#special operation technologies

[kneedeepincynade]

Before we continue with today's post we would like to raise awareness toward the earthquake that happened today in Turkey and Siria, Russia and China as well as most of the world have already mobilized toward helping the affected countries,if you can find a charity and donate to the victims.

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

⚠️ AZIENDE DI STATO CINESI HANNO FORNITO APPARECCHIATURE DI NAVIGAZIONE, COMPONENTISTICA E TECNOLOGIE A DUPLICE USO ALLA FEDERAZIONE RUSSA ⚠️

📰 Secondo una revisione condotta dal Wall Street Journal (❗️) sui Dati Doganali della Federazione Russa, la Cina avrebbe fornito (e starebbe tuttora fornendo) attrezzature militari, Tecnologie a Duplice Uso, Tecnologia per la Guerra Elettronica e parti di Caccia da Combattimento a Compagnie di Difesa di proprietà del Governo Russo, poste sotto sanzioni dagli Stati Uniti e dall'Unione Europea ⚙️

💭 Per quanto riguarda i mesi precedenti (prima di questa notizia), sappiamo che:

🔺Le esportazioni cinesi in Russia di Ossido di Alluminio, essenziale per la produzione in certi settori militari, sono aumentate di oltre 400 volte - Fonte 📄

🔺Le spedizioni cinesi di Chip in Russia, utili sia in ambito civile che militare, sono raddoppiate - Fonte 📄

🔺La Changsha Tianyi Space Technology Research Institute Company Ltd, Società Cinese che si occupa della produzione di Satelliti, avrebbe fornito immagini satellitari di località in Ucraina di alta qualità alla PMC Wagner, permettendole di condurre le sue operazioni militari - Fonte 📄

📄 Secondo la Revisione condotta dal WSJ, la maggior parte delle importazioni russe di Tecnologie a Duplice Uso provenivano dalla Cina, segnale che l'aiuto che la Repubblica Popolare Cinese sta fornendo alla Russia non è solamente di natura economica, ma anche militare 🪖

🧾 Ecco ciò che fuoriesce dai Registri Doganali:

🔺La Società di Difesa "保利科技有限公司", di Proprietà Statale, ha spedito - in data 31/08/2022 - Apparecchiature di Navigazione alla Società Statale Russa JSC Rosoboronexport per Elicotteri Mi-17 🚁

🔺Il conglomerato "AVIC - Aviation Industry Corporation of China" - di Proprietà Statale, facente parte del SASAC, la Commissione per la Supervisione e l'Amministrazione delle Attività Statali, ha fornito - il 24 ottobre - numerosi pezzi per Caccia Multiruolo Su-35 (usati dalla Russia nell'Operazione Militare Speciale) ad una sussidiaria della ROSTEC, Holding Statale Russa operante nel Settore della Difesa e delle Tecnologie Avanzate, per 1,2 milioni di dollari 🇷🇺

🔺La "China Taly Aviation Technologies Corporation", Società Commerciale di Proprietà Statale operante nei Settori delle Tecnologia, dell'Industria e del Commercio relative all'Aviazione, ha fornito - il 04/10/2022 - componentistica alla "Almaz-Antey Corporation", Compagnia Statale Russa che si occupa di Sistemi di Difesa Anti-Aerea. Si tratta di componenti per il Sistema Radar 96L6E, utilizzato dalla Russia per rilevare Caccia, Missili e Droni nemici come parte del Sistema S-400 🚀

🔺La "SINNO ELECTRONIC CO. LTD", con sede a Hong Kong, già posta sotto sanzioni dal Dipartimento del Tesoro degli USA, ha inviato più di 1.300 spedizioni tra Aprile e Ottobre 2022 alla KRET, Azienda di Stato della Russia, sussidiaria della ROSTEC, per un valore di due milioni di dollari 📊

🤔 Alcune aziende citate però, hanno affermato di non avere inviato nulla alla Russia, tipo la "Fujian Nanan Baofeng Electronics Co., Ltd", che - secondo il Report - avrebbe fornito un'Antenna Telescopica per un RB-531BE, utilizzando come intermediario tra Cina e Russia un'Azienda Statale del Settore della Difesa dell'Uzbekistan, paese membro dell'Organizzazione per la Cooperazione di Shanghai 🇨🇳

💬 Wang Shaofeng, Direttore Generale dell'Azienda, ha affermato che il nome ufficiale della sua azienda non include "Nanan", e che un'altra azienda avrebbe potuto utilizzare illegalmente il nome della sua azienda, e che non produce antenne telescopiche, dichiarando che il Report "manca di basi fattuali, ed è incoerente coi fatti" - è certamente più probabile che siano state le Aziende di Stato ad aver fornito la componentistica, e non questa azienda 🤔

Silverado Policy Accelerator, Think Tank USA con sede a Washington, ha affermato - in un suo Report - che la Russia "fa sempre più affidamento sulle importazioni di Beni e Tecnologie a Duplice Uso dalla Cina, per soddisfare le sue esigenze militari" 🪖

🌸 Iscriviti 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

⚠️ CHINESE STATE COMPANIES SUPPLIED NAVIGATION EQUIPMENT, COMPONENTS AND DUAL-USE TECHNOLOGIES TO THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION ⚠️

📰 According to a review conducted by the Wall Street Journal (❗️) on Customs Data of the Russian Federation, China has supplied (and is still supplying) military equipment, Dual-Use Technologies, Electronic Warfare Technology and Fighter Fighter parts to Companies of Defense owned by the Russian Government, placed under sanctions by the United States and the European Union ⚙️

💭 Regarding the previous months (before this news), we know that:

🔺Chinese exports to Russia of Aluminum Oxide, essential for production in certain military sectors, have increased more than 400 times - Source 📄

🔺Chinese shipments of Chips to Russia, useful in both civilian and military fields, have doubled - Source 📄

🔺Changsha Tianyi Space Technology Research Institute Company Ltd, a Chinese company that manufactures satellites, allegedly provided high-quality satellite images of locations in Ukraine to PMC Wagner, allowing it to conduct its military operations - Source 📄

📄 According to the Review conducted by the WSJ, the majority of Russian imports of Dual-Use Technologies came from China, a sign that the aid that the People's Republic of China is providing to Russia is not only economic but also military 🪖

🧾 Here's what comes out of the Customs Registers:

🔺The State Owned Defense Company "保利科技有限公司", shipped - on 08/31/2022 - Navigation Equipment to the Russian State Company JSC Rosoboronexport for Mi-17 Helicopters 🚁

🔺The state-owned conglomerate "AVIC - Aviation Industry Corporation of China" - part of SASAC, the Commission for the Supervision and Administration of State Activities, supplied - on October 24 - numerous parts for Su-35 Multirole Fighter (used by Russia in the Special Military Operation) to a subsidiary of ROSTEC, the Russian State Holding operating in the Defense and Advanced Technologies Sector, for 1.2 million dollars 🇷🇺

