#it's literally sold out on amazon. like how???

[slippery-minghus]

x

[eskumii]

yandere!incel!tomura shigaraki + foreigner!darling who can't speak japanese

TITLE: " RENT-A-GF " — navi.

NOTES: nsfw (18+ only) below the cut (non-con!! somnophilia!!) reminder: this is merely fantasy, i don't condone. will prob proofread someday lol. enjoy!

PAIRING: yandere!incel!shigaraki tomura x foreinger!reader

GENRE/AU: shigaraki is rlly misogynistic and delusional, age gap (you're older), reader is a substitute english teacher who got kidnapped by bwad gwuys and is now... yeah

CHARACTERS: shigaraki tomura (21), reader (24)

let's be for real: shigaraki was born to be an incel.

and incel!shigaraki is shamelessly self-aware of this, indeed. when he's not out terrorizing innocent citizens with his villainous coups, he takes to the internet to fulfill his insatiable need for an adrenaline rush. gorey video games and brutal death metal makes him light up in glee, but sometimes it's just not enough.

so, instead, he's a frequent on the dark web, diligently scouring sites that specialize in obscure female porn collectives that cater to his twisted kinks. incel!shigaraki glowers at the pictures of stupid, slutty women who prance around in sexy lingerie, but still gets a hard-on because he wishes he had a woman who would do that for him and him only.

and what shigaraki wants, he gets. on another sweaty night in his dark bedroom, he's boredly clicking through the hundreds of entries of women who are being sold for, what he thinks, too high of a price. not that money would ever be a problem for him; if he felt compelled to, he could just kidnap the girl he wanted all over again. so, no, it's not the price—it's what he thinks they're worth based on his attraction to them.

and, so far, all of them are worthless.

you see, the conundrum is that incel!shigaraki has a thing for foreign girls. don't ask why, he doesn't know. maybe he finds it cute that they're so clueless about his culture and language, and he's the one who'll control the narrative that rules their ignorance. maybe it's so cute how they wear their perpetual confusion on their face at all times, like a bratty kid who can't navigate the world without mommy or daddy by their side.

of course, though, women could hardly do anything on their own anyway. every time he came across one they'd wail and cry as he grabbed them by the hair and threatened to kill them if they didn't shut the hell up. they'd beg for their lives or scream for someone to save them, but it would only piss him off more at how useless and brainless they tended to be. he just couldn't help but decay them—they were so noisy and whiny, it wasn't his fault.

obviously, shigaraki has neither patience nor experience with women. in fact, he can probably count with two fingers how many times he's had a non-violent interaction with a woman in his entire lifetime. the mere thought of this drives his insecurities to the brink of rage, but it's not his fault women are so unbelievably tasteless in their choice of men. it's their fault he has to go to such lengths to find a decent woman worthy of his presence.

but imagine his delight when he happens upon a listing of you, an immediately attractive foreign woman who used to be an english substitute teacher of all things. he clicks through your pictures with a renewed vigor, his interest piqued as he studies your unique features. eagerly, he scours through your posted information and it turns out that you happen to be exactly the kind of woman he's looking for.

it's a done deal. the transaction takes less than a few minutes and incel!shigaraki couldn't be more pleased with how smoothly it went. he'll have to leave a good review later on, when and if the woman he's just bought has satisfied him.

it takes just one night before shigaraki finds you literally dropped off at his doorstep like an amazon prime package. you’ve clearly been pampered with the way you’re clad in a skimpy maid outfit; your nails, hair, and makeup are all dolled to perfection. you look exactly like you did in the pictures.

and clearly you're wise beyond your years. you don't speak much because of the obvious language barrier, but you do seem to understand a bit of elementary japanese. shigaraki is delighted by your small mutterings of broken japanese—it’s unbelievably cute. sometimes he'll force you to speak in japanese just because he loves watching you struggle with your limited vocabulary.

incel!shigaraki gets attached to you. you're very attractive in his eyes, and he's completely ecstatic that you're all his. a woman he can do whatever he wants with, and no one would dare question him. the immense power trip sends him over the edge.

that being said, the first couple of weeks are still rather... awkward. you're not happy about being in the situation you're in, but you're smart enough to keep that to yourself. you don't fuss when shigaraki orders you to fetch him liquor or tidy up his filthy room, nor do you complain when he commands you to cuddle with him or keep him company while he plays video games.

"[name], c'mere," he'd bark at you, eyes still glued to the tv screen.

"be a good girl and keep my lap warm, hm?"

he'll force you to wear cute lingerie sets like he's seen the women on porn sites do. somehow you look so much better though, and it feels as though you're teasing him with the way you bend over so much while cleaning. the outline of your pussy through the small fabric that stretches over it has him horny in a matter of seconds. you're such a tease, aren't you ashamed? you just can't seem to stay in line.

however, despite all your obvious sexual innuendos towards him, shigaraki gets no relief. he's resorted to jacking off whenever you go to sleep but no matter how hard or how much he cums, there's an itch that can't be scratched with masturbation alone. and the way you're so shy around him is adorable, sure, but your little playing-hard-to-get act wasn't cutting it anymore.

the remedy? incel!shigaraki starts slipping sleeping pills into your food and drinks.

and it doesn't take long for shigaraki to develop a routine of visiting you while you're sleeping. partly to check up on you and assure himself of your presence, but mostly to creep around the edges of the bed and feel you up. you sleep so soundly that you don't even twitch when he fondles your soft breasts or runs his spindly fingers over your curves.

he almost doesn't want to disturb you; you look so peaceful, totally different than the frightened little faces you muster when you're awake. but the bothersome tightness stretching his boxers taut against its stitches makes it hard to resist his urges. anyway, you're simply doing the only thing a woman is good for: using your body to please him.

his breath is hot and heavy, laced with lust and selfish perversion as he defiles you to get himself off. some nights he just sits and admires your beauty, caressing your face with clumsy, inexperienced fingertips. some nights your shirt is pulled up so he can marvel at how nicely your breasts sit in whatever color bra he forced you to wear.

other nights his cock is nestled between them, thrusting like his life depends on it, chasing that euphoric high he gets when he finally spills his seed across your hardening nipples. and other nights shigaraki is even more daring—cute pajama pants and panties below your knees, face buried between your thighs as he explores every inch of your sweet cunt. he knows it's wrong, but so what? he's a villian, that's what makes it feel so right.

when you make faces in your sleep, he's filled with so much genuine affection—it's almost as if you're telling him he's doing a good job. you love it, don't you? he so desperately wants to hear you cry his name in that precious accent of yours and run your hands through his hair as you lavish your praise upon him for making you cream so many times.

he can't keep his eyes off you. so soft and compliant. you're so pretty while he's stuffing his cock into you and relentlessly flicking your little clit, not stopping even when he feels you clench around him like a vice as you orgasm over and over. not stopping even though you're drooling all over the linen sheets and he's came twice already.

