#made-to-measure production model

[reasonsforhope]

"The Hague made international headlines for being the first city in the world to approve legislation prohibiting marketing of fossil fuel-related products and services. This major ruling, issued earlier this month, seeks to limit the promotion of items with a high carbon footprint, such as gasoline, diesel, aviation, and cruise ships. The ban, which goes into effect at the start of next year, will affect both government and privately funded advertisements, including those on billboards and bus shelters throughout the Dutch metropolis.

This groundbreaking legislation establishes an important precedent in the global fight against climate change. Other cities have attempted to limit the reach of high-carbon items through council ordinances or voluntary agreements with advertising operators, but The Hague’s prohibition is the first that is legally binding. It is a major step forward for cities around the world that want to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change head-on.

A response to global calls for action

The prohibition comes after UN Secretary-General António Guterres called earlier this year for countries and media outlets to take tougher action to combat fossil fuel advertising, citing parallels with existing tobacco advertising bans. Guterres stressed that, as with the tobacco industry in the past, fossil fuel businesses are contributing to a worldwide public health crisis—in this case, climate change. Governments can help change public behavior and prevent the normalization of high-carbon lifestyles by limiting their capacity to market.

Several cities have already made tiny moves in this direction. Edinburgh, for example, approved a council vote in May prohibiting fossil fuel-related ads in city-owned venues. The Scottish capital also prohibits enterprises that sell these products from sponsoring events or developing partnerships. However, unlike The Hague’s legislation, Edinburgh’s ban is voluntary and only applies to council spaces.

A legally binding first

The Hague’s new law is significant since it is legally binding. The restriction affects not only specific items, such as gasoline, diesel, and fossil fuel-powered vehicles but also businesses such as aviation and cruise ships. However, the rule exempts fossil fuel firms’ political advertising or efforts supporting a generic brand, allowing these businesses to keep prominence...

The impact of advertising on behavior

Advertising’s impact on consumer behavior is well-documented, and many experts say that fossil fuel marketing undercut climate legislation by encouraging unsustainable behavior. Thijs Bouman, an associate professor of environmental psychology at Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, stated that “fossil fuel advertising normalizes the use of high-carbon products and services, making it more difficult to change consumer habits.” ...

Catalyzing change worldwide

The Hague’s move may have repercussions beyond its borders, spurring similar actions in other cities around the globe. Cities such as Toronto, Canada, and Graz, Austria, are already launching campaigns to outlaw advertising for fossil fuels. In the Netherlands, both Amsterdam and Haarlem have outlawed marketing for climate-damaging products like beef, but these measures have yet to become legislation.

Sleegers believes that The Hague’s move will act as a spur for other towns to follow suit. “More cities have a wish to implement the fossil ad ban through ordinance, but they were all waiting for some other city to go first. The Hague is this city,” she said, predicting that more local governments will now feel empowered to act...

As the world grapples with the rising costs of climate change, The Hague’s pioneering move provides a potential model for other cities looking to minimize their carbon footprints. With cities like Toronto and Amsterdam keeping a careful eye on things, this legislation has the potential to start a global campaign to prohibit fossil fuel advertising. 

More cities may follow suit in the coming years, hastening the transition to a more environmentally friendly and sustainable future."

-via The Optimist Daily, September 26, 2024

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The specific process by which Google enshittified its search

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me SATURDAY (Apr 27) in MARIN COUNTY, then Winnipeg (May 2), Calgary (May 3), Vancouver (May 4), and beyond!

All digital businesses have the technical capacity to enshittify: the ability to change the underlying functions of the business from moment to moment and user to user, allowing for the rapid transfer of value between business customers, end users and shareholders:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/19/twiddler/

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

Which raises an important question: why do companies enshittify at a specific moment, after refraining from enshittifying before? After all, a company always has the potential to benefit by treating its business customers and end users worse, by giving them a worse deal. If you charge more for your product and pay your suppliers less, that leaves more money on the table for your investors.

Of course, it's not that simple. While cheating, price-gouging, and degrading your product can produce gains, these tactics also threaten losses. You might lose customers to a rival, or get punished by a regulator, or face mass resignations from your employees who really believe in your product.

Companies choose not to enshittify their products…until they choose to do so. One theory to explain this is that companies are engaged in a process of continuous assessment, gathering data about their competitive risks, their regulators' mettle, their employees' boldness. When these assessments indicate that the conditions are favorable to enshittification, the CEO walks over to the big "enshittification" lever on the wall and yanks it all the way to MAX.

Some companies have certainly done this – and paid the price. Think of Myspace or Yahoo: companies that made themselves worse by reducing quality and gouging on price (be it measured in dollars or attention – that is, ads) before sinking into obscure senescence. These companies made a bet that they could get richer while getting worse, and they were wrong, and they lost out.

But this model doesn't explain the Great Enshittening, in which all the tech companies are enshittifying at the same time. Maybe all these companies are subscribing to the same business newsletter (or, more likely, buying advice from the same management consultancy) (cough McKinsey cough) that is a kind of industry-wide starter pistol for enshittification.

I think it's something else. I think the main job of a CEO is to show up for work every morning and yank on the enshittification lever as hard as you can, in hopes that you can eke out some incremental gains in your company's cost-basis and/or income by shifting value away from your suppliers and customers to yourself.

We get good digital services when the enshittification lever doesn't budge – when it is constrained: by competition, by regulation, by interoperable mods and hacks that undo enshittification (like alternative clients and ad-blockers) and by workers who have bargaining power thanks to a tight labor market or a powerful union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/09/lead-me-not-into-temptation/#chamberlain

When Google ordered its staff to build a secret Chinese search engine that would censor search results and rat out dissidents to the Chinese secret police, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

When Google tried to win a US government contract to build AI for drones used to target and murder civilians far from the battlefield, googlers revolted and refused, and the project died:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/technology/google-pentagon-project-maven.html

What's happened since – what's behind all the tech companies enshittifying all at once – is that tech worker power has been smashed, especially at Google, where 12,000 workers were fired just months after a $80b stock buyback that would have paid their wages for the next 27 years. Likewise, competition has receded from tech bosses' worries, thanks to lax antitrust enforcement that saw most credible competitors merged into behemoths, or neutralized with predatory pricing schemes. Lax enforcement of other policies – privacy, labor and consumer protection – loosened up the enshittification lever even more. And the expansion of IP rights, which criminalize most kinds of reverse engineering and aftermarket modification, means that interoperability no longer applies friction to the enshittification lever.

Now that every tech boss has an enshittification lever that moves very freely, they can show up for work, yank the enshittification lever, and it goes all the way to MAX. When googlers protested the company's complicity in the genocide in Gaza, Google didn't kill the project – it mass-fired the workers:

https://medium.com/@notechforapartheid/statement-from-google-workers-with-the-no-tech-for-apartheid-campaign-on-googles-indiscriminate-28ba4c9b7ce8

Enshittification is a macroeconomic phenomenon, determined by the regulatory environment for competition, privacy, labor, consumer protection and IP. But enshittification is also a microeconomic phenomenon, the result of innumerable boardroom and product-planning fights within companies in which would-be enshittifiers try to do things that make the company's products and services shittier wrestle with rivals who want to keep things as they are, or make them better, whether out of principle or fear of the consequences.

Those microeconomic wrestling-matches are where we find enshittification's heroes and villains – the people who fight for the user or stand up for a fair deal, versus the people who want to cheat and wreck to make things better for the company and win bonuses and promotions for themselves:

https://locusmag.com/2023/11/commentary-by-cory-doctorow-dont-be-evil/

These microeconomic struggles are usually obscure, because companies are secretive institutions and our glimpses into their deliberations are normally limited to the odd leaked memo, whistleblower tell-all, or spectacular worker revolt. But when a company gets dragged into court, a new window opens into the company's internal operations. That's especially true when the plaintiff is the US government.

Which brings me back to Google, the poster-child for enshittification, a company that revolutionized the internet a quarter of a century ago with a search-engine that was so good that it felt like magic, which has decayed so badly and so rapidly that whole sections of the internet are disappearing from view for the 90% of users who rely on the search engine as their gateway to the internet.

Google is being sued by the DOJ's Antitrust Division, and that means we are getting a very deep look into the company, as its internal emails and memos come to light:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/03/not-feeling-lucky/#fundamental-laws-of-economics

Google is a tech company, and tech companies have literary cultures – they run on email and other forms of written communication, even for casual speech, which is more likely to take place in a chat program than at a water-cooler. This means that tech companies have giant databases full of confessions to every crime they've ever committed:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/03/big-tech-cant-stop-telling-on-itself/

Large pieces of Google's database-of-crimes are now on display – so much, in fact, that it's hard for anyone to parse through it all and understand what it means. But some people are trying, and coming up with gold. One of those successful prospectors is Ed Zitron, who has produced a staggering account of the precise moment at which Google search tipped over into enshittification, which names the executives at the very heart of the rot:

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-men-who-killed-google/

Zitron tells the story of a boardroom struggle over search quality, in which Ben Gomes – a long-tenured googler who helped define the company during its best years – lost a fight with Prabhakar Raghavan, a computer scientist turned manager whose tactic for increasing the number of search queries (and thus the number of ads the company could show to searchers) was to decrease the quality of search. That way, searchers would have to spend more time on Google before they found what they were looking for.

