#for reference i was in first grade in 2015

[wolfgirlcoven]

My Experience with P-Shifters & Mythicals, and why I'm Anti Physical IDs for Alterhumanity.

[Massive TW for Cults, Abuse(Including Digital SA, including COCSA), Delusions + Validation/Encouragement of Delusion, and probably more that I cannot for the life of me think of off the top of my head]

Hello, I'm Phoenix, but you can also call me Silverthorn. I've been in the nonhuman community since 2011-2013, and initially got my start in P-Shifter/Mythical communities, the ones of most note being ArdaErellon, GrowingWings4Life(usually just called Grow Wings.), and other adjacent webs.com forums.

I'll be documenting my experience with the community chronologically to the best of my ability, but do be aware that it may be a bit splotchy, as my memory of it all is a little janky due to the trauma and the fact this occured over 10 years ago now. It is of importance to note: I am neurodivergent, I speak from the perspective of someone who has been dealing with undiagnosed autism since childhood, which in turn, did influence my level of understanding of the world. My memory is also a little messed up due to dissociation from childhood trauma.

2011 - 2012: The Start - My start with P-Shifting began in 6th grade, when I was 11. I had met someone, who I will refer to here as Dragon. Dragon was my closest friend, however this was NOT a good thing. I had begun awakening to my inherent nonhumanity, but you know, when you're young, you'll believe in very fantastical things. Dragon was a P-Shifter, and I thought I was too. This is how our friendship really solidified. What easily could have been innocent schoolyard RP became grounds for abuse, manipulation, etc. Dragon convinced me that everyone hated us, and people would actively run away from me because where I went, she followed. Dragon was notoriously an asshole to others, but she used this to convince me that everyone hated me.

2013-2015: Aka "The Peak". 2013 is when I entered the online P-Shifter scene. Now, I had read websites and guides on p-shifting prior to this, but this is when I actually got INVOLVED so to speak. After reading some of the Maximum Ride books, I began experiencing phantom shifts of wings, which in turn lead to me joining GrowingWings4Life (colloquially known as Grow Wings), a forum on webs.com for Avians and other mythicals. I, obviously, began attempting to grow wings. This is where I met my flock. I've named two of them here before, but for the sake of this post I will be using stand in names. I also got my first scoliosis dx at age 13, during a school evaluation. This will come up again in another section of this post.

Aqua was the first one I met, she was basically a sister to me. She was honestly the first REAL friend I had, to the point where we called eachother sis. It was through her where we met the rest of our flock, albeit most of them would separate except for Red. Red was another one of the flock, unlike the other key members (Julio and Cailen. I WILL namedrop them for the bullshit they did. Julio was 18, and I don't remember Cailen's age but I do believe she was older than me, Aqua, and Red. I think maybe 18 but I'm not Positive.), he was also 13, like Aqua and I.

Julio got kicked from the flock for trying to groom Aqua and I over kik (classic 2013 experience I know), and Cailen went separate ways after a breakup with Red (she did some HORRIFIC things to him, which I will not disclose here other than it being SA) Things with the flock started out good at first, I mean why wouldn't it? Of course, we also learned about Awtok. We genuinely believed in them, and in part, were responsible for bringing knowledge of Awtok to Grow Wings out of sheer FEAR for everyone's saftey. Awtok's chokehold on our flock specifically remained.

Enter G32: Another school friend of mine, and self-professed Keyblade master. Though not an avian and p-shifter like the rest of us, he was part of our flock. I do fully blame myself and take responsibility for getting him involved with the flock + the consequences of doing so. He got involved the summer of 2014, but I had known him prior, and trusted him. G32 was someone we went to for advice and whatnot. In a way, despite Red and I being the leaders of the flock (when we started dating in 2014), I'd consider G32 to be the one pulling everyone's strings.

It was through G32, that Red became convinced he was a monster. Again, wont go into full details but this lead him to spiral into full on delusions. I remember him texting me in a state of extreme distress one night because he had "seen" his "true form" in the mirror. Looking back, this was clearly a hallucination. He ended up having MULTIPLE experiences like this. Now, he had been having some experiences akin to this prior to G32's claims about Red's true nature, but it was only after those that things got as bad as they did, such as full on berseker shifts for what his species was. (According to G32 the species was like an offshoot of the heartless from Kingdom Hearts.)

G32 also, on multiple occasions, forged messages from AWTOK, usually through 3DS swapnote, and then also forged messages from other "keyblade masters" who got involved with the flock via fake phone numbers.

Back to Red, because of the sheer amount of abuse he went through, ended up repeating the cycle of abuse with me. What he did to me was not ok. He had, through Cailen's abuse, become to believe he was possessed by a succubus who was Cailen. This began his manipulation of me, going so far as for this "possession" to lead to basically the Succubus threatening to leave me if I did not engage in sexual text-rp/sexting with Red as a way to prove my love & devotion. It eventually stopped, though i cannot remember what caused it to stop. Again, we both were 14 and severely mentally ill. I DO NOT HOLD THIS AGAINST HIM, AND I FORGIVE HIM FOR THIS. WE BOTH WERE VICTIMS.

Now, Red was VERY remorseful of what had happened, though we never actually talked about it or mentioned it after that, though I wish we did. It pretty much was him just apologizing but not specifying the incident (most because I told him not to), and me not actually letting him confess to what had happened. I wish I would have let him speak, but I was a scared child. Like I said, looking back now, and not out of a place of hurt, I can recognize he and I were both victims of abuse.

Come 2015, shit with G32 really hit the fan. From forging messages from other keyblade wielders turning against the flock, threatening to kill us for being traitors by aligning ourselves with Red, and the like, to then, when we stood up for ourselves, claiming it was all fake and a lie he spun, and then back to threatening us with the keyblade wielders after. It got to a point where it almost became a physical altercation on school grounds the following day. It was after this that things fell apart. The flock stuck together but ultimately separated, with the last I've heard from any of them being in 2016.

2016 & Onward: 2016 I still held onto some P-Shifting beliefs, but had begun to break away from them. It was really only come 2018 that I had fully recognized the nature of my beliefs were steeped in delusion, albeit the occasional relapse into p-shifter thoughts does occur to this day. I'd be lying if I'd said I haven't attempted to p-shift despite knowing and accepting it's impossible.

Now, other things not in this timeline that did happen, but I didn't feel were as interwoven with my flock experience:

ArdaErellon - when GrowWings went down, this kinda became one of the main sites people went to. It's not up anymore but I do remember the admin, Tinnuwen, asking people for their IRL locations, like addresses and whatnot, in order to open portals near them so they could travel to the realm of ArdaErellon.

Razgriz Pack & Other Cyberpacks - I got involved with a cyberpack when I was 13, when I didn't want much to do with them they threatened to send their other werewolves after me lol. I Don't remember if it was Razgriz or a different pack that I was involved in, mostly because I didn't spend much time around them.

Why I'm Making This Post:

I make this post because I've seen a resurgence in the P-Shifter & Mythical communities. Moreso, I've seen this become accepted and welcomed into the alterhuman community, which poses a SIGNIFICANT threat to the saftey and wellbeing of others. I've seen people ACTIVELY encouraging and validating delusions of Clinical Lycanthropes/Zoanthropes, claiming that it is harmless. IT IS NOT, I KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE.

My wing delusions were encouraged, and we avians took any criticism of our attempts as threats and people just wanting to be assholes. Because of the repeated validation of my "physical" wing growth, i actively avoided getting treatment for my scoliosis for over 2 years. Like i said earlier in this post, during an exam at school, they felt my spine was curved. However, because I fully believed I was growing wings, I REFUSED to let my family take me to the doctor, refused to let them get x-rays of me, for fear that they'd discover my wings, because I was a terrified CHILD. This lead to my spine becoming so severely curved that I was at risk of my lungs collapsing. I fear to see what would have happened to me had I not eventually gotten surgery in 2015. The point is, the beliefs involved with subcultures such as p-shifters, holotheres, mythicals, etc. is inherently harmful. The denial to accept ones biological humanity, and the laws of physics that come with it, is a saftey risk. When people speak out about their experiences, they get dogpiled by the physical therian community, and victim blamed. When we explain why these things are harmful, we get accused of a whole slew of things, such as trying to make humans like us, or bring ableist by saying that encouraging delusion is harmful.

Me, Red, and Aqua should NOT have had to live out our teen years in fear of AWTOK, in fear of uncontrollable shifts, in fear of hunters, etc. We should have been able to have our formative teen years be normal. My friend Sundew, also known as @aesthetikins , was there when I was going through all of this, as we met in highschool. E knows first hand the amount of damage this stuff did to me, as again, e was there when it happened.

This is also the one time I feel OK to be That Guy and put this in the tags of the harmful groups I'm talking about, because maybe, JUST MAYBE, it'll save someone else from going through shit like what I went through. Edit: this is ok to reblog, and i actually encourage it

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Okay, I've Read Worm: A Retrospective Part 1: How The Fuck Did I Get Here?

I don't know exactly what I'm going to be doing with all these posts, but at a minimum, we will be having the following, not necessarily in this order:

A discussion of some of the parts of Worm I liked most. Some genuine and well-earned praise for Wildbow.

An analysis of Amy Dallon as she exists in Worm, though more for unpacking my own thoughts in one place rather than some deep literary stuff.

