[syndicated profile] 404media_feed

Posted by Joseph Cox

Apple Removes Women Dating Safety App from the App Store

Apple has removed Tea, the women’s safety app which went viral earlier this year before facing multiple data breaches, from the App Store.

“This app is currently not available in your country or region,” a message on the Apple App Store currently says when trying to visit a link to the app.

Apple told 404 Media in an email it removed the app, as well as a copycat called TeaOnHer, for failing to meet the company’s terms of use around content moderation and user privacy. Apple also said it received an excessive number of complaints, including ones about the personal data of minors being posted in the apps. 

💡
Do you know anything else about this removal? Do you work at Tea or did you used to? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.

The company pointed to parts of its guidelines including that apps are not allowed to share someone’s personal data without their permission, and that apps need a mechanism for reporting objectionable content.

Randy Nelson, head of insights and media resources at app intelligence company Appfigures, first alerted 404 Media to the app’s removal.

After launching a number of years ago, Tea skyrocketed to the top of the App Store this summer. The idea was for women to come together to share information and red flags about their dates. Tea users can “find verified green flag men,” “run background checks,” and “identify potential catfish,” according to Tea’s website. Crucially, the app said it verified that every user was a woman by asking them to upload a selfie.

In the wake of its new found attention, members of the notorious troll and harassment forum 4chan targeted the service, and found an exposed database containing Tea users’ driver licenses and selfies. Days later, 404 Media revealed a second data breach at Tea impacted users’ direct messages, including those discussing abortions and cheating.

Tea turned off its direct messaging functionality altogether after that breach, and a Tea user filed a class action lawsuit against the app. Despite those data breaches, Tea continued to grow its userbase, Tea previously told 404 Media in a statement.

404 Media subsequently published an in-depth investigation into Tea and its CEO and founder Sean Cook, revealing how the app tried to essentially hijack the Are We Dating the Same Guy community, an ecosystem of Facebook pages that are credited with keeping women safe. Tea paid influencers to undermine Are We Dating the Same Guy and created competing Facebook pages with nearly identical names. That investigation also discovered a third security breach which revealed the personal data of women who were paid to promote the app as part of an affiliate program.

The app is still available on the Google Play Store. A number of other copycat apps that include “tea” in their name and advertise similar features are still available on the Apple App Store as well.  

As of Wednesday Tea is still posting to its social media accounts, including its Instagram. The most recent post from around 13 hours ago describes Tea as “The first ever girls-only space that truly amplifies women’s voices and gives them an anonymous space to share their experiences, find comfort, and get the info they need on the man they’re talking to, in the name of DATING SAFETY💜”

One of the replies to that video simply says “App is gone.”

Update: This piece has been updated to include more information from Apple. The headline has also been updated to reflect that Apple removed the app.

[syndicated profile] 404media_feed

Posted by Matthew Gault

The AWS Outage Bricked People’s $2,700 Smartbeds

Sleepers snoozing in Eight Sleep smartbeds had a bad night on Monday when a major outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) caused their beds to malfunction. Some were left with the bed’s heat blasting, others were left in a sitting position and unable to recline. One woman said her bed went haywire and she had to unplug it from the wall.

At around 3 a.m. ET on Monday morning the US-EAST-1 AWS cluster went down and screwed up internet connected services across the planet. Customers for the banks Lloyds and Halifax couldn’t access their accounts. United Airlines check-ins stopped functioning. And people who rest in Eight Sleep beds awoke to find their mattresses had turned against them.

Podcast: Hackers Dox ICE

Oct. 22nd, 2025 01:00 pm
[syndicated profile] 404media_feed

Posted by Joseph Cox

Podcast: Hackers Dox ICE

We start this week with Joseph’s articles about a hacking group that doxed DHS, ICE, FBI, and DOJ officials. The group then sent us the personal data of officials from the NSA and a bunch of other government agencies. After the break, Emanuel revisits Wikipedia’s AI problem. In the subscribers-only section, Sam explains OpenAI’s inevitable path to an AI sex bot.

Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.

advice/thoughts on local cycling

Oct. 22nd, 2025 08:53 am
gingicat: (oops - Agatha Heterodyne)
[personal profile] gingicat posting in [community profile] davis_square
I am seeking anecdotal advice about cycling in the Somerville-Medford-Malden area. Even the amazing Susan McLucas could not teach me to ride a bicycle (I can't keep myself from looking down on a turn) so I am considering investing in an adult tricycle with or without power assist. (I can fall down and bang myself up while walking with something in my hands that throws my balance off-center, too.)

My issue is that as a motorist, I have noticed that I often don't have room to pass a cyclist. I keep pace with the cyclist until I can safely pass with two or more feet between the side of the car and the cyclist. I very much appreciate the roads painted with the indication that cyclists are allowed to ride down the middle of the car lane!

How well is this honored? Am I a typical motorist when it comes to cyclist safety?

...p...p-p-PENIS?!!!

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:56 pm
azurelunatic: melting chocolate teapot (418)
[personal profile] azurelunatic
Today Belovedest had to bust the teenagers for playing "the penis game" in the library.

[You say the word increasingly loudly, in turns, until someone loses the game by being told to cut it out or being asked to leave.]

The weather's getting colder, but I have evolved myself an outfit to wear outdoors for lounging while the weather's in the high 50s F -- my slightly ratty plush bathrobe underneath my much more windproof corduroy floor length duster. And the ta'al fingerless mgloves Mama knitted for me, in rainbow stripes. They're just the thing for keeping my hands warm while I'm on the phone.

I've discovered I do enjoy cauliflower "wings", even though I don't enjoy chicken wings.

The scooter has arrived. I am plotting how best to bedazzle it. It does have its own USB power outlet! It also has head and tail lights. It's better for approaching counters than the wheelchair, since the tiller is so close to me.

[personal profile] norabombay points out that given all the poorly supervised international visitors who have been in and out of the White House, they're going to have to take it down to the studs when they refit it for #48 to use. So the general devastation in the East Wing is small potatoes as far as outrage fodder. And anywhere that the last major update was 1947-ish must really need some yanking out of the century of the fruitbat.

My legs are doing better. In part this is because I stuck ibuprofen in my nightly pill box, since I'd been waking up with aching legs and shouting knees pretty consistently.

Medication: the medication definitely has some activity. The main activity seems to be that my appetite has been fading in and out of "did we recently have chemo?!" mode. I'm tempted to give myself a week off every few weeks.

Makeup: currently waiting on a liquid formulation of the eyeshadow that promised to match the eyeliner, because the color is fantastic and I want it in a wide brush. I guess the powder can work for blending it out. (The powder just does not want to cooperate and layer on thick enough to get the color shift effect, even with a wet brush.) My skin continues to behave itself better than my ability to use foundation; there are only a few spots where I want to color correct if I'm doing Full Battle Makeup.

Games: keeping up with all the Gems of War events is sometimes tiring, but it does make winding down my brain at night much easier than other things I could be doing.

Perfume: went through my massive perfume spreadsheet and filled in the formulation for all the BPAL (which is the same except for that one spray). Cracked myself up at some of the descriptions I've left. One particular exceedingly long-lasting one
Read more... )

10/22/2025

Oct. 22nd, 2025 04:00 am
[syndicated profile] the_devils_panties_feed

Posted by Jennie Breeden

10/22/2025

No boom TODAY. Boom tomorrow. There’s ALWAYS a boom tomorrow

gingicat: Bengal tiger looking peeved (anger/protectiveness - tigerbright)
[personal profile] gingicat posting in [community profile] thisfinecrew
Just attended the livestream - recording can be viewed here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/4v2p3NwsMg0

Lots of talking and encouragement, also a lot of stories and photos from Saturday. On the livestream:
Moderator: Ashlee-Woodard Henderson (activist)
Speakers: Ezra Levin (co-executive director of Indivisible), Hunter Dunn (LA Host, National Press Coordinator 50501), Lisa Gilbert (co-executive director, Public Citizen), Maribel Hernández-Rivera (National Director of Immigrant Community Strategies), Jiggy Geronimo (Narrative Strategist)

Final message: find your local community.

