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mostlysignssomeportents · 8 months

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A link-clump demands a linkdump

Cometh the weekend, cometh the linkdump. My daily-ish newsletter includes a section called "Hey look at this," with three short links per day, but sometimes those links get backed up and I need to clean house. Here's the eight previous installments:

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

The country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla is .ai, and that's turned into millions of dollars worth of royalties as "entrepreneurs" scramble to sprinkle some buzzword-compliant AI stuff on their businesses in the most superficial way possible:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-fever-turns-anguillas-ai-domain-into-a-digital-gold-mine/

All told, .ai domain royalties will account for about ten percent of the country's GDP.

It's actually kind of nice to see Anguilla finding some internet money at long last. Back in the 1990s, when I was a freelance web developer, I got hired to work on the investor website for a publicly traded internet casino based in Anguilla that was a scammy disaster in every conceivable way. The company had been conceived of by people who inherited a modestly successful chain of print-shops and decided to diversify by buying a dormant penny mining stock and relaunching it as an online casino.

But of course, online casinos were illegal nearly everywhere. Not in Anguilla – or at least, that's what the founders told us – which is why they located their servers there, despite the lack of broadband or, indeed, reliable electricity at their data-center. At a certain point, the whole thing started to whiff of a stock swindle, a pump-and-dump where they'd sell off shares in that ex-mining stock to people who knew even less about the internet than they did and skedaddle. I got out, and lost track of them, and a search for their names and business today turns up nothing so I assume that it flamed out before it could ruin any retail investors' lives.

Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory, one of those former British colonies that was drained and then given "independence" by paternalistic imperial administrators half a world away. The country's main industries are tourism and "finance" – which is to say, it's a pearl in the globe-spanning necklace of tax- and corporate-crime-havens the UK established around the world so its most vicious criminals – the hereditary aristocracy – can continue to use Britain's roads and exploit its educated workforce without paying any taxes.

This is the "finance curse," and there are tiny, struggling nations all around the world that live under it. Nick Shaxson dubbed them "Treasure Islands" in his outstanding book of the same name:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780230341722/treasureislands

I can't imagine that the AI bubble will last forever – anything that can't go on forever eventually stops – and when it does, those .ai domain royalties will dry up. But until then, I salute Anguilla, which has at last found the internet riches that I played a small part in bringing to it in the previous century.

The AI bubble is indeed overdue for a popping, but while the market remains gripped by irrational exuberance, there's lots of weird stuff happening around the edges. Take Inject My PDF, which embeds repeating blocks of invisible text into your resume:

https://kai-greshake.de/posts/inject-my-pdf/

The text is tuned to make resume-sorting Large Language Models identify you as the ideal candidate for the job. It'll even trick the summarizer function into spitting out text that does not appear in any human-readable form on your CV.

Embedding weird stuff into resumes is a hacker tradition. I first encountered it at the Chaos Communications Congress in 2012, when Ang Cui used it as an example in his stellar "Print Me If You Dare" talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8

Cui figured out that one way to update the software of a printer was to embed an invisible Postscript instruction in a document that basically said, "everything after this is a firmware update." Then he came up with 100 lines of perl that he hid in documents with names like cv.pdf that would flash the printer when they ran, causing it to probe your LAN for vulnerable PCs and take them over, opening a reverse-shell to his command-and-control server in the cloud. Compromised printers would then refuse to apply future updates from their owners, but would pretend to install them and even update their version numbers to give verisimilitude to the ruse. The only way to exorcise these haunted printers was to send 'em to the landfill. Good times!

Printers are still a dumpster fire, and it's not solely about the intrinsic difficulty of computer security. After all, printer manufacturers have devoted enormous resources to hardening their products against their owners, making it progressively harder to use third-party ink. They're super perverse about it, too – they send "security updates" to your printer that update the printer's security against you – run these updates and your printer downgrades itself by refusing to use the ink you chose for it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

It's a reminder that what a monopolist thinks of as "security" isn't what you think of as security. Oftentimes, their security is antithetical to your security. That was the case with Web Environment Integrity, a plan by Google to make your phone rat you out to advertisers' servers, revealing any adblocking modifications you might have installed so that ad-serving companies could refuse to talk to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

WEI is now dead, thanks to a lot of hueing and crying by people like us:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/google_abandons_web_environment_integrity/

But the dream of securing Google against its own users lives on. Youtube has embarked on an aggressive campaign of refusing to show videos to people running ad-blockers, triggering an arms-race of ad-blocker-blockers and ad-blocker-blocker-blockers:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-will-the-ad-versus-ad-blocker-arms-race-end/

The folks behind Ublock Origin are racing to keep up with Google's engineers' countermeasures, and there's a single-serving website called "Is uBlock Origin updated to the last Anti-Adblocker YouTube script?" that will give you a realtime, one-word status update:

https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/

One in four web users has an ad-blocker, a stat that Doc Searls pithily summarizes as "the biggest boycott in world history":

https://doc.searls.com/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

Zero app users have ad-blockers. That's not because ad-blocking an app is harder than ad-blocking the web – it's because reverse-engineering an app triggers liability under IP laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which can put you away for 5 years for a first offense. That's what I mean when I say that "IP is anything that lets a company control its customers, critics or competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

I predicted that apps would open up all kinds of opportunities for abusive, monopolistic conduct back in 2010, and I'm experiencing a mix of sadness and smugness (I assume there's a German word for this emotion) at being so thoroughly vindicated by history:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

The more control a company can exert over its customers, the worse it will be tempted to treat them. These systems of control shift the balance of power within companies, making it harder for internal factions that defend product quality and customer interests to win against the enshittifiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The result has been a Great Enshittening, with platforms of all description shifting value from their customers and users to their shareholders, making everything palpably worse. The only bright side is that this has created the political will to do something about it, sparking a wave of bold, muscular antitrust action all over the world.

The Google antitrust case is certainly the most important corporate lawsuit of the century (so far), but Judge Amit Mehta's deference to Google's demands for secrecy has kept the case out of the headlines. I mean, Sam Bankman-Fried is a psychopathic thief, but even so, his trial does not deserve its vastly greater prominence, though, if you haven't heard yet, he's been convicted and will face decades in prison after he exhausts his appeals:

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-on-all-charges

The secrecy around Google's trial has relaxed somewhat, and the trickle of revelations emerging from the cracks in the courthouse are fascinating. For the first time, we're able to get a concrete sense of which queries are the most lucrative for Google:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/1/23941766/google-antitrust-trial-search-queries-ad-money

The list comes from 2018, but it's still wild. As David Pierce writes in The Verge, the top twenty includes three iPhone-related terms, five insurance queries, and the rest are overshadowed by searches for customer service info for monopolistic services like Xfinity, Uber and Hulu.

