#global shipping program

[ms-demeanor]

A lot of recent privacy news has catalyzed my longstanding desire to De-Google my life and online presence; with that said, I'm a little overwhelmed as to the details of how. Because they're the point of contact for some academic and family things, I don't have the option of fully deleting my account, and I'm not sure how much good just denying every google app on my phone all permissions and not backing anything up to their cloud if I can help it does. If you have the time and spoons, could you recommend a guide or resources for this purpose?

Hello it took me a while to gather the time and spoons for this (you asked me this in August, it is now October) but in answer I give you this 4800-word, 9-page book, including such lines as:

Even the smallest thing that you can take away from Google is worth it. Fuck Google. They want to own the world and they don't get to, we're taking away what we can, even if it's only scraps. They may be scraps, but they are my scraps, not Google's scraps. And eventually, if all of us collect enough scraps, we can sew together one big "Fuck Google" quilt. Or something. This metaphor got away from me.

In case you hadn't guessed, this document is being written in Libre Office Writer. The font is called Liberation Serif, because that's freedom, baby. This program will never snitch on me to its manufacturer, it knows all the words I need it to even if the internet goes down and never comes back, and it cost me zero dollars and asked me for zero information.

So! ProtonDrive, physical storage media, and not having constant global internet access to every bit of digital data you've ever owned. That's the pain-in-the-ass recommendation I've got for you. "You don't actually need all that storage and you shouldn't want it" probably isn't the answer you're looking for, but it's what I've got for you. Convenience is killing the world. Say goodbye to Google Cloud and next-day shipping and look forward to a better tomorrow.

Fuck Google. They Get nothing.

Anyway, thank you very much for your question and also fuck google.

[flagbridge]

The Raoul Navy Part 2: The International Polar Year

HAPPY 2,000 HITS AND 69,000 (lol) PUBLISHED WORDS ON ALL VOWS!

Thank you wonderful humans for reading my longfic. My earlier post about Raoul's Navy background is very popular so buckle up for some more facts about the Vicomte de Chagny's military career.

The time when Raoul's Arctic deployment took place (early 1880s, 1883 in the fic) corresponds with the First International Polar Year. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), "The First IPY, from 1881 to 1884, involved 11 nations and was the first coordinated international polar research activity ever undertaken, inspiring subsequent international research programs."

France was one of the 11 nations, and they maintained a research station north of the Arctic Circle in Bossekop, Norway (where there was a magnetic observatory). Basically, all the different nations competing in Arctic exploration during the 19th century was getting a whole lot of people killed, so by the late 19th Century, these nations decided to collaborate and share research--much of which we still use (especially charts) today--including to measure recession of Arctic Ice due to global warming. Imagine that!

Raoul's ship's mission was personnel recovery, but they most certainly would have been doing research, and they would have had a number of basic instruments on board to measure things like the temperature, air pressure, and the pull of the North Pole. You can still access all of this data today. Bless the US government researchers who compiled this website. I'm sure they're pleased to know it's being used to write fanfiction.

In the fic, Raoul is rescued by a hunting party of the Sápmi people, and they nurse him back to health. The Sápmi are an indigenous nomadic people who still live north of the Arctic Circle and herd reindeer today. They also have several of their own languages--hence Raoul and his hosts have to use very rudimentary Norwegian that they've both learned for the same purpose (trading) as a lingua franca.

The music his hosts, Ande and Marja sing is joik, a very unique form of Sápmi music that often has no words.

Here is an example:

While these missions were lengthy, missions in the 1880s and 1890s also started to see all or most of the crews come back, a far cry from missions (like the Franklin), where even now we still don't know what happened.

[thunderbirds-showdown]

Which Thunderbirds Are Go episode is better?

Vote on which episode you think is better. Episode synopses below the cut.

Ghost Ship: EOS detects a distress signal from the derelict generation ship EDEN, after Ridley O'Bannon is blown into the vacuum of space. John comes to her rescue and the two discover that space pirates have re-awoken the dormant ship. However, they are inhibited by the Builder Bots, who are programmed to build the ship. In an effort to stop them, Dobbs reverses the Bots' programming, but instead of stopping them they start tearing the ship apart. With the pirates' ship out of action, O'Bannon's ship too far away, and Thunderbird 3 too large to make a rescue, John has to take charge and save everyone.

Icarus: While the members of International Rescue attend a prestigious global airshow, a test pilot unveils an ultra-fast superjet.

[runnerup-montbeau]

MONT BEAU (JOHNSON SET)

Back again with the all-new Jatavia Johnson set, which includes the Johnson Skirt, Johnson heels, and the Johnson Tank. This set gives details and high quality while being comfortable shipped to you straight from our malibu flagship. 😘 !

