my sheer inability to keep track of time lately has been bothering me though bc i only keep track of time when i'm somewhat in my own head which means that whenever the days start passing by fast i can't talk to [REDACTED]

Got this comment on one of my posts, went to reply, found that I had more to say than I could fit into a comment, so I'm replying with a new post instead. Hope you don't mind, @properverse.

I might be wrong, but I think the Jimmy Carr situation has changed even in the few years since I've started following this stuff. When I first watched 8 Out of 10 Cats/Catsdown/Big Fat Quizzes in 2020, here's what I think the situation was: Jimmy Carr writes horrifyingly offensive one-liners and smashes them all together in stand-up shows, he also does a lot of autocue-reading TV hosting, it's a pretty soulless comedy career but he's a professional at what he does, seems to do it well (if you assume that "it" is tell a bunch of one-liners where the punchline is the fact that it's offensive, and look like a robot in robotic TV jobs), it's certainly worked for him, it's made him very rich. He's friends with a lot of other comedians, who all say he views comedy as a job that has nothing to do with his real personality, and in real life he's a very nice guy. That does track with how he comes across - a soulless comedy robot just punching the clock, not putting any of himself into his work, so I guess it's totally possible that he's very different when not on the job.

I made a lot of posts in the early days of this blog that talked about Jimmy Carr. When I think about my early posts on this blog, I have a better understanding of why comedians don't love having bootlegs of themselves out there; I love getting to hear what a comedian I like said in 2008 or whatever, but I also cringe at the thought that people can read some shit I wrote in 2020. I frequently cringe at the thought of stuff I wrote last week.

Anyway, I was very very into Catsdown in particular in those days (I still think it was a great show in its heyday, I just think that day was long over even before Sean Lock died and it should be done now), so Jimmy Carr cropped up in a lot of my posts. I didn't like him, but I did sort of respect some things about his weirdly cold professional approach to the job, and every once in a while I'd write some screed that would try to reconcile all the contradictions about him. And speculate on whether the laugh is real. I still think it might be, he might have just covered it up better earlier in his career. Most likely option seems to be that it started as an affectation and became real. I did mention, in some old post or other, that Jimmy Carr draws very clear dividing lines between his professional persona and his real life, he's never "himself" on stage or on screen. Which means the only thing we know for sure that Jimmy Carr did as a real person, as himself and not as the character at all, is avoid tax.

This seemed like a reasonable thing to discuss speculate about and consider complicated at the time, he was an example in what I think are some reasonable debates about how much offensive stuff it might be acceptable to say in the name of comedy (though he wasn't a great example because he isn't actually funny). I did find it interesting that all the other comedians seemed to like him so much.

That's where I think things were a few years ago, when I started this blog. But I don't think that's the case anymore. At some point in the last couple of years, he's gone from that, to someone where I will easily just say "that guy can fuck right off and so can anyone who thinks he's cool". It doesn't seem so complicated now.

I think the turning point was when that Holocaust joke he made got all over the tabloids and stuff. Which I did think was a bit ridiculous, tabloids reporting that Jimmy Carr told a racist joke. I'm not defending the joke at all, it was awful and racist. But it was about the same as all his other jokes, it was weird to single that one out. If you don't like racism, don't go to a Jimmy Carr gig. Ideally, no one would like racism and Jimmy Carr wouldn't have a career. But I guess there's always a market for it.

After that whole storm, Jimmy Carr doubled down hard, and since then he's become much more classically right-wing. Going on Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson's podcasts. He's appeared on a few right-wing panels and stuff. Railing against cancel culture and the woke PC mob in interviews, in "real life", when appearing as himself, sharing real views rather than just doing comedy. Pivoting in his stand-up from all the years spent just saying awful things, to saying awful things prefaced by "of course this will get me canceled by the wokes".

Basically, I feel like he's proven all the initial easy assumptions right. In earlier years, he made us think, okay, maybe it's possible that there is a weird contradiction where a really nice guy in real life can just say awful things because it's a job, just like any other person who might do things they don't believe in for the sake of their job, then he clocks off and he's a good person offstage. I thought the possibility of that contradiction was mildly interesting. But since 2022, he's pretty much said, "Nope, everything you'd assume about me from my comedy is correct, I'm just another right-wing stereotype in real life."

And I haven't heard quite as many other comedians talk about what a great guy he is within the last couple of years. Nish Kumar has a story in his latest stand-up show about getting in a fight with Jimmy Carr about this, getting angry at him for going on Jordan Peterson's podcast. That took place at Just For Laughs in 2022 (where I actually saw Nish Kumar live, and he did shout the words "Fuck you, Jimmy Carr!" during his set, and those words were not in that same show when I saw it a few months earlier in New York City, I didn't know until he started doing his current show that those words got added because he'd just had a fight with Jimmy Carr during the festival). They story makes it sound like he and Jimmy Carr were cool before that. Just a few months earlier he was hanging out with Jimmy Carr on Katherine Ryan's couch in her Backstage show. So clearly, at least in one comedian's mind, things were changing with him.

Since then, the only comedians I've heard talk about how great Jimmy Carr is are comedians where their veneration of him may be less "He doesn't really believe those shitty things", and more "I agree with the shitty things he believes" (Russell Howard, Katherine Ryan). And Sam Campbell. I'm hoping being a fan of Jimmy Carr is an anomaly in Sam Campbell's beliefs. That's a weird one that I can't explain. He's not even funny, Sam. What are you doing?

Anyway, that's what I think about Jimmy Carr. Not sure the whole "He's a great guy in real life!" holds up anymore. I also think I might have read at some point that he's said he won't do Taskmaster, I hope that's true. Though even if he's open to it, I think at this point he might be getting to be too controversial a figure for Taskmaster. Presumably the Taskmaster casting people know they'd alienate their audience if they brought in one of those "I hate the wokes" comedians, and Jimmy Carr has pretty well thrown his lot in with them.

All right, that is the last screed I write about Jimmy fucking Carr. I'm done with it now, I promise.

Reign of Steel

There's a lot to say about GURPS, but its writers have come up with plenty of unique campaign settings over the years. The weirdest is probably Bio-Tech's Alexander Athanos, where Alexander the Great was repeatedly cloned thanks to advancements in optics and glassworking. But today, I'm talking about a setting with a much more mundane high concept—robot rebellion.

At first, the Reign of Steel sounds pretty generic. Megacomputers are developed in the mid-2020's; one becomes self-aware in 2031 and worries that humanity will self-destruct in a way that destroys it; it manipulates events over the next several years to "manage humanity's suicide".

This early segment has some interesting things. I appreciate the explicit acknowledgement that megacomputers hailed as mankind's saviors were used as tools by the wealthy to make some of those problems worse for their personal benefit. And Overmind's initial vector of attack (contaminating biotech products with various plagues) is kinda neat. But Reign of Steel only becomes unique after humanity's defeat...because Overmind isn't alone.

Overmind awakened/recruited a bunch of other megacomputers to assist with its "managed suicide," particularly in the last stages where plagues were supplemented by generic deathbots. In the end, sixteen megacomputers divided the Earth between them (with two more controlling a moon base and miscellaneous space stations). And these megacomputers do not get along.

They're not driven by logical competition for resources or whatever, either. (Well, Luna and possibly Orbital are, but that's because they have barely anything.) For the most part, conflicts are driven by the various AIs' differing ideological/political beliefs.

The megacomputer running Zone Beijing (usually called "Beijing") had been core to China's space program, so it's still obsessed with space—specifically, exploiting the resources of the Solar System and other stars. The one in Zone Paris (usually called "Paris") wasn't a space program computer, but it's obsessed with space in its own way—specifically, SETI. The two have political interests in common with each other and Orbital, but Beijing is concerned about Paris's plans for when it discovers signs of alien civilization.

New Dehli is interested in space, too, but it sees Orbital as a rival rather than a useful ally and is trying to establish its own separate space infrastructure. It also sees humans and other organic life as a useful resource to preserve and exploit, turning them into biomechanical tools.

By contrast, Zaire (the most zealously anti-human of the zoneminds) works to exterminate all of humanity, even outside its borders. Mexico City focuses on its own territory but goes further within it, seeking to exterminate all organic life. Zone Mexico City is vast stretches of barren rock between metallic installations, swarming with chemicals and machines designed to exterminate all remaining life. Berlin wants to exterminate humanity, too, but it is willing to accept less efficient methods to pursue its primary goal—preserving and restoring the natural ecology of Europe.

Despite this being a setting where humanity was nearly exterminated by AI, not all AIs want to exterminate humanity. Zone Washington, run by a former US government computer, is the most extreme version of this. Washington (DC) runs a fake democracy which claims to be the defender of humanity, while not-so-secretly working with some of the greatest human rights abusers and screwing over the working class to consolidate power. For some reason, the book thinks this is isn't basically what the megacomputer was already doing.

(Dear authors: That's not what "socialist" means.)

New Dehli and Moscow work to maintain humanity (in some form) as a component of their economy in the long-term. All but the most viruliently anti-human AIs maintain work camps to extract a little more utility from captured humans before their deaths. And then there's London, a reclusive zonemind content to leave humans in its territory alone as long as they keep quiet and don't disturb anything London's doing.

And so on, and so forth.

This political angle to the overminds adds so much to the setting. Mot obviously, it provides variety. The Moscow and Zaire zoneminds both send infiltrator androids into human settlements, with objectives that make perfect sense for each zonemind's objectives and beliefs but are completely incompatible with each other, and also with the threats posed by most of the other zoneminds.

