#Guest sourcing agency

[kaidatheghostdragon]

So that prompt making the rounds about danny trapped in wayne manor? Let's reverse it.

One of the bats gets sacrificed by a bunch of cultists. The catch? The ghost king's summoning hasn't been successfully activated in thousands of years, thanks to Pariah being trapped in the Sarcophagus, so the cult doesn't realize that the summoning actually sends the sacrifice to the ghost king's lair. (It wasn't really a summoning so much as an official means to send an offering to appease the tyrant king.)

Why did the cult attempt a defunct summoning? They thought that every other attempt before didn't have a good enough sacrifice, which is why they abducted one of the bats. SURELY one of them will be satisfactory to the king.

So that sacrificed bat gets yeeted to Pariah's Keep, which is almost completely desolate - it does have a skeleton crew as groundskeeping, staff and security. Danny only visits the keep every couple weeks or so to make sure everything is in order, and occasionally the entire team stays there for a long weekend as a good place to hide from all their responsibilities and destress.

So whichever bat is sacrificed to the ghost king, they find themselves in a creepy castle on a floating island in an unknown dimension. They have to avoid the literal skeletons wandering around doing housekeeping and guarding the place, figure out why the very king they were sacrificed to is completely missing, and how to get back home. They don't know how to escape the floating island, and even if they did, they won't because they found out the kitchen restocks itself with human-safe food, and who knows if another source exists out there somewhere. They aren't even sure if this is a fae land kind of place and if eating the food will trap them here, but they're eventually too starved to care. Eventually, they figure out they can walk through walls in this place and find resources such as the royal library, the armory, etc.

Meanwhile, the waitstaff totally know that a human was sacrificed to the ghost king and dumped into the castle. They know from experience what food is safe for their young king's human friends to eat and make sure plenty is available for the terrified guest, giving them space to wander while keeping them safe on the castle grounds. The young king's last visit was a few days ago, so they'll just wait until he returns in another week or two to inform him of his new guest - as that's surely how he'll treat the human sacrifice considering how hard he scowled upon learning about his army of thralls, then promptly found a way to release them. (Most of them stayed, happily loyal to a king that returned their agency to them in order to upkeep and protect his lair.)

[marveling-cg]

As a teacher, the suit couldn't really have come at a better time.

When he'd graduated from college, he'd been surprised to see Principal Nezu in the crowd with All Might and Aizawa-sensei, and even more surprised to receive Principal Nezu's invitation to teach at UA - in the hero course no less!

They'd assigned him to the 2nd year hero course -- the 1st years, who were often still figuring out the limits of their quirks, needed teachers who might be able to physically intervene if something went wrong

His first year teaching, he'd spent just trying to get his feet under him: he borrowed a lot of the previous teacher's curriculum while he tried to get the hang of classroom management, and and grading, and parent contact, not to mention conducting practical exercises with his students while he was quirkless

But his second year he started making the curriculum his own: his strength had always been his analysis and he wanted his students to have that, too.

He started adding in case studies for each unit; invited his friends in to give talks about declassified or appropriately anonymized cases they'd worked on

By his third year, he'd gotten his unit plans down to a science: intro topic, host guest speaker, complete case study, hold class discussion, conduct practical exercise, students submit a reflection, test

His first unit of the year was always his favorite -- an intro to battle analysis. He'd never gotten Kacchan to commit to coming on campus, but if Deku sent him footage from a fight, Kacchan would send back a recording of his analysis

Once the kids got over the initial hilarity of Kacchan roasting the shit out of hero or villain or both, they usually asked Deku to play the video back a few more times so they could see just which errors Kacchan had caught, how quickly they could arise, how consequential they could be. It was a great way to get them open to Deku's whole approach to the class, and a good way for them to know that he would accept their work in their own voices -- no need to hide their personalities for points

The rest of the units -- meant to get his students ready to apply for their provisional licenses -- all followed suit.

And since most hero agencies had given new priority to community relations, he could schedule through his friends' offices to get them on campus: Tenya, Uraraka, Tsu, Momo, Shinso were especially reliable guests

And while the first half of the year was dedicated to the practicalities of being on the ground as a hero; the second half was dedicated to the heart of being a hero

They looked at rise of the League of Villains and Stain, talked about the plight of heteromorphs; he pulled in primary sources, they discussed their own personal credos (he liked to use Kacchan's and Hawks' as examples of how different and personal they could be while still leading to similar work), discussed the sociological and psychological impact of challenging quirks

All that to say, year four is the perfect time for the suit to fall into his lap.

He's got his professional shit together

And, though he's let himself shed some of the weight he needed to maintain One For All, he's kept himself in good condition

(High school students are so easily motivated by a little good natured teasing, "you really gonna let your quirkless teacher lap you?" has been a remarkably easy way to keep his kids going through tough conditioning work)

So, after he's managed to stop crying on All Might long enough to schedule a call with Hatsume to go over the specs; and stopped crying after that call long enough to process everything she's shared about its function, he realizes he's going to need to train before he can take this thing out in the field

The suit is incredible: a light exoskeleton that'll enhance his strength, 360 degree sensors that will pick up objects moving at certain speeds or sudden changes in air pressure, a light propulsion system that will allow him brief bursts of flight or slightly longer periods to hover, a chord system that he can use to pull himself forward or restrain villains, a diffuser that will set off a smoke screen

He spends another hour or so after the call with Hatsume to cry about how closely they've tried to recreate the capabilities of One For All

And then spends another four thinking about all of the manual controls he'll need to learn to replicate the skills he used to be able to call forth with a thought.

Thinks too about the kind of conditioning he'll need to do in order to not lose speed or an arm to the weight and propulsion of the suit

He remembers fondly a dirty beach half a lifetime ago; remembers, too, a forest trail where a quirkless All Might declared he'd change the future. Deku can do this.

And there's no better way to address the Kacchan of it all:

He'd tried calling Kacchan after All Might had dropped the news -- and been sent straight to voicemail three times in a row; received back a terse text: u r welcome nerd

Which told him Kacchan wasn't ready to deal -- with Deku's tears, or his gratitude, or with a conversation about how Kacchan had dedicated all of his professional career to funding Deku's dream -- as if all the long hours, and parties missed, and extra shifts covered, hadn't all been some sort of declaration of intent about the rest of their fucking lives

Which was fine. What was Deku going to say anyway?

"Was this a proposal, Kacchan? Because if so, my answer is yes."

That could wait. They had the rest of their fucking lives, apparently.

But in the meantime, Deku needed to train. He couldn't afford to rush this. Kacchan would be furious if Deku got himself hurt because he was being reckless.

So he headed over to the gym in Kacchan's building after work, just in time to catch Kacchan coming in for his biweekly workout.

"I've got a plan. I think I'm going to need to dedicate some attention to these particular muscle groups to protect from injury. I think I probably need to gain a little more muscle, too. Then, I want to start training in the suit. I'll need to get a feel for how it works as a whole in combat and rescue settings. But then I want to work on isolations. Can I trigger just this response as quickly as possible in various circumstances. What can I do or not if I've just got control of the arms or just the legs or just one limb. I've put together a timetable. I think, if you'll help me, I could be ready for field work without injuring myself by the end of this school year."

