#30/04/2019

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Brand safety” killed Jezebel

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library this Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

Progressives: if you want to lose to conservatives, all you need to do is reflexively praise and support everything conservatives turn into a culture-war issue, without considering whether they might be right. Because sometimes…they're right.

Remember early in the Trump presidency, when conservatives all woke up and discovered that America's spy agencies – excuse me, "the intelligence community" – were dirty-tricking psychos who run amok, lawlessly sabotaging democracy? Progressives have been shouting this ever since Hoover's FBI tried to blackmail MLK into killing himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

But millions of progressives forgot about COINTELPRO, CIA dirty tricks and CIA mass spying when this "intelligence community" temporarily set out to wrong-foot Trump. Remember James Comey votive candles?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/08/30/james-comey-fbi-memo-leaks-trump-inspector-general-report-column/2157705001/

Anthropologists have a name for this phenomenon, in which one side reverses its positions because their sworn enemies have done so. It's called schizmogenesis, and it goes like this: "If they hate it, we love it":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

Schizmogenesis is an equal-opportunity delusion. Within living memory, white evangelicals supported abortion, because their sworn enemies – Catholics – opposed it. Some of those white Boomer women who voted Trump because abortion was literally the only issue they cared about held the opposite position on abortion not so long ago – and completely forgot about it:

https://text.npr.org/734303135

The main purpose of the culture war isn't immiserating marginalized people – that's its effect, but its purpose is to distract low-information turkeys (working people) so they'll vote for Christmas (the ongoing seizure of power by American oligarchs). For the funders of conservative movement politics, the cruelty isn't the point, it's merely the tactic. The point is power:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/09/turkeys-voting-for-christmas/#culture-wars

Which brings me to "woke capitalism." Conservative string-pullers have whipped up their base about the threat of companies embracing social causes. They (erroneously) claim that corporations have progressive values, and that big business is thumbing the scales for causes they despise. The purpose here isn't to sow distrust of capitalism per se. Rather, it's to stampede talk-radio-addled supporters into backing the oligarchy's agenda. Remember when culture war leaders told their base to support being gouged on credit-card junk fees "to own the libs?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

That's schizmogenesis working against the conservative rank-and-file, tricking them into taking the side of a cartel of wildly profitable payment processors who are making billions by picking their pockets (credit card fees are up 40% since the covid lockdowns), because (checks notes), Target pays these profiteers a lot to process its payments, and Target sells Pride merch (no, really):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

It's easy to point and laugh at conservative dopes when they're tricked into shooting themselves in the balls to own the libs. This is not a hypothetical example:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/28/holographic-nano-layer-catalyser/#musketfuckers

But progressives do it, too, particularly when they embrace monopolies as a force for positive social change. Remember 2019, when people got excited about playing loud pop music at Nazi rallies in the hopes that the monopoly video platforms' copyright filters would make any video from that rally impossible to post?

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/23/clever-hack-that-will-end-badly-playing-copyrighted-music-during-nazis-rallies-so-they-cant-be-posted-to-youtube/

I warned then that if this tactic worked, it would be used by cops to prevent you from recording them when they're macing you or splitting your skull with a billyclub, and yup, within a couple years, cops were blaring Taylor Swift music in hopes of preventing the public from posting videos of their illegal conduct:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/07/moral-hazard-of-filternets/#dmas

Conservatives are (partially) right about woke capitalism. It is a threat to democracy. Concentrating the power to decide who gets to speak and what they get to say into the hands of five or six corporations, mostly run by mediocre billionaires, is bad for society. The moderation decisions of giant platforms are a form of (commercial) censorship, even these don't violate the First Amendment:

https://locusmag.com/2020/01/cory-doctorow-inaction-is-a-form-of-action/

(The progressive delusion that censorship only occurs when the First Amendment is violated is a wild own-goal, one that excuses, for example, the decision by school book-fair monopolist Scholastic to remove books about queers and Black and brown people from its offerings as a purely private matter without consequences for free speech):

https://www.themarysue.com/scholastic-response-to-authors-and-illustrators-on-diverse-books/

Conservatives are only partially right about woke capitalism, though. Here's what they're wrong about: corporations don't have values. Target isn't selling Pride tees because they support progressive causes, they're selling them because it seems like a good way to increase returns to their shareholders. Individuals – even top executives – at Target might endorse the cause, but the company will only durably support the cause if that endorsement is profitable, which means that when it stops being profitable, the company will stop supporting the cause:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/23/business/target-lgbtq-merchandise/index.html

The idea that corporations have values isn't merely stupid, it's very dangerous. The Hobby Lobby decision – which allows corporations to deny basic health-care expenses for women on the basis that a Bronze Age mystic wouldn't approve of an IUD – rests on the ideological foundation that corporate personhood includes corporate values:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_Stores,_Inc.

Citizens United – the idea that corporations should be allowed to funnel unlimited funds to politicians who'll sell out the public good in favor of investor profits – also depends on a form of corporate personhood that includes values:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

There are undeniably instances in which corporate monopoly power benefits progressive causes, but these are side-effects of corporate power's main purpose, namely: taking money and power away from working people and giving it to rich people. That is what monopoly power is for.

Which brings me to ad-tech, "brand safety," and the demise of Jezebel, the 16 year old feminist website whose shuttering was just announced by its latest owner, G/O Media:

https://www.metafilter.com/201349/This-is-the-end-of-Jezebel-and-that-feels-really-really-bad

Jezebel's demise is the direct result of monopoly power. Jezebel writes about current affairs – sex, politics, abortion, and other important issues of great moment and significance. When we talk about journalism as a public good, necessary for a healthy civic life, this is what we mean. But unfortunately for Jezebel – and any other news outlet covering current events – there are vast, invisible forces that exist solely to starve this kind of coverage of advertising revenue.

Writing for the independent news site 404 Media, reporter Emanuel Maiberg and former Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler go deep on the "brand safety" industry, whose mission is to assist corporations in blocking their ads from showing up alongside real news:

https://www.404media.co/advertisers-dont-want-sites-like-jezebel-to-exist/

Maiberg and Koebler explain how industry associations like the World Federation of Marketers' Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) promulgate "frameworks" to help advertisers automatically detect and exclude real news from consideration when their ads are placed:

https://www.peer39.com/blog/garm-standards

This boycott makes use of scammy "AI" technology like "sentiment and emotional analysis" to determine whether an article is suitable for monetization. These parameters are then fed to the ad-tech duopoly's ad auction system, so Google and Meta (who control the vast majority of online advertising) can ensure that real news is starved of cash.

But reality is not brand-safe, and high quality, reputable journalistic outlets are concerned with reality, which means that the "brand safe" outlets that attract the most revenue are garbage websites that haven't yet been blacklisted by the ad-safety cartel, leading to major brands' ads showing up alongside notorious internet gross-out images like "goatse":

https://www.404media.co/sqword-game-dev-sneaks-goatse-onto-a-dozen-sites-that-stole-his-game/

More than a fifth of "brand safe" ad placements end up on "made for advertising" sites, which 404 Media describe as "trash websites that plagiarize content, are literally spam, pay for fake traffic, or are autogenerated websites that serve no other purpose than capturing ad dollars":

https://www.ana.net/miccontent/show/id/rr-2023-06-ana-programmatic-transparency-first-look

Despite all this, many progressives have become cheerleaders for "brand safety," as a countervailing force to the drawdown of trust and safety at online platforms, which led to the re-platforming of Nazis, QAnon conspiratorialists, TERFs, and other overt elements of the reactionary movement's vanguard on Twitter and Facebook. Articles about ads for major brands showing up alongside Nazi content on Twitter are now a staple of progressive reporting, presented as evidence of Elon Musk's lack of business acumen. The message of these stories is "Musk is bad at business because he's allowing Nazis on his platform, which will send advertisers bolting for the exits to avoid brand-safety crises."