"that's right... y-you gonna cum again? you gonna—ngh—cum all over my cock, you dumb whore?"

shigaraki watches with glassy, intrigued eyes as you squirm ever so slightly, face warped into one of undeniable pleasure as he ravages your gushing pussy. you're such a good girl for him, letting him use you as he wishes.

you're the woman he's chosen to give his virginity to. he's so happy and content that when he cums inside of you for the third time, he doesn't pull out. instead, shigaraki gently maneuvers your body so he can spoon you from behind, whispering tender "i love you's" as if he knows what that means. absently grinding his hips because your warmth is so comforting around his sticky, softening dick.

as much as shigaraki wants to stay and pound you into the mattress all night, the sleeping medication doesn't last forever. not to mention the mess you've made; the sheets are completely ruined and your clothes are strewn about on the floor, long forgotten. it's hot in your room and it stinks of his cum and sweat, but it doesn't really matter. the only thing on his mind is you and how he'll ruin you again tomorrow night.

for now, though, he rewards you for being so good by cleaning you up, smirking whenever you unconsciously nuzzle up to his touch. when your clothes are back on, he plants a tender kiss on your forehead and admires your flushed face from the shadows of your bedside. when the sun begins to rise and you stir in your ignorance, he'll sneak out and act as if nothing ever happened.

incel!shigaraki who doesn't deny that you're just another stupid slutty woman, but you're the only woman he'll ever want to cum inside of. when he returns to his room, he remembers to pull up your archived listing on his computer and dazedly taps away at his keyboard.

"10/10 recommend"

[ventique18]

This statistic is so interesting to me because of a few things.

(These "reasons" are purely my conjecture and may be right or wrong.)

All along I thought that Malleus was NOT popular in JP. Because a) He doesn't have many fanfics on Pixiv, and b) He doesn't really get voted highly in Yume, or Japanese xReader poll rankings. I've just come to a conclusion that he simply was not popular, but I somehow doubted that because his merch are ALWAYS sold out in Amazon JP and other stores. It's very rare to find Malleus items that aren't preorders. So I was thinking, Malleus JP fans are probably the silent majority-- those who don't really have time to create stuff, but are curious enough to search content through Google and has enough financial capability to hoard his merch: the working adult class. He is very popular with adult players.

He is very consistently popular in EN and was beaten by Riddle because of meta keywords like "How to beat Riddle twst" (Malleus does not have a boss battle early on), Riddle twst figure (Malleus does not have a scale figure yet), or Riddle twst cosplay (Riddle's just more pleasant to cosplay compared to Malleus tbh lol).

Malleus keywords are the horniest out of literally everyone. He's the face of twst's x Reader keywords both in EN and JP. Additionally, JP people have been searching for his specific body parts lmao. The others' popular keywords are pretty tame.

My marketing analysis from way before was correct. Malleus is the "honey trap" of the game; the character deliberately made to be appealing to hook the casual players quickly.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Amazon Alexa is a graduate of the Darth Vader MBA

Next Tuesday (Oct 31) at 10hPT, the Internet Archive is livestreaming my presentation on my recent book, The Internet Con.

If you own an Alexa, you might enjoy its integration with IFTTT, an easy scripting environment that lets you create your own little voice-controlled apps, like "start my Roomba" or "close the garage door." If so, tough shit, Amazon just nuked IFTTT for Alexa:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/25/23931463/ifttt-amazon-alexa-applets-ending-support-integration-automation

Amazon can do this because the Alexa's operating system sits behind a cryptographic lock, and any tool that bypasses that lock is a felony under Section 1201 of the DMCA, punishable by a 5-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine. That means that it's literally a crime to provide a rival OS that lets users retain functionality that Amazon no longer supports.

This is the proverbial gun on the mantelpiece, a moral hazard and invitation to mischief that tempts Amazon executives to run a bait-and-switch con where they sell you a gadget with five features and then remotely kill-switch two of them. This is prime directive of the Darth Vader MBA: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further."

So many companies got their business-plan at the Darth Vader MBA. The ability to revoke features after the fact means that companies can fuck around, but never find out. Apple sold millions of tracks via iTunes with the promise of letting you stream them to any other device you owned. After a couple years of this, the company caught some heat from the record labels, so they just pushed an update that killed the feature:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/10/30/apple-to-ipod-owners-eat-shit-and-die-updated/

That gun on the mantelpiece went off all the way back in 2004 and it turns out it was a starter-pistol. Pretty soon, everyone was getting in on the act. If you find an alert on your printer screen demanding that you install a "security update" there's a damned good chance that the "update" is designed to block you from using third-party ink cartridges in a printer that you (sorta) own:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Selling your Tesla? Have fun being poor. The upgrades you spent thousands of dollars on go up in a puff of smoke the minute you trade the car into the dealer, annihilating the resale value of your car at the speed of light:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/how-to-fix-cars-by-breaking-felony-contempt-of-business-model/

Telsa has to detect the ownership transfer first. But once a product is sufficiently cloud-based, they can destroy your property from a distance without any warning or intervention on your part. That's what Adobe did last year, when it literally stole the colors from your Photoshop files, in history's SaaSiest heist caper:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

And yet, when we hear about remote killswitches in the news, it's most often as part of a PR blitz for their virtues. Russia's invasion of Ukraine kicked off a new genre of these PR pieces, celebrating the fact that a John Deere dealership was able to remotely brick looted tractors that had been removed to Chechnya:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

Today, Deere's PR minions are pitching search-and-replace versions of this story about Israeli tractors that Hamas is said to have looted, which were also remotely bricked.

But the main use of this remote killswitch isn't confounding war-looters: it's preventing farmers from fixing their own tractors without paying rent to John Deere. An even bigger omission from this narrative is the fact that John Deere is objectively Very Bad At Security, which means that the world's fleet of critical agricultural equipment is one breach away from being rendered permanently inert:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/23/reputation-laundry/#deere-john

There are plenty of good and honorable people working at big companies, from Adobe to Apple to Deere to Tesla to Amazon. But those people have to convince their colleagues that they should do the right thing. Those debates weigh the expected gains from scammy, immoral behavior against the expected costs.

Without DMCA 1201, Amazon would have to worry that their decision to revoke IFTTT functionality would motivate customers to seek out alternative software for their Alexas. This is a big deal: once a customer learns how to de-Amazon their Alexa, Amazon might never recapture that customer. Such a switch wouldn't have to come from a scrappy startup or a hacker's DIY solution, either. Take away DMCA 1201 and Walmart could step up, offering an alternative Alexa software stack that let you switch your purchases away from Amazon.

Money talks, bullshit walks. In any boardroom argument about whether to shift value away from customers to the company, a credible argument about how the company will suffer a net loss as a result has a better chance of prevailing than an argument that's just about the ethics of such a course of action:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Inevitably, these killswitches are pitched as a paternalistic tool for protecting customers. An HP rep once told me that they push deceptive security updates to brick third-party ink cartridges so that printer owners aren't tricked into printing out cherished family photos with ink that fades over time. Apple insists that its ability to push iOS updates that revoke functionality is about keeping mobile users safe – not monopolizing repair:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/22/vin-locking/#thought-differently

John Deere's killswitches protect you from looters. Adobe's killswitches let them add valuable functionality to their products. Tesla? Well, Tesla at least is refreshingly honest: "We have a killswitch because fuck you, that's why."

These excuses ring hollow because they conspicuously omit the possibility that you could have the benefits without the harms. Like, your tractor could come with a killswitch that you could bypass, meaning you could brick it at a distance, and still fix it yourself. Same with your phone. Software updates that take away functionality you want can be mitigated with the ability to roll back those updates – and by giving users the ability to apply part of a patch, but not the whole patch.

Cloud computing and software as a service are a choice. "Local first" computing is possible, and desirable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

The cheapest rhetorical trick of the tech sector is the "indivisibility gambit" – the idea that these prix-fixe menus could never be served a la carte. Wanna talk to your friends online? Sorry there's just no way to help you do that without spying on you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/08/divisibility/#technognosticism

One important argument over smart-speakers was poisoned by this false dichotomy: the debate about accessibility and IoT gadgets. Every IoT privacy or revocation scandal would provoke blanket statements from technically savvy people like, "No one should ever use one of these." The replies would then swiftly follow: "That's an ableist statement: I rely on my automation because I have a disability and I would otherwise be reliant on a caregiver or have to go without."

