#al cardboard art

[aldreambox]

First post and its beyblade x 🔥 omg pierce the veil reference

[kikipancakes]

So I started writing a fic about your Worrywart injured Jason art. I'm not sure if it'll be good enough to share, but I wanted to share my Alfred's idea of a 'solution' to Jason's PTSD issues. Jason calls it the Crime Alley bed.

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"Floor," Jason mumbled, looking ready for a good, long sleep.

"Not this time, Master Jason," Alfred smirked, "I believe you'll find the accommodations adequate." Even Bruce was curious about that. They made their was up to Jason's room, where the two younger men blinked at Jason's bed. Jason burst out laughing through winces and 'ow's. The bed had cardboard laid over it, followed by a tarp as a blanket.

"Alfred, that's not funny!" Bruce scolded loudly.

"I never said it was. Master Jason is not well enough to sleep on the floor. The bed will at least allow for some give and comfort under the cardboard. However, I hardly see how this could remind him of that," Alfred explained.

"Home sweet home!" Jason laughed. "You know how to make a Crime Alley kid feel welcomed, Al, I'll give you that!" They heard a snort behind them, seeing Duke stopped outside the doorway. He looked like he wanted to say something, but was too busy trying to not lose it laughing and just walked away. "I think Duke's jealous, Alfred."

"And I believe I may have given you too high of a dose of painkillers, Master Jason." They helped Jason into his Crime Alley inspired bed, Bruce topping the tarp off with a comforter for his own peace of mind. Jason fell asleep far faster than they expected, Bruce sighing and shaking his head at the fact that he slept so well on cardboard and a tarp.

Drawing this is fic is referring to (x)

Hi! I'm so sorry for the late reply, I was either asleep bc timezones or I was at work ;;;;

HOLY SHIIIIT THIS IS AMAZING!!!!!! OMGGG I'm always in awe when ppl write something based on my silly drawings AAAAAA I LOVE THISSSSS!!!! I'm in love with the idea of Alfred not wanting to let Jason sleep on the floor so it makes him get creative haiusdhfauisf I can definitely imagine Alfred finding no joy in realizing his grandson would sleep better you put a cardboard box and a tarp on the bed AAAAAAAAAA and I love that Jason is chill and genuinely happy that he found a solution AAAAAHH!!! Bruce still being the worrywart that he is and putting a blanket on top of the tarp makes me smile so much haisduajksdnfam

I'm really happy that you're sharing it here!! I am absolutely not a writer so I'm always like WAAAAAHHHHH when ppl write things?? FOR ME?!?!?!?!? AAAAAAAA THANK YOUUUUUUUUUUU

[mariacallous]

I'm sharing this because I think it's kind of atrocious. Hasan Piker *and* Richard Reeves?! And it gets worse from there.

By the time I landed at LAX and switched my phone out of airplane mode, Hasan Piker had been streaming for three hours. I put in an earbud and watched as I filed off the plane. Visible behind him were walls of framed fan art, a cardboard cutout of Bernie Sanders sitting in the cold, and Piker’s huge puppy, Kaya, taking a nap. Piker had already shown off his “cozy-ass ’fit” (sweatpants with kitschy bald eagles, a custom pair of platform Crocs), and recounted his experience the previous night at the Streamer Awards, a red-carpet event honoring A-listers on Twitch—the popular live-streaming site where he is one of the biggest stars, and the only prominent leftist. He’d begun the day’s broadcast by rattling off a standard opening monologue: “Folks, we’re live and alive, and I hope all the boys, girls, and enbies”—nonbinary people—“are having a fantastic one.” To anyone listening for shibboleths, this would have pigeonholed him as a progressive. Also within view, though, were three towers of Zyn cannisters, and a “Make America Great Again” hat, which he sometimes wears ironically. He has the patter of a Rutgers frat bro and the laid-back charisma of a Miami club promoter, both of which he was, briefly, in his early twenties. Now he’s thirty-three—so old, in streamer years, that his fans call him “unc.”

I ordered a Lyft, then flipped back to Piker’s stream. By then, he was talking about the overthrow of the Assad regime in Syria, which had happened overnight. I watched as he cycled from BBC footage to Wikipedia, pausing every few seconds to add a diatribe or a joke. The angle he was developing was that Western journalists seemed too eager to portray the leader of the Syrian rebel forces in a heroic light. “I’m very skeptical of the fucking former Al Qaeda guy,” Piker said. A little while later, his doorbell rang, and he leaned over to buzz in a guest—me. I looked up from my phone to see him standing in his doorway. He doesn’t run ad breaks, so whenever he needs to do something off-camera, like answer the door or use the bathroom, he plays a video and attends to his business quickly, before his viewers can get bored. “I’m live right now, but we can talk when I’m done,” he told me, already walking away. “Try and stay out of the shot.”

In last year’s Presidential election, Democrats lost support with nearly every kind of voter: rich, poor, white, Black, Asian American, Hispanic. But the defection that alarmed Party strategists the most was that of young voters, especially young men, a group that Donald Trump lost by fifteen points in 2020 and won by fourteen points in 2024—a nearly thirty-point swing. “The only cohort of men that Biden won in 2020 was eighteen-to-twenty-nine-year-olds,” John Della Volpe, the polling director at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and a former adviser to Biden’s Presidential campaign, told me. “That was the one cohort they had to hold on to, and they let it go.”

Candidates matter; so does the national mood, and the price of groceries. Yet some Monday-morning quarterbacks also noted that, just as 1960 was the first TV election and 2016 was the first social-media election, the 2024 Presidential campaign was the first to be conducted largely on live streams and long-form podcasts, media that happen to be thoroughly dominated by MAGA bros. The biggest of them all, Joe Rogan, spent the final weeks of the campaign giving many hours of fawning airtime to Trump—and to his running mate, J. D. Vance, and his key allies, such as Elon Musk—before endorsing Trump on the eve of the election. “At no point was I, like, ‘Only I, a dickhead on the internet, am qualified to teach these kids why we need a functioning welfare state,’ ” Piker told me. “I just felt like no one else was really in these spaces trying to explain these things. Certainly not the Democrats.”

Piker has almost three million Twitch followers, and, as with most guys who talk into microphones on the internet, his audience skews young, male, and disaffected. At the peak of his Election Night stream in November, he had more than three hundred thousand viewers. He broadcasts seven days a week, eight to ten hours a day, usually from his house in West Hollywood, and he doesn’t use visual pyrotechnics to hold his viewers’ attention. Most of the time, what you see on his stream is an overlay of three things: a fixed shot of Piker sitting at his desk; a screen share of whatever he’s looking at on his computer; and his chat, where fans supply pertinent links, caps-lock shit talk, and puppy emojis, all surging in real time up the right side of the screen.

Although Piker hates Trump, he’s hardly a loyal Democrat. At bottom, he’s an old-school hard leftist, not a liberal. (On his bedside table he has some protein Pop-Tart knock-offs and a copy of “The Communist Manifesto.”) Many of his opinions—for example, that the “American empire” has been a destructive force, on the whole—would surely be off-putting to the median voter. But he is just one of many independent media creators with an anti-Trump message—in recent weeks, the political-podcast charts have included “The Bulwark,” “This Is Gavin Newsom,” and even a show called “Raging Moderates.” For a couple of weeks last month, a liberal show called “The MeidasTouch Podcast” beat out “The Joe Rogan Experience” for the No. 1 spot. “Corporate media, too often, has a both-sides perspective,” Ben Meiselas, one of the “MeidasTouch” co-hosts, told me. “We do not mince words about the threat to workers, the threat to democracy.”

One piece of fan art on Piker’s wall is a cartoon of him operating a day-care center, shielding a roomful of lost boys from the malign chaos of the open internet. “You gravitate to him because he’s just a voice you find relatable,” Piker’s producer, who goes by Marche, told me. “A lot of people don’t even put a political label on it, at least at first.” Piker gets up early every morning to work out, posting his daily stats so that his fans—his “community”—can follow along from home. He gives dating advice and motivational speeches. At a moment when there seems to be an ever-shortening algorithmic pipeline from bench-pressing tips to misogynist rage, Piker tries to model a more capacious form of masculinity: a straight guy, six feet four and movie-star handsome, who’s as comfortable wearing camo to a gun range as he is walking a red carpet in split-toe Margiela boots. Once viewers have come to trust him, they may be more open to his riffs on the rights of the poor or of trans people—delivered not as a primer on Judith Butler but in the register of “Bro, don’t be a dick.”

I pulled up a chair, just out of frame. Kaya ambled toward me, vetting my scent. Piker talked, almost without interruption, for four more hours, holding forth about recent internet drama, a documentary about the history of NATO, and the UnitedHealthcare C.E.O.’s assassin, who had not yet been identified. Within reach of his rolling desk chair was a mini-fridge full of cold brew and Diet Mountain Dew. Some of his takes were too unpolished for prime time. (“Bro, these guys are so cucked,” he said, critiquing a clip from a rival podcast on the right.) Then again, a live stream isn’t supposed to be a tight, scripted lecture. It’s supposed to be a good hang.

“I gotta end the broadcast here,” he said, shortly after 8 P.M. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” After turning the camera off, he seemed to deflate a bit. Comments were still floating up one of his monitors—the thousands of fans in the chat had dwindled to a few hundred, the inner circle who were devoted enough, or lonely enough, to keep one another company after the feed had gone dark. “The Democrats are smug and condescending, and everything they say sounds fake as shit,” Piker said. “Trump lies constantly, yes, but at least people get the sense that he’s authentically saying what he’s thinking.”

He put his feet up and reached for a fresh Zyn pouch. “Young men, like a lot of Americans, feel increasingly alienated,” he continued. They can’t afford college or rent, they can’t get a date, they can’t imagine a stable future. “The right is always there to tell them, ‘Yes, you should be angry, and the reason your life sucks is because of immigrants, or because a trans kid played a sport.’ And all the Democrats are telling them is ‘No, shut up, your life is fine, be joyful.’ ” No one has ever accused Piker of being a moderate, but in this case he is trying to forge a compromise. “My way is to go, ‘Look, be angry if you want. But your undocumented neighbor is not the problem here. You’re looking in the wrong direction.’ ”

In 2015, the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton wrote that “white non-Hispanics without college degrees” were experiencing an anomalous spike in mortality from opioids, alcohol, and suicide. They later called these “deaths of despair.” In 2016, J. D. Vance, then an anti-Trump conservative, published a memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” about the struggles of white rural families like his own. Promoting the book on PBS, he explained (but did not yet excuse) why such voters were drawn to Trump: “I think that the sense of cultural alienation breeds a sense of mistrust.” The first Trump Administration didn’t deliver many material gains to the rural poor—deaths of despair continued to rise, and wages continued to stagnate—but at least Trump spoke to their anguish and seemed outraged on their behalf. In retrospect, the question may not be why so many non-urban non-élites became Trump Republicans but what took them so long.

