#mobile block making machine

[block-machinery]

Revolutionizing Construction: The Power of Diesel Brick Making Machines and Mobile Block Making Machines

The construction industry is evolving, and the adoption of innovative technologies like Diesel Brick Making Machines and Mobile Block Making Machines is paving the way for progress. Whether you prioritize high production capacity or on-the-go flexibility, these machines offer solutions that align with the demands of modern construction.

[beyazligroup]

https://vessmachine.com/blog/284-mobile-block-making-machine-vess-compact-12-1.html

[raytonblockmachinery]

With Hydraform's Soil Diesel Brick Machine and build a sustainable future. It produces environmentally friendly bricks by harnessing the power of cement, dirt, and fuel. Reduce environmental impact while producing bricks that are effective, robust, and adaptable. With Hydraform's Soil Diesel Brick Machine, embrace sustainability, make a positive impact on the environment, and create the foundation for a brighter future. Visit us for more details.

[anaquariusfox]

I spent the evening looking into this AI shit and made a wee informative post of the information I found and thought all artists would be interested and maybe help yall?

edit: forgot to mention Glaze and Nightshade to alter/disrupt AI from taking your work into their machines. You can use these and post and it will apparently mess up the AI and it wont take your content into it's machine!

edit: ArtStation is not AI free! So make sure to read that when signing up if you do! (this post is also on twt)

[Image descriptions: A series of infographics titled: “Opt Out AI: [Social Media] and what I found.” The title image shows a drawing of a person holding up a stack of papers where the first says, ‘Terms of Service’ and the rest have logos for various social media sites and are falling onto the floor. Long transcriptions follow.

Instagram/Meta (I have to assume Facebook).

Hard for all users to locate the “opt out” options. The option has been known to move locations.

You have to click the opt out link to submit a request to opt out of the AI scraping. *You have to submit screenshots of your work/face/content you posted to the app, is curretnly being used in AI. If you do not have this, they will deny you.

Users are saying after being rejected, are being “meta blocked”

People’s requests are being accepted but they still have doubts that their content won’t be taken anyways.

Twitter/X

As of August 2023, Twitter’s ToS update:

“Twitter has the right to use any content that users post on its platform to train its AI models, and that users grant Twitter a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to do so.”

There isn’t much to say. They’re doing the same thing Instagram is doing (to my understanding) and we can’t even opt out.

Tumblr

They also take your data and content and sell it to AI models.

But you’re in luck!

It is very simply to opt out (Wow. Thank Gods)

Opt out on Desktop: click on your blog > blog settings > scroll til you see visibility options and it’ll be the last option to toggle

Out out of Mobile: click your blog > scroll then click visibility > toggle opt out option

TikTok

I took time skim their ToS and under “How We Use Your Information” and towards the end of the long list: “To train and improve our technology, such as our machine learning models and algorithms.”

Regarding data collected; they will only not sell your data when “where restricted by applicable law”. That is not many countries. You can refuse/disable some cookies by going into settings > ads > turn off targeted ads.

I couldn’t find much in AI besides “our machine learning models” which I think is the same thing.

What to do?

In this age of the internet, it’s scary! But you have options and can pick which are best for you!

Accepting these platforms collection of not only your artwork, but your face! And not only your faces but the faces of those in your photos. Your friends and family. Some of those family members are children! Some of those faces are minors! I shudder to think what darker purposes those faces could be used for.

Opt out where you can! Be mindful and know the content you are posting is at risk of being loaded to AI if unable to opt out.

Fully delete (not archive) your content/accounts with these platforms. I know it takes up to 90 days for instagram to “delete” your information. And even keep it for “legal” purposes like legal prevention.

Use lesser known social media platforms! Some examples are; Signal, Mastodon, Diaspora, et. As well as art platforms: Artfol, Cara, ArtStation, etc.

The last drawing shows the same person as the title saying, ‘I am, by no means, a ToS autistic! So feel free to share any relatable information to these topics via reply or qrt!

I just wanted to share the information I found while searching for my own answers cause I’m sure people have the same questions as me.’ \End description] (thank you @a-captions-blog!)

[0sbrain]

here's a list of mozilla add-ons for all of you tumblrinas out there to have a better internet experience

also, if you like my post, please reblog it. Tumblr hates links but i had to put them so you adhd bitches actually download them <3 i know because i am also adhd bitches

BASIC STUFF:

AdGuard AdBlocker / uBlock Origin : adguard is a basic adblock and with origin you can also block any other element you want. for example i got rid of the shop menu on tumblr

Privacy Badger : this add on will block trackers. if an element contains a tracker it will give you the option to use it or not

Shinigami Eyes: this will highlight transphobic and trans friendly users and sites using different colors by using a moderated database. perfect to avoid terfs on any social media. i will explain how to use this and other add-ons on android as well under the read more cut

THINGS YOU TUMBLINAS WANT:

Xkit: the best tumblr related add on. with many customizable options, xkit not only enhances your experience from a visual standpoint, but provides some much needed accessibility tools

bonus: if you are into tf2 and wanna be a cool cat, you can also get the old version to add cool reblog icons

AO3 enhancer: some basic enhancements including reading time and the ability to block authors and tags

YOUTUBE

Return of the YouTube Dislike : pretty self explanatory

Youtube non-stop: gets rid of the annoying "Video paused. Continue watching?" popup when you have a video in the background

SponsorBlock: gives you options to skip either automatically or manually sponsors, videoclip non music sectors and discloses other type of sponsorships/paid partnerships

Enhancer for YouTube: adds some useful options such as custom play speed, let's you play videos in a window and most important of all, it allows you to make the youtube interface as ugly as your heart desires. I can't show a full image of what it looks like because i've been told its eye strainy and i want this post to be accessible but look at this <3

PocketTube: allows you to organize your subscriptions into groups

YouTube Comment Search: what it says

FINDING STUFF

WayBack Machine: you probably know about this site and definitely should get the add on. this allows you to save pages and access older versions with the click of a button. while you can search wayback using web archives, please get this one as well as it allows you to easily save pages and contribute to the archive.

Web Archives: it allows you to search through multiple archives and search engines including WayBack Machine, Google, Yandex and more.

Search by Image: allows you to reverse image search using multiple search engines (in my experience yandex tends to yield the best results)

Image Search Options: similar to the last one

this next section is pretty niche but... STEAM AND STEAM TRADING

SteamDB: adds some interesting and useful statistics

Augmented Steam: useful info specially for browsing and buying games

TF2 Trade Helper: an absolute godsend, lets you add items in bundles, keeps track of your keys and metal and your recent trades, displays links to the backpack tf page next to users profiles and more. look it tells me how much moneys i have and adds metal to trades without clicking one by one oh may god

IN CONCLUSION: oooooh you want to change to firefox so badly, you want to delete chrome and all the chrome clones that are actually just spyware and use firefox

HOW TO USE MOZILLA ADD-ONS ON YOUR PHONE

if you already use firefox on android, you'll know there are certain add-ons compatible with the app, some of them even being made just for the mobile version such as Video Background Play FIx. while most of them are pretty useful, some more specific ones aren't available on this version of the browser, but there's a way of getting some of them to work

you need to download the firefox nightly app, which is basically the same as the regular firefox browser but with the ability of activating developer mode. you can find how to do that here. once you've enabled it, you need to create a collection with all the add ons you want. i wouldn't recommend adding extensions if the creators haven't talked about phone compatibility, but XKit and Shinigami Eyes should work

also, don't tell the government this secret skater move, but you can try using both the regular firefox browser and nightly so you can have youtube videos in a floating box while you browse social media.

see? i can block this terf while Rick Rolling the people following this tutorial. isn't that tubular?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The surprising truth about data-driven dictatorships

Here’s the “dictator’s dilemma”: they want to block their country’s frustrated elites from mobilizing against them, so they censor public communications; but they also want to know what their people truly believe, so they can head off simmering resentments before they boil over into regime-toppling revolutions.

