#humans really said 'we are going to invent small fake people to keep us company' and then we did that!

[marzipanandminutiae]

dolls are for that moment when you look over at one and their beautiful little face brings you such joy that everything feels alright

[ariadnelives]

Chapter 19 -- The Parting Gifts

[Missed earlier chapters? Go catch up here! Otherwise, welcome back! Oh, and make sure to join our discord server! Chapter can also be found @ ao3”]

“I just don’t really have any use for a bunch of church junk,” Ariadne said, pulling the lumpy duffel bag out of the safe. “It’s not like I believe in this stuff— weird, it’s lighter than I expected— but it feels wrong to sell it on the black market.”

“We could give it to a museum,” Pilar suggested. “It’ll probably do a lot more to reclaim our legend than attacking the cult, I mean, think of how it looks, the cult stole all those priceless artifacts and hoarded them in a basement for decades until real Ariadne’s Angels liberated them and gave them back to the people?”

“Legally speaking, it’s probably for the best that the museum not be linked to a known criminal syndicate,” Ariadne replied, “but you know how rumors are, I’m sure people will talk.”

“Now,” Pilar said, “let’s look inside and see what we’ve won.” She carefully zipped it open and peered inside, then immediately snapped it closed again.

“What is it?” Ariadne asked, “something good?”

“Nope,” Pilar said, “we are definitely not donating this to a museum.”

“What is— let me see,” Ariadne said, snatching the bag away from her, “oh my god?!”

“What do we do with this?!” Pilar tried to maintain some semblance of calm. She was no stranger to fear, of course, the life of a pirate usually gives one a certain tolerance for danger. Surprise, on the other hand, is something that can’t really be trained away. If you have some reason to expect a surprise, the ensuing response can be avoided, but as Pilar had never quite found herself in this situation, she had no reason to expect the contents of the bag and, reasonably, found herself beginning to panic.

“Go… Go get your sister… Sweettalk too… And a bucket.” Ariadne dry-heaved. “Bucket first, time is a factor on the bucket.”

“Was it scary?” ViLaz asked Deathsbane and Sweettalk, who’d come to visit her with a large tub of graham crackers and cannoli cream.

“Was whuh scary?” Sasha asked, her mouth full of cannoli cream.

“The larceny,” ViLaz replied.

“Well, that’s the fanciest word I’ve ever heard for a Stealy Burgle,” Sweettalk said, but ViLaz didn’t seem to register the joke.

“It was scary seeing Sweettalk get shot,” Sasha admitted.

“You got shot?!” ViLaz asked with a mix of genuine concern and somewhat macabre fascination.

“That was my role in the robbery,” Sweettalk explained. “We didn’t want to hurt anyone for real, but we needed the security team to think we were a real threat, so Sasha here gave me a few doses of her healing serum and we let Spacebreather shoot me.”

Sasha hesitated. “I knew she’d be okay, but it was still scary to see my girlfriend shot, you know?”

ViLaz scooped too much cannoli cream onto a single graham cracker. “It wasn’t scary getting shot?”

“I’d trust Spacebreather with my life, even though she hates me,” Sweettalk explained, and created a small sandwich out of the crackers and cream.

Sasha moved to reassure Sweettalk, “She doesn’t hate you, she—”

“Babe, she despises me.”

“I thought she was unaware of your relationship?” ViLaz asked.

Sweettalk laughed. “Yeah, that’s why she didn’t shoot me for real.”

ViLaz looked somewhat disheartened. “Does she have a problem with your… lifestyle?”

“I mean...” Sweettalk seemed confused by this, “we work for her, so I’m pretty sure she knows we’re criminals.”

“Hey, speaking of,” Sasha asked, “you seem pretty chill with us being criminals.”

“Well, casinos are dens of sin, right?” ViLaz said, “so, it isn’t really bad if you steal from them.”

Sweettalk and Sasha exchanged a glance.

“I have problems with… like maybe half of that,” Sasha said.

“I was sorry to hear about Prescott, though,” ViLaz said, twiddling a graham cracker between her fingers.

Sweettalk chuckled. “Why?”

“I assume his death brings you sadness,” ViLaz explained, “you’ve known him for a long time.”

“I don’t even fully believe he’s dead,” Sasha replied casually, “I mean, we just saw how easy it is to fake a fatal shooting, and Prescott’s nothing if he’s not a slippery bastard.”

“He made my life hell, I’m glad he’s gone,” Sweettalk would have elaborated more on this, but she didn’t get the chance, since at this moment Spacebreather came barrelling into the mess hall.

“Sasha, Sweettalk, you’ve g—” she gagged, collected herself, and continued, “—you’ve gotta come to the mess hall right away.”

“Everything okay?” Sasha asked.

“Oh, no, you’ve eaten. Grab a few buckets. ViLaz, you come too, we’re gonna need your input when we pick apart Prescott’s dossier on the Zealot.”

The girls rushed up the stairs to find Ariadne holding the Jumper in her hand and heaving over a bucket, with an open safe on the table and Prescott’s duffel bag laying open in front of it.

None of them blinked for a moment.

“Well, I guess I was wrong,” Sasha said, “Prescott is definitely dead for real.”

Sasha was right, as they could all see, as they looked into Prescott’s lifeless, glazed-over eyes staring back at them sideways from the inside of the bag. His head had been cleanly severed, but there was still a fair amount of blood coming from the area where a screwdriver had been driven through the side of his skull, firmly pinning a blood-stained note to his remains.

The note read, “YOUR MOVE. XOXOXO NICKS”

The head was quickly moved to the infirmary and placed in a stasis jar, with a cloth over it so nobody had to look at it. Sasha, fearing that someone would be curious and peek under the cloth with no way of guessing what was underneath, decided to stick a note to the cloth reading “SEVERED HEAD - DO NOT TOSS.”