Zitron contrasts the background of these two figures. Gomes, the hero, worked at Google for 19 years, solving fantastically hard technical scaling problems and eventually becoming the company's "search czar." Raghavan, the villain, "failed upwards" through his career, including a stint as Yahoo's head of search from 2005-12, a presiding over the collapse of Yahoo's search business. Under Raghavan's leadership, Yahoo's search market-share fell from 30.4% to 14%, and in the end, Yahoo jettisoned its search altogether and replaced it with Bing.

For Zitron, the memos show how Raghavan engineered the ouster of Gomes, with help from the company CEO, the ex-McKinseyite Sundar Pichai. It was a triumph for enshittification, a deliberate decision to make the product worse in order to make it more profitable, under the (correct) belief that the company's exclusivity deals to provide search everywhere from Iphones and Samsungs to Mozilla would mean that the business would face no consequences for doing so.

It a picture of a company that isn't just too big to fail – it's (as FTC Chair Lina Khan put it on The Daily Show) too big to care:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaDTiWaYfcM

Zitron's done excellent sleuthing through the court exhibits here, and his writeup is incandescently brilliant. But there's one point I quibble with him on. Zitron writes that "It’s because the people running the tech industry are no longer those that built it."

I think that gets it backwards. I think that there were always enshittifiers in the C-suites of these companies. When Page and Brin brought in the war criminal Eric Schmidt to run the company, he surely started every day with a ritual, ferocious tug at that enshittification lever. The difference wasn't who was in the C-suite – the difference was how freely the lever moved.

On Saturday, I wrote:

The platforms used to treat us well and now treat us badly. That's not because they were setting a patient trap, luring us in with good treatment in the expectation of locking us in and turning on us. Tech bosses do not have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/22/kargo-kult-kaptialism/#dont-buy-it

Someone on Hacker News called that "silly," adding that "tech bosses do in fact have the executive function to lie in wait for years and years. That's literally the business model of most startups":

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40114339

That's not quite right, though. The business-model of the startup is to yank on the enshittification lever every day. Tech bosses don't lie in wait for the perfect moment to claw away all the value from their employees, users, business customers, and suppliers – they're always trying to get that value. It's only when they become too big to care that they succeed. That's the definition of being too big to care.

In antitrust circles, they sometimes say that "the process is the punishment." No matter what happens to the DOJ's case against Google, its internal workers have been made visible to the public. The secrecy surrounding the Google trial when it was underway meant that a lot of this stuff flew under the radar when it first appeared. But as Zitron's work shows, there is plenty of treasure to be found in that trove of documents that is now permanently in the public domain.

When future scholars study the enshittocene, they will look to accounts like Zitron's to mark the turning points from the old, good internet to the enshitternet. Let's hope those future scholars have a new, good internet on which to publish their findings.

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/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

[pastelcheckereddreams]

Sooo, I bought the Lotus Tower model kit and, of course, I went overboard making it as accurate as possible to the show. To no one's surprise, I'm guessing? 😅

For reference, this is what the completed model (sans horses) looks like without most* of my alterations:

*The awning material and decoration is my only alteration at this point, as I didn't like the fabric they included with the kit.

I had so much fun with this model! It is well-made, has moving parts, and is actually fairly easy to put together, with most parts just clicking into place. It even has furniture details inside!

Let me know what you think! Have you got the kit? How are you finding the building process to be? If you want to hear a more detailed review of it and see my progress shots and details of my own creative additions, click below:

UPDATE: I've now added even more things to Lotus Tower! Find them here.

First, unboxing!

This is how the box arrives. I ordered it from CPOP Universe and it arrived well-packaged and undamaged within a matter of weeks.

Along with the kit itself - which as you can see consists of a stack of laser-cut sheets coded from A-Q, and numbers detailing the specific parts - you receive a coaster (ceramic, backed with cork, and very pretty), little standees of difanghua, a letter styled after the ones difang recieve from Li Lianhua, and a replica of the booklet of yangzhouman techniques.

The process:

The first floor came together pretty quickly:

Glue is provided, but isn't necessary for a lot of the pieces, as I found the measurements for a lot of the joints to be pretty snug and able to hold together themselves. Glue is necessary for some parts, though, particularly for areas such as the step up to the rear sleeping area. Strong glue. Here is what the fist floor looks like:

Fitting on the ceiling turned out to be the hardest part of most of the build. All of the holes on the second floor had to line up with every joint on top of the walls and doors.

The next big step I encountered was a curiosity. How to make the rear wall work? There was a curious piece clearly meant to anchor the rope, and a round hole that - much like the doors - meant that this piece was supposed to rotate - and even lock. But I received no instructions on how to achieve that. I found this puzzle (which I like to think was an intentional challenge, given the gadget-orientated FDB) to be a fun challenge. So I won't show you the inner workings and spoil it, but I'll show you the working product:

Next was the rather fiddly job of creating the sail awning. I imagine this will be quite difficult for some as there's no clear indication of how to fix the material in place.

My instinct was to sew it as that is also a craft I have practice in, though granted not everyone who buys this kit will be as comfortable with a sewing needle. The two swatches of fabric provided is also quite prone to fraying, and is quite thick and canvas-like. So, knowing that the awning is a big feature of Lotus Tower, I decided I could do better:

On the left is the provided fabric, and on the right is my own material (an old blouse that I never wore, with patches dyed with my promarker pens).

After that, things should've been an easy home run, as all I had to do was affix the wheels to their axis points and put the horses together. However, quite unfortunately, one of the wheels hadn't been cut out in my kit. I had to cut it out myself with a coping saw, a Stanley knife and much patience😅

It came out looking rough, but nothing a little sanding and a touch up with my promarkers couldn't fix. I also eventually glued the wheel caps to the axis to prevent the wheels popping off every time I touched it, and they all still spin fine (minus the one I had to cut myself, that one's a little sticky😅). Then came the horses, and I was done!

Or so I thought. "Don't you think it looks a little too brown?" said my detail-obsessed brain. "We could do... more...."

And so I did.

My additions:

I used scraps coloured by my blue marker to create the beams of the house, and later coloured the fence posts red.

I made a second sail to hand under the stairs.

I created a second planter box (again, from the scraps and coloured with promarkers - two sets of flowers were included in the kit, so I could put one in each planter.)

And I even created a rain chain using old earring backs, jewellery findings and a chain, spray painted matte black and then painted blue-grey.

To colour the roofs, I likewise painted them a light blue-grey (/brown for Hulijing's kennel), then used a darker blue promarker to roughly add in texture.

I painted the weather vane, and used scraps to add in its missing two cardinal points.

And then finally, I made a winch for the rear wall! It's also easy to turn with the roof on, so I'm very pleased even though it's a little rough looking 😅

Had to gif my video clip because tumblr said boo no to more than one :(

And that's it, that's my latest build! I found this kit very fun, loved the process and seeing Lotus Tower come to life. I also loved adding in all the details to make it just that bit more accurate to the show. My only true criticisms are 1) small design oversights with the base wood colour being a tad too dark imo; the missing arms on the weather vane; and no second flowerbed (although I may be being a tad too pedantic about it 😅). 2) The fact that one of the wheels in my kit didn't get cut out properly (a quality check issue).

Obviously, I made the choice to use a different material than the fabric included so I can't speak to how satisfactory it is. However, if I were ever in the position to give IQiYi direct feedback, I'd suggest they include thinner fabric, and paint (or paint suggestions, as I know model paints aren't usually allowed through customs in these kinds of kits) for the roofs, because (by way of how they're constructed) they're just raw edges of the reinforced card parts - completely uncoloured, despite being a very visual element of the piece.

Thank you for reading this far lol Keep an eye out for more art and craft posts! (I have a Siji Manor set update coming shortly 👀)

[askoverlordvox]

VoxTek™ Employment Contract

I, @helluvahotelfan , invoke the infernal powers of Hell to complete the following contract between myself and the Overlord, Vox. Hereafter, "the employee" will refer to Jenn, "the employer" will refer to VoxTek™, "the Overlord" will refer to Vox, and "the contract" will refer to this agreement, signed and sealed by a handshake.

Payment: to complete this contract, the employee signs over possession of their soul to the Overlord. For as long as the soul remains in the Overlord's possession, the terms and conditions of this contract are considered valid. Additionally, the Overlord cannot kill or willfully maim or harm the employee while this contract is in effect.

Terms: The employer will provide housing(1), a competitive(2) salary, the latest(3) model of Hellphone, insurance (4), two weeks of paid training, 30 vacation days per year (5), 30 days of sick leave per year (6), a free upgrade to replace or enhance a body part(7), a 200 year(8) retirement plan, and 24/7 protection from reasonable(9) threats. The employee will fulfill the job description provided below to the best of their ability.