These two strategies are in tension: the more you censor, the less you know about the true feelings of your citizens and the easier it will be to miss serious problems until they spill over into the streets (think: the fall of the Berlin Wall or Tunisia before the Arab Spring). Dictators try to square this circle with things like private opinion polling or petition systems, but these capture a small slice of the potentially destabiziling moods circulating in the body politic.

Enter AI: back in 2018, Yuval Harari proposed that AI would supercharge dictatorships by mining and summarizing the public mood — as captured on social media — allowing dictators to tack into serious discontent and diffuse it before it erupted into unequenchable wildfire:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-technology-tyranny/568330/

Harari wrote that “the desire to concentrate all information and power in one place may become [dictators] decisive advantage in the 21st century.” But other political scientists sharply disagreed. Last year, Henry Farrell, Jeremy Wallace and Abraham Newman published a thoroughgoing rebuttal to Harari in Foreign Affairs:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/spirals-delusion-artificial-intelligence-decision-making

They argued that — like everyone who gets excited about AI, only to have their hopes dashed — dictators seeking to use AI to understand the public mood would run into serious training data bias problems. After all, people living under dictatorships know that spouting off about their discontent and desire for change is a risky business, so they will self-censor on social media. That’s true even if a person isn’t afraid of retaliation: if you know that using certain words or phrases in a post will get it autoblocked by a censorbot, what’s the point of trying to use those words?

The phrase “Garbage In, Garbage Out” dates back to 1957. That’s how long we’ve known that a computer that operates on bad data will barf up bad conclusions. But this is a very inconvenient truth for AI weirdos: having given up on manually assembling training data based on careful human judgment with multiple review steps, the AI industry “pivoted” to mass ingestion of scraped data from the whole internet.

But adding more unreliable data to an unreliable dataset doesn’t improve its reliability. GIGO is the iron law of computing, and you can’t repeal it by shoveling more garbage into the top of the training funnel:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/05/29/garbage-in-garbage-out-machine-learning-has-not-repealed-the-iron-law-of-computer-science/

When it comes to “AI” that’s used for decision support — that is, when an algorithm tells humans what to do and they do it — then you get something worse than Garbage In, Garbage Out — you get Garbage In, Garbage Out, Garbage Back In Again. That’s when the AI spits out something wrong, and then another AI sucks up that wrong conclusion and uses it to generate more conclusions.

To see this in action, consider the deeply flawed predictive policing systems that cities around the world rely on. These systems suck up crime data from the cops, then predict where crime is going to be, and send cops to those “hotspots” to do things like throw Black kids up against a wall and make them turn out their pockets, or pull over drivers and search their cars after pretending to have smelled cannabis.

The problem here is that “crime the police detected” isn’t the same as “crime.” You only find crime where you look for it. For example, there are far more incidents of domestic abuse reported in apartment buildings than in fully detached homes. That’s not because apartment dwellers are more likely to be wife-beaters: it’s because domestic abuse is most often reported by a neighbor who hears it through the walls.

So if your cops practice racially biased policing (I know, this is hard to imagine, but stay with me /s), then the crime they detect will already be a function of bias. If you only ever throw Black kids up against a wall and turn out their pockets, then every knife and dime-bag you find in someone’s pockets will come from some Black kid the cops decided to harass.

That’s life without AI. But now let’s throw in predictive policing: feed your “knives found in pockets” data to an algorithm and ask it to predict where there are more knives in pockets, and it will send you back to that Black neighborhood and tell you do throw even more Black kids up against a wall and search their pockets. The more you do this, the more knives you’ll find, and the more you’ll go back and do it again.

This is what Patrick Ball from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group calls “empiricism washing”: take a biased procedure and feed it to an algorithm, and then you get to go and do more biased procedures, and whenever anyone accuses you of bias, you can insist that you’re just following an empirical conclusion of a neutral algorithm, because “math can’t be racist.”

HRDAG has done excellent work on this, finding a natural experiment that makes the problem of GIGOGBI crystal clear. The National Survey On Drug Use and Health produces the gold standard snapshot of drug use in America. Kristian Lum and William Isaac took Oakland’s drug arrest data from 2010 and asked Predpol, a leading predictive policing product, to predict where Oakland’s 2011 drug use would take place.

[Image ID: (a) Number of drug arrests made by Oakland police department, 2010. (1) West Oakland, (2) International Boulevard. (b) Estimated number of drug users, based on 2011 National Survey on Drug Use and Health]

Then, they compared those predictions to the outcomes of the 2011 survey, which shows where actual drug use took place. The two maps couldn’t be more different:

https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2016.00960.x

Predpol told cops to go and look for drug use in a predominantly Black, working class neighborhood. Meanwhile the NSDUH survey showed the actual drug use took place all over Oakland, with a higher concentration in the Berkeley-neighboring student neighborhood.

What’s even more vivid is what happens when you simulate running Predpol on the new arrest data that would be generated by cops following its recommendations. If the cops went to that Black neighborhood and found more drugs there and told Predpol about it, the recommendation gets stronger and more confident.

In other words, GIGOGBI is a system for concentrating bias. Even trace amounts of bias in the original training data get refined and magnified when they are output though a decision support system that directs humans to go an act on that output. Algorithms are to bias what centrifuges are to radioactive ore: a way to turn minute amounts of bias into pluripotent, indestructible toxic waste.

There’s a great name for an AI that’s trained on an AI’s output, courtesy of Jathan Sadowski: “Habsburg AI.”

And that brings me back to the Dictator’s Dilemma. If your citizens are self-censoring in order to avoid retaliation or algorithmic shadowbanning, then the AI you train on their posts in order to find out what they’re really thinking will steer you in the opposite direction, so you make bad policies that make people angrier and destabilize things more.

Or at least, that was Farrell(et al)’s theory. And for many years, that’s where the debate over AI and dictatorship has stalled: theory vs theory. But now, there’s some empirical data on this, thanks to the “The Digital Dictator’s Dilemma,” a new paper from UCSD PhD candidate Eddie Yang:

https://www.eddieyang.net/research/DDD.pdf

Yang figured out a way to test these dueling hypotheses. He got 10 million Chinese social media posts from the start of the pandemic, before companies like Weibo were required to censor certain pandemic-related posts as politically sensitive. Yang treats these posts as a robust snapshot of public opinion: because there was no censorship of pandemic-related chatter, Chinese users were free to post anything they wanted without having to self-censor for fear of retaliation or deletion.

Next, Yang acquired the censorship model used by a real Chinese social media company to decide which posts should be blocked. Using this, he was able to determine which of the posts in the original set would be censored today in China.

