#the stupidest cyberpunk future

[titleknown]

The fact that this is A Thing We Have To Worry About now really feels like a "Don't Create The Torment Nexus" situation but very specifically for Minority Report...

@stupidsexyfuture

[chiefofboatwatsonstittymug]

Bit too much social media bitching on the new Slipknot album fellas

[nem0c]

me and a friend were having an argument- is patlabor cyberpunk? is lain?

excellent ask because it means I can complain about three things:

1. all transhumanist sf is cyberpunk now (actually New Weird stuff avoids this) This bothers me because there was a great deal of transhumanist fiction in the 60s and 70s which influenced cybperunk but often had a different imaginary wrt what new technologies would mean and how society could be organised. Examples: -Samuel Delany's Nova (one of Delany's least interesting so still better than most space opera) is one of the first sf novels to feature mind-machine interfaces and they exist specifically to end the social isolation of contemporary workers. As work is always social and mediated through machinery, they get to directly experience both their fellow workers and the thing they're working on - no longer a bit part of the process. -John Varley's Eight Worlds fiction in which mankind gets all sorts of future tech as a result of an alien invasion and promptly develops double welfare state plus libertarian socialism. Stories focus on the day-to-day problems of people in this post-scarcity society. Morphological freedom is a given, though this is the 70s so the exploration of this often gets about as far 'wouldn't it be cool to be a hot babe for a weekend?' -Whatever is going on with Cordwainer Smith -Also see Walter Jon Williams' Aristoi for an example of a cyberpunk author trying something different (transhumanist means-tested solar neoplatonist aristocracy wherein each aristocrat is a plural system of personalities)

2. Transhumanist film and videogames, due to big number investment and the necessity of mass-market returns, don't even copy the cool print cyberpunk works (exception for Caves of Qud because it's correctly copying Gamma World instead)

3. Post-cyberpunk wasn't/isn't what I want it to be. I agree we should question the humanist++ vision of transhumanism and the neo-noir story set-up of Corpos Are Evil (but provide actually good product and actually want to dismantle the nuclear family) but there is a street-level resistance composed of your stupidest speed dealer friend who's totally going to make it big this time. However, post-cyberpunk authors mostly have californian tech investor brain disease and were writing in the late 90s/early 00s and I can't really take 'silicon valley will save us, billions must prosper' seriously in 2024.

To answer your actual questions, genre is whatever is useful to discussion and I'm willing to call Lain and Patlabor 2 cybperpunk because of their thematic concerns with conspiracies, technological reimagining of the human, the breakdown of certainties in a world inundated with simulation, and a post-cold war post-nation state public/private hell co-operation politics.

What makes Patlabor 2 different is its complete rejection of -punk aesthetics and its associated political commitments. This is an anime about interdepartmental politics and middle-aged public servants rooting through paperwork, and there's no solid moral conflict. Much as in GitS:SAC 2nd, the fight is between the status quo and a slide into authoritarianism. It's barely even a mecha anime and Noa's repeated statements that she 'doesn't need it any more' and 'doesn't want to be remembered as the robo crazy chick' reinforces this.

Lain is a religious text and an initiation into a way of perception that only people who have been shut-in NEETs will understand. Lain is just like me frfr. Lain knows that the way out is through.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 5/23/2023

six sentences or less bc that's the kind of week it is

listening

straighten up and fly right from the nat king cole songbook, covered by sammy davis junior. i have a lot of fondness for the nat king cole songbook bc my grandmother had a lot of fondness for it, and this one was very comfortably in our (contralto) ranges. really burrowing into the comforting familiar as we enter the Cross Country Move Hellzone (tm). spotify

-

reading

lot of documentation for work bc i am trying to build a google sheet + calendar for our grants and reports such that when someone adds OR EDITS a row in the grant/report tracker it creates a new google calendar event OR UPDATES existing events. i may have to give up on that second half.

in non-work stuff, it is hysterical how many hackers brian krebs (infosec reporter/journalist/researcher) is able to interview. like when this guy was asked "yo is this your code targeting a specific mastodon server with a crypto scam" the response was

Clicking the “open chat in Telegram” button on Zipper’s Lolzteam profile page launched a Telegram instant message chat window where the user Quotpw responded almost immediately. Asked if they were aware their domain was being used to manage a spam botnet that was pelting Mastodon instances with crypto scam spam, Quotpw confirmed the spam was powered by their software.

“It was made for a limited circle of people,” Quotpw said, noting that they recently released the bot software as open source on GitHub.

we live in the stupidest possible cyberpunk future.

-

watching

i don't know jack about shit about cars and i don't know what the fuck jennings motorsports on youtube is talking about 80% of the time but a friendly guy with a calm voice talking through how he's going to get some cars in the worst shape you've ever seen up and running again? yes good thanks, i've blown through his entire backlog in the last week in my second monitor while i've cleaned data. this man is essentially rebuilding this rare limited edition shiny holographic car from half a frame and a panel LOOK how fucked this thing is.

love the Will It Run? videos bc the answer is almost always yes AND SOMETIMES HE EVEN DRIVES THEM DOWN HIS DRIVEWAY AND BACK even if the cars are barely holding themselves together. the horse souls in these machines can be coaxed back into resurrection with the proper burnt offerings and application of liquefied dinosaur

-

playing

the charm of Powerwash Simulator is somewhat dampened by its extremely buggy achievements bc i KNOW i could get all 40 so fuckin easy if they just WORKED. i didn't get the "main campaign completed!" achievement despite spending nearly forty hours 100%ing every job, so i think the rarity of the achievements is somewhat inaccurate, bc it's more like, did you happen to play through that level at a time when the achievement was working? despite all that, it has been incredibly effective at damping generalized moving anxiety and it's a tremendous catch-up-on-podcasts game. it's hysterical to me this was published by square enix bc this style of simulator game is usually published by Playway or a Playway company, a shadowy network of about a hundred small polish studios, many of which went public and had IPOs in order to hand over a controlling interest of the company to Playway. long history of annoying business practices such as remaking more popular games with the serial numbers filed off and making demos to gauge interest and THEN only making about one full game for every twenty demos, which is very irritating for players. not this one tho, it's in fucking brighton in the uk, no relation!

