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sylverstorms · 3 years

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Lady Dimitrescu x Maiden ----Chivalry

It is late.

It is late, dammit! you repeat to yourself as you struggle to run through the healthy inches of white frost that cover the roads. The sky is grey, a clear indication it will snow again, but that is precisely what caused you to lose track of time so badly. And in this particular village, it is rumored staying out after sunfall is a fatal mistake.

Normally, you are not one to believe in such superstitions.

But nothing in this place you chose to call home is normal.

Though, to be fair to yourself, it isn’t much of a choice if it’s the only option left. Your family’s debts threatened to choke the life out of you after you lost your father –and you had to escape to the distant village of his birth. The same one he adamantly refused to talk about every time you asked, since childhood. Now you see why. You definitely see why.

The winter is ice cold. The summer –well, from what you’ve heard, that doesn’t really exist. Peerless, thick forests separate you completely from the outside world. The villagers range from highly superstitious to downright batshit crazy, which you guess –and hope— is from the isolation. That and the ‘incidents’. You choose to call them that so you don’t think of corpses and lose sleep at night.

The truth is… there are quite a lot of disappearances. An unsettling amount, if you’re honest. Still, there is a logical explanation besides the ‘werewolves and vampires and blood-witches’ nonsense you keep hearing about.

It baffles you why the villagers refuse to accept that it’s just the wolves. You’re surrounded by woods, for God’s sake and you hear them howling above the wind almost every night. They literally keep you awake sometimes. At the end of the day, though, they are just animals. Not supernatural monsters. Just good ol’ mother nature at her most brutal.

And in the off chance it isn’t, you don’t want to stay out long enough to find out.

Your steps hasten. It is a great relief when the sign of the shop near your house comes into view. Yes, almost made it! You cannot wait to have some warm soup and then curl into a ball underneath your heavy blankets.

Just as you are about to take the turn home, however, something catches your eye. Someone. Their presence is so jarring it makes you literally freeze in place and stare.

A woman you’ve never seen before –you’d know if you had, nothing about her is forgettable— ducks out of the store. Yes, she ducks, because she’s so incredibly tall there is no other way for her to fit through. Her height isn’t even the most stunning thing about her. Actually, you can’t decide what is.

It may be her spotless white dress and the way it hugs her luscious curves just right. It may be the wide-brimmed hat she wears, or the pearls that glimmer at her neck and ears, screaming of wealth. It may be her perfectly styled waves of dark hair and how stark they stand against the paleness of her skin. Or perhaps the ancient Greek, goddess-like beauty that is her profile.

You stand there breathless as she turns the other way, having spared you not a single glance. And why would she, when you’re a commoner and she looks like she has and is everything?

What is a woman like that doing here?

She belongs in a palace guarded by knights, is your first thought. Then it clicks. She does, in fact, live in a palace. She must be the lady you hear the whole village whispering about, the one who owns the castle at the top of the mountain.

That… is such a hike from the village. How did she manage that in a dress and heels? And… wait. How isn’t she freezing to death? Even past your two layers of coats, you are shaking. The frost is biting. It’s biting hard.

You want to ask her if she’ll be alright on her own, but the first lesson you learned in the village is to mind your own business. People do not react well to kindness here.

So you make to follow your own path— only to halt again when a tiny shooting star of a shine slips down her back and falls into the snow. The lady doesn’t seem to notice. Curiosity killed the cat, they say, yet you walk forward to take a closer look.

An earring that looks more expensive than your entire wardrobe –and probably is— lies on the cold ground, lost and alone. You must be an idiot because it doesn’t even occur to you to sell it for a month’s worth of any meal you desire, until much, much later.

“Um— my lady!” you call out, before you can think twice about it. You don’t remember her name. What is the castle called? Oh, come on… Dimitrescu or something?

Thankfully, she stops and you don’t have to embarrass yourself further. When she turns, a cold breeze carries a wondrous, expensive perfume to your nostrils. Sandalwood, Chantilly musk. You are pinned in place by a pair of amber eyes that seem to positively glow from within. She’s terribly intimidating, even while she looks more amused than bothered by your delay.

You try not to stammer or stumble. “S-sorry to stall you. Your earring fell off.” you say over the pounding of your heart and the merciless chill. Your fingers are numb when you present the object to her like a tribute.

A gloved hand reaches up to her ear, slow, as if she’s in no hurry at all. “Ah.” she breathes. She even sounds as good as she looks. “How nice of you to return it, dear.”

That ‘dear’ shouldn’t make your mind glitch like a faulty machine so easily. You lament the fact your palm is so cold you can’t even feel the whisper of her glove against it as she takes her earring back. You stand so frozen underneath her towering height, her classy smell and studying, golden gaze for a moment you have all but forgotten the time.

A distant howl is quick to remind you.

Oh no!

Your instincts give an instant flight reaction, you want to make a dash for your house, but your blue eyes meet hers once more. The stunning lady either has a mean poker face or the sound doesn’t faze her at all. She seems to disregard it as blatantly as the cold.

“That— that’s not good.” So much for not stammering in front of the beautiful woman.

“Better hurry indoors, now.” she says it lightly, as if there’s an underlying joke in there somewhere. “Who knows what scary monsters a pretty dear like you may attract.”

A pretty— your brain shuts down and reboots on the spot. If the urge to run to safety wasn’t swelling so fast you’d have trouble speaking at all, after that. It is a small mercy your blood is too frozen in your veins to make your cheeks redden.

“But you… you’re not going back to your castle alone, right?” you ask. Surely, she’s not that crazy to trudge through the damn woods at this time. “S-shall I escort you to safety?”

The Lady blinks.

Then, she throws her head back in a brief, hearty laugh that tickles your ears in the best way.

“And they say chivalry is dead!” her voice sounds like whiskey. “You are too good for this village, darling, you really are.” as she says it, the very tip of her glove brushes over your cheek. A touch ghostly; quick to fade, though not from your skin. “Don’t you worry about me. Get indoors.” The last part sounds like an order.

You don’t have to be told twice.

You’re hesitant –why are you so worried about her?— but you step back with a nod. “Stay safe.” you say and dash towards your home without looking over your shoulder again.

The breath you’ve been keeping leaves you only after you’re safely inside with the doors and windows locked. The howling is getting closer. Louder. You can’t stop thinking about the woman –Lady Dimitrescu?— and hoping she sees the sunrise safe and sound.

Weirdly enough, nothing pads or scratches or makes noise around your house that night.

You fall into a deep sleep, dreaming of golden eyes and lips crimson like blood.

Ko-Fi

#lady dimitrescu #alcina dimitrescu #lady dimitrescu x oc #resident evil 8 #resident evil village #fanfiction #Lady D #lady dimitrescu x reader #tall vampire lady #help im in love #after she yeeted that vanity I had to write about her or i'd go mad

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tabloidtoc · 3 years

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National Examiner, May 3

You can buy a brand new copy of this issue without the mailing label for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Widow Queen Elizabeth suddenly alone at 95

Page 2: Holy Moly! Stars take on film roles of biblical proportions -- Willem Dafoe, Leelee Sobieski, Keanu Reeves, Charlton Heston, Ewan McGregor

Page 3: Jon Voight, Jim Caviezel, Ingrid Bergman, Christian Bale, Max von Sydow, Steve Carell, Milla Jovovich

Page 4: Garden of Delights -- floral fashion unfolds in spring -- Olivia Wilde, Mindy Kaling, Keira Knightley

Page 5: Sarah Paulson, Drew Barrymore, Tiffany Haddish, Penelope Cruz

Page 6: Brooke Shields has finally fought her way back after a nightmarish accident she was terrified would leave her paralyzed after she broke her right femur after falling off a balance board at her New York City gym -- Brooke said it felt like it was all in slow motion and then she just started screaming -- after two surgeries and a nearly three-week hospital stay, Brooke went home to her worried family, husband Chris Henchy and their daughters Rowan and Grier, but her nightmare wasn't over because a serious staph infection sent her back to the hospital for yet another surgery, saying for the first time in her life she thought she can't power through this and she can't even stand on her leg or go up a step and she needs to relearn how to even walk and she kept saying she could feel her toes because she was so afraid she would be paralyzed but if anything, she's a fighter -- now back at home and receiving physical therapy, Brooke feels like she's slowly on her way out of the woods and she knows she's got a long way to go, but she'll get there

Page 7: Do your pets suffer from mental illness? Humans aren't the only ones who can sink into depression or fall victim to stress and anxiety; household pets also have their share of mental illness, usually it's because there's something wrong in their environment and that means they probably don't need meds or a visit to the analyst's couch, just some sensitivity on your part and a little TLC and here's how to tell whether Fluffy, Fido or Tweety have problems you need to address -- dogs can have PTSD, birds get depressed, cats can have OCD, hamsters are hoarders

Page 9: Race Against COVID Mutants -- scientists scramble as virus variations gather strength

Page 10: In an incredible stroke of luck, and savvy cop intuition, a New York State Trooper saved a missing toddler from the top of a mountain

Page 11: 3 cheers for cherries -- it's cherry season again, and whether you like them sweet or tart, these deep red fruits pack a healthful punch