LAUNCHING ALL GLOBAL ORDERS NOW!

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(Johnson Skirt)

bottoms: 19 swatches (medium poly)

(Johson Tank Top)

tops: 9 swatches (medium poly)

(Johnson Heels)

shoes: 8 swatches (low poly)

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100% new meshes

textures made by me

custom thumbnails

hq compatible

low - medium poly

terms of use

do not reupload anywhere!!-

recoloring is allowed- ( do not include mesh)

do not claim as your own

Conversion (sims 2,3) is allowed

want to see more? follow us @r.unnerup on instagram

(any texture glitching is from the render program and do not depict the texturing in game)

[soleiltac]

Okay, recently I found out the information from Disney Wiki that AUTO from WALL-E is the only non-sentient robot in the movie. And I don't feel like that. :(

I am aware that he is meant to be an antagonist, the "villain" of the story as he follows his directives like there's no tomorrow. But, I didn't think this trait should define ALL of his personality. Like, he clearly had emotions and showed them in a restrained way. Or at least I thought he did?

I decided to rewatch it.

Warning: spoilers, potential grammar, punctuation mistakes. Excuse me, english is hard!

***

Why do I think AUTO is a sentient robot? My observations.

• Every bot on this ship is capable of emotions, when why an intelligent steering wheel isn't?

• Well, why, he actually has them! You can tell it by his body language and a tone of deep synthesized voice.

He expresses:

1. Frustration, annoyance.

- "CAPTNNNNN D:" – AUTO said calmly.

2. Surprise.

- He is genuinely shocked to see WALL•E with 'the p l a n t' on his head. I actually laughed at his reaction.

- "n ot pos sible! 0:" every now and when.

3. He is persistent and blutantly stubborn. Strict on himself. Some people can be like that without any directives.

- Captain McCrea needed to give AUTO 'a stern look' for him to share the information about directive. AUTO reluctantly obliged. (At least he tried to reason with Captain.)

- "sir, i INSIST you give me the plant." (Dutch Van der Linde voice here: "he INSISTS...")

- (And the whole plot obviously.)

4. Anger, fear. McCrea: – You want it? Come and get it, blinky.

Auto: – N O.

- "E N ouGh" 😡 *flips the ship around impulsively*

- "NOT POSSIBLE D:" but with more panicking tone.

- "NoOOo..." when he gets deactivated.

• The whole sequence with manual is... interesting.

- At this point of the story AUTO ordered GO-4 to steal the plant from EVE to make her look defective in Captain's eyes.

- I felt how much AUTO and McCrea are tired of each other's presence. AUTO is patiently anticipating McCrea's attention, he is eager to do his job.

(- Captain tries to imitate jogging in his seat and AUTO for some reason looks at him with puzzled and uncertain look. )

- AUTO keeps pretending like he doesn't know anything...

• Which is actually not a common thing for robots. "Lying is a human emotion." (c) HAL 9000

And yes, hiding the truth is considered to be lying too.

It's not like he was instructed to lie by his superiors, they didn't care. But rather it's the tactic that he learnt while being active for 700 years. I bet he understands it would be much easier to secretly yeet the plant into space without bothering captain with a decision. I suppose it required some thinking in his mechanical brain.

When why does he show the captain an operation manual? Good question. My personal headcanon: he loves doing his job so much, it doesn't matter for him if it can increase risks towards his global goal. That is why I can tell it wasn't a programmed, logical decision of the machine. If non-sentient perfect AUTO knew about A-113, he wouldn't let captain see the possibility at all. He hasn't considered that his domestic human pet might get interested in whole "Earth" thing. And he hasn't considered sentient WALL•E and EVE as serious obstacles. He did a crucial mistake to satisfy his ego... Or... Or maybe not? It's a headcanon, after all. Maybe it was a part of protocol. Or maybe he tried to entertain McCrea. AUTO seems to care about him in some way as he didn't push him out off the power until the last moment. (uwu) Choose whatever you like more. It's a thought-provoking subject.

• That aside, have you noticed that there is not a single character in the movie who would not be terrified of having to leave the comfort zone? It's only AUTO, who is opposing this idea for the sake of survival. Recolonizing nearly-dead Earth is not an easy work, someone can get really hurt and, well, die. And knowing that AUTO is based on famous computer HAL 9000, who is, in fact, killed people because of his panic attack (he didn't want to be deactivated/murdered), this situation kinda gets a new meaning? It's an interesting perspective to look at AUTO's character, too. AUTO, like HAL, at the start of story was okay and non-hostile towards others. Eventually, as the story progresses, AUTO becomes more and more impatient, eager to complete his primary task, thus taking violent measures. In AUTO's eye WALL•E & EVE are rogue robots anyway, defected and dispatchable. But attacking the captain? AUTO's final step to AI "madness" was fighting the man he is designed to serve. And though I believe he wouldn't kill him, we can imagine AUTO was panicking at this moment. So, no programmed logic there either, pure emotion of fear and reckless behaviour, almost like HAL. And HAL is 100% sentient and conscious entity.