All-in-all, we're living through a hell of a moment for piercing the corporate veil. Maybe it's the problem of maintaining secrecy within large companies, or maybe the the rampant mistreatment of even senior executives has led to more leaks and whistleblowing. Either way, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous leaker who revealed the unbelievable pettiness of former HBO president of programming Casey Bloys, who ordered his underlings to create an army of sock-puppet Twitter accounts to harass TV and movie critics who panned HBO's shows:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/hbo-casey-bloys-secret-twitter-trolls-tv-critics-leaked-texts-lawsuit-the-idol-1234867722/

These trolling attempts were pathetic, even by the standards of thick-fingered corporate execs. Like, accusing critics who panned the shitty-ass Perry Mason reboot of disrespecting veterans because the fictional Mason's back-story had him storming the beach on D-Day.

The pushback against corporate bullying is everywhere, and of course, the vanguard is the labor movement. Did you hear that the UAW won their strike against the auto-makers, scoring raises for all workers based on the increases in the companies' CEO pay? The UAW isn't done, either! Their incredible new leader, Shawn Fain, has called for a general strike in 2028:

https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/

The massive victory for unionized auto-workers has thrown a spotlight on the terrible working conditions and pay for workers at Tesla, a criminal company that has no compunctions about violating labor law to prevent its workers from exercising their legal rights. Over in Sweden, union workers are teaching Tesla a lesson. After the company tried its illegal union-busting playbook on Tesla service centers, the unionized dock-workers issued an ultimatum: respect your workers or face a blockade at Sweden's ports that would block any Tesla from being unloaded into the EU's fifth largest Tesla market:

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-sweden-strike/

Of course, the real solution to Teslas – and every other kind of car – is to redesign our cities for public transit, walking and cycling, making cars the exception for deliveries, accessibility and other necessities. Transitioning to EVs will make a big dent in the climate emergency, but it won't make our streets any safer – and they keep getting deadlier.

Last summer, my dear old pal Ted Kulczycky got in touch with me to tell me that Talking Heads were going to be all present in public for the first time since the band's breakup, as part of the debut of the newly remastered print of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert movie of all time. Even better, the show would be in Toronto, my hometown, where Ted and I went to high-school together, at TIFF.

Ted is the only person I know who is more obsessed with Talking Heads than I am, and he started working on tickets for the show while I starting pricing plane tickets. And then, the unthinkable happened: Ted's wife, Serah, got in touch to say that Ted had been run over by a car while getting off of a streetcar, that he was severely injured, and would require multiple surgeries.

But this was Ted, so of course he was still planning to see the show. And he did, getting a day-pass from the hospital and showing up looking like someone from a Kids In The Hall sketch who'd been made up to look like someone who'd been run over by a car:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53182440282/

In his Globe and Mail article about Ted's experience, Brad Wheeler describes how the whole hospital rallied around Ted to make it possible for him to get to the movie:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-how-a-talking-heads-superfan-found-healing-with-the-concert-film-stop/

He also mentions that Ted is working on a book and podcast about Stop Making Sense. I visited Ted in the hospital the day after the gig and we talked about the book and it sounds amazing. Also? The movie was incredible. See it in Imax.

That heartwarming tale of healing through big suits is a pretty good place to wrap up this linkdump, but I want to call your attention to just one more thing before I go: Robin Sloan's Snarkmarket piece about blogging and "stock and flow":

https://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890/

Sloan makes the excellent case that for writers, having a "flow" of short, quick posts builds the audience for a "stock" of longer, more synthetic pieces like books. This has certainly been my experience, but I think it's only part of the story – there are good, non-mercenary reasons for writers to do a lot of "flow." As I wrote in my 2021 essay, "The Memex Method," turning your commonplace book into a database – AKA "blogging" – makes you write better notes to yourself because you know others will see them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

This, in turn, creates a supersaturated, subconscious solution of fragments that are just waiting to nucleate and crystallize into full-blown novels and nonfiction books and other "stock." That's how I came out of lockdown with nine new books. The next one is The Lost Cause, a hopepunk science fiction novel about the climate whose early fans include Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. It's out on November 14:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/05/variegated/#nein

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benny-the-spaceman · 1 month

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one of these days im going to release my tlm drafting headcanons from my notes app purgatory and that day is Today.

HERE'S HOW I THINK LEGO MOVIE CHARACTERS WOULD PREPARE AND MAKE DRAFTS

...under the cut

Batman

• Fairly good at drawing. Somehow able to draw straight lines without a ruler perfectly fine every single time but otherwise nothing super noteworthy (he does brag about this constantly however)

• Drafts in white and yellow posca pen??? will use white colored pencil for finer detail however, specifically one of those mechanical colored pencils

• Drafts on black paper because he thinks it makes his designs cooler (it doesn't)

• Dimensions in imperial and would be annoyed if you dare even *insinuate* he use metric. no justification here

• Doodles around his drafts, specifically likes to doodle bats and himself because he, once again, thanks it makes his drafts cooler (the bats kinda do)

• Refuses to leave notes on his designs. you either know what to do or you don't

• Does however write his drawing title obnoxiously large

• Used autocad for like a day, hated it, switched to solidworks and never went back

• Buys autodesk licenses for the rest of the masterbuilders. unwillingly, mind you, wyldstyle just knows his credit card information and abuses it

Benny

• Good at drawing exclusively spaceships. big shock i know

• The king of eyeballing a line or an angle and then labelling it however the fuck he wants. proper measurements take time he could spend drafting or making more spaceships, he'll save measuring and straightedges for drafts he deems important enough

• Uses blueprinting paper. there's no practical purpose for this, he just digs it

• Drafts with whatever writing utensil is on hand

• He gets inspired quite often so he usually keeps a drafting notepad on him just in case

• Leaves a *lot* of notes. Most of them are completely unnecessary and are a funny contrast to his haphazard dimensioning

• Pretty dang good at autocad! Usually reserves it for projects that require a lot more collaboration however

• Usually drafts in metric, can dimension in imperial but prefers not to

• 100% sets autocad to the light background like a monster

• Do not give him any 3d modelling software, he might blow up the computer

Emmet

• Either really good or really bad at drawings (obvs leaning towards bad. we remember the break in plans)

• Dimensions in imperial. I cant justify this one he just does. god bless america or something idk

• Owns a couple drafting pencils but rarely uses them, most of the time he drafts in marker or pen much to the chagrin of anyone who needs to read his drafts (or delight if you're unikitty)

• Started learning how to use autocad after taco tuesday and he's actually pretty good at it! he does use an architectural dimstyle for everything though which is particularly annoying when he's quite often not drafting buildings now

• Has labelled and colored layers 👍 enough said

• Uses disgustingly thick lineweights. horrible.

