#15/01/2020
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Tesla's Dieselgate
Elon Musk lies a lot. He lies about being a “utopian socialist.” He lies about being a “free speech absolutist.” He lies about which companies he founded:
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cofounder-martin-eberhard-interview-history-elon-musk-ev-market-2023-2
He lies about being the “chief engineer” of those companies:
https://www.quora.com/Was-Elon-Musk-the-actual-engineer-behind-SpaceX-and-Tesla
He lies about really stupid stuff, like claiming that comsats that share the same spectrum will deliver steady broadband speeds as they add more users who each get a narrower slice of that spectrum:
https://www.eff.org/wp/case-fiber-home-today-why-fiber-superior-medium-21st-century-broadband
The fundamental laws of physics don’t care about this bullshit, but people do. The comsat lie convinced a bunch of people that pulling fiber to all our homes is literally impossible — as though the electrical and phone lines that come to our homes now were installed by an ancient, lost civilization. Pulling new cabling isn’t a mysterious art, like embalming pharaohs. We do it all the time. One of the poorest places in America installed universal fiber with a mule named “Ole Bub”:
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us
Previous tech barons had “reality distortion fields,” but Musk just blithely contradicts himself and pretends he isn’t doing so, like a budget Steve Jobs. There’s an entire site devoted to cataloging Musk’s public lies:
https://elonmusk.today/
But while Musk lacks the charm of earlier Silicon Valley grifters, he’s much better than they ever were at running a long con. For years, he’s been promising “full self driving…next year.”
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money
He’s hasn’t delivered, but he keeps claiming he has, making Teslas some of the deadliest cars on the road:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/
Tesla is a giant shell-game masquerading as a car company. The important thing about Tesla isn’t its cars, it’s Tesla’s business arrangement, the Tesla-Financial Complex:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat
Once you start unpacking Tesla’s balance sheets, you start to realize how much the company depends on government subsidies and tax-breaks, combined with selling carbon credits that make huge, planet-destroying SUVs possible, under the pretense that this is somehow good for the environment:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy
But even with all those financial shenanigans, Tesla’s got an absurdly high valuation, soaring at times to 1600x its profitability:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/15/hoover-calling/#intangibles
That valuation represents a bet on Tesla’s ability to extract ever-higher rents from its customers. Take Tesla’s batteries: you pay for the battery when you buy your car, but you don’t own that battery. You have to rent the right to use its full capacity, with Tesla reserving the right to reduce how far you go on a charge based on your willingness to pay:
https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/10/teslas-demon-haunted-cars-in-irmas-path-get-a-temporary-battery-life-boost/
That’s just one of the many rent-a-features that Tesla drivers have to shell out for. You don’t own your car at all: when you sell it as a used vehicle, Tesla strips out these features you paid for and makes the next driver pay again, reducing the value of your used car and transfering it to Tesla’s shareholders:
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update
To maintain this rent-extraction racket, Tesla uses DRM that makes it a felony to alter your own car’s software without Tesla’s permission. This is the root of all autoenshittification:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon
This is technofeudalism. Whereas capitalists seek profits (income from selling things), feudalists seek rents (income from owning the things other people use). If Telsa were a capitalist enterprise, then entrepreneurs could enter the market and sell mods that let you unlock the functionality in your own car:
https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/11/1-in-3/#boost-50
But because Tesla is a feudal enterprise, capitalists must first secure permission from the fief, Elon Musk, who decides which companies are allowed to compete with him, and how.
Once a company owns the right to decide which software you can run, there’s no limit to the ways it can extract rent from you. Blocking you from changing your device’s software lets a company run overt scams on you. For example, they can block you from getting your car independently repaired with third-party parts.
But they can also screw you in sneaky ways. Once a device has DRM on it, Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to bypass that DRM, even for legitimate purposes. That means that your DRM-locked device can spy on you, and because no one is allowed to explore how that surveillance works, the manufacturer can be incredibly sloppy with all the personal info they gather:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/tesla-model-3-keeps-data-like-crash-videos-location-phone-contacts.html
All kinds of hidden anti-features can lurk in your DRM-locked car, protected from discovery, analysis and criticism by the illegality of bypassing the DRM. For example, Teslas have a hidden feature that lets them lock out their owners and summon a repo man to drive them away if you have a dispute about a late payment:
https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/
DRM is a gun on the mantlepiece in Act I, and by Act III, it goes off, revealing some kind of ugly and often dangerous scam. Remember Dieselgate? Volkswagen created a line of demon-haunted cars: if they thought they were being scrutinized (by regulators measuring their emissions), they switched into a mode that traded performance for low emissions. But when they believed themselves to be unobserved, they reversed this, emitting deadly levels of NOX but delivering superior mileage.
The conversion of the VW diesel fleet into mobile gas-chambers wouldn’t have been possible without DRM. DRM adds a layer of serious criminal jeopardy to anyone attempting to reverse-engineer and study any device, from a phone to a car. DRM let Apple claim to be a champion of its users’ privacy even as it spied on them from asshole to appetite:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar
Now, Tesla is having its own Dieselgate scandal. A stunning investigation by Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu for Reuters reveals how Tesla was able to create its own demon-haunted car, which systematically deceived drivers about its driving range, and the increasingly desperate measures the company turned to as customers discovered the ruse:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/
The root of the deception is very simple: Tesla mis-sells its cars by falsely claiming ranges that those cars can’t attain. Every person who ever bought a Tesla was defrauded.
But this fraud would be easy to detect. If you bought a Tesla rated for 353 miles on a charge, but the dashboard range predictor told you that your fully charged car could only go 150 miles, you’d immediately figure something was up. So your Telsa tells another lie: the range predictor tells you that you can go 353 miles.
But again, if the car continued to tell you it has 203 miles of range when it was about to run out of charge, you’d figure something was up pretty quick — like, the first time your car ran out of battery while the dashboard cheerily informed you that you had 203 miles of range left.
So Teslas tell a third lie: when the battery charge reached about 50%, the fake range is replaced with the real one. That way, drivers aren’t getting mass-stranded by the roadside, and the scam can continue.
But there’s a new problem: drivers whose cars are rated for 353 miles but can’t go anything like that far on a full charge naturally assume that something is wrong with their cars, so they start calling Tesla service and asking to have the car checked over.
This creates a problem for Tesla: those service calls can cost the company $1,000, and of course, there’s nothing wrong with the car. It’s performing exactly as designed. So Tesla created its boldest fraud yet: a boiler-room full of anti-salespeople charged with convincing people that their cars weren’t broken.
This new unit — the “diversion team” — was headquartered in a Nevada satellite office, which was equipped with a metal xylophone that would be rung in triumph every time a Tesla owner was successfully conned into thinking that their car wasn’t defrauding them.
When a Tesla owner called this boiler room, the diverter would run remote diagnostics on their car, then pronounce it fine, and chide the driver for having energy-hungry driving habits (shades of Steve Jobs’s “You’re holding it wrong”):
https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/
The drivers who called the Diversion Team weren’t just lied to, they were also punished. The Tesla app was silently altered so that anyone who filed a complaint about their car’s range was no longer able to book a service appointment for any reason. If their car malfunctioned, they’d have to request a callback, which could take several days.
Meanwhile, the diverters on the diversion team were instructed not to inform drivers if the remote diagnostics they performed detected any other defects in the cars.