Shockingly, the crew had very little experience dealing with human remains. For the most part, Deathsbane was very good at keeping them all alive and, for the most part, functioning. Most of the actual corpses that had seen the inside of the station were medical cadavers that Sasha had gently scammed into her possession for academic purposes. There was at least one instance where Spacebreather had killed an assailant in the station, but in that instance the body didn’t stay onboard for very long.

However, for the most part, the human remains Sasha had to deal with were mostly things like amputated limbs or fingers that had been lost in tragic but absolutely unavoidable fireworks accidents. It rarely fazed her, since she was skilled enough to regrow most lost limbs and damaged organs. The regenerative serum she invented helped, but there were injuries where they would need assistance from lab-grown transplants or, in very extreme cases like ViLaz, she would enlist Ariadne’s help in crafting cybernetic replacements.

This shook her a little more than any of that, though. She briefly wondered if she’d be able to build a life support system that could sustain Prescott if she could heal his injuries, but she knew the deep wound to his brain would prove too much for her to repair to working condition. The serum would be able to repair the physical damage, with a helping hand from Sasha’s own equipment, but the brain was a unique organ.

Most human tissues and organs, even bones, can heal back the way they were before if they’re configured properly, given enough time. Set a broken bone or stitch up a laceration and leave it for long enough, it will eventually heal. Treat it properly and there won’t even be a noticeable scar. Sasha’s serum just changed that process from a matter of weeks or months to a matter of minutes or even seconds. With a quickly-applied dose of her serum, someone could survive a stab to the heart or exposure to the vacuum of deep space, and walk away feeling nothing more severe than a hangover.

What the serum could not do, however, is restore information lost when extensive damage is done to the human brain. If someone, for instance, sustained damage to the part of their brain that allowed them to create and store memories, if applied carefully, the serum could theoretically repair that damage and allow them to create new memories. It could not, however, restore the memories destroyed when their spouse’s lover leapt at them from behind with an icepick.

If Sasha were to build a life support system, she could potentially use the serum to heal the bullet wound to the brain and restore the processes of life in the head. However, she dismissed this thought quickly. It would have no memories or consciousness, no cognitive abilities whatsoever, and no potential for quality of life. Reviving it would be a waste of time and resources, and more importantly, it would be completely inhumane. There’s really no point, Sasha figured, in cheating death at the expense of life.

Once the head was covered, she hurried back to the War Room just in time to hear Ariadne tell her that she and Pilar would be taking ViLaz back to their quarters to discuss Prescott’s dossier on the Zealot, and that they would brief the rest of the crew after dinner that night.

“Oh,” Ariadne added in a hurry. “You might wanna go keep Sweettalk company, Prescott left another document on the drive and addressed it to her. I don’t know what it says, but I doubt it’s something she’ll want to be alone after reading.”

“Roger,” Sasha said, and filed into the War Room to join Sweettalk.

[jcounts83-blog-blog-blog]

Passport to the Brave New World: the Vaccine

I have already written about the currency reset and other features of a technocratic future waiting in the wings. —New levels of visible surveillance, social credit scores, universal guaranteed income, Internet of Things, energy-use quotas, smart cities.

—Events can move in several directions, going forward. In this article, I explore one of those directions.

The occasion is this fake pandemic; the big hammer is the vaccine against the phony COVID.

As Fauci mentioned a couple of months ago, it could be a DNA vaccine—new technology—which means it is really gene therapy. Synthesized genes are injected into the body. They purportedly set up immunity. Actually, they PERMANENTLY alter the genetic makeup of the recipient. Jabbed: How the Vaccin... Wilcox, Brett Best Price: $13.02 Buy New $13.05 (as of 03:50 EST - Details) 

As you can imagine, this creates the opportunity to put many different genes into humans. To try to invent “new humans.”

The so-called immunity certificates Fauci is now talking about? They would be issued to people who test positive on the new antibody tests for COVID-19—which is an interesting turnaround, because, since 1984, positive tests results have generally been taken to mean “infected.” Why the shift?

Because there is a need for these immunity certificates—as an INTRO to condition the population to an IDEA.

If and when the COVID vaccine arrives, the certificates would be used to signify immunity for all those who take the shot.

It would function as a license. Your passport into the Brave New World. You’re “immune,” so you’re allowed to move out of fear mode. And circulate and travel and enter schools…

For DNA vaccines, the reference is the New York Times, 3/15/15, “Protection Without a Vaccine.” It describes the frontier of research. Here are key quotes that illustrate the use of synthetic genes to “protect against disease,” while changing the genetic makeup of humans. This is not science fiction:

“By delivering synthetic genes into the muscles of the [experimental] monkeys, the scientists are essentially re-engineering the animals to resist disease.”

“’The sky’s the limit,’ said Michael Farzan, an immunologist at Scripps and lead author of the new study.”

“The first human trial based on this strategy — called immunoprophylaxis by gene transfer, or I.G.T. — is underway, and several new ones are planned.” [That was five years ago.]

“I.G.T. is altogether different from traditional vaccination. It is instead a form of gene therapy. Scientists isolate the genes that produce powerful antibodies against certain diseases and then synthesize artificial versions. The genes are placed into viruses and injected into human tissue, usually muscle.”

Here is the punchline: “The viruses invade human cells with their DNA payloads, and the synthetic gene is incorporated into the recipient’s own DNA. If all goes well, the new genes instruct the cells to begin manufacturing powerful antibodies.”

Read that again: “the synthetic gene is incorporated into the recipient’s own DNA.”

Alteration of the human genetic makeup.

Not just a “visit.” Permanent residence.

