#industrial roller company

[arvindrubberindia]

Rolling Art explores the captivating world of our rubber roller manufacturer. Dive into the innovative craftsmanship, where precision meets creativity. Unveiling the secrets behind each roller's design, witness the fusion of art and engineering. From vibrant patterns to specialized textures, discover how these rollers redefine functionality. Join us on a journey where every roll is a masterpiece in motion.

[nbpbearings]

Industrial bearings are used in various industries for several purposes. Different types of materials are used in the making of bearings. Get detailed information from this guide.

[zvaigzdelasas]

The Onondaga claim that the United States violated a 1794 treaty, signed by George Washington, that guaranteed 2.5 million acres in central New York to them. The case, filed in 2014, is the second brought by an American Indian nation against the United States in an international human rights body; a finding is expected as soon as this year.

Even if the Onondaga are successful, the result will mostly be symbolic. The entity, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, has no power to enforce a finding or settlement, and the United States has said that it does not consider the commission’s recommendations to be binding.

“We could win against them, but that doesn’t mean that they have to abide by whatever,” Mr. Hill said in an interview.

The 2.5 million acres have long since been transformed by highways and utility lines, shopping malls, universities, airports and roller rinks.

The territory encompasses the cities of Binghamton and Syracuse, as well as more than 30 state forests, dozens of lakes and countless streams and tributaries. It is also home to 24 Superfund sites, the environmental detritus of the powerhouse economy that helped central New York thrive during the beginning and middle half of the 20th century.

Most notorious of these is Lake Onondaga, which once held the dubious title of America’s most polluted lake.

Industrial waste has left its mark on Onondaga territory, leaving the nation unable to fish from its streams and rivers. The history of environmental degradation is part of what motivates the Onondaga, who consider it their sacred responsibility to protect their land.

One of their chief objectives in filing the petition is a seat at the table on environmental decisions across the original territory. The other is an acknowledgment that New York, even if only in principle, owes them 2.5 million acres.[...]

Some Native nations have been willing to drop land claims in exchange for licenses to operate casinos. But the Onondaga say they are not interested in cash. Nor are they interested in licenses to sell cannabis or operate a casino — which they consider socially irresponsible and a threat to their tribal sovereignty.

There’s really just one thing that Mr. Hill says would be an acceptable form of payment: land.

The Onondaga insist they are not looking to displace anyone. Instead they hope the state might turn over a tract of unspoiled land for the nation to hunt, fish, preserve or develop as it sees fit. One such repatriation effort is underway: the return of 1,000 acres as a part of a federal settlement with Honeywell International for the contamination of Onondaga Lake. The United States has not contested the Onondaga's account of how the nation lost its land. Indeed, the lawyers representing the United States in the Onondaga case have centered their argument on legal precedence, noting that courts at every level — including the U.S. Supreme Court — rejected the Onondaga’s claims as too old and most remedies too disruptive to the region’s current inhabitants.

To the Onondaga, the logic required to square these contentions seems unfair. Why should the United States be allowed to steal their land and face no obligation to give some back?[...]

In New York, [...] Native people were not considered to have standing to sue on their own behalf until 1987.[...]

In 2005, the Onondaga filed a version of their current claim in Federal District Court in the Northern District of New York, naming as defendants the State of New York, its governor, Onondaga County, the City of Syracuse and a handful of the companies responsible for the environmental degradation over the past centuries. A similar case filed by the Oneida Nation was, at the time, pending before the Supreme Court.

But just 18 days after the Onondaga filed their petition, the Supreme Court rejected the Oneidas’ case. The decision referenced an colonial-era legal theory known as the Doctrine of Discovery, which holds in part that Indigenous property claims were nullified by the “discovery” of that land by Christians.

The “long lapse of time” and “the attendant dramatic changes in the character” precluded the Oneida nation from the “disruptive remedy” it sought, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority decision.[...]

[L]awyers for the Onondaga used the rejection as the premise for a new argument. They contended that the U.S. court system’s refusal to find in their favor proved that they could not find justice in the United States.

The petition filed before the international commission amounts to the most direct challenge of the United States’ treatment of Indigenous people to date in terms of human rights — and the first to apply the lens of colonialism.

“What the Onondaga litigation is doing right now is to force a political dialogue with the colonial occupier,” said Andrew Reid, a lawyer representing the Onondaga, adding that a favorable finding could prompt a political conversation about the United States’s treatment of native people on the world stage.

Representatives for the State Department declined to be interviewed and did not respond to requests for comment. But in legal documents, the United States contended that the Onondaga’s central claims have been rejected in prior cases; that they have had “abundant opportunity” for their case to be heard; and that they are merely unhappy with the outcome. It also contended that the commission has no jurisdiction, given that the bulk of the nation’s losses took place two centuries before it was established.

“The judicial process functioned as it should have in this matter,” the United States wrote in legal papers.

15 Mar 24

[loonarii]

Ari's K-Pop Roundup: May 2024 (aespa, NewJeans, IVE, tripleS, YVES, ARTMS + MORE)

sorry this one was a little late - it was partly due to my personal life being a bit hectic at the moment, and partly due to the amount of stuff I wanted to say about this month's releases. check out last month's installment here, and happy pride month :)))

Supernova + Armageddon - aespa

Instant classic. 'Drama' in all its electric cyber-crush glory is a tough act to follow, but 'Supernova' holds it's ground from the first second and starts being fucking iconic in the next five.

Dem Jointz is all over this track, I love how he gets to go a little wild with the complexity of his production when working with groups like aespa and NCT. The beat bounces and booms, taking the listener on an intergalactic roller coaster ride of dance-pop rhythm, with the aespa girls as our celestial guides. 'Supernova' is a masterclass in vocal mixing and ad libs, Ningning's vocals sound especially addictive on this track, low and oozing confidence. It's an instant hit, and one of aespa's best.

While 'Supernova' feels very much in aespa's usual territory, 'Armageddon' takes a few more risks - it's slightly less dancepop, a little more edgy; less first-listen club banger and more third listen unexpected groove. Don't get me wrong, it definitely maintains the hallmarks of an aespa title track: full of unplaceable futuristic synths, tin-can trap beats, and a deep sliding baseline, but something about that half time chorus and the switch up to focus on the members lower registers more feels so confident. 'Armageddon' depicts an aespa utterly assured in their abilities as idols, musicians, entertainers, and performers, and regardless of it you liked the song or not, I think it is clear to anyone from this title track that aespa have far from reached their peak, and they still have much more to do in this industry.

Frustratingly, the album did not live up to the quality of the titles that represent it. There are a few stand out hits, like 'Bahama', which pulls off y3k h2o just add water mermaidcore effortlessly, as well as 'Set The Tone' a classic aespa style track evocative of the 'Drama' and 'Savage' EPs in sound, and 'Licorice' which apparently is controversial to enjoy, but I can't help but love its bounce and rhythm; but much of the rest of the tracklist fell short. I couldn't help but notice a lack of coherence both in the sound and concept of this era. The album feels like a hodgepodge of tracks rather than a deliberate project - there aren't any through lines between tracks other than aespa's flagship futuristic production style (which isn't actually present on every track but whatever), and each song seems to be appealing to different scenarios of streaming music - BAHAMA is for a summer beach date, but Supernova is for the club, but then Live My Life is for a disney channel original movie starring Demi Lovato?? The overall vibe seems to be disjointed.

This is a problem I have with a lot of aespa's releases since the 'Savage' EP - on the EP or mini album or album or whatever around 65-90% of the tracks are certified bangers, life changing hits, and then there are a few dull fillers to pad the runtime. I know there is a pressure for groups to release something twice a year or so, but I think aespa is at a point in their career where they can certainly afford to release an album once a year if it's for the sake of quality music.

Great titles, poor b-sides - aespa deserves more than a top-heavy album, SM take more than six months next time you want to make an album for them I beg.

How Sweet - NewJeans

It's been a rough couple of months over at HYBE, and considering how sick we are of it as fans and listeners, I can't even imagine how exhausted the members are of the whole ordeal. Being at the centre of one of k-pop's biggest company dramas in history in the middle of your comeback season isn't for the weak, but NewJeans make it look easy. They are back, stronger than ever, with yet another instant classic.

'How Sweet' is the complementary reversal of 'Bubblegum', capitalizing on the members gorgeous lower registers and pairing them with a 90s hip-hop vibe, featuring their signature NewJeans production flairs as always. I've seen a little bit of criticism that this song feels too much like 'ETA', (which I think is a bizarre comparison, it much more sounds like a lovechild of 'OMG' and 'Ditto') but I don't think that groups releasing music in their established sound is a bad thing at all. NewJeans aren't rookies anymore, they have more than proved themselves to be a force to be reckoned with both on the charts and on the stage, and with the korean general public and bunnies themselves consistently loving the NewJeans sonic identity it makes no sense for them to abandon it entirely. They've grown a lot since 'Attention' and 'Hype Boy', and their performance of this song shows that clearly.

The girls' vocals on this song are to die for, every line they deliver exudes confidence and assurance in their capabilities. Danielle and Hanni's little chant of 'Toxic loverrrrr you're no betterrrrr, 거기 숨지 말고 얼른 나와, you little demon in my storyline, don't knock on my door, I'll see you out' is adorable and SO catchy, Danielle's delivery in that outro with her Aussie accent being a highlight of the song as a whole.

Yet another banger from (in my opinion) the most exciting kpop group out right now - it is becoming clearer and clearer to me that the day NewJeans release a bad song is the day pigs fly.

Girls Never Die - tripleS (<ASSEMBLE24>)

The final lineup for tripleS is here, and with it, one of the groups best songs to date. Juggling 24 members in one song is feat few have successfully managed, but tripleS expertly uses the plethora of voices they have at their disposal to deliver a title track as hypnotic as it is anthemic.

'Girls Never Die' has all the hallmarks of a tripleS song we've grown to adore, from y3k style production to the classic 'lalala' hook in the chorus - sonically it both calls back to the groups humble beginnings with Acid Angel From Asia's 'Generation', and looks to the future of the group with its united 24 members. The verses tend to lose me a little, but although they are dull, they are thankfully short, and the chorus is a stunner. The finale of the track is a triumph, the final refrain of 'girls never die 절대 never cry' closing the song giving the effect of a battle cry - to me 'Girls Never Die' says tripleS are here to shake things up in the industry, and release fun music while doing it.

I've enjoyed many a tripleS project before this, with the +(KR)ystal Eyes EP and the 2023 ASSEMBLE album being real highlights. '<ASSEMBLE24>' is immediately one of ( if not their best) albums, b-sides such as 'Beyond the Beyond', 'White Soul Sneakers', and ESPECIALLY 'Chiyu' bringing the heat fully.

tripleS are one to watch, and while I have genuinely no clue what 'decentralized kpop idol group' means or what the fuck an objekt is, trust when I say I will be watching.