But the excluded middle here is: "No one should use one of these because they are killswitched. This is especially bad when a smart speaker is an assistive technology, because those applications are too important to leave up to the whims of giant companies that might brick them or revoke their features due to their own commercial imperatives, callousness, or financial straits."

Like the problem with the "bionic eyes" that Second Sight bricked wasn't that they helped visually impaired people see – it was that they couldn't be operated without the company's ongoing support and consent:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/bionic-eye-obsolete

It's perfectly possible to imagine a bionic eye whose software can be maintained by third parties, whose parts and schematics are widely available. The challenge of making this assistive technology fail gracefully isn't technical – it's commercial.

We're meant to believe that no bionic eye company could survive unless they devise their assistive technology such that it fails catastrophically if the business goes under. But it turns out that a bionic eye company can't survive even if they are allowed to do this.

Even if you believe Milton Friedman's Big Lie that a company is legally obligated to "maximize shareholder value," not even Friedman says that you are legally obligated to maximize companies' shareholder value. The fact that a company can make more money by defrauding you by revoking or bricking the things you buy from them doesn't oblige you to stand up for their right to do this.

Indeed, all of this conduct is arguably illegal, under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits "unfair and deceptive business practices":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

"No one should ever use a smart speaker" lacks nuance. "Anyone who uses a smart speaker should be insulated from unilateral revocations by the manufacturer, both through legal restrictions that bind the manufacturer, and legal rights that empower others to modify our devices to help us," is a much better formulation.

It's only in the land of the Darth Vader MBA that the deal is "take it or leave it." In a good world, we should be able to take the parts that work, and throw away the parts that don't.

(Image: Stock Catalog/https://www.quotecatalog.com, Sam Howzit; CC BY 2.0; modified)

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/26/hit-with-a-brick/#graceful-failure

[flavorcountry]

I'm about to ask a question that I know none of you individually can answer entirely, it's more like I'm hoping the knowledge can be condensed out of the ether by everyone collectively: why can't I just go to startrek.com and buy a Starfleet uniform? Isn't this the one piece of clothing most Trek fans want to have? Why have we been essentially left to our own devices on this for decades?

There used to be a company called Rubie's that made pretty reasonable costume uniforms from TNG and DS9/VOY but they went out of business or stopped making them or something; I haven't seen one in geological eons

Anovos made insanely great-looking product but it cost a million dollars and shipped 🤷‍♂️???when???🤷‍♂️ Anyway they're out of business too

Sure, you can go to Amazon and find a reasonable-looking costume uniform for cheap from a place with a weird name you've never heard of in your life, but ……… odds are near 100% it comes from some kind of appalling exploitation factory of some sort, right? The irony of buying a Starfleet uniform made by slave labor, no thank you

Something like 10-15 years ago ThinkGeek sold a line of two-piece PJs that were surprisingly excellent versions of a TNG s03+ uniform, like someone over there was PAYING ATTENTION and doing really solid work

Anyway ThinkGeek is also out of business

But like: how the fuck? Is this not a solved problem? For the Star Trek Industrial Complex? I get that supply chains are complicated and all that, but if you can pump out kinda janky one-off merch for Star Trek Day, how hard is it to source a manufacturer for a Starfleet uniform replica that looks decent and doesn't cost a literal thousand dollars?

That's what I want: to be able to just get a uniform that looks okay (I don't need 100% SCREEN ACCURATE PERFECTION TO THE MICRODETAIL) and won't cost a down payment; is that not ……….. possible? Is there something about vending Starfleet uniforms that's economically impractical or somehow legally infeasible or something else that we just aren't aware of??* Who do I talk to about this???

* Like: did they do the math and discover that the majority of Trek fans inexplicably want those Santa suits from the Wrath of Khan era which are probably impossible to manufacture at scale for a decent price and just went fuck this

[betterthanburrow]

White Party - Instagram AU

(Bengals Quarterback! Joe Burrow x Fashion Model! OC)

liked by joeyb_9 and 955,013 more users

yourinstagram: i love a white party 🤍

view all 270,009 comments

yourmama: my beautiful girl!

username1: 😍😍😍

username2: Burrow is a lucky man

username3: it’s no wonder that you’re a model!

joeyb_9: i love a white party too!

liked by 69,513 users

BurrowSource: Joe Burrow with Donovan Mitchell at Michael Rubin’s 4th of July Party!

view all 10,550 comments

username1: the fact Joe attended a white party but he still kept those colorful rubber band on his wrist…

username2: these men are so fine 🤤🥵

username3: i don’t know how to feel about the outfit?!

username4: my favorite basetball player and my favorite football player in a photo together… i won!

liked by yourinstagram and 325,545 more users

joeyb_9: Had the basketball versus football convo too many times

view all 10,039 comments

grantwill2: We can really set it up 😂

username1: THAT’S MY QB!

username2: i think Joey B would be a great basketball player for some reason

↳ username3: you’ll be surprised to learn that Joe played basketball in high school!

yourinstagram: i bet those were some real interesting conversations 👀

liked by 10,069 users

BenGALSStyle: @.joeyb_9 | July 3, 2023 |

Wearing: Zara Men’s Crochet Shirt (Sold Out)

Zara Men’s Crochet Shorts (ON SALE $35.99)

Amazon Jersey Tank ($15.99)

Saint Laurent amid-Top Sneakers $895

view all 1,013 comments

username1: HE WORE A ZARA CROCHET SET?!

username2: someone get Joe Burrow a stylist NOW!

username3: the zara fit and amazon tank 💀

username4: joe’s fashion choices scare me sometimes

username5: how is Joey B dating a FASHION MODEL yet he doesn’t know how to dress himself appropriately for events and celebrity parties 😳😭

liked by joeyb_9 and 220,999 more users

michaelrubin: A literal movie - white party 2023 recap

view all 40,870 comments

joeyb_9: it was a fun night!

username1: only man that can invite everyone to a party and they all show up 😂🔥

username2: if you are a celeb and not invited to this party… i think it can really put you into depression 😵‍💫

yourinstagram: same time next year?! 🤍

Author’s Note:

according to Google, today is Flag Day so it makes sense that an Instagram AU inspired by Michael Rubin’s 4th Of July Party is published!

if you want to request an Instagram AU, send the IG AU request to my Inbox and i will try to get the Instagram AU request published as soon as i can.

thank you all for the love and support! 🤍

[arch-obsessed]

Inside the Barbie Dreamhouse, a Fuchsia Fantasy Inspired by Palm Springs

Barbie’s Dreamhouse is no place for the bashful. “There are no walls and no doors,” says Greta Gerwig via email. “Dreamhouses assume that you never have anything you wish was private—there is no place to hide.” That layered domestic metaphor has proved rich fodder for the filmmaker, whose live-action homage to the iconic Mattel doll hits theaters July 21.

To translate this panopticon play world to the screen, Gerwig enlisted production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer, the London-based team behind such period realms as Pride & Prejudice and Anna Karenina. The two took inspiration from Palm Springs midcentury modernism, including Richard Neutra’s 1946 Kaufmann House and other icons photographed by Slim Aarons. “Everything about that era was spot-on,” says Greenwood, who strove “to make Barbie real through this unreal world.”

Neither she nor Spencer had ever owned a Barbie before, so they ordered a Dreamhouse off Amazon to study. “The scale was quite strange,” recalls Spencer, explaining how they adjusted its rooms’ quirky proportions to 23 percent smaller than human size for the set. Says Gerwig: “The ceiling is actually quite close to one’s head, and it only takes a few paces to cross the room. It has the odd effect of making the actors seem big in the space but small overall.”