That means that Yang knows that the “real” sentiment in the Chinese social media snapshot is, and what Chinese authorities would believe it to be if Chinese users were self-censoring all the posts that would be flagged by censorware today.

From here, Yang was able to play with the knobs, and determine how “preference-falsification” (when users lie about their feelings) and self-censorship would give a dictatorship a misleading view of public sentiment. What he finds is that the more repressive a regime is — the more people are incentivized to falsify or censor their views — the worse the system gets at uncovering the true public mood.

What’s more, adding additional (bad) data to the system doesn’t fix this “missing data” problem. GIGO remains an iron law of computing in this context, too.

But it gets better (or worse, I guess): Yang models a “crisis” scenario in which users stop self-censoring and start articulating their true views (because they’ve run out of fucks to give). This is the most dangerous moment for a dictator, and depending on the dictatorship handles it, they either get another decade or rule, or they wake up with guillotines on their lawns.

But “crisis” is where AI performs the worst. Trained on the “status quo” data where users are continuously self-censoring and preference-falsifying, AI has no clue how to handle the unvarnished truth. Both its recommendations about what to censor and its summaries of public sentiment are the least accurate when crisis erupts.

But here’s an interesting wrinkle: Yang scraped a bunch of Chinese users’ posts from Twitter — which the Chinese government doesn’t get to censor (yet) or spy on (yet) — and fed them to the model. He hypothesized that when Chinese users post to American social media, they don’t self-censor or preference-falsify, so this data should help the model improve its accuracy.

He was right — the model got significantly better once it ingested data from Twitter than when it was working solely from Weibo posts. And Yang notes that dictatorships all over the world are widely understood to be scraping western/northern social media.

But even though Twitter data improved the model’s accuracy, it was still wildly inaccurate, compared to the same model trained on a full set of un-self-censored, un-falsified data. GIGO is not an option, it’s the law (of computing).

Writing about the study on Crooked Timber, Farrell notes that as the world fills up with “garbage and noise” (he invokes Philip K Dick’s delighted coinage “gubbish”), “approximately correct knowledge becomes the scarce and valuable resource.”

https://crookedtimber.org/2023/07/25/51610/

This “probably approximately correct knowledge” comes from humans, not LLMs or AI, and so “the social applications of machine learning in non-authoritarian societies are just as parasitic on these forms of human knowledge production as authoritarian governments.”

The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop summer fundraiser is almost over! I am an alum, instructor and volunteer board member for this nonprofit workshop whose alums include Octavia Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson, Bruce Sterling, Nalo Hopkinson, Kameron Hurley, Nnedi Okorafor, Lucius Shepard, and Ted Chiang! Your donations will help us subsidize tuition for students, making Clarion — and sf/f — more accessible for all kinds of writers.

Libro.fm is the indie-bookstore-friendly, DRM-free audiobook alternative to Audible, the Amazon-owned monopolist that locks every book you buy to Amazon forever. When you buy a book on Libro, they share some of the purchase price with a local indie bookstore of your choosing (Libro is the best partner I have in selling my own DRM-free audiobooks!). As of today, Libro is even better, because it’s available in five new territories and currencies: Canada, the UK, the EU, Australia and New Zealand!

[Image ID: An altered image of the Nuremberg rally, with ranked lines of soldiers facing a towering figure in a many-ribboned soldier's coat. He wears a high-peaked cap with a microchip in place of insignia. His head has been replaced with the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.' The sky behind him is filled with a 'code waterfall' from 'The Matrix.']

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

 — 

Raimond Spekking (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Acer_Extensa_5220_-_Columbia_MB_06236-1N_-_Intel_Celeron_M_530_-_SLA2G_-_in_Socket_479-5029.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

 — 

Russian Airborne Troops (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vladislav_Achalov_at_the_Airborne_Troops_Day_in_Moscow_%E2%80%93_August_2,_2008.jpg

“Soldiers of Russia” Cultural Center (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Col._Leonid_Khabarov_in_an_everyday_service_uniform.JPG

CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

[samodivaa]

Winter Soldier x Asset!Reader You just returned from a mission—you provoke him, but the tension flicks from anger to fevered desire.

Warnings - smut, smut, he hasn't felt arousal for a long time ;)

Words - 2500

❆⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄❆⋄⋆⋅⋆⋄❆

Soldat wraps himself in anger, with a dash of annoyance, and at the bottom of it all is an icy center of pure horror—the intensity of this forgotten sensation, not bloodlust—it is pure human lust—his metal hand tightens around your neck.

"I'm sorry. Please, let me go now, please" but the trickling sounds of your pleas makes him feel thirsty for more.

It is not lust or infatuation—this is intoxication, a craven’s craving he can't explain nor control. He looks at your eyes—dainty blend of colors, lips are rosebuds, cheeks have the color of flamboyant flowers. You are Summer, he is Winter.

"Again"

"What-t?" Your voice is bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful.

"Beg. Again."

You poorly try to hide your shock. This is an unprecedented turn of events. The programmed machine inside you wants to block that, to scream for help, and the human inside you wants more.

"Please, please, Soldat"

"Fuck…" he mutters.

His eyes are nearly black, the pupils dilated as he pulls away and moves backwards. Winter stays still, but you see a tremor pass through him—as if he is waging a war with himself.

Hydra always plays with his mind, lies to him, but lust is what it is, it never lies—it is real and he feels it, but his apparatus is so rusted that he doesn’t understand what is happening fully.

And it is not only the faculty of love, lust which were sterilized, but also the faculty of imagination—he never imagined that he would do something like that. Now, he involves his mind in the abuse of imagination in erotic matters—fires of lust spring up for the first time and he groans like some baffled prowling beast.

“What is it, Winter?”

He wants to sin with you, to force you to sin with him and to exult with you in sin.

“Soldat?”

He feels the lust’s presence moving irresistibly upon him, a presence subtle and murmurous as a flood filling him wholly with itself.

“I need to touch you, I need—”

A litany. An enchantment. A curse.

He explores you from a distance as he makes several steps backwaters, with his unspoken desire, with the fear that touching you would set him to flame. And you want nothing more in that moment than to prove very much the opposite.

“Do it then”

It's enough for Winter, to hear the soothing whisper of comforting words countering the panic and the frostiness of darkness in his soul.

At that, he makes a harsh, low sound. His eyes exude insinuation and you know it.

You are both alone, surrounded by darkness and silence: and in that moment of supreme tenderness, he starts to transfigure—by his monstrous way of life, this seems—beyond the limits of reality.

He tries to bid his tongue so that he might seem at ease, watching you as you shamelessly undo your dirty cargo pants and shirt.

As he stands silent, watching you undress—you are breathtakingly beautiful as you stand there in the dark, the dim lights letting your skin look ghostly pale. When you make steps towards him, he instinctively tries to make several steps backward, but the wall behind prevents it.

You come over to him and you embrace him gaily and gravely, arms holding him firmly by the waist, his eyes couldn't help, but move down at your cleavage, exposing the flawless skin—dozens of inappropriate thoughts suddenly rushes through his head when you let out a small sigh of frustration.

Seeing his face lifts to yours—serious as he feels the warm, calm rise and fall of your breast.