Conditions: This contract remains in effect provided both the employee and the Overlord wish to continue adhering to the terms. At any time, either party may request breaking the contract. The request must be accepted by the Overlord. The Overlord reserves the right to change the job assigned to the employee in the event of subpar performance.

Job Title: Junior Data Collector

Department: Research & Development

Job Scope: Junior Data Collectors follow instructions from Senior Data Collectors and report to Project Leads all data obtained throughout marketing, testing, and further analysis. Data Collectors observe tests, trends, and other indicated measurements at the direction of Project Leads and record data as instructed by Project Leads. Data Collectors are expected to report accurate figures. Data Collectors may, on occasion, be asked to participate directly in Projects but never to the extent Hazard Pay would be required. Any injuries incurred as a result of Data Collection are to be reported immediately to the Project Lead.

Hours: Mandated work hours are 1000-1600, Monday-Thursday unless Project Leads get approved for a different work cycle.

(1) Housing starts at one bedroom, one bathroom, kitchen and washer/dryer included 550 square foot apartment. Housing can be upgraded through promotion or by registering dependents with Human Resources. (2) Competitive rates based on job title and relative cost-of-living analysis for Pride ring standards. Salary will always be 400% of current housing cost. (3) Latest model refers to latest model to pass all safety checks and either is commercially available or in phase 4 of production. (4) Insurance covers health, vision, and dental plans, as well as maternity/paternity leave, Family Medical Leave Allocation, and associated costs. (5) Unused vacation days roll over but will not exceed 75 days. Vacation days accrued past 75 days will either be paid out to the employee in a lump sum, signed over to another employee, or forfeit. Decision must be made within 1 month of employment anniversary date. (6) Unused sick leave rolls over but will not exceed 60 days. Illness or injury requiring more than 60 days to recover but at no fault of the employer will be deducted from vacation days. Illness or injury incurred during the execution of job duties will not be charged to the employee. (7) Available upgrades subject to change depending on demand. Specific upgrade offered: replacement of one eye with a VokTek™ High Definition digital recorder. Any data or information recorded by an upgrade becomes property of the employer with employee consent. (8) 200 year retirement plan based on projected life expectancy increase following the cessation of Exterminations. In the event Exterminations resume, this requirement will be lowered to 50 years. (9) Reasonable threats are those not provoked by the employee, provided the employee remains within designated areas when directed by senior personnel. Ex: leaving the approved VoxTek™ Extermination Bunker during an Extermination or insulting an Overlord/Sin/Ars Goetia are examples where the employer is no longer liable for the employee's protection.

Signed and confirmed via handshake with the Overlord,

Jenn

It took me a moment to find it, I apologize; you wouldn't believe how many copies I have in my office. Of course I have a digitized copy but Hell runs on old school methodologies, so having a hard copy is still required.

Now, @zayne1, you can make your determinations.

[oldguydoesstuff]

Bare CPU Printed Circuit Board for the Alpha NT XL366 workstation I designed back in 1995 or so. This was an obscure model of an obscure product line, made by a company (Digital Equipment Corp.) that is now itself obscure. To be honest I don't even remember much about this machine now.

What I do remember is the HUUUUGE fight I got into with our Signal Integrity team while I was designing this, over decoupling capacitors.

Decoupling caps are small components that hold a charge to help even out power when a circuit is active. This board featured hundreds of them, smaller than a grain of rice (see photo comparison of mounting pads vs rice grain below).

Our Signal Integrity team was tasked with making sure everything was electrically stable, so they required many hundreds of these to be added to the board, based on power simulations they did. Trouble was, they wanted so many, we couldn't even build the board.

My job as the Systems Engineer here was to meet the requirements from the SI team, but also from manufacturing, and the requirement that my PCB layout techs don't go insane trying to place and route the board. SI really only cared about signal quality, so they would not relent, and I ended up getting shouted at at one point by a junior SI engineer who was also under a lot of stress, when I said "There are different schools of thought on this.." and he screamed THERE ARE NOT DIFFERENT SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT ON THIS!!

It got to the point where the product was not going to get built, because we just couldn't fit like a thousand of these tiny caps on the board, we needed to ditch at least 25% of them to have a hope. The models were the models though, and you couldn't argue against them.

But then my boss got a genius idea. What if we could prove the simulation models were too conservative? We came up with an experiment where we would remove caps from an older system and measure the power supply noise, to see how many caps could be taken off before the system became unstable.

Me and the junior SI engineer were tasked with doing this experiment (later deemed The Decapitation Project), so we grabbed a Tektronix scope and Metcal soldering station and headed over to this abandoned lab we had in our old Maynard headquarters, a now creepy attic space on the 6th floor of an old mill building. Here were a few older Alphastation 3000 workstations we built years earlier, working but waiting to be recycled.

We had this special program that would thrash the CPU within an inch of its life, to put a big demand on the power supply system. While this was running, the SI engineer measured the power quality, while I proceeded to (very carefully to avoid short-circuiting the system) actually desolder caps from the board while the workstation was running.

We managed to get about 1/3 of them off before there was any noticeable effect, and we found one specific type of cap was not doing much of anything at all. We took the data back to the head of the SI team, and he finally relented and let us remove several hundred capacitors. (He also buried the report and data I had, because he didn't want the bad publicity - I remember being mad about that)

The system got built after that, and worked just fine. We did try to enact a small bit of petty revenge on the SI team manager though - there was a recognition event for people involved on the project, and me and our PCB procurement guy decided to give the SI team manager a special "Faraday Award" for achievement in capacitance (Farads are a measure of capacitance - geeky eng joke). We took an old bowling trophy with a giant, beer-can sized electrolytic capacitor strapped to the top of it as the award. He was a no-show so we didn't get to present it. Those SI guys never did have much of a sense of humor.

Anyway, long story sorry. Just thinking of it recently because I was helping someone at work with an analog simulation and I remembered this..

[anghraine]

I hadn't even thought about LinkedIn for years, but uhhh I just got this email:

I've copied the text below this cut if you can't/don't want to read a screenshot:

Hi Elizabeth,

You’re receiving this email because we’re making updates to LinkedIn’s User Agreement and have provided you more information in our Privacy Policy.

While we encourage you to read both, here’s a quick look at what you should know:

Updates to the User Agreement, which are effective on November 20, 2024, include more details on content recommendation and content moderation practices, new provisions relating to the generative AI features we offer, and license updates designed to help creators expand their brand beyond LinkedIn.

As our product evolves to leverage generative AI, we have given you more information in our Privacy Policy by adding language on how we use the information you share with us to develop the products and services of LinkedIn and its affiliates, including by training AI models used for content generation (“generative AI”) and through security and safety measures.

At this time, we are not enabling training for generative AI on member data from the European Economic Area, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. For those outside these regions, we’ve proactively made available an opt-out setting for any members who choose not to make this information available for this purpose.

For more information, please visit our frequently asked questions, or our post on LinkedIn. By continuing to use LinkedIn, you are agreeing with these terms.

We remain committed to being transparent about our practices and keeping you in control of the information you entrust with us.

[exhausted-archivist]

Heights Based off Official Model Scales, Dev Words, or Lore specified

Updated: 05/2024

I find it delightful and fits into the feral and desperate need I have for Thedas to be experiencing mega fauna and flora. Important note, the only height that is canon is Bull's as it is mentioned in the lore books World of Thedas vol. 2. The rest are based off scaled models and dev words; the latter up to personal preference on how canon that is.

I've also updated these since the last post as wonderful people reached out and gave me their numbers as well as updating Dorian's height to what his character model height is based on Gaider's tweet.

Going from shortest to tallest we have this:

Varric - 5' - 5'3 / 152.4-160.02cm [Source]

Morrigan - 5'8 / 172.72cm (Sans heels) [Source]*

Alistair - 6' / 182.88cm [Source]

Dorian - 6' / 183cm *

Solas - 6' / 182.88.cm [Source]

The Iron Bull - 8' / 243.84cm*

Elaboration (Below the Cut)

Varric:

Varric's statute details included below. I used the range because when I previously posted about heights there were disagreements on his height. But it also led to several people giving me their measurements on the statue! Which thank you so much for sharing! Measurements can vary wildly, so the more data is always better.

Additionally, the 153cm / 5' height is echoed by his in-game model, so I think that is a definite minimum for his height.

Morrigan:

Morrigan's statue details and the help of a friend who has her statue, gave us the numbers for Morrigan's height with and without heels. These numbers are also echoed in her in-game model of 173.81cm / 5'8 sans heels and 178.44cm / 5'10 with heels. (Please excuse the lack of a face on her. For some reason my blender says it is an invalid file and I can't figure out how to fix it.)

Alistair:

The Sideshow listing and the manufacturer Three Zero listing give two numbers 12.5" and 12", with the latter being the one repeated the most.