The diversion team had a 750 complaint/week quota: to juke this stat, diverters would close the case for any driver who failed to answer the phone when they were eventually called back. The center received 2,000+ calls every week. Diverters were ordered to keep calls to five minutes or less.
Eventually, diverters were ordered to cease performing any remote diagnostics on drivers’ cars: a source told Reuters that “Thousands of customers were told there is nothing wrong with their car” without any diagnostics being performed.
Predicting EV range is an inexact science as many factors can affect battery life, notably whether a journey is uphill or downhill. Every EV automaker has to come up with a figure that represents some kind of best guess under a mix of conditions. But while other manufacturers err on the side of caution, Tesla has the most inaccurate mileage estimates in the industry, double the industry average.
Other countries’ regulators have taken note. In Korea, Tesla was fined millions and Elon Musk was personally required to state that he had deceived Tesla buyers. The Korean regulator found that the true range of Teslas under normal winter conditions was less than half of the claimed range.
Now, many companies have been run by malignant narcissists who lied compulsively — think of Thomas Edison, archnemesis of Nikola Tesla himself. The difference here isn’t merely that Musk is a deeply unfit monster of a human being — but rather, that DRM allows him to defraud his customers behind a state-enforced opaque veil. The digital computers at the heart of a Tesla aren’t just demons haunting the car, changing its performance based on whether it believes it is being observed — they also allow Musk to invoke the power of the US government to felonize anyone who tries to peer into the black box where he commits his frauds.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world
This Sunday (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.
Image ID [A scene out of an 11th century tome on demon-summoning called 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros. Anno 1057. Noli me tangere.' It depicts a demon tormenting two unlucky would-be demon-summoners who have dug up a grave in a graveyard. One summoner is held aloft by his hair, screaming; the other screams from inside the grave he is digging up. The scene has been altered to remove the demon's prominent, urinating penis, to add in a Tesla supercharger, and a red Tesla Model S nosing into the scene.]
Image:
Steve Jurvetson (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Model_S_Indoors.jpg
CC BY 2.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
#pluralistic#steve stecklow#autoenshittification#norihiko shirouzu#reuters#you're holding it wrong#r2r#right to repair#range rage#range anxiety#grifters#demon-haunted world#drm#tpms#1201#dmca 1201#tesla#evs#electric vehicles#ftc act section 5#unfair and deceptive practices#automotive#enshittification#elon musk
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Hey! I wanna talk for a sec about the Live Music Archive. If you're a tMG fan who's on here you probably already at least know about it, but for anyone unfamiliar I want to do a quick post talking about what it is and how you can listen!
The Live Music Archive is a collection hosted by the Internet Archive for audio recordings of concerts. Specifically, the LMA hosts, with permission from the band, user-contributed recordings of concerts. Some fans will go to concerts with recording gear to take a full audio recording of the show and then upload it to the archive under the band's collection. As of writing this post there are almost 450 live tapes uploaded to the tMG LMA collection!
There's a few ways that you can listen to recordings on the Live Music Archive. The webpage works pretty well both on desktop and mobile browsers, and that's what I typically use. You can also listen on web without having to make an account on the Internet Archive, which is convenient for browsing. I also use the webpage to download mp3s of favorite tapes to my phone, so that I can listen to them in my local music player.
However, if you don't mind making a free account and prefer the convenience of something more like Spotify, you can also listen to anything on the LMA via the Taper's Section app for Android or the Live Music Archive app for iOS! (Obligatory disclaimer that I use an Android and can't personally vouch for the iOS app, but afaik they have similar features.) The apps have the same functionality as the webpage in a more streamlined mobile-friendly interface, plus things like notifications when there's a new tape added to a collection you follow and downloading in-app for offline listening. The Android app also has a tab for tapes from today's date, there's often at least one (there are FOUR for today!) and that's a really fun way to find tapes to listen to.
If you're looking at this going, wow, that sounds really cool but there's so many tapes that it's a little overwhelming to get into this, don't worry! I'll leave you with a couple recommendations. As mentioned above, I like to listen to shows from the current date. Another fun way to find shows is looking for a specific song - you can go on the wiki and it'll list every show at which the song has been played live, and then just search until you find one of them that has a tape on the archive. Lastly, a few specific favorite tapes of mine:
- 2014-06-15 has the entirety of Taboo VI: The Homecoming played live + one of my absolute favorite performances of both Woke Up New and The Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton.
- 2015-06-01 is the only time Straight Six has ever been played live and it's interestingly pretty different from the EP version, plus a phenomenal back to back Spent Gladiator 1 & 2.
- 2021-08-06 was the first show after the band started playing concerts again post 2020, and it has a really incredible energy and a phenomenal setlist.
- 2024-03-01 is from the recent run of solo shows, this one was at Grace Cathedral and the ambience is truly truly incredible, it feels so ethereal.
Please feel free to add any additional notes or some of your own favorite tapes to the post as well! Happy listening!!
#txt#transmissions from lyric#the mountain goats#tmg#tapes#theres a post of live tape recs that im gonna go back and rb after this#and im also gonna start posting some favorite live recordings regularly! which is why i wanted to make this post!#the LMA is such an incredible resource#and at some point ill make a followup post about how to contribute to the LMA but thats a later post#resources
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I feel like fic recs tend to be things that are complete, so I thought I'd rec some things that haven't been updated in a while (>a year) or abandoned, but I still like to go back and reread
with links and comments under the cut <3
Poured Over Ice in an Old-Fashioned Glass by prepandemicwriting (bealeciphers) [2016-02-04, 28k]
-classic bartender!barry fic. they're both kinda disasters all around? hilarious
Run Away With Me by asexual-fandom-queen (2016-05-23, 14k]
-the only time asking someone to run away with you has ever worked lmao.
Painting the Roses Red by Solarcat [2016-07-01, 20k]
-Family of Rogues but there's a third snart sibling that Len's got to protect. Lucy Snart that only exists in this fic and my brain ily <3
I bet these memories follow you around by MissSugarPlum [2017-06-07,5k]
-Lisa and Barry in high school at the same time, Barry being tiny and full of rage, Lisa being reluctantly charmed, mwah. chef's kiss.
Bolt from the Blue by town_without_heart [2017-06-16, 170k]
-pre-canon meeting is always delicious to me. eobard being aware of it is the cherry on top (what a creeper)
The Good in You (the Bad in Me) by blue_wonderer [2017-08-02, 26k]
-I have a soft spot for fics where Barry and Lisa are friends what can I say. set pre-canon, and barry is a goddamn delight
Get Me Through The Night by Mentalrebel [2017-08-07, 11k]
-super interesting formatting. it's a lifeline au? I have no idea what that it, but it's fun
Ties and Barricades by yersifanel [2017-09-01, 10k]
-pre-canon meet-ugly where len kidnaps his soulmate as part of his getaway.
