#i think a lot of it has to do with the agency i was at previously as well. the toxicity and burnout i was dealing with

[daegu-based-terrorist]

I think a lot of people misunderstand why we talk about both racism and anti communism when discussing anti north korean sentiment. I do understand why people don’t think the racism aspect is all that important to emphasise, after all Samsung Republic is probably the north’s greatest detractor and the most vile anti North Korean scumbags can all be found on this side of the DMZ.

However I think it’s also a failing to not recognise that alot of the anti North Korean sentiment that comes from outside of Korea utilises anti Korean racism.

(South) Koreans are a great example of the “model minority” * huges swaths of our popular culture has been exported and deliberately changed for the consumption of the white westerner. Koreans in the American diaspora have often taken to becoming members of the petty bourgeois, and for some reason, doing this. South Korea is a hyper capitalist military state and uses Korean culture as a product to be sold to casual enjoyers and fetishists a like. New developments in popular tourist cities may as well cater towards the white expat/tourist’s gaze. Korean Americans have delighted in and actively encouraged the proximity to whiteness they gain by being neither black, native american or one of the “bad asians” (south, west ect.)

The dprk, and by extension, it’s people, destroy the shaky foundations all of these myths are based on. So despite being the same ethnicity, North Koreans aren’t given the privilege of proximity to whiteness, or treated as if they are almost honorary Europeans.

The Korean of the north is still a uncivilised dog eating animal who doesn’t know what is good for them and should either be saved by the benevolent American army or put out of their misery if the first option fails to materialise.

If we were to overthrow the ROK government today and reunite with the DPRK under the current North Korean government, South Koreans would be treated with as much vitriol as those of us from and/or in the north.

Because as affective as anti communist propaganda is, the fact that white people already viewed Koreans as docile, unintelligent people, really helped in promoting the idea that North Koreans are unable to think for themselves or have any sort of agency/autonomy.

Idk. I’ve been awake for two days straight and feel like I’ve written this weirdly so please as for any clarification. I’m exhausted lol

* (now please correct anything that I say wrong here, I’m not American so I’ve only understood this threw literature and the stories and anecdotes of other Korean comrades)

[whetstonefires]

Thinking about the parallels set up between Wei Wuxian and Mo Xuanyu, and how actually most of them are oddly specious.

The sketch of the backstory lines up, but on close examination they're mirror images.

Wei Wuxian wasn't kicked out of his sect, he left it. Wei Wuxian didn't hate the house he grew up in, he loved it, and getting the people there killed was the absolute last purpose for which his dark powers were ever intended.

Jiang Cheng was no Mo Ziyuan--his jealousy was a complicated thing all twisted up with love, and while he would lash out at Wei Wuxian both as a casual means of shit communication and more damagingly in moments of high tension, he had neither the desire nor the ability to bully him, and in general respected his boundaries almost too well.

When Wei Wuxian destroyed himself about Jiang Cheng, it was to give him cultivation, and protect his life and happiness. He would never have killed him.

Madam Yu was a domineering aunt-like figure, who hated Wei Wuxian for reasons of reputation, and because she had resented his dead mother, but she crucially did not have the power to actually disrupt his lifestyle to any significant extent.

Mo Xuanyu was shut up in a small room to rot; Wei Wuxian didn't even attend classes unless he wanted to. Mo Xuanyu was weak and disliked; Wei Wuxian was brilliant and popular.

Mo Xuanyu's uncle is a cipher of a figure, without character or agency, a nonentity who is resented to death apparently mostly for what he didn't do; in theory he is the master of the house, but he certainly never protected his wife and son's punching bag from them.

And this is what got me thinking along this track: because people keep interpreting Jiang Fengmian as this, as exactly like Mo Xuanyu's nameless uncle, a nonentity who lets his wife make all the decisions, and is contemptible therefore.

He shows up in fic characterized this way all the time, handled narratively as a gap rather than a person, an absence where there should have been a parent, and it's...totally inaccurate? The man only has a few scenes but the things that are most firmly established about him are:

he regularly goes out of his way to protect Wei Wuxian

he's extremely fond of Wei Wuxian

he cares a lot about ethical behavior

he's conflict-avoidant and gentle

he can and will overrule Yu Ziyuan when he's made up his mind, and there's nothing she can do about it

his communication skills are mediocre at best

he doesn't understand jiang cheng

he has a dumb sense of humor

Now almost none of this made it into cql besides point 4 and maybe 6, 5 is technically there but buried by the cinematic framing, so I totally get why the fandom on the whole struggles to characterize him well, and it's easier to write him off.

But it keeps bugging me to see him and Yu Ziyuan squashed into the mold of the Mo, because not only is that boring and reductive and kind-of-missing-the-point, it's like. Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's characterization suffers a lot when you alter the environment and take away the influence exerted by their shared father figure.

Jiang Fengmian was Wei Wuxian's primary adult role model and it shows.

Jiang Cheng's relationship to his own sense of ethics is fraught because 'teaching him good ethics' was his dad's number one parenting goal, but they misunderstood each other so badly (partly because Yu Ziyuan kept loudly misinterpreting them to each other, which is so realistic I can't get over it, that's exactly how it works good lord) that Jiang Cheng has a direct association between the concept of 'doing the right thing even when it's hard' and a feeling of personal inadequacy.