• Rarely if ever 3d models so he's not good at it, he mostly works on things that 2d conveys better anyways

• Although he's not the best drafter of the master builders, his construction background makes him the best at reading drafts, give him a unikitty draft and he can decipher it like it's nothing

Metalbeard

• Probably the best at drafting of the master builders, he's got the age advantage and lots of practice from making ships

• Drafts in pencil, quill, or charcoal depending

• Who needs straightedges or angle stencils when youre basically a pirate cyborg, expect robot like precision

• Doesn't use standard measuring conventions, instead opts to use the dumbest things possible. The Sea cow's units of measurement were seagulls. It isnt that he cant do normal units of measurement, he just prefers his made up ones

• Makes his drafting paper by himself

• Pretty good with 2d and 3d modelling surprisingly. He doesn't like either, however, he much prefers drafting on paper

• Leaves an average amount of notes on his drafts but has the most disgustingly fancy cursive and writes in his piratey english. Often a nightmare to read if you aren't used to his writing

• Will sometimes do blueprint swaps with Benny wherein they critique each other's work. not sure when they started doing it, but it's become a weekly activity for them

Unikitty

• Worst drafter of the main masterbuilder crew. Most people think it's because she's a cat but no she just doesnt take drafting seriously in the slightest

• Drafts like she's making an arts and crafts project. She has put several bottles of glitter on singular drafts and she will do it again

• Dimensions in rainbows, no knows what this means other than emmet

• Gives the longest, most complicated titles possible

• No such thing as straight lines

• Is entirely capable of drafting properly, just refuses to

• Leaves notes that are entirely unrelated to the draft. she wont tell you how youre supposed to connect two objects but she *will* tell you about the sandwich she ate while making the draft

• Doesnt use autocad, looks too boring

• Didnt use any 3d modelling softwares until she realized you can change the appearance of materials. that was a game changer. still much prefers drafting on paper though

• Likes drafting with emmet sometimes since he seems to be the only person who understands her drawings. to this day no one understands how he does it

Vitruvius

• Going blind has, surprisingly, not made him much worse at drafting, just changed his process a bit

• Drafts in pencil

• Probably the person who least frequently drafts of the main masterbuilders. On account of just not needing to and also on account of being dead

• Dimensions in the old anglo-saxon units of measurement

• Doesn't title his drafts and doesnt see a point in doing so

• Leaves the most vague, utterly confusing notes on his drawings. theyre still related to the drawings unlike unikitty's notes, but theyre very odd

• Doesn't use autocad or 3d modelling softwares, partially because he wouldnt really be able to on account of being blind but also partially because he doesn't really know what they are

• There isnt really much to say about his drafting skills he's about as normal of a drafter as a masterbuilder can be

Wyldstyle

• An engineering teacher's dream student. She may not have the amount of experience metalbeard has but she's still very skilled

• Doesn't like drafting on paper and won't if she doesn't have to

• When she does draft on paper she uses a drafting mechanical pencils. she also 100% collects them

• dimensions in metric to exactly 3 decimal places

• leaves very few if any notes (always very concise ones if included)

• has a case of staedtler stencils that she bought 4 years ago and never uses

• picked up a habit of doodling on drafts from batman but will never admit she got the habit from him

• Autocad PRO. Also really damn good at solidworks and fusion. Give this girl a computer and she'll give you a motorcycle assembly within the hour

• Specializes in automotives

• Spends time with Emmet on the weekends teaching him how to use digital drafting softwares (this process was incredibly frusturating at first but gets easier with time)

#this has been rotting in my drafts and i needed to set it free #live laugh love kind of boring headcanons and combining your interests #the lego movie #lego movie

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flesh-is-the-fever · 10 months

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petty bourgeois:

- a small business owner (such as a family restaurant) that must perform part of the labor to turn a profit

- a self-employed professional example: a doctor with a private practice

labor aristocrat:

- a highly paid proletarian living in an imperial core country, whose interests run counter to the global proletariat

example: a software engineer (who increasingly completes with post-colonial remote workers)

example 2: a doctor working for a public hospital (note the difference!)

Does this make sense? I feel like some clarification is needed between these two terms

#marxism #marxism leninism

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metamatar · 1 year

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I got a little excited talking about robotics so I went into full engineer mode but obviously the OP is wrong on the ideological priors. A lot of problems in robotic automation are open and unsolved. Robotics is much much harder than software. But, capitalists ARE the reason that there isn't as much as much funding for doing non military robotics research and making progress on open problems. They want quick profits but robotics is in the VC parlance "deep tech" so you're going to be spending a lot of money and it may not lead to a profitable product. It's risky. Way easier to be disruptive via regulatory capture. As institutions have in the last two decades, especially in engineering pivoted aggressively to the private partnership model ala Stanford/Bay Area nexus even institutional research looks to create products instead of core research.

The more commie critique of the "why isn't automation taking away dangerous jobs and only taking the fun ones" is that taking away the fun ones has suddenly become possible right now and is affecting a certain type of content creator. We have been taking away some dangerous and boring jobs, that has been happening for a while, pretty unnoticed. It also decimates communities, just that those communities are less important to the media cycle. Sometimes, especially in the imperial core automation is more expensive than brutalising some third world citizens to do the robots jobs. It is obviously because of capitalism that it is even possible to deprive people to the extent that they are forced to accept shit wages.

#idhsksh i think i got vagued for putting that on the dash lol #robots #reflection. it is good for u

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a-queer-seminarian · 3 months

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Decolonizing Palestine (2023) by Mitri Raheb: a Palestinian Christian’s call for a theological paradigm shift

As I dig into various responses to Israel’s colonization of Palestine, this book has become my top recommendation for Christians.

Lutheran pastor Dr. Mitri Raheb (b. 1962) is Palestine’s most widely published Christian theologian. His latest text, Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, the People, the Bible, could hardly have been more timely, coming out just a few months before the events of October 7, 2023.

If you are Christian — or are otherwise interested in unpacking how Christian theology has fueled Israeli settler-colonialism, and what Christian theology that centers and supports the Palestinian cause might look like — I strongly urge you to read the book in full. But if you don't have the time or inclination, I've published a Medium article that provides a thorough summary of his book.