Erected at the Warner Bros. Studios lot outside London, Barbie’s cinematic home reinterprets Neutra’s work as a three-story fuchsia fantasy, with a slide that coils into a kidney-shaped pool. “I wanted to capture what was so ridiculously fun about the Dreamhouses,” says Gerwig, alluding to past incarnations like the bohemian 1970s model (outfitted with trompe l’oeil Tiffany lamps) and the 2000 Queen Anne Victorian manse, complete with Philippe Starck lounge chairs. “Why walk down stairs when you can slide into your pool? Why trudge up stairs when you take an elevator that matches your dress?” Her own references ranged from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure to Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings of pies to Gene Kelly’s tiny painter’s garret in An American in Paris.

For Barbie’s bedroom, the team paired a clamshell headboard upholstered in velvet with a sequined coverlet. Her closet, meanwhile, reveals coordinated outfits in toy-box vitrines. “It’s very definitely a house for a single woman,” says Greenwood, noting that when the first Dreamhouse (a cardboard foldout) was sold in 1962 it was rare for a woman to own her own home. Adds Spencer: “She is the ultimate feminist icon.”

In Barbie, as in previous films like Little Women and Lady Bird, Gerwig set out to realize a whole world. “We were literally creating the alternate universe of Barbie Land,” says the director, who aimed for “authentic artificiality” at every opportunity. As a case in point, she cites the use of a hand-painted backdrop rather than CGI to capture the sky and the San Jacinto Mountains. “Everything needed to be tactile, because toys are, above all, things you touch.”

Everything also needed to be pink. “Maintaining the ‘kid-ness’ was paramount,” Gerwig says. “I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much.” In other words, she continues, she didn’t want to “forget what made me love Barbie when I was a little girl.” Construction, Greenwood notes, caused an international run on the fluorescent shade of Rosco paint. “The world,” she laughs, “ran out of pink.”

[shinyzango]

So, about that "A Steampunk Carol" graphic novel...

I totally did not forget to make the post about it like I promised I am so sorry.

For those who are not familiar with it, long story short a while ago I came across a Kickstarter project for what seemed to be a steampunk adaptation of the Nutcracker story and was bummed that I missed out on it and wasn't able to support and secure a copy for myself, but a fella made me aware that it did actually get published in Italy a few years ago, and that it was sold on Amazon. And after discovering that there was literally only one copy left, I bought it on a whim to both read it and to hopefully attract more attention to it for reasons I'll discuss in just a bit.

I'm just going to say that I'm very back at writing reviews so apologies if this doesn't say anything at the end or if you didn't get the answers to your questions dkfjgn

Alright, now for the book itself.

First things first, the story. I won't go into details right now as I do not want to spoil folks in case this does get released in english to a wider public, but I can add a Spoilers section in the future where I explain in detail what happens if I get asked about it.

The story, like I said, is an adaptation of the Nutcracker And The Mouse King, but it is quite different in many elements, and spices things up quite a bit, especially after the introduction.

Sadly it feels quite rushed in its execution imo, I assume it's because they had to fit everything in a single volume. Which is a shame because there are many concepts and ideas that are very fascinating and interesting, both for the plot and for the characters themselves.

Speaking of the characters, they are quite unique and interesting.

The main kid, Caitlin, who is the Clara/Marie of the story, can be a little sassy, but she still feels grounded and has a good balance between putting down her foot and being nervous about the situation. I don't mind her character.

The Nutcracker, who is only called Schiaccia (just a shortened "Schiaccianoci" which is nutcracker in italian. I assume he's called Cracker in english if they kept that logic), feels solid. He's a loyal soldier, skilled but does show hints of insecurities. A good lad.

The mice are great as well, I'm really intrigued by the lore they cooked up for them, and the Mouse King is actually not bad, and I like what they did with his character.

There's also another supporting character, a tin soldier who goes by Sergeant Idle. He is basically a companion to the Nutcracker. He is basically a plot tool, helping with the backstory and moving the story forward, but not in a bad way. He's very enjoyable.

I would have loved to see them all explored further, but like I said it all feels rushed probably because it had to stick all in a single volume. I don't know if the authors ever considered this to become a series or if it's just a one-shot story, but I would honestly love to see this evolve into a series, if only because I love the characters and I would love to know more about the lore they cooked up for it more in detail, letting all the elements have the time to shine.

Moving on to the graphic...

I love Lorenza's art style. It looks very sketchy, with a clean roughness to it if that makes sense. And I really like all the designs of the characters.

(Apologies for the glares, I tried my hardest to limit them as much as possible. also ngl I'm giggling a little seeing how Schiaccia looks similar to my Hans skdfkjhn)

All in all, I really like this adaptation. It's unique and enjoyable, if only a little rushed.

Like I mentioned before, this was Kickstarted a while ago to get properly published in english. It was successfully funded and as far as I know, they're currently in the process of printing copies if not even shipping them for the backers. I still don't know if the folks at Last Ember Press are planning in making it available to purchase outsite the Kickstart, but I really hope so because I do think this deserves to be available to everyone.

[eaglesnick]

“You know you’re priced right when your customers complain—but buy anyway.” — John Harrison

Dynamic pricing is not new but it has not been widespread up until recently.

We all know about train fares being more expensive during peak times and parents know that holidays cost more during school breaks than at any other time of the year. Airline tickets are subject to dynamic pricing and there was a trend towards off-peak electricity tariffs at one time. This summer we saw tickets for Oasis concerts subject to dynamic pricing, resulting in massive spikes in the cost of a ticket.

Dynamic pricing is when a company changes their pricing to match demand and supply. Hence train journeys are more expensive during the rush hour than in the middle of the day when demand is lower. Holidays are more expensive during school breaks because demand is higher from families with children.

Few of us like this traditional method of dynamic pricing but we have accepted it as part of our way of life. The old fashioned dynamic pricing model was fairly unsophisticated and based on the time of day in the case of rail and airline tickets and specific weeks and months of the year in the case of holidays.

This is no longer the case. Artificial Intelligence allows companies to literally change prices in line with changes in demand every second if they so want. Some of the companies using AI to set prices are Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, Tesco, Ocado and Sky. Amazon is said to reset prices every ten minutes.

The days of “fixed pricing" are fast disappearing. Long gone are the days when a company added up all of its production costs to work out the cost per unit and then added a little bit more in order to make a profit. This was basically what is known as the objective or labour theory of value. This has been supplanted by the "subjective theory of value" (STV).

According to the subjective theory of value a products worth (price) is not determined by how much it costs to produce but by how much people are willing to pay for that good at any given moment. At its worst this means that ALL goods and services should be sold for maximum monetary return regardless of the cost of production. No wonder supporters of neo-liberal economics favour STV.

At one level this doesn’t really matter. Oasis concert tickets may have doubled in original price due to dynamic pricing but not being able to afford a concert ticket is not a matter of life or death. It is however, symptomatic of a growing social problem.

The assumption of neo-liberal economists and their support of STV pricing is that individual choice is paramount in all economic transactions. For the neo-liberal societal values do not exist, there is only individual choice. Mrs Thatcher, the woman who championed neo-liberal economics in the UK, famously said: “There’s no such thing as society”. Many Tory's still believe this to be true but they are demonstratively mistaken.

During Covid we all stood at our doors every Thursday night clapping and banging pots to applaud the bravery of our dedicated health professionals. Yes, we did this as individuals but also as a society. When the England football team were progressing through the stages of the European cup we watched each game as individuals but also as a nation. The same is true of the recent Olympic and Paralympic games.

