#Denmark's Next Top Model

[thatsmybook]

Just rewatching the documentary and just before 4 mins in, Lisa is explaining to Omar her thought process for what will be the main dilemma/ crux of the show, and it made me realise what exactly Simon was saying when he broke up with Wille at the end of Episode 5. He was saying: I've seen what the monarchy does to you and how it hurts you, I've experienced it myself, so I have additional empathy for how that must feel for you. Also, I, too, am being hurt by it (see all of season 3 when he's not smiling with Wille). I thought I could try it out for your sake to see if I could handle it because you're worth it.

But after spending the birthday day with Prince Wilhelm and the Royal Court, he sees that it will continue to hurt both of them, and there will be no respite, things will only get worse. He has seen Wille get worse right in front of him on that day. It is poisoning Wille, and he is becoming someone he doesn't recognise. Simon decides that he does not want that to happen to either of them. The only thing he can do is leave the system so it can stop hurting him. Unfortunately, because Wille is entwined with Prince Wilhelm, it means he has to leave Wille too.

To me, by staying with Wille, Simon is condoning bad behaviour or the status quo by just going along with everything the Royal Court says while they both slowly deteriorate. So though he leaves Wille to save himself, he is also saving Wille because he is showing Wille that this is not alright, boundaries have to be put in place somewhere and Wille needs to start setting some boundaries for himself too. If Wille thought that Simon would stick around to support him and occasionally be someone he could lash out to, then he may not have felt the need to save himself from the monarchy. Because Simon is around to hold him up.

So for King Wilhelm truthers, Simon is required to know his place as an aid to the King, whilst suppressing his own pain and never putting pressure on the King by asking for help with his own issues. There is never a time when they would be equal in their relationship, even in private, because everything about Simon's values, ambitions, and passions would have to be deleted. King Wilhelm's needs would come first. This is what class does. It sets up hierarchies of certain humans' needs being more important than others and even that certain humans are superior/supreme to others. Therefore, to function, it needs lackeys who know their place to serve those on top. Hillerska, as an institution, is a mirror of Simon's relationship as a partner for the next king. Hillerska being closed is the equivalent of Lisa abolishing the monarchy. (By the way, there's a real-life incident of the 16 year old Prince of Denmark having to be removed from his elite school when issues of sexual abuse and other scandals came to light. This happened in 2022).

On a side note, this made me think about the Duke's role as consort and imagine that that would be Simon's role to model himself on. If we want Wille to remain as a Crown Prince and have his boyfriend, do we want Simon to become as bland and ineffective as the Duke is, where all of his focus is solely on the Queen's needs. Smoothing over any rough patches with innane conversation and totally neglecting and not 'seeing' his child. Simon deserves to be himself, as does Wille.

[mariacallous]

In the latest battle between AI and the media, major Danish newspapers and TV stations are threatening to sue OpenAI unless the company compensates the country’s press for allegedly using their content to train its models.

“We want remuneration for our work [which] they have used to train their model,” says Karen Rønde, CEO of the Danish Press Publications’ Collective Management Organization (DPCMO), which represents 99 percent of Danish media outlets, including state broadcaster DR and TV 2. Rønde says the DPCMO plans to sue if a deal is not reached in the next year.

AI has created a new front in copyright law after a series of lawsuits claimed that OpenAI, which is backed by Microsoft, scraped news companies’ websites without permission in order to train its AI models. Soon after those lawsuits, OpenAI struck a series of licensing deals with major publishers, enabling the company to train its future iterations of ChatGPT on their content. Financial terms for the deals have not been disclosed.

Now, Danish media is attempting to force OpenAI to negotiate with them as a collective, an unusual tactic that could provide a model for other small countries if successful. So far, OpenAI has been striking deals with publishers individually and has announced content partnerships with the Financial Times and the Atlantic, as well as German media conglomerate Axel Springer, French newspaper Le Monde, and Spanish group Prisa.

After meeting with OpenAI online and in-person earlier this year, Rønde says she was left with the impression that Denmark was not a top priority. “It was made clear that the focus was the deal in Germany and the deal in France and the deal in Spain and of course, the American ones,” she says. “There are so many content creators in all the other territories and they are now left with nothing.”

Rønde has sent a letter to OpenAI’s lawyer at Dutch firm Brinkhof informing them of Danish copyright law, and says she is waiting for a response. She presumes OpenAI has already used content from Danish press websites because the company has not told her otherwise, she says. Neither OpenAI nor Brinkhof replied to WIRED’s request for comment.

For Rønde, time is of the essence. She wants to strike a deal with OpenAI and also Google’s Gemini in the next year, before the use of AI chatbots and search engine overviews further marginalizes publishers’ websites. “Maybe then it [will be] too late, and the value of the press publishers’ content will be—in one or two or three years—too low,” she says. “If we cannot enter into a partnership agreement within a reasonably short time frame, then we need to enforce our rights.”

DPCMO was set up in 2021 to help Danish media negotiate with Big Tech. “We needed to stand united, otherwise we feared that Denmark would be too small a country to be prioritized in the discussion with Big Tech,” says Rønde.

Last year, the group secured preliminary license agreements with Microsoft’s Bing and Google to feature Danish publishers’ content in the company’s search engines. Although the agreements outlined that publishers should be compensated by the two companies, the deals did not agree on how much.

[bettyg196]

My Eurovision 2024 predictions

Hi !

How are you ?

Here are my predictions for Eurovision 2024 nobody asked !

Disclaimer : I'm not clairvoyant, so most of my predictions won't come true. Also, please note that I don't mean to offend anyone in this post, I just like to guess what will happen in the next Eurovision season.

The jury system will remain the same but EBU won't bring it back in the semi-finals

The rest of the world will still have the ability to vote

They will introduce a new rule where we have to create an account to vote from the Eurovision app

38 countries will participate

In plus of Luxembourg, North Macedonia will come back

Romania will withdraw following the bad result in ESC and because of poor TV ratings

Turkey won't come back for obvious reasons

Monaco will be back... in 2025 because TV Monaco will join EBU only in 2024

A ballad will win the contest

The edition will be dominated by pop songs in English

Malmö will host

Petra Mede won't come back as a host but Måns Zelmerlöw (Sweden 2015, host in 2016) will

Farah Abadi or Sarah Dawn Finer will be the other host

Carola Häggkvist (Sweden 1983, 1991, 2006) will be involved in the contest

🇦🇱 Albania

The winner of FiK will also be chosen by the public as the representative

The entry will be a power ballad which will be revamped in English

The artist had already participated to FiK once

Will be in the same semi-final than Serbia

Will finish 11th in its SF

🇦🇲 Armenia

The country will send a woman again

The entry is an up-tempo pop song with disco influences

Will be the last song to be released

Will be a favourite of the eurofans

Will qualify but will flop in the grand final and finish in the right side of the table

🇦🇺 Australia

EBU will confirm that the country will participate to the contest during summer

Internal selection

The chosen artist has never participated to Eurovision- Australia Decides

The song will be a sad ballad

It will be popular on TikTok

🇦🇹 Austria

A male duo will be chosen

The entry will sound like a Troye Sivan song

Will not get attention from the fandom until the rehearsals

The staging will be simple but efficient

Will qualify but will finish in the bottom 5

🇦🇿 Azerbaijan

The chosen artist is famous in Turkey

The song will be an up-tempo pop song in English

Most of the songwriters are from Sweden

The staging will be similar to the Euphoria one but with dancers

Will close its semi-final

🇧🇪 Belgium

The chosen artist has participated to The Voice Belgique and was in the team of Beverly Jo Scott aka BJ Scott

The entry will sound like an Axelle Red song, but in English

Most of the songwriters are from France

Will be in the first semi-final

Will qualify

🇭🇷 Croatia

Dora 2024 will take place

A former representative will be involved as a contestant

A man will win the nf

The entry will be a sentimental ballad in English and in Croatian

Will get attention during the rehearsals

🇨🇾 Cyprus

A drama will happen during the nf

The winner of the nf will be a woman

The entry will be a pop song about love with a dancebreak

Will be high in the odds

Will be in the second semi-final again

🇨🇿 Czechia

ESCZ will take place again

A boy band will win the nf

The entry will sound like if Backstreet Boys and BTS had a baby

It will be a contender for the win

Will place at least 15th in the final

🇩🇰 Denmark

DMGP will be a weak nf as usual

The winning artist will be an Instagram model

The entry will be a bubblegum bop in English

Thomas G:son will be one of the songwriters

Will do better than expected

🇪🇪 Estonia

A former representative will be involved in Eesti Laul 2024

A band will win the nf

The entry will be a scam themed funny song in Estonian

Will be overhated by the fandom

Will be in the top 20

🇫🇮 Finland

UMK 2024 will be a good nf

An underdog act will win it

The song will be a catchy pop song in English

It will be liked by a lot of people

Will finish second last in the final

🇫🇷 France

A nf will take place (but not necessary CVQD)

Bilal Hassani will take part as a jury member

A southern man will win

The entry will sound like a 2010s French song

Will finish somewhere in the right part of the table but will get at least one "12 points"

🇬🇪 Georgia

The Voice of Georgia will be used to select the representative again

A woman will win again

The entry will be a dark edm pop song

It will cause a controversy in the country

Will compete in the first semi-final

🇩🇪 Germany

Ikke Hüftgold will be involved in the nf again

The winner of the nf will be a woman

The entry will sound similar to Flowers by Miley Cyrus and the artist will be accused of plagiarism

Will be hated by Germans and the fandom

Will finish in the bottom 5 again

🇬🇷 Greece

A Greek-German artist will be selected in internal

Greek locals will hate their representative for some reason

The entry will be a radio-friendly pop song in English and the title will be in Greek

Will compete in the second semi-final

Will NQ

🇮🇸 Iceland

Söngvakeppnin will be disappointing in terms of quality

New rule in the nf

A woman will win against the odds

The entry will sound like a song from Taylor Swift's Midnights album

Will NQ again

🇮🇪 Ireland

The nf will be a beautiful disaster

The chosen artist will be the youngest of the edition

The entry will be a pop song about a Swedish artist/band

A drama will happen after the pre-party season

Will have the weirdest staging

🇮�� Israel

The Rising Star will have new rules

A woman will win the nf

The entry will be dance pop song in English

A drama involving politics will happen

Will finish 17th in the final

🇮🇹 Italy

A big controversy will happen before Sanremo week

Diodato will participate in the festival

The winning artist openly supports Meloni

The song will be a modern ballad

Will finish top 10

🇱🇻 Latvia

Initially, a Supernova SF will be planned but will be ultimately cancelled for only one final

A girl band will win

The entry will be an up-tempo pop song in English

Will get attention from the pre-parties

Will qualify but end up in the bottom 5

🇱🇹 Lithuania

PiN 2024 will be an average edition

The favourite of the nf will win both the jury voting and the televoting

A member of InCulto (🇱🇹 2010) will be involved in the nf

The entry will be a slow ballad in English

Will be the only baltic country in its SF

🇱🇺 Luxembourg

A nf will take place

Any artist from any country can participate but Luxembourgers singers will be privileged

A well-known French artist will be selected

The entry will be a French chanson that will sound like a Juliette Armanet's song

Will sadly NQ

🇲🇹 Malta

MESC will be the longest nf

Matt Blxck will participate again

The winner will be a man

The entry will be a love ballad

Will compete in the second semi-final

🇲🇩 Moldova

35 artists/bands will participate to the nf's audition

A finalist will withdraw in the last minute

A female former representative will win

The entry will be a folk-pop song in Romanian and in English

Will be a borderline qualifier

🇳🇱 Netherlands

A nf will take place and almost everyone in the fandom will hate it

Between 5 and 10 acts will compete

The most disliked act will win

The entry will be a schlager in English

Will do better than expected

🇲🇰 North Macedonia

Internal selection

A male artist will be chosen

The entry will sound like a movie score

Will be cancelled by the fandom for some reason

Will do better than expected

🇳🇴 Norway

Autotune will still be allowed in MGP

Emma Steinbakken will be involved in the nf at least as a songwriter

The winner will be a woman

The entry will be a power ballad about trust

Will place somewhere in the left side of the table

🇵🇱 Poland

A nf will be planned but will be cancelled and replaced by a last minute internal selection for some reason

A male YouTuber will be chosen

The entry will be a dance pop song

Will divide the entire fandom

Will make the final thanks to the artist's fandom

🇵🇹 Portugal

A drama will happen before the reveal of FdC tracks

A fado artist will be the favourite for the win

An underdog act will win

The entry will be a folk song in Portuguese

Will be underrated by the fandom

🇸🇲 San Marino

UVPSM will be shorter than usual

Some artists from the 2023 NF season will participate

An unknown Italian artist will win

The song will be a disco-pop song in English

Will somehow become a meme

🇷🇸 Serbia

The nf will be nice overall

An eccentric artist will get attention

A woman will win

The song will be a balkan ballad in Serbian

Will be high in the odds

🇸🇮 Slovenia

Internal selection again

A female pop star will be chosen

The entry will be an up-tempo pop song in English with some words in Slovenian

Will be overhyped by the fandom

Will do worse than expected

🇪🇸 Spain

Pol Granch will be involved in the Benidorm Fest

A controversy will happen during the nf

A famous artist will win the festival

The entry will be a dark ballad in Spanish

Will finish 20th in the final

🇸🇪 Sweden

Melodifestivalen will be better than the last edition

Both Anna Bergendahl and Dotter will be involved at least as songwriters

A LGBTQ artist will win

The entry will be a pop song in English about self-love

Will finish 6th in the grand final

🇨🇭 Switzerland

A good-looking male artist will be chosen

The entry is another sad ballad, but this time about break up

Unlike the 2 previous songs, it will be more appreciated by the fandom

Sacha Jean-Baptiste will stage it

Will qualify but will flop in the final

🇺🇦 Ukraine

Vidbir will be good as usual

A female pop star will win

The entry will be a world music influenced pop song in Ukrainian and in English

A big drama will happen after the nf

Will finish 4th

🇬🇧 United Kingdom

There will be a rumor that Dido could represent the UK to make her big comeback on stage

The actual representative has worked with a British star

The entry will be a mid-tempo pop song

Will be a favourite of many fans

Will finish 16th in the final

[janetushar1]

Allergy Immunotherapy Market to Hit $3.33 Billion by 2032

What's Trending in Allergy Immunotherapy Market?

