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sgiandubh · 8 months

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This is not a political post

One more time, in caps and bold: THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL POST. But if I can, as a diplomat and a historian, bring some extra context and try and understand what happened today in S's world, so be it. Enough said about me.

I am fumbling with a ton of thoughts since this morning, when this link was shared with me by one of the closest people in my platoon:

In a nutshell: S signed that (in)famous letter, an initiative of APUK (Artists for Palestine UK), a network that's been operating since 2015. You can read it in full if you open the link and I suggest you do. You will soon find out that the letter, while correctly pointing out the atrocious gesture of bombing a civilian hospital in Gaza, asked the world's governments to 'end their military and political support for Israel’s actions'. Nowhere in that letter did the word Hamas appear, which would immediately point out as supporting what is a terrorist movement that is, alas, also part and parcel of the Palestinian government, under Mahmoud Abbas's weak, irrelevant aegis. The man is an old PLO/Fatah crone: fishy, ineffective and fairly corrupted. His position on the Holocaust is, to be elegant, a study in ambiguity. Enough said.

It is pointless and absurd to try and explain the whole situation in detail. I would have to go back at least to the Balfour Declaration (1919) or the no less infamous end of the British/LoN/UN Palestine Mandate (1948), if I wanted to simply scratch the surface of a subject that is everywhere these days. With an intensity of absolutely legitimate emotions that can simply not be measured by any counter on this planet, as we speak.

But the facts are here, and naïve S had no damn idea: 500 civilians were killed, Tuesday night, in the bombing of the al-Ahli Baptist/Arab Hospital in Gaza City. Hullaballoo ensued on a cataclysmic scale: first, Hananya Naftali, a digital aide to Benjamin Netanyahu recklessly wrote on X that the "Israeli army [Tsahal] bombed a Hamas terrorist base inside a hospital in Gaza". Then erased the tweet. Several video collages released by the Tsahal, the first of which was heavily contested by a NYT journalist (and former Bellingcat researcher) Aric Toler, point out towards the PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad)'s forces being responsible for the strike.

These quotes from an Al Jazeera paper sum up the ensuing scandal better than I ever could - selected by me, but you can and probably should read it all (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/18/what-is-israels-narrative-on-the-gaza-hospital-explosion):

No craters mean no airstrike and most probably a rocket failure. The uneasiness remained, that being said, at the highest level. And the planned US-Egypt-Jordan- Palestine talks hosted by Amman were abruptly called off hours before Biden landed in Tel Aviv.

To cut the story short: the letter is right to point out that you just don't bomb hospitals when you are at war, as per the terms of the Fourth 1949 Geneva Convention, dealing with the protection of civilians in times of war. Both Israel (signed in 1949/ratified in 1951) and Palestine (2014) are, as parties and signatories, legally bound by it, in the eyes of International Law. The only problem with it is that it purposefully omits to put things into context (whodunnit) and forgets the cynical truth: Hamas keeps hundreds of innocent Israelis and two millions of innocent Gaza civilians as its hostages.

Article 18 is at the core of the matter:

The last thing S should have done is to sign that fucking treacherous letter, without getting a second (third, fourth...) opinion.

S is a good man, we all know and love this about him. He is also one of the most naïve people I have ever seen in this lifetime. This is why his final reaction really, really moved this cynic, here:

I am taking this home and keep it. It deeply moved me (yes, me):

" I don't know nearly enough and trying to educate myself on the conflicts in the Middle East. I feel helpless and wish I could help in some way.'

I am sure 'someone nice' called and 'nicely asked", maybe even offered some scarce and biased details, to prompt an impulse signature. I am also sure S didn't read the letter himself. There is no harm saying you were wrong. He did it with dignity and grace - no, it was not easy.

This is a man of worth speaking. Bravo!

But for the love of all that's holy, Sir: don't you ever step into this kind of shit again. These things are far more complex than you could ever fathom and it's a very cynical world out there. Leave it to us, we are handsomely paid for it by our governments. I hear you and I am completely supporting this more than welcome withdrawal. It's not worth much, for sure. But it is an honest POV.

Also, John 8:7:

So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

Kindly refrain from politics in your comments. Let's not drag trash where it should not be, ever. Thank you all.

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echo-bleu · 11 months

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Soo... coming back again. Feel free to disregard my previous ask(s). But for the Pride Game, could I ask for Elladan and Elrohir with the aroace flag? Thank you so much, and please take all the time in the world <3

I absolutely loved drawing this. Always nice to draw my own flags, and I love the colours of the aroace flag.

[ID: digital painting of Elladan and Elrohir lying down in opposite directions with their heads together, seen from the top. They are identical elven twins with light brown skin, dark eyes and long, curly dark hair. Elladan has his hair in a loose braid and is wearing a yellow vest and blue sleeves, and he looks up at the camera, laughing. Elrohir is wearing blue leather armour and orange sleeves, his hair half-up, and he looks at his brother, smiling. A ribbon in the aroace flag colours runs around them. The second picture is the same as the first but upside down.]

I'm still learning how to do consistent faces, so identical twins is a challenge! And I spent way too long trying to figure out what their features might be based on my headcanons for all of their parents and grandparents and so on xD. They inherited Idril's curls, which Elrond and Arwen didn't, but on Lúthien's hair texture that makes it impossible to braid properly (Elrond makes a lot of effort, but the twins don't care). Their ears are a little more rounded than full elves, and they have just a pinch of the Maia eyes.

To me Elladan (with the braid) is the more outgoing one, he's the diplomat of the two, he dresses a touch more colourful, while Elrohir is more of an introvert. Them being aroace is a wonderful headcanon that I may just adopt!

#elladan #elrohir #lotr #lord of the rings #lotr fanart #tolkien #silmarillion #queer elves #queer silmarillion #aroace #aroace flag #echo's drawings #artists on tumblr #digital art #queer tolkien characters

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carionto · 9 months

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Aliens observe Humans being Humans, just more

Humans have numerous events, holidays, celebrations and other gatherings for a wide variety of occasions. As cultures across the Galaxy go, not out of the ordinary, though quite louder than most.

One peculiar event a group of Coalition delegates attended was rather hard to understand. A large indoor location with some outdoor activity, many service stations set up around in a sort of makeshift town that specialized for this particular get-together, but we could not discern the purpose for it.

Humans were walking around dressed in a rather more eclectic fashion than typical and there seemed to be no connecting element. They would wait in line at these stations to interact with the attending service providers, receive items and signatures, sometimes in exchange for currency, sometimes not, take pictures of and with them, as well as with other attendees.

Some larger stations would host speeches and audio-visual demonstrations, as well as hands-on practice with whatever they were providing, usually a digital form of media, though sometimes a physical item too.

What was rather unusual was how the Humans would interact with us. Or, moreso - how they didn't. Most behaved as though we were fellow Humans as well, giving us praise for our appearance, and asking to take pictures with us, sometimes requesting we take certain stances both alone and with them.

There was a recurring set of similarly dressed Humans who would more often interact with us in similar manners. One group who were generally dressed in simple color coded attire would be overly respectful and considerate and engage us as though they were fellow diplomats and go on to talk about matters of Galactic import, though the names and institutions they cited were unfamiliar to us.

The other distinct group were Humans, we presume at least, housed within massive and elaborate suits of armor and weaponry, though panicked scans quickly revealed they were decorative in nature. They would often address us in a more derogatory manner and talk of overly hostile actions they would personally inflict upon us, which was quite disturbing to hear, but then they would laugh and become very friendly and also ask to take pictures with us. However, once again, the faction and organization names they used when referring to us were unknown entities.

After a couple of days of this, the event sort of just ended and the Humans scattered across the Earth and Solar system, many changing their attire into the more typical less elaborate but still highly diverse and uncoordinated items. We left still unsure of what we witnessed, but it appears these kinds of random gatherings of Humans who are almost always not personally connected with each other in any way happen quite frequently in many places around the world.

In conclusion, while we do not fully know how to categorize these "conventions", we summarize their purpose is mass communication, sensory stimulation, cultural exchange, and creation of new social bonds. Beyond that, it may be impossible to properly comprehend without direct assistance from Humans themselves.

#humans are weird #aliens #just an observation #what else do i tag #i guess #warhammer #and #star trek #im not very good at this #so i'll just insert suggestions that pop up #guess thats too rare #oh well #writing is hard #but fun #thinking is hard #and less fun #carionto

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17-noodlebird · 4 months

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presenting...

