#operation chokepoint

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

Please look into Operation Chokepoint if you can. It was the progenitor of this stuff. So, whenever you see payment processors screwing over artists because of what they draw you will know why.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prime’s enshittified advertising

Prime's gonna add more ads. They brought in ads in January, and people didn't cancel their Prime subscriptions, so Amazon figures that they can make Prime even worse and make more money:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/10/amazon-prime-video-is-getting-more-ads-next-year/

The cruelty isn't the point. Money is the point. Every ad that Amazon shows you shifts value away from you – your time, your attention – to the company's shareholders.

That's the crux of enshittification. Companies don't enshittify – making their once-useful products monotonically worse – because it amuses them to erode the quality of their offerings. They enshittify them because their products are zero-sum: the things that make them valuable to you (watching videos without ads) make things less valuable to them (because they can't monetize your attention).

This isn't new. The internet has always been dominated by intermediaries – platforms – because there are lots more people who want to use the internet than are capable of building the internet. There's more people who want to write blogs than can make a blogging app. There's more people who want to play and listen to music than can host a music streaming service. There's more people who want to write and read ebooks than want to operate an ebook store or sell an ebooks reader.

Despite all the early internet rhetoric about the glories of disintermediation, intermediaries are good, actually:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/direct-the-problem-of-middlemen/

The problem isn't with intermediaries per se. The problem arises when intermediaries grow so powerful that they usurp the relationship between the parties they connect. The problem with Uber isn't the use of mobile phones to tell taxis that you're standing on a street somewhere and would like a cab, please. The problem is rampant worker misclassification, regulatory arbitrage, starvation wages, and price-gouging:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/29/geometry-hates-uber/#toronto-the-gullible

There's no problem with publishers, distributors, retailers, printers, and all the other parts of the bookselling ecosystem. While there are a few, rare authors who are capable of performing all of these functions – basically gnawing their books out of whole logs with their teeth – most writers can't, and even the ones who can, don't want to:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/19/crad-kilodney-was-an-outlier/#intermediation

When early internet boosters spoke of disintermediation, what they mostly meant was that it would be harder for intermediaries to capture those relationships – between sellers and buyers, creators and audiences, workers and customers. As Rebecca Giblin and I wrote in our 2022 book Chokepoint Capitalism, intermediaries in every sector rely on chokepoints, narrows where they can erect tollbooths:

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

When chokepoints exist, they multiply up and down the supply chain. In the golden age of physical, recorded music, you had several chokepoints that reinforced one another. Limited radio airwaves gave radio stations power over record labels, who had to secretly, illegally bid for prime airspace ("payola"). Retail consolidation – the growth of big record chains – drove consolidation in the distributors who sold to the chains, and the more concentrated distributors became, the more they could squeeze retailers, which drove even more consolidation in record stores. The bigger a label was, the more power it had to shove back against the muscle of the stores and the distributors (and the pressing plants, etc). Consolidation in labels also drove consolidation in talent agencies, whose large client rosters gave them power to resist the squeeze from the labels. Consolidation in venues drives consolidation in ticketing and promotion – and vice-versa.

But there's two parties to this supply chain who can't consolidate: musicians and their fans. With limits on "sectoral bargaining" (where unions can represent workers against all the companies in a sector), musicians' unions were limited in their power against key parts of the supply chain, so the creative workers who made the music were easy pickings for labels, talent reps, promoters, ticketers, venues, retailers, etc. Music fans are diffused and dispersed, and organized fan clubs were usually run by the labels, who weren't about to allow those clubs to be used against the labels.

This is a perfect case-study in the problems of powerful intermediaries, who move from facilitator to parasite, paying workers less while degrading their products, and then charge customers more for those enshittified products.

The excitement about "disintermediation" wasn't so much about eliminating intermediaries as it was about disciplining them. If there were lots of ways to market a product or service, sell it, collect payment for it, and deliver it, then the natural inclination of intermediaries to turn predator would be curbed by the difficulty of corralling their prey into chokepoints.

Now that we're a quarter century on from the Napster Wars, we can see how that worked out. Decades of failure to enforce antitrust law allowed a few companies to effectively capture the internet, buying out rivals who were willing to sell, and bankrupting those who wouldn't with illegal tactics like predatory pricing (think of Uber losing $31 billion by subsidizing $0.41 out of every dollar they charged for taxi rides for more than a decade).

The market power that platforms gained through consolidation translated into political power. When a few companies dominate a sector, they're able to come to agreement on common strategies for dealing with their regulators, and they've got plenty of excess profits to spend on those strategies. First and foremost, platforms used their power to get more power, lobbying for even less antitrust enforcement. Additionally, platforms mobilized gigantic sums to secure the right to screw customers (for example, by making binding arbitration clauses in terms of service enforceable) and workers (think of the $225m Uber and Lyft spent on California's Prop 22, which formalized their worker misclassification swindle).

So big platforms were able to insulate themselves from the risk of competition ("five giant websites, filled with screenshots of the other four" – Tom Eastman), and from regulation. They were also able to expand and mobilize IP law to prevent anyone from breaking their chokepoints or undoing the abuses that these enabled. This is a good place to get specific about how Prime Video works.

There's two ways to get Prime videos: over an app, or in your browser. Both of these streams are encrypted, and that's really important here, because of a law – Section 1201 of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act – which makes it really illegal to break this kind of encryption (commonly called "Digital Rights Management" or "DRM"). Practically speaking, that means that if a company encrypts its videos, no one is allowed to do anything to those videos, even things that are legal, without the company's permission, because doing all those legal things requires breaking the DRM, and breaking the DRM is a felony (five years in prison, $500k fine, for a first offense).

Copyright law actually gives subscribers to services like Prime a lot of rights, and it empowers businesses that offer tools to exercise those rights. Back in 1976, Sony rolled out the Betamax, the first major home video recorder. After an eight-year court battle, the Supreme Court weighed in on VCRs and ruled that it was legal for all of us to record videos at home, both to watch them later, and to build a library of our favorite shows. They also ruled that it was legal for Sony – and by that time, every other electronics company – to make VHS systems, even if those systems could be used in ways that violated copyright because they were "capable of sustaining a substantial non-infringing use" (letting you tape shows off your TV).

Now, this was more than a decade before the DMCA – and its prohibition on breaking DRM – passed, but even after the DMCA came into effect, there was a lot of media that didn't have DRM, so a new generation of tech companies were able to make tools that were "capable of sustaining a substantial non-infringing use" and that didn't have to break any DRM to do it.

Think of the Ipod and Itunes, which, together, were sold as a way to rip CDs (which weren't encrypted), and play them back from both your desktop computer and a wildly successful pocket-sized portable device. Itunes even let you stream from one computer to another. The record industry hated this, but they couldn't do anything about it, thanks to the Supreme Court's Betamax ruling.

Indeed, they eventually swallowed their bile and started selling their products through the Itunes Music Store. These tracks had DRM and were thus permanently locked to Apple's ecosystem, and Apple immediately used that power to squeeze the labels, who decided they didn't like DRM after all, and licensed all those same tracks to Amazon's DRM-free MP3 store, whose slogan was "DRM: Don't Restrict Me":

https://memex.craphound.com/2008/02/01/amazons-anti-drm-tee/

Apple played a funny double role here. In marketing Itunes/Ipods ("Rip, Mix, Burn"), they were the world's biggest cheerleaders for all the things you were allowed to do with copyrighted works, even when the copyright holder objected. But with the Itunes Music Store and its mandatory DRM, the company was also one of the world's biggest cheerleaders for wrapping copyrighted works in a thin skin of IP that would allow copyright holders to shut down products like the Ipod and Itunes.

Microsoft, predictably enough, focused on the "lock everything to our platform" strategy. Then-CEO Steve Ballmer went on record calling every Ipod owner a "thief" and arguing that every record company should wrap music in Microsoft's Zune DRM, which would allow them to restrict anything they didn't like, even if copyright allowed it (and would also give Microsoft the same abusive leverage over labels that they famously exercised over Windows software companies):

https://web.archive.org/web/20050113051129/http://management.silicon.com/itpro/0,39024675,39124642,00.htm

In the end, Amazon's approach won. Apple dropped DRM, and Microsoft retired the Zune and shut down its DRM servers, screwing anyone who'd ever bought a Zune track by rendering that music permanently unplayable.

Around the same time as all this was going on, another company was making history by making uses of copyrighted works that the law allowed, but which the copyright holders hated. That company was Tivo, who products did for personal video recorders (PVRs) what Apple's Ipod did for digital portable music players. With a Tivo, you could record any show over cable (which was too expensive and complicated to encrypt) and terrestrial broadcast (which is illegal to encrypt, since those are the public's airwaves, on loan to the TV stations).

That meant that you could record any show, and keep it forever. What's more, you could very easily skip through ads (and rival players quickly emerged that did automatic ad-skipping). All of this was legal, but of course the cable companies and broadcasters hated it. Like Ballmer, TV execs called Tivo owners "thieves."

But Tivo didn't usher in the ad-supported TV apocalypse that furious, spittle-flecked industry reps insisted it would. Rather, it disciplined the TV and cable operators. Tivo owners actually sought out ads that were funny and well-made enough to go viral. Meanwhile, every time the industry decided to increase the amount of advertising in a show, they also increased the likelihood that their viewers would seek out a Tivo, or worse, one of those auto-ad-skipping PVRs.