- Keep Yourself Up-To-Date With The Latest Market Trends.

The global Allergy Immunotherapy Market was valued at USD 1.63 Billion in 2024 and it is estimated to garner USD 3.33 Billion by 2032 with a registered CAGR of 9.2% during the forecast period 2024 to 2032.

Firstly, the Market report for Allergy Immunotherapy Market describes the current state of the companies and recommends where it is likely to go next. The report shows the production, revenue, price, market share, and growth rate of each type, mainly divided into Product Types and Product Applications etc.

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Get a Sample Copy of the Allergy Immunotherapy Market Report at: https://www.vantagemarketresearch.com/buy-now/allergy-immunotherapy-market-2360/0

Top Competitors:

Merck KGaA (Germany), Jubilant Pharma (Hollister Allergy) (U.S.), Leti Pharma (Spain), Stallergenes Greer (Switzerland), ALK-Abello A/S (Denmark), Allergy Therapeutics (UK), Anergis SA (Switzerland), ASIT Biotech (Belgium), DBV Technologies (France)

This market report has all the information you need to start or grow your business in the industry. It also includes market drivers, restraints, competitiveness, and geographic estimates, as well as a price and emerging market structure. It is a complete description of a company's business model, benchmarks, consumer preferences, value proposition, and net profit. This comprehensive Allergy Immunotherapy Market study also sheds light on key techniques that help companies truly assess their customers' buying behavior.

It represents global economic trends between 2024 and 2032. With the help of this market research, top companies can easily make smarter financial decisions. This market analysis is an excellent technique to help companies implement new products. It also includes critical data on major industry topics, including market expansions and evolving market conditions.

This well-researched Allergy Immunotherapy Market report describes the negative impact COVID-19 is having on various companies and offers companies recommendations on how to recover from the damage suffered by the outbreak as well as the nationwide quarantine. The plan analyzes the company's expectations and priorities, as well as the delivery of all crucial data.

You Can Buy This Report From Here: https://www.vantagemarketresearch.com/allergy-immunotherapy-market-2360/request-sample

This report analyzes key market segments by type, application, and geography. The geographic analysis section covers key regions such as Europe, North America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia-Pacific region.

This Allergy Immunotherapy Market report not only provides valuable data but outlines key goals, pricing strategies, and approaches to help market participants' recommendations in this report will make accelerating economic growth easy. It offers some specific tips and business-related data to help new competitors in the market grow their businesses and diversify their product lines. Companies in the industry should choose tactics that include new product launches, mergers, and partnerships to survive in the competitive marketplace and strengthen their position.

Regional Analysis

-North America [United States, Canada, Mexico]

-South America [Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Chile, Peru]

-Europe [Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Netherlands, Turkey, Switzerland]

-Middle East & Africa [GCC, North Africa, South Africa]

-Asia-Pacific [China, Southeast Asia, India, Japan, Korea, Western Asia]

The quantitative information in this Allergy Immunotherapy Market analysis helps predict future sales and market penetration. This type of information is based on statistics. The qualitative information provided here will greatly help the key players understand the buyer's opinion of your brand. Improving business goals becomes easy with the information provided in this report.

The industries can draw some conclusions about their original goals. In business. This Allergy Immunotherapy Market research helps you make assumptions about your competition, customers, and the market in order to make informed business decisions. Additionally, it forecasts the competition in the market for the estimated period of 2024-2032. Effective decision-making in companies leads to business growth and is made possible by this precise market study.

Read Full Research Report with [TOC] @ https://www.vantagemarketresearch.com/industry-report/allergy-immunotherapy-market-2360

Some of the Key Questions Answered in this Report:

Which are the five top players of the Allergy Immunotherapy Market?

How will the Allergy Immunotherapy Market change in the upcoming years?

Which product and application will take a share of the Allergy Immunotherapy Market?

What will be the CAGR and size of the Allergy Immunotherapy Market throughout the forecast period?

What are the drivers and restraints of the Allergy Immunotherapy Market?

Which regional market will show the highest growth?

What is the current industry size, what will the market size be in 2030 and what will the growth rate be?

Who are the major competitors and what is their strategy?

What are the challenges to grow in the industry?

What are the market opportunities and challenges faced by the key vendors?

What are the barriers to entry for new players in the Allergy Immunotherapy industry?

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[andreisvechnikov]

tumblr still won't let me reply to anything so i'm responding here re: freddie posing <3

tie fix is such a classic. draw attention to the tie, you're not blocking the rest of the suit….show off the timepiece. freddie is playing 3d chess and these other guys are just doing:

>carry coffee >stare at feet >copy >paste >kk smile :D

-Sarah hugecaniac

no you're so right!!! he's a good looking man with taste AND he knows it!!!

I would genuinely enjoy listening to Freddie explain his watch collection or something. a rich guy thing I can get down with. I would also enjoy a magazine feature. get that man in front of cameras!!! Denmark's Next Top Model!!!!

(also Sepe has a coffee addiction so he's forgiven on the carrying coffee front)

[strandbiler]

Discover Your Next Car at Strand Biler

Welcome to Strand Biler, your trusted destination for high-quality vehicles in Denmark. Whether you're in the market for a new car, a reliable used vehicle, or expert automotive services, we have everything you need. In this blog post, we'll explore what makes Strand Biler the ideal choice for your automotive needs, highlight our top services, and provide tips for making the most of your car buying experience.

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[industrydelevelpoments]

Revolutionizing Urban Mobility: A Comprehensive Analysis of the France Bike Sharing Market (2023-2030)

France Bike Sharing is Expected to Grow at a Significant Growth Rate, and the Forecast Period is 2023-2030, Considering the Base Year as 2022.

The France bike-sharing market has experienced remarkable growth in recent years, propelled by increasing concerns over urban congestion, environmental sustainability, and the promotion of healthier lifestyles. With cities across the country embracing bike-sharing programs as a key component of their transportation networks, the market has witnessed significant expansion and innovation. Companies offering bike-sharing services have introduced diverse models, including docked and dockless systems, catering to the diverse needs of urban commuters and tourists. Government initiatives promoting cycling infrastructure and the integration of bike-sharing with public transportation have further fueled market growth.

To Learn More About This Report, Request A Free Sample Copy:

Top Key Players Covered in The France Bike Sharing Market:

Vélib' (France),Vélo'v (France), Vélo Bleu (France), Bluecub (France), Bicloo (France), Velib' Métropole (France), Pony Bikes (France), Indigo Weel (France), Lime (US), Jump Bikes (US), Bird (US), Tier (Germany), VOI Technology (Sweden), Donkey Republic (Denmark), Dott (Netherlands), Oribiky (France), Zoov (France), BleeperBike (Ireland), Cityscoot (France), Smoove (France) and Other Major Players

Updated Version 2023 is available our Sample Report May Includes the:

Scope For 2023

Brief Introduction to the research report.

Table of Contents (Scope covered as a part of the study)

Top players in the market

Research framework (structure of the report)

Research methodology adopted by Worldwide Market Reports

The latest research on the France Bike Sharing Market provides a comprehensive overview of the market for the years 2023 to 2030. It gives a comprehensive picture of the global Avocado Puree industry, considering all significant industry trends, market dynamics, competitive landscape, and market analysis tools such as Porter's five forces analysis, Industry Value chain analysis, and PESTEL analysis of the France Bike Sharing Market. Moreover, the report includes significant chapters such as Patent Analysis, Regulatory Framework, Technology Roadmap, BCG Matrix, Heat Map Analysis, Price Trend Analysis, and Investment Analysis which help to understand the market direction and movement in the current and upcoming years. The report is designed to help readers find information and make decisions that will help them grow their businesses. The study is written with a specific goal in mind: to give business insights and consultancy to help customers make smart business decisions and achieve long-term success in their particular market areas.

Segmentation Analysis Of The France Bike-Sharing Market:

By Bike

By Sharing System

By User

Regular Commuters By Region        

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Key Industry Developments in the Bike-Sharing Market:

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Market forecast analysis through recent trends and SWOT analysis

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Competitive environment related to the France Bike Sharing Market share for key players, along with new projects and strategies that players have adopted over the past five years

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We are a technocratic market research and consulting company that provides comprehensive and data-driven market insights. We hold expertise in demand analysis and estimation of multidomain industries with encyclopedic competitive and landscape analysis. Also, our in-depth macroeconomic analysis gives us a bird's eye view of the market for our esteemed client. Our team at Pristine Intelligence focuses on result-oriented methodologies which are based on historic and present data to produce authentic foretelling about the industry. Pristine Intelligence's extensive studies help our clients to make righteous decisions that make a positive impact on their business. Our customer-oriented business model firmly follows satisfactory service through which our brand name is recognized in the market.

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[bjornswoman]

Blue piercing eyes

Requested by none.

Author's note: Hey guys! I hope each one of you is alright. I want to thank yoy again for your support, that means a lot for me. Especially, now that I am getting through a difficult period time. Also, sorry for any mistakes. Thank you for reading this!

Pairing: Modern!Bjorn x Reader.

Genre: Modern!au, romance, drama, angst.

Summary: You and Bjorn reunite again after two painful months.

Warnings: Jealousy.

You tried to live a peaceful life, away from him and the drama of his world, that followed him everywhere. Wherever he was, the placed ended up destroyed. You even left your home, you left Denmark and moved somewhere else, thinking that he wouldn't find you. You had reached Spain to find your peace, but Bjorn Lothbrok was stubborn and he would do anything to take you back. The reason you left wasn't because you didn't love him. You loved him with every last piece of you. Your heart was beating only for him and the fact that you were apart, teared it off, but you couldn't do nothing else.

He had warned you that his job was his top priority and all the matters that happened into it. You didn't care, at first, but that changed when be spent more and more time away from you, because of business. Of course, business included being close to attracting women. You knew how Bjorn could get when he was close to a hot woman, he couldn't handle himself. He loved you, he really did and you knew that, but that was his weak spot. He was the perfect man. He was a successful businessman, a good looking man and an even better lover, you knew too well how to satisfy a woman. He was a father, he loved his children, he had told you that and even if he didn't, you would see it in his eyes. He loved them deeply, but he didn't really know how to express it, because his own father had never really gotten to tell him. He just taught him how to be the successful heir of his company. He kept saying that he regretted for not being in their lives, you told him that never was late, but, as the stubborn man he was, he didn't listen, he thought that he had lost any chance.

The things between you got bad and then worse when he met your boss. You were working in a well-known law firm. Actually, he had already known him, obviously. Bjorn Lothbrok knew literally everyone in this country and everyone knew him. After all, his family was the richest one in Denmark. The name Lothbrok was known all over the world and many famous businessmen craved a deal with them. Your boss, Mr Jones, was a womanizer, as well as your beloved boyfriend. He was hitting on you non-stop not knowing about your relationship with Bjorn, but even when he learned, he kept doing that. His flirting was the reason of the fights that destroyed you. He spoke harsh words, just to harm you, and you did the same and then your relationship ended.

After all that, you knew that you had to leave from Denmark. Ubbe, his younger brother, told that be was a mess and that he wouldn't let things this way. You wanted to be with him, but all that drama and you being never something serious for him, you decided that it your time to leave Denmark. Ubbe warned you that he would chase after you, but you were sure that you would make it to hide yourself from him and maybe, when he had forgotten you, you would return to your home and restart everything.

Now, after two months, you had settled down. You had a new job and made some new friends. You even managed to go on a date with some man. His name was Olaf, luckily, he was from Sweden. Maria, one of new friends, was working in the same company with him. She was the one whi insisted that you should date someone and you did. At first, you didn't like the idea of going out with someone that wasn't Bjorn Lothbrok, but, when you got to know Olaf, you liked spending time with him. He wasn't Bjorn, but no one would be, you had to move on, as you were sure that he did.

The only problem was that he didn't move on, because you loved you. He couldn't even lay with another woman. Yes, Bjorn Lothbrok couldn't lay with another because of you. Every single time he saw your figure everywhere in the room. He even tried to not be in a room to claim a woman, but you were still around there. He couldn't even imagine that he would feel something like that towards a woman, but there he was, feeling helpless. He tried to find you all this time and when he did, the deal with that Spanish men seemed the best option. They were pain in his ass for a whole year and now they were lucky that Madrid was where you decided to hide yourself, but nothing could be hidden from Bjorn Lothbrok.

"Stop! Please, I can't! It's..... my belly is hurting! Olaf, please you need to stop!" You tried to say within your laughter. You couldn't stop laughing. All night he was telling you some of some ridiculously funny jokes, you couldn't stop laughing. He was smiling at you. He liked you and tried to make him feel more comfortable when you were together, that's why he started saying that jokes. He wanted you to open up.

You couldn't do that. You needed to fully trust him before you started sharing private stuff about you with him. It wasn't like Bjorn. When you were with him you felt comfortable, that had been happening since your first actual date. Now with Olaf, it was different. Maria said that it was normal, because you hadn't been on a date with anyone, except Bjorn, but you didn't feel like it.

Olaf continued saying his jokes, but it wasn't funny anymore. Your laughter died when you saw Bjorn entering that same restaurant. His hand was wrapped around a woman's waist. She looked like a doll, probably she was a model. He didn't look at you neither once. Olaf looked at you confused. You had totally forgotten about him for a moment, but his voice took you back there on your table.

"Is-is everything all right?" He asked looking where you were looking before. He couldn't understand what was happening. "Do you-do you know that man?" He asked again and you coughed. You didn't want to lie to him, but that seemed the only solution at that moment.