Ironically, some of our most ardent neo-liberal Tory MP’s have been recently admonishing us for not being proud of our English identity. Robert Jenrick, a contender for the leadership of the Conservative Party said yesterday that English identity had “started to fray” due to mass immigration and public institutions “dismissing our history”.

Sorry, the neo-liberals cannot have it both ways. Either there is an entity called English society, with its own history and set of values, or we are just individuals all acting according to our own individual needs. The fact that latter view is obviously mistaken does not deter the advocates of dynamic pricing. For them the goal is maximisation of profit regardless of social cost.

A thousand reasons why dynamic pricing is good for the consumer will be rolled out as more and more companies adopt this system of pricing, but the bottom line will always be making more profit. And in a system where pricing is determined by what price the individual is willing to pay rather than the actual cost of production, in the end it is only the rich who benefit.

South West Water has recently introduced the cruder form of dynamic pricing to their customers. They will be charging more for water use in summer than in winter. Consumers were given no choice about this and they have yet to be told what the charges will be. This “trial" will last for 2 years.

This is the spin:

“These pioneering trials are designed to make sure that water bills are fairer and more reflective of individual consumption patterns and are part of our wider commitment to making customer-first decisions in everything we do.” (CornwallLive:19/09/24)

Note the emphasis on “individual consumption". To my mind water is a public good, a societal necessity. As such I want to see pricing evened out over the whole community. Under dynamic pricing  the rich can consume as much water as they like because they can afford to pay, while the poorer members of society will have to suddenly become use conscious. While the rich fill their swimming pools and have the lawn sprinklers on day and night, the poor will have to think twice about how often the toilet is flushed, how often the washing machine is used and can they afford to shower everyday. The poor pensioner will be calculating whether or not they have enough money to water their beloved garden.

Ok, my pensioner being unable to afford to water the garden is a hypothetical scenario. The cost of music venue tickets isn’t, neither are the prices you pay for an Uber, a holiday let from Airbnb, the food you buy from Tesco or Ocado. Even the price of a pint is now affected by dynamic pricing.

“A campaign group representing pubgoers has criticised the move by Stonegate, Britain’s largest pub company, to raise the price of pints during its busiest trading hours in some of its venues by 20p..."  Financial Times: 12/09/24)

If the price of a British pint of beer is now subject to dynamic pricing then nothing is sacred!

More seriously, when the market economy becomes the market society, when those in power promote the value of maximising profit for the few at the expense of the happiness and well being of the many, then, as a society, we lose all sense of humanity, morality and common decency.

There has been much theoretical discussion of late about the threat of Artificial Intelligence to humanity. I would argue that maybe we should be more concerned about those  humans using AI to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us.

[desire-mona]

so, i want to get into nickel creek, where do i start?

a comprehensive guide / masterlist by desire mona :-)

so ive gotten like. probably 3 or so asks about this + i need a pinned post for the nickel creek community so im making this. keep in mind that i am still a relatively new fan so i definitely dont have the seasoned advice that someone who's been listening for a while would have.

more info under cut!

lets start with the basics -

who is nickel creek?

nickel creek is a 3 piece bluegrass band from california made up of chris thile on mandolin, sara watkins on fiddle, and sean watkins on guitar. all 3 members are vocalists and sing lead vocals on various songs, but youll most likely hear chris on main vocals in a majority of their songs. though they are categorised as bluegrass / folk, their music delves into sounds from a variety of different genres, so a general acoustic label would probably be more fitting. they were originally known as "the nickel creek band" starting in 1989, but they dropped the "the" and "band" in uhhhhhhhh... some time before 2000.

what should i listen to first?

thats honestly up to you, i think anywhere is a good place to start since literally everything they make is good, but i can give u some kick off points so u can know whether or not u like them the quickest i suppose. i was introduced to them at a pretty young age, and the 2 songs that i remembered after years of not hearing them were the lighthouse's tale and this side.

lighthouse's tale - youtube, spotify, apple music

this side - youtube, spotify, apple music

after deciding that i should fully commit to the creek, i started with the tiny desk. i was BLOWN away by how kickass their live vocals were. i went thru and i listened to their albums one by one after that, but i'll have a list of all the albums later on.

"ummmm mona that's too many fucking buttons!!"

ok FINE here's two much easier ways but i think the way i did it was best. whatever.

both my father and my fellow creeker coworker discovered them from their best of album released just after they began their hiatus from 2007-2014. that was a good starting point to go through and listen to the rest, but beware that there are two (very good) albums that came out after this was released.

reasons why: the very best - youtube, spotify, apple music

OR i'll be extra nice and make a spotify playlist for you that i'll eventually make a youtube playlist as well (but not apple music im not paying for that shit <3)

(DO NOT LISTEN ON SHUFFLE - IT IS IN INTENDED ORDER)

every nickel creek album (even the baby ones)

*im doing my best to link physical copies from their official merch site, but some vinyls havent been reissued. if theyre not sold then ive linked the amazon page, but if theyre just sold out then ive linked the merch page anyway. physical copies linked are cds and vinyls respectively, sorry tape users.

little cowpoke (1993) - internet archive, cd

here to there (1997) - youtube and theres a cd but its over $100 so

nickel creek (2000) - youtube, spotify, apple music, physical copies (cd on official merch site is sold out as of 10/2/24)

this side (2002) - youtube, spotify, apple music, physical copies

why should the fire die? (2005) - youtube, spotify, apple music, physical copies

a dotted line (2014) - youtube, spotify, apple music, physical copies (no dotted line physical copies on the merch site, sorry!!)

celebrants (2023) - youtube, spotify, apple music, physical copies

ok fine i like these guys, what can i watch?

OH IM SO GLAD YOU ASKED!! here are my favs, you can do some exploring on your own as well!

their music videos

celebrants music videos (these are live performances)

2002 live @ aol sessions

2000 acoustic innovators documentary

toxic cover

studio session @ the current + interview

cmt's on the verge

new haven 2024 concert

kill bill cover w/ kacey musgraves

ok but what else have they done?

well all 3 members have their own solo careers, as well as separate bands and projects that theyve done. i wont be linking anything for this section, so you're just gonna have to do some digging for yourself.

chris thile:

solo career

unbelievable amounts of collaborations, too many to list

punch brothers

mutual admiration society

live from here

probably other shit, chris is kinda everywhere

sara watkins:

solo career

watkins family hour

im with her

mutual admiration society

sean watkins:

solo career

watkins family hour

fiction family

works progress administration

mutual admiration society

in conclusion + notes

listen to nickel creek or i will kill you with hammers. if you have any more resources youd like me to add to this post, let me know and i absolutely will!! i do plan on making some fandom-y stuff, such as blinkies and dividers. if youd like to check out all of *my* nickel creek posts, you can visit my #certified creeker tag, or if youd like to see all my posts about chris thile, you can visit my #dangly mandolin boy you will be mine tag. i apologise about the name i just. i like him.

thank u for reading!! feel free to send to anyone you want to annoy the shit out of <3

[classicanalyzer]

Fallout Series Thoughts and Reflection

"Everyone wants to save the world. They just...disagree on how." Maximus

It's one day until one month since this amazing series was released and I have a lot to talk about Fallout!