Realignment (time & company) by writerdragonfly [2018-02-13, 12k]
-me? rec a time travel fic? of course. time traveller's wife au. gives some really interesting backstory to Len's mother/family
Unexpected Development by nirejseki [2018-04-05, 20k]
-it's so funny it's practically a crack fic. calling the reverse flash Mr. Banana is an inspired choice
since I can remember I've been runnin' from you by youmakemesoangry [2019-01-26, 14k]
-barry getting haunted by post oculus len yes oh yes
Sticky Fingers by MoriartyMastermind [2019-03-05, 18k]
-barry stealing wallets as the flash is like objectively funny okay
Resonance by Moriavis [2019-06-16, 40k]
-looove a soulmate fic and this one is so unique. Barry and Len meet when Barry's still a child, and it ends before they meet as adults, so really it's mainly a Leonard snart character study
Ice and Lightning by vomitingwords [2020-03-26, 2k]
-potentially the only figure skating au for this ship?
Zero to Sixty by scrubmarine [2020-06-26, 25k]
-barry meeting len out of costume because he's running away from Iris is a hilarious set up, and he kind of deserves it
Just Friends by Thundersnow [2021-08-11, 168k]
-a classic fake dating au, trying to figure out how a blueberry coffee could taste good has been a question that has followed me for years.
Shiva by crestfaller [2021-11-07, 17k]
-I always need more fics dealing with the loss of Henry tbh, and this is a really good exploration of grief.
What It Might Cost by Kateera [2022-05-17, 20k]
-a classic deaging fic, len is heartbreakingly cute
Stand Still by Taste_of_Bitterness [2022-09-15, 25k]
-len doesn't go on the waverider after running to stand still. Barry's kind of a mess here, tbh?
I Think I Love You by youmakemesoangry [2023-05-03, 67k]
-it's post Len and mick's legends trip, and they're helping out team flash. there's a truth spell involved. It's a classic trope. (also there's this bit where mick's reading Frankenstein and he calls creature victor's kid, and that's such a mood, my gothic fiction class spent like an hour talking about his daddy issues once)
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Incomplete collection of Marius lore
suggestions for additions are welcome, but it MUST HAVE A SOURCE
overview
He is the ship’s medic[1]/ship’s doctor[3], plays fiddle and has a mechanised right arm[1].
backstory
He is neither a baron nor a doctor[3][5]; ‘Baron’ is a corruption of his original name, Byron von Raum[2][5].
Marius has a sister called Dorothea, and they were raised by a single nonbinary parent. Marius doesn’t remember their name or face, and knows them only as Zeze[6].
It is strongly implied that Marius was not mechanised by Dr Carmilla [7].
Marius is 5’5 and very skinny. This is apparently because he came from a world that is ‘somewhat medieval in its nutrition levels’ and Marius was not a healthy child. [14]
He piloted a mecha called KISMET. She was 5-6 storeys tall and slightly insectoid, like a dragonfly or butterfly. [17]
‘The control pod’s entirely in the head, which allows the internal control rig to right itself like a ball bearing, keeping the pilot upright whether she’s standing on the ground, hovering, flying horizontally, banking sharply or even rolling.’ [17]
The mecha is not meelee-oriented. [17]
time with the mechanisms
Drumbot Brian said that ‘given that we're immortal and don't need a doctor, it's the job we're most comfortable giving Marius, and it keeps him busy’ and also that he ‘frequently tries to psychoanalyze inanimate objects’ [5]
His mechanism was ‘probably botched’ and he has a ‘tenuous grasp on reality’[2]
According to Jonny, he grew a beard presumably around 08/02/2014 ‘almost instantaneously, and without warning’ and was apparently ‘very upset’ and ‘said he’d been holding it in for decades and just that momentary lapse of concentration as I kneecapped him had ruined all his hard work’[8]
He once dressed up as the Toy Soldier for a halloween concert [9]
Drumbot Brian once responded to someone asking how the mechanisms were by describing marius as ‘mad’[10]
The Aurora describes Marius as ‘the broken doctor’ [16]
songs/albums
He had a planned lecture on the psyche of the olympians, but this was cancelled[11]
He helped Ashes install at a minimum the camera in Ulysses’ vault in UDAD, though he does not remember this[4]
Apparently, ‘Marius spent his time on Fort Galfridian sitting at the porthole for days staring into the sun because he didn't realise it was supposed to be unbearable, and now the Ghouls think he's some sort of prophet’ [12]
In The Bifrost Incident, Marius does not know where he got the violin - in fact, he doesn’t even realise he’s holding it until Lyf points it out [15]
death
Marius was always skeptical of the crew’s immortality and was less surprised to meet his end. ‘One day, at something of a loose end, he will decide to check on the octokittens. Unfortunately, the purring horde has not been fed in many decades, and devours him, head to toe, in 11.7 seconds.’ [13]
Jonny is implied to have already witnessed Marius’ death before the final concert; he says ‘11.7 seconds. At least, by my watch.’ [13]
In Marius’ death, tunes from ‘Blood and Whiskey’ and ‘Favoured Son’ can be heard [13].
[1] Mechanisms Marius von Raum Available at: https://themechanisms.com/the-crew/marius-von-raum/ Last accessed: 11/01/24
[2] Young (2020) Future Projects: The Death of Byron von Raum (spoiler free) Available at: https://kofiyoung.com/2020/07/25/future-projects-the-death-of-byron-von-raum-spoiler-free/ Last accessed: 11/01/24
[3] Revenge of Spaceport Mahon
[4] Mechanisms Eskhatos Available at: https://themechanisms.com/fiction/eskhatos/ Last accessed: 11/01/24
[5] Below (2013) Why do immortals need a ship doctor? Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/the-mechanisms/58736308596/why-do-immortals-need-a-ship-doctor-i-need-an Last accessed: 11/01/24
[6] Young (2023) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/neitherabaron/727612334921678848/holding-checklist-titled-qualities-to-kill Last accessed: 11/01/24
[7] Rasputina (2013) Where'd you folks pick up Marius and Raphiella? Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/the-mechanisms/58960694562/whered-you-folks-pick-up-marius-and-raphiella Last accessed: 11/01/24
[8] Sims (2014) Ingratitude Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/the-mechanisms/75995731661/ingratitude Last accessed: 11/01/24
[9] wickedacephotos (2013) The Mechanisms at The Cellar, 29 Oct 2013, for Halloween with Polar Patterns Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/wickedacephotos/65528149745/wickedacephotos-the-mechanisms-at-the-cellar Last accessed: 11/01/24
[10] Below (2013) Hooray for questions! Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/the-mechanisms/58734952128/i-apologize-that-i-didnt-ask-a-question-to-make Last accessed: 12/01/24
[11] The Mechanisms Ulysses Dies at Dawn Available at: https://themechanisms.bandcamp.com/album/ulysses-dies-at-dawn Last accessed: 12/01/24
[12] thedreadvampy (2020) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/thedreadvampy/624522490768736256/i-feel-like-i-should-clarify-because-it-does-at Last accessed: 12/01/24
[13] The Mechanisms (2020) Death to the Mechanisms Available at: https://themechanisms.bandcamp.com/album/death-to-the-mechanisms Last accessed: 12/01/24
[14] thedreadvampy (2020) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/thedreadvampy/630817295229468672/so-i-am-absolutely-going-to-go-draw-tim-with Last accessed: 12/01/24
[15] thedreadvampy (2020) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/thedreadvampy/631436135234699264/you-dont-need-to-awnser-this-because-i-am-lore Last accessed: 12/01/24
[16] themechanisms A Bedtime Story Available at: https://themechanisms.com/fiction/ghost-in-the-machine/ Last accessed: 06/03/24
[17] Young (2023) Available at: https://www.tumblr.com/neitherabaron/708247931183153152 Last accessed: 11/04/24
To do:
not yet added Marius’ dttm dialogue
may add more detail to what is contained in expert testimony
could probably add detail on things seen doing in photos, e.g. Marius playing rock paper scissors with TS. (are photoshoots canon? I assume so)
[3] missing a link
wow did I really miss pilchard. I will Get To It at some point maybe
does anyone have the his arm is like a fungus post link handy
perhaps more backstory info from byron
https://x.com/neitherabaron/status/1231124594544783361?s=20
https://x.com/neitherabaron/status/1231604579529302018?s=20
numbers are ordered mostly in when I added the source rather than order of appearance as I have moved things around a lot. as above this is very incomplete and I don’t have the willpower to update this now maybe I will later. I’m just uploading it now since someone wanted marius lore
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golden lovers (2018-2023)
to the dead - frank bidart // njpw road to tokyo dome (photo credit) - 12/15/18 // langston hughes // starrcast 2 // njpw wrestle kingdom 15 01/05/2021 // i have some friends - robert w. service // aew dynamite - 10/31/19 // wrestling with angels - robert stock // njpw g1 climax 28 & aew full gear 2020 // song of myself - walt whitman // 01/30/2021 // wild geese - mary oliver // aew full gear 2021 // wrestling - louisa s. bevington // 09/15/22 // 01/04/23 // aew dynamite - 07/12/23 // to you - frank o'hara // aew dynamite - 07/19/2023 // to the dead - frank bidart
#kenny omega#kota ibushi#golden lovers#hangman page#aewedit#my edit#u: built a pyre and burnt himself up#long post
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Ghoap Analysis/Meta (1?)