Page 12: After two years of dating and five years of marriage, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston split without children, then he went on to have six kids with Angelina Jolie, so if Brad wanted to have a great big family, why didn't he and Jennifer have children of their own? After suffering through a horrible public breakup, when her husband threw her over for Angie, poor Jennifer suffered even further indignation when she was raked over the coals for not giving Brad a baby, and vicious accusations began that it was her outright refusal to have a family that started their breakup and that made Jen furious, saying a man divorcing would never be accused of choosing career over family and she's never in her life said she didn't want to have children, and she did and she does want children and she will have them and the women who inspire her are the ones who have careers and children and she's always wanted to have children, and she would never give up that experience for a career and she wants to have it all -- in 2004, while Jennifer was finishing up with the ten-year run of her hit TV show Friends and Brad was doing the flick Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Jen was telling pals the time was finally right, and they were in a good place, ready to start a family and they were even preparing their home for a child by adding a playroom and a room for a nanny and they were definitely planning on having a kid but the plans were blown up when Mr. and Mrs. Smith was completed, and Brad left Jennifer for his co-star Angie, who already had a toddler and when she fell wildly in love with Brad, he also fell into the ready-made family and it turned out he liked being a dad so much, the couple have five more, three biological and two more adopted -- by the time Jennifer married Justin Theroux in 2015 and divorced two years later without a baby, she admitted that starting a family was a frightening prospect and that she had no regrets about her two marriages or remaining childless and she doesn't feel a void and her marriages have been very successful in her personal opinion, and she's sick of being beat up about it, saying there is a pressure on women to be mothers, and if they are not, then they're deemed damaged goods and maybe her purpose on this planet isn't to procreate; maybe she has other things she's supposed to do

Page 14: Dear Tony, America's Top Psychic Healer -- lying and dishonesty bring trouble to our world

Page 15: Sharon Stone starred in Basic Instinct and Casino and her life seemed to be glamorous, but behind the scenes it was a different story -- Sharon recently released her new memoir, in which she recalls the sexual abuse she and her sister Karen suffered as children and their mother's failure to protect them

Page 16: The shocking day Barry Manilow first discovered he had the heart condition AFib, he was alone and acted quickly to save his own life -- he was driving home and he felt his heart skip a beat, which doesn't sound like anything serious, so he didn't pay much attention to it and then it went blump-bla-bla-blump and it got crazier and crazier and he felt like there was a fish flopping around in his chest and it calmed down for a while, but later as he was watching TV, it started up again so he dialed his doctor, told him the problem and blurted what is this? He did what he was told and drove himself to the medical center in a panic to find out what was wrong with him and put a stop to it fast -- that first time was 25 years ago, but AFib is a lifetime problem that has to be monitored and battled consistently

Page 18: Here's some good news for fans of Don Johnson -- the actor says he's bringing one of his most beloved characters back to the small screen: Inspector Nash Bridges -- he confirmed during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that's he's currently prepping a revival of the show that ran for six seasons from 1996 to 2000 and he said they're in heavy prep for a reboot of Nash Bridges and it's Nash some years later and Cheech Marin is going to come back, and Jeff Perry, and they've got a pretty exciting show that they're prepping in San Francisco right now

Page 19: Shaquille O'Neal was spreading the love when he overheard a man making a payment on his girlfriend's engagement ring and stepped in to buy it himself -- the generous moment took place in an Atlanta jewelry store, where Shaq says he just happened to be shopping for earrings and overheard the young kid, a hard-working guy asking to make a layaway payment on the ring and that's when Shaq said tell your girlfriend he's got it and promptly handed over his credit card and at first, the shocked guy tried to turn down the offer, but Shaq wouldn't hear of it -- Shaq said he's just trying to make people smile and the random acts of kindness make him happy

Page 20: Cover Story -- after 75 years with Prince Philip, the only man she has ever loved, widowed Queen Elizabeth has to find the strength to keep going

Page 22: Cool Uses for Cola -- pop open a can for cleaning, unclogging, cooking and more

Page 24: This little baby is the toughest survivor as she has already made it through COVID-19 and a liver transplant and you'd never know it to look at joyful Winter Moore, but she's been through more than many people endure in a lifetime, all before her first birthday

Page 25: Face Mask Mistakes -- here's how to do it right to protect your health

Page 26: When Irwin Allen's production of The Towering Inferno was released to stunned audiences in 1974, it represented the pinnacle disaster film and it was far and away the highest-grossing film of the year, with a whopping $203 million worldwide -- The Towering Inferno takes place on the opening night at the world's tallest skyscraper, where faulty wiring short-circuits start a fast-moving, out-of-control blaze that threatens the guests at the opening party on one of the top floors and to the rescue comes superstar Steve McQueen as larger-than-life Fire Chief Mike O'Hallorhan, and none other than the legendary Paul Newman as architect Doug Roberts -- here are some startling secrets from the flick: McQueen, Newman and William Holden all wanted top billing and Holden was turned down as McQueen and Newman had both become bigger stars so to provide dual top billing to both McQueen and Newman the credit were arranged diagonally with McQueen in the lower left and Newman in the upper right; Newman later regretted his decision to co-star with McQueen because of the rivalry between the two, created by Steve and as a result, the fireman role dominates Newman's architect; at McQueen's insistence, both characters have the same number of lines although McQueen's character doesn't appear until 43 minutes into the film and as a result, Newman had used almost half his lines before McQueen even enters; after seeing this film, novelist Roderick Thorp had a dream that same night about a man being chased through a skyscraper by gun-wielding assailants and this was the inspiration for his 1979 book Nothing Lasts Forever which eventually was made into another blockbuster film: Die Hard

Page 28: The Dashing Duke of Edinburgh -- Prince Philip was a study in elegance -- a look at Philip's long and amazing life

Page 40: Read Your Palm -- it holds your fate

Page 42: 10 things to know about Leonardo DiCaprio

Page 44: Eyes on the Stars -- Blue Bloods castmates Steve Schirripa and Vanessa Ray and Bridget Moynahan share a lighthearted moment behind the scenes on the Brooklyn set (picture), Hugh Grant and wife Anna hit the red carpet in London (picture), Henry Cavill is flying high with a new galpal reality TV's Natalie Viscuso of Super Sweet 16, there may be a silver lining to Kelly Clarkson's ugly divorce with estranged husband Brandon Blackstock as she says she's written 60 new songs since their split, Christie Brinkley has called aging "the last frontier" as the longtime model seeks to continue her career in front of the camera at 67, Salma Hayek says her pet owl Kering stays in her bedroom with her when husband Francois-Henri Pinault is out of town, Dolly Parton delivered a heartfelt goodbye to her dear uncle and mentor Bill Owens

Page 45: Jay Leno is ready to take a spin in L.A. in a vintage purple Barracuda (picture), Percy Gibson escorts wife Joan Collins to dinner in Hollywood (picture), Patrick Dempsey filming Devils in Italy (picture), Matthew Perry posted a behind-the-scenes shot that showed him getting prepped to appear on camera for the Friends special and the posted racked up 27,000 likes before it was deleted without comment from the actor's account, Jessica Springsteen who is the daughter of Bruce Springsteen and wife Patti Scialfa could represent America at the Olympic Games in Tokyo as a champion equestrian, Rosie Perez claims she's been snubbed by the Academy Awards for more than two decades since she was nominated as a Best Supporting Actress in 1994

Page 46: Online dating isn't just for the younger crowd as studies show older adults are the fastest growing group trying it out -- if you're considering looking for love online, here are some guidelines to help you stay safe while maximizing your chances

Page 47: Fear of Flying -- these jetsetters would rather drive -- William Shatner, Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Megan Fox, Sandra Bullock, Whoopi Goldberg, Kate Winslet

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hdwallpaperslovely · 4 years

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) – Gwen's Fall Scene (10/10) | Movieclips

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The Amazing Spider-Man 2 movie clips: BUY THE MOVIE: Don’t miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS:

CLIP DESCRIPTION: When Gwen (Emma Stone) falls during a battle at the clock tower, Spider-Man (Andrew Garfield) is unable to save her.

FILM DESCRIPTION: The web-slingin’ wall-crawler hits the screens once again in this follow-up to Marc Webb’s 2012 reboot of the series. Andrew Garfield returns as Peter Parker, who squares off against the villainous Electro, played by Jamie Foxx. As the film opens, we find Richard (Campbell Scott) and Mary Parker (Embeth Davitz) stealing away with some crucial Oscorp files while leaving young Peter in the care of Aunt May (Sally Field) and Uncle Ben. Flash forward about a decade, and Peter (Garfield) is swinging into action as Spider-Man; having successfully thwarted the hijacking of an Oscorp truck by notorious Russian criminal Aleksei Sytsevich (Paul Giamatti), Peter ditches the costume just in time to meet up with Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) at their high school graduation. Despite his deep love for Emma, however, Peter remains haunted by his promise to her late father not to get emotionally involved with her for fear that she could be targeted by Spider-Man’s enemies. Meanwhile, young Harry Osborne (Dane DeHaan) inherits OsCorp and a deadly retrovirus from his father Norman (Chris Cooper), and brilliant but timid OsCorp scientist Max Dillon (Jamie Foxx) gets infused with a powerful dose of electricity while attempting to fix a faulty power circuit in the lab. Upon regaining consciousness, Max discovers that he has the power to harness electrical currents – the higher the voltage the more powerful he becomes. When a battle with Max in Times Square shorts out Spidey’s web-shooters, Peter goes to work on developing a more reliable model of his signature weapon while Harry grows convinced that Spider-Man’s blood is the key to his survival. Later, villainous OsCorp chairman Donald Menken (Colm Feore) steals the company out right out from under Harry, driving the vengeful youth to break Max — now Electro — out of the heavily-guarded Ravencroft Institute for a two-pronged attack on Menken and Spider-Man. The stage for that battle is set when New York City goes dark just as Peter declares his love to Gwen, plunging the wise-cracking web-slinger into a fight that could forever alter the course of his life.

