Nyxelestia

“i don’t know, probably that i can have ilya’s photos on my phone now :).”

India actually, unfortunately makes a great case study for the difference between "poor crop yield" and "famine."

The monsoons and rainfall that make the region super abundant most of the time also lead to regular floods and droughts -- and where there's flood and drought, there's poor agricultural yield on a widespread and systemic level. These kinds of ecological events are relatively common in the scale of history; like "at least a couple times a century," somewhere in India there was a massive drop in crop yield because Indra, god of storms and rains and rivers, threw a hissy fit or sulked too long.

Despite the recurring droughts/floods and instances of very poor yield, in the grand scheme of history there weren't actually as many famines as you'd expect.

That is, in large part, because of the recurring droughts and floods! Kings, priests, and other ruling class elites who were raised in India were also raised on a long standing tradition of massive grain and water-works redistribution during rough years. Taxes were reduced or waived entirely, grain rations were distributed without labor debts, and much of India's awe-inspiring water infrastructure traces their origins back to one drought/flood or another.

This wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts, btw. This was very much an awareness that a lot of hungry, desperate people were a lot of people with nothing left to lose, which would mean tremendous political unrest and revolt. A political culture of community support during droughts was specifically to prevent the widespread violence and revolts that often accompanied famines. It's not a coincidence that the Hindu god of storms and rivers is also a god of war.

Even in cultures that largely existed outside of organized states, villages had layers of social practices to build up grain storage specifically to get through lean years.

That isn't to say there weren't famines in pre-colonial Indian history. There were! But they extremely rare compared to the number of droughts and floods. When you do get famines, these are most commonly associated with some kind of empire or dynasty -- and even then, the famine is generally the result of insufficient relief and aid.

The East India Company was the first instance of India being widely colonized by an imperial body whose ruling elites and decision makers did not live there and never had.

Colonial Britain's famines were not the first famines in India; but they were the first famines where the rulers not only failed to provide relief but actively made everything worse. Where previous empires that caused famines did so by failing to do more than waive grain exports for a year or two, the British Empire were the first to continue to actively extract as much food as possible from Indian farmers despite the poor crop yields.

Other useful AI Removal/Detection links

How to spot AI Hallucinations like a Reference Librarian (originally on Substack)

Great dialogue can come from radical emotional honesty. But in most real conversations, people

dodge questions

answer indirectly

lie (badly)

change the subject

crack jokes to avoid serious answers

lie (convincingly)

say half of what they mean

tell the truth but get so anxious/angry/defensive others now think they're lying

If your dialogue feels unnatural, it might be because everyone is saying exactly what they think, or articulating their thoughts too well. Try letting characters hide things instead.

people don’t always speak in full sentences,

slang can change depending on age range, demographic, etc. &

They have a Global Device Identifier (GDID) Tracker that functions as a fingerprint for your PC that can surpass VPNs, proxy servers and countries. Although it can't survive a clean reinstall of Windows (it can survive updates), because Microsoft forces you to go to the internet and log in into a Microsoft account, they will be able to get to you.

Microsoft kept it secret and it was only found out when the FBI tracked a hacker thanks to the information Microsoft gave them.

You should be paying attention to this, and possibly consider moving away from Windows. If a government, especially the US government, doesn't like you for some reason, this could be seriously concerning.

This article specifically notes:

For journalism, activism, or domestic abuse situations, skip Windows and use Linux routed through Tor instead of a commercial VPN. A GDID doesn’t care which VPN you use, only that it’s still the same Windows installation.

Other important quotes:

What has researchers uneasy is everything else the case reveals. Costin Raiu, a well-known malware researcher, asked on the Three Buddy Problem podcast how much of this exists on other platforms, and whether it is linked more permanently to hardware. Matthew Hickey, another security researcher, called Windows “surveillance software”.

Two things back that up:

There’s no consent screen. A GDID gets assigned when you sign into a Microsoft Account. Apple’s advertising identifier needs an App Tracking Transparency prompt and a visible reset; Android’s works the same way. GDID has neither, and a Windows reinstall only gets you a new number Microsoft can still get back to the same account.

Then there’s activation. Massgrave, the group behind Microsoft Activation Scripts, notes that Windows setup sends hardware info to Microsoft and gets identifiers back, the same tokens later used for Store access and licensing: “It’s impossible to prevent Windows from getting a GDID without breaking activation and UWP app[s].” Anyone who lost a license after swapping a motherboard has already met a smaller version of this.

Here's the complaint filed to the court, the primary source for the case mentioned in the article. You can find mentions of GDID on page 30 of the document or 34 of the PDF.

I also made a PDF version!!

For comprehensive deets, tomshardware explains

Before I could even process that, another officer dropped the big surprise: they’d actually been tracking me around town for days via Flock cameras. But they kept losing the trail, so when a camera alerted them that the Range Rover had been spotted turning into Kohl’s that morning, they quickly set up their ambush and waited for me and my wife to walk out of the store and get into the SUV.

[…]

One of the officers pulled out his phone, opened the Flock app, and showed me two photos: a wide shot of the Range Rover going through the intersection and a zoomed-in shot of the New Jersey license plate, which clearly reads 34 10 DTM and says VEHICLE MFR along the bottom. Critically, the number 10 is in a much smaller font than the rest of the tag, which is the non-standard structure New Jersey uses for manufacturer plates.

[…]

The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw 34 DTM in large type and started alerting the local police.

As we all stood there shaking our heads, including my wife, who was finally allowed to join me, I connected the final dot. A lot of vehicles in JLR’s media fleet have a New Jersey manufacturer plate with the same alphanumeric structure—34 ## DTM—and Officer Ganshyn observed that meant it was now a nationwide issue. Anywhere a police department has a partnership with Flock, any other JLR-owned car with the same plate structure is going to get flagged as stolen. In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock’s system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call.

Still, he warned me to drive straight home, park the Range Rover, and leave it there. If I were to cross into the neighboring town, I’d probably get flagged again and go through this entire ordeal again with a different set of officers. His parting words were ominous: “You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”

There’s a there theme.

@churlsgrace @nev-ertheless3 @karalynlovescake @elodieunderglass @nyxelestia @rhosyn-du @meadowziplines @evilwickedme @biglawbear @ellicelluella @toli-a

Also tagging anyone who sees this and wants to play. Reblog me and I’ll answer.

tagged by @phantomxarmy!

last song: COIN - leaving a light on

currently watching: Human Target season 2 with the fam, and for myself I'm about to start a season 3 Heartstopper rewatch before watching the movie

currently reading: An ARC for The A-Listers by Berlin Wick, which is out next week, plus a crap-ton of fanfic

currently working on: Oh, lord. So many things. Alternating between writing 2 Heated Rivalry multichapters, mostly focused on "Give Shane More Trauma" but occasionally working on Jackanov Baby. Having thoughts about DHSWTE like I might be about ready to pick it up again. Edited half of a chapter for Battle of the 5 Phantoms which is making me want to write more for it. Want to edit and publish Subspace and Don't Trust Your Teammates for HR, more BOT5P for JatP, and TDKAU for ofic.

last thing googled: "subspace BDSM" because if you just duckduckgo "subspace" you get some computer software thingy