#corporate defense training

[kalisikaransweden]

Website : https://www.kalisikaran.com

Address : Nygardsv. 18F, 433 32 Partille, Sweden

Kali Sikaran International specializes in the Filipino Martial Art of Kali Sikaran, offering a comprehensive self-defense program. The art, rooted in ancient Southeast Asian martial traditions, emphasizes functionality and adaptability in self-defense, covering various techniques including empty hand combat, stick fighting, knife defense, and more. The academy provides a phased training program, online courses, and seminars, catering to different skill levels from beginners to advanced practitioners.

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[nando161mando]

CAPTCHAs tech companies exploiting free labor to train AI vision for defense contractors military drones and autonomous weapons

[kravmagasrilanka]

"Pink Warriors" - self-defense awareness program

Sheraton Kosgoda turtle beach resort “Pink Warriors” – self-defence awareness program

[maplewoodstreet]

CONTENT WARNING: police, violence

Some Stop Cop City TikToks caught my attention

and got me interested in learning more about Cop City. I thought I would share some of the information I found.

from Police Foundations. These are not necessarily corporations that donated to Cop City, but they are to show that donating to police is something corporations regularly do.

Cop City is another name for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in Atlanta, Georgia.

Funded with $90,000,000 in taxes and donations.

Largest police training facility in the United States.

Located in the densest black populated area in Georgia.

Cop City is being built in one of Atlanta’s last forests.

Stop Cop City protester and environmentalist activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán was shot “12 or 13” times by a police officer despite Terán not firing at the police. The cop did not face charges because the killing was “objectively reasonable under the circumstances of this case”.

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr described Defend Atlanta Forest as “an anarchist, anti-police, and anti-business extremist organization” and 61 activists have been charged with domestic terrorism.

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) directly shares strategies with the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE). “The Atlanta Police Department and Fulton County SWAT teams had conducted training exercises in an abandoned hotel to remove “Hamas terrorists’.”

Corporations like Dunkin Donuts parent corporation Inspire Brands, Coca-Cola, Chic-Fil-A, Bank of America, UPS, Norfolk Southern, and more help fund Cop City with multimillion-dollar donations. Coca-Cola, UPS, Chic-Fil-A, and more made statements during the murder of George Floyd with things like “…end the cycle of systemic racism”, “creating social impact, advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion”, and “building stronger communities.” Corporations often donate to police foundations.

Articles sourced:

https://prismreports.org/2023/11/14/stop-cop-city-gilee-palestinian-genocide/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/morgansimon/2023/03/14/cops-and-donuts-go-together-more-than-you-thought-the-corporations-funding-cop-city-in-atlanta/ 

I’m not a professional or even a hobbyist journalist, so if I have wrong information here, please let me know.

[linkyu]

tell me about your defense contract pleage

Oh boy!

To be fair, it's nothing grandiose, like, it wasn't about "a new missile blueprint" or whatever, but, just thinking about what it could have become? yeesh.

So, let's go.

For context, this is taking place in the early 2010s, where I was working as a dev and manager for a company that mostly did space stuff, but they had some defence and security contracts too.

One day we got a new contract though, which was... a weird one. It was state-auctioned, meaning that this was basically a homeland contract, but the main sponsor was Philip Morris. Yeah. The American cigarette company.

Why? Because the contract was essentially a crackdown on "illegal cigarette sales", but it was sold as a more general "war on drugs" contract.

For those unaware (because chances are, like me, you are a non-smoker), cigarette contraband is very much a thing. At the time, ~15% of cigarettes were sold illegally here (read: they were smuggled in and sold on the street).

And Phillip Morris wanted to stop that. After all, they're only a small company worth uhhh... oh JFC. Just a paltry 150 billion dollars. They need those extra dollars, you understand?

Anyway. So they sponsored a contract to the state, promising that "the technology used for this can be used to stop drug deals too". Also that "the state would benefit from the cigarettes part as well because smaller black market means more official sales means a higher tax revenue" (that has actually been proven true during the 2020 quarantine).

Anyway, here was the plan:

Phase 1 was to train a neural network and plug it in directly to the city's video-surveillance system, in order to detect illegal transactions as soon as they occur. Big brother who?

Phase 2 was to then track the people involved in said transaction throughout the city, based on their appearance and gait. You ever seen the Plainsight sheep counting video? Imagine something like this but with people. That data would then be relayed to police officers in the area.

So yeah, an automated CCTV-based tracking system. Because that's not setting a scary precedent.

So what do you do when you're in that position? Let me tell you. If you're thrust unknowingly, or against your will, into a project like this,

Note. The following is not a legal advice. In fact it's not even good advice. Do not attempt any of this unless you know you can't get caught, or that even if you are caught, the consequences are acceptable. Above all else, always have a backup plan if and when it backfires. Also don't do anything that can get you sued. Be reasonable.

Let me introduce you to the world of Corporate Sabotage! It's a funny form of striking, very effective in office environments.

Here's what I did:

First of all was the training data. We had extensive footage, but it needed to be marked manually for the training. Basically, just cropping the clips around the "transaction" and drawing some boxes on top of the "criminals". I was in charge of several batches of those. It helped that I was fast at it since I had video editing experience already. Well, let's just say that a good deal of those markings were... not very accurate.

Also, did you know that some video encodings are very slow to process by OpenCV, to the point of sometimes crashing? I'm sure the software is better at it nowadays though. So I did that to another portion of the data.

Unfortunately the training model itself was handled by a different company, so I couldn't do more about this.

Or could I?

I was the main person communicating with them, after all.

Enter: Miscommunication Master

In short (because this is already way too long), I became the most rigid person in the project. Like insisting on sharing the training data only on our own secure shared drive, which they didn't have access to yet. Or tracking down every single bug in the program and making weekly reports on those, which bogged down progress. Or asking for things to be done but without pointing at anyone in particular, so that no one actually did the thing. You know, classic manager incompetence. Except I couldn't be faulted, because after all, I was just "really serious about the security aspect of this project. And you don't want the state to learn that we've mishandled the data security of the project, do you, Jeff?"

A thousand little jabs like this, to slow down and delay the project.

At the end of it, after a full year on this project, we had.... a neural network full of false positives and a semi-working visualizer.

They said the project needed to be wrapped up in the next three months.

I said "damn, good luck with that! By the way my contract is up next month and I'm not renewing."

Last I heard, that city still doesn't have anything installed on their CCTV.

tl;dr: I used corporate sabotage to prevent automated surveillance to be implemented in a city--

hey hold on

wait

what

HEY ACTUALLY I DID SOME EXTRA RESEARCH TO SEE IF PHILLIP MORRIS TRIED THIS SHIT WITH ANOTHER COMPANY SINCE THEN AND WHAT THE FUCK

HUH??????

well what the fuck was all that even about then if they already own most of the black market???

[greatworldwar2]

• Stanisław Sosabowski

Stanisław Franciszek Sosabowski was a Polish general in World War II. He fought in the Polish Campaign of 1939 and at the Battle of Arnhem (Netherlands), as a part of Operation Market Garden, in 1944 as commander of the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade.

