under so many more material constraints than them that they might as well be space aliens. The book expresses that there's a level on which the initial group of 30 goddess-crafted Amazons- the divine, born-as-adult utopian agents- can look like women, intervene on the behalf of, fundamentally align with women, but, before they meet Hippolyta, there are important ways in which they only fleetingly interact with women as a human social category. They strike from the shadows, kill some oppressors, and fuck right back off- which is cathartic, but none of the mortal women they "rescue" are left in a significantly better position by this alone. That's not an arbitrary strategy; In suitable Greek tragedy fashion, everyone in this narrative is beholden to something, and the original Amazons are beholden to the system in the sense that they have to hide what they're doing so they don't get turbofucked by Zeus and company. But they are very pointedly not beholden in the sense of having to make soul-destroying choices as a result of the gendered boot that they're under. They don't have to, say, live with the guilt of being made to leave an extraneous newborn girl to die of exposure.

Moreover, even in isolation, even with a headcount of 30, the book gestures at the idea that the first wave of Amazons are developing their own systems of norms, orderings of power and hierarchy, valorization of specific traits and rigid systems of categorization based on aligning with different goddesses:

Hippolyta bounces off these requests for categorization hard even as she petitions to join- she sees value in the category, but not the expectations. What DeConnick has done here is engineer a situation where the Amazonian founding narrative is a story about how the identity category of "Amazon" was forcibly expanded until it could accommodate everyone to whom it would be useful- do the work it was intended to do as a positive force in the world. Strict ontology subordinated to questions of practical harm. I think the intended applicability to other issues is obvious.

This brings me to the tail end of the narrative, another of many things I like- As I mentioned before, this whole thing is constructed as a national founding myth, right? The Aeneid, but for Themyscira. But it's not a triumphant story. It's not a tale of glorious conquest, it's not a narrative about how the Amazons turned their backs on a fallen world and carved out their utopian little enclave. They don't live on Themyscira because they're nationalists, or female separatists, or whatever other dunk Azzarello wants to advance. They live on Themyscira because they aren't allowed to leave. Themyscira is an act of suppression. Partly a "cruel mercy" punishment from Zeus and company, loss of freedom constructed as worse than death for the Amazons; implicitly, also a containment tactic, to keep their ideas from spreading.

Much of this was engineered through the machinations of Hera, who presents this National-founding-as-tragedy as the best that could be done under the existing constraints; a setback, a compromise, a launch pad for future endeavors, but still a meaningful defeat, something that Diana, the first and only child actually born on the island, is going to have to work to rectify.

[vexwerewolf]

Doesn't the existence of MONIST-1 and MONIST-2 Imply the existence of a MONIST-0?

Normally I'd say no, because enumeration systems that are meant to be read by humans almost always label the first item as 1. 0 is meant to represent an absence of items, and enumerating an item as 0 will feel instinctively unintuitive to a lot of people.

The main reason you would enumerate from 0 is because you're programming and your integer space always starts there (00000000 for an 8-bit register, 0000000000000000 for a 16-bit register, 00000000000000000000000000000000 for a 32-bit register, etc.).

However, MONIST-class entities are reality-warping higher-order lifeforms that seem to warp not only the laws of physical reality but also of information. RA/MONIST-1 appears to have been created/manifested/summoned/revealed simply by the Five Voices thinking about it.

Consider this: it might be quite important for information preservation that MONIST-1 is always assigned integer 00000001 in any 8-bit register that refers to them, MONIST-2 assigned integer 00000010, and so on. This would suggest that 00000000 is the unique identifier of a dummy entry, padding to ensure that MONIST-1 and MONIST-2 get the correct reference number.

But the problem when you're dealing with psychoactive higher-dimensional entities is that if you joke "there is no MONIST-0" long enough...

[polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup]

Rant delayed slightly by dinner plans BUT

literally all you had to do to make this show good was to lean into the sheer eldtrich horror of it. Like:

The second the System drops him in the Desert Hell World for four hours as an “appropriate penalty” for missing his push-up quota while hospitalized, it should have foreclosed any possibility of the System being benevolent or at least not actively hostile. This is a hostage situation. An untold power has him in its complete control and it can pluck him out of existence and make him fight for his fucking life at the smallest sign of disobedience.

All he knows for certain about this thing is that (1) it has absolute power over him (2) it wants him alive but is willing to kill him and (3) it wants him to get stronger for some indiscernible reason. There is a lingering and terrifying question as to why and what happens to him when he gets strong enough

I did in fact look up spoilers he’s being groomed as the vessel for an ancient and powerful being and needs to get stronger for that so this would have been a PERFECT exploration of eldtrich horror

The sheer fucking existential terror that this show could have explored. This as a mechanic speaks to a horrible violation of his autonomy. He is someone who has spent his entire life as a human with all the autonomy of one and now he’s a video game character and the thing behind the controllers only cares about him to a very limited extent. He should be terrified right now instead of like “sick level up”

There’s also a sick incentive to it. he’s in an absolute monkey paw of a situation right now. He went from the weakest hunter alive to the only person in the world who can increase his raw power, but he will never be more powerful than the System. He is at its mercy. He can become the strongest person alive but he will always be too weak to save himself. There is a twisted, perverse humor to it. It is almost mocking.