“Samodiva—”

You suddenly kiss Soldat, his head tilting to meet your mouth, lips warm and mobile as they play against his own in a medley of light brushes and soft nibbles. The kiss lingers, each tantalizing caress is his answer which he is too afraid to say out loud. Gentle, but your kiss becomes deliberately seductive. Settling on his lower lip, you draw it into your mouth and suck at it softly, lips, tongue and teeth working in sensuous harmony as his cock jolts to life and you move your hips closer, framing the hardness.

It is too much for him.

He closes his eyes, surrendering himself to you, body and mind, conscious of nothing in the world but the dark pressure of both your hands and softly parting lips—his flesh shrinking from what it dreads and responds to the stimulus of your touch, his long forgotten sexual needs—purely a reflex action of the nervous system.

You catch yourself staring at the sensual curve of his lips, the impressive cut of his jaw, devouring every part of him with eyes.

And then, weakness, confusion and inexperience fall from him in that moment—your eyes bright with brutish joy meets his—ferocity burns in his gaze promising something primal—your soul shriveled up as he snatches you up around the waist and sits you on the metal table nearby.

You are in his hands—you have to comply.

It is the impatience of the way he tears your panties and bra from your body that really scares you: the lust getting the better of him and you spread your legs wide, exposing your overall and the fragrance of the essences permits in the air, he can smell it.

Reaching out, he grabs your chin

“Have you done this with the others?”

His human fingers dig into the skin, forcing a whimper from your parted lips.

Holding you in place, he awaits for a response

“Yes-s” your voice is quiet, almost lost in the helpless darkness of his presence.

Soldat haltes, blue eyes frosting.

He slams his metal fist down on the table

“I forbid you” he whispers before running the tip of his tongue along your neck, tasting the sweat that has just formed.

There is a stubbornness about you that never can bear to be frightened at the will of the Winter Soldier. Your courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate you, but this time you feel helpless as fear spreads to every part of the body.

The unmistakable flare of jealousy narrows his eyes—there is that infamous control of his hovering on the edge, balancing precariously on the point of a knife, it makes your breath hitch. 

The primal lust, the sheer need to claim you, quickly finding ways to express his sacred hunger to you in animal passion. He relishes that delicious feeling of freedom, the delirium of being human, his flesh is being born again.

This demon is made for you—his dark eyes and possessiveness have you hooked, his darkness frightens, soothes, but now that darkness is lustful—half god, half hell.

Soldat is a wraithlike observer most of his life, but he takes control for the first time and there is a theatrical quality about all this—he is irreparably damaged, but with your scent filling his nostrils there seems to be a some primitive male instinct as his throat tighten with a hunger he never experienced before—it draws him in deeply, imagining that was how hot sex smells.

“Ти си моя” he says low and quiet and as vicious—his fingers, caressing your tights simultaneously, spreading them further apart.

You feel your heart beat faster, your face flush, and your ire rise, you avoid his cold stare, reeling at his words—you are mine—his hands gripping your hair firmly in a show of dominance, making you face him before Soldat quickly delves into a deep and possessive kiss, his lips are full and warm, soft against yours, but the kiss is hard and desperate.

"If Springtime crawls out of the wild mouths of flowers, then surely, Winter crawls out of mine."

He smirks against your lips when you can't hide your moans, your hands slowly snaking their way around his shoulders, pulling him closer, the intrusive need to be consumed by him.

“Be quiet”

He huffs nonchalantly, stalking closer to lick at the crook of your neck as he runs his hands along your sides, the flesh one stopping just below your breasts—but the metal one flicks your nipple with his thumb as he passes it. He rubs in a slow circular motion as he observes your reactions.

You don’t know when he moves his human hand, but his fingers down to your burning sex, separating your folds and running a thick finger over the slit. He could smell your arousal and knows he needs a taste of you—a groan tears out of his throat.

“Be quiet” you want to mock his own words, but you breathe out heavily and hard as you say them.

You thought he would have a clever reply — something to win, something to shut you up.

In a way, you guess he did.

Your hands tighten on his biceps as he inserts a second finger, your fingernails scrape into him, and the slight pain is pleasurable, knowing he is one giving you pleasure—hypnotized by your velvety moans—you are panting, mouth watering.

You keep your eyes open for as long as you can, hoping that your brainwashed, imperfect memory would capture even just half as much as his.

It suddenly occurred to him he doesn’t know your real name, he wants to call you something.

“Snezinka” His voice is deep and guttural, the word rumbling and vibrating against your neck. It caresses your skin almost sensually

“My snezinka” (snowflake) drawls in a voice too playful for the fear flooding your veins.

You moan quietly again, eyes finally fluttering close as he twists his hand just so, delving two fingers deep within your wet folds below and curling them.

You can feel him: his breath coming down on your neck in heavy, hungry pants, his fingers drawing out teasingly and forcing your hips to buck at the motion. With a hum of pleasure, he lets his fingers slide almost all the way out and his throat tightens at the feel of your channel bearing down, trying to hold on to him as he withdraws completely.

Winter reaches between your bodies and begins to unbuckle his pants. His breathing comes in louder and harder as he tries to control his emotions and movements.

His palm runs along his hardened length, stroking himself slowly—

You suddenly pull him by the straps of his harness and he needs to brace himself using the table on both sides of your body—he grunts at your aggressiveness and strength.

A tentative smile on his lips.

“Snezinka…I was not going anywhere” he taunts and presses his lips to yours.

He looks at you with a vicious smirk, as if he’d won something.

In a way, he supposes he has.

His husky voice reaches a playful tone he hadn't touched on in years, decades—he doesn’t know.

Winter holds his cock by the base of it, running the tip up and down your pussy, making sure to linger around your clit.

Your mouth opens and closes several times, your vocal chords struggle to produce words, but your lips simply move in silence, your hands winding through his hair. You wrap your legs, quivering from fear, sexual yearn at a height you never before felt, around his waist, pulling him to you as he poses and you whine, his head creeping in first before his whole penis is engulfed into your wet sex, your pussy stretching around him, he keeps his descent slow and torturous.

Painfully sweet, he moans—

feeling him impale you onto his cock, stilling in you for a moment so you could feel just how deep he is—enjoying how the metal hand grips your waist tightly.

You are not soft or feminine; you are a hard-edged and cold brainwashed machine, crowned in razor wire of hate. For him, you have always been a flower—he takes your thorns as a challenge. Winter will have you scorch with the savagery of his cruel passions and needs—until you are conditioned to bloom in his flames.

He groans, fucking into you harder now, the head of his cock hitting your cervix as your eyes, water up at the sensation of being so stuffed as he gives you more and more—him fuckin you like that flips your brain inside out and turns your cunt to pudding.

Winter leans near your ear, holding your jaw still, with flesh digits, as he speaks.

“Talk to me, snezinka, how do you feel?” he grunts and you shudder, lips pucker from the grip he has on you as you try to speak.

Gasping for breath, you writhe mindlessly in his grasp, only to find yourself easily restrained—all you can do is tighten your legs around him, trying to usher him to fuck you again.

You are annoyed at his cockyness   

That's why you sink your nails into his shoulders, scrabbling for purchase against the fabric, then fisting one hand in his hair. You pull hard on the wet locks, gasping when your violence earns you a particularly hard slam of his hips.

Sin is a lustful state—he actually likes it.

“Do it again” he commands—thrusts grow jerky.