Click here for the full review & summary of the book; what follows below the is a much briefer summation of Raheb's main points:

Western Christian theology today is dominated by Christian Zionism, all forms of implicitly endorse the oppression of Palestinians.

While conservative forms of Christian Zionism, with their focus on Israel’s supposed role in the Second Coming, tend to be centered, Raheb proposes a definition of Christian Zionism that reckons with “liberal” forms of Christian Zionism as well.

His definition emphasizes action over belief: “I argue that Christian Zionism should be defined as a Christian lobby that supports the Jewish settler colonialism of Palestinian land by using biblical/theological constructs within a metanarrative while taking glocal considerations into account.”

A paradigm shift is urgently needed in Christian theology, one that applies the lens of settler colonialism to our biblical interpretation.

Of the book’s four chapters, much of the first two focus on presenting Palestinian history through this lens, successfully arguing that modern Israel is a settler colonial state funded by Western powers:

“Today, empire is bigger than one state, nation, or military power. …Israel is part of this empire and is sustained by it” with both the “hardware” of military weapons, and the “software” of “a biblical blueprint that paints colonial practices with theological justifications of a ‘promised land’ and ‘chosen people.’”

To move towards a decolonial theology, our two hermeneutical keys are the land and the native people of Palestine. Understanding Palestine as:

the name of the “multiethnic, multicultural, and multireligious region that was able to include diverse identities and peoples within its boundaries” for the past 2,500 years; and

a land on the margins of “five regional empires that have determined its fate” for millennia,

we come to recognize that the voices lifted up in the Bible are colonized voices, those who are oppressed by and who resist Empire.

This lens helps us understand the theme of chosenness or “election” as well:

in Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and elsewhere in scripture, “Election was and will always be…a promise to those weak and powerless, to those who begin to despair about themselves. …It is with a notion like election that the people of Palestine were able to face the diverse imperial occupations throughout millennia.”

Therefore, the appropriation of the concept of election by various imperial powers, from the British Empire to the United States to modern Israel, is completely contrary to its biblical significance.

That sums up Raheb’s main points in Decolonizing Palestine; for more information, go read his book — or read my full article over on Medium!

#decolonizing palestine #mitri raheb #palestinian christians #palestinian theology #christian zionism #free palestine #books #essays

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0firstlast1 · 2 years

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It was easy to find places that sold stickers, specifically newsstands that sold magazines, newspapers, and other products that were perhaps indirectly related to publications, stickers were just one of the numerous forms of communication, as when I was a child I liked to collect decals that were removed for application after being immersed in water, I saw in these new stickers, usually metallic, a practical and quick way to finish off some small maintenance.

That year during a period of one month I could not do the correct maintenance of this work equipment shown in the photo, I bought the equipment to work at the time of neoliberalism and neocolonialism to maintain my home after the laborism era, and maybe to get some space among the imperialist capitalists, they who had already won before I was born.

Thanks??

#0firstlast1 #stickers #neoliberalism #neocolonialism #capitalism #imperialism #hardware #software #apps

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teriri-sayes · 1 year

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Reactions to Trash Boss's Chapter 132

TLDR; Heavenly Demon warns Cale. Misunderstanding about Cale again. Cale versus Heavenly Demon begins.

Soos? LSH = ✅ CJS = ✅

First of all, let me tell you that this entire chapter was a pain to read. RidiBooks, the site where I purchase the raws, forgot to add the new chapter today. So I had to buy the new chapter from Munpia.

The problem with Munpia is that Chrome's Google Translate extension does not work on the chapter itself. In order to read the raw chapter in English, I had to do the following:

Use the Snipping Tool on my PC to screen capture all the text.

Use an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to convert the Korean text in the screen captured images into plain text.

Manually check for any errors or misspellings because the OCR software is not 100% accurate.

Copy-paste the text into Google Translate's page to read it in English.

Decipher the MTL.

See? That's how hard it was. This process also applies to other Korean websites that legally sell the chapters, like Kakaopage. However, Naver is the worst offender because it doesn't even allow you to screen capture the chapter!

Alright, now that I've let out my frustration, let's begin with the chapter proper.

Heavenly Demon's warning HD: *barges into Cale's carriage* HD: *says something about knowing Cale's identity and warns Cale of the plans of HD's other self* HD: *refuses to elaborate further* HD: *leaves* Cale: W-What???

No, seriously, Heavenly Demon did that above meme and left Cale confused. 🤣🤣🤣

Moving on, Cale told his party that the messenger was actually Heavenly Demon, which surprised everyone. Fist King thought that Heavenly Demon must be higher in martial arts rank than him then.

What did Cale do with this warning? He became cautious, especially of Brain Demon. Because Brain Demon might be using them as sacrifices in order to save Heavenly Demon.

The Imperial Palace is the Best! Everyone, another round of Cale coughing blood is nearing. Cale realized the seriousness of the situation and asked Chief Eunuch Wi for more elixirs. And Wi agreed without hesitation, leading to Cale mentally praising the imperial palace as his best backer and financier in this world, much better than the Good and Evil Factions.

Psst, psst, Cale. *whispers* You should thank Jungwon for introducing you to them, so please stop ignoring our baby Jungwon's messages. Pretty please?

Young Master Kim is not human And as usual, we have people misunderstanding Cale again... 😂

(Legend: HD = Heavenly Demon; BD = Brain Demon) HD: Young Master Kim is an interesting person. BD: Is that so? HD: He didn't learn martial arts. BD: ! HD: But he has nature in his body. I can't even compare. BD: ! HD: He may not be human. BD: ! HD: It seems that he excels in a different way from martial arts. BD: !

Anyway, after Heavenly Demon's conversation with Brain Demon, he went ahead of the group because he could feel that his "other self" was waking up. Aaaaah, poor Heavenly Demon-nim. Even Cale was feeling sorry for him after he would be purified.

The Left and Right Guardians We are briefly introduced to new characters: Left Guardian and Right Guardian. These two elders are the closest aides of Heavenly Demon, and are older than Brain Demon.

The two greeted Cale's group and treated them hospitably, so Cale had a good impression of them. Unfortunately, Wi destroyed that by secretly telling Cale that Left Guardian was famous for ripping apart people to death, so Cale got scared of them... 😂

Of course, Cale also felt that something was strange. The two elders had the word "Guardian" in their titles, so they should be "guarding" Heavenly Demon. Yet, they were here greeting the guests.

Oh yeah, there are actually three guardians. The last one is Shadow Guardian, who never reveals him/herself.