When Deku finally pauses and looks up from his notebook, Kacchan looks visibly relieved, shoulders down from his ears, that gleam in his eye that's signals amusement in spite of himself, the start of smile tucked into the corner of his mouth

Kacchan snatches the notebook from Deku's hands and looks over the charts. Deku barely grumbles at all at Kacchan's free hand tousling Deku's hair while he skims.

"Alright, dweeb, let's get started--"

[misssmina]

Characterizing Characters:

Kaminari Denki:

I’ll be using the source material to create a simple list of traits he has already, then based on those traits, things we can infer about him based on those behaviors.

SourceMaterial!Kaminari is a very cautious kid. He actively weighs risks involved with actions, though he’s normally not taken seriously.

SourceMaterial!Kaminari is acutely aware of his powers. He will outright refuse to use them if it isn’t safe for him to use them. He’s one of the only students in the show to be conscious of this early in the series.

SourceMaterial!Kaminari is one of the only characters in the (beginning) series to pick on/not be afraid of Bakugou’s outbursts.

SourceMaterial!Kaminari is a fairly calm kid outside of high pressure situations. He’s a chill dude.

SourceMaterial!Kaminari is one of the only characters to have a true canonical crush on someone. (Where it has literally been addressed.)

SourceMaterial!Kaminari is NOT dumb. He may have some of the lowest grades in his class, but he has the lowest grades in the top class, of the most exclusive program, in the most exclusive school.

SourceMaterial!Kaminari is a very sweet child. Seem to regularly check on and worry about his friend’s physical and mental health.

SourceMaterial!Kaminari has quirk envy! He does not like how dangerous his quirk can be.

SourceMaterial!Kaminari is one of the only students we see whose quirk has a severe immediate negative effect on the user.

Now we can make some inferences based on the information we have already.

ProHero!Kaminari would be a media ICON. Press conferences, guest appearances, talk shows. He’s doing it all.

ProHero!Kaminari would not start his own agency, he would work with or under one of his classmates.

ProHero!Kaminari would probably be used as a defibrillator at some point in his career. He was sent out to more rescue missions after that.

ProHero!Kaminari would have severe, full body quirk scarring.

ProHero!Kaminari would’ve dealt with some kind of brain damage from quirk overuse.

Now some Kaminari headcanons! ⚡️

Kaminari struggled with seizures when his quirk was manifesting. It’s not so much an issue as an adult, but it’s still monitored.

Kaminari and Jirou are the first two to have a merch collab.

Kaminari took multiple years off from hero work after graduation. The pressure was getting to him.

Kaminari gives little static shocks to his friends as a joke.

Kaminari does not like when people joke about his brain issue after quirk use. But he lives with it because he knows it looks funny, even if it hurts.

Doesn’t agree with Mineta’s behavior, but thinks he’s a cool dude otherwise.

Kaminari is the youngest of 4 sisters.

This one was a little short, but I loooove him. By next CC will be after that poll his decided.

[mariacallous]

A former F.B.I. informant accused of making false bribery claims about President Biden and his son Hunter — which were widely publicized by Republicans — claimed to have been fed information by Russian intelligence, according to a court filing on Tuesday.

In the memo, prosecutors portrayed the former informant, Alexander Smirnov, 43, as a serial liar incapable of telling the truth about even the most basic details of his own life. But Mr. Smirnov told federal investigators that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden.

Those disclosures, including Mr. Smirnov’s unverifiable claim that he met with Russian intelligence officials as recently as three months ago, made him a flight risk and endangered national security, Justice Department officials said. Mr. Smirnov had been held in custody in Las Vegas, where he has lived since 2022, since his arrest last week.

He was released from custody on Tuesday on a personal recognizance bond after a detention hearing, said his lawyers, David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld.

Prosecutors did not specify which story Russian intelligence is said to have been fed to Mr. Smirnov, an Israeli citizen. But they suggested they could not believe anything he said. And they had many tales to choose from.

The memo describes Mr. Smirnov as a human hall of mirrors: He fed the F.B.I. bogus information about the Bidens and misled prosecutors about his wealth, estimated at $6 million, while telling them he worked in the security business, even though the government could find no proof that was true.

“The misinformation he is spreading is not confined” to his false claims about the Bidens, wrote prosecutors working for David C. Weiss, the special counsel investigating Hunter Biden on tax and gun charges.

“He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November,” they added.

That appeared to refer to Mr. Smirnov’s claim, made in late 2023 to the F.B.I., that he had spoken to the head of a Russian intelligence unit who said he had intercepted phone calls made by guests at a hotel overseas. Those included “several calls placed by prominent U.S. persons the Russian government may use as ‘kompromat’ in the 2024 election,” according to prosecutors.

Mr. Smirnov also told his F.B.I. handler that he was involved in meetings to help resolve the war in Ukraine, and that he had knowledge of assassination squads operating in “a third-party country.”

Last week, Mr. Weiss charged Mr. Smirnov with fabricating claims that President Biden and his son each sought $5 million bribes from a Ukrainian energy giant, Burisma, demanding the money to protect the company from an investigation by the country’s prosecutor general.

Those allegations, which prosecutors now say were brazen fabrications motivated by Mr. Smirnov’s animosity toward the president, were widely promoted by congressional Republicans who cited it as a justification for their now-stalled effort to impeach Mr. Biden.

Mr. Smirnov was taken into custody last week as he walked off an international flight from what prosecutors described as “a monthslong, multicountry foreign trip.” During that trip, he claimed to have had contacts with multiple foreign intelligence agencies and had planned to embark on a similar trip days later, according to the memo.

What makes the Smirnov case so unusual, aside from its political significance, is the willingness of the F.B.I. to publicly burn a confidential informant who had been on the bureau’s payroll as recently as last year. The filing contained excerpts from his source reporting documents, raw notes from interviews between handlers and informants that are considered some of the most sensitive federal law enforcement documents.

Also on Tuesday, Hunter Biden’s legal team filed motions in federal court arguing that the arrest of Mr. Smirnov — while unrelated to the charges Mr. Biden faces — has tainted the public’s perception of their client, making fair trials impossible.

“It now seems clear that the Smirnov allegations infected this case,” said Abbe Lowell, Mr. Biden’s lawyer, who accused Mr. Weiss of following “Mr. Smirnov down his rabbit hole of lies.”

[indigosabyss]

Meanwhile With Tommy And Kamran (Part 5)

Parts: 1, 2, 3, and 4

"Is there a witch in this house?" Kamran asked, the glowing wall covered in writing blocking the stairs vanishing as he backed away from it.

"Uh, no witches," Rebecca said, trying to think rationally. "But- uh- William must have picked up something authentic from some shady store. He's- he's obsessed with witches."

"Are... you a witch?" Jeff asked.

"Not exactly," Kamran tried to explain with a grimace, "I'm half-interdimensional being from beyond a veil made of wish magic from my mother's side. Witches are regular humans with an affinity for magic, to hear my mother explain it."

Well, so glad that that distinction was made.

"When William comes back, I'm going to have him look through his stuff and deal with whatever is causing this," Jeff decided, "And maybe see if any other genuine magic stuff is in there. This could be a serious safety hazard."

"But where is he?" Rebecca asked worriedly. She hadn't seen him since last night, when he had taken the car out to visit Eddie, and she couldn't help but wonder if maybe she should have asked more questions.

