#pc: vancouver

[battle-of-alberta]

I still have bet art to catch up on but for now WE WON! and we took vengeance for what mayor sims did to poor hunter :)

welcome bandwagoners <3 and who's calvin texting?

isn't it great to have pals who can owe you art :) [knock on wood]

[simmyfrobby]

for @kitchener-waterloo

[poketechsimuladordirigindoemcasa]

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Twinkfrump Linkdump

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in CHICAGO (Apr 17), Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

Welcome to the seventeenth Pluralistic linkdump, a collection of all the miscellany that didn't make it into the week's newsletter, cunningly wrought together in a single edition that ranges from the first ISP to AI nonsense to labor organizing victories to the obituary of a brilliant scientist you should know a lot more about! Here's the other 16 dumps:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

If you're reading this (and you are!), it was delivered to you by an internet service provider. Today, the ISP industry is calcified, controlled by a handful of telcos and cable companies. But the idea of an "ISP" didn't come out of a giant telecommunications firm – it was created, in living memory, by excellent nerds who are still around.

Depending on how you reckon, The Little Garden was either the first or the second ISP in America. It was named after a Palo Alto Chinese restaurant frequented by its founders. To get a sense of that founding, read these excellent recollections by Tom Jennings, whose contributions include the seminal zine Homocore, the seminal networking protocol Fidonet, and the seminal third-party PC ROM, whence came Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and every other "PC clone" company.

The first installment describes how an informal co-op to network a few friends turned into a business almost by accident, with thousands of dollars flowing in and out of Jennings' bank account:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/TLG.html

And it describes how that ISP set a standard for neutrality, boldly declaring that "TLGnet exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information." They introduced an idea of radical transparency, documenting their router configurations and other technical details and making them available to the public. They hired unskilled punk and queer kids from their communities and trained them to operate the network equipment they'd invented, customized or improvised.

In part two, Jennings talks about the evolution of TLG's radical business-plan: to offer unrestricted service, encouraging their customers to resell that service to people in their communities, having no lock-in, unbundling extra services including installation charges – the whole anti-enshittification enchilada:

https://www.sensitiveresearch.com/Archive/TLG/

I love Jennings and his work. I even gave him a little cameo in Picks and Shovels, the third Martin Hench novel, which will be out next winter. He's as lyrical a writer about technology as you could ask for, and he's also a brilliant engineer and thinker.

The Little Garden's founders and early power-users have all fleshed out Jennings' account of the birth of ISPs. Writing on his blog, David "DSHR" Rosenthal rounds up other histories from the likes of EFF co-founder John Gilmore and Tim Pozar:

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/04/the-little-garden.html

Rosenthal describes some of the more exotic shenanigans TLG got up to in order to do end-runs around the Bell system's onerous policies, hacking in the purest sense of the word, for example, by daisy-chaining together modems in regions with free local calling and then making "permanent local calls," with the modems staying online 24/7.

Enshittification came to the ISP business early and hit it hard. The cartel that controls your access to the internet today is a billion light-years away from the principled technologists who invented the industry with an ethos of care, access and fairness. Today's ISPs are bitterly opposed to Net Neutrality, the straightforward proposition that if you request some data, your ISP should send it to you as quickly and reliably as it can.

Instead, ISPs want to offer "slow-lanes" where they will relegate the whole internet, except for those companies that bribe the ISP to be delivered at normal speed. ISPs have a laughably transparent way of describing this: they say that they're allowing services to pay for "fast lanes" with priority access. This is the same as the giant grocery store that charges you extra unless you surrender your privacy with a "loyalty card" – and then says that they're offering a "discount" for loyal customers, rather than charging a premium to customers who don't want to be spied on.

The American business lobby loves this arrangement, and hates Net Neutrality. Having monopolized every sector of our economy, they are extremely fond of "winner take all" dynamics, and that's what a non-neutral ISP delivers: the biggest services with the deepest pockets get the most reliable delivery, which means that smaller services don't just have to be better than the big guys, they also have to be able to outbid them for "priority carriage."

If everything you get from your ISP is slow and janky, except for the dominant services, then the dominant services can skimp on quality and pocket the difference. That's the goal of every monopolist – not just to be too big to fail, but also too big to care.

Under the Trump administration, FCC chair Ajit Pai dismantled the Net Neutrality rule, colluding with American big business to rig the process. They accepted millions of obviously fake anti-Net Neutrality comments (one million identical comments from @pornhub.com addresses, comments from dead people, comments from sitting US Senators who support Net Neutrality) and declared open season on American internet users:

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-issues-report-detailing-millions-fake-comments-revealing

Now, Biden's FCC is set to reinstate Net Neutrality – but with a "compromise" that will make mobile internet (which nearly all of use sometimes, and the poorest of us are reliant on) a swamp of anticompetitive practices:

https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2024/04/harmful-5g-fast-lanes-are-coming-fcc-needs-stop-them

Under the proposed rule, mobile carriers will be able to put traffic to and from apps in the slow lane, and then extort bribes from preferred apps for normal speed and delivery. They'll rely on parts of the 5G standard to pull off this trick.