-

making

this is going to be cleaning and move prep for the next six weeks. i deep cleaned (even mopped!) my kitchen and bathroom last weekend bc it uh. really needed it, and that's the most exciting thing i did. no progress on cleaning the flip clock radio bc i do not currently have the patience to sit down with qtips and get in all the little grooves.

[rainphee]

in thrilling news from the stupidest possible cyberpunk future, i had to install an app to use my fucking dryer today

[bentothuglife]

Waiting for a prescription at the pharmacy and the blood pressure machine is playing ads on repeat. We are living in the stupidest cyberpunk future

[prokopetz]

One of the perennial problems with deep learning models like DALL-E is that if you train them too well, eventually they start precisely reproducing material from their training data set that just happens to match whatever criteria they’re given.

Given that these models are a. trained on random images scraped in bulk from the Internet, largely without human curation, and b. being touted as a potential substitute for human artists in certain commercial applications, I’m just waiting for the inevitable lawsuit where one of these models spits out an exact copy of some reasonably well-known piece of art, that copy is used in a commercial publication whose author is unaware of what the model has done, and some poor judge has to rule on whether an AI can commit plagiarism.

[dyllpiccle]

Dyllpiccle’s OCs Masterlist!

Hello, its occurred to me that I'm bad at actually sharing information about my OCs and their little universes, and I've been asked a few times for this, so this is a list of all my OCs.. ever. mostly.

I totally forgot I was doing this but I finally finished like 3 weeks later so enjoy.

Side note. I did not proof read ANY of this. If something is garbage that’s why.

They will each be organized by universe, have basic background info on them and an image! ill also include a playlist link if they have one  :)

This is gonna be a Loooong post. Thanks!

I’d like to apologize in advance for the names of some of these universes. My friend and I accidentally got in the habit of naming our rps the stupidest least comprehensible and lengthy titles ever and they all kinda stuck so now I have plots with stupid names. Anyways.

BADABING BADAZAP

alrighty so this one is a world of my own creation, a rp thats currently happening with my friends an i. basically its a cyberpunk city setting set about 400 years in the future, but fused with a 1920s great depression kinda love for partying jazz and crime! It centers around two prominent crime families, the tawdry family (mine) and the capazellos, (my friends). There is a whole bunch of other important characters but for the sake of being brief thats the basic premise.

Atlas

TW abuse and evil guy problems, animal death

im obsessed with him. im obsessed with him. im OBSESSED With him i cannot stop thinking about him ever he is so full of issues he need a therapist so bad. hes the son of the Big Man, Enzo Tawdry, long time ruler over the lights district in the undercity. The family specializes in reselling (and gathering) bionic parts, and loaning them out to those who cant afford them for a .. steep price. anyways it should be no surprise from that job description that enzo tawdry is a DICK, and aaa very abusive and manipulative father. Atlas is his eldest son and his whole life, has been molded and shaped in his fathers image to take over the tawdry name and business. I wont get into it too bad but definitely took a long term toll on Atlas’s entire psyche. bla bla one time when he was a kid his dad made him shoot the sick stray dog he found and said ‘thats what happens to things you love atlas! they get worse and you have to put em out of their misery’ so you can imagine what thatd do to a guy. when he was 13, him and his brother mars, who you will soon learn was the rebel of the family, went out to a warehouse to goof off. mars had convinced him to go, and atlas didnt want to for fear of their father finding out. But atlas decided to go, he wanted to feel like a normal kid just for a moment, and do something stupid with his brother. so they went to a warehouse, which happened to be a rivals guarded warehouse. mars dared atlas to sneak in and touch a crate, and atlas giddily tried. when he got in and reached it, a guard saw him and fired a warning shot, which hit an explosive crate and blew up the entire warehouse, and half of atlas’s face. Mars in terror dragged atlas out of the rubble and brought him home through tears. He didnt know what else to do, so he brought them to their father and begged him to help. Their father yelled at mars to get out, called him a curse, and so he did. Once Atlas was conscious enough, Enzo lectured him too on how foolish he was to think he could do that. After that the brothers avoided eachother, Atlas fell further under his fathers wing and became a close replica to him. A couple years later, Atlas seperated slightly, as he fell in love with an opera performer in Paris. It was hopeless, but hed go and watch all her shows and spend his time there, as he loved the music. His father didnt like that atlas had a distraction, and something he cared about, so he literally DROPPED A STAGE ON HER (which this man has a tendency to do). Her vocal chords were severed (perhaps due to some very targeted ‘dropping’. Atlas doesnt really have anyone else to turn to, so he begged his father to do something as he was a bit in denial that it was his doing in the first place. His father agreed, but didn’t elaborate how, and the performer was brought home to work under atlas at his club as a performer, with a brand new cybernetic voice box. They are both very bad for eachother it’s a mess in there. A lot has happened since then but that’s the backstory.

Atlas playlist !

Mars

Mars is the second oldest, and bastard son of Enzo Tawdry. His mother was a performer, and when his father cheated and got her pregnant, y know how I said Enzo tawdry likes dropping stages on women who inconvenience him? Yeah he did that again but they both survived. Figuring out that Mars had lived, Enzo stole him from his mother, then raised him completely ostracized within the family. A lot of his story is shared with atlas above ^. He makes a lot of gadgets and will do work for just about whoever will pay him, definitely not strong on the family loyalty front but he’s always felt guilty about atlas, and feels a responsibility over him.

