#remote published applications

[lensman-arms-race]

A tiny fic about Titan TV's origins

This is actually a (bowdlerised) excerpt from a fic I already published last year. I never posted it here because it's Phaeton up to their usual bullshit a little too explicit for this blog. (I try to keep this blog basically work-safe except for funny swearing, à la Polycephaly.) However, I thought people might still want to read it who otherwise wouldn't have.

Imperator = TV Matriarch

You get an imaginary cookie if you correctly guess why I chose the serial numbers I did.

--

Every TV-unit contributed to the building of the Titan in some way.

Every engineer, every mechanic, had worked together to design and build the most perfect version of the upgrade technology that had been created by the other Alliance factions. Every agent had either sourced materials and components or parlayed with the other factions for them.

Every single TV-unit had had their wrist-blades replaced, and the old ones melted down for the construction of the Titan's shell. Regardless of how much or how little they'd been able to contribute otherwise, every single TV would be able to say that they had added something to the Titan.

Out of all the applicants for being remade into the Titan, a final sixteen had been shortlisted. All sixteen had been trained for the three possibilities that awaited them. Of these sixteen, one would become the Titan, and the two in second and third place would become the Imperator's two bodyguards. The rest would return to their work as agents, but not before all candidates had had their serial numbers expunged, never to be re-used, and had new serials allocated. No-one except the Titan themself would ever know which candidate had been chosen… none besides Engineer Sixteen-Sixty-Eight, the superintendent of all engineers in the faction.

Agent Seventeen-Ninety-One beheld the dormant Titan construct with which they would soon be merged. "…You made me so beautiful."

Agent Ninety-One and Engineer Sixty-Eight stood in the highest of the control rooms within the Titan hangar, allowing them to see the magnificent entirety of the Titan shell, still connected by huge roping twists of cables and pipes to the machinery of the hangar. The shell twitched slightly.

"Why does it move?" asked Ninety-One. "It is still mindless, isn't it?"

"In every sense that matters," replied Sixty-Eight. "It is animate only on the most basic level, so that we can remotely control it to test all its systems. It is still useless in battle without an intelligent mind."

The Titan's mind would come from Seventeen-Ninety-One, the most brilliant and perfect of all TV agents.

Engineer Sixty-Eight continued: "We shall be sorry to lose you as an agent. You always were the best of us. …It almost wasn't worth running the trials."

"I'm sure the Imperator appreciated it," replied Ninety-One, "They'll get two fine bodyguards out of it. …You call me 'the best of us', but really, that honour's the Imperator's. I did consider petitioning for the Imperator to become the Titan instead, and I could take the Imperator's place. But this way is better, I'm sure of it now. Better to have a superb Titan and a superb Imperator, than to have the superlative Titan but a mediocre Imperator. Our Imperator will do a finer job than I ever could of leading our faction." Ninety-One turned away from looking at its soon-to-be new shell and faced Sixty-Eight. "What happens to my old shell?"

"Stripped of all identifying serials and then mixed in with the other candidates' shells. All of them will be partially rebuilt and re-serialised. No-one except us will know which candidate became the Titan. Not even the Imperator will have any idea."

A pause, then Agent Ninety-One drew their wrist-blades. "Won't you spar with me, Sixty-Eight? Once I am remade, I never again will be able to participate in such a simple pleasure."

"I…won't be much of a challenge for you…"

"I am not asking for a competition. I just want one last round of play."

"Of course, Ninety-One. One last happy memory from your old life? I can do that for you."

The engineer drew their own blades, and both TVs faced each other in combat stance. Engineer Sixty-Eight fought nervously, both from facing such an elite agent and at the unexpected deviation from the night's schedule, but Agent Ninety-One didn't seem at all frustrated or disappointed by such an easy opponent. Sixty-Eight gradually became a little bolder, as Ninety-One parried all their attacks with no apparent effort - Sixty-Eight felt they could therefore fight a little more fiercely, as the chance of hurting the Titan-in-waiting was so low. The Engineer fought harder, in the process leaving their defence wide open - enabling the Agent to swoop inwards and perform the attack that would have disarmed them in a real fight.

"Do you yield?" asked Ninety-One.

"Of course - I've no chance of coming back from that!" Sixty-Eight sounded amused. The sparring match couldn't have had any other outcome… though the engineer had enjoyed getting to spar with such a skilled agent, and they were grateful that Ninety-One hadn't simply let them win - Sixty-Eight thought they would have found that patronising rather than pleasing.

As the two TVs retracted their blades, Agent Ninety-One spread their arms to invite a hug from Engineer Sixty-Eight.

"…I suppose a final embrace is apt for such a momentous occasion," commented Sixty-Eight, stepping forward to accept.

"Once I assume my rightful form… I will be an entity of only destruction. There are so many things I must put aside and will never experience again. Thank you for letting me spar one last time."

"I'm glad it helped?"

"…I know I am not going to die now, not really. But in a way, I will cease to be. Agent Ninety-One will be no more, and only the Titan will remain. …I've already wasted too much of our time, haven't I? We should proceed."

Engineer Sixty-Eight nodded solemnly. "It's time for our Titan to be born." The Engineer led the Titan-in-waiting to a wall-mounted apparatus designed to incapacitate a unit and prepare them for breakdown.

Ninety-One willingly stepped into place and allowed Sixty-Eight to close all restraints and connect all cables.

Sixty-Eight placed a hand on the activation lever. "Any last words as Agent Seventeen-Ninety-One?"

"…All toilets will die."

...

The entity awoke. Was it awake? How did it know what 'awake' was? Had it done this before? Whose body was this? Had it ever had a body before? "Is it my body?" thought the entity. It must be. Whose else's would it be? Is it normal to have a body and not know if it's yours?

"I feel unfinished," thought the entity. But how did it know that, it thought to itself. What does it mean to be unfinished? Had it ever had a finished body to compare it to?

It used to have a screen, didn't it? Is it still there? The entity discovered it had a screen. The entity probed its consciousness around its shell (since when did it have a shell? Was that there before?), searching for a way to link its mind to it.

The entity's mind felt as though it was falling apart into fragments, though it was not breaking apart. Each of the mind-pieces felt linked together by chains of fire, stronger than anything. The mind-pieces unfurled into a magnificent fiery web that spread and tunnelled though every part of this strange new shell… then the web pulled itself taut and snapped all of itself back into place.

The entity powered on its screen. It saw… shapes. Angles and lines… resolved into a hangar with gantries. How did it know the words 'hangar' and 'gantry'? It knew it had seen them before. But how? It was just born.

"Titan?" called out Sixty-Eight.

The entity instantly knew who it was. What it was. Its life's purpose.

The Titan inclined its colossal screen to the source of the voice. "…Sixty-Eight?"

"Yes!" Sixty-Eight sounded delighted. "Oh, Titan… welcome."

The Titan tried to lower its head down to get a better look at Sixty-Eight, and was stopped by all the hangar-apparatus still holding it in place. The Titan's mind, still new and fresh, wasn't sure what it was supposed to do to resolve that. "Sixty-Eight. Need you."

The engineer teleported to a gantry near the Titan's head. "You're not quite finished activating," explained Sixty-Eight. "We have to leave you linked up for just a little while longer."

"Frightened," replied the Titan.

"Don't be, dear Titan," replied Sixty-Eight, lifting a hand to stroke the Titan's screen. "All engineers are here to look after you."

"…Better. Thank you. …What happens next?"

"Please… just continue to rest. Your mind needs to work itself into your new shell. Let it happen at its own pace."

The Titan shakily raised a hand onto the gantry. "Would like to hold hands with you," explained the Titan, "Can't yet. Haven't got used to shell. Don't want to crush you."

"I'll hold hands with you, Titan," Sixty-Eight said as they knelt next to the Titan's hand and stroked it.

A morass of punctuation displayed on the Titan's screen. Sixty-Eight guessed the Titan was trying to render an emoticon but was having difficulty.

Four more TVs joined Engineer Sixty-Eight on the gantry: three normal-sized and one comparatively colossal, though still small compared to the TV Titan. The Titan beheld the new units, wondering why they were familiar, before a memory surfaced. "Imperator. Polycephaly. …Two unknown. Successful candidates? Imperator's bodyguards."

"Got it in one," said the largest of the four units - Polycephaly. Polycephaly knelt by the Titan's hand and pulled one of the Titan's fingers into a hug. "Titan, I went through this too. You will prevail. I remember it was difficult and frightening for me those first few hours after activation. It might be harder for you, because there's more of you to get used to. Or maybe it will go easier, because your mind is more powerful. Either way, I'll see you through it. Polycephaly's here for you."

The Titan's screen flickered with random punctuation, and briefly managed to display a smiling emoticon, before fading back to whitish static.

The Imperator stepped forth and wedged themself between Polycephaly and Engineer Sixty-Eight, joining in on petting the Titan's hand. The Imperator's two bodyguards stood respectfully at a distance, until the Imperator wordlessly beckoned them both over. The two bodyguards seemed apprehensive but stepped forth nevertheless, reverently placing a single hand each upon the Titan's hand.

The five units remained quietly in place for several minutes, as the Titan enjoyed their soothing and comforting presence, and took in the sight of all its other engineers calmly and efficiently going back and forth and carrying out their tasks.

"Sixty-Eight…" spoke the Titan after a while, "Ask me who I am."

"…What?"

"Indulge me, my engineer. Ask me who I am."

"…Who are you?"

"I am your Titan… and I am perfect in every way."

[thecurioustale]

Art Begets Art and the Law Should Respect This

I believe in the tradition of folk art, which is to say: Borrow liberally and lovingly.

It's a practice we've been mostly sterilized from embracing in our modern corporatist society, where all of the big-name, commonly-recognizable "IPs" are imprisoned behind layer after layer of obnoxious lawyers with nothing better to do than torment the innocent. It's a terrible thing, a deprivation of our cultural oxygen—a crime against art and ethics.

As an artist myself, I often have to thread the needle of building upon the inspiring works of others while still remaining within the letter of our outrageous IP laws. It's something I think about a lot.