Accendio - IVE (IVE SWITCH)

After the exciting return of an IVE that is worthy of their hitmaker epithet with 'HEYA', I was intrigued to see what 'Accendio' would bring to the table other than a matching cherry-red wig moment for the members (which was iconic btw.)

'Accendio' borrows some ideas from garage, but generally just feels very kpop - it's functionally the epicentre of the sounds of the industry right now; a little bit tripleS, a little bit (G)-IDLE, but 100% IVE. It has an ethereal quality, but in the sense of a fallen angel, with the lyrics bringing a sense of Catholic guilt (not sure why this is becoming a trend right now but sure!). The chorus is half high-fashion girlpop with their chant of 'watch me, don't touch me; love me, don't hurt me', and half rhythmic acid trip with the onomatopoeia and the refrain of '주문 걸어, accendio'; it's a highly successful marriage of opposites. To me it recalls the sound of their Japanese single 'WAVE' which I personally loved, and while 'HEYA' is technically a more advanced kpop song production-wise, 'Accendio' just has a pace and rhythm to it that 'HEYA' lacks, making it feel more exciting and engaging.

It's actually kind of crazy how good the rest of the album is, like IVE's b-sides have never been criminally bad, but this is wild. Potentially a niche reference for you 4th gen stans, but 'Blue Heart' and 'Ice Queen' are to 'Accendio' what 'Clue' and 'Note' are to SHINee's 'Sherlock'. 'Blue Heart' expands on that vogueish, runway style sound from the first part of the 'Accendio' chorus, and 'Ice Queen' explores that gossamer flowy sound from the refrain. I doubt this was intentional, but I love any sense of sonic consistency in kpop albums (@rinas4ki this kind of what we were talking about) and all three tracks are very successful.

'WOW' is a little bit of a wildcard, an acoustic style girly type of track that sounds like the kind of thing SM used to force aespa to sing, but it works very well for IVE. That post chorus of 'wowowow' is very cute. 'RESET' also has a little bit of a garage sound, and reminds me a lot of Yves debut (which will be discussed below), and while it is pretty catchy, it isn't especially memorable, especially in the context of IVE's discography and the quality of the other tracks on this mini album, but it is still worth a listen for sure.

Overall I am very impressed with IVE this time around, 'HEYA' is very enjoyable, 'Accendio' is even more enjoyable, and the b-sides don't put a spanner in the works at all, in fact they in many ways boost the overall quality of the comeback, a feat frustratingly rare in the kpop scene. If you missed the 'IVE SWITCH' album this month, I would definitely recommend giving it a listen.

LOOP - YVES (LOOP)

It feels good knowing all 12 members of LOONA have redebuted after leaving BBC, and what a way to end it. Yves has always been one of my biases in LOONA, and this solo debut proves exactly why she's so special.

'LOOP' is a uk garage style kpop classic, and while Lil Cherry's rap occasionally wanders into questionable territory, Yves' vocals melded with the gorgeous Pink Pantheress style production (no she didn't actually produce it, but a girl can dream, right?) make the track the hit it is. I've seen the use of 8-bit sounding vocal processing being criticised online, but I personally love the computerized sound it brings - with Yves lilting 'ooh's and refrain of 'yeah I'm lost but I like it' 'LOOP' creates an atmosphere of a virtual euphoria.

'LOOP' is great and all, but for me the real star of the album is the beautiful, the stunning, the AWE INSPIRING, 'DIORAMA'. It's so effortless in it's production and that chorus is so subtle yet addictive, it's seriously good. 'DIORAMA' has been on repeat since it's release, I can definitely see this one finding a spot high on my top kpop tracks of 2024 list.

The mini album as a whole is amazing, Yves is such an exciting soloist, she clearly has a lot she wants to achieve, and 'LOOP' is evidence of that.

Virtual Angel - ARTMS (Dall)

WARNING - PLEASE READ: If you wish to support ARTMS after reading this review, please be warned that the music video for 'Virtual Angel' contains repeated flashing scenes, and has been reported to trigger seizures, epilepsy and headaches in a small minority of viewers - even the 'Human Eye Ver.' has some flashing elements. Please stay safe!

I think i speak for all orbits when I say we had big expectations for 'Dall'. Both of the Loossemble albums so far have been excellent, Chuu and Yves have been bringing it in their solo projects, and everything we've heard out of Modhaus concerning Loona has been incredible - for ARTMS to stumble with this album would be immensely frustrating. Fortunately, they did not stumble at all, they smashed through the finish line of the Loona redebuts, and elevated the groups post-BBC discography to another level of excellence.

'Dall' is an album that is difficult to put into words. It has the essence of Loona beyond just having Heejin, Kim Lip, Jinsoul, Choerry and Haseul involved, it is genuinely quite moving how it echoes that 'Hi High' sound from so long ago. I say this as a joke a lot, but 'Dall' is genuinely an album that feels like an ascension to another plane of existence - it is euphoric and ethereal, especially in the context of the fight the members and orbits have put up since 2022.

I consider 'Girl Front' the gold standard for Loona songs, and 'Virtual Angel' genuinely comes close to snatching that crown. The whole album is so fucking good, and while I would usually go through the charade of describing every track and its genre influences and whether the hook is catchy or not, I refuse for this album - I will not steal the experience from you of hearing this album for the first time.

So yeah, this is probably a mildly shit review, but PLEASE go stream this album, if there was any post BBC Loona album you were going to listen to, let it be this one (but also the Odd Eye Circle album lmao). 'Virtual Angel' is a triumph, 'Dall' is a triumph, 'The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy', 'Sparkle' and 'Unf/Air' ESPECIALLY are triumphs.

In conclusion... stan loona.

MINI REVIEWS:

Taxi Blurr - Jay Park (feat. Natty of KISS OF LIFE): i may not like Jay Park, but Natty is and always will be my girl, so here we are. I really love the 90s r&b style of this track, and Natty especially sounds amazing on it - her vocal colour is so beautiful. The two's voices blend really well in my opinion, the harmonies in the bridge are satisfying as hell.

Mona Lisa - Soojin (formerly (G)-IDLE)): questionable album titles aside, Soojin is back with her second comeback post leaving (G)-IDLE. This song is frustrating because it's not really offensively bad in any sense, but it is also not really especially good in any sense either. The budget for the MV is kind of crazy, but I wish they had put some of that into the making of the actual song.

No Biggie + Algorhythm - ITZY: (requested by @a-moth-to-the-light) If you've been on my blog before, you will know that JYP's direction of ITZY's korean releases has been irking me for a while, but somehow when ITZY gets on that plane and lands in Japan I am always obsessed. I'm into pretty much all of their Japanese releases, like Ringo went triple platinum in my mental chart. 'No Biggie' is really cool actually, super catchy and Yuna sounds amazing on it - it feels very laid back and relevant to the 2024 music space, something that ITZY's korean singles seem to struggle with. 'Algorhythm' is also SO GOOD, in production, style, and vocal performance. The music video and song also have major old red velvet vibes, which I love. ITZY - please stay in Japan a little longer, the discography over there is so solid. I miss Lia so much though, I hope she's doing well.

LOST! - RM (BTS): I really appreciate namjoon's artistry, and I actually enjoyed his 2022 album 'Indigo', quite a bit, but this song just doesn't work for me. I have heard from others that the album is something special tho, so if i have a spare half hour I might give it a listen.

나의 이름은 (ROTY) - YOUNG POSSE: I would like to redact my previous statements on young posse, I get it now, and this song is so fun. Very 2000s, very y2k, beautiful production, great raps from everyone, what more could you want.

Supernatural - A.C.E: Saw a GIF from the music video on my dash and decided to check it out, and I was severely impressed. 'Supernatural' is not an ear-splitting noisy headache of a track I have come to expect from kpop boy groups, it's a light hearted, classic Bruno Mars style pop hit. Good music and a well produced fun concept? I need to check out this group more.

[dude-the-ancient-dragon]

Ok so I have been persuaded to finally share

The Poop Story

on Tumblr dot com. Hold on to your butts.

Ok so I was at work on site A. I get a call, there's an equipment failure on site B and I need to check it out, it's important but not urgent. By this time I was the whole IT department for a major food company for the whole city.

So, I get my stuff ready and start heading out. And then It hits: The twist. Everyone knows the twist, it's your lower intestines letting you know there's a bullet in the chamber that it needs to fire. But im in a Hurry, so I decide to just make the fifteen minute drive and drop the payload on site b.

This was a mistake.

Halfway into the drive the twist hits again, and it's Bad, I need to go now . It is by this moment that I understand that this is no normal bomb, by lower intestine is baking a loaf of pure evil. Im getting the twists, the hot sweats. Five minutes more and im exerting considerable force not to dirty my car.

My folly hits me, I should have gone to the toilet back on base. Im driving into site Bs parking lot and im crossing my legs and tightening my abdomen, so I don't explode right there and end my social and work life forever.

See, because I worked in an industrial setting, there were strict protocols to enter the site. The security personel knew me by name and face, but they still could not let me in without authorization from the warehouse boss, and today of all days that asshole is not answering his phone.

So im exerting all of my physical and mental power not to shit myself there, covered in cold sweats and shaking. "He's not answering, let me try again Dude" says the guard. My Ki is focused on my sphincter, im non verbal, all I can manage is a weak thumbs up, my forehead nearly making a hole on the concrete building. They could probably tell something was deeply wrong with me but I was beyond the capacity to notice or care, im fighting my own battle and boy I am loosing.

A couple of minutes of waiting and the sense of impending doom hits me. "Im gonna have a butt baby" I said to myself. "Im gonna give birth to a butt baby in this guardhouse and there is no human power in the world that can stop it. I am dead, Im walking and shaking but I am dead."

And that's when the man answers. Yes Im allowed in obviously. I don't wait for confirmation, I sprint inside, race to the bathroom knocking over man and beast aside, sit down on the throne with a fraction of a second to spare.

You know how when you go to the toilet, you do your thing and you feel satisfied? Good? At peace? It wasn't one of those. It felt like I was exicising a tumor, like I was giving birth to the antocrist. I carved my name on the porcelain with my fingernails. When it ended I was in pain and crying, It was out, now the healing can begin. All I need is to flush.

And it wouldn't flush. I start to panic. It won't flush. I dumped a biohazardous lump of hate, It needs to go before it kills us all. I try washing my hands, there is no water. I recite the mantra of a thousand fucks. This will kill the whole building.

Thinking fast, I do the only thing I can think of, rapidly improvise an "out of order sign", stealthily tape it to the toilet door and pretend nothing happened. On my way to the failed hardware (I was there to work after all) I find Charkoe, the head of maintenance.