The Times article taps Dr. David Baltimore for an opinion:

“Still, Dr. Baltimore says that he envisions that some people might be leery of a vaccination strategy that means altering their own DNA, even if it prevents a potentially fatal disease.”

Yes, some people might be leery. If they have two or three working brain cells.

This is genetic roulette with a loaded gun.

And the further implications are clear. Vaccines can be used as a cover for the injections of any and all genes, whose actual purpose is unannounced.

The vaccine masters have a problem. They know their genetic technology is far from perfect. Plans to re-engineer the human race are not a simple one two three.

For example, consider the latest and greatest genetic tool, called CRISPR.

Here is a backgrounder I wrote a year ago.

New CRISPR gene-editing: the extreme dangers

Technologynetworks.com (6/26/17): “CRISPR gene editing is taking biomedical research by storm. Providing the ultimate toolbox for genetic manipulation, many new applications for this technology are now being investigated and established. CRISPR systems are already delivering superior genetic models for fundamental disease research, drug screening and therapy development, rapid diagnostics, in vivo editing and correction of heritable conditions and now the first human CRISPR clinical trials.”

All hail. 

It’s called CRISPR, a much faster, more precise, and cheaper technique for editing genes. Researchers are in love with it. You can find hundreds of articles and studies fawning over the innovation.

At phys.org, however, we have this, ahem, warning note (5/29/17): “…a new study published in Nature Methods has found that the gene-editing technology can introduce hundreds of unintended mutations into the genome.”

Oops.

“In the new study, the researchers sequenced the entire genome of mice that had undergone CRISPR gene editing in the team’s previous study and looked for all mutations, including those that only altered a single nucleotide.”

“The researchers determined that CRISPR had successfully corrected a gene that causes blindness, but Kellie Schaefer, a PhD student in the lab of Vinit Mahajan, MD, PhD, associate professor of ophthalmology at Stanford University, and co-author of the study, found that the genomes of two independent gene therapy recipients [mice] HAD SUSTAINED MORE THAN 1500 SINGLE-NUCLEOTIDE MUTATIONS AND MORE THAN 100 LARGER [GENE] DELETIONS AND INSERTIONS. None of these DNA mutations were predicted by computer algorithms that are widely used by researchers to look for off-target effects.” (Emphasis is mine.)

“’Researchers who aren’t using whole genome sequencing to find off-target effects may be missing potentially important mutations,’ Dr. Tsang says. ‘Even a single nucleotide change can have a huge impact’.”

Genetic roulette is alive and well.

Spin the wheel, see what numbers come up. Good effects, bad effects, who knows? Step right up and take your chances.

Of course, researchers who admit these tremendous problems remain optimistic. They look forward to “refining the method.” That’s a cover for: “we really don’t know what we’re doing right now.”

Unfortunately, much science operates in this fashion. Launch a new technology, and turn a blind eye to the consequences. For example, place mercury, a devastating neurotoxin, in vaccines. What harm could result—aside from the destruction of children’s brains.

Here is more gushing PR, otherwise known as throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks: “There are weekly press releases and updates on new advances [in CRISPR] and discoveries made possible with this technology; the first evidence is now emerging that CRISPR-Cas9 could provide cures for major diseases including cancers and devastating human viruses such as HIV-1.” (technologynetworks.com)

The train has left the station. Deadly Medicines and O... Peter Gotzsche Best Price: $38.43 Buy New $33.29 (as of 07:20 EST - Details)

And just in case you think only the most careful and competent leading lights of the genetic research community would be permitted to get within a mile of CRISPR, here is more from technologynetworks.com:

“CRISPR-Cas9 systems, tools and basic methodology are very accessible as ready to go toolkits that anyone with lab space and an idea can pick up and start working with…In response to a growing need, companies such as Desktop Genetics have developed open access software to accelerate CRISPR experimentation and analysis.”

That’s good to know. “Anyone with lab space and an idea” can jump on board and have at it.

Do your own cross breeding of the pregnant phrases, “What could possibly go wrong,” and “Nothing to see here, move along,” and you’ve summarized the situation.

“They say they cured my anemia, but now I turn green and purple and I keep falling down.”

If all this isn’t enough to make you see the dangers of CRISPR, consider this statement about engineering human immune cells (T-cells) in a “safer” way. From statnews.com (June 23, 2013):

“The experiment would alter the immune system’s T cells only after they’re removed from a patient. That gives scientists the chance to screen the CRISPR’d cells to make sure only the three intended genes, all involved in making T cells find and destroy tumor cells, are altered. But after those T cells are infused back into a patient to fight melanoma, sarcoma, or myeloma, the CRISPR system can keep editing DNA, and tracking such edits becomes like following a polar bear in a snowstorm.”

Not very comforting. Once set in motion, even under the most protected and limited conditions, CRISPR can keep on working, scrambling genes in unknown ways.

So…when it comes to DNA vaccines, aka gene therapy, a plan to precisely re-engineer humans could quite easily descend into uncontrolled chaos.

And the controllers and elite funders of the vaccine know that.

What to do?

With the global population as their guinea pigs, perhaps they would start small. Introduce the slightest possible gene-alteration, stand back and see what happens. Try out a gene that would ordinarily—hopefully—achieve next to nothing. Try to measure the results.

Viewed from one angle, the whole fake epidemic is a set-up for the vaccine, and for mandatory vaccines.

I have written about the special exemption from liability recently issued by the US Dept. of Health and Human Services. Basically, anyone associated with pharmaceutical strategies undertaken “against the coronavirus” cannot be sued, regardless of “adverse effects” of medicines or vaccines.

Taking a stand against mandatory vaccines—any and all vaccines—is more important than ever.