*** Well...

Maybe it's just me and my anthropomorphizing tendencies on non-living fictional objects. I can be self-projecting too much, so if you disagree, let's say it's my headcanons and leave that at that. After all, AUTO is a direct representation of BnL – heartless company, that destroyed life on Earth and continued destroying it in space. They made humans, their customers, helpless like babies! And I am afraid it could only be worse in the future, if it wasn't for WALL•E and EVE.

It's quite a tragedy that AUTO can't escape from this never-ending system of least resistance and comfort. He is the system. He is made to be an autopilot of Axiom, he IS the Axiom, programmed to do his job fully dedicated to the mission of saving mankind. And if he was really fully-sentient... well, it would've made his life even more miserable. What's the use of the steering wheel on Earth surface? It's not like they are gonna fly into space again. Captain's dead and woah, hello eternal loneliness, next generation forgets about your existence or decides to ignore it like a bad memory about containment. Even AUTO's closest henchman GO-4 is forever destroyed... *sigh*

I am overthinking too much, aren't I? Gosh, this wheel NEEDS a redemption arc. And friends. My heart bleeds for him, really.

[iatrophilosophos]

Socialized medicine in the US is a partial solution to the myriad of problems with western medicine at best.

Western medicine is theoretically speaking the application of the scientific method to the human body, right? So it seeks to isolate "variables" in the name of "objectivity". Another word for variables here is context. And you just can't in a real way separate context from an individual's state of health; something medical professionals are VERY MUCH AWARE OF (see: shit life syndrome for one example) that exists in tension with both the current regiment of distributing healthcare and with the foundational mythos of western medical knowledge formation.

Western medicine is also beholden to the rest of the world. In places in the US where medicaid is actually relatively accessible, for example, you still have shit like racism and sexism and transphobia and ableism impacting care people get. And I understand that like, when people talk about their ideal socialist utopia, there's mechanisms in place that deal with social oppression; but I want you to think about just how big a project uniform care actually existing would be.

So in our current world, another obstacle to Making Medicine That Works is legality, especially re: the drug war. Very useful, known, well-studied substances have documented properties making them extremely useful or potentially useful for a variety of medical treatments (examples: THC for everything from gut stuff to emotional support; LSD for crohns and potentially diabetes; good old opiates and opiate-related-chemicals for chronic pain, some cases of depression and a subset of the experiences often diagnosed as schizophrenia and/or ADHD): but prohibition prevents application or further study (even for chemicals like THC that are legal in some states, if any program that receives federal funding is involved, can't use it! Fun right?). But sure, we can waive that one aside to and say that universal healthcare will also mean a total end to prohibition. That'd be cool!

So now that we've magicked away these problems, we have uniformly available healthcare that's getting better every day because all the social, legal and financial limits on medical exploration have been taken away. What do we have?

Well aside from a system that's gonna die with the rest of industry any time from next year to a few decades from now, still heavily dependent on plastics and factories and worldwide shipping and coerced labor in other countries, we still have a hierarchical structure where prescriptive knowledge is generated by centralized institutions who's abilities and members are dictated by governmental legislation and that inherently cannot see or account for the context of various people's bodies and lives and thus still limits the ability of disabled and mad people to explore/access unapproved/not-yet-approved treatments. But no, we can magic this one away too, obviously in the ideal socialized healthcare, everyone's needs will be accounted for so we'll have decentralized community medical exploration! And we'll use existing holistic healthcare tools and make more to account for individual people's context! And nobody will be subjected to coerced labor or nonconsensual treatment! And we'll find ways of creating medicine that are locally feasible, don't require global industry, and are resilient against climate collapse!

...so we no longer have contemporary western medicine (or civ, for that matter). Cheers!

