AstroShield Program Ends

Helios, Near-Solar Observatory Zone -- 26 Apr. 2057:  The last of the aging AstroShield platforms was ceremonially decommissioned this day and added to the Museum of Early Space, marking the end of a beloved but ailing symbol of the expansion of human civilization beyond the boundaries of Earth.

The AstroShield program was inaugurated by the newly-formed United Nations Astronautical Commission on August 13, 2015 after the near-miss of the so-called 'Civilization Buster', a previously undetected near-earth object with a 4500-foot diameter which passed between the orbits of the Earth and Moon.  Renewed fears of catastrophic asteroid impact led to unprecedented inter-national cooperation and speed in the design and launch of the AstroShield, a series of powerful combination scientific instruments and ionic engine platforms under UNAC control which were designed to provide early warning of potential asteroid threats as well as the means to avert them by pushing approaching large or mid-sized asteroids off course.

Dr. Kensington Blackfield of the Interplanetary Astronomical Service, who was a key figure in the implementation of AstroShield, waxed nostalgic about the program in a speech broadcast after the decommissioning.  "To be perfectly honest, AstroShield was not nearly as urgent as we made it out to be.  We deliberately played on the fear of world leaders and populations after the near-miss because we knew it would get us funding and authority.  That was the plan a few of us at UNAC hatched: to use AstroShield as a stepping stone to research and infrastructure that would allow the more intensive promotion of space-based ventures.  Truth be told, the Civilization Buster had lit a fire under us as well.  We had decided that humanity was languishing, that if we didn't get the process of space colonization in gear, this fragile pearl called Earth could far too easily be shattered.  Of course, when the real disaster came -- the Great Blowout of 2017, that is -- we were still not in any way prepared.  But we had managed to establish a significant presence off Earth by then, and it ended up saving us.  Saving us from our own blasted folly."

Dr. Blackfield lamented the end of the AstroShield program, but was philosophical about it.  "All things must end.  To refurbish or replace the AstroShield would have been pointless; every planet and space station has much more effective and advanced collision controls now.  I am sad to see this old friend go, but happy that there is no longer a need for it.  We have grown beyond the need to protect just one planet from destruction.  It's everything my colleagues and I ever dreamed of."

Unexpected Results In Venusian State Elections

Newtopia, Telluria, Venus -- 25 Apr. 2057:  Prediction markets, polls and pundits were confounded by the bizarre, helter-skelter results in today's Venus-wide state Presidential and Directorial elections.  The final results, many of which have already been challenged, show 12 Presidencies captured by the Socialist party; 9 by the Anarchist party; 5 by the Libertarians; 3 by the Communitarians; and one state, the terraforming hub of Telluria-Panegyric, taken by Technoprogressive candidate Zalyx Antimone Alvore.  The Technoprogressives, an extreme outer-upper-leftwing party, are generally marginalized in the shadow of the Technocrats, which managed to hold only one Presidential seat, re-electing the immensely popular President Dax Mannheim in Elysium-Morningstar.  State Directorates have also gone every which way, with the vast majority forced into coalitions and almost all in near-direct ideological opposition to the presidency.

Political commentators are scrambling to find an explanation for the bizarre results in what was widely predicted as a Socialist sweep across the board.  Prediction market-centric blog Predictionomics, whose primary writer Len Bibbley lost heavily today investing in bets on Socialist wins, is on the hunt for evidence of market tampering.  "There's just no way the markets could have got this so wrong without tampering," stated a clearly enraged Bibbley in a video post.  Meanwhile, local state-level politics coverage on Stellar Political Review is focused on the unusual harshness of the campaign and the continual repetition of the "Socialist Sweep" mantra.  "Venusians are a contrary and fractious lot," writes veteran Venusian political blogger Corpal Tawnal.  "More than once during the campaign, I threw up my hands in disgust at the smear tactics and negativity being displayed between the Socialist and Technocrat candidates, all the while acting as if none of the other parties were even worth engaging with.  In the end I voted Anarchist across the board, as a way of pissing into the airstream as much as anything else.  And, how about that; [Anarchist party Presidential candidate] Gigas Fuentes took LVO.  I'm thinking a whole lot of Venusians opened up their ballot key today and had the same idea I did.  I'm just wondering if, in the cold hard light of the new day, our collective fit of pique won't be coming back to haunt us."