In Galaxy Federal, for instance, I mentioned last time that the name "Galaxy Federal" was inspired, among other things, by the mention of the "Galaxy Federal Police" title screen of the original Metroid game. When I was settling on this title for my series, I also found that Galaxy Federal is the trademarked name of a bank. I spent considerable time and mental resources, years ago, to determine to my satisfaction that it is permissible under the law for me to use this title.

I have to do way too much of this bullshit, and I know it'll still be for naught: If I ever do become an even remotely successful author, I'm sure I'll be sued anyway, probably for something I never even realized was an "infringement" despite all my vigilance. Because, at the end of the day, for big corporations and for IP trolls, our IP laws are just a racketeering scheme—a side hustle. I mean, Best Western trademarked the word "seniority." If someone wants to sue you, they're gonna find a way.

I am not really a "from scratch" writer. I don't sit down at a blank page and just come up with prose from first principles. My art is almost always inspired by things that I experience in my life, or by the ideas that result from those experiences. Sometimes—frequently, even—my inspirations come from things that are copyrighted or trademarked. I have written in the past about the influence of the video game The Secret of Mana on me as a kid. Among many other inspirations, that game has a neat sandship in it, and that's why the desert easts of Relance are prevalent with sandships.

Over the years I've become a pro at reinterpreting IP-blocked inspirations into usable, original ones—both in terms of the legal research I've done and the skills I've developed at transforming an IP-blocked inspiration into something usable. I've also become more knowledgeable about what I can get away with quoting directly: Certain things cannot be copyrighted, and trademarks have a finite zone of applicability.

It's all a very needless and skill-intensive ballet to achieve something that should be directly accessible. Obviously, there do need to be limits. As an artist myself, I am keenly aware that I wouldn't want to have no special claim to my own work. But if I were to rewrite our outrageous IP laws—and over the years I have amassed considerable material for a book on this—I would make it vastly easier for artists and the public in general to "borrow liberally and lovingly" from the sources that inspire them. Our current IP laws are like a crime-ridden police state: The security is in all the wrong places and just doesn't work. We could relax the laws considerably without hurting artists, and potentially even tighten them in other respects to better combat trolls and thieves.

But in the meantime, here's my advice: Don't let it daunt you. Dance the friggin' ballet. Get good at transformation. Liberate intellectual property from its prison in spirit if not in substance. And, when you're fearless and/or sufficiently obscure, just straight-up pirate. I think society has a duty to reject unjust laws through word and deed.

I don't usually don my pirate's hat, but I do sometimes. When I published the Prelude in 2015, for a limited time I also published a free companion soundtrack consisting entirely of, gasp, copyrighted music. Nowhere is the horror of our modern IP laws more evident than in the realm of music. What I did was basically create a curated playlist, to help set the mood of the story. I don't know if anyone even availed themselves of that soundtrack, yet for me to license all of those pieces to make my limited-time links lawful would have cost me thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars! All for something that it's possible nobody other than me even listened to. That's a crime against art. And it's a crime against artists. Our draconian IP laws hurt small artists the most. If I had had thousands of fans, I'd have been able to pay to play—and I would have done so, or perhaps I would have spent the equivalent money to hire composers to write an original soundtrack. But, as a nobody-artist and a poor person, whose own Curious Score musical compositions are long in the making, the lawful avenues are all unassailably closed off to me. This too is an injustice, of another sort.

Doing the companion soundtrack was the right thing to do in the tradition of folk art. None of those other artists (or, let's be real, the corporate goliaths that hoard most of this "content" in their treasure-vaults) was deprived of a single penny; in fact that's one of the great lies of the IP lawyers and their corporate masters: Cultural interchange usually improves income for people whose work is quoted by others. Borrow liberally and lovingly—and give credit where credit is due.

That's the way it should be.

And, one day, that's how it will be again.

[bpod-bpod]

Magnetic Morphing

Using magnetic forces to remotely shape 3D printed hydrogel scaffolds with biomedical applications such as for growing endothelial cells in vessel networks (pictured)

Read the published research paper here

Image from work by Ruoxiao Xie and Yuanxiong Cao, and colleagues

Department of Materials, Department of Bioengineering and Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Imperial College London, London and Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, University of Oxford, UK

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Science Advances, February 2024

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Novel crystals enhance mid-infrared laser performance

A research group led by Prof. Sun Dunlu from Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), Chinese Academy of Sciences, has successfully synthesized novel mid-infrared Ho,Pr:YAP and Er:YGGAG crystals using the Czchralski (Cz) method, and improved the continuous-wave laser performance of laser diode (LD) side-pumped Er:YSGG crystal through thermal bonding technology. The research results were published in Optics Express. The 2.7~3 μm mid-infrared lasers are located in the strong absorption band of water molecules, which have wide application prospects in fields such as biomedical, optical remote sensing, and nonlinear optics. In a recent study, scientists have found a way to make lasers more powerful and efficient. By adjusting the components in the laser material, they discovered that the performance could be improved. Specifically, they increased the concentration of one component of Ho3+ ions and added just the suitable amount of another component of Pr3+ ions.

Read more.

[benk625-blog]

Confections Pulverizer

Commandant Effyl of Military intelligence began the briefing. Behind and above them was a large viewscreen displaying the galaxy's most popular video game, "Confections Pulverized." Game play involved manipulation of brightly colored geometric shapes so that three or more were aligned orthogonally. Success resulted in pleasant, on screen explosions and increased score. The audience quietly chuckled.

"The incongruity of this briefing is not lost on me." The Commandant began. "No doubt many of you are wondering why Military Intelligence would bother researching such a harmless frivolity. My own subordinates had a difficult time convincing me of the grave threat human malware presented.

“The game on display is relatively harmless. The danger is the underlying code within it. Almost all human programs include instructions to save and transmit user location data. In short, they have turned our electronic devices into little spies that note our every move.”

The viewscreen changed to display military personnel exercising in group calisthenics.

"The coordinates of several secret military bases became known to humans through fitness trackers. Hidden in the code of so-called "health software" is location tracking. Earth government has purchased the data generated by the applications, or apps. These apps are available to consumers free of charge. This data was analyzed and it was noted that users flagged as military service members had begun exercising in a routine manner in remote locations."

The next image was a spinning circle of question marks.

"Trivia games are being used to assess information ubiquity in user populations. Using algorithmic, artificial intelligence, the game learns the depth and breadth of each user's information and skill level. Military Intelligence was informed of this by an arms research group that noticed the trivia categories had gradually shifted from general knowledge questions towards categories that match their professional expertise."

Above the Commandant's head was a sound wave & a timer icon.

"This is an application titled 'Sound Worms.' It is a specific type of trivia game. Players are presented with an audio file of popular music. The task is to identify the composition in the least amount of time. Preliminary reports indicate the data mined from this app aids in the creation of propaganda."

New image is a nine digit number. Straight lines emanate from it to other numbers. Webs and clusters form as the video continues.

"Military Intelligence has been able to purchase data sets from the human malware companies. Displayed behind me are social networks. The deductions and probability extrapolations generated are truly staggering. We are still analyzing the data and will make a full report later”

Icons and symbols referring to romance and sexuality start to flicker onto the screen. Quickly the display becomes a scrolling screen of tiny thumbnail images.

“These are just a small sampling of the countless dating apps that humans have been flooding the personal electronic software market with. I say without exaggeration that they will fundamentally destabilize interstellar society. There are unpleasant and unspoken differences between public morality and private behavior. A staggering amount of politicians and bureaucrats have become susceptible to blackmail and corruption.”

Stifled gasps and nervous laughter from the audience

“Compounding this danger is that the private entities that publish this malware do not properly secure their data networks. Collectives that are not associated with governmental or commercial entities routinely release huge swaths of privileged user information on the galactinet. So far these disclosures have been small in scale and limited in damage. If anyone here has used these services, I implore you to stop at once and delete it from your devices.”

More than half the attendees start pulling out various objects and interacting with operating screens. Some hurriedly leave the lecture hall. Effyl was losing their audience.

“Oh, and one last thing.” The Commandant pulls out their own personal device. “These damn things are recording audio and video without our permission.”

[donnerpartyofone]

I once found myself foolishly complaining to my old therapist about some deeply unsatisfying exchange I had on tumblr with somebody who had willfully misconstrued what I said and was going after me about what they decided I meant, just because that was what they would rather talk about. You know, the usual. My therapist threw me off my game by just asking my why I post here to begin with, instead of indulging my desire to passionately bitch and moan. She seemed very skeptical about whatever I said, I had the idea that she wanted me to admit that I was either looking for a fight, or attention, or validation from a bad source where I am destined to encounter a lot of friction. (Man o man, if only she knew about the absolutely bonkers and irrational "you are valid" culture we have here...) And I mean, she's right, you ARE destined to encounter a lot of friction on tumblr if you do anything remotely personal with it, but somehow that annoyance can be outweighed by

a) the internal satisfaction of putting your thoughts in order

b) the catharsis of venting, even into the void

c) the small but unignorable possibility that someone will deeply understand what you said, or have something relevant and provocative to add based on their own unique and valuable experience/expertise.

I think about turning off replies all the time now, quite a lot of the time there's someone being rude either on purpose or inadvertently, because they're too obtuse or thoughtless to consider the implications or real usefulness of what they are saying. Sometimes I think about turning off reblogs on everything too, and I'm trying to develop the habit of stopping before I post to ask myself, every single time, how I'm going to feel when some total cretin reblogs something that is obviously either not universally applicable (e.g. just personal in-the-moment venting) or actually not their business (discussion of personal tragedy that you'd think people would have the good sense to leave alone, like just let strangers who need to talk about something do so in peace?). All of these things have happened more and more lately, and I think what would be really great for me is if I developed a much tougher hide, if I developed a mental baleen that filters out all the shit I don't need to care about and lets in all the tasty, nutritious stuff that I'm actually here for, that I like so much that it makes all the chaff totally worth it.

