#latest technologies in IT Sector

[worldconstructiontoday]

The AHR Expo in Orlando showcased innovations in HVAC&R technology. Learn about the latest trends in construction industry, construction and building materials. AHR Expo Orlando, construction industry, construction and building materials, designing buildings, HVAC&R innovations

[worldpharmatoday]

https://www.worldpharmatoday.com/press-releases/syntegon-reports-accelerated-growth-in-2024-results/

Syntegon shows strong growth in 2024 with high order intake and focus on Pharma & Biotech—covered in Pharmaceutical Industry news and pharmaceutical manufacturing. For info visit us https://www.worldpharmatoday.com/ , For more info: sunny@worldpharmatoday.com

[chemistrycongressblog]

chemical engineering

[dcxdpdabbles]

Danny wakes up in a cage in the Batcave as a human and thinks to himself “well that’s not a good sign.”

Big bad bat encountered him in the caves near the Batcave by finding him half dunked in the Lazarus pits under Gotham during a routine check. He put the boy in a cage as a precaution, but was otherwise planning on investigating then returning him to his rightful place.

Danny does not know that.

He proceeds to search his pockets (phase his hand into his body disguised as reaching into his pockets) and pulls out a tool kit, systematically disassembles, exits, then reassembles the cage.

And walks out.

Now the bats are hunting the streets for this engineering escape artist while Danny is just hanging out at a newsstand reading up on the universe Clockwork had sent him to check out.

"Woah! What happened here?" Duke gasps from the staircase. He is wearing his school uniform, but upon checking his backpack, he realizes his chemistry textbook is missing, likely somewhere in the Batcave after his latest monitor duty.

He had been multitasking by shooting out questions to the rest of the bats as they patrolled. Due to an injured wrist, Duke had been benched from his regular day shift (Jason offered to cover for him), and watching screens had been the only way Bruce had been willing to let him participate.

That quickly became boring, however, since Oracle was much faster than he was, and Duke had a tough time focusing on screens. He's never been one to enjoy too much screen time - he didn't have the attention span for it.

This meant that Duke had not been in the cave for the past three nights, after he struck a deal with Bruce to let him catch up on some much-needed rest instead, provided he could continue his civilian work during the day.

Imagine his surprise to find the Batcave in disarray, with almost everything taken apart, piece by piece, including the Batcomputer and the dinosaur. Bruce, Damian, Dick, Jason, Tim, and Cass were currently attempting to gather the pieces and reassemble everything, which seemed hard given all the little pieces that had shattered about.

"Some kid with a screwdriver," Jason grunted, holding up various nails towards the light. In front of the anti-hero were five distinct piles of nails and bolts, each separated by type and size, which he carefully sorted from a large bucket.

"What?"

Tim looked up from a mountain of wires, some of which were dropped over his shoulders, around his head, and a few were entangled with his leg, as he tried to untangle everything. He looked as crazed as he did the year he decided he was going to put up all the Christmas lights by himself, only to realize how large Wayne Manor really was. "Two nights ago, we found a civilian unconscious in cave sector T-Y13. He was practically radioactive with Lazarus pits water, so Bruce had the bright idea to put him in a cage as a precaution. The civillain woke up while Bruce was away so he couldn't explain that he was not kidnapped, realized he was in a cage, and deassimbled it with a tool set he pulled from his ass-"

"Tim. Laugauge" Dick scolds, leanign over metal tubes to cover Damian's ears. The twelve-year-old huffs, but doesn't shake off Dick's hands as he stares at a different buckets of lightbults, sorting them like Jason was doing to the nails.

It was a little darker than what Duke was used to.

"-And then, he decided to reassemble the cage once he was out." Tim continued as if he weren't interrupted, nodding his head to the only part of the cave that looked normal. The contamination unit seemed to shine in the untouched spotlights. "Then the civilian had the bright idea to take apart everything in the cave. He systematically disassembled everything and mixed up the pieces. The only things he left alone were the railings!"

"It's pretty impressive," Bruce praises. He was checking over technology boards with a critical eye. A headlight strapped to his forehead shines brightly on the pieces as he smiles. "I wonder where he is now."

"If he has any brains, he's probably applying for a position with a pit crew in NASCAR," Cass laughs, picking up different boards of metal. "He took the whole place apart in less than twenty minutes."

"He even got the Batpens" Dick sighs. "Why was he so passive-aggressive about pulling out the pen's springs?"

"If I woke up in a cage, after unfair imprisonment, I would also cause my captors as much grief as possible," Damain comments casually. "We are lucky he decided to leave nothing harmful behind."

"He just took everything else!" Steph's voice calls out from a dark patch of the cave. Duke knows it's in the direction of the showers and the changing room. "Does anyone see any shower heads over there? The kid took them off every shower!

"I have one!" Cass calls back, holding up an item in her hand. "Are any pipes missing? There are five long metal cylinders that I can't figure out what they are for."

"No, he left the pipes along, but I think he took the mirrors and the door."

"Which door?" Bruce yells back. There is a moment of silence before Steph replies.

"All of them! "

"Of course. That's what these ones are for." Jason says in an Ah-ha voice, holding up a few black bolts. "They're the ones from the shower heads!"

Duke stares, then sighs. He lets his backpack slide off his shoulders, landing on the stairs with a thump. Looks like he's calling in sick to school again.

Rolling up his sleeves, he moves over to Cass and helps her lift the long cylinders she had mentioned. "Do we know anything about this civilian?"

"Before he took the Batcomputer apart, we were able to get that he wasn't in any of the local government records. He isn't from Gotham or this state." Bruce says while carefully placing pieces back on a large computer board with a pair of tweezers. "My guess, he's not going to be in any system, either."

"Why?"

Bruce looks up, his eyes shining. "His DNA matched eighty-five percent with Themyscira's genetic make-up. No proof of cloning either. We may just have a genius male Themysciran on our hands."

Duke didn't like how excited Bruce sounded when he made that statement. He opens his mouth to snap, "You can't adopt him, Bruce!"

It's validating that his voice wasn't the only one that said it, but that it echoed by literally everyone else in the cave. Bruce purses his lips but doesn't agree or disagree with the accusation as he turns back to his computer board.

Duke hears him mutter under his breath, but he's too far away to figure out what he said.

"How long do you think this will take us to put back together?" He asks Cass as they compare metal pieces- he's holding a triangle-looking thing that he can't figure out where it came from.

She kicks aside a circular metal slate, raising a brow at him, then nodding her head toward the left side of the cave. Duke turns to look in the direction of the third Robin, who was wiggling around.

"What are you!?" Tim screams at a blue wire, shaking it like he was strangling someone's neck. Somehow, in the time Duke looked away from him, Tim had his right arm tied to his left knee, with a red wire thread running through his shirt, and his right leg was no longer visible because the rest of the wire pile had consumed it.

"Oh, so it's going to be a few hours," Duke sighs as Cass nods sadly.

"Does anyone have any eyes on the light switches?" Dick yells out. "Damian and I almost have all the pieces to turn the lights back on."

"Oh gods -He took the lockers!" Steph screams in angst. "I had a snack stash in there!"

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States

The vast majority of America's debt collection targets $500-2,000 credit card debts. It is a filthy business, operated by lawless firms who hire unskilled workers drawn from the same economic background as their targets, who routinely and grotesquely flout the law, but only when it comes to the people with the least ability to pay.

America has fairly robust laws to protect debtors from sleazy debt-collection practices, notably the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), which has been on the books since 1978. The FDCPA puts strict limits on the conduct of debt collectors, and offers real remedies to debtors when they are abused.

But for FDPCA provisions to be honored, they must be understood. The people who collect these debts are almost entirely untrained. The people they collected the debts from are likewise in the dark. The only specialized expertise debt-collection firms concern themselves with are a series of gotcha tricks and semi-automated legal shenanigans that let them take money they don't deserve from people who can't afford to pay it.

There's no better person to explain this dynamic than Patrick McKenzie, a finance and technology expert whose Bits About Money newsletter is absolutely essential reading. No one breaks down the internal operations of the finance sector like McKenzie. His latest edition, "Credit card debt collection," is a fantastic read:

https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/the-waste-stream-of-consumer-finance/

McKenzie describes how a debt collector who mistook him for a different PJ McKenzie and tried to shake him down for a couple hundred bucks, and how this launched him into a life as a volunteer advocate for debtors who were less equipped to defend themselves from collectors than he was.

McKenzie's conclusion is that "paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States." If you stand on your rights (which requires that you know your rights), then you will quickly discover that debt collectors don't have – and can't get – the documentation needed to collect on whatever debts they think you owe (even if you really owe them).

The credit card companies are fully aware of this, and bank (literally) on the fact that "the vast majority of consumers, including those with the socioeconomic wherewithal to walk away from their debts, feel themselves morally bound and pay as agreed."

If you find yourself on the business end of a debt collector's harassment campaign, you can generally make it end simply by "carefully sending a series of letters invoking [your] rights under the FDCPA." The debt collector who receives these letters will have bought your debt at five cents on the dollar, and will simply write it off.

By contrast, the mere act of paying anything marks you out as substantially more likely to pay than nearly everyone else on their hit-list. Paying anything doesn't trigger forbearance, it invites a flood of harassing calls and letters, because you've demonstrated that you can be coerced into paying.

But while learning FDCPA rules isn't overly difficult, it's also beyond the wherewithal of the most distressed debtors (and people falsely accused of being debtors). McKenzie recounts that many of the people he helped were living under chaotic circumstances that put seemingly simple things "like writing letters and counting to 30 days" beyond their needs.

This means that the people best able to defend themselves against illegal shakedowns are less likely to be targeted. Instead, debt collectors husband their resources so they can use them "to do abusive and frequently illegal shakedowns of the people the legislation was meant to benefit."

Here's how this debt market works. If you become delinquent in meeting your credit card payments ("delinquent" has a flexible meaning that varies with each issuer), then your debt will be sold to a collector. It is packaged in part of a large spreadsheet – a CSV file – and likely sold to one of 10 large firms that control 75% of the industry.

The "mom and pops" who have the other quarter of the industry might also get your debt, but it's more likely that they'll buy it as a kind of tailings from one of the big guys, who package up the debts they couldn't collect on and sell them at even deeper discounts.

The people who make the calls are often barely better off than the people they're calling. They're minimally trained and required to work at a breakneck pace. Employee turnover is 75-100% annually: imagine the worst call center job in the world, and then make it worse, and make "success" into a moral injury, and you've got the debt-collector rank-and-file.

To improve the yield on this awful process, debt collection companies start by purging these spreadsheets of likely duds: dead people, people with very low credit-scores, and people who appear on a list of debtors who know their rights and are likely to stand on them (that's right, merely insisting on your rights can ensure that the entire debt-collection industry leaves you alone, forever).

The FDPCA gives you rights: for example, you have the right to verify the debt and see the contract you signed when you took it on. The debt collector who calls you almost certainly does not have that contract and can't get it. Your original lender might, but they stopped caring about your debt the minute they sold it to a debt-collector. Their own IT systems are baling-wire-and-spit Rube Goldberg machines that glue together the wheezing computers of all the companies they've bought over the last 25 years. Retrieving your paperwork is a nontrivial task, and the lender doesn't have any reason to perform it.

Debt collectors are bottom feeders. They are buying delinquent debts at 5 cents on the dollar and hoping to recover 8 percent of them; at 7 percent, they're losing money. They aren't "large, nationally scaled, hypercompetent operators" – they're shoestring operations that can only be viable if they hire unskilled workers and fail to train them.