🔺The "China Taly Aviation Technologies Corporation", a State-owned Commercial Company operating in the Aviation Technology, Industry and Commerce Sectors, supplied - on 04/10/2022 - components to the "Almaz-Antey Corporation", a Russian State Company dealing with Anti-Aircraft Defense Systems. These are components for the 96L6E Radar System, used by Russia to detect enemy Fighters, Missiles and Drones as part of the S-400 System 🚀

🔺The "SINNO ELECTRONIC CO. LTD", based in Hong Kong, already placed under sanctions by the US Treasury Department, sent more than 1,300 shipments between April and October 2022 to KRET, the State Company of Russia, a subsidiary of ROSTEC , worth two million dollars 📊

🤔 However, some companies mentioned claimed that they had not sent anything to Russia, such as the "Fujian Nanan Baofeng Electronics Co., Ltd", which - according to the Report - would have supplied a Telescopic Antenna for an RB-531BE, using it as an intermediary between China and Russia a State Enterprise of the Defense Sector of Uzbekistan, a member country of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization 🇨🇳

💬 Wang Shaofeng, general manager of the company, said that his company's official name does not include "Nanan", and that another company may have used his company name illegally, and that he does not produce telescopic antennas, stating that the Report "lacks factual basis, and is inconsistent with the facts" - it is certainly more probable that it was the State Companies that supplied the components, and not this company 🤔

Silverado Policy Accelerator, Think Tank USA based in Washington, stated - in its Report - that Russia "increasingly relies on imports of Dual-Use Goods and Technologies from China to meet its military needs" 🪖

🌸 Subscribe 👉 @collettivoshaoshan

[defensenow]

Discover how the U.S. and Australia are secretly preparing for long-range strikes by rehearsing the delivery of precision fires from hidden locations. Watch as military forces train to execute strategic operations with maximum stealth and precision. Stay tuned to learn more about this fascinating collaboration between two powerful allies. Don't miss out on the latest updates by subscribing to our channel!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Paying consumer debts is basically optional in the United States

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/12/do-not-pay/#fair-debt-collection-practices-act

[soft-star-dubai]

Professional Technical and Landscape Service

Introduction:

Technical and Landscape service www.softstardubai.ae is best company in Dubai.

Dubai known for its awe-inspiring skyline and innovative infrastructure, is a thriving metropolis that constantly evolves and embraces technological advancements. To support the city’s development and maintain its captivating landscapes. Moreover and wide again and range of the Soft Star technical and more landscape services have emerged near too Dubai. These are services play again pivotal role in enhancing urban living and then again by providing state of the art solutions for construction maintenance and green space etc.

Technical Services:

Dubai’s rapid growth necessitates the expertise of technical service providers who specialize in various areas. First Construction companies second architectural firms and engineering consultancies offer their expertise in designing and building iconic structures that define the city’s landscape. In addition from too be towering skyscrapers too intricate urban planning and again these technical

services contribute to Dubai’s unique skyline and urban fabric.

Moreover, facilities and management companies are key players in maintaining the functionality and efficiency of Dubai’s infrastructure important. They provide comprehensive services. Moreover maintenance repairs, and energy again management for residential and commercial buildings, ensuring that the city’s facilities operate seamlessly.

Landscape Services:

Dubai’s commitment to creating lush green spaces amidst its urban environment has led to a thriving landscape services industry. Landscape architects and designers are instrumental in transforming open areas. and parks and gardens into breathtaking landscapes. By integrating sustainable design practices and innovative techniques or they harmonize the natural and built environments. They providing residents and visitors with serene and aesthetically pleasing surroundings.

To ensure the well-being of these green spaces and landscape maintenance companies employ skilled horticulturists and gardeners. They meticulously care for the plants or trees and lawns ensuring their health and vitality. From irrigation systems to pest control, these services maintain the beauty and functionality of Dubai’s green areas.

Best Technical and Landscape service:

 Technical and Landscape service to a range of professional service focused on the design or installation and maintenances of the outdoor spaces and the infrastructure associated with them. These services are essential for creating aesthetically pleasing and functional environments in residential or commercial and public settings.

Synergy between Technical and Landscape Service:

The seamless integration of technical and landscape services near Dubai offers numerous benefits to the city and its residents. Furthermore By combining innovative construction again

methods with sustainable landscape designs. In addition they create too harmonious urban environment that prioritizes both aesthetics and functionality more.

For instance, incorporating green spaces within too skyscrapers not only enhances the visual appeal but also improves air quality and provides a retreat for residents. Next Technical services contribute to the construction of these green buildings. landscape services maintain and nurture the plants within them.

Conclusion:

The availability of technical and landscape services near Dubai. They played a vital role in shaping the city’s infrastructure and green spaces. Finally through their expertise again more commitment too innovation. These service providers contribute to Dubai’s reputation and as a global hub of modernity and sustainable living etc. Moreover as the city and continues too evolve and the collaboration between technical and landscape are services will further enhance the urban experience ensuring a harmonious blend of technology, architecture, and natural beauty.

[reasonsforhope]

Scientists have developed a new solar-powered system to convert saltwater into fresh drinking water which they say could help reduce dangerous the risk of waterborne diseases like cholera.

Via tests in rural communities, they showed that the process is more than 20% cheaper than traditional methods and can be deployed in rural locations around the globe.

Building on existing processes that convert saline groundwater to freshwater, the researchers from King’s College London, in collaboration with MIT and the Helmholtz Institute for Renewable Energy Systems, created a new system that produced consistent levels of water using solar power, and reported it in a paper published recently in Nature Water.

It works through a process called electrodialysis which separates the salt using a set of specialized membranes that channel salt ions into a stream of brine, leaving the water fresh and drinkable. By flexibly adjusting the voltage and the rate at which salt water flowed through the system, the researchers developed a system that adjusts to variable sunshine while not compromising on the amount of fresh drinking water produced.

Using data first gathered in the village of Chelleru near Hyderabad in India, and then recreating these conditions of the village in New Mexico, the team successfully converted up to 10 cubic meters, or several bathtubs worth of fresh drinking water. This was enough for 3,000 people a day with the process continuing to run regardless of variable solar power caused by cloud coverage and rain.

[Note: Not sure what metric they're using to calculate daily water needs here. Presumably this is drinking water only.]

Dr. Wei He from the Department of Engineering at King’s College London believes the new technology could bring massive benefits to rural communities, not only increasing the supply of drinking water but also bringing health benefits.

“By offering a cheap, eco-friendly alternative that can be operated off the grid, our technology enables communities to tap into alternative water sources (such as deep aquifers or saline water) to address water scarcity and contamination in traditional water supplies,” said He.