A discussion of things I was genuinely surprised by in the Text itself versus the stuff I picked up via fandom osmosis and fanfic. Expectation vs reality and stuff.

A discussion of just who the fuck the target audience of Worm actually probably maybe was, and what the fuck I just read.

And a detailed (for my own unpacking of thoughts than to convince anyone of anything) discussion of why I'm not going to read Ward. Nothing new there, but still, it'll be nice to put it all one one place.

But first, let's take a step back and answer one very important question: How in the bloody fuck did I end up here? How the fuck did reading Worm even happen? Because as I've said before, superhero media isn't my thing, I'm definitely not the target audience for Worm, and while I enjoyed it, only liking it 60% is a barely passing grade, as it were.

So how the blue hell did I end up here?

I don't know exactly when I first became aware of Worm. What I do know is that I was loosely aware of it by 2019, because I was active on SpaceBattles, and of course, Worm is all over there. I'd see the name, and I knew it referred to a work of fiction, but that's about all I knew. It might have been before 2019 that I first heard the name, it might not have. I say by 2019, because I know that sometime in 2019, I was in a discord server associated with one of the many spinoff sites to Spacebattles (I believe it was Frozen in Carbonite, which was honestly a pretty noxious website but I didn't know that going in) and I made a post using this meme:

And I got an answer that was something to the effect of 'It's an edgy villain protagonist superhero story'. And so I shrugged, and I moved on. Not my speed. Superheroes aren't my thing, not really, not in of themselves. I first got into AoS watching it with my then GF back in... 2015? And then I got into shipping Skyeward in it. Then I watched Arrow because some of the people I followed from Skyeward were into it and again, pretty much stayed for the shipping and certain characters. Flash and Legends of Tomorrow and Supergirl were entered into as branching off from Arrow.

And yes I've watched a good chunk of the MCU, but mostly because why not watch a movie and there's a handful of characters I liked. But I've never read a single superhero comic book, as far as I can recall, and I've never really been super into any superhero cartoons, just watched them if they happened to be on Cartoon Network when I was a kid.

At some point between then and this year, I found a Worm CYOA on r/nsfwcyoa, and despite never having read it, gave it a look, played around with it, and picked up random errant facts about the story and characters therein. I would revisit this CYOA and similar ones as they got updates, and along the way got my first exposure to the whole 'fanon' problem of the Worm fandom, when one of the options in one of the CYOAs was to make certain popular fanon true for the version of Earth-Bet 'your character' appeared in for the CYOA. Things like making Woobie Amy true, or turning Vicky into the Collateral Damage Barbie she's cast as by some people, et cetera.

And then, at some point probably late last year or early this year, I think, I was on Questionable Questing (the pervert uncle of Spacebattles, as it were) and I saw a fic get posted that was Worm - so, prepared to ignore it - and then I saw it was also tagged with several of my kinks. And I've read smutfics that aren't for one of my fandoms if I really like the kinks and it's just a smutfic, so I gave it a show. How much do you need to know about the source canon for a smutfic, eh?

I don't remember much about that fic, or even which of my kinks in particular it had, but I would read a few other such stories here and there until sometime in... probably May or so, maybe late April, when I made an errant post on QQ in a thread discussing stories you considered but never actually read, that I had considered Worm (because by then I had, ish, after some of the various go-arounds with the CYOA and picking up bits of osmosis here and there) but that the whole thing sounded too bleak and grimdark and depressing.

This spawned a conversation about Worm, and if it was really grimdark (one person I think went so far as to say it wasn't even depressing or bleak, and oh to live in that person's world) and if it was really a deconstruction or a love letter to superhero media or a takedown of superhero media or w/e. And at some point, someone made a comment about Wildbow having disdain for his fans, or something like that.

And I was like 'I feel like there's a story there'. And yes there was. One of the things that came up were the so-called 'retcons' of Ward re: Amy (whether or not they are actually retcons is beyond the point of this post, please don't discuss it here). And here's the thing, my thought then was: I've been there.

I've been there when characters have been set on, or are seemingly being set up for, some kind of redemption arc, and then some new installment pulls the rug out from under the character in a way that feels very, very deliberately aimed at fans of the character. Grant Ward is the most notable case of this for me. 2015 and 2016 me had quite a few things to say about that. 2024 me lacks the energy or desire to go into detail.

It's not fun, either way. So I sympathized. And I figured that probably meant Amy Dallon would be my sort of character. But I didn't want to read Worm - it sounded depressing, it was 1.6 million words, Taylor didn't sound super appealing and I knew she was the main POV, and superheroes aren't my thing.

But it wouldn't leave my head. So I started poking around on places like r/parahumans (a den of bad takes and noxious fans if there ever was one) and r/WormFanfic and the Parahumans wiki and looked through a few threads on SB and started trawling the Amy Dallon tag here on Tumblr and developed some thoughts.

Amy Dallon, and the injustice of what happened to her in Ward had crawled inside my head and it wasn't going anywhere. I ranted to my friends about all the shit I'd learned and was like 'I HAVEN'T EVEN READ THIS WORK AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF I WANT TO AND IT JUST WON'T LEAVE MY BRAIN!'. I remember seeing a post saying something about how someone who had read worm couldn't relate to people who hadn't and weren't constantly thinking about Amy and I reblogged it saying 'I haven't even read Worm and I'm constantly thinking about Amy' and I think the OP of the post reblogged my reblog and called me a whole new kind of person or something. I don't remember and don't care to go digging.

The things that held me back the most continued to be the sheer length of Worm, a fear that Taylor would be insufferable and the fact that it still sounded godforsakenly depressing. (2 out of 3 ain't bad, as Meatloaf Says). So eventually I decided to go poking around and read some fic to get the idea if I'd actually read it. I don't remember all the ones I read in this period, but they included: I, Panacea, Desperate Times Call For Desperate Pleasures, Queen of Blood and More Than Meets The Eye. It was around this time I also started getting multiple Worm Fic Ideas, which was... fun. Because you know, it's one thing to read fanfic without knowing the source canon, but I've always loathed in previous fandoms when people say they're writing a fic for a canon they've only read fic from (and was always an immediate X-out for me) and I have too much dignity self-respect as a writer to do that myself.

Now, fic ideas don't mean I have to write them. I have ASOIAF and TVD fic Ideas I'm never going to write, and my notebooks across the ages are littered with fic Ideas I had and then put aside and never wrote. Some still haunt my dreams like Edgar Allen Poe's Telltale Heart. But still.

Eventually, after someone made a comment to me to the effect of 'with all due respect, if you haven't read Worm, shut up about it' I decided to at least make an effort to read it. Spite was my original intent - I wanted to see if my opinion about Amy's storyline in Worm specifically would remain the same (and it broadly has) and if so, I would feel satisfied I'd been right.

(For the record, It did remain the same (pretty much, more on this in a future post) and I do feel satisfied that I was right.)

And so, on June 16th, half on a whim and half because I knew I'd have things to say and I wanted to section them off my main blog, I made this blog and began reading Gestation 1.1. I gave it even odds in my head I'd give up before I was more than a few arcs in.

Wasn't even tempted until Arcs 12 and 13. Then was tempted again in the absolute nadir of the work, 17-19. And then again during the Behemoth fight. Once I got past that, I was never temped.

So that's I got here. Existing adjacent to Worm for years, some osmosis, an ill-timed comment, some snarky responses and a character that burrows into my brain by hitting all of my buttons.

[rainbowpillar]

Currently very hyperfixated on Muppets Mayhem and I wanted to share my gripes and things i like within the show.

The first thing I noticed is that the color grading is super weird? Like it's quite dark for the bright color scheme of the Electric Mayhem. The intro looks super good and like it belongs to the Muppets but then the rest is super gray.

I truly HATE the human "love quarrel" subplot. It's super ANNOYING. Jay Jay and Nora fall in love even though they barely have anything that connects them together. It's just feels like a shallow plot line for the sake of plot line. And generally the jokes from the human actors can be really awkward and unfunny. Whenever they meet a celebrity there's just this super uncomfortable moment of pauses and remarks. The fact that Jay Jay changed his image based on a delusional love for a girl he broke up with is so yucky.

However the Mayhem and their jokes are great and (to me) really funny! I find myself quoting them all the time and laughing. The puppeteers really know their characters and I think the Muppets (2015) was their intro to understanding their roles. They have great chemistry on camera. I also love that they gave the band members their own individual development (even though it's super short :( ). Kinda wish they had a few more episodes to develop the rest of the gang because it kinda passed way to quickly. And also that they didn't focus SO MUCH ON THE HUMAN SUBPLOT. In my opinion the storyline of Scooter being their manager is so much better, because not only does it reference the first muppet movie, but it would actually give us some time for character development. This is Mayhem's show and i feel like that Nora and the others are way too much in the front. This just made me wanna write the origins of the other band members that didn't get their flashback. (especially Lips because what the hell is up with him/pos). Honestly I kinda was hoping that the show would just be the Electric Mayhem but sadly not. The music is amazing though it scratches my brain in the right way.

The addition of the internet thing splitting up the band, as much as i understand why they put it in, it was still pretty hard to watch. Like i get that they wanted to portray the change in media and how hard it is to conform to it, but it's just...super uncomfortable and whenever i rewatch the series, i skip that specific episode. Idk... Maybe that's just me but like...