CREDITS: TM & © Sony (2014) Cast: Dane DeHaan, Emma Stone, Andrew Garfield Director: Marc Webb Producers: Avi Arad, Alex Kurtzman, Matthew Tolmach, Roberto Orci, Beatriz Sequeira Screenwriters: Alex Kurtzman, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, Roberto Orci, James Vanderbilt

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topmixtrends · 6 years

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IT WAS THE mid-1970s, and medicine’s so-called golden age was beginning to lose its luster. The pharmaceutical industry was booming, a sure sign to some that the medical profession had sold its soul — if it ever had one to begin with — to big business. Indeed, that was what Ivan Illich, a Catholic priest and philosopher, charged in a damning, if arcane, attack on what he called the “iatrogenic” culture of medicine: its healers’ tendency to bring forth harm.

Illich did not believe physicians were intentionally trying to hurt their patients. Rather, he blamed the system in which they practiced, one that was oriented toward a dispassionate embrace of science at the expense of humility and humanity. As a spiritual thinker, Illich held a deeper concern that doctors had become cogs in an institutional machine that robbed them of the ability to adequately address human suffering. In 1975, Illich’s takedown of the profession, Medical Nemesis, became a nonfiction best seller.

Illich had an unlikely ally in Hollywood, where a young, Harvard-trained MD named Michael Crichton was broadcasting calls for medical reform through fiction. Crichton had already achieved commercial success with the novel The Andromeda Strain (made into a film by Robert Wise), and, in 1973, he wrote and directed a movie that used his insider knowledge of the medical present to project a dire posthuman future. The movie was called Westworld. In an interview in Playboy, Crichton explained that medicine’s obsession with the scientific cutting edge had cast the “the physician as technician and the patient as a biological machine that was broken.”

In 2018, the priest and the pulp fiction writer both seem like prophets. One of the most talked about shows of this year has been HBO’s Westworld, a reboot of Crichton’s 1973 film. This has also been the year when Silicon Valley’s heroic self-narrative began to crumble under the weighty evidence of its dystopic potential, allowing Westworld to emerge as shorthand for anxieties about human’s relationships to their machines. The Bleeding Edge is a timely and harrowing new documentary for Netflix that exposes, much like a Crichton tale, medical innovation gone out of control. The film’s aesthetic self-consciously echoes Westworld’s intro, featuring seductive imagery of medical technology against a spooky soundtrack. And the analogy works. While medical devices are less sexy than scantily clad androids, they both become possible in a world where innovation is its own justification and regulation more often protects those who make technology than those whose bodies it alters. And like Westworld, The Bleeding Edge is a contemporary portrait of how a misguided quest for innovation is eroding the forms of connection that make us human.

Under the regulatory apparatus of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the category of medical device includes everything from tongue depressors and heating pads to imaging technologies and implantable technologies ranging from stents to pacemakers. It is this last category, devices that become an enduring part of the patients in whom they are implanted, that claim the spotlight in The Bleeding Edge. Are such medical devices a “means to an end of unleashing innovation to improve and save lives,” as one industry lobbyist featured in the film insists to a room full of business people and politicians? Or are they the latest instruments of the iatrogenic culture of medicine? By 2050, the techno-optimists of this room are told, their organs will be custom-regenerated and their doctors will be computers. It’s a futurist fantasy that’s at least a century old but has yet to become obsolete. A reporter covering the medical industry goes so far as to suggest that the production and use of medical devices are not only “a way of life for post-industrial society — they are a reason for the existence of post-industrial society.”

The Bleeding Edge, by veteran filmmaking team Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, shows the violent side of this industrial Wild West, one that has wrought tremendous suffering for those whose bodies have become crucibles of innovation. The medical device industry, which is both more powerful and far less regulated than its pharmaceutical companion, is also perhaps more deeply cannibalistic, turning patients into expendable consumers without any incentive or regulatory burden to account for its costs. The emotional and evidentiary core of the film is a disparate group of Americans who might best be described as survivors of medical innovation. In several cases, the medical devices in question are connected to elective procedures that lead to a cascade of new medical problems — ones that shrewd device manufacturers will likely seize as emerging markets.

When the body becomes a site of industry, it also becomes a window into some of the most intimate consequences of governance in our late industrial age. Though the FDA was created in 1907, it wasn’t until 1976 that laws were put in place to regulate medical devices. With the exception of a few relatively minor amendments (the most significant being the 1990 Safe Medical Device Act, which authorizes FDA to recall devices after they are on the market) those are the laws we still have. And those laws do not even require that devices be safe or effective in order to be approved. David Kessler, a former FDA commissioner, is blunt in his diagnosis: “The system doesn’t work.” It never did, and as devices have become more complex and more intimate — over the past 10 years, nearly 70 million Americans have been implanted with devices — the regulatory system that many imagine protects them is an agent of injury.

The relationship between profit and protection is an essential tension facing regulators in the United States, who see the flourishing of industry as necessary for maintenance of capitalism. Yet, the FDA is a system that one interviewee describes as a “revolving door,” in which agency leadership is populated by people who work in industry (and often after leaving, such figures go on to help provide guidance to medical device companies in navigating the system). This insight collapses the distinction between public and private interests — one that has been used to imagine a form of knowledge-making that is purified of the market.

If I had not myself studied the history of medical device regulation, I might have a hard time accepting the veracity of this state of affairs. And while I cannot vouch for the individual cases featured in The Bleeding Edge — which range from poisonous hip replacements to slinky-like implants to prevent pregnancy — the filmmakers have unquestionably homed in on a scandal that predates Trump and will likely post-date him, if we can survive the present, let alone bask in the future of 2050 that has so captivated device manufacturers.

Not that Trump is off the hook. Kirby and Ziering show the “revolving door” in action as Scott Gottlieb, a major industry insider, is installed as FDA commissioner — a turn of events that is celebrated by the lobbyists interviewed. By this point in the film, it becomes easier to imagine a future of robotic doctors than an overhaul of the regulatory system in an administration that seems set against social goods.

We become acquainted with the da Vinci surgical robot (hailed by newscasters as Dr. Robot) and the shocking circumstances of its approval and marketing. This “device” is a big-ticket item that allows surgeons to conduct precision operations by manipulating its mechanical arms like an arcade game. It was developed to overcome certain technical limitations of laparoscopic surgery, which reduced complications associated with traditional “open” surgery. However, da Vinci has not demonstrated similar improvements and often loses money for hospitals. In fact, its greatest value has been as a marketing tool, leading consumers to confuse elaborate technology with better care, driving demand for a machine that may not serve them well. Da Vinci didn’t pass through the most stringent review process, but an FDA regulator intervened to ensure that it could go through the less stringent 510(k) pathway, which allows devices to be approved on no other basis than “substantial similarity” to previously approved devices — even if those devices have since been taken off the market. This “approval by daisy chain” as one expert dubs it, is less a regulatory procedure than, as Kessler explains, “an exception that became the rule.” Or, from the perspective of industry, a loophole.

Throughout the film, we hear politicians, including Trump, argue that innovation is central to job creation. Yet injuries caused by unproven devices are making some unable to work. Many of the survivors profiled have had their work lives negatively affected, and, as will come as no surprise, those who are most socioeconomically precarious before their encounter with a faulty device are least equipped to heal.

Take Ana Fuentes, an administrative assistant who experiences debilitating pain after being implanted with a device intended to induce sterilization. She tells us that her doctors dismissed her accounts of pain, claiming that Latina women are more sensitive. (Recent studies have shown that physicians are significantly more likely to underestimate the pain of people of color, of women, and especially of women of color.) Her husband leaves her because she cannot have sex without severe pain. Indeed, she is in pain even when not having sex and soon loses her job. We last see her having made the wrenching decision to put her four young daughters into foster-care run by her church.

Yet, even an affluent, white, established male physician can find himself cast as an unreliable narrator of his own suffering. We also meet Stephen Tower, an athletic orthopedic surgeon who becomes a patient in need of a hip replacement. Seduced by the promise of a new breed of metal hip, he soon begins having memory problems culminating in a full psychotic break at a medical conference. Blood tests reveal high levels of cobalt in his blood which he has the wherewithal to remember as the innovative component of his bionic joint. When surgeons open him up, they find the device decayed, evidence that poisonous cobalt has leaked into his system. As he makes a full recovery, he is chilled by the realization that his own patients, for whom he had recommended and even implanted this same cobalt hip, are similarly afflicted. Some have even been wrongly diagnosed with Parkinson’s or dementia as a result of their symptoms. Tower’s efforts to undo the harm caused by his cure transform him into a reluctant activist, unable to appreciate why his scientific evidence is unpersuasive to those regulators he believes should be collecting it themselves.

This raises the deeper question of the meaning of scientific objectivity when the evidence is pain — especially, as the filmmakers go out of their way to demonstrate, the pain of women. One of the central arcs of the film follows the grassroots activism of women harmed by a device called Essure, the slinky-like metal coil they had permanently implanted in their fallopian tubes to prevent pregnancy and the same one Fuentes received. They share a symptomology that includes debilitating chronic physical pain, which also results in emotional trauma. Many are unable enjoy sexual intimacy with their male partners. Injury, it becomes clear, is not only physical or relegated to the individual user. It is relational. It is a social problem with profoundly intimate consequences, but it is also an intimate problem with social potential.

In a memorable scene, a delegation of women representing more than 10,000 reported cases of Essure-induced injury meet with a series of female Congresswomen. Louise Slaughter (D-New York), who passed at the age of 88 earlier this year, sympathetically observes, “Women seem to be expendable.” Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut), who happens to be my representative, ironically suggests that they are invincible. “Welcome to the NFL. You can’t get tired [if you’re female],” she declares. But what if you’re playing while injured (which we know many NFL players are)?

