#techno-babble

[technowings]

I've only tangently been keeping up with the sun and moon show (too much angst, too few games, confusing to follow) but I really hope that whenever they bring solar back he takes like one look at old moon and is like "you're not MY moon" and just, immediately demands to know where new moon/nexus is.

I hope he calls out the family on their behavior. I hope he goes looking for new moon/nexus instead of just accepting old moon in his place. Let solar and new moon/nexus have a good reunion (and kick dark sun's ass).

I hope sun gets to yell and be angry. I hope he gets to ACTUALLY talk about all the hurt that gets heaped on him, all the changes he's had to deal with and been expected to accept without question. (I would really like for the others to actually listen and try to be better but that seems unlikely to ever happen tbh.)

Kind of related: I want earth to dump monty (she can do better!) Or at least actually acknowledge and get MAD about the way they act and treat other people. Also she and eclipse should at least do morning yoga together. Maybe get sun involved too. They've both got a lot of screams that need to be let out.

[themaninyourcomputer]

Watching House, guessed the illness 10 minutes in, and spent the remaining half hour YELLING at my phone until they finally put the pieces together. The illness in question was textbook rabies. House and Wilson were too busy making heart eyes at each other to notice the patient spitting out water and hallucinating.

[buckevantommy]

..talk dirty to me fireboy.. 💦🚒

[bumblingbabooshka]

Technobabble. Whatever you say, king.

[rifleseye]

I THINK THAT'S THE LAST I'LL BE TAKING OF THOSE FOR A WHILE.

[hachama]

Technical papers are such a crap shoot. So many of them are written by people who clearly hate writing and believe that information should be inaccessible to people who maybe don't have the familiarity or formal training they do.

But I hope the full text of that study on tin whiskers isn't paywalled.

[ssjandtechno]

A quick guide to vaccines for scifi writers

(can you tell I've seen too many wildly innacurate bits of fiction this week?)

What is a vaccine for?

A vaccine is a fake disease. Its job is to pretend to be one very specific disease and con your body into fighting it, without risking you getting dangerously unwell. I compare it to fire drills when I'm talking to children. You have fire drills at school/work so that if there's a fire, everyone knows what to do and everyone can be safe. You have vaccines so that, if you ever meet this disease, your body knows what to do, and your body can be safe.

Important: Vaccines prevent. Vaccines very rarely cure. In almost all circumstances, you have to have had the vaccine you come in to contact with the disease, sometimes several weeks before. In a very small number of cases, in diseases with very long incubation periods (the time gap between catching it and getting sick), vaccines can be given in that long time gap and still work. Once you have symptoms, vaccines will not help you.

How long does a vaccine take to work?

It varies. The fastest one I've ever seen boasted 72 hours to onset of immunity, five to fifteen days is more normal

What is a vaccine made of?

Dead disease (killed vaccines), maimed disease (live or attenuated vaccines) fake disease (mRNA vaccines), or part of a disease (subunit vaccines). Dead viruses or bacteria, obviously, can't actually make you ill. But immune systems are suspicious gits, they'll still practice killing dead bugs most of the time. Subunit vaccines also are very safe, but small mutations (variations) in the bugs can stop the vaccines from working. Live vaccines tend to be very, very effective, but might be able to make you sick if your immune system is very weak. I could spend a long time explaining why mRNA vaccines are so, so clever (I thought they were likely to be impossible when I was an undergrad - like teleportation or universal translation software), but here is a nice readable explanation if you're curious.

But the disease in my story is a virus, so antibiotics won't work on it, so I need a vaccine, right?