The ISP cartel and the FCC insist that this is fine because web traffic won't be degraded, but of course, every service is hellbent on pushing you into using apps instead of the web. That's because the web is an open platform, which means you can install ad- and privacy-blockers. More than half of web users have installed a blocker, making it the largest boycott in human history:

https://doc.searls.com/2023/11/11/how-is-the-worlds-biggest-boycott-doing/

But reverse-engineering and modding an app is a legal minefield. Just removing the encryption from an app can trigger criminal penalties under Section 1201 of the DMCA, carrying a five-year prison sentence and a $500k fine. An app is just a web-page skinned in enough IP that it's a felony to mod it.

Apps are enshittification's vanguard, and the fact that the FCC has found a way to make them even worse is perversely impressive. They're voting on this on April 25, and they have until April 24 to fix this. They should. They really should:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-401676A1.pdf

In a just world, cheating ripoff ISPs would the top tech policy story. The operational practices of ISPs effect every single one us. We literally can't talk about tech policy without ISPs in the middle. But Net Neutrality is an also-ran in tech policy discourse, while AI – ugh ugh ugh – is the thing none of us can shut up about.

This, despite the fact that the most consequential AI applications sum up to serving as a kind of moral crumple-zone for shitty business practices. The point of AI isn't to replace customer service and other low-paid workers who have taken to demanding higher wages and better conditions – it's to fire those workers and replace them with chatbots that can't do their jobs. An AI salesdroid can't sell your boss a bot that can replace you, but they don't need to. They only have to convince your boss that the bot can do your job, even if it can't.

SF writer Karl Schroeder is one of the rare sf practitioners who grapples seriously with the future, a "strategic foresight" guy who somehow skirts the bullshit that is the field's hallmark:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

Writing on his blog, Schroeder describes the AI debates roiling the Association of Professional Futurists, and how it's sucking him into being an unwilling participant in the AI hype cycle:

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/dragged-into-the-ai-hype-cycle

Schroeder's piece is a thoughtful meditation on the relationship of SF's thought-experiments and parables about AI to the promises of AI hucksters, who promise that a) "general artificial intelligence" is just around the corner and that b) it will be worth trillions of dollars.

Schroeder – like other sf writers including Ted Chiang and Charlie Stross (and me) – comes to the conclusion that AI panic isn't about AI, it's about power. The artificial life-form devouring the planet and murdering our species is the limited liability corporation, and its substrate isn't silicon, it's us, human bodies:

What’s lying underneath all our anxieties about AGI is an anxiety that has nothing to do with Artificial Intelligence. Instead, it’s a manifestation of our growing awareness that our world is being stolen from under us. Last year’s estimate put the amount of wealth currently being transferred from the people who made it to an idle billionaire class at $5.2 trillion. Artificial General Intelligence whose environment is the server farms and sweatshops of this class is frightening only because of its capacity to accelerate this greatest of all heists.

After all, the business-case for AI is so very thin that the industry can only survive on a torrent of hype and nonsense – like claims that Amazon's "Grab and Go" stores used "AI" to monitor shoppers and automatically bill them for their purchases. In reality, the stores used thousands of low-paid Indian workers to monitor cameras and manually charge your card. This happens so often that Indian technologists joke that "AI" stands for "absent Indians":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/29/pay-no-attention/#to-the-little-man-behind-the-curtain

Isn't it funny how all the really promising AI applications are in domains that most of us aren't qualified to assess? Like the claim that Google's AI was producing millions of novel materials that will shortly revolutionize all forms of production, from construction to electronics to medical implants:

https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/millions-of-new-materials-discovered-with-deep-learning/

That's what Google's press-release claimed, anyway. But when two groups of experts actually pulled a representative sample of these "new materials" from the Deep Mind database, they found that none of these materials qualified as "credible, useful and novel":

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643

Writing about the researchers' findings for 404 Media, Jason Koebler cites Berkeley researchers who concluded that "no new materials have been discovered":

https://www.404media.co/google-says-it-discovered-millions-of-new-materials-with-ai-human-researchers/

The researchers say that AI data-mining for new materials is promising, but falls well short of Google's claim to be so transformative that it constitutes the "equivalent to nearly 800 years’ worth of knowledge" and "an order-of-magnitude expansion in stable materials known to humanity."

AI hype keeps the bubble inflating, and for so long as it keeps blowing up, all those investors who've sunk their money into AI can tell themselves that they're rich. This is the essence of "a bezzle": "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way

Among the best debezzlers of AI are the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy's Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, who edit the "AI Snake Oil" blog. Now, they've sold a book with the same title:

https://www.aisnakeoil.com/p/ai-snake-oil-is-now-available-to

Obviously, books move a lot more slowly than blogs, and so Narayanan and Kapoor say their book will focus on the timeless elements of identifying and understanding AI snake oil:

In the book, we explain the crucial differences between types of AI, why people, companies, and governments are falling for AI snake oil, why AI can’t fix social media, and why we should be far more worried about what people will do with AI than about anything AI will do on its own. While generative AI is what drives press, predictive AI used in criminal justice, finance, healthcare, and other domains remains far more consequential in people’s lives. We discuss in depth how predictive AI can go wrong. We also warn of the dangers of a world where AI continues to be controlled by largely unaccountable big tech companies.