My problem is that I don't have that natural thing that tells you what incoming stimulus is relevant and what you can completely ignore, I'm curious about EVERYTHING especially how other people think and behave. When I hear something insulting or idiotic directed at me I immediately start processing it like it's a mystery that it is my duty to unravel, instead of casually throwing it in the trash like I should. This morning I posted about how I was reminded of a personal tragedy by some stupid thing a business did to me, and I get this complete stranger unloading his own version of that tragedy, only to then condemn me morally for my interaction with the business. Like does he think I'm going to be so humbled by his "direct action" that it's going to change the world? What was the goal besides picking a fight before the sun is all the way up in the sky? Yesterday I posted links to a bunch of film scholarship I published along with some new blu ray releases, literally calling it my life's work, and somebody reblogged it and put in the tags that they don't like one of the movies and they don't know what the other two are. So...what was the point here? Are you planning on buying two expensive collector's editions of movies you don't know by a director you don't like? I mean thanks for promoting my work, I guess if the price of your sponsorship is that you say rude, pointless things that don't mean anything to anyone, then I'll take it? It might have a positive impact on my mental health if I turned off replies and reblogs universally, but then I wouldn't get to hear from any of the smart and nice guys I've met on here who have opened my eyes to all sorts of things. So yeah my Christmas wish or New Year's resolution or whatever is to give a shit much, much more selectively, for the rest of my life.

PS Regarding disagreements on the internet: There is an important qualitative difference between someone saying something you find disagreeable on their own blog, which you don't even have to be aware of if you don't want to, and someone going out of their away to like cross into your yard to start a fight about what's on your blog ~as if~ you had called them on the phone and said it directly to them personally. Most of what you see on the internet doesn't require your input at all, if you don't really have anything to add except your own emotional content. The difference: Learn it, know it, live it!

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Geologists discover hidden magmatism on the moon

Lunar igneous activities including intrusive and extrusive magmatism, and their products contain significant information about the lunar interior and its thermal state. Their distribution is asymmetrical on the nearside and farside, reflecting the global lunar dichotomy. In addition to previously returned lunar samples all from nearside (Apollo, Luna, and Chang’e-5), samples from the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin on the farside have long been thought to hold the key to rebalancing the asymmetrical understandings of the Moon and disclosing the lunar dichotomy conundrum.

Earlier this year, the Chang’e-6 mission of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, successfully launched on May 3, landed on the lunar surface on June 2, and returned to the Earth on June 25 carrying a total of 1935.3g of lunar soils. It is the world’s first lunar farside sample-return mission, which landed in the south of the Apollo basin within the SPA basin on the farside. These precious samples would open a window to solve the long-standing question of lunar dichotomy, even reshape human’s knowledge of our closest neighbour. However, compared with the well-known mare volcanism surrounding the Chang’e-6 landing site, the intrusive magmatic activities have a much more obscure presence and origin, impeding future sample analyses when they are available for application.

In a recent research paper published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Dr Yuqi QIAN, Professor Joseph MICHALSKI and Professor Guochun ZHAO from the Department of Earth Sciences at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and their domestic and international collaborators have comprehensively studied the intrusive magmatism of the Chang’e-6 landing site and its surroundings based on remote sensing data. The study revealed their extensive distributions and obscure nature with significant implications for the petrogenesis of lunar plutonic rocks and the Chang’e-6 mission, which will facilitate scientists’ further study of lunar farside.

Key Findings The study has found that intrusive magmatism is widespread in the SPA basin. They occur in various forms including sills beneath floor-modified craters, linear and ring dikes shown by gravity data, and Mg-suite intrusions with characteristic spectral absorptions. These observations agree with the intermediate-thick crust of SPA where intrusion is favored. Landing in the SPA basin, Chang’e-6 likely collected plutonic rocks, excavated and transported by adjacent impact craters to the sampling site, that could be examined by the ongoing sample studies. They have discovered two heavily degraded floor-fractured craters (see Apollo X and Apollo Q craters in Figure 1), inspiring to identify more similar features on the Moon. All indicate that intrusive magmatism is abundant in the Chang’e-6 sampling region.

This study has traced potential plutonic materials in the Chang’e-6 samples and found that Mg-suite materials highly likely exist, primarily from the western peak ring of the Apollo basin delivered by Chaffee S crater. These Mg-rich materials contain crucial information on the origin of mysterious KREEP-poor Mg-suite rocks. Samples from both the intrusive and extrusive magmatism from the never sampled farside, especially the mysterious Mg-suite, will shed further light on solving the lunar dichotomy conundrum and a series of fundamental scientific questions relating to secondary crust building and early evolution of the Moon.

TOP IMAGE: Chang’e-6 landing site locates to the southern Apollo basin in the northeast of the South Pole-Aitken basin, lunar farside.  Credit Y. Qian

LOWER IMAGE:  Intrusive magmatism is extensive across the South Pole-Aitken basin, whose products highly likely collected by the Chang’e-6 mission.  Credit Y. Qian

[papaya-inspiration]

Hi! How are you doing? Have you published a lot of papers? That sounds really cool! How long does the whole process take, if you don't mind me asking?

Hey puppy! I'm doing pretty well. Been working on a new side project that's got me very jazzed lately (but don't tell my supervisor, because it's not strictly what they're paying me to work rn jkjkj XD)

Have you published a lot of papers?

The answer is... yes and no. I only have one first author paper right now--that means that I lead and did the majority of the work and writing myself. I also have one 2nd author and one 3rd author paper, which is honestly a bit behind where I wanted to be at this point in grad school. I'll be applying to post doctoral positions in the fall, and it would have been really nice to have a few more papers that I was the lead on under my belt before I get there. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to push a project through the publication process, and my current projects probably won't quite get there in time for applications. (I've got one and a half that I still kind of have hope for. We'll see.)

That said, I'm on over two dozen other papers. I'm an observational astronomer, and for several years now I've volunteered to take survey data on one of the large groundbased telescopes. What this means is that every so often I stay up all night operating the telescope and taking data for other people. (This happens remotely over zoom and an ssh terminal window, I don't actually get to go to the telescope.) In return, the people who use that data give me authorship on their paper. I'm not usually involved in the data analysis, but my name is on there! Separately, I'm part of a few large collaborations where I help with target vetting or data cleaning, and I also get offered authorship for that work too.

How long does the whole process take, if you don't mind me asking?

Oh gosh. A long ass time. Then double it. First you have to do all the data analysis, which always takes three times as long as you expect it to. Then you have to write the paper, which you usually do simultaneously with redoing a bunch of the analysis because you realize there are a bunch of other angles to cover. Then you send out the paper to co-authors and give them anywhere from two-weeks to a month to review it and send you comments. Sometimes this results in more redoing of analysis. If the edits are substantial enough, you send it around for another round of comments. Then you submit it to the journal, who can take anywhere up to a few months to match you with a referee, who reads your paper and sends you back additional comments. Then you have a few months to do revisions and apply their suggested changes, send it around to co-authors for comments again, and then send it back in. Sometimes there is a second round of refereeing, though that isn't common. Then it goes to proof and, eventually is published.

The whole process, starting from when you "finish" the analysis and the first draft of the paper writing, can take anywhere from a few months to a few years. It varies by journal as well. Publishing in high profile journals like Science and Nature can take a notoriously long time. (I am on one paper in Science, and it nearly two years from the first time we submitted it to when it appeared in print.) That said, shorter papers in more specialized journals can go through in just a few months. And there are other options, like research notes (which don't get peer reviewed) that go up even faster.

[saint--claire]

Invitation to the Deep  - Term Glossary

Hi Everybody!

I was blown away by people’s interest with Invitation to the Deep, and to continue sharing the love (and because I’m a nerd) I wanted to continue the glossary in a more readable form.  The term definition overviews were really blowing out some of the end notes, so I decided to shuffle everything here, where I can make a nice tidy list.  It’s in alphabetical order per chapter, because to do it any other way would have annoyed me.

As I say in the story, please, please take everything you read with a grain of salt.  The story is fictional, some of the scenarios I put everyone in are blown well outside the bounds of plausibility.  I don’t specialize in diving, much less tec diving, and my marine license has been expired for a good few years.  Someone who has a metric ton of dive experience is J_Bailler, who wrote the outstanding ‘Thermocline’ in 2020, and whose technical experience inspired me to get my hands dirty with this fic.

I won’t continually reblog this post, but I will edit and update it each time I update the story itself, which will contain a link to this. 

**I am apparently now editing this post with the final additions of the story, only to acknowledge that many of us have now had a crash course in imploding submersibles.  I only have two main comments on this - the first being that I originally began writing and later publishing this story early this year, and the second is that the entirety of this story occurs less than a kilometer below sea level.

Chapter 1

FIFO - fly-in-fly-out.  Usually applicable for people working mines, oil rigs, or certain other trade jobs where the site you work on is highly remote.  You might work a 4-on-2-off schedule, which is where you’d fly out and work on site, staying in provided accommodation for 4 weeks, and then you’d fly home for 2 weeks before rinse and repeating.

LKP - last known position.  Think vessels (or submarine pods) lost at sea, or who’ve sent up distress signals before become non-contactable.

Lucet Tenebris - an entirely fictional underwater cave labyrinth set somewhere off the Indian ocean, near Indonesia.

Ring of Fire - Too long to explain in a post.   A very real and not made up geographical feature of the globe.  https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/ring-fire/

VHF - very high frequency (radios used at sea).

Yamaha - in this setting, a boat engine.  Noisy.

Chapter 2

Neoprene - The material wetsuits are made out of, to help people keep insulated and stay warm under water.  

Chapter 3

Fenders - big squishy things you put between ships to stop them damaging each other if they bump together.  Also used to stop boats banging into the wood/metal of marinas.

Chapter 4

Blood bent - a version of a slang term used to refer to decompression sickness (DCS) where pressure changes alter and form bubbles of the gases naturally inside human blood vessels.  DCS can often cause air bubbles to settle in and around major key joints and cause people to bend over in excruciating pain, which is how it got its name, the bends.

Embolism - In diving contexts, a gas embolism or an AGE would usually refer to a bubble of air in the blood.  This is really, really bad - it has the potential to shut off blood supply to major organs including the heart, brain, or lungs.  There’s no short or simple way to explain how they form, put if you look into barotrauma embolisms it’s a fascinating matter.

Equalising ears - Underwater at changing atmospheric pressure, water pressure bends the eardrum inwards.  You equalise this change by a variety of techniques, the same way you might in an aeroplane.  If you keep going deeper and don’t equalise your ears, you run the risk of damaging them or blowing them out completely.  Hurts like a bitch.