Okay, yes, but also no. In face of a viral epidemic or pandemic, a vaccine is pretty much your only hope. But, as COVID showed us, vaccines are bespoke, slow to make, and don't work perfectly - vaccinated people still got COVID and, occasionally, still died. But there are a whole lot of other disease on which antibiotics won't work. Fungal infections (like in The Last of Us, or murcomycosis in real life) are scary and we don't have many treatment options for them. In many cases, you have to cut the infected tissue out like it's a tumour. Parasitic disease is a big group of weird and wonderful stuff which (mostly) won't respond to antibiotics. There's some nightmare fuel in parasitic diseases! Malaria is a parasitic disease, toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease (and it rewires your brain a little), lungworms and heartworms are parasites. Some parasites even have the fun catch that, if you kill them quickly/in the wrong way, they release stuff that kills the host anyway. Stargate SG-1 had a go at this concept. And, certainly these days, there are bacterial infections that are almost impossible to cure with antibiotics. Clostridium difficile, Pseudomonas aerogiosa...

Bottom line: Don't use vaccines as a ex machina fix for a disease in scifi. They only work for prevention, and take at least days to work, which is far too slow for most narrative purposes. Gross yourself out reading about unusual parasites or fungal diseases and come up with something more original and more horrifying than a virus.

And vaccinate your kids. And yourself

[plainlyraine]

Episode 32 B plot, or as I like to call it:

Eiffel is jealous of Maxwell flirting with his robot gf

[finex09]

So parts of tumblr are holding elections/polls to decide the sexyman/icon/poor meow meow of [x] tumblr and I really wanna do one for EDM but I don't know how many of us there are that could participate

EDM crew rise up I know there's like. 5 of you at least

[markwateneymemorialcrater]

Despite being a massive fan of JRR Tolkien and the fantasy world of middle earth, I really struggle to get into other fantasy. Like I’ll try reading or listening to the audiobook and as soon as I here “I am a Sta’Kai Greatest warriors of the last free realm Trabboor on the continent of Oudalin” I just can’t take it serious enough to continue.

And I’m not quite sure what the difference between Tolkien’s made up words; hobbits, Kazad-Dûm / Moria, Mordor, Minas Tirith, and other authors. But one I can take seriously and the other I can’t. Even though they are all made up words.

Maybe it’s the fact the the LotR movies did such a good job introducing me to the world as a world that could exist and that took itself seriously while not being an edge lord about it. Or that Tolkien wrote them under the imaginary filter of translating ancient text to more modern and familiar language.

The closest I would probably say is Game of Thrones or the Witcher. Both of which I only know from their tv adaptations.

[technowings]

Oh.

Comparing the news tsams video with their first house video, you can see a difference between Nexus and OMoon.

Nexus took Sun to a showing - he did decide to take it without really letting them have a discussion, but they at least had a little talk about it while looking around? And it was at least partially presented as being necessary for both of them to have space away from work, a safe place to relax.

Old moon is just like "I bought us a new house and we're moving rn because I don't wanna pay taxes and the other place makes me uncomfortable"

And isn't that such and OMoon thing to do? He makes a decision and Sun has to do it (or else).

Nexus had to deal with the ghost of OMoon for so long, but OMoon seems to be working to scrub out absolutely everything about Nexus asap.

Idk, just hits me the wrong way.

[bluesunsdusk]

A light tapping filled the diagram-filled room. Cold light from a screen served as the only illumination, bathing Najma in white and blue. Their optics were fixed on projections of wide expanded synthetic neural networks from a variety of different omnics, some awakened and others not.

Something distracted them though. A soft electrical whirring followed by a light click of metal against metal. They looked over their shoulder and turned their seat to get a better look of what was behind them.

Setesh stood dormant in one of the corners, statuesque like a decorative suit of armor. Their optics were visibility active, but the lights indicating it were dim, faintly blinking on and off like that of a computer on standby. They turned their attention down to the station next to Setesh. It was were Najma would be plugged in for post-test analyses. There was no reason for that to be making a sound, the wires were security stored away.

The sound came again. In the corner of their vision, they spotted something. Movement. They switched their focus back to Setesh. Specifically, to their head.

This time, they kept their optics firmly on Setesh.

There it was again, and this time they saw what it was. Involtary convulsions. Without any seeming intent, Setesh's neck actuation activated and very slightly angled their head upward like they were about to look up, just enough for one of their hard metal antennae to touch part of the wall.