The book's out in September and it's up for pre-order now:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/ai-snake-oil-what-artificial-intelligence-can-do-what-it-can-t-and-how-to-tell-the-difference-arvind-narayanan/21324674

One of the weirder and worst side-effects of the AI hype bubble is that it has revived the belief that it's somehow possible for giant platforms to monitor all their users' speech and remove "harmful" speech. We've tried this for years, and when humans do it, it always ends with disfavored groups being censored, while dedicated trolls, harassers and monsters evade punishment:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/como-is-infosec/

AI hype has led policy-makers to believe that we can deputize online services to spy on all their customers and block the bad ones without falling into this trap. Canada is on the verge of adopting Bill C-63, a "harmful content" regulation modeled on examples from the UK and Australia.

Writing on his blog, Canadian lawyer/activist/journalist Dimitri Lascaris describes the dire speech implications for C-63:

https://dimitrilascaris.org/2024/04/08/trudeaus-online-harms-bill-threatens-free-speech/

It's an excellent legal breakdown of the bill's provisions, but also a excellent analysis of how those provisions are likely to play out in the lives of Canadians, especially those advocating against genocide and taking other positions the that oppose the agenda of the government of the day.

Even if you like the Trudeau government and its policies, these powers will accrue to every Canadian government, including the presumptive (and inevitably, totally unhinged) near-future Conservative majority government of Pierre Poilievre.

It's been ten years since Martin Gilens and Benjamin I Page published their paper that concluded that governments make policies that are popular among elites, no matter how unpopular they are among the public:

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B

Now, this is obviously depressing, but when you see it in action, it's kind of wild. The Biden administration has declared war on junk fees, from "resort fees" charged by hotels to the dozens of line-items added to your plane ticket, rental car, or even your rent check. In response, Republican politicians are climbing to their rear haunches and, using their actual human mouths, defending junk fees:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-12-republicans-objectively-pro-junk-fee/

Congressional Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau's $8 cap on credit-card late-fees. Trump's presumptive running-mate Tim Scott is making this a campaign plank: "Vote for me and I will protect your credit-card company's right to screw you on fees!" He boasts about the lobbyists who asked him to take this position: champions of the public interest from the Consumer Bankers Association to the US Chamber of Commerce.

Banks stand to lose $10b/year from this rule (which means Americans stand to gain $10b/year from this rule). What's more, Scott's attempt to kill the rule is doomed to fail – there's just no procedural way it will fly. As David Dayen writes, "Not only does this vote put Republicans on the spot over junk fees, it’s a doomed vote, completely initiated by their own possible VP nominee."

This is an hilarious own-goal, one that only brings attention to a largely ignored – but extremely good – aspect of the Biden administration. As Adam Green of Bold Progressives told Dayen, "What’s been missing is opponents smoking themselves out and raising the volume of this fight so the public knows who is on their side."

The CFPB is a major bright spot in the Biden administration's record. They're doing all kind of innovative things, like making it easy for you to figure out which bank will give you the best deal and then letting you transfer your account and all its associated data, records and payments with a single click:

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

And now, CFPB chair Rohit Chopra has given a speech laying out the agency's plan to outlaw data-brokers:

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/prepared-remarks-of-cfpb-director-rohit-chopra-at-the-white-house-on-data-protection-and-national-security/

Yes, this is some good news! There is, in fact, good news in the world, bright spots amidst all the misery and terror. One of those bright spots? Labor.

Unions are back, baby. Not only do the vast majority of Americans favor unions, not only are new shops being unionized at rates not seen in generations, but also the largest unions are undergoing revolutions, with control being wrestled away from corrupt union bosses and given to the rank-and-file.

Many of us have heard about the high-profile victories to take back the UAW and Teamsters, but I hadn't heard about the internal struggles at the United Food and Commercial Workers, not until I read Hamilton Nolan's gripping account for In These Times:

https://inthesetimes.com/article/revolt-aisle-5-ufcw-grocery-workers-union

Nolan profiles Faye Guenther, president of UFCW Local 3000 and her successful and effective fight to bring a militant spirit back to the union, which represents a million grocery workers. Nolan describes the fight as "every bit as dramatic as any episode of Game of Thrones," and he's not wrong. This is an inspiring tale of working people taking power away from scumbag monopoly bosses and sellout fatcat leaders – and, in so doing, creating a institution that gets better wages, better working conditions, and a better economy, by helping to block giant grocery mergers like Kroger/Albertsons.

I like to end these linkdumps on an up note, so it feels weird to be closing out with an obituary, but I'd argue that any celebration of the long life and many accomplishments of my friend and mentor Anne Innis Dagg is an "up note."

I last wrote about Anne in 2020, on the release of a documentary about her work, "The Woman Who Loved Giraffes":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/02/19/pluralist-19-feb-2020/#annedagg

As you might have guessed from the title of that doc, Anne was a biologist. She was the first woman scientist to do field-work on giraffes, and that work was so brilliant and fascinating that it kicked off the modern field of giraffology, which remains a woman-dominated specialty thanks to her tireless mentoring and support for the scientists that followed her.

Anne was also the world's most fearsome slayer of junk-science "evolutionary psychology," in which "scientists" invent unfalsifiable just-so stories that prove that some odious human characteristic is actually "natural" because it can be found somewhere in the animal kingdom (i.e., "Darling, please, it's not my fault that I'm fucking my grad students, it's the bonobos!").