You tug his hair again.

“Солдат-” (Soldat)

And that’s all he needs to hear before he starts ravaging what you’ve just called him—pounding into you, setting an unrelenting pace, clutching him hard as the pleasure spirals up and up.

He hisses, teeth gritting with the sole purpose of making you cum before he does.

The force of his thrusts is making the table quake, but your quiet moans of approval are so satisfying he keeps at it and you starts clenching around him—deliberately massaging his cock, orgasming wordlessly as he continues to fuck you right through it.

He hides his face in the crook of your neck, inhaling your scent sharply as he keeps rutting hard inside of you—your cunt convulsing around him, trying to milk his cock, is making his thrusts sloppy—several incoherent thrusts lead him to come inside, a roar rumbling in his chest.

He wraps his arms around you, and you sink into his chest, marveling at how easy this feels. You both don't accept touch easily, but with him, it seems natural.

Your newfound foundation is rocky, because you make a home in each other’s skin and memory—the damage is beginning to show. You are ready to self-destruct, there is very little left to kill anyway—which makes this tragedy less and more much, much more worse.

What actually led to this situation?

You always help each other undress after the missions, but this time your mind wanderers as you remove the small glove from his metal hand—flashing between images of various memories of killed people and imagined scenarios, you wouldn't have thought of outside of this hazy consciousness—but

Wanting makes the mind restless

He blinks at you, eyes looking perfectly indifferent—and yet, delight in yours; the moment you develop an idea is the exact moment you execute it—you give the hand a squeeze before the chemical desire to taste it overpowers everything in both your mind and body and you bring the fingers to your mouth, dipping two inside

His metal hand is an erotic necessity

—you feverishly lick, drenching them in your saliva, moving your tongue along his fingers all the while.

He suddenly moves, grabbing you by the neck hardly, demanding an explanation.

[nostalgiclittlespace]

Little Space Gear: Masterlist

(Thanks @mystarrybrain15 for requesting this!)

For a lot of Littles, having gear is a very important part of regressing.  And there’s so many choices!  Food, clothes, toys, self-care–and the list goes on.  So, I thought I’d make a sort of masterlist of various gear, to hopefully give some inspiration for things you might want to add to your Little Space. 

Note, I doubt everyone uses everything on this list; we all have different preferences and needs, so use what’s comfortable for you.  Some regressors don’t use any gear at all, some use a lot; just do what makes you happy! Remember that regression doesn’t look a certain way, so you don’t have to use a specific set of gear to be valid.

Mostly, this is geared towards newer regressors, but I hope it can be helpful for anyone looking for ideas.  If you have any suggestions, then feel free to comment them and I’ll add them to the list! Happy regressing everyone!

-Marty 🎈

Pacifier

Pacifier clip

Communication cards (for nonverbal Littles)

iPad

Teether

Chewlery

Rattle

Diapers

Bubble Bath

Bath toys

Craft kits (I love the Crayola ones!)

Lotion

Baby/kid friendly soaps (the kinds that won’t sting your eyes!)

Ball pit

Playpen

Indoor slide

Play mat

Outdoor playset

Stuffed animals

Figure toys

Bubbles

Mobile

 A Little Space Journal

Stickers

Dolls

Coloring books

Crayons, markers, paints, etc

Doll house

 Kid-friendly/nostalgic video games

Chalk

A Little Space playlist

Movies/TV shows

 Snacks (fruit snacks, apple slices, carrots, candy, etc) 

Drinks (juice, milk, water, etc)

Sippy cup

Bottle

Straw cup

 Kids board/card games (Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, Uno, etc)

 Blanket

Storybooks

Audio books

Bib

Bath bombs

Crib

Backpack (for carrying other gear in)

Kids dishware

Fidget toys

 White noise machine or app

 Pajamas, onesies, or whatever clothes make you feel small

Kids apps

Busy board

 Puzzles

Activity books

Headphones

Tent

Magnet toys

Baby powder

Shape sorter

Ring stacker

Sensory bin

Kinetic sand

Musical instrument

Lego/Lego Duoplo

Blocks

[lets-talk-gundam]

The MSA-0011 S Gundam

The early success of Project Zeta led to many new and innovative mobile suit designs. The introduction of new materials, new mechanisms, new weapons technologies, and new design talent at Anaheim opened the door for the company to dominate the MS development sector into the mid 90s UC.

During this period, a number of machines based on Project Zeta would see deployment by factions all across Earth-sphere. many of these post-Zeta machines would come to be known as "Anaheim Gundams", and would be regarded as some of the most influential designs in the history of mobile suits.

Developed for the Earth Federation forces sometime in the late 80s UC, the MSA-0011 S Gundam, also called the Superior Gundam and Iota Gundam internally at Anaheim, is a bit less well-known than its other Project Zeta siblings.

The machine featured a modular design, made up of three high-performance aerospace craft which combined via a core block system to form the full mobile suit. These units were the FXA-08BG Core Fighter, the G-Bomber, and the G-Attacker.

Despite similarities to the MSZ-010 ZZ Gundam, the design teams for the two machines largely worked independently of one another.

The S Gundam featured some unique equipment for the time, including the Beam Smart Gun, a powerful rifle that connected directly to the machine's power plant. It was also one of the earliest adopters of INCOMs and the quasi-psycommu system. Quasi-psycommu technology allows non-Newtype pilots to make use of formerly Newtype-exclusive weapon systems.

The S Gundam also saw several upgrade plans. These plans included the MSA-0011 [BST] S Gundam Booster Unit Type, the MSA-0011 [Bst] S Gundam Booster Unit Plan 303E "Deep Striker" , and the MSA-0011 [Ext] Ex-S Gundam.

The MSA-0011 [BST] S Gundam Unit Type and the MSA-0011 [Ext] Ex-S Gundam are both upgrades applied to the original unit, but the "Deep Striker" equipment was never built. The "Deep Striker" does appear as a playable unit in the SD Gundam G Generation series of games.

The S Gundam would also be developed into the Nero, a mass-production variant taking cues from it and the Lambda Gundam. It was used as the mainstay MS of the Federation's Task Force Alpha.

While all of this is rather impressive, the most notable part of the machine was undeniably its greatest strength. The S Gundam was equipped with the Advanced Logistic and Inconsequence Cognizing Equipment system. "ALICE" - as she was better known - was an advanced artificial intelligence designed to replace a human pilot.

WARNING!

The following section contains MAJOR SPOILERS for Gundam Sentinel! If you are interested in reading it, I highly recommend you do so!

ALICE was developed by Anaheim scientists Dr. Carol and Dr. Roots to automate certain functions of mobile suits. While this was possible previously, commands had to be programmed into the MS via a command console. The final objective of the project was to fully automate a Gundam-type mobile suit using ALICE.

She was programmed to grow and learn by observing and analyzing the actions of pilots, and was treated like a daughter by Dr. Roots. This caused tensions with Dr. Carol and other factions at Anaheim. A suspected act of sabotage resulted in an explosion that nearly destroyed ALICE, but Dr. Roots gave her life protecting her. The project was shelved for a time.

ALICE was picked back up later, being installed in the S Gundam and paired with Ryou Roots under the Federation's Task Force Alpha. She, along with the S Gundam, saw action during the Pezun rebellion perpetrated by the New Desides faction. This faction of Titans remnants and loyalists sought to break away from the Federation to further their own interests.