Resources linked:
- https://brandfolder.com/indivisibleproject/no-kings-know-your-rights (cards to print and distribute in English, Vietnamese, Traditional Chinese, Tagalog, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Haitian Creole, French, and Arabic)
- Text SHUTDOWN to 30403 to get a script from the Working Families Party to leave a message with your Senator to encourage them to hold the line during the shutdown and keep fighting against Trump's health care cuts and price increases, followed by them calling you to connect.
- There's also a QR code in the video to connect you to the Stop the Healthcare Heist! Week of Action.
lightreads: a partial image of a etymology tree for the Indo-European word 'leuk done in white neon on black'; in the lower left is (Default)
[personal profile] lightreads
Being Mortal

5/5. Discussion by a surgeon about how poorly we often handle mortality – care for the elderly in general, and death for both the old and young.

Excellent. I’ve had this book on my radar for over a decade, but the last time I went to pick it up, I found out literally the next day that my father was terminally ill, and I noped out. He lived another eleven months, which was about five months longer than he was expected to, but it’s taken me nearly eight years to come back to this book. I’m very glad I did, though this is depressing and infuriating and did make me cry.

It is also incredibly useful. There is an aging person in my life whom it is likely my wife and I will need to provide care for when it is needed, and this book was incredibly grounding on what that might look like, and in supplying an ethical framework to think about it. It would be oversimplifying to say that the book argues for privileging autonomy over safety, because there’s more to it than that, but the points it makes about how so many elderly care facilities are designed for the psychological comfort of the residents’ families at the expense of the residents’ comfort and happiness is sobering.

Also notable for some candid and messy examinations of how doctors do and don’t approach mortality with patients. There are no easy answers there, as patient need will vary widely. Some need to hear it to be prepared. Some don’t ever want to hear it. But he offers up some really good advice on frameworks for decisionmaking in life or death situations that can, if done right, make things vastly easier for the family making hard calls.

Highly recommended.

Content notes: Terminal illness, death of a parent, medical gaslighting
rebeccmeister: (Default)
[personal profile] rebeccmeister
So, I haven't even talked about the weekend that was!

It was busy, because I drove out to Boston to spectate at the Head of the Charles, and to catch up with a couple of good friends who live in the Boston area. I also snuck in two Coffeeneuring expeditions while I was there.

Since the Head of the Charles is the world's largest rowing event, there were tons of things to see, races to watch, and people to catch up with. The weather was superb, and so was some of the rowing.

A few highlights:

The spectating view from the Anderson Bridge was fantastic, as usual.
HOCR 2025

This photo can give you a sense as to why there can often be boat carnage at the Head of the Charles:
HOCR 2025

Lots of boats racing fast in a relatively small space full of twists and turns and bridges. Exciting but also nerve-wracking.

I'm totally a leaf-peeper these days, although from what I understand this year's fall foliage isn't as dramatic as it can get sometimes, just because of how the weather went this past spring and summer.

HOCR 2025 leaf peeping

Harvard Square is under construction:
Harvard Square Sights

Does it bother anyone else that Harvard Square is more like Harvard Triangle? I never really understood any of these things until I got to see ACTUAL town squares in Texas and the Midwest. You know, square ones. And then, in hindsight, I mean, I know about Boston and the cow paths and all that, but still.

I would love to know what's below this patch of sidewalk, getting that purple-infused light.

Harvard Square Sights

On Sunday I was pleased to encounter a small farmer's market, and promptly bought lots of fruits and veggies.

Harvard Square Farmers Market

More leaf-peepin' outside [personal profile] bluepapercup's house:

Fall leaf peeping

A lovely visit, all around.
[syndicated profile] 404media_feed

Posted by Emanuel Maiberg

Anthropic Promises Trump Admin Its AI Is Not Woke

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has published a lengthy statement on the company’s site in which he promises Anthropic’s AI models are not politically biased, that it remains committed to American leadership in the AI industry, and that it supports the AI startup space in particular. 