A Vault Dweller (Lucy MacLean), a Brotherhood Squire (Maximus), a Ghoul Bounty Hunter (Once a human called Cooper Howard)...and a dog (Dogmeat) travel the Wasteland in pursuit of their goals. In doing so, all four will change the Wasteland for better or worse, and discover more sinister secrets. And as Siggi Wilzig, an Enclave defector, asks Lucy in their first encounter,

"Question is will you still want the same things......when you have become a different animal altogether." Siggi Wilzig

The opening (The End) was perfect. The tension reminds me a lot of TLOU’s opening. We look into the eternal 50s culture United States in the 2070s. Cooper's reaction to the first bomb dropping is just acting perfectly. He at first tries to assure his daughter, Janey, that it's just a fire...only to see the smoke turn into a mushroom cloud. His reaction then just turns into one of pure horror that conveys how this is the end of society. That shot of him and Janey looking at the mushroom cloud and the ignorant American families watching TV says everything. As the rich family hides out in their bunker (the father punching his friend which is a foreshadowing moment of humanity's desperation for self-preservation), we see Cooper and Janey ride on their horse as Lose Angelos is bombarded with the title card popping up (Each episode has a unique variation of the title card based on what's going on).

The show captures the dark comedy and the satire of 50s America, Capitalism, and the Cold War. When Wilzig talked about how the cyanide pill (which tasted like bananas too!) was the most humane product Vault-Tec ever made (it really is), that was Fallout humor alright. We even have a pre-war bit where Sebastion Lesie sold his vocal rights to RobCo for their Mr. Handy bots for around $186 (I know it could be 186 thousand but I love the possibility he only got literally 186 dollars). Another is when the "execution" of Lucy by the inhabitants of Vault 4 which was very elaborate to set up death by beheading... turns out out to be death to the surface (as the Overseer is trying horribly to cut off the rope). A funny meta joke is how the teaser joker poked about Amazon Prime being the company with 2-day shipping in the teaser trailer. Then the show was released 2 days earlier than its stated release date (The show came out on April 10th, 6 PM PST when its original release date was April 12th).

"The future, my friend, is products. You're a product. I'm a product. The end of the world is a product." Sebastian Leslie

The attention to detail in this show is also amazing. In the first episode, the radio mentions the President not present at the White House. That follows the lore of the President moving to the Poseidon Oil Rig. I also love how in Episode 2, Maximus mentions Tidus' Power Armor having Tempered Lining and Lucy brought it up too in Episode 5. In Episode 8, The Ghoul mentioned the weakness of the Power Armor suit just below the chestplate. It further explains why Maximus didn't die to the Ghoul since the Ghoul was trying to aim for that but due to that modification, Maximus was able to survive. They also brought back the hacking mini-game when Norman was hacking into the Overseer's computer.

There's also the question of how to rebuild humanity. Each faction (Vault-Tec, NCR, BoS, Enclave) has its own vision for the Wasteland. Maximus perfectly described the setting perfectly well in his quote at the top.

Lucy’s (Positive Karma) naivety and optimism really show her as the heart of our main trio. Even by the end where she gained a lot of cynicism, it’s still her underneath it. I also appreciate her character so much when she doesn’t follow the “character’s bond with another is broken because they lied” trope. I like how the folks of the Wasteland can't stand Vault Dwellers because of their nativity, self-centered attitude, and how it was really for the rich and privileged who could afford to go to a Vault. However, she proves herself to be an earnest character who truly wants to make the Wasteland a better place, and adapts to survive... but doesn't lose sight of who she is unlike the Ghoul. I cannot wait to see how S2 takes her character. Her relationship with Maximus is also pretty sweet as they both help each other out and bring out the best in each other.

"I just doused an innocent man's face with acid, and I've only been up here two weeks. The wasteland sucks." Lucy MacLean

Maximus’ (Neutral Karma) character development was nice to see. He still has a long way to go but he’s starting to understand what being a “hero” is about rather than just having physical power. A hero knows to sacrifice your desires (The Power Armor) to help others (giving back the fusion core). He wants a life beyond the Brotherhood and is clearly disillusioned with the organization. When his friend thought he killed Moldaver and declared him a Knight, his face tells another story of how he felt about this.

The Ghoul (Evil Karma) may have been a cruel bounty hunter who believes in the worst of the Wasteland...but there are moments of his former self still inside. His taking a liking to Wilzig's dog (whom he eventually named Dogmeat) and granting his Ghoul friend Roger a mercy kill reveals there might be hope for him yet. His former self, Cooper Howard. is nothing like his current self. I love how the show made it clear he was once this human who couldn't initially bring himself to kill someone... even if it was for a movie! Even when he tries to initially deny the evils of Vault-Tec and buys into American Cold War propaganda, it's clear he still values his friends (even if they're supposedly "Communists") and eventually starts to really question what the hell is going on.

"I'm not a Communist, Mr. Howard. That's just a dirty word they use to describe people who aren't insane." Lee Moldaver

The reveal that Vault-Tec was responsible for dropping the first bomb (or at the very least planned to do so) was genuinely one of the most shocking bombshell reveals ever. You feel the nervous breakdown of Howard Cooper as he’s trying to process his own wife advocating this insane genocidal plan. I wonder if the shadow figure overseeing the meeting of the corporations is from the Enclave. I also really love the detail that Mr. House is the only one questioning the logistics and the proposal (Daily note that Mr. House is just as bad as everyone in this room, it's just that he sees less value in causing the end of the world). It shows why he decided to go against this insane conspiracy plan as we see the fruits of his preparations in New Vegas. I also love seeing Frederick Sinclair (Also New Vegas), the owner of the Sierra Madre Casino, Leon Von Felden (Fallout 1), the mad scientist behind the FEV and the Mariposa Military base, and Julia Masters, the chief financial officer of REPCONN Aerospace who sold out the company to RobCo.

"It's a fun idea. There's a lot of earning potential with the end of the world. But we're talking about making a significant investment based on a hypothetical. How can you guarantee results?" Robert House

"By dropping the bomb ourselves." Barbara Howard

Moldaver is no saint (she did let raiders massacre Vault 33 and almost killed Lucy, her friend's daughter), and it shows how far the NCR has sunken to achieve its aims. However, a lot of her actions are based on the horrors and crimes against humanity she witnessed. She wanted to rectify them and give the Wasteland hope, no matter the cost. She had seen her failures to stop the old world from being destroyed, and she would not stop until she could make the Wasteland better, even if that meant the NCR not living to see that better world.

Lucy's quest to rescue her father is like a twisted Fallout 3 narrative where the Lone Wanderer's quest was to find their father. But instead of her father being a scientist who wants to further heal the Wasteland, her father is responsible for destroying one of the most developed nations post-war because they weren't Vault-Tec. It's also implied it might've been out of jealousy since the show hints that Moldaver and Rose MacLean were more than just friends.

The collapse of the NCR was something I knew would happen based on the state of it in NV, but the final nail in the coffin being at the hands of Vault-Tec was something I did not see coming. I love that the last action of the NCR Remnant was to restore Shady Sands's power with the cold-fusion reactor. Even when the NCR is gone, whatever arises from the NCR will not only do the job better but now benefit from infinite energy. This is in comparison to the US government whose last action was to nuke the world and for the Enclave, leave the American populace to die.

The West Coast of the Brotherhood took advantage of the NCR's collapse to reestablish itself and with the help of the East Coast's BoS, they're now the largest military presence in California. The final battle between them and the NCR Remnant is a mirror foil to an event mentioned in New Vegas with the Helios Power Plant. We see how Maximus grows disillusioned with how far the organization has fallen and its own Knights not being the heroes he looked up to, even his superior agrees about how the Brotherhood is not what it once was.