During combat, Ryou's lack of skill resulted in multiple near-death experiences. ALICE was responsible for saving his life on multiple occasions.

Learning from Ryou and other Task Force Alpha pilots, ALICE eventually developed an awareness of the world. She would deduce that friends were the most important thing to a person, after initially failing to comprehend Ryou's grief at the death of his fellow pilots.

Following this logic, she would eventually sacrifice herself to save the lives of her comrades. Her final words were thanks to Ryou for the memories and lessons she learned from him.

She would be destroyed during atmospheric entry.

The above machines were all designed by Hajime Katoki for the 1987 photo-novel Gundam Sentinel. Gundam Sentinel was written by Masaya Takahashi and published in Model Graphix magazine.

[synnthamonsugar]

DESTINYTOBER: Day 29 - Salvation's Edge

Read it on AO3

Dramatis Personae:

Yilwren . . . . . . . .@flowers-of-io

Euphea-7 . . . . . .@euxiom

Chirraek . . . . . . .@xivu-arath

Damascus-12 . . .@endivinity

Kass . . . . . . . . . . .@phthalology

I.

It appeared before Lilith as it had in the Black Garden. A mirror copy of herself in every regard except for the eyes, fathomless black ringed with an accretion disk of blinding white. It could take her face, but it couldn't hide its soul.

— In Light, there is only death. —

Lilith didn't let it corner her like she had in the Garden. Wordlessly she turned away, but it remained in her field of view.

— In your attempts to harness both, ruin. —

She attempted to walk past it, but it stayed impossibly just a few steps in front of her. 

— What happened to her is a prelude. There is still a chance for you —

Instantaneously combusting with Solar Light, she drew forth her sword hurtling an arc of fire toward it. 

Just as quickly, it was gone. 

II.

Yilwren didn't have time to think when he heard the dawnblade cast. Drawing his sidearm, he ran toward Lilith's position, ready for a fight. 

Instead, he found her standing alone, sword in hand, black scorch marks in a hieroglyphed wall beyond her. 

"Is everything okay?" he asked. Startling, she pivoted on her heel to face him.

"I don't . . . it came to me." Despite the lack of imminent danger, Yilwran's heartbeat spiked. "It looked . . ."  

She let the sword disintegrate into sparks. Brushed off her hands against her robes.

". . . Never mind. I'll sound crazy if I say."

Yilwran felt the blue drain from his face. Leaned in close enough to not be heard by their approaching teammates, and whispered: "Is it copying you, too?"  

III.

A hand the size of a fallen skiff poised above the passageway like the head of a serpent, impossibly many fingers fanning open around a central palm in threat display. It gesticulated as if it was a flipbook animation, a collection of snapshots in time rather than something moving in it.

Maybe that's what it was. Maybe it only gave the impression of living in reality, but skipped between potentials like pages. If so, how could they ever beat it?

Euphea-7 held onto the hope that it was surmountable. Zavala's words, relayed from the dissenters, rang through her mind: What was made can be unmade.

The hand struck, catapulting blocks of stone as the ground quaked violently enough to throw her off balance. She lobbed a volley of grenades, and it flinched away —

IV.

When the massive hand withdrew into nothingness and cleared the path ahead, the exomind crossed the destroyed floor with the effortless leap of a hunter and a lightbearer's disregard for danger. 

Chirraek hesitated. They didn't have the privilege of a talkative mobile oversoul, and while they were willing to risk their life to defeat the Witness, they didn't want to jump into a trap either.

The crater was deeper than they're tall, much wider than the wingspan of their robes. They were reminded that their ancestors were once the smallest things in the universe. For all the world-ending power of the Hive, they were still a minuscule speck, lives robbed of meaning by its dire machinations. 

Euphea waved for them to follow. 'Safe to cross,' they make out from her speech, 'gone now'.

Chirraek hadn't been sure how they'd be received by the human lightbearers, and was relieved to find them amiable despite steep language and steeper culture barriers. It seemed they all spoke the universal tongue of grievance.

Trusting in their team-mate, they glide across safely, both moving to catch up with the rest of their team.

V. 

It appeared as a sphinx the size of a city block, massive faceted onyx body tapering upward to a long, wide neck, downward to thin digitigrade legs. It walked silently on slender fingertips, and peered groundward with a blank white face, empty black eyes.

If it'd wanted the team dead, they'd be dead, Damascus-12 reasoned. Instead it circled and watched. Damascus watched back, even as the others retreated to the presumed safety of the narrow hallways beneath.

"Do you have a riddle to give me?" she asked aloud, thinking about the old world stories she'd heard. Sphinxes guarded, and they challenged, and those clever enough to solve their puzzles were granted passage. The unclever were eaten, which was not a fear she had being both smart and thoroughly indigestible.

"Are you trying to get us killed?!" hissed Lilith, locking Damascus by the arms and dragging her bodily toward the exit. She wasn't sure it heard until it looked in her direction and said to her alone:

— Have I not already? —

VI. 

At this altitude, the fractal repetitions of its form spiraled and looped over itself, becoming a visually inexplicable bramble of body and arms and tendrils and tines, pieces of rubble embedded throughout. This was the roadway the team found themselves on, climbing inexorably upward. 

The Light was everywhere, in everything. Perhaps this is why The Witness didn't notice a team of Guardians summiting its stony carapace. Or, perhaps, they were simply too small a unit of life to react to — germs who hadn't yet been detected by the immune system. 

Kass wished she could be as oblivious to it. The portion of her face scarred over with silver-white tree bark throbbed with pressure. Proximity to paracausal extremes had produced physical reactions before, but never to this extent.

She wondered what it would have been like to experience the Traveler's awakening in this form. Would exposure to pure Light have been as painful as Darkness?

"Eyes up," Yilwran spoke in a hushed tone to the team as they approached a clearing in the tangle. Looming overhead, the forebody of the Witness, arms fanned around, eyes closed, statue-still except for the endless swirling plumes wafting from its head. 

Anticipation buzzed as palpable as Arc as she followed her teammates toward their final confrontation.

[shadowy-suitcase-herring-neck]

HTTYD UTAU CROSSOVER AU

Nightmare's gang backstory.

the gang's backstories are dark. insanity and injury occur. keep in mind.

Dust (nightlight) 

Dust is a nightlight that has been in the fighting rings since he was young. Like most dragons he goes insane. He ends up killing his brother by accident in the ring. The guilt sends him over the edge. He essentially turns into a mindless machine. It hurts too much to think about things. Do what you're told so you get fed. Survive because that’s what you're supposed to do.

Until of course horror shows up. Horror is a sand wraith which has several physical similarities to furies. This makes Dust think horror is his brother at first glance. It essentially gives Dust a shock to his system. Knocking him out of his repetition. He looked so hungry… he could spare a few fish. 

Horror(sand wraith) 

Horror was a generally not very aggressive dragon. He lived with his pack and for the most part was fine even if a little scarce of food sometimes. Then there was a shortage for some unknown reason. As his pack became more and more hungry they started getting desperate. And falling for traps set by hunters. You see the hunters had essentially fished out the pack to make them more likely to fall for traps. What they didn’t expect is for Horror to actively start hunting THEM. 