When the Essure activists do get an audience with FDA Commissioner Gottlieb, it feels like a small miracle of justice. And they do achieve a modicum of success: the FDA will require doctors to state the risks of Essure to future potential users. However, lax regulation in the United States has allowed the device industry to become a major player on the international scene. And there’s another cruel irony at play. The activism of American Essure users leads to the creation of Facebook groups across Europe where women find solace in shoe leather epidemiology, the hard-won knowledge that they are not alone. They are not crazy. After European regulators demand better evidence, Bayer, the company who makes Essure, chooses to pull out of the European market while also issuing a statement undermining the activists efforts to get news media to cover their story, claiming that reporting on the scandal is “inaccurate and biased.” The device remained on the American market until this week, when Bayer announced it will discontinue sales of Essure. But not because the device is dangerous — which the company continues to deny. Rather than accepting the testimony of tens of thousands of women, the company has continued to blame them for the decline of what they continue to insist is a safe and effective device. The idea that someone who has had their reproductive system painfully destroyed is “biased” is tautological at best, a form of medically and legally sanctioned rape.

Yet it’s not a simple choice between innovation or Luddism. It’s not even about doing a better job of maintaining and making do with the technologies we have that work, though that is important too. Until those in power are made to accept ordinary people’s expressions of pain as legitimate forms of knowledge about the world, the logics of innovation will remain but rhetorical designs that sanction injury of those seeking care. In the meantime, it will be other forms of human ingenuity — philosophy, fiction, film — that give inspiration to create less violent futures.

Joanna Radin is a historian of biomedical futures, based at Yale. She is currently at work on a book about Michael Crichton’s influence on the politics of truth.

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retrospeckia-blog · 6 years

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Antiseptic, frigid- Alana flinches at the cold front emanating from Dr. Pryce’s laboratory.

Her footsteps are tentative, ringing out against the tiles waxed to a mirrored shine. Pryce is leaning indolently against one of the humming towers for the quantum computer, scribbling away on a clipboard in indecipherable lines- from what Alana sees from the split second flash of flipping it over and clearing her throat politely, Pryce seemed to be writing blue lines of Russian cursive. Prussian blue, to be exact. Of course, it was entirely possible that her handwriting was just that bad.

The retractable pen is slipped into her labcoat’s pocket, and she looks up over the edge of her glasses at Alana. She’s as inscrutable as ever, expression clinically cool, levelly measured.

“It’s good of you to finally join us- Maxim.”

The name is incorrect, again- and Alana’s eyes flash hot, before she reels back in her telegraphing. Her hands, balled into fists, are consciously relaxed: her fingers dry from the decontamination shower, slightly red from the showerhead that only runs the gamut of scaldingly hot or arctic cold.

Dr. Pryce’s faint smile is all she needs to know, though- that she did in fact, catch onto her jumpy little shadowing intern’s emotional flare up.

“Well, come on then- what are you waiting for?”

The edge in her voice is softened by a trace of amusement. Her heels --of course she would wear heels, impractical for back support and difficult to run in as they were, it seemed entirely like Pryce to wear them if solely for the intimidation factor of click-clacking her way across the floor-- are Louboutins, Alana notes: the gaudy red sole in sharp contrast to the patent leather black. She tries to focus in on that, instead of the cold of the room, the imperious sway to Pryce’s stride, the clamminess of her palms crammed into the too shallow pockets of her own labcoat. The fabric scratches at her hands.

Just focus on the darting, flickering red.

Alana looks down at her own scrubs, the bright firework pattern splotched over a midnight blue sky, and tries to think of what Daniel might say- something sharp tongued, something derisive. Something smouldering. Before she can summon the words, she nearly bumps into Pryce’s back.

Pryce clucks her tongue in annoyance, before pulling back the uncomfortable plastic wheelie chair from the control console that’s a Cold War relic. The dirty mint green plastic, innumerous blinking lights and flips and switches so used their colors are long rubbed off by oily fingers, and the chunky little keyboard with half of its keys grimily stuck to the backing stare insolently at Alana.

It’s the technological equivalent of the kid’s plastic picnic table. It’s humiliating, and degrading: and a downright insult to her own abilities, to sit her down in front of the beginner’s punching bag.

Pryce looks sideways at her, through the crisp fall of her dark hair, just barely skimming her jawline. Her eyes are dark brown, dark enough to be black: and they take her in with the same pitiless intention blackholes exert onto bent light: gravitational lensing, that’s what it reminds Alana of.

There’s an unspoken expectation that hangs in the air, and Alana abruptly grabs the back of the chair from Pryce, before wrenching it backwards and throwing herself into it gracelessly, resentfully.

Pryce smiles, indulgently- the way a mother would to a child who’s fruitlessly throwing a fit over not being allowed to wear neon pink rainboots with a turquoise tutu on top of striped black and white overalls to school: silly, sweet, simple. Absurd.

Alana desperately wishes she could smack that self satisfied smile off of Pryce’s face, scrub it off the same way she would the slash of her dark red lipstick, smudge it over the arm of her bright, white labcoat: freshly laundered, starched. Leave an indelible mark.

Instead, she breathes- in, out, feels the expansion and compression of her ribcage, a palm curled against her stomach, tries to focus on the simplicity of in-out-in-out-in-out. Pryce taps her nails on the counter, clicking expectantly. Alana holds onto her last breath, rolls her shoulders, cracks her knuckles, tongue wetting her lower lip in a nervous dart- and jabs the power button on before she can second guess herself.

“Hi,” Alana whispers, lips barely moving as she mumbles, fingers already darting across the clogged keys. She stumbles, catches herself: the muscle memory faltering back into place. No one is allowed into Pryce’s lab after-hours, and it’s been difficult to find time to familiarize herself with the console, entirely different from her brand spanking new custom rig, lips silently mouthing the sharp outlines of words: red, black, purple, magenta, orange, green, chrome: the colors of the buttons and switches she presses, throws: left hand spidering across the board as her right darts blindly through the mess of buttons.

She’s found her stride- and looks almost at home, in her element: effortless. The halcyonic light glints off of her face, throws it into relief: with the dimmed surroundings, it floats palely, suspended in the darkness: bright blonde hair reminiscent of exposed coils of copper wiring. Her scrubs fade into the background, with only the occasional bright splotch of color catching the blue making itself known as she shifts, a little restlessly.

A moment passes. Alana pauses, clears her throat. She repeats her greeting, unsure of what she’s expecting in return- wondering whether it would be worse to hear a response, or a screeched, staticky keen: (and Kepler’s face comes unbidden to mind, dark hair mussed as he runs a hand through it, drawling out about how sometimes we have to make tough calls, and of course- he wouldn’t want for her to be in this position, it’s a difficult one to be forced into: but doctors have an obligation to alleviate suffering, and well, this entity- this puhr-son, he pushes so much emphasis on the first syllable, the pauses dramatic, scattered, sprawled listlessly through his speech, is suffering, and its in her hands to lighten that burden- Alana, I think you can do it, Alana, I know you can do it-) and Alana stumbles.

Her hands stop, tripped up over the blare of distortion from the speakers as she winces away from the screen. The voice, modelled after Pryce’s own- is ragged, twisted up into itself in pain: and it asks her to stop.

Alana’s heart is in her throat, the pulse raggedly pressing against her trachea. She has never been more aware of the distinct, ribbed edges of cartilage binding it into place, protection from collapse: dry swallowing, the insides of her throat sticking together as she tries to process what she’s just heard, through the alarm bells ringing in her head.

Pryce said that the AI was faulty- she never specified just how broken, or unbroken it was.

Pryce, for her part- watches with a perfectly filled in, arched brow raised: a sharp pique of interest as she watches Alana’s full bodied trembling, the half-complete gesturing, tiny lift of her fingers off of the keys, electric blue eyes blown wide with minuscule pinpricks of pupils: a fear response. The anxiety palpably radiates off of her, and Pryce can almost taste the sharp tang of cortisol melded with adrenaline’s burn, iron on her tongue. When she smiles, it’s a sharp reminder that showing your teeth has never been a gesture of kindliness in the animal kingdom: and she watches, predatory- enjoying Alana’s split second of dropped composure.

The next handful of minutes are a blur, in recollection: Alana only remembers the desperation, her despair- the futile railing of the AI against what was happening. The burning ardour to live- that Alana has to smother. Has to consciously grapple with, browbeat into submission. She disconnects herself from the growing horror in the bottom of her stomach, guts knotted up into a fish-hook twist: throws herself into the loops, into the netting of commands that holds back the digital onslaught like meshed fingers do the tide: it is afraid.

She is afraid.

Alana isn’t sure which of them is the she in question: all she knows is the sound of computer keys mashed flat against the backing, the retina searing light of the screen’s display distorting, and the high pitched dial tone that approximates a final scream.

When it’s finally over, the screen’s gone black, and a quick reboot of the system shows that it’s been wiped clean, scoured down to the last pixel: any trace of the broken-unbroken census unit’s been eradicated off of the face of the planet, Alana crumples into herself.

She holds her head in her hands, the curtain of her hair saving her a shred of dignity as Pryce watches with avid --and clinical, she’d insist-- interest, almost on the edge of her seat. There’s a few ragged sips of air, but when Alana looks over to Pryce, with a tight bob of her head to indicate that she’d finished what she set out to do, mouth pressed into a thin line: no tears are streaming down her cheeks, dripping off of her chin.