-Jon Rappaport

[tokupedia]

Kamen Rider 45th Anniversary File:Drive

2014-2015:

Godzilla returns for his 60th birthday to theaters in an American film adaptation reboot simply titled Godzilla. Unlike last time America did this stunt, the film was well done and was a success.

Fans celebrate and sing with Moon Pride with Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Crystal, a modern reboot that fully adapts the original manga for the franchise’s 20th anniversary.

Ultraman Ginga got a sequel season on TV, Ultraman Ginga S. Ultraman X would come the following year and Tsuburaya would sign an exclusive streaming and simulcast deal with the California-based internet streaming company Crunchyroll to broadcast entries of the Ultra Series legally on the web. (despite Chaiyo being jerks and trying to stop the deal with the fake “We own Ultraman��� thing again)

Zing Zing, AMAZING! As long as there is love in the world, Cure Lovely is invincible! Pretty Cure celebrates its 10th Anniversary with HappinessCharge Precure, which introduces the concept of non-super mode form changing to the shoujo series thanks to Kamen Rider writers on the staff.

The Super Sentai Series hits a rough patch with ratings and toy sales as ToQger and Ninninger come and go. Super Sentai celebrates its 40th year of existence on April 5, 2015 and for the first time ever, a Power Rangers actor cameos in a Sentai!

Japan finishes switching to full digital HD TV broadcasting. Now we can see all the pretty lasers, sparks and explosions in glorious high definition!

Shout! Factory shocked Ranger Nation with a bombshell, Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger was coming to DVD in the United States! Due to positive reception by fans and sales, the company would become the official distributor of Super Sentai DVDs in America!

Power Rangers celebrated 20 years of the franchise. The Mighty Morphin’ Red Ranger gets a spot in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade as a balloon!

Power Rangers Super Megaforce frustrates longtime fans of the series, with reviews ranging from “meh, it’s okay” to fan rage of the highest caliber for the mishandling of such a special occasion as the 20th anniversary. It really is a divisive season.

Kikaider Reboot attempts to relaunch Kikaider for its 40th anniversary, but later Shotaro’s son and president of Ishimori Pro Akira Onodera would put the Kikiader’s licensing to Japanese filmmakers under indefinite lockdown as he was unhappy with the direction the film took.

Cyborg 009 comes to America again with a graphic novel adaptation in 2013, intended to be the first of a series of graphic novels featuring Shotaro Ishinomori’s super heroes (”The Ishinomori Universe Books” as they were to be called). After a year of waiting for the next one, fans are disappointed to hear from F.J. DeSanto that the next set of books were put on hold and then cancelled indefinitely due to Ishimori Pro’s “cultural issues” with the project. Thus, the planned Skull Man and Kikaider novels are cancelled during their early draft phase. 

The Garo Series turns 10 years old and a vast array of projects are announced and debut on TV, video and in theaters, increasing the franchise’s media output to levels never seen before.

The Patlabor franchise gets a series of live action films with Erina Mano (Kamen Rider Nadeshiko) as one of its stars.

When Drive was being planned; the producers had an idea of utilizing aspects of another cult favorite “Rider” show: Glen A. Larson’s cult 1980s TV show Knight Rider. In an interview, producer Takahito Omori even outright stated that Drive would be “Kamen Rider meets Knight Rider”.

Now imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but you need to be subdued to avoid lawsuits when you are dealing with TV. (Especially with tyrannical copyright strikedowners and suers like NBC Universal if you are simply doing a tribute). But the overall feeling is there in some regard: Rinna is Bonnie, we have a KARR expy on two accounts and a sentient A.I. in a car that accompanied a law enforcer. But that is where the some of the Knight similarities end as Drive tries to be its own thing, a quirky, sometimes goofy, sometimes serious show with sentient Hot Wheels cars, special tires that give the heroes super powers and a talking belt.

The planning involved Riku Sanjo, who fans remember from the beloved Kamen Rider W. He wanted a police procedural drama integrated into the action. Oddly enough, the original concept was to make the hero a former criminal and then revised into a crook turned cop!  This idea was bounced around before the TV Asahi network executives got into a hissy fit about an anti-hero as a lead and said/demanded that the hero should be “pure”. So they decided to just make the show about cops with the main hero being an officer of the leu. (as Peter Sellers used to say).

A second concept idea was the use of games but the staff thought the age demographic they were aiming for was “too young for that”. This will still come... eventually in another Rider show years later.

Another aspect that chose the direction of the show was a more somber one, the choice of a car as the main Rider Machine. Ishinomori famously claimed in an SIC story that “cars didn’t work” for Kamen Rider the last time they tried it. But according to the Asahi Shimbun in 2014, with the dwindling population and low birth rate of Japan, motorcycles are becoming less and less common in number on Japan’s roads. No extra babies being born means less future rebellious youngsters and some of those who have bikes registered are getting older and greyer. 

So the staff chose a car as 1: Cars are steadily beginning to rise in number on Japan’s roads and 2: small car toys like Hot Wheels are and always will be popular with the young male demographic. Plus the staff thought it would be “innovative” as unlike with Black RX, the car would be the main hero’s sole vehicle. Also helping the car motif was Carranger director Ryuta Tasaki being on the show as a consultant and episode director, who wanted to “break a few conceptions about Heisei Kamen Rider”. 

So after the decision, the production crew took a used 1992 Honda NSX, got some custom seating, racing style safety belts and trim from TS Tech, took her to a body shop and went to work. Several months of hard labor and custom parts made in-house and spare/modified parts donated from Honda later.....

We got a souped-up custom super machine! Sure, Tridoron doesn’t have a style that is to everbody’s taste, but in the show it can fly like a certain Delorean, turbo boost, shoot lasers and can go a little over 340MPH and drive itself!