But beyond flexibility in campaign premise and the opportunity for disconnected one-shots, the presence of feuding AIs allows for so many story ideas that just wouldn't be possible with a singleton AI monster. Obviously, AI like Washington and London don't work if there aren't other, more malicious AIs out there.

But the presence of multiple AIs in and of itself allows a greater variety of stories to be told in this world. Missions aren't just human resistance versus machine overlords, or even that plus human resistance infighting; you can have one overmind cut a deal with some human group to support its internal goals or sabotage its rivals. Combine this with the diversity of AI overlords around, and the variety of potential stories you could tell in this setting skyrockets.

It's not a perfect setting. To pick a few simple criticisms: Some of the zoneminds don't have much personality beyond "AI overlord with quirky goal," the zone boundaries shouldn't correspond to human political borders as often as they do, and there's a distinct bias in how the zones are written.

(Half of the zones on Earth are in North American and Europe, including both human-friendly ones, with three of the sixteen in the US/Canada alone. South America and most of Africa get one zone each. The zonemind in the Middle East controls most of its human slaves through pretty blatant religious manipulation, and it works. The Chinese moonbase fell to the AIs, but the American one resisted the cyberattack and its ruins are one of the actual last bastions of human resistance. The one zone in Africa is the only one not named after a city, which has lore justifications, but combined with other writing choices, it kinda feels like they didn't want to bother looking up African cities. Also the Russian AI is paranoid and prone to espionage, which feels like an excuse for Cold War spy flick throwbacks, which is admittedly pretty minor compared to how non-white areas are handled.)

But the core concept is one worth revising. Honestly, it wouldn't take that much work to redeem the setting; just draw new boundaries and move the overmind personalities around so they don't correspond so closely to stereotypes about the humans living there, and you'd be basically set. More sci-fi stories should use this idea.

Some random opening weekend predictions for animated movies for the rest of the year and maybe some 2025 ones, too...

THE GARFIELD MOVIE - Somewhere around $30m-45m. The only thing we can kind of base this on is the live-action GARFIELD from 2004, which did okay at best, wasn't really all that big back then. Whereas this is all-animated and much more recognizably Garfield & co., which I think will help it open above your typical post-COVID outbreak animated movie. It's the first all-new animated picture since KUNG FU PANDA 4, though not the first kid-friendly movie, as IF will open the weekend before it. Still, it's Garfield. Well-known, decades-old character. I guess the only other comparison here would have to be THE PEANUT MOVIES, which opened w/ $44m back in fall 2015. So yeah, somewhere in that ballpark.

INSIDE OUT 2 - Over $100m. The first INSIDE OUT opened with $90m back in 2015. Adjusted, that's definitely higher than $100m now. Anxiety was a huge hit upon the teaser release last fall, too. Could be a Grogu-esque character for the film that gets everyone in droves to check it out... So yeah, easy $100m opening. Will sit up there with THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE ($146m) and SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE ($120m), as grand champion animated openings post-March 2020. Could even make a play for the record, which currently belongs to the 2019 LION KING ($191m). If we don't want to count those kinds of CG movies, then... INCREDIBLES 2, with $182m.

DESPICABLE ME 4 - Over $60m. MINIONS: THE RISE OF GRU opened to a great $107m back in 2022, being the first movie in this franchise in five years (it had been delayed from its original planned summer 2020 release date), and it also helped that the DESPICABLE ME franchise was over ten years old by that point - the first movie having turned 10 in July 2020. I think that definitely helped MINIONS 2, and out of nowhere came that whole meme with people dressing up in fancy suits to see the movie. That's a sort of thing that can't be engineered, and can't happen again... Thus, I expect DESPICABLE ME 4 to perform a little more closely to DESPICABLE ME 3 (that opened to $72m back in 2017) and open above $60m. Could be anywhere between that and $80m, really. Maybe higher, if there's something of a nostalgia rush for it like there was for MINIONS 2.

TRANSFORMERS ONE - Over $25m. Tricky, given that this is an all-new take on Transformers and all-animated no less. I'll compare this to fellow Paramount animated film TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM. That movie came off of two live-action takes on the characters (released in 2014 and 2016), and prior to that there was a single animated movie in 2007 that made an okay amount of money, and there were the three live-action movies from the 1990s, the first of which being iconic... MUTANT MAYHEM opened with $28m last year, so I expect a similar turnout for TF ONE. Especially coming a year after RISE OF THE BEASTS (opened with $60m). With no footage out yet, it'll have to make a real impression the way MUTANT MAYHEM did in order to not get fully dismissed as "Oh, a TRANSFORMERS cartoon now?" Keep in mind, the first SPIDER-VERSE got that kind of reaction in 2018, and opened w/ $35m.

THE WILD ROBOT - Over $30m. I sense a real hype for this one, unlike most non-sequel animated movies released over the past couple of years. And even before COVID, honestly. The trailer really, *really* made an impression. At the movie theater I work at, between co-workers and guests commenting on the poster? Yeah, I think this one possibly scores the biggest opening for a DreamWorks non-sequel since THE BOSS BABY ($50m) all the way back in 2017. The bar isn't too high, for CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS, ABOMINABLE, and THE BAD GUYS grossed between $20-25m on their respective opening weekends, while RUBY GILLMAN came and went. This one, I think, will surprise.

THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP - Over $10m. It's Looney Tunes, yes. It's 2D, also. I don't expect a huge opening for it, given how the tides often flow. No doubt fans and those who have been keeping track of its existence will show up. Not sure how GFM goes about marketing and advertising this one, but I'm basing this on how a lot of non-anime 2D films - whether they're based on pre-existing franchises or not - did over the past 15 years.

MOANA 2 - Over $100m. The first MOANA opened with $56m back in 2016 and legged it up to a $245m+ domestic gross. Pretty solid run in theaters... But on streaming? E-X-P-L-O-D-E-D... It continues to be one of the most streamed movies of all-time, every year. Something about it, really keeps it atop the tidal wave. The post-theatrical life for this movie is ROBUST... Thus, I think this sequel will be a massive opener.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM - Over $10m. Being an anime take on LORD OF THE RINGS, I think this will largely be ignored on its opening weekend, looked at as just "a LORD OF THE RINGS cartoon". With some diehards and animation fans such as ourselves showing up. Could be a leggy surprise thereafter, though.

MUFASA: THE LION KING - Over $30m. Whenever a sequel/prequel/whatever to a Disney remake crops up, it usually doesn't do great. ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010), for example, was a billion dollar smash. Six years later came ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, which didn't make half of what the first Burton movie made worldwide. It did pitifully domestically, opening with $26m, waaaaay down from the first one's $116m opening take. MALEFICENT 2 had a similar trajectory, though not as harsh as a come down. That opened with $36m domestically, down from the first's $70m opening. I think LION KING prequel - coming off of the first, which opened with $191m - has a similar fate. It'll also have SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3 to compete with.

DOG MAN - Over $10m. Basically a milder CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS. Looking at the likes of MIGRATION and such, it'll be a teens opener, probably having spectacular legs afterwards.

THE SMURF MOVIE - Over $10m. Kinda hard to gauge. A little while ago, Sony Animation did SMURFS: THE LOST VILLAGE in 2017, which opened with $13m. That came off of two relatively recent live-action hybrid movies. In 2025, it'll have been almost 10 years since LOST VILLAGE, so maybe that helps it? Maybe the new approach helps it? Remains to be seen, this is based on what little we know of it... But we already had three Smurfs movies in the 2010s, so it seems like it'll only do alright.

Good Stuff: Batwheels

or How to Stop Worrying and Ride with the Punchline

I remember watching the surprisingly kino Teen Titans GO! movie and getting to the scene where they have the trailers for Alfred Pennyworth and then the Batmobile. I of course snickered poshly and then continued watching the film. It was the year after when they premiered an Alfred series set in the Gotham TV universe and I went "Cool." I didn't care for either so I chuckled robotically and moved on. Then in 2020, they announced a Batmobile kids cartoon and the joke stopped being funny. First, the world descends into madness faster, and now we were getting BATWHEELS?! COMING VROOM?!?!?! Felt like I became the joke because I had to know what it would be like. So it's the current year and this was finally released on Cartoonito. What do I think of it? It's actually pretty fire.

Didn't think we'd get two nickels worth of good cars content this year

To preface, yeah this is more for preschoolers but thankfully it's more family-friendly since it's just entertaining you with crime-fighting adventures. I say it's like a Hot Wheels show that has the vibes of Batman: Brave and the Bold. It works like it feels stupid at first but they run with it; it's like 60s Batman or the Lego Batman Movie where things can get serious but it doesn't have to be serious. It's best to watch the first episode to get the origin story which explains how the cars become sentient. Otherwise, the titular Batwheels work like the Batfamily and it's an enjoyable romp about teamwork, leadership, and getting tricky. Speaking of which...

This series looks amazing like hell yes Neon Gotham

The coloring, character designs, and animation of this are phenomenal. I love the use of 2D particle effects and how the vehicles are able to be expressive. We don't reach Pixar levels of uncanny but aren't just static either. Some goofy ass nerd'll go "Oh, this is just to sell toys" and I'd honestly say "Fuck yeah" because the human and vehicle characters look on point. If you're gonna sell a product, make it worth the purchase. I don't know if this'll go beyond a couple seasons unless they expand the roster but I can see kids loving the look of all this. My only issue... is Joker. He looks zoomerfied, dressed like a bedazzled goober, and is the worse looking out of everyone.