"Well, not really. He just seemed familiar to me, but I don't really know him." You lied and he smiled at you again. Your eyes found their way to Bjorn again. This time they made contact with his blue piercing eyes. He didn't looked at you for long. His gaze returned to that woman. You tried to concentrate on what Olaf were saying. Your mind, as well as your heart, was on Bjorn and that blond woman who reminded you of Barbie.

"As I told you before, the company I work for is goimg to deal with some company of Denmark and--" His words made you look at him. He just said company of Denmark, you heard that clear. He was here because of a deal. Then what was this woman doing here, next to your man? Technically, he wasn't your man, not anymore, but you cared.

"You just said company of Denmark, didn't you?" You tried not to yell and you succeeded, only because you didn't want Bjorn to understand, but he did and that was why he smirked. Literally, this man could hear anything, even a cat walking. Olaf nodded and you run your hand through your hair. "Do you-do you know how the CEO of that company is called? Actually, is his name Bjorn Lothbrok?" You whispered and he frowned. He was completely confused. Firstly, he didn't know why you bothered and secondly, he couldn't understand why you were whispering.

"I think so." He spoke and you smiked. Now he was completely lost. He couldn't understand you. "Are you okay, (Y/N)? Do you want ys to leave, you know to continue our night somewhere else?" He asked and you thought about it for a while. If you left now, you wouldn't be close enough to watching him and if you stayed, you would be close enough, but you would be caught up for sure because you couldn't stop staring at them. Leaving was the right thing to do, you didn't want him to thinking that you were staying tgere vecause of him. But if you left, you wouldn't know were he was. That didn't really mattered. A voice inside your hears was yelling at you that you would meet him again.

"I am fine, but I do think that we should leave. I know were we should go. It's funnier there." You spoke and grabbed your jacket. He stood up and a wide smile covered his face. Bjorn wasn't as happy as Olaf. You had succeeded. You glanced at him. You was glaring at you. You smiled to yourself and left.

The fact that Bjorn was enraged because of you made you happy, but that woman with him didn't. You were almost sure that he had moved on, but if he had, why would he be angry with you dating another man? You needed answers and only Bjorn could give them to you, but you were sure that he wasn't willing to give them and even if you was, you wouldn't dare to ask for them. You could imagine that smirk on his face and that drove you crazy.

You were jealous, so much jealous that you couldn't control your thoughts, but you had no right to be. You had found another man and he did the same. You had to be happy for him. Whatever happened between you, wasn't meant to last. Maybe that way was better, but that didn't make it less painful. It hurt seeing him with another woman.

On the other hand, he was enraged. He tried to control his anger and not beat that man to death. That wouldn't help your relationship at all, but he couldn't see him make you laugh or hold your hand, like he used to do. Actually, he had never really held your hand. His hand had always been wrapped around your waist. He was possessive and that movement meant to show to every other man who wanted you, that you were his. He had totally forgotten about the blonde doll with him, but she made sure to remember him. She cleared her throat, but still he didn't seem to care for her. She sighed deep.

"Bjorn!" She whispered yelled and he looked at her frowned. She smiled at him and he looked back at you. You and that prick had stood up and probably were going to leave this place.

He hadn't picked this place randomly, he had learned about you dating this man and even that this place was where you going most of the times. So he wouldn't miss the chance to encounter with you here. He thought that all this would be less painful, but it wasn't. He even managed to bring Stella. She was a model, they met somewhere he couldn't reacall. She was just a friend. Yes, Bjorn Lothbrok had friends that were female. She was one of them. After all, she wasn't interested in any man.

Your eyes locked with his dark angry blue before you make your way out of that place. If eyes killed, you would be dead. Everyone would be dead inside that place.

You started walking with Olaf by your side. No one of you really talked. You were thinking about Bjorn. He looked more beautiful than before. His beard, that you loved so much, had grew much longer and his hair was shorter and that blue eyes that you missed so much. You could sense that something was bothering Olaf, as well, but Bjorn was the only thing you could think.

"There something in your mind that's bothering you, I can sense it you know and I think that it has to do with that man from earlier in the restaurant." Olaf spoke and you turned your face and looked at him. You didn't want to lie to him. He didn't deserve all of this. He was a funny and good guy. He deserved a woman who cared about him truly and loved him, not you. All you could think about, all you cared about was Bjorn. You were stil in love with him. Actually, you had never stopped. You couldn't stop.

You turned your gaze down on the ground. You weren't proud for that. You didn't want to hurt him. He deserved to know the truth. He was nothing but good and fair to you all this time. He didn't even make any move to lay with you. He respected you, because he had understood that something bothered you.

"There is something that's bothering me and yes, it has to do with him. His name is Bjorn and he is my ex." You said in stable tone of voice.

"Bjorn as Bjorn Lothbrok?" He asked, trying to join the pieces together. You nodded at him and he frowned. Now all made sense. He was the man Maria told him about. He told him that you had broken up with your boyfriend and that was the reason you came to Madrid. You lived in Denmark and Bjorn lived there too. Also, Maria told him that you tried to get away from that man. It all made sense. He was famous and powerful. "And you? I mean, do you still love him?" He asked, but you didn't really answered. He knew the answer himself. He could see it in your eyes. When you looked at him in the restaurant, he saw a gleam in your eyes, something that he hadn't seen inside there before. It hurt him, because he liked you, but he couldn't make you love him or even like him. If Bjorn was the man who could make you happy, he would ve happy as well. People said that if you love someone, you let him go. That was what he was going to do.

"I have never stopped loving him. You are a good guy, you truly are. But for me there is only Bjorn. My Gods have decided that I am made to love him, but we can't be together, things between us are complicated. Sorry, if that hurts, but I can't stop it. I wanted to forget about him and be with you. I tried, but I can't control my feelings." You spoke and your eyes teared up. What you said was the truth. It was upon you these feelings, you didn't have the power to banish them. Your tears were streaming insanely from you eyes. You couldn't even control that.

"I understand you. That kind of love is difficult, if not impossible, to die. If you are happy because of him, I am happy, as well. Just not cry. You have nothing to be sorry about. It's your feelings, you can't change them. I really like you, yeah, and I want to fight for you, but I know that I will lose." He said and stopped walking, you stopped, as well. His hands cupped your hand and his thumbs wiped away your tears. "You shouldn't cry. That eyes aren't made for crying. Don't let him leave, (Y/N). You are suffering without and he is suffering too. Actually, he probably wants to kill me. His eyes were throwing daggers to me. I am lucky because eyes can't kill." He said and you smiled. He was so sweet. He even tried to make you smile after all this.

"His piercing blue eyes can kill you know." You said and both of you laughed. After a small conversation, he left. You sat on a bench and looked at the starry night sky. Madrid was busy at night. People were laughing and having fun. You were watching them having fun in a try to forget about your own thoughts, but that seemed impossible. Bjorn were always there, inside your mind, haunting your thoughts. You would never find the peace you wanted, because there is no peace when you are away from only person you care so much about. You would only find your peace by his side, but even there the problems would exist.

A very familiar scent invaded in your nostrils. You lifted your gaze and saw his face. He sat down next to you and for a moment or so no one of you really talked. You were just watching the busy streats. You were sure that he could listen your heart pounding inside your chest. You were together after two whole months and your skin was burning. Your hearts couldn't stop beating so fast. You were sure that if it continued to beat like that, it would be ripped off your chest. You turned to look at him, he was looking at you. Blue piercing eyes met with yours and they stayed there.

"Were is your..... friend?" He said playfully and took a cigarette out of his pocket. He placed it on his lips and light it up. You watched every single movement of his. "Do you want one?" He offered yiu cigarette and you took it. He seemed surprised by this, because you didn't really smoke before. He light it up for you and you inhaled the smoke and then exhaled. Now he was watching your movements. "I thought you hate smoking." He continued and you turned again to him.

"Yes, I hated it, but I guess I have adopted bad habits since I came here. As for Olaf, he probably went to his home or somewhere else. He is a good guy, but not for me." You said and looked back at the street. You exhaled the smoke before you start talking again. "What about your friend?" You asked, trying to sound like you didn't care, but in fact you did. You wanted to ask why he was here, sitting next to you, when he could ve somewhere with that blonde doll, you saw him with, but you were a coward. He smiled. He had succeeded, you were jealous.

"Probably somewhere with her girlfriend." He answered and you looked at him frowned. You couldn't understand. He threw away his cigarette and moved closer to you. You did the same. His hands cupped your face and he looked deep in your eyes. "You were crying. You know that I hate it when you cry." He whispered and his thumbs caressed your cheeks. You closed your eyes for a moment.

"Why did you come here, Bjorn? Don't tell about some stupid deal, I won't believe it." You said and he sighed.

"I came for you, (Y/N). I thought I was fine when you left, that I didn't need you. I was angry with you for leaving me, but I didn't want to admit it. I tried to lay with some women, but you were always there, I couldn't stop thinking about you. I need you. I-I..... love you." He confessed and you tears fell from your eyes again. His thumbs on your cheeks wiped them away. "Come back home." He whispered and you closed your eyes again.

"I tried to forget about you, to start a new life here away from my old one, I even found a man that wasn't you, but nothing seemed to work out, because of my mind. You were, you are always inside there haunting my thoughts. I don't really sleep, you eyes don't let me. Earlier today, I told Olaf about us and he understood. He told me not to let you leave. He even told me that I am suffering when I am not with you and I am not going to deny it. I love you too much to bear living without you, Bjorn." You whispered and he smirked, but not for long. His lips pressed on yours, in a fierce and rough kiss. He was biting you hungrily within the kiss. You loved it. You loved all the marks that he left to your body each time, hickeys, scratches, bites, bruises, you were used to that. He gripped your body firmly, he didn't mean to harm you. He was just getting too much exciting about this and he couldn't handle himself. He hurt you sometimes because of his size and his fast pace, but you liked it. At first it was a little painful, but then it was only pleasure.

When you stopped kissing, you looked at his eyes again. All this was like a dream. He smiled at you and you did the same. He didn't smile often. Most of the times he was angry and his eyebrows were knitted, because of anger.

"So this means that you are coming back." He said and you nodded.

Your relationship didn't work out at first, but it would in the future. Everything would be different after this night. After all this time you were apart, he knew that he needed you, that he loved you. He had loved other woman before, but no one of them made him feel this way. What he felt for you wasn't something that he could handle or control. He liked being in control and that drove him crazy. He would try to be the right man for you. He wanted to be ans he would.

[neapolitanadonna]

hi boo! how about ☾ - sleep headcanon, ■ - Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon, ♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon, ▼ - childhood headcanon for Romano, Prussia, and Denmark? Thank you so much!

eee I love this. I remember when the Nordics got a TON of hype a couple years ago, but now they’re so underrated. Hit me with those Nordic asks, I love them endlessly. 

South Italy

☾ - sleep headcanon

If he falls asleep in one position, he sure isn’t going to wake up in that position. Sometimes he wakes up, and his blankets and pillows are on the floor, and on rare occasions, he wakes up on the floor himself. The first two times he sleeps next to a s/o, they’ll probably wake up with a kick to the gut, or with him right on top of them. Only way he can sleep still is if he’s cuddled, so if you’re dating him, you better like to cuddle. 

■ - Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon

I’m pretty sure it’s canon that he keeps everything he’s ever owned ever. Germany says he’s disgusting, but he says that he has “an organized fuckin’ mess”, which is pretty accurate. He has letters from people he met during World War Two, random busts of emperors that his grandfather left behind for him, and a DaVinci painting all in one room. Even though he has all these things, he can always find whatever he’s looking for- so it can’t be a bad thing, right? 

♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon

-When he wakes up in the morning, he makes sure to wake up an hour earlier than needed so he can lay in bed and go on his phone.

-He got this one from Spain, which he would rather die than admit, but he loves to garden. He likes the feeling of being in control and taking care of something. This feeling eventually ends up with him adopting a couple dogs. 

-Speaking of dogs, he will only ever show his baby voice for his dogs. He has a Cane Corso and a Neapolitan Mastiff, both of them being absolute units, but he treats them like they’re the most precious things on earth. He hasn’t yelled at them a day in their lives. 

▼ - childhood headcanon 

He was a physically different child, and this is part of the reason why he was seen as less desirable. Along with his chorea, he had very obvious vitiligo, which showed a lot more in the warmer months. People weren’t informed about the condition back in the day, and many people assumed he wasn’t human for it. (His skin tone has evened out since, but he still has patches on his knuckles and chest.)

Prussia

☾ - sleep headcanon

He hasn’t been able to sleep a full night straight since the 1800′s, and he has no idea why. He can go a full day on just four hours of sleep. He’ll take random hour long naps here and there, but he rarely ever shows signs of being tired. It’s kinda freaky. 

■ - Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon

His houses are always spotless, but his basements are absolute hell holes. You could walk into his house and think it’s a model home for sale- everything is squeaky clean and you couldn’t find a spot of dust anywhere. However, especially in his house in Munich, once you get down to the basement, you’re met with thousands of old diaries, old motorcycles and bikes, crowns, and old jackets and boots that haven’t been worn in centuries, and anything in between. Even he avoids going down there, sometimes. 

♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon

Due to his lack of national importance these days, he has chanelled all his energy into becoming a vlogger- and he’s pretty damn popular too. Nobody knows who he really is, especially since most of his followers are teenagers. Germany thinks it’s embarrassing, but Prussia believes his true calling in life was to become a vlogger all along. He brags to his country friends that he bought David Dobrik a Tesla, but they honeslty have no idea what he’s talking about. 

▼ - childhood headcanon 

Like Romano, he was labelled as a Devil child in a world heavily influenced by the Roman Catholic Church. He got along with Fredrick the Great a lot because he was labelled as the runt and the failure of his family too, and it was refreshing for him to finally have a boss who understood his struggles in the world. 