Anne wrote a classic – and sadly out of print – book about this that I absolutely adore, not least for having one of the best titles I've ever encountered: "Love of Shopping" Is Not a Gene:

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/04/love-of-shopping-is-not-a-gene-exposing-junk-science-and-ideology-in-darwinian-psychology/

Anne was my advisor at the University of Waterloo, an institution that denied her tenure for fifty years, despite a brilliant academic career that rivaled that of her storied father, Harold Innis ("the thinking person's Marshall McLuhan"). The fact that Waterloo never recognized Anne is doubly shameful when you consider that she was awarded the Order of Canada:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/queen-of-giraffes-among-new-order-of-canada-recipients-with-global-influence

Anne lived a brilliant live, struggling through adversity, never compromising on her principles, inspiring a vast number of students and colleagues. She lived to ninety one, and died earlier this month. Her ashes will be spread "on the breeding grounds of her beloved giraffes" in South Africa this summer:

https://obituaries.therecord.com/obituary/anne-innis-dagg-1089534658

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/2024/04/13/goulash/#material-misstatement

Image: Valeva1010 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hungarian_Goulash_Recipe.png

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[kickmuncher3]

Squirts her skirt? 😟 I think Onyx is a major contender for Emily Axford’s horniest PC.

Reminds me of the Vancouver live show where she was locked in a dungeon so decided to “rub one out” and then kicked out the ally NPC who was there to free her so that she could finish

[moosenaround2448]

Ask game tag from @dare-g (hey thanks friend sorry this took forever lmao :3)

Last Song You Listened To:

Other than the songs I posted just before this, I've had this one man project called KidMotor on repeat. Total random discovery and I love it. Every EP is different but I'm really into 777 Lives, this art student kid from Vancouver with family originally from Mexico captures the sound of sun bleached west coast post-punk in one song and transitions seamlessly into some ambient dark synthwave in another. I really really really recommend listening to every project on his bandcamp.

Last Movie You Watched: Recently rewatched the original 1976 Assault On Precinct 13 by John Carpenter. I can't get enough of that score.

Currently Watching: I honestly don't watch many new shows or much of anything really unless it's Sopranos or The Wire for the 100th time lmao so it's a lot of youtube, currently a compilation of the Super Best Friends L.A. Noir let's play on in the background every now and then.

Other Things You've Watched This Year: Ah see above for my boring answer lmao. OH! FUNNY CONNECTION I saw the latest Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movie with my dad the last time I visited home and it happened to be in the 3 screen theater :^)

Currently Reading: Forever Words - The Unknown Poems by Johnny Cash

Currently Listening To: at this very moment, Glycerine by Bush on repeat. In a general sense, been looking for and listening to underground lofi black metal projects and the like.

Currently Working On: Uhhhh I'm kinda between projects atm I guess. A few weeks ago I finished an activity/sensory board for my niece and nephew. My buddies and I are co-opping Dead Island 2 if that counts.

Current Obsession: Now that my pc is up and running again I'd like to try to get back into mixing vaporwave/mallsoft again and potentially making videos to go along with it. And my leopard gecko Godzilla :3

Tagging folks do it if you wanna no pressure <3

@200-penis-gnomes @manybackflips@soyuzam @mia-wiah @honeyed-simmy @hes-one-of-those-gothic-punks @traceamountsoftimetravel @2-easy-peasy @warkitty07 @junkdrawerbrain @shotofchinaco

[serafilms]

just some of my fav content that kpop (boy) groups have put out (very specific!!!)

i spend many an hour on it (like actually just one hour) because i don’t want to work on my wips!!!

nct 127 hit the states: haechan x dallas

HAECHAN SILVER HAIR HAECHAN SILVER HAIR i will never shut up. this and purple and we go up brown/rainbow are his best looks idgaf. they’re just soo cute here and having so much fun and i can’t even believe how fun it looks :(( i wanna have a day like this

nct 127 hit the states: mark x vancouver

such a beautiful scenery and seeing mark be so happy in his hometown w the rest of 127 is so cute. taeil and jungwoo are so funny here too

boynextdoor pretty u cover

SLAYED! nothing more to say. i love bnd performances they ate down period.

beomgyu kids’ café on workman

the editing is so funny in this video PLS and the way the little girls all hated him but the boys were obsessed with him 😭 the café staff are so fun and nice too 👍 i love beomgyu sm

nct dream candy mv

no explanation required. once you candy you never stop candying. the cutest music video EVER i love it so much. nct dream mv’s always EAT. hello future, we go up, chewing gum, go, life is still going on (track video but still cute), hot sauce

txt lo$er=lover office attack version

so creative and fun and they look so good 😋

nct dream rooftop fight

so glad they actually did this bc i was waiting for it for so long 😭 they hyped it up for so many years did NOT disappoint. nct will never not be funny.

stray kids fancy cover

THE WAY I ACTUALLY FORGOT THIS HAPPENED UNTIL JUST NOW WHEN I WAS GOING THROUGH MY YOUTUBE PLAYLIST. omg we moved on too soon

boynextdoor funnextdoor

i’m actually in the process of watching it rn but i’m actually so amazed at how genuine and funny they are?? usually a lot of groups (excluding survival show groups) take a while to warm up to the cameras and talk to them and be natural around them and their members in front of them, but you can really tell how comfortable bnd are with each other and even though they’re warming up the the cameras, they’re so cute about it and so natural and outgoing that it’s not awkward at all and so fun to watch! and on that note….