Given all the stink that TV execs raised over PVRs, you'd think that these represented a novel threat. But in fact, the TV industry's appetite for ads had been disciplined by viewers' access to new technology since 1956, when the first TV remotes appeared on the market (executives declared that anyone who changed the channel during an ad-break was a thief). Then came the mute button. Then the wireless remote. Meanwhile, a common VCR use-case – raised in the Supreme Court case – was fast-forwarding ads.

At each stage, TV adapted. Ads in TV shows represented a kind of offer: "Will you watch this many of these ads in return for a free TV show?" And the remote, the mute button, the wireless remote, the VCR, the PVR, and the ad-skipping PVR all represented a counter-offer. As economists would put it, the ability of viewers to make these counteroffers "shifted the equilibrium." If viewers had no defensive technology, they might tolerate more ads, but once they were able to enforce their preferences with technology, the industry couldn't enshittify its product to the liminal cusp of "so many ads that the viewer is right on the brink of turning off the TV (but not quite)."

This is the same equilibrium-shifting dynamic that we see on the open web, where more than 50% of users have installed an ad-blocker. The industry says, "Will you allow this many 'sign up to our mailing list' interrupters, pop ups, pop unders, autoplaying videos and other stuff that users hate but shareholders benefit from" and the ad-blocker makes a counteroffer: "How about 'nah?'":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/07/adblocking-how-about-nah

TV remotes, PVRs and ad-blockers are all examples of "adversarial interoperability" – a new product that plugs into an existing one, extending or modifying its functions without permission from (or even over the objections of) the original manufacturer:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Adversarial interop creates a powerful disciplining force on platform owners. Once a user grows so frustrated with a product's enshittification that they research, seek out, acquire and learn to use an adversarial interop tool, it's really game over. The printer owner who figures out where to get third-party ink is gone forever. Every time a company like HP raises its prices, they have to account for the number of customers who will finally figure out how to use generic ink and never, ever send another cent to HP.

This is where DMCA 1201 comes into play. Once a product is skinned with DRM, its manufacturers gain the right to prevent you from doing legal things, and can use the public's courts and law-enforcement apparatus to punish you for trying. Take HP: as soon as they started adding DRM to their cartridges, they gained the legal power to shut down companies that cloned, refilled or remanufactured their cartridges, and started raising the price of ink – which today sits at more than $10,000/gallon:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/30/life-finds-a-way/#ink-stained-wretches

Using third party ink in your printer isn't illegal (it's your printer, right?). But making third party ink for your printer becomes illegal once you have to break DRM to do so, and so HP gets to transform tinted water into literally the most expensive fluid on Earth. The ink you use to print your kid's homework costs more than vintage Veuve Cliquot or sperm from a Kentucky Derby-winning thoroughbred.

Adversarial interoperability is a powerful tool for shifting the equilibrium between producers, intermediaries and buyers. DRM is an even more powerful way of wrenching that equilibrium back towards the intermediary, reducing the share that buyers and sellers are able to eke out of the transaction.

Prime Video, of course, is delivered via an app, which means it has DRM. That means that subscribers don't get to exercise the rights afforded to them by copyright – only the rights that Amazon permits them to have. There's no Tivo for Prime, because it would have to break the DRM to record the shows you stream from Prime. That allows Prime to pull all kinds of shady shit. For example, every year around this time, Amazon pulls popular Christmas movies from its free-to-watch tier and moves them into pay-per-view, only restoring them in the spring:

https://www.reddit.com/r/vudu/comments/1bpzanx/looks_like_amazon_removed_the_free_titles_from/

And of course, Prime sticks ads in its videos. You can't skip these ads – not because it's technically challenging to make a 30-second advance button for a video stream, and doing so wouldn't violate anyone's copyright – but because Amazon doesn't permit you to do so, and the fact that the video is wrapped in DRM makes it a felony to even try.

This means that Amazon gets to seek a different equilibrium than TV companies have had to accept since 1956 and the invention of the TV remote. Amazon doesn't have to limit the quantity, volume, and invasiveness of its ads to "less the amount that would drive our subscribers to install and use an ad-skipping plugin." Instead, they can shoot for the much more lucrative equilibrium of "so obnoxious that the viewer is almost ready to cancel their subscription (but not quite)."

That's pretty much exactly how Kelly Day, the Amazon exec in charge of Prime Video, put it to the Financial Times: they're increasing the number of ads because "we haven’t really seen a groundswell of people churning out or cancelling":

https://www.ft.com/content/f8112991-820c-4e09-bcf4-23b5e0f190a5

At this point, attentive readers might be asking themselves, "Doesn't Amazon have to worry about Prime viewers who watch in their browsers?" After all browsers are built on open standards, and anyone can make one, so there should be browsers that can auto-skip Prime ads, right?

Wrong, alas. Back in 2017, the W3C – the organization that makes the most important browser standards – caved to pressure from the entertainment industry and the largest browser companies and created "Encrypted Media Extensions" (EME), a "standard" for video DRM that blocks all adversarial interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

This had the almost immediate effect of making it impossible to create an independent browser without licensing proprietary tech from Google – now a convicted monopolist! – who won't give you a license if you implement recording, ad-skipping, or any other legal (but dispreferred) feature:

https://blog.samuelmaddock.com/posts/the-end-of-indie-web-browsers/

This means that for Amazon, there's no way to shift value away from the platform to you. The company has locked you in, and has locked out anyone who might offer you a better deal. Companies that know you are technologically defenseless are endlessly inventive in finding ways to make things worse for you to make things better for them. Take Youtube, another DRM-video-serving platform that has jacked up the number of ads you have to sit through in order to watch a video – even as they slash payments to performers. They've got a new move: they're gonna start showing you ads while your video is paused:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/09/20/youtube-pause-ads-rollout/75306204007/

That is the kind of fuckery you only come up with when your victory condition is "a service that's almost so bad our customers quit (but not quite)."

In Amazon's case, the math is even worse. After all, Youtube may have near-total market dominance over a certain segment of the video market, but Prime Video is bundled with Prime Delivery, which the vast majority of US households subscribe to. You have to give up a lot to cancel your Prime subscription – especially since Amazon's predatory pricing devastated the rest of the retail sector:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

Amazon's founding principle was "customer obsession." Ex-Amazoners tell me that this was more than an empty platitude: arguments over product design were won or lost based on whether they could satisfy the "customer obsession" litmus test. Now, everyone falls short of their ideals, but sticking to your ideals isn't merely a matter of internal discipline, of willpower. Living up to your ideals is a matter of external discipline, too. When Amazon no longer had to contend with competitors or regulators, when it was able to use DRM to control its customers and use the law to prevent them from using its products in legal ways, it lost those external sources of discipline.

Amazon suppliers have long complained of the company's high-handed treatment of the vendors who supplied it with goods. Its workers have complained bitterly and loudly about the dangerous and oppressive conditions in its warehouses and delivery vans. But Amazon's customers have consistently given Amazon high marks on quality and trustworthiness.

The reason Amazon treated its workers and suppliers badly and its customers well wasn't that it liked customers and hated workers and suppliers. Amazon was engaged in a cold-blooded calculus: it understood that treating customers well would give it control over those customers, and that this would translate market power to retain suppliers even as it ripped them off and screwed them over.

But now, Amazon has clearly concluded that it no longer needs to keep customers happy in order to retain them. Instead, it's shooting for "keeping customers so angry that they're almost ready to take their business elsewhere (but not quite)." You see this in the steady decline of Amazon product search, which preferences the products that pay the biggest bribes for search placement over the best matches:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/06/attention-rents/#consumer-welfare-queens

And you see it in the steady enshittification of Prime Video. Amazon's character never changed. The company always had a predatory side. But now that monopoly and IP law have insulated it from consequences for its actions, there's no longer any reason to keep the predator in check.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

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/2024/10/03/mother-may-i/#minmax

[milfstalin]

A leader of a major faction in the Islamic Resistance in Iraq has warned that if Israel begins a war that involves the energy sector, the world will lose 12 million barrels per day, “and this is what we will make sure of.”

Abu Ali al-Askari, the head of the Iraqi Hezbollah Brigades Security Bureau, stated: “This is what we will be taking care of, but only God knows what our brethren in Yemen will do in Bab al-Mandab and our brethren in Iran will do in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Israeli leaders have threatened to launch a massive attack against Iran, including against nuclear power and oil infrastructure.

Askari warned further that the resistance’s response “will not be limited to Israel, but will extend to Washington’s bases and interests in Iraq and the region.”

[...]

The Strait of Hormuz is a vital oil transit chokepoint situated between Iran and Oman. Oil tankers carry approximately 17 million barrels of oil each day through the Strait, or 20 percent of the world's total consumption.

Some analysts believe that oil prices, currently around $80 per barrel, could reach more than $300 per barrel in the case of a full blockade of the Gulf of Hormuz.

[...]

Al-Askari's statement also comes after right-wing Israeli Channel 14 aired a segment on Tuesday featuring Ayatollah al-Sistani's image on a list of potential assassination targets.