Mars playlist

Jaime

Jaime is the youngest tawdry brother and he is a little freak! I love him. Basically in this world higher education for anyone living in the undercity has been eradicated due to the severe economic depression everyone is in so apprenticeships are back and so is child labor. So this isn’t all that weird of a thing but Enzo tawdry needed someone to dissect bionic parts from stolen bodies and he was like hey my 16 year old son knows science, give that kid a knife ! So Jaime works in the morgue under atlas’s club and does his little dissection work. He’s great.

Jaime playlist

TTRPG CHARACTERS

ill go into universes individually for these ones cause theyre mostly all different but i still wanted to group em.

Harysin Faedra

TW for implied suicidal attitude, death, infant death

you know him. you love him. Mr Harysin Lawry Faedra. Ive gone over his dealio a whole bunch of times now, you can find it under my #DND tag, but ill go over it briefly (though it really deserves a deep dive).  Harysin was born in a small village on the outskirts of a town called Neverwinter, a town run by different monasteries, and is thought of as the religious capitol. He was raised very simply, and like many of his peers was expected to become an apprentice to some religion and lead an honorable life. His parents always knew harysinw as a little different, but wanted him to lead an easy life so they steered him toward priesthood and becoming a family man. As his friends started to split off and get married, Harysin pulled a compulsive heterosexuality move and proposed to his best friend since childhood, Lillian. He was only 18 when he got married and became a priest of Helios, and soon after the two had a small child. When he was 19, Harysin and Lillian welcomed a beautiful baby girl, Roslyn, or Rose. The year after she was  born, Harysin fell deathly ill with a mysterious lung infection. He was bedridden and no matter who they brought in, no one seemed to be able to help him. One night as he was dying, he prayed out for help, but someone else answered. He was desperate and delerious, so he made a deal without knowing the cost. When he woke up, they found their infant daughter had died in the night from a bad cough. Harysin told Lillian what hed done and she kicked him out, along with the rest of the village. With nothing but the clothes on his back harysin left, now with a new godlike companion in his head; Obara.  He soon discovered that his deal was a bit of a compound interest situation, and very temporary. He could feel himself start to decay again the farther past his intended expiration date he got, and he felt he deserved it, so he just sort of walked around and traveled hoping hed fall over n die sometime. However one day when he was walking he found a fvillage that had been entirely decimated, and the only survivor was a little girl who was hardly breathing, a stake through her chest. He cradled her in his arms and, for the first time since the incident, harysin spoke back to the god hed made a deal with. He begged her to save the child. Having already made peace with his own death, he promised Obara anything shed like as long as she saved the child. and so she did. But harysin now had another purpose, though he thought itd be temporary, which was to watch over this child. Unfortunately, obaras magic required upkeep, and to keep them both alive harysin started to do weekly blood rituals. He took her to a nearby town, where he used his priestly status to build them a temple to stay in. However, since he was telling everyone he was a preist, people started to come to him for healing, and my boy harysin has a problem where he just wants to do whats good, and that is his downfall every time. Technically, he could help, with obaras magic. So he brought them into the temple. However, using obaras power required blood. an eye for an eye. He used his own for a while, but as demand grew this became unsustainable. This is when he got the idea. For one bad person, he could save 10 innocents. People who were ill not of any fault of their own. But the criteria would have to be strict, what constitutes a bad person?  So harysin started to play god. He had his rules, he found his methods of how to screen people and get it done quickly. He built a blood well for obara in the temple of the basement.  This is where he was when the campaign started, and theres plenty more that has happened since, but ill stop it here since this would be way too long if i kept going.  Harysins Playlist!

Arkin This is for a different DM’s Campaign. Arkin (Jamison Arkin Lera Adler-Hausen) was born a twin, princes to the king of a small rainy province. The two were typical brothers, but unfortunately for Arkin his twin was born a few minutes before him, making him the natural heir, despite the difference being small. This caused Arkin a lot of jealousy growing up, and he often found himself second best to his brother. It only got worse when they got older, and closer to a reality of ruling, as they competed academically and in all other areas. One day, after losing a duel infront of his parents, Arkin ran out to the witch infested woods that surrounded the castle. there he found a coven who offered him power, and wanting that more than anything, he accepted. They brought him to a cavern that was lined with sharp glowing crystals, and lowered him into a pool. He felt the water fill his lungs and the rocks permeate his skin, and he lost conciousness. He woke up at the edge of the forest, in the mud and rain, and he walked home. He went in the front door, only to find his brother there standing in the hall. He saw how Arkin looked, and the black that filled th veins on his wrists, and he ran to tell his parents, knowing what hed done. Arkin panicked and grabbed his brothers wrist, but he broke free, and when he did, arkin reached out his hand toward his brother, and when he lowered it he saw he had turned his brother to crystal. Soon after, he heard his parents coming down the hall to check out the yelling theyd heard. Arkin took a horse and ran away, never to return. Now, nearly ten years later, he is still wanted, and battling the powers he got that day. They cause him visions, past and future, and pains in his body from what id loosely define as a mineral based symbiote. His powers are complicated so im not gonna elabroate too much but this boy microdoses on fantasy drugs to get em to shut up. if u wanna know more i will gladly share. Arkin Playlist!

Ferrer

This is actually the same universe as Harysin, different campaign. Ferrer (Ferrer Jakoby Laufley) was born in a little swampy village to two lovely parents. He grew up normal and happy till his mother fell ill around age 11, and when she passed away his father fell into a deep depression. He would hang around bars all day and ferrer would have to go collect him and watch after him and feed him. He met an old fisherman who lived at the docks, and soon would become a sort of apprentice under him, going out on the water every day and learning how to sail. After working with him for years, the fisherman passed away from old age, and ferrer felt that there wasnt much tying him down here. In an impulse decision, Ferrer gathered a few things and hopped on a cart that was heading out of town. He never said goodbye to his father, and he feels immense guilt for it since he was his fathers only caretaker and he loved him, but he knew it wasnt good to stay there. He soon joined a band of rogues, where he met his first boyfriend, who was ringleader and a massive dick to him. He was disrespectful and rude, and would make a fool out of ferrer infront of their peers. Ferrer grew tired of this and cursed him out one night, then left the group, and the stability he had there. Soon after this he met up with the party he now travels with.