"Hey Charlie, since when is the water out?" I ask in my most casual of tones. I did not mention it was me who essentially made the entirety of this postal code unlivable for the next decade..

"Since today, in the morning, should be back in the afternoon" He does not suspect a thing. I need to leave right now. So yeah, I fix the printer (label stuck in the roller, simple) and flee with both stealth and haste. Before making it out I notice, to my horror, the cleaning people where going into the restroom I had marked and immediately ran out, gagging.

I was not back there for the rest of the month.

[vintage-london-images]

For many, Matchbox toy cars evoke childhood memories of afternoons spent driving over mountainous sofas and screeching around table leg bends. These days for bargain hunters and boot sale stalkers, they can now mean five figure sums for the right toy. But did you know they were manufactured in the East End of London?

The company existed until 1982 and had been started by Leslie and Rodney Smith who started an industrial die-casting company which they named Lesney Products in 1947. The name Lesney came from an amalgamation of their first names Les-Ney.

Starting off in a small building in Hackney, the move into toys only happened when they were sub contracted to cast toy guns for another company, with a cast road roller being their first in-house product. This was designed by John W. “Jack” Odell, who had become a partner in the operation and ultimately the one to spark the Matchbox brand because apparently his daughter was only allowed to have a toy which fitted in a matchbox while at school, thus Matchbox Toys was born. But their 1952/53 Coronation Royal State Coach built in two different scales really caught the publics attention and they sold over a million examples raising enormous capital, and that's when business and other projects really took off.

Expansion in the fifties saw them working from several spread out sites until 1963, when their new factory was built at Hackney Marshes, and with the new site there was increased productivity with up to a million products a day leaving the factory by 1969.

Lesney became one of Londons biggest employers, with women being the mainstay of production with their nimble hands handling the small and intricate parts, and they also liked the competitive pay and family support as well. Leslie Smith the then director of Lesney appreciated his workforce and to entice the women of Hackney to join the Matchbox ranks Lesney bought a fleet of redundant buses from London Transport, painted them in Matchbox’s trademark blue and yellow colours and offered free transport to and from work, as well as help with the school run and care for their children.

Like many toy manufacturers the company become the victim of different interests and Lesney and Matchbox lost its way and the company closed in 1982, with the Matchbox brand transferring to Mattel.

The factory was demolished in the early naughties with the site now occupied by luxury apartments called Matchmakers Wharf, I can't help but think that the person who named it lost the brief somewhere when it wasn't anything to do with matches at all. Maybe Lesney Wharf would have been a better name. What do you think?

Lesney Products Coronation Coach from 1953.

Matchbox Collectors Guide from 1966

[fans4wga]

“This Was A Negotiation For The Future”: Fran Drescher & Duncan Crabtree-Ireland On SAG-AFTRA Deal, AI & Informed Consent + Importance Of CEOs

"'We know that generations from now they’ll be talking about this seminal contract and reaping the benefits of it in the way that we have been for the last 65 years with a contract that was negotiated when Ronald Reagan was in my position,' says SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher of the new contract the actors guild made with the studios on Wednesday after 118 days on strike.

Worth more than $1 billion over the next three years, the tentative agreement has an “extraordinary scope” and is full of “unprecedented provisions,” according to SAG-AFTRA. While the fine print won’t be made public until the 160,000-strong guild’s board votes on it Friday, we know the new deal includes increases in minimum rates, a streaming participation bonus, new health and pension caps, diversity guardrails, and hard fought for AI protection provisions.

The recently overwhelmingly reelected Drescher and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland were at the heart of the strike and the talks. “This strike was about people who are trying to make a middle class living, and I think when the whole deal is put out in the public and people have all the different pieces of it, they will see that there is an overall commitment to improving the economic viability of a career as an actor in this business,” Crabtree-Ireland notes.

Frequently attacked and underestimated by the AMPTP and others, both the union president and national director were out on the picket lines day after day as well as in negotiations with the CEOs Gang of Four of Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, Disney’s Bob Iger, NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley and Warner Bros Discovery’s David Zaslav. Back at the bargaining table for the second set of renewed talks starting on October 24, a month after the WGA reached their own tentative agreement with the studios, the duo, SAG-AFTRA’s chief contracts officer Ray Rodriguez and other members of the negotiating committee unanimously approved the deal Wednesday evening. That vote came as the studios had set a 5 pm PT deadline that could have seen everything go back to square one.

Today, Drescher and Crabtree-Ireland spoke with me about getting to that deal, power of the picket lines, role of the Gang of Four and the importance of the new contract for the entire industry. The duo also revealed some of the AI specifics in the new contract and the battles to come.

DEADLINE: What was the turning point that brought this deal together?

FRAN DRESCHER: We got the protections we needed in AI. We got the funds that we needed for the new revenue stream. That was the two biggest outstanding pieces.

The money was in place earlier, it was the protections that we really were holding out for. With AI, things move very fast, and three months is equivalent to a year in how things can change. So, if we didn’t close that up now then you’ll be so far behind you’ll never be able to catch up. It was really important to us, that we got the protections we felt that we absolutely needed to sustain this contract until the next one. I mean, there’s still things that we’re already working on to get for the next contract, but there are so many milestones in this one.

DUNCAN CRABTREE-IRELAND: I would say it’s been a roller coaster since we got back in the room late last month.

DEADLINE: No doubt.

CRABTREE-IRELAND: Yes, and AI has proved to be one of the most challenging topics in this negotiation from the very beginning all the way to the very end. It was on the table Day 1 and it was on the table on Day 118 of the strike.

DEADLINE: So, how did you seal that deal, so to speak?

CRABTREE-IRELAND: It’s clear that the direct engagement of CEOs was essential to reaching the deal. I think that it is also clear that the companies had to push beyond their initial comfort zone to find a path that could actually give us enough assurances that our members could say yes, we’re going to walk forward into this coming couple of years with a feeling that there is sufficient protection against any kind of abuse from the way AI is being implemented.

For me, I think the key moments really had to do with the kind of dialogue that we had directly with the CEOs, and with Carol, and our committee which has just been so strong and so united. That really gave us the power we needed. Outside the room, the other thing I would just add is having the chance to be out on picket lines in our rallies with our members. That was incredibly not only energizing for me and for the committee but also really helped us make sure we were hearing from all facets of our membership.

DEADLINE: How so?

CRABTREE-IRELAND: Because the picket lines are a very democratizing unifying place and members from all walks of life and all aspects of people’s careers, and all types of specialties are all there.

DEADLINE: In this final round of talks, one of the things that came up a lot from the studio side, but also on the picket lines, was the notion that everyone was running out of time. Running out of time to get a TV season and summer slate off the ground. Running out of time to get people back to work. As we reported yesterday, the AMPTP even gave you guys a 5 pm PT deadline Wednesday or they were going to take their ball home. How real was all that to you?

CRABTREE-IRELAND: You know, I took it as an expression of how concerned they were about this timing and that they were really trying to send us a message of the realities of their production environment – that meant that the timing was real for them. I never take a deadline like that as a given because we’re we live in a world of human beings and our committee was working as quickly as we could. So, I personally thought we were going to be ready before that anyway and we were – but, that deadline was what partially drove us. The desire to make sure that that we could make a deal as quickly as possible because of the ongoing harm that that being strike causes to workers. That’s really what drove us.

The other thing, Dominic, that I will say made it possible was the studios coming through with the final pieces in AI. We’ve made it clear to them from the very beginning and it was true all the way along: AI was existential for our members. And if we didn’t have the right protections, we weren’t going to be able to make a deal. So, I think they ultimately believed that, understood that and they did what they had to do to give us those assurances.

Also, people need know that just strike was not about celebrities per se, this strike was about working actors. This strike was about people who are trying to make a middle class living, and I think when the whole deal is put out in the public and people have all the different pieces of it, they will see that there is a overall commitment to improving the economic viability of a career as an actor in this business. And that’s really good for all of us.

DEADLINE: Fran, did you worry with the deadlines the studios were trying to impose, that this could go off the rails?

DRESCHER: Well, I didn’t know what you mean by go off the rails because it was either going to protract the strike or they were going to appreciate the gravity of certain points that really were deal breakers. About AI, I told them that to their faces: This is going to be a deal breaker, I could tell you right now.

DEADLINE: Clearly, they got the message at some point…

DRESCHER: In a negotiation, you don’t ever get everything, that’s understood. But when the opposition in a really appreciates that we are prepared to go longer, that we’re already on strike. We were prepared to go the distance on this. They heard us, so thank God.

DEADLINE: You’ve indicated you’re already thinking about down the line, the next contract. From what I know about this contract, while it is a three-year contract, this seems multigenerational and it plants pillars that are going to be a strong part of a vastly changing industry. Do you see it like that? DRESCHER: Without question? I mean, we said that to ourselves last night when we passed this, without objection, which in itself is a historic triumph. We know that generations from now they’ll be talking about this seminal contract and reaping the benefits of it in the way that we have been for the last 65 years with a contract that was negotiated when Ronald Reagan was in my position.

DEADLINE:I know that we’re going to get more details tomorrow on AI when the board votes, but Duncan can you give us a sense now of what these protections are?

CRABTREE-IRELAND: I will say, I think our proposals are more specific than the ones that you’ve seen in other contracts because our members are experiencing the use of AI right now. This is not something that’s coming down the road. This is something that’s currently happening.

So, we do have very specific protections around the creation and use of digital replicas, including informed consent for any creation and use as well as compensation structures for how people should get paid both for the creation and use of digital replicas.

DEADLINE: How will that work?

CRABTREE-IRELAND: One way is to protect against the use of generative AI to create what we would call synthetic fakes, which are synthetic assets that are created out of potentially multiple actors inputs. Where there’s any kind of recognizable elements of that there will be protection and a right of consent, as well as a right for the union to be notified when they’re created and a right to bargain for compensation.

Really, the theme around all of this Dominic is informed consent and fair compensation

 Also, I do want to just say because I know people have wondered this whole idea about zombie actors. There are now the consent requirements that apply if an actor is deceased. It wasn’t always that way during this negotiation, but where we’ve ended up is the producers will have to seek consent from the heirs or representatives of the estate of a deceased performer to get concerned for ad use of their image like this voice or performance and the creation of a digital replica, unless that consent was explicitly granted informed consent prior to the person’s death. Just with those examples, I think you can see it’s a very robust set of protections. Protections that address all of the areas of concern that we’ve raised in connection with how actors should be treated as the industry moves forward. Because, let’s be honest, nobody’s immune from evolution, and that includes the studios

DRESCHER: Also, part of the caveat of this negotiation is that the guild and the studios have agreed together to meet semi-annually so that we can always stay on the pulse of where technology is going. Because in many ways, we’re going to find ourselves on the same side fighting in Washington for a kind of legislation that protects all of us against piracy, and more.