Stanisław Sosabowski was born on May 8th, 1892 in Stanislau, in what was then Austria-Hungary and is now Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine. His father was a railway worker. Sosabowski graduated from a local gymnasium and in 1910 he was accepted as a student of the faculty of economy of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. However, the death of his father and the poor financial situation of his family forced him to abandon his studies and return to Stanislau. There he became a member of Drużyny Strzeleckie, a semi-clandestine Polish national paramilitary organisation. He was soon promoted to the head of all Polish Scouting groups in the area. In 1913, Sosabowski was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army. After training, he was promoted to the rank of corporal, serving in the 58th Infantry Regiment. After the outbreak of World War I he fought with his unit against the Imperial Russian Army in the battles of Rzeszów, Dukla Pass and Gorlice. For his bravery, he was awarded several medals and promoted to first lieutenant. In 1915, he was badly wounded in action and withdrawn from the front. In November 1918, after Poland regained its independence Sosabowski volunteered for the newly formed Polish Army, but his wounds were still not healed and he was rejected as a front-line officer. Instead, he became a staff officer in the Ministry of War Affairs in Warsaw.

After the Polish-Soviet War Sosabowski was promoted to major and in 1922 he started his studies at the Higher Military School in Warsaw. After he finished his studies he was assigned to the Polish General Staff. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, in 1928 he was finally assigned to a front-line unit, the 75th Infantry Regiment, as commanding officer of a battalion. The following year he was assigned to the 3rd Podhale Rifles Regiment as its deputy commander. From 1930 he was also a professor of logistics at his alma mater. In 1937 Sosabowski was promoted to colonel and became the commanding officer of the 9th Polish Legions Infantry Regiment stationed in Zamość. In January 1939 he became the commander of the prestigious Warsaw-based 21st Infantry Regiment. According to the Polish mobilisation scheme, Sosabowski's regiment was attached to the 8th Infantry Division. Shortly before the German invasion of Poland started his unit was moved from its garrison in the Warsaw Citadel to the area of Ciechanów, where it was planned as a strategic reserve of the Modlin Army. On September 2nd, the division was moved towards Mława and in the early morning of the following day it entered combat in the Battle of Mława. Although the 21st Regiment managed to capture Przasnysz and its secondary objectives, the rest of the division was surrounded by the Wehrmacht and destroyed. After that Sosabowski ordered his troops to retreat towards Warsaw. Sosabowski was ordered to man the Grochów and the Kamionek defensive area and defend Praga, the eastern borough of Warsaw, against the German 10th Infantry Division. During the Siege of Warsaw the forces of Sosabowski were outmanned and outgunned, but managed to hold all their objectives. When the general assault on Praga started on September 16th, the 21st Infantry Regiment managed to repel the attacks of German 23rd Infantry Regiment and then successfully counter-attacked and destroyed the enemy unit. After this success, Sosabowski was assigned to command all Polish troops fighting in the area of Grochów. Despite constant bombardment and German attacks repeated every day, Sosabowski managed to hold his objectives at relatively low cost in manpower. On September 26th, 1939, the forces led by Sosabowski bloodily repelled the last German attack, but two days later Warsaw capitulated.

Following the Polish surrender, Sosabowski was made a prisoner of war and interned at a camp near Żyrardów. However, he escaped and remained in Warsaw under a false name, where he joined the Polish resistance. He was ordered to leave Poland and reached France to report on the situation in occupied Poland. After arriving in Paris, The Polish government in exile assigned him to the Polish 4th Infantry Division as the commanding officer. Initially, the French authorities were very reluctant to hand over the badly needed equipment and armament for the Polish unit. Sosabowski's soldiers had to train with pre-World War I weapons. In April 1940, the division was moved to a training camp in Parthenay and was finally handed the weapons awaited since January, but it was already too late to organise the division. Out of more than 11,000 soldiers, only 3,150 were given arms. By June 1940, Sosabowski with approximately 6,000 Polish soldiers arrived at La Pallice, whence they were evacuated to Great Britain. Upon his arrival in London, Sosabowski turned up at the Polish General Staff and was assigned to 4th Rifles Brigade that was to become a core of the future 4th Infantry Division. The unit was to be composed mainly of Polish Canadians, but it soon became apparent that there were not enough young Poles in Canada from which to create a division. Then, Sosabowski decided to transform his brigade into a Parachute Brigade, the first such unit in the Polish Army. The volunteers came from all the formations of the Polish Army. In Largo House in Fife, a training camp was built and the parachute training was started. Sosabowski himself passed the training and, at 49 years of age, made his first parachute jump. In October 1942 the Brigade was ready for combat and was named the 1st Independent Parachute Brigade. Since the Polish General Staff planned to use the Brigade to assist a national uprising in Poland, the soldiers of the 1st Polish Para were to be the first element of the Polish Army in Exile to reach their homeland. Hence the unofficial motto of the unit: by the shortest road (najkrótszą drogą).

In September 1943, Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning proposed that Sosabowski reform his unit into a division and fill the remaining posts with British troops. Sosabowski himself would be assigned to the newly formed division and promoted to general. However, Sosabowski refused. Nevertheless, on June 15th, 1944 he was promoted to Brigadier General. In early August 1944, news of the Warsaw Uprising arrived in Great Britain. The Brigade was ready to be dropped by parachute into Warsaw to aid their comrades from the underground Polish Home Army, who were fighting a desperate battle against overwhelming odds. However, the distance was too great for the transport aircraft to make a round trip and access to Soviet airfields was denied. The morale of the Polish troops suffered badly and many of the units verged on mutiny. The British staff threatened its Polish counterpart with disarmament of the Brigade, but Sosabowski retained control of his unit. Finally, Polish Commander in Chief Kazimierz Sosnkowski put the Brigade under British command, and the plan to send it to Warsaw was abandoned.

During the planning for Operation Market Garden, Sosabowski expressed serious concerns regarding the feasibility of the mission. Among Sosabowski's concerns were the poorly conceived drop zones at Arnhem, the long distances between the landing zones and Arnhem Bridge and that the area would contain a greater German presence than British intelligence believed. Despite Sosabowski's concerns and warnings from the Dutch Resistance that two SS Panzer Divisions were in the operations area, Market Garden proceeded as planned. The Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade was among the Allied forces taking part in Market Garden. Due to a shortage of transport aircraft, the brigade was split into several parts before being dropped into the battle. A small part of the brigade with Sosabowski was parachuted near Driel on September 19th, but the rest of the brigade arrived only on September 21st at the distant town of Grave, falling directly on the waiting guns of the Germans camped in the area. The brigade's artillery was dropped with the British 1st Airborne Division. Three times Sosabowski attempted to cross the Rhine to come to the assistance of the surrounded 1st Airborne Division. Unfortunately, the ferry they hoped to use had been sunk and the Poles attempting to cross the river in small rubber boats came under heavy fire. Even so, at least 200 men made it across the river and reinforced the embattled British paratroopers. Despite the difficult situation, at a staff meeting on September 24th, Sosabowski suggested that the battle could still be won. He proposed that the combined forces of XXX Corps, under Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, and the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade should start an all-out assault on the German positions and try to break through the Rhine. This plan was not accepted, and during the last phase of the battle, on 25th and 26th of September, Sosabowski led his men southwards, shielding the retreat of the remnants of the 1st Airborne Division. Casualties among the Polish units were high, approaching 40%. After the battle, on October 5th, 1944, Sosabowski received a letter from Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, commander of the Anglo-Canadian 21st Army Group, describing the Polish soldiers as having fought bravely and offering awards to ten of his soldiers. However, on October 14th, 1944, Montgomery wrote another letter, this time to the British commanders, in which he scapegoated Sosabowski for the failure of Market Garden. Sosabowski was accused of criticizing Montgomery, and the Polish General Staff was forced to remove him as the commanding officer of his brigade on December 27th, 1944.