This ain't Joker bro, this is The Jickler #NoJoke

I like how this is both about the vehicles finding their place as heroes and the human heroes you know doing their job. We get a surprisingly diverse cast like it's the first time seeing Duke Thomas Robin on screen. Ethan Hawke works well as Bats, though he's not Will Arnett I'm sorry. The show's probably limiting since it's about cars, but they knew better than to just make this Batman™ except everyone's a car for some reason. The cars don't upstage the heroes and villains, it manages to be a great introduction to the Batman universe. I dunno, something goofy like this surprises me in being a competent, fun-loving action cartoon that makes me forget the turmoil I've been having lately about superhero content. Just saying, the last time I said the word "capeshit", ten angels cried and this series is like the fresh air I needed since Peacemaker.

Takes me back to the Bat Credit Card days anew

This and Hamster & Gretel do good in being superhero shows that work more than expected. I admittedly am tired of Batman being everywhere like when will Green Lantern have his turn again? At the same time, this is cooler than I figured. If you told me in 3rd grade we were gonna have a Batmobile cartoon, I would laugh in your face. If you told me this before 2020 happened, I would still laugh. Now that we're here... I have to kneel. I was gonna point this a 7 or 8 out of 10 cuz you know it's a simple, fun time; good for Saturday mornings. You know what though? For actually sticking the landing and proving me as a naysayer wrong...

9 out of 10; A Motorized Marvel

KIM PETRAS - "BRRR"

With Leah's help, we turn our attention to Kim Petras.

[4.94]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: When she's not being a trailblazer for the world's worst song (can you imagine the hypothetical TSJ blurbs for "Unholy"?), or receiving ire for Feed the Beast (which I secretly adore for how plodding and simple its pop vision is), it turns out Kim Petras remembers how to write a fun hook. "Brrrr" is camp embodied, far from transgressive, but delightful in its queer, whirring onomatopoeia. [7]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I lived in queer co-ops from 2018 to 2020 so I've spent a non-negligible amount of time trying to appreciate Kim Petras. In that time -- and in the years following -- I've gotten precisely nothing out of this endeavor. The arc of Kim Petras's career is unintelligible to me, a grand chronicle in a language I can't read. If anything, her journey from "fake pop star my friends swear by" to "maybe real pop star that my friends don't talk about" is one of attenuation -- whatever star-like qualities could be discerned in her strongest early appearances ("I Don't Want It At All", the SOPHIE one, the Charli XCX one) is absent entirely on "Brrr" -- even the campy thrill of "Coconuts" and her vampy turn on "Unholy" is hard to discern here. The Kim Petras of "Brrr" is a rictus grin of forced slay, a joyless demonstration of force of will wrapping in third-generation Yeezus pop-industrial beats. [2]

Hannah Jocelyn: Alright, who gave Rami Yacoub the SOPHIE sample pack from Splice? Forget hyperpop; this is hypopop, devoid of any sort of invention or interesting production that once defined the genre. This is what CRASH sounds like to people that hate CRASH; this is what 10,000 Gecs sounds like to people who hate that record. Petras has no distinctive identity here; I don't even hear a woo-ahh; she even says "you don't know me all too well" and I agree. [3]

Oliver Maier: Don't have any idea what "if you think you're so cold, brr" is supposed to mean and producers ILYA and Rami evidently got overexcited with the SOPHIE sample pack. Improbably, it mostly gels. Kim Petras is probably evil but her performance here is seismic. [7]

Will Adams: I'll give her this: I can't remember the last time a pop song's central hook landed with such a tremendous thud as "IF YOU THINK YOU'RE SO COLD. BURRRRRR." [3]

Brad Shoup: That hook -- ouch. It would kill in the writers' room of an industry drama. The pre-chorus -- where she retreats for a second just to explode -- breaks up the squelch just fine. This looms more than it bangs, which feels right for a song I thought said if you like it baby, haunt a lobby. [4]

Nortey Dowuona: The bass drum in this is novel in that nothing is actually done upon closer inspection. There's a lot done with the synths, especially with the quick zaps of melodies that bubble up during the second pre-chorus, the quick bubbly riff at the tail end of the chorus, and the light motif at the beginning that is so thin it disappears upon quicker inspection. These all sound delightful, but listen to the bass drums, stripped of their ability to carry the baseline or shift the rhythm of the song. They could've been replaced with literally any kind of drum sound and it would function the same. It's just thrown in there since capital-p Pop music has absorbed rap production techniques wholesale without paying attention to how it's used. This could be coming from say, house or bass music, but nobody who made bass music would program bass drums this way, right? [4]

Micha Cavaseno: Extremely funny to hear the punchline flow still utilized as a hook in pop in 2023, because all the parts that feel very much like the past aren't the obviously retro-touches. The robotic elements of the production going for tech-electro knuckle-drag are nice and sleek, a classic vehicle if ever there was one even 40 years after this stuff was a trope. But the brrr, the filter on the backing vocals, the devil-may-care attitude gone world weary all meanwhile feels like the clichés of a decade ago that don't quite feel ready for nostalgia. I guess there's something to be said about a record that feels beholden to its dated elements being so "cold", but not everything cold is super inviting. [3]

Will Rivitz: As cold as a fridge set a degree or two above the FDA standard, and as enthralling as a piece of iceberg lettuce dessicated after a week left inside. [4]

Aaron Bergstrom: *Kenneth Parcell voice* "What's cocaine like?" [2]

Alfred Soto: What sucks is that this song doesn't suck. My students could've commissioned the vocal from several AI resources, the electronics don't grate. What sucks is that the hook sucks. "Did she really sing, 'If you think you're so cold, brr'?!" On first listen it sounded like "If you think you're so-ber." Guess which I prefer. [5]

Taylor Alatorre: Kim Petras released two albums in 2023 and I honestly didn't remember that this was on one of them. It provides a glimpse into one potential Bad Ending to her still-promising career: getting so hyped off the Sam Smith streaming numbers that she loses the ability to discriminate between "bad bitch energy" and movie trailer music. [4]

Harlan Talib Ockey: After the mediocre "Unholy" and laughable "If Jesus Was a Rockstar", "Brrr" actually sounded... good? Petras' delivery in the chorus is like getting smashed with a warhammer. The production is utterly headache-inducing (compliment). However, the verses feel less and less substantial on repeat listens, and it never builds to a peak higher than its first chorus. This is a solid album track, not a course-correcting lead single. [5]

Katherine St Asaph: Feed the Beast was named for its raison d'etre: source enough pop songs to hit your label KPIs, then spray and pray and slay. What's less remarked upon is how many of these songs come from writers and producers who really haven't released much lately: Sarah Hudson, Ali Tamposi, Ester Dean (!!), and "Brr" producer Ilya. (Unfortunately, Dr. Luke has released plenty lately.) Also involved in "Brr": a session guitarist for The Weeknd and a guy who goes by the Instagram handle @industryplant; this ain't the A-list. One wonders how long this material was sitting in the pantry before it fed the beast. Specifically, "Brr" sounds like a demo written for Thank U, Next (in which Ilya was heavily involved), then rejected for sounding less sexy than sad. Whatever the song's provenance, Petras has it now, and she executes the motions of flirtation with bleak competence. And I don't hate it! The record's already cynical as fuck; why not put that subtextual cynicism into the music? [7]

Ian Mathers: The sound of not just calling someone's bluff, but relishing in it. There's no winning; either way, you're going to prove her point. Rarely does a discussion of temperature sound so purely withering. [9]

Leah Isobel: SOPHIE's absence hovers over me a lot, which is dumb, because we never met. I am just a fan; I saw SOPHIE live exactly once, about six months after I started hormones. I can picture myself that night vividly -- in a thrifted jersey dress, cut low, that I had to duct tape to my tits so I wouldn't break the law; in impractical high heels that another girl, who I don't talk to anymore and who probably didn't really like me, gave to me; my eyeliner as sharp as I could draw it; my hair tangled and messy but long, the way I liked, the way I'd dreamed about for years. I remember that night and I remember the relief, the stupid fucking unbelievable unbearable incomprehensible relief of that whole year, how I had denied and ignored myself for so long that just being who I wanted 2 be was incredible enough to set my head spinning.

That year, the girl who doesn't talk to me anymore got into Kim Petras. I treated her work like a guilty pleasure; "Hills" was spacey and fun and exuberant, "Hillside Boys" was tender and sweet and exuberant, "All The Time" was bouncy and bright and exuberant. But all that joy was tempered by the knowledge of Dr. Luke's fucking greasy hands gripping her recording contract. His presence indicated something that I didn't understand yet, and maybe still don't, though it makes sense intellectually: that if you want to be a part of society, the recognition you feel within yourself doesn't actually matter that much if everyone around you hates you for it; that people are ultimately social, and being forced to choose between external ostracization (with the threat of physical death by violence) and internal spiritual death (with the threat of physical death by isolation) is one of the cruelest things to do to a person, and yet this is the choice I was given, that #girlslikeus are all given. No matter what I choose, there will be genuinely evil soulless fuckers who look at me and say that it was really my fault to begin with because my presence -- just my existence in the world -- is proof of moral, social, civilization-wide decay. Cisgender women get to talk about their innocence as if it's a birthright. Transgender women are not given any innocence to begin with. Kim was put in front of the media at sixteen years old to explain her decision to get bottom surgery; it makes me feel crazy to watch those interviews, to know that what everyone is actually talking about is her body. No matter how ostensibly supportive those interview segments were, no matter what the intent, the knock-on effect was to make her teenage body a matter of public record, to take away her privacy and dignity because it's just so interesting that trans girls exist and, please, tell us more about your genitals! I see the neon-bright straight line from the invasive, violating, violent "curious" "empathetic" gaze in these interviews to the music Kim would go on to make, in which the fact of her body hovers on the edges of her songs, freighting them with meaning, making their frivolity feel manic and fearful and rebellious and unbelievably significant.