“This technology can expand water sources available to communities beyond traditional ones and by providing water from uncontaminated saline sources, may help combat water scarcity or unexpected emergencies when conventional water supplies are disrupted, for example like the recent cholera outbreaks in Zambia.”

In the global rural population, 1.6 billion people face water scarcity, many of whom are reliant on stressed reserves of groundwater lying beneath the Earth’s surface.

However, worldwide 56% of groundwater is saline and unsuitable for consumption. This issue is particularly prevalent in India, where 60% of the land harbors undrinkable saline water. Consequently, there is a pressing need for efficient desalination methods to create fresh drinking water cheaply, and at scale.

Traditional desalination technology has relied either on costly batteries in off-grid systems or a grid system to supply the energy necessary to remove salt from the water. In developing countries’ rural areas, however, grid infrastructure can be unreliable and is largely reliant on fossil fuels...

“By removing the need for a grid system entirely and cutting reliance on battery tech by 92%, our system can provide reliable access to safe drinking water, entirely emission-free, onsite, and at a discount of roughly 22% to the people who need it compared to traditional methods,” He said.

The system also has the potential to be used outside of developing areas, particularly in agriculture where climate change is leading to unstable reserves of fresh water for irrigation.

The team plans to scale up the availability of the technology across India through collaboration with local partners. Beyond this, a team from MIT also plans to create a start-up to commercialize and fund the technology.

“While the US and UK have more stable, diversified grids than most countries, they still rely on fossil fuels. By removing fossil fuels from the equation for energy-hungry sectors like agriculture, we can help accelerate the transition to Net Zero,” He said.

-via Good News Network, April 2, 2024

[nasa]

Let's Explore a Metal-Rich Asteroid 🤘

Between Mars and Jupiter, there lies a unique, metal-rich asteroid named Psyche. Psyche’s special because it looks like it is part or all of the metallic interior of a planetesimal—an early planetary building block of our solar system. For the first time, we have the chance to visit a planetary core and possibly learn more about the turbulent history that created terrestrial planets.

Here are six things to know about the mission that’s a journey into the past: Psyche.

1. Psyche could help us learn more about the origins of our solar system.

After studying data from Earth-based radar and optical telescopes, scientists believe that Psyche collided with other large bodies in space and lost its outer rocky shell. This leads scientists to think that Psyche could have a metal-rich interior, which is a building block of a rocky planet. Since we can’t pierce the core of rocky planets like Mercury, Venus, Mars, and our home planet, Earth, Psyche offers us a window into how other planets are formed.

2. Psyche might be different than other objects in the solar system.

Rocks on Mars, Mercury, Venus, and Earth contain iron oxides. From afar, Psyche doesn’t seem to feature these chemical compounds, so it might have a different history of formation than other planets.

If the Psyche asteroid is leftover material from a planetary formation, scientists are excited to learn about the similarities and differences from other rocky planets. The asteroid might instead prove to be a never-before-seen solar system object. Either way, we’re prepared for the possibility of the unexpected!

3. Three science instruments and a gravity science investigation will be aboard the spacecraft.

The three instruments aboard will be a magnetometer, a gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer, and a multispectral imager. Here’s what each of them will do:

Magnetometer: Detect evidence of a magnetic field, which will tell us whether the asteroid formed from a planetary body

Gamma-ray and neutron spectrometer: Help us figure out what chemical elements Psyche is made of, and how it was formed

Multispectral imager: Gather and share information about the topography and mineral composition of Psyche

The gravity science investigation will allow scientists to determine the asteroid’s rotation, mass, and gravity field and to gain insight into the interior by analyzing the radio waves it communicates with. Then, scientists can measure how Psyche affects the spacecraft’s orbit.

4. The Psyche spacecraft will use a super-efficient propulsion system.

Psyche’s solar electric propulsion system harnesses energy from large solar arrays that convert sunlight into electricity, creating thrust. For the first time ever, we will be using Hall-effect thrusters in deep space.

5. This mission runs on collaboration.

To make this mission happen, we work together with universities, and industry and NASA to draw in resources and expertise.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the mission and is responsible for system engineering, integration, and mission operations, while NASA’s Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Services Program manages launch operations and procured the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Working with Arizona State University (ASU) offers opportunities for students to train as future instrument or mission leads. Mission leader and Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton is also based at ASU.

Finally, Maxar Technologies is a key commercial participant and delivered the main body of the spacecraft, as well as most of its engineering hardware systems.

6. You can be a part of the journey.

Everyone can find activities to get involved on the mission’s webpage. There's an annual internship to interpret the mission, capstone courses for undergraduate projects, and age-appropriate lessons, craft projects, and videos.

You can join us for a virtual launch experience, and, of course, you can watch the launch with us on Oct. 12, 2023, at 10:16 a.m. EDT!

For official news on the mission, follow us on social media and check out NASA’s and ASU’s Psyche websites.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[dcxdpdabbles]

Danny's Grill Part 2

Special thanks to @mkarchin713 for letting me use their idea.

Tim's night had been hectic.

Not only have things at WE taken a turn for the worst due to some random influencer that decided Wayne Enterprises was the cause of global warming and convinced all his fans of the same- despite the fact they were the nation's leading company in green energy- sales have been down.

The board was breathing down his neck to fix the stocks while being no help at all to get the youth back on their side. He's already pulled twelve hours of overtime this week and it was only Wednesday.

He's been dealing with the PR nightmare while trying to get to the bottom of data theft across multiple big-name technology companies. Reports of scams and total funds lost were reported all through Gotham and only his city.

Tim suspects someone had been planting screen recording devices in one of Gotham's shipping factories before they left the buildings, stealing all the information from new buyers.

Since his theory is so hard to trace, he's been having difficulty pinpointing the base of operations, never mind having enough proof for his thesis. After Bruce's lost-in-time fiasco, Tim learns to have evidence before going to the family with anything.

So that means he's been trying to fight his way on his own, which usually isn't too much to handle, but stress and lack of sleep have really been slowing him down.

Thankfully, a specific food truck appears in his line of sight, and his mood improves drastically. He finds a safe roof to quickly change into his civilians, already fantasizing about what delicious food he would eat.

Dressed in his typical Alvin Draper disguise- black, almost second-skin tights and an oversized sweater- he all but skips to Danny's Grill.

"Night, Danny," He says, smiling at the back of the chef. He leans on the little extended table outside the truck's small window. He takes a sniff of the air, mouth watering at the scent.

Looks like tonight is cheeseburgers, as Danny carefully flips some patties. Danny whirls around with a smile of his own, only to drop the spatula in horror.