Sosabowski was eventually made the commander of rearguard troops and was demobilized in July 1948. Shortly after the war Sosabowski succeeded in evacuating his wife and only son from Poland. Like many other Polish wartime officers and soldiers who were unable to return to Communist Poland on pain of repercussions including death or disappearance, he settled in West London. He found a job as a factory worker at the CAV Electrics assembly plant in Acton.He died in London on September 25th, 1967. In 1969, Sosabowski's remains were returned to Poland, where he was reinterred at Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw. In The Hague, on May 31st, 2006, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands awarded the Military Order of William to the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade. The brigade's commander, Sosabowski, was posthumously awarded the "Bronze Lion". On June 1st, a ceremony was held at Driel, the town where the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade fought. Among the speakers at the ceremony were the mayor of Overbetuwe, as well as Sosabowski's grandson and great-grandson. Sosabowski was portrayed by Gene Hackman in the 1977 war film A Bridge Too Far. In the summer of 2012 1st Airborne Major Tony Hibbert made a video appeal for Sosabowski to be pardoned and honoured.

[thesirencult]

YOU NEED PEOPLE LIKE ME / DARK PSYCHOLOGY

You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your f*****’ fingers and say, “That’s the bad guy.” So what that make you? Good? You’re not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie.

(Tony Montana, Scarface)

Most people can not handle their darker side. They can not handle their ego and their deepest desires. Now, I'm not telling you to become like Tony Montana. He was consumed by his vices and they run the show for him. I'm telling you to do what you what to do and to stop lying to yourself and hiding from your true nature.

A couple of years ago, I met a girl who had an obsession with finding a wealthy man. She did not care about anything else other than the money. In her defense, she grew up in a poor family where, her dad beat her mom up and he even did that while her mom was pregnant with her.

That girl was studying finance. She took up Arabic and wanted to work for off shore companies where she could find a husband. She specifically told me she wanted her husband to drive a Porsche which has more prestige than a BMW and buy her a BMW cause the woman should be beneath her husband. Overall she was "micey" in character. If you didn't know her you would think she was shy and religious, but. you should know better guys, these people have more ego problems than the most outspoken, egomaniac extrovert.

So, she looked "weak" but had an agenda. She also was trying to give off the "trad wife" vibe but salivated as soon as a man breathed her direction and shamed any woman who showcased her seductiveness.

A few days ago, she messaged me. She wanted to grab a coffee with me as she would be in town. I was surprised when I saw her. In the "kindest" way I can put it, she looked like women who run on every single rally around and fight for justice (nothing wrong with taht, but if you're following me I bet you get what I'm trying to convey). A white girl with Bob Marley braids! Yup, there it is!

She told me she had given up Arabic and no longer wanted to work in a big shipping corporation because that supported big oil and their agenda. She then preached to me about equality and why the left is supreme. Now, I'm pretty straightforward so I asked her, how and why her views changed. She wanted to own 3 cars and be a stay at home mom! She looked outside the window of the coffee shop and saw my parked car.

"Do you see this car?"

I said "Yeah, I see it."

"Whoever drives this car is a right wing egomaniac who doesn't care about the environment and just wants to flaunt their money." (my car is a hybrid you guys!)

"Do you drive?"

"No, I can not afford a license and my family owns only one car. Also, I'm scared of driving. Also, did I tell you I'm running on the elections with the *left wing side*. Will you vote for me? If I make it I'll get 2k per month plus health care benefits."

"That's my car. I was going to ask you, do you want to take the train home or will you ride with me?" I just wanted this meeting to bo over, to tell you the truth.

She came with me.

Wanna know why? Here is my hypothesis (and it ties in with Tony Montana's words):

99% of people give up on their dreams by age 23. In order to make it easier for them and help them soothe the guilt this breeds, they begin to drift to the opposite "side" of the court. Pornstars turn to trad wives. Playboys turn to "faithful" husbands who preach the word of the Lord. Money and power hungry individuals take up boring jobs and blame the rich and the goverment for everything. Men who can not pick up women turn to red pill guys and so on and so forth.

Most people can not handle their darker side. They can not handle their ego and their deepest desires. Now, I'm not telling you to become like Tony Montana, he was consumed by his vices and that's who runs the show. Either you run the show or someone else or something (an addiction) runs it for you.

We see all that often with sex. Body counts, "I can not find a good man/woman" etc. People who can not get what they want hate those that have the GUTS to get it.

If my acquaintance's beliefs are that strong why did she enjoy the drive in the luxury SUV? Why did she then ask me when are we going out again and if I can bring "that" guy friend who runs a tech start up?

Because they are not her beliefs. They are just a cover up. A mask.

We've all seen how happy some people get when a dreamer fails.

So, go one. Fail. You''ll succeed at some point. You're better than those who sit on the sidelines running their mouth.

They would want to be at your shoes. They would want to run free on the court.

Own that. Own yourself and run after your goals and desires. Fuck them.

[baelpenrose]

Alright, action plan for the Left

I keep telling anti-Voting advocates "okay so what's your plan" and they keep asking me, "okay but what's yours" Alright, bet. It exists in three parts.

Phase 1: Apotheosis Denied. Republicans have spent the last 40 years playing a very long game in order to weaken institutions in ways that only benefit them - jerrymandering, weakening institutions at state and local levels, and seizing supreme court, in order to make something like Project 2025 a reality, but it has also led to a critical fracturing of their party. At this point, they are making one desperate gambit to seize power, and if it fails, they will have a critical fracture in their party as the authoritarian wing, now a cult of personality around trump, attempts a second violent coup and is met with the violence of the state and is curbstomped into the dirt. The resulting republican realignment will be frantic, and leave them in a much weaker position - no less fascist, but weaker. Our first step, right now, because we are so far behind, has to be to deny them the apotheosis of their 40 year long game. Phase 2: Parallel Systems. There are multiple components to this one and this is where the government is going to get a little more concerned. This can start NOW, and should start NOW, but continue in tandem with phase 3. Phase 2.1: United Labor - Join the IWW. Join a union. Look into unionizing your workplace. Regardless of how small a difference you think it makes, increasing the power of labor decreases corporate power, full stop.

Phase 2.2: Mutual Aid: Set aside a certain percentage of your income each month - doesn’t have to be a lot, but just a certain amount, that you can budget for each month for helping your community. Make helping other people part of the budget. Creating this simple system, if enough people do it, will limit the reliance on corporate and state control. Do not exceed this - you will expend your resources and wind up needing to rely on others and then overdraw. Keep it to within what you can give.  Further, budget a certain amount of TIME each week to doing something that serves your community (see below as well) and getting to know them. 

Phase 2.3: Community Networking: Engage with your community in real life, outside. Set aside a certain amount of time each week to do this. If it’s working with underprivileged kids or providing childcare, taking care of the elderly, etc. You can go to a sewing circle and start talking to the people there and bring salvaged clothing that you repair and donate and talk them into doing something similar. Work your hobbies into it! Can you sew? Knit? Scarves and ponchos are never a bad thing, and you can show people how to do it - or swap labor for something you need.. Can you do carpentry? Repair furniture for people who need it, and odds are you can give lessons to people for free and put on a workshop - or swap labor for things you need. Start building these networks in your community. Also, anyone who has a yard? Start looking towards native food-bearing plants. If you’re rural, look into ethical hunting and community cookouts. Kill feral pigs, especially. There’s a shit ton of them, they’re invasive, and they’re tasty, and a cookout of them will bring people together. 