Amodei doesn’t explicitly say why he feels the need to state all of these obvious positions for the CEO of an American AI company to have, but the reason is that the Trump administration’s so-called “AI Czar” has publicly accused Anthropic of producing “woke AI” that it’s trying to force on the population via regulatory capture. 

The current round of beef began earlier this month when Anthropic’s co-founder and head of policy Jack Clark published a written version of a talk he gave at The Curve AI conference in Berkeley. The piece, published on Clark’s personal blog, is full of tortured analogies and self-serving sci-fi speculation about the future of AI, but essentially boils down to Clark saying he thinks artificial general intelligence is possible, extremely powerful, potentially dangerous, and scary to the general population. In order to prevent disaster, put the appropriate policies in place, and make people embrace AI positively, he said, AI companies should be transparent about what they are building and listen to people’s concerns.

“What we are dealing with is a real and mysterious creature, not a simple and predictable machine,” he wrote. “And like all the best fairytales, the creature is of our own creation. Only by acknowledging it as being real and by mastering our own fears do we even have a chance to understand it, make peace with it, and figure out a way to tame it and live together.”

Venture capitalist, podcaster, and the White House’s “AI and Crypto Czar” David Sacks was not a fan of Clark’s blog. 

“Anthropic is running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering,” Sacks said on X in response to Clark’s blog. “It is principally responsible for the state regulatory frenzy that is damaging the startup ecosystem.”

Things escalated yesterday when Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s co-founder and a megadonor to the Democratic party, supported Anthropic in a thread on X, saying “Anthropic was one of the good guys” because it's one of the companies “trying to deploy AI the right way, thoughtfully, safely, and enormously beneficial for society.” Hoffman also appeared to take a jab at Elon Musk’s xAI, saying “Some other labs are making decisions that clearly disregard safety and societal impact (e.g. bots that sometimes go full-fascist) and that’s a choice. So is choosing not to support them.”

Sacks responded to Hoffman on X, saying “The leading funder of lawfare and dirty tricks against President Trump wants you to know that ‘Anthropic is one of the good guys.’ Thanks for clarifying that. All we needed to know.” Musk hopped into the replies saying: “Indeed.”

“The real issue is not research but rather Anthropic’s agenda to backdoor Woke AI and other AI regulations through Blue states like California,” Sacks said. Here, Sacks is referring to Anthropic’s opposition to Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which wanted to stop states from regulating AI in any way for 10 years, and its backing of California’s SB 53, which requires AI companies that generate more than $500 million in annual revenue to make their safety protocols public. 

All this sniping leads us to Amodei’s statement today, which doesn’t mention the beef above but is clearly designed to calm investors who are watching Trump’s AI guy publicly saying one of the biggest AI companies in the world sucks. 

“I fully believe that Anthropic, the administration, and leaders across the political spectrum want the same thing: to ensure that powerful AI technology benefits the American people and that America advances and secures its lead in AI development,” Amodei said. “Despite our track record of communicating frequently and transparently about our positions, there has been a recent uptick in inaccurate claims about Anthropic's policy stances. Some are significant enough that they warrant setting the record straight.”

Amodei then goes to count the ways in which Anthropic already works with the federal government and directly grovels to Trump.

“Anthropic publicly praised President Trump’s AI Action Plan. We have been supportive of the President’s efforts to expand energy provision in the US in order to win the AI race, and I personally attended an AI and energy summit in Pennsylvania with President Trump, where he and I had a good conversation about US leadership in AI,” he said. “Anthropic’s Chief Product Officer attended a White House event where we joined a pledge to accelerate healthcare applications of AI, and our Head of External Affairs attended the White House’s AI Education Taskforce event to support their efforts to advance AI fluency for teachers.”

The more substantive part of his argument is that Anthropic didn’t support SB 53 until it made an exemption for all but the biggest AI labs, and that several studies found that Anthropic’s AI models are not “uniquely politically biased,” (read: not woke).

“Again, we believe we share those goals with the Trump administration, both sides of Congress, and the public,” Amodei wrote. “We are going to keep being honest and straightforward, and will stand up for the policies we believe are right. The stakes of this technology are too great for us to do otherwise.”