The fact that Wei Wuxian got their dad-person's approval for being exactly himself and Jiang Cheng not only couldn't do that, he couldn't even get that same level of approval when he really pushed himself to rise to expectations, because Jiang Fengmian did not intend that warmth as a 'reward,' and so never realized he was withholding it, and therefore misunderstood Jiang Cheng's visible jealousy as a dangerous sense of personal entitlement that had to be carefully restrained, which reinforced his distrust of Jiang-Cheng-the-person and fed into a shitty loop where they were less and less able to relate to one another--that's fantastic. That's so human! I love it so much.

Both their failures are their own but at the same time it would never have gotten so bad if Yu Ziyuan hadn't been interjecting herself in there, in the middle of their relationship, fucking it up. That's family, baby.

I would ofc like if there was more fic engaging with the subtleties of all this because it's so good, mxtx did such elegant work here and it is not sufficiently appreciated. But it's the kind of thing that's hard to write good fic about; I am struggling with it myself.

So mostly I wish there was just more fic that didn't impose Mo Xuanyu's cliche angst backstory on Wei Wuxian, who has a whole different thing going on.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tech monopolists use their market power to invade your privacy

On SEPTEMBER 24th, I'll be speaking IN PERSON at the BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY!

It's easy to greet the FTC's new report on social media privacy, which concludes that tech giants have terrible privacy practices with a resounding "duh," but that would be a grave mistake.

Much to the disappointment of autocrats and would-be autocrats, administrative agencies like the FTC can't just make rules up. In order to enact policies, regulators have to do their homework: for example, they can do "market studies," which go beyond anything you'd get out of an MBA or Master of Public Policy program, thanks to the agency's legal authority to force companies to reveal their confidential business information.

Market studies are fabulous in their own right. The UK Competition and Markets Authority has a fantastic research group called the Digital Markets Unit that has published some of the most fascinating deep dives into how parts of the tech industry actually function, 400+ page bangers that pierce the Shield of Boringness that tech firms use to hide their operations. I recommend their ad-tech study:

https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/online-platforms-and-digital-advertising-market-study

In and of themselves, good market studies are powerful things. They expose workings. They inform debate. When they're undertaken by wealthy, powerful countries, they provide enforcement roadmaps for smaller, poorer nations who are being tormented in the same way, by the same companies, that the regulator studied.

But market studies are really just curtain-raisers. After a regulator establishes the facts about a market, they can intervene. They can propose new regulations, and they can impose "conduct remedies" (punishments that restrict corporate behavior) on companies that are cheating.

Now, the stolen, corrupt, illegitimate, extremist, bullshit Supreme Court just made regulation a lot harder. In a case called Loper Bright, SCOTUS killed the longstanding principle of "Chevron deference," which basically meant that when an agency said it had built a factual case to support a regulation, courts should assume they're not lying:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/scotus-decisions-chevron-immunity-loper

The death of Chevron Deference means that many important regulations – past, present and future – are going to get dragged in front of a judge, most likely one of those Texas MAGA mouth-breathers in the Fifth Circuit, to be neutered or killed. But even so, regulators still have options – they can still impose conduct remedies, which are unaffected by the sabotage of Chevron Deference.

Pre-Loper, post-Loper, and today, the careful, thorough investigation of the facts of how markets operate is the prelude to doing things about how those markets operate. Facts matter. They matter even if there's a change in government, because once the facts are in the public domain, other governments can use them as the basis for action.

Which is why, when the FTC uses its powers to compel disclosures from the largest tech companies in the world, and then assesses those disclosures and concludes that these companies engage in "vast surveillance," in ways that the users don't realize and that these companies "fail to adequately protect users, that matters.

What's more, the Commission concludes that "data abuses can fuel market dominance, and market dominance can, in turn, further enable data abuses and practices that harm consumers." In other words: tech monopolists spy on us in order to achieve and maintain their monopolies, and then they spy on us some more, and that hurts us.

So if you're wondering what kind of action this report is teeing up, I think we can safely say that the FTC believes that there's evidence that the unregulated, rampant practices of the commercial surveillance industry are illegal. First, because commercial surveillance harms us as "consumers." "Consumer welfare" is the one rubric for enforcement that the right-wing economists who hijacked antitrust law in the Reagan era left intact, and here we have the Commission giving us evidence that surveillance hurts us, and that it comes about as a result of monopoly, and that the more companies spy, the stronger their monopolies become.

But the Commission also tees up another kind of enforcement: Section 5, the long (long!) neglected power of the agency to punish companies for "unfair and deceptive methods of competition," a very broad power indeed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

In the study, the Commission shows – pretty convincingly! – that the commercial surveillance sector routinely tricks people who have no idea how their data is being used. Most people don't understand, for example, that the platforms use all kinds of inducements to get web publishers to embed tracking pixels, fonts, analytics beacons, etc that send user-data back to the Big Tech databases, where it's merged with data from your direct interactions with the company. Likewise, most people don't understand the shadowy data-broker industry, which sells Big Tech gigantic amounts of data harvested by your credit card company, by Bluetooth and wifi monitoring devices on streets and in stores, and by your car. Data-brokers buy this data from anyone who claims to have it, including people who are probably lying, like Nissan, who claims that it has records of the smells inside drivers' cars, as well as those drivers' sex-lives:

https://nypost.com/2023/09/06/nissan-kia-collect-data-about-drivers-sexual-activity/

Or Cox Communications, which claims that it is secretly recording and transcribing the conversations we have in range of the mics on our speakers, phones, and other IoT devices:

https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-listening-ad-targeting/

(If there's a kernel of truth to Cox's bullshit, my guess it's that they've convinced some of the sleazier "smart TV" companies to secretly turn on their mics, then inflated this into a marketdroid's wet-dream of "we have logged every word uttered by Americans and can use it to target ads.)