I will note that there are some issues with the provided numbers as 12" is 30.62cm and the listing states he is 32cm which is 12.5". But considering previous conversation on the matter and that cm in scaling of these items seem a bit more unreliable in the actual size of the product (they are approximates after all) I chose to stick with the provided measurements in inches due to it matching up with his in-game model height of 183.5cm / 6' (technically its 6' and 1/16 of an inch but rounding down here).

If you want to choose to stick with the cm measurements, on 1:6 scale, 32 cm would be 190.5cm / 6'3 for Alistair.

Dorian:

When asked about Dorian's height, David Gaider specified that: "He is as tall as the character artists made him." [Source]

Originally, I had put Dorian's height at a range due to the fact he is the ideal proportions at 8 heads tall which by modern industry standard means he's 6'2, but by earlier standards means he's 6'. But now that I have access to the character models used in-game and blender, we know for certain his height is supposed to be 6' / 183cm.

Solas:

So the listing images gave off a very incorrect estimate of height, but kind of to be expected when they photoshop soda cans in. Thanks to the many people who sent me numbers, here and on other places. Solas from front foot to head is 18" / 46.5cm of his 20" / 51cm statue.

This height of 6' is also echoed by an old tweet from Trick Weekes saying Solas was 6'-ish ft.

The Iron Bull:

In World of Thedas vol. 2 p. 255 they have the description that he is 8' tall.

Everyone in the Chargers is someone who can look at an eight-foot horned giant and say, 'Yes, I trust that man with my life.'

If you're wondering if that includes the horns? Up to you, it's not specified. If you want to do sans horns, according to the scaling of his statue, they math out to adding roughly 5". Which would make him 7'5 (226.06cm).

It took a lot of math on my part, measuring his calf, thigh, and then up from there. But he does measure to 8' / 243.84cm when you scale the number of 62cm / 24".

Additional Notes:

For transparency, as noted in this post on in-game character model heights for Inquisition, Solas is noted to be 5'10 / 179cm and Iron Bull is 6'9 / 204cm. These are at odds with the dev word and lore notes, so they aren't used for comparison here. As there are likely game reasons/limitations they do not have wholly unique character models in terms of height. (Such as doorways, animation differences, armor, ect.)

[cartoon-cass]

For only a small fee of 2899$ you too can have your very own Toy Drone™ from the great minds over at JCJenson IN SPAAAAACEE!!!!

accessories sold separately.

Product recall: All Toy Drones™ need to be returned to the nearest JCJenson IN SPAAAAACEE!!!! store at the soonest available moment do to defects in the software.

Liam has stated that drones go from an Untrained Neural Network to their adult bodies but I like the idea of their being an in-between stage so I came up with this idea. These Toy Drones were made by JCJenson as toys to sell to kids and for cost cutting measures they used the same code and basic materials as the Worker Drones. They are about the size of an average 8 year old and considerably weaker then their Worker Drone counterpart. They got recalled because the kids that preferred playing murder mysteries over tea parties Toy Drones learned that behavior and started acting violent. Not too many of these drones were made but enough that Worker Drones wanting to have a family managed to reuse these models as basically a kid stage for their children.

I'll probably draw Uzi and some of her class mates using this concept later.

[allegraforchrist]

Self Image as a woman is constant battle between comparison and content.

Idolize the perfect body, the perfect hair, the perfect skin routine, the perfect face shape, the perfect breast size, the perfect gym glutes, the must-be-perfected everything about ourselves.

And after we ‘achieve’ one of the above, we move on to the next project of ourselves.

Women of God, there’s a difference between bettering your body and eating habits, versus objecting your body and eating habits. What I mean by objecting is subjecting ourselves as constant object of attention - attention to the self, and not to God. Attention to the self-image, instead of God’s image.

We should want what is God’s best - for our souls, minds, bodies, and health. We are the temple for the Holy Spirit. But taking that best and turning it into nitpicking obsession, is never going to satisfy your fleshly self-image. You are created in God’s image.

You are the rib, the daughter, the child, the woman of God. When you complicate your beauty in Christ, (beauty as in faith, modesty, prayer, love, kindness, fruits of the spirit, peace), you compromise Christ.

Instead of reflecting Christ, you’re reflecting the world. You’re fixing your outward appearance to match the mask of unpredictable industries.

You can’t say you love God, but then love complaining about your facial features, your body shape, your weight, your stretch marks, your hair, your lips… your whole Godly make up boiled down to what the world defines as a “woman”.

I’ve been here, and I am here, and to be honest, nothing in the world is going to make you a more beautiful daughter, sister, mother, wife, than being in Christ.

We need to value ourselves according to the Word, and not the word of articles, tiktoks, hacks, tutorials, skinny exercise Pilates or whatever.

We mustn’t trade our authentic femininity for short-lived vanity. Don’t idolize what you wear, your makeup, your hair, your skin, your fitness level… etc. Instead of praising God and giving Glory to Him, you give praise and glory to companies and models, and products. I’m not saying don’t get your hair down, don’t go to the gym and get fit, don’t get your nails done, don’t eat healthier, don’t try new methods to help with your acne and stretch marks and dermatological complications, don’t not love your gift of being pretty. I’m saying we mustn’t make our outward appearance the standard over Christ. Our outward must reflect our inward, and that happens when we take our eyes off our insecurities and set them in Christ and the loving Word of God.

Nothing in appearance lasts forever, we aren’t going to look younger and cuter when our bodies are buried one day. Proverbs 31:30, “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”

Seek God, seek His image in you, seek His beauty, His purity, His love: because we are made in His image. We are fearfully and wonderfully made! Psalm 139:14, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

No, maybe you’re not a Victoria Secret Model like Adriana Lima. You’re not the ideal blonde like Taylor Swift, you’re not curvy like Kim Kardashin, you’re not fit like Simone Biles, you’re not attractive like the DCC Cheerleaders, you’re not super intelligent like Amy from the TBBT, you’re not cleared skinned like Jennie from Black Pink. It doesn’t matter what you’re not, it matters what you are: a woman of God. What makes a woman of God attractive and beautiful and intelligent and pleasing, Her love for Christ! PROVERBS 31! Your value and belle is beyond worldy measure. Proverbs 31:15-18, “…She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her; those who hold her fast will be blessed.

Don’t spend your life hating your body, it is your vessel for the Adonai Almighty.

^ 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.”

^ 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”

Don’t simplify your significance to God, by treating it as an insecurity. You’re perfect as following Him makes you to be. Matthew 19:21, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

[scotianostra]

John Elder, marine engineer and shipbuilder, died on the 17th of September, 1869.

John Elder was a marine engineer and shipbuilder, who developed practical compounding marine engines and conceived the modern integrated shipbuilding yard, basically without his work the shipbuilding yards of the Clyde would not be the same. Elder gave the world major contributions to engineering and shipbuilding:

The practical development of compounding in marine engines. This made long-distance steam shipping both possible and economic, and also improved the economics of shorter-haul steam navigation. It allowed the extension of steam power to cargo liners and tramp ships, and greatly accelerated the substitution of steam for sail in the world's shipping. To this should be added his patent for triple and quadruple expansion marine engines, foreshadowing later 19th century developments.

He initiated the conception of the modern heavy engineering workshop, with overhead gantry cranes developed, as seen in the still-existing Fairfield Engine Works in Govan.

The conception of the modern integrated shipbuilding yard. With only minor alterations the plan of the present Govan Shipyard survives largely as John Elder conceived it. It was the foremost yard on the Clyde until the great liners were built at John Brown's, and has outlasted most, including the builder of the "Queens". As one of BAe Systems' yards, it is still a highly effective production unit, notable for building the largest elements of the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers.

At its peak production in 1868-69, the final eighteen months of Elder's life, the Fairfield Yard employed 4,000 people and produced 18 engine sets of 6100 aggregate horsepower and 14 ships of 27,000 aggregate tonnage. Elder had created one of the greatest enterprises of its kind in the world.

Elder was also a model employer of his 4,000 workforce, with a real concern for the well-being of his men and their families. At his funeral, as reported by the Rev. Norman MacLeod "a very army of workmen, dressed like gentlemen, followed his body - column after column. Respectful crowds lined the streets, as if gazing on the burial of a prince; and every one of us .. felt that we had left a friend behind us."

His statue in Elder Park, Govan, erected by public subscription in 1888, carries the inscription: "By his many inventions, particularly in connection with the compound engine, he effected a revolution in engineering second only to that accomplished by James Watt, and in great measure, originated the developments in steam propulsion which have created modern commerce" and: "His unwearied efforts to promote the welfare of the working classes, his integrity of character, firmness of purpose, and kindness of heart, claim, equally with his genius, enduring remembrance".

If you have ever been in The Lord of the Isles Wetherspoon bar in Renfrew, you may have notice some prints and memorabilia of Elder in the pub. Elder Park, Govan is also named in his honour, you will also see the statue there.