The Evolution of GhostSoap Redux
Continuing thoughts on how Ghost and Soap's relationship has changed over the course of mw(19), mwii(22) and mwiii(23)
Spread out amongst several posts. This will be long 😅
(Part 1)
BEWARE SPOILERS TO MWIII(23) !
I've had time to settle my thoughts on Ghostsoap in mwiii (23) and this will go more into depth of the re-contextualising of Ghost and Soap's relationship in mwii (22) from the verdansk mission: "Flashpoint".
Flashpoint is set 4 years to mwiii(23). The game places it as April 6, 2019. This is important to us because it sets a different potential first mission (meet cute lmao) between the two and thus changes the tone of their interactions in mwii (22)
So let's set up a timeline with the available dates. Thankfully, the game sets some very concrete dates for us. Not all missions are included.*
2019
Flashpoint - April 06, 2019
First canonical appearance of SAS Ghost and Soap
Ghost provides sniper cover for Soap
Price/Soap capture Makarov and transport him to a helo with Ghost and Shepherd
There's a failed interrogation by Ghost and Soap.
Makarov implies he has met Ghost before and thought him dead at an airport
2019 Mw(19)
Piccadilly - Oct 25, 2019
First canonical appearance of SAS Gaz
Gaz is attached to Met Counter Terrorist Police. This implies he has worked largely in his career in conjunction to the Police. It's unknown whether he met Soap or Ghost before.
First meet of Gaz and Price to combat terrorists in London
Old Comrades - Oct 31, 2019
Gaz meets Nikolai
Interrogation scene. Arguably strengthens Gaz and Price's relationship
Into the Furnace - Nov 03, 2019
Last mission, they kill general barkov
Credit Scene - Nov 03-04, 2019* (hypothetical)
Laswell and Price form task force 141
Price seconds Ghost, Soap, Gaz. This implies that Price has worked with Soap and Ghost on missions for x amount of years. It's Gaz who was the surprise recruit.
2020 Cod Warzone
Season 2 - Mar 2020
First appearance of 141 Ghost
Unknown amount of 141 stationed in Verdansk. Ghost asks for backup.
Season 3 - Apr 2020
Armistice dissolved
Price and Gaz show up to help Ghost
Implied- unknown amount of 141 to Verdansk (possible meeting of Soap and Ghost)
Season ? - Dec 2020
Price kills Zakaev
First appearance (via call) of 141 Soap asking for backup in Verdansk
Price, Ghost, Gaz, Farah etc backup Soap who is somewhere else in Verdansk getting pinned down by enemies
2022 Mwii(22)
Strike - July 15, 2022
Ghost calls an airstrike on Ghorbrani with the aid of Shadow Company
Hindsight - Aug 12, 2022
Shepherd/Shadow Company loses American missiles to terroists
Kill or Capture - Oct 28, 2022
Ghost gets assigned Soap as his sergeant for Al Mazhrah mission to kill or capture Hassan
They find American missiles instead
Cartel Protection - Oct 30, 2022
Ghost/Soap meet Ale/Rudy in Las Almas
They fight the Mexican army under control of the cartels
RV with Graves/Shadow Comp.
El Sin Nombre - Nov 01, 2022
Soap infils cartel mansion
Valeria is revealed as El Sin Nombre
They take her into custody
Dark Water - Nov 02, 2022
Boat/oil rig mission with Shadow company
Missile launch averted by Ghost, Soap and Graves
Alone - Nov 03, 2022
Graves and Shepherd betray 141/mexi bros
Ghost and Soap get out of Las Almas
RV at ale's hideout with Rudy
Prison Break - Nov 03, 2022
Ghost, Soap, Rudy break out ale from prison
Meet up with Price/Gaz
Ghost Team - Nov 03, 2022
141 with mexi bros take back mexi bros base
Soap and Rudy "kill" Graves
Countdown - Nov 04, 2022
Stop missile launch in Chicago
Ghost and Soap kill Hassan
2023 Mwiii (23)
Operation 627 - Oct 13, 2023
Makarov breaks out of prison
Reactor - Nov 10, 2023
141 find out that Makarov escaped
141 assaults konni base
Price finds chemical weapons (almost died)
Payload - Nov 11, 2023
141 split up to stop missile launch of chemical weapons
They fail to stop 2 missiles to Russia
Oligarch - Nov 12, 2023
Ghost/Soap island mission to find Makarov's financier
Interrogation of Milena for Makarov's location
Frozen Tundra - Nov 14, 2023
141 ambush konni convoy
Find Shepherd was Makarov's prisoner
Interrogate him on Makarov's location
Gora Dam - Nov 16, 2023
Ghost/Soap split up to stop chemical weapons in Verdansk
Trojan Horse - Nov 21, 2023
141 split up in London tunnels to stop Makarov from using chemical weapons in subway system
So now that's done. I've mostly ignored Farah and Alex and focused on Price, Ghost, Gaz, Soap and Nikolai as it pertains to relationships within the core group of Price/Ghost/Gaz/Soap.
What can we make of this ?
Well, a couple things.
We can now say that from 2019 to the events of "Kill or Capture" in 2022, Ghost and Soap have most likely worked together on missions before. The timeline shows that they at least had to have met in Dec 2020 in Verdansk as Soap had called for backup to Price and group.
That makes it actually at least 3 years of knowledge of each other prior to mwii(22). So a total of 4 years + potentially at the start of mwiii(23).
It also shows us how quickly their relationship changed from the Alone mission in '22 despite the 3 years of prior knowledge they had since '19.
Let it be said that it took 1 week, ONLY 7 DAYS!! to change Ghost and Soap's relationship. 7 days out of a total at least 3 years total.