This isn't wrong. Musk is a bad businessman (he's a good scam artist, though). Twitter is hemorrhaging advertisers, notwithstanding the desperate (and easily debunked) stats-juking its "CEO," Linda Yaccarino, floats onstage at tech conferences:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/11/math-problem-for-linda-yaccarino-if-90-of-the-top-advertisers-have-come-back-but-are-only-spending-10-of-what-they-used-to-how-screwed-are-you/

But progressives are out of their minds if they think the primary effect of the brand safety industry is punishing Elon Musk for secretly loving Nazis. The primary effect of brand safety is killing reality-based coverage of the news of the day, and since reality has a well-known anti-conservative bias, anything that works against the reality-based community is ultimately good for oligarchy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

We can't afford to let schizmogenesis stampede us into loving things just because conservative culture warriors have been momentarily tricked into hating them as part of oligarchs' turkeys-voting-for-Christmas project. "Swivel-eyed loons hate it, so it must be good," is a worse-than-useless heuristic for navigating complex issues:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

A much better rule of thumb is "If oligarchs love something, it's probably bad." Almost without exception, things that are good for oligarchs are bad for the rest of us. I mean, this whole shuttering of Jezebel starts with an oligarch imposing his will on millions of other people. Jezebel began life as a Gawker Media site, beloved of millions of readers, destroyed when FBI informant Peter Thiel secretly funded Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against the publisher in a successful bid to put them out of business to retaliate for their unfavorable coverage of Thiel:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/hogan-thiel-gawker-trial/554132/

This, in turn, put Jezebel under the ownership of G/O Media, who are unwilling to pay for a human salesforce that would – for example – sell advertising space on Jezebel to sex-toy companies or pro-abortion groups. G/O has been on a killing spree, shuttering beloved news outlets like Deadspin:

https://deadspin.com/this-is-how-things-work-now-at-g-o-media-1836908201

G/O's top exec, an oligarch named Jim Spanfeller who answers to the private equity looters at Great Hill Partners, is bent on ending reality-based coverage in favor of "letting robots shit out brand safe AI-assisted articles about generic topics":

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ai-articles-disinformation-future-g-o-media-rcna95944

Three quarters of a century ago, Orwell coined a term to describe this kind of news: duckspeak,

It was not the man’s brain that was speaking it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words but it was not speech in true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness like the quacking of a duck.

When investors and analysts speak of "content" (rather than, say, "journalism"), this is what they mean – a warm slurry of platitudes, purged of any jagged-edged fragments to render it a perfectly suitable carrier for commercial messages targeted based on surveillance data about the "consumer" whose eyeballs are upon it.

This aversion to reality has been present among corporate decisionmakers since the earliest days, but the consolidation of power among large firms – ad-tech firms, online platforms, and "brands" themselves – makes corporate realityphobia much easier to turn into, well, reality, giving advertisers the fine-grained power to put Jezebel and every site like it out of business.

As Koebler and Maiberg's headliine so aptly puts it, "Advertisers Don’t Want Sites Like Jezebel to Exist."

The reason to deplore Nazis on Twitter is because they are Nazis, not because their content isn't brand-safe. The short-term wins progressives gain by legitimizing a corporate veto over what we see online are vastly overshadowed by the most important consequence of brand safety: the mass extinction of reality-based reporting. Reality isn't brand safe. If you're in the reality based community, brand safety should be your sworn enemy, even if they help you temporarily get a couple of Nazis kicked off Twitter.

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/2023/11/11/ad-jacency/#brand-safety

[thealieninhiding]

The Katie McGrath Archives (WIP)

A repository of my ongoing digital archeology & archival work please contact me if you have anything to contribute and buy me a coffee if you value my content

Updates

(last updated 2024-07-03)

2024-07-03

Scans:

2014-02-07 London Times - Dracula sets

Audio:

(Un)likeminded 2x02 How to Survive The Apocalypse

2024-05-24

Video:

2017 Katie McGrath interview [CW|KMcGsource]

2017 Supergirl Season 3 Sweet dreams (are made of this) Music Video

2017 CW SDCC Promo Supergirl and Arrow

2019-01-01 The CW Promo Open To All

2021-04-25 Supergirl Season 6 Katie McGrath Lena Luthor

2021-09-15 Supergirl Season 6 Katie McGrath Reflecting on Supergirl

2024-05-22

Audio:

Interview - 2009-07-17 Katie McGrath Mr Media interview

Interview - 2009-10-15 Geek Syndicate Merlin BTS special

Video:

BTS - 2008-10-08 Blue Peter Merlin BTS

Events - 2009 TV Choice Awards Digital Spy interview

Events - Getty Videos of 2009 TV Choice Awards, 2010 Merlin Series 3 launch, 2011 W.E. premiere, 2017 King Arthur Premiere

2024-05-17

Archived interviews

2008-12-07 Tribune Magazine - What Katie Did

2011-10-14 What's on TV - Merlin's Katie McGrath- 'Bad girls have more fun!'

2012-12-03 Fanhattan Blog - Colin Morgan, Katie McGrath and Bradley James on Season 5 and The Series Finale

2018-08-01 The TV Junkies - Supergirl SDCC 2018 Interviews- Lena’s Impractical Lab Outfits, the Return of Reporter Kara and a More Grounded Season 4

Audio

HHush samples

Interview - 2009-2011 Sci-fi Talk rewind merlin the series specials episode 1

Interview - 2011? Merlin S4 Sci-fi talk byte katie mcgrath on morgana

Interview - 2013 BBC Radio 1xtra part 1 & part 2

(Un)likeminded 1x02 While You Were Dreaming

Trees a crowd- Irish folklore segment

Magazine scans

2008-09-20 Radio Times

2009-06-08 TV Week (Aus)

2010-09-05 Sunday Express

2010-09-30 Totally Merlin Magazine

2011-12 Total Film

2012-03-14 Sci-Fi Now

2012-10-06 Radio Times

2013-04-06 Irish independent

2013-09-02 Marie-Claire (UK)

2013-12 Instyle

2013-12 Total Film

Video:

Fans - 2012-04-16 Merlin4 [carlospyrrhus]

Fans - 2017-08-30 Supergirl cast together on set [Joyce Law]

Interview - 2009-09-?? Merlin S2 audio interview with Katie McGrath [BJsRealm] part 1

Interview - 2010-09-06 Merlin Series 3 - BBC Radio 1xtra Interview with Angel Coulby & Katie McGrath [BJsrealm]

Interview - 2011-10-14 Merlin S4 Colin Morgan, Eoin Macken Katie McGrath on The Late Late Show

Interview - 2012-07-15 Colin Morgan and Katie McGrath at SDCC 2012 - innerSPACE [merlinnetwork2]

Interview - 2012-07-18 Katie McGrath Talks Merlin At Comic Con 2012 [ThinkHeroTV]

Interview - 2012-10-25 BBC Radio 1 Breakfast - Colin & Katie part 1 & part 2 [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2012-12-03 Merlin S5 Katie McGrath interview international press day [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2012-12-03 Colin, Bradley, Katie phone interview [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2013-11-09 Katie McGrath on BBC One Saturday Kitchen [BJsRealm]

Interview - 2019-07-22 ENTREVISTA SUPERGIRL Elenco fala sobre a nova temporada [Warner Channel Brasil]

Interview - 2019-07-23 Melissa Benoist Teases Directing An Episode Of 'Supergirl' [ET Canada]

Interview - 2020-02-21 ‘Supergirl’ Celebrates 100th Episode [ET Canada]

Panels - 2011-07-28 Merlin Comic Con 2011 Panel [ThinkHeroTV]

[fictionfixations]

what if bridon arc but i pay attention to the times (ep 1) (at least the ones that i can notice since some look like they have something but then i cant make it out so shrug)

im really bad at dates so bear with me here. dates will be added to time when i can see it on that frame but unless stated otherwise just assume theyre following each other in order

23:10 - they hide in the darkroom

23:11 - he pauses before rushing to xiaoshi who is laying on the ground. xiaoshi takes his hand, apologies and tells him 'save them'

00:04 - lu guang is upstairs getting the photo (HE SPENT AN HOUR WITH XIAOSHIS DEAD BODY IM-)

00:05 (09-13) - he goes back in time

17:32 - he ends up back in the past (assumedly. his watch is missing but its the time on the photo)

05:29 (04-12) (it then ticks to 05:30) - bruhs sitting on his bed thinking. his eyes are still gold

05:31 - he puts his hands down

05:33 - he replies to xiaoshis text, see below (THATS AFTER TWELVE HOURS PASSED IM. i didnt think about this cause they didnt really do much time travel so i wasnt thinking of like seeing it in the present but that it happened in the past so i. om.)

