#great intelligence

[pluralzalpha]

Doctor Who - revamped villains part one

[blackbonnet-ruined-my-life]

Me realising that The Great Intelligence now canonically took the form of a doctor incarnation from an unknown point in his timeline

[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.)

[o-the-mts]

Doctor Who Television Review: The Web of Fear

Title:  The Web of Fear Story Number: 41 Season:  5 Screenwriter:  Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln Director:  Douglas Camfield Thoughts: The Web of Fear is a story that’s difficult to unstick from what followed it.  This is after all the first appearance of Nicholas Courtney as Colonel Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart.  At this point in Doctor Who, a story set roughly in the present day in Earth…

[technically-human]

Bisexual crisis Crystal edition

[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]

[aloneinthedark-eagle]

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

[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)

[hey-heigo]

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

[erinwantstowrite]

Peter introducing batfamily to avengers: this my (bio) dad with his ginger partner and this is his huge dysfunctional family

Peter introducing the Avengers: this my (foster) dad with his ginger partner and this is his huge dysfunctional family

maybe the real reason dick and tony hate each other is that they're so similar

[backpackingspace]

Odysseus: demanding Athena take off whatever enchantment she put on him the second the situation ends.

Odysseus: who constantly reminds Athena that he has great plans to grow old and die with his wife so don't even think about getting any ideas.

Odysseus: side eye diomedes who has started fucking glowing he has so many enchantments on him: bro you should talk to Athena about getting those removed. You're going to end up immortal or some shit

Diomedes: who has been a solider since he was 5 who has intersting thoughts about his own personhood who has a much more traditional relationship with Athena and would rather literally stab his own eye out with a rusted sword than speak out of turn: I don't know what you're talking about

[dani-the-human]

We're rambling again since I'm too busy to read my damn book but am still trying hard to avoid doing my work:

Cale is what every kid that looked at their abusers and said "I never want to be like you"'s dream for how they'll turn out as adults.

He justifies all his actions under the guise of "logic" and "being selfish" but for all his internal monologs, he is everything little Kim Roksoo needed as a child. Cale spoils the kids and gives them an allowance, he makes sure they can protect themselves but also know that they can run away, he gives these kids and the people around him a home and security. And this is all because he didn't have that as a child.

You wanna know why thinking about this man makes me sick? It's because he is what I hoped I would, and hope I have, become as a person despite the behavior I saw as a child.

It's so SO fucking easy to mimic bad behavior, especially when it's done by a guardian who's supposed to protect you and takes so much awareness to look at that and say "I won't become like you" because you never want someone to feel the way you have.

The fact that this man had practically no positive adult role models as a child (I may be remembering wrong since it's been a while since I read the sloth and indignity tests, but no one really got close to him because of the curse so even if there were good people around him, all of them left. All he was probably left with was neutral people who didn't really care about him besides out of obligation.) yet STILL HASNT TURNED BITTER honestly just shows how good of a person Cale is.

He still CARES. He cares so much about his team, not letting another death happen again under his watch and not letting grief consume him because he has a job to do. He cares so much about the people around him, HE GOT SO ANGRY WHEN RON GOT BACK AND HIS ARM WAS CUT OFF AND HE WAS POISONED- He literally doesn't have to do anything, but he does, just because he knows what it feels like to not be cared for. AND THEN THE KIDS!!! He spoils them so much, makes sure they eat and always holds them even when they get heavy in his twig arms (and he always mentions how chubby Raon is, I cant-) AND THE GEORGE OF DEATH AAAAAA-

He takes every shitty thing that has ever been done to him, and instead of letting it build into something bitter and angry, he's flipped it on its head by becoming it's antithesis.

[urban-witch101]

Love how Isabeau and Siffrin are just another version of two very smart people walking into the same room and leaving their brain cells at the door to just enjoy each other's company.