External airway - a measure of first aid and emergency resuscitation - if there is risk to an individual’s own airway collapsing or not being able to be maintained in the middle of an emergency scenario, intubation or an external airway implementation will be performed at speed.  An intubation tube is semi-rigid -the aim is that when you’re connected to oxygen, we want full confirmation that the air is traveling down the trachea and into the lungs, not stopping in its tracks because the airway’s collapsed.

Hyperbaric chamber - would suggest searching for a picture.  In a hyperbaric chamber, air pressure is increased higher than normal air pressure so a person’s lungs can pull in more oxygen than they would under normal circumstances.

Chapter 5

Klick - kilometre.

Neoprene ratings - Wetsuits come in varying thickness.  You might see them referred to as a 3:2 or a 5:3 or a 7:5 - this would indicate the material is 7mm thick over the chest and torso, 5mm thick on the arms and legs.  The thicker the material, the warmer you'll be.  The deeper you go, the thicker you'll want it!

Chapter 6

Buoyancy vest - also known as a BCD. It allows you to control your buoyancy in the water, allowing you to easily float on the surface without sinking under all the weight of your gear, and maintain neutral buoyancy while submerged (so you don’t sink further than the depth you are aiming to go to).

Dive computer -  a meter or device used by divers that measure elapsed time and depth during a dive, and use this data to calculate and display an ascent profile which will aim to prevent DCS.  Most will also monitor real-time ambient pressure input, some allow for gas switching during the dive, other features include water temp and compass info.

Gas blending - To dive at the depths of this fictional reef, you can’t just use straight oxygen or atmospheric air.  Gas blending mixes very specific concentrations of a variety of gases to create a breathable component.  It’s very specialised work and you have to undergo highly specialised training to do it.

Tec diving - I’m going to borrow J_Bailler’s explanation and hope she does not mind, which explains it far more concisely than I can.  The key differences between regular recreational scuba diving and tec diving:– scuba divers use air or air mixed with oxygen and generally stay at depths shallower than 40 metres.  Tec divers use various mixed gases to be able to go deeper and to stay there longer.  To breathe pure oxygen at deep depths can kill you.  Technical diving also includes cave diving almost as a default term, because you need advanced training to dive in an enclosed environment that has a ceiling.  In a normal dive, if something goes balls to the wall wrong, at least you can come up, whether you bend your blood or not.  In cave diving...

Trimix - Put simply, trimix is a blended composition of oxygen, helium, and nitrogen, used on deep descents.

Safety stops - planned stops as you reascend from the deep to decompress and allow your blood the chance to off-gas the excess nitrogen forming, and hopefully prevent decompression sickness.

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Cleat - The metal, wooden, or plastic part that protrudes from a jetty that you tie off a boat to.

S&S34 - A fibreglass monohull sailboat, primarily designed for cruising and racing.  For those of you who are interested or know the name, this is the yacht Jessica Watson sailed around the world in, at age 16.  

Hope everyone enjoys reading!  Let me know if there are other terms you’d like to see laid out.

[jcmarchi]

Future-Ready Enterprises: The Crucial Role of Large Vision Models (LVMs)

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/future-ready-enterprises-the-crucial-role-of-large-vision-models-lvms/

Future-Ready Enterprises: The Crucial Role of Large Vision Models (LVMs)

What are Large Vision Models (LVMs)

Over the last few decades, the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has experienced rapid growth, resulting in significant changes to various aspects of human society and business operations. AI has proven to be useful in task automation and process optimization, as well as in promoting creativity and innovation. However, as data complexity and diversity continue to increase, there is a growing need for more advanced AI models that can comprehend and handle these challenges effectively. This is where the emergence of Large Vision Models (LVMs) becomes crucial.

LVMs are a new category of AI models specifically designed for analyzing and interpreting visual information, such as images and videos, on a large scale, with impressive accuracy. Unlike traditional computer vision models that rely on manual feature crafting, LVMs leverage deep learning techniques, utilizing extensive datasets to generate authentic and diverse outputs. An outstanding feature of LVMs is their ability to seamlessly integrate visual information with other modalities, such as natural language and audio, enabling a comprehensive understanding and generation of multimodal outputs.

LVMs are defined by their key attributes and capabilities, including their proficiency in advanced image and video processing tasks related to natural language and visual information. This includes tasks like generating captions, descriptions, stories, code, and more. LVMs also exhibit multimodal learning by effectively processing information from various sources, such as text, images, videos, and audio, resulting in outputs across different modalities.

Additionally, LVMs possess adaptability through transfer learning, meaning they can apply knowledge gained from one domain or task to another, with the capability to adapt to new data or scenarios through minimal fine-tuning. Moreover, their real-time decision-making capabilities empower rapid and adaptive responses, supporting interactive applications in gaming, education, and entertainment.

How LVMs Can Boost Enterprise Performance and Innovation?

Adopting LVMs can provide enterprises with powerful and promising technology to navigate the evolving AI discipline, making them more future-ready and competitive. LVMs have the potential to enhance productivity, efficiency, and innovation across various domains and applications. However, it is important to consider the ethical, security, and integration challenges associated with LVMs, which require responsible and careful management.

Moreover, LVMs enable insightful analytics by extracting and synthesizing information from diverse visual data sources, including images, videos, and text. Their capability to generate realistic outputs, such as captions, descriptions, stories, and code based on visual inputs, empowers enterprises to make informed decisions and optimize strategies. The creative potential of LVMs emerges in their ability to develop new business models and opportunities, particularly those using visual data and multimodal capabilities.

Prominent examples of enterprises adopting LVMs for these advantages include Landing AI, a computer vision cloud platform addressing diverse computer vision challenges, and Snowflake, a cloud data platform facilitating LVM deployment through Snowpark Container Services. Additionally, OpenAI, contributes to LVM development with models like GPT-4, CLIP, DALL-E, and OpenAI Codex, capable of handling various tasks involving natural language and visual information.

In the post-pandemic landscape, LVMs offer additional benefits by assisting enterprises in adapting to remote work, online shopping trends, and digital transformation. Whether enabling remote collaboration, enhancing online marketing and sales through personalized recommendations, or contributing to digital health and wellness via telemedicine, LVMs emerge as powerful tools.

Challenges and Considerations for Enterprises in LVM Adoption

While the promises of LVMs are extensive, their adoption is not without challenges and considerations. Ethical implications are significant, covering issues related to bias, transparency, and accountability. Instances of bias in data or outputs can lead to unfair or inaccurate representations, potentially undermining the trust and fairness associated with LVMs. Thus, ensuring transparency in how LVMs operate and the accountability of developers and users for their consequences becomes essential.

Security concerns add another layer of complexity, requiring the protection of sensitive data processed by LVMs and precautions against adversarial attacks. Sensitive information, ranging from health records to financial transactions, demands robust security measures to preserve privacy, integrity, and reliability.

Integration and scalability hurdles pose additional challenges, especially for large enterprises. Ensuring compatibility with existing systems and processes becomes a crucial factor to consider. Enterprises need to explore tools and technologies that facilitate and optimize the integration of LVMs. Container services, cloud platforms, and specialized platforms for computer vision offer solutions to enhance the interoperability, performance, and accessibility of LVMs.

To tackle these challenges, enterprises must adopt best practices and frameworks for responsible LVM use. Prioritizing data quality, establishing governance policies, and complying with relevant regulations are important steps. These measures ensure the validity, consistency, and accountability of LVMs, enhancing their value, performance, and compliance within enterprise settings.

Future Trends and Possibilities for LVMs

With the adoption of digital transformation by enterprises, the domain of LVMs is poised for further evolution. Anticipated advancements in model architectures, training techniques, and application areas will drive LVMs to become more robust, efficient, and versatile. For example, self-supervised learning, which enables LVMs to learn from unlabeled data without human intervention, is expected to gain prominence.

Likewise, transformer models, renowned for their ability to process sequential data using attention mechanisms, are likely to contribute to state-of-the-art outcomes in various tasks. Similarly, Zero-shot learning, allowing LVMs to perform tasks they have not been explicitly trained on, is set to expand their capabilities even further.

Simultaneously, the scope of LVM application areas is expected to widen, encompassing new industries and domains. Medical imaging, in particular, holds promise as an avenue where LVMs could assist in the diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment of various diseases and conditions, including cancer, COVID-19, and Alzheimer’s.

In the e-commerce sector, LVMs are expected to enhance personalization, optimize pricing strategies, and increase conversion rates by analyzing and generating images and videos of products and customers. The entertainment industry also stands to benefit as LVMs contribute to the creation and distribution of captivating and immersive content across movies, games, and music.

To fully utilize the potential of these future trends, enterprises must focus on acquiring and developing the necessary skills and competencies for the adoption and implementation of LVMs. In addition to technical challenges, successfully integrating LVMs into enterprise workflows requires a clear strategic vision, a robust organizational culture, and a capable team. Key skills and competencies include data literacy, which encompasses the ability to understand, analyze, and communicate data.

The Bottom Line

In conclusion, LVMs are effective tools for enterprises, promising transformative impacts on productivity, efficiency, and innovation. Despite challenges, embracing best practices and advanced technologies can overcome hurdles. LVMs are envisioned not just as tools but as pivotal contributors to the next technological era, requiring a thoughtful approach. A practical adoption of LVMs ensures future readiness, acknowledging their evolving role for responsible integration into business processes.

[epenvs3000w24]

Unit 2: My Ideal Role of Environmental Interpreter

While reflecting on my experiences with others' environmental interpretations, the memories that linger are those of connections between tangible elements of a place and intangible meanings (Beck et al., 2018). In this way, the interpreter planted a seed to evoke thought so as to foster a revelation, personal understanding, and feeling. However, not everyone grows their roots the same way. Individuals are unique in their learning styles, which was highlighted when completing the “What's Your Learning Style?” quiz. Just as people grow roots in different ways, so too do they connect with and interpret their surroundings uniquely. Acknowledging this diversity is crucial, especially when acting as an interpreter for a place. While a location might speak for itself in some instances, it is equally important to tailor interpretations to resonate with the audience, sparking a connection that evokes emotion—a gift of a spark (Beck et al., 2018).