Notwithstanding the rampant fraud inside the data brokerage industry, there's no question that some of the data they offer for sale is real, that it's intimate and sensitive, and that the people it's harvested from never consented to its collection. How do you opt out of public facial recognition cameras? "Just don't have a face" isn't a realistic opt-out policy.

And if the public is being deceived about the collection of this data, they're even more in the dark about the way it's used – merged with on-platform usage data and data from apps and the web, then analyzed for the purposes of drawing "inferences" about you and your traits.

What's more, the companies have chaotic, bullshit internal processes for handling your data, which also rise to the level of "deceptive and unfair" conduct. For example, if you send these companies a deletion request for your data, they'll tell you they deleted the data, but actually, they keep it, after "de-identifying" it.

De-identification is a highly theoretical way of sanitizing data by removing the "personally identifiers" from it. In practice, most de-identified data can be quickly re-identified, and nearly all de-identified data can eventually be re-identified:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/08/the-fire-of-orodruin/#are-we-the-baddies

Breaches, re-identification, and weaponization are extraordinarily hard to prevent. In general, we should operate on the assumption that any data that's collected will probably leak, and any data that's retained will almost certainly leak someday. To have even a hope of preventing this, companies have to treat data with enormous care, maintaining detailed logs and conducting regular audits. But the Commission found that the biggest tech companies are extraordinarily sloppy, to the point where "they often could not even identify all the data points they collected or all of the third parties they shared that data with."

This has serious implications for consumer privacy, obviously, but there's also a big national security dimension. Given the recent panic at the prospect that the Chinese government is using Tiktok to spy on Americans, it's pretty amazing that American commercial surveillance has escaped serious Congressional scrutiny.

After all, it would be a simple matter to use the tech platforms targeting systems to identify and push ads (including ads linking to malicious sites) to Congressional staffers ("under-40s with Political Science college degrees within one mile of Congress") or, say, NORAD personnel ("Air Force enlistees within one mile of Cheyenne Mountain").

Those targeting parameters should be enough to worry Congress, but there's a whole universe of potential characteristics that can be selected, hence the Commission's conclusion that "profound threats to users can occur when targeting occurs based on sensitive categories."

The FTC's findings about the dangers of all this data are timely, given the current wrangle over another antitrust case. In August, a federal court found that Google is a monopolist in search, and that the company used its data lakes to secure and maintain its monopoly.

This kicked off widespread demands for the court to order Google to share its data with competitors in order to erase that competitive advantage. Holy moly is this a bad idea – as the FTC study shows, the data that Google stole from us all is incredibly toxic. Arguing that we can fix the Google problem by sharing that data far and wide is like proposing that we can "solve" the fact that only some countries have nuclear warheads by "democratizing" access to planet-busting bombs:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

To address the competitive advantage Google achieved by engaging in the reckless, harmful conduct detailed in this FTC report, we should delete all that data. Sure, that may seem inconceivable, but come on, surely the right amount of toxic, nonconsensually harvested data on the public that should be retained by corporations is zero:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/19/just-stop-putting-that-up-your-ass/#harm-reduction

Some people argue that we don't need to share out the data that Google never should have been allowed to collect – it's enough to share out the "inferences" that Google drew from that data, and from other data its other tentacles (Youtube, Android, etc) shoved into its gaping maw, as well as the oceans of data-broker slurry it stirred into the mix.

But as the report finds, the most unethical, least consensual data was "personal information that these systems infer, that was purchased from third parties, or that was derived from users’ and non-users’ activities off of the platform." We gotta delete that, too. Especially that.

A major focus of the report is the way that the platforms handled children's data. Platforms have special obligations when it comes to kids' data, because while Congress has failed to act on consumer privacy, they did bestir themselves to enact a children's privacy law. In 2000, Congress passed the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which puts strict limits on the collection, retention and processing of data on kids under 13.

Now, there are two ways to think about COPPA. One view is, "if you're not certain that everyone in your data-set is over 13, you shouldn't be collecting or processing their data at all." Another is, "In order to ensure that everyone whose data you're collecting and processing is over 13, you should collect a gigantic amount of data on all of them, including the under-13s, in order to be sure that not collecting under-13s' data." That second approach would be ironically self-defeating, obviously, though it's one that's gaining traction around the world and in state legislatures, as "age verification" laws find legislative support.

The platforms, meanwhile, found a third, even stupider approach: rather than collecting nothing because they can't verify ages, or collecting everything to verify ages, they collect everything, but make you click a box that says, "I'm over 13":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/09/how-to-make-a-child-safe-tiktok/

It will not surprise you to learn that many children under 13 have figured out that they can click the "I'm over 13" box and go on their merry way. It won't surprise you, but apparently, it will surprise the hell out of the platforms, who claimed that they had zero underage users on the basis that everyone has to click the "I'm over 13" box to get an account on the service.

By failing to pass comprehensive privacy legislation for 36 years (and counting), Congress delegated privacy protection to self-regulation by the companies themselves. They've been marking their own homework, and now, thanks to the FTC's power to compel disclosures, we can say for certain that the platforms cheat.