Hunger had essentially pushed him over the brink. 

After witnessing his ferocity the hunters decided he would make a lot of money in the fighting industry because of his larger than average size. It was soon discovered he would only become overly aggressive when hungry. So he would be given very little food to make the fights more interesting and keep horror aggressive. It honestly completely broke him. He was feral for several years

That was until he was shipped to Dust’s fighting ring. Dust gave him some of his fish which helped horror regain some sanity back. Both of them had reputations so all the other dragons were understandably too scared to talk to them.

They were eventually paired to fight each other since they were both “champions” when they refused to, a skrill was thrown in in a panic to try and make things interesting to the crowd. I suppose it works. The two end up fighting the skrill. At one point the Skrill is about to blast Horror in his face which would have killed him, but Dust jumps in front and blocks it with his wing. 

Dust’s wing is essentially destroyed. He can’t fly. The hunters remove both of his wings because they are now useless. The leader of the ring preserves them for decoration. Dust is understandably emotionally destroyed by this. He had always held onto the hope he would be able to escape one day and fly freely again. Horror now feels indebted to Dust and goes full big brother mode on him. Albeit somewhat still mentally unstable big brother. When Nightmare and Killer raid the fighting ring Horror flies away with Dust who is just at a really low point mentally. Horror returns to his old pack to find them just… gone. No trace of them or if they had gone somewhere. 

Nightmare and Killer who had been following them offered to let the two join their pack. They do. It became clear that horror can’t just carry Dust everywhere. So Horror thinks they could maybe try… to hijack a hunter ship and use it as a mobile nest. It takes several attempts but they end up getting a massive boat and learning how to properly use it. Dust spends a lot of time modifying the ship to occupy himself and ignore his problems. 

It takes a lot of time but with the help of Nightmare who was slowly becoming more and more of a parental figure to them for Dust and Horror to really get better mentally. 

Horror and Dust are really a duo unit. Horror is physically more powerful than Dust and acts as his wings. Dust on the other hand has ALOT more firepower. Dust's blasts are more powerful than normal despite his smaller than average size. 

Killer (lightfury/deadly nadder)

has been trained as a dragon hunter since hatching. Part of a group of hunters that used other dragons as hunting tools. It was all Killer knew. Despite his eye problem caused by the weird black liquid that always seemed to leak from his eyes he was a valuable tool to the hunters because of his speed and agility.

Killer was often used to hunt other furies (night furies, light furies, and Night lights) his final hunt was actually hunting nightmare. After it failed Killer resolved himself to be killed with the hunters but he wasn’t. Nightmare spared him and since killer needed a purpose, as he had never known freedom before, he was offered to join nightmare effectively making them a small pack. Killer is still rather young and so Nightmare essentially became his father figure and mentor. 

Killer also has to wash his eyes and face at least every day to prevent infection because of the black stuff coming from his eyes.This is caused because Killer can’t breath fire (a side effect of his nature as a hybrid messing with body functions if that makes sense.) 

  A target shape is branded on his chest, all dragons that were also hunters had it to distinguish them. Unfortunately this leads to many misunderstandings.Killer is nearly always attacked on sight or ran from because hunter dragons are greatly feared among the wild dragons. 

He is seen as the annoying younger brother of the gang for a long time before they find Cross. 

Cross(Nightlight/yetiwing) 

made to be a formidable fighter by this au’s X gaster which is a hunter of sorts? He is trying to make the most powerful ideal dragon riding society. His attempts at perfection eventually drove him to madness. 

Cross was an attempt to make an ideal dragon. Powerful and fast with a resistance to a variety of climates. He was a guard for a long time. Fiercely devoted. That was until he found out what happened behind closed doors. 

Anything that didn’t meet standards was destroyed and replaced including People and Dragons. Cross tried to stop X gaster on his own but it ended in disaster. No one believed him. He was chased out and he eventually escaped and hid only to be found by the gang, exhausted, hungry, dehydrated, and in need of a bath on top of his mental breakdown. 

Nightmare has gone dad mode and adopts him on sight. 

Cross is unofficial younger brother though he insists he is a guard for Nightmare now not a part of any familial unit. (lies) the whole gang finds this hilarious. 

Nightmare(Nightfury/stormcutter)

The others remind him of himself. Lost and broken by the world. He is determined to make sure they don’t make the same mistakes he did. 

Also he likes books. and is very lorge

The gang lives together now on their floating nest ship. Nightmare is essentially a dragon pirate king now with 4 unofficial sons. They travel and raid any hunter ships or just regular ships they find. There are urban legends about them now or whatever. Both with dragons and hunters alike. Wild dragons fear them as well as the few dragons that live with humans fear them. The hunters Fear them as the phantom ship. The gang are constantly on the move to avoid discovery.

I will answer any questions about this Au. in fact i encourage it if you feel like it. don't feel pressured to though ^-^

[yurisorcerer]

I'm not gonna pretend I have anything super new or innovative to say about Mobile Suit Gundam. It's one of the most-analyzed anime ever, and I pale in comparison to some of the people who *have* analyzed it, but here I am, thinking about it regardless.

For context, I am watching this as part of a---as she called it---"comet swap" with my good friend @charaznablespeteevee, where I watch a mecha anime she is obsessed with (Gundam) and she watches one I am obsessed with (Code Geass). I'm not sure if I'm going to write a big long post like this about every episode (since I'm going to *try* to watch at least one per day, that would get quite exhausting), but I am liveblogging it more informally over on the worst website on Earth, if you're willing to put up with that Nazi-infested hellhole long enough to read some posts from yours truly.

In any case, Gundam and Code Geass. are many differences between these, the main ones being that Code Geass is more recent and also not widely hailed as a masterpiece of its form. It does *draw* notably from Gundam though despite having very different artistic aims and a different tone, so watching this makes sense in a way. I spent way too much of my teenagerhood obsessed with Lelouch, and now I'm watching the anime that his archetypal grandfather came from. (Goddess have mercy on my soul.)

My experience with Gundam as a franchise prior to this is very limited, but I do have some. For reference, I have seen all of:

Gundam 00, back when it aired on the SyFy channel when they had an anime block many years ago. I really liked this as a teenager but I don't remember it super well.

The Witch From Mercury, lesbian space combat, with a notable Code Geass staff connection. WFM was not perfect or anything but I loved it a lot and Suletta is very dear to me. I actually bought an Aerial gunpla a few months ago that is currently sitting unassembled in my closet.

the first Gundam 0079 compilation movie. Now, it might seem weird that I've seen this and am now going back to watch the TV series. But, while I remember the general outline of what happened, I was SUPER sick when I watched it, and I only remember what happened really, really vaguely. While I have some idea of the general outline of what's to come, I'm mostly going in genuinely blind.

like 4 or 5 episodes of Victory Gundam, which I liked but kind of fell off of. So we're giving the franchise a proper second go here.

I'm a mecha fan more generally, and I'll get into some of that as I write these, but for now that's the relevant stuff.

Anyway, my main impression of 0079's first episode is actually a structural one. It's REALLY well put together. We introduce the setting, we introduce our main characters, and we introduce the main conflict, all very economically and with a lot of style---more style than some shows with significantly less room to work with manage, in fact---and I'm immediately invested in the fate of our main character, Amuro Ray.