At the onset of action he should only be cooperating with the System to the extent that he absolutely has to. He will obey its mandatory directives because it will hurt him if it doesn’t. But the only time he can buy himself is by resisting the end goal. He needs to be actively opposed to getting stronger at the start instead of seeking out opportunities to level up, because the more he stretches this out, the better his chances of escaping are. He’s buying time to figure out what the fuck he’s gotten himself into and see if there’s any way to free himself from the system

This cures so many problems of the early narrative. Instead of it being endless Jogging And Punching And Sword Fight show, you have the protagonist trying to find the limits of his own autonomy under the thumb of the System and see if there’s anyway to escape this. There’s an actual goal for the narrative to drive through instead of it being bland shounen “get stronger for the sake of being stronger” dribble

It also cures the very real problem of how shallow the narrative’s conflicts are. He wants to keep his new strength a secret because he doesn’t want to deal with the media attention. But there’s no enumerated reason for why he wants to avoid the media attention. It’s just. Manufactured conflict, because he Needs Things To Be Certain Ways Until He Doesn’t Anymore. Legitimately this conflict resolves because he randomly decides that it’s about time that he should go get reassessed and have his level updated and just. Does it. The only narrative change has been that he has Gotten Stronger. And then of course he is so so strong now that the machine can’t even process his power and everyone comes to fawn over how amazing he is and the President of An Important Magic Guild comes to personally introduce himself to him but jinwoo blows him off because he’s just Too Cool now. There is no real stakes or weight to keeping his strength a secret because fundamentally he did not truly care

But if he’s trying to resist the system? Suddenly there’s a huge narrative stake in keeping it a secret. He is in a world where humanity is struggling to keep up with the threats they’re facing. They have lost entire islands to monsters because they weren’t powerful enough to contain them. Their only hope is to just fucking pray that there will be a once in a blue moon S level awakening to help account for growing power disparities. To have someone out there who can actually increase his own power levels?? That’s a huge fucking asset that the public would want as powerful as possible. It would become infinitely harder to resist his function in the system and buy himself more time because society itself would want him to lean into this as hard as he can

And he has no reason to have faith in other hunters and the public supporting a decision to resist the system because they have never taken are of him. He caught multiple of his teammates faking him the worlds weakest hunter. He meets new people and they say “oh I’ve heard of you you are a legend for being bad at this.” He is constantly taken advantage of, constantly pushed to the curb, constantly told he is a pathetic waste of a hunter. And when it came down to it? Those brave, powerful, luminaries of hunters just fucking left him to die and got him stuck in this mess

In one of the increasingly rare moments where this protagonist is interesting, he has a moment of genuine anger in the pilot that has so much potential. Effectively, he and his teammates are facing the final trial of the dungeon, which involves standing by a stone altar surrounded by massive statues closing in on all sides. If someone has their eyes on each statues at all time, the statues stop advancing. But if they look away, then the statues start closing in. He figures out that the ring of fire around them slowly going out is a timer and tells his teammates that if they all just keep their eyes on the statues and wait it out then they all get to walk out of here alive. But his teammates crumble under the pressure one by one, fleeing for the door, which closes further with each person who leaves. A lot of them say they can’t risk it because they have families. Eventually, there’s only three people left, which is not enough to stop the statue’s advance. He ends up staying behind to keep the door open for the last two that flee, and, in a very harsh scene, is absolutely brutalized by the statues. He ends up bleeding out on the stone altar, down several limbs, knowing he’s about to die and furious at his teammates for abandoning him to die. They could have all made it. He was the one everyone shit on as the weakest but he was the one who ended up having to make the sacrifice play. He had a family too. His sister will have no one now. And he doesn’t want to die.

That anger should have been fucking farmed in the early episodes. He is chained to this fucking System when he doesn’t have to be, because they could have all made it. They all got to escape from that, and now he’s evil god’s chew toy.

That could have made all the other characters and their relationships with him more interesting too rather than people who just exist to talk about how cool he is. In one of the other rare moments where people are interesting, one of his former teammates who abandoned him tells him he was going to apologize while he’s undergoing a gratuitous and unnecessary death following an event that has no true impact on the plot. And jinwoo says something like “you can’t just die like this. How am I supposed to keep blaming you for everything that happened”

His anger should be one of the few comforts left to him. It protects him from having to decide if he trusts anyone enough to tell them what happened. It should be difficult for him to let go of it. The traumatizing agony of how he ended up here should be one of the biggest reasons why he keeps it secret. Instead of their vague “ehh I don’t want to deal with it not being a secret until I randomly decide I do”

On the flip side, his teammates have to actually grapple with the fact that when it came down to it, they left their teammate to die instead of just dying in what was ultimately an unimportant action sequence that mostly just let jinwoo show off how cool he was

There’s the added conflict of jinwoo having to struggle with the changes the system is inflicting on him if he’s actively decided to resist it

Within like, one or two episodes, this man is unrecognizable due to the enhancements the System is giving him. He is at least half a foot taller. His hair is different. His face is different. He’s absolutely jacked. His voice got so deep that I legitimately thought they changed voice actors. There is so much horror potential in that

Imagine that you are the Ship of Thesus. It’s you. And you are watching as they rip up your planks and nail new wood in its place. Piece by piece, you are replaced. You don’t have a say in it. Your owners have never deigned to come aboard, so you don’t even know who they are, but they’ve decided to replace the wood. And everyone gathers around and talks about how much better you look with all this new wood. So much more attractive, and everyone is thrilled. Thank god we got rid of all those rotten planks, and congrats on deciding to do so, because it must have been your decision, right? It’s all your wood.