The cars and speed didn’t stop with the main hero, as we got a TRON-lined high tech Mercedes-Benz AMG GT (the first non-Japanese manufactured car in the Kamen Rider series) and a modified Mazda Miata with machine guns as villain cars for the movies. 

Another cool aspect of Drive is the indirect Marvel connection, the main lead actor Ryoma Takeuchi is a fan of Marvel Comics. This shows as his portrayal as Drive is a sometimes Spider-Man-esque snarky superhero. But Ryoma also studied hard to learn English really for one purpose: To meet Stan Lee and tell him how much he loved Marvel. A year after his show ended, he did! 

(Yes, even in other superhero fandoms, Stan ”The Man” Lee will make that cameo! 94 and still awesome and kicking, God bless him!)

Word is Ryoma’s now trying to get into Hollywood to be a Marvel superhero on the American big screen or TV. If that doesn’t prove Ryoma is One of Us, what will?  (Good luck Ryoma! We’ll be cheering for you and we hope your dream comes true!)

Chris Peppler, a Japanese-American radio DJ was chosen to be the other half of Kamen Rider Drive: the KITT-esqe Mr. Belt. Since he was fluent in both Japanese and English, it gave him room to play around as an actor and his performance even spawned a Rider meme or two.

But now, let’s START OUR ENGINES! Cuz’ ALL WE NEED IS DRIVE!

DRIVE! TYPE: 45 File! 

The First Kamen Rider (Proto) Drive

Real Name: Roidmude Proto-Zero

“Those who are about to die do not need to know my name”

A scientist named Dr. Krim Steinbelt was working on a device called Core Driviars which he hoped could be used to benefit mankind.

His colleague Dr. Banno had borrowed his invention when his own research on advanced A.I. androids called Roidmudes hit a dead end. Krim wanted to help his friend and aided in the development of Banno’s research. But then Banno had other ideas and used the androids human mimicry ability to enact his revenge fantasies of destroying those who mocked or didn’t support his research without Krim’s knowledge. But Krim found out about Banno’s petty and sadistic behavior and ended their partnership.

Banno then intended to implant the negative emotions of humans into his creations so they would understand the concept of hate and violence and be used as his military force to conquer the world. 

However, Banno’s plan seemingly went awry as the 108 Roidmudes he built gained sentience and rebelled against their cruel creator and like so many films and TV about AI, they decide we fleshy meatbags are not worth protecting or keeping around.

However, Krim had a contingency plan if Banno’s evil work bore fruit. After his home was attacked and he was killed by a Roidmude, a protocol was activated to download his consciousness into a belt-like device and he reactivated an early Roidmude that didn’t have Banno’s programming installed into him. The evil Roidmudes initiated a disaster later referred to as the Global Freeze, where a large quarter of the Earth was slowed down by the Heavy Acceleration phenomenon the Drivairs in the Roidmudes created. Many people were hurt or died and thousands of buildings were destroyed, but then a savior came in the form of a black Kamen Rider. The Rider drove away the evil forces but could not destroy the Cores that keep them alive. The Rider eventually fell in battle when one of the stronger Roidmudes defeated him and discarded a helpless Krim aside. Some say he is dead....but is he really?

The second and current Kamen Rider Drive (Officer Tomari circa 2015)

Real Name: Shinnosuke Tomari

When all the Global Freeze ruckus was about to go on, two police officers were in pursuit of a suspect of the terrorist cell Neo-Shade. When one of the suspects tried to ambush Officer Tomari’s partner Hayase by cornering him, Tomari panicked and pulled out his gun intending to disable the crook. But then the Global Freeze wave hit and slowed Officer Tomari down, causing his bullet to miss and hit a flammable generator near Hayase. The generator exploded and Hayase fell with steel pipes threatening to crush him after he fell. Tomari tried to save his partner but was slowed down again unable to reach him. Thankfully, due to the slowdown, Hayase was still alive after the pipes fell but was badly hurt. But being the cause of his best friend’s injuries haunted Officer Tomari and he became a broken man, unable to focus on work and losing all motivation. 

He was transferred to a special investigations unit as Krim had a friend in the Police force who could pull the strings to find a candidate worthy of being the next Kamen Rider and formed the unit. Half a year later, Shinnosuke is still in that department but has a lax motivation to do anything at first, constantly being scolded for his slacking by his co-worker Kiriko. Upon hearing there may be a Heavy Acceleration case, he gets interested at first but is easily discouraged by his low self esteem. He keeps hearing a voice coming for the red car he drives telling him to not give up and offers him a chance to be a “warrior”. Shinnosuke is a bit weirded out by this but tells the voice he still refuses as he is a has-been. But the voice tells him he knows he has greater potential and then when Shinnouske finds where the voice is coming from, Krim attaches himself to Shinnouske which freaks him out. After investigating another attempted murder with Heavy Acceleration in the area, they find the suspect: Roidmude #029. Unable to save a bystander as even with the Shift Cars help, he cannot do much as he is ambushed by more Roidmudes.

Kiriko tells him he must use Krim and transform and the Shift Cars give him a brace and a red car to go with the belt. He uses it to become Kamen Rider Drive Type Speed.  After a bit of a learning curve, Drive makes quick work of the Roidmudes using his new powers. (though at least one survived the attack via his Core escaping to antagonize the hero next episode)

When the day is saved, Kiriko shows him their base of operations under the Kuruma Driver's License Center: the Drive Pit. She tells Shinnosuke they must keep the base a secret from the Special Investigation Unit and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. So Shinnosuke must investigate the cases of the Roidmudes to stop and eliminate them as the secret Kamen Rider of law enforcement and supported by his allies in the Special Investigations Unit.  Many twists and tuns happen along the way, with new allies, new powers and new dangers and mysteries around every corner!