Ghost started at not even bothering to name Soap in 2019, to presumably basic Soap/Mactavish/sergeant for the next 3 years.
Cut to the events in mwii(22). Lets say beginning at "Kill or Capture" and finishing at "Alone" and suddenly Ghost ends up having made up his own personal nickname that no one else can use for Soap in just those 7 days.
I posit that this was in part due to "Kill or Capture" in '22 being the first mission that Soap has directly worked under Ghost's command.
This is all hypotheticals and guesswork so take it as you may.
Assuming Ghost was mainly a solo mission sort of guy, let's also assume he mostly helped as sniper overwatch if he ever had team missions (like in Flashpoint). Most 141 missions have him taking that position as well, so it's safe to say he is support most of the time.
Given that assumption, it's also likely that Soap and Ghost had to have interacted mainly on comms and any physical meeting would be restricted to transport via heli or otherwise.
It's possible Soap and Ghost have worked together on a more physical basis (aka Ghost leading Soap on a squad), but given how much Ghost seemed to be testing Soap in "Kill or Capture" I find that somewhat unlikely.
In 2019 we see how brusque Ghost is with Soap. It's very likely that Ghost was largely monosyllabic with Soap pre or post missions to Flashpoint.
Considering Soap's propensity to chatter in 2022 and 2023, it's also very likely Soap annoyed the hell out of Ghost on comms. Lol.
This could explain why Ghost was so dismissive of having Soap as his sergeant in "Kill or Capture", despite working together 3 years ago.
I, and arguably most of fandom had theorised that "Kill or Capture" was the first mission that Soap and Ghost ever had together. And we weren't quite right, but we weren't completely wrong either.
With Flashpoint, it's obvious now that was not quite true. It even suggests in it that Ghost and Soap had worked together prior to even that, as there was no formal introduction between the two.
This dramatically changes how Ghost's dialogue and Soap's to a lesser degree can be read in mwii(22) and implies much much more if you consider how they interact with each other in '23.
So why does it matter when Ghost and Soap's relationship started?
With mwiii(23) we can now definitively tell when Ghost and Soap's relationship changed. We now have a rough basis of a timeline and we can track down the differences between '19 -'22 and then '22- '23. Its important because we can see how their relationship deepens and how it changed within a span of 3 years, 7 compelling days and 1 heartwrenching year later.
For all that mwiii(23) was lax with explicit Ghostsoap moments, it's rich in how much context we gain to their relationship. We see how Ghost changes and how his relationships differ between 141. It's an interesting and compelling look at both Ghost and Soap's characters.
In this discussion I separate this analysis into 3 parts. Part 2 will cover the implications of "Flashpoint" on mwii (22), with discussion line by line. Part 3 will most likely go over comparisons a year makes from the events in '22 to '23. (This might be subject to change as I get further into the analysis)
Onto Part 2.
+
#ghostsoap#cod mw3#cod mwiii#john soap mactavish#simon ghost riley#soapghost#ghost x soap#simon riley#call of duty#meta#analysis#soap x ghost#soap mactavish#soap cod#mw3 spoilers#cod mwii#call of duty modern warfare
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MEUS CC’S MASCULINOS FAVORITOS + CC/ MY FAVORITE MALE CC || PART 1
⇢ basics ||
eyes. https://www.patreon.com/posts/d-o-l-c-e-v2-eye-68183687?l=fr
eyelash. https://kijiko-catfood.com/3d-lashes-version2-for-skin-detail-experimental/
skinblend. https://lamatisse.tumblr.com/post/612766683809136640/butterish-my-first-skinblend-i-made-like-two
skinoverlay. https://www.patreon.com/posts/lemonade-skin-62813813
skintone. https://www.patreon.com/posts/bare-skintone-40506361
skin detail. https://www.patreon.com/posts/61433364
freckles . https://www.patreon.com/posts/40247063
nose shade. https://faaeishccpreviews.tumblr.com/post/648642853067800576/skin-details-nose-shaders-by-faaeish-download
blush. https://squeamishsims.tumblr.com/post/185846308452/booboo-blush-by-squeamishsims-so-ive-tried-so
eyebrows. https://www.patreon.com/posts/whispy-eyebrows-62391460?utm_source=Patreon&utm_campaign=Whispy+Eyebrows
lips. https://www.patreon.com/posts/55703083
mouth corners. https://www.patreon.com/posts/61433364
~~~~
⇢ presets ||
lip. https://www.patreon.com/posts/memphis-lip-43736936
nose. https://poyopoyosim.tumblr.com/post/686774059407736833/male-nose-presets-n5n6n7n8-teen
jaw. https://www.patreon.com/posts/jiumiqaq-jaw-72054166
~~~~
⇢ hair/cabelos ||
01. https://www.patreon.com/posts/oh-my-god-were-58952703
02. https://jny-sims.tumblr.com/post/685668030601117696/jny-redo-hair
03. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pelo-bueno-male-33392785
04. https://www.patreon.com/posts/male-hair-pack-2-65951700
05. https://www.patreon.com/posts/kent-hair-62397490
06. https://www.patreon.com/posts/63544161
07. https://www.patreon.com/posts/wild-ride-70288763
08. https://www.patreon.com/posts/wild-ride-70288763
09. https://www.patreon.com/posts/63544161
10. https://www.patreon.com/posts/71551981
11. https://www.patreon.com/posts/71827369
12. https://www.patreon.com/posts/72827056
13. https://www.patreon.com/posts/levi-hair-73080895
14. https://www.patreon.com/posts/79061220
15. https://allabouthatcc.tumblr.com/post/656904403834503168/grimcookies-hair-dump-ive-updated-all-of-my-old
16. https://aharris00britney.tumblr.com/post/187194346870/axa-2019-official-release
17. https://okruee.tumblr.com/post/684075013010243584/sylvester-hair-hi-babes-info-masculine-frame
18. https://www.patreon.com/posts/58261906
19. https://www.patreon.com/posts/lorenzo-by-54215805
20. https://www.patreon.com/posts/marco-by-56792600
21. https://www.patreon.com/posts/federico-by-70185929
22. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pedro-by-44485564
23. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pedro-by-44485564
24. https://www.patreon.com/posts/70428613
25. https://www.patreon.com/posts/58551246
26. https://liliili-sims4.tumblr.com/post/691837200658219008/bruno-hair-bgc-hat-compatible-24
27. https://qrqr19.tumblr.com/post/673612023225073664/hair-24-fluorite-hair-25-peridot-hair-26
28. https://qr19sims.blogspot.com/2022/03/hair-27-28-29.html
~~~~
⇢ beard/barba ||
01. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard
02. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard
03. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard
04. https://www.veigasims.com/2018/07/beard-facial-hair-style-12.html
05. https://www.veigasims.com/2020/11/beard-facial-hair-style-15.html
06. https://www.veigasims.com/2022/08/facial-hair-style-33.html
~~~~
⇢ acc/acessórios ||
01. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/655362683425751040/calm-fit-collection-a-mostly-male-cc-collection
02. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/696230540558385152/equinox-collection-its-the-start-of-my-favorite
03. https://www.patreon.com/adrienpastel
04. https://www.patreon.com/posts/warm-5-item-set-60918114
05. https://www.patreon.com/posts/round-square-38706995
06. https://maxismatchccworld.tumblr.com/post/190436912960/liliili-sims-scarf-collection-scarf-no1-45
07. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/655362683425751040/calm-fit-collection-a-mostly-male-cc-collection
youtube
#ts4#ts4 sims#ts4 cc#ts4 lookbook#ts4 create a sim#ts4 male sims#ts4 male hair#ts4 male clothing#ts4 male cc#the sims 4#the sims 4 sims#the sims 4 cc#the sims 4 create a sim#the sims 4 lookbook#the sims 4 male cc#the sims 4 male hair#the sims 4 male clothing#mc#pressnat
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✿༉ ⸻ legendborn by tracy deonn (review)
genre: young adult, fantasy, adventure, a hint of romance
published date: 09/15/2020
pages: 501
format: paperback, audiobook
start date: 02/01/24 end date: 02/19/24
rating: ★★★★★
spoilers below cut.