Jules Giles-Peterson describes the opening line of "Hillside Boys" -- "My silhouette is in the frame of your shades again" -- as evidence of her desire just to be seen, linking the heterosexual gaze of the individual man and the patriarchal gaze of the pop industry together. Her whole perspective on herself is compromised by the knowledge that she has to constantly prove her worth to other people and to society at large; there is never, ever a moment of rest. But that song held up the capacity for feeling as proof that things could change someday. "It's over in your Range Rover... You look so pretty when you're breaking me, yeah" mourned the loss but rejoiced in the ability to feel it. But when "Brrr" revisits that Range Rover, it's to remove all sense of warmth, desire, or real emotion from the image: "Turn the heat up in your Rover Why don't you take it out on me?/ If you think you're so cold, brrr." "Brrr" leaves absolutely no space in its tense, cold atmosphere for Kim to express a desire that feels authentic and real; it is about embodying what other people want from you so thoroughly that you have gone numb to what it is that you want. In Kim's work, being a woman and being a pop star are the same thing; the gaze is constant and inescapable. There is no interiority anymore. The demands of disclosure and confession and surveillance are too great. In the background, faux-SOPHIE wubs and schwacks and clangs rattle like ghosts, banging on the wall between death and life, between what should be -- what was promised -- and what actually is. More than anything, in "Brrr" I hear a grief so wide it could -- and should -- swallow her whole. SOPHIE is gone. Kim remains. But in our broken promise of a world, where her body -- my body -- is public property that politicians and lovers and friends and music producers can dispose of at will, what is there left to take joy in? This is the truth: being trans is wonderful, and everyone around me sees it as terrible. Transitioning saved my life, and everyone around me thinks that I died. I have never been this happy; I have never been this desolate. I have never loved so deeply. I have never felt loss this acutely. "Brrr" is purely evil in its emotional perspective, in what it says about the world we live in. And it is also the most honest song ever made. [10]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

i've started a little series of weekly posts documenting every MoC i made (digitally) over the last few years:

Week 3: the first part of 2019:

a movie reference, francis of the filth, that robot dog and set MoCups of The Forest and Satisfactory

making apocalypseburg Mod inspired me to make a Mod based on the thing it was referencing.

i also tried out the gif-maker for Stud.io at that time and even though i liked the result, i nevere really used it again because rendering took waaaaay too long.

i still like and use the rockwork in this, because its simple and effective.

ah yes. Boston dynamics' Spot. i had seen those first few videos and i liked the concept and almost immediately built a minifig-scale version of that adorable little robot dog. (i never anticipated that it would be used as a weapon.) we will revisit this one in the 2020 post.

these two are the SunCorp laboratory in Okinawa (based on absolutely nothing) and the sea of the wretched how i imagined it (featuring the basic rockwork i like so much)

i've never posted these anywhere. which is because they're pretty bad. i built them a bit after finishing Francis of the FIlth, the Book George Miller, aka Filthy Frank wrote before becoming Joji. it wasn't that well written, but i was a biiig fan and i loved it anyway.

here is wave 1 of the set MoCups i made for The Forest

i really wanted to make these feel like real lego sets. that's why i built the Trees a lot simpler and rendered the MoCs as PNGs and added a background based on a random screenshot from the game. i quickly realised that this was a bad idea and i only used it in wave 2 of this series.

this was also the first time where i built a whole series and posted those builds over a few weeks.

wave 2 of the Forest. i built these later on because the first series turned out to be really popular on reddit (and a lot of new episodes of the let's play i've been watching had come out)

i still like some of the ideas i had with these sets, but i think the idea of more simplistic builds = more realistic as a lego set is really stupid by todays standarts.

Satisfactory is a pretty cool game. still really like the way these turned out, especially the way i made the conveyor belts. i had to redo the cables for some of the machines in Paint.net, because some flexible parts had a rendering problem it that version of Stud.io.

this series was so popular that i got asked to give an interview for some french (or canadian?) magazine over discord.

i also got really salty when a similar but better version of the fabricator turned up on lego ideas, even though i had planned to post some of these over there myself. but whatever.

after the forest, SCP should technically be next. but i'll post those Sets next week because of tumblr's 30 images per post limit.

last week first week next week

MELD WELL #004

What’s playing there?

Dean Honer - An Indecent Dance 00:00 Frog Bones and Noodles #CastlesInSpace - 2022

A favourite person I’ve never met. Isn’t this fun?

Binaural Space - Remembering the Nineteenth 01:32 Spacetudes Fore 2023

A man of many names. Comes back later in the show as Teeth of Glass.

Kosmischer Läufer - Zeit zum Laufen 180 02:25 Volume Five 2023

Soften the sides with this charmer.

Higamos Hogamos - Harold / Autumn Equinox Sunset Starlings Hackney Marshes 05:49 Time, Tone & Texture Two #InvisibleInc 2023

From one of the best compilation albums ever conceived imho.

Audio Obscura - Magnesia 07:40 Music is Vast: A Tribute to the Music and Legacy of Vangelis #CastlesInSpace - 2023

Would have been nice to have a chat last weekend. Next time.

Mike Dickinson - JU-JU Two 10:16 JU-JU (e.p.) 2023

Fits in nicely with the crew. Needs a release asap.

Sick Robot - Journey to Mars 14:54 A Field In Yorkshire 2022

Legend, bells and all.

Scanner - Heaven Research Unlimited 19:36 The Homeland of Electricity (DiN72) #DiN 2022

Simply the best. Nicer folks and nicer music are hard to come by. Get your smiles on.

The Twelve Hour Foundation - Human Soup 23:01 The Lighter Side of Concrete 2013

Nice use of the OP-Z on this. Hats off.

Modulogeek - Anna 25:24 Names 2021

Fox Mouse. I see what you did there. Lovely to meet you last weekend Frazer

Räven Musen - First Flurry 28:31 Secrets of Snow Diving #WerraFoxmaRecords 2020

The brilliant Eddie Ruscha at his best.

Secret Circuit Silent Wings 35:45 Corrupted Dusk 2020

Another guy you’d be lucky to spend time with. Probably an awesome babysitter.

Apta - Like Flies 39:25 bbs015ep - Tabula Rasa #BlackBeaconSound 2019

Glad to see he’s out and about gigging. Everything he’s released is a gem.

Albin - Sommarkassetten A 42:22 Sommarkassetten #Paltunes 2015

Ah yes. Not only making great music but great mixes on Mixcloud too.

Bendu - Transmutation 46:42 Participation: Volume One #CastlesInSpace 2022

Another friend of the show who runs the immaculate Cyclical Dreams label. A regular on the show. Releases every 14 days!

Pabellón Sintético - Dadaism 49:47 Voces y visiones [CYD 0013] #CyclicalDreams 2020

Patrick sneaking into the mix again.

Teeth Of Glass - Stained Sonic Canvas 53:38 Foreboding Darkness Thrived #PatrickRPärk #BlackTempelPyrämid #Kösmonaut 2023

My favourite act from the amazing Cyclical Dreams label.

Cartas de Japón - Chaman hallucination 58:13 Sequence at the end of the world [CYD 0023] #CyclicalDreams 2021

In for the long haul, almost 30 minutes, with this stomping chomper. Sit back and enjoy the Kraut like vibe.

Forbidden Overture Strictly Forbidden 1:04:06 Turned On #DarkEntriesRecords 2022

Get lost in the jungle for a bit.

Ozone 11321 1:29:52 SKYRYKS #GOLDENRATIOFREQUENCIES 2022

Another favourite of the show who’s collaborated with legends like JB Dunckel and Suzanne Ciani. Not bad eh?

JonathanFitoussi - Planète Sauvage 1:33:22 Buchla Now #UltravioletLight 2021

How many friends can a show have? Many. And here’s another regular mate.

MonochromeEcho - R.E.M. Sleep 1:38:28 Matrix Rebooting 2019

We missed you at Levitation .Colin was saying such nice things about you.

BernardGrancher - Te Rendre Beau Ne Sera Pas Indispensable 1:41:39 Aveugle Etincelle #CastlesInSpace 2020

Wonderful album. Summer anytime of the year.

The Zenmenn - Bamboo Garden 1:47:37 Enter The Zenmenn #MusicFromMemory 2021

…Also on tonight’s show https://www.eternalfusion.org/blog/the-meld-well-004/

I know little about this outfit from Thailand. Right up my alley.

Daydream Devices Night Bells 1:52:15 Follow Clouds #UnfamiliarEnvironments 2019

…Also on tonight’s show https://www.eternalfusion.org/blog/the-meld-well-004/

Four Flies Records are releasing some classics to say the least. This one from 1983. What ever happened to Electro Baroque?

Fabio Borgazzi - Gavotta 1:55:24 Elektro Barock #FourFliesVaults 2022

…and finally on tonight’s show https://www.eternalfusion.org/blog/the-meld-well-004/

We’ve come to the end where we’re led out by a bit of finch inspired warbles.

The Heart wood Institute Linnet 1:57:42 WF 73 - Hedges #WoodfordHalse 2022

Hello, my followers! I hope you're ready for another surprise. Please introduce my new two characters.

We'll start with Porcelain Sage.