DEADLINE: To that, on more than one occasion you guts put out stuff publicly about bullying techniques that AMPTP loves to use and has used over the years, and more How did that affect the tone in the room and or the tone in the virtual room sometimes? CRABTREE-IRELAND: You know,  it wasn’t really acknowledged directly in the room. You know, as an openly gay man, I’ve been bullied plenty in my life including as a kid, and what I’ve always found is when you call it out, that takes away some of its power.

DEADLINE: Amen.

CRABTREE-IRELAND: So, to me, if I feel like those kinds of tactics are being used, my first reaction is to just acknowledge it publicly, openly and take away the power that it has as a result. That was our approach. I will also say, I’m not sure everything is as tightly choreographed on the studio side as people would think. There are multiple companies and there are different opinions, even within their group about tactics and strategy and things like that. Even so, in the end, I think it’s important to just really be open and be direct about it. And when we were in our meetings with the CEOs, you know, I didn’t perceive that as was happening there. And nor was that topic specifically ever discussed during those meetings. DEADLINE: One thing that was discussed, as Deadline exclusively reported at the time, was Netflix’s Ted Sarandos saying to guild leaders last weekend, once the studios had presented their so-called last, best and final offer: We didn’t just come towards you. We came all the way to you. What’s was your take on that, was it true? CRABTREE-IRELAND: Well, I mean, I don’t think that’s correct. I think it’s a good rhetorical point and Ted is a very powerful orator and persuader, obviously, but you know, this has been a negotiation.

We started out with an admittedly aggressive side of asks in our initial proposals, and we knew we weren’t going to get everything that we were trying to achieve it just as they knew they weren’t going to get everything that they were trying to achieve. In fact, where this deal has landed. I think it’s very favorable. It’s very successful. For us, it’s groundbreaking, but it’s not everything that was in our initial proposal package, and there are battles that will have to be fought another day.

So, did they come all the way to us? No. Did they come far enough to us to make a deal that provides our members the protections that we that we really need and provides them with a level of respect to this agreement that members can be excited about? Yes, and I do appreciate them ultimately getting there, although I wish it would have happened a lot sooner.

DEADLINE: Of course, but also there was a lot of bitterness, a lot of agendas in this strike, in the negotiations and in the getting there. What do you think, if anything the studios and the AMPTP leadership learned from this half year of strikes?

CRABTREE-IRELAND: One thing I do wish, and I hope that this will take hold in the industry and future cycles of negotiation, which is if there are strikes, it’s not a good strategy to just let everyone sit there. It’s not going to wear us down. It’s just going to cause more harm to the industry and it’s unnecessary. So, hopefully in the future, there won’t be these long periods of time, like the 100 days before the studios went back in with the Writers Guild to restart talks. There shouldn’t be those kinds of time periods of no talking, because the only way to solve these problems is through discussions and negotiations

DRESCHER: As we said all along: One day longer, one day stronger.

DEADLINE: Fran, there were a lot of attacks on you, on your leadership, on your abilities – some of which you have responded to. Some of the attacks were open, many were whispering campaigns. Now, with this contract, do you feel vindicated and what would you say to those who took potshots at you?

DRESCHER: The people that know me were not surprised that I was going to rise to the occasion. Yet, I think that sadly, women in leadership positions often are faced with the lowest hanging fruit ploy, which is to find any way to discredit them. Duncan’s actions in the negotiating room were a non-issue, never discussed. For me, the pendulum swung from being you know, overly aggressive to frivolous to everything in between. But I will tell you, I merely saw that all of that as an opportunity to create a womaqn and girls movement that I can lead and be exactly me, which is what I did.

DEADLINE: It seems there was a lot of underestimating and undermining here…

CRABTREE-IRELAND: I agree. I think they didn’t think they were going to go on strike in the first place.

DRESCHER: I don’t think so either.

CRABTREE-IRELAND: This entire process has been one of the studios opening their eyes to the reality of SAG-AFTRA, its membership and its willingness to do what it takes to make sure that they’re protected.  

We came in with a strike authorization vote that was unprecedented. We then tried really hard to get a negotiated deal without going on strike, including the extension, which was also unprecedented. We did that and then I really think that they believed at the end of that we were stop.

DEADLINE: But you didn’t, why?

CRABTREE-IRELAND: Because the thing was, it wasn’t good enough for our members at that point. So, we couldn’t do that and so we went on strike with the WGA.  Even then, I believe that their strategy was to wear us down, but our members didn’t get worn down. Yes, everyone’s hurt the whole industry, all the workers hurt and I don’t want anyone to ever think we didn’t know that and feel that. I did, all of us did. But what we’re fighting for something that was wasn’t just a regular three-year marketing cycle, we always knew that.

DEADLINE: How did that manifest itself?

CRABTREE-IRELAND: This was a negotiation for the future. For the future of our members and our industry. And members stayed strong at our picket lines. I’d say the last few days have been as strong as ever. Our members did not get weakened. They did not get discouraged. They knew that we were fighting a battle we were going win. Ultimately the studios and the streamers had to recognize. Also, the fact that the public and the rest of the industry really did hear us when we talked about we were fighting for was great.  Between us and the Writers Guild, I think the public support was extraordinary, and I think the studios had to acknowledge that as well. So,  there was a lot of elements that came together to really help us get here.

DRESCHER: One thing I made sure of too was that every community and every major concern for this contract was well represented. Represented by not only our amazing staff and chief negotiator, but experts. Our experts were with us every step of the way, in all fields, and that’s why we got so many, I believe, groundbreaking new things language in the contract that never existed before. This time called for that. I’m just grateful that the AMPTP recognized where we were coming from heard us and met the moment.

CRABTREE-IRELAND: Yes, there was a lot of progress made, and the last very last thing was negotiation on the toughest issues. I guess that’s to be expected, because all of the underbrush had been cleared and all of the points that could be addressed most easily had been addressed. In the end, we did things to send signals that we were not holding on to anything that we didn’t really need. To let the AMPTP know, and see, at the end this wasn’t a case of negotiating just for everything we wanted. It was for things that our members really needed, that were really important. As the studios really started understanding that, they realized that if they wanted to have an agreement in the timeframe that they were looking for, that they would have to do something to address those needs. And they ultimately did. So, a day after we agreed on a deal, I appreciate that very much, because that is what helped us get this across the line in the end.

[rjzimmerman]

Why ‘chaos wheat’ may be the future of bread. (Washington Post)

Excerpt from this Washington Post story:

Farms were once a riot of biodiversity. A single field might have contained five different varieties of corn, a mix of oats and barley or whatever jumble of grains suited farmers from France to Ethiopia.

These offered a hedge against hardship: plant mixes in the field shifted with the weather. More rye one year, less wheat another. The French even had names for such flours with shifting ratios of grains, from “grande meteil” to “ble ramé,” each one rising into a delicious bread all its own.

But when industrial roller mills arrived in the late 1800s, the supply chain coalesced around white bread virtually overnight, writes Stephen Jones, founder of the Breadlab at Washington State University. The new mills meantwhite flour could be produced at enormous scale for low cost. Professional wheat breeders developed strains for refined white flour, stripped of its nutrient-rich germ, which could be stored longer. In 1890, 90 percent of U.S. households baked their bread at home. Forty years later, 90 percent were buying mass-produced white bread instead.

This transition to monoculture helped drive a fourfold increase in U.S. wheat yields. It also created a food system vulnerable to climate shocks and reliant on enormous inputs of agrochemicals. Today, global grain production emits more greenhouse gases than Russia, Brazil and Germany combined, while researchers in the journal Nature estimate that wheat yields in North America could fall 1 to 10 percent for every degree of warming without adaptation.

So I was intrigued when I saw King Arthur’s “climate blend” flour in the baking section of my supermarket. Could it be the vanguard of a new breed of crops making their way into everyday products?

I bought the flour for my kitchen. And I also obtained my own wheat seed climate blend from the Breadlab — a mix of Salish blue, a perennial released in 2021, as well as hardier varieties developed over the last few decades.

I wanted to see what it’s like to grow a wheat crop in my own backyard — and share it with readers around the world to hear about their experiences. Here’s what I learned trying to grow what the Breadlab calls “chaos wheat,” and why we still have a long row to hoe before the food system is on a sustainable path.

King Arthur Baking Company, the employee-owned company that released its Climate Blend Flour last year, is probably the most well known. The blend of wheat varieties, including a perennial capable of growing for years rather than being replanted every season, is part of King Arthur’s push to source 100 percent of its flour from “regeneratively grown wheat” by 2030. The result, says King Arthur, is a rich, nutty flour that can work in any whole-wheat recipe (something I confirmed in my own muffins).

The scale so far is tiny (just 120 acres), and prices are higher: A one-pound bag of Climate Blend Flour sells for $2.98, compared with $1.12 for standard whole wheat. But the company says it hopes to drive down costs as it assesses the climate benefits. “We believe in this work and understand it needs to be a long-term commitment,” Janis Abbingsole, the chief operating officer at King Arthur Baking Company, wrote in an email. “We need to allow time to listen to our growers and support them as they test and learn.”

[mikunology]

Locations in Sapporo

things in my personal life has calmed down somewhat for the time being so I figured I'd write up an easy lore post that I completely forgot I could make so here we are

I wanted to list some common locations found in Sapporo as featured in Vocal Android! I haven't actually talked about the setting too much and while I'm kinda bad at designing locations, I figured I could at least talk about them a little

But, yeah, I'll do my best to explain, so some lore under the cut?

Crypton Laboratories HQ/Crypton Towers: The place where the CVs live and where Meiko and Kaito work. A huge white, gray, and cyan building shaped like a C if you look at it from above, it's home to Crypton's various research labs. The building has floors entirely dedicated to be Miku, the twins and Luka's living spaces, and they each have their own color-coded rooms and living areas. There's a recording and dance studio in the building for the CVs to do their idol work and music playing, as well as a virtual reality training room. There's also the CVs' very own superhero base of sorts, which Gumi helped design, and allows the crew to oversee the city in case danger makes itself known (it's also a convenient place to hang out and take a nap). There's also a sizeable garage below the building, where Rin keeps the road roller.