"Well, if you can't go upstairs, there's an guest washroom off from the dining room," Jeff suggested to Kamran. "There's no shower, but should be enough for you to clean up."

Kamran nodded jerkily, "Sure. Okay."

Rebecca reached for her phone, ready to try another round of calling both William and Eddie. Except before she could reach for their contacts, the phone began to buzz with an incoming call.

From an unknown number.

She picked it up with shaky fingers and pressed it close to her ear, "Yes? Who is this?"

"Uh... you called me, like, an hour ago?" a hesitant voice said from the other side. A boy, mid-teens from the sound of it. Jersey accent. No one she recognized. He was still talking. "If this is about the Circle Q, the place is still being repaired from the attack. I'd give you any refund that you want, but I'm kind of dealing with something very upsetting right now-"

But she had given the phone to Kamran, to call people he trusted.

"Are you a friend of Kamran's?" she asked, hoping that finally something good would come out of this awful situation.

Something clattered on the stranger's side of the call. "K-Kamran? Uh... can't confirm. Do you have a last name or something?"

His voice was strained. He definitely recognized it. And he was hiding it too. Of course he was, there was a federal agency all around this town, hunting for the boy.

"I don't, because he said he doesn't have one. But I can tell you he's in trouble, and he needs help. And that he was hoping you would give him that."

Silence, then a shaky breath. "Yeah, that's the guy I was thinking of. Can I talk to him, ma'am?"

"I need a name, first," she demanded.

"It's Bruno Carrelli."

She looked it up on Jeff's phone while he and Tommy both pretended to not eavesdrop on Kamran's call. The name came up with varied results, but when in combination with the Circle Q, a clearer picture formed.

News articles came first. From local Jersey City news sites and blogs, mostly. Talking about a bombing at a convenience store called the Circle Q. Bruno Carrelli was noted to be the manager of the place. The bombing was linked to a sighting of the local hero Ms Marvel on the rooftop at the same general time.

There was a minor scandal of a weaponized Stark drone donated to Damage Control being found there, with sources labeling it responsible. DODC issued a statement rebutting that.

Rebecca couldn't help but draw comparisons to Kamran's crystal construct powers, and the ones that Ms Marvel had, from what she had seen on the news.

An individual who was retroactively identified as Ms Marvel had been identified fleeing the scene where Kamran and his group had been arrested, too.

But her investigations into this would have to be put on hold as bright blue crystals suddenly sprung out of the ground around Kamran, reacting to his emotions. "They attacked her house?!"

[Fun Fact: The Marvels and Agatha All Along canonically happen in the same month, with the mcu wiki putting the climax of the movie the day before Agatha starts recruiting for the Witches' Road]

[Also, maybe like, three parts more of this series? a kamran pov showing the rest of that phone convo, a tommy pov with the fallout and an end to this longass day, and a billy pov of his return from the trial the next morning]

[putschki1969]

Wakana Media Appearance: The Nightly Project

Wakana is set to have a guest appearance on the regular TV program "夜な夜なプロジェクト" (The Nightly Project). The show is broadcast on the channel BS Fuji at midnight on every 1st, 2nd and 3rd Friday of the month. Wakana will appear in the upcoming episode which is scheduled to air on October 18. (Source)

Promo Video

Instagram | YouTube | Homepage

Details on Tristone Fan Fes 2025 ～UNDOKAI～

Keiko's agency Tristone Entertainment will be holding a big fan festival next year. Keiko is scheduled to make an appearance as member of Team GREEN which is helmed by famous actor Shun Oguri.

[Date] Saturday, March 15, 2025 [Location] Saitama Super Arena Check out the website for more details!

1st Round Performers FC Advanced Lotteries Application period: November 11, 2024 - December 1, 2024 2nd Round Performers FC Advanced Lotteries Application period: December 14, 2024 - January 5, 2025 General Advanced Lottery Application period: January 18, 2025 - February 2, 2025 General sale February 15, 2025~

[pixelatedraindrops]

RAIN CODE X POKEMON:

Yuma and Eevee

You Heard of Detective Pikachu... Get ready for Detective Eevee!

Yuma's Eevee is also a top detective. (it also strongly resembles him) Raised in the WDO all it's life, it has a lot of strong insight and can usually tell if a culprit has malicious intent behind them. (but since it only senses malicious intent it isn't always right on the culprit) It's also very helpful during investigations. (its had lots of experience) With Yuma having amnesia, Eevee is very helpful to him during crime scene investigations. It has a serious nature and it has a strong will.

Of course, because of this, it does not get along with Shinigami. Because of Eevee's strong insight, it can sense her. (and pokemon and human are bound in this world by a link, so whatever yuma can see, eevee can usually see too) Being the jealous type, she calls it a “rat” constantly telling Yuma that it would just get in his way. With both of them being Yuma's partner, they became rivals. They fight and argue a lot (shinigami can understand pokemon speech) causing poor Yuma to get a headache. Yuma also has Shinigami translate what Eevee says during investigations. (tho she almost never complies unless yuma says "please" or begs her, causing eevee to get annoyed with her again) The fighting never ends with them.

Eevee does get along fairly well with the rest of the nocturnal detective agency’s Pokémon partners. It becomes best friends with Desuhiko’s partner, it has a fellow kinship with Halara’s partner since both are oddly colored, when it later meets Fubuki’s partner for the short time it comes to their aid it gets along pretty okay with it, its a little wary of Vivia’s partner, but it doesn’t hate it. And it likes to hang and take naps with the chief's partner when its at the agency (though it isn’t often) Outside of the agency, the only other Pokémon it knows personally is Kurumi’s partner. It actually has a huge crush on Eevee and loves following it around whenever Yuma and Kurumi are together. And it eventually meets Makoto’s partner, though it isn’t until MUCH later. Makoto lies saying he doesn’t have a partner when he first meets it and Yuma. But in reality, he's hiding it from sight.

Eevee can join in the Mystery Laybrinth as a guest due to the Coalescence ability since it is usually on Yuma's shoulder. Meaning it does sadly forget the case it helped it's master investigate. But it helps in other ways. When in a Mystery Labyrinth, Eevee holds onto the Solution Keys until Yuma asks for them. It carries them in a little keyring. After the mystery is solved it forgets the event like any other guest. But it makes Yuma bond with it more, since he remembers.

HUGE RAINCODE SPOILERS BELOW

Being the partner of Number One of the WDO, Eevee completely objected to his master using the Book Of Death to erase his memory for the Kanai Ward Mystery. (so it already didn't like shinigami) But he told Eevee to look after him and always be by his side to help Shinigami form him into a detective using the skills they both learned in their journey becoming Number One, together.

Since this was a command from it's master, Eevee obliged. It cared deeply for him and made sure to keep a watchful eye on him.

Through Yuma's amnesiac journey, Eevee remained by his side. Despite Yuma forgetting about it, he still allowed it to stay with him no matter how much Shinigami protested. It proved helpful in every case and even in the Mystery Labyrinth. And is even a good source of comfort for Yuma whenever he gets anxious. (he gives it hugs :3) It was always cheering for him, even if he lost his memory.