Phase 2.4: Community Accountability/Mentoring. Do you have problems in the community with crime? Kids being assholes? Have you considered, rather than calling the cops, giving the kids something to do so they aren’t shitheels? Hooking them up with mentors who can give them skills or help them explore their passions? Providing programs with volunteering? Get involved at your school as well, or form a parent group for it, this will help reduce how many of your kids wind up in the school to prison pipeline. 

Phase 2.5: Community Defense: Arm. Odds are you have at least a few disaffected veterans in the community who know the government screwed them and their families who are willing to train you to defend yourselves and who will be happy to be asked to do so - and easy enough to radicalize if they spend time with other people the state is fucking over. It doesn’t have to be everyone in the community, but realistically, you should have at least a few able-bodied people with guns from every community who are practicing with firearms and tactics to protect their community from the fascists as things escalate. This will allow considerably better protection in the event of a shooting or similar.  Phase 2.6: Community Assets: Every community should develop a battery of people who can provide at least some degree of help in a variety of situations. Become trained in first aid, CPR, etc. You won't be as good as a doctor, but you can still help. Have a community garden or three. Develop a neighborhood mechanic. Develop a neighborhood seamstress or carpenter if you know one. Trade services. Watch each other's kids.

Phase 3: Electoral Counterstroke This phase exists in two parts: Phase 3.1: Divide and Conquer: Further hasten the crumbling of the republican party. While it realigns, it will do so into a number of factions, the one most likely to win is the authoritarian, christian, culture war, racist wing. You have the ability, if you approach gun nuts and "small government" conservatives (which still exist in many areas of the country) to discuss with them their options. They will NEVER vote democrat or green or left - and they will never be leftists. BUT. They will be easy to convince to splinter from fascism and join a right-wing Libertarian party. They won't be on our side, but their defection from the fascists serves us still in that it splits a right wing further and makes a divided left much less of a gamble.

Phase 3.2: Left Surge Okay, so flat out? This year, Jasmine Sherman is not a viable candidate. They should be, by all rights, but they are not. This is partially due to ballot access tampering, but also partially because far-left candidates have a bad habit of starting their homework five minutes before class starts and then wondering why they don't get a good grade. We have four years to figure out how to get them ballot access in all 50 states, and we need to accomplish that goal, and ensure that they actually are on the ballot in all 50 states in 2028. A vote for them in 2024 is wasted, a vote for them in 2028 should not be unless we've all fucked up to a ridiculous degree. (Yes, I know they have it in 48 states. One of the two where they DON'T because both the democrats and the green party bent over backwards to stop them is CALIFORNIA. You know, the state that no left-wing candidate can win without because of our whopping 55 electoral votes. I mean it when I say they need it in all 50. We can get them there by 2028 if we aren't stupid.)

Further, your local elections should be contested. That public defender who tries to keep juvenile offenders out of jail? Push him to run as a judge and rally as much support as possible. Push left wing retired teachers to run for school board and help them run their campaigns. Push librarians who have lost their libraries to right wing culture war nonsense to run for school board. Politics is local and controlling local power controls most of the governing.

In the senate races, the party machines in almost every state have a lock, so what you're going to do is vote the farthest left democrat you can, consistently, and force the dems to move towards us. This will damage the republican obstruction capacity and begin hijacking the democratic party and make us a block the dems MUST appease.

In the House, you vote radicals, and try to encourage other radicals to run. Where possible, vote green or left-wing third party, where not, repeat the strategy in the Senate.

For state legislature, there's more play for independents - check your state races, these vary a lot more, and to be honest I am much, much more aware of my own state's political machinery than I am aware of anyone else's to the point that any advice I gave on this point would really only be relevant to CA.

There you go, actionable, intelligent planning for the next decade of how the left can effectively sieze power and specific things YOU can do to make the situation better.

[rahuratna]

Synopsis: Fat Gum (Taishiro Toyomitsu) x Fem Reader

As a crime journalist with a chequered past, you find yourself re-located to Esuha City through no choice of your own. Working alongside pro-hero Fat Gum, each new case exposes more of the dark underbelly of the city, and what it truly means to be a hero.

Genres: Suspense, mystery, romance, humour.

Rating: M

Warnings: Violence, substance abuse, adult themes, explicit sexual content in later chapters.

Cross-posted from Ao3.

Title from: "Era Vulgaris" lyrics, by Queens of the Stone Age.

Divider by: @animatedglittergraphics-n-more

It was time.

Your belongings all fitted into a small cardboard box, a foot each way in length and width. First, the framed pictures and accolades that sat around your desk in the tiny, crowded cubicle. Then the other personal items, including the stationery, coffee mug, journal and numerous blank spiral-bound notepads.

In went the small basket of plastic flowers gifted to you by Mrs Honda. They had never been to your taste, even before they faded, but you'd treasured them since she'd handed them over to you after that last appearance in court.

Packing was complete in a depressingly short time. The books stacked waist high against the walls of your cubicle, the archives you'd spent many sleepless nights poring over, the rows of files piled on flimsy bracketed shelving, bowing slightly under their weight, would not be leaving this office with you. You'd signed a non-compete to avoid any issues if a rival news group employed you, and all of this would have to remain.

Not that you had much hope of that happening. Your new posting was in downtown Esuha City, at a small local tabloid, the only kind that would currently employ you.

Once your box was packed with its meager contents, you paused, taking in the cubicle you'd spent the last six years ensconced in, eating cheap, steaming cup ramen, the tinny radio from across the hall on full blast for the evening news, peeling off your wet coat and socks after hours spent standing in pouring rain at some event or other.

This was where your career had been made. This was where it had ended.

All right, so you were entitled to a dramatic flourish, considering your circumstances. Technically, your career wasn't over.

You picked up the box with an air of finality, shrugging away your procrastination of the inevitable. There was still that long walk to the train station to endure, through the halls, past the cubicles and offices of the people you'd worked alongside for years.

A walk of endurance.

You could take doors slamming against the prod of your questioning, the roughhousing of other journalists as you waited outside the scene of a crime, fingers numb with cold. You could withstand a shower of flying spittle as some corporate bigshot screamed into your face, apoplectic with rage. You had even learned to stand silent witness to grief, despair and unimaginable violence.

This, on the other hand, was different. Their stares weren't even disapproving, or angry. Just pitying.

Your pace increased, and even though the box you carried was shockingly light, your breathing was laboured by the time you reached the front doors.

"Reporting for duty, Fat Gum!"

"Nice and early, Kirishima. Good on ya."

Tamaki glanced between the two manifestations of pure sunshine that, unfortunately, made up the rest of his team. His shoulders came up defensively.

"I thought today was going to be admin. Can't you leave me here in the office to handle things?"

Fat Gum's large hand steered Tamaki out the door, and right out of that particular delusion.

"Come on. What have I told you about practicing your 'helping people' face?"

"I've never possessed such a face."

Kirishima slapped an open palm against his chest and flashed a confident grin.

"Like this! See? It's easy."

Tamaki shook his head woefully.

"I can't help it. I look nervous all the time and my smile comes out wrong and I scare people. Or make them feel sorry for me."

Fat Gum stroked his chin in apparent thoughtfulness.

"Guess you're right about that. You do look scared a lot. Need to work on that, 'fore we let you out into the streets again, huh?"

Tamaki's mouth fell open, and he craned his neck to catch a glimpse of Fat Gum's face.

"Are you for real? I can actually stay here at the agency and ... "

He received a good-natured, if callous, belly laugh from the BMI hero.

"Nah, just kidding. You're going on patrol with us. Ain'tcha a lucky guy?"