Denmark 

☾ - sleep headcanon

Yunno, for a guy who can’t stop bouncing off the walls, he sleeps surprisingly still. The position he falls asleep in is the position he’ll fall asleep in, but there’s just one little problem- he snores. He sounds like a cross breed between a hippo and a freight train, and it absolutely irks the hell out of anyone who’s sleeping within his general vicinity. 

■ - Bedroom/house/living quarters headcanon

He’s got his things together for the most part, but he can’t help but make a little bit of a mess from time to time. He has everything dusted and washed, he’s not that dirty, but if you can’t find something scattered across the floors of his living room or bedroom, then you’re not in his house. Sometimes it’s legos, other times it’s paperwork he’s putting off until later. He’ll get to both eventually. 

♦ - quirks/hobbies headcanon

Wherever he goes, there’s a human who knows him on a personal level. He prides himself on being very anti-problematic (take that, America) and doesn’t have a lot of political and social issues going on in his country most days out of the year. He uses all his free time to go traveling around his country and other countries in Europe, and uninteltionally makes a lot of human friends along the way. He’s just lovable like that.

▼ - childhood headcanon 

He was always a little troublemaker. Before he was old enough to really be a viking, he would still go on voyages and travels with them. He was known for being a complete pain in the arse, but of course nobody could ever do anything about it. He was their beloved home country, after all. 

[mariacallous]

This story is part of a joint investigation between Lighthouse Reports and WIRED. To read other stories from the series, click here.

In a sparsely decorated corner office of the Danish Public Benefits Administration sits one of Denmark’s most quietly influential people. Annika Jacobsen is the head of the agency’s data mining unit, which, over the past eight years, has conducted a vast experiment in automated bureaucracy. Blunt, and with a habit of completing others’ sentences, Jacobsen is clear about her mission: “I’m here to catch cheaters.”

Denmark’s Public Benefits Administration employs hundreds of people who oversee one of the world's most well-funded welfare states. The country spends 26 percent of its GDP on benefits—more than Sweden, the United States, and the United Kingdom. It’s been hailed as a leading example of how governments can support their most vulnerable citizens. Bernie Sanders, the US senator, called the Nordic nation of 6 million people a model for how countries should approach welfare.

But over the past decade, the scale of Denmark’s benefits spending has come under intense scrutiny, and the perceived scourge of welfare fraud is now at the top of the country’s political agenda. Armed with questionable data on the amount of benefits fraud taking place, conservative politicians have turned Denmark’s famed safety net into a polarizing political battleground. 

It has become an article of faith among the country’s right-wing politicians that Denmark is losing hundreds of millions of euros to benefits fraud each year. In 2011, KMD, one of Denmark’s largest IT companies, estimated that up to 5 percent of all welfare payments in the country were fraudulent. KMD’s estimates would make the Nordic nation an outlier, and its findings have been criticized by some academics. In France, it’s estimated that fraud amounts to 0.39 percent of all benefits paid. A similar estimate made in the Netherlands in 2016 by broadcaster RTL found the average amount of fraud per benefit payment was €‎17 ($18), or just 0.2 percent of total benefits payments. The perception of widespread welfare fraud has empowered Jacobsen to establish one of the most sophisticated and far-reaching fraud detection systems in the world. She has tripled the number of state databases her agency can access from three to nine, compiling information on people’s taxes, homes, cars, relationships, employers, travel, and citizenship. Her agency has developed an array of machine learning models to analyze this data and predict who may be cheating the system.

Documents obtained by Lighthouse Reports and WIRED through freedom-of-information requests show how Denmark is building algorithms to profile benefits recipients based on everything from their nationality to whom they may be sleeping next to at night. They reveal a system where technology and political agendas have become entwined, with potentially dangerous consequences.

Danish human rights groups such as Justitia describe the agency’s expansion as “systematic surveillance” and disproportionate to the scale of welfare fraud. Denmark's system has yet to be challenged under EU law. Whether the country’s experiments with machine learning cross a legal line is a question that could be answered by the European Union’s landmark Artificial Intelligence Act, proposed legislation that aims to safeguard human rights against emerging technologies.

The debate about welfare in Denmark changed in October 2012, when officials asked residents to send in photos of suspected welfare cheats in their local area. The call led some left-leaning commentators to warn of a “war on welfare,” and arrived as the far-right Danish People’s Party—which criticized the government for “luring” immigrants with welfare benefits—rose up in opinion polls. 

Within a year, consulting firm Deloitte released an audit of welfare fraud controls in Denmark, finding them inadequate to detect fraud in an increasingly digitized welfare system. The auditors, commissioned by the Danish finance ministry, estimated the “short-term savings” of a new “risk-scoring infrastructure” to be €126 million.

Deloitte’s vision was realized in February 2015 with a bill that overhauled the Danish welfare state. It proposed a massive expansion of the Public Benefit Administration’s powers, including the ability to store and collect data on millions of people, access other authorities’ databases, and even request data from foreign governments. Largely unnoticed at the time, it also called for the creation of a “data mining unit” to “control for social benefits fraud.”

The bill was backed by all of the major political parties in Denmark and became law in April 2015. That month, Jacobsen left an IT job in the financial sector to become Denmark’s first head of data mining and fraud detection. 

As Jacobsen got to work, conservative politician Troels Lund Poulsen took office in June 2015 as Denmark’s new employment minister. He implemented random airport checks to catch welfare recipients taking undeclared vacations, and proposed giving the new data mining unit access to welfare recipients’ electricity and water bills in order to detect where they were living. He was joined by a growing chorus of supporters, with one municipality reportedly asking for data from cell towers to track where welfare recipients were staying. “It’s about politics,” Poulsen said in March 2018. “It is important for me to send a clear signal that we will not accept social cheating and fraud.”

Jacobsen’s critics have accused her unit of conducting mass surveillance, but she argues that there are clear safeguards that prevent overreach. Jacobsen says her algorithms don’t actually cancel benefits—they only flag people as suspicious. Ultimately, it is up to a human fraud investigator to make the final call, and citizens have the right to appeal their decisions. “You are not guilty just because we point you out. There will always be a person that looks into your data,” she says.

The majority of Danish residents flagged for investigation are found innocent. Of the nearly 50,000 cases selected by the data mining unit in 2022, 4,000, or 8 percent, resulted in some form of punishment. In the cases where wrongdoing was found, the data mining unit has managed to recover €‎23.1 million—a significant return on its annual budget of €‎3.1 million.

But the scale and reach of Denmark's data collection has been criticized by the Danish Institute of Human Rights, an independent human rights watchdog, and the Danish Data Protection Authority, a public body that enforces privacy regulations. Justitia has compared the Public Benefits Administration to the National Security Agency in the US, and claimed that its digital monitoring of millions of Danish residents violates their privacy rights.

Jacobsen says the agency’s use of data is proportional under European data protection laws, and that preventing error and fraud is important to maintain trust in the welfare state. The Public Benefits Administration is also looking to have its algorithms check citizens earlier in the process, when they first apply for benefits, to avoid situations where they have to repay large sums of money. “Most citizens are honest; however, there will always be some citizens who try to get welfare benefits that they are not entitled to,” Jacobsen says. 

Jacobsen also argues that machine learning is fairer than analog methods. Anonymous tips about potential welfare cheats are unreliable, she claims. In 2017, they made up 14 percent of the cases selected for investigation by local fraud officials, whereas cases from her data unit amounted to 26 percent. That means her unit is more effective than anonymous tips, but nearly half of the cases local investigators decide to take on come from their own leads. Random selection is also unfair, she claims, because it means burdening people when there are no grounds for suspicion. “[Critics] say that when the machine is looking at data, it is violating the citizen, [whereas] I might think it’s very violating looking at random citizens,” Jacobsen says. “What is a violation of the citizen, really? Is it a violation that you are in the stomach of the machine, running around in there?”

Denmark isn’t alone in turning to algorithms amid political pressure to crack down on welfare fraud. France adopted the technology in 2010, the Netherlands in 2013, Ireland in 2016, Spain in 2018, Poland in 2021, and Italy in 2022. But it’s the Netherlands that has provided the clearest warning against technological overreach. In 2021, a childcare benefits scandal, in which 20,000 families were wrongly accused of fraud, led to the resignation of the entire Dutch government. It came after officials interpreted small errors, such as a missing signature, as evidence of fraud, and forced welfare recipients to pay back thousands of euros they’d received as benefits payments.

As details of the Dutch scandal emerged, it was found that an algorithm had selected thousands of parents—nearly 70 percent of whom were first or second generation migrants—for investigation. The system was abandoned after the Dutch Data Protection Authority found that it had illegally used nationality as a variable, which Amnesty International later compared to “digital ethnic profiling.” 

The EU’s AI Act would ban any system covered by the legislation that “exploits the vulnerabilities of a specific group,” including those who are vulnerable because of their financial situation. Systems like Jacobsen’s, which affect citizens’ access to essential public services, would also likely be labeled as “high risk” and subject to stringent requirements, including transparency obligations and a requirement for “high levels of accuracy.”

The documents obtained by Lighthouse Reports and WIRED appear to show that Denmark’s system goes beyond the one that brought down the Dutch government. They reveal how Denmark’s algorithms use variables like nationality, whose use has been equated with ethnic profiling.

One of Denmark's fraud detection algorithms attempts to work out how someone might be connected to a non-EU country. Heavily redacted documents show that, in order to do this, the system tracks whether a welfare recipient or their “family relations” have ever emigrated from Denmark. Two other variables record their nationality and whether they have ever been a citizen of any country other than Denmark.

Jacobsen says that nationality is only one of many variables used by the algorithm, and that a welfare recipient will not be flagged unless they live at a “suspicious address” and the system isn’t able to find a connection to Denmark.  The documents also show that Denmark’s data mining unit tracks welfare recipients’ marital status, the length of their marriage, who they live with, the size of their house, their income, whether they’ve ever lived outside Denmark, their call history with the Public Benefits Administration, and whether their children are Danish residents.

Another variable, “presumed partner,” is used to determine whether someone has a concealed relationship, since single people receive more benefits. This involves searching data for connections between welfare recipients and other Danish residents, such as whether they have lived at the same address or raised children together. 

“The ideology that underlies these algorithmic systems, and [the] very intrusive surveillance and monitoring of people who receive welfare, is a deep suspicion of the poor,” says Victoria Adelmant, director of the Digital Welfare and Human Rights Project. 

For all the complexity of machine learning models, and all the data amassed and processed, there is still a person with a decision to make at the hard end of fraud controls. This is the fail-safe, Jacobsen argues, but it’s also the first place where these systems collide with reality.

Morten Bruun Jonassen is one of these fail-safes. A former police officer, he leads Copenhagen's control team, a group of officials tasked with ensuring that the city’s residents are registered at the correct address and receive the correct benefits payments. He's been working for the city’s social services department for 14 years, long enough to remember a time before algorithms assumed such importance—and long enough to have observed the change of tone in the national conversation on welfare.

While the war on welfare fraud remains politically popular in Denmark, Jonassen says only a “very small” number of the cases he encounters involve actual fraud. For all the investment in it, the data mining unit is not his best source of leads, and cases flagged by Jacobsen’s system make up just 13 percent of the cases his team investigates—half the national average. Since 2018, Jonassen and his unit have softened their approach compared to other units in Denmark, which tend to be tougher on fraud, he says. In a case documented in 2019 by DR, Denmark’s public broadcaster, a welfare recipient said that investigators had trawled her social media to see whether she was in a relationship before wrongfully accusing her of welfare fraud.

While he gives credit to Jacobsen’s data mining unit for trying to improve its algorithms, Jonassen has yet to see significant improvement for the cases he handles. “Basically, it’s not been better,” he says. In a 2022 survey of Denmark’s towns and cities conducted by the unit, officials scored their satisfaction with it, on average, between 4 and 5 out of 7.

Jonassen says people claiming benefits should get what they’re due—no more, no less. And despite the scale of Jacobsen’s automated bureaucracy, he starts more investigations based on tips from schools and social workers than machine-flagged cases. And, crucially, he says, he works hard to understand the people claiming benefits and the difficult situations they find themselves in. “If you look at statistics and just look at the screen,” he says, “you don’t see that there are people behind it.” 

Additional reporting by Daniel Howden, Soizic Penicaud, Pablo Jiménez Arandia, and Htet Aung. Reporting was supported by the Pulitzer Center’s AI Accountability Fellowship and the Center for Artistic Inquiry and Reporting.

[uoblgbtq]

🌈 LGBTQ+ History in Europe 🌈

Hello everyone! For History Month we want to bring LGBTQ+ History from all over the world to you. Fourth week: Europe- today for history, Friday for people.

Captionage differences in relationships, slide 4 for homophobia, slide 6 for Nazi persecution and slide 9 for HIV/AIDS

Resources in the last slide and here for the full thing:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jmwMYQpAb42GO93CXB4V3a5wlzr_pYwryFGF7bIY-Q8/edit

Image 1:

[ID: Baby blue background, with a white outline. There is white circle patterns on the bottom right and top left corners. At the center there are a few blobs of two blue tones and a yellow one. Over this there is a dark green silhouette of the European continent, with a circle in the progressive gay flag around it.

Top right corner has the LGBTQ+ Association logo and the guild of students one. Bottom left has dark blue text that reads “Europe - History”. Underneath, in white smaller text, it says “LGBTQ+ History Month 2021”. End ID]

Image 2:

[ID: Baby blue background, with white circle patterns on the bottom right and top left corners and a yellow circle halfway down the right side.

At the center there is a white square, with dark blue text which reads “LGBTQ+ History is often missing from our textbooks, and this year we decided to try and bring you people, events and traditions from all over the world - Tuesdays for broad history, Fridays for amazing people throughout history. For this fourth week, we are focusing on Europe.”