The Amazing Digital Circus Road Trip AU!!!! 🎪🛣️🎉

I finally have the courage to post something of genuine purpose here!!!

So this is the summary:

• The events prior to the road trip were… eventful, for lack of a better term. To make a long story short, a group of dimensional travelers opened the eyes of the Amazing Digital Circus, both for better and for worse. What started out so rocky ended up becoming a closer bond for them, as they learned more about the other dimensions, and maybe, just maybe, the enigmatic inner machinations of C&A and their perpetually dark history.

• About 6 months went by since then, with Bubble, and four of the interdimensional diplomats, Beth, Pam, Val, and Garcia, creating brand new maps for the game that the others could explore, while completing tasks, gaining artifacts, and meeting brand new people, all while keeping the details secret until it was ready. The other diplomats each had their own contributions to their own game maps, as did Bubble, but only one knew the ending of the road trip: the main diplomat Lulu.

• The road trip would be akin to the world level-based collect-a-thon video games, a la the Super Mario Odyssey, and the role-playing games a la the Steven Universe: Light series. Twenty-six designated levels were made, each with a different theme, animation style, culture, customs, interactable NPCs, characters in need of help, and antagonists/bosses that they can defeat.

• There is a door made out of mountain rock that needs to be unlocked, using all twenty-six (or twenty-eight, depending on your point of view on the matter) jewels, to unlock the “ending” of the road trip; no one else, not even Bubble, knows what's behind the rock door — no one, that is, except Lulu. She says that it's a surprise for afterwards. Each gem is hidden somewhere in their respective worlds, and the players need to obtain and collect all of the jewels in order to open that door by completing tasks, fulfilling objectives, and defeating antagonists. While the circus players pack their things into the Magical Digital Van (a combo of the Magic School Bus for the cutesy face that only communicates in beeps or radio music, and Vanzilla from The Loud House, in terms of retro appearance and spaciousness in cargo and passengers), Garcia gives Caine a silver-colored crystalline gem, causing a “YOU DID IT” pop-up to appear, startling him. Apparently, the pop-up appears when a jewel is obtained after completing the location’s objective. After the first jewel is placed in the middle of the rock door, The Amazing Digital Circus sets off for fun and adventure, thrills and peril, comedy and tragedy, action and excitement, an obscure all-star cast of side characters, heroes, villains, pop culture references, ties to nostalgia, relatability, and… possibly romance…...? Who knows? The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma.

• Each of the Digital Circus members have magical Velcro bracelet communicators that they can use to contact the diplomats for help on tasks, finding out further information, or to just talk to them the same way we'd talk to our loved ones on the phone for hours on end. The communicators also send the circus members notifications for an objective they must complete (do keep in mind they can come much later than usual when they least expect it), as well as random achievements, the same way you would when actually playing a video game. Once a jewel has been obtained by any means, the pop-up will congratulate the circus members for grabbing the jewel, as well as to notify how many left you need to obtain to unlock the rock door. For example:

~ JEWEL OBTAINED! ~

15 out of 26

Only 11 remain

~~~~

Characters:

The original eight characters have been slightly altered to fit the AU, but still have most of their canon traits intact.

• Caine:

Caine is still the charismatic goofball we all know and love, but with a dash of nervousness, inability to understand human humor, especially Gen Z humor, and hints of newfound irritability. He's practically a fish out of water in most of these game locations, not really capable of self-defense outside of his signature cane, and being a lot more cautious and protective with his fellow members, especially his best friend and guide, Pomni. Caine sometimes acts as the dad friend of the group, not tolerating anyone's BS and trying to maintain order in situations he's absolutely not familiar with at all. When around Pomni, he feels kinda at ease, with their dynamic being akin to SpongeBob and Patrick when working together. Hell, Jax even refers to Caine and Pomni as The Dynamic Duo.

• Bubble:

Still the chaotic, anarchy-loving glutton we all know and love, but with a caring side to him. You see, for as long as Bubble could remember, he had been Caine's sole confidant, being there for him during his toughest battles, from witnessing yet another abstraction, to calming the ringleader down after a nasty panic attack. They're even roommates! (my god, they were roommates) Bubble would totally just go with the flow and not worry too much about having to adapt to an environment completely different than his own. In fact, his masochistic tendencies make the perils more thrilling for him! He'd also act as the mom friend of the bunch, acting as some sort of mediator for when things get too chaotic for his liking. He'll also lend a helping hand if so desired.

•Pomni:

She's still jittery and anxious, but thankfully not as bad as when she first arrived at The Amazing Digital Circus. After several months of dealing with this game's BS, she developed an indifference to her situation as a defense mechanism, and has become something of a voice of reason to the others. Jesters in real life are known for not just providing entertainment and comedic nitpicks to the royal court, but were also considered their royal advisors. Pomni would become Caine's advisor after some constructive criticisms towards him and his methods of keeping the others sane and healthy, and later on his best friend, acting as Bubble's stand in from time to time, providing witty banter and friendly roast sessions with the other circus members. Jax often calls Pomni and Caine “The Dynamic Duo” because of the fact that they share some things in common: both can turn into nervous wrecks during stressful situations, both are hilarious to be around, both want to keep the circus happy and healthy, and both care immensely for the well-being of everyone around them. Rumor has it they're also drinking buddies; but nothing has been confirmed…

• Ragatha:

Still our cheerful and good-natured ragdoll, with big sister/ant tendencies. Her hugs are as soft as they are warm and reassuring. She'd be the one to always look on the bright side, even when surrounded by unfamiliar surroundings, kinda like Ruby Gloom. She still has to keep an eye on Jax and make sure he doesn't get up to no good, but during moments where Ragatha and Jax must work together, there are things they can learn from one another. Ragatha would teach Jax the importance of being kind to others as well as taking time to listen and understand them, while Jax could teach Ragatha how to be more assertive and set proper boundaries, making her less of a passive pushover and more confident in taking care of herself first. Ragatha could also attract animals and have them help around with chores, a la Snow White.

• Jax:

Jax is less of a condescending asshole and more of a Jerk With A Heart Of Gold, becoming Pomni's big brother figure when necessary. Sometimes, he and Pomni would get into comedic hijinks of their own, as regular siblings naturally would, even pulling off harmless pranks. Jax is still snarky as always, but this time, being more genre savvy than the others, taking notes of his surroundings, and apparently has a lot of knowledge about agriculture, which proves useful for one particular road trip location. He'll also go out of his way to give someone a hug if he sense someone is in dire need of one, and will offer helpful advice during his more rare moments of kindness.

• Gangle:

Still the cute and bubbly but also emotional and prone to crying talking theater mask, but with hidden depths. Her love for anime and all things Japan is generally what keeps her going, as well as her love for drawing. Gangle doesn't really contribute much other than trying to be as helpful as possible, especially after finding out she can use her ribbons as a rope! Golly! She is, however, incredibly intelligent, with a knack for math, science, and history, as we come to find out in a road trip location, and can even speak and translate Japanese. When Gangle decides to grow a spine in protecting her friends from harm or bullying (even Jax, surprisingly), her voice has a tendency to change to a more mature and assertive business-like tone (remember that her VA, Marissa Lenti, was once the voice of a high school guidance counselor until… y'know.) to show you that you really shouldn't fuck with her. This causes Jax to rethink picking on Gangle ever again at one point.

• Zooble:

Honestly, not much can be said about Zooble, other than they're mostly apathetic, slightly rude, and snarky, being there cuz they can. They, along with Bubble, kinda just go with the flow, but now has the ability to become awestruck or starstruck by the other circus members’ newfound abilities, including Gangle's rope ribbons. Zooble also takes time to appreciate the little things in life, enjoying the much-needed change of pace the road trip brings. They're basically the emo goth kid in terms of personality, but with layers like an onion. Zooble also acts as the bodyguard of the circus members, somehow discovering her prowess in defensive combat, fueled by the innate desire to protect their loved ones at all costs.

• Kinger:

The oldest surviving member of the circus, Kinger still retains his ability to get startled easily from constantly dissociating, his love for insects and insect collecting, and his knack for building pillow forts. Due to being the oldest, he now acts as the group’s grandpa, with his “back in my day” kind of storytelling, and apparent knowledge of how the digital world works. He also offers some life advice on how to get through even the toughest days, him having lived through it long ago with Queenie’s abstraction, and is noticeably a lot more chipper and compassionate during the road trip. He also becomes braver and more empathetic in one particular road trip location, with him becoming less startled easily over time. He apparently is also a tech genius (in reference to MatPat and finnthepony’s theory on Kinger’s past life as The Amazing Digital Circus’s game dev), having knowledge on how to fix machines and software, as well as acting as the gang's mechanic for the Magical Digital Van.