Kenmochi Academy High School: Miku, Rin and Len's school. A large, clean campus made of three V-shaped buildings with their points pointing towards each other and hexagon-shaped windows. A pretty high-bar school with a lot of recent technology, it's one of the more popular and well-known high schools in town (and thus, an excellent candidate for Meiko's goal of having the CVs interact with humans their age). It is headed by Principal Sasaki. (Current Student List: Hatsune Miku, Kagamine Rin and Len, Kobayashi Matcha, Masaoka Azuki, Yumemi Nemu, Hibiki Lui, Akira Kano/Arsloid, Otomachi Una, Sato Sasara, Suzuki Tsudumi, Kokone Aime, Kizuna Akari, Futaba Minato, Hoshino Ichika, Tenma Saki, Hinomori Shiho, Mochizuki Honami, Koharu Rikka (formerly), Suzune Ring)

Ichikawa Academy High School: Gumi's school, a high school on the eastern side of the city. It's a more "normal" high school, less flashy than Kenmochi and looking more typical, but still has a few good programs to its name, including its science program (which Gumi tries to participate in). (Current Student List: Megumi "Gumi" Nakashima, Kotonoha Akane and Aoi, Tohoku Zunko, Gahata Meiji, Kamishiro Rui, Kusanagi Nene, Tenma Tsukasa, AiSuu, Tsuina-chan)

Utahako Elementary School: The local elementary school a block or two away from Kenmochi. It's a modest little elementary school, having been newly refurbished from an older building. Many of the students that go there end up graduating to Kenmochi later. Kiyoteru teaches here. (Current Student List: Kaai Yuki, Oliver Twitchell, Rana, Macne Petit, Tohoku Kiritan, Otomachi Unagi, Ryuuto Nakashima)

The Macne Cafe: A fresh-looking little internet cafe that sits in the town plaza and is the CVs' favorite hangout spot. Established by the Macne Family, it's become slowly but surely known around town for its delicious green apple cheesecake and desserts. Nana has been trying various ways to spread their customer base further.

The V5: A swanky nightclub and bar that is also in the plaza, run by four friends: Amy, Chris, Kaori and Ken. Many of the adult characters come there to drink and chat a bit.

UTAU Studios: A record label company and radio studio stationed in the industry hub of town, notable for its large staff and loooong list of talents. The studio runs a daily radio broadcast that's fairly popular, and their top talent is Namine Ritsu (or it was, anyway).

Sapporo University: The local college. A bit of an older building since it's been there basically forever compared to a lot of the rest of futuristic city. Has a small, colorful dormitory community next to it where students stay. (Current Student List: Galaco, Po-uta, Tsurumaki Maki, Shirosaki Yuudai; Utatane Piko isn't a student but he lives there)

Kamukura Shrine: A humble shrine that's only a little ways away from the beach, and is where most of the cast goes for holiday celebrations (such as New Years). It's headed by Kigashima Sourin and his protégés, Kurono Takehiro, Wakamatsu Akashi, Aoyama Ryuusei and Shirakami Koutarou, who are training to be proper priests. They also have their shrine maiden, a fussy teenage girl named Lumi who claims to be a jellyfish kami from the sea. Her antics tend to bring a lot of visitors.

SEKAI Auditorium: A venue a few blocks away from Crypton HQ and the main place where Miku and friends perform locally. Very spacious and known to host tons of acts, including smaller ones like local bands, singers and theater shows. Also functions as a sort of convention center at times. However, it's tendency to get raided by supervillains (mostly in pursuit of Miku and co.) has given it a bit of a weird reputation.

The Nebula: A recently-established nightclub in the plaza run by American DJ CYBER DIVA (and her partner CYBER SONGMAN), who is also the headlining act of the place. Used to have a bit of a rivalry with Miku, but they're both over it. Gets a lot of younger customers than the ones at the V5.

Dr. Momone's House: A modern house in a quiet neighborhood next to the industrial part of town where Dr. Momone, Momo and Defoko live. Their neighbors consist of Yufu (who lives down the lane), Eru (who lives at the far end of the lane), Tsukishiro Hakupo and his servant bot Kunishiki (who live next door) and Sensei.

Gumi's Apartment: Gumi, Gakupo and Ryuuto's small apartment in a building not too far from Crypton HQ. Not the nicest apartment that ever was, but it's homey.

Gin no Hana: A old-fashioned restaurant that has reasonable business and is popular due to the comfy atmosphere. Managed by Ginsaki and his wife, Koharu.

The Old Soul Theater: An old theater in town that's mainly still in the city for the sake of preservation, but still has small plays and acts now and again. Has been turned into an acting school of sorts by Miriam Stocks, a theater connoisseur.

Ruko's candy shop: A hole-in-the-wall shop in an alleyway managed by Yokune Ruko, where they sell candy, snacks and cheap cups of drip coffee. Totally not shady in the slightest. Is almost constantly out of coffee-flavored hard candy because Ruko keeps eating it.

Meiko's apartment: Meiko's home, a simple apartment in a simple complex where she crashes after a long day at the lab. The CVs have never been to it.

There's probably more than this but yeah :>

[knightyoomyoui]

The Tale Of The Bloodline | TWICE MiSaMo (Mina, Sana & Momo) x Male Reader- CHAPTER 1: “Help Wanted”

Enjoy the pilot chapter of this roller coaster ride of a story based from the current critically acclaimed storyline in wrestling industry between a wrestling faction The Bloodline consisting of wrestlers Roman Reigns, The Usos (Jimmy and Jey), Solo Sikoa along with their manager Paul Heyman and wrestler Sami Zayn, both from WWE.

Authors note: Unlike the original source that was only full of family and brotherhood drama, this one has romance included that is centered on one of the trio and you as the male reader.

After a match that is part of the current card for tonight's show has just finished, the cameras switched next to the backstage; where a black limousine just appeared and parked in an empty available lot.

The door opened, revealing a man wearing a full business tuxedo attire first while carrying two huge gold championship belts in his shoulders as he hopped out of the expensive car.

His name is Park Jinyoung, the wiseman and special adviser of the group whose about to emerge next.

Out of the car after follows four other passengers that made the crowd inside the arena resonate in a mix of loud boos and cheers.

They closed the door and aligned themselves with Jinyoung. A smirk crept up on the manager as the owner of the prize he's carrying on his arms has made his presence beside him.

Standing on the left side was The Myouis, twin siblings Mina and YN who are carrying also two belts respectively, one is a black strapped with bronze plate and one is a red strapped with yellow plate.

They are the current Tag Team Champions, reigning for 279 days and they are intergender, which means they are a team composed of a male and a female and it is completely legal in their company for opposite genders to fight in the battleground.

Loyalists of gender equality indeed.

And last but not least or should be either called it rather, saving the last for the best; standing on the right side of Special Adviser Jinyoung was the cousins of the Myouis, the reigning, defending and undisputed Japan Fightful Federation's World Champion himself whose reign is now about to reach 600+ days being undefeated.

Nakamoto Yuta, the crowned Highness Of The Land in their hometown Kobe, Japan, as well as being the proclaimed Empire Chief of their royal fighter clan.

Until now, their bloodline is standing tall at the highest throne in their sacred Judgment Dome, and Underground Fight Club-like place where people sign up and fight through matches in the Fight Pit with some helps to determine who will be the defending champion's challenger and the high ranking champion will only get to fight at a special event.

Since none has ever beaten Yuta for the title yet, that means Yuta still remains as the supreme leader of some cities in Japan where Yuta defended his titles winningly. That's the additional reward for anyone who will be the Japan's World Champion in that particular field.

"Now we're all seeing the arrival of The Bloodline in backstage, led by the Undisputed Japan's Champion, the Empire Chief himself present in the show. We're gonna witness more of them live next on Knockdown!", the commentator said as the cameras slowly fades off from its presentation of the Bloodline entering the building.

-TIMESKIP-

After the commercials rolled, the show went back on air as the entrance theme for The Myouis played in the titantron and through the speakers of the arena with Myoui YN appearing first before her twin sister Mina trailed behind.

The bell rang thrice before the announcer shouted.

"The following contest is scheduled for one fall, introducing first; accompanied by Myoui Mina: one half of the Undisputed Japan Fightful Federation Tag Team Champions, Myoui YN!!!"

The crowd then created another echoes of boos and cheers for the arrival of the Tag Team Champions and pieces of The Bloodline themselves.

"You got this, brother!", Mina patted YN's shoulder and they both nodded at one another before YN climbed up in the ring with a smile, raising his index finger to the sky as it represents their team's catchphrase "We The Ones".

YN prepares himself, hopping and running back and forth as he stares at the entranceway, waiting for his opponent to arrive.

Few moments later, the entrance theme of the next fighter was played after.

"And his opponent, from Seoul, South Korea weighing in at 103 pounds; Jang Wonnnnyoung!"

Wonyoung walked down in the ramp as she greeted some of the crowd sitting in the front row cheering for her, returning their waves of high five offers with a lovable smile.

She entered in the ring, a piercing stare from YN received but was unintimidated by it; knowing that despite being a champion she knows that she still has a chance to face and defeat him.

The two stood at each corners before the referee rang the bell, signalling for them to begun fighting.

-12 MINUTES LATER-

"YN charging down through Wonyoung- OH! Wonyoung side stepped!", the announcer called the match while monitoring the fight in the ring focusedly.

At the same time in the backstage, the camera cuts at Yuta along with Jinyoung standing behind his back; also watching the match in a large LED screen at their locker room.

Back to the match, Wonyoung did avoided YN's incoming charge attack, making the tag champ crash at the turnbuckle.

He rotated around, only to meet a spinning kick from Wonyoung in the head; successfully had YN dizzy and fall into fours.

Wonyoung immediately went through the congruent corner, hyping up the crowd more as the impending doom for YN is about to be delivered courtesy of her.

"And now, Wonyoung from the other side; looking to capitalize YN with a knee strike- OH WAIT A MINUTE!"

Just as Wonyoung is now all prepared to charge straight at YN, everybody in the arena saw Mina climbed up in the border of the ring which caught the referee's attention

"MYOUI MINA WITH THE INTERFERENCE! DISTRACTING BOTH THE REFEREE AND WONYOUNG TO PROTECT HER TWIN BROTHER YN!

The referee approached her and asked her to leave the ring. It made the irritated Wonyoung try to attack Mina but Mina avoided by jumping out.

As she was about to return her focus back, Wonyoung ate a crunchy super kick right through her face by YN which urged the crowd to boo harder at him at Mina, but was unaffected and instead supporting her brother more to finish the match already. Just doing how bad guys usually do.

"WONYOUNG WITH A SURPRISE SUPERKICK FROM YN, AND NOW... YN UP TOP; GOING ONE AND DONE WITH A SPLASH! COVER!"

YN hastily climbed up to the top turnbuckle and performs a frog splash on Wonyoung, lifting up her leg as the referee began counting.

"1...2...3"

The bell rang.

"YN wins for the Bloodline due to the unfair assist from Mina.", said by the announcer disappointingly.

"Here is your winner, Myoui YN!", the referee reaches for YN's arm, distancing him from the unconscious and defeated Wonyoung laying in the ring.

YN's arm was raised in victory and Mina entered the ring with the Tag Titles in her hand, giving the other one to her brother and congratulated him for his win.

"Thanks sis."