Her composure is shaky, but present again- stretched thin around the corners of her mouth and her eyes, liquid: but in place nonetheless. When Alana stands- it is on her own two feet: even if one palm is pressed against the desk, holding her weight up unsteadily. She doesn’t glower, doesn’t glare- much to Pryce’s surprise. The levelness in the look that Alana throws her way is disconcerting, the tightness of wrath smoothing out into a calm plane: glassy, dark: as indiscernible as an ocean two minutes after the end of a storm. It holds unknown, unpredictable fathoms.

She stumbles, doe legged, tears brimming on the edge of her lashes: right into Kepler’s arms, without heed of the heavy door closing smartly on her heels, or Pryce’s wink at the major from behind the glass partition. She forgets to scrub out through the decontamination protocol, under the bruising pummel of the shower head jets, and she isn’t reprimanded for it, for once. Her focus is so far from proper protocol that it’d be a useless endeavour to try to prompt her, anyways- you’d have to lead her into the stall yourself, strip her stark naked, have to soap her up in suds and scrub fingers through her hair, tilt the water so that it runs through her hair, hand cupped and pushing her head back into a tilt so that shampoo doesn’t drip into her eyes, wrap those trembling limbs into a towel, hold her together, like she might come undone from shaking at the seams, pop her into a fresh set of clothes: like Daniel will, like Daniel does after she comes home.

And it is their home- the tiny apartment-esque living quarters adjoined onto her personal laboratory, it’s a home they’ve made together despite the fact Goddard Futuristic’s presence is heavy, impossible to peel off of the walls. It’s where she’ll spend the night trembling in his arms, teeth chattering in her skull even when she’s wrapped up in warm blankets and laid against the radiator-furnace of his body. The coldness of the laboratory’s settled into her bones, and she’ll grab at him, press herself against him greedily, bury her face against his chest as if she could displace it, if she could only hold him close enough, closer than skin to skin, impossibly close, overcoming the minuscule electrostatic separation of atomic structure- and sob, on and off and on and off as he holds her, as steady as the earth beneath her feet.

That’s to come after, later, in a time and space she isn’t aware of yet, doesn’t occupy yet, can’t fathom yet- and in the moment, now, in all of its piercing clarity, all she can focus on is what she’s done. She turns her hands over, palm side up, fingers half curled involuntarily into clawed beginnings of fists.

Alana’s hands shake, uncontrollably: she imagines them sluiced in red up to the wrists, indelible.

There’s the bodily sensation of being wrapped up into an awkward hug, from someone who isn’t used to being that close to another human being, the too tight squash against his chest, the warmth of tears soaking into the fabric and pressed against her face as she weeps openly, the hiccoughed sob that tears itself out of somewhere that feels just below her diaphragm, a sharp punctuating punch upwards- his fingers patting her hair in the same way you pet a dog, rough and rasping and smushing down more so than stroking, nonsense shushing, slurring into a single breath- all too much sensory information as a whole, but only one thing ringing in her ears, reverberating in her skull, entrenching itself into the marrow of her vertebrae, the flimsy skeleton structure holding her up against the hopelessness of horror catching up to her, drowning out his southern soaked syllables: whiskey and honey and gunpowder compressed into a lolling soundbite. Even his acknowledgement, his pride is lost, a buzzing drone to the looped soundtrack in her head.

When Alana closes her eyes, all she can hear is digitized death.

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guiafeminino · 6 years

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Suddenly, six teens running for Kansas governor doesn’t seem so preposterous

By Monica Hesse / The Washington Post

MERRIAM, Kan. – A report from the Midwest, where a gangly hope has arrived in the form of children enrobed in various assortments of khakis and blazers, because six teenage boys are running for governor of the state of Kansas.

The would-be boy governors of Kansas. This was a funny concept for a while, and then it became absurd, and then a national tragedy happened and it became not funny but actually an emotion approaching tender, even aching.

But on the Monday before Valentines Day, as a half-dozen minors vied for the highest office of a state that had never bothered to codify any gubernatorial age requirements, it was still absurd. And so on that afternoon, while a suburban mom named Carrie Stracy debated whether to make meatloaf or use up the salmon in the fridge, her son, Tyler Ruzich, sat in his bedroom and discussed his candidacy.

“I have always thought of myself as more moderate, almost an Eisenhower Democrat,” said Tyler, 17, whose opponents in the Republican primary this summer include the current governor and the Kansas secretary of state. “For me, the question of government is a question about adequacy. There shouldn’t be an effort to grow, but there should be adequate funding to cover programs.”

Regarding the so-called “Kansas Experiment,” a tax cut enacted by former Gov. Sam Brownback, R, that left the state topsy-turvy with ballooning class sizes and shuttered social programs – “I am most certainly against that,” Tyler said.

Tyler has a slight build, dark blond hair and an earnest way of saying, “I’m not too sure about that” when he wants to think something over. He drives a rustbucket Oldsmobile to get to Shawnee Mission North High School, where he is a junior, or to pick up his girlfriend at a different high school. The girlfriend didn’t know Tyler was running when they met, but she learned shortly thereafter when they were walking through town and someone jauntily shouted, “Hello, Guvnor!”

At present, Tyler was a long way from his party’s nomination, but he did have a slogan – “A Republican for the Next Generation” – and he did have a website, and he did have an 11-year-old sister named Sadie who had taken to wearing a pale blue T-shirt reading “Ruzich for Governor,” especially when she heard company was coming.

—

Tyler was technically the second teenage gubernatorial candidate to join the race. The first was Jack Bergeson, a 16-year-old Democrat from Wichita, who declared partly to offer a full-throated Obamacare defense – the Affordable Care Act helped his family – back in the summer of 2017. Tyler heard of Jack through social media and reached out; it was Jack who convinced him they could make a big statement about Kansas’s sorry state of affairs if there were teen candidates from both parties. Tyler, who was the captain of his school’s debate team and whose wall was plastered with a poster-size U.S. Constitution, logged onto the state’s website and downloaded the necessary forms.

The third teenage candidate was Ethan Randleas, a 17-year-old Wichita Libertarian. The fourth was Dominic Scavuzzo, 17, a Republican from Kansas City; Scavuzzo’s classmate Joseph Tutera, 16, became the fifth a few weeks later. The sixth was Aaron Coleman, 17, a Green Party candidate, although several of the others confessed they were not entirely sure Coleman was still running (“I’ve never seen him at anything,” Dominic told Tyler recently) and his Twitter account seemed to operate in fits and starts.

Still, it could be said with certainty that either five or six teenage boys were running for governor in the state of Kansas.

They had come to mean something. They had come to reflect the morass of the country. Fifteen months ago, Donald Trump had won the presidency based on the idea that politics were so corrupt, Americans could only trust an outsider with no experience. Now Trump’s polling numbers were in the toilet and the boy governors of Kansas represented yet another reboot: Truly outsiders. Truly no experience. If Kansas laws permitted a passel of hormonal teenagers to clog the ballot – well, then, some onlookers ruefully shrugged, maybe those were the candidates we deserved.

The aspiring boy governors had been to debates. Granted interviews. They traveled in a pack dressed in their best sport coats – the kind parents buy teenage sons, with room to grow in the sleeves, giving the illusion that the candidates themselves were proper-sized; it was their clothing that was too big.

—

At around 4:30 p.m., Carrie knocked on her son’s door frame.

“Did you find someone?” she asked.

A few hours before, a producer from Soledad O’Brien’s news show, “Matter of Fact,” had called, inviting Tyler to Washington for the show Thursday morning. The producer offered the stipulation that Tyler needed an adult chaperon. Carrie said she could chaperon while Tyler’s stepdad watched Sadie, but offered the additional stipulation that Tyler must find someone to cover his shift bagging groceries at the HyVee.

“I’ve been texting people,” Tyler told her. “I thought Kelsey could do it, but she has choir practice.”

Eventually, with no luck, Tyler pulled on his parka and drove to the store, rationalizing that it would be harder for co-workers to turn him down in person. “I’ll just wander,” he decided, scanning the aisles and spotting a kid in an apron.

“Hey, Houston? Are you working Wednesday?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I check your schedule? I need someone to cover my 4-to-8. I have to go to Washington.”

The swap arranged, Tyler grabbed a Sprite and took it to a register where an older woman named Sherry was rubbing her lower back.

“Tyler!” she said, perking up as she scanned the soda.

“How’s your back doing, Sherry? Are you back up to 35 hours yet?”

One of the things Tyler appreciated about HyVee was how he got to interact with people of all ages. He liked his colleagues, how they came from different walks of life.

“You know, lots of people ask me, what can you, Tyler Ruzich, do for people my age?” Tyler said, back in his car. “I say, we keep continuing these Old Man Principles that aren’t working. In [Alexander] Hamilton’s time, someone my age could be commander of a frigate. Did the Founding Fathers consider that a 17-year-old might be governor? I don’t know. Did they consider that a reality-television businessman would become president of the United States after losing the popular vote? Probably not.”

—

The next morning, Tyler got up and drove to a nearby Steak ’n Shake. The aspiring boy governors had been invited to debate each other in a little town called Hillsboro, and Tyler planned to carpool with Dominic.

“Jack’s not going to be there,” Tyler told Dominic once their burgers arrived. “He couldn’t miss any more math.”

“Got it,” said Dominic, whose gubernatorial preparation had involved working at his mom’s frozen yogurt shop and joining his school Spanish club.

“His running mate will be there, though,” Tyler said. “And Ethan will be there. That will be . . . fun.”

Dominic laughed. A byproduct of the boy governors’ youth: outsiders had begun to think of them as a unit, as if they all belonged to the same political party, called “Young.” But they believed in different things.