boynextdoor what? door!

they’re so funny omg also bc why are hybe editors so slay?? will never stop promoting bnd (+zb1!!! love riize too but they have sufficient hype tbh i need bnd appreciation!! 5th gen boy groups let’s gooooo)

zerobaseone zbtv

ok so this list actually isn’t specific anymore but can u blame me. they’re so funny in all of the episodes how am i to choose just one. zb1 are quite literally one of the absolute funniest groups I’ve ever seen. love them sm PLEASE stan before they disband 😞

eunchae star diary with sunghoon and heeseung

EUNCHAE !!!!! she’s so cute i love eunchae star diary 😭 this was more awkward than the jake ni-ki one tbh but it was really cute too 👍 and the way sunghoon kept trying to weasel out the tea from her like leave that girl alone hoon 😭😭

honourable mentions to the kyujin and hiyyih episodes too!! bc it’s so fun to see eunchae with her friends

en o’clock episode 12

the one where they did like the high up line training course thing idk what it’s called and they were wearing camo print like military ish stuff idk man but it’s so funny and their early days r so cute

en o’clock episodes 32 and 33

the irl among us episodes 😭😭

boys planet jelly pop

MY GODDDDDD JELLY POP ZHANG HAO I LOVE U SM. i wish he liked women and was 4 years younger and went to my uni. i purchased many zhang hao pc’s recently. jelly pop my #7 most played song in spotify. i watched it too many times. saved so many edits. ilysm king.

txt idol human theatre when they went to that house

the way the managers lifted taehyun out of the pool gets me every single time 😭😭😭

txt idol human theatre during blue hour era

my fav idol human theatre episode EVER. so funny and i love blue hour era sm‼️

stray kids family 3rd anniversary

skz with wigs will never not be iconic. and why did jeongin and felix lowkey devour acting elderly like???

to do x txt flying yoga episode 83

i love this episode so much actually omfg PLEASEE they’re so funny 😭 kpop idols doing any kind of strenuous movement exercise is my favourite content ever

to do x txt self defense episode 104

this one is CRIMINALLY underrated actually. wdym both parts don’t have 1 million views at least? can’t tell you how many times i had to rewind bc i was enjoying it so much 🫶🫶 i have plans to rewatch this soon so i also can learn some self defense moves.

run bts episode 55

this whole trip starts from ep 53 but them slapping each other’s asses and trying not to laugh is one of the funniest things i’ve ever watched actually,, this was one of the first run bts vids i watched on vlive and it brings me back when i see clips of it 😢

the nct show (nct 2020 but in 2022)

i love LOVE when nct all gets together :( nct 2018 and nct world 2.0 !!!! everything happens for a reason and sungchan and shotaro belong in riize but this video is so fun and they’re all so cute together!! field day episodes!!!!!! this and hybe game caterers fr

007” 00” the nct show

same as previous with extra emphasis on I LOVE THE 00 LINE HOKY FUCK. yangyang ❤️❤️❤️ i need to watch more wayv content i miss him

upper side dreamin’ halloween version behind the scenes

sunoo dancing to mama at the end is peak editing. enha vs ghosts let’s go!!! they’re all so cute and funny in this 🥳🥳 the way ni-ki abandoned the camera man bye 😭

txt magic island mv

words cannot express how much i miss the dream chapter: magic era. how i wish i could find a song that makes me feel the way run away and magic island do. the things i’d do to listen to that album for the first time omfg!!!! anyways this mv and the run away mv make me so emotional like 😭😭😭 also old bts txt lore used to be so confusing to me like i would spend soo so long trying to figure it out

anyways that’s it bc youtube search and sorting history filters are ass so i can’t find many more but i hope at least 1 person finds a new video to watch from this.

[iseullgc]

profile. background.

okay now that my prewritten things are out of the way — hello friendos i am here with my third muse cho iseul, future it boy, wannabe idol, etc etc etc. thank you for the welcomes (will be getting to those in a bit) but i wanted to post a short about (him) if you didn't to read the monster i put in his bg post hahaha

as always, like to plot!! i also have twitter and d*scord (young_story) if that's easier for you ^^

also, i'm looking for LGCU plots specifically for people in the house of younggong.

he was born on 010101 so when he was growing up, his nanny used to call him an angel all the time bc angel numbers

he doesn't really enjoy that his bday is on new years, but what can you do lmao

he was born in vancouver canada but he was back and forth between van and seoul a lot as a kid

he did some of his younger years in an international school in seoul (gr 8-10 age 13-15) before he moved back to canada for a while

his parents are rich business people (they both work in international trade) so he didn't see them very much when he was growing up (and sees them even less now)

was always lonely when he was younger and that has manifested as him being rather clingy with the friends that he has now

he came to seoul (permanently) last year (july 2022) when he auditioned for fun in an international legacy audition and passed

he actually feels a bit more at home in seoul bc he has a few friends here compared to being back in canada (though he does miss his nanny. she didn't really take care of him much now that he was older but they kept in touch, and he has fond memories of her being one of the only people who cared for him in comparison to his parents)

he currently is still kinda figuring out what he wants to do because while he loves to dance, he's not too sure if being an idol is cut out for him

he's a decent singer though, and he likes to think that he's unique bc of his higher tone

he works part-time at a pc room because the hours worked well for him to fit in with training and he likes to cook (even though pc bang food is usually just putting stuff into the microwave or air fryer or just adding water to noodles) he also enjoys that he doesn't really have to talk with anyone, though he's more than happy to talk to people about games or whatever (he knows games but mun doesn't hahaha)

some plot ideas

friends from canada!!