08:00 - xiaoshi is in his bed looking at his phone, at lu guang's contact (google translate tells me xiaoshi tells him that they should play basketball together tomorrow)

when he stops by at the time where he probably helps them paint the building his eyes are normal colored

13:30 (06-09) - xiaoshi is there to take pictures of the main coser (lu guang) of the anime club

12:30 probably..? (next day) - they arrive at the convention

13:34 - they get the kung fu master package (the bag) and qiao ling leaves to get it

14:35 (06-10) - qiao ling exits the line after getting the collector's edition of kung fu master 7

DONT BE SHY SHOW ME THE TIME

15:54 - lu guang gets the display book and opens it

15:55 - hes flipping through it

i cant read this. google translate says it says '13:30 start shooting' so i assume when they start taking pictures at the con

'13:35 separate actions' when qiao ling left to get the game?

'14:45 lost items' assumedly around when qiao ling and miaomiao switch bags (or maybe when she realized they had switched bags?)

'15:55 found the photo' the photo in the display book of her?

15:56 - lu guang says he knows how to find her through divination

15:57 - he tells them to close their eyes, xiaoshi protests but qiao ling says to give it a try

15:59 - hes about to look through the photo

16:00 - he looks (that is 16 right?)

(looking through photo) 14:35 - qiao ling and miaomiao say goodbye and switch bags

22:52 - miaomiao flashback (how do i describe this)

(past) signing event of RanXi Chronicles at 15:00 next saturday?

16:59 (06-10 2019) - xiaoshi talks about adding his divination (if it was real) as a side gig to the studio

17:00 - lu guang says he has to leave, qiao ling tells them to hurry up. he turns back but xiaoshi grabs his wrist and brings him inside

(flashback) 14:50 - vivian getting zhou xun into investing (also same time when he gives her 100k seemingly? or he was thinking it)

7:20 (pm?) - they beg lu guang to do his magic thing (I think? the seconds hand keeps confusing me). lu guang tells them to get out as his condition

next day at 7:20-ish pm - lu guang has their phones on call and puts one in xiaoshi's breast pocket

8 pm - xiaoshi meets vivian who thinks he is zhou xun

21:46 - vivian seemingly texted the bad guy (idk name) that xiaoshi (who she thinks is zhou xun) took the bait (again im using google translate so idk)

??? - vivian says that lu guang could get hurt (as an example, if he wanted to run away if he joined them?)

whatever this time is - vivian pretends to hurt him and has him fake his death

the guys enter the room

revealed vivian betrayed the bad guys, and xiaoshi n lu guang run away

11:30 - zhou xun sees the news of vivian being a suspect (his text to her is about meeting again since he missed it yesterday)

7:20 am (probably, its bright outside) - xiaoshi tells him that he worries about lu guang disappearing. lu guang tells him he can stay in the photo studio. they do the clap that means theyre partners for life

that.. should be it?

[vintagelasvegas]

Construction of Fremont Street Experience, c. November 1994

Photo by Pam G.

Facing a stagnant economy and fearing that mega-resort projects on the Strip would further drain visitors to downtown casinos, Las Vegas City Council and downtown casino execs collaborated to create an attraction downtown which would become Fremont Street Experience.

Timeline of Fremont Street Experience

'91: Feb., Mirage Resorts chairman Steve Wynn suggests Venice-style canal attraction for Fremont St. Jul., City council forms committee to study downtown revitalization.

'92: Jan., Downtown Progress Association hears redevelopment proposals from three firms, rejects all. Apr., City begins purchasing property for future development use. Jun., Architect Jon Jerde presents plan for Fremont Street Experience.

'93: May, LVCVA approves $8M funding for FSE. Aug., City Council approves tax increase for financing the construction. Nov., City begins procedures to condemn property of owners who refuse to vacate on 400 block of Fremont St.

'94: Mar., Demolition of 400 block Fremont St. Sep. 7, Fremont St closed to traffic, and construction begins.

'95: Jul., Construction completed. Inaugurated Dec. 14.

2004: The canopy's 2 million incandescent bulbs replaced with 12.5 million LED lamps. The new light show dubbed Viva Vision debuts Jun. 14.

2014: Slotzilla zip line opened Apr. 27 (lower zipline) and Aug. 31 (upper zoomline).

2019: The Viva Vision display is rebuilt with 49 million LED lamps, competed Dec. 31. The new canopy can operate in daylight hours.

Demolition of Fremont & 4th (block 35), 1994. City of Las Vegas acquired the businesses on this block, partly through eminent domain, and demolished everything to make way for the Fremont Street Experience parking garage. Last building standing is Cornet 5-10-15 (401 Fremont). Photo taken from the garage of Fitzgerald’s Hotel & Casino by Roadsidepictures.

Section of scale model of Fremont Street Experience. Photographed Dec. 15, 1994, by Greg Cava. A 22-foot long scale model of Fremont Street Experience was built at the office of Atlandia Design, which supervised the creation of the attraction. Greg Cava Photograph Collection (PH-00399). UNLV Special Collections and Archives.

The “Vegas Vic” sign re-installed at Pioneer Club, December 23, 1994 - Photo by Las Vegas News Bureau. The sign was removed days earlier while the platform was extended from the building and the character’s hat was shortened, to accommodate the construction of the Fremont Street Experience canopy. The “Vegas Vickie” sign at Glitter Gulch casino was also lowered to fit under the canopy. Before the work was done on the two signs, a marriage ceremony was held on Fremont St for Vic and Vickie. Vic’s best man was Vaughn Cannon of YESCO. Guest of honor was Edna Sherrill who had played a “Vegas Vickie” character as a hostess at Pioneer Club in the 60s.

Sources include: Creative thinking needed downtown. Review-Journal, 2/25/91; H. Stutz. Wynn proposes Venice-style downtown project. Review Journal, 5/21/91; J. Gallant. Council, casinos plan revamp panel. Review-Journal, 7/18/91; C. Scarbrough. City, casino execs discuss three themes. Review-Journal, 1/30/92; C. Scarbrough. Megaresort projects threat to downtown. Review-Journal, 1/31/92; C. Scott. “Tourists to pick up most of project tab.” Las Vegas Sun, 4/17/94. S. McKinnon. “Downtown celebrates neon nuptial.” Review Journal, 12/17/94. Chris Jones. A vision of things to come. Review-Journal, 6/9/04.