The image appeared alongside other regional figures, including Yemeni leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi, Hezbollah's deputy leader Naim Qassem, Hamas political chief Yahya Sinwar, Iranian Quds Force commander Ismail Qaani, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

[...]

11 Oct 2024

[professionalranter31]

I think every season they should do map changes like what they did with Colosseo

With Colosseo it added more to the map, both gameplay wise but also just to the overall feel and enjoyment of the map (but they should still add the fountains back) and I’ve been having a lot of fun playing it now than before the rework

But I also think it should be done for maps where it doesn’t do anything gameplay wise such as on MEKA base on Busan I think they should make the rooms for the other pilots and not just D.Va since they were her teammates before she joined Overwatch and they are now the defenders of Korea down one member, I just feel like there should be more given to them. So map changes that serve only a lore purpose

Then with other maps like Chateau Guillard it could serve both lore expansion and also just map expansion. With this map (yes I think they should either add new Deathmatch/Elimination maps still but the others should be given some love) I got three ideas for additions they could do. We get Widowmaker’s room, getting an idea of how she sleeps and such, a dock area for when she has to leave via boat, and a helipad for when she has to leave via airship. The last two could have vehicles or they don’t but it would give more to what is essentially Widowmaker’s base of operations when she isn’t on missions

Same for Petra, give some stuff relating to Venture since it was revealed that the place is a Wayfinders site and Venture was working there when we got their gameplay trailer, such as maybe their tent that they sleep in and such

For Kanezaka I would love to see stuff for Kiriko there but also stuff for the rest of her Yokai gang as well as Hashimoto stuff, I also think Hashimoto stuff should be added to Hanamura (they need to do something to put Assault back into the regular circulation of game modes for quick and competitive because the maps are too beautiful to not be properly used) and Hanaoka alongside signs of Kiriko’s fight against them. These changes can be either be just Lore additions or they could be expansions for gameplay stuff as well

Gameplay wise I can think of three maps that for me personally I think would benefit a lot from and that is King’s Row, Route 66, and Numbani since the defenders only get two spawn rooms while only similar maps they get three, same as other maps. It would change up the flow of combat and could really help, hell with Numbani the new Defender’s spawn room could be Efi’s workshop or something like that

Also, I think with the weather and time of day variations of maps they should change up where certain things are placed that would be reasonably moved, such as at Blizzard World the gryphon ride near the first chokepoint might not be running at night or in the rain. Introducing that would make the variations more fun

Changes to maps that help better tell the story of the map and just make it more fun to play it becoming a more regular thing for the seasons I think could really help the game, you guys got any ideas for map additions or changes?

[rimeiii]

I feel like a lot of people seem to be struggling against a lot of the stages, most notably those before story segments. And as a chronic Arknights player who regularly plays high Surging/does ending 2 and ending 3 attempts regularly in IS3, I'd like to share some tips to potentially help with progression!

First and foremost, it does help to have a zone where you can concentrate all your damage at, then prepare blockers and DPS units at that specific area, along with potentially healers. Marbas is the go-to usually because his ult is a heal over time in a 3x3 area around him that lasts the entire stage, kinda like Bard Supporters in Arknights. This comes with enemy pathing and behaviour knowledge, however. Basically, identify a chokepoint to concentrate all your firepower at.

It's probably one of the things you have to get used to in Arknights ASAP if you want an easier time. Take a look at this early stage in IS3 - where you'll have to improvise on the fly based on the unit classes the game gives you.

In this stage (Precarious Defense - normal operation), I took the long straightway in front of Exusiai (the red-haired angel) as my main damage zone. It helps burst down the exploding spiders, as well as the enemies from the bottom spawn point. Gnosis and Steward, the other two ranged units near Exusiai (black and white hair respectively), help with DPS their own way. And I would plug the the leftmost lane as a chokepoint with Spot if I had a weaker sniper than Exusiai, like May or Kroos, but S3M3 Exusiai is more than enough to deal with the squishy units on left lane.

Other options I've used at other points for this stage include:

Using Mountain (S2), Thorns (S3), Lappland (S2), Mudrock (S2), or Saria (S1/S2) to solo lane the top left spawn point.

Using a combination of anything between Agent, Merchant, or Executor classes to deploy and redeploy for the leftmost lane.

If on Emergency (bottom lane spawns turn into Bonethrowers that inflict heavy physical ranged damage, but takes damage over time), focus down the leftmost spawn point with ranged units, and have a Defender/high defense melee unit with healer support near the blue base to tank the hits until the Bonethrowers die.

But there are times where you can't funnel everything into a single chokepoint. In situations like this, you're better off looking for several laneholding combinations while focusing your damage on the lane/area with the largest threats. And since I'm limited to one video on mobile, have this screenshot from one of my ending 3 clears on IS3 as an illustration!

It looks like there's a lot of things going on in this image, but I'll explain.

First of all, the concept. I want to spawn-kill the boss, Ishar'mla, who appears in the red box before making a loop around the map, and finally going to the top left blue base. In this run specifically I have a relic combination that allowed me to one-cycle this boss, which includes the ASPD boosting relics (increases attack speed based on the amount of ingots you have), the Old Fan (increases all Operators' attack by 10% based on the number of classes in your team, capping at 80%), and the chocolate sauce pasta (boosts attack by 100% one second after using a skill).

Two types of main zones to pay attention to: the spawn kill zone in blue and the laneholding zones in dark pink.

With the laneholding zones, you need units with DPS and blocking power - Mountain on S2 is a premiere laneholder on the rightmost area (2-block, attacks everyone he blocks, gives him an attack boost, and gives him HP regen), while a combination of Gnosis's damage (S3M3) and Spot's 3-block plus heal on skill takes care of the leftmost area.

As for the spawn kill zone, it uses both Mlynar and SilverAsh to deal damage. They deal immense physical damage, and considering their ranges somewhat overlap (yellow for Mlynar and light purple for SilverAsh), it helps burst down the boss ASAP.

Of course, to utilize these tips well, you need an understanding of enemy pathing and behaviour. Sadly enemy pathing really isn't exactly indicated by the game, and it's a QoL that I also want in WHB. It's the red line that appears before a wave of enemies spawns in Arknights. Here's some things I've noticed about enemy behaviours:

The enemies that look like fluffy angel doggos move faster than other enemy units.

Screamers/ranged attackers tend to attack the closest unit within their range, and stop moving when they're attacking until they or their targets die - like the Bonethrowers.

The blobs are your slugs. Squishy, easy to beat, weaker than most other units.

As for the other units (eyeballs, smiley faces, etc) I haven't managed to playtest enough, as skill cycling between my L cards (Bath Levi, Selfie Levi, and Selfie Bubs) is enough to kill most everything without issue.

If I have to split up my forces, I personally usually have Bubs and one Levi handle a weaker lane, then focus on the other lane with everything else. I get that moving units is a thing but if I can AFK...why not? Lol

Also, as an aside, I would love to see units with lower rarities gain viability in WHB. Believe it or not, some of the units I use in those Arknights examples aren't the top rarities. To wit:

In the video, I brought Exusiai (6* Marksman Sniper), Gnosis (6* Hexer Supporter), Mulberry (5* Wandering Medic), Cantabile (5* Agent Vanguard), Steward (3* Core Caster), Fang (3* Pioneer Vanguard), and Spot (3* Guardian Defender). Only Mulberry and the 3*s aren't at E2.

In the Ending 3 screenshot, I brought Mlynar (6* Liberator Guard), SilverAsh (6* Lord Guard), Mountain (6* Brawler Guard), Saria (6* Guardian Defender), Gnosis, Texas the Omertosa (6* Executioner Specialist), Mostima (6* Splash Caster), Guard Amiya (5* Arts Guard), Arene (4* Lord Guard), Myrtle (4* Flagbearer Vanguard), Ansel (3* Single-target Medic), and Spot. Only Saria and the 3*s aren't at Elite 2.

However, with how rare Solomon's Tears are and with how upgrade costs are the same across rarities, perhaps having only A+ ranks be viable is for the best. Sunk-cost fallacy and all that.

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

Once again Operation Chokepoint's consequences.

something that boils my piss about visa and mastercard and stripe and paypal unilaterally declaring themselves the final arbiters of what kind of legal business people are allowed to conduct is how much of their bullying is based on pure aesthetics. If you go through the retailer list of a certain specialty herb supplier, the stores that are dressed as legal highs and head shops have all got the banhammer but the stores dressed as wellness and lifestyle have the full suite of payment options available. THEY'RE THE SAME. FUCKING. BUSINESS.

It's the same with adult products, if you want a dildo from Horny Hank's Freaky Fuck Bazaar you gotta pay with crypto or bank transfer but if you want the exact same dildo from the Heterosexual Coupling Healthy Happiness Enhancement Emporium you can pay with paypal.

They don't even truly care what you're selling they only care how it looks. The image of respectable conformity matters more than the substance of the business and products. And actually I don't think anyone should have to meet arbitrary standards of what an acceptable storefront looks like to be able to draw a cartoon dick when drawing cartoon dicks is in fact perfectly fucking legal. You should be able to draw and distribute cartoon dicks in accordance with the law without being forced to dress your cartoon dick dispensary like a hot yoga studio, actually.

[mariacallous]

Moses may have parted the Red Sea, but now, thanks to a wave of Houthi missile attacks, shipping companies are departing it in droves.