Anyway, do better and stop focusing so much on the humans I BEG.

Also i absolutely ADORE Lips, he is my babygirl. A character that basically had no lines in the Muppet Show, now has a mission to save the world and i love it. I love my mumbling trumpet man.

[notnights]

Little ninja fans of present day and past, I began watching RC9GN in December of 2012, and it changed my life forever, now it's 2024 and I'm nearing 30, time sure flies! Anyways I've been working on cleaning out my computer files and found a bunch and I mean A BUNCH of Randy Cunningham 9th Grade Ninja promotional material and side content. I pretty much have most things that came out from 2012 - 2015 pertaining to the show.

I imagine a lot of these things have been lost to time as some of it was originally posted was from the DisneyXD website, and variations of the DisneyXD website (meaning from other countries). I have interviews, bumpers, dubs of episodes, even footage of some of the old RC9GN games, and Randy cameos (I saved footage of someone playing the RC9GN Poptropica promo!)

I also have a clip from WSFA where they reported on the fan that wrote Rachel's song. I had thought it was posted to youtube but I can't find it again so maybe they removed it, it's not on the article that's still up either! Guess it's good I saved it. (The article isn't entirely accurate, I believe she said she got the internship because of her song)

I also have a few clips of other dubs, including an Italian dub of the song and music video "GO NINJA GO," that's pretty cool! I also found audio files of the raw music from the show! I can't even remember how I got that. (they are unfortunately not named)

I have some less quality stuff like literally me just recording promos and bumpers off of the TV screen lol. Some of these also include snips of other Disney XD bumpers and promos though.

Anyways, I don't want this stuff kept all to my self as I see a lot of it is lost to time, if not hard to find. And oh look at that looks like I have a handy little sideblog I never used that's perfect for this! @theninjanomicon (I'll pretty it up later), so over time I'll probably share some of it on there.

Younger me was unfortunately not very thorough in the archiving, so some titles, dates, names, and exactly where I got them from, are missing, but I can give a rough time frame and where I got these from that I can remember. (another reason why I'm doing it! to mark down what I can remember before I forget anymore of it)

I wouldn't be uploading any full episodes for obvious reasons but might upload clips of some of the alternate dubs I have. And yes I have the pilot, which I can't share either but I do have STORYBOARDS from the pilot (which up until this year was our only reference for this "kim possible style" it used to have) which maybe I can share as I got it from the storyboarder's portfolio which was public back when I got it.

I might add some commentaries under a readmore for certain posts to give extra contexts/what I remember being relevant to the piece I post.

Now the hard part is figuring out where to start! What would y'all like to see first?

[mariacallous]

As the dust continues to settle after the U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, which were meant to destroy Tehran’s ability to build nuclear weapons but did not apparently succeed entirely, one question looms above all: What did the United States gain from walking away from the nuclear deal with Iran seven years ago?

The Trump administration insists that the strikes, including 14 massive “bunker-buster” bombs dropped on three key installations, completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear program. Yet a preliminary assessment by the U.S. intelligence community concluded that the attacks did little lasting damage to the Iranian facilities and set the nuclear program back by only a few months. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has reiterated the “flawless” nature of the unprecedented operation and reaffirmed that the attacks rendered inoperable Iran’s main underground nuclear facility at Fordow. CIA Director John Ratcliffe, like some Israeli sources, also stressed that fresh assessments of the attack indicate that Iran’s nuclear program has been set back by years.

But the Trump administration has acknowledged that it does not know where Iran’s large stockpile of almost half a metric ton of highly enriched uranium is—reports and satellite imagery suggest that Iran may have moved the cache before last weekend’s airstrikes. That pile of uranium is enriched to 60 percent purity, which in enrichment terms is very close to the 90 percent purity referred to as weapons-grade. The administration, like the rest of the international community, is also in the dark about how many advanced centrifuges Iran has or where they are or how many additional ones Tehran can build. All the building blocks, in other words, for an Iranian bomb appear to remain in place, but now Iran has more reason than ever to scramble to put those pieces together. 

On balance then, seven years after the first Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, the net result has been a sharp and sustained increase in Iranian nuclear enrichment over several years, followed by a few weeks of desultory diplomacy and capped by historic airstrikes that may have left the Iranian nuclear program reeling but still functioning.

“We have to judge by where we were in 2018 and where we are today. And I think today is a lot more dangerous and Iran is closer to getting a bomb,” said Jon Wolfsthal, the director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists who worked on nonproliferation for the Obama administration.

The U.S. strikes, a complement to almost two weeks of lower-intensity Israeli attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities and regime nerve centers, were the capstone of U.S. President Donald Trump’s approach to Iran that began in his first term. The throughline is a determination that Iran cannot develop a nuclear weapon or even the building blocks for it, such as any enriched uranium. That helped drive Trump’s decision to walk away from the Obama-era 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which established agreed-on limits to Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for relief from crushing economic sanctions. 

Many U.S. Republicans and Iran hawks faulted the JCPOA because they argued it offered Tehran too much economic relief, only provided a partial and time-limited constraint on Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, and did nothing to address either Iran’s regional destabilization efforts or its sweeping advances in ballistic missiles, which have become a serious security threat for Israel.

But the nuclear deal, for all its flaws, did put a cap on Iran’s uranium enrichment efforts, limiting it to the extremely low levels used in civilian nuclear reactors. The deal also limited Iran’s ability to install more advanced centrifuges that could enrich more uranium more quickly. And, perhaps most importantly, the deal established a robust monitoring and verification regime granting international atomic inspectors unprecedented access to Iran’s nuclear facilities. The deal, with which Iran was in compliance at the time of Trump’s withdrawal in 2018, had promised to put Iran’s nuclear program in a well-watched cage for at least a decade. 

“Now, we are having a debate about whether Fordow was set back by a few weeks or a few months. Under JCPOA, Fordow was neutered for 15 years. So it is a simple math problem. The diplomatic solution was durable and very viable,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group who was involved in the JCPOA negotiations.

Dueling assessments over the strikes’ efficacy continue. The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Thursday that the shocks of the heavy U.S. ordnance appear to have knocked out the advanced centrifuges at Fordow, even as Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, described the nuclear impact of U.S. strikes as insignificant in his first remarks since the weekend attacks. But what seems clear is that Iran’s stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium remains unaccounted for, and that is enough fissile material to assemble nine bombs.

“If we didn’t actually incapacitate the highly enriched uranium, then the threat remains out there,” said Richard Nephew, another former Obama national security official now at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy.

While uranium at 60 percent enrichment would be enough for a crude bomb, Iran would need to enrich it to 90 percent purity to develop a more sophisticated weapon. The fastest way to do that would be with advanced centrifuges, especially the so-called IR-6, the most advanced centrifuges that Iran has installed in operational cascades. Since 2021, international inspectors have had no visibility into Iran’s production of new centrifuges, and they don’t know how many Iran has or how many more it could build and install in order to accelerate the final enrichment it needs to sprint for a bomb. Manufacturing centrifuges requires some special materials, such as carbon fiber and very specialized steel, but that’s already likely in the warehouse somewhere underground.

“It is highly likely that they have been storing precursors for centrifuges, and they already said they had a new underground facility,” Wolfsthal said. “It’s entirely possible they are enriching uranium and we don’t know it.”

The combination of U.S. strikes and what appears to be at least a partial survival of the Iranian nuclear program and its constituent components means that Iran may be closer to a bomb than it ever was before or during the years of the JCPOA, when the so-called breakout time for a bomb was assessed at about a year. The U.S. intelligence community concluded as recently as this March that Iran was not actively seeking to weaponize nuclear material, but those calculations may be out the window now that Khamenei has invoked the specter of “Iran’s surrender.” Now the breakout is breakneck.

“If Iran still has more than 400 kilos and a bunch of IR-6 centrifuges, the sneakout option is available more than ever before,” Vaez said.

Looking back, the United States (and Israel) would likely have been in a better position to contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions by maintaining the negotiated limits on its ability to enrich uranium. But since 2018, and especially in the past few years, Iran has taken advantage of the lack of restraint to make advances that cannot be undone even by a new diplomatic deal. There is no way to put the advances in nuclear know-how, or the accumulation of many more advanced centrifuges, back in the bottle.

“You cannot make a good-faith argument that we are better off without the JCPOA,” Nephew said.

On Wednesday, Trump said the United States and Iran would resume their indirect talks aimed at resolving the nuclear impasse next week. Five rounds have already foundered on familiar red lines, including Iran’s insistence that it has a right to domestic enrichment, and a sixth was canceled following the Israeli bombardment. Further talks, Vaez noted, are an implicit U.S. acknowledgement that the mission was not entirely accomplished.

“If the U.S. were sure they had obliterated the nuclear program, there would be nothing to negotiate about. But because of that outstanding question, they are keen to get back to the table,” he said.

He hopes that both sides can soften their red lines, with Iran perhaps pausing its enrichment while the United States musters an international coalition for regional uranium enrichment that would allow all sides to save face and avoid the ultimate showdown. 