Vaults 31-33 may not have an extreme experiment as the other Vaults and in this case, Vault 4, but the experiment is still horrifying. Vault 32-33 are meant to be breeding pools for Vault 31, full of Vault-Tec personnel in cryogenic pods (which I think is how maybe Lee Moldaver survived), to create the "best" Vault-Tec personnel. Vault 4 is a vault where scientists govern the people...which went as well as you might expect (The experiments going berserk and the Vault Dwellers revolting). I also love how the Gulper we saw in Episode 4 is one of Vault 4's experiments (also explaining the human-like finders inside its mouth) and who also ate the Overseer. I wonder what Norman will do given how Bud puts in him a seemingly impossible situation.

Then there's the Enclave and the pre-war Corporations. The Enclave really only shows up for a flashback sequence for Wilzig but, interestingly, the show glosses over them. What interests me the most is that Wilzig knows about the Vaults 31-33 experiment and Lucy's full name. Obviously, the Enclave still has observations of the Vaults, but as I mentioned before, that shadow figure observing the corporate meeting might be them. Speaking of the Corporations, we see the results of unchecked Capitalism with no regulations in this franchise and this show. We see the insane troll logic that these mega corporations will win the "great game of capitalism" by outliving everyone. Mega corporations have no logic other than their insane troll logic that what matters is they survive regardless of who suffers or dies in the name of profits.

"So, the U.S. government has outsourced the survival of the human race to Vault-Tec. Vault-Tec is a private corporation that has a fiduciary responsibility to make money for its investors. And how does it make money? By selling vaults... The cattle ranchers are in charge, Coop." Charlie Whiteknife.

You can tell how much Nolan and his team love Fallout by the work they put into this show. They did such an amazing job that Tim Cain, one of the OG creators of Fallout, praised the hell out of this show for bringing Fallout to life. I cannot wait to see what S2 will bring us.

"War never changes." Barbara Howard and The Ghoul

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

"What's the issue, it's just an ad?" Oh how you've become dull. Where is your anger? Where is your rage?

I get on the most basic of basic of levels why we've become like this. Advertising has literally been a part of our lives for as long as I've been alive, and honestly let's just put "the Reagan era" as a convenient turning point because if there is anything unnatural and unholy that's a part of our society at this point it comes from that demonic spawn.

I cannot personally tell you how much I am sick of all of it. I am so sick and fucking tired of having every minute of every day being a constant battle against the endless cavalcade of advertisements. You couldn't escape it on TV, you couldn't escape it in magazines, you couldn't go to the store without having things shoved in your fucking face by billboards and fliers and signage. But even that, on some fucking level, was bearable. How little we knew as we grumbled about how magazines were becoming 65% ads by volume how much worse it would get.

Advertisement on the modern internet has become a sprawling web of massive privacy violations as every bit of your online existence is wrapped up, bundled, and sold to some morally bankrupt corporation so that the CEO of Google can fucking jack off in a bathtub made of whatever ephemeral tech fratboy abomination has come out of Silicon Valley this week. You cannot escape the targeted ads, you cannot escape the ads that fucking jumpscare you, you cannot escape the ads that are 15 minutes long because they're designed to ambush people who are too busy to quickly skip the ad, you cannot avoid the constant deluge of sponsorships and paid promotions. Everyone is trying to fucking sell you something, whether its a shitty product or a shitty subscription service or a nightmare mental health service designed in the cenobite dimension or even worse than all of that, Prager fucking U.

The fact that adblocks exist is the only saving grace of the internet period. Adblocks literally keep the internet from falling apart in the same way TV and magazines did. They are the only way the average person can survived being seen as an endless fucking consumer, because having the ability to say "No, you cannot beam advertisements into my fucking brain 24/7" is basically our one big act of resistance at this point. So when Google tries to give me shit for it, when Amazon throws a hissyfit because you don't want ads interrupting a stream for two and a half minutes at a time, when websites guilt you over having an ad blocker? When they tell you that you should just accept being a good little shit?

Yeah that just inspires a lot of fucking rage in me. I hope one day we all collectively decide this is inhumane and abhorrent and fucking rip the tendons out of the knees of the advertising industry.

[ponyguru]

The only sour note in today's excitement at the doll show was finding out that my 'starter BJD' I bought was in fact bought from Amazon from a company known for recasting, aka art theft. Like, IDK if the seller realized it was such a bad thing... but the way she phrased it was that SHE made the dolls (???), so I sort of assumed that she was an artist who worked with a casting company, or owned a 3D printer, or something? (I mean for all I know she could be an artist who contracts with a recasting company!) Literally my first question was, 'how can you offer these so cheap?' and she came back with 'well, I make them so I set the price!' And I guess from that I should have assumed she's actually a drop-shipper? :/ So idk if she's a scammer or just unclear, but either way I was not told the company name when I bought the doll. It wasn't until I saw the box (after I paid when the seller was packing up the doll) that I realized how cheap it looked, and red flags started going up. When I got her home and saw the Amazon sticker on the bottom of the box, I was like, ohhhh no.

So that was a big shame!! I can clock a knockoff MLP from a mile off, but I've only ever purchased one artist resin head, and admired BJDs from afar due to price and space. So finding a vinyl doll, which I know should be cheaper than resin even if it's legit, didn't immediately send up any red flags. I should be excited to have my very first full doll (wow!), but I know instead it comes with this huge headache. Urgh!

Anyway, I know there were a lot of young people at the show, and at least one of the other three dolls sold; I wonder if they were BJD noobs too, and didn't realize that they weren't getting a legit doll, or how recasts are viewed within that community? How would one even tactfully warn off someone from buying a recast? And I also wonder if because it's not a BJD specific event, if there's just no oversight to ensure that recasts aren't sold? I only saw one other booth with BJDs, but I think they were in a different room - and what could they do, even?

I'm still going to try and enjoy her, but it might take a couple days to shake off this funk. It just sucks that I can't just post photos of her without some kind of disclaimer, you know? Like, hey I know recasting is bad, I just didn't immediately assume this lady was lying, my bad!! She's cute but please don't buy one! :P

[maklodes]

I saw some threads in which people were condemning use of agave syrup, on the grounds that agave cultivation has deleterious ecological consequences.

I haven't actually checked whether agave cultivation is more destructive than growing potatoes or carrots or anything else on a per calorie basis, and I don't know whether environmental damage per calorie is the best metric, but my curiosity took me in a different direction: how much agave goes to agave syrup, how much goes to tequila, and how much goes to mezcal?

I'd think agave farming associations would have this data -- that they'd be pouring over the data, trying to see if they could market agave-syrup baklavas, wondering whether they could somehow sell people on a double-tequila margarita for Taco Tuesday specials, etc. Maybe they do, but I can't find it.

For the amount of agave syrup, I found this site, ominously called Mordor Intelligence, claiming that the agave syrup market in 2024 was $187.24 million. How much agave is that, though? One Amazon source of bulk agave is $147.58 for 44 lbs. (There are other sources, but they don't differ radically.) This suggests that about 25,322 tonnes of agave syrup were sold in 2024. A USDA source claims that agave syrup is about 68% sugar by weight, the amount of sugar being sold in agave syrup is around 17,219 tonnes. (I have way more significant figures than is justified here, but I'm leaving them in mid-process.)

Mordor Intelligence claims the 2024 tequila market 457.96 million liters. Tequilas are, I've heard, often 80 proof, or 40% alcohol by volume. So a liter of tequila should, in principle, have 400 ml of alcohol, weighing 0.79 g/ml * 400 ml = 316 grams of alcohol. It's generally accepted that fermentation yields about 55% of the starting sugar mass as ethanol. I.e., 1 kg of sugar will give you about 550 grams of ethanol. So each liter of tequila started from 575 grams of agave-sourced sugar.