Cale meets Heavenly Demon "alone" Finally, the Soos are here! The two guardians informed Cale that Heavenly Demon wanted to meet him, alone, so CH and the two Soos began to be protective of Cale.

But Cale agreed to that, surprising his party. After all, Cale had the invisible Raon, so he could just teleport away if something happened.

Raon: I told Choi Han that I'm going! I also told the laughing team leader and Choi Jung Soo who eats well! I didn't tell Ron-gramps and Beacrox!

Cale wondered why Raon did not tell the Molans, and understood when he saw their vicious gazes. 🤣

Durst and Heavenly Demon In case you're all wondering how our sniffing dog reacted to Heavenly Demon, here it is... Durst did not gag or cough. Rather, he instantly fainted from the overwhelming smell... Poor Durst 😵

Boss Battle Start! And it's here! Cale versus evil HD! Cale and Raon are led by the guardians to Heavenly Demon's room. And they were greeted by... black mana smoke seeping from the door!

Cale prepared to go against it with his Fire AP, leaving the two guardians shocked to see it. He barges in and sees the entire room full of dead mana smoke, so thick that Heavenly Demon could not be seen. But our Cale could hear him groaning and suffering.

And that's it. It's a cliffhanger! Noooooooo! 😖

Ending Remarks Overall, this chapter feels average to me. My frustration at just getting to actually read this chapter overshadowed whatever emotion I felt for the chapter itself. But I guess I feel a little excited at the upcoming boss battle (and frustrated at the cliffhanger). So see you all on Monday, and hopefully, RidiBooks would not be late in updating the new chapter.

#tcf spoilers #trash of the count's family

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aita-alternia · 9 months

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aita for Eating a bee and blaming it on my coworker?

i [12 indigo] am an apicultural engineedler for [a Large company name redacted]. we Provide a live software service so realtime support and updates are very Important. recently, a concentrated Effort has been made to port our old and Exceedingly convoluted network onto a new beehouse mainframework to comply with silicomb 2.0 standards and drag our Very tangled Very old codebase into the present decasweep. it has been a lot of effort over almost a full sweep, but the new mainframe is beautiful and well worth the time and will make it much easier to debug and re-bug the network going forward.

due to our service being live, our small team of developunishers were required to supervise the migration of our bees between mainframe overday, which we turned into a little Shindig since if all went well there wouldn't be much to do once Everything was underway. one of my coworkers [14 violet] who I will call aparna for this story brought faygo for us to celebrate with [she is Not a practicing juggalo but she still talks about growing up in the church All The Time. it is frankly Quite grating. we do not need to hear again about how you chose your paint aparna you do not actually paint anymore i fail to see how it is presently Relevant. and she Always seems to talk about it louder when she notices im listening]

anyway it was getting close to migration time and Most of my coworkers were there. we opened bottles of soda and began to prep the signal drones. [not like Her Imperious Condescension's drones, these are apicultural beenary signallers that serve signposts for the queen for the interframe migration. basically Her Smaller Majesty the Hive Queen Who Makes Our Code Work needs to know where to go to get to the new mainframe but we can't move her there directly since she's too vicious to be handled directly. instead we move the drones who we can manually override and she follows them into the new beehome.] this step of the process is Usually pretty smooth. the Most difficult part is usually when the queen moves and the Entire hive follows her; the multithreading can be somewhat difficult to manage and if the beestreams begin to cross over too much, they can jam the entrances to the new beehome, causing the formation to collapse and potentially bringing down the network. that's why we have to supervise the migration closely.

however. a Mistake was made. and it was made early.

at some point during setup one of the signal drones was knocked loose of its designated position. i do not know how this happened [but it's probably aparna's fault. she is always making these kinds of very Small mistakes. never anything Severe but little things. annoying things. many of them.] this is usually easy to correct except that it went unnoticed and, drawn by some instinct of insects Everywhere, found its way into my soda.

which i then drank.

i could tell the bee was in there right away, but my instinctive self defense reaction was to swallow and crush whatever was buzzing in my mouth with my Powerful esophageal muscles. so that is what I did. the signal drone died Swiftly in my throat. i was safe from the Threat of its sting - and we were down an essential component for the migration

i Panicked. i turned my head and frantically coughed up the signal drone, passing it off as the soda going down the wrong pipe. this dislodged the signal drone into my hand. i knew that if i were caught it would Not go well for me. if i got in Trouble at this job my lusus might start trying to push me toward the cavalreapers again. i could not let that happen.

then i noticed that someone's soda was open on the table next to me.

i invite you to guess what i did next. i also invite you to guess whose drink it happened to be.

it took some time for the absence of the signal drone to be noticed, but eventually aparna took a drink of her faygo and spat it out along with the body of the drone. it was Very clear what had happened and she took the blame for the subsequent Disaster of having to emergency patch the signal formation, as well as the debugging required to fix the resulting path collisions during the Full migration.

aparna will be fine. our boss likes her Very much overall and is Extremely unlikely to get rid of her [i would likely have come forward by now if i had done this to Any other coworker, but aparna is in no danger and Also she deserves it for being careless and Also it was probably her who knocked the drone out of formation to begin with], whereas i would Very likely have been fired had they known it was actually my fault. however i am concerned that aparna may be on to me. she has been glaring at me even More than usual for the past few days. i have glared back as i will Not be Cowed by a juggalo - and a lapsed one at that. she'll have to do better than an annoyance if she wants anything out of me.

so. am i the Asshole?

#OK^^^^^^Y THIS IS SO MUCH #THIS IS MY F^VORITE SUBMISSION EVER IM PRINTING IT OUT ^ND FR^MING IT ON MY W^LL #LITER^LLY I DONT C^RE IF THIS IS OBJECTIVELY ^ BULGE MOVE . WE ^LL DO CR^ZY THINGS IN THE N^ME OF PITCH FLIRTING #<- I ME^N WH^T WHO S^ID TH^T #am i the asshole

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leo-fie · 1 year

Text

There is a noticeable lack of Warhammer 40k Cross Stitching, and I seem to be the only person worried about this. In an attempt to combat this grave injustice, I made some smol 60x60 patterns from my favorite 40k book, Steve Parker's Deathwatch. I call it the Killteam Talon Collection. For free, GW, chill!