"Alvin! What happened!?" Danny shouts, nearly flinging himself through the tiny opening. The vigilante blinks in confusion before catching his reflection in the napkin dispenser.

In his haste to have some of Danny's food, he forgot to cover up a black eye, swollen right cheekbone, and busted lip from his last faulty lead. A goon had gotten him by surprise and had nearly rearranged his face before he was able to get his wits about him.

"Nothing, really; it comes with the job, you know?" Tim tries to play off, laughing nervously when Danny's expression crumbles into pure rage. "Look, it's no big deal-"

"How can it not be a big deal!? Half your face is swollen!"

That happens when someone hits you with a metal pipe in the face. He thinks hysterically. "I've had worse."

"That's not comforting!" Danny screams, throwing off his apron. "Let me close down, and I'll take you to a doctor-"

"No hospitals. They'll ask where I got this, and I can't answer that." Tim cuts in, voice hard. There is a tense moment where he thinks Danny will force him to go anyway, but after a moment the other man growls slamming his hands on the counter.

"Fine. Fine. No hospitals. At least let me ice it." It takes everything in Tim not to shrink back from the hateful tone. He barely has the mind to nod as Danny quickly unlocks the little door that leads into his truck, ushering the Bat inside with barely controlled rage.

He knows it's not aimed at him, but being around someone so upset makes his skin crawl. Tim has problems with offending people; his parents had been masters in drilling into him from a young age.

That's why Tim always sought the approval of everyone around him, even if he couldn't stand the person.

He has been working on it, but old habits died hard.

"Sorry." He mumbles as Danny quickly gets a zippy bag full of ice.

"Don't. Apologize." Danny bites before taking a large breath, clearly trying to calm down. He gently places the ice against Tim's cheek, staring at him with such tender worry Tim can't help but feel butterflies. "You don't have to apologize for getting roughed up. Never. Okay?"

Tim nods, shyly looking away as his stomach is rapidly overrun by even more butterflies. "Okay."

"Come home with me." Danny suddenly blurts as if the words were forced out of him. He looked just as surprised by them as Tim was.

"What?"

"Just for tonight. Just so I know you're safe." Danny all but pleas, and Tim- well, Tim has never been known to be strong enough to resist his impulses. Sure, the family might worry, but he can send them a message claiming to be undercover, and frankly- it's been so long since Tim's had a break.

He's always wanted to know more about Danny outside his food truck. He hadn't been able to find much on him. Tim is a detective by heart. He wants to know everything there is to know about Danny Fenton.

"I can leave when I want." He says, as Danny carefully places a warm hand on his other cheek. "And I sleep in my own space. No bed sharing. I also want to take a shower but I don't have anything to sleep in."

"You can borrow something of mine/ Whatever you need." The words are practically a warm hug, and Tim feels relaxed. Already the shitty week feels less terrible, and he finds himself growing bold enough to take an obvious sniff of the air.

"Can I have a burger?"

There is a hint of an amused smile, but it does not cover up the worry. "Of course you can."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The shower is running in Danny's house.

It's a bit out of the way, about a forty-minute drive outside of Gotham limits, but it's spacious and private, just the way Danny liked it.

Ever since he inherited his title, he's found this house on the list of properties, and that was why he chose to take Gotham by storm in his little truck.

Danny isn't really sure what the story of the property was- the suspects the place was built around the same time Gotham got its curse; seeing as it was overseeing the city and had enough natural ectoplasm in the air, he would suspect the curse affecting the town lead to here. He never cared to check.

No, rather Danny had some ghosts remodel the old building to include wiring and functioning plumbing but asked that the general overall of the mansion stay the same.

He sort of like pretending to be a Lord of the Oldden days. If anyone asked if he walked around acting out old romances of the Victorian era, that was not else business but his own.

Alvin was undoubtedly impressed when they pulled up to his house. Maybe it shouldn't have felt so prideful to have the handsome man be impressed with his mansion given the circumstances.

He seemed to accept the excuse of having been willed the house by his late grandfather. He just hoped Alvin didn't think him the same as his wealthy clients.

Speaking of, he better make the call before Alvin finished.

Stepping to his balcony, he pulled out his burner phone and pressed the speed dial five. There are four rings before the call connects.

He gets no greeting, but he's not expecting one. Danny looks over his shoulder to ensure the bathroom door is connected to the master room- his bedroom, where Alvin will be staying, seeing as it has a bigger fireplace. He needs to have them install a heating system. Danny never bothered, what with his ice core and all- before he spoke.

"Hey, Red Hood, it's Danny. I'm calling in that favor."

There is a long pause before the other man grunts. "What is it?"

"My friend is a pro whose pimp or johns have been abusing lately. Can you help me....take care of the issue? I don't want to overstep in his life, but I'm pretty sure they broke his check bone tonight, and he claimed to have had worse before." Danny sighs, his stomach overturning at what that could mean. He hasn't gone out as Ghost King to show those assholes a thing or two because this isn't his haunt.

It's Red Hood's.

Danny had met the other man when a rouge attack had busted up all the main highways he usually worked in and had no choice but to try to sell in Crime Alley. He was right off the territory's edge, freaking out about entering without the main ghost's permission, until Red Hood confronted him.

Danny's frantic fretting had been suspicious enough that the main honcho had gone to find out why he was so nervous.

They worked a deal where Danny would sell his ware in peace, and as long as he let kids eat for free, Red Hood had no quarrels with him. He even got a favor from the crime lord after Danny provided free meals to some of his men's families struggling to get food a few months back.

He also allowed Hood to use his house as a safe house to hide a few people who needed to be out of the city. Is he part of Red Hood's gang? No.

Is he an alley? Yes.

Danny had been saving the favor for such an occasion.

There is silence on Hood's side, so Danny goes in for the kill. "My friend is seventeen; in a few months, he'll be eighteen, but he said he has been doing this since he was younger."

The silence is now laced with malice. If there was one thing they both agreed on it was that kids were never meant to be hurt by the scum of the city. "Give me his name and the area he usually works in."

"Alvin Draper. He changes per night, but I've often seen him on the east side of Crime Alley."

"I'll look into it. Is Alvin safe?"

"Yeah, he's going to be staying with me tonight. Don't come by until I convince him to extend his stay." Danny knows Hood will understand. This is one of many pros to see the Zone- his mansion's name- as a sanctuary.

"That's fine. Can you get me a picture of Alvin?"

"No, he's too skimmish."

Hood grunts again, his voice coming out tired despite the voice monitor. "Kids always are. I'll have my boys find Alvin's primp and johns. Ensure there aren't any other younglings before they make them swim with the fish."

Danny almost falls over in relief. "Thank you. Alvin...Alvin means a lot to me."

" Don't mention it. Stay well, Victorian."