Around the same time, social scientists started to notice an overlapping crisis. The statistics were grim—twenty-first-century males were, relative to their forefathers and their female contemporaries, much more likely to fall behind in school, drop out of college, languish in the workforce, or die by overdose or suicide. The title of a 2012 book by the journalist Hanna Rosin declared “The End of Men.” The following year, the economists Marianne Bertrand and Jessica Pan published a paper called “The Trouble with Boys.” In one survey, more than a quarter of men in their teens and twenties reported having no close friends. When Covid hit, men were significantly more likely to die from it.

“In the fifteen years I’ve been looking at the statistics, the outcomes for men have not changed,” Rosin told me. “What did change, tremendously, is the culture.” The last Democratic Presidential candidate to win the male vote was Barack Obama. When Bernie Sanders ran for President, he had a zealous male following, but many top Democrats treated the “Bernie bros” less like a force to be harnessed than like a threat to be vanquished. A “White Dudes for Harris” Zoom call raised millions for Kamala Harris’s campaign, but it would have been anathema to her base if she’d given a speech about what she planned to do for white dudes. This was, meanwhile, a key part of Trump’s appeal.

In a 2022 book, “Of Boys and Men,” Richard Reeves, a social scientist and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, blasts Republicans for exploiting “male dislocation” and misogynist fury at the expense of women’s rights. But he also lambastes Democrats for “pathologizing masculinity.” He gives an example from his sons’ high school in Bethesda, Maryland, where boys passed around a spreadsheet ranking their female classmates by attractiveness—behavior that Reeves describes as “immature,” even “harmful,” but not worthy of an international incident, which is what it became. He writes that “indiscriminately slapping the label of ‘toxic masculinity’ onto this kind of behavior is a mistake,” likely to propel young men “to the online manosphere where they will be reassured that they did nothing wrong, and that liberals are out to get them.”

At some point between Bill Clinton playing the saxophone on “The Arsenio Hall Show” and Hillary Clinton describing potential voters as “deplorables,” the Democrats came to be perceived as the party of scolds and snobs. Liberals used to be the counterculture; today, they’re the defenders of traditional norms and institutions. This may not have been the best political strategy at any time; it certainly isn’t now, when trust in institutions has never been lower. It’s impossible to know how many young men fit into this category, but there is clearly a kind of guy—the contemporary don’t-tread-on-me type who demands both the freedom to have gay friends and the freedom to use “gay” as an insult—who resents the idea of his morality being dictated by the family-values right or his speech being curtailed by the hall-monitor left. When pressed, many of these young men seem to have bought the pitch that, of the two parties, the Republicans were the less censorious. This may have been a miscalculation—the current Trump Administration has already banished dozens of words from government websites and, just last week, arrested a former Columbia student for what seems to be protected speech—but you can’t convince voters that they’ve been misinformed simply by lecturing them. The lecturing is part of the issue.

“Democrats got used to speaking about men as the problem, not as people with problems,” Reeves told me. “But of course men do have problems, and problems become grievances when you ignore them.” He knows a lot of well-connected Democrats in Washington, and for years he has urged them to campaign on men’s issues—“not in a zero-sum way, certainly not taking anything away from women, but just to show boys and men, ‘Hey, you’re also having a tough go of it, we see you.’ And the response I always got was ‘Now is not the time.’ ”

Rosin told me about a husband and wife she’d met in Alabama, in 2010. The husband lost his job, and the wife became the breadwinner, an arrangement he experienced as deeply shameful. “She would put the check down on the kitchen table, she would sign it over to him, and he would cash it, and nobody would speak about it,” Rosin said. “But then ‘man-victim’ became a viable identity.” As Rosin stayed in touch with the man, he started exhibiting a more “mischievous” expression of men’s-rights sensibilities, wearing a T-shirt that read “My Cave, My Rules.” This coincided with the rise of Trump, the man-victim’s patron saint. He didn’t offer detailed policy solutions to any of the underlying sociological problems, but, again, he addressed them directly. (“It is a very scary time for young men in America,” Trump said in 2018.)

Like most internet terms, “manosphere” is vague and protean; it has been applied to Ben Shapiro, a father of four who delivers conservative talking points in a yarmulke, and to Andrew Tate, a Bugatti-driving hustler who has been charged with human trafficking. In 2016, after a reedy Canadian professor named Jordan Peterson refused to use gender-neutral pronouns, he was taken up as a folk hero, like Galileo standing firm against the Inquisition. Peterson has almost nothing in common with, say, Dave Portnoy, another mascot of the bro-sphere, who mostly just wants to be left alone to eat pizza and drink beer by the pool. Yet they all seem to be meeting a demand in the cultural marketplace, one that could be as simple, at its root, as a dorm-room poster of Marlon Brando on a motorcycle or Johnny Cash flipping off the camera.

Last month, Richard Reeves was a guest on a popular podcast hosted by Theo Von, a formerly apolitical comedian who recently went to Trump’s Inauguration. Von, an infectiously affable guy with a mullet, presents himself as a curious goofball with essentially no prior knowledge on any topic. At one point he spoke—without much nuance, but also without apparent malice—about the plight of the white man. “I’m not speaking against any other group,” he said. “I’m just saying . . . you can’t make white males feel like they don’t exist.” Von grew up poor in a small town in Louisiana. “Yes, I know there’s privilege, but if you grew up with nothing you didn’t fucking feel any privilege sometimes.”

If Von had made this observation at a Trump rally, or on X, he might have been led from just-asking-questions guilelessness to more overt white aggrievement. If he’d made the same point in a liberal-arts seminar, or on Bluesky, he might have been shouted down. (When I got to this part of the podcast, I have to admit, my own inner hall monitor was on high alert.) But Reeves, looking a bit trepidatious, tried to thread the needle, introducing some academic caveats without coming across as a scold. “The U.S. has a uniquely terrible history when it comes to slavery,” he said. But he also noted that low-income white men were at particularly high risk of suicide. “Two things can be true at once,” he said.

The hallmark of social media is disinhibition born of anonymity. On the internet, no one knows whether you’re a dog, a Macedonian teen-ager, or the Pope wearing a puffer jacket. Podcasts, on the other hand, are built on parasociality: Michael Barbaro isn’t your friend, but, after making coffee with him in your ear a hundred times, you start to feel as if he were. And then there’s the world of always-on streaming, in which the temptations of parasociality are even more acute. The inputs are both aural and visual. The hosts respond to your comments in real time, at all hours. You can remind yourself not to bond with the pixels on the screen, but you may fall for the illusion all the same, like a baby chick imprinting on a robot. Piker treats fans in a way that can be confusingly intimate, giving them avuncular life advice one minute and thirst-trap photos the next. His Twitch handle is Hasanabi, “abi” being Turkish for “big brother”; his fans are called “Hasanabi heads,” or “parasocialists.”

Even as most of his fellow-streamers have drifted to the right, Piker has remained a staunch leftist. His explanation for this is that he is from Turkey, where “the idea that American economic and military power runs the world—that was, like, ‘Yeah, duh.’ ” He was born in New Jersey and grew up mostly in Ankara and Istanbul, in an upper-middle-class family, spending summers with relatives in the U.S. and watching a lot of American TV. (He speaks English with an American accent.) His father, an economist, is “more of a neolib, World Bank-loving type,” Piker told me. “We argue about it all the time, but it’s not heated.” His mother, an art-and-architecture historian, is more aligned with his politics. “The inequality is just so blatant,” she told me. “It was never fair, but now we have the internet—everyone can see it.”

Despite Piker’s brand as a brash outsider, he is, in an almost literal sense, a nepo baby. After graduating from Rutgers, in 2013, he moved to Los Angeles and got a job with his maternal uncle, Cenk Uygur, who happened to be the founder and host of “The Young Turks,” one of the biggest left-populist talk shows on the internet. The show had a considerable footprint on YouTube, but Piker helped it adapt to punchier formats that were better suited to Facebook and Instagram. “You’ve got to understand, I remember when this was a pudgy kid and I was changing his diapers,” Uygur told me. “Now, suddenly, he’s this handsome man, he’s dynamic, he’s killing it in front of the camera.” Piker hosted a recurring video segment called “Agitprop,” and picked fights with the right-wing influencers of the day, such as Tomi Lahren and Representative Dan Crenshaw. He got himself in trouble—“America deserved 9/11” was not a particularly good take, even in context—but he also expanded his name recognition. In 2017, BuzzFeed dubbed him “woke bae.”

Although he made some of the outlet’s most popular videos, he didn’t own the I.P. (Even when the boss is your uncle, you can still be alienated from the means of production.) So, in 2020, he decided to go solo, on Twitch. His mother joined him in Los Angeles, and they formed a pandemic pod in a two-bedroom apartment. “He was on there non-stop, shouting about video games or sex advice or whatever,” she told me. “His fans would see me in the background, cringing, and they would send me earplugs in the mail.” That year, he spent forty-two per cent of his time live on camera. (Not forty-two per cent of his waking hours—forty-two per cent of all the hours in the year.) In a call-in segment called “Chadvice,” Piker coached men through the small terrors and triumphs of daily life. One twenty-eight-year-old from Finland described himself as having an Asperger’s diagnosis and an “abject fear of rejection”; Piker, with solicitude and just enough amiable ribbing, spent half an hour talking him through the social mechanics of a first date.

When Twitch first launched, it was a niche platform where bored adolescents could watch other adolescents play video games. In 2014, Amazon bought it for nearly a billion dollars—an eye-popping amount, at least back then—even as mainstream analysts knew almost nothing about it. “My demographic hem is showing,” the columnist David Carr admitted in the Times; still, he concluded, “there is clear value in owning so much screen time of a hard-to-reach demographic of young men.” One article referred to Twitch as “talk radio for the extremely online.”

I first met Piker in February of 2020, on Boston Common, while covering a rally during Bernie Sanders’s Presidential campaign. Most of us travelling correspondents were youngish reporters from oldish outlets, wearing blue button-downs and carrying notebooks in the back pockets of our Bonobos. Piker wasn’t much younger, but he dressed as if he were from another planet, in black nail polish and cargo pants that, at the time, struck me as incomprehensibly wide. He carried an “I.R.L. backpack,” a portable camera setup that streamers use (I learned) when they venture out into the world. Admirers in the crowd kept interrupting him and asking for photos, a nuisance that, for whatever reason, didn’t afflict the rest of us. I still didn’t get why viewers would hang around on his stream all day when they could get an unimpeded view of Sanders’s speech on YouTube. Obviously, my demographic hem was showing. You might as well ask why a fan would watch a football game at a bar when he could concentrate better alone, or read a summary of the game in tomorrow’s paper. Piker’s followers wanted to watch the rally through his eyes because they wanted to be his friend.

