Days

If I could honestly break open the 2024 year and kindly burn it to ashes, please

do you think that a certain genre of queer person is so obsessively weird about pride flag discourse becuase their flags fill the gaping hole in their personality where a hogwarts house used to be

The not so fun facts of the first scene of Episode 1 (and on Jayce and Singed)

- You can see that Viktor's spine shattered on impact (Hexcore x-ray). He died in the council room (hence Jayce later telling Viktor, "my partner died in this room")

- Despite the fact other people died, including Mrs Kiramman whom Jayce was very close to (she was his patron and he owed her a lot), he only starts crying when he sees Viktor. It's also the moment he starts dissociating (as proven by the back and forth of the action, where we the viewers see events in the present in the council room and in the future in the lab)

- Viktor doesn't have clothes on the top half of his body in the lab because Jayce attempted to revive him on scene, and failed

- The lab is five blocks away. Jayce RAN five entire blocks while carrying dead weight (which is an insane physical feat)

- Jayce didn't save Viktor's life. Jayce literally brought him back from the dead by using the Hexcore.

- Jayce broke Viktor's promise because he would rather have Viktor be alive with him (paraphrasing, "I'm going to leave the council, my place is in the lab, with you") than to respect Viktor's last wish, destroying the Hexcore.

- Jayce studied all of Viktor's research. He doesn't care about the outcome and the toll on Viktor's body (which was literally so changed that Viktor himself replied, "What am I?") as long as it means Viktor is "alive"

That scene illustrates perfectly Singed's character motivations.

"Why would anyone commit acts others deem unspeakable? For love."

At that point in time both Heimerdinger and Viktor had warned Jayce about the Hexcore. One was Jayce's mentor and the other his partner.

And yet Jayce rejects their opinions each time if it means saving Viktor. (He continues research on Hextech in the hopes of saving Viktor's life. He refuses to destroy the Hexcore because he wants to bring Viktor back to life.)

I find it super interesting that both of the brilliant Piltover scientists in the show are the ones to reject scientific ethos. And this leads to unspeakable horrors, with the creation of Warwick and the Herald.

Yet funnily enough, both Jayce and Singed get their happy endings. The only thing they wanted was to be reunited with the person they lost. And they did. We see that Orianna is alive at the end of the episode just like Viktor. Viktor's theme only plays when Jayce tells him that "(they are going to) finish this together" indicating that at the very end, the original Viktor came back. It is also indicated visually by his appearance which is that of Viktor from Act 1, Season 1.

(We know that regardless of the existence of Hextech, of whether Jinx bombed the council room or not, Viktor would have died by succumbing to his disease. Much like Orianna. I can't help but think of the very, very dark timeline where a grief-stricken, brilliant Jayce meets Singed.)

What a beautiful, beautiful show.

I wanna talk about aliens. I want to talk to Okarun! I want to talk to Ayase-san! I want to talk about ghosts!

Dandadan Episode 05 - Okarun & Momo + Mutual Pining

how does being punched in the face feel like

jayvikdivorce.jpeg

squeezing in one more fanart before the finale irrevocably changes me 🫠

The red eye in the sky made me think of the mal de ojo

MIT Technology Review

Why a ruling against the Internet Archive threatens the future of America’s libraries

The decision locks libraries into an ecosystem that is not in readers' interests. Congress must act.

Libraries have traditionally operated on a basic premise: Once they purchase a book, they can lend it out to patrons as much (or as little) as they like. Library copies often come from publishers, but they can also come from donations, used book sales, or other libraries. However the library obtains the book, once the library legally owns it, it is theirs to lend as they see fit.  Not so for digital books. To make licensed e-books available to patrons, libraries have to pay publishers multiple times over. First, they must subscribe (for a fee) to aggregator platforms such as Overdrive. Aggregators, like streaming services such as HBO’s Max, have total control over adding or removing content from their catalogue. Content can be removed at any time, for any reason, without input from your local library. The decision happens not at the community level but at the corporate one, thousands of miles from the patrons affected.  Then libraries must purchase each individual copy of each individual title that they want to offer as an e-book. These e-book copies are not only priced at a steep markup—up to 300% over consumer retail—but are also time- and loan-limited, meaning the files self-destruct after a certain number of loans. The library then needs to repurchase the same book, at a new price, in order to keep it in stock.  This upending of the traditional order puts massive financial strain on libraries and the taxpayers that fund them. It also opens up a world of privacy concerns; while libraries are restricted in the reader data they can collect and share, private companies are under no such obligation. Some libraries have turned to another solution: controlled digital lending, or CDL, a process by which a library scans the physical books it already has in its collection, makes secure digital copies, and lends those out on a one-to-one “owned to loaned” ratio.  The Internet Archive was an early pioneer of this technique. When the digital copy is loaned, the physical copy is sequestered from borrowing; when the physical copy is checked out, the digital copy becomes unavailable. The benefits to libraries are obvious; delicate books can be circulated without fear of damage, volumes can be moved off-site for facilities work without interrupting patron access, and older and endangered works become searchable and can get a second chance at life. Library patrons, who fund their local library’s purchases with their tax dollars, also benefit from the ability to freely access the books. Publishers are, unfortunately, not a fan of this model, and in 2020 four of them sued the Internet Archive over its CDL program. The suit ultimately focused on the Internet Archive’s lending of 127 books that were already commercially available through licensed aggregators. The publisher plaintiffs accused the Internet Archive of mass copyright infringement, while the Internet Archive argued that its digitization and lending program was a fair use. The trial court sided with the publishers, and on September 4, the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reaffirmed that decision with some alterations to the underlying reasoning.  This decision harms libraries. It locks them into an e-book ecosystem designed to extract as much money as possible while harvesting (and reselling) reader data en masse. It leaves local communities’ reading habits at the mercy of curatorial decisions made by four dominant publishing companies thousands of miles away. It steers Americans away from one of the few remaining bastions of privacy protection and funnels them into a surveillance ecosystem that, like Big Tech, becomes more dangerous with each passing data breach. And by increasing the price for access to knowledge, it puts up even more barriers between underserved communities and the American dream.

11 September 2024