Ferrer’s playlist

Nigel MYYY BAAAABYYYYYY MYYYY BAAABYYYYY YOURE M-

So this was for a monsterhearts campaign!!! This is my rude little silly mischevious and strange and disturbing little boy Nigel O’gara, who is a ghost!!! his origin story is gross tw for death and me explaining gross stuff. Basically nigel pre death was a very normal sweet little nerdy boy with weird interests. very regular kid wore little sweaters. Anyways some bullies thought it would be funny to lock him in a locker, a classic. However there was a problem with this. which was that they did this right before a week long spring break and uhh staff was all gone so there wasnt anyone to come let him out like there usually was. Everyone was gone for a week and nigel had uhh. as you can imagine. a very slow and agonizing death locked in there. They found his body after spring break when there were complaints of a smell. so now hes a ghost and hes freaky on purpose as a defnense thing (it happens). I adore him. He is so funny.

Nigels playlist Michael Mr michael Dara is my mean little punk boy from a little campaign that was a DIY of my friends, basically they are teenagers they are superheros cue persona music. Teenagers invade ur dream world and they have magic powers based off their soul or whatever in there. Michael was orphaned by a house fire, grew up in foster care (this is all too familiar of a character shape for me), got in trouble with the law a lot cause of his anger issues and as ‘punishment’ was sent to a school where he has to behave himself and stay with a guy who watches him. He has fire powers and a cool phoenix bird that i think i named Apollo Michaels playlist

Markle

So I made this guy for a campaign that didn’t ever actually happen but I like him so bad that he’s sticking around. This is Markle, he was made for a sci-fi campaign, and he’s the son of a legendary thief. He grew up on a big city scape planet that was mostly used as a port location for shipping and storage and warehouse work, but had a very lively underbelly of crime. Those who live there are basically expected to die there, but Markle grew up with a father who was a legendary thief, an underdog for the masses that every aspiring criminal would tell tall tales about. There are countless stories about his quick escapes and badass moves across the galaxy. Growing up he was hardly home, and his mother was constantly worried about whether he’d come back or not. He was in truth an unfaithful, careless man, but Markle only saw the legend, and wanted to be just like him. However one fateful day, in a fiery explosion, his father didn’t make it home from a heist.

Pretty soon, despite his lovely mother’s wishes, Markle started on his path to become the galaxies greatest thief. He got his first body mod at 16, which scared the shit out of his mom. It was a large piece of metal down his spine that tapped into his nervous system, worked as an enhancement. From there he got a lot more to help his work, and he left planet soon after, and got quite the career as a thief under his belt. His biggest talent? his unbridled optimism that hell survive whatever. And so far, he has.

Markles playlist

DUSTY LAZER KIDS (DLK)

Its. Sci-fi western. Cowboys out in a fictional desert where aliens and technology are scattered about. We follow the plot of 2 rival bounty hunters chasing a third rival bounty hunter. They are all disasters.

Billy Cassidy

This is my pretty lady bounty hunter. Shes the sharpest sharpshooter in the land and known for it too, but the general public is also under the assumption that she is a man. She hasnt exactly pushed this image on purpose, but people kinda just assumed and she kinda just let them. She prefers it that way cause if she wears literally anything else people assume shes a normal person and she can go about her daily life undisturbed without some idiot trying to shoot her. She likes her work and she takes it seriously, and shes good at it. 

Jodie

My little sand cat!! Another orphan im afraid. One day another bounty hunter, Mr Jonah, came along and found him in a sandy little shack with no parents. He scooped him up, (as well discuss he has a tendency to do this) and took him in as an apprentice. He gets very sleepy in the heat cause of his little desert cat genes and he likes a good glass of milk and a good fight. Meow.

Duncan Diora

This is actually Mr Jonah’s first passion project, a DIFFERENT kid he took under his wing quite a few years ago who is now an adult. Now i cant say that Jonah is the ideal father figure, but he sure is A Father Figure. Anyways Duncan's doing well, he is a sad drunk whos missing 2 limbs, has a dead fiancé and a passionate vendetta against the man who killed him. That man happens to be the man theyre hunting down now. 

HALLUCINOGENIC BREAD (HLED)

I haven't drawn any of these guys in 200 years so have fun with the old art.

So this universe was a massive fantasy politics RP I made like 200 years ago. Its standard high fantasy stuff, basically everyone controlled different rulers of different kingdoms etc.. Mostly we had an elven kingdom, and a viking kingdom.  Elwin

 This boy was my main man! He’s a prince of the Elven kingdom, younger brother of the now King. Their father died when they were young in battle and their mother isn’t mentally stable enough to run a kingdom, so being the eldest his brother, Daran, took rein. However, he is the least competent king imaginable, Elwin definitely deserves the crown and basically runs everything from behind the scenes. Daran causes problems on purpose that Elwin has to clean up and gets no credit for, and for that Elwin is a gay little ball of stress. He is in love with his royal guard Rory too, who happens to be his best friend. They are very funny together. But uhhh basically Elwin and Daran end up getting in an argument when Daran proposes to declare war, Elwin is fed up and barges into the throne room to voice his opposition, Daran is rude and dismissive and says that if he doesn't agree, he’ll simply fire him from the position. Elwin is a trained soldier and, when Adrien grabs him to turn him around, Elwin takes out his sword and drives it through his brothers abdomen. On accident (?). Rory finds Elwin over the body, in shock, and quickly rushes him away and hides him in his personal quarters in the attic. Elwin is left freaking out, because technically, he is the only heir to the throne, and he just killed his brother, the king. That's about where we left off with him but I did have quite a bit of things planned. His playlist has 3 songs but here you go

