gave a shout of light

And this forces you to decide whether your autonomy matters to you more than the approval of the group - while they'll still act like you're on thin ice either way, if you give in at this point they know you're theirs forever, because now they've established a foothold, you've shown a moral weakness, which they will brand you with so it can be used against you in the future ("hey RICE-addict here doesn't want help break into the city records office") to force you to double-down and isolate you further.

Spangle-cheeked Tanager

For this week's Off Topic Tuesday: my shameless plug for Tidal.

I've seen posts circulating Tumblr complaining that Spotify has too much of a monopoly on music streaming, and it does! Part of the reason I switched to Tidal was because I do like to avoid supporting businesses I think have too much of a monopoly in favor of supporting "underdogs".

Another reason I switched to Tidal was because Spotify was having too many scandals for my taste in the content they platform (like allowing Andrew Tate's podcasts on how to traffic women, or Joe Rogan's COVID misinformation podcasts).

And also, as the linked article points out, Tidal has higher quality audio, and also pays artists better than Spotify.

The drawback is that Tidal doesn't have quite as much content as Spotify, for example Tidal is mostly music focused and has very few podcasts or audio books. For me this hasn't been an issue though, I just switched to using Pocket Casts for podcasts, and I'm not much of an audio book person in the first place (but I also know there's better alternatives than Spotify for listening to audio books, some are even through your library and support your local library!).

- Was eventually trialed by governments of the world as a scapegoat and sent to prison

- She somehow BROKE out of said prison and currently commandeers a rogue paramilitary faction of Project Hail Mary loyalists who believe in her over world governments, who presumably are still hunting her down

- She currently is on the run and staying mobile on an ice breaker ship like some kind of james bond villain base (but you know, good) while STILL working on project hail mary the whole time

- Her rogue loyalist faction controlled enough resources they could go to space and collect the beetles Grace had sent. Alternatively, it was the world government that collected the beetles, and Stratt had a whole ass heist movie to steal them, which is why she had the little xenonite figure at the end of the movie. Either ways she was running circles around them.