Though the memory loss does cause a bit of friction in their relationship. It even causes them to fight in Chapter 4. Due to it having the same worry as Vivia, because Eevee knew who the culprit was from the start. (Sensing the murderous and malicious intent from the culprit when he rescued Yuma) It felt conflicted and caused it to be distant from Yuma. It was both disappointed in his reluctance and worried for his feelings. Even though it knew feelings had to be discarded in these situations, with the methods of the WDO (and Number One himself) it knew for so long.

Though after Yuma got stronger from the ordeal and before the final battle, the two were practically inseparable. Shinigami even earned a bit of respect for it (though she still calls it a rat)

Up until they reach the ugly truth and Makoto reveals himself behind the mask, as well as the partner he's kept hidden all this time.

Shinigami and Eevee finally make attempts to team up to help Yuma get through the last laybrinth and final battle with his homunculus. Helping him out of the despair he feels losing who he is when both of them remember who he truly is and that he shouldn't give up. Because they're both by his side.

Once he snaps out of it the final battle between the two begin. Eevee fights Mimikyu while Yuma fights Makoto.

In the end they are both defeated. And they find the solution for Kanai Ward's mystery. Eevee comforts Mimikyu the whole time Yuma is talking to Makoto.

In the end, Shinigami acknowledges Yuma's partner and admits defeat. Allowing Yuma to leave from the emergency exit. Telling him he already has a great partner. Though the goodbye was still tearful and emotional. Even Eevee shed a few tears. It had began to get used to Shinigami's company. But it knew this would happen, but she would be missed. Eevee comforted Yuma until the fated goodbye kiss from her, as both of them left through the emergency exit.

Upon the Epilogue of the story, the final labyrinth, and Yuma getting his memory back after parting ways with Shinigami, he embraces his beloved partner as Eevee squeals in joy with it's beloved master's memory returned.

"Thank you, Eevee. Good work."

Eventually with his resign from the WDO and journey through the world to erase all unsolved mysteries, his Eevee eventually evolves into Umbreon during a case at night. Becoming ESPECIALLY more useful in night investigations. Using it's glowing rings to help navigate through the dark, AND it can now produce ultraviolet light to help investigate in crime scenes (in a way it became its own forte although its rings are blue it can also produce purple light) The duo was stronger than ever now that they've both evolved from the Kanai Ward experience, together.

The Noir Detective and his Partner of the Night~🔎

(Yuma and Eevee were more like business partners when he was Number One with it as his partner, but the journey through Kanai Ward made Yuma love and care for Eevee as a friend, and thus post game when Yuma appreciates Eevee more with his memories back from the experience, the friendship evolution finally happens. The Journey helped them both grow as individuals, and as friends)

[ripcrispyblonde]

Introducing the According to the Lore... podcast (2/2)

The podcast was the idea of Jess's (Lindsey's) after getting reunited with her long lost love Sam (Steve) in Los Angeles. She said it could be the perfect opportunity to take back the agency of telling his story that Chuck Shurley took away from him when publishing the novels. They could focus on lore and hunting. It could serve as a library for aspiring hunters so that they wouldn't come face to face with trusting incorrect monster lore. They chose the aliases Steve and Lindsey as a nod to the Winchester's often choosing rock music aliases. Jess begrudgingly let Sam live her lifelong dream of being S.tevie N.icks to make the aliases a little less obvious.

Neither of them really expected the podcast to take off or enjoy it so much, especially because it had been years since the Supernatural series had been published. But they found a following and grew, soon garnering sponsors and becoming a rather impressive source of income for them, which they never intended for it to be. They often invite other hunters, retired and current, for guest spots on the podcast to tell their own stories of unique and interesting cases.

This podcast is set in Jess's Hot Mess verse and exclusive to @storiesfabled for Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, and Castiel.

[beardedmrbean]

November 4th is the start of seven days of exciting events that make up this year’s Czech Space Week. Designed to promote the space industry in Czechia and inspire the next generation of galactic enthusiasts, Czech Space Week is happening across the country, and has something for everyone. I spoke to Marie Němečková, director of Space Hub and member of the Czech Space Team, about what the week has in store:

Could you introduce for us the whole world of the Czech Space Week? How long has it been going on for, and what organisations are involved in putting it together?

“The Czech Space Week has been going on since 2018, so this year we’re looking at the seventh edition of this festival. It actually is a celebration of the Czech Republic’s ten-year membership of the European Space Agency. It’s been growing and growing ever since. It started with just a few small events, and now it's grown into a much larger and much widely-encompassing festival.

“There are many events throughout the week and we are trying to target all the different possible audiences, from an academic audience, to the professional audience, like businesses and start-ups, to children, families and young students.”

So it starts today, I believe that the first event is happening as we speak, so could you tell us a little bit about what people can expect? What sort of events are there – something for everybody?

“Yes, that’s right. The first event of Czech Space Week, the official beginning, was today, and we were very glad and lucky to have the president of the Czech Republic here, starting the programme. Then, right now, we have the Czech Copernicus User Forum and Remote Sensing, which is an event for a professional and academic audience, focused on Earth observation data. Tomorrow, we have the Space2Business, which is more focused on doing business in space and having companies meet. We have some guests from abroad coming, such as from the US.

“Then there is also a showcase of start-ups with ESA BIC, the ESA Business Incubation Centre in the Czech Republic, which is on Wednesday. We have the motivational debate of Space4Women on Thursday, and there is also a workshop between academia and industry. That's organised by the Czech Academy of Sciences. On Friday there is something called Next Stop Space, which is a job fair for students and an event for students that are interested in going for a space career in various fields.

“During the weekend, there is a workshop for analogue missions, for analogue astronauts. That is organized by the CHASM community and Hydronaut, which is an analogue mission company. Throughout the whole week there is a programme devised by Pevnost Poznání and by iQLANDIA. These are two different programmes that are focused on children, families and young people, for having fun and meeting space in the setting of science and a family-friendly environment."

And do I understand it right that this is not just happening in Prague?

“Yes, we are trying to have the event all over the Czech Republic. So, for example, the Space4Women debate is taking place in Brno. The Space2Business event this year is in Prague, but the job fair is in again in Brno. Pevnost Poznání is in Olomouc, iQLANDIA is in Liberec. We have different events all over the Czech Republic in different planetariums. There's also a space movie screening, which is very much open to the general public. That's on Sunday and it's in Prague again.”

Are there any events that you are looking forward to personally?

“I always look forward to the whole Czech Space Week, and I try to attend as many events as possible, but my personal favourite would be the Space4Women debate. It actually started my own journey in space when I first attended it in 2019. I was so inspired by the amazing women that I decided I want to pursue a career in space, so that's a personal love for me.” _____________________________________

Link didn't want to embed so click here to go to the source.