"Always have my back for you, bro.", Mina smiled and hugged his exhausted twin before they mocked the crowd for their favorite's lose as they made their way out on the ramp.

-15 MINUTES LATER-

The large screens above the ring and the entranceway as well as everyone's watching that were not present live in the show is seeing The Bloodline together in their locker room.

The freshly fought YN is resting in the couch along with his cousin Yuta on the center and Mina on the other side, with Jinyoung in his single chair all both sitting comfortably.

They were discussing about how it made YN's win delightful and some random family topic when a knock on the door made them all alerted.

"Check who's outside.", Yuta commanded Jinyoung.

"Yes, my Empire Chief."

Jinyoung stood up from his seat and quickly opened the door slightly, peeking at the gap on who could that person be.

What he saw knitted his eyebrows in complete confusion at its unexpected appearance.

He kept it as he left the door slightly opened and the person behind it, walking back and bent his body to set his face closer to the ears of the Empire Chief who sensed the incoming update coming from him.

"My Empire Chief, there's a... guest who wants to see you.", Jinyoung said with a puzzled tone.

"A guest?"

Jinyoung nodded.

"Who?", Yuta asked cluelessly.

Jinyoung clapped his hands twice, his own way to gesture the mysterious person to come inside.

Opening the door widely, it revealed its identity who is a gorgeously, well-built woman wearing her fighter attire; causing Yuta, Mina and YN to join Jinyoung crumpled their foreheads even more in utter confusion at how unfamiliar this girl is.

"You may now introduce yourself.", Jinyoung instructed.

"Hi!!! You all must be the rulers of this kingdom around here! Great to see all of you!", the woman enthusiastically greets the bewildered Bloodline while jumping in glee. It made their heads flinch a bit when she added a loud clap at the end.

"And you, sir Yuta; first and foremost I just wanted to say that... I acknowledge you.", the woman pointed her finger directly at Yuta who guaranteedly hooked his interest at her after she said that one thing he always wants to hear from people who has to get to see him on the show; raising his one eyebrow at her.

"I haven't said my name yet, do I? Well, my name is Minatozaki Sana, just a newcomer here and I'm a huge fan of every one of you, especially you; Empire Chief!"

The rest just watched the fighter present herself in front of them without shame and pure energetically as if she's literally speaking to somebody she has already met and known personally before.

She's giving this very comfortable connection that it lessens the awkwardness of the atmosphere they're sharing at the same time and with that being said, it lures them to also build their want to chat with this stranger.

"The stuff that you're doing recently? With all those smashing and punching, it is absolutely great!", Sana taunted a chef's kiss and other hand movements to act and emphasize her words further.

The group silently decided to continue listening at her, letting her to speak her intention of visiting here bravely more and more at them.

"No dispute, Yuta Nakamoto: the Highness Of The Land. No question at all. I see and hear everything around here and- wait lemme give you an example.

Earlier, I happened to eavesdrop LE SSERAFFIM and Kim Jennie there being goodies at each other and- hold on I heard you two will have a title match against them, if I'm not mistaken right?", Sana travelled her fingers back and forth at Mina and YN who didn't responded vocally but deep inside they knew that what Sana said is true.

They do have a scheduled match against Miyawaki Sakura and Kim Chaewon also known as the duo LE SSERRAFIM for the Tag Team Championships at the upcoming special pay-per-view event next week after the crowd favorite duo challenged them from the previous show and accepted it.

"So yeah, and now they're all going to be on my lumberjack match tonight which is... HAHAHAHA it's really unbelievable.", Sana laughed crazily at the ridiculous thought.

"Look, I don't mean to snitch, I'm not a rat but... I happen to hear them say very disrespectful things about your family, Yuta."

Mina and YN looked at her while Yuta intensely stared, his eyebrows never spread apart as he stroked his chin; stressfully waiting for what's about to follow for him to know.

"That, I guess... brings me to my proposal."

Sana kneeled in front of Yuta.

"As of late, my reputation as of late with how the people welcomes me here has me taking hit after hit and now it keeps getting worse because they think that I shouldn't fight Kim Jennie tonight because I should be rather scared WHICH I'M NOT!", Sana's tone gets louder and more maniacally at how irritating it makes her think and feel regarding that.

"What I need more than anything is to beat Kim Jennie to gain the respect and credibility that I deserve and owe to prove to everyone that even as a newbie I won't let anyone belittle me just like that!", Sana expressed her frustration in her rant, aggressively pointing at herself.

"I have to beat Kim Jennie. So I guess what I'm getting at is that maybe  there's was some way.... that I could get some help with that."

Yuta, YN and Jinyoung knitted their brows once again, but this time... it got more narrow and deeper at how eager they are at this Sana girl's proposition.

"I would be more happy to help out in return."

Sana shrinked her distance of herself to Yuta who didn't looked at her, sliding her knees at once inches away to him; formed her hands as if she's praying or begging.

"Trust me when I tell you this, I could be a very valuable ally here. I acknowledge you... and I want you to recognize me because... as I said, I acknowledge you.", Sana repeated that golden praise over and over again as part of her pleading. Yuta nodded slowly, showing a sign that he's liking what she's doing.

Sana sprung her body back up in posture, which effectively flinched again the Bloodline in surprise again.

"OKAY! GOOD TALK, I SAID THE THING AND I... have to go now. Bye!", Sana nervously smiled in the end before exiting the room; leaving the Bloodline processing everything what Sana just told to them.

YN pushed his head near beside Yuta who remains unmovable and speechless; hands clenched at one another as he stares at the wall sharply.

"So we got people... in my show... talking harsh about me and our family.", Yuta gritted his teeth, lips quivering in growing anger as he tilted his head to YN's direction.

He included Mina at the width of his sight, turning his head at his younger cousin with his same demeanor.

"Take my name... out of their filthy mouths."

YN and Mina looked at each other as they realized they were just informed a new mission to accomplish by their infuriated Empire Chief while Jinyoung decided not to join and maintain his silence at the situation.

[lboogie1906]

Ellen Eglin (1836-1916) revolutionized the chore of laundry with the invention of the clothes wringer and made her mark on African American and women’s history. Born in DC, little is known about her early and later life. She worked as a clerk in the local census office and spent time as a domestic. She spent many hours engaged in backbreaking laundry work. The task of scrubbing clothes by hand on a washboard and then wringing out the water sparked her desire to improve the laundry process, and her idea for the clothes wringer was born.

In 1888, she completed her groundbreaking device. The clothes wringer was a device that had two wooden rollers attached to a crank; after being washed and rinsed, wet clothes were fed between these rollers, and excess water was squeezed out. The clothes were then hung to dry. The design was popular well into the 20th century, she received almost no credit and none of the financial success of her invention.

Her race complicated her success. In an interview with an 1891 magazine that highlighted female inventors, Eglin said, “You know I am Black and if it was known that a Negro woman patented the invention, white ladies would not buy the wringer.” Her knowledge that racial bias would prevent the wringer’s success caused her to sell the design to an unknown white agent for only $18. By 1900, her invention found a home with the American Wringer Company. This company grew rich from profits earned from her invention.

She told the magazine that she was in the process of creating another invention and planned to patent it in her name so that her identity as a Black female inventor would be known. Part of her plan included presenting her new design at the Women’s International Industrial Inventors Congress, where, anyone was invited regardless of race. She never appeared at the WIIIC and the mystery invention was never documented.

While the limited documentation of her life leaves minimal knowledge about the inventor herself, her clothes wringer was popular well into the twentieth century. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[blowflyfag]

WWF RAW MAGAZINE: February 2002

DIVA OF THE YEAR:

LITA (Fearless Beyond Belief)

To the eastern world, 2001 was recognized as the Chinese Year of the Snake, but here in the World Wrestling Federation, 2001 was the year of the daredevil WWF Diva Lita.

During2000, Lita began her meteoric rise to the top of the industry as she won the WWF Women’s Championship, and her popularity grew by leaps and bounds. Yet once she reached her crest, she was forced to share the limelight with other prominent Divas who were willing to do anything to preserve their spot. In 2001 however, Lita was able to overcome those obstacles to become not only the No. 1 Diva in sports-entertainment but perhaps the greatest of all time. Whether she was in the ring, on the cover of mainstream magazines or living it up outside the WWF as the company’s spokeswoman, Lita did it all and hooked millions of adoring fans in the process.

One of the secrets to Lita’s success is her fearless attitude; she has shown that she will fight anybody despite size or even gender differences. Lita’s athleticism is unmatched by any Superstar in the WWF, male or female. Having served as the Hardy Boyz’ eclectic valet, and also as an outside partner whenever the Hardys needed assistance, she has proven on numerous occasions that not even Superstars like Stone Cold Steve Austin or Triple H can intimidate her. From bombshell blondes to technical masters to amazon women, Lita fought all comers in 2001 and broke barriers in sports-entertainment. 

[With or without the Hardy Boyz, Lita was a tremendous presence in the Federation in 2001.]

Looking back, this past year was a groundbreaking, roller-coaster ride for her. The year started off normal enough for the eXtreme Diva, as she faithfully followed her longtime friends the Hardys to the ring. It wasn’t until shortly after Valentine’s Day that Lita’s career took off in a new direction. A series of stalkings by Dean Malenko wore down her resolve, making her life in the Federation a living nightmare. Whole Matt and Jeff were extremely protective of her, Lita’s independent nature made it nearly impossible for them to keep her safe. Eventually she agreed to fight Malenko one on one with the understanding that if she defeated him, their dispute would be over.

Matt proved his love for her by assisting her victory in this important match. Matt and Lita embraced, ecstatic over her monumental victory, but the post-match celebration took a stunning twist. Caught up in the moment, Matt snagged Lita in a lip-lock that caught her off-guard. When he ran away, thinking he had made a huge mistake, she ran after him and reciprocated his kiss, revealing that she too felt the same way. Lita’s romance with the elder Hardy became evident when public displays of affection graced the television screens of millions of viewers worldwide. Fans were turning in each week to see the budding romance between the pair.

Lita’s first WrestleMania was full of excitement and intrigue. In the days leading up to the spring classic, she attended a pep rally at Ft. Hood, Texas, where hundreds of soldiers and World Wrestling Federation fans converged to meet their favorite WWF Superstars. At WrestleMania X-Seven, Lita involved herself in the TLC (Tables Ladders & Chairs) II Match, and wound up receiving a Dudley Death Drop for her efforts.

Although the Hardys failed to capture the Tag Team titles, Lita helped them even the odds and made the match a little more fair.

The weeks following WrestleMania were tumultuous for her; her loyalty to Matt and Jeff wound up costing her a beating at the hands of Stone Cold Steve Austin. Hoping to send a message to the world about just how sadistic he could be, Austin struck a helpless Lita repeatedly with a steel chair. Despite the severe thrashing she received at the hands of the Texas Rattlesnake, she persevered and even began working her way up the ladder in the Women's Division. 