Jinwoo’s not even an active enough presence in his own life to even express any kind of feeling on his new appearance, except to discuss how he’s gotten Stronger. He doesn’t express any opinion or emotion on how he looks like a different fucking person now. Like he’s not even happy because he doesn’t even seem to notice

Imagine waking up one day and you look like everyone who has ever hurt you. You are Strong now. You are attractive. You have washboard abs. Women want you, fish fear you, and so does everything else for that matter. Your voice is So So Deep. And every single piece from who you used to be is just gone. It’s just gone, and no one’s even fucking disappointed about it. And none of it, not a single bit of it, is for your benefit. You didn’t even get a say in it before it happened. The thing that did it does not care about you. You are at once the house that has been remodeled for the new tenants, and the person being evicted. The exterior is so much more attractive, but it is not you.

Keep the conflict where the System makes him kill but make it legitimately a conflict. Have him struggle with it. In canon, he ends up with one of them at his feet begging for his life. He kills him anyway. A different character who was also there (voiced by Justin Briner and it is FUCKING ME UP I keep going Midoriya Izuku what are you DOING here) later says “oh no you saved us they were gonna kill us it was self defense” and like. Objectively it wasn’t. Self defense legally ends when the threat to you does. You have a legal duty to retreat. So if they’re on the ground begging for their life, it’s not self defense. It doesn’t matter if they started it.

Have Jinwoo overpower them but be faced with the same circumstance of having them beg for their lives. Have him try to convince the system to let them live. Have him fail. Gun to his head, he chooses to kill them. He has to grapple with the moral and emotional consequences of that.

The Elixir of life as a mechanic finally makes sense. Because his mom is in an irreversible coma because she has the terrible affliction of Being In A Coma. And, in canon, he randomly gets the key to the demon kings castle which holds the secrets to the Elixir of Life which can cure anything, including Being In A Coma. But it’s an enormously difficult dungeon. Overwhelmingly difficult. So he has to Get Stronger if he’s going to save his mom.

But the thing is in canon that this changes literally nothing in the plot. He already was driven to Get Stronger. He’d be Getting Stronger no matter what. Now he just has to clear a cool demon castle to save his mom in his never ending quest to Get Stronger.

If you make this eldritch horror, it is a malevolent force throwing a starving dog a table scrap and the dog knows it’s poisoned but knows he’s going to eat it anyway. He is only cooperating with the System as far as he strictly has to. But this gives him an incentive to improve as fast as he can and push himself to his limits. He can save his mom, and all it costs is himself. And he was already doomed from the start.

For this to be maximum effect actually make his mom and sister characters with some kind of personality fucking hell

He is going to know this is the system trying to cut short his time. He is going to do it anyway. Because he has no guarantee that he’s getting out of this. He is fucked in a way that literally no one has been in human history. But if he can wake up his mom before he goes out? His sister won’t be all alone. And his mom will be safe.

It would become this horrible, complicated, fucked up self sacrifice. He’s becoming increasingly powerful and dragging himself towards a finish line that scares him. He can become the most powerful man alive. But he will never be strong enough to save himself, and he has to stop trying if he’s going to save his mom. There is so much existential horror in being the puppet dragged about the stage.

Ideally at this point you’ve fleshed out the characters who abandoned him at the start + the Lesser Izuku and they come together to save him in the end

Literally this show could have been a fucking masterclass is eldtrich horror and a study in a total loss of autonomy and it could have made for a fascinating concept and instead I am stuck with this human equivalent of white bread fight dnd npcs that somehow only he can beat while everyone else watches in awe and talks about his washboard abs and increasingly deep voice and how he’s hotter and more impressive than anyone they’ve ever seen. oh my god I hate this fucking show

Literally it should have been

Jinwoo, in horrified realization: I am gods strongest soldier

And it would have been so so interesting and instead it is the anime equivalent of a mayonnaise sandwich on white bread

[kawaoneechan]

Project Special K, my "maybe this will be an Animal Crossing some day" thing that I mainly use to learn C++ has a Starbound-inspired asset system, much like many other things I made. As such, it works in much the same way:

On startup it takes a list of asset sources, sorts them by priority (I haven't added dependency graphs yet) and enumerates all the files in these assets. It then spends more time populating various databases from these files, like which items, species, and villagers there are.

That's it lol it's single-player only for now.

Even though I've written a function to forget certain files' existence in the asset system, there's a catch. Imagine two asset sources contain a file with the same relative path, let's say "foo.json", and they're different in content. During enumeration, the first file is put on the list, marked as coming from the first asset source. Some entries later, the second file is found and takes the first one's spot in the list, marking it as coming from the later source.

If I were to call ForgetVFS("foo.json"), I would not magically get the first version back. It was replaced, after all. That entry in the file list is removed, but it's the only entry listing "foo.json".

And that brings me back to the first PSK mockup screenshot that I made, the Content Filter screen.

Since PSK is beholden to the same limitations as SB that I literally just rambled about, clearly the content filter can't disable specific asset sources. It's all already loaded and processed after all.

But as the text in the mockup notes: "Unchecked species will never appear in your town as villagers. Any villager already there will remain." So if you uncheck the cranky personality and the hippopotamus species before first starting a game, no villagers of that personality and/or species will try to move in. But any cranky hippos already there will remain there until they're put in boxes.