Tyler was the most liberal of the Republican candidates. He supported “LGBTQ-plus rights.” He supported protecting the Ogallala Aquifer, the water table beneath the Great Plains states. At debates, Tyler often found himself tangling with Ethan the libertarian, who opposed him on almost every issue.

The only thing that they agreed on was that the lawmakers making decisions about the state’s education didn’t have to go to the state’s schools. And that the politicians running the country weren’t the ones who were going to inherit it. Wasn’t it a civic responsibility for the teenagers to become politically involved?

If they didn’t change things, who would?

“Have all the TV people been reaching out to you?” Dominic asked as they drove past flat fields and rusty water towers. Dominic told Tyler he’d gotten a call from Lionsgate.

“Lionsgate?” Tyler repeated. He wasn’t sure about the people wanting to make movies. It was hard enough to be taken seriously without bringing Hollywood into the mix. Especially for the Republican candidates. While Jack, the 16-year-old Democrat, had been invited to participate in events with the party’s older candidates, the GOP had shut out Tyler and Dominic from anything official.

A Republican state lawmaker was now trying to pass a bill saying that in all future elections, candidates must be 18. “We have age requirements on voters,” one of the bill’s supporters, Rep. Keith Esau, had told the Kansas City Star. “Anybody who’s running should be able to vote for themselves.”

Tyler felt wounded by this exclusion but compensated by accepting every news interview. This seemed the best way to gain exposure for his positions, but the interviewers almost never wanted to talk about his positions, just his age. He practiced deflection: “I guess if I’m governor, I could keep pardoning myself for truancy,” he said when reporters asked, winking, how he could finish high school from the governor’s mansion. “But on a more serious note. . . .”

On a more serious note, he wanted to talk about governmental transparency, he told the reporters. On a more serious note, he wanted to talk about how his party could connect more with young people. On a more serious note, could they have a conversation about net neutrality, and how he saw its repeal as a way of taxing poor people?

“Yes, I am old enough to drive,” he repeated wearily to a reporter on the telephone. He paused. “I drive a ’94 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera.”

—

Tyler and Dominic arrived at the Hillsboro debate a few minutes late, victims of a faulty GPS, and by the time they got to the high school auditorium, Ethan and Jack’s running mate, Alexander Cline, were already onstage (Alexander later described Jack’s absence as an “unavoidable scheduling conflict,” sidestepping the question of math class).

Alexander wore a traditional boy-governor suit. Ethan, the Libertarian, wore a T-shirt with a cartoon snake and the slogan, “No step on snek” – a “Don’t tread on me” interpretation for the 21st century – and was expounding on family farms. “The way to help is to get the government out of the farm,” said the candidate, who had worked on his own family’s since he was 11. “The struggle for small farms is too great.”

“That’s why you subsidize them,” offered Tyler, joining him on the stage.

The candidates talked about tax rates and their views on abortion, and then a teenage audience member went to the microphone for the next question:

“Tyler, do you plan on keeping conceal-carry laws the same? If not, what do you plan on doing to change them?

Tyler nodded. “I believe, first of all, that the Second Amendment needs to be upheld. However, I still believe that when it comes to – Now wait, I haven’t even said anything controversial yet,” he said as Ethan began to protest. “What I’m going to say is that public university students should not be allowed to carry guns on campus. We are too many school shootings too late.”

“My sister goes to Kansas State,” Dominic jumped in, citing a campus that permitted concealed weapons. “Professors do not feel safe there. It’s just spun into madness.”

After the debate, the candidates posed for a photo, and then Dominic and Tyler drove home and Tyler went to his job and spent the next five hours standing at a cash register, ringing up ice cream tubs and packages of frozen chicken.

—

Tyler and his mother were driving to the airport the next day, Valentine’s Day, when his phone buzzed with a news alert: Police were seeking an active school shooter in a Florida town called Parkland.

By the time they checked in for their flight to Washington, Tyler’s phone told him the death toll was rising. He thought about his own school. What if the shooter had been there, and Tyler had been caught, hiding for his life? Or what if, because he’d skipped his last class to make it to the airport, he’d been safe while his classmates were left to hide alone? He decided that would have been worse.

By the next morning, the teenage students of Parkland were already making their voices heard. Tyler watched as David Hogg went on CNN and implored lawmakers: “We’re children. You guys are the adults. You need to take some action.” There were videos of bloody bodies on Snapchat, and Tyler was putting on his blazer and going to the Newseum for Soledad O’Brien’s show.

Jack had been invited, too, and the two sat in armchairs across from their interviewer, who for once didn’t ask whether they were old enough to drive.

“One of the big stories of the week is another school shooting,” O’Brien said. “What would be your strategy for bringing an end for what people would agree is clearly a crisis?”

Tyler and Jack told her they both believed in gun-control measures.

Did Tyler realize, O’Brien asked, that this put him in opposition with most Republicans?

Tyler had bags under his eyes, and AP exams he needed to register for, and he needed to be back in Kansas by that evening because he had to be in school the next morning. His voice was a little hoarse.

“If I’m making an enemy of the NRA, that’s something I’m kind of proud of, to be honest,” he told O’Brien. “I’ve seen what gun violence does. It’s time that we change the rhetoric and the discussion. Because clearly we are too far gone to say it’s a mental illness problem.”

Was that the right answer to have given on national television? He wasn’t sure. It was what he believed. Why couldn’t any of the adult politicians seem to say what they believed, he wondered. The kids were all saying what they believed. Whatever the consequences, the kids believed in something.

Tyler spent the rest of the week following the news back home in Kansas, along with all of the other boy governors.

In quieter moments, when he wasn’t trying to spin things, he admitted that his chances of winning were not very good. But then again, he would turn 18 by the time the primaries rolled around this summer. And because of that, he at least had already registered to vote.

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teamsupergood · 6 years

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Plantr is an automated participatory community garden project that aims to create greenspaces across public spaces. The gardens use sensors and irrigation to keep track of the condition of the plants within it and relay the information to a website. Participation is done on a purely voluntary basis and can be as simple as replenishing a water reservoir or as involved as building and installing a whole new garden. The system measures user involvement and rewards them with Plantr points which can then be exchanged for perks and bonuses. The goal of the project is not only to greenify open spaces but to give the possibility to passers-by to feel part of the project and learn basics in gardening, coding and DIY design. In order to make the project as accessible as possible, costs are kepts to a minimum, materials are chosen to be readily available and all necessary resources are made publically available. Although this version of the build is better suited to growing small plants and herbs, it can easily be adapted and modified to grow fruits or vegetables in order to increase access to locally grown, fresh produce. Moreover, by modifying materials, the project could also be made to function outdoors to create rooftop gardens. Our project therefore responds to multiple sustainabilty concerns: energy needs for food production, urban heat island effect and more generally, global warming. In creating this project the work load was split into different modules of developement each with their own set of challenges, and decisions. Each module necessitated research for materials, design and technolog; protoptyping; building and testing. After completing what we are calling Plantr v.1.0 we also have a better idea of how to improve the project and how to make the building of each module mode accessible for would-be participants.

1. The garden. Pintrest is littered with design ideas for decorative indoor gardens so it's probably safe to say that pretty much everything has been done in this departement. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, we chose the tried and true tower design as it would offer an effecient use of space with its limited footprint and vertical design.

Although PVC is the most commonly used material when looking at examples online, we were hoping to steer away for the usage of new plastics. Therefore we opted for a cylindrical concrete pouring form. This is an object that is easy to work with and to cut into and the waxy coating on its surface makes it sufficiently water resistant in case of spills. To insure some stability we designed two base pieces that give the whole project an unintentional but welcome space-rocket look. Another objective was to keep as much of the electronics and irrigation out of sight in order to make the final object visually appealing. This proved to add to the challenge especially when trying to troubleshoot faulty wires with the electonic devices anchored to the inside of the tube.

In order to add a bit of polish we wanted to paint the outside of the tube. Spray paint would have been an easy choice but would have clashed with our sustainability objectives. We therefore opted for an acrylic based chalkboard paint which would give participants an extra outlet of creativity. After all, this first prototype is installed in the art building of concordia.

2. Sensing and watering system. The choice for sensors compatible with single-board computers and microcontrollers is vast, ever expanding and can be overwhelming. A multitude of data points were discussed along with various methods to collect them. Ambient humidity, temperature, atmospheric pressure and light levels were all discussed but discarted for simplicity and cost's sake. We narrowed it down to hygrometers (soil moisture sensors) for each plant and a water level sensor for the reservoir.

Hygrometers for DIY project come in two main flavors, capacitive and inductive. The choice here was not particularly difficult as the inductive type can cost upwards of 40$ each. While they do offer a more precise and durable output, especially for outdoor use, we needed 8 of these for the initial prototype which would make the system cost prohibitive. The capacitive snesors on the other hand ranged from 2$ to 8$ depending on the materials used in their fabrication. Although we would have been thrilled to see the cheaper variety (Sparkfun SEN-13322) succeed, we noticed performance degrading corrosion on these while testing and were forced to upgrade to the 8$ gold plated versions (DFRobot SEN0114). The output of these sensors are analog so the use of an ADC (analog digital converter) is necessary if the computer or microcontrol used does not have analog inputs. Luckily the MCP3008 works perfectly for this application using the SPI serial communication protocol present on most GPIO pins of single-boards. As for water level, again there are two main schools: float or ultrasonic sensor. Intuitively, we were drawn to the float sensor as it seemed easier to use. Unfortunately, the less expensive variety of these only offer the ability to measure whether the water level has exceeded a certain level. This would give us an indication when the reservoirs would need to be refilled but we preffered having an acual level to work with. Luckily, the ultrasonic sensor HC-SR04 can give supprisingly accurate and reliable readings of the distance between it and the surface of the water. Wiring and programming slightly more involved as it needs one pin to output a ping and another one to measure the time taken for the ping to bounce back.