They are subject to automatic damages for illegal behavior, but they still break the law all the time. As McKenzie writes, a debt collector will "commit three federal torts in a few minutes of talking to a debtor then follow up with a confirmation of the same in writing." A statement like "if you don’t pay me I will sue you and then Immigration will take notice of that and yank your green card" makes the requisite three violations: a false threat of legal action, a false statement of affiliation with a federal agency, and "a false alleged consequence for debt nonpayment not provided for in law."

If you know this, you can likely end the process right there. If you don't, buckle in. The one area that debt collectors invest heavily in is the automation that allows them to engage in high-intensity harassment. They use "predictive dialers" to make multiple calls at once, only connecting the collector to the calls that pick up. They will call you repeatedly. They'll call your family, something they're legally prohibited from doing except to get your contact info, but they'll do it anyway, betting that you'll scrape up $250 to keep them from harassing your mother.

These dialing systems are far better organized than any of the company's record keeping about what you owe. A company may sell your debt on and fail to keep track of it, with the effect that multiple collectors will call you about the same debt, and even paying off one of them will not stop the other.

Talking to these people is a bad idea, because the one area where collectors get sophisticated training is in emptying your bank account. If you consent to a "payment plan," they will use your account and routing info to start whacking your bank account, and your bank will let them do it, because the one part of your conversation they reliably record is this payment plan rigamarole. Sending a check won't help – they'll use the account info on the front of your check to undertake "demand debits" from your account, and backstop it with that recorded call.

Any agreement on your part to get on a payment plan transforms the old, low-value debt you incurred with your credit card into a brand new, high value debt that you owe to the bill collector. There's a good chance they'll sell this debt to another collector and take the lump sum – and then the new collector will commence a fresh round of harassment.

McKenzie says you should never talk to a debt collector. Make them put everything in writing. They are almost certain to lie to you and violate your rights, and a written record will help you prove it later. What's more, debt collection agencies just don't have the capacity or competence to engage in written correspondence. Tell them to put it in writing and there's a good chance they'll just give up and move on, hunting softer targets.

One other thing debt collectors due is robo-sue their targets, bulk-filing boilerplate suits against debtors, real and imaginary. If you don't show up for court (which is what usually happens), they'll get a default judgment, and with it, the legal right to raid your bank account and your paycheck. That, in turn, is an asset that, once again, the debt collector can sell to an even scummier bottom-feeder, pocketing a lump sum.

McKenzie doesn't know what will fix this. But Michael Hudson, a renowned scholar of the debt practices of antiquity, has some ideas. Hudson has written eloquently and persuasively about the longstanding practice of jubilee, in which all debts were periodically wiped clean (say, whenever a new king took the throne, or once per generation):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/24/grandparents-optional-party/#jubilee

Hudson's core maxim is that "debt's that can't be paid won't be paid." The productive economy will have need for credit to secure the inputs to their processes. Farmers need to borrow every year for labor, seed and fertilizer. If all goes according to plan, the producer pays off the lender after the production is done and the goods are sold.

But even the most competent producer will eventually find themselves unable to pay. The best-prepared farmer can't save every harvest from blight, hailstorms or fire. When the producer can't pay the creditor, they go a little deeper into debt. That debt accumulates, getting worse with interest and with each bad beat.

Run this process long enough and the entire productive economy will be captive to lenders, who will be able to direct production for follies and fripperies. Farmers stop producing the food the people need so they can devote their land to ornamental flowers for creditors' tables. Left to themselves, credit markets produce hereditary castes of lenders and debtors, with lenders exercising ever-more power over debtors.

This is socially destabilizing; you can feel it in McKenzie's eloquent, barely controlled rage at the hopeless structural knot that produces the abusive and predatory debt industry. Hudson's claim is that the rulers of antiquity knew this – and that we forgot it. Jubilee was key to producing long term political stability. Take away Jubilee and civilizations collapse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/08/jubilant/#construire-des-passerelles

Debts that can't be paid won't be paid. Debt collectors know this. It's irrefutable. The point of debt markets isn't to ensure that debts are discharged – it's to ensure that every penny the hereditary debtor class has is transferred to the creditor class, at the hands of their fellow debtors.

In her 2021 Paris Review article "America's Dead Souls," Molly McGhee gives a haunting, wrenching account of the debts her parents incurred and the harassment they endured:

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/05/17/americas-dead-souls/

After I published on it, many readers wrote in disbelief, insisting that the debt collection practices McGhee described were illegal:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/19/zombie-debt/#damnation

And they are illegal. But debt collection is a trade founded on lawlessness, and its core competence is to identify and target people who can't invoke the law in their own defense.

Going to Defcon this weekend? I’m giving a keynote, “An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification and Throw it Into Reverse,” today (Aug 12) at 12:30pm, followed by a book signing at the No Starch Press booth at 2:30pm!

https://info.defcon.org/event/?id=50826

I’m kickstarting the audiobook for “The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation,” a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and bring back the old, good internet. It’s a DRM-free book, which means Audible won’t carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act

[aaron04jpg]

MotoGP guide

TEAMS AND RIDERS

In MotoGP, there are “factory teams” and “satellite teams”

Both factory teams and satellite teams compete on the same track 

Each manufacturer is allowed 1 team per class

There is no limit to how many satellite teams can get bikes from a manufacturer (i.e.  there are 4 Ducati teams)

A team consists of 2 drivers

For the 2025 season, there are 11 teams and 22 drivers

Factory Teams

Factory teams are directly supported by motorcycle manufacturers

Factory teams are considered top-tier teams with the hierarchy; they often have priority access to the latest upgrades and are typically composed of highly skilled riders

The manufacturers design and produce their motorcycles and have their dedicated championship

Factory teams get significant financial and technical support from their manufacturer (access to the latest technology, support for bike development)

Factory teams are a direct representation of the manufacturers on track. the factory team’s success reflects on the manufacturer’s brand and image

Satellite Teams

Satellite teams are independent entities and may not be directly part of a manufacturer. 

They don’t have the same level of support from a motorcycle manufacturer as factory teams.

Satellite teams usually use the “same” motorcycles as the factory teams but they don’t typically have the latest upgrades or the same level of technical support

These teams typically purchase or lease the previous year’s bike from the manufacturers.

Satellite teams rely on their own sponsorships and funding (although they do receive support from the manufacturer it is not to the extent the factory teams do)

Satellite teams can switch manufacturers from year to year (when their contracts expire with manufacturers)

WEEKEND FORMAT

Each weekend from Friday to Sunday consists of free practice 1, 2, & 3, qualifying 1 & 2, a sprint race, a warm-up session, and a main race.

Friday: Free Practice Sessions

Fridays consist of only an fp1 and fp2

Fp1 (45 minutes)allows the drivers to familiarize themselves with the track and start setups. 

Fp2 (45 minutes) is usually faster paced as teams gather final data and tune bike setups

Saturday: Practice, Qualifying & Sprint Race

Fp3 (30 minutes) is a shorter session but important, fp3 directly influences qualifying

The combined lap times of fp1, fp2, & fp3 decide the top 10 riders who skip Q1 and go straight into Q2

Qualifying Q1 (15 minutes) the riders who didn’t place in the top 10 from combined fp1-fp3 times compete to go into Q2 (only 2 riders advance)

Qualifying Q2 (15 minutes) The top 10 from combined fp1-fp3 times plus the top 2 from Q1 compete for pole and decide the top 12 grid positions 

This sets the grid for the sprint and the main race

Sprint Race (15-20 minutes) were introduced in 2023 

Covers half the main race distance 

Awards points to the top 9 

Sprint races are every weekend 

Sunday: Warm-up & Main Race

Warm-ups (10 minutes) are just brief sessions in the morning before the race. 

Checks the bikes and finalize the setup

Main Race (40-45 minutes) typically covers 20-25 laps 

Points are awarded to the top 15 finishers 

These points count toward the rider, team, and constructor championship

PITSTOPS

Under normal circumstances, there are no pitstops in races due to how short the race is 

Riders and teams chose tires (soft, medium, or hard) before the race based on strategy and durability

Exceptions

Pit-stops can happen in flag-to-flag races, which happen during different weather conditions (i.e. rain)

Riders enter the pits to switch bikes, not tires

The teams prepare a second bike with the correct tires (wets for rain, slicks for dry)

An average pit stop is 5-10 seconds

RACE NEUTRALIZATIONS

Compared to f1, there are no safety cars, as the motorcycles are faster to maneuver than the cars.

Yellow Flags 

A yellow flag is shown when there is a minor incident (a crash, debris, or a stopped bike) 

Riders must slow down in the affected sector

Overtaking is not allowed in the flagged zone

Once the flag is withdrawn racing resumes as normal

Red Flag

A red flag is shown for more serious incidents (a dangerous crash, severe weather conditions, unsafe track conditions that can’t be cleared quickly)

All riders must return to the pitlane

Depending on how much of the race has been completed the race may be restarted from the beginning, resumed with the remaining laps, or declared finished

CHAMPIONSHIPS

Motogp has 3 championships: the rider championship, the team championship, and the constructors championship

Rider Championship

The rider with the most points at the end of the season becomes the World champion

When talking about rider championships, moto2 & moto3 are both included (i.e. Marc Marquez has 8 Grand Prix world championships, 6 MotoGP, 1 moto2 & 1 moto3)

Team Championship

The team with the highest total points at the end of season wins

Points are earned from the sum of the points earned by the Team 2 riders 

This reflects the performance of the riders, and the teams’s efforts, including the engineers and mechanics 

Constructor Championship

The constructor with the most points at the end of the season wins

Only the highest-placed rider from each constructor scores points for the manufacturer 

Points go with the rider’s finishing position (i.e. if Pecco in a Ducati finishes 1st, ducati gets 25 points)

POINTS

Riders earn points in sprint races and main races

There is no bonus point for the fastest lap

Sprint Race Point Finishers

12

9

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

Main Race Point Finishers

25

20

16

13

11

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

PENALTIES

FIM stands for Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (International Motocycling Federation)

FIM governs premier motorcycle racing series (Motogp, Moto2, Moto3) 

Regulations are broken into technical and behavioral/riding 

Warnings & small penalties

Warnings from the stewards either made privately or public 

Warnings can be given for small things such as track limits

Cash penalties or fines can also be issued to riders and teams

In-Race penalties

Change of position penalties are given during a race

The rider must slow down to either give back a position or let other riders pass

A long lap penalty means the rider takes a longer route through a specific part of the track during the race

Takes about 1-2 seconds off the rider’s time

Time penalty adds up to 2 minutes to the rider’s race time

Given if a rider gains an unfair advantage 

Ride-through penalty rider must enter the pit lane riding the speed limit

costs the rider 20-30 seconds

Stop-and-Go Penalty rider must stop in the pit box for 3-10 seconds before rejoining the race

Post-Race Penalties 

Position Drop at the end of the race (5th to 7th)

Grid penalty for the following race the rider is dropped several places on the starting grid next race

Riders can lose championship points as punishment

Riders can also get disqualified (usually following a break in the technical rules)

Penalty points

Riders collect penalty points

If they reach 4 penalty points they get a grid group

If they reach 10 penalty points they are banned from the next race

How Penalties Occur

Jump starts

Exceeding track limits 

Ignoring yellow flags

Causing a collision 

Exceeding fuel or tire limits

Technical Violations

MEET THE GRID

Now that we understand how the sport works and what to expect during a typical weekend let’s learn who to expect