No surprise that the FTC's top recommendation is for Congress to pass a new privacy law. But they've got other, eminently sensible recommendations, like requiring the companies to do a better job of protecting their users' data: collect less, store less, delete it after use, stop combining data from their various lines of business, and stop sharing data with third parties.

Remember, the FTC has broad powers to order "conduct remedies" like this, and these are largely unaffected by the Supreme Court's "Chevron deference" decision in Loper-Bright.

The FTC says that privacy policies should be "clear, simple, and easily understood," and says that ad-targeting should be severely restricted. They want clearer consent for data inferences (including AI), and that companies should monitor their own processes with regular, stringent audits.

They also have recommendations for competition regulators – remember, the Biden administration has a "whole of government" antitrust approach that asks every agency to use its power to break up corporate concentration:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

They say that competition enforcers factor in the privacy implications of proposed mergers, and think about how promoting privacy could also promote competition (in other words, if Google's stolen data helped it secure a monopoly, then making them delete that data will weaken their market power).

I understand the reflex to greet a report like this with cheap cynicism, but that's a mistake. There's a difference between "everybody knows" that tech is screwing us on privacy, and "a federal agency has concluded" that this is true. These market studies make a difference – if you doubt it, consider for a moment that Cigna is suing the FTC for releasing a landmark market study showing how its Express Scripts division has used its monopoly power to jack up the price of prescription drugs:

https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/express-scripts-files-suit-against-ftc-demands-retraction-report-pbm-industry

Big business is shit-scared of this kind of research by federal agencies – if they think this threatens their power, why shouldn't we take them at their word?

This report is a milestone, and – as with the UK Competition and Markets Authority reports – it's a banger. Even after Loper-Bright, this report can form the factual foundation for muscular conduct remedies that will limit what the largest tech companies can do.

But without privacy law, the data brokerages that feed the tech giants will be largely unaffected. True, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is doing some good work at the margins here:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

But we need to do more than curb the worst excesses of the largest data-brokers. We need to kill this sector, and to do that, Congress has to act:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

The paperback edition of The Lost Cause, my nationally bestselling, hopeful solarpunk novel is out this month!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/20/water-also-wet/#marking-their-own-homework

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[bougiebutchbitch]

I'm not in the ofmd fandom but I am intrigued by the drama. spill the tea?

OH GOD OKAY

Where do I begin lksdlgkfds

Okay so

There’s this nasty little gremlin-man in ofmd called Izzy Hands. He’s a sour, mean, skrunkly, disabled little cunt who is a firm believer in Respect and Discipline (in a very queer subby way).

This is to say: he is. Explicitly. Queer. He does drag on the show, and has a whole coming-out scene. He is a kinky masochist. He confesses his love for another man, and basically ruins his own life & everyone else's, because he is sooooo pathetically jealous about this man (his captain!) falling for some milquetoast loser white rich guy, when Izzy, a badass leather-wearing working-class sword-swinging swashbuckler, is right there making puppy-eyes at him.

He's wrong! He's horrid! He's a bastard, pickled in piss and vinegar! He's five-foot-nothing of spite and gay self-loathing! He's very fun to watch, and very, very queer.

People still insist that he’s straight. And racist. Despite there being 0 textural evidence to support this, and the creators of the show repeatedly saying that this is absolutely not what they wrote.

Why do people hate him so much? Simple! Because he ‘got in the way’ of the main ship.

Yup. It’s basically ‘bash the girl who gets in the way of our m/m otp’ only the girl is a grizzled 50-something year old pirate.

The main ship, btw, is between Ed Teach, an awesome complex flawed hopeful beautiful character of colour; and Stede Bonnet, another awesome complex flawed character. Who is a white guy. And who happens to be a rich plantation owner from the 1700s. Based on A LITERAL SLAVE OWNER. Who is explicitly shown to be a Problematic White Guy with fucked-up racist views.

Like. He’s not a perfect guy. The show makes this very, very clear - to the point where Stede pushes Ed into sex super-fast immediately after Ed says he wants to go slow, and this makes Ed run away and freak out.

But somehow, Certain Fans still insist that Izzy is to blame because :checks notes: he makes one cheeky, friendly joke about them finally getting together that is clearly given & received in good spirits.

Yeah.

There's a lot of this cognitive dissonance going on. And it's very, very wilful.

Basically: a certain subset of people who ship Ed and Stede refuse to exercise the slightest bit of critical thought of Stede’s views and actions (which are a representation of the white landed gentry!) but insist on maliciously twisting literally everything Izzy says or does to cast him as The Ultimate Villain. Whereas anyone watching the show can tell that he starts off as an antagonist-with-a-deeply-hidden-heart-of-gold, whose entire arc is about growth and redemption.

I think 99% of this is projection. Stede and Ed are not perfect by any means, but these people are so dead-set on shipping a Cute Fluffy Romance (when that. Really isn’t what the show gave us) that they have to create a villain out of Izzy and blame all of Stede and Ed’s fucked-up choices and actions on him, in the most contrived ways. Which has the added bonus of them deciding that Izzy, a white guy, is somehow responsible for literally ALL of Ed’s genuinely awful, abusive, and interesting choices in S2, where he went on his villain arc. Even though Izzy was the main victim of this villain arc. Rather than, y’know, giving Ed the agency to make his own damn decisions and acknowledging that he is a flawed and fascinating character who Hurts People but still deserves a happy ending, like literally every other main character on ofmd. Nope. Gotta infantalise that man of colour and pretend he has no control over his own life and his morality is goverened by the white men around him!