Victorian is the code name Hood has given him to ensure Danny isn't tired of his gang. Yes, it's because his house is a Victorian mansion, but Danny also likes to think it's cause the other man appreciates the aesthetics of his house a little too much.

He once caught Hood admiring his Pride and Prejudice hardcover book displayed in his green sitting room.

"You too Hood. And thank you."

How would he convince Alvin that his house was a better place to call home than the orphanage and street corners without coming off as a wannabe savior or hopelessly in love creep?

Danny pauses at his own train of thought.

Hopelessly in love? He thinks in shock as the bathroom door swings open, and out comes Alvin, dressed in Danny's extra pajama set. He offers Danny a shy smile; even with the injuries, it is the loveliest sight he's ever seen, and- oh no, Danny is in love with him.

"You up for a late-night snack?" He asks, trying to not show the world-shattering realization on his face, and Alvin's smile grows wider.

"You're going to make me fat." The other laughs. Danny's heart skips a beat.

Danny Fenton loves Alvin Draper and will do everything he can to protect him. Even if Alvin will hate him for it.

[seat-safety-switch]

I am not the kind of person who would become a chicken farmer. Don't get me wrong: I can certainly understand the reasons why you would. There's a lot of different makes and models of chickens, and they help keep bugs out of your property. Plus, they make eggs. There is, however, one big downside: you don't have to buy a special vehicle for them.

One of the greatest things about agriculture is that it gives you an excuse to buy a specialized automobile or automobile accessory. Cows? Need a cattle trailer. Horses? Horse trailer. Big trucks in either regard. Chickens are small, so you can throw them in the back of your regular ol' Subaru wagon, and take them to the chicken vet whenever you want. It's an easy lifestyle, but as Socrates once said, the life where you don't buy a cool niche automobile is hardly a life at all.

Don't worry, shareholders. I am fully aware of the spending power and spare capital of chicken-lovers all over the country. There is a non-solution from Switch Industries to this non-problem. We simply give the chickens each their own little cars. They can drive themselves to the vet, or to the feed store, and sleep in their cars rather than rely on the construction of old-fashioned, expensive (and increasingly costly) chicken coops.

Many haters are speaking out against this project, and I address those haters now. You might think that this is excessive. You might think that this is impossible. You might think that this is illegal. Self-driving car technology has come a long way from the early days of "tie a rope to it." With modern Japanese technology (i.e. batteries stolen from floor models of Makita power drills at Home Depot,) a small chicken-operated electric car, built out of a repurposed Power Wheels®, can easily reach highway speeds.

As for illegality, it turns out that the current government will write whatever law we tell them to do, as long as we grow our chicken-driving industry to a size that is awkward to legislate before those lawmakers wake up to the threat. It is for this reason that I've partnered with some only-slightly-arrested junk bond kings in the tri-state areas to fuel this development.

So if you have a bunch of chickens on your property, easy access to the highway, and a lack of legal representation, call Switch Industries as soon as possible. We'll get you hooked up with your own fleet of NuggetRides® as soon as possible. You won't regret it, or at least we won't.

[carionto]

C'mon, Really? Look, Just, Let Me Help You!

Humans: We need to have a talk about your secret war plans against us.

Aliens: W-what? No, that's not it, how-

H: Our intelligence operative are very good. Don't pretend these [throws folder on the table that scatters hundreds of pages of classified documents all over] aren't yours.

A: F-Fine! Yes! We made plans about how we should fight you if we ever got into a war. We admit it! What do you want?

H: Huh? No, what I'm trying to say is, why do your plans suck?

A: Err... what?

H: Yeah, compared to our plans and war games, you don't seem to utilize all the advantages you have against us. There's not as much coordination and specialization of forces as we expect in our simulations. What gives?

A: You've lost me.

H: Look, every civilization should run military simulations against EVERY existing party, not just the ones you're natural competitors, or ones you see as antagonistic. Hell, while we were "vanished" our military literally had nothing else to do and spent a solid 200 years making up every kind of scenario against every single potential power we might end up encountering once we "reappeared".

Honestly, there are so many things we are shocked about once we got our hands on your plans, I legitimately don't know where is the best place to begin.

Okay, for starters, why don't any of your plans include making use of our superior technology? It would work, we tested it as well. We built a scale model of one of your capital ships, plopped one of our fusion reactors in and BAM, shields and weapons instantly became on par with our Destroyers, and could even do some serious damage to our Dreadnoughts (for a few seconds before our counterattack vaporizes it, but that's besides the point), so we know your technology is fully capable of handling us.

A: For the millionth time, we are not using unstable power sources that could totally blow us up at any point!

H: It is safe! Those things only have a 0.002 percent chance to fail, and a one in six hundred thousand chance of THAT resulting in an explosion. We've only had twelve incidents the entire time we've been using them.

A: No.

H: Well you ain't winning a war against us with that attitude.

But anyway, one other thing your plans never do is blow up Earth and irradiate the shipyard orbits, what gives?

A: That's an abominable crime against, well, EVERYTHING!

H: Weak. But okay. One other thing though, and this one is just baffling, your deployments and gathering locations are always in the most obvious and convenient places. Those are, no joke, where we would place recon units and prepare ambushes the moment we even got a hint of a whiff of hostility from you. How come you never seem to account for us expecting you to do the obvious and pre-emptively counter that. And inversely, you never expect us to not be in the logical places where we should be.

A: I think my head is spinning from that. What?

H: Reverse psychology? Predictive behavior, or whatever it's called, not a psychologist. If you want to win against your enemy, you have to think like your enemy first.

You look dizzy. I know it's a lot to take in, but we'll guide you through this. Think of it as homework. After we have a more thorough meeting on this subject, we'll wait and let you figure things out back in your secret HQ's. But, if the plans we acquire later still won't account for the things we discussed, we'll be very disappointed.

[lilith-vodkaaunt-of-demons]

So recently I've been rewatching Danny Phantom, and I still retain that it's a pretty great show kid's super hero show, the fights, the characters, the (not so) witty banter, the whole schtick is good imo, but there's one thing I didn't notice when I was a young girl that I'm noticing now for the first time, and that's how hard they lean into the "Bumbling, Idiot Father" trope, and how utterly contradictory it is to the actual characterization they have for Jack Fenton.

Man constantly invents new, operational, and effective Anti-Ghost technology on the regular, but the show treats him like he can't add 2+2. Yes, Maddie is OBVIOUSLY the Smarter of the two, but I really wish they'd forgone the "Idiot Father" trope to go along with something like what they did in The Owl House, with Amity's dad.