[staydandy]

The Lost Tomb 2: Explore With the Note (2021) - 云顶天宫 - Whump List

List by StayDandy Synopsis : The iron triangle: Wu Xie, Zhang Qi Ling and Wang Pang Zi find themselves on a train headed for the mountainous Korean border in search of a mysterious, mythical palace in a world of glaciers, avalanches, and blizzards. They have no idea why Wu San Sheng has sent the message that brought them all together again, but they soon discover that they are not alone in their search for the peak that holds the palace. As they move deeper within the maze of mountain tunnels, all of them begin to wonder if this adventure will be their final quest. (MDL) AKA : The Lost Tomb 2: Heavenly Palace on the Clouds

Whumpees : Wu Xie played by Bai Shu (center) • Zhang Qi Ling played by Zhao Dong Ze (right) • Wang Pang Zi played by Zhang Bo Yu (left)

Country : 🇨🇳 China Genres : Action, Adventure, Mystery, Supernatural, Bromance

Notes : This is a Full Whump List • Adapted from book 4 of "The Grave Robbers' Chronicles" (盗墓笔记) by Kennedy Xu (南派三叔) • I think this is my least favorite Wu Xie actor, but I love the actor who plays Pang Zi (it's the same one as in Wrath of the Sea) • Favorite episode is pink • Suggested watch order of series (not including movies & spin-offs) : – 1. Mystic Nine (2016) – 2. The Lost Tomb (2015) – 3. The Lost Tomb 2: Wrath of the Sea (2019) >> 4. The Lost Tomb 2: Explore with the Note (2021) – 5. The Lost Tomb 3: Ultimate Note (2020) – 6. Adventure Behind the Bronze Door (2024) – 7. Tomb of the Sea (2018) – 8. Reunion: Sound of the Providence (2020) – 9. Reunion: Sound of the Providence 2 (2020)

Related Lists : The Lost Tomb (2015) - Full List • The Lost Tomb 2: Wrath of the Sea (2019) - Full List • The Lost Tomb 3: Ultimate Note (2020) - Full List • Adventure Behind the Bronze Door (2024) - Full List

Episodes on List : 17 Total Episodes : 24

*Spoilers below*

01 : [flashback] Wu Xie trapped in collapsed tomb rubble … [present] hospitalized, conscious but unresponsive, [flashback] trapped in the rubble.. [present] wandering around barefoot, unsteady, dizzy, in & out of consciousness … attacked, cloth over mouth, injected with something; pain, seizure, dropped out of car unconscious … nightmare … rolls down a hill, hits a tree … ensnared in a trap, thrown around & tied up.. Wang Pang Zi tied up & dragged in the same trap … bit by a snake

02 : Face swollen from bee stings … scratched by a poisoned arrow, passes out … cared for, fever

04 : Wu Xie dizzy, unsteady … Wu Xie, Zhang Qi Ling, & Pang Zi exhausted … Wu Xie & Pang Zi knocked out with gas

05 : (at end) Wu Xie & Pang Zi almost fall into a ravine

06 : … continued from previous ep. ... Wu Xie & Pang Zi almost fall into a ravine

08 : Wu Xie exhausted, unsteady … collapses, suffering from hypoxia (low oxygen), passes out.. hallucinating.. dragged down a hill

11 : Falls off a cliff, caught by the safety line

14 : Kicked, hit his head, knocked out … Pang Zi hallucinating … Wu Xie in a daze, unresponsive … (@ 26:30-28:57, 38:43-40:45 gross many-legged bugs, including a giant one .. I srsly had to skip most of this .. I can't with these things) … shock

15 : Pang Zi grabbed by a nasty giant bug … (at end) Wu Xie choked

16 : … continued from previous ep. ... Choked

17 : Qi Ling not feeling well.. cuts his own fingers

18 : Wu Xie grabbed by a monster (thankfully not another bug) & dropped from a great height … (@ 5:14-6:50 more fucking bugs) … wakes, hurt from the fall … passed out/sleeping, wakes coughing, dehydrated, passes out again.. wakes coughing again, chest pain, helped to walk … weaker, blurry vision … wakes from sleep with pain … rib pain, coughing.. Pang Zi sore from being dropped from a great height … Wu Xie has nightmare, pain

19 : (@ 8:23-8:51 gross bug stuff) … Coughing, rib pain … pukes

20 : (near end) Bit

21 : Panic, hyperventilating … attacked … (@ 31:23-32:40, 33:59-35:32 bugs!) falls off a platform, spits up blood.. cared for, chest pain

22 : Coughing, pain

24 : (big bug demon thing) … Held hostage, gun to his head.. Pang Zi tied up

More Whump Lists for this show: love-me-a-lotta-whump

[jetix]

2019-04-30

[earlycuntsets]

mcr shows on youtube pt. 4 (2011 - 2023) last one :]

-> pt. 1 (2002 - 2005)

-> pt. 2 (2005 - 2007)

-> pt. 3 (2007 - 2011)

08/05/2011 pnc bank arts center holmdel nj - the academy is my beautiful romance

08/13/2011 hersheypark stadium hershey pa - the academy is my beautiful romance

08/20/2011 first midwest bank amphitheater tinley park il - the academy is my beautiful romance

08/26/2011 little john's farm reading england - em

08/31/2011 rogers arena vancouver canada - catie cunningham

09/03/2011 usana amphitheater west valley city utah - delaney nye

09/04/2011 comfort dental amphitheater greenwood village co - the academy is my beautiful romance

09/09/2011  capitol federal park at sandstone amphitheater bonner springs ks - the academy is my beautiful romance

09/11/2011 dte energy music theater clarkston mi - justanotherkilljoy

09/18/2011 farm bureau live at virginia beach va - the academy is my beautiful romance

09/20/2011 verizon wireless amphitheater charlotte nc - the academy is my beautiful romance

1/22/2012 gold coast parklands gold coast australia - the academy is my beautiful romance

02/03/2012 adelaide showground adelaide australia - the academy is my beautiful romance

02/05/2012 mccallum park perth australia - myxinfinitexromance

05/19/2012 north beach asbury park asbury park nj - ryan hanratty

12/20/2019 the shrine expo hall los angeles ca - gabe havel photo

05/16/2022 the eden project day one st austell england - the academy is my beautiful romance

05/17/2022 the eden project day two st austell england - the academy is my beautiful romance

05/21/2022 stadium mk milton keynes england - TheChickenGiraffe

05/24/2022 royal hospital kilmainham dublin ireland - the academy is my beautiful romance

05/28/2022 sofia gardens cricket ground cardiff wales - the academy is my beautiful romance

06/04/2022 bologna sonic park arena parco north italy - the academy is my beautiful romance

06/06/2022 olympiahalle munich germany - the academy is my beautiful romance

06/07/2022 budapest park budapest hungary - the academy is my beautiful romance

06/09/2022 progresja warsaw poland - the academy is my beautiful romance

06/11/2022 o2 arena prague czech republic - the academy is my beautiful romance

06/13/2022 stora scenen gröna lund stockholm sweden - live from stockholm

08/19/2022 paycom center oklahoma city ok - tony

08/23/2022 bridgestone arena nashville tn - the academy is my beautiful romance

08/24/2022 heritage bank center cincinnati oh - the academy is my beautiful romance

08/29/2022 wells fargo philadelphia pa - ronaldb2985

08/30/2022 mvp arena albany ny - the academy is my beautiful romance

09/05/2022 scotia bank toronto ca - the academy is my beautiful romance

09/16/2022 riot fest douglass park chicago il - geoffrey gardner

09/20/2022 prudential center newark nj - deadhoarse

09/24/2022 fla live arena sunrise fl - the academy is my beautiful romance

10/03/2022 tacoma dome tacoma wa - seattle concerts

10/05/2022 oakland arena oakland ca - HisoKu

10/07/2022 t-mobile arena las vegas nv - wormspeddler (smeagles)

10/08/2022 aftershock discovery park sacramento ca - the academy is my beautiful romance

10/09/2022 barclays center brooklyn ny - the academy is my beautiful romance

10/15/2022 kia forum inglewood ca - the academy is my beautiful romance

10/23/2022 when we were young day day two las vegas - the academy is my beautiful romance

10/29/2022 when we were young fest las vegas nv - PichyJr

11/18/2022 autódromo hermanos rodríguez mexico city mexico - leashalia

03/11/2023 the outer fields at western springs auckland new zealand (soundcheck) - the academy is my beautiful romance

03/23/2023 qudos bank arena sydney australia - the academy is my beautiful romance

-> pt. 1 (2002 - 2005)

-> pt. 2 (2005 - 2007)

-> pt. 3 (2007 - 2011)

[autumnslance]

LynMars's FFXIV Write 2024 Master Post

We're back again! The list and links for all of my completed prompts for this year's FFXIV Write. Stats and ramblings about writing will go under the Read More cut. Eventually these will be revised in some manner and tossed onto Ao3.