So far, the Iran-backed Yemeni group has launched at least 100 missile and drone attacks against a dozen ships in the Red Sea, according to U.S. officials, and threatened to target all vessels heading toward Israel, whether or not they are Israeli-owned or operated. To avoid suffering the same fate, major energy and shipping companies, including BP and Maersk, have halted their operations there—rattling energy markets and driving up global oil prices and soon everything else. The Red Sea is what connects Asia to Europe, in terms of cargo ships, so disruptions are felt around the world.

The Houthi attacks “have created worries for global freight markets, for the flows of energy commodities, other commodities, goods,” said Richard Bronze, the head of geopolitics at Energy Aspects, a research firm. “It’s a really critical shipping route, so any disruption risks adding delays and costs, which have a sort of knock-on effect in many corners of the global economy.”

Washington is reportedly mulling striking the Houthi base in Yemen, just days after announcing a multinational task force to safeguard navigation in the Red Sea. But the pledge did little to deter the Houthis, who instead vowed to ramp up their attacks and target U.S. warships if Washington executed attacks in Yemen. 

As the threat of escalation looms over wary shipping companies and energy markets, Foreign Policy broke down the Red Sea crisis—and what it could mean for global trade.

You lost me at Houthis.

Backed by Iran, the Houthi rebel group controls vast swaths of northern Yemen, following a yearslong effort to gain power that ultimately plunged the country into a devastating civil war in 2014. After years of fighting between the Iran-armed Houthis and a Saudi-led coalition, at least 377,000 people had been killed by the end of 2021, 70 percent of whom were children younger than 5, according to U.N. estimates. 

Experts say the Houthis’ Red Sea attacks are part of a bid to shore up domestic support and strengthen the group’s regional standing, while the Houthis’ popularity has only grown since they began waging these attacks. As part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” the Houthis have vowed to attack ships transiting the Red Sea until Israel ends its bombardment of Gaza. They’re Iran’s JV team, but they can make a splash at times.

“They seek to accomplish a more prestigious status in the region, as a resistance movement integral to the Iranian Axis of Resistance,” said Ibrahim Jalal, a nonresident scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. The Houthis also “want to be framed as a disruptive actor that’s capable of also offering security by halting attacks,” he said.

By attacking ships heading toward Israel, Iran, through its Houthi proxies, is essentially doing what Washington and the West does with economic sanctions—turn the screws. “What they’ve done is very architecturally similar to Western secondary sanctions,” said Kevin Book, the managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, an energy consultancy. “They have essentially tried to make it so that anyone who has nexus to, or trades with, Israel is subject to attack or risk of an attack.”

Why is the Red Sea so important?

Tucked between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan, the Red Sea is an entryway to the Suez Canal and one of the world’s key global trade corridors, overseeing some 12 percent of global trade and nearly one-third of global container traffic. With as many as 19,000 ships crossing through the Suez Canal annually, the inlet is a strategic pressure point in the energy and commodity trade. 

“There’s always been a lot of interest in oil and freight chokepoints because they may be relatively small geographically but they have global impact,” Book said. “Adversaries of the U.S. and Western allies sometimes seek to capitalize on those chokepoints because it can exert such a significant influence over global dynamics.”

Worried by the Houthi attacks, a growing list of major energy companies and shipping firms—including BP, Equinor, Maersk, Evergreen Line, and HMM—have rerouted their ships or suspended operations in the Red Sea. Rather than steaming through the narrow sea, at least 100 ships have instead traveled around the bottom of southern Africa—a detour that can extend ship journeys by thousands of miles and delay freight by weeks.

For now, that will just mean delays, higher costs, and continued disruptions—not the complete upending of global trade. The attacks have “been enough to make certain shippers hesitant to continue using the Red Sea,” said Bronze of Energy Aspects. “But we’re not at a stage where all shipping is being halted or rerouted or that there’s any sort of likelihood of that scale of disruption.”

How is Washington responding?

Washington, which currently has at least three destroyers stationed by the Red Sea, has shot down countless Houthi drones and intercepted missiles launched at transiting ships. To ensure freedom of navigation, Washington also announced this week that it mobilized 10 other countries to form a new task force called Operation Prosperity Guardian.

The operation is set to include Bahrain, Canada, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles, Spain, and the United Kingdom, U.S. officials said, although details are still murky and there remains ongoing confusion about what it will look like. Italy, for example, has said it is sending a frigate to the Red Sea under its long-standing plans—not as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian, Reuters reported. According to the Associated Press, several other countries also agreed to take part in the task force but preferred to remain anonymous. (Many Arab countries don’t want to be seen as defending Israel just now.)

That “underline[s] how tricky it’s been to assemble this coalition and perhaps the limited enthusiasm for many countries for being too visible in confronting this threat and in standing sort of shoulder to shoulder with the U.S. on this issue,” Bronze said.

Apparently undeterred, the Houthis have vowed to continue the fight. “Even if America succeeds in mobilizing the entire world, our military operations will not stop unless the genocide crimes in Gaza stop and allow food, medicine, and fuel to enter its besieged population, no matter the sacrifices it costs us,” Mohammed al-Bukaiti, a senior Houthi official, posted on X, formerly Twitter.

That could mean continued uncertainty for energy and shipping companies, many of which are waiting for more robust reassurances and greater stability until they feel comfortable resuming operations in the Red Sea.

“From a shipping company or a tanker company perspective, I think it’s probably safe to say that they’re going to err on the side of caution until they have some sense that the underlying risks have changed,” said Book of ClearView. Maersk, for instance, acknowledged that its shipping diversions would disrupt operations but stressed that the safety of its crews is paramount.

More fireworks could soon come. Washington is reportedly considering military strikes targeting the Houthis’ base in Yemen if the task force fails to thwart future attacks. The Houthis have threatened to strike U.S. warships in response, potentially paving the way for future escalations. 

The United States could also snap back previously levied sanctions on key Houthi figures as a dissuasive measure—but Saudi Arabia isn’t sold on that idea, since Riyadh is trying to negotiate an end to the yearslong quagmire in Yemen and worries that heavy-handed U.S. tactics could complicate its withdrawal.

What exactly is Saudi Arabia’s calculus here? 

After years of involvement in the Yemen war, Riyadh wants out. Saudi Arabia has been working to extricate itself from that war and to make peace with both Tehran��the two powers normalized relations in March—and the Houthis. 

As Saudi Arabia and the Houthis inch closer to securing a peace agreement, experts say Riyadh has adopted a cautious approach, wary of taking any steps that could jeopardize its fragile detente with Tehran or derail peace talks. But continued escalations in the Red Sea could throw a wrench in Riyadh’s plans. 

“If the U.S. were to attack targets in Yemen, not only could it threaten the truce that Saudi Arabia has struck with the Houthis, but it could interfere with that detente between Iran and the kingdom,” Book said. And that could threaten what is still one of the world’s biggest oil producers and exporters at a time when crude oil is already trading north of $70 a barrel.

“If that were to happen,” Book said, “then risks to production could come back, and that would change the picture, potentially adding more upside risk to the crude price.”

[deliverred]

✧ craxis: the unease of knowing how quickly your circumstances could change on you.

Becoming used to things invited complacency, and complacency led to lazy mistakes.

Lukas had gotten used to fighting against similarly armed opponents. Soldiers with spears, pirates with axes -- physical threats that he could turn away with his own lance, shirk off with his shield and armor. Even archers, who thought they were safe at a distance, could not bring him down with their arrows before he marched his way up to end them.

Where his armor offered him superior defenses against most of their foes, it didn't give him the benefit of quick movement. He was best utilized at chokepoints, to wear down enemies for the others to sweep in, or to protect their forces from any reinforcements seeking to flank them. He was a sturdy shield, and Lukas held no qualms with operating as such.

His error was not expecting their enemy to make use of witches in this battle.

They were a little understood factor of fighting against Rigel, but there was one thing Lukas recognized about them: the strange, distorted noise that heralded one warping nearby. It was a surprisingly subtle sound, if he were to think about it outside the scope of life and death, but there was something about it that just sounded wrong to the ears.

Foolish, to think that fighting for one's life was something to get used to, to wear like a cloak and not think beyond it.

Lukas takes note of where the main force is, how far away, turns away towards where he'd heard the witch warp in. To an outsider, perhaps it would look like a mismatched fight in his favor; a man in heavy armor against a young woman with no such armaments. Just a mask and glowing pits for eyes. He wonders, briefly, if the mask is required; would their emotions still show on their face despite being a soulless husk?

Does this poor woman see a mask on him, made of flesh that smiles but eyes dark pits all the same?

She moves, and Lukas brings up his shield.

Flames explode around his defenses like a wave crashing into a seaside cliff. And, just as water finds its way into all the cracks and crevices of sturdy rock, magic seeps passed his armor as if it were were nothing more than a slight delay. Armor that could turn away even Rigel's finest weapons did little to guard him against such tortured magics.

Heat builds up quickly, unbearable in its intensity, but Lukas does not feel the burn of it and ducks his head behind his shield as he charges toward his foe.

But he does not connect.

She is there and gone again, wisps of smoke between his fingers -- and then that intense heat erupts across his back again.