This book has been sitting in my TBR since I started back up reading books again and I am now sending out a formal apology on me taking so long to pick up this book. I now understand why some people have multiple copies and editions of this book.
Although the font was extremely small for me so I had to get the audiobook also to follow along....the audiobook simply helped me become even more immersed in the world that Bree Matthews was navigating through.
Now, let's talk about Bree Matthews. The GOAT herself! By the end of the book, she became one of my favorite book protagonists. From the longing of wanting to know what happened to her mother to her development by the end of the book, it was just such a fun experience watching her grow as a character. Especially as the chapter went on and she connected more and more about her roots.
This story just kept me on my toes as each chapter went on. From the plot to the world-building, it was such a roller coaster that I didn't want to get off because I was so eager to know what was going to be next.
I loved the side characters in the book. Sel had me side eyeing him the first half but he grown on me. Nick just deserve best fantasy boyfriend award tbh. Matter of fact, him, Bree, and Sel should just be a trouple or something. I loved that Tracy included so much about Bree and her interactions with other characters. I feel like it made Bree so much more human to see her have a fight with her best friend and see her conversations with her father (the scene in the Waffle House was my favorite).
Overall,
Tracy Deonn...I wasn't familiar with your game. I am seated for the rest of this series. On to the next...aka Bloodmarked.
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❝PIRATE KINGDOM❞ . CHOI SAN . SMAU!
→ SUMMARY. It all starts when you and your friends are kicked out of your shared apartment, causing you to ask your childhood best friend (and idol) for help, which leads you to live with him and the other members of his kpop group. From there on, you completely enter the world of kpop, creating the best friendships you could ask for, and, as if working with kdramas wasn't enough, your life ends up becoming the best example of one with each passing moment. and your best friends are the main spectators and commentators of all the drama that has surrounded your life since it all began.
→ PAIRING. idol!Choi San x actress!afab!reader (main) || Juyeon x reader || some platonic pairing as well.
→ TYPE. social media au.
→ GENRE. stranger to friends to lovers, fluff, a little angs (on ocasion just bc), slow burn (!). if any part is to be written, it will be complementary and not a necessity to read it, but I don't really plan on having them atp.
→ WARNINGS. the story starts officially on febuary 2020, I'm not gonna focus a lot on the hair colors and their agendas or else I'll go insane to match everything but I'll do my best, idol! au, she/her pronouns, normalization of drinking/getting drunk, toxic envyroment (lightly), body dismorphia, idols are human beings. [more to be added if needed]
→ FEATURING. stray kids, astro, itzy, the boyz, oneus, txt, enhypen, aespa, and other. NOT ALL FROM EVERY GROUP WILL APPEAR, NOR WITH SUCH A PRESENCE LIKE ATEEZ AND STRAY KIDS.
→ STATUS. on going.
↪ started: 07.10.2023 (dd/mm/yyyy)
↪ ended: [ON HIATUS]
→ UPDATES. when I can and most likely on the weekends or whenever there's a hollyday and I get my hands on the laptop so I can update.
→ TAGLIST. open (here's the form).
→ IMPORTANT. the ATEEZ guys appear first in chapter 07, with some interaction with the members, but Wooyoung is the first one to interact directly with the reader, then progressively, the others start to interect and to become friends.
if you want to support me and my writing, you can buy me coffee here! I already thank you for you time and attention.
©yessa vie (2024) — all rights reserved. reposting/modification of any kind is not tolerated.
DO NOT REPOST, TRANSLATE, PLAGIARISE OR REPURPOSE.
twitter profiles: y/n babies || skz || teez || extras
teaser 01 || teaser 02 || teaser 03 || teaser 04 || teaser 05
PART I: princess.
01. me and jisung need help
02. Chan, can we keep her?
03. but I do love Moonbin more than you
04. crushing my dreams again
05. my baby?
06. keep the real ones close
06.1. happy birthday princeling 📝
07. 8M1T
08. I dare you
09. she did what now?
10. happened during rehearsals
11. Eric YES!
PART II: kingdom.
12. denial stage
12.1. catching fire 📝
12.2. 8Makes1AmazingTeam 📝
13. it's not how it looks
14. what you share online (??)
15. ?? (??.??.2024)
16. ?? (??.??.2024)
17. ?? (??.??.2024)
18. ?? (??.??.2024)
bonus (just extras that i did for fun):
↪ mostly will be smau, not sure if I'll put a written part here yet, but I do have some ideas. if they are written parts they will have the emoji that says they are written, other wise, they'll be smau.
⤳ pre debut han (??.??.????)
⤳ jung 'big mouth' wooyoung (??.??.????)
⤳ house warming 'party' 📝(??.??.????)
⤳ i'll prove it 📝(??.??.????)
#imagine#ateez#stray kids#romance#reading#kpop#kpop smau#skz smau#stray kids smau#ateez smau#pirate kingdom smau#choi san#choi san smau#ateez scenarios#ateez imagine#ateez x you#ateez fake texts#san x reader#ateez x reader#ateez fanfic#ateez fic#ateez imagines#atz#atz x reader#atz fanfic#choi san x reader#choi san x y/n#choi san fanfic
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Roddacember 2023!!
Roddacember runs during December to celebrate all of Emily Rodda’s books.
With a new prompt every day, make a piece of fan content of your choice. You can draw some art, write fic, make a playlist, rant about something, or whatever you vibe with!
Remember to tag it #Roddacember 2023 so we can check it out <3
I’ve also created an AO3 collection for those who would like to write fics!
Update
This is my attempt at taking the best of the past years and bringing something for everyone.
What I've come up with are three levels of abstraction that (hopefully) serve as different levels of difficulty. The first week-ish draws more from 2019's style, and the last couple weeks are the more recent style, with the middle being a segue between them.
(i kinda struggled to make questions, but you're welcome to use the prompts as keywords for your own!)
Notes
A reminder that you don’t have to commit to every day. Take care of yourself. You can make it more manageable by skipping days.
It’s also okay to alter the prompt slightly for grammatical purposes, if you so wish (e.g. growth –> growing) or to cut out irrelevant words (e.g. animal or monster -> animal). Feel free to interpret the prompts as metaphorically or as literally as you want!
If there’s anything you are confused about, feel free to ask me in the notes or DMs or whatever. You can also check out what the fandom did previously at #Roddacember 2022, #Roddacember 2021, #Roddacember 2020 and #Roddacember 2019.