Valuable "Space Rocks" Accidentaly Crushed

Hygiea Processing Complex, Federation of Asteroidal Polities -- 24 Apr. 2057:  A collection of Original Space Rocks, Moon Rocks and Mars Rocks valued at dozens of credits was destroyed this day when it was mixed into a load of simple chondrite ores and fed into the machinery of the processing plant.  The collection, which belonged to Inter-Asteroidal Mining CEO Halan Gillespie and was being shipped by the company from his vacation residence in Trans-Arctica to his home in the Hygeia Residential Complex, was composed of common geological specimens which were sold as souvenirs by early off-Earth mining concerns.

"The rocks weren't valuable in themselves," the visibly distraught Mr. Gillespie replied to our inquiries in a vid-chat interview.  "In fact, that was kind of the point.  The first asteroid and regolith miners monetized tailings that didn't contain any valuable minerals or hydrocarbons by selling them to tourists and rich Earthers as 'Space Rocks' and 'Moon Rocks'.  The kind of rocks they were are a dime a dozen now, but those particular rocks were a piece of space history.  You know, I used to look up at the stars and dream about living out there, and news about the asteroid mines and Moonbase Alpha -- it was like other kids with super-hero comics.  I spent most of my life collecting those rocks.  Now they're dust, nothing but dust."

Max Throttle, the plant foreman who supervised the auto-loader which sent the rocks into the processing machinery, expressed disbelief at the stir that his actions have caused.  "I just did my job," he told us in an audio interview.  "Hoppers of rock come through here and they get fed into the works.  A hopper of rocks came in so I fed it into the works.  I don't get what the big deal is.  A rock is a rock is a rock."  Mr. Throttle has applied to his union, the Interplanetary Miners Local 32571, for a preemptive judgement of no fault.  "Wouldn't put it past the boss to try and have me shit-canned for this, pardon my Lunar.  You know how these one-percenters are.  Imagine, cryin' over a buncha rocks.  It's crazy."

Corporations Still Not Persons: Armstrong Court

Armstrong Dome, Moonbase Alpha, Colonial Lunar Administration Zone -- 23 Apr. 20547:  In a 3-2 decision, the Constitutional Court of Personhood Rights and Definitions has rejected the appeal in the case of Omnicor Hypercorp LLC. & State of Denmark.  Writing the majority opinion, the Honourable Judge Pamlin Trimal stated unequivocally that "Corporationbs are not persons under the Armstrong charter, nor do they display any significant quasi-personal attributes deserving of special legal protections beyond those afforded to private property."  Of the reasoning behind the appeal, which attempted to leverage the newly installed sapient hive-mind principle, Judge Trimal clarified that "in order for an entity to be classified as a sapient hive-mind, conscious experience and autonomous choices must arise from the rote behaviour of unintelligent autonomous agents which can be thought of as similar to brain cells or integrated circuits.  We regret that the court did not make this clear in the cited ruling.  Unlike in the case of Mathematical Bees or Forrester's Ants, the autonomous agents put forward by the plaintiff as constituting the potential person, specifically the employees and shareholders of a corporation, are legal persons themselves, with their own rights and responsibilities under the law.  As such, any claim that such a collection of persons can be taken as a legal person in itself is subject to the tests for gestalt personhood, which this court has already considered and rejected in the case of limited-liability corporations."

Activist Wilberforce Braunstein, communications director of the corporate watchdog group Fair Dealings, stated in a series of tweets that he is "glad of the ruling, which sends a clear message that despite the hopes of the right-back wing, the highest court is not an extension of the previous administration's policies ... The real victory here is the rejection of even quasi-personality.  That was the best hope for the Corporatists, that a corporation would gain protected civil rights and the way would be opened for corps to participate in the Deckard-Bowman test ... The drive for corporate personhood will surely continue.  They tried to enshrine it in the Armstrong Convention, and tried again using the splinter persona decision, the personality remix decision, the borganization decision, and the parliamentary neuromorph decision ... they'll try pretty much anything they think has a chance of leading to corporate personhood and civil rights, which adds up in the end to special rights for corporate owners and directors."

