#great intelligence

[pluralzalpha]

Doctor Who - revamped villains part one

[doctorwhogirlie]

Click keep reading if you wanna see a picture of each creature :)

(p.s says part three because im an idiot who shuffled my queue)

[nerds-yearbook]

In 1892, on Christmas Eve, London wss plagued by deadly snowmen. The time traveling alien known as the Doctor was on sabbatical there, but was coaxed back into action by a barmaid named Clara, a Sontaran named Strax, and a Restac known as Madame Vastra. ("The Snowmen", Doctor Who, vlm 3, TV)

[thienvaldram]

The Book of the Snowstorm – Readthrough/Review Part 9

Framing Story (Scene 22)

Reunion time. And Snowstorm reveal, and it was Yog Sothoth (And I think there was a ‘The Snowmen’ allusion there)? Let into the Universe by ‘an Archon making a dent in Urizen’s wall’. (The events of WBY?) And the man in black was a Frenchman possessed by Yog Sothoth.

The Gift of the Renegades

Rob Jaguar huh? Wonder who that’s supposed to be…

That aside, fun little meta piece. Also Lady Aesc’s first in person appearance beyond her Claus Rosen Bridge cameo. Also Coloth was there, though I’m not sure how much it’ll help Martisa and Callum that he is. (Spoiler alert it didn't)

The First Noël

Interesting little piece about the Library as a setting, Room 28 was very effective imagery in particular. Also is that Wade/Old Amy from the Girl Who Waited?

Our Finest Gifts We Bring (1-10)

Fun little vignettes, some connecting to things, some not. Standout for these first ten for me is Warky’s cameo.

[doctorkinktraveller]

[Tomb]

CLARA: And remember me.

(Whiteout.)

STRAX: It was an unprovoked and violent attack, but that's no excuse.

VASTRA: We're all restored. That's all that matters now.

DOCTOR: We are not all restored.

RIVER: You can't go in there. It's your own time stream, for God's sake.

DOCTOR: I have to get her back.

RIVER: Of course, but not like this.

JENNY: But how?

VASTRA: Is she still alive? It killed Doctor Simeon.

DOCTOR: Clara's got one advantage over the Great Intelligence.

VASTRA: Which is?

DOCTOR: Me.

RIVER: Doctor, please listen to me. At least hear me.

DOCTOR: Now, if I don't come back, and I might not

RIVER: Doctor!

DOCTOR: Go to the Tardis. The fast return protocols should be on. She'll take you home, then shut herself down.

RIVER: There has to be another way. Use the Tardis, use something. Save her, yes, but for God's sake be sensible.

(River's image goes to hit the Doctor, and he catches her arm in his hand.)

RIVER: How are you even doing that? I'm not really here.

DOCTOR: You are always here to me. And I always listen, and I can always see you.

RIVER: Then why didn't you speak to me?

DOCTOR: Because I thought it would hurt too much.

RIVER: I believe I could have coped.

DOCTOR: No, I thought it would hurt me. And I was right.

(The Doctor kisses River.)

DOCTOR: Since nobody else in this room can see you, God knows how that looked. There is a time to live and a time to sleep. You are an echo, River. Like Clara. Like all of us, in the end. My fault, I know, but you should've faded by now.

RIVER: It's hard to leave when you haven't said goodbye.

DOCTOR: Then tell me, because I don't know. How do I say it?

RIVER: There's only one way I'd accept. If you ever loved me, say it like you're going to come back.

DOCTOR: Well, then. See you around, Professor River Song.

RIVER: Till the next time, Doctor.

DOCTOR: Don't wait up.

RIVER: Oh, there's one more thing.

DOCTOR: Isn't there always?

RIVER: I was mentally linked with Clara. If she's really dead, then how can I still be here?

DOCTOR: Okay, how?

RIVER: Spoilers. Goodbye, sweetie.

(Melody Pond, daughter of the Tardis, vanishes. The Doctor steps into his own time stream. Whiteout.)

[technically-human]

Bisexual crisis Crystal edition

[muchymozzarella]

Listening to the podcast with Tumblr's CEO about how Tumblr is running on debt because he believes it's worth keeping up because of how unique and good it is as a blogging platform and honestly it warms the heart

And how Tumblr may have been purchased for 3 million but at one point cost 60 million a year to run and they decided it was worth slowly fixing and honestly it warms the heart

And thinking about how Musk bought Twitter for way above its valuation when in fact he was also getting all of its debts and liabilities since Twitter was, like Tumblr, also running on debt, so he actually owes way more than 44 billion dollars and that's why he's no longer the richest man on earth and that's why he's floundering and losing his mind, and honestly it warms the heart

And about how Tumblr are happily poaching talent from Twitter and investors are looking at Tumblr as a worthwhile investment and the debt is going down in part because of Twitter's fuckup and honestly it warms the heart

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon's bestselling "bitter lemon" energy drink was bottled delivery driver piss

Today (Oct 20), I'm in Charleston, WV at Charleston's Taylor Books from 12h-14h.