Then, they get to portray Stede as his white saviourTM who swoops in and saves Ed from ‘his own darkness’ with the power of love. 😊 because that’s not Problematique in the slightest 😊

It’s… fucked up, to put it plainly. But honestly, as much as there is a problem with their dogged insistence that Izzy is the root of all iniquity on the show, and that Ed and Stede are pure perfect angels who never did any wrong... what was worse was the relentless harassment enacted by that side of the fandom against anyone who dared show a liking for Izzy’s character. Like, it’s not the worst fandom out there by any means, but it really did make the fandom feel hostile to anyone who didn’t ship the main ship.

SO - yeah. That's the tea! OFMD was a fun show with lots of cool flawed characters. But the fandom was a cesspit, fuelled mostly by a Certain Group Of Fans' desperation to make their ship Perfect and Morally Pure - which resulted in them throwing an interesting, well-rounded, morally grey queer disabled character under the bus, and harrassing anyone who enjoyed him.

[wyvchard]

Birds of a Feather...

Agent Phoenix found themself displaced in time after waking up to Reginald's younger self. Chaos ensues.

Content Warnings: Canon Typical Violence, guns, restraints, Reggie's field days, Phoenix chaos

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Are you doing alright?" Agent Phoenix groaned as they woke up in a rough bed feeling far worse than the time they stayed up until daylight. They took a deep breath to calm down in order to observe their surroundings. It wasn't as clinical as a typical Zoraxis base, a relief to them.

"Nothing too unfamiliar. Where am I?" They glanced at the source of the voice, suddenly pausing when they finally registered a familiar looking face peering at them with worry.

"Is there something on my face?" He raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms to show his disapproval. "If you think these bandages look horrible, you should take a good look at yourself."

"You look like someone I know... just... younger. It's not what you think. I know I look horrible but believe me, I can manage." They looked away, taking a deep breath to focus on something other than their heavy limbs. "I've been through worse."

"You were found unconscious in the middle of nowhere. What could be worse than that? Actually, I take that back."

Phoenix gave him a sympathetic smile before getting up, much to his panic. They chuckled at his fussing. "You remind me too much of my dad. I'm sorry for laughing. He frets a lot."

"Who wouldn't? I know I can be stubborn as a mule but you seem to be on another level."

"Well, I'd say I like to take things on another level." They smirked, amusement spilling all over them, only for them to frown when they felt their ear emptier than usual.

"We confiscated your earpiece. For some reason, it caught the attention of one of our technicians we're taking a poke at it a little bit."

"I'm getting it back, right?"

"If you can get R&D to return it, that is. Speaking of, I have to go. Please stay here? I'm sure some of doctors have plenty to be curious about. Would it be alright if you satisfy their curiosity a bit?"

"I don't have much of a choice, do I? All I can do is sit up at the moment." They mumbled, shooing him off. A part of him remains unconvinced but he has somewhere to be: Roxana is waiting for him.

Phoenix absolutely hated the probing that came moments later. They miss the fact they didn't have to answer questions that weren't "where does it hurt? Have you injested anything you shouldn't? How are you even alive?" or any of the sort.

They so badly wanted to grab the clipboard from the doctor with their TK but that was classified information that mustn't come out, so they put on a smile and answered as best they could without releasing anything classified.

They really wish to know who that young man was, seeing as though he looked a lot like the older photos of their beloved handler.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Reginald..." Roxana stared at her friend who approached her with a silly grin. "You know you really shouldn't have taken their earpiece. Who knows what it is made of."

"You are curious about it as well. Don't give me that look." He stifled a huff, watching as she hands him some schematics. "Roxana, you know I don't understand any of this."

She sighed, pointing at a stool nearby a table with an open sewing kit. "The earpiece is definitely more compact than anything the agency is capable of producing at the moment." Her eyes darted to him working on one of the tears she accidentally created when it was snagged by a tool. She really needs to make a case to allow a bit of leeway in the dress code.

"That's not what I'm interested about. Why is their earpiece so tied to my own? I know I don't pay attention to the other agents as much as I should but I'm sure I can recognize someone like them."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well-" His words were cut off by a transmission. "I have to go. My handler is telling to check out the source of a distress call in the building."

He gently put away the repaired garment and rushed outside, leaving her alone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Agent Phoenix is currently curled up in a corner, one spare radio borrowed from the "supply closet" (empty and unused office) they barricaded themself in.

They need to get evac there. Immediately. Everything felt so familiar yet so wrong. There were some places where they can delude themselves they were back in their office, bullet holes and all. Yet it was too new to them, as if someone patched up the structural failings on the surface.

They held their breath, really hoping that the mail slot there wasn't going to have a-

"Woah! Gun safety rules aside, it's me. Come on. Please get outta there." He sounded surprised at the fact his gun was practically ripped from his grasp in the mail slot although here was a hint of reprimand.

"Leave me alone! I wanna go back. I miss him so much." They covered their ears, still shivering from how similar the young man's voice was to his.

"There isn't really much to miss there. A lot of things you can shoot at point blank range. And I don't think he's around."

They counted the seconds, internally cursing at the fact they need to use their TK to open the door in order to escape.

Despite their preparation, they managed to falter, earning him a chance to tie their limbs with a rope.

"Let me go! I swear I only want to go home." Indignation laced their voice as their struggled. "Please. I'm sure they're worried."

"I only came with a gun because you were reported to have a knife on you. How did you even manage to sneak it past us?"