Like, it doesn't have to be 1-to-1, there are other zany "Scientist turned Parent" archetypes that aren't Heavily-implied-to-be-Autistic-and-X-is-their-Special-Interest. You could lean more into Mad Scientist, or Special Talent, or something, but it's just really jarring for Jack to be treated like an incompetent, bumbling fool one scene, then the next seen he's surprising Maddie with a new, operational, and actually effective gadget she's never seen before (like the Fenton Spector Deflector) when in the scene before, he's shown to be a complete and utter idiot that, despite being a Ghost Obsessed Ghost Hunter, couldn't even tell the person who delivered his mail was a ghost.

I want to see a Jack Fenton who doesn't listen to social graces because Ghosts don't care about manners, so why should he? I wanna see a Jack Fenton who doesn't want to deal with Mr. Lancer because it takes time away from his inventing and/or investigation Ghosts, not because he's somehow a Scientist that's also an Anti-Intellectual. I want to see a Jack Fenton that cares about Danny's education, in-so-far as it pertains to Ghosts and Ghost Hunting Activities.

I WANT A JACK FENTON THAT FITS THE GHOST OBSESSED GHOST HUNTER THAT HE IS, WHILE ALSO ALIGNING WITH THE SCIENTIST HE IS!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Three AI insights for hard-charging, future-oriented smartypantses

MERE HOURS REMAIN for the Kickstarter for the audiobook for The Bezzle, the sequel to Red Team Blues, narrated by @wilwheaton! You can pre-order the audiobook and ebook, DRM free, as well as the hardcover, signed or unsigned. There’s also bundles with Red Team Blues in ebook, audio or paperback.

Living in the age of AI hype makes demands on all of us to come up with smartypants prognostications about how AI is about to change everything forever, and wow, it's pretty amazing, huh?

AI pitchmen don't make it easy. They like to pile on the cognitive dissonance and demand that we all somehow resolve it. This is a thing cult leaders do, too – tell blatant and obvious lies to their followers. When a cult follower repeats the lie to others, they are demonstrating their loyalty, both to the leader and to themselves.

Over and over, the claims of AI pitchmen turn out to be blatant lies. This has been the case since at least the age of the Mechanical Turk, the 18th chess-playing automaton that was actually just a chess player crammed into the base of an elaborate puppet that was exhibited as an autonomous, intelligent robot.

The most prominent Mechanical Turk huckster is Elon Musk, who habitually, blatantly and repeatedly lies about AI. He's been promising "full self driving" Telsas in "one to two years" for more than a decade. Periodically, he'll "demonstrate" a car that's in full-self driving mode – which then turns out to be canned, recorded demo:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-video-promoting-self-driving-was-staged-engineer-testifies-2023-01-17/

Musk even trotted an autonomous, humanoid robot on-stage at an investor presentation, failing to mention that this mechanical marvel was just a person in a robot suit:

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/elon-musk-tesla-robot-optimus-ai

Now, Musk has announced that his junk-science neural interface company, Neuralink, has made the leap to implanting neural interface chips in a human brain. As Joan Westenberg writes, the press have repeated this claim as presumptively true, despite its wild implausibility:

https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/elon-musk-lies

Neuralink, after all, is a company notorious for mutilating primates in pursuit of showy, meaningless demos:

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pcrm-neuralink-monkey-deaths/

I'm perfectly willing to believe that Musk would risk someone else's life to help him with this nonsense, because he doesn't see other people as real and deserving of compassion or empathy. But he's also profoundly lazy and is accustomed to a world that unquestioningly swallows his most outlandish pronouncements, so Occam's Razor dictates that the most likely explanation here is that he just made it up.

The odds that there's a human being beta-testing Musk's neural interface with the only brain they will ever have aren't zero. But I give it the same odds as the Raelians' claim to have cloned a human being:

https://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/03/cf.opinion.rael/

The human-in-a-robot-suit gambit is everywhere in AI hype. Cruise, GM's disgraced "robot taxi" company, had 1.5 remote operators for every one of the cars on the road. They used AI to replace a single, low-waged driver with 1.5 high-waged, specialized technicians. Truly, it was a marvel.

Globalization is key to maintaining the guy-in-a-robot-suit phenomenon. Globalization gives AI pitchmen access to millions of low-waged workers who can pretend to be software programs, allowing us to pretend to have transcended the capitalism's exploitation trap. This is also a very old pattern – just a couple decades after the Mechanical Turk toured Europe, Thomas Jefferson returned from the continent with the dumbwaiter. Jefferson refined and installed these marvels, announcing to his dinner guests that they allowed him to replace his "servants" (that is, his slaves). Dumbwaiters don't replace slaves, of course – they just keep them out of sight:

https://www.stuartmcmillen.com/blog/behind-the-dumbwaiter/

So much AI turns out to be low-waged people in a call center in the Global South pretending to be robots that Indian techies have a joke about it: "AI stands for 'absent Indian'":

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

A reader wrote to me this week. They're a multi-decade veteran of Amazon who had a fascinating tale about the launch of Amazon Go, the "fully automated" Amazon retail outlets that let you wander around, pick up goods and walk out again, while AI-enabled cameras totted up the goods in your basket and charged your card for them.

According to this reader, the AI cameras didn't work any better than Tesla's full-self driving mode, and had to be backstopped by a minimum of three camera operators in an Indian call center, "so that there could be a quorum system for deciding on a customer's activity – three autopilots good, two autopilots bad."

Amazon got a ton of press from the launch of the Amazon Go stores. A lot of it was very favorable, of course: Mister Market is insatiably horny for firing human beings and replacing them with robots, so any announcement that you've got a human-replacing robot is a surefire way to make Line Go Up. But there was also plenty of critical press about this – pieces that took Amazon to task for replacing human beings with robots.

What was missing from the criticism? Articles that said that Amazon was probably lying about its robots, that it had replaced low-waged clerks in the USA with even-lower-waged camera-jockeys in India.

Which is a shame, because that criticism would have hit Amazon where it hurts, right there in the ole Line Go Up. Amazon's stock price boost off the back of the Amazon Go announcements represented the market's bet that Amazon would evert out of cyberspace and fill all of our physical retail corridors with monopolistic robot stores, moated with IP that prevented other retailers from similarly slashing their wage bills. That unbridgeable moat would guarantee Amazon generations of monopoly rents, which it would share with any shareholders who piled into the stock at that moment.

See the difference? Criticize Amazon for its devastatingly effective automation and you help Amazon sell stock to suckers, which makes Amazon executives richer. Criticize Amazon for lying about its automation, and you clobber the personal net worth of the executives who spun up this lie, because their portfolios are full of Amazon stock:

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

Amazon Go didn't go. The hundreds of Amazon Go stores we were promised never materialized. There's an embarrassing rump of 25 of these things still around, which will doubtless be quietly shuttered in the years to come. But Amazon Go wasn't a failure. It allowed its architects to pocket massive capital gains on the way to building generational wealth and establishing a new permanent aristocracy of habitual bullshitters dressed up as high-tech wizards.