Gear:

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Core_Driviars

The Drive Driver aka “Mr. Belt” - Krim’s current form and Shinnosuke’s partner. Unlike KITT from Knight Rider whom partially inspired his character, Krim can leave the car and be mobile to help his partner whenever and wherever he is needed and is a vital part of the Drive System’s functions.

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Shift_Brace

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Shift_Cars

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Shift_Car_Holder

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Tridoron Its full “Format Number” is the Tridoron-3000. 

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Tire_Specific_Items

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Handle-Ken

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Door-Ju

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Trailer-Hou

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Ride_Booster_Set - Go karts which combine with the Tridoron to change into hover conversion tech! Best of all, they were a free gift from Rinna, no $39,999.95 worth of body work needed!

Powers: 

Super Speed, enhanced strength and reflexes, weapons proficiency, Immunity to singularity events such as Heavy Acceleration if Shift Cars are on his person or his Core Driviar in his Rider Suit is active. 

The Shift Cars give a wide variety of powers:

Flame Generation and projectiles

Ninja based-powers such as cloning jitsu and throwing shuriken construct projectiles  

Spike projectile shooting

Entrapment of an enemy via a cage.

Twin Shields, Playing card projectiles and smokescreen/Coin projectiles, the coin ones depend on Drive’s luck though.

Teleports a fraction of Drive’s Body to another area or creates portals.

Enhanced power and defense

Gives Drive analytical power, enhanced reflexes and the ability to multitask and detect enemies from behind him. 

Enhanced Super Speed with rocket boosters and more power. Able to resist Super Heavy Acceleration.

Healing Factor, albeit a very painful one.

Self-repair to Drive’s armor

Nitro power boost to enhance speed

Hologram projections

A Drill that can pierce the Roidmudes!

Light projection to blind enemies

Grappling hook!

Spanner fist

chomping claws and elastic “tongue” on the claws.

freezing blast ability

Cement gun

Fire extinguisher and extendable robotic arm

Acme 10 ton weight and gravity distortions

lifting jack

Able to fuse the power of 3 Shift cars into one super ability or all of them. Able to resist all forms of Heavy Acceleration. Energy Shield

Also, like Fourze, Wizard and Deacde, Drive’s powers are compatible with Super Sentai powers as he can use a Ninninger Nin Shuriken to turn Tridoron into a Zord. Though that was just a one-off thing.

Signature Finishers:

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Full_Throttle_(finisher)

Weaknesses:

A big one is Shinnosuke needs Mr. Belt to transform and given that he is an A.I., that means he is vulnerable to hacking or tampering to make the once friendly scientist into a violent killing machine via evil programming and use Drive’s body in Type Tridoron to hurt others. 

The Shift Cars can be captured, immobilized or damaged. In some cases, the villains could even control them and use them against Drive.

Shinnosuke can be killed, even when in Rider form as the battle with Freeze seemingly showed. Meaning a more powerful opponent with devastating firepower can kill Drive if enough effort is put in or he somehow has no access to his defensive abilities. Despite being protected from singularities, he is not entirely immune to distortions in time and can be affected by them. (Though this was a bit inconsistent as he somehow remembered being a hero later when this happened.)

Stronger Heavy Acceleration waves can severely damage Drive or slow him down. But modifications and successions to his base Core Driviar system thanks to Dr. Hendrickson and Rinna in newer forms slowly negates this weakness to the point it is not an issue as he can maintain his movement. 

Enemies:

Roidmudes:

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Category%3ARoidmudes

Androids created by Tenjiro Banno and Krim Steinbelt who possess sapient, advanced level intelligence, human mimicry abilities and a wide variety of powers as well as the ability to generate Heavy Acceleration. 

In a nice nod to the original Kamen Rider, the low level types of Roidmudes are divided into three of the classic Rider mythology monsters: Bat Type, Spider Type and Cobra Type.

Roidmudes are capable of evolving to even stronger forms: Advanced, Giant, and the rare Super Evolved State, which grant Roidmudes new abilities and greater power and stronger Heavy Acceleration effects. Their goal is to create a utopia for their race by attaining The Promised Number of evolution.

Among the Advanced Roidmudes are several generals/leaders:

Heart 

Brain

Medic

Freeze

And their enforcer/reaper: the mysterious Mashin Chaser.

And secretly pulling the strings of these events from the shadows is.....

Tenjuro Banno/Gold Drive:

(The KARR to Krim’s KITT)

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Tenjuro_Banno

Tenjuro Banno was a horrible and insane human being and even worse as an A.I.. An abusive, petty, cold, manipulative, ego-driven, sadistic and narcissistic black soul who believed the world owed him tribute to his “genius”. Seeing those that help him as nothing but pawns, even his own family as his two kids need a therapist after all the stuff he pulled. He is the cause of the first Global Freeze as a “ test experiment” and planned everything, as the rebellion of the Roidmudes was no accident but planned by him. 

Like Krim, he uploaded his consciousness into an A.I. after being killed and slowly let his schemes come to fruition, even faking helping and reforming when reunited with his son and Krim to steal more tech Team Drive used and render it useless against him. He even managed to kill a Kamen Rider fans came to like over the course of the series. (I won’t say who though.)

He truly was a villain fans loved to hate for how dirty he played and demented he was, helped by the fact he was played by voice actor Masakazu Morita whom anime fans know can play crazy in a way that gives you shivers. He also was formidable as an evil Kamen Rider as he could pull off a wide array of powers, including swiping the weapons of the heroes away from them via teleport!

Neo-Shade: 

http://kamenrider.wikia.com/wiki/Neo-Shade

A Terrorist group that Shinnouske was trying to track down before the series, they resurfaced in the final episode and were dissolved as their leader was captured. No seeming relation to the real Shade from Kamen Rider G other than its name.