This can be dynamic, in the middle of a running game. You could have a single cranky villager, disable that personality in the content filter, and no other cranky villagers will appear.

Or you could disable sea bass. Any bass already caught, stored in your inventory, in an aquarium on display in your house or the museum, or in storage, will still be there, but no more sea bass will spawn in the waters until you re-enable them.

That of course raises the question...

What happens when you remove an asset source whose contents are already used in your saved game?

My take? Since the saved game would refer to all of this by ID names that have to resolve to the actual things, it could fail gently. Items turn into fallback stuff (perfectly generic items as it were), and villagers whose IDs don't appear in the database, or whose species don't exist anymore, spontaneously move out, their houses replaced by cordoned-off "this space for sale" placeholders.

That was my take. But what's yours?

[argumate]

centrally-unplanned said: I think its funny how, surely prison has always sucked, but the “genre” became this cool outsider story from the 70’s onward for a while as a new twist on the classic man-on-the-fringe tale. And then we kind of…stopped, as I think everyone just knows it sucks now. It is too pedestrian to be sexy. (Pure id thought here ofc)

and beyond trope evolution there's also the spirit of the times, like in The Glass House there is a black lifer played by Billy Dee Williams (!) who is a political activist trying to change the system from the inside, the idealistic new guard served in Vietnam and has aspirations to reform the system, and the old warden bitterly enumerates all the ways in which the different political factions critique the system but offer no money to improve it, such that the best option is maintaining the status quo.

the '60s and '70s were self-consciously a time of change, but of course the drug war continued for fifty years afterwards, racial integration ultimate led to a black president but didn't usher in the dreams of a radical new society, the '80s brought unprecedented mass incarceration, and of course the crime rate went into a steep decline, something that people still struggle to remember.

what is the political context for a prison movie made today? what are people looking forward to, or in despair over? probably some AI shit.

(also, would the prison movies of the '60s and '70s share any history with the prisoner of war stories of the same era, like The Great Escape or even Hogan's Heroes? it doesn't seem like getting captured and imprisoned was a big part of the American experience in WWII like it was for the Russians or indeed the Germans)

[madraynesims]

The Sims 2 PSP Cut Content: Part 2

This is a follow up to my first cut content post, mostly talking about the cut Kine Dairy content there.

Missing Division 47 Scientists

Catelyn Lancaster

Catelyn is one of four Division 47 research assistants that are in The Sims 2 PSP. The two research assistants that still show up are Red Sands and Cristian Allard. All four scientists originally spawned inside the Laboratory along with the Curious brothers. Red and Cristian were later moved outside the lab to roam with the guards, leaving the other two scientists behind. This was likely due to performance issues in the lab. The schedule file indicates that Catelyn Lancaster would have spawned in the Laboratory only during the night.

This screenshot shows Red Sands when he used to spawn inside Division 47's lab. (Unfortunately, I couldn't find any pictures showing Catelyn)

As mentioned in part 1: Gender: 0 = female, 1 = male. The eye color is only specified if they're not the default brown. (I'll be using the Sims 2 PC to recreate them, as it shares a lot of assets with the PSP version)

Catelyn Lancaster's Details

Bio: "A research assistant at Division 47." social = 15, intimidation = 3, personality = 1, Her social score is higher compared to other Division 47 locals, and her intimidation score is at the max of 3, which would have made her one of the difficult Sims to do social games with. She has the Air personality type and she uses the serious idle set of animations instead of neutral. Her topic sets (interests) are dresses, makeup, medicine2, school2, politics2, spacesuit, travel2, money1, and the solar system. A visual of these:

Catelyn Lancaster's Secrets

 (Personal): "Does all of the work at the lab and gets none of the credit."

 (Intimate): "You were her first kiss … and after that experience, probably her last."

 (Dark): "Persists in enumerating common domestic fowl prior to emergence from their pre-natal habitats."

Terri Tortuga

As said above, Terri is one of four Division 47 research assistants that are in the game. The schedule file indicates that Terri would have spawned in the Laboratory only during the day.

Terri Tortuga's Details

Bio: "A research assistant at Division 47." social = 13, intimidation = 2, personality = 0, Her social and intimidation scores are average for Division 47 locals, so social games aren't too bad. She has the Fire personality type and she uses the serious idle set of animations instead of neutral. Her topic sets (interests) are dresses, makeup, classical, school1, alien, aliens, and birdbee. A visual of these:

Terri Tortuga's Secrets

 (Personal): "Has a HUGE crush on Pollination Tech #9."

 (Intimate): "Sometimes turns the radio telescope towards the city and pretends it's a laser."

 (Dark): "Tests new chemicals on herself, just for kicks. Once grew a second head."

Since we're talking about Division 47, I can add one more thing about TA7 (go see p6tgel's post to learn more about who TA7 is) The devs left notes here and there in the files.

don't worry, he's just (sleeping :P)

Random fact time: When you collect Roberta Rossum's parts, you can check your inventory and read the descriptions for them, but I don't believe you get a chance to read the description of Roberta's head before you give it to Isaac Rossum? But here it is.

There's also a toy horse story item that I can't seem to find any other information for.

[darkmaga-returns]

When Elon Musk and his DOGE colleague Antonio Gracias showed a Wisconsin audience how non-citizens get Social Security Numbers (SSNs), their presentation painted the clearest picture yet of the long-term damage former President Joe Biden’s open border policy will have on the United States.