Iona

So Iona is my little wild baby, shes a wild orphan of the village who likes to tame the local strays, for this shes earned the title “Iona the brave” and “iona the beast tamer” by other village children. Shes loud and unruly and LOVELY. She's been unofficially adopted by the kings son, Asger, which other members of the kingdoms ‘royalty’ generally despise. Theyre wonderful.  Endre Luellason

Sooo This is Endre, whos the half brother of Asger and the bastard son of the king. you know how Vikings be. Anyways, he had a kid with a lady from a village that he later raided, and amongst the rubble found Endre. Feeling some kind of bad, he took him home, but his wife, the queen, was obviously uhh not happy about this. He grew up very much on the sidelines, a total runt amongst the other Vikings, he likes reading and poetry and... reason. However, his absolute golden retriever brother loves him, and the two get along well. Endre still has to sleep in the barn with the wolves though, which luckily is an easy feat for him since he gets along with the wolves swimmingly. due to uhh his lycanthropy condition. He’s a werewolf.  Once a month during the full moon he takes a trip to go stay in an inn with his secret bounty hunter boyfriend miles away who keeps him from killing anybody. Literally nobody knows about this, Asger has no clue why he disappears every month but he’s happy whenever he comes back.

SUPERHERO GUYS

Amar Bagheri / Kid Death

Alrighty! This is my revamped superhero oc from like 9th grade but he’s edgy and cool now. I gotta be so honest for both of these guys I literally just wrote a summary a few posts ago so I’m just gonna copy paste it. I don’t wanna write it twice.

Tw for drug use / addiction / death

SO BASICALLY amars story is he was raised in an orphanage, which was fine, but got sucked into a bad crowd in the punk scene and eventually got heavily dependent on like. Heavy substance use. Uh one night after a party he got himself a cab to go crash in his little ‘house’ (he’s homeless but he had a Spot so he was headed there), and the cab got absolutely t-boned BAD by a truck. Unbeknownst to him some superhuman chemicals got into his stuff earlier and he basically died in the crash except he Can’t Die so he’s in this weird dead not dead space. He didn’t realize this was the case until he was getting the shit kicked out of him in a dive bar bathroom. I love him he’s so funny and lovely. His only superpower is that he Can’t Die other than that he has normal guy abilities and hits bad guys with pipes. He’s doin a little better since then if ur worried he may be dead but he’s clean mostly and living in a group home type dealio.

Amars Playlist!

Julian Romero / Lab Rat

Ok so once upon a time my boy Julian was a scientist as a Science Place and he discovered a chemical that could give people superpowers. He told his gay boyfriend lab partners Jon, and Jon took credit for it and became super cool and famous and used it to make child soldiers for the government. Also his son got into it and became the face for the Superhero Science Company Place. College. Thing. Anyways Julian didn’t like that so he decided to become evil and insane and seek revenge and now he DIYs his superpowers bioshock style with his own little chemicals. I adore him.

Julians playlist!

[virovac]

One parts of “stupidest cyberpunk future” we don’t have yet

LGBT+ Gatekeeping of people with cybernetic genitalia.

[genquerdeer]

I just realized that how fucking WEIRD it’d be to add modern concepts into old cyberpunk media. Does Renraku have a blog where they post surreal memes to fit with the cool kids? What would OCP’s social media look like? Does Motoko Kusanagi have a twitter account? if so, what would she post?

[nuclearblastuk]

FOREVER STILL | UNVEIL MUSIC VIDEO FOR TITLE TRACK 'BREATHE IN COLOURS'  

On March 29th, FOREVER STILL will unleash their sophomore full-length release 'Breathe In Colours' via Nuclear Blast. Inspired by a dystopian cyberpunk future and the fact that some of the biggest works in that genre, Blade Runner and Akira, are set in 2019, Denmark's highflyers have adapted a dark musical concept for this record and take a look at the world being on the verge of ecological collapse, while humanity is fleeing into cyberspace to escape the horrors of the real world.

After the epic 'Rew1nd', the band now unveils the second single of their upcoming album - their title track 'Breathe In Colours'. The song title and album name was inspired by a memory from Maja's past, as she explains:

"The album title was born from an experience, I had as a young teenager, where I started wearing all black and a friend of my mother’s suggested that I wear more colours. I told her that it’s just an aesthetic preference and she replied that it was okay “as long as I remembered to keep the colours on the inside”. At that time I thought, it was the stupidest thing, I’d ever heard, since wearing black clothes doesn’t automatically mean you’re sad inside. Despite thinking that, her words stuck with me and I was able to have it make sense in a new way much later in life. For this album it’s an affirmation that even though the world sometimes seems cold and grey, there is still colour and kindness to be found, but in order to see it, we first have to find the colours on the inside."