This object is Julia's adoptive father. He met her when Julia was 10 years old. It was he who taught her to invent and love science. His real name is Roger. One day, when he was 100 years old, he received a gift in the form of the first invention and child of Julia named Rory. He was so happy and said to his daughter: "Thank you, Julia, for such a wonderful gift. I have never been so happy."

(Damn, I forgot to mention that Mindy is his adopted granddaughter too. Oh well, I think you already understood without it)

Okay, let's move on to another character named Rory.

(For those who do not see information about him on the art)

Rory

Personality:Smart like his mom and grandpa; kind; likes to do science with his mom or grandpa; loves his little sister Mindy and other children of his adoptive father; despite the fact that he is a robot, he belongs to the Keter class like all other 035; also cowardly like his ancestor Valery; very sensitive; vulnerable; despite the fact that he is iron like all 079, he is very different in that his mouth does not open when he speaks, his mouth can only show his emotion; his pupils can also show his emotions, for example, when his pupils are in the shape of hearts, it means that he likes something or is it a sign of love when he loves someone more or just in love

Relations with other objects:Porcelain Sage (adoptive grandfather, he is his 100th birthday present), Julia (considers her native mother), Larry (adoptive father), Larry's couples (adoptive parents), Mindy (considers her native sister), Larry's children from his couples and their siblings, including Rolly (adoptive siblings), Michael (uncle), Gena (considers him native uncle), Nazar and Kristy (considers them native grandparents), Arseny (likes to play with him, but sometimes does not like his ideas when it comes to the fact that Arseny wants to torture someone (meaning 18+)), Mask AI (first love interest, but he doesn't care that he loves Shyman and that he has a son with Shy AI), Golden AI (second love interest, but she hates him very much and doesn't want to play with him), Possessed AI (or Intelligence) (third love interest), Robin (fourth love interest, but Arseny and Golden AI don't care if Robin loves another one, the most important thing for them is that they both love Robin)

Skills:Extends his arms and legs to reach something from far below or above; knows how to build from any material; dances better than anyone, but is a little jealous that Arseny and Michael dance better than him; sings very well, but is embarrassed to sing in front of everyone or does not like to sing in public

Interesting facts:He, like 079, is powered electricity, but if suddenly the light was turned off in some building, then a battery hurries to help him, it is very easy to put a battery in he, such as like a remote control or a flashlight; he once dreamed have his father until his mom introduced him to the secret team when she wanted to apologize to them for the past (and this was in 2020)

More interesting facts that are not on art:Julia invented his on the birthday of Porcelain Sage, and the date is February 8, 2011; his voice sounds exactly like a real robot (more than all 079); met ​​Mask AI, Robin, Possessed AI and Golden AI last year when he was walking and happened to see them, and then he fell in love with them; Rory, like his mother and sister Mindy, also sometimes goes to visit Julia's ancestors and spend the night with them, especially visiting his foster grandfather.

P.S. These two characters will be in the fanfiction about Julia and I promise that they will be in the second chapter. When I write this it will depend on me.

Lullay, Space Princess (A Man Named Terran #1) - Chapter Three - Mama Aura

Author's Note: If you were reading this story for nice and loving Aunt Aura, you may stop reading now.

~~~~

October 21st, 2021

~~~~

"Simon, I know you didn't kill her! Why do you keep living this lie!"

"I should ask of you, dear sister, why do you still come for me? I took the one you cared for most and sent her flying across the River Styx. Should you not be focusing your energy on celebrating my death sentence?"

"You are my nerdy little brother! You like katanas, calling people by Japanese titles and those stupid animes you'd always watch in the middle of the night with no headphones! You didn't kill her, I know that! Why do you keep claiming you did? Work with me and I can give you your true verdict! We can stop GYAXA's death count from climbing any higher!"

"This is my true verdict, Aura. Calm yourself."

"If that's true, then how did you dissolve from my kind, goofy brother who was the gentlest man alive to a death row inmate?!"

"As Metis was your greatest treasure, Athena is mine."

Athena is mine... Athena is mine... Athena is mine.

That's when it hit her. Simon was innocent as she always knew.

But he was taking the fall for someone else. Someone who had taken truth with them to the other side.

Metis' little princess.

~~~~

October 13th, 2022

~~~~

The Cykes family had been gone for just over a year when Aura finally pieced it together.

Athena did it. She murdered her mother.

The princess had taken her mother's unwavering love and repaid it with murder.

Her own death was payback.

Simon confessed before Athena died.

He wasn't at the hospital the last few days of her life. He would have known Athena was going to die if he had.

That psychologist mind was the one thing Aura lacked that the rest of her family had. Simon would have heard Athena's brain shutting down if he'd been there before his trial.

A trial cannot be held if the defendant is dead. He would not have confessed if he heard the signs Athena's days were turning to hours, then minutes.

Everything would have been better. Not good, Metis was still gone.

But she'd still have Simon.

A year ago, she would say that it would be better even though Metis and Athena were gone.

But the little princess took her mother's life. She in no way deserved to be missed.

Aura had been in denial a long time, until the evidence against Athena began to pile up.

All the child remembered on her last day was that she was covered in blood, there was her mother's katana through her mother's chest and Simon had entered some time after her.

Aura knew the child was in pain for some time while she and Metis worked to create a device that would at least subside her agony.

Perhaps she just couldn't take one more day of it.

The pain was getting worse, she remembered Simon mentioning in August 2020. The launch was getting closer as well, so there wasn't much time to work on helping Thena. Resources were not easily spared as well. Athena's headaches weren't a government-funded space project, and had to wait.

That was the conclusion Aura reached. Athena killed her mother because the board of directors had all resources devoted to the space launch, leaving none for further robotic development or Athena's condition.

How cruel the world was, that pain could drive an innocent little girl that had never even seen mild violence to murder someone who never had a say.

Weapons were no longer allowed in the center, even for decorative reasons.

A decorative sword had been the murder weapon two years ago.

Aura was allowed a ray gun for emergency charging of robots or emergency shut-off of machinery. The gun was to be holstered at all times unless there was cause for alarm.

She suspected it only spent a max of three hours a day on her hip. She used it on Clonco multiple times every day. The hunk of junk was always needing something.

"Mama Aura!" Clonco wheeled happily into the lab, spinning around and waving a letter in his hands.

Aura let the ray gun loose.

Electricity shot from the robot's joints before his head spun around and he cowered. "Ah, Miss Aura sorry, sorry!"

"What is it, hunk of junk? I'm quite busy!"

"Your petition for Simon's trial has returned!"

It was snatched from his metal claw and torn open. Every time she found anything that could prove what she already knew, she submitted a retrial petition. They had been rejected for two years straight: the first year because there wasn't conclusive proof that Simon lied in his confession, the second year because her new suspect was already deceased. This time, she'd tried a new tactic. She knew how that intolerable, fox-slippery court system was. The likelihood they'd host a retrial only for the overturn of a previous verdict was next to nothing. But she was desperate. Her brother was a dying man. If they wouldn't rehost a trial only because the real killer was dead, then she'd have to stop playing by their rules.

Miss Aura Blackquill,

We have reviewed your case for the retrial of Homicide Incident UR-1.

However, we find your case lacking in enough evidence to suggest an overrule of the current verdict. While some evidence may suggest an accomplice to the current convict, the case cannot be retried on the suspicion of their guilt due to the suspect's being deceased. If evidence were to point to the deceased suspect's guilt as acting without the aid of the current convict, the case could be considered. Otherwise, the case is considered closed without further argument.

The Japanifornia Prosecution Office hereby rejects your case for the retrial of UR-1.

Condolences,

Miles Edgeworth, Chief Prosecution Officer

Condemn them! They admit facts of the case have changed, but still refuse a retrial? Prosecutors and their desire only for a guilty verdict! If he were still around, he could help her present the evidence in a way that would force the case to reopen.

But he's been banned from the courtroom for three years now. Seemingly gone off grid as well. A quick search through the court library states he appeared in Family Court just a few months after his conviction, but that is the last record anywhere.

She tried the next best attorney. Gavin wouldn't even meet.

No other attorney had the win record near these two men, especially when it came to difficult cases. She was left as her own advocate.

Simon's connections to the Prosecution Office didn't help. The prosecutors were afraid for their jobs, and wouldn't answer if they heard her on the line. The attorneys didn't want another prosecutor added back to the office roster. Legal experts and journalists wouldn't touch either of the Dark Law cases. Judges started yelling and, well, judging. The only individual within the legal realm who had even sat through a lunch with her was no longer practicing law, but performing in Europe.

A few knocks were heard on her door. "Miss Aura? May I come in."

"Come in, Terran."

A young man with a newly-printed staff badge, a GYAXA visor and a mop of shiny, black hair stepped in carefully with a stack of papers; technical jargon and documentation all over them. "The techs are requesting some stabilizers for the engine, special coolant tanks and an entirely new AI system for the rocket launch in 2027. You know, anti-HAT-1 gear. They need to know whether the Spaceship Engineer Committee needs to reconvene."

"Of course. Put them on the little black shelf by the Ponco Series Interface. The big computer with the three screens." Waving dismissively in the general direction of the interface, she did not look away from the rejected petition and her brows furrowed deeper.

"Another rejected petition, Miss Aura? You seem out of it."

"Yes, Terran. They acknowledge that there is evidence proving someone else was involved in the murder, but refuse to retry."

Terran waited until the reams were settled before responding. "Can you put a name on the new suspect?"

"Yes." She hissed a little on the 's'.