In October, 2020, Piker spent a couple of hours playing the group video game Among Us with some special guests, including the congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They occasionally mentioned the ostensible purpose of the event—getting out the vote—but mostly they made easygoing small talk. On Election Day, Piker streamed for sixteen hours straight, chugging energy drinks. His mother made several onscreen cameos, delivering him plates of home-cooked food. “I wouldn’t do it for this long if it wasn’t for you,” he told his viewers at the end of the night. “Love you bro!” a commenter typed. “See you tomorrow.”

After the 2024 election, Democratic strategists argued that what the anti-Trump coalition needed was a “Joe Rogan of the left.” There once was such a person. His name was Joe Rogan. “I’m socially about as liberal as it gets,” Rogan said earlier this month. He has a live-and-let-live attitude about sex, drugs, and abortion. (He is also extremely open to conspiracy theories about 9/11, J.F.K., and Jeffrey Epstein, an inclination that was left-coded until very recently.) In 2014, when Rogan was a fan of “The Young Turks,” Piker met him at the Hollywood Improv, and they sat and talked for two hours. (The topics included “weed, psychedelics, the state of media and girls,” Piker wrote at the time. “Top ten coolest moments of my life.”) During the 2020 Democratic primary, Rogan interviewed three Presidential candidates—Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang, and Bernie Sanders—and concluded that Sanders was his favorite. “I believe in him,” Rogan said. “He’s been insanely consistent his entire life.”

It’s hard to fathom now, but Rogan’s support was then considered a liability. “The Sanders campaign must reconsider this endorsement,” the Human Rights Campaign wrote, citing transphobic and racist remarks from Rogan’s past. In retrospect, this was the height (or perhaps the nadir) of a kind of purity-test politics that was making some swing voters, including Rogan, feel less at home in the Democratic coalition. In 2022, Neil Young removed his music from Spotify to protest Rogan’s vaccine skepticism; Rogan took ivermectin, which CNN mocked as a horse dewormer. “I can afford people medicine, motherfucker,” Rogan told CNN’s chief medical correspondent, adding that the medication had been prescribed by his doctor. “This is ridiculous.”

In 2016, every one of Trump’s baby steps toward normalization—doing a goofy dance on “Saturday Night Live,” getting his hair ruffled by Jimmy Fallon—was treated as a scandal. But by 2024 anyone with access to Spotify or YouTube could find hours of flattering footage of Trump looking like a chill, approachable grandpa. While interviewing Trump at one of his golf clubs, Theo Von used his free-associative style to great effect, prompting as much introspection in Trump as any interviewer has. (Von: “Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie.” Trump: “And is that a good feeling?”) Trump invited the Nelk Boys, prank-video influencers with their own brand of hard seltzer, to eat Chick-fil-A on his private plane. He sat in a Cybertruck with the baby-faced, fascist-curious streamer Adin Ross, testing the stereo. “Who’s, like, your top three artists?” Ross asked. “Well, we love Frank Sinatra, right?” Trump said. Ross invited him to pick a song, and Trump, “thinking that it’s gonna come back under proper management,” picked “California Dreamin’.”

Collectively, these shows reached tens of millions of potential voters. Most were presumably young men, many of them the kind of American who is both the hardest and the most crucial for a campaign to reach: the kind who is not seeking out political news. Trump ended his parasocial-media tour by sitting in Joe Rogan’s studio, in Austin, for three hours. That’s too long for anyone, even a champion of rhetorical rope-a-dope, to go without gaffes—which was part of the point. While repeating his timeworn case that the 2020 election was rigged, Trump let out a shocking Freudian slip—“I lost by . . .”—before quickly trying to recover: “I didn’t lose.” Rogan laughed in his face. No one cared. On YouTube alone, the episode got more than fifty million views, and the reaction was overwhelmingly positive. “Unedited/uncensored interviews should be required of all candidates,” one of the top comments read.

Harris tried. She appeared on a few big podcasts—“Club Shay Shay,” whose audience is primarily Black, and “Call Her Daddy,” whose audience is mostly female—but she never made inroads with the comedy bros. (The closest she got was an interview with Howard Stern, a former shock jock who now seems wholesome, like Little Richard in the era of Lil Baby.) Harris’s staffers tried to get her booked on “Hot Ones,” the YouTube show on which celebrities answer innocuous questions while eating sadistically spicy chicken wings, but even “Hot Ones” turned her down. Her campaign staffers insisted that she wanted to do Rogan’s show, but that it fell through for scheduling reasons. Rogan claimed that he was eager to interview her, and that he was even willing to keep certain topics off-limits. “I said, ‘I don’t give a fuck,’ ” he told Theo Von. “I feel like, if you give someone a couple of hours, and you start talking about anything, I’m going to see the pattern of the way you think . . . whether you’re calculated or whether you’re just free.”

Imagine the set of a prototypical man-cave podcast, and “Flagrant,” co-founded by the comedian Andrew Schulz, wouldn’t be far off: four dudes lounging around, with a few plastic plants and a shelf of brown liquor behind them. Trump sat with them in October, and Schulz and the other hosts buttered him up, asking him about his kids. “Barron is eighteen,” Schulz said. “He’s unleashed in New York City. Are you sure you want to reverse Roe v. Wade now?” An hour in, they cut to an ad break. “Hard-dick season is upon us, and you gotta make sure that you’re stiffed up,” Schulz said. “BlueChew has got your back.”

“Flagrant” is taped weekly at a studio in SoHo. I visited one Wednesday in February. Schulz arrived just after noon, opened a fridge stocked with cans of tequila- and THC-infused seltzer, and grabbed a bottle of water. He sports a mustache and a chain necklace, and his hair is tight on the sides and slicked back on top. (During a show at Madison Square Garden, a fellow-comedian described Schulz’s look as “the Tubi version of Adolf Hitler.”) He’s a throwback to an old New York archetype: the melting-pot white guy who tells hyper-specific ethnic jokes with a sly smile and, for the most part, gets away with it. He did a crowd-work special that included sections called “Mexican,” “Colombian,” and “Black Women.” His newest special, about his wife’s experience with I.V.F., includes moments of real tenderness, but he still insists on his right to do old-fashioned bits about the battle between the sexes. “We all have feelings that are a little bit wrong,” Schulz said. “ ‘Take my wife, please’—that’s a fucked-up premise, but there’s a seed of a feeling there that’s real. It’s the comedian’s job to make you comfortable enough to laugh at it.”

Schulz grew up in lower Manhattan, where his parents owned a dance studio and he went to public school. “My family was super liberal,” he told me. “This was in the nineties, when being a liberal, to me, just meant ‘I don’t hate gay people or Black people’—normal shit.” He now thinks of himself as apolitical, and he acknowledged all the reasons to distrust Trump, but the word he kept using, whenever Trump came up, was “enticing.” “I still appreciate a lot of the policies Bernie talked about, universal health care and all that,” he said. “But culture-wise? Vibe-wise? When all you hear from one side is ‘That’s not funny, that’s over the line’—realistically, where are people gonna feel more comfortable?”

Trump is known for his bloviating, but Schulz suggested that his greater talent may be a kind of listening. “Democrats are tuned in to what people should feel,” he said. “Trump is tuned in to what people actually fucking feel.” Schulz noted that, as a boundary-pushing performer, this was also one of his own key skills: gauging micro-fluctuations in an audience’s reaction. When Trump appeared on “Flagrant,” he talked about being taken to a hospital in rural Pennsylvania after he was shot, and how impressed he was with the “country doctors” who’d treated him. “I laughed at that, ’cause I just thought ‘country doctors’ was a funny phrase,” Schulz told me. “He clocks me laughing at it, and in the next sentence he immediately says it again, and he watches me to make sure I laugh again.”

“Flagrant” bills itself as “THE GREATEST HANG IN THE UNIVERSE!” I spent the rest of the day watching Schulz and his co-hosts tape an episode (and then an extra segment sponsored by an online betting platform, and then an extra extra segment for Patreon), and I could imagine some places in the universe that would have been greater. One of the running gags in the episode was that the hosts kept pronouncing the word “prerecorded” as “pre-retarded.” At one point, a host volunteered how many times he’d masturbated in a single day, and his record was so formidable that the others looked worried for him. In fairness, though, even a solid hang can’t be scintillating all the time. One function of a long-standing friendship, including a parasocial one, is simply to while away the hours, even when there isn’t much to say.

When it comes to parasocial media, MAGA has had a long head start. Before Dan Bongino was Trump’s deputy F.B.I. director, he was a popular, blustery podcaster; after Matt Gaetz withdrew from consideration as Attorney General, he announced that he would host a TV show and a podcast (his third). During the Biden Administration, about a dozen Republicans were both active podcast hosts and sitting members of Congress, while most Democrats hardly seemed interested in trying. Before the “Flagrant” taping, Schulz and I had been discussing which qualities the Democrats should look for in their next crop of leaders, and afterward he returned to the question. “They need someone who can really hang,” he said. “Obama could hang. Clinton, for sure—Bill, not Hillary. Trump can hang.” I ran through the shortlist: Pete Buttigieg? Schulz wrinkled his nose—too polished. A.O.C.? “When she’s being the working-class chick from the Bronx, I could see it,” he said. “But when she starts going on MSNBC and doing ‘We have an orange rapist in the White House’—then you start to lose people.”

Schulz said that he’d invited Kamala Harris and Tim Walz to appear on the show “numerous times,” to no avail. (The Harris campaign says that Schulz never sent a formal invitation.) He couldn’t be sure why Walz had stayed away from podcasts like his, but he had guesses. “If we’ve got on a guy who was in the military for twenty years, at some point I’m gonna go, ‘Cut the shit, Tim, you know how guys really talk,’ ” Schulz said. “And then let’s say we start busting balls, making gay jokes, whatever—does he laugh? If he does, he pisses off his people. If he doesn’t, he loses our people.” Walz was added to the Presidential ticket because he was able to talk like a regular person who could make the opposition seem “weird” by contrast. But, things being as they are, Schulz said, “the Democrats can’t let a guy like that loose.”

When Trump was on “Flagrant,” Akaash Singh, a co-host who refers to himself as a “moderate,” encouraged him to consider practicing self-restraint. “What we love about you as comedians is you shoot from the hip,” Singh said. “If you get elected, would you be a little more mindful of how powerful your words are?”

“I will,” Trump said. “And I’m gonna think of you every time.”

“Let’s go!” Singh said, jumping up and pumping his fist. “I might actually vote.”