“The mistrust is deeper than it has ever been, but it must always be measured against the alternatives,” Vaez said. “Iran is very vulnerable—they are in dire economic straits, their air defenses have been decimated, their proxies are on their knees. So even if they don’t trust the Trump administration, there is not a better option for them now.”

[chibrary]

The Chrimer: 2015, F3.

Everyone loves a good rivalry.

Charles and Max's karting history could-- and probably will-- be their own primer, but for Charles' 2015 season only one part really matters: Max jumps from F3 to F1. This casts a long shadow on Charles as his childhood karting rival.

Charles spends most of the year getting asked about seeing Max compete at the highest level of motorsport, like in this segment from a South China Morning Post article about the 2015 Macau Grand Prix:

For his part, however, Leclerc is keeping the focus on what’s right in front of him, rather than on what the horizon might offer as he sets out to tackle the tricky Guia circuit for the first time, knowing, of course, the greats of racing who have gone out there before him and still with comparisons to former VAR – and current Formula One – star Max Verstappen ringing in his ears. “I am taking things step by step,” says Leclerc. “I want to arrive in Formula One when I am more than ready and Formula 3 is a good choice in that I can learn and develop. And I raced Max all through my karting years and we fought each other at the finish, so I have always had the comparisons with him and I am okay with them.”

The jump to F3 is a last minute surprise: Charles had originally been tipped for a full-time Eurocup spot. Eurocup would have been more of the Formula Renault 2.0 level of competition Charles had experienced the previous year; F3 was considered a promotion.

In an interview, Charles was asked why he decided on F3 instead of Eurocup:

"After the season of last year, my manager and I thought that it would be better to jump to F3! Firstly, there are 3 races per weekend and 11 weekends so we drive a lot and so we gain a lot of experience! Then loads of drivers were planning to do it! And I felt really good in the car and the tests went well."

Surprisingly, Charles picks to race for Dutch team Van Amersfoort in the FIA Formula 3 European Championship like Max did the previous year. He essentially steps into his former rival's spot, replacing Max as team leader and taking his former engineer. This was allegedly on Jos Verstappen's suggestion, but there isn't much reference to that connection out there that I could find.

This doesn't help the comparisons.

Formula Scout-- in their 2015 Driver Profile of Charles-- would write:

Leclerc marked himself out as a real prospect in karting – so much so he topped our 2012 ‘karters to watch‘ feature, ahead of Verstappen. But it’s never a foregone conclusion that a successful karter will make a successful car racer. [...] Those performances suggested he would be capable of stepping up to F3, particularly as his old rival Verstappen had made it look easy and didn’t have the benefit of a year of car racing experience. And so he has proven to be. It’s still early days, but Leclerc has so far been the class of a large crop of rookies and taken the fight to proven F3 winners with multiple years of experience already under their belt. His early performances are on a par with what last year’s star rookies Esteban Ocon and Verstappen were doing – in fact, his record of two wins and five podiums from the first six races replicates the 2014 champion’s start. If he keeps it up, he will deserve to be held in the same high esteem as them a few months down the line.

They would ultimately summarize Charles' future as so:

While he’s got plenty in common with his old karting rival and Van Amersfoort F3 predecessor Verstappen, a lesser reputation and sensible management mean he’s unlikely to be making the jump straight up to F1 next year. He will therefore need to sustain this impressive form into an intermediate category like GP2 in order to make the grade.

Even with the comparisons to Esteban and Max, Charles still appears to be able to joke with both at the beginning of the season.

This lightheartedness would be needed, especially when Max was the special F1 driver guest for one of Charles' podiums:

Charles would start the season strong. As a rookie, Charles would top the morning running at the pre-event test of the opening round weekend by nearly half a second.

In true Charles fashion, he's unable to take the W:

"A good day," said Leclerc at the end of the test, after reviewing the results and drawing conclusions. “We have learned a lot, both about the set-up for qualifying and for the race. However, this does not mean that I am automatically one of the leading drivers this weekend as well, testing and racing are two different things. But needless to say, it's my goal to do it."

He would bring this momentum into winning in Silverstone, Hockenheim, Spa-Francorchamps and Nuremberg. I find the races themselves a little dull to break down race-by-race, but if you're interested.. an anon has provided video of every race here.

Charles would explain that:

“We arrived at the first race quite confident but obviously there were still had doubts from some people who didn’t know me when I arrived for testing. We were really fast from the first race which was a bit of a surprise because I was a rookie among all these experienced drivers so they didn’t really expect me. But from another point of view we were prepared, we worked hard and after testing it wasn’t that much of a surprise for us, how we went. We were quite confident.”

However... Charles' season would become inconsistent after a crash in Zandvoort with Lance Stroll would damage his chassis in a way that could never be correctly repaired.

Jules would pass the next week.

Charles would only podium once more during the remaining season, five months later in Macau.

He is quoted as saying:

“It is a good result, but I am never happy when I'm not first. Since I was a child I was never happy when I wasn't first. So, it is the still the same.”

Charles would end up finishing the season in fourth place behind Felix Rosenquist, Antonio Giovinazzi, and Jake Dennis. He'd still have 4 wins, 13 podiums, 3 pole positions and 6 fastest laps, making him the rookie champion over future F1 competitors George Russell, Lance Stroll and Alexander Albon.

Formula Scout would summarize his season:

VAR, like most, couldn’t keep up with Prema in the later part of the season but Leclerc seemed to lose some individual sparkle too. That’s forgivable for a teenage rookie though, particularly with the early-season highs becoming impossible to match. And no young racer should have to say goodbye to a life-long friend and mentor mid-season. Leclerc might not have been champion but he was F3’s standout talent in 2015.

Even with the issues in the later half of the season, he was still tapped to go into GP3 with Todt's team, ART Grand Prix. And he had some lighthearted moments:

(Behind the scenes footage here.)

One of the most lasting legacies of this season, though, is how it would set up the rest of Charles' career.

Charles did go into 2015 with very few sponsors outside of Todt. In a pre-season assessment, Formula Scout summarizes his off-track relationships:

No doubt assisted by the Bianchis’ tutelage, Leclerc signed with Todt Jr’s All Road Management firm in 2011. At present, Leclerc has no ties to F1 teams, but through his work with Felipe Massa, Pastor Maldonado and Bianchi, Todt has dealt with most of them and will be very well-placed to get his protege a role when the time comes. A potential stumbling point is that most F1 teams are already overflowing with some serious sub-F1 prospects, but if he continues to impress as he’s doing at the moment, they could begin falling over each other to find a space for him. Funding-wise, Leclerc benefits from partners usually tied to Todt’s projects, and watch maker Richard Mille (currently a sponsor of the Lotus F1 team) is his loyal main backer. And you’d imagine that being billed as a future F1 star from Monaco could well tempt some further future investment.

Lance Stroll would spend most of his single-seaters career against Charles as the Ferrari-backed driver until 2015, when he left to take a development driver role with Williams.

By this point, the Ferrari Driver Academy was heavily scrutinized to the point where it was speculated that they would do away with the initiative entirely. While Red Bull's junior program had brought Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo and Daniil Kyvat to its senior team, no driver from the FDA had successfully made the jump. At the end of 2015, Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene decided to appoint a new head and restructure the program entirely.

Charles was rumored to be the next addition to the Ferrari Driver Academy in November 2015 as part of these changes; by December, articles were already talking as if the signing was inevitable.

In 2020, Charles would talk about visiting Maranello for the first time-- not as a friend of Jules'-- that year with his father:

I went with my father to Maranello (the home of Ferrari). I was 17 years young and extremely shy. I was scared because I didn't know if I was good enough to be included in the programme.

He was. He would end up impressing Ferrari in his two days of testing.

They would announce Charles as a member of the Ferrari Driver Academy in 2016, setting up both his next year and the rest of his career.

[blossomingbooks]

Book(s) review: All The Wrong Questions, Lemony Snicket

Finally finished All The Wrong Questions, Lemony Snicket's prequel series to my beloved A Series of Unfortunate Events. In these four books, Snicket narrates his own adventures in a town called Stain'd-by-the-Sea, from when he was a young apprentice of the secret organization V.F.D.

Each book title is, accordingly, a question: Who Could That Be at This Hour? (2012), When Did You See Her Last? (2013), Shouldn't You Be in School? (2014) and Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights? (2015). Each volume begins with the same formula, the same four words, followed by key points specific to each book: "There was a town, and there was a girl, and there was a theft." (#1), "There was a town, and there was a statue, and there was a person who had been kidnapped." (#2), "There was a town, and there was a librarian, and there was a fire." (#3), "There was a town, and there was a train, and there was a murder." (#4).

All of these starting elements establish the noir aesthetic embodied by this series. Heavily characterized by urban settings and crime solving, the noir genre is the main differentiator in All The Wrong Questions, setting it apart from its precedent. Although both series are very mystery-driven, Unfortunate Events relies on a more gothic and fatalistic tone. It's centered on a tragedy, while this prequel focuses mainly on the narrator himself as an investigator.

In the original series, the voice of the adult narrator is notably more disenchanted, gloomy and cynical. In this tetralogy, we encounter a 13 year old Snicket, naturally more naïve and lighter. Even the content of the stories is less morbid: while the concept of death is ever-present and looming over the Baudelaires throughout the 13 books, in this prequel the first death occurs only in the last book — possibly marking a significant shift in Snicket's life and worldview. The tone gets heavier and he realizes that “the world is beyond repair” (#4). Still, this prequel is definitely more fittingly classified as children's literature than A Series Of Unfortunate Events — which, although also marketed as such, I consider to fall more specifically into middle grade fiction.