other people he might've known in the circle of Rich Business People's Kids aka they literally sat at the same table while their parents mingled at Fancy Business Dinners and Events

dorm/roommates shenanigans pls (look at you dorm a!)

he actually needs more friends in general

as always i would much rather brainstorm bc i hate coming up w plots hahahajgkkfd help

[sunskate]

omg oona and gage in 4th! a petite sibling team with good skating skills and musicality succeeding on the grand prix 🥺 i'm pleasantly surprised how 3rd/4th/5th turned out. though if ZK had a clean choreo step, they'd be in 4th

congratulations R/A on their first GP medal 😭 i like them more and more - they skate well and have an out of the box vibe. they also had an issue with the choreo step and split the panel in their tech score but were solidly 3rd in PCS. she's been on the international circuit since 2009! she was only 15 and went to the Olympics for Georgia - and here she is going stronger than ever

ZK are so talented and nearly transcend the Igor-ness of this program- the arm waving and accents are distracting, but they're engaging performers. she has flair - it's telling that a good part of the flair in the choreo is done individually. when they skate in hold, they're not close together, you can see the little bumps and slight mistimings that come up (like in the opening lift), but there are also a lot of ways they're working well together. he's uncommonly gifted at partnering besides being a good skater, but he's adjusting and waiting for her a whole lot less than he was a year ago - her progress is pretty amazing. i'm glad that the judging so far is fairly reasonable and is taking both their strengths and their newness into account

christopher buchanan, the UK judge strikes again, his scores for FG are so high that every single mark he gave them was tossed out. if you look at how he's scored them over the years, it's truly ridiculous. you expect that judges boost their own teams, but he takes it to a whole other level

the pink ladies were in texas last week and now in vancouver too 🌸

ok i like this piper and paul fd a lot - it's the best they've had since vincent. that said, he has one facial expression, and by contrast, she did this in the judges’s faces🙃

but it's intricate and flowing, and the music is big enough that they have a lot of room to grow - i'm looking forward to see how this develops

[froghwon]

Highlights from the nct dream concert on Friday:

FINALLY GETTING TO MEET CHELLE (@yutagirlie) IN PERSON!!! 😭❤️

getting souvenirs from a local shop and being told 3/4 of the members were in there earlier 🫠🫠

(it had to have been mark and chenle for sure, but the other 1-2 members are a toss up. jisung maybe??? jeno???? 🤷‍♀️)

randomly seeing a Jeno bday truck around pike place market before the concert <3

(not photographed, but there was a chihuahua sitting in the passenger seat that looked sooo tired that it had to be there sjkfdnksj the truck drove away before i could get a pic 😔😔)

getting surprised by a random czennie before the concert, only for her to hand me a bag of jeno goodies before she walked off without giving chelle anything 🤣 (and none for gretchen weiners BYEEEE)

getting a random pc with my dream tshirt, and it being jeno :'')

jarms <3 (and honorable mention to the cleavage)

jenos back 😌🙏

mark during one of his ments said that his fav thing about seattle is that if u go north a bit, vancouver is there lmao (not even anything to do with seattle, seattle sweetie, im so sorry 🤣🤣 but also, u should have come to vancouver on the tour then u bitch)

Before jenos ment, he didnt start talking right away bc people were screaming. but then he cupped his ear like he was waiting to hear something from us??? so people started barking 🤡ksjkdfnks and i joined in bc i thought it was hilarious 🤡🤡 and then haechan started singing happy bday, so we all joined in :P

jisung running across the stage to ask mark for help with his english ment <3 and haechan narrating their off mic convo like "mark, i love you" "jisung i love you too" 🤡

renjun did so well with his english ments!!!! i was so impressed/proud <3333

also jisung is such an incredible live performer fr even when he isnt the center, he puts 100% into his dancing and has incredible stage presence 👌

jaemin having the time of his life during the encore <3

also he put on a cinnamoroll backpack, which matched the one that i wore 😌 (u can see it during the goodbye ment video in my google drive)

my jeno banner and i are visible in the audience photo <3

i put a white arrow pointing to me and my jeno banner :P

all in all, it was a very fun time!! 👍 but i already miss them, and i wanna see them in concert again!!! 😩😩

also i took a few videos during the concert, which u can see in this google drive here (just pretend u cant hear me during saturday drip)

[lovelyboned]

Sending Online Flowers Internationally

While you are away and somebody critical to you is living in Canada, you can in any case have the option to send your contemplations and articulations through flowers. Regardless of whether you are miles away, you can send beautiful Vancouver flowers to those living in Canada. These flowers are newly picked and prepared by a florist in Canada. Thusly, regardless of whether you are not as of now this website remaining in Canada and you might want to send flowers to somebody particular to you, you should simply to order these flowers online.