For a brief time this year, the bestselling "bitter lemon drink" on Amazon was "Release Energy," which consisted of the harvested urine of Amazon delivery drivers, rebottled for sale by Catfish UK prankster Oobah Butler in a stunt for a new Channel 4 doc, "The Great Amazon Heist":

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-great-amazon-heist

Collecting driver piss is surprisingly easy. Amazon, you see, puts its drivers on a quota that makes it impossible for them to drive safely, park conscientiously, or, indeed, fulfill their basic human biological needs. Amazon has long waged war on its employees' kidneys, marking down warehouse workers for "time off task" when they visit the toilets.

As tales of drivers pissing – and shitting! – in their vans multiplied, Amazon took decisive action. The company enacted a strict zero tolerance policy for drivers returning to the depot with bottles of piss in their vans.

That's where Butler comes in: the roads leading to Amazon delivery depots are lined with bottles of piss thrown out of delivery vans by drivers who don't want to lose their jobs, which made harvesting the raw material for "Release Energy" a straightforward matter.

Butler was worried that he wouldn't be able to list his product on Amazon because he didn't have the requisite "food and drinks licensing" certificates, so he listed his drink in Amazon's refillable pump dispenser category. But Amazon's systems detected the mismatch and automatically shifted the product into the drinks section.

Butler enlisted some confederates to place orders for his drink, and it quickly rocketed to the top of Amazon's listings for the category, which led to Amazon's recommendation engine pushing the item on people who weren't in on the gag. When these orders came in, Butler pulled the plug, but not before an Amazon rep telephoned him to pitch him turning packaging, shipping and fulfillment over to Amazon:

https://www.wired.com/story/amazon-let-its-drivers-urine-be-sold-as-an-energy-drink/

The Release Energy prank was just one stunt Butler pulled for his doc; he also went undercover at an Amazon warehouse, during a period when Amazon hired an extra 1,000 workers for its warehouses in Coventry, UK, in a successful bid to dilute pro-union sentiment in his workforce in advance of a key union vote:

https://jacobin.com/2023/10/the-great-amazon-heist-oobah-butler-review

Butler's stint as an Amazon warehouse worker only lasted a couple of days, ending when Amazon recognized him and fired him.

The contrast between Amazon's ability to detect an undercover reporter and its inability to spot bottles of piss being marketed as bitter lemon energy drink says it all, really. Corporations like Amazon hire vast armies of "threat intelligence" creeps who LARP at being CIA superspies, subjecting employees and activists to intense and often illegal surveillance.

But while Amazon's defensive might is laser-focused on the threat of labor organizers and documentarians, the company can't figure out that one of its bestselling products is bottles of its tormented drivers' own urine.

In the USA, the FTC is suing Amazon for its monopolistic tactics, arguing that the company has found ways to raise prices and reduce quality by trapping manufacturers and sellers with its logistics operation, taking $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar they earn and forcing them to raise prices at all retailers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The Release Energy stunt shows where Amazon's priorities are. Not only did Release Energy get listed on Amazon without any quality checks, the company actually nudged it into a category where it was more likely to be consumed by a person. The only notice the company took of Release Energy was in its logistics and manufacturing department – the part of the business that extracts the monopoly rents at issue in the FTC case – which tracked Butler down in order to sell him these services.

The drivers whose piss Butler collected don't work directly for Amazon, they work for a Delivery Service Partner. These DSPs are victims of a pyramid scheme that Amazon set up. DSP operators lease vans and pay to have them skinned in Amazon livery and studded with Amazon sensors. They take out long-term leases on depots, and hire drivers who dress in Amazon uniforms. Their drivers are minutely monitored by Amazon, down to the movements of their eyeballs.

But none of this is "Amazon" – it's all run by an "entrepreneur," whom Amazon can cut loose without notice, leaving them with unfairly terminated employees, outstanding workers' comp claims, a fleet of Amazon-skinned vehicles and unbreakable facilities leases:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/17/revenge-of-the-chickenized-reverse-centaurs/

Speaking to Wired, Amazon denied that it forces its drivers to piss in bottles, but Butler clearly catches a DSP dispatcher telling drivers "If you pee in a bottle and leave it [in the vehicle], you will get a point for that" – that is, the part you get punished for isn't the peeing, it's the leaving.

Amazon's defense against the FTC is that it spares no effort to keep its marketplace safe. As Amazon spokesperson James Drummond says, they use "industry-leading tools to prevent genuinely unsafe products being listed." But the only industry-leading tools in evidence are tools to bust unions and screw suppliers.

In her landmark Yale Law Review paper, "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," FTC Chair Lina Khan makes a brilliant argument that Amazon's alleged benefits to "consumers" are temporary at best, illusory at worst:

https://www.yalelawjournal.org/note/amazons-antitrust-paradox

In Butler's documentary, Khan's hypothesis is thoroughly validated: here's a company extracting hundreds of billions from merchants who raise prices to compensate, and those monopoly rents are "invested" in union-busting and countermeasures against investigative journalists, while the tools to keep you from accidentally getting a bottle of piss in the mail are laughably primitive.