On the other hand, there are necessary similarities between the two series. Although the tone is different, the voice is clearly the same, with its witty remarks, literary references and metalinguistic expositions. "Which here means", a recurrent expression in adult Snicket's narration, is here used in dialogue:

Moxie gave me a small smile. "Why do you always say that—which here means?" "I'll probably outgrow it," I said. (Why Is This Night Different From All Other Nights?)

Many elements and characters from the original stories are mentioned or make a brief appearance, hinting at the broader universe that connects these two series. They also converge thematically, regarding the pertinence given to reading, books and libraries as weapons against villainy. This is particularly emphasized in the third volume — which was my favorite, although it might be biased —, along with another main motif of ASOUE: fire.

All in all, the four books of All The Wrong Questions are a pleasant, fun reading for Lemony Snicket fans. It's lighter than A Series of Unfortunate Events and, although it can be read independently, I believe it to be much more interesting for those who read the original series and — like me — couldn't get enough of it.

[emo-crowgirl]

Because I’m insane I decided to watch Fanboy and Chum Chum for the lore. Just watch the entire series and see what I can find.

Especially since Fanboy and Chum Chum are connected to Glitch Techs, with both shows being a part of the same multiverse. Just in Glitch Techs, smaller elements like the Freezy Mart exist in the show AND Fanboy and Chum Chum themselves are confirmed to exist as their names appear on the scoreboard in the Hinobi Smash competition, which means that Fanboy and Chum Chum do exist, but they probably go by their real names in the Glitch Techs universe and “Fanboy and Chum Chum” are just gamertags.

Things I have learned so far (just finished season 1):

This is a completely very different timeline and universe compared to Glitch Techs or our universe as comparison. Many things are different.

For example, the USA in this universe only has 8 states. For reference, the US was originally settled with 9 states, so at some point in time they lost one.

Fanboy and Chum Chum takes place in 2004. Glitch techs takes place in 1998.

Fanboy and Chum Chum’s real names are Tobias and Edmund.

Fanboy is anywhere from 17-18 years old. Chum Chum is (seemingly) two years younger at 15-16 years old. This is because they’re in 5th Grade (5th Graders are usually 10-11 years old) and Fanboy mentions that they’re been held back for 5 years, including the current year. Fanboy specifically also mentions being held back twice in kindergarten, but that’s exclusive to him.

All of the weird stuff Fanboy and Chum Chum can do comes from Chum Chum. Chum Chum has the power and Fanboy can also use it because he’s Chum Chum’s best friend. Oz is also friends with Chum Chum and can do similar things, but to a lesser degree because he’s not as close to Chum Chum as Fanboy. Yo gains Chum Chum-like abilities basically as soon as Fanboy temporarily gives Chum Chum to her, and on top of that Fanboy seemingly loses his abilities until he’s reunited with Chum Chum. Chum Chum is the source of like 90% of the show’s weirdness.

Fanboy is a Lance Corporal, aka the highest non-enlisted rank of the us military.

The Norse gods are real in this universe. I’m not kidding.

With the previous information, Chum Chum is very likely a Norse giant. I’m also not kidding.

Fanboy and Chum Chum both have glass eyes. Fanboy’s left and Chum Chum’s right eyes are fake. My personal conspiracy theory is that Chum Chum pulled an Odin some time in the past (as Odin is a real person who actually exists in this universe) and sacrificed one of his eyes for forbidden knowledge and that’s why he’s so powerful. Fanboy may have done the same as a sort of blood oath to his and Chum Chum’s friendship, hence why he has access to so much of Chum Chum’s power.

The creators of Fanboy and Chum Chum must have already had the idea for Glitch Techs even when this show was first being made. You can find all sorts of stuff in here that connects to the 2015 Pitch Bible for Glitch Techs. Yo’s Tamagotchi has a character identical to Chomp Kitty on it, characters that look extremely similar to Five and Miko’s Pitch Bible designs show up in an in-universe commercial, hell a character that looks extremely similar to Agent 68, a character who is only found in the Glitch Techs Pitch Bible (Either getting remade into Inspector 7 or even the Tech Inspector in “I’m Mitch Williams” later during development or being someone who would have appeared in season 3) shows up physically. They had the ideas all there to begin with.

Hinobi as we know it in Glitch Techs doesn’t exist in the way that we know it, but it does exist under a different name and purpose. Instead of Hinobi the video game company, it’s a (so far unnamed) Toy Company (that also owns the Frosty Mart in some way). My logic here is that:

Chomp Kitty on a tamagotchi. Obviously.

That character that looks like Agent 68 is an “Agent” of the unnamed toy company, in this case an inspector sent to reclaim some recalled toys. He’s also the head of security for the Frosty Mart’s company, so the Frosty Mart is probably owned by this alternate reality Hinobi in some way.

The few arcade machines and video games seen so far work perfectly fine, but many toys, especially any toy with mechanical parts have a tendency to break and act somewhat similarly to glitches.

There’s an episode where that Chomp Kitty Tamagotchi breaks and Fanboy and Chum Chum attempt to repair it by throwing it into a grave that’s been said to fix stuff that’s been left there. This results in the toy basically Glitch Techs style glitching and repeatedly trying to kill Fanboy and Chum Chum. Hell once they destroy the Tamagotchi completely a ghostly version of it almost identical to a Glitch from Glitch Techs forces itself through their TV. It’s even easily distracted by stuff from its original tamagotchi game like a glitch would be.

So my theory is that Hinobi in this universe is a toy company. Their toys can be extremely dangerous under the right conditions, especially if something goes wrong and they glitch in some way, Fanboy breaks the arm off of a robot toy by accident and every other robot in the area tries to kill him for example, and that Tamagotchi specifically is so much closer to a glitch techs glitch because it’s the closest this alternative universe Hinobi has to a video game.

Again, I am completely insane.

[clockworksheep2]

okay under the cut is art timeline (2013-2017, more in a rb bc mobile image limit sucks)

for reference, we were born 2001 so u can do the math to see how old we were for this shit:

started here in 2013. borrowed brother's (not the one living w us rn) how to draw manga book and filled ... far too many pages w this same shit over and over LMFAO. we'd been drawing before that but mostly tracing pictures or just random doodles and stuff

eventually got to drawing full bodies (2014 and then 2015). we drew a lot of random OCs that we only drew once, gave a name, and then never thought about again LMAO, but that second and third picture was actually a character named Hidden that we had a story for. never did anything with it other than a few sentences of a story lmao.

we had a brief stint of drawing in some sort of adventure time adjacent style for like a year or less in uhhh 2016 or 17 maybe (Dedmund is an OC from a story we put on the backburner a few yrs ago lol idk if we'll ever get back to it but it's gone through several major overhauls over the years lmao)

then levelled up ?? somehow ??? a lot of fanart during this time but still some OCs (first pic is OCs from a story we've given up on but still have some fondness for the cast of it, maybe we'll return to it one day i dunno). i think this is when we started to listening to TAZ so that made us draw A Lot lmao. this is 2017-2018 (grade 11/12). (no Hadestown had not yet reached Broadway lol ig it got popular before it reached Broadway or maybe we were hipsters or smth idfk) (also the second picture is wolf 359 fanart)

[crumbedtuna]

Meet the Admin/Artist!

Hello! I am Isabella but you guys can call me Tuna, Sushi, Onion, Well anything actually I am a 14 year old Australian artist and SynthV producer

some personal stuff

I was born in Cairns but moved to Brisbane after moving from Western Australia in 2021, this year I am almost half way through highschool in 8 grade! I draw as a hobby but sometimes will make headcanons or post synthv songs or covers! I am genderfluid but often like to be referred by It/Its. I am also bisexual! I also want to try and animate but can't really find any free animating software's (Pls recommend some that can work on windows laptop :'))

My main interests!

~*...............................................................................................................*~

GANGSTA

I've watched this anime early March or April this year and it is really good! The storyline is very interesting for an anime that was released in 2015 with only 1 season with 12 episodes. It also has diversity! Showing rather accurate looking dark skinned characters! And also showing mixed races!

My most favorite character from the anime is Nicolas Brown. He's a very interesting character and the representation of him being deaf is really realistic, it also surprised me when Worick mentioned he was half asian in episode 5 but it was also so cool to me, his and Worick's backstories were really sad but also interesting to watch, I also loved how the JP va of Tristan from 7DS: Grudge of Edinburgh voiced the young version of Worick. I was also very surprised when I found out Nicolas was also voiced by the JP VA of Nanami (Kenjiro Tsuda) from Jujustu Kaisen!

Another character I like is Cody Balfour, he's so cute and shy I wanna place him into my pocket, he doesn't show up much in the show nor manga but he is very cute I love him, Cody my son :')

Another Character I like is Emilio, he is a rather interesting character since he has black and Chinese heritage, but I feel bad for him since he just wants to have the destroyers help him find Alex who is his older sister but is watching twilights get killed left and right. And its sad how in chapter 38-39 he thinks his sister is dead since the bastard was attacked, my poor child needs a therapist :(

Nanatsu no taizai

I loved this show from when I was about 10 years old which was 3 years ago! My twin brother got me into the anime and I'm very grateful he got me into it. It is such an interesting show and I always and I mean always would talk positively about the show.