Court Orders Memory Wipe of IP Thief

Tynaeris, Ganymede, Jupiter Space -- 22 Apr. 2057:  The Ganymede Regional Criminal Court this day sentenced defendant Cormorant Lyndstrom to memory excision for his role in the dissemination of intellectual property belonging to the shareholders of Omnicor Hypercorp LLC.  The court chose to impose a particularly severe sentence, ordering that not only the IP itself, but the skills required to illegally copy and distribute it as well as the beliefs which motivated Mr. Lyndstrom to commit the felony should also be erased.  This is the heaviest penalty yet to be levied in an IP-theft trial, and was justified by the Honourable Judge Beatrix Mallory as being appropriate due to "the egregious, deliberate, and crippling damage done to the value of Omnicor shareholders' investments".

Cormorant Lyndstrom, a former employee in the software engineering department of Omnicor subsidiary Ultramax Software Dynamics, was proved during the trial to have engraved his neural tissue with memory engrams containing proprietary software code for over 1000 Omnicor-owned programs, many of which are in common use throughout the system.  Among the best known of the stolen programs are Ultramax MetaWake, a neural optimization system popular among users with heavy neural interlink protocols, and Ultramax Rapids, an emergent data traffic control utility which is given free (in encrypted form) to public utilities but will only interface with other proprietary Ultramax software.  Lyndstrom, who has since confessed to membership in the Pirate Party and become the public face of the information-freedom movement in Jupiter Space, then uploaded the source code through a number of black underlayer protocols which distributed them to anonymous data caches throughout the hyperlayer.  Although Omnicor is pursuing strenuous legal actions in an attempt to have the programs expunged, a number of districts with more Libertarian or Anarchist sympathies are explicitly refusing to allow the code to be taken down and many others are dragging their heels, doubtless not wanting to expend the immense amount of effort and political capital which such a thorough and somewhat pointless hyperlayer purge would require.  According to a statement released by Lyndstrom under the aegis of the Pirate Party, "the information which Omnicor tried and failed to control has been let loose from its bonds, and can no longer be chained.  It has seeded in a million offline storage caches; it will flower throughout the hyperlayer ecosystem and fruit into new and innovative software which will be of much greater value to society than the pale hothouse flowers kept by Omnicor in its walled garden."

Lyndstrom is widely expected to appeal his conviction to the Superior Criminal Court.  Dr. Wembly McCcarrington, a professor of IP law at Stross University, believes that Lyndstrom's audacious crime and subsequent capture and trial may in fact have been a political maneuver on behalf of the Pirate Party.  "Think about it," Dr. McCarrington urged in an audio interview.  "The man didn't even make an effort to erase the memory engrams that proved his guilt, to avoid the Omnicor Corporate Police or to cover his tracks in any way.  Every move of this was calculated to enrage the Corporatists and get them calling for his head.  And now, the Pirates have a perfect test case to throw to the Superior Court, which is newly flush with Technocrat-appointed judges and likely to take a dim view of such a blatant use of state power to protect corporate interests."

Publicam Captures Shocking Assault

Mangala, Lowell, Mars -- 21 Apr. 2057:  Three local youths have been taken onto police custody in connection with the violent assault and rape of Taskar Oliphant Astarte, a resident of Galbraith Station in the Lagrange Orbital Colonial Authority.  Although the alleged perpetrators are quasi-persons by reason of youth and thus cannot legally be named, described or gendered in the press, their identities were quickly ascertained by investigators from footage captured on one of Mangala's publicly-accessible sousveillance cameras.

The footage clearly shows three young people confronting Mx. Astarte, a long-limbed, androgynous Spacer with the pronounced, bulging forehead typical of a hypercortical.  The assault occurred late last evening as zie walked through the Crosstalk, one of the rougher entertainment districts of Mangala.  Surrounding zer on a deserted street, the youths begin mocking Mx. Astarte, shouting epithets such as 'big-head', 'no-sex', and 'spider-legs'.  When Mx. Astarte tries to run, zie is restrained and thrown to the ground.  The three assailants repeatedly kick their victim and then take turns sexually assaulting zer.  After several minutes, they run away down the street, laughing loudly.  Police and emergency medical services arrive on the scene approximately 20 minutes later.