Remember, the world has a drive that goes faster than ever, but as long as you yourself have a drive in life, you can be in Top Gear and go along for the Ride! 

Shinnosuke Tomari: A Kamen Rider’s flight into a dangerous world ...the world.... of the Drive Rider. *1980s synth music*

[suzanneshannon]

<![CDATA[ Nothing Fails Like Success ]]>

A family buys a house they can’t afford. They can’t make their monthly mortgage payments, so they borrow money from the Mob. Now they’re in debt to the bank and the Mob, live in fear of losing their home, and must do whatever their creditors tell them to do.

Welcome to the internet, 2019.

Buying something you can’t afford, and borrowing from organizations that don’t have your (or your customers’) best interest at heart, is the business plan of most internet startups. It’s why our digital services and social networks in 2019 are a garbage fire of lies, distortions, hate speech, tribalism, privacy violations, snake oil, dangerous idiocy, deflected responsibility, and whole new categories of unpunished ethical breaches and crimes.

From optimistically conceived origins and message statements about making the world a better place, too many websites and startups have become the leading edge of bias and trauma, especially for marginalized and at-risk groups.

Why (almost) everything sucks

Twitter, for instance, needs a lot of views for advertising to pay at the massive scale its investors demand. A lot of views means you can’t be too picky about what people share. If it’s misogynists or racists inspiring others who share their heinous beliefs to bring back the 1930s, hey, it’s measurable. If a powerful elected official’s out-of-control tweeting reduces churn and increases views, not only can you pay your investors, you can even take home a bonus. Maybe it can pay for that next meditation retreat.

You can cloak this basic economic trade-off in fifty layers of bullshit—say you believe in freedom of speech, or that the antidote to bad speech is more speech—but the fact is, hate speech is profitable. It’s killing our society and our planet, but it’s profitable. And the remaining makers of Twitter—the ones whose consciences didn’t send them packing years ago—no longer have a choice. The guy from the Mob is on his way over, and the vig is due.

Not to single out Twitter, but this is clearly the root cause of its seeming indifference to the destruction hate speech is doing to society…and will ultimately do to the platform. (But by then Jack will be able to afford to meditate full-time.)

Other companies do other evil things to pay their vig. When you owe the Mob, you have no choice. Like sell our data. Or lie about medical research.

There are internet companies (like Basecamp, or like Automattic, makers of WordPress.com, where I work) that charge money for their products and services, and use that money to grow their business. I wish more internet companies could follow that model, but it’s hard to retrofit a legitimate business model to a product that started its life as free.

And there are even some high-end news publications, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian, that survive on a combination of advertising and flexible paywalls. But these options are not available to most digital publications and businesses.

Return with me to those Halcyon days…

Websites and internet startups used to be you and your friends making cool stuff for your other friends, and maybe building new friendships and even small communities in the process. (Even in 2019, that’s still how some websites and startups begin—as labors of love, fashioned by idealists in their spare time.)

Because they are labors of love; because we’ve spent 25 years training people to believe that websites, and news, and apps, and services should be free; because, when we begin a project, we can scarcely believe anyone will ever notice or care about it—for these reasons and more, the things we make digitally, especially on the web, are offered free of charge. We labor on, excited by positive feedback, and delighted to discover that, if we keep at it, our little community will grow.

Most such labors of love disappear after a year or two, as the creators drift out of touch with each other, get “real” jobs, fall in love, start families, or simply lose interest due to lack of attention from the public or the frustrations of spending weekends and holidays grinding away at an underappreciated site or app while their non-internet friends spend those same hours either having fun or earning money.

Along came money

But some of these startup projects catch on. And when they do, a certain class of investor smells ROI. And the naive cofounders, who never expected their product or service to really get anywhere, can suddenly envision themselves rich and Zuckerberg-famous. Or maybe they like the idea of quitting their day job, believing in themselves, and really going for it. After all, that is an empowering and righteous vision.

Maybe they believe that by taking the initial investment, they can do more good—that their product, if developed further, can actually help people. This is often the motivation behind agreeing to an initial investment deal, especially in categories like healthcare.

Or maybe the founders are problem solvers. Existing products or services in a given category have a big weakness. The problem solvers are sure that their idea is better. With enough capital, and a slightly bigger team, they can show the world how to do it right. Most inventions that have moved humankind forward followed exactly this path. It should lead to a better world (and it sometimes does). It shouldn’t produce privacy breaches and fake medicine and election-influencing bots and all the other plagues of our emerging digital civilization. So why does it?

Content wants to be paid

Primarily it is because these businesses have no business model. They were made and given away free. Now investors come along who can pay the founders, buy them an office, give them the money to staff up, and even help with PR and advertising to help them grow faster.

Now there are salaries and insurance and taxes and office space and travel and lecture tours and sales booths at SXSW, but there is still no charge for the product.

And the investor seeks a big return.

And when the initial investment is no longer enough to get the free-product company to scale to the big leagues, that’s when the really big investors come in with the really big bucks. And the company is suddenly famous overnight, and “everybody” is using the product, and it’s still free, and the investors are still expecting a giant payday.

Like I said—a house you can’t afford, so you go into debt to the bank and the Mob.

The money trap

Here it would be easy to blame capitalism, or at least untrammeled, under-regulated capitalism, which has often been a source of human suffering—not that capitalism, properly regulated, can’t also be a force for innovation which ameliorates suffering. That’s the dilemma for our society, and where you come down on free markets versus governmental regulation of businesses should be an intellectual decision, but these days it is a label, and we hate our neighbors for coming down a few degrees to the left or right of us. But I digress and oversimplify, and this isn’t a complaint about late stage capitalism per se, although it may smell like one.