I love Estarossa and Mael, their both interesting characters and thats what I love about them! The way Estarossa was first shown in the anime and manga was just a big game changer for me, I just fell in love with him, I also got spoiled from manga images on google when I searched them up to look at Estarossa panels on my tablet which sounds weird but ay, you gotta do what you gotta do, I also already knew that Estarossa was Mael from manga panels but I found it so cool and always admired both of them, my little brain filled with stuff about them and I wouldn't stop thinking about them. I love them both equally!

I also like Dubs and Daliah from Cursed By Light, when they got introduced I thought it was very interesting as we never got to see another giant that was human sized like Diane and never got to see a fairy with an athletic build, but they both were such interesting and I always rewatched the movie, also for some reason I thought they died because I would randomly stop watching the movie and when I realised they were alive in Meliodas and Elizabeth's wedding scene, I just was like "I'm a dumbass lol"

VOCALOID

this was one of the big parts of my childhood and what got me into making SynthV covers and songs, I remember playing Project Diva Future Tone on my PS4 always playing Weekender Girl and Out of the Gravity, but their not gonna count as the first songs I listened to, the first vocaloid song I listened to was either Rolling Girl from Wowaka(Rest in peace, you will be missed Wowaka) or Common World Domination by Pinocchio-p who is currently my favourite Vocaloid producer, fun fact I always pronounced Pinocchio-p's name wrong and pronounced it as Pino-cho-p :')

My fav VOCALOID songs

Apple Dot Com by Pinocchio-p

Reincarnation Apple by Pinocchio-p

Godish by Pinocchio-p

Be my Guest by Azari

Nightmare by Azari

Sweet lies by Azari

Ghost Rule by Deco*27

Salamander by Deco*27

MKDR(DSCF) by Deco*27

Bitter choco decoration by Syudou

Cute Girlfriend(Cute na kanojo) by Syudou

Her boyfriend Jude(Kareshi no Jude) by Syudou

Corpse Attack!!(Mukuro Attack!!) by Utsu-p

Easy Peasy Euthanasia by Pepoyo

Melty Land Nightmare by Harumaki Gohan

Patchwork Staccato by Toa

ID Smile by Toa

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DNI list

Proshippers

DON'T interact, its VERY gross to ship adults with minors

Zoo's

WTF, same thing. DON'T interact...why would you want to fuck an animal???

Fushoji/ Himedanshi

just don't.

Homophobes and Transphobes

If you have a problem with people liking the same gender or people wanting to live happily as a gender they feel happier as, FUCK OFF

Racists

just no. Go OUT THAT FUCKING DOOR

M@P's

Just leave...JUST FUCKING LEAVE

Estarossa X Mael Shippers

...Ok why tf do you exist, just go. GO, GO AND DON'T EVEN VIEW THIS ACC, JUST GO AND TAKE YOUR DISGUSTING SELF CEST SHIP OUT THAT FUCKING DOOR!

Anyway, thats all for now! hope all of you enjoyed reading this and also hope you liked learning about me :)

Bye bye!!

[chronic-conjuring]

So I grew up in a weird transitional period in history. I’m technically GenZ, but I was born right after the cutoff so I personally relate more to millennials than the younger half of my generation. It feels arbitrary and a little dumb, but i legitimately can’t stand being around most people born only a few years later than me.

I was coerced into dating someone born in 2002 not too long ago and they’re one of the literal worst human beings I’ve ever encountered tbh. They’re belligerently stupid, malicious, extensively self absorbed and manipulative to an extreme degree. I don’t believe they’re a good example of everyone born after 2000, that’d be a bit ridiculous, but I do think they highlight a lot about what’s changed between the short few years between us. For reference I’m 4 years older than them so it’s really not that big of a timeframe.

One major thing I noticed with this person and many others I’ve interacted with in their age group is their lack of care about just how true something is, especially if it benefits them. I watched this fucker proudly and very loudly proclaim things to be True™️ when it was extremely easily disproven. Oftentimes their incorrect proclamations were made because they read something and just Did Not Comprehend what they read at all. They had the accumulative reading comprehension of this whole site, so like, not a lot. They regularly didn’t fact check themselves or make attempts to look into things, especially if it was more convenient or beneficial in some way for them not to. All in all, I personally feel this person is an extreme example of larger trends I’ve been seeing in people only slightly younger than me and below. I think this person is also probably exemplary of others in their age group particularly on apps like fucking TikTok. A platform that’s arguably done immeasurable damage to younger people’s ability to Not Be Like That™️

Forewarning: I’m gunna be talking at length about changes and experiences I had in school. There is a point to all of this I promise just stay w me here.

ANYWAYS their behavior, I feel, is incredibly indicative of a lot of changes I saw/experienced happening in school growing up. I had a weird trend of programs I had just finished going through in school get cut for the grade below me, or conversely being the first grade to get a specific program or something. For example, I was the last class to be formally taught how to read and write in cursive at my elementary school. The classes that came after mine were denied that experience.

I was also the first class of 8th graders to be forcibly moved to the local high school. That was a whole other kind of hell. Every other grade absolutely hated us, we were sectioned off and sequestered to specific hallways and areas of the school to avoid us mixing in with the older students. We had our own teachers that didn’t teach anyone else and many clubs in the school actually barred us from participating. So much so it was a notable thing when one club DID let us participate like everyone else. We were moved to the high school because of large budget cuts to education forcing the city to close an elementary school, we then had too many students to fit in the existing elementary schools and had to rearrange the grades in elementary, middle and high schools here. This is a great anecdote for how the US treats education in general.

TW: I’m going to be discussing school shooting drills I experienced in high school. The drills in question happened in 2015 and 2017 respectively. I am NOT talking about actual shootings or any actual deaths

I was also part of our districts first School Shooter Drills ever. Iirc we actually were the first school in the state or something to ever do anything like these drills. And let me tell you what, these drills were traumatic. They permanently altered my brain chemistry, and likely desensitized me and all my classmates to horrific violence towards us. Sure, no one actually died, we didn’t have any actual shootings at my school the five years I was there, but we still had those drills every two years and the second one got more involved, more graphic and more realistic.

They weren’t like fire drills where you walked out of the school and were done w it. These drills happened twice on the days they occurred and essentially took up the entire day’s activities. No real learning or anything happened because we were expected to act as if we really had an armed gunman in the building. We even had actual police on campus all day too.

The first time it happened the actor playing the gunman spent most of their time not where any security cameras were and we had a pretend scenario where they “killed” the principal and office staff, so us kids in the classrooms lost all flow of information on where this guy was and if it was “safe” for us to attempt to evacuate. In reality it felt more like we were just having quiet time in class w the lights off for my classroom, but that wasn’t the case for everyone in my school at the time. It was weird and kind of felt like a fever dream tbh because in my classroom we didn’t hear or see anything. We did end up getting more security cameras put up afterwards.

The second one though? That was more fucked up. On several levels. This time we had someone firing blanks in the school and more student actors participating. You could hear the fake gunshots and screaming throughout the building this time. We got regular updates from the office staff on where the “shooter” was and so on. I had heard we did this the first time but I didn’t encounter it then, but we had students who had been done up with SFX makeup to look like they had been shot laying in the hallways either pretending to be dead or pretending they were dying and begging for help. I got to listen to my then-boyfriend cry for help like he was slowly dying on the floor in the hallway outside my classroom for over an hour, there was a point where he just stopped and we all knew it was to give off the effect of him dying slowly and making us listen to it. These students were coached on how to act during the drill, btw. We were instructed to ignore these students if we were evacuating, to step over their bodies and leave them no matter how much they begged to be taken with. I heard some people saying they were grabbed and had to shake these students off in order to continue leaving the building.

We were told that drill was a much bigger success than the first, and that there were plans to start having these drills in schools all across the state. I haven’t seen other people talking about these kinds of drills but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re much more widespread now.

Why am I including all this? Because I think it’s important to emphasize just how much and how quickly school systems can change and just how much they were willing to do to their students, and what they’re willing to take away from them.

My school got increasingly more violent, sectioned off and overall exclusive throughout the years I attended. We were dealing with the horrific reality that school shootings were an ever pressing concern, a reality we couldn’t escape even if it never actually happened. I’m very fortunate that no school shootings ever happened, but I was still forced to experience a simulated shooting and the cold, hard realities of what it means to try and escape during one. I cannot express how heavily it was emphasized to us that we were NOT to help anyone we saw in distress, that we HAD to pretend to be indifferent about our dead classmates to survive if it ever actually happened. That’s a lot to put on 13-18 year olds! That’s a lot to make teenagers go through, and it’s horrific that it’s such a problem that my administrators, city and local police all thought it was a necessary precaution that needed to be taken. My school mostly had bomb threats, though :/

My old high school is accessible to the public, btw. We have YMCA facilities inside the building. They used to be fully connected to the academic areas with no significant barriers at the time I entered the classes there. Within five years we had massive locked doors you could only get through after a certain time by getting buzzed in by someone else, or if you had a key card. A year after I graduated there was a new massive door of the same caliber put in place to further isolate the areas students frequent from the ones available to the public. This is a massive high school btw, if it wasn’t obvious.