Tamaki retreated into hopelessness once again. For two kind and cheerful heroes, Fat Gum and Kirishima seemed to take some sort of special pleasure in tormenting him. He'd just have to endure.

As they made their way out into the chilly street, Tanaki considered his unique position at Fat Gum's Agency. As much as he still needed to work on himself, he knew, on some level, that he'd made large strides since he'd started his studies here.

His internship had been a success, if harrowing in its social nature. Attached to a hero like Fat Gum, there was no bypassing any form of public interaction, as Tamaki had successfully done in the past. Taishiro Toyomitsu was a 'tender tank' indeed, warm, effusive, generous, always ready with a quick snack and words of encouragement or support, but he didn't hold Tamaki's hand either. There was a rough, tough, independent streak to the man, one that didn't brook wallowing in weakness or accepting one's flaws as part of nature.

He'd made it clear to Tamaki that he'd expect him to improve as a hero, because heroes weren't perfect beings that sprang fully formed into the public eye. They had to actively work on themselves, much harder than the people they protected on a daily basis. Fat Gum himself had steadily climbed the ranks through sheer incremental labour, gaining the trust of the community he had grown up in, effectively working alongside other heroes that people could consider to be far more powerful than he was.

Tamaki raised his head slightly when he realized that Fat Gum was speaking again, words slightly muffled as he popped the steaming taiyaki he'd bought from a street vendor into his mouth.

" ... and there'll be new deliveries coming in for Okita Groceries. Gotta keep an eye on that later. Clover Fields Nursery is also holding a fundraiser some time this morning. Traffic might be a problem if they're taking up the corner across from Gijima Group Building. Hmm. Let's see. Oh, I got a message from Tachibana at Esuha Shimbun. They're getting a new employee today. Someone he wants to talk to me about. I gotta stop by there too."

Kirishima was nodding along earnestly to the listing.

"Where should we go first?"

Fat Gum raised a burly fist, pausing in thought before swinging his arm out towards the south-west district that was crowded with various business enterprises and office blocks.

"The newspaper building. Tachibana gets there pretty early. Let's see what he has to say."

Esuha Shimbun was small and focused enough to be classified a tabloid, but its reputation as a long-established and trustworthy news source for the locals made it worth its salt. Tachibana had been the assistant editor for many years now, his own roots in the community providing him with a network of information (and imformants) that often proved very useful to Fat Gum.

The building was an unremarkable light grey, the sign for the newspaper headquarters half hidden in a shadowed entryway. Tamaki spotted the short, bespectacled man outside, waiting for their approach. He frowned. Tachibana only met them out here when he wanted to pass along confidential information.

Fat Gum raised a hand in greeting as the assistant editor spotted them and hurried over. Tachibana started speaking as soon as they were within earshot, his rapid-fire delivery jumbled and nervous.

"Oh, there you are. She's due any time now. Apparently she took the first train out and she's going to - "

"Hey now, hold on."

Fat Gum raised a quelling palm.

"Who's 'she' and what's got your head in such  spin?"

Tachibana took a small, bracing breath before adjusting his glasses.

"The new columnist, that's who. She's going to be here soon."

"And that's who you wanted to tell me about?"

"Well ... yes. Her. She specializes in crime writing. But ... you see ... she's been involved in reporting on certain types of cases. That's what I wanted you to know about. There was a big court case surrounding that last one. It's the reason she's been transferred here. One of our sponsors also invests in a big Tokyo newspaper where she used to work."

Fat Gum scratched his chin lightly, frowning.

"Sounds like a lotta words for a simple warning, Tachibana. What exactly do you want me to know?"

"Some of the cases she covered don't exactly put heroes ... in the best light. It's why nobody in the big cities wants to employ her anymore. That court case she was involved in was a good example. The hero didn't come out of it looking great at all. One could say ... his career pretty much went downhill from there. So listen."

Tachibana leaned in urgently, voice lowering even further.

"I had no say in her ending up here. Just ... watch your back, okay? Be extra careful with how you handle cases from now on."

Fat Gum reacted exactly the way Tamaki expected him to. He chuckled, fishing a now slightly cold taiyaki from the paper carton he carried.

"That's it?"

Tachibana let out a frustrated huff.

"I knew you wouldn't take this seriously enough. Just ... just be careful. And don't say I didn't warn you."

"Warn him about what?"

A distinct feminine voice, calm and crisp, sounded from behind them. Tamaki froze before turning slowly. Tachibana's complexion had lost a little of its ruddiness.

It looked like the subject of their conversation  had turned up at a most ... inopportune time.

You'd done your research on the area, of course. Which was the reason you'd known about him; BMI hero, Fat Gum. Seeing him in person was ... certainly something, though. You'd seen pictures of him, but nothing had prepared you for how tall he was in his current form.

He towered over the two youngsters who were, presumably, his interns or sidekicks, and definitely dwarfed the diminutive assistant editor who was now looking at you as if you'd donned a tengu mask and danced threateningly in front of him holding a spear.

Your eyes met Fat Gum's, the large, tawny-gold irises surrounded by the black material of his mask, disconcerting in their wide, frank appraisal. He grinned and the lengthening of his sizeable mouth heralded a low rumble that then pitched forward seamlessly into a full throated laugh. His belly heaved and he slapped Tachibana's shoulder so hard the smaller man stumbled forward. Fat Gum wiped a tear of mirth away from his eye, completely oblivious, it seemed, to the tension that had permeated the air.

"Now this'll make a funny story."

He waved to you, large hand encased in a worn, red glove of sturdy material.

"Hiya. You must be the new columnist."

You nodded slowly before approaching.

"I am. But are introductions really in order? It seems Mister Tachibana was doing a good enough job before I came along."

The assistant editor sputtered.

"Now, I meant no harm. You have to understand - "

"Ya, he was telling me watch my back 'round you, missy," Fat Gum chirped cheerfully.

One of the sidekicks, a dark-haired boy, moaned slightly before covering his face. The other boy flashed a sharp row of teeth in an amused grin. Fat Gum continued undeterred, now munching on a stick of pocky he had pulled from God-knows-where.

"That ain't gonna change how I work, obviously. You're welcome over at my agency any time! Come see how we do things. Get to know the town. You're gonna need to be familiar with stuff if you wanna get in on the good stories, ya know?"

So saying, he handed you a stick of pocky. You took it. You weren't sure you had a choice in the matter. Fat Gum offered a small salute and a "See ya!" before turning his portly form towards the main road and ambling off, trailing his sidekicks in his sizeable wake.

Tachibana mumbled some half-hearted apology before hurrying into the building, leaving you standing on the street with your satchel slung over your shoulder.

Well.

That was certainly one way to start your first day at work. Your patchy history with pro-heroes had followed you all the way out here, it seemed. Not that you expected any different. This hero, Fat Gum, seemed genuinely unconcerned though.

Raising the stick of pocky to your mouth thoughtfully, you took a bite.

[soaps-mohawk]

your fix has inspired so many thoughts in my head omg- what would the boys be like if reader started making friends on base. talking with the other betas (reader would probably stay clear of the alphas but betas maybe). one day they’re eating lunch and this other beta /alpha just comes up to reader and reader t a l k s to them. maybe even smelling a little like their new friend since they’ve been hanging with them whenever 141 isn’t there 👀👀

The way those boys would get so defensive at first. They're used to the stares, the whispers. They're the God Damn 141, of course they get looked at when they pass by. But when reader's with them? Whole other story. They'd all be bristling, hackles up. Like who the hell would have the audacity to approach them and their omega so openly?