Which teams are constructors, factory, and satellite teams

Notable: you will also hear the name Valentino Rossi (9x world champion) he is considered one of the greatest of all time

He not only owns the VR46 team but also has a driver academy which many of the Italian drivers go through

He is also famous for his rivalry with Marc Marquez (Rosquez)

Factory Teams

Ducati Lenovo Team (Ducati)

63 Fracesco “Pecco” Bagnaia 

93 Marc Marquez

Red Bull KTM Factory Racing (KTM)

37 Pedro Acosta 

33 Brad Binder 

Aprilia Racing (Aprilia)

89 (1) Jorge Martin 

72 Marco “Bez” Bezzecchi 

Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP (Yamaha)

20 Fabio Quartararo 

42 Alex Rins

Honda HRC (Honda)

10 Luca Marini 

36 Joan Mir

Satellite Teams

Redbull KTM Tech3 (KTM)

12 Maverick Viñales

23 Enea Bastianini 

Gresini Racing MotoGP (Ducati)

73 Alex Marquez

54 Fermin Aldeguer rookie

Pertamina Enduro VR46 (Ducati)

49 Fabio Di Giannantonio

21 Franco Morbidelli 

Prima Pramac Yamaha (Yamaha)

88 Miguel Oliveria 

43 Jack Miller

LCR Honda (Honda)

5 Johann Zarco

35 Somkiat Chantra rookie

Trackhouse (Aprilia)

25 Raul Fernandez

79 Ai Ogura rookie

2025 SCHEDULE 

The schedule stretches across 22 rounds, making it the biggest season in MotoGP history

Pre-Season Testing

Sepang Shakedown Test: January 31-February 2, 2025 (this test is for rookies and race riders from manufacturers in concession Rank D which is currently Yamaha and Honda)

Sepang MotoGP Test: February 5-7, 2025

Buriram MotoGP Test: February 12-13, 2025 

Race Calendar 

Thailand, Buriram: February 28-March 2

Argentina, Termas de Rio Hondo: March 14-16

Americas, COTA: March 28-30

Qatar, Lusail: April 11-13

Spain, Jerez: April 25-27

France, Le Mans: May 9-11

England, Silverstone May 23-25

Aragon, MotorLand: June 6-8

Italy, Mugello: June 20-22

Netherlands, Assen: June 27-29

Germany, Sachsenring: July 11-13

Czech Republic, Brno: July 18-20

Austria, Red Bull Ring: August 15-17

Hungary, Balaton Park: August 22-24

Catalunya, Barcelona: September 5-7

San Marino, Misano: September 12-14

Japan, Motegi: September 26-28

Indonesia, Mandalika: October 3-5

Australia, Phillip Island: October 17-19

Portugal, Portimao: November 7-9

Valencia, Ricardo Tormo: November 14-16

GET CONNECTED

The easiest way to stay up to date is by following MotoGP on Instagram (and their broadcast channels) and Twitter

They also have a YouTube where a lot of full races get posted

There is an official app (MotoGP) and website (www.motogp.com)

Similar to f1, they have a VideoPass subscription to watch the races, they have a current season, archived seasons, documentaries, collections, and a spoiler-free experience

To get a VideoPass you have the option of VideoPass+TimingPass, Yearly, Monthly, and a free trial 

A full season pass is 148.99€

Currently, the preseason full pass is 24.99€

The free trials work for 1 grand prix race weekend for full access

After testing, Monthly subscription costs will come out (I will update when they do)

Please feel free to ask questions, correct any mistakes I made, or add any information I missed :)

[probablyasocialecologist]

This is it. Generative AI, as a commercial tech phenomenon, has reached its apex. The hype is evaporating. The tech is too unreliable, too often. The vibes are terrible. The air is escaping from the bubble. To me, the question is more about whether the air will rush out all at once, sending the tech sector careening downward like a balloon that someone blew up, failed to tie off properly, and let go—or more slowly, shrinking down to size in gradual sputters, while emitting embarrassing fart sounds, like a balloon being deliberately pinched around the opening by a smirking teenager. But come on. The jig is up. The technology that was at this time last year being somberly touted as so powerful that it posed an existential threat to humanity is now worrying investors because it is apparently incapable of generating passable marketing emails reliably enough. We’ve had at least a year of companies shelling out for business-grade generative AI, and the results—painted as shinily as possible from a banking and investment sector that would love nothing more than a new technology that can automate office work and creative labor—are one big “meh.” As a Bloomberg story put it last week, “Big Tech Fails to Convince Wall Street That AI Is Paying Off.” From the piece: Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc. had one job heading into this earnings season: show that the billions of dollars they’ve each sunk into the infrastructure propelling the artificial intelligence boom is translating into real sales. In the eyes of Wall Street, they disappointed. Shares in Google owner Alphabet have fallen 7.4% since it reported last week. Microsoft’s stock price has declined in the three days since the company’s own results. Shares of Amazon — the latest to drop its earnings on Thursday — plunged by the most since October 2022 on Friday. Silicon Valley hailed 2024 as the year that companies would begin to deploy generative AI, the type of technology that can create text, images and videos from simple prompts. This mass adoption is meant to finally bring about meaningful profits from the likes of Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot. The fact that those returns have yet to meaningfully materialize is stoking broader concerns about how worthwhile AI will really prove to be. Meanwhile, Nvidia, the AI chipmaker that soared to an absurd $3 trillion valuation, is losing that value with every passing day—26% over the last month or so, and some analysts believe that’s just the beginning. These declines are the result of less-than-stellar early results from corporations who’ve embraced enterprise-tier generative AI, the distinct lack of killer commercial products 18 months into the AI boom, and scathing financial analyses from Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital, and Elliot Management, each of whom concluded that there was “too much spend, too little benefit” from generative AI, in the words of Goldman, and that it was “overhyped” and a “bubble” per Elliot. As CNN put it in its report on growing fears of an AI bubble, Some investors had even anticipated that this would be the quarter that tech giants would start to signal that they were backing off their AI infrastructure investments since “AI is not delivering the returns that they were expecting,” D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria told CNN. The opposite happened — Google, Microsoft and Meta all signaled that they plan to spend even more as they lay the groundwork for what they hope is an AI future. This can, perhaps, explain some of the investor revolt. The tech giants have responded to mounting concerns by doubling, even tripling down, and planning on spending tens of billions of dollars on researching, developing, and deploying generative AI for the foreseeable future. All this as high profile clients are canceling their contracts. As surveys show that overwhelming majorities of workers say generative AI makes them less productive. As MIT economist and automation scholar Daron Acemoglu warns, “Don’t believe the AI hype.”

6 August 2024

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from the Substack Distilled:

In the last few months, the Biden administration has quietly passed multiple federal policies that will transform the United States economy and wipe out billions of tons of future greenhouse gas emissions. 

The new policies have received little attention outside of wonky climate circles. And that is a problem.

Earlier this year, I wrote that Biden has done more to mitigate climate change than any President before him. For decades, environmentalists tried and failed to convince lawmakers to pass even the most marginal climate policies. It wasn’t until Biden took office that the logjam broke and the climate policies flowed. And yet few American voters are hearing this story in an election year of huge consequence.

It’s been two and a half months since I wrote that article. In that short time, the Biden administration has passed a handful of climate policies that will collectively cut more than 10 billion tons of planet-warming pollution over the next three decades, more than the annual emissions of India, Russia, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Saudi Arabia, and the entire continent of Europe—combined.

One climate policy that flew under the radar recently was the administration's latest energy efficiency rule, unveiled at the beginning of May. The new rules will reduce the amount of energy that water heaters use by encouraging manufacturers to sell models with more efficient heat pump technology. The new regulation is expected to save more energy than any federal regulation in history. 

Most people give little thought to how the water in their homes is heated, but water heaters are the second-largest consumer of energy in the average American home and one of the largest sources of climate pollution in the country. 

A few days before the administration announced its water heater efficiency rules, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced another sweeping policy.

According to the new rules, existing coal power plants will need to either shut down or install carbon capture technology capable of removing 90% of their carbon pollution. The policy will also require any new natural gas power plants that provide baseload power—the ones that run throughout the day and night, as opposed to the peaker plants that only run for a small fraction of hours in the year—to install carbon capture technology. 

The new power sector rules are effectively a death blow to coal power in America, which has slowly faded over the last two decades but still emits more carbon emissions than almost every country in the world. 

The water heater rules and power plant regulations will help the country meet its goal of cutting emissions by 50% by 2030. But impactful as they will be, they weren’t the most important climate policy that the Biden administration passed in the last two months. 

That honor goes to the EPA’s tailpipe rules, which are set to transform the auto industry over the next decade.

Today the transportation sector is the largest source of climate pollution in the United States. Within the sector, passenger cars and trucks are the biggest contributors to emissions. While electric vehicle adoption has grown in recent years, America lags behind many other countries in decarbonizing its vehicle stock. 

The EPA’s new rules will force automakers to reduce the amount of pollution and carbon emissions that come from their vehicles. The federal policy doesn’t specifically mandate that automakers produce EVs or stop selling gas-powered cars but instead regulates the average carbon emissions per mile of a manufacturer's entire fleet over the next decade. That means automakers can still sell gas-guzzling, carbon-spewing trucks in 2035. They’ll just need to sell a lot more EVs or plug-in hybrids to bring their average fleet emissions down if they do.

Like the power plant rules, the EPA’s new auto regulations are designed to avoid being thrown out by a conservative and hostile Supreme Court. 

[worldconstructiontoday]

The AHR Expo in Orlando showcased innovations in HVAC&R technology. Learn about the latest trends in construction industry, construction and building materials. AHR Expo Orlando, construction industry, construction and building materials, designing buildings, HVAC&R innovations

[chemistrycongressblog]

chemical engineering

[groupfazza]

سمو الشيخ حمدان بن محمد بن راشد آل مكتوم، ولي عهد دبي نائب رئيس مجلس الوزراء وزير الدفاع🔻

‏افتتحنا اليوم معرض ومؤتمر الدفاع الدولي (آيدكس) في مركز أدنيك أبوظبي، بمشاركة أكثر من 1500 عارض من حول العالم، وبحضور كبار القادة العسكريين وصنَّاع القرار في قطاع الدفاع والأمن ... برؤية وتوجيهات صاحب السمو الشيخ محمد بن زايد آل نهيان تحول “آيدكس” لأحد أهم الفعاليات المتخصصة على المستوى العالمي.

‏وعلى هامش الافتتاح، التقيت عدداً من ضيوف الحدث ووزراء الدفاع المشاركين، وتفقدت ما تعرضه الشركات الدولية من منتجات وتقنيات حديثة، كما زرت أجنحة شركاتنا الوطنية التي تعرض أحدث الابتكارات الإماراتية في مجالات الدفاع والأمن...

ما نراه اليوم من تطور في قدراتنا الدفاعية والصناعات العسكرية الوطنية يعزز منظومة الأمن والتنمية في دولة الإمارات، ويساهم في تحقيق رؤية قيادتنا الرشيدة بترك بصمات إيجابية في منظومة الاستقرار الإقليمي والدولي.

_____________

His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence of the UAE🔻

Today, I inaugurated the International Defence Exhibition (IDEX) at ADNEC Abu Dhabi, which has grown into one of the world’s leading defence industry events, thanks to the visionary leadership of President HH Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan. This year’s edition has brought together over 1,500 exhibitors, along with senior military leaders and key decision-makers in the global defence and security sector.