Standing in front of a huge chart, they showed how the number of SSNs issued to new non-citizens spiked in 2024.

The total SSNs issued in 2021 was roughly 270,000; in 2022 it climbed to 590,000, and in 2023, there were 964,000 SSNs issued to new non-citizens. But in 2024 it more than doubled to over 2 million. This counts only non-citizens who got their SSNs through the Enumeration Beyond Entry program, a system where the Social Security Administration automatically issues SSNs and cards to certain foreign nationals in the U.S., as part of an agreement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

[talonabraxas]

“I know a spot” Cover Art Guy @CoverArtGuyy

The energies which emanate from what is esoterically called the "heart of the sun" sweep through the planets in seven great streams and pour into human soul producing what we call awareness. These seven types of energy produce the seven types of souls or rays. These differentions are like the colouring that the prism takes when subjected to the rays of the sun. But the prism is one.

TO ENUMERATE EACH OF THE SEVEN RAYS:

1st ray – The energy of Will, Purpose or Power, which is essentially the Will of Deity. This ray is of such dynamic intensity that it’s called the ray of the Destroyer. We are told that there is no true 1st ray type in incarnation yet, due to its potency. Perhaps the best example of the first ray’s potency is found in the mineral kingdom, for radium is said to hold the key to the mystery of the 1st ray. Courage is also an aspect of the 1st ray, but true courage is not a fighting courage or any sort of struggle to be what is called "brave." It is the courage of sure knowledge, held steadily and without questioning in the midst of difficulty and discomfort.

Higher Expression: The science of statesmanship, of government.

Lower Expression: Modern diplomacy and politics.

Perhaps the words of great servers can add a human dimension to the quality of particular rays. Goethe, I think, touched upon the dynamic, initiating power of the first ray when he said: "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now." And the courage of the first ray lies behind the Christ’s promise: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

2nd ray – The energy of Love-Wisdom – the desire or love of Deity. This is not emotional desire, but desire as the great Law of Attraction - the capacity to draw to itself that which is loved. It’s the bond of coherence, the principle of magnetic cohesion which works through all creation of forms on every level, from a crystal to a solar system. All have been created to satisfy the desire of the Creator.

Higher Expression: The process of initiation as taught by the hierarchy of adepts.

Lower Expression: Religion

The inclusiveness of the 2nd ray is encapsulated in some words of Krishna: "Whatever path men travel is my path; No matter where they walk it leads to Me."

3rd ray – The energy of Active Intelligence or, to reverse it, intelligent activity; the intelligent use of form building, of all creative effort, to reveal divine purpose.

Higher Expression: Means of communication or interaction. The radio, telephone, telegraph and the power to travel.

Lower Expression: The use and spread of money and gold.

The intelligence expressed through the 3rd ray is the authority the Buddha pointed his disciples to in his final sermon: "Be a lamp unto yourselves. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp. Look not for refuge in anyone beside yourselves."

4th ray – The energy of Harmony through Conflict. This ray produces beauty and works towards the harmonising of effects. Essentially, it is the refiner, the producer of perfection within the form so that the objective world becomes a true house of Light.

Higher Expression: Masonry, based on formation of hierarchy, and rules for admittance.

Lower Expression: Architectural construction. Modern city planning.

Perhaps the words of Julian of Norwich, the fourteenth-century mystic whose puzzlement over the existence of sin was appeased in the revelation that "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well". This summarises the essential harmony that in time prevails when conflict has exhausted itself.

5th ray – The energy of Concrete Knowledge or Science. This energy has produced science and led to man’s comprehension of the natural world. Because it operates on the plane of the higher and lower mind and because "man" is literally "one who thinks", the 5th ray has special significance to humanity.

Higher Expression: The science of the soul. Esoteric psychology.

Lower Expression: Modern educational systems and mental science.

Again, the words of the Buddha invoke the essence of the 5th ray: "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."

6th ray – The energy of Devotion or Idealism. This ray endows man with the capacity to see the ideal, the reality behind the form. It endows man with the urge to penetrate behind the veiled and hidden realms. The past 2000 years have produced fantastic gains in the understanding of what were, to early man, "magical" realms. Christ hinted at this when he said "Greater things than I have done ye shall do." Einstein also touched upon this urge to penetrate beyond the outer realms in his statement, "The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science."

Higher Expression: Christianity and diversified religions. (Notice here relation to Ray II.)

Lower Expression: Churches and organised religions.

The devotion of the 6th Ray is perhaps best expressed by Jesus, the 6th Ray Master: "Whosoever would find his life must lose it for my sake."

7th ray – The energy of Ceremonial Order. This is the coordinating capacity which unifies inner quality and outer tangible form or appearance. This ray primarily involves the etheric levels and thus governs the true magical work - the spiritualising of forms.

Higher Expression: All forms of white magic.

Lower Expression: Spiritualism – emphasis on form, "phenomena."

The essence of the 7th ray is found in the familiar aphorism of Hermes Trismegistus: "As above so below." The scientist David Bohm also touched upon the 7th ray in his theory of the Implicate Order, a new form of insight which he defined as Undivided Wholeness in Flowing Movement. A hologram is the symbol of the implicate order, he said: A total order is contained, in some implicit sense, in each region of space and time.

These are the seven rays, but it’s important to remember that all seven rays are subrays of the synthetic 2nd Ray of Love/Wisdom: Basically speaking, the energy of love, expressed with wisdom, is the line of least resistance for the manifested lives in our solar system. "God is love" is a great truth, for love is the basic law of this solar system.

[yuzukult]

drafts: i've been a little lost lately || jww & reader

drafts: unfinished works by yuzukult. please do not steal or try to recreate. draft title: i've been a little lost lately pairing: jeon wonwoo & reader genre: angst word count: 2.2k warnings: break up!au, second chances!au a/n: weee another draft, i hope you guys like it lol

Laying in your bed, you suspect it’s been forty minutes since you’ve actually woken up. The ceiling is painted white—blank, bleak, and plain, just like how your life has been feeling lately. Even with the sun shining through the sheer curtains, a warm glow hitting the pale walls, it remains dull. How many days has it been? Weeks? Months? Years? Truthfully, it’s not a question, rather you used to count the days since the break-up, but you’ve already stopped lying to yourself that he’ll come back. You’ve stopped enumerating the amount of time by now.

But mornings like these, the ones where there isn’t an agenda other than to just waste the day away, you miss him. You miss tossing in the bedsheets, turning to meet your gaze with his; soft brown eyes that resembled the burning wood in a campfire, pools of hot chocolate in cups during the winter with a marshmallow in each serving, and the walnuts he’d attempt to fling into your mouth from across the couch before the two of you would laugh breathlessly when he would miss and hit another part of your face. His hair would always be messy; stray strands poking up analogous to antennes, and you’d poke fun, asking if he was receiving any signal from the satellite from above. There was the aroma of freshly brewed coffee that filled the room, the sizzle of the eggs that hit the heated pan on the stove, and the smile that beamed so brightly sitting in front of you at the kitchen table seemed to be a lost piece of your life, one you don’t think you’d ever get the chance of seeing again.

Not all loves last, you learn wistfully, and remembering the day he shut the door of your apartment behind him with his duffle bag in hand and a backpack that sat atop his shoulders, it’s a reminder that he’s really gone. There’s no big, flamboyant gesture that you could do to bring him back, and if you really wanted to, a portion of you knows that this is what he wishes for. To be apart. You respect him too much to put him in another uncomfortable position by asking if he could stay.

Glancing over at your phone screen, you groan. 12:31PM. 

You’ve been laying here for what feels like forever, but the forty minutes that you assumed is a measly five.

The smell of breakfast and coffee, the loud clutters from the pans under the cabinets that used to come from outside your bedroom, and the exchanged delicate kisses during these mornings weren’t there anymore, and they haven’t been for two years now.

So why the fuck are you still thinking about them?

Rubbing your face tiredly, you force yourself to sit up on your bed. He’s not here, and he hasn’t been here in a while, and the fact that the memories still haunt your thoughts like a bad dream is frustrating. Why would he still infiltrate your head like he belongs there, like he deserves to be there, when he hasn’t been here physically in two years? He’s like a plague you can’t seem to cure yourself from, and even if you did, remnants of him prevail. You’d think you’d have the antibodies or something and your system could get rid of him before it takes over.

Maybe you’ll catch up on laundry, possibly do something today instead of nothing so that your head could be too busy to think of anything else. Toothbrush in hand and staring at yourself through the mirror, you’ve caught yourself once again pondering why he would pop in your head again when you’ve been doing so well lately. Shaking yourself from these thoughts, you went on with your morning routine. Brush, facewash, and skincare. 

The thought of coffee crosses your mind again, this time, you’re contemplating if you’re favoring ordering delivery or opting to make a cup for yourself.

Unlocking your phone, you skim through the pages of your homescreen before your finger hovers the Instagram icon. Purple, pink, red, orange, and yellow, who knew a square with a plethora of colors could weigh so heavy on your heart. Barely a month ago, you scrolled through the app casually before that familiar username pops up, one that used to sit in your direct messages almost daily, now hidden deep in your history. He posts a picture that seems like forever ago since he last did, the image of him with the silhouette of a pretty girl is on your feed and you could almost hear your heart audibly crack.

You’ve moved on. So why were you still aching?

Before you could decide on ordering or making coffee yourself, there’s a knock at the door.

And in all fairness, you weren’t sure of what you were expecting. You should’ve checked the peep hole in the door, or even taken a glance at the monitor that shows who’s outside in the hall—but oddly something in you is out of order today and when the door opens to expose who it is standing by the threshold of your apartment, you freeze.

If this is what it feels like for your heart to drop to your ass, then you’ve just experienced it.

There he is. Jeon Wonwoo in the flesh, in the halls of your apartment complex with an oversized beige jacket and two cups of coffee placed in a pulp fiber drink carrier.

“Hey,” he says, voice soft and barely a whisper. The expression on his face is pained, like he’s just been through a heartbreak. Why was he here?

“Uh, hi?” Rubbing your nape, you’re left confused and speechless. Do you invite him in? Do you yell and scream because he left you that night, without a real explanation on why he decided to go? Or do you leap into his arms and tell him how much you’ve missed him, and how even when you’ve moved on and found others to love, your heart still came back to him. “What… What can I do for you?”

Wonwoo inhales a deep breath, lifting up the carrier in his hands. “I… I brought us coffee to talk, if you’re willing to invite me in.”

You roll your lips. “What are you actually doing here, Wonwoo? We broke up. I’m sure you remember that.”