Many of the AI industry’s most vocal critics would agree with Sacks that Clark’s blog and “fear-mongering” about AI is self-serving because it makes their companies seem more valuable and powerful. Some critics will also agree that AI companies take advantage of that perspective to then influence AI regulation in a way that benefits them as incumbents. 

It would be a far more compelling argument if it didn’t come from Sacks and Musk, who found a much better way to influence AI regulation to benefit their companies and investments: working for the president directly and publicly bullying their competitors.

It’s Time to Take Back CTRL

Oct. 21st, 2025 05:02 pm
[syndicated profile] eff_feed

Posted by Allison Morris

Technology is supercharging the attack on democracy by making it easier to spy on people, block free speech, and control what we do. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s activists, lawyers, and technologists are fighting back. Join the movement to Take Back CTRL.

DONATE TODAY

Join EFF and Fight Back

Take Back CTRL is EFF's new website to give you insight into the ways that technology has become the veins and arteries of rising global authoritarianism. It’s not just because of technology’s massive power to surveil, categorize, censor, and make decisions for governments—but also because the money made by selling your data props up companies and CEOs with clear authoritarian agendas. As the preeminent digital rights organization, EFF has a clear role to play.

If You Use Technology, This Fight Is Yours.

EFF was created for scary moments like the one we’re facing now. For 35 years, EFF has fought to ensure your rights follow you online and wherever you use technology. We’ve sued, we’ve analyzed, we’ve hacked, we’ve argued, and we’ve helped people be heard in halls of power.

But we're still missing something. You.

Because it's your rights we're fighting for:

  • Your right to speak and learn freely online, free of government censorship
  • Your right to move through the world without being surveilled everywhere you go
  • Your right to use your device without it tracking your every click, purchase, and IRL movement
  • Your right to control your data, including data about your body, and to know that data given to one government agency won’t be weaponized against you by another
  • Your right to do what you please with the products and content you pay for
  • Consider Take Back CTRL our "help wanted" notice, because we need your help to win this fight today.

Join EFF

The future is being decided today. Join the movement to Take Back CTRL.

The Take Back CTRL campaign highlights the work that EFF is doing to fight for our democracy, defend vulnerable members of our community, and stand up against the use of tech in this authoritarian takeover. It also features actions everyone can take to support EFF’s work, use our tools in their everyday lives, and fight back.

Help us spread the word:

Stop tech from dismantling democracy. Join the movement to Take Back CTRL of our rights. https://eff.org/tbc

[syndicated profile] 404media_feed

Posted by Samantha Cole

OpenAI Catches Up to AI Market Reality: People Are Horny

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared on Cleo Abram's podcast in August where he said the company was “tempted” to add sexual content in the past, but resisted, saying that a “sex bot avatar” in ChatGPT would be a move to “juice growth.” In light of his announcement last week that ChatGPT would soon offer erotica, revisiting that conversation is revealing. 

It’s not clear yet what the specific offerings will be, or whether it’ll be an avatar like Grok’s horny waifu. But OpenAI is following a trend we’ve known about for years: There are endless theorized applications of AI, but in the real world many people want to use LLMs for sexual gratification, and it’s up for the market to keep up. In 2023, a16z published an analysis of the generative AI market, which amounted to one glaringly obvious finding: people use AI as part of their sex lives. As Emanuel wrote at the time in his analysis of the analysis: “Even if we put ethical questions aside, it is absurd that a tech industry kingmaker like a16z can look at this data, write a blog titled ‘How Are Consumers Using Generative AI?’ and not come to the obvious conclusion that people are using it to jerk off. If you are actually interested in the generative AI boom and you are not identifying porn as a core use for the technology, you are either not paying attention or intentionally pretending it’s not happening.” 

Altman even hinting at introducing erotic roleplay as a feature is huge, because it’s a signal that he’s no longer pretending. People have been fucking the chatbot for a long time in an unofficial capacity, and have recently started hitting guardrails that stop them from doing so. People use Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, Elon Musk’s Grok, and self-rolled large language models to roleplay erotic scenarios whether the terms of use for those platforms permit it or not, DIYing AI boyfriends out of platforms that otherwise forbid it. And there are specialized erotic chatbot platforms and AI dating simulators, but what OpenAI does—as the owner of the biggest share of the chatbot market—the rest follow.