~~~~

• The Magical Digital Van:

Built by Bubble, Kinger, Val, and Beth, the Magical Digital Van is the main vehicle the circus members use for the road trip, traveling to different destinations and stops along the way. The Van has a cutesy face that pays homage to The Magic School Bus, with her own emotions and reactions, but can only communicate in van noises, horn beeps, and radio music. Yes, the Van is a girl; a lot of vehicles in real life (including ships) are referred to by female pronouns. Kinger especially loves the Van like he would his girlfriend, much to the chagrin of everyone else.

~~~~

• Potential ships(?):

I might be the only one in a sea of Showtime, Bluetooth, and Kingleader, among others on this platform, but I actually do ship Caine x Bubble. When I first saw the pilot, I thought to myself, “yep. These two definitely have chemistry.” I see them as one of those old bickering couples that like to tease each other. They've basically been through thick and thin, gray skies and sunny days, tears of laughter, and everything in between. Also, I'm in love with the idea of Caine just being a tsundere; I find it pretty hilarious to me. And Pomni being the Shipper On Deck in the background. I have a particular fondness for the unusual.

Another ship mentioned here is Jax x Ragatha. Remember The Princess & The Frog where Naveen taught Tiana to relax a little, while Tiana taught Naveen to take life more seriously and work harder to achieve his goals? Well, it's essentially that, like rivals to lovers or something. I love when “opposites attract” is done properly, especially here!

Bluetooth (Moon x Caine) would have been canon in this AU at one point in the past, but now The Moon and Caine are exes (y'all can have exes in fiction btw!). In the past, Caine and Moon dated (and at one point did the deed, *wink wink*), but after the Moon became too clingy and possessive, with a yandere attitude, Caine broke up with her, and Pomni would have helped both the Moon and Caine move on from the breakup, realizing what they had was not healthy. This “adventure”/off-screen episode would be mentioned here and there during the road trip (I want to assume the road trip is like a Season 3 thing, but the show's success might contradict this; oh, well) while Bubble and Caine try to take things slowly.

Hints of Gangle x Zooble (aptly named Google by the masses) can be found, but only in subtext. Zooble makes an in-passing comment on how they find Gangle's assertive voice to be hot at one point.

~~~~

This AU pays homage to… well… A LOT of things that I enjoy watching over the years. It takes a look back on the things I found nostalgic as a kid growing up in the late 2000s and early 2010’s, including things that might also be familiar to other older generations of Gen Z. My most recent fixations (such as Unikitty) can also be found there, including random YouTubers I used to watch all the time, horror movies I grew fond of, some cartoons I still watch, such as Steven Universe, The Loud House, Teen Titans Go of all shows, the DreamWorks and Disney movies I watched as a kid, the older Gen Z memes we're familiar with by now, other video games we used to play all the time, among many others. I also wanted to spice up the variety of the fandom with my own interpretations of the characters, as well as some neat ideas I wanted to share when I conceived them.

With that being said, I hope you enjoyed this summary of my brand new AU idea!

Welcome one and all to

The Amazing Digital Road Trip!

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theculturedmarxist · 1 year

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SHANGHAI — Over the past generation, China’s most important relationships were with the more developed world, the one that used to be called the “first world.” Mao Zedong proclaimed China to be the leader of a “third” (non-aligned) world back in the 1970s, and the term later came to be a byword for deprivation. The notion of China as a developing country continues to this day, even as it has become a superpower; as the tech analyst Dan Wang has joked, China will always remain developing — once you’re developed, you’re done.

Fueled by exports to the first world, China became something different — something not of any of the three worlds. We’re still trying to figure out what that new China is and how it now relates to the world of deprivation — what is now called the Global South, where the majority of human beings alive today reside. But amid that uncertainty, Chinese exports to the Global South now exceed those to the Global North considerably — and they’re growing.

The International Monetary Fund expects Asian countries to account for 70% of growth globally this year. China must “shape a new international system that is conducive to hedging against the negative impacts of the West’s decoupling,” the scholar and former People’s Liberation Army theorist Cheng Yawen wrote recently. That plan starts with Southeast Asia and extends throughout the Global South, a terrain that many Chinese intellectuals see as being on their side in the widening divide between the West and the rest.

“The idea is that what China is today, fast-growing countries from Bangladesh to Brazil could be tomorrow.”

China isn’t exporting plastic trinkets to these places but rather the infrastructure for telecommunications, transportation and digitally driven “smart cities.” In other words, China is selling the developmental model that raised its people out of obscurity and poverty to developed global superpower status in a few short decades to countries with people who have decided that they want that too.

The world China is reorienting itself to is a world that, in many respects, looks like China did a generation ago. On offer are the basics of development — education, health care, clean drinking water, housing. But also more than that — technology, communication and transportation.

Back in April, on the eve of a trip to China, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva sat down for an interview with Reuters. “I am going to invite Xi Jinping to come to Brazil,” he said, “to get to know Brazil, to show him the projects that we have of interest for Chinese investment. … What we want is for the Chinese to make investments to generate new jobs and generate new productive assets in Brazil.” After Lula and Xi had met, the Brazilian finance minister proclaimed that “President Lula wants a policy of reindustrialization. This visit starts a new challenge for Brazil: bringing direct investments from China.” Three months later, the battery and electric vehicle giant BYD announced a $624 million investment to build a factory in Brazil, its first outside Asia.

Across the Global South, fast-growing countries from Bangladesh to Brazil can send raw materials to China and get technological devices in exchange. The idea is that what China is today, they could be tomorrow.

At The Kunming Institute of Botany

In April, I went to Kunming to visit one of China’s most important environmental conservation outfits — the Kunming Institute of Botany. Like the British Museum’s antiquities collected from everywhere that the empire once extended, the seed bank here (China’s largest) aspires to acquire thousands of samples of various plant species and become a regional hub for future biotech research.

From the Kunming train station, you can travel by Chinese high-speed rail to Vientiane; if all goes according to plan, the line will soon be extended to Bangkok. At Yunnan University across town, the economics department researches “frontier economics” with an eye to Southeast Asian neighboring states, while the international relations department focuses on trade pacts within the region and a community of anthropologists tries to figure out what it all means.

Kunming is a bland, air-conditioned provincial capital in a province of startling ethnic and geographic diversity. In this respect, it is a template for Chinese development around Southeast Asia. Perhaps in the future, Dhaka, Naypyidaw and Phnom Penh will provide the reassuring boredom of a Kunming afternoon.

Imagine you work at the consulate of Bangladesh in Kunming. Why are you in Kunming? What does Kunming have that you want?

The Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore lyrically described Asia’s communities as organic and spiritual in contrast with the materialism of the West. As Tagore spoke of the liberatory powers of art, his Chinese listeners scoffed. The Chinese poet Wen Yiduo, who moved to Kunming during World War II and is commemorated with a statue at Yunnan Normal University in Kunming, wrote that Tagore’s work had no form: “The greatest fault in Tagore’s art is that he has no grasp of reality. Literature is an expression of life and even metaphysical poetry cannot be an exception. Everyday life is the basic stuff of literature, and the experiences of life are universal things.”

“Xi Jinping famously said that China doesn’t export revolution. But what else do you call train lines, 5G connectivity and scientific research centers appearing in places that previously had none of these things?”

If Tagore’s Bengali modernism championed a spiritual lens for life rather than the materiality of Western colonialists, Chinese modernists decided that only by being more materialist than Westerners could they regain sovereignty. Mao had said rural deprivation was “一穷二白” — poor and empty; Wen accused Tagore’s poetry of being formless. Hegel sneered that Asia had no history, since the same phenomena simply repeated themselves again and again — the cycle of planting and harvest in agricultural societies.

For modernists, such societies were devoid of historical meaning in addition to being poor and readily exploited. The amorphous realm of the spirit was for losers, the Chinese May 4th generation decided. Railroads, shipyards and electrification offered salvation.