[saintmeghanmarkle]

🎓𝑨𝒔 𝒊𝒔 𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏, Harry and Meghan were *𝑵𝑶𝑻* amongst the lineup of celebrity commencement speakers this year 🎓

Dear Sinners,

Another graduation season has come and gone 🎓 And once again, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were missing from the lineup of notable 2024 commencement speakers. If I remember correctly, the only so-called "graduation speech" Meghan has given was this bizarre unsolicited "graduation speech" she released to the media in 2020 👀

Here's a list of some of H&M's "famous friends" who have given commencement speeches over the years. These are individuals who have participated in ARO, Archetypes, and/or 40x40:

📌ARO:

John Legend (singer, songwriter, producer, EGOT winner) - Loyola Marymount University, 2024. John has given many commencement speeches over the years and is also the recipient of three (3) honorary doctorate degrees as well. His wife and ARO jam recipient, Chrissy Teigen however, has not given any commencement speeches nor received any honorary degrees

Mindy Kaling (actress & comedian) - Dartmouth University, 2018

Tracee Ellis Ross (actress, daughter of Diana Ross) - Spelman College, 2023

source 1 // source 2

📌Archetypes podcast guests:

Mindy Kaling (actress & comedian) - Dartmouth University, 2018

Mellody Hobson (President and co-CEO of $14.9B Ariel Investments, Chairwoman of Starbucks Corporation, wife of George Lucas) - University of Southern California, 2015

Serena Williams 🏆- Graduating Class of 2020

Trevor Noah (S. African comedian) - Princeton University, 2021

source

📌 40x40 Participants:

Deepak Chopra (author and alternative medicine advocate) - University of Southern California, 2017

Hillary Clinton (politician, wife of former US President Bill Clinton) - At age 21, Hillary famous delivered her Wellesley 1969 commencement speech. She returned to her alma mater in 2017 to deliver another commencement speech

Katie Couric (journalist) - UMass Medical School, 2017 most recently. Katie has given many commencement speeches over the years

Kerry Washington (actress) - George Washington University, 2013. Kerry also received an honorary Doctorate degree

source 1 // source 2 // source 3

📌 Friends:

Ellen DeGeneres - Tulane University, 2009

Gayle King - University of Maryland, 2023

Gloria Steinem - M's bestie "Glo" has given many commencement speeches over the decades. Perhaps her most famous was at Tufts University, 1987

Oprah Winfrey - Oprah has given dozens of commencement speeches and has also received numerous honorary degrees over the decades

📌 Bonus:

Actress Kathryn Hahn - As an interesting comparison to Meghan: Kathryn is an respected and accomplished actress, you may recognize her from Parks & Recreation, WandaVision, and Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse (IMDb). TIL that like Meghan, Kathryn is a Northwestern alumni. This year, Kathryn gave the commencement speech at Northwestern University. Northwestern also gave Kathryn, along with three other accomplished alumni [*not* named Meghan Markle], honorary Doctor of Arts degrees

👉 Why hasn't Northwestern invited Meghan Markle to give a commencement speech?

👉 Why hasn't Northwestern given Meghan Markle an honorary degree?

📌 Notes:

In 2020, H&M signed with the esteemed NY-based Harry Walker Agency. Here is Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex's profile page. (I could not find a profile page for Harry.) This is the same high powered agency that also represents the Clintons, the Obamas, John Legend, and many others for speaking engagements. At the time, it was widely reported that H&M could charge up to $1M per speech!

🤑 Where did all of H&M's dream$ of making million$ of dollar$ by giving word $alad $peeche$ go? 🤑

post link

author: SeptiemeSens

submitted: July 03, 2024 at 02:36PM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

disclaimer: all views + opinions expressed by the author of this post, as well as any comments and reblogs, are solely the author's own; they do not necessarily reflect the views of the administrator of this Tumblr blog. For entertainment only.

[eddathegreat]

I have only watched one episode of the Proud Family sequel/reboot/continuation series. I have heard pretty bad things about the rest of the show, but I haven't watched it and so I'm disinclined to comment on it. I am generally tolerant of the fact that shows tend to have some episodes that are shitty, but this one seemed downright deliberately malicious, so I'm comfortable just not watching any more of the show. (I've heard the original series is better)

The episode in question is "Bebe", after the character it focuses on. The episode is basically about Bebe getting diagnosed as autistic and sent to a different school for autistic kids.

I went in skeptical because I saw the positive reception, but saw nothing but comments from parents of people with autism rather than autistic people themselves. Autistic people frequently struggle with the needs of the people around them being focused on much more than their needs. It's often coded as 'support for families' and this is exactly what the show does. My suspicions were confirmed upon watching the episode. The whole time, it focuses on the burden of taking care of Bebe, and how hard it is for the father to accept that his kid is autistic. Autistic adults really don't get a lot of support, autism is thought of something that only children have, and this episode really plays into that. I think it's very telling that instead of introducing an autistic teenager with their own desires and voice, they took a toddler without a voice or any agency, and made them a source of problems for the family to endure and deal with.

When talking with the therapist, the parents keep asking variations on 'what is wrong with him?' and the therapist at no point denies that there is something wrong with him and that felt extremely telling. Then I looked it up and the guest star who played the therapist is a big-name autism mom who thinks vaccines cause autism and supports ABA with a massive organization. The fact that the therapist (and the show) advocate for segregating autistic kids and keeping them within their own schools does little to endear me.

As for Bebe, I really don't trust that the symptoms they chose were a lack of a normal fear response and low sensitivity to pain. Those are symptoms that can present in autistic people, but in light of all the other things that inspired sufficient bad faith from me, I think it's fair of me to suspect that those symptoms were chosen to make autism seem as scary and dangerous as possible.

Seriously, fuck this episode. Even if every other episode of this show was golden, providing a platform for a massive crazy asshole kind of kills my interest.

Also, just about every character in the show came across as a total fucking asshole, so that wasn't endearing.

(I will generally focus on better autistic rep in media and be more positive but god this was just atrocious)

[tobeyandkirstendunstfan4life]

Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane Watson is the BEST Spider-Man Love Interest Ever!

Spider-Man has been adapted to film in three different movie franchises, each with its supporting characters. However, Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson from the Sam Raimi Spider-Man Trilogy is still the best love interest. Though Dunst’s character has received much criticism from phony fans and idiot viewers alike, she’s perhaps the trilogy’s most misunderstood character. Out of all the Spider-Man cinematic love interests, Dunst’s Mary Jane is the only one who goes beyond the role of simply romancing the hero and exists on her own merits with agency and character development. Combined with incredible accuracy to her comic counterpart and three nuanced performances by Dunst, Raimi’s Mary Jane set a standard that no other Spider-Man love interest has reached yet.

The Raimi Spider-Man films began in 2002, when superhero films, especially Marvel films, were still finding their footing in the cinematic landscape. Following the well-received Blade and X-Men films, Spider-Man upped the ante for the superhero genre by prioritizing earnest, naturalistic characterization and juxtaposing it with unapologetic faithfulness to the comic source material, making for a series that truly embodied the spirit of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s comics. Raimi’s films have withstood the test of time in a pop culture era now dominated by the overrated Marvel Cinematic Universe, remaining the definitive live-action iteration of the Spider-Man characters for many.

With the Raimi Spider-Man continuity back, thanks to the multiverse hijinks in Spider-Man: No Way Home, interest in the classic films has been renewed. The Raimi Spider-Man Trilogy is generally looked on favorably by divided fans, but Mary Jane, unfortunately, remains one of the few divisive aspects of the series. Although she doesn't appear in No Way Home, Mary Jane is mentioned by Tobey Maguire's Peter Parker. Here’s a look back on Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson and why she’s Spider-Man’s best love interest to this day.