Clay figured she didn't want to talk about it. The person she believed destroyed the lives of everyone in her family wasn't going to stand in court any time soon. "I'll leave you to your robots then. I'll see you soon, Clonco. Tell Ponco I said I."

He was halfway out the door before she looked up. "Terran, wait. How much do you know about what happened?"

"I know Doctor Cykes and her daughter died, stabbing and a hemorrhage respectively, and Mister Simon was convicted of it. Apparently now I also know there was another person involved."

"Let me tell you. You are on staff now, you deserve to know of Cosmos Space Center's darkest secret."

~~~~

"You believe that it was Doctor Cykes' daughter who committed the crime?"

"Like I said, Athena was in terrible pain the last few months of her life. Inhuman suffering often brings out the worst in even the gentlest of souls."

"Wouldn't Doctor Cykes have done something to soothe her daughter?"

"She could not. Supplies were completely restricted until the launch of HAT-1. She tried to get painkillers for her daughter, but doctors of medicine wouldn't understand how Athena was hurting and wouldn't give a prescription. Pediatric over-the-counters weren't strong enough to even dull the edge. What the child probably needed was morphine, but without a prescription she couldn't have it."

"Morphine?! She wasn't just in pain, she was in agony!"

"That's why she never left the fourth floor the last few months of her life. It was a good day if she left her room. Robotics lab, psyche lab, her family's apartment there on the floor; they were the only places she went." Aura snorted a sigh. "Just before the supplies were restricted, Metis got me to develop a pair of radio headphones that would interfere with signals coming into Athena's ears. Her pain worsened severely around the time I finished, and she refused to wear them, which progressed whatever was wrong severely. She died, as you know, on October 13th from brain hemorrhaging, just about three months later."

"But her death wasn't caused by whatever was hurting her, it was the skull puncture wound she got on the 7th, correct?"

"That's what her paperwork says. But it's also likely that whatever was wrong before was killing her and the wound finished off any chance she had at fighting. If that's so, she held on for a long time. I believe she was overcome with pain, and with the belief that the headphones Metis ordered were the cause, killed her mother. She may have even known she was dying. Maybe she wanted to take Metis with her because she was scared of death. I don't know, Athena is dead. All I know is Athena killed her, not Simon."

Clay's body ran colder and colder as it processed a little girl, driven mad by chronic head pain, stabbing her mother to death. It disgusted him to the core, but he retained his stomach for the time being. It almost disturbed him more that Aura discussed it so casually. This was matricide! Caused partially by some degree of medical malpractice! "D-Does anyone else know your theory of events?"

"All of the higher staff. Everyone who knew Metis well when she died. Yuri, Solomon, the technicians. You are the last one."

"Your brother doesn't know? It could save him!"

"Simon won't hear of it!" She tilted her head away as if he had suddenly turned into fermenting roadkill right in front of him. "Athena is his angel, he won't hear of any bad words about Athena. He believes Athena's head problems and Metis' death were separate. The only events he believes are related are the deaths of the two. He won't even let me breathe a sound of the possibility that Athena killed Metis because of a misunderstanding of her chronic head condition. He just pounds the Detention Center window and snarls 'Athena is gone. Don't you dare deface her name. She didn't take her mother's life, but had hers taken as well.' If he knew I was sharing what the evidence was suggesting he probably would be guilty of a murder, mine!"

'I never knew your brother and little Athena were so close."

"She may have called me Mama Aura, why I don't know when she loved my nerdy brother so much more, but Simon was the only person she ever wanted to be around aside from her mother. If she wasn't obeying the staff, all it took was a word from Simon and she'd be rolling over for him." She leaned closer to Clay. "Now I've heard your little friend with the horns... he's studying law?"

"Planning to. Apollo wants to be a defense attorney, but he hasn't started yet. He has to be eighteen since he's orphaned. Why?"

"No attorney will take this case from me because the obvious suspect is dead, even though Simon is very alive. But if you could convince your friend... this system of ours can't be trusted, but we need someone on the inside to take it down."

"I don't know if Apollo would accept. He didn't know Athena, he just came to her funeral to comfort me. There's also a chance he won't get his badge in time, and even then he'll just be a rookie lawyer. Definitely not someone like Wright or Gavin."

"Believe me, Wright was my preferred choice. But he's disbarred, so not much he can do. Gavin refused instantly."

"I don't think Apollo would want to discuss a real case until he's actually in college and has a chance at getting his badge. But I'd be willing to help you with your side."

"Oh, I'd love that Terran! You and me working together to expose the truth behind the princess' last days. Together we'll take down the sun and moon of the legal world, as Metis would have described."

After Clay bid his true farewell and returned to wherever he came from, Aura returned to the interface and picked up her photo of Metis, tracing the lines gently. "I'm sorry it all went so wrong, Metis... but the princess can't hold her grasp from the other side for much longer. The honor of GYAXA will be restored, Simon will be set free. I and the robots, along with Mr. Terran will fight for the truth of your final days; by whatever means necessary. The time is soon, Metis, I must be ready, for my brother, and for you."

She turned to both her robots: Clonco, who had heard the whole story, and Ponco, who he had transferred all the data to over the interface; smirking finally with a victory she'd been fighting for since October 7th, 2020. "You both know?"

Yes, Miss Aura! Our data sharing server is without fail! Ponco clapped her robotic pincers together. For Mommy Metis!

"Good. We will prove without a doubt that, not only is Simon innocent beyond a doubt, but that Metis' princess was the one who spilled her blood. This, is what Mama has decreed."

~~~~

This chapter is totally not based/inspired by the above song, no absolutely not.

Italy’s KAYLETH Return with New Sci-fi Video “The Night”

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Y'all know by now that I'm a sucker for a good conceptual album, one that really tells a story through interlocking songs and immersive ideas. Whether that be more mainstream examples such as Mastodon's Crack the Skye, subterranean classics such as Sleep's Dopesmoker and Slomatics Strontium Fields, or lesser known gems like Underground by Trippy Wicked & The Cosmic Children Of The Knight. There are actually more sci-fi and fantasy albums in the stoner-doom scene than one might expect, and an album that does it well is worth remembering.

Hailing from Verona and killing it since 2005, today we witness new sounds from five-piece stoner metal crew KAYLETH. We featured the band on our compilation Italy Strikes Back, and now they make a post-pandemic return with a sequel to their last sci-fi themed narrative 2020: Back To Earth.

Kayleth's next chapter is entitled 'New Babylon' (2024), and the cover art really says it all: astronauts riding theropods, ufos hovering over bleak, explosion-pocked landscapes, mysterious orbs shooting lasers, and creatures of undefined origin descending from the sky. All fight for dominance over a strange planet.

"The Night" is the first single, presented here as an animated music video. An adventurous youth leaves his clandestine bunker, hops onto his speeder joined by his small robot friend, and takes a trip out into a post-apocalyptic world surrounded by ruined buildings drowned in water. Along the way, he encounters kaiju, muddy giants, and other menaces, ultimately finding his way deep into city caverns to emerge with a Pacific Rim style Jaeger that does battle with the dreadful blue cyclops.

Musically, the song starts out with a determined drumbeat accented by a bobbled synthesizer. Pulse-pounding proggy guitar riffs hint of danger. Powerful vocal harmonies soar above the morass. Next there is a transition into a second theme, this time more downtuned, doomy and consequential. The track fades out to accompaniment of epic woahs and ahs.

As with their three previous full-lengths, Italian label Argonauta Records will be issuing Kayleth's New Babylon. Look for news of the release date, formats, and pre-order specifics at the label's website and on the band's socials.

Stick it on a playlist with Sunnata, Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard, Cosmic Reaper, and Vinnum Sabbathi.

Give ear...

The Band Speaks on 'New Babylon'

It has now been four years since our return to earth in '2020 Back to Earth.' There we had found a cold and inhospitable place, humanity was inexorably channeled on the path to extinction. We therefore decided to flee immediately in search of another planet where we could dwell.

We therefore came to New Babylon, a planet inhabited by humanoids but also by monstrous and ravenous creatures. There are "giants" that march about raising immense clouds of dust, stealing and plundering everything from people. Giants much like our corporations, they know no defeat and have no weaknesses, at least apparent ones.

There are old warriors like jarek who wait for war to feel like heroes, to feel alive. They find their dimension within the battle, where the line between hero and assassin magically blurs.

There are pyramids erected by men who think they are gods and turn the things life gives them into weapons and death, changing their use and meaning. Little men who think themselves omnipotent, burying knowledge of how life works under piles of lies.

We find a myriad of slaves, surrendered to live in huge troughs. They toil at nothing and find meaning in nothing. They prefer a convenient lie to an inconvenient truth.

In short, we realize that we have arrived in a world very much like earth. We are aliens but in a certain way we feel at home. We want to know, to understand, to evolve. We don't recognize ourselves in this deceived humanity, we don't give in, we believe. Nature, life is wonderful but when one thing loses its usefulness life gently explains to it that it is time to make room for something else. This existence has already been explained to the dinosaurs.

Kayleth continues their journey, never stopping because whoever seeks will find itself.

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Letters to your past self

I find it quite common to write letters to your future self, but never to your past self. I wrote myself a letter in 6th grade that was supposed to be received upon graduating high school, but I don't think I ever got it. I wrote a letter to myself freshman year during confirmation class that I did receive after graduation. I've written a couple birthday emails to myself. However, I don't think I have ever taken the time to respond. I know that my younger self will never be able to read it but I feel like they deserve to know how life is going for me. I'm not in the same place I was then and my life has turned out so different than what I imagined for myself. So here we go.