Mx. Astarte, who is recovering in hospital, has declined requests for an interview.  The incident has raised serious questions about the efficacy of the Mangala police department, as well as the Publicam system, which was announced earlier this year to great fanfare as a means of curbing the trend of increasing violence in the Crosstalk and other high-risk districts of the city.  The selling point of the project was that crowdsourcing the monitoring of public areas would free up police resources and allow quicker reporting and police response.  However, access records obtained from the Publicam servers under an expedited Free Access order show that several viewers were accessing the publicam feed throughout the assault and rape.  A spokesperson for the Mangala Police Department stated in a text message that the crime was not reported until several minutes after it had occurred.

Allemand Mertainian, a spokesperson for anti-rape activist group Body Count, has published a series of tweets blaming an "epidemic culture of sexualized violence" in Mangala for both the assault itself and for the apathetic response.  According to Ms. Mertainian, "It is the fault of their parents, our educators, and all of society that these youths consider gang rape of outsiders an evening's light entertainment ... Our entire culture has colluded in turning a program intended to stop assaults and protect victims into a form of voyeuristic pornography ... And however long it took for the watchers to become involved, it is unconscionable that the police took so long to respond to an assault that left the victim broken, bleeding and unable to move ... our city is sick with an incurable cancer, and all of us are responsible for standing by as it metastasized."

For its part, the Mangala police department denies that its response was inadequate.  "Our officers were engages in dealing with several other incidents, including a firefight in the Glassworks between rival criminal syndicates which led to the arrest of several multiple murderers," stated police spokesperson Lt. Ramsay Edgeworth.  "The assailants will be punished to the fullest extent of the law, though their status as quasi-persons leaves most of the choices about the consequences of their actions up to their legal guardians.  As for Mx. Astarte, zie made the choice to walk alone, inebriated and provocatively dressed, after a night in the roughest sex clubs of the Crosstalk.  It is not our responsibility to protect people from the logical results of their own actions."

Bugs Force Telepathy Exchange Shutdown

Dynaeris, Phobos, Mars Space -- 20 Apr. 2057:  A persistent problem with missed, dropped, and incorrectly routed connections has forced Phobos Telephone & Telepathic to temporarily suspend all direct brain-to-brain communication services.  A notice from the utility to subscribers promised that the problems would be fixed, and services restored, within a few days.  In the mean time, Phobians are left with audio, videophone, telepresence, text messaging, email, social network feeds, written mail delivery, and in-person conversations as their sole means of communication.

The difficulties with telepathic interference on Phobos have already caused a number of unfortunate incidents ranging from annoyances to life-threatening situations, including the following:

• Attempting to  "send my lover a little pick-me-up" in the middle of a busy work day, one customer delivered thoughts of an erotic nature to his partner's direct superior.  The intended recipient of the telepathic sext was subsequently fired due to the "unwelcome and sexually harassing" communication, though intervention by PT&T representatives has caused the company to reconsider.
• The sole observer of a hovercar accident on the outskirts of Dynaeris attempted repeatedly to summon paramedics using PT&T ThoughtLink emergency response services.  Though e was assured by the software that help was on the way, this was an automated server response; it was not until the situation grew dire that the good samaritan used alternate means to re-iterate eir requests for help.  Thankfully, nobody was killed, although several of the injured participants are still in recovery.
• When a hungry Dynaeris resident's thoughts about food inadvertently activated her telepathic interface, she received 47 pizza deliveries ordered telepathically from restaurants as far away as Alderious.  PT&T has agreed to pick up the tab.

Though PT&T's quick action to correct the results of these errors and general reputation for high-quality telepathic communication protocols has so far protected it from legal repercussions, the expense of the downtime and the required public-relations campaign combined with the threat of potential litigation has severely damaged the company's brand.  As a public utility operated by the Phobos district government, PT&T is of course not answerable to any shareholders, but an anonymous source in the Phobos Department of Utilities is predicting hard questions and a possible change in company leadership come the next district budget.

Crossmedia Servers Hacked

Enchiridion, Trojans Administrative District, Jupiter Space -- 19 Apr. 2057:  A cyber-security breach and attempted data theft in progress were foiled this day by Crossmedia's resident security administrator, Degenerate Sinusoid.  It is believed that no sensitive files were copied, but considerable damage to financial records and the basic operating system substrate occurred.  Vr. Sinusoid was not seriously harmed and has been fully recompiled.