Today, as Chinese roads, telecoms and entrepreneurs transform Bangladesh and its peers in the developing world, you could say that the argument has been won by the Chinese. Chinese infrastructure creates a new sort of blank generic urban template, one seen first in Shenzhen, then in Kunming and lately in Vientiane, Dhaka or Indonesian mining towns.

The sleepy backwaters of Southeast Asia have seen previous waves of Chinese pollinators. Low Lan Pak, a tin miner from Guangdong, established a revolutionary state in Indonesia in the 18th century. Li Mi, a Kuomintang general, set up an independent republic in what is now northern Myanmar after World War II.

New sorts of communities might walk on the new roads and make calls on the new telecom networks and find work in the new factories that have been built with Chinese technology and funded by Chinese money across Southeast Asia. One Bangladeshi investor told me that his government prefers direct investment to aid — aid organizations are incentivized to portray Bangladesh as eternally poor, while Huawei and Chinese investors play up the country’s development prospects and bright future. In the latter, Bangladeshis tend to agree.

“Is China a place, or is it a recipe for social structure that can be implemented generically anywhere?”

The majority of human beings alive today live in a world of not enough: not enough food; not enough security; not enough housing, education, health care; not enough rights for women; not enough potable water. They are desperate to get out of there, as China has. They might or might not like Chinese government policies or the transactional attitudes of Chinese entrepreneurs, but such concerns are usually of little importance to countries struggling to bootstrap their way out of poverty.

The first world tends to see the third as a rebuke and a threat. Most Southeast Asian countries have historically borne abuse in relationship to these American fears. Most American companies don’t tend to see Pakistan or Bangladesh or Sumatra as places they’d like invest money in. But opportunity beckons for Chinese companies seeking markets outside their nation’s borders and finding countries with rapidly growing populations and GDPs. Imagine a Huawei engineer in a rural Bangladeshi village, eating a bad lunch with the mayor, surrounded by rice paddies — he might remember the Hunan of his childhood.

Xi Jinping famously said that China doesn’t export revolution. But what else do you call train lines, 5G connectivity and scientific research centers appearing in places that previously had none of these things?

Across the vastness of a world that most first-worlders would not wish to visit, Chinese entrepreneurs are setting up electric vehicle and battery companies, installing broadband and building trains. The world that is looming into view on Huawei’s 2022 business report is one in which Asia is the center of the global economy and China sits at its core, the hub from which sophisticated and carbon-neutral technologies are distributed. Down the spokes the other way come soybeans, jute and nickel. Lenin’s term for this kind of political economy was imperialism.

If the Chinese economy is the set of processes that created and create China, then its exports today are China — technologies, knowledge, communication networks, forms of organization. But is China a place, or is it a recipe for social structure that can be implemented generically anywhere?

Huawei Station

Huawei’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party remain unclear, but there is certainly a case of elective affinities. Huawei’s descriptions of selfless, nameless engineers working to bring telecoms to the countryside of Bangladesh is reminiscent of Party propaganda and “socialist realist” art. As a young man, Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s CEO, spent time in the Chongqing of Mao’s “third front,” where resources were redistributed to develop new urban centers; the logic of starting in rural areas and working your way to the center, using infrastructure to rappel your way up, is embedded within the Maoist ideas that he studied at the time. Today, it underpins Huawei’s business development throughout the Global South.

I stopped by the Huawei Analyst Summit in April to see if I could connect the company’s history to today. The Bildungsroman of Huawei’s corporate development includes battles against entrenched state-owned monopolies in the more developed parts of the country. The story goes that Huawei couldn’t make inroads in established markets against state-owned competitors, so got started in benighted rural areas where the original leaders had to brainstorm what to do if rats ate the cables or rainstorms swept power stations away; this story is mobilized today to explain their work overseas.

Perhaps at one point, Huawei could have been just another boring corporation selling plastic objects to consumers across the developed world, but that time ended definitively with Western sanctions in 2019, effectively banning the company from doing business in the U.S. The sanctions didn’t kill Huawei, obviously, and they may have made it stronger. They certainly made it weirder, more militant and more focused on the markets largely scorned by the Ericssons and Nokias of the world. Huawei retrenched to its core strength: providing rural and remote areas with access to connectivity across difficult terrain with the intention that these networks will fuel telehealth and digital education and rapidly scale the heights of development.

Huawei used to do this with dial-up modems in China, but now it is building 5G networks across the Global South. The Chinese government is supportive of these efforts; Huawei’s HQ has a subway station named for the company, and in 2022 the government offered the company massive subsidies.

“For many countries in the Global South, the model of development exemplified by Shenzhen seems plausible and attainable.”

For years, the notion of an ideological struggle between the U.S. and China was dismissed; China is capitalist, they said. Just look at the Louis Vuitton bags. This misses a central truth of the economy of the 21st century. The means of production now are internet servers, which are used for digital communication, for data farms and blockchain, for AI and telehealth. Capitalists control the means of production in the United States, but the state controls the means of production in China. In the U.S. and countries that implicitly accept its tech dominance, private businesspeople dictate the rules of the internet, often to the displeasure of elected politicians who accuse them of rigging elections, fueling inequality or colluding with communists. The difference with China, in which the state has maintained clear regulatory control over the internet since the early days, couldn’t be clearer.

The capitalist system pursues frontier technologies and profits, but companies like Huawei pursue scalability to the forgotten people of the world. For better or worse, it’s San Francisco or Shenzhen. For many countries in the Global South, the model of development exemplified by Shenzhen seems more plausible and attainable. Nobody thinks they can replicate Silicon Valley, but many seem to think they can replicate Chinese infrastructure-driven middle-class consumerism.

As Deng Xiaoping said, it doesn’t matter if it is a black cat or a white cat, just get a cat that catches mice. Today, leaders of Global South countries complain about the ideological components of American aid; they just want a cat that can catch their mice. Chinese investment is blank — no ideological strings attached. But this begs the question: If China builds the future of Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Laos, then is their future Chinese?

Telecommunications and 5G is at the heart of this because connectivity can enable rapid upgrades in health and education via digital technology such as telehealth, whereby people in remote villages are able to consult with doctors and hospitals in more developed regions. For example, Huawei has retrofitted Thailand’s biggest and oldest hospital with 5G to communicate with villages in Thailand’s poor interior — the sort of places a new Chinese high-speed train line could potentially provide links with the outside world — offering Thai villagers without the ability to travel into town the opportunity to get medical treatments and consultations remotely.

The IMF has proposed that Asia’s developing belt “should prioritize reforms that boost innovation and digitalization while accelerating the green energy transition,” but there is little detail about who exactly ought to be doing all of that building and connecting. In many cases and places, it’s Chinese infrastructure and companies like Huawei that are enabling Thai villagers to live as they do in Guizhou.

Chinese Style Modernization?

The People’s Republic of China is “infinitely stronger than the Soviet Union ever was,” the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, told Politico in April. This prowess “is based on the extraordinary strength of the Chinese economy — its science and technology research base, its innovative capacity and its ambitions in the Indo-Pacific to be the dominant power in the future.” This increasingly feels more like the official position of the U.S. government than a random comment.

Ten years ago, Xi Jinping proposed the notion of a “maritime Silk Road” to the Indonesian Parliament. Today, Indonesia is building an entirely new capital — Nusantara — for which China is providing “smart city” technologies. Indonesia has a complex history with ethnic Chinese merchants, who played an intermediary role between Indigenous people and Western colonists in the 19th century and have been seen as CCP proxies for the past half century or so. But the country is nevertheless moving decisively towards China’s pole, adopting Chinese developmental rhythms and using Chinese technology and infrastructure to unlock the door to the future. “The internet, roads, ports, logistics — most of these were built by Chinese companies,” observed a local scholar.

The months since the 20th Communist Party Congress have seen the introduction of what Chinese diplomats call “Chinese-style modernization,” a clunky slogan that can evoke the worst and most boring agitprop of the Soviet era. But the concept just means exporting Chinese bones to other social bodies around the world.

If every apartment decorated with IKEA furniture looks the same, prepare for every city in booming Asia to start looking like Shenzhen. If you like clean streets, bullet trains, public safety and fast Wi-Fi, this may not be a bad thing.

Chinese trade with Southeast Asia is roughly double that between China and the U.S., and Chinese technology infrastructure is spreading out from places like the “Huawei University” at Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology, which plans to train 100,000 telecom engineers in the next five years. We’re about to see a generation of “barefoot doctors” throughout Southeast Asia traveling by moped across landscapes of underdevelopment connected to hubs of medical data built by Chinese companies with Chinese technology.