But then reader's just chill, greeting this Corporal by name and the confusion sets in. They'd share looks, maybe a whispered "what the fuck?" They'd be a little on edge because this Corporal hasn't even glanced their way, totally focused on their omega.

When the Corporal walks away, all eyes are on the reader. They all want to know.

Reader just shrugs. "Oh, that's my new friend."

Friend? You have been busy while they were gone. They're immediately doing background checks on this beta Corporal, looking at every little detail available to them. Nothing of significance pops out. Cue the spontaneous interrogation training, starting with this beta Corporal.

Nothing. Just some cheeky beta that's a little too friendly, but hey, so is Soap.

Maybe they are just a friend.

[simsandchesscrossover]

More in-depth descriptions of the kids for my kidswap below the cut!

NOTES ON CHANGES (KIDS)

At the start of the story, JOHN has recently been abandoned by his brother, who has given up on training him to save the world. He now resides in a foster care facility. In the first act, he has a rather violent breakdown as a result, and decides to express any and every emotion he pleases. This results in a unique typing style where he often forgets to add punctuation and emoticons to his texts and adds them on later.

Contrary to Rose’s passive-agressive battles with her mother, JADE is frequntly and plainly aggressive. She lives in the woods outside her house and refuses to go inside unless pre-planned and mutually agreed upon- as she puts it, she and her mother have their own territories, and their relationship relies on them staying out of each other’s way. This mindset means that she is exceptionally frustrated when her mother is sober and tries to convince her to come back, saying that “children aren’t supposed to live out in the woods” and “it’s dangerous”. Can’t she see Jade is being the bigger person here?

On the subject of ROSE, she is both more secure and far more paranoid. Actually interacting with other children, the majority of whom found her pretentious and strange, has made her overly defensive, and she has taken refuge in what she views as her areas of superiority. Given her father’s more balanced approach to parenting, she doesn’t believe everything he does is an attack, but when she encounters something odd enough that it seems like one, she spirals.

DAVE deals with his enviroment perhaps the worst out of any of the children. He doesn’t cope well with what he phrases as “living on this bumfuck island with my grandpa until he shot himself because taking care of me was just that bad i guess”. On top of that, he’s constantly hounded (ha!) by a dog-like creature that he used to think was the one that killed his grandfather. Now, he isn’t sure if it’s even real or some sort of grief-induced hallucination. This has made him exceptionally anxious, and although he tries to hide it, his very limited social skills aren’t up to the task.

The Alpha session is a bit more complicated. JANE was raised on a series of recordings from her brother, all intended for a boy named Dirk. Given that she was entirely alone, she had no reason to think that that wasn’t her. Rose gets a vision of the changes to the timeline just in time to send out one final message explaining the truth. A key component of Jane’s worldview is that she deeply resents Dave for that and not being there, and is completely aware that it’s irrational. Conciously or not, she rebels against his post-ironic movie star lifestyle by leaning into suburbia. She sews dapper suits out of t-shirts and practices comedy. Once she discovers that she is not, in fact, Dirk, her idea of mild-mannered perfection shifts slightly. It’s undeniable that this house wasn’t made for her, but some aspect of being a “cool dude” still calls to her more than her new matronly ways… (it’s the transgender)

JAKE CROCKER is the heir to the Crocker corporation, and he’s also a media darling. Despite his father’s attempts to keep him out of the public eye (mainly due to the assassination attempts), the PR department has taken their chance, and his celebrity status is sure to make the population of Earth unwilling to resist their new Empress. Besides, Jake’s got his crackshot aim, a dashing smile, and two-inch-thick bulletproof windows, through which he can wave to his adoring populace before going about his business. What could go wrong?

ROXY spends her days chatting online and experimenting in her grandmother’s laboratory. She may be the only human left on her island, but she’s far from the only creature! Her beloved Gcat is always by her side, at least when he’s hungry. The rest of the island’s animals are wild, but the ones she makes love her. They barely try to eat her even a quarter of the time. But mostly, she wants to figure out a way to get off the island- just for a quick vacay!- and explore the world, meeting all the people and seeing all the sights.

Roxy-DIRK-Lalonde-Strider- whatever his name is now, it doesn’t matter- is wrong. There was some great cosmic error, and he came to this city of carapacians instead of a single apartment in the middle of the sea. He’s always known he didn’t belong here, but he assumed it was just some innate, destructive quality of his. Ever since the day he killed his own pet cat (in an unfortunate robotics accident), he’s known he was a monster. He’s done his best to counteract that, helping the carapacians in any way he could, but it isn’t enough. Everything in this home reminds him of his mistakes, and he makes no effort to change that.

[lboogie1906]

Sergeant Major Gilbert “Hashmark” Johnson (October 30, 1905 – August 5, 1972) was one of the first African Americans to enlist in the Marine Corps and one of the first African American drill instructors in the Marine Corps. He was known as “Hashmark” because he had more service stripes than rank stripes. He retired in 1959 after 32 years of service in the Armed forces, including 17 years as a Marine.

He was born to a farming family in rural Mount Hebron, Alabama. He attended Stillman College, aspiring to become a minister, but he left college the following year to join the Army.

He enlisted in the 25th Infantry Regiment in 1923, serving two three-year tours. He was discharged as a corporal. He decided to join the Navy. In 1933, he enlisted in the Naval Reserve and was accepted into the Stewards Branch, the only job available to African Americans at that time, he served in the Navy for nearly 10 years. In May 1941, he entered the regular Navy. He served aboard the USS Wyoming at the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, requiring the Marine Corps to accept African Americans and forbidding discrimination by military contractors. He requested a transfer from the Navy to the Marine Corps. He and other African Americans served in segregated units.

In 1943, he was among the first African American men to be trained as Marine drill instructors. In May 1943 at Montford Point, he replaced the drill instructor. As a member of the 52d Defense Battalion, on Guamin WWII, he asked that African American Marines be assigned to combat patrols, from which they had been exempt. Once approved, he led 25 combat patrols.

Edgar Huff, the only other African American Sergeant Major besides him to serve during WWII, was his brother-in-law. They were married to twin sisters. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[monstrifex-art]

Malka Bat-Sheva - Original character & short story inspired by the Chainverse series by Maria Ying.

Killing a vampire with your hands is not a simple matter. There are several important steps to the process.

The first step is to understand that you are outmatched. A vampire kills and eats humans. That is its nature, its default state. Every fact of its physiology is bent toward this aim. It is stronger than you, faster than you, and possessing of a hunger that eclipses its fear of death. To match the lowest vampire, a human must train to be strong, to be fast, and to numb themselves to mortal fear. In this sport, hesitation will kill faster than recklessness.

Second, you must craft of yourself an effective weapon. Folklore suggests a dozen dozen anathemas that harm vampires, some of which even work. But there are only two weapons that harm vampires across all bloodlines: sunlight and human hope.

While sunlight can be weaponized by arcane means in hand-to-hand combat, it is a difficult and often fleeting resource to harness. Do so if you are able, but do not rely on it as your only weapon.

Hope is a more dependable asset. Vampires are creatures made of fear. The faith and courage of their prey harms them at a metaphysical level. To this end, religious symbology and artifacts of human belief can be instrumental. I have tattooed myself with the faith of my ancestors, as their religion runs most strongly in my blood. If your ancestry leans toward a particular creed, I suggest you do likewise.

The more eclectic reagents espoused by folklore can be effective against particular vampire bloodlines, often because of the properties granted them by human belief. I take a scattershot approach. I wrap my arms in bandages lined with smoked salt, purified silver wire, various cleansing herbs, and a mix of shredded holy texts. If you know the lineage of your target, you can tailor these ingredients to them. Do your research.