He staggers to a knee, gasps against the heat; feels the lick of flames catching on padding and clothing beneath armor, skin beneath that. Smoke and char and heat cling to his throat. He forces himself to breathe, shield digging into the ground with a crack of superheated metal as he leverages it to get himself back onto his feet. Twists to swing out with his lance -- it doesn't hurt, but it feels wrong and tight -- and it catches in the witches side with a warbled cry.

But they both stubbornly cling to their thread of life, and Lukas knows that he will not strike her down before her fire consumes him. He refuses to fall here, to this, even if he has to prop himself up by his lance to accomplish it.

His willpower would make it happen, but his body could not.

His vision was spotty, his legs were buckling, his breath rattled in his chest. Lukas stared down those glowing eyes all the same. Her mouth opened but if she made a sound, he did not hear it; fire bloomed in her open palms. The world warped like heat distortion, and he slipped just as the witch's head jerked forward -- an arrow buried deep before disappearing along with the body, a writhing, screaming thing before it blipped out of existence.

Someone was patting him down desperately, trying to put out the fire that was eating at clothes and skin. Lukas swallowed, dry and ineffective, coughed. Eventually gave up on his voice and physically waved the other away from touching his armor -- it would hurt them just the same as him, it was too late for him but he could at least keep them from suffering injury on his account.

A familiar voice he couldn't quite place in the moment asked what happened, shouted back towards the direction of the main group for a healer.

Lukas forced his eyes open, tried to curl his mouth into a smile.

"I grew complacent..."

[raitrolling]

Where the Wolfsbane Blooms

[Easy reading version on Toyhou.se]

(This drabble is related to @cloudbattrolls' Harbinger plot, and takes place at the same time as Last Stand.)

Mikiel had been waiting for this moment.

Perigees had passed since Thrixe’s disappearance, but he had done nothing but wait. Biding his time, throwing himself into his work, keeping his skills sharp and his anger even sharper. Gone were the times that he would complain at the sight of some unexplainable abnormality, replaced now with a cold efficiency to destroy anything that crossed his path.

It was all he could do to stay sane, at least until Ginger gave him the call.

They told him to expect to be summoned a few nights after their first call, which gave him ample time to prepare. The head of Special Operations had taken his notice that he was summoned by the Mantle of Pestilence themself as a job of grave importance, making Mikiel Gaia’s representative in assisting with restoring the balance between the two realms. Many of Gaia’s agents, like all other entities on Alternia, had been barred entry from the realm after the fae closed the courts, meaning that they could not send in any back-up to assist him.

But, that did not mean they were unable to provide the blueblood with any assistance.

In his hand were three doses of psiionic stimulant, each contained within an auto-injector needle. Mind honey is a highly-controlled substance on Alternia, yet Gaia had something equally as potent on its side: Magic. Mikiel had been warned by the medical staff to not exceed more than one dose over twenty-four hours, as given his highly unstable psiionics they could not be certain that his body would be able to handle the strain they will put on his heart.

As he tucked two of the injectors into his pockets and stared down his present targets, the last thing on his mind were any safety concerns. Being safe will not bring his moirail back.

When he was teleported into the Summer Court, he was barely given any time to take in his surroundings before Ginger had informed him of his task: Keep the advancing fae at bay, and buy the two trolls they were assisting as much time as possible to catch up to their quarry. Supposedly they were seeking out one known as The Fireseer, the sole roadblock between this world and The Furthest Ring.

Their goals aligned with his, and that was all he cared about. The rest of these damned fae realms could burn to the ground, as far as he was concerned. 

Ginger had also provided him with some minor protective spells before they parted ways: One to shield his eyes from the Court’s endless daylight, and one to lessen the impact of any magic or wounds caused by the fae. Typically he did not enjoy the idea of being subjected to magic, but he had to respect their practicality. 

The battlefield in front of him was a coastal wasteland: A strategic location to provide himself with ample room to let his psiionics loose, and pools of boiling water behind him created a chokepoint to defend as the main group made their escape. The sun shining above him felt like it should have been burning his skin like that of Alternia’s brightest star, but his psiionics combined with Ginger’s spell protected him from any discomfort related to the unusual temperature. 

He could see swarms of disease-ridden amalgamations approaching from the horizon, and knew it was time. With a silent nod towards Ginger, he set out to fulfil his duty.

Ice began forming at his feet as he pulled off his gloves, holding the needle between his teeth while he clenched and unclenched his hands. The temperature of the Summer Court would ordinarily not be ideal for his psiionics, his frozen footsteps not spreading out as fast as he would like. He kept advancing until he was in the middle of the field, staring firmly ahead at the disgusting creatures in front of him. 

He could feel the many pairs of eyes on him, scrutinising him with suspicion. He is but a single troll, powerless against the fae’s sheer numbers in their forces and lacking in any natural defenses that their species was accustomed to. A mind fragile against supernatural interference, a body incapable of regenerating itself infinitely…

But they knew what just one troll could be capable of, after the intruder had destroyed so many kin, and they knew that there must be a reason if Pestilence had called upon him specifically.

That reason made itself clear when the blueblood bared his teeth and snarled, almost wolf-like in nature, then drove the needle into his own thigh.  

That snarl became a pained howl as Mikiel doubled over, clutching his head as the stimulant ignited his psiionics, sending shockwaves of power throughout his entire body. His vision tripled, his head felt like it was splitting apart while his heart threatened to tear out of his chest, and he felt like he was going to vomit. 

The landlocked fae did not stand a chance against the resulting blast of pure psiionic energy.

The ground within a twenty metre radius of Mikiel froze within an instant, consuming everything in its path. Pillars of ice spikes shot up metres in the air around him, and as he staggered backwards sent even more soaring up into the air. He could hear a cacophony of sounds as those capable of flight screeched at the sight of entire squadrons of fae swallowed up by the ice, their horrified expressions captured inside their frozen prisons. 

Breathing heavily, his hand moved to his chest to feel his heartbeat. Each breath felt like he was getting speared by icicles forming within his own lungs. His glasses cracked under the rapid drop in temperature, making the swarms of creatures ahead nothing but dark inhuman blurs. Ice stuck to his clothes and climbed up his legs, reminding him that he needed to get moving now lest he end up just like his foes.

He took a moment to attach his ice skate blades to his boots, and charged forward. 

Mikiel ducked and weaved amongst the ice spikes shooting up at all angles around him, baiting the fae to try and get within his reach. The one drawback of his cryokinesis was that he cannot freeze anything that is not directly touching either himself or the ground underneath him, but after dealing with abnormalities at Gaia, he had developed a new strategy. 

A mass of insectoid limbs with monarch wings dive bombed in from his left. Mikiel turned on his skates and swung out his arm, using his entire body to guide the fast-growing ice spikes into the same arc. The fae stopped in its tracks for just a second too long and was pierced by a spike directly through its central core.   

Another one down. God knows how many to go.  

Mikiel kept moving, keeping as many fae eyes on him as possible, leading them around the battlefield and spearing them with his spikes whenever the opportunity struck. To stop moving would be to die. Any moment spent standing still would allow the disgusting creatures to pile onto him, overwhelming him with their sheer numbers.

But, while quick and with the power of at least ten psiionics surging through his veins, he was not invincible. 

A nautilus-like disease fae, using its crystalline shell to camouflage against a pillar of ice, shot its tendrils out at the skating troll, and managed to get a grip on his arm. Mikiel stumbled, caught unaware, and was forced to grind his blades to a halt. With its prey ensnared, the fae sprouted more tendrils, this time tipped with sharp needle-like points, and aimed them at the blueblood’s neck. 

Mikiel disregarded those entirely, instead grabbing onto the tendrils that’d wrapped around his other arm. He yanked them towards himself with all his strength to dislodge the fae from its hiding place, and the needle-tipped tendrils missed their mark, one only managing to nick the side of his neck while the other flailed about uselessly. He felt the creature’s grip tighten around his arm, but quickly the tendrils stiffened and froze, ice consuming the rest of its body.

It may have wasted precious seconds, but Mikiel felt some satisfaction from stomping on the newly-formed ice sculpture until it was nothing but a pile of frozen chunks.

This back-and-forth continued, until it seemed that the fae’s numbers had drastically decreased. Mikiel did not feel as if he had thinned out their numbers that dramatically, and could only assume they had performed a strategic retreat. Good, as he could feel the effects of the stimulant start to wane. He was able to breathe for a moment, and slowed down, retrieving a second pair of glasses so he could survey his surroundings. However, the lens cracked quickly from the shift in temperature, and Mikiel swore under his breath.

His neck itched where the nautilus-fae’s tendrils had scratched him, the beginnings of a rash forming. 

This section of the Summer Court had also been transformed into a frozen wasteland, spires of ice haphazardly dotted around the area encasing many fae within. Those who had been speared by the spikes had already dissolved, leaving only traces of their melted remains glimmering in the realm’s abnormal sunlight. 

There were no other traces of fae in sight, meaning… 

Mikiel heard a distorted call, a chorus of synthesised war horns crying out at once, then felt the ground underneath him rumble. The spikes around him cracked with each tremor. When he turned around, his jaw almost dropped.