In 1955, the year of the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, the non-aligned world was almost entirely poor, cut off from the means of production in a world where nearly 50% of GDP globally was in the U.S. Today, the logic of that landmark conference is alive today in Chinese informal networks across the Global South, with the key difference that China can now offer these countries the possibility of building their own future without talking to anyone from the Global North.

Welcome to the Sinosphere, where the tides of Chinese development lap over its borders into the remote forests of tropical Asia, and beyond.

#china #economics #capitalism #communism #hmm

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eretzyisrael · 8 months

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We Forgot

You shall remember what Amalek did to you on the way, when you went out of Egypt,

how he happened upon you on the way and cut off all the stragglers at your rear, when you were faint and weary, and he did not fear God.

It will be, when the Lord your God grants you respite from all your enemies around in the land which the Lord, your God, gives to you as an inheritance to possess, that you shall obliterate the remembrance of Amalek from beneath the heavens. You shall not forget! — Dvarim 25:17-19

I have heard this read in the synagogue numerous times, and taken part in discussions of the meaning of this mitzvah (commandment). But I did not truly understand it until Simchat Torah of this year.

A mitzvah can always be understood in relation to actions. The well-known injunction to “love thy neighbor” in Lev. 18:19 appears in context as “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” It does not require me to have a warm feeling toward the residents of the apartment next to mine. Rather, it orders me to avoid feuding with other Jews (not always an easy thing).

The commandment to remember Amalek does not mean to produce in myself a certain state of mind, similar to what I aspire to when my wife tells me to remember to bring home a carton of milk. That would be impossible anyway, because I wasn’t there in the desert when Amalek first did its dirty deeds. How can I remember what I didn’t experience? So what does “remember” mean here?

What I realized on Simchat Torah was that it means that we must not only keep in mind the evil that Amalek intends, but we must act on that awareness. It means that we must not let our guard down, we must take positive actions to prepare for Amalek’s viciousness. Only after we have achieved our independence in the land of Israel and fully defeated all of our enemies, can we stand down from our condition of high alert. Only when Amalek is finally obliterated will it be safe to obliterate our memory of it.

This has actually been the human condition for ages, and remains the condition of most of the world’s population today. If a tribe forgets that it has enemies, it will soon be swallowed up. But recently, several generations have grown up in North America and Western Europe whose enemies have been kept far enough away from them that they’ve come to believe that it’s normal to live in peace. It is actually exceptional. I think that shortly they may find out that this isn’t true.

For Jews, the wolf of Amalek is always at the door. This is certainly true in Eretz Yisrael, where Amalek has been battering at us for at least the last 100 years. But since 1967, many Israeli Jews have lost the existential anxiety that gripped the generation of 1948. The Yom Kippur War was a reminder of it, but the fact that we recovered from the initial defeat and won a clear-cut military victory (though it was taken from us diplomatically) and that our enemies didn’t penetrate our home front, soon erased the fear of the first days of the war. There were other warnings, but the desire to live as though we were one of the large Western democracies made us suppress the precarious reality of the Middle East in which we live.

So we reduced the size of our ground army, and relaxed many of the procedures that were, it turns out, essential to protecting our people. We have become dependent: on America, on technology, on our Air Force. Officers assumed that we were so strong that nobody would challenge us, so it was safe for them to fudge a little on their reports to higher-ups. What could happen? Our General Staff decided that technology could replace boots on the ground; they advocated for a “digital battlefield” on which every soldier would be tied into to sophisticated information systems that would provide real-time intelligence and command, blah blah blah. Their reports all said that goals were achieved. A whole paper structure was built that did not reflect reality. The map was not the territory. “We’ve never been stronger,” said the top generals, until Hamas revealed their nakedness on October 7.

Our leaders should have known the intentions of our enemies. All they had to do was listen to what the spokespeople of Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO, and Iran said in public. But perhaps because they themselves were so easily bought, they held our enemies in contempt. They assumed that quiet could be purchased with American dollars to the PLO and Qatari cash for Hamas. But it turns out, as anyone who has studied the Middle East even a little knows, that money was only a means to an end. They were happy to take it and build fancy villas for themselves, but they also dug tunnels and manufactured rockets. And they never lost their aspiration to once and for all kill and drive out the Jews from what they claim as their land.

The generals and the politicians forgot that we are not a large western democracy, but rather a small country in the Middle East. They forgot that our enemies are not stupid. They forgot that honor and deterrence go together. They forgot that the more complicated a system, the more weak points it has, and that technology can fail. They forgot that Maginot Lines never work. They forgot that only ground forces can hold territory.

Most importantly, they forgot how much our enemies hate us and how this motivates them. They forgot Amalek.

Abu Yehuda

#Israeli Society #Jew Hatred #War

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gaytotaldrama · 8 months

Note

[Request] Alejandro has to explain to his important diplomat father why he frenched a pineapple on international tv, got kicked in the kiwis (also on international tv), then vanished off the face of the earth for a good year.

also on my ao3!

Practically the second Alejandro emerges from the humiliating send-off that had been the Flush of Shame, his dad's calling him. On a hotel phone. On a hotel phone in Miami, of all the God-forsaken places in the world. It's a testament to the Burromuerto name that it'd been so easy for his father to find him - but where was all that during the year Alejandro's spent inside a robot suit?!

And the reception is horrible, too. Naturalmente.

"So." His father's voice crackles through the line in his usual clipped Spanish, formal and curt. "You're alive, then."

"Well, yes," Alejandro returns, furrowing his brows. "Did you think I was dead?"

A non-committal grunt. "The volcano in Hawaii burnt you to a crisp."

"Yes, but then - "

"Then you failed to win the million dollars. Twice now, if I'm not mistaken."

Alejandro rolls his eyes, thankful his father can't see him do it. "Why should it matter to you? You've got your own money."

"It doesn't. What matters is my own blood soiling the family name on international television for the entire world to see."

"Soil - ? I've been one of Total Drama's most ambitious competitors!" he exclaims, irked at the erasure. "I was the master schemer of the third season! You saw!"

"I didn't watch," his father says, which, oh. Alejandro hadn't been aware of that. It's expected, no doubt about it, but it's different, hearing its confirmation. "Your brothers have kept me updated on all of your shortcomings."

"Oh, have they, now," Alejandro seethes.

"You allowed yourself to become much too cocky. Toying with all the girls' hearts, so certain you'd win. Then you let that little Asian witch outsmart you. Kicking you while your guard was down. What in God's name made you fail that way, Alejandro?"

"Heather is not a witch," he fumes back. "Only I get to call her that. And so what if she won? She didn't get to keep the money, either, not after the eruption."

His father scoffs. "You think that's what matters? No. What matters is the humiliation you've caused us all, Alejandro."

"You already said that," Alejandro deadpans. "If you're going to ruthlessly insult me, at least have the originality not to be repetitive."

"Oh, so you're giving me cheek now, hm?" His father sounds pissed, which is exactly what Alejandro was going for. "Two pathetic stints on a damn reality show where you french kiss a pineapple and you think you're king of the world! Why I ever bothered to have a third son is lost on me, I must admit."

"I've been asking that same question for years."

A snort. "Well, if you think you're welcome at Christmas, you are gravely mistaken!!

"That's what you say," Alejandro points out. "Good luck getting that past Mom." And then he hangs up, jamming the phone back in its charging port, so his father won't have the satisfaction of getting in the last word.

He lays back on the scratchy pillow, folding his arms behind his head and thinking, contemplating, looking up at the mildewy ceiling. He wishes he could say that his father's words stopped hurting him a long time ago, but the hollowness in his heart tells him otherwise. Twenty years of trying to impress the man. Two decades of failure.

His dear mamá will stick up for him, he knows, but even so. It may be a good idea to throw together a different plan for the winter holidays. And also, you know. Find a more permanent place to stay.

An idea strikes, nearly wiping the previous conversation from his brain entirely. He reaches again for the telephone, entering the digits carefully with the calloused pad of his thumb. Smirking, he presses Call. He knew he still remembered Heather's number...

#td #total drama #alejandro burromuerto #my writing #aleheather

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mariacallous · 3 months

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The United Nations on Thursday adopted a U.S.-led resolution on artificial intelligence, marking what Washington says is a major step toward establishing a global baseline to regulate the rapidly developing technology.