Truly, Amazon is the apex predator of the platform era:

https://pluralistic.net/ApexPredator

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/20/release-energy/#the-bitterest-lemon

My next novel is The Lost Cause, a hopeful novel of the climate emergency. Amazon won't sell the audiobook, so I made my own and I'm pre-selling it on Kickstarter!

[charcoaldustonmyfingers]

Splinter mutation speculation! This one is actually pretty old, I drew it before I did all that research on turtles :)

Fun facts about rats: When they are happy, they do a thing called bruxing and boggling, wherein they will grind their teeth together sometimes to the point where the muscles of their jaw make their eyes wiggle in their sockets. They also don’t have paw pads the way dogs or cats do, but instead have little bumps of thicker skin. Look up happy pet rats, they’re absolutely adorable!

These are mostly just my head canons for Splinter as an old jokester with a messed up past trying to do better for the future. We don’t actually see much of him in the show despite dialogue refrencing his daily lessons and his great ‘embarrassing dad’ comedy, so I wanted to speculate of how he might be when the cameras not rolling, per se. It’s tough being the single father of four teenagers without the help of a community, but the brothers are pretty well adjusted (relatively speaking) and are loving towards each other and open to others.

In terms of his anatomy though, while rats may look chubby, it’s in part because of their curved spine and rodent posture. They can get pretty slim when they stretch out. It may be because of these changes to his skeleton that Splinter seemingly shank so much from his human form, while still having the strength to beat people up despite his age. He also made a vow to stop fighting in the Battle Nexus leading to his eventual mutation, which he does break when his kids are on the line, but could be a reason as to why he avoided many of their squabbles in the show? Who knows!

There’s a lot to work with from little characterizations, and it’s fun to see all the different interpretations of his character!

[General][Raph][Donnie][Leo][Mikey]

[dangans-ur-ronpas]

obsessed with this 4koma. what do you mean that's your first friend. i mean im guess im not surprised but are you serious

[aloneinthedark-eagle]

Pain Changes People. If You Don't Want To Change A Person, Don't Hurt Him...🎶🎵🎶🌺🤗😊

[doctorwhogirlie]

Classic Who Creature Tournament:

Click here for tournament table!

[fairyroses]

Tulips look great. Yeah, you cleaned us out. Mom said if you want some more you’d have to call Holland.

— SMALLVILLE, “Shimmer” (1.10)

[kittyoverlord]

"We're just playing with the space!"

[serpentface]

The closest living relative to elowey, most commonly called variants on 'wildmen' and 'dogmen' (the Nekh term is 'hutsmet', a play on 'wildmen' more literally meaning 'woodsmen'). This is a dominant female in estrus, marked with a dense mane, large cuspids, and red anogenital swelling. Males are slightly larger, but sleeker in build and lacking manes.

They are quite different from proto-elowey, being stockier, wholly quadrupedal and near exclusively terrestrial (only incidentally climbing trees), and having a more carnivorous diet. They are opportunistic omnivores, mostly eating plant matter, small animals, and scavenged carcasses, but occasionally tackling large prey through cooperative hunting. They are also less intensely territorial than proto-elowey (who were heavily reliant on fruiting trees and would establish firm territorial boundaries to monopolize access), and the edges of territories will often overlap with minimal conflict outside of times of starvation.

Like proto-elowey (and most lemuroids) hutsmet exhibit a female dominated social structure. Groups of (mostly related) females form the core territorial unit, with a dominant matriarch directing most activities. Unlike elowey, the dominant female does not monopolize breeding, and all adult females in a band reproduce and cooperatively rear young. Females mostly stay in the home range of their birth and maintain territorial boundaries, while males disperse and form all-male bands that travel between multiple territories for breeding and feeding.

It is rare for modern hutsmet populations to coexist with elowey, as they are often in competition for resources. Hutsmet are also occasionally known to eat elowey children, and even mob and kill adults, and as such are often hunted to local extinction when their presence is known. Few elowey cultures have positive outlooks on these animals, with their uncanny resemblance and 'cannibalistic' qualities often seen as uniquely unsettling. They are often antagonistic figures in mythology and folklore, imagined as a sort of hostile fae-folk that lure travellers off trails with vocal mimicry and kidnap young elowey men for reproductive purposes.

They also share native ranges with some human and qilik peoples, who don't experience the same psychological disturbance but still tend towards having hostile relations- hutsmet will opportunistically prey on adult qilik, and antagonize humans primarily by taking livestock and destroying crops.

[mndvx]

DOCTOR WHO – The Name Of The Doctor (S07E13) directed by Saul Metzstein | written by Steven Moffat ››› Neve McIntosh as Madame Vastra ››› Richard E. Grant as Yog-Sothoth / The Great Intelligence