"Well, why was your first thought to push a gun through a mail slot to calm me down?"

Their unfriendly glare made him wear a wry smile as he mumbled an apology. "Well, why wouldn't I be guarded? You were sending a distress call to the agency, not to mention your earpiece always connects to mine."

Eyes widening at the realization, they looked resigned a few seconds later. "... I won't participate in any questions until you do this one thing for me, Mr. Reginald Crane."

A shiver ran up his spine as they gave him a devious grin.

"Please ask Dr. Roxana Prism if she's willing to make a tine machine with me."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I have NO idea where I'm going with this so this is a one shot for now.

Tag List:

@phoenix-and-found-family, @the-one-and-only-043, @ghostlystarwanderer, @jellyfishgummy

[mariacallous]

A new UC Riverside study on California agriculture and climate proposes a plan for new water capture, storage, and distribution systems throughout California that will sustain agriculture and keep up with climate trajectories.

Available water for consumption is disappearing because of climate change and failing storage systems, leaving one of its top consumers—the agricultural industry—scrambling, the study concludes.

California’s agriculture sector uses about 40 percent of all the state’s water, or 80 percent of its consumed water. With less water available, agriculture must adjust. The study provides a pathway for the sector to do so.

The study, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that groundwater aquifers have more storage potential than surface water reservoirs. So, instead of devoting decades to build more dams and reservoirs that are subject to evaporation and overflow, water should be diverted into these depleted aquifers below the Central Valley and the coastal plains.

Over the past 40 years, aquifers have been overpumped, meaning more water has been taken out than put back in. When aquifers become too depleted, the land can subside. “In some parts of the Central Valley, it’s been sinking a foot or two a year,” said Kurt Schwabe, a public policy professor at UC Riverside and coauthor of the study. Land subsidence can cause infrastructure like buildings and highways to crack and degrade. It also harms the aquifer’s capacity to hold water and the health of the surrounding ecosystems.

Not only can replenishing groundwater aquifers limit these negative environmental impacts, but it can also bolster a water “savings account” during times of drought. When California lacks surface water, water usage shifts to groundwater stores.

But the big problem isn’t simply a quantity issue: “When I moved to California over 20 years ago, someone told me, ‘Don’t let people tell you there isn’t a lot of water in California, because there is. The problem is that it’s just managed really poorly,” said Schwabe.

The drought-plagued state was just drenched by two wet seasons and atmospheric rivers, but its infrastructure failed to adequately store that excess water.

Think of it like a leaky roof. In the past, you could have stored rainwater seeping through your roof in a gallon bucket for five separate rain events. Now, you would need a 5-gallon bucket for just one rain event.

Although the amount of precipitation hasn’t changed much compared to historical rates, “climate change has typically reduced the number of rainfall events but has made them much more intense,” said Schwabe.

Additionally, the climate crisis has led to high temperatures that evaporate surface waters before they can replenish and prevent rainfall from accumulating as snowpack, which has traditionally refilled reservoirs throughout the spring.

Like the gallon bucket, California’s storage facilities are too small. That, together with slow landscape absorption, is leading to flash floods and potentially useful water flowing back to the ocean.

For example, two winters’ worth of snow followed by intense heat created a flood risk in 2023. State officials decided to release water from Lake Oroville and other reservoirs across Southern California and the Central Valley. Although this helped prevent flooding and sent water downstream, many Californians were upset that the fresh water was being wasted. In attempts to reduce overflow releases, water agencies and irrigation districts made recharge basins to capture precipitation. But it wasn’t enough. Constant overpumping and a changing climate leave aquifers depleted to this day.

Their natural recharge process—precipitation accumulating as surface water that percolates through the soil to recharge groundwater aquifers—can also be disrupted by urbanization or impervious covers like pavement, said Bruk Berhanu, a senior researcher in water efficiency and reuse at the Pacific Institute.

The study suggests more managed aquifer recharge (MAR) infrastructure is needed to adequately catch large amounts of water in short time periods and avoid similar water-loss situations.

MAR is an intentional method of recharging aquifers, especially those at low levels. Already commonly implemented in California, MAR infrastructure includes conveyance structures that redistribute water to dehydrated locations, and injection—spraying water on land or, the more costly option, directly infusing water in wells.

Yet, to ensure an effective recharge of the aquifers, more monitoring and measurement is required. “Through 2014, growers were not required to monitor or report any withdrawals or injections to aquifers,” said Schwabe.

Regardless, California has more monitoring practices than other states mainly because water availability is not as big a concern elsewhere, said Berhanu. Monitoring standards vary by state and region. Regulations for urban areas differ from agricultural or industrial areas. Based on Berhanu’s work assessing the country’s volumetric potential for water use efficiency at the municipal level, he found that “there is no federal regulatory framework for monitoring or reporting. In a lot of cases, water supplies aren’t even metered.”

Even in areas that did have regulations, the reports were often infrequent or incomplete; the UC Riverside researchers are working on expanding the few accurate monitoring systems put in place in Southern California by proactive growers.

Additionally, the study proposes voluntary water markets where farmers with a surplus of water can trade it to another farmer in need. It’s a win-win process: The selling farmer makes extra profit and the other gets much-needed water. “With prices based on scarcity plus delivery costs, such a marketplace would have incentives for storage and efficient use,” Schwabe said in a press release.