Watch the music video for the haunting track 'Breathe In Colours' here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOo0qgHpCac

Pre-order your physical or digital version of FOREVER STILL's sophomore album now: 

http://nblast.de/FSBreatheInColours

In case you missed the first videos, make sure to watch them here:

'Rew1nd' music video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--CQeGZvo9M

Trailer #1 - about the album concept: 

https://youtu.be/AWdYqvomrXc

Trailer #2 - theremins and rough, electronic sound:

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

The 'Breathe In Colours' tracklist reads as follows:

01. Rewind

02. Fight!

03. Breathe In Colours

04. Is It Gone?

05. Survive

06. Do Your Worst

07. Pieces

08. Rising Over You

09. Say Your Goodbyes

10. Embrace The Tide

Bonus:

11. Is It Gone? (Acoustic Version)

12. Perfect Day

When Philip K. Dick wrote what would later become Blade Runner, no one would have believed that the dystopian cyberpunk future he imagined 2019 to be, would be so similar to the world we live in today…

This realisation is what sparked the idea for the new album from FOREVER STILL – 'Breathe In Colours'. With their sophomore full-length album, the band has evolved their songwriting skills even further and didn’t want to produce a carbon copy of its predecessor 'Tied Down', released in 2016. Instead, the new album drifts both into more epic moments, while frontwoman Maja Shining also delivers her heaviest screams to date. And for the first time, the songwriting duo of singer Maja and multi-instrumentalist Mikkel Haastruphave decided to make the album a more collaborative effort and therefore brought their long time live drummer, Rune Frisch, into the studio with them to record the drums - a big step for the two young musicians who handled everything on their own on the previous record, from music videos to band photos, the album production and even concert booking. After sweat, blood and tears and the surprising use of a theremin, the result of FOREVER STILL’s efforts to break through the numbing grey, is a surprisingly diversified and mature album that breathes fresh air – and colours – into the bland rock scene.

[titleknown]

In other news of “We live in the stupidest cyberpunk dystopia,” this.

Good god has the adoption of more and more user-unfriendly practices in the “AAA” games industry been one of the under-spoken regulatory failures of the modern era...

[reddragdiva]

excerpt: Business bafflegab, but on the Blockchain

If you’re a business guy you could look at the current construct versus the new construct and say ‘aren’t you just building a big database?’

– Charley Cooper, R3 Blockchain Consortium

As Bitcoin became more famous, its dubious nature became increasingly obvious to mainstream observers. So the buzzword of choice shifted from “Bitcoin” to “the blockchain”, or just “Blockchain”.

This really meant the Bitcoin blockchain, as the goal was to get interest up and the price with it. This particularly picked up around January 2015, when the Bitcoin price had cratered. The value proposition was that Bitcoin was the most secure chain as it had the most hashing power, so everyone wanting a blockchain should use that one. However, the limit of 7 transactions per second worldwide, blocks often being full anyway so transactions can’t get through, and that your Internet of Things light bulb was profoundly unlikely to add enough flash memory for 100 gigabytes of SatoshiDice spam were all a bit too obvious to the prospective suckers.

But by late 2015, “Blockchain” hype had taken on a life of its own as a business buzzword. If in a manner somewhat uncomfortable with its Bitcoin origins.

In the real world, nobody outside the cryptocurrency subculture uses blockchains proper, because they are ridiculously impractical and the most prominent one uses as much electricity as all of Ireland. This means their fantasy life is rich indeed.

Repeat to yourself: if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

What can Blockchain do for me?

If you start with “... but with Blockchain!”, then putting lots of different words before “but” isn’t likely to result in something that’s actually useful, not just interesting.

Merkle trees are excellent, and business is about to discover how to use them for tamper-evident transaction ledgers. These will likely be branded “Blockchain,” whether or not the product has anything else to do with blockchains. Merkle trees are the only good part of blockchains.

(If you have programmers and they save their code in Git, it’s got Merkle trees in – you can tell your management “oh yes, we’ve been using blockchain-related technologies for years now ...”)

Business Blockchain marketing claims are largely divorced from tawdry considerations of technical or economic feasibility, mathematical coherency or logical consistency. Normal people see these claims, see obvious uses for them in their own business and are left with the impression “Blockchain” can get them these things.

Some of the claims are sort of true in some sense, others are completely fanciful. Many claims start from a hypothetical use case – often lifted directly from the most fanciful Bitcoin advocacy – then tout the hypothetical as if it were an existing and practical technology.

IBM’s “What is IBM Blockchain?” page1 is a good example. Almost every “is” statement on that page is a “might” or “could” – no blockchain does all the things it describes in present-day terms, and certainly not Hyperledger, the basis of IBM Blockchain.

Many blockchain schemes promise the magic of full availability of properly cleaned-up data. The actual problem in every case is cleaning up the data in the first place; the barrier that such efforts founder on, over and over, is that no industry’s players want to create such a new monopoly. The proponents’ business goal is usually to become the organisation effectively controlling the newly cleaned-up data, with a monopoly maintained by network effect.

If your big goal is cleaned-up data across multiple organisations, the approach that will get you there is creating a data schema that is so obviously and elegantly the right thing that everyone just adopts it themselves, and a regulator eventually says “hey, use this schema.” Note lack of blockchains. (This is the usual approach in computing, though even there companies routinely try to set themselves up in the role of central octopus.)

If someone is trying to sell you on blockchains, the obvious skeptical questions will get you a long way:

Are they confusing “might” and “is”? (Almost all business blockchain claims are full of “might” and salespeople talking about “the possibilities.”)

Do they have present-day working blockchains that do every one of the things they’ve claimed you can get from blockchains? If not, which ones are missing? Will they scale to the size of your data?

How do they fix human error in their “immutable” blockchain or smart contracts?

If this is for working with people you trust less than the people you deal with now, how are they assuring the security of the chain – what’s their security threat model? (Get your system administrator along to ask pointed questions.)

If it’s for working with people you can already trust to that degree, why are you bothering with a blockchain?

What does this get you that a centralised database can’t?

Blockchain marketers frequently claim a prominent company “is using” a blockchain when there’s just been a press release that they are “investigating” running a future trial. This is because an “investigation” is cheap (this book is a legitimate business expense for this purpose, by the way), and worth the PR value in showing you’re fully up to date with current buzzwords. “Researching the opportunities” could mean anything, but almost certainly does mean nothing.

