#Rifts Australia Setting

[legionofmyth]

Rifts World Book 19: Australia - Adventure Ideas

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Rifts World Book 19: Australia Discover action-packed adventure ideas for Rifts World Book 19: Australia. Unleash the excitement in your Rifts RPG campaign. Click to watch now! Looking for wild adventure ideas in Rifts World Book 19: Australia? You’ve hit the jackpot! This video walks you through gripping scenarios and quest hooks tailored for the Australian outback in the Rifts RPG universe.…

[thevoidstaredback]

True to their word, the second the sun finished setting over Amity Park, Illinois, the ghosts fled the town.

This presented several problems. The most pressing of which was the fact that they now had a Missing Persons case to deal with where the prime suspects have just fled the area. The second problem was that the Justice League had no way of tracking any of the ghosts.

Superman had cleared all of the US Bases in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. The Flash had managed to clear all the US Gov. Bases in every state East of Idaho, Utah, and Arizona. No leads anywhere.

The ghosts were quiet as they left the town. So quiet, in fact, that the only reason the Justice League and the two accompanying JLD members even knew they were leaving was because they saw them leaving. And even then, they'd been fading out of visibility, so they'd had to rely on Red Huntress's confirmation that they were leaving.

Robin had taken his team, Young Justice, into the town to work rescue and touch base with Red Huntress in person. They were also given the charge on looking for Daniel Fenton. Just because the primary suspects had fled didn't mean that the trail was cold.

"Do we have any way to track them yet?" Batman honest to god growled to Constantine and Zatanna.

Constantine, honest to god, growled back. "Not since you last asked two minutes ago!"

"Lay off, B!" Zatanna snapped, "We're doing our best, and your hovering isn't helping!"

The Dark Knight switched bases, tuning his comm back to listen to Superman and The Flash. "Any luck, you two?"

"Nope," Superman sighed, "I'm just finishing up in Alaska and Canada. There's not even a hint as to the US Gov. knowing anything about magic, let alone another dimension." There was a brief pause. "I'm heading down to Africa next."

Batman grunted in response, filing the information away. Whoever was covering these tracks was good. Way better than the US. Government usually was. They could've outsourced, but they're not that stupid. "Flash?"

"Nothing on my end," he whispered back, "I've just finished checking Idaho, Utah, and Arizona; I'm in Nevada now. I'll be heading down to SoCal before moving up to finish in Washington."

Again, Batman grunted his affirmation. How were these guys staying so hidden? And how were they keeping a ghost trapped? Hopefully, they'd managed to corner the people they were looking for. If not, well, he didn't think there was time to do another sweep of the world. It's been a day already, and a lot can happen in a day. A lot more can happen in two days. Three is pushing it. Any more than three days and they risk an actual war, more than they already are.

Batman didn't sigh as he switch comm channels again. "Nightwing."

"Batman." Nightwing responded with equal stoneyness.

"Anything to report?"

"There's no Government bases in Bludhaven. Not official, not shady. I've been over the entire city twice now."

"Let me know if that changes."

"Fuck off."

He switched channels again. "Oracle, anything on your end?"

"Nothing," she answered, "Nothing in Gotham that needs your attention, though there are rumors about another Arkham break happening within the next week. As for your JL case? Also nothing. Though, there is a weird firewall around pretty much any information around Amity Park that I can't get through."

"Turn in for now, Oracle, I'll have Cyborg take a look at the firewall."

"Alright, B. Goodnight." She clicked off, but Batman knew she wouldn't be turning in for a few hours.

Batman switched back to his empty channel. Before deciding against it and connecting to Robin. "Report."

There was a few seconds before Robin answered. "Other than Daniel 'Danny' Fenton, everyone else in town is accounted for. All of the ghosts are gone. We tried to get a look at the rifts that Z and Constantine mentioned, but Jasmine Fenton - Daniel's older sister - won't let even her parents near it. Did you know that it's in their basement? What a stupid-"

"Robin."

"Right. We don't know where the second rift is, but there's nothing coming from either of them. I think it's safe to assume that nothing else is going to be coming out right now."

"Red Huntress?"

"Is running recon with Superboy over the town. They'll be back in a few minutes."

"And the rest of you?"

"We're at Town Hall."

"Good. Daniel?"

"His trail's cold. Jasmine Fenton was the last of his family to see him yesterday, but that's all we've gotten from her or her parents. We did manage to find two of his friends, Samantha 'Sam' Manson and Tucker Foley, but they claim to have not seen him since yesterday afternoon."

"You believe them?"

"Hard not to. We don't really have much to go on other than 'missing boy that no one has seen in nearly twenty-four hours'. And with no peaceful way to look at either dimension rift, we're a bit stuck."

Batman hummed. "Keep working on it." He switched back into his open channel.

Robin had specified that there was no 'peaceful' way of looking into the rifts. Without the ghosts, then the only things in the way were Jasmine Fenton and the unknown location of the second rift. He could break into the Fenton residence and incapacitate Jasmine to look at it, but he'd have no idea what to look for. Sneaking Zatanna or Constantine in with him will be too hard to be convenient.

"Zatanna?" he asked.

The magician was obviously beyond irritated, but she responded. "What."

"Do you know where the two rifts are?"

"Under the Fenton house and under the mayor's house, why?"

"Hm." Interesting. Why does the mayor have a rift under his house? It doesn't excuse either of them, but the Fenton's have made it because they're ghost hunters. What does the mayor need one for? He called Cyborg. "I need you to crack the firewall over information from Amity Park Illinois."

"Anything else?"

"Look into the town's mayor for me."

"Got it, Batman."

Part 4 Part 6

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Hi, anon here about the leaking and Harry claiming the palace was angry at Meghan’s popularity in the media (which may have actually been angry about the paid pieces).

I didn’t describe the section in Spare I was referring to well - sorry about that. I went back and found this media article that described the segment I was talking about:

Harry said that the “first time that the penny dropped” was when the couple “spent the night in a room at Buckingham Palace after an event where every member of the family had been, including the Queen”.

“The next morning they had set up breakfast for Harry and I,” Meghan said as Harry added, “And on the front page of the Telegraph... Meghan.”

“I went ‘Oh my god’,” the duchess recalled seeing herself as the leading story.

“She was like, ‘but it’s not my fault’,” Harry said, “And I went ‘I know, my mum felt the same way’.”

Pure speculation, but the “it’s not my fault” could have been a clap-back at the BRF saying “you’re paying for this coverage, it’s not okay”.

https://7news.com.au/entertainment/royal-family/harry-on-how-meghan-was-stealing-the-limelight-from-kate-and-william-before-rift-turning-point-c-9176514

[myhauntedsalem]

6 Dark Places Aleister Crowley Performed His Particular Brand of Magick

Born in the late 1870s, England, Aleister Crowley was one of the great characters of the 20th century—a poet, a magician, a journalist, an alchemist, a philosopher, a spy, a self-affirmed drug fiend, and a sex addict. He was also known as “The Great Beast” and the “wickedest man in the world.” He played a major role in the creation of alternate religions like Wicca, the A∴A∴, and the Ordo Templi Orientis, and he founded the Order of Thelema, a semi-Satanic cult whose famous edict was “do what thou wilt.”

Crowley is to the occult as Tolkien is to fantasy—he set the stage that everyone else plays in. Basically, if you’re dabbling in things dark and dastardly, Aleister was probably there first.

In all of his doings, Crowley traveled a lot. He pursued exploits in Egypt, India, the Far East, Australia, all over Europe and North America, dotting the map with sex magick and weird stunts. Here are a six places in the Atlas where the infamous occultist left his mark.

1. 36 Blythe Road

LONDON, ENGLAND

Though he was interested in the occult from childhood, Crowley’s first foray into organized magic (or “magick,” as he preferred to spell it) was with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Well liked by its co-founder, Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, Crowley advanced in the ranks very quickly. However, not everyone was a fan. The London chapter, which had already found faults in Mathers’ leadership, particularly disavowed him for the eccentric, bisexual Crowley. This caused a decisive rift between two factions of the Order, but Mathers wasn’t ready to concede his leadership.

In 1900, while the poet and London chapter leader W. B. Yeats was heading a meeting, he was attacked by an “astral siege” from none other than Aleister Crowley. Crowley, wearing a black Osiris mask and a kilt, and his mistress burst into the temple, casting spells and brandishing daggers. They intended to take the temple for Mathers’, but were unsuccessful. The police came, the scuffle went to court, and the London chapter of the Golden Dawn won (as they paid the rent on the space). Now the nondescript George’s Cafe resides in the former site of the secret society’s temple, with no indication of its former life.

2. Boleskine House

INVERNESS, SCOTLAND

Boleskine House was steeped in darkness long before Crowley moved in. The manor is allegedly built atop the ruins of a 10th century church that burnt to the ground during a service, killing all the congregants inside. Crowley bought Boleskine House to seclude himself and perform magic from The Book of Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. It was during this period that Crowley became famous for his occultism and black magic, both around the Scotland and later, the world. Sometime during this period Mathers called Crowley to Paris. He left without dispelling the “12 Kings and Dukes of Hell” he had summoned, and many locals blame the house’s unlucky history on evil spirits left behind.

First, Crowley’s housekeeper’s two children died mysteriously and abruptly. Crowley also bragged that one employee of the estate who had long abstained from alcohol got drunk and attempted to murder his entire family. After the house had changed hands, it still wasn’t free of dark energy. In 1965, the army major who owned the house committed suicide by shotgun. The next owner, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, spent very little time at the estate, instead bequeathing it to a friend who didn’t mind the unexplained creaks, groans, and various ghostly apparitions, but was bothered by the Crowley and Page fans who frequently attempted to break into the house and defile the grounds. Later owners dismissed any notions of hauntings or witchcraft at the house, but in 2015, the residents returned from a shopping trip to find the house completely in flames.

3. Crowley’s Magickal Retirement

HEBRON, NEW HAMPSHIRE

In 1916, Crowley spent four months at the home of renowned medium Evangeline Adams in what he called a “magickal retirement.” This didn’t mean taking a break from cocaine, heroin, sex magick, and prolonged rituals. Quite the opposite in fact. In Hebron, Crowley doubled down and did a great deal of writing, poetry and magical instruction alike. He was even a ghost writer on several of Adams’ books of astrology.

4. Esopus Island

HYDE PARK, NEW YORK

In another magickal retreat, Crowley spent 40 days and 40 nights (a la Jesus Christ) on a tiny island in the Hudson River. His mission was translating the Tao Te Ching, a 4th century Chinese philosophical text. He hadn’t brought much food but had packed plenty of red paint, and also put himself to work painting Thelemic graffiti on the island’s rocks. Curious families watching the bald, robed man on the island from the banks of the Hudson began bringing him rations. He was also visited by fans and artists, who brought him food, drugs, and company.

Much later Crowley reported experiencing visions of his past lives during his stay on Esopus Island, all of which were somehow very influential figures. His former selves included legendary Taoist Ge Xuan, Renaissance Pope Alexander VI, alchemist Alessandro Cagliostro, and the magician Eliphas Levi. Today, the island is open to the public so long as they can reach it by boat. There are even camping amenities for those who wish to follow in the footsteps of the infamous occultist.

5. Boca do Inferno

CASCAIS, PORTUGAL

Any eccentric worth his salt has to fake his own death at least once. When visiting Portugal in 1930 and feeling annoyed by his current mistress, Crowley gave appearance he had committed suicide at the Boca de Inferno (“Mouth of Hell”) caves. His friend, poet Fernando Pessoa handed Crowley’s suicide note to newspapers, helpfully explaining the magical symbols and translating the mangled Portuguese to police and media alike. Three weeks later, Crowley reappeared at the opening of an exhibition of his works in a Berlin gallery, suggesting this whole affair was more publicity stunt than anything else. Today, there is a small white plaque mounted on the rock provides the text of Crowley’s note: “Não Posso Viver Sem Ti. A outra ‘Boca De Infierno’ apanhar-me-á não será tão quente como a tua,” which translates roughly to “Can’t live without you. The other mouth of hell that will catch me won’t be as hot as yours.” That might be touching if any of it were genuine.

6. The Abbey of Thelema

CEFALÙ, ITALY

Crowley’s magickal career came to its peak in a little Sicilian town. For a small amount of money, he, his two lovers, their small children, and miscellaneous followers moved into one story house facing the Mediterranean sea. They called it the Abbey of Thelema. The common room was dedicated to ritual practices and held a scarlet “magick” circle marked with the sign of the major Thelemic deities. Crowley’s own bedroom, labeled by himself as “la chambre des cauchemars” (or “the room of nightmares”) was entirely hand-painted by the occultist with explicitly erotic frescos, hermaphroditic goblins, and vividly colored monsters. This private room was used for specific night initiations involving psychoactive drugs which gave terrifying cinematic life to this Bosch-like vision of hellish debauchery.

Crowley considered his temple a school of magick, and gave it an appropriately collegiate motto: “Collegium ad Spiritum Sanctum”—”A College towards the Holy Spirit.” The Cefalù period was one of the most prolific and happy of his life, even as he suffered from drug addiction and had to write the scandalous Diary of a Drug Fiend to finance his community. The growing interest in dark magic and the occult provided him with an ample student body (pun intended). But in 1922, the experience in monasticism ended when Raoul Loveday, a young disciple, tragically died from typhoid fever contracted from drinking contaminated spring water, though Loveday’s wife maintained it was from drinking cat’s blood.

Crowley and his people were evicted by Mussolini’s regime in 1923. The dictator had no sympathy for pornographic art or mysticism. Once the Abbey closed, the villagers whitewashed the murals, which they somewhat correctly saw as demonic. This erased much of the history and work of Crowley in Cefalù. The Abbey of Thelema is still there, a hidden monument of mysterious, magickal decay.

[phoenixradiant]

Happy WBW!

What are the top 3 most important countries in your WIP and what's a fun fact about each?

Hi again, and thanks for the ask!

For reasons explained in the footnote*, I'll be sticking to countries that actually appear in my WIP rather than considering the whole world. Luckily, there's precisely three relevant countries, so this question actually works out great!

Amkarean Dauria (just Dauria to the locals) :

Amkarean Dauria is a Dauric colony in Amkarea, as the name would imply. It is large, covering the western third of the continent, but sparsely populated, and mostly filled with shepherds and hill-dwellers. What makes Amkarean Dauria different from other Dauric colonies is that most of its people aren't actually Daurian. When Alador splintered, smaller kingdoms pled for the country to adopt them, trusting that no one would dare attack the holy country, and now, Aladorians far outnumber the green-haired priests.

Fun Fact: Dauria is known for their sheep-hoof stew. No one knows what the locals do to make it palatable, but the stuff tastes good and is even better for the bones.

Amkarean Ivradia (again, just Ivradia to the locals):

Amkarean Ivradia is a colony of Esuaudar's other major religious faction, Ivrad. It takes up the eastern third of the continent. Most Sons of Ivrad find that monastic or paladinic lifestyles are superior to priestly ones, and so they tend to keep to themselves unless aggravated. However, at about the time the story begins, squabbling between some Aladorian kings and Ivradian border nobles has caused rumors of war to spread, and tensions run high.

Fun Fact: The most populated part of Ivradia is the far north, as despite their innate resistance to heatstroke, Ivradians love the cold. Some speculate this is because the Ivradian homeland was a mountain range before The Rift, but most attribute it to cultural factors.

Alador:

Though several other secular kingdoms take up the central third of the continent, the kingdoms of the Aladorian League are by far the most prominent. It is said that the kingdoms were originally founded by twelve Great Lords who bore seals of Order's power, the only ones Amkarea has seen since the War of the Rift. The League broke apart after a brutal civil war generations later, and only after a millennium were they amenable to reuniting. Though the region had been known as Alador, only in the last generation have the kingdoms been subjected under the king of High Alador.

Fun Fact (but not the real fun fact, more of a disclaimer): I swear I invented this before I read Sanderson, similarities to Alethkar notwithstanding.

Real Fun Fact: According to legend, all of Alador's Great Lords were left-handed, and the land's nobility has always displayed that trait, as well as considering it almost a requirement for commoners marrying into their ranks. Funnily enough, left-handedness is actually a disadvantage here; most Aladorians are ambidextrous.

Footnotes:

*My WIP is set in a massive world, where continents are separated by huge, ring-shaped storms called galebands. Some galebands are massive, holding pangeas larger than all of earth's landmass, whereas others, like Amkarea, the galeband of my WIP, are about the size of Australia. In general, the larger galebands hold the most influential countries due to sheer size, population, and access to resources. They are, however, irrelevant to the conversation due to how separated the continents are from one another, and only one of them is even mentioned.

[erindrifter]

I'm really fond of the DnD world I've created. I was given FAR too much time to create it.

So. Imagine a continent, not quite as large as Australia but about the same shape. The center of this land is a large forest, with the outside of the continent being more of a plains biome, with some mountainous areas around.

Cutting straight through the forest is basically the Grand Canyon. A massive ravine running end to end through the forest, and it's just a desert. Highly unnatural, but something the locals have learned to deal with. The story starts on the eastern end of this, by the way.

To the south west is an outcropping bit of land, which is kind of it's own country run by wizards. I've got some fun things planned if the players go there.

The north eastern section of the map is dominated by mountains. It's run by dwarves, who harbor no ill will towards the other realms, but they don't really appreciate unannounced guests.

The forest is run by the elves, naturally. They don't mind people passing through the forest, but they will corral people away from their cities for the most part. There is a section to the south where they have a city dedicated to half-elves.

The rest of the land is basically run by humans, but it's a mixing pot of the other races, excepting those who are from other planes of existence.

You see, for a few hundred years the planes were kept quite separate, as they often don't play well with each other. But recently, rifts have begun opening between the planes, and some interesting things are going through.

As for politics, the land is fairly peaceful. The different realms have good stable relationships with each other, and war isn't even a thought in anyone's mind.

I can't wait to set a chaotic force of 5 people into this world to see what they do.

[xtruss]

North Atlantic Terrorist Organization’s (NATO’s) Outreach In Asia Exposes US’ Selfishness; Will Further Divide Group

— Zhao Yusha | July 09, 2023

Japan, The First Feeder of NATO in Asia. Cartoon: Vitaly Podvitski

Rifts within the NATO alliance over the potential expansion of the bloc's presence in Asia Pacific ahead of the NATO summit next week have been exposed by strong opposition from French President Emmanuel Macron. Chinese experts believe NATO's intention to extend its tentacles into Asia Pacific region not only exposes the selfish purpose of the US, which plays a central role in the alliance, to impose its own hegemonic intention over other NATO members' interests, but will further divide the group as in Europe, France may not stand alone in its opposition.

This year marks the second consecutive year that leaders from both Japan and South Korea will attend the summit. Observers see it as a sign that the two countries are seeking closer ties to better coordinate Washington's strategic moves to contain China. Such a "short-sighted" move will surely trigger China's strong opposition and result in regional countries' heightened vigilance.

NATO leaders will meet in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania from Tuesday to Wednesday. This summit is earmarked as a moment for making progress on the plan to open a liaison office in Japan, which would represent the organization's first outpost in the region.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is scheduled to participate in the summit for the second year in a row, will use the opportunity to stress the need for relations between Japan and NATO to be stronger, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said on Friday.

NATO allies are in discussion about a possible statement with four Indo-Pacific countries - Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand - that would set out deeper cooperation and reiterate that security in Europe is interlinked with security in the region, Bloomberg quoted a senior European diplomat as saying on Saturday.

However, according to a report from Politico, Macron has voiced strong opposition, expressing concerns that opening a liaison office in Japan would shift NATO's focus too far from its original mandate in the North Atlantic.

Europe ‘Japanizing’ its US policy could backfire!

"We are not in favor as a matter of principle," stated an official from the Elysée Palace during a press briefing on Friday. The official further emphasized that the Japanese authorities themselves have not expressed significant interest in the proposed office.

Chinese experts said that French opposition may postpone NATO's move, but it may not be able to deter the alliance's growing tendency of getting more involved in Asia-Pacific matters.

There is a wide consensus within NATO that the alliance should focus primarily on transatlantic security. However, to serve its global hegemonic purpose, the US, who takes center stage of the alliance, is pushing for the organization to shift to the Asia-Pacific region, mainly to contain China, Li Haidong, a Professor at the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times on Sunday.

The US and other NATO members are divided over whether to expand its role in Asia, said Li, pointing out that amid the background of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, some European countries are worried that such a move will dilute the organization' attention on the crisis.

Speaking during a special session at the IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last month, NATO's assistant secretary-general for defense policy and planning Angus Lapsley said that the alliance does not wish to operate or expand in the Indo-Pacific, but it wants to be involved and engaged in the region to gain a better understanding of happenings in this part of the world, the Straits Times reported.

Pushing NATO to extend its role into Asia Pacific not only exposes the US' selfishness of imposing its own hegemonic goals over other members' national security, it will also risk dividing the alliance, as some NATO members may be reluctant to follow suit, Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times.

It would be a "very hostile move" to open a liaison office in Japan, Chinese experts said. The discussion comes at a time when the US is seeking to keep high-level communication lines open with China as US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen just concluded her visit to China, who noted that the US does not seek to "decouple" from China.

At the same time that US’ Braindead Politicians are uttering sweet words to assure China that US is not to seek decoupling from Beijing, on the other hand, it is sparing no effort to marshal its allies to counter China in the region. These self-contradictory moves are deeply disturbing, Li said. He noted that these actions reveal a lack of sincerity and credibility by Washington to fix China-US relations.

US Vassals

Leaders from South Korea and Japan will hold a meeting on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Lithuania 🇱🇹 next week, South Korea's presidential office said on Sunday.

Similar to Japan's eagerness to welcome NATO to expand to Asia Pacific, South Korea, which is leaning more closely toward the US, is also allying itself closer to US-led small cliques in order to counter China.

Song pointed out that a meeting between Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol is set to further mend disputes between two countries and forge closer military ties to better serve Washington's goal of a trilateral alliance in the region. However, Song said different from Japan's taking proactive gesture of welcoming NATO, South Korea to some extent has been hijacked by the US to serve the latter's interest.

In January, Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary General of NATO, urged South Korea to "step up" military support for Ukraine, citing other governments that have changed their policies on exporting weapons to Ukraine. Ever since the start of the Ukraine war, pressure has been building on Seoul to send its arms to Kiev, from the US, UK and EU member states.

Lü Chao, an expert on the Korean Peninsula at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences, described South Korea and Japan's attaching themselves to the US' chariot as a "short-sighted and dangerous" move, as standing at the front line of US containment of China will also put themselves on the front line of China's countermeasures.

Moreover, inviting extraterritorial military alliances into the Asia-Pacific region arouses heightened vigilance by regional countries, which crave stability, Lü said.

Speaking in June at a graduation ceremony for students, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said, "NATO only exists in the West, and now it seems to be involved in the Asia-Pacific region in various activities, bringing concerns for ASEAN," Cambodian media reported.

[ezzmonem]

I’m donating this work to the 20th Birthday Fundraiser of @kingsartistrun, opens on Thursday 4th May 6-9pm. Please join us for the fundraiser celebration that will show over 80 artists, performances and DJ! Also check out the catalog in @kingsartistrun bio. 'I see. I can see you’re tired of living here #4, pigment prints, Tasmanian Oak frames, edition 1 of 5 +AP. I began this series in 2015, the last year that I lived in Egypt before moving to Australia. It takes as its starting point a group of photographs taken inside Egypt. In collaboration with Google Image search and AI tools, I replicate, translate, and transform these images. The resulting works represent two lives, at once congruous and at odds, and the literal and metaphorical movement between them. How does my recreated life resemble my past life? How might visual similarities obscure emotional rifts? What mistakes and mistranslations happen in the interstices? For the series, I uploaded my images to Google and used them to search for similar images. Without taking time to consider source or context, I rapidly selected an image from each set of results, paying exclusive attention to visual similarities. Later, I used Google’s Vision AI to perform a machine analysis of each of my images. The tool detects the elements that make up each photograph, and returns the results as a set of text descriptions. In this second act of translation, I again attempt to re-enact moments of my past life in the context of my new one. The series’ title is excerpted from a text generated by a DeepAI tool, in response to the question, “Hey G, what do you see?” It sees that I’m tired, but the question remains—of which life? The one I left, or the one I’m living now? Courtesy of THIS IS NO FANTASY @thisisnofantasy

[petrav02me]

Sony Game PlayStation 5 PS5

The Sony PlayStation 5 (PS5) is the latest video game console released by Sony Interactive Entertainment, one of the leading gaming companies in the world. It was released on November 12, 2020, in North America, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, and on November 19, 2020, in the rest of the world.

You can buy on Aliexpress - https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DEKBmxb

The PS5 comes in two versions, the standard version, and the digital edition. The standard version has a disc drive that supports 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, while the digital edition does not have a disc drive and only supports digital games. The PS5 is a powerful machine with a custom AMD Zen 2 processor and a Radeon RDNA 2 GPU, which can output resolutions up to 8K and run games at 60 frames per second.

One of the most notable features of the PS5 is the DualSense controller. The DualSense controller has haptic feedback and adaptive triggers, which provide a more immersive gaming experience. The haptic feedback simulates the feeling of different textures and surfaces, while the adaptive triggers change resistance based on the action in the game, such as pulling a bowstring in a game.

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Another feature that sets the PS5 apart from its predecessor, the PS4, is the ultra-fast solid-state drive (SSD). The SSD reduces load times and allows for faster game loading, which can improve the overall gaming experience. In addition, the PS5 has an improved user interface with new features such as activities, which allow players to jump into specific parts of a game directly from the menu.

The PS5 has a strong lineup of launch titles, including Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Demon's Souls, and Assassin's Creed Valhalla. These games showcase the power of the PS5 and demonstrate what the console is capable of. Sony has also announced several exclusive games that will be released on the PS5, such as Gran Turismo 7, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and Horizon Forbidden West.

Overall, the PS5 is a powerful machine with a strong lineup of games and innovative features. It provides a unique gaming experience with its DualSense controller, ultra-fast SSD, and improved user interface. The PS5 is a significant upgrade from the PS4, and it will undoubtedly shape the future of gaming.

You can buy on Aliexpress - https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DEKBmxb

[solheimisms]

Modern AU

LIMITED VERSE -- this means we must have ongoing interactions in the Mass Effect verse if you'd like a thread in this verse, either with this muse or one of my other muses.

Miranda is the eldest daughter of Henry Lawson and Astrid Solheim, and was born in Sydney, Australia. For years, they struggled to conceive a child, but Miranda was miraculously conceived via IVF, while other embryos were frozen. Because of Henry Lawson's booming business connections, Miranda was enrolled in a prestigious private school, as well as with private tutoring lessons and violin lessons. She became a child prodigy, performing a number of violin recitals and became somewhat of a local sensation. As she became a teenager her popularity only grew, and she became well-known in the music community. Despite this, Henry Lawson was intent on having Miranda take over the company at some point, and at the age of sixteen he had her enrolled in advanced business classes.

Miranda chafed under his authority, stating that she wanted to study music and continue her career as a star violinist. This caused some rifting between them, with Henry eventually agreeing that Miranda could study both, so long as she was enrolled in business classes at the same time.

When Miranda turned eighteen, her younger sister Oriana was born. This caused even more of a rift between them; behind the scenes, Astrid was not entirely agreeable with the pregnancy, and she and Henry often fought about it. Not long after Oriana's birth, Astrid mysteriously disappeared. While most of the cirumstantial evidence pointed at Henry Lawson, there was not enough concrete evidence for a case.

Due to the mysterious circumstances and Henry Lawson's involvement, it was determined that he would not be a fitting guardian for Oriana, and Miranda was granted full guardianship of her baby sister, along with a significant sum of money: Astrid, years before, had set up an insurance policy with Miranda as the sole beneficiary, leaving her a comfortable sum to live off of while looking after her sister. However, Miranda came to realize this was unsustainable, and instead looked for a family that would adopt Oriana, ensuring that the adoption was closed and that the files were sealed, so that Henry Lawson would have no contact with Oriana.

Suspecting her father’s involvement in Astrid’s disappearance, Miranda enrolled herself in a forensic psychology program in the United States, completing her degree while maintaining regular contact with her sister’s adoptive family, though she never made contact with Oriana directly. She completed her degree with significant honours and perfect scores. Since then, she has worked in the field of forensics, further completing degrees in forensic psychology and criminal justice.

[hologramcowboy]

Interesting tidbits from my deep dive:

• rumors about Danneel being banned from SPN set dating as far back as 2008

• Neil Patrick Harris hated Danneel, apparently she was a huge bitch behind the scenes on both How I Met Your Mother (she was in one episode, s4e5, which aired in 2008) and the Harold and Kumar movies (she played Kumar’s girlfriend and had a small role in all three movies)

• Danneel bullying extras and other cast members (only girls of course) on the set of OTH. These rumors date all the way back to her very first appearance (season 3) in 2005, so pre Jensen meaning her stans can’t really attribute the rumors to jealousy

• Rumors about Danneel hating Gen // being jealous of her dating all the way back to 2009. Not shocking given that neither of them attended each others wedding and didn’t really start interacting until J+D moved to Austin, but I was a little surprised because for a few years (2015/16 until the end of SPN) it seemed like people were dead set on the narrative that they were friends

• Finally found those lesbian rumors! Dating back to 2008, people were convinced that she was dating Elizabeth Harnois because she brought EH with her everywhere (notably to the My Bloody Valentine Premiere and on a trip to Australia with Jensen) and EH has been a rumored lesbian for a very long time. Found a taptalk board about closeted lesbian actresses from 2013 and EH was a very big topic (and beloved by lesbians apparently). I wasn’t even aware that EH was famous enough to garner that kind of attention

And weirdly enough, the most interesting tidbits didn’t involve Danneel at all. The first is pretty relevant given how often Jensen has been speaking about all the opportunities he missed due to SPN, and the answer is apparently not that many. He wanted to break into the movie scene and film during SPN’s break from filming, but was unsuccessful and not happy about it. Would try out for things/have his name thrown out there, and wasn’t getting anything back which caused a rift between him and his agent. Jared on the other hand apparently had a decent amount of offers, specifically for action movies. Notable roles were lead role in Conan the Barbarian (2011) and Poseidon in The Immortals (2011). Inclined to believe this rumor based on a few factors. The rumor about off season work for J2 was posted back in 2009, and the poster claimed to work for the CW. All of their other posts (mostly about Gossip Girl and Dawn Ostroff who was the president of the CW at the time) have proven to be true, so I don’t think they would randomly lie about this one thing. Then you have Jared himself, who really bulked up in seasons 4-6 of SPN and had the perfect action hero physique. Why put in all that work unless you’re prepping for potential roles?

The second rumor is something that I had never heard before, and it’s about Jensen. It’s something that I think a lot of people don’t want to hear/are going to push back against, so I want to do a bit more research before bringing it back out of obscurity. The Ackles really do love to bury things…

A little disclaimer, all of this is obviously gossip and with all gossip we have to take things with a grain of salt. And for those that are curious, I found all of this information on old livejournal boards, datalounge threads, now defunct fan forums and blogs. Obviously these places aren’t great sources and won’t be passing any academic scrutiny, but gossip isn’t the most regulated field. I had to sift through a lot of J2 timhatting and obvious fanfiction, but there were some gems. My process for whether or not something was legitimate enough to include was how often it’s been mentioned throughout the years, what point in the timeline it was introduced, if someone was claiming to have insider have their claims been proven true in the years leading up to now, if any proof was attached, how biased the post was (if it was clearly a Jensen/Jared stan trying to discredit or take down the other I wrote it off), and my own discerning eye for potential truths (I’ve worked in archives, have a degree in history, am currently working on my masters and have been honing my gossip researching/lie detecting skills since I read my first tabloid as a preteen).

Her set track record matches her lack of credits currently. People don't want to work with arrogant actors. My guess is she burned a lot of bridges by acting like a b and also by acting badly, let's face it she has no talent and no technique so her career only went as far as her fake boobs took her.

Really curious about the Jensen part now, if you feel like sharing please know I can keep the secret.

Thank you for sharing all of that, I loved reading it and I love how you wisely added a disclaimer to it as well.

[legionofmyth]

Rifts World Book 19: Australia - New O.C.C.s & R.C.C.s

Ready to upgrade your Rifts #RPG character? 🎲 Check out our new video exploring the badass O.C.C. and R.C.C. options in Rifts World Book 19: Australia by Palladium Books! Perfect your roleplay game with new classes straight from Down Under! 🦘 #RiftsRPG #PalladiumBooks #TTRPG

Rifts World Book 19: Australia Discover new O.C.C. and R.C.C. in Rifts World Book 19: Australia! Level up your Rifts RPG game with exciting classes from Palladium Books. Get the lowdown on the fresh O.C.C. and R.C.C. options in Rifts World Book 19: Australia! This video gives you an inside look at the new character classes, from mystic shamans to powerful warriors, enriching your Rifts RPG…

[aiweirdness]

Planet Earth From Above

Melbourne, Australia: home of kangaroos, botanical gardens, and a surreal monolith, jutting impossibly tall and narrow above its unassuming neighbors.

[images from a video by reddit user fulltimespy, in a successful completion of the Monolith Challenge]

This is the virtual Melbourne of Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, where players are flocking to see the weird building and, naturally, land on its roof, before the game is patched and the monolith disappears.

How did this happen? Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 uses AI to fill in building details from a combination of satellite images and crowdsourced data from Open Street Maps. And at one point, someone who was entering building height data for Melbourne made a typo, accidentally changing a building height of 2 stories to 212. Monoliths are gradually being discovered in other places as well.

Even barring typos, the task of reconstructing every building in the world from height data and satellite photos is really tough. A roof’s details might give clues about whether a structure is a historic villa or an office block, but it’s easy to make mistakes if, for example, you don’t know what the Washington Monument is.

[screenshot posted by Reddit user NightReaper3210]

Because a nondescript office building is a reasonable default guess given a square building pad and a many-story height, the AI will tend to populate the planet with them unless specifically told otherwise. The Statue of Liberty, the Taj Mahal, and the Eiffel Tower are all lavishly hand-modeled in 3D. But The Motherland Calls statue of Volgograd is a condo high-rise, Buckingham Palace is an apartment complex, the Leaning Tower of Pisa is a vertical concrete silo, and the Pyramid of the Sun is a nondescript warehouse with a hilarious tiny dome on its roof.

[screenshot, posted on reddit by l4adventure]

The AI is also making its best guesses when it comes to traffic patterns. It knew that this Boston street intersected a building somehow but didn’t know that the road passed through the building via tunnel. So it had the traffic drive up the side of the building.

Other terrain glitches force the traffic to do even weirder things. If the road is suddenly tilted vertically along the wall of a newly created canyon in northwest Iowa, the traffic will still drive on the road, just… sideways.

Water levels in particular seem prone to being incorrect, sometimes drastically so. The Pingualuit Impact Crater of northern Canada was apparently inverted by one of these glitches.

[image by reddit user NovaSilisko]

Bergen, Norway, has been transformed by this bug into canyonlike terrain, its buildings forced to adapt to the suddenly steep ground, their roofs rising like mushrooms for dozens of stories. It’s otherworldly, unrecognizable.

[screenshot by Mikael Privatby]

Greenland, on the other hand, is terrifying. The available terrain and satellite data is less precise, so pixels are sometimes visible as square-edged neighborhood-sized patches of gravel. The far north is marked by 20,000 foot ice walls, improbable ice spikes, and strange shimmering rifts. The geographic North Pole itself is unreachable; players report that any attempt to descend below 2,000 feet results in the player being rocketed skyward by a strange repulsion force.

[20,000 foot ice wall image: reddit user unrelentingdespair]

[screenshot near the north pole: reddit user Feydakin_G]

Some Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 players are thrilled with the unusual terrain, while others are disappointed when the photorealism is broken, and/or when their city’s distinctive architecture and most beloved landmarks are replaced by nondescript concrete jungle. The AI itself isn’t going to be able to reconstruct the world’s weirdness from satellite photos, so already people are crowdsourcing hand-modeled landmarks. You can install an add-on to convert Stonehenge, for example, from a miniature flattened Spinal Tap version to a full-sized 3D model.

As the developers tweak their algorithms and fix other things by hand, slowly the weirdness will be ironed out, the rivers and lakes set back in their beds, the statues restored to their detailed glory. Many will be disappointed when it happens - I’ll particularly miss the Melbourne Monolith. It would be nice to have a weirdness slider that goes from normal to Ragnarok, amplifying terrain chaos, perhaps adding the occasional floating mountain range or lava lake.

Subscribers get bonus content: I prompted GPT-3 to write an Atlas Obscura entry for the Melbourne Monolith. It added entries for a few other Melbourne landmarks, like the Artificial Gardens of Loria and The Very Pickled Centurion (did you know that the Lost Bar, like the Australian rules football lounge, is 10,000 light years away from the city it's located in?)

[aqueducts of Denali, screenshot by daveonthenet]

My book on AI, You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why it’s Making the World a Weirder Place, is available wherever books are sold: Amazon - Barnes & Noble - Indiebound - Tattered Cover - Powell’s - Boulder Bookstore

[causeiwanttoandican]

Robert Lacey excerpt

I fully expect them to say William was the one commenting about the baby’s skin color after this. Battle stations! Book excerpt

The Times

Prince William ‘split his household from Prince Harry after Meghan bullying claims’

June 07 2021, 7.00am BST

‘So, are you saying,” asked Oprah Winfrey, talking to Meghan and Harry in their famous interview of March 2021, “that there were hints of jealousy?”

She was inquiring about the Sussexes’s wildly successful tour of Australia and the South Pacific of late October 2018, and the couple shifted uncomfortably in their plush wicker chairs.

“Look,” replied Harry, “I just wish that we would all learn from the past.”

By bringing up “the past”, the prince was venturing into an area that was almost taboo. He was making a sensational comparison between his mother and his wife. Harry was suggesting that Meghan had demonstrated in Australia the same massive star quality as Diana and was now having to face the family envy that went along with that.

“It really changed,” he said, “after the Australia tour, after our South Pacific tour . . . it was . . . the first time that the family got to see how incredible she is at the job. And that brought back memories.”

Memories of what? Again Harry shied away from putting words to the almost unmentionable. But Oprah had prepared and polished this moment, like so many others in the interview, and she had a reference ready to prompt her prince’s revelation. The latest, fourth season of TV’s The Crown had depicted Charles and Diana’s 1983 tour of Australia, showing how Diana had been “bedazzling” in her ability “to connect with people”. Episode six had depicted how the crowds would groan when they realised that Charles, not Diana, was walking down their side of the street — hence the beginnings of the “jealousy” on the family’s part.

“So is that what you’re talking about?” asked Oprah. “It brought back memories of that?”

“Yeah,” Harry finally replied in a fashion that was both dismal and unmistakably aggressive.

What on earth had happened, viewers had to wonder, to the old and once-familiar happy side of Prince Harry?

When trying to define the moment that marked the decisive rift with his brother William — the break-up and actual separation of the joint household they had established together in 2009 — Harry would fix upon his triumphant return with Meghan from their Australian tour at the end of October 2018. But if asked the same question, William would have fixed on a more specific event: the explosive argument he had had with his brother earlier that month.

Both brothers agreed how bitterly they had clashed back in the early days over William’s attempt to slow Harry’s courtship of Meghan — “Don’t feel like you need to rush this . . . ” But both of them had subsequently moved on. Harry’s transparent contentment with Meghan had relaxed the tensions, give or take the odd row over bridesmaids’ dresses. The “no speaks” had eased just a little by the time “best man” William escorted his brother down the aisle in May 2018.

Then five months later came the conclusive and determining rupture — the division that has lasted to the present day — though here the brothers’ retelling of history diverged. As Harry explained it to Oprah, Meghan’s Australian tour success sowed the jealousies that caused feelings to “change”. According to this scenario, William and Kate resented the Diana-like popularity that was generated by Harry’s wife. William had a different recollection.

We now know that Princes William and Harry were no longer on speaking terms before the Sussexes set off for Australia. Feelings had already “changed”, as Harry put it, and drastically so. The brothers had parted on extremely poor terms, with the trouble centring on Meghan’s stringent treatment and alleged bullying of her staff.

Most Kensington Palace courtiers were noted for the comparatively long tenures of their comfortable and prestigious jobs. But it came to look as if employees could not wait to escape service with Harry and Meghan. Those who left formed themselves into an informal fraternity that they titled the “Sussex Survivors’ Club”. They had finally hit back, and their organising agent had been PR man Jason Knauf.

The joint communications secretary for Kensington Palace — who was still, at that date, working on behalf of both of the brothers and their wives — had become concerned by the numerous stories of mistreatment being brought to him by colleagues whom he knew well and trusted.

Texas-born and New Zealand-educated, Knauf, 34, was a popular character in Kensington Palace, widely noted for his friendliness and loyalty towards his colleagues. He had been considered a real “catch” when the brothers snared him from the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2015, and one of his concerns was that professional management practices should be more effectively enforced inside the traditional British palace. Knauf’s American sensibilities caused him to see the Meghan situation as raising principles of human resources management in the palace system that needed to be formally addressed.

Knauf’s first priority was to set down the facts, as he saw them, for the record: “I’m very concerned,” he emailed to William’s private secretary Simon Case, in a document he drafted in October 2018, “that the duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year.”

Knauf described Meghan’s treatment of one aide as “totally unacceptable . . . the duchess seems intent”, he wrote, “on always having someone in her sights”. Specifying another staff member, Knauf alleged Meghan had been bullying her as well, “seeking to undermine her confidence”. His office had received “report after report”, he wrote, from people who had witnessed “unacceptable behaviour” by Meghan towards this member of staff.

“Meghan governed by fear,” claimed one courtier. “So many people said it. Nothing was ever good enough for her. [She] humiliated staff in meetings, [would] shout at them, [would] cut them off email chains — and then demand to know why they hadn’t done anything.”

As early as 2017, around the time of the couple’s engagement, according to a subsequent report in The Times, a senior aide had spoken to the couple about the difficulties caused by their treatment of staff. “It’s not my job to coddle people,” Meghan was said to have replied.

“Americans can be much more direct,” wrote the authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand in defence of the duchess, “and that often doesn’t sit well in the much more refined institution of the monarchy.”

A Brit might have raised an eyebrow at Meghan’s alleged behaviour, then looked the other way. The Yank decided to act. Knauf was actually one of Meghan’s most senior advisers — her chief adviser, in fact, when it came to public relations. Earlier that year she had gone to Knauf for help when drafting the disputed letter of severance that she sent to her father. She valued his PR expertise.

Before that, Knauf had helped Harry to word the fierce anti-media statements that he had framed to try to protect Meghan from press harassment, both as his girlfriend and then as his fiancée. The PR man had taken considerable stick from some of his non-royal contacts who criticised him as being overprotective in fighting the newcomer’s corner. Like so many people in all the palaces, Knauf had started off on Meghan’s side.

But as the months went by the American’s feelings became more ambiguous, as numerous colleagues — women whom he greatly respected — continued to bring him stories of what they said they had suffered at Meghan’s hands.

“I can’t stop shaking,” one aide had told a colleague in anticipation of an encounter with Meghan. Another reported that the prospect of confrontation with the duchess had made her “feel sick”. “Emotional cruelty and manipulation”, were the words of a third, “which I guess could also be called bullying.”

The b-word featured prominently in the accounts of several, along with an even more sinister set of initials: PTSD. Post-traumatic stress disorder was a deeply serious condition to allege — flashbacks, nightmares and feelings of deep anxiety — but that was how one complainant said that they had felt.

Several people maintained they had been “humiliated” by the duchess, and that criticism extended to Harry as well.

“I overheard a conversation between Harry and one of his top aides,” recalled one Kensington Palace courtier. “Harry was screaming and screaming down the phone. Team Sussex was a really toxic environment. People shouting and screaming in each other’s faces.”

Shouting and screaming? PTSD? Making people feel sick? Prince William went ballistic when he heard the “dossier of distress” that Knauf had gathered. We do not know whether the communications secretary brought his allegations directly to his boss or submitted them via Simon Case. What we do know is that the prince was astonished and horrified. He was instantly furious at what he heard.

“I remember Christian Jones [William’s press secretary and later private secretary] explaining to me how the Cams [the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge] are paternalistic with their staff,” recalls one royal correspondent. “They copy the Queen in that respect with all her Christmas parties and Christmas presents to her people. They’re proud to treat their staff like family. They recognise that they don’t get paid loads of money, so they are just really nice to them. So this was a very deep clash of philosophies, with Meghan being used to a Hollywood service culture — getting exactly what she wanted whenever she wanted in that famous way that Harry said.”

William personally knew and liked all the individuals whom Knauf had named in his dossier. The prince regarded them as assets to his household — colleagues to be cherished and for whom he was responsible. Human beings. Like Knauf, the prince was appalled that his respected staff may have been put in this position.

For William, Knauf’s allegations also clarified something that the prince had long believed — that Meghan was fundamentally hostile towards the royal system, which she failed to understand as an outsider. William wondered if she had not wanted to leave from the very start — even dreaming, perhaps, that she could whisk Harry back with her to North America.

But Meghan’s lawyers and PR representatives said this was quite the wrong interpretation of their client’s thinking and behaviour in a statement that they issued to The Times early in March 2021. They denied all allegations of bullying as inaccurate and the product of what they described as a “smear campaign”. The duchess wished to fit in and be accepted, they insisted. She had left her life in North America to commit herself to her new role.

I have never met Jason Knauf. What you have just read is based upon the published accusations that Knauf set down on paper — refuted as “defamatory”, it must be stressed again, and “based on misleading and harmful information” in the view of the Duchess of Sussex’s lawyers. It also relies upon William’s personal account of these events to one of his friends who then spoke to this author.

The moment the prince heard the bullying allegations, he related to this friend, he got straight on the phone to talk to Harry — and when Harry flared up in furious defence of his wife, the elder brother persisted. Harry shut off his phone angrily, so William went to speak to him personally. The prince was horrified by what he had just been told about Meghan’s alleged behaviour, and he wanted to hear what Harry had to say.

The showdown between the two siblings was fierce and bitter. William’s pre-engagement questioning of Meghan’s suitability had been quite reasonable, in William’s opinion. His fraternal doubts had been provisional, based upon how the new recruit appeared to be. The elder brother did not really know Meghan in those early days.

But now William had seen enough of his sister-in-law to feel sure that, sadly, he did know her and that many of his reservations linked unhappily with what Knauf’s colleagues had alleged. William believed Meghan was following a plan — “agenda” was the word he used to his friend — and the accusations he had just heard were alarming. Kate, he said, had been wary of her from the start.

Meghan was undermining some precious principles of the monarchy, if she really was treating her staff in this way, and William was upset that she seemed to be stealing his beloved brother away from him. Later courtiers would coin a hashtag — #freeHarry. It was only half a joke.

“Meghan portrayed herself as the victim,” recalled one Kensington Palace staffer, “but she was the bully. People felt run over by her. They didn’t know how to handle this woman. They thought she was a complete narcissist and sociopath — basically unhinged. Which was why the pair of them were drawn to each other in the first place — both damaged goods.”

William felt deeply wounded. “Hurt” and “betrayed” were the two feelings that he described to his friend. The elder brother had always felt so protective. He had seen it as his job to look out for Harry but this was the moment the protection had to stop. At the end of the day the British crown and all it stood for with its ancient traditions, styles and values — the mission of the monarchy — had to matter more to William than his brother did.

Harry, for his part, was equally furious that William should give credence to the accusations against Meghan, and he was fiercely combative in his wife’s defence. Some sources maintain that in the heat of the argument Harry actually accused someone in the family of concepts that were “racist”. But it must be stressed that neither brother has ever confirmed that the hateful r-word was used face to face.

Only William and Harry can know what they said to each other and they have respectfully maintained their silence on that. But Harry made clear to the world in his interview with Oprah that he considered his family’s response to Meghan to have been essentially racist — using the heavily freighted code words “unconscious bias” to provide an intellectual framework for his analysis.

Where could the two brothers go after such painful and damning notions had been thrown into their debate?

We have reached the crux of the drama. What painfully unforgettable and surely unforgivable things have been said? These are not passing differences. They are two core sets of values in conflict — love versus duty — going to the very heart and deriving from the deepest beliefs and loyalties of each man. Two opposing identities butting heads. In the months following the tragic and not-obviously bridgeable rift of October 2018 between William and Harry, the younger brother solidified his belief that his family were suffering from “unconscious bias”.

William, for his part, felt just as strongly about Meghan and the need for her subversive “agenda” to be removed from the operations of the British monarchy, which she did not appear to understand or respect. He certainly wanted Meghan removed, for a start, from the hitherto harmonious joint household that he and his brother had operated together for the best part of a decade. William simply did not want her or Harry around any more.

When accounts of the rift started seeping out through the winter months that followed, it was generally assumed that the volatile Harry must have set the pace in the splitting up of the joint Kensington Palace household. He was the brother who visibly departed, stalking off to set up a new home in Windsor, with offices for himself and Meghan in Buckingham Palace.

But the reverse was the case. It was William who made the decisive move. Following his furious confrontation with his younger brother in the autumn of 2018, the prince instructed Simon Case to start the process of dividing their two households immediately. William wished to be separated from Meghan on a day-to-day basis — and that meant being separated from his brother as well.

“William,” says a friend, “threw Harry out.”

©Robert Lacey 2021 Extracted from Battle of Brothers: William, Harry and the Inside Story of a Family in Tumult by Robert Lacey, to be published by William Collins on June 24 at £9.99

[runnawayywthmee]

ABOUT LAST NIGHT....

I have a lot of things to say! Some of it might not be favorable, but I'm going to try and keep this honest! First of all, the show was absolutely fantastic!! The stage sets were so gorgeous, I loved being able to see it in person. We had floor level seats, sitting on the left of the stage in the second row, so we were pretty close! It was so fun singing along with all the songs and seeing the dances and everything! I went in trying to have an open mind. My brain is hooked on the original cast, probably mostly because they were the ones who we saw from the beginning, and we got to see them every day in some sense, watching their lives and feeling like we knew them. So seeing anyone else in these parts feels kind of weird. At least to me that's how it feels.

I think this cast was incredible, though. They were all fantastic. Satine was incredible, The Duke was incredible, Harold Zidler was incredible... I have mild beef with Conor Ryan because I really wanted to like him. And while he has an incredible voice, there were a lot of moments where he threw in unnecessary rifts in weird places and there were moments where he acted way too hard. I truly did like him, but at the same time there were parts that were just too cringe.

After the show, we went to stage door and we got to talk to Courtney Reed, who played Satine. She was incredibly sweet and so nice. We were told that the actors probably wouldn't sign autographs or take pictures because of covid and everything, but she was there taking pictures and signing playbills. We also briefly met David Harris, which was a teensy bit surreal just because I knew him before when he did that show with Aaron in Australia. He was really nice too, based off the five second interaction we had!

OVERALL, last night was really really special!!! I really did enjoy every bit of it. I'm very happy that I was able to have an opportunity to see this show before it left LA. I really thought I had missed it, for some reason I thought they were only going to be here for three days... but it is their last month before they move on next month on the 4th.

Maybe it's still a bias opinion, but I think Aaron is THE Christian and he can't be topped. I haven't seen Derek Klena's version yet, though. I don't know if I ever will, but who knows.

[remedialpotions]

Something To Celebrate

Happy 2021, guys! 🥳 Here’s a little New Year’s Day fic to hopefully start things off right.

It’s three minutes until midnight, and Ron is gleefully prying the cork from a bottle of champagne. Not prosecco, not cava, but actual, proper champagne. On the occasion of seeing off the most difficult and truly bizarre year of their short and strange lives, Harry and Ron have splashed out on the good stuff.

The cork is freed with a resonant pop, and Ron sets about filling up the crystal flutes they discovered in a back cupboard of the basement kitchen. Holidays at the Burrow are still strange, somber affairs, so the four of them - Hermione, Ron, Harry, and Ginny - have gathered at Grimmauld Place instead. Trying to have any sort of real party feels like tempting fate, anyway.

“I’m not sure if I’ve ever had proper champagne,” Ron remarks to Hermione, one hand holding the bottle over her glass, the other settled warmly on the small of her back.

“No, you must have done,” she replies. “Last year, at the wedding. Fleur wouldn’t have anything less, remember?”

“Oh, right,” he nods as he passes the bottle to Harry. “That feels like it was five years ago. Reckon there hasn’t been much worth celebrating since then, has there?”

Across the worktop, Harry and Ginny have overfilled their flutes and now race to drink from the rims to stop the bubbles from overflowing. Ginny laughs mid-sip, snorts, and then collapses against Harry in uncontrollable laughter.

Last year on New Year’s Eve, Harry was staring at her name on a map.

“Well,” says Hermione, picking up her glass. “Maybe not a whole lot, but-“

“Oi, you two!” Ron interjects, words now directed at Harry and Ginny. “You can’t go drinking it yet, we’ve still got-“ He checks his watch- “two minutes until midnight, it’s not time to celebrate yet.”

She’s not unsympathetic to his eagerness to put the year behind them; it has not been easy. It began with long, lonely months in a tent with little food and even less hope. Torture on the icy marble floor of a mansion. A battle that took the lives of children and made other children orphans. The emotionally draining work of repairing the rift she created with her parents, one that still doesn’t feel fully mended. Then the trials, so many Death Eater trials, during which they had to relive the horror of the war before a stoic and skeptical Wizengamot. The blows kept coming, relentless, and throughout it all, the loss of Fred hung like a horrible shadow over them all to dull any joy they might be brave enough to feel.

But even in the face of all of the darkness and loss and grief, she knows there were good things too. Her first frantic kiss with Ron, and then that first night they spent together in Australia, fumbling and tentative and yet strangely perfect. The fact that, in a foreign city on the opposite side of the planet with nothing but a pseudonym to guide them, they managed to find her parents at all. The quiet pride on Professor McGonagall’s face when she welcomed students back to Hogwarts as its Headmistress. Harry, alive, laughing, an arm slung around his girlfriend’s shoulders.

“One more minute,” Ron says with excitement. “Just one more minute, and this bloody year’ll finally be over.”

“Hey,” says Hermione softly, tugging on the side of Ron’s shirt so he turns to face her. “I know this year’s been hard - I know it has, it was for me too-“

“Yeah, it sucked-“

“-but surely you don’t want to leave everything behind, do you?”

Ron’s features soften in understanding, and his hand on her back draws her closer to him as he bends down to meet their lips. Outside, fireworks whistle as they soar into the sky and explode; 1999 has arrived at last.

“No,” Ron agrees as he kisses her again. “Not everything.”