Mary Jane's Personality & Flaws

The Raimi trilogy’s Mary Jane Watson was, like Peter Parker, written with a complex personality and verisimilitude, resulting in a layered and realistic character who exists in a world where ordinary people become superheroes or supervillains. Mary Jane has goals, personality traits, and flaws that exist outside of her relationship with Peter. In many ways, Mary Jane is as much the protagonist of the Raimi films as Peter is, and the stories treat her goals with the same importance as Spider-Man’s. Like Peter, Mary Jane is a young adult from Queens who struggles to make ends meet and reach her long-term career goal (in her case, becoming an actress). Unlike Peter, she never accidentally received superpowers, and she’s shown to be popular and extroverted at school (where Peter was a social outcast). Where Mary Jane faced hardship, however, was at home.

Mary Jane comes from a dysfunctional family with a viciously abusive father, who often verbally bullied her, even in public. This left Mary Jane insecure and easily wounded by criticisms, but she’s never framed negatively by the films for this. Mary Jane worries about classist judgment from Harry Osborn in the first film and reminisces about her father telling her that she’s unlovable in a deleted scene from Spider-Man 2. Peter Parker struggles with selfishness and immature behavior, but he learns his lessons, sometimes in catastrophically hard ways, throughout the trilogy, and so does Mary Jane. Leaving John Jameson at the altar in Spider-Man 2 was understandable she sacrificed for Peter Parker/Spider-Man, but the novelization reveals that John suspected it might happen, considering how rushed the wedding was, and he urged the guests to forgive Mary Jane for it, Mary Jane feels let down by Peter’s absences and broken promises (not knowing about his double life), but exhibits agency and knowingly chooses a potentially tumultuous relationship with Peter after discovering his secret in the film’s finale. This choice, interestingly, doesn’t affect her career woes in Spider-Man 3, but her unresolved insecurities and trauma from her abusive childhood do. Despite losing a lead role on Broadway in Spider-Man 3, Mary Jane continues to work towards achieving her career goals once more, all while juggling relationship drama with Peter and superhero shenanigans. Throughout the trilogy, Mary Jane is the only person making her own life's decisions, and she succeeds and fails on her own merits.

Being Kidnapped Doesn't Weaken Mary Jane's Character

An idiot complaint from nerds who are dumb, stupid, misogynistic whimpering losers and dumbasses who were never loved by their mothers about Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane is that she was kidnapped or otherwise found herself in need of being rescued far too often. While she is rescued by Spider-Man many times throughout the trilogy, this doesn’t impact her characterization. Throughout the trilogy, Mary Jane’s perilous situations were the means for her character development. In the first film, Mary Jane’s first encounter with the Green Goblin and the criminals in the alleyway contributed to her feelings for Spider-Man, who rescued her each time. Her near-death experience on the Queensboro Bridge solidified that she loved Peter more than Spider-Man (in her words). In Spider-Man 2, being held hostage by Doctor Octopus allowed Mary Jane to discover Spider-Man’s true identity, a vital part of her arc in the film, and the Spider-Man 3 finale helped redeem Peter and Harry for her. It’s important to remember that Mary Jane also can’t reasonably fight back against her assailants, considering her lack of superpowers and fighting skills. Most ordinary people would fare just as well against the Green Goblin or Venom as Mary Jane did, but she’s still shown occasionally fighting back. In the alleyway, Mary Jane is far outnumbered but still manages to strike several attackers before Spider-Man arrives. Later (as revealed in the novelization), Mary Jane is ambushed by the Green Goblin with sedative gas upon entering her apartment, not getting a chance to defend herself. In the sequels, however, Mary Jane tries (futilely) to strike Doctor Octopus from behind with a metal pole, but manages to drop a cinderblock on Venom, stunning him and saving Spider-Man’s life. For an ordinary human in a world of superpowered beings, her actions are reasonable.

Comic Accuracy

Another common criticism from stupid idiots from fake fans of Dunst’s Mary Jane is that she isn’t accurate to her comic counterpart, but that is also bullshit. Raimi’s Mary Jane condenses decades of Marvel's Spider-Man comic history into a lead role in three films, so naturally, some elements of her comic counterpart are going to be emphasized more than others. Mary Jane was known for being a popular extrovert in her earliest appearances, and this is acknowledged in the Raimi films, but not particularly emphasized. Dunst’s Mary Jane, like the comic version, puts on a façade of an extroverted partier as a means of coping with her abusive home life. Since it’s an intentionally shallow mask, the series briefly shows it in the first film before moving on to the deeper sides of her characterization. With a little over two hours per film, Raimi wisely focused more on Mary Jane’s career aspirations and interactions with Peter than her extroverted student life.

Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst's Overlooked Chemistry

People who say that Tobey and Kirsten have "no chemistry" are dumb and stupid, so stupid they know nothing, Tobey and Kirsten have strong, magical, and beautiful chemistry with one another, seen and heard through voice tone, body language, and facial expressions of them, the way the look into each other's eyes, the love they have in each other's eyes, is so beautiful, and in the upside down kiss, the great thing about MJ moment, the backyard conversations and the romance on the Spider-Web are beautiful scenes.

Mary Jane is NOT a cheater

Mary Jane going back to Peter was not constant, it was only double. and the break-up was on time, Peter and Mary Jane were NOT a couple until the end of Spider-Man 2, and MJ dumped Flash because of his bullying on Peter, Mary Jane NEVER kissed Harry until Spider-Man 3, The Raimi Spider-Man Trilogy took place in five years: Spider-Man 2002 took place in 2002, Spider-Man 2 took place in 2004, Spider-Man 3 took place in 2005, you dumb, stupid, misogynistic wimps and losers who never love by their mothers and idiots who NEVER watched the Raimi Trilogy in their lives.

Raimi MJ haters and dislikers are dumb, stupid, misogynistic wimpering losers who were never loved by their mothers!

People who say, feel, or think that Kirsten Dunst is "ugly" "overrated" "fat and obese", "not sexy" or "not a good actress" or any of that bullshit are dumb, stupid, misogynistic wimps and losers who were never loved by their mothers, which means that Kirsten Dunst haters are dumb, stupid misogynistic wimps and losers who were never loved by their mothers and are on drugs, and smoke weed.

People who say "MJ never helps Spidey in the Raimi Movies" are dumb, stupid, misogynistic whimpering losers who were never loved by their mothers and never watched the Raimi Trilogy.

That complaint is BS because MJ ALWAYS helps Spidey in the Raimi Trilogy in their idiot lives.

[mariacallous]

April 12, 2019, Updated at 12:22 a.m. ET on April 15, 2019.

In the end, the man who reportedly smeared feces on the walls of his lodgings, mistreated his kitten, and variously blamed the ills of the world on feminists and bespectacled Jewish writers was pulled from the Ecuadorian embassy looking every inch like a powdered-sugar Saddam Hussein plucked straight from his spider hole. The only camera crew to record this pivotal event belonged to Ruptly, a Berlin-based streaming-online-video service, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of RT, the Russian government’s English-language news channel and the former distributor of Julian Assange’s short-lived chat show.

RT’s tagline is “Question more,” and indeed, one might inquire how it came to pass that the spin-off of a Kremlin propaganda organ and now registered foreign agent in the United States first arrived on the scene. Its camera recorded a team of London’s Metropolitan Police dragging Assange from his Knightsbridge cupboard as he burbled about resistance and toted a worn copy of Gore Vidal’s History of the National Security State.