Berhanu added that water-trading markets can work in some areas but not in others. “It needs a very strong governance framework to make sure all of the players are playing according to the rules.” The process will need to have improved monitoring practices, transparent data, and clear external costs, he said. “The more decentralized you get with how these transactions are being made, it becomes very difficult to coordinate the overall watershed-scale system benefits.”

The study also mentions the value of reusing wastewater. Historically, wastewater has been treated to an environmental safety standard then released into the ocean or groundwater system. Over time, natural processes will clean it. Instead of waiting for the environment to purify it, water treatment facilities can repurpose the wastewater for irrigation, commercial use, or recharging purposes.

As of 2023, water treatment plants can purify wastewater so well that people can drink it. “At some point, the water that we use will become someone else’s water for drinking or irrigation,” said Berhanu. Whether wastewater is for drinking or recharging aquifers, California plants are expanding their operations to include recycling methods so they can produce a sufficient supply.

“The overall volume of water in the world doesn’t really change. We need to shift our thinking from looking at how much water is available at one point of time to trying to better integrate our practices with the entire water cycle,” said Berhanu.

The study goes on to mention numerous efficiency-based and management solutions, like sustainable farming practices, land repurposing, and desalination to help the agriculture industry adjust.

“Now is the time to think about possibilities and opportunities for collaboration across agriculture, municipalities, and the environment to invest in smart investments that capture more water and put it in the ground,” said Schwabe.

[pinnithin]

yknow i didn't necessarily start my wyll origin run with the intent of romancing astarion in mind but the more i play the more i find their similarities amusing when it comes to like, the surface level personality they present to strangers in act 1.

wyll is a compulsive flirt. you see it in dialogue with shadowheart and lae'zel - he just tosses out a couple lines that clearly aren't supposed to go anywhere (asking lae'zel if she believes in love at first sight, blatantly reusing the same flirtation attempts with shadowheart) and i see this as part of his Blade of Frontiers persona. obviously a traveling vigilante would have no time for romance or relationships, but he's socially aware enough to have learned that people respond well to a certain level of rogueish charm. especially if his reputation precedes him. he can safely and positively engage in surface level flirtations with the people he interacts with because the person doing the flirting isn't real - at least not to him. he often says the Blade is his best self, but to him its an ideal he strives to achieve, not the person he really is. and i imagine that includes the ability to give discouraged people positive attention in a nonthreatening way. its safe. its superficial. he doesn't have to follow through.

this is overshadowed somewhat by astarion's tendency to flirt with anything that has a pulse, but the perspective they both have on it is pretty similar. theyre both coming from a place of not actually being interested in the recipient of their attention - whether that be through astarion's ulterior motives or wyll's lack of capacity for a relationship - but they both still put on this front because it's habitual. it's worked for them and it's gotten them through the varying degrees of social contracts they find themselves in. so they wind up trading lines easily because they've studied from the same script.

anyway what im getting at is bumping these two personalities against each other can definitely result in wyll and astarion committing to the bit so hard they accidentally wind up in a relationship. like, you're safe, you know the rules, you're speaking in a language i'm familiar with but we both understand that neither of us expect anything back on an emotional level. wait when did we start confiding our deepest secrets with one another. what do you mean you trust me.

[lemonycranberries]

kinda agry at the last dbd episode, not gonna lie. even if a character is actually alive in some way after going through the "gratuitously killing the sweetheart traumatized character who was finally starting to get the thing they've wanted for years, right when they were so close to making it out alive and getting some happiness and closure" trope IT DOESN'T MAKE ME NOT HATE IT!!!

[henrybelly]

honestly when i tried to figure out why some fans are so mad at ivypool these days i was looking through avos and. the scene where ivypool apologises to twigpaw for not supporting sending a patrol for skyclan is genuinely very sweet??

i actually saw someone characterize this as "ivypool forcing twigpaw to forgive her". is it crack you smoke. is that what you smoke. you smoke crack?

[fluffypotatey]

That is, huh. A lot more of a thought out response then what I was going for lol. I was like “what little rat does that remind you of” “the dude spying in the castle just now” when I rhetorically said “what shadowpeach does that remind you of” and you debunked it 😭 but since we’re talking about this now

Wiki calls em “an interconnected, self-perpetuating cycle. Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary and at the same time opposing forces that interact to form a dynamic system. Yin and yang transform each other: like an undertow in the ocean, every advance is complemented by a retreat, and every rise transforms into a fall.” Idk about you but with Mac getting chaos powers, I figured the show might take inspo from this, what with the cycles and all too. There might be an opposite “order” power in contrast to Nines. If Pandora’s box is literal, MK is “hope” there’s a lot of other symbolism fandom likes the stereotypically portray into their ShadowPeach lol. But they have day/night too. Nobody has to think too hard to take inspo, and most shows don’t in my experience. Shout out to Ninjago and ATLA just mixing culture and language in a way that annoys people and placing it under one umbrella.

well i mean, lmk is already playing with the themes of order and chaos. except there Order was on the side of the antagonists while MK was Chaos (being the harbinger and all). we saw it with LBD and Azure and now with Nines

also, lmk’s order can be seen when it talks about Fate and Destiny and even the “story”, but in a way where they are shown as being too fixed and bureaucratic compared to the lessons being taught to MK and by MK which are “your fate (order) is your own and can only be determined by you.”

we had it with MK telling LBD “do you really think the universe cares about any of us?”

we had it when Macky told MK “if you tread the paths already carved for you, then you doom yourself into a self-fulfilling prophecy”

we have it even more explicitly in s5 from Wukong: “sometimes you need to carve your own path and fuck all the rest”

lmk is all about finding that balance between the chaos of your mind and the forced order of the world around you. our own daily ying and yang that we must balance, and that is why i don't place those themes with shadowpeach just because it takes away from the crux of the show where it’s original focus is on MK and how he changes and grow throughout the seasons

tbh i think their day/night themes with ying/yang are significantly minor. the major focus with them is the themes of betrayal and reconciliation and past haunts

[lazycranberrydoodles]

the people in the tags understand me. starembers art is super pretty but also weird at times.