Asterisks again mean there's wolship nonsense happening.

01. Steer - Vignettes of less sociable times over Aeryn's life. 02. Horizon - WoL at the end of Ultima Thule, EW 6.0. 03. Tempest - WoL returns to Amaurot to contemplate, EW 6.4. 04. Reticent - C'oretta & Dark Autumn have a chat. Sort of. 05. Stamp - Aeryn finds a memento while cleaning, post-EW 6.0 06. Halcyon - Tanzel, Emelia, & understanding grief. Backstory. 07. Morsel - Zenos heading to Camp Broken Glass, EW 6.0. 08. Free Day! 09. Lend an Ear - Emperor Varis is very much alone. StB patches. 10. Stable - Hydaelyn as the avatar of Light. Endwalker. 11. Surrogate - Weird West AU. Unexpected new roles for the Strikers. 12. Quarry* - Dominants AU. Thavnair comes to Tural's aid. DT 7.0. 13. Butte - Dark Autumn versus seedkin in Xak Tural. DT 7.0. 14. Telling - WoL reflects on Emet-Selch's expected reaction. EW 6.0. 15. Free Day! 16. Third-Rate - Aeryn's annoyed by the Unbound. DT Role Quests. 17. Sally - Dark pays a final visit to a traitor, post-StB 4.1. 18. Hackneyed* - Aeryn, Thancred, & terrible literature. 19. Taken - A young wood warder tries to save his sibling. Backstory. 20. Duel - Wuk Lamat's challenge does not go as expected. DT 7.0. 21. Shade - WoL ruminates on some of their ghosts. Thru DT 7.0. 22. Free Day! 23. On Cloud Nine - A chocobo & her Warrior of Light. End ShB 5.0. 24. Bar - 2 different adventurers starting out. Legacy & ARR. 25. Perpetuity - Aeryn, Deryk, & questions of faith. EW 24man raid. 26. Zip - C'oretta helping out Hamon at the Coliseum. Technically DT. 27. Memory - In a future, music makes Iyna remember. EW Patches. 28. Deleterious - Aeryn & Shale discuss regulators & history. DT 7.0. 29. (Free) Deleterious 2* - Thancred & self-recrimination. ShB 5.0. 30. Two Heads are Better than One - Gulool Ja Ja muses. DT 7.0.

Previous years: 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023

Ended up a touch Aeryn-heavy this year, though Generic WoL, various NPCs, the other OCs, forays in the FC's AUs, and some supporting family cast members make appearances. There's even a callback to a previous FFXIV Write entry. Lots of Endwalker and Dawntrail due to recency bias, but it manages to span the spectrum from backstories through various expansions.

I only did 1 Free Day, due to having 2 solid ideas I ended up writing for that prompt. It was right at the end of my annual birthday vacation week, so I was pretty rested (may also be why they're among the longer entries!). Unusually, the rest of that week's works are not any longer than the others.

I'm also still working on some original writing, though, so that did cut into fanfiction time.

Below 500 words: #2 Horizon (347), #3 Tempest (415), #7 Morsel (499), #10 Stable (400), #13 Butte (477), #14 Telling (355), #17 Sally (464), #20 Duel (499), #24 Bar (462).

500 - 1,000 words: #1 Steer (944), #4 Reticent (581), #5 Stamp (588), #11 Surrogate (964), #12 Quarry (844), #16 Third-Rate (564), #18 Hackneyed (577), #19 Taken (915), #21 Shade (764), #23 On Cloud Nine (728), #25 Perpetuity (958), #26 Zip (592), #27 Memory (810), #30 Two Heads are Better than One (500).

Over 1,000 words: #6 Halcyon (2,479), #9 Lend an Ear (1,326), #28 Deleterious (1,099), #29 Deleterious 2 (1,231).

Shortest: #2 Horizon Longest: #6 Halcyon

Total: 20,382 words. Not my shortest but far from my longest. Comparing with the previous years, I can see a clear improvement in my grasp of both NPC and OC voices, and more confidence in general.

Even so, "Butte", "Sally", "Bar", and "Zip" were the hardest for me this year, and I may need to warm up to them. I love "Halcyon" for a lot of reasons, and am also fond of the lighter offerings in "Duel" and "On Cloud Nine." I like a lot of the others, particularly when trying to get into NPC heads (even if they're really weird places to be ffs, Zenos).

Not too many shippy entries this year, one of them for one of the AUs, one mostly talking about it rather than seeing it, but I like "Hackneyed" a lot as it's been awhile since I've written about Aeryn & Thancred's literary tastes (and opposite ways of treating their books).

These will eventually be revised and added to Ao3, and then we await next year!

[abrandnewshadow]

barriers flyers were so good

altcorner.com

06/17/2019

08/21/2019

08/10/2019

06/21/2019

06/20/2019

06/18/2019

06/04/2019

06/02/2019

06/01/2019

05/31/2019

05/30/2019

03/30/2019

03/05/2019

06/05/2019

[hotjaneaustenmenpoll]

At least 80% of Colonel Brandon 95's sexiness is due to his amazing voice, so I gotta include some video clips as propaganda.

Watch from 0:38 to 1:26: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clTG6sYtJig

This one looks like crap but his voice is great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWwA74j1MEw

Watch from 1:04 to 5:30: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U8BJoOfG2Q

And finally this whole fan edit is wonderful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GM4G316zZ2g

Colonel Brandon (1995) Vs Sidney Parker (2019)

[lurksunderthebed]

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.

+

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Housing is a labor issue

There's a reason Reagan declared war on unions before he declared war on everything else – environmental protection, health care, consumer rights, financial regulation. Unions are how working people fight for a better world for all of us. They're how everyday people come together to resist oligarchy, extraction and exploitation.

Take the 2019 LA teachers' strike. As Jane McAlevey writes in A Collective Bargain, the LA teachers didn't just win higher pay for their members! They also demanded (and got) an end to immigration sweeps of parents waiting for their kids at the school gate; a guarantee of green space near every public school in the city; and on-site immigration counselors in LA schools:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Unionization is enjoying an historic renaissance. The Hot Labor Summer transitioned to an Eternal Labor September, and it's still going strong, with UAW president Shawn Fain celebrating his members victory over the Big Three automakers by calling for a 2028 general strike:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/uaw-general-strike-no-class

The rising labor movement has powerful allies in the Biden Administration. NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is systematically gutting the "union avoidance" playbook. She's banned the use of temp-work app blacklists that force workers to cross picket lines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

She's changed the penalty for bosses who violate labor law during union drives. It used to be the boss would pay a fine, which was an easy price to pay in exchange for killing your workers' union. Now, the penalty is automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

And while the law doesn't allow Abruzzo to impose a contract on companies that refuse to bargain their unions, she's set to force those companies to honor other employers' union contracts until they agree to a contract with their own workers:

https://onlabor.org/gc-abruzzo-just-asked-the-nlrb-to-overturn-ex-cell-o-heres-why-that-matters/

She's also nuking TRAPs, the deals that force workers to repay their employers for their "training expenses" if they have the audacity to quit and get a better job somewhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

(As with every aspect of the Biden White House, its labor policy is contradictory and self-defeating, with other Biden appointees working to smash worker power, including when Biden broke the railworkers' strike:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

A surging labor movement opens up all kinds of possibilities for a better world. Writing for the Law and Political Economy Project, UNITE Here attorney Zoe Tucker makes the case for unions as a way out of America's brutal housing crisis:

https://lpeproject.org/blog/why-unions-should-join-the-housing-fight/

She describes how low-waged LA hotel workers have been pushed out of neighborhoods close to their jobs, with UNITE Here members commuting three hours in each direction, starting their work-days at 3AM in order to clock in on time:

https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1669088899769987079

UNITE Here members are striking against 50 hotels in LA and Orange County, and their demands include significant cost-of-living raises. But more money won't give them back the time they give up to those bruising daily commutes. For that, unions need to make housing itself a demand.