During the event, I engaged with several guests and defence ministers. I also explored cutting-edge products and technologies showcased by international companies and visited the pavilions of UAE firms, which presented the latest Emirati innovations in defence and security.

The remarkable advancements in our defence capabilities and military industry reinforce the UAE’s security and development. Our progress reflects our leadership’s vision of contributing to regional and global stability.

Monday, 17 February 2025 الأثنين

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Fintech bullies stole your kid’s lunch money

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Three companies control the market for school lunch payments. They take as much as 60 cents out of every dollar poor kids' parents put into the system to the tune of $100m/year. They're literally stealing poor kids' lunch money.

In its latest report, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau describes this scam in eye-watering, blood-boiling detail:

https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_costs-of-electronic-payment-in-k-12-schools-issue-spotlight_2024-07.pdf

The report samples 16.7m K-12 students in 25k schools. It finds that schools are racing to go cashless, with 87% contracting with payment processors to handle cafeteria transactions. Three processors dominate the sector: Myschoolbucks, Schoolcafé, and Linq Connect.

These aren't credit card processors (most students don't have credit cards). Instead, they let kids set up an account, like a prison commissary account, that their families load up with cash. And, as with prison commissary accounts, every time a loved one adds cash to the account, the processor takes a giant whack out of them with junk fees:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

If you're the parent of a kid who is eligible for a reduced-price lunch (that is, if you are poor), then about 60% of the money you put into your kid's account is gobbled up by these payment processors in service charges.

It's expensive to be poor, and this is no exception. If your kid doesn't qualify for the lunch subsidy, you're only paying about 8% in service charges (which is still triple the rate charged by credit card companies for payment processing).

The disparity is down to how these charges are calculated. The payment processors charge a flat fee for every top-up, and poor families can't afford to minimize these fees by making a single payment at the start of the year or semester. Instead, they pay small sums every payday, meaning they pay the fee twice per month (or even more frequently).

Not only is the sector concentrated into three companies, neither school districts nor parents have any meaningful way to shop around. For school districts, payment processing is usually bundled in with other school services, like student data management and HR data handling. For parents, there's no way to choose a different payment processor – you have to go with the one the school district has chosen.

This is all illegal. The USDA – which provides and regulates – the reduced cost lunch program, bans schools from charging fees to receive its meals. Under USDA regs, schools must allow kids to pay cash, or to top up their accounts with cash at the school, without any fees. The USDA has repeatedly (2014, 2017) published these rules.

Despite this, many schools refuse to handle cash, citing safety and security, and even when schools do accept cash or checks, they often fail to advertise this fact.

The USDA also requires schools to publish the fees charged by processors, but most of the districts in the study violate this requirement. Where schools do publish fees, we see a per-transaction charge of up to $3.25 for an ACH transfer that costs $0.26-0.50, or 4.58% for a debit/credit-card transaction that costs 1.5%. On top of this, many payment processors charge a one-time fee to enroll a student in the program and "convenience fees" to transfer funds between siblings' accounts. They also set maximum fees that make it hard to avoid paying multiple charges through the year.

These are classic junk fees. As Matt Stoller puts it: "'Convenience fees' that aren't convenient and 'service fees' without any service." Another way in which these fit the definition of junk fees: they are calculated at the end of the transaction, and not advertised up front.

Like all junk fee companies, school payment processors make it extremely hard to cancel an automatic recurring payment, and have innumerable hurdles to getting a refund, which takes an age to arrive.

Now, there are many agencies that could have compiled this report (the USDA, for one), and it could just as easily have come from an academic or a journalist. But it didn't – it came from the CFPB, and that matters, because the CFPB has the means, motive and opportunity to do something about this.

The CFPB has emerged as a powerhouse of a regulator, doing things that materially and profoundly benefit average Americans. During the lockdowns, they were the ones who took on scumbag landlords who violated the ban on evictions:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cfpb

They went after "Earned Wage Access" programs where your boss colludes with payday lenders to trap you in debt at 300% APR:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

They are forcing the banks to let you move your account (along with all your payment history, stored payees, automatic payments, etc) with one click – and they're standing up a site that will analyze your account data and tell you which bank will give you the best deal:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

They're going after "buy now, pay later" companies that flout borrower protection rules, making a rogues' gallery of repeat corporate criminals, banning fine-print gotcha clauses, and they're doing it all in the wake of a 7-2 Supreme Court decision that affirmed their power to do so:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/10/getting-things-done/#deliverism

The CFPB can – and will – do something to protect America's poorest parents from having $100m of their kids' lunch money stolen by three giant fintech companies. But whether they'll continue to do so under a Kamala Harris administration is an open question. While Harris has repeatedly talked up the ways that Biden's CFPB, the DOJ Antitrust Division, and FTC have gone after corporate abuses, some of her largest donors are demanding that her administration fire the heads of these agencies and crush their agenda:

https://prospect.org/power/2024-07-26-corporate-wishcasting-attack-lina-khan/

Tens of millions of dollars have been donated to Harris' campaign and PACs that support her by billionaires like Reid Hoffman, who says that FTC Chair Lina Khan is "waging war on American business":

https://prospect.org/power/2024-07-26-corporate-wishcasting-attack-lina-khan/

Some of the richest Democrat donors told the Financial Times that their donations were contingent on Harris firing Khan and that they'd been assured this would happen:

https://archive.is/k7tUY

This would be a disaster – for America, and for Harris's election prospects – and one hopes that Harris and her advisors know it. Writing in his "How Things Work" newsletter today, Hamilton Nolan makes the case that labor unions should publicly declare that they support the FTC, the CFPB and the DOJ's antitrust efforts:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/unions-and-antitrust-are-peanut-butter

Don’t want huge companies and their idiot billionaire bosses to run the world? Break them up, and unionize them. It’s the best program we have.

Perhaps you've heard that antitrust is anti-worker. It's true that antitrust law has been used to attack labor organizing, but that has always been in spite of the letter of the law. Indeed, the legislative history of US antitrust law is Congress repeatedly passing law after law explaining that antitrust "aims at dollars, not men":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

The Democrats need to be more than The Party of Not Trump. To succeed – as a party and as a force for a future for Americans – they have to be the party that defends us – workers, parents, kids and retirees alike – from corporate predation.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/26/taanstafl/#stay-hungry

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

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

[natrogersfics]

The Elysium - A Romanogers One Shot

Artwork by @faith2nyc

Steve would hardly classify himself as a prude.

But as he reads the tagline the marketing team had inserted on the packaging mockups for their upcoming release, he finds himself arching a brow at the words. “It can do you all day?” he clarifies as he swivels his chair away from the image of the royal blue device standing proudly on his screen. “That is quite a promise to make, don’t you think?”

“Which is why we’re making it,” Carol says from where she’s sprawled out on his office couch, her eyes trained on the email she’s typing up on her phone.

He tilts his head to the side. “But is it one we can deliver on?”

“I’ve already spoken to OB down in R&D and he’s completely vouched for it,” Carol assures him, moving to sit up. “The battery is powered by a new technology. Temporal something-”

“Just what our customers like to hear,” he interjects. “Our devices run… on something.”

Carol sends an icy glare his way, to which he only smirks. “As I was saying,” she says, “testing shows that this bad boy can run a full twenty-six hours on the highest setting.”

“In a single charge?”

“Mhmm,” Carol confirms. “And believe me when I say that the battery isn’t even the best part. Because with eight different settings? Dear God, the things I could tell you-”

“I’m good,” he says before Carol can continue. “In fact, I’ll sign the production slip right now.”

“Years of running this business together and you choose to turn squeamish on me now?”

“Oh, I’m not squeamish at all,” he says. “But given how much lobotomies cost these days, I’d rather not have thoughts about my little cousin and our latest product flashing in my head.”

Carol rolls her eyes. “Well, if you don’t want to hear about my personal experiences with The Captain,” she says, pointing to their latest thrusting vibrator sitting on the coffee table, “you can always listen to the feedback from our focus group.”

“Does it include tales about seeing stars and discovering new galaxies?”

“Obviously,” Carols says. “We’re not called Cosmic Pleasures for nothing.”

He chuckles. “You always did have a crystal clear vision for this.”

Dissatisfied with the options and the quality of the toys in the market, Carol had started Cosmic Pleasures out of her garage in Brooklyn seven years ago. The name is a nod to her days as a former Air Force pilot, and while she’s poured her heart and soul into the company, she’s never been too enthused by the business end of it, preferring instead to focus on the more creative aspects. It was only serendipitous that he had finally left the Army just as she was gearing to expand, and while the private sector didn’t particularly appeal to him then, the idea of working with his cousin and nurturing a family-owned business certainly did.

Thinking back to when he would spend countless nights wondering how his life would pan out, he doesn’t think he could have ever envisioned his transition from soldier to CEO. Now that it’s become his reality, though, he can’t think of anything else he’d rather be doing. The combination of his business acumen, Carol’s endless pursuit of innovation as Creative Director, and the recent erotica boom across the globe that encouraged people to invite a third party in the bedroom – battery-operated or otherwise – made for lucrative business. Add to that Cosmic Pleasures’ extraordinary commitment to producing models only of the finest quality, it’s no wonder that their products are quickly becoming the industry’s gold standard.

It’s in that excellence that he and Carol take so much pride in. And if he has to put a finger on what it is that continues to open doors for their company, it’s that. It’s certainly what’s led to his meeting tonight with the owners of The Velvet Hex, the ritzy shop in Chelsea that sells luxury pleasure products at their storefront by day, before transforming into an ultra-exclusive BDSM club by night. Admittedly, the latter has never been his cup of tea, but he’s hardly one to judge what goes on between consenting adults. In any case, if such practices encourage people to experiment with more toys, then he’s only too glad to provide them with the best tools possible.

Carol rises from her spot on the couch, grabbing The Captain as she makes her way across his office and sets the toy down on his desk. “You should take this to your meeting with Agatha and Rio.”

“That’s still technically a prototype,” he says, waving off the idea. “Besides, they’ve already selected their SKUs. We’re only meeting to finalize their first shipment. Trust me, we’re way past the Show and Tell stage now.”

“Doesn’t mean they won’t appreciate a sneak peek of what’s in the pipeline,” Carol retorts. “They are attending the Love and Sex conference at The Elysium, aren’t they?”

“Agatha mentioned that they might drop by a few lectures in the afternoon,” he confirms. “But it is The Elysium, Care. I think I’d prefer not to brandish a 9-incher on their mahogany bar.”

“Then clearly, you don’t understand what that hotel is for,” Carol says before tossing the toy at him. “Just take it, will you? You never know if they’ll want to take it for a spin.”

“Not after you’ve tossed it around!”

“That’s what the anti-bacterial cleanser is for,” Carol says, picking up the sample bottle displayed on his desk before tossing that to him, too. He catches it mid-air, narrowing his eyes at Carol, only to earn a smirk in return. “Tell the ladies I said hello.”

As Carol strolls out of his office, he can only shake his head. It’s not that he’s embarrassed to take their products along with him. But when it comes to business, shock and awe has never been his style. Neither have stuffy, structured meetings where everyone types furiously away on their laptops. There’s a time and place for that, he knows, but where closing deals are concerned, he likes to keep things simple. Conversational. And he certainly didn’t need any props for that.