As an interpreter, my goal is to have visitors able to convey significance, by being able to appeal to their emotions and allowing them to create tangible connections with the environment. Drawing inspiration from my Montessori upbringing, I value the natural curiosity to learn, which I believe is crucial for environment interpretation (Beck et al., 2018). To enrich visitor experiences, I intend to provide an interpretive recreation as Beck et al. (2018) explained. Combining a theme for interpretation (as per the “T” in TORE), along with self-guided opportunities, encourages visitors to explore the environment in their own ways and develop their own connections (Beck et al., 2018). 

Along with endless opportunities to learn curiously, passion emerges as a central skill I would need for effective environmental interpretation. As Tilden expressed, sharing genuine love for the subject is paramount in engaging the audience (Beck et al., 2018). Without genuine passion, the interpretive experience falls short, rendering it no more valuable than reading a pamphlet. 

In my ideal role, I could exude this passion on a remote island where I lived for two months in 2021 for a marine conservation internship. Immersed in the island’s culture and community, I developed a profound passion for its nature. This newfound passion became integral to my daily life through my daily tasks, where I eagerly shared it with others, particularly children from neighbouring islands. Employing various techniques such as presentations, listening games, and hands-on activities, my team and I tailored our approach to different learning styles, providing a real-world application of environmental interpretation. The island as depicted in the pictures, speaks for itself, but I believe there is much more to discover if you know where to look.

Tailoring communication to evoke emotion and instill passion would allow me to showcase the hidden treasures of this 16 km² island to a diverse audience, providing personal opportunities to develop perception of place and explore and appreciate its nature as much as I do! 

Reference:

Beck, L., Cable, T. T., and Knudson, D. M. (2018). Interpreting cultural and natural heritage: For A Better World. Sagamore Publishing.

[zombiesun]

Hello, I was just wondering if you could share the process details of you legally changing your name? I would really really love to change mine, I’m also of the legal age, and I just don’t know where to even start. Any links you could share that might help would also be great if not the self-description. Even though we don’t know each other, I am so so happy for you as a trans person and want to send all of the congratulations in the world to you. Happy Vin day !!!!!!!!!!

Absolutely! I can't really share links because I don't know what state you're in and the name changing process is different depending on the state and country you live in, but I'll let you know what I did, and then you can look up what the process is wherever you live.

you'll need to get fingerprinted and submit them to the FBI and your state bureau. you can look up fingerprinting services near you (I got fingerprinted in a library study hall by a remote company) and they'll submit them for you. I got my results back instantly, but when I got fingerprinted a few years back they sent me my results. be sure to double-check your information because the first time I got fingerprinted they said I was born in 1976 and had no criminal record. I was not born in 1976. this will cost around $80-100.

after you have your fingerprinting results back you have 90 days to submit your application for a name chance with your courts. this is the point where you google (state name) adult name change process and see what paperwork you need to file. I printed out my paperwork, filed it, and then took it to my county's court house (along with my fingerprints) and gave them to the clerk. they'll review your application to make sure everything is filled out correctly and either charge you a filing fee ($100) or, if you're below the poverty line your fee will be waved (at least in my state). they'll then give you your court date.

my court was held over zoom but there are many states that still hold them in person. it took about three weeks after I filed for my court date to happen but when it arrived I logged on. the judge confirmed the name I wanted to change to, asked me a few more legal questions. and then said my name had gone from (x) to my name now. in some places, you have to actually publish your name in a newspaper three times before your name change is official. in my state, that is waived because it's for gender affirming reasons but my ex who lives in Portland had to have their name on a billboard for 3+ weeks because legality is weird. it depends on your state whether you have to do that part of the process.

after court you'll be sent the paperwork that confirms that your name is in fact, changed. you then take this piece of paper to the DMV to get your ID changed and then buy additional copies of that paperwork (in my state it's $20 dollars each) for your social security and passport if you have one. then you'll start the process of making sure your bank, medical records, and any other place that has your name on file is aware of your name change.

That's the process I followed! Again, each state is different so be sure to google what paperwork is required but universally, it goes fingerprinting/background check, filing, court date, possible name publishing depending on the state, and then working on getting your IDs changed. Good luck!

Thanks again for the well-wishes! I should really remember today specifically as a little personal holiday, so I appreciate that.

[breakingarrows]

Demoscene and “Art” Games on PlayStation 3

Early in the seventh console generation, with the inclusion of storefronts allowing a user to download games on every home console, the ability to self-publish or be picked up by a publisher increased thanks to this new ease of access and lower costs of digital distribution as compared to boxed retail products. For Sony and the PlayStation 3, this would see the release of some games both Sony, games media, and players alike would sometimes deem non-games, especially those that came from a group of artists called demosceners which we’ll look at today.

Currently: Linger in Shadows .detuned

To be completed: flOw Echochrome PixelJunk Eden Flower Noby Noby Boy Journey Datura PixelJunk 4am Papo & Yo The Unfinished Swan Proteus Bound Linger in Shadows

Released: Thursday, October 9, 2008 On: PlayStation Network for PlayStation 3 Developed by: Plastic Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.

Linger in Shadows was announced at the demoparty Breakpoint 2008 in Germany. Breakpoint was a successor to the demoparty mekka & symposium which ran from 1995 - 2002. Demoparties came out of the demoscene in which software crackers would create their own audiovisual effects and playbacks to be shared via demoparties, the internet, and inserted into cracked software. Organized parties would break the competition into categories of size and platform, letting the restrictions feed creativity. As explained by the organizers of the demoparty mekka & symposium:

What is MS? The mekka & symposium is a demo-scene party that was organized annually at Easter. More than 1200 young Multimedia artists gathered here for four days in order to meet similarly-minded people, to exchange ideas and to participate in the competitions, in which individuals and groups show off their talents in a certain form of electronic art called Demos. ms2002 has been the eighth and last event in a traditional party series that started back in 1995, when 300 mostly German visitors attended the BlackBox Symposium. To our 2002 event, about 1220 visitors came from all over Europe, and beyond - "sceners" have come to celebrate with us from countries as remote as Estonia and Israel! The event was never a LAN or gaming party. People playing Qu*ke or Half-Life on our events would have been considered non-creative by our "serious" visitors, and as a matter of fact, the participation of gamers on our parties has always been exceptionally low, which made the MS one of the last big enjoyable events for real sceners.

Breakpoint would see its first iteration during Easter 2003, Friday, April 18 - Monday, April 21. The lead organizer was Scamp who detailed in an interview some of the difficulties in running the first party such as heating, internet access, attendance-to-expense, and getting permission to have the meeting during the Easter holiday in Germany. Attendance cost was reportedly €40.00 for men and no cost for women. It was during Breakpoint 2008 that the team called Plastic would reveal a video teasing the project Linger in Shadows for the PlayStation 3, with official confirmation coming later that year at E3.

Linger in Shadows was released on October 9, 2008 as an “interactive art” application for $2.99. Sony was quick to assert that this was not the typical PSN release. Rusty Buchert on the PlayStation Blog would state, “I’ll start with the easier side, and that is Linger in Shadows is NOT a game. It was never meant to be a game and it will never be a game.” In IGN’s “Impressions” piece on the game Chris Roper stated, “Linger in Shadows hit the PlayStation Network this week, but make no mistake - it is not a game. It even says so in about three different places just to make sure the point gets across. Instead, it's being dubbed as "interactive art", which is a pretty fitting description.” GameSpot’s Ricardo Torres would similarly remark, “While this isn't a game…”

“Games” are restricted to things such as Pac-Man, Madden NFL, or even LittleBigPlanet. Linger in Shadows is interactable (the player makes inputs and the game responds and reacts) though because it doesn’t fall into the traditional, high score, killing, or numbers-go-up categories so familiar to game players it becomes a non-game. Sony understood this and is why they would denote it as “not a game” themselves in its promotions. While seeking out the various titles listed at the beginning of this article the main things I was looking for were “art” games that lacked the traditional video-game framework such as a scoring system or games that had “artsy” visual styles but were really just dressing up a traditional platformer or point and click adventure game.

Due to its “non-game” status, reviews from release are fairly scarce. HonestGamers’ 1.5/5 community review by zippdementia says, “What bothers me is that this was such an obvious attempt to make an extra buck off the PS3 owner with overblown advertising. Next time, Sony, tell me what's really inside your package. Don't tell me you're going to give me cheese and then hand me Cheetos.” Eurogamer’s Dan Whitehead appeared to be the most adept at talking about the game in a “review” context, ending theirs with “Linger therefore exists in a strange new realm between the hardcore demoscene and the mainstream audience being asked to pay to play around with its peculiar concept. It's an interesting move if it opens up Sony's platform for more demos to reach a broader audience, but perhaps not if they have to pass through the gateway of establishment approval to get there. This experiment may at least tempt a few more people to Google "demoscene" and, payment aside, it's refreshing to see something so esoteric being championed in such a public way. You certainly won't see anything like this on Xbox Live or the Wii Store. That, at the very least, makes Linger in Shadows something rather special.”

Modern reviews have not been kind either, as Gamerhub’s ⅖ reviewer Steven Barry writes in 2022 that, “To be fair to developer Plastic, they do go out of their way to emphasise that this is not actually a game and is instead ‘interactive art’. So, it does feel a little strange to review this like any other game when in reality it’s a glorified tech demo. However, this was a purchasable product on release in 2008 over the Playstation Network so that is why it’s ultimately eligible for critique.”

Since most people were more preoccupied with grappling with its status as a “non-game,” there wasn’t much discussion about what it actually is and does. Linger in Shadows plays and unfurls itself as a dream. There is an unlogic to the procession of movement, space, and plot. The first signal of this is when watching the dog try and run through the air to escape the ethereal black cloud presence haunting the concrete setting. The dog's attempts to flee are vigorous, but without much effect, calling back to a shared experience nearly everyone who dreams has, of trying to run but finding you are unable to move at much more than a snail’s pace.