The resolution, which followed more than three months of negotiations among dozens of countries, calls on U.N. member states to ensure “safe, secure, and trustworthy AI systems” that are developed responsibly and respect human rights and international law.

While the resolution is non-binding and does not include an enforcement mechanism, U.S. officials in a briefing on Wednesday highlighted the significance of its unanimous adoption as an important step in establishing global AI guardrails.

“This first-ever standalone resolution on AI at the United Nations is a consensus resolution—that means that all 193 member states will agree to it, and trust me, that is no easy feat,” a senior Biden administration official said, adding that as of Wednesday afternoon, 97 countries had also co-sponsored the resolution and that number was growing “literally by the hour.”

Debates on how best to regulate AI have dominated bilateral and multilateral forums for more than a year, ranging from the G-7 summit in Japan to the AI Safety Summit hosted by the United Kingdom last November. Several of the world’s most powerful governments have also established their own paths to regulate AI—the European Union earlier this month passed the EU AI Act after nearly two years of deliberations, while authorities in China have cast an ever-expanding, ever-evolving regulatory net to rein in AI technologies.

The Biden administration took its biggest swing last October with an executive order that echoes many of the goals included in the U.N. resolution. “What we’ve done, essentially, is to make sure that the resolution reflects what the administration is already doing with respect to its domestic AI governance,” another senior administration official told reporters.

The United Nations also has multiple other initiatives, including a new AI advisory body and its global standard-setting organization, the International Telecommunication Union. Those efforts will continue, but this week’s resolution may give the conversation more heft. “We view this as complementing other initiatives happening throughout the U.N. system, but it is different,” the second official said. “We think it’s important when all 193 member states agree to a set of global norms.”

That broad agreement is significant, given the diplomatic battles that have played out in the United Nations between Western democracies and allies on the one hand and autocracies on the other. China and Russia, in particular, have increasingly sought to shape the institution toward their worldview and priorities, stalling deliberations over a proposed treaty on crimes against humanity and attempting to impose a contentious treaty on cybercrime. On AI, however, the discussions appear to have been more productive.

“There were lots of heated conversations; that’s not unusual for the United Nations,” the first administration official said. “The fact that 193 countries that often can’t agree on anything at the U.N. were able to agree on this shows that this issue of AI is so transformative—not only from the technology standpoint but in terms of the potential opportunities that people see—that I think it transcended the usual geopolitical divisions that we have here in the United Nations.”

The inclusion of language ensuring AI systems comply with human rights is a particular bright spot of the resolution, according to Daniel Leufer, a senior policy analyst at the digital rights group Access Now. “I wouldn’t take that for granted as a statement,” he said. “Getting the message across that there are uses of AI that are just incompatible with human rights and cannot be permitted was a battle, and it is good to see that enshrined in something at this level with the level of consensus.”

But achieving that consensus also dilutes the impact that the resolution can have, Leufer added, particularly with a lack of enforcement mechanisms built into the U.N. process. “There’s always a risk that what that means effectively is bringing everyone down to the lowest agreeable bar,” he said. “If we limit ourselves to what we can get every state to agree on, we’re not going to get too far.”

One notable absence from the resolution is the potential military use of AI, and that was largely by design. “In looking across the broad sweep of AI considerations in the world, we made a purposeful choice in pursuing a consensus-based U.N. resolution to not include the military uses discussion in this resolution,” one of the officials said, adding that several diplomatic and multilateral conversations about military applications of AI are already ongoing across the U.N. and other forums. “We believed there was an opportunity to talk about safe, secure, and trustworthy AI in a civilian, non-military context, which was very important and deserved and merited its own attention and focus.”

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seventeenlovesthree · 4 months

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draceempressa "also ngl, Taichi's adventure from "another elementary shonen mc "all the way to "corporate slave who is still idealistic and maintain his individuality and idealism "is an interesting premise, considering in animangames, you just fade to the background when you matures. Taichi remaning as the mc and maintaning what he stands for wven as an adult is a nicd contrast to that, which ,i appreciate."

SEE, AND THIS IS WHAT I WANT FOR HIM. First and foremost, Kizuna didn't even display him as a corporate slave yet, but as a young adult without direction who had lost his way and played "performative adult" instead. A part of him had denied his past, his connection with Digimon and even his own partner - even if he STILL used the fighting as escapism in my opinion, because there he could still lead, still make an impact, still have control to some degree. And that is still making my heart ache, considering how much 02 and Tri showed us how much he always missed Agumon, how much he loved him and hated to see him hurt, corrupted, gone... Basically, he had to get in touch with himself again through the wake-up call that was Kizuna to find his true self (again).

I know a few Japanese artists have picked it up already and I love to imagine that Taichi will work part-time for Koushirou's company while getting his diplomat education done through the years - and that WILL take many years and there will be times when he'll hate everything about it. He will hate the government, he will hate the circumstances, he will hate the bureaucracy - and yet, at the same time, he will love enduring all of this, because he will finally know what he is doing it all for. Or rather - he will have found the answer in himself all along. As I said - you can get the kid out of the Digital World, but never the Digital World out of the kid.

And as much as I love to imagine it... I also want to SEE it, I want to see him thrive again. So badly.

#taichi yagami #tai kamiya #my two cents #meta #personal

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collapsedsquid · 1 year

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In July, the ex-Coinbase chief technology officer and former Andreessen Horowitz partner published “The Network State: How to Start a New Country,” a crystallization of ideas he’s been kicking around for almost a decade. The book audaciously claims that like-minded people scattered across the globe can form new societies first by building communities on the internet and eventually coalescing in real life – though not necessarily in a single place.

“A key concept is to go cloud first, land last – but not land never – by starting with an online community and then materializing it into the physical world,” Srinivasan writes.

Cryptocurrencies, borderless by nature, would power the economies of these countries-to-be. Once prospective citizens know and trust each other – early on, those already in close proximity could hold in-person meetups – they could crowdfund the acquisition or construction of apartments, houses or towns in which to live together. These discontiguous outposts would be stitched together into a “network archipelago” using “mixed reality,” a combination of virtual reality, augmented reality (e.g., glasses that superimpose text or graphics over what’s in front of your nose) and face-to-face interactions. Digital IDs would confer citizenship and a census would be taken (how else?) on-chain. Ultimately, a network state would seek diplomatic recognition from the analog-world governments Srinivasan depicts as sclerotic.

He calls it the "Network State" but really what he describes sounds a lot more like a "Network Political Party"

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hopeonmyphone · 4 months

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World Music Awards Twitter

Happy 30th Birthday to the gorgeous, super talented record-breaking, history-making Million-seller rapper, singer-songwriter, dancer, record producer, choreographer & Global Icon, the One & Only #jhope who rings in his birthday, trending at #1 WORLDWIDE on X! 👏🎂🎉🌟🐐👑💜

jhope rose to fame as the main Rapper of #BTS, the Biggest Boy band in the world! He is a hugely successful Solo Artist in his own right and one of the Best K-Pop performers, always paving the way! He was the first K-Pop soloist to enter the “Top 100 Most Followed Artists” on Spotify, the first K-Pop Soloist to surpass 16 Million followers and the most followed on Spotify for many years (now 2nd)! He's the 1st K-soloist to debut an album (Jack in the box) with over 60Million streams and the 1st Kpop Soloist to have 3 albums surpassing 500 Million streams on Spotify! j-hope is also the 1st South Korean Artist in history to headline a major US music festival "Lollapalooza" and the highest ticket- selling artist in Lollapalooza’s history! With his song "on the street" J-Hope is the 1st Asian Act to enter the Top 10 of the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Song Sales Year End Chart and the 1st member of BTS to earn a top-40 entry on the UK Singles Chart following its debut at #37, setting a new record as the highest-charting Korean soloist in the history of the chart at the time! j-hope ties PSY as the 4th K-Pop Act with the most #1 hits in World Digital Song Sales chart history after BTS, Blackpink & Big Bang! #jhope's solo discography including his songs under BTS has achieved 1,500 #1's on iTunes! He ties Suga as the Rapper with the most songs with over 100 x #1s on iTunes! His first solo mixtape, 'Hope World', in 2018 peaked at #38 on the US Billboard 200, breaking the record for the highest-charting album by a K- soloist at the time. He became the 1st member of BTS to enter the Billboard Hot 100 as a soloist in 2019, with his single "Chicken Noodle Soup", fr-t. #BeckyG, which debuted at #81. In 2022, J-Hope's chart-topping debut studio album 'Jack in the Box', scored the 5th biggest Album debut among K-Pop soloists in history! J-hope is also the 1st K-POP Act to headline Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve in 2022!

j-hope has received 30 nominations and has won numerous awards including a Golden Disc Award in 2023, a Korean Hip Hop Award in 2023 for Best R& B track for "Rush Hour" with Crush and 2 MAMA Awards in 2022 including Most Popular Male Artist! In 2018, he was awarded the fifth-class Hwagwan Order of Cultural Merit by the President of South Korea and in 2021, he was appointed Special Presidential Envoy for Future Generations and Culture by President Moon Jae-in to help "lead the global agenda for future generations, such as sustainable growth" and "expand South Korea's diplomatic efforts and global standing" in the international community!