He sets the items back on his desk, and as he stands, he reaches for the slate gray tie that’s slung on the back of his chair before looping it in a neat knot around his neck. Contrary to what Carol thinks, he is aware of The Elysium’s reputation. But just because the line between business and pleasure tends to blur within their art-deco walls, doesn’t mean that it’s not still regarded as a New York institution. As such, he wouldn’t be caught dead not dressing accordingly.

He's just thrown on his suit jacket when Carol suddenly slips back into his office. “I almost forgot,” she says, the playful expression on her face when she had first left replaced by a more serious one. “Don’t forget about your appointment tomorrow.”

This time, he’s the one that can’t resist rolling his eyes. “I know,” he grumbles. “You’ve only reminded me every single day this week.”

“This is important, Steve,” Carol says, her hands coming to rest on her hips. “It’s been two years.”

It’s not as though he needs another reminder of how long it’s been since his life had indelibly changed. That is, since his engagement had come to an abrupt end. But while his mind had recovered from that tragedy, he hasn’t had the same luck when it comes to the damn thing in his chest that to this day, still feels irretrievably broken – something Carol never misses the opportunity to point out. He sighs. “I know.”

Sex is top of mind for Natasha Romanoff.

Specifically, the hurried, dirty, can’t-wait-to-have-you kind. The type you have in the backseat of a town car or a nightclub bathroom where the possibility of getting caught leaves a tingle across your skin, causing your post-coital high to linger just that little bit longer.

But at the moment, as the salacious images flash in her mind, she can’t say that the sensation running through her is all that positive. In fact, as her client recounts her philandering husband’s transgressions, it’s only through years of practice that she’s able to school her face into a neutral expression as the disgust creeps into her veins.

In truth, it’s with every fiber of her being that she wants to tell her client to leave the man. She wants to shout it, empathically. Beg her to pack her bags, take their dogs, and go. Hell, at this point, she’ll settle for writing the words across her office walls in the brightest red paint she can find if that means it’ll open Sersi’s eyes to the situation. Only that would be doing her dear client a disservice, and she knows it. If Sersi is ever to kick this man to the curb once and for all, it needs to be a decision she comes to on her own terms.

“I keep dreaming about the chalet,” Sersi says with a sigh, referring to the large estate she and her husband own in Aspen. It’s where he had proposed to her, and it’s the same place she had caught him sleeping with his business associate just last week. “It has these glass windows that overlook the mountains. It’s absolutely magical in the daylight… It’s where we made love for the first time.” Sersi scoffs, wiping the fresh tears that roll down her cheeks with the back of her hand. “Back when I could stand Ikaris’ touch, anyway.”

She pulls a few tissues from the box on the console table before handing it to her client, watching as the woman who occupies this exact spot in her office nearly thrice a week pats away the evidence of her despair. It’s only when Sersi settles further back into the couch, looking up at the ceiling fan, that she continues to prod. “What exactly about this situation weighs on you the most, Sersi?” she asks softly. “Is it that he slept with someone else or that he slept with someone in a place you thought was sacred to both of you?” She lets her questions hang in the air between them, but when moments pass and they remain unanswered, she adds, “Or perhaps it’s something else entirely?”

Sersi remains frozen in silence before her, her hands curled into fists at her sides as if she’s channeling every ounce of strength she has to keep from spilling her deepest darkest fears. This part of her job is never pleasant, and as much as she wishes she could wipe away her clients’ pain, she knows that it’s her duty to guide them to the other side of it, towards healing – even if sometimes, that means forcing them to pry open a wound they’re desperately trying to keep closed.

“Sersi,” she repeats gently, waiting until the woman finally looks her way. “Do you fault yourself for his infidelity?”

“I don’t see how I can’t not,” Sersi says so quickly that she’s certain her patient has had more than this session to ponder the question. “Since the first time I caught him, the idea of having sex with him… I- I simply can’t bear it.”

“And that makes you at fault for him being unfaithful?”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Not in the slightest,” she says, her tone firm. “The only person responsible for Ikaris’ actions is himself. You, on the other hand, have the power to hold him accountable for them. That being said, we still need to get to the why for you.” Sersi’s brows rise at her words, so she elaborates. “We’ve talked at length about the things he’s done, and for good reason. But you lost interest in having sex with him way before he started stepping out on your relationship. Why that is, we haven’t been able to uncover.” That is, after all, the onus behind Sersi seeking out her services to begin with. Helping people through their relationship tribulations and their aversion to intimacy is her specialty, and for reasons she can’t quite put her finger on, she’s never been more determined to help a patient overcome their issues than she is with Sersi now. “So, let’s dive into that.”

Later, as Sersi prepares to leave at the conclusion of their session, she finds herself smiling at her patient. Some days, making progress happens at the speed of light. But more often than not, it moves just as it has today – slowly, like water trickling into a bucket, drop by drop. Nevertheless, especially in her line of work, she’s learned that a step forward, regardless of how small, is still a step forward. In the end, all that matters is that she’s helped move the needle in the right direction, which is what she’s done with Sersi today.

She bids Sersi goodbye, and as the door of her office clicks shut, she makes her way to her desk to take a peek at her schedule for tomorrow. As she thumbs through her calendar, she finds a slew of bookings from her regulars and a new patient appointment sandwiched in between. It’s going to be another day that’s booked solid, and as much as she wishes she could use the next few hours to brace herself for another full day, the fact is that her evening isn’t looking any better either. She had committed to a speaking engagement at a conference for the American Therapists Association weeks ago, and tonight she's due to share her research on love and sex addiction. In recent years, she has become something of the leading expert in the matter, guiding afflicted patients towards a path of recovery. And while she had spoken at numerous conferences in the past, this one feels particularly special after being asked to present by Melina Vostokoff, the Chairman of the ATA who also happens to be her former mentor – a mentor who, she reckons, is a stickler for punctuality.

It's with that reminder that she stands, pulling open her bottom drawer to exchange her flats for the black, pointed toe stilettos she keeps in there for these occasions. As she rises to her full height, she grabs her phone from the stash of papers on her desk, slipping it into her purse before making a beeline for the full-length mirror by her door. Studying her reflection, she adjusts the collar of her blush silk blouse and smooths a hand down her pencil skirt before ultimately deciding to swipe another coat of gloss on her lips. Then, with a final once-over, she exits her office.

“Wow!” Billy, the practice’s young receptionist, remarks as she nears the front desk. His lips curl into a smirk. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you’re heading to The Elysium for a little sneaky link.”

“Sneaky link?” she says, shooting him a confused stare.

“A rendezvous, I mean.”

“Right,” she says with a chuckle. “One day, I’ll actually understand a word you’re saying. But today is not that day. Goodnight, Billy.”

“‘Night, Nat!”

As she turns to leave, she finds herself shaking her head at Billy’s antics. As if she, of all people, would have a rendezvous at The Elysium. It had been too long since she had a rendezvous of any kind, let alone one at a hotel infamous for being the city’s designated hookup spot. Her last relationship had ended six months ago, and while Bruce had turned out to be a lovely man, in the end, he had been a little too vanilla for her liking. No doubt, the suggestion of a quickie in a public powder room, even one as nice as The Elysium’s, would have left the Physicist reeling.

Even so, Bruce’s mundane proclivities were hardly what caused their relationship to fizzle out. The real problem was that even when she was wrapped up in his embrace, her mind was always with Reed. Reed is a professor at Columbia, and since they met during their freshman year at college, he has been her best friend, closest confidant… and the man she’s been deeply in love with for the last twelve years. All this time, even as that fact ate away at her, she had kept that bit of information to herself. And, to her credit, Reed had never noticed how much she longed to be the woman by his side. But who knew what and when they knew are all irrelevant, anyway. He’s happily married now, so the time to tell him? Well, that’s well and truly passed.

The irony isn’t lost on her. Here she is, one of the most sought-after sex and love therapists in New York City, helping scores of people through matters of the heart, and yet, when it comes to her own love life, she’s been left perpetually wanting a man she can never have. For months, she’s been doing her best to move on. From salsa dancing with her girlfriends every Thursday to brushing up on her Russian, she’s left no stone unturned in her mission to detoxify her heart from her feelings for Reed Richards. And while she’s never been a gym rat, the Pilates classes she’s signed up for are quickly growing on her, if only for the fact that the sheer concentration needed to keep her on the Reformer nearly makes her forget about the man she’s been pining over for well over a decade.

But of all the activities she’s filled her days with, she finds that there’s nothing quite like throwing herself into her work to make her forget about her unrequited love. More than anything in the world, she loves her job, and helping people through their toughest times has always been her calling and deepest passion. She could think of no greater joy than guiding someone towards becoming a better, healthier version of themselves, which is why the idea of sharing her methods with her colleagues tonight has had her feeling exhilarated all day.

Fifteen minutes later, she’s walking through the revolving doors of The Elysium, taking in the posh surroundings as she makes her way towards the elevators. Soft jazz plays in the background, and to the far right, people congregate around the lobby’s massive, gleaming bar, laughing and enjoying their libations. Add to that the swanky ambiance that’s amplified by its tall white walls, dim lighting, and shining marble floors, she could easily see why this hotel has earned its reputation.

It’s as she’s waiting for the elevator that her eyes zero in on a man leaning casually against the bar, talking animatedly with the two women in his party. Quickly, she takes stock of his features – broad frame, chiseled jaw, sandy blonde hair, and a smile that couldn’t be described as anything other than captivating.

She isn’t certain if her gaze had lingered a little too long. Or, perhaps, maybe just the right amount of time. But as the man glances up, his gaze wandering seemingly across the vast expanse of the lobby, it’s as though his deliciously blue eyes lock with hers. At least, that’s what she tells herself as the elevator dings open and she steps inside, filing away the devilishly handsome man’s face as fodder for later. She’d find use for the image when she’s all alone in bed tonight, steeping in her fantasies, but first thing’s first – she had a group of therapists to wow.

Catch the full story on AO3

[carionto]

Difference in encounters

Human: "Hey, try this VR headset on for me would you. It's not a free fall experience thing this time, just a slow trek through some nature that you control."

Alien: "Alright, Human Greg, I will give these things ONE last chance."

H: (muahahahahaa, time to introduce Slenderman and classic monsters to them! I wanna know how they look when scared by something like that instead of the typical existential dread they get when we show them our latest technology)

A: [plays the game]

H: [excitedly anticipating the jump scare moment]

A: [keeps playing]

H: (huh? they definitely would have encountered at least three monsters by now, is it bugged?)

A: [finishes playing and takes off the headset] "Well, that was indeed a lovely experience, Earth's nature of the past is truly verdant and diverse, even in the dark of night. Although I don't understand why I could not interact with the other players that appeared every now and then."

H: "??? It's a single player experience, there are no other players. What?"

A: "Yeah, you know, the two sub-species of the Glak'Rori (Xenomorphs), a weird looking large Hrok (Cloverfield), and the Vrishmishnami one (Zaat) who looked awfully similar to their ambassador to my home planet. Also, how was there a Quatni (Slenderman) playing? They are still a pre-industrial civilization in my home sector. Don't tell me one of you Humans "adopted" one while we weren't looking? You know that's a crime. We've been over this before!"

H: (exasperated) "But! It was supposed to be sca- you know what, nevermind. Want to see what Juliana has been working on, she had this great idea about combining a gravity well and a light speed accelerator!"

A: (in sheer terror, scrambling out of the setup, escaping the premises)

H: "I guess that'll have to do... still, not the kind of fear I wanted to see..."