"Wizard" is the right word for it. The high-tech sector pretends to be science fiction, but it's usually fantasy. For a generation, America's largest tech firms peddled the dream of imminently establishing colonies on distant worlds or even traveling to other solar systems, something that is still so far in our future that it might well never come to pass:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

During the Space Age, we got the same kind of performative bullshit. On The Well David Gans mentioned hearing a promo on SiriusXM for a radio show with "the first AI co-host." To this, Craig L Maudlin replied, "Reminds me of fins on automobiles."

Yup, that's exactly it. An AI radio co-host is to artificial intelligence as a Cadillac Eldorado Biaritz tail-fin is to interstellar rocketry.

Back the Kickstarter for the audiobook of The Bezzle here!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/31/neural-interface-beta-tester/#tailfins

[kadextra]

There is lots of qsmp lore current unknowns/loose ends, but tonight I ended up thinking about the things that aren’t

So! this is a list of qsmp resolved lore plot points, answers & things we have learned :D

More than one island exists

Quesadilla island is in point nemo

There are multiple factions present on quesadilla island - federation, rebellion, capybaras

The duck is the federation manager

There are multiple different cucuruchos - cucurucho, osito, ourson, oscurucho(?)

Elquackity and q!Quackity are different people

The nether is capable of exploring, and the federation goes there. but the portal technology is not stabilized (pluto’s gate, also what walter bob & the rebellion said)

Federation workers have a hierarchy of ranks and different specializations

The federation ran tests/experiments on the eggs and also people

The federation did lots of hybrid experiments

There is more unnamed eggs out there (egg A1, hope egg)

There is more named eggs out there (sunny, empanada, pepito)

The resistance/rebellion faction has been doing hidden operations on quesadilla island, the codes and masked guy who gave sofia’s blueprints are a part of it

Many workers of the federation are secretly a part of the rebellion too (like walter bob)

The rebellion was who helped q!Bagi and q!Cellbit recover their memories of being twins who lived on quesadilla island before

Codes can shapeshift into eggs

Codes are able to go rogue and develop individuality (codeflippa)

Code infection is a thing

There is at least two abnormal unaffiliated entities that exist- oscurucho and the eye guy

The eye guy took over “egg island” and renamed it to purgatory, using it to make the islanders suffer. you can take a train there and also sail on a boat

The wheel spins & dice rolls were all related to purgatory and the eggs

Little eye cyclops creature species exists on egg island

Shadow virus infection is a thing

The effects of the happy pills/risus potion and how to create the antidote

q!Dan, q!Spreen & q!Max are canonically dead

Spirits can return on día de los muertos

q!Bad is a demon and grim reaper

Ron did not get eaten, he lives on beautiful real estate with a cat

Soul infection is a thing

q!Baghera is a hybrid created by the federation

q!Fit was sent to quesadilla island from 2b2t on a mission

q!Wilbur when he’s gone performs with q!Lovejoy off the island to collect funds for the federation

Mr. Mustard was alive just invisible

q!Cellbit was the worker murderer

q!Cellbit and f!Cell are still the same person

q!Jaiden worked with the cucuruchos before

q!Slime can canonically shapeshift bc he’s slime

q!Pol worked with the federation to produce videos in the past

Cucurucho has a house

those are just all the ones off the top of my head, feel free to add what you remember too ^^

[reachartwork]

I'd love to know how you can advance AI art ethically. I'll be perfectly honest and say I'm of the opinion that there's no way to make AI art ethical but I genuinely would like to hear your thoughts on this since it's something you clearly have put a lot of thought in to. Not trying to hate just curious about your opinion.

i reject the premise that it is inherently unethical to perform any of the operations required to do image synthesis. almost every single assumption required to start from the baseline of "it's unethical" (it's plagiarism, it requires no creativity, it smashes two images together, etc.) are all just straight up incorrect.

unless you can explain to me how to fit two (or more) billion images into 2 gigabytes (i'll let you do the math) in a way that preserves their features for later "stealing" (you can't) then i am rejecting the premise. because even if it were some sort of database that smashed pieces of images together (it's not), if your argument is that it's unethical to do that then you have a whole lot of collage and blackout artists that you need to contend with too. (if you think collage is also unethical then you are internally consistent, good for you, and then we just have a garden variety disagreement). generally speaking there is no argument one can take that can meaningfully separate ai art from other forms of transformative artwork except via special pleading, which doesn't convince me.

so yeah, basically, you (the general case you, not You Specifically, Fish Of The Woods) have to do the work to convince me that it's unethical because i am not starting from the premise of "it's inherently evil, except my one exception", i am starting from "it is neutral and you have to convince me that it's bad". and so far nobody who is anti-ai has managed to do so, primarily because (this is not a dig at you) nobody who is anti-ai actually bothers to understand how it works, and thus all their criticisms don't sync up with actual reality. while i'm sympathetic to labor arguments i.e ai art will put people out of jobs (definitely much more salient than the other ones), that is regular old capitalism abusing automation, and not an inherent flaw in the technology itself that renders it Ontologically Evil From Birth.

i get like five of these asks a day so i politely request you send future inquiries to the AWAY Discord, which is full of people who have significantly more patience than i do.

[reelmegabyte]

ever wonder why spotify/discord/teams desktop apps kind of suck?

i don't do a lot of long form posts but. I realized that so many people aren't aware that a lot of the enshittification of using computers in the past decade or so has a lot to do with embedded webapps becoming so frequently used instead of creating native programs. and boy do i have some thoughts about this.

for those who are not blessed/cursed with computers knowledge Basically most (graphical) programs used to be native programs (ever since we started widely using a graphical interface instead of just a text-based terminal). these are apps that feel like when you open up the settings on your computer, and one of the factors that make windows and mac programs look different (bc they use a different design language!) this was the standard for a long long time - your emails were served to you in a special email application like thunderbird or outlook, your documents were processed in something like microsoft word (again. On your own computer!). same goes for calendars, calculators, spreadsheets, and a whole bunch more - crucially, your computer didn't depend on the internet to do basic things, but being connected to the web was very much an appreciated luxury!

that leads us to the eventual rise of webapps that we are all so painfully familiar with today - gmail dot com/outlook, google docs, google/microsoft calendar, and so on. as html/css/js technology grew beyond just displaying text images and such, it became clear that it could be a lot more convenient to just run programs on some server somewhere, and serve the front end on a web interface for anyone to use. this is really very convenient!!!! it Also means a huge concentration of power (notice how suddenly google is one company providing you the SERVICE) - you're renting instead of owning. which means google is your landlord - the services you use every day are first and foremost means of hitting the year over year profit quota. its a pretty sweet deal to have a free email account in exchange for ads! email accounts used to be paid (simply because the provider had to store your emails somewhere. which takes up storage space which is physical hard drives), but now the standard as of hotmail/yahoo/gmail is to just provide a free service and shove ads in as much as you need to.