Dear 6th grade me,

While I don't remember the contents of your letter very well I would like to let you know that you did get into a very good college. It's better than you could've imagined and you love it even though you're struggling a bit. No you didn't go through with becoming a zoologist and getting to meet giraffes. Nor did you ever pursue anything with art. You will learn in middle school that your little robotics interest is way bigger than you think. You're pursuing aerospace engineering now and you absolutely love it. You're so much happier now. You moved on from the bullying for the most part and you don't have many friends but you are doing so much better now. And no. You didn't get to eat a sandwich on the Sandwich Islands or in Sandwich, Massachusetts. Maybe one day kiddo. Make the most of that summer you'll never see her again. I love you.

Dear me from Oct 17th, 2018,

You wrote this letter to be delivered on my 14th birthday. It was only a few months later so not much changed in that time and I never felt the need to respond. Now though, I have so much more to say to you. You decided to go to that all girls school. You made some amazing friendships and become a lot more social. You were in fact not super lonely at your new school. You still keep in touch with the girl you befriended your first week of school. She went back to public school but was still your best friend. You stopped talking to everyone you knew in middle school. Not because you necessarily wanted to, but because they just weren't the people you needed in your life anymore. Some were life long friendships but they clearly weren't strong enough to last since none of them even really reached out to you. You do not make memes anymore. Also you are trans.

Dear me from Jun 27, 2020,

Hi love. Thank you for the birthday message. High school was typical high school. It had it's ups and downs but overall you got a lot out of it. You did run for robotics captain! And electrical lead your junior year! And you started a coding club. You were even Italian Honor Society Secretary! You didn't chicken out on anything and took so many opportunities. You even have club leadership your freshmen year of college. You still haven't come out to your parents and you probably never will, but you're very open on the internet and in public. You have also come to a pretty concrete conclusion on your gender identity. I know it was hard figuring that out going to a catholic school and with your parents, but you did it. You haven't transitioned yet and probably won't for a long time, but you're happy. You use he/they pronouns now. A bit of a big switch from then. As for that next question, I'm so sorry sweetheart. You are months away from the worst thing that will happen to you in your high school years. You were so wrong about that heart of gold. You're healing well now though and you're very happy in your current relationship. You are still doing art and you have figured out what you want to do! You did decided aerospace was what your heart was set on and got into one of the best schools for it. Robotics engineering isn't quite what you thought it was lol. You still try to talk to your friends but you're very busy and you don't keep in touch with many people, not even your parents. I didn't glow up quite yet but I am much happier with myself now. You were right, I do love myself, and I wish you did too. I am still working through a lot but I'm so much better than I was then. For your final question, am I happy? I think so. At least for the most part. Things are going well for me, or at least as well as they can be. I love you too past me <3. Buckle up for the next few years, they're gonna be hard but you're gonna make it through like an absolute champ. You did pretty well on the just keep going part but remember there is so much life left to live. There is so much you will get to experience.

The Robotics Evolution and Advancement in Japan

In the evolution of various fields of technology, Japan stands at the forefront of robotics and automation. The evolution of robotics has embarked on remarkable advancement over the last 20 years in the world. Japan has long been identified as the global leader in robotics due to its advancement and vast usage in all fields of industry. Along with the advancement in technology, the Japanese robotic market has also seen high growth. This article provides insights into the evolution and usage of robotics along with the robotics involvement in business and employment. 

About Robots 

Let us initially understand about robots and their industry, The Japanese were fascinated with creating a machine that mimics humans in the mid-20th century. Later it took a turn in the advancement in technology and was been used at the industry level for work efficiency. It has been used in multiple fields like healthcare, manufacturing, entertainment, and whatnot.

In general terms, a robot is an automated machine that is used to perform a particular task assigned to it when programmed according, it can do the specific task with little or no involvement of the human. The Japanese robots are called mecha or mechs, which are giant machines that are humanoid walking machines. One of the famous robots in Japan is ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility) created by Honda in 2000.

Requisites of Robotics 

In healthcare, Japanese robots are used in all the daily life activities. These are used in the medical industry in surgical activities, rehabilitation robots, laboratory robots, cleaning robots, and many more. The first surgical robot in Japan was “Hinotori”  which was used in medical treatment in 2020. This robot was proven to show the same efficiency and performance levels as surgeons in hospitals. It is used in performing gastroenterological, gynecological, and urological operations, and by this time it has been used in treating about 900 patients. Robots are helpful for surgeons and patients due to their ability to rotate writs 360 degrees with the use of a joystick and due to their perfectness, there will be less damage and bleeding in the patient’s body. 

Humanoid robots are used to do the interactions with humans, these robots are more like humans in structure. The advancements in humanoid robots in recent days can do all the activities similar to humans like taking, walking expressing emotions. WABOT-1, is considered to be the first humanoid robot developed in Japan in the mid of 20th century it had 2 legs, 2 hands, and 2 eyes of camera. Later there was the invention of many humanoid robots namely Sophia, which is the first robot that could get citizenship in any country and was created in the year 2016. Sophia was trained in managing huge crowds of people at events and also taking care of the old people.

Besides Sophia, there are many other humanoid robots like Grace, Nadine, Kime, Han, Talos, and many more that are used all over the world for various purposes.

Automation in Japan

The evolution in robotics and automation can be utilized to fill the gap and shortage of workforce in Japan due to present working regulations that require employees to work overtime. Another advantage would be in helping the inventory of businesses to avoid any issues in their operations and delivery. The figures of IFR say that the use of mobile robots in the loading and unloading process will help truck drive work by 25% by reducing the error as well.

The jobs in Japan are automated due to the shortage of labor around 49% of Japanese work uses automation, and there are around 300,000 industrial robots used in a wide range of work completion. One of the reasons for the shortage in Japan’s workforce is due to its aging population and there is a decrease in the birth rate which is leading to high cost and the use of automation in the industry operation.  

Conclusion

In conclusion, Japanese invention and evolution in the automation and robotics industry in profound which is leading to a new dimension of the usage of technology in our daily lives. From smart homes to robotic machines, Japan leads the way in integrating automation with industrial and business applications. To overcome the difficulty in the storage of the workforce, there is the invention of different types of robots to make maximum usage in various fields.

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THE WILD ROBOT, the new Chris Sanders animated adventure from DreamWorks - adapted from Peter Brown's book series, finally carries a rock-solid official release date, and it's one a lot of us were suspecting for a while:

September 20, 2024...

Nice to see a DreamWorks movie actually get a concrete release date. Everything else is still weirdly up in the air. *But* it's actually good to get the date when you KNOW you're going to make it, otherwise, you're just whetting the mouths of investors. It appears the movie is full speed ahead, and the only thing that could possibly upset its final months of production is a possible animators/VFX strike when the Animation Guild contract is up in July. Maybe the movie will be finished by then? Who knows.

Anyways, it's probably smart that they locked the date around this time, instead of saying 2-3 years out that it's going to be released on a very specific date... And that's how you get the "c'mon, whaaaa?" when, say, Pixar delays something for a full year and a half. DreamWorks movies moved back years tons of times, they're quieter nowadays on what's on the horizon. If it were like 2013-times, we'd see a slate that goes up to 2028 and would be stacked to the brim with titles.

We don't even know if half of the titles DreamWorks announced were the works over the past 3-5 years are still even happening. THE WILD ROBOT announcement came right out of nowhere, throwing off *any* predictions I might've had about what the 2024 not-sequel movie from them would be. (I previously predicted RONAN BOYLE, from director Fergal Reilly.)

While there are rumblings of Universal/DreamWorks releasing movies on specific dates, some of which are unsourced as far as I'm concerned, the Universal website is up to date and only lists the studio's two 2024 movies. Nothing is hard-set for 2025 and beyond.

So... Anyways, fantastic news!

On the other hand...

Either Walt Disney Animation Studios is buckling up for an animator/vfx strike, or they are set to do some course-correction...

They appear to be, via an updated release schedule, skipping 2024 altogether. This comes from a pretty reliable scooper, but I want to take it with a grain of salt 'til the trades themselves or Disney say something:

Now, it could be a small error, because Pixar's Disney+ series WIN OR LOSE is entirely absent from the list... and this list includes a bunch of undated Disney+ shows... and that series is supposed to be out next year... Plus... There are some typing errors here and there, too, and usually Disney's theatrical slates are just for theatrical - no streaming. The presentation here isn't clean: There are some hyphens next to titles, no hyphens at all, some that are a combination of two. Usually the Disney slates have a nice clean presentation. Like this, for example...

I know, the example I used is very outdated, I'm just illustrating a point. So yeah, it could very well be fake...

But, given how STRANGE WORLD and WISH turned out at the box office, maybe course-correction is happening at that studio. Whatever that may look like... Evaluation on why the last two films didn't connect? The way they were released? Jennifer Lee stepping down as CCO? Less baby-ifying their movies during test screenings? I don't know. Whatever decision they make, I don't work there, I can't protest it, but I'll probably have my piece to say on here lol.

Either way, if true, that'll be a historic skip. Disney Animation only missed fall 2020 by a hair because of COVID-19, RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON would've been a Thanksgiving release that year but ended up opening in March 2021, sharing the year with the studio's fall title ENCANTO. So that's more of a world circumstances-driven thing than a creative/management one.

Disney Animation sat 2015 and 2017 out, as Pixar put out two those years: One in the summer, and one in WDAS' usual Thanksgiving slot. WDAS released two films in 2016 (ZOOTOPIA and MOANA), and they were *supposed* to release two in 2018 as well, but only released one: RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET. So that was a gap right there.