Prompts in text below:
Your Favourite
01. Character
02. Place
03. Animal or monster
04. Something you wish was real
05. Magic
06. People, culture, or tradition
07. Filli❔
08. Relationship of any kind
09. Symbols or signs
Memorable Moments:
10. Epic
11. Courage
12. Deception
13. Power
14. Foreshadowing
15. Playful
16. Envy
17. Solution
Abstract:
18. Ripples
19. Design
20. Trade
21. Nurture
22. Technology
23. Intricacy
24. Mend
25. Twisted
26. Pathway
27. Watch
28. Growth
29. Time
30. Unity
31. Essence of Rodda
#roddacember 2023 prompts#roddacember 2023#roddacember#roddacember prompts#postlyn#emily rodda#roddaverse#deltora quest#rowan of rin#star of deltora#the three doors#and all the other rodda books <3#//#lads im so sorry i meant to post these earlier but life just hasnt been It lately :)#(sarcastic smiley face)#alas rejoice for prompts arrive#we got red left so at least one more roddacember and we have a colour set
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my friend and i have an entire team of foxhole OCs and its so funny how clearly you can see our ravens bias bc the team captain is a huge riko fan and the Definately Not team captain is a jean fan, and their coach is a former raven
The St Felix Lynxes
(we are not american and simply refused to go with a real school)
(This isnt my art but they dont really have social media. They told me to link to their artfight- all art in this post is theirs)
The dynamic here is that 01 (Priore Marino) was the captain and then just. disappeared. So 05(Roman Denar) took over as captain and played the whole last year as captain - and their stuff is set in the fox timeline and theyre from the ravens old district so Denar is pretty excited about this next year because now that the ravens have switched, they have a chance to go further. He's excited for his second year as captain -- and on the first training session of the new year, Priore walks in, demands he strips so he can take his number back and humiliates him in front of everyone
02 (Marco Bianchi) and 08 (Noah Baker) are Priore's backliner bodyguards essentially and make sure Denar does as he's told. Marco disappeared with Priore but Noah stayed
(Priore went home to Italy but nobody is sure why. im also not sure why, these OCs are from 2020 and i cant seem to find any note of what he was doing. he did get top surgery while he was gone tho)
Coach is really awful (Affectionate) because being trained in the nest does things to a guy. he's an alcoholic, hes a bastard and he wont let any of his players kill each other but only really stops priore when he makes denar late for practice
Coach was originally a lynx, got scouted into the ravens and did the rest of his collage career there, ended up too traumatised to want to go pro so went back to the lynxes as a coach
Priore didn't get into Edgar Allen so came to St Felix because Coach used to be a raven, its the best he can get (priore idolises and resents the ravens)
Some of the others
Not including coach i think we ended up with 7 fleshed out players but we wanted them to be a team of 15 (i have other art of 'mine' but its old and i dont like it lmao)
as a team they have the shortest shorts in class 1 exy
We made it a point that Priore wasn't mafia bc we wanted to be slightly less edgy than the books. but there is art like this so idk if we succeeded in that
Team lineup--
01 - Priore Marino (Striker) (Italian)
02 - Marco Bianchi (Backliner)
05 - Roman Denar (Dealer) (Canadian)
06 - Timothee Yenisei (Backliner)
07 - Alik North (Striker)
08 - Noah Baker (Backliner)
13 - Misha LeBlanc (Goalie)
one day im going to write it and friend is going to illustrate like a light novel, and it will be the most self indulgent project ive worked on
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The Romance Of Tiger And Rose (2020)
Han Shuo
01:
- Pretends to have a heart attack, collapses into his friend’s arms, taking medication
- Coughing, clutching his chest
02:
- Forced to kneel, humiliated, coughing and clutching his chest, fed medication
- Humiliated, almost stripped in public
04:
- Coughing, breathless, clutching his chest
05:
- Clutching his chest, struggling to breathe, passes out, dragged to a bed, cradled, medicated, needs help to stand
06:
- Shot in the chest with a dart, collapses and passes out, chained up, cut across the chest so one of his ribs can be removed, protected, volunteers to let them cut out his rib to save his wife
11:
- Slashed across the back
12:
- Has the wound from last episode cleaned and treated, flinching
- Drugged with an aphrodisiac, dizzy, collapses to his knees, slapped in the face, fighting the effects, punches a wall, bloody knuckles
13:
- Still fighting the effects of the drug from last episode, collapses, passes out
15:
- Forced to wear a copper bracelet that brands him as his wife’s property, flinching in pain while it’s fitted, later seen with his wrist bandaged
17:
- Alternate Time Line: Face cut and bruised from battle, stabbed in the chest, pulls the blade out himself, witnesses his friend’s death, stabbed again, vomiting blood
18:
- Drugged, passes out, wakes up in a cell with his hands chained
- Betrayed by his wife, rips off the copper bracelet, bleeding from the wrist
- Exiled, still chained during transportation
21:
- Slashed across the arm in a swordfight
- Locked in a cell, sentenced to death, tied up and forced to kneel at the chopping block, rescued and protected
24:
- Stabbed in the chest, bleeding from the mouth, collapses and passes out, barely conscious in bed, diagnosed with terminal lung damage
- Trying to sit up, weak and coughing, falls while trying to stand, vomiting blood
- Unable to walk without support, vomiting blood again, collapses, cradled
- Alternate Time Line: Recovering in hospital after a car accident
TW: Contains themes of domestic abuse and noncon
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Enshitternet
Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.
On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.
On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.
This week on my podcast, I read "Enshitternet: The old, good internet deserves a new, good internet," my recent Medium column about building a better internet:
https://doctorow.medium.com/enshitternet-c1d4252e5c6b
As John @hodgman is fond of reminding us, "nostalgia is a toxic impulse." It is easy for an old net.hand like me to fall into the trap of shaking his fist at the cloud. Having been on the other side of that dynamic, I can tell you it's no fun.
When I got on BBSes in the early 1980s, there was an omnipresent chorus of grumps insisting that the move from honest acoustic couplers to decadent modems was the end of the Golden Age of telecommunications:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler
When I got on Usenet shortly thereafter, the Unix Greybeard set never passed up an opportunity to tell us newcomers that the Fidonet-Usenet bridge allowed the barbarian hordes to overwhelm their Athenian marketplace of ideas:
https://technicshistory.com/2020/06/25/the-era-of-fragmentation-part-4-the-anarchists/
When I joined The WELL in the late 1980s, I was repeatedly assured that the good times were over, and that we would never see their like again:
https://www.well.com/
Now that I'm 52, I've learned to recognize this dynamic, from the Eternal September:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
to the moral panic over menuing systems replacing CLIs:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-gatekeepers-fortresses
to the culture wars over what would happen when the net got a normie-friendly GUI:
https://www.dejavu.org/1993win.htm
And yeah, I've done it too, explaining "Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)":
https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/
But there's a key difference between my own warnings about the enshittification that new "user friendly" technologies would engender and all those other AARP members' complaints: they were wrong, and I was right.
As Tom Eastman reminded us, the internet really was better, back before it became "five giant websites filled with screenshots of text of the other four":
https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040
The underlying pathology of that enshittification wasn't the UI, or whether it involved an app store. As the Luddites knew, the important thing about a technology isn't what it does, but who it does it for and who it does it to:
https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/
The problem wasn't which technology we used. There is nothing inherent about touchscreens that makes them into prisons that trap users, rather than walled gardens that protect them.