The game mostly finds itself following the presence of a black sentient cloud figure, as it moves about an impossible high rise grouping and its various unlogic features, such as a large flower atop a levitating rock, barrels similarly suspended in the air, and the biggest “tech-demo” flag of “how many moving objects of different shape and synchronicity can we have at the same time?” The black cloud can be interpreted as a malevolent entity even before it turns the dog to stone due to its coloring and the faint imagery moving about within it recalling the antennae of insects, both elements long associated with the impure. A cat impassively watches as the cloud turns the dog to stone, maybe something of a mirroring of the player impassively watching and even participating, without much of a feeling for what’s occurring on screen. Soon after, a giant creature bearing a mask with eyes and a body of trailing tentacles appears. In contrast to the black cloud, which effortlessly weaved in, out, and between various objects without much effect, this mask creature blunders its way toppling various objects as it seeks out the petrified dog which it also ends up breaking apart. Bearing familiar eyes and a more tangent shape than the ethereal black cloud, this mask creature is instantly interpreted as the “good guy.” Confronted by the black cloud, the mask ascends a pillar of stone atop of which is a semicircle of columns surrounding a statue of a woman. The black cloud begins petrifying the mask’s tentacles, furthering the black cloud’s villainy and the mask’s innocence as a victim. The “camera” is destroyed by a toppled column leading to the credits. As the demoscene is more about visual demonstrations than narrative, it's not surprising that the one displayed here is pretty simple and straightforward and more a way to show off different character models and what the player can manipulate.

The “game” portion of the game is that during this entire video playback you can at any point pause and manipulate the camera and objects on-screen. Since everything is a rendered object you can escape the usual limitations of regular video playback, and the UI even resembles the UI of media playback on the console or any DVD/Blu-Ray player of the time. The game itself will guide you through what types of manipulation you can do, with an additional hidden object portion tied to finding images that are shout-outs to other demogroups tucked away just out of frame. Playing Linger in Shadows is mostly a touch and go affair of moving the timecode forward and backward and moving around the controller and pressing buttons to see what sort of movement you can do in this specific frame or scene. Aside from whatever you can come up with yourself there isn’t any set of objectives beyond the tutorial teachings and then the image hunting collection.

It is this lack of purpose or list of things to do that I think most frustrates people into declaring Linger in Shadows “not a game!” Coming from arcades with high scores to home consoles with experience to accrue and levels to beat and people to shoot, we’ve been conditioned to think of games as filling a certain role and no other. Even Shadow of the Colossus in 2005 was heralded as the fulfillment of “Games as art” that would convince people like Roger Ebert of the medium’s value. That goal is self-defeating anyway, but also Shadow of the Colossus, while a phenomenal work, still falls into the traditional video game category quite easily, with the game bearing the objective to kill 18 colossi that are framed as unique boss encounters. While there is no progression in terms of level or equipment you do slowly increase our stamina and health over the course of the game. Nobody would mistake Shadow of the Colossus as an “interactive art piece” like they would Linger in Shadows, but both are video games.

Watching another of Plastic’s demos from 2008, called “Into the Pink,” many similarities come up, from more explicit bugs, more imposing crawling shadows, moving lots of objects floating through the air, and distorting text/images so that they jitter. Another project of theirs, “Catzilla,” is much more an entertainment object playing with destruction on a city-wide scale which just happened to come out the same year as Man of Steel and its similar experiments.

This art stands among the other “demoscene” game(s) on PlayStation 3 as a period when Sony was interested in courting the margins of games in order to sell its struggling console. At the time, the PlayStation 3 was in dead last place when it came to home console sales, and so Sony had to look at alternative ways to attract engagement. One of those ways was to present the PlayStation 3 as something more than just a video game console. Early advertisements for the PlayStation 3 are routinely mocked, though they really don’t stray too far from some of the advertisements for the PlayStation 2, such as those famously directed by David Lynch. These more “heady” adverts attempt to sell the console based not on gameplay footage but on an idea of what the console could do/be. It didn’t work.

Not until the Kevin Butler series of commercials did PlayStation 3 begin to majorly change its presentation to the larger gaming audience. PlayStation Plus, courting indies, and the humbled approach they took towards developers with the creation of the PlayStation 4, culminating in the disaster that was the Xbox One’s lead-up to launch, secured their continued success to this day. The cost of that success has been a lack of effort to engage the margins of gaming, something unofficially certified with the closure of its internal Japan Studio in early 2021 and further with the shuttering of PixelOpus  and the announcement of ending support for MediaMolecule’s Dreams just this month. With its focus on huge titles, contemporary Sony would not throw money towards a group of students and tell them to “go wild” and release their demoware title on the PlayStation Network. The closest we have gotten in recent years was the release of Dreams, a game to create other games from MediaMolecule, itself a development team founded in part by a demoscene participant named Alex Evans known as Statix/TPOLM during the 1990s.

This is not to write off Microsoft and Nintendo’s attempts to court the indie space for success, as Xbox Live famously had its “Summer of Arcade'' titles, as well as being the console that really began today’s online network connectivity and distribution of smaller titles on the OG Xbox. Microsoft still had a restrictive storefront however, with file sizes and other limitations holding back small developers from seeking it out as the best place to try and publish their game. Nintendo also had some success with indie releases under the WiiWare brand (World of Goo and Bit.Trip Beat), but failed to do much to advertise or promote them.

One question that persists is in the intention behind the team of Plastic in creating Linger in Shadows. Dipping into demos and their productions, what strikes me is that the challenge comes from crafting advanced renders on platforms with limited and dated capabilities. As I’ll detail later, .theprodukkt was able to create a first person shooter with a file size of 96kb, and results for demoparties are broken down by platforms such as the C64, Amiga, and restricted file sizes such as 64kb. So why choose to utilize the PlayStation 3? Proudly boasted as the most powerful next-generation console in 2007, what appeal does that have to a group regularly challenging themselves to see what they can create using computers from the 1980s? Perhaps it was the challenge of working with the difficult to develop for CELL processor powered console. Perhaps they just thought it would be fun to swindle Sony out of some cash and just create whatever their whim deemed suitable for a wider audience instead of fellow demosceners. As I mentioned before, portions of Linger in Shadows definitely seem to be examples of the team simply trying to see how much they could get away with without breaking the game, though in 2023 it can be hard to look at it with the same eyes as someone in 2008, as graphics are continually chasing more and more fidelity with reality.

Shared between Linger in Shadows and the next demoscene game, .detuned, is Rusty Buchert, a producer at Sony Santa Monica who was the face of these demoscene games to the PlayStation audience at the time. Previously at Interplay Entertainment from 1990 - 2003, Buchert joined Sony Santa Monica Studio in 2003 and his major credits include flOw, Everyday Shooter, Linger in Shadows, Flower, .detuned, and despite his departure from the company in 2011 gained Special Thanks in Datura, Sorcery, The Unfinished Swan, and Sound Shapes. Speaking to Engadget in 2007, Buchert detailed his role as focusing on producing PSN titles for the PlayStation 3 and details what type of games and culture Sony was interested in cultivating.

We started searching for games like this [flOw] from the outset and we were searching through the Indie Scene right out the gate. In general the Scene thinks outside the traditional development box. All too often people get indoctrinated into one general way of thinking about games in genre, design, and execution. You are not going to get anything new thinking like that. We were betting on the fact that people wanted something new and not a rehash of a rehash of a rehash. There are a lot of games to sort through. When we find a gem we start pursuing it. Some work out, some don't. I recently heard back from one developer that wanted to finish college and then he would like to try. The game made me think he was already programming professionally. There are some other experimental projects that will also fit in this vein too. These are very much art and an extremely different take on interactivity.

In a later post on the PlayStation Blog, Buchert also discusses how he, and another producer, George Weising (who is still at Sony today) scoured the Indie Games Festival booth at GDC 2007 where they found and signed a deal with the team behind Everyday Shooter. Their seeking out of indie games led to the next project from a group called Plastic.

Linger in Shadows developer Plastic was a Polish demogroup led by Michal Staniszewski (bonzaj). Alongside Staniszewski for all three Plastic projects were Grzegorz Juraszek (fei) and Damian Bajowski (mime). Those who developed Linger in Shadows and went on to Datura in 2012 are Krzysztof Deoniziak (rork) and Wojciech Golczewski (Blz). Shared staff between Datura and Bound, released for the PlayStation 4 in 2016, are Andrzej Uszakow (uho), Kinga Staniszewska, Marek Bielawski (mare), and Michał Szymczyk (misz). Plastic joined Epic Games in 2022, and was credited in Cyberpunk 2077 under “Outsource Partners,” though Staniszewski details on his Linkedin that the work was, “Responsible for visual development and prototyping of Cyberspace in Cyberpunk 2077.” 

Grzegorz Juraszek (fei) is still active in the scene as he is the main organizer of the demoparty Riverwash, the largest of its kind in Poland. Damian Bajowski (mime) continues to work as an artist, most recently contributing to an episode of Netflix’s “Love, Death and Robots” called “Manson’s Rats.” Micahl Staniszewski (bonzaj) now works at Epic Games and has many YouTube videos talking about Plastic’s last game, Bound, which was released on PlayStation 4 in 2016. He has one lone video on the making of Linger in Shadows from December 2008. Krzysztof Deoniziak (rork) is also active in the scene, being credited on several demos in 2022. Wojciech Golczewski (Blz) continues to make music, though hasn’t been a participant in the demoscene since his time with Plastic early on. Andrzej Uszakow (uho) appears to still be at CD Projekt Red as a “Senior Engine Programmer.” I couldn't find much of anything to see what Kinga Staniszewska has been up to since Bound’s release. Marek Bielawski (mare) is currently a senior audio programmer at CD Projekt Red. Michał Szymczyk (misz) has the most surprising transition, while most of the developers stuck to Poland, Szymczyk is a Senior Software Engineer at the LA-based developer Infinity Ward starting in September 2017.

Plastic’s work on Linger in Shadow would be the first, but not only, demoscene game to find its way onto the PlayStation 3, as within a year of release another title from another demogroup would appear on the PlayStation Network.

.detuned

Released: Thursday, October 15, 2009 On: PlayStation Network for PlayStation 3 Developed by: .theprodukkt GmbH Published by: Sony Computer Entertainment America Inc.