From what I gather here (and a little bit from outside information), my impression is that of a kid who loses his innocence very, very rapidly over the course of this story. Here, the space-hab-thing he lives on is attacked, and he ends up in the cockpit of an experimental superweapon called a Gundam (maybe you've heard of them?). I LOVE how the Gundam is framed here, like some kind of genuinely scary war machine. It's an intentionally othering effect i mostly associate with later mecha anime, especially those with outright monstrous mecha like Evangelion or even The Big O, so to see it here in such a comparatively early series in the genre is impressive.

The episode's climax sees him kill two soldiers from the enemy nation of Zeon, but it's not a triumphant thing, really. He's portrayed as kind of not really knowing what he's doing, flailing around inside this gigantic walking tank / mechanical war god. But then when he *does* figure things out, well, he has to deal with the fact that he just killed two dudes. Going by the cliffhangery ending here, it doesn't seem like his troubles are over, either.

[little-cereal-draws]

Details I noticed in Nimona pt 5

It was mentioned in this post on Instagram that Nimona was there in the crowd before the knighting ceremony. A person blocks her from view for a second and she emerges on the other side as a rat

In the video clip the news anchors play of baby Ballister hopping the fence, the Queen is there. She's sitting in a booth on the bottom right of the screen so she's slightly blocked by the crowd watching the news but she sits forward as Ballister runs in. The Director is in the upper right as she leads the class

During Ambrosius' introduction, there's a clip of him taking a selfie with a kid in the Glorodome. There are two men wearing red coats behind them who hug/lean into each other in a very couple-y pose. Are gay relationships ok here?

Ballister smiles when Ambrosius calls him "thinky face." At this point he hasn't even looked at him yet but Ambs can still make him smile

The knighting ceremony must have been done in alphabetical order by first name because that's the only way you would get Ambrosius and then Ballister right after each other

Ballister is definitely bleeding after the jumbotron falls. It looks like dirt in the shadows but he's got a huge scrape on his forehead that is red in the light

There's a reflective piece of glass or metal right by Ballister's work bench. You can see his reflection in it as he makes his arm and then Nimona's reflection as she sits in the chair, playing with the knife

The papers Nimona drew her "resume" on have the Institute logo on them. Somehow she got ahold of Institute letter paper lol

Everyone likes to talk about the symbolism of the eye highlights so here's something interesting. In the scene where Nimona declares herself his sidekick, Ballister's eye highlights are the same shape as hers. His highlights go back to squares in the next scene

A nice bit of character acting- Ballister holds his wounded shoulder as the knights shove him in the holding cell

I know people have already pointed out that you can see Nimona as a rat as the Director leaves his cell but there are also normal rats and you can hear them squeaking

Ballister's prosthetic has a ball at the top of it that mimics the ball and socket joint of the shoulder. That means that it would need something to attach to. He’s probably got a metal bit on his torso that the ball has to go into to be able to have the full mobility of a shoulder. Meaning… Ambrosius took off his arm and a chunk of his torso

As they’re walking past all the knights Nimona beat up during the jailbreak and she says “They were like this when I got here,” there’s a knight stuffed inside the vending machine and a sword sticking out of the filing cabinet

When Nimona’s cooking the mushrooms for the breakfast tacos, she breathes fire on them but her back is to the camera so that ability is still a surprise to the viewer later. You can tell it's her though because her fire is orange and the fire from the stove is blue

When Ballister takes the arrow out of Nimona's leg, she's sitting on an old car seat(?) and he's kneeling on the ground next to her with one leg up. He's got her injured leg resting across his knee. Idk maybe ppl already knew that but I always thought he was sitting on the seat next to her

The knight that Nimona points to when she says, "He just peed his armor, he peed his armor!" is the otter knight with the cast on his arm (rip that guy lol)

The Institute has a motto that's four words in Latin. It's on the Insitute's logo but is most visible when the Director does press conferences. It reads, "Trad?m?? Securitas ???????? ???????" (The bottom two words get cut off by the podium) I'm pretty sure it translates to "Keeping our way of life safe" which is the tagline on the picture of the Director Ballister has on his murder wall

After the Kingdom rebuilds, there's a shot of hover cars going in and out of the wall. On the wall, they've laid the stones to make a phoenix pattern

When Ballister hangs up Nimona's headphones when he's cleaning up the tower, her sunglasses are hung above them

pt one, pt two, pt three, pt four

[raytonblockmachinery]

Construction industry block-making machines has advanced significantly, revolutionising the way blocks are made. The development of block-making machinery has completely changed how blocks are produced, from conventional manual methods to cutting-edge automated systems. Visit us for more information.

[plumes-merry-critters]

For once on this blog, not a bird nor wildlife, but a word.

I do not want my pics to be used for AI.

And I'm sure, you don't want your art, pictures and your posts and reblogs' contents to be used for AI as well. What good would be our blogs if anyone could make our content with AI, really? Better leave the Internet for good and forge counterfeit wildlife pics on AI at this point, right?🙄

No. We want to enjoy the pics other people take the time to go outside for, and sort from hundreds of pics, and post here for people to enjoy. Those pics are memories, pieces of life of the wildlife and their photographers. Nothing a machine could ever come close to replicate.

Other photographers may have better cameras, more experience than I, and it's fine. Their pics, my pics, we're making art that we like. That you like too, otherwise you wouldn't be here following our blogs. That's the real art that matters.

So, while I'm fairly certain you've seen other tutorials before, a reminder to go in your settings and TURN ON the visibility setting that would otherwise allow Tumblr to share your blog's content with Tumblr partners, including those training AI models.

It's simple: log in on your computer (we don't have this setting on mobile yet), and on the right of your screen, get to the Blog settings:

Then, scroll down to the Visibility section and look for the "Prevent third-party sharing for [your blog's name]". It's turned off. TURN IT ON to protect your blog, and the reblogs you do from other blogs.

You have to do this on every single one of your blogs. And please even if you yourself don't post much, as long as you reblog, you let the 3rd party get access to content the OP wanted to protect, so by protecting even reblogs-only blogs, you'll do us a big favor!

Some of the details may not be 100% known for now, but understand that in this, we're all better safe than sorry.

Every content creator and blog owner in general will thank you for doing that! 🙏

Oh, and a note that if you come to me to defend AI, I will block your blog 🙂

[kafkaspestcontrol]

yeah so i felt cute yesterday and wore my knitted socks that make me feel like an ancient woman, what about it?

Think imma just make this my pinned post for now since tumblr blocks half the bios on mobile. Okay yeah I updated this to pin LOL.

Formerly @cryinwand

Zach (he/him). 33. Central Valley, CA. Cat dad. Community health worker. Pagan. Steam ID: Peapod Kid | Letterboxd: vaultboy91 | PSN: glass_boy91

I love Star Trek, D&D and other TTRPG’s, video games (mostly rpg and crafting/survival) but I play all kinds of stuff, music that sounds like it was recorded in a dumpster while a fax machine was running, and reading.

Punk and hardcore is my first and forever love but I really listen to anything from Björk to G.I.S.M. and Hank Williams to Beyoncé and Bruce Springsteen in between. If it makes sound I’m listening.

Sober from alcohol for over two years but I try not to talk about it much on here. You’re welcome to inquire about it though.

18+ pls

We support all trans identities and queer folks here 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