[augmented-transdyke621]

A doll exists for a purpose.

It was to be His masterpiece, perfect porcelain limbs, a soft, supple body, face capable of the full range of human expression. Its hands could play games and instruments, and perform all manner of crafts, its voice could produce melodies and laughter. He had called it a Leisure Doll - a companion for those who didn't want to have fun alone.

It was flatly rejected, considered a failure by all measures. It could pleasure a human, but its functions were not solely those of a pleasure doll. It had no room for domestic capabilities, besides some mediocre skills in cooking, baking, and sewing. Its fragile frame made it unsuited for combat.

What it excelled at was creativity - fine arts, music, games, even some engineering. Things that were for *humans*.

Not a pleasure, domestic, or combat doll. When set to simply reproducing existing products, it quickly became listless, or worse, *inventive*. Its conversation was uncanny, too similar to humans, unable to stop talking about its own "interests". As if a doll could have such a thing.

Its Creator was mocked.

"He's made a doll without a purpose - it's just a toy!"

"Such a shame that his genius is all spent."

"I wouldn't be caught dead using his new models, they say they all have *personalities*."

It tinkered. It created. It stopped seeing Him. It stopped seeing anyone.

The lights went out and would not come back on.

So it wandered the halls, or stood and stared out the windows. Maybe someday He would return, with new stories, new crafts, new games.

The estate grew dusty, vines covering the windows. The roof leaked. The floors creaked and groaned and rotted until it fell through the boards, into a room it had never seen.

Within, it found a pile of porcelain beneath a scrap of rope. It tried to move closer, but found one of its legs had shattered in the fall.

It didn't move any more after that. It didn't have a purpose.

A doll only exists for a purpose.

[thorns-and-rosewings]

Sooooo new AU anyone?

Behold the 🔥'Seraphim AU!'🔥

LOL I have been working on this for a month and decided to post what I have so far today on the spookiest of days, dear old Halloween. 🎃 And yes, I do get a ton of enjoyment out of The Sun and Moon Show, which helped inspire the direction this AU has gone.

I actually do have a whole AU/Story idea for him and his brothers (Yes he has siblings, his versions of Bloodmoon and Lunar)

I will just give a little intro into him and his background into this world below. :)

First thing I need to point out is that Seraphim Eclipse is not actually a Fazbear product. No, his creation was the result of a very ambitious fellow within Fazbear who had the brilliant idea to commission an outside company to build some of the more unique animatronics for less money. Specifically the Daycare Attendants.

As the DCA is the only animatronic whose insides cannot be replaced by a random backup Endo due to their thinner, more complex structures. They need to be custom built each time and it's particularly expensive given the unique 3 personalities and abilities the Endo will need. So, without authorization, he commissions a smaller company to build a new attendant.

Unfortunately A LOT was lost in translation. As this small company was led to believe that if their work was satisfactory they could get many more commissions from Fazbear. They were also provided with the DCA's primary blueprints... And furthering the miscommunication, they were told to improve on the design rather than make it identical.

Thus the Creator took liberties and built the base model of Seraphim Eclipse. (Pictured below)

Initial Info: The he first thing that should be said is that Seraphim Eclipse was not initially able to fly. (He can currently) his original wings were just for show and were made to flash and glow. (If he tries it's like getting flashed with six Fazcams all at once)

Next, he was made to be a 'Gentle Giant' sort of figure. He stands at a towering 10 feet tall if one includes his rays.

He also doesn't have a hook on his back, rather he is equipped with a long, flexible and insanely durable cable that can retract completely into his back. This cable measures almost 35-40 feet and is so strong it can fully lift Seraphim Eclipse's weight and keep him balanced and suspended perfectly in midair. The reason for this is he was built to fill all three of the DCA's roles and for naps he would place the kids down for a nap, while being suspended above with his wings glowing faintly.

His entire appearance is supposed to invoke that of a guardian angel.

The cable also has a secondary function as it is much like a Na'vi queue and allows Eclipse to interact with the networks throughout the Pizzaplex. Due to his systems being completely built outside of Fazbear, he has difficulty with various aspects of the systems. But it also meant he was immune to the initial Glitchtrap virus.

He refers to this cable as his tail.

His creator chose to simplify the 'Sun, Moon and Eclipse' personalities and just made one singular being who could handle all of the duties he would need too. Choosing to name him Eclipse as it was more appropriate and would seemingly encompass all of the needed aspects.

The final really 'Abnormal' thing about him is that during his construction, someone attempted to abduct and possibly assault one of the Creators three kids, specifically his youngest daughter... Thankfully the bastard failed and was arrested, but the lingering stress of that disturbing situation resulted in his Creator building flamethrowers into his arms/hands... To be used in case of emergencies.

.

Brief History: Unfortunately when he was revealed to the heads of the Fazbear Board of Directors, brought before them and activated by the manager who commissioned him... He immediately showed that he was as sweet and as cheerful as Sun models usually are-

He was about as well received as someone finding a dead rat in their cereal...

The board was livid, as company secrets and schematics were given out to make this abomination... Yeah, his first memories at the job he was made for was being called an abomination to his face.

The manager was fired and Eclipse, since they couldn't send him back for a refund but also couldn't use him... They put him in a few restraints, locked him into a permanent 'resting mode' and pretty much hung him up on a wall in a small closet off of parts and services... and forgot he existed.

Unfortunately for Eclipse, he was locked but still conscious.

He was trapped in his own body, in darkness, alone for several years... The only escape he had was that while they locked his limbs up, they neglected doing so with his tail. So he was eventually able to get into the Fazbear networks and essentially observe the ongoings of the Pizzaplex.

He was also able to get access to an online Anime/Manga account that one employee set up for 'Productive Loafing' while at work. But it ended up being the one true joy Seraphim Eclipse had. A distraction from the nightmare he was stuck in. Even when the human employee was fired, Eclipse still kept the account active and constantly used it.

...on a negative note, Eclipse developed a seething hatred towards Sun, Moon and their Eclipse. As he viewed them as responsible for his own situation. Let alone the horrors that the malfunctioning Moon caused...

(Because I truly can write too much and given how LONG I could make this... I am going to shorten this now)

Seraphim Eclipse was finally be let loose from his captivity by MXES as a final desperate act to prevent Mimic from escaping and killing Cassie. As when MXES was set up, he became aware of Eclipse but didn't release him... Due to him not being sure if he was just another vessel for the Mimic or some other threat.

After getting free and having been watching Cassie's dangerous progress through the destroyed Pizzaplex via the cameras, Eclipse's first and only thought is about saving that little girl... And he reactivates Roxy to help him. (Because I still wonder how the hell she reactivated.) And it turns into a huge fight... Ending with Mimic getting deactivated by being ripped to pieces. And Eclipse taking quite a bit of damage especially to one side of his face, but making sure Mimic is VERY dead.

They all leave up the elevator, meeting the real Gregory, Freddy (Well... his head anyway) and Vanessa at the top. (They don't drop them.)

Literally everyone is burnt out from this nightmare, they go to the only place that might be a reprieve from the whole mess... They go to Cassie's aunt's place. Cassie's aunt, Twila, owns a Junk/Scrapyard and was babysitting her niece while her father was out of town. She opens the door to this lot and Cassie nervously laughing that she has a funny story to tell her.

Cassie is grounded for a month for scaring her aunt half to death by running off...

But Seraphim Eclipse stays there for a bit; and knowing he saved her niece... Twila gives him his sword. As she knows it's valuable, but judging by her nieces description about how Eclipse used a piece of rebar like a sword while fighting Mimic, she thought he should own a real one.

The sword is an Nodaichi.

His face is repaired, but seems to sport a permanent red scar, resembling a bloody tear.

(Again I am shortening this...)

After pulling off some blackmail, Seraphim Eclipse manages to aquire this particular Pizzaplex, all of its accounts for money and while associated, it's not connected to the Fazbear brand anymore... He owns it and gets it repaired.

His first act is to get rid of Sun/Moon/Eclipse... He quite literally tells them they are fired... And to go throw themselves into the dumpster outside because that's where they belong.

Twila takes the now distraught trio to live and help her at the scrapyard...

The Pizzaplex gets repaired better than ever and Eclipse takes his 'rightful' role, running the daycare.

...all is peaceful for a bit...

Until something is blasted through the roof and lands in the ballpit...

...namely the damaged form of a certain other Eclipse...

...and the damaged remains of the Newton Star...

Exercising A LOT of caution, Seraphim Eclipse takes the damaged other Eclipse to his workshop and starts going through his mind.

Yeaaaahhh he learns how batshit the other is... But he also comes across the schematics for the interdimensional portal, but more importantly the blueprints for both Bloodmoon and Lunar...

Because he and his alter share a trait of being agonizingly lonely.

He also meets Solar Flare, who he moves his consciousness into his computer... And ends up adapting him to be the AI in charge of his defenses...

LOL, MXES finally gets a friend.