For as far back as decade it is as yet impossible to send flowers particularly if you are living from a different area as the recipient. Beside that, bearing the cost of an international flowers delivery is additionally very costly. The flowers are additionally not ensured new since it should be sent out starting with one spot then onto the next. Because of the headways in innovation, particularly the PCs and the web, it is presently conceivable to order Vancouver flowers and send them to your loved ones living in Canada.

If you are working abroad and your much loved mother is living in Canada, you can send her a lovely bundle of flowers during mother's day. One of the upsides of ordering online is that you can plan its delivery so you wouldn't have a reason that you have failed to remember the event. Ordering flowers online offers us a chance to send flowers to those people who are living miles from us.

For you to have the option to send pretty Vancouver flowers particularly planned and picked by a florist from Canada, you need to find a website that offers such administrations. You can utilize your number one web crawler to search for websites offering these administrations. Remember that few websites might offer different bundles and costs, so contingent upon your budget, pick a website that offers flowers that would accommodate your budget and your taste. Likewise, you need to ensure that the website is dependable and not a trick webpage. Via looking online, you'd have the option to find many florists in Canada offering those various administrations.

When you have a rundown of the websites offering these administrations, you can limit your rundown by wiping out websites that don't accumulate your budget and taste. Likewise, you need to check if the website accuses you of delivery administrations or different charges beside the fundamental cost of the bouquet. Apparently, these may not be remembered for the costs of the flowers, so you need to carefully peruse the website.

[battle-of-alberta]

now that this has arrived safely in the mail to its destination, I can post it! :D

here is another piece of my bet with my amazing pal @orcanadian-blog featuring her personifications of the translink trolley buses (who occasionally forget to cheer for the canucks)

now go check out the amazing piece she did for me :D

me outside on my mental health bike ride waiting for the paint to dry

[mhalachai]

Random but do you have a laptop recommendation? I work from home and also do a lot of writing in my spare time. (and if any of your followers know how to get over anxiety over lithium ion powered laptops, pls let me know my stress decided to laser on the risk of the thing exploding as my current laptop is definitely getting close to its last legs and yeesh it's not fun when a part of your brain thinks you've got a bomb in the house. and you need to use the bomb)

i love how random this is. and actually yes, this is an area where i have unexpectedly strong opinions. (Also if anyone reading has any suggestions as to the second question, please drop them into the replies!)

first off, if you're not going to be focusing on gaming or on intensive design software, you can probably get something very functional (new or refurbished) for a reasonable price. Skip the Apple and Chromebook (Apple laptops are super-expensive for what you get, and hard to fix, and Chromebooks are limited in nearly every way) You're going to want to look for a cheap pc laptop with interchangeable parts in case you need to affect repairs over the years.

do you know an IT person? not a software engineer, but someone who builds and fixes machines? if you work, your company might have someone who they use to get their equipment - you could ask them where they get their equipment.

I'm partial to buying in-person, mostly so you can know you're getting what you're paying for. I've had a lot of luck in second-hand or build your own laptop places - you can check online review before you head in to make sure you're getting a real store. If their website looks like it was hand-coded in 1998, don't let that scare you off. That's a sign of authenticity.

And if you have concerns about the laptop battery when you're deciding what to buy, with a PC you can pop the battery out and google the make/model when you're in the store - to see if they have any recalls or any other listed problems.

Also don't know where you're at geographically, but if on the off chance you're in Vancouver BC, I recommend the Hackery on Victoria just north of Hastings. They're good folks.

Good luck and happy computing :)

[nikkeisimmer]

In the Market…

Browsing places like FB Marketplace and Craigslist has given me an appreciation for value-hunting. Being in the market to replace my overheated and now-deceased laptop has me searching for something a little less than retail for a gaming PC with a little more bang for the limited buck.

Frankly, what I’m searching for is a gently used (that might be an oxymoron when it comes to gaming machines) gaming laptop that I’m able to swap out the existing SSD and give it a 1TB SSD, then if it has space enough to do so, add in an HDD for storage. Most of the second-hand gaming laptops are coming in around the 16GB RAM mark which means I’ll be getting more bang than if I went retail and paid close to $2K for a gaming laptop brand new in the box.

Wandering around online has led me to some interesting finds that could help me save money and still be able to play Sims 3 and SWTOR at ultra graphics settings and that’s what I want. Between that and writing my “fanfiction” for JAG and Sims 3 and I’ll be kept occupied for whatever leisure time I have that I’m not devoting to getting my photography freelance business back off the ground.

…and that is another post in itself. I can’t sit happily playing Sims 3 all the time until I’ve turned into mulch. I have to be doing something. Which means going back to what I know best: photography. And if I can manage to get my brain to organize properly and the rest of my body to remain in adequate health, I may be taking the opportunity to go for a week and photograph the Rocky Mountains by taking a nice little drive through the Rockies. At 52, yeah, the time’s ticking, but it’s been something I’ve wanted to do for a while now. My body won’t let me climb mountains to reach a nice secluded spot or wander trails with a grade of 8% or steeper, but the Rockies and Banff, I can do as well as scenics of Vancouver.