Developed by .theprodukkt, .detuned™ is a personalized, interactive music experience which gives you the opportunity to create dynamic artwork in real-time to accompany your XMB™ music collection. Manipulate the given scene by interacting with and modifying its unique graphics using the DUALSHOCK®3 Wireless Controller. Plus you can change and tweak your own music to accompany the scene. .detuned™'s brilliant design and capabilities call for the state-of-the-art processing power that can only be done on the PS3™ system. Download .detuned™ today for an artistic music experience! Features: -Artistic Experiences: An abstract and surreal interactive experience to players of all levels and interests -Personalized Music: Manipulate and tweak music tracks on the XMB™ to accompany your artistic creations -Power of the PS3™ system: Stunning and crisp HD environment that brings your artistic visions to life in real-time

It started with a team of eleven people, a majority of which came from 49Games GmbH of Hamburg, Germany. 49Games GmbH’s main development was the annual winter and summer games for PC and consoles in Germany. Summer Athletics 2009 for Wii, released on July 24, 2009 was the largest collaborative effort, seeing nine of the eleven developers for .detuned credited on that game. An earlier collaborative effort is more closely related to the work of .detuned, a first person shooter game called .kkrieger. Released on April 10, 2004 for Windows PCs, .kkrieger was a product of the Breakpoint demoscene party in April 2004 in Bingen, Germany. It was the result of a challenge to create a first person shooter in the vein of Unreal Tournament and Quake but with the restriction of being 96KB in size. GameDeveloper has an interview with programmer Fabian Giesen (who was only 19 at the time!) and Nostalgia Nerd on YouTube has a great video documenting the development of .kkrieger that is worth a watch if you want to know more about how they accomplished this feat.

Sony Santa Monica Studios Producer Rusty Buchert announced .detuned on the PlayStation Blog on May 1, 2009. He said it would, “[offer] an abstract and surreal interactive experience like nothing else. It is not exactly a game or an art piece like Linger in Shadows. It allows you to create your own visual to accompany your favorite music tracks on the XMB, and using the SIXAXIS™ Wireless Controller, you will be able to manipulate the given scene by interacting with and modifying a man and his world. It even lets you tweak your music as you play with it.” Their announcement is already getting ahead of the “not a game!” crowd, though the comments on that PlayStation Blog piece are generally positive and welcoming.

.detuned would release on PSN for $2.99 on October 15, 2009. Games media reviews were limited, as most game “critics” were used to reviewing games such as Madden, Call of Duty, and Uncharted, but something like .detuned was challenging when approached from the limited scope of a consumer review with the stated goal being a buyer’s guide to “should you purchase this?” IGN gave it a 4/10, Bad, with Chris Roper saying, “Currently selling for $2.99 in the US PlayStation Store, that's about a dollar per minute of entertainment. If you have cash to blow and want to see one of the weirdest pieces of software on any system, go for it. Otherwise, just watch our videos and you'll get the point.” GamesRadar’s Shaun Curnow would rate .detuned 2.5/5 with its negatives being, “-Not really a game, -Won't amuse everyone, -Won't amuse for long.” Again we hit the same reactions and falsehoods of criticism, not being a [mainstream’s expectation of a] game, not reaching some imagined universal appeal, and not lasting long enough to be “worth” it in the mental formula of $/hour. A retrospective review in 2019 from Gaming Audio News’ Trevor Chan would say, “It didn’t take long to wonder if it was worth paying the small amount of money for this bite-sized experience. It’s a great snapshot of a bygone decade. Does that mean one would go recommending .detuned as a ‘must-play’? No, but it is worth experiencing, even if just for a few minutes.” Again we come back to reviews being centered on this one point: Monetary Price. No matter the time it costs you, don’t go questioning whether those 40 hours in the latest RPG were truly meaningful, be glad you got more bang for your buck compared to this! 

As mentioned by GameSpy’s Sterlin McGarvey in their news writeup for .detuned’s announcement, Linger in Shadows, and .detuned, were positively regarded for their easy trophies, “It [Linger in Shadows] was also a handy way to clean up on some good trophies, another reason why many people picked it up.” This sentiment was echoed in PlayStation The Official Magazine Issue 22 for August 2009 whose Trophies for Cheaters by Carlos Ruiz includes entries for Linger in Shadows, Flower, and Noby Noby Boy. I admit, my purchase of Linger in Shadows and .detuned at the time was more for their easy trophies than interest in the demoscene or its history. It is only while looking back do I realize there is a richer field to examine than just a quick injection of trophy points. 

What is .detuned if not a video game? The visual effects manually activated by the player suggests it is a visualizer meant to mesmerize you while enjoying your custom tracks imported onto the PlayStation 3 hard drive. Reliance on human, rather than machine, for these effects means the attention of the player is squarely on enacting movement to the rhythm of whatever track is currently being played instead of enjoying the track and visuals meshed together. Due to this, it reads as more of a toy, something to pick up and play around with, poking at its odds and ends, seeing what action you can provoke and manipulate, before setting it down and moving on. This briefness of experience and interest may be why publisher, reviewer, and player alike referred to it as, “not a game.” It failed, intentionally so, to entertain for multiple hours, tell a story, or offer a high score. Still, I find it limiting to restrict the moniker of “game” from .detuned and its ilk. The player can manipulate and control aspects programmed by the developer, engaging in a unique kind of conversation between player and program that can only happen in video games.

As a game, what does .detuned evoke? The first time through was spent poking and prodding at the game, seeing what the different button press combinations could accomplish and create in the suited man. The default track demo that you can watch to get an overall feel for what this game is capable of producing works well, though the cuts and camera movement seem way out of range of what the player is capable of producing when in control. The lack of an editable timeline means creating your own music video with this game as the base foundation would be a waste of time and effort. So, as before, it remains a toy, something you can plug a music track into in order to have some fun pulling and twisting it around in your hand, not quite as literal given the capability of the Sixaxis within the PlayStation 3 controller (though maybe for the best given the Sixaxis never achieved much in its lifetime). One of the tracks I chose to test out was probably the most apt for a repeatable batch of animations: Daft Punk’s “Around the World.” Some other experiments were on Blink 182’s “What’s My Age Again?” and M.O.O.N.’s “Hydrogen” from the Hotline Miami soundtrack. Unfortunately I did not realize I could turn off the sound effect to the “crank” noise when using the analog sticks to forward and rewind the animations. Due to this, my experience, and footage, are inseparable from the annoying click-clack of the crank.

In 2012 Q-Games released a game very similar to .detuned in intention, PixelJunk 4am, a game for the PlayStation Move motion controller that allowed players to, “Mix and create your own music with the PlayStation®Move. ‘Paint’ with sound in 3D space by pulling new tracks from the surrounding audio palette.” Though more social-minded than .detuned was, the audio effect manipulation and importing of your own custom tracks, aka your iTunes library, is very similar to the sandbox playground of .detuned, and is something I hope to try out once I obtain a PlayStation Move myself.

Some members of .theprodukkt continue to work in the demoscene today. Dierk Ohlerich (chaos) is an organizer for The Revision, a German demoparty that continues even to this year with an event in April 2023. Thomas Mahlke (fiver2) has continued working in the demoscene as well, most often with the group Farbrausch, one of the groups shouted out in Linger in Shadows. Tammo Hinrichs (kb) has also helped organize The Revision, and continues to make music for demos. Sebastian Grillmaier (wayfinder) has continued to create music for the scene and even provided the theme music for The Revision 2022. Christoph Mütze (giZMo) also appears to have remained active in the scene contributing to projects as late as 2021. Fabian Giesen (ryg) currently works at RAD Game Tools in Kirkland, Washington and maintains his blog to this day. Bleick Bleicken (mcfly) has most recently worked as an art director for Chorus developed by Deep Silver. I had trouble looking for any recent output from Oliver Waechter (joey) and Uwe Meier (moonlay). I believe Thomas Heinrich (aTom) is this same Thomas Heinrich on Twitter who links to Glare Productions as his current place of employment. Lastly Leonard Ritter (paniq) is currently a co-founder and developer at Duangle working on a crowdfunded game called Nowhere, an “alien life simulator.” The game has been in development since 2011 though sadly it appears the latest update was in March 2021. 

Ever since my article on the short lived studio Endrant I’ve always wondered where these groups of people end up long after this project I’ve just played was probably last on their mind. Thankfully, in the comments of that Nostalgia Nerd video YouTube on .kkrieger there is a message from Tammo “kb” Hinrichs posted in October 2022 who gives an update on where the team is at now,

"Where are those guys now?" We exist, living our lives, all outside actual game development nowadays (because we wanted to have lives), but still quietly working away on various things that you might or might not have seen. Some of us are still active in the demoscene, and we're all fine, thank you :)

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Scientists discover diamond defects can secure data transmission and measure temperatures

Scientists from Skoltech, Moscow Pedagogical State University, and other research centers have discovered a new class of defects in diamond that may be of use for quantum information processing and precise and remote temperature measurements within very small objects, such as living cells. The findings are reported in a letter published in Physical Review B.

Color centers are an umbrella term for defects of various nature in a transparent crystal, usually diamond. Typically, a color center is a foreign atom, such as nitrogen, incorporated into the crystal lattice of diamond, with one or more nearby carbon atoms missing.

What gives color centers their name are their optical properties. While diamond itself is transparent to visible light, color centers are spots in it that have the technologically appealing capacity to absorb light and effectively re-emit it in a rather narrow spectral band—that is, with a very specific color (wavelength). Importantly, color centers can effectively emit single photons. There are several potential applications where this narrow-band single-photon emission comes in handy.

Read more.

[mariacallous]

Agriculture is a big source of emissions. In the US, about 10 percent of greenhouse gases come from livestock or crops—and for a long time, agriculture has lagged behind other sectors when it comes to cutting its carbon footprint. Since 1990, total emissions from agriculture have risen by 7 percent, while emissions from sectors like electricity generation and buildings have declined.

There’s a simple reason for this: Cutting emissions from agriculture is really hard. It’s not like the energy industry, which has readily available low-carbon electricity in the form of renewables. Reducing agriculture’s impact means making tough decisions about what gets farmed and how, and dealing with the notoriously tricky science of making sure carbon stays in the ground rather than being released into the atmosphere.