"I'm shocked," said Crossmedia spokesperson Vander van Zander Zalm, "absolutely shocked and appalled.  The collective has never had to deal with a cyber-attack of this magnitude before.  We all feel violated by this absolutely cowardly and disgusting tactic.  We're particularly grateful to Vr. Sinusoid, who really earned its profit share today.  But it's clear this is a sign that we're a growing concern in the world of journalism.  We must have stirred up some kind of hornet's nest to have this level of heat coming our way.  I wouldn't be surprised at all if this is part of Omnicor's campaign of harassment against us.  It was way too clumsy and destructive for your garden-variety data thievery, and Anonymous doesn't just break in and trash the place; they tell you exactly why you're being targeted.  But whoever it was, they have not put us down and they are not going to silence us!  One thing is for sure, we're going to have to beef up our security setup."

Although no evidence has yet been discovered as to the identity of the perpetrators, investigators from the TAD Department of Public Safety, Department of Cybercrime are still sifting through the trashed files and access logs.

Full disclosure: this newsfeed is a subsidiary of Futuristical Crossmedia operated under the aegis of the Bureau of Temporal Relations.  Our service is operated from a separate, highly secure server within the Bureau datafarm; we are thus not a party to this investigation.

Major Crash on Virtual Currencies Index

New Fort Knox Dome, Moonbase Alpha, Colonial Lunar Administration Zone -- 18 Apr. 2057:  The Bureau of Market Stabilization has declared a formal economic emergency and deployed its counterweight traders to shore up values of practically all virtual currencies.  After a number of severe value spikes, the Central Currency Clearinghouse is in freefall this day, with over 50 kinds of game, fantasia and other hedonic currencies losing half of their value or more.

The collapse in the virtual-currencies market is widely believed to be the result of the tragic and much-publicized death of Ampstead Axelrod Vikkenssen, a virtual-experience addict whose inability to cope with reality led him into an elaborate suicide.  The incident severely damaged the value of premier gaming experience ArcWorld, which was Mr. Vikkenssen's escape of choice -- both the stock value of the game's publisher Unreality, and the market value of the game's virtual currency, the Arc.  "As ArcWorld is one of the system's largest and most popular virtual environments," we were told by Dr. John Jacob Smith, a senior economics professor at Asimov University, "its in-game currency is central to the VC market.  In some ways, the market value of the Arc is more economically important even than the value of the standard Alliance credit, which is subject to tight macro-economic controls.  The makers of ArcWorld have had little concern and less understanding of economic policy; it's never even really been on their radar."

As the value of the Arc nose-dived, traders fled to other virtual currencies, only to abandon them at the first sign of price instability.  "First the ISK went belly-up," explains Dr. Smith, "followed by the Endless Fantasy Gil, the Linden Dollar, the Nickelodeon Arcade Nickel, and the Steamworks Pound Sterling.  After that, they started dropping like flies.  Companies without effective in-game economic controls are suffering complete economic meltdown which may require them to completely reboot their in-game economies just to maintain playability, and even games which maintain some form of macro policy are taking a severe beating."

According to Dr. Smith, the crash was a disaster waiting to happen.  "The entire virtual-currencies market has been in a bubble for years," he stated in an audio interview.  "The Arc was severely overvalued, and was just waiting for a spark to set off a panic.  If the Bureau of Market Stabilization had been bidding the value of virtual currencies down like we've been telling them they ought, they wouldn't be bidding them up now.  But New Fort Knox hates trying to deflate bubbles, especially since that incident with heavy-gas futures during the previous coalition.  In that case, it turned out to be politically motivated; there was no real bubble, and so the Department got chewed out something fierce.  Now they won't even touch the most obvious bubble; they'd rather wait for it to burst, and try to clean up the mess afterward.  It's never as effective; we're in for a rough year or two.  Lucky for me, I had a few centicredits tied up betting against virtual currencies.  Those bets have now paid off in full."