[novantinuum]

Fandom: Steven Universe Rating: Teen Audiences (CW: Description of attempted suicide) Words: 5.4K~ Summary: There’s more to this story, Lars can feel it brimming in his very bones. He can feel it squirming around in the tangled coils of his guts, a primal, virulent rot that threatens to consume him from the inside out. Something is off with Steven, something is distinctly wrong. And oh, does he hate being right. - When an unexpected visitor tumbles through the magic portal in his hair long after hours, breathless and bright pink, Lars must amass the courage to weather one of the most difficult conversations of his life.

Hey folks- this is a really heavy one, but it's a story I've been sitting on in my WIPs for a good four years and am very happy to finally set loose. A lot of personal experience has been poured into this particular fic, and I hope you enjoy.

Please take care and mind the content warning given above. If you're curious on what else this story entails, you can click through to see the AO3 tags as well. Love y'all!

__

Advocate

The Sun Incinerator’s bridge is unusually quiet tonight, with almost everyone spending the evening in their quarters. As such, the only sounds greeting Lars’ ears right now are the dull buzz of their FTL-drive and the gentle chimes of one of the ship’s secondary consoles in the back. (Padparadscha’s making some adjustments to the mainframe parameters, hoping to secure them more malleable control over each system’s energy output.) It makes for a rather meditative scene… focusing on these lulling, almost formulaic bits of white noise as he peers through the glass and watches entire stars and solar systems zip by as nothing but razor thin tendrils of light, the very fabric of space warping and folding around their ship in a myriad of hypnotizing colors. Content to simply be in this peaceful silence, he stretches back in his captain’s chair, allowing a wide smile to rejuvenate his countenance. There’s genuinely nothing more relaxing in all the universe than this.

Though, as he begins to muse upon today’s chaotic ventures of choice, it occurs to him that he hasn’t logged anything down for a good few cycles. And that really, really needs to change, he thinks. Keeping thorough audio records of their whereabouts and activities could prove useful if they get into any more legal scrapes with disgruntled Gems. Plus, it’s great for personal posterity— for when he and the fam want to kick back with some mixers and reminisce about old times.

He activates the mic embedded in the armrest of his seat with a single tap, and clears his throat.

“Logging… stardate one-three zero-five twenty eighteen,“ he begins, rhythmically tapping his fingers against the cool metal. “Or, uh… however that’s supposed to work,” he tags on with a bemused mumble, his nose wrinkling in personal annoyance as he realizes he might have completely jumbled the date format again. At this point, half of his logs are month first, then date, and the other half are date then month. Ugh, what a mess. Perhaps one day he’ll standardize the captain’s logging procedure, but that future is definitely not now. 

And knowing him, it’s probably not gonna be tomorrow, either.

He’s unable to help his exhausted yawn as he kicks back and unwinds, throwing his legs over the side of the armrest as he pushes ahead with his recounting of the last few hours.

“Today’s travels once again had us come face-to-face with our favorite frenemy Emerald, who claimed that her latest star cruiser had the booster technology to easily outperform all other Era 3 ships and challenged us to a race across the Stellaris Astroid Field in sector 9. We won, of course,” he says with a smug lilt to his voice. “The Rutiles’ savvy piloting saw to that, as well as Fluorite’s last-minute engine modifications. I think we hit like… a record cruising speed?” He presses his lips into a thin line and turns his head towards his friend working at the rear of the main deck. “Hey Pady? D’ya happen to remember what our top velocity came to during the final stretch of that race?”

She pauses in her self-appointed duty and hums in careful thought, sorting back through her eidetic knowledge of the recent past like it’s nothing but child’s play. “I believe… 181 klicks per second, nearing the speed of light.”

“And that was like… a record, yeah?” he asks, a sudden hair-raising twinge of… well, something settling deep at the pit of his chest. He ignores it for now. Such phantom pangs aren’t uncommon these days. He’s not exactly sure what causes it yet, and chalks it up to more ‘pink zombie’ weirdness.

“For our craft, yes,” she nods. “For all Gemkind, no. I was curious, as well. As far as I’ve read from Homeworld’s databases, the current non-FTL cruising record is 186.1 klicks per second.” 

Lars can’t help the scoffing chuckle that bubbles within his throat. “Ugh. Good grief, that’s basically light speed as it is. Like, leave some room for competition for the rest of us, yeah?”

Padparadscha gives a faint snicker of agreement as she turns her focus back to the ship’s mainframe interface. Right, right… she’s got work to get done. Which really reminds him, he needs to get back to his point too, or else this log’s gonna be stuffed with nothing but meaningless chit-chatter and asides. He sighs, leaning his cheek against the seat’s edge again.

“But in any case,” he continues into the mic, “our latest victory over Emerald seems to ha—”

With zero warning whatsoever that hollow pang at his core intensifies, its thrall pulsing louder and louder until it’s a thunderous cascade of static rippling through his very veins. He hisses in alarm, jamming his hands over his ears out of pure bodily instinct. This doesn’t help, of course— as this cacophonous feeling (not a sound, not some external input he can mute or modulate, but a feeling—) seems to be emanating from within, from a place all but intangible to the physical realm, from— 

He spies that oh-so-familiar glow emanating from the fringe of his hair just a split second before his surprise visitor tumbles through and throws off his center of balance, unceremoniously toppling both of them to the floor in a ridiculous tangle of limbs. 

Lars’ exhales become laborious as he extracts himself from under the teen and clambers back up to his knees, heart pounding with more fervent intensity than it has since he up and died a few years back.

And right on cue, about fifteen seconds too late:

“Captain Lars, Steven is about to cross through the portal in your head!”

“Yeah, I noticed, thanks,” he snaps in the shock of it all, feeling guilty for this snide remark the second it passes through his lips. (Because Padparadscha can’t help her compulsive ‘predictions.’ He knows this. Everyone knows this. He’ll have to find time to pull her aside and apologize.)

But not now.

Not yet.

Because the alarm bells rung by Pady’s next comment are enough to slap him right out of his brooding contemplation and back to the troubling here-and-now.

“I also predict that Steven won’t be in a very sound state of mind when he arrives,” she says, a noticeable tension building in her tone.

His eyes blow wide as he shifts his full attention to his friend, clad in a pair of sweatpants and a thin sleep shirt.

Steven is… oh, geeze. It seems Steven can’t even manage coherent speech right now. His cheeks are blotchy and raw with recent tears. He’s doubled over on the floor with one hand clutching at his center as he heaves for breath, glowing bright ass pink and looking halfway to hyperventilating. One thing’s for sure: it’s really, really hard to watch. His own chest growing insufferably tight in sympathy, Lars leaps to action, unwilling to let the poor guy wallow in the thickets of whatever the hell this breakdown is about any longer than he has to.

“H-hey…” he begins, edging towards him with the same slow deliberateness he always has to use with the rescue dog his parents recently adopted. And like, yeah— a part of him feels really rude for comparing his own friend to a skittish, fretful animal— but it’s a comparison that seems all the more apt the longer he drinks in the realities of this situation.

Because just like ol’ Maru, Steven is jumpy, horrifically on-edge, and ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. 

Lars frowns, considering what few options he has.

Realizing his friend’s not likely to calm down very well so out in the open like this, he turns towards his fellow Off-Color. 

“Pady, I’m taking him to my quarters. Can you let the others know, and uh… tell them not to disturb us for a while?”

“Yes, right away,” she chimes, hopping off her seat.

“Thank you,” he breathes, expression softening. “I mean it. And sorry about— well, I’ll talk with you later, all right?”

Her mouth falling into a perfectly neutral line (even if she’s incapable of reading the future, he’s sure she’s intensely aware of what he wishes to speak to her about from mere context clues alone), the Gem serves him a solid nod of acceptance and spins on her heels, striding down the hall with a level of confidence he envies. The bridge’s door slides shut after her, leaving him and his glowing, pink hued guest entirely alone.

Alone, and incredibly, incredibly vulnerable, like a live wire flailing about atop a damaged Earth power line.

(The last thing anyone on this ship needs is him having one of his infamous explosive episodes here and compromising the bridge’s airlock system. Which is why his quarters— below deck and fully enclosed— is a far more ideal locale for them right now.)

“O-okay, Steven,” he says, holding out his arm in aid as the teen struggles to clamber back to his feet. “Let’s go somewhere private to cool down, yeah?”

~~

A few minutes later, Lars has Steven situated on the one plush sofa he keeps in his quarters. Since he no longer possess any biological need for sleep and thus doesn’t keep a bed, his room on the ship is pretty sparse— just a desk for journaling or gaming and some shelves with a number of sentimental knick-knacks he brought with him from Earth— but he did find it important to keep a couch. Even if he doesn’t need to sleep, curling up for a quick hour of shut-eye still feels quite rejuvenating sometimes. Plus, it’s handy to have whenever he hosts visitors. Like now. 

Lars sits himself down right next to the distressed teen. He’s still flushed bright pink, but has regained a fair bit of emotional stability compared to how he was right after tumbling out of the magic space portal in his hair. It might take a while until the glow fades away entirely, but it’s progress, at least. 

He sighs, rapping his fingertips against his jeans as he gives his friend some time in silence to cool down. The last thing the guy needs right now is for him to wave half a dozen questions in his face. He’ll talk when he’s ready. Or, hell, maybe not at all. That’s okay, too. Maybe he just wanted a place to have a quick little freak-out away from his family or girlfriend. Who’s he to judge? Sometimes a man’s just gotta be alone for a while. 

Of course, he muses, if Steven really wanted to be alone, then he wouldn’t have crossed through Lion’s mane over to him, now would he? So this visit can’t only be due to a desire for solitude. Steven sought out him— specifically him— for a reason.

That churning, hollow pang at his core radiates even stronger, pulsing at the same interval as the dull tick of the clock he has hanging up on his wall, the one he keeps set to Earth EST as an everlasting reminder of his humble human roots and all the people who care about him back home.

Finally— some ten or so minutes later— the seventeen-year-old stops glowing, that unnatural, otherworldly pallor fading into obscurity. The kid (sorry, but Steven will always be a ‘kid’ to him at this point, don’t matter his age) deflates in exhaustion, cupping his face in his hands.

Now a little more confident that his expressions of concern won’t rile him up to destructive levels of stress, Lars makes a gentle inquiry as to what brought him here. 

“‘Course, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to,” he tacks on quickly when he sees Steven’s expression widen with an almost grief-stricken apprehension, “but since I’m here an’ all, I figured…”

His guest sucks in a deep, shaky bout of air.

“N-no, I wanna talk,” he says, voice painfully hoarse. “I came here to talk, but I— it’s just so, so much, I-I’m—”

Lars’ eyes soften. “Dude, it’s okay. Take your time.”

And take his time he does. Another minute or so passes whilst Steven continues to reel himself in on the emotional side of things, breathing slow and heavy as he levels a dead-eyed stare at the blank section of wall flanking the doorway and his desk.

“Connie and I had a fight,” he begins eventually, his tone streaked with embarrassment. “Over the phone.”

Lars’ brow shoots up. Huh. All right. This is absolutely not the opener he expected.

“Really? You two fight? About what?”

“It doesn’t even matter anymore. It was nothing,” Steven mutters, clenching and unclenching his fists against the soft fabric of his pajama pants in a markedly uneven rhythm. “Just me being an idiot, as per usual. I’m sure we’ll make up over it tomorrow. But the problem is that we hung up mad. And when I’m mad about something, it just… makes me mad at myself. A-and then it’s like—” anxious, clawing hands migrate to his head, gripping at his hair— “w-when I’m mad at myself I just spiral? And it’s so, so scary how fast that can happen.”