Third, one must force the vampire to remain in corporeal form. There is merit to emotional manipulation in pursuit of this goal– challenging a vampire to physical combat will often amuse them enough to humor your request. But it is an unreliable method best used only when other options are unavailable. In my experience, one is better off relying on magical means of trapping them in their body of meat and bone. Smoked salt disrupts the black mist, drawing them back to physicality. Coat your fists and shins with it. Certain charms and benedictions ward off intangible evils, forcing them to materialize in order to approach you. With these the key is to not only force them to start a fight, but to prevent them from escaping.

Fourth is to unmake them. Know that no human martial art is sufficient to prepare you. Martial arts are designed with defense in mind and honed through the use of sparring. In order to kill a vampire, you will have to perform actions that are impossible to practice without maiming your sparring partner. It is a sad reality that in order to kill vampires with your hands, you must first have killed humans.

Supernaturally augmented though they may be, a vampire still needs eyes to see. Tendons to move. A jaw with which to bite. Your goal is to deny them these resources.

It is not enough to strike your opponent or grapple them into submission. You must ruin them. You must tear muscle fibers, crack joints, snap bones with carefully placed force. Vampires feel pain less intensely than humans, but they will still be stunned if you mangle their flesh. Your attacks must rupture the machinery of their bodies, inflict enough damage that they are unable to tear out your throat and drink your lifeblood. No single martial art can prepare you. Study them all. Use the parts you find effective. Reduce your opponent to a husk of broken meat. Then the killing blow will be trivial.

Fifth, you must eat the vampire’s heart. Mere moments after ruining a vampire’s body, it will begin to repair itself. You must act quickly. Tear the heart from its rib cage and devour it. Take the power it would use to remake itself and channel it into your own flesh. This is the truest defeat of a vampire: to inflict on it what it was born to inflict on you. There is no sweeter triumph for humanity than to dominate the beast at its own game.

Consuming vampires will change you. The magic that strengthens them will fuel your body, but alter your flesh. You will not be human, not in the traditional sense. But you will remain human in the eyes of your prey.

And that is all that matters.

[manorpunk]

Teach Me, Maria-sensei! 7️⃣

Sunny: I haven’t heard you talk about your family, like, ever. What’s up with that?

Maria: None of humanity’s institutions are defensible, but ‘the family’ is by far our worst creation. It is the root of all evil, the ancestor of all hierarchies and unearned authorities, and thus deserves a slow and painful death.

Sunny. Neat. So you totally want to complain about your family, don’t you?

Maria: I’d really rather not.

Sunny: Then you want to say something nondescript about them?

Maria: No! Why do you care so much about it?

Sunny: Because you usually want to share your opinions about everything and everyone, so if you don’t want to talk about it, then I must be poking a nerve.

Maria: …

Sunny: Poke poke.

Maria: …

Sunny: You know it’s only a matter of time. I can do this all day.

Maria: [sighs] Right, I forget sometimes that you’re evil.

Sunny: I’m not evil! I’m just good at what I do. Now gimme the details. Gimme gimme.

Maria: It’s… ugh, I can’t believe I’m telling you this. By any chance, have you ever heard of the ‘skuman project’?

Sunny: Nope, but it’s in quotes so it must be important.

Maria: I had just described how the billionaire class retreated to their bunkers, private islands, and company towns back in the 2030s. Once they were settled, they unfortunately were not content to stay idle, and set to work on a number of experiments previously considered off-limits. The ‘skuman project’ was one of those experiments, or rather, a collection of related experiments that would have previously been rejected as unethical and physically impossible - exowombs, genetic engineering, tailored hormone therapies, the list goes on. They tried anything that would bring them closer to a future of eloi and morlocks, deific übermenschen ruling over obedient, unthinking worker bees.

Sunny: Sheesh! I mean, I am also trying to make people into my obedient and unthinking servants, but I just do that by bein’ so gosh-darn cute! [wink, peace sign]

Maria: But, as always happens with such grand ambitions, the billionaires behind it were deeply in denial. There’s a reason that such experiments were off-limits - back then, our knowledge of human genetics was woefully rudimentary, and their ‘experiments’ were akin to doing surgery while wearing oven mitts. They were throwing darts in the dark, often with live human subjects. The majority of these experiments were straightforward failures. Their exowomb experiments never produced any viable offspring, and the only thing their gene-tailoring therapies did was give children genetic disorders… hence why I’m stuck in this wheelchair most of the time.

Sunny: Whoa. So you’re telling me…

Maria: My ‘parents’ were a human breeding-sow and the supercomputer that wrote my DNA. I was raised by nannybots that followed the whims of their corporate masters. I am a skuman.

Sunny: That is, and I do not say this lightly, wowsers bowserinos. There’s no way it’s still going on, right?

Maria: Correct. The Global Logistics Network came in and shut the whole thing down back in the 2050s, then paid off all the surviving skumans to keep quiet about it, though by this point it’s become an open secret.

Sunny: Why did they want to keep it secret? If I were in their shoes I’d love the chance to show off other people’s bad ideas.

Maria: My guess would be that the GLN wanted to take a look at the results for themselves, see if there was anything they could learn from it. Mistakes can also be valuable information. Who knows what they’re doing with it now, it’ll probably be decades before anything is officially released to the public. If there’s one thing the GLN is good at, it’s giving people money to keep them quiet.

Sunny: Hey, it’s a form of wealth redistribution.

[long pause]

Maria: They thought they were making the future of humanity. And instead, they made a genetic train wreck. A woman-shaped pile of endocrine disorders. It’s like making pancakes, you know, the first one of the batch always comes out wrong. And you know what the worst part of all this is?

Sunny: [quietly] What’s that?

Maria: There’s a part of me that admires what they were trying to do. I don’t agree with their aims, obviously, but… whenever I tell people about all this, the first thing they do is whimper and coo about how hard it must be to not have a family. Then they turn around and talk about how much they hate their parents. In a way, us skumans are ex nihilo, free of ancestry and thus free from original sin. There’s a part of me that hopes the GLN gets some good data from all this and by 2100 people themselves are just one more mass-produced commodity.

Sunny: Why?

Maria: I don’t know. Because it’s what we deserve.

[thoughtportal]

'Megalopolis' is a piece of s—t

SFGATE columnist Drew Magary begs you not to see Francis Ford Coppola's new film

This is not a review. This is a warning. If I gave Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” a standard movie review and told you that it was an incoherent mess on par with “Rebel Moon” (which it is), your fanboy reflexes would kick and you’d write me off. You’d take me as just another pair of glasses dead set on panning a movie just to bolster their art cred. I hate critics like that, and so do you.

So I’m telling you this not as a reviewer, but as a friend: Do not see this movie. It is a piece of s—t.

You’ve been warned various times already. You were warned when the Guardian reported this spring that crew members on “Megalopolis” described its making, paid for entirely by Coppola thanks to his fortune in winemaking, as a “train wreck.” You were warned when that same article leveled allegations that the old man would sexually harass female crew members (barf) and burn hours of shooting time just hanging out and smoking weed instead of working (OK I respect it). Coppola has denied the allegations, and has sued Variety for its own investigation into his reported wrongdoing. In its introduction, the written complaint in that suit includes the sentence, “Some people are jealous and resentful of genius.” Go ahead and take that sentence as a warning, too.

Because Coppola has been running defense for this film basically ever since it wrapped. Lionsgate, the only studio willing to distribute Coppola’s vanity project, tried to get ahead of the damage by releasing a trailer larded with critical barbs that had been levied against Coppola’s old masterpieces, quotes that turned out to be fabricated.