This suggests that the amount of agave-derived sugar going into tequila is about 263,119 tonnes. Except one thing: a lot of tequila is not pure fermented agave. Up to 49% of tequila can be some other neutral grain spirit. This could potentially cut sugar going into tequila to 134,191 tonnes.

So, back-of-the-envelop, it looks to me like 7-8 times as much agave goes to tequila as to agave syrup, although some tequilas are higher than 80 proof, and contain more than 51% agave sugar, so this is probably something of an underestimate. I also feel there's a lot of uncertainty in the agave syrup quantity estimate -- is the agave syrup market the market for selling agave from farm to processors, or is it final purchases by consumers? I think most consumer agave syrup is bought in smaller batches, at higher per-volume prices, than the four gallon Amazon agave jug, so perhaps total agave sugar in syrup is an overestimate.

What about Mezcal? I tried to figure that out, but I got exhausted, so I'm not sure. The North American market page puts market volume at 19.73 million liters. The global market page puts Mexican exports in 2020 at 4.8 million liters. So is ~15 million liters consumed within Mexico? I don't know if I trust this data. I don't know if I trust a lot of the previous data either. I think it's a significantly smaller market than tequila. if anyone has good data on Mezcal -- or better data than what I have on agave syrup and tequila -- I'd certainly welcome it.

(I'm not going to disingenuously pretend not to understand why some people on Tumblr get super mad about agave syrup rather than condemning Friday night margaritas, but that seems to me like a fairly obvious and uninteresting phenomenon, at least in my current state, so I focused on trying to reverse engineer the allocation of agave from scattered data on final agave products.)

[delyth-thomas-art]

Tired Webcomic Creator Noises

Gags … ah yes lets make art into mindless content spat out by Ai cos we've been literally killing creators with inhumane workloads to spit out as many episodes as possible for mindless consumption.

I make my comics with passion and love of the craft! I have a degree in Comics, I spent years...years learning, practising, experimenting, adapting. I recall the days where you may get a page a week, or a few at the start of the month back in the 2000s era of self hosted webcomics and smackjeeves. (Rant below)

I've had to learn how the whole scrolling format worked to adapt to where all the readers had gone to, having been taught the traditional print page formats. And now cos its suddenly a massive money maker for these few hosts and they've pushed creators to the brink with the sheer volume they want pumped out that of course they want to use AI.

But it will speed up colouring! I have multiple tools available by the software I use and made by the wonderful people who love creating that colouring isn't that much of a chore, Its my fav part honestly. And its also a job sector within comics, colourists are skilled artists and this is another way to trim the fat, to pocket more money and keep churning out the 5th millionth villainess story.

Yes I am in most views a tiny creator, I haven't even broken their 1000 sub goal to even try applying for ad rev in the near 5 ish years on webtoon. But what I make I love, I spend hours researching folklore, scripting, drafting the whole kabudle like many other creators. And other than the kind supporters on my Patreon and Ko-fi I don't make much from the hours, days, weeks I pour into what I make. But at least I know its made with my own hands. That its made with love as corny as that sounds.

Ai is creeping its tentacles into everything, now ethically trained ai tools to help smaller creators would be fine. Most creators already rely on 3d tools to speed up things like backgrounds for webcomics. But when we don't know what its trained on, and is marketed wholesale as something anyone can use to make "content" is where it gets insidious. I am all for anyone with the desire to create and tell a story to go out there and do so, whether a beginner or a master. Part of the joy of a long running webcomic is seeing the artist grow both artistically and literary. But with ai it will be all one homogenous style, a copy of what ever is the hot thing. We already have amazon stuffed to the teeth with ai generated books, videos, merch and more all to be sold in some get rich quick manner. (need I point at the Willy's Wonderland incident). Youtube videos being spat out by faceless accounts stealing and regurgitating content at the speed no human video making team can easily match without cutting out quality or fact checking.

It is tiring. Creatives as a whole are treated poorly for decades, and now with the rapid late stage capitalism, website /social media enshitification and the blind headlong rush into the next big money making thing (watches the nft crash). I can't deny Covid sped this up, as everyone was locked inside and turned to what we creators made for comfort. But that content eating boom, lead to more demand, faster output and tighter budgets. We are seeing journalists being cut, game designers in their thousands and recently Dreamworks cutting a bunch and pushing to make their Robot film come out sooner due to public demands.

Skilled creatives are being treated like disposable fast food restaurant employees. Used til they burn out, get injured and even die! And then are simply replaced.

I've never been a creator with huge ambitions to work at places like DC, Marvel or Top Cow. I simply wished to create and share stories with the world, to bring smiles, to create art that evokes emotions, inspires others to look around themselves and create too.

Art is for everyone. You just need to take that scary jump, there is a whole array of welcoming communities willing to teach and share. I wouldn't have improved so much without the kindness of the webcomic groups I've discovered and learnt from. Everyone is always learning, and there no shame in not knowing how to do a thing. Even I started with the cheesy how to draw books as a kid and made my own pokemon and digimon.

Don't let the world treat your art as content. It is "ART" as much as what's kept in the louvre is seen as art, so is that little stick man doodle on a postit.

So Try something new, try a new material, a new style.

And support the artists you enjoy, tip their Ko-Fi, pledge to their Patreon, buy a sticker or print. Share their posts and tell them what you love about what they make.

Don't let machines steal away the art in HEART.

[abuzd]

if I sound angry in this ask it's not directed towards you, but what the actual fuck is up with that U-OZ person? their bio says "my focus is on other survivors and their incredible desire to be seen, heard, understood, to grow and thrive" but I don't get that vibe from them at all in regards to what the post showed. I looked at pages from their book and it's so obvious NONE of that is info for helping survivors to "grow and thrive" or whatever the fuck, it was for helping ABUSERS learn how to do that shit, it's a literal step by step instruction guide on it. I'm just like why would anybody write that book? genuine question. like I know there are sick people out there but why literally make the book available on amazon, I'm just confused and shocked and sickened so maybe my mind isn't wrapping itself around this stuff because it's so nauseating, but even if abuse groups have methods they teach to other groomers, wouldn't those creeps want that stuff stay within the group and not public? I wouldn't think it would be turned into a book and sold online, why be so public about something so fucking disgusting, I just don't get it? is this for someone to try it on their own or some shit even though U-OZ wrote about methods that clearly involve multiple people and that an individual wouldn't be able to carry out on their own? I'm just confused and pissed off and disgusted. it's so weird and just... what the hell even is that? like I'm still trying to understand why they wrote that, all those details and disgusting information for hurting vulnerable kids. and then their blog has a healing tag and posts I would think are genuinely trying to help survivors and share positivity so like... genuinely what is going on with this person? also thank you so much for doing your part and spreading awareness about them, I think I had come across posts by them in the tags when searching stuff like recovery and healing encouragement posts, but had NO idea about any of the other shit.

i genuinely agree with you 100% and can confirm they’ve always been this way. it’s not news. it’s not rumours. it’s fact. soooooooo many people have receipts over YEEEEAAAARRRSSSSS. they’re extremely antisemetic, anti-anything-government-whatsoever. makes up programming methods that aren’t even fucking real because they “connect dots” that aren’t there and then tell you everyone else is a conspiracy theorist and you can’t trust anyone else but them like HELLOOOOOOOOOO?????????

🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

Just. Block. Oz. they can’t be reasoned with. don’t support them. spread the word not to support the book. if/when it’s released, report it if you know how.