He is also a leading Fashion Icon, being the global ambassador for the French luxury brand #LouisVuitton!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY HOBI

#jung hoseok #hoseok #jhope #BTS #정호석 #호석 #제이홉 #방탄소년단 #jhope news

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sleepyburito · 8 days

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Angelia

“Open minds mean open endings that can be shaped how we want them to be, that is the first thing I teach”

-‘Communication across the Stars, an autobiography’ page 3 by Angelia Envoy

𓆩⟡𓆪

Angelia is a playable character in Honkai: Star Rail.

As the communications professor, Angelia is open and welcoming to any and all students who enter her classroom. She helps students spread their wings and fly with their newfound potential. So long as she doesn’t go off track with her syllabus of course.

𓆩⟡𓆪

Overview

Rarity: ⟡⟡⟡⟡

Path: Harmony

Combat Type: Quantum

Bio

Real Name: Angelia Envoy

Pronouns: She/her

Species: human

Faction: Intelligentsia Guild

World: Cosmic

Messages: Angelia’s messages

Family

Relatives: Dolores (wife)

unnamed father (alive)

Voice

English: Princess Bubblegum

𓆩⟡𓆪

Trivia

Angelia has worked at the University of Veritas for nearly a decade

Her father was also a professor but in engineering instead of communications

She has degrees in the following: Digital Communication, Media Studies, Communication Theory and a PHD in Communication research

Angelia has the following Alias’s:

Professor Envoy

⋆

Etymology

Angelia is a name of greek origin, is was the name of Hermes’s daughter and means ‘messenger’

Angelia was also considered the spirit (daimona) of messages, tidings, and proclamations

In Latin, envoy means ‘to send on a journey’ or means a messenger or representative, typically one of diplomatic nature

@misty-lilies since you wanted the names : D

@aurae-rori

#honkai star rail #honkai star rail oc #Intelligentsia Guild #hsr oc

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microwaving-tesilid-argente · 6 months

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Summary of Tesilid’s regression rounds, with sources

Contains major, MAJOR, MAJOR spoilers for webtoon-onlys.

I recommended you read this only after the Mermaid Dungeon arc (chapter 156) or at least after Ailette talks to the Pope (webnovel chapter 140).

---

[Source chapter in square brackets]

Feel free to let me know if there's any mistakes or missing info! (Last updated: 29 April 2024) (In the process of updating with official TL's quotes)

Tesilid turned 20 shortly before the Holy Sword Dungeon [69].

Rounds 1-7: Died because of the Knights of Worship [84]

Tesilid wakes up in the Sculptor’s Atelier with the Order of the Pillar of Light Knights of Worship each time. The time between each loop is “less than taking a night's sleep” [136].

3x because of the commander Gadville’s stupid plans

1x because of vice commander Lecto making things difficult because of his inferiority complex

3x because of mistakes, betrayal and coerced sacrifices

Not clear if all of these deaths occurred in the Sculptor’s Atelier dungeon

Bandit Village / Harpy Queen Dungeon

Round 8:

Requested to be transferred to a different unit [84]

Gave in to the hostage threat and was killed by the bandits [84]

Readers called him "Tez the Tryhard" because of this lol [84]

Round 9: Trained to get strong & wiped out the bandits, but was lured by the village chief (bandit leader) into a trap and killed [84].

Attempted suicide for the first time [88]

Even in the present round, Tesilid still holds a grudge about this [88]

Round 10: Killed the village chief. Summoned back to the Vatican, disciplined and demoted Disciplinary action taken against him on the grounds of fighting the bandits while ignoring the hostages [84]

Round ?? but before 16: Goes to Republic of Magic as a diplomatic envoy, gets captured by the princess (Audillet Marcellion) and subjected to vivisection (being cut up for experimental purposes while alive) [84]

Round 14: Raises his aura and divine power; devotes his life to training. Discovers that his natural lifespan was longer than average [152]

Round 16: Discovers his familial roots, but is killed by his brother the prince of the empire [84]. 3rd Prince Ligares Rigarez holds a grudge against the Vatican because he believes they kidnapped the 2nd Prince (Tesilid), so he killed Tesilid as the wielder of the Holy Sword [160]. Tesilid dies with a stab wound from his brother & in the wilderness while it was raining heavily [84].

Round 17: Killed by Reed in the Sculptor’s Atelier. Was physically dragged to Reed by the other knights of the Order of the Pillar of Light. Was unable to resist because of the shock [93]. (Not sure if the author made a mistake here, but current Tesilid says that in his first Loop 17, he "spent his lifetime wasting away" [156])

First time where he felt disillusioned by his life because of how he just kept dying [84]

Round 18: First time challenging for the right to open the Bible Catechism of Truth [120]

Asked “Why do I return?”; receives the answer “To save the world”.

Round 19: Asks the Bible of Truth, “How do I save the world?”. Until Round 89, all subsequent questions to the Catechism of Truth (to Ailette's knowledge) were about clearing dungeons [120] (Tesilid's question in Round 94 deviates from the OG!Novel)

Round 85: First time saving the world

Defeats all 3 demon kings, seals the Chaos and Evil. No more dungeons and demons can appear on the continent [136]

Cardinal-class divine power, aura master who has double-digit aura blades. [136]

Dies soon after the battle but is satisfied. [136]

The Church has a habit of killing him in various ways as soon as the world is saved. This includes 1) being burned alive, 2) being hanged, 3) being pushed off a cliff, 4) being surrounded by knights who stab him, 5) being given poison that put him to sleep, then being given a grand state funeral and buried alive [137]

Round 86: Second time saving the world [136] and first round where the Saintess appears [154].

Did not get life-threatening injuries in the final battle [136]

“Handed over his vitality for the Saint who had been in a tragic accident” [136].

Round 87: Third time saving the world.

OG!Tesilid fell in love with Muriel in this round [154]

Ailette calls this round the end of Tesilid’s puritanical life [154] and the point at which she would no longer be able to tease him for his lack of romantic experience [164].

Died in place of the Saint who was falsely accused because of some conflict [136]

Round 88: Fourth time saving the world, now with minimal damage to allies. Visited the Saint seeking a quick way to die [136]

Saint frames Tesilid of being a cult leader. As he was about to be burnt at the stake, she smiled kindly at him and said, “This world needs you to die. I’m sorry, and thank you for your sacrifice, Sir Tesilid.” [136]

(Note that Ailette refers to Rounds 86-88 as the ones where Tesilid is "betrayed by a woman that he loved with all his heart. Three consecutive times. [...] He probably would've died for her many more times had he not realized the truth” [84]. But in Tesilid’s POV [136] as recounted above, he seems more ambivalent about the Saintess.)

Round 89: Asks the Bible of Truth, “How do I stop regressing?; is told, “You just need to save the world”. Destroys the Library, hacks Demon King Inferinos to pieces, and commits suicide [120; 136]

Round 90-92: Asks the Bible of Truth, “How do I stop regressing?”; is told, “You just need to save the world” [136]

Round 93: Saves the world, then asks the Bible of Truth, “How do I stop regressing?” as the dungeons started collapsing; is again told, “You just need to save the world”. Dies when the dungeon collapses. [136]

Round 94: Goes to the Bible of Truth again out of habit. Asks, “Where is Ailette Rodeline?” [136]

Saves the world just to have something to do, and because he was good at it. 5th time saving the world. [136]

Does not go to the Bible of Truth again until Round 99 [137]

Reed places Round 94 as the last timeline where he would have been willing to take Ailette’s hand [138]

Rounds 94-98: Saves the world just to have something to do, and because he was good at it [137]

Round 98: 10th time saving the world [137]

Took less than 5 years because he only thought about efficiency and did not spare a thought for human life.