A sure tell of a reality-free writeup, completely detached from earthly considerations, is when a writer talks about “Blockchain”, capital B, no “the”. You should try mentally replacing the word “Blockchain” with “Cloud” and see if the article seems eerily familiar. Also try the previous business technology buzzwords “big data”, “NoSQL”, “SaaS” and “Web 2.0” and see how it works with those.2

1 Nathan C. Bybee. “What is IBM Blockchain?” IBM Blockchain, 2 September 2016. (archive)

2 I commend to you “Ignoring Blockchain Is Corporate Suicide: Why Blockchain is the biggest single threat to all CEOs for destroying corporate value” by Nick Ayton, in analyst newsletter Innovation Enterprise (7 July 2016) (archive). In the several years I’ve been following Bitcoin and blockchains, this is the single worst, stupidest and most incoherent piece of “Blockchain” hype I’ve seen; you definitely need to read it, to inoculate yourself against the worst excesses of this foolishness.

Ayton spends the first third of the article repeating how devastating Blockchain will be to business, the second third making technically garbled or meaningless unsubstantiated claims about the future and the last third on a list of predictions, many of which have already been shown unfeasible and three or four of which are literally out of ’80s cyberpunk science fiction, as if he read too much William Gibson as a lad and thinks Blockchain will make Mona Lisa Overdrive real – “augmented reality using VR and holographic systems will feed off sensory layers that will sit on the Ledger of Things connecting the world”, clearly visible to your new Zeiss-Ikon eyeballs.

I know of one case where a non-technical manager inadvertently sent this link around their company; they quickly realised how relentlessly terrible everything about blockchains actually is – anyone who’s survived in business where sales people exist doesn’t need to be a techie to notice there’s something deeply wrong and lacking in blockchain hype – but the article had by then caught the attention of upper management. The manager found themselves in the position of designated expert and having to quell this idea, mostly by a process of translating why none of this could ever work into sober and considered business speak from the original profanity-laced screaming.

direct link: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/business-bafflegab-but-on-the-blockchain.html iI put it on Hacker News too, and i think it's eminently upvoteable (and maybe you will too). book status: but right now I'm on two weeks' holiday and I want to land this thing in that time. (still don't have a front cover finished ...) hopefully Bitcoin won't suddenly fork just before it's released, as it’s in eminent danger of doing, because everyone involved is a blithering incompetent.

[satireknight]

TMNT S02E11 - Teenagers from Dimension X

I’m having deja vu. I seem to remember reviewing this episode before... wait, no, that one had “Hot-rodding” in the title, so it’s otherwise completely different.

And yes, it’s time for more Neutrinos. Whee.

The Turtles are watching a monster movie, which of course prompts a discussion about movie romance, which somehow leads to a discussion about Kala, the Neutrino girl Michelangelo developed a crush on after exchanging maybe six words.

They also somehow managed to exchange glossy photos in the space of a few hours, most of which was spent saving the world and messing around at arcades. Yes, that still bugs me. I’m pedantic.

And then we cut back to the Neutrinos and ARRRGUUUGGGHHHH THEIR VOICES. Kala in particular sounds like a laryngitic who swallowed a dose of helium. They decide to go into the Technodrome for no particular reason except thrillseeking, and then start listening in on Krang’s messages.

It turns out he’s giving Shredder yet another device to deal with the Turtles, this being a Mental Neutralizer that will turn them into zombies. Mindless, that is, not rotting. And by the freakiest of coincidences, it is also functioning on the same frequency as the Neutrinos’ car.

So the Neutrinos open their own portal to Earth and zip on through, hoping to warn the Turtles.

Since they have no idea where the Turtles are... despite having been to their lair... the Neutrinos decide to buzz the Channel 6 building and get themselves noticed. Remember this in every future episode when people are skeptical or shocked by the idea of aliens.

Burne not unreasonably wants people to actually start filming the flying alien car outside the window, but April is busy going off to tell the Turtles what’s going on. Then she actually gets around to reporting what’s happening, even though the entire story is “There’s a car flying around our building.” 

Shredder, Rocksteady and Bebop all see the coverage and rush off to deal with the Neutrinos.

The Turtles arrive in their blimp and say hi, which is said with such enthusiasm that Raphael starts speaking in someone else’s voice.

But before they can finish talking, the Neutrinos are shot down by Shredder and kidnapped. The Turtles pursue, but somehow the glider just refuses to do what they want and they crash.

Michelangelo’s anxiety gets to the point where Splinter advises him to meditate, but that’s ruined when Donatello zooms in on a motorized skateboard. He’s also created a tracking device that can follow the Neutrinos by their extradimensional... auras. Whatever that means.

“... and it cost practically nothing to build.” Does that mean his inventions usually DO cost a lot? Actually, where do they get money from in the first place?

Meanwhile, Shredder flips out when he discovers the Neutrinos’ starmobile has the hypersignal similar to that of the Neutralizer, and demands that Rocksteady and Bebop get it. Problem is, it got towed. Yes, they actually towed an alien spacecraft, no joke.

Then the Turtles arrive, because Shredder made the mistake of saying “What else can go wrong?”

A fight breaks out and the Turtles aren’t doing too well, until Dask switches the power of the roller coaster on. Did I mention they’re at a defunct fairground? Anyway, Shredder and his mutants are temporarily carried off, which allows for more of Michelangelo acting all moony.

They then head to the auto impound yard... I still can’t believe that... to recover the Starmobile, and arrive just as Shredder does. In fact, they manage to drive directly over Raphael’s head, somehow, and then emerge from the ground without even glancing at him.

I almost feel sorry for Shredder. They’re not taking him seriously at ALL. So the Neutrinos and Turtles fly off in the starmobile, while Shredder quietly laments the unfairness of the universe.

However, it turns out the starmobile is broken: the trilithium crystal that powers it is cracked, meaning they’re stuck on Earth for the foreseeable future. I seem to remember trilithium being something highly explosive in Star Trek, but I’m pretty sure that came a bit later.