Piker starts streaming at eleven every morning, so everything else has to happen before then, or at night. At 7 a.m. one day, he drove Kaya to a nearby park, to take her for a walk, then played basketball for half an hour. He saw me eying his car, a Porsche Taycan. “It’s not the flashiest model I could afford,” he protested, before I could say anything. “But yes, admittedly, it is a fucking Porsche.” When Piker is criticized by the right, it’s usually for soft-pedalling the brutality of Hamas, or the Houthis, or the Chinese Communist Party. (Piker is such a relentless critic of Israel that, last year, the advocacy group StopAntisemitism nominated him for “Antisemite of the Year”; when asked his opinion of Hezbollah, he once shrugged and replied, “I don’t have an issue with them.”) By the left, he is more likely to be dismissed as a limousine socialist who lives in a $2.7-million house. He has his own clothing brand, called Ideologie.

While driving home, he took a call from his manager. A major production company wanted to discuss a potential TV show, hosted by Piker, in the vein of “Borat” or “Nathan for You.” His manager asked if he wanted to be interviewed by Megyn Kelly on her radio show. “No.” A daytime show on Fox News? “No.” Buttigieg’s people had asked if Piker would interview Buttigieg on his stream. “Probably not, but I’ll think about it,” Piker said—too centrist. “If he’s thinking about running for President, I don’t really wanna be giving him clout.” In his kitchen, he took a few fistfuls of supplements: creatine, fish oil, Ashwagandha. Still on the phone with his manager, he sat at his desktop, skimming stories he might cover. Then, a few minutes before he went live, he started seeing news alerts: Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the UnitedHealthcare assassination, had just been arrested. Whatever else he’d been planning to talk about was now irrelevant. “Holy shit, they got him,” Piker told his manager. “I gotta go.”

“Mamma mia!” he said, on air. “This is the first day where there will be no Italiophobia on this broadcast.” Already, his chat was full of spaghetti emojis and “FREE LUIGI!” Piker walked a fine line—celebrating Mangione as “hotter than me” and speaking in generally exalted terms about “the propaganda of the deed,” but trying to stop short of overtly glorifying murder, which is against Twitch’s terms of service. “We, of course, do not condone,” he said repeatedly. “We condemn.” (Recently, he was suspended from Twitch for twenty-four hours after musing that someone may want to “kill Rick Scott,” the Florida senator.)

In fact, he reserved his condemnation for the finger-wagging from the “corporate media,” as exhibited everywhere from Fox News to CNN. “Bro, they can’t let anybody have anything,” he said later. For six hours straight, his chatters sent him links to new information as it emerged—Mangione’s Goodreads account, his Twitter history, his high-school valedictorian speech. On my own, I would have been tempted to spend the day following the same bread crumbs, struggling to retrace Mangione’s path to radicalization. But it was easier to let Piker and the forty thousand internet sleuths in his chat make sense of it for me.

Many of Piker’s viewers come to him with inchoate opinions. He aims to mold them. But, he told me, of the stream, “at the end of the day, it still has to be relatable and entertaining.” One of his maxims is “Read the room.” In his case, this means posting many hours of content about nothing in particular. Stavros Halkias, a comedian and a friend of Piker’s, told me, “He’s built up enough trust with his audience that, if he’s being boring and academic for forty minutes, they’ll stick with it until he starts doing something more interesting, playing a Japanese dating simulator or whatever.” Some days, he puts on a Trump hat and streams as Hank Pecker, a “Colbert Report”-style satirical character updated for the MAGA era. In another room of his house, Piker records a weekly podcast with three buddies, an apolitical chat show on which one of the most heated topics of recent debate was proper manscaping technique, and another was whether one of them farted. Marche, the producer, was proud to tell me that the podcast’s audience is about sixty per cent male—“which sounds like a lot, but actually most shows in this space are eighty-twenty male, or eighty-five-fifteen.” One theory for this lopsidedness is that, given all the “End of Men” statistics, women have better things to do with their time, such as holding down meaningful jobs and cultivating lasting relationships, while men are stuck playing video games with their imaginary friends.

Recently, on a MAGA-bro podcast, Piker reached across the aisle, adapting “eight hours for what you will” to the current decadent moment. “Deep down inside, most people just wanna be comfortable,” he said. “They wanna have a roof over their heads, they want a fuckin’ nice meal, get some pussy . . . play Marvel Rivals.” In recent years, Piker has stopped using the word “retarded,” but he still uses the word “pussy,” even though it may sound misogynist, and “lame,” despite fans who consider the term ableist. “I don’t give a shit,” Piker said. “If you can’t handle it, then I guess I’m not for you.” When his commenters try to tone-police him, Piker will often single one of them out and say, “Congratulations, chatter, you’ve won Woke of the Day.” It’s not a compliment.

The day after Mangione’s arrest, Piker had back-to-back interviews with Lina Khan, then the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, whom Piker called “the LeBron James of regulators,” and with the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, promoting his new book. In the chat, a user named PapiJohn36 wrote, “Not to be parasocial, but I love this man.” Piker’s mother stopped by during the Coates interview. “Hasan, check your messages!” she shouted from the kitchen. Piker, grudgingly but dutifully, read his mother’s message aloud: “I got his book for the content and fell in love with his writing.”

“Thank you, Hasan’s mom,” Coates said. In the living room, Piker’s father was sprawled on the couch watching “Love Actually.”

Halkias, the comedian, showed up later that afternoon, with a bag of dirty laundry and a calendar featuring photos of himself posing in the nude. While many of Halkias’s comedian friends have taken a reactionary turn, he has stuck to his progressive principles, but he has never been a hall monitor. (He got his start on a podcast called “Cum Town.”) “Ladies and gentlemen, boys, girls, and enbies,” Piker said, “we’ve got the left’s Joe Rogan here in the building!” In the “Rogan of the left” discourse, both Piker and Halkias are frequently mentioned as top prospects. Even if they were secretly flattered by the designation, the least alpha thing they could do—the least Roganesque thing they could do—would be to thirst for it. “Free Luigi,” Halkias said, taking a seat. “He’s too sexy to be behind bars.”

As a model for the future of progressive media, Piker checks only some of the requisite boxes. A while back, he was a guest on “Flagrant”; when I asked one of the show’s staffers about Piker’s performance, he gave it a middling review. “Good guy, clearly knows his shit, but he sort of comes off like he thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room.” Piker sometimes succumbs to the socialist bro’s cardinal sin of pedantry, and he can seem like a jejune know-it-all trying to reduce any societal problem to a one-word culprit, usually “capitalism” or “imperialism.” Some segments of the Democratic coalition would find Piker to be edgy, or crass, or even despicable. But, if “Rogan of the left” is to mean anything, it would surely mean a higher tolerance for controversy, even at the risk of alienating parts of the base.

On the scale of “whether you’re calculated or whether you’re just free,” Piker is freer than most Democratic surrogates, Ivy League overachievers who sound like chatbots trained on stacks of campaign brochures. But he is less free than the average MAGA bro, who is unconstrained by the need for any consistent ideology. “He’s funny, but not that funny,” Halkias told me. “You can tell him I said that.” Halkias has his own podcast, on which he gives advice to callers. On the normier part of the spectrum are liberal influencers like Dean Withers and Harry Sisson, who have transferred the “debate me, bro” spirit of early YouTube to TikTok Live.

One afternoon, in L.A., I visited the office of Crooked Media, which was decorated with some Yes We Can iconography and had glass-walled conference rooms with cheeky names such as “Sedition” and “Conspiracy.” When the company began, in 2017, its three founders, former Obama staffers named Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor, and Jon Favreau, were treated as audacious upstarts challenging the media hierarchy. Now they are middle-aged bosses in Henleys and tapered jeans. We sat in “Legitimate Political Discourse.” A long table had been laid with LaCroix and PopCorners. “We have become the out-of-touch lib establishment,” Vietor said. Lovett added, “My, how time flies.”

Crooked now has more than a dozen podcasts, including its flagship show, “Pod Save America.” Vietor recounted a time, a few years back, when a friend invited him to appear on a show put out by Barstool Sports, a bro-y podcast network that leans right. Vietor, worried about guilt by association, turned it down. “Looking back, that was so stupid,” he said. “The ‘how dare you platform someone you disagree with’ era is over. Fuck that.” (He has since appeared on the show.) In 2018, Favreau was hosting a show called “The Wilderness,” about how the Democratic Party lost its way, and wanted to include a clip of Obama reaching out to the white working class. “A younger producer listened and went, ‘I’m not sure this plays well today,’ ” Favreau said. “And I went, ‘That’s part of the problem!’ ” After the 2024 election, Piker appeared on “Pod Save America.” Lovett got pushback from moderate fans, who objected to Piker’s anti-Zionism, and from progressive fans, who objected to Lovett’s next interview, with a Democrat who wants restrictions on trans women in sports—but he shrugged it off. “It’s a big tent,” Lovett said. “It’s got Dick Cheney in it. It’s got Hasan Piker in it.”

The “Rogan of the left” formulation isn’t entirely vacuous, but it’s easy to misinterpret. Rogan-like figures can’t be engineered; they have to develop organically. Their value lies in their idiosyncrasies—their passionate insistence on talking about chimps and ancient pyramids, say, rather than the budget ceiling—and in their authenticity, which entails an aversion to memorizing talking points. Many Democrats assume that what they have is a messaging problem—that voters don’t have a clear enough sense of what the Democrats are really like. But it’s possible that the problem is the opposite: that many swing voters, including Joe Rogan, got a sense of what the Democrats were like, then ran in the opposite direction.

The good news for Democrats is that the right does not have a monopoly on relatability. A week before his interview with Trump, Theo Von conducted an interview with Bernie Sanders while wearing a Grateful Dead shirt. “You ever see the Grateful Dead?” Von said, as an icebreaker. Sanders, apparently unfamiliar with the concept, frowned and said, “Um, no.” From any other politician, this would have been malpractice, but with Sanders the crankiness is part of the crossover charm. (“He literally just talks common sense,” one of the top YouTube comments read.) A few months later, Rogan interviewed Senator John Fetterman. “Trump is not polished, but you get a sense of who he is as a human being,” Rogan said. Fetterman agreed, alluding to a line from “Scarface”: “All I have in this world is my balls and my word.”

Reeves, the social scientist, told me, “There is a strong correlation between which Democratic lawmakers are in my inbox and which ones have the year 2028 circled on their calendar.” Senator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, read Reeves’s book in 2023 and praised it on X; many of Murphy’s constituents, including his fourteen-year-old son, took issue with his post. Nevertheless, he persisted, writing a follow-up on Substack: “We should try to do two things at once—fight for the equality of women and gay people, while also trying hard to figure out why so many boys are struggling and why so many men are feeling shitty.” Sanders and Fetterman share what could be described as populist instincts, but ideologically they are leagues apart. On the level of pure affect, though, they may represent elements of a style that other politicians could crib from. “Personally, I find the performance of masculinity to be totally boring,” Hanna Rosin told me. “But if that’s what fifty-one per cent of Americans need—someone who reads as some version of ‘gruff, manly dude,’ but whose heart is still in the right place—then I’m willing to go along with it.”