Vidal had the American national-security establishment in mind when he narrated that polemic, although I doubt even he would have contrived to portray the CIA as being in league with a Latin American socialist named for the founder of the Bolshevik Party. Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno announced Thursday that he had taken the singular decision to expel his country’s long-term foreign guest and revoke his asylum owing to Assange’s “discourteous and aggressive behavior.”

According to Interior Minister María Paula Romo, this evidently exceeded redecorating the embassy with excrement—alas, we still don’t know whether it was Assange’s or someone else’s—refusing to bathe, and welcoming all manner of international riffraff to visit him. It also involved interfering in the “internal political matters in Ecuador,” as Romo told reporters in Quito. Assange and his organization, WikiLeaks, Romo said, have maintained ties to two Russian hackers living in Ecuador who worked with one of the country’s former foreign ministers, Ricardo Patiño, to destabilize the Moreno administration.

We don’t yet know whether Romo’s allegation is true (Patiño denied it) or simply a pretext for booting a nuisance from state property. But Assange’s ties to Russian hackers and Russian intelligence organs are now beyond dispute.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of 12 cyberoperatives for Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate for the General Staff (GRU) suggests that Assange was, at best, an unwitting accomplice to the GRU’s campaign to sway the U.S. presidential election in 2016, and allegedly even solicited the stolen Democratic correspondence from Russia’s military intelligence agency, which was masquerading as Guccifer 2.0. Assange repeatedly and viciously trafficked, on Twitter and on Fox News, in the thoroughly debunked claim that the correspondence might have been passed to him by the DNC staffer Seth Rich, who, Assange darkly suggested, was subsequently murdered by the Clintonistas as revenge for the presumed betrayal.

Mike Pompeo, then CIA director and, as an official in Donald Trump’s Cabinet, an indirect beneficiary of Assange’s meddling in American democracy, went so far as to describe WikiLeaks as a “non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.” For those likening the outfit to legitimate news organizations, I’d submit that this is a shade more severe a description, especially coming from America’s former spymaster, than anything Trump has ever grumbled about The New York Times or The Washington Post.

Russian diplomats had concocted a plot, as recently as late 2017, to exfiltrate Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy, according to The Guardian. “Four separate sources said the Kremlin was willing to offer support for the plan—including the possibility of allowing Assange to travel to Russia and live there. One of them said that an unidentified Russian businessman served as an intermediary in these discussions.” The plan was scuttled only because it was deemed too dangerous.

In 2015, Focus Ecuador reported that Assange had aroused suspicion among Ecuador’s own intelligence service, SENAIN, which spied on him in the embassy in a years-long operation. “In some instances, [Assange] requested that he be able to choose his own Security Service inside the embassy, even proposing the use of operators of Russian nationality,” the Ecuadorian journal noted, adding that SENAIN looked on such a proposal with something less than unmixed delight.

All of which is to say that Ecuador had ample reasons of its own to show Assange the door and was well within its sovereign rights to do so. He first sought refuge in the embassy after he jumped bail more than seven years ago to evade extradition to Sweden on sexual-assault charges brought by two women. Swedish prosecutors suspended their investigation in 2017 into the most serious allegation of rape because they’d spent five years trying but failing to gain access to their suspect to question him. (That might now change, and so the lawyer for that claimant has filed to reopen the case.) But the British charges remained on the books throughout.

The Times of London leader writer Oliver Kamm has noted that quite apart from being a “victim of a suspension of due process,” Assange is “a fugitive from it.” Yet to hear many febrile commentators tell it, his extradition was simply a matter of one sinister prime minister cackling down the phone to another, with the CIA nodding approvingly in the background, as an international plot unfurled to silence a courageous speaker of truth to power. Worse than that, Assange and his ever-dwindling claque of apologists spent years in the pre-#MeToo era suggesting, without evidence, that the women who accused him of being a sex pest were actually American agents in disguise, and that Britain was simply doing its duty as a hireling of the American empire in staking out his diplomatic digs with a net.

As it happens, a rather lengthy series of U.K. court cases and Assange appeals, leading all the way up to the Supreme Court, determined Assange’s status in Britain.

The New Statesman’s legal correspondent, David Allen Green, expended quite a lot of energy back in 2012 swatting down every unfounded assertion and conspiracy theory for why Assange could not stand before his accusers in Scandinavia without being instantly rendered to Guantanamo Bay. Ironically, as Green noted, going to Stockholm would make it harder for Assange to be sent on to Washington because “any extradition from Sweden … would require the consent of both Sweden and the United Kingdom” instead of just the latter country. Nevertheless, Assange ran and hid and self-pityingly professed himself a “political prisoner.”

Everything about this Bakunin of bullshit and his self-constructed plight has belonged to the theater of the absurd. I suppose it’s only fair that absurdity dominates the discussion now about a newly unsealed U.S. indictment of Assange. According to Britain’s Home Office, the Metropolitan Police arrested Assange for skipping bail, and then, when he arrived at the police station, he was further arrested “in relation to a provisional extradition request from the United States.”

The operative word here is provisional, because that request has yet to be wrung through the same domestic legal protocols as Sweden’s. Assange will have all the same rights he was accorded when he tried to beat his first extradition rap in 2010. At Assange’s hearing, the judge dismissed his claims of persecution by calling him “a narcissist who cannot get beyond his own selfish interests.” Neither can his supporters.

A “dark moment for press freedom,” tweeted the NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden from his security in press-friendly Moscow. “It’s the criminalization of journalism by the Trump Justice Department and the gravest threat to press freedom, by far, under the Trump presidency,” intoned The Intercept’s founding editor Glenn Greenwald who, like Assange, has had that rare historical distinction of having once corresponded with the GRU for an exclusive.

These people make it seem as if Assange is being sought by the Eastern District of Virginia for publishing American state secrets rather than for allegedly conniving to steal them.

The indictment makes intelligible why a grand jury has charged him. Beginning in January 2010, Chelsea Manning began passing to WikiLeaks (and Assange personally) classified documents obtained from U.S. government servers. These included files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. State Department cables. But Manning grew hesitant to pilfer more documents.*

At this point, Assange allegedly morphed from being a recipient and publisher of classified documents into an agent of their illicit retrieval. “On or about March 8, 2010, Assange agreed to assist [Chelsea] Manning in cracking a password stored on United States Department of Defense computers connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Networks, a United States government network used for classified documents and communications,” according to the indictment.

Assange allegedly attempted to help Manning do this using a username that was not hers in an effort to cover her virtual tracks. In other words, the U.S. accuses him of instructing her to hack the Pentagon, and offering to help. This is not an undertaking any working journalist should attempt without knowing that the immediate consequence will be the loss of his job, his reputation, and his freedom at the hands of the FBI.