Probe Sale Leads to Arrest, Outcry

New New Orleans, Titan, Saturnine Confederacy -- 17 Apr. 2057:  Hydrocarbon refiner Gargus Abix Tessera has been taken into custody on charges of Improper Disposal of Government Property after the sale at auction of the exoplanetary research probe which crashed on zer property last month.  The Saturnine Confederate Authority refused to execute the warrent for zer arrest, forcing the Department of Public Safety to divert a police unit from Ganymede specifically to carry out the arrest.  The Confederacy is now attempting to block the Department's order to remand Mx. Tessera to Luna for trial, insisting that zie be tried in a Saturnine court.  The already strained relationship between the Confederacy and the Alliance centre is suffering additional strain from the confrontation, according to political observers.

In a press release transmitted systemwide this day, Confederate Authority Chairman Deuce Titslinger described the arrest as "an unforgivable intrusion by the authoritarian running-dogs of the UNCA into the rightful demesne of our independent polity" and promises that the Confederacy "will fight this illegal extradition of a Confederate citizen with every means at our disposal, opening with legal maneuvers and escalating as appropriate."  The use of the term UNCA, or United Nations Colonial Authority, is a direct challenge to the authority of the Stellar Alliance over the Confederacy, according to Dr. Phlanigan Arbutus, a professor of interplanetary law at Rubix University.

"The Constitution Accord describes the Stellar Alliance and the Saturnine Confederacy as 'equal partners within a united Solar System'; the previous Stellar Alliance Treaty, which was intended to prevent a second interplanetary war, was signed by the UNCA, the now-defunct Mars Development Council, and Federation of Asteroidal Polities.  With this statement, the Confederacy has completely discounted the authority of the Alliance within Saturnine territory by rhetorically demoting the Stellar DPS to an arm of the UNCA, a mere Terran political unit comprising an entity which is constitutionally the Confederacy's equal.  This whole situation is a mess; if Baikonur backs down and allows Tessera to be tried in a local court, they're conceding that Alliance law does not supersede Confederate Authority diktat.  I don't think it will come down to violence, but if neither the centre nor the Confederacy chooses to back down it's a distinct possibility.  All this over a simple little thing like a crashed space probe; it boggles the mind."

Atlantis Raises Shipping Tariffs

Atlantis, Atlantica, Earth -- 16 Apr. 2057:  In a move which is causing vehement protest among the business community, the Atlantis state government has issued a 5% hike in both ocean surface and sub-surface tonnage tariffs.  A press release issued by the state Directorate cites the new mandatory tax policy as its primary reason.  Other voices, however, have connected the fee hike to the increased traffic on the Atlantis beanstalk since the devastating terrorist attack which has nearly halted space-elevator shipments to and from Kisangani.

"It's sheer price gouging and rank opportunism of the most disgusting kind," stated Gek Almartion of the Terran Chamber of Commerce.  "They can't raise loading prices for the beanstalk since those are set by the regional Concilium, so they jack up the rates to ship to and from.  To try and profit off the deaths of all those poor people in such a crass and blatant way -- those goddamn fish-heads ought to be ashamed of themselves."  The Chamber of Commerce has filed suit against the State of Atlantis in Regional Civil Court in an attempt to get the increase declared illegal market interference.

Mandatory Taxation Bill Passes

Baikonur, Kazakhstan, Earth -- 15 Apr. 2057:  After only minimal debate this day, the governing Technocrat-Socialist coalition fulfilled one of its major platform planks as the Senate approved the controversial new tax code in a 255-213 vote.  The signing ceremony, set to occur in 3 days, will mark the official end to the extremely unpopular tax policy experiment which spelled the end of the Libertarian-Traditionalist-Corporatist government which held the Trapezoid for 8 years.

"The byzantine bureaucratic and ontological nightmare which was the Fee-For-Service Model of taxation is no more," wrote veteran political blogger Dax Blagenflam at Branches and Mandates.  "Gone are the 57-page forms, the endless cascade of receipts, the 'indirect life-impact statements' on everything from public education services to childhood vaccinations to pure research funding.  The great irony of the age is that a steep progressive income tax with a parade of fiddly Technocratic incentives and penalties will in the end be less complicated and less intrusive than the promised 'voluntary tax' which bought the Libertarians nearly a decade of nominal laissez-faire policy."

Gage Maximillian Pequod, of the respected right-front blog Live Free or Die, wrote that "the Corporatist's Benedictine backstabbing, which killed the possibility of a Flat Tax, set the stage for the monstrosity of Fee-For-Service.  They have sowed what we all now reap.  In the attempt to remove even the slightest of tax burdens from the rentier class and force the productive classes to bear the burden alone, they have admirably succeeded in ensuring that they will pay handsomely for the back-left's massive welfare schemes and monumental projects."