But wait! There's more! You can live in this brave new world RIGHT NOW! what do you do with ur time, huh? You play video games? I bet you've put a lot of time and effort and skill-building and resource accumulation into it! Maybe you're poor as shit like me and have figured out emulators and pirating or talk to other people who share your interests about how to access them or you're into indie games! That is cool and meaningful! Maybe you like music! Maybe you like fiction! I bet you know a lot of lore/specifics/techniques/etc related to SOMETHING! maybe it's birds! Idk you but I am absolutely positive that there is SOMETHING you know a lot about that you have figured out how to know in a way that's accessible to you and applicable to your life. Maybe it felt easy, maybe it was really hard, maybe you did it because you want to, maybe you did it because you had to, maybe it's a really big topic, maybe it's a small one, maybe you can think of it right this second and maybe you'd have to ask some friends to point it out to you. Whatever it is, whoever you are, YOU HAVE BUILT A KNOWLEDGE SET AND YOU CAN BUILD ANOTHER ONE! You can start learning about the medicine that is applicable to your life right now. Go read the Wikipedia page for some medications you have around! Or for some ingredient in a food nearby you don't know what is! Or one you do know what is! Figure out a question about it! Google that question! Keep googling! Read some studies that come up and then search all the words you don't know and keep looking until you understand them! Look at you you're doing it! Keep going! This is how it starts!

Medicine exists in the same world we do and we can take it for ourselves and make it better!

[regina-del-cielo]

Roberto Bolle spending the first five minutes of his latest ballet show on tv saying that the program (made in honour of the International Day of Dancing) was made "on the wishes of Rai and the Ministry of Culture" hurts my heart

Can you believe the GALL of fucking Sangiuliano.

As if Bolle, Global Ballet Legend, hasn't been single-handedly keeping ballet and dance alive in Italian people's minds with his tours and programs for the last ten years

People at Rai should kiss their own elbows that Bolle hasn't jumped ship like every other competent TV worker in the last two years

[brujitaadinbo]

I am happy and a little nervous to start here. English is not something I master, so please let's go slowly. If you don't understand something, you can ask before anything.

I have a lot to say and I hope to gather more friends than anything else. I am open to dialogue but I repeat, insulting is not an argument and you leave. I have seen how Duo Din and Bo katan have coexisted during these seasons; I never expected that this interaction would deepen from the fact of giving each other the opportunity to open up and get to know each other.

I don't deny that at first I didn't see something between them; because I was more distracted by the action of the series and the euphoria. But my opinion completely changed in the season 3 finale.

When I saw how Grogu protected his father and in that process, I included Bo (and I'm not saying that he saw her as a mother but he saw the need to protect her, feeling her closer and part of him) So I change my perspective to this season.

I had to rewatch the series several times, hahaha I'm not lying and it makes me laugh but I did it. Then I started to see those little details between Din and Bo katan. Certain parallels and how hatred came to be appreciated. Since there were signs of flirting, he added verbal and body language, non-verbal language, approaches and even the dialogues, the music. A way to pair them, but not as a cliché couple, as they always portray us. With that cliché romance that always repeats itself; no no

Here they were giving things a process, this type of relationship in which both come wounded, with doubts, with traumas, something that must be slow because if not, it won't end up cooking. And living in a world like the one we live in, where survival is substantial, it is very likely that you empathize with them, understand them and understand how they have done what they have done and how they walk hand in hand.

I do not want to come to talk for the sake of talking and I will try to take all the visible and documented elements to show that indeed; There was no romance as such in this season between them, but there were romantic overtones, there was subtle interaction of this type between them, so much so that Grogu realized that something in Bo was changing. Being sensitive in those aspects, come on, that cannot be hidden from the child.

I have also seen how because of all this, toxic fandom and harmful people have given themselves the right to criticize, mock and attack. I understand it's Star Wars, without generalizing, don't expect many to understand or be mature or allow themselves to question or see beyond their own very personal visions and tastes.

But as I say; Your tastes are clouding the panorama or denying a palpable reality just because something is not to your liking and attacking it. More than sad, it's pathetic. Although anything can happen in The Mandalorian and no one can deny it, if we talk about possibilities, then I tell you, the possibility of something healthy developing is there!!! among them like so many ships from other SW content and clearly those little messages have been there for a reason.

"You don't talk about what you don't know" I love that Din said that. Because if you do not take the time to objectively question this union, to see the content again, you will continue in that ignorance of the elements, which is not just me (because it is not just my opinion, I base it on other aspects) Many others

I would like SW to understand that it is not just a bias of the population or of a certain country that has fans or fandoms about its content. We must give priority to everyone, this is a global phenomenon, seen in many places. And although the program has a family focus, nothing is an obstacle for them to show that no matter what it is, who it is, feelings and emotions are also valid and allow us to surround ourselves with positive people, becoming someone better for those who little by little have entered our hearts. No matter how badass, how Mandalorian, or where you want to be from. No matter the conflict or situation you are going through. Star Wars is based on human emotions and love is not left out of this.

are proving it and they only come to silence them.

[robsheridan]

Hacking The Afterlife: A Look Inside Hacker Tombs of the 1990s (Wired Magazine, 1994)

In the late 20th century, a posthumous custom amongst prolific hackers was to have their remains preserved in ornate tombs containing all of their hardware and data, such that their soul would be empowered to hack the afterlife. Friends and admirers would bring offerings of code, uploading programs of tribute to run forever on video screens within the tomb. Once respects had been paid, the tombs - usually installed within industrial freight containers augmented with solar panels - would run a preset program to have the container shipped around the world through an untraceable random chain of global freight carriers, ending in a secret remote final destination, never to be disclosed.

For decades since, determined raiders have searched for the locations of some of the most revered hacker tombs, hoping to pillage them for valuable data; none have been successful.

-----------

NOTE: This alternate reality horror story is part of my NightmAIres narrative art series. NightmAIres are windows into other worlds and alternate histories, conceived/written by me and visualized with synthography and Photoshop.

If you enjoy my work, consider supporting me on Patreon for frequent exclusive hi-res wallpaper packs, behind-the-scenes features, downloads, events, contests, and an awesome fan community. Direct fan support is what keeps me going as an independent creator, and it means the world to me.

[queering-ecology]

Chapter 5 . Non-white Reproduction and Same-Sex Eroticism: Queer Acts against Nature by Andil Gosine prt 1

“In Euroamerican-dominant cultural contexts, two kinds of sex have been (are) said to be toxic to nature; reproductive sex between non-white people, and sex between men.” (149)

The concept of ‘overpopulation’ has put the blame for global ecological disasters/climate change on the reproducing proclivities of the poor; due to the easy collaboration of capitalism with patriarchy and racism, that has meant the economically dispossessed non-white peoples of the world, particularly child-bearing (or potentially child-bearing) women from Asia, Africa, and South and Central American, as well as First Nations and non-white women in North America. (149)

“Although overpopulation propaganda and its material offshoots (family planing programs, coercive sterilization practices, etc.) and the criminalization and policing of sexual acts between men have been and are generally treated as distinct phenomenon, their genealogies are intimately interwoven through the projects of colonialism, development, and nation building. Read against the heterosexist, racialized formations of nature engendered by these projects (the creation of national parks,etc.), heterosexual, potentially reproductive sex between non-white people and homosexual sex, I argue threaten colonial-imperialist and nationalist ambitions. Both are “queer acts'' in that they challenge the stated norms of collaborating colonial narratives of race, sex, and gender, through which modern formations of nature have been constituted. Both fail to meet and are threatening to the white nation building projects engendered through the process of colonization, and uncritically buttressed in historical and contemporary discourses of environment and ecology.” (150)

Any acts seen to upset this agenda are constituted as not just unnatural but toxic to nature. This claim is not far removed from those made by postcolonial scholars and psychoanalysts who recognize sex as a primary site through which the terms of empire are negotiated and stipulated. (151)

The Sex of Others

The sex of “Others” has long preoccupied the imaginations of social and economic stewards of Euroamerican culture. The author provides many examples of this. These fantasies exerted a powerful influence on figures such as Columbus and “informed the organization of colonial society around the tropes of race and gender” (Rattansi 1994, 44) (152) (ie the first time Columbus saw 'America' from his ship he compared the land to a woman's breast)

“The management of sexuality, parenting, and morality were at the heart of the colonial project” (Ann Laura Stoler 1995, 226) (152) Through the course of colonization, anxieties about non-white peoples’ sexualities would also inform the constitution of natural space across the world. The creation of “wildlife preserves'  and national parks across the colonized world was predicated on the removal of their human, reproductive presence: the areas’ indigenous populations. Aboriginal peoples in Africa, North America, and Asia were viewed as both a part of and a threat to pristine nature, a contradictory argument that rested in no small part on fears about the potential reproduction and ‘abundance’ of them. (152) 

Reproduction-Overpopulation

English cleric Thomas Malthus is credited with innovating the idea that the sheer growth of human population (and not what humans do) is socially and environmentally destructive. In his 1798 Essay On Population, Malthus argued that since agricultural production increases arithmetically and population soars geometrically, poverty and disease acted to check excess numbers of people who were outstripping available resources. (He was strongly influenced by his work as a colonial administrator in India for the East India Company)

Malthusian theory has been revitalized by racial theorists, birth control advocates, American military agents of imperialism and national security, ethno-nationalists, international development policy makers and project managers, and environmentalists.

The idea that population growth in non-white communities poses an ecological threat has throughout the twentieth century enjoyed considerable popular appeal, particularly in the Global North. (153) i.e. Tragedy of the Commons-Garrett Hardin (1968) (“Freedom to breed is intolerable”, eugenics, sterilization, against redistribution of wealth, privatized ownership of natural resources)

Most credible scholarship has outright rejected Malthusian claims. The overpopulation myth is simply bad science, unsubstantiated by lived experience and driven by particular ideological interests that serve to deflect attention from the fact that most environmental problems–global warming, pollution, deforestation, and so on–are the direct consequence of industrialization, over-consumption, and capitalist territorialization, and NOT simply the overabundance of people. (153)

For preservationist-conservationist environmental movements in North America, the myth of overpopulation was an appealing distraction from the effects of capitalism and industrialization that became especially apparent in the 1960s, effectively turning attention away from the consumption activities of white, middle-upper-class Americans who often made up the movements’ membership (Darnovsky 1992). (153)

One important point oft overlooked in Malthusianism is that in overpopulation discourse the main culprit is sex. Identification of overpopulation as the cause of poverty and environmental degradation necessarily implicates the people said to be engaged in dangerously overproducing themselves: non-white men and women living in the Global South engaged in heterosexual sex. Sex itself, then, is the act of destruction. (154)

[krispyweiss]

Todd Rundgren at Andrew J. Brady Music Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, April 24, 2024

Todd Rundgren had nothing to say besides Thank you and We love you, Cincinnati at the end of the gig on Wednesday night in the Queen City. The typically talkative musician instead let a career-spanning collection of deep cuts handle communications with his audience, which on April 24 filled about half of the Andrew J. Brady Music Center’s 2,800 seats.

The Me/We tour is one for the faithful, with long-dormant tracks such as 1995’s subdued “Beloved Infidel” and novelties like 2004’s “Stood Up” returning to the setlist for the first time in ages. “Down with the Ship,” Rundgren’s 2022 joint with Rivers Cuomo, meanwhile, is just getting its sea legs and the goofy sea shanty works well alongside the eclectic sonic smorgasbord that found Rundgren conducting synth strings and soprano sax with a baton on the balladic “Kindness” from 1991, playing a searing guitar solo on 2000’s “Buffalo Grass” and proving his compositional prescience on the now entirely relevant rap-rocker “Fascist Christ” from 1993.

In a nod to any casual fans who may have attended, Rundgren began the encore with the first half of “I Saw the Light” segued into the bridge of “Can We Still be Friends?,” which led into the coda of “Hello it’s Me” before the dramatic fan favorite “The Last Ride” and “A Dream Goes on Forever” ended the gig.

Backed by five long-time compatriots - bassist Kasim Sulton and drummer Prairie Prince; Bobby Strickland on keyboards, woodwinds and programming; keyboardist Gil Assayas; and guitarist Bruce McDaniel - Rundgren played 24 songs over 125 minutes, as the black-clad band was bathed in white, red, blue, green and yellow hues from a generous light show that augmented the selections flawlessly.

Strong visuals notwithstanding, sublime audio, from the band and the venue’s sound system, was the focus. Drawing from more than one-dozen solo and Utopia albums connecting 1972’s Something/Anything? to 2022’s Space Force, Rundgren, per his wont, also covered a diverse stylistic template, as he switched from lead guitarist to band leader who paced the lip of the stage sans instrument and tossed in some EDM in the form of “Flesh & Blood” from 2015’s Global for good measure.

Opening with 1974’s ethereal “I Think You Know,” Rundgren celebrated the nature of his fanatical followers on Utopia’s 1985 dance track “Secret Society” before showing off his grimy guitar and gritty growl on 2008’s “Weakness.”

The initial triptych set the evening’s tone as Rundgren, 75, used his deepened voice to bring the songs into the present while the band provided the backgrounds that tied them to their era. To that end, Sulton and McDaniel joined Rundgren around a single mic for the a cappella “Honest Work,” which hushed any grabbers in the house, and “Hawking” came off as a hybrid metaphysical worship service thanks to the veritable choir and a soaring saxophone solo from Strickland. The passage of time seemed to be a loose theme of the Me/We tour as Rundgren plumbed his discography for songs that explore the unknowable to come up with such tracks as “Lost Horizon” (1985), “Afterlife” and “God Said” from 2004 and “Worldwide Epiphany,” the 1993 celebration of figuring it all out.

The latter got the audience on their collective feet where they remained until the show ended.

Grade card: Todd Rundgren in Cincinnati - 4/24/24 - A

See more photos on Sound Bites’ Facebook page.

4/25/24

[stevenbasic]

Growing into the Job, Post 373: Evolution Concerns

We’re just worried that her growth chart is beginning to look logarithmic came the message, the most recent in a series of alarmist communiques from a technician at their daughter company in the US.

Kristina Zhestakova had received the first text as she’d been talking with prospective recruits, young women in their second and third year. She was now between meetings, walking down the hallways of The Medical University of Warsaw. The school was her alma mater and she recognized most of the landmarks, the twists and turns of the old passages, the labs and classrooms. Many of the professors were new; the plaques on the office doors had been largely replaced by female names. Twenty years, she thought with a nod, had brought on some welcome changes. 