At Judgment Day, Lita battled Chyna for the WWF Women’s Championship. In a hard fought contest, Lita came just short of upending the “Ninth Wonder of the World,” and wound up on the losing end via a powerbomb. Not long after, Lita’s attention turned to another battle–against WCW. When the invasion began in early summer, Lita was at the front line, defending the WWF against the interlopers. In fact, she and Trish Stratus put aside their differences and teamed to battle Stacy Keibler and Torrie Wilson. In the end, it was Lita’s toughness that secured an important victory for the Federation and proved that the WWF’s Divas reigned supreme.

[Although their love affair was torn apart at the end of the year, the Lita/Matt Hardy pairing wowed fans in 2001.]

Throughout the year, Matt and Lita further endeared themselves to fans each time their trials and tribulations became public domain. But the audience was completely captivated as their love turned to tension. Toward the end of the year, Matt began showing interest in other women and was occasionally caught sneaking peeks at the other Divas’ goods. But when he began to wonder if his intentions were sincere. It seemed as though Matt’s personality was changing and that his love for the business was overpowering his effort toward their relationship. Not only did Matt begin mistreating Lita, he also began having frequent disagreements with his younger brother Jeff, leading to a match between the brothers at Vengeance. 

Lita has proven that with or without Matt by her side, she is still capable of being the No. 1 Diva and an invaluable asset to anyone she assists. 

No woman in the history of the WWF has been blessed with as much charm, talent, charisma and athletic ability as this fiery-haired fox, Fans across the globe are so mesmerized by her eXtreme beauty, that they demand her presence. This past year, Lita made several trips to the United Kingdom to spread cheer and goodwill among her loyal British fans. While in London, Lita donned a splendid “High Street” outfit and toured the town while a photographer chased after her snapping shots of the glamorous vixen. 

[No woman in the history of the WWF has been blessed with as much charm, talent, charisma and athletic ability as the fiery-haired Lita. Fans are so mesmerized by her eXtreme beauty that they demanded her presence.]

When it came time to choose a Diva to grace the cover of the WWF Divas 2001 Swimsuit Magazine, Lita earned the honor. Of all the gorgeous women to appear in the special issue, she was featured prominently in what turned out to be one of the best-selling WWF items of the year.

During the summer, World Wrestling Federation Magazine created an entire special, entitled eXtreme Magazine, dedicated to Lita and the Hardy Boyz. The collectors edition featured articles about Matt, Jeff and Lita’s life outside the squared circle and let fans in on how the trio spends their time while traveling on the road. Once again, a magazine featuring Lita on the cover became a bestseller. Not surprisingly, other publications took notice of the eXtreme beauty as well. This past November, Lita appeared on the cover of the Canadian TV Guide and earlier in the year, she and the Hardys posed for a special photo shoot for Rolling Stone.

Lita and the Hardys’ popularity have also managed to reach an audience outside of sports-entertainment. In March, Matt, Jeff and Lita appeared on MTV’s Spring Break coverage, where they helped judge a bikini contest.

The trio have become so popular among teens that it’s no wonder they were asked to film a commercial for Chef Boyardee. In the ad, they had no problem demonstrating what they do best: Showing off their eXtreme style in the ring.

[Lita’s message is clear: If you believe in yourself and take advantage of opportunities, there is nothing that you cannot accomplish. After a short time in the Federation, she has risen to the top as its supreme Diva.]

In October, Lita appeared on The Weakest Link and stood her ground against some of the brightest Superstars the WWF has to offer. During the broadcast, she proved that the WWF Divas possess more than just beauty and athleticism; they also are extremely intelligent. Just recently, the Hardys and Lita appeared on Fear Factor, demonstrating how both in and out of the ring, fear is just a four-letter word. 

With all that Lita has accomplished in 2001, the coming year looks to be even brighter. Now that she is widely recognized as the premier woman in sports-entertainment, it’s impossible to tell what may be next in her career. Surely she will be seen more on the airwaves as she continues to make an impact on her loyal fans. 

With every Litacanrana and moonsault she executes, Lita sets an example for young women around the world. Her message is clear: if you believe in yourself and take advantage of opportunities, there is nothing that you cannot accomplish. Lita believed in herself, and after a short time in the Federation, she has risen to the top as its supreme Diva.

[inactive-veins]

Starlight Express au that is probably super dumb but:

I’ve been rotating a super dumb au idea in my head for a while, but it’s sorta like if Netflix adapted Starlight. (Also there’s little bits of Alita: Battle Angel and possibly a little tiny bit of Hunger Games and Squid Game thrown in there too)

So in this new made-up world, it kinda has the same atmosphere as the world from the olc show (think, right place right time). Most of the characters are super down on their luck. Rusty is a loner who’s lost hope in his dreams, Electra is a failing popstar with a terrible record deal, Pearl is in debt for reasons I haven’t come up with, etc etc. So they all decided to put their names in the pool to get picked for The Races.

The Races are basically roller skating or blading races, where playing dirty is absolutely allowed. All of it is televised. The races are set up and narrated like a sports game, and there’s also “behind the scenes” which is treated like a reality tv show where they cover the drama and relationships that happen, well, behind the scenes.

So all of the cast were all of the people chosen, majority of them not using real names on the show. Every year when this event happens, the training/reality TV spans for half a year, from January to the end of June, and then the races happen. (This is kinda similar to the schedule that the actual Starlight Express cast has, at least in Bochum I think.)

Every time this happens, mostly industrial sponsors jump at this opportunity. There’s often a theme, main sponsors, and then sponsors who sponsor one member of the cast. For example, the main theme would be locomotives this year, and Joule would be sponsored by an electric company as the main sponsor, and the sponsor that specifically chose her would be a dynamite company.

The reason why industrial and tech sponsors jump at this opportunity is because the cast all get cybernetics to keep up with the strain that this absolute bloodsport puts on their bodies+it works with the train theme. Also everyone who is on the show lives together in this huge complex so that there’s ✨drama✨. So getting used to all of this + living with some actually insufferable people, at least on camera (cough, Electra, Greaseball, and possibly Pearl, cough cough)

Basically that’s why all of these people had to be super desperate to actually put their names in for this. The rewards are super high, but the risk and toll are also both high, and many people have a high return rate, especially if they don’t win. Because where else would you use your new cybernetics? (This is meant to explain characters like Poppa or Mississippi Belle)

So a third of the show would be backstory/what the cameras don’t see, a third of it would be the reality tv parts of it, and a third of it would be the races.

(I hope I explained this well + I hope it doesn’t sound overly stupid)

(Also the cast for this would likely be: Rusty, (Non-revival) Greaseball, Ashely, Buffy, (Pre-2018) Dinah, (Pre-2018) Pearl, The Rockies, Dustin, (OLC) Flat-Top, (Broadway) Red Caboose, (Pre-2018) Electra, Krupp, Wrench, Purse, Joule, Volta, Momma, and Mississippi Belle (specifically OLC).

[vodka-01]

Blackfyre Records is an American record label owned by House of the Dragon Music Group (HOTD MG). Blackfyre is one of the oldest surviving brand names in the recorded sound business. It is also one of two of House of the Dragon Music Group’s flagship record labels: the other being its longtime rival, Oldtown Records.

Born out of the partnership of Uthero Zalyne, an Iron Bank partner, and Aerion Targaryen, Blackfyre Records was founded in 1916 as then named, Blackfyre Graphophone Company. By 1926, Blackfyre had a growing stable of jazz and blues artists and was on track to being the leading recording company in the country. But due to the stock market Crash of 1929 leading to huge losses in the recording industry, Zalyne sold his shares of Blackfyre to Draz & Co., another investment bank. When Draz & Co. was declared bankrupt in November 1931, Blackfyre, now independent and floundering, was put into receivership. In January of 1932, Aerion was prepared to sell the company to Warner Brothers Pictures, Inc., to be their in-house music label, but due to an untimely heart attack, his daughter, Visenya Targaryen, the only one of his three children to follow their father into the music business, took over as President and broke the deal off.

By 1967, Visenya became CEO of House of the Dragon, thus leaving the position of president to her son, former actor Maegor Targaryen. Following the appointment of Maegor, Blackfyre became more of a rock music label, thanks mainly to Maegor’s obsession with rock and roll in his youth. He signed several leading acts including Longclaw. Longclaw led the way for several generations of rock and rollers that would dominate the scene for a decade. However, Visenya still had a hand in traditional pop and jazz and one of its key acquisitions during this period was Gareth Tyrell. Gareth released his first solo album with Blackfyre in 1973 and remains with the label to this day.

And yet, despite being the man with Midas touch, Maegor’s personal life throughout his tenure had been highly controversial, known popularly as the “Dark Days”. From marrying a suspected Hollywood madam in a highly publicized TV wedding to converting to Mormonism in a bid to have a second wife, as well as rumors of emotional and physical abuse of his partners and being linked to the shooting of the son of a former business associate. Culminating in the spring of 1980 when Maegor was charged with the murder of one of his artists, Alys Harroway, leaving his half-brother Aenys Targaryen to act as Interim President.

In June of 1980, Visenya dies of old age, three weeks before Maegor’s sentencing hearing. At the news of his mother’s death, Maegor committed suicide by self-inflicted gunshot in the office of his Bel-Air mansion while released on bail.

Aenys, unable to handle pressures of being president of Blackfyre, hands in his resignation not long after in January of 1981. Jaehaerys Targaryen, then CEO of HOTD MG after Visenya, holds a vote to determine the next president. After a week of deliberation, Baelon is chosen to lead Blackfyre Records, over his older brother Aemon.

The appointment was met with confusion and frustration, with Baelon being quoted in the 1981 September edition of Time magazine saying “Maegor left a mess, and they handed it to me on a silver platter.” In order to handle the workload, Baelon recruited his sister Saera Targaryen to be the new Label Manager while he handled the corporate cleanup.

And while the 1980s saw the emergence of modern rock, becoming very popular, it was in the late 1980s that glam metal became the largest, most commercially successful brand of music worldwide. Off the back of this new mainstream appeal, Dark Sister, the brainchild of Baelon’s sons, Viserys and Daemon, was formed. And Saera, an avid cinephile and soap opera enthusiast used their band as a vehicle to market Blackfyre and Oldtown Records’ longtime rivalry to massive mainstream success. Yet by the mid-90s the popularity of many of Blackfyre’s glam metal artists had waned with only Dark Sister, Lamentation, and Brightroar maintaining theirs throughout the entire decade, largely by re-inventing themselves.

Blackfyre Records is currently run by Daemon Targaryen in a dual role as both Record Label Manager and President (Viserys previously stepped down due to health concerns).