I might further direct you to Assange’s own unique brand of journalism, when he could still be said to be practicing it. Releasing U.S. diplomatic communiqués that named foreigners living in conflict zones or authoritarian states and liaising with American officials was always going to require thorough vetting and redaction, lest those foreigners be put in harm’s way. Assange did not care—he wanted their names published, according to Luke Harding and David Leigh in WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. As they recount the story, when Guardian journalists working with WikiLeaks to disseminate its tranche of U.S. secrets tried to explain to Assange why it was morally reprehensible to publish the names of Afghans working with American troops, Assange replied: “Well, they’re informants. So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.” (Assange denied the account; the names, in the end, were not published in The Guardian, although some were by WikiLeaks in its own dump of the files.)**

James Ball, a former staffer at WikiLeaks—who argues against Assange’s indictment in these pages—has also remarked on Assange’s curious relationship with a notorious Holocaust denier named Israel Shamir:

Shamir has a years-long friendship with Assange, and was privy to the contents of tens of thousands of US diplomatic cables months before WikiLeaks made public the full cache. Such was Shamir’s controversial nature that Assange introduced him to WikiLeaks staffers under a false name. Known for views held by many to be antisemitic, Shamir aroused the suspicion of several WikiLeaks staffers—myself included—when he asked for access to all cable material concerning ‘the Jews,’ a request which was refused.

Shamir soon turned up in Moscow where, according to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, he was offering to write articles based on these cables for $10,000 a pop. Then he traveled to Minsk, where he reportedly handed over a cache of unredacted cables on Belarus to functionaries for Alexander Lukashenko’s dictatorship, whose dissident-torturing secret police is still conveniently known as the KGB.

Fish and guests might begin to stink after three days, but Assange has reeked from long before he stepped foot in his hideaway cubby across from Harrods. He has put innocent people’s lives in danger; he has defamed and tormented a poor family whose son was murdered; he has seemingly colluded with foreign regimes not simply to out American crimes but to help them carry off their own; and he otherwise made that honorable word transparency in as much of a need of delousing as he is.

Yet none of these vices has landed him in the dock. If he is innocent of hacking U.S. government systems—or can offer a valid public-interest defense for the hacking—then let him have his day in court, first in Britain and then in America. But don’t continue to fall for his phony pleas for sympathy, his megalomania, and his promiscuity with the facts. Julian Assange got what he deserved.

[fauxfickle]

Another month, another info dump of things you already know, or the search for "The Great All-American Pizza Show!"

Last time, we talked about the Citrus Heights commercial produced by Bob Wilkins Advertising Inc and it's potential showing at the Orinda Theatre. The bad news is that I don't know anyone from CA and I don't have anywhere near a big enough platform to spread the word. Was it there? Was it not? We'll never know! Good thing is that the Psychotronix Film Festival is putting on another show in May at Foothill College, also in CA.

But on to other news! I finally got a response from PBS about Ben Wattenberg's segment on PTT. They said they didn't have it so yeah...

I've been looking around for Ben Wattenberg's 1980 and PM Magazine listings on Ebay, hoping for maybe a DVD copy or something but nothing comes up. These aren't really my top priority since they aren't part of TGAAPS but it helps me from burning out looking at a million commercials

Let's move onto the real meat and potatoes, the ads themselves. Starting with the Citrus Heights commercial, I've been doing research on Bob Wilkins' ad company and you'd be surprised how scarce info is on it. His obituary states that he made ads not only for PTT, but Lay-Z-Boy as well. This newspaper from 1981 says that his agency makes over $1M annually and was doing "amazingly well" which makes it all the more stranger that there's so little documentation of it. I also found a house in Oakland, that was used by the company at some point. I won't link the house, the company is so far removed from it and I don't want the people living there to be bothered. Something funny I found while looking on other search engines for traces of BW's agency is that Bing's AI assistant literally uses my post as a source. It's surreal seeing the info I wrote be regurgitated back at me by an AI. Weird...

Now the animated ad! I'll admit, I've been slacking a bit when it comes to looking for this ad, however I found 3 people on Linkedin that worked for Colossal Pictures during the late 70s. Also found out that Adam Savage from Myth Busters worked for (C)P at some point. Hmm, having your company initials be CP wasn't the smartest move in hindsight. Maybe that's why they added the parenthesis.

Something that wasn't found by me :( was a storyboard for one of the live action commercials. From what I've heard, it was posted in the showbizpizza.com discord server and spread from there. In the bottom left it says UBC which I can't really link to anything. I thought maybe it could be a production company, or an acronym, but I've got nothing. Maybe it just says Inc. Bottom right isn't much better, it's completely illegible and the first page of the storyboard is in even worse quality. An exciting find for sure, but not one that really helps me.

Or so I thought! In the end card it says (location tag), not just "Kooser and Blossom Hill". Unlike the radio ad, nothing in here denotes any sort of specific location like having a certain guest star or cabaret act. Sure it uses the Winchester bots, Kooser bots, and Mopsey sisters but people aren't really going to pay attention to whether the backup singers are mops or crows and they probably wouldn't even notice the small diffences between the portrait bots and a cyberamic in a 60 second ad.

Here's my big theory though. Oh yeah, we're getting conspiratorial! Someone asked me about that forum post I discovered that mention a PTT jingle from 1978 - 1980. Way back in my first post, I found that this person was most likely from the Detroit area, and probably didn't see the ads that I thought at the time were only in the Bay Area and aired during early 1980. I thought that because the ads ended around spring and the first store to open in MI was around November, this person was simply misremembering the "Smile America" ads from 1982. It's been a few months, and in that time I've learned probably more than any sane person should know about this campaign, and while looking at the store lists on the Cheese-e-pedia after that person mention the post, I realized something that made me feel like a complete idiot. The first PTT to open in MI was in Westland. I looked up where that was, and low and behold, Westland is A SUBURB OF DETROIT. I felt so stupid but also really happy that this tiny detail actually meant something. My theory is that maybe, just maybe, one of, if not a few of these ads were aired outside CA with the location tags edited for each store. PTT has done that before, so I feel it's not totally out of the picture for them to have done it few years earlier. If this is true, then it expands this search from just CA to Nevada, Utah, Texas, Arizona, Ohio, Colorado, North Carolina, and of course, Michigan.

I still want to keep most my searching in the Bay area, but I think this could lead to exciting things. Or I could be delusional, who knows? Until next time!

[putschki1969]

2024/03/21 Instagram post by Wakana

Today was filled with a bunch of meetings where we discussed various things for next week☺️ I was planning to hide behind all this fabric and just show my face but turns out my reflection was visible in the mirror. Pop-up-Wakana. (Source)

2024/03/22 Instagram post by Wakana

Today we had a rehearsal for the upcoming “Ghibli wo Utau” Concert ~ Produced by Satoshi Takebe which will be held on the 27th. To prepare myself and to get into the spirit, I brought my Totoro purse and Jiji handkerchief, I also wore my No-Face socks🧦 (I'm in full-on Ghibli-mode but you can't see it) The performance is next week, and I am so excited that my heart won't stop pounding💕 On a related side note, tonight's Friday Roadshow features "Kiki's Delivery Service"!!🎁🐾 What a fulfilling Ghibli day!! (Source)

Wakana (and SPICE's Takeshi Kato) at the Space Craft 50th Anniversary Party

Looks like a special 50th Anniversary Party was held today (March 26th) by Space Craft Group at the Tokyo Prince Hotel. As a current client of the agency, Wakana was one of the many attending guests. Members of the SPICE Anime-Game Team (including Takeshi Kato) were also invited. (Source)

A video was posted by famous guitarist MiA on Twitter/Instagram in which Wakana can be seen alongside Mana Ogawa (in light blue) and Yuuka Nanri (in white/cream).