It was substantially larger than the others he had fought, and while slow and lumbering it emanates the pure power of a phantasmal beast. Four sturdy hooves cracked from centuries of warfare held up a body much more dinosaur-like in appearance, and atop of its long neck was a head resembling a chimera of horse and crocodile. Its head revealed flashes of exposed bone between shaggy strings of peeled skin, and similar needle-like bones lined down the creature’s back at odd angles, finishing at a leathery tail thin as a whip.

A lengthy maw filled with fangs smiled down upon Mikiel, and its tail cracked in intimidation. Blackened skin sloughed off its body in chunks like irradiated flesh, a twisted parody of death and rebirth as new sheets regrew in its place only to be scorched and discarded. The ice floor underneath its feet sizzled as it walked, but through shattered glasses the blueblood could not tell what was dripping off its rapidly-decaying body.

He knew nothing of the fae’s hierarchy or how to identify the diseases they represented, but he could tell by its size and its ornate headdress decorated with summer foliage that the seasonal Courts had summoned one of its strongest combatants. A Royal Knight. 

He reached into his pocket to pull out a second injector. He was told to not exceed the limit of one dosage per night, but this wasn’t the ordinary circumstances he would be facing on Alternia, this was a literal do-or-die scenario. And he needed all the power he could get.

Mikiel was prepared for the consequences as he jabbed the needle into his thigh, but that did not make its activation any less painful. Again he screamed and staggered, holding his head as the same affects struck him twofold. Ice stuck to his hair and lanced up the filed-down stumps where his horns once sat, and another wave of spikes shot out from the ground in a brilliant wave as his nerves fried. He felt the burning all the way down to the tips of his fingers and toes, and tasted blood in his mouth from the strain his body was being put under. 

He was hearing sounds and seeing colours that did not exist, but his target was large enough that he did not need to clearly envision his next move. Barely able to remain steady on his feet, he took off, the ice carving a path through all the spikes for him to gain enough speed.

Then, focusing his power, the path he had created lifted off the ground, becoming a perfect ramp for him to leap off - and onto the fae’s back. 

Fuck, this thing is hot. Even with his psiionics protecting him, he could still feel the beast’s skin sizzling against his boots… As betwixt the fleshy peels lay tumorous boils which continuously oozed searing-hot acid, covering the fae in a viscous layer of boiling corrosive tar. Bubbles burst and shot flecks of acid upwards, burning tiny holes into Mikiel’s clothing, while ice continuously creeped over his body, instantly melting then reforming to protect him from the heat.

He knew now that his original plan was a bust, there was simply no way his psiionics would be able to freeze this monster. Goddammit.

The fae howled a horrible draconic roar, lurching it’s body from side to side in an attempt to shake the blueblood off. Mikiel made a grab for the rows of exposed needle-like bones running down its spines. He attempted to spread his ice down them, but they too were too hot for his cryokinesis to affect them. The best he could manage was preventing his hands from blistering upon exposure. 

Reaching out from one spine to the next, he made his way up the creature’s back, gritting his teeth through the pain of his psiionics being pushed into overdrive. He had to make this work, he had to stop this thing no matter what. Perhaps if he could not freeze it from the outside, then - 

A sound of a whip crack caught his attention, and he spun around. The tail. A long, leathery-looking thing, far more flexible than the fae’s sauropod-like appearance made it seem. It curled up like a scorpion’s stinger, and lashed forward at Mikiel. He dodged, still clinging to one of the spines to maintain his balance, but the sludgy consistency of the acid at his feet made it difficult to move. 

But the fae was not aiming to spear the cryokinetic, and the tail’s position was in a perfect spot to coil itself around Mikiel’s throat.

Mikiel panicked, clawing madly at it as he felt its grip tighten, digging his nails into its leathery flesh. He managed to pull it off him, but it kept fighting back. With the intensity of a cornered animal, he grasped a length of the tail between his fists and bit down, hard.

There was a loud crack as rather than sinking his teeth into what appeared to be flesh, Mikiel found bone hard enough to shatter his fangs. He cried out in pain and lurched backwards, wiping his hand against his mouth and tasting bloodied gums. Damn beast, he should have known that he was not dealing with a creature made of anything remotely similar to Alternian animal biology.

Yet, despite the relative stupidity of his move, the fae’s agonised shriek proved it had some impact. It withdrew its tail from the blueblood, changing strategies.

He leaned forwards to cough up all the gunk inside his mouth: blood, ice crystals, and a few shards of shattered teeth. His jaw seized up with pain, sending another wave of dizziness to distract him from the beast’s next move.

The Patron’s Mark alerted him to a sudden surge of magical energy around him. Light crackled in the air, forming rings of magical circuits that entrapped Mikiel before he was able to react.

Shit.

He couldn’t move.

The damned beast had cast a binding spell. Goddamnit, he was warned that the fae were capable of casting magic, why didn’t he think-

Before he knew it, the fae struck again. As fast as lightning, its tail smacked against him and sent him flying. He was powerless against it, and unable to move his body to lessen the near-instantaneous impact with the ground.

He heard his elbow crack against the frozen floor, but he couldn’t feel it. He continued to slide across the ice, seeing stars and incomprehensible blurs, until his body finally ran out of any momentum.

The blueblood let out a groan. Ice crawled up his arm to hold it in place, not that he was able to move anything while the spell still had its hold on him. It was starting to wear off, however, as he was able to move his head and spit out all the remaining shards of broken teeth. He knew he’d have to get them all removed when he returned, so that new teeth could grow in their place. If he was able to return. He had no plan of even attempting to make it out of this battle alive, because if he’d faltered, that could have spelled the end of Thrixe’s return. Why now? Why worry about returning home?

When he heard the rumbling of the Knight lumbering towards him, he knew why. It was because he knew he was going to die. And as its jaws clamped around his body, piercing into his flesh, oozing blood and threatening to crunch his bones, he realised he did not actually want to die.

The beast shook its head from side to side, playing with its food, and then tossed Mikiel upwards. His body ragdolled as the force of the fae’s swing and gravity interacted with one another, and he gazed directly down its open maw.

Then, he recalled his previous idea. An idea that would only work if -

The jaws of the fae clamped back down on him, but this time he’d managed to move just enough to twist around and avoid getting swallowed whole. It was biding its time with play, single-minded as fae tend to be, awaiting the moment its binding spell wore off and its prey could truly feel his last torturous moments. His leg was trapped between its fangs, and he was hanging upside-down outside of its mouth. 

Blood was rapidly rushing to his head, if it wasn’t already pouring out the previous bite wound, but he’d been fighting the dizziness from the psiionic stimulants this entire fight. All he needed was one thing: For his foot to be touching the inside of the fae’s mouth.

He wriggled his leg, and then hit something solid.

There.

Mikiel activated his psiionics with a guttural roar, and the fae suddenly fell still. Ice consumed the inside of its mouth and spread throughout its internal structure, and then - 

It howled one last final, unholy scream before hundreds of icicles pierced through its flesh from the inside-out. Mikiel was unceremoniously dropped from its maw, and could only watch as the beast exploded in a flurry of acid and viscera.

It was finally over. He’d taken down one of the Summer Court’s Royal Knights, and any last fae remaining scattered.

The blueblood felt something drip onto his face, then another landed in his eye as the shattered lenses of his glasses were unable to catch it.

Ah. The ice spikes still looming above his head are starting to melt. His psiionics have stopped working. Is that… Is he dying?

He found he could move his body again, but was too tired to stand back up. Weakly, he attempted to move his arms. The left - useless. His elbow had shattered when he first hit the ground, as all he could feel was a dull pain shooting up his arm. The right, though - he moved his hand in front of his face. It was shaking, likely from blood loss, but through his blurry vision he could tell his fingers had blackened, frostbitten in appearance.

But it wasn’t frostbite, it was burnout. If he could see properly he would notice the scarring continuing down his arm, light blue lighting bolts patterning his skin. The same scarring also present on his face, barely visible amongst the frost covering his skin.

He dropped his arm back down, landing on his chest. Ice was spreading over his body in a feeble attempt to slow the bleeding from the fae’s jaws. His leg was similarly covered in a coating of ice. He didn’t know why his own body bothered to protect himself like this, when it was only sapping away the last of his strength.

He supposed he had Ginger to thank for the fact he was still breathing now, albeit weak and laboured. If it wasn’t for their protection, he likely would have already bled out and died. Or maybe the impact of the fae’s tail that sent him flying would have killed him. Or maybe it would have been the boiling acid that covered the monster when he landed on it.

Or maybe it would have simply been from the sun, still bearing down on him while he stared into the clear blue sky. So many things that would have ordinarily caused him to give up and accept death, but in what felt like his last moments, he knew he still wanted to live.

He thought of Thrixe. Jumbled, disconnected thoughts as his mind drifted between the realms of consciousness and unconsciousness... He hoped this was enough, to bring him home. He knew Thrixe wouldn’t be proud of him for pushing himself this far, but he hoped that he would understand why he did. He hoped to see him smile again, one last time…

…

…

By the time Ginger was able to return to find Mikiel, he was already near comatose.

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

Once again Operation Chokepoint and its consequences have been a disaster for humanity.

while it might seem the case that being an independent artist frees you of having a boss you hate, this always ignores the fact that anyone doing art becomes intimately aware of how much room there is in your hollowed out skeleton to hate payment processors

[randomnameless]

Fort Merceus was built back when the Empire was only about the size of Hresvelg territory. They constructed the massive military base in order to subdue other clans in the area. After that, it ended up serving as the guardian of the Imperial capital, and kept getting updated and expanded. The rest is history.