Twitch stars often appear on one another’s streams, hoping to pick up some new fans. One afternoon, Piker headed to Zoo Culture, a gym in Encino owned by a streamer and fitness influencer named Bradley Martyn, to do a “collab.” It would also feature Jason Nguyen, a twenty-year-old Twitch star from Texas who goes by JasonTheWeen. “Bradley’s a big Trump guy, and we talk politics sometimes, but mostly we just talk about gym-bro shit,” Piker told me. “Jason probably leans Trump, if I had to guess, but his content isn’t really political at all.” (“I dont lean towards anyone,” Nguyen wrote when reached for comment. “I dont want anything to do with politics 😭.”)

By the time we got to the gym, Nguyen was already there, performing for the camera by flirting with a woman on a weight bench. “Is Jason rizzing right now?” Piker asked Martyn, who nodded. “Is it working?” Piker asked the woman. She replied, “A little bit.” Before she left, she gave Nguyen her Discord handle.

“Bradley, I’ve got something for you,” Piker said, removing his long-sleeved shirt. Underneath, he was wearing a tank top with a Rambo-style cartoon of Trump and the words “LET’S GO BRANDON.” “I was coming into hostile territory, so I had to fit in,” Piker said.

“It’s perfect,” Martyn said.

Martyn, who is six feet three and two hundred and sixty pounds, looks vaguely like Bradley Cooper on steroids. (Martyn has taken testosterone supplements, which Piker once brought up in a jocular debate about trans rights: You do hormone-replacement therapy, so why can’t they?) Nguyen is much smaller. “My chat just said, ‘There’s three muscleheads in the gym right now,’ ” Nguyen joked, not even pretending to look at his phone. Piker roasted Nguyen with a fake comment from his own chat: “Jason looks like a twink.” They wandered from station to station—first bench-pressing, then deadlifting—as their cameramen followed. “We’re just here to have fun,” Piker said. Then, dropping into a mock P.S.A. voice: “And also reach out to the young men out there who are lost—who feel anchorless, rudderless—by lifting some heavy weights.”

One flat-screen TV showed Joe Rogan interviewing Elon Musk, on mute, with no captions. Two shirtless guys, between reps, compared crypto wallets. “During Covid, they let liquor stores and strip clubs open, but they shut us down,” Martyn told me. “And then all the inflation, all the wars—it’s not like I trust any politician, Trump or Kamala or anyone, to be a perfect person. It’s just—if we never try anything new, how can we get a different result?” Last fall, when Martyn interviewed Trump, he brought up “the deep state” and asked, “How would you actually make an effective change there?” It wasn’t a specific question, and Trump didn’t have a specific answer. “We’re changing that whole thing around,” he said. Apparently, this was good enough for Martyn.

The day after the 2024 election, Martyn appeared on Piker’s stream to explain his support for Trump. They started with small talk. “Why do you have so many Zyn containers behind you?” Martyn said.

“I fucking slam those bad boys daily,” Piker said.

“Look at us relating, bro,” Martyn said.

When they got around to politics, Piker said, “One side at least acknowledges that people are angry—the Republicans.” The Democrats’ proposed solutions were inadequate, he said, but Trump would only make things worse. Martyn smiled and replied, “You’re gonna have to say sorry when he does what he says he’s gonna do.”

They ended the gym session by daring each other to take turns sitting in Martyn’s cold plunge. Piker resisted at first—“I didn’t bring a towel, a bathing suit, nothing”—but he went in anyway, in his gym shorts, and his commenters went wild. “Hey, Hasan’s chat, I hope y’all are happy he took his shirt off,” Nguyen said, facing Piker’s camera. Then he checked his phone: the woman from the weight bench had already sent him a message.

“Wait, she did?” Piker said, with a grin. “You’re about to lose your virginity, I think.”

[tracycloud]

COOKING FOR ROBERTA (part 2)

PART 2

Roberta had spotted me a few months earlier at Café Ravenna, where I worked as a kitchen assistant and waitress. She was a regular guest in this small restaurant owned by Erika and Giovanni, an elderly German-Italian couple who were constantly arguing. They alternated between German and Italian cuisine, ignoring the menu posted outside.

The regulars didn't care at all. Most of them ate Erika's ragu Bolognese or Lasagne al Forno just as enthusiastically as they loved Giovanni's crispy roast pork with dumplings or his thick bean soup with bacon and sausages. I never managed to find out why Giovanni, of all people, was so fond of German cuisine. Maybe an answer to the dominance of his mother from Emilia-Romagna, from whom Erika had learned all her culinary skills

Café Ravenna was open seven days a week, from morning to night, because the owners felt a great responsibility for their guests and feared that without their care they might go hungry or, even worse, be forced to eat fast food.

The middle-sized town where the “Ravenna” was located,  is best known for its art college, to which I had just applied in vain.  It said: “Rejected for lack of perspective talent”.

My divorced parents, as much as they hated each other and never saw eye to eye, would both triumph over this.

That´s why I decided to just stay and try again the next year.

The unimpressive cardboard sign: “Temporary help wanted for kitchen and restaurant” was already a bit faded. Erica and Giovanni  hired me on a trial basis. I showed surprising talent in the kitchen, brought food and drinks to the guests without any spills and didn't complain about the working hours.

Roberta was something special. In terms of age, she could have been my older sister. Roberta only came when Erika was cooking. She was always solo, friendly but distant. I noticed how she sometimes looked at me when I served her. I also have a thing for girls and could read her eyes.

But she was still just a guest - until the moment she praised the Ribollita, a thick Tuscan soup made from white beans, kale, leeks, carrots, celery, tomatoes, parmesan and bread.

Giovanni pointed at me: “Our little girl here cooked this”. I was proud and blushed a little when Roberta looked at me intensely and applauded.

A few weeks later, Giovanni asked me if I wanted to cook for Roberta's birthday. The next day, which was actually my day off, and at her house. She would pay me for it and he mentioned a sum that I could make good use of, as I was chronically broke.

She wouldn't take me shopping, but I would just turn up at her door in the early afternoon and cook what she had bought.

I had a bit of stage fright as I stood in front of the weathered wooden door of the old house. It was still summer, the garden was wild, natural, full of herbs, wild flowers, bushes, meadow grass, humming everywhere.

Roberta opened the door. For the first time, she was no longer a guest to me, but a beautiful, desirable woman. She was taller than me, with short blonde hair, wearing a light, green-spotted, casual summer dress that emphasized her boobs.

I must have stared at them for a few seconds too long. I don't have much to stare at when it comes to my own boobs, but I immediately thought about how it would feel if her stiff nipples rubbed against mine. She pretended not to notice my horny stares and walked into the house ahead of me.

 I congratulated her on her birthday, of course, and presented her with a small, very feminine clay figurine that I had modeled and glazed myself as a piece of work for the entrance exam. Roberta placed the figurine with a friendly smile next to other slightly dusty odds and ends - where it still stands today.

She lived in a rare mélange of furniture and paintings from all stylistic periods of the 20th century.  In the kitchen, fans of old cooking utensils would have been thrilled.

As we toasted each other with a cool white wine, I asked: “What would I even cook?”  Roberta pointed to the kitchen table, full of tomatoes, vegetables, fragrant herbs, ripe Parmesan, different types of pasta, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and buffalo butter. There was much more in the fridge.

“I'll leave that to you. Just surprise me”.

 “Ohhh, really? Ok. Why not.  And when are the guests arriving?”

 She grinned at me: “No guests are coming, my little one.  You're just cooking for me. And if you want, you're invited to try your own creations”.

I was quite taken aback, but after all, I was paid to cook and not by the number of guests. I decided to use the vegetables to make a range of hot and cold starters, culminating in a real “Ragu Bolognese” because had just learned this from Erika.  I was curious to see how Roberta would like it.

 Later I was so busy that I didn't notice her looking over my shoulder at first. When I felt the warmth of her body and the light touch on my back, I involuntarily pressed my bottom against her and felt her return the pressure. I started to rub myself against her, continuing to slice the tomatoes, then felt her breath on my neck and the pressure of her boobies against my back. I moaned softly as she whispered in my ear: “My little girl, don't say anything”. Then she slowly inserted her tongue into my ear and her hands felt my stiff nipples through the T-shirt and the wafer-thin bra.

I was getting wet now, moaning louder, supporting myself with my hands on the worktable, crushing the ripe tomatoes, my vulva pressed against the worktop. Roberta's hands were now under my shirt, fumbling my boobs out of my bra, massaging them, squeezing my nipples.

Roberta could feel me giving myself completely to her now. Her right hand unbuttoned my jeans, slipped into my panties and explored my wetness. I involuntarily spread my legs. She penetrated me deeply with two fingers. I began to move rhythmically against her fingers.

 “It's so beautiful how horny and submissive you are, my little cooking whore,” I heard her whisper.  Suddenly I could no longer feel her hands or her breath on my neck. Now she was standing in front of me, looking at me closely.

I stood with my legs still spread wide apart on the table, my jeans open, my wet panties barely covering my vulva, tomato juice dripping onto the floor, my T-shirt pushed up, my boobs hanging out of my bra, my face feeling hot, drops of sweat running down my face.

 “You're so cute the way you're standing there, my little submissive cooking slut. You know, I always dreamed about this when I watched you at the Ravenna. To spot and feel you here. You're a wonderful young woman, independent, clever, you're going to be a great cook and you're so wonderfully submissive. I sense you are yearning to be submissive and to be fucked by a strong woman.”

She leaned over the table, gave me a kiss on my sweaty forehead and walked out. “Go on cooking now, my little kitchen slut. I'm already looking forward to your delicacies.”

 Slowly I slipped back into reality. I had never experienced anything so hot and beautiful with a woman. The kitchen had now become a magical, wonderful space. The kitchen utensils became friends now who helped me to achieve my first great performance as a cook for Roberta.

[seriousfic]

Despite the all-timer title and pretty sweet poster art, Inseminoid turns out to be far more in line with its original title, Horror Planet. It's dull, dull, dull, with a bunch of indistinguishable British actors playing astronauts. One of them is inseminated by an alien and then goes around killing the others (although there's a tangent about another crew member going crazy in a non-preggers manner. Life's a rich tapestry et al et al).

What all of this means is you get very little creature in this creature feature, just a bird with a beachball stuffed under her (cozy-looking) jumper. As one character opines, an expectant mother isn't the most terrifying threat, game as the actress is.