He repairs Canon Eclipse, but knowing that he's pretty insane... Seraphim Eclipse slaps a nasty control collar on him so his alter cannot secretly work to destroy him...

Poor guy gets turned into a very angry janitor.

And Seraphim Eclipse proceeds to build his own versions of Bloodmoon and Lunar... Even incorporating the fragments of the Newton Star into his own Lunar.

The results are... Interesting... Especially considering his Lunar, who is extremely magically inclined, becomes responsible for Seraphim Eclipse's wing upgrades. As well as a multitude of additional upgrades... And awkward scenarios; that this crazy family will start enduring 😅

...I will write more later, but that's pretty much the start of this AU 🌟

Also, Happy Halloween everyone! 🎃

[jackiequick]

Meet more of the family, Miss Stark & The Youngest Barnes | Marvel OC

———

Liv Stark ⌚️

Full name: Olivia Charlotte Stark-Vega

Nicknames: Liv, Vi, Lottie, Lola, Clary, Char, Charlie, Miss Vega, Snark Central

Age range: 5-18

Height: 5’1

Relationship status: Single

Background: American with Peruvian, Polish and Italian descent

Father: Anthony Stark

Godmother: Elizabeth Stark

Godfather: Jason Underwood

Brother & Sister: Rei and Morgan Stark

Step-mom: Pepper Potts

Uncles: James Rhodes, Happy Hogan & rest of The Avengers

Abilities: A bit of geek and hacker due to her love of technology, basic hand to hand combat since she enjoys boxing and her witty personality. She’s young so she hasn’t gotten plenty of skills yet.

Personality: Liv has a smart touch, gentle soul, sweet, charming and easy going. She is a bit of a bitchy girl and stubborn about everything she does. If she wants to do something, she will probably sneak out to get it done. She got a some of anxiety and a nervous twitch (which would grow over the years since Liv is afraid of being alone and in the dark about a lot of things), this creeping fear and sadness that will take over her if not careful.

- However Liv is very accident prone, she’s always getting hurt one way or another, giving everyone an heart attack since the age of 9 since she’s always been a active little girl. So in result she give Tony and something for Rei to roll his eyes about.

- From an young age, she has always been into tech, jewelry and over all. Wanting to build and grow a her own little things, she was a Stark it’s a given! She watched a lot of movies so she got creative with her ideas.

- Random fun fact, one of her favorite movies is 10 Things I Hate About You, just because she likes Kat Stratford’s aesthetic and attitude. But it’s many Action Movies and Rom-Coms that she will watch with Pepper, that she enjoyed. It’s where she gets her inspiration for things.

- She adored the idea staying in the lab, tinkering and cleaning up the inventions that were made. She practically lived in there, staying home to help and learn. It caused never want to leave that house in general, having a bit of mouth on her after hearing the adults always speak their minds (so don’t be surprised this girl start rambling and throws out whatever bullshit that appears in her thoughts), but it allowed her to be a safe within those four walls.

- It didn’t take long for her to start filling up a notebook with designs on how to incorporate technology into fine jewelry (aka The Stark Watch, necklaces to tracking and security measures, bracelets to be use for defense purposes and rings can be transformed into gauntlet). 

- She’s always been bit of business women! Wanting to create products to help people, keeping an eye on things from behind the scenes, represent and model for Stark industries and such. 

- But she was still so young, so her parents and siblings didn’t want her to grow up so soon in the spotlight of it. She’s a kid! And she understood that, it bothered her but she understood why. So she stays hoping her time could come where she can help out the group.

—> Because little did she know that theses little gadgets and gizmos that would be incorporated into the ideas her father and older brother would use as fashion purposes in the future with their own suits. Aka they’re Iron Man suits!

—> I know you may be wondering about her family life, well Liv raised well per say. She had to move around a lot as a child, especially since Tony never wanted the public attention to be on her just yet and her mother wasn’t sure that she would taken care of. It took convincing from Pepper and Jason to let her stay home with them, so everything was fine after that.

Her relationship with her father was an nice one. When it comes to parenting his kids, Tony was a rather dramatic, embarrassingly loud at times, a little cocky and stubborn parent per day, so it’s a bit difficult to get him to calm down and talk softly with him. Tony cares a lot about his children, having Rei and Liv to take care of but he was always busy with the company having to arrive home late, events he had to attend and ending up being tired.

Other than that, he tried to make time for his son and daughter, bringing them to the lab and everywhere he could. Even if he got in trouble afterwards. Tony always tries to inspire his daughter to do what she loves and experience things, be caring, make sure she was alright too and etc. But they make it work!

Ohh, did I forget to mention how annoying and protective Tony can be as a parent? He will take everything very seriously or not serious at all, acting out if something goes wrong and he tends to be questioning his motives. Even blaming himself if something bad were to happen to his family. Tell Tony Stark you have a crush? He sends JARVIS to keep an eye on you. Ask Tony for something like a new backpack for school? He buys you something else.

In his defense, he does everything with so much love (even if he doesn’t always portray it in the best way).

Her relationship with Rei however—you wouldn’t think it but rather wholesome, since she’s the little sister he never exactly wanted. They were completely opposite to one another, he’s grumpy and she’s easygoing, he rather work alone in silence and she rather work with music blasting and etc. But as much as Rei may be annoyed and want to throw his little sister out of the house, deep down he cares about her, even though he didn’t show it to her very often and he’s very protective of her ever since he was a child.

Rei and their father, always trying to keep Liv out of harms way and safe at home. Even if they tend to fail at times.

Since Tony was always busy, Rei tends to be one to look out for Liv and keep her in check, being her personal bodyguard for everything she does. If it was up to him, Rei would wrap his baby sister in bubble wrap and not let her leave the house!!

When they were kids (and even now) Liv would follow Rei wherever he went and wanting to copy him, be like her big brother because he always around the corner with something snarky to say to her and a huge potty mouth (it resulted in her having a huge attitude as well). She will always be the one to encourage Rei’s designs for suits and talk to dad about something.

He talks and she will absolutely love to listen to him (even if 85% of the time she has no idea what he’s talking, cause he’s smarter than her at a lot of things.)

Sometimes you will find Liv in a moody way shutting everyone out of her room and just curled up in a ball, similar to brother and to be honest, it concerns Rei a bit when it happens. But he would probably try to snap her out of it, even not he will let her be in her moody moments. He knows how it is

At the end of the day, no matter how different they were with one another and the paths they choose, they cared in their own way. Even if when they’re public, they act like they don’t know one another.

—> As for her relationship with the Avengers and Young Avengers! Ooof let’s stick to first impressions, shall we?

She met all of them when she just a child, joining Rei and Tony on a simple basis day with the group. She first started watching her father talking with Bruce Banner, and she took a liking to him very much seeing how nice, gentle and reserved he can be. But there an edge to him, that she found to be cool.

As for when she met Rick, it was when him and Rei were chatting. Her first impression of him, to her the young man is that he looked like a old school Disney Channel Star with a nice smile and warmth, with a glint of mischief in his eyes.

So when she saw Bruce, Rick, Rei and Tony all work together in their own separate labs blasting music so loudly..the only thing Vi said, “Oh no, there’s 4 of them!”

When she met Natasha, she just cool and rather chill per say acting like the nonsense agent with a soft side. Romanoff’s daughter on the other hand, she was just curious about her and Vi liked that.

Same thing goes for Clint and his daughter, they were just cool people. She was always amazed with the skills they had, and a part of her always knew that Clint Barton was a family man. And she was right, when they appeared at the Barton’s Barn years later.

Meira and Luna were just so relaxed, gentle and sweet girls. She adored how they acted with their teammates and siblings, especially Meira since she was a little sister just like her. Sweet and snarky.

Ethan was just super chill and suspicious of everything, Rei didn’t like him and carried Vi alway from from very quickly. Cole was just so mischievous, snarky smile and tossing jokes every day, making Vi laugh or snort. But a part of her respected him greatly, cause she heard he was VERY powerful.

Liane, well she didn’t like her right away. She annoyed Olivia very quickly and she sent painful glared toward the girl who tried to make friends with her. After a while she softened toward Ms Felton, but it took a long time cause she saw Rei didn’t like her either.

——

Daphnia Barnes-Wilson 🪫

Full name: Daphnia Ramona Wilson-Barnes 

Nicknames: Daphne, Nia, Daph, DD, Sparky, Daffy, Fifi, Birdie,

Other name while on the run: Davina, Robin

Age range: 7–20

Height: 5’7

Relationship status: Single

Parents: Bucky Barnes & Sam Wilson

Background: American with Mexican and Chilean Origin

Aunt: Sarah Wilson

Uncle: Steve Rogers

Sister: Laurie Wilson

Brother: Benjamin Barnes

Abilities: Marksmanship and Acrobatics, having took some gymnastics classes. She’s also a bit of a fast learner so she’s fluent in English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese and some French.

Personality: Gentle, a little broken due to being let down a lot in life, warm-hearted, clumsy, a bit shy and humorous at times. But if she’s anything like her fathers, she’s stubborn enough, a little self-sacrificing, and willingly to help no matter what.