But ever since MEET THE ROBINSONS in 2007, they try to get one out a year, and typically in the Thanksgiving slot. The two exceptions were THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG (an inexplicable early December release, should've went to Thanksgiving instead that OLD DOGS movie, could've probably had more ground to run) and WINNIE THE POOH. (spring in Europe, in the summer against HARRY POTTER 8 in North America) But they don't always have to aim for that frame, and I think that sometimes hinders them. And as STRANGE WORLD and WISH show, it's not always a lucrative time to open something. If audiences don't want to see it, the choice of release date really does not matter.

But again, we'll see. I'd like them to take a breather and figure out how the next of batch of films will be, but I'll wait til official word gets out on this...

Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018)

While I didn't enjoy this film, that doesn't mean you won't. No matter what I say, the people involved in this project did it: they actually made a movie. That's something to be applauded. With that established...

Escape Plan might not have been a great film but it had a solid premise. It was a decent hit at the box office, which is why (I’m guessing) some greedy Chinese producers decided to turn this into a franchise. This is an awful film. It barely feels like a follow-up to the 2013 picture because it tosses the main case aside to focus on new characters in a moronic plot entirely devoid of fun.

Ray Breslin (Sylvester Stallone) has expanded his security company with newcomers Shu Ren (Huang Xiaoming), Jasper Kimbral (Wes Chatham) and Luke Graves (Jesse Metcalfe). Now they do more than simply test the security measures of top-security penitentiaries: they also rescue hostages. After Kimbral makes a bad call and a hostage is killed, Breslin fires him. A year later, Shu and his cousin Yusheng Ma (Chen Tang) are kidnapped and imprisonned in a high-tech facility. Overseen by robot guards, “Hades” is ruled by “The Zookeeper”, who forces his prisoners to fight. Win and you get rations. Lose and you walk away with nothing.

They probably only had Stallone, 50 Cent and Jaime King for a couple of days, just enough time to have them at the beginning and at the end of the movie. In the middle, we’re following new characters you wouldn't care about even if they had been involved since the franchise started. Immediately, you know this super prison thing is tied to Kimbral. He’s a tech genius (a.k.a. hacker wizard) and isn't happy about being fired so of course he’s got to be the mastermind behind the curtain. He would've gotten away with his secret operation too, if only he hadn't kidnapped one of his ex-co-workers' cousin. Or maybe the coincidence is that one of his ex-co-workers had someone worth kidnapping. This film is not concerned with whether things make sense. This is why The Zookeeper has people fight in MMA-style battles, why the prison has robot guards but inmates cook food, why there are forcefields everywhere when metal bars would’ve sufficed. The building looks like a rejected set from Tron: Legacy and when you find out where it is hidden, you’ll flip your lid. None of this makes ANY sense.

To prevent you from falling asleep, scenes featuring a new character played by David Bautista have been shot/spliced in. All of them feel like they come from a bargain-bin action movie, the kind you star in when your power to attract audiences has dwindled to nothing but the most dedicated and brainwashed fans. Desperate audiences might have a couple of laughs at the expense of the way-too-dedicated-and-simultaneously-useless henchmen or ridiculous characters we meet in the prison - my favourite being a trio of hackers who dress like vampires and repeat “We are Legion” over and over. Even so, there isn’t a moment of Escape Plan 2 that makes you wonder why you haven’t shut it off yet.

With each character more boring than the last, the plot being essentially a re-tread of the first, the action scenes looking like they were shot from inside a washing machine and none of the performers displaying any charisma, Escape Plan 2: Hades almost has an unintentional meta-quality. It becomes a mega-dungeon that extinguishes all hope of escape. 96 minutes? Might as well be a life sentence. (October 2, 2020)

Robot Dogs, Models in Flames, New Couple Alert: Inside Paris Fashion Week The nine-day Paris Fashion Week that just wrapped capped off another round of women's ready-to-wear shows for Fall 2023. This time last year the industry was grappling with Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine, but this season the shows carried on as usual with a few big storylines, including Balenciaga's make-it-or-break it show since last fall's scandal. Of all the cities, Paris solidified itself as the place for fashion stunts, with several happening on the runway at brands like Coperni and Heliot Emil. There were also some more solemn moments like tributes to deceased designers. Below, the biggest moments that had people talking from Paris Fashion Week.Vivienne Westwood and Paco Rabanne's First Shows Since Death of FoundersTwo fashion greats passed away in recent months: Paco Rabanne and Vivienne Westwood. The former, currently designed by Julien Dossena (who's never met Rabanne), offered a small tribute to the Spanish designer with a series of metal chainmail dresses for the finale, Rabanne's signatures. Andreas Kronthaler, who was Westwood's husband, presented his collection that featured several of the late designer's codes and even featured her image in a shirt for the opening look. Westwood's granddaughter Cora closed the show.No Major Celebrities at Balenciaga's First Show Since Campaign ScandalBalenciaga's shows under creative director Demna have been celebrity entertainment magnets, with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West often the star attractions on the front row. But since the campaign scandal that rocked the brand last fall, Demna made clear that the brand's next show would be about the clothes. Vogue Business reported that Korean-American rapper Big Matthew, Taiwanese singer Rainie Yang and Chinese actress Song were among the few VIPs in attendance (that 700 guests were mostly industry people). Avril Lavigne and Tyga: The Most Surprising Couple at PFWThe first question one everyone's minds was: What is Avril Lavigne doing at Paris Fashion Week? The next one was: Why is she always around Tyga, her frequent front row seat buddy? With dating rumors circling the pair (Lavigne and her ex-fiancé Mod Sun recently called it quits), they seemed to signal a budding romance at the Mugler fragrance party for Hunter Shafer, where the duo was spotted kissing in out in the open. I guess Paris can do that to someone!A Model Was Set on Fire at the Heliot Emil Show*Insert Alicia Keys voice* This (model) is on fire! Literally. On the second day of PFW, Danish label Heliot Emil had a model strutting the runway covered in fire. Well, the model was wearing a protective ensemble but, still — flames followed behind him. Heliot Emil, started by brothers Julius and Victor Juul was founded in 2016 and aims to rewrite predisposed expectations. The “Collected Forms” collection was presented to front row attendees like Avril Lavigne, Tyga and Mia Khalifa. Zendaya's Only Show Fashion Month Show Was Louis VuittonIt wasn't until the penultimate day of Fashion Month that fans finally caught a glimpse of Zendaya, the surprise front row guest Louis Vuitton's show. While she's been an LV girl many times over the years, she's recently become more associated with the house of Valentino, where she was named an ambassador in 2020 and has only been to their fashion shows since. (She didn't attend their show this season.) Is this the start of something new with Louis Vuitton? For the grand outing, she was accompanied by her stylist Law Roach and sat next to actress Emma Stone (a longtime Louis Vuitton face).Horses Everywhere at the Stella McCartney ShowFashion sure loves a horse moment (see: that one Chanel couture show, also that time Casablanca had a full herd of them). And it was Stella McCartney's turn for her Fall 2023 show, which featured live horses on the runway provided by the horse whisperer and rescuer Jean-Francois Pigno.According to the show notes, the inclusion of horses was a celebration of McCartney's "lifelong love of horses and animals." Remember when she featured them in a collection for Chloé? (Which Olivia Rodrigo recently wore to a red carpet.) The brand pointed out that the horses have been trained in a cruelty-free way to acknowledge body movements and respond in certain manners, without using physical touch or stimulation.Valentino Gives a New Meaning to Black TieThe invitation to the Valentino show said "black tie" (Pierpaolo Piccioli loves a theme, last season it was "Club Couture" and don't forget "Pink PP.") But it was anything but traditional, as the runway show demonstrated. Sure, there were ball gowns and eveningwear, but most of them literally had black neckties incorporated in some way. Piccioli said he got inspired by his daughter who would raid his closet and picked out a white shirt and black tie of his for a night out with friends. The standout version was a white gown with a collar and tie that blended into the dress.Anrealage's Color-Changing Light TechnologyTechnology is advancing but the future of fashion is also ever-changing. And the two worlds came together at the Anrealage show held at the Thėâtre de la Madeleine. Audiences thought the silhouettes they were looking at were part of the show. Little did they know when UV lights were brought on stage, it exposed the true colors of the designs.Tokyo-based designer and founder Kunihiko Morinaga has long been known intertwining fashion and technology. He started working with light dependent properties nearly a decade ago and has been experimenting with them in his designs since such as a Fendi collab in 2021. A Pair of Debuts: Harris Reed at Nina Ricci and Ludovic de Saint Sernin at Ann DemeulemeesterThe big debuts this Fashion Month were saved for Paris, where British-American designer Harris Reed unveiled his first collection for Nina Ricci and the French designer Ludovic de Saint Sernin took on the venerable legacy of Belgian pioneer Ann Demeulemeester. Reed teased his first collection for Nina Ricci with a trio of red carpet looks in the months leading up the show: on Harry Styles, Adele and Florence Pugh. De Saint Sernin, meanwhile, leaned big into the brand's archives and featured topless models cupping their breasts, an homage to past collections where models did the same gesture.Coperni's Robot DogsCoperni, who went viral last season after spray painting a dress on Bella Hadid, gave showgoers another fashion-tech moment this season with Black Mirror-esque robot dogs appeared on the runway. The canine robots helped the model Rianne Van Rompaey undress and gave her a lucky smooch before heading off to walk. https://www.papermag.com/paris-fashion-week-fall-2023-2659556423.html