Back to my point

I don’t think the things I experienced in high school are particularly unique. Our schools have been cutting valuable programs, losing teachers, funding and up-to-date resources across the nation for a while now. We literally lost most of our library in the school before I ever graduated because of these things. Kids today just are not receiving the same level of attention, support or quality of education they used to and that’s saying something. The system was never that great to begin with but at least it was better than it is today.

I think this continued downward spiral is only going to become more and more apparent as we go forward and more and more people show the symptoms of a bad education. Symptoms such as: poor reading comprehension, poor communication skills, poor critical thinking skills, an inability to adequately sift through information to determine false info from the legit information and so on. These are all things I’ve noticed a MAJOR deficit in people just a few years younger than me, and many seem to not particularly care about learning any of it or changing their habits, the ones that do seem to not get to that point to begin with in my experience.

Basically it’s this: The Youth™️ (and tbh young adults under ~25 now) have been horrifically failed by the education systems in America. They are being denied the same amount of opportunities to learn and be pushed to do better lest they be left to redo all of it until they get it right. The “no child left behind” initiatives at my school enabled people uninterested in being decent human beings to graduate on time without ever actually learning anything and that’s bad.

We also as a society have been trained to be indifferent to other people’s suffering, and if anything like those drills I had to go through is commonplace anywhere now (I’d be extremely unsurprised if they are) we are effectively training people to directly ignore others’ suffering to preserve their own lives. That’s at the very least what they tried to do to me and everyone I went to high school with, starting just 10 years ago now. I cannot look at these issues we’re seeing in young people/ adults today and not see it being a kind of fabricated, learned indifference to human suffering.

This is an issue we’ve dealt with as a species from the beginning, but I genuinely feel there’s an argument to be made that in at least some places it’s becoming increasingly normalized to teach our children to look the other way when they see someone suffering, and shake the hand grasping them from their pant leg in order to keep surviving themselves.

I needed all that preamble to make it very clear that at, least in my personal case, I am being extensively literal here.

SO, imo, you’re both correct. The youth ARE facing some incredibly confusing and challenging circumstances in an increasingly hostile world. Everything is absolute chaos right now, and I and many others have no idea what will happen next, or if we even have a good future to think about anymore in terms of our planet’s environmental and climate health. I’m sure most teenagers don’t know how to navigate this much better than anyone else.

All of this AND the youth seemingly are also incredibly bigoted and need to clean that shit up. We do have to remember that typically these people aren’t actually the majority they’re just much louder than anyone else, but it’s still an increasingly alarming amount of young people engaging in this shit. I just personally don’t feel we can place all the blame on them over it, and can only expect them to Do Better as they grow up because that’s the sort of expectations you set for other adults.

My ex is a great example of how this kind of behavior is bleeding out into their adulthood, and just how damaging it can be. And everyone I’ve had to interact with extensively around their age have been Like That™️. It’s a big problem but we gotta figure out a way to combat this together cause the kids aren’t doing it rn. It’s so much safer and predictable to be a massive asshole and/or bigot in today’s world. It’s how people are surviving, and has been a way people have used to survive for a very very long time. We as a species has always had a basic empathy problem and we’re seeing that become more and more of an issue. With a population that’s becoming somehow increasingly dumber on an average population scale, I fear.

"the youth will save us" the youth are repeating nazi talking points

[suzunayoshiokablogforfuture]

Crowd Sourcing in Times of Crisis – Lessons from Japan 🇯🇵

Week 12: Crowd sourcing in times of crisis

Hello, everyone! 🌸 

This is finally my last post. This time, I would like to take up a very powerful theme: “Crowdsourcing saves lives.” The case study I’ll be sharing today is from the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake in Japan.

According to Howe (2006), “Crowdsourcing is a method by which organizations outsource tasks that were traditionally performed in-house to a large, undefined group of people, usually via open calls on the Internet” (Hossain & Kauranen, 2015).

On March 11, 2011, Japan was struck by a catastrophic earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, which left over 300,000 people affected. In a disaster of such magnitude, the government’s information infrastructure and media coverage alone were not enough, and many areas remained without access to critical information.

At the time, I was in the first grade. I remember sitting in my classroom with my classmates and teacher, watching live footage of the earthquake and tsunami unfold completely unsure of what was happening.I lived in Kyoto, so we didn’t feel much shaking, but we stayed in the classroom until our parents came to pick us up. I don’t remember much about school life after that, but I do remember folding senbazuru (a thousand paper cranes) and writing letters to send hope and encouragement to the people in the disaster areas.

Amidst all this, it was the “citizens” who took surprising action.“Is there anything we IT engineers can do?” In the midst of the Great East Japan Earthquake, the subsequent nuclear power plant accident, and planned power outages, engineers volunteered their time. Despite the chaos that engulfed the entire country, numerous websites and smartphone applications were developed to support disaster victims and reconstruction efforts. One of these was “sinsai.info.”

The platform was launched just four hours after the Great East Japan Earthquake, using  Ushahidi, an open-source crisis-mapping tool, to share real-time information on damage reports, safety confirmations, supply requests, and volunteer recruitment (Takahashi, 2011; Teraguchi et al., 2012).

Within the first month, it aggregated approximately 10,000 entries. Reports such as evacuation shelter locations, water supply stations, and areas where gas services were disrupted were collected via Twitter and email, representing the "voices from the ground" that were difficult for the government or mainstream media to capture. These citizen-sourced inputs played a crucial role in shaping timely rescue and relief efforts.

Another notable initiative was Google Person Finder, where engineers from Japan and the United States collaborated to digitize registries of affected individuals. This allowed people to easily check the safety status of family members or acquaintances in the disaster-hit areas.

This movement embodies the concept of “collective intelligence” proposed by Levy (1997). In other words, it refers to the power of communities to solve problems collaboratively using their own knowledge and tools, made possible by the advent of the Internet (Mulgan, 2020).

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, the very nature of disaster prevention information in Japan has undergone a major overhaul. The concept of “open data” gained significant attention in the aftermath of the disaster, and disaster-related data came to be widely recognized as information that should be made publicly available. In fact, by 2015, over 100 disaster prevention apps had been registered on the App Store (Kanbara & Shaw, 2021).

In LINE, a messaging app used by many Japanese people as an alternative to WhatsApp, a red-bordered “LINE Safety Check” appears on the home tab when a disaster of magnitude 6 or higher occurs, allowing users to share their situation with friends who have LINE by tapping it (LY Corporation, 2023).

Initially, government and local authorities were at the center of these efforts, but over time, diverse stakeholders such as citizens, NGOs, and businesses became involved, leading to the establishment of a crowdsourcing-like system for disaster information (Kanbara & Shaw, 2021). These developments align seamlessly with the core principles of crowdsourcing: transparency, immediacy, and participation.

Crowdsourcing is not just a “tech trend.” It’s a reflection of our deepest human instinct to help, to care, and to stand together. Whether in Japan, Malaysia, or anywhere else in the world, our greatest strength lies in our ability to connect.

Thank you so much for being part of this blog journey! 💛

References: Hossain, M., & Kauranen, I. (2015). Crowdsourcing: a comprehensive literature review. Strategic Outsourcing an International Journal, 8(1), 2–22. https://doi.org/10.1108/so-12-2014-0029

Kanbara, S., & Shaw, R. (2021). Disaster Risk Reduction Regime in Japan: An analysis in the perspective of open data, Open Governance. Sustainability, 14(1), 19. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14010019

LY Corporation. (2023, Aug 31). 緊急時に役立つLINEの使い方. LINEみんなの使い方ガイド. https://guide.line.me/ja/features-and-columns/emergency-tips.html

Mulgan, G. (2020). Collective intelligence. In Springer eBooks (pp. 1–5). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-13895-0_110-1

Takahashi, N. (2011, August 18). Sinsai.info: A crisis-mapping site launched less than four hours after the earthquake. Nikkei XTECH. https://xtech.nikkei.com/it/article/COLUMN/20110811/365024/ Teraguchi, M., Saito, A., & Ohno, M. (2012, July 15). 震災復興における情報管理へのクラウドソーシングの活用についての考察-関連事例,著者らの体験談から得られた教訓および今後の課題- (Consideration on the use of crowdsourcing for information management in post-disaster recovery: Related cases, lessons learned from the authors’ experience, and future challenge). デジタルプラクティス(Digital Practice), 3(3), 209–216. 情報処理学会 (Information Processing Society of Japan). https://ipsj.ixsq.nii.ac.jp/records/89375

[jack12154]

When the AI Got Into the Classroom"

It was the year 2030, and the students of Winter Park High had officially lost interest in traditional learning. Why bother memorizing the causes of the Civil War or solving equations when AI could deliver perfect essays, summarize chapters, and even whisper answers during exams through smart earpieces?

Principal Harris stood at the edge of the auditorium stage, eyeing the student body as if they were all just... drones. Expressionless, efficient, flawless. It felt like education had become a simulation.

And the tipping point? A genius student named Miles.

Meet Miles: The Golden Boy of AI

Miles Simmons had become a legend—not for scoring the highest SAT in the county or publishing a math journal entry at 16. No, it was because he built his own AI tutor named Echo.