Deathwatch: https://www.stitchfiddle.com/c/sjwc31-1jo018

Inquisition https://www.stitchfiddle.com/c/sjwbtl-68pca

Death Spectres: https://www.stitchfiddle.com/c/sjulwl-davw3w

Exorcists: https://www.stitchfiddle.com/c/sjwcfn-2nslpb

Ultramarines: https://www.stitchfiddle.com/c/sjwbun-4xtxid

Imperial Fists: https://www.stitchfiddle.com/c/sjwcf6-f5hr9x

Raven Guard: https://www.stitchfiddle.com/c/sjwcvk-6kivd9

Lamenters: https://www.stitchfiddle.com/c/sjwc60-gcm7u4

Making an account with stitchfiddle is not neccessary, but it's a good software. Try it. If only it weren't subscription based, but one purchase. Nah, let's not get into that.

#warhammer 40000 #warhammer 40k #grimdark crafting #grimdark needlework #cross stitch #cross stitching #cross stitch pattern #free pattern #killteam #killteam talon #raven guard #imperial fists #ultramarines #deathwatch #imperial inquisition #embroidery #needlework

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silverwings22 · 2 months

Text

Song of the Sea: Chapter 37: Follow You Down

Chapter warning: major character injury, description of severe injury, grief Series Warning: explicit smut, alien anatomy (it's a monsterfucker fic, guys), major character injury, grief, canon typical violence, autistic meltdowns, and my terrible attempts at Mando'a

Previous chapter:

Next chapter:

“Nothing’s working. That surge fried the power from here.” Echo had his scomp link wedged into the wall, trying his best to get power going again.

“I told you that wasn’t going to work.” Shiani leaned out the open window, taking a shot at the Imperials who were shooting at them. This wasn’t sustainable, and it wouldn’t be long before the Empire scrambled V-wings to deal with them definitively.

“We’ll have to access one of the terminals attached to the track itself. It’ll require a full system reboot.” She frowned, looking at Tech.

He nodded. “You and I can accomplish that.”

“It’s software. You can, I’ll cover you.” She smiled faintly.

“Echo, stand by for their signal. Wrecker and I will give them cover fire.” Hunter nodded. “Omega, stay close to Wrecker.”

Tech and Shiani nodded and went out a window, Hunter following to boost them up one by one. Once they were on the track itself, they had to make their way over towards the terminal and swing out on a dart line.

Shiani ducked under his arm soundlessly as usual, pistol out and returning fire while they swung. Once they landed, he plugged his way into the terminal and started on the datapad. His siren stood over him, blaster out and watching.

The horrifying sound of three V-wings moving towards them made her skin crawl. “Hunter! Arial support coming in. Three V-wings, and they’re coming in hot.” She tried to sound confident and unafraid, the way the clones always did.

She was a civilian. She kept trying to forget she wasn’t a soldier like the man she loved, that she wasn’t terrified all the time when they engaged the Empire. She wanted to crumble most of the time, but one thing was stronger than fear. The undying, feral need to protect Tech like he was made of nova crystals kept her on her feet as the Imperial ships came into view.

Three gunships versus a siren with pistol was almost laughable odds, but Shiani had never been the one who loved statistics like her husband did. “Cover ears.” She muttered into the comm, putting her blaster back in her holster as they got closer.

“Copy.”

When the V-wings came screaming past, getting ready to shoot her and Tech off the track, she sucked in every scrap of air she had and shrieked directly up.

One simply exploded, raining durasteel confetti as the sound shook it apart with the viciousness of an ion cannon. The other one lost a wing and went careening into the clouds below, though the third managed to avoid the blast and pulled wide to come back for a second pass. Shiani grinned and pumped her fist in the air. “Yeah!”

Over the comm, she could hear Wrecker and cheering too.

“That was exceptional, cyar’ika, but let’s not celebrate too soon.” Tech stood up. “Echo, the power is restored. You’ll need to reboot that terminal to access the rail car controls.”

“On it. You two get down here before the wind knocks you down.”

Like a long forgotten dream, Tech recalled when they’d found Echo on Skako Minor, when the wind had swept Crosshair over the edge of a rickety open air bridge. Wrecker had jumped after him without hesitation, despite his fear. He also remembered telling them, just a moment before it happened, if they were going to fall to not take him with them.

He took Shiani by the hand and the two of them came running as fast as they could across the upper rail. The surviving V-wing was coming back, they just had to make it-

The V-wing’s weapons hit the back of the two connected rail cars, the rear one starting to come detached from its mooring, and the vibrations sent Shiani and Tech flying. Her claws dug into the plastoid of his vambrace as he managed to catch them on a dart line secure to the bottom of the loosening car.

“Shiani? Are you alright?” Tech’s usually measured voice sounded a little… less so. “Can you pull yourself up to my side without causing to many vibrations?”

She looked up and nodded, swinging her arm up to grab his belt and then shoulder, wrapping her legs around his waist from the side and her arms around his neck. Tentacles wound their way around him, and she helped him connect the dart line to his belt to free his hands.

“The damaged car is pulling the other one loose.” He murmured as he looked up, going stock still as she saw the remaining connecting wobbling.

“I’m comin’ for you Tech!” Wrecker called, trying to make it to the blown out end their line was attached to and haul them in.

Shiani swallowed hard. “... He’s not going to make it, Tech.”

“I know.” He nodded, one arm moving around her hip. “Stop, Wrecker! Any shift in weight could cause the carriage to collapse.”

“Hang on. I can pull you guys up.” Wrecker protested.

“The weight will pull both of them off the rail. You must sever the connection hinge.” Tech’s volume dropped even as he said it, realizing what it meant.

“Not until you’re both up here!” Wrecker yelled back, and judging by the horrified tone in his voice, so did he.

. Tech looked at Shiani, and she saw the glimmer of his eyes starting to water. She’d never seen him cry before. “Tech…” She whispered.

“I am sorry, cyare.” He breathed. “I thought you would be safer by my side… There is no way to get you up there without taking everyone else with you. You know I would…”

“I wouldn’t go. Not without you.” She swallowed hard. “Where you go, I go. Even down.”

Tech nodded and looked back up, the arm around her waist squeezing three times.

I love you. If it’s the last time, I love you.

“There is no time, Wrecker.” Tech pulled out his blaster. He knew the odds of survival were basically nothing, and he only had one regret. That Shiani had to come with him, because he was certain a galaxy without her would be a lesser one. Still… if he had to die, it might be more pleasant if he could hold her hand on the way down. “Plan 99.”

“Don’t you do it, Tech!” Wrecker shouted, panic in his voice. Omega, who was right behind him, sucked in a sharp breath.

They’re the ones who saw him in the Riot Race. They saw when crowds were cheering his name… and now they’ll see us fall.