And for a movie called Inseminoid, it's almost tasteful, leaving the birth largely off-screen and rendering the rape as a hallucinogenic ob/gyn examination. It all reminds one of a Doctor Who episode where Jon Pertwee was too smart to show up for work.

Creepozoids isn't good by any means, but it is at least so bad it's good. Directed by gay porn/Lifetime Original Movie (!) auteur David DeCoteau, Creepozoids is about deserters from a post-apocalyptic war, fleeing from mutants and other such budget-straining threats to take shelter in an abandoned warehouse, I MEAN, government/military/corporate experiment site gone wrong. Mad scientists have been trying to find out how to genetically modify humans not to need food (you'd think DOGE would get on that kind of USAID malarkey) and the results are more or less a chubby Uncle Xenomorph.

You get a lot of bang for your B-movie buck here, with some nudity from the always-reliable Linnea Quigley, plenty of hilariously unconvincing monsters, and a svelte 70-minute runtime (easy to keep from bloating up your movie when you barely even bother with an ending).

Every character is less 'grizzled post-apocalyptic survivor' than 'cowardly and incompetent sorority girl'. Even the guys just stand back and scream when the monster has someone in a clinch! No wonder these guys deserted their unit; I can only imagine the mass pants-shittification that would go down if they got shot at instead of being thrown into cardboard boxes repeatedly.

And speaking of gay porn, this is one monster who won't be doing any Inseminoiding. He seems set on killing the girls and then spraying the guys' faces with his slime.

Points for the bizarrely Conanesque poster.

[lunamagicablu]

Il bello di vivere con un gatto è che ti ricorda che ci si può sedere su una libreria. Che si può sonnecchiare su una busta di plastica. Che una scatola di cartone può essere mooolto interessante, se vista dal di dentro. E che - nascosti dietro una tenda, con la coda in bella vista - si può essere al sicuro. Il bello di vivere con un gatto è che, se ti va di saltare sul divano o stiracchiarti per terra, puoi farlo e basta. Perché il gatto ti ricorda che si può uscire dalla banalità. E che le cose, i luoghi, possono essere molto di più di quanto le convenzioni non ci raccontino. peaceloveandhopeplease art by Designs Vanguard: Animal of Earth ********************* The great thing about living with a cat is that it reminds you that you can sit on a bookcase. That you can snooze on a plastic bag. That a cardboard box can be very interesting, if seen from the inside. And that - hidden behind a curtain, with your tail in plain sight - you can be safe. The great thing about living with a cat is that if you feel like jumping on the couch or stretching on the floor, you can just do it. Because the cat reminds you that you can escape banality. And that things, places, can be much more than conventions tell us. peaceloveandhopeplease art by Designs Vanguard: Animal of Earth

[ambystoman]

Ale (Common Alebrije)

A struggling artist from Sector 1. He claims to have arrived from a distant galaxy. He owns an art shop where he sells his paintings, crafts and supplies. He likes to paint with his tail rather than use proper brushes and he is rather good at it.

Many creative people in the Essence Realm have what is called Artistic Essence. This is a kind of magic that lets people create with their hearts. It can also give life to their works among other qualities. He is happy to give art advice but isn't the best teacher.

First art of him. He was the winner in a poll of 3 characters I asked people in my server to vote for to add to the game.

His art shop is where he also lives in. On the top floor, you can find his room, while the bottom is for the shop. You can find all sorts of fun art supplies and crafts he has been working on lately.

Progress screenshots of his shop and room along with some of his works that are displayed. Some in the last image were done by @blaz-art

Ale has frog legs, the body and head of a dragon, wings of an eagle, snake teeth, and a bushy mane and tail. He has become one of my favorite designs I've made. Who doesn't like dragons anyway.

Inspiration

He is an Alebrije. These are Mexican folk art sculptures typically made of paper or cardboard. They usually depict fantastical animals with chimera-like properties and brightly colored patterns.

He is not made of cardboard though.

[ze-land-fill]

Multifandom December Prompts 2024

Day 3. "Holiday Crafts"

Fandom: Radio Silence

Word Count: 1,514

Summary: Frances envites her friends to make stuff. Chaos ensues.

~ * ~

A knock at the door alerted Frances of the new arrival. She leapt up and opened the door. Carys and Raine are at her door. Wearing thick coats and colorful scarves. Frances hugged both of them and pulled them inside. 

Raine started to take off her scarf. “Is anyone here yet?”

“Nope. You two are the first ones here!”

Raine smiled, and clapped her hands. “Wonderful. We’ll have some girl time before the other two get here.”

Carys laughed and moved to take off her coat. Raine handed her own coat to Frances, and began marching into the living room. Frances grabbed Carys’ coat as well, and hung it on the stand that stood next to the door. When she walked back into the living room, Raine had already taken her place on the sofa, leaning on Carys. 

How they had gotten together was beyond her. The last time they all saw each other was two months ago, when everyone helped Dae move into his new dorm. Back then, they’d been arguing like toddlers. But somewhere between late September and now… Raine and Carys had apparently met up, more than once. And so now, despite no one having technically said anything, it was pretty much just a fact that they were, in fact, a couple. 

“Is there anything I can get for you guys?”

“Sure! What are your options?”

“Er… Lemonade, some fizzy drinks, and… Well, Mum said we could only open the wine after 10.”

“Why the specific time?” Carys asked.

“She said we were more likely to do something stupid when it’s dark out and we’re surrounded by each of our drunk selves.”

“...That is… A weird take on it.”

Raine smiled. “Where is your mum anyway?”

“She had a christmas party to attend. Although she was really reluctant about going. She literally said she would rather hang out with me and my cool college friends, cutting paper shapes, instead of going to a party filled to the brim with miserable, middle-aged, 9-to-5 workers.”

Raine laughed. “Your mum will never not be an absolute legend to me.”

Carys smiled, “I’ll have some lemonade.”

“Me too!”

“Yes ma'ams’! Two lemonades, coming right out!”

When she brings out the lemonades, Carys has opened the plastic bag she brought with her. “I got some of the stuff you wanted. Old props and some art supplies from storage.” Frances put down the glasses, and sat down on the floor in front of the coffee table. “Perfect. Thank you!” “Of course.”

~

There's a knock again. This time, she doesn’t get up, instead, Aled lets himself in. “Hi, everyone!” Everyone greets him back in unison. There a sound of him taking off his coat and shoes, and walking into the living room. Frances stands up to give him a hug. 

He hugs Carys and high fives Raine, before slumping down next to Carys on the sofa. He’s wearing an ugly christmas sweater, with pom-poms and glittery fur as ornaments. 

“London commute is shit.” He furrowed his brows and pursed his lips. Carys closed her eyes and nodded knowingly. 

There was silence for a second, before everyone burst out laughing.

“Should we maybe start getting all the stuff out? How much longer ‘till Dae gets here?” Raine asked, a sort of, electrifying excitement around her.

Frances took a look at the clock on the wall. “About thirty minutes or so.” Carys grabbed the bag and shook out its content onto the table. “I feel like he won’t mind all that much if we do start without him.” She says, a smile on her face. They’d had to practically beg him to come over for the weekend, he’d insisted on staying at uni to revise his notes. 

Frances began picking through the pieces of cardboard, stickers, ribbons, glitter… Literally everything. “This is Christmas paradise.” 

Aled snorted, “Of course the art student would say that.” He takes a seat next to Frances on the floor, and grabs a pair of scissors. He starts snipping away at a piece of green cardboard into the vague shape of a christmas tree. Raine reached out, took a sip of her lemonade and started twisting some glittery pipe cleaners into a shape of sorts. Carys walked out, and came back in with a few bags of crisps. She doesn’t actually reach for any of the stuff on the table. Merely watches from her comfortable seat on the sofa.

~

It's around ten thirty by the time Daniel finally shows up. His first instinct when Frances opens the door for him, is to apologize for being late, and then proceed to blame the train and the weather. A true Daniel classic.

He took his seat next to Aled on the floor. There was a small pile of decorations and crafts that they'd made. He grabbed some ribbons and absentmindedly started twisting them around random scraps that ended up in his hands.

Frances finally brought out the wine. Raine trailing right behind her with the glasses. She screwed off the cork, and poured some for everyone, except Raine, who instead, poured her can of Fanta Exotic into her own glass. 

Carys raised her glass. “A toast- To all the shit decisions we made this year. And to all the good choices we made each other make. And for hopefully more of the latter in the year to come.” Everyone raised their glass in unison and lightly tapped them together in the center. 

Then began the drunken crafts.

~

Daniel got drunk the fastest. And he was leaning over Aled’s shoulder, eyes squinted, brows furrowed, and focusing intently, on the ornament Aled was working on. 

“Why are you holding it so weird?” he asked, placing his chin on Aled’s shoulder. 

“So I don’t get glue on my hands, Dae.” Aled answered, he wasn’t quite as drunk as Daniel yet, but he was definitely tipsy. 

Daniel furrowed his brows even more, before he relaxed his face and he grinned widely. He turned to face Aled’s ear and whispered (or, attempted to whisper. This attempt was about as loud as a regular speaking volume.) loudly, “I know something better you can do with your hands.”

Raine coughed loudly, Fanta spilling out of her mouth as she reeled from Daniel’s comment. She hit her chest repeatedly, so as to dislodge the liquid from her throat. Carys laughed loudly. “Oh my God! We need to get him drunk more often!”

Aled placed his forehead on the table, his face pink from embarrassment. Frances fell back on her carpet, laughing. Seeing her on the floor, Daniel started laughing too.

~

At some point, Aled had migrated to the sofa, and was leaning back. And Carys had moved to sit next to Frances opposite him. Daniel was leaning on his shoulder. Someone had brought out cookies. No one knew who or where they came from. At this point, they were all too drunk to care. Save for Raine, but she was so invested in her ornament, she may as well have been as drunk as them.

Aled was inspecting a few paper stars. He held them above his face, then eventually got bored of that. So he threw it at Carys. A paper star in the hair earned him a grimace and a middle finger. ‘Rude’ he mouthed to her, before proceeding to throw a second star at Frances. 

He missed, and hit Carys again. And, hey, Third times the charm right?

Wrong.

Carys got pissed. And threw a handfull of paper scraps at him, which he blocked with his hands. Then she threw a pillow. He pushed it away, and it ended up hitting raine instead. And her ornament went tumbling.

She looked up, “Who the fuck, just threw that?!” 

Carys and Aled locked eyes. And without a beat, they both pointed at… Frances. Who was hunched over her own little craft. Not for long.