No, the reason small companies created by idealists too frequently turn into consumer-defrauding forces for evil has to do with the amount of profit each new phase of investor expects to receive, and how quickly they expect to receive it, and the fact that the products and services are still free. And you know what they say about free products.

Nothing fails like success

A friend who’s a serial entrepreneur has started maybe a dozen internet businesses over the span of his career. They’ve all met a need in the marketplace. As a consequence, they’ve all found customers, and they’ve all made a profit. Yet his investors are rarely happy.

“Most of my startups have the decency to fail in the first year,” one investor told him. My friend’s business was taking in several million dollars a year and was slowly growing in staff and customers. It was profitable. Just not obscenely so.

And internet investors don’t want a modest return on their investment. They want an obscene profit right away, or a brutal loss, which they can write off their taxes. Making them a hundred million for the ten million they lent you is good. Losing their ten million is also good—they pay a lower tax bill that way, or they use the loss to fold a company, or they make a profit on the furniture while writing off the business as a loss…whatever rich people can legally do under our tax system, which is quite a lot.

What these folks don’t want is to lend you ten million dollars and get twelve million back.

You and I might go, “Wow! I just made two million dollars just for being privileged enough to have money to lend somebody else.” And that’s why you and I will never have ten million dollars to lend anybody. Because we would be grateful for it. And we would see a free two million dollars as a life-changing gift from God. But investors don’t think this way.

We didn’t start the fire, but we roasted our weenies in it

As much as we pretend to be a religious nation, our society worships these investors and their profits, worships companies that turn these profits, worships above all the myth of overnight success, which we use to motivate the hundreds of thousands of workers who will work nights and weekends for the owners in hopes of cashing in when the stock goes big.

Most times, even if the stock does go big, the owner has found a way to devalue it by the time it does. Owners have brilliant advisers they pay to figure out how to do those things. You and I don’t.

A Christmas memory

I remember visiting San Francisco years ago and scoring an invitation to Twitter’s Christmas party through a friend who worked there at the time. Twitter was, at the time, an app that worked via SMS and also via a website. Period.

Some third-party companies, starting with my friends at Iconfactory, had built iPhone apps for people who wanted to navigate Twitter via their newfangled iPhones instead of the web. Twitter itself hadn’t publicly addressed mobile and might not even have been thinking about it.

Although Twitter was transitioning from a fun cult thing—used by bloggers who attended SXSW Interactive in 2007—to an emerging cultural phenomenon, it was still quite basic in its interface and limited in its abilities. Which was not a bad thing. There is art in constraint, value in doing one thing well. As an outsider, if I’d thought about it, I would have guessed that Twitter’s entire team consisted of no more than 10 or 12 wild-eyed, sleep-deprived true believers.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I showed up at the Christmas party and discovered I’d be sharing dinner with hundreds of designers, developers, salespeople, and executives instead of the handful I’d naively anticipated meeting. (By now, of course, Twitter employs many thousands. It’s still not clear to an outsider why so many workers are needed.)

But one thing is clear: somebody has to pay for it all.

Freemium isn’t free

Employees, let alone thousands of them, on inflated Silicon Valley engineer salaries, aren’t free. Health insurance and parking and meals and HR and travel and expense accounts and meetups and software and hardware and office space and amenities aren’t free. Paying for all that while striving to repay investors tenfold means making a buck any way you can.

Since the product was born free and a paywall isn’t feasible, Twitter must rely on that old standby: advertising. Advertising may not generate enough revenue to keep your hometown newspaper (or most podcasts and content sites) in business, but at Twitter’s scale, it pays.

It pays because Twitter has so many active users. And what keeps those users coming back? Too often, it’s the dopamine of relentless tribalism—folks whose political beliefs match and reinforce mine in a constant unwinnable war of words with folks whose beliefs differ.

Of course, half the antagonists in a given brawl may be bots, paid for in secret by an organization that wants to make it appear that most citizens are against Net Neutrality, or that most Americans oppose even the most basic gun laws, or that our elected officials work for lizard people. The whole system is broken and dangerous, but it’s also addictive, and we can’t look away. From our naive belief that content wants to be free, and our inability to create businesses that pay for themselves, we are turning our era’s greatest inventions into engines of doom and despair.

Your turn

So here we are. Now what do we do about it?

It’s too late for current internet businesses (victims of their own success) that are mortgaged to the hilt in investor gelt. But could the next generation of internet startups learn from older, stable companies like Basecamp, and design products that pay for themselves via customer income—products that profit slowly and sustainably, allowing them to scale up in a similarly slow, sustainable fashion?

The self-payment model may not work for apps and sites that are designed as modest amusements or communities, but maybe those kinds of startups don’t need to make a buck—maybe they can simply be labors of love, like the websites we loved in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Along those same lines, can the IndieWeb, and products of IndieWeb thinking like Micro.blog, save us? Might they at least provide an alternative to the toxic aspects of our current social web, and restore the ownership of our data and content? And before you answer, RTFM.

On an individual and small collective basis, the IndieWeb already works. But does an IndieWeb approach scale to the general public? If it doesn’t scale yet, can we, who envision and design and build, create a new generation of tools that will help give birth to a flourishing, independent web? One that is as accessible to ordinary internet users as Twitter and Facebook and Instagram? Tantek Çelik thinks so, and he’s been right about the web for nearly 30 years. (For more about what Tantek thinks, listen to our conversation in Episode № 186 of The Big Web Show.) Are these approaches mere whistling against a hurricane? Are most web and internet users content with how things are? What do you think? Share your thoughts on your personal website (dust yours off!) or (irony ahoy!) on your indie or mainstream social networks of choice using hashtag #LetsFixThis. I can’t wait to see what you have to say.

published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/