This was unusual in omnics, especially the less human ones. It usually resulted from a fault somewhere within a unit's system.

Najma kept looking, considering their next course of action. It was basically the kind of standby where non-essential functions were put on hold to divert processing power to another task for increased efficiency. It was easy to break a properly-functional unit out of.

Perhaps, they could do something discrete to snap them out of it...

[ Sending direct device connection request... ]

There was no quick response. At least, not by Setesh's usual metric, but Najma wouldn't delve too deep into what the ramifications of this might be just yet. Shortly after Najma making a mental note of this, Setesh's head twitched ever so slightly in their direction.

[ Direct connection accepted... ]

> What is it you require, Najma?

> You were exhibiting involuntary tremors and head convulsions during deep memory processing. It is unusual...and concerning. Your neural network may have a faulty layer causing the stored memory being processed to be mistaken for active input.

> ...

> If you could inform me what you were processing before the connection request was made, it could help narrow down which section of your processing unit may be responsible.

> ...I do not wish to recall this information.

> ...May I ask why?

> You may not.

> I see. It could a series of different causes. For example, it could be the part of your processing unit that mirrors the function of the amygdala in humans, the component responsible for identifying threats.

> No.

> ...Peculiar response. If I could be allowed to perform a second party diagnostic, I could pinpoint the error. We could also run one during your deep memory processing.

> ...I will...think about it.

[ Direct connection terminated. ]

Once the connection was broken, Setesh continued to remain still for several minutes, seemingly staring ahead at nothing. Of course, Najma was aware their optics were advanced enough that turning their head to see most available visual data in the room was unnecessary and only served to place objects into direct view of their central optic. Setesh could, realistically, be looking at anything.

Najma kept their attention on them for a while, but eventually returned to their studies. As soon as their head was turned away, Setesh walked to the door. They could hear their heavy and notably hasty footfalls. Najma didn't turn to look when they heard the exit to their quarters open and close.

After having been linked with Setesh at least once well enough to walk one of their lived experiences before, they really didn't feel like it needed to be said. It didn't need to be said that Setesh had suffered tremendous damage on multiple occasions and witnessed things no person should. It didn’t need to be said that both left a permanent impact on them, both mentally and physically. Najma knew how to repair some of it, but this required a level of trust only the reckless tended to have... Setesh was far too on edge to be quite that reckless, even if they'd proven their skills on one of their own people before.

Perhaps, they simply needed time. Perhaps, they'd just grown used to this way of being. They would see.

[ Receiving direct device connection request... ][ Source: Sj-0000a. ]

[ Altering designation... ]

[ Source: Setesh. ]

[ Direct connection accepted... ]

> ...

> Is there something you wish to ask me, Setesh?

> ...Yes. I request that you keep what we previously discussed confidential. Suspicions of an internal vulnerability would be detrimental to the cause.

> Of course.

[ Direct connection terminated. ]

Well, it was... a step. Najma wasn't sure what direction a step it was, but it was a step.

[kinocharlley]

Ok I was trying to torment mutal with Poland au dsmp but it made me yearn for techno and philza in Bieszczady mountains...

--

For those unaware, Bieszczady are farely low mountains but are considered to be a place to run away and live in your little hut ("a może by tak rzucić wszystko i wyjechać w Bieszczady? Rough translation: "maybe I should throw everything away and go to Bieszczady") ofc nowdays it's harder to go there to never seen or heard again but still most of areas are far away from eachother and signal is bad.

--

That being said. That's the place for them. They would go on mountain tops to see sunrise, harvest wild berries and mushrooms :)

[starrybobatea]

if trolls 3 does not include pennywhistle and techno beat drop button having more speaking lines and screentime (and more interactions with trollzart and trollex respectively) and maybe bigger roles if i dare wish for it, i will consider the movie a complete disgusting terrible failure

[vvindication]

cannot be trusted with a bad time I’ll impulsively buy the thing Ive been hemming and hawing over for a week. as a treat

[snubbullls]

At the point in my life where I need a gamer to yap at me nonstop or else I can't do basic tasks