Raine grabbed a cushion and threw it so it hit her in the face. She squeaked - yes, squeaked - As she grabbed it from off the floor. Without even missing a beat, she threw it straight at Daniel. Who, at that point, was dozing off on Aled’s shoulder. And then was promptly woken up by a cushion hitting him in the gut. 

“Fuck!” He coughed. And then he eyed everyone. He grabbed two pillows and shot them in random directions. One was caught, the other, Not.

So began their Alcohol/sugar induced pillow fight.

~

The keys turned in the lock, and Lana let out a sigh of relief as she took off her boots and jacket. She walked into the living room. She was met with Frances and her friends piled on top of each other on the sofa. The almost-empty bottle of wine lay on the table, miraculously having survived the third world war that occurred in her living room. There were cookies, scraps, crafts and cushions scattered everywhere. She sighed again, and smiled.

She left them be. Obviously she would make them clean up tomorrow. But for now.

She let them rest in their tangled mess of limbs and love.

~ * ~ Thank you for reading! (COMMENTS ARE MUCH APPRECIATED) ~ Remzy

[astralwhat]

Charlie/Aster. tree-hugging animal nerd. enjoyer of sci-fi, fantasy, the paranormal, historical fiction, and everything in between. draws stuff sometimes

other art ▪️ buy my wares ▪️ zine bash

faq ⤵️

can I use your art for [personal thing]?

you can use any of my art (that wasn't commissioned by someone else) for your personal icon, profile pic, header, playlist cover, dnd home game, print and tape to your wall, etc etc. as long as it's personal use, not being profited from, and not edited beyond basic cropping/resizing i don't mind! please credit/link back to me whenever possible if it's something posted on the internet.

can I get a tattoo of your art?

again, for my personal non-commissioned art, sure! I'd appreciate it if you leave a kofi tip or buy a little something from my shop when you can. a shout out is also appreciated if you post a pic to show off the tattoo, partly for design credit and partly because I'd like to see it :)

are you open for commissions?

maybe 👍 please email astralwhat@gmail.com with "commission" in the subject line. tell me what you have in mind and I'll let you know if it's something I can do right now.

will you restock [item]?

Franklin leg and Terror/Erebus ship pillows: nah. I might do a new ship pillow eventually, but no immediate plans. feel free to take the ideas and make your own; they're not super original concepts lmao

polar explorer shirts: "all well" will have another preorder campaign (probably its last) in december 2024. "make history or die trying" is available through my Redbubble (and as of nov '24 has a few still in stock in my Etsy) but otherwise i have no plans to do another run.

prints and stickers: will probably be restocked (shop updates are usually in april and november ish), and/or is available through my redbubble shop.

how do you produce your merch?

prints: Catprint (US based) my beloved

stickers: I've used Stickerapp (US based) before but I mostly use Zap! for stickers now

pins, charms: Zap! Creatives (UK based)

pillowcases, lanyards, glasses cloths: a group order organized by another artist; dm me for the mailing list :)

shirts: I used Green Pea Press (Huntsville AL USA based) for the first runs of "Make History" and highly recommend them especially if you're local. I then used Print Social (now closed) for pre-order campaigns because storing/shipping shirts was too much for my one-man-one-room business

packaging: I get basically all my mailers from EcoEnclose, glassine paper from Blick, and otherwise just try to reuse brown paper/cardboard/etc for inner packaging as much as possible

will you draw [fandom] again?

[shrug emoji] it could happen. I'm still fond of everything I've done fanart for in recent years, so there's always a chance I'll return to it if struck with ideas and motivation and energy at the right time

what happened to [various original story things]?

I'm tired dude. I haven't forgotten about them I'm just Tired

----

if you have a question or something to say, you can send a dm or ask here, although my response may be a little slow. for anything time-sensitive or otherwise very important, please email me at astralwhat@gmail.com

[thepagansun]

Admittedly on the tendency to glorify Scrooge over Donald, sure Donald's existed longer than Scrooge, but when you look at the in-universe timeline for anything with Scrooge, he's clearly shown going on adventures for decades before Donald was ever born. Like it is kinda hard for a work to claim Donald is "original adventurer" when in the in-universe timeline has Scrooge going on adventures for decades before Donald was ever born. It's not like they can just go the meta route in stating Scrooge and Donald are cartoon characters that were already in their present ages the moment they were first drawn and created because they don't follow animated actor rules in Disney works (aside from Roger Rabbit and the Rescue Rangers movie).

I got a LOT of Disney asks which I can only assume came from the same person so I'm going to try to answer them all here.

The thing with glorifying Scrooge over Donald: Yes, Scrooge is far older than Donald in-universe, but if Disney can go out of its way to constantly credit Mickey as "It all started with a mouse" (when technically it was Oswald and before him, Julius of the Alice Comedies which was also Pete's first incarnation); then I think they can find a way to properly give Donald his well-earned credit for being the one to inspire the Al Taliaferro and Carl Barks (and by extension Don Rosa) universe. In the end, the original in that regard was Donald, not Scrooge so he should get the credit.

Mickey and Goofy: My favorite portrayals of them? For Mickey, I love the newer Mickey Mouse shorts/Wonderful World of Mickey Mouse shorts which are admittedly a little weird but do a good job in bringing Mickey back to his mischievous, wacky roots. And I love the fact that he doesn't always win because he wasn't originally perfect. Just like Donald wasn't originally a bad luck magnet. Donald's bad luck came around the same time as Mickey was sanitized. Donald is more than his bad luck and Mickey is more than a corporate cardboard cut-out. For Goofy, "A Goofy Movie" did a great job in balancing him as both his goofy side with real, relatable emotional depth. He and Pete are older in universe than Donald and Goofy. And while Goofy might not be book smart, he's emotionally wise with life experience that sadly, gets overlooked. The movie had great tunes, too! And Max also matured throughout the movie.

Newer Disney Shows: The only newer shows of the ones you listed that I watched (and even then only a few episodes) were: Star and the Forces of Evil and Amphibia. The difference between those and DT17 are that those are completely new (to my knowledge) so they're not changing or missing up already established portrayals of the characters since it's the first time we're seeing them.

Newbies and Webby on DT17: It's not that I "don't like newbies on reboots." What I don't like is having newbies upstage the canon characters on adventures inspired by the canon characters' adventures and stories. DT17 essentially hijacked the adventures, badass abilities and even biological family of Donald abd Scrooge and literally made it all about Webby as if she's the reason for the Carl Barks/Scrooge legacy when she's absolutely NOT. Donald is. So making it seem as if it's all thanks to her is dead wrong and a gross disrespect to Donald. Now.. that being said, how I would've handled her? Several ways, I guess. She could've been given a couple of episodes focuses on her where she went on an entirely new adventure (that wasn't a ripoff of one that Donald or Scrooge already did). Instead of having her be the only badass fighting kid, I probably would've had each nephew/adopted nieces master a form of martial arts each: Huey would've mastered kickboxing to deal with his anger, Dewey would've mastered Muy Thai or BBJ which are flashier, Louie would've mastered judo or akido since they use less effort, and Webby would've mastered karate. And she definitely would've remained Beakley's biological granddaughter.

Productions that do a good job with Scrooge: The original Ducktales was pretty good in his portrayal and DT17 came close too. But again, their issue was having Scrooge sort of cater and bond with the newbies over his own canonical family! How many episodes did we get of Scrooge and Donald bonding?? But yet Webby gets to meet the McDucks TWICE when Donald himself, their canonical grandson, doesn't get to meet them ONCE?? It was prioritizing Scrooge's relationship with the newbies over his own family that damaged his portrayal. That and sanitized his greed. If Donald had to keep his bad luck, Scrooge was supposed to be a miser. I think his portray in House of Mouse came pretty close too especially the lengths his greedy can go.

Favorite Versions of Minnie & Daisy: I do like their sillier sides in the newer Mickey Mouse shorts. I liked Daisy's sweeter/ditzy side in House of Mouse. And actually, I think the pre-K shows do a good job of getting them out of Mickey's and Donald's shadows.

Other Reboots: I did like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power but I can understand why that too fell flat for those that lived the original. Out of the various TMNT? The one that came closest to their comics was TMNT 2003-2010. I grew up with TMNT (1987-1996) and Nickleodeon's TMNT 2012-2017 had the best balance of being aimed a younger audience but with serious issues and some plot points of the comics. I liked TMNT 2007 movie mostly because I'm a Raphael fan and he beat Leo in a fight. As for My Little Pony, I never saw episodes of them but I grew up seeing the Gen 2 games so I miss that.

Hope this answered everything.

[marsnicolasliwiak]

Research: Robot sculptures

Toy robot packaging

This is a video about old school toy robot packaging.

These all share a common baseline: Cardboard packaging, bold fonts, hand-painted sci-fi backgrounds, the robot doing cool things or being in motion, a description for its functions at the bottom or back, art for the top of the box, so on and so forth. These are very nice packages, mainly due to the artwork, even if they're repeititve in nature.

Robot build

This video by Thomas Burns showcases how he built an electronic robot that can respond to commands using the circuit board of an Alexa.

After a lengthy montage of Burns goes around stalls selling electronic scraps, he comes back with a small scale CRT tv, with its circuit board open to be tampered with, mainly to hijack the horizontal signal and replace it with an audio signal. By connecting two of the lines to the audio circuit and connecting a phone to an amp, a wavegram appears and moves.

The 3D printing process begins and produces an eyeball and eyelids. the eye mechanisms are using a method developed by Will Kogi of Milheim Mechatronics, which is quick and cheap to build. Once finalised, the eyes can move freely with a sensor circuit board.

Now to work with a dissembled Alexa for reprogramming. With some altercation to the sister board so it could connect to a microcontroller, the Alexa can now activate and respond without additional commands. Extra work is now done for the eyes and their detailing with acrylics and have them covered I resin (With some mistakes made in terms of molds).

For the body of the robot, a chassis made from acrylic sheets is formed and fitted to hide all the parts. Once fitted, a test is done and the robot is complete.

Emerson Tung

Emerson Tung is a concept artist who specialises in illustrating armour and mechs. He has drawn a vast variety, from medieval-armor inspired robots to robots inspired by random items, all of them are gorgeously detailed and well designed. there's a lot of variety in terms of art direction, some more simple and serious than others, but they all work within their given worlds and contexts.

Wooden robot

Here's a robot by DR Toys about his process in making a robot entirely out of wood.

He starts out by mapping out the pieces he's going to cut with a pencil. Once the pieces are cut with a saw, they are sanded ti have grooves so parts could be fitted. This is how the base body is formed, with extra measuring and cutting done to actually put the pieces together (As well as drilling holes to put in other wood pieces into the robot itself). Wood disks are glued together with wood filler to hide seams.