At the top there is small text that reads: "Next Slide CW age differences in relationships"

The top right corner has the LGBTQ+ Association logo and the guild of students one. Bottom left has small text in two lines, the first in dark blue, the second in white. It reads “Europe - History. LGBTQ+ History Month 2021”. End ID]

Image 3:

[ID: Baby blue background, with white circle patterns on the bottom right and top left corners and a yellow circle halfway down the right side.

At the center there is a white square, with dark blue text which reads “Ancient Greece”, and smaller text that reads “Relationships between soldiers were common in some Greek militaries, notably the Sacred Band of Thebes, a troop in the Theban army in the 4th century BC. 

Relationships between men and teenagers were also common - these relationships were a form of mentorship, but were also romantic and sexual. While we would not condone this sort of age difference today, this was considered normal at the time, based on different ideas of sexual agency and maturity.

There are more limited records about relationships between women. Some artwork depicts lesbian relationships. Most famously, Sappho's poems depict love for other women.”

At the top there is small text that reads: "Next Slide CW homophobia"

The top right corner has the LGBTQ+ Association logo and the guild of students one. Bottom left has small text in two lines, the first in dark blue, the second in white. It reads “Europe - History. LGBTQ+ History Month 2021”. End ID]

Image 4:

[ID: Baby blue background, with white circle patterns on the bottom right and top left corners and a yellow circle halfway down the right side.

At the center there is a white square, with dark blue text which reads “Al-Andalus”, and smaller text that reads “Al-Andalus was an area of the Iberian peninsula spanning most of modern-day Portugal and Spain ruled by the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate from the 8th century to the 15th century. During this period, unlike areas in the Middle East, attitudes towards homosexuality were more relaxed - though it was never officially condoned, relationships between men were commonplace. Some of the rulers of al-Andalus were known to keep male partners. These relationships are shown in some of the poetry and art of the time.”

The top right corner has the LGBTQ+ Association logo and the guild of students one. Bottom left has small text in two lines, the first in dark blue, the second in white. It reads “Europe - History. LGBTQ+ History Month 2021”. End ID]

Image 5:

[ID: Baby blue background, with white circle patterns on the bottom right and top left corners and a yellow circle halfway down the right side.

At the center there is a white square, with dark blue text which reads “Molly Houses”, and smaller text that reads “In the 18th and 19th century, homosexuality was a capital offence in Britain. Taverns and inns known as "molly houses" became spaces where gay and bisexual people could freely socialise and meet others. It was common for some at the molly houses to cross dress, and some adopted what could be described today as transgender identities. Unfortunately, due to their secret nature much of what is known about molly houses, and those that frequented them, comes from court proceedings after these places were raided by police.”

At the top there is small text that reads: "Next Slide CW Nazi persecution"

The top right corner has the LGBTQ+ Association logo and the guild of students one. Bottom left has small text in two lines, the first in dark blue, the second in white. It reads “Europe - History. LGBTQ+ History Month 2021”. End ID]

Image 6:

[ID: Baby blue background, with white circle patterns on the bottom right and top left corners and a yellow circle halfway down the right side.

At the center there is a white square, with dark blue text which reads “Institut für Sexualwissenschaft”, and smaller text that reads “Magnus Hirschfeld opened the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (sometimes translated as "Institute for Sex Research") in 1919. The institute had may functions, being a research library and archive, but also offered various medical and psychological services, including endocrinological and surgical services for transgender patients. The first modern gender confirmation surgeries were performed at the institute. Additionally, many trans people were employed there. In 1933, the Institute was targeted by the Nazi government, and its archives destroyed.”

The top right corner has the LGBTQ+ Association logo and the guild of students one. Bottom left has small text in two lines, the first in dark blue, the second in white. It reads “Europe - History. LGBTQ+ History Month 2021”. End ID]

Image 7:

[ID: Baby blue background, with white circle patterns on the bottom right and top left corners and a yellow circle halfway down the right side.

At the center there is a white square, with dark blue text which reads “Early LGBTQ+ Organisations”, and smaller text that reads “- 1897: The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee is founded by Magnus Hirschfeld, the first recorded organisation to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. It regularly published the "Yearbook for Intermediate Sexual Types", the first scientific journal about "sexual variants"

- 1946: The Shakespeareclub was founded in Amsterdam - the group was renamed to COC (Centre for Culture and Recreation) in 1949. COC is among the oldest surviving LGBTQ+ organisations, and worked to equalize the age of consent, and provide support groups for LGBT people in the Netherlands. ”

The top right corner has the LGBTQ+ Association logo and the guild of students one. Bottom left has small text in two lines, the first in dark blue, the second in white. It reads “Europe - History. LGBTQ+ History Month 2021”. End ID]

Image 8:

[ID: Baby blue background, with white circle patterns on the bottom right and top left corners and a yellow circle halfway down the right side.

At the center there is a white square, with dark blue text which reads “- Denmark was the first country in to introduce civil unions for same sex couples (1989). While this was not true marriage equality, this gave these couples legal recognition, affording them similar legal protections to heterosexual couples. Many other countries chose to adopt this model for same sex couples. 

- The Netherlands were the first country to introduce marriage equality (2001).

- Sweden was the first country to allow transgender people to change the gender marker on official identification documents (1972), although there were a number of requirements for this including being sterilized. Sweden also provided free transition healthcare to trans people.”

At the top there is small text that reads: "Next Slide CW HIV/AIDS"

The top right corner has the LGBTQ+ Association logo and the guild of students one. Bottom left has small text in two lines, the first in dark blue, the second in white. It reads “Europe - History. LGBTQ+ History Month 2021”. End ID]

Image 9:

[ID: Baby blue background, with white circle patterns on the bottom right and top left corners and a yellow circle halfway down the right side.

At the center there is a white square, with dark blue text which reads “ACT UP-Paris”, and smaller text that reads “ACT UP-Paris, founded in 1989 as a branch of the international AIDS activist organisation ACT UP, sought to publicise the AIDS epidemic and put pressure on politicians to improve care for all AIDS patients. One example of their actions was covering the obelisk on the Concorde with a giant pink condom in 1992.

They also campaigned for marketing of the treatments for HIV and information about methods of prevention, as well as the rights of minority groups in France.”

The top right corner has the LGBTQ+ Association logo and the guild of students one. Bottom left has small text in two lines, the first in dark blue, the second in white. It reads “Europe - History. LGBTQ+ History Month 2021”. End ID]

Image 10:

[ID: Baby blue background, with white circle patterns on the bottom right and top left corners and a yellow circle halfway down the right side.

At the center there is a white square, with dark blue text which reads “Some further resources”, and smaller text that reads “Al-Andalus:

http://queerstoryfiles.blogspot.com/2013/09/hispanic-africa.html

Molly Houses (Use of Q word):

https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/miss-muffs-molly-house-in-whitechapel

https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/lgbtq-heritage-project/meeting-and-socialising/cross-dressing-and-queer-socialising/

Scientific-Humanitarian Committee/Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (CW: Nazi persecution):

https://worldqueerstory.org/2018/06/08/scientific-humanitarian-committee/https://archive.jewishcurrents.org/may-14-magnus-hirschfeld-vs-the-nazis/

COC Nederland: 

https://www.coc.nl/engels

https://international.coc.nl/

ACT UP-Paris:

https://www.actupparis.org/ (French Site)”

The top right corner has the LGBTQ+ Association logo and the guild of students one. Bottom left has small text in two lines, the first in dark blue, the second in white. It reads “Europe - History. LGBTQ+ History Month 2021”. End ID]

[janetushar1]

Cochlear Implants Market to Hit $3 Billion by 2032

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The global Cochlear Implants Market was valued at USD 1.5 Billion in 2024 and it is estimated to garner USD 3 Billion by 2032 with a registered CAGR of 9.2% during the forecast period 2024 to 2032.

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Top Competitors:

Cochlear Ltd. (Australia), Sonova (Switzerland), MED-EL Medical Electronics (Austria), Demant A/S (Denmark), Zhejiang Nurotron Biotechnology Co. Ltd. (China)

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Regional Analysis

-North America [United States, Canada, Mexico]

-South America [Brazil, Argentina, Columbia, Chile, Peru]

-Europe [Germany, UK, France, Italy, Russia, Spain, Netherlands, Turkey, Switzerland]

-Middle East & Africa [GCC, North Africa, South Africa]

-Asia-Pacific [China, Southeast Asia, India, Japan, Korea, Western Asia]

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[expatimes]