404 Media Generative AI Market Analysis: People Love to Cum
A list of the top 50 generative AI websites shows non-consensual porn is a driving force for the buzziest technology in years.
OpenAI Catches Up to AI Market Reality: People Are Horny

Already we see other AI companies stroking their chins about it. Following Altman’s announcement, Amanda Askell, who works on the philosophical issues that arise with Anthropic’s alignment, posted: “It's unfortunate that people often conflate AI erotica and AI romantic relationships, given that one of them is clearly more concerning than the other. Of the two, I'm more worried about romantic relationships. Mostly because it seems like it would make users pretty vulnerable to the AI company in many ways. It seems like a hard area to navigate responsibly.” And the highly influential anti-porn crowd is paying attention, too: the National Center on Sexual Exploitation put out a statement following Altman’s post declaring that actually, no one should be allowed to do erotic roleplay with chatbots, not even adults. (Ron DeHaas, co-founder of Christian porn surveillance company Covenant Eyes, resigned from the NCOSE board earlier this month after his 38-year-old adult stepson was charged with felony child sexual abuse.)

In the August interview, Abram sets up a question for Altman by noting that there’s a difference between “winning the race” and “building the AI future that would be best for the most people,” noting that it must be easier to focus on winning. She asks Altman for an example of a decision he’s had to make that would be best for the world but not best for winning. 

Altman responded that he’s proud of the impression users have that ChatGPT is “trying to help you,” and says a bunch of other stuff that’s not really answering the question, about alignment with users and so on. But then he started to say something actually interesting: “There's a lot of things we could do that would like, grow faster, that would get more time in ChatGPT, that we don't do because we know that like, our long-term incentive is to stay as aligned with our users as possible. But there's a lot of short-term stuff we could do that would really juice growth or revenue or whatever, and be very misaligned with that long-term goal,” Altman said. “And I'm proud of the company and how little we get distracted by that. But sometimes we do get tempted.”

“Are there specific examples that come to mind?” Abram asked. “Any decisions that you've made?”

After a full five-second pause to think, Altman said, “Well, we haven't put a sex bot avatar in ChatGPT yet.” 

“That does seem like it would get time spent,” Abram replied. “Apparently, it does.” Altman said. They have a giggle about it and move on.

Two months later, Altman was surprised that the erotica announcement blew up. “Without being paternalistic we will attempt to help users achieve their long-term goals,” he wrote. “But we are not the elected moral police of the world. In the same way that society differentiates other appropriate boundaries (R-rated movies, for example) we want to do a similar thing here.” 

This announcement, aside from being a blatant hail mary cash grab for a company that’s bleeding funds because it’s already too popular, has inspired even more “bubble’s popping” speculation, something boosters and doomers alike have been saying (or rooting for) for months now. Once lauded as a productivity godsend, AI has mostly proven to be a hindrance to workers. It’s interesting that OpenAI’s embrace of erotica would cause that reaction, and not, say, the fact that AI is flooding and burdening libraries, eating Wikipedia, and incinerating the planet. It’s also interesting that OpenAI, which takes user conversations as training data—along with all of the writing and information available on the internet—feels it’s finally gobbled enough training data from humans to be able to stoop so low, as Altman’s attitude insinuates, to let users be horny. That training data includes authors of romance novels and NSFW fanfic but also sex workers who’ve spent the last 10 years posting endlessly to social media platforms like Twitter (pre-X, when Elon Musk cut off OpenAI’s access) and Reddit, only to have their posts scraped into the training maw.

Altman believes “sex bots” are not in service of the theoretical future that would “benefit the most people,” and that it’s a fast-track to juicing revenue, something the company badly needs. People have always used technology for horny ends, and OpenAI might be among the last to realize that—or the first of the AI giants to actually admit it.

Lord of the River [status, rowing]

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:28 am
rebeccmeister: (Default)
[personal profile] rebeccmeister
Mercy me, this week is NOT ready for prime time.