Some designs are imprinted and cut out using a laser cutter and are sanded. They are placed using glue and tweezers as showcased by pencil guidelines. A frame is formed for volume and detailing for the bottom half of the body and then glued to the top part.

After finalising all the details, the robot is given a coating of blue paint with details like wear painted with acrylic paints.

Wooden toy robot

Another video about making a wooden toy robot. Yay.

Multiple pieces of wood have their sides measured and cut down by a chainsaw to form the body of the robot. Once the pieces are cut, some of them are drilled into to attach the limbs to the body. Once th pieces are actually finished, they are sanded down and indented with details. A large piece of sting is cut and glued into the holes so al the pieces could be connected to the torso. The wooden parts are then polished and have marbles inserted into the eye holes.

Pop culture robots

Here's a top 10 list of greatest robot designs in pop culture. I'll be honest: I never cared much for robots or mechas, at least in popular culture. There are some pretty good picks here, like Canti for FLCL and The Iron Giant, but I can tell the author has a bias towards mechs (Nothing wrong with that. They are pretty cool looking and can defiantly be iconic). I don't have a lot to elaborate on because I can't name a robot design that 1. Is popular and 2. Can beat out a Gundam of all things.

[aldreambox]

Ewww it's my selfship

Yes it's called sleepless shipping, hopefully that name isn't taken

[socialmediaviralvideo]

What does it mean to go viral on social media: Success Stories

In the landscape of digital marketing, the phenomenon of "Social Media Viral Video" is akin to striking gold. When a post, video, or tweet spreads like wildfire across the internet, it can transform unknowns into celebrities, elevate small businesses to prominence, and change lives overnight. But what exactly does it mean to go viral on social media, and what are some success stories that illustrate the power of viral content?

Understanding Virality

To go viral means to create content that is shared extensively across social media platforms, reaching a massive audience far beyond the original follower count. Virality is usually driven by content that evokes strong emotional responses such as laughter, awe, or empathy. It can happen organically, through the inherent appeal and sharability of the content, or it can be fueled by current trends, societal movements, or even sheer luck.

The metrics of virality aren't exact, but generally, if a piece of content receives exponentially more shares, likes, and comments compared to usual posts, it's considered viral. This can result in millions of views, new followers, and significant media attention.

Success Stories of Virality

The Ice Bucket Challenge: Perhaps one of the most impactful viral campaigns was the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. What started as a small initiative to raise awareness and funds for ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) research exploded into a global phenomenon in 2014. Thousands of people, including celebrities and high-profile personalities, posted videos of pouring ice-cold water over their heads and challenging others to do the same. The campaign not only went viral but also raised over $115 million for ALS research, showing how virality can drive real-world impact.

Dude With Sign: Seth Phillips, better known as the "Dude With Sign", turned holding up cardboard signs with relatable, often humorous statements into an Instagram sensation. His simple, direct way of highlighting everyday frustrations resonated with millions. This viral approach not only garnered him over 7.6 million followers but also attracted collaborations with major brands, showcasing how individual creativity can capture widespread public attention.

Old Spice Campaign: The Old Spice "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" campaign redefined the brand’s image and reached a new, younger audience. Launched in 2010, the original commercial featured actor Isaiah Mustafa and was notable for its humorous and bizarre monologue. The ad went viral, and Old Spice followed up with a series of interactive videos responding to fans' comments on social media. This not only boosted sales significantly but also set a benchmark for interactive and viral marketing campaigns.

TikTok and "Ratatouille The Musical": In 2020, TikTok users collectively began creating what would become "Ratatouille The Musical." What started as a humorous ode to the Pixar film "Ratatouille" turned into a series of songs, choreographies, and eventually, a full-fledged musical production that was performed as a benefit concert, raising over $1 million for The Actors Fund. This unique viral moment highlighted the collaborative power of social media platforms to create and fund art in a new, digital-first environment.

#LikeAGirl Campaign: Launched by Always, the #LikeAGirl campaign aimed to tackle stereotypes associated with girls in sports. The campaign's centerpiece, a video challenging the derogatory connotation of the phrase "like a girl," went viral for its empowering message. It not only increased Always’ brand sentiment but also sparked important conversations about gender stereotypes, proving that viral content can also drive meaningful societal conversations.

The Impact of Going Viral

The consequences of going viral can be profound. For individuals, it can mean sudden fame and the potential for monetization through brand partnerships and media deals. For businesses, viral content can lead to a significant boost in sales and brand loyalty. However, virality is also unpredictable and can sometimes be a double-edged sword, where the intense spotlight and scrutiny can backfire.

In conclusion, going viral on social media means creating content that resonates deeply enough with people that they feel compelled to share it. While not every viral story leads to lasting success, the stories of the Ice Bucket Challenge, Dude With Sign, Old Spice, "Ratatouille The Musical", and #LikeAGirl show that the effects of viral content can extend far beyond mere numbers. They can influence culture, raise awareness, and even alter perceptions, demonstrating the transformative power of social media.

[anbarin-ghanem]

Transforming Same Day Delivery into an Experience in Dubai

In the ever-evolving landscape of same-day delivery in Dubai, Al-Nasheet has emerged as a beacon of innovation and excellence. With a focus on delivering not just packages but exceptional experiences, Al-Nasheet has redefined the way people perceive and interact with delivery services in the city. This blog delves deeper into the transformative journey of Al-Nasheet, its commitment to customer satisfaction, and the unparalleled experiences it brings to the forefront of Dubai's logistics industry.

Elevating Customer Experience:

At the core of Al-Nasheet's philosophy is a relentless dedication to exceeding customer expectations. Beyond simply delivering goods, Al-Nasheet strives to create memorable experiences that leave a lasting impression. From the moment a customer places an order to the joyful reception of their package, every touchpoint is carefully curated to delight and surprise.

Personalized Service:

Al-Nasheet understands that every customer is unique, with distinct preferences and needs. That's why it offers personalized delivery options, allowing customers to choose their preferred delivery time, location, and even packaging style. Whether it's a birthday gift or a corporate document, Al-Nasheet ensures that every delivery is tailored to the recipient's specifications.

Seamless Communication:

Clear and timely communication is the cornerstone of a positive delivery experience. Al-Nasheet keeps customers informed at every stage of the delivery process, sending real-time updates via SMS, email, or its intuitive mobile app. From order confirmation to arrival notifications, customers can rest assured that they're always in the loop.

Exceptional Customer Support:

In the rare event of a hiccup or delay, Al-Nasheet's dedicated customer support team is ready to assist with prompt and courteous service. Whether it's tracking down a missing package or addressing a delivery issue, customers can rely on Al-Nasheet to resolve any concerns with professionalism and care.

Innovative Technology:

At the heart of Al-Nasheet's success lies its relentless pursuit of technological innovation. By harnessing the latest advancements in logistics technology, Al-Nasheet continually raises the bar for efficiency, reliability, and convenience.

AI-Powered Routing:

Al-Nasheet's proprietary routing algorithm optimizes delivery routes in real-time, taking into account factors such as traffic patterns, weather conditions, and delivery volume. This dynamic approach ensures that deliveries are completed swiftly and efficiently, even in the face of unforeseen challenges.

Smart Warehousing:

Al-Nasheet's state-of-the-art warehouses are equipped with advanced automation and robotics technology, enabling seamless order fulfillment and inventory management. By streamlining operations and minimizing human error, Al-Nasheet maintains high standards of accuracy and reliability.

Predictive Analytics:

By analyzing historical data and market trends, Al-Nasheet anticipates future demand and adjusts its operations accordingly. This proactive approach not only prevents bottlenecks and delays but also enables Al-Nasheet to stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly changing marketplace.

Sustainable Practices:

As a responsible corporate citizen, Al-Nasheet is committed to minimizing its environmental footprint and promoting sustainability in every aspect of its operations.

Green Fleet:

Al-Nasheet's delivery fleet consists of eco-friendly vehicles powered by electric or hybrid technology, reducing emissions and carbon footprint. By embracing clean energy solutions, Al-Nasheet contributes to a healthier future for delivery service in Dubai

Recyclable Packaging:

Al-Nasheet prioritizes the use of recyclable and biodegradable packaging materials, minimizing waste and environmental impact. From cardboard boxes to compostable packing peanuts, every effort is made to ensure that packaging materials are eco-friendly and responsibly sourced.

Community Engagement:

Al-Nasheet actively engages with local communities through outreach programs, charitable initiatives, and volunteer efforts. By giving back to the community, Al-Nasheet fosters goodwill and strengthens its bonds with customers, partners, and stakeholders.

In a world where speed and efficiency often take precedence, Al-Nasheet stands as a beacon of humanity and empathy in Dubai's bustling delivery scene. By prioritizing customer experience, embracing innovation, and promoting sustainability, Al-Nasheet transcends the traditional boundaries of logistics, transforming same-day delivery into an art form. As Dubai continues to evolve as a global hub of commerce and culture, Al-Nasheet remains committed to delivering not just packages but unforgettable experiences that enrich the lives of everyone it touches.

[chaotic-theatrical-weaver]

Preschool-age Pearl headcanons, courtesy of Al and me:

Based on something that actually happened to me: for her preschool’s career day, Pearl said she wanted to be a mail carrier because she liked the outfit (and because the costume for the career she actually wanted was unavailable).

Drew on the walls in the house she lived in with Mia and Mia kept the art (per Al); Mia took pictures of the walls before cleaning them with Pearl so that Pearl could draw on them again (per me).

Was definitely in possession of at least two rotating stuffed bunnies sewn from identical fabric for her by Mia.

Did not get the point of lollipops at all. She just licked them once and threw them out (yes, this is something I actually did).

Given that she was 4 when “Running Up That Hill” came out, it was her favorite song. (Adult Pearl is probably very pleased at the song’s resurgence.)

Well-behaved in stores, but on the occasion that Mia let her pick a stuffed toy or doll to buy and there just so happened to only be two left, Pearl cried because she didn’t want the other to feel lonely. Mia made her pick only one but gave her all the supplies she needed to make a friend for the one she chose. Pearl enjoyed the creation process a lot and wound up making toys regardless of whether she felt her existing ones needed friends. The number of homemade toys she had quickly exceeded the store-bought ones.

According to Al, Pearl’s favorite playground activity is swinging, and her least favorite is tetherball. I can see her trying to run away from the ball. I was that kind of person (still am with volleyball). Her second favorite thing to play with is hula hoops, and she is not a monkey bars kind of girl but tries her hardest anyway. Most often, though, she can be seen playing pretend with wands and fairy wings that she made with her mom.

Mia made Pearl a little cardboard loom and taught her how to weave as an exercise in fine motor skills.

[thanksineededthattoday]

Whenever you see this, list some nice things related to: sight, sound, taste, texture, scent, temperature, loved ones, nature, art.