[wonder-worker]

"Among their complaints [in 1460, the Yorkists] specifically blamed the earls of Wiltshire and Shrewsbury and Viscount Beaumont for ‘stirring’ the king [Henry VI] to hold a parliament at Coventry that would attaint them and for keeping them from the king’s presence and likely mercy, asserting that this was done against [the king's] will. To this they added the charge that these evil counselors were also tyrannizing other true men* without the king’s knowledge. Such claims of malfeasance obliquely raised the question of Henry’s fitness as a king, for how could he be deemed competent if such things happened without his knowledge and against his wishes? They also tied in rumors circulating somewhat earlier in the southern counties and likely to have originated in Calais that Henry was really ‘good and gracious Lord to the [Yorkists] since, it was alleged, he had not known of or assented to their attainders. On 11 June the king was compelled to issue a proclamation stating that they were indeed traitors and that assertions to the contrary were to be ignored." - Helen Maurer, "Margaret of Anjou: "Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England"

Three things that we can surmise from this:

We know where the "Henry was an innocent helpless king being controlled and manipulated by his Evil™ advisors" rhetoric came from**.

The Yorkists were deliberately trying to downplay Henry VI's actual role and involvement in politics and the Wars of the Roses. They cast him as a "statue of a king", blamed all royal policies and decisions on others*** (claiming that Henry wasn't even aware of them), and framed themselves as righteous and misunderstood counselors who remained loyal to the crown. We should keep this in mind when we look at chronicles' comments of Henry's alleged passivity and the so-called "role reversal" between him and Queen Margaret.

Henry VI's actual agency and involvement is nevertheless proven by his own actions. We know what he thought of the Yorkists, and we know he took the effort to publicly counter their claims through a proclamation of his own. That speaks louder than the politically motivated narrative of his enemies, don't you think?

*There was some truth to these criticisms. For example, Wiltshire (ie: one of the men named in the pamphlet) was reportedly involved in a horrible situation in June which included hangings and imprisonments for tax resistance in Newbury. The best propagandists always contain a degree of truth, etc. **I've seen some theories on why Margaret of Anjou wasn't mentioned in these pamphlets alongside the others even though she was clearly being vilified during that time as well, and honestly, I think those speculations are mostly unnecessary. Margaret was absent because it was regarded as very unseemly to target queens in such an officially public manner. We see a similar situation a decade later: Elizabeth Woodville was vilified and her whole family - popularly and administratively known as "the queen's kin" - was disparaged in Warwick and Clarence's pamphlets. This would have inevitably associated her with their official complaints far more than Margaret had been, but she was also not directly mentioned. It was simply not considered appropriate. ***This narrative was begun by the Duke of York & Warwick and was - demonstrably - already widespread by the end of 1460. When Edward IV came to power, there seems to have been a slight shift in how he spoke of Henry (he referred to Henry as their "great enemy and adversary"; his envoys were clearly willing to acknowledge Henry's role in Lancastrian resistance to Yorkist rule; etc), but he nevertheless continued the former narrative for the most part. I think this was because 1) it was already well-established and widespread by his father, and 2) downplaying Henry's authority would have served to emphasize Edward's own kingship, which was probably advantageous for a usurper whose deposed rival was still alive and out of reach. In some sense, the Lancastrians did the same thing with their own propaganda across the 1460s, which was clearly not as effective in terms of garnering support and is too long to get into right now, but was still very relevant when it came to emphasizing their own right to the throne while disparaging the Yorkists' claim.

[ohmeadows]

very tired.

[fischiee]

i was watching the end of s9 for reasons and honestly it really gets me how tex is literally BEGGING church not to say goodbye!!

i mean!!!

like this is not her sounding composed or put together or flippant like we get a lot from her, she is genuinely distressed at the idea that church might be trying to sever their ties in that way

she’s panicked at the idea that they’re about to die and her last moments with him will be him disrespecting everything that he made her to be that she is

she may have loved him but she knew deep down that she couldn’t trust him, not after he was the one to bring her back and force her to live her cursed half life

[infinitelystrangemachinex]

Come on, you know you want to, give us the character bingo for Viktor.

don't mind if i doooo

[sammygender]

there’s also the obvious dimension that well. dean’s whole life is built around this tiny family unit. him and john and sammy. even if it ruins him, even if it’s toxic and abusive and codependent, it’s who he is. it’s who all of them are!! then sammy leaves. sam leaving is selfish! not in a bad way, in a way where it’s an intensely brave act of self-preservation that must’ve required so much strength to pull off! but that idea of selfish as at all ever being good….... well. dean cant even comprehend that. not when he’s so thoroughly invested in this decades-long act of Dean Winchester, big brother and soldier son and surrogate wife. not when he feels like nothing and has no real sense of self at all. how dare sam be selfish etc etc is basically asking How dare sam even have/try to take ownership over his own identity and his life since when was that a thing that happened…….