It was a horrible thought. Omega didn’t deserve this to live in her mind forever. Wrecker didn’t either, but he’d seen horror. He was a soldier with a good heart, Omega was only a baby… her sweet Baby Mega, her best friend. She hoped Omega forgave her for this, as she put her hand over Tech’s on the blaster and followed his aim towards the connection hinge.

Both Tech’s amber eyes and Shiani’s blue ones were a little shiny with tears, but it didn’t affect their aim. They’d trained forever together, by now the only person who could have made a better shot was the very sniper they’d come to rescue. Tech hoped the rest of the team went on to find Crosshair. Then this wasn’t all in vain. “When have we ever followed orders?”

“NO!”

“Three. Two. One. Now.” Tech coached, and both of them pulled the trigger. They had to do it together, or they’d feel like they’d murdered their lover the whole way to their deaths. It was better like this, together. The connection hinge snapped under the plasma, and it started to fall along with them.

As gravity took hold, Shiani looked at Tech’s face. This, oddly, reminded her of a holo-drama Omega and Lyana had gotten her to watch with them one night. It ended in a wedding, with the bride and groom holding a knife and cutting a cake together. A surface wedding, something she’d been meaning to ask if he wanted since she’d accidentally denied it to him.

They’d never get the chance for the ceremony, but at least they were hand in hand. They pitched over, Tech letting go of the blaster to wrap both arms around Shiani as they went plummeting head first towards the ground with the rail car coming after them.

“TECH! SHIANI!” She heard Wrecker and Omega screaming their names, but it faded to the sound of the wind whistling as they reached terminal velocity and everything faded to cloud around them.

Shiani pressed her head against Tech’s helmet, eyes fixed on him, and as they went plummeting to near certain death, she sang everything she had. She couldn’t save him, but she could kiss him the whole way down.

She was cold, laying on her back staring up at the sky. It didn’t look like the blue, cloudy sky she’d fallen out of. It looked like night, full of stars and swirling as if she was once again below the waves. She couldn’t move and her body felt ice cold, pain lancing through her with every gasping breath. The thick taste of blood flooded her mouth, and she felt it leaking out of her gills and pooling in her chest plate.

She must have been alive somehow, if she was hurting. “T-tech?” She managed to rasp around her bloody fangs.

“Poor little siren.” A gentle, kind voice spoke. “So far from home and so badly hurt.”

Shiani managed to slowly shift her head, until she was looking up at the pale and pretty face of a being made of light and grace. Greenish hair flowed around her, her smile so kind and sweet… “M-elody…” She choked, looking into the face of a goddess.

“Oh, my dear. You’re so close to death.” The goddess leaned over her. “But if you want to fight, you just might survive.”

“Take me. S-send Tech back.” Shiani coughed, spraying blue blood across her chestplate. Her armor that her mate had made her, maybe the only think that had kept her alive this long.

“You can’t bargain with death, little one.”

“Take me. Send… send Tech back.” The siren repeated. “I know… that you can. Take me. Send Tech back.” She wouldn’t fight death if it meant he would live. He deserved his life on Pabu with the little joys she’d shown him. They’d take care of him after she was gone, but he had live.

“He isn’t mine to return to you.” The Melody settled on her knees by the siren’s broken body.

“H-harmony then.” Shiani swallowed. She’d go into the darkest oceans for her afterlife, if that was the price. No more playing in the light and warmth of the shallows, but she could get used to life like an anglerfish.

The god appeared, his eyes hard on her. “It’s been a long time since anyone called to me in their hour of death.”

“Take me and send Tech back.” Shiani wheezed again, forcing one little wobbly hand towards him. It dripped blood and could barely tremble, but she made it reach for him. “Please.”

“I cannot give you what you seek, siren.” He shook his head and moved away as she tried to touch him.

She sobbed brokenly. “Please… please, send Tech back. He just learned how to live.”

The Melody took her battered little hand in both of her glowing ones. “I can’t give him back to you, my dear. But I can give you back to the galaxy. You’ve been so brave. It is a rare gift, use it wisely.”

Shiani stared up at the goddess as she placed a hand on her chest plate, her three hearts beating out of sync for a moment before kicking back into the appropriate rhythm. “B-but…”

“Shh. Save your strength, Shiani Illumai. You will need it.”

Shiani woke up with a choked groan of agony, every nerve in her body screaming at her. Aggressively.

She was half on her side under a pile of debris, some of it sprayed with blue and red blood. “T-tech?” She gasped, raising wobbly hands to try to push the metal off her. It was stacked, not quite in an organic way it would have fallen, but her brain was to busy buzzing with the pain to figure it out. She shoved the durasteel off, sucking in a breath as the sky appeared in front of her. It was morning light, and it had been before dusk when they’d fallen. She’d been out here all night, skin slick with morning dew and sweat.

She tried to take stock of her injuries, slowly moving her arms up. Her right shoulder was most definitely not in its socket correctly and she couldn’t lift it past her sternum. One of her head tresses was ripped completely in half and glued to the others with matted dried blood. There was a deep cut on her left cheek, her chest plate was cracked in the front, and her tentacles were all covered in various bruises and deep gashes. When she tried to sit up, though, was when she found the worst of it. Her left femur was snapped, the bone punched out of her skin, and when she tried to move her hips she almost passed out again from the pain. Her pelvis was definitely crushed on that side as well.

She managed to roll onto her right side and throw up from the fire running under her skin. Her comm was broken too, there was no way to call for help.

“Tech?” She rasped again, puking again as she finished the roll onto her stomach and used her tentacle to push her dislocated shoulder back into its mooring. He had to be nearby, they’d been holding onto each other… She didn’t remember the actual moment they’d struck the ground, but she was sure she didn’t want to. All she wanted to remember was what she was desperate to find; the love of her life.

There was red blood spatter all over the area, and she spotted his cracked helmet tossed carelessly on the ground. She dragged herself to it in tiny motions, wheezing around what was likely several broken ribs. When she got there, it lay empty and bloody, with the visor broken out. Beside it and also bloody was the puzzle necklace she’d made him, laying in a bootprint depression like someone had stepped on it when they’d taken it off of him.

Shiani’s fingers curled around the dented durasteel, tears cleaning the dirt and blood off her face. Tech’s wedding gift… the Empire had taken his body, probably for twisted experiments like the ones Tech had mentioned got Hemlock fired from the Republic. Those monsters would desecrate what was left of him, and she couldn’t even bury him.

Tech was gone.