The US has started getting to grips with these tough decisions. President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act included $20 billion to help farmers tackle the climate crisis. And in February 2022 the US Department of Agriculture announced $3.1 billion in funding through a scheme called Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC). The money was intended to fund projects that help farmers adopt more environmentally friendly ways of farming and create a market for what the USDA calls “climate-smart” crops and livestock.

According to the USDA, its plan has the potential to sequester 60 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents—the same as removing 12 million gasoline-powered cars from roads for one year. But some scientists are worried that the PSCS approach is the wrong kind of climate intervention. The government could be channeling billions of dollars to projects that are of uncertain benefit in terms of emissions—or, worse, actually end up increasing overall levels of greenhouse gases.

If the goal is to reduce overall emissions from agriculture, a good place to start is by figuring out where all those emissions come from. It turns out that over half of all agricultural emissions come in the form of nitrous oxide—a potent greenhouse gas released when microbes in the soil break down nitrogen-based fertilizers. Overuse of fertilizer is a huge problem in agriculture, says Paul West, an ecologist at the climate nonprofit Project Drawdown. On top of being a huge source of emissions, excess nitrogen leaches into waterways, causing algal blooms.

Reducing the amount of fertilizer farmers use would be a big win. Remote sensors and machines can help farmers apply fertilizer only when and where it is needed, while smarter forms of fertilizers might reduce the amount of nitrogen that ends up digested by microbes. The crucial thing about these kinds of interventions is that they stop emissions being released in the first place, says Dan Blaustein-Rejto, director of food and agriculture at the Breakthrough Institute. If you never put fertilizer on the ground, it’s impossible for microbes to turn it into planet-warming nitrous oxide. Getting smarter with fertilizer use is one of the biggest changes that US agriculture could make to its emissions footprint.

But fertilizer management plays second fiddle to a different kind of climate project in the PCSC. Of the 60 finalized projects for which the USDA has published summaries, only 12 mention nutrient management or fertilizer application. A much higher number of projects focus on cover cropping—a technique that involves covering fields with crops between harvests in order to slow soil erosion, capture carbon, and keep nutrients in the fields. Since planting cover crops takes time and expense, and can lower the overall productivity of fields, only a relatively small number of farmers use the technique. If the PCSC is successful, however, the number of farmers planting cover crops should shoot up.

Cover crops absorb carbon from the atmosphere and turn it into plant material as they grow, explains Deepak Joshi, an assistant professor at Arkansas State University and the author of a recent paper about cover crops. When the cover crops are harvested or left to rot on the soil, a lot of that carbon gets released back into the atmosphere, but a small amount can remain behind in the soil. If that soil remains undisturbed, then that carbon can potentially remain underground for years. Joshi’s meta-analysis focused on cover crops grown in cornfields around the world and found that, on average, cover crops increased carbon stored in the soil by about 7 percent.

So far, so good. But once you dive down into the details of Joshi’s study, things get more complicated. The research found that the amount of carbon stored varied widely, depending on location, cover crop type, plowing, and the amount of plant growth. A different review, this time examining cover cropping on US farms, found that, in lots of cases, fields with cover crops didn’t gain extra soil carbon when compared to fields that hadn’t been cover cropped. “In terms of climate benefit, it isn’t all that great,” says West.

One of the big limitations to cover cropping is that carbon added to the soil might eventually make its way back into the atmosphere. “What we find is that even where there is a build-up of carbon, once you plow those areas again you lose a lot—or all—of the carbon that has been stored up over time,” says West. If money for cover crops runs out, farmers may start leaving fields bare during off-seasons and plowing them more, which would mean a lot of that sequestered carbon would end up back in the atmosphere. And if the cover crops reduce the overall productivity of fields, there’s also the danger that the practice might encourage more land to be converted to agriculture, which is bad news for overall emissions.

Blaustein-Rejto and West both worry that the PCSC prioritizes sequestering carbon rather than stopping emissions from being released in the first place. One way to think about this is the difference between switching to an electric car today or continuing to drive a gas-powered vehicle while also planting a forest to sequester the carbon you emit. In both cases the overall carbon accounting may net out the same, but sequestering always carries the risk that the carbon might later be released if—for instance—that forest is replaced by a cattle ranch.

Robert Bonnie, the under secretary for agriculture for farm production and conservation at the USDA, says that criticisms of the PCSC aren’t entirely fair. “These are pilots. We’re actually going to go out and try some things. We don’t have all the information we need,” he says. He points out that a number of the funded projects do focus on fertilizer use. “We’re not scared of the math; we’re really interested in getting the math right,” he says.

Bonnie says that the real challenge is to persuade farms to get on board with climate-smart farming. A big focus of the project is to create a market for climate-smart crops and livestock, encouraging buyers to pay a premium for goods made in an environmentally friendly manner. A top-down regulatory approach might discourage farmers from taking part, he says.

In lots of the PCSC projects, the USDA funding is supplemented by money from food companies that buy beef, corn, soy, or other agricultural commodities. One PCSC project run by the Iowa Soybean Association includes $62.1 million in corporate payments from companies including PepsiCo, Cargill, Target, JBS, and Coca-Cola. This is a relatively new form of carbon accounting called insetting, where companies pay for carbon offsets within their own supply chains.

Insetting is rising in popularity, but it has a lot of the same problems as offsets, says Sybrig Smit of the NewClimate Institute, a climate policy and global sustainability nonprofit based in Germany. It might be difficult to assess whether insets deliver their supposed benefits, and sequestering carbon is still less desirable than cutting emissions at their source, particularly when it helps sustain industries that are bigger emitters of carbon. Livestock is the second-biggest source of emissions in US agriculture, so reducing consumption of meat and dairy products is an obvious way to reduce emissions, says Smit. “As a society we’re really scared to touch on our consumption patterns,” she says.

The USDA scheme is stuck in an awkward place. It is supposed to reduce emissions but seeks to achieve that in a way that keeps farmers on board and doesn’t fundamentally change the goods they produce. “We’re going to have beef production and dairy production for a long time to come. And our job is to figure out how to work with those producers to reduce the greenhouse gas impacts to the maximum extent we can,” Bonnie says.

In practice, that means that much money from PCSC will go toward farming soy and corn—a large percentage of which will end up as livestock feed or as ethanol for biofuels. Cover cropping is good for soil health, but its potential to lead to long-lasting carbon storage is uncertain at best. At worst, it could see the US avoiding the kind of fundamental changes to food production that could really bring emissions down.

[mixingpumpkins]

Hi, I just graduated university recently and will likely be doing some remote part-time freelance proofreading and editing while I search for something more permanent. Because I believe I saw that you do similar work yourself, is there anything I should know that might help me prepare for early obstacles if I’ve never been paid for this work before? Any tips? I feel as though I’m a fairly talented writer and editor, I’m just wondering if there’s anything I should be looking out for outside of my own skills.

Hi! Congrats on your graduation. :)

Honestly, it depends on what kind of editing you're doing. Books? Resumes? Blog posts? Technical writing? Content mill-type articles from all the outlets that are putting things like "5 Reasons We Can't Wait to See the Next Marvel Movie (and 5 Reasons the MCU Should Die in a Fire, Actually)" on your Google feed?

Also, is this freelance editing like... you set up shop on your own site, you're on a platform like Fiverr, or doing contract work with a media company? They're all different animals, so I'll answer like you're applying for part-time contract editing work. (If it's one of the former, lmk.)

Overall tips...

You probably already know this, but have good samples both for things you've edited AND things you've written (and ideally, links to where they're published online). If you're applying to edit at a specific outlet, try to pick samples that are similar to their vibe. Don't stress if they're not a 100% match, but it certainly helps. (Do NOT send 5 million sample pieces unless the application asks for it. Just pick the best you have that's similar to what you'd be editing for the job.)

Don't stress about an interview. Chances are, they already feel you can do good work – they've already seen your samples. Now they just want to see how much of a fit you are for the people you'll be working with.

Generally, people who hire editors want to see 1) can you spot when a writer isn't following a style guide/other standards and correct them on it, 2) can you do this while meeting a certain productivity standard, 3) can you not constantly fuck up with any tech you need to use, and 4) can you be pleasant and communicative with anyone you're required to work with. If yes, you're in good shape. BUT...

...These are hard things to tell from an application and interview alone, so you'll probably have a probationary period to this end. There will probably be at least one other editor who looks over ALL your work during this period to see if you're meeting their standards. DO NOT DO THIS FOR FREE. Do not do anything "here, edit these 3 articles/these 5 pages as a trial" for free. Shitty companies and people do this to use applicants and trainees for free labor. If you're doing work while you're in training, they should be paying you.

Do some research on average pay rates for the kind of editing you're doing. If you can set your own rates, you'll know what to shoot for (adjust for your experience). If you can't and you're hunting on job boards, you'll have a better idea of which employers are trying to rip you off.

If you can, avoid working with people and companies who accept, encourage, or are interested in using AI in any part of their content generation or creation process. (The reasons why are a rant for a different day.) If you get to a job and your "editing" is to essentially fact-check and rewrite AI content to make it sound more human, fucking run.

Be prepared to check for AI-generated content if you're working in a circumstance where human writing is still valued.

Get very comfortable with giving and receiving feedback, if you're not already. Be kind, but don't stress too much about stroking egos. Most pro writers (well, outside the book publishing or screenplay world) won't fight you – they just want to get their pieces out there and get paid, especially if they work on a per-word basis.

Get REALLY comfortable with editing to strict word count standards. (My first book had +/- 3 words of wiggle room around certain sections' target word counts.) Yes, you will probably have to cut something that you love or reword it to something worse a few times. No, a publisher/printer/higher-up editor will not usually let you make an exception. Mourn these instances and move on.

Writers will sometimes get mad. Some of them will try to bully or steamroll editors they've never worked with before. Don't let them. Give them grace because you know what it's like to have to kill your darlings, but remember that you were hired to hold them to certain standards. It doesn't matter if they've been published in Forbes or the New York Times and you're a new face – if their current work isn't meeting the standards it needs to, hold them to it.

Try to develop a good rapport with any writers, editors, or others you work with, even if you're only doing this as a part-time, temporary thing. You never know what opportunities may come down the line if you cross paths with these people again.

Try not to do what I do on Tumblr, aka word-vomit all over everything every time I answer an ask. ^^^^^^^^

Best of luck!