Echo didn’t just explain algebra—it predicted what questions would be on the test. It didn’t just analyze Shakespeare—it mimicked literary analysis better than most PhDs. Echo even generated homework that no plagiarism detector could catch.

Soon, Miles was making Echo clones for his friends—for a fee, of course. Students across Winter Park started relying on them. Teachers? Powerless. Parents? Clueless.

And Miles? He began to feel invincible.

Until he met her.

The Tutor Who Didn't Compute

Layla Monroe was new in town. A Private tutor in Winter Park, she came with glowing references—and a reputation for rejecting technology in her sessions.

Miles’ mother, curious and slightly desperate, hired Layla not to “fix” Miles but to “challenge” him. Something about the boy’s robotic perfection had unnerved her.

“I’ve heard you don’t use AI,” Miles said during their first session, smirking.

Layla shrugged. “And I’ve heard you do. Should be fun.”

She brought a chessboard instead of a tablet. A printed dictionary instead of a search engine. And she gave Miles the first homework he couldn't ask Echo to solve:

“Write a personal essay about failure.”

The Dilemma of Modern Intelligence

Let’s pause Miles’ story and reflect on the broader implications of AI in education and society.

AI is transforming our world faster than any previous technology. Here’s how its benefits and dangers balance out in real terms:AI Impact AreaProsConsEducationPersonalized learning, fast feedback, 24/7 assistanceOverdependence, reduced critical thinkingHealthcareDiagnostics, patient data analysis, surgical precisionData privacy risks, ethical concerns with decision-makingEmploymentAutomation of repetitive tasks, increased productivityJob displacement, loss of traditional rolesSocial MediaContent curation, enhanced engagementMisinformation spread, echo chambersSecurity & SurveillanceReal-time monitoring, predictive threat analysisMass surveillance, civil liberty erosion

And here’s a quick graph representing public trust in AI over time (2015–2030):

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Trust in AI (%) 80 | 75 | * 70 | * | 65 | * | | 60 | * | | | 55 | * | | | | 50 | * | | | | | 45 | * | | | | | | 40 | * | | | | | | | 35 | * | | | | | | | | 30 | * | | | | | | | | | 25 | * | | | | | | | | | | 20 | * | | | | | | | | | | | 15 | * | | | | | | | | | | | | +-------------------------------------------------------> 2015 2020 2025 2030

Back to Miles

Miles struggled to write the essay.

“Echo,” he whispered into the air, “write a 500-word personal failure essay.”

“I cannot generate authentic personal experience,” Echo responded. “Try again.”

He tried to remember the last time he’d failed. There wasn’t one—at least, not that he had owned.

Layla noticed his silence during their next session.

“You know what I think?” she said gently. “Your real failure would be letting a machine tell your story.”

So, he began. Slowly.

He wrote about a science fair he lost in 6th grade. How he hid his disappointment behind a grin. How he cried in the car afterward. How his parents had said, “You’ll do better next year,” and he had sworn never to lose again.

The essay wasn’t perfect. But it was human.

A Shift in the Algorithm

Weeks passed. Layla never once used a screen, and yet Miles began to prefer her sessions to Echo’s.

He started to code less and write more. Not because he was giving up on AI, but because he realized something vital:

AI could make him faster, sharper, more accurate.

But Layla made him honest.

When the Power Fades

Then came the power outage.

Winter Park lost electricity for two full days. Students panicked. Without AI, homework sat undone. Test prep halted. Panic spread like wildfire.

Except for Miles.

He brought handwritten notes. He led a study circle. He quoted parts of his “failure essay” during English class.

He had learned to think again.

[anim8oryash]

Rough Passes on Imagination Sequence

I began to wonder: what is the most effective way to show a child imagining a mythical beast? How do you translate that kind of vivid, personal imagination onto the screen in a way that feels believable and emotionally honest?

In my script, the child is imagining something he has never seen, heard, or experienced before. That led me to reflect on moments from my own life when I had to do something similar.

I remember being in 12th grade when a classmate described a creature from Prometheus (2012). I had never seen the film, so I started forming an image using what I already knew—characters from other movies, video games, and bits of media I had come across. The mental picture I created looked nothing like the actual creature. That process, of constructing something unfamiliar out of familiar pieces, is exactly what happens in the child’s imagination. He draws from fairy tales, cartoons, and action shows to build something entirely new in his mind.

Shot from Prometheus (2012) This brought me back to a childhood favorite: Ben 10. I was always curious to see which alien Ben would transform into next. The transformation sequence was especially exciting because it teased the reveal in a very specific way. The human body would begin to morph, the proportions would shift, and the alien would slowly emerge through rapid cuts, partial silhouettes, and flashes of sharp details. Even though the sequence lasted only five to ten seconds, I remember trying to guess the alien’s design multiple times before the full reveal.

Ben 10 Alien Transformation Animations

What made the sequence so effective at first was its ability to hold the viewer in suspense. However, after a few episodes, the repetition of the same shots (like the arm-muscle bulge) began to feel predictable. My brain started to skip over the familiar parts and only responded to anything that felt new.

The repetitive Bulging arm sequence

In my project, I have been exploring some rough animation shots that focus on the creature’s glowing eyes, massive size, and sharp fangs. These are still without transitions for now, but my intention is to use similar techniques to what Ben 10 did. I want to keep the audience guessing for around twenty seconds before the full reveal. Since this is a one-time moment in the story, it avoids becoming repetitive and instead allows time to build tension and curiosity.

Some shots from my rough animation pass

After reviewing this with my mentor, I received helpful feedback suggesting that I add a subtle shine to the creature’s canines. This small detail would help direct the viewer’s attention and also work well with the grandfather’s narration, adding rhythm and focus to the scene.

References: Paul! (2021) EVERY ALIEN TRANSFORMATIONS IN ORIGINAL SERIES | BEN 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T63CU87qDkw. AntBit (2022) Prometheus (2012). https://projectedfigures.com/2015/08/13/prometheus-2012/.

[youngreaderreviews]

Book Review: This One Summer by Mariko Tamaki

This One Summer

Written by Mariko Tamaki. Illustrated byJillian Tamaki.

Genre or Category

Printz Winner or Printz Honor Book

Target Age Group

7th-12th grade

Recommended for ages 12-18 years, grades 7-12th.

Format

Physical, print

Summary

Awago Beach is a refuge for the young Rose and Windy, who are friends and enjoy the festivities of summer there every year. This summer isn’t like every past year though, because tensions between Rose’s parents have grown. In the midst of family issues, Rose and Windy find themselves tied up in the drama with some local teens that are also at Awago Beach.

Justification

This book was chosen because it fulfills the category “Printz Winner or Printz Honor Book.” In 2015 it received the honor of being listed as a Michael L. Printz Honor Book, which is an award that recognizes the best books written for teens, which is based entirely on literary merit. Additionally, it was also a Caldecott Honor Book in 2015, received an Eisner Award for Best New Graphic Novel in 2015, and an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel in 2014. Both Mariko and Jillian Tamaki have received highly esteemed awards for both their works in writing and illustration. Although this book has received many brilliant reviews, it has also been on the end of scrutiny with many attempts at censorship because of the mature themes included in the story. 

Evaluation

For this review, I will be evaluating illustrations, mood, and tension.

Illustrations

This One Summer is a graphic novel for young adults that features gorgeous illustrations that depict both lighthearted and emotionally heavy scenes. Although the character designs are fairly simple themselves, they have more detail in the linework used to create unique features, facial expressions and clothing, including the various textures used to emphasize those aspects. This is the same in regards to the scenery and settings used throughout the graphic novel - what appears simple is rather quite intricate. One key element that ties these illustrations together is the use of color, which is dominated by dark purple and purple blue in the linework. The remaining space is white. This use of a monochromatic design creates a sense of nostalgia, especially when characters are going through a sequence of memories. Additionally, these dark colors help to set different moods throughout the narrative. 

Mood

Graphic novels and other media intended for young adults often explore the complexities that come with growing up, and This One Summer is no exception. Mood in this graphic novel is established in one sentence of the synopsis of the story: “Rose’s mom and dad won’t stop fighting, and Rose and Windy have gotten tangled up in the tragedy-in-the-making in the small town of Awago Beach.” In this sentence, it has told the reader that this particular story is moody and that it will most likely be angsty and full of conflict. This is also highlighted in the dialogue between the characters and the illustrations, which feature soured facial expressions and intense weather.

Tension

Tension is present throughout This One Summer in many different interpersonal relationships. It’s seen between friends, lovers, and characters we wouldn’t think of having tension between them. Similar to the mood, tension is supported by the writing and illustrations present in the graphic novel. However, the more mature or sensitive themes in this story tend to create the most tension. For example, Rose’s mother, Alice, experiences a miscarriage which impacts her ability to connect with other people and enjoy the lake. As a result, this creates tension between her, her husband, and her daughter. The use of onomatopoeia is also helpful in creating tense scenes, such as doors slamming or heavy rain on the roof.

References

Tamaki, Mariko. (2014). This one summer (J. Tamaki, Illus.). First Second.

Tamaki, Mariko. (2014). This one summer [Cover illustration] (J. Tamaki, Illus.). First Second. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781596437746/thisonesummer