As Tucker writes, most workers are tenants and vice-versa. What's more, bad landlords are apt to be bad bosses, too. Stepan Kazaryan, the same guy who owns the strip club whose conditions were so bad that it prompted the creation of Equity Strippers NoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, is also a shitty landlord whose tenants went on a rent-strike:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/20/the-missing-links/#plunderphonics

So it was only natural that Kazaryan's tenants walked the picket line with the Equity Stripper Noho workers:

https://twitter.com/glendaletenants/status/1733290276599570736?s=46

While scumbag bosses/evil landlords like Kazaryan deal out misery retail, one apartment building at a time, the wholesale destruction of workers' lives comes from private equity giants who are the most prolific source of TRAPs, robo-scabbing apps, illegal union busting, and indefinite contract delays – and these are the very same PE firms that are buying up millions of single-family homes and turning them into slums:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Tucker's point is that when a worker clocks out of their bad job, commutes home for three hours, and gets back to their black-mold-saturated, overpriced apartment to find a notice of a new junk fee (like a surcharge for paying your rent in cash, by check, or by direct payment), they're fighting the very same corporations.

Unions who defend their workers' right to shelter do every tenant a service. A coalition of LA unions succeeded in passing Measure ULA, which uses a surcharge on real estate transactions over $5m to fund "the largest municipal housing program in the country":

https://unitedtohousela.com/app/uploads/2022/05/LA_City_Affordable_Housing_Petition_H.pdf

LA unions are fighting for rules to limit Airbnbs and other platforms that transform the city's rental stock into illegal, unlicensed hotels:

https://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/publication/strs-in-los-angeles-2022/Wachsmuth_LA_2022.pdf

And the hotel workers organized under UNITE Here are fighting their own employers: the hoteliers who are aggressively buying up residences, evicting their long-term tenants, tearing down the building and putting up a luxury hotel. They got LA council to pass a law requiring hotels to build new housing to replace any residences they displace:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-28/airbnb-operators-would-need-police-permit-in-l-a-under-proposed-law

UNITE Here is bargaining for a per-room hotel surcharge to fund housing specifically for hotel workers, so the people who change the sheets and clean the toilets don't have to waste six hours a day commuting to do so.

Labor unions and tenant unions have a long history of collaboration in the USA. NYC's first housing coop was midwifed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1927. The Penn South coop was created by the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union. The 1949 Federal Housing Act passed after American unions pushed hard for it:

http://www.peterdreier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Labors-Love-Lost.pdf

It goes both ways. Strong unions can create sound housing – and precarious housing makes unions weaker. Remember during the Hollywood writers' strike, when an anonymous studio ghoul told the press the plans was to "allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses?"

Vienna has the most successful housing in any major city in the world. It's the city where people of every income and background live in comfort without being rent-burdened and without worry about eviction, mold, or leaks. That's the legacy of Red Vienna, the Austrian period of Social Democratic Workers' Party rule and built vast tracts of high-quality public housing. The system was so robust that it rebounded after World War II and continues to this day:

https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/

Today, the rest of the world is mired in a terrible housing crisis. It's not merely that the rent's too damned high (though it is) – housing precarity is driving dangerous political instability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Turning the human necessity of shelter into a market commodity is a failure. The economic orthodoxy that insists that public housing, rent control, and high-density zoning will lead to less housing has failed. rent control works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

Leaving housing to the market only produces losers. If you have the bad luck to invest everything you have into a home in a city that contracts, you're wiped out. If you have the bad luck into invest everything into a home in a "superstar city" where prices go up, you also lose, because your city becomes uninhabitable and your children can't afford to live there:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/27/lethal-dysfunction/#yimby

A strong labor movement is the best chance we have for breaking the housing deadlock. And housing is just for starters. Labor is the key to opening every frozen-in-place dysfunction. Take care work: the aging, increasingly chronically ill American population is being tortured and murdered by private equity hospices, long-term care facilities and health services that have been rolled up by the same private equity firms that destroyed work and housing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

In her interview with Capital & Main's Jessica Goodheart, National Domestic Workers Alliance president Ai-jen Poo describes how making things better for care workers will make things better for everyone:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-12-13-labor-leader-ai-jen-poo-interview/

Care work is a "triple dignity investment": first, it makes life better for the worker (most often a woman of color), then, it allows family members of people who need care to move into higher paid work; and of course, it makes life better for people who need care: "It delivers human potential and agency. It delivers a future workforce. It delivers quality of life."

The failure to fund care work is a massive driver of inequality. America's sole federal public provision for care is Medicaid, which only kicks in after a family it totally impoverished. Funding care with tax increases polls high with both Democrats and Republicans, making it good politics:

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/4/7/voters-support-investing-in-the-care-economy

Congress stripped many of the care provisions from Build Back Better, missing a chance for an "unprecedented, transformational investment in care." But the administrative agencies picked up where Congress failed, following a detailed executive order that identifies existing, previously unused powers to improve care in America. The EO "expands access to care, supports family caregivers and improves wages and conditions for the workforce":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/04/18/executive-order-on-increasing-access-to-high-quality-care-and-supporting-caregivers/

States are also filling the void. Washington just created a long-term care benefit:

https://apnews.com/article/washington-long-term-care-tax-disability-cb54b04b025223dbdba7199db1d254e4

New Mexicans passed a ballot initiative that establishes permanent funding for child care:

https://www.cwla.org/new-mexico-votes-for-child-care/

New York care workers won a $3/hour across the board raise:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/new-york-budget-fair-pay-home-care/

The fight is being led by women of color, and they're kicking ass – and they're doing it through their unions. Worker power is the foundation that we build a better world upon, and it's surging.

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/2023/12/13/i-want-a-roof-over-my-head/#and-bread-on-the-table

[bangtanpurplearchive]

All 2019 content has now been uploaded onto the website

I've also put the streaming links for Golden on the home page - as members and BTS release I'll put the latest release on the home page if that helps with streaming.

Eventually, once I have updated all of the comeback and discography content, I'll put steaming links for those on those pages as well.

It's starting to shape up

The Calendar has been updated as well.