From a Nopes Adrestian NPC

Which means

(graphic design is not my passion)

Between -41 and 0, we know Enbarr existed, but Willy Hresvelg was a Lord/the Lord of Enbarr.

Jury's out on what Enbarr encompassed - if it was just a city or a city + provinces, but in 0, Adrestia is founded with Enbarr as its capital, officially due to the presence of Seiros, but if it was Willy's domain/city to begin with, I can see why they picked it as the capital of the Empire.

Was it at that point that Enbarrian territory stopped being "Enbarr Provinces" and started to become "Hresvelg Territory" or it happened earlier (Willy conquering neighbour provinces before become Emperor, for Enbarr, but ultimately for him/the Hresvelg house?), or did the "Hresvelg Territory" encompass the conquests, between 0 and 32 of the most southern parts of what is now Adrestia, Boramas, Rusalka, etc, with the river with Aegir being a kind of natural border?

32 : Willy wants to unify the world

It'd make sense to have Merceus built around that time, both to protect what was already Adrestian/Enbarrian/belonged to the Hresvelg, and to have a base of operations closer to the new "lands to be conquered" than Enbarr.

Someone on Redshit made a detailed map thanks to Nopes's informations (and some guessing) and placed Fort Merceus here :

At the exit of the sort of "canyon" that is identified as "Merceus" in the general map, near the source of a river (there is a fork thing). It's kind of a strategical point, given how any army, to reach Enbarr, would have to cross the "Merceus canyon", because east of that canyon there is the Aegir River, and west of said canyon there are some mountains.

46 : Battle of Gronder 1

Things were going well for Adrestia between around 32 and 46, if they were able to reach Gronder in 46.

Sure, compared to the fast war that happens in the game, you'd have to wonder why the fuck did they take 14 years to reach Gronder, but it kinds of make sense with the idea of Adrestia building its strength slowly to ultimately be strong enough to challenge Nemesis, or the Empire wanted to make sure the newly conquered provinces were "correctly Adrestianised" before pushing forward, so they wouldn't rebel and stab Willy in the back or turn against a defenseless Enbarr if the main army is fighting up north?

Myrrdin

Ignatz notes how the Bridge of Myrddin was made during the War of Heroes - it has the same strategical value as Fort Merceus, making a fort in the only chokepoint (mountains on one side and huge river on the other) both to protect what is already Adrestianised, and to have a new base of operations.

91 Tailtean 1 : Rhea turns Nemesis in a pincushion

Between Gronder - which more or less took 14 years to reach from Merceus to Tailtean, the Adrestian army either accelerated their pace, or stopped taking a crap lot of time to "pacify/Adrestianise" the newly conquered provinces, given how in 45 years they managed to cross the Alliance and a large part of what is now Faerghus.

However, given how in 98 it is said the Empire is in control of "most" of Fodlan, I suppose they also spent time "conquering/Adrestianise" the Eastern parts of the continent, like Eastern Adrestia and Eastern Faerghus, because I sure as hell don't see Willy+Lycaon+Seiros rushing to Tailtean if half of Fodlan is still siding with Nemesis, and "pacifying/conquering" this half in the 7 years following Nemesis's defeat.

(and given how this other half encompasses Rhodos, where Cichol lived and how Seiros met him and his family there per Flayn's support, either she went like a ninja to meet them, or it was "safe enough" for her to walk from Enbarr to Rhodos - or Seiros the Warrior, just after Zanado, first went to Rhodos before going to Enbarr?)

Tl; dr : Adrestia started slowly, at least until the new Empire reached Myrrdin. Willy Seiros built forts in strategical positions/chokepoints to protect what was already Imperial Land, and also to have new bases of operation as the army moved up north.

However, we don't have any clues or info about forts and bases being built post Myrrdin (which can only have been built post 46), so it can be assumed post 46, when the Adrestian Army started to fight the Elites and their allied clans, they didn't have the same motivation anymore, even if taking roughly 50 years to reach the Tailtean Plains, given how fast the war happens in the Fodlan games, either means they were all foot units and had a crap mov stat back then, or the Adrestian Conquests of back then weren't just "kill the leader and move forward" like we see in Tru Piss (and Supreme Bullshit?) but might have been something closer to "kill the leader, bring enough 'order' to the newly conquered lands and Adrestianise them so they won't rebel, maybe let Seiros do her thing with her church stuff, ask people around if they know about "golden weapons", and then move forward".

It's all conjecture, of course, given how we don't have enough intel, but with the presence of those forts and the abnormaly long time it took for the Adrestian Army to conquer Fodlan and deck Nemesis, even if he and his Elites put up a fight with the help of Mole People, I can't really explain nor understand why it took around 65 years for Willy to conquer Fodlan.

In comparison, Supreme Leader "only" takes 5 years in FE16 (and that's only because she was "very sad uwu" when Billy fell in a ravine in Tru Piss), but Nopes shows how starting the War of Unification when her home base/state isn't "orderly" enough bites her, in Nopes Aegir Sr who wasn't "dealt with" rebels and we have bits of pseudo civil wars (even if it's always subdued thanks to the Supreme rule of thumb regarding the Fodlan games), in AG she ultimately becomes Supreme Puppet because dealing with evil lizard lady was more important than making sure Uncle'n'pals were "dealt with", which also happens in Supreme Bullshit.

So, in a way, Supreme Leader conquered Fodlan way faster than her stupid ancestor did (5 years vs 60) but she had to face opposition and rebellions within her own forces, let it be by people she deposed and called a day (Aegir Sr) or her embarassing allies - she either "deals" with them after the Conquest, or forgets to deal with them and it destroys Adrestia (AG) or is another surprise force she has to fight against (but ultimately succeeds because she has a plot mc guffin siding with her, or an imbecile who does all of the heavy work for her).

[dysrope]

The Long 35th Century

[V v late addition to turn 15: 9-3-3-1=2]

The collapse of the centralized control over most of the underworld, and the outbreak of brutal war caused a disruption of all underworld trade, massive depopulation of central areas, and an overextension of the Royal armies. Internal and external enemies take notice

The Empire Is Struck Back

Sensing the weakness of Chivik, the long-suffering tribes closest to the see the time is right to retailiate for the many historic mistreatments andhumiliations. At first they simply participate on the side of rebels as mercenaries, or engage in banditry, but the charismatic brother of the Kilklak matriarch fosters personal relationships with the leaders of many other clans and tribes, and promotes a branch of the circadian cult that yearns for a return to the "good old days" when all tiktik lived in tribes, and there were no decadent city-dwellers. With a combination of traditional personalistic alliances and a formalized priesthood connecting the tribes, he manages to unite most of them in a grand confoederation. The Confoederation of Free Tribes raises a vast army, and manages to defeat what arnies Chivik can bring to bear, and capture the city of Tranos, which had long been a thorn in their side. The city is promptly renamed Kilklak, but it is mainly used as a garrison, with only little civilian activity; a base of operations for further attacks eastward. The confoederation is led by an agreed-upon Matriarch (often from the Kilklak clan) but her prime councillor is always the high priest, and a very conservative agenda tends to dominate the political programme.

The Second One True Empire

Tanmak also sees the scattered Royal armies and the long response times and mobilizes its population. A quick march takes them to the relatively undefended eastern edge of Retvik. The Retvikvik are convinced that their interests are better served by submitting to the Empress of Tanmak, and the fledgling empire gains control of this most vital chokepoint without a fight, securing the entirety of the east. The Empress declares herself the rightful sovereign of the entire world, though in practice that only means Tanmak is now truly independent. A variant of circadianism is established as state religion, centering on the empress dynasty as a manifestation of eternal renewal, and the holy land of Erjul, as a place where the sunlight spills into the underworld and many pilgrims go there to bathe in the waters that carry the light, though it is a very dangerous excursion to any that need to breathe.

Rebel rebel

In Fikset city, the successive escalating crises, and ineffective responses of the central government are met with joy. The city is hit hard by the loss of trade, and increased taxes, but the population is united in opposition to Chivik rule, and are now finally able to drive out the occupation forces. Since the former glory days of independent Neskot are fondly remebered, that name is reintroduced, but the original ruling clan was long ago driven into extinction. Instead, the Independent and Free City State of Neskot is ruled more or less democratically. The most important body is the assembly, where each of the citizen clans with more than 144 members sends their representatives, but each year they elect one amongst themselves to become a "Neskotkot". These are a "clan" only in name, but do form a government, usually with a dozen or so members

[mostlysignssomeportents]

To save the news, shatter ad-tech

I’m coming to the HowTheLightGetsIn festival in HAY-ON-WYE with my novel Red Team Blues:

Sun (May 28), 1130h: The AI Enigma

Mon (May 29), 12h: Danger and Desire at the Frontier

I’m at OXFORD’s Blackwell’s on May 29 at 7:30PM with Tim Harford.

Then it’s Nottingham, Manchester, London, Edinburgh, and Berlin!

Big Tech steals from news, but what it steals isn’t content. Talking about the news isn’t theft, and neither is linking to it, or excerpting it. But stealing money? That’s definitely theft.