The gaming laptop would be a combination gaming PC and video/photo editing tool and if I can manage to get it for a reasonable price, all the better. And it would provide me a base to build up better with a desktop down the road as the (photography) business grows as well as provide me with some power for gaming.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me THIS WEDNESDAY (Apr 17) in CHICAGO, then Torino (Apr 21) Marin County (Apr 27), Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

#20yrsago Canadian government spending public funds to develop DRM https://web.archive.org/web/20040508011338/www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/pubs/2004/4_e.cfm#5

#15yrsago Pirate Bay defendants found guilty, sentenced to jail https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/apr/17/the-pirate-bay-trial-guilty-verdict

#15yrsago London cops mug tourist for his bus-station photos https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/apr/16/police-delete-tourist-photos

#5yrsago On the eve of a contentious election, Twitter suspends the accounts of progressive activists https://www.sprawlcalgary.com/twitter-suspends-left-leaning-albertans-before-election

#5yrsago Your kid’s “smart watch” lets anyone in the world trace their location. Again. https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/tic-toc-pwned/

#1yrago How To Make the Least-Worst Mastodon Threads https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/16/how-to-make-the-least-worst-mastodon-threads/

[gameforestdach]

In einer Zeit, die von weitverbreiteten Entlassungen in der Gaming-Branche geprägt ist, hebt sich Capcom durch bedeutende Gehaltserhöhungen für seine Mitarbeitenden ab. Diese Initiative unterstreicht nicht nur die Widerstandsfähigkeit von Capcom, sondern positioniert das Unternehmen auch als Vorreiter in der Mitarbeiterentlohnung während wirtschaftlich herausfordernder Zeiten. Capcom kündigt Gehaltserhöhungen für neu eingestellte Mitarbeitende in Japan an. Bereits beschäftigte Mitarbeitende erhalten dieses Jahr durchschnittlich über 5% mehr Gehalt. Einführung einer einmaligen Sonderzahlung sowie Verbesserungen bei Bonus- und aktienbasierten Vergütungssystemen. Während die globale Gaming-Industrie finanziellen Belastungen gegenübersteht, die zu Entlassungen und Budgetkürzungen führen, sticht Capcoms Entscheidung, die Gehälter der Mitarbeitenden zu erhöhen, hervor. Das in Osaka ansässige Unternehmen hat das Einstiegsgehalt für Hochschulabsolventen in Japan von ¥235,000 auf ¥300,000 pro Monat angehoben. Diese Anpassung, obwohl moderat, ist bedeutend im Kontext der aktuellen wirtschaftlichen Umgebung und der Herausforderungen bei den Lebenshaltungskosten, mit denen Arbeitnehmende in Japan konfrontiert sind. Capcoms Strategie geht über bloße Gehaltserhöhungen hinaus. Das Unternehmen führt auch eine einmalige Sonderzahlung für seine Mitarbeitenden ein, eine Geste der Investition in diejenigen, die zum zukünftigen Wachstum von Capcom beitragen. Weiterhin verfeinert Capcom sein Bonussystem, um es stärker an die Leistung des Unternehmens zu koppeln, und führt ein aktienbasiertes Vergütungsschema für Mitarbeitende ein. Die Gaming-Branche hat in den letzten Jahren mehrere große Entlassungswellen erlebt, wobei Capcom 2018 nach der Schließung von Capcom Vancouver selbst betroffen war. Seitdem hat das Unternehmen jedoch eine Renaissance erlebt und hochgelobte Titel wie Monster Hunter World, Remakes von Resident Evil und Street Fighter 6 veröffentlicht. CapComs finanzieller und kritischer Erfolg hat es dem Unternehmen ermöglicht, in seine Belegschaft zu investieren, was sich deutlich vom branchenweiten Trend zu Kosteneinsparungen abhebt. Diese Entscheidung von Capcom erfolgt auf den Ruf des japanischen Premierministers Fumio Kishida hin, die Inflation zu bekämpfen, wobei auch andere japanische Spieleunternehmen wie FromSoftware, Nintendo und Sega Gehaltserhöhungen ankündigten. Die Details zu den Gehaltserhöhungen von Capcom und ob diese weltweit gelten, müssen noch geklärt werden, was die Notwendigkeit weiterer Kommunikation seitens des Unternehmens hinsichtlich seiner Vergütungspolitik unterstreicht. Für weitere Einblicke in CapComs innovative Herangehensweise in der Gaming-Branche, siehe unsere Berichterstattung auf PC Gamer. Entdecke außerdem, wie technologische Fortschritte die Zukunft der Industrie prägen, wie etwa Nvidias GPU der nächsten Generation B200 KI auf GameForest. Capcom führt bei der Wertschätzung des Wohlergehens der Mitarbeitenden Zusammenfassend spiegelt CapComs Initiative zur Erhöhung der Gehälter und zur Verbesserung der Vergütungspakete sein Engagement für das Wohlergehen der Mitarbeitenden und seine optimistische Sicht auf die Zukunft wider. Während die Gaming-Branche weiterhin wirtschaftliche Unsicherheiten navigiert, setzen CapComs Aktionen ein positives Beispiel für andere Unternehmen.