Ever so slight, his lip presses into a tense frown as he listens. He doesn’t interject, not yet. Steven’s not finished with his disclosure— there’s more to this story, he can feel it brimming in his very bones. He can feel it squirming around in the tangled coils of his guts, a primal, virulent rot that threatens to consume him from the inside out. Something is off with him, something is distinctly wrong.

And oh, does he hate being right.

“I just… couldn’t stop thinking about it,” Steven admits.

The aching hollowness etched into the contours of his friend’s face intensifies, if that’s even possible.

Lars swallows.

“It?”

“—about killing myself,” he rasps, “and finally being done with all this.”

…

So, he’s not gonna lie.

While— much like himself— Steven’s never been the sort of person to prefer wearing his most turbulent emotions on his sleeve, he’s long suspected something like this was going on with him.

He suspected (because he’s been right there in those trenches himself), but he never said anything. 

He never mentioned these worries to any of his guardians.

And he never asked.

‘Cause like, how could he, right?? What a horrible, triggering inquiry that would be. ‘Hey Steven, hah, so random question— you don’t happen to casually fantasize about your own death or anything sometimes, do you?’ Fucking hell, what an asshole he’d make. What a disgusting, disgusting breech of boundaries. He always hated it when his parents violated his trust by butting into his own personal business unprompted, so how could he ever turn right around and do that to Steven? To one of his most cherished friends in the whole galaxy? To the guy who— despite years and years of putting up with all his toxic bullshit and daring to see the good in him anyways— literally brought him back to life?

Thus, with him never volunteering any information himself, all that was left for Lars to do was watch. 

To watch, and to listen where he can.

But still.

He’s not gonna lie.

Even if he always kinda suspected, even if so many of their interactions this past year only acted as fuel for all his constant, silent worries, hearing the kid actually say those words hurts like a bitch.

…

“Steven…” he utters with widened eyes, extending his hand.

To no avail, though.

“And that’s stupid, right??” the teen blurts out with a broad sweep of his arms, either ignoring or plain not noticing his offer of comfort as he rants onwards, his demeanor growing more and more unstable with each and every syllable. “That’s just… stupid! Normal people don’t think like that! Normal people don’t make mistakes and instantly leap to the worst possible punishment and spin that little thought around, and around, and around in your head until you’ve considered a thousand different scenarios that all end the same way.”

He pauses for breath, his chest heaving in and out— probably amidst the exertion of being so damn honest for once. Lars doesn’t even make a sound within this brief span of quiet. A part of him is a little terrified at what else might spill out of his friend’s mouth now that the cork of his anxieties has thoroughly been popped off, but he’s even more terrified at the thought of derailing him, of unintentionally stopping these truths from ever being spoken.

“And it’d be so easy, too,” Steven says, his once manic tone dropping a little lower, into something that’s worryingly more akin to numb acceptance. “I already know exactly how I’d do it! All I’d have to do is smash my gem so I don’t heal, and slit my wrists, and let myself just—” his voice cracks— “drift away, b-but—”

Lars’ brow hardens with a sudden rush of understanding as the trajectory of the teen’s sentence trails on off. “But something’s… holding you back?”

He nods, swallowing so hard that he can see the resultant lump move along the center line of his throat.

“The problem is,” he says, voice raw and vulnerable, “I’ve already seen how my family would respond to that. To… to me trying to kill myself. When I turned into that monster, I— I don’t actually remember much about it, but what I do remember is that the last thought I had before I changed was eerily similar to what I’m feeling now.”

Momentary lull. He’s rotating a thought in his head with the same intensity of a set of steam engine gears grinding against each other, that much is obvious.

“I think… for me,” he continues with marked hesitation, “corruption was a form of suicide. Which means—” he grinds his fingers into the soft fabric of his pajama bottoms as if seeking out an anchor, any anchor at all— “I already know what that would do to them. And I hate that I do, b-because… ‘cause I’m just so tired. Of all of this. I just want everything to stop. I want to stop.” 

Lars can’t help but wince as he listens to the developing theme of this admission, to how each and every new word his friend weaves into existence falls into such dissonant harmony with the gloomy, directionless version of himself he’s worked so hard to let rest in the past. Hell, he might as well be looking straight into some weird, warped mirror of his own teenage years. His lungs seize tight upon this revelation. Instinctively, he extends his hand towards the guy’s shoulder, sobered by the understanding that he’s possibly the sole person in this entire quadrant who’s capable of conveying even an ounce of sympathy or comfort for what he’s battling through right now.

“Hey, man. It’s okay. It’s over, now, you’re here with me. Those are just thoughts, y’know?”

Steven shakes his head, the motion swift and drenched with the dread of all his unaddressed self-loathing.

“But they’re not, though…”

“Wait, what are you even—?”

“Because… this time I almost carried through with it.”

His expression crumples upon the advent of this spoken revelation.

Fuck, he thinks, wishing with every last brittle nerve in his body that this conversation didn’t just swerve in the exact godawful direction he always feared it might. What the actual fuck.

He is so not equipped for this. 

With literally nothing else in his arsenal but the drive to bite his lip and listen, Lars motions for him to continue.

Sniffling, the teen backs his story up to provide what little context he feels comfortable with sharing. 

“After Connie and I’s fight… well, my dreams were really, really bad. So I woke up. Alone. And I started spiraling real bad again, an’… and then before I could even process what was happening, I—”

Sweet stars, is the poor guy trembling as he struggles to push this admission out. With a brief waver of hesitation (‘cause in normal circumstances, he’s not huge on all this touchy-feely stuff), he reaches over, angling to rest one of his hands over Steven’s.

“I had the knife in my hand,” he says. “And a pestle from the kitchen, to smash my gem. B-but I just… I just couldn’t do it! I’m just a coward, Lars! A stupid fucking coward who can’t even—”

He doesn’t utter a single syllable. 

He doesn’t even think. (How could he, in such fraught circumstances?) 

Limbs trembling in an outright terrifying cascade of adrenaline he hasn’t experienced since the day he finally found something worth existing for, Lars surges forward to wrap him into what’s gotta be the tightest, most sincere hug he’s given in his whole twenty-one years of life.

And thankfully, such an impulsive interjection is all it takes.

The walls his friend’s erected around himself this past season topples like wayward dominos. They smash against the ground, crumbling into vulnerable, vulnerable fragments. 

Steven sobs into his shoulder with a raw, shattered fervency that stretches leagues beyond any outpour of emotion he’s ever witnessed from another living person. It’s messy. It’s visceral. And in the precise context of this intensely specific turn of events, it’s a damn cathartic relief… because when it comes to training your brain out of a deep-rooted death wish, feeling anything— literally anything at all— is step number fucking one.

“I wanted to die so badly,” the teen warbles, his ugly mixture of snot and tears staining his shirt all the while. “B-but… I’m just such a worthless, pathetic failure that I can’t even do that right!”

He can’t help but cringe at this admission, but resolves to remain silent, not wanting a gentle pushback to such brutal self-loathing to spook Steven away from showing any shred of vulnerability whatsoever. He’s been there plenty of times himself. After all, when a person who’s caught in such a void of hopelessness and despair makes a last ditch appeal for help, they’re usually not looking to be told ‘everything will get better in time, you’ll see’ or ‘don’t be so hard on yourself, you’re not a worthless failure at all,’ or whatever other empty attempt at reassurance someone who doesn’t have such intimate experience with depression and suicidal ideation as he does might come up with. In many cases, such people are simply vying for their bleakest, most private feelings to actually be heard for once in their lives. 

The moment’s sanctity unhindered, the boy continues to cry against his shoulder for a good long stretch of time. Lars barely even breathes as he sits perched at the very edge of that couch, consigned to nothing but a statue as he holds him within what’s gotta be a record for the galaxy’s most awkward and stiff embrace ever shared.

A miniature eternity passes within this space before those sobs finally begin to lighten up.

“‘M sorry,” Steven mumbles through a face full of snot, pulling away from his offered comfort as a flicker of shame wrests control of his features. 

Lars shakes his head in a vehement refusal of the habitual guilt spiral he’s sure the guy’s a split second from slipping right into. “Dude, don’t be. Stars, I— I’m just glad you came over to me, okay?”

Then, swallowing… and doing his upmost best to consider the most respectful way to broach such a sensitive topic, he continues:

“I… I don’t mean to pry, but… are you… taking anything for this?”

Steven’s glassy expression scrunches into a configuration that screams nothing but blank confusion. “What?”

“Like… medication, or—?”

A bright understanding dawns within his gaze like the glow from a passing star system, before immediately collapsing inwards into a bitter, shadowed singularity. 

“No… no,” he protests, gesticulating all the while, “I keep telling everyone— my therapist, my dad, the Gems— I don’t wanna take any medicine! I’m not sick, I’m not, I don’t need drugs in my brain, I just— I just need to stop acting like this, just need to do better, to be better, I-I need—”

“Steven, no offense, but it’s called mental illness for a reason,” Lars says in the most deadpan tone he can muster, crossing his arms as he leans back upon the plush of the couch cushion. “Your brain is ill. That’s literally what this is. If you had the flu, you’d be taking flu medicine to help yourself get over it, right?”

“I’ve never had the flu,” he says in miserable contradiction.

“Yeah, well— come on, man, just work with me here,” he half-snaps, throwing a hand up for emphasis. “You agree that someone who is ill deserves medicine to feel better, right?”

The teen merely shrugs, his features growing cold and sullen. And good golly does he super want to smack all this noncommittal, self-sabotaging bullshit out of his stupid fucking system right this instant— because it reminds him so damn much of himself, and he hates that it does— but… aughhh. He’s gotta be more mature than that, doesn’t he?

As the older of the pair, he’s gotta be the role model here. 

“Then, don’t you think you might benefit from the same thing?” he presses.

Steven responds in the negative, swiveling his head from side to side. “I don’t know how it’d interact with… well—” 

He flashes a sharp gesture towards himself. More specifically, towards his very center, where his gem sits. Lars has no need to live inside his thoughts to pick up on the tricky little issue he’s hinting at here… he’s worried about how human medications would interact with the complexities of part-Gem physiology. And to be fair, it’s a reasonable concern to have.

But then again…

“That’s how it is with humans, too,” he shrugs. “It takes some people a lot of trial and error to find a drug and dosage that works for them. For once, you wouldn’t be any more an unusual case than anyone else. Do what you want, but—” deep inhale— “if it were me, I’d really consider talking with a psychiatrist about this.”

The teen issues a dull huff through his nose. It’s the sort of response that makes it clear he reluctantly agrees with Lars’ logic, but should he actually follow his advice— and stars, he hopes he does— won’t be doing so with a willing heart. That’s fine, though. Sometimes, being the most supportive friend one can be means that the other party won’t always like what you have to say. He knows this from intense personal experience… from being the person on the other side of this kind of conflict. Sadie was never afraid of serving him the tough love and cutting perspective he needed when he opened up to her about his own experience with suicidal ideation, and he’s forever grateful for that. Thus, the least he can do now is try to be that kind of advocate for Steven, too.

Which brings him to the next vital topic rattling within his brain.

“Oh, and one other thing,” Lars says, folding his hands in his lap and looking him directly in the eye. “This is important, so please be honest with me. Have you told anyone else you’ve been struggling with these kinds of thoughts?”