📰 11/01 – Jimin Elle Korea release

📅 11/02  – ‘Golden’ Official MV teaser  (0am KST -11/01 11am ET)

🎶 11/03  – ‘Golden’ Official MV   (1pm KST – 0am ET)

💿 11/03 – Golden by Jk released (1pm KST) (0am ET)

🍸 11/04 – 슈취타 EP.21 ft Jungkook (10pm KST)

💿11/05 – JK iheartradio Album release party (10am KST  – 9pm ET)

💿11/05 – JK iheartradio Album release party (11am KST  – 10pm ET)

🏆11/05 – MTV EMA awards

📺 11/07 – JK live on The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon (1.35pm KST – 11/06 11.35pm ET)

📺 11/08 – JK live on The Today show Citi Concert Series (10,.30pm KST – 8.30am ET)

📺11/09 – Yet To Come released – Amazon Prime

📅 11/10  – ‘Golden’ by JK – Special event TSX special stage

🪖11/12 – Jin 7 months to discharge

🍸11/13 – 슈취타 EP.22 TEASER

🎤 11/14  – Jung Kook ‘GOLDEN’ – Audacy live  (11am KST – 11/13 9pm ET)

🎤 11/16 – Jung Kook ‘GOLDEN’ MNet Countdown (6pm KST – 4am ET)

🪖11/17 – JHope 11 months to discharge

11/17 – Permission to Dance DVD – pre-order (11AM KST)

🫂11/18 – JK Video Call / Fansign

🏆11/19 – The 2023 Billboard Music Awards (BBMAs)

🎤 11/20 – Jung Kook ‘GOLDEN’ Live On Stage (8pm KST)

💿 11/20 – BE Anniversary (201120)

🍸11/20 – 슈취타 EP.22 (10pm KST)

🪖11/21 – Yoongi 19 months to discharge

📰 11/23 – Jimin x GQ UK  and GQ France 

11/127 – Permission to Dance DVD – release

🏆11/28 – 2023 MAMA Awards – Tokyo Dome day 1

🏆11/29 – 2023 MAMA Awards – Tokyo Dome day 2

💿 11/30 – HYYH pt. 2 Anniversary (151130)

[black-arcana]

POWERWOLF Announces 'Summer Of The Wicked 2025' European Headlining Tour

German metallers POWERWOLF have announced the "Summer Of The Wicked 2025" European headlining tour. Featuring huge festival performances and headline shows all over the continent, the tour begins only one month after the completion of POWERWOLF's 2025 "Latin American Crusade" headlining tour.

"Summer Of The Wicked 2025" tour dates:

June 06 - FR - Nancy / Heavy Week-End June 07 - DE - Nuremberg / Rock Im Park June 08 - DE - Nurburg / Rock Am Ring June 10 - FR - Toulouse / Zenith (+ DRAGONFORCE) June 11 - FR - Lyon / Halle Tony Garnier (+ DRAGONFORCE) June 13 - AT - Nickelsdorf / Nova Rock June 15 - NL - Leeuwarden / Into The Grave June 17 - FR - Lille / Zenith (+ DRAGONFORCE) June 20 - DE - Rostock / Stadthalle (+ DRAGONFORCE) June 21 - DK - Copenhagen / Copenhell June 22 - SE - Huskvarna / Folkets Park (+ AMARANTHE & DRAGONFORCE) June 24 - SE - Uppsala / Fyrishov (+ AMARANTHE & DRAGONFORCE) June 25 - NO - Oslo / Tons Of Rock June 27 - EE - Tallinn / Tallinn Rock Festival June 28 - FI - Helsinki / Tuska Festival June 30 - PL - Lodz / Atlas Arena (+ EPICA & DRAGONFORCE) July 02 - HU - Dunaujvaros / Rockmaraton July 04 - DE - Ballenstedt / Rockharz Festival July 11 - DE - Saarbrücken / E-Werk Open Air (+ WARKINGS) July 13 - CZ - Vizovice / Masters Of Rock August 02 - RO - Rasnov / Rockstadt Extreme Fest August 09 - ES - Villena / Leyendas Del Rock

POWERWOLF's latest studio album, "Wake Up The Wicked", came out in July via Napalm Records. The highly anticipated follow-up to the extremely successful "Call Of The Wild" (2021) was once again produced by Joost Van Den Broek at Sandlane Recording Facilities and marks a new benchmark and undisputed career highlight for the band. The new album is hard, surprising and full of variety. While staying true to their established, loved sound, POWERWOLF go one step further and showcase a different facet of their deft musical and technical skills. This is evident, for example, on the outstanding single "1589", which is based on a true story from the 16th century.

20 years after their formation in 2004, POWERWOLF are expanding their repertoire with the highest quality and adding many future live hits to their extraordinary discography. "Wake Up The Wicked" is yet another statement cementing the status of the band as a leading force in the world of heavy metal.

The first single from "Wake Up The Wicked", "1589" tells the story of Peter Stump, who lived near Cologne, Germany in the 16th century and is known today as the Werewolf Of Bedburg. After being defamed as a werewolf, the farmer confessed to several murders under torture and was cruelly executed on October 31, 1589. This morbid story has fascinated people all over the world ever since and has been picked up by National Geographic, among others.

For the video for "1589", POWERWOLF traveled to England to stage Stump's fate in the dark woods in a cinematic way. With carefully selected locations, countless actors and crew members, and impressive special effects, it marks the most elaborate music video production in the band's history to date.

POWERWOLF are undoubtedly one of the most celebrated and successful heavy metal bands of the last decade. Multiple No. 1 album chart entries, gold and platinum records, huge sold-out arena shows, as well as headline slots at the biggest festivals have paved their way. In 20 years of band history, POWERWOLF has made it to the very highest league of heavy metal.

POWERWOLF has conquered countless stages at the world's biggest summer festivals, and their last "Wolfsnächte" headline tours (2019, 2022),as well as their North American debut in early 2023, were almost completely sold out — resulting in a massive triumph. They have performed headlining sets at Wacken Open Air and Summer Breeze, as well as held premium slots at genre festival giants such as Hellfest, Graspop Metal Meeting, Masters Of Rock and many more, captivating enormous audiences. No other German metal band has been able to write a success story even remotely comparable in recent years.

The story of the frontrunners of today's German metal scene, POWERWOLF, began in 2004 and only knows one direction: ever upwards. Their trajectory may seem like something out of a fairytale, but it is the result of the band embodying the highest quality of heavy metal in the universe. Outstanding album production, bombastic live shows and a tireless drive for perfection on and behind the stage are what this exceptional band is known for around the world.

Over the course of their career, the band has not only fascinated metal fans, but has also won over international press and critics. Countless cover stories in the most important magazines, critics' awards such as the Metal Hammer Award, and effusive album and concert reviews underpin POWERWOLF's outstanding international status.

POWERWOLF is:

Attila Dorn - vocals Falk Maria Schlegel - organ Charles Greywolf - guitar Matthew Greywolf - guitar Roel van Helden - drums

[cruciatusforeplay]

Hello I have Good Omens Brainrot like the rest of us, and I had a spare afternoon, so here is

Crowley and Aziraphale's Canonical Chronological History

(watching-guide with media timestamps so you can watch it all develop in order)

It's long so it's going under the cut. Let me know if there are errors beyond being out by a second or so. Also speedrunning two series of this show in an afternoon made me So Unwell (emotionally). I would absolutely recommend it.

I've broadly only included only clips that featured either one or both them as a focal point, or where the events would have informed their relationship, plus the option of the S2 finale in its entirety.