LEGO won't make modern war machines, but others are picking up the pieces This is a story about a multibillion-dollar international conglomerate, arms manufacturers, a German peace group and renegades who make miniaturized weapons systems out of small shops.Not that those tiny weapons could actually hurt anyone. Well, not unless you stepped on one.The conglomerate is LEGO, with worldwide revenues of $6.2 billion in 2019 from its toys, retail stores, theme parks and even movie rights. Its toy sets -- which are intended to "inspire the builders of tomorrow," according to the company's mission statement -- run the gamut, from skyscrapers to boats, police stations to castles. There's even a kit to make Rome's famous Colosseum. Nothing from the real world, it seems, is off limits. That is, except for anything modeled on today's military. "We have a long-standing policy of not creating sets which feature real military vehicles that are currently in use," Ryan Greenwood, a spokesman for the company, said in an email to CNN.But during the summer, the Danish company released a set for the V-22 Osprey, a tiltrotor aircraft manufactured by Boeing and Bell Helicopter Textron that is only used by the American and Japanese militaries.LEGO pulled its V-22 Osprey amid protests from a German anti-war group. Credit: LEGOThe kit, set to launch under LEGO's vehicle-focused Technic brand, depicted a search and rescue version of the Osprey. But it drew a quick, harsh protest from the German Peace Society -- United War Resisters (DFG-VK in German), an almost 130-year-old anti-war group.The V-22 Osprey, the group said, has been involved in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mali, Yemen and Syria. In a press release criticizing LEGO over the model, the DFG-VK then threw the toymaker's own words from a decade earlier right back at it:"The basic aim is to avoid realistic weapons and military equipment that children may recognize from hot spots around the world and to refrain from showing violent or frightening situations when communicating about LEGO products. At the same time, the purpose is for the LEGO brand not to be associated with issues that glorify conflicts and unethical or harmful behavior," the peace group quoted from a 2010 LEGO report.LEGO quickly pulled the motorized aircraft model from its inventory in late July. The few sets that had already hit store shelves made their way into the hands LEGO enthusiasts and onto internet trading sites at prices as high as $1,000 for a set that would've retailed at around $120.US Air Force V-22 Ospreys take off from a base in New Mexico. Credit: U.S. Air Force/Staff Sgt. Markus MaierThe V-22 Osprey LEGO set. Credit: LEGOGreenwood, the company spokesperson, refused to comment further on why LEGO changed its mind on the Osprey model or why it was produced in the first place.But LEGO canceling its Osprey set hasn't stopped fans from creating their own versions. In a video interview from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Dan Siskind pulled up a large model of the aircraft to the camera. Although built from LEGO pieces, this one is bigger and, arguably, even more elaborate and life-like. He spun its tiltrotor propellers in a hand-held simulated flight.Siskind is a former "master builder," the top LEGO designers who assemble the models you find displayed in stores. He is now part of a subculture that unites adult fans of LEGO (or AFOLs as they are known) and military buffs. Through his company, Brickmania Toyworks, the 51-year-old takes the iconic bricks and turns them into custom military building kits spanning eras and multiple wars. An arms bazaar for AFOLs, his inventory includes a US F-16 fighter ($425), a Russian T-80BVM main battle tank ($340) and even a Phalanx close-in weapon system, the rapid-fire Gatling gun the US Navy puts on its warships to knock out incoming threats like missiles or speedboats ($175).There are also historical options, such as a Vietnam War-era Soviet MiG-21 fighter, a World War II Japanese A6M2 Zero or British Spitfire Mk I fighter plane, a US M4A3 Sherman or German Panzer IV Ausf G tank, or a World War I British biplane, all priced around $200.For those with lower budgets, micro military vehicle sets are sold for around $20.The parts are almost all genuine, made with new-condition LEGO bricks. But while the Danish company does not endorse its products being used for these purposes, it tolerates the practice, Siskind said."They've given us some guidelines -- here's how to stay out of trouble."He's nonetheless blunt in describing his job. "It's just stuff we've taken that weren't supposed to be made into military things, (that) we've made into military things," Siskind explained. "Ordinary LEGO bricks just used in a way they were never intended to be used." Because he isn't allowed to purchase bricks directly from LEGO for his military sets, sourcing is "one big, continuous scavenger hunt" that requires his staff to comb through Walmarts, Targets and toy stores for discounts on original sets. The company also uses the website Bricklink, a kind of eBay for LEGO parts, where specific bricks can be bought and sold. The AC-130 Spooky II gunship model, made using LEGO bricks and other aftermarket parts, from Brickmania Toyworks in Minneapolis. Credit: Courtesy Brickmania ToyworksAll the parts are brought to Brickmania's Minneapolis headquarters, where they are broken down and reallocated to the new kits, including its most expensive design: a Lockheed Martin AC-130 "Spooky II" gunship that contains more than 5,200 pieces and sells for $3,755.In real life, an AC-130 gunship is one of the most terrifying aircraft imaginable. Armed with 40mm and 105mm cannons and a 25mm Gatling gun, it can devastate an area in seconds, earning it the nickname the "Angel of Death" in military circles. When the company made the first 25 models available, they sold out in five hours. A second batch then went in the same amount of time, Siskind said. "We have more demand than we can keep up with."While Siskind will sell you a military kit, his company also encourages AFOLs to produce their own creations, sponsoring regular contests at Brickmania's flagship store in Minneapolis. Among the rules: They must be military or war-themed, bear no Nazi symbols, display no excessive gore and are not of the sci-fi or fantasy genres. Global communityPeople entering the competitions should probably be thankful that Ralph Savelsberg lives thousands of miles away in the Netherlands -- because the 45-year-old Dutch builder's portfolio of LEGO-based military creations would likely be easy winners.There's a Vietnam-era US Navy patrol boat, a Cold War-era intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), an Iranian F-14 fighter, an M-21 reconnaissance jet and a massive and stunning recreation of a B-52 bomber, the mainstay of the US Air Force's bomber fleet for more than six decades.Dutch LEGO builder Ralph Savelsberg shows off a model he made of a US Air Force B-52 bomber with a 5-foot wingspan. Credit: Courtesy Ralph SavelsbergSavelsberg, a physicist and assistant professor, said he builds LEGO for love, not money."This is just a hobby. I do get a lot of requests, but I always disappoint them; I have no interest whatsoever in having to deal with customers."Furthermore, making plans or instructions is no fun, so I don't actually have any plans for most of my models," he said in an email.What he does enjoy is getting together with LEGO military builders from around the world at various conventions, where they share creations and even make custom ones to commemorate anniversaries.For this year's Brickfair Virginia, Savelsberg and a few dozen military builders planned a display themed on the Cold War, including his ICBM. The event was canceled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but Savelsberg plans to return next year.LEGO-style military models on display at Brickfest Japan 2019 in Kobe. Credit: Courtesy The Brothers Brick / Edwinder SinghIn 2019, he attended Japan Brickfest, Asia's largest AFOL gathering, which featured a section for military items by some of the 270 builders displaying their work.Those builders, who came from places like Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan as well as Japan, likely represent just a fraction of those pursuing the hobby, Savelsberg said."I suspect that the people who come to events represent the tip of the iceberg. For every builder who is willing and able to travel to events, there might be two dozen teenagers who rarely get out of their bedrooms and share their builds with a group of friends via social media," he said. Justin Chua, who runs LEGO aftermarket store Lioncity Mocs in Singapore, says this 1:100-scale model of a Singaporean littoral mission ship took him more than two months to plan, source parts and assemble. It has more than 2,000 pieces. Credit: Courtesy Justin ChuaA company for kidsIn a way, Savelsberg, Siskind and the other builders of LEGO-based military models are doing what LEGO has always encouraged -- "only the imagination sets the limit to what you can build," the company's profile says."There's nothing that stops me from using dark green elements I get from, say, a LEGO Mini Cooper for a US Navy patrol boat," like this one from the Vietnam era, Dutch builder Ralph Savelsberg said. Credit: Courtesy Ralph SavelsbergLEGO traces its roots back to Denmark in the 1930s, when carpenter Ole Kirk Kristiansen abbreviated the Danish words "Leg Godt," meaning "play well" in English, to brand the wooden toys he was producing. It turned to plastic bricks in 1949.In 1955, Kristiansen's son Godtfred launched LEGO bricks as a system, embracing the idea that the more you have, the more things you can make. "Our idea has been to create a toy that prepares the child for life -- appealing to its imagination and developing the creative urge and joy of creation that are the driving forces in every human being," he said.Over the years, wheels and human figures were introduced in 1962 and 1978 respectively. And in 1989, miniature human figures sporting more facial expressions than the usual slight smile also emerged.LEGO has also been determined to put smiles on the faces of children."As a family-owned company with a long-term mission, the LEGO Group is uniquely placed to deliver a positive impact on children, society and the planet," the company profile says. The 25-page company document mentions the words "child" or "children" nearly 100 times. Still, as LEGO grew over the years, so did the presence of weapons.A 2016 report analyzing the company's products, published on the peer-reviewed scientific investigation journal PLOS One, argues that LEGO sets "are not as innocent as they used to be" and have become increasingly violent over time. Since 1978, when the first weapon bricks -- a sword, a halberd and a lance -- were added to castle-themed LEGO sets, there the amount of weaponry has increased each year, according to the study. It found that by 2014, nearly 30% of sets contained at least one weapon brick.A LEGO James Bond Aston Martin set on the shelf of a Hong Kong store. Credit: Brad Lendon/CNNSome of this increase can be attributed to movie-themed sets. For example, the company's summer 2020 catalog features a model of the Aston Martin, the famous car driven by British spy James Bond. It comes complete with "a wealth of sophisticated details and 007 gadgetry, including rotating license plates, ejector seat, tire scythes and front-wing machine guns."There's also "Star Wars" X-wing fighters and Imperial star destroyers, and sets depicting "Minecraft" battles, with axes, bludgeons and cases of TNT.When it comes to the LEGO's ethical red lines, Siskind sees a disconnect in the company's logic. Is there really a difference between the Death Star or the violence of a galaxy far, far away and the machines that kill people here on Earth?"There's very direct historical connections between the 'Star Wars' world and World War II," he added. Following LEGO's rulesFrom his office in Atlanta, Andrew Roberts, co-owner of Battle Brick Customs, another aftermarket retailer, expresses what he sees as the LEGO dilemma."LEGO has always kind of struggled with filling boys' desires for action and adventure (while) staying true to themselves (by) not doing realistic military things," he said.For a long time, the company even went so far as to avoid gray-colored bricks (the obvious color choice for building military weapons and vehicles), Roberts claimed, saying early castle sets were made from yellow ones. (Siskind, too, recalled some rather colorful medieval builds, saying: "When I was a kid all my castles were red because I had the most of that color.") LEGO's avoidance of modern military themes provided an opening, Roberts added. He turned his college pastime -- messing with his old LEGO sets -- into a full-time job, churning out best-sellers like World War II M4 Sherman tanks and modern Gulf War M1 Abrahms tanks."I don't think they like what I do but at the same time ... They tolerate me because I obey the rules." A US Special Forces team in LEGO-style figures from Battle Brick Customs. Credit: Courtesy Battle Brick CustomsFor instance, Roberts buys minifigures from LEGO, strips them of their paint and markings, and turns them into soldiers, sailors and airmen to stand watch in the military-themed sets he sells. He likens it to how a custom car shop takes a showroom model and turns it into a street racer."If you're a shop selling custom Ford Mustangs, you can do that -- people have to know that this is a Ford Mustang, but it's not an official Ford product," Roberts said. "I took a Ford and I did a bunch of stuff to it."In the case of LEGO parts, he added, "It's a genuine LEGO minifigure that has had a bunch of aftermarket stuff done to it. I bought it, and it's mine. And I'm customizing it, and I'm not pretending they did it."A figure stylized as a US soldier from Battle Brick Customs. Credit: Courtesy Battle Brick CustomsFor much of the fanatic LEGO-building community, the "it's mine" mentality -- a personal stake in what they make -- is what's fun and what fills them with pride. And they're not going to let the company's ethos get in the way of their creations.After the company pulled the Osprey in the summer, The Brothers Brick, an independent, reader-funded website for LEGO enthusiasts, carried several posts about the set's demise. One showed a futuristic olive green vision of an Osprey with orange highlights, created by builder Simon Liu, using LEGO bricks.Brothers Brick contributor, Lino -- a Washington state-based artist and humorist, according to his biography -- drew inspiration from Liu's creation."The point of showing you this is, while LEGO occasionally makes doofus decisions, they provide the pieces so that you can build anything you want. Who needs directions and an official set?" Lino wrote."With LEGO bricks and a bit of imagination, the world is your oyster. Or Osprey."Top image caption: A figurine from Battle Brick Customs of a US soldier emerging from an armored personnel carrier. #lifestyle Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=15448&feed_id=22672

[strandbiler]

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[nomolosk]

Snapshots (AU Yeah August 2020)

read on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25655623/chapters/62626303

Day 8- Secret Dating

Marinette had no idea what she was doing or even what was going on. One moment she was convinced that she’d gravely offended Gabriel Agreste, who had rudely fallen on top of her while she was sleeping the night before, and the next she’s feeling disoriented and confused because the man she thought was Gabriel Agreste actually turned out to be his son, Adrien Agreste. 

Marinette really felt like that was something she should have known. Why didn’t she know that before? Adrien was a public figure! His face was all over billboards on a regular basis! He featured in every Gabriel magazine, and his ads were in most other magazines as well. She should have been able to recognize him, or even remember that Gabriel had a son, and she should have noticed that the man last night looked too young to be Gabriel himself. She remembered all of that as soon as the man introduced himself properly, so why hadn’t she remembered it before?

On top of that confusion, was the fact that not only was he not offended by last night’s mistake, he was the same hot model from the cafe! Marinette knew she was scatterbrained sometimes, but surely even she couldn’t forget something like that!

Something was definitely rotten in the state of Denmark. Or Paris, at any rate. And it was probably due to some kind of akuma. This one, though, was apparently very subtle. Marinette continued to make small talk with this unfairly hot and inexplicably interested model while she tried to sort out what was going on and how she really felt. The manipulation of her own emotions wasn’t entirely out of the picture if there was an akuma involved. Then someone else called his name and annoyance and distaste flitted over his face before he smoothed out his expression into something polite.

The woman who’d called his name was probably another model, someone he worked with- she was tall and beautiful and projected an air of, not just confidence, but possessiveness. She latched onto Adrien’s arm as if she was a cat, and he was a scratching post. Marinette’s eyes flicked to his face again, but while his expression didn’t waver, he was looking anywhere but her- which in itself was a huge warning sign. He was clearly used to this behavior and as clearly wished it wasn’t happening.

“Adrien! Fancy meeting you here!” The brunette simpered, completely ignoring Marinette.

“It should hardly be a surprise to you, Lila,” Adrien answered calmly. “I’m sure you overheard Nathalie giving me my schedule for today after last night’s photoshoot.”

Marinette raised an eyebrow at the emphasis on ‘overheard,’ turning slightly away from them to rearrange some of the jewelry on the table, trying to decide which piece would best suit the woman. She had warm coloring, so gold or brass toned, maybe copper… Marinette suppressed a smile as Lila sputtered a bit.

“You know I’m just concerned about your health, Adrien,” Lila finally cooed at him. Marinette could practically hear her pout. “Your father works you awfully hard, and I almost never see you outside of work.”

“If you’re so concerned about it, perhaps you should be a little more cooperative during our photoshoots so they don’t drag on for forever.”

The woman named Lila laughed, “But Adrien, you know your father relies on me to make sure all our pictures together are just to die for!”

By this time Marinette had finished straightening, and had picked out something she thought would suit the woman. There was currently a mania for ocean-themed jewelry, and an eight-stranded gold chain bracelet with an octopus charm would suit Lila. She picked it up and turned back to them, just in time to see Adrien looking pointedly away from Lila as the woman in question tried to plaster herself to his side, with her face tilted up in what was probably supposed to be an inviting way.

Marinette blinked at this blatant display, but she’d already decided to interfere, so she spoke up anyway. Ironically, Lila’s current position made the octopus charm even more fitting for her. Marinette could practically see the invisible tentacles she was trying to wind around her fellow model.

“This bracelet would suit you, Madame,” Marinette said, in her best salesperson tone. “The delicate gold chains compliment without overwhelming, and the charm in the shape of an octopus is the latest trend.” She draped the bracelet over a stand she’d made herself and held it out for her to see. 

Lila looked at Marinette blankly, as if surprised to find her standing there. Her mouth opened a little, and she actually allowed an inch of space to open up between herself and her prey. Marinette noticed but tried not to show her satisfaction. She was conscious of Adrien turning his head to look at her, too, but she didn’t take her focus off the woman in front of her.

“Oh! Ah…” Lila’s posture and expression both softened, conveying apology. “I’m so sorry. How rude of me to ignore you like that.” One hand flew to her chest, presumably in embarrassment, but Marinette had seen that maneuver too many times before to believe it. She was simply trying to draw attention to her ‘assets.’ “I just saw my Adrien here, and everything else vanished! You know how it is when you’re in love,” Lila simpered, throwing an adoring look towards Adrien.

Adrien snorted. “We are not dating,” he said firmly, making eye contact with Marinette and gesturing between himself and Lila.

“Well… not officially,” Lila in a lowered tone, with a coy look and a wink.

“Not officially, and not at all,” Adrien clarified. “Not even a little bit.”

“That’s right!” Lila said brightly, smiling and winking again. “Not dating officially, or at all!” 

Yet, despite agreeing with Adrien, she tried to cozy up to him again. Adrien leaned away from her.

Marinette narrowed her eyes. This could be a clever plot to throw sand in the eyes of the paparazzi, but she hardly counted as paparazzi, and it was hard not to notice the thinly veiled disgust in Adrien’s eyes. 

“Oh, don’t worry,” she heard herself say. “I know all about that.”

----

For the second time in two days, Adrien was surprised to the point of being stunned by this woman. Most people, when confronted by Lila’s well practiced acting and lies, rolled over and believed every little thing out of her mouth. That was why he was so determined to make it clear to Miss Dupain-Cheng that there was nothing between him and Lila. Yet Lila, of course, had managed to make his firm declaration sound like nothing more than a cover up. She was trying to imply they were dating in secret, and he had been just about to deny that categorically when the woman he had a real interest in took charge of the conversation.

“Oh, don’t worry. I know all about that,” she said with a sweet smile. “I was trying to be discreet earlier, but now that you’ve shown you recognize me, I can be more open. Right, Adrien?”

Adrien quickly nodded, even though he had no idea what this woman was planning, and turned to see Lila’s reaction.

“Recognize you?” Lila asked in some hesitation. Adrien had to give her credit for acting. Anyone else would have put scorn in that question, trying to put this interloper in her place, but Lila didn’t know what she was up against, and was playing it safe with a sweeter tone.

“Of course!” MDC said (at some point he should really learn her first name). “Adrien talks about you all the time- you know, how professional you are at photoshoots, and how you play along like you really do like him. We’re both grateful, you know. In fact, why don’t I make you a gift of this bracelet? It’s the least I can do after you’ve selflessly taken so much of the heat off him.”

Adrien felt like proposing on the spot. He watched this woman whom he barely knew, whose night he had ruined, wrap the thin bracelet in tissue paper and produce a small velvet bag with her initials embroidered on it. She folded the tissue and put it inside the bag, drawing it shut, and then held it out to Lila with a kind smile. And all the while, Lila stood there, dumbfounded, with nothing to say for once. It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever done for him.