webapps can do a lot of things, but they didn't immediately replace software like skype or code editors or music players - software that requires more heavy system interaction or snappy audio/visual responses. in 2013, the electron framework came out - a way of packaging up a bundle of html/css/js into a neat little crossplatform application that could be downloaded and run like any other native application. there were significant upsides to this - web developers could suddenly use their webapp skills to build desktop applications that ran on any computer as long as it could support chrome*! the first applications to be built on electron were the late code editor atom (rest in peace), but soon a whole lot of companies took note! some notable contemporary applications that use electron, or a similar webapp-embedded-in-a-little-chrome as a base are:

microsoft teams

notion

vscode

discord

spotify

anyone! who has paid even a little bit of attention to their computer - especially when using older/budget computers - know just how much having chrome open can slow down your computer (firefox as well to a lesser extent. because its just built better <3)

whenever you have one of these programs open on your computer, it's running in a one-tab chrome browser. there is a whole extra chrome open just to run your discord. if you have discord, spotify, and notion open all at once, along with chrome itself, that's four chromes. needless to say, this uses a LOT of resources to deliver applications that are often much less polished and less integrated with the rest of the operating system. it also means that if you have no internet connection, sometimes the apps straight up do not work, since much of them rely heavily on being connected to their servers, where the heavy lifting is done.

taking this idea to the very furthest is the concept of chromebooks - dinky little laptops that were created to only run a web browser and webapps - simply a vessel to access the google dot com mothership. they have gotten better at running offline android/linux applications, but often the $200 chromebooks that are bought in bulk have almost no processing power of their own - why would you even need it? you have everything you could possibly need in the warm embrace of google!

all in all the average person in the modern age, using computers in the mainstream way, owns very little of their means of computing.

i started this post as a rant about the electron/webapp framework because i think that it sucks and it displaces proper programs. and now ive swiveled into getting pissed off at software services which is in honestly the core issue. and i think things can be better!!!!!!!!!!! but to think about better computing culture one has to imagine living outside of capitalism.

i'm not the one to try to explain permacomputing specifically because there's already wonderful literature ^ but if anything here interested you, read this!!!!!!!!!! there is a beautiful world where computers live for decades and do less but do it well. and you just own it. come frolic with me Okay ? :]

*when i say chrome i technically mean chromium. but functionally it's same thing

[nasa]

Soaring into Aerospace: NASA Interns Take Flight at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh

Sustainable Aviation Ambassadors Alex Kehler, Bianca Legeza-Narvaez, Evan Gotchel, and Janki Patel pose in front of the NASA Pavilion at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.

It’s that time of year again–EAA AirVenture Oshkosh is underway!

Boasting more than 650,000 visitors annually, EAA AirVenture Oshkosh, or “Oshkosh” for short, is an airshow and fly-in held by the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA). Each year, flight enthusiasts and professionals from around the world converge on Oshkosh, Wisconsin, to engage with industry-leading organizations and businesses and celebrate past, present, and future innovation in aviation.

This year, four NASA interns with the Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration (EPFD) project count themselves among those 650,000+ visitors, having the unique opportunity to get firsthand experience with all things aerospace at Oshkosh.

Alex Kehler, Bianca Legeza-Narvaez, Evan Gotchel, and Janki Patel are Sustainable Aviation Ambassadors supporting the EPFD project, which conducts tests of hybrid electric aircraft that use electric aircraft propulsion technologies to enable a new generation of electric-powered aircraft. The focus of Alex, Bianca, Evan, and Janki’s internships cover everything from strategic communications to engineering, and they typically do their work using a laptop. But at Oshkosh, they have a special, more hands-on task: data collection.

“At Oshkosh, I am doing some data collection to better estimate how we can be prepared in the future,” said Janki, an Aerospace Engineering major from the University of Michigan. “Coming to Oshkosh has been an amazing experience… I can walk around and see people passionate about the work they do.”

The NASA Pavilion at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh is full of interactive exhibits and activities for visitors to engage with. NASA Interns Alex, Bianca, Evan, and Janki are collecting data in the pavilion to help improve future exhibits at Oshkosh.

In addition to gathering data to help inform future NASA exhibits and activities at Oshkosh, the interns also have the opportunity to engage with visitors and share their passion for aviation with other aero enthusiasts. For Evan, who is receiving his Master's in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, “being able to be here and talk with people who are both young and old who are interested in what the future of flight could be has been so incredible.”

Alex, Evan, Bianca, and Janki pose in front of NASA’s Super Guppy, a specialized aircraft used to transport oversized cargo.

At Oshkosh, one memory in particular stands out for Alex, Bianca, Evan, and Janki: seeing NASA’s famous Super Guppy in person. With a unique hinged nose and a cargo area that's 25 feet in diameter and 111 feet long, the Super Guppy can carry oversized cargo that is impossible to transport with other cargo aircraft. 

“We had a very lucky experience… We were able to not only see the Super Guppy, we got to get up close when it landed,” said Bianca, who is receiving her Master's in Business Administration with a specialization in Strategic Communications from Bowling Green State University. “From a learning experience, it gave me a way better basis on cargo aircraft and how they operate.” 

For Alex, who is receiving his Master's in Aeronautical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, it was exciting to see the Super Guppy’s older technology integrated with newer technologies up close. “There have been a lot of good memories, but I think the best one was the Super Guppy. It was cool to see this combination of 60’s and 70’s technology with this upgraded plane.”

Evan and Janki pose for a photo while walking around EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.

With Oshkosh coming to a close this Sunday, July 30, Alex, Bianca, Evan, and Janki also reflected on advice they have for future NASA interns on how they can get the most out of their internship: be curious and explore, connect with people who work in the field you’re interested in, and don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Alex advises potential NASA interns to “dream big and shoot for your goals, and divide that up into steps… In the end it will work out.” For Bianca, being open and exploring is key: “take opportunities, even if it’s the complete opposite thing that you were intending to do.”

“Ask questions all the time,” said Evan. “Even outside the internship, always continue asking people about what they are knowledgeable on.” And Janki encourages future interns to “Follow your own path. Get the help of mentors, but still do your own thing.”

Visiting Oshkosh and want to see NASA science in action? Stop by the NASA Pavilion, located at Aviation Gateway Park, and see everything from interactive exhibits on sustainable aviation, Advanced Air Mobility, Quesst, and Artemis to STEM activities–and you may even meet NASA pilots, engineers, and astronauts! At Oshkosh, the sky’s the limit.

Interested in interning with NASA? Head over to NASA’s internship website to learn more about internship opportunities with NASA and find your place in (aero)space.

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