Please, make Kala stop talking. Her voice makes my throat have sympathy pains.

To fix it, they’d need a particle accelerator, and Leonardo happens to know the location of one. Um, it would be pushing it to have Donatello know, but Leonardo of all people just happens to know of one they can use? The Convenience Fairy is beating the plot with her wand.

So they land in a crappy, ruinous slum in the middle of nowhere, scuttle into an underground facility... and find a particle accelerator. Why not find the lost treasure of El Dorado at the same time? It seems equally likely.

So they put the crystal, which has shrunk to about half its former size, inside the particle accelerator and it starts getting all glowy. Too glowy, in fact! It’s gonna esplode!

Since Shredder currently has no way of knowing where anybody is, Krang calls him up and announces that the Turtles fixing the crystal created such an energy surge that it was detectable from Dimension X. Fuck. What exactly were they doing?

Oh, and remember that imminent explosion and radioactive cloud? Donatello stops it by pushing buttons really fast. Maybe it just chose not to blow up so it wouldn’t be subjected to more of Michelangelo acting like a dolt.

Oh, and Shredder gives us a supremely lame excuse for why there’s a particle accelerator in a craphole like this: because if it blew up, nobody would care what happened to the area. That’s... really... dumb. Then they’re confronted by a robot that eats up a precious five seconds of screen time.

Also, the crystal is now the size of a scone, whereas it was the size of an engine before.

Shredder breaks in and thankfully shoots everyone, saving me from more bad Neutrinos dialogue.

And as Leonardo keels over, his Turtle Com pops onto the floor and apparently autodials April. She knows they’re in mortal peril immediately, based on... I don’t know. Psychic powers.

Shredder piles the unconscious Turtles in the Starmobile, fixes the engine, and leaves the Neutrinos on the sidewalk, presumably to be raped and killed by the revenants who roam the wasteland.

Also, the crystal has now shrunk to the point where you can’t see it.

Unfortunately for me, the Neutrinos wake up and continue talking, and really, nothing highlights my point that Kala is practically a non-character like her dialogue. Everything she says in this episode is painfully obvious or filler masquerading as dialogue like “Maaaaaan, what a draaaaaaag.”

April shows up just then, and the Neutrinos have apparently forgotten all about her even though they met her when they were last on Earth. Continuity error or then being assholes? Either works.

April then reveals that the whole area is run by a gang called the Cyberpunks, who will add nothing to the episode and never be mentioned after it. They just provide a false sense of tension that the episode doesn’t need.

Meanwhile, the Turtles are waking up.

And Shredder chooses the single stupidest way to unveil a machine: have his minions SHOOT THE CRAP OFF OF IT. Because getting a tarp was just too much work, apparently. Cover it in garbage, and then fire lasers at it.

The Turtles aren’t feeling too positive about being put into something called a Neutralizer, especially when the phrase “brain drain” was used.

Meanwhile, April manages to crash into an overturned bus that was right in plain sight, so they have to escape the Cyberpunks by blinding them with a camera flash and jumping into the sewers. 

Shredder tries to activate the Starmobile, only to be immobilized with a forcefield of some kind. Yeah, whatever. At this point, I’m just craving the end of the episode.

The Turtles take this opportunity to slip out of the Neutralizer, possibly because Shredder didn’t bother to tie their legs together. And when Rocksteady and Bebop try to shoot them... wait, why didn’t they just try to kill them when they were unconscious? Anyway, the Turtles manage to free themselves by having the ropes shot off their bodies.

April and the Neutrinos show up just then, as do the Cyberpunks. The sight of the Cyberpunks is enough to send Shredder and his mutants scuttling away, and everyone else leaves in the Starmobile.

So everyone says their goodbyes, and Michelangelo gives the Neutrinos a pizza that burns their hands as they leave. And Raphael manages to cheer up Michelangelo by saying that a lack of a girlfriend means more pizza for him... am I really supposed to take this crush seriously?

VERDICT

Ever read a book or watch a movie where it’s painfully obvious that someone wasn’t contributing their A-game? That’s what this episode feels like. It feels like someone was given a basic outline of an episode, and they just sort of loosely tied everything together with a bunch of bad coincidental stuff that they didn’t care about. Exhibit A: that particle accelerator, which Leonardo - a guy who doesn’t really know anything about technology - happens to know of, which is completely abandoned and which happens to be in a spectacularly bad area. Nothing about this makes sense.

I’ve ranted before about the Neutrinos, but if anything, they’re even thinner here than they were in their debut. At least they don’t whine about adults and having fun, but you could easily combine all three of them into one character and you’d lose nothing, plotwise. In fact, Kala would literally have no reason to exist if it weren’t for Michelangelo’s crush on her... which isn’t even much of a crush, if that last line of his is any indication.

The Cyberpunks? Less than nothing. They aren’t even really an obstacle; you could literally erase them from the story, and nothing would really have to change.

The sad thing is that the beginning of the episode isn’t bad, despite the irritating voices. There was potential there. But once the crystal cracks, the entire story just sort of veers off into no-man’s-land and never comes back.

And seriously, the Turtles were unconscious and at Shredder’s mercy. Why didn’t he just kill them? 

Whew, been dreading this one. On to things that don’t bother me as much.

Grade: D

[marlowekana]

Precursor to Dystopia #23: we live in the stupidest timeline. Follow @marlowekana for more Cyberpunk moodboard material for the book! Http://marlowekana.com // #MarloweKana #FreeMarlowe // #moodboard #art #digitalpainting // #cyberpunk #киберпанк #サイバーパンク #kiberpunk #ciberpunk #cyber // #scifi #sciencefiction #scifiart #future // #PrecursorToDystopia // #instadaily

[titleknown]

This article really did hit home how close we are to the IRL version of this scene happening in our lifetimes (CW: Gore):