When MDC held out the little pouch, Lila reached for it, inadvertently releasing his arm. Adrien flexed it subtly to shake off her touch.

“Well… thank you. Although... I’m not really sure what I’m thanking you for,” Lila said, actually sounding genuine for once in her surprise. MDC raised her eyebrows.

“You, covering for Adrien and me, of course,” she replied, with the warmest of smiles.

Lila choked. Then she whipped her head around to glare at Adrien. Adrien called on all his experience and produced the warmest of smiles, though he felt another little zing of surprise himself. But he was more than happy to roll with it. 

“You really are the best of friends,” he said, digging deep into his minimal store of fond memories for inspiration. “M and I…” he trailed off as he floundered for something to say to support the story she was building.

Once again MDC came to his rescue. “It’s so comforting to know Adrien has someone to ward off the opportunistic until my brand gets off the ground and we can go public. Naturally, neither of us want anyone thinking I’m only dating Adrien to get to his father, or his father’s company.”

“Right,” Adrien corroborated, sending MDC an even warmer- and far more genuine- smile. “M’s designs are amazing, and I want her to get the recognition and acclaim she deserves, instead of having people think Father is either using me to get her on his design team, or that she’s using me for the same purpose. Plus, you know how adamant Father is that I remain at least outwardly ‘available’ so my fans will stay happy and keep buying his clothes.”

Lila’s mouth tightened ominously, but once again, M (dang it, he really, really needed to learn her first name- maybe she had business cards around here somewhere?) defused her in the only possible way- she praised her.

“So really, thank you. I just can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. You know, most girls would totally take advantage of a situation like this, but… I know Adrien and I can trust you.” MDC smiled warmly and opened her arms, hugging Lila before she could do anything about it. 

“Think nothing of it,” Lila said breathlessly. Adrien knew her well enough to know that her social instincts were currently at war. She probably wanted to verbally cut M into bite sized chunks, but M was also a person currently offering the praise and adoration she craved. “Of course, I... you know I’d do anything for Adrien.”

“Well, I appreciate you, too,” MDC said, finally stepping back. “We’ll definitely have to get together some time. Oooh, maybe you can join us for dinner some time! It’ll look less suspicious if it’s a group of three, don’t you think? Besides,” M said, with a little wink, “sometimes it’s just as well to have a chaperone, you know?”

Adrien had to hide a huge grin as Lila choked for the second time and started coughing. “Are you okay?” he asked, faking concern. “And oh hey, isn’t that Claudio over there?” 

Adrien knew he was far from Lila’s only target, and the handsome Italian model was the perfect distraction.

“Oh yes, I think it is. Well, I guess I’ll just go over and say hello,” Lila said, once she recovered. “I know we were supposed to have lunch, Adrien, but I don’t think I can pass up the opportunity to speak my native language with someone instead.” She sighed, falling back into her usual persona. “I get so homesick sometimes.”

“You poor thing!” MDC cut in. “Yes, of course, go on! I’m sure Adrien would be only too happy to let you cancel at the last minute.”

“Well, it would look good for my cover, but I guess I’ll just have to make do with my actual girlfriend,” Adrien said, daring to move closer to MDC and reach out to gently touch her arm. She blinked before smiling up at him. Apparently this small display of affection was too much for Lila, though.

“Thank you for the bracelet,” she huffed and marched off, slowing and shifting to a swaying walk as she approached her alternative target. As she did, there was an almost imperceptible shift in the air...

@auyeahaugust

[garbage-empress]