“I got lost,” he admits abruptly, like it was the words that got caught in his throat all these years, as if it’s what he wanted to tell you all along. “I got lost, and I thought that what we had wasn’t supposed to be the end. I saw what it was like being with other people and I—I fucked up. It was a mistake.”

You don’t know what to say. This was something the old you wished for, dreamed for, even, but the person presently here doesn’t know what she wants. “Um,” you begin, clearing your throat. “What’s in that cup?”

“My apologies,” Wonwoo answers humorously, but it’s only a front. “Hot matcha latte with two shots of espresso. Just as you liked years ago.”

He went through the efforts to get the right drink for you. Maybe you’ll give him a chance to explain himself. “Twenty minutes—tops,” you clarify before stepping aside for him to enter.

Your apartment is in the same location, but the interior is different. He takes note that you’ve moved your desk to face the window, for sunlight he assumes, and you’ve shifted your couch over to make room for it. Your dishes used to sit out at the table, he remembered correctly, but you’ve overcome the habit and your sink is empty, plates cleared, and placed where they belong on the shelf. 

“Quick. Timer is starting.”

You’re quick to snag the drink from him, and a soft smile tugs on his mouth. He missed you, and even if he doesn’t outright say it, he feels it in his core. “I got engaged.”

You nearly spat out your matcha. “You what?”

Wonwoo nods, fingers tapping against the granite countertops of your island, swallowing all his nerves so he could fully explain himself. “I was seeing someone and… it got serious. So I did what seemed best at the time, and I proposed.”

“She looked nice,” you say, drawing imaginary shapes on the outside of your cup to calm yourself. Hatred buzzed through you, not the two shots of espresso, but you weren’t going to show it. You assumed it was his girlfriend that he proposed to, and to be fair, she seemed lovely—how could you blame him? “And she was pretty too.”

“She was great,” Wonwoo admits, and you wonder why he came in the first place. “Kind, charming, sweet—she was the whole packaged deal.”

Remaining silent, you figured it wasn’t time to start a fight. As tempting as it was, you still wanted to hear what he had to say.

“But she wasn’t you.”

You weren’t expecting that. 

“So I left,” he sighs, his jaw tensing at the memories. “I told her how I truly felt and walked out.”

You purse your lips. “Well, you do what you know best.”

It stings.

For him, his weakest spot has always been you. You were the one that made his heart skip a beat the first time, the one who made him feel whole as a person without making it feel like he needed you to fill it. You taught him to love himself, to accept who he was because he got to see himself through your eyes.

And he let that go. He fucked up and let go of the one person that helped him grow and be better as a person. For himself, for your relationship… for you.

But he abandoned you. Now he’s here and begging for forgiveness.

So when you say those words, they sting and burn like alcohol poured on to an open wound, but he’d stand there and take it because deserves it from you. 

“I—I know what I did, and I don’t know how to make it better.”

“Go marry her and be happy.” 

Now he wasn’t expecting that.

With furrowed brows, he switches the weight on his one leg to the other. You don’t mean that, do you? “What? You want me to marry her?”

“Yeah,” you reply, fists at your side clenched. “I want you to be married and happy, not still thinking about a ‘what if,’ with me. Wonwoo, as much as I wished it was me, I don’t want that for her. I don’t want her to deal with what I did, watching the love of your life walk out on you and never come back.”

“But I came back.”

“And you’ll go back to her. I also have too much self respect to just let you waltz into my life like you didn’t just throw away four years into the trash for you to get engaged and come back.”

He’s silent.

Your response catches him dumbfounded, but everything with you leaves him on the edge of his seat. It’s why your relationship had always been an excitement—the spontaneous road-trips, the surprises you’d give on random days to show your love, and the subtle things you’d do for him just because—with you, even when you’re just lounging on the couch with nothing to do for the day, he could never be bored.

“I’m not going back to her,” Wonwoo states, firmly this time.

“And why’s that? Because you got lost for a second?” You snap, and it feels like it was a slap to the face.

“Because I don’t love her.”

Scoffing, you place your drink into the counter. “So now what? You love me instead?”

“No,” he heaves out a heavy sigh, because he knows that you’ve put up a wall to protect yourself. It’d be hard for you to allow him through to you again, but he knows it’s worth it. “I’ve always loved you.”

Your heart swells. But of course it does, this is Jeon Wonwoo you were talking about here. With just one look, he makes people weak in the knees, heart stuttering in its beat, and steals the breath from their lungs. He’s a walking dream, and you’d be crazy to turn him down—and you didn't, but that was before. Things are different now. You’ve already given him the chance, and he took advantage of that.

“That’s great, Wonwoo, I’m happy that you realized that. But I don’t know what you want me to do—open my arms and let you leap back into them? Not really a Disney movie we’re living in here. This is reality.”

“I get it, in reality, there aren’t always second chances.”

You quirk a brow. “Well, if you get it, then why are you still here?”

“Because you’re a realist, and sometimes so am I. But I met a hopeless romantic, and he told me that if I still love you, I should still try.” 

There’s a pregnant pause. “Here I am, trying.”

In all honesty, Wonwoo knows you. He knows what comes with coming back to ask you for a second chance. It’s always been easy to love you, the difficult part was convincing you to admit you still love him back. You’ve been known to be stubborn, hard headedness being the bane of his existence because you’ll never cave in that easily.

But what you also knew and previously loved was his persistence.

He’d never leave unless you let him at least try winning you back.