Likewise, the problem wasn't who made that technology. We didn't swap wise UUCP Monks for venal tech bros. The early tech world was full of public-spirited sysops, but it was also full of would-be monopolists who tried – and failed – to get us to "stop talking to each other and start buying things":
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start
If it wasn't the technology that killed the old, good internet, and if it wasn't the people who killed the old, good internet, where did the enshitternet come from?
It wasn't the wrong tech, it wasn't the wrong people: it was the wrong rules. After all, the Apple ][+ went on sale the year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail. Consumer tech was the first industry born after antitrust was dismantled, and it created the modern monopoly playbook: buying and merging with competitors. The resulting unity of purpose and anticompetitive profit margins allowed tech to capture its regulators and secure favorable court and legislative outcomes.
The simultaneous drawdown of antitrust enforcement and growth of tech meant that tech's long-standing cycle of renewal was ended. Tech companies that owed their existence to their ability to reverse-engineer incumbent companies' products and make interoperable replacements and add-ons were able to ban anyone else from doing unto them as they did unto the giants that came before them:
https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980
The pirates became admirals, and set about creating a "felony contempt of business model":
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/03/painful-burning-dribble/#law-of-intended-consequences
They changed the rules to ensure that they could "disrupt" anyone they chose, but could themselves mobilize the full might of the US government to prevent anyone from disrupting them:
https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/
The old, good internet was the internet we we able to make while tech was still realizing the new anticompetitive powers it had at its disposal, and it disappeared because every administration, R and D, from Reagan to Trump, yanked more and more Jenga blocks out of the antitrust tower.
In other words: the old, good internet was always doomed, because it was being frantically built in an ever-contracting zone of freedom to tinker, where technologies could be operated by and for the people who used them.
Today, the Biden administration has ushered in a new era of antitrust renewal, planting the seeds of a disenshittification movement that will tame corporate power rather than nurturing it:
https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby
In other words, we are living in the first days of a better nation.
In other words, rather than restoring the old, good internet, we should build a new, good internet.
What is a new, good internet? It's an internet where it's legal to:
reverse-engineer the products and services you use, to add interoperability to them so you can leave a social network without leaving your friends:
https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook
jailbreak devices to remove antifeatures, like surveillance, ink-locking, or repair-blocking:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/17/have-you-tried-not-spying/#coppa
move your media files and apps from any platform to any device or service, even if the company that sold them to you objects:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate
A new, good internet gives powers to users, and takes power away from corporations:
https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6
On a new, good internet, companies can't practice algorithmic wage discrimination:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men
They can't turn search into an auction between companies that match your query and companies that want to sell you fakes and knockoffs:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola
They can't charge rent to the people whose feeds you asked to read for the privilege of reaching you:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen
In fact, a new, good internet is one where we euthanize rentiers:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon
On the new good internet, your boss can't use bossware to turn "work from home" into "live at work":
https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware
And on top of that, you have the right to hack that bossware to undetectably disable it (and hackers have the right to sell or give you that hack):
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/tech-rights-are-workers-rights-doordash-edition
On the new, good internet, we stop pretending that tech is stealing content from news companies, and focus on how tech steals money from the news, with app taxes, rigged ad markets, surveillance ads, and payola:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech
The new, good internet is an internet where we seize the means of computation. It's an internet operated by and for the people who use it.
Hodgman is right. Nostalgia is a toxic impulse. The point of making a new, good internet isn't to revive the old, good internet. There were plenty of problems with the old, good internet. The point is to make a new, good internet that is the worthy successor to the old, good internet – and to consign the enshitternet to the scrapheap of history, an unfortunate transitional stage between one good internet and another.
Here's a link to the podcast episode:
https://craphound.com/news/2023/08/21/enshitternet-the-old-good-internet-deserves-a-new-good-internet/
and here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):
https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_448/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_448_-_Enshitternet.mp3
and here's a link to my podcast's RSS feed:
https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/22/the-new-good-internet/#the-old-good-internet
Image:
Cryteria (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg
CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
#podcasts#mp3s#enshittification#nostalgia#nostalgia is a toxic impulse#spoken word#the old good internet#the new good internet
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Photo
Scene Banners and Dividers - Post 12 of 12
[Post 1] [Post 2] [Post 3] [Post 4] [Post 5] [Post 6] [Post 7] [Post 8] [Post 9] [Post 10] [Post 11] [Post 12]
Decided to do a set of banners and dividers based on the scene images that would match, in style and size, my set of Coliseum Dividers. As new scenes get added to Flight Rising, they’ll get added to this set of photosets.
When linking from these images, make sure you’ve clicked on an image in the photoset and are doing your right click -> copy image link from the full size (640 pixel width) images, not from the downsized dashboard images. You are also welcome to copy these images and host them somewhere else if you find that more convenient. When attributing these images (not required) please link back to the first post.
Photoset #1:
Autumn Clearing
Foxfire Grove
Frostbite Falls
Moonbeam Aquaduct
Pillow Palace
Photoset #2:
Remembrance
Rocky Refuge
Royal Chamber
Shoreline Serenity
Starksand Dunes
Photoset #3:
Titan’s Fall
Wedfiend Cave
Lightweaver’s Domain (added 2020-06-22)
Flamecaller’s Domain (added 2020-11-14)
Stormcatcher’s Domain (added 2020-11-14)
Photoset #4 (added 2020-11-14):
Voyage of the Tenacity
Arcanist’s Domain
Plaguebringer’s Domain
Earthshaker’s Domain (added 2020-12-10)
Golem Workshop (added 2020-12-10)
Photoset #5 (added 2020-12-24):
Strange Chests
Quaint Parlor
Dusty Attic
Serpent Shrine (2021-01-22)
Icewarden’s Domain (2021-02-06)
Photoset #6 (added 2021-02-06):
Flowering Wasteland
Shadowbinder’s Domain (added 2021-02-24)
Training Field (added 2021-05-24)
Windsinger’s Domain (added 2021-05-24)
Tidelord’s Domain (added 2021-05-24)
Photoset #7 (added 2021-05-24):
Greenskeeper Gathering (added 2021-05-24)
Sandswept Delta (added 2021-06-02)
Blooming Grove (added 2021-06-02)
Arena (added 2021-06-02)
Waterway (added 2021-06-02)
Photoset #8 (added 2021-06-08):
8th Anniversary
Sunparched Prowl (added 2021-06-18)
Target Practice (added 2021-08-05)
Armory (added 2021-08-05)
Battlefield (added 2021-08-05)
Photoset #9 (added 2021-09-12):
Drakeharvest
Mire (added 2021-10-22)
Frigidfin Expedition (2021-12-20)
Enchanted Dungeon (2021-12-20)
Haunted Museum (2021-12-20)
Photoset #10 (Added 2022-02-12):
Lovebird Landscape
Garden Arches
Thunder Lizards (added 2022-02-18)
Kelp Beds (added 2022-03-19)
Ancient Harpy Canyon (2022-05-21)
Photoset #11 (2022-12-08):
Summer
Pirate Town
Autumn
Elder Sea
Harpy City (2022-12-15)
Photoset #12 (2022-12-22):
Witch’s Kitchen
Enchanted Library
Winter
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