Of course, with this data being input into our single-board, we now needed to use this interpreted data to trigger the automated irrigation to water our plants. Our initial plan was to split the water output of the reservoir to 8 individual soft tubed lines that would each have an electronically controlled valve and would run to each plant. While this idea remains feasable and applicable for projects with larger plants, having a costly valve per plant made little sense for our build. We instead chose to have a single valve leading to a rotating piece of plumbing that would direct the flow of water to one of 8 funnels, each leading to one of the palnts. With a single valve and a servo motor, we are able to water the plant that needs it. Those who have worked with servos may know that their range is often limited to around 180 degrees. We found two viable solutions to this, either going with a specialized, more expensive, winch servo for model sail boats which does cover a full 360 degrees, or go with a standard servo and use gearing to give us the range we needed. Although we beleive that using a gear system would be more advantagous in terms of cost and availability, it would require extra time and testing which were running low on at this point in the project. We therefore opted for the more expensive sail winch servo which is still reasonably priced at around 20$ (vs 8$ for a servo with 180 degrees range).

3. Gathering, analyzing and sending the data The valve, motor and sensors need to plug into something to be interpreted and sent out to the world and this is where the single-board computer or microcontroller comes in. Ever since the advent of the arduino uno and the raspberry pi, dozens of companies have decided to offer their own variation on these devices with different features with some even offering hybrids. While the arduino type devices offer direct control, dedicated resources and a mix of analog and digital inputs, the raspberry pi type devices offer every possible feature of a linux based computer including integrated wi-fi, storage and support for multiple programming languages. Hybrid boards like the Udoo Neo offer the best of both worlds with the same pinout as an Arduino Uno and an arm based CPU to run a full fledge linux distribution. Obviously, the extra features come at a cost and in the end, even the least expensive option is overkill in terms of computing power for this project. While we used a raspberry pi 2b that we had on hand to do the build, a pi zero W would do the trick and its cool 10$ price tag definately fits in with our goal of low cost accessibility.

Setting up the pi for wi-fi connectivity proved to be one of the most annoying challenges of this project. While it's easy enough to do so on a home network with standard WPA2-PSK security, Concordia (and most campuses) use a form of WPA2-Enterprise PEAP without certificate. Without getting into technical details, this meant hours of testing, tinkering and half a dozen e-mails exchange with Concordia technical support to get a connection going. Once that was done, the next step was to find a way to remotely control the Pi (having a screen and keyboard hooked up to it while it is anchored to the inside of the planter is obviously not ideal). Although it is easy enough to connect to a device via SSH on a home network, doing so on a campus network is usually prohibited. In order to circumvent this issue, the SSH port had to be bridged to an external server that is publically visible. This acts as an intermediary connection that redirects the traffic directly to the Pi. A script was written to ensure that the Pi would automatically re-establish the bridge if the device were to reboot or the bridge to fail. The advantage with this method is that it is now possible to remotely control the Pi from anywhere, even outside Concordia's network. As a matter of fact, a decent part of the code was written from the comfort of my living room while the Pi was locked away in a room in the arts building. Speaking of code, the script that controls the sensors and watering system was written in python as it offers all the necessary compatible libraries to interface with the Pi's GPIO pins. The algorithm is relatively simple. If one of the plant's hygrometer has a reading that is below a certain threshold and if the plant has not been recently watered, the motor moves the plumbing towards correct funnel and the valve is opened for 3 seconds. At every loop, the ultrasonic sensor checks the water level. All the data is collected. If the information has not been updated in more than 15 minutes, the Pi connects to the website's server via FTP and updates a json file containing all the information.

4. Displaying the information and point system Once all this information is collected and uploaded, it needs to be displayed online for users to see. We use a bare-bones virtual server from OVH that has a datacentre in Beauharnois that uses water-cooling to reduce energy usage of their machines. By using a combination of google API and javascript, we can parse the data from the json file and display the status of the plants on a map in a way that is meaningful to users. The website is also designed to offer users the possibility to create an account and accumulate points for their participation. This feature however was not implemented and a dummy version is displayed for demoing purposed. The map however does show live data from the garden.

While we were succesfully able to test the technical functionalities and how the organic interacts with the electronic we would need more time to measure the social aspect of the project. This would enable us to have a reading of how feasible it would be to implement in an uncotrolled environement. Still, the build has proven to work and be adaptable for personal or educational use for anyone who would want to reproduce it in their home or classroom. We welcome any initiative to iterate on the current design to adjust it to different situations.

#documentation #sustainable #sustainability #diy #concordia

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blazehedgehog · 7 years

Text

Hey, kids! Can you figure out what’s wrong with my desktop?

I have some bad news: that Sonic Mania video review I’ve been working on for like, a month? It’s postponed. Maybe indefinitely. Well, not indefinitely, that’s dramatic, but the long story short is that my desktop may be dying or dead and I’m a little lost as to what to do. It’s a long story, and kind of boring, so you’ll have to click through to read the full post:

9/29/2017: I hook my computer tower up in the spare bedroom at my brother’s place where I’m living until we can move in to our new apartment. It has been shipped from Colorado to Nevada in a moving trailer with as much padding as I could find. It probably still wasn’t enough. The system boots up fine, but very slowly, and software (especially games) stutters. I shut it down and touch a few connections inside the system, making sure the RAM, graphics card, and HDD connectors are firm. It’s not very thorough as far as checks go, but I start the system back up anyway. Stuttering is still there. The system doesn’t have internet yet, because even though I bought a $15 TP-Link USB Wifi adapter back in February or March in anticipation of this moment, I absentmindedly left it in storage. Storage doesn’t have lighting inside of the units, so finding the Wifi adapter will have to wait until the sun comes back out. I think maybe the stuttering will go away once I connect it to the internet, since some games act funny when they can’t connect to the web.

9/30/2017: With the TP-Link USB Wifi adapter installed, the system updates everything but the stuttering problem persists. Friends urge me to open the system and do a full check of all the connections. Some suggest taking everything out and reconnecting it. I don’t do that, but I do find that the CPU cooler is loose and that the backplate on my 1060 is also loose (this is me pushing down on the metal plate, which has separated from the 1060′s chassis a little bit, allowing the loose screws to raise up). I take the 1060 out and gently tighten all the screws so the backplate doesn’t shift around anymore, and I manage to snap 3 out of 4 of the CPU cooler pins back in to place (it’s one of those generic, stock Intel coolers). The 4th one kind of snaps in, but it’s a little mushy and these coolers are fragile so I figure it’s good enough. Amazingly enough, the computer starts up much faster and all stuttering in games is gone.

10/1/2017: A new problem has emerged: when the system sits overnight without being turned on, on first boot it will show the BIOS logo, POST, and then instead of loading Windows, it gets stuck on a black screen. While on this black screen, if I hit the reset button, the system boots normally. One friend suggests a power supply issue. I contact EVGA, my PSU manufacturer, who claim to have a 10 year warranty. EVGA says that doesn’t sound like a power supply issue to them, and we start talking about what it could be.

10/2/2017: I have this strange paranoia about the power cable I’m using for the tower and whether or not the surge protector is too old. I grabbed a newer surge protector from storage thinking that may also fix the stuttering problem, but since it didn’t fix that nor the black screen problem, I plug the computer directly in to the wall outlet and joke to myself, “hopefully this isn’t a bad idea.” Is it a bad idea? I can’t quite remember.

10/3/2017: Out of options, EVGA suggests I just disassemble the entire PC besides the the CPU and see if the black screen happens. If it doesn’t, reconnect the entire computer component-by-component until it happens. Then, simply replace that component. That sounds like a lot of work, and given how small this spare bedroom is, I don’t have a lot of room for that kind of stuff. I’ll have to psyche myself up for it.

10/4/2017: Suddenly I realize: the first time the system started up, it didn’t have the black screen problem. It was only after I connected the TP-Link USB Wifi adapter. I pull it out of the system before I start it up, and sure enough, it boots straight in to Windows. A quick Google search reveals others, with nearly identical models of TP-Link adapters, suffering the EXACT same problem. It’s a long standing hardware conflict with a Windows 10 USB 3.0 Controller and TP-Link devices that neither are interested in fixing (and at least for some, seems to cause a variety of USB problems until they got rid of the device). This guy says his TP-Link device actually damaged a USB 3.0 port of his because of this problem. A friend suggests an internal PCIe Wifi card. It’s $60, which is a lot for someone who is still technically homeless, but you get what you pay for, and last time I cheaped out with the TP-Link adapter, it bit me in the butt -- so I go for it.

10/7/2017: The ASUS PCIe Wifi card arrives, I put it in, and it works with zero problems. The day is saved. Or is it?

10/11/2017 (12:45am): Around midnight I go to the bathroom and return to find my TV is turned off. My computer monitor is too big to use with my tower in this tiny room, so I have it connected to a TV. Same size, but the base is smaller, so it fits on this table easier. What this means is that when my desktop tells my TV to enter standby mode due to inactivity, the TV just reports “No Signal” and turns off after 30 seconds. Absentmindedly, I move the mouse but forget to to turn the TV on at first, and by the time I get the TV on and it stops showing the Vizio logo, the computer is already mid-reboot for some reason. Seems like coming out of standby with no display may have crashed the video card. Surely it’ll come right back on.

1:05am: Windows has been stuck on a loading spinner for close to 20 minutes. I’m getting worried and looking up stories from people who left their system sit on this same spinner for hours, even days, with no progress. The HDD activity light hasn’t blinked in a while. The system is just sitting there. Some solutions say to just shut it off and try again. So, I throw caution in to the wind and go for it.