**Before the beginning, nebula** S2E1 0:00- 6:20 (up to opening credits)

**Just after the beginning, Garden of Eden, 4004BC** S1E1 1:55 (or 3:25 to skip Adam and Eve)-6:04 (opening credits)

**Noah's Ark, mesopotamia 3004BC** S1E3 0:00-2:47

**Job, 2500BC** S2E2 0:00-5:35, 22:30-40:01, 44:10-46:49 (end of episode)

**Crucifixion of Jesus, Golgotha, 33AD** S1E3 2:47-4:28 (continues directly to)

**Rome 41AD** S1E3 4:28-5:31 (continues directly to)

**Knights, kingdom of Wessex, 537AD** S1E3 5:31-7:56 (continues directly to)

**Bastille, Paris, 1793** S1E3 11:53-15:31

**The Globe Theatre London, 1601** S1E3 7:56-11:53 (continues directly to)

**Edinburgh, 1827** S2E3 8:34(post credits)-12:56, 17:38-22:10, 24:28-33:59

**St James' Park London, 1862** S1E3 15:31-17:29 (continues directly to)

**The Blitz, London, 1941** S1E3 17:29-24:07, recap can be skipped that can be skipped: S2E4 5:10(post credits)-6:14, 8:24-37:59

**Soho, London, 1967** S1E3 24:07-28:38 (opening credits)

**The M25 meeting, Hell, 1970s** S1E5 21:21-22:27

**The Antichrist, near Tadfield airbase, "11 years ago" ~2008** S1E1 7:32(post credits)-14:24, (optional baby drop off with Crowley) 19:24-20:14, 25:59-29:59, 30:14-32:24, 33:35-35:04 (continues directly to)

**Antichrist upbringing, "5 years later" ~2013** S1E1 35:04-39:30

**6 days before the end of the world, Monday, 2019** S1E1 40:45-43:19 (continues directly to)

**3 days before the end of the world, Wednesday, 2019** S1E1 43:19-44:08, 44:38-45:52, 48:01-49:11(to end credits)

**2 days before the end of the world, Thursday, 2019** S1E2 0:00-3:56, 21:16-23:33, 26:24-27:54, 31:04-32:10, 34:14-44:40, 45:36-46:21, 48:05-54:01 (to end credits)

**1 day before the end of the world, Friday, 2019** S1E3 30:07-31:14, 35:27-36:49, 38:48-41:30, 43:39-45:51, 49:41-49:53, 50:39-53:11

**The last day of the world, Saturday, 2019** S1E4 4:01-5:42, 8:15-9:28, 29:06-29:48, 33:29-42:00, 48:47-54:06 (to end credits)

**5 Hours and 48 Minutes to the End of the World, 2019** S1E5 0:00-1:32, 3:17(after credits)-4:17, 6:11-8:49, 11:01-13:25, 17:47(or 20:18 to skip the spirit of Ron)-21:00

**1 Hour and 43 Minutes to the End of the World, 2019** S1E5 21:00-21:21, 22:28-25:07, 26:49-31:43, 36:59-37:31

**17 minutes to the end of the world (and the rest ofbthat day), 2019** S1E5 46:24-49:25 (end credits), S1E6 1:53(2:35 to skip repeat section)-4:39, 8:19-9:49, 10:44-12:49, 14:02-27:10

**The very last day of the rest of their lives, 2019** S1E6 27:10- 28:07, 31:02-32:58, 0:00-1:46, 32:58-36:26, 42:33-45:45, 48:40-52:17

**London, present day (S2E1), ~2023** S2E1 7:48-13:15, 13:47-29:59, 33:00-36:13, 37:39-38:00, 38:19-42:41

**London, present day (S2E2), ~2023** S2E2 5:35-8:53 (to opening credits), 10:21-22:30, 40:04-43:28

**London/Edinburgh present day (S2E3), ~2023** S2E3 1:14-6:35, 6:47-7:07 (to opening credits), 12:57-14:36, 16:09-17:38, 22:11-24:27, 33:59-42:05(to end credits)

**London, present day (S2E4), ~2023** S2E4 0:00-3:42 (opening credits), 41:08-41:46, 42:02-43:09(end credits)

**London, present day (S2E5), ~2023** S2E5 0:48-2:57, 3:43-5:24, 7:07-8:04, 8:31-10:12, 12:29-13:32, 13:57-17:57, 19:33-29:52, 30:24-40:38

**London, present day (S2E6), ~2023** S2E6 0:00-4:52(to opening credits), 6:20-(optional 21:06-27:31 for Gabe and Muriel memories, otherwise continue to)end of ep

[staydandy]

The Golden Eyes (2019) - 黄金瞳 - Whump List

List by StayDandy Synopsis : A simple pawn shop worker, Zhuang Rui, had his own eyes mutated after an accident during a robbery attempt of an ancient Jade carving. His mutated eyes subsequently brought many changes to his life in many unexpected ways he could ever imagined. (MDL)

Whumpees : Zhuang Rui played by Lay Zhang (center) • Peng Fei played by Meng A Sai (2 eps) (far right)

Country : 🇨🇳 China Genres : Adventure, Martial Arts, Fantasy, Tomb Raider

Notes : This is a Full Whump List • This is the a revision of my Partial List, which only had 4 episodes on it! It really deserved better than that. • My favorite episodes are pink : 00

Related List : The Golden Eyes (2019) - partial list

Episodes on List : 37 Total Episodes : 56

*Spoilers below*

01 : Glass gets into Zhuang Rui's eyes, knocked out … hospitalized, eyes bandaged … blurry vision, overwhelmed by new eyesight … unsteady, rubbing eyes

02 : Headache

04 : Attacked, hooded

05 : Handcuffed … falls through a trapdoor

06 : Protects someone from an explosion, knocked out … protects someone from a 2nd explosion, knocked out

09 : Rubbing his eyes

10 : (near end) Attacked, fight

11 : Shaking head in slight pain

13 : Fight, knocked out … dizzy, eye/head pain.. unsteady

14 : Car crash, knocked out … treated in hospital

17 : Drunk, unsteady, helped to walk

18 : Shaking head, pain.. unsteady, passes out, caught … nauseous … locked in a wine cellar

19 : … continued from previous ep. ... Locked in wine cellar, shivering

22 : While driving, shaking head, pain … revealed he's been shot in the leg, bleeding, limping … temporary amnesia, migraine, collapses.. leg infected, fever

23 : … continued from previous ep. ... Limping, exhausted, eye pain.. blurry vision, collapses, passes out … headache

24 : … continued from previous ep. ... Passes out, hospitalized

25 : Chased, rolls down a hill, migraine, unsteady, blurry vision, temporarily blind … blurry vision

26 : … continued from previous ep. ... Still partially blind … vision slowly returning, blurry … steps on a landmine

27 : Peng Fei is captured, tied up, whipped

28 : … continued from previous ep. ... Attempts escape, tied up again … Zhuang Rui is captured, tied up … Zhuang Rui & Peng Fei are knocked out with smoke bomb … Zhuang Rui nightmare.. headache, ear ringing

29 : Not feeling well, not eating, depressed

30 : Wrestling match, sore after … lightheaded

31 : Lightheaded … out of it, collapses against a pillar, barely conscious, helped to walk … blurry vision, migraine, helped to walk, saying he can't see or hear, writhing in pain, given a shot to sleep

32 : Unsteady, starts to collapses, supported … slightly unresponsive … headache … nightmare

33 : Hit with a shovel

35 : (near end) [flashbacks to eps 22, 25, 31] migraine, amnesia, blind, migraine, writhing … [present] drunk

36 : Admitting he's lost his sense of taste … eye strain, headache, exhausted … (@ 13:16 Huang Fu Yun looks so much better without the birdshit highlight in his hair) … drunk

37 : … continued from previous ep. ... Drunk … captured, hands tied

38 : Shock, dizzy, migraine, collapses, caught … briefly knocked out from explosion

42 : Eye strain … captured, hands tied.. hit with bats in a fight

43 : Drugged … tied up

44 : MIgraine

45 : Dizzy, collapses, migraine.. unsteady … starts to collapse, supported

50 : (at end) Tied up

53 : Attacked, knocked out … migraine … captured

55 : Headache, backhanded, falls & hits head on a pipe, barely conscious.. carried … unconscious … hospitalized

56 : … continued from previous ep. ... Hospitalized, drugged asleep … hospitalized for brain surgery.. seizure during surgery

More Whump Lists for this show: love-me-a-lotta-whump whumpetywhump