With a heavy sigh of defeat, it’s the first time Wonwoo wins an argument against you. It doesn’t require much effort this time, he takes note, and he likes to think you’ve changed for the better since he last saw you.

[irc-d-x-ao3]

It’s that time of the year again, and I’m once more participating in the Spop Anniversary Big Bang with a Vampire AU fic!

Please, do check @spopbigbang for more preview posts of this year’s submissions!

In this occasion, I’ll be posting Iudicium et Rationem, which is technically a continuation of Fidem et Proditionem from last year’s Big Bang event, even though it can still be read as standalone! I promise!

Furthermore, I have the pleasure to work with @isleoflesbosresident and @kuurankaiho this year, who are cooking really cool designs for some of our vampires XD

Now, here’s a little preview of my fic!

Well, Catra was right, after all. Adora and Shadow Weaver had gone to the Police Station where the old vampire was giving her testimony, while Judge Hordak went to arrange the terms of the arrangement with the prosecutor. Right, the prosecutor. It could only be one person… This wasn’t going to be fun for the hunters. At all. Once at the station, Catra had Castaspella wait seated while she got into the room next to interrogation’s. She knew Adora would be there. —Hey… Catra?— she let out, surprised. —Hey, Adora… How’s the interrogation going? —Incredible. I have my people taking Shadow Weaver’s testimony and I’m waiting for the Judge to send the prosecutor. —You don’t know them yet, right? —Nope. —Then I won’t say anything— Catra smirked.

~ Ch 2 - Catra's POV

A few more hours passed. The old vampire went through many topics, explained the archiving system of the Alliance, enumerated the different weapons and gadgets normally used, described some of the most relevant protocols, and explained how she had become a vampire yet remained a hunter as it was more advantageous for herself. And, of course, she mentioned hers and Catra’s capture and… her torture. At some point, a detective named Double Trouble showed up to ask a few more questions, most of them regarding the case of the Butcher Brothers, and took her testimony for what would be her trial for double murder in self-defense. And finally the prosecutor showed up, carrying a large folder.

~ Ch 2 - SW's POV

I'm very excited to share this new fic (#^_^#)

See you in May!

[mutipede]

KICKASS userbox from @coiningcoyote oh man I'm going to have to make the rest of this post look nice one of these days too now hehehehahaaa >8]

I'm a mutant centipede piloting a zombie.

I look like THIS!

And maybe a few other things.

AND here's a bit you should be aware of before attempting to converse with me

You can call me Valg if you want. The practice of listing off pronouns feels weirdly presumptuous when I'm not expecting people to be talking about me in the 3rd person but I'm a guy who has also found I enjoy it pronouns. I gained sentience in the 90's. I have various things wrong with me that I also don't feel comfortable just fuckin' enumerating but will post about and don't mind talking about or answering questions about them. It's at the intersection of "who wants to know" paranoia with desire to open up and be understood, you feel me?

Futurepast inhabitant of PSR B1257+12 b

I have a tagging system

𓆨 - Original posts

👁️ - Mental health and the lack thereof

☣️ - Just Mutant Things

🧟‍♂️ - Specifically Cotard's and zombie shit

💢 - Hyenas

🪲 - Arthropods and other things loosely classified as bugs

Centipedes are special they get their own tag

Blugs is for my own pet bugs

☢️ - Nukes, radiation, nuclear power

⚙️ - I am a machinist

🤘 - I'm so fucking obsessed with music you guys have no idea

RR48 - █████ ████ ██ ██ ███████ █████████████ [REDACTED]

🏚️ - This is what the inside of my mind looks like

My art - I draw stuff sometimes

lastfm spotify

[tf2-data-collection-agency]

Hello. We are a subsidiary of TF Industries created for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and sorting data on behalf of TF Industries and it's other subsidiaries.

The Census Bureau was initially created because the original "Teufort Nine" has grown to upwards of 30 000 mercenaries at any given time, and a more robust data collection system is necessary.

To be clear, the workforce that compose the Teufort Census Bureau are adults.

Should you have any questions about the Bureau, don't hesitate to ask. We are happy to answer.

Notices and posts from the Bureau in general are tagged #notice from the census bureau

Posts about the Bureau are tagged #teufort census bureau

Information about the Enumerator can be found here,

Any posts from the Enumerator directly are tagged #from the enumerator

Any posts about the Enumerator are tagged #the enumerator

Most recent update of the Mercenary Employment Satisfaction Survey and blog catalogue can be found here

Most recent update of the ongoing study of which mercenary the public finds most attractive can be found here

Should you wish to submit your vote for the most attractive mercenary, you can do so here

Should a Mercenary wish to receive asks from the Census Bureau, they will need to have Anonymous Asks On.

Thank you for your co-operation.

[lastconcourse]

There is a computer made of sardonyx: square sun. You float

Below the mountain, looking through the heads up display, seeing a cross-section of our star's heart,

there is a computer made of warm sardonyx.

full of beacons and windows nailed on sludgey linkages

and free-floating crystals used to enumerate & indicate.

The heads up display grants a visual chiasmus, the system seen from without and within both at once:

a sun in an android's heart, an aeronautic heart within a manmade sun

a drop of gold falling out of a turbine, or falling back into it

an aquatic-colored set of armor, with new muscles

clouds raining ink as a trio-fleet, airborne airborne airborne.

The valley is muddy and green and it keeps raining

the glasses you've worn are the size of the horizon. Ideas roll.