You are working on the sequencing data? she replied, relying on the translation software of KOLECTV’s encrypted messaging app. Her English had improved over the last couple decades, ever since she’d been tasked with establishing the company’s first North American facility on the island off Mexico's coast, but she still preferred writing in her native Polish. She was glad this technician - Marcia was her name - used the secure proprietary messenger as she’d been asked; not all at this upstart American company Evolution Pharmaceuticals did. 

Yes we have the bloodwork. Working on it but it’s complicated, came the tech's next message. They all knew that MM-1A’s eldritch origins complicated things, making the polymerase chain reactions difficult and keeping them from using the Sanger or NGS. The witches and their ways tended to do that, make everything either too easy or too much of a chore. But KOLECTV’s science had learned and become powerful. We’ve already identified the location of the breath and the voice. 

Yes. Doctor Zhestakova’s heels <click-click-clicked> on the tiled hallways of the medical school. Ostensibly, she was still, in title, Senior Vice President of Biotechnology at Gray Global Enterprises, once an American shipping empire that was now little more than a shell company for a good-sized group of the collective’s holdings. KOLECTV, technically, was one of those. However, in the early days, like a tick it had drained GGE’s resources and quickly came to dwarf its parent company and now controlled its interests. It was now an enormous, if still shadowy, network with tendrils not only in the medical and scientific industries around the world, but deep in other businesses, banking and politics.

The hope was that, soon - especially after the victorious results in the recent American elections - KOLECTV would finally shed the false auspices of GGE and begin to reveal itself. It would  grow in power tenfold, it knew, when it could step out of the shadows on its six-inch stilettos and begin to claim its empire. When it is done send the sequencing package to my team at Coronado. 

Of course Doctor. We’ve also located multiple other newly active gene loci, of unknown phenotype expression, the technician’s next message explained. Dr. Zhestakova knew what that meant, other potential abilities budding within the subject. 

She’d spent many of her early years with the company, after being sent to America soon after medical school for project “Bridesmaid”, and then setting up and studying at their island research facility, KOLECTV’s first in the New World. The project, nearly twenty years prior to today, had ultimately resulted in the takeover of GGE and the facility was now one of many jewels in the crown of the movement. Dr. Zhestakova had been not only an operative (088) in that operation and an integral player in building the prototypes for what the women of the new world could be, but an early beneficiary subject (Program, 3133j) as well.

Send it all. But tell no one else, for now. I want Coronado to go over it so we can develop an isolation plan. Dr. Zhestakova knew that Oksana and others in KOLECTV’s higher ranks were made nervous by her tendencies towards self-autonomy and transgression; she’d seen the old files they kept on her. She knew that her independent streak, coupled with her Program-gifted intelligence and with what they called her “relative lack of empathy” was seen as both a powerful opportunity for the movement but something they struggled to keep in check. She knew her file also described her tendencies for excessive behaviors and indulgences. Those, over the past decade or so, she’d made good progress in controlling, reining in. 

She could really use some vodka. 

The height? The explosion in strength? We’re not worried? came the technician’s concern.. 

Fuck the height and strength. I’ve seen the monsters they’d made, the failed experiments in Siberia and Kazakhstan. That can be dealt with when the time comes. Let the other abilities manifest first, so we learn, glean, farm. No we are not yet concerned.

Others would be, she knew. Others would be very concerned. Dr. Zhestakova could only do so much, but she had been trying her best to keep the snowballing irregularities in Project MM-1A's case “under the radar”, as they might say in the US. If they were to attract notice, the project could get shut down; Kristina knew there was so much potential to be culled, so much that could be achieved. Just imagine, she found herself thinking, an army of superwomen not only bigger, taller, stronger than any man alive, like we’d planned…

No, the possibilities might go well beyond that.

…but impervious to heat, and harm, and bullets…

And in a rare moment of heart-pounding speculation…

Imagine an army of women that can fly…

=========================================

for more on the enigmatic, psychopathic and high-functioning alcoholic Dr. Zhestakova,  as well as “Project Bridesmaid”, please see required reading “Trophy”

[mapsontheweb]

The Persian Gulf forms the center of this photograph taken by an astronaut from the International Space Station (ISS). The nighttime lights mark the larger cities and highways of Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The brightest lights are concentrated along the southern and western coastlines, where the major cities of Kuwait City, Doha, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai stand out. Several smaller port cities line the northern coast at the foot of the Zagros Mountains.

The lights speckled across the dark waters of the Gulf indicate ships passing through one of the world’s major trade routes. The narrowest section is the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. The Strait varies in width between 39 and 96 kilometers (21 to 90 nautical miles) and represents an important chokepoint in the global trade network that funnels millions of barrels of crude oil and petroleum products per day through the region.