Big Tech steals money from the news media. 51% of every ad-dollar is claimed by a tech intermediary, a middleman that squats on a chokepoint between advertisers and publishers. Two companies — Google and Meta — dominate this sector, and both of these companies are “full-stack” — which is cutesy techspeak for “vertical monopoly.”

Here’s what that means: when an advertiser wants to place an ad, it contracts with the “demand-side platform” (DSP) to seek out a chance to put an ad in front of a user based on nonconsensually gathered surveillance data about a potential customer.

The DSP contacts an ad-exchange — a marketplace where advertisers bid against each other to cram their ads into the eyeballs of a user based on surveillance data matches.

The ad-exchange receives a constant stream of chances to place ads. This stream is generated by the “supply-side platform” (SSP), a service that represents publishers who want to sell ads.

Meta/Facebook and Google both the “full stack” of ads: they represent buyers and sellers, and they operate the marketplace. When the sale closes, Googbook collects a commission from the advertiser, another from the publisher, and a fee for running the market. And of course, Google and Facebook are both publishers and advertisers.

This is like a stock exchange where one company operates the exchange, while serving as broker and underwriter for every stock bought or sold, while owning huge amounts of stock in many of the listed companies as well as owning the largest companies on the exchange outright.

It’s like a realtor representing the buyer and the seller, while buying and selling millions of homes for its own purposes, bidding against its buyers and also undercutting its sellers, in an opaque auction that only it can see.

It’s a single lawyer representing both parties in a divorce, while serving as judge in divorce court, while trying to match one of the divorcing parties on Tinder.

It’s incredibly dirty. These companies gobble up the majority of every ad dollar in commissions and other junk fees, and they say it’s because they’re just really danged good at buying and selling ads. Forgive me if I sound cynical, but I think it’s a lot more likely that they’re good at cheating.

We could try to make them stop cheating with a bunch of rules about how a company with this kind of gross conflict of interest should conduct itself. But enforcing those rules would be hard — merely detecting cheating would be hard. A simpler — and more effective — approach is to simply remove the conflict of interest.

Writing on EFF’s Deeplinks blog this week, I explain how the AMERICA Act — introduced by Senator Mike Lee, with bipartisan cosponsors from Elizabeth Warren to Ted Cruz (!) — can do just that:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

The AMERICA Act would require the largest ad-tech companies to sell off two of their three ad-tech divisions — they could be a buyer’s agent, a seller’s agent or a marketplace — but not all three (not even two!). This is in keeping with a well-established principle in antitrust law: “structural separation,” the idea that a company can be a platform owner, or a platform user, but not both.

In the heyday of structural separation, railroad companies were banned from running freight companies that competed with the firms that shipped freight on their rails. Likewise, banks were banned from owning companies that competed with the businesses they loaned money to. Basically, the rule said, “If you want to be the ref in this game, you can’t own one of the teams”:

https://www.eff.org/es/deeplinks/2021/02/what-att-breakup-teaches-us-about-big-tech-breakup

Structural separation acknowledges that some conflicts of interest are so consequential and so hard to police that they shouldn’t exist at all. A judge won’t hear a case if they know one of the litigants — and certainly not if they have a financial stake in the outcome of the case.

The ad-tech duopoly controls a massive slice of the ad market, and holds in its hands the destiny of much of the news and other media we enjoy and rely on. Under the AMERICA Act’s structural separation rule, the obvious, glaring conflicts of interest that dominate big ad-tech companies would be abolished.

The AMERICA Act also regulates smaller ad-tech platforms. Companies with $5–20b in turnover would have a duty to “act in the best interests of their customers, including by making the best execution for bids on ads,” and maintain transparent systems that are designed to facilitate third-party auditing. If a single company operated brokerages serving both buyers and sellers, it would need to create firewalls between both sides of the business, and would face stiff penalties for failures to uphold their customers’ interests.

EFF’s endorsement of the AMERICA Act is the first of four proposals we’re laying out in a series on saving news media from Big Tech. We introduced those proposals last week in a big “curtain raiser” post:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

Next week, we’ll publish our proposal for using privacy law to kill surveillance ads, replacing them with “context ads” that let publishers — not ad-tech — control the market.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Hay-on-Wye, Oxford, Manchester, Nottingham, London, and Berlin!

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/25/structural-separation/#america-act

EFF's banner for the save news series; the word 'NEWS' appears in pixelated, gothic script in the style of a newspaper masthead. Beneath it in four entwined circles are logos for breaking up ad-tech, ending surveillance ads, opening app stores, and end-to-end delivery. All the icons except for 'break-up ad-tech' are greyed out.

Image: EFF https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/save-news-we-must-shatter-ad-tech

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

[choppedcowboydinosaur]

Just to add to this the reason why credit card companies decided to be against the 1st and 2nd ammendments is because of Operation Chokepoint. If you want to look into it, it's the reason why we have this censorship hellscape with payment processors.

Anyone ever noticed how so many leftist memes lack…restraint?

The memer had to add the capitalist pig with a speech bubble, because apparently just mocking the “bad” decision wasn’t enough.

They had to also imply that any Yank who disagrees is nothing but a brainwashed sheep.

Seems a biiit like projection.

Also, what does this have to do with credit vs. Cash?

[blockchainfeed]

Coinbase Unveils FDIC’s Role in Operation Chokepoint 2.0: A Battle for Crypto Freedom In a bold move, Coinbase Global Inc has successfully obtained unredacted documents from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), exposing the agency’s #Blockchain #Crypto

[cerastes]

dreamer, how do you usually decide if a stage were badly designed or not?

I run into some tweets talking about how H9-6 was miles better than H8-4, mainly because of how they approach the stage itself, and how that also makes it fun to retry and experiment with the stage when it's nicely designed. I don't know if I really get it because I struggled hard on both of them, maybe even more on H9-6, because my roster is way better than it was on H8-4 when I still have a couple 3 star on the squad.

My appraisal of maps tends to gauge the Fun Factor vs. the Annoying Factor. Difficulty is accessory to both of these, or in other words, it's significance in the equation stems from how it weights in on the Fun or Annoying Factors.

For example, my least favorite maps in the game are Chapter 10 maps, or in other words, maps in which you have to juggle the Artillery Strike (and thus, block count). The idea in itself isn't bad, but the execution, in my opinion, is pretty poor, because it's full of Annoying Factor:

The Artillery hits the unit with the highest block count, and if there's equal blocking in two parts of the map, the latest deploy. There's also a lot of enemies that modify the block count of the Operators blocking them. This means your team building needs to have at least a few high-block units whose purpose is to bait the hit (and have a means to survive 3000 True Damage, be it shields or high HP). This also means your deployment order needs to be more deliberate than in other maps. The deployment requirements in themselves are Fun, but:

These maps are also full to the brim with enemies with low HP but VERY high bulk against non-True damage, meaning you'll usually want bursty options, whether it be constant mini-bursts like Mudrock S2, or true burst windows, in order to deal with them. This is another limiting factor in the team building, because you need Artillery Bait, but also a lot of firepower. More fun control options, like Decel Binders, tend to struggle to find a place in these maps except for specific maps.

And, here's the most important thing, to me at least... After 10+ maps of Artillery juggling... It's just not fun anymore. I think the Artillery would be good if it was used a bit more infrequently, but you really have to deal with almost a full chapter of it, and then a set of H missions which ALL involve Manfred, leading to more Artillery fuckery on top of the normal Artillery stuff and I just don't want to deal with it anymore because it stopped being fun years ago.

I think a Good Map is fun and allows for a bunch of different solutions while still being challenging. Another good aspect of a Good Map is when it doesn't allow stalling. In general, I want the game to punish stalling and make you play aggressively or at least proactively instead of passively. The Artillery, in this regard, is good! It's even good in the sense that enemies can interact with its charge meter, so you can decide to let it fall when you want it to or stall it for longer until you want it to shoot at you. But having to do this a ton of times over and over throughout an entire chapter gets old. So another thing about a good map is that its gimmick shouldn't overstay its welcome.

Now, specifically about H8-4 and H9-6, I personally like H8-4 more, because I don't really care too much for Mandragora as a boss (she's not a bad fight, I just feel neutral about it) whereas I love The Deathless Black Snake as a boss. That said, I believe both maps are good.

In the case of H8-4, it's demanding in terms of bulk: You need to shield the Civilians, and you can do this is a myriad of ways, whether it be to slam your beefiest units in there, or through juggling summons, fast redeploys, and healing. All while dealing with the actual map itself, which necessitates a mix of Physical and Arts. I like it!

In H9-6, the challenge is deployment management: It doesn't deathball you right away, but it's a remarkably large map with several different chokepoints you can choose, and it's a very open-ended map! You can go about it in a LOT of different ways, and I find that cool, all while minding the different challenges: Mandragora as a boss, the tougher Dublinn mobs, specific little groups of tough enemies that come out in intervals, the pillars, etc. It's also a really fun map and a good map, for different reasons than H8-4.

End of the day, a good map isn't a pain to play, in my opinion, and doesn't lock you into very limited team comps. This is also why I sort of fell out of love with Contingency Contract: It was fun at first, but then every high risk (Risk 26 and up) map became a mix of extremely annoying challenges that just kill your entire line-up if not handled in specific ways, and having to stall a boss for 7 minutes while slowly killing them.