Shiani collapsed onto her face, sobbing and choking. She’d die out here alone, without him, because the rest of the team must have escaped by now. She’d wanted them too, to get Omega out of here, but it didn’t change the fact that she was afraid. She didn’t want to die of exposure and the slow infection that would set in on these wounds. She wasn’t ready to meet the gods again and tell them she never made it more than a few meters from where they’d given her a second chance she hadn’t even wanted.

Her tool bag had landed by Tech’s helmet, strap ripped off her but somehow miraculously still closed. She inched her way to it and looked up, struggling to wipe the snot and tears off her bloody face as she squinted at something shiny a few more meters away. It was a huge chunk of broken ship part, surprisingly intact for having crashed.

The V-wing. The one missing only a wing, something a mechanic could put back together with just the tools in the bag she was clinging to. It would be hard since she couldn’t stand, but the scrap parts around her would work. She only needed to survive takeoff and space, a tin can with a hyperdrive would do.

She started dragging herself to it with painful little sounds, inch by inch. Claws dug into the grass, but she wasn’t giving up. She had to get home. She couldn’t sleep until it was done, and dimly she knew it might mean she didn’t heal correctly… but if she was going to die she either wanted to do it in a ship, or on Pabu with the rest of her family. Either way, she was following Tech one way or the other.

It didn’t hurt anymore. Shiani had been awake for so long her body felt numb, though she still couldn’t stand. She’d rebuilt the wing and made the hull of this miserable V-wing pressurized. It wasn’t hyperspace capable without a hyperdrive ring, but she’d seen one just on the edge of the system when they’d come on the Marauder.

At least she thought she had. She was sure she was hallucinating at this point, exhausted and shaking as she dragged herself into the V-wing’s pilot’s seat. Sitting her hip reminded her she was, in fact, still broken, and the pain cleared her head. How long had she been at this… ten days? Twelve? She’d lost track.

She managed to flip the dials and levers in the correct sequence to get the controls to light up, kicking it with her good foot until the engines started. “C’mon… c’mon…” She growled, hissing at the contraption until it came fully to life and she could get it in the air. She didn’t have clearance from the airspace, but the V-wing was fast and nimble. She had to pray she was half as good a pilot as Tech trained her to be.

The Imperial comm was still active, and she heard them scrambling pursuit after her as she laid on the controls. Her slapdash repairs weren’t enough to keep ahead of a pristine V-wing… She turned on her mic and started singing furiously as she headed for the edge of the atmosphere, pouring every ounce of her exhaustion into the soundwaves.

Fall asleep. You want to rest. You want to fall apart and cry yourself to sleep.

The closest pursuit’s nose dropped, the pilot making a helpless noise and starting to sob as he went down into the trees. Behind her, other fighters were wobbling in the air as their pilots started to fall apart. Shiani gunned her own engine like it owed her money and made for the hyperdrive ring, docking her barely-spaceworthy stolen vessel. She hurriedly slammed one of only three sets of coordinates she had truly memorized. Kamino and Ord Mantell were lost causes, but Pabu… she could get home.

She jumped into hyperspace just before the Empire caught her, catching on and turning off their comms finally. The stretching lights of purple light flickered over the broken siren, who flicked a wire with her claw to sever it and ensured the ship couldn’t be tracked.

This thing couldn’t land, but if she crashed into the water near enough to the island she could make her way to shore. She would have to figure it out, how deep the water needed to be to keep what was left of her broken body from being destroyed on impact and how far she could reasonably drag herself underwater with her injuries.

She clutched Tech’s necklace, where she’d hung it around her neck. “Going home, Tech… we’re gonna go home…”

Phee was sitting on the beach with Lyana, both of them having come out to clear their heads. Wrecker and Hunter had limped the Marauder back to Pabu, both to let Echo get his ship back and to supply themselves. Hunter had quietly told Phee that Tech and Shiani had been killed, and that Cid had double crossed them to the Empire which had led to Omega being taken captive. Phee’s heart had snapped in half at the story of the friendly siren and clone she’d loved, who’d gone down to save their family only to have their baby sister snatched by something evil.

The broken pair of goggles that had sat in Hunter’s hand had been hard to take.

Lyana was so worried about Omega, and comforting her gave Phee something to think about other than her dead friends. She was sitting with her arm around her niece, looking up at the sunny sky and stroking her hair.

“You think they’ll find her, Auntie Phee?” Lyana whispered.

“Those boys don’t play around… if anyone can, it’s them.” She murmured cautiously. She wanted to believe that Wrecker and Hunter could do it-

A flash of light made them both look up, and Phee frowned as a small ship came hurtling into the atmosphere far too fast. “What’s that?” Lyana gasped.

“A Imperial V-wing.” Phee gritted her teeth. “But it’s going to crash.”

“It’s broken looking.” Lyana pointed out, a thousand conversations with Omega about things she’d learned being raised by soldiers sticking with her. “Look at the left wing.”

“.... Do me a favor. Go tell your dad I’m gonna borrow the boat.” Phee frowned, getting to her feet. She watched the V-wing hit the water and start to break up as it sank, steam rising from the where the hull had superheated due to the speed of reentry. Once Lyana was out of sight, Phee ran to the boat and took it out to the crash site. She had one hand on her blaster, determined to take out any Imperial survivor in the name of her dead friends.

The V-wing was still sinking as she got over it, a stream of bubbles coming from the broken windshield as it slowly shed the trapped air holding it from plummeting into the sea where it belonged. As Phee watched, she spotted a fist slam into the cracked transparisteel once, twice, three times until it broke through and a figure shoved themselves out of the hole heedless of the sharp fragments cutting them.

A figure with four tentacles, who was leaking blue blood into the water. A siren!

Phee dropped her blaster into the bottom of the boat and jumped in, grabbing the siren who couldn’t seem to kick to swim. She dragged the injured woman to the surface and pulled her into the boat, climbing back in after her.

The siren smiled around bloody teeth. “Phee…” She mumbled, and Phee gasped at the awful injuries covering nearly every inch of her. She was green with bruises, bones exposed, burned from reentry, and her skin was both clammy and hot with a raging infection.

“Hang on, I got you.” Phee breathed, hitting her comm. “Shep, meet me at the dock with a stretcher and round up as much bacta as we can spare. Send Lyana to my ship and tell her to bring me my long-range transmitter. I’ve got to call Hunter and Wrecker.”

“What’s going on, Phee? Lyana said an Imperial ship crashed into the ocean?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t an Imperial on it. It’s Shiani!”

#explict #original character #clone force 99 #the bad batch #star wars #fanfic #tbb tech #song of the sea

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