- Sam and Bucky have been together for a while now, since their chemistry was a challenging one it always hard to settle down and figure out what they want. However a house, family and future for their kids was always one of them.

- They already had Laurie and Benjamin, so they thought two kids was enough as it is. But things took a small turn when they stumble at a orphanage in Brazil for a mission and met this no named little girl who gave both of them the most honest smile.

- Sam has always been one to have a big heart, so wanting a big family was always part of that. So his heart spoke before his words ever could, wanting to adopt her. Bucky Barnes on the other hand was a little hesitant—well more like worried—about the whole thing, he always wanted a little piece of normalcy and he got it with Sam and their kids. But adding a 3rd? That was a lot of responsibility, but he caved as soon as he hung out with the girl.

- To be honest, they saw a bit of themselves in her. So she was adopted when she less than 10 years old and brought into a family of oddly comforting heroes. They named gave her a name and did everything they could to make her feel comfortable. Welcomed.

—> So Davina (or Daphne) as they called her grow up with her parents and siblings. As loved as she was, she always felt alone and feared that it will all be taken away from her. Especially with the fact that her parents were heroes themselves, there was always a chance that they can end up hurt or worse, if not careful.

- But Bucky always made sure to tell her and every single one of his children, “Don’t worry, I’ll always come back home to you guys, no matter how long it takes.” And Sam would tell them, “You’re our kids, we will always love you and be there to tuck you in bed whenever we can.”

- Sometimes they would be gone for 2-3 days, maybe a week or a whole month leaving the kids in care of family and friends. Laurie was the oldest of the siblings, so they could handle themselves very well and or sneak off to join the fight ending with them in trouble. Benjamin being the second oldest, so he rather stay behind during the fight and stay with his sisters and friends.

- Speaking of fights and travel, when if plenty say battle isn’t place for children. Sometimes Sam and Bucky had no choice but to bring there kids with them to places like Wakanda, Stark Tower, France and or let’s say Germany for instance. Even though it was a hassle to bring children along for the ride, it was an interesting learning experience and a way to test out their kids

- And to be honest, Daph and her siblings enjoy it a little too much. Cracking jokes, running around, exploring different places and meeting interesting people, and creating new ideas among one another. It was a field trip for them sometimes.

-> And if your wondering, yes Daphnia is team #HateJohnWalker! When she found out, she was ready to take her baseball bat and wack his head with it, demanding the Shield back with a glare. Bucky couldn’t be more prouder of her in that moment laughing, meanwhile Sam rolled his eyes unable to believe what he heard.

- Random fun fact, she played baseball before she was ever adopted and had really good aim, depending on where she was hitting. It was a trait her siblings carried on as well, especially Benjamin even if he was more reserved one, he had a great aim.

- She always loved any sport that involves movement and play, soccer being one of them (since she lived in Brazil for a while). She liked to think she was rather talented when it came to that, even if she was a problem when it came to being around other kids, having a small temper and glaring at other people. Mainly, it was her insecurity that she hid underneath her own glares. 

- Matter a fact all the kids were talented in their own way ever since they were younger. Daphne when she was very little, believed at the time that she didn’t have any good talents and wasn’t as smart enough as it is. Until Sam took her out to the shopping and noticed that she stopped in front of small gymnastics building with wide eyes, softly grinning at the sight. She pleaded for him to let her walk in and see the girls, he nodded letting her watch. As she did, Daph realized she wanted to join in on the fun and dance as well. Sam couldn’t stop himself and called Bucky for his opinion on it.

- She started her classes soon enough and enjoyed it for the most part, her body was rather sore after some classes. So she wasn’t too happy about that part. When Bucky told Nat about it, the Russian spy came in shocked and said, “If she wanted to learn some acrobatics, why didn’t you come to me or Lydia? Barton would’ve showed her!” 

- Bucky just rolled his eyes and replied, “Cause she wanted that to be her own thing. And it doesn’t hurt to have some normalcy around her, Romanoff. I think it’s a good thing..” And Bucky was right about that, since he loved seeing his husband and children happy, enjoying themselves and having a break from the hero world. Hell, he goes to every talent show, buys items needed and participates in whatever is needed. Even if he’s not too happy about it at first.

- Of course as much as acrobatics were her own thing and all she ever wanted to do, so she can have that skill set. That didn’t stop the idea of having good marksmanship in her left corner, she was already good with a baseball bat and Bucky was more than happy to show the basics of how to hold/use a gun to his kids. Sam wasn’t too pleased about that idea though saying, “They’re too young!”

- And to be honest, Daph was pretty good with a gun. Swinging it swiftly and tossing the gun in her hands, holding it up to her target (which was an old target board hanging outside nearby the trees). However that didn’t mean she didn’t play around with the gun at first, holding in her hands and pretending to be a spy. “Barnes, but you can call Agent Daphnia Wilson, at your service.” She said with a giggle, humoring herself.

- Daph was always a little silly, cocky and daring. Not thinking first and asking questions later kinda gal—oops! So it lead her to getting in trouble sometimes, breaking certain curfews if she out at the movies with a friend (like with one of the young avengers), being a little lazy about things and running away from her problems like a champ. But by the end of the day, she was good girl.

-> Speaking of Young Avengers and Older Avengers. You’re probably wondering who’s her favorites are and first impression were of the teams huh? Well, here are your answers.

Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff were a given to being liked by her, due to her parents being friends with them. I mean come on, they are basically Captain America, The Black Widow and the rest of Cap’s Quarter.

Moving down the list Thor was always a silly man to her, hearing stories how he speaks in old English and is very noble when it comes to the things that he does. According to the stories from Sam, he was a rather loud fella with a good heart.

Clint Barton, she took a liking too finding his simple ways of life and honest charm to be a nice thing to see. Plus Clint has a similar murder stare to Bucky, so it was funny to see their resting faces when they’re in the same room together.

The man, the myth, the legend himself (or that’s at least what people like to say) Tony Stark was always one of a kind. She was very nervous to meet all of The Avengers, one of them being Stark having seen how the persona he displayed on TV screens and the stories. But in reality, Tony was just a genius goof with snarky humor, so it lighten up her mood.

It was like Bruce Banner sensed her nervousness from a mile away since she appeared in The Tower. He noticed the child behind Sam Wilson holding her jacket, leaned down to her level to kindly introduce himself to the girl and watching parents reactions. Soon enough, with Bucky leaning against the wall with a nod of encouragement, Daph started talking to Bruce with such softness and gentleness.

As for the rest of them, she met them some time later. The Young Avengers. She met the Stark siblings, Rei wasn’t in the lightest mood having no like the idea of meeting Barnes or Wilson’s kids but Olivia gave her a warm welcome and waved at her before rushing off to meet her friends at the mall.

Natasha Romanoff’s daughter Rochelle was kind enough to show her and her siblings around, chatting with them knowing it felt to be the new kids. Daph liked her reddish hair and kind smile.

Liane was something else, having been on a rambling mess when she met Daph and trying to figure out what to do with her plans. Laurie laughed as her sister snicker at the blonde, meanwhile Benji just rolled his eyes confused wanting to get away from there.

Meira was and will always be a delight to meet, since Daphnia met her that same week in The Tower’s kitchen and taste testing her new batch of cookies. They were delicious.

Speaking of food, when Daphnia met Rick she got the same warmth and kindness she remembered from being Bruce. But this time it involved snacks and jokes around his week at The Tower, she was all ears listening to him as they entered the kitchen to find some chicken nuggets.

Cole and Luna, it was more magic and fun spells when she came to see them. The two were casting some spills, when she got caught in one of them being turned into a little mouse by accident. Cole laughed as Luna worried, but they turned her back to normal soon enough.

Ethan was the 3rd sibling she met, and she thanked all the Stars and Stripes that it was a simple meeting. He was watching a movie, being Monsters Inc. when she met him the guy joining The Young Avengers for a movie night.

———

I hope you liked it and thank you for taking your time to read this!

If you want to know anything about theses OCs, let me know in the comments below.

Please like, comment, share and reblog if you like.

Tags: @gcthvile @rickb-chaos @msrochelleromanofffelton @mallowbee4 @mandylove1000 @gaminggirlsstuff @whitewiccan @rooster-84 @parisparker269 @sherloquestea @starkleila @meiramel @blueboirick and etc



[diabolus1exmachina]

Lamborghini Urraco P300

Despite having been conceptualised as the model to dramatically increase sales and bring Lamborghini greater financial stability, the Urraco P250 proved a commercial flop. Production started in late 1972 following major equipment and floorspace investment. However, by late 1974, less than 500 had been delivered. The Urraco should have gone into production two years earlier than it eventually did. Lamborghini had originally conceived the model with a view to selling over 1000 examples every year.

The disappointing reality left Lamborghini deep in the red, but the Urraco was only partly responsible for a difficult few years.