Yazem Sirius, the interim leader of the extreme upper-leftwing Technoprogressive Party, wrote on the official blog that "the time is fast coming when such all-consuming wrangles over economic leverage will seem like a sideshow to the real decisions we face.  None of the major political actors are willing to face the exploding reality of Economy 2.0 -- the obsolescence of money as we know it, the near-total unemployment which is accompanying the shift toward a post-labour economy, and the radical self-sufficiencies which will make most forms of trade both redundant and self-destructive.  In a mere 5 to 10 years, the laws of economics will have been completely rewritten."

Ideological Schism Breaks Temeredine Borganization

Temeredine Station, Callisto, Jupiter Space -- 14 Apr. 2057:  The system's oldest and largest borganization has suffered a fatal collapse of common ideology and split into two separate factions.  No violence has occurred, though tensions on Temeredine Station and across the Jovian complex are running high. A petition has been filed in Callisto Regional Civil Court to arbitrate the division of common assets and to determine which group, if either, will be permitted to retain the Temeredine name and network identities.

Temeredine borganization was founded on 25 October 2039 as a proof-of-concept for the potential of neurolinking technology; 24 individual minds, including 5 humans, 2 gorillas, 3 dogs, 4 synthetics, and a full digital imprint of each biological person were integrated together by an experimental prototype of the Kyanis Neurological Integration System.  When the Kyanis corporation attempted to dissolve the link and disentangle the minds of the individual volunteers involved, the collective entity which had been created in the experiment protested and sought the protection of the Armstrong Court, taking the name Temeredine and claiming to be a new and unique individual.  Since the landmark decision declaring integrated meta-minds to be autonomous persons in their own right, Temeredine has grown immensely in both numbers, with at last pre-schism count over 12000 biological and 15000 virtual minds voluntarily joined together, and in wealth and power.  Temeredine was one of the single wealthiest individuals in the system, though that wealth was diluted by the necessity of maintaining a small nation's worth of bodies and avatars.  A lifelong member of the Socialist party, they has served as both President and Director of Callisto, recent rumour has it that they has been considering challenging Callisto-Orbital's longtime Libertarian elector Pacman Packard for eir seat in the Trapezoid.

However, an irreconcilable schism has developed between the part of the Temeredine collective consciousness which holds firmly to Socialist principles and the growing segment which has been influenced by the prevalent Libertarian social attitudes of the Jovian complex.  "I had warned Temeredine of this possibility," stated Dr. Pritchard Mitchell, a member of the research team involved in the original experiment who has since gone on to become a professor of social psychiatry at Cordwainer University and a noted expert in borganization psychosociology.  "Most of the borganizations and neuro-parliaments which have been formed since their inception have chosen to apply a compatibility test, limiting new inductees to those who broadly shared the ethical or political ideals representative of the whole.  Temeredine has maintained a policy of completely open recruitment, from both a lack of a founding mandate and a dominant belief that ideological diversity would strengthen the collective consciousness.  I have seen the signs for some time now; Temeredine's decisions were becoming erratic and they was more and more frequently frozen by indecision. The further-flung parts of the network had begun taking actions unapproved by the centre and sometimes contrary to their own stated intentions.  Temeredine as we knew them is dead."

Our correspondent on Temeredine Station, Skip Limnu, reports that tempers are running high.  "Almost everybody on this station was a part of Temeredine," he told us in an email brief.  "They work together, eat together, sleep together, sex together, and play together.  Where they once shared an uncanny uniformity and a continual cheerfulness, tempers are now running high.  Bodies who share dormitories are on different sides of the divorce; they are beginning to reorganize themselves, but in the meantime they must share an intimate space with those who are now strangers to them.  Political arguments break out at the slightest provocation, and develop with frightening rapidity into screaming mobs.  Work on the various enterprises of the Temeredine commercial empire has ground to a standstill.  Station services are becoming erratic; bodies flock to the few cafeterias that can get their act together well enough to serve meals, and outside contractors have been called in to run water and air distribution.  Hyperlayer function is erratic at best, with constant public flamewars infesting every page.  Perhaps worst, though, is the hurt and betrayal written clearly on every face.  Temeredine is suffering.  They has been scarred beyond healing.  They is a broken shadow of their former stature."