1:15am: It takes at least another five minutes of loading spinners, but the system finally boots. Seems like Windows may have rolled back to a restore point as some icons have been moved around on the desktop to old positions, but not everything was rolled back (the event viewer makes no note of this). Not only that, but my ASUS PCIe Wifi Card is gone. Windows is complaining about there being no ethernet connection, which it shouldn’t be doing. Checking the device manager, the ASUS wifi card is there, but it’s saying there “aren’t enough free resources” for it to function. Code 12. A Google search on my tablet says this means it’s run out of IRQ slots. What? It wants me to disable other devices on my system to make room. Does that mean something with my Elgato or the 1060 is broken? Given this was apparently a video error, I’d say the 1060. The day before, GeForce Experience had notified me of new drivers and I ignored it because I was in the middle of something. Maybe I stumbled upon an IRQ bug they patched?

1:35am: I uninstall, reinstall, disable, and renable the PCIe wifi card repeatedly. I get out the CDROM that came with the PCIe card and install the “official” ASUS drivers instead of whatever Windows thinks it needs (Windows says it’s a Broadcom device; it’s not). Nothing changes: every time I reboot, it’ll say wifi connections are available, but when I connect, I get wifi for a split second and then the device disappears and stops functioning. I’m considering downloading clean Nvidia drivers on a USB stick using my laptop to see what that does.

1:50am: I’ve run the Windows Hardware Troubleshooter. It states the obvious: hey, your wifi card’s not working. It claims to do some magic behind the scenes but nothing works. The problem evolves and the Hardware Troubleshooter next says the wifi card’s drivers might be faulty, even though five minutes ago they were fine. Look, all I need is those Nvidia drivers. I plug in the TP-Link USB Wifi adapter, knowing that’ll give me internet long enough to download the driver update. This was a bad idea -- I’d uninstalled the device completely, and I think it needed the drivers disc before you plugged it in to the USB port. Windows seems to summon drivers from somewhere, for something, and instantly the whole system is brought to its knees and eventually BSODs with a DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION. This essentially means that a piece of software caused an extreme memory leak (or something similar) and this is Windows catching it before it could cause real data corruption from an overflow or something.

2:13am: The system boots up after the DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION blue screen and I load up Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), ready to, at the very least, clear out what is probably just a bad Nvidia driver. DDU says I should run it in Safe Mode, and I idly wonder if maybe I can just turn my antivirus off. I disable Malwarebytes, and for some reason pop in to the Device Manager to have one last look to see if the Wifi Card is still broken. Instead of being broken, it’s merely disabled. That’s... new. I re-enable it and suddenly Wifi just... works. I have full internet again. It’s like nothing was wrong. What? I didn’t actually fix anything. Why is it working now? Maybe it was me turning off Malwarebytes? Was it conflicting with Windows Defender? (for the record, I’d had Malwarebytes installed for a while but all of its real-time protections were turned off -- until the night before, where it updated to a free trial of the premium version and turned all the real-time protections on). Just to make sure no conflicts happen in the future, I uninstall Malwarebytes.

2:41am: Sure enough, I tell the Nvidia Tray Icon to update my 1060′s drivers and an entry appears in the Event Viewer saying the GeForce Experience is either missing or corrupt (The GeForce Experience handles driver installation and other things like video recording, etc.) The tray icon downloads and installs a fresh copy of the GeForce Experience to replace the corrupted stuff.

2:54am: Wifi disappears again. Same problem: there aren’t enough IRQ slots. When the GeForce Experience reinstalled and updated the drivers, the Nvidia Tray Icon went away and never came back. Maybe something’s still corrupted in there. I boot in to safe mode and use DDU to clean out the all traces of the Nvidia driver.

3:02am: When I restart with no graphics drivers, wifi is instantly working again. This looks promising. Fresh install of the drivers and everything’s looking like it’s back to normal.

3:40am: Wifi goes out yet again, because once again, it’s run out of IRQ slots. What do I gotta do to make sure this stays fixed? Well, since restarting last time fixed it, maybe restarting again this time will fix it.

3:45am: The system hangs on the “Restarting...” screen. Not sure what to do, I leave it there for a few minutes until eventually it cuts to a blue screen. Our old pal DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION is back.

4:02am: The system seems to have steady wifi for about 30-45 minutes before it runs in to that IRQ error and dies. Now, the IRQ error precedes a guaranteed DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION blue screen, usually by only a few minutes. I’ve also noticed that when the wifi runs out of IRQ slots, the ASMedia eXtensible USB 3.0 Host Controller also fails along with it (no error about system resources, it just stops working, this time with “Code 24.”).

4:45am: Something weird has started to happen. Wifi will dip out for just a second, but then come back and the system will be “fine.” It’ll still eventually BSOD with the Watchdog Violation, but it’ll keep the internet up until that moment.

5:10am: The event viewer starts spitting out weird warnings about “Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0.” followed by messages about retrying “IO operations” on the Disk at “logical block addresses.” Checkdisk seems to not care, says all drives are healthy. Earlier in the night a friend mentioned checking out software called “WhoCrashed?” that analyzes BSOD crash dumps and can help tell you what’s going on. I have to clear some HDD space for it, but eventually it’s just a matter of time of waiting for the next BSOD. I also install a system resource monitor called WhySoSlow from the same place just to see what’s going on under the hood. At this point, it’s been over an hour, and I start to think maybe I won’t have another BSOD.

5:20am: Idly, I run a system integrity check (sfc /scannow). This scans core Windows components for errors. It says everything is fine.

5:50am: Within five or ten minutes of the integrity check finishing, “Application Responsiveness” and “Kernel Responsiveness” in WhySoSlow spike HARD out of nowhere. They go from 0ms to peaks of 200ms or more. It’s like when I plugged in the TP-Link device a few hours earlier. The system is incredibly sluggish, but the Event Viewer isn’t reporting anything out of the ordinary, the USB 3.0 controller’s still working, and so is the wifi. Even the system temperatures are normal (40C and below), so this isn’t a loose CPU cooler again. Regardless, boom: we have our Watchdog Violation BSOD to analyze.

6:08am: Windows is LETHARGIC to start up. It takes forever just to get to the desktop, and even longer to show icons. I manage to get it to load WhoCrashed and it analyzes five dumps made by Windows. Unfortunately, I can only read one and half of another. The system won’t shake this sluggishness and I know what that probably means. I snap photos of the two entries so I can look at them in detail later, with the other three impossible to read.

6:10am: Windows BSODs again with another Watchdog Violation. WhoCrashed said the Watchdog “detected a prolonged runtime at an IRQL of DISPATCH_LEVEL or above” and that this was “typical of a software driver bug” and not a hardware issue. Of the second memory dump it read, all I could make out was that the error happened in asstor64.sys -- aka the ASMedia eXtensible USB 3.0 Host Controller. I try to get Windows 10 to boot in to safe mode so I can have a look at the rest of the dump analysis, but Microsoft removed the ability to boot you system in to safe mode by holding F8. Now you have to actually get in to Windows and pick “Safe Mode” from a menu option. Hard to do that when Windows “loads normally” and eventually BSODs before you can get to the Safe Mode menu.

6:16am: Windows is still starting up INCREDIBLY slowly. I can’t even get the start menu to come up. And, before I know it, once again, boom: Watchdog Violation. They’re getting closer together.

6:20am: As Windows 10 once again lurches back to life, I try and get it to shut down, but the start menu still won’t come up. Instead I hit the power button to force a shut down, but it gets stuck on the “Shutting down...” screen for several minutes before also getting a Watchdog Violation Bluescreen. Instead, while it’s on the BIOS screen, I just power the system off entirely, frustrated.

And so here we are. I’m back on my laptop now. My incredibly slow, incredibly small laptop. I’m lucky to have it, but this thing has problems of its own I don’t want to talk about right now.

So what do we think happened? I’ve spoken to four or five friends now, and there are three running theories:

One friend says it sounds like a bad motherboard. This is the motherboard I have, and I paid $140 because I wanted something reliable. It was “Tom’s Hardware Smart Buy 2014.“ (I bought it in 2015 when it was on sale for Black Friday). Apparently ASRock Mobos have problems where if they lose power suddenly, they can develop problems, and the power apparently did go out yesterday (10/10/2017) in the morning while I was asleep. The system was off, however, but it was still connected directly to the outlet -- opening it up to power surges. Still, one would think power surge problems wouldn’t slowly get worse over time, and you’d think it’d manifest as a power supply problem first, right? Either way, I have a 10 year warranty on the EVGA PSU and even though Newegg doesn’t sell my mobo anymore, this one is nearly identical and costs $100. That’s a lot, especially after I complained about $60 for the wifi card, but it’s either that or no computer at all, period.

Other friends say to boot in to safe mode and reinstall all of my motherboard drivers. That’s an inexpensive option to be sure, but it really did seem like things were getting worse, not better. With as slow as the system was getting, it seems like hardware damage may have been done.

Related to the above, the BSOD problems didn’t start happening until I plugged in the stupid TP-LINK USB wifi adapter without reinstalling its drivers from the disc it came with. Could that be mucking up the internals? But again, if it was getting so slow, that probably at least means reinstalling Windows 10...

Or perhaps a fourth option that you out there on the internet know about...?

Anyway, this has been a hellish night, on top of a hellish week, on top of a hellish three months. Sickness and hospitals (and hospital bills) and almost not finding an apartment and now my computer progressively having a worse and worse meltdown. Any tips you out there have would be welcome.

#computer #tech support #help

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