Yesterday's AWS outages affected our institution's LMS, leading to a bunch of panicked students because my General Biology students have an exam today and all of the lecture files are on the LMS, and my Science Writing students had a big assignment due last night, with submissions due on the LMS.

Sigh.

Because the LMS is relatively convenient, it's cumbersome to hunt down email addresses and communicate with entire class sections more directly through email. So I postponed the Science Writing assignment deadline; for the General Biology students I wound up deciding it would be WAY too complicated to try and postpone their exam, so we are forging ahead. They are taking it well, all things considered.

In case that isn't enough to deal with...

We have a regatta coming up next weekend, our big end-of-season event. For this morning's practice, I was feeling a little on the fence about showing up. But it was a chance to practice our racing lineup for Saturday, so I found the motivation and got myself to the boathouse.

We were having a really great practice to begin with, in the pitch black darkness of dawn. I am sitting in bow in the racing lineup, which means I'm in charge of steering and coordinating the crew. We were headed up the river, just finishing our warmup, when we felt:

WHAM! (or, alternatively, BOOM!)

Crunch-skchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

"Weigh enough!" I shouted.

We had hit a massive tree trunk, we're talking about 1.5 ft in diameter, 25 feet long. In the dark. I saw nothing ahead of time; the log had been partially submerged. We were in the correct place on the river, we just had really bad luck.

The "Crunch-skchhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" is the incredibly painful sound of solid wood ripping through paint and carbon fiber.

Our boat contained enough speed and mass that we found ourselves thoroughly wedged onto the log. I radioed our coach (TFG for our walkie-talkies!), and she came over to help dislodge us from the tree trunk. I was able to move the trunk about 2 ft back towards the bow of the boat by straddling the boat and putting all my body weight onto the log, basically standing on the log to push it down. But it soon became clear that that tactic wouldn't be enough to get us completely free of the log.

So our coach brought the launch in next to the boat, and we abandoned ship. Thankfully we had 2 safety launches on the water for the morning, so the second launch was able to work the boat back off of the log and towed it back to the dock, while the launch we were in accompanied our other boats safely back to the dock.

Ultimately, no one got hurt or went in the water. So from a safety standpoint, things went very well. On the other hand, the damage to the bow of the boat is extensive enough that the boat will require major repairs, so it won't be available for the regatta on Saturday. That's disappointing, because it's the best 4-person boat in our fleet. But thankfully, we have enough boats in our fleet overall that we will still have a boat to race in, and a decent boat at that.

Anyway, I am going to be very careful and thoughtful about everything I do for the rest of the week, after two major touch-and-go situations already.

Weekend reading

Oct. 20th, 2025 09:02 pm
troisoiseaux: (reading 8)
[personal profile] troisoiseaux
I hadn't planned on reading Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, both because I hadn't really clicked with any of her previous books and because I've seen mostly negative reviews of Katabasis specifically, but it was available as a short-term/lucky/skip-the-line loan on Libby and who am I to look a gift book in the mouth. I'm really enjoying it! Two rival graduate students of Analytical Magick descend to the underworld to rescue their dissertation advisor so they can graduate with his valuable recommendation; it's great for spooky season, with vivid descriptions of the very nasty ways one can die from doing magick wrong and something darkly whimsical about the version of Hell that they navigate with the ambiguous aid of the different accounts of underworld journeys (Orpheus, Dante, etc.) as filtered through alternate translations and theories of interpretation and academic technobabble. ... )

Back to the theme of Bad Times on Boats with Into the Raging Sea by Rachel Slade, a nonfiction account of the 2015 sinking of an American cargo ship after capitalism led it to sail directly into a hurricane. Technically focused on unfolding the narrative of a specific event (the loss of the El Faro in Hurricane Joaquin) but throws in a bunch of stuff for context, such as how hurricanes are formed and measured, the history of U.S. shipbuilding and shipping industries, etc.

Profile

nathanjw: (Default)
Nathan Williams

November 2022

S M T W T F S
  12345
678910 1112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930   

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Oct. 22nd, 2025 06:30 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios