#WAR is next and it's already in double digits

[whatsthisascianbullshit]

5/9 initial stage Zodiac weapons complete: I will have my title!!!

[misfitwashere]

We thank you, Joe

Tonight is for you

Robert Reich

Aug 19, 2024

Friends,

Tonight’s opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago will be an opportunity for the Democratic Party and the nation to take stock of Joe Biden’s term of office and thank him for his service.

He still has five months to go as president, of course, but the baton has been passed.

Biden’s singular achievement has been to change the economic paradigm that reigned since Reagan and return to one that dominated public life between 1933 and 1980 — and is far superior to the one that has prevailed since.

Biden’s democratic capitalism is neither socialism nor “big government.” It is, rather, a return to an era when government organized the market for the greater good.

The Great Crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression taught the nation a crucial lesson that we forgot after Reagan’s presidency: markets are human creations. The economy that collapsed in 1929 was the consequence of allowing nearly unlimited borrowing, encouraging people to gamble on Wall Street, and permitting the Street to take huge risks with other people’s money.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration reversed this. They stopped the looting of America. They also gave Americans a modicum of economic security. During World War II, they put almost every American to work.

Subsequent Democratic and Republican administrations enlarged and extended democratic capitalism. Wall Street was regulated, as were television networks, airlines, railroads, and other common carriers. CEO pay was modest. Taxes on the highest earners financed public investments in infrastructure (such as the national highway system) and higher education.

America’s postwar industrial policy spurred innovation. The Department of Defense and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration developed satellite communications, container ships, and the internet. The National Institutes of Health did trailblazing basic research in biochemistry, DNA, and infectious diseases.

Public spending rose during economic downturns to encourage hiring. Antitrust enforcers broke up AT&T and other monopolies. Small businesses were protected from giant chain stores. Labor unions thrived. By the 1960s, a third of all private-sector workers were unionized. Large corporations sought to be responsive to all their stakeholders.

But then America took a giant U-turn. The OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s brought double-digit inflation followed by Fed Chair Paul Volcker’s effort to “break the back” of it by raising interest rates so high that the economy fell into deep recession.

All of which prepared the ground for Reagan’s war on democratic capitalism. From 1981 onward, a new bipartisan orthodoxy emerged that markets functioned well only if the government got out of the way.

The goal of economic policy thereby shifted from the common good to economic growth, even though Americans already well-off gained most from that growth. And the means shifted from public oversight of the market to deregulation, free trade, privatization, “trickle-down” tax cuts, and deficit reduction — all of which helped the monied interests make even more money.

The economy grew for the next 40 years, but median wages stagnated, and inequalities of income and wealth surged. In sum, after Reagan’s presidency, democratic capitalism — organized to serve public purposes — all but disappeared. It was replaced by corporate capitalism, organized to serve the monied interests.

**

Joe Biden revived democratic capitalism. He learned from the Obama administration’s mistake of spending too little to pull the economy out of the Great Recession that the pandemic required substantially greater spending, which would also give working families a cushion against adversity. So he pushed for and got the giant $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

This was followed by a $550 billion initiative to rebuild the nation’s bridges, roads, public transit, broadband, water, and energy systems. He championed the biggest investment in clean energy sources in American history — expanding wind and solar power, electric vehicles, carbon capture and sequestration, and hydrogen and small nuclear reactors. He then led the largest public investment ever made in semiconductors, the building blocks of the next economy. Notably, these initiatives were targeted to companies that employ American workers.

Biden also embarked on altering the balance of power between capital and labor, as had FDR. Biden put trustbusters at the head of the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. And he remade the National Labor Relations Board into a strong advocate for labor unions.

Unlike his Democratic predecessors Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, Biden did not reduce all trade barriers. He targeted them to industries that were crucial to America’s future — semiconductors, electric batteries, electric vehicles. Unlike Trump, Biden did not give a huge tax cut to corporations and the wealthy.

It’s also worth noting that, in contrast with every president since Reagan, Biden did not fill his White House with former Wall Street executives. Not one of his economic advisers — not even his treasury secretary — is from the Street.

The one large blot on Biden’s record is Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden should have been tougher on him — refusing to provide him offensive weapons unless Netanyahu stopped his massacre in Gaza. Yes, I know: Hamas began the bloodbath. But that is no excuse for Netanyahu’s disproportionate response, which has made Israel a pariah and endangered its future. Nor an excuse for our complicity.

***

One more thing needs to be said in praise of Joe Biden. He did something Donald Trump could never do: He put his country over ego, ambition, and pride. He bowed out with grace and dignity. He gave us Kamala Harris.

Presidents don’t want to bow out. Both Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson had to be shoved out of office. Biden was not forced out. He did nothing wrong. His problem is that he was old and losing some of the capacities that dwindle with old age.

Even among people who are not president, old age inevitably triggers denial. How many elderly people do you know who accept that they can’t do the things they used to do or think they should be able to do? How many willingly give up the keys to their car? It’s not surprising he resisted.

Yet Biden cares about America and was aware of the damage a second Trump administration could do to this nation, and to the world. Biden’s patriotism won out over any denial or wounded pride or false sense of infallibility or paranoia.

For this and much else, we thank you, Joe.

[gareleia]

THE KNITTING SAGA BUT MAKE IT SAD

update: my co-writer friend FINALLY got a tumblr account, so I can tag them now!!

previously: part 1 part 2

next: part 4 part 5

lets talk about relationships, shall we. i'm gonna focus on Athena & Telemachus this time, but Hermes will have his turn later

let's be real, Athena is a hardass. sure, she cares, but she's so emotionally constipated that it really doesn't show that much. especially before she goes through that character development arc after her break up with Odysseus in My Goodbye

(and what a crisis that is)

(because her masterpiece??? failed her??? but she trusted him??? she made him much as in her image as possible??? he was supposed to be perfect???)

(and if he's not perfect, then she failed,,, and she can't fail, she doesn't fail,,, she's a goddess,,, war strategy is her domain, surely there is no way her plan could be flawed,,,)

(what even is the point of her if she's not perfect)

so yeah, she's a hardass. even on baby Telemachus who'd never held a sword before - especially on baby Telemachus, because he's the son of her favored Champion. he may be waaay younger than any of her previous pupils, but she's expecting him to shine just as bright.

Athena, on the first day: let's get down to business! make your father proud! you won't have a weakness! by the time we're done! you're the saddest pupil that I've had! and you haven't got a clue! but I will make a man outta you! Telemachus, a literal toddler, holding a wooden sword as big as himself: ٩(๑❛ᴗ❛๑)۶

and for years to come she trains him relentlessly. she's honestly trying to be nice about it, too. it's just that Athena doesn't do soft or gentle, her default is a neutral face of displeasure, and her idea of encouragement is saying 'you're not as bad as you used to be', or something along these lines.

Telemachus: *succeeds at something* Athena: *raises an eyebrow in a slightly different manner than usually* Telemachus: *le gasp* could it b-be? am I doing a good job??? Athena: it's… acceptable, for your age.

she never once tells him she is proud of him. because surely he already knows. he doesn't need to hear it. his father didn't, after all (ody so fucking did)

and this goes on until Telemachus reaches double digits. then My Goodbye happens, and Athena has Feelings™. she's having an existential crisis, and has to confront the fact that she had done something wrong while training Odysseus, and she can't understand what. which is terrifying, because what if she makes a mistake like that with Telemachus. will he fail her too?

will she have to leave him too, so she doesn't watch him die horribly in a tragedy that could've been prevented if only she had made him see-

so Athena doubles down and starts demanding more and more from Telemachus. the praise goes from sparse to non-existent, and nothing he does seems to be enough anymore. she goes from tough love to borderline verbal abuse, thinking that it's the only way to keep him safe and prepare him for the future.

and Telemachus endures. he has to, because he doesn't want his mother to worry. doesn't want to appear weak. Odysseus had done it, so it's only fair his son should too. and when his dad comes home, he'll be sooo impressed. he can do it!

except…. not really. it's been a losing battle since the beginning, and deep down he knows it. he can't win with Athena, not on his own.

???: if you want to impress her, you'll need the blessing of a certain god! divine intervention! someone who's not afraid to- telemachus: aeolus, what are doing in my closet?!

so anyway, Aeolus and the winions start helping him via winds and stuff, and Telemachus actually starts exceeding everyone's expectations. it's not that he'd been bad before, but he's soft, and not quite strong enough physically to make up for his gentle constitution

everyone is cheering him on. he's the talk of the palace! his mom is so proud! the suitors start sizing him up with consideration instead of dismissing him outright! (and tele, baby, that's not a good thing! ಠ_ಠ). Athena seems pleased for the first time in ages!! but he knows that it's all a lie, and it's killing him.

cause he's a good, honest boye, and he wants to succeed on his own merit, not because of cheating and lying to everyone he loves. that's vile and dishonorable.

que some very important island-wide competition that everyone is expecting him to join and win. maybe it's even his duty as a prince. like, a right of passage from complete boyhood to adolescence.

and there's,,, a lot of pressure on Telemachus to suceed. everyone and their mother are telling him that of course he's got this, he's a prodigy! def his father's son! nobody doubts his incoming victory! he's got this! he definitely won't disappoint them!

random noble: we'll be cheering you on, young prince! truly, we are blessed by the gods to have such a talented successor to the throne! we'll watch with keen eyes as you triumph over your foes and bring even more honor to your family! b(￣▽￣*) telemachus, eye twitching: y-yeah… thank you… (ㆆ _ ㆆ)

so, the night before the competition Telemachus can barely sleep, he's so wrecked by guilt and nerves. he keeps thinking - what would his father do in this situation? all the stories he'd ever heard of Odysseus always painted him as some kind of invincible, righteous, all-capable genius. so the idea of his dad ever grappling with guilt and feelings of inadequacy is just laughable. (oh, if only he knew)

so, he goes to his mom for advice. because Penelope is awesome. but he can't bring himself to admit that's he's cheating - what if she's ashamed of him? he brought dishonor to his father's name, and if anyone knows - will he get exiled?

so yeah, he basically has a panic attack and cries for like, half an hour straight.

telemachus, bawling: if I lose tomorrow, will you hate me? will dad hate me? I can't do anything right and I'm a failure and a horrible person and- just- what do I do, mother? penelope, holding him: oh, love. sometimes you're so similar to your father I wonder if the gods haven't returned him to me in spirit through you.

because no matter what everyone else says, Penelope knows the truth - Odysseus always followed his heart. oh, how he may have tried to forget he had one, to only ever use his head. but a heart he did have - does have, they have to believe that - and it's a bright and gentle one. he may have been hardened by years of pain and struggle in a way that Telemachus hadn't been yet (and Penelope's heart breaks from knowledge that her son will be, one day). but deep down, at ther cores, Odysseus and Telemachus are strikingly similar. and she loves them all the more for it.

and so, with his mother's blessing, the young prince does just as she told him to: follows his heart. he thanks Aeolus for their help, and asks them to stop giving it from now on. either he'll suceed on his own merit, or he'll wear his failure as a badge of honor and an incentive to do better.

and he loses. badly.

and the world,,, doesn't end? sure, the suitors sneer and jeer, but there's a surprising lack of disowning and exile going around. and the nobles tone it down significantly with undeserved adoration, which is definitely a plus, as far as he's concerned.

the only thing is. Athena.

oh boy.

because she's not stupid. Telemachus may have gotten away with cheating so far, but now he'll have to answer to her why he had flunked so badly, and she won't buy his go-to excuse of 'I got nervous!'

athena, expression unreadable: so. care to explain yourself, my stupid pupil? telemachus: w-well, you see… ha-ha… it's, uh… a funny story… athena: you threw away your best advantage! you've had a god perfectly willing to assist you and yet you still somehow managed to lose! telemachus: wait, what-

so yeah, Athena knew all along.

athena, mildly insulted: how stupid do you think I am, boy? telemachus: but! but! but!.. you never said anything! didn't even scold me for cheating! athena, even more insulted: child, I am the goddess of war strategy, where did you get the idea that I ever play fair and straightforward? leave that to ares, the simple-minded fool!

to clarify, she's not upset at him for cheating. she's upset that he stopped doing so. so she throws some choice words at him, implying he lacks both talent and intelligence

and Telemachus defends himself by saying that he'd rather fail on his own merit, than abandon his principles and win by lying and dishonoring his family. in response, she calls him naive.

he tries to implore to her connection to his father by saying that he was just trying to do what's right. he was following his heart, just as Odysseus had always strived to. and he's training to fight for his loved ones, not for glory of being known.

it's a one hit K.O., because it reminds Athena of her recent break-up with Odysseus. of everything they spat at each other during My Goodbye. of anger, of hurt, of disappointment, of betrayal, of I loved you and you failed me, of I loved you and I failed you, of good riddance! and y̶͈̔o̴̘̖͆u̶̻̱͆͒'̸̫̩̌̉r̷̼͝e̴̩̒ ̴͎̻̈́̎ȧ̸̦l̵̗͙͌̐o̸͚͕̚n̷̟̯͠e̵̳̩͠

and is their whole line just cursed? is this their way of punishing her for something? why do they both hurt her so? is it her fault?

telemachus: athena? are… are you okay? (‘-’*) athena, coming off MG flashbacks: well, obviously, boy, why would you even ask that (ಥ﹏ಥ)

Telemachus just hugs her, because she obviously needs it. and she melts into it like never before.

because she wasn't made for empathy or kindness. she's been born to be ruthless and cold. she's not supposed to love and be loved care about anything but winning. it doesn't come natural to Athena, until recently she had truly thought herself unable to, and yet-

yet here, right in front of her, is a boy who loves for the both of them. loves the whole world - sincerely, selflessly. a truly kind and caring soul (the nobles even joke that his true father is Polites).

she can't love.

but maybe… maybe he will teach her.

maybe he already did.

or maybe she always could.

she forgets sometimes, that her fingers know not only the roughness of swords and spears, but also the gentle softness of weaved silk. creation goes hand in hand with destruction, and she can bind countless threads together without breaking them.

and what are humans, if not strings, waiting to be cut by the fates?

also, if Telemachus can teach the goddess of cold cynicism and detached cruelty kindness of all things, then she can teach him swordplay.

yes, it's a threat.

[lanawinterscigarettes]

Imagine for a second that you're Palestinian.

Imagine waking up to the news that a nearby city has been bombed by Israel. The reasoning being they're searching for Hamas. You go outside and you look around. You don't see any members of Hamas anywhere. You only see family, friends, and neighbors.

Pretty soon a bomb is going to hit your city, and you're not going to be given the ample time needed to make preparations for you and your family. You're going to see the ground be leveled by bombs that are being dropped, buildings are going to crumble, cities are going to collapse. There will be so many who will die, people you don't even know, but that your heart aches for.

You're going to be outside when one of the nearby bombs hits. You're going to feel the dust and smoke in the air. You're going to hear the screams of people as they search for their loved ones, or even worse find them already dead. You're going to have to listen as parents scream for their children. Perhaps you are even one of them.

You're going to see men dig through the crumbled rocks and stones in an effort to get out to the people who were in the building when it collapsed. Their efforts will be futile because if they do manage to get through all that rubble the person underneath it is most likely already dead.

You're going to see children playing a game called carry the martyr, a game that is so morbid there hasn't been one like it since ring around the rosie, which was a game about the plague. You're going to see people write numbers and names on their arms as a way to be identified when and if they die when the next bomb hits, because it's going to hit and it's going to be soon. You don't know when it will happen but you know that it will.

Women will start going to bed with their hijabs on because they know there's a possibility they will get bombed in their sleep, and in Muslim culture it's unfit for a Muslim woman to be seen without a head covering by someone unless it is another woman or member of their family.

You're going to see mothers and fathers carry bits of their children in grocery bags or wrapped in cloth. You are going to see children and babies in hospitals covered with dust from the bombs, shaking and crying, if even that. They will most likely be silent because of the shock. They will start having panic attacks because they are scared and worried for when the next bomb will hit. The oldest hasn't even hit double digits yet.

Maybe you're not even there when it happens. Maybe you're in a western country, and you're findng out everything that's happening to your people online. Maybe you have family over there who you've lost contact with. Family you may never get to see again, who you may never even know their fates, you can only assume.

You will be told that you are the problem. That you, as a Palestinian, are the problem. That because of Hamas, you are being bombed. That it is your fault. That Israel is just doing what it needs to do with the occupation and the ethnic cleansing. The entire world will look at you as the aggressors.

There will be people who will decide to remain neutral, to not take sides because it's "too complicated". They "don't understand" the politics of the war. But there's not much to understand, is there, when one side has all of the weapons and the bombs, and the other side has no food, no water, no electricity, nothing to defend themselves with.

Imagine that you're Palestinian for just one second, and now imagine what that must be like to have to endure all of that, as well as the aftermath, every second, every hour, every day for years.

Imagine.

[hecateisalesbian]

i already know 4 but 3-44

3: Uhh I’ve done it like a few times but not really no

4: I know I always joke about this on my blog but actually? Not really. I don’t actually like the taste of most alcohol. The only drink I’ve had and really liked is an espresso martini 🍸 (and some lemonade seltzers but shh)

5: I have medicated drugs that I take for allergies, period cramps/pain in general, and another one for personal reasons but in terms of like weed like I said I’ve done it a couple times but not really.

6: anywhere from 14-24

7: Nope.

8: Hell Yeah Baby! I want a bunch

9: Only your basic one in the earlobe

10: I’ve already planned out my next couple piercings (Double Earlobe, Helix, etc)

11: Irl: My friend [redacted] who I’ve been best friends with since we were 7. She lives in Colorado but we’re still amazing friends. Digitally: 👀 not tryna start a war but I’d have to say the person I’m closest with digitally isssssss [redacted] (<— hah you thought I was gonna say)

12: Single 😔

13: (in a romantic sense) when they like the same things i do. Also dressing hella cool. If you’re a stranger in public and your dressed cool I’m instantly in love with you

14: (In a romantic sense) making fun of others for just being themselves.

15: *sigh* Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

16: I love you. Simple as that. (Also the previously mentioned dressing hella cool)

17: My sister and my Ex-Best friend

18: Oooooo we’re not diving into that rabbit whole. It does connect with the fact that I don’t do discord tho :p

19: I’m GAY (in all realness though my favorite animal is a snake because of Slytherin (🖕 you jkr) but now it’s my favorite animal because I think they’re awesome)

20: My physical appearance

21: Hmm. My sense of style or my calfs (seriously)

22: Actor, professional cosplayer, or something in the film/acting industry.

23: With all of them I’d say it’s pretty good

24: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

25: I’ve never really thought about it but just something that sparks both our interests. A simple date to the park or a date to Meow Wolf (<- so cool) are both great ideas

26: the us government

27: I’m polyam so like. There’s kinda a few. But one of them is tall with reddish brownish hair and she’s a great friend :,)

28: almost every person at my school

29: It got boring and a little awkward after we finished doing everything fun so I asked my sister to pick me up but pretend like I didn’t ask her to

30: The people

31: “I’ve only gotten money from [Redacted], and [Redacted] says she’s gonna indivually buy”

32: Idk. I’m disappointed is definitely up there

33: I like your style

34: Women

35: Men (not really attracted to them as much but if the right one came along)

36: My home in Colorado

37: Stretch Marks

38: Being a Vet (but then I found out animals die 😔)

39: They’re all pretty good INCLUDING MINT CHCOOLATE CHIP IF YOU DONT LIKE MINT CHCOOLATE CHIP I EILL END YOU

40: A lot of people

41: In my bed nice and warm and asleep

42: Waffles and sausage

43: …..chat noir

44: In Florida (where I live atleast) it’s illegal to set off fireworks on the beach except on the 4th of July, and New Years Eve and New Years Day

[comraderomeo]

Where Skin Ends Ch. 2

Updated Every Other Thursday (sorry I was late)

links: ao3 masterpost

cw: none of note

The sun finally breaks through your stupor and forces you awake. You lie groggily in bed, less regretful of your beverage choices than you expected to be. Your complimentary headache is only a mild annoyance, for which you have that Corporal to thank, not that you remember. In fact, your memory is hazy enough to leave you with no clear events, only a lingering sense of embarrassment. You check the clock and utter a "fuck" on realizing it's noon. After gathering your strength, you roll out of bed. Each layer of clothes from the day before is systematically stripped and thrown with force into the corner where a pile of undone laundry lies. At least you have a uniform for today. As you enter the bathroom, your reflection causes you to jump. It's always been an unexpected scare, but you look especially bad today, sorry to say. The cold water splashes off your back and coats your body like a sealant for restfulness. At the end of it, you feel half-normal again. Congratulations. As you dry off fully, there comes a series of bare-minimum upkeep procedures, just enough to make you not-appalling. Next, comes the uniform. It's too crinkled to pass inspection, but who gives a shit, right? They don't even have those in your company. Run your fingers through your hair that looks like it was cut with hedge trimmers, and you're done. Now, off to drills before you give Alex anything to be annoyed about.

You arrive at the simulator facility five minutes early, which you're happy with until you see the rest of your lance sitting around a map already discussing tactics. 

"Given we are defending through this sector, Hill 251 seems the most tenable for Alex and I."

"Ed, swear to God, please use words I can understand."

"It means 'defendable.'"

"Thanks, but I don't have time for a language lesson in the field."

"I will refrain, but I ask you stop calling me-"

Alex, being uninvested in the debate on words, was the first to notice you.

"Ah, Mat. Pleased to see you on time today."

"Anything for you, Lance Commander."

"Oh, that's a surprise. I figured you half an hour late at least."

You look for a rebuke to Ashe’s comment and find one. Pointing lazily to Edward, you fire back, "At least I'm not nursing a hangover in the planning room."

"You would've been out cold for a week, if it weren't for that Lyran lass."

Edward isn’t making a show of it, but you're right. He looks like his headache is about to devour him whole.

"And, who's to say it's not a migraine or some other thing?"

"Aye, could be. Could be."

"No, it is a hangover. I apologize. However, I will still be able to pilot."

You roll your eyes almost hard enough to crack your skull. It's petty but deserved. This whole ribbing thing is a waste of time anyway.

"So, can we move on to the actual thing we're being paid to do? Or, are we all just bullying me today?"

"It can be either. I couldn't give less of a shit."

"Ashe, chill please."

"Thank you, Lance Commander."

"Agreed, bickering about one's drinking habits will not decide the war nor pay well."

"Right you are, Ed. Anyway, let me fill you in on the sim we're working with."

Edward raised up as if to say something, but dropped it. Alex zoomed out on the digital map, revealing a series of arrows indicating expected troop movements. 

"We're operating on a constructed battleground, temperate climate, hilly, lightly forested. Simulation is starting on clear weather, but that might change. We, along with elements of the Lyran 57th Armored Regiment, will be defending a 'mech production facility. We will have no aerospace support nor ground reinforcements. But, the simulation will be providing long-distance artillery support on demand, so Ashe will be running double duty spotting for them and us."

The name of that armored regiment sits poorly with you, but the reason didn’t survive last night. Alex doesn't notice and points to a hill annotated on the map.

"As Edward stated, Hill 251 would be the best place for Scholar and Storm to be positioned. Meanwhile, Calm will be running spotting and skirmishes in support of the heavy tanks all throughout the foothills here. You, as always, are the hardest to place. I'm thinking myself that we should have you powered down in this more heavily forested area Southeast of where Ashe is doing her spotting. That way, you'll be able to pop in for an ambush once they engage the armored regiment. Thoughts?"

To you, it sounds less like an important assignment and more like getting sidelined. But, what are you going to do? You’ve still barely recovered from the probationary period you were on prior to Houses Steiner and Davion making their union into an all-consuming war. It's not worth risking your neck over an assignment.

"Fine, that works. It'll also give me the chance to get into melee with their support 'mechs."

"Good. I forgot to lead with the opposition, so let me clarify. We'll be up against two full lances of Capellan ‘mechs. I haven't been given a specific list of ‘mechs, but expect them on the medium to heavy side."

"Always hate it when they don’t tell us what to expect…"

"Oh, good. I was worried Ashe had secretly passed away after that much blissful silence."

"Fuck off."

"Gladly, if I weren't on contract."

"The two of you need to stop, or I will kick you out of here. The Lyran officers are going to be joining the briefing in a few minutes, so keep it to off-hours."

You and Ashe huff. Then, as if on cue, a series of finely-trimmed officers stroll into the briefing room. Their faces belie origins from all different regions of the Lyran Commonwealth, but the patches on their shoulders unify them. It takes a few more seconds than you like to admit, but you realize this is the Lyran 57th Armored. You scan through the officers, starting with the obvious Commander and rolling down the line judgmentally. That is until you reach a face far too familiar. You instinctively recoil before you can catch yourself. Hannelore smiles at you. It's hard to catch, but there's pity in her eyes too. The rest of your lance greets them half as formally as they greet you. All you can manage is a stoic nod. Alex launches into another explanation of his tactics. You mentally block this out, even though he does mention a few more details than he gave you. The tankers seem in agreeance, and start laying out their own plans in support of you, as being the center of attention is the privilege of a MechWarrior. You don't parse most of this either, which is clearly a great idea that definitely won't fuck you over down the line. The major strokes are that the artillery will be hiding behind the hills and the rest are holding the line alongside your lancemates. It's nothing groundbreaking all in all. At some point, Alex and the nameless Lyran Commander finally stop talking. It's probably been half an hour by estimates outside of your comprehension. A few more affirmations are shared between people, then the room breaks for the simulators. You take a little too long to react, lost in your lack of thought, and now you're alone with Hannelore. You look at her and mutter “oh shit…” quietly enough that it slurs beyond comprehension. She doesn't smile with the same warmness that you saw at first but with more of the pity you’d missed before.

“So, how’re you holding up?”

“Fine…”

You swallow your pride and almost gag,

“Thank you.”

“Well, I couldn't have just left you like that. It wouldn't be right.”

“Being a mercenary doesn't leave you much room to expect people to do right. I wouldn't have been mad.”

She nods, silently drawing a parallel between the two of you.

“Very true, but doesn't that make it all the better when someone proves you wrong?”

How could someone maintain this earnestness, despite knowing how cruel and violent the universe is? You can't say. It's unsettling in a way you can't describe.

“Maybe it is, but you still didn't have to.”

She deflates a little.

“Still better to have you in good condition for the drills, right?”

You nod obliquely, giving her that concession. 

“As thanks, I'll make an effort to not embarrass you again, but I make no promises I’ll be successful.”

She lets out an amused breath, even though you don’t mean that as a joke.

“Appreciated, but I'm sure you'll do fine. Even Lieutenant Ashe let slip that you're decent in a ‘mech.”

“I figured she'd rather drag herself than compliment me, but I guess all we can do is wait and see if I live up to the legend.”

“It's the weight you have to deal with when you go the ‘mech route. It's why I'm plenty happy in my humble tank crew.”

“I prefer the solitude, and it always felt to me like the inside of a tank would smell like a sauna adjacent to livestock.”

The Corporal laughs fully this time. You're glad she does but don’t show it.

“You know what? It does, but luckily you get used to it.”

“Maybe they should-”

“Mat. Corporal. You're needed in the sim bays.”

Alex stands in the doorway, looking not mad but disappointed. You don't care much that he is, but you really should get going.

[rightnouveau]

The Media Mogul Meltdown: Elon Musk's MSNBC Gambit

Nov. 22, 2024

In today's episode of "Who's Buying Who in the Billionaire Hunger Games," tech's most unpredictable genius is eyeing his next conquest: MSNBC.

Yes, the same maverick who transformed Twitter into X, popularized electric cars, and treats space exploration like a weekend hobby is now plotting to acquire the network that gives us more spin than a washing machine on steroids.

The Plot Thickens

Here's the kicker: Musk claims he'd run MSNBC for free. Zero dollars. Nada. Zilch. He's already reached out to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, practically begging him to offload what he calls their "propaganda machine" – which, let's face it, is like accusing water of being wet. If anyone can make waves in the media ocean, it's the guy who launched a Tesla into space for kicks.

The Free Speech Chess Game

While Musk parades as the eccentric savior of free speech (remember his pledge to de-censor Twitter?), there's always a corporate angle. Think of it as a tech version of Game of Thrones, minus the dragons but with extra servers. His potential MSNBC acquisition arrives just as the UN doubles down on "controlling misinformation" – their fancy way of saying they want to be the only voice in the room. From Europe's strict content moderation laws to international think tanks proposing online "speech monitors," the global elite are working overtime to make the internet as exciting as unseasoned oatmeal.

The Media Landscape: Theater Kids of Capitalism

Traditional media companies are essentially the drama club of the business world—loud, attention-seeking, and increasingly irrelevant. While MSNBC clings to its establishment narratives, independent creators on TikTok and YouTube are winning the culture war by doing something revolutionary: being authentic. Perhaps Musk sees MSNBC as the perfect sandbox for experimenting with new digital storytelling. Or maybe he just wants to replace "breaking news" with memes. Either way, it's prime popcorn entertainment.

The Stakes: More Than Just Another Billionaire's Game

Beyond the spectacle of media moguls playing Monopoly with our brains lies a deeper question: What happens to us, the scroll-weary masses trying to separate fact from fiction in a world where attention spans are shorter than a TikTok? For all his flaws, Musk seems to grasp that the media isn't just broken—it's rigged. If his goal is to demolish the system and amplify public discourse, that's something worth watching, even if just for the inevitable Rachel Maddow existential crisis.

The Bottom Line

Whether this move proves to be a game-changer for free speech or just another chapter in the billionaire drama series, one thing's certain: the media landscape will never be the same. So grab your popcorn, temporarily tune out MSNBC, and keep your eyes peeled. Because when the circus gets this good, you don't just watch—you laugh, you question, and maybe, just maybe, you start dreaming of a better stage.

After all, in a world where most news feels like a rerun of yesterday's drama, at least Musk knows how to keep things interesting.

The Elon Show continues, and if history teaches us anything, the next episode promises to be even wilder. Stay tuned, stay skeptical, and most importantly, stay free.

[vachnajain]

A War for Peace, Legacy, and the Future"(draft 1)

In 2104, Isla Esperanza proved to be the battlefield on which a war other than any played out. This time the women fought for a whole lot more than claiming the land; they were fighting to ensure that their children have a brighter future. It was not a conquest war or a war of destruction but a survival, rebuilding war-a battle for freedom, sustainability, and a new life. Equipped with the latest technology, these warriors took over not only the lands but also the seas, using AI-powered exosuits, drones, and biomechanical sea creatures to fight against an enemy who seemed highly adaptable. Their exoskeleton suits were updated with a method of increased strength and speed, so they moved invisibly through dense jungles and rocky terrains due to their cloaking systems. They made strategic ambushes in the water by taking the enemy ships down with the various biomechanical beasts dragging them under the waves. They deployed drones and put up traps against the enemy threats. The women very easily managed to merge nature into technology by controlling tides and storms with advanced climate manipulation devices. The environment became a double-edged sword. The mission was not one of fighting alone but teaching the next generations on how to hold on to the gains that were made and sustain peace.

The heart of their plan was a revolutionary learning system: the digital transparent zone, shimmering, self-regenerating energy dome in which the children of the warriors were kept safe. And within it, the children watched front-row viewing with augmented reality projections of the battlefield in real time. Every decision, every maneuver, and every sacrifice became a living lesson in leadership, survival, and the high cost of peace. Safe within this shielded environment, they were not just passive observers; they were active participants, monitoring battlefield data through neural interfaces, even hacking into enemy systems to give strategic insights to their mothers. There, they believed, the facts of war should not be hidden from their children, but the children needed to know what lay at risk and learn how decisions were made under fire. A radical philosophy, it fused motherhood with leadership and battle with education-and prepared the children to become future leaders armed with the wisdom to protect peace and avoid war.

The battle for Isla Esperanza required mastery of both land and sea; it was nothing challenging to always come up with new ideas. The exosuits, which possessed the ability for women to self-heal, corrected the terrain in real time, and AI companions were not only within the neural networks but also provided predictive information that coordinated attacks with these ladies. Some of the AI companions evolved from simply being just tools into more trusted companions, who are ever-ready and available, understanding what complements this human. At sea, the women waged war from floating cities mobile bases that rode the tides to achieve flexibility. From those bases they went on to launch robotic sea creatures and drones to sabotage enemy ships and lay underwater traps. When huge enemy fleets advanced upon the island, the women responded by creating storms and tidal waves, which transformed the ocean itself into a battlefield. For their ability to perform both operations would make them a very formidable force that managed to remain unpredictable and subsequently overwhelming to the foe at every turn.

The end of the battle was its climax when the enemy, in its final last gasp, launched a desperate assault by sending waves of troops from both land and sea in a bid to capture the island. The warriors were prepared for it. This attack had already been prophesied by the simulations of the Predictive AI, and the women performed a very intricate counter-offensive. Making use of stealth suits, decoy robots, and environmental manipulations, they ensnared the invaders. Their biomechanical sea beasts towed down enemy ships to the bottom, and its drones in the jungle established automatic turrets and barricades for cutting off the routes of retreat. The children inside the digital space were all waiting for every passing of each second, knowing that the victory was not in muscle force but rather in strategy, teamwork, and being flexible. They saw their mothers fight without hate, but with such precision, a sense of purpose, and knowing that every step forward moved them closer to rebuilding a more decently acceptable world.

With the enemy's forces surrendering, war was done, but the real mission was set to begin. The women rounded up their children and set about rebuilding Isla Esperanza, but this time they will not seek to conquer it but to care for it. Here, then, would go the island, a place where technology, tradition, and nature would complement each other—a living test laboratory for the future of man. The children, having seen war and peace, were ready to head it on their own now. They realized that peace is not something to be given to them but rather is something that must be achieved and guarded through knowledge and experience. Their mothers led them to devise plans for a balanced society that would understand its elders at the same time as moving forward into the future with compassion and innovation. That's how the legend of the war for Isla Esperanza came to be, but not as a conquest story but as one of survival and purpose.

The children of the warriors would hold and carry with themselves this knowledge they had earned both in battle and in books, forging a future where mistakes made in the past would never come to repeat. The island's legacy was clear: peace was a precious thing, brewed through struggle, and the people who fought for it were not only warriors but builders, teachers, and guardians of the future.

[saving-word-crawls]

The Surpass Yourself Crawl

By: Dradra

Hi everyone !

This is my first crawl so if you have any ideas on how to make it better or if you spotted a mistake, let me know.

Have fun and enjoy. Let me know how far you went and how many words you wrote.

I created The Surpass Yourself Crawl worksheet 245, if you want to try it, let me know how it goes.

First step (reach for 1 667 words)

Alright, we’ll start with a quick sprint to 100 words. Easy enough, we just need to warm up a little bit.

Roll a die multiply that number by 50 and sprint to that many words. ( 1:50 words, 2:100 words, 3:150 words, 4:200 words, 5:250 words, 6:300 words)

Now, what about a 3-digit challenge, of your own word count, I’ll go easy on you if you have more than 400 words to write, go for 400 words.

Good job, drink some water, stretch a little bit then we are back for more. Write for 5 minutes.

This is going great, sprint to 300 words.

Everyone is doing great ? Don’t forget to stretch once in a while, move around the house, then we are back for some more. Write for 10 minutes.

Time to let fate decided on our next step. Roll a die, if it’s an even number multiply that number by 50 and wite that amount (2:100 words, 4:200 words, 6:300 words). If it’s odd, multiply by 75 and write that many words (1:75 words, 3:225 words, 5:375 words).

Are you getting closer to your daily objective ? I hope so. What about you try to write 300 words in 15 minutes. If you fail, write the amount missing to reach 300 words.

How many words have you so far ? Is it less than 1 300 words ? If so, write until you reached it, you shouldn’t be far, you can do it. Then, take a 5 minutes break. You are over 1 300 words. Take a five minutes break. Drink water, walk around the house, then we are back at it.

We are almost at the end, this will be the last sprint, you can do it, I believe in you. Are you ready to sprint to the number of words you need to reach 1 667 words. If you already have 1 667 words or more, congratulation you just finished the first step.

Drink water, stretch and we are off to the second step.

Second step (can we go up to 3 000 words)

Next step, congratulation, you already have the recommended amount for today, what about doubling it up. If you are up to the challenge sprint to 200 words.

Roll a die multiply that number by 75 and sprint to that many words. ( 1:75 words, 2:150 words, 3:225 words, 4:300 words, 5:375 words, 6:450 words)

Now, what about a 3-digit challenge, of your own word count, I’ll go easy on you if you have more than 500 words to write, go for 500 words. It’s only the second step after all.

Good job, drink some water, stretch a little bit then we are back for more. Word war for 5 minutes. If you lose, write an additional 100 words.

This is going great, sprint to 400 words.

Everyone is doing great ? Don’t forget to stretch once in a while, move around the house, then we are back for some more. Word war for 10 minutes. If you lose, write an additional 200 words.

Time to let fate decided on our next step. Roll a die, if it’s an even number multiply that number by 75 and wite that amount (2:150 words, 4:300 words, 6:450 words). If it’s odd, multiply by 100 and write that many words (1:100 words, 3:300 words, 5:500 words).

Are you getting closer to your daily objective ? I hope so. What about you try to write 300 words in 15 minutes. If you fail, sprint to 300 words.

How many words have you so far ? Is it less than 2 500 words ? If so, write until you reached it, you shouldn’t be far, you can do it. Then, take a 5 minutes break. You are over 2 500 words. Take a five minutes break. Drink water, walk around the house, then we are back at it.

We are almost at the end, this will be the last sprint, you can do it, I believe in you. Are you ready to sprint to the number of words you need to reach 3 000 words. If you already have 3 000 words or more, congratulation you just finished the second step.

Drink water, stretch and we are off to the third step. It will get harder.

Third step (anyone wants to reach 5 000 words)

Wow, congratulation, this is going great, let’s do some more, we can do it. Sprint to 300 words.

Roll a die multiply that number by 100 and sprint to that many words. ( 1:100 words, 2:200 words, 3:300 words, 4:400 words, 5:500 words, 6:600 words)

Now, what about a 3-digit challenge, of your own word count, no cheating, you have to do it all.

Good job, drink some water, stretch a little bit then we are back for more. Ready for a real challenge ? Try a fifty-headed hydra. If you lose, it’s okay, I know it’s hard.

This is going great, sprint to 500 words.

Everyone is doing great ? Don’t forget to stretch once in a while, move around the house, then we are back for some more. Word war for 10 minutes. If you lose, write an additional 300 words.

Time to let fate decided on our next step. Roll a die, if it’s an even number multiply that number by 100 and write that amount (2:200 words, 4:400 words, 6:600 words). If it’s odd, multiply by 150 and write that many words (1:150 words, 3:450 words, 5:750 words).

Are you getting closer to your daily objective ? I hope so. What about you try to write 500 words in 15 minutes. If you fail, sprint to 300 words.

How many words have you so far ? Is it less than 4 500 words ? If so, write until you reached it, you shouldn’t be far, you can do it. Then, take a 5 minutes break. You are over 4 500 words. Take a five minutes break. Drink water, walk around the house, then we are back at it.

We are almost at the end, this will be the last sprint, you can do it, I believe in you. Are you ready to sprint to the number of words you need to reach 5 000 words. If you already have 5 000 words or more, congratulation you just finished the third step.

Drink water, stretch and we are off to the fourth step. It will be the hardest challenge, you are getting to the end. You’re the best, you can do it.

Fourth step (you don’t have enough yet ? Let’s hit 10000 words)

You’re on fire today. Let’s sprint to 500 words.

Roll a die multiply that number by 150 and sprint to that many words. ( 1:150 words, 2:300 words, 3:450 words, 4:600 words, 5:750 words, 6:900 words)

Now, what about a 3-digit challenge, of your own word count, and this time, if you have less than 500 words, add 500 words to your number.

Good job, drink some water, stretch a little bit then we are back for more. Ready for a real challenge ? Try a fifty-headed hydra. If you lose, try again. If you lose again, then write 500 words. I mean, it is the point of a fifty-headed hydra after all.

This is going great, sprint to 1 000 words.

Everyone is doing great ? Don’t forget to stretch once in a while, move around the house, then we are back for some more. Word war for 10 minutes. If you lose, write an additional 500 words.

Time to let fate decided on our next step. Roll a die, if it’s an even number multiply that number by 150 and wite that amount (2:300 words, 4:600 words, 6:900 words). If it’s odd, multiply by 200 and write that many words (1:200 words, 3:600 words, 5:1 000 words).

Are you getting closer to your daily objective ? I hope so. What about you try to write 500 words in 15 minutes. If you fail, sprint to 500 words.

How many words have you so far ? Is it less than 9 000 words ? If so, write until you reached it, you shouldn’t be far, you can do it. Then, take a 5 minutes break. You are over 9 000 words. Take a five minutes break. Drink water, walk around the house, then we are back at it.

We are almost at the end, this will be the last sprint, you can do it, I believe in you. Are you ready to sprint to the number of words you need to reach 10 000 words. If you already have 10 000 words or more, congratulation you just finished the fourth step.

Drink water, stretch and take a well-deserved break.

How far did you go ? How many words you managed to write ? And did you beat your personal record ?

Good luck everyone.

[dominiq-e]

Pasting the article for those of you who don’t want to make an account with the site (it’s missing dozens of cited links; make an account to view the whole article yourself if you would like to access them):

Twenty-five years ago, computers were on the verge of destroying America’s energy system.

Or, at least, that’s what lots of smart people seemed to think.

In a 1999 Forbes article, a pair of conservative lawyers, Peter Huber and Mark Mills, warned that personal computers and the internet were about to overwhelm the fragile U.S. grid.

Information technology already devoured 8% to 13% of total U.S. power demand, Huber and Mills claimed, and that share would only rise over time. “It’s now reasonable to project,” they wrote, “that half of the electric grid will be powering the digital-Internet economy within the next decade.” (Emphasis mine.)

Over the next 18 months, investment banks including JP Morgan and Credit Suisse repeated the Forbes estimate of internet-driven power demand, advising their customers to pile into utilities and other electricity-adjacent stocks. Although it was unrelated, California’s simultaneous blackout crisis deepened the sense of panic. For a moment, experts were convinced: Data centers and computers would drain the country’s energy resources.

They could not have been more wrong. In fact, Huber and Mills had drastically mismeasured the amount of electricity used by PCs and the internet. Computing ate up perhaps 3% of total U.S. electricity in 1999, not the roughly 10% they had claimed. And instead of staring down a period of explosive growth, the U.S. electric grid was in reality facing a long stagnation. Over the next two decades, America’s electricity demand did not grow rapidly — or even, really, at all. Instead, it flatlined for the first time since World War II. The 2000s and 2010s were the first decades without “load growth,” the utility industry’s jargon for rising power demand, since perhaps the discovery of electricity itself.

Now that lull is ending — and a new wave of tech-driven concerns has overtaken the electricity industry. According to its supporters and critics alike, generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT is about to devour huge amounts of electricity, enough to threaten the grid itself. “We still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this technology,” Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has said, arguing that the world needs a clean energy breakthrough to meet AI’s voracious energy needs. (He is investing in nuclear fusion and fission companies to meet this demand.) The Washington Post captured the zeitgeist with a recent story: America, it said, “is running out of power.”

But … is it actually? There is no question that America’s electricity demand is rising once again and that load growth, long in abeyance, has finally returned to the grid: The boom in new factories and the ongoing adoption of electric vehicles will see to that. And you shouldn’t bet against the continued growth of data centers, which have increased in size and number since the 1990s. But there is surprisingly little evidence that AI, specifically, is driving surging electricity demand. And there are big risks — for utility customers and for the planet — by treating AI-driven electricity demand as an emergency.

There is, to be clear, no shortage of predictions that AI will cause electricity demand to rise. According to a recent Reuters report, nine of the country’s 10 largest utilities are now citing the “surge” in power demand from data centers when arguing to regulators that they should build more power. Morgan Stanley projects that power use from data centers “is expected to triple globally this year,” according to the same report. The International Energy Agency more modestly — but still shockingly — suggests that electricity use from data centers, AI, and cryptocurrency could double by 2026.

These concerns have also come from environmentalists. A recent report from the Climate Action Against Disinformation Commission, a left-wing alliance of groups including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, warned that AI will require “massive amounts of energy and water” and called for aggressive regulation.

That report focused on the risks of an AI-addled social media public sphere, which progressives fear will be filled with climate-change-denying propaganda by AI-powered bots. But in an interview, Michael Khoo, an author of the report and a researcher at Friends of the Earth, told me that studying AI made him much more frightened about its energy use.

AI is such an power-suck that it “is causing America to run out of energy,” Khoo said. “I think that’s going to be much more disruptive than the disinformation conversation in the mid-term.” He sketched a scenario where Altman and Mark Zuckerberg can outbid ordinary households for electrons as AI proliferates across the economy. “I can see people going without power,” he said, “and there being massive social unrest.”

These predictions aren’t happening in a vacuum. At the same time that investment bankers and environmentalists have fretted over a potential electricity shortage, utilities across the South have proposed a de facto solution: a massive buildout of new natural-gas power plants.

Citing the return of load growth, utilities across the South are trying to go around normal regulatory channels and build a slew of new natural-gas-burning power plants. Across at least six states, utilities have already won — or are trying to win — permission from local governments to fast-track more than 10,000 megawatts of new gas-fired power plants so that they can meet the surge in demand.

These requests have popped up across the region, pushed by vertically integrated monopoly power companies. Georgia Power won a tentative agreement to build 1,400 new megawatts of gas capacity, Canary reported. In the Carolinas, Duke Energy has asked to build 9,000 megawatts of new gas capacity, triple what it previously requested. The Tennessee Valley Authority has plans to add 6,600 megawatts of new capacity to its grid.

This buildout is big enough to endanger the country’s climate targets. Although these utilities are also building new renewable and battery farms, and shutting down coal plants, the planned surge in carbon emissions from natural gas plants would erase the reductions from those changes, according to a Southern Environmental Law Center analysis. Duke Energy has already said that it will not meet its 2030 climate goal in order to conduct the gas expansion.

In the popular press, AI’s voracious energy demand is sometimes said to be a major driver of this planned gas boom. But evidence for that proposition is slim, and the utilities have said only that data center expansion is one of several reasons for the boom. The Southeast’s population is growing, and the region is experiencing a manufacturing renaissance, due in part to the new car, battery, and solar panel factories subsidized by Biden’s climate law. Utilities in the South also face a particular challenge coping with the coldest winter mornings because so many homes and offices use inefficient and power-hungry space heaters.

Indeed, it’s hard to talk about the drivers of load growth with any specificity — and it’s hard to know whether load growth will actually happen in all corners of the South.

Utilities compete against each other to secure big-name customers — much like local governments compete with sweetheart tax deals — so when a utility asks regulators to build more capacity, it doesn’t reveal where potential power demand is coming from. (In other words, it doesn’t reveal who it believes will eventually buy that power.) A company might float plans to build the same data center or factory in multiple states to shop around for the best rates, which means the same underlying gigawatts of demand may be appearing in several different utilities’ resource plans at the same time. In other words, utilities are unlikely to actually see all of the demand they’re now projecting.

Even if we did know exactly how many gigawatts of new demand each utility would see, it’s almost impossible to say how much of it is coming from AI. Utilities don’t say how much of their future projected power demand will come from planned factories versus data centers. Nor do they say what each data center does and whether it trains AI (or mines Bitcoin, which remains a far bigger energy suck).

The risk of focusing on AI, specifically, as a driver of load growth is that because it’s a hot new technology — one with national security implications, no less — it can rhetorically justify expensive emergency action that is actually not necessary at all. Utilities may very well need to build more power capacity in the years to come. But does that need constitute an emergency? Does it justify seeking special permission from their statehouses or regulators to build more gas, instead of going through the regular planning process? Is it worth accelerating approvals for new gas plants? Probably not. The real danger, in other words, is not that we’ll run out of power. It’s that we’ll build too much of the wrong kind.

At the same time, we might have been led astray by overly dire predictions of AI’s energy use. Jonathan Koomey, a researcher who studies how the internet and data centers use energy (and the namesake of Koomey’s Law) told me that many estimates of Nvidia’s most important AI chips assume that their energy use is the same as their advertised “rated” power. In reality, Nvidia chips probably use half of that amount, he said, because chipmakers engineer their chips to withstand more electricity than is necessary for safety reasons.

And this is just the current generation of chips: Nvidia’s next generation of AI-training chips, called “Blackwell,” use 25 times less energy to do the same amount of computation as the previous generation of chips.

Koomey helped defuse the last panic over energy use by showing that the estimates Huber and Mills relied on were wildly incorrect. Estimates now suggest that the internet used less than 1% of total U.S. electricity by the late 1990s, not 13% as they claimed. Those percentages stayed roughly the same through 2008, he later found, even as data centers grew and computers proliferated across the economy. That’s the same year, remember, that Huber and Mills predicted that the internet would consume half of American energy.

These bad predictions were extremely convenient. Mills was a scientific advisor to the Greening Earth Society, a fossil-fuel-industry-funded group that alleged carbon dioxide pollution would actually improve the global environment. He aimed to show that climate and environmental policy would conflict with the continued growth of the internet.

“Many electricity policy proposals are on a collision course with demand forces,” Mills said in a Greening Earth press release at the time. “While many environmentalists want to substantially reduce coal use in making electricity, there is no chance of meeting future economically-driven and Internet-accelerated electric demand without retaining and expanding the coal component.” Hence the headline of the Forbes piece: “The PCs are coming — Dig more coal.”

What makes today’s AI-induced fear frenzy different from 1999 is that the alarmed projections are not just coming from businesses and banks like Morgan Stanley, but from environmentalists like Friends of the Earth. Yet neither their estimates of near-term, AI-driven power shortages — nor the analysis from Morgan Stanley that U.S. data-center use could soon triple within a year — make sense given what we know about data centers, Koomey said. It is not logistically possible to triple data centers’ electricity use in one year. “There just aren’t enough people to build data centers, and it takes longer than a year to build a new data center anyway,” he said. “There aren’t enough generators, there aren’t enough transformers — the backlog for some equipment is 24 months. It’s a supply chain constraint.”

Look around and you might notice that we have many more servers and computers today than we did in 1999 — not to mention smartphones and tablets, which didn’t even exist then — and yet computing doesn’t devour half of American energy. It doesn’t even get close. Today, computers use 1% to 4% of total U.S. power demand, depending on which estimate you trust. That’s about the same share of total U.S. electricity demand that they used in the late 1990s and mid-2000s.

It may well be that AI devours more energy in years to come, but utilities probably do not need to deal with it by building more gas. They could install more batteries, build new power lines, or even pay some customers to reduce their electricity usage during certain peak events, such as cold winter storms.

There are some places where AI-driven energy demand could be a problem — Koomey cited Ireland and Loudon County, Virginia, as two epicenters. But even there, building more natural gas is not the sole way to cope with load growth.

“The problem with this debate is everybody is kind of right,” Daniel Tait, who researches Southern utilities for the Energy and Policy Institute, a consumer watchdog, told me. “Yes, AI will increase load a little bit, but probably not as much as you think. Yes, load is growing, but maybe not as much as you say. Yes, we do need to build stuff, but maybe not the stuff that you want.”

There are real risks if AI’s energy demands get overstated and utilities go on a gas-driven bender. The first is for the planet: Utilities might overbuild gas plants now, run them even though they’re non-economic, and blow through their climate goals.

“Utilities — especially the vertically integrated monopoles in the South — have every incentive to overstate load growth, and they have a pattern of having done that consistently,” Gudrun Thompson, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, told me. In 2017, the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy think tank, found in 2017 that utilities systematically overestimated their peak demand when compiling forecasts. This makes sense: Utilities would rather build too much capacity than wind up with too little, especially when they can pass along the associated costs to rate-payers.

But the second risk is that utilities could burn through the public’s willingness to pay for grid upgrades. Over the next few years, utilities should make dozens of updates to their systems. They have to build new renewables, new batteries, and new clean 24/7 power, such as nuclear or geothermal. They will have to link their grids to their neighbors’ by building new transmission lines. All of that will be expensive, and it could require the kind of investment that raises electricity rates. But the public and politicians can accept only so many rate hikes before they rebel, and there’s a risk that utilities spend through that fuzzy budget on unnecessary and wasteful projects now, not on the projects that they’ll need in the future.

There is no question that AI will use more electricity in the years to come. But so will EVs, new factories, and other sources of demand. America is on track to use more electricity. If that becomes a crisis, it will be one of our own making.

[afmcompany]

Logistics Challenges for 2023

For the past three years, the world has witnessed a pandemic, conflicts, war, inflation, natural disasters, talks of a recession, and changes that we can barely keep up with. While the entire Earth’s population was dramatically affected by all these happenings, supply chains have also greatly suffered. 

Since the beginning of the pandemic back in 2020, supply chains of all industries faced challenges that put their continuity at risk. Although, we saw the light at the end of the tunnel many times, another “crisis” came up, giving the word challenge a whole new meaning.  

In today's fast-paced and constantly changing business environment, it is essential to anticipate and prepare for the challenges you may face in 2023.

In this blog post, we will discuss some critical challenges that freight forwarders may face in the coming year and provide strategies for navigating and overcoming them.

LOGISTIC CHALLENGE: THE UNCERTAINTY OF FREIGHT COST 

Freight prices in the past couple of years have risen drastically. This has forced logistics and transport managers to double their efforts to find the more affordable option to transport their goods.  

It became a series of calculations and extra spendings for far too many organizations. These then struggled to meet growth targets or to keep up with their already complex supply chains. However, freight prices have recently considerably dropped. Some transport modes have even seen their prices dip by almost 50%. Nevertheless, many transport and logistics managers continue to pay the full price!  

This uncertainty and these fluctuations are not easy to keep up with if you don’t have the technology that keeps you updated and that finds you the best current prices for your transportation. With worldwide shipping and logistics company in delhi,  you save on freight tendering allocation through more accurate tender results. Allowing you to save on freight cost thanks to more accurate calculations.  

 LOGISTIC CHALLENGE: THE ERA OF DIGITALIZATION 

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[ashcovenews]

'I'm depressed, don't want to lose my house': Homeowners and renters in UK gripped by rising costs

A London housing organization that manages affordable rental homes for lower-income tenants has raised rent yearly and most recently declared a 4% bump to 170 pounds ($223) a week.

LONDON: For Sadie James, the cost-of-living crisis in Britain just never seems to ease.

First, it was skyrocketing energy and food costs stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, the 61-year-old worries whether she can keep a roof over her head.

James, who lives in south London, has struggled for years to stay on top of her finances. Just as she was starting to clear her debts, she’s back to square one: Her rent keeps rising, and on top of higher food and energy bills, her welfare payments just can’t keep up.

“I’m actually in a meltdown each time I think about it,” said James, who cannot work because of underlying health problems. “I’m literally depressed, I’m angry, I’m totally overwhelmed about it because I don’t want to lose my home.”

Interest rates have risen rapidly in recent months, which in turn have ratcheted up mortgages and rents across the United Kingdom. Rates have hit 5% after being below 1% for the past decade as the Bank of England has tried to bring down the highest inflation in the Group of Seven major economies.

As is often the case, the poorest households are bearing the brunt. The rate hikes have led to the biggest fall in household wealth in Britain since World War II, according to new research from the Resolution Foundation think tank.

Unlike the United States, where many mortgages are fixed for up to 30 years, U.K. homeowners are more exposed to changes in the cost of borrowing because a large percentage of them have loans that need to be renewed every two or five years.

Around 2.5 million such deals are due to expire by the end of next year, with around a million households facing a 500-pound ($655) monthly increase in their average mortgage repayments by 2026, Bank of England Gov. Andrew Bailey said.

That has put pressure on both Bailey and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, whose hold on power is tenuous ahead of a likely general election next year. Making it more expensive to borrow is how higher interest rates help lower inflation — people potentially spend less, reducing demand and pressure on prices.

Though inflation has eased from a double-digit peak last year, it’s still stubbornly high at 8.7%, and the central bank is expected to keep hiking rates — already at a 15-year high. That has led to mounting fears of the economy sinking into recession.

Many landlords facing higher mortgage payments want to pass on those costs to renters. A dearth of rental options doesn’t help either.

James says her landlord, a London housing organization that manages affordable rental homes for lower-income tenants, has raised her rent yearly and most recently declared a 4% bump to 170 pounds ($223) a week. For James, who is barely managing to cover her other bills, the rent increases seem relentless and she is terrified of being evicted.

“It’s a nightmare, thinking they’re going to come one day … lock my door and I can’t get in,” she said.

Despite the sharp increase in mortgage rates, renters have struggled to afford their housing to a greater degree than homeowners, according to Britain’s statistics agency. Renters typically spend a higher proportion of their income on housing costs, it said.

Jon Taylor, a debt manager at the charity Christians Against Poverty who has helped James, said his organization has seen a large increase in the number of people in rental debt in the past two years. Almost half of the charity’s new clients seek help paying their rent.

“Already, the rent increases are astronomical here in London, and people can’t afford that,” he said. “There’s this group of people that would have just about been able to pay their rent, but it’s just not sustainable anymore. And so something’s got to give.”

The rising rates are not just affecting people on the breadline or on social welfare, he added. He’s also worried about workers who could easily be tipped into debt because they can’t cover the simultaneous increases in food, housing and energy bills seen since last year.

“I’m extremely concerned that we’re going to see more people coming to us saying, ‘We can’t pay the mortgage’ — people who you’d never have thought of needing that kind of help are now going to be struggling,” he said.

The interest rate hikes have sent the average two-year fixed mortgage rate to 6.66%, the highest since before the 2008 global financial crisis.

Joanne Barker-Marsh, a single mother who cares for her teenage son with special needs, is trying not to think about February, when her fixed-rate mortgage is up for renewal. She is bracing for her payment to more than double.

“I will fly by the seat of my pants,” Barker-Marsh said. “I can’t even address this right now because I am terrified.”

The 51-year-old from Rochdale, in northern England, lost her job during the pandemic and relies on social services payments. She spends a third of her state benefits on the mortgage.

“I don’t have any spare cash, I don’t know where we’re going next,” she said. “It will swallow up the majority of our social services payment.”

Bailey, the central banker, expressed hope that the country’s biggest banks are resilient enough to offer more help than they could before the global financial crisis. He said banks have more capital and are carrying far less debt than they did then, allowing them to offer struggling households more financial options.

Whatever options are available, the drip-drip of bad news doesn’t help those fretting about where the cost-of-living crisis will go next.

“I don’t have a chance to catch up, to get better, because next minute there’s something else,” James said. “And I don’t understand why.”

[jetiisyandereclones]

A Fox’s Kit and vixen

Platonic soft!yandere Fox x F!Jedi Reader (no use of Y/N)

Romantic soft!yandere Fox x Riyu Chuchi

Description:

Fox is tired. His ad’ika is helping him finnish reports and he reflects on their relationship. what is, what could be and what will soon be.

She was back again, sitting in my office like she had done a thousand times before.

Hound had let her in like usual, gliding past the guards, giving grizzer a fond pat, and greeting Thorn just outside my office door. She was not allowed in this part of the senate building, not really. She just didn’t have the clearance for it but that never stopped her. As per usual she had breezed into my office with a chocolate pastry and two ungodly large and strong caf’s.

Like every other time she made herself at home in the office, on the couch that she bought cause she was not gonna sit for hours on a ‘glorified block of durasteel parading as a posture correct tool’.

She got comfy with her cat and her pilfered half of the datapads from my desk without a single care. And like every time, I graciously, guiltily let her.

After about two hours she broke the easy silence.

“Who’s handwriting is this?” She asked incredulously.

As if the written report had personally insulted her and her lineage. I just sighed.

“These are confidential reports. I could throw you in a cell for reading any one of them” I grouch.

But it’s a hollow threat. She knows it. I know it. We both are far too aware that in times like these, when my workload is doubled and the chancellor has thrown all his paperwork my way, that I value her help and company far more than the rules I’m supposed to hold us both to.

“Do that and I’m letting a bunch of tooka’s loose in the building” she airily responded, with about as much conviction as my own threat.

Suddenly the data pad was thrown to the side, having finally decoded the shinies handwriting and transferred his report to the digital archives.

“How did that guy even make it out of kamino? His handwriting was so messed up the kaminoans would have probably tried to bring a cleaning crew in to fix it”

I glanced at the pile of data pads next to her. All reports she had digitalised and filed in the past two and a half hours. All reports that I should have done.

Gods I loved her so much.

She suddenly yawned. Looking out of the window and seeing the Coruscant skyline darkening as afternoon changed into night.

As she looked back at me I am struck by how changed she is. The war had taken its toll on everyone and while seeing what should be carefree Jedi children sent to war would always sadden me, i can’t quite bring myself to care nearly as much about them, as I do my ad’ika.

When i first met her she was small, chubby, mischievous and happy. But as the conflict dragged on that mischievousness was packed away, and in its place came the seriousness of command. Happy smiles became mean smirks and grins. Baby fat melted away to reveal hard won muscles and a slightly sunken face from all the nights spent awake and days spent on the battlefield.

I hated it.

While i had never verbally acknowledged her as my daughter, nor did I dare treat her any more affectionately than I already did for fear of repercussion and force forbid, reprogramming, I still couldn’t help but dream about could be. What should be.

I dream about a future where there is no war, a future where she can thrive and live in peace and harmony on some remote, low population planet. I had thought about it every night for years.

Forging some convincing papers and signatures was easy enough. Acquiring the correct adoption documents could be done in minutes and at this point he knew nearly every senators signature and handwriting as well as he knew his own. It wouldn’t take much to officiate the paperwork to not only adopt his Jedi, but to change their identities as well.

Then I’d stage our deaths. A senate bombing would work. One planted in, or close by my office. Close enough so the lack of bodies wasn’t suspicious. Then i could simply take my daughter and leave. Leave with the money i stole from the chancellor. Money i feel in my bones that i have every right to after working like a dog at the senates heels all this time.

And I could steal it too. The chancellor foolishly entrusted me with every aspect of his safety. Including financial safety. After all, who would believe a clone to be disloyal to the republic, to Palpatine himself?

It wouldn’t take much with his clearance and knowledge to drain his accounts, and put the credits to better use than anything Palpatine had in mind. What could be more important than a father providing a better life for his child.

And i would provide a better life for her.

Take her far away from Coruscant, from war. Take her to a world where there’s lots of nature. Wild and mysterious forests, rolling oceans, tall snow covered mountains. Sceneries that look like they came straight out of a holofilm. Something with a low population and so different from here. She always hated coruscant. Thinks it’s ugly, and wrapped in stench and corruption.

I would tell my brothers of course. Some of them may even want to come with us. Hound would. And he’d bring Grizzer with him. I think Thorn might stay for a while. But eventually stage his own accident and join them.

I am broken out of my thoughts by a hand in front of my face.

My ad’ika was looking at the door and the figure that stood in it.

“Senator Chuchi” I acknowledged, standing up.

Out of all the senators she’s one of the few that treated me and my brothers like human beings. Like people deserving of respect and kindness. And in return, the guards have always been kind and helpful to her. Offering friendship and their protection.

While I also shared this sentiment it was a little more than friendship i craved to give her. In my more guarded hopes and dreams I can see her with me and my ad’ika. A complete and happy family. Maybe one day…

“Commander Fox. I’m told that there might have been a friend in your office” she sweetly commented, gesturing to my Jedi.

Ah yes, that’s right. The senator has been working with my ad’ika to try and settle a territory dispute happening on the borders of Pantoran spaceways.

“Whatchya need, darling?”

My Jedi replied in her charming, casual tone that without fail always caused me to grimace slightly, but people seem to love.

“Nohing, nothing. Just here to see a friend. And inform a friend that at this moment general Tii is currently sweeping through the senate looking for her Padawan.”

I reflected just how loyal these two were to each other. Having heard how they would not leave each others side and always covering each others back, on the clock and off.

I couldn’t be prouder.

“Oh, ya. I kinda ditched her midway through a meeting.” She commented, without regret.

“Ad’ika.” I lightly reprimanded

She just rolled her eyes and blurted out,

“If I had to listen to the chancellor talk for one more minute I was gonna puke. Man has the appeal of two week unwashed, oily ass hair.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

“Still, should probably go meet her before she sends you to find me.”

Both she an Riyu make their way out into the hall.

Riyu with a warm goodbye, my ad’ika with a distracted ‘see ya’ thrown over her shoulder as she leaves.

‘Soon my loves.’ I think looking away from where two of the most important people to me were standing, and eyeing the locked chest containing a half built bomb, unfinished paperwork, fake identities and stolen credit account information under my desk.

Very soon.

[dirhwangdaseul-archived]

Desperate Europeans Return to the World’s Oldest Fuel for Warmth

Source: Bloomberg.

‘It’s back to the old days’ as demand for firewood soars due to gas shortage.

A supplier unloads bags of firewood at the Hans Engelke Energie OHG depot in Berlin, on Oct. 5.Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

October 8, 2022 at 12:00 AM CDT

Not far from Berlin’s Tempelhof airport, Peter Engelke is putting up a new security gate at his warehouse because of concerns about desperate people pilfering his stock. The precious asset at risk is firewood.

Engelke’s actions reflect growing anxiety across Europe as the continent braces for energy shortfalls, and possibly blackouts, this winter. The apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipeline is the latest sign of the region’s critical position as Russia slashes supplies in the standoff over the war in Ukraine.

At a summit in Prague on Friday, European Union leaders fell short of agreeing on a price cap for gas amid concerns that any such move could threaten supplies to the region. As much as 70% of European heating comes from natural gas and electricity, and with Russian deliveries drastically reduced, wood — already used by some 40 million people for heating — has become a sought-after commodity.

Peter Engelke next to a pile of wood pellets at his company's depot in Berlin, on Oct. 5.Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

Prices for wood pellets have nearly doubled to 600 euros a ton in France, and there are signs of panic buying of the world’s most basic fuel. Hungary even went so far as to ban exports of pellets, and Romania capped firewood prices for six months. Meanwhile, wood stoves can now take months to deliver.

Aside from concerns about shortages, the energy crisis is intensifying a surge in living expenses, with euro-zone inflation hitting double digits for the first time ever in September. Strapped households across the region are increasingly faced with choosing between heating and other essentials.

“It’s back to the old days when people wouldn’t have the whole house heated,” said Nic Snell, managing director at British wholesale firewood retailer Certainly Wood. “They’d sit around the fire and use the heat from the stove or open fire and go off to bed. There will be a lot more of that this winter.”

The trend has meant a boom in demand for Gabriel Kakelugnar AB, a manufacturer of high-end tiled stoves costing an average of 86,000 Swedish kronor ($7,700). The stoves can keep a room warm for 24 hours because of its intricate construction using different channels that hold and distribute the heat.

“During the pandemic, people started to invest more in their homes. That has now of course escalated,” said Jesper Svensson, owner and managing director of the company that’s located less than an hour drive from Sweden’s biggest nuclear reactor.

Orders have surged more than fourfold, and customers now have to wait until March for delivery, compared with as little as four weeks a year ago.

A Kungsholm tiled stove by Gabriel Kakelugnar AB.Source: Gabriel Kakelugnar AB

For many Europeans, the key concern is doing whatever it takes to stay warm in the coming months. The worry has become ever more pressing as the winter chill gets nearer, and the desperation for heat could create health and environmental issues.

Related: People in Poland Are Burning Trash to Stay Warm This Winter

“We are worried that people will just burn what they can get their hands on,” said Roger Sedin, head of the air quality unit at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, warning against poor ventilation and trying to burn wet firewood. “We can see very high pollution levels when you have people burning wood who don’t know how to do it correctly.”

Particulate matter can end up deep in the lungs and cause heart attacks, strokes and asthma, he said, adding that the risk is particularly acute in urban areas.

“You need to think about your neighbors,” Sedin said.

Inexperience is also evident in Germany, where the country’s association of chimney sweeps is dealing with a flood of requests to connect new and old stoves, and customers are inquiring about burning horse dung and other obscure fuels.

There are also signs of hording. In France, Frederic Coirier, chief executive officer of Poujoulat SA, which makes chimney flues and produces wood fuels, said some clients have bought two tons of wood pellets, when less than one ton is normally enough to head a home for a year.

“People are desperate for wood, and they are buying more than usual,” said Trond Fjortoft, founder and CEO of Norwegian wood seller Kortreist Ved. “Usually it happens when it starts to get cold, ‘someone says, oh we should order some wood.’ This year, that started in June” — around the time Russia slashed gas supplies.

Wood pellets loaded onto a conveyor at the Hans Engelke Energie depot.Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg

In Berlin, the crisis creates unsettling echoes of the desolation following World War II. With fuel in short supply, residents chopped down nearly all the trees in the central Tiergarten park for heating.

While Berliners aren’t going to such extremes now, concerns about staying warm are widespread. Engelke not only put up an extra security gate to protect logs, coal briquettes and heating oil, he also had to stop taking on new customers.

“We’re looking ahead to winter with great concern,” he said.

— With assistance by Benoit Berthelot, Kari Lundgren and Will Mathis

@vague-humanoid @charpointer

[avatar-news]

Avatar Studios masterpost!

Here’s absolutely everything there is to know about the big Avatar news from today’s ViacomCBS Paramount+ Streaming Event and investor day!

Summary of facts

Avatar Studios is a new studio at Nickelodeon. Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra co-creators and showrunners Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino are the co-Chief Creative Officers of Avatar Studios.

Avatar Studios will create original movies, series, and shorts set in the world of Avatar.

The first project is an animated theatrical film set to start production later this year.

One or more Avatar Studios Paramount+ Original Series will be among the 50 original shows coming to Paramount+ in its first two years.

The above image has been included in many articles and official social media posts. It’s presumably the current official logo of Avatar Studios.

That is a distilled list of the cold, hard facts from the whirlwind of news that has come out today, from many different sources. With that out of the way, the rest of this post will delve deeper into everything we’ve learned, including full-length quotes from the people involved.

Today’s event

Today, ViacomCBS (the company that owns Nickelodeon, and thus Avatar) held their “Streaming Event” and investor day. ViacomCBS is launching their big streaming service, Paramount+, on March 4th. It’s a rebrand and relaunch of their current streaming service, CBS All Access. Paramount+ is meant to be their big push to compete in the streaming wars with Disney’s Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+; WarnerMedia’s HBO Max; NBCUniversal’s Peacock; Apple’s Apple TV+; and, yes, Netflix’s Netflix by Netflix in collaboration with Netflix.

Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra are already on CBS All Access in full, and they, like all the rest of the content on the service, will automatically transfer over to Paramount+. (Currently we know absolutely nothing about when or if either show will leave Netflix. They’re currently on both Netflix and CBS All Access, so it’s possible they’ll remain on both Netflix and Paramount+ for some time.)

Here’s my livetweet thread from today’s event. Below, I’ll cover the notable stuff:

The first big mention of Avatar was when it was called out by the CEO as one of the ViacomCBS properties that were big hits on other streaming services last year.

It’s notable that it was mentioned among a list of exclusively adult, live-action series.

This is totally in line with the earlier stuff where the CEO mentioned it as having potential for Paramount+ original content.

The presentation also included something along the lines of: if you helped make one of our properties popular on another streaming service, there’s a good chance originals will be coming to Paramount+.

Basically, they saw how huge Avatar was on Netflix last year, and that visibility was up to the highest levels of the company.

And of course, finally they announced the creation of Avatar Studios. This was actually a few minutes after the news went up officially online, so at that point I lost track of the stream as I covered the news. But, I do know they didn’t show/announce anything else in the event besides the news that went up online.

Official quotes/statements

Here are the official quotes about Avatar Studios sent out today:

Joint official statement from Bryke:

“It’s hard to believe it’s been 19 years since we created Avatar: The Last Airbender. But even after all that time, there are still many stories and time periods in Aang’s world that we are eager to bring to life. We are fortunate to have an ever-growing community of passionate fans that enjoys exploring the Avatarverse as much as we do. And with this new Avatar Studios venture we have an unparalleled opportunity to develop our franchise and its storytelling on a vast scale, in myriad exciting ways and mediums. We are exceedingly grateful to Brian Robbins and Ramsey Naito for their enthusiasm and respect for the Avatar property and us as its stewards. From the start, they’ve supported our ambitious plans and created a positive, proactive environment for us. We’re excited to be back at Nickelodeon where Avatar began, doing what we do best in the biggest way possible. We can’t wait to build the great teams and productions to make all of this fantasy a reality.”

via Entertainment Weekly

Bryan on his Instagram and Tumblr:

“Bryke is back at Nickelodeon in a big way. ⚡️💙⬇️💙⚡️ Mike and I are heading up a new studio dedicated to expanding the Avatarverse.”

Mike on his Instagram:

“BIG announcement! @bryankonietzko and I are returning to #Nickelodeon as co-chief creative officers of Avatar Studios to develop new animated projects in the #avatarverse and oversee the franchise. Couldn't be more excited and inspired!”

Brian Robbins:

“Avatar: The Last Airbender and Korra have grown at least ten-fold in popularity since their original hit runs on Nickelodeon, and Ramsey Naito and I are incredibly excited to have Mike and Bryan’s genius talent on board to helm a studio devoted to expanding their characters and world into new content and formats for fans everywhere. Creator-driven stories and characters have long been the hallmarks of Nickelodeon, and Avatar Studios is a way to give Mike and Bryan the resources and runway to open up their imaginations even more and dive deeper into the action and mythology of Avatar as we simultaneously expand upon that world and the world of content available on Paramount+ and Nickelodeon.”

via Deadline

Brian Robbins was referred to as the president of Nickelodeon on Entertainment Weekly, and “President, ViacomCBS Kids & Family” on Deadline. Ramsey Naito is the president of Nickelodeon Animation.

Press release

The post-event ViacomCBS press release mentioned Avatar in two places:

First, right up at the top:

“Over 50 original series to premiere on Paramount+ over next two years, including Halo, Frasier, Criminal Minds, iCarly, The Real World, Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies, shows from the Avatar, Yellowstone, Star Trek and SpongeBob SquarePants universes and more”

The wording makes it unclear if it will be multiple shows from each of the final four franchises mentioned, or if it’s plural because it’s listing multiple franchises. It’s talking about the first two years specifically, so it’s likely that in that timeframe only one Avatar show would be ready, but in general it’s basically guaranteed that there will be multiple in the coming years.

The second place it’s mentioned is in the “Expansive Slate of Upcoming Paramount+ Original Series” - “Kids & Family” section:

“Avatar – Nickelodeon’s new animation studio division dedicated entirely to creating content based on the wildly popular world of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra. Led by the series’ original creators Mike DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, in partnership with the Nickelodeon Animation Studio, Avatar Studios will produce for Paramount+ a wide-range of Avatar-inspired content, ranging from spinoffs and theatricals to short form.”

Info from news

Across the many news sources today (sites, social media, etc.) this info has sort of coalesced:

What is Avatar Studios?

It has been referred to as a studio, a venture, a division of Nickelodeon, an animation studio division, etc. etc. etc.

As far as we know, it’s not an animation production studio and so doesn’t employ animators who draw the frames of animation themselves.

What does Avatar Studios make?

The various sources have said they’re making series, movies, and short-form stuff. The first two are pretty self-explanatory. The third, shorts, remains to be seen what it is. I could honestly see official TikTok videos or something, but that’s just my speculation. 😂

Right now it has been said that Avatar Studios will be making Avatar stuff only. Various wordings like “based on” and “Avatar-inspired” and “in the Avatarverse” have been used.

The question of live-action has arisen. Some places, including Mike’s post, specifically say animation, while Bryke’s official statement also says “myriad [...] mediums”. It’s highly likely there will be both animation and live-action at some point. Currently it’s probably animation-focused, with the first project being an animated movie.

Where will Avatar Studios content come out?

Another case where there have been various wordings used throughout the different news sources.

It has been said that Avatar Studios’ content will be made for Paramount+, Nickelodeon’s “linear” (meaning old-fashioned live TV) and digital outlets, third parties, and theaters.

Paramount+ is self-explanatory, that would be Paramount+ Originals streaming exclusively on Paramount+.

Nickelodeon complicates things a bit. I find it a little hard to believe that within a few years, new Avatar shows specifically for Nick’s TV channel will start being made. It’s possible statements to this effect are indicating the content will also end up aired on TV. ViacomCBS’s Star Trek universe’s first Nick show will be taking that route: first on Paramount+ and then later airing on TV on Nick, so I’m guessing something similar could be the case here. As for Nick’s digital side, they have episodes to watch on their website and apps, so I’m guessing that’s what that refers to-- I wouldn’t read into it too much. Nick itself is one of the sections on Paramount+, which also just makes my head spin a bit more.

Mention of third parties is also a little weird at first. ViacomCBS does double-dip a lot, so maybe Avatar Studios will also end up making shows for, like, Netflix and others, but it just seems like a weird business decision when they just announced Paramount+. One thing this could be referring to is potentially other mediums like books and games, for which it would make sense to be for other companies.

Lastly, theatrical. In their movies strategy, ViacomCBS announced that Paramount movies like the Mission: Impossible franchise will still be in theaters, but go to Paramount+ exclusively after a reduced 30-to-45-day theatrical window. (Some movies will also have the regular window, also a little confusing.) Some movies will also just be Paramount+ Originals in the first place, like the newest SpongeBob movie. Avatar Studios’ first project has been exclusively called a theatrical animated film. This seems to suggest that it will be in theaters at first, then a Paramount+ Original shortly after (probably the shortest, 30-day window if I were to guess). This is interesting because if it’s theatrical, that could suggest a big budget, especially if this is their first project they intend to make an impressive splash with. It could also potentially suggest 3D/CGI animation rather than 2D, but I personally don’t find that super likely. However, it could mean fancier 2D animation than we’re used to, and that’s saying a lot because we’re used to some pretty good animation from the Avatar franchise! The wording of “theatricals” could also just be used as a synonym for “films”, to indicate prestige, theatrical release quality and budget rather than made-for-TV or direct-to-DVD vibes.

In summary, it seems like right now, they’re covering all the bases, but if Paramount+ is as successful as they want it to be, it’s likely they would eventually (maybe quite soon) move more and more stuff into it exclusively. Currently, there’s also still a lot of uncertainty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and so the new state of the theatrical, linear, and streaming marketplaces hasn’t really crystallized yet either. The world does seem to be moving to streaming quite hard though, so while they’re covering all the bases right now, again, it’s likely most of this stuff will end up mainly as a Paramount+ thing.

And again, I mentioned TikTok as a possible experimental place for short-form content. Maybe. Especially if they make the next Avatar after Korra modern day?! Ok, let me not get ahead of myself...

Who will work at Avatar Studios?

We only know about Bryke so far. They’re the co-Chief Creative Officers.

Brandon Hoang, who was working with Bryke on live-action ATLA at Netflix, has confirmed he’s not involved. He also left Netflix at some point; not sure if it was at the exact same time or for the same reasons as Bryke, but he’s neither here nor there, as it were.

No, I don’t have anything to tell you about Jeremy Zuckerman. :)

Given that there will be multiple shows and movies, it’s likely that lots of different people will end up working on them. Bryke’s official statement said that they will “build [...] teams and productions” at Avatar Studios, and Mike also said that they will be “oversee[ing] the franchise”. Right now, we don’t know what exact role Bryke will have. They might write/direct/showrun some stuff themselves, or they might oversee other creatives they hire for those roles, or, likely, both-- different levels of involvement for different shows and movies.

As mentioned previously, Avatar Studios (probably) isn’t an animation production studio. This means they will still hire animation production studios, like Studio Mir, to do the animation itself. I say “like” Studio Mir, because I’m not sure if Studio Mir itself is free right now. They recently officially partnered with Netflix and have plenty of things on their plate there. So, it remains to be seen who will be doing the actual animation for Avatar Studios’ projects.

Lastly, this is an awesome opportunity to have the “culturally appropriate, non-whitewashed cast” assurance Bryke originally made for live-action ATLA both on and off the screen at Avatar Studios!

Netflix and live-action ATLA

There has been no news or updates on the live-action adaptation of ATLA being developed at Netflix, which Bryke was originally showrunning but left (to do all this!) over creative differences.

No, it’s not cancelled.

I suppose this makes it a little more likely that Netflix would choose to give up on it, but right now there have been no changes. The existence of Avatar Studios almost definitely has no effect on the licensing rights Netflix obtained to make a live-action ATLA adaptation-- that stuff is usually pretty iron-clad. Again, maybe in light of all this Netflix will choose to not go through with it, but they also might want to make it even more now to compete with Paramount+ on Avatar. We don’t really know the stances of the decisionmakers at Netflix, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Personal note

Over the last few months I’ve gotten a lot of, err, rude comments and messages whenever I said there could be new stuff coming. I’m really not here to say “I told you so”, because I don’t care-- I run Avatar News for fun.

But, I hope this goes to show that I wouldn't be posting things if I didn't have good factual reason to believe them, and that very much panned out very correctly here. Sometimes it’s directly or indirectly based on stuff I can't say publicly. I always have and always will post in a trustworthy, fact- and reason-based manner.

In light of that, and for just a bit of “I told you so”, here’s a timeline of all the Avatar News posts that led up to today. Definitely had a lot of fun re-reading these just now:

August 12th, 2020: Bryke left the Netflix live-action ATLA series two months ago. It’s not the end of the world.

September 15th, 2020: ViacomCBS is relaunching their streaming service next year as Paramount+, the future home of Avatar shows and movies?

September 17th, 2020: Anonymous asked: Do you think now that the original creators left the live action remake that they will make a new avatar animated series?

November 6th, 2020: CEO says Avatar franchise has potential for new original series on Paramount+, the new streaming service launching next year to compete with Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max

January 4th, 2021: “This also brings up another interesting point, which is that Bryke actually originally pitched this storyline to Nick as an animated movie after the show. That obviously didn’t happen, but now that Paramount+ is coming and teasing potential new Avatar content…”

January 5th, 2021: Investor day announcement

January 21st, 2021: The Fire Nation Awaits 🌺 An in-depth look at the ever-elusive islands in the era of Korra and when we will finally pay them a visit. See section: Are they saving the Fire Nation for an animated movie?

February 12th, 2021: All seven seasons of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra are coming to Paramount+ on March 4th!

February 20th, 2021: The musical themes of Avatar: An Avatar News interview with Jeremy Zuckerman. See section: “So, another streaming service: Paramount+.”

February 24th, 2021: Avatar Studios masterpost :)

[unprocione]

☄ * ⋆ — 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐐𝐔𝐈𝐑𝐊𝐒 & 𝐇𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐒. bold  what  applies.  italicize  what  sometimes  applies.  strike  what  doesn’t.   repost  &  don’t  reblog.

 likes  artificial  watermelon,    sleeps  in  what  they  are  already  wearing,    eats  their  cereal  with  milk,    listens  to  music  with  earbuds, (you WILL be exposed to his music tastes. you WILL enjoy elvis and metallica. you WILL lose your hearing.)    hates  the  summer,    can  recite  past  the  first  four  digits  of  pi,    eats  frosting  out  of  the  jar,    doodles  on  their  notebooks,    can  bake  cookies,    has  a  garden,    has  had  a  snowball  fight,    eats  pancakes  without  syrup,    prefers  shorts  over  pants,    can  name  more  than  ten  superheroes,    has  a  plan  for  the  zombie  apocalypse,      uses  the  same  password  for  everything,    can’t  hold  their  breath  for  more  than  fifteen  seconds,    watches  anime,   hasn’t  read  harry  potter,    can  say  ‘  i  love  you  ‘  in  more  than  one  language, (he can, but will he?)   prefers  mechanical  pencils,    thinks  space  is  cool,    takes  personality  tests  more  than  once  to  make  sure,    can’t  tie  their  shoelaces,    has  a  purse,    likes  salads,    likes  cool  colors  better  than  warm  colors,    knows  how  to  braid  hair,    reads  biographies,   can  ice  skate,    knows  their  mbti,    reads  astrology  charts,    prefers  the  star  wars  prequels  to  the  original  trilogy,    plays  video  games,   reads  the  newspaper,   likes  chocolate  ice  cream  best, (strawberry or die, punk)   doesn’t  cuss,    memorizes  song  lyrics,   collects  coupons,    has  a  preferred  order  at  starbucks,    likes  movie  theater  popcorn,    has  seen  a  play, (he got bored. does not get bored watching ballet though.)   listens  to  music  with  headphones,  owns  a  hoodie, (owns several. owns some cardigans.)   would  rather  own  cds  than  online  copies,    has  written  a  poem,    can  shuffle  cards,    subscribes  to  a  magazine, (it’s.. not sfw. okay listen. he’s not the best with any computers that aren’t umbrella super computers alright it’s his technological niche. him and the internet do not get along. thank you ethan for removing my pop-up ads you will have to do this again next month.)   double  dips  when  eating,   drinks  directly  out  of  the  milk  container,    keeps  a  journal. (submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known? by HIMSELF? no thanks. that sounds like therapy.)

tagged by: @nonangelic ! hiii don’t mind me just adoring ur lisa blog <3 tagging: @agntkennedy @shatteredfears @greenherb @sailento​ & whoever else would like to!