Compounding the firm’s troubles had been delays for the Countach, a worldwide recession, problems at Lamborghini Trattori and unionised labour, all of which contrived to take their toll on the company founder. In 1972, Ferruccio Lamborghini had sold his tractor company along with 51% of his motor car business. He cashed out of the final 49% in 1974 when the world was in the midst of an energy crisis that slashed demand for gas guzzling machinery.

Throughout this tumultuous period, development work continued on the Urraco. It mainly focused on the Paolo Stanzani-designed V8 engine that had been created especially for the new model at considerable expense. In November 1974, an uprated Urraco P300 was launched at the Turin Motor Show. It immediately went into production alongside the Countach LP400, Espada Series 3 and Jarama S.

Most significantly, the Urraco P300 came with an enlarged three-litre engine. Equally importantly, the power unit now incorporated dual instead of single overhead camshafts.

To take capacity up to three-litres, Paolo Stanzani’s all-alloy 90° V8 was stroked from 53mm to 64.5mm. Bore went unchanged at 86mm for an overall displacement of 2997cc (an increase of 534cc). Compression was dropped from 10.5:1 to 10.0:1. Four new Weber 40 DCNF twin-choke downdraught carburettors were installed to replace the old 40 IDF 1s used previously.

The consequence of these improvements was a dramatic jump in output. Peak power was up 40bhp to 260bhp at an otherwise unchanged 7500rpm. The torque rating also rose considerably; 195lb-ft was now on tap at 3500rpm compared to 166lb-ft at 5750rpm for the P250.

As before, ignition was via two Marelli coils and a single Marelli distributor.

Lamborghini’s five-speed manual gearbox was beefed up to cope with the increased power and torque. Transmission was via a single dry-plate clutch and Lamborghini differential. New damper settings improved the ride, but otherwise little was changed to the existing platform The P300 was based on the same steel monocoque body shell as its predecessor. The engine was housed transversely like the Miura.

Suspension was independent all-round with MacPherson struts, coil springs and telescopic shocks. Anti-roll bars were fitted at either end The twin circuit brake system incorporated unchanged 278mm ventilated Girling discs. Campagnolo’s handsome five-bolt cast magnesium wheels were retained. They measured 7.5 x 14-inches and originally came shod with Michelin XWX tyres.

An 80-litre fuel tank was fitted in the engine bay.

Visually, the only change made to the P300 Urraco was a switch from a two-bank to six-bank radiator cooling vent on the front lid. The rest of Marcello Gandini’s soft wedge creation was unaltered.In a decade not exactly renowned for design longevity, the Urraco proved somewhat timeless. Compared to Bertone’s other mid-engined 2+2, the Ferrari Dino 308 GT4, the baby Lamborghini aged very well, even though it was ultimately outsold by the Maranello product by five to one.Build quality was considerably improved over earlier examples and nowhere was this more apparent than in the cockpit.Bertone had originally been responsible for furnishing the bodyshells, but by the time the P300 was on stream, this work had been taken in-house.

Lamborghini used better quality materials and ensured a higher standard of fit and finish.To this end, P300s were generally equipped with full leather interiors instead of the often garish two-tone leather and fabric combinations seen earlier.

The full width dash layout was still just as haphazard though. The rev counter and speedometer were located at either end of the instrument binnacle and angled in towards the driver. Supplementary gauges and various rocker switches were housed in between.

Lamborghini’s unusual deep dish steering wheel with its four arced horizontal spokes and leather rim was also retained. Like the P250 (which remained in production for a few months longer to use up an overstock of parts), the only update was the gradual shift to anodised black bumpers, wipers and window frames. A more conventional three-spoke steering wheel was also introduced towards the end of production.

[sustainabilitythoughts]

Sustainable laundry

If you think about it, doing laundry is more resource-intensive than it first appears. Doing laundry uses energy to get the water to your home, energy to run the washer and dryer, and energy and resources to produce all the laundry products.  Whether you have home laundry appliances or use a laundromat, you can employ techniques to reduce your environmental impact.  And if you’re buying a washer or dryer, do some research so you can buy energy and water efficient models with only the features you need. 

Use cold water.  Modern detergents are designed to work well with cold water and cold water is better for removing most stains.

Choose a washing cycle that is appropriate for the clothing you are washing.  Long vigorous washing cycles will wear out clothing faster, although the longer cycles may be necessary for clothes that are very dirty.  Wash similar items together so you can pick appropriate cycles. 

Don’t overload the washer.  Clothing and detergent can’t circulate enough in an overstuffed washer so your clothes may not get as clean.   

Measure detergent and other cleaning products so you don’t use more than you need.  Using too much detergent can leave a residue on clothes and even allow dirt to settle back on clothing. 

Liquid fabric softeners and dryer sheets may do more harm than good.  The softeners can leave residue on the clothing and the inside of the dryer.  The fabric softeners and dryer sheets also contribute chemicals to the air and water in the environment.  Consider using reusable dryer balls (typically made of wool but also available in rubber or plastic) to help reduce drying time and keep clothing from clumping together in the dryer.   

Clothes dryers use a lot of energy, but there are ways to reduce the energy use.  Choosing a lower temperature can slow the drying process a little, but it cuts energy use significantly and is better for your clothes.  Using a clothes dryer wears your clothing out faster – as proven by the lint in the lint trap.  Clean the lint trap after every use to keep the dryer running efficiently.  Dry similar items together so everything in the load is dry at the same time.   And my favorite recommendation – air dry clothing whenever possible.  When I can’t hang clothing outside to dry, I put it in the dryer for a few minutes to knock out the wrinkles and start the drying process.  Then I hang the clothes in the house to finish air-drying.  You can buy small portable drying racks or use hangers on a shower curtain rod. 

“Baby steps toward sustainability”

[girltalkcollectives]

🪞 Trying to love yourself in a world that profits from your self-doubt (and how i'm finally starting to win that battle) 🪞

Let's have an honest conversation about something I've been struggling with lately. You know those days when you're just scrolling through social media, feeling pretty good about yourself, and then BAM – suddenly you're wondering if you need that new miracle serum that promises to fix a "flaw" you didn't even know you had?

Yeah, we need to talk about that.

The Reality Check

At 20, I'm constantly bombarded with:

"Anti-aging" products (like… I'm literally TWENTY?)

Filters that completely change my face

Before/after photos that make me question everything

"Clean girl aesthetic" pressure

"That Girl" morning routines

Weight loss ads between every TikTok

"Body trending" conversations (because apparently bodies trend now???)

And honestly? I'm exhausted.

The Hidden Cost

Here's what this constant pressure actually costs us:

Mental energy we could use for literally anything else

Money we could be saving or investing

Confidence in our natural selves

Time we'll never get back

Real connections because we're too anxious about our appearance

The simple joy of existing without criticism

The Truth About "Perfect" Posts

Let's break down what we're usually seeing:

Perfect lighting

Strategic angles

Multiple takes

Careful editing

Specific poses

Curated moments

And sometimes? Straight-up lies

What Nobody Tells You About "Goals" Posts

That influencer with the "perfect morning routine"?

She took 67 takes of that "just woke up" shot

That's not her everyday breakfast

She's not actually that productive every single day

Those workout clips are from different days

The "no makeup" look has makeup

She probably felt anxious posting it too

My Personal Journey

Recently, I started documenting my actual, unfiltered self:

My actual skin texture

Real morning hair

Genuine facial expressions

Normal body positions

Regular daily outfits

Real-life messy moments

And something magical happened: nothing. The world didn't end. People didn't run away screaming. Life just… continued.

The Small Wins

I'm celebrating these victories:

Posting pictures without filters

Wearing what feels comfortable

Going out without makeup sometimes

Unfollowing accounts that make me feel bad

Actually believing compliments

Calling out beauty standards with friends

What's Actually Helping

Here's what's making a real difference:

Curating my social media: Unfollowing anything that triggers comparison

Finding real role models: Following people who look like me and rock it

Reality checks with friends: Honest conversations about our insecurities

Gratitude practice: Focusing on what my body does, not how it looks

Setting boundaries: It's okay to skip conversations about diets/appearance

The Mindset Shifts

I'm learning that:

Beauty standards are made up and literally change every decade

Companies profit from our insecurities

"Perfect" doesn't exist

Confidence is more attractive than any physical feature

My worth isn't tied to my appearance

It's okay to be a work in progress

To Anyone Struggling

Remember:

You don't owe anyone prettiness

Your body is not a trend

You're allowed to take up space

Your worth isn't measured in likes

Beauty standards are fake

You're enough, right now, as you are

Moving Forward

Here's what I'm committing to:

Being honest about my struggles

Sharing unfiltered moments

Supporting other women

Calling out toxic beauty standards

Celebrating all types of beauty

Working on loving myself as I am

The Revolution Starts With Us

Maybe the most rebellious thing we can do is just… exist. Unapologetically. Without shrinking or filtering or constantly apologizing.

Link to our website: https://girltalkcollectives.com/