if i could date & kiss anyone it would be the Tunguska event was a large explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia, on the morning of 30 June 1908 (NS).[1][2] The explosion over the sparsely populated Eastern Siberian Taiga flattened 2,000 square kilometres (770 square miles) of forest, and may have caused up to three human casualties.[3] The explosion is generally attributed to the air burst of a meteoroid. It is classified as an impact event, even though no impact crater has been found; the object is thought to have disintegrated at an altitude of 5 to 10 kilometres (3 to 6 miles) rather than to have hit the surface of the Earth.[4] The Tunguska event is the largest impact event on Earth in recorded history, but there have been larger impacts during prehistoric times. Studies have yielded different estimates of the meteoroid's size, on the order of 50 to 190 metres (160 to 620 feet), depending on whether the body entered with a low or high speed.[5] Since the 1908 event, there have been an estimated 1,000 scholarly papers (most in Russian) published on the Tunguska explosion. In 2013, a team of researchers published analysis results of micro-samples from a peat bog near the center of the affected area showing fragments that may be of meteoritic origin.[6][7] Early estimates of the energy of the air burst ranged from 10–15 megatons of TNT (42–63 petajoules) to 30 megatons of TNT (130 PJ),[8] depending on the exact height of burst estimated when the scaling laws from the effects of nuclear weapons are employed.[8][9] More recent calculations that include the effect of the object's momentum find that more of the energy was focused downward than would be the case from a nuclear explosion and estimate that the airburst had an energy range from 3 to 5 megatons of TNT (13 to 21 PJ).[9] A 2019 paper suggests the explosive power may have been around 20–30 megatons.[10] The 15-megaton (Mt) estimate represents an energy about 1,000 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan—roughly equal to that of the United States' Castle Bravo (15.2 Mt) nuclear test in 1954, and about one-third that of the Soviet Union's Tsar Bomba explosion in 1961.[11] It is estimated that the Tunguska explosion knocked down 80 million trees over an area of 2,150 km2 (830 sq mi), and that the shock wave from the blast would have measured 5.0 on the Richter magnitude scale. An explosion of this magnitude would be capable of destroying a large metropolitan area.[12] Eyewitness reports indicate that at least three people may have died in the event.[13][14][15][16][3] The Tunguska event has helped to spark discussion of asteroid impact avoidance. Contents 1 Description 2 Investigations 3 Earth impactor model 4 Geophysical hypotheses 5 Similar events 6 In popular culture 7 See also 8 References 9 External links 1.1 Selected eyewitness reports 3.1 Asteroid air burst 3.2 Blast patterns 3.3 Asteroid or comet 3.4 Lake Cheko Description  Trees knocked over by the Tunguska blast. Photograph from the Soviet Academy of Science 1927 expedition led by Leonid Kulik. On 30 June 1908 (cited in Russia as 17 Jun 1908, Julian Calendar, prior to implementation of the Soviet calendar in 1918), at around 07:17 local time, Evenki natives and Russian settlers in the hills north-west of Lake Baikal observed a column of bluish light, nearly as bright as the Sun, moving across the sky. About ten minutes later, there was a flash and a sound similar to artillery fire. Eyewitnesses closer to the explosion reported that the source of the sound moved from the east to the north of them. The sounds were accompanied by a shock wave that knocked people off their feet and broke windows hundreds of kilometres away. The explosion registered at seismic stations across Eurasia, and air waves from the blast were detected in Germany, Denmark, Croatia, the United Kingdom, and as far away as Batavia and Washington, D.C.[17] It is estimated that, in some places, the resulting shock wave was equivalent to an earthquake measuring 5.0 on the Richter magnitude scale.[18] Over the next few days night skies in Asia and Europe were aglow,[19] with contemporaneous reports of photographs being successfully taken at midnight in Sweden and Scotland.[17] It has been theorized that this effect was due to light passing through high-altitude ice particles that had formed at extremely low temperatures—a phenomenon that many years later was produced by space shuttles.[20][21] In the United States, a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory program at the Mount Wilson Observatory observed a months-long decrease in atmospheric transparency consistent with an increase in suspended dust particles.[22] Selected eyewitness reports  Topi Tunguski, around the area where it fell. This photo is from the magazine Around the World, 1931. The original photo was taken between 1927 and 1930 (presumably, no later than 14 September 1930). Testimony of S. Semenov, as recorded by Leonid Kulik's expedition in 1930:[23] At breakfast time I was sitting by the house at Vanavara Trading Post [65 kilometres/40 miles south of the explosion], facing north. […] I suddenly saw that directly to the north, over Onkoul's Tunguska Road, the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest [as Semenov showed, about 50 degrees up—expedition note]. The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn't bear it as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few metres. I lost my senses for a moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the Earth shook, and when I was on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways, and it damaged some crops. Later we saw that many windows were shattered, and in the barn, a part of the iron lock snapped. Testimony of Chuchan of Shanyagir tribe, as recorded by I. M. Suslov in 1926:[24] We had a hut by the river with my brother Chekaren. We were sleeping. Suddenly we both woke up at the same time. Somebody shoved us. We heard whistling and felt strong wind. Chekaren said, 'Can you hear all those birds flying overhead?' We were both in the hut, couldn't see what was going on outside. Suddenly, I got shoved again, this time so hard I fell into the fire. I got scared. Chekaren got scared too. We started crying out for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was noise beyond the hut, we could hear trees falling down. Chekaren and I got out of our sleeping bags and wanted to run out, but then the thunder struck. This was the first thunder. The Earth began to move and rock, the wind hit our hut and knocked it over. My body was pushed down by sticks, but my head was in the clear. Then I saw a wonder: trees were falling, the branches were on fire, it became mighty bright, how can I say this, as if there was a second sun, my eyes were hurting, I even closed them. It was like what the Russians call lightning. And immediately there was a loud thunderclap. This was the second thunder. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our Sun was shining brightly as usual, and suddenly there came a second one! Chekaren and I had some difficulty getting out from under the remains of our hut. Then we saw that above, but in a different place, there was another flash, and loud thunder came. This was the third thunder strike. Wind came again, knocked us off our feet, struck the fallen trees. We looked at the fallen trees, watched the tree tops get snapped off, watched the fires. Suddenly Chekaren yelled "Look up" and pointed with his hand. I looked there and saw another flash, and it made another thunder. But the noise was less than before. This was the fourth strike, like normal thunder. Now I remember well there was also one more thunder strike, but it was small, and somewhere far away, where the Sun goes to sleep. Sibir newspaper, 2 July 1908:[25] On the morning of 17th of June,[26] around 9:00, we observed an unusual natural occurrence. In the north Karelinski village [200 verst (213 km (132 mi)) north of Kirensk] the peasants saw to the northwest, rather high above the horizon, some strangely bright (impossible to look at) bluish-white heavenly body, which for 10 minutes moved downwards. The body appeared as a "pipe", i.e., a cylinder. The sky was cloudless, only a small dark cloud was observed in the general direction of the bright body. It was hot and dry. As the body neared the ground (forest), the bright body seemed to smudge, and then turned into a giant billow of black smoke, and a loud knocking (not thunder) was heard as if large stones were falling, or artillery was fired. All buildings shook. At the same time the cloud began emitting flames of uncertain shapes. All villagers were stricken with panic and took to the streets, women cried, thinking it was the end of the world. The author of these lines was meantime in the forest about 6 versts [6.4 km] north of Kirensk and heard to the north east some kind of artillery barrage, that repeated in intervals of 15 minutes at least 10 times. In Kirensk in a few buildings in the walls facing north-east window glass shook. Siberian Life newspaper, 27 July 1908:[27] When the meteorite fell, strong tremors in the ground were observed, and near the Lovat village of the Kansk uezd two strong explosions were heard, as if from large-calibre artillery. Krasnoyaretz newspaper, 13 July 1908:[28] Kezhemskoe village. On the 17th an unusual atmospheric event was observed. At 7:43 the noise akin to a strong wind was heard. Immediately afterward a horrific thump sounded, followed by an earthquake that literally shook the buildings as if they were hit by a large log or a heavy rock. The first thump was followed by a second, and then a third. Then the interval between the first and the third thumps was accompanied by an unusual underground rattle, similar to a railway upon which dozens of trains are travelling at the same time. Afterward, for 5 to 6 minutes an exact likeness of artillery fire was heard: 50 to 60 salvoes in short, equal intervals, which got progressively weaker. After 1.5–2 minutes after one of the "barrages" six more thumps were heard, like cannon firing, but individual, loud and accompanied by tremors. The sky, at the first sight, appeared to be clear. There was no wind and no clouds. Upon closer inspection to the north, i.e. where most of the thumps were heard, a kind of an ashen cloud was seen near the horizon, which kept getting smaller and more transparent and possibly by around 2–3 p.m. completely disappeared.  Tunguska's trajectory and the locations of five villages projected onto a plane normal to the Earth's surface and passing through the fireball's approach path. The scale is given by an adopted beginning height of 100 km. Three zenith angles ZR of the apparent radiant are assumed and the trajectories plotted by the solid, dashed, and dotted lines, respectively. The parenthesized data are the distances of the locations from the plane of projection: a plus sign indicates the location is south-south west of the plane; a minus sign, north-north east of it. The transliteration of the village names in this figure and the text is consistent with that of Paper I and differs somewhat from the transliteration in the current world atlases. InvestigationsIt was more than a decade after the event before any scientific analysis of the region took place, in part due to the isolation of the area. In 1921, the Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik led a team to the Podkamennaya Tunguska River basin to conduct a survey for the Soviet Academy of Sciences.[29] Although they never visited the central blast area, the many local accounts of the event led Kulik to believe that the explosion had been caused by a giant meteorite impact. Upon returning, he persuaded the Soviet government to fund an expedition to the suspected impact zone, based on the prospect of salvaging meteoric iron.[30]  Photograph from Kulik's 1929 expedition taken near the Hushmo River Kulik led a scientific expedition to the Tunguska blast site in 1927. He hired local Evenki hunters to guide them to the centre of the blast area, where they expected to find an impact crater. To their surprise, there was no crater to be found at ground zero. Instead they found a zone, roughly 8 kilometres (5.0 miles) across, where the trees were scorched and devoid of branches, but still standing upright.[30] The trees farther away had been partly scorched and knocked down in a direction away from the center. In the 1960s, it was established that the zone of levelled forest occupied an area of 2,150 km2 (830 sq mi), its shape resembling a gigantic spread-eagled butterfly with a "wingspan" of 70 km (43 mi) and a "body length" of 55 km (34 mi).[31] Upon closer examination, Kulik located holes that he erroneously concluded were meteorite holes; he did not have the means at that time to excavate the holes. During the next ten years there were three more expeditions to the area. Kulik found several dozens of little "pothole" bogs, each 10 to 50 metres (33 to 164 feet) in diameter, that he thought might be meteoric craters. After a laborious exercise in draining one of these bogs (the so-called "Suslov's crater", 32 m (105 ft) in diameter), he found an old stump on the bottom, ruling out the possibility that it was a meteoric crater. In 1938, Kulik arranged for an aerial photographic survey of the area[32] covering the central part of the levelled forest (250 square kilometres (97 sq mi)).[33] The negatives of these aerial photographs (1,500 negatives, each 18 by 18 centimetres (7.1 by 7.1 inches)) were burned in 1975 by order of Yevgeny Krinov, then Chairman of the Committee on Meteorites of the USSR Academy of Sciences, as part of an initiative to dispose of hazardous nitrate film.[33] Positive prints were preserved for further study in the Russian city of Tomsk.[34] Expeditions sent to the area in the 1950s and 1960s found microscopic silicate and magnetite spheres in siftings of the soil. Similar spheres were predicted to exist in the felled trees, although they could not be detected by contemporary means. Later expeditions did identify such spheres in the resin of the trees. Chemical analysis showed that the spheres contained high proportions of nickel relative to iron, which is also found in meteorites, leading to the conclusion they were of extraterrestrial origin. The concentration of the spheres in different regions of the soil was also found to be consistent with the expected distribution of debris from a meteoroid air burst.[35] Later studies of the spheres found unusual ratios of numerous other metals relative to the surrounding environment, which was taken as further evidence of their extraterrestrial origin.[36] Chemical analysis of peat bogs from the area also revealed numerous anomalies considered consistent with an impact event. The isotopic signatures of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen at the layer of the bogs corresponding to 1908 were found to be inconsistent with the isotopic ratios measured in the adjacent layers, and this abnormality was not found in bogs located outside the area. The region of the bogs showing these anomalous signatures also contains an unusually high proportion of iridium, similar to the iridium layer found in the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary. These unusual proportions are believed to result from debris from the falling body that deposited in the bogs. The nitrogen is believed to have been deposited as acid rain, a suspected fallout from the explosion.[36][37][38] Researcher John Anfinogenov has suggested that a boulder found at the event site, known as John's stone, is a remnant of the meteorite,[39] but oxygen isotope analysis of the quartzite suggests that it is of hydrothermal origin, and probably related to Permian-Triassic Siberian Traps magmatism.[40] Earth impactor modelAsteroid air burst  Comparison of possible sizes of Tunguska (TM mark) and Chelyabinsk meteoroids to Eiffel Tower and Empire State Building. The leading scientific explanation for the explosion is the air burst of an asteroid 6–10 km (4–6 mi) above Earth's surface. Meteoroids enter Earth's atmosphere from outer space every day, travelling at a speed of at least 11 km/s (7 mi/s). The heat generated by compression of air in front of the body (ram pressure) as it travels through the atmosphere is immense and most meteoroids burn up or explode before they reach the ground. Since the second half of the 20th century, close monitoring of Earth's atmosphere through infrasound and satellite observation has shown that asteroid air bursts with energies comparable to those of nuclear weapons routinely occur, although Tunguska-sized 5-15 megaton[41] events are much rarer. Eugene Shoemaker estimated that 20 kiloton events occur annually and that Tunguska sized events occur about once every 300 years.[8][42] More recent estimates place Tunguska-sized events at about once every thousand years, with 5 kiloton air bursts averaging about once per year.[43] Most of these air bursts are thought to be caused by asteroid impactors as opposed to mechanically weaker cometary materials based on their typical penetration depths into the Earth's atmosphere.[43] The largest asteroid air burst to be observed with modern instrumentation was the 500-kiloton Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013, which shattered windows and produced meteorites.[41] Blast patternsThe explosion's effect on the trees near the hypocentre of the explosion was similar to the effects of the conventional Operation Blowdown. These effects are caused by the blast wave produced by large airburst explosions. The trees directly below the explosion are stripped as the blast wave moves vertically downward, while trees farther away are knocked over because the blast wave is travelling closer to horizontal when it reaches them. Soviet experiments performed in the mid-1960s, with model forests (made of matches on wire stakes) and small explosive charges slid downward on wires, produced butterfly-shaped blast patterns similar to the pattern found at the Tunguska site. The experiments suggested that the object had approached at an angle of roughly 30 degrees from the ground and 115 degrees from north and had exploded in mid-air.[44] Asteroid or cometIn 1930, the British astronomer F. J. W. Whipple suggested that the Tunguska body was a small comet. A comet is composed of dust and volatiles, such as water ice and frozen gases, and could have been completely vaporised by the impact with Earth's atmosphere, leaving no obvious traces. The comet hypothesis was further supported by the glowing skies (or "skyglows" or "bright nights") observed across Europe for several evenings after the impact, possibly explained by dust and ice that had been dispersed from the comet's tail across the upper atmosphere.[8] The cometary hypothesis gained a general acceptance amongst Soviet Tunguska investigators by the 1960s.[8] In 1978, Slovak astronomer Ľubor Kresák suggested that the body was a fragment of Comet Encke. This is a periodic comet with an extremely short period of 3 years that stays entirely within the orbit of Jupiter. It is also responsible for the Beta Taurids, an annual meteor shower with a maximum activity around 28–29 June. The Tunguska event coincided with the peak activity of that shower,[45] and the approximate trajectory of the Tunguska object is consistent with what would be expected from a fragment of Comet Encke.[8] It is now known that bodies of this kind explode at frequent intervals tens to hundreds of kilometres above the ground. Military satellites have been observing these explosions for decades.[46] During 2019 astronomers searched for hypothesized asteroids ~100 metres in diameter from the Taurid swarm between 5–11 July, and 21 July – 10 August.[47] However, as of December 2019 there have been no reports of discoveries of any such objects. In 1983, astronomer Zdeněk Sekanina published a paper criticising the comet hypothesis. He pointed out that a body composed of cometary material, travelling through the atmosphere along such a shallow trajectory, ought to have disintegrated, whereas the Tunguska body apparently remained intact into the lower atmosphere. Sekanina argued that the evidence pointed to a dense, rocky object, probably of asteroidal origin. This hypothesis was further boosted in 2001, when Farinella, Foschini, et al. released a study calculating the probabilities based on orbital modelling extracted from the atmospheric trajectories of the Tunguska object. They concluded with a probability of 83% that the object moved on an asteroidal path originating from the asteroid belt, rather than on a cometary one (probability of 17%).[1] Proponents of the comet hypothesis have suggested that the object was an extinct comet with a stony mantle that allowed it to penetrate the atmosphere. The chief difficulty in the asteroid hypothesis is that a stony object should have produced a large crater where it struck the ground, but no such crater has been found. It has been hypothesised that the passage of the asteroid through the atmosphere caused pressures and temperatures to build up to a point where the asteroid abruptly disintegrated in a huge explosion. The destruction would have to have been so complete that no remnants of substantial size survived, and the material scattered into the upper atmosphere during the explosion would have caused the skyglows. Models published in 1993 suggested that the stony body would have been about 60 metres (200 ft) across, with physical properties somewhere between an ordinary chondrite and a carbonaceous chondrite.[citation needed] Typical carbonaceous chondrite substance tends to be dissolved with water rather quickly unless it is frozen.[48] Christopher Chyba and others have proposed a process whereby a stony meteorite could have exhibited the behaviour of the Tunguska impactor. Their models show that when the forces opposing a body's descent become greater than the cohesive force holding it together, it blows apart, releasing nearly all its energy at once. The result is no crater, with damage distributed over a fairly wide radius, and all of the damage resulting from the thermal energy released in the blast. Three-dimensional numerical modelling of the Tunguska impact done by Utyuzhnikov and Rudenko in 2008[49] supports the comet hypothesis. According to their results, the comet matter dispersed in the atmosphere, while the destruction of the forest was caused by the shock wave. During the 1990s, Italian researchers, coordinated by the physicist Giuseppe Longo from University of Bologna, extracted resin from the core of the trees in the area of impact to examine trapped particles that were present during the 1908 event. They found high levels of material commonly found in rocky asteroids and rarely found in comets.[50][51] Kelly et al. (2009) contend that the impact was caused by a comet because of the sightings of noctilucent clouds following the impact, a phenomenon caused by massive amounts of water vapor in the upper atmosphere. They compared the noctilucent cloud phenomenon to the exhaust plume from NASA's Endeavour space shuttle.[52][53] In 2013, analysis of fragments from the Tunguska site by a joint US-European team was consistent with an iron meteorite.[54] The February 2013 Chelyabinsk bolide event provided ample data for scientists to create new models for the Tunguska event. Researchers used data from both Tunguska and Chelyabinsk to perform a statistical study of over 50 million combinations of bolide and entry properties that could produce Tunguska-scale damage when breaking apart or exploding at similar altitudes. Some models focused on combinations of properties which created scenarios which similar effects to the tree fall pattern as well as the atmospheric and seismic pressure waves of Tunguska. Four different computer models produced similar results; they concluded that the likeliest candidate for the Tunguska impactor was a stony body between 50 and 80 m (164 and 262 ft) in diameter, entering the atmosphere at roughly 55,000 km/h (34,000 mph), exploding at 10 to 14 km (6 to 9 mi) altitude, and releasing explosive energy equivalent to between 10 and 30 megatons. This is similar to the blast energy equivalent of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. The researchers also concluded impactors of this size only hit the Earth at an average interval scale of millennia.[55] Lake ChekoSee also: Lake ChekoIn June 2007, scientists from the University of Bologna identified a lake in the Tunguska region as a possible impact crater from the event. They do not dispute that the Tunguska body exploded in mid-air but believe that a ten-metre fragment survived the explosion and struck the ground. Lake Cheko is a small, bowl-shaped lake approximately 8 km (5.0 mi) north-northwest of the hypocentre.[56] The hypothesis has been disputed by other impact crater specialists.[57] A 1961 investigation had dismissed a modern origin of Lake Cheko, saying that the presence of metres-thick silt deposits at the lake's bed suggests an age of at least 5,000 years,[35] but more recent research suggests that only a metre or so of the sediment layer on the lake bed is "normal lacustrine sedimentation", a depth consistent with an age of about 100 years.[58] Acoustic-echo soundings of the lake floor provide support for the hypothesis that the lake was formed by the Tunguska event. The soundings revealed a conical shape for the lake bed, which is consistent with an impact crater.[59] Magnetic readings indicate a possible metre-sized chunk of rock below the lake's deepest point that may be a fragment of the colliding body.[59] Finally, the lake's long axis points to the hypocentre of the Tunguska explosion, about 7.0 km (4.3 mi) away.[59] Work is still being done at Lake Cheko to determine its origins.[60] The main points of the study are that Cheko, a small lake located in Siberia close to the epicentre of the 1908 Tunguska explosion, might fill a crater left by the impact of a fragment of a cosmic body. Sediment cores from the lake's bottom were studied to support or reject this hypothesis. A 175-centimetre-long (69 in) core, collected near the center of the lake, consists of an upper c. 1-metre-thick (39 in) sequence of lacustrine deposits overlaying coarser chaotic material. 210Pb and 137Cs indicate that the transition from lower to upper sequence occurred close to the time of the Tunguska event. Pollen analysis reveals that remains of aquatic plants are abundant in the top post-1908 sequence but are absent in the lower pre-1908 portion of the core. These results, including organic C, N and δ13C data, suggest that Lake Cheko formed at the time of the Tunguska event.[61] In 2017, new research by Russian scientists pointed to a rejection of the theory. They used soil research to prove that the lake is 280 years old or even much older; in any case clearly older than the Tunguska events.[62][63] Geophysical hypothesesThe scientific consensus is that the explosion was caused by the impact of a small asteroid, but there are some dissenters. Astrophysicist Wolfgang Kundt has proposed that the Tunguska event was caused by the release and subsequent explosion of 10 million tons of natural gas from within Earth's crust.[64][65][66][67][68] The basic idea is that natural gas leaked out of the crust and then rose to its equal-density height in the atmosphere; from there, it drifted downwind, in a sort of wick, which eventually found an ignition source such as lightning. Once the gas was ignited, the fire streaked along the wick, and then down to the source of the leak in the ground, whereupon there was the explosion. The similar verneshot hypothesis has also been proposed as a possible cause of the Tunguska event.[69][70][71] Other research has supported a geophysical mechanism for the event.[72][73][74] Similar eventsSee also: Fireball (meteor) and List of meteor air burstsThe Tunguska event is not the only example of a great unobserved explosion event. For example, the 1930 Curuçá River event in Brazil may have been an explosion of a superbolide that left no clear evidence of an impact crater. Modern developments in infrasound detection by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization and infrared DSP satellite technology have reduced the likelihood of undetected airbursts. A smaller air burst occurred over a populated area in Russia on 15 February 2013, at Chelyabinsk in the Ural district of Russia. The exploding meteoroid was an asteroid that measured about 17 to 20 metres across, with an estimated initial mass of 11,000 tonnes and which exploded with an energy release of approximately 500 kilotons.[55] It inflicted over 1,200 injuries, mainly from broken glass falling from windows shattered by its shock wave.[75] In popular cultureMain article: Tunguska event in popular cultureSee alsoPatomskiy crater, about 830 km (515 mi) to the east-southeast Sikhote-Alin meteorite, 1947 impact Tunguska Nature Reserve, protected area covering a portion of the site; ongoing scientific study of forest recovery Tall el-Hammam, a Middle Bronze Age site that one archaeological team has proposed was destroyed by an airburst