Round 99: Walked into the final battleground with “Chaos and Evil” himself and talked to it.

Is called the “Clock Hand of the Strict Order and Goodwill”

Told to ask the Bible of Truth, “What is the truth?” [Ailette POV in Library arc, 120] or “Why does the world continue to get destroyed?” [Tesilid POV, 137].

Prayed until he died [137].

Round 100: Reed

Offers himself to “Chaos and Evil” and loses his holy power. Holy sword becomes corrupted. Is banished to the dimensional rift where time stops. Rips through the dimensional rift after less than a hundred years, compared to the estimated few hundred years. [137]

Finds a point in time before the loop starts and sees Ailette’s Descent of Divinity (current Reed only). Visits the Vatican which was full of people celebrating the lunar genesis (new year???). Burns everyone (including himself) to death. Gives sincere prayers for the regression to end. Week of regression starts as the world rewinds and Reed kills Tesilid again [79; 138]

“I can’t save the world or myself, so what am I supposed to do?” / “My salvation means death, so what about the salvation of this world?" / "What if annihilation is the only way to save this world?” / “That was it. That was the answer. I will disappear if the world I belong to disappears as well.” / “You have no idea how happy I was to discover this. I’ve always hated this world.” / "To think I could destroy the world I struggled so many times to save... It feels so... thrilling." [138]

Subdued by 5 humans who became legendary heroes [138] including Cardinal Cartelyena [139]

Early stage: insomnia, nightmares, hallucinations, confusion, mental weakness [153]

Tesilid calls this round the "timeline that I felt I was the most human" [139] (fan TL of 139 & 156 calls it the last time he lived like a human)

It's implied that in the 2nd Loop 17, the Knights of the Temple wouldn't have showed up at the near Greenwall where Tesilette reunited with the other two because they wouldn't have been tracking down the Saint [91]

Middle stage: Lack of emotions, loss of memory, loss of three major powers [153]

End stage: Soul disintegration (still treatable), then soul extinction [153]

“You can still live as long as you breathe, even if you're not holding yourself together. Also, memory loss could be useful in the long run because your most difficult moments will feel like they never happened." [154]

#s-class heroine spoilers #a transmigrator's privilege #the perks of being an s class heroine #tesilid argente #mash potato #roast potato #made this for easy ref when i try to write fic

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17-noodlebird · 3 months

Text

World One = The Amazing Digital Circus Grounds

🎪🤡🤹🎡🎩🎢🎠🎈🪀

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Jewel: Crystal

Power: Energy

Color: Silver

Theme: The Circus & Childhood Wonder

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Objective:

Get to the first location of the road trip without experiencing too much road rage.

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Chapter I: The Amazing Digital Road Trip Begins!

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The first episode — or chapter — pays homage to the Unikitty episode “Roadtrip Ruckus”, Teen Titan Go’s “Road Trip”, and the basic comedic road trip tropes we see in movies.

The episode begins with the Amazing Digital Circus members, or as I'll be calling them from here on out, Team Circus, taking a 15-hour drive to their very first destination, after packing their belongings and installing the first jewel into the secret door, after a brief discussion of what they'll be doing during the trip. Just as they depart The Grounds, all eight members of Team Circus receive a notification for their first objective on their communicator bracelets. Poor Caine thought it'd be a piece of cake…

At first, it's about what you'd expect it to be; road trip games (Jax’s favorite being punch buggy, giving him the perfect opportunity to pick on Gangle), some funny stories to share, Kinger talking about how the Bee Movie is such an underrated classic of the 2000’s, Ragatha reading a book in the car (and ultimately getting carsick as a result), and of course, road trip songs. The diplomats from the other dimension are acting as the surrogate audience, helping them out along the way via their Velcro communicator bracelets that Team Circus is also wearing on their wrists.

Unfortunately, things start to get out of hand really quickly, as Caine soon begins to develop road rage as a result of the antics of the other six members, something that has never happened before. Eventually, the Magical Digital Van gets a flat tire, so they have to stop at a gas station for repairs. While at the gas station, Jax and Pomni bond for a bit as they laugh at off-brand snacks, Ragatha and Gangle try to have a heart-to-heart with one another, Kinger and Zooble fix the van while discovering the mechanic is a shady scammer, and Caine is just freaking out over his newfound emotions as Bubble tries to calm him down.

Afterwards, when the Van is seemingly fixed after Kinger, Zooble, and the mechanic make a compromise, Team Circus causes even more of a ruckus, much to Caine's annoyance and Bubble's concern, all before the Van breaks down in the middle of the road (as well as earning a second flat tire), and Caine is not happy about this, throwing in some colorful (albeit censored with old timey car noises) vocabulary all the while. As the other members try to figure out what the heck just happened, Zooble reveals that they and Kinger had a bit of a squabble with the mechanic, making them immediately come to the conclusion that they have both been tricked by the con artist of a mechanic, who removed some of the parts of the engine to sell on eBay. “Thanks a lot, you two.” were the words said by Jax, as the others watched the mechanic scammer drive off with the missing parts, hollering back, “Yeah, thanks a lot, you two! Hahahahahahaaaa!!!!”

Uh oh.

This was all within Caine's earshot, who now wants payback. A car chase ensues, all to the tune of Lynyrd Skynyrd's “Free Bird”, as Caine tries to catch the fake mechanic and retrieve back the stolen parts for the engine, Zooble and Kinger having looks of guilt all the while. After Team Circus catches up to the fake mechanic (the Van falling apart by the seams from exhaustion in the process), Caine demands that he give back the parts. Naturally, a heated argument ensues, until Pomni discovers that they weren't the only victims of stolen car parts. This is where she puts two and two together and informs the rest of Team Circus of her findings.

It turns out that when The Magical Digital Van got a flat tire as result of a rusty nail being placed in the middle of the road, conveniently a couple of yards from the mechanic shop and local gas station, something the fake mechanic did on purpose. And he had been doing this to the other vehicles too; apparently, this was all part of a conniving scheme to sell used car parts on the black market to unsuspecting customers in order to gain some money.

As the fake mechanic attempts to run away, knowing damn well he had been caught, Ragatha apprehends him and forces him to give them back the stolen car parts, as well as the ones stolen prior to the encounter. He complies, defeated.

Pomni is congratulated by the diplomats and Team Circus for her cleverness, while the fake mechanic fixes The Magical Digital Van for real as he replaces both flattened tires and puts back the stolen parts. Some NPC police officers arrest the fake mechanic shortly after, with Pomni having called the authorities in the meantime.

Of course, Zooble and Kinger aren't let off the hook completely; Caine scolds the both of them for not being street smart about the matter (tho Bubble asks him to go easy on them this time, as no one could have foreseen this outcome). So all's well that ends well, and after several more hours of casual hijinks, they finally reach their first destination. The episode ends here.

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Current Status:

0 Jewels have been collected

26 remain

🎪🤡🤹🎡🎩🎢🎠🎈🪀

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• OG Cast:

Lizzie Freeman as Pomni

Amanda Hufford as Ragatha

Michael Kovach as Jax

Sean Chiplock as Kinger

Marissa Lenti as Gangle

Ashley Nichols as Zooble

Gooseworx as Bubble

Alex Rochon as Caine

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• Audience Surrogate Cast/Diplomats

Hynden Walch as Valerie

Susan Egan as Pamela

Amy Winfrey as Garcia

Mandy Moore as Lulu

Nevaeh Hamilton (me) as Bethany

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• Background Diplomats

Andrea Libman as Winona

Cristina Vee as Patricia

E.G. Daily as Rionna

Stephanie Sheh as Olivia

Debi Derryberry as Yolanda

Cree Summer as Gemma

Ashleigh Ball as Cécelia

Erica Luttrell as Belle

Ashly Burch as Imera

Kimberly Brooks as Bailey

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• Episode’s Antagonists

Danny DeVito as Otto Partz the Fake Mechanic

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• Secondary Characters Introduced

Edward Bosco as Gene Virgo the Convenience Store Owner

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#the amazing digital circus #tadc #tadc caine #tadc pomni #tadc jax #tadc au #tadc ragatha #tadc bubble #tadc gangle #tadc kinger #tadc zooble #tadc road trip #tadrt au #the amazing digital road trip

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