This photograph provides an excellent example of the wide field of view that crew members have from their perch on the ISS. Tehran, the capital of Iran, is visible near the Earth limb and stands approximately 1200 kilometers (750 miles) from Dubai.

Astronaut photograph ISS063-E-81262 was acquired on August 31, 2020, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a 28 millimeter lens and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 63 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Laura Phoebus, Jacobs, JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.

[runnerup-montbeau]

MONT BEAU (JAYDA SET++ SKI MASK)

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We bring the all-new Jayda set, which includes the Jayda $tacks, Jayda $hirt, and the Basic $ki Mask. This set brings highquality streetwear fashion shipped to you straight from our malibu flagship. 😘 !

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terms of use

do not reupload anywhere!!-

recoloring is allowed- ( do not include mesh)

do not claim as your own

Conversion (sims 2,3) is allowed

want to see more? follow us @r.unnerup on instagram

(any texture glitching is from the render program and do not depict the texturing in game)

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Canary Media:

With their roaring diesel engines, tugboats push, pull and guide much larger vessels into port and out to sea. They are small but mighty — and incredibly dirty, spewing huge amounts of toxic exhaust and planet-warming emissions every year.

Now, however, the humble harbor craft is going electric.

America’s first fully battery-powered tugboat recently docked at the Port of San Diego, where officials are working to decarbonize not just tugs but also diesel cranes and trucks. The electric tug was built over three years at an Alabama shipyard, then moved through the Panama Canal before arriving in Southern California earlier this spring.

“We’re ecstatic,” Frank Urtasun, the port’s chairman, told Canary Media. ​“This electric tugboat is a real game-changer that I think will have ramifications across the country.”

The 82-foot-long vessel is set to begin operating within the coming weeks, as soon as the shoreside charging infrastructure is completed, according to Crowley. The Florida-based company owns and operates the electric boat — named ​“eWolf” in honor of Crowley’s first tug, the early 1900s Seawolf — and everything that’s needed to keep it running.

The eWolf is launching as ports and cities around the world are pushing to decarbonize their industrial waterfronts.

Globally, the cargo-shipping sector accounts for around 3 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions every year. While giant, oil-guzzling freighters tend to draw more public scrutiny for their large environmental impact, many thousands of smaller vessels and workboats are also major sources of both carbon emissions and local pollution.

In the U.S., state and regional policies are increasingly requiring operators to slash emissions from vessels, cranes, forklifts and other diesel-burning equipment. About 39 million people live in close proximity to ports, many of whom are lower-income residents and people of color.

An infusion of government funding has recently emerged to support those efforts. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act includes $3 billion for zero-emission port equipment and infrastructure. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is expected to announce the recipients of that funding later this year — along with the winners of a separate $115 million program under the 2022-2023 Diesel Emissions Reduction Act.

[usafphantom2]

Lockheed Martin delivers 75º APY-9 radar for the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye built by Northrop Grumman

Setting the standard in the development and delivery of Airborne Early Warning (AEW) radars.

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 01/30/2024 - 16:00 in Military

Lockheed Martin, under contract with Northrop Grumman for the U.S. Navy's E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, delivered the 75º APY-9 radar that provides the U.S. Navy with information mastery through revolutionary sensor capability. More Hawkeyes were built and delivered than any other AEW platform in the world.

“As the primary sensor of the E-2D, the APY-9 radar has a long legacy of providing agile deterrence for greater security of the 21st century,” said Chandra Marshall, vice president of radar systems and sensors business at Lockheed Martin. “Our main focus is to bring our military and women home safely, and the APY-9 sets this standard for all other AEW radars.”

The newest Advanced Hawkeye variant is at the forefront of technological capacity, largely due to Lockheed Martin's APY-9 radar. The E-2 built by Northrop Grumman has become known as the "fleet eyes" of the U.S. Navy due to its ability to simultaneously monitor the air, land and sea. Whenever a Navy aircraft carrier has aircraft in the air, there is an APY-9 radar in operation, protecting the United States and its allies.

The U.S. Navy financed 80 of the 86 aircraft of the current purchase program. Japan bought 18 E-2D Hawkeyes and France bought three. With U.S. and international demand, APY-9 is expected to be in production by the end of the 2020s, and in modernization and support by the 2040s.

Lockheed Martin is a contributor to the E-2D built by Northrop Grumman for more than two decades. The E-2D Advanced Hawkeye platform provides critical and actionable data to enable decision mastery for joint forces and rescuers. These advances provide the armed forces with the necessary situational awareness to reduce the time between initial consciousness and active involvement.

Tags: Military AviationE-2D Advanced HawkeyeLockheed MartinNorthrop Grumman

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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