But perhaps those warnings haven’t been enough. Perhaps, like me, you keep a soft spot in your heart for Coppola, a member of the auteur revolution who made a string of masterpieces through the ’70s and ’80s, but has made none since. Perhaps, like me, you were drawn in by a cast that includes Adam Driver, Aubrey Plaza, Dustin Hoffman, the god Giancarlo Esposito and other luminaries. And perhaps, like me, you’re so worn out by corporate filmmaking that you’re down with any movie that showcases pure artistic ambition, even if the end result is a misfire. Maybe this thing is a disaster, but maybe that’s the fun of it, yeah? Like gawking at a car wreck?

Wrong. This movie is unwatchable. It deserves to live in infamy, with its title acting as shorthand for any multimillion-dollar flop borne out of monstrous ego. I took a bullet watching “Megalopolis” for you. An actual bullet would have been kinder.

I’ll give you the details as best as I can manage. “Megalopolis” — oh I’m sorry, “Megalopolis: A Fable” — is Coppola’s attempt to portray near-future America as Ancient Rome. And brother, he is NOT subtle about it. He renames New York as New Rome. He gives every male actor a Caesar cut. He throws in engraved title cards throughout the movie that look like the menu of an SNES game. He turns Madison Square Garden into the Coliseum and uses it for an extended bacchanalia scene that goes on longer than a Catholic wedding. And he dresses up Shia LaBeouf, a talented actor whose face I never want to see again, in toga drag. Why is Shia in drag? What’s his character up to? Please don’t expect answers to any of that.

Here is the plot, as best as I can divine it. Driver plays Cesar Catilina, who runs the Design Authority of New Rome, which has its own police force for some reason. We know that Cesar is an architect, because the posters for “Megalopolis” all show Driver holding a magic T-square. We do not actually see him use that T-square in this movie. In fact, we don’t see him doing any nuts-and-bolts design work of any kind. This is because Cesar’s real occupation is Godfather of New Rome. He somehow has more influence in New Rome than the city’s mayor (Esposito), ANDhe has the power to stop time. How he acquired this ability is never explained. In fact, the movie gives Cesar this power for virtually zero narrative purpose.

Cesar is tortured. His wife has died, and Cesar is mourning her by doing lots of blow and sleeping with salacious TV reporter Wow Platinum, played by Aubrey Plaza. Turning Aubrey Plaza blonde is one of many crimes that Coppola perpetrates in this film. Now, Wow Platinum has some skeezy motives of her own (she’s a gold digger), so Cesar is wary.

He also has beef with Mayor Cicero, who apparently tried to implicate Cesar in his wife’s death, and who is working to prevent Cesar’s Design Authority from building Megalopolis, the architect’s vision of a future city. None of this is explained with any clarity. More important, it’s boring.

The rivalry between Cesar and Cicero grows more heated when the former falls in love with the mayor’s daughter, Julia. Julia is played by Nathalie Emmanuel, whose only direction from Coppola appears to have been, “act like you’re the love interest in a Michael Bay film.” Julia is a reporter (I think?) who’s loyal to her father but enchanted by this brooding, wide-chested rival. Is this love? Does the fate of Driver’s new “city,” which we know is the city of the future because it has moving walkways that glow, depend on them staying away from one another? Do I care about ANY of this s—t?

I don’t.

The plot I described above is barely discernible through the excruciating 138-minute running time of “Megalopolis.” I had to piece the story together myself while enduring things that no paying moviegoer should ever have to sit through. There’s that endless Coliseum scene, featuring a musical interlude from the city’s “virgin sweetheart,” who turns out to be older than she claimed (no!) and not a virgin at all (ZOMG!). In fact, she f—ked Cesar! On camera! Is nothing pure?

It gets dumber. There’s a scene where Julia, with the film’s incoherent score blasting in the background, solemnly reads not one, but THREE quotes from Marcus Aurelius in a row, giving the Roman emperor attribution after each one of them. There is Dustin Hoffman looking lost. There is Jon Voight looking even MORE lost. Driver is just about the only person here who does his best with the material he’s given. He acts so, so hard. Admirably so. Everyone else, with great justification, looks like they’re already embarrassed to be here. They know this thing is going to be a lemon, and act accordingly.

That includes Laurence Fishburne, in full “Matrix 2” mode playing both a chauffeur and an occasional narrator. That also includes Jason Schwartzman, who gets almost no lines in the film but shows up mostly because he’s related to Coppola. And it includes Plaza, who will absolutely be the best interviewee from this cast whenever Werner Herzog films a documentary about how awful the production was.

Oh hey, did I mention that there’s an Elvis impersonator singing the national anthem? That was random. There are also still photos of 9/11 (Rome falling alert!), plus an “interactive element” where a live performer in the auditorium asks questions of the on-screen Cesar as part of a press conference scene. It adds nothing.

There’s a jarring sequence where a little kid walks up to Driver’s car and shoots him in the face (credit where it’s due, Coppola still knows how to film a murder), but the bullet turns Driver’s right eye into a miniature galaxy before the wound magically heals altogether.

And, most importantly, there is Voight in a Robin Hood outfit, asking Plaza, “What do you think of this boner I got?” before shooting her in the chest with an arrow. That one’ll be a meme.

Save for Voight’s erect midnight cowboy, nothing else about “Megalopolis” will last. The dialogue is terrible. The color palette is nearly as incongruent as the music. The overdubbing sometimes doesn’t match the actors’ lips at all. The visual effects are terrible, featuring virtual sets that look like early design mockups Coppola never bothered to flesh out. Even the PROPS are terrible. Every physical prop in “Megalopolis” looks like Coppola either found it in his garage or asked his grandkids to make it for him. This movie cost the old man $120 million. He sold one of his wineries off to finance it. You could have shot a better looking movie with your phone.

And that’s really all there is to it. The only reason this film was released was because Coppola made it, and the only reason that Coppola made it was because he’s a centimillionaire. This is very much the work of a bored old stoner. I knew it five minutes into “Megalopolis.” I also knew that I was stuck.

Don’t let that happen to you. Don’t be tempted by Coppola, or by the cast, or by any contrarian review that attempts to kick off a reassessment of this disaster that it will never deserve. This movie is garbage. It doesn’t work as “so bad it’s good” camp. It doesn’t work as a “fable.” It doesn’t work as a noble attempt at a Big Statement. It doesn’t work at all. I’m sorry I watched it, and I will genuinely think less of anyone who finds it redeemable. There are plenty of directing legends, Martin Scorsese chief among them, who have great stories left to tell. “Megalopolis” proves that Coppola is not one of them. This man doesn’t know how to make good movies anymore. In fact, he doesn’t appear to know how to make any movie anymore. 

Before my screening, the studio hosted a livestreamed Q&A with Coppola, Spike Lee and Robert De Niro. Toward the end of that Q&A, De Niro, an outspoken liberal, looked out at the audience and said to them, “Just imagine Trump directing this movie.” Bobby, I don’t have to.

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All systems of totalitarianism, including corporate totalitarianism, deform education into vocational training where students are taught what to think, not how to think. Only the skills and expertise demanded by the corporate state are valued. The withering away of the humanities and transformation of major research universities into corporate and Defense Department vocational schools with their outsized emphasis on science, technology, engineering and math, illustrate this shift. The students who disrupt the Potemkin university, who dare to think for themselves, face beatings, suspension, arrest and expulsion.

The Nation’s Conscience