“Not really,” he mumbles, his own gaze slipping aside amidst the turbulent throes of his clear shame. “I just… I wanted to deal with this myself. I don’t want them to be disappointed. They all think I’m doing so well these days, but then—”

“Steven.”

There’s no acknowledgement of his call, at first. He’s just too damn tangled within his own thoughts— expression glazed over and restless fingertips drumming in an endless thrall against his thigh.

“Steven, come on. Look at me,” he implores, interrupting his manic fidgeting with the reassuring solidity of a hand over his. “Please. Promise me, when you go back through my head, you’ll call someone else— anyone else— and tell them. Tell them, and then have them contact me. I want to hear you promise.”

“Lars…”

“Promise me,” he repeats with an even stronger fervency, his normally sluggish heartbeat surging halfway to its old full-strength status quo. “Listen, I don’t want to invade your privacy any more than you want me to, but if you don’t do this by the end of tomorrow… if that very clock—” he jabs a finger towards the so-mentioned object hanging upon his wall— “hits midnight and I don’t hear anything from your family… then I’m calling your father and telling him myself.”

Steven’s expression twists with a sharp jolt of dismay, his mouth falling ajar. Lars cuts off any pending protests with a swift flash of his hand and continues undeterred.

“I’m not joking. I’m like, a billion light years in space, man. You need someone closer to home in your corner, too.”

Unable to ignore the hard hitting truth of this statement, his friend finally acquiesces to his request, his shoulders slumping inwards.   

“Fine,” he mumbles, folding his arms to his chest. “I promise I’ll tell Dad.”

“Thank you,” he breathes in sheer spine tingling relief. And by golly, does he uber mean it. 

Because holy shit, have the past fifteen or so minutes of conversation been an absolute stress-soaked ordeal. He doesn’t know if he’s ever felt so emotionally exhausted in his whole ass existence.

“In the morning, though,” Steven adds. “I—” the kid heaves a long, exhausted sigh— “I really don’t think either of us are prepared for that kind of conversation this late.”

“Absolutely fair enough.”

His friend sniffles a little, gaze averting once more. “Can I— can I stay here, for tonight? I really, really don’t want to be alone right now.”

“Of course,” he nods. In his mind, Steven’s request was never a matter up for debate. “Always. I’ll… I’ll go get some blankets.”

Hooking his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans, Lars pushes himself off the couch and slowly shuffles his way to the door. (The storage closet he keeps all his extra personal elements in is a short distance down the hall, past Rhody and Padparadscha’s shared room.) He keeps his expression as blank as he can muster… at least until he’s moved well out of both visual and auditory range. And then… once he’s absolutely positive that Steven can’t overhear… all that built-up worry and emotional strain simply overflows.

He’s not outright crying— not in the way that others might— but damn if he’s not real close to it.

Lars’ whole body shudders with a burst of delayed grief as he braces himself upon the closet door. He clamps a hand over his mouth, stifling the impact of the shaky exhale that spills from his lips otherwise unhindered. Just… fuck. What the fuck. All of this feels like a horrible nightmare. When the hell did things get so bad for him? Who let things get this bad? Is he at fault—? Like, geeze— he always knew something felt awry with the kid (and that’s half the issue, isn’t it? He’s not just a sweet little kid with simple lil’ problems anymore, and in many ways he never was), but should he have said something? Confronted him about it? Told his guardians about his concerns, privacy be damned? 

He grits his teeth as he muddles over all the infinite complexities of this problem.

Ugh.

What if, what if, what if.

It’s all useless conjecture.

The bottom line is, Steven doesn’t deserve any of this. Not then, not now, not ever. He shouldn’t have to be dealing with any of these horrid, horrid thoughts. Stars, if anything had happened to him— if he actually did follow through with his plan, then—

Lars drops his head against the door panel, doing everything within his power to will the thought to evaporate from his mind.

No.

No…

He doesn’t even want to consider that possibility. Steven’s like a brother to him at this point. It’s not gonna happen. Not now, not ever. Not on his watch.

He’s not sure how yet, but he’ll make damn sure of it.

…

Once he’s cooled himself down, Lars returns to his quarters with a couple of blankets in hand.

Upon passing through the doorframe, he’s met with a somewhat reassuring sight: Steven already sound asleep on his ratty old couch, curled up against the armrest and snoring softly. Heh. He sure doesn’t blame him for tuckering out so soon. Poor guy must’ve been exhausted after such a rigorous emotional outpouring. Moving with calm intent so as not to disturb him, he quickly lays the blankets across his slumbering form before retreating to the far wall to keep watch for the night. He stretches back against the metallic panel, inhaling as deep as he can muster to erase the quavering tension staining his countenance.

Standing vigil over a soul in need… just in case.

[thegildedbee]

Calm/Hobby: May 7 & 8 Prompts from @calaisreno

As his Air Baltic flight from Oslo begins its descent into Tallinn, Sherlock stares distractedly out the window at the thinning layer of clouds, and pushes back at the whisper of bleakness that it it is the Estonian coastline coming into view, not the South East shores of England. He girds himself with stoicism as he feels a tendril of melancholy begin to unfurl at the fact that Sherlock Holmes no longer exists, now that Herr Lukas Sigerson has taken his place.

He knows that this new identity will only be the first of many.

Sigerson has brown eyes, and wears dark brown tortoiseshell glasses; his dark hair is beginning to have a salt and pepper cast to it, his lower face is covered by stubble. His loose-limbed gait is relaxed, and there's a remnant of a tendency to stutter when he speaks. Hidden from view are the still-healing cracked ribs on the right side of his torso, the damaged ligaments of his right knee, and the fact that the ossicular chain within his right ear bears traces of having been successfully reconstructed, the surgical repair restoring the hearing he had lost after the trauma to his skull. 

When Sherlock had been ready to leave the UK to begin to grapple with Moriarty’s extant remains -- the people and infrastructure and schemes dispersed across the globe -- it had been hard to determine what to do first and where and why. Of the three assassins in London on the day of his fall, the one assigned to Mrs. Hudson – a thuggish fellow more noteworthy for his brawn than any brains – had been rolled up by Mycroft’s people even before Sherlock had been delivered to the morgue. The one assigned to Lestrade had been somewhat harder to ferret out, but as Sherlock began piecing together what details he could collect during his recuperation, he had determined that he was a functionary who had infiltrated the Met – and the resolution of that criminal had also been left to Mycroftian minions. 

But John’s sniper was of a different cast altogether, an experienced professional who had made no mistakes and vanished like vapor. Sherlock believed that individual had been more than a freelance hire -– Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade had been brought into the mix of those in danger of losing their lives because every action of Moriarty’s was as theatrical and excessive as it was insane: ransoming John’s life had always been the true motive. John’s sniper would have been especially close to Moriarty, and likely a member of the upper echelon of his criminal syndicate. Sherlock suspected that acquiring the information that would allow him to destroy this person was going to be an exceedingly difficult proposition.

He needed information, and Sherlock had finally decided that the place to begin was with Estonia, the tiny nation that had regained its independence from Soviet occupation in 1991, and that had chosen to bypass the encumbering drag of the impoverished infrastructure bequeathed from the Soviets, by abandoning it. Estonia had instead risked its future by constructing an economy based on the latest digital technologies, leapfrogging more advanced nations as it became a cyber-powered incubator of innovation, and one of the most wired countries in the world. Sherlock had no doubt that Moriarty would have been intent on turning this transformation to his own advantage; he would have found the opportunity irresistible.

Moriarty’s claim to have a code that could take over any computer was false, but even so Sherlock suspected that this fabulation pointed at something all too real: investments by Moriarity in the dark web, and in the recruitment of cadres of hackers to be manipulated into hijacking computer networks. In April and May of 2007, Estonia had been besieged for three weeks by waves of cyberattacks that had crippled its digital public and private sectors, from government entities such as the foreign and defense ministries, to banks, corporate enterprises, and media outlets. Estonia had traced the attacks to actors within Moldova’s breakaway state of Transnistria, a long narrow geographic entity bordering Ukraine that displayed the Soviet Communist hammer-and-sickle on its flag and coat of arms. Sherlock suspected that these cyberterrorist actors were performing roles under Moriarty’s direction, and that he would find information from within Estonia that would point to the far-flung nodes of his enemy’s wretched empire. 

With their impending arrival in Tallinn, the melancholy that had emerged begins to become more deeply rooted, and Sherlock’s mind's eye paints pictures of what lies in the deep of the sea passage below, and across the sea miles beyond Britain’s and Europe’s contours – fragments of exploded ordnance littering the ocean floor, where bodies entombed in submarines and battleships are testament to the destructive capabilities of bands of people bent on glory and riches and domination.

His meandering thoughts catch hold of a memory in the viewing room of his mind palace, the one that records the evenings when John had chosen a film to share as they sat propped up together on the sofa in the darkness. It focused on the US Army Air Force unit that flew missions from East Anglia in World War II, and the appointment of a new commanding officer tasked with reversing the underperformance of the bombing teams. 

He had been riveted by the harsh speech the uncompromising commander delivers to the group of pilots, who simmer with resentment at his theory that part of their problems lie with their playing it safe. He tells them that while fear is to be expected, the only choice they have is to stop worrying about the fear, and about themselves. He can still feel the chill of premonition when he heard the figure on the screen bite out his message: “We’re in a war – a shooting war. We’ve got to fight. And some of us have got to die." But it was the follow-on command that is engraved in his mind beyond the memory palace, visible in the shadow of all else he is thinking about: "Stop making plans. Forget about going home. Consider yourselves already dead. After that, it won’t be so tough.” And so, too, was his bombing run a flight into the unknown, against unseen enemies, the actions of a self-created ghost who must reckon that he truly inhabits the underworld from this point on.

Sherlock closes his eyes and continues work on the new spaces that he has been constructing in his mind palace, an effort that never fails to bring him calm, even when other emotions are in play. These new rooms are cloisters and refectories based on the architecture of a thirteenth-century monastery, in deference to Tallinn’s remarkable preservation of the medieval city within its precincts, and he has reserved this adjacent building for whatever part Eastern Europe will play in his sojourns. It is complicated artistry, and he is the last one to rise and exit the airplane.

As Herr Sigerson makes his way toward the front of the compact airport, he adjusts the rucksack on his shoulder, and tugs the bottom of his jumper to straighten it. As a standard issue Norwegian, he is, of course, kitted out in knitted wool, although the garment he wears is only a single hue; the vividly colored patterns favored by so many of the inhabitants of his improvised homeland hurt both his eyesight and his sense of fashion. Sherlock smiles at the thought that John would be amused, were he to see his couture, and consider it revenge for Sherlock’s hobby of “inadvertently” wreaking havoc on the least attractive of John’s jumpers.

Sherlock's half-zip pullover is a dark navy blue with a beautiful sheen, and it is not completely devoid of decoration – it is just that the design is woven into the single color, slightly raised, subdued in its visibility. On the back is the Norse symbol of the vegvisir, which was said to allow its possessor to always find the right path, no matter how turbulent the environment might be. Next to the wayfinding icon is a letter from the ancient runic alphabet said to summon good luck. No doubt John would also be amused at the fact that his relentlessly rational friend is carrying these mystical totems on his body. Although, perhaps not, were he to know of the future toward which Sherlock has now committed himself. ........................................................ @calaisreno @totallysilvergirl @friday411 @peanitbear @original-welovethebeekeeper rest of the @s in the tags, which will work for communication purposes, I hope? just say the word if you want to be untagged or tagged xoxoxo