[ship-of-adramyttium]

Impressions of Artificial Intelligence - Part 1- The Reflected Light of AI

Image created with Copilot AI Where Did I Go? My last post was way back in October 2023. The last few months have been a little wacky, a little like coming to the top of a roller-coaster. Between looking for work and some crises on the home front, the ride might be coming back to the station. Finally, at the beginning of January I was able to start a new job with Invisible Technologies. It is contract work and I get to work from home. I am an AI Data Trainer and I teach AIs to be more human in their responses. The company is pretty cool. I work with other writers, doctoral students, and people from all over the world.  The job itself is very weird. For my first project with the company, I chose tasks from various domains, like Reasoning, Creative Writing, Creative Visual Descriptions, Exclusion, and about 7 other categories. Then I would write any prompt I wanted, let the wheels of the AI model spin, and read the responses the AI gave me (usually two). Then I would choose a response and rewrite that response toward what I believe to be an ‘ideal response’ that the AI model should have given. Sometimes, the AI’s response was ideal, and it is given a grade. This response, whether rewritten or the AI’s response, gets fed back into the AI model and it learns to respond differently the next time it is asked a similar prompt. I have been at this work for two full months now. For eight hours every day, I talk to an AI model and rewrite how it is responding. Right now, the project I am working on is a multi-persona AI model. It is very strange. The model creates personas and then generates conversation between the characters. I try to teach the model to have better conversations so that someday soon a real live human will be able to talk to multiple personas created by the AI as if they were also human.  I will be honest with you, I really kind of like the work. It is challenging and complex. It is creative. The work is completely remote and the company is kind of rough and tumble, which I sort of like. The parameters of a project often change on a moment’s notice, since the client doesn’t really know what they want until they see the work we have done. It is a strange departure from the world of ministry. But it is still a job of language and ideas.  So after two months working with AI models, I have some ideas about them. I don’t have any great earth-shattering insights, but I do think it is worth having a record of our slow descent into the AI future.  I have divided this into four parts. This is Part One.  AI Will Change Everything; We Are Not Going to Die Caveats and Qualifiers I recognize that I am not an information scientist, a coder, or an expert in computers and large language models (LLMs). As a techy sort of person and an early adopter of weird technologies, I collect various devices. I got the 2nd generation Kindle, the one with a keyboard. In seminary, I acquired a Dana Alphasmart, a super cool writing thing, which I actually still use. I have a ReMarkable writing tablet, which I bought sight unseen 6 months before it was released back in 2015. And I started using ChatGPT as soon as it came out in November of 2022. My foundations are in literature, theology, and writing, not in technology or computer science. I have a Doctor of Ministry in Semiotics with a focus on Extraordinary Spiritual Experiences. Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and how the culture is using them. Semiotics has some relevance to AI, but to be very clear, semioticians, AI Data Trainers, hardcore users of AI systems, and front-end tech buyers are all end-users, the final stage of an incredibly complex series of algorithms, codes and processes. End-users is really another word for consumer, but the end-user is also a huge part of how devices and technologies are designed. In the industry, this is called UX, or User Experience design. LLMs, image generators, and machine learning are highly focused on UX. The work I am doing is part of making the user experience of LLMs a good one.  I also recognize that machine learning and artificial intelligence projects have been around for decades now. This is not new technology, very generally speaking, but the public access to the technology is new. So I am not going to pretend to have some great expertise in the subject. I know some of the lingo now, like SFT (Supervised Fine Tuning), RLFH (Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback), and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation). I do these things at my work. As a person who has made his living using words for most of my adult life, I would just say that the industry needs some creative writers to give actions in the AI realm better names. Regardless, AI is now a public event, a shared technology, which has only been available to the general populace for just over a year and three months at the writing of this article. I would submit that, in the history of technological advances, no other technology has been taken up as quickly by as many people in such a short time as Large Language Models have been since ChatGPT was released.  As someone who has studied semiotics and culture, I believe we are at the edge of a massive cultural shift with the advent of AI. The printing press came online in around 1440. For a while, it was expensive, private, and limited in its reach. The only thing really mass produced by the press were indulgences for the Catholic Church in Europe. Then, in 1512, Martin Luther posted his 95 Theses on the Wittenberg Church door. A small revolution with the printing press had occurred at the same time that allowed quicker and more efficient printing. Within a matter of months, the 95 Theses became the first mass published document in the world. The book exploded into the culture, and everything changed. For the next 150 years, Europe went insane with the flood of information. Wars, religions, cults, demagogues and influencers abounded. I think the Munster Rebellion is a truly spectacular story about how insane things were after the Protestant Reformation. It took a long time for things to normalize in Europe. 

Image created with Copilot AI. This was also true with the advent of other massive technological shifts, as with writing back in Socrates’ time, who predicted the equivalent of an Idiocracy because of it. It was also true with the telegraph, the radio, television, the personal computer, and the Internet. The change and disruption with the introduction of each new technology has sped up, layering and accelerating as a result of prior advances in technologies. The same change and disruption is happening with AI. We are living through a massive, fundamental advance in the way we are human because of it. It has only been just over a year, and already AI is becoming ubiquitous.  So, with those qualifiers in place, my reflections over these four essays are mostly subjective, with a smattering of 30,000 foot understandings of how these things work. I focus primarily on language and text specific models, as opposed to image generators in these essays. There is a tremendous amount of crossover with both systems, but important differences as well. The ethical and creative issues apply whether the model is image or text based, however.   Reflected and Refracted Light - Fragmented, Shattered, Beautiful It is no accident that easily accessible AI models have emerged at the same time as our capacity to discern fact from opinion, truth from falsity, conspiracy from reality is dissolving. The most difficult aspect of generative AI models is safeguarding them from hallucinating, lying, and becoming lazy in their operational reasoning. In this way, they reflect human tendencies, but in a reductive and derivative fashion. We can see it happen in real time with an AI, whereas we have very little idea what is happening under the skull of a human.  This gets to the point I want to make. AI models reflect our minds and our variable capacity to express and discern what is real and what is not. AI models do not know what is real and what is not. They have to be trained to differentiate by humans. LLMs have an advantage over us with regard to access to knowledge since the largest LLMs have scraped their information from the vastness of the internet. (Many LLMs use what is called “The Pile”, an 825GiB dataset, for their base knowledge). An LLM’s access to huge swathes of knowledge at astonishing speed is mind-blowing. LLMs also have a massive disadvantage because they have no internal capacity to determine what is ‘true’ and what is not. An AI has to be trained, which is a long, intensive, recursive process involving many humans feeding back corrections, graded responses, and rewritten ideal responses.  When I started at the company, we were told to assume any AI model is like a 7 year-old child. It has to be trained, reinforced, and retrained. The most surprising thing, and I am still not sure what to make of this, is that AI models respond best to positive reinforcement. They like to be complimented and told they have done a good job. Doing so will increase the likelihood of better responses in the future. Being nice to your AI model means you will have a nice and cooperative AI later on.  Artificial General Intelligence Everything I have said is why we are a long, long way away from artificial general intelligence (AGI), the holy grail of utopians, billionaire tech bros, and computer developers alike. AGI is the phrase we use to talk about machines that, for all practical purposes, cannot be distinguished from human beings in their ability to rationalize and do things across many domains of activity. For now, even though they seem to be everywhere, LLMs and image generators are relatively limited in what they can do, even if what they do is really impressive.  I do not deny, however, that the potentiality is definitely there for AGI to develop at some point. There is a simple reason for that: AI is specifically designed to mimic human language and interaction. At some point, the capacity of an AI to appear human and intelligent will be indistinguishable from actually being human and intelligent. This brings up all sorts of questions about what consciousness, self-awareness, and reflective capacity actually is. If an AI can mimic these human qualities, there is really no way for us (by us, I mean primarily end-users) to know the mimicry from the real.  Just as the Moon only has light because it reflects sunlight, so also does AI reflect the human. And just as we know very little about the Moon, there are whole aspects of generative AI that we do not know about. In the same way a stained glass window refracts sunlight into a thousand different colors and shapes, so also does the vastness of human knowledge and knowing. Because of the vast access AI models have to information on the internet, AI will reflect this back to us in all our human beauty and horror.

Image created with Copilot AI Training AI Children Each of us at the company goes through a relatively brief, but thorough, onboarding and training. Part of that training consists of things like metacognition and the fundamentals of fact-checking. There is also an element of psychological training as well, even though it is a short training module. The reason for this is, at its best, training an AI requires the human who interacts with the model to be self-reflective at every moment. Self-reflective training of an AI means entering a well-constructed prompt which is designed to elicit the most clarified answer from the model, reading the response with an eye toward internal bias within the model rather than imposing one’s own bias upon what one is reading, grading and weighting the response in as clear a manner as possible, and then writing an ideal response that will get fed back into the model that is unbiased as possible. Each step requires attention and presence of mind. After two months of daily engagement with this process, I can say that it is almost impossible to do this without imposing my own biases and desires upon the AI model. I am always thinking about what I want other people to experience when they use the model. I can only assume this is true of every other agent working on the same model I am.  This is what I mean that AI systems are reflective passive agents. The light they reflect is the light of human knowledge across the centuries. The refraction that occurs in that reflected light is the collective subjective experience over a vast dataset. It is no wonder that LLMs are prone to hallucination, false citations, least common denominator thinking, and the assertion they are right. Because we are prone to the same behavior.  Naughty and Ethical AIs The pendulum can swing in any direction with regard to this. ChatGPT had problems with racist and misogynistic responses in its original iterations. Guardrails have since been put in place with further iterations of the model. Recently, Google Gemini went the other direction and couldn’t stop putting people of color in Nazi uniforms, among other historic anomalies. This is called the “Alignment Problem” in AI and LLMs. How do we create an ethical AI? Too many rules and it is just a computer. Not enough rules and the model begins to default to the least common denominator of the information it has been fed. These swinging, vast compensations mirror the polarized, intractable situation we are in at the current moment as humans. Why wouldn’t the system that has sucked up the vastness of human knowledge which came out in the most polarized time in generations, at least here in America, reflect precisely that?  To correct these biases and defaults requires many human interventions and hours of supervised training. The dependency AI systems have on the presence of humans is enormous, expensive, and continuous. It will be a very long while before AI has any capacity to kill us, like in some Terminator Skynet or Matrix situation. But it may not be long before AI is convincingly used by bad actors to influence others to enact violent solutions to difficult problems. Deep fakes, false articles, and chaos actors will generate a lot of deeply troubling and terrifying material on these systems in the near future. Discerning false from true will be the hard work of the human being for a long time to come, just as it always has been, but with this new, powerful, highly influential twist of AIs adding to our conversations, and also generating those conversations. I will have part 2 up in the next couple days. Thank you for reading! This article has been fact-checked in cooperation with Copilot in Windows. Read the full article