Spacers-Only Immigration Law Struck Down

Naylor Station, Low Mars Orbit -- 13 Apr. 2057:  The Regional Civil Court has ruled in the case of Colby v. Naylor Station, finding for the plaintiff and nullifying the section of the station's local ordnance which limits biological immigration to members of the subspecies Homo Sapiens Orbital.  The court has instructed the Naylor Board of Directors to implement new station settlement guidelines which forbid discrimination in residence permits based on the genotype of the applicant.

The Board is reportedly upset and confused with the ruling, and plans to appeal to the Superior Civil Court.  In an audio interview, Director Madius Pelney called the decision "incomprehensible", stating that "Naylor Station was founded by Spacers.  It was built by Spacers, for Spacers.  Every facility in every part of the station is designed with Spacers in mind.  We don't even supply centrifugal rotation here!  I don't see why a Grounder would even want to move here; they're at an extreme disability -- just like we are in their habs!  They have all the planets in goddamn system and half the stations beside; why the hell do they have to come here and take our station too?  It's ridiculous!"

Remembering Nachius Vilsen Freisenborg

Hrungnir, Pluto, Kuiper-Oort Authority -- 12 Apr. 2057:  A virtual wake was held this day to commemorate the life of Nachius Vilsen Freisenborg, who was found frozen to death in an exhausted envirosuit last month.  Mr. Freisenborg died at the age of 12 person-years, having lived and worked in the Hrungnir Hydrogen Collective for 3 years.  He is survived only by  his genedonor, Christian Freisenborg; he did not leave a data ghost.  The wake has attracted significant system-wide attention due to the status of Mr. Freisenborg as the first person to have died on Pluto, and due to the efforts of Debtslave, an activist group which opposes the practice of corporate indenture.  Mr. Freisenborg's death, which has been ruled a total suicide by the KOA Department of Public Safety, is widely attributed to the impending possibility of indenture proceedings by the bank Mutual Providers of Barsoom, to which he owed over 600 microcredits.

Nachius Vilsen Freisenborg was decanted on 22 July 2026 at the Aarskog Memorial Clinic in Trondheim, Norway; his genetics were redacted from those of Christian Freisenborg, an automobile mechanic, and his husband Gunnar, a moose hunter.  After Gunnar was killed in the Battle of Armstrong, Christian took his young son to live in the burgeoning settlement of Primus on Ganymede.  "Vilsen was always one to run," a partial imprint of Christian remembered in his eulogy.  "It seemed unfair to confine him in a hut beneath the crushing ice; but he adapted better than me, perhaps.  I could not keep him in the house, that boy.  He had to run.  He was always living such grand lives in his head, but he understood too the necessity of life in the real world, this world of ice and fire."  Mr. Freisenborg achieved full legal personhood on 7 May 2046.  He worked as an ice miner for his entire life, mining water ice on Ganymede and in the Tachtenstaffel mines in the Ring of Saturn before moving on to Pluto.  His workmate Bliff Snadmer described him as "a steady, conscientious worker; polite, friendly, distant but always with a kind word.  Everyone liked Nachius, but I was maybe the closest thing he had to a friend.  He wasn't political, he wasn't an agitator; all he wanted here was to break ice and take his share.  The one thing he really loved, those old twencen movies -- you know, gangster flicks.  The Heist, Ocean's Eleven, The Italian Job.  He could sit and watch that stuff all night.  I dunno, I shoulda seen it coming.  He would take long walks out on the ice.  Eccentric, but who knew?  I miss the hell outta him."

KOA Symposiarch Palmus Nickelstan delivered a brief address to the assembled mourners.  "Every time human mortality touches another part of the universe, we are reminded again and more sharply of how small and how fragile our lives are.  We are reminded that we must make the most of every moment we have, and that we must continue to strive to defeat the scourges that rob us of our best possible lives.  Nachius Vilsen Freisenborg will live on in every life he has touched, in every contribution he has made to civilization."  Nachius Vilsen Freisenborg